Summary: After a dragging case Castle and Beckett are too tired to fight and for the fragment of a second, all the things Kate Beckett feels make sense.

The Fragments Of Seconds Of Sense

~Barely even friends, then somebody bends, unexpectedly.~

It had been a rough day, a tough case, a bone-chilling, strength-sucking, hard-ass-ugly case.

A dead child, a pretty, little goldie-locked girl, not older than six years and three months. She'd been still a baby. An innocent little girl with a lifetime of happiness ahead of her. Raped and strangled by her stepfather.

Once again Kate Beckett asked herself in what world she was living in. Of course being who she was, a homicide detective with the New York Police Department, she'd seen horror beyond what most people could take but it was always cases like this, when pure innocence was slaughtered that she feared for the world.

What society where you living in when people were actually capable of murdering a six-year-old child, a child that had trusted you, that loved you like a father? What kind of monsters could walk their streets that were capable of hurting something so fragile, so defenseless? She sat at her desk, looking over a pile of paper work that she just didn't have the slightest urge to go through and saw nothing but blankness. She felt that she shouldn't be biting her lips so hard as she could taste the metallic fluid that was her own blood on her tongue but she also knew that, if she unlocked her teeth from her auburn lips, she would scream.

Sometimes this job just dragged her down, consumed her and left her dry with bitterness and pain, pain for people she hadn't known but failed to protect. Just like her mother. She couldn't protect her. Every time she saw someone die who hadn't deserved it, her unconscious brought the images of her mother back, the last time she'd seen her, the last smile they shared. So much she'd lost that night and Kate had chosen the one job that made her relive if over and over again.

Castle would call that self-destructive. And he would call the fact that she, none the less couldn't be happy doing any other job, ironic. Using the word in the right way.

Castle. He was a pain. Okay, if she was honest, most of the time he made her job much more easy and lighter to take but with cases like this, cases involving little girls, all humor faded from his character, leaving a cynical mask of Richard Castle behind that wore that strict face he usually just pulled off for an act, like a shield displaying a nonchalance that everyone, who knew him somewhat, could easily make out as phony. Truth was that cases like this pulled at him, too. Probably even more than they got to Kate because of Alexis.

His own daughter was nearly sixteen and each time they had a case on the table involving a girl, he made her his Alexis, for a bit he felt like his own daughter had died. His empathy didn't just made him capable of writing such great novels, it also made him feel all the pain of loosing a child, even if it was the child of another person and his blooming imagination could make up all the details, all the images, all the scenes if such a thing happened to him. Of course he never told her that. But she knew. If there was anything she had learned about him, it was that, although he tried to hide it, he was sensitive and afraid and being these things, he held on to Alexis like dear life. She was everything to him and just the thought of loosing her made him sick.

"Son of a bitch", his voice was low, brittle, not the usual cocky note floating along in it as he stood at her desk, looking down at her sympathetically, rubbing his thumbs against the solid wood.

"Yes", she agreed, knowing that he was talking about Mike Finnegan, the man who'd killed his step-daughter and was being processed to jail to wait for his trial, "If I could for one minute believe in hell, I'd want it to be for guys like him"

He simply nodded, his lips pursed as always when he was being serious. It was a rare silence filling the blanks between them, wrapping itself around them and for a moment, just looking each other it was clear that they understood. They had a truce. There would be no picking on each other after a day like this, no stupid comments or snappy answers.

"Care to share an elevator down?", Castle finally asked with the smallest hint of a smile crossing his features and with the same half-smile he got in return from her, he helped her into her coat that he'd swiftly picked up from the backrest of her chair.

She let him help. Although she sometimes despised him she had to admit that she liked these little gentlemen things he did. Just like that, for no profit, no gain, just because he felt that's how a woman was to be treated, the same went for opening up doors, waiting for the lady to enter, pulling out the chair at dinner. That was one side of Richard Castle she didn't want to see jump out the window and never come back.

Their steps echoed through the hollow corridor and as the elevator doors popped open Castle let her go first and pushed the button down.

"It feels like every time there is a case like this a piece of me dies", it was sudden and quiet when he spoke and the sort of insight into his mind that she had naturally but that he rarely gave verbally. It meant that there was a lot going on in his head, too much to keep to himself. And although she didn't like the feeling much because she couldn't and didn't want to understand where it came from, she felt a bit of an accomplishment. Him open up, revealing his true thoughts intentionally was something so rare it had begun to feel precious. And then again, the thought that something Castle said was precious to her was causing more reluctance than it should have, or better; spite.

But, yes, he was intruding, sometimes a riddle, there was nothing wrong about admitting to that, there was absolutely nothing humiliating about being fascinated by him. It was just stupid of her to feel like it was. And somewhere buried way down in her chest she was afraid of the origin of these feelings; their true roots and how it felt a little like in Elementary School were you just couldn't show that you indeed liked Kyle, the jock, a lot and instead pretended to hate him.

"I can't imagine how her mother feels", she finally said after giving his revelation a little room and eying him for a few moments, "I hope I never get to find out"

"Me too", he said and looked back at her and the sincerity shaping his features in a rarely seen way caused a chain-reaction that Kate Beckett dreaded more than anything.

It took just a second, just the fragment of a second, a second where the motive of the move her body demanded her to make made perfect sense. A second when she felt this overwhelming need to open her arms and fling them around his body, put her face on his shoulder and just hold him closely, make him hold her. That very second it was the only thought she had, grasp him, show him, hold him. That very second she found nothing odd about the urge. That very second it was like she was a volcano, about to erupt.

But the next second her mind got hold of itself again and the fear of the explosion, of the things that the volcano would bring to bright daylight, things so well hidden inside of her, emotions she wouldn't dare to name. It was a second of an attempted move that she would never make. Because just the perfect innocence of the act would mean too much to both of them. The line it would cross, just this subtle little gesture, it would be too much.

Kate felt like a house of cards, it took all her self-control to keep her together, to keep her face straight, to not ever let Castle see that he could do this to her.

She couldn't let go of that and also, what was an epiphany every single time he looked at her like that, that she, only in the aftermath denied to have ever felt, was the knowledge that she was walking on an edge with no safety net below. There was just the fall. The complete loss of control. If she fell, she fell into an ocean of these feelings she didn't want to have, an ocean that would swallow her a whole and leave her exposed to all the hurt and pain such emotions could inflict on a person. That wouldn't happen to her. Not with him. Not Castle.

He didn't have a clue, he just looked back at her, a little confused, a tad bit puzzled, like he always did when they looked at each other like that. He might ask himself what she was thinking but she#d sworn the first time it had happened that he would never know.

Kate Beckett was in control of herself. And she knew that she wasn't going to let her body, her bloody hormones, chain her to this man. It was not going to happen. He would take too much, he would take all that she had, not because he was greedy but because he could, because she would let him.

If she lost control. But she wouldn't. She would never.

"Kate, are you alright", he asked concerned, thinking he'd figured her out, thinking she was still thinking about that little girl, oblivious to the truth, that he was currently all that occupied her head.

"Yeah, I just need a bath and sleep", she said, carefully putting the casual smile on her face, planting it there to stay and focusing her eyes back on the elevator door's, "I'm fine"

Note: So this is just what my imagination spills out when I think of Castle/Beckett...it tickles me to make this a story but as I have one priority-one unfinished it could take a bit, but maybe I'll update this whenever I feel myself block with the other one...I'll just hear you guys out, see what you think about it.

I would also like to get into Castles head and I would certainly like some flames spark between these to but only if anyone cares to even read.

So...drop me a line, tell me what you think.

Should I leave it at that or work my way around?