Loose Change

The light in your eyes fell away like loose change
and I tried to figure out
who you were at all.

-Candy Machine Gun, Haley Bonar

"People are islands,' she said. 'They don't really touch. However close they are, they're really quite separate. Even if they've been married for fifty years." -Ian Fleming, Casino Royale

(pennies)

She tries to be the last to go to bed. She tries to wait for him.

The loft is bathed in a soft, golden light that touches the walls with hesitance. She settles her glass in his kitchen sink and wonders when he'll come back downstairs, if he will at all. She supposes Alexis is spending the night indefinitely.

Her palm trails along the cool granite, fingers catching at the package still open on the counter, the envelope ragged. The book is placed in the center and she lays her hand over it, the pages rough at her thumb.

A muffled noise from the upstairs hall has her jerking back, moving out of the kitchen and passing the fireplace, lingering at the stairs.

But the steps are empty.

Kate pushes her hand through the hair tickling her cheek, tucks it behind her ear as she drops her eyes back to the living room, the darkness pressing its cheek to the window.

She goes to bed.

(nickels)

She's awake when he comes into the room, and he grins to find her waiting on him, a book in her hands and propped up on her knees, the cove of her body in shadows.

"She okay?" she asks him.

He fumbles at his cuffs without looking at the buttons. "Yeah. Better than me, I think."

"She's a strong girl. She'll make it."

From anyone else, he might think it a platitude. But she means it, and the earnest searching on her face has him coming to the bed and sitting down at her side. She slides her legs up and leans in, her hand brushing his knee.

"Are you okay, Castle?"

He nods. "You don't have to worry about me. Danger's past. She's safe."

Her fingers scratch at his pants and he glances down to unbutton his cuff, startled when she takes over, shifting to lean in closer.

"Worry about you anyway," she murmurs. Her voice is rich and wraps around him, and he lets her do the undressing. She's slow with it, her thumb stroking the inside of his wrist and curling up into his palm.

"I've had a few days to get past the shaking with fear," he jokes, giving her a smile.

She lifts her eyes to his and turns his hand over, strokes all five fingers down over his, their palms kissing. The touch sends licks of heat through his arm and into his chest, makes his breath shallow. He can't look away from her.

She leans in and her mouth hovers over his, her breath skirting his cheek. "You're shaking now," she murmurs.

"Not with fear," he laughs, breathless. When he curls his hand around her wrist, he can feel her trembling too. "And so are you."

"But mine is still fear," she sighs.

(dimes)

She didn't mean to let that out, and he seems to sense it, because he doesn't question her. His arm comes around her shoulders too gently though, and he's pulling her against his chest, letting her rest.

She pushes her forehead into his neck and closes her eyes for just a moment. Just a moment more.

His fingers lift to stroke through her hair, the loose cuff of his shirt dragging her cheek, and she chews the inside of her lip to keep herself under control. His thumb touches the corner of her eye. He's warm and he's here now and nothing bad - there was nothing - he gets to still be his easy-going, life-loving, happy self. She gets to keep that man.

There are enough tragedies between them; one more would have been one too many, she's afraid.

"Hey," he murmurs, his thumb skimming her cheek. She lifts her hand to his and holds it there.

She meant to be his solid ground after all this; she meant to be the core of steel he could lean against. The cop. The role he assigned to her when he left. She didn't mean to make this about her.

"Curl up with me," he says suddenly.

She opens her eyes and he's shifting them down into bed, her head touching the pillow and his body wrapping around hers. He gives that little growling noise he does when he's gotten what he's wanted, an arm tucked around her torso, a knee nudging the back of her thigh, and his mouth comes to rest at her shoulder.

Huh. Okay. She was expecting the night to go differently, but Castle's always full of surprises. He's not even covertly trying to feel her up; he's actually just. . .cuddling with her.

She turns her head and sees the wide smile on his face, his closed eyes, and she huffs a little laugh.

His eyes pop open. "What?"

"Nothing." But she lifts her free hand and cards it through his hair, palming the side of his face. "I'm glad you're both home."

(quarters)

It's while he's kissing her, while he's got two fingers under her sleep shirt and skimming up her ribs that she lifts the book out of the way and haphazardly aims it towards the bedside table.

His eyes catch the title and he stutters to a stop, his head lifting from the pink blush of her lips. She sucks in a long breath.

"What?"

He doesn't answer, just reaches out and snags the book before she can let go, takes it back. She releases it but sits up, her other arm hooking around his neck, her fingers stroking his bare shoulder.

"Castle?"

"I don't really want my father staring at me while we have sex," he mutters, leaning back to do something with the book.

She makes a noise and he turns his head, sees her startled face - a mixture of amusement and disgust. "What?" she laughs. "What are you talking about?"

"It's from him - a sign he made it out alive," he starts, hesitating. "Are we talking or are we. . ."

"You can do both," she smirks, a delicate eyebrow arching. "In fact, you talk a lot when we. . ."

"Yeah, but it's all dirty. Or at least not parent-related. Come on. How would you like it if I brought up your dad when-"

"Ew," she mutters, pushing on his chest and toppling him off of her. "Castle."

He grins, but he realizes he's kinda shot himself in the foot as far as touching her goes. She's adjusting her sleep shirt now and sitting up against the headboard, so he drags himself up with her. She runs her fingers up his inside thigh, playing with the hem of his boxers, and he hands her back the book.

"Casino Royale," she says, a question in her voice. "I read Live and Let Die first. Had to go back and read this one when I realized I'd done it out of order."

"He gave this one to me."

Her thumb strokes the cover, the one on his thigh does the same, a strange connection. "Yeah, Castle. I can see that," she says lightly.

He smiles and slips his hand under hers at his leg, and for some reason their fingers lace together, naturally falling into place. It makes his heart pound hard, and he can feel his blood pulsing at the thin skin between their fingers, their palms pressed together. It's intimate in a way he didn't expect.

"I was in the New York Public Library, escaped there during one of my mother's rehearsals," he starts. She's rubbing her thumb over the back of his hand now, slow circles. "I was looking for something to read - everything in the children's section was boring and I'd read it a hundred times. But the adult fiction was overwhelming, didn't know where to start, and it was totally off limits, so I had to be clever about it."

"Rite of passage, huh?" she murmurs. "I remember that day myself."

"Oh?" he asks, now imagining a ten year old version of Kate - it would be Katie, wouldn't it? Katie trailing her fingers over the shelves, sighing loudly at the same old titles, her eyes wandering longingly across the aisle. "You sneaked your way into the adult fiction too? Tell me the story."

He gets a soft kiss at his jaw for that, a butterfly touch and then her voice. "The McGurk Mystery series got me started, but they couldn't hold me. Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys - I tore through them soon enough. And then I had to reread Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume-"

"Re-reading," he huffs, amused with her. "What else?"

"I pulled paperbacks with interesting covers - you know those spinners in the aisles?"

"The bodice rippers?" he gasps, titillated despite himself.

"Castle," she draws out, her knee coming up over his thigh. "You know me better than that." Her hand teases at the waistband of his boxers. "I went straight for the mystery novels."

He grunts at her hand, straight for it, like she said. "Oh, of course. . ."

"But we're talking about you." She pats his chest now, totally PG about it. "Ten years old. Public library. The day you crossed over."

He grins and his hand curls tighter at her bicep, smoothing his thumb along the soft skin there. "To the dark side."

She laughs at that, the first free sound he's heard from her since he came home with his daughter.

"I was wandering around in the adult fiction, trying to duck out of sight of the librarian who always took it upon herself to look after me-"

"Aw, keeping you innocent."

"Lost cause. I was so involved with keeping my cover, slinking around the bookshelves and acting like a rebel without a cause, that I ran right into this guy. Fell right on my ass."

She hums; it's one of his favorites noises because it's like she doesn't know whether to laugh or scold and it comes out both.

"He squinted one eye - like Jack Palance in City Slickers, you know that movie? where he says the meaning life is this one thing-"

Kate's laughing now, and her thumb comes up to rub his eyebrow where he's making that same face. "I know that one. Yeah. So you ran into a Jack Palance look-alike, and then what?"

"He pulled a book down from the shelf next to him and handed it over. Start here, he said. And then you'll know what you're doing."

She gives a little sigh that sounds like contentment, like the satisfaction of a story well-told, and he really likes that noise as well. Maybe better.

"Casino Royale," she says with relish. "Did you like it?"

"Loved it." He can feel his grin deepening. "Poker and secret agents and women. 'Bond saw luck as a woman to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged.'"

She laughs then and her knee shifts over his lap, her head against his shoulder. "Then he did good, giving you that book."

"And here's the best part: it turns out - that man was my father."

Her hand on his chest pauses, and he realizes his heart is pounding. "Your - he was - he set that up?"

"He told me so in Paris. He said he looked in on me from time to time. Me, my mother, Alexis. He even knew your name. Told me to call you."

She curls her fingers at his chest and her cheek turns on his shoulder, her lips touching his skin. "That - is that a good thing?"

"Good thing," he answers. "You're part of my family too, you know."

Her breath gusts out across his skin and she tilts her head up. "Not what I was talking about. Your father - looking in on you, being unknown, in the shadows. You're okay with that, Castle?"

He shrugs a little, cups his fingers at her elbow, his eyes on the book. "Yeah. What else is there?"

"Knowing him?" she says tightly.

"But I do," he answers. "He came when I needed him; he helped me rescue my daughter. I know him."

Her palm flattens at his chest and her mouth does too, a deep breath through her nose that he can feel fill her body. "Okay, Castle."

He lifts the book off his lap and stretches out to place it on the opposite bedside table, unwilling to move away from her. She stays where she is, and once the book is secure, he wraps both arms around her and rolls over, letting his hips settle into the cradle of hers.

Kate lifts her mouth to his but doesn't kiss him, just nudges her nose at his and breathes out a line that he recognizes from the novel: "Bond accepted the fact that one day he would be brought to his knees by love or by luck."

"Thank God, it's love," he murmurs back and pushes his mouth to hers.

"And I'm the lucky one," she whispers.