Standing on Sidewalks
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Occurs in a future after Beckett left (XX)
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Her stomach churned, and the solid heel of her boot caught on the sidewalk as she stumbled around those too slow. Being late was unacceptable in her book, a mortal sin made by people who had little respect for others, and yet those who blocked her way were going to have her lumped into that category.
"Beckett- shit, Kate?"
The husky voice was low in volume, but it didn't matter. That was a sound never to be forgotten.
"Rick. Hi."
She made a response. Polite. Short. Maybe a little sharp. This wasn't supposed to happen. Not like this, not a crowed street in Philly as she ran late to a meeting – one of the too many she was required to be at.
It didn't matter what she wanted though, clearly.
"It's, uh, it's, you're looking good." His stutter cut into her, the awkward jerk of his gaze as it dropped down the long length of her body. Could he see the hollow beneath her cheekbones? The jut of her wrists? The edges of her ribs?
Kate shook the stupid from her mind. Forced herself to reply.
"You too. You look good too." She shrugged a shoulder, controlled the wrinkle threatening to form on her forehead before it gave her thoughts away.
All those years, every conversation, every touch, a marriage for fuck's sake, and it was reduced to this.
Stilted words on a sidewalk. Four years and then some, without...
This is what they had left?
Her teeth captured the inner flesh of her bottom lip, gnawed on the skin as she allowed her attention to slide the extent of his body. Surprise flared. She wasn't the only one who had slimmed, the tight curve of his skin along his jaw, the smooth plain of his abdomen beneath a shirt that once would have pouched, but now clung. While hers was a result of senseless decisions, illogical in retrospect, she wondered what had brought this change upon his appearance?
Couldn't help but speculate, just for a moment, whether his was a result of those same damned choices she had made.
She'd left after all, shattered them. Took the whole that they'd created and smashed a relationship, worse a friendship, that had taken years to solidify. She'd made the right choice. She held fast then, as much as she did now, that the consequences, while now over, would have been brutal. Would have killed him. Would have been worse than living without him...
Yet looking up into the face, the eyes, the mouth, that nose she'd loved, she'd worshipped in her own way, she felt a pause in the mantra she'd been repeating for those last years.
He'd been better off without her, than dead because of her.
"Are you, Castle? Are you good?"
Idiot, idiot, idiot. How Idiotic could she be?
He smiled bright, lips pulling wide, his body rocking back as he nodded enthusiastically, hair flopping onto his forehead in a way her fingers stretched to brush back without thought.
His eyes never changed, never lighting, the flat glaze gave him, and his truth, away.
"Of course. Hey, why don't we grab a coffee? A grande skim latte with two pumps of sugar-free vanilla, for old time's sake." A joke, the need to be the jester, old banter from the beginning, spilling out. Hurting her. He'd never needed to be that for her. Never needed to don that persona when it was just them.
"No. I don't drink coffee." She squeezed her eyelids tight for a second, exhaling loudly. "I don't drink that type of coffee any more..."
How could she when it was their thing, his thing, he'd taken her habit and made it his own. Handcuffs were no longer instruments of a trade. Books no longer pieces of paper with sentences. And coffee, that coffee, was a haunting shadow over a soul that would never be free of the tarnish she'd applied.
His features mimicked hers in their own way; eyebrows drawn forward, a hunch in his frame. Could he hear the words, the explanation she dared not give life to?
"Oh, okay-"
A jostle from her left, a shove from a pedestrian as he charged along the sidewalk, the back of his head shaking in annoyance as the stranger moved past the obstruction that the two of them had created, and her own needs came hurtling back. Right. She was late and now probably outlandishly so.
"I have to go. I have a meeting. And," she pointed north toward the block of towers she was supposed to be currently in. "I have to go."
She'd repeated herself. The barely minute of them had left her more baffled, more lost for words than she'd been in a very long time.
Four years and then some.
Since she'd left without a proper explanation. A proper goodbye. A proper anything.
"Oh, okay..."
He took a step into her space, the tips of his fingers brushing the sleeve of her jacket, before he pulled them back with a jerk, fist clenching at his side.
Did he feel it too? The links that still lingered in the space between them? The tug that left an ache within her gut? The need to tumble ahead into him, into those arms, engulfed her. To have them wrap around her. To have him hold her. Absolve her.
He'd written, when the disaster had been diverted, the good guys winning. He'd written of understanding, of clarity, of acceptance.
Never of forgiveness. Never of wanting her back.
She'd been unable to put pen to paper, to reply in any other way than to clutch to that letter when the darkness had threatened to take a hold, when the reasons for moving on with her life were as distant a memory as the two of them.
Words were, after all, his thing.
"It was- it's good seeing you again, Kate." He smiled once more, the corners of his mouth lifting a little higher this time. The spark within his eyes that would have normally flared, coming to life, if only a tiny fraction of what was.
"Yeah, yeah I wish... I have to go. I'm sorry."
Sorry that she was late, sorry for running out of this conversation, out of the millions of conversations that hang in the air between them. Everything she hadn't said, everything she should have said.
Wanted to.
She shifted around his frame, around the shoulders she'd rested her head on, the hands that had held her together, the body of the man she'd loved completely.
Loved even now.
As he slipped out of her vision, her throat closing expectedly, she stumbled on the desperate need to turn back as his voice once again cut through the din rising from the street.
"I can't write." A hitch, a pause as sharp as the brittle pieces of her heart. "I mean, I understand about the coffee. I haven't been able to write."
Pivoting, the chunky heel of her shoe catching for a second time on the uneven path, she raised her gaze. Locked on to his.
"I just- if you want to grab something else, a hot chocolate or something. I get it."
Air lodged, regardless of how she panted, she couldn't catch a breath.
"Did you? Did you want to grab a hot chocolate or something?"
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Thank you for reading xo
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I was driving home from work and a song came on the radio and for the first time since I walked away from Castle, from writing and reading, I had a story in my head and words to get out.
I'm marking complete because it may be another four years before it happens again.
In the meantime I hope this finds you well, happy and healthy.
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Thank you to Honeyandvodka for answering my email xo
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