Title: Basic Necessity

Summary: Sometimes you don't know how much you need someone until you think you've lost them.

Rating: M stands for muffins, morphling, microbiology, Mads, and MATURE!

Disclaimer: Castle owns my soul. ABC owns Castle. Disney owns ABC. Therefore, Disney owns my soul. And I own nothing. Crap.

Author's Note: This is based upon what I could glean from the promo, clips, and internet snooping concerning the upcoming Episode 5, "Probable Cause". I won't be directly referencing the plot of the episode so watching the promo will definitely help.

Elevator buttons dinging by, lighting up like candles, flickering to life before snuffing themselves out. It's all that you can do to breathe.

Because you haven't been breathing these past two days. You've been underwater, drowning, and every time you tried to suck in air all that you get is salty liquid. You've been drowning in your tears.

The aftereffects of the bottle and a half of wine you had last night are still lingering. You've had worse hangovers, but the presence is still felt. It's another dull ache, one more to add to the list of complaints your body is bitching to you about. That's what you get when you don't sleep for two days.

He wants to touch you, but he won't. You know that he won't. He won't let himself, not after what he put you through. You remember when he dragged you out of the airplane carrier, how he held you and kept you safe, even though you screamed and sobbed and said that you hated him for not letting you save your captain.

He didn't touch you again until the funeral. He caused you pain, so he wouldn't get near you. You suspect that it's a subconscious decision but you don't want to go into it. Apparently associating with therapists turns you into a shrink, too.

The elevator dings open and you step through. Breathe, you remember. You've been deprived of that freedom for long enough that you've almost forgotten how. You're in the underground parking garage but each inhale is as sweet and fresh as a faintly scented meadow breeze. You can breathe again, because you have him. You have him back.

You nearly lost him, there. And not just to cold stone walls and no chance of parole. You nearly lost him to your own fears, your grief, your suspicions. If the shoe were on the other foot he would have stood by you, and never accepted anything except for your innocence. Yet you doubted him.

It's not just the need for oxygen, you realize. As you reach the car your body becomes more vocal, not just about the aches and tension hovering just behind your skull and between your shoulder blades, but about your heart. You have to touch him.

Air is secondary to this need.

He seems startled when you kiss him, but a good kind of startled. Maybe he thought he'd be sleeping on the couch or something. You're the one who should be in the doghouse. You didn't believe in him when he needed you most.

You're good at communication, even without words, and now that you can touch each other whenever you want and actually act on all of that need boiling your blood, your bond as tightened, thickened, a great rope connecting the two of you, pulling taut and linking you forevermore. He senses what you want in the way that you grab at his shoulders, the hot, wet press of your mouth against his, and the shuffle of your feet on the concrete. He wraps his arms around your waist and you're up, up and on the car, and it's your legs and his arms wrapping around and around until you're entrapped in each other, and you want to cry with joy.

It takes you a second to realize that you already are.

Like Robinson Crusoe or Odysseus, you've finally reached home, your safe harbor. You need him like food, like air, like water, like sleep, like life itself, and it will all never be enough for you. This man, this man, this is what you need. This is what your heart started searching for long before you even knew you were missing something, and you cannot let him go now. He is necessary to your very existence.

"Sorry." He whispers, repeating the word over and over again. He presses it into the skin of your neck, bites it into your shoulder, and breathes it into your ear, writing it with his mouth down your cleavage, that one word a searing brand repeated into your body until your skin is tattooed with it. The words glow invisibly against your hot skin, and you wish that you weren't so busy breathing him in so that you could say it back.

He understands anyway. He is the words and you are the actions, and he can read your face and your body and your movements like your thoughts were projected into his mind.

Every sense is open and raw and greedily drinking him in. You breathe him in; your nose filled with his scent, while your tongue and teeth and lips taste every bit of him that you can get. You try to keep your eyes open so that you can imprint this moment upon your memory – exactly how he looked as each moment occurred. Your ears are filled with every tiny sound he makes, from his body as he shifts against you to the word he is groaning whenever he exhales. Your hands feel him up, everywhere, mapping him out as if you are his Creator, molding him from the clay. You are absorbing him. He is sinking into your pores, your skin, down your throat, into your heart and mind. Your entire system has shut down and restarted with the one change that he is now your one necessity. He is the thing keeping you going.

He is you, and you are he; it's all one and the same, and you have never been so happy to lose a piece of yourself, because you are gaining so much more. All that you have needed, all that you need now, and all that you ever will need, is right here, holding you and thrusting in you and doing his damndest to apologize because all that he wanted to do was sweep you off your feet and buy you a necklace and look at how that went south.

You haven't said it yet, because you've never fully understood it, and for many years you feared it. But now, now you accept it, because if this is what it is you know that there is no higher power in this 'verse, or any other, because it has taken everything away from you and given it all back to you, tainted and marked and filled with him. It is all him.

"I love you."

He doesn't stop, only because that's how far along you are, but under any other circumstances he would probably stop and stare and his jaw would drop. You love making his jaw drop.

"I love you." Again, again, say it again, make him believe it as surely as you believe it, as you believe in him. You need him, you need this, you are in this now, and you are never, ever going back because not only do you not want to but also you simply can't. "I love you, Rick, God, God, I love you Rick. I love you."

He stops apologizing after that, and you both finish wordlessly. When you separate (but not really separate, not now, not ever again, you are entwined in one another forever) and you can see his face, look into those blue eyes, he looks so happy and confused and sad that he hurt you.

"We're going home now." You say, "And we are going to go to bed, and we are not leaving that bed until tomorrow morning. And you are going to stop apologizing."

He nods, and kisses you, and oh. You need this. You will always need this. He is your air, food, water, drug, addiction, life… everything. He is your love. And you will need love, always. Therefore, you need him.

It's not the least painful realization you've come to, but it is the happiest, and the fullest, and the most natural. You need him, because you love him, and he's just proven to you (again) that he needs you because he loves you too. It's all quite simple, and you wonder how you missed it all before when it was such a glaring, garishly pink elephant loping about your room, any room, every room that you were in.

"Okay." He agrees. Another kiss. "I love you."

"I love you."

Your greatest strength, your greatest weakness, and your all-consuming need. Your addiction. Your basic necessity.

Your love.

All of which perfectly describe one Richard Castle, bestselling author and murder suspect for two days, seven hours and five minutes, the man currently helping you straighten out your clothes before you get into the car and he finally gets to give you the necklace he bought that started this entire mess.

Not too bad for your birthday, all things considered.

I have got to stop with the angst. Seriously. I'm depressing myself. First time in second person, can you believe it? I didn't plan that, it just sort of happened. I promise. My brain just goes and does things without my permission.