One thing they all loved about The Old Haunt - other than the running tab they had going, that seemed to miraculously pay itself off each week - was that it usually cleared out by 10pm on weeknights. The place had more or less become the teams own private bar where they could unwind and let loose.
Ryan sat at their usual booth leaning against the wall, reaching across the table to hold his wife's hand. Beckett, who had somehow ended up sandwiched between him and Esposito, couldn't help but watch on as the couple slowly fazed out the rest of the group.
In their own little love haze - that may or may not have been amplified by the several rounds of beverages they had all shared - they were all smiles as fingers intertwined and thumbs traced shapes in each others palms.
Oh, to be so deeply in love.
She felt the flutter in the pit of her stomach as she tried to ignore the reel of fond memories of Castle that her mind had involuntarily conjured for her.
She turned her attention back to her friends who were actually engaging in conversation: laughing and bickering back and forth.
Lanie sat across from her, laughing at something Castle had said. Pushing the playback of stolen moments with her writer from her mind, Beckett tried to focus on the conversation.
"Porter might be a genius, but he is a menace out in the field!" Esposito added to the conversation, laughing. "Kid barely survived the week!"
For the past week the team had been working alongside Agent Porter, an FBI profiler who had obviously drawn the short straw and been assigned to the lowly NYPD's unimportant case.
Or perhaps the more experienced profilers had simply pulled rank and sent the newbie off on his merry way.
Either way, Beckett and the team had been stuck with what could have only been the FBI's worst: the guy who must be a direct descendant of Mr. Hoover himself because Beckett couldn't think of any other way he could have possibly gained his credentials unassisted.
Sure, his psychological insights had been beneficial, but she will stand by the fact that they probably could have solved the case easier if they hadn't had to spend the week babysitting the fresh-faced agent.
"You guys think I'm hard to keep out of trouble..." Castle mused aloud.
"You are," Beckett retorted with a smirk.
Castle opened his mouth as if he were about to argue, but upon further thought, he had obviously decided against doing so.
"Touché," he sighed, shooting her one of his signature grins that had her heart skipping several beats.
Surely it couldn't be any good for her, the way he did that.
"Beckett's put in some long hours training you, though," Ryan joked, re-joining the conversation. "That should eventually kick in, right?"
"Ha. Ha." Castle interjected sarcastically across the table. "Come on guys, you can admit it... I'm the only consultant you actually enjoy working with." He quirked his eyebrows as his eyes flickered between the the group.
"I mean, I personally didn't mind consulting with Serena Kaye," Esposito locked eyes with Lanie as he practically purred the insurance investigator's name, an obvious attempt to ruffle Lanie's feathers.
Unfortunately for him, her feathers remained unruffled.
Beckett's, on the other hand...
Images of the beautiful blonde with her piercing blue eyes and dazzling smile flashed in her mind, all too quickly followed by the memory of Castle pinning her to the wall and practically mauling her with his mouth.
The unwavering faith he had in this stranger bothered her even now, months later. Because he was supposed to be hers... and he sure as hell didn't act like it while Serena Kaye was around.
She inhaled deeply, trying to simmer the heat rising under her collar. Her jealousy had an incredible knack of running rampant after a few drinks...
"Well I personally didn't mind working alongside Scotland Yard," Lanie bit back at her ex.
Beckett tensed at the mention of Detective Inspector Colin Hunt. That entire case - the before, the during, especially the after - she just wanted to put it all behind her.
Lanie looked at Beckett and smiled. "I know I wouldn't mind revisiting that partnership again."
Ryan chuckled to himself, amused by whatever thought had crossed his mind.
"What's so funny?" Beckett asked, nudging him playfully with her elbow, hoping he could offer some distraction from their current topic of discussion.
His eyes darted to Castle, then down to the table in front of them.
"Nothing," he insisted, but when he looked back up and saw all eyes on him, intrigued, he continued. "I just... I don't think he would knock back the chance to work with us again, either."
He looked at her and she saw a million apologies in his hazy, blue eyes. Suddenly she regretted asking.
"Us? You mean Beckett," Esposito added with a laugh, obviously too many drinks in to pick up on his partners careful omission of said fact.
She heard the unmistakable thump of foot colliding with shin under the table, followed by Esposito's mumbled ouch!
"I just mean... he probably wouldn't mind the opportunity to see her again," he explained, glaring at Lanie, as if it weren't painfully obvious what he had meant.
"Just stop talking," Lanie whispered the warning, too late.
"I think the inspector has seen plenty of Beckett," Castle muttered bitterly under his breath.
Beckett exhaled, her entire body deflating as she did so.
The silence was palpable and she couldn't believe he had actually said that. Lanie glanced across the table, pursing her lips together, shocked by Castle's not-so-subtle hint.
Esposito and the Ryan's just looked at each other awkwardly and Jenny might have been the only person on this planet who genuinely didn't understand the sudden switch in mood.
Suddenly, a switch flipped inside her. In an instant she went from being embarrassed to being filled with fury.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she asked Castle, trying her best to keep her temperament under control.
Who the hell did he think he was?
He's allowed to spend the week wining and dining Little Miss Mile-High, but she can't have a drink after the case with a fellow detective?
He smiled at her, that charming butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth smile that he pulled out when he was feeling petty.
"You just seemed to really... hit it off, that's all."
If he wanted petty, she could do petty.
"You got a problem with that, Castle?"
There was no hiding the venom in the way she said his name and what had started as a slight awkwardness amongst the group turned into outright discomfort.
Praying for the ground beneath them to open up and swallow them whole kind of discomfort.
He shook his head, no.
He knew that he should end this, try to change the conversation, but that little voice in his head that often got him into trouble just didn't know when to stop.
"I just don't think it's very... professional. But who am I to judge someone else's indiscretions?"
She scoffed, eyes wide with disbelief, as she leant back into the booth. She was speechless, not a single response forming in her mind once she realised exactly what he was accusing her of.
She knew why he would be hurt by the idea of her and Colin... together. Especially now that things seemed to be back on track for them (what a joke that turned out to be) but she couldn't believe he was bringing this up now, in front of all their friends and in such a petty and childish manner.
Although, why didn't she see this coming? Petty and childish... isn't that exactly how she had described Castle, too many times, in the past?
In all honesty, she should have known this was coming.
She wouldn't back down, though. She hadn't done anything wrong and she sure as hell wasn't going to let him make her feel like she had.
"It's not like we work together anymore," she said with a shrug, carefully avoiding giving him an actual answer to the question he technically hadn't asked.
"So you're still seeing him," Castle surmised, staring into the drink he had been nursing.
Her eyes darted around the table, taking in the flushed faces around them. She needed to slow this down, to steer them away from the conversation she just couldn't bear to have in front of so many witnesses.
She took a deep breath and schooled her expression, flipping that internal switch back into light-hearted, flirtatious teasing mode.
"That commute is a bit far for my liking," she said with a soft smile, hoping he would pick up on the cues she was putting out there for him.
He cleared his throat. "I'm not playing, Beckett."
And just like that, she felt so out of sync with him again. She could feel all the progress they had made slipping through her fingers.
What happened to their silent conversations? To being able to convey any message with nothing more than a look?
"You know what? Neither am I," she stated, getting fired up again. "Whatever did or did not happen between Colin and I is none of your damn business."
"Of course not," Castle relented. He looked to the group, apologetically. "Excuse me."
He slipped from the booth and began to walk toward his office, behind the bar.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Beckett muttered under her breath, turning to Lanie for moral backup, but Lanie still looked completely shocked that this was unfolding so openly.
She turned her entire body, facing Esposito.
"Right," he said, piecing together her silent order. "Moving now."
He stumbled from the booth and Beckett followed, shuffling along the leather bench seat until she was freed from the restraint of the table.
"Why do you care?" she called out to Castle, effectively stopping him in his tracks as he reached out for the door handle that lead to his office.
"Why do I care?" he asked angrily, turning back to face her.
"You had Jacinda," she snapped.
"I didn't want Jacinda," he spat back at her. "I wanted... you."
His voice cracked with the overwhelming rush of emotion. And for one second, all of his anger was replaced with such pure sadness that she could feel her heart shatter into a million pieces.
"And you knew that," he choked.
Her stomach dropped with that confession, with the knowledge that he had known her secret.
All his distance, all his coldness, Jacinda: it all made sense now.
He was hurting.
"I can't do this, Castle. Not... here." She looked over her shoulder to their friends still sitting awkwardly at the booth.
"Sure. Whatever. It doesn't matter, Beckett."
He turned away from her and headed downstairs. The slam of the door behind him reverberated through her and every muscle in her body tensed.
She scrubbed her hands over her face and released a heavy breath into her palms. Her heart was hammering against her rib cage, her stomach doing nauseating somersaults.
With each passing second, it felt harder to breathe.
She needed to get out of there, get away. She need to run and hide: like she always did.
She wasn't going to break down. Not here, not in front of everyone.
She stormed back to the table and grabbed her jacket from where she had been sitting in the booth.
"You're leaving?" Lanie asked her, not even attempting to mask the disbelief in her voice.
"I can't do this right now, Lane. I need-"
She took another deep breath to calm the shake in her voice, clenched and unclenched her fists before shaking the tension from her hands. She didn't know what she needed right now.
"You need to fix this," Lanie said, finishing her sentence for her. "Girl, you were this close-" she held up her thumb an index finger, holding them just millimetres apart. "-to telling him how you felt."
No, she needed to regain the control that was slipping through her fingers.
"Stay out of it," Beckett warned her friend before turning and storming toward the exit.
He had started this.
Why?
In attempt to embarrass her?
To make her the villain in the story of them?
To make it her fault that they couldn't work this out?
She wasn't about to let him start a war and walk away unscathed.
She stopped just short of reaching the door and considered her options.
If she left now, she was almost certain there would be no coming back from this: the end.
But, if she stayed...
If she confronted the issue...
Was she ready for that?
She took a deep breath and spun on her heel, glaring at Lanie as she stomped toward the bar - as if this was somehow all her fault - and tossed her jacket over the wooden countertop. She pushed through the door, slamming it behind her the same way Castle had.
She took her time descending the stairs, unsure of exactly what it was she was going to say once she reached the bottom.
There were too many ways this could play out, too many variables.
She wanted to yell and scream and cry. She wanted to tell him that she hated him and the way he made her feel; that he had hurt her when he gave up on her. She wanted to blame him for the fact that they were broken.
But she also wanted to hold him, to kiss him and tell him that their brokenness wasn't beyond repair. They could figure this out, together, just like he had promised to, months ago.
She knew that was easier said than done, though. As she stepped further into his office, that reality was only highlighted by anxiety that weighed heavy in her chest, threatening to slowly suffocate her.
The room was dimly lit by the lamp that sat on his desk. She narrowed her eyes, trying to force their adjustment to the darkened room to be quicker.
"Castle?" she called out just loud enough for her shaky voice to cut through the thick silence.
He came into sight, pouring himself another drink from the cart in the corner of the room, once she reached the bottom step.
"I told you I loved you, Kate," he said, partially turning to her, but refusing to meet her eyes. "You brushed it off as if it meant nothing."
She shook her head, wanted to reassure him that it didn't mean nothing, it meant everything, but he wasn't looking and the words wouldn't form.
"Worse than that, you lied. You didn't even have the guts to tell me you didn't feel the same way, you just didn't want to deal with it." He finally turned to her, looked her in the eye. "You let me waste my time waiting for you because you didn't even care enough to let me down easy."
She swallowed the lump forming in her throat and blinked back the tears that stung her eyes.
His pain was so real, so raw... and she had inflicted it.
"Didn't care?" She managed to choke through the rising emotion.
His statement was so far from the truth that the idea of them simply not being on the same page was laughable: they weren't even reading the same damned book.
But of course he didn't see how much she cared. How was he supposed to know the effort she was putting into this, into them, if she never told him?
"I'm in therapy trying to deal with everything that happened that day: everything that haunts me, everything that makes me scared to leave my apartment during the day and keeps me up at night because I-"
She stopped herself, just short of saying what she had been working toward for so long now.
"Because what, Kate?"
She could hear it in his voice, that sliver of hope that he had been so desperately grasping to.
She wanted to tell him, but she wanted the timing to be right. She didn't want him to doubt it, to think that perhaps it was forced out of fear of losing him.
"Because... I don't want to hurt you." The admission felt weak, but it was as true as her love for him. "But I will."
Because she was broken - too broken - and she wasn't about to let him be a casualty in this. A casualty of her.
"I have hurt you." She corrected herself, because hurting him wasn't a possibility anymore, it was the reality.
This was exactly what she had been trying to avoid. This was exactly why she had lied in the first place. She wasn't ready, her heart wasn't whole enough to be offering to someone.
"I see you, Kate. I see through all your faults and all your fucked up coping mechanisms. You don't give a shit about hurting me."
"That's not fair," she whispered, holding back her tears. "You gave up on me."
"Gave up on you?" he asked and she could sense the denial on the tip of his tongue.
"Yes," she reinforced her statement with no uncertainty. "You gave up on me. You gave up on us."
"What us? A year, Kate, and not once did you give me any sort of indication that you wanted this, too."
"I-" Her words caught in her throat and she couldn't force them out.
"I spent so much time analysing every look, every touch, trying to convince myself that this wasn't just some story I had fabricated in my mind." He placed his glass on his desk and walked toward her. "Do you know how many nights I lost sleep because I was replaying every conversation, looking for some deeper meaning that just wasn't there?"
But it was there. She really had thought he understood.
"And then I find out that you knew. All this time, you knew and it didn't even occur to you that maybe you should have just put me out of my misery."
His words were sharp as a knife as they penetrated her chest and plunged right into her heart.
She turned away from him, wiping the moisture that was beginning to spill from her eyes.
"I didn't realise I made you so miserable, Castle."
"Don't twist my words," he warned.
"How did we end up here?" she asked in a pathetically weak whisper as she turned back to face him. "This is so far from what I wanted."
His shoulders dropped and in the golden glow from the desk lamp, she saw the hardened set of his jaw release.
"What do you want, Kate?" he asked with a sigh, simmering his frustrations to match the softness of her words. "You know what it is that I want, so please, just tell me what you want because I'm so... confused."
He took another small step toward her and they stood closer than they had dared to in weeks. In his closeness he towered over her and she kept her eyes fixed to the lump in his throat, watching the way it bobbed as he spoke, as he swallowed.
"I thought I misunderstood everything, but then... then you said that the wall was coming down and now you're here, crying, and it's breaking my heart-"
"I'm sorry," she interrupted as she wiped the backs of her hands across her cheeks and cleared away the fallen tears.
He cupped her face, the warmth of his touch taking her by surprise as he used the pads of his thumbs to wipe away the fresh tears that had fallen almost instantly to replace the ones she had banished.
"Don't apologise," he whispered.
He brushed her hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. His gentle touch shifted from her hair and her face, slowly moving down her arms until he reached her waist. There he stayed, hovering, unable to bring himself to pull away. Nervously, she rested her hands on his arms, reinforcing their connection.
"I just... I don't understand. I want to understand."
She searched his eyes for the anger from before, the anger that was missing from his words, but she couldn't find it.
This emotional rollercoaster - the back and forth, up and down, round and round - she just wanted it to be over.
Ready or not, one way or another, here was where this ride would end.
"I want this to be easier than it is," she confessed.
The soft, sad chuckle of agreement her confession drew from Castle drained her body of the nervous tension her muscled seemed to have stored up. It felt so good to be standing here with him, touching him, actually talking to him. That was exactly what she needed to be able to push through this.
"I want to be able to trust myself to not... poison you with all my-" She paused and smiled to herself. "-faults and fucked up coping mechanisms. I want you to know that I do care and that is why I lied."
"To protect me from getting hurt?" He quirked his brow and pressed his lips into a fine line.
The irony wasn't lost on her.
"I never said it was a perfect plan," she said as she looked away.
His hands gripped at her waist, drawing her attention back to him. "We need a new plan, Kate."
She looked at him, confused, as she felt an overwhelming wave of fear rush through her.
She felt naked, exposed, unguarded. Her breath quickened as she realised what this feeling was: vulnerability.
She had been teetering the edge of this cliff for months now, fighting to stay on solid ground as if her life depended on it.
And now she was letting six softly spoken words threaten to send her over that edge and into a dangerous free-fall.
She hesitated, giving herself a moment to process. "You don't think it's too late?"
That damned wall wasn't going to save her now.
She had already convinced herself that he had given up. She was prepared, she could handle his confirmation.
Of course, the crash-landing would do a considerate amount of damage. She would have to pick up the shattered pieces of her heart and spend a decent amount of time gluing it back together.
She'd have to carefully wrap it in bubble wrap, place it in a box and mark it as fragile before tucking it into the very back of her closet where it would be safe, where no one could ever reach it.
Over time she might even forget it was there; forget it ever even existed.
But she could handle that.
"Do you want this?" he asked, avoiding her question. "Put everything else aside: wrong timing, internal walls, work protocols, everything. Do you want this, want us?"
It wasn't that easy. It would never be that easy and they would be fooling themselves to think, for even a second, that it could be.
But still, she nodded. "I do."
Over the edge, she went.
Her heart was racing, adrenaline coursing through her in preparation for that inevitable bone-crushing landing.
It was coming, she knew it was.
"Then it's never too late."
The air was pulled from her lungs as the ground disappeared from sight and suddenly falling felt like flying.
She moved closer, framing his face with her hands and pulling her face to his. Their mouths collided: ravenous, possessive. They were thirsting for gratification.
All at once it was too much, but not nearly enough.
She wanted him, all of him. God knows they had waited long enough.
He took several purposeful steps, guiding her backward until her back pressed against the stucco basement wall and his body crowded hers.
She moaned as she arched her back and his hands drifted from her waist, under the hem of her shirt. His fingers splayed against hot skin as his hands explored her body, learning and memorising every inch he could.
She broke from his lips, dizzy and needing air.
"Castle..." His name left her lips breathlessly as he trailed kisses along her jaw and down her neck.
But when his teeth grazed against her collarbone, followed by the delicate pepper of more kisses, her thought was all but forgotten and she let out a pleasurable sigh.
"Hmm?" he hummed and she could feel the curve of his smile against her skin.
She placed her palms flat against his chest. "Look at me."
He pulled back, frantically searching her eyes for any sign that he had gone too far.
She smiled her reassurances, taking his hand and tangling her fingers through his. With her free hand, she cupped his face and smoothed her thumb along the rough of his stubble.
She took a deep breath before continuing.
"Colin and I-"
"It doesn't matter," he assured her, cutting her off before she said too much.
Truly, it didn't matter to him, but that didn't mean he wanted to know the details. "I shouldn't have brought it up, I'm sorry."
She shook her head. "Nothing happened," she whispered, promising.
"I thought it was none of my business," he said, trying to stifle a smile, but she saw it.
"It's not," she stated firmly. "But... I wanted you to know."
She pressed her lips to his again in a soft and slow, almost shy kiss.
She pulled back mere inches and dropped her gaze to his lips.
"My heart has been yours - only yours - from the moment you told me you loved me."
Smiling, he swept a tendril of hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear.
In one smooth motion, he brushed his index finger along her jawline and curled it under her chin, tilting her face up slightly.
"For what it's worth; I promise to handle with care."
He kissed her slowly, with a devotion and reverence she had never felt before: like she were something to be worshipped.