65. 67: Wednesday

67

Kate's reading on her phone in the semi-dark of the back deck when Castle slides the screen door aside and steps through. Her heart sinks.

"Hey," he murmurs, his face hesitant.

"Hey," she says back, turning to him, reluctance vibrating so strongly in her body that it takes work to keep it from her face, her voice.

"I - uh - I'm kinda exhausted," he laughs, shrugging his shoulders as if to apologize. He walks slowly to her side, his body leaning towards her but not touching. Waiting for permission.

She slides a hand down his forearm, curls her fingers around his, giving him a little shake. "You should go to bed."

He sighs. "I think I will, actually. You gonna read?"

Is he asking her to come to bed with him? He is. She can tell by his face, even in the darkness, even with just the blue light from her iphone lighting his features. He wants to snuggle up with her and that is absolutely the last thing she wants to do right now.

"I'm gonna read, yeah," she says softly, trying to keep all judgment out of it. Trying to keep from hurting his feelings.

"Yeah, okay," he says, standing there a moment. He rouses as if from a daydream, heads back for the door.

"Castle," she stops him, sighing a little.

"Yeah," he waits, standing half inside the living room, a foot still on the wooden deck, his body turned away from her but she thinks she can see his eyes seeking hers.

"Night," she offers, wondering if there should be more. But there's not.

"Yeah. Night," he says back, and disappears inside.

She knows that he falls asleep quickly, so she reads only to the end of the chapter, then blanks her screen, closes her eyes in the quiet night. She lets out a long breath, drops her feet from the other chair to the deck, her head tilting back.

She craves this, has been craving it all day. Like a fix. She needs this. The nothing, the darkness, the silence, the alone.

She loves him, she does, but she loves him more maybe when she doesn't have to be with him twenty-four hours a day for the last three weeks. She loves him, but she doesn't love how he has to fill up every moment with idle conversation. She loves him, but she just wants to turn on the radio and listen.

She loves him.

So she kept her mouth shut and suffered through, and she's going to murder him if she has to do it for much longer without a break.

Not a break from them, but maybe just a break from incessant him.

She loves him. She does. She really does.

Before she can think but again, Kate gets to her feet swiftly, eyes open to the late-night darkness, and then, using her phone for light, she heads down the stairs to the beach.

The pool is to the right and she hesitates for just a moment, thinking how lovely, how free and ridiculous and exhilarating it would be to strip off her clothes and dive in. But actually, that's something she kinda would like his company for actually, so she saves it and heads for the beach instead.

The sand is that grey-blue found in the deep of night, strangely luminous under the stars. Kate kicks off her sandals and lets her feet dig into the cool grains, her toes making aimless patterns. She tucks her phone into her pocket, no longer needing it to see, and walks down the beach, away.

Away.

Her body unwinds with every step, her brain settling down, her nerves soothed by the roar of the ocean. It's loud, but it's even-toned and rhythmic; it has a music to it that ceases to hold meaning the longer she hears it.

Nearly three weeks of it now, and the ocean is like breathing, in and out. Her body, even when not in the water, rises and falls with the waves, attuned.

She walks to the wet edge of the sand, pauses there for a moment before the oncoming wave. She feels the water swirl at her feet, curl around her ankles, the strange nibble of inquisitive little fish, the fingers of seaweed at her skin. Ethereal in the darkness, with her eyes mostly blind to whatever the water holds.

Kate takes a long breath in and releases it, lets it go to the water, the salty air, the humid touch of the night. She lets it all get hung up on the stars, closes her eyes.

Castle gave her this too. The night, the blessing of the ocean in the darkness. Even as she needs this moment to be lost in the modulation of the sea, alone in the cadence of the water's voice, she also can appreciate how she got here.

The aloneness, the solitude is only sweet because of him, because she has him to go back to when she's been filled up with the peace of the lonely night.

Still. Doesn't mean she wants to go back right now.

Kate opens her eyes and keeps walking.

It's been a couple hours when she makes it back to the deck, and her feet have been rubbed soft by fine sand. She brushes it off as best she can, leaving her wet sandals outside, and then steps into the living room.

He's plugged the nightlight from the extra bathroom into the outlet here. He's left her a trail of light that extends nearly to the open bedroom door.

Kate sighs, closing her eyes to reclaim that feeling of night, and solitude, breathes out again. She slips the shirt over her head as she moves for their room, stepping out of her shorts as she goes.

She pads softly past the bed and into the master bathroom, leaves her clothes in the floor as she turns the faucet on low, letting water trickle out. She gets a washcloth damp, washes her face quietly, brushes her teeth. She goes to the bathroom, washes her hands, takes her earrings out, remembers to put them well back from the sink or else he'll get them wet again.

Kate slips out of her underwear and bra, pulls one of his tshirts from the pile, sniffs it. Pretty clean. He keeps dumping his stuff in the floor after the resort people do laundry. Drives her nuts, but-

No, no more tonight.

No more, Kate.

She heads back out to the bedroom and is struck suddenly by the way he looks in the bed, this dark, solid form with such presence to it, such substance. He's managed to command her attention, arrest her, even in sleep, even with his face slack and rugged with shadows.

She sighs, shakes her head at herself and climbs into bed with him.

Castle doesn't wake at all, doesn't move. He's on his side, back to her, and she closes her eyes, getting comfortable under the sheet. The night is alive outside their open window, the slight breeze touching her skin.

But it's not quite right.

Kate opens her eyes, turns her head to look at the broad expanse of his shoulders. It's that. The part that isn't settled, doesn't want to rest.

She curls on her side at his back, reaches out with a hand at his shoulder blade. Her body eases at the warmth of him and she traces a slow line up to his neck, fingers in the soft hair there before journeying back down his spine.

Kate leans in and presses a good-night to his skin, closes her eyes.

Sleep finds her with her kiss still at his shoulder.