The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You

A/N: Spoiler Alert. Okay, so I caved and watched Sneak Peak 5 for 'The Limey'. This was the result…

"Castle, is everything okay?" she asks, looking at him with fresh eyes; the eyes of a concerned friend, rather than a spurned lover.

They're not lovers. No. But then that's her fault, and it's taken this for her to recognize it.

'This' being his arrival at a fresh crime scene in his cherry red Ferrari, accompanied by a mystery blonde, who bears an uncanny resemblance to his ex-wife Gina. In fact, the Ferrari has just departed again at high speed, driven off by the aforementioned identikit blonde, tires squealing.

Kate shakes her head.

He looks like shit, she thinks, taking in the shadow of stubble ghosting along his jawline, the deepened wrinkles running from nose to mouth, and the thumbprint-sized dark circles smudged beneath his deep blue eyes. Eyes that look duller and deader than she's used to seeing. Haunted eyes that take her back to a darker time in their shared past.

Lanie's been bugging her for days to tell him how she feels about him. If she's honest her friend has really been nudging her towards him for years, trying to get her to own up to her feelings, and put everyone around them out of their misery. But things have reached crisis point in the last week or so. Castle's going off the rails before her eyes, playing up to every crass, irritating, brash, playboy stereotype she knows he has in his arsenal, because she was there when he was playing this game the first time around, before…

Okay, dammit. Enough, she thinks, taking a deep breath.

She stalks away from him, striding across the blacktop, her heels striking the asphalt with a metallic ring, leaving him standing in the neon-lit parking lot alone.

The blue police lights bounce off his pale, sleep-deprived complexion, and the fake, plastered on, theatrical, 'I'm on top of the world, Beckett, honest Gov' smile he's been wearing since he stepped out of the car drops clean off his face the moment her back is turned, because maintaining it a second longer takes more emotional energy and more heart than he has left in him.

He's more miserable than he's ever felt in his entire life. More miserable than two divorces, rejections from publishers, bad reviews, his mother's cooking, that summer without her, ever made him. Because at least that summer he had hope. A faint hope, but hope none-the-less. Now he has nothing. Just a confirmation that she knows that he loves her, and she doesn't feel the same way.

Kate arrives by Lanie's side, grabs her by the arm, and drags her off into the shadows.

"Kate, honey, what they hell?" exclaims her friend, rubbing her arm. "Where's lover boy?" she asks, looking around for Castle.

Kate glances down at the metal thermometer dangling from the M.E.'s fingertips, wrinkles her nose at the faint smear of blood and liver tissue on the sharp tip then looks back at her friend.

"Lanie, I can't do this anymore," warns Kate.

"Let him get it out of his system, Kate. He'll soon burn out," she tries to soothe her distressed friend. "Just…give him time."

"No, I mean I need to tell him now. No more time. No more waiting. He's…I need to fix this, Lanie. So, just hit me with your premature analysis of the murder victim, and then…"

Kate tugs at her hair, freeing it from the chignon she twisted it into when the call came in at 2.00am, and she fled her warm, but torturously empty bed, for this damp, cold, motel parking lot. Curls tumble free around her shoulders. She's wearing a pale grey scarf around her neck, and she fiddles with it nervously while Lanie presents her preliminary findings.

She can hear Castle chatting to the boys just around the corner. He's sharing some crass joke about a donkey, a dolphin, and a legless woman, and if she didn't know him as well as she does - from the heart on out – then she'd never give him a second look. He'd just be another loud mouth jerk with a flash car, no scruples, and too much money to throw around.

But there's no getting away from it…from him. Because she does know him, only too well, and she can see the hurt he's masking with humor, his go-to coping mechanism. And just as he doesn't begrudge her hers, she finds she can't begrudge him his either.

Ryan appears round the corner, calling out in the dark for them.

"Over here," yells Kate, squeezing Lanie's arm.

"What's…?" asks Ryan. He stops when he sees the look on Kate's face.

She's not quite sure what he sees there, but it's enough to spur her into action, because they've let themselves be derailed once too often by interruptions.

"Ryan, I want you to take the lead on this one. Lanie will bring you up to speed," says Kate, fleeing before he has a chance to ask her why.

She strides over towards Castle and Esposito, her hair flying in the damp air. The writer is miming the outline of a particularly curvaceous woman's figure, if the sweeping dance his hands and arms are performing is anything to go by. They're ginning like dirty little schoolboys sharing a rumpled copy of Penthouse. But she tells herself this is her fault too, and pushes on towards them.

"Espo, Ryan's running point on this one. Castle, you're with me," she commands, tugging the writer's arm and dragging him firmly away, ignoring the startled looks both men are giving her.

When they hit the dark shadows in the dirty alley behind the motel, Kate lets go of Castle's arm, and he looks tense and uncertain for the first time in days. She's knocked some of the cocky out of him for now. Good. Time to step it up a gear.

But before she can formulate her first thought, his mask slips back into place, and he leers through the dark at her.

"Did you do something," he gestures with his hand, "with your hair, Beckett? Because it looks kinda…" he swallows, playing a role, she can see, "…kinda sexy," he says, thrusting out his jaw as if daring her to hit him.

So much for what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. He's still feeling reckless evidently. Gambling. His boundaries are gone, driven away by something that looks like pain. Though she's yet to figure out why.

She ignores the 'compliment'? Looks him in the eye. They've done so much hiding in their time (working) together for two people who are actually insanely in tune in so many ways. They finish one another's sentences for god's sake. Married couples take years to get to that…

Shit, Kate. Focus.

He's staring at her. Waiting.

"Why did you give the case to Ryan?" he asks finally, frowning at her, his voice cold and disapproving.

"Because we need to talk."

He looks afraid, ready to run.

"No. No, we don't. We have nothing to talk about. Work, Beckett. Come on," he says, turning to flee the alley.

If it weren't so pitiful she'd laugh.

"You're off the case, Castle," she calls after him.

"What?" He whirls back round to look at her.

"I said, you're off the case. Me too. So get over here, and listen."

"Beckett, what the…"

"It's Kate. Just...Kate," she says, determined to put him on the back foot so she can break down his…walls?

She mentally shivers at the familiar analogy. Yeah, they're more alike than she'd care to admit.

"So, Kate, what did you want to talk about? Secrets, lies, hiding from…"

Kate frowns at his bitter little speech, and cuts him off without really listening to what he's saying.

"You."

"What?"

"I want to talk about you."

"What about me? My devilishly handsome good looks? Or, my enormous…"

Oh, Castle. He's hiding in humor again.

"Castle!" she barks.

He stops talking, and sags a little, his act finally running out of steam.

"You've been…different these last few days. Distant. What's going on with you?"

"What's going on with me?" he asks, a note of incredulity to his tone.

Kate frowns, unsure what he means. But she ignores it and plows on.

"I care about you, Castle," she says, her voice sincere, her face softening. "And I'm worried."

"Rick. It's just Rick," he parrots, and Kate takes a deep breath, tries to cut him some slack. Because whatever it is that's bugging him must be bad. She's never seen him like this before - so bitter - certainly not with her.

"Right, Rick. Well, anyway. Talk to me."

"Why?"

"Why?" she asks, puzzled. Not what she was expecting.

"Yes. Why should I talk to you, Kate? It's not like we share our…our issues. That's not our thing."

"Not our thing?" she repeats. "So, just what is our thing, then, Rick?

Maybe she'll learn something.

"I'm not sure anymore. I thought I knew. But I don't. Look. If we're not working this case I really have to go. I promised I'd phone Jacinda…"

"Wow! I'm impressed. You remembered her name," snipes Kate, the sarcastic little comment slipping out by accident. "And a flight attendant. Gee, how original."

He stares at her, his eyes radiating hurt, then turns to walk away.

"Castle…Rick, wait. Please? I'm…sorry," she calls after him.

He stops. She watches his broad shoulders fall, outlined in the soft, black leather of his jacket.

"Kate. I've done enough waiting to last me a lifetime. It's time I started living again. I'm sorry too," he says wearily, backing out of the alley.

Any thoughts?