fic: everything in whispers
i should be working on other stuff, so of course...i'm writing Castle fic. which is just weird.
Title: Everything in whispers
Media: Castle
Rating: M
Disclaimer: not mine, don't own etc.
Archive: My LJ, goblok archive, others by permission.
Summary: Castle gets stabbed, but Beckett’s the one who gets hurt. H/C, C/B, all those other weird acronyms.
Note: I don’t know if Esposito getting stabbed once is canon. I think I just made it up.
Spoilers: none
Feedback: is strictly by the numbers, people.
Everything in whispers
It doesn't matter how it happened, how it happened is irrelevant, it is not important.
What is important is the sucking chest wound.
Jesus...oh god. Stop -
He gasps as she tries to cover it with her hands, sinks to his knees on the concrete, tilts and slides, all the way down. She's trying to keep her hands on the wound, grabs for his shoulders, can't control his descent, he's too heavy. His head slips off her knee onto the ground, gently, gently now.
...haa, he says. The noise is soft and sluggish, like the blood coming out of him.
Oh god, god, why'd you do that? she whispers. Jesus -
He doesn't say anything. His lips are going white. Then he says, Had to.
No. She shakes her head. No, god, it was the first thing I told you, don't you remember? Jesus, Castle - she is almost crying now - never, you never take off your vest, not ever, oh god -
He doesn’t say anything, just looks at her with his white lips over his clenched teeth, and his eyes are very dark, his hair and eyebrows like singular accents as his olive skin turns slowly grey.
*
- it was like 'oh shit’ -
Yes - well that was what I thought, kinda 'oh shit' -
- yeah, but that was the expression on your face, like you were surprised.
Well, I was surprised.
You looked surprised, man, you had that nice blank neutral 'please don't kill me' look, and then when he did it, you were -
Surprised, yeah. But I'm not sure if I was surprised he stabbed me, or just surprised at the fact that I'd been stabbed -
Yeah, that first cut really kinda shocks you, I think, like 'how the hell did that happen?'. Or maybe it's just the feeling -
The feeling, yeah.
Castle and Esposito both trail off, both of them kind of looking somewhere else, back into the respective awareness of their flesh parting under the assault of metal. Then the realization that to dwell on it, to extend the silence too long, is not appropriate. They look back at the CCTV footage.
Yeah, anyway. I'm glad you're not dead, man.
Yeah. Me too.
Beckett is not listening. She is standing by the coffee machine, holding the bench and trying to control the urge to throw up.
*
How it happened is not important. It is everything.
Because when the knife is at her throat, the guy's hand in her hair, yanking her head back, as she has her chin raised, she's trying to get away from it, trying not to feel, trying not to look, she has both hands on the guy's arm, holding on, holding him back, and she knows this is stupid, stupid, she's made one critical error of judgement and now she's here, this -
That's when she hears the scream of Velcro, and her brain goes into some kind of weird tailspin. Even as she cries out reflexively, No, Castle, don't, and the jerk of the knife sucks her breath away, he's already talking so calmly, smoothly, his palms upraised, letting his vest, the peace-offering, dangle and then fall to the floor, making sound arguments, making so much sense of it all for the guy who has the knife to her throat, so that even she, or some part of her, the self-preserving part, even that part is convinced of the logic of what he's saying. And it's not logical, not at all, but the guy with the knife is too strung out or unbalanced to notice the difference, so he pushes her away, pushes her sprawling, ten feet from her gun and her face cracking against the concrete so she sees stars, hears rainbows -
*
Don't fade out, don't fade out on me -
No -
Come on, they're nearly here, it's okay -
He hisses, the whites of his eyes showing. His legs jerk a little as she presses her wadded-up shirt against his diaphragm.
Stop, he gasps.
It's okay, you can do it, come on -
Everything in whispers. All the buttons popped off his shirt when she wrenched the front apart, now his shirt-ends sag and dirty in the red puddle tiding out from underneath him. He looks helpless. It is bizarre, seeing him look helpless like this, it is not who he is. Her fingers are cold from seeing it, her face is frozen, seeing it.
She concentrates on breathing. They breathe in unison, short and tight, only his breathing is so strained, so strained, as his lung collapses. He is aspirating blood, she knows this. A pink bubble forms and breaks at the corner of his mouth.
Come on, don't -
He is trying to say her name.
Don't talk, please don't talk, please, it's okay -
She is pleading with him now. One hand squeezing his shoulder while the other hand presses. His right hand is holding onto her knee, as she kneels beside him, his hand clenches spasmodically there. The placement of hands, parts, the involuntary movements of his body, the way she touches him now - it's like a sick inversion of her own barely-acknowledged fantasy, and she swallows hard, to block that awareness out. Their bodies - it's just skin and bone now, just the essentials: their eyes, holding each other's gaze, their breath, their inner warmth, she tries to transfer it to him, to coddle and warm him, that part of him that wants to stay, that she wants to stay.
*
- that she’s lodged a written application to have the conditions of your visits here…altered.
Beckett isn’t listening. She’s in front of the computer at her desk, pretending to type something, while she lipreads his reactions across the hall in the captain’s office. Castle’s mouth opens with shock and indignation, his lips make the What? she was expecting. She looks quickly back to the monitor before he glances over. When she chances another look, the captain has his placatory face on.
There’s more talk, she can hear the voices. She keeps typing. Her brain and her fingers aren’t cooperating well, the nerves short-circuiting. She types a for s, and then a whole line of gibberish. She takes a deep breath, deletes. It’s okay. She’s tougher than this, she can deal with this. She fixes the image firmly in her mind, the one she has so much trouble with at night, the one where his glazed eyes look upwards, where he has blood on his teeth as he tries to suck in the air that his body can’t contain -
There’s a bang as the captain’s door opens, as Castle stalks out like a thundercloud with legs. She’s almost never seen him angry. He walks straight up to her desk, and there’s no limp, no arm-in-a-sling, no obvious contusions, no evidence of any kind. It’s been four weeks, and the only giveaway is a touch of pallor from the time he spent in the hospital.
We need to talk, he says grimly, brows furrowed. His eyes are intense. They take in surreptitious stares from around the bullpen. He takes a breath and then says, Later.
Sure, she says.
She nods in a business-like fashion. She sees him with blood on his teeth, she’s prepared herself for this.
After he walks away, she unhitches her shoulders and lets out the breath he drew before.
*
He’s making these weak, desperate, wheezing gasps, trying to breathe, and his eyes are losing focus now. This is where it all goes fuzzy.
Come on, she whispers, please, it’s okay -
Her fingers are all over with his blood, but she strokes the hair off his forehead anyway. Skin and bone now, and her tireless monologue, Come on, and Please, and Don’t let go, don’t let go on me. She abases herself. She kneels hunkered over him, with one hand pressing and one hand just touching - his shoulder, his cheek, his fingers. She says his name, Rick. Please, Rick. She’s whispering in his ear, and that’s how the paramedics find them.
*
Later turns out to be around nine p.m. at her apartment. He didn’t call first. She was expecting that, she’s still in her work clothes.
Beckett isn’t listening. She’s watching the way his arms move, the way his shoulders bunch up when he’s really really angry. He almost never reveals this side of himself at all. He is a presence. His contained fury is visceral, towering, the height and bulk of him suddenly imposing. Everything he’s not saying.
They have traded arguments back and forth, not your call blahblah, and my responsibility blah, and it’s my choice blahblah, and don’t get to say whose choice it is blahblahblah endlessly blah. And suddenly he’s saying don’t want me dying on your watch, is that it? And her vision goes kind of white and fuzzy, visual tinnitus, and she grabs something, a mug or something, and she throws it, shattering against the wall, and she screams Yes, goddamnit, that’s it! And you don’t save me! You never do that, ever, not if it means - and then she makes an animal groan and she stops and hugs herself, looking down, gulping air, wishing she had something else to throw.
He goes very still. There’s a long silence before he speaks and she realizes it’s because he’s shaking, and his look holds her completely. And when he speaks his voice is quiet and low and controlled with a mammoth effort of will, and he says, Kate, he was going to slit your throat, right in front of me. I couldn’t… and he stops and swallows and tries again. I just… he says, and so softly, Do you understand? and he can’t get anything else out past the emotion.
Her eyes are enormous and she doesn’t think then, she just blurts it out her mouth, You were bleeding out, and I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t stop - A shiver goes through her, a convulsion. She lifts a hand to cover her mouth and moans Oh god, muffled and bitten off.
He takes two steps and she staggers a little, and then his arms go round her. She shudders inside the warmth, and they breathe in unison, short and tight. She gets the worst of it out, and starts to quiet into him, and he is whispering, he is saying Come on, and Please, Kate, and it’s okay. And she is whispering Don’t let go.
edited for dumb spelling
Title: Everything in whispers
Media: Castle
Rating: M
Disclaimer: not mine, don't own etc.
Archive: My LJ, goblok archive, others by permission.
Summary: Castle gets stabbed, but Beckett’s the one who gets hurt. H/C, C/B, all those other weird acronyms.
Note: I don’t know if Esposito getting stabbed once is canon. I think I just made it up.
Spoilers: none
Feedback: is strictly by the numbers, people.
Everything in whispers
It doesn't matter how it happened, how it happened is irrelevant, it is not important.
What is important is the sucking chest wound.
Jesus...oh god. Stop -
He gasps as she tries to cover it with her hands, sinks to his knees on the concrete, tilts and slides, all the way down. She's trying to keep her hands on the wound, grabs for his shoulders, can't control his descent, he's too heavy. His head slips off her knee onto the ground, gently, gently now.
...haa, he says. The noise is soft and sluggish, like the blood coming out of him.
Oh god, god, why'd you do that? she whispers. Jesus -
He doesn't say anything. His lips are going white. Then he says, Had to.
No. She shakes her head. No, god, it was the first thing I told you, don't you remember? Jesus, Castle - she is almost crying now - never, you never take off your vest, not ever, oh god -
He doesn’t say anything, just looks at her with his white lips over his clenched teeth, and his eyes are very dark, his hair and eyebrows like singular accents as his olive skin turns slowly grey.
*
- it was like 'oh shit’ -
Yes - well that was what I thought, kinda 'oh shit' -
- yeah, but that was the expression on your face, like you were surprised.
Well, I was surprised.
You looked surprised, man, you had that nice blank neutral 'please don't kill me' look, and then when he did it, you were -
Surprised, yeah. But I'm not sure if I was surprised he stabbed me, or just surprised at the fact that I'd been stabbed -
Yeah, that first cut really kinda shocks you, I think, like 'how the hell did that happen?'. Or maybe it's just the feeling -
The feeling, yeah.
Castle and Esposito both trail off, both of them kind of looking somewhere else, back into the respective awareness of their flesh parting under the assault of metal. Then the realization that to dwell on it, to extend the silence too long, is not appropriate. They look back at the CCTV footage.
Yeah, anyway. I'm glad you're not dead, man.
Yeah. Me too.
Beckett is not listening. She is standing by the coffee machine, holding the bench and trying to control the urge to throw up.
*
How it happened is not important. It is everything.
Because when the knife is at her throat, the guy's hand in her hair, yanking her head back, as she has her chin raised, she's trying to get away from it, trying not to feel, trying not to look, she has both hands on the guy's arm, holding on, holding him back, and she knows this is stupid, stupid, she's made one critical error of judgement and now she's here, this -
That's when she hears the scream of Velcro, and her brain goes into some kind of weird tailspin. Even as she cries out reflexively, No, Castle, don't, and the jerk of the knife sucks her breath away, he's already talking so calmly, smoothly, his palms upraised, letting his vest, the peace-offering, dangle and then fall to the floor, making sound arguments, making so much sense of it all for the guy who has the knife to her throat, so that even she, or some part of her, the self-preserving part, even that part is convinced of the logic of what he's saying. And it's not logical, not at all, but the guy with the knife is too strung out or unbalanced to notice the difference, so he pushes her away, pushes her sprawling, ten feet from her gun and her face cracking against the concrete so she sees stars, hears rainbows -
*
Don't fade out, don't fade out on me -
No -
Come on, they're nearly here, it's okay -
He hisses, the whites of his eyes showing. His legs jerk a little as she presses her wadded-up shirt against his diaphragm.
Stop, he gasps.
It's okay, you can do it, come on -
Everything in whispers. All the buttons popped off his shirt when she wrenched the front apart, now his shirt-ends sag and dirty in the red puddle tiding out from underneath him. He looks helpless. It is bizarre, seeing him look helpless like this, it is not who he is. Her fingers are cold from seeing it, her face is frozen, seeing it.
She concentrates on breathing. They breathe in unison, short and tight, only his breathing is so strained, so strained, as his lung collapses. He is aspirating blood, she knows this. A pink bubble forms and breaks at the corner of his mouth.
Come on, don't -
He is trying to say her name.
Don't talk, please don't talk, please, it's okay -
She is pleading with him now. One hand squeezing his shoulder while the other hand presses. His right hand is holding onto her knee, as she kneels beside him, his hand clenches spasmodically there. The placement of hands, parts, the involuntary movements of his body, the way she touches him now - it's like a sick inversion of her own barely-acknowledged fantasy, and she swallows hard, to block that awareness out. Their bodies - it's just skin and bone now, just the essentials: their eyes, holding each other's gaze, their breath, their inner warmth, she tries to transfer it to him, to coddle and warm him, that part of him that wants to stay, that she wants to stay.
*
- that she’s lodged a written application to have the conditions of your visits here…altered.
Beckett isn’t listening. She’s in front of the computer at her desk, pretending to type something, while she lipreads his reactions across the hall in the captain’s office. Castle’s mouth opens with shock and indignation, his lips make the What? she was expecting. She looks quickly back to the monitor before he glances over. When she chances another look, the captain has his placatory face on.
There’s more talk, she can hear the voices. She keeps typing. Her brain and her fingers aren’t cooperating well, the nerves short-circuiting. She types a for s, and then a whole line of gibberish. She takes a deep breath, deletes. It’s okay. She’s tougher than this, she can deal with this. She fixes the image firmly in her mind, the one she has so much trouble with at night, the one where his glazed eyes look upwards, where he has blood on his teeth as he tries to suck in the air that his body can’t contain -
There’s a bang as the captain’s door opens, as Castle stalks out like a thundercloud with legs. She’s almost never seen him angry. He walks straight up to her desk, and there’s no limp, no arm-in-a-sling, no obvious contusions, no evidence of any kind. It’s been four weeks, and the only giveaway is a touch of pallor from the time he spent in the hospital.
We need to talk, he says grimly, brows furrowed. His eyes are intense. They take in surreptitious stares from around the bullpen. He takes a breath and then says, Later.
Sure, she says.
She nods in a business-like fashion. She sees him with blood on his teeth, she’s prepared herself for this.
After he walks away, she unhitches her shoulders and lets out the breath he drew before.
*
He’s making these weak, desperate, wheezing gasps, trying to breathe, and his eyes are losing focus now. This is where it all goes fuzzy.
Come on, she whispers, please, it’s okay -
Her fingers are all over with his blood, but she strokes the hair off his forehead anyway. Skin and bone now, and her tireless monologue, Come on, and Please, and Don’t let go, don’t let go on me. She abases herself. She kneels hunkered over him, with one hand pressing and one hand just touching - his shoulder, his cheek, his fingers. She says his name, Rick. Please, Rick. She’s whispering in his ear, and that’s how the paramedics find them.
*
Later turns out to be around nine p.m. at her apartment. He didn’t call first. She was expecting that, she’s still in her work clothes.
Beckett isn’t listening. She’s watching the way his arms move, the way his shoulders bunch up when he’s really really angry. He almost never reveals this side of himself at all. He is a presence. His contained fury is visceral, towering, the height and bulk of him suddenly imposing. Everything he’s not saying.
They have traded arguments back and forth, not your call blahblah, and my responsibility blah, and it’s my choice blahblah, and don’t get to say whose choice it is blahblahblah endlessly blah. And suddenly he’s saying don’t want me dying on your watch, is that it? And her vision goes kind of white and fuzzy, visual tinnitus, and she grabs something, a mug or something, and she throws it, shattering against the wall, and she screams Yes, goddamnit, that’s it! And you don’t save me! You never do that, ever, not if it means - and then she makes an animal groan and she stops and hugs herself, looking down, gulping air, wishing she had something else to throw.
He goes very still. There’s a long silence before he speaks and she realizes it’s because he’s shaking, and his look holds her completely. And when he speaks his voice is quiet and low and controlled with a mammoth effort of will, and he says, Kate, he was going to slit your throat, right in front of me. I couldn’t… and he stops and swallows and tries again. I just… he says, and so softly, Do you understand? and he can’t get anything else out past the emotion.
Her eyes are enormous and she doesn’t think then, she just blurts it out her mouth, You were bleeding out, and I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t stop - A shiver goes through her, a convulsion. She lifts a hand to cover her mouth and moans Oh god, muffled and bitten off.
He takes two steps and she staggers a little, and then his arms go round her. She shudders inside the warmth, and they breathe in unison, short and tight. She gets the worst of it out, and starts to quiet into him, and he is whispering, he is saying Come on, and Please, Kate, and it’s okay. And she is whispering Don’t let go.
edited for dumb spelling