Monday, October 27th, 2011
8:17 AM, Montauk, NY

You're being ridiculous, Katie.

That was true. Even so, her already halting momentum stuttered in the doorway of the master suite before she ducked her head and slunk inside.

The poor excuse for daylight was further disadvantaged by half-closed blinds where it shone in narrow slits. Rich, dark hardwoods stood in congregation along the room's outer circumference: two dressers, armoires, a desk and curio cabinet. A gorgeous black marble plinth held a bronze bust of Edgar Allan Poe. Unlike the loft Castle had in the city, the walls bore paintings instead of prints. A grim vanitas still-life by Pieter Claesz depicted, among other objects, a writing quill and skull. The male facial portrait by contemporary artist Andrew Salgado was somehow chilling. Deep, dark pastels and the way some were frozen dripping down the canvas. She wondered if it was done after the painter's homophobia-fueled assault a few years ago. She worried about why it had appealed to her partner enough to purchase.

The shower was running in the en suite bath. Brighter, clean light poured out of the half-sealed portal to pool in a blunted rectangle upon the hardwood floor. Tempting to follow that radiant roadway. Tendrils of steam licked along the borders of the door like exaggerated fingers crooked and beckoning to her. Jeez. Kate turned her back to it and found herself facing the centrally positioned king-sized bed.

In what remained their most deliberately intimate moment to-date, it was there she'd coaxed the author to sleep last time she'd visited. He'd stared blankly forward, hardly seeming aware while the detective had stripped them both down to nearly nothing. There was no lust in the act, only dire needs to comfort and connect. A few intermittent swoops of his lashes were all that greeted her guidance. She'd eased him under the covers and slid in after. The full-length shiver of welcome that had emerged from him when she'd tucked her bare back into the cove of his torso and arms was still powerfully vivid. The recalled warmth and breadth of his palm nestled between her breasts was difficult to breathe around.

In the grip of the memory, Kate thought: Thank goodness I did that. Thank god Rick let me do that. He got to see me, feel me, before the scars.

The cessation of the shower went completely unheeded. It was the greater bloom of light that alerted her to no longer being alone. A humid gust accompanied her host out of the en suite bath, scented by his preferred shower gel: balsam, eucalyptus, sandalwood and birch.

"Beckett?"

She turned at the waist to view him over her left shoulder.

An uncertain reception dwelt in her host's features. A partial smile was stymied by fine lines of confusion at his forehead. A white towel wrapped his waist, clasped shut in the grip of his right hand. For a few long seconds, staring was all either seemed capable of managing. Perhaps he too was lured into remembering the last time she'd been invited into his earthy-hued den of masculinity.

At length, the detective turned where she stood and slowly approached. She noted his grip on the towel clench incrementally tighter. A minor lift of his chin compounded the gesture. He looked so wary. Oh. Nope. Maybe part of him was, but a parsimonious anger was present too. It flexed at his clenched jaw and glinted in his eyes—obsidian jewels in the gloom—which had narrowed perceptibly.

Kate stopped with a mere foot between them and let her gaze lower from his to make another, more determined evaluation of the figure before her. On the beach, she'd been caught off-guard, distracted by the riot of her own nerves. Closer inspection revealed a physique that was less definition than it was outright muscle mass. His was the build one acquired through brief, overly aggressive workouts, either an expulsion of pent-up energy or the seeking of raw strength. He hadn't engaged in the controlled effort of someone who wanted to shape themselves into a more pleasing aesthetic.

In the near-perfect silence of the largely dormant summer home, her aggrieved murmur was clear. "What have you done to yourself?"

Richard curled his left arm around his abdomen in an almost laughable attempt to conceal himself. "What're you doing in here? Not that you aren't welcome," he added swiftly in a rougher tone, but stopped short and frowned.

"I was going to call the precinct with an update." The abode had few downsides; a lack of reliable cell-phone reception was one of them. A microcell signal booster was utilized to compensate for that seclusion, but it wasn't left on during the owner's long absences.

"I see." The man's gaze cut to the desk on which the equipment was stored. "I'll take care of—

"Castle. Look at me. Answer me, please."

He did in time without meeting her eyes. The form that prompted her concern shifted its weight from one hip to the other. "You, uh, don't approve?"

Are you kidding me right now? Beckett jerked her gaze sharply up to his and lifted an eyebrow of her own to communicate the foolishness of his question. Beads of water yet clung to the hills and valleys of his heavier frame. Sun-warmed skin brought on images of better days. The roughness of stubble called to her for the shuddering contrast it would be against her softer skin. He looked like a tall glass of ice-water on a scorching summer day.

"Why did you do it, Rick?"

"I-I've been wanting to for a while."

"Yeah, but it happened recently."

Castle just stared at her.

Kate slid a palm back over her hair and sighed with some impatience. She tried to make her tone more conversational to set him at ease. Lost cause. It hurt to see him so…different. "You know, being stronger or faster isn't enough sometimes. Terrible things happen and we can't always stop them."

"Oh," her partner said, his eyes closing briefly. "You think I did this because I couldn't—because of the cemetery," he corrected with a hitch of his breath. He met her gaze and didn't shy from the probing. "I guess I'd be lying if I said that hadn't crossed my mind at some point, but this wasn't about your shooting. Not in the way you're inferring."

Kate really wanted to believe that. She arched an eyebrow again in mute prompting.

Rick squinted and looked to one side. The half-lofted hand at his middle curled into a loose fist against his right side. For a moment, she thought it might take an ear pinch to get him spilling. Then the man huffed and relinquished, "I spoke to Jim the morning you started your physical therapy." She frowned lightly and shook her head when he fixed her with an expectant look. "This wasn't—I didn't do this in the hope of being able to successfully race any future bullets." He turned away some to face the bedroom beyond them both. "It helped me feel a little closer to you at the time, that's all."

Oh. Oh God…

"Please," he cut himself short, cleared his throat again and looked down at the floor between them. "Please don't say anything. I needed it. Can we leave it at that?"

"Okay," Kate managed to breathe out, though she could have exploded with the pressure of pent-up attempts at reassuring him, thanking him, showering him all over again with how much that meant to her. It was an instinctive move to reach for him.

Castle didn't back away, but flinched sharply.

The detective sighed and curled her arms around herself instead. "So, you are upset. Some at least."

"Beckett…" The man sighed and raked his fingers through his shorter, damp hair.

As if summoned by the surname, the detective lowered her arms and squared her shoulders. "I'll let you get dressed. And since that stupid beach ate the to-go cups of coffee I brought for us," she added with a decent facsimile of a wry smirk, "I'll make us a couple mugs for the road. Sound good?"

"Kate—"

Oof! She was the one to flinch a little that time but was thankfully already en route to the east hallway door. "Don't shave just yet," she called back. "The scruff is a nice compliment to the new bulk—you're like that guy on the Brawny paper-towel packages."

"Wha—Rude," he fired after her in protest.

The trilling laugh that escaped her was much less forced. It was a small splash of cool relief at her core. She was 'Kate' to him again for a moment there. Not exactly 'Allie' yet. Maybe that won't be so easy after all, but this is still a good start. An expansive exhale loosened some of the knots inside.

Her partner emerged only fifteen minutes later in dark slacks with a matching sports coat slumped over the crook of his right elbow. He was in the process of wrestling with the top three buttons of a white dress shirt. The sleeves hung loose. A distinct curl of pleasure awoke to behold that. The view itself was nice; mouth-watering torsions of vascular forearms as they worked, the fabric at either bicep pulled smooth across the obstructions flesh imposed, the summer kissed contrast at his throat and the dip between the pronounced rise of squarish pectoral shelves.

More pleasing still, however, was the haste to rejoin her implied by the other's mostly-complete state of dress. Rick grunted in disgust and left the last two buttons undone. He looked at his cuffs and then at Kate. She grinned when he advanced to present them beseechingly to her.

"Big, tough man defeated by phalangeal dexterity."

He watched her eyes as she smoothed the right sleeve and latched its button. The unwavering focus was apparent at her peripheral. "I'm really not, you know."

"Big and tough? It's true what they say then: appearances are decei—

"I'm not mad at you," he interjected quietly. It didn't take volume for those words to jolt her to a sudden halt. "I'm pissed off at myself." She scoffed quietly and continued with the other sleeve. The effort was stalled again by one of his hands closing lightly over her industrious digits. "It bothers me that you'd come here expecting the worst. I thought giving you space was what you needed."

"Oh, babe. It was. I was—I am grateful, Castle." The study of his gaze relented as she finished and again tugged his sleeve crisply straight. She took the coat from where it was slumped over his arm and opened it. A surprised blip of a smile appeared before the other turned and slipped it on with her aid.

"But you can't accept that I could be okay with it," Rick said as he stepped forward to the counter and gathered his keys, cellphone, and wallet. When he turned again and gathered the lidded cups of coffee she'd prepared, his brow was marred some by lines of disturbance. "I don't understand how you of all people could think otherwise."

Kate frowned. "Me of all people?"

"You changed everything the last time you were here. You changed me."

He was different. That had been true over a year ago when he'd returned the previous fall.

"I know it was difficult when I came back." The detective's frown remained, an unvoiced objection stirred toward the surface. "For a while there," he mused, glancing aside as if peering through a window to that time, "I was pretty well cut adrift. Our work together was the only thing that made ironclad sense. There's no dithering about whether or not to catch a murderer. Don't misunderstand me though; I was never unsure about you. It's just the opposite. I was unsure of myself. Before our weekend away together, there was no real expectation in my mind of one day living without the weight of guilt I'd been carrying. Without it... Everything came untethered. It felt like I was reassembling myself from the ground up."

Beckett tried to mask her shock. That was the first time he'd ever willingly broached the subject. When he'd returned from that summer away, he'd been distant. God had it hurt. They'd parted in Montauk with a kiss she'd dreamt about for weeks afterward, but he'd come back so quiet and reserved. Uncertain. Within a few short weeks her partner had thawed and they'd fallen back into something resembling a smooth pattern at the precinct, but it was still different. They had spent nine long months trying to readjust to where and what they were to one another.

It would have been so much easier if it hadn't been so obvious he still cared. The trip to L.A., an 'undercover kiss' that had brought her dreams roaring back to life, and so many other thoughtful gifts or sweet comments had kept her heart effectively chained and locked to what she feared was one-sided certitude. The culmination of both their pent-up frustrations when they'd fought in her apartment before Roy died… Looking at the man now, she can see and hear him then.

"I just—I need time, Kate. I would never leave you, damn it."

"No. You're so much crueler than that. You stay just close enough to twist the knife and bleed me a little more every day."

Ugh. She shouldn't have said 'knife'. He'd paled like a ghost and left her apartment in a daze. She hadn't even considered the comment in relation to her mother's murder, to the single greatest horror of her life thus far. Not until Rick was long gone. It wasn't an intentional association, but how could a writer of all people dismiss the implications?

Then came the cemetery, the sniper, and her long recovery. Keeping him at a distance while she healed was never about revenge or reciprocity. Sustained and at times systemic pain turns people into someone they are otherwise not. It lashes out with vile bitterness without forethought or permission. Kate has seen it turn people into monsters. She has watched pain tear families apart. There was no way in hell she was going to allow the author near her at such a precarious time. Too much uncertainty and regret had built up between them. She hadn't trusted herself.

Instead, she'd clung to the memory of him smoothing her hair back from her brow on the cemetery grass, to his wet blue eyes set against the sympathetic sky, and even to the agony of his palm pressed flush to her chest as the blood desperately flooded out. To the words of love that followed her all the way down into the dark.

"I wish you'd told me this back then," she gritted presently. Anger had waned over their summer apart but grief and regret for the time they had lost because of both their choices was still raw.

"I do too. I wish I'd understood then what was really holding me back. It took," he grimaced, stopped. Then started again, "It took a crystalline moment of utter devastation to help me see clearly." No need to ask what calamity was being spoken of.

Lanie had recently, tearfully relayed the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

"He was calling for you, saying how he needed you. L-loved you. Sorry, honey, I know you're private, but he wasn't in his right mind. And then suddenly he seemed to shatter. He thought you'd…you know. He just knelt there gaping and wide-eyed. By then we were almost to you. But, God, his head snapped to us with this look of unbridled menace. I can't even look at him now without seeing it. He was like those animals you read about that guard their fallen, driven savage. Thank god for Javi. He realized what was coming before I did and took the brunt of your writer's insane charge. It took five people to keep him down so I could get to you. He kept c-calling out. Promised he'd be good if you came back, like a little boy might, y'know? B-broke my—lordy. I'm sorry. He broke my damn heart."

"You waited for me," Rick said, bringing her jarringly back to reality. Both cups of coffee were back on the counter. The proximity between them had been decreased to almost nothing amidst her distraction. The blue of his eyes, clearer now in the brighter kitchen, were like wells of gravity pulling specifically at the heart drumming hard in her chest. "How could I deny you the same?"

It flew out of her mouth, a gushed torrent. "You said you loved me. I-I heard you."

"No."

Kate flinched bodily in shock at the denial.

"I didn't use those words in the past tense. I never will."

"Ugh, fuck," she grunted, backing off some to rest her hands on her knees. To breathe. "Don't do this to me. Not unless you're sure. I can't watch you drift apart like that again. I won't. I did too in a way, I know. It's terrible, so goddamned hypocritical. But, even so, I can't—"

Beckett stiffened at the feel of his hands gripping at the shoulders of her coat, tugging her sharply upright and into a mauling embrace. Crushing. "This time we're leaving here together," he growled angrily into her hair, "I promise. I fucking promise." She sighed and sagged in his grip.

"Hurts," she was forced to croak at length.

Rick shot away to arms length as though she were a pillar of flame. "Ah, shit. I'm sorry."

A hum of amusement accompanied a relieved breath. She stepped back into him again and the grasp of his arms was gentler but still nice. "When did you become such a potty-mouth?"

"Someone's a bad influence on me, clearly. You work fast."

"Oh gosh, work. I called the 12th and Gates gave me hell for being gone so long. We have to—"

"Get on the road," he finished with a slide of his hand against her back. "I know. It's okay."

"Still. You love me," she said, pulling back enough to grin widely at him.

"Focus, Allie."

"Oh, I am, Brute. I am."

Blue eyes dipped into the merger of their chests and then back up. "Do you…too?"

"You have to ask? And you have to phrase it like something out of Dr. Seuss?"

"Rude," he complained on a huff, but smiled helplessly with a soft nudge of his forehead coming to rest against hers.

"Yeah, me too. God, yes. I love the shit out of you, Rick."

A tilt of his chin sent a modulated peal of laughter upwards. "Wow. Nicely put."

"Shaddup," she grumbled and tugged him down by his ears into a proper, heated welcome at her mouth. The site of their first fully intentional kiss became that of their second—no thinly veiled subterfuge to mar it. Beckett resolved then and there that their third wouldn't wait for another trip to Montauk.