A/N: I didn't like the way that "47 Seconds" ended, at all, so I wrote this as a response. I thought about scrapping it, but I also felt that the season finale was lacking, so here you go.
Obviously, Caskett is not mine. Enjoy!
By 2:13am Rick Castle had given up any hope of falling asleep. He rolled out of bed and trudged down to the kitchen. Staring blankly into the confines of the bright refrigerator light numbed him somewhat. "I need comfort food," he mumbled to himself. Ice cream? No, Alexis had finished off his carton of X-treme Moosetracks and he didn't like anything else they had in the freezer. There were Oreos lying around somewhere…Aha!
He reached around the Oreos and pulled out one of the emergency blue boxes. He definitely had the blues. Hopefully the extra work required—if boiling water and mixing cheese actually amounted to work—would help take his mind off of things. He filled the sauce pan with water and dialed the knob on the stove. A bubble rose to the surface of the water and burst, producing a pattern of ripples that spread to the edge of the pan and stilled. Rick identified with the bubble, a lone disturbance in the deep that settled after a while, leaving no trace of its existence behind.
That wasn't supposed to happen when you confessed your love to someone. That wasn't supposed to happen to him.
But it had.
Rick went to the fridge and pulled out a jug of milk and a bottle of chocolate sauce, hoping to keep his hands busy before he tossed the noodles into the water. Busy was good, and chocolate milk was basically happiness in a cup. The spoon rattled loudly against the glass as he stirred and Rick had to remind himself that taking his anger out on a glass would only wake up his mother and Alexis, who would both tell him that he needed to talk to…to her. Taking a sip he looked at the pan. Nothing. No more bubbles. He cursed his literary mind: this was physics and not a story. The placid water wasn't meant to symbolize Beckett's feelings for him. The water simply wasn't boiling. Maybe he'd put in too much water. Yeah, must be it. The more water in the pan, the longer it would take to boil. Physics. Not psychology. Physics.
His cup was drained and still no bubbles. He made himself another glass of chocolate milk and checked the pan again. Tiny bubbles, but no boiling.
Rick focused on his breathing, inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling, until the tightness in his chest began to loosen. His heart was pounding and his eyes blurred of their own accord. This reaction angered him—she had no idea that he was standing in the kitchen in the middle of the night crying over her. And why should he cry? Yes, he loved her. Everyone knew that. Apparently she knew that, despite her lies. But if she'd really cared about him—even as a friend—she would have put him out of his misery, right?
So you went and lost your heart to a heartless bitch. His mind supplied the lines, but in his heart he knew that she wasn't heartless. Or a bitch, really. She was…perfect.
And she lied to him.
A single tear rolled down his cheek, but he refused to acknowledge it. Instead he registered the hissing sound issuing from the stove top and he up-ended the macaroni into the pan. The wooden spoon trembled in the water, but his hands calmed as he found a relaxing pattern to trace in the water. Up down, back to the middle, up to the right, back, down to the left, back, up, down, loop, loop, up, down, back to the middle…he paused, realizing what it was he was tracing. K B.
He momentarily abandoned the noodles and made himself another glass of chocolate milk, contemplating spiking it. If he got himself good and drunk then he wouldn't have to worry about the hurricane his thoughts had turned into after finishing the bombing case. Knocking himself out would be good. After all, it wasn't his fault that she lied to him. Or was it? His eyes blurred again but he refused to allow himself to break down. Another tear traced the path of the first and he ignored it, too. No, drinking wasn't going to fix his problem, and for some reason he felt that he needed to confront the pain head on, as though he deserved it.
How long had the noodles been boiling? They didn't look done yet, so he continued stirring as he thought back over the past few months for the tenth time that evening. Obviously—he forced himself to think her name—Kate had a reason to distrust him, even to dislike him. Time and again she'd told him to stay away from her mother's case, and time and again he'd ignored her. He broke through her walls without giving it a second thought, and a number of times she lost her temper and said she never wanted to see him again. But that was before they'd managed to track down Raglan. After realizing just how involved and complex the real story was, she'd seemed to appreciate his prying. She hadn't pushed him away when he'd pulled her out of the hanger before Montgomery was shot, either, so he'd assumed that things were on their way to becoming…well, more.
Rick guessed the noodles were done and flipped the stove off with one hand while he reached for the strainer with the other. Steam rose from the sink as he poured out the contents of the pan, bouncing the strainer every so often to sift the noodles. He dumped the macaroni back in the pan and felt his heart sink a little more: for some reason the sight of plain macaroni always depressed him. Grabbing the rest of the supplies from the refrigerator and taking a long drink of his virgin chocolate milk, Rick finished preparing his snack.
The cheese powder lumped together when he stirred, reminding him that he hadn't added butter.
He corrected his mistake, dumped it all in a big mixing bowl and relocated to the sofa, where he pulled a blanket over his head before he began eating his now lukewarm comfort food. Always one to eat mac'n cheese with a fork, he took morbid delight in spearing the tiny noodles.
After five bites he could feel the food mixing with the chocolate milk in his stomach, but he kept eating. He described the scene in his head, paying particular attention to the gritty, tasteless mush in his mouth. It seemed to have lost any temperature at all, along with its smell. It simply existed in the bowl, there for him alone to devour and otherwise without purpose. He ate until he could feel its solid weight in his stomach. Bile rose in his throat but he kept it down, his eyes blurring again. The bowl safely on the coffee table, Rick pulled the blanket tighter around himself, as if he could shut out the rest of the world. She was out there, somewhere.
He'd known from the beginning that his feelings for Kate hadn't been welcome or reciprocated…much. He'd known that, but still he'd followed where she went and hoped he could change her mind. At some point they'd become friends, bonding over the highs and lows that came with police work, and he had appreciated that she'd finally taken the time to look past the public façade and gotten to know the real Rick Castle. He wasn't sure, but he thought it was safe to say that apart from his mother and daughter, no one knew him as well as Kate did.
Not even his ex-wives. Gina had been too serious to put up with Rick's inextinguishable inner child, Meredith had been too much of a child herself, and neither of them had evoked the emotional response in him that Kate had. Kate was serious enough to balance out his immaturity, but fun enough to play along with him. She kept him guessing, a trait that intrigued both the author and the man.
And yet she'd still lied to him. The tears fell freely, a fact he blamed on sleep deprivation and emotional strain, further complicated by a severe tummy ache. His breathing was even and he remained still, despite the fact that he was tensed to the point his muscles were beginning to cramp. Eyes stinging, knees twinging, back aching, the fetal position was anything but comforting. Real men weren't supposed to break like this, however the very thought of straightening himself out left him with a sense of vertigo, as though unclenching his hands from his shins would break the tie that prevented his body from fading to nothingness. In this moment, Richard Castle could care less that he was a grown adult, a man known for his spine-tingling ability to weave best-selling stories out of nothing more than keen observation and words, words that seemed to reshape the world by creating more heroes and monsters. No, all that mattered at that moment was the realization that the only words that would make him feel any better could never come from himself.
What he needed was an explanation, something that would help him make sense of her deception. While Kate was nowhere as blunt as Lanie, he still felt sure that she would have no problem turning him down. It wouldn't be the first time she'd told him to get lost.
Maybe she was scared of hurting his feelings. If she valued their friendship as much as he did—and as much as he thought she did—then she would be reluctant to flat out turn him down. Playing the amnesia card gave her a quick and easy out and put the blame on him for not repeating his declaration. That was certainly a possibility, but Rick wasn't sure he was ready to accept all of the blame there. He thought back to their talk on the playground after the book signing. She'd told him that she wouldn't be in a position to enter a serious relationship until her mother's murder was solved. Whether that was true or not was unclear, but she had said it, so surely that must have meant that she wanted him to back off for the time being, fake amnesia or not.
He hated to think that she was cowardly enough to sink to that level of deception to avoid even considering a relationship with him, but nothing else fit. There was also no way that he would be able to approach her about it, as experience had shown him that Beckett tended to lash out when she was cornered.
For a moment he allowed himself to step out on the proverbial ledge and hope. His imagination took off at a sprint and attempted to characterize his current predicament. If Kate did care…if she did want something more from him…maybe she really wasn't ready.