Author's note: Happy Hallowe'en! Except that this chapter isn't happy at all, and was pretty heart-breaking to write. Poor Castle! Poor Kate!
They still have quite a journey ahead of them, but they do love each other, and I'm a big fan of happy endings. They'll get there somehow.
All the reviews and kind words are very much appreciated.
Castle leaned back in his desk chair, staring at the ceiling of his office. The room was dimly lit, and he could hear the subdued clatter of his mother and Alexis preparing dinner out in the main open-plan area of the loft.
He had excused himself to jot down a few notes based on the current case, but in reality he just wanted a few minutes alone to decompress after being at the precinct, and to put on a positive face for Alexis.
Today had been difficult.
It had become marginally easier to stay away from Beckett during the last couple of weeks, but it took all his willpower to maintain his composure when he was actually in her company.
She wasn't making it easy, either, he thought.
It was obvious that she knew something was wrong, and she was being cautious around him. He half-expected her to take him aside at some point during the day and ask him about it, but she hadn't. He had put his phone on silent as soon as he left the precinct, but that didn't stop him checking it every half hour since then anyway.
He mentally tallied up the instances of unusual behaviour he'd noticed in her today.
The coffees from the usual place, but with my name on them. The way she was at the board. Saying thanks for being there, at least three times. Watching me all the time. Saying they'd missed me last week. And none of the usual teasing.
He sighed, running his fingers through his hair.
"Like she's worried," he muttered.
Worried about what?
"About… I don't know."
Follow the evidence.
He frowned. It was simple enough, really. He'd been gradually withdrawing from his work at the precinct, and she was being careful not to upset the apple cart, in case he left for good.
I don't even blame her, he realised, his eyebrows rising slightly. It would be strange if she wasn't worried about him quitting the precinct.
Their close rate was the highest in the department, and probably the whole precinct. He had connections that were often useful. And he was an asset to their investigations, much as they might occasionally pretend otherwise. Then there was the attention he had always lavished on her, without pushing for anything in return.
When you think about it, she must be very worried indeed.
"Well, that ship has sailed," he said quietly to the empty office. She hadn't done anything, and he had no desire to hurt her. Even the thought of it raised an ache in his chest. But she couldn't have it both ways.
It's not her fault she doesn't want a relationship with you, his mind said, and he shrugged. That was true enough.
"But she can't expect me to just wait around forever, either."
Also true.
"So it's settled. Finish the case, and then…"
And then?
"Then… figure out my next step. Get away from it all, for a while. Focus on my real job."
For a while, or forever?
He felt goosebumps break out along his forearms at the thought of never seeing her again.
"Until I don't love her anymore," he whispered.
His mind was silent for many moments, then the question seemed to echo around him.
When will that be?
"I honestly have no idea."
He heard a light knock, then the office door slowly swung open, letting in a band of light from the kitchen and living room. He squinted at the brightness, seeing the silhouette of his mother standing in the doorway.
"No idea about what, darling?" Martha asked, taking a moment to locate him in the gloom of the office.
"Just some dialogue I'm trying out," he said. "Sorry, I should be helping with dinner."
He walked around his desk and crossed the room towards her.
"It's almost ready," Martha replied. "You can set the table."
He nodded, but she didn't immediately move to let him past, instead fixing him with a contemplative look.
"Richard, is everything alright?"
His eyes widened, and then he smiled.
"Everything's fine," he said, putting his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels.
Martha tilted her head slightly to the side, examining his face carefully.
"If you say so," she said at last. "And how is Kate? We've not seen her in a while."
He allowed his face to go completely blank.
Martha Rodgers was a perceptive woman, but that didn't mean he had to talk to her about it.
"Same as usual," he said, with the barest hint of a shrug.
Martha looked at him, and several emotions flitted across her eyes in quick succession.
"Well, let's have dinner, shall we?" she said, reaching out to place her hand on his elbow, and he smiled as widely as he could.
"After you," he said, and he followed from the darkness of his office out into the bright, artificial light.
Beckett knelt on the carpeted floor of her bedroom, rummaging through the open drawer of her bedside table.
It was a deep drawer, made of oak on solid steel runners, with an elegantly-carved inlaid handle. It held all manner of things, including everything from a packet of tissues to hair-grips, a couple of bookmarks, a small paper notebook, a half-eaten packet of mints, a sleep-mask she rarely used, a spare iPhone charging cable and wall plug, several unmatched buttons, a small screwdriver with an LED flashlight built into the handle, two rubber bands, a folded leaflet about a charity for abandoned dogs, a Kindle with a dead battery, her birth control, a length of frayed blue ribbon, and a host of other miscellaneous items.
It also held a simple wooden jewellery box, a few inches thick, and it was this that she now lifted out and sat on the floor beside her.
It was her Castle box.
She unlatched the lid and lifted it up and back, revealing the box's contents. For the first time, the act provoked a bittersweet feeling – love for the man, and despair at how distant he'd become.
She ran her fingers over some of the beloved items sitting on the red velvet interior.
A napkin from Remy's on which he'd written his signature several times, to prove to her that he had a consistent signing technique and didn't just scribble his name on people's copies of his books.
A tiny, yellow plastic elephant that had been in a Christmas cracker at the precinct one year. It had been in Ryan's cracker, but Castle had traded him for a rubber ball, and given the elephant to her.
A disc of gold foil that used to be part of a candy wrapper, until Castle had carefully torn in into a circle, pressed it flat with the side of an empty mug, and carefully scratched #1 Partner into it.
A yellow post-it note with a doodle of a UFO hovering over the Empire State Building.
A pale pink piece of heart-shaped hard candy, etched with the words Be Mine.
Another post-it note, this time a blue one, with just a smiley face drawn on it.
An ordinary ballpoint pen, with blue ink, that had been in his jacket pocket. She had needed a pen while they surveyed a crime scene, and he'd given it to her. When she'd tried to return it later, he waved her off and told her to keep it.
A newspaper cutting, folded carefully, showing a grainy photo of the two of them arriving at the launch party for Heat Wave. He was standing by her side, immaculately dressed, and smiling proudly for the assembled media. She was wearing an emerald satin dress, and her hair was up. The sub-head of the article said "Is it hot in here?", and Castle had double-underlined it before leaving the newspaper open at that page on her desk.
The white plastic lid of a take-away coffee cup, with Beckett written on it in black marker as usual, but this time with a small red love-heart before the name. Castle had added the symbol using one of the board markers on Valentine's Day two years before, and she had glared at him until he raised both his hands in surrender. She had left the empty cup on her desk all morning, and waited until he finally went to the men's room before snatching the lid and putting it into her purse.
A pressed wild flower that he'd picked from the railings along the edge of a small park on a blazing hot Summer day, and given to her (laid across the top of a coffee cup, of course) while she was reviewing one of Lanie's reports. When she raised her eyebrows at him, he just shrugged and wandered off towards Ryan and Esposito. Lanie had advised her to throw the plastic lid of the cup away before drinking the coffee, and she had, but she kept the flower and pressed it flat between the pages of a book.
A terrible drawing of a werewolf, facing down a stick-figure version of her, on a torn-out page of a spiral-bound notebook.
Yet another post-it note, with a stick-figure drawing of himself, hands on hips, wearing a billowing cape with a large C.
An I.O.U. for One bearclaw, cherry icing, written on half of an envelope and bearing his signature. For some reason, he'd added "Esquire" too.
The top hat from a Monopoly game, which she'd used when she thoroughly beat him, with Martha and Alexis close behind. He'd claimed that the piece was forever tainted, and he would no longer allow it in his home. He had stood up and taken it over to her jacket himself, putting it in an inside pocket before returning to the dining table in the loft with a smirk on his face.
Another newspaper clipping, this time from a book reviews column. The reviewer had been lukewarm in his enthusiasm for one of the Storm novels years ago, and when Castle had seen Beckett reading his column, he'd snatched the paper and meticulously gone through the section, circling examples of what he declared to be poor phrasing, sloppy sentence structure or inelegant vocabulary. He'd got bored about three-quarters of the way through, then gone back and drawn a goatee and spectacles on the journalist's photo.
One of those rubber bracelets that everyone was wearing a year or two ago, in pale lilac. The phrase BE EXTRAORDINARY was imprinted onto it.
A black cable-tie, from when the new phones were installed on the desks in the homicide department. She had returned to her desk after filing a report to find that Castle had gone out to get lunch for the two of them. Sitting on her desk beside her computer keyboard was the cable tie, twisted into the shape of a ring, with the ends curled together in suggestion of the setting for a stone. When he arrived back with the food, the makeshift ring was nowhere to be found, and neither of them had ever mentioned it.
And plenty more. There were Dilbert cartoon strips he'd torn from newspapers or even printed out at home and brought in for her. A shopping list he'd written for her, in her own apartment, after he'd bemoaned the state of her refrigerator and kitchen cupboards. Cinema tickets for a Forbidden Planet screening he'd insisted he take her to. A polaroid taken by Alexis at Halloween, showing him dressed as Captain Kirk. A USB flash drive (in the shape of an electric guitar) with dozens of songs on it that he said were his favourite background music for writing. A beer mat from the Old Haunt. A small paper aeroplane made out of a blank yellow cover-form from an evidence bag, complete with go-faster stripes drawn along the wings. More post-it notes, with some of his favourite words written on them, complete with definitions.
She wasn't even aware that she was crying until she was startled by the drop of water falling onto her thigh, making a dark spot on her jeans.
She wiped her eyes, placing the last item she'd been holding – one of his private business cards, the ones with his own number instead of his agent's – carefully back into the box.
She sat back, leaning against the bed, and took a deep, shuddering breath.
I've been so stupid.
She tucked a few stray strands of hair behind her ears, and looked at the open box again. Some of what it held was evidence of his love for her, but the fact she'd kept it all was evidence of hers for him.
What was I waiting for? Why did I wait too long?
She shivered, hunching her shoulders against the soft edge of the duvet cover. After a moment, she reached out and laid her hand along the edge of the wooden box, trying to draw strength from it.
"I'm not going to lose you, Rick," she said. "I won't let you go."
Her voice sounded thin and frightened against the silence of the room.