With a fire in my bones

and the sweet taste of kerosene. . .

But all the while, I was dreaming of revelry.

-Revelry, Kings of Leon

She lured him away.

Kate, feeling the razor's edge she walked between manageable ache and throbbing anguish, made Castle guide her out the side entrance where her two boys stood ready. She shook her head when Emile made to follow, and Castle instead was the one watching her back as they disappeared down the hall.

The Trump-Soho ballroom was still so new that neither of them could find an exit to the front and instead stayed, she a little breathless, in the maze of hallways connecting the conference rooms.

Kate needed, very badly, to lay down. But she needed, even worse, to make him spill everything. Every secret thing he'd kept locked away from her, all those moments they'd apparently had that she couldn't remember. All the things they'd said in the heat of unguarded moments, in the grip of grief, but which she now no longer retained.

It wasn't fair for her to always be in a struggle against a self she didn't know, and couldn't claim, fighting a battle with him that only he remembered.

She leaned back against the wall, the lights here dim and the hallway unused. An emergency exit sign in the distant end glowed red at the corner of her vision. Castle came closer.

"What did you want to tell me?" she asked, putting a hand to her abdomen as if she could keep herself together with her fingers or the shape of a palm. She wanted another couple of advil but didn't dare interrupt this.

Castle stepped in all the way, fully against her now, taking on her weight instead of letting the wall be her structured support. Kate leaned forward into her favorite therapy position: curled against him, his hands under her elbows holding her up. This time his fingers brushed her sides, lovely sparks of pleasure to counteract the pain.

"What did you need to tell me?" she asked again. She wanted, so badly, to start this. She was tired of limitations, of things carefully avoided; she was tired of endings.

He breathed softly against that spot behind her ear, brushing her hair out of the way. She'd cut it as soon after surgery as she could, but it had grown again this year; her hair skimmed her shoulders and curled, dark as night.

"No more secrets. You were right," he whispered against her skin.

Kate slid her arms down along his chest and wrapped them around his waist, reveling in the warmth of him, the solid line of his body against hers. She knew the things he wouldn't say, but she wanted them, wanted the words. She wanted it to have a starting point she could remember, not some haze of agony and blood, not dreams of a too-bright, blue sky and the scratching blades of grass under her cheek as darkness drilled holes in her vision.

She wanted this, not the agony. She wanted him.

"What secrets?" she whispered back, dipping her head to touch her lips to his adam's apple, breathing him in.

He jerked in a breath and let it out slowly, as if seeking control. "I have to tell you."

"So tell me." And she touched the tip of her tongue to his skin, tasted him.

Castle shivered, his hands involuntarily crushing her against his chest, sending jolts of fierce and terrible pain up her spine and down into her legs. She gasped and leaned her forehead against his collarbone, surprised and exhilarated at how she'd made him come undone. So quickly.

He murmured apologies as he cradled her against his body, his fingers featherlight again.

"No more," she moaned, tossing her head against his concern, his lovely, annoying, obtuse concern. "Tell me. Just tell me."

Say it.

Castle pressed reverent lips to her temple, worshipped at the altar of her body with his hands, smooth and soft, as light as incense. His touch was supplicant.

When she pulled her head back to see him; she wanted to see his eyes when he said it; when she pulled back, his face was repentant rather than ecstatic. His eyes held sorrow, not eternity.

"You should sit down," he said. And the dejavu that swept over her like a cloud wasn't from dreams half-remembered, but from seeing that face before, seeing that devastated regret like a mask on his face. "Beckett. You should sit down."

No. No. Not this. She shook her head at him, in negation of all he was about to do, in negation of Beckett alone.

"The Captain. . .sent me something. Before he went to his death. He mailed me a file. A collection of evidence."

"What?" Instead of fulfilling her memory-dreams, he had punctured the haze with needles sharper than pain.

"It's enough to know, for sure, who is behind everything. All of it. The conspiracy is laid out in perfect detail. I'm sorry. Kate. I'm sorry."

"Why are you apologizing?" But her words caught in her throat, got hung up in the breath that couldn't escape the grip of her spasming lungs. She wheezed and leaned her head back against the wall, but it made the tremors worse.

Oh God. This was what happened. This was the punishment for intimacy; she could not even run away from him.

"I should've given it to you right away. I shouldn't have kept it buried. I was wrong. Kate-"

She was trembling, and she was not even given the choice to be embarrassed by it, because she had stopped being ashamed of this need so long, long ago.

She needed him. It wasn't even weakness; it was formidable strength and it was the steel that kept her backbone straight.

But even as she acknowledged it, he was letting go; he was settling her against the wall as if he couldn't touch her. As if he expected her to need the wall more than him.

She shook her head and fought the urge to be sick. "Castle."

"I'm so sorry," he whispered.

"Why?" It was all she could choke out from the panicked palpitations of her lungs which wouldn't fight against the muscles quivering in her abdomen. Her whole body in revolt against her.

Why was he removing himself? Why now? After a year of forcing himself on her, ever closer, ever more intimate, until his very touch was a lifeline, a release from the prison of her pain. . .and then he dumped this on her and wanted to leave her to the stiff and cold expanse of the wall? The wall?

"Why?" she gasped and closed her eyes against the retreat of his body, her palms flat on the wall behind her. It took everything in her not to break apart.

"Why?" he croaked, as if he'd run for miles. "Why'd I hide it? Why'd I keep it from you? Because I love you."

The world ceased. The jagged racket of her breath stilled.

She opened her eyes on a breaking, wide smile and tried to move towards him, to bring him back where he belonged.

"You do," she breathed and let her hands reach for his wretched and wrecked countenance. "You do."

She curled her hands around the lapels of his tux and tugged him in, hands tightly clenched to keep herself upright, waiting for the blessed touch of his fingertips at her elbows, her support.

"Kate?"

"I don't care, don't care," she murmured, the giddiness of relief washing through her as his hands came up, bulwark and strength.

"I thought. . .you'd hate me," he whispered, sounding shellshocked even as his mouth grew brave and brushed along her ear.

"I do. I hate you for it." She shivered and pressed closer, unable to look. "But I love you and I can't help it. You've made me need you, and I don't even care."

Then his hands were framing her face and pulling her away from him, rough and bruising, no longer gentle. Gone was the Castle who had spent the last year perched on the side of her bed, feathering touches, not pushing. Instead, she had him back again, childish and enthusiastic and clumsy and passionate.

He crushed his mouth against hers, hot and thorough and uncompromising, doing to her what he wanted as she lifted, lifted against him, every ragged edge of pain drawing up out of her. Until they broke apart, and it spilled out into nothing, like ice following heat.

"Say it again," he commanded, his voice raw and needy.

She had made him need her too, somehow, in all of this. Kate had made him just as powerless.

"I hate you for it," she said, her lips sliding up, unwilling to give it away now that she had it back.

Castle growled and angled his mouth over hers again, pulling it all up out of her, his fingers tight in her hair against her skull, seeking admittance.

When they broke again, it was only so that Castle could lean against her, panting, his pulse writhing under the tips of her fingers at his neck. He was trembling. He was gulping for air and backing her against the wall, unwilling to move off of her. He was liquid, strumming tension. He was as helpless as she was.

"I love you for it," she whispered and traced the lines she'd put in his face this past year, eased them from his skin with the brush of her fingers.

Erased them all.