His hand has been suspended in front of her door for the last five minutes as he decides between knocking and just going home. Sure, he's been showing up a lot more frequently over the last few months. Hell, she's been turning up at his apartment without warning. But those nights are movie nights, marathons of the TV shows one of them used to love and the other has never seen, celebratory dinners after a case, sometimes even just dinner because they're bored and he misses her. Though he'll never say it aloud, he has a sneaking suspicion she misses him too.
But that's just it. All of those other times, those late nights and sometimes even Sunday afternoons, she's wanted him there. She's never really said it, but she's made little comments that he knows are supposed to show him just that. Plus, he can tell. She's getting progressively worse at hiding it. They both seem to have that problem.
That's exactly why he's here. He can't not be and he can't seem to hide it anymore. He's worried and he hates it when she tries to fight her demons off alone. He just hates it when she tries to fight the war all by herself when she has so many people who would sign up to help in a heartbeat. When she has him.
He knocks. He's done letting her pretend that she can do this alone.
"Hey, Castle." Eyes: Sullen but not red-rimmed. Smile: Tight and close-lipped but not at all fake. Clothes: Baggy NYU sweatshirt and leggings. Okay, so she's wallowing but not drowning. "What do you got there?" He looks down, just remembering the bag of Italian food in his hand.
"Dinner." She turns around and walks over to her couch, plopping down and folding her legs underneath her. He follows, placing the food on her coffee table before sitting on the other side of the sofa. "How are you?" He hesitantly reaches over and puts a hand on her ankle. When she doesn't move away, he brushes his thumb over her skin.
"Fine." He gives her a pointed look, complete with a raised eyebrow and disbelieving eyes. "Maybe a little less than fine." Getting her to admit it is fine for now and so he doesn't push.
"Thought so. Food?" Nudging the bag with his foot, he watches her face for signs that she's far hungrier than she's letting on. Turns out he doesn't have to because her stomach decides to betray her.
"What did you bring me?" She sits up, grabbing the takeout and tearing through the containers. Yeah, she's starving.
"You get the choice between Fettuccine Alfredo and Chicken Parm. I'll eat whatever you don't want. And there may be some chocolate cake in there. But you only get that special treat if you're nice to me." Rolling her eyes, she fishes the pasta and a plastic fork out of the bag and digs in. "I guess I'll be having the chicken then."
"And cake. Don't forget cake." She points her fork at him and laughs.
"Oh, so you're going to be nice to me? This is new."
"I'm nice to you." She says the words around a mouthful of pasta and he has to clamp down on his chicken to keep from laughing. It's adorable, this side of Beckett that he's just been privy to these last few months. The side that lights up when she feeds pigeons, the side that wrinkles her nose at broccoli and has to cradle a pillow to her chest during scary movies.
"Yes, I see now. All of those eye rolls and quips about my competence threw me off a little." He lets out that laugh and is immediately confronted with the narrowed eyes of his partner.
"Would you rather I adopt Gates' point of view?" Eyes widening, he shakes his head vehemently. "Didn't think so."
"You could always balance out the attacks on my theories with other, nicer things that I'd enjoy." He waggles his eyebrows at her, sure that if his meaning hadn't gotten across she completely understood now. She only raised an eyebrow.
"Oh? And what would these nicer things entail?" He gulps. He was not expecting that voice. That low, throaty voice that she knows, she totally knows, gets him every time. Damn.
"I'm sure you could think of something worthwhile." He's grateful that a great big mouthful of incomprehensible sounds didn't slip out and actual words did.
"Maybe I'll let you have the last eggroll every now and again." He pouts but she's smirking, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye as she goes back to her food.
They eat the rest of their meal in silence, not that he thinks Beckett spends more than a few seconds without food in her mouth the entire time. Damn, did she not eat at all today? They ate lunch together so she – oh, they got that lead not even halfway through lunch. She really hasn't eaten today. Suddenly he's really glad he thought to bring food as an excuse. A flimsy excuse, sure, but she doesn't look like she's complaining.
The haze of lingering thoughts clears when he hears her put her empty container on the coffee table. He's not quite done yet but he's only been pecking at his food. He doesn't tend to eat much when he's worried. So he leans over, picks up the remnants of her dinner as well as his and makes his way to her kitchen. He takes his time, pouring two glasses of water and getting forks for that cake if they end up eating it later.
If she doesn't kick him out for prying. He thinks they're past that but he never really knows with her. It doesn't really help that he can't figure out what kind of state she's in, how much this case has affected her. And so he takes his time in the kitchen, busying himself with unnecessary tasks while she sits silently in the other room.
He'd forgotten why he'd come here with all of that smiling and teasing. The looming darkness of her tragedy overhead didn't seem present in her eyes. But it hasn't simply gone away, it was only buried for a moment. Hibernating, waiting for its next opportunity to emerge and feed on her conviction. One day, it'll be gone for good. One day. Maybe one day soon.
He knows what comes next. He knows what conversation they'll have, or at least what conversation he'll try to have. Turning around and sucking in a deep breath, he carries the glasses of water and hopefully an air of nonchalance back over to the couch. When he can finally see her face, she's looking down and he curses inwardly that he can't see her eyes. Setting the water down on the table, he takes his seat back and opens his mouth to begin what he came over here to do. If he could only find the right wo–
"What if I never close it?" She's starting the conversation? That's unexpected. But welcome.
"We will. Eventually." We. He needs her to know that he's in this; he's standing right there with her in the darkness. Even if she can't see him.
"I don't want to spend my life chasing after something I'll never reach." Just like how you're chasing after her, the sadistic voice in his head reminds him. But it's the curse of so many, too many. Flashes of a green light and shattered dreams flit across his vision but then she's speaking again. "I keep getting so close only to have it slip away. And what if it's always going to be that way?"
"Then you move on because you have to." He sees her jaw tighten almost imperceptibly and it makes him ache with the need to take it all back but he doesn't want her to keep living among the shadows. Tragic. Asymptotic.
"I'm trying." She pulls her mother's ring from under her sweatshirt, light catching on the metal as it spins.
"I know." He almost whispers it, not wanting to break the stubborn concentration she seems to have on the spinning ring. Around and around. Worlds turning, time passing, everything changing around this one constant.
"It's hard." She bites her lip, still watching the ring make its rotations. A rotation for every day she's lived with it. A rotation for every day this has sat on her shoulders.
"I know." It's all he can think to say. Nothing else seems worthy. Hell, that doesn't even seem worthy but he can't really sit here and say absolutely nothing. She's still staring at the ring as it spins, seemingly mesmerized. He doesn't like the way she's staring at it. Desperate. Hungry. Mourning. His hand shoots out and grabs the ring, stopping it. She looks up at him, startled, as if she'd forgotten he was here for a moment.
"I don't know if I can let go of it. I've been telling myself that I can but I don't know..." If I'm strong enough. Who I am without it. So many ways to finish that sentence, none of which he's particularly fond of.
"Kate," he moves the hand enclosing the ring a bit until it's dangling on his pinky, "you're one of the strongest people I know. You'll get through this. You'll conquer it." He has a quip on the tip of his tongue, ready to diffuse the tension. But he doesn't let it loose, corralling it because it doesn't feel right to diffuse this. She glances down, a hand coming to play with her mother's ring resting on his finger.
Her fingers start to rub the metal as she looks back up at him, tipping her head to the side as if considering him. Perhaps to see if he really believes that, if he actually thinks she can do it. He does. He believes that with a conviction that surprises him sometimes. He believes in her.
"Do you really think that?" It's not often that Beckett looks for verbal validation when she can so easily see it in his eyes. She must really need it. And he'll willingly give it whenever she asks.
"I know you will." He flicks his gaze to their hands, debating how wise his next statement is. But he needs her to know and he's never been that good at holding back anyway. "And I'll be here to hold you up when the doubts resurface. Even when you don't think you need me to."
Oh, damn. He told himself he wasn't going to push and yet here he is, ramming into that wall. He doesn't want to look at her, doesn't want to see her recoiling because it hurts. It just hurts so much to see her pull away. But he has to look, has to determine if he can throw a quick save in there. When he looks back up at her, he's sure she must have jerked back so quickly that he fell over and hit his head. That expression she's currently sporting can't be right.
There's no way she's looking up at him like that, eyes shining with the emotions she hasn't been trying to hide recently. Emotions he dare not name in case he jinxes it. This isn't the way it works with them. He pushes, she retreats. It's what they do however tired of it he is. That smile can't be real because the murder board is open behind them and he tried to just blow right by it.
She's going to hide her heart again, in a new and even trickier spot that he'll have to spend months looking for. A twisted game of hide and seek. One that someday he knows he'll lose. So this full-bloomed smile and these eyes twinkling as if there are thousands of little stars secreted away into their depths can't be real, no matter how much he wants them to be. They simply cannot be.
He's proven wrong by the feeling of her lips on his.
Review? Give me a little something to be happy about during exam week?