Treading Water
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The Limey 4x20 Prequel Part Two
"The guy is crazy about you. And despite your little act, you're crazy about him."
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"Um," she says on the phone. "I'm not sure. We just left the city and... he's driving me out into the desert."
Castle huffs. "Don't say it like that!"
Lanie cackles. "Girl, he is finally gonna murder you."
She breaks a smile, glad her friend called after that plane ride, the sexual tension and regular tension so cloying she was ready to jump out an emergency exit. "He's not going to murder me. Are you, Castle?"
"No!" She raises an eyebrow and he strangles the wheel a little. "I just figured the strip, right off the bat, you know, just. I have a history there, you might not want to... it's really loud."
Her stomach flips. He doesn't think her PTSD can handle walking through the casino.
He might be right.
"Alright, Kate, you have fun getting murdered. And if you couldn't hear it, those were quote marks around murdered, because I really think that's a euphemism for sex."
"Lanie," she hisses.
"I heard that," Castle groans. Yells towards Kate's phone. "She's not getting murdered!"
Silence drops like a stone.
Kate ends the call. They both don't look at each other.
Not getting 'murdered', huh?
Nothing comes to mind to dispel that unspoken indictment, and she sits in the passenger side of the rental car—sleek, sexy Audi—waiting for it to not feel quite so awkward and terrible.
That never happens.
He was, in fact, driving them out of the Vegas city limits, and she did, in fact, assume he booked them a hotel on the strip. When he said, come away with me, she assumed a riot of things, all of which, apparently, won't be happening.
He has driven them to... a cabin. Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, the signs read. Scrubby brush and a painted desert in the Mojave, not that she can see any of it in the dark. It might be just within the city limits, maybe? "Why... here?" she asks.
She sounds jittery and she hates jittery. Bewildered, and that is her pet peeve. The pathetic victims who never saw it coming, just can't imagine he would ever do this to her.
She's not getting murdered.
"It's quiet," he says lamely. The car engine still ticks as it cools. A fine shower of sand skitters along the frame of the car, dies again. A red haze from the halogen security lamp in front of the cabin, a few moths attempting an end run, falling back. "And there's no chance we're being bugged."
Her head whips around to him.
He swallows roughly and drops his hands from the steering wheel. "Leave the luggage in the car, just in case," he murmurs, won't look at her. "No phones. And come inside with me. After I talk, you can decide if you want to turn around and leave, or if... uh, you want to get murdered."
She has a weird, shivery feeling he doesn't mean that with quote marks.
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"I love you."
He watches the terror flash over her face. Watches her school her features with a heroic effort of will. And then the confusion hot on its heels, because he's pretty sure his face isn't suffused with joy right now.
He bobs his head and gestures for her to sit, but neither of them do. The cabin isn't rustic, by any means—it costs too much for that, and he likes his bathroom indoors, thanks—but he didn't give either of them much time to check out the space. Two master bedrooms, a common space, a kitchen, all they need.
If she stays.
"I'm in love with you," he clarifies. Winces when his voice breaks. "And the problem with that—"
"Problem?" she breathes.
"Yes," he confirms. She rocks back on her heels. "The problem with that is—I've made some choices, based on wanting to make things right, wanting to keep you, um, at all, which have actually taken agency away—"
She shakes her head, a short sharp gesture. "No, we talked about that. A ride-along was forced on me, but I also—"
"Not that," he interrupts. "Definitely, yeah, I am still working on that specific behavior, just as you're working on those walls, and okay, we meet in the middle with that, don't we?" She looks so lost. So confused. He's talking in circles. He scrubs a hand down his face and paces to the window. "It's reached a point where I can't not say anything."
"I... still need time," she whispers. "I'm still..."
He stares out at the night. "It's not about that, actually. And I... know you already know. How could you not know I'm in love with you?" He laughs, and it only sounds a small amount hysterical. Just a bit. "How could I not know you're in love with me back?" He looks at her over his shoulder and her whole face is flushed and stunned and—yeah.
She does. It's obvious.
"That's not the conversation we need to have," he says quietly. He wants to be as gentle with her as he can, because of the PTSD, because of the therapy, because—because he loves her. He never wanted to hurt her. "But it informs everything I do." He shrugs and finds a way to smile at her. "How can it not? It came from a good place. But I have been made to understand that—well, I already knew, I did know when I made this choice, took this deal, that you wouldn't have chosen it for yourself and I was taking that away from you."
"Took what deal?" she snaps. The stunned and flushed has frozen solid, frozen into denial, horror, something really not good. Something also cop-like. Strident. Impatient. Aggressive. (Hot.) "What deal, Castle."
"After you were shot, a friend of Montgomery's came to me—"
"Oh God." Her hand goes up as if in defense. "No. Castle."
He sees it in her eyes; she's never been able to fully mask herself in front of him. Even as he's never been able to play the fool convincingly before her either.
She knows, already, somehow. Just as he knew, already, she remembered his as-she-lay-dying confession.
Silence stretches taut between them.
"Rick, don't," she croaks.
But he has to. It's too late already.
He looks down at his hands, takes a breath, and tells her everything.
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She's not asleep.
How can she ever sleep again?
She sits in the window with her knees drawn up to her chest, wearing the pajamas she threw in her bag this evening when he called to take her away. She stares out at the Mojave Desert's darkness, a sky filled with stars, the faint sense of rock formations looming somewhere past the strain of her night vision. Black shapes blocking out the stars.
She wants to open his door and crawl into bed with Castle, her friend, her partner, but that's not the man in the other room. The man in the other room is miserably in love with her and made a deal to save her life. For now. A deal to actively work against her, sabotage her, if it comes to that.
It will, at some point, come to that. There will be a case that falls in her lap, there will be an event, a thread that unravels, which will bring her mother's case—or Kate's own shooting—back into the spotlight. It's bound to happen, the way her luck falls. It's why she's felt the sword hanging over her neck, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It will happen.
And he will—would have—will do everything in his power to keep her away from it.
Keep her from the truth. From her life's work. From her mother's justice.
From her own.
She doesn't know what to do about that. He was never supposed to be working against her.
It's not about love. God knows she's miserably in love with him too. He knows she is; it's not a secret. They agreed to work on their thornier problems first, themselves, her issues, before tackling the reality of love. Because a relationship in practice is not the same as in theory.
In theory, she wants to turn her head and always see him there. In theory, she wants the feeling of his body close in the dark, erupting with stars. In theory, she wants to hear what he thinks about her latest case and tug at the loose ends of his story.
In practice, she's one in a rather large club of muses who have momentarily dazzled him with inspiration. In practice, she sucks at communicating and gets her feelings hurt far too easily. In practice, he reads over her shoulder, thinks about himself first and sometimes only, can't manage to have a serious conversation without cracking an inappropriate joke, has a lot of baggage and hang-ups about women, forgets she's not a child with her own damn life—
The anger boils away as fast as it boiled over, and she slumps against the windowpane to feel the cold on her forehead. She cries again, wiping away silent tears, tired of crying over something that really ought to be wonderful.
He loves her. And once again, once again, he chose a time right for him and not at all right for her.
(Couldn't he have taken her to dinner and smiled at her? Held her hand. Kissed the corner of her mouth where it tickles between her legs.)
She did all her yelling and exploding and furying, she did all that and then stomped into the first room she came to and slammed the door. She had that fight with him, they were still fighting when she came out to unpack her bag and dig around for her toothbrush, (don't you know how dangerous this is? you're a civilian) but he fought back. But I love you is such a stupid sucker punch move. But I love you doesn't excuse shitty behavior; it's why women stay with their abusers. But I love you shouldn't melt her to the window and make her want to weep with exhaustion and wanting and not having.
She wants to call Castle and bitch to him about this guy she's seeing who keeps taking important decisions out of her hands, like she's not a competent adult. She wants to curl in bed with Rick and whisper cattily about the new guy at work who keeps trying to explain why it's 'better this way' when it's really just his way and she has experience too.
He has yanked both of those away from her.
I can't let this go on, us, this relationship, in good conscience, while you're in the dark about the choice I made for you.
If he hadn't said that, at the end of it all, she wouldn't even have stayed.
But damn him, he's yanked that away from her too.
Because he does, actually, really, truly. Love her.
And she feels so alive with him.
Miserable in the window, feeling it all.
It's all too much.
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