"Blah-cka...cka!" She vomits loudly, coughing harshly as bile drops from her bottom lip.

Rick's heart feels heavy, knowing there's not much he can do to take away any of this. When he was her partner, all he had to do was jump in front of a bullet or two. Acting as her human shield wouldn't do much good here. Knowing this, he holds her hair back for her, draping the frizzy, unkempt tangles over his forearm.

"Ugghhh..." Kate groans, hanging her head over the edge of the bowl, her hands gripping sides for a moment before falling to the floor limply. Rick stays silent and decides to reach up and pull the useless hair tie from her hair, letting the tangled mess of brunette locks fan out over her back. He puts the hair tie on his finger and thumb, launching it through the air and into the sink on the other side of the bathroom. As he reaches over with his other hand, kneeling on the floor next to her while she sits huddled over the toilet bowl, he brushes her hair back enough to where it's out her way.

He can feel her convulse again, and after a moment, her cheeks puffing up, her face reddening, she opens her mouth and spills her stomach out into the toilet bowl again for another fit of vomiting. "Blugghh... ka-ka-ka-kuu!" She coughs.

Rick sighs a small breath out through his nose, holding her hair in a soft grip, trying to stay stoic and steadfast, more for himself than for her, but even now he has to admit to himself that seeing her like this, the woman he admired and loved so much for her strength, determination, and iron will now reduced to this, huddled over a toilet bowl, puking her guts out... it hurts.

After a tense moment, where Kate hangs her face over the bowl with her eyes closed, waiting for the next assault, she moves her tongue around in her mouth and spits in the bowl. She leans up and puts an elbow against one side of the bowl, clutching her pounding forehead with her hand, reaching up with her other hand to pet the arm of Rick's white long sleeved button up. "You don't have to do this, Castle."

Rick lets go of her hair and slowly drags his hand out from the tangled mess, trying to brush some of it out with his fingers out of habit, and moves to sit down on the floor, leaning back against the tub with one arm propped up over his knee. "I also didn't have to shadow you for five years for book research."

That makes Kate pull her eyes open, looking over to him with her hand still clutching her forehead. Rick just gives her a lidded gaze, raised brow, and pout of his lips, waving his hand in the air over his knee. "If that's your way of saying you're doing this to try and get me back, just give the word." She says, managing to muster up a smirk.

Rick doesn't respond beyond hardening his expression.

Kate looks back down into the bowl for a moment, taking her hand off her forehead. "I won't kiss you for obvious reasons, but I'll think of something."

"Hate to burst your bubble, Beckett, but that's not why I'm here either." He says, pushing himself off the back of the tub and over closer to her.

She feels her gag reflex break and she's vomiting into the bowl again, and Rick calmly reaches over and takes her hair for her. After the barrage is done and she hawks another wad of spit into the bowl, Rick waits until she has her face out of the bowl to reach up and pull on the handle to flush. As the water starts to swirl, she doesn't bother looking into the details and decides to just enjoy to brief feeling of the cold mist hitting her face as she rests her head in her hand again.

"This is even worse than when I was shot," She slurs as Rick takes his hand from her hair again.

Rick leans back against the back of the tub again and begins to roll up his sleeves. "Can't exactly say I would know." He says in somewhat of a snide tone. He focuses his eyes on rolling up his sleeves, but can feel Kate's tired, sickly, dark circled eyes on him.

It's silent save for the toilet hissing next to them that stops just as Kate starts. "You really want to do this? You're deciding now's the time to still be upset about that?"

Rick chuckles darkly to himself as he hangs his arm over his knee again. "No, I forgave you for that a long time ago. That and... you know, the whole looking me in the eye every day for a year and lying right to my face thing." Kate closes her eyes and turns her head away from him, covering her face with her hand. He's being honest, holding no grudges over what he had truly forgiven her for. "But then again, I guess some things never change." He says in a dark tone to match his chuckle from earlier.

There's a moment of silence when Kate feels there's nothing she can say and just cradles her aching head in her hand. But after a minute or so, she convulses, feeling her gag reflex swell and hot bile flood her throat. As she hangs her head back over into the toilet bowl, puking out her guts in yet another fit of sickness, the only comfort she has is feeling his gentle hand reaching back up to her hair and gently holding it back for her. After she vomits another couple of times, she groans deeply and gives out on her neck muscles, resting her chin on the edge of the bowl, her head still pounding.

"Uugghhhh..." she groans, her stomach feeling queasy.

Rick gently drags his fingers out of her hair again, his hand acting as a brush to straighten out the tangled, slept on, unkempt mess on her head. He pushes himself up off the floor and sits down on the edge of the tub, reaching into the shower to grab a light blue wash rag, turns on the cold water for a second and rinses it, ringes it out with one hand, then comes back to kneel next to her, shaking out the rag.

"So, tell me, Beckett," he begins in a calm voice, flattening out the rag on his palm and putting a soothing hand on the arch of her back, "why'd you go behind my back with the interview at the AG's office?"

Kate cracks her eyes open, a line of bile still hanging grossly from the edge of her bottom line, and lethargically grabs for the rag, pressing it to her face and exhaling cautiously, the cold, brisk feel of the water feeling like a miracle had just touched her face. She drags it down her face, wiping the leftover sickness from her mouth and a layer of sweat from her skin. "You're really asking about this now?" She asks him, taking the rag from her face.

"No, no, no," Rick says quickly and leans back over, taking the rag from her, folding it three times into a band and pressing it to her forehead with a slow, gentle hand. "Keep it right there." He tells her as he holds the rag against her forehead for her, soon feeling her cold, clamy hand reach up and cover his, her eyes drifting shut as she leans into his palm. "I figured you wouldn't have the energy to lie to me if I bring it up now."

She groans again as she takes his hand back, letting her hold the rag by herself. "Because I couldn't get you to talk about where we were going." She tells him in a thrashy voice. "I didn't know where our relationship was headed," she continues, her eyes still closed and giving him credit where it's due, she just doesn't have the energy to think up a lie, "I thought I'd gotten all I was getting out of us. And the job at the AG's office..." at this point, she thinks, there's probably not much more she can tell him to break his heart further when he starts to get it in his head, "I thought it was my shot at something real."

Rick can feel himself harden and ice over, all of it despite how sickly and pitiful she's looking. Any other time, he'd feel terrible about himself for thinking like this when she's in this state. "And what we had just wasn't real enough?" He asks, his voice low and edging with held-back emotion. "I guess I never realized how badly I screwed things up for you, Kate."

"Oh, Rick, I..." she trails off, taking the rag from her head as she hangs her head back inside the bowl just as she vomits again. "Blagchka!"

Even still, Rick reaches over as her head dips into the bowl and takes her hair, holding it back for her, despite how small and shriveled his heart feels.

After she's done with that wave, she wipes the bile from her mouth with the rag and he takes it from her, quickly reaching behind him to rinse it off in the shower faucet, rejuvenating it with cold water. Her eyes look heavy and emotional, more reddened when he folds the rag back up for her and goes to press it to her forehead. Once his hand is holding the rag on her, she covers his hand with her's, taking it and pressing her lips to his palm. His heart jumps at the feeling, his thumb reaching out to brush over her cheekbone out of an old formed habit.

"Rick, I love you." She says in a groggy voice as she lets him take his hand back, pressing the cold rag to her forehead again, leaning against the edge of the bowl. Rick goes back to leaning back against the tub, watching her as she looks over to him with tired eyes.

All he can do is watch her silently as she looks over to him. There was a time when he could have died perfectly happy just having heard those words from her. But it's a lesson learned from turning over a new leaf that even that bile-laden toilet water she's hanging her head over right now will be akin to a Sonoma County, California wine to a man who's dying of thirst. And at this point, not even knowing her, just knowing how it's been his entire life... he just doesn't believe her.

"So," she continues after a pause in both her sickness and the conversation, "how'd your date go?" She asks, her voice heavy. Rick's eyes break out of the cold, icy stare and into a somewhat of a surprised quirk. "We go to the same coffee shop." She points out, telling him how she knew about it.

"Well," Rick sighs, waving his hand in the air as his forearm rests on his knee, "it sure went better than our first date went."

With that, she can feel her heart slowly shatter into pieces, feeling even more painful when she sees that slight unturn on his lips as he looks away from her and smirks. As her eyes burn, she looks away and covers her quickly welling up eyes with the rag.

He sees it happen and pinches his brow. "What?"

When she takes the rag from her eyes, her eyes are red and puffy. "We had sex on our first date, Castle!" She says, leaning over and weakly pressing her hand to his shin in a show of just how hurt she is.

But he remains calm, raising his hand to her and cocking one side of his brow. "I'd... actually like to think of it more as making love?" He says with a lift in his voice. "Unless you think of all those times we were together as nothing more than scratching each other's itch?" When all she does is take her bottom lip in between her teeth and shake her head, her big hazel eyes still reddened with emotion, and adding to it her dark, already sickly complexion, none of it is helping. "Nothing happened, okay?" He says in a much softer, calming voice.

She meets his eyes, seeing a familiar look of honesty and caring in his features. She stares into his eyes for a moment, feeling her heartbreak melt away the more she drinks in his soft gaze.

"We went to dinner, we did the usual get-to-know-you stuff, then went for a walk and talked, after which I took her home. The only rubbing I got was from her Siamese cat, and from my research on cats, they only do that to spread pheromones."

Kate nods, slowly turning herself back toward the bowl to prepare for the inevitable bout of vomiting that's sure to come. "I'm gonna hate myself for asking this but why'd you ask her out?" She hesitates, handing him back the rag as a cue for him to run some more water over it.

Rick smiles and takes the rag, quickly rinsing it for her again, hands it back to her and shrugs. "I don't know, she's just... light." He says, not knowing really how to describe Sierra. "Not weighed down, not hiding from anything, pretty easy to talk to."

"So," she says, her heart starting to get heavy again, holding a twinge of heartache at the center, "in other words nothing like me." She tells him, looking away as she takes the cold rag back from him.

"She's definitely quicker with the occasional compliment than you are." He almost snides as he leans back against the tub. When she peers over to him again in a tired, lidded gaze, he smirks proudly. "She even called me cute a couple of times."

She rolls her eyes. "Stop fishing, Castle." She groans, her head still aching. "You're gorgeous, okay?"

His heart flutters for a moment, "Man, you must have one hell of a fever."

"Oh, quit it, Castle," she tells him again, shaking her head.

"Well, I don't exactly ever remember you telling me things like that before."

"One," she starts, "I didn't think you needed your ego boosted by the woman who was already sleeping with you. Two, I did so tell you how attractive you were. And three, that's not why I loved you." She finishes, looking him in the eye with a soft, tired smile before waving the rag at him and going back to leaning her head down against the bowl. "It was just an added bonus." She says, peering over to him again. "I really good-looking added bonus."

Despite himself, Rick finds himself fighting a smile, craning his neck to try and hide it from her. After a minute of her not fighting her gag reflex, her stomach seeming to have settled, he looks back up to her. "Think you're done?"

She looks down at the bowl, the contents of her stomach still floating around in the water, and nods. "Yeah."

"Alright, come on," he says to her, standing up and putting his hands on her arms to help her up. Still in her baggy clothes and his shirt, her hair now untangled and falling down her shoulders in the same soft waves as usual aside from still being a bit frazzled and frizzy, Kate's weakened body leans on his strength and support as his arms help her up off the floor.

As her weak, cramped legs test her weight, his arms still holding her up, she slowly gets her balance back and gives him an assuring nod. "I'm up."

"Good," he says, his hands cupping her elbows as she mindlessly wraps her fingers around his biceps.

But she's only mindless of it for a moment before she feels his muscles tense under her touch. When she feels it, her hand increases the pressure on instinct, grasping his muscular arms, so much more defined than the memory of her hands can tell, and she looks up to him, seeing him look down to her eyes in a soft, very familiar gaze. It would be now that she'd just lean in and take his lips, feast on his mouth all she can, jump on him and wrap her legs around his waist, let him carry her to the nearest surface where they could make love. That's usually what that soft look in his eyes and that gentle arch in his brow usually meant before.

Kate shakes her head after a moment, her headache throbbing reminding her of the situation, and lets go of his biceps, running her palms down his forearms and turning out of the bathroom.

"Still worse than when you were shot?" He asks as he trails directly behind her.

Kate smiles, rolls her eyes to herself as she shuffles out of the bathroom, and pushes her hair back. "You didn't use up the last of the peanut butter, did you?"


A/N: So, I wasn't going to bring it up until it happened because I really didn't want to spoil anything, but I've been having a bit of a crisis of confidence, so I'll just ask it. Rating change: yay or nay?

I won't say when, where, how, who, or why, but I had planned on one. And as with my other stories, I wouldn't do it unless it was pretty crucial to the telling of the story. There are plenty of one-shots out there that fulfill that purpose. If I do up the rating, it won't be just for one scene, and it won't add just M-rated content to the story, it will be part of the story telling. I can maneuver around it with some clever writing tricks, but I don't think it will have the same impact as it would otherwise. Again, I don't want to give away anything, but I also don't want viewership to plunge as usually the case when a rating change happens, since this story is on track to be my most popular (who would've thought?). Please, let me know in the reviews. And a big thank you to all of you who have stuck with this story for this long. 22 chapters is usually when I begin to wrap things up, but this story just as so much plot that needs telling!

So again, a big thank you to all of those who have stuck with the story and reviewed! You guys rock.