Keep Calm and Carry On

3 word prompt - kate drunk london

— ANONYMOUS

"I shouldn't have come," she moaned. Her head throbbed, her eyes were two stones sunk into the soup of her sockets. Her face hurt. "This was such a bad idea. Oh fuck."

Hunt caught her hair and held it off her neck; his fingers teased and made her shiver. "It was a perfectly wonderful idea," he said. His voice was liquid sex. She hated herself for wanting him. "It's possible you had too many fireballs." His eyes twitched like Castle's when he was amused. "And you perhaps took some liberties-"

"I tried to hump one of those fur-hatted palace soldiers. Oh God." She bowed her head over the hedge where she could still smell her vomit, and she groaned even as Hunt laughed.

"You did. However, I have connections and you're fine. No charges."

Charges. Oh God. Oh God, she should never have bought the plane ticket. What the hell had she been thinking? When he had come to her crime scene with the blonde, she hadn't even flinched. (Well, only a little.) When he had come and gone at will through her precinct with that 'just had sex' face, she had steeled herself.

So why the hell had his 'fun and uncomplicated' inspired this?

(Because he was a man of words. Actions were one thing, actions she had learned from him not to believe. Words. Words had power, and she was as miserable inside as out).

"Katherine?"

"It's Kate," she growled, clenching her jaw around her own damn name. Hunt couldn't even be bothered to get it right.

"While getting pissed - drunk, I mean - and grinding against a Queen's Guard doesn't put me off. The - uh - sick does."

Put him off?

"If you think you're done, we can head for a public loo, let you clean up. Go back to your hotel and make this worth-"

"Oh God," she moaned, slamming her eyes shut.

There was a moment of silence. Then. "Is that a no?"

"No," she snapped. "Hunt. Just - go."

"I can't leave you here. It's three in the morning, Katherine-"

"Kate." She rounded on him, her hand balled into a fist, but her own seasickness made her too unbalanced to throw the punch. Instead she wound up swaying back into the hedge, twigs snagging at her clothes.

He reached for her, his fingers around her elbow to drag her upright. His touched burned. Her throat burned. Her eyes.

She couldn't even do this. Castle could parade fun and easy flight attendants through her precinct, but she couldn't even go through with this. Hump a Queen's Guard, but when it came to touching Hunt, letting him touch her, kissing him - her first reaction was to vomit in the bushes.

"I'm not leaving you here."

"You don't need to protect me," she rasped, wiping the back of her hand against her mouth. "I'm sober now."

And she was.

Dead sober.

Hunt refused to leave her side. His chivalry was antagonizing, considering he'd been angling for sex even after she'd thrown up. Now he was trying to usher her quickly back to her hotel room.

A hotel room she didn't have.

"Call me a cab," she got out. Her hand shook as she scraped her hair back off her face. Her mouth was the pit of hell. "Get me a cab, put me in it, and go home, Hunt."

"It's Hunt now, is it?"

She eyed him.

He put up both hands in 'calm down', and then he fished out his phone from his back pocket. She was working hard to keep it together, to look put-together.

It took everything in her power to not hit him. Asshole.

Except she knew it wasn't him she wanted to have it out with. She'd bought a fifteen hundred dollar plane ticket to prove something that wasn't even true.

Her heart actually was broken.

When the cab pulled up, Beckett crawled in. She didn't look at Hunt, didn't wave, and he had stopped trying to talk her into a toothbrush and a hotel room.

"Where to?"

"Heathrow," she croaked, tilting her head back against the seat.

She closed her eyes but it made the tears slip down her cheeks.

Pathetic. She hated him. She did. She hated him.

So why did she have her phone in her hand and her thumb hovering over his contact? Why, even as she was shaking with exhaustion and dehydration and bitter drunken sobriety, was the heat of her thumb already calling him?

Oh, God.

And he answered.

That curt command of her name, such anger in it. Why did he get to be angry? He was the one who'd gone to Las Vegas for more setting-curtains-on-fire one-night-stands.

"Beckett. You called me. Answer your damn phone."

She stared at it, astonished that every word came to her so clearly, astonished she had actually called him.

She put the phone to her ear. "N-never mind."

"No, you ruined my evening. You tell me what the problem is. Another case? I don't feel like it. So-"

"I'm in London."

Air punched out over the line; she heard the drag of his breath back in. "London. England."

"I'm hanging up," she grit out, pulling it away from her ear.

But he yelled her name through the phone - yelled - and she flinched hard enough to startle the phone back to her ear.

"You better not hang up on me. London? Are you kidding? Calling me to what, Beckett, brag about it? How long did it take to let him fuck you?"

"How long did it take you?" she bit out. "With your flight attendant. Driving that car, Castle. I love that car." She snapped her eyes shut and shook her head. Stupid. He wasn't hers to-

She lowered the phone and ended the call, curled her knees up to her chest to keep her stomach from rolling.

The phone buzzed in her hand and she ignored it. Silenced it, her eyes fixed on the world outside, tried to keep from getting motion sick with the slip and slide of the city past the window.

This had all been such a mistake.

—–

A/N: This started as a fill, but has turned into a beast on tumblr. So I'll post here to give you an easier place to read the whole story.