Disclaimer- Don't own the characters or any of the dialogue
She knew there was no denying that New York summers could suck. The humidity was what really did her in each year. Heat alone she could handle, but the heaviness the heat gained because it was humid made her wish she had chosen to live somewhere with dry summers, somewhere on the west coast – like California. Every summer she would use whatever time she had that wasn't being eaten away by her job, time that was almost non-existent, to stop and dream of wind, rain, snow, anything that signaled the coldness of winter. And she knows it's fitting that she dreams of those muggy and oppressive New York summers at this moment.
She can really feel the cold now. She knew it was cold as soon as the freezer door shut, but sitting here next to Castle she can finally feel it; in fact it's overriding everything else. She sees Castle, she knows he's there, but all she senses is the coldness creeping in, further than it has already, and she suddenly has a sharp sense of clarity. She has to talk to him, it's now or never. They talk all the time, they're talking now, but never about them and she suddenly wants to, she needs to.
"Castle," she whispers, and reaches up to touch his face, "Thank you for being there."
"Always." He replies, and she knows he understands that she is also thanking him for all the times she has tried to push him away and he resisted. It is that unspoken connection in this moment that drives her to voice a thought she has been forming since their latest encounter with her mother's case.
"I just want you to know how much I l-"
And as the blackness takes over, her last lucid thought is that it's better for their relationship that she never completes that sentence, not even in her own head.
A/N: Inspired by the movie The Core which made me mentally compare that situation to Castle (which I do for everything) and made me remember my old Bio teacher's favorite saying "Homeostasis is a bitch". The fact that it led to this story doesn't make much sense to me, but that's apparently how I think. You can blame the ending on a quote by Stana Katic saying, "Men should never marry their muse. It ruins the illusion" which I never want to have any affect on the show, but it fits their situation. My first time writing fanfic instead of just lurking and reading and like all other first time writers I'm super insecure about how it turned out. Thoughts?