Author's note: I wanted to to thank the people who left reviews. Fluff is more fun to write. But the other stuff stacks up in my heart and it is really interesting to unstack it. Sort of. Thanks for telling me to go on.

Also the excellent McManda of the Dustjackets dot Wetpaint dot com Castle wiki. If you are not aware of this resource (transcripts and all kinds of good stuff!) you might like to look at it. McManda got the transcript for 47 Seconds up by Wednesday morning.

Rather late, I should add that I don't own any of this, they belong to Andrew Marlowe et Co. and I just move them around. Except for the Bartender, who is on loan from the Thrilling Adventure Hour and probably Lisa Lutz as well.

"Congratulations on the bombing thing, Detective," Kent said, moving as smoothly as an oiled nun from behind the bar to put the glass in Kate's hand. "You and Mr. Castle were just going upstairs."

"We were?"

"We are," Rick said, still not looking at her. "I guess. If you came here to see me. The Scotch is quite good, though, you might want to enjoy it alone. Or I might."

"Rick —"

"I'm Rick now?"

"I don't want any trouble," the bartender insisted. There actually were a few other customers, reading or talking and trying not to watch the tableau too obviously.

"Oh, I think I do," his boss muttered.

"Mr. Castle."

"We need to get a really big mirror so we can throw chairs at it."

"I'll give you each a shot of Jack and then upstairs."

"I don't need —" Kate began.

"Oh, you will. Thank you, Kent, we'll go quietly."

Rick downed the shot of cheap whiskey and headed up the stairs, not looking (not needing to look) to see whether Beckett was following. He really needed to eat something, sometime. The alcohol burned at the chunk of neutron star inside him. His office still smelled like a place he did not live, a place he had not eaten pizza or takeout; he hadn't done enough to make it his own. The overhead lighting was ugly fluorescent and the desk lamp was not much use. He didn't want it to look romantic; he was pretty sure she wouldn't take it that way. He settled in the fairly comfortable desk chair, leaving Beckett a settee. 'They're normally referred to as love-seats. Settee is for your English readers.' His internal dialogue was stupid today. He was not in a mood for loveseats.

He had never thought he would not want to talk to Beckett. He had trouble sitting facing her, settled for focussing on her shoes. "Well. What?"

"I could ask you that," Beckett said. She didn't seem upset. In the past he might have thought that was a sign in itself, of Kate containing her powerful passions. Now he wondered whether she was just really that calm.

Rick kept himself himself from making another flip response. Nice I still have an endless supply. He took a small sip of the Scotch. "Okay. You told Bobby you remembered everything when you were shot. If that's true, then your not wanting to see me for three months seems to be directly related to my. Having. Said. ThatIlovedyou." He felt his face flush and ignored it. He could still hear his voice and so far he hadn't said anything stupid. Okay, keep going. "And you told me you couldn't remember anything. Maybe you were trying to spare my feelings. You did a lousy job and I am sorry I am putting both of us through this so why don't you leave and let me get over you in peace?"

Beckett's voice was slow—that was her— and distant—that was probably him. "Spare your feelings from what? I can't believe you're saying this."

"Spare my feelings from not their 'being reciprocated,' I think is the traditional way to put it. It's what people do when they don't love somebody else. I keep offering you chances to leave so I can spare _your_ feelings. Because I keep thinking you have some kind of conscience and didn't want to hurt me. Which may not be very realistic of me, considering, but you have never thought I was very realistic, so fine."

"You're angry because you think I am trying to spare your feelings," Kate felt toward whatever the hell mess they were in.

I really don't need my feelings reflected right now. "No, I'm angry because you lied to me. Because sometimes you helped me hope you did care for me as more than a useful," he had to think, "detective appliance. Not that there's anything wrong with being one of those; I like being useful. But it would have helped if you had let me know you'd ruled me out as anything else." And I am angry because I am sad. Oh, God, I am so sad. I loved you so much. And now you're sitting there looking like I speak fluent Klingon. "But I should have known that from all the times you didn't want to talk. I was trying to leave you space, because you asked for space, because I know you have had hard times. But by now I have had some hard times too, and I wish I could expect you to— to show up for me. But that's because the person, the woman I had in my head" you're in my heart/you're in my soul, my breath "is not who you are and I'm sorry for mistaking you and please, go away." And he did stop facing her and tried to breathe.

Kate knew what the bomb had looked like, afterward, had a good idea what it had felt like a hundred feet from the lamppost in Boylan Square. Now it had gone off inside her. She was empty, the silence within that stunned air and dust in unprecedented patterns unable to settle, filled with futile energy. Her face felt like it was a long way off.

"I screwed up." Simplest place to start. Rick, I'd never hurt you — Nope, she already had. I didn't know any better— Nope. How many times had her shrink, had Lanie tried to tell her whatever she was doing it wasn't going to work? I was a mess and I made a mistake. Certainly not something a cop had never heard. Worth a try. She needed to feel her way into the truth. She had not known there was a truth she was estranged from. "I was a mess and I made a mistake."

"You sure don't work a crime like someone who's a mess, and any 'mistake' you made with me you went on making over and over again. It's not like there wasn't a time in the past YEAR you could have talked to me." Rick faced her again. "Kate. I made a mistake. Before anything else— well, not before the cop stuff, but that's important—"

This was so surreal she had trouble connecting it to anything she was hearing, but she did kind of like the way he still had the sense to know the business of the police they did together was not, could not be, subject to friendship-

"But before anything else between us, we were friends. I told you you are extraordinary. And I believed in you enough I thought you would rather know that stuff I found out about your mother. And I screwed up there so much you wanted me out of your life then. I should have listened."

"But you were right." Kate tried to make him hear it.

" I was wrong. I don't think it's made you happier. I thought the truth would set you free but I made all of us lose Montgomery and I got you shot. And it's worse now."

This made no sense to Kate at all. "You didn't shoot me, Castle. You didn't shoot Roy."

"All I've done is open a can of very angry worms."

Kate sighed. She couldn't remember seeing him, Castle, annoying man-about-town, so bereft of his swagger.

"Which at least, " he went on, "I won't need to poke at anymore." He made a face, kind of 'so what?' "And despite my jumping into that with big heavy boots, you let me come back and solve crimes with you. Can you blame me for thinking it was the best relationship ever? Only… being your friend was hard to separate from wanting to be something a lot more intense. And maybe that was where I went wrong and started seeing more than there was. You had a life and a nice guy and you made it clear I wasn't part of it."

No, Kate wanted to say, and if ever there was to be a time anymore it was now. "I broke up with Demming for you, but you went off to the Hamptons with Gina! Nobody heard from you. Would we ever have seen you again if we hadn't arrested you?"

"With everything you have ever heard me say about Gina, you couldn't just call me later in the week? Because that was about as long as I took that shot at renewing our, our 'meaningful relationship' seriously. Her either. I damn sure wasn't going to remarry her or she, me." He stopped for moment. "You broke up with Demming for me?"

"Yeah." Actually stopped him for a second. Kate held her breath.

"Damn. I wish someone had told me that sometime in the last two years." He shook his head. "Not that it mattered, because by then you were with Josh." Rick's tone was bitter and joyless.

She had never been sure what was behind his barbs at Dr. Motorcycle Boy: just casual male another-guy-in-my-territory? After Gina came back on the scene, Kate had laid aside any theory there was more to Rick's jibes than that. Except when Lanie suggested I was being dishonest. Except sometimes when he looked at me. Except at night -

Rick went on. "I don't think you're as bad at relationships as you make out."

"That's what it looks like? From where I'm sitting right now I don't think I'm much good at them at all. No, I wanted there to be more than friendship — more intense— I wanted that, too."

"You picked a damn awful way to show it."

"I was scared."

"So what? It's not like I was the one with a Do Not Disturb sign on me. Since you came back last fall then I've given you all the space you wanted, but it turns out there's no one there to give space to. No one for me, anyway. You're scared? I tiptoe around trying not to set off any Beckett Fragility Alarms. I would do anything in my power for you, intense friends or just partners, I try to protect you with my life—"

"And you have —"

"We both have, not just because of the police stuff, but you won't talk about it — just like you can't even tell me 'I love you too but just not that way.'"

"I love you too, and just that way, Rick." She wanted that to make everything all right, but the tension in his shoulders did not release. She didn't feel any better either. Miles to go before I sleep. If ever.

He looked at her the way she looked at evidence. No, less excited. "I don't think so. It's one thing when you don't want to look at your emotions, but I put mine right out there and you really did not want to deal."

"How is that conversation supposed to start?" she asked, wondering how many times she had wanted to, started to, stopped herself from reaching for him.

"Don't pretend. I wouldn't have cared how it came up. Don't pretend I haven't thrown you the ball and watched it sail past you while you looked bland. Don't pretend you couldn't have said, 'Hey, Rick, thanks for helping me out of the sinking car, how about a hug?' Or, "Hey you know, when I was bleeding there, you said some stuff.' " He took a careful breath in and out. She had seen him containing himself before. He was good at it. "But you had no trouble at all asking me me if I'd slept with Sophia. What made that so easy? Because it had no risk for you?"

Because it's easier to be jealous than it is to be honest. Because you made cracks about my boyfriends. Because snarky is easier than admitting in so many words that someone is important to you. Than it is to say, 'emotions are hard, people I love die, a holding pattern is safe, please don't move, please don't look too deep or I will shatter, shattering's easier than living through all this…' All this now is exactly what shattering is easier than, but it's happening, that's what's happened. I blew it.

"People tell me I shouldn't walk around with my heart on my sleeve," Rick said. She was grateful that for this second he wasn't talking about her. "I always thought you were supposed to live life as much as you can and tell the truth. So I look shallow; in fact, I probably am shallow. But what you see is what you get. You people who run deep, with the still waters — you make it too easy for people like me to see what we want to see in you, like on a movie screen. Or maybe you don't run deep, but we can't tell, we go on seeing the beautiful person we want to be near. The one we love. And you: when I would find out a little more about how you ticked, it was always more than I had imagined. And I know most of that person is still true, the extraordinary cop, the woman with style and brains. But I thought there was heart there as well. I'd feel more like I could survive right now, if I hadn't thought there was more to you than the extraordinary Detective Beckett. But maybe you never did lie about that, and I just saw what I wanted to believe."

"I have a heart." Kate wasn't sure. Nothing inside her felt like it was breaking, though there was a part of her brain that was screaming Listen you idiot— but what she wanted him to listen to, she had no idea. She was tired. She was in shock.

"Not one that I've been able to get near."

"Nearer than anybody else ever has." She had trouble believing she had said that. She would have to think about whether it was true. What it meant. Looks like it's going to be a pretty much theoretical discussion.

"So you can write this into 'your poor damaged Kate' story. I wonder whether you should fire your therapist or he should fire you."