I have to thank Susan once again, for her help with the concept and those little things I tend to miss.

Without further adieu:

F

Fearless

Kate was no stranger to fear. Not only as a human and as a woman, but as a cop, she had come to accept fear as a part of her daily life. Denying fear, accepting fear, fearing fear, and most importantly, overcoming fear.

When she was 7, her biggest fear was heights.
Now it was loss.

Death.
Defeat.
Failure.
Heartbreak.

And now she stood, a Homicide Detective with a hardened shell and a woman underneath with eyes that had seen too much. She feared all of the above and then some. And then after the fear, she overcame.

She overcame the anxiety of her first airplane ride.
She overcame the choke she experienced the first time she watched a man die.
She overcame the choke she experienced the first time she killed a man.

And today she would get the hell over cupid's chokehold.

It was in the break room, as Castle poured her a coffee that she pounced.

"You're afraid," she said, from her spot beside him and the coffee maker, leaning her weight against the commercial countertop. He turned to face her, a mixture of surprise and confusion in his eyes.

"Excuse me?" he asked.

"You are afraid." She stated again, simply. She was trying to figure him out just as much as he was her.

"And what exactly am I afraid of?" Suddenly he felt like he was on the ugly end of an interrogation.

"Me," she said, watching his eyes, carefully gauging his reaction. "Us." The single syllable earned wide eyes as realization dawned upon him. He took a minute to respond, his words chosen carefully. She was practically swimming in the silence as it fed the tension.

"If I do recall, it's you who's afraid. It's you who dodges my passes and blows off my obvious feelings," he told her. His voice was measured, calm. She couldn't help but let out a little ironic laugh.

"You can't just come out and say it. You have to make jokes and make light of it all. You can't just tell me how you feel." She was getting excited, and the tension turned from suspenseful to heated. The fight she was ready to fight was contagious and the next thing he knew, he was just as fired up.

"I have a daughter, Kate. I have a family that gets roped right in to this 'us' you exclaim so passionately about. 'Us' isn't you, Kate, and it's not me, and it's not just you and I together. It's…"

He trailed off, unable to coin exactly what 'it' was.
Oddly, that was his point.

He stepped a step closer, the coffee he poured for her forgotten about. "You're damn straight I'm scared. I'm scared as hell. Scared of messing up, scared of running you off, scared of losing you, I'm scared that we won't work out. Hell, I'm scared that we will work out."

She reached out, her hand resting, palm flat, on his chest, feeling it rise and fall beneath her.

"Me too," she whispered, so quietly he almost missed it. "I'm scared, too."

"You're Kate Beckett," he told her, equally as quiet. "You're fearless." She laughed again, this time at the irony of his words.

She was anything but without fear. It haunted her, every morning and every night and especially now, her face inches from his. It followed her home, triple-locked her door and slept under her pillow. She spent more time with fear than she did her own shadow. The thought crossed her mind and then she smiled at the pun and poetry. That, along with all the other things she once feared- still occasionally feared- needed to change.

And that was the sole logic that had her closing the space between them.

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I could eat you up I love you so.

softer