fanofthegenre | [ forced decompression ]

Combing the parking garage for any sign of the third victim's body proves fruitless. The killer - whoever he is - isn't sticking to his normal M.O. of leaving the body where he's killed them, either. Forensics bags the lone pump, the clumps of blonde hair, swabs the places where her blood had spilled, but Beckett isn't hopeful yet. Changing his tactic means he's becoming more unpredictable, getting harder to pin down, but the fact that she's being sent home after feeling like she and her team can actually be a help is weighing heavy on her shoulders. Her protests fall on Agent Shaw's ignoring ears, and she leaves feeling more helpless than before - a feeling she doesn't appreciate having at the moment. It's not until she's climbed into her car and left that she realizes Castle's still there, but something tells her he doesn't mind being left with another brilliant mind to build theory with.

The unit, a small trio of suits wearing earpieces, are waiting in various places throughout her apartment building by the time Beckett gets there, a bag of takeout Chinese in one hand. The sight of them only re-emphasizes her frustration over the situation, and her other hand tightens around her keys when she lets herself into her apartment. She makes a point of checking all the windows, combing rooms, and then pokes her head out into the hallway and tells the guys to head on home. There's no point in keeping them around when everything's perfectly secured and she's got a gun in her bedside drawer - and one in the living room, too.

Beckett changes into a loose-fitting shirt and a pair of jeans and cracks open the Chinese, mixing rice and veggies together with her disposable chopsticks. Fifteen minutes in and the casefile is spread out on the couch in front of her, and Beckett settles in Indian-style, combing over the information: crime scene photos, eyewitness accounts, victims' backgrounds - searching for anything she might be missing, anything Agent Shaw and her team (and her "smart board") haven't pinned down yet.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Something about this time is quieter than the others; more tempered, careful. Maybe they're both afraid that the security detail she said she ditched might come back for one last sweep of the place; maybe they're being quiet for another reason--that this thing between them is so tenuous and fragile, a misplaced sound might break it.

Quiet, yeah, but close. She's got her legs around him like a vice and he's almost trying to bring them within the same molecular space, hands on her hips and over her ribs, circling her breasts until there's no inch of her his touch hasn't lingered.

In this precious, all too brief moment, she's not thinking about the case. Nor is her mind turning to thoughts of Shaw, of the team that is undoubtedly still taking up residence at the precinct and working even into this late hour. Shaw said we needed to decompress. Castle's earlier words echo in her brain when his hands skim over her breasts, and she arches up into his touch, head lazily drifting to one side.

There's no rush, no hurry. She can't be bothered to glance over toward the alarm clock, knocked askew by earlier fumbles, and a part of her is accepting of that. Beckett opens her eyes in the semi-darkness, turning to find Castle's face as her own tilts upward for her mouth to collide with his.

Her breath flashes across his cheek. Blindly, hungrily, he blurs his own focus and finds her mouth again. Neither of them have ever been any good at taking things slow. Work. Play. Themselves. To be slow is to be dangerously close to being stagnant, and both he and Beckett would sooner die than risk falling off the map like that. But the both of them seem happy to let time go by them when they're like this. The whole terrifying, shrinking world goes away when he's with her.

"What do you need?" he breathes, drawing his tongue along her bottom lip. "What do you need, Beckett?"

Need. It's a word that resonates with her all too strongly, tightening in her chest and knocking around against her ribs like a restless prisoner trying to escape from the bars. For a moment, she nearly freezes, but only in her face even as her body perpetuates the movement, the slow undulating pace. She closes her eyes against it, against the question, turning her head to one side so that Castle's mouth stutters over her jaw.

"This," she says, because right now, it's a safer answer than the one that had been dangling from her tongue alongside (you). "Just this."

He kisses the side of her jaw. The corner of her mouth where, on any given day, her lips bow down into a species of frown that lets him know she's only half taking him seriously. The place where, now, her lips are full and parted, blowing warm air like a channel through his hair.

"Me too."

His hand sweeps under her hip, pushing her toward the headboard -- companioned by a knock! loud enough to resonate with her neighbors -- as he moves over her, one knee dug into the mattress, his arms around her middle, pulling them both toward the end.

Like so many other things about Castle, this finish is also unpredictable but no less overwhelming when it happens. There's the catch - in her breath, in her chest, a moment where she's suspended in the in-between, in some kind of ecstatic limbo - and her body tenses, her back bowed, dark hair spilling over her shoulderblades when she arches toward him for one last surge.

The catch, but also the inevitable release and the feeling akin to an explosion as she cries out, just once, biting down hard on her own lower lip to stifle the sound halfway through. A rush of warmth, and Beckett slowly begins to find her center of gravity again, laying back into the surprising safety of Castle's arms.

It takes him a minute longer, not because the need for release isn't there, but because it's every honest, red-blooded straight male's fantasy to hear a woman make a sound like that and know that he had something to do with it. Her mouth is close to his ear. He feels her lips scrape over the shadow on his cheek and jaw, hears something in her that battles to get out and be heard, and that's enough for him: the end is hard, fast, and threatens to drown him. With her, he wouldn't mind going under.

Slow, slow, slow. A mantra in his head that his body eventually obeys. He lets out a sigh and turns his cheek, blindly seeking her mouth beneath him. Her eyes are smokey and pale. He smiles languidly.

"Decompression is fun."

Beckett's content to lay in the aftermath for a moment, her eyes still closed, concentrating on returning the pace of her breathing and the rhythm of her heartbeat back to their normal rates. There's a slow fire still burning in her lower belly, stoked into a lingering flame as she sighs under Castle's seeking mouth, her limbs weak and pleasure-filled.

Decompression. Shaw.

And just like that, Beckett's brain is back on the case, the wheels resuming their turning. Her eyes snap open. She pries herself away, squeezes out from underneath Castle, rolling onto her side and cradling her arms against her chest.

"Uh huh," she murmurs, eyes reflecting the returning stream of her thought process as she stares at the bedside table, the alarm clock's face hidden from her view thanks to earlier fumbling in the dark.

Castle flops onto his back and pillows his hands beneath his head. He nudges her with the side of his foot. "Hey, you're missing the afterglow."

Beckett senses it. Barely.

"Uh huh," she murmurs.

He angles a look toward her. A single eyebrow cranes upward.

"You wanna' use my back as a white board?"

She's back on the scent, he can tell.

She rolls over; on her back, she can let her head loll to one side and respond with a smile, a brief upturn of her mouth.

"That's okay. I'm - I should probably just try to sleep."

She draws the bedsheets up over herself.

"Shaw's right - I won't be of use to anyone if I'm burned out."

"Worn out, yes." He slides down the mattress and angles his half of the sheet over himself. "Complete physical exhaustion --" he stretches his face comically "-- will do that to a body. But burned out? Well, that we have to worry about."

His hand slides over her hip, staying at the small of her back.

"Don't worry. I'll protect you."

She settles in against him, hiding her yawn between his shoulder and the pillows. Her eyelids feel as if they have tiny weights holding them closed. The jellylike quality of her limbs isn't helping matters - though, in the way of decompression, maybe it is.

"You do that, Castle," she sleepily mumbles.

[ forced decompression ]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject