Disclaimer: I do not own Castle, For Lovers Only or the song Bloodstream by Stateless. This story is merely inspired by all of the above.
Chapter One
I think I might've inhaled you
I could feel you behind my eyes
You've gotten into my bloodstream
I could feel you floating in me
A familiar blast of cold air assaulted Rick's face and neck the moment he straightened from the exit of the private jet. New York City. Here he was again in the town that never sleeps; the town many assume to be of his birth and success. All he remembered was a piece of him dying inside this city, and the rest of him with too much winter in his bones to be sun-drenched by the laughter of Los Angeles, the place he called his new home.
It had been five whole years since he had stepped foot into the city he used to love, and he would not have been here now had Paula, his book agent, not exclaimed for him to grow up and return for an important editor's meeting.
The truth was Richard Castle had not published anything for the last five years. After a long and weary drought, he had tried to regain a part of himself by beginning a novella. The editors did not like it. It was too dark, they had commented. It would not have appealed to readers. It seemed that he had forgot how to write about magic and love and hope and warmth. His work made their hearts sink, as if that was his aim, as if he wanted them as company. His melancholy seemed to seep out of him and bleed into the ink.
Everything he wrote was about her and for her. Even the way he described the weather was to find pieces of her ā in the snow, in the wind, in the dark cloak of a night sky that only seemed to consume him.
So, he had only survived these past few years by distributing rights to the Nikki Heat movies, allowing graphic artists to develop Derrick Storm, and riding on a past glory that no longer felt like his.
Rick surveyed the LaGuardia airport slowly. Small airplanes dotted the largely empty area, and people were milling towards metallic doors that invited them into warmth. Instead of seeing excited tourists and returning New Yorkers, he recalled the images of a particular night at another hangar, images that were burnt into his brain no matter how long ago it seemed.
He remembered the way her screams seared through him like electric shocks, he remembered the hysteria drowning her eyes, he remembered the way she slid down under his weight, and he remembered thinking he had to carry the world for her now. He would breathe for her, if she could no longer do so. He remembered forcing her away from the mentor they both loved, knowing full well he would no longer be standing when they returned. He remembered only thinking about how if she had died, if he had not pulled her away, how he would not have survived.
It seemed he had not survived either way.
Sighing and blinking the images away so easily it only reminded him of how practised the action was, Rick strode silently into the immigration checkpoint. It was still early in the morning, so the line at the guarded area was not long. Although Rick could commission a private jet, he had felt it necessary to arrive in New York at a time where fewer people were around.
As he joined the end of the slow-moving line, he was once again reminded of another memory related to her ā this one of him in the airport waiting to board the plane to Los Angeles, knowing that she was boarding the same plane in a quest for justice for her training officer, the love of her past life. Kate Beckett had guarded her heart so jealously that he had wondered how Mike Royce could have thrown it all away when she so gladly bestowed it upon him so long ago. It was all in the past now, and Rick could no longer marvel at the mysteries of her heart.
He could not help but think about how strange the affairs of the human heart were. As soon as Kate was absent from his life, she only became more painfully present. She filled every single gap of his being, seeped into every nook and cranny of his life, appeared on walls and street corners, came up in every pause in every conversation, and she filled him. She filled him the way sand fills an hourglass, until she squeezed him dry.
Finally, Rick reached the checkpoint. The immigration officer on duty smiled at him amiably, and Rick wondered if he could see the pain in him.
"Welcome to New York, sir."
Rick managed a tight smile, and a ghost of a frown seemed to pass the officer's face, as if he sensed Rick's unhappiness.
"Business or pleasure?"
"Purely business," Rick said, sliding the young man his passport.
"Oh, but you're in the city that never sleeps! You should go out and have some fun at night. Watch a Broadway musical or something." The officer seemed to lend Rick a benign smile that promised everything was going to be all right. Oh, will it kill you to smile? He seemed to be saying with his eyes. "I guarantee you will love New York, sir."
"Hmmm, I don't like it very much, not anymore." Rick said, almost apologetically, but his mind filled instantly with images of Kate again. This left the officer with nothing to say, a situation that seemed to make him nervous, so when Rick received his freshly stamped passport from the officer, he nodded and said, "Well, have a nice day."
He walked further into the airport and towards the gateway to New York City. He could not help but wonder if he had transformed, if he had altered from being an essentially happy and optimistic person to becoming a fundamentally depressed man, one who would make good material for a novel. Only, there was no metaphorical salvation for him, and if there was no Kate, he needed no salvation. There seemed to be no one else that could replace the room in his heart he had carved out so carefully for her and that she had ripped from him, like pulling an IV wire off his needy diseased being.
This did not mean he had not tried though. Succumbing to the glamorous life of Los Angeles, he had attended premiere after premiere, threw parties after parties, trying to remember what it was about the socialite universe that had been so attractive before. He remained charming, and to the world he retained the persona that they assumed was also him. But when he cracked jokes, he hated himself for desiring an expected eye-roll, when all he got was affected laughter and too affectionate arm caresses.
A series of automatic doors indicated to him that he was finally exiting the airport. Stepping out to embrace the chilly winter air once again, Rick closed his eyes and breathed.
The yellow cab dropped him and his luggage a few blocks from his hotel, as he had instructed. Midtown was familiar to him and he felt like taking a morning stroll, just to soak up the city and try to remember it the way he used to love it. The streets were mostly empty and they smelled of morning dew and Chinese food.
Turning a street corner, Rick lifted his head to meet a concrete, worn flight of stairs. He seemed to recall a string of shops along this street, and a coffee place he used to love, but it was too early in the morning for this part of the city to be crowded. The pavement was laced with a few early risers, and only one well-dressed woman was descending the flight of stairs Rick began to ascend. He climbed a few steps up and ā oh God.
The woman going down the stairs was Kate Beckett.
He felt instantly like he was drowning from an amalgamation of words and emotions that jammed at the back of his throat.
He could not breathe.
His sudden lack of movement caught Kate's attention and she noticed him too. She stopped. Her eyes locked on to his, wide with alarm and disbelief.
If he reflected upon it later, he knew it would not have been true, but at that moment, the world seemed to dissolve around them. Her stillness only matched his, and his only matched the incapacity of the world to move around him. He could only take her in. She was wearing a brown overcoat with large cotton buttons and an understated pair of black boots. When his mind finally rediscovered language, the thought crossed his mind that perhaps the cosmic force of how the more you think about someone, the more likely the person were to appear was true.
The light fell across her face like a stream of gold, and she would have looked like the aloof goddess he used to know, except that he could not place her expression. The shock that wrote over her features transformed almost instantly into an odd mix of pain and anxiety. If he looked closely, he swore he saw fear in her eyes. Still, she looked wonderful, and it tortured him. She still wore her hair in the same hazel-coloured curls, and her eyes were still half-brown, but magically green in the sunlight. She looked the same as the woman who haunted his dreams, and he quietly resented her for it.
He had written this scene a million times in his head, until at last her face had almost transformed into a blur and vague sting. Yet, none of it could have prepared him for this moment. He did not know how, but he felt knocked out of air and brought back to life at the same time.
Slowly, he regained strength in his legs to move upwards, taking one more step towards her. She mimicked by descending another step.
They met each other in the middle of the flight of stairs. She was closer to him than she ever was in five years. He stopped a few levels beneath her because he was afraid that if he went any closer she would disappear like a mirage.
They regarded each other in silence for a while, but in his mind cacophony rose into a crescendo until he almost expected to explode. She looked about her in discomfort, while his heart was about to ram out of his chest. Adrenaline coursed through his bloodstream. He could not tell if he was relieved or pained at her presence. He did not know if he wanted to kiss her or run away. He wished a big yellow school bus would just come crashing into them already.
Rick waited a few more beats, but the bus did not come.
Instead, Kate's eyes flickered from his eyes, to his mouth, to away from him, and back to eyes again, as she said, "I⦠uh, I'm going to be late. Will you give me a call?"
She reached into her bag, and fumbled for a bit, before pulling out an old-looking card. "The number is the same."
After pressing the card into his palms, she backed away from him, as if in flustered panic. Slowly, she continued on the path she was on, before their collision. He took a few more steps up the staircase, his mouth dry and his head whirling.
He allowed a moment to pass where he felt his gut clenched so hard it was beginning to hurt, before he turned around again to watch her retreating back. Still, he felt like he has lost the capacity to breathe.
Looking around him, he realised the city was beginning to awaken. Of all the people, of all the street corners, of all the mornings, it had to be her, it had to be here, and it had to be today.
Who was he kidding? This was New York City. This was bound to happen.
The spaces in between
Two minds and all the places they have been
The spaces in between
I tried to put my finger on it
I tried to put my finger on it
Author's Note: Hi there! I do not peruse the main page of Castle fanfiction, so I'm not sure how popular FLO-inspired fics are, but this has been in my head for a while. Even before the movie, I have wanted to write something of Castle and Beckett meeting like this after years of separation. The film only spurred me on, because the moment Yves and Sofia meet is just so gut wrenching and beautiful. So, I'm not sure what this little chapter will amount to, but I will be glad to continue if the popular opinion wishes it so.
