DR: Jack and Beckett, Post-"Knockout"

[trigger_man]

It always starts out as an ordinary day.

Jack's got his bag slung over his shoulder, ready to head out to his world for a while.  Only when he opens the door, it's not the tiny apartment he's rented in Lexington that he sees.  Instead, it's sidewalk and tall apartment buildings.  Turning his head, he sees yellow cabs and New York licence plates, behind him apparently an ordinary phone booth.

Something cold settles in his stomach; there are only a few reasons for the bar to have dropped him off somewhere other than the place where he'd walked in, and none of them are good.

Following a hunch, he covers the sidewalk between him and the nearest apartment building in a couple strides, eyes searching the nameplates by the door, until he finds the one he's looking for.

K. Beckett.

The bar dropped him off at her home, not the precinct, not a hospital.

(not a morgue, a church or a cemetery)

Telling himself that it can't be that bad if he's been kicked out of the bar at her apartment building, he presses the button to buzz her apartment.

If only the butterflies in his stomach were listening.

Comments

[needthepractice]

It's only been a couple weeks - a little over a month now, Beckett corrects herself - since everything that's happened, and through it all, she can't decide if she's happy for the excuse to take her leave from the precinct or ready to tear her hair out from the way the apartment seems to stifle her, to make it difficult to even breathe until she can crack a window open and listen to the sounds of the city.

In all that time, she hasn't called anyone. She just wants to leave them to their work, doesn't want Castle to spend his nights at the precinct worrying about her - and really, in truth, she doesn't want anyone to see her like this, worn and tired, trying to work the strength back into her arm every single day, for hours on end, until her muscles are screaming and she's gritting her teeth in pain. They haven't cleared her to come back, much less hold a gun, and she doesn't blame them. There's no way her shoulder could handle the recoil.

It's the mandatory psych eval she's really not looking forward to, but she'll have to suck it up if she ever wants to be able to go back to work. And she'll go, eventually. She will.

Taut reflex has her whirling towards the direction of the sound, on high alert, before she recognizes it as someone buzzing her from the street below, and she prays it's the takeout she ordered and nothing else before she walks over to answer it, pressing the button and responding just loudly enough to be heard through the speaker. "Yeah?"