World Anew: Hope Beyond Hope
Still on her couch, there's an awkwardness at first, as if they both knew it would happen all along but now that it's arrived, it's unwieldy. After too long a moment waiting for her to move, make a move, thinking can we just do this now, Rick realizes he's stupid.
He's stupid. This is the exact wrong time to make moves.
She's gone through this cataclysmic event. No wonder she's been avoiding him, avoiding the world, hiding out. He thought he had pushed too far, said too much, that he'd finally driven her away, and when he arrived at her door this evening, it was with the certainty he wasn't leaving without her. Or at least a promise for more.
She's been going through this all the while. Her mother's murder, her mentor's betrayal.
And Rick has blundered into it, wanting to kiss her, pressing his mouth eagerly over hers while she was having her whole world be remade.
So he stops begging with his eyes and instead gives way, curls his fingers at the back of her neck and down to her shoulder. He tugs, and her body's resistance is easily overwhelmed. She puts her back to his chest and leans against him, a shuddering breath like surfacing after a long swim.
"Don't let me hurt you," she murmurs.
Too late.
Her head turns and her lips skim his chest, one of the scars from the bullet wounds.
"You're good, it's good," he promises. "Need to build up my endurance. The PT will thank you."
Her fingers trail at his hand, suddenly sliding her fingers between his, flexing and curling up so that his heart responds in mimicry, flexing and curling as well. Her cheek comes to his shoulder, her knees at his thigh, and now he's sprawled on her couch with Kate spooned at his side and it's a hundred times better than the fantasy of making out.
"Is physical therapy bad?" she asks. Her voice is quiet but strong; he likes that best about her. The strength of her that doesn't demand any respect but certainly commands it.
"Therapy's all right," he says. He tries not to complain about the wounds any more, the scars as they've healed, the tissue that stretches too tightly, the atrophy of abdominal muscles.
She brings their clasped hands in close, his wrist brushing the underside of her jaw, and she puts a kiss to the meat of his thumb. "Tell me about therapy."
"Brutish, long, and exhausting. But only another few weeks."
She runs her lips over the back of his hand, back and forth, back and forth. It's the most erotic thing anyone has ever done to him. He shifts on the couch and she puts her cheek to his shoulder, waiting.
"It's what has to happen," he says finally. "To get full range of motion. That's all. Do the work."
Her free hand lifts between them and her knuckles touch the first scar, though really he has no idea of the order in which he was shot. None of that day has come back to him. He's missing two days worth, really, but he thinks this is something he's glad to have skipped over, the getting shot part.
Her fingers straighten so that the back of her hand is pressing to his chest. "Does it hurt right now?"
"Not so that you'd know."
"I don't know," she probes. "But you? Do you feel it?"
"I'm, uh, feeling everything right about now," he grunts.
Kate gives this little laugh - something sly in it that sends his heart clattering - and she drags her knuckles down his sternum, down, just below the hooking sweep of his ribs. "And this one?"
"Feel it," he gets out.
Her fingers swirl, the material of his shirt bunching and smoothing under her touch, and he has to swallow and lay his head back against the couch, close his eyes. He's not making out with her on her couch after she's had her whole world knocked sideways by her former Captain and mentor. He's not. He's not.
The man who put himself in front of a bullet for her would not do that, take advantage. He would wait for her. He would wait until it's right.
Rick lifts his hand and catches hers, draws his arms in until he has both of her hands between his, and just so she won't need to wonder, he touches a light kiss to the back of her neck.
Her breath hitches, her body framed by his on the couch.
"Tell me about Roy Montgomery," he murmurs. He can feel the hairs rising at her nape. "About your mother's murder. Tell me - where do we start?"
She freezes. All that pliant heat is now taut and stiff, held apart from him. She untangles one of their hands and he lets her sit up straighter, lets her slide away from the touch of his mouth on her neck.
When she still hasn't spoken, he has to try. "You said you wanted me here to see it, you wanted me - here for this."
"I..." Her eyes avoid his, her hands fold over in her lap, body blocking him out.
Just that quickly, he feels the desperation well in him. "You said, Kate. You said I was the one with the clues. Wouldn't I be the best one to help? I know I don't remember, but I did the work once before. I figured it out or discovered it somehow and I can do it again. Give me a chance - just give me a shot-"
Her hand flaps up to his mouth, presses over his lips, her eyes a startling darkness limned by the moon through the window. She stretches a smile across her face, hesitant and incongruous for the misery swamping him.
"Rick. I didn't mean like that."
She didn't mean it?
"I meant - with me. Just. Here for it. Not that I want your help - professionally."
"I don't..."
"I just want-" she flusters. Mouth parted, eyes lifted to his, searching him, like she can see straight down into his soul, his lacking and amnesiac soul, and she doesn't mind at all what she sees there. "I just want you."
He catches her face in his hands and presses his mouth over hers, sealing lips and stealing breath, the wet and rich slide of her tongue foraying first, a heat blooming too fast, too much. She gasps and goes again, surging back into him, knocking awake the pain in his ribs that he transmutes into pleasure.
The touch of her mouth, her kiss. Her kiss is-
She breaks first, rearing back with her wrist pressed to her lips, breathing these delicate, light, fast things. He finds he's been gripping her by the back of her shirt, his heartbeat so erratic he can't find a place to rest his eyes: the scoop of her collar made low by his grip, the red mottle of her skin as she flushes, the fixed intensity of her eyes.
"You want me... personally," he fills in suddenly.
Her head ducks, a curl of hair falling that she quickly tucks back. "Well. Yes." She glances away with a roll of her eyes. "I mean, hasn't it been rather obvious? I never go home, Rick. Seriously, why haven't you just put me out?"
He has a short burst of laughter, still scrambling to reorient. She's circled her fingers at his elbow, his arm lying in her lap; he could touch... anything from here.
"You're - never home," he repeats vaguely. "And you're the Captain of the Twelfth; you have responsibilities."
She glances at him, lips pressing together.
"Do you - even have room for - for me personally?" he says.
She stares, swallows. "Well." Her head bows forward. "That's... a fair question."
He lurches forward, blindly gripping her hip, the back of her neck, forcing connection, eye contact. "No, I - no. No. I meant - can't I be here professionally too?" He groans at how stupid that sounds, how utterly juvenile. "I'm great at mysteries."
She lets out a skittering breath of laughter, her fingers tightening in the loose material of his dress shirt.
"This isn't coming out right," he mutters. "But I have skills you haven't even seen yet, Kate. Oh, hell, that's even worse."
She's laughing now, these breathless things where he thinks he can hear her gulping down her misunderstanding in great swallows.
"Look, you said it first. I started you on this. I said something - I had some idea. I don't know where it's gone, but I can get it back. I can help at least. I have resources, people I can talk to, ask for favors. I have the mayor on speed dial."
"He's my boss," she says, but there's an airiness to her words that gives him hope.
"Let me in on this - just - just so I can see you. So I can make you smile every once in a while."
She sucks in a breath, and he crashes his forehead to hers, trying to ease his grip but unable, unable. Pulled inexorably to her.
"You must have it somewhere," he says quietly. "All of it, the case. Let me help. Let me do this."
"How do you know I have it?" she says, a strain in her voice.
"I know you," he whispers. And then stronger. "I know you. I've had almost two months with nothing to do but study you, trying to bring it back, and I know you. You don't take no for an answer. You don't compromise. You must have it here."
She stiffens, head coming up, the clash of her eyes on his. "What did you say?"
He goes still. "I - you have it here. You don't take no for an answer?"
Her eyes are so deep that nothing rises to the surface. But her shoulders come down, the tightness around her mouth eases. "I have it here. I have - all of it. I made copies of her case file. It's in a box."
"Then get it," he says firmly, hands pressing his knees to keep from touching her. "Go get it. We're taking it to my place. Right now. Come on."
She blinks. "Your place?"
"You said you never go home. Well now you'll come home to me."
She seems reluctant, but he pushes through, hustling her into her coat, finding her gloves inside her pockets for her. She stands in her entryway with the paper box resting between them at their feet, and she lets him wind the scarf around her neck like a child.
This isn't the Captain Beckett he met when he woke from the world's most vicious punch to the guts. Telling him her story, the terrible truth, has peeled something away from her, letting him touch the soft pink insides.
He doesn't want to be putting more layers between them, but at the same time, he feels the urgent need to cover her up, give her protection somehow.
One spring when Alexis was a small child, he took her to the park, unthinkingly, the wind bitter and driving the temperature down. She played for a long time, swings and slide and climbing apparatus, scampering all over, oblivious in her fun. The temperature dropped further, the wind icy. She didn't have any mittens. She came back to him on the bench where he sat, huddled himself for warmth, and she opened her chapped, bleeding fingers to him, tears forming, I can't do it, Daddy.
He felt like the biggest jerk. He took her home and bandaged her fingers, the tender meat of her palms, and then made her hot chocolate with colored marshmallows, plied her with store bought cookies, wrapped her in blankets before the gas logs and did his utmost to make her giggle.
He feels like that now. That desperation to make things right, make her okay again. You can do it.
"I'll carry this?" he murmurs to her, bending down to get the box. She's half-reaching for it, but the moment he speaks, she drops her hands.
"Okay."
"I called the car service while you were changing clothes," he admits. "I didn't want to have to keep track of this on the subway."
She nods, her arms at her sides and her hands slack. "Good thinking."
His shoulders are tight in his coat, as if he's too big for this, too much for the apartment and the situation, a fumbling giant.
He shifts the box to one hand, puts it on his hip, tests it to be sure he getting jostled won't make him lose it. She's already opening her front door, a lone key in the lock, ushering him outside into the hall. He follows her lead, watches her push her hair back behind her ears and then lock it up again.
Down the stairs, carpeted so that their feet make barely a sound, the box held out before him and keeping him from being able to see every step. But he can see her, the swing of her short pony tail, incongruously exciting. She reaches back at the landing and takes his sleeve, guides him around the corner and down the next flight. He feels better now, some of that jittery anxiety leaving him.
Outside, the driver stands before the passenger side door, leaning against the car in a way he's not supposed to, laconic, irreverent for the occasion. Rick gives the man a look and the driver straightens up, offers to open the trunk but at her no, ends up just opening the door for them instead.
Kate slides in first and takes the box from him while he gets in. The door thumps shut and the driver walks around and they are alone for a heartbeat, a breath, silence entombing the car.
The box rests between them on the seat, and Kate lays her arm over the top of it, leaning into her elbow, suddenly close.
"Why are you doing this?" she says.
The driver gets in on his side, breaking the quiet and asking where the dropoff is, and Rick has to lean forward and give him the address. Seatbelts go on, a mirror is adjusted, the driver pulls out into traffic and gets a horn blaring for the move.
Rick finds himself leaning against the box for no other reason than to imagine her leaning against it on her side, the combined pressure transmitting things to the other they can't seem to say.
"I started this," he tells her. "I'm trying to figure out how. Why. Who I was for two days. He's unrecognizable."
She bows her head in that way she has, the way of studying, searching out the exact and precise words for what she says next. When she speaks, he's holding his breath to hear her.
"He's unrecognizable?"
Rick starts to answer, to elaborate, but he pauses. The truth of things sifts out slowly. No wonder she thinks before she speaks. And doing so, she must give weight and credence to the words he vomits out, a constant waterfall of half-thought that he barely means.
He has to get this right. "He was unrecognizable," he answers, stressing the past tense. "But it's taken me nearly two months to get to a place that before took me - overnight it seems."
"Does it matter when or how?" she asks. "If, in the end, this is who you are."
"I don't know. Ends justifies the means? Is that what you're preaching?"
"No," she sighs. "You're right. It matters how you got here. The answers matter."
She's stroking the box; he wonders if she knows that.
"Here I have the effect," he says to her, watching those fingers on the lid of the box, wishing they were on him. "I have the effect right here in front of me. You."
She takes a sharp breath, looks at him.
"You'd never have given me the time of day before," he smiles. Smiles. She doesn't look hurt by it, only curious. "I'd never have wanted to work at it."
"I'm work," she says lightly.
"I'm work," he corrects. "Never done it before. But it's like a Christmas movie, Kate. I woke up and there was all this - reverse Scrooge? It's A Wonderful Life, and I'm living it, only what did I do to get here?"
"Christmas Future," she says, a smile at the side of her mouth.
"I have the effect right before me, but no cause. The cause is a mystery."
"You're good at mysteries."
Rick chuckles. "I am at that. Should've stuck to writing what I know." He finds himself floored by her. He says things and braces for impact, but it causes only a ripple. She's deep enough to absorb the words and keep going, but she brings it out later, some new angle, some slant he never thought of before, and the world is remade.
"I never finished the new book," she sighs. "I tried."
"Oh, please don't," he mutters. Trying on faces. A new act, thinking he led the charmed life and drivel could be accepted as literature by those who knew better. "It's thin stuff. Everyone sees right through it."
Her hands flattens on the box, going still. As if she's just realized she's doing it. "Can I read it?"
"I have personally bought up every copy and had them burned, so no. You can't-"
"Not that. The fifty pages. Of me."
It's a riot in his head, alarm bells and warning klaxons and his heart trying to dive like a submarine.
She must see it on his face because her hand slides across the box and drops to his thigh, warm and light and making him acutely aware of every cell in his body. He can't breathe through wanting her.
Her voice is soft but the tone definitive. Certain. "This is the effect, remember? Maybe you weren't there for the cause, maybe it happened without you, but it happened anyway."
I love you, Kate. It happened, somewhere, to some version of himself he can't reboot. But if he can live like it's true, then maybe it makes it true.
"You can read it."