a/n: Episode insert for 3x24, "Knockout" – AU missing scene after the hangar.
Many thanks to Dia for excellent beta services rendered.
Breaking Point
She's clinging to him and it's for all the wrong reasons.
So tight all around him, her fingers digging into the back of his neck and her thighs clamped around his waist, her hips surging high as her muscles quiver where he's buried deep inside her.
His heart is breaking. He didn't think there was anything left to break after the past twenty-four hours. It shouldn't happen like this, not for these reasons - trying to patch what's cracked and broken, trying to fill the devastating emptiness roaring through them - and yet, here they are.
Everything about it is wrong and yet he can't regret this, can't be sorry when nothing has ever felt this right before.
He thinks he might be crying, he isn't sure; knows she is when he dips his mouth to her cheekbone and the moisture he tastes there isn't sweat. He collects it against his tongue, murmurs reassurances like prayers to her skin as he sweeps his palm around her shoulder blade, drawing her into the protective curve of his body. Her mouth sinks over the tendons of his neck, the edges of her teeth grazing his skin and he shivers, his hips rolling into her, pushing deep, deep, deep.
He doesn't know how this story will end, doesn't know if this is all they'll ever have. His heart contracts viciously in protest at the thought, his chest cracking open with the rising force of emotions, of promises and declarations for which it is neither time nor place when they're raw and open and damaged, bleeding into each other like wounded animals.
She's snug around him, a perfect fit as he rocks within her, short sharp thrusts that make her muscles quiver, her breath hiccup in her chest, low murmured sounds rolling from her throat that leave him burning from the inside out. Her limbs tighten further around him until they're skin to skin, her breasts flattened against his chest and her body undulating with his, meeting every stroke as if she can't get him deep enough, can't get enough of him.
He knows he'll never get enough of her, can't even fathom how he'd ever let her go again.
So he gives up all pretense, whispers his truth with her cradled in his arms while she's keening with pleasure, her body shaking and spasming with the wracking force of her release - whispers the only thing that matters.
"I love you. I love you, Kate."
He'd brought her home. He'd been prepared to argue, for her to fight him on it but instead she'd let him guide her to his car, and he knew nothing was right at all when she slid into the passenger seat without a single comment and let him drive.
Nothing might ever be right again.
It'd been hours since... everything, hours of police and ambulances arriving, screaming tires and the too-bright strobe of lights and swarms of people surrounding them, of making statements over and over and over. He'd heard the strain in her voice, seen her curling within herself even while her spine remained rigid and her face impenetrable; had to fight his instinct to just draw his arms around her, tell her everything would be okay even though he feared nothing would ever be okay again. He could still feel the phantom of her beneath him when he'd pressed her to the car while the gunshots crushed the silence with stark finality, had shielded her with the bulk of his body, so lithe and fragile in his arms when he knew nothing he could do would protect her from this tragedy.
Silence descended by the time it was all done, the horror of the night outlined in chalk and orderly mapped with evidence markers like abstract art, the too-hopeful light of dawn already dipping across the horizon.
She was silent, unmoving as they traveled across the city, her temple pressed against the window pane. He wondered what she was thinking; it was easier to analyze her than to visit the trauma scrambling his own mind. Maybe she'd fallen asleep; he hoped for that more than anything else. For her mind to get at least momentary reprieve from the endless parade of what-ifs and recriminations and guilt-laced thoughts that were sure to be inundating her.
He walked her to her door, stood guard at her back while she inserted the key, the click and rasp of metal against metal reverberating in the numb silence of her hallway, and then he followed her inside because there was nothing else he could do, nowhere else he could be.
He's still not sure how it happened; one moment he was standing there, helplessly staring, and the next her keys slid from her hand and clattered to the floor, and her mouth crashed to his. Her kiss was rough and frantic and desperate against his lips, and it wasn't long from there until he was on his knees before her, her jeans puddled around her ankles and his tongue curling around her clit.
He had tried to put up resistance, crooned a litany of her name against her lips, Kate, Kate, Kate; tried to calm the ferocious urgency thrumming through her, to be the voice of reason he felt he needed to be in the face of the overwhelming waves of turmoil that were drowning them both but it was halfhearted at best when every part of him was screaming for this, for her, for her touch and her comfort and the warmth of her body, alive and writhing and safe in his arms.
She was the only thing that was good, the only thing that still felt right in this world that was spinning madly and irrevocably out of control beneath his feet.
He'd tried to ask, between the fiery path of kisses she trailed along his jaw and her mouth biting his collar bone until his knees buckled, tried to ask if she was sure or if he'd end up one of her regrets, if this was nothing more than a furious scramble to feel alive; tried to ask about a leather-clad motorcycle boy who'd been suspiciously absent lately both in presence and conversation, but she'd clung to him as if he was the only thing keeping her still standing, the only thing she could count on and he didn't have it in him to deny her. He could never deny her anything she'd wanted. She owned his heart and in the end, he trusted her to know what she was doing, trusted her with himself.
'Please, Castle, please', she'd keened, not unlike her desperate pleas when he had carried her away from her Captain earlier. Her fingers clung to his waist, her eyes a dark contradiction of mourning and arousal when she lifted her gaze to his, so he'd pushed her against the door and ripped the sweater over her head, his mouth almost savage against her breasts while she chanted encouragements with a frantic, wild need he'd always wished she'd feel for him; consuming her the way she consumed him, wholly and unapologetically.
She pushed his head south and he tasted the curve of her ribcage and the line of her abs, every patch of skin in his path while he fumbled open her jeans, dragged them down over her hips along with her underwear and then his fingers held her squirming hips in place while his tongue slid through her wetness, found the swollen bundle of nerves. She cried out, sobbing, head thrown back against the door and her eyes pinched closed, her fingers scrabbling haplessly against the wood, seeking purchase.
He wanted to weep at his first taste of her, her flavor everything he's ever wanted; God, she was everything, everything.
Fingers and mouth working in tandem he worshipped at the altar of her body, his pace fervent and relentless as he gave her the absolution she sought until she screamed in release, a sound so raw, so forlorn that the hairs stood up on his body while she shivered and slumped into his arms.
And then he hoisted her up, and carried her to bed.
"Will you stand with me?" She asks later, when the sun has risen high against the stretch of stark-blue sky, too beautiful in the face of the day's harsh reality. It's low and broken and needier than he thinks he's ever heard her before.
She's staring out the window, rigid and silent like a lone statue chiseled in strength, but he sees her. Knows how thin the façade is, sees the clefts now, the cracks and tears and fissures that threaten to break her apart before his eyes. But she's wearing his shirt like draped armor and her fingers are tight around his, her grip sharpened by her nails digging into his flesh as she holds on with a near-death grip, and he'll take it. He'll take any part of her she gives him because it's more than she's been able to give before, more vulnerable than she's ever allowed herself to be with him.
He knows what she means, all the things she can't say, can't ask - senses the fear and bottomless panic that's taken a hold. Of what's out there and yet to come, of not making it through, of being unable or - maybe, hopefully - unwilling to do it on her own.
He senses it because it matches everything he feels.
He steps closer so that his pecs meet her shoulder blade, their height difference more apparent than ever when she's barefoot and fits so snugly, so very right against him. He stands guard by her side as they both stare out at the city that's lost its luster, his vocal cords raw when he speaks but his promise certain.
"Always."