"I feel like the first few beats were hurtful … and finding solace in each other... These are two people who are extraordinary as individuals... And then because they're so extraordinary, they're alone... By being together, maybe they're not so alone? This is a person that she can be safe around." - Stana Katic.

I just had to play with that.

Extraordinary Individuals

By Rianne

She had climbed to his floor on trembling legs.

Zigging and zagging up the ascending stairs, wet squelches of her jeans echoing loud in the empty stairwell.

Emergency steps, rarely used by the tenants of a building like this.

Aptly named for her.

For there had been little chance his doorman would have granted her easy access to the elevator without causing a scene.

Soaked clothes, wild eyes, distracted heart.

The staff here knew her too well. Would have worried and pitied and fretted.

But a quick tilt of her hand, and constantly moving feet, had brought her to the stairs without more than a mild blink of query.

Unless he had just not wanted to question the determination on her face.

Focused to the point of Zen.

On capturing her Castle.

She had swung resolutely through the doorway and into the vast echoing chamber.

And then upward.

Moving through the pools of awakening light as she triggered motion sensors on each of the floors.

Illumination clicking off behind her as she climbed.

Breathless by the time she reached his level.

Stepped from concrete floors, through to neatly carpeted hallway.

Standing at his door.

Heart in her throat.

Trembling fingers clenched into fists. Nails biting into the forgiving flesh.

He had refused her call.

He never refused her call.

She had never needed him more than this.

Nearly dancing from foot to foot.

Barely aware of her own actions her mind is so fast.

It is now or never, and never cannot be an option.

Now is the time to live. To love. To get what she wants.

Her knock is decisive.

Loud.

The moments that follow too. Echoing with her heartbeat, her panting breath.

She spreads her feet, steadying her stance. Waiting for the sound of footsteps.

Bracing for impact.

For the wall of hurt she knows she created.

'Kate, I love you. I love you Kate.'

She wasn't ready.

She might not be now.

But she has to try.

Her mother would want her to live.

She is the strength at her back, pushing her forward.

The door swings open.

Warmth pouring out, sending her senses reeling.

This is it.

Their moment.

Her chance to really find a place to belong.

Castle's apartment is a Home. A family. Welcoming. Warm.

She meets his gaze as thunder rolls.

And time stops.

The sight of him.

Her aching heart throbs as she watches him shift.

His eyes forcibly harden. His stance goes stiff. He makes himself taller.

His battlements are drawn. Readying himself for more hurt.

Pain in every nuance of his posture tearing her insides apart.

But she can do this.

"Beckett, what do you want?"

She can hear the hurt deep in his voice as he just manages not to break.

She can understand it, feel it too. Can only hope as never before that he can understand, can grasp for forgiveness.

The air sharpens between them.

For her clarity dawns.

"You."

The confession barely from her lips before she gives in.

Her physical advance the only reaction imaginable to answer the pull she no longer needs to fight.

Her desire for him in every way now at a level of desperation her head and her heart could never ignore.

His face is warm beneath her reaching palms, his lips soft, his mouth open, gasping surprised and hot.

She has to fix this. To let him know that he is not alone.

To beg for absolution she might not deserve. Might not be worthy of. Can scarcely hope to receive.

This is their second kiss and it leaves her dizzy.

-000-

She smelt of atmosphere.

The scent of her an overwhelming breeze pouring towards him as he swings open the door.

Thunder and static in the air.

There is a drowsy fog clinging to the tussled strands of her hair.

Cloaking her in aura of weighted storm clouds, full to breaking point, ready to release angst filled droplets tumbling to earth.

Moisture beads like dew on grass, gleams on her skin.

Thunder crashes in the receding distance wreaking havoc across the violent sky.

As his world shrinks to just the woman before him.

Everything is quivering with the uneasy shiver of transformation in the air.

And there she is.

Of course she is.

Eyes achingly full, darkly gleaming with her sins.

Tempting, taunting, and begging him to break.

Face streaked with tears.

He had known it was her.

Of course it was.

He had ignored her call; there was no way she would just let that drift.

Determined, frustrating, beautiful Kate Beckett.

The woman he had just literally and figuratively binned.

The sight of her hurt.

Made his chest burn.

He opened his mouth.

Tried to be in control.

Spoke the accusing words, too sharp, too hurt, and too accented with his pain.

"Beckett, what do you want?"

And he watched her fall.

"You."

Her word no time to register before her lips and her hands are upon him.

Her advance a rush of breathless, desperate longing.

She is passing him the ache.

Open mouth hot. Burning his. The only warm part of her shivering frame.

Her fingers cool, clinging, against his cheeks.

He can taste her and what should be sweet, memory forming, is filled with pain.

Her flavour tainted with the ache of their previous arguments. The searing sharpness of devastating secrets kept.

With the bitterness of the agonisingly bitter words recently volleyed between them, each strike launched with a level of pinpoint accuracy that only those closest to you can possess.

Accusations that have soured within them both for a year and hurt all the more for their fine grains of truth.

'…nowhere relationships with men you don't love… crawled into your mothers case and never came out… this is over, I'm done."

It's too much for him.

An overload.

There is no space to think.

A roar in his ears that must be his heart.

He had expected angry, anticipated aggression.

Not this.

Not this wavering, yet determined, trembling, yet sure woman so focused on trying to steal the breath from him.

Their second kiss.

The first she has initiated, but he can't bare it any longer.

Confusing, heartbreaking, earth shattering.

Kate.

He is so angry with her.

He loves her.

Why can't she see what she is?

What she is worth to him?

To others? Her father, her friends?

What she does to herself? When the hunt for the truth takes over and the rabbit hole wins. Spiralling her away from everyone who cares.

Why can't she see what he can see?

How extraordinary she is.

'Every morning I bring you a cup of coffee, just so I can see a smile on your face.'

She is so, so close.

Her forehead against his, her breath panting too, she inhales what he exhales.

It is everything he ever wanted.

Delivered at the wrong time, with perfect precision. Horrendous timing.

She is murmuring, gentle words, sobbing for his forgiveness.

"I'm sorry," tumbles from her quivering lips, over and over and over.

A litany, his name spoken with the reverence of a prayer.

Her touch falling from his face to his shoulder to support herself as she sways.

-000-

"I'm sorry… I'm so sorry Castle," whispered feather soft.

Her own breath fanning back against her chin at his closeness.

Nose to nose and swaying dazed.

Surrounded by his strength and his heat and his familiar scent.

Safe.

Safe enough to just be.

Open, honest, real.

To allow the words to flow, to not have to bite them back, to keep them restrained behind the wall.

The wall is gone, smashed to dust as her fingers lost their grip on the edge of that building.

The wall fell, not her.

She has risen strong.

Yet he is untrusting.

Confusion ebbs off him, tightens his stance, grits his nerves against giving in to her.

She has done this to him.

To this man with the biggest, most open, most vulnerable heart she knows.

This man who offered her love, protection and shelter and she has fought tooth and nail, sarcasm and rolled eyes, against him every step of the way.

He is different this close, his blurred features familiar yet strange.

"Are you a part of this…?" the disbelief and devastation still reverberates. That edge of uncertainty.

That he had known things, held precious leads, answers, odd socks, and had kept them from her. For a year.

Betrayed by the only one she trusted. The bottom dropped out of her world.

"If you care about me at all, just don't do this."

Does she really know him?

But the answer is yes. As well as she knows herself.

Only he would put himself on the line. Only he would put himself in her place in the line of fire.

He had done it before, took that stand beside her, tried to take her bullet in the bright sunlight of Montgomery's funeral.

But now she is seeing him with the clarity that only one who has nearly lost their life can.

Stupid, confusing, beautiful man.

He is everything.

Not her job.

Not her mother's case.

Him.

And she will clamour, fight, and beg, for this man she loves.