This story is a continuation of RedGreyBull's story entitled "Proud" to be written by his invitation - read this first as it picks up where he left off. The TV show, and how it went has been excluded as the story from its beginning went on a different path. This is one of the many paths the story could go... hope you enjoy it.
Later that night ...
She tossed, she turned. The blankets that covered her didn't feel right, her night clothes were constrictive and the air was suffocating. The mattress was uncomfortable. The bed too big, the apartment too lonely.
To top it off her mind was restless, frustrated and playing out the events of the past several days like she was flicking through the TV stations and only finding bad repeats of wasted and missed moments. Her brain wouldn't cease it relentless punishment. All attempts to take control of her thoughts and emotional stated dismally failed. Meditation had failed. Imagining a candle flame and blocking all thoughts had almost been successful, but Castle's image leaning towards her telling her it wasn't her fault, that he was proud of her, loved her, still did, had interrupted her process. She stopped the imagery work feeling claustrophic and more guilty for all the fabrications she had lived with for months.
Castle was haunting her. His usual blue eyes, cloudy grey with worry had faded in and out, his quiet calm voice repeating how proud he was of her echoed in her mind; his words a blatant lie, to cover what he was really feeling about her actions, or lack of actions.
It had been a long time since she had lost count of how many sleepless nights she had experienced because of their confusing and complicated relationship. Their interactions rarely ran smoothly outside of the work environment, but recently things had been going better for them all the time. She had been letting him know via verbal hints and physical signals that she had turned a corner and was starting to see a future. He had seemed to understand. Until tonight.
His voice was present again, calmly, quietly telling her, 'I still do, you know. I'm not pushing. That's the last thing you need — I know that. No pressure. I'm not asking for anything, and I'm not even asking you to say anything, OK? I just… you should know, for what it's worth. It wasn't just because I… didn't know if I'd get another chance.'
"You said it when I was dying," she declared to the image of Castle in her vivid imagination, to the empty room. The Castle in her imagination didn't react.
She rolled from her side to her back, running her fingers meanly through her hair. She wiped the tears from the side of her face and sniffed.
"Fuck it. I can't sleep," she huffed out and sat in bed tugging at her cotton top. She growled. Impatience quickly wore too thin and she pulled off the top throwing it to the end of the bed. Naked, free and now feeling the cool air, she began to focus on breathing slowly and steadily. Slow. Relax.
If she was to get some sleep before daylight, she needed to calm down and shut her mind down. She wanted to know whether he had replied to her text messages in which she had apologized for not talking to him like an adult at the Haunt that evening. She admitted she had been shocked and lost for words.
By habit, she blindly reached to the night stand for her phone, picked it up and flipped it over, pressing her finger to the on button. The device lit up glowing into the darkness. Her eyes blinked in rapid succession before she was able to focus on the screen. No messages. She opened the message app and pressed on Castle's name, reading the last message he had sent her. It had been to tell her he was heading into the Precinct with coffees. She had missed that message when he'd sent it because she had been interrogating the pickpocket named Lopez.
Be in soon. Getting coffee.
She had send eight texts to him since his.
An unexpected sob escaped her.
'I … didn't know if I'd get another chance..' echoed.
"I need another chance." She stressfully whispered, "I need it."
'–I rehearsed what I was gonna say.' She recollected him saying as she thought about the thousands of time she had tried to brave up, to confess that she had heard his words and that she felt the same way. 'Stood outside a Starbucks, talking to myself. I wanted to get it right. But he wasn't even there. I went in, and I asked at the desk, and I thought he'd just walk around the corner. Or be out in the parking lot, on his bike. Maybe even… with you. But he wasn't there.'
"Because I pushed him away too," she cried with self-pity thinking about Josh. Although absent a lot, he had been a great boyfriend, had been kind and caring. She knew he was engaged to a doctor or nurse or something like that. Lanie had filled her in a while back, but she hadn't cared enough to take in the information at the time. The doctor had moved on and she was still alone and dancing around Castle pretending that everything was just fine.
It wasn't. At all.
It wasn't even alright by a long shot. And now he knew she'd heard him say those three words. In addition, she had also heard him plead her to stay with him, to not leave her. He'd said that first. She had tried to promise she wouldn't leave but words hadn't come out.
She had clung on to every word he'd said after she was shot. Almost every conscious moment she'd lived in the hospital, when her life had been touch and go, she had secretly meditated and promised that she would stay alive, not leave him. She had prayed for time, so she could have the things in life that she wanted, be with him. Prayed and continued to breathe.
Breathed and healed, until she had been able to take care of herself again. All the seconds, minutes, hours, days and now months since that moment, she had never left his side, had kept him close spiritually and physically all this time.
She'd asked him for time, had thought he'd understood what she had struggled to tell him at the swings. The subtext. He'd heard the subtext. She wanted to be a better person for him. He was after all, Richard Castle, and he could have any woman he wanted. All she had asked for was time; time to accept and reciprocate what he had said to her, time to mend, time to find who she was.
It was clear that he hadn't fully understood her at the swings, and it was because she had lied. All this time he believed that she didn't remember and this influence how he thought.
Weakened, guarded and always afraid she was going to be shot dead, she'd lied, kept him close enough, but at arms' length to protect herself, to protect him from the snipers in the shadows. Always there beside him, just wasn't ready to be loved by him.
She wiped eyes that were brimming with tears then unconsciously brushed the back of her hand against the bed sheet.
If she were to brave up in the morning, trek to the loft and pound on his door until he opened it, she knew that the moment she saw his eyes, his expression, she would be stuck for words. She could rehearse what she wanted to say for the rest of the night, but once she stood before him, she would more than like be rendered to a babbling mess or be silent, unable to engage her brain to her vocal cords. He was the only person in the world who had that effect on her, the ability to simultaneously scramble her mind and create heat in her loins. He made her feel he was the safest place to be in the world. His presence brought her peace.
And going back to sleepless nights. How many of those wee hours of the night had she spent fantasizing about what his hands would feel like, what effect his soft lips could have on her body. My Lord, the things she longed to do for him. Masturbation using Castle as her leading man was a given. Ex-boyfriends, favourite movie or TV stars, sports men that physically appealed to her were off the menu. What she would give to have the morning coffee preceded with a session of making love with the writer. Some mornings when he arrived at the Precinct carrying their coffees, she felt her cheeks and neck heat up, recalling her nocturnal fantasies.
He would look at her oddly, tilt his head momentarily then would place the coffee on her desk.
"Morning Detective," he would begin, "Good night?"
Her breathe would catch in her throat. He knew. The guilt bubbled to the surface with the embarrassment she had been caught out.
Every occasion, she suppressed the shame and would reply, "Nothing out of the ordinary, Rick." She would then allow her gaze to migrate from her blue eyes to his belt, to her coffee.
He would make a minor grunt, sit down in his chair, Kate sure he knew exactly what she had been up to during the night.
"Eat your bear claw," he would say, and give her a smartass smile.
If she sensed he knew so much about how she felt about him, then why couldn't she bring herself to cross that proverbial line, to allow herself be in love with him? She knew the answer to that question. In her private world, she didn't want to lose him as a friend, her best friend. He was safe pocketed away as a lover in her sexual fantasies.
Exasperated with herself, Kate flopped backward to the bed with a grunt of frustration mainly. Her head protested when it impacted with the memory foam pillow. Eyes open and sleepless, she swiped through the photos of her and Castles stored on her phone, and permitted herself to dwell about her fear of allowing another being to love her. To love her wholly and unconditionally as she knew Castle would. The manner in which he admired her when he believed she wasn't watching, the way his fingers lingered on the cup when he passed her anything so their fingers touched. It always sent electrical currents surging throughout her body.
The photos were another form of fantasy, she thought, as she scanned some of the hundreds of pictures she had collected over the years. Both were guilty of taking and sharing photos and he loved to edit them into funny pictures they would laugh about. She paused on a picture she'd snapped of him when he wasn't aware. Blue shirt, bright blue eyes and a gentle smile, his hair falling over his forehead, taken at a murder scene a few months ago. She sighed, feeling the need to talk to her best friend but that was Castle, the only person she had allowed in since the death of her mother.
My mom.
"I really need to speak to my mom right now," she murmured to herself breaking into timid cries. In the solitude of the dark apartment, tired to the brink of exhaustion from long hours at work, it was too easy to feel vulnerable. She dropped the phone to the bed and put her hands to her eyes letting herself cry out the recent stresses.
In amongst the cries and the endless memories of Castle flooding her mind, an idea formed, that lead her along a path of thoughts about how Castle was a quite sensitive and caring man, in tune with his emotions and those of others. He lived his life with women and understood them better than most men. Likewise, Kate, spent her waking life with men and she intuitively understood how they ticked. It suddenly made sense to her that Rick needed to be reassured and shown how she felt about him. She was always pushing him away, would then lure him back in only to push back again. She ceased to cry, sniffed and opened her eyes to the ceiling.
"Prove it to him," she whispered, "You can't tell him, but can prove it to him how you have felt about him all this time. Utilize what you know about him, Kate."
Feeling more positive and hopeful that she did have another chance, she sat up, reached for the lamp she turned on. She found her top and redressed in it, then scrambled down to the end of the bed, leaned over to the large wooden box and pushed the clothes she had worn that day off the top of the box to the floor. The lid was heavy causing her to grunt as she pulled it open. She peered over the lid to the contents inside the large oak box, a smile creeping over her face. A box full of memories from her childhood to as recently as yesterday.
She stepped off the bed and hurried over to her shoe closet. She had bought new boots the other day and soon found the box she had left aside to throw out. It was black and strong enough to do the job she required of it.
With the box on the floor, Kate knelt before her trunk full of personal items. There were so many things, but for this task, she only needed items at the top of the pile. She reached for a stack of folded sheets of writing paper, held together with a purple ribbon tied in a bow. She lovingly brushed her palm over the top sheet very aware of what secrets the papers held, then gently placed it into the shoe box, on the tissue paper that lined the box to protect the boots. She then picked up a red journal that was almost exploding with additional items pasted within in. She momentarily held it, its contents important to a relevant period of her life, their life. She placed it beside the papers. She then found a small draw string jewelry bag that jingled when she picked it up. She continued until she was certain she was done. She closed the shoe box. She closed the trunk.
At 4.47 am she touched off the lamp, laid to her side and closed her eyes. The place she went to when she missed her mother, was the place that would hopefully help save her relationship with Castle. Feeling confident, she fell into a peaceful sleeping knowing what she was going to do when daylight came.