Uncomplicated

It didn't help.

It didn't even feel right; it just felt -

wrong.

She was uncomfortable; she kept jerking back when Hunt tried to touch her. She ran her hand through her hair and knocked back the last of her drink and felt her smile too tight on her face.

So she apologized and went home early, sat at the kitchen counter with her phone in her hand, stared at it until the screen blurred.

She texted Lanie: He wants fun and uncomplicated. I'm not fun. I'm a huge complication. I should never have thought it would go anywhere.

She didn't hear back from her friend. Not in the twenty minutes Kate gave herself to sit and wonder, chewing on the edge of a hang nail, gnawing it down so it wouldn't catch on her sleeve.

She wasn't fun. Hadn't been fun before she met him, at least. And even now, being fun required a glass or two of red and that way he had o smiling at her before fun came easy. Uncomplicated was about as far from her - them - as it got. She was snared in complications; she couldn't untangle herself from any of it.

A stewardess? He'd run as far and long from her as he possibly could.

Stewardess - excuse me, flight attendant - was his rebound girl.

His Josh.

Kate rubbed a ruthless hand down her face and squeezed her eyes shut, tried to force herself into letting it go, put the phone down, go to bed. Tomorrow was a different day, a fresh start, and-

And she couldn't. She couldn't.

She wasn't even drunk, wasn't even drinking, but she texted him:

I know I'm no fun. I know I'm complicated. But I'm coming over.

Only self-preservation, a lingering since of dignity, kept her from adding:

The stewardness better not be there.

Kate's hand were shaking so she shoved them in the pockets of her jeans, felt the edge of the denim cutting into the back of her fingers. She bounced on her toes as she waited for him to answer the door, wondered - hoped she didn't know the reason he was taking so long.

When he answered, he was alone, and not smiling. "I got your text?"

It was a question, and she nodded, confirmed it wasn't a mistake. She found the words slow in coming, had to study the line of his face for something - she didn't even know what, just that she needed confirmation of her own. She didn't find it.

He sighed and scrubbed his hand down his face. "So."

He wasn't going to make it easy on her, was he? He was going to make her start this. It was on her now.

"I thought you understood," she blurted out, then shook her head at how petulant she sounded, even to her own ears. But no. He didn't get it.

"I don't follow."

You're supposed to follow. "I thought what happened in Vegas . . . stayed in Vegas," she tried again, going for their old standby. Subtext.

"Oh, it did," he grinned, but none of his heart was in it.

And hers was crumbling.

She turned her head away, couldn't help the thickness in her throat, the choke of it in her chest. Okay. Okay he'd - done - something - with someone else. Another someone else. He'd been - not hers. He wasn't hers.

She'd never had him.

"I should go," she said quietly, a mistake brushed her fingers under her eye to make sure. Good, nothing. Okay. She could - it just wasn't meant to be. Two ships that pass in the night. All those good cliches.

Kate turned back for the door, realized she'd not made it that far inside after all - a few steps maybe, if that.

Only a few steps back out the door again.

He gave a huff of breath, sounded ticked. "What's this about? Why are you asking about what I did, Beckett?"

It was her name that did it. Back to Beckett when lately - oh, before - before it had been Kate and the regard of his eyes, tender on hers, and waiting. Before, he'd been waiting, and now she was Beckett.

She half-turned, glancing over her shoulder at him, wondered if she really had it in her to demand anything at all, to insist he choose complicated and not-fun over - over Vegas and girls in Ferraris and lunch dates.

"It was a mistake," she said, felt her voice crack as she did. Felt it all crack, fall apart. "No. It wasn't a mistake. It was - it was something, and now it's broken. And I don't understand why. What did I do wrong?"

His face was wiped clean of everything, completely blank.

It filled her up with the pieces, shards, jagged edges that cut every time she breathed.

"It's never going to change with us, is it? It's never going to be right. You'll be - this - just like this - and I'll be complicated. It's never going to work, no matter how I fool myself, no matter how you look at me." Only he wasn't now, was he? "That helps though. At least you're not looking at me like that anymore, are you?"

His mouth opened, nothing came out.

Well. "You wanna teach me that trick? Because I don't know that I can stop looking at you like that. Don't know that I can hide it when you take a lunch date or let another girl drive your car or have four dates in three days and not with me. So you're gonna have to show me how to flip that switch, Castle, because I-"

His mouth closed over hers, fierce and indignant and final. She stumbled, felt her back hit the wall, put her hands to his shoulders and pushed.

He broke away, still that same blank nothing on his face, and she scowled.

"What the hell?"

His face broke, the mask slipped and his features reformed into something hesitant and watchful, his hands were still buried in her hair, cradling her head, his forearms pressed against her collarbone.

"Kate."

She gripped his wrists, but didn't pull his hands away, couldn't help but wonder at the sound of her name.

"There is no switch," he whispered, close, his breath feathering at her lips, a nudge of a kiss, another touch at the corner of her mouth, a trail to her cheekbone. "No switch I can find, though I keep trying. All an act, all to keep from - but you - why didn't you say anything?"

"I don't know what you mean," she whispered back, her chest tight, eyes closed, fingers wrapped around his wrists as if to yank him away or keep him there - she didn't yet know.

"Don't you?"

"You don't make sense, Castle. I thought you - there was Vegas and your car-"

"Distractions. Didn't work."

"Distractions from what?" She opened her eyes to see for herself the look that went with that voice.

He was wide open, all of him, and his thumbs were stroking the sides of her face as he studied her, as if memorizing the moment.

"Castle?"

"You know," he said intently, and the way he said it, the knowledge behind his words, the current of tension, it made her heart pound. "You know. And now I do too."

Her mouth ran dry.

"You know I like complicated," he said quietly. "I love complicated."

Her chest clenched. "Yeah?"

He scoffed. "Course."

"Complicated isn't any fun," she said slowly.

"Sure it is." His hand skimmed her neck, skated down her arm, curled at her hip. She found her hand had settled over his there. "Best kind of fun. Thrilling, mysterious-"

"Complicated," she sighed, closed her eyes against it. Already, it felt too hard, too much for either of them.

His mouth caught her cheekbone, his fingers stroked the side of her face. "Kate."

"Yeah."

"I wish you'd told me. I didn't like hearing it behind the glass."

Her heart flipped. So that - that was it. She lowered her forehead to his shoulder, wished she was wearing higher heels. "I didn't mean it to - I didn't - I'm sorry."

"For that? Or for all of it?"

"I thought we talked about this," she said quietly, lifted her head to give him the courtesy of at least looking him in the face. "I thought you understood."

He was looking at her gravely. "I thought I did. That day on the swings?"

She nodded back, traced her finger along the vein she could feel in his wrist. He cupped her cheek, his eyes so tender she might never be able to breathe again.

"I thought I did. But then it felt like - maybe I made it sound like what I wanted to hear. Maybe it's all been what I wanted to see. Every time you looked at me. I thought maybe it was just me."

She swallowed hard and tried to be uncomplicated.

"It's not just you," she murmured, slid her thumb along his wrist and up to his shoulder, fingers at his neck. "Not just you."

His lips spread cautiously, eyes beginning to crimp at the edges, something like a smile.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Best you can do?"

She huffed at him, furrowed her brow, but his thumb was there, smoothing it even as he smirked at her.

"Okay. Best you can do. Got it."

"Told you it wasn't fun."

"I can make it fun," he grinned.

She sighed, easing into him, releasing it. "You already do. Or at least interesting."

"We can do better than that," he murmured. His fingers curled at her neck now, he brushed a kiss to her temple, paused there a moment as if breathing her in. "We can do whatever you like, Kate."

"Just don't do flight attendants," she said suddenly.

He choked, his fingers flexing at her hip, her neck. "Shit."

"No kidding."

He laughed, a strangled thing at her hairline, curled around her as if he was trying to protect her. And maybe he was. "No flight attendants. No more flights. Just you. I'll just do you."

She gasped on a laugh, felt the burn of shock and arousal clean her out, the rest of it - the anger, the hurt, the confusion - the rest of it ashes in the wind.

"You'll do me?" she hummed, felt her body lift into his, her arms winding around his neck.

He groaned. The sound reverberated through her, echoed in her ribs, found residence in her heart.

"You can't say stuff like that and then only give me - It's not just you. Jeez, Kate, you'll kill me."

"Don't want to do that," she said, felt herself smiling despite the lace of sadness trimming his voice.

"Laughing at me," he sighed, his hand sliding around her waist to pull her hips against him.

She smiled wider. "No. I can say - It's not just you and - and I better be the only one you do."

His mouth pushed into hers, his tongue already breaking the seal of her mouth to lance inside, hot and quick, her back pushed against the wall, his body crushing her.

She took it, gave it back, clutched his shirt in her fists and tugged until she could get her hands on him.

If she found blonde hairs in his bed, she was going to make him pay.