A/N: Short, little chapter. But I think you guys will like. Let me know. :)

Just finishing up in the bathroom, she feels a deep thwack of stupidity as she goes through what she needs to do for the night. She remembers grabbing the case file from the backseat but also remembers not walking into the room with it in her hands. She feels the need to stay behind this closed door for the rest of the night, a tightly enclosed space with a hissing, noisy toilet and a bathtub with off-yellow flower decals stuck to the bottom. He's obviously annoyed with her, with the room, with the crash, with being alone with her, with everything, and she wants to just shut it all out.

That's not her partner out there. It's not the man who told her that he loved her. She can feel him changing himself, putting up that shield, erecting his own wall that she has yet to figure out how to scale. He seemed to figure out how to scale hers a long time ago, maybe even before she told him about it. But no matter what she tries, she just can't seem to get around his. She misses the man that she's become comfortable with, the man she's known, the man who's become her partner, the man she's been falling for.

She pushes out a tight, long breath and opens the door, running her fingers behind her ear and looking down to the floor. Coming through the door, the bed is against the left wall, with a large window next to the door. There's a small night stand with a lamp sitting on top, and a long table with a small TV on a swivel stand sitting on it, with a small dining table with two chairs pushed under it. She looks up after pretending to become intrigued by something imaginary on the table and looks up through her lashes and sees him standing at the window, looking through the curtains.

She can hear an intense downpour fall on the rooftop, just as a flash of white lightning strobes the window. "You know," He says, his hands in his pockets, his voice seeming softer and more toneful, peering out the window, "I always thought I would die doing something heroic."

Her brow scrunches as she feels an interested smile tighten her lips.

"Like..." He begins, shrugging his shoulders, still looking out the window, "trying to save someone drowning in a lake, err... pulling someone from a burning building or something."

She feels her heart warmed, still being able to feel his arms around her as he practically carried her out of her hellish apartment with nothing but the clothes on his back and hope. "You've already done that, Castle." She says softly.

He feels his heart jump when she reminds him of that. It's not that he didn't think of it, it's her tone as she says it. It sounds so soft, almost caring, it's a tone that seems so alien coming from her. He quickly turns and sees her standing at the table that's sitting at the end of the TV stand with a smile softly gracing her beautiful features. "Right... well..." He says trying to play it off. "You know what I mean." He shakes his head and peers back out the window.

"Castle, why are you bringing this up, anyway?" She asks with a giggle in her voice, looking for where she put the case file.

"I've seen how this ends enough to know how it goes down, Beckett. A couple trapped for the night at a motel in the middle of nowhere on a dark and stormy night? First, the lights go out, next thing we know, we're being chased through the woods by a lunatic with a chainsaw and a clown mask."

"Couple?"

Her voice sends his blood cold and his eyes wide. He quickly looks over his shoulder again, pinching his brow. "... of partners. A couple of partners is what I said, not... not couple, no." He corrects himself, even as he sees the lift in her brow and her agape smile as she crosses her arms challengingly. He simply swallows and looks out the window. "But you know how it goes. It's always the handsome, charming, debonair, innocent guy with a sensitive side that's the first to go."

And seeing an opportunity, she pounces. "Oh, good, we don't have anything to worry about, then."

But he just deeply rolls his eyes and grinds his teeth. He knows that she's kidding and he probably left himself wide open for that one, but after this long of putting up with her insults, he's not having it. And he's shoving the words her way before he can decide if the consequences are worth it. "Would it kill you to compliment me once in a while?"

His harsh voice stings her like venom running coldly through her veins. The anger firing in his eyes, the crease in his brow, the clench in his teeth... that's not the man who loved her. She thought that jibing him would at least bring him back, maybe even crack a smile. They've always been so quick to rib each other, drive each other up a wall and haven't been that quick to just force it to a stop. Like he was taking her seriously. And once the tone of his voice goes, his words come into her mind. She never thought he needed that, he never seemed that needy, or even this sensitive. He seemed confident and egotistical enough without her stoking it.

His eyes are still boring into her as he sees her lowered brow and mouth hanging open, caught off guard at him snapping at her like that. "Just for that, I'm not coming back to get you when you trip in the woods as we're running from the killer."

And she can tell that when he raises his brow and lowered his head that his features are softening toward her, even as he turns and looks back out the window. She shakes her head and looks up, a tight clench in her throat. "Well, I'm not too worried about that, Castle. I think I can handle myself enough to protect both of us." She says, slipping her blazer off her shoulders.

"And you're not worried about me? Haven't you ever seen The Shining?"

She chuckles as she hangs her blazer over one of the chairs. "Alright, Castle. If you decide to go crazy and come after me with an ax, at least I'll die knowing it was because I didn't go to charm school." She says in a sarcastic drawl as she turns toward the nightstand, looking for the case file.

"You do know that she got away in the movie, right?" He says, not turning from the window as another crack of lightning flashes through the blinds.

"Have you seen the case file? I want to organize some notes for tomorrow." She says, turning to scan the room.

Castle turns and looks toward the table over his shoulder with his hands still stuffed into his pockets. "Didn't you pick it up when we left the front desk?"

She feels yet another thwack of stupidity hit her as she rolls her eyes, remembering now that she left it sitting on the counter at check-in. "I'll be right back." She says as she's darting out the door and into the rain.

"Wait-"

He's cut off by the door closing. He quickly looks back out the window, seeing the faint outline of her running the long distance separating the room and the office. He never understood how she was able to run in those heels. He watches intently as the door to the office flings open, then is being pushed back open just a few seconds later before it can close all the way. He sees another flash of lightning crack, outlining her silhouette. When he sees it, he's instantly hit by a pull of sorrow.

When the door flies open and she stumbles inside, he almost can't stand to see her like this. His eyes rove over her as she slowly pushes the door closed with her black folder in her hand. Her hair is hanging down and drenched in stringy strands, her light purple blouse is wet and clinging to her skin, and she's standing at the door, hunched over as her nose hangs onto a drop of rain. When he can plainly see her shoulders shiver, he caves to his chivalrous ways. "Are you okay?" He asks in a caring voice.

She looks over to him, seeing him look over toward with a worried arch in his brow, the first honest expression he's shown her all day. She smirks despite herself and waves a hand. "Yeah, I'm fine." She says, halfway lying for her own good, even as she feels the cold of the rain sink into her skin.

"Beckett, you're not fine. You just ran through a thunderstorm and you don't have any clothes to change into." He says and shuffles toward her, taking his hands out of his pockets.

"I did. But I accidentally left them in the trunk of my car before they hauled it off." She says with a shake in her voice.

"Alright," He says as he pulls off his suede jacket. "You're gonna get sick if you keep that shirt on." He tosses his jacket onto the bed, untucks his shirt and begins to unbutton his shirt.

Kate watches with a pounding heart as his fingers quickly work the buttons of his pale blue, long-sleeved shirt. Once he unbuttons the last button, the sides fall open to reveal a tight, white tank top underneath, and her throat closes. But when his arms move behind him to tug the sleeves down his arms, her mouth goes dry. His arms flex strongly with hidden, but softly defined muscle, his shoulders are rock-solid as he pulls his arms out of the shirt, his softly outlined abs crunch together under the tight fabric of the tank top. When he's holding the shirt in front of him, offering it to her, she can't hear his voice over the blood rushing in her ears and the tight coil in her stomach.

"Here."

But Kate's eyes are still wide and boring into his softly defined, broad, muscular chest under the fabric of the under tanktop. Her eyes are still greedily raking over his well-hidden features, the sharp curve of his bicep with the deep line of his triceps, the soft, deep valley between his softly defined pecs. Her body feels weak looking at him. But her hand is slowly reaching up and taking the shirt in her hand even as her eyes rake over him one last time before her mind finally tells her what it is she's doing.

Gawking.

She shakes her head and quickly looks away, the heat of her body contrasting violently with the wet chill of her clothes on her skin.

"You should probably take a hot shower to warm yourself up."

I'm boiling, she thinks to herself. As she offers him a small smile, speechless as she nods and slowly moves on shaky legs toward the bathroom. She slides the door shut and spins, leaning against it for support, throwing her head back and letting her eyes drift shut, letting a long, deep sigh, closing her throat to keep it turning into a moan. He's always kept all that hidden from her view, with his nice shirts and sport coats. He never boasted about exercising or flexed his muscles at her, never posed like Hercules like she would think he would do if he had all that.

She shakes her head as her brain is imagining her hands exploring it all before she looks down and sees the shirt in her hands. She pushes out another breath, feeling ridiculous at the thought as she turns on the water to the shower. But as she waits for it to heat up, she can't help it and presses the fabric into her mouth and nose, taking a long, deep whiff. And just as she thought, he quickly overpowers all of her senses.

She takes her shower, letting the hot water scald her already crawling body for a mind-addled twenty minutes. She can feel her eyes burn right as she's about to shut off the water. He's just the kind of man that would offer her the shirt off his back. It's just a simple show of his endless generosity, how deep he can reach into that big heart of his, and how quickly he will for someone he cares about. Because, at the very least, the shirt that's hanging off the edge of the towel rack waiting for her is a sign that he does still care about her.

And that, in some other time, he felt strongly enough for her to tell her how he felt. That he loved her. Once upon a time, he was in love with her. That caring, kind-hearted, funny man that was around before all this loved her. The man she's doing this awkward dance, this tense back and forth clearly doesn't love her. And it's that that's been sending doubts over everything. Maybe he doesn't love her after all, maybe what she was starting to fear the most is actually true and that he only said it because she had been shot and he panicked.

But she's been running those words through her mind a lot. The tone in his voice and the feeling of his hands on her as she laid in the grass that hot, humid summer day.

"Kate... I love you. I love you, Kate."

There was so much wrong with so much about everything with that. His timing, their fight, her ending their relationship, her life turning upside down with a single gunshot just before he threw yet another monkey wrench to delay her healing, Josh, then her lying. A part of her was still angry at him for everything he'd said that night. And when she came back, he seemed so understanding that when she told him about her wall that she told him without actually telling him was keeping her from loving him back.

But now... she's been feeling herself open up more, being more honest with herself when it comes to her heart and the willingness to risk it. She's been searching herself for the past months for what it is she would feel if she just accepted that he did say he loved her that day instead of pretending it never happened. And the word love seems too strong in her mind, but also... it feels too brutally honest to let go.

As she shuts off the water and slides the shower curtain over, she sees his shirt hanging on the towel rack, a sign from him that he still cares for her, it's time to start letting the taste of the words beome familiar, for the words to become a mantra, a way to describe what it is she feels for him in a set of simply complex words.

She's in love with him.