"Castle," Javier Esposito said into the receiver of his desk phone. "Yeah, it's me. Listen, uh… Kevin and I found some stuff of yours. Saturday? No… no, Beckett won't be in this Saturday. Great! See ya then." Turning around with a wide grin, he was met by a similar grin on Kevin Ryan, his co-worker and co-conspirator.
"Hey, what are you two up to?" Kate asked as she breezed into the room and pulled her coat from the back of her chair. They instantaneously wiped the smiles from their faces. "Work let out twenty minutes ago. I'd have thought you two would be long gone by now."
"Last minute things to clear up, boss," Kevin said with a nod of his head in the direction of a report. She smiled sympathetically.
"Right," she said. She tugged on her coat and pressed off her computer. Walking towards the door, she threw one last look and question over her shoulder. "You two are going to be here Saturday to work on that cold case, right?"
Without a blink between them, they nodded their heads begrudgingly in an attempt to appear a lot less excited than they actually were. She disappeared through the doors and they grinned mischievously at each other.
"Wouldn't miss it!" they laughed and packed up for the evening.
*CASTLE*CASTLE*CASTLE*CASTLE*CASTLE*
"It's been a long time, man," Javier said sincerely as they spotted Rick coming in the door to the precinct. The blue-eyed author had a lot of scruff on his face and his clothes looked pretty wrinkled. Wide, dark circles curved beneath his eyes which looked around for a few moments, looking as though he wished his friends had duped him and that his muse was indeed in for work today, but if she was, she was not at her post, sitting in the uncomfortable chair behind her desk.
"Yeah… Yes, it has. How are you guys? Beckett's not being too much of a pain in the ass, is she?" he asked with a grin that did not reach his eyes. This did not go unnoticed by his detective friends. They gave off-hand shrugs.
"Nah… Same Beckett. She is a modicum easier to work for since we caught her mom's killer three months ago. Thanks to you, of course," Kevin said quickly, watching the writer smile. He nodded his head. "I'm just sorry Beckett couldn't get over it. We haven't had the same dynamic… or results, for that matter… since you left."
"Yeah, well… I did step over the line and she was right to kick me out of her life, but I never thought she would hold it against me for this long, especially since the info helped catch the scumbag."
"You know Beckett," Javier said, but Rick shook his head sadly.
"No… I guess I don't."
The three men stood at the door of the precinct for several moments in silence as the two cops let their friend have his moment to compose himself. He cleared his throat and straightened up.
"So… where's that box of stuff of mine that you found?" he asked and Javier and Kevin both stood up a little straighter. They led him down the main corridor towards the back of the building.
"We put it all in a box and locked it in a storage cabinet for safe keeping. There's just no room around the main offices as it is," Kevin said off-handedly. Javier reached into his pocket and pulled out a key from the depths of it. He slipped it into the door and unlocked it gently. The tiniest click came from the handle and Javier threw it quickly open. Kevin said, "It's right there." Rick stepped inside.
"Don't let them close the door!"
"Beckett?"
"Castle?"
"Got him!"
Rick went tumbling into the room and landed against a curvy shape and the two heard the click of the door's lock behind them. He pushed himself quickly off of the person he was laying across and extended his hand to help her up, but she slapped it away.
"I don't want your help, Castle," she spit out at him.
"What are you doing here?"
"Sight-seeing. What does it look like, Castle?"
"No, I mean they called to tell me they found some stuff I left behind and, when I asked if you'd be here, they said… they said…"
Rick trailed off and replayed their conversation in his head. A full box of stuff, but he had not noticed that anything was missing since she kicked him out of her life and the precinct five months ago. If they knew he was coming, why didn't they just bring the box to the office so he could be in and out painlessly? He moved around in the semi-darkness for a minute to drag his feet around the floor of the entire room and stumbled over… nothing. The room was completely empty.
"I'm gonna kill them," he growled through clenched teeth, but the echo that followed sounded distinctly feminine. He spun to her to see her arms crossed over her chest as she sat on the floor, looking up at him in a mixture of surprise, disdain and several other emotions that he could not get a read on. Lowering his gaze from hers, he moved to the furthest corner of the room and slid down the wall, landing with a soft thud. He groaned.
"I'm not talking to you," she said beneath her breath.
"Good…" he said in a gentle and depressed voice. He rested his head on the cool wall and closed his eyes. Forcing deep breaths through his nostrils, he tried to remain in control of his emotions, but they were getting the better of him. A single tear trickled down his face and he tried to fake rubbing at his eye while discreetly swiping away the tear, but she noticed and gave a snort.
"Going soft?"
"Fuck you…" he bit out and she looked honestly taken aback.
"Excuse me, but who do you think you are?"
"The man you're supposed to not be talking to," he seethed, emotion choking him as he forced the words out. She sat up a little straighter and tightened her arms around her. He let his eyes crack open a sliver and saw her coil herself into a tiny ball in her corner of the room. His heart ached for her like it had been doing the whole five months since he had left her, but he refused to lose what little dignity he had left. Besides, from this far away, she had less chance of seeing how her leaving had affected him. He gave his cheek a little scratch and turned his head away.
"Castle?"
"You're not supposed to be talking to me, remember?" he bit out silently.
"Please? A question?" When he did not reply, she thought it was his way of giving her the floor to address whatever issue it was she wished to address. She took a deep breath. "Why did you ask if I'd be here when you passed by?"
"Because I didn't want to run into you," he said quickly, his voice as cold as ice. Instead of recoil, she leaned forward.
"You were going to come here to my place of employment, pick up your stuff, talk to Esposito and Ryan and you had no intention of even saying hello to me?" she asked, her voice incredulous. She glared at him.
"More or less."
"Are you mental or something?" she asked, leaning against the wall and looking at him with her piercing gaze. He avoided it and turned away from her. "Don't you turn your back on me! You give me news about my mother and then disappear like you had done nothing more than give me a weather report!" Somewhere in the middle of her tirade, he had spun on her, his eyes glassed over with tears, but they nearly evaporated as his blood began to boil.
"'Have you forgotten I'm wearing a gun?' 'You do know I'm wearing a gun, don't you?' 'Can I shoot him now or do I have to wait for something?' Do I have 'suicidal' written on my forehead, or are you forgetting that you're the one who kicked me out of the precinct and out of your whole damn life?!" he yelled at her and watched her recoil yet again, but the sight of her looking remotely sorry made him feel good after all the pain he had been through being away from her. For a week afterwards, he had barely stepped out of bed and, in time, he came to realize that, if absence makes the heart grow fonder, he must have been in love with her before this whole fiasco. Since that day, he had not felt whole, himself or barely even human.
"You betrayed my trust! Castle, I told you… I told you that I didn't want her case reopened."
"Would you have preferred I not tell you? I could have not said anything and you never would have caught him. You haven't got a clue how tempted I was, especially knowing that it could possibly mean the end of our partnership. Did it ever occur to you that I had already given it to my doctor friend when I asked you and that, with the case we were working on at the time, I never gave it another thought until he showed up on my doorstep with new answers? Did the thought even cross your mind that I would never reopen an old wound unless I knew, without a doubt, that this would help solve the case?! NO! All you thought was… I can't even imagine what you thought, but I know what I thought. I thought I was dying as I watched you go white as a sheet, ball your hands into fists in an obvious attempt not to hit me and tell me that you never, ever wanted to see my face again. That's why I wanted to know if you'd be gone when I passed by to pick up my stuff. Does that satisfy your curiosity?"
Kate sat motionless in the corner of the room for a few minutes, looking down at something she was twirling between her fingers. A blue half-watt bulb shining through a vent glinted off its surface and he knew she was playing with her mother's ring. His heart wretched in his chest and he wanted so desperately to go to her side and pull her into a wide hug, but his rant had brought about a fresh batch of tears as he leaned back against the wall, taking deep breaths to try and calm his racing blood pressure. All the while, all he could think of was the way he was going to exact revenge on his 'friends' and what, if anything, could possibly come close to what they were currently inflicting on him, being so close to her while she sat hating him.
"Ryan! Esposito!" he called out, standing up and banging on the door, but he heard a shuffle from behind him and threw himself away from her back to the corner, his hands raised in surrender as he slid back down to the ground, but it was too late.
"Castle!" she gasped, stepping closer to him. He recoiled again and turned his face away from the tiny amount of light there was, but she had obviously seen him. "Jesus, Castle, are you alright? Have you been in a fight?" He shook his head. "Did someone die?" Another shake. "Well, what happened?" He remained silent and motionless. "Castle?"
"Kate?" he said, lifting his emotionless eyes to hers, haunting her straight through to her very core. "For the love of whatever deity you choose, would you please shut the hell up and leave me the hell alone?" he asked, his voice barely more than a grumble. She sat down opposite him and stared at him. "And stop that," he added, turning his face away from hers.
"Stop what?" she asked quietly, but his eyes flashed at her.
"Staring at me," he said in a low voice, his narrowed eyes swinging away from her.
"Alright… I'll stop staring, but will you listen to me at least?" He remained silent like he had when she had first asked him is she could broach a topic. "There's a lot that I want and need to say to you, but I think I should start with the most important and that's to thank you. Thank you, Richard Castle, from my mother, father and from me. We are forever grateful. I can't imagine what I could ever do to thank you enough for what you've done for my entire family.
"I think the next thing that needs to be said is that I'm beyond sorry for the way I acted. I want to be totally honest and let me start by saying that until you got locked in here with me, I was still genuinely furious that you had gone behind my back like that. I know!" she said quickly, holding up her hands as he prepared to attack her. "I know now that you never meant to hurt me and that, knowing what it might… would do to us, you realized that I needed to know the truth so that we could use this new information and solve my mother's case. I can appreciate now how hard that must have been for you." He snorted. "I deserve that. It's just… I was so close to trusting you fully, Castle, and this rocked me to my very core. You must be able to understand that."
"Yes, Kate, I can," he said, his voice still very low which scared her more than when he screamed. "I can understand feeling like that for a week, two weeks… Hell, I can understand feeling that way for a month, but it's been five months since I told you and two since the killer was caught and you couldn't even pick up the phone to tell me how the case was progressing or to thank me when all was said and done. I got a call once or twice a month from Esposito or Ryan when they had a second to spare and, at the end of it all, I found out that the case had been closed when I read the morning paper the next day." His eyes slid away from hers and he rested his head against the wall once more, taking long, measured breaths of air into his lungs. Fresh tears stung at his eyes. "I didn't think you hated me that much," he choked out. His eyes slipped closed and he swiped at his eyes with his sleeve to wipe away any stray tears. A sniffle and dry sob from across the room is what made him open his eyes again to see a tear-streaked face staring back at him.
"I don't hate you…" she breathed out, her voice barely audible. Her shoulders bounced with a sob as she hugged herself and rocked back and forth in the corner. "I don't hate you, Rick. I can't. It would have been so much easier if I could, but I can't…" she sobbed and laid onto her side. She held herself tighter with one hand and pressed her other to her mouth, crying into it. From her position on the floor, she looked up at him, her eyes rolling in tears and she swallowed her sobs. "I love you so much it hurts!" she cried out, hugging her sides. "The hope that you would disrespect my order and come by was all that kept me coming into work. And I prayed you would and that, by some miracle, you could forgive me for the things I said and I'm so sorry, Rick. I so sorry!" she sobbed, clasping her hand back over her mouth as she cried into it.
He leaned forward and watched her cry for a minute before gently advancing from his fetal position in the corner to crouch in front of her. She looked up at him and her eyes slipped closed as she covered her face and tried to roll away from him, but he caught her shoulders and hauled her up against him. He bit his lower lip and managed to stem the tear flow a little as he rocked her back and forth in his arms, shushing her and pressing soft kisses against the crown of her head.
"I'm sorry…" she sobbed again. "I'm so sorry, Rick. I'm sorry…" she said over and over until the sobs simmered down to tiny tremors to shivers to the occasional bounce of her shoulders. He continued to rock her in his arms and pressed another kiss to her head as she sighed and tried to pry herself out of his arms. "I'm… Look, I'm sorry about unloading on you this way. After everything I've said, I have no right to expect… forgiveness, never mind friendship or any form of trust."
"Kate…" he whispered, taking her face in his hands and holding her gaze with his. "Kate, I would forgive you just about anything right now just to be speaking to you again. You have no idea what these last few months have been like for me," he gasped out before a little smile quirked the corners of his mouth. "Well… I guess you do if you love me," he whispered, his eyes softening while her grew wide and she fought against his embrace. "Kate!" he said as she tried to shrug free.
"No, please! Please, let me go, Rick. Please! I'm so sorry. I never meant to drop that on you at a time like this… Oh, God!" she moaned and continued to struggle against him.
"Kate… Kate, listen to me." She stilled in his arms and he hauled her back up against him, cupping her face in one of his hands while the other held her body against his chest. Her eyes welled with tears again. "Kate, please don't cry. Please. Kate, trust me, I understand entirely." She began to shake her head, but he stilled it and crashed his lips against hers, clinging to her desperately and holding her against him, yet the kiss remained so intensely passionate and incredible gently that she felt fresh tears stream down her cheeks. His hand caressed her face and she rested her hand on his as they kissed on, fighting against the cry of their lungs for oxygen until neither could breathe. They broke apart and he stroked her hair back, looking down at her. "Kate Beckett, I love you, too," he whispered. His eyes slipped closed and he took deep breaths before opening them again. New tears were in her eyes.
"Rick, please!"
"Kate, I'm serious. I've never been more serious in my entire life. I'm so in love with you, I can barely function without you. You've been a reason for getting up for a little over a year. The rest of the world can take a flying leap at the moon. The last five months have been a private hell that I never thought possible. For the love of God, mother hid my razor for the first month! And, after that kiss, I'm pretty sure you can tell that I still haven't been using it too often. Kate… I need you in my life, because, without you by my side, I don't care about living it."
She sighed and leaned forward, pressing a brief kiss to his cheek. "Beards never bothered me," she whispered and smiled as he sighed and hauled her into his arms. Shifting them both, he rested them against the nearest wall and held her by his side as they awaited the arrival of Ryan and Esposito to let them out. Everything was cleared up between them and they were ready to go home and talk for the rest of the evening… or whatever else might happen. It was time to come out of the closet.