9: Time keeps rolling on
There is a short pause, while Beckett collects herself.
"You went back while I was in the bus?"
"Er… yeah? When I got you some clothes."
"You went back into a blown-up building to look for my watch and necklace?"
"Yes," Castle says cautiously. This is not sounding like wholesale approval, suddenly.
"You unbelievably stupid" – what? – "reckless, insane idiot. You could have been killed. What if there had been a second blast? What if he'd put another time delay bomb in to catch the response team? You would have been killed."
She's angry with him. Why's she angry with him? She's just been delighted that she got her watch back. She's still yelling. "It doesn't matter what they were to me, they aren't worth losing you." What? There's a very hard stop as she slams her mouth shut and then starts to cry for at least the fourth time today and it's not even eleven in the morning yet.
"They weren't worth it, Castle," she sobs. "Nothing would never have been worth you being killed. You had no right to take that risk. Sure they matter, but not as much as you." Oh. Oh. Castle's baffled brain finally fires and overtakes his rising emotions.
"I'm more important than these?" Beckett isn't answering. Beckett has buried her face in his shoulder and is – from the uncontrolled spasms of her shoulders – absolutely distraught. He'd bet on it being at least half fury, and the rest upset. He tries to detach her from the box, and reluctantly she releases it to allow him to place it safely on the nightstand before it drowns. Her arms come up over his chest and cling around his shoulders. His arms stay very firmly around her, hands stroking soothingly softly; he's murmuring meaninglessly into her hair.
All the time his ridiculously happy heart is thumping you mean more. Which is only a breath away from I love you – and from Beckett means far more, because he knows all too well – it had very nearly, courtesy of Dick Coonan, been the last thing he ever knew – how much Beckett's mother had meant to her. And, though he has never met Beckett's father and consequently never seen them together, he has not forgotten one single solitary word or tone of the way in which she had once – that first time she had opened up the tiniest amount and let him see her – spoken about both items and shown how much each meant to her. That had told him everything he now needs to know about how much her father means to her, still.
And yet she has just outright said that he is more important than both of these mementoes and the memories that they carry for her, which have defined her entire adult life.
"Kate… Kate, it's okay. CSU and the fire marshals had been all over it. I wasn't taking any risks. Really. I wouldn't… I just wanted to get you them back."
"You follow me around into every insanely life-threatening situation we're forced into, and then you go off and put yourself in a totally avoidable one just for two pieces of jewellery? If you ever, ever do that again I will arrest you and put you in a cell in a solitary confinement block till you're eighty five."
"With handcuffs and you, that might be hot," Castle muses. Beckett hits him, hard enough to hurt. "Ow! Too soon?"
"Way too soon." She's pale.
"You've just hurt yourself, haven't you?"
"I'm fine."
"Right. That's why you're white and wincing." He's sure it was the crying – and the yelling at him. He is not quite stupid enough to say that. "You shouldn't have hit me. That's what did it." He was quite stupid enough to say that. Beckett looks as if she's about to hit him again. "Don't," he says, and brings her arms down so that he can wrap her all up into him. He thinks she's about to protest, but suddenly she simply softens and leans into him, relying on his support to hold her up.
"Don't ever do that again. Things don't matter. People do."
"Are you saying I matter, Beckett?" He wishes he hadn't said that the minute he hears himself. If ever there was a question to make her spook that's it. Sure enough, there's instant tension in her body. He slumps, mentally. Just as it was all going so well, and he's messed it up.
She raises damp eyes to meet his.
"Are you stupid or something?" she snaps, fixing him with a ferocious glare. "Of course you matter." But it seems that that's all her courage used up, as her eyes fall away and her head drops. He tips her face up so that he can see her.
"So do you. And those two things – the ring and the watch – matter to you. So they matter to me" – he holds his breath but seems to get away with that – "so I went to get them but I only went in because the response team told me it was safe." He breathes out. "I did ask. I'm not entirely reckless."
"You follow me around," she points out, with a tiny but Beckett-like smirk. "That's pretty reckless."
"No, that's not reckless. That's research. Not the same at all." He smirks in return. "Reckless is entirely different."
"Oh?"
"Reckless, Beckett, would be sneaking into someone else's bed late at night when you should be resting broken ribs." She colours. "Or maybe something else. Reckless might be kissing the person you found there. Like this." He drops his head to meet her lips.
Maybe he shouldn't be doing this when she's emotional. Maybe he shouldn't be doing this again at all until she's mended.
But maybe not doing it now when she's practically admitted all her feelings would be the biggest mistake of his life.
He deepens his kiss, searching out the seam of her lips, traces of saltiness on his tongue attesting to the tears she had shed. Access is immediate, acceptance and then her own assertion of her right to access his mouth follows barely afterwards. The kiss turns intent and sure, one to the other and back again, demanding and receiving, switch-around and turnabout, but regardless of the fusion of their mouths, it doesn't – yet – explode. Finally they drag their mouths apart.
"Or reckless might be doing this."
The top towel falls away after a tiny tug from Castle's finger.
"Or this."
His shirt falls off his shoulders. He hadn't touched it.
"Or this."
The second towel falls away too. He lays Beckett down on the bed and slides to lie beside her, leaning on an elbow.
"Or this."
His pants are open. He removes them, in case Beckett should try to do that too. She's already done quite enough with his shirt and pants to show that she wants this to go the same place he does. She smiles up at him.
"Let's be reckless together, Castle."
She reaches up, pulls his head down, and conquers his mouth before he's finished the answering smile. Her hands are gripping at the back of his head, holding him in place for her invasion, and if only he didn't have to remember not to place any weight at all on her chest this would be wholly heavenly. He's dreamed about that chest ever since he didn't get to sign it.
So all he can do is kiss her, and delicately stroke while avoiding her fractured frontage. Happily, kisses and delicate stroking give him plenty of pleasurable options. He'll bear those all in mind. For now, he's content to explore the manifold delights of kissing, skin to skin. More can wait. They don't have to hurry, there's no reason to rush. They have all the time in the world to learn each other, study up and reach mastery. It's already been amazing, and it can only get better with practice. Lots of practice. He'll just start right now. Slowly.
He slips a slow hand on to her hip, an easy touch, softens his searching kiss and subtly, gently flirts with her full lips; teases and tricks her into thinking he's staying, then moves away and round the clean line of her jaw, a nibble of her ear, a tiny flicker of tongue on the kiss he drops behind it, and she sighs out a soft little sexy noise and relaxes into the delicate seduction seeping over her.
"Just stay still, Beckett. Let me do it all. You'll have plenty of chances another time. Relax." Amazingly, she relaxes further, completely boneless, eyes hazy, skin still too white for comfort, but a slight flush rising on her neck. "You're beautiful," he breathes into her ear, as he tucks her nearer arm through the gap between his arm and his chest, so that she's semi-cuddled in. His hand moves slowly over her skin and wanders lazily down her thigh, as innocently playful as a week-old kitten and as dangerously potent as a panther.
"I'm bruised and my ribs are broken," she murmurs. "That's not beautiful."
"I'll kiss you better."
"That an AMA-approved technique?" she flirts.
"Much older than the AMA. Kissing it better probably worked in the Stone Age." He demonstrates, a tiny touch of lips on the bruises across her shoulders, a butterfly's breath sending warmth into them.
"It does work," she purrs. "Maybe you should do it some more?" Castle has no objection to that at all. His lips move softly over her collarbones, all his weight supported on his arm below her neck and the arm now arched over her, not quite touching her. All those press-ups at the gym are paying off, he thinks smugly. Still, he wouldn't want to hold this position for too long. The small, neat mounds and dark pink tips below him are far too attractive and if he stays like this he'll start to be attracted, like iron to a magnet. In self-defence, and the certain knowledge that puncturing Beckett's lung is not likely to endear him to her, he wriggles upward to return to her lips, mouth, and the interesting effects of nuzzling just behind her ear. She likes that, if the swift pressure of her hand on his back is any guide.
If only he'd remembered that sliding back upward would leave his hand free to roam again. He really hadn't meant to skate down over her other hip, trace the cut of her muscle, ease over the lithe outline or delineate the narrow crease where hip meets thigh. He hadn't meant any of that, but his hands are as ill-disciplined as his sense of humour. He can't stop touching her. He always touches things: it's how he thinks. He fidgets, unless he has something in his hands to play with. It's just that what's in his hands right now isn't in any way a toy. It's far too delicate, and far too important. He needs to treat it very carefully and not play roughly with it at all. His hand wanders a little further, into softer areas, causing a quiet noise of approval.
He holds her shoulder as she tries to turn into him, takes her hand as it creeps up to meet his and clasp his fingers, leans over again and repossesses her mouth, giving and greedy at once. She's there with him, plainly hampered by her injury, but he's worked out that there might be a way to do this – if she wants to and he's really, really slow and careful – and anyway there will be plenty of time – a lifetime of time, he hopes – to experiment more enthusiastically. (A small and unpleasant thought tells him that cops get injured, so they'd better work out how to deal with it. Not much stops Beckett from doing what she wants to: in her own way she's as incapable of impulse control as he is. The only difference is that she only shows it on the job.)
"Still wanna be reckless with me, Beckett?"
"I thought we were being reckless together," she husks. "I don't hear me saying stop, Castle."
"You're the one who shouldn't do anything strenuous and who's moving like a half-petrified mummy." She squawks. Ah. That wasn't tactful, was it? "Not that you look like a mummy." He gazes appreciatively at her. "You look gorgeous."
"Nice recovery. Not that you'd have had time to escape if I could move."
"If you could move we wouldn't be having this conversation." Beckett raises a seductively questioning eyebrow. "We'd be having a very different form of intercourse." Identically wicked smirks appear on both their faces. Castle watches Beckett's trail off into disappointment. "I have a theory," he says.
"A theory? Is this really the time you want to start on theories?" She licks her lips. Castle thinks that if she could, at this point she'd flex, and he'd be even more completely lost than he already is.
"You like my theories," he pouts.
"No, I put up with your theories. Just like I'm putting up with you not kissing me." He takes the hint – well, brick to the head – and dips to kiss her for a while. His uncontrollable fingers wander across her leg and play a little, gently. Her hips twist a fraction, and he listens to the cadence of her breathing for the slightest hint that it's too much, that pleasure will be turned to pain by an inadvertent movement.
"So I have a theory," he says again, after there have been plenty of kisses and quite a lot of gently provocative touching. Beckett simply gives a formless murmur and is too lax in his arm even to start to argue about it. "My theory is that in this situation" – his fingers play, and there's a tiny squirm – "I can do" – he nearly simply says you, and only just stops himself – "anything you want me to (she might say skydiving, just to wind him up, if he hadn't put in the qualifier of this situation) without hurting you." She blinks slowly. "Well, nearly anything."
"Oh?" she drawls out slowly, and anticipation lights in her eyes. "Really?" She smiles slowly and ferally. "Theories need tested…" Then she makes an unhappy face. "But I can't do anything much. 'S not fair."
"You'll get your chances, Beckett." Castle smiles with irritating innocence. "Don't be selfish. You need to learn to share – ow!" Her nails have just raked down his back.
"I am not selfish." He possesses himself of her evil hand.
"Yes you are."
"I'm not. I want to play, not lie here like a blow-up doll and nearly as responsive."
"You are being selfish. If you don't let me do nearly everything, we can't do anything, because I'm not letting you hurt yourself. And if you try to move more than a little, you'll get hurt. Again." He looks determined and annoyingly saintly in even shares. "So stop being selfish and let me" – he waggles his eyebrows wolfishly and puts on a leeringly lascivious expression – "make you very, very happy. And if it makes you happy, we'll work out a way for you to make me very, very happy too."
Beckett acquires an attitude of flopped-ness, and pouts. "Wanna play," she grumbles, much in the manner of a spoilt small child. Castle kisses her. Only to make the pout go away, of course. Nothing to do with how ridiculously adorable sulky Beckett looks when she can't get what she wants. In this case, what she clearly wants is to reduce him to a puddle.
"You'll get to play. Stop sulking, Beckett. It doesn't suit you. Concentrate on mending your ribs." He smiles evilly. "Or on my ruggedly handsome face and well-shaped body." He smiles even more evilly. "Or just concentrate on this," and he moves his fingers wickedly between her legs and takes her mouth and holds her relatively still with his arm over her toned stomach and slowly, gently, and thoroughly brings her up and up and up in such a way as to leave her totally incapable of movement or thought that isn't more, Castle! And then he brings her into a drawn out, gentle climax that leaves her with her eyes shut and muscles loose.
"See," he says happily, perfectly pleased with himself, "you're happy again. Being unselfish makes you happy." A growl rises from Beckett's lips, but since it's heavily diluted by satisfaction he ignores it in favour of a carefully judged snuggle. An aura of smugness surrounds him. It almost makes up for his own considerable discomfort.
"Now do I get to make you happy," Beckett says out of nowhere.
"Okay," Castle replies placidly, and is shortly wondering where his boxers went and how Beckett achieved that without apparent movement. Magic invisible scissors? Oh – they're there. He'd simply failed to notice them, being considerably more attentive to the movement and grip of Beckett's long fingers. Now this is not what he had planned. He had had a very different idea. The problem is that Beckett will break if there is any substantial weight on her chest, but she will also break – or break him, more like – if he doesn't let her play. Fortunately he has a solution that should stop her taking matters into her own hands – ohhhhh – okay, further into her own hands.
"I have a plan," he announces, and detaches her hands. Then he sits up, regardless of Beckett's dark mutterings, and finishes removing his boxers. The mutters become marginally lighter. He takes a solid grip of Beckett's slim waist. "I'm going to lift you to sitting up. Okay?"
"I can do that myself, Castle. It's broken ribs, not a broken back." She demonstrates, under Castle's nervous eye and twitching fingers. When she's propped up against the pillows he breathes a deep and not-at-all hidden sigh of relief. "I can manage," she says faux-crossly. "See?"
"Hmmm," he hums sceptically, but shuffles closer to the centre of the bed, leaning against the headboard. "Are you going to let me lift you this time?"
Beckett looks at him. "Why do you need to lift me? I can move myself."
"I want to. Humour me, Beckett." He grins. "I'm a big, strong man" –
"With an ego to match," she snarks.
" – so you should let me prove it." He puts his hands back on her waist and waits for a second. "Okay, put your hands on my shoulders." He lifts her smoothly and re-settles her straddling his lap, kneeling, then brings his arms around her again as she sits back on her heels.
"Now what?" she smirks, and slides her hand down over his chest and abs to find the hard weight between them. "This seems to be in the way." She leans forward a tiny fraction, carefully, presses her lips to his and traps him – and her ohhhhh evil hand – between them. "Let's hear your theory now, Castle."
Thank you to all readers and reviewers. Your thoughts are very much appreciated.