It's been three weeks since he left. Three weeks since he last saw her.
Well, no, that's not technically true.
He's seen her in glimpses, brief moments that he keeps expecting to have less of an effect on him, knock the wind out him a little less than before. He's got to grow immune to her sometime, he figures. Enough friction makes a callus, if you give it time.
Maybe he just needs a little more time, because his theory hasn't been proved right yet.
He sees the back of her as she waits for the elevator, clutching a tall cup of coffee that isn't from their usual place. It's from another store, further away, higher in price and lower in quality. Strange – he can't think of a reason for her to buy her coffee from there, other than her avoiding the store they frequent(or used to frequent). It's also strange how the idea wounds him.
He sees her in the precinct lobby late one night, hunched in a chair in a corner, trying to look inconspicuous while she pores over a case file. It's something she does when she's been kicked out by the Captain but she doesn't want to leave, sure she can still be productive and find a lead. If and when she finds it, he knows she'll sneak back upstairs once the Captain's left, mark it on the board and keep puzzling it out.
His heart constricts just looking at her. Achingly beautiful. So focused, so determined, biting her bottom lip with a furrow between her brows. He loves how she does tha–
No, not loves. Loved. Past tense. His switch must be faulty. He'll need to fix that.
He moves quietly past her, slipping by unnoticed. He's not sure if he's glad or not.
He sees her when he's waiting outside the precinct in Detective Slaughter's flashy car – the polar opposite of Beckett's no-nonsense Crown Vic – running with Ryan and Esposito to their respective vehicles. They grab their bulletproofs from the trunk before they get into the unmarkeds and speed off, gumballs flashing. He pictures her going up against a faceless suspect, being overpowered, being hurt. Partnerless, without backup, because he left.
When Slaughter gets into the car and asks him why he's shaking, he tells him it's because he's coming down with a cold.
Detective Ethan Slaughter is no Detective Katherine Beckett. That much is clear from the beginning.
Morals, to him, seem to be nothing more than quaint suggestions. He's loud, and brash, and overly macho. He doesn't pause for thought before he throws a suspect bodily into the wall, and only pauses before injuring a suspect long enough to ensure he isn't being watched by a superior.
This is refreshing, at first, and a rush. Castle spends the first week with his chest puffed up – he's strutting around with the coolest, baddest jocks in the school. He gets to speed through the city in fast cars and meet gang informants in shady alleys and on one occasion, he even gets to carry a gun.
Slaughter calls him Ricky, then nicknames him Tyson after he punches an attacking suspect in self-defense, and it's good, it's nice not being Castle. It lets him breathe, lets him forget green eyes and soft curls and perfect lips saying that name.
However, the rush quickly wears off.
Before long, Castle finds himself constantly on edge. One of the cons of hanging around with the cool kids, he realises, is the constant pressure to fit in. Do as they do, think as they think.
His cheesy jokes and dramatic theories don't earn him a fond eye-roll – they earn him a vicious snarl("You gonna quit bein' a wiseass and help get this sonofabitch?"). He has to keep his mouth shut when Slaughter breaks the rules, abuses his power, mistreats the citizens he swore to protect. Beckett wouldn't do that is forever on the tip of his tongue, and it's increasingly difficult to bite it back.
He quickly learns to change his mannerisms. He perfected the art of personality crafting as a lonely kid in boarding school: sculpting, cultivating and downright faking the traits he needed to fit in, to be accepted, and presenting them to his peers. He applies the same technique now.
Just a hint of a swagger. Jaw held a little higher. A slightly stronger, rougher take on his New York accent. A faint, ever-present smirk. A booming laugh. He ditches the suit jacket and dress pants, starts wearing a leather jacket and jeans. He stops saying things like that's surprising and starts saying thing like well, fuck me.
It feels wrong, though. All wrong. He's walking around with a shell, having to carry and act this Ricky, Tyson, whoever the hell he is, and it's fast becoming exhausting.
He misses his real self.
He misses his real team.
He misses her.
He misses her so much he's shocked he can still function, still appear to be a normal human being to the outside world.
But she doesn't feel the same. He'd be torturing himself more seeing her every day, so this is good, he reiterates. This is just detox. Love is as powerful as any drug, right? And any addiction is hard to shake. There'll be pain, craving, needing... but sooner or later it'll fade, and he'll come out stronger on the other side of it.
He'll continue to tell himself that until it starts sounding true.
He's with Slaughter and Ortega in the Gang Unit bullpen, laughing over a crude joke he doesn't really find that funny, when someone calls his name – Castle, not Ricky or Tyson or Sherlock or any of the other nicknames he's earned in Gangs.
Oh. That's not who he was expecting.
Ryan walks up to him with a folder in his hand and a hardness in his expression. He looks almost comically out of place in his three-piece suit and shined shoes, but seems completely unphased by the rough atmosphere. He might be the quiet pacifist out of his team, Castle reminds himself, but he's still tougher than most.
"Ryan. Hey, man." Castle's attempt at a welcoming smile falters when Ryan remains stony-faced. "What are you doin' here?"
After keeping his stare – or is it a glare? – on Castle for a moment longer, Ryan turns to Slaughter.
"Hey. Detective Ryan, Homicide." After nods of greeting are exchanged, he ploughs ahead, ignoring Castle completely.
"Our unit just caught a fatal shooting. We think it's gang related – the vic was tagging a wall when it happened. We still don't have an ID on the vic, but we have this picture of the tag," he pulls a print-off of the graffiti from the folder, "And we were hoping you guys might be able to tell us what gang it belongs to, where we can find 'em, who their enemies are."
Slaughter shrugs. "Sure, we can take a look. Ortega, handle that, will ya? I'm gonna get a drink." He saunters to the break room and shuts the door(Castle doubts he means coffee when he says 'drink'), and Ortega heads off with an assurance that he'll call up to Homicide if he finds the information they need.
Which leaves Castle and Ryan standing in uncomfortable silence.
Okay. Wow.
He's always considered Beckett and Esposito to be the scary ones, but being on the receiving end of that look leaves him praying he's never on the opposite side of an interrogation table to Kevin Ryan.
"Celtic playing today?" Castle asks nervously, gesturing to the small shamrock pin on the detective's lapel. It's a Scottish soccer team, but the club has Irish ties and Ryan's Irish roots mean he's been brought up to support them. He always wears the shamrock pin on game days, and sometimes Castle watches the games with him, despite not being much of a soccer fan himself.
The icebreaker doesn't even chip Ryan's façade, however, and he turns to leave with a sharp, "See you around."
"Whoa, hey, wait! What gives, Ryan?"
"What gives?" Ryan wheels back around with a growl, and Castle reflexively takes a step back. "What gives is that you left."
"Left? I'm – I'm just shadowing Slaughter for a whi–"
"Riiight. And that's why you've been avoiding Beckett."
Busted. "I have not been–"
"You know what, Castle? Maybe you don't care about this, but we're your partners. Me, Esposito, Beckett – all of us. Your family. Or at least we were. Obviously that doesn't mean much to you. Me and Esposito have each others' backs, but who's gonna have Beckett's now you got bored and dropped us? Again?"
He needs to explain so badly. Tell him he'd still be their partner if he could, tell him he can't be around her all day and not fall into despair because he's been a fool the whole time, because he can't picture ever finding someone he'd love a fifth as much as her.
Instead, he says nothing, and lets Ryan walk away.
Slaughter overhears the verbal beatdown, and cracks a few jokes as they head to his car – "Was that your ex-girlfriend or somethin'?" – but Castle doesn't feel much like laughing about it.
He feels more like drinking about it. A voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Beckett warns him that drinking isn't the way to fix his problems, tells him he should find a better way to deal with things.
Well, he's sure most health professionals would advise against listening to any voices you might have in your head. He'll pour himself a nice glass of scotch when he gets home.
"So where are we going again?" He should have been listening, getting excited when Slaughter gave him a debriefing(emphasis on the 'brief'), but he'd been too caught up in thoughts of partners and now you got bored and dropped us, again.
"To meet the rat," Slaughter huffs impatiently. He sees Castle's blank stare, rolls his eyes. "The gang I was tellin' you about? Call themselves Tongs? Did you listen to a thing?"
Castle shrugs. No, not really. We're your family, or at least we were.
The detective snorts. "Alright, here's the skinny. But listen this time, cause I ain't telling you again, and I ain't gonna save your ass if you run into trouble 'cause you don't know who you're dealing with. Okay? Okay. They're a pretty new gang – only go back about ten years – but they're what you could call up-and-coming. Scots-Irish, mainly. Big on extortion and racketeering... y'know, the usual. But they love knives. Plain old stabbing, slashing, throat-slitting, Glasgow Smiles if they're feeling creative. Pretty nasty, if you ask me."
Something about Slaughter's grin tells Castle he doesn't find it as nasty as he claims.
"So, they've been getting bigger, pushing into other territories. It's causing some problems, causing some fights. You wanna stand a chance in a gang war, you need money. You wanna get more money, you need to branch out a bit from racketeering."
"Drugs?" Castle questions dumbly. Wait, why is he getting involved with these people again?
"Drugs, smuggling, prostitution," Slaughter casually throws the terms out, "You name it. Some bad heroin's been making the rounds on the streets lately, and Narc thinks it's down to the Tongs. Asked us to check it out... which is where the rat comes in. Poor sucker's only eighteen. Kid wants out, but he needs protection."
"Are we gonna help him?" That's a given, surely.
It's Slaughter's turn to shrug. "If he gives us good enough information. Why'd we waste resources protecting him if he's not even any use to us?"
Yeah, he definitely misses Beckett.
He really should have seen this coming, he thinks.
For three weeks this moment had been coming, a slow-motion trip and fall down the stairs, the floor rising up to meet him for the inevitable crash. It was bound to happen. He should have stopped it, should have changed course. Been living too dangerously. But it's too late now.
He feels the knife slip into his abdomen, the overriding lance of white-hot pain, and he can't speak, can't think clearly. He tries to look at his attacker, tries to ask a silent why? But he's already gone, running, chasing after the rat.
What was his name again? Chris? He'd been so scared. Kept worrying he'd been followed.
Didn't listen. Should've listened.
Everything's blurry now, muffled, and it's okay, better than the all-consuming pain, and when did he get on the ground?
Some sober part of his mind knows he should be keeping pressure on the wound, but it's so hard when he's so tired. Just wants to sleep. His blood is warm, hot even, and that would be surprising to him if he hadn't been in a situation like this before. Holding a hand to Kate's chest while she bled out on the green grass.
Kate.
Where's Kate?
Is she okay?
Where's Slaughter?
Can't see him.
He's alone.
He's going to die, and he's alone.
He wishes he could say sorry. Wishes he had more time. Wishes so many things.
That's the last thing he thinks before the world goes black.