"You hurt me, Beckett."
"What?"
It explodes out of her in a heated rush, the word caught there in the confines of the elevator, rebounding back to her, made tinny by the surrounding walls.
The doors close at his back and she knows she should react, should hit a button or hit him - something - but she's so stunned by the truth of it, by that undeniable flicker of pain that contorts his face, that Kate finds herself silently staring up at him.
Her heart races.
She hurt him?
The silence mounts in seconds, feelings piling up on each other, damage done, they find themselves bound up in one, long unbreakable gaze. The very walls seem to pulsate in time with the beat of her heart, a heavy, thundering rhythm that brings them closer and closer, her chest dancing in a manic flutter. The air thickens with tension, drips over them like molasses and bears down heavy with the weight of whatever comes next.
The words ring in her ears. You hurt me, Beckett? And the shock washes over her heated skin like cold water.
She wasn't sure he cared that much, but looking at him now she can see he does.
Maybe more than care.
Maybe he's just as terrified as she is of what lingers beyond those heated gazes and mind blowing sex.
She blinks, blinks again, tries to clear him from her vision, but it's painful and blurry. He swims in the undercurrent of everything. The lines between them are crossed, wounds raw, and the confusion is still pummeling her skin. Trapped with him like a caged animal - seeing every aching play of emotion on his face - is too much.
The memory of having him is vibrating through her body.
That look in his eyes is too penetrating, too real.
He's too close and too far away all at once and she hurt him?
What the fuck does that even mean?
Confusion and indignation help her find her voice, self preservation on its heels. "I hurt you?" She hisses, her tone low and deadly, advancing towards him with a pointed finger, "You wanted me out of your system, Castle." Her voice doesn't break, she won't let it, but her hands shake as they drop to her sides, nails digging into flesh that throbs and yearns.
"Her words, not mine," he growls and she freezes, "I know they sound bad -" Castle ignores the scoff of ya think that comes from Beckett and he surges on, "but I don't want you out of my system." He runs a hand over his face, his voice low and mostly for his own ears, "I don't think I could get you out if I tried."
She startles and her head snaps up, eyes catching his, a flare of fire sparking between them. She can hear in the way he caresses the words, that he's thought about it.
She can also hear the truth. He doesn't want to try.
She stumbles, he's better at this than she is - finding the words - even the arguing. She vibrates with emotion and he lays himself bare.
"But -"
He cuts her off, blinks slowly. "But before that, before we squeezed past the press and before you walked away. You hurt me."
He's advancing and she has nowhere to go, the distance between them evaporating.
Why the fuck are they trapped in an elevator?
She needs to move, to take a step back, but when she does she hits the wall and has no option but to look up and meet the intense gaze he bathes her in.
"Before I had a chance to say how amazing it was." Castle stops just in front of her, a whisper of breath the distance between their bodies, his face washed clean of everything but honesty. "Before I had the chance to tell you that something that extraordinary should not have happened where it did or how it did, but that I wouldn't take back a second of it because it was -" His eyes close as he tries to find the words - the writer, speechless - and he sighs lost in memory. "It was everything, Beckett."
His eyes catch hers again, hold like they won't ever let go. As though there is a cipher to the complexity of her existence - to the questions that she poses to herself in darkness - hidden in the very depths of her contracting pupils and that if he stares long enough it will all become clear.
He stares with a forever kind of intensity that rocks her very foundations.
She's in love with Castle and as she searches his face for doubt - breath escaping in panted gasps - all she sees is the reflection of her own fears, her own worries shining back.
Is it possible he feels the same way?
"Nikki is complex and driven and you-" he breathes out slowly, painfully, " - you said she needs a better writer, Kate." She shivers when he says her name, jerks in remembrance at what started it all.
Shit, she didn't mean -
"I-"
"But Kate," he hums, the air electric between them, her name a sizzle on his tongue, "you're not Nikki," Castle steps in closer, closes the final distance between them and leans down, his warm breath stirring the air that touches her lips.
"Nikki?" She breathes the name almost a lover's caress, eyes flicking to his lips as she wets her own, before darting back up again.
"Is not you." Castle says forcefully, driving it home.
No, no she's not, and relief like summer rain trickles over her. She's real and more twisted and fucked up than any character on the page. His eyes burn into hers and she knows - knows as clearly as she knows how to breathe - that Castle sees that too. That maybe he wants her story as much as, if not more than, Nikki's.
He places a steady hand to the wall behind her, the words he speaks like curling flames across her neck, licking out to caress her cheeks and ear as he threads their path over her skin settling finally at her lips.
He dusts them over her mouth before sealing them with a kiss, "You don't need a better writer Kate," he hums, "you just need the right one."