Close Encounters 3.5

"I want to ride," she growled at him.

"There's a buddy horse," he said slowly, taking over the effort of dressing her himself. She huffed at him, but he drew her sleeve back to find her fingers, straightened the hem on her shoulder. "If you really want to ride."

"A buddy horse?" she said skeptically, then batted at his hands. "Stop. I can do it."

He stepped back as she worked intently at the buttons. Why had she picked this anyway? She could just wear his tshirt and slither it on and off, slowly work her shoulders in and out.

He sighed and gave up just watching, went back in to help her again. She growled and stumbled back. "I can do it by myself."

"You sound like a three year old, Beckett."

"Now you know what you're in for," she muttered back.

He froze with his fingers over hers; she jerked her head up with horror at the back of her eyes.

"I didn't-

"You didn't-"

They both stopped, staring, her breathing shallow but hard, her lashes swept back from her round, terrified eyes.

Cute kids had just moved from a joke to-

What exactly?

He was a spy. It wasn't in his future.

"You plan on acting like a three year old for a while?" he said smoothly.

Her shoulders dropped in relief and so did her hands, letting him swoop in and finish buttoning her shirt. He concentrated on that task and tried to blank out the image that was seared into his brain - a petulant three year old with Kate's determined eyes and his clumsy fingers, trying to dress herself in clashing colors.

A fuschia tutu.

Red leggings.

A black hoodie.

Scraping her hair back off her forehead just so he could see her eyes-

Beckett knocked his hands away and took over the job of buttoning the last one, her head bowed to the task so that her cheek brushed his chin. He came slowly out of his reverie and swallowed hard, practically able to reach out and touch that shimmering vision.

"Buddy horse?" Kate said loudly, too loudly, obvious in her attempt to switch the subject. Or un-derail their conversation.

"There's a support saddle that will hold you up. Problem is - it comes pretty high up. But I can walk the horse-"

"Walk the horse? No."

"Or. I can get one of the big beasts and ride behind you. No support saddle, practically bareback-"

"Yes," she said with sudden relish, lifting her head with bright, burning eyes. "That. Yes. Please."

He lifted an eyebrow but she was already moving past him, searching for her tennis shoes. She was wearing jeans as well, which might chafe, and he realized she'd picked out a butterfly collar shirt, a pale cream with a tiny pattern of brown - roses? Something. She was slowly rolling up her cuffs and snapping the pearl buttons together to hold them.

"Let's ride, Castle. It'll be good for me."

"You getting antsy, Beckett?"

"Beyond antsy. I'm gonna shoot someone if I can't get away from here."

"I'll take you, but-"

"No. No conditions. Just-"

"But the moment I say we go back, Kate - we go back."

She stared him down, but surely she knew that while he'd do anything possible to give her the chance to feel free, to be unburdened, he wouldn't endanger her health.

"Okay, fine," she agreed finally. "When you say go back. I go back."

The ride was agony. She knew better; she'd known better before, but this was truly gruesome.

She kept her lips pressed tightly together and tried to keep from stiffening every time his chest met her back. He was trying, she knew that, but it hurt. It hurt.

Shit, she was messed up. This was bad. Her hands were white where she gripped the horse's mane, and she felt sorry for it, she really did. He was a huge thing, but Castle kept a firm hold of him with reins and knees, and she could feel his every movement at her back, the horse's own strength between her thighs and vibrating through her body.

She might pass out.

This was a bad idea.

A particularly jolting movement of horse shoulder under her right knee made her grunt, and she swayed. Her vision tunneled. Castle was calling her name but she couldn't open her mouth to speak.

The next thing she knew, she was lying with her head in his lap and her feet propped against a tree, her shoulder digging painfully into a rock.

"Kate. Kate. Kate-"

She groaned and tried to sit up, but it wasn't happening. He kept a hand on her shoulder, the other in her hair, so heavy she couldn't possibly move. She could at least take her feet off the bark, curl her legs in.

"You okay?" he said finally, gruff and raw, and she immediately hated herself for what she'd done to him. What she was putting him through.

She shifted in his lap so that her shoulder wasn't against the ground, drew her arms up at her chest to give herself a cushion. She kept her cheek at his thigh, mouth practically open near his knee, and every breath smelled of denim and horse and failure.

"We can stay right here, long as you need to," he murmured.

"The horse."

"He's hobbled right behind me. I've got a tree at my back so I can sit here all day, Kate."

She turned her cheek into him, pressed her nose hard into the ridge of his thigh. She remembered the way he'd looked in that weight room the other day, straining and tense and burning, and this was so very far from that-

So far-

That it made her want to cry.

"I hate being weak," she got out finally.

"You're not weak," he huffed, his fingers tightening in her hair.

"Castle, I can't even-"

"If you showed some damn weakness every once in a while, Beckett, we wouldn't be here, would we? But no. You keep doing things you shouldn't even have the strength to do, let alone the will - riding horses and walking the whole length of the the place and making out with me with those hips rolling-"

She grunted at that and turned her mouth into his jeans, bit at the material until she felt the give of his skin beneath it. He grunted back, wordless the two of them, and his hand fell heavily to her skull, claiming and possessive and not trying to stop her.

She pushed her tongue against his jeans until the damp soaked through and his fingers tightened at her ear, her neck, and he gripped her too hard.

"You gotta stop."

She stopped. But she wasn't quite so miserable.

It was full dark before they got back to the barn. He'd gone slowly to keep the horse from picking up its pace, but the pitch and roll of its movement made Beckett catch her breath. She wouldn't tell him if it hurt, but he knew it did. He kept an arm around her waist and she eventually listed into him, her good shoulder at his breastbone, her fingers in a fist in his shirt.

When he walked the horse to the dismount block, she looked down at it with something that looked a lot like despair.

"You got it," he said quietly. "I'll go first."

She leaned hard when he wasn't behind her, and he hurriedly got down, stepping to the lower block with a hand at her waist to keep her there.

"Okay, Kate. Pull your knee up-"

"I know," she said, her fingers gripping around his. He watched her slowly draw her knee towards the midline and then twist on the horse's back. Her foot near him stretched down for the top block and he put a hand at her thigh to steady her, control her descent.

The horse stayed perfectly still, trained not to shift around, and Kate slid from its side and to the step, a little breathless. He kept hold of her around her waist and guided her to solid ground.

Her heart was pounding hard in her neck, her cheeks flushed and warm as she leaned into him. He felt her grin and her hands gripping his waist and then she laughed.

"Awesome."

He chuckled and tried to withdraw only to have her body cant after his, swaying. He gripped her by the hip and one elbow, tried not to hurt her. "You okay there?"

"Doing good. I ache all over."

"Sounds kinda the opposite, Beckett."

"I feel good though."

"Yeah?"

"Better."

"You sound better," he murmured, surprised because she actually did sound better. Every step of the horse had to have been so painful, but it wasn't the pain, was it? It was the accomplishment. She hadn't failed.

"You gonna walk back to the room?" he asked, wondering how far she was going to push it.

"I'm. . .gonna need your help," she admitted, still trembling a little against him.

"I can do that."

She shook off his attempts to get her to eat something; she craved a place to lie down and be nothing.

He was practically carrying her by the time she made it to their room. The muscles in her back had seized and refused to let go, a vicious mouth that sank its teeth into her spine. Every breath ached in her chest.

She immediately laid down on the bed on her stomach, her feet hanging off the edge, muddy shoes still on but her brain ceasing higher-level functioning. She didn't even bother with covers or a pillow, just let her cheek hit the mattress and her eyes close.

And then Castle was there, the bed dipping her towards him. His wide palm came to the back of her thigh and burned through her jeans, and then he skated his hand down her leg to her foot. Loosening the laces on her shoes, one by one, he worked at them with steady hands before tugging them off.

She heard her sneakers hit the floor and felt the firm press of his fingers into her arches, then massaging the back of her calves in a rush of bliss that made her groan.

"You're good at this," she murmured, remembering another time, another place. She drew an arm up to her cheek so she could prop up her head and look at him, but he hovered over her, too close, and kissed the corner of her mouth.

"I like touching you," he said softly, the rough catch in his voice matching the grip of his hands at her thighs.

Castle slid his arm under her, gently tilting her hips, and even though it made her back ripple with pain, the hot and firm press of his hand at her stomach was so worth it. He was unbuttoning her jeans and drawing the zipper down, fingers seeking skin, the tops of her thighs as he peeled back the material from her legs.

She wanted so badly to have the strength to turn over, hook her ankles around his waist and pull his body into hers. She'd spent the last four weeks feeling shitty and weak and burdensome, and now-

Now he was touching her with his mouth.

"Castle," she gasped, jerking when her spine arched and the pain redoubled.

"Sorry, sorry, couldn't stop," he breathed, his forehead pressed into the flare of her lower back, hands kneading, soothing, firm and in control once more.

She felt the scrape of stubble and then he was pulling back to ease her upright, back to business, his face set again.

"Shirt off."

She nodded, used to the way he maneuvered her in and out of her clothes, and a stray thought slipped its way through her.

"Why are you doing this?" she said, tilting her head to look at him.

"Because you can't, Beckett," he said, his eyes on hers and then to the sleeve of her shirt where he was trying not to rotate her bad shoulder. "Needs to be done."

"No. Why you. You don't - this shouldn't be your job."

"I've already seen you naked," he smirked, but the smile dropped off too quickly. "Figured it'd be easier on you if you didn't have to need a lot of people."

"But why not just let Logan do it?"

Castle's face closed down. She'd seen that sudden slam of emergency doors in his eyes before; it was fast and deadly and she was cut off.

"Logan," he said slowly. "The nurse."

"He's the one who gets me in and out of bed for physical therapy. He's the one who changes the bandages and my IV when I got here. It's his job."

"You'd rather Logan do this?" His voice was hollow.

She watched the way he carefully didn't look at her. "Castle. You - it's stopped being fun. For either of us. Seeing me naked. It's. . .ruined."

His eyes lifted to hers on a tremor of breath. "It's not ruined. I'm trying to - keep myself together here, Beckett, because taking your pants off makes me. . .and that's not right."

"But it should be," she insisted. "It should be right. And until it can be again, let someone else-"

"No one else will see you naked," he growled. "Only me."

Her skin prickled with a heat she couldn't do anything about, but it felt good. Finally. "Oh yeah?"

He didn't answer her challenge, only set his jaw stubbornly and went back to work on her shirt, pulling it over her head. When her hair fell down around her shoulders, his fingers stroked the line of her collarbone.

"Only me," he said again, but his voice was pleading and soft and lacked all authority.

"Then don't stop," she breathed out, her body trembling on the terrorizing edge between arousal and worthlessness. She curled her fingers around his hand and pressed it against her. "Don't stop touching me like this. Even if it wrecks us both. I'd rather have that than it all be ruined."

He leaned in and pressed his mouth to her clavicles, scraped his teeth over the hard ridge of bone. She moaned and curled over him even as his hands worked a clean tshirt over her head.

She sighed and let him touch, let him stroke and explore with his breath heavy at her cheek until they were both on the ragged edge of pain.

He woke burning in the night.

He struggled for breath and light, his chest aching and his ribs contracting painfully under her weight. Sweat slicked between them, and he oriented to the rattle of her lungs, the whine in her chest.

Castle's hands went to her neck, her lower back, and she was on fire.

"Beckett," he grunted. "Beckett, wake up."

She didn't stir. He carefully eased her to the side and slid out from under her, his shirt plastered to his body with sweat - hers and his both. Her skin radiated heat.

"Beckett. Wake up."

He smoothed the hair back from her face and pressed his wrist to her forehead. She was scorching hot, mouth open, breath rattling. She had a fever.

That couldn't be good.

"Beckett. Come on. Wake up." He slid out of bed and kneeled beside her, running his fingers through her damp hair, getting it off her neck, away from her face. "Beckett."

She didn't stir.

He turned and went for the bathroom, started running water in the tub, warm water, close to hot, and then snagged a towel and soaked it. He left the water to fill and came back to the bed, used a corner of the cloth to wipe the sweat from her forehead and cheek, her neck, and then yanked the covers down to lay the towel at her back.

He avoided getting her stitches wet, but he peeled the tape off one edge of the bandage and lifted it.

Angry and red, swollen, hot to the touch.

Infected.

Shit.

He went back to the bathroom, shut off the water, and then came for her.

Had to get her fever under control, and then he'd go get the doctor.

She woke to water, startled violently at the sting of cold, but he was there.

"I got you. I got you, Beckett."

She opened her eyes.

He hovered over her in the bathtub, and she shivered violently as he poured another cup of water over her soaked tshirt. Her teeth started to chatter and she saw him reach out and adjust the temperature.

"Cold," she muttered.

"It's actually pretty hot. You have a fever, an infection. Dr West is drawing up an IV for you."

"I'm cold," she said back. Why was he dumping water all over her wet pajamas?

"Kate, love, you have a high fever. Are you with me?"

She nodded, her head falling back against his arm. He was holding her away from the edge of the bathtub with a tight grip, his other hand still washing her down with cold water. "Fever."

"Yeah," he said on a rush, a sudden smile breaking across his face. "Yeah, that's good. That's good. You have a fever."

"Why is the water so cold?" she said, her teeth chattering again and biting into her lip.

"It's not," he said softly. "It's pretty hot."

"Oh." That couldn't be good.

"First time you've come round in an hour or so," he said, his hand at her bicep and gripping harder, his arm behind her neck.

She lifted her chin to look at him, felt her eyes growing heavy. "I'm tired."

"I know. I know. But I think your fever is beginning to break. You want to get back to bed? We can hook up the IV."

"Mm, okay." She spread her fingers out in the couple inches of water in the tub, managed to turn her body towards him. "I'm soaking wet."

He laughed and leaned his forehead against the side of the tub. "Yeah. Yeah, you are."

It must have been much worse than she knew.

Kate lifted her fingers to his head, scratched her nails over his scalp until he let out a long breath.

"Okay," he said finally. "Let's get you in dry clothes and back to bed."

She grunted and swallowed roughly through the dry heat of her mouth, the scrape of her throat, and opened her eyes.

She was propped on one side, Dr West at her back, cutting out the infected stitches. He had to dig into scar tissue to get at them, and she suppressed a shudder and gripped Castle's hands tighter.

She had refused a shot for the pain. She wanted to feel this. It was her own damn fault the stitches had gotten infected, her own damn fault that her back burned like fire. The grief on Castle's face - her fault as well.

She tugged loosely at his hand and he came up on his knees to be closer, his mouth at the back of her hand, murmuring imprecations and praise alternately into her skin. She swallowed again as the scalpel seemed to hook into her spine itself and yank-

"Got one," Dr West said. "Now for the next three."

Shit.

Castle came in closer, sneaked a kiss to her cheek before settling back on his knees again. She felt the pounding of her pulse in her hands as she clung to him; her knee jerked up when the doctor slid the scalpel under another thread.

Her thighs were quivering, muscles twitching and flexing with every fresh attempt. Dr West warned her with a hand at her shoulder and she tried to hold still, closed her eyes when a knot twisted in her back and came free, dragging long tendrils of pain along her spine and out through her wound.

She gasped and her eyes popped open; Castle was close, acting as a shield, and she knew tears had slipped down her cheeks.

He put his lips to the back of her hand. "Not long now."

"There are more?" she groaned.

Dr West laughed.

She was going to crush the small bones in his hand.

He didn't even care, if it helped at all. She could break every single bone in his body if it eased any of the agony on her face.

He wished she'd agreed to a local anesthetic, but that wasn't Beckett's style. She was punishing herself for failing, for trying and failing, and she was probably punishing him as well.

For leaving her here so he could go kill Maddox, for bullying her these last four weeks, for being dependent on him, for his father's mind games, for pushing her into her mother's case to begin with, for a laundry list of things he was guilty of when it came to her.

Of all the people in the world, she was the only one-

And still, how he kept hurting her.

How she hurt him.

They did it to each other.

He'd long ago stopped letting Black get to him, and by the time he was a teenager, his mother's abandonment was only a fact on his personal bio sheet. But Kate Beckett had the power to maim him.

Probably end him.

She gasped and he met her eyes, saw the shimmer of agony swim behind her eyes like a parasite. Her back arched and Dr West, behind her, pulled out another knotted stitch.

"That's the last of it. I'm going to leave this open to the air, let the wound weep," he said. "Don't move, don't touch it. I'll be back to pack it."

"Are you stitching it back up?" Castle asked, because clearly Beckett wasn't entirely with it any longer.

"No. The deeper bullet wound has healed. But where the stitches got infected - I'll have to pack it and let it heal from the inside out."

"Thank you, West," he said, loosening his hands from Beckett's grip to get to his feet.

Dr West nodded and allowed Castle to usher him to the door. "I'll be back in five with the packing, give you instructions then."

Castle nodded, thanked him again, and left the door open as West left. He went back to Kate on the bed, sat down near her hip.

"Beckett," he murmured and her eyes opened, blinking slowly.

"Feel bad," she croaked.

"Bet you do." He swallowed and skimmed his hand up the side of her shoulder. She shivered and he stroked the tiny tendrils of hair from her neck. When Dr West had started on her back, he'd scraped her hair into a crooked ponytail to keep it out of the way.

"My bad," she sighed, and he felt her fingers fumble at his waist, hook into his pajama pants. "It's my bad."

"Hey, it's okay. You can feel bad, Kate."

"Not that," she sighed. "My fault. Pushing and not - not letting myself rest and heal, and I just hate this, I hate it but I haven't been fair to you, I haven't been-"

He waited but nothing more came out of her mouth; she had her lips pressed tight and her eyes closed.

As an apology, it sucked. But from Kate, it was earth-shaking.

Castle leaned in and ghosted his lips to her clammy forehead.

"You took a bullet for me, Kate. You can be however you want to be. Just - just don't make it worse. That's all I ask. Don't keep setting yourself back."

When he lifted from her skin, he saw she'd fallen asleep.