Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—from "The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver
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It was after the elevator doors had slid closed, after his car had rumbled to life and after it drove away into the night, giving her no chance to catch him, did she realize he had left without an "until tomorrow," the more hopeful goodbye. He had brushed off drinks with her and avoided talking with her, but she had blamed it on Alexis and his fatherly instinct that was causing him to act so distant. However, as Kate Beckett stood at her desk, the precinct silently emptying, did she realize that his more hopeful goodbye was missing, his constant waiting for her to put on her jacket just so they could down the hallway together was gone.
"To sin by silence," he had repeated while in the interrogation room. Beckett had always found it helpful when Castle spun his crazy theories in front of the suspects normally causing them to lose their control, but this time, his stare bore into the side of her face while talking to the reporter. She tried to ignore it like always however it wasn't his usual admiration stare, his longing stare; it was almost as if he was trying to send a message, trying to consume her. Beckett dismissed it, just as she ignored the rest of his strange actions, hoping they wouldn't last. Then, her breath caught in her throat.
"And I remember every second of it…" It was finally out, so graciously had it flowed out of her mouth and into the real world where it could have been heard by anybody. And that anybody had been Castle. Beside Dr. Burke, she had yet to tell a soul about what actually happened that day. It became clear, after the interrogation she had found their daily coffees left alone on her desk, no tall, broad shouldered, blue eyed man to accompany them. Along with the way he had been acting, it all made sense.
She grabbed her car keys and drove, cutting easily through the night.
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Alexis opened the door and there stood a frantic Detective Beckett, slowly trying to catch her breath after running the steps because of the under maintenance elevator.
" Kate! Are you okay?" Alexis's eyes were puffy and red, still in the aftermath of the case.
"Hey Lex," she panted "where is your dad?"
"He went over to the Old Haunt. Said he couldn't get any writing done and just wanted to be there. Left about 30 minutes ago. Why?"
"Thank you so much sweetie." Kate said with a final pant and kissed Alexis's head. Beckett turned and she was off again, into the night.
The Old Haunt was an ancient bar that lived up to being everything Castle had said it would be. When they weren't on cases and he wasn't writing, he spent most of his time here, not drinking necessarily, just thinking. As Beckett busted through the doors, however, she saw him chugging down the remains of a scotch. His shoulders were slumped in and he sat alone almost mumbling to himself.
"Castle!" She called, grabbing the crook of his elbow as she approached. He flinched, retracting his arm back from her touch like she was some type of disease.
"Beckett?" He asked, his eyes focusing on her and then almost as if they were trying to look past her.
"I was wrong, okay? I was wrong to have done what I did." Kate said, diving into a new world without giving him a chance to say no; without giving him the option of stopping the avalanche that was about to peruse. The bartender slid another round of scotch Castle's way.
"Did you hear me, Castle? I said I was wrong," Beckett repeated.
Castle started at the glass in his hands, refusing to meet her eyes again. Those lovely eyes, when they would look at him under her long lashes, the way her fingers would brush his as they walked, the way she'd bite her lip when working on paperwork, he lov- No! No more of that. No thoughts like that. He had to turn it off. Let her go. He'd move on… sooner or later. He'd get past her, just like he did everyone women that walked into his life.
There was nothing different about Katherine Beckett.
Oh who was he kidding, she was everything different, Rick's fingers gripped the glass and he quickly brought it to his lips and finished the scotch.
"Goddammit Rick! Stop drinking and at least look at me!" Beckett demanded as she grabbed chin, until they were facing eye to eye. "I shouldn't have done what I did that day. Well more so the months after, but I should have told you that I knew."
"No worries." He brushed off, moving her hands from his face. He couldn't have her soft fingers near him, the smell of cherries infiltrating his senses anymore.
"The way you acted today, I couldn't tell what was up. I thought it was Alexis, this case, something, but I never knew you were listening to the interrogation. I'm sorry you had to find out so bluntly, it wasn't fair and I should have told you earlier." Beckett explained as she glanced away from his eyes, an ice blue.
He smiled, but it was tense and forced, nothing like the Richard Castle charm she was use too. "No worries," he repeated, "it's all fine," as he turned his body back to the bar again
"Bullshit! It's not fine! You won't even look at me when I'm talking! I at least deserve the respect of an explanation of what you are thinking that is more than two words!"
Castle finally let his anger seep into the rest of his body, where it sat like sludge. He slid off the bar stool, squaring his shoulders and towering over Beckett making her feel his beyond 6-foot height.
"Respect. That's what this has come down too? Well then I am sorry, detective, that I have not done the respectable thing here." He spat his words like venom at her. "I am sorry to have been nothing but kind to you after you shut me out for three months because you 'needed time to think'. Did you just hope that pushing me away would cause my feelings disappear? Did you hope that after time I would just move on? That if you acted like you had never known then it would all just go away? Well it doesn't work like that, I'm sorry to admit." Castle stepped around her, anger still brewing as he headed for the door.
Beckett stood there frozen, confused, and completely shocked at his words. She could only count on one hand the amount of times he had actually yelled at her. And this definitely ranked at number one.
Castle reached the door, and spun around and looked straight at her, shrinking her down once again. "But most of all, I am sorry to have ever told you that I loved you. I am sorry you had to deal with the burden of carrying those words around, but never letting me know because obviously you don't feel the same way."
The last of his lethal venom hung in the air as the door swung close, leaving Kate feeling completely stripped and naked in the middle of the Old Haunt. She could have let him walk away, out of the Old Haunt, out of her life. Things would be easier this way, right? No more hurting on either sides, right? But she was determined, she had come here with a reason and he still didn't know everything. Somewhere in her she grew a pair of balls and picked up her feet from the ground.
She ran out the doors, the same ones he just stormed out of. "Castle!" She yelled at his turned back. Beckett saw him pause for half a millisecond maybe, and then push on down the street. "I never told you because I was scared. I was scared to start a relationship. To have the chance of ruining all the good things that we had built over the years. After the shooting, after Montgomery, after what you said, it was all too much. I know it's no excuse, but I wasn't ready then. But I am now!"
Castle turned and just barely had time to brace himself for the women crashing into him. Her lips met his in frenzy, her tongue quickly slide past his teeth. His mind had little time to register the words and the lips that were coming at him. Her finger nails scratched lightly down his back as her other hand grasped at the hair at the nape of his neck.
"But, Kate…" He gasped as she began to make an assault on his open neck. Her body pushed fully against his as he stumbled backwards into the Old Haunt wall. "You really… mean" he tried clearing his mind to form some sort of coherent sentence.
She hummed against his the base of his neck, and brought her lips backs to his. "Too many words, not enough this…" She pushed him flat against the wall, sliding her hands up and down the inside of his jacket, all while aggressively attacking his mouth.
Castle gave up on speaking and turned his attention to the soft pair of lips that were attached to his at the moment. He grabbed her legs and she hitched them around his waist, inevitably forcing their bodies closer. The heat pulsing like fire between the two.
He broke the contact and trailed his lips down the column of her neck, sucking everywhere he possibly could. Once he reached the collarbone, a sweet spot, Beckett rolled her head back and let out a moan that made Castle's whole body react. There had been not enough this in his whole life time.
They stood there, on the warm March night, making out like teenagers against a bar wall. All the troubles pushed aside for right now, all the things that needed to be said had been said. This moment was enough for the pair for right now. Castle finally pulled away and looked deep into her eyes, and she stared right back.
"I'm ready now." She repeated, a slow smile creeping across her face.