Treading Water
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Undead Again 4x22 Epilogue
"Just wanted this one to be special."
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Castle finds her wet.
She answers the door in an oversized t-shirt soaked to her skin, breasts dark outlines, the material heavy and clinging. No shame on her face, just the same frustrated want he feels in large coils in his guts. She beckons him inside without a word and he watches the flash of pale leg as she walks.
He follows.
She drips along the wooden floor, retreating to the bathroom, telling him to wait a minute so she can change. (He wishes she wouldn't.)
He sinks down on her couch and pushes off his shoes and the socks, unbuttons his cuffs, rolls the sleeves up. It's overly warm in her apartment, maybe because of the bath, maybe because May has been obscenely warm this year and she's one of those diehards who refuses to turn on the air conditioning until it's imperative.
It's strange that he doesn't know that about her. She layers, now that he's thinking about it; he's never seen her in only a t-shirt and nothing—
God. Did she not have on underwear when she answered the door?
Castle twists on the couch to look, but of course he can't see her; he stares at the doorway with a slack jaw. He tries to think. Recall the vision of her opening the door to him. He was so distracted by the wet stains at her breasts, the shine on her neck, the so-pale line of her thighs below the hem—
Castle unbuttons the top two of his dress shirt and fans himself with the material, letting out a slow breath.
"Hey," she says from the doorway. Like she's been watching him in silence, debating whether or not to call his name.
He turns on the couch, arm draped on the back, to see her standing just inside the living room once more. The oversized shirt has been replaced with something only slightly more fitted, ash-blue. Charcoal leggings. Her wet hair in a knot at her nape, though she missed a strand which wraps around her neck like a line of dark blood.
He swallows roughly, drops his gaze. "Thanks for letting me come over."
"Thanks for not mauling me at the door. You were faster than I expected."
His head comes up at that; she's smiling tightly but she moves forward to sit with him. Near him. Her knees angled towards his thigh, she draws her legs up on the couch.
He lifts his hand from the back and touches her throat with a finger.
She goes still.
He snakes the hair away from that noose-like line, combing it back, wet, towards the bun.
It must tickle, because she flinches and reaches a hand up to her neck, feels the last of it go.
"Your hair is so long," he murmurs.
Her eyes find his. Too dark, too unfathomable. When he needs it most, he can never read her.
"I just couldn't bear for anything to happen to you," he tries to explain.
"I know."
"Then, but now too."
She nods. It's not an agreement, but an understanding.
He turns his hand and lightly brushes the backs of his fingers against the slope of her neck, catching a few stray drops of bath water. Like they're tears.
She watches him bring his hand to his mouth, watches his tongue dart out to lick those drops of water from his knuckles.
She's on him in the next breath. Her mouth wet to his wet mouth.
X
He tastes differently now. With grief between them. The knowledge of grief, past and future. Like a resin on their tongues, like a faint bitterness in the sweet.
She couldn't stand it. There's a dark fury deep in her guts for what he's done to them, when she wants him so badly, but she has spent the whole of her adult life not giving way to her selfish wants.
Until tonight. This one moment.
His hands are rough on her body. She doesn't think he knows where to land, what's allowed. She tries to show him the way with her own touch: hands holding in his heart against his chest, framing his ribs, palms sliding up his back, cupping his chin, stroking the nape of his neck with her fingers as she kisses him.
He tightens his grip, wrapped so painfully at her upper arms she cants into him, falls into his side. He bands an arm low at her waist and curves his hand over her ass, a little moan from him as he holds her—like it's all he's ever wanted and as far as he knows to go.
So she rubs herself against him, the heel of her hand pressing bruises into his sternum in an attempt to get closer. A clash of teeth as it goes wrong. She bites his lip. His nose is mashed against her cheek. His breaths are hard and panting, his five o'clock shadow leaving marks on her lips, her throat, her jaw.
She can't catch her breath.
He presses her legs apart. A strong grip, sure of himself. Or needy. She can't tell the difference with him; he's been so long now at his imposter syndrome. Desperation is how it tastes, sucking on his tongue and rolling her hips into the flex of his thigh. Her body coiling. Her heart in a panicked rhythm.
Bittersweet.
It's not the end. But it's no beginning either.
It's only a holding pattern.
And they both know it.
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Rick Castle knows that sex will get them nowhere. That making out on her couch tangles them all the more.
He just doesn't want to lose her.
She doesn't seem to want to let go of him either.
He touches things.
Her breath is fast, skirting his cheek. Her fingers cold but warming against his skin. She scrapes raw marks across his shoulders with her nails in an attempt to drag him closer. He loves the burn of it. He loves the burn. His pants are uncomfortably tight; she keeps playing with the buttons of his dress shirt and down.
Sex is a bad idea.
He can't help curving his fingers down inside the back of her leggings and finding proof, indeed, she was not wearing underwear when she opened that door.
She whimpers at the friction of skin.
"Oh, Kate," he groans. Wishing it weren't so. Closes his eyes tightly. "We should stop."
"You can stop," she breathes. Her teeth worry his bottom lip in a roll of pain so erotic he shudders. Her fingers curve in the thick material of his fly. He sucks in a harsh curse. She softens her kiss and leaves a wet, light trail along his jaw to his ear. "But do you really want to?"
"Of course not," he growls. "But we shouldn't tear down every damn bridge we've managed to erect—"
She snickers.
"Beckett," he huffs. "Are you seriously—"
She smiles at his throat. "You said it." Her thumb rubs over and over the button of his pants. "But what exactly do you think gets demolished if I make you come on my couch?"
"Holy. Shit."
"I don't think we have achieved quite that level of reverence," she smirks. "But I'm willing to try."
She's pulled just far enough away that he can see the self-satisfaction, the upper hand in her eyes. The sense of self-immolation.
And for once, well... no. No, that won't do at all. She wants to burn? He can make her burn.
"Then perhaps you should get a towel," he says, narrowing his eyes. "And some lotion. If you're so willing to try."
A flash of heat in her eyes. But the smirk remains. "Oh, Rick. Who said anything about needing to clean up?" She rolls into him, a hot breathless contact of her body over his, before she slides down between his knees to the floor. "My mouth is all you'll need."
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For a long time after—can't think, can't breathe, can't coordinate—his fingers tangled in her damp hair and the warm, soft, slow breath against his inside wrist are all he needs to ground him.
When time and space return, coalescing around the wonder and beauty of this moment (God, he's a sap because of her), Rick can finally make his voice work, his eyes fixed on the erotic line of her mouth, partially open on his inside thigh. "Get up here," he husks. "Where I can reach you."
She lifts her head, eyes dark as the universe. "Oh, is it my turn now? We've returned to the land of the living?"
"I am very gratefully not Undead," he growls. "And it is most assuredly your turn. Get up here."
She turns up her nose. "I don't care for your demands."
"You liar. Get up here."
Her smile breaks out, a little shiver of her shoulders as she 'obeys'—she climbs into his lap and squeezes her knees at his hips. "Good?" she says softly, hesitation, almost a cringing—and he can't stand for her to be uncertain about him.
"Detective, that was mind blowing. Pun intended." He cups her jaw and forces a kiss she can't refuse, sliding his tongue along hers to let her know just how good it all is to him, insistent, demanding—
She moans and surges into him. Widening her thighs, pressing herself right against his hip, grinding. Castle tears from her mouth to suck on her jaw, her neck, her throat. Cupping her breasts over the shirt. "Never expected that when I asked to come over."
"Come. Haha. Lame."
He laughs because he didn't even hear that pun when he said it. "Just true. Kate. You mean too much to me to ever ask—"
"For head? Oh God, please don't turn out to be a closet prude. I couldn't bear it. If we're not compatible in sex, what do we really have?"
He laughs again (but are they not compatible in other ways?) and cups her face in his hands, forces her back—and off the hickey she's making on his neck. "You know better. I'm serious. I wasn't asking for you to—"
"In case you haven't noticed this about me, Castle? I crave control."
He blinks.
She removes his hands from her face, but lightly, wrapping her long fingers around his. Kissing the rough edge of his knuckles. Each hand. "I like tearing you down into nothing but need. And I adore the power I have over you."
"Wow."
She grins and squeezes his hands. "But now it's my turn." She rises up on her knees, arching, and pushes his hand between her legs.
"Oh, Kate," he chuckles, lifting his chin. He's never serious with her, but he's deadly now. "If you think I'll accept anything other than exactly that same power over you—"
Before she can grasp his meaning, Castle lifts her by the hips and flips them, pinning her back against the couch even as his body slides down.
"Whoa, no," she gasps.
He pauses with a hand just inside her leggings. "No?"
She shakes her head against the couch. "Not no, not no, just... oh no. Oh hell."
He leans in and press his lips to the exposed skin of her belly.
She whimpers, her fingers in his hair.
He licks a circle around her navel. Blows softly over it. "How about I get a bit more consent than that?"
"Yes, yes, go for it. I'll probably give you a black eye—fair warning—because I can't very well control my knees when I'm—" Her disclaimer ends in a squeak as he roughly yanks the leggings down. All exposed to him.
"I should have dropped to my knees the moment you answered the door," he sighs against her thigh.
"Why the hell didn't you?"
"Let me remedy the error of my ways."
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Kate groans as the ache in her knee becomes intolerable. Digs her heel into his rib to make him free her.
Before letting her go, Castle leaves teeth marks at her inside thigh. She yelps but her leg pops free of the trap under his arm, and she unwinds from around his neck where she—yes, okay, fine, she could have strangled him. She didn't, though, did she?
He had to hold her open, pin her down, but they got there.
Castle is somehow fully clothed and she is wearing nothing but the sleep shirt, badly rucked up her body, but he crawls up onto the couch with her, over her, and drops down.
"Oof," she grunts.
"No cracks about my weight," he bemoans.
She smiles, unable to respond. Too tired, too good, too wiped out.
"Are you breathing?" he whispers.
She shakes her head no.
"Well, shit." He shoves himself to one side, his ribs hitting the back of the couch—she knows because her knee is pinned between, but that's okay. "Better?"
"Better," she mumbles. "Let me sleep."
"I see you're the one who drops into oblivion after."
"Only with you," she sighs. Presses her nose into his neck, falls asleep.
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It's not nothing, but it's not everything either.
Only with you.
Now that they're here—
Wait, are they even here? Making out on the couch went much farther than it ever has, but they're not here.
Castle lies on his side with his eyes tightly shut, not wanting to look, not wanting to know, not wanting the dawn to break. The woman you wake up to is always ten times uglier than the woman you took to bed last night. Something his mother used to say, warning him about one-night stands. Do as I say, not as I do, she would chortle, waving her bejeweled fingers, usually one of those rings a gift from a smitten old man.
He's always known what Kate Beckett looks like in the cold light of day. It's where they started: her disdain of anything less than her exacting standards, her rigid judgment of his libertine ways—the world in only black and white while Rick Castle lives in greys.
That can't be where they are now. They haven't put in all this work only to find themselves back at square one: You touch my mother's case, and you and I are done.
Okay, but why, he asked.
Same reason a recovering alcoholic doesn't drink. You don't think I haven't been down there? You don't think I haven't memorized every line in that file?
Only he did touch her mother's case—he broke it open again, like cracking opening a bottle of champagne in front of an alcoholic and telling her it would only be one drink. How selfish he's been, how he's wanted her to just see him, find him useful, how he's performed tricks to make her want him. It took me a year of therapy to realize, if I didn't let it go, it would destroy me.
Okay, so they're three years down the line and she's back in therapy (and so is he)—where does that leave them? They both know how it clutches at her, how it sinks its claws in her flesh and rips her apart, piece by piece.
Castle closes his hand at the back of her neck and squeezes as if to keep her together.
As if to tame her.
They've come to an understanding, but an understanding can quickly turn into an impasse.
It has before.
It will again.
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