Treading Water


x

Always 4x23 - Part Three

"What do you want?"

x

She leaves her phone beside his sink, an app streaming a low-fi jazz station. Her nakedness feels like exposure, feels like taboo. A thrill of anticipation, even alone in the semi-dark. She's afraid to stop moving; if she does, the pain will lock up her bones, stiffen her body into something impenetrable. She steps to the bathtub with toes curling in the cold, a shudder down her her spine as the water froths with the force of the faucet.

Her skin erupts with goose bumps. She breathes in male: cloves and blood oranges and cherrywood. Scented oils and shea lotions and sea salt facial scrubs line his medicine cabinet, where she popped two ibuprofen instead of pouring a glass of wine.

She hums to the melody while she lowers herself into the heat of Castle's bath.

Castle's bath. She's taken a shower here before, he's used her bathroom after a too-long all-nighter; they've put their mouths where—

Kate closes her eyes and sinks down until the water laps at her chin; she tilts her head back and lets the heat and hush fill her ears.

(It shouldn't be so sensuous, alone in his bath. Shouldn't be so erotic, thinking about him walking in. They had a fight; she said terrible things; he turned away from her).

She opens her eyes and stares at his dark ceiling, reminding herself that this is no romantic rendezvous.

He warned her. He traded on the currency of his love for her, and she refused to tender its value.

(He chased after her anyway.)

She'll have to make up for that. And as they know full well, no amount of sex can reconcile two people who are fundamentally not seeing the world the same way.

Even if she weren't beat and bruised to hell, she wouldn't try using sex to—

Kate huffs and lifts up in the water, shivering as cool air licks her face, her throat. The music plays low and haunting from her phone, floating over the water. A warning.

Who is she kidding? She might still try to use sex. Sex with Castle is very easy to—

(Okay, technically that hasn't happened yet. Everything but. Mostly an exploration of what makes him grunt her name and husk stop stop.

Teasing him has become an art form.)

And the very existence of this tension between them, the waiting game, is an allure she didn't know she would like so much. She's thought he's liked it too.

He must.

He gave her his key.

(Is he thinking about her, as he plays the part of dutiful, doting parent? Does he wonder if this is it, their time, all will be revealed? Or does he, instead, fantasize about punishing her for her many sins?)

Kate ripples with a secret thrill and sinks back down into the heat, wincing as a bruise glances off porcelain. Her body still buzzes with near-death. On edge for him, for herself, for danger.

This is dangerous. Choosing her own life is dangerous. So much could go wrong, and so spectacularly. Off a roof, off the edge of the known and into the chaos of him.

She presses her fingers between her legs just to relieve the pressure. Just to give herself a fighting chance to not use sex against him.

She shatters to the wail of a horn, his name gasping echoes across the tile.

X

Castle is deeply uncomfortable.

He's congratulating parents and kids and his kid's friends and strangers—and he's thinking about Kate taking a hot shower in his master bathroom. (Steam. The form of her body. Her palm planted against the glass, water streaking down, rivulets.) He's sipping sparkling cider and politely eating puff pastries someone catered and holding a glass up at the various cheers and hurrahs—and picturing the rise of her spine with the mottle of bruises, the dark smudges under her eyes, the slow reveal of each and every hit she took (and why does that turn him on, why do his hands and mouth chase her bruises in his dreams).

He shouldn't be turned on.

He is anyway.

They have so much to talk about, there are so many things he needs to explain—why he ratted her out to Captain Gates when Ryan called, worried, why he wanted her to get in trouble, punished, why it mattered that someone take her down a notch, make her see what she was doing.

(Why is he so very aroused?)

Then again, there ought to be no need to explain.

It is, between them, essential. Always has been. You have no idea, she warned him, and he didn't. He still doesn't. He may never know the depths of their connection, the nuances of their chemistry—and just how far into the darkness she'll take him.

Doesn't mean he hasn't always wanted to go.

x

She drinks a glass of wine, slowly, over time.

She trails her fingers over his books, on his shelves, his name on the spines, the shiny print of Richard Castle. Will she call him Richard, eventually, in that tone of eye-rolling displeasure? Will she call him Richard when she comes next on his tongue, his lips, his fingers? What does Richard feel like inside her?

Oh God, what does Castle?

She places her hands on the keys of the antique typewriter, imagining its electric hum, the clack of letters striking the paper with all that brute strength, forcing the form of words, shoving out an accumulation of sentences. She knows he does not use a typewriter to compose his novels, not any longer (if ever? she needs to ask), but the image of him sitting before this black-beautied machine is too strong to resist.

A low furious brow, peering at her over his machine.

She prowls his bedroom, cloaked only in the fantasy of novel scenarios, moving from bureau to bedside table to closet drawers. She finds rose-scented soap, a tree-shaped key chain from Muir Woods, a Patterson paperback dog-eared and margin-noted in such a blatant exposure of poor self-esteem that it sends a sharp burst of tenderness through her chest.

She has to put it down.

A dildo in a soft velvet pouch. (Not new).

A drape of dainty gold, a pendant and chain, very new, in a blue box, too delicate to be for his mother, too romantic for his daughter. She fondles the sapphire in its setting and sees twinkling lights and apple cider, ice skating and holding hands, you weren't supposed ot get me a present.

She has to put it away too. If she starts crying, she won't stop, and tonight it would be a terrible and wide grief pouring out of her.

She would rather find joy here, with him.

But at the end of her expedition, she finds herself not at home here. And yet familiar with every slope and expanse, intimate with each nook and cranny. Both foreigner and family.

She remembers that she is naked.

But also battered. Battle-scarred.

She does not need to show him this side of her tonight. She ought not to.

x

When Castle opens his front door, the loft is a waiting quiet. He closes the door with care, hangs up his jacket in the hall closet, works on the knot of his tie (his throat feels similarly tight). He tries not to think about where Kate is right now (is she in his bed? is she awake and naked and—).

Oh.

She's asleep on his couch.

He swallows roughly, struck mute by the vulnerability of her form. His heart trips at the view of a pale shoulder, marred by purple bruises, interrupted by the line of the blanket. The storm is still raging outside, fresh fury, lightning giving illumination to the weariness etched into her face, even in sleep.

He is not sure when he last saw her without make-up. Without at least eye liner (if smudged) and some form of concealer. That first case, he remembers the awkward shape of her nose, the eyeteeth, the short boys'-club-appropriate hair that grew out awkwardly for a time—but still a tinted lip gloss, that flare of mascara which made her lashes so long. Over the years, it's developed into contouring and highlighter, a make-up job so flawless he doesn't even see the girl he used to follow like annoying shadow.

She was too young for him then. She is sans concealer tonight, and once more too young for him.

And so very weary. His chest hurts to look at her.

Castle toes off his shoes to keep quiet, runs his hands through his hair to shake off the rain. He moves across the living room to the couch and hesitates.

He supposes her position here, and not in his bed, is a message.

Or perhaps a question?

One can only hope.

He crouches beside the couch and lightly touches two fingers to the visible bruising on her shoulder.

Kate gasps awake, a wild terror streaking across her face before she recognizes him. Panic subsides before he can apologize. Her breath evens out again. He skims his fingers over the artful curve of her shoulder, painfully in love.

Her lashes droop; she sinks back to the cushions. "Castle," she mumbles. "You're home."

"There are far more comfortable places to sleep," he murmurs.

"I didn't want to miss you," she whispers.

A riot of joy. "You didn't miss me." He is desperate to know if she's naked. More, if she's hurt. Hurting. How he hurt her, how the sniper hurt her, how her mother's murder has so very much hurt her. He settles for the immediate, the physical. "How's... the bruising? Just this, that I can see, looks pretty bad, Kate."

She nods against the cushion, entirely too willing to admit her weaknesses.

His heart constricts. Grief a momentary pulse in his throat.

She shifts, pushing herself up, the blanket spilling. His breath catches when he realizes she's wearing one of his dress shirts like a robe. She pushes a hand through her hair, wavy and tangled—she must have dropped straight onto the couch without even finger-combing it.

It's gorgeous.

She's everything.

This is everything.

Kate tilts her forehead to her hand, eyes closing again. "I should've iced it. Instead I fell asleep."

"Not too late for ice," he says softly. Her eyes open and catch on his. He tries a smile and she tries one in return.

"Come to bed, Kate."

x