A/N: Written for the #castle28 project.

Prompt: "I can't believe you did this! I didn't ask you to do any of this!"

Watching her spin around on the sidewalk, terror in her wide eyes as they flicker across the sky, snagging on glimmering edges of sky scrapers, startling at the sound of sirens, tears at his insides. The squawk of a squad car sends her straight to the ground and he doesn't think he's ever seen Kate Beckett so scared.

She is a warrior of a woman, the strongest he's ever met, but this case has her so rattled, she can't stand without shaking, can't manage to speak to the victim of a sniper's bullet the next day.

"He's still out there, he's out there, he's going to kill me," the woman on the gurney had started crying, clutching Beckett's arm, and Kate, the detective who could comfort and reassure in such situations with usual ease, began to break right before his eyes, her voice splitting in two and her entire body trembling.

And then he watched her run away.

It took every ounce of restraint he possessed not to follow. Until he just couldn't stay away any longer.

Castle finds her by the broken echoes of her sobs, quiet, gasping noises that draw him down a hallway, around a corner, where she sits slumped against the wall, her head in her hands and her back heaving.

"Kate," he says, softly, hoping he doesn't spook her, upset her further.

She stills for only a moment at the sound of her name, her head rising at his voice, falling back against the wall to stare up at him with bloodshot eyes. She shouldn't be on this case, shouldn't be suffering through a panic attack for so many days straight, shouldn't have been shot in the first place.

"Can I sit with you?" he murmurs, feeling his heart ease just a fraction when the corner of her mouth twitches.

"Yeah, Castle," she rasps, tugging her knees closer to her chest as he crosses the small hallway they're hiding away in, easing down beside her and resting his back to the wall.

"Is there anything at all that I can do? Anything I can get you?" he asks, nearly startling himself when she shifts, turning on her side to drop her head against his shoulder, her eyes falling shut like she just can't hold them open any longer and her body shuddering hard against him.

He must have missed the worst of it and it must have been bad if she's leaning on him for support, her body ragged with the after effects of a breakdown. But her chest is still trembling, uneven breaths tripping past her lips, and Castle reaches for one of the hands wrapped around her knees, lets the kiss of their palms anchor her.

"I'm so sorry, Kate," he whispers, tentatively resting his cheek atop her head, sighing in silent relief when she doesn't stiffen or shove him away. "I'd give anything-"

"I know you would," she gets out, her fingers squirming to readjust their grip, slipping between his instead. "I'm okay. I'll be okay."

"I know you will," he nods, brushing his thumb up and down along her index finger. "But you're not right now and that's okay too."

"No, it's not," she mumbles, sniffling and sucking in a breath that has her chest expanding a little steadier against his bicep. "I – I need to be-"

"Even superheroes have bad days," he reminds her, wishing he could do more than squeeze her hand, wishing he could wrap his arms around her and kiss her forehead, promise her that everything's fine even when it so clearly isn't. "You're the strongest person I know. This doesn't change that, doesn't make you weak."

She doesn't answer him, doesn't protest, but he can feel her thinking, struggling, and he's doing his best not to break the silence when-

"Can we just – stay, like this, for a few more minutes? I can't… I can't go out there yet," she confesses, too much shame in her voice, but Castle doesn't miss a beat.

"Of course. As long as you need, Kate."

They stay on the floor, her head on his shoulder and her hand in his grasp for fifteen more minutes. He almost doesn't want to move.

He's never seen her so afraid and all he wants is to make it stop, make her stop before she pushes herself too far and he has no way to reel her back in, so after they return from the site of the last shooting and Kate is deep in discussion over the case with Esposito in the break room, he does what he thinks is best at the time.

He makes a mistake.

"She's good at her job, the best, but this case… she shouldn't be on this case and unless she's taken off of it, she's just going to drive herself into the ground and I don't want - I just don't think it should go that far," he'd murmured, meeting Gates's eyes with resolution in his, not trying to discredit Beckett, only trying to help. He just wants to help.

"You're asking me to take her off the case?" Gates's had inquired calmly, giving him one of those intimidating looks over the rim of her glasses, and Castle had taken a deep breath before he'd nodded.

"I just want her to be okay," he'd sighed, but she appears far from okay now.

Her body is a lightning rod of tension as he watches her storm from Gates's office later that afternoon, ready to catch fire at any moment, already setting off dangerous sparks, and Castle quickly rises from his seat beside her desk.

"Beckett," he calls after her, but she buries her hands deeper into the pockets of her leather jacket and keeps her head down, ducks into the elevator. "Kate."

But the doors slide shut before he can reach her.

Beckett's trying to clean up the mess of her apartment when the knocking on her door begins only a couple of hours after she had abandoned the precinct. It's no surprise, she knew it was coming, that he would come to her sooner or later, and while it grates on her nerves, it soothes a ragged piece of her too. The part of her that longs for the comfort he had shown her earlier, the solid presence of his body beside hers on the floor of the hallway while she had learned to breathe again.

She swings her front door open, finding him shifting anxiously on the other side, and sighs. "Hey, Castle."

"Hey," he murmurs, entering her apartment when she leaves him in the doorway to return to her living room.

The worst of the damage, the evidence, is gone, but she still has a few pieces of furniture sitting askew.

"Gates kicked me off the case," she growls, the anger welling in her chest all over again, almost strong enough to overpower the all consuming panic that still ripples through her with every breath. "She ordered me to take a couple of days off. I can't even - I was fine. I am fine. How could she just-"

"Maybe a couple of days off isn't so bad," he offers quietly, and it isn't sympathy in his eyes when she jerks her gaze up to glare at him, but concern. A lot of bright blue concern. "We could do something to take your mind off of it," he suggests, injecting some of that light into his voice, stepping deeper into her living room. "I was thinking that maybe we could go see a movie, or just veg out here, or at the loft - I have that giant projector screen, great for marathons-"

"Wait," she interrupts, straightening from her position beside the couch, where she had been retrieving a couple of throw pillows from the floor. "You were thinking?"

"Of a way to take your mind off of things," he nods, but she scrutinizes him with her gaze, doesn't like what she sees.

"I hadn't even told you I was off the case yet," she points out, watching his chest rise with a deep breath, and Beckett squares her jaw, bracing for it. "Did you know she was going to pull me from it?"

His throat ripples with a swallow that goes down hard, but to his credit, he doesn't stand down, doesn't cower before her, even though every part of him seems to be fighting the urge.

"Did you do this?" she whispers, her heart sinking and flaring all at once.

"I thought - I thought it was what you needed."

Oh. Oh, she could kill him.

Kate lets out a breath, utterly hating him in that moment, hating him for taking away the one thing that keeps her grounded, for leaving her with nothing to buoy her in these choppy waters of panic and paranoia that threaten to drown her with every lapping wave, hating him for caring about her.

"Kate, I saw what this case was doing to you, and that you were never going to back down, and I - I will always admire that about you, but I couldn't just watch you run yourself ragged," he gets out, but her fury only grows with every word of his explanation. "I just… wanted to make it okay. For once. I just wanted to-"

"I told you I would be okay!" she snaps, her scar tugging as her heart begins to pound too hard. "I - fuck, I let you in for that moment and this is why I shouldn't have. My life is not yours to control, Castle."

"I wasn't trying to-"

"You went over my head and talked to my boss, you told her to take me off my case, like I'm some kind of child who doesn't know my limits," she spits out, but Castle grits his teeth at that.

"It wasn't my intention to make you look incapable of handling yourself, Beckett. But I do have to wonder about the last part," he mutters, his eyes flickering beneath the shade of his lashes, glancing towards closed shutters that had become a shrine.

"You had no right," she grinds out.

Guilt blooms through his features, remorse, but when he returns his gaze to her, there is no apology, only a hope she can't comprehend.

"I'm sorry for overstepping, but all I wanted to do was help you and I - I thought that giving you a chance to take a break, regroup, would-"

"Well, you thought wrong. I'm - I can't believe you did this!" she finally shouts, can't contain the outrage any longer, can't feel past the exasperation and agony, the pressure and torment of this case, the way he heals and hurts her with his love all at once. "I didn't ask for any of this!"

"Kate-"

She turns her back on him and buries a hand in her hair, digs her nails into her scalp.

"Just go," she huffs out, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to rediscover her breath for the second time that day.

"I did it because I don't want to see this happen again," he says, his voice suddenly at her back, his chest brushing her shoulder as he snags her wrist, gentle but firm as he exposes the snowy white bandage, peeking out from beneath her sleeve, cut through with a strip of crimson once more. "I did it because I love you. Probably too much."

For a split second, everything stills in the whirlwind of her mind, and she's torn between the secret thrill of confirmation that it had been real, that she truly had not imagined the words he'd whispered to her while she'd laid dying in the grass, and the urge to bite out that she didn't ask for that either.

These days, she hardly felt worthy of it anyway.

Castle lets her go, her wrist dropping back to her side, and leaves her alone in the living room that had been tidied up, but still felt like a war zone.

He's an asshole.

A selfish, bullying asshole who was smothering her with love she wasn't even supposed to know about.

Castle sways in the swing, frowning down at the clasp of his hands in his lap, questioning how he could have been so foolish.

Had he really thought he could just get Beckett drawn back from the case and she'd be up to spend the next couple of days of downtime with him, having fun? She was probably back at the Twelfth right now, fighting to regain her spot and gritting her teeth through the persisting effects of PTSD.

He claims to know her so well, but today, he had done the exact opposite of what she wanted because he thought he knew what was best for her, and he could recognize that, hated how unfair it suddenly seemed now when it was all too late.

I let you in for that moment and this is why I shouldn't have.

That had hurt, the regret and frustration in her voice, her face, but maybe she had a point. She gave him an inch, allowed him the rare opportunity of witnessing her in a state of vulnerability, allowed him the chance to just be there for her like he's always wanted, and he took a mile when they were supposed to be moving at the pace of baby steps.

Rick sighs and pushes the toe of his shoe into the dirt.

Apparently, he still has a lot to learn where Kate Beckett is concerned, but he may no longer have the chance to do so anymore.

Kate curls her palm over her jumping knee, closes her eyes, and tries to breathe. There's a sniper in the city, not to mention the man who shot her, both still out there, and every instinct is screaming for her to barricade herself inside her apartment, but the yanking sensation in her chest has her sitting in a cab, on her way to SoHo.

She has control over so little in her life these days and losing that control professionally today had scared her, angered her, but she doesn't want to let them spiral out of control too.

He went behind her back, overstepped, but after the rage had slowed in its pounding through her veins, she had been able to sit and think, to see his side.

He isn't necessarily wrong about her and she knows it. Hell, she had even told him from the beginning how obsessive she can be, how she's made homes out of rabbit holes, and even though this isn't her mother's case, Castle had seen her drowning, and it was his instinct to throw her a life jacket and drag her back to shore. Even if she went kicking and screaming through the waves.

She sighs as she opens her eyes, keeping them on the trembling hands that remain atop her knees. He'd had good intentions, that much was effortless to see, but there had to be another way of exerting them. And in turn, perhaps she could learn to step back before she ended up too deep in the ground, learn to compromise.

Not that she's ever been good at that.

But for Castle, a man who loved her with such strength and uncertainty - probably too much, that had torn through her brittle heart with vicious ease - she wants to try. Because even if she's not ready to say it, to dive that deep, she loves him too.

Her scar is throbbing between her breasts, the strip of healing tissue tugging sharply at her side, but she practices the breathing exercises from physical therapy and pushes through, perseveres her way out of the cab, into the building, up the elevator and to his door.

Castle enters the loft before darkness can fall over the city, expecting to find Alexis in the kitchen or his mother on the couch, but the loft is quiet, bare, and he shrugs off his jacket before venturing further to investigate.

The lights are on, but the only sign of life is coming from his office, a quiet hum of electricity and the glow of a lamp, and the last thing he expects when he walks inside is to find Kate Beckett curled on his couch, a throw blanket drawn up to her chin and her head on the arm of the sofa, her eyes closed and the projector screen pulled down and waiting in front of her.

For a second, he has no idea what to do. The last time they had a big fight, the only reason they reconciled so quickly had been because tragic consequences that had forced them to, but he had never expected she would come to him by her own will.

He had already started brainstorming his own game plan on how to apologize throughout his walk home.

"Beckett?" he whispers, descending to his haunches in front of the couch when she doesn't stir, cupping a gentle palm to her shoulder in hopes of softening the chances of startling her when he knows how on edge she is. "Kate."

Her brow scrunches, but her chest expands with a wakening breath, and then she's shifting, peeling her eyes open to squint at him.

"Finally," she grumbles, frowning up at him and blinking away the leftover sleep in her eyes as he tilts his head in confusion. "Been waiting on you for over two hours."

"Waiting on me?" he echoes, moving to stand while she sits up, but Kate catches him by the wrist, stills him from rising and swings her legs over the edge of the sofa, letting her knees settle between his.

"Alexis let me in, helped me set up the projector," she yawns, raking a hand through her hair. "You mentioned a movie marathon. There's popcorn in the kitchen."

He is officially and utterly lost.

"But - but I - you're mad at me," he stammers, watching the corner of her mouth quirk, but not in amusement. No, she looks as sad and worn out as he feels.

"I was mad," she concurs with a nod, releasing his wrist to curl her fingers in her lap. "And disappointed. I still am, to a degree, but I… Castle, you and my job are the only things that keep me grounded, that help me," she confesses, training her gaze on her twisting hands to get the words out, and for once, he keeps his mouth firmly shut. "When you took one of those things from me, it felt like the ground beneath me was shaken."

"Kate-"

"Please, just - let me finish," she murmurs and he sits back on his heels, waits patiently while she continues to gather the words. "And I know you never wanted to do that, that you really thought you were helping, but you can't just - you have to talk to me, Rick. What you did today wasn't okay, no matter how much you wanted to help and how much I may have needed it."

"I know," he agrees. "But talking isn't always an option with us, especially when you get… invested."

"I know that too," she mumbles, frowning down at her hands. "How difficult I can be. But if it comes down to it, find a way to force me to listen if you have to. Don't go behind my back."

"I can do that," he decides, determined to do it. If it means being allowed to stick around, to keep her in his life, he'd damn well do just about anything.

"Good," she breathes, lifting tentative eyes to him and pursing her lips. And he would bet that she's wondering the same thing he is - can this really be resolved so easily? "Well, I have a couple of days off. Want to capitalize on that movie marathon after all?"

"Kate, if you want, I'll go to Gates, tell her how out of line-"

She shakes her head. "It's too late for that. Ryan and Esposito caught a lead with the sniper, those paper dolls. They can handle themselves without me for the rest of this one."

Rick bites down on another apology and looks up at her, slightly surprised to find her watching him with something soft in her gaze, the flares of anger and hard layer of stoned amber nothing more than rubble and embers. He's not used to this more forgiving side to her, this near tender expression on her face he doesn't quite know.

The 'I plan to murder you and they'll never find the body' face from earlier, yes. This, no.

"About what I said back at your place," he starts and Beckett draws one of her arms around her stomach, pressing her bandaged forearm to her abdomen.

"It was an accident," she explains, and even while he's grateful to hear it, had already suspected it, he shakes his head.

"No, I meant… I know you didn't ask for this, that everything I said near the end was too much and I don't want you to feel pressured by-"

"Castle, no, that's not…" She sighs and leans forward, close enough with him on the floor and her body seated on the low couch that her forehead knocks into his, allowing them both a moment of rest he had so desperately needed. Needed with her. "I may not have asked for it, but that doesn't mean I don't want it."

He sucks in a breath, feels her lashes flutter as her hand ascends to graze his jaw.

"I can't - I'm not there yet, where I want to be," Kate whispers, biting down on her bottom lip when he opens his eyes, torturing him in a way he can't distinguish as painful or pleasant. "But it's not too much. It's enough for now, enough for me to - hold onto."

He extends one of his hands forward to slip along her arm, cup the sharp point of her elbow.

"It's yours for however long you want it," he nods, drawing back from the intimate kiss of heads, offering her the soft spread of his lips and stroking his thumb at the back of her arm. "I'm not going anywhere, Kate."

"Good, because I'm keeping it," she announces with a shy smile that matches his, a sight he certainly never would have fathomed being on the receiving end of today. He never would have fathomed her to embrace the terror his words had to have evoked earlier, to seek him out in his apartment with his daughter's help, to forgive him with far more ease than usual.

To let him love her.

"So, does this mean I can say it out loud?" he muses, arching an eyebrow at her, half challenge, half genuine hope. "In a less dire and/or tense situation such as now?"

Kate rolls her eyes. "I'd prefer you wait, if possible. Until I can say it back."

This may be the best night of his life.

"Deal," he beams, reveling in the quiet chuckle she releases. "Now, what movie do you want to watch?"

They share the couch in his office for three movies straight, even though she begins drifting from the exhaustion that still wears heavy in every line of her face before the first film can even come to an end, her body slumping into his side before she can stop it, her cheek landing against his shoulder.

It's a strange sense of deja vu, a better version of the comforting solidarity they had found together in the hall earlier that day - he can't believe the drastic turns that have occurred all in one day - only this is better.

"Shh, stop thinking," she mutters, shifting against his side, resting heavy and warm against him, blanketing him in the overwhelming scent of cherries and the soothing sensation of reassurance. "I'm keeping you, Castle."

So much better.