Hollow Ground
AN: Set season three, roughly after episode 3x14 'Lucky Stiff'.
She strides through the bullpen, the staccato of her heels loud on the concrete floor, echoing through the mostly deserted bullpen. It's gotten late, really late. She sent the boys home, just finished up the last of the paperwork, conscientiously folding their closed case into a file box and closing its lid.
The few cops on nightshift are scattered in the south corner of the bullpen, throwing wadded up paper balls at a waste basket, laughing and rigging each other about their scores. The detectives on call tonight available by phone should a case break, but for now their section of the city is blissfully at peace. She can't wait to get home, soak her tired muscles in a hot, long bath, can almost taste the sharp tang of a glass of red wine on her tongue.
She glances through the window of the break room as she strides past, craning her neck but he isn't there either. She promised to give Castle a ride home tonight but he disappeared on her a few minutes ago, needing to make a phone call, and now that she's ready to go he's nowhere to be found. Not in the stairwell, nor in any of the interrogation rooms, or even in the supply closet where she'd actually checked, wondering whether he needed privacy.
The restroom is the only place left, and she's aware that she should probably just go back to her desk, wait for him there but she's tired and a little impatient, craving the warm solitude of her apartment. So she walks up to the men's room, ready to call his name, raises her arm to knock. A noise startles her, arrests her every move, her body going rigid.
Later, when she allows herself to think about it, she'll claim that she had no idea what was going on. She'll justify to herself that she was just concerned about him, had to make sure he was okay.
But the truth is, she knows. From the moment the sound meets her ears, she knows. Knows what she's hearing. And yet she can't step away. For a long moment she stands impossibly still, unable to move, to think, her breathing shallow.
Another sound, so quiet it's barely there. Her heart hammers loudly in her chest and her arm sinks, her fingertips landing softly against the cold metal of the door. Seemingly of their own volition her fingers push and the door glides open silently. Before she can talk herself out of it, before she even thinks it through, she sneaks through the gap, inexorably drawn inside.
She leans her back against the cool door, pressing it closed as she stares into the echoing emptiness of the restroom, the grey and white tiles and metal stalls to her left, every stall door hanging open - except one.
Her stomach rolls, her mouth dry like cotton wool. The rational part of her brain is screeching, urging her to turn around, get out, get out! but she stands frozen, her senses alert, her heart leaping into her throat.
The noises are muffled, surreptitiously kept quiet but she seems honed to every nuance, each detail so clear, so unmistakable to her. The whisper of rustling fabric. The cacophony of rapid breathing and swallowed moans and the slide of fingers over heated, solid, tender flesh.
Heat is rising through her, her skin feverish, her cheeks flushed.
The images come to her unbidden, vivid and carnal and so very, very hot. The way she imagines his face would crease, the ridge between his brow sharp, his mouth falling open on a labored breath. The way he'd fold his large fingers around himself, slide and circle and squeeze, the muscles of his ass clenching as he keeps himself under rigorous control, his forehead sinking against the chilled metal of the stall. The way his eyes would darken, his pupils large and blurred with arousal.
She's seen that look before. The way his eyes focused on her, just on her, dark and dangerous with intent before he'd curled a palm around her neck and drawn her to him, his lips slanted over hers for a kiss so sensual, so erotic that she never ever dares to think about it. The way he drank her in while she danced with him in that club, his mouth falling open as she purposely rolled her hips a little more, brushed a little closer against him. As she teased him, lured by the danger of feeling the solid mass of his body, the heat that emanated from his skin, lured by the suppressed, ever-present want buried deep inside of her.
The way he looks at her when he thinks she doesn't notice, his face painted with a riot of emotions, his eyes dripping desire... All those moments that make her question everything she thought she knew, that make her want things. Things she'd stopped believing she could have.
She probably imagines more than hears it, the steady, inevitable rise of his body, his touches faster, harder. Rushed breathing, racing heart and heated skin, sweat running down his spine. Lips pressed tightly together so no sound would escape as he climbs, wracked with searing, visceral sensations.
She clenches her hands, her nails digging sharply into her palms, the pain a physical reminder to not move, to stop herself from pressing her fingers between her legs where she's swollen and slick with arousal, where she's aching, yearning to be touched.
It's wrong, so wrong; she shouldn't be here, she should not hear this, this most private, desperate moment but she can't move, she's frozen in place, her body tight with arousal and her throat clogged with an anguish she's scared to acknowledge.
It's murmured, low and dark, a groan so forlorn that it tears at her heart, unmistakable to her ears. "Kate." Her name on his lips as he breaks apart, a melody of labored breaths and swallowed moans.
Her face burns; she bites her lip hard at the shock of hearing him call her name. Hearing his want for her, the fierce yearning in his voice, and feeling the matching tug low in her belly.
She rushes back to her desk, her cheeks hot and her body on fire; sits back down with a file open and a pen in her grasp, as if she'd never left. She sinks her forehead into the cradle of her palm, buries her face in the file. Just don't think; don't think, Kate, don't think.
Then he's standing by the side of her desk, looming over her, and she knows she's not imagining the coarse edge to his voice. "Ready to go?"
"Yeah." She can't quite meet his eyes as she glances up at him, tries to swallow the lump in her throat, the cloying sadness that doesn't want to dissipate. She flips the file folder closed, throws her pen in the drawer and gets up, her chair pushed back a little more forcefully than she intended.
Castle reaches for her coat, holds it open for her, and she slips her arms inside, lets him drape the heavy fabric over her. His fingers brush her shoulders, seem to linger just this side of too long, the same thick fingers that he touched himself with mere minutes ago and her cheeks flush all over again, want coiling inside of her, thick like molasses.
And when she's stretched out in her tub later that night, eyes squeezed shut and fingers curled between her thighs, it's his face she sees, his groan she hears, his touch she feels. Her mind in turmoil, a swirl of guilt and burning images; it is wrong, all so wrong but it's there, stark and fiery and inevitable.
She falls apart with his name on her lips.