"If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right." - Jules Renard
He leads her by the hand to the bedroom.
They don't make love.
It's quiet in his room. A rustle of sheets here, the soft hum and tick of his laptop's hard drive as it does its nightly backup there. Tentatively he reaches out, closes the distance and runs his fingers over the map of bones and cartilage in her spine. She shivers, remains silent, and scoots a little closer; still not touching, too far away, but enough that he can feel the warmth of her skin as it seeps into the linens.
It hurts.
The only indication of her distress, that anything is amiss, that their entire world is crumbling, is the tremble as she takes each breath.
"Kate..."
"Castle, don't."
He sighs, tangles a stray curl around his pinky finger. She gulps in a lungful of air, the sound strangled and painful to his ears. He wants nothing more than to pull her into his side and hold her.
But he won't. She did this.
They've been on tenterhooks all night. Fighting, slinging accusatory words and getting nowhere. This truce is delicate at best.
Despite all the courage he'd managed to gather as he'd finally told her that the decision was hers, that nothing would have to change… it fucking hurts.
He understands the choice she has to make; why it's so hard for her.
He does.
A part of him is ridiculously proud of her. He's so very proud that she was chosen to be a part of such an elite force; a handful of the best, doing their best, to take down the worst. And this could be her chance. To finally take down Bracken.
From the top this time, with the weight of the Attorney General at her back. Instead of from the bottom up; one step forward and two steps back.
God, he wants that for her.
Despite her best efforts over the past year, it just keeps coming back to haunt them. As long as that man is in power, there will always be a noose dangling above their heads.
The other part of him is a petulant little boy who doesn't understand how she could even consider the offer.
His face feels warm and it isn't until he reaches up to run a hand over his achy forehead that he realizes that he's crying. Silent tears run burning hot trails down his cheeks. He bites the inside of his cheek to staunch the flow.
"Rick," she gasps, and he wonders if she knows what this is doing to him. Is it hurting her as bad as it is him?
He bites down harder. Until he tastes iron and his cheeks are dry. His jaw aches from the effort.
She reaches back, fumbles and flounders her hand until she finds his and clasps tight, squeezing, her nails digging into the flesh at his wrist. Somehow it feels like a goodbye.
He squeezes back. It's a plea.
She rolls over then, burrowing her face into his neck. He feels wetness as it pools in his clavicle. Good, he thinks childishly. But he wraps an arm around her waist anyway and pulls her close, burrowing his nose into her hair and rememorizing her scent. Just in case.
In case she says yes.
She should say yes, his mind helpfully retorts. He casts his eyes to the digital display and watches as the minutes tick by on his alarm clock. Ten minutes, and then twenty. Her breathing has evened out and he thinks she might be asleep.
"You should take the job," he mutters into the gloomy still of the night. It's a benediction and blessing that he didn't have the bravery to muster when she'd asked with teary eyes what he thought she should do. When he didn't have the courage to tell her what he actually wanted. What he was afraid he'd ruin if he ever spoke it out loud.
The thought of her leaving, even part-time, has left him near-paralyzed with the fear. Unable to give her the guidance she seeks. The reassurances. Now that he has time to reflect on all that he is about to lose, he realizes that she has been in search of answers for weeks. She's aching for the future, while he clings to the past, and he wonders when they got so turned around. When she became the rock and he the one with the walls. He feels sick to his stomach as he tries to imagine not waking up to her warm body at his side every morning; abject terror and loneliness rushes over him in an all-consuming wave as his mind considers a life where he isn't her partner anymore.
He wants a do-over. He wants to take back the last few weeks and rewind to the point where she'd bared her soul as she stood upon a bomb. To the point where she'd spent the rest of the following weekend repeating it; making sure he knew it wasn't a deathbed confessional.
She'd told him they could work it out, that the commute wasn't too bad; that they'd have weekends and holidays. He could fly down to see her; she could come up to the city and see him. She'd told him that they could make it work and that maybe she could even work out of New York City once she had settled in. With tears in her eyes and uncertainty clouding her features, she'd suggested he could move to D.C.
He'd told her about his responsibilities and that he couldn't just pack up and leave. He had asked her about Lanie and the boys. Wondered if she'd even considered how they would feel if she left. He'd told her that if she took this job their relationship would be as good as over.
He's a selfish asshole.
He's a writer. He doesn't need to live in this city. He has a laptop and a portable hotspot. He could write from Bumfuck, Idaho if he really wanted to. His daughter has left the nest and his mother is scarce these days as her acting studio takes off and she becomes more and more involved.
Nothing is actually tying him to New York City at all.
Nothing but his pride.
He could fix this simply by going there with her.
"You should go," he repeats, certainty in the statement, lacing his voice.
If she'll take him, he will follow.
In the morning, when she wakes up, he will try and explain what he has been feeling. How afraid he is, but how much he wants them to work, no matter the effort it takes. He'll go anywhere if he gets to be with her.
She sobs then; loud, aching, a desolate cry into his throat.
And then he realizes with start that she's been awake this whole time. He realizes how that might have sounded to her.
"Oh god, Kate, no… please don't cry."
Her hands clutch the back of his neck, painfully tight, fingers clawing in the short hairs at the nape of his neck, as though she's trying to stop the flow of his words, as though she's hanging on for dear life.
"I don't want to go," she cries.
And in that moment, something lifts in his heart.
The fear that he wasn't good enough for her, the nagging thought that maybe she was happy for this offer, that it was a handy excuse to end it with him. A way for her to gracefully back out now things between them had reached a turning point. Sink or swim.
"I should go," she sobs, "I should. This could be everything I've ever hoped for but Royce…"
"Royce?" he asks, confused. What has Royce got to do with any of this?
"Before he…"
She takes a breath, pries herself away from his chest and looks him in the eye.
"Before he died," she begins again, "he left me a letter. He told me that putting the job ahead of my heart was a mistake, that the last thing I want is to look back on my life and wonder, if only… He said that what we had was real."
He had always brooded over that, had been so tempted to ask as she'd read and re-read that letter on the flight back from L.A., as she shot him surreptitious looks and stroked the worn paper with her thumb. At the time, he'd thought that maybe it was a last-minute love letter from the doomed private eye. Jealousy had burned in his gut with every caress of the note. Turns out the man had been his own private cheerleader. He makes a note to move him down on the list of Beckett exes he'd like to forget.
He was so used to drowning in failed relationships. Until this moment it had never occurred to him that swimming was a viable option.
"And what do you think?"
"He was right, Rick. But I don't want to wonder and lately..."
"Lately I've been a scared, jealous and spiteful jackass," he finishes for her with a smile and a raised brow.
"Something like that," she says, biting her lip and fighting a grin. "Rick, where are we going?"
"Wherever you want, Kate," he says earnestly. "I'm all in. You want to take this job, take it. But I'm coming with you. You want to stay? We stay. We're doing this together because just the thought of this ending, of us…"
"Shh," she says, laying a finger against his lips. "We've only just begun."
Tada! Writer's block, be gone with you!
Thanks to Em for the super-speedy beta on the fly. She rocks my socks.