She wakes up four hours later, her phone at 2% and she thinks that the word "pain" has as many syllables as each beat of her heart.
She hates that someone caring about her makes her feel sick.
Her mother used to tell her that one day she'll meet a great guy, who will show her the stars and make her feel everything all at once. She told her about how frightening it is, because love was like that moment when you leap of the edge, but you're not scared because you know the fall will be gentle.
But love for her, has always meant destruction.
It meant that her body was too much glass and too little flesh and that there was no fall or leap and no good smiles, just pain and a tightness in the stomach she can't seem to unfurl.
She thinks about the time with Sorenson and the fact that he made her smile sometimes. She thinks about the guys at the precinct and Lanie that told her to stop killing herself.
She didn't tell them much about those months she spent on the kitchen floor, but the lines on her skin did and she can't forget their eyes.
Castle won't be different.
People leave bruises too often and too little strength.
And not even the smiles can erase the scars.
Her fingers find her phone and select his contact. He took a selfie as a contact picture and it essentially consists of him grinning over the lenses at her sitting across from him.
The screen goes black again and her fingers fail and let it drop.
She watches the device rest accusingly on the floor and directs her trembling fingers to trace the white scar lines at the curve of her hips and thighs to eventually travel up to the round silhouette between her breasts.
She wonders when she has allowed scar tissue to define her. She wonders when she started turning her soft edges into battle grounds. And when she looks at herself in her mirror, all mismatched heart and eyes like porcelain she thinks that maybe he won't be different.
Maybe he will be like all the other people that dropped another ounce of weight onto her shoulders. Maybe this will be what makes her crumble. Not even Atlas could shoulder more than the world.
But maybe he is just a good guy, with a good smile and eyes that hold forgiveness.
Maybe she should have cancelled after all. Her fingers are grasping each other, nails digging crescent half-moons into the soft parts of her skin and she thinks that sometimes she'd like to flee from herself.
He watches her over the rim of his coffee cup. His eyes seek out hers and every time they meet she flinches away from the understanding she finds in them.
He isn't supposed to see all that hurts.
He seems to consider her for a while longer, eyes cutting deeper than skin.
It's relatively silent. There aren't any other customers currently present at the small diner. A waitress is playing a game on her iPhone and the background melodies carry over to them on an almost inaudible beat. The sun looks almost fluid in the air, a sea with small dust fragments dancing on the waves. His eyes match the sight and her nails cut deeper.
"When I was a child my mother used to sing to me," he says then, voice dotted with a kind of heaviness she can't seem to understand.
"And not just like any mother, no she was all actress and dramatically reenacted musical numbers when I was feeling down until I started to smile."
He breathes and it sounds like gravel and stone and too much grey in comparison to the matt rose of his lips.
"I asked her to start doing it again because I couldn't pick myself up alone," he adds and she thinks that if words could break people it would be those.
"She sounds lovely," she replies, voice heavy with all that she is trying to say but doesn't have the words for. He seems to understand anyway.
"Yeah she is." He confirms and she is glad that his voice has lost some of its edge.
He smiles at her, this smile that is just lips and little eyes and the word melancholy.
"Why are you telling me this?" She asks.
"A truth for a truth?" It's not a demand, there are no expectations and his eyes are just blue when they settle on her hands that have released some of their strain.
She nods a little, hair falling into her face, hiding her behind a curtain of fluid amber. She breathes in and out, tightens her jaw and lets her voice soar up.
"When I was little the dark scared me."
She waits a couple of seconds and tries to comprehend why she has decided to share this.
"And now?" He asks silently enough to give her the opportunity of pretending she hasn't heard.
She did hear however. And she doesn't know where the words come from when they spill over her chapped lips.
"I learned that there are worse things than the dark and equally there are none, so I'm not so sure."
He nods and for the flick of a second their eyes meet and she knows that he understands.
"Alexis broke her arm once in elementary school and I don't think I've ever been so afraid in my life before. I ran five red lights on the way to the hospital. I probably could've ended up there myself, considering my driving style, but I didn't care I just needed to get to her."
"You two are very close aren't you?" She knows the answer from the frequent occasions in which she has witnessed his eyes lighting up when he was talking about his daughter.
"Yeah we are, even-" his words seem to get caught in his throat, "well even still."
She knows better than to ask. She doesn't have to. She knows the look in his eyes.
They both went through the same thing, and she knows what it does to your relationships.
"I met my best friend from high school on the streets last week and she hugged me and told me she missed me and the only thing I could say was, me too," she turns her tea cup in her hands, "but I didn't mean her, I meant that I miss myself."
"I haven't written in two years now, and sometimes I worry that words have left me for good."
"I was a cop since I was nineteen, and I haven't been on duty for the past year and sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night when I hear a siren and I think that it's time to go."
He turns it into a game and she isn't surprised. He calls it "truth" and as she tells him that it isn't the most original title he comes up with titles that vary in degree of ridiculousness and so she finally agrees that "truth" seems to be the best one.
He also enlists two cardinal rules.
No questions are allowed.
The truths of the respective other have to be kept secret and are not to be shared with anyone else.
She's surprised at the ease with which they fall into this new routine and she is most definitely surprised at how easy it is to talk to him.
There is something reckless about telling the absolute truth and something almost destructive at the way she glances up at his eyes.
"I've actually never seen the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy because I always fell asleep half way through."
"I was a Sci-fi geek and dressed up as my favorite character to go to Comic Cons and all."
She watches his eyes widening at this new piece of information and almost laughs.
"What is your favorite show?" His voice is slightly high-pitched and his eye brows have risen to a point that should be humanly impossible.
"I thought no questions are allowed," she smirks.
"Please," he pouts and widens his eyes even more for maximum puppy-eye-effect and she concedes.
"Nebula 9."
His eyes stay wide but they manage to change expression from thoroughly excited to deeply distressed.
"Hey you don't get to ask questions and then judge me for their answer you know," her voice is playful but he must hear the small edge to the lightness that tells him how much this truly matters to her.
"Sorry, it's just not- well not my thing, but I guess it's important to you and so it doesn't matter what I think."
He shuffles around with his hands for a bit, as if he was physically trying to take back the negativity.
"You can ask a question too so we're even," he offers.
"I don't-"
"No you really can, I promise I will answer honestly."
She knows she should ask something light. They have been hiding in lightness for the past few sessions and the sun is drawing light silhouettes on the soft parts of his skin and she knows she shouldn't break the tranquility but the words seem to climb up the rugs of her ribs, each one clawing at her, willing her to finally ask the only thing that seems to matter.
"Do you think it will ever stop being this hard?"
She feels her teeth cutting into the soft flesh of her lip immediately after the words stumble free and she watches his eyes turning raw with a glimpse of sadness, a snap shot of despair.
"I don't know," he says "I don't think so. But maybe at one point we'll learn how to carry it. Maybe one day we can understand the weight and won't feel it weighing us down anymore. Maybe one day it won't limit us anymore," he shrugs and for a while they sit in silence, trying to measure the weight of the word maybe.
"So about Nebula 9 though," she almost laughs because he does have a gift for rapid changes of conversation.
"I thought there was no judgment."
"Oh there isn't just, let's call it curiosity," she shakes her head but smiles in despite of it "did it never bother you that they literally fly through time and space and into black holes and all that and no one ever thought to mention that the effect the space-time-continuum would have on their journey?"
"I am sorry that I didn't watch it for the purpose of being scientifically educated but solely for entertainment. It's not like Star Trek is super realistic."
His mouth opens and closes a couple of times in silent disbelief.
"You did not just insult Star Trek."
She listens to the rain against the window. For once she reached the diner before him, but even now it's only because she had to practically flee from the oncoming storm.
The rain reaches the asphalt in a kind of mismatched symphony and the light of the sun is caught in every single drop as they fall softly. She thinks that she understands how Chopin wrote a whole prelude about the rain and she wonders what he would think about her heart.
Maybe he would write her down as a raging pianissimo.
He arrives five minutes later, jacket soaked and even his hair dripping with water. He sort of shakes his head and manages to look like a little puppy reaching shore after swimming in the sea. When he grins at her with blue eyes and hair stuck to his forehead she thinks that as kids she and her best friend tried to find each other's spirit dog and that his would be a golden retriever.
She tells him about the time she worked a child kidnapping case and that it didn't end well. She tells him that it is one of the cases that never let her go, but has simultaneously made her a better cop. Not that it matters anymore.
His eyes go dark at the story. Like the blue is replaced by steel and she watches him swallow a couple of times around some invisible weight that must have settled on his throat.
"Are you okay?" She asks him and he just nods, eyes painfully focused on the checked tablecloth.
She wonders what has happened to him.
But she knows the rules and doesn't ask.
Instead she manages to turn the conversation to lighter things again. Safety zones.
She watches his eyes clear up again, climbing up the spectrum until they reach cerulean and his lips curl up into a smile.
She sighs and feels her shoulders relax and once again she doesn't understand how he affects her in this way.
"You know I can't believe you still haven't watched Doctor Who," he says then.
"I'm sorry, I just have better things to do," it's a blatant lie to be honest.
"That's no excuse, and you know what?" He asks and she meets his eyes that are now gleaming with the overly eager excitement of a child.
"We should have a movie night."
"When?"
"Tonight," she has to swallow. She isn't good with social interactions. And she is definitely not good with spontaneous ones. "It'll be fun, come on. Alexis and mother are out most of the night, so you don't have to worry about that."
"It's only 3pm," she croaks.
"It's an advanced movie night, starts early, lasts longer," she swallows again but when she meets his eyes, ready to fumble around with a made up excuse, she finds a small drop behind the sea of honest excitement, an ounce of rain that asks for company to keep the steel at bay.
And so she says yes.
AN: I am torn between crying and laughing because this is so terrible.
Thank you to everyone, who has reviewed or left words of encouragement elsewhere though. It means a lot to me to hear that you like this little story and it makes me smile a lot 3