Castle 1. Chapter 1

Richard Castle was sitting in the dark of his loft, his back against the wal, a bottle of scotch at his feet and a notebook in his lap.

The tears he didn't even realize were streaming silently down his cheeks had run dry, leaving silvery trails that glinted as they caught the faint light from the moon outside. His fingers twitched around the pen that was loosely clutched between them, but he didn't have the heart to pick it up and put it to paper the way he had so many times before.

Because he didn't think he'd be able to handle seeing it written down.

Because he was hurting in a way he hadn't thought he knew how to.

Because there weren't enough words in the world for this feeling.

He slid the notebook off his lap and pushed it away from him, threw the pen across the room and listened to the clatter of it on the floor. Writing couldn't make this better, writing couldn't take the pain away. This time, getting drunk on the flow of ink onto the page wouldn't heal him.

Only one thing could heal him, and she might has well have been a million worlds away.

She'd called, he'd turned his phone off.

His door was well and truly locked.

Castle sighed, pulled his knees to his chest. He felt so _stupid_. He'd assumed that she returned his feelings for her, at least to some degree, read too far into the glittering of her eyes and the way she anchored his hand to hers and the little touches when no one was looking.

Maybe he'd even thought she loved him, just a little bit. Little tattered scraps of love that frayed in the breeze.

But he'd been wrong. So wrong. Just spinning pretty stories in his head. Because if she loved him, she wouldn't have lied.

All she'd needed to do to remedy his three poorly-timed words was to say two of her own.

_I remember._

He'd thought maybe she did remember, even a little bit, given her so many chances to **say **it if she had, but each time she'd brushed it off.

"No, it's a blank" she'd said, but it **_wasn't_** and she knew it, she'd _known _it was a lie as she said it, and every time he thought about that it was another stab to his heart.

They would have been okay if she'd told him.

Instead, her secret been spat out like poison as she threatened a suspect, and he had clenched his fists so hard that his nails dug little half-moons into the palms of his look on her face just as the elevator doors closed on her, shut her out the way she'd done to him, that look still lingered in the back of his mind. He'd watched as she mentally rewound, trying to find what had happened, and then the widening of her eyes, the drop of the jaw just as the doors completely shut.

But she hadn't told him, she'd let it slip off her tongue to a complete stranger in the interrogation room, and even though their relationship had survived gunshot wounds and freezers and bombs, he wasn't sure if it could survive this.

He wasn't sure if _he _could survive this.

Not everyone got a happily ending; their story hadn't even really had a beginning, but already the book was closing.

Ironic, he thought. Ironic that a bestselling author couldn't even write himself a happily ever after.

And with that, he rested his chin on his knees and stared into the darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

Castle had no idea what to do with himself.

In the long weeks that had followed Kate's bombshell in the interrogation room, he had drifted aimlessly around the loft and the city with no murders to fill in his time. He hadn't realized just how much his world revolved around the precinct until he had forbidden himself from setting foot in there.

He'd taken care of his daughter, of his mother, just like usual, but had rejected any of their efforts to take care of him. Hell, he couldn't even take care of himself.

_You stupid, stupid man. _Light hearted flirting and dating, that was easy, but if there was one thing he'd learned throughout his life, it was that if you got attached, you got hurt.

The few boyfriends of his mother that had stuck around long enough for him to get to know them? They'd left.

His first serious girlfriend? She'd broken up with him for a hockey player from Manhattan.

Meredith had cheated on him and then divorced him, Gina had proved to be more in love with Richard Castle the famous novelist than Rick Castle the person.

So he had slipped uncomfortably into his playboy persona, breaking the hearts instead of letting them break his. And for a while, everything was fine. Not awesome, but still fine, because he was okay.

And then along came Kate Beckett, intriguing and unusual, and she had shattered his resolve. The liasons with other people had stopped, he ceased picking up women just for the sake of it. He started writing again, because he finally, _finally _had a story that might have an ending worth writing.

He had chased her for years, put up with the catty comments and the sheer hopelessness of it all.

And look where that had got him; staring into empty space on a park bench with a cup of coffee wrapped in his cold fingers. It was probably terrible coffee - he'd only wanted it for the caffeine hit to keep him awake - but he couldn't really tell the difference. Coffee didn't taste that good anymore.

Rick fought the urge to hurl the cup of coffee across the park. Everything reminded him of her, of them and everything they weren't. She was - or had been? - so firmly engrained into almost every aspect of his life that now that he wanted her out, he had no idea where to start.

He had let her in, she'd let him down.

He still couldn't find the right word for whatever he was feeling; it was ultimate betrayal and anger, resentment and sadness and an overwhelming sense of _disappointment_ all stirred together into a cocktail of brokenness. It wasn't an emotion he could just push to the back of his mind and forget about, but in a way he didn't want to forget about it. He deserved it, for being enough of an idiot to believe she loved him too. At least the pain would serve as a reminder not to do this again next time.

**_Next time?_ **here wasn't going to be a next time. This was it. It was over. He was done. She was so utterly perfect that no other woman in the world could even try and compare, and now whatever they hadn't had was over.

Of course. One of the few people he would have taken a bullet for was now standing behind the trigger.

The sky growled, menacing clouds marbling amongst each other. Rick crossed his legs at the ankles, watching in resignment as rain began to spot the charcoal-coloured fabric. He found himself counting the raindrops, watching them soak through the material and onto his skin. To any people who might have been observing him - not that there were many around; it was a gloomy day where anyone with half an ounce of happiness in their body would curl up on the couch with a bucket of popcorn and watch a movie - he must have looked crazy, sitting there in the rain. Maybe he was a little bit crazy.

For the record, he'd tried watching a movie. He'd tried watching several movies, but the plots had seemed so trivial, so pointless, read the first chapter of half of his favorite books, but none of the literature worlds that usually pulled him in and let him live a different life for a few hours so much as tweaked his interest. Because up until fifteen days ago - not that he'd been counting - he had been living what he thought was the best story he had ever read.

Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook, fighting crimes and falling in love.

He shouldn't have let those fantasies become reality in his mind, because Kate Beckett was clearly not in love with him, or anywhere close, and he knew that Rook would not have let himself get torn up like this. Who was he kidding? He wasn't Rook, and she wasn't Nikki. Never had been, never would be.

Although Nikki was feisty, and brave, and a bit of a tease - just like Beckett - something told him that the Nikki Heat he had created wouldn't have lied to her partner about something like this. She was better than that, and he'd believed that Beckett was, too.

There was another, apparently false, thing he'd believed about Katherine Beckett.

"Castle."

Oh, God, he really was going crazy. He was seeing her face every night when he closed his eyes, as if it was stamped on the inside of his eyelids, he swore he could smell her wherever he went, and now he was hearing her voice, too.

"Rick."

There it goes agai- wait, no, that wasn't in his head. He breathed in a mouthful of cold air and rain, shifted his gaze from where it was fixed on his knees, and there she was.

Her face beaded with rain, droplets strung on the long curls of her hair like crystal beads.

Her teeth clamped down on her bottom lip, hard enough, he thought, to draw blood.

She was stunningly, shockingly beautiful, and it was breaking his heart. He didn't say anything, because there was nothing to say. Nothing to say.

"Rick, I need to talk to you."


	3. Chapter 3

Castle's eyes snapped up to meet Kate's. Kate's? No. Beckett's. As far as he was concerned, they were no longer on a first-name basis. Her eyes captivated him, just as they always have, the buttery hazel irises that seem to melt when she smiles, and it hurts him. Hurts him? God, he really is losing his wordsmith abilities. It does more than just hurt him, it _shatters _him.

"Rick?" she asked again, a question creeping into the low notes of her voice, and he realized he hadn't replied.

"Oh, so it's _Rick_ now, is it?" he said with next to no expression, his face hard and his eyes steely. He's not letting her in, not this time.

"I-" Beckett seemed unsurprised at the tone that he spoke in. "What do you want me to say, Castle?"

She reverted back to his last name, and it's a strange sort of comfort. The lack of familiarity makes it less painful somehow. Eased the burn.

"I don't want you to say anything now. I want you to turn around and I want you to leave."

They both stare each other down in silence for a few heartbeats. Beckett is the one to twitch her gaze away first.

"There's only one thing I wish you'd told me," Castle continues, "And you didn't say it. I gave you so many chances, but you lied to me. Every time, you lied to me."

He stood up then. The part of him that is telling him to leave right this instance, the part he is currently disobeying, can't stand being the submissive one. He'd crawled around her ankles like a puppy for years, and his tail had been trodden on one too many times.

"Kate, I waited for you. I broke up with girlfriends for you. I paid for a blind shot at your mothers killer. I have nearly died trying to protect you, and God help me, if I had needed to kill for you, die for you, I would have done it in a second."

"Rick, I couldn-"

"I'm not saying I need _repayment_. If you think that, you don't know me very well at all. I did it all knowing that I might get nothing in return. But the least I expected was for you to be honest with me. And you weren't. Instead, you **dropped **me like a hot coal for months - months, Kate - knowing full well that I was in love with you."

"I-" she whispered, and he waited for her to continue, but she trailed off into silence. Her eyes were too bright and he came to term with the fact that he was a few words away from making the great Katherine Beckett cry. Let her cry; he'd cried enough for two people over the past few months.

"I didn't expect you to say it back," he said quietly "I never expected that. If you'd told me that you remembered, that would have been enough. We would have never brought it up again, and maybe the two of us could have been okay. I didn't want a long talk about feelings with you. Just an, "I remember". That would have been enough."

Her teeth sank into the flesh of her bottom lip yet again, and he tried in vain not to watch the tendons of her neck ripple as she swallowed.

"Maybe I wanted to."

Castle let the silence stretch itself out between them, let the sound of the rain kissing the pavement fill his ears until he couldn't stand it anymore. He shifted his feet on the damp grass, scuffed the heel of one of his shoes through the dirt.

"Maybe you wanted to..?"

Beckett appeared to steel herself, as her hand twisted itself in the fabric of her coat and formed a fist. The sharp bones of her knuckles shone through the skin.

"Say it back." she whispered, her gaze dropping to the ground like a shot bird. Castle bit the soft skin on the inside of his cheek.

In that moment, he missed her a lot. It was the worst kind of _missing _someone that he could possibly imagine, because she was standing less than five feet away from him, but there were oceans of things unsaid that lay between them. He wasn't even sure if it was the woman in front of him that he was missing - he missed Kate, KB, the warm-hearted cop with a penchant for strawberry milkshakes, not Detective Beckett, the woman who had lied to him.

"Maybe you did, maybe you didn't." he said eventually. "Either way, it doesn't excuse what you did - no, all the things you did were just fine, actually. It was the things you _didn't _do that hurt."

And with that, he turned around, - shivering as the rain-drenched fabric of his shirt stuck to the skin underneath and raised a patch of goosebumps - and began to walk away, away from her, and the precinct, and his broken heart.

"Castle? Where're you going?" she called out after him, and he didn't look around because the croak in her voice told him she was crying and he didn't think he would be able to walk away with an image of a blurry-eyed Beckett burned forever into his mind.

"I need some time." he said shortly, parroting her own words from after the shooting back to her.

"When- what? How am I going to-"

"I'll call you." the tone of his voice betrayed that no, he was not going to call her, in a way that he wished hers had as she'd spoken from the hospital bed. If he'd known that she wasn't going to call at all..

His strides picked up pace, long legs covering ground fast in an attempt to get as far away from the pain as possible.

"No-" her voice cut off sharply and the next thing he could hear was the clatter of her footsteps as she bounded after him, and then there was a shove at his shoulder, a tug as she grabbed his collar and pulled him him around to face her, pulled him in...

And all of a sudden the meagre amount of space between their faces wasn't there anymore as she pushed herself up on her toes and roughly yanked his mouth down to meet hers.

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><p>sheesh, thanks for all the reviews :3 I don't know how much longer this story shall continue for, but more reviews = more motivation = faster updates, so if you read, PLEASE drop me a line.<p> 


	4. Chapter 4

He felt like the world slowed down for a few seconds, like the clouds froze in the sky and the smog from the city stopped rising. His mind was swept blissfully blank.

All he could focus on was that Kate Beckett had just slanted her mouth over his in a fierce, open-mouthed kiss, the kind he had thought and dreamed and _written _about for years. Her hand snaked its way around the back of his neck as she _plundered_ him with a kind of ferociousness that would've held him speechless if he hadn't been kissing her back with such wild abandon that he was incapable of any kind of speech.

Castle's mind is a blurry cloud of _what _and _why _and _how. _Then she sucked his lower lip into her mouth, **hard**, and all his thoughts condensed down into _shit, Beckett._

Wait. Beckett.

Kate Beckett.

Kate Beckett who he is currently extremely pissed off at because she ripped his heart out of his chest, threw it onto the ground and stomped on it repeatedly with those killer heels of hers that make her legs look li- not helping.

He mustered every inch of self control he possessed, shifted his hands from where they were wrapped around the small of her back - he swore he hadn't told them to do that - and shoved her backwards with numb fingers. She stumbled a step away from him.

Rick took her in. Swollen lips and glazed eyes, with tear tracks streaming down her cheeks and disappearing into the collar of her jumper. Her breath was coming hard and fast in little soft puffs.

"What the _hell_, Beckett?" he demanded, his voice cracking through the heavy, breath-broken silence that had enveloped them.

Beckett lifted a hand to push a few stray strands of her hair away from her flushed face, leaned her forehead into her palm for a few moments before answering.

"I don't know." she mumbled.

"I meant why did you kiss me?" his voice rose considerably.

"I don't- I don't know that either... you were just _leaving, _Castle, and I wanted to say something, stop you, you couldn't just **go, **but... Hell, Rick, I couldn't find any goddamn_ words."_

Castle allowed himself a few seconds to soak this information in.

"Try."

Beckett's eyes widened, deepened, searching the planes of his face for any semblance of an answer.

"Try what?"

"To find the words. I'll listen."

She took a deep breath and thumbed a tear away from her chin, but when the words came, they weren't what he'd expected at all.

"I never knew about you. I _hated_ you at the beginning. You were so cocky and stuck up and **hot**, god, it just pissed me off. And I remember telling myself that you didn't have a chance, that I would never fall for you. But you _stayed, _and... in LA, the hotel room? Castle, I came so close- I opened the door, but you were gone."

Castle's jaw dropped a fraction of an inch.

"You-"

"Shut up, let me finish. You've always been there, and you've saved my life so many times. I was such an idiot, should have told you the truth, never wanted to hurt you..."

She was crying by then, her voice beginning to crack, tears trickling down her cheeks and mingling with the raindrops that were already scattered there.

"I don't think I have any more words, Rick, but I am so completely in love with you that it scares me."

His universe shifted on its axis, everything in the world suddenly centering itself on the fact that Kate Beckett had just said it back. And she'd meant it.

"I'm still angry." he muttered, but pulled her in against his chest anyway. Kate curled her head into the curve of his shoulder, nuzzled her nose against the soft line sof his neck. Underneath the haze of affection, something inside of him still felt like it was being clenched by a vice, but he couldn't leave. Letting her pour her heart out in the rain and then just _leaving _would be doing to her exactly what she'd done to him.

"I know, Rick, and I don't want you to forgive me straight away. I just want you to stick around for a while. Stick around forever, maybe." she mumbled into his skin.

He realized that he was crying, too, little silent sobs that racked his chest and scraped raw against the back of his throat. Kate pulled away from him, dragged her eyes over his face.

"Oh, Castle..." she whispered, tilting her head and pressing her mouth to his one more time, and it was everything the other kiss hadn't been. No tongue, no teeth, just reassurance and _I'm_ _sorry _and several different promises as he dipped his head for a better angle and she swiped her thumb over the smooth shell of his ear.

He pulled back first, only to press his nose into her hair and breathe her in. This was going to be difficult. They were going to bicker, and argue, and fight, and they were going to hurt each other and wonder why they had started it in the first place. It would be awkward, and published all over page six of the paper. But she loved him, and he still loved her, so they would have to put up with each other.

"I didn't think you meant it." Beckett whispered against the line of his collar, her lips barely grazing against the fabric of his shirt, but he swore he could feel the heat burning through to the cold skin underneath.

"You- what?"

"When you said it. I thought it was just because I- I was dying. That's what people say when they don't have anything else left."

"I'm sorry."

Now it was her turn to pull back just a little, close enough to leave her torso pressed against his but far enough away to see his face. Castle saw a million questions reflected in her eyes.

"It was nothing but the truth, Beckett, but I should have said it sooner. Shouldn't have needed a bullet in your chest to give me the courage."

He watches as the expression on her face changed, as the corners of her eyes softened and lips parted slightly. He knew what a horrible cliche it was, but so much sudden affection was radiating from her expression alone that he could actually _feel_ something in his chest melting.

"Rick, never, **ever** say sorry for that." she croaked out, as another few tears rolled down her cheeks like liquid pearls in the hazy light. Seemingly unable to resist, Beckett brushed her mouth over his, a subtle gesture of skin against skin. Her arms slid up to wrap around his shoulders, hold him so, so close to her that Rick swore he could feel her heartbeat.

He let his hands span the small of her back, and basked in the sensation of his stubble rasping against the smooth skin of her cheek, the scent of her hair that he couldn't quite name; it was just _Kate._

"I love you, Castle. I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you... it feels so **good **to say it out loud." she mumbled, her jawbone sliding against his as she spoke. "God, I love you. So much."

And he loved her, too.


	5. Chapter 5

Castle wasn't sure how long they had been standing there for - it could have been several minutes, it could have been closer to an hour.

He had been entirely lost in the sensation of Beckett's body pressed up against his, the back of her hand lightly stroking along the skin of his neck, long fingers playing with the fluffy hair at his nape.

But now his legs were beginning to cramp up and the light yet insistent drizzle had soaked through his clothes a long time ago.

He shifted against her, moved as if to pull back, but her arms clamped tighter around his neck.

"Kate? We should maybe... go somewhere warmer now?"

Castle suggested, only to have her nuzzle his cheek again and whisper something that sounded suspiciously like, "..._don't wanna let go..."_ into his collar.

He gently began unpeeling her hands from him, slender digit by slender digit, unwinding strands of her hair from around his fingers, all the while fighting back the hundreds of questions that threatened to bubble up. _How long have you felt like this for? Why didn't you tell me sooner? Will you marry me? Where is your tattoo, exactly?  
><em>He swallowed the words down; there would be time for that later.

"Come on."

Rick took a step away, and she followed, so close, sliding her hand down the smooth line of his wrist to tangle her fingers with his. He shot a questioning look at their close bodies, their linked hands. She paused, eyes on the ground, before saying quietly, "I'm sorry, but before, when you weren't- I thought I was going to lose you." He didn't question it, because he knew how that felt, to feel as if someone had been torn away from you forever, and then the all-encompassing relief when you realized they were still there.

Except when _he'd _felt like that, after that bullet had bitten into her body, he hadn't had the chance to hold her close.

Instead, he'd nursed a bottle of scotch and a notebook full of angsty writing that he had burnt when she returned.

Pushing away the anger that swelled up, he swiped his thumb over the back of her hand as they walked. She was here now. She was with him.

It was then that the other things he had occupied himself with during her shooting flitted across his mind. _Oh, god. _He flirted with the idea of stopping them, telling her right here, right now, no matter the consequences. But, he thought, that would break them. Permanently, irreparably, undeniably break them.

Was it better to drop the second bomb straight after the first so that it would only intensify the original damage, or to wait for the wounds to heal first? Either way, it wasn't going to be easy. Castle bit down on the inside of his cheek as Beckett's footsteps fell in sync with his, a metronome of truth and lies against the glistening pavement.

* * *

><p>If, at eleven o'clock that morning, you had asked Richard Castle what he would be doing in twelve hours time, he would replied that he would be lying in the dark, or sitting in the dark, or possibly standing in the dark, with an unhealthy amount of strong alcohol and an uneasy mind.<p>

He might have said that he would be spending time with his daughter or his mother.

He would not have predicted that he would be lying in bed with Kate Beckett curled against his chest, her cold feet pressed against the warm skin of his calves.

But there he was, with her, the two of them dressed in his old sweatpants and baggy t-shirts.

Castle took a moment to drink in the sheer intimacy of their position. His knees fitted neatly into the hollows at the back of her knees, his hands flat against the skin of her stomach, but there was nothing especially sexual about it.

She was comforting him, because he was still wounded, and he was comforting her because she had been wounded too, in a bizarre trading of reassurance and forgiveness.

He knew a lot of different Kate Becketts.

He knew Detective Beckett, the kick-ass cop with killer heels and a matching attitude.

He knew Beckett, who he exchanged witty banter with.

He knew Katherine Beckett, who loved both her parents - living and dead - with every piece of her bullet-scarred heart.

And he knew Kate, who was currently twisting in his arms to roll over and face him, rest her head against his, her nose buried in his hair- _oh my **god **did she just breathe in?_

"You smell good" was whispered against the curve of his ear, her lips brushing the sensitive skin with every soft syllable. Castle decided there and then that out of all the Kate Becketts there were, sleepy Beckett would have to be his favorite. However, sexy Beckett was a close second. Probably tied with badass Beckett. And- hell, he'd never be able to pick, he loved all of them. All of her. And she loved him back... for now.

For now. It was the exact opposite of permanent, of forever, of **always**, and it had been irking him constantly, cowering in the back of his mind like an unscratched itch. "For now" was so unstable that with a word, a conversation, one glance at a murder board that wasn't meant to happen in the first place, and everything would change.

He wasn't entirely sure what would happen, she was unpredictable. He was, too. Everything was unpredictable. But, God, when this second bomb exploded, there would be one heck of a pile of smouldering rubble to clean up. That much, he could predict.

Rick slid his hand over her shoulder to play with a curl of hair, twisting the soft strands together in a loose plait before combing his fingers through, letting them trail against her scalp.

"Mmmm..." she hummed, nuzzling her way even closer to him.

He allowed himself a smile; who would have thought that Detective Beckett would be a cuddler? Possibly it was just the stress of the fallout had made her weak, and she would be back to her feisty ways as soon as she recovered. Castle hoped not; he could get used to this.

"I love you." he said softly, his words dissolving into the faded darkness surrounding them.

Because that, at least, was one thing he was sure of.


	6. Chapter 6

Castle flipped a pancake from the pan, listened to it sizzle as he caught it again. He'd swirled the batter into sloppy yet unmistakeable heart.

Behind him, Kate Beckett, wearing _his_ clothes, in _his _kitchen, her hair loosely plaited, was chopping strawberries into a chipped china bowl. The sheer domestic-ness and absurbity of the situation didn't escape him; yesterday they had fought in the rain and now they were making breakfast together like they'd been doing it for years.

He tipped the last pancake onto the plate, found a bottle of syrup, then slid them both across the counter. And then he sat, watching Beckett. She was still completely absorbed in chopping her strawberries, her teeth digging ever-so-slightly into the full curve of her bottom lip. Something about it floored him, that she could look so stunning when she wasn't trying, not even a little bit.

"Hm?" her eyes lifted to meet his, a question written in the slight pucker of her forehead.

"Nothing, nothing, you're just beautiful." Rick said softly, "Nearly done?"

"Almost." she murmured, almost singing the word, slicing through a final berry before coming to join him at the counter.

The food was delicious and the company was _more_ than delicious (she tasted like syrup and strawberries when he kissed her out of the blue) but despite the film of happiness that had clouded his vision, Castle was decidedly uneasy. Each touch, each kiss, each new gesture - all of them felt like he was just building her up to break her down again. Was that how she'd felt, during all those months after the shooting? He wasn't going to ask, but he thought so.

He was abruptly pulled out of his train of thought by her fingers linking through his, two hands fitting together. She brushed her thumb over a callus that had formed where his pen rubbed against the skin of his hand, stroked his knuckles.

"I should probably get back to the precinct."

He was torn between _no, don't leave,_ and _stay away, I don't want to hurt you any more than I have to_. In the end, he said neither, just squeezed her hand in his.

"Gates made me take time off," she admitted quietly, "She didn't know what was wrong, but I wasn't working well. She put it down to me being exhausted and kicked me out for a few days."

It didn't help at all that Rick could see her, struggling through a vast pile of paperwork with no one to take her mind off the monotony of the day.

"I don't think I realized just how much I need you around." the corners of his mouth softened slightly into a half-smile, as he dragged her fingers up to his mouth and pressed his lips against the knuckles.

"Come with me today?" Beckett asked, raising her eyebrows slightly, but she was unable to stop herself from smiling too.

"Of course. Does anyone know-?"

"They know that something happened, but they don't know what, and I'd rather keep it that way if it's okay with you."

Castle dipped his head in a nod, stacked their plates in a pile. "We'll swing by your apartment, because I think a few eyebrows would be raised and suggestive questions heard if you showed up to the precinct in my clothes."

"Yeah, Ryan and Espo would have a field day with that one..." she bumped her hips against his as they walked towards the door.

* * *

><p>Forty-five minutes later, a slightly less disheveled looking Beckett (who was wearing a turtleneck purely out of choice and <em>not<em> because she had a fresh hickey on her neck) and a **very **please looking Castle (because they had totally just made out against the door of her apartment) arrived at the precinct.

He had to fight the urge to let his hand reach out to snag hers, a gesture which had somehow become instinctive in a very, very short amount of time.

They passed Ryan and Espo in the hallway, the two detectives ceasing their bickering to look them up and down.

"You guys... you okay now?" Esposito asked quietly, seemingly unsure whether the question would endanger his health or not. Beckett threw a glance in Castle's direction, her eyes softening for a fraction of a second before she replied.

"Yeah, yeah, everything's okay." she replied, accepting Ryan's fist bump as he walked away.

Castle lowered himself into the chair beside Beckett's desk. Everything was exactly the way it had been the last time he had sat in this particular chair, and that was oddly reassuring because some weird part of him had been anticipating a difference. He wasn't sure why; it just seemed like he had been away for a lot longer than he had.

As she clattered around organizing herself, he picked up a post-it note and a pen, doodled an intricate loveheart filled with swirls and flowers. He was in the middle of inking in the dark petals when her hand stilled him, soft against the curve of his bicep.

"Castle, that's only a few steps up from writing RC + KB in the margins of your schoolbooks." Beckett tried to keep her voice firm but she couldn't stop the smile from creeping its way into her sentence, making the words warmer, softer, more rounded.

"I could do that, too, if you want." he replied, his gaze almost entirely focused on the weight of her hand on him. "You should probably... not do that for too long, not unless you want them to know that we're...?"

"That we're...? What exactly _are_ we doing, Rick?" Castle's eyes traced the lines and curves of her face for a few seconds before he trusted himself to answer.

"We're stopping pretending that there's nothing there. We're giving in to the pull."

Kate shifted her hand from his arm, tapping the tips of her fingers against the worn wood of the desk.

"Magnetism." she whispered.

"Yes."

"So we're not going out of our way to do anything, we're just letting ourselves do what we want?"

"Sounds good to me." Castle said, rasping his thumb over the paper in his hand and wishing it was her skin.

"Sounds good to me, too," Beckett admitted with that sweet, sweet smile. "Look, Castle, it's not that I don't want them to know ever, it's that I don't want them to know right now. Baby steps."

"I know. They'll work it out eventually, anyway. As will Lanie."

"They saw this coming before either of us did, I think."

"Hmm." he hummed, picking up the pen again to finish the details of the petals.

He wrote a teeny, tiny RC + KB 4EVER before covering it up with scribbles of black ink. Might be invisible, but it would always, always be there underneath.


	7. Chapter 7

Castle was lying with his head in Kate's lap, her long fingers playing with the shell of his ear, tracing the whorls with the tip of one fingernail. While, as far as situations he had been in went, this was pretty much as good as it got, he wasn't happy. In fact, he was anything but. The guilt of his secret-keeping had snowballed, accumulating more and more worry as it sat in the front of his brain like a strange sort of brain tumor.

And she was stroking his ear, completely unaware of- oh, screw this, he couldn't keep it from her anymore. Not when she loved him. Not like that. He sat up slowly, shuffled around to face her on the couch. She caught sight of his expression and all at once, her face mirrored his insecurities. It killed a little part of him, seeing that look on her face.

Yes, she'd hurt him, yes, he was still upset about it, but she thought they'd resolved all their issues, she thought that once this lie smoothed over, melted away, they'd be okay.

"Kate? Kate, I have to tell you something."

Her eyes widened. He'd known that there was no way that Beckett, the trained detective, could _not _pick up on his unease, and he'd been right.

"What is it, Castle?" she asked quietly. Castle wondered what she was thinking.

"You're going to hate me."

"I could never hate you." the admission was so genuine that he swore he felt something inside of his heart rupture.

"I am so, so sorry. After your shooting-" he took a deep breath, the heavy air cloying in his lungs "- a guy contacted me. I didn't know who he is, still don't, not really, but he... knew stuff, stuff about your mom's murder."

Castle's eyes scanned back and forth over her face, watching as her jaw dropped, watching as that precious little pucker between her brows appeared.

"I wanted to tell you, I wanted to tell you so badly, but you didn't call, and he was powerful, so powerful, and I didn't want him to hurt you, I-"

"Castle." her voice was quiet but firm, and he stopped talking immediately. "Castle, I'm not leaving."

"You're not?"

"I'm not. I'm upset that you didn't tell me, but you're still upset that I didn't tell you, and we worked around that. You had your reasons, I had mine, and we worked around that too. It would be the same fight over again, and it's not worth it, it's not worth us. We can be angry at each other and be together, that's fine, because I'd rather be angry with you than angry without you."

He struggled for words, struggled to string together consonants and vowels and syllables into sentences because there was nothing but _oh thank god_ on repeat in his brain.

She spoke first.

"I don't think there's any bombshell you could drop on me that could make me leave you. We've found something and I'm not losing it, not now, not again."

Beckett shuffled forwards, their knees bumping, legs linking together, and curled her head under his chin, her nose bumping the baby-soft skin of his neck. He wrapped his arms around her back, stroking slow arcs across her spine, fingertips ghosting her skin.

"Any more secrets?" the words were muffled into his skin, but he understood them.

"Nope, not big ones. You?"

"The same. You know, we should be completely, totally honest with each other. Just for one night."

"Like truth or dare?"

"Like truth or truth. You and I both know where dares would take us."

_Somewhere fun_, he thought, but he wasn't going to say it out loud. He wanted all of his limbs fully functioning, thank you very much.

"Okay." Castle found himself saying into her hair, "Let's do it."

* * *

><p>They were stretched out on a rug on the floor, a bowl of popcorn and skittles between them, trading kisses and the truth.<p>

"I read page 105 of heat waves so many times that it has creases all over it." she offered, a slight flush colouring the curves of her cheeks.

Castle had been fairly sure of that, but it was nice - so, so **nice** - to hear her say it out loud, with that sunshine smile on her face.

"I used to have a whole notebook full of little scenes like that. More than what got published. A _lot _more than what got published."

"About Nikki and Rook?" Damn, she's good.

"About us." he admitted, "But I changed the names."

"We should read it together sometime." Kate murmured, tossing a piece of popcorn in the air and catching it in her mouth with a click of teeth.

He took a moment to watch her, to watch the way her eyes flickered between different hues of hazel in the soft half-light. He could never quite pinpoint the colour, she had her own spectrum painted across her irises...

"Penny for them?" Beckett asked, both her forehead and the corners of those pretty eyes crinkling as she tossed him another smile.

"Worth more than that, but I'll give 'em for free. Just thinking about you, and your eyes. Like usual. It's your turn, anyway..."

"My truth? Mm. This isn't a light one, but- when I broke up with Demming, I did it for you. I did it before you left for the Hamptons."

"You- then why did-?"

"Sh, it's my turn. Remember when I told you I had something to tell you, and then Gina showed up, and I never got to say it? I was going to say yes, that I'd changed my mind."

"You were going to come to the Hamptons." he said incredulously. "And I- oh, god, Beckett, I am such an ass."

"You weren't meant to know, I turned you down first. But I'm kind of glad I didn't come." Rick cocked an eyebrow.

"Why?"

"Well, I think we both know - knew - that if I went to the Hamptons, it would change our relationship. And if we'd done it then, I don't think we would have lasted as long as we will."

_As long as we will. _He stored the words in his brain, stored them to bring out on the rainy days when she wasn't around. Castle reached for her hand, squeezed it, brushed a lock of hair back from her eyes.

"I'm glad, too."


End file.

Castle, Angst, Hurt-Comfort