"Why are you looking down all the wrong roads? When mine is a heart and a soul that is sore.

There may be lovers who hold out their hands, but, he'll never love you like I can, can, can.

He'll never love you like I can..."

Anger burns. That's the first thing that registers with him when the elevator doors finally open and Castle steps out ready to leave the precinct. It burns under his skin, far too raw and tight for him to be able to ignore it any longer. Like acid and fire have mutated together, some cloying mixture that festers and flakes apart the pieces of him that are still desperately trying not to be in love with her.

It's mission fucking impossible clearly.

She's everywhere and everything and working with her day-in-day-out is not just causing him physical pain, it's mental torture too.

She still looks at him like she gives a shit, like his life and hers have some meaning together, as though she imagines a future somewhere down the line where they might be more than what they are right now.

The problem is it's all a lie!

He halts in the middle of the milling traffic of end of shift cops, someone grunting and knocking into him as he turns, knowing instantly it's useless and he has no way back to the elevator.

He'll have to take the stairs.

It's good and though his body is a little out of shape -probably one of a million reasons why she doesn't see him the way she should - he finds the effort and exertion it takes to run up them gives him back something that she's stolen. For a few seconds he has power over his body and mind. He has control.

His heart is pounding and he's out of breath, undoing his shirt collar as he climbs, and it's not just because he's running back up to homicide, not just because he can feel the tension within him ratcheting up at the prospect of confrontation, but his anger is flooding his system and tying everything together. It's because he knows the truth now.

He heard her. Heard her twice over in fact. Once lying to his face and once making plans with another man and it's not that he feels he holds some claim over her, it's just that surely, surely when it comes to her heart, her attention, her bed, he's first in fucking line?

He's proven himself, she knows how he feels.

That she could be so blind to him after all this time is ridiculous, either she feels nothing for him in return or she's willfully blind to it for her own convenience and as much as he's in love with her - because no matter what he tries his stupid stubborn heart just will not let her go - the prospect of either of those scenarios being true makes him hate her just a little bit.

More than a little bit.

Enough to growl and charge up the next flight onto the third floor and throw off his jacket, leaving it behind him in the stairwell. Enough to pierce the skin of his own palms when he fists his hands and his nails dig in, sharp and painful.

Enough to almost miss arriving on the fourth floor, to miss himself demanding where she is and ignoring Espo's shocked expression. Enough to barrel down the hall and throw open the door of the locker room.

Enough to look her square in the eyes and yell, "He'll never love you like I can."

Enough to hate himself for hating her even as the words spill free.

Going for a drink with another man is literally the very last thing she feels like doing, but there's a small part of her that wonders if being uncomplicated will come upon her with more ease if she starts trying to be more carefree?

Careless might be more appropriate. Because the man she wants to go for a drink with, sit next to, talk to, is acting as if she doesn't exist and as much as she tries to ignore it, the pain from Castle's nonchalant attitude and casual dismissal is starting to fester.

Maybe a drink with someone else will be a step closer to being who she should be to have the man she truly wants?

It's a thin excuse even to her own ears and she drags a hand through her hair, tipping into her locker, hanging her head as shame ripples up her spine, chasing the cotton of her clean shirt as she drags it on.

It's just, he's so cold!

She didn't expect it to be a fist to her gut every time she looks at him, every time he arrives with just the one coffee, every time he blows her off for plans with another woman.

Tears burn at the backs of her eyes when she pictures the way he looks at her now, all warmth gone, all feeling and what she imagines used to be love washed clean of his pupils. And she has no idea why.

What did she do?

It's like being shot all over again, it's like dying in his arms every time their eyes meet and he looks away, with her tongue too leaden to move in her mouth, her mute appraisal and damn wait and see attitude doing nothing but breaking her heart. Every. Single. Day.

With a heavy sigh and downcast eyes unable to meet her own reflection she slams the locker shut and pulls her shirt across her chest, fingers fumbling over the buttons. She can't even get the first one through the hole before she's dropping her hands and reaching for her phone.

She should cancel. She should go home. She should do anything other than stand here moping about Castle.

"He'll never love you like I can."

She stops dead, the phone falling from her fingers at the sound of his voice, as if thinking of him for so long has conjured him into being. He's behind her. The loud creak of the door crackling like burning timber before the booming echo of it slamming shut makes her flinch back and spin on the spot.

She jumps at his tone - the sounds that splinter off from his presence - the broken, bitter sounding drawl of his voice making her turn to face him. She draws in painful breath at his words. Love? Her chest flutters at the mere mention of it, panic racing under her skin and the urge to run, to not risk what they are already shredding to bits, is so fierce that she has to fist her hands at her side just so she doesn't barge past him.

Castle vibrates where he stands, the atmosphere suddenly alive and electric with his frustration, his anger. His anger that is mounting by the second because looking at her, searching those damn mystical eyes, he skims the familiar waters of their fathomless depths and knows exactly what she's thinking.

She wants to run.

She wants to escape and push aside what he came here for. She wants to pretend again that she doesn't hear him. And in the morning she'll want to pretend that none of this ever happened.

Well, "Not again, Beckett."

She startles and a small part of him is glad, at least his words are getting some reaction, because his love clearly wasn't going to.

She can feel it without even having to look, can't bring herself to meet his gaze when she knows that every little bit of will be filled with anger and pain, with a firm insistence that she face her own cowardice and he has to bark her name for her to be able to lift her eyes to his face.

When she does the sight before her is shocking and she opens her mouth to beg - escape or relief she doesn't know herself yet - but her voice falls away to nothing. He looks a torn apart shred of the man she saw leave only a few moments ago. He looks broken and put back together with pieces missing or ripped in two.

He's an entirely different person.

Confusion and terror race through her, competitors for her heart as they tangle and thread their way around her system and tear down her defences. He sounds so unlike the man she is in love with - nothing at all like her writer, partner, friend. And he's speaking words designed to take her apart in seconds.

There is no finesse to his countenance now, no ease of conversation, no flow of emotion. His words strike at her like arrows, quick, cold and deliberate, sharp invisible thuds to the chest that have her flinching back into her locker when their eyes meet.

He's breathing hard, so angry and she thought he went home, thought he left without her again, fled the building only to turn right back around. Deadly still and frighteningly silent, he pushes off from the door to stare her down.

"Castle..." She doesn't know what to say beyond his name, that's always been enough for them and she knows her lack of words are part of the problem, but in desperation she clings to the old and the familiar. His name, the comforting curve of the letters that should be flooded with enough feeling for him to if not understand, at least stop looking at her like she broke his heart.

Oh, god. Did she?

"Could have." He amends coldly, quietly, his eyes burning into hers and waiting for a reaction.

He watches it take root, like ice down her spine, his change of tense so subtle and yet so significant, so telling that he doesn't even need to utter another word for her to understand why he came here.

His lips twist up as if to smile, pleased with the way she flinches back, the sound she makes when the knowledge of his oncoming rejection douses her like cold water.

She can see it in his eyes then, that he's done. That she's finally pushed him too far, their unspoken agreement no longer exists. Whatever subtextual moment they shared long ago on the swings, before, every time in between, it's over, he's through with it, with her, done with waiting for the woman too complicated to fix her own problems.

Too stupid to do anything other than lie to him.

He's bitter with it, burning through and he might be a hypocrite for it but he quite likes holding something over her head, just so she doesn't have all the power, just so she's not standing there stripping off to dress up for another man, treading all over his ripped out heart in the process.

With a hand to her chest that she doesn't feel move or land over her shaking skin Beckett stutters and repeats his words, not in confusion, just for herself. "Could have."

It slams into her harder than any bullet ever has or will again.

This is it. This is how they end.

He glowers, smiles in the most unhappy way, "You get that, right? That I could have -" he shudders, the first visible reaction he gives that it's painful beyond words to be doing this, curls his hands and fingers into fists to regain composure, "Did. I did. I loved you like no one else." His eyes close when he grits his teeth to force out the words, as if the admission is too much, agony, he swallows hard and forces himself to stand rigid. His voice is a whisper when he repeats it, "No one else."

He waits. When she says nothing - can say nothing around the cracking open of her chest cavity at his confession - Castle takes a step into the room and unclenches his hands at his side.

He won't speak again until she acknowledges it. He's done making this easy for her and if after everything this is how they fizzle out, she will damn well take some responsibility for it.

She's frozen with fear. Terrified. Not of him, never ever of him, but the anger in his voice and the bite and kick and punch of every word he has uttered since he entered the room scare her more than any criminal ever has, any choice before, any decision in life she has ever made.

He talks as if they're over before they've even begun. He speaks as if he expects her to respond when she just doesn't know how. Words fail her and the ice in her veins is matched only by the glacial stare reflected back at her from the man she loves.

Loves.

Because she does, she does love him with whatever fucked up pieces of her unworthy heart are left to share. She does love him, even if he thinks otherwise.

As soon as the word enters her mind and penetrates the thickened shell around her heart her body is forced into action. It's not a conscious choice or decision, it's beyond that. The movement of her being is fundamental and crucial to her existence, elemental.

She's never been one for words when action will suffice and taking the five or so steps between them is like crossing an ocean. It takes everything in her not to fall back at the hurt and hatred that he levels her with.

If this is it, if this is how it ends she wants to know what it feels like when he puts his hands on her. His skin under her lips and inside her. She wants to let go.

Without word or preamble she steps into his space, too close to be ignored and she pushes his shoulders back, reaches for his face with both hands and kisses him.

Even if it means she's kissing him goodbye.

When her fingers touch his skin his eyes widen and pain bursts through him like an untamed dam, seams splintering apart at the silken feel of her feather light touch. It's not fair, not fair at all that all he wants to do is reach for her and kiss her back when he's angry, when she offers him nothing but false hope and more heartache than he can bear.

But if this is how it ends, then perhaps he can make sure she never forgets it. That she was the one who tore them apart, that it was she who threw away what they could have had together.

His eyes drop to her lips as she leans in. Just a little taste, to make damn sure she never forgets him.

She doesn't close her eyes and neither does he. She doesn't flinch back or give an inch and neither does he. She doesn't wait for an invitation to take whatever she wants from his parted lips and neither does he. His reaction is immediate and hungry, not tentative but rough and rushed and perfect. His hands fist in her hair and he opens for her tongue, dives deep inside her kiss and refuses to come out.

He pushes the unbuttoned shirt off her arms and kicks it aside when it lands in his way, stepping forwards and shoving her back.

Her hands are in his hair too, sliding to clutch his chest and when he uses all his weight to force her backwards on unsteady feet she has no choice but to grab hold of him, taking him with her, grunting at the shift in position. She lands heavily, her back to the cold metal of the locker making her whole body spasm in reaction and before she can think enough to breathe through that, his leg is slamming between her own and he's pulling her up against his chest, wiping her mind with the invasion of his tongue.

She bites his lip and he growls and retaliates, forcing his thigh higher so she's riding it, a frisson of pleasure so sharp she gasps into his mouth snapping through her body and centering to where his muscle's are pushing hard between her legs.

She does it again and tastes blood, his or hers she has no idea but her hand drops, slides awkwardly between them and she gropes him hard enough through his pants to make him squirm.

Nothing between them is past tense.

She needs him to know that, know it as surely as he knows that she's angry too. That she's confused, that he's as stupid and ridiculous and crazy as she is.

He groans when her hand closes around him, too big to be contained in her palm she runs her fingers along the length to gauge his size and her body quakes with knowledge, melting, she is suddenly nothing but liquid heat in his hands.

She's burning with it, anger, pain, hurt, humiliation, need, desire everything, every emotion she has ever felt with this man is there like knives under her skin and she has to get her hands on him and make him feel it too.

She thumbs open his zipper and snakes inside, her fingers circling as she reaches, the heated tip hot and moist under her touch and she widens her grasp to take him in hand, skin to skin.

Castle growls, roughly kissing her as his nails dig into the skin of her wrists and he pulls her hands up from between them, slamming them into the metal at her back.

It drags her up onto the balls of her feet and she arches, desperate for his mouth and his body to be on her, she whimpers and groans and growls in frustration when he sinks his teeth into her neck, leaving a very visible mark but kissing her no longer.

They hiss when they connect, smoke, sizzle and steam and he roughly unclasps her bra and breathes stilted breath into her mouth, running his tongue over her bottom lip as he's wanted to for four years.

Reaching his fingers up under the black swathe of lace to palm her breast roughly, he kicks aside her feet and steps in as close as he can, her hands high above her head. Rolling her nipple between his fingers finally makes her eyes close and she shudders head to toe in reaction so violently that he wonders if she's come apart already from that simple touch.

He kisses her, fills his hands with her soft skin and memorizes the weight of each breast in his palm. He thumbs her taut nipples until she's rocking back and forth on her heels, mimicking a movement they will soon make reality.

She lifts her leg and he releases her hands, both of them reaching between them to undo her pants. Their knuckles knock and brush past each other. The silken material falls like a whisper down her legs and she steps out of the black pool at her feet, her hands on his hips shoving down his jeans.

Her eyes are darker than he's ever seem them, possessed with desperation and anger, she's sad even as her skin comes to life and he knows exactly how she feels.

They are not good and honest people in this moment, they are broken, hurt and wounded. They are not the false facade they wear every day and they are not warriors.

Seeking something they fear they can never have, in each other's arms they are nothing more than human. Flawed, unforgiving and lost.

He pushes aside her sodden underwear, fingers biting into her thighs, she groans and rocks and he takes her lead, lifting her so she can wrap her legs around his waist and he can slide inside her, one long stroke, through tight hot skin that brings them chest to chest and thrumming hard with pitiful pleasure.

He chokes her name at the feel of her and she whispers his back, the same tone of utter shock uniting them.

Holding her up, with both hands cradling her hips and ass he can't angle her head and find her eyes but somehow she knows what he wants because she lifts up, wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him hard.

Her cheeks are an angry slash of red and heat billows from her, the way she clenches around him, swallows him up makes Castle feel like he's melting inside her and he thrusts roughly, shifts his knees to lift her higher and their eyes meet for the briefest second before he starts pounding into her.

It's sloppy and fast and more than a little painful, with her back against the metal locker and his nails digging into her skin. He's not small and he's not gentle and razor-blades of ecstatic pleasure cut through her body every time he slams into her, locking them both firmly in the present.

She wraps her legs around him, tighter, groaning when he slides deeper and her nipples rasp across the front of his shirt. She bites his name into his lip and surges up into him, squeezing around him hard so that he almost freezes on the angry growl that leaves him, only to slam into her harder and faster than before.

The metal behind her creaks in protest and she fists her hands in his hair, dragging his mouth down to her chest, her ankles lock at his back and balanced as she is she can finally snake a hand between them and touch herself.

She's wet and slippery and she can feel the grunt of movement under her hands when he pistons in and out of her, she pushes her underwear further to the side and hears them rip when he finds purchase enough to reach between them and help.

She touches him and then herself, feels his teeth sink into her breast when she runs a wet finger over skin just shy of disappearing inside her.

Her fingers are messy with arousal, sliding over herself, nails scraping and she throws her head back and moans his name when the electric snap and spark bursts through her like lightning.

"Castle." She moans again and her head thumps rhythmically against the locker, fingers working hard, hips snapping as she absorbs every bit of him.

"Look at me." He demands and she fights to find control from somewhere deep inside, enough to lift her head and comply, allowing their eyes to meet and hold as she works her fingers and he slides into her again and again.

With his mouth on her breast he feels her fingers working between her legs, the way she tightens and flutters around him warning him she's close and no way in hell is she gonna be riding him this hard with her head thrown back in delight when she comes.

He wants to see it, to know her. To witness the way the orgasm crashes through her system. More than that he wants her to see him and watch the way he pours inside her, nothing between them and no escape.

She mumbles his name and writhes along the length of him, making him sink his teeth into her nipple, he sucks hard and she shudders and he soothes the marks he leaves with his teeth with the salve of his long, hot tongue, not wanting to hurt her.

His hips snap when she grazes him, her fingers touching his most sensitive skin, hardening even more painfully under that briefest of contact. He'd probably die if she got her hands on him again.

He slams into her and calls her name, slides deep so that every cell is stimulated and caressed by them both. He does it again, hitching her legs higher and calling her name but her head remains back, her fingers working harder and she's so utterly lost in the feel of her own fingers that she can't hear him.

"Castle." She breathes and it's the most intimate sounding thing he has ever heard, his head lifting from her chest, to watch her face, his body sloppy now as they spiral towards completion. Higher and higher and each slide and slip of their bodies joined likes this brings them a little closer to their end.

"Look at me." He demands and she shakes her head, writhes, shimmies and quakes, "Beckett, look at me."

She shivers but her head lifts and his pace falters at the expression on her face, she's wanton and glorious, hair flying and matting on her sweat soaked skin, her lips are red and raw and her eyes glisten.

If she cries there's no coming back for him.

Their pupils lock as she breaks apart and he dives forwards to feast on her mouth, stealing the murmurs and the moans straight from her tongue as he sucks it into his own mouth. She doesn't close her eyes and neither does he. He keeps on, demanding she shatter apart further and more with each thundering surge of his hips and he stares into her intently watching as each ripple of her orgasm washes through her. She tightens around him, her grip like a vice only to intensify with each hold and release, hold and release, a tugging caress from deep inside a demand that he follow her over the edge.

He holds off as long as he can pulling her through pleasure so intense that she digs her nails into his skin and drags them over him.

Her movements cease between them and he reaches for her hands once again, entwining their fingers and dragging them up above her head, holding her hard against the locker and pounding desperately to draw out that last screaming ache of agonized joy before he spills into her.

Their mouths come apart as they fight to breathe and he slams hard, the room nothing more than an echoed boom of their hips in motion. The thunder of their passion rolling through the halls for all to hear.

His voice is a roar in her ear as he comes. Her body splintering apart with each hot burst, breaking at the seams as she fights to contain him and she shudders, she's never felt anything like this in all her life.

It's sex in the rawest form imaginable, pleasure ancient and unknown and she draws it out as long as she can, clinging to his hands as he holds them apart from their bodies, rotating her hips and lifting her legs to take him deeper, meeting him thrust for thrust until she's coming apart again.

It blisters like fire, it burns, it hurts, it scalds. It feels so good and it's almost over.

He slumps into her and she wraps her arms around him, body a hollowed out shell of pleasure and she strokes a hand down his back, lifts his chin and makes him kiss her.

She holds on because she knows it's nearly over, nearly done, and any second now he'll leave and she's terrified of what comes after that. How much more of themselves and each other they have left to lose.

Her feet land on the floor and he steps back from her, sliding out of her body and touching his softening skin with his own fingers to feel the remnants of her enjoyment drying over him.

She watches his movements, the way he appears mesmerized by it, and her eyes dart up guiltily to meet his, too many unsaid words between them and her mouth opens to offer up more.

Castle bends and hands her the shirt, stepping back to give her space as he zips his jeans.

They dress in silence, but their eyes never falter.

Eventually, when he can bear it no longer, he heads for the door.

"Don't." She whispers quietly when he turns to leave. "Don't wait for me anymore, Castle." She can't have it, can't face that look in his eyes everyday when she knows she'll never be good enough to deserve him.

He sighs.

Their eyes meet across the locker room, the vast expanse between them an ocean of pain and confusion once more.

He shakes his head.

"That's the problem isn't it Beckett? Waiting for you." He smiles sadly reaching for the door, offering up the thinnest thread of possibility as he goes, "It's not a decision you get to make."