Cataclysm

Rick Castle buried his head in his hands, sighed, and then scrubbed through his hair. But it didn't alleviate the headache that been building for days, nor the tight ache in his chest at what he knew had to happen next.

He had to give her up. It wasn't meant to be. They had missed their moment.

All those awful clichés.

Kate Beckett was his friend, and she would only ever be his friend. He had been confronted with that reality in such a bald and brutal way that he couldn't deny it any longer. All of her careful consideration, her gentleness - she'd been trying to spare his feelings.

He had gone from furious and lashing out to simply… sad.

Detective Slaughter had at least done that for him.

Castle lifted his head blindly, pressed his hands to his knees to push himself off the break room couch. He felt like an old man, his bones popping, his muscles creaking. Slaughter's rough and tumble detective style didn't give much quarter and Castle was feeling it even now, five days later.

"Castle!"

Of course, Beckett called his name and he jerked right to his feet, unable to resist. Like he hadn't had enough, like his heart could take more trampling.

She came around the corner, her jacket slung over one shoulder. "Castle, you wanna ride out with me?"

He swallowed hard. He wasn't sure he could take it.

Her face shuttered and she glanced to one side, avoiding his eyes. Like she knew that he knew and she didn't know what to say to him. So of course she went with case. "I'm gonna check up on Vales. Make sure he's truly left my city."

Castle closed his eyes, the name like a body blow. Vales. A bitter reminder of the royal screw-up he'd made of that case with Slaughter, and how she had to step in and save his sorry ass all over again. Save the day.

She was always doing that.

Her integrity and honor and her friendship with him had compelled her to help Castle straighten out Slaughter's case. The mess he'd made of it. She'd risked her professional neck for him, because they were friends, and if he kept reading too much into it, if he kept foolishly falling in love with her over and over again, then whose fault was that?

He could do this. He could be friends with her. He'd - he hadn't done such a great job lately, and he'd pitched a fit and gone home sulking more than once, but he could be a better man. She had taught him that. Detective Beckett had the finest sense of-

"Castle? You coming, or..."

His eyes flew open at the hesitance in her voice. But his head bobbed, nodding, and he reached for his own jacket. The words were stuck in his throat.

She seemed to sense he was having a rough time of it, and whether she chalked it up to shame at his mistakes or something else - his struggle to be content with that friendship - he didn't know.

"I had a colleague keep an eye on Vales's cars, his crew. We're going to have to do a bit of legwork, but I want to be sure he's in Connecticut like the GPS says he is."

He gaped at her, surprised by her rather underhanded move. "You lojacked his car?"

She winked and held a finger to her lips in a conspiratorial smile. It caused such a bloom of warmth through him, like old times, that he smiled back.

And for some reason, her whole being lit up in response.

It knocked the breath clean out of him, and stabbed a knife in his heart, all with that one gorgeous smile.

Loving her wasn't going away quietly. Loving her might break him.

(...)

Beckett was caught a little off guard by the fact that he'd agreed to come with her. Something had shifted between them, again, and she didn't know how to deal with it. It felt like she was trying to put a puzzle together with the completely wrong pieces. Nothing fit.

What exactly was she missing here?

He had hesitated when she'd first asked, and she'd been so sure he would decline her invitation to accompany her on this unsanctioned road trip. But here he was, a silent shadow haunting her as they made their way to her precinct car.

She was trying to figure it out. She had been trying, for weeks now, and she'd been so hopeful when he had turned up that morning, a cup of coffee in his hand for her, and she had thought maybe it was over. Whatever it had been.

She had thought wrong.

He'd left her for Slaughter, dragged her already bruised and battered heart through a minefield of betrayal and regret.

It was so damn frustrating to not know why.

Still, all other things aside, she'd happily take this quiet brooding Castle over obnoxious jerk Castle, flashing his Ferrari and his Jacinda around, any day.

"Hopefully we'll find him exactly where he should be, and we can get back before dinner," she said. She unlocked the car and pulled the driver's side door open, looked up to find Castle blinking at her from across the roof of the car. He nodded again - still so quiet - before climbing inside.

With a sigh, she slid in herself, tugging at her seat belt as Castle did the same. She turned the keys in the ignition and the engine purred to life, filling the awkward silence between them with the gentle hum of a well-oiled machine.

"Do you need anything before we go? Food? I know you get hungry," she teased, glancing over at her partner before she angled the car away from the curb.

Partner.

Not like he was acting like much of one these days, really.

He winced. "No. Let's just get this over with."

The tinge of acid in his response made her jerk her head away from him as if struck. She exhaled slowly, counting to five in her head, reminding herself she was trying to ... try here. She didn't even know what was wrong and it infuriated her and god - maybe if he'd just talk to her, she'd know whatever it was that she'd done.

"I'm sorry." He cleared his throat and turned to her. His lips were in a crooked smile, apologetic, and he raised a hand to scratch the back of his neck. "I didn't mean to snap at you, Beckett. No, I'm not hungry, but we can stop for food if you are," he offered.

She bristled at the unnatural politeness in his voice. This whole weird-Castle thing was getting old really fast. "I'm never the one who wants-" She rolled her eyes. "Okay, never mind. We'll just... go then."

The streets were blessedly empty and she managed to make it onto the freeway incident free. She expected to admonish him at least twice for messing with the radio, or with the air conditioning, but the man next to her remained stoic and solemn, the model of good behavior.

It made her heart sink.

The longer they drove down the nearly deserted road, the more he noticed the rigid set of her spine and the hard clench of her jaw. He should say something, he should try to ease the tension that was nearly palpable in the air between them, but he couldn't - the words weren't there.

He couldn't make himself pretend. Maybe it came off as childish or pouting, but really he was just trying to heal here. He'd eventually get over it, eventually realize that it was all his overactive imagination, a pipe-dream to think she'd love him back, but right now he couldn't fake the breezy persona she'd come to rely on. It was all gray skies ahead for him, no silver linings.

If only he could just shut it off. His mother had told him that love wasn't a switch, but damn if he wished it could be. He was a glutton for punishment when it came to Kate Beckett. But as he sat in the passenger seat of her car, a place he'd been so many times before, he knew he couldn't let this go. Her.

Friends.

Partners.

He was her ride-along. This was his seat, his stupid spring that poked him in the ass. This was where he belonged.

It was better than not having her at all.

Maybe one day the fractured shards of his heart could be welded back together. Just not now. Not yet. He would go through the motions because he couldn't risk losing what little he had of her.

After all, he had neverhad her heart.

Damn, he was being so melodramatic that even he was sick of himself. No one wanted to be around that guy, the sulking idiot. He'd learned that lesson ages ago, as a child accompanying his mother on the piano while she sang, the life of the party. People didn't want the real Rick Rodgers. They wanted Richard Castle, the celebrity, gregarious and charming, smooth talker who threw his money around, who rode a police horse naked.

No more of this. He could play the part, plaster on the smile. He could do this.

He would do this.

Small talk. Supportive partner. Fake it until you make it.

"I didn't realize it was supposed to storm," he said, trying to keep his voice light, finally cutting through their stark silence. It was cliché to talk about the weather, but it was the only thing he could conjure up. (Especially when all he wanted to say was 'Why don't you love me back?')

No, he was done being pathetic. He had infringed on her good-heartedness long enough. Overstayed his welcome. He needed to fix this.

Weather was safe, if a piss-poor start, but looking out the window at the wind shearing the road, the lightning that seemed to crack open the sky - safe probably wasn't the appropriate word for what was going on out there.

(...)

Beckett surreptitiously checked the address on her phone once more, then she smacked the top of her GPS display that was inset in the car dash. It blinked and stuttered, but the dot hadn't moved in nearly three miles.

"Amazing how reliant on technology we've gotten," Castle commented.

It was really a comment she could do without. "Cheap police issue," she muttered. In reality, it was probably the nasty storm outside interfering with the satellite.

Beckett had to work to not hunch her shoulders over the steering wheel as she peered through the fast-moving wipers, the slop of rain making visibility nil.

She grit her teeth at the silence from his side once more, tossed the phone towards him. "Map that, would you? GPS can't get a signal in all this."

He didn't answer, but she assumed he was doing as she'd asked. Neither of them wanted to be here; she knew that much. He had flight attendants and fun to get back to and she had a couple cases on her docket plus a court date she needed to prep for. The thunderstorm was making what should have been an ideal time to reacquaint themselves into a kind of watery hell, though she could admit she hadn't thought this one through.

She had been desperate; she knew that.

But after an hour and a half of fruitless, painful silence - or worse, his polite small talk - her heart wasn't in it.

Beckett swallowed roughly, gripping the steering wheel.

Her heart wasn't in it any longer. Where was her heart? Had it been so easy to trample, after all? A few rough weeks of completely bewildering behavior, hurtful comments, and grief-stricken eyes when he thought she wasn't looking, and her heart was too battered to stay?

Maybe it was good they'd missed their moment. She wasn't ready for this, for this, for heartache that felt so poignant it was like those first few minutes after waking from surgery, everything painful and tight and nothing making sense. Raw. She had walls for a damn good reason.

"Yeah, no good. I'm not getting a connection here either." Castle sighed. "Probably should just give it up, Beckett."

She ground her teeth to keep from saying something entirely too revealing. That had stung her pride. And he hadn't even meant it to. She knew that.

"Yeah," she admitted, her voice on a croak. She swallowed again and narrowed her eyes at the rain pouring outside, tried to come up with a plan. "I'll get as close as I can - the end point is still marked in GPS - and then we'll stop and ask for directions."

"It's a bar?"

"Mm." Her fingers were cramped on the wheel and she had to sit up straight to alleviate the ache in her back. "A motor works and bar - so it said on my report. Not sure what that means."

"Greasy shots?"

A laugh startled out of her. She gave Castle a short glance, suddenly flustered by the way he was looking at her. Back to sad eyes again, back to grief, to yearning. Her throat worked but no words came out.

How did she say thank you so much for trying.

He smiled. Weak, but it was there. She tried for one back, though she knew all of her desperation was in her eyes - and she ought to be watching the road.

As she navigated the car over a low concrete bridge, the sound of the rain under their tires changed to a steady, low thrum. Felt like the sensation in her guts when he smiled like that.

Felt like complicated and not fun, and her insides twisted.

She reached blindly for the GPS to call up the address's end point, needing to not think, but his hand closed around hers.

"I'll get it. You should watch the road. Getting intense out there."

That wasn't her heart beating in her throat, choking off her air. No, because her heart wasn't supposed to be in it anymore, right?

Oh, God, she still needed him so badly.

(…)