I know it's me that's supposed to love you,
And when I'm home you know I got you,
Is there somebody who can love you?
- Is There Somebody Who Can Watch You, The 1975
Disclaimer: Unless someone bought me the rights and didn't tell me, no, I don't own Castle.
You're falling into the trap of her lungs, breathing through her listless body and succumbing to the amorphous circuitry of her mind. Fingertips shake with warmth and blushes and empty gasps open on soundless words.
She's nothing. Everything.
"How bad is it?"
Your stubble brushes against the softness of her thigh, wet kisses mingling with the sweat of two bodies coalescing in the distant darkness.
"Loving me, I mean."
"Bad… It's quite bad."
She nods, and you crawl up the length of her body so that she can curl around you, or you around her; crepuscular hearts patterned amongst the woven limbs. Her breath skitters, lost, across your chest, hands never quite certain on their path. She's chasing something you're both too stubborn to ever believe in. And perhaps that ought to bother you, and perhaps you should grieve for a future you'll never have, but something about the sadism of it all is beautiful in ways that is altogether too blinding for words.
"I'm sorry."
It's wrong.
Words trap in the concave of your spine, wound tightly, stones in your pocket weighing you down, down, down.
Her skin is soft, smooth.
"Yeah."
A thousand bruised kisses across those lips could never sway a feeling like this.
"I should go."
"Stay."
You look at her. Her eyes are wide, desperate, surprise fleetingly appearing before it dissipates once again.
"What about Josh?"
She settles against your chest.
"Josh isn't here."
And for now, it's enough.
Her skin is broken, rough. Her breaths short, fast.
"I love you."
She says it loud and clear.
"I love you."
You growl somewhere around her neck when it's over, rolling away onto your side, even as she's chasing you with desultory fingertips. Traces patterns into your spine and presses a kiss against the base of your neck, wrecking your entire body with her touch, her words.
This is the first time in which you don't ask her for something more. Pessimism floats through the chambers of your heart, something poisoned and addictive lingering in too vast a quantity to be healthy. Maybe that's what scares her. You know she's scared, because she's not speaking, body pressed against yours the way it always fits in its own disjointed pattern. But for once, you're unwilling to give her the comfort or the satisfaction of some sick, beautiful tragedy the two of you have woven.
"Why won't you love me back?"
"I do. You know I do."
You turn back, force your hands between her breasts and palm her scar.
"You took a damn bullet, Kate, and you still let the people that did it to you haunt you."
"What do you want me to do? Sit back and let it happen?"
"It's your fault. If you hadn't looked into this, Montgomery wouldn't be dead, you wouldn't have taken a bullet, and maybe-"
"Maybe what, Rick?"
You fall away, ashes in the sinful torture of her bed only you're no longer the phoenix you once believed you were.
She lifts on her elbow, smudges a thumb against the ridge of your cheekbone.
"I'm doing this to protect you, Rick. I don't want anything to happen to you... I can't let them get to you. Me, but never you, Rick."
"Save it, Kate."
She nuzzles her nose against your neck, justifies love with kisses against your shoulders, leaking down to your collarbones, fingers tracing your navel.
"It'll be over someday. And then..."
"And then?"
"And then maybe it won't be so bad."
Her concern is touching, but like most of her, it's ephemeral.
You realise that poetic language isn't something you ought to use when it comes to her.
Metaphors are useless against those eyes. Similies are pathetic in comparison to her heart. Imagery is pale in contrast to the colour of her blood.
Coffee is just liquid, burning you bright from the inside.
She doesn't know that it's the last time.
You watch over the city from her rooftop. A few floors below, she lies satisfied and content and blissfully unaware, brushing against cold sheets and an empty bed.
You breathe in, out.
Goodbyes are pointless, sentimental things.
So you grab that blue shirt of yours that you know she hides at the bottom of her hamper when you traipse back down there, slip the key she gave you under the pillow your head used to lie against. There's no hesitancy to your movements when you watch her from the doorway, studying the devastating architecture of her face, the fine masterpiece she is even as the shadows trace the outline of her body, slowly eating her away.
You leave before it has to opportunity to catch you, too.
Sometimes, it's not so bad.
230 days, 43 missed calls and a gunshot later...
It's not so bad.
After it all, coffee tastes sour against your tongue.
In one of your drawers in your office, there's a newspaper clipping with her bright, young face fresh from the police academy smiling up at you with empty eyes. Bathed in coffee beneath is her obituary, something that you'd not expected to find when you'd bought the newspaper that morning, but deep down all along you knew it this was the only way it would ever end.
"Richard?"
"Yes?"
Your mother strokes a hand through your hair, rests it on your shoulder. Gestures to the book in front of you.
"Let it go, darling. Let her go."
"I did once. Look where it got her."
"Oh, darling."
She sits with you on the sofa, taking your hands in hers, and not for the first time you feel the longing to climb back into your childhood. To be the little boy fascinated by books with words you were let to learn, stories yet to be lived. The little boy who was soothed by his mother's voice singing songs that could only be from Broadway, dancing with her at 2am in the cramped Manhattan apartment because you'd had nightmares again and she was always there, distracting you and lifting you with the abundance of colours she shone in.
"Mom…"
There's nothing else to say, so she scoots closer, wraps an arm around you.
"It's not your fault, kiddo. It was never your fault."
"I thought it was her fault too, but…"
"It was never your fault."
Her voice is firm, sure.
"I don't know how to let her go."
She slips the book from your grasp, dumps it on the other side of the couch, away from your sight.
"She's already gone, kiddo. She's gone."
You cry into her shoulder and she rocks you, humming sweet words under her breath in a voice that's croaky with age, but nonetheless beautiful.
Not for the first time, you're rendered speechless by how finite everything truly is.
"Rick?"
Her mouth tilts upwards at the edges.
"Yeah?"
In the morning light, she's everything, despite what should stand in the way- her past, her problems, her boyfriend.
"I love you."
Startling, clear, beautiful.
You drown in it.
The End.
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