Author's note: A brief bonus chapter? Kind of broke my own heart with this one, but it ends on a better note. The dam had to break with Castle at some point. You can blame the whisky I have here - at least a little.
Half an hour had passed since Alexis went to bed.
Castle and Beckett were still sitting on the couch, her in his arms, and the only sound was the steady ticking of the clock on the wall. Castle had reached for the remote ten minutes earlier, switching the TV off for the night.
Beckett replayed her conversation with Alexis in her mind, over and over. She felt alternately hopeless, then hopeful; guilty, then ashamed; relieved, then filled with dread. Eventually, she pushed the thoughts from her mind, her fingers curling around the fabric of his shirt.
"Stop thinking about it," he said quietly, his voice rumbling through his chest and directly into her ear.
"Trying to," she said.
A minute or so passed.
"I hate feeling like this," she said.
He waited, knowing she would continue in her own time.
"It's so… tentative."
"Hmm?"
She sighed, burrowing her nose into the open neck of his shirt.
"I'm finally here with you, and we're… it's like we're mourning. I never thought it would be like this," she said.
He took a long, slow breath, choosing his words.
"I'm not sure that this is even it," he said. He felt her freeze, and he rubbed his palms up and down her back. "That's not what I mean. I mean that the it you're talking about is something we've still to get to."
"I guess that's true," she said softly, after a moment. Then: "And I hate feeling like this, too. Like… I'm not sure what you–"
She stopped, stunned at the sentence she'd been about to complete. Like I'm not sure what you feel about me.
She squeezed her eyes shut. This was exactly what he'd felt for so long now, but without even the comfort that she was getting from feeling his arms wrapped around her, and his lips occasionally brushing across her hair.
"I'm sorry," she said.
He didn't reply, and she was about to raise her head to look at him when his voice rumbled around her again.
"I've never wanted to punish you," he said. "I'm not looking for payback. I just have to be careful right now. Can you understand?"
She nodded against his chest, feeling the ache of that understanding all through her.
"I want you back," she said softly, and she felt his head move above hers. She could picture the puzzled look on his face so easily.
"I want the old you back, Castle," she said. "You've lost that light in your eyes. You're so… quiet now. So cautious. And I did that to you."
He sighed, making her head bounce slightly on his chest.
"You're also the only one who can bring me back, Kate."
This time she did lift her head from his chest, keeping her arms wrapped around him, and looked up at him. His blue eyes were almost black in the dim light.
"How?" she asked, resting her head against his shoulder and looking from his eyes, to his lips, to his jaw, and back again.
"You're already doing it," he said simply. Her enormous eyes looked up at him, dark pools reflecting his own face, and he felt an almost painful tug in his chest.
"What are you thinking when you look at me like that?" she asked, her voice suddenly needy.
"About what I wanted for us," he said. Her face fell.
"Wanted, past tense?" she asked, her voice just a whisper, and he gave a sad smile.
"Sorry. Want, present tense."
I'm not sure I believe you, she thought. But I want to.
"Tell me?" she said, one hand shifting from around his waist to rest on his chest, so she could feel it rise and fall as he breathed.
He looked off into the middle distance, and his eyes became unfocused. The ghost of a sentimental smile flickered around the edges of his lips, and in the dim light it was somehow incredibly sad.
"I wanted – want – … everything," he said. "To kiss you whenever I want. Walk down the street and hold your hand, so everybody knows that you're… that we're together."
Her heart broke all over again. It wasn't just the sentiment, but the oh so very Castle need to correct himself before he said something possessive and demeaning like you're mine.
"To make love to you," he said, his voice vibrating with a complex series of emotions, the most prominent one being something like bitter loss. She felt another crack appear in her heart.
"To fall asleep holding you like this. To wake up and not have to find out it was a dream, like every other time."
He paused, blinking several times, and she didn't even have to look at how much brighter his eyes had become to know that he was struggling to hold back this old pain, as worn-in and familiar as a well-used leather jacket.
"To – someday, when it was right – ask you… and then you'd… and all of it. But right this time. It wouldn't fall apart. You wouldn't leave." His voice was only a hoarse whisper now, tension thrumming in his shoulders.
"But mostly… to look at you and know, not wonder. Not wish," he said. "That more than anything else."
A single tear slipped from the corner of his eye and rolled exquisitely slowly down his cheek, its progress slowed as it reached his growing five o'clock shadow, then finally traced down the line of his jaw and fell to his collar, leaving a dark spot against the burgundy.
She watched its progress in agonised fascination. It was a shocking, appalling thing to see. So wrong on this beautiful man.
"I am so sorry I've done this to you," she sobbed, his face indistinct through her own tears.
His eyes met hers, and at last the hurt flared and pushed out past the careful barrier he'd held in place. She saw it laid bare across his strangely youthful face, lined much more than a year ago, and for a moment she couldn't breathe against the magnitude of it. Then his eyes closed.
"You nearly killed me, Kate," he said. "I swear you nearly… just… took away who I am. And some of me wants to hate you, but I love you too damned much."
His own voice was thick and watery now, and every syllable was agony for her to hear.
"And the worst part is," he said, his voice hitching at the end as she felt a tremor run through his chest, "when I finally wanted to run, the only person I wanted to run to… was you."
"I'm sorry, Rick, I'm so sorry," she said, both of her hands caressing his face now, her thumbs swiping away his incredibly rare and devastating tears even as so many more of her own fell freely. His eyes were still closed, and his breathing had a ragged quality, as if his heart was an engine that was no longer working entirely properly.
She stretched up and pressed soft, urgent kisses along his cheekbones, jaw, eyelids, temples, and then his lips, tasting the salt of tears that might have been either his or hers, or even both together.
"I love you," she said, imploring him to understand. "I love you." She pressed another kiss to his lips, feeling him respond at last, and she parted her own lips, desperate to offer him comfort in any way she could.
He sighed against her, and she felt his tongue run along her lower lip. She groaned, her hands sliding back from his jaw line to thread her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. She opened her mouth to him, and then finally he was kissing her back, with all the need that she also felt.
Lips and teeth and tongues and hot breath all mingled, and at last they were giving and taking what they so desperately needed from each other.
One of his hands came up and tangled through her hair, and the other held her in the middle of her back, the heat of his skin burning through to hers.
He pulled her flush against him, and after only a moment she was no longer sure which heartbeat was her own.