Sleeping Bag, Ch. 4-A short Caskett WIP set between seasons 5 and 6, AU from Watershed-Complete
Title: Sleeping Bag, Ch. 4/Epilogue
WC: ~3900 this chapter, ~9500 total
Rating: M
Summary: "It all comes and goes in waves. Worry about the minutiae of right now. The crushing weight of everything this doesn't solve. Delaware and a sleeping bag. What feels like the first time she's touched anything in him in weeks."
He's watching her when she wakes. It's intermittently dark-a sickly light flickers somewhere outside. She's disoriented, but she knows instantly that he's watching. Like always, she feels the steadiness of gaze and the sharpness of his hunger to know her. The flutter in her own belly. Fear, sometimes. Even now, she's afraid sometimes of what he'll see. But eagerness, mostly. She wants him to know her. She wants to know and be known and it's easier in the dark.
She settles back into him. He knows she's awake, but he watches still. The slow, even rise and fall of his chest tells her it's been going on a while. She wonders if he's slept. If he's cold, too. Or too warm. If his knee aches and he can count every new bruise. Every broken expanse of skin.
It all comes and goes in waves. Worry about the minutiae of right now. The crushing weight of everything this doesn't solve. Delaware and a sleeping bag. What feels like the first time she's touched anything in him in weeks.
It all comes and goes, and she can't face it. She says the first thing that comes to mind.
"Why do you have this?"
They're spooned together. She lets her fingers creep up and out over the top of the bag. She reaches for his and drags them over the fabric, guiding with her own.
"A sleeping bag?" He murmurs it idly against her bare shoulder. It's careless. A little annoying on purpose. It's . . . normal.
She wriggles in his arms. She flops once to her back and again to her side. She faces him, smiling, and tries not to worry this won't last. That the spell will break and they'll fall all the way back to careful.
"A two-person sleeping bag," she says just before her mouth snaps shut. She might not want to know.
He laughs, though. "Camouflage. I know your weakness." He presses kisses across her cheek and whispers in her ear, "I have a sparkly lavender one with unicorns, if you prefer . . ." He cocks his head, thinking. "Or Pegasus? Unicorns with wings? Maybe My Little Pony?"
She draws her hand inside the bag and presses it to his ribs. "Castle . . ."
He yelps and tries to retreat from the ice cold of her fingers, but two-person or no, there's no escape.
"Ok, ok," he says quickly. She moves to pull back, but he catches her hands. One, then the other, he draws them against his skin and tucks them against the warmth of his sides like he's done a hundred times before. "They're what I had on hand to grab. Alexis just had to have her own. That's the . . . unspecified mythical equine bag, but she was only ever brave until the fire died down."
"She'd crawl in with you." She grins. Tries to picture it, but she's weary and the image is funny. She can only picture the version of him she knows. Perfect hair. A crisp button-down and impeccably creased slacks, lying stock still on hard-packed dirt. "Did you camp a lot?"
"Not a lot." He turns her hands palm out and finds a new patch of warmth to press her fingers to. "And we haven't gone together in . . . " He thinks about it. Shrugs. "Not since the dark days of sparkly lavender. But I . . . I guess I hold on to things."
"Lucky for me," she says, unthinking.
"Lucky," he repeats and there's too much crowded into it. Apology. Wariness. Exhaustion. Frustration. Hope and stubbornness, too, though. She follows those. She is lucky, but she can't keep counting on that. They can't keep counting on it.
"You knew this would go wrong." She feels him tense, but she worms her her hands under and around him. She knots them together behind his back. "Delaware. You knew and you didn't say anything."
"I didn't want it to go wrong." She can practically hear his mind whirring as he sifts through the words for the right thing. The careful thing. "But . . . yeah. The new graphic novel. . . So . . . plan B."
"It's July." The words come out flat. She feels flat. Stunned. "Castle. It's July."
"Yeah. Ow!" He squirms, and no wonder. Her fingers are digging hard into his back. "Of course it's July."
"It just came out!" Her voice is too loud. She's thrown. She's just putting it together. How stupid this is. How stupid she is. "Castle. Your book just came out."
"Yeah," he says, his tone neutral. Careful again. "Number five on the Ledger's list."
"Five," she repeats faintly. She pictures the pile inside her front door. Half a dozen unopened packages, at least. Her preorder must be in there somewhere. And he'd have sent one. Or brought one with him for the weekend. "Why didn't you say?" It's more accusing than she means it to be. She's more frustrated with herself than anything, but it comes out sharp.
"Say, what, Beckett? 'Hey, I know you've just made this major career move, but remember how I'm moderately famous?' " It's mild. He's going for self-deprecating, but it's worn around the edges. A little sharp, too, and she's so out of practice. They're so out of practice at this.
"I should've . . . I didn't forget. I just . . ."
"Didn't know it was July?" That's sharper still. He rolls to his back, away from her, and that stings. It all stings.
"I didn't put it together, ok?" She flops so they're shoulder to shoulder. "I missed you, and it's 'my turn'." She carves angry quotes in the air and lets her hands fall to cover her face. "I wanted it to be fun. And I couldn't stand another weekend with you hating DC."
"I don't hate DC." The words come swiftly. A completely neutral aside, like they're playing by Robert's Rules of Order, and it's a simple point of information.
She laughs. A short trill, because she forgot. They're so out of practice that she forgot this is what it's like to argue with him. That he can slip in and out of things. That he can be boiling over with fury and still stop entirely to pick up some point that interests him. She just forgot. That's all she means by it, but it takes him the wrong way. He thinks she's laughing at him. Dismissing him.
"I don't."He rolls back toward her. He lifts himself one elbow and closes his fingers around his wrist. He looms over her. "I hate that you've run yourself into the ground. I hate that you look worse now than you did after you got shot. I hate that you've dug yourself in so deep that you don't even know it's July. . . "
"Castle. . ." She swallows hard. She raises her hand toward his face, but he bats it away.
"No, I'm not done." His jaw works. It's more than anger. It's the hurt underneath and only a glimpse of that. She presses down a sudden sick feeling and nods for him to go on. "I hate that there's . . . that I have a ring in my pocket that would fall right off your finger now." He dips his head to sweep a kiss over her knuckles. Even though he's angry. Because he's angry, and she sees suddenly how frail her fingers look against his. How thin and she thinks about her clothes hanging off her. How she's always cold. It's . . . sobering. "And I hate . . . " His breath hitches like he's winding down. "I hate your shitty little apartment." He collapses on to his back again. "But I don't hate DC."
She stares up at the roof of the car. Lets her eyes focus and refocus on the patterns their fingers and elbows and buttons and zippers dragged into the fabric. She tries to let it all sink in. The longest stretch of anything real he's said to her in weeks. Months, she reminds herself. It's July.
"So you don't hate DC," she says, the words sailing up and out unbidden. Dry and bland, but not exactly careful. "My mistake."
He laughs, thank God. Harder than it deserves, by far, and a little of the tension washes away on the sound.
"You hate my apartment, though." She's not really sure why she says it. Why she picks that out of all things. It's a way back in, she supposes. One of the easier ways back in and she should probably be ashamed of that. She should probably be braver, but he takes it up.
"Don't you?" He cranes his head up and to the side to look at her. He's puzzled.
"It's . . . I really just sleep there. I do sleep." She narrows her eyes at him. His mouth twists, but lets it go. "I didn't really have time to find anything else."
"I did."
"You . . . . what?" She shakes her head like she's clearing it. She can't have heard him right.
"I had time," he says like she's a little slow. "I could have helped."
"Castle, I couldn't . . ." she stammers. "How could I do that to you?"
"Do what?" He blinks hard up at the roof. "Let me in? Let me have some part in this huge change in your life?"
"This huge change that hurt you." She tries to keep her voice steady. "How could I ask you . . ."
"You could ask," he cuts in. He jerks his head to look at her, and she wishes he'd go back to staring at the dome light or something. He's angry-the tight, controlled kind of angry that drops right into the pit of her stomach. "You could open your mouth and have the conversation. And maybe I say no or maybe I say yes or maybe I'm angry or glad or whatever. But you ask and I get a chance to answer. That's how grown-ups do things."
It dies away. The words and fury behind them, gone just like that. It's cold and silent in the car, and the sleeping bag feels big enough for four. For a hundred.
"So . . ." She clears her throat, but it's too thick with tears to really help. She's kind of smiling, anyway, because it's funny. Somewhere in the mess of her headspace, it's a little funny. "You're lecturing me on how grown-ups do things."
"Apparently." He snorts. A watery kind of chuckle that makes her want to ask what it's like for him. All these things colliding. "That's how bad it's gotten, Beckett."
He means that to be funny, too, and it is. A joke as weak as hers, that gets a laugh even as they reach for each other, frantic in the same moment to be close.
"It's bad, Castle," she whispers and he says it back.
"Yeah . . . it's bad." He presses her closer to him. "It's bad, Kate."
They lie together quietly for a while, tired out from even this small skirmish. Tired from everything that's come before. Between the swings and now, but there's rest in his arms around her and something about the unfamiliar space that pushes her onward.
"I've been alone since I was nineteen." She feels him shift. Curiosity rising. The words are strange to her, too. A non-sequitur, or so it seems at first. "And I think . . . it always seemed like a good thing that I didn't have anyone else to consider. My dad was . . . it got to a point when I had to just accept that his sobriety was his job. And I had mine. I knew what I needed to do. The academy and working my way up. Making detective. Getting into homicide."
"Sorenson," he says. Just the name, and she can feel how much even that costs him. Anger and hurt fizzing on his skin. Not the fact of him, but the fact he belongs in the conversation somehow.
"Yeah." She thinks about it. For the first time maybe. How that piece fits here. "When he took the Boston job, it . . . hurt. But it seemed normal. Josh, too. When things blew up about him going to Haiti, it was like being outside myself. I was upset and he was just . . . shocked, and I was, too. We'd just gone along all that time, and I had it in the back of my head that it was how things are supposed to go. That it was good that way."
"Good," he repeats it, his tone flat and mechanical. Like he knows it's his turn to say something and it's all he can muster up.
"No," she says. "Not good. Lonely."
She chokes on the word. She wants to tell him how long it took her to get anywhere near the idea. How Burke was the first to say it and she almost walked out. How angry it still makes her to own it, but it's too hard. It's too much right now.
He softens. She feels him struggling against it. Hurt and his own anger hammering against the bedrock of fundamental kindness in him. He doesn't say anything. He's not there yet, but his fingers trail gently through her hair and over her skin.
"I'm not making excuses."
"Good," he says tightly, but he kisses her temple as if to temper it. "Not really ready for excuses."
"I don't have any, but I'm trying to explain . . ."
"I know." She feels his jaw working against her cheek. His teeth grinding. "I hadn't thought about what normal looks like for you. I've been . . . I've never really been alone like that. I've always had at least Alexis to consider. And money to throw at things."
"But it's not . . . my normal isn't normal. And I don't . . . want . . . " She tries keep her own frustration out of it, but she's not good at this. She's not good at being the one to stand and fight. The one who has to draw him out. "When I told my dad about . . . everything. When you found the boarding pass and left . . ." She swallows it down. Shock and pain, even now. "He said I'd have to live with the fact that you'd hate me."
"I don't hate you. I don't hate DC. I don't even that you took the job." He says it and he means it, but he takes his hands off her all the same. They hover over her, agitated, like he's afraid of himself.
"But you're angry and you're hurt and I don't know how . . ."
"You stop doing it." He cuts her off. "Stop deciding for me what I hate or what's too much to ask. Stop acting like I'm your victim."
"I'm not . . . my victim?" She's staggered. Wounded by it and pissed off.
He plows right over her, though, like the word punches through whatever's been holding this in. "It's your life, Kate. This job and DC and where you want to go with your career. It's not something you're doing to me unless you keep making it be that. Do you want me to hate you? Is that what you think you deserve?"
"I'm trying to be fair." She's shouting now. They both are, and the sound is eerie and dead in the close space.
"Fuck fair." He rolls away from her, his fists clenching around the air. "This isn't . . ." He breaks off. He heaves one breath out and another in and he's calmer. A little calmer. "It's not a bar tab. It's not . . . you give up this much because you've decided that I've given up that much. That's not how it works."
"So how does it work when you never say anything but 'Sure. Yes. Ok'?" She grinds the heels of her hands into her eyes. She welcomes the blackness and stars behind them. It suits her right now. "You never say anything."
"Ok. You want me to say something?" He knots his hands together on his chest, that maddening calm of his creeping in.
Yes." She keeps herself still. She mirrors his pose. "And if you say 'something,' I'm going to hit you."
"Tempting." He tips a grin her way, but it doesn't do much to lighten things. He goes on. "I'm rich. And barring any real stupidity on my part, I always will be. I have work that I can do any time and anywhere and I can pretty much say yes and no to whatever I want when it comes to writing and everything that goes with it. I have a kid who-damn her-is doing absolutely great in college and life and everything. Even my mother is more or less stable. I'm not starting from the ground up again in a grueling job. I'm not in a new city, cut off from the handful of people in my life who I've let in enough to support me . . . "
He stops himself again. There's more he has to say there. A lot more, and she can practically taste it in the air, but he won't pile on. He stops himself like there's time for it later, and there is. She feels air rush into her lungs. A deeper breath. There's time.
"How do I not say yes to everything when you won't ask for anything, Kate?"
The light flickers on and off outside. The windows are misty with words and breath and how hard this all is.
"I don't know how . . ." She shakes her head. That's not right. There's no excuse for it. "I don't know what to ask for."
"What do you want?" he asks softly. His hand creeps out to find hers.
"I want . . ." She slides her fingers through his and tries to get out of her own way for once. Out of their way. "I want this to be easier. I want . . . to not sit there wanting to hit something over a twenty-minute flight delay because that's twenty minutes less we get until I have to say goodbye again."
"Let me find us a place." His voice is calm. The words are easy and even, but he has a death grip on her hand. He turns his head, and she knows all his tells. The way his tongue flicks over his lips and his eyes dart from her to window to the roof and back again. He's terrified. "In DC. Let me find a non-shitty place that's ours."
Her free hand flies up to stop her mouth. Her heart is pouring and her stomach is tumbling over and over. Relief and guilt sloshing together in her and she presses her fingers hard against the words. It's too long a habit to change so easily. I can't . . . you shouldn't . . . what about . . . she closes her teeth against all of it, but her body rises up.
She clambers on top of him. She slides her knees around his hips and kisses him everywhere until the only thing left is Yes. Please. I love you.
His arms come around her, tight around her ribs to the point of pain. He kisses her back. All over until he realizes she's pushing against him. Out of air and needing to see his face. He takes her by the shoulders. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." She nods. "I want a non-shitty place that's ours."
"Good." He kisses her. "Great. What else?"
"No," she laughs. "Nothing else. I'm not asking for anything else. You ask for something."
"I just did," he says smugly. "I said 'Let me' and you said 'yes'."
She scowls at him. He ducks away and lands another kiss on her shoulder. The corner of her jaw. Happiness he stamps on her. Contentment and relief.
She opens her mouth to call another truce. To say maybe it's ok that they're both done asking for things right now. She opens her mouth and something else entirely comes out.
"You have . . . a ring in your pocket?" She stares at him. He stares at her, and she wonders what the hell possessed her. It's the last thing she wants to ask about. It's the thing she'd like to ignore most. That's how it is on the surface. That's what fear and panic and dark tell her. But the words rise up anyway. From warmth and hope and delight underneath, and she won't take it back. "Right now?"
"Not at the moment. At the moment, I don't have pockets . . ." He grins, but he's nervous. Babbling a little. "And not a ring. The ring. Not a random ring or a different one. But wherever my pockets are . . ." He trails off. Makes himself look at her. "Yeah. All the time."
"All the time," she echoes. She feels her skin prickling all over. A wash of too many things. "What if you get mugged?"
He laughs hard enough that his ribs rise and fall. She's off balance, but he rights her with an arm around her waist. He pulls her head to his shoulder. "I'm careful. I take good care of it. And I have to be prepared."
"Prepared." She scowls against his chest. Annoyed that she only has breath and focus enough to parrot his words. "To ask?"
"To ask." He draws his hand possessively down her spine.
"I'd totally say yes." It pops out unbidden. She tries to scramble back. She tries to hide. Her face. Her head. The fact that she's blushing scarlet everywhere. He holds on, though.
"Good to know." He buries his hands in her hair and pulls her mouth up to his. "Really, really good to know."
She breaks the kiss after a while. Her hair falls around them and she opens her eyes to find the world reduced to inches. To find him watching her again.
"You're not asking now, though, are you?" There's sadness in it. A little, but she wrestles it back.
"No," he says, sadness in it, too. Hurt that won't heal just like that, but hope, too. It will heal. It can. "It's not the right time. It wasn't then, either."
"It wasn't." She lowers her head. Rests her cheek against his. "Are you . . . are you sorry?"
"That I asked?" He waits for her nod, even though he knows the answer. He knows what she was asking and he's buying time. "I'm . . . it came from . . . I'm sorry it came from a bad place. Then." His head moves from side to side. "But I'm not sorry that it's out there. I wish . . . I . . . we could have the first time back. But I'm not sorry for saying what I want."
She nods again, too filled with too much of everything to really respond, but her mouth continues to have a mind of its own. "Can I see it?"
"No."
She jerks half upright. "What do you mean, no?"
"I think you're tired, Beckett." He keeps a straight face. "No is pretty self explanatory."
"I want to see it." She glares down at him.
"Too bad." He shrugs, unperturbed.
She makes a strangled noise and pushes off him. She roots around in the mass of clothes strewn around the sleeping bag, but he hauls her in. He pins her wrists to the floor and rolls her on to her back. He braces his hips against hers.
"Why are you being such a brat?" She squirms against him. A half-hearted struggle that's more about the sudden energy she really needs to do something with than trying to get away.
"Practicing," he says it low in her ear and it sounds like an offer to help with that. "I hear I'm not supposed to say yes all the time."
A/N: So, what I had of this part of the story from a year ago was about 2000 words. Not sure how it grew by 1900 in the mean time. Sorry for so extended an "epilogue" and thanks for reading.