A Season in Hell


X

Kate Beckett stepped out of her therapist's office and into the long, nondescript hall. The door closed behind her automatically, swinging shut with its own weight and momentum. Locking her out.

But she didn't move.

One moment. Just a breath. She had begun allowing herself that much at least.

Learn to forgive yourself, Kate.

She was, she was.

Learning, at least.

Today took two breaths, and a hand pressed against her sternum where the bullet should have struck but didn't.

She shrugged off the leather jacket, sweating in it, and then Beckett straightened up and walked down the hall. Towards her new life.

She was moving closer; she was, at least, always getting closer.

X

Rick Castle jerked upright when she stepped off the elevator and out into the lobby. His movement caused the incision site to stretch, the scar thick across his back like a stiff rubber band. They had told him he couldn't feel the bullet fragment left inside his body, but he would swear he could.

Beckett did a double-take at seeing him, came to a stop with an entire marble floor between them. Warring emotions on her face.

He took the steps necessary to meet her, and she let out a tremulous breath, something sounding like his name in her undeniable cadence, though he didn't hear any actual sounds.

"Good evening, Detective."

"You're... how are you here?" she choked out.

Castle grinned and came to her side, offering his arm to her even as he took her jacket out of her hands. He draped the leather over his forearm and waited for her to take his elbow, which she did, threading her arm through his. There was hope spilling in her smile.

"Surprise," he said softly.

"I didn't expect you out and about today." Her walk was reluctant on his account, but he gave her his usual even stride, despite the constant strain of muscles in his back, the work and effort at normalcy.

"Came to pick you up," he began, "and take you to dinner."

"I thought I was coming over to the loft for dinner."

"Not tonight," he said. "Besides, you promised me that dinner before you knew your session would be switched. So I'm taking you out, and then I'm taking you home - your home, Kate. Where I will leave you." He leaned in and kissed her cheek, lightly, no pressure. "But I'm calling you in the morning."

She squeezed his bicep, and when he reached out and opened the lobby door for her, there was such gratefulness in her eyes. She went out ahead of him, and he got stuck holding the door for a pair of older women as they entered. He could see her closed-lip smile, two fingers playing with her mother's ring on its chain, watching him.

He knew her m.o.; he was no stranger to the way Beckett worked. If she kept attending therapy, he would give her room to breathe. It was only fair. They were both doing work for this relationship.

He resumed his place at her side, taking up her arm once more. She threaded close.

"How are you able to take me out?" she said then, a hitch in her stride as she paused for him to find her rhythm.

He met it, and they ambled, rather than walked, meandering. He couldn't yet stride. "I had therapy today too, you know."

"I know," she gave him, mouth quirking. "That's exactly what I mean. You're usually exhausted."

"Usually," he agreed. "But, you know, long-term the point of physical therapy has always been to take you out."

She snorted, not delicate, entirely cop-like and scoffing, but he found himself grinning to hear it. And the ease with which she was meeting him, despite his unexpected arrival.

She usually went home and crawled into bed after therapy. He usually did too. Hers was mental, his was physical. But the effects were the same, he thought, and they coped the same. Worked.

"Are you telling me you no longer need physical therapy?" she said, very lightly bumping his hip.

He toppled. She saved him.

He growled at her for doing it, proving her point, but at the same time, he knew his irritation was with himself. He missed walking the streets of New York with his detective, jostling her hip as she bumped his shoulder, the physicality of their partnership.

He missed things he hadn't ever done with her either, and that irritation was ready to drive him out of his skin.

Being shot sucked.

Once he was balanced again, and they were walking in the right direction, she slid her fingers down his arm and took his hand. An apology. He squeezed back and kept her hand. Forgiven.

"The PT did say he was bumping me down to one session a week," he offered. "And the only reason I did two was for this."

"Holding my hand?" she smirked. The twilight was causing her face to fall into shadows; the street lamps hadn't yet cut on. Stars winked green in her eyes.

"Yes," he said gravely. "Holding your hand. Picking you up at the door. Taking you to a nice restaurant. Walking you home. My end goal."

If he placed added emphasis on walking, who could blame him?

A gunshot wound in the back meant every muscle that wrapped around his ribs and held him up felt as if they had been shredded and reattached incorrectly, the wrong insertion points, inadequate tendons, inflamed cartilage.

Sitting up was the first thing to master. Walking without pain had proven near-impossible.

But tonight. "First date, Detective."

Beckett startled to a stop.

He paused beside her, waiting, but she took his hand in both of hers and unfurled from his side, spinning like a dance move he hadn't thought of so that she turned to face him in the blue-green light of past-sunset. Her cheeks were pink; they were deep into summer.

"You've worked your ass off in PT," she began. "For... a painful walk to have dinner out with me after my therapy? That's our first date?" Which I'm going to ruin.

They both heard it.

He lifted his free hand to cup the side of her face. Even after nearly six weeks, she reacted like a woodland creature, going quiet, going still, wary.

He stroked his thumb against her bottom lip. She parted her mouth, already primed for his kiss. Their usual. They'd had many. This was no first.

"Promise me a kiss at the end of the night. No matter what. And I'll endure anything."

She caught her lip in her teeth and shook her head. But she stepped into him and eased her arms around his back, bracing him the way the therapist had shown her so that the strain was taken off some of his muscles.

He couldn't stop the groan of relief, the way his head dipped to her shoulder.

In the span of a moment, she had undone him.

"You shouldn't have to endure," she whispered at his ear. "I won't make you. That's the point of my therapy."

X

Stupid man. He had even dismissed the car service for the evening, determined to prove himself to her.

She didn't need proving. She believed in them.

She was taking him home.

Beckett flagged down a passing cab, three or four, really, before one finally pulled over and stopped for them. She opened the back door and braced it against her hip so that Castle could use the top of the car and the frame of the door to leverage himself down.

She followed him into the back and gave the loft address to the cab driver, and then she widened her feet and braced herself on the seat as the man pulled into traffic.

As usual, Castle grunted when the forward movement threw him off balance, but she caught his weight against her side and stabilized him.

"You're a crutch, Beckett," he grumbled. "A beautiful crutch, but-"

"I know," she sighed. "It's habit."

"You have to let me fall," he sighed mournfully. "I'll never be able to take you out if you keep taking me back home."

"Give it the summer and then we'll see," she murmured back, stroking her fingers over his knee. He still had the hang-dog look, so she leaned in and lightly kissed the corner of his mouth. "Hey, look at that. You don't even need dinner to get your kiss."

He hummed with something close to approval, and she missed the moment he snaked his arm around her, felt only the sudden tug into him.

Beckett laughed, catching herself with a hand on his thigh, but she was still tumbled against his chest. She teased his ear with her breath. "Mm, strong man. PT looks good on you."

She could practically feel him flush. Pride and arousal both. And as his arm around her waist grew tighter, she realized why he'd been so adamant on taking her out tonight.

Nearly six weeks and they hadn't had sex. Oh, they had done quite a lot, but he just wasn't physically able to withstand her. And he thought now?

Was it because she was going back to work in a few days?

Kate reached up and twisted his ear with her fingers. He yelped and knocked her hand away, but she could feel the flex of his muscles against her side, the power and tension in his body, the vibrating need.

"What was that for?" he whined, rubbing his ear.

"Don't you dare think you're getting away with that," she snapped, playing it up for him. "I know what you were trying to do."

"What? Nothing." Wide blue eyes back at her, mask of innocence. "I was being romantic, Beckett."

"Rick Castle, I do not have sex on the first date, no matter how romantic you think you are."

His laughter burst out of him, ruining the game, and his hand came up from her waist to grip the back of her neck.

It was both commanding and cradling at the same time. She had learned that quite a lot of Castle walked that fine, thrilling line between power and pliancy. Strength and weakness.

Domination and submission.

She was learning the art not of compromise but confluence. Two things at once, the perfect blending of elements. Therapy didn't work half as well as Castle himself, modeling the way in which they were to go. Forward progress even as they ceased investigation on her mother's case. Bend, don't break.

She wasn't disappointing her mom in more ways than just that one. She was discovering the wide-angled lens of justice rather than the narrow. It was called life.

Castle, she was learning, was just as stubborn as she was.

As he was right now. Unwilling to let her go. Thank God for him.

His grip turned guiding, his mouth brushed along her jaw, the faint roughness of his cheeks so late in the day. (Oh, he already knew she liked it when he didn't shave before dinner, when he let the five o'clock shadow lengthen on his cheeks - oh how much he already knew of what her body demanded-)

"Oh, yeah?" he murmured. "Wanna make a bet?"

"Yeah," she breathed. "I bet I put out before the first date ever happens."

His laughter was champagne bubbles in her stomach and the world turning upside down.

It was a better world this way.

X