Participants:
Scene Title | To See Me |
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Synopsis | A once-in-a-lifetime meeting stretches to breakfast and beyond after a few awkward moments on All Saints Day morning. |
Date | November 1, 2020 |
Ferrymen's Bay, Castle's Houseboat
Eventually, they had made it to what Castle had joking called the “Captain’s Quarters''. A queen size bed filled almost the entire room, with some storage areas for clothes and belongings, a clock on the wall, and another painting. This one wasn’t hidden, and it was just a simple nightscape, the moon in a cloudy night sky over the ocean, with a lighthouse overlooking the shore.
Castle hadn’t stopped his desire to learn more about her as the night went on, even if what he wanted to learn and how he learned it certainly did. Though the two had both fallen asleep in the bed at some point, by dawn, the owner of the boat is already awake. Light breaks into the darkness through the window to the side of the bed, not direct sunlight, but enough that it illuminates the room and casts shadows.
And draws attention to the sudden feeling of emptiness in the bed where there once had been warmth, cause Castle has already left the warmth of the blankets and the tangle of their limbs and bare skin. They haven’t gone far, though, casting a silhouette in the window next to the bed. Pale eyes look into the glass, into their own reflection, and there’s a hint of a whisper under their breath, as if they are talking to themselves.
They didn’t bother to find any clothes when they got out of bed either.
Chess’ lids flicker when they sense that gray light illuminating the cabin. Her eyes open — both brown now, as the blue contact she’d worn in her right eye the night before got thrown out at some point, her face washed as well, though there is still a small smear of face paint on her cheekbone, and maybe even on Castle’s as well. She tips her head to squint at the clock, and finds the light isn’t a lie. It’s morning.
That feels like something of a miracle, for a few reasons.
If Chess finds the whispering odd, she doesn’t speak to it. She watches Castle from the bed with sleepy eyes for a moment, giving herself a few more heartbeats of quiet before having to break it again. It isn’t long, because it feels, well, creepy. And maybe rude, even if the sight is a pleasant one.
“Morning,” is a good place to start, though it comes out a little creaky. She sits up, pressing her fingers against her eyes. “I can’t believe I slept that long.” It hasn’t been that long — a few hours at most since she’d fallen asleep.
The face paint definitely got a few places that it wasn’t supposed to, a hint of it visible on the tight shoulders that were turned toward her under that pale light of dawn. Castle back seems oddly tense for a moment, the stance slightly off, but there’s an immediate reaction to the voice from the bed in a shift to look back. For a moment, the Agent’s eyes look lighter than usual, but— perhaps that was just a trick of the light, because with a blink, his shoulders relax and there’s an almost embarrassed grin that pulls on his lips.
Not that he was embarrassed about much of anything last night once they started to discard their costumes.
“Morning.” His hand trails against the window, where he’d been looking at his reflection a moment before— and then he’s moving the few steps to sit back down on the bed. “Not usually a deep sleeper?” For the moment, some of the Irish accent sn’t quite as heavy as it had been last night— still there, just less so. But it had seemed to get thicker the more relaxed he’d gotten.
The tension and other slight changes in him and the light of day make Chess a little more shy, and she pulls her knees, covered by sheet upward, then wraps her arms around them. If it were a movie, she might pull the sheet around herself entirely, pull it off the bed to trail off to the bathroom in it. But really, who does that?
“Even when I’m home, I tend to wake up a couple of times a night. Bad dreams.” She lifts a shoulder, as if to shrug away any worry or concern about that aspect of her sleeping behaviors. “When I’m somewhere I haven’t slept before, I don’t tend to sleep at all. My lizard brain goes on high alert or whatever, courtesy of the war, I guess.”
Why she was able to sleep peacefully with him beside her, she doesn’t hazard a guess.
“You okay? If you’re standing there trying to come up with a good excuse to get me out of your house, I promise I won’t be offended.” There’s a small smile there — it’d be a first for her. Usually she’s the one slipping out early.
“I don’t sleep well either,” Castle has to admit, as he pulls himself closer on the bed, possibly noticing her discomfort and thus not actually touching her, but still wanting to be close to her, watching her in the dim light. “But I mostly woke up restless cause I slept in late yesterday, so my schedule was already a little off. Even if we did wear each other out quite a bit,” he teases with that not-wink.
It seems he’s back to himself, or at least the self that had been flirting with her, even if there’s still some vague differences. It could be because— well— it was an after now. There would never be a before again. Resets in the real world didn’t really work.
“I was just talking to myself. Working some stuff out. A lot rattling around up in here sometimes,” he gestures toward his head, the curls messed up rather haphazardly and hanging on his forehead. But he acts as if that gesture and explanation should be enough. “Are you looking for an excuse to leave?”
She bites her lower lip as he looks at her, tipping her head a little to try and decide what’s different about him. She looks much more like herself than “Lady Stardust” today, her long blond hair a bit mussed, if not as badly as his curls, and only the faintest hints of her over-the-top makeup left in place.
“I can imagine,” she murmurs, regarding the rattling in his mind. After all, he’s aware of some impending doomsday he can’t talk about.
Something she can relate to, actually. Chess doesn’t have to imagine.
When he asks that question, she shakes her head. “Oddly, no, which is kinda freaking me out a bit, if I gotta be honest,” she says wryly, but there is honesty there too, despite the flippant tone. “But if you want space to rattle, I get it.”
“No,” Castle says, reaching out with his left hand to find one of hers, toying fingers along hers before lifting her hand up and pressing it against his mouth, in almost a quiet echo of that moment when she had brushed her lips against his knuckles. All the while he’s looking at her, seeing her. Amazingly he seems more distracted by her lack of make-up, the tousled hair and wry expression than what laid under those covers— even if he’d certainly been appreciating that last night.
Unless his phone suddenly rings with an emergency or someone steps through one of the doors unexpectedly, Castle had no desire to see her leave yet. Their once in a lifetime meeting could last a little longer.
Without actually letting go of her hand, he doesn’t actually hold it either, the touch continues to linger, though, as long as she allows it. She didn’t want to leave, and it was freaking her out a little, she had said— he didn’t want her to leave and…
“Basil” he suddenly says.
She takes a shallow breath of air through parted lips when he reaches for her hand. Her thumb brushes his cheek as he stands there looking at her, and she seems transfixed for a long moment. Her brows draw together, as if she’s almost in pain, but before she can speak, he says that single word.
The expression turns to something more quizzical, and she cants her head.
“Basil?” Chess echoes, brows lifting along with the end of the word, making it a question.
“It’s my name. Basil,” he explains simply, with a soft smile. It’s not as joking or teasing as some of his smiles, or as flirty as others. It’s soft— it’s closer to the almost embarrassed smile that he’d had when he turned around and looked at her for the first time after she’d awakened again. The way he says his name isn’t like the way that Americans say the herb, it’s the British way of saying it.
“Like the Great Mouse Detective.” The grin touches his eyes for a moment, before he continues, sadness softening them once again. “People used to call me Bazz.” The nickname rhymes with jazz. People who were no longer with him, as he had already said.
After a moment he adds on a quiet, “I wanted you to see me.” See past the masks. Just like he wanted to see past hers.
Her expression shifts from surprise to amusement to something softer, that look of near pain in her eyes again as she breathes out a soft oh.
She shifts on the bed to kneel on the mattress, reaching for his other hand to tug him closer. Looking up, her dark eyes finds his green, and she reaches up with one hand to touch his face. “Basil,” she says softly, and it sounds right. “I see you,” she adds, tipping her head to brush her lips against his, breaking that distance between them that she put up in the morning light.
“Yīngsù means poppy, actually,” she murmurs, bumping her forehead against his lightly. “Not that anyone calls me that, either, anymore.” Ivy had. Lanhua had. Not the fondest of memories, but there is still grief there, though she says it lightly.
“Bazz suits you. A little quirky. Like Baz Luhrmann.” Who is not a Basil. “But cuter.”
“I wasn’t lying when I said I liked my name,” Basil says with a small smile, leaning into the kiss and the embrace both, eyes sliding shut for a moment as their foreheads meet. She can hear her name, the name— that rarely said original name of hers— repeated back carefully, so carefully as if afraid he might get it wrong. It’s definitely tinged by his accent, and the way he says it. He remembered it from before, but he hadn’t attempted to say it. This time he did.
Even if softly. “A Poppy— can be a controversial symbol that one,” he muses quietly, because, well, it was. At least in some places. But he doubts she knows that particular background, so he’ll leave it hanging there with a small smile and focus on his— well— “But also a powerful painkiller, which— was something I didn’t even know I needed.”
That’s said with almost a laugh, but— well— it had been a rough month? “If we’re not careful we could end up in bed all day,” is teased, as his fingers trail over skin.
His quip makes her laugh, a little husky from sleep yet, and she shakes her head at the commentary on her name. “Sleep, drugs, and war casualties. The perfect name for a baby girl,” she says wryly.
“What’s funny is a lot of people confuse poppies with lotus flowers when it comes to opium, and, well, that’s fitting, too. People confused me for my sister a lot.” The smile fades, though — for all the pain and hatred Lanhua brought, Chess wanted to save her, not lose her.
She pushes that thought away and brushes his lips with hers again, then pulls back to look at him, reaching up to push a curl out of his eyes. “There’s worse places to be. I would love a shower though, and…” her smile returns, “maybe a pair of sweats or something. I didn’t plan to be Lady Stardust for All Saints’ Day.”
But before he answers that, she asks, “Does Basil mean anything — other than the plant? Or the Great Mouse Detective.” The second is said in a tone of teasing. “There’s a Basil who’s an artist in The Picture of Dorian Gray, who is lovely but ends up in a bad way. I’m not sure I’d deliberately name someone after him, but then people name their kids all sorts of awful things.”
“A bloody symbol of British Imperialism,” Basil says in his thickest Irish accent ever, that’s also said almost mockingly of his own culture by the sounds of things. Or at least poking fun at the culture that he had been partially a part of. Little does he know that might also be a little on the nail for her too? There’s a regretful sigh and he disengages from her to roll across the bed to the other side, where the small drawers and storage lockers sit and begins to rummage for clothing.
While putting on underwear, he answers the question, thoughtfully, “Well the Greek and Latin origins mean royalty or kingly, which it was considered the royal herb and everything.” He casts a glance to her as he jokes, “I know, King in his Castle. I made that joke to myself a few times when they started calling my ability that.” Returning to rummage, he grabs a pair of loose sweat pants that will probably be long on her, but can be tied up probably— and then a gray hoodie. “It’s also the root for the basilisk. King of monsters and all.”
Not bothering to find more clothes for himself, he sits back down on the edge of the bed again and offers them to her. “There’s also an Arabic version that means intrepid and fearless. Still blame the Great Mouse Detective since it came out a few years before I was born. I love the Oscar Wilde reference, though. He was Irish too.”
“Technically I’m part English, but definitely not pro Imperialism. More reason not to go by it, if I needed more reason,” Chess says wryly. “Not that the British Imperialist in my life had anything to do with naming me.” Or even fathering her, except unknowingly.
She takes the clothing in exchange for a kiss on his cheek. “Basil is a good name. Apparently your parents had good taste in movies. Did they like all Disney movies or just the ones with rodents?” she teases. “I mean, there are a lot to choose from.”
It seems rhetorical, though, because she stands with the clothes in hand and tips her head toward the bathroom. “I’ll be right out. Promise I won’t use all your water.”
True to her word, she’s only gone a few minutes, and returns in his clothing with wet hair and a fresh-scrubbed face, smelling of whatever soap and shampoo he uses.
“Hey, do you think I can visit Eve or is she shut off from all visitors?” she asks, a little tentatively. “I don’t mean today or anything. I just… I hate to think of her alone.” Like she was, she doesn’t add.
“Everyone likes Disney movies, whether they admit it or not,” Basil defends, closing his eyes for a moment and not even trying to hide the hint of a sigh as she kisses him on the cheek, but he doesn’t stop her from going to partake in what shower his boat offers. It really isn’t that great an option, but it suffices. It’s better than no shower at all, and he’s sure they’ve both been in situations with no way to wash up at all. Well, he knows he has. And he’s pretty sure she has too, from what little he’d heard so far.
When she returns, he’s still sitting there on the bed, though he’s pulled his legs up around him and is resting his arms on his knees. He’s not muttering to himself, this time, but they do seem lost in thought for a moment, until she speaks— then he looks up and…
“I think she would like that,” they say quietly, voice a little less— Basil and a little more something else. “I’ll see what I can do about getting you in to visit her.” That’s a little more him, but it’s still more serious than usual.
The few minutes apart — the longest apart they’ve spent since they met — or maybe it’s the change in his tone —something has brought back a little shyness on Chess’ part, and she leans against the door, as if she’s unsure she should stay or go.
“Thanks,” she says, regarding the offer to arrange a visit with Eve. “And thanks for the loan,” she adds, plucking at the sweatshirt. “And, well, for everything.”
Her cheeks grow rosier, and she ducks her head, damp hair swinging forward as she fiddles with the hoodie’s ties. “It was nice to forget the rest of the world for a little while. And to sleep more than a few hours at a time.” That still feels miraculous to her.
Normally, he would probably have said that she could keep the clothes— but a loan assumes she would return them. And return implies they will see each other again— so Castle leaves it at that, just nodding, “You’re welcome,” and looking as if he agreed with the rest of what she had to say as well. The night had been pleasant and a nice distraction from… everything.
It had helped in ways he’s not sure he can explain well, but he wishes he could.
There would always be secrets.
“Next time, you should pick the drinks,” he offers, the corner of his mouth tugging into a smile, a hopeful light in his green eyes. He’s still mostly undressed, except for the pants, as he steps closer to her in the doorway. “Do you want some breakfast before I drop you off somewhere?”
Cause he wasn’t going to make her walk home or call for a pick up.
Her gaze alights back on his face at the implication of a next time — for a second she has the proverbial deer-in-the-headlights expression. This, if ever, is the moment to say she doesn’t date, that she’s not capable of even promising a next time.
The moment ticks by and she smiles instead. “Do you like sake?” Chess asks, instead, stepping closer to him, fingers finding his hips. She feels warm from the shower, the heat emanating from her in the chillier air of the cabin.
“I don’t even remember what food is,” she quips. It’s been at least twelve hours since she’s eaten — they never did make it to the canapes table. “If you want some, sure. Otherwise I’ll just wait until you’re out of sight and eat everything in my refrigerator and then order more.”
It seems like “next time” might be about to become— now. Because Castle smiles and moves back to his dresser and starts to pick out clothes, as he says, “I like sake well enough. But I’ll drink just about anything honestly.” A pair of trousers are pulled on and he throws a few shirts onto the bed before he decides on one to pull over his head and says, “Let’s go out to eat. I’d cook, but it’ll take too long and the tummy's rumbling already. And I know a few good places we can stop at.”
And a breakfast date is a good start, they can eat and talk more and maybe trade some philosopher stories or something— If he noticed the deer in headlights, he’s rolling right on through it— because he wants to make this moment last a little bit longer.
“How do you feel about Dutch pancakes?”
She watches him, the corners of her mouth pulling into a small smile at the quirky word choice of tummy’s rumbling and that he has to look at a few shirts before choosing one.
“Do you have some Uggs or flip flops or something so I don’t look like I robbed Cher’s shoe closet and a men’s loungewear store at the same time?” The only shoes she has are knee-high sequined gold boots, after all. His shoes will be big on Chess, but at least they won’t look like she got dressed in the dark. “Then I can say I walked in your shoes, literally if not metaphorically,” she teases.
But there’s another question to answer — how does Chess feel about Dutch pancakes?
“What makes them Dutch? Do they wear little wooden shoes?” It’s a joke, but she also doesn’t know the true answer.
“If I failed to provide you with a suitable pair of shoes my mother would be ashamed of me,” Basil responds with a grin, bending down to open up another drawer— this one has shoes. For someone who had been barefoot on the beach, he has a fine collection of footwear. Some of them are very colorful and like he raided Cher’s closet himself. After a few moments of searching, he finds what he’s looking for, a boot not dissimilar Uggs, but not quite the same.
For one it wasn’t real leather or fur, but it doesn’t always have to be, right? No sheeps were skinned to make this product.
“Here you go.” They will still be big, but tied tight enough, they should work okay. He grabs some shoes for himself after a moment and pulls them on, comfortable looking shoes that matches his shirt, and then says, “Well if you’ve never had a Dutch pancake before, we’ll let you be surprised,” is what he finally says in answer to her joke. “Too bad I didn’t actually have wooden shoes for you to wear, though. It might have been funny watching you try to walk in there with clogs on.”
Taking the shoes, Chess tips her head. “Your family has odd rules for chivalry,” she teases, perching on the edge of the bed to slip the shoes on. It isn’t the most attractive of outfits she’s ever worn, but it’s one of the coziest — not a bad thing for a chilly November morning.
His joke draws a laugh from her, and she shakes her head. “Those things look even more uncomfortable than the shoes I wore last night,” she says, rising and going out to the living room to gather the abandoned boots and the rest of her costume to carry in a bundle to the van.
“But I have to say the boots were worthwhile, if they helped get your attention.” This, she says a little more shyly, peeking up at him from under downcast lashes.
“Just think, if I didn’t dress as a flamboyant rockstar’s alien alter ego, you would never have gotten to see all this,” she adds, hands flourishing out as if she were wearing something even more spectacular or beautiful than her costume the night before.
“Ichi-go ichi-e,” Basil quietly repeats the Japanese saying he’d mentioned the night before as he follows behind her. It had been an interesting night, and he won’t say that she was the first person they had struck up a casual conversation with— Many had been flamboyant and showy, eye catching in various ways, and they had attended the party to enjoy themselves. And even before they saw her, they had been trying to.
But then they had seen her.
“Ziggy Stardust may have drawn us in,” he says, stepping closer, reaching up to brush the backs of his fingers against her jaw. “But it was you that kept me looking.”