A/N: This fic was written rather quickly, so I apologize ahead of time for any potential mistakes.
Set immediately after the end of 8x02, XX.
"You do not get to do this." His voice is thunderous, storming after her with the angry thuds of his footsteps following her down the hall, and Kate pauses, but doesn't turn around.
If she just keeps her back to him, doesn't see his face or look into his eyes, she can hold her ground. But that strategy is damned when his hand latches onto her shoulder, spins her around so fast she has to bite back the gasp, gritting her teeth through the spiraling burn of pain through her side.
"Rick," she starts, chokes, but there is no room for argument, not this time.
He grabs her by the chin with two fingers, forces her eyes up to meet him and oh, oh no. No, he's crying. Tears streaking down his cheeks in a ceaseless stream, his eyes filled with them but unwavering as they hold onto hers.
"You do not get to just decide to throw away all the progress that we've made, everything we've been through-"
"I have to do this alone," she scrapes out, her voice as raw as the bullet wound bleeding through the bandage taped beneath her diaphragm. The stinging ache that threads through her skin, pounds through her flesh, is nothing compared to the fresh wave of agony rippling through her chest, though, constricting her heart. "Just let me fix this, let me have some time-"
"Four years," he growls at her, an echo of a memory from three years ago, a fateful fight in her apartment, bouncing around in her head, but this is worse. So much worse. "I won't-" His voice cracks and oh, Castle. "Can't give you more time. You are my wife, Kate. Partners. We're a team and we-"
"Not this time," she croaks, lifting a hand to his chest, over his heart in hopes of placating the beaten muscle for now, but he snatches the fingers before she can touch him, crushes her bones in the iron grip of his.
She doesn't know how to make him understand, how to make anyone understand the twisted workings of her mind. How she has to do this alone, how she's protecting him from the danger, from the consequences, from herself. He knows how she becomes once she's fallen down the rabbit hole, but this time she's diving in.
She only wishes to spare him from it.
"I won't let you go," he rasps and fuck, her eyes are stinging again, the brokenness of his voice slicing her chest wide open.
Kate reaches for his neck with her unrestrained hand, curves her palm over the drum of his pulse, memorizing the beat beneath her skin, but before she can use this moment of weakness to withdraw, he's surging forward, draping his mouth over hers and using the fingers on her chin to hold her there.
She moans, long and sorrowful, tasting the bitter salt of his tears mingling with hers on her tongue and digging her nails into the skin of his nape.
"Castle," she gets out, but his hand is dropping from her chin to cinch his arm around her waist, hauling her forward until she's trapped. "No," she whimpers, but her feet fail to listen, fail to stop him from dragging her back towards the open door.
It's too good. After being gone for nearly two days, missing him, worrying about him, yearning for him – it's too good having the heat of his body against hers, pouring molten lava into all of the places inside of her that had begun to go cold. Kate glides her hand up and into his hair, fisting in the soft locks and catching his bottom lip with her teeth, biting down hard.
She hisses - from pain or the clash of his hips into hers, she isn't sure - when he slams her into the front door, slamming it shut with a resounding bang that she recognizes from many past occasions.
"Is this how it ends, Kate?" he mutters, his lips at the corner of her mouth, nipping harshly enough to sting, but he avoids her mouth when she turns her head, seeks his kiss. "Not enough for you?"
"Always enough," she pants, her spine arching from the door at the desperate rock of his hips into her, the solid burn of him pinned between them. "You're everything."
"Prove it," he snarls at her jaw, the wet heat of his tongue soothing the rough scrape of his teeth. His hands slide down her sides, bypassing her hips to curve at her ass, hoisting her up. Kate gasps, her head jerking back and thumping into the hard surface of the door, a barely suppressed sob breaching her lips at the roll of his body so perfectly aligned with hers. "Stay with me." He opens his mouth at her collarbone, the burn of his breath, his tongue, eviscerating through the fabric of her turtleneck. "Stay with me, Kate."
Damn him. Damn him for using those words, so deliberate and knowing even in his desperation.
Beckett cradles the back of his skull in both of her hands, splaying her palms there and trying to suck in a deep breath that her lungs refuse to harbor.
"Just let me do this," she wheezes, stroking her thumb along the shell of his ear at the hard press of his nose at her clavicle. "Let me - let me put it to bed so I can come back home to you."
The shake of his head causes her hands to slip to his nape, tightening when he pulls her from the support of the door.
"Together," he insists, petulant like a child, but dominating like a beast, carrying her to their bedroom even as she mewls her halfhearted protest.
He puts a stop to that, trails an open mouthed path up the column of her throat, suckling at the sensitive spot just below her jawline. He makes her mewl for another reason entirely.
Despite his anger, Castle lowers her to their bed with care, tender but strong, the crux of who he is. Why she loves him.
God, she doesn't know if she can do this. It felt like the right decision two hours ago, ten minutes ago, but to leave him… is leaving him ever truly a good idea? That summer at her father's cabin still evoked a sharp pang of remorse within her sternum any time she imagined him here, hundreds of miles away and wanting her, waiting for her to return. Always waiting. But it's different. It's for his own good. What if he-
Her entire body arcs when Castle jerks her jeans down her legs, cups her through the black cotton of her underwear.
"You don't get to decide what's best for me," he husks, and she must have said it out loud even though she can't remember the words leaving her lips, but Castle's palm pressed against her, sealing the heat there, demolished any hope for clear thinking to begin with. "Just - dammit, just give me a chance, Kate. Let me help, let me-"
She muffles his pleas with her mouth, can't take the way they shred through her insides, and doesn't try to stop him when his hands fist in her shirt, tug it upwards until he can get it over her head. They both flinch when his palms travel up her sides, his hand pausing over the bloom of crimson in the middle of the bandage.
He's already seen the rip of skin where the bullet had grazed through her flesh, the hasty patchwork she had managed in a dry cleaners' with nothing more than a needle, thread, and bottle of cheap vodka. He had held her hand in the hospital where she had been properly treated and stitched up, whispered his love like an encouragement against her temple, suffusing her with a warmth that unfurled through her chest and distracted her from the pain. And even through the anguish that she has caused, the fury she deserves, he brushes his fingers over the newest addition to her battered body with a reverence that has the tears clinging to her lashes again.
Kate covers his hand with her, draws his fluttering fingers away from the wound that has receded into a dull roar beneath the pulsing throb of her grief, the stormy seas of her arousal. Castle pins their tangled hands above her head, taking control once more, and the fight in her body falls away, ebbs like the retreat of the tide.
He releases her hand, his plaid shirt disappears, his undershirt next, and she attempts to reach for the clasp of her bra at her back, but Rick is already slapping her hand away. He's leaning over her, his eyes dark with need and despair, devastating her to the core. No matter what she decides, whatever choice she makes, she will be working to earn his forgiveness for a long time.
Does it even make a difference what she chooses? Will she ever stop hurting him?
For a second too long, she wonders how much better his life would be without her, without her there, always having to put the pieces of his broken heart together with the same hands that shattered it. If she left right now with no intention of returning, if it would ultimately be better for him…
Castle has always been skilled at reading her, the only person who could take her apart piece by piece with a single look in her direction, and she knows the moment he must catch on to her line of thought, feels it when he dives down to take her mouth in a chaotic collision of lips and limbs.
"Don't you dare," he growls, reaching beneath her to unhook her bra, tearing the lingerie from her chest and jerking it down her arms. "Don't-" He's choking on the moisture sloshing through his throat, seals his mouth back to hers to keep it at bay.
Kate coils her arms around his back, scaling her hands over the flexing muscles and digging her fingers into his shoulder blades, keening against his lips at the sear of his flesh on hers, the blanket of his body engulfing her in flames. Forget everything else. In this moment, she only needs this, him.
He grunts when her fingers dip past the waistband of his pants, curling in the elastic of his boxers and grazing the hot skin covering his tailbone. Too impatient to attempt the unfastening of his jeans, she jerks mercilessly at the denim, trying to get it past his hips until Castle tears away from her mouth, maneuvers an unsteady hand between them to undo the buckle of his belt, his zipper.
Her hands skate down the strong bones of his hips, but Castle steals her wandering fingers once more, captures both of her wrists in one of his large hands and pins them above her head.
The descent of his body back over hers is slow, purposely torturous, and she can't contain the strained noises of desperation from crawling past her lips.
"If you love me," he husks at her jaw, his cheek grazing along hers, the light traces of stubble abrading. "If you care as much about our happily ever after as you claim to, you'll think about this. You'll stay with me long enough to think it through, Beckett."
He makes it sound so easy, so very enticing, and before she can even try to conjure up an answer, before her mind can even begin to decide, he's sinking down, settling between her thighs, and she can't think at all.
He slides inside her with one long, deep thrust, fills her completely and has the bursts of pleasure exploding through her veins. The line of fire his free hand draws along the outside of her thigh, up her uninjured side to palm her breast, has her biting down on her lip, piercing his knuckles with both sets of her nails. She's so wound up, stripped raw of every defense, it's almost enough to end her right then.
"Kate, look at me."
Her eyes fly open at the command, unaware she had even allowed them to screw shut, and blinks past the haze of desire to see him, to cling to the connection burning bright and hot between them. Like always.
Castle withdraws, plunges back in and the muscles in her legs already threaten to spasm, but she forces them up, folding them high at his waist, drawing him down even further into the cove of her aching body. His mouth is an inferno over hers, his tongue matching every thrust and grind of his hips. She is anything but passive, her abdominals trembling with the effort it takes to meet the brutal rhythm he's setting, her lungs overworked with the need for air, her brain dizzy with the overflow of sensation.
Anger, sorrow, desperation, hope – it threatens to drown her. It all threatens to sweep her up in the riptide and take her under, but he anchors her, with his hips, his hands, his heart.
Maybe he isn't wrong.
"I would never leave you," she chokes out, agony arguing with the arousal at the memory of his words.
Why are you giving up on our marriage?
I'm trying to save it.
By leaving me?
She hadn't wanted – she had only wanted to do this right, but it's all wrong. And the image of him standing across from her in the middle of their home, staring back at her so beseechingly, is already seared so deeply into her mind, and she can't do this to him.
He promised her they could get through it.
"Together," she breathes into his mouth, twisting her hips, tightening her legs and the pulsing walls of her inner muscles, their rhythm falling apart.
Castle's palm splays at the base of her spine, bruises her lower back with his fingers as he hauls her in as close as possible, has the friction burning brighter, and the second he lets go, so does she.
Together.
The flame of her orgasm spreads from where they're joined, consuming from head to toe, and for the first time in the last two days, peace flushes through her bloodstream, flourishing as her husband's body lies loose and warm atop hers.
Castle releases her wrists, the blood rushing back to her hands, sparking in her fingertips as she flexes them, eases her arms down to curl around his shoulders. Her bullet wound is throbbing beneath the cage of his ribs, but she doesn't want him to move, doesn't want this beautiful moment broken by the harsh remembrance of reality.
"Kate." He whispers her name as if he's already mourning her. But his next syllable is infused with so much hope, so much longing- "Stay."
He's close enough that when her eyes peel open, her lashes catch in his, his breath skittering across her parted lips, and she brings her hands to his face, takes the moment he allows her to cherish the curve of his eyebrow beneath her thumb, the slope of his nose, the tender flesh of his mouth. He's beautiful, even heartbroken like this, and she lifts her neck so she can dust her lips to the eyelids that have fluttered shut, brushing an apology to the swollen skin and tasting the remnants of his tears on her mouth.
"I love you," she breathes, even as her traitorous chin begins to quiver. "I'm so sorry. I'm so-"
His eyes open and his head shakes, his nose bumping with hers. "Don't be - not now, enough for now. Just stay with me, love."
Beckett unlocks her ankles from around his waist, buries her face in the crook of his neck as she forces a nod. The final wave of tension drains from his body, and Kate nudges them onto their sides, curls into the sheltering shield of his embrace immediately wrapping around her, a sigh expanding through her chest at the solid, unwavering band of his arms around her.
For tonight, at least, she isn't going anywhere.
He wakes, and for one blissful moment, his mind is blank.
But it's only a moment and a mere second later, he is jerking out of the bed, his heart galloping with panic at the sight of the empty space where she had lain after making love to him last night.
"No," he gets out through the closing of his throat, grabbing his boxers and stumbling into them.
The small trash bin just inside the en suite doorway holds the bloodied remains of her bandage from the night before, but it's the only evidence he finds in the vicinity of their bedroom, the only trace of her left behind. Fuck, he doesn't want to cry again, but she's gone and it's welling up in his eyes, swelling in his chest. He doesn't even have to search the living room, the kitchen, to know she won't be there and he doesn't even understand the true reason behind any-
"Castle?"
Rick spins around, his shoulder smacking into the adjoining bathroom's doorway, but the sight of her subdues the flare of pain spreading through his arm. Because she's here, she's still here, standing ragged but glorious in their bedroom doorway in one of his shirts.
He nearly staggers to his knees in relief.
"You - you stayed," he manages and the edges of her mouth twitch, but she doesn't smile.
"I don't know if I'm doing the right thing, what the right choice is, but I'm selfish," she replies, her voice quiet but steady, and his brow furrows at the response. "I just want to keep you safe, but I - I love you, Castle," she adds, as if that explains it all, but her lips quiver with the words. "I love you too much to go."
Castle takes a step towards her, cautious, but his wife doesn't back away or hesitate, not even when he's standing right in front of her and has her shoulders cradled in his palms.
"Do you trust me?"
Her eyes fly up to meet his, questions swirling in the murky seas of browns. "Of course," she murmurs, echoing one of the less gut wrenching pieces of their conversation from the night before.
"Then trust me when I say that I know we are better off doing this together than apart. Trust me when I say that whatever this is, if you explain it to me, I will understand and I will stand with you through all of it. Just – trust me to have your back, Beckett."
The line of her throat bobs with the thickness of her swallow, but when she looks at him, it's with resolution burning gold in her eyes.
"I trust you with my life, Rick," she murmurs, one of her hands rising to stroke her fingers along his cheek. "I'm just… terrified of destroying us, everything we worked so hard to build-"
"You won't," he promises her, swears it, and the fear doesn't dull from her eyes, but he can feel how badly she wants to believe him. "I won't let you. This is why we're a team, Kate. If you dive down the rabbit hole, I'll pull you back out, and we'll work through it."
"Together," she exhales, the damn word he's been trying to drill into her skull, and Castle nods, drifts forward to press his lips to her forehead, the current of relief growing stronger through his system when the length of her body cants into him.
"Always," he confirms, careful of the fresh graze scaling her side as he bands his arms around her body, hating how small, how uncertain she feels against him. But she's here, she isn't giving up, hasn't run away, and his heart may be wounded, his faith in her may be shaken, but it is still firmly in place.
He will always fight for her, with her if she'll allow it.
He isn't giving up either.