A year and a half ago, I wrote my first story about Castle. And I currently have trouble looking at this story, because my now-seventeen-year-old-self tends to make very snarky observations at my then-sixteen-year-old self. Like, what were you thinking with that word choice? And, what was up with all of those ridiculous italics?I don't really read it now, if I can help it.

But nevertheless, I promised at the time I'd write something similar from Rick's perspective. It took a while, because I just didn't feel like I had all the pieces – but Knockout was the final piece and I wrote this in a matter of hours. And was very, very proud of myself. Just a note: it is not ambitious, or even terribly interesting, and essentially is just about exploring moments already on camera. But still. It's something.

(And it should be noted for the record that I'm working on a Castle story with things like original dialogue! and off-camera moments! and the like. Just as soon as I convince myself I'm capable of such.)

If Richard Castle is being honest with himself, it all starts to unravel right here.

A dark alley, lights tangling on the backdrop of worn buildings and parked cars, tangling in her hair, as her fingertips press flush against his side and tangle in his shirt. It's cold, and she is warm; pressed snugly against his side and spilling closer with every uneven step, her sway matching and then contradicting his from stride to stride.

The scuff of his shoes on the pavement, the guard standing vigilant and watching them from a shadowed doorway, the chill in the air; these things are grounding, sturdy, playing through him in uncoiling tension with the resounding reminder of danger.

But the scent of her hair, the press of her hand to his shirt, the dim light accenting the finer points of her features – these things arenot grounding, not helpful, are terribly distracting.

But this is just a cover. A plan. A crazy idea. And it just isn't quite enough; he drags her closer, works her into the crook of his arm and drops his cheek against her hair and keeps his goofy smile in place (though it is really not funny, and his heart is racing, and he can't tell if it's the spark of peril inherent in their situation or just this proximity).

Beckett laughs into his shoulder, pitched high and manufactured, drugged with tension; "He's not buying it, Castle," she says through it, through gritted teeth, and he doesn't have to be told because he already knows.

She goes for her gun. He goes for her hand.

Facades vanish and reappear, flicker in and out and fade into resolve; his thumb coming up to brush the slash of her cheekbone as it is highlighted by a thin streetlight twisting gold into her hair. And. There is a guard with a gun approaching, approaching quickly; he has no time to think, so he doesn't. Just leans in to cover her mouth with his, brings a hand to the small of her back and presses in close. Kisses her, to distract the guard. Kisses Kate Beckett. His partner, inspiration, muse.

Call me a muse again and I will break both your legs.

Well, okay. Maybe not muse. Maybe just Kate. Maybe just this.

She's the one to break it; jerking abruptly in his arms, pressing against the hand he has against her back, eyes wide and dark in the spotty light. Flecked with question, hesitation. She's also the one to resume it, pulling, insisting, white-hot behind his eyes as she slants against him and pulls him ever-closer, hand on his shoulder heated and adamant. Stealing from him breath, words, reason, everything.

And then – it stops being a cover. Stops being anything but this. She is demanding, relentless, fingers weaving into his hair and pulling him in, and he loses himself in it for half a moment; forgets the dark alley and the burly security guard and the streetlamps shading them in skeletal light. This is enough, this right here, her hands in his hair and pressing him closer, closer, enough.

Then she's gone; empty air and the sound of sharp impact replacing contact, and the ghost of her touch, warmth, scent still dizzying enough in her wake. When he opens his eyes the guard is face-down and very still on the pavement, and Castle angles his head, thoughtful.

That was amazing, he thinks detachedly; and also says, which comes as a belated realization when she slowly turns to stare at him.

So. He stammers and explanation and shuts up.

-n-

It's cold, in the freezer.

Seems obvious enough, but Castle has never been this cold before; numb beyond reason, everything in him stolen by this cold, so that every motion takes the grittiness of draining effort and every breath stings heatedly in his lungs.

Beckett is curled up beside him, curled against him, head slanted to rest on his chest, all of her held within the comfortable angle of his bent arm. But he can't feel anything. Just the phantom memory of her warmth bleeding through, long-gone, long robbed by the rising chill.

Talking is difficult; his lips are numb, uncooperative, and between heartbeats his teeth clatter forcefully together. But they manage, the two of them. They talk. He's sorry; but he is a lot more than that, so much more than that, but he can find nothing to say between the knifing cold and ebbing focus. Nothing that is enough.

His hand traces circles on her shoulder, contact he can't feel and just imagines, the catch of the fabric on his callused fingertips. He can feel her shivering, or maybe it's just him; nothing is clear, in this place between numbness and unconsciousness, gray and oblivion. The pain that comes with breathing has started to fade, ice melting, melting back into the pale expanse of nothing waiting to drag him into it.

But. Her hand brushing his jaw, eyes rimmed with frost-dusted lashes warmer than they ought to have been in all this cold… This is clear. This is clear.

"Thank you. For being there," she breathes, a rasp to her voice that makes his chest hurt. He can't help her, is helpless, can't have her back because he is just as vulnerable. The cold stings behind his eyes, hurts.

"Always," he swears, and means it; even if always is just another hour, half-hour, whatever abbreviated amount time they have left. Even if always is forever. It's the best he can do.

"I just want you to know how much I-…"

And then she is silent, achingly still.

"Kate," he says, a plea, thin and hollow, torn from the jagged instability of her unfinished declaration. He's losing her, and he is unraveling, things layered in uncertainties suddenly stark as words on paper and so very tangible.

"Stay with me," Castle begs, and he touches her face, holds her to him tightly as he dares and soaks in warmth he cannot feel, as if that will keep her with him.

Always, always, always.

-n-

Sharing a hotel room was a bad idea.

It's not that he regrets it; it's that he doesn't, and that this is dangerous, dangerous to him. Propped on the couch and talking quietly, the distance between them closed enough that he can memorize this. Memorize the slant of light over the slight smile on her mouth, the angles of her jaw framed perfectly by the fall of her hair, the tones of color in her eyes, shifting, warm.

She's dangerous. Because he…

No. He can't think it, yet. Thinking it, putting words to it, that would make it real. The unraveling threads of everything pooling together into an emotion with a weighted name, and she has a boyfriend, and he is…

Too late. Too late for this.

Except… "Even now, after spending all this time with you, I'm… I'm still amazed at the depths of your strength… your heart…" (and she looks away, down, something like a flush climbing her cheeks and lashes curling darkly to hide her eyes, so he quickly amends;) "And your hotness."

She grins, almost laughs, light; triumph spills into to spaces between, because he's finally, finally said the right thing. The right thing for right now. The only thing he can say when there is so much he isn't ready for.

And it would have been fine. Except that then she looks at him says, a smile curling at the corners of her mouth, a hand sliding into her own hair and propping against the hinge of her jaw. And she says, "You're not so bad yourself, Castle." And words stick in his throat, ragged, raw. Warmth, the rich tones of color in her eyes and this proximity; he doesn't know what to do with it, doesn't know what to do.

For all the words Kate Beckett has given him, she has stolen more; give and take, push and pull, the natural rhythm of whatever it is they have.

And now, Castle can't speak, can't answer; just catches her eyes with his, waiting, testing, asking a question he isn't sure he can hear the answer to. And it aches of failure when she withdraws, murmurs a goodnight, and even her name on his lips can't undo what he's said without speaking. The door clicks when it shuts, but he can see the shadow of her, moving, stopping, waiting.

Rick waits, too. Presses his hands into the couch's cushions, fisting them in the material and grounding himself in the now. His heart rate, rapid and urgent, begins to slow, bringing reason back with it – she has a boyfriend and he shouldn't be doing this, and the emotion has a name but he isn't ready to spell it out.

He moves, quickly, retreating himself behind his own wall before they change their minds and things are irreversibly thrown into question. Questions they aren't ready for.

He thinks he hears her door open, just before his closes; a click that rattles around in his head, tangles in intangibility and unfinished threads.

-n-

Rick Castle is Kate Beckett's partner.

Her plucky sidekick, sure. Her shadow. Her consultant. But these titles are thinner than the truth, brittle like an excuse. He doesn't have a badge, usually doesn't have a gun, but they are partners. And partners have each other's backs, right? They support each other, work together…

And they protect each other. Protect. And that is what he is doing now; what he is doing when he asks, begs, tells her to walk away. Walk away from this. Please walk away from this. Please don't get yourself killed chasing this because I can't live with that.

(The emotion has a name now, and he knows it; can't say it, but knows it.)

"Get out," she says.

He does.

And stands in the hallway, leaning heavily on the wall with the heels of his palms pressed against his eyes, everything unraveled and everything wrong. Partners. He just wanted to protect his partner. Protect her from the dragon, Lockwood, herself. Protect her because there is no world for him without Kate Beckett in it. Because somewhere along the way, things got blurry, and he's in too deep now, in for too much.

It started with the kiss. It's the alley, her hands in his hair and body angled intoxicatingly against him. It's the freezer, too cold to feel anything and still feeling everything, the world shaded in blue and her fingertip grazing his jaw. It's the hotel room, the almost, the exact shape of her smile and the exact color of her eyes branded into him forever, always.

It's this. Right now. The knowledge that he cannot, cannot, cannot let anything happen to her.

(They're over, she'd said. The emotion has a name and it tangles with that truth, rejects it, rejects it.)

Partners. Always.

-n-

Blood. There's blood.

It turns it real; more tangible than the glint of the sun on a rifle's scope, more tangible than the sick-wet sound of a bullet making impact and her abbreviated hitch of a gasp. This is real, crimson splashed stark against the white of her gloves, cutting through to bone, and no, he cannot lose her. Won't lose her. Can't.

(he's her partner; it was his job, his duty to push her to safety and take the bullet himself, because that is how these things work – and instead she's bleeding on the ground and he doesn't know what to do next)

There's blood, red, and it stings behind his eyes when he blinks. He knows he should apply pressure, stop the bleeding, find the ragged edges of her uniform and the wound beneath and hold it all together until help arrives-…

He doesn't. Can't. Can't feel it, see it, have her blood on his hands, because he just can't. Reality is murky, muddled, tangled in desperation, and all he wants is for this to go away. Every ragged gasp of a breath she takes snags somewhere deep in his chest, sharp, like the specter of his words months ago – when I saw the blood on your shirt I thought you'd been shot.

No, no, no.

His hands hover, seek her out, one at the back of her head and one against the curve of her side; clinging because he thinks if he lets go for even a second he'll lose her. He can't lose her. Not ever. He grips tight and leans close, protective, a shield against the world just a bit too late, and his fingers tangle in her hair and he begs her to stay.

Stay.

Don't leave me, please; stay with me, okay?

Kate, Kate, Kate.

Rick murmurs her name like a prayer, a promise, whisper-soft and reverent and pleading; he repeats it with the shadow of desperation, again and again in his head, and he's not sure when he only thinks it and when he says it aloud. Because he is clinging to her name as if saying it will keep her alive, clutching at her arm as if it will hold her here. As if anything in the world is enough to fix this.

This started with this kiss, and he's too late to take it back, too late to fix it, too late.

Unraveling. Everything. Words spill through his head without filter, without caution, buoyed by his mother's advice – don't waste another second, and how achingly true that is, when Kate may have only seconds left to her. He holds onto her, has to have this contact, has to hold her as close as he can and protect her from everything and it just isn't enough.

In the end he just whispers it like a secret, one kept too long, too late; no flare to it, no extraneous words to dress it up, because she is dying in his arms and it just doesn't matter anymore, and all the words he's ever known can't make it right. So he just uses three, wills it to be enough.

"I love you," in one breath, quick, sharp; it tastes both thin and perfect, frail and the most right thing he's said in a long time. "I love you, Kate."

He thinks she smiles before her eyes close and she slips from consciousness, but his vision is going all blurry at the edges and it's hard to tell. I love you, I love you, I love you, is what he thinks and does not say, holding on, staying.

(always)

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Castle and its characters do not belong to me.

Reviews are greatly, greatly appreciated, and thanks so much for reading!