He hadn't meant to spend what could ultimately be his last day with her writing, but the urge to create pieces of her story, to bring this new character to life, had his fingertips tingling.
Kate had retrieved a pen and black notebook from the desk in the bedroom for him as soon as he had asked for writing materials, but when the book was placed in front of him and he flipped open the first page, he saw that half of it was filled.
Kate's hand slammed down over the stained white paper, concealing the messy scrawl that filled a number of pages from top to bottom.
"I forgot I'd written in this one," she murmured, moving to steal it away, but Castle's fingers held to the edge of the notebook.
"What'd you write about?"
Her eyes darkened, defensive and deadly, and she snatched the book back from him, cradled it protectively against her chest.
"None of your business."
"Are secrets really necessary, Kate?" he tried with a quirked eyebrow and a teasing smile, but she didn't budge.
"It's not - it isn't secrets." Her throat bobbed and her nails cut into the thin cover of the notebook. "It's just - my therapist at the time made me keep a journal. I can't even read what's in here, so please just - respect my privacy and leave it alone."
She turned on her heel, striding back into her bedroom, and Castle rose from his seat at the table, but decided not to follow her. She returned with a yellow legal pad instead, handed it over without meeting his eyes. He took the stack of paper, placed it on the table, but caught her by the biceps before she could disappear.
"I'm sorry." He smoothed his hands down to cup her elbows, giving her the chance to move away if it was what she wanted.
She sighed, allowed her body to fall stiffly against his for just a moment. "I know, Castle, but don't be. It's fine."
Rick released her and she didn't hesitate in using her freedom to drift away from him.
"What are you itching to write about?" she asked out of what sounded like good natured curiosity as she headed into the kitchen, but he knew it was simply a way to steer him towards distraction. Already so quick to push him away, to distance herself before he was even gone.
"New character," he murmured, already drawing up an outline on the yellow paper.
"Oh? What about Derrick Storm?"
"I'm sick of Storm," he sighed. "He's not fun to write anymore. I already have the next book planned out and I think it'll be his last."
He felt her go still. "You're going to kill him off?"
"You're a fan all of the sudden?" he chuckled, continuing on with his outline, jotting down details about his newest protagonist. His new character needed a name, a badass name worthy of a hot cop, but it was hard to think when his muse was staring at him.
"I read the first book while I was… watching over you."
His eyebrows hitched and Rick glanced over to see her quickly divert her gaze the moment she noticed his attention on her. He was tempted to tease her, to needle her about her thoughts on his work, but he had yet been able to follow her advice, to forget the future and enjoy what little time he had left with her. Instead, he continued to carry the heavy weight of impending loss and lingering rejection on his shoulders.
"So," she murmured, pretending not to notice the obvious tension now rippling from his hunched figure. "Tell me about your new character."
"You inspired her," he admitted, shrugging those burdened shoulders. She had gone still again, only this time, her face had blanched and her mouth formed a tight line.
Never a good sign.
"Rick, I don't think-"
"It won't give any hints to your identity, or your job, don't worry."
"No," she huffed, striding over to the dining room table. "It's not that. I just think there's so many better things, better characters, for you to write about. Why waste your time on me?"
Castle clenched his fingers around the pen. "So, I can't have you in real life or on paper then," he muttered, refusing to look at her anymore but sensing the way she deflated against the back of the chair next to the one he currently occupied.
"That's not what I meant," she argued softly, calmly. "Just – don't you think it would be easier to distance yourself from all of this, rather than keep it close?"
"Not all of us are as great as compartmentalizing as you are, Beckett," he snapped, giving up on any hope of continuing his impromptu outline. "Forgetting about all of this might be easy for you, but-"
"Stop it," she growled, snatching the pen from his hand and forcing him to face her, glare up at her. "Don't treat me like I'm some cold, heartless bitch, like I don't care."
"I thought that's what you wanted," he fired back, staring into the flaring gold of her eyes. He watched her swallow and straighten, shuffle away from him. He should have let it be, left the bitter words to lie, but he was feeling brave. Or maybe he just had a death wish. "How convenient that you'll never have to see me again after this."
Kate spun on her heel, her bottom lip stabbed beneath her teeth, trying not play into his trap for an argument.
"Castle," she grinded out. "I don't want to fight about this."
"Not fighting," he stated simply. "Listing facts."
He rose from his chair, took a few daring steps towards her until he was only inches away.
"The truth of the matter is that you could be happy, Kate. You deserve to be happy, but you're afraid. So you hide in your job and your fake identities, in your parents' deaths, but you don't want to hide from me."
Her nostrils flared and her knuckles shined as they clenched at her sides. She was done restraining herself; she was on the edge of furious now and she was about to let him have it.
"You pompous, arrogant-"
"I heard your partner offer you backup, I'm sure she could have sent a different agent to watch after me altogether, but you insisted you had it under control." He stepped forward, she took a step back. "You don't have it under control at all, do you, Kate?"
"I'm just trying to keep you safe!" she growled, shoving at his chest when he ventured too close, but he caught her by the elbows, held her against the wall even as she struggled. She could push out of his grasp if she wanted to. He knew for a fact she was trained to fight her way out of an opponent's grasp, but she was barely trying. "You don't mean anything, you don't-"
He sealed his mouth over hers, staunched the lies pouring out with the rough clash of his teeth, and she moaned, long and needy and exhausted.
"You're ruining everything, ruining me," she gasped, curling a leg around his thigh and jerking him closer.
He caught her by the knee, pinned her hips to the wall, and pressed his forehead into hers. She growled, undulating her confined hips, making his teeth clench at the instinctive flare of arousal she evoked so easily, but he cupped the sharp line of her jaw in his palm, forced her to look at him.
"It wasn't supposed to go like this," she choked.
Tears were swimming in her eyes, tumbling down her cheeks, and suddenly all of his confidence vanished. He didn't want - he hadn't meant to make her cry. He released her immediately, attempted to take a step back.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"
"Stop apologizing," she choked around the quiver in her throat, reining him back in by the grip she still had on his shirt. "You're always apologizing to me, to everyone, and you shouldn't be. You deserve to be angry." She leaned into the wall of his chest, resting her forehead to his clavicle. But he wasn't angry, not exactly, not with her. Not anymore.
His stomach growled then, breaking the brief silence, and she laughed, muffled it with his shirt, and he exhaled in relief, smoothed his hands down the curve of her spine.
"I need to go to the store, get some food before you waste away," she sighed, but he held her tighter.
They were both quiet for a while until eventually she lifted her head, stared up at him with a thoughtful expression.
"I wish I would have said yes to dinner that night."
His heart fluttered at her words. The memory of that night grew clearer with each day spent with her - their conversation at the bar and the way her laugh had drawn him in all too quickly, their time on the dance floor, how she had seduced him without speaking a word, and the bittersweet feeling of watching her walk away, leaving him alone in a dirty alley, left to wonder what the sudden unfolding of emptiness in his chest had meant.
"I would have taken you to my favorite place, this little hole in the wall Italian restaurant I've only ever taken Alexis to," he mused, watching her eyes shimmer with soft delight. "We would have bypassed small talk pretty quickly, you would have told me about your mother, not because you trusted me with it, not just yet, but because you thought it would scare me off," he murmured, knowing he was correct when her lashes lowered to hide her gaze. "But I would have listened to you, maybe held your hand if you would have let me. Then I would have made a stupid joke, tried to get you to smile again." Her lips quirked at that. "And I would have promised to be there for you, be whatever you need. And it probably would have freaked you out."
She huffed a laugh, knocked her forehead into his chin to hide from his gaze. He didn't mind, allowing one of his hands to travel up her vertebrae to cup her nape, holding her there.
"It still would have been a nice dinner. You'd let me walk you home, kiss you goodnight, but nothing more, because even though we'd already taken the next step, this was only our first date and the next time we had sex, it was going to be so much more than quick and meaningless."
He listened to her hum, felt one of her hands mimic his, curling around the back of his neck. "Then what?"
Warmth unfurled in his chest and Castle stroked his thumb along the base of her skull, circling at that sensitive spot behind her ear to feel the reflexive cant of her body further into his.
"You wouldn't have called me for like a week, maybe more, because like I said, I totally freaked you out." She grunted, but he could feel her smile against his collarbone. "Eventually I would have just shown up at your apartment again."
"Because you're too persistent for your own good," she muttered and he nodded, feathered his lips over the top of her head.
"Yep, and you would have been unable to resist me, just as you are now, and you would have let me inside, shared the dinner and wine I brought over."
She dislodged her forehead from his jaw, lifted her face, her gaze. "And then I would have taken you to bed, kept you awake all night."
"I would have had to leave the next morning, while you were sleeping, so I could see Alexis off to school."
"But you would have come back."
"I would have come back," he confirmed, squeezing gently at the smooth skin of her nape. "While Alexis was in school. I would have made you pancakes."
She smirked, stared up at him with curiosity lacing along her lips. "Why pancakes?"
"Edible way of saying 'thank you so much for last night'."
"You owe me a lot of pancakes, Richard Castle."
The laugh rumbled through his chest, shook them both, and he wished she would never stop smiling at him like she was in that moment.
"I wish we could have had that," she sighed, so mournful, stroking her fingers through the thickening stubble still peppering his jaw because he hadn't remembered to shave since Los Angeles.
"We still can," he tried, knowing it was likely the best way to wipe the smile clean from her face, but the curve of her lips didn't disappear, only dimmed. "It wouldn't be easy, but we could make it work."
Her eyes drifted up from his lips, the usual hazel a beautiful kaleidoscope of greens and browns and gold in the afternoon light. For a second, he swore she believed him.
But then her eyes fell away.
"I need to go to the store."
And Kate was gone, Agent Beckett back in place.
"Can you get ice cream?"
The grin spread across her face and she smeared her lips across his in a chaste kiss before breaking free from the circle of his arms.
"Let me guess, chocolate?"
"Duh, Beckett."
She began to tug on her shoes, but apprehension was creating a visible line of tension up her spine.
"I hate to leave you alone," she murmured, eyes roving over the interior of the cabin as if gauging its chances of surviving an attack.
"I'll be fine, Kate."
She disappeared into the bedroom for a second before returning with a gun in her hand. Castle's eyebrows hitched upwards.
"Just in case," she said, placing the gun on the dining room table. "But if anyone comes, the first thing you do is run, use the woods as a cover and make your way to the street, but stay hidden until you see me coming. I'll go slow so I can-"
"I doubt anything will happen in the half hour it takes for you to go to the store and back," he assured her, but she still looked pensive.
"Here, keep this on you too." She held out her phone to him, but he hesitated.
"That's your only form of communication."
"Like you said, it's just half an hour. It'll make me feel better knowing you have access to a phone," she insisted, returning to stand in front of him and holding the burner cell between them.
He sighed but took the device, slipped it into his pocket.
"Thank you," she murmured, squeezing his forearm, but she seemed distracted as she stared up at him, as if she was searching his face for some kind of evidence.
"Kate?"
She shook her head, trailed her fingers over his ears before she kissed him one last time and started for the door.
"I just don't understand how anyone could want you dead."