#woop woop

As if reading her mind, he says- “I can promise you that you don’t wanna know more, kid.” He stops himself just shy of saying, it’s better this way. “Anyone who's ever known more about me - about my life - has paid bitterly for it.” He squeezes her hand thrice beneath the covers; his touch spelling out the words for her even if he can’t. “I can protect you here, kid.” He presses a kiss to her forehead. “It’s an entirely different world out there.” 

In an attempt to shift the subject, she tells him she dreamt about him the night before. 

He hums against her before asking, “you gonna tell me about it, or do I gotta guess?”

“Kiss me first, Frank.”

“Let me fix your radiator.” He presses, firmly.

She grins against him before relenting. “Yeah, yeah. You got yourself a deal, Castle. Now please, for the love of god, kiss me.” 

There is a desperation to her demand that he can’t ignore, and he smiles softly to himself before peppering a series of tender kisses to her temple, the tip of her nose, her cheeks, and finally her lips. His beard tickles, but the sensation is so familiar that she feels the joy from it all the way down in her toes. Their delicate flux and flow could go on forever if she’d had her way, but then he breaks for air, and rests his forehead against her temple, his breaths fanning out against her in measured waves. 

“Do we really have to go out?” she groans.

He huffs out a grunt and nods. “It’s your friend's birthday, boots.” 

The nickname still makes her smile. (It was a remnant from the first night they met that managed to stick; she hasn’t grown tired of it yet, and she reckons he just likes having someone around to give nicknames to). 

“C’mon, then,” He pats her thigh twice. “The sooner we get ready and go, the sooner we can get back here.” 

It’s Saturday night, and the city breathes life into everything around it. The walk to the bar is chilly, but Frank’s so close beside her that his warmth helps to drive the November chill from her bones. 

“You gonna tell me about your dream?” 

A siren blares close by, before fading off in the distance. “I dreamt that you broke my heart into a million magnificent pieces, and the most insane part of the whole thing is that I let you do it.” The burst of laughter that follows that statement borders incredulity.

A moment passes between them before he asks, “why did you let me?” 

She mulls over her answer carefully. “I think because whatever’s transpiring between us right now feels completely worth the heartbreak waiting around the corner.”  

“How do you know it’s around the corner, boots?” 

She shrugs. “It has a tendency of following people like us around, don’t you think?” 

The pub is loud, and busy, and while she loves her friend dearly - her regret over leaving the safe-haven of her bedroom weighs heavily. She spots a couple of her friends on the makeshift dance floor and waves at them before sliding into a cracked vinyl booth. A couple of drinks under her belt are imperative to how close she ventures to the dance floor this evening.

“What’ll it be, kid?” he hooks a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the bar. 

“Whatever’s cheapest.” 

He smirks. “Pabst it is.” 

She misses him as soon as he’s gone, and maybe that’s all the confirmation she needs to know how much she enjoys having him in her life. He returns a little while later with two frothy pints of beer and slides one over the glossy tabletop toward her. She lifts the rim to her lips and takes a hearty gulp of the slightly bitter liquid before thanking him. He’s quiet, and then it dawns on her that two things tend to occur when he finds himself in chaotic situations. He either becomes hyper-vigilant of his surroundings, keeping a keen eye on each of the building’s exits, or he disappears inside of himself. Tonight, it’s the latter of the two. She watches his beautiful brown eyes grow hollow - like two umber pools of nothingness - and asks, “where are you, Frank? you feel a million miles away.” Her teasing lilt brings him back into himself, like he was never gone at all.

“‘m right here, boots.” 

And yeah, he is right there, but he’s also somewhere else entirely. For a hair-raising second, she wonders if it’s the anniversary, but then a quick mental check tells her it isn’t for another couple of months. She then allows herself a moment to take stock of him in the low lamplight. His hair is longer than he usually lets it get, and his beard could do with a trim, but despite all of that, he still remains the most handsome man in the room.  

He leans toward her and gestures with the jut of his chin to the hive of dancing bodies. “This place reminds me of the first time we met.” 

The memory makes her smile. “I’m afraid there will be no karaoke for me tonight. And,” she adds. “David’s not here.”

He drops his head and elicits a huff of laughter at that, and then clears his throat. “I wanna tell you something.” He has to raise his voice above the din of the pub to be heard, and though it’s chaotic, he’s always possessed the ability of making her feel like it’s just the two of them. “I had a revelation recently, and while fear and I made our peace a while ago, there’s a particular terror to this epiphany that I just can’t shake.” 

“Better get on with it then, Castle.” She whistles.

He tips the glass to his mouth, drains the rest of the amber liquid, and fixes his gaze on hers. “I’ve uh… fallen for you.” 

She shakes her head. “Listen Frank, if this is about earlier, I didn’t mean to push-

“You didn’t push. And you were right. You do deserve more. For the first time since…” he doesn’t need to elaborate for her to know his thoughts are with Maria, and the kids. “For the first time in a really long time, I wanna try, with you.” 

His words give life to a sphere of golden sunlight in her chest that expands until it feels like every fiber of her being is alight with it. Her response hovers on the tip of her tongue, but then the birthday girl materializes at her side, her hand warm around hers as it pulls her toward the throng of people on the dance floor. 

Frank’s already shaking his head. “Get outta here, boots. We’ll talk more about it on the way home.” 

She catches his gaze before he disappears from her sight completely and watches the grin grow on his face, his hand frozen in a wave.

“You’re absolutely glowing!” her best friend shouts above the chaos, and then they’re laughing so hard their bellies ache. 

She doesn’t know how else to describe it, except to say that there is a child-like euphoria to it all. A breathless anticipation that feels akin to when you were a kid on the eve of an exciting event; like Christmas, or a family vacation. She dances like her, and the people she loves are the only ones in the room. Like when she leaves at the end of the night, on the arm of the man she loves, everything will make sense in the world. Or it won’t, but at least she’ll have her friends, and Frank by her side, and really - what more could anyone ask for? 

The song changes to something upbeat and frustratingly familiar, though she couldn’t place who it was by if her life depended on it. She turns to wrap her arms around her friend when the sound of a car back-firing outside pierces the din, rendering the bar eerily silent. 

“Call an ambulance!” someone screams. “Someone’s been hurt!”

Time seems to slow to a halt, then. She steps on tiptoes to try and get a view of the booth in which she’d last seen Frank, but it’s empty. Dropping back onto the balls of her feet, she turns to her friend, and tries to calm the pounding of her heart. “Find an exit, Nat, somewhere in the back and get safe. I need to find Frank.” 

His disappearance could mean a multitude of things, which she knows. She also knows that of all people, Frank would admonish her the most for panicking in a situation like this one. So, she tries to view the situation through a logical lens. He could be in the washroom or grabbing another beer, but when both of those places come up void of him, the cold blooms of panic start to settle in. She frantically searches for a way out that isn’t currently being bottle-necked by panicked patrons and spots a door at the back of the bar with a red exit sign glowing above it. Taking a deep breath, she pushes it open and stumbles out into the windy November evening. In her haste to find him, she’d forgotten her coat inside, but the chill barely registers. All she cares about is finding Frank. She grabs her phone out of her back pocket and wills her trembling fingers to dial his number, but before she can even get it in, she hears someone hacks a wet cough to the left of her that makes her heart skip a beat. She trepidatiously makes her way past a set of rusted dumpsters, and the first thing that assaults her senses is the metallic tang of blood; it hangs so heavily in the air, she can almost taste it. She finds Frank slumped against the brick wall of the bar, holding a hand to his side. Blood so dark it almost looks black, seeps out from between his fingers. Another man lies in a bad way a few yards away.

“Oh god, Frank,” she falls to her knees beside him and does her best to survey the damage, but there's just too much of it. She settles for cradling his battered and broken face in her hands. 

“Your coat,” he coughs. “Take mine.” 

“Oh god, oh god.” She whimpers and places her small hands over his near-frozen ones, as if touch alone could make everything alright again. 

He keeps one hand on the wound at his side, and the other finds purchase around her free hand. He frantically searches her gaze before rasping, “It- it ain’t safe here, kid, you gotta go.” There is a hysterical edge to his voice that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. He’s soaked with blood so completely that it’s hard to believe it’s the same man from before. “You have to go.” He urges, again.

Tears blur her vision and cascade down her cheeks in rivers. “You gotta put more pressure on this wound, Frankie.” Her head snaps up, and an anguished howl erupts from her. “HELP! Somebody, we need help here!” They’re seemingly alone in the alley, but she can’t care about that.

“I’m sorry, kid.” He whispers, and his grip on her hand is like a vice. It feels like he knows that if he lets go of her at all, he’ll lose his tether to the universe entirely. 

A series of whaling sirens sound in the distance and grow louder with each ticking second. Everything after the ambulance arrives seems to unfold in slow motion. She watches them load him in; they don’t offer her a ride, and she doesn’t ask. They tell her where they’re headed, but that’s about it. 

“Mount Sinai hospital, please,” she tells her cabbie when she’s finally able to flag one down. He’s saying something to her, but none of it registers. The flashing red and blue lights still burn behind her eyes, and all she can think of is how palpable Frank’s fear was; how she could feel it rolling from him in waves. She learns when she arrives at the hospital that he was immediately moved into emergency surgery to try and repair the wound at his side. They don’t tell her how long it’ll be before he’s out, and again, she doesn’t ask. She finds a seat against the far wall of the room and waits.

“Ma’am,” she hadn’t realized she’d fallen asleep until a nurse is waking her. Grey morning light streams in through a window above her. “Ma’am, the person you’re here to see is out of surgery and in a room. If you follow me, I can take you to him.”

He’s dozing when she enters, so she pulls up a chair beside the bed and waits. Cuts of varying degrees decorate the expanse of his face like a warzone, and a violet bruise blooms around the socket of his left eye. She reaches for his hand, wanting desperately to feel the familiar warmth from it, when he stirs beneath her. 

“There he is,” she whispers before bending her head to press a kiss to the back of his hand. “Only man in New York City to get his block knocked off, and come out looking more handsome on the other side of it.” 

Frank grumbles at that. “I don’t know, boots, you ever meet Red?” 

Silence settles in the cracks between them and there are so many things she wants answers to, but all she can manage is, “what the hell happened, Frank? You scared the shit out of me.” 

“I’m sorry.” He whispers. 

She shakes her head. “I need a little bit more than that.” 

He shifts in the bed and winces. “Violence follows me around like an old friend, kid, always has. I think I’m like a magnet for it or something.” His hoarse voice is foreign to her. “It’s why I went into the Marines. It’s why scars litter my body like a damn roadmap. It’s why I’m always the first in line for a brawl.” 

“Last night, Frank.” 

He levels his gaze with hers. “I was content to just sit and watch you, right? I could see your glow from all the way back at the booth, and it was nothin' short of spectacular, y'know? It was like I caught a glimpse of it just then, boots. What our life could look like if I could just get my goddamn shit together.” He chokes back the emotion and elicits a huff of laughter that bears no warmth. “But I get up to go to the washroom and there’s this fuckin’ sorry excuse for a man feelin’ his way up a girl who can’t tell up from down; just in pretty bad shape in general.” He shrugs as if to say, what was I supposed to do? “Couldn’t leave the poor bird there, so I intervened. He didn’t like it, we took it outside, he played dirty, and I finished it.” 

I finished it. 

“That’s me, kid. It’s always gonna be me. It’s what I'm best at; what I know.” 

Her voice is a wineglass on the edge of a tabletop when she speaks again. “But it doesn’t have to be, Frank. You can choose for it not to be.” 

He squeezes her hand thrice, saltwater glitters in the depths of his eyes. “I don’t think it’s in the cards, sweetheart.” 

She doesn’t have to ask him what he means to know he’s referring to their relationship. 

“So that’s it then, huh?” She does nothing to hide the hurt. “Just like that.” 

His jaw flexes and gives away the emotions he’s trying to conceal. “Do you know what it would do to me if you were ever hurt because of the choices I’ve made?” He clears his throat. “It’s what happens when I let people get too close.”

Anger swells within her. “You’re making my decision for me, Frank.” 

“I already find it hard to live with myself most days,” His fragile voice is on the precipice of shattering completely. “And you make it all bearable, boots. But if something were to happen to you because of me, I would simply not survive it. So yeah, I guess I am making your decision for you.” 

“But I love you,” she whimpers. “Why can't that be enough?” 

His eyes close, and a single tear cascades down his broken visage before disappearing in his beard. He scrubs a palm down the length of his face before mumbling, “please just go, boots.”