Misconception
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Tonight, Rick Castle is a man of action.
Well, small amendment: right this moment he is a man of action. He has Beckett by the hand, walking briskly out of his building, and she's not even being dragged - she's just as eager - and they're doing this. He feels very good about his decisiveness, his urgent now, until he gets to the sidewalk and realizes he has no idea about transportation.
His plan is dust. The subway would be too cruel. He couldn't possibly lean close to her on a crowded line, smelling her hair and faintly feeling the heat of her skin, and make it out alive. But he left the keys to his own car upstairs.
This suddenly feels destined for failure. They cannot catch a break.
"Did you drive?" he asks, jerking his head around to her. He hears himself, he does, the growl in his voice that might be the leading edge of his anger.
He's almost stunned to recognize that it is - actually - latent anger. He's actually not that much a man of action - not until Beckett and police chases and staring down killers - but more importantly, he's not personally. He lets things slide and is pretty laidback and goes with the flow, smiling all the way.
Not now. A lot of mess could have been avoided if only there was a damn note where it was supposed to be. If they didn't speak in subtext. If her-
"Castle," she snaps.
He hasn't been listening. She's holding up her keys, dangling them in front of his face as she tries to shove him down the sidewalk. Literally shove. She's put real muscle behind it; she's trying to propel him forward.
"Good," he says, clipped, still tightly angry. Arousal and anger like winding together like DNA; they feed each other so that the harder the knot in his throat the more he wants her. Because she - she - did all this and he was only trying to pathetically go with the flow and passively wait, but she did this.
He leads, he doesn't follow, even though he has no idea where she's parked the car. No. No more following. He strides down the block at a fast pace, but she's effortlessly keeping up with him, just enough at his side so that the slightest angle of her body wordlessly communicates the direction and he finds her car after they jaywalk across the street.
He's not driving, but he's driving - in the driver's seat, so to speak, and it feels deeply satisfying. It both fuels his anger and soothes the wound made by lies and silence, though her lie was really just a manner of sidestepping, avoiding the truth. He's done that enough himself that the anger feels unwarranted, and the guilt eats away and bubbles angrily up his throat again.
She remote unlocks the doors and they separate at the back of the car to get in; he hates losing her hand, feels sick to his stomach when he touches the cold metal of the door handle. He slides into the passenger seat with a heart made heavy by a sudden and profound inevitability.
It will be like this from now on. They won't change; they'll just get better at fighting each other, more crafty at it, her evasions will be more elaborate, his hurt will be more melodramatic, until-
"I don't like that look on your face," she says, turning the engine over with the key. She spares him a glance as she head-checks the traffic, and then she smoothly pulls out into the street. It takes a matter of moments, and she drives like a cop, alternately breaking the law and mildly annoyingly following it precisely.
"What look?"
"Sour." Her right hand leaves the wheel and reaches out, hovers in the gap between them, a sad and desperate thing, a gesture that reeks of futility. "Stop that. Please?"
The plea unmakes him. The demands he takes every day, has grown inured to her authority (somewhat). But that question at the end of it, that hope.
He takes her hand gently, his big paw closing over hers and dwarfing it - how strange that her hand is so thin and strong and overmatched by his own. He never thought of that before. Not even that night, when they danced too close at Ryan's wedding and he held her against his heart, not even then did he notice just how capably unfit their hands are together.
"You're angry with me," she says. Her fingers are wriggling, trapped by his hand, and she works them between his own, squeezing. "That's the look you've had for weeks. Have we not - I can apologize as often as you need until-"
"I'm angry," he sighs, leaning his head back against the seat. "But it seems as if being turned on goes hand in hand with wanting to strangle you."
She lets out a laughing little breath. "I've never been into that, but we'll see."
Well, hell. That shocks the anger right out of him.
"Rick?" A tentative sound, his name on her lips. She's shooting fast glances his way, her eyes troubled, filled up with it. She's nervous. Of them. For them. She's nervous.
That's not what he expected. Sexy confidence has all she's allowed him to see.
"I-" When he croaks, he has to clear his throat, try again. "Anything you want to do, I'm - willing. Wow. I didn't think this would be the conversation we'd be having right now."
"No?" Some of that confidence has returned, but her grip on his hand is telling: she clutches him like she's drowning.
"Not a whole lot of talking that first night," he says. "Well, you already knew my safe word. No need to talk, right?"
"That's too bad," she sighs. "Maybe we wouldn't have wasted so much time if we had."
"You left a note," he reminds her, though it sounds as weak coming out of his mouth as it did hers earlier tonight.
She chews on the corner of her lip; she looks... He's a writer, a wordsmith, and all he can come up with is very sad. The deep kind, drawing from a well of it that Kate always seems to have on hand. Very sad.
Her grief is one grief, and it levels her out, seeks equilibrium within her, filling her every crack. These tonight, these fault lines in her being, he thinks they're due to him, and that old grief settles so well.
It's the wound he saw in her eyes that first case he consulted with the NYPD, the 'neat trick' he played, reading her life's story there. It wasn't a trick; it's just that Kate Beckett holds on to so much that it leaves high-water marks, evidence of her feelings for anyone to read if only they know how.
Why does he know how?
"I'm sorry," she says quietly. "I have been selfish. All this time. And I'm doing it again, tonight, taking you home. But I can't stop now. It would kill me to stop-"
"No, don't," he breathes. "It's not selfish to want - us. I want us. I want us alone."
She gives a faltering laugh, and he can see her take a deep breath again. Was she holding it? Is there still that much uncertainty?
His mother said they ought to be talking, that conversations needed to happen. He couldn't focus on the trajectory of their relationship; he just wanted to get Kate alone.
They're alone now, but she's driving them to her place, and there's time to say a few things.
"I'm angry, yes," he starts, keeping himself calm. "You're a frustrating woman." He lifts her hand with his and lightly dusts a kiss over her knuckles. He can see her shiver. From the kiss or from his honesty? "I'm sure given enough time, together, you could say the same of me."
"You're a frustrating woman?" she quips.
"Funny," he says, smiling. She doesn't turn her head to look, but he knows she knows it's there. "You keep me sharp, Beckett, that's for sure."
"I hope that's a good thing," she says. Her voice is so light, almost insubstantial. He scared her. That's what this is - he scared her these last few weeks and she was like a rabbit, frozen and caught out. Doing nothing is her default reaction to emotional fright; she froze.
He thought it was worse than it really was. He thought the worst when she did nothing. He doesn't understand, instinctively, how nothing can be good when it comes to love. But that's not what it was for her. Nothing was a clear response that she wanted more - so much more - that it overwhelmed her and shut her down.
"It's a good thing," he says finally.
"You really had to think about it," she chuffs. Teasing but not teasing.
"Well, that deserved a thoughtful answer," he says. "So you know it's not just something I tossed off. I talk a lot, words are my thing, but I'm not sure you believe half of them." He squeezes her hand. "CIA conspiracies do exist, you know."
Kate laughs at that, a sound like relief and honest amusement. "So that's what we're doing? Building theory about - about us?"
"Yes. And you know I'm usually right."
She snorts, but her eyes dart to his. "Alien abduction aside, sometimes... you are right."
"Was that so hard?" he grins.
"Yes."
Yes, he thinks it really was.
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