Heartlines
Kate would like to make love to him but she has a sense (a spidey sense? smiling to herself at that), a sense that there's more to be done, a burned place in him that needs to be soothed. Healed. He does his own share of hiding; she wonders if he knows that.
They sit on the edge of the dock with their bared legs dangling into the calm water, jeans rolled up, shoes off and piled next to them. Kate leans against his shoulder because something about sitting here makes her feel hunched and needy, but she battles at it. She twines an arm around his and uses the warmth of his body and the brilliant blue sky and the rustle of the lake to fight it.
Gradually, her spine uncurls, her chest stops cramping. She realizes that she's using her free hand to massage the tender place between her breasts, realizes also that Castle is quiet but alert at her side.
She wants to make love to him and forget, but there's still work to be done.
"Come inside with me," she says, but this does have a question in it. She's not sure of her way, only that she needs for them both to go forward.
"All right. But my feet are wet."
She grins into his arm and remembers coming back alone from a long sojourn down here on the dock and finding Castle on the deck waiting for her, a towel laid out beside him. She wasn't allowed to swim, of course, but she had dangled her legs over the edge, like now, and Castle had made her sit down on the bench so he could dry off her feet, her calves, serving her in one of the only ways she'd left to him.
"That was the day I realized what I'd been doing - that's when I asked to go with you to the Hamptons," she says, lifting her head so he can see her smile.
He's smiling back. "I remember."
"I didn't want to come back from my time at the lake and not have you. So I figured sitting and staring at the Atlantic was equally helpful."
"Was it?"
"It wasn't the ocean that helped me, Rick."
He leans closer and palms her cheek; she loves the way he touches her when he's filled up with them, with this, with the way they love each other. She breathes lightly against his cheek and lets her mouth wander across his.
"Let's go inside," he murmurs.
Kate lets him help her up, because he's polite and a good man and not because she needs help. It feels differently, his gestures, when she's not defensive, when she *can* stand on her own two feet. This is the problem for her - not knowing how to accept help when she absolutely needs it, but having no trouble accepting help when she could easily knock it aside. She will have to learn to need with grace.
They walk slowly back to the cabin, hands brushing but not together because the little frissons of awareness are so clear and delicious that it's better this way, to tease. It stays in her chest, light and bright, and it makes her crave the heavy touch of him over her.
But there's more to do. She needs to set them right before they chase after a family. Castle babies. Kate reaches out and snags his hand because the thought of children with him makes her instinctively yearn towards him, pulled true north by him, and just brushing his hand isn't enough anymore.
They walk inside with their wet feet, but she finds a kitchen towel in the drawer by the stove and hooks a finger in his belt loop to stop him before he goes anywhere. He chuckles when she leans down and dries off his feet, brushing her thumb at the strangely sensitive strip of skin to the left of his knee. He gets goose bumps and drops his hand to her shoulder.
She dries her own feet, dislodges his hand so she can take it in hers, and guides him to the back bedroom with its two cramped twin beds.
Kate leaves him standing in the doorway. He doesn't look confused, just patient. She realizes they haven't said a word to each other since they started walking back. Kate puts her thigh against the bed she slept in and tries to shove it in towards the middle. Her skin tightens and pain flares; she doubles over, hands pressed tight to the scar. She forgot. For a moment, she forgot.
"Kate?" His hands land at her back, move to her shoulders, but she can't straighten up yet.
"Can you push the beds together for me?" she says instead, gritting her teeth. "I can't do it."
"Yeah. Sure. Of course."
He leaves her side to angle the beds together, shoving first one end and then the other until the twin beds form a somewhat full mattress. Kate drops to the end of the bed and stays bent over for a moment more, waiting for the sharp cramp to ease.
Castle sits down next to her, rubs her back. She gets control of her breathing and sits up a little, pausing in increments to make sure nothing else will twist or tear.
"Do you fit if you sleep across both? Diagonally." she asks, now that she's managed to take a deeper breath.
Castle glances behind his shoulder to the twin beds then nods. "Probably. Why? You wanna sleep with me?"
Leering. Jeez, Castle.
But she grins. "Yes. Lie down for me."
His startled amazement is quickly replaced with indulgent love and a thin veneer of immature lust. But she'll take it - all of it - the horny teenager and the lovestruck puppy and the good, good man. He does lie down, but he brings her with him, holding her against him to control their descent.
She turns carefully in his arms until her back is pressed against his chest, his legs curled up behind her thighs, his warm mouth at her neck. He wraps an arm around her waist and sighs.
"I wanted to do this every night," he murmurs.
Exactly. Exactly. Kate tugs on the hand at her belly and pulls his palm to her mouth, seals it with a kiss. "I want to be this. Like this. For you."
"I don't need you to be anyone other than yourself."
She can't help the rush of warmth that flashes across her skin. How he wants her, loves her. She hopes it's not unbalanced, hopes he knows how much she-
Why hope? Tell him. She should tell him.
Kate turns to her back slowly, being careful of the tender places around her scar. Castle is watching her expectantly, but he raises his hand to the bullet wound and lays his palm over her, as if to protect it. Protect her.
She wants so badly to have him. She does have him. But to take everything he offers and-
"I want you to marry me," she says, staring at him. He grins, but she sees, with relief, that it's not new information. He does know. He knows.
"Oh I plan on it."
The relief breaks open her smile and she can't control it, doesn't want to. "Good."
"I mean," he starts, with a melodramatic look of sincerity on his face. "Where else am I going to find a woman - in this day and age - who will crown me king?"
She laughs, not wanting to feed his ego but unable to stop herself, laughs and watches him maneuver so he can hold his hand in front of her face and wriggle his fingers.
"Only Kate Beckett would be so-"
"Stupid?" she supplies, grinning at him.
He grunts disapproval at her word choice. "Hardly."
"Maybe just stupidly in love with you," she says, feeling it all over her face, wide open for him to read.
"Not true. I picked a smart girl. A hot, smart girl." His eyebrows dance at her. "We gonna spend all afternoon in bed then?"
"Maybe you're a toad instead of a frog," she laughs, reaching a hand up to touch those wriggling eyebrows.
"A what?"
"A horny toad," she explains.
Castle's laughter rolls through the room, shatters their old memories, breaks those six weeks this summer into a thousand pieces, never to be put back together.
Now, now she can make love to him. Now it's fixed.
"Come here," he laughs. "Let's try the kissing thing again. Maybe that will help change me."
Kate bites her lip as she grins at him, shakes her head. "I don't want to change you, Castle. I just want you."
He chuckles again, rich and low, then leans over her to push his laughter into her mouth, hot and urgent, and her body rises to meet him.
Now it's fixed. Now she chases this, the way his hand traverses her body, the way she finds her whole future in the love that pours out of him.
Beth finds Alex in the bathroom, washing his hands, his shoes already on. She smiles a little; his enthusiasm is too cute. She'd never have guessed Alex Conrad was big on dancing, especially on traditional dancing, but her experience has proved wrong.
"I want to waltz with you," he told her one night, sparkles in his clear blue eyes. "I wanna waltz with you at our wedding, twirl you around, and think 'this is it'. This is my happy ending."
And silly as it sounds, it got to Beth. Those kinds of things always do. Her mother always joked about her little girl's tender heart, about Beth's inability to say no when the person asking looked at her with pleading eyes, and it's still true.
So she agreed to the dance classes, even though she doesn't have the slightest idea how to waltz or to fox-trot or any of those things really. And Alex does, the little bastard. Took classes with his high school sweetheart. Of course.
She circles his waist with her arms, leans her cheek into his back after giving him a smile in the mirror.
"Are you ready?" he asks.
"Yep. I've got all my stuff in a bag, including the dance shoes." She runs her tongue over her lips, asks the real question. The reason why she came in here. "Alex. Can we take Alexis with us?"
"To the dance lesson?" He sounds surprised but not unwilling. Good.
"It's only an hour and a half. And then we can go back to the loft with her, have dinner? She just... broke up with Ashley," Beth admits softly, knowing her fiancé will understand.
"Oh," he says, wincing as he pulls her hands from his waist, turns to her. "Well. You...sort of expected that, didn't you?"
"Yes," Beth sighs. "But still. I hate to see her hurt."
He curls his hands around her forearms, pulls her into him. "I know. Of course, she can come. But don't you think she'll get bored?"
"She has a book to read for her English class. It's just...so I can keep an eye on her, you know?"
Alex nods, leans in to brush a gentle kiss to her lips. "I love that you're such a good friend, good sister."
Beth smiles, shakes her head at him, her fingers finding a home against his cheek.
"You're easily persuaded," she says playfully, her insides turning to mush at the burning look he levels on her.
He links their mouths with more determination this time, as if he has something to prove, as if the swirl of his tongue against hers stands for his commitment, the graze of his teeth for his passion, his slow, hot exhales into her mouth for his love.
"Not so easily," he assures her in a deep, deep voice, his lips moving against hers. "Not so easily."
Alex leans on the barre that runs along the wall and waits for their dance instructor, Philip, to show Beth the next series of steps. He finds it quite amusing – though he would never dare say it out loud – that his fiancé, who is a reasonably good dancer when you put some music on and let her do her thing, has so much trouble memorizing particular steps.
But she tries, she actually tries, and a warm feeling rushes through him when he remembers that this is for him. That she's doing this for him.
Because she loves him.
He's not sure what he's done to deserve such happiness, but he'll take it. Take everything she has to offer.
Unable to fight the grin that wants so badly to curve his lips, Alex looks away, and his eyes land on Alexis, who is sitting on the floor at the other end of the room. Her book is open on her knees, but she's not reading; she's watching Beth and Philip instead.
The longing etched on her young face is positively heartbreaking.
Before he's even aware of it, Alex is halfway across the room; Alexis's head swivels to him, red hair flying, and the intense sadness disappears from her eyes. But too late – he's seen it all.
He sits down next to her, his back to the wall, spreading his long legs in front of him, and doesn't let himself hesitate.
"What are you reading?" he asks. The good thing with books is that he never has to feign interest.
Alexis sighs, lifts the cover so that he can see it. Hamlet. Ah. A classic.
"One of my favorites," he comments happily. "But then again, I'm partial to bloody deaths."
That gets a snort out of the girl, and she knits her eyebrows, her fingers skimming the pages.
"I don't understand why everyone makes such a fuss about it," she observes quietly. "Everyone dies in the end, except poor Horatio who's supposed to pass on the story, and... I just can't see the point. It seems like such a waste."
"You think so? What would you have done in Hamlet's place? Just...ignored your dead father's ghost, gone on with your life?"
"That's the thing – we don't even know if the ghost is real, or if Hamlet is actually going crazy. And he hurts his mom, hurts the girl he loves, kills her father unwittingly –"
Alexis shakes her head in incomprehension; Beth's fiancé tilts his head back against the wall, tries to consider things from her point of view.
"And you should feel sad," she goes on, "but I don't really, because I don't even like Ophelia. She's so weak and so thin a character..."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Alex stops her, raising a hand as if to put a physical limit to her words. "Easy on Ophelia. She's one of my favorite characters in all of Shakespeare."
"Is she?" Alexis says, obviously surprised. "Come on. What about Viola, Rosalind, Cordelia? They're strong women, good characters. But Ophelia?"
"Give Ophelia some credit, will you? Her father and brother are trying to manage her life for her. And she's shy and sweet, but you can see she has some wit to her. She just lacks confidence. On top of that, the guy that swore he loved her, who courted her, suddenly turns her away. Won't have anything to do with her. He tells her – in a conversation that is pretty violent – to enter a nunnery! How would you react? And then she learns that he *killed* her father. That the man she's still in love with killed her dad. And her brother's away, so she's on her own, all her hopes and dreams crushed. It's terrible. No wonder she goes mad."
Alexis presses her lips together, gives a little shrug, clouds gathering in her eyes.
"I guess, when you look at it that way. It *is* pretty awful."
"She's in such a vulnerable position, too. Made to spy on Hamlet by her father and Claudius. No one will help her. No one will stand up for her."
"Shouldn't she stand up for herself?"
Alex sighs. "She's so very young. She's a girl, in a time when girls were taught to be quiet and think as little as possible. She's... See, the way I think about Ophelia is as a beautiful but fragile flower. One that needs constant care and affection to blossom. And if she were given that care and affection, she would – oh, she would become the most gorgeous thing ever. But instead she's neglected, and used badly, and she withers away. Alone."
Alexis bites her lip fiercely, and he suddenly realizes he might have gone too far. Castle's daughter is easy to talk to, and smart, and sometimes he forgets that she's not actually an adult yet. That she doesn't have his or Beth's experience. And now, to add to that, she's just broken up with her first love.
"Until you change your mind on Ophelia, though," he adds a little hastily, trying to sound more cheerful, "may I have this dance?"
Philip is showing Beth the steps, one more time, and the music playing is Dana Glover's 'It Is You,' the soundtrack from Shrek. Alexis gives him a wide-eyed, slightly panicked look. "Me?"
He takes her hand and eases to his feet, bringing her up with him.
"We need to practice, you know. I believe I'm supposed to dance with the bridesmaids at some point?"
Alexis gives an incredulous laugh.
"Beth didn't say anything about that."
Is that a blush on her cheeks? Man, the girl is just adorable. He can't believe anyone would be stupid enough to break up with her.
"Well. I need the practice, anyway. So if you would be kind enough?"
He winks at her, and opens his arms. Alexis hesitantly moves forward, places a hand in his, and the other on his shoulder.
"You've done this before, haven't you?" He asks, noticing how instinctive her movements are. "Waltz, I mean."
"Um, yeah, a little. I was in dance my first two years of high school, and we got a sort of introduction to all the dances. I hardly remember any of it, though."
"It's pretty easy. It's in triple time, remember? I'm gonna start with my right foot, which means you should start with your left one." When she nods, he adds with a smile, "Just follow my lead."
The first couple steps are a bit awkward, because Alexis is focused on her feet, trying to get it right, and she's too tense. But as they twirl around the dance floor, she progressively relaxes, and he can see the exact moment when she starts enjoying herself, the smile awakening at the corner of her lips, the grip of her fingers on his shoulder loosening.
She's a good dancer, he finds, a natural. He lets the music guide their steps, hoping that it gets to Alexis the way it gets to him. That it cradles her, gently seeps into her soul, healing the cracks and the bruises.
When the song stops and friendly applause takes its place, he sees his partner blink in surprise, as if shaken out of a trance. He lets go of her hand, smiles to her; Alexis beams back, gratitude and joy pouring out of her eyes.
"Thanks," she says softly.
"I should be jealous," Beth says as she gets closer, the pleasure on her face belying her words. Castle's daughter almost blushes, but Beth adds, "You're a much better dancer than I am, Little Castle. Wish you could take my place."
The girl laughs; she looks from Beth to Alex and back, gives the future bride a sly grin. And shakes her head.
"No. No one could fill your shoes."
Alex watches her walk back to her book – her step lighter, he believes, hopes – then turns to Beth. He finds her looking at him with that so-soft expression, the one that tells him she knows exactly what he's been doing. And loves him for it.
She runs her hands up his chest, skimming the sides of his neck before she wraps her arms around it. For a moment, he thinks she's going to kiss him, but she lifts to her tiptoes to bring her mouth to his ear. The almost-caress of her lips makes him shiver.
"I can't wait to be married to you," she murmurs, and he closes his eyes in bliss, hugs her tight.
Yeah. He can't wait either.
Alexis follows Beth into the girls' changing room, while Alex stays behind to ask their dance instructor a couple questions. She's found herself reading Hamlet with fresh eyes for the last half-hour of the dance class, scribbling notes about Ophelia and Hamlet's relationship, and her heart doesn't feel so heavy in her chest.
And she wants to tell Beth about it. She's not sure why – she just wants to let her know how great she thinks Alex is, how perfect a fit for her.
Yet she remains close-mouthed as Beth makes light comments about her lack of dancing skills, and how patient Philip is.
"Poor man," she laughs, "at some point I really thought he was going to give up on me. *I* would have, to be honest. Alex and his crazy ideas."
"I think it's pretty romantic," Alexis points out with a shy smile.
Beth glances at her, pulling a clean shirt over her head, and when the dark fabric is hugging her torso, the light in her eyes has changed, softened. "It is," she concedes quietly. "And you know I'm not really complaining, right? Alex –"
She seems at a loss for words for a second, and the temptation is too great for Castle's daughter to resist.
"He's right for you," she says, conviction carrying in her voice.
Beth stops shoving her clothes into bag to give her a look, somewhere between surprise and agreement. She tilts her head, studying Alexis, and asks, "What did you talk about? When he sat down with you?"
"Just, the play I'm reading. Hamlet. But he..." The girl chews on her lip, pushes her hair back as she tries to explain. "He reminded me of Dad. The way he made feel better, took my mind off things, without making it look like he was. That's just – so much like Dad. It's funny."
"Really?" Beth says, turning to face her, little sparks of amusement like will-o'-the-wisps in her dark green eyes. "Alex makes you think of your dad?"
"Well. Sometimes, yes. Like today. Why?"
The woman seems to struggle with her laughter, but it's like trying to lock a cage on a hungry lion – it gets out anyway.
"Alex makes me think of Kate," she explains, and Alexis stares at her in disbelief. Seriously?
"Why?" She can't help but ask.
"Oh, well – little things, I guess. Alex can be pretty guarded, you know? Not with me, but I've seen him with other people. And he's not very good at relationships in general. He's actually said as much to me. And Kate. . .Well, Kate's good at reading people, most of the time, but she's not always good at interacting with them."
Beth's lips curve with memories, her cheeks adorably flushed in the dim lights of the changing room.
"And Alex is...fairly cautious. With life. With everything. Sending his manuscript to Black Pawn was the biggest, most daring thing he's ever done in his life, he told me. He was literally frozen in terror when he got their answer in the mail."
"Oh," Alexis answers, understanding running through her veins. It's not exactly how she pictured him, but it makes sense. "Oh, I see."
"So, yeah. I'd say, between Alex and me, I'm the one who's more like your father. I think he and I have this same ability to brush off the things we don't like, and not let them matter. And people think we don't care, but it's not true, not exactly. While Kate and Alex – it's hard for them to get over something when it's upsetting them. They can take years to bounce back."
Castle's daughter is drinking in the words, tasting them, rolling them into her mouth to see if they fit. This is why she loves Beth so much; because Kate's sister always opens her eyes to new perspectives, and she's willing to discuss them for hours. She never treats Alexis like a child.
"So what about me?" The teenager asks slowly, when she's absorbed it all, made sense of it. "Am I more like you and Dad, or like Kate and Alex?"
Beth's eyes rest on her fondly; she hangs her bag on her shoulder, then hooks an arm around Alexis's neck, walking them towards the door.
"You're *you*," she tells the girl, pressing her cheek to her hair. "You're like no one else."
Alexis smiles, touched by the words.
But Beth is wrong. The girl's not even sure why she asked, since the knowledge is deep-seated in her heart, has always been there, it seems. She's like Kate.
And even though it means that the pain might linger a while, even though it means that she will never have Beth's easy way with life. . .
She can't find it in herself to mind.
She's like Kate.
"Well, I won't say this is the weirdest place I've ever done it, but it may be a first for two different beds at one time."
Kate presses two fingers against his mouth and arches an eyebrow, somehow deviantly sexy with her clothes half-pulled back on but her face a mask of rebuke.
"If it's not with me, I don't want to know about it," she says archly, then takes his mouth in a brutal kiss.
Breathless, head spinning, Castle rolls back on top of her, despite the clothes and the damp sheets and her biting teeth, presses her back against the mattress, aggressively goes after her. He feels her fingers digging into his hipbones, the thrust of her body upward into him, a last foray before it's time to leave.
When he lifts, lets her go, her eyes are glittering with need and fierceness, two separate entities that wind together and combust.
"You don't want there to be secrets between us, do you?" he says back, teasing.
"Everyone has secrets. Some I don't need to know. Some *you* don't need to know."
"Oh no, not-uh." Castle rocks his hips into hers, pleased with the flutter of her lashes and the catch in her breath. "I want to know everything, Kate. All of you."
"No you don't." She runs her hands up his sides, trails her fingers along his chest, circles his neck. "For instance, you don't want me to tell you how many times Will and I made love inside this cabin. Which places and what positions-"
He growls and claims her mouth, entirely pissed and thoroughly proven wrong, tries to annihilate all thoughts and memories of anyone but himself from her head. Especially now, especially here.
His tongue fills the wet cavern of her mouth; he drops his weight on her, his hands in her hair to hold her to him. She parts her thighs and hooks a calf around his leg, arching.
When he needs to breathe again, he breaks from her mouth, pants. "No previous lovers. Got it."
"Not even lovers," she murmurs, her mouth at his neck, her body thrumming. "No one has loved me like you."
And, God, she just. . .His eyes burn and holy hell she is not going to make him cry. Too, too unmanly. Esposito would kick his ass and call him Honeymilk.
Castle wraps his arms around her and pulls back to lay on his side, bringing her with him, cradling her close, all the fight gone out of him.
But the story has taken root in his head. It grows. "Did you and Will-?"
She laughs and bites his adam's apple. "No, baby. We didn't. You and me. Only."
"Did you call me baby?"
"I called you *a* baby. A big baby."
He grins back, slips his hand under her twisted, rucked up shirt, slides under the strap of her bra, fiddles with it.
"We have to go soon," she murmurs. "We can't spend the night."
"We could."
"No. Tomorrow morning is the bridesmaids' brunch and then the guys are doing something too-"
"Alex is coming over for poker with my Mystery Guild tomorrow night. Not tomorrow morning."
"No wait, I remember. Tomorrow morning is the tux fittings, Castle. You have to get-"
"Oh damn." He really wants to spend tonight with her here. He wants to make love to her on the back deck, screened by the trees, the chill of the air, the dark night. He wants to take her there where she would come back up from the lake so far away from him, so removed; he wants to repossess her. Because he's a man, at heart, no matter living with his women and raised by his mother - no, he's a man. And she's his.
"We can go back late," she says finally. "Get me home in time to get at least five hours of sleep - restful sleep - and I'll be good to go."
"That puts us here until. . .eleven?" he asks, trying to calculate in his head, glancing at her in confirmation.
Kate puts a hand under her head, watches him, amusement in her eyes, dark passion moving against the backdrop of her gaze. "Eleven it is. Now, Castle?"
"Yeah," he murmurs back, already feeling that buzz of warm and happy pleasure just looking at her in bed with him.
She draws her knee up and presses into him, making his heart falter as lust roars through him instead of tenderness, need instead of mere want.
"You still have all those terrible pictures in your head? Me and-"
He narrows his eyes at her and brings his hand to the back of her neck, squeezing. "Woman."
"Castle. Make me pay."
"You're gonna be sorry you said that," he growls, tugging her in close, scraping his teeth along her jaw, working his hand past the barrier of her jeans. "I know just what skin that dress you have to wear reveals. And I'm marking all of it."