A/N: Can I just say: you guys are truly outstanding. I adore you all. This is the first place that I've felt safe enough to share my ideas, and everyone has been so supportive and open. Thank you endlessly for that.
As I'm attempting to match up with the chronological order of the show (Caskett instituted Fantasy Fridays after 5x17, and I'm working on the basis that Still comes before Squab), this is a post-ep for Still.
WARNING: Rated M.
Fantasy Fridays
Chapter Seven: Be Still
"When I was vulnerable, you were strong."
The adrenaline lasts for about an hour after she's safely off the trigger plate and out of the building. Long enough to make it through Ryan taking her statement in the conference room. Just long enough to sign the documents that need signing and delegate the rest of the closure paperwork to her colleagues. Barely long enough to make it down to street level and into the town-car Castle has waiting for them.
He's been at her elbow the whole time, poised as if he's been expecting her to stumble, to crumple. Normally it'd annoy her, but he did something extraordinary today, so she keeps the admonitions in her chest, where they build alongside the tension of the hideously close call. She won't tell him yet that she likes the safety net. She's also not entirely sure she won't pass out every time she stands up from a chair.
And then, cruelly, when they get to her building, they find the elevator out of service. She searches for a scrap of the giddy elation she'd felt when she finally got to step off that plate and fall into her partner's arms. Unfortunately, all of the adrenaline is gone, slumbering somewhere near her knees.
Castle frowns at the elevator doors.
"It's fine. Honestly, Castle, I'm fine. Come on," Kate says, heading for the stained stairwell door. She can handle some stairs. It's not like she really did anything today anyway; she didn't have to chase a suspect for eight blocks or wrestle a murderer to the ground to slap cuffs on him. Just had to stand still.
She does, however, regret the shoes. She hopes Castle isn't in the room when she takes them off because her feet are hot and swollen, and because of the wedge heel, her toenails are grinding into her flesh.
Instead of watching her ass like he usually does when he's behind her in a stairwell, he's trying to watch her shoulders, to gauge how irregular her breathing is, because it looks like she's biting back pain, struggling to keep her lungs working only shallowly. Should he be worried about blood clots or something? On the fifth step her knee locks up. He doesn't wait for her to shrug it off. He scoops her legs out from under her, drapes her across his arms like jeans on a drying rack. He knows it must be bad because she goes limp, tucks herself into his broad chest, and just lets him carry her up. He's proud that he doesn't stumble, and even though he's winded when he sets her down outside her door, she doesn't tease him, just smiles; simple, tired and grateful.
"Okay, so you need food, and a hot bath. Ooh, and that bubble bath I got you with the arnica and comfrey stuff!" He babbles as he swirls into her apartment. The melancholy space expands with his energy. He makes a detour through the kitchen and grabs her takeout menu folder, then jogs into the bathroom. The hot water roars, pummeling the shell of her tub. She realizes she's been standing inside the door just staring blankly after him, so she blinks and starts to move again. She gingerly rolls her shoulders back and starts to unbutton her shirt.
Yin and Yang, she thinks. How they can come out of a day like today, one on turbocharge, the other in molasses. Before him, she'd had close calls. Maybe not quite as dramatic, but she'd had days on the job that made her wonder how she made it out alive. And after those days, she'd stumble into her apartment alone, turn off the lights, peel off all her clothes, fling herself face-down on her bed, and will herself to sleep for a full ten hours to avoid dealing with her own mortality. If that didn't work, on a few occasions she'd broken down and taken a sleeping pill, but there was never food, never warmth, never company.
Castle peels her shirt off gingerly, unhooking her bra and lifting it away from her body, smoothing the angry red lines on her ribcage, perhaps for the first time without that naughty gleam in his eye. Although she might have missed it - she's so out of it. Thankfully, she's not too out of it to shoo him away so she can sit down and take off her boots.
She slides down to her chin in the tub. It feels so good that she dips the rest of the way in, lets the water closing over her scalp. Is this what it would have felt like? In the last fraction of a second of her life, between being blown to bits and being gone?
The phantom sound of her ringtone breaks through the pulsing peace she's found under the water. She's not sure that it's real; the sound is so familiar, so expected that it sometimes whispers against her eardrums in strange moments.
But it's followed by the arduous creak of her bathroom door and the distorted echo of footsteps thudding towards her. When she slides up out of the water, Castle's kneeling by the bath with her phone in his hand, unanswered.
"Uh, Kate? It's your dad."
She blinks slowly, once, twice. It's taking so long to process his words, even longer to look into herself and make a decision.
"I can - should I just answer it then?" he asks.
She nods, relieved that he's made the choice for her.
"Yeah. Okay, I can do that." He taps the screen as he rises, shutting the door firmly behind him as he leaves the bathroom, and she hears him calling her dad by his first name. It occurs to her that for a moment, her dad will be terrified it's bad news, but she just doesn't have enough energy to placate him, and she trusts Castle to assure him that she's safe and whole.
She falls asleep in the bath, and she doesn't come around until Castle strokes her face and whispers that he's going to help her out. He's thoughtfully turned off the glaring overhead light, but she keeps her eyes closed anyway. He wraps a towel around her hair and dries her body off as she sways on her feet. He doesn't linger, doesn't let her stay standing for long, just carries her to bed, where she promptly falls asleep again.
When she wakes up it's dark. Her hair's not in the towel anymore, and when she turns her head she feels the sleek waves of it combed flat. He combed her hair. While she was sleeping.
What she would have missed if she'd died today.
She looks at the clock, calculates how much more sleep she can get away with before needing to get up for work, and it's then that she realizes it's Friday. And strangely, it's that that does it for her, that uncorks the shock, the fear, the black grip of facing her own mortality.
She turns into the warmth of her partner, her lover, and finds his eyes open and staring at her.
She sniffles, tries to stifle the first sob, and he pulls her into him, cradles her head in his hands.
"Hey, shh, shh, you're okay."
"But - " she inhales with an unattractively wet noise. "But it's Friday."
He looks at her like she's lost her mind.
"It's Friday, Castle."
"Yeah, I know - oh...Friday," he says, putting the pieces together. "Hey, don't worry about that. There are plenty of other Fridays for us now. Remember? Just getting started, Kate."
"I just - if we'd been blown up today - we would have missed all those Fridays."
Castle sucks in a ragged breath of his own, because he knows just how lucky they are that in a few hours the sun will rise on this particular day for them.
Kate presses her fingers against her eyelids until the pressure counteracts the headache building behind her eyes. "I can't even think right now. Can't even remember anything on my list of fantasies."
Castle doesn't say anything, just levers himself up on his arm, coming down to kiss her, soft and warm, on lips that had trembled when she'd told him to leave her to die.
She reaches up, weaves her fingers through his hair, tugs so that his body falls over hers. She shifts her legs open so he's lying between them, and she makes a mental note to move her full-length mirror out of the corner so that she can watch him work over her. For now, she'll have to satisfy herself with sliding her hands over the tight muscles in his lower back, over the luscious curve of his ass. She would pay good money for a picture of them now, her legs parted around him, that amazing ass on display.
"I don't want to hurt you," he murmurs.
"I'm just a little sore. Nothing I haven't been before." She smiles coyly. "Usually it's you who's made me sore." In fact, it feels weird to be so achy everywhere except between her legs. Her shoulders are still heavy from wearing the Kevlar and her thighs feel like they've spent an hour under a meat tenderizer, but the bath and the way he's stretching her with his weight is going a long way towards healing her.
She draws him down again, fastens her mouth to his. It's slow, sure, a reaffirmation of this terrifyingly deep thing they have between them, and she feels him harden between her thighs. His chest is mashing her down into the mattress, flattening her breasts, and she didn't realize it, but it really has been a long time since they've had vanilla sex.
She's not really the type to just lie back and think of England, so she brings her legs up around him, hooking her heels over his tailbone, rubbing herself over his length, lubricating him, teasing him, persuading him to enter her.
He lets more of his weight fall onto her as he returns the favor, gliding over her, thrusting even though he's not inside yet, and he catches her clit with the tip of his cock. She gasps, half out of pain, half out of pleasure.
"Ah - thighs - "
"Cramps?" Castle starts to pull back, but she wraps her arms around his neck and forces him back down.
"No. Just feels really good to stretch them."
He props himself up on one arm and uses the opposite hand to push her knee to the mattress, rolling into her, stretching her muscles out even more, fingers kneading into the tight flesh.
He runs his hand up over the curve of her ribcage, snagging her arm and pinning it above her, stretching her on the rack of his body, hooking his feet around hers and pulling her taut and long under him. He puts all his weight on her then and kisses her, finding her other hand and pinning them both above her hand. He seeks out her hot, wet entrance with the part of him that belongs there.
He bumps against her once, and she shudders, straining to open for him, as if just the wanting of him could draw him in. He nudges against her again, a little harder. Again. And then he thrusts in earnest, one harsh, fast swing that has them both crying out. Then stillness. Then again, hard. He's trying to fit his whole soul inside her body. The third time he crushes himself into her, she starts to cry. It's something that's only happened once before, on the night she came to his door. She'd had wet hair then too. It's a strange grief, just the tingling prick of tears behind her eyes as the overwhelming gratitude she has for this man swamps her, the pleasure taking over her.
"Kate." His voice is rough, concerned. She looks up at him and strokes her thumb over his cheek, seeing his pity through her tears. His manly uncertainty about what they mean, what to do.
"Just keep going, Castle. Just feels perfect, that's all. Just missed you."
"I've been here the whole time."
"I know," she says before she kisses him to shut him up, to get him moving again. She doesn't know if she should explain that somehow, she'd felt what it would be like to miss out on her life. She hadn't known she'd be capable of that - of grieving for her future. Because she'd never really had a future. Not like this.
Castle rolls off of her slowly, but she follows, wanting to breathe with him as they come down from the high together. He lets her lie on him, clamps one hand over her hip possessively, the other tight on her neck.
There's so much more he wants to do with this woman. 'Had a good run', she'd said today. Fuck it. He's had her in his life for almost five years, had her close enough to kiss for less than one, and it doesn't even take the edge of the hunger he has for Kate Beckett. Not just for the spectacular sex, but for the sustenance her mind, her spirit gives his. For the love they've created, for the tight bond that holds them up both up when one is down.
He wants to marry her. He's thought about it before, been lulled into daydreams of it, but he's struck with it, feels it now viscerally.
Slow down, Rick. She hasn't even agreed to move in, despite your subtle nags. Hell, their relationship is still a secret - on paper at least, and only half of the people on their floor at the precinct have figured it out after running into them flushed and flustered after a quick make-out session in the parking garage or the stairwell.
So even though he's seized by the desire to put a ring on it this very second, maybe he needs to hold off on sharing that thought. He squeezes her once more, love you, Kate, and passes out from sheer emotional and physical exhaustion.
When she's sure he's asleep, she inhales the salty smoothness of his bare chest, and then begins to whisper against him.
"You. This. It's my fantasy."
She doesn't need the costume or the creative locations. If she was only allowed to have missionary sex in a bed for the rest of her life, as long as it's with Richard Castle, she'll be happy.
The rest is icing.