Quietly Forever
He's been sulking at his desk for approximately three hours and seventeen minutes when his mother makes it home. Bringing with her noise and exuberance and everything he's been trying to drown with the two fingers of scotch in his glass. He's been nursing the same tumbler-full this whole time because since he met Kate, since he met Jim, he can't quite bring himself to drink into oblivion.
"Darling." His mother calls when she spots him, striding through into his office and shedding her coat, draping it over the arm of a chair before she sinks down gracefully. "I wasn't expecting you to be home so early. Something happen at the precinct?"
Rick grits his teeth and scrubs a hand down his face, feels the scalding flood of tears start to build in his throat. He really, really doesn't want to cry over her. He did enough of that this summer, wept for the life he hadn't lost but might as well have done.
"I asked Kate to dinner."
"And she said no." His mother murmurs, not a question. She stands up from her chair and comes around to lean on his desk instead, her fingers curling at his shoulder. "Oh kiddo, I'm sorry."
Somehow, he manages to meet his mother's gaze. Feeling so stupid, so vulnerable, like a little boy whose first crush has just broken his heart. "No. She said yes."
"Okay. . ." His mother frowns at him, forehead creased with confusion.
He sucks in a breath, pushes his chair backwards and stalks over to the window. Dusk is settling over the city, lights slowly flickering on in all of the blocks that surround his own. He loves this time of day, the slow descent of nightfall. He's had visions of walking hand in hand with the woman he loves as the sun dips below the horizon and into the belly of the earth, the sky above them streaked with lilac and gold.
Not that it matters anymore. "She got a call from Sorenson. He's back in the city. She told him she'd cancel her plans tonight and meet up with him."
"Oh, honey. I am so sorry to hear that." His mother says, detaching herself from the desk and coming around to stand at Rick's side. Her fingers curl in his but they're all wrong, too short and too warm and he shakes his way out of her grip, stuffs his hands in his pockets again.
Swallowing back a growl, Rick rests his forehead to the cool glass of the windowpane and closes his eyes. "Please, Mother. I don't need your pity."
"Richard, are you sure everything is as it seems? This doesn't seem like something Beckett would do." His mother is saying, but at least she's not touching him anymore. His body is a fortress, impenetrable, and he needs a little space to figure out how to get through this.
Just to find a way to hold it together.
"I'm sure."
"Have you spoken with her?"
He growls, turns away from the window and covers the ground to his desk in three footsteps. Snatching up his glass of scotch, he downs the whole thing and pours another, knocking back half of that as well. Fuck Jim, fuck any lingering sense of respect for the man that keeps him from abusing alcohol to numb his pain. And yes, fuck Jim Beckett's daughter, too. "Why, so she can tell me to my face that a better offer came along?"
"Darling, don't you at least owe her the chance to explain?" His mother says tentatively. He's scaring her and he knows it, can see it in the hum of tension at her jaw, the knot of her hands.
Closing his eyes against his mother's pity, he sets his glass down on the desk again. Suddenly just so exhausted. His entire relationship with Beckett has been a fight. To get her to let him in, trust him, open up. He's had to battle for every inch of her, and he thought he could do it. He thought he could, because the looks and the smiles and the laughter have been such a gift.
He can't do it anymore. Can't work to have her come out of her shell only to watch her fall into someone else's arms. "I don't owe her anything."
A knock on the door rings out across the loft and Rick freezes in place, turns wide eyes to his mother. He knows that knock, can picture all too clearly the slender hand that makes it. What is she doing at his apartment?
"Are you expecting someone?" He asks his mother, desperate for it to be true. Just please let it not be her. He can't face her yet.
Martha heads away from the window and towards him again, her palms flat in supplication. "No, I'm not. Do you want me to tell her to go?"
"Can you just. . .make sure there's nothing wrong?" He gruffs out, hating himself for it. Even though he's mad, even though he hates her more than a little right now, he can't turn it off. How stupid he is with love for her.
"Surely she would have called you if something were wrong?"
"Phone's off." Another knock, this one somehow managing to sound impatient, and he lifts his eyes from his slow perusal of the hardwood. "You know what, I'll go. She's just a woman. I can handle it."
He strides through the living room and to the door before his mother can tell him how ridiculous a notion it is that Kate Beckett is anything less than everything to him (thank you, he knows) and he wrenches open the door before he gives himself any time to second guess it.
"Beckett. What is it?"
"Hey, Castle." She says, so soft. Quiet, but sure. She still seems so certain of this, of them, and now he's seriously just confused. What on earth is going on? Is she looking for some polyamorous kind of arrangement here? Because he is definitely not okay with that. "Can I come in?"
He steps back, pushes the door open and closes it behind her. It's a battle not to slam it closed, but somehow he manages it. Even if he does have to take a moment to breathe before he can turn and face her. "What are you doing here?"
"You left the precinct kind of in a rush." She offers. Now that he's looking at her, he sees how wide open her body language is. As if her guard is down and she's opening herself up to him, to the possibility of getting hurt by him. "And I wanted to let you know in person that I can't make our dinner date."
"Right. Okay."
"Something came up that I- look, I don't want to get into detail now. I'm running late. But this is something I want to share with you. So I was thinking. . .maybe you'd come over later tonight and we can talk?" She finishes her speech on a rush, as if she's terrified, desperate to get the words out.
God help him, he loves her. He wants her, still. He can make her see that he's a better option than Sorenson, right? That he loves her so much more than that smug FBI bastard ever could. That he'd never leave her. Not for James Bond, not for Boston. Not for anything.
"I, uh- I guess I could do that." He shrugs, does his utmost to ignore the entirely devastating grin that splits her face in two. She's so beautiful like this. He just wants to cradle her face between his palms and kiss her, kiss her until she loves him back.
Kate snags one of his hands in both of hers and clutches it to her chest; for half a second he thinks she might dust her mouth to his knuckles before she lets him go. "Thank you, Castle. Let's say ten. Does that work for you?"
"Ten sounds good. I'll see you." He manages, gets a nod from her before she leaves his loft and closes the door behind herself. And even if she is only going to tell him that they're done, that she wants to give it another shot with Captain America, there's still hope.
He's not giving her up without a fight. No, he promised himself that he'd tell her how he feels today, and so no matter the change in circumstance, he will.
By the time ten pm rolls around, Castle's guts are roiling and panic makes his hands clammy, makes him tremble. He drives to Beckett's apartment, needs to feel the roar of the engine underneath him, have something to focus on other than the desperate words that crowd his tongue, choking him with how very much he means them.
He pulls up opposite her building and cuts the engine, takes a moment to scrub his hands down his face. Okay, Rick. Just stay calm. It's fine.
Not like he's about to tell the woman he loves more than his own life that he wants her for himself, that he adores her and he can't watch her get hurt by Sorenson. Or worse. . .not get hurt by him. If Castle has to watch Kate find her happy ever after with someone that isn't him he doesn't know what he'll do.
A movement captures his attention and he drops his hands, watches as the door to Beckett's building opens and she steps out. It's dark, there in the shadows of her building's doorway; he can only tell that it's her at all because he knows her so well.
The lines of her body, the spill of her hair, the absolute confidence and grace with which she holds herself. He's written four books on it; he considers himself something of an expert. Kate steps backwards out of her building and holds the door open for someone else.
It's too dark to see much, but he gets enough. Tall. Male. Sorenson-shaped. And then Kate's wrapping her arms around the man, holding him so close, and jealousy spills up from Castle's gut, bitter and ugly and shameful.
He turns the key in the ignition and starts the engine, shifts his car into drive and pulls away from the curb without looking back at Kate or her companion. Gripping the wheel hard enough that his knuckles are white as he manoeuvres through the rivers of city traffic, desperate to just get back home and hole up inside the loft and never have to face the absolute embarrassment of this situation. He really didn't think she'd make him actually watch her be with someone else.
She can be closed off, she can be hard to reach, but he has never thought of Kate Beckett as cruel.