Disclaimer: Characters are property of ABC and Mr. Andrew Marlowe; I just like to play with them sometimes.

A/N: Please be kind and take a few seconds to leave a review, even the shortest ones are appreciated.

I Need You

Kate had been sitting on the corner of her desk, staring at the murder board for hours now, oblivious to the fact that she was the only one left in the bullpen. She's been holding a dry erase marker in her hand, clicking the top on and off, over and over. No one was there to glare at her to stop, but she wouldn't have noticed anyways. Her eyes were fixed on the board, staring at the pictures and writing that represented their latest case, the victim's story unfolding bit by bit.

But her mind wasn't on the murder, it was somewhere else, on someone else other than the victim she was tasked with finding justice for. It was on him. Castle.

Rick.

She couldn't stop thinking about the look on his face as he'd left the precinct several hours ago. His eyes that were normally creased at the edges with his boyish smile were dark and bleak and just… empty. The sparkle she'd gotten so used to seeing was gone. The deep blue color she loved wasn't bright and shining with mischief.

Loved?

The voice in her head makes her physically cringe at the word she's been avoiding, her shoulders hunching and her heart aching for him. She knows the dullness of his eyes and the spark that's been missing from those expressive blue orbs are her fault.

She broke him. And now he's gone. She doesn't know if he's coming back. Because for the first time in over four years, he said nothing about "tomorrow" or "see you later" or even "goodnight". He got his coat from the back of his chair, slung it over it his arm, and just walked away. He didn't glance back over his shoulder and give her that little half smile she's been so used to seeing.

The crushing reality of the situation comes crashing down around Kate in the eerie silence of the bull pen. In the dim fluorescent light of one a.m., the empty desks sit as unspeaking judge and jury, condemning her actions towards her partner, her friend. She's finally managed to alienate the one man who's stood by her side for the last four years through danger, heartache, and death. And not just the death that she deals with every day.

Her death.

She died that day in the cemetery and he held her in her arms as the life flowed out of her body and stained the green grass around Roy Montgomery's grave. Some of the captain's last words to her had been about finding a place to make a stand, and finding someone to stand with. Castle had stood with her through so many things, waiting for her to see that he was there for her.

For her.

Not for the thrill he got from helping her solve a case. Not for the excitement that courses through their veins when their thought processes are racing down the same path. Not for the money he made selling the books he's written using her as inspiration.

He'd waited patiently for so long, and something had happened in the last week that had made him give up the fight. She didn't know what she'd said or done, but it had to be something big to make him look at her with that much pain in his eyes. Pain instead of love.

Yes, love. Love for her.

She'd stopped kidding herself months ago about what she saw in his eyes when she caught his gaze suddenly and he didn't have enough time to cover it up before she saw it shining out at her. Most of the time, he was good at hiding it. She'd noticed he'd been more careful about letting his feelings for her be so obvious the last couple of months. He'd been keeping his features carefully schooled to a safe neutral expression, holding the joy that usually poured out of him inside.

She'd known the hesitation in his actions and the hitch in his voice were her fault, that he was trying not to push her too far. Because they both knew that didn't work. His thinly veiled affection had been obvious to everyone around them for a long time. Esposito and Ryan saw it. Lanie saw it. Jordan Shaw had seen it (and predicted it) over a year ago. Natalie Rhodes had seen it. Castle's ex-girlfriend had seen it. Even the insurance adjuster-turned-art-thief had seen it. And they'd all watched her run away from it. For years.

This time she'd ran too far away.

But the question was – Could she run back to him? Did she have the balls to chase HIM? To tell him how she felt? That she knew how he felt? That'd she known all along? That she remembered what he'd said? Every word.

She'd feigned ignorance, and told him that she didn't remember anything about that day, when the truth was that she remembered everything. Every single second. She remembered how he'd shouted her name and then flung himself in front at her.

In FRONT of her.

He'd tried to jump in front of a bullet for her.

She remembered how he'd covered her body with his, wrapped himself around her, trying to protect her. She remembered the horror on his face when he saw the blood. She remembered his arms around her, holding her, begging her to stay with him. She remembered her name being wrenched out of those beautiful lips of his as he gave up his secret, giving up the words he'd held in for so long, and the desperate hope that they would be enough to keep her soul tethered to her broken body.

"Stay with me Kate… Don't leave me please… Stay with me okay?"

"Kate… I love you… I love you Kate…"

She'd held onto those words as her fading heartbeat had thundered quietly in her ears. She'd held onto them as she'd watched the light grow just past his shoulders, beckoning her beyond this life. She'd held onto them as the hands of the paramedics had torn her out of his arms and began trying to save her life. She remembered thinking that if those words were the last ones she ever heard, it was okay, because they were the most beautiful words she'd ever heard. And then all she'd heard were muffled shouts, and the doors of the ambulance slamming shut, and the beeping of the machines trying to bring her back to life. Then it all had gone black.

He'd been there when she'd woken up of course. Looking so happy to see her eyes open and words coming out of her mouth. And he'd looked so incredibly nervous. And hopeful. Nervous that she'd remembered what he'd said, and hopeful that she did at the same time. There had been so much to process in that moment, she just hadn't been able to face his feelings for her. Or, more accurately, she hadn't been able to face her feelings for him.

Because she thought that if she wasn't dead, that she was still in danger, and she couldn't bear to think of what would have happened if he'd been half a second quicker in lunging for her. She couldn't stand the thought of him being hurt and bleeding and shot. The idea of having to tell his mother and daughter that he'd died trying to save her and that he'd done it on purpose wasn't something that she could even begin to live with.

So she lied.

She'd lied and said she didn't remember anything, and she'd done what she always did when the feelings the two of them shared got close enough to the surface to break through – She pretended it never happened. She'd told him that she needed some time and that she'd call him.

But she didn't. Call him, that is.

And while she'd recovered, alone, in the isolation of her dad's cabin, she had thought about the time they'd spent together, how he'd always been by her side. He'd been there through all of the cases they'd solved, and the few that they hadn't. Truth be told, they probably solved a lot more than they would have without him. Or at the very least, they'd solved them faster. As much as it pained her to admit it, he had been a big help. His different way of looking at things, that outside-the-box thinking that cops often forgot because they were too busy following the leads and beating the streets, broke more cases than she could count.

He'd been there through Demming, and Josh, and all of the other insignificant ones before and in between that didn't even warrant a memory. He'd been there through gunshots, rescue missions, freezers, bombs, and everything else the criminals had thrown at her and her team over the years. He'd been there for Esposito and Ryan while she was off on disability licking her wounds. While she'd hid away from the world and her friends, he'd kept the case going, kept the fire burning when she couldn't. He'd dug the leads out of the haystacks like needles, and followed what proved to be dead ends upon dead ends. And he'd kept going day after day after day, tirelessly, while she hid from his admission of love and her feelings like a coward out in the woods.

While she was hiding from the world and from herself, the days had bled together in a constant string of pain and longing and heartache. She'd put off calling him every day, telling herself that she wasn't strong enough yet, and that she didn't want him to see the broken mess she'd become. She'd rationalized shutting him out because she was so emotional all the time. She hadn't been able to hold anything in most of the time. Every time she thought of him, the tears would start streaming down her face, and then she would just go crawl back in bed and hug her pillow to her aching chest. She'd imagine it was him comforting her, that it was him holding her and telling her it was going to be okay. Then she'd realize that she was all alone, and she'd start crying all over again.

Kate shuddered as a shiver passed through her and wrapped her arms around herself. She looked around the empty bullpen again, and she mentally berated herself for getting lost in the memories of her self-pity. She turned away from the murder board because it was obvious she wasn't going to be getting any more work done. It was time to go home and try to catch a couple of hours of sleep. She would come back in the morning and start again. Maybe the presence of her fellow cops and the sunlight of a new day could keep the dark thoughts at bay so she could focus on the case.

But when she went to grab her coat, seeing Castle's empty chair beside her desk brings it all right back to the front of her mind. Pressing her lips together, she takes a deep breath and walks out the door. But instead of heading towards her apartment, she angles towards the nearest subway station for a ride to The Old Haunt instead. She doesn't feel like going home to the quiet and the loneliness of no one to hold her and tell her it will be okay. She needs a friend. And while she seems to have alienated the closest one she's had in a while outside of Lanie, the next best thing is her friend Jose Cuervo waiting at the bar.

Kate knocks back what she thinks is her fifth shot of tequila, and sees the "don't-you-think-you've-had-enough" look the bartender is giving her. She doesn't think she HAS had enough, because she can still feel the pain of Castle's hurt pounding deep in her chest, so she calls for yet another shot. There's got to be some number of the little glasses full of oblivion that will help loosen the vise of heartache that's squeezing her chest so tight.

While she's waiting for her refill, she goes to the jukebox and feeds it another five dollars, picking out more bleeding-heart blues songs. Jonny Lang, John Hiatt, John Mayer, Joe Cocker. The men with the "J" names are the men of the hour. And though she's drinking to forget, the music makes her remember and makes her ache with longing for the very arms she's been running away from for so long. She doesn't even remember why she's running anymore, except she doesn't know how to do anything but run. She wants to call him, she wants to hold him, she wants to love him, but she doesn't know how.

She only knows how to run away.

Several shots, several dollars, and several songs later, and Kate is still waiting for the alcohol to numb the pain. Everything else is numb, but the longing for Castle seems to be getting sharper with every drink and every baleful note of music that pounds out of the jukebox speakers. She can't feel her nose, but she can sure as hell still feel the pain.

She lifts bloodstained, bleary eyes to the clock on the wall and sees it ticking just past three a.m. Raising a finger to the bartender, she signals for yet another shot. She can't remember how many she's had; she lost count about two hours ago. And though she suspects he's watering them down, she can't catch him doing it. She doesn't realize that she's the only one left in the bar, because her tequila-soaked brain fails to register the fact that it's way past closing time and that they locked the door over an hour ago. She also didn't see the bartender pick up the phone tucked away in the wall twenty minutes earlier to call the owner.

As she's swaying drunkenly from side to side by the jukebox, searching for a sad song that she hasn't played yet, she doesn't notice the blue-eyed, broad-shouldered man come quietly in the front door and make his way to the back. When she leans against the wall and closes her eyes, he slips into a booth so that she can't see him and he watches her break herself down. Once he sees the state she's in, he motions for the bartender to go on home, and waits for her to finish chipping away the armor she surrounds herself with so that he can step in and save her, take care of her. He's still unbelievably angry with her for lying to him about remembering, but he can't turn off the love he feels for her, and it kills him to see her this way.

Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now" comes filtering out of the speakers, and the last of Kate's resistance fades away. She has always prided herself on her strength of will, but she's finally drunk enough to let it go and stop denying that she needs and wants Castle, that she loves him… has loved him… for a long time. In fact, she's loved him for so long, that she can't really remember a time when she didn't love him. She knows that she didn't in the beginning, that she only saw him as a selfish, self-centered, spoiled, rich-boy womanizer. But even at that point, she loved him as the author whose words helped her get through the dark times after her mother was murdered. And over the years, as she got to know the real man beneath the persona, her heart slowly schooled itself to see only him. Somewhere in the midst of the near death experiences that they seem to have a knack for getting into, she's become so completely his that she can't imagine him not being a part of her life, her future. The future she sees in her mind is no longer her own - it's their future. Together.

She's spent the last few months trying to "get better", but deep down she knows it's just another excuse to hide her heart so that it doesn't get broken again like it did when her mom died. Now, she's finally scattered enough pieces of her self-control around her on the hardwood floor to unearth the feelings she keeps shoved down inside. She lifts them out of the darkness that her soul has become, and she accepts them, breathes life into them, and they rise up from the depths, breaking the shackles her denial has used to bind them. They slowly seep into her veins, soaking into the spaces between her blood cells, quickly spreading warmth and love through her inebriated, sluggish limbs.

She can feel the tears welling up in her eyes, because she knows it might be too late. She might have made him wait too long. After all, what man could withstand the punishment, the heartache she's put him through? What man would follow her around day after day, month after month, year after year, waiting on her to make up her mind? She knows the answer to the questions pounding in her head…

No other man but Castle.

There's never been a man in her life that had the character fortitude to break through the walls she's built around her heart. There's never been a man that has made her want to live beyond those walls.

Until him.

It kills her to know that it could be too late, that all the things she fears might be true. Her drunken, bumbling fingers dig her phone out of her back pocket and she stares at the screen. And when she sees the missed calls blinking on the display, the last, lonely, crumbling brick falls away in a little puff of dust, coming to rest in the rubble of the wall she's held on to so tightly for so long.

Somehow, determination breaks through the haze she's drank herself into, and she quickly swipes the screen to unlock it and touches her finger to his number before the coward inside her head wakes up too and talks her out of it.

As she holds the phone to her ear to listen and wait for the sound of his voice answering, she hears a phone ringing behind her. It doesn't mean anything at first, just another noise in the background mingling with the song on the jukebox. But then, the sound really breaks through her concentration, and she hears the ringtone, getting louder (and closer) with each ring.

Frowning, she pulls the phone away from her face to stare at the screen, making sure the call is still connected. Her addled brain is confused because the ring tone that she hears behind her is the same one that Castle has programmed for her in his phone. She thinks that it's her imagination - that she's hearing things because she wants to hear his voice so badly.

In that moment that her focus stutters, the recognition fires through the nerve cells in her head, but she still can't put the two together in her head… She's wondering how she can be calling Castle and hearing his phone ring at the same time. Then a soft voice behind her makes her wildly racing heart stumble in its staccato rhythm.

"Kate." He says softly, from right behind her.

His low voice sends goose bumps shooting up all over her skin. She still thinks she's hallucinating, and pulls the phone away from her ear one more time to look at the screen. The display still shows his smiling face, and says dialing, so she doesn't understand how she can be hearing his voice.

"Kate… Turn around and look at me." He tells her, his voice a little louder this time.

She does turn around, and she sees him standing there, and she blinks a few times, trying to determine whether he's real. He looks real. His eyes are heavy with a tiredness that consumes his whole body. His shirt is rumpled, and untucked, and his jeans even look a little worse for wear.

"Castle?" She croaks out.

"Yes, Kate. It's me. I'm here." He closes the small remaining distance between them, and gathers her into his arms, pulling her to his chest and tucking her head under his chin.

He feels her breath hitch, and then she's gasping and her slender arms are snaking around his back and she's clinging to him like a life-preserver in a storm-tossed sea. And when first her shoulders, and then her whole body, start shaking with sobs, he squeezes her tighter, trying to keep her together while she falls apart.

"I'm sorry Castle. I'm so sorry…. so very sorry… very, very sorry." Kate forces the words out of her mouth between the gut-wrenching sobs she can't stop. She knows that she's crying, and that she's soaking his shirt, but she keeps holding on, clinging to him with every bit of strength left in her body.

"Just let it go Kate. Let go, get it all out. I'm here, and I've got you." He whispers into her hair.

She feels his breath in her hair, and the strength in his arms gives her comfort, gives her strength. After a few minutes she's finally able to stop the tears from pouring down her face and onto his shirt, but she still stands safe in the circle of his arms. She's holding on with her face buried in his neck, and she can feel his heartbeat pulsing against her forehead.

Kate thinks that she should probably let him go, but she can't make herself do it. She doesn't ever want to let him go again, but she doesn't know if he still feels the same. He was clearly angry with her before, but he's here now, and he's holding her, comforting her, his hands warm against her back. Surely that means that he still feels something, right?

Finally tired of standing in one place, Kate pulls back so that she can see his face. She's surprised to see his eyes glistening and traces of wetness on his cheeks.

"Oh, Castle. No. Why?" She whispers and swipes away the offending trails with the tips of her fingers.

"How can you ask me that Kate? Are you really going to stand in front of me right now and tell me that you don't know?" He pushes his hands through his already tasseled hair, and steps back from her. Because he can't be mad, can't focus when she's standing so close. And not when he just got done coaxing her tears out of her and holding her while she purged her soul of whatever darkness had brought her here tonight to try and drown it out.

"Castle, I…" She starts, but that's all she gets out before he interrupts.

"Don't Kate. Just don't. Forget it. I know how this dance goes. You have a weak moment, where you show that you might actually need me, or heaven forbid, that you WANT me, and then you push me away. But then it passes, and we go on like nothing happened, and we don't talk about it. Don't worry; I've had lots of practice pretending."

Kate just stands helpless against his tirade. She knows he needs to get it out, that he just can't hold it in any longer. And he's right, he HAS had a lot of practice at this because it seems like they've been here before. Emotionally. With the frustration and the tension building between them until something breaks and it comes spilling out.

He's waiting for her to say something, she knows he is, but she can't make the sound come out of her mouth. So, he does what he's done every other time in the past. He hangs his head, and he gives up trying to get through to. She sees it on his face, his broken heart glaring out through his eyes, and hers splinters in her chest. Because why can't she just go to him already? She called to tell him that she loved him, but now that he's standing right in front of her, waiting for some sign that she has a heart beating in her chest somewhere, she can't tell him, can't say the words, can't put herself out there even though she knows that he'd still take her. And then she sees him box his heart back up and pull it back where she can't touch it, and he turns his back on her, and somehow that hurts more than anything he's said.

"Just leave Kate. Call a cab and go home. I'll lock up when you leave." His voice quakes as he speaks the words, but he's not looking at her, so he doesn't see the tears start streaming down her face again. He still hopes that she'll say something, but there's no sound, no words, no hand lightly touching his arm, so he just walks away towards his office. He plans on soothing his nerves with a bit of Old Leo's secret stash of scotch.

Kate feels the thud of his office door slamming all the way down to her bones. But, the noise finally breaks through the trance she slipped into while Castle was pouring out his feelings, his heart. The tears keep coming because she's done it again. She could have told him how she felt, why she was here in his bar getting as drunk as possible. Instead, the thought of sharing her feelings made her freeze up. AGAIN.

She messed up…. AGAIN.

Dammit, why can't she get it right with him? Why is she always hurting him?

She wonders if she should just walk away now… Walk away and never come back, and never hurt him again. Except that just thinking about doing that makes the sharp edges of panic clamber in to crowd her heart.

Finally… FINALLY… the thought of losing him forever gives her strength, and squaring her shoulders, she strides through the empty bar to his office. The thick wooden door doesn't deter her in the slightest, now that she's finally made up her mind. But just as she goes to yank it open, it swings open in front of her, and her outstretched hand only comes up with empty air. The momentum of grabbing for the handle throws her off balance, and she stumbles forward into his arms.

Just as quickly, he's pushing her away from his chest and back onto her feet. "What do you want Beckett?"

She almost falters again at the ice in his beautiful voice, but she shoves the cowardice away, knowing that she has to say what she came to tell him even if he rejects her. He has to know how she feels. She can't stand another second of him thinking she doesn't want him.

"You, Rick. I just want you." She whispers and brings her hands up to caress his face, feels the stubble on his cheeks scraping against her palms. And then she closes the distance he put between them and touches her lips to his tentatively.

He groans at the feel of her mouth on his and slants his head to mold his lips to hers, but then he grabs her wrists and pushes her away again. "You need to go home Beckett. You're drunk. And I can't take being another one of your regrets. Or your conquest. Or your pity case." He growls out and steps back.

She refuses to be put off. "You're not a regret Rick. You're not a conquest. And you're damned well not a pity case. I am drunk, but I don't need to go home. I need YOU."

She doesn't give him a chance to argue, or respond, just takes back the step he retreated and crushes her lips to his, presses her body into him, and drinks him in.

"Kate." He whimpers, pulling away just enough to get a breath in.

"Stop talking Rick, and kiss me again."