When he swings his door open and sees Beckett standing there, he knows he's in trouble.
"You're not sick," is the first thing she says, even though she's been staring at him for two seconds tops. She's a detective. She can tell when people are faking. She thrusts a container of soup at his chest and turns on her heel, walking away at a clip just short of a jog.
"Than – oh – hey – wait," he stutters, tripping over himself to trot down the hallway after her.
She's nearly at the elevator by the time he manages to catch her elbow, and she whirls so quickly that he flinches, ready to take a punch. "Let. Go," she growls, deadly serious.
"Just come back – just for a minute, just let me explain," he says, trying not to sound too pathetic.
"No," she says, yanking her elbow out of his grasp. He can see her suck in a breath of air, her chest rising and falling in a sharp shudder. "I don't know what's been going on with you lately, Castle, but I would have hoped that even if you didn't want to wait anymore you could have at least told –" she cuts off abruptly and sets her jaw, eyes glinting, and he can tell from the twitch of her fingers and the clench of her teeth that she's at least as angry with herself as she is with him.
He feels the realization settle softly over him. His brain, always narrating, wants to be charitable, helpfully giving him metaphors about his moment of enlightenment bowling into him like an overly-large African game animal, but the truth is that every curious look she's given him over the past two weeks has added up to this, to the inevitable conclusion that he's cannonballed into what would clearly be a serious relationship. "That's not –" he starts, but she cuts him off with clipped, staccato sentences.
"Look – it's okay. I've got to go. There's this case. I was just stopping by." She starts to spin back toward the elevator, but her eyes trip to something just over the point of his shoulder, and then he can hear Kizzy's odd lope thumping down the hallway. The dog stops next to him and noses his calf, checking in, probably hesitant after the angry voices and sharp whispers. She's standing closer than normal, and the chuffs of air against his leg have, he imagines, a worried edge. He cards his hand through the fur behind her ears.
"Kizzy, this is Detective Beckett. Beckett, this is Kizzy," he says. By way of introductions, it's not the most auspicious – Kizzy is definitely wearing her suspicious stance, and Beckett still looks like she's a breath away from tears or punching him in the face. But then Kizzy takes a tentative step toward Beckett, gently pushes her cold nose against the detective's clenched fist, and he can see a thread of tension uncoil itself from around her, and he thinks, just maybe, that it might all work out.
He's been talking at her for fifteen minutes, starting with the story of stumbling across Kizzy in his spur-of-the-moment visit to the Humane Society and ending with today's recent vet appointment.
Beckett's hands are wrapped around a mug of warm coffee, and she's sitting on the couch, finally looking slightly less on edge. Kizzy's lying next to her, gigantic head resting on her thigh, and Beckett, consciously or unconsciously, keeps threading her fingers through the dog's hair. He's sitting on the armchair nearest the couch; Beckett had shot him a death glare as he approached earlier that made him hesitate to sit any closer.
"So why lie?" is finally her only question.
This is the part that he can't quite understand himself, and it takes a minute to cobble together an answer. "I didn't mean to, not at first," he says, thinking back to the crime scene two days after he got Kizzy, to the words, bubbling up in his throat, that he pushed back down. "I wasn't sure how to start, what to say. And then – it snowballed, like these things do, until I knew I couldn't tell you without hurting you, and I knew I didn't want that."
Her lip is caught between her teeth and her eyes are shining a little too suspiciously in the soft light of his apartment. "Now it's too late," she says, voice low. "Now it hurts no matter what."
He is suddenly, endlessly sure that this has nothing to do with Kizzy, not for either of them. It's a painful kind of relief, this thought that she, too, is keeping something. "It's worth it, though," he says. He won't bend on this point, though he's not sure what else to say, not everyone has secrets or also, while we're talking about this, I've been talking to a shadowy man about your mother's case for a while, and sorry it slipped my mind.
"Yeah," she says, still looking far too distant, and he thinks maybe she needs more from him.
"I like taking care of her," he tries to explain. "She's not – she's not a needy dog, but it felt good, to be the one to bring her home."
"Because she's damaged," Beckett says flatly.
"No," he says, vehement, although he can't explain why it feels so good to take care of this animal, can't vocalize this horrifyingly crushing need he has that started coiling in his chest years ago, that wound tight over a horrible summer, to care for something, to care for anything that will let him.
He swallows harshly, feeling a burn at the back of his throat, the inside of his eyelids. He finds he can't stand the distance between them anymore, feels the desire for movement sizzling through his muscles, and almost without his conscious permission he's moving from the armchair to the couch, sliding down onto the supple leather so that he and Kizzy are on each side of her, hemming her in. "Castle," she sighs, but it's less of a protest now, more acceptance.
"I'm sorry," he says, "I'm sorry for lying." Her lips are so close.
"Me too," she murmurs, her eyes slowly mapping his face, and he's not quite sure what to make of that, but before he can get further she's standing. Kizzy lets out a surprised whine. Beckett reaches down, scratches the dog's forehead. "I gotta get back to the Precinct."
"We're done at the vet. I can – can I come?"
Beckett steps back, silently regarding the pair of them. "Why don't you take today," she says, not sounding angry or sad or edgy, just a kind of resigned quiet.
"I didn't want to hurt you," he offers, feeling hollow, feeling that he's not sure what else he can give.
"It's not that," she says. "I promise."
He can't think of what else to say; the conversation's been slipping away from him since the first moment and he's not sure what protest would be best, so in the end, he can only murmur, "Okay," and hope that tomorrow will go better.
x
Thank you so much to everyone who's reviewed! I want to give you a suitable metaphor for how happy it makes me on my insides every time my gmail politely informs me I have a new present of words from you (yes, YOU!), but I am not as of yet quite sure what that metaphor would be. Something about puppies is too obvious; snowflakes, even though I would kill for a good blizzard right now, are probably a little cliche; it's not the season for Christmas elves, and, well, they've been done before. Maybe something about how I'm sick and every review is like a magical kind of pill that combines DayQuil and love and that transports me to the upper levels of the stratosphere, not in a scary "Oh my God I'm forty thousand feet above the earth and now I am going to die" type of feeling, more like in a "I can achieve my dreams! The world is my oyster! Anything is possible!" kind of way.
... I know that that's a smilie instead of a metaphor. And that it is not a grammatically correct sentence. And that it makes no sense at all. I'm sorry. I'll try harder for next time. Suggestions welcome.