Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He wasn’t there.

Kate’s eyes slowly began to blur as they fixed on her evening’s second pour of bourbon, its well-aged hue melding with the mahogany of the bar on which it rested. To her ears, the otherwise gentle chatter of the room sounded more like a pack of drill sergeants on bullhorns, and her head already pounded like the morning after a night she hadn’t yet had, yet she remained, still, in that place she hadn’t stepped into since…Since.

She had no idea how she’d ended up there, why she’d chosen that door on that night--Rick’s door, as it was--in a city filled with doors. It’d been however many days, weeks, and months it’d been, and she’d kept count at the beginning, but, eventually, that became too difficult, not because her brain couldn’t manage the task, but because her heart couldn’t. She was the reason why. She was the reason she didn’t have a partner, anymore, and his empty chair at the precinct represented the very least of that word.

With just a few syllables, she succeeded in fending off the unwanted attention of a man who’d spent the better part of twenty minutes working up the courage to approach, and he trotted back to his end of the bar and found love with another within three minutes flat. So much for extraordinary, Kate, she thought, before sweeping aside the self-deprecation with a mock toast to herself. 

“Jesus, he finally came over, huh?” the winsome bartender asked as he passed by on his way to deliver help to someone else’s day. “Took him long enough. Hope you let him down easy.”

“Turns out, we just wanted different things,” Kate replied humorously.

“Yeah, it’ll be better for both of you in the long run,” he said, playing along. He smiled and she returned the gesture, mostly because it was the polite thing to do, and she watched him spin off with the gin that could’ve been hers if only she’d played her cards right.

In that moment, she wondered when the better of it all might begin.

xxxx

She woke too late to make herself morning-survival coffee, which also meant she was running too late to stop for it on the way to Burke’s office, and she cursed herself for it the entire way there. She still saw him every week, despite the huffing she often did about it, despite the undeniable progress she’d made in pushing through barriers related to her mother’s murder, which had, not long before, seemed all but impossible. She still showed up because there was more work to be done, more work she wanted to do, and because there was Rick.

“You look tired,” Burke noticed aloud as Kate settled into her usual curl in the chair opposite his. “Didn’t sleep well?”

“I slept fine,” she fought back, though he hadn’t intended a provocation. “But it’s nice to know I look like hell, thanks.” He read her all too well, as he always found way to do, so he wasn’t baited, offering only a modest grin until she checked herself. “Sorry. I’m just…I don’t know what I am.”

“That doesn’t seem like you.” He crossed one leg over the other and pushed back against the leather of his cushion. “Why today? You said you slept fine, so did something happen? Something at work or--”

“I went to the bar last night,” she said, stepping on what remained of his inquiry, and she wasn’t near through, which he understood, leaving her statement in the air without comment. “His bar--Rick.”

“I wasn’t aware Rick owned a bar. I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned it. What is it called?”

“Why do you want to know?” Kate snipped.

There was something else Dr. Burke knew about Kate: she liked to be the one in control of the gas pedal. “Just simple curiosity, Kate,” he told her. She’d moved from swirling a fingertip along the arm of her chair to fidgeting with the ends of her loose hair. “You saw him while you were there?”

She still hadn’t seen him, not since that night in that very bar when he’d pulled away, for good. She hated that bar now. “No, I didn’t,” she said, and even she couldn’t tell if it was relief or sadness in her voice. “And, it’s called The Old Haunt, the bar. It was famous with old writers, I guess,” she added of no consequence. 

“Did you go there to see him?”

It wasn’t that she didn’t expect the question. He knew her, yes, but she knew him, too. She hoped it might take a few more steps to get there, though, because it was still one without a good answer. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I am, today. I don’t know why I went to his bar last night. I don’t know much, I guess, except that I’d do just about anything for a vat-sized cup of coffee right now,” she said with a contrived chuckle--deflecting, clearly.

Burke remained steady, despite her effort. “Kate, did you go there to see him?” It would come. He could see it.

She immediately cut their eye contact, because with one more second, the tears would form. She could already feel the pressure building, like bathwater about to flow over. Why now? she thought. She’d worked so hard to lock it away. And she was good at that. Why a goddamn dream now?

“I told you I don’t know why, okay? He’s been gone for months, doing God knows what. There’s no reason for me to go anywhere to see him because the fact of the matter is, he doesn’t want to see me.” She swallowed and it was physically painful, the knot being pushed back down. “But...” That one word slipped out, the one that left the door open and her vulnerable to more.

He sat forward, again, his elbows perched on his knees. “But, what?”

Kate let her eyes close, because that’s what one did just before one went down the rabbit hole. “I had a dream about him.”

“Okay. Would you like to share it?” Burke asked, opting to leave the ball in her court.

She never told him about what happened. Well, about all of it. There was an argument, he knew--a break, but that was it. The rest she buried because it was so painfully ugly. But this dream brought it back into the light, and there it was, again, like a movie being projected on a giant screen for her to relive.

She’d made a foolish decision that night, one that’d involved a level of thought that spoke nothing of the keen intellect that’d always been attributed to her. She just hadn’t imagined Rick would show up there. She hadn’t imagined that when he’d walked out of the precinct--walked out on her--she’d find him standing across the very room she was in, he with another woman and she with another man, but that’d been precisely the folly the universe had seen fit to construct.

Part of her wanted to run the second she saw him, the part of her that hated what she was doing there, that hated what she was doing to herself and to Colin, and she knew just what that was. But the other part of her wanted to remain, wanted Rick to see how great everything was, how much fun she was having, and that whatever it was that was going on between them clearly didn’t faze her, either. Except it wasn’t, and she wasn’t, and it did.

“Isn’t that Rick?” Colin asked, curiously following her eyes when she failed to acknowledge his last getting-to-know-you-better question. “That’s a bit weird, isn’t it? Both of you turn up here?”

Kate swallowed a sip of bourbon from the glass she’d been neglecting. “He owns the bar. I didn’t know he’d be here,” she said, her aversion to the sight of Rick with his whatever-she-was audible.

“Would you rather go somewhere else? I think I saw another pub down the way.” Colin was ignorant of the discord between the two, of course, but her swift change in demeanor would’ve been evident to even her newest of acquaintances, and there was little else he had to offer in the way of benefit. “Kate?” He had to grab for her attention because she was no longer giving it willingly. 

“I’m sorry, what?” she asked with a blush of embarrassment at his concerned expression.

Colin turned once more and found Rick through the crowd as he kissed the cheek of the blonde curled in his arm. “I just asked if you wanted to go was all,” he told her, and he downed what was left of the beer in his bottle, just in case.

Kate had seen the kiss, too, and the arm, and all the rest, and it was in that moment she made the decision not to run but to stay, not to be chased off. “No, I’m sorry. It’s...I’m fine. You have to head out to the airport soon, anyway, so.”

“I do, I do,” he confirmed with a glance at his watch. “But I think I have enough time for one more, if you’d like. I’m not very keen on flying, so I have a good excuse.” He smiled and a pang of guilt struck her a silent blow.

“I guess I can have one, too, thanks. I’ll try and come up with a good excuse for myself while you’re gone.” She smiled back as he walked off for the bar, emptied her glass while fighting not to seek out Rick with her eyes one more time. It didn’t seem as though he’d spotted her, yet, or them, but like so many other things about him of late, she couldn’t really be certain. For all she knew, he could’ve decided that very night to start ignoring her altogether.

“Here you are, Detective,” Colin said, setting a second glass next to her first and reclaiming his seat. “And I must say I find it a bit odd buying alcohol from a man who barely looks old enough to enjoy it himself. How old do you think that bartender is, anyway?” He looked back over his shoulder towards the bar and Kate leaned over and peered around him.

“I see what you mean. Maybe I should run him,” she said in jest. “Was he wearing a name tag?”

“You mean in case he forgets what his name actually is?”

They laughed together then, but were interrupted when someone stepped up to their table.

“So, the law folks have their own table at the Haunt now, I see,” a voice said. “To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure? Not here to bust me for having too much fun, I hope,” Rick joked with a cackle echoed by his female companion.

Kate peered over the rim of the glass she’d brought to her lips merely to keep herself from throwing it at him, but said nothing, so Colin jumped in. “Nothing like that, Rick, no. Entirely unofficial. Kate agreed to keep me company for a drink before my flight, so here we are.”

“Well, wasn’t that nice of her,” Rick responded snobbishly, dropping a hand onto Colin’s shoulder as though they were friends. “Not that you asked for my two cents, here, but Kate’s a great girl. And, hey, if you find yourself back across the pond at some point, maybe the four of us can go out and break bread or something.”

With his other arm, he squeezed the blonde back into his body and she all but purred on cue. “You asked for something pink, right? Ask and ye shall receive,” he said, and with a disgustingly casual “See ya later, you guys,” the two wandered off for the bar.

Kate didn’t said a word during Rick’s display, but she could feel her fingernails still digging into her thigh beneath the table. He was standing there for just a couple of moments, yet in them he managed to elicit a reaction near disgust, a feeling she’d never come close to in all their time together, and the worst part about it was that it seemed as though hurting her was exactly what he was trying to do.

“Well, good on you, Detective Beckett,” Colin said, raising his bottle. “Apparently, you’re a great girl.” His attempt at a goofy American accent would’ve gone over better ten minutes earlier, but as things were, the humor was utterly wasted on Kate. “The blonde seemed really special, as well.”

Her thigh had started to numb beneath her relentless hand, so she curled her fingers into a tight fist. “I need to go to the restroom,” she told him, managing only those words before she got up and headed for the back.

It wasn’t occupied at the time and she was thankful for it, because she desperately needed the space to breathe or she thought she might break. She threw the door open and locked it behind her, grabbing for the edge of the sink to steady her shake. Finding her reflection in the mirror, Rick’s words came back at her, firing off the walls and striking her fresh. Fun. Uncomplicated. All of it, all of it felt deliberate and she had no fucking idea why.

It was a minute or two or five, she didn’t know, but Kate finally gathered herself as best she could. There was Colin, and that was a thing she needed to finish before it started. She pushed her hands through her hair one last time to expend some of the residual energy coursing through her, however feeble the effort, and she made her way back out into the bar.

“I’m sorry,” she told Colin when he stood, most gentlemanly, upon her return. And she was truly that.

“No worries,” he told her in kind dismissal. Kate sat, but he remained standing. “So, I really hate to drink and run, but I should be off if I’m to make my flight. Can I help get you someplace?”

He was a fine man. She hardly knew a thing about him, but that, to her, was clear. “No, of course, yeah,” she said, pushing back up out of her chair. “I’m um...you know, I think I’m actually going to sit here and finish my drink first, but thank you. I appreciate it. One of those days, you know?” She tried to make light of it, but couldn’t tell whether or not she’d succeeded.

There was a moment of something between them before he spoke his parting words. “I’d like to think I might be seeing you again, Detective, but I’m fairly certain we both know better, and that will just have to be my profound loss. If ever I can be of help to you, ring.”

“I will,” Kate said. “Thank you. I wish…” Whatever she began to say she thought better of and let it pass. “Safe home.”

Colin left her with a grin, and once he’d gone, she immediately scanned the room for Rick, determined to bring whatever was going on between them to an end, there and then, no matter whom he was with. Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she took a quick glance, another text message from Lanie asking when she was going to tell him how she felt about him, so she left it without a response, noting the almost comical timing. It was then that she spotted Rick behind the bar, minus his new accessory, so she drank down her Jim Beam and went for him.

She pushed through a group of four young guys to get to him as he talked with a redhead a few bodies down. She could hear him bragging about owning the place, as though he was the only man on earth to ever own a bar, and from Kate’s vantage point, his new target seemed to be lapping it up. Jacinda, the blonde, was now nowhere to be found, which was actually a welcome change; though she’d only seen the woman three times in her life, it was already three times too many.

“Rick,” she called out over the din of the crowd--he sure as hell didn’t feel like Castle to her in that moment--succeeding in capturing his ear only on her fourth attempt, each louder and more insistent than its predecessor. He looked over at her, but he didn’t say anything, and Kate could feel the burn of the redhead’s eyes on her instantly. “We need to talk.”

Rick reached out and touched the woman’s arm deliberately before sliding Kate’s way. “What can I get you?” he asked, playing bartender like they were strangers.

“Cut it out,” Kate scolded. “We need to talk, right now.”

“Why, because you say we do? You say a whole lot of things that don’t mean anything. And, I’m already having a conversation with someone.” He turned and tossed the redhead, who, Kate happened to notice, was also sipping a pink cocktail of some kind, a cutesy wave. “You’re here with someone, too, aren’t you? Where is Mr. Bond, anyway?”

“You know what? Fine. We can do this right here, Rick. I don’t give a shit. Kind of like you,” she added, throwing fight right back. The volume of her voice had already elevated, again, and the group she’d fought her way through to get up to the bar was now looking on with interest. “What the hell is your problem, lately? You’ve been treating me like shit for weeks.”

Rick tossed the towel draped over his shoulder onto the bar and futilely attempted to ease the crowd’s growing unease with a chuckle, awkward at best. “Buy everybody a round, Sam,” he told his bartender as he walked down to the end of the bar and came around. “I’ll be right back.”

“So, do I get an answer?” Kate said once they were behind the closed door of his manager’s office. “What the hell is going on, Rick?”

“So, it’s Rick now, Kate?” he asked, punctuating her name with thinly veiled displeasure.

“Act like Castle and I’ll call you that,” she bit back. He sat while she paced, an overt tell as to their varying levels of disquietude. “I don’t understand what’s going on. I don’t understand how we got from almost...from...” She stopped herself, the words there but arrested by the look in his eyes. “I can’t do this. I need to be focused at work, and I need a partner there I can count on.”

That quickly pulled him out of his chair. “You mean a partner who doesn’t lie to your face? A partner who respects you and trusts you and believes in you? Because I’m looking for one of those now, too.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“What it means, Kate, is that I can’t do this, either, so you won’t have to worry about me at work, anymore. You’re free of your shadow. No more silly books to endure, no more ridiculous theories to listen to, no more lies to have to keep straight.”

She felt like she’d been kicked in the gut, the air knocked out of her. It was supposed to get better. This was supposed to help. Without a voice, all she could do was ask the question with her eyes, and he stepped right up to answer.

“I know you remember what happened that day. I know you lied to my face about it and that you’ve been lying for months.” He spoke softly, in a tone that might, under different circumstances, soothe, but it did nothing but evoke fear in her, because she could hear every ounce of his hurt, and she knew nothing from that moment on would be the same. “So, to answer your question, Kate, my problem lately has been that special surprise everyone always just loves to get. You know, the one where you find out how wrong you were about one of the most important things in your life.”

“Cas--” He walked away from her, and the impulse to reach out for him was one she couldn’t suppress, in spite of all the anger she’d carried with her into that office. She took a step in approach, though his back was all she had. “How?” she asked, but only because that’s what came out first.

“That’s funny,” Rick replied. “I remember I’m sorry sounding a lot different. Must be all the one beer I had.” He finally turned but kept his distance, and she knew enough not to take any more of his space. She had his eye, but he looked blankly at her, like he was looking through her, like she was barely there.

“Not that I think how I found out is the fucking point, Kate,” he continued, “but I’m a storyteller, so here’s the story: Once upon a time, I overheard you share the truth with a perfect stranger--a person of interest in a crime, actually, for a sprinkle of added fun--as I stood on the other side of that wall of dirty glass like a fool and watched in awe, as I often did, as the woman I loved worked her beautiful cop magic. The end.”

Kate tried to think, tried to remember, as each of the words came out of his mouth, but the only reason she found her body still upright was by the grace of adrenaline, so her brain couldn’t be convinced to do much of anything with a successful result.

“I need you to let me explain, Castle. There are things--”

“No,” he protested abruptly. “Right now, there aren’t. And at least I’m telling you to your face and not just disappearing.”

She didn’t have to ask. She’d almost been waiting for that, though she hoped it would never come. “Okay,” she said, barely audible, utterly blown apart.

“I have someone waiting in the bar. I need to go.” He stepped around her for the door, waited for her to pass and closed it behind her, his name on her lips one last time as he disappeared from view.

From beyond the door, she heard it, the sound of something breaking against the office wall and crashing to the ground, so she turned back, her fingers at the door handle, but she went no further. In that moment, she knew there was nothing more she had that he wanted.

That had been her last contact with him. Until he appeared in her dream, that’d been the last time she’d heard Rick’s voice or seen his face, despite several attempts early in those days and weeks and months. However long it’d been.

“Kate? Do you want to tell me about the dream?” Burke asked for the second time, his voice plugging her back into present.

She shifted and tucked her knees up into her chest, hugged them with her arms. “It was a week ago, and, I don’t know, it was just so vivid, like I could’ve reached out and touched them if I’d wanted to.” Her whole body calmed as she called up the vision and continued. “He was with my mom, and they were sitting together in a field with tall, tall grass and all these white flowers. I’m still not sure what they were. And it was so quiet; I could almost hear all the stems moving with the wind.”

“So, you were there with them, too?” Burke asked with her thoughtful pause.

“Yeah, I mean, no, not with them. I was there, but they couldn’t see me, I guess, and I had this sketchpad with me, and I was drawing them as they talked and laughed, until all the pages were filled.”

“Was that the end of the dream?”

It was almost as though Kate didn’t hear his question, because she went on without acknowledging it. “The stems started to bend and sway, and there was this sound like a hiss that got louder and louder, and then the wind suddenly rushed across the field in a huge gust. All the sketches I’d drawn went flying into the air, and I kept jumping to try and save them, but they were all too high to reach, so I finally had to just stand there and watch as they floated away.”

She felt sad even recounting it. Burke heard it in her voice, saw it in her face. “What about your mom and Rick? What happened to them?”

“I don’t know. When I finally looked back, they were gone. So were all the white flowers.” Burke’s expression changed ever so slightly, but it was just enough for her to pick up on it, her cop sense ever at work. “What was that look for? You have it all figured out?”

“I’m not sure which look you’re referring to, exactly, but I’ve told you before, Kate, my job is to help you figure things out. And, yes, I already know you hate it when I tell you that, so you can forgo the look you usually give me.” She tossed him an eye, nonetheless, but he pressed on. “Have you thought about it? About what might be behind it?”

“You mean the dream where two people I loved basically disappeared in front of my eyes and all these beautiful things and all the work I’d done went right along with them?” She mocked with her tone, but there was pain there.

"You went to the bar to see Rick. You’re allowed to say it, Kate. It doesn’t make you any of the things you’re afraid it does.”

She closed her eyes, again, and she heard the crash against that office wall, saw the hurt on Rick’s face, felt the harsh wind of her dream upon her skin. Why now? she asked herself for the umpteenth time, but she didn’t know why. She only knew who, and she said just one more word before she got up and walked out.

“Yes.”

Chapter Text

Rick peeled one eyelid open as his arm flailed for his phone, the early morning hour one he’d grown unaccustomed to seeing, and he cursed aloud the fiend who awaited him on the other end. As was the new norm in his life--and not by his own design--he’d spent the better part of the night not sleeping, and though his day ahead, and most days of recent past, involved little in the way of responsibility, he still grumbled at the intrusion on what was, quite honestly, mediocre rest at best. 

And, of course it was.

“Mother, you do realize Florida is in the same time zone as Manhattan. This better be good.”

“I’m well aware of that, Richard, thank you, but the early bird and all of that, darling,” Martha countered, her voice far too chipper for his morning mood. 

“I imagine Stephen must be the early bird in this scenario, since I remember many a day I didn’t see you until well past noon,” Rick said, squeezing the fog from his eyes. “Is everything all right, Mother?”

“Well, you wanted good, kid, and I’m calling to give you a truckload of it. I spoke with the moving company this morning and they will have my things out of the loft by next Tuesday afternoon. And, this is probably the only time you’ll ever hear this actress ask, but please keep your delighted applause to a minimum.”

Rick propped his body up against the leather headboard, extricated his legs from the tangle of the sheets. “I’m happy for you, Mother, not for me,” he told her, which was mostly the truth. “Do you need me to fly up?”

“The movers will do just fine on their own. That is what you’re paying them for, after all. And, I thank you for the kindhearted fib, Richard, but it has been far too long, and I know you’ll be glad to finally have your space back. How much longer are you going to be staying down there? Have you decided?”

He’d been in the Keys for a couple of months, brought there by a whim and kept there by a lack of reasons to return to the city. Alexis had already gone off to Oxford, leaving New York early to spend part of the summer in a literature seminar to get a jump on credits and the rest traveling around Europe, and Martha’s love life was back in full swing and seemingly headed towards some permanence, so his time with her had become limited. The most glaring hole in his days and nights was the absence of Kate and the 12th, of course, and with their Nikki Heat, whom he hadn’t penned in an unimaginable number of days.

“I don’t know, yet. It’s quiet here.” That’d been both a blessing and a curse for his headspace, though he would probably never admit the latter. “My back door is twelve steps from the sand. I can hear the ocean from my living room. Honestly, I may never leave, but I’ll probably come up at some point next month to make sure my departed tenant didn’t trash my place before she moved out,” he teased.

“Yes, she was a troublemaker, that one. That’s probably best,” Martha joined in, playing along before a pause of note. “Have you written anything at all, yet, Richard?” It wasn’t the first time she’d asked, but the answer had yet to change.

Rick slid back down to the mattress and draped his forearm over his eyes. “No,” he said and then promptly ended the call.

xxxx

Kate pulled over and parked her vehicle a block away from the garage and immediately made radio contact with Kevin and Javi, whom she’d instructed to pull around the back and to wait for her signal. They’d been planning and coordinating the entry all day, electing to go in under the cover of darkness, with backup waiting in the wings in case things went sideways.

She’d been carrying the weight of her session with Burke around since she’d walked out of his office two days ago, and certainly not by choice. In her work world, where she found her greatest escape and greatest success, she was terrifically skilled at putting everything in its place, yet she hadn’t found a way to overlap that success with her private world, to find a place for that dream, in particular, and all that came with it, a place where it would remain quiet, impotent. No, it was with her all the time, now, floating free inside of her, and living side by side was proving an impossible distraction.

“You guys ready?” she asked into the walkie, stealing a glance at her reflection in the rearview mirror, including herself in the check. “You heard? Thermal hit on three inside, southwest corner.”

“Roger that,” Javi came back, sounding anxious, more than ready, to get inside. “Let’s take it down. We got eyes on the troops back here, so we go on your say, boss.”

“I want Vashil in the box at the 12^th in an hour. And then I want to put him in Rikers.”

Kevin and Javi shared a nod and a fist bump. “Fuck, yeah. We all do.”

“Let’s go,” Kate signed off, and she climbed from the car with her vest already secured, her weapon drawn, hugging the buildings along the dim line of sidewalk until she arrived at the target location and spotted her team approaching from the other side. They were no more than ten feet from the large metal door, set on opposite sides, the cavalry in the shadows at the periphery.

Kate signaled to Javi from beneath one of the garage’s exterior lights and cued him to gradually slide the door open, with Kevin just off to his left, angled for better eyes inside once access was established. He tugged on the handle and the door rumbled along its metal base, despite his methodical pace and thankfully without consequence. When Kevin gave the all-clear, Kate moved through the narrow opening and slipped inside.

It took several seconds for her eyes to adjust to the shadowy space after coming in from the light of the street, and she saw no one once they had. Her heart thumped in her chest as her partners ducked in through the door behind her and took up either side, yet she felt powerfully calm in her element, and, for the first time in days, every ounce of her was right there in that moment. When she was in that space, there wasn’t room for anything else.

She tipped her head to the left and moved off that way, Kevin continuing his approach along the right and Javi behind her to the left, though maintaining a healthy distance. A muffled sound kicked in from somewhere ahead and it was a constant, almost like the shuffling of a deck of cards over and over, and it only grew louder as they moved on. Just then, a clank of metal on the concrete floor as Kevin unwittingly kicked over some kind of a tool that was leaning against the wall in the shadows, Kate and Javi spinning in reaction with their guns poised.

The immediate bustle of footsteps rushing towards them had the three swooping for the nearest cover in anticipation of a firefight, which it became within seconds, with bullets bouncing off the concrete floor and walls all around them. “NYPD!” Kate shouted amidst the roaring echo of gunfire. “Geoffrey Vashil, drop your weapon!”

With the commotion, she could no longer see Kevin or Javi, but she knew she wasn’t the only one emptying her Glock, because she could feel Javi’s bullets flying in from behind her. “Beckett, they’re comin’,” Javi yelled out, having alerted the team holding outside.

Kate turned and looked over her left shoulder. It was a second, just one second was all it was, and that’s when it hit. She dropped to the ground with a screech of pain, never losing the grip she had on her piece, her free hand blanketing the entry wound just above her knee with all the strength her position would allow.

All around, the sounds grew louder and more intense as their reinforcements stormed the place behind them. Within a minute, there were only voices, and she was being carried hastily by Javi back out to the sidewalk.

“The ambulance is comin’,” he told her and she acknowledged with a nod. She was well alert, but her leg felt like it was on fire where the skin had been frayed, and she was trying to breathe through it as best she could. “Let me, let me,” he told her, applying pressure to the wound with both hands when Kevin finally appeared. “Fuck, bro, what happened in there?”

“Beckett, I’m--” He tried to offer apology for setting what’d happened inside in motion, but Javi jumped all over it.

“She got shot in the leg, bro. That better be one hell of a sorry,” he snapped, though not entirely without sport, which Kate found way to appreciate in spite of her circumstance.

“S’okay, Ryan,” Kate quietly assured him in a discharge of breath. “I’m okay.”

She knew she would be, but, fuck, it hurt.

xxxx

Javi was second in Kate’s hospital room after her father, his visit preceded by a surgery to help repair the torn skin of her leg. Though the bullet’s calling card was both certain and cruel, given the nature of the resulting wound, it was believed to have ricocheted off the concrete floor before striking her, luckily sparing damage to bone, a scenario that would’ve left her in a far more difficult and extended period of recovery. As it was, she faced weeks and potential future work by the surgeon, both of which, though grateful, of course, she hated.

“You know, you keep getting shot and ending up in this place, they’re gonna name a wing after you,” Javi joked, dropping the oversized bag of candy he’d brought for her in lieu of flowers onto the bed.

“Every cop’s dream,” Kate quipped in her residual fog. She set the bag on the side table, winced a bit with the movement. “Thanks, Espo. Where’s Ryan?”

“He stopped in the gift shop downstairs, so I’d prepare yourself if I was you. It’s no Macy’s.”

Kate’s brow crinkled. “Maybe you can bust me out before he makes it up here.”

“Are you kidding? Not with your pops running around this place somewhere. He’d kill me.” He smiled and she couldn’t help but do the same. “Know when they’re springing you?”

“Tomorrow, I think. I hope.” She glanced over at the candy. “At least I won’t have to eat the cafeteria food while I’m here.” She’d waited two minutes to ask, but she had to know. “Is Vashil alive?” She could see the answer before he said a word.

“He had a vest, but he took one to the neck--too much blood.” Kate’s jaw clenched. “One of his boys made it, but he’s in lousy shape, probably won’t last the day. Sorry, Beckett, I know you wanted this one.”

“Fuck,” she hissed, thrust her head back against the pillows.

“Hey, we’ll get it done. Ryan and I will hit the board again, today. Let us work it. We’ll find another way.”

Kate was more thankful for the two of them than she had adequate words to describe. “I know, I just--”

The door to her room pushed open, cut her thought short, and Kevin came through it, out of breath and carrying an armful of stuffed animals. “I ran all the way up,” he said after something of a cough, though no one had yet asked.

“Bears, bro? And bunnies? Are you for real? This is a grown-ass woman and she got frickin’ shot,” Javi needled.

Kevin stepped up to the bed and set his gifts at Kate’s feet. “Girls like bears and bunnies, Javier. What did you bring again? Oh, a bag of cavities, how thoughtful,” he shot back, knocking the candy offering. “And what the hell do you know about girls, anyway? Lanie dumped you like a bad habit.”

“Can you guys, maybe, take this out to the playground?” Kate jumped in. “I went through a surgery last night that was more fun. And, Ryan, thank you for the gifts. I may be a grown-ass woman,” she said, mocking Javi, “but I do appreciate them.”

Kevin proudly turned his nose up at his partner and threw Kate a grin. “How are you feeling? You know, if you keep getting shot, they’re going to have to name a wing here after you or something,” he added with a chuckle that Kate echoed.

“Hear that, Espo? Too bad you’re married, Ryan. The two of you would make a perfect couple.”

“Don’t make me take that candy back,” Javi warned playfully. “I know you can’t chase me with that thing you call a leg.” Ryan nudged him with his elbow. “What? It’s Beckett. She can take a joke.”

“Really, guys, come on, I know you have more important things to do than this. Without Vashil, we have to find another way to get to Timms.”

“I told you,” Javi said, “we’re on it. Get yourself back up and around. Let us be on it.” He grabbed Kevin by the arm and tugged him towards the door. “You need anything, you call. And let us know when you’re home.”

“I’m really sorry, Beckett,” Ryan tried to tell her as he was being pushed out the door. Javi took one last look at Kate and shook his head.

“Give him a break, Jav. And find us something, okay?”

She closed her eyes once they’d gone, largely because her body demanded it, and when she did, there they were: all the pages from her subconscious’ sketchpad, all the images of Rick and her mother she’d captured by hand, floating away on the breeze.

It wasn’t going away.                      

xxxx

She wasn’t quite sure she should be there, for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that if her son were to find out about it, it undoubtedly wouldn’t be well accepted. Yet there Martha was, climbing floors in an elevator at the 12th, brought there by a treasure she hadn’t set eyes on in years, and a fond memory connected to it.

It’d been months since she last found herself there, not that she’d ever frequented, but she felt uncharacteristically nervous as the car stopped and the doors slid open, wondering what her reunion with Kate might be like after all that’d happened with Rick.

Martha stepped from the elevator and wandered into the bullpen, most of the desks, including Kate’s, unoccupied, but the work of the city plainly in progress. Pausing in it for a moment to acknowledge the unexpected feeling of nostalgia that swept over her, she was spotted and greeted by Javi, who was more than a bit surprised to find her there.

“Hey, Ms. R,” he called out from across the way, dropping a stack of files on his desk before approaching. “It’s nice to see you around here again. Is everything okay?”

“Lovely to see you, too, Javier, and, yes, thank you, everything is just fine.” She gave the room a once-over and came back to him. “I must say, it feels a bit like returning to an old theater, you know?”

Javi allowed her the moment before introducing the subject of their only real connection. “It’s been a while since we heard from Castle. How’s he doin’?”

“Oh, you know Richard, always landing on his feet,” Martha said, trying mightily to sound convincing when she wasn’t at all sure, and she left it there, uncertain how much she should say on behalf of her son.

“Sounds like Castle, yeah. So, is there something NYPD’s finest can help you with? Not that a surprise visit isn’t appreciated.”

Martha looked back over her shoulder at Kate’s desk. “It’s nothing official, actually. I was hoping to see Katherine. She isn’t expecting me, and I know I shouldn’t be bothering her at work, but I wanted to steal a few moments of her time, if I could.”

“Oh, Ms. R, Beckett’s at home right now. She was injured during an op the other night, so the doc has her on leave for a while.”

“Injured? My God. Again, that poor girl.” Her mind instantly cut to that day in the cemetery when she witnessed Kate fall at the hands of a gunman and to all the chaos and pain that came of it.

“She’s doing fine, don’t worry about Beckett. You know how tough she is, and it’s nothing like last time. She took a shot to the leg and it busted her up a bit, but she’ll be chasin’ bad guys around again in no time.”

“Heaven help them,” Martha replied knowingly, her concern allayed by Javi’s assuredness.

“You should definitely give her a call, though, try to see her. I know she hates not being around this place. She’s been sending us text messages every twenty minutes and she’s only been gone two days.”

The two shared a smile because they both knew.

“Yes, I might just do that, Javier, thank you. Thank you for letting me know about this. I suppose I should get out of your hair and let you get back to protecting we fair citizens of Gotham.”

“We do our best, Ms. R. It was nice seeing you. Tell Castle we all miss him.”

“You, too, Javier, and I will. I’m sure Richard feels the same.”

There was a moment, as she made her way back across the precinct lobby and out onto the sidewalk, that she considered calling Rick first to tell him what’d happened. Of course he’d want to know. He would. But then she thought better of it, pulled up Kate’s number instead. Things were different. Things were very different.

xxxx

The call had been surprise enough, after all the time that’d passed, but Kate couldn’t imagine why it was Martha wanted to see her, too. And it wasn’t that she didn’t welcome the idea of company, because she’d already grown somewhat bored of her own, but the universe had tossed an odd card with the who, one terribly close to home, given her mind’s recent preoccupation, and that had her somewhat on edge in wait.

A short while later, when the knock finally came, and with the help of her crutches, Kate shuffled to the door to find Martha waiting on the other side with a smile, and something about her very presence, something about just being that close to her again, put a restless Kate quickly at ease.

“Katherine, you darling girl, how could something so dreadful have happened again?” she asked with all the dramatic flair Kate had come to love. “If it’s any consolation, you’re just as gorgeous as ever.”

“Well, I don’t really feel gorgeous, but thank you, Martha. Come on in. I hope you don’t mind if I hobble back over to the couch. It probably misses me, already. We’ve barely been apart the past couple of days.”

“Of course, not, darling, go, go.” Martha shut the door behind her and followed Kate inside, her first ever taste of the space. “This is lovely, Katherine. It’s very you, if I may say so.”

“Thanks, I’ve been comfortable here. I mean, I loved my old place, too, but, I don’t know, this space feels lighter, I guess.”

Martha wandered over and sat with her. “I believe I know what you mean. That’s actually why I came to see you at the precinct earlier, strange as it may sound. I hope you don’t mind that I just dropped in. You weren’t there, of course, but I wondered if I should.”

“No, Martha, it’s fine. I’m not sure why you came, but I would’ve been glad to see you. I am glad to see you.”

Whether it was because she was a part of Rick or because she’d lost her own mother and Martha had sometimes helped to fill that void, or both, Kate always felt safe around her--comforted, somehow. Her life had grown better with Martha in it, and she hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed her until that very moment.

“And I, you,” Martha said, reciprocating the sentiment. “As for the reason for my visit, it wasn’t anything in an official capacity, so you need not worry about that.” Kate smiled her relief softly. “Believe it or not, this old broad has fallen in love. Yes, it’s true, and I am, right now, just a day away from moving out of the loft and into Stephen’s apartment uptown.”

“Martha, that’s wonderful. Of course I believe it. You’re an amazing woman. I’m so happy for the two of you.”

“I thank you for that. I am, too,” she said with a youthful spirit in her voice. “Well, naturally, I’ve been going through my things as I’ve been gathering them up, and I came across something that made me think of you.”

“You did?”

“I did. Oh, it was a few years back, now, but one evening, in one of your undercover efforts, you and Richard attended a fundraiser put on by someone or other for some such thing, and you came by the loft in that heavenly red gown on your way there. Do you remember that?”

Kate remembered many things about that night, most of them for her alone. “I remember. Castle sent me  that dress to wear,” she said, enjoying a memory she hadn’t called up in a long time. “You shared your beautiful necklace with me. I was so nervous about that.”

“The woman’s always armed, but put some diamonds around her neck and she gets nervous. Go figure,” Martha teased. “And I did, indeed. It was what you and that gown deserved. That necklace is precisely what I happened upon this morning. You were the first thing I thought about, and I suppose it made me a touch sentimental.”

“That’s really sweet, Martha.” The two shared a look and each understood there was more. “You know, after everything that happened with Castle, I just want to tell you I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to hurt him. That was the last thing I wanted.” Kate looked down at her bandaged leg because it offered an easy retreat. “I was trying to make sure I was ready so I wouldn’t hurt him.”

“Katherine, look at me,” Martha said in a tone of some weight. “You do not owe me any apology. Do you understand? You and me, kiddo, we’re good, okay?”

“Okay,” Kate said, meeting her eye again. “Is he okay, Martha? You don’t have to tell me,” she quickly backtracked, not wanting to push. “He’s just been on my mind lately.” If ever there was an understatement.

“Honestly, I’m not sure what Richard is these days. He’s pretty easy for his mother to read when he’s close, but now that he’s gone, it’s tough. He says one thing, but sometimes I hear another.”

Kate didn’t understand. That was the first she’d heard of Rick being anywhere. “He’s gone?” It was strange that the words could hurt coming out of her mouth because he’d already been gone from her life for months, but they did.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Katherine. I didn’t realize. Yes, Richard’s been renting a house down in the Keys for a while now. You know, with Alexis away, he said he really didn’t need to stick around the city, anymore, so off he went.”

Hit number two. Kate didn’t know Alexis was gone, either. One more thing she’d missed.

“Where’s Alexis?”

“My word, I’m tripping all over myself, aren’t I?” Martha said, embarrassed and saddened all at once. “Alexis decided to go off and study at Oxford, and she’s taking part in a summer seminar and doing some traveling, beforehand. I’m telling you, it is truly unbelievable how quickly they become these independent adults, really.”

“That’s amazing, Martha. She’s an amazing girl.”

Martha heard the melancholy in Kate’s words as clearly as she saw her sitting there on the couch next to her, and though she knew there was a line, not one imposed upon her, specifically, but one that existed, nonetheless, she was about to cross it. She loved her son, and because she loved Kate, too, and because a chance, however minute, often proved worth taking, there wasn’t an important enough reason not to.

“I’m going to say something to you, Katherine, and if it upsets you or makes you uncomfortable, please know that was not at all my intent. Richard loves you. He always has, and you may not believe that because he walked away, but I know that’s the truth. I know because no one loves another person as much as he loved you and simply leaves it behind.”

More than discomfort, it was shock and confusion that overtook Kate, and it was a blessing she was already sitting because her legs might easily have buckled beneath her, otherwise. But Martha didn’t know. She hadn’t been in that office with them. She hadn’t seen or heard any of it.

“Martha, what happened that night…it was awful. I wanted to tell him so badly. I tried to tell him, and then I hoped, maybe, eventually we could find a way to talk about everything, but that’s obviously not what he wanted.”

Martha pushed over on the couch, close enough to touch Kate’s hand. “A relationship is two people, Katherine, no matter how stubborn one of them might be. Richard was hurt, yes, but I’ve never believed that was your intention, and I’m not saying he is or he isn’t because I honestly don’t know, but maybe he’s at a point, now, where he could hear that from you.”

Kate’s eyes filled with tears. “I love him, Martha.” It was the first time she’d said the words aloud, to anyone, and they were three of the most powerful she’d ever spoken, utterly pure, palpably cathartic in their liberation.

“I know, kiddo,” Martha replied with a maternal clutch of her hand. “Maybe he should know it, too.”

Chapter Text

Kate made it to her first follow-up appointment with her doctor--at her insistence and to the surprise of no one--without the help of any who offered to help get her there, and the news she came home with wasn't what she’d hoped for going in. It was frustrating more than bad, certainly for someone so invested in her work, but it meant being away from the 12th for a bit longer, and, beyond that, perhaps behind her desk when she finally was cleared, a punishment, for her, far harsher than any couch. She was never particularly good with the don’ts and the can’ts, limitations placed on her when she felt capable, waiting and waiting until, and her current bout with the tedium of restriction had already lasted far too many rounds.

Javi answered his phone for the umpteenth time that afternoon, most of those calls originating from Kate, and he finally decided it was well beyond time to give her shit about it. “I’ve talked to you more today than I would’ve if you'd actually been here. For real. You know that, right?"

“Lucky bastard,” Kate quipped, rolling with the swipe. “What happened with Grasslee? Did you guys get anything from her?”

He pushed out a chuckle of feigned umbrage. “Did we get anything from her? You kiddin’? It’s us. Of course we got something from her. Just left the box, actually. Vashil’s lawyer showed up.”

“How did--”

“The guy had a network of lowlifes on the payroll. Probably had her watched all the time. You know these girls are property to guys like Vashil. Had to protect what was his." He dropped into his chair and popped open a web search box. “Got an address from her first, though, and don’t let Ryan tell you it was all him because it wasn’t,” he said with a notably raised voice.

“He's walking by right now," Kate said with a grin, knowing Javi as she did.

“So easy to mess with,” he proudly confessed, calling up the address as they went back and forth. “How’s that walking stick of yours?"

“Follow-up sucked, and I think I’m actually starting to hate my apartment." She pushed off the couch to shuffle around some like a good patient, as she’d been instructed to do, now down to just one crutch if and when her pain level permitted it. “You miss me, yet?”

“How the hell could we miss you when you call every five seconds?”

“I bet Gates misses me with the kids there running the place,” she teased.

“Yo, Ryan,” Kate heard him say, though somewhat muffled because he’d pulled the phone away from his mouth. “Beckett thinks you’ve been running this place into the ground since she’s been gone. What should I tell her?”

Kate laughed when she heard Ryan’s bewildered objection, her first good laugh in too long. “You should tell me what the hell the address is, Espo,” she hollered loud enough that he brought the phone back in. “I have to hang up in a minute, come on.”

“Why, so you can call me back?” he snickered, amused with himself. “It’s some dive in Queens. Or it was. This hit says it was shut down, like, four years ago.”

“She was there for some reason. You guys check it out and I’ll call you later.”

Javi sent the info on to the printer and wandered over to grab it. “Check it out, yeah. Good thing you called or we wouldn’t have known what the hell to do,” he sassed.

“Don’t be an asshole, Espo,” Kate said. "I'd like to see you try to stay away from that place for ten minutes, let alone weeks. Can you even breathe if you're not ribbing Ryan?"

“Miss you, Detective Beckett,” he told her mockingly and he clicked off.

xxxx

Lanie was the reason Kate had to jump off her latest call with Javi, and her visit that evening proved to be exactly what Kate needed in her day. She arrived with wine in hand and a smile on her face, and she was appreciated dearly for it. Kate had spent the previous couple of hours with her laptop, perusing information about the Florida Keys, which she knew absolutely nothing about except that it was where Rick was, in an effort to help quash the relentless curiosity that’d rooted inside of her since she'd talked with Martha.

“You’re hating this, aren’t you?” Lanie asked, not five minutes inside.

“What gave it away?” Kate replied with more than a ribbon of sarcasm.

Lanie rifled through the kitchen drawer behind her and pulled out a corkscrew. “You mean besides the eyes, the tone, and all the rest of you?”

Kate pushed up onto one of the stools at the island, leaned her single crutch beside her. “I have patience for a lot of things, Lanie,” she said to a quizzical brow that she talked right by, “but not being able to work my cases isn’t one of them. I feel fucking useless.”

“I know you do. Javi told me you’ve been blowing up his phone.” The cork inched free and Lanie grabbed a glass for each of them. “Before I pour this, should you be having booze? How medicated are you?” Kate gave her a look that required no further commentary. “Okay, then, two glasses it is.”

“I’m just trying to help. What the hell else am I supposed to do, sit around and watch TV all day?”

Lanie slid out the stool next to hers and sat. “No one's asking you to make a career of it, Kate, but I’ve gotta tell ya, a few days with my ass parked on the couch sounds pretty damn good to me. It’s not like you ever take a damn break or any kind of vacation, heaven forbid.”

Kate’s mind immediately drifted to the photographs of the Keys she’d been eyeing earlier, to Rick in that unfamiliar place. “I like my job, okay?”

“You like to hide in your job,” Lanie argued, unapologetically so.

“Okay, shut up and drink your wine.” Kate hadn’t yet told her about her surprise visitor of earlier that week, but she felt the words coming faster than she could manage to push them off. “Martha came to see me.”

And there they were.

Lanie nearly spit her wine right in Kate’s face. “Martha? Martha Rodgers?”

“No, Lanie, Stewart. Martha Stewart was here. We baked together.”

“Hey, don’t get snippy with me, Katherine Beckett, just because you went and got yourself shot again. You act like I shouldn’t be surprised. Hasn’t it been months? Unless there’s more you haven’t told me.”

“No, there isn't, and it’s been a long time,” Kate said. “Since before Castle left.” She downed her first sip of wine. “And he definitely left.”

“What does that mean?”

“Martha told me he isn’t in the city, anymore. He’s been renting some house in Florida for the past few months.”

“He’s what now?”

Kate suddenly decided she needed to be more comfortable for that particular--and no doubt lengthy-- conversation. “Can we go sit over there, please?"

Lanie practically leapt off her stool. “Honey, we can go sit on Mars as long as you tell me what the hell it is you’re talking about.” Once the two resituated, she dove right back in. "Okay, spill. Where in the world is Castle and what’s he doing?"

"Apparently, Alexis got into Oxford, so she's off in Europe, and he has some beach house in the Keys, I guess."

"What in God’s name could he possibly be doing down there? And why did his mother come over here to tell you that?"

There was a part of Kate that still wished Martha hadn’t come, despite her good intentions. Rick might've stopped invading her minutes and hours by now if she hadn't shown up at her door, hadn't pulled those words from her, hadn't fueled the fire that was already raging on its own. The rest of her knew what a colossal fucking lie that was.

"She didn't come over here for that. She found something when she was going through her stuff at the loft and she thought of me and she just wanted me to know that. It was really sweet. She moved out this week, actually."

"And Castle wasn’t here to throw a party for that?" Lanie joked. "That's a surprise."

"She's in love." Kate said thoughtfully.

Lanie hummed in response. There was more. She could feel it. "There's something else going on."

"What do you mean?" Kate asked.

"Don't do that, not with me. I have been friends with you for a long time, Kate, and you're good at many things, but playing dumb is not one of them. I can tell when something's up, so you might as well say it because you know I'll just keep asking."

Kate attempted to huff in displeasure but it more resembled a wistful sigh. "I've been thinking about him a lot, Lanie. I had this dream, and I don't know why, but I can't seem to shake it, and then Martha showed up out of the blue. It's just..."

"Old wounds," Lanie jumped in with Kate’s thought left unfinished.

"It doesn't feel old."

Lanie drew up her brow. "So, what're you going to do about that? What do you want to do about that?”

"I don't know, Lanie. I'm not sure what I can do. I hurt him so much."

"What happened between you hurt him so much because he loved you so much, Kate. Don't you realize that? That doesn't just change overnight. And maybe he is where he is right now because he's going through the same kind of pain you are. Maybe that was his way of coping with it, like how you bury yourself in your cases." She reached out and put her hand on Kate's, just as Martha had. "Most things don't happen in life unless we make them happen, Kate. If there's something you want, going after it might just be worth the risk."

"So, what, I'm just supposed to show up on his doorstep in Florida after all this time? And then what?"

"And then maybe he lets you in," Lanie replied.

xxxx

Less than forty-eight hours later, Kate was on a plane, and, no, the doctor hadn't approved her for any sort of travel--hell, she wasn't even allowed back in the precinct, yet--so she didn't tell him, or anyone else besides Lanie, for that matter. Her dad would call, she knew. She also knew he'd give her grief, and that was something she'd just have to deal with later on.

The day prior, Javi and Kevin had finally managed to get eyes on a freshly discovered associate of Timms' at the address out in Queens, thanks to some impressive work following their interview with Grasslee, and things had snowballed quickly from there. As they'd so often seen, loyalty meant little when one's own ass was on the line, so Timms was currently sitting in a cell and awaiting a transfer, courtesy of one of his crew, and Kate's frustration about being absent from her case had been replaced by relief, though that hadn’t made her distance from its resolution any easier to swallow.

She found herself, that Saturday morning, at 37,000 feet, staring out the window of seat 11B, its partner unoccupied, in a rare bit of luck, the sun bright enough that her eyes remained hidden behind sunglasses. It all felt so surreal, the idea that in just a few hours, she could be standing in front of Rick, seeing his face, hearing his voice, asking him if. Once she'd clicked the button to buy her ticket, it was almost like she'd been operating on auto-pilot, doing so she wouldn't think, so she wouldn't talk herself out of the whole thing.

She had to be prepared for the real possibility, though, too. As nervous as the thought made her, she had to be prepared for his dismissal. That was the simple and not-at-all simple of it. Maybe Martha didn't know anything at all. Maybe there was nothing, now, where once there was something. Maybe he wasn't alone. Maybe so many things she hated to think about. Kate didn't know him as he was now, nor he her, and while time showed an incredible record of healing, it could also bring about unwelcome change.

Her leg was stiff and achy as she made her way through the airport on both crutches to retrieve her rental car, having declined her second offer of the morning for a courtesy ride. Stopping for a bottle of water and two aspirin, she texted Lanie of her arrival in Miami to a response of emphatic support and then continued on her way, her weekend bag hanging across her body. It would be 200 more miles on the road before the moment of truth, and she knew she needed every damn one of them to calm the butterflies that'd already begun to flutter.

xxxx

The long drive south was tedious, the hellish traffic even worse than she'd read about, and by the time Kate reached Rick's house, she was ready to abandon cars altogether. She smiled softly at Martha's handwriting on the piece of paper noting his address and folded it into a small square, dropped it into the outside pocket of her bag, and checked her look in the visor's mirror, the image reflected back at her less than impressive. She felt worn and it showed, but there was nothing to be done about it. She was there. She was at the end.

She had to tell herself aloud to get out of the car, will her legs to hold her up as she did, hobbling from one side of the street to the other where number 4883 sat. She knew better than to assume, but she'd envisioned something grander. Rick always tended towards more, not less, after all, but his bungalow was anything but, its porch and front garden as humble and welcoming as any she'd ever seen for herself. It felt about as far from his city loft as he could've chosen, and she couldn't help but wonder if it'd been purposeful, if he'd wanted to be in a place that reminded him of little that'd come before.

Kate pulled up on the gate’s latch with a deliberate and preparatory exhale and stepped onto the brick path just inside. There was no car in the driveway that she could see, but a garage sat off in the back with its door closed, so she continued on towards the steps, gifting her sore muscles time to embrace the stretch of each stride. She noted the doorbell, but opted to knock, its alert far less intrusive, and she waited. One minute then two, then three, but no one answered, Rick or otherwise, so she made her way back down the path and out to her car.

Leaning there against it, she closed her eyes beneath the island's afternoon sun, and it soothed her skin like a salve. It was a true luxury, she realized as she relaxed into it, a moment like that in a place like that. Lanie was right. She rarely allowed herself time away from the weight of her daily life, and the events of the previous months should’ve taught her better, she knew.

“Kate?”

At first, she wasn’t certain if the voice was in her head or if she’d actually heard it, but when it presented louder and seemingly closer the second time, she opened her eyes to find Rick standing out at the gate, looking at her with palpable shock.

Their eyes remained fixed on each other for a long, silent moment before he stepped out onto the sidewalk and Kate began the slow move towards him. He stopped at the road’s edge and stood there still as she approached--a metaphor for their recent history, if ever there was one--his expression one she couldn’t yet read, and she held up close, yet with enough distance between them so as not to impose, despite an almost tactile desire to experience the physical reality of him after so long.

"Hi,” she said as she took him in, chastising herself for sounding foolishly simple. His face had passed across her mind hundreds of times since that night in the bar, but its beauty as she stood there before him felt overwhelming to her senses. “You’re tan.” All the words swirling around inside of her and that’s what tumbled from her lips next.

“I had music on, so I wasn’t sure if I’d heard the door or not. Kate, what are you doing here?”  

“I’m sorry. I know,” she said. “I didn't mean to interrupt something. I should’ve--”

“And why are you walking with crutches?”

Kate glanced down at her leg, which was wrapped in a flexible brace beneath her pants. “I’m just a bullet magnet this year, I guess,” she answered with a breezy chuckle, but he didn’t join in her flippancy.

“You got shot again? When?” He asked like he couldn’t believe he didn’t know, and he couldn't.

“The last case we were on. It’s recent, and it was a ricochet, not that that isn't bad, obviously, but it could’ve been a lot worse. It's a whole story, but you would’ve had a field day with Ryan after if you were there, actually. He sort of kicked over the first domino, so to speak.”

“Ryan always found a way to make himself an easy target, somehow," Rick replied knowingly before they each took a pause in the unexpected moment of nostalgia, their melancholy quietly shared. “I’m sorry, Kate,” he went on, still confused, “but I’m…why are you here?”

"Can we sit down for a minute, Castle? Would that be okay?”

With a roll of his eyes at his own lack of courtesy, he turned back for the gate. “I’m sorry, of course, your leg. Yeah, we can go up and sit on the porch.” He let her pass and lead their way, a once familiar circumstance. “Do you need any help with the stairs?”

“No, I’m fine, thanks,” she told him.

“Of course you are,” Rick mumbled, having expected exactly what he got.

They sat in the two wicker chairs, side by side, a small table with a watering can set on it separating them. With a passing swirl of the breeze, Kate could smell his skin, a scent she would forever associate only with him, and it played with her memories as she gathered the words to begin.

“Can I get you anything, by the way? Water or coffee or something? Sorry, I'm just a bit caught off guard, here."

Coffee. He said it so plainly, and it was once just a plain word, until he'd changed that. She didn’t know, anymore, how many mornings it’d been absent the gesture, but the mere sound of the word from his lips felt sharp against her heart.

“I know you don’t understand why I’m here, Castle, or how I got here or what the hell this is all about,” Kate said bypassing his questions, “and I wish I had an easy answer to give you because I know, at this point, that’s what you deserve.” She noticed the watering can again, suddenly, and smiled. “You have a green thumb these days?” she asked, both curious and deflective.

“You obviously came all the way down here for a reason, Kate. You should probably just say it so we can--”

She didn’t want to hear the end of that sentence. The end of that sentence could break her right there on that porch. “I miss you, Castle. My life misses you.” Her throat stung with the sadness she was trying desperately to keep down. “I've been doing a lot of thinking, lately, and there are things I'd like to say to you. I promise I’ll go if you just let me say them.”

Rick didn’t respond for a long while, and she didn't want to push, but he finally got up and crossed for the door. “Come inside,” he said, and he offered his hand to help her up.

Chapter Text

Rick grabbed them each a bottle of water from the refrigerator, though Kate hadn’t asked for one, and he led her into the den at the back of the house with its covetable view of the sand and the ocean. Drinking in the panorama, her mind couldn’t help but wander to his house in the Hamptons--a journey it’d taken on countless previous occasions--about what it might be like, and about what might've happened there between them years ago had she allowed herself to accept his invitation in the face of her fear and before it was too late.

“This is nice, Castle, this place,” Kate said. “Different, but…” She caught herself before she went on any further, unsure she was even in a place to be making small talk, and the frailty in her voice evidenced that.

“It is. Sometimes different is what you need, though,” he responded, settling onto the couch opposite her chair. “I like it here.”

“I’m glad,” Kate said, though the sentiment wasn’t entirely truthful. “Your mom is how I got here, by the way, how I knew where you were. And, please don’t be angry with her for it. You can be angry with me, or more angry, I guess. She came to see me about something a few days ago and…anyway, that’s how.”

“What did she need to see you about?” His tone wasn't defensive, but there was something.

“She said she found something in her things at the loft while she was packing up for her move and it made her think of me, I guess. I was just as surprised as you are, but I was definitely happy to see her. It’d been a long time. She, um, she told me about Alexis, too. Oxford, huh?”

“I guess the moon wasn’t taking applicants for this year,” Rick answered with customary sarcasm, swallowing down the bitterness along with some water.

Kate smiled because, surprisingly, she’d missed that about him. “Alexis is always with you, Castle. You know that. It doesn’t matter how far away she is.” She realized only after she’d said them just how fitting her words were to the very circumstance she found herself in with him.

“I still hate that we’re so far apart,” he said, and for a second, looking him in the eye, she wondered if the admission might not be entirely about Alexis.

“I hate that talking like this feels so formal or detached or whatever it is, Castle,” Kate lamented. “I just want to fix this.”

“What this are you referring to?”

His inflection quickly set something off inside her. “I mean us, Rick, and I think you know that. I’m talking about us and what happened between us that night."

“As I remember it, there wasn’t an us that night or any other night, for that matter. Weren’t you on a date with 007?”

And there they were, right where they’d left off months before, as though not a minute had passed. The geography was markedly different, but Kate felt the very same knot twisting around her heart. This was it, though, and she knew it. There and now. This was the one and only chance she’d have to tell him what she needed and wanted to tell him, and she wasn’t about to let him chase her off. Not again.

“Weren’t you screwing some flight attendant? Or was it a redheaded coed? I can’t remember. It’s so hard to keep your toys straight,” she bit back.

“What the hell did you care who I was screwing? As long as it wasn’t you, right?” He pushed up from the couch and walked off, flinging his water bottle towards the sink, where it missed its target and came crashing to the floor. Kate flinched with the impact, but settled with a sip from her own bottle.

“As usual, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Castle.”

“Oh? Please enlighten me, then, Kate. Which part of me telling you I loved you and then you doing your best for months to pretend it never happened is me not knowing what the fuck I’m talking about?”

She closed her eyes, inhaled and exhaled a deep breath. “I wasn’t pretending anything, you jackass,” she muttered, not realizing he was standing as close as he was.

“I’m sorry, what was that? Come on, Kate,” he prodded when she didn’t answer, “you’re the one who wanted to talk, so talk. You didn’t come all the way down here for the piña coladas.”

She twisted as best she could in the chair with the limitations of her leg and she repeated it, each word enunciated for aggravating effect. “I said I wasn’t pretending anything, you jackass.”

“Okay,” he sneered, turning away again. “Fine.”

“You honestly think I’d spend months in therapy trying to work through everything so I’d be ready to accept on the off chance some suave British agent asked me to have a drink with him one night on his way out of the country?”

Rick stopped pacing where he was and came around.

“Yes, Castle, therapy,” she continued snappishly. “You didn’t know that because you wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to tell you. You didn’t know that because you were too busy with what’s her name and what’s her name to let me explain.” She finally stood, too, using the arm of the chair as her balance, though they each remained fixed in place.

“When?”

Kate shrugged. “Then, now, tomorrow, for however long. I don’t know. I just knew for this, I had to be better.” She took a small step towards him. “I didn’t want Colin Hunt or anyone else, Castle. I wanted you.”

Rick started to make a move towards her, almost automatic. "Jesus, Kate, I wish you'd told me from the beginning, even if..." He pushed his hands through his hair as he began to pace again, side to side. "This fucking wrecked me."

“I know, Castle," she said, and she truly did. “I wanted to tell you a hundred times. I just hope, at some point, you can understand why I didn’t.”

“So, then, why now?”

Kate blew the loose strands of hair away from her face as his motion stilled. “Why now?” she thought aloud. “The short answer is that it’s a long answer, Castle, but I know it begins and ends with I love you, and if--”

Rick didn’t allow her one more syllable before he came for her, and despite the precipitousness of his advance, she managed to use the thew of his body to steady her own. She’d noticed, of course, the physical changes in him, from the warm color of his skin to the dance of the dangling hair at his brow, but her hands now played witness, too, and while it wasn’t the first time she’d felt him pressed against her, the line of him had also conspicuously changed.

“Castle,” she whispered as he trailed his lips along the skin of her neck, his days-old whiskers punctuating the sensation. “You’re…Can you?” Her eyelids slid shut as the tip of his tongue made contact with that spot he didn’t yet know of, and the rest of her words vanished into the thrill of his touch.

“You’re talking,” he released in an exhale. “Why are you talking?”

Kate's fingers closed around a handful of the fabric of his t-shirt when he started on her earlobe. “You’re standing on my foot, Castle,” she got out finally, though she hated herself for it because what he’d begun already had her in a state.

Rick's eyes turned downward and he swiftly jumped back. “Shit, I’m so sorry.” With his zealous effort, his breath was no longer silent, and that only served to further her ignited craving. “Dammit, and it was your good one. Well, I mean, they’re both good--great, really.”

“It’s okay,” she said with a soft chuckle, still clinging to his shirt with one hand. “Walking’s overrated, anyway.”

He cautiously inched his way back into her, kissed her forehead. “I really missed that, by the way.”

Kate looked up at him and he met her eye. “Must be thinking of the blonde or the redhead, Castle, because I’m pretty sure we’ve never done that before.”

“I wasn’t talking about that, though it pains me you seem to have forgotten about our magical night under those dreamy back alley lights. I meant I've missed hearing you call me Castle. No one down here does.” She leaned into his chest, hid her face from view. “What is it?” He brought his hands to her shoulders and squeezed them gently. “Kate, tell me.”

“Was I crazy to come here? We haven’t said a word to each other in months, Castle, and I just get on a plane this morning and now I’m here in your house on some island, kissing you in your living room? It’s like it doesn’t make any sense.”

Rick curled a finger beneath her chin and propped it up so he could see her face again. “You’re actually kissing me in my den,” he joked, earning a favorite roll of the eyes. “And, honestly, my brain has barely processed anything at all since I saw you standing outside on the street. In fact, maybe you should tell me you love me again, just to be sure I remember later on.”

“You processed plenty,” she said.

“Hey, listen to me, you weren’t crazy. Maybe crazy adjacent, but not crazy, and I say that because I found myself at your door one night not that long ago, too. You just didn’t know it because I didn’t have the balls to knock. And as for things that make sense, relative to everything else going on in the world, I’d say us finding ourselves together again is pretty damn close.”

Kate just stood there, staring back at him, waiting.

“The door thing, right? I kinda figured,” he said, answering his own question. “Okay, yes, I came to your apartment when I was up in the city for a meeting about a month ago, and, no, it wasn’t a planned thing, it just sort of happened. I stood there outside your door and I thought about you and I thought about us, and then I thought about all the shitty things I’d said at the Haunt and I chickened out. I left.”

“What would you have said if you hadn’t?”

Rick cupped her cheek, let his thumb brush her skin. “I would’ve told you you really were crazy if you believed I didn’t spend every minute of every day thinking about you and how I’d screwed things up. I would’ve told you how sorry I was, how heartbroken I was, how fucking awful it was that I couldn’t see you every day. But, first I probably would’ve asked you if I could borrow a cup of sugar because, let’s face it, it’s difficult for me to do anything without some smart-ass remark."

Kate pushed into his hand and called up the imaginary moment. “It’s a good thing you didn’t knock, then. I probably would’ve sent you right to the neighbors for the sugar, and then all of that mushy stuff you thought up would’ve been wasted.” She smiled at him and he reciprocated.

“Actually, maybe not entirely wasted. I’ve seen your neighbor and she’s pretty cute," he retorted.

“You do seem to like the blondes.”

“Yeah, but I love the brunettes,” he said, and he kissed her lips again.

xxxx

The two rambled out to the beach, Kate perched on Rick's back, piggyback-style, for obvious reasons, once they finally managed to pull themselves away from one another, and that was no small feat for either, more than an hour having passed since they’d dropped onto the couch like a couple of teenagers gifted a rare taste of freedom.

Kate’s lips tingled with the mark left by his, and even as the breeze off the water pushed back at her as they walked along the sand, she could still feel him there, eager and intent. “Pretty nice backyard,” she whispered in his ear, and he came to a stop with his bare feet just beyond wave’s reach. “I can definitely see why you chose this place.”

“It was good enough for Hemingway,” Rick replied, settling her onto the sand and taking a spot at her side. “Stretch your leg out out. Let it rest a bit before we head back in."

She turned and pressed her lips against his arm. “You carried me the whole way, Castle. I think I’ll be okay, but a hot bath later will help, too, I’m sure.”

“The thought of your hot bath later definitely helps me,” Rick quipped to a flick on the leg. “You booked a place to stay, then, I guess?”

“For the night, yeah, at the Sands,” Kate said. “I’m supposed to fly out in the afternoon.”

“You’re leaving tomorrow? You just got here.”

She hadn't imagined this would happen. She hadn't expected such a shift in her universe, such an unlikely twist in the story. She’d all but convinced herself he probably wouldn’t even see her. “I don’t know. Maybe I could--”

“You can!” he jumped in spiritedly.

“You don’t even know what I was going to say, Castle. All this time and you're still a shitty listener."

He rolled his hand up her back and into her hair. “Stay,” he said, like it was a thousand words and not just one.

“Maybe,” Kate said after a taunting moment of reflection, but the truth was she already knew.

xxxx

Rick presented Kate with a plate and took the seat across from hers with his own, the odd collection of components he’d assembled for their impromptu meal garnering an amused smile. She hadn’t wanted to eat out, to leave the private bubble they’d created and shared that afternoon, and though he’d warned her about what that meant dinner might look like, she’d welcomed the opportunity, once again, to witness his creative side at work.

“I think I’ve only cooked in this house twice since I’ve been here,” Rick said. “I don’t spend a whole lot of time eating these days. It’s kind of a pain in the ass when everything isn’t right outside your door like it is in the city.”

“You say that like you're living in the middle of nowhere, Castle. If you think that, why did you come here, then?” she asked, plucking a wedge of orange from her plate.

“No, I know it's not that bad. It's just different than what I was used to, and, honestly, I came here because it was away. Paula happened to know someone who knew someone who needed to rent out the house for a while, and I thought it might be someplace quiet where I could start working on writing something new. A lot of things seemed to be changing all at once--my mother and Alexis and you--so I just decided to try a change, too."

“I'm sorry,” Kate said, because it was difficult to know what else to say.

“Don’t be. I like it fine, I do. I guess it just hasn’t really been the lightning bolt of inspiration I was hoping for. Nikki Heat has proven a very tough fantasy-come-true to follow. How’s the rice, by the way? Too sticky?”

“You're not writing Nikki Heat, anymore?” How many times she’d groaned about her, cursed her, wished her attention upon someone else’s life, and yet she suddenly found herself surprisingly disappointed by her character’s apparent end.

“I tried to move on from her, because it was hard to be connected to that world after everything,” Rick answered candidly, “but I haven't been able to get her out of my brain. She’s very stubborn. Imagine that,” he added, his veiled inference anything but. “I do have some new doodles that’ll knock your socks off, though, if you’re interested.”

“Castle, I don’t ever want to be someone who takes what you love away from you.”

He turned his attention away from his plate and found her. “You’re what I love. So, like I said before, stay.”

Kate dropped her napkin on the table and slid her chair back, came around to him. When her hand settled on his shoulder, he wrapped an arm around her waist and guided her down onto his lap. “What if I did? What would we do?" Her fingernails traced lazy circles along the back of his neck as she awaited his response. "Maybe some actual food?"

“It is sticky. I knew it,” he said with a pout.

“Castle.” His name from her lips was all it took to pull his focus back in. "Your rice is perfect," she told him with a kiss to the cheek.

"Would you, maybe, allow me to take you on a proper date? Would that be enough to entice you? I promise I'll put out afterwards," he said with a smile.

Kate leaned in for his ear. "Make a reservation, Writer."

“I already know exactly what I’m going to wear,” he teased excitedly.

xxxx

Kate drove back to the hotel late that night, having already checked in earlier on her way to the house, and it was more difficult than most of the things she'd already managed to do that day. It pained her to leave him, to let him go, if only for the night, but so much had happened in those few hours together, she thought it best to take some time for all of it to land before there was what inevitably came next.

All she could think about as she stood at her night’s bed, peeling the clothes from her body, was Rick being beneath its sheets with her, about the heat of their skin in its contact, about her hands and her mouth exploring the newness of him outside the realm of her fantasies, where she’d resided for so long. She wanted him intensely, the ache one she’d never before felt, and she loved him, surely, but more than that, she wanted to be in love with him, to be alive in that universe together without hindrance or hesitation, to live them rather than dream them.

The ring of her phone intruded upon her reverie, and she moved for the nightstand with a scowl, until she looked down and saw Rick's face staring back at her from the screen. “Calling to cancel our date?” she asked playfully, drawing her arm modestly across her bare breasts, alone though she was.

Rick laughed raucously into the phone. “Maybe you missed the part where I could barely bring myself to let you leave my house, tonight. I’d be more likely to become the president of Slovakia than to cancel on you. And speaking of on you, are you in your bath, yet?”

“I have the water on right now. I was just getting undressed when the phone rang, actually.”

“How cruel, thank you for that."

Kate slowly let her arm drop down to her side, titillated by the hunger in his voice. “If I don’t get back in there soon, the tub’s going to overflow, Castle. You want something?” She knew well what he wanted because she wanted it, too.

“Tomorrow night is too long to wait to see you. Come have breakfast at the house with me.”

She unbuttoned her pants and perched herself along the edge of the bed, pulled her strong leg free. “You promise to go shopping first or will it be ice cubes and soy sauce packets for us?” Falling back against the mattress, her fingers unconsciously trailed her skin, not the first time the sound of him had elicited such an unmeditated response.

“The surprise is all part of the fun, isn’t it, Detective?"

“What time should I be there?”

“Twenty minutes ago,” Rick said without pause, without shame. “Or 10AMish, if that doesn’t work with your schedule.”

“Ten,” Kate acknowledged before ending the call without another word, and had it not been for the running bathwater, her fingers might’ve continued their journey.

Chapter Text

Kate found herself at Rick’s front door for the second time in as many days, yet the charge running through her as she waited for it to open on that morning felt monumentally different. The sky above was moody and grey, and a soft rain had been falling for the better part of an hour, its note almost melodic in its consistency, and following a knock marking her arrival, she stepped back out to the edge of the porch and let the droplets of water tickle her skin. That day would be different than all the rest; she could feel it, just as she could feel the kiss of the rain tumbling from the sky.

“You know, there is a doorbell, Detective,” Rick pointed out when he finally emerged. “Man, your case clearance rate must really be slipping without me if you’re overlooking such obvious scene details. Gates is probably beside herself.”

Kate slowly pivoted, having walked up with the aid of just one of her crutches, and allowed her eyes a moment of self-indulgence to feast on him. He was leaning casually against the doorframe, dressed in a white t-shirt and jeans, his feet bare and his hair morning wild, the very embodiment of her beautiful, and she had to consciously will herself to swallow in order to activate the voice that briefly escaped her.

“Gates is beside herself, alright, but with joy because you aren’t around to drive her nuts, anymore,” she needled, moving closer.

“You’re four minutes late,” he said, his gaze likewise fixed.

She gripped his forearm to keep steady, pushed up onto the toes of her right foot, and pressed a kiss against his lips. “You sure you really want to start clocking stuff, Castle? Think long and hard about that, because I have a watch, too,” she countered coquettishly.

“Oh, whoa, okay, I see what...um, how about you come inside and we throw away every single clock, all of them, right now.”

Kate grinned at the blush across his tanned cheeks. “Can you feed me first, please? I’m hungry.”

“And you’re wet,” Rick replied, noting the rain’s temporary abstraction left on her clothes. “If you want to take anything off, I’d be fine with that, just so you know. I’m a host who likes his guests to be comfortable.”

“Thanks, maybe later,” she said as she slid by him. “I haven’t even had my morning coffee, yet.”

“Well, your coffee is my command,” he muttered as he followed her inside. “Take whichever seat at the table you’d like and I’ll pour us some. I was actually waiting for you, so I haven’t had any, either.”

“Trying to score some extra credit points, Castle?” she said, settling into her chosen chair. “Have you done something wrong?”

“Your faith in me is underwhelming. No, I’m just trying to be a gentleman, Ms. Beckett, but if you’re giving out extra, I’ll gladly take it,” he told her in innuendo-laced tone. He filled two mugs with coffee and brought them around from the kitchen before returning for the plates of food he’d left to warm in the oven. “And, speaking of extra, were you able to change your ticket with the airline?”

“I now have a seat on a flight out late Wednesday morning.” Rick set the plates at their respective placemats. “Wow, Castle, this actually looks really good. I’m impressed,” she said, picking a grape from its stem and popping it into her mouth.

Rick angled for her in silent request and she met him with a kiss. “Thank you for staying here with me willingly. Now I don’t have to set the whole kidnapping plot I had planned in motion. That’s a real time-saver. Also,” he added, pulling out his chair, “a little Rick Castle trivia for you: that might be the only time I’ve ever moved right past a compliment.”

“Then you should probably sit. I don’t want you fainting from the aftereffect,” Kate teased. “And you shouldn’t thank me yet. When I get home, I’ll be sending you my credit card bill for the insane fee I had to pay to change my reservation. On top of that, I still have to return my car by this afternoon. They told me I can do that down here instead of back at the airport, but you’re going to have to be my chauffeur while I’m here, too.”

“Are you kidding? For two more days with you, I’ll be your anything,” Rick said around a mouthful of potato. “So, tell me. It looked good, but how does it taste? Better than dinner?”

“Being a bit generous with that word, Castle,” she replied with an eye, filling her fork with omelet and swallowing a bite. “Okay, the bar’s obviously pretty low on this one, but it actually tastes really good, too. Thank you for doing all of this.” Rick sat quietly and watched her with a smirk as she cut into another bite. “What are you this morning? You seem…something.”

“I am something this morning. I’m happy,” he said. “I chatted with Alexis for a while before you got here, and I just found out you aren’t leaving today. What more could I ask for than the two girls I love the most?”

“How are things going over there for her?”

“If you ask me, she’s a bit too excited to be so far away from me, but other than that, she’s doing great. She’s being Alexis, as Alexis has always been.”

Kate set her fork down, something clearly on her mind. “Did you tell her about me? I mean, does she know that I’m here?”

"Tell me what that face is about.” It was written all over her. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I can’t be something that comes between the two of you, Rick.”

“Hey, hey, where is this coming from? You know that could never happen. Don’t you?” When she didn’t respond, he scooted back from the table and tossed his napkin aside. “Come here. Shuffle over here, Crutch.” After an initial hesitation, Kate pushed out of her chair and came around. “Sit down right here and listen to me, please,” he insisted, tapping the tops of his thighs, and she acquiesced, wrapping her arm around his shoulder, her hand playing lazily with his hair. “Alexis has known for a long time how I feel about you, Kate, and, yes, to answer your question, I told her you were here.”

“Does she know about what happened before?”

“She knows there was something between the two of us that happened, of course. I wasn’t leaving the loft every morning to come to the precinct. I wasn’t writing. I was mopey and brooding and losing at laser tag all the time, and she saw her share of that before she left for Europe, but I would never say a bad word about you to her, Kate. There wouldn’t be any for me to say.”

“I know how important you are to her, Castle. I just don’t want whatever she might think of me to affect you or your relationship, that’s all.”

Rick ran his fingers along the hair tucked behind her ear. “Alexis thinks the world of you. Believe me when I tell you that, and I don’t want you to worry about Alexis or me and Alexis or you and Alexis, okay? I love her and I love you, and neither of those things will ever change the other.” He hugged her in tight and her body relaxed into his arms. “Have I told you, yet, how beautiful you look this morning and how happy I am that you’re here?”

She almost didn’t know how to reconcile it. She’d never had this with him before, such freedom of physical and emotional expression, such tenderness, and though the them they’d become was still just hours old, she found herself wondering how it was she’d lived so close to him for so long without it.

“It’s still raining,” Kate whispered at his ear, the day on divine display through the glass behind them. “What do you do down here at the beach when it rains?”

“Me? Oh, I usually either sit and stare at a blank laptop screen for hours and end up writing absolutely nothing, scribble unartistic doodles and end up writing absolutely nothing, or see how many balled up pieces of paper with absolutely nothing written on them I can land in the trash can across my office. Any of that interest you?”

She clenched her fingers around his hair and hooked a handful. “Is that really what you want to do?” It was far more a statement than a question, and her eyes affirmed that.

“No, it’s not,” Rick answered assuredly, “but I’m not sure it’s the right time for me to ask for what it is I really want.”

“Where’s the bedroom, Castle?” Rick motioned over his shoulder but offered no commentary, and Kate peered around him before finding him again. “I think you should show me,” she told him. “Waiting for the right time isn’t something that interests me all that much, anymore.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, his body already shifting to oblige.

He only had to look at her once more and he knew.

xxxx

“Jesus, now that I know my incredible prowess can do that, I may never let you leave this state, let alone this bed. You should prepare yourself,” Rick beamed as Kate slid her knee up the side of his naked body beneath the sheets. He curled his fingers in behind it to hold it in place, the contact both exquisite and painful as he worked to recover from the splendor his muscles and bones had just lived.

“Do what?” she purred in a puff of warm breath at his neck.

His grip on her leg tightened inadvertently with the thought. “That sound you make. I can’t even describe it in words. It’s just…fuck.”

“We just did that,” Kate said, the delicious ache in his voice already sparking a new craving in her, “but I can go again if you’re ready.” What they’d just done to one another’s bodies, where they’d taken each other, was beyond any fantasy she’d carried into that bedroom along with her. “Are you ready, Castle?” she asked rhetorically, her fingers inching downward for the answer.

“Hey, okay, unfair body advantage,” Rick blurted with a notable flinch. “Just you wait, though, Detective, I’ll get there, and, you know, if you promise you’ll make that sound again, it might be able to cut, like, seven or eight minutes off the wait.”

"Guess that means you have to promise you’ll do that thing with your tongue, again, then.” She rolled off of him and treated her muscles to a well-earned stretch. “And again, and again,” she whispered through a grin.

“I can never be without this ever again. You realize that, right? That’s what you’ve done here this morning. Not that it’s ever been easy, of course, but it’s much easier when you have no idea exactly what it is you’re missing.” He turned onto his side, propped himself up on his elbow. “I didn’t know what the hell to do when I didn’t have you, anymore, and I know that probably sounds dramatic, like something my mother would say, but that’s just the truth of it.”

Kate reached up and traced the line of his jaw with her fingertip. “I remember you came to my apartment one night,” she began to tell him in the moment, uncertain of the memory’s trigger but moved to share it, nonetheless. “We were talking and then you touched my hand, and it wasn’t for very long, just a few seconds, but even after you’d gone, I could still feel you. That’s how it was for me these past few months, when I didn’t have you, anymore. Somehow, I could still feel you.”

Rick angled for her lips and she gave them softly, openly. “We’re going to make up for all the time we missed, I promise, and I’m sorry, but I just have to tell you that I remember that night at your place, and I still think Royal would’ve picked me if that Chihuahua hadn’t shown up and distracted him.”

“How To Ruin a Romantic Moment, by Richard Castle. You know, maybe you should just stop talking and put your mouth to better use.”

He held her at the hip and shifted her body beneath his. “Best suggestion I’ve heard all day. How’s that leg of yours doing, so far?”

Kate pulled her arms free of the sheet, tucked them relaxedly beneath her head. “I can think of far better places for you to spend time than on my leg, Castle.”

“I’m going to enjoy this making up thing so much,” he chirped giddily.

xxxx

The rain subsided early that afternoon and they finally extricated themselves from the bed, more by necessity than anything else, Kate’s rental car due to be returned by 3PM. Rick trailed her in his own--the Benz he’d had shipped down from the city--affording him needed time alone to firm up last minute details for their date that evening, one, despite the short notice, he hoped would prove worth all the time they’d waited for it to come.

“Why do you seem guilty or pleased with yourself or whatever that look is about?” Kate asked, settling into the seat beside his after stealing a kiss because it’d been thirty-five whole minutes since the last one and she already missed his mouth. “I’d say you haven’t had time since we left the house to get yourself into trouble, but we both know that isn’t true.”

“I’m just that good at it. What can I say?” he joked. “I was actually just talking with a buddy of mine about tonight. He’s helping me out with a few things so I can really impress you.”

“Castle, you really don’t need to make it a big thing. I’m fine with simple. I just want to spend time with you.”

Rick chuckled because he’d certainly never been accused of simple. “That’s what I want, too. There won’t be circus animals or anything, not after our playdate with the tiger. I’m not going too crazy, don’t worry. ”

“Funny how when you say that I panic. Just remember, I’m still hobbling around on this damn thing,” she said pointing at the crutch beside her, “so no paintball or water skiing or whatever else.”

“Detective, please,” he said, turning to her at the well-timed red light. “Give a man a little credit, okay? Oh, hey, wait, grab my phone and ask Siri if it’s a left or a right to the hang gliding place before the light changes,” The two exchanged smiles. “You said you wanted to stop at that shop on the way back to the house, right?”

Kate had already checked out of the hotel, its modest size not permitting an adjustment of her stay, and she wanted something to wear that was better suited to a night out, not to mention sexier than the pair of culottes she had tucked in her bag. “Yeah, I want to try to find something to wear for tonight,” she said, ironic though it was since all she could picture was wearing nothing with him at all.

“Then shop we shall. Do I get to pick out something for you to try on?”

She wasn’t sure why, but the notion vibrated square. “Maybe,” she said, skeptical yet titillated. “You do have fairly good taste, as I recall.” Her double entendre was both purposeful and effective, setting her brain off on a delectable tangent as they continued on towards the shop.

“Well, thank you for saying so, but you’re the one with the that and the that,” he said, stealing a glance. “You’d look like a queen even if you wore trash bags, and if you ever do, please choose the clear kind so I can see all the that and the that.”

“If you don’t pay attention to the road, Castle, we’re going to end up in bags.” She gave his cheek a playful tap and nudged his face forward.

xxxx

“Do you think I can get away with this color or does it wash me out?” Rick asked as he zigzagged his way through the shop’s racks of clothes in Kate’s shadow. “I’ve been told I’m a summer, but I’m not sure this one is really me.”

She stopped and turned for the fourth time since they’d walked in, his chatter already inspiring exhaustion. “I don’t know about the color, Castle, but I do know that skirt will do zero for your legs. Now, can you please just give me two minutes to look around in peace? I’ve banished you to the car before and I have no problem doing it again.”

“Yeah, like that works,” he mumbled. “What about our big fashion show? I thought you were going to let me pick something.”

An employee working nearby happened to catch her eye, and Kate found the woman gazing at Rick with a charmed smile. “Would you keep your voice down, please? People are staring.”

“That’s your fault for being so gorgeous. Happens everywhere,” he said matter-of-factly, continuing to flip through hangers.

Even when he wasn’t trying, he had her.

“Okay, fine, you go off and you do that and I’ll meet you over at the dressing rooms in a little bit. Just stay out of trouble and try to pick something normal, Castle.”

“Short and tight, got it,” he quipped, pretending to make note. “Kidding, I’m kidding. Let me think. What color truly complements a silver crutch?” Kate heard him say as he wandered off.

xxxx

She really wasn’t all that picky. She wanted a simple sundress, something that would be comfortable in the heat and over the brace on her leg, and give Rick something to look at, which, of course, she knew she would ultimately benefit from, as well. The smitten employee she’d caught moments before helped her to a dressing room with a few viable options and pointed out the call button on the wall--something Kate had never seen in a store before--in case she found she needed additional assistance of any kind.

“Pssst, Beckett, which room are you in?” came Rick’s voice from beyond the curtain not five minutes later. “I found some great stuff.”

“Hang on, Castle, I’m half naked in here,” she called back, though tempted not to answer at all because he sounded way too enthusiastic.

Rick followed the sound and found her, like a moth to flame. “Such magical words you speak,” he said, peeking through the opening he’d created with his finger. “May I come in and show you my treasure? Not a euphemism, by the way,” he added swiftly, preempting her anticipated comeback.

“Come on,” she told him, stepping out of view as best she could. “Wait, Castle, is that a bikini?” It was at the front of the collection of hangers he brought in with him, and there was barely enough fabric there to call it much of anything. “That thing is your idea of normal?”

“What? This was crafted by a very famous and very expensive designer, I’ll have you know, and I’ll also have you know that I grabbed this off the hook in one of the other dressing rooms just to see the look on your face. Yep, totally worth it.”

Kate tossed her pants at him and he dropped everything he was holding. “You just think you’re so cute, don’t you?”

“I think you think I am,” he boasted, moving for her. He pushed his fingers along the bare skin of her hips, just below the hem of her shirt, and wove them together at the back, encouraging her into his body. “I like this.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

"I meant being here with you, anywhere with you, pants or no pants.”

Kate draped her arms over his shoulders and held him tight. “Me too,” she whispered in his ear. “Now let me try this stuff on so I can choose something for you to take off me later.”

Rick tiptoed backwards excitedly, picked up and hung the items he’d dropped, and parked himself against the opposite wall, his eyes all over her as she pulled out of her shirt. “Put the violet one on.” His tone was assertive, insistent, and where it once would’ve sparked a snappish retort, it now suddenly had her stirred up in quite a different way.

She reached for it without a word, dropped it over her head, and let it tumble down the length of her, setting the halter in place around her neck and freeing her hair from its band. The fabric fell just below her knees, below the ugliness of her newest battle scar, and hugged her form without restriction, and she knew instantly she didn’t even want to try another.

“What do you think?” She could already see it in the way he was watching her, but she selfishly wanted to hear him say it.

 “I think you look like a dream I had once,” he said. “And that I really do have good taste.”

Kate backed up the few small steps she could and leaned her body against the wall facing him, and there they stood. It was almost like a showdown, like a silent battle of self-restraint was being fought, but one that neither hoped to win. “Think they have cameras back here?” Her teeth bit anxiously at her lip in wait.

“Not anywhere that can see us right now. Not unless management enjoys lawsuits.”

She let him stew for a long moment, though she knew he understood exactly why she’d asked. “So, you gonna make me walk all the way over there with this leg or what?” Before all her words were out, he’d already begun his advance and his purpose was clear.

Three strides and his mouth was on hers, his hands in her hair, his thigh snared between the possessive muscles of her own. In the fervor, she struggled to grasp the violet fabric of the dress, but eventually succeeded between tastes of him, lifting it over her head and dropping it to the bench at her side, leaving her body, once again, almost entirely exposed.

Rick’s shirt was her next target, but he grabbed her at the wrists and stopped her. “What’re you--”

“Relax,” he said, relinquishing his grip and weaving his fingers between hers. “Let me do this.” He traveled down her body with his eyes and came back up with a devilish smile. “Do you have any idea how incredible you look right now?” She tried to push away from the wall, to come for his mouth again, the grasp she had on his leg beginning to falter. “Kate, I said let me.”

She said his name in protest, but that was all she managed before he kissed her and slowly crouched to his knees. “I thought you liked this.” With his thumb, he hooked aside the lace covering the only part of her that remained hidden. “Am I wrong?”

Clearly it wasn’t advisable, what it was she was about to take part in, for any number of obvious reasons, but she could feel the heat of his breath, sense the pleasure he’d already derived from the power of his position, and in an instant every one of those reasons faded with the remembrance of their morning and his bed.

“No, you’re not wrong,” she confessed in a sigh as his tongue began its dance, her words escaping not as four but as one. “Fuck, Castle.” With a handful of his hair clutched in her hand, she closed her eyes and let the sensation wash over her, from the tips of her toes to the top of her head--and that’s where she could feel him, everywhere.

He hummed unwittingly against her and she flinched, her leg finding its way around his shoulder to rest at his back. “Are you okay?” he paused to ask, fearing for her comfort in their current arrangement, not that the space allowed for much in the way of improvisation.

“Don’t talk, Castle,” she hushed, her fist firm, the wall behind her growing ever more essential to her remaining upright. “Just do that. Just that.”

Rick indulged her with an increased pace rather than words, though his touch remained a delicate one, and Kate’s body began to move along with him, a silent plea for its perpetuation. She was nearing a breaking point. It was there in the heel at his back, in the sounds on her lips, and he gave her everything she demanded until the second she allowed herself to let go.

“That is so my new favorite thing,” he said following a trail of kisses along the inside of her thigh. “Did you--”

“Yes, hello, can I help you?” came a sudden and strange voice from somewhere unseen, shocking both motionless. “Do you need to see something in another size?”

Without thought, Rick simply answered. “No, thank you, we’re good,” he hollered back, earning a gentle slap to the head.

“Alright, well, just hit the call button again if you do, you two,” the woman replied with audible amusement.

It was a minute before either spoke, Rick having moved up to the tiny bench inside to sit in the interim. “Think she knew?” he asked to break the silence, though, of course, she did and that was obvious.

"Probably, since you opened your big mouth,” Kate said, still trying to wind herself down.

“Excuse me? What about your whatever hitting that button? And five seconds ago you were quite fond of my mouth, thank you.” He reached behind him and grabbed her shirt. “Tell me how fond and maybe I’ll give this back.”

“Check your threat, Castle. We’re in a clothing store. I don’t need that shirt, anymore.” She finally peeled her body off the wall, reached out for his shoulders. “But, because you asked me so nicely, I will tell you this: that mouth of yours is better than any book you’ve ever written.”

“Very funny,” he said, conceding the garment and hugging her in.

Kate tugged at his hair, again, to seek his eye. “Love you, Big Mouth” she said.

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled and he kissed her belly. “Let’s go get this walk of shame over with and get the hell out of here.”

Chapter Text

Rick hadn’t told Kate anything of his plan for their evening, and though certain he could’ve put together something far more impressive, far worthier of the belated occasion with the benefit of added time, the fact that it was happening at all, that she was there with him at all, had him gratefully distracted from any perceived failing.

Not only had she found her way to him, and they, at last, to one other, but she would now be beside him in his bed for the next three nights when he fell asleep and the next three mornings when he woke, and the reality of the distance his life had traveled over the past twenty-four hours was enough to bring him to his knees.

There would, undoubtedly, exist moments in the near future when he would ask himself why, when he would find fault with himself for his months of decisions--namely the one to leave unseen the night he’d found himself at her door--and those whispers of his mind would be difficult to silence, but nothing he’d done or not done could take her away from him now. He was never going to let that happen again.

xxxx

“Ooo, I always knew you had it in you, girl,” Lanie told her as Kate put the finishing touches on her look behind the closed bathroom door. “I hope you bought something, at least.”

“I did,” Kate confirmed with a chuckle. “I bought the dress he picked out, actually.”

“And how long is it going to manage to stay on your bod this time? You think the two of you can actually make it through an entire evening out, because it sounds like you left all your self-control back up here.”

Kate eyed her reflection in the mirror, her look smoky, sultry, unlike anything she’d shown him before, and a soft grin curled at her lips. “It’s like I can’t even help myself, Lanie, but I don’t care. I don’t want to.”

“Hey, you two have waited long enough--too long, as far as we’re all concerned. You go get yours, and tell that lucky son of a b for me he better not screw this up. I have friends who work at the NYPD and I can make things happen.”

“Love you,” Kate said to a like response and then clicked off, a gentle knock at the door following almost immediately.

“Our chariot should be arriving to take us away, momentarily, m’lady. You need any help with buttons or zippers in there?” Rick stood in wait of a reply, but none came, and just as he began to move off, the door pulled open.

“Do you really want to have to waste time on buttons or zippers later, Castle?” she asked impishly, emerging in the dress he’d chosen that conveniently featured neither. “You did promise you’d put out tonight, if I remember correctly. I’m pretty sure that’s why I agreed to stay.”

Rick traveled her once up and down and did so proudly. “Everything about you in that dress is correct, Detective, and if we had time, trust me, I’d put out right here, right now. God, it looks even more perfect on you here than it did in the store.”

Kate did the best version of a twirl she could, using the frame of the bathroom door in aid. “Thank you, Castle. And you look very handsome.”

“So handsome you won’t be able to help yourself?” he asked smugly, giving away a secret.

She tossed him a cold glare. “Were you listening in on my conversation just now? Were you spying on me?”

“Not on purpose,” he sputtered with a crack in his voice and a guilty step backwards. “It was...I came to get you and the speaker thing with the echo and I didn’t mean to.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I swear I won’t screw this up, if that helps, and you really do look--and smell, by the way--incredible.” With her unchanged expression, he kept going. “You want me to do that thing with my tongue again? We still have a couple of minutes. I could--”

“Stop talking,” Kate interjected, defying a smile. “Get back over here.” He came immediately and she rewarded them both with a bruising kiss. “I know you won’t because I won’t let you.” She leaned in and  whispered the rest. “And, yes, I do, but I want you to have to think about it all night until we get home.”

His forehead dropped to her shoulder. “So cruel.”

“Now, listen, I thought about it while I was getting ready and I decided I want to try tonight without any crutches. What do you think?”

Rick swiftly moved in beside her and offered his arm. “I think if it means you’ll let me help you, I’m in,” he said, “but that won’t be negotiable.”

She hooked her arm around his and squeezed it into her body. “I think I can agree to that for one evening, but where are we going and why do we need a chariot?”

“Well, what if you got me drunk and I couldn’t drive us home?”

“Then I’d drive us,” Kate replied most logically. “My driving leg is perfectly fine, Castle.”

“It is that,” he said, stealing a peek.

“Or we could call a cab. I know this isn’t Manhattan, but I’m pretty sure we could manage.”

“You just have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

“No fun, is it?” Kate said knowingly, bumping him at the hip.

xxxx

Rick had her standing out on the front porch with her eyes covered as their ride pulled up just beyond the gate. It wasn’t a conventional way to get from here to there, to be sure, but he imagined that might be the adventure of it, the fun, and no one had ever accused him of being predictable.

“He’s here,” he said. “Ready to see it?”

Kate reached for his hand to pull it away. “You sound way too excited about this. I’m not sure I am.” She opened her eyes and there it was, a pedicab with a neon green carriage for two and what appeared to be nothing more than a teenager perched on the driver’s seat. “You have got to be kidding me, Castle. That thing is our ride?”

“What? You don’t like it? Come on, it’s great. It’s eco-friendly, offers great views, commands attention, and comes with its own chauffeur.” He hooked her at the arm, again, and guided her down the stairs. “Don’t worry, we’re not going that far. I promise it’ll be fun.”

“Hey, Mr. Castle,” the young driver called out as they approached. He looked all of fourteen to Kate, and that provided little comfort. “I cleaned her up nice for you, today. What do you think?”

“She looks great, Garrett.” He popped the gate open and held Kate’s hand through. “And please stop with the Mr. Castle, thing, already. I told you, it’s Rick.”

“Righto,” Garrett said with a hang loose gesture for good measure. “Hop in, you two. You’re Kate, right?”

Kate used the side of the carriage and Rick’s hand to step up into the seat, and he followed. “I am,” she said, “and you’re old enough to drive this thing, right?”

“Got a permit and everything,” Garrett assured her with something resembling a giggle born of too many inhales. “You were right, Mr. Castle,” he said, turning over his shoulder towards Rick. She is definitely a babe.” Then he stood right up on the pedals and off they went.

Rick let the name thing go the second time. He knew what he was working with and it wasn’t worth the effort. “She is definitely.” He turned to Kate and she gave him a shake of her head. “Garrett’s the son of a buddy of mine down here,” he told her quietly. “He’s a poor college kid and he does the pedicab thing for tourists to make extra money. I figured I’d toss him a bone, tonight.”

Kate angled for his lips. “That’s very sweet of you, Mr. Castle.”

“Niiice,” Garrett commented from the front, a mirror positioned atop the handlebar granting him a prime view of his passengers.

“It’s right down the road, I swear,” Rick mumbled to her. “Just try and remember how sweet I am.”

xxxx

Less than ten minutes later, Garrett stopped pedaling and announced their arrival with a grandiose ta-da of his arms. Rick hopped out of the carriage first and extended a hand for Kate, settled her on the sidewalk and returned to their pilot to discuss the next part of the plan.

Rick peeled a fifty-dollar bill from the fold in his pocket and presented it with his instructions. “Back out front in three hours, okay?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Castle,” Garrett said, hearts of love for the bill practically beaming from his eyes. “The Duchess and me will be here.”

“The Duchess?”

Garrett caressed the handlebars of the bike lovingly. “It’s what I call her. Pretty rad, huh?”

Rick was no one to judge. He was in love with a fictional character, after all. “Three hours,” he reiterated, moving off but quickly turning back. “And, not a big deal, but it’s ‘The Duchess and I will be here.’ Just for your info.” He just couldn’t help himself--a common story. 

“Righto,” Garrett replied, tucking his spoils into his front pocket and riding off.

“What was that about?” Kate asked. “Trying to find out where you can buy one of those things for yourself?”

Rick kissed her cheek and silently asked for her hand. “Please, I’d be swarmed by women everywhere I went if I rode around on one of those things. I’m sure that’s not what you want now that you’re lucky enough to have me.”

“What I want is to know what we’re doing here, wherever here is,” she said, breezing past his ego.

He pivoted and pointed out the restaurant just to their left. “For part one of the evening, we’re going in there. Once we get inside, you’ll see.” There were lights on in the two front windows, but the Open sign wasn’t illuminated and, like the cop she was, ever observant, Kate noticed that as they walked up.

“Are they even open, Castle?”

“For us they are,” he said, knocking on the door three times as though it was some secret, pre-arranged code.

A man dressed in shorts and flip flops opened to them a moment later. “Hey, buddy,” he said, offering Rick his hand. “And this must be your detective. Hi there, I’m Mel.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Mel. I’m Kate,” she said, curious as to how much he actually knew about her from Rick, already.

He shuffled the two inside and the door locked behind them, the place seemingly theirs and theirs alone. It was quiet save for the soft sound of piano keys spilling from speakers above, and the light around them  dim.

"I have everything set up for you to do your thing, just like we talked about, Rick. You’re going to head through there and beyond the door, and you’ll see it. George left all the instructions and they’re very simple, so you shouldn’t have any problems, and I’ll be back in a few hours to clean up. Just pull the front door closed when you leave and it’ll lock.”

Rick shook his hand one more time in thanks. “I appreciate you doing this for me, my friend. I owe you one.”

“Hope she’s impressed,” Mel said with a wink in Kate’s direction.

“Well, she’s already been treated to a ride in The Duchess, so I think it’s looking pretty good,” Rick replied amusingly.

“That kid and that thing, I swear,” Mel thought aloud with a roll of his eyes. “Anyway, enjoy, you two. Don’t burn the place down.”

Kate looked at Rick with confusion as he chuckled off Mel’s admonition. “Is that an actual possibility?” she asked after he’d left them.

“No. I mean, probably not. No.” He watched as she began to scan the entryway. “What?”

“Oh, nothing, Castle. Just looking for the fire extinguishers, that’s all.”

He pinched her playfully at the waist. “We’re going to be doing this together, so if I burn this place down, you burn this place down. We can send an apology card together after and save a few bucks.” He slid his fingers down her arm and wove them together with hers. “Come with me. Let’s go find the wine.”

xxxx

They wore matching aprons, Kate because her dress was nice enough not to risk and Rick because he thought he looked sexy in it--no surprise to her--and they were gathered around a table in the kitchen, preparing the ingredients for their soon-to-be Carbonara feast. Rick had imagined it quite romantic, the notion of cooking their first date’s meal together, and he’d made it happen in splendid fashion.

“I still can’t believe you bought out this whole place, Castle,” Kate commented for the second time, adorably focused on her assigned leek and lemon duties.

“And this is just part one of my brilliance. There’s still more to come.” He dropped the pile of bacon he’d cut up into the pan on the stove and it sizzled with the contact. “I just wanted tonight to be special. We only have a first once. How are you doin’ over there, gorgeous?”

“Almost done, I just have to grate the zest of that half. Did you put the water on, yet?”

“Yes, ma’am, I did,” Rick confirmed, their meal machine running smooth and steady. He sipped from his glass of wine and set it back down, his eyes only on her, despite the kitchen’s many active distractions. “I’m so glad you stayed. Have I said that, yet?” Around the table he came, then, hungry for something other than food.

“Only five or six times,” Kate said with a smile, tugging on his apron knot to pull him in. “I am, too.” They kissed each other like they’d still been waiting years for the moment, and parted resistantly but necessarily. “You should think about buying one of those for home, by the way,” she said of his cooking accoutrement. “It’s actually kind of sexy, after all.” 

And just like that, Kate had set off her own mind. She’d mentioned home, and it suddenly occurred to her she wasn’t sure where his was, anymore. He no longer had Martha and Alexis to go home to at the loft, he was enjoying island life, and they’d only just begun what it was they’d begun in time still measured in hours. It somehow felt like the city shouldn’t be an assumption she should make.

Rick reached into his pocket and plucked his phone. “Hey Siri,” he spoke into it, “add an apron to my shopping list.” She acknowledged and confirmed the request and he thanked her before turning to attend to his pan on the stove. “I told you they could be more than practical,” he said over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” she said after a long enough pause to stir his curiosity.

“Hey, you okay, chef? You stopped grating.”

It wasn’t the time, so she shook herself out of it. “Sorry, must be the smell of the bacon distracting me.”

“Is that what you’re calling me, now?” he said in jest, leaning across the table towards her. “I like it.”

Kate flicked him gently on the forehead and he recoiled. “Go check the water pot,” she said with a faint grin, “and tell me what’s next on the list.”

xxxx

Mel had a table set up for them in the corner of the dining room, a candle at its center, a rose set across Kate’s plate. They ate only by that light and filled the hush around them with talk and laughter. It was effortless, comfortable, yet it felt rousingly new, the spark that’d always lived between them finally allowed to breathe and to shine.

“This was fun. You can share my kitchen, anytime, Detective,” Rick said, pouring the last of the wine, “and if you show up wearing that, all the better.”

“It was a very sweet idea, Castle. I had fun, too, but I ate so much pasta, I’m not sure I can move. You think Mel would notice if I slept here all night at the table?”

Rick drew his arms up over his head and stretched. “I think most people would notice you from the moon, but not to worry, Garrett and his trusted girl will deliver us where we need to go next. How does your leg feel, so far? Okay?”

“Yeah, I popped an aspirin when you went back into the kitchen before, just in case. Why, are you planning on taking me dancing after this?”

“I think we might need a rain check on that, for now, but I’d love to at some point, so keep it in your back pocket. I think you’d be surprised at the things I can do on a dance floor.”

Kate tried to stifle her laughter, but failed miserably. “Sorry,” she said, clearing her throat. “Most things about you have surprised me, Castle. I’ll just add that to the list, once I’ve witnessed your Travolta for myself, of course.”

Rick glanced at his watch, and it was nearly time for them to meet Garrett, every moment, thus far, just as he’d hoped. “Speaking of surprises, can I ask you something?”

“May I ask you something?” Kate shot back, poking at his grammar as he was so accustomed to doing to everyone else.

Painfully, he had to swallow the jab. He’d done the very thing to Garrett earlier, after all. “I’m just curious to know what you thought would happen when you came down here. I know when I was in the cab that night on the way to your apartment, I tried so hard to believe something good would come of it, that somehow we’d see each other after all that’d happened and we could just magically be us again, but by the time I actually got to your door, my head was just filled with the things I’d said and done and they got the better of my hope.”

“I wish I had known you were there, Castle. I really do. Even if we’d just stood there and hadn’t said a word. Not that I would’ve known exactly what to say, at that point, but, just to have seen you.” In the reflection, she smiled as a thought crossed her mind. “I don’t think I ever told you that I brought one of your books with me to my dad’s cabin after I was shot.”

Rick wasted no time in jumping all over that. “You did? Which one?”

“I don’t remember which one it was, Castle,” she answered, shaking her head. “It didn’t matter which one. I just wanted to have a part of you with me that I could hold on to. I think something inside of me has always held on to you, and as for coming down here, when I got on the plane, honestly, I thought that was probably all I’d be leaving with, too. I definitely never imagined we’d be doing what we did in a dressing room the next day.”

“Ah, yes, my new favorite thing,” he said dreamily.

Kate tossed her napkin across the table at him. “You need to get out more.”

Rick pushed out of his chair and came around the table for her. “That’s not all you’ll be leaving here with,” he told her solemnly.

She used the strength of his hand to stand. “I know,” she said as she relaxed into his arms. “And I love you.”

“I love you, too. Now, are you ready for another ride in The Duchess?”

“You’re a strange man, you know that?”

Rick grabbed the clutch they’d bought with the dress that afternoon off the table. “I might be, but what does that say about you, Detective Beckett?” he said.

xxxx

Garrett offered to help Kate into the carriage as though she was some sort of a celebrity, his nervous excitement in the face of his swift crush charming if nothing else. He steered the two back towards the house, but the ride continued on past it and away from the lights of town, ending at the large gate of a private home a short distance away.

“This isn’t some Eyes Wide Shut thing you’ve brought me to, right?” Kate asked as Rick disembarked.

Garrett laughed, simply because Kate said it and not because he grasped the reference, and awaited his next instruction from the man with the cash. “Can you even get in there? Looks pretty creepy, Mr. Castle.”

“Rick, Garrett, it’s Rick,” he tried again to, he imagined, no avail. “The second of three,” he said, relinquishing another fifty, cringing inside about the god-awful piss water beer he knew the kid would end up blowing it on back at school. “Ninety minutes. You get us home in one piece, you get another, and I might be willing to throw in a little extra if you stop trying to flirt with my girl.”

“Castle,” Kate huffed from the shadows a few steps away.

“Righto,” Garrett responded with a sloppy military salute, his sole interest in the evening quite clear. “Really, though, can you get in there?”

“We’ll be just fine, I promise. Ninety minutes, got it?”

“Thank you, Garrett,” Kate added.

Not wanting to risk breaking Rick’s flirting rule and losing out on some unexpected dough, he offered her nothing in return before hopping back on the bike and taking off, leaving the two standing in the dark before the closed gate.

“Is there a password or something, Castle, or are you just going to push really hard?”

Rick reached into his pocket and came out with a key that he dangled in front of her face. “I know a guy,” he said, using it to unlock the gate’s side door.

The house in the near distance was enormous, its circular driveway, anchored by an active fountain bathed in spotlight, lined with expensive cars, and the sound of music pouring out from somewhere inside, the bassline thumping against their chests as they neared. Every room from every window they could see seemed to be illuminated, yet they could see no one in any of them as Rick led Kate around the side and down a curved path.

“I know you had a key, Castle, but did we just sneak in here? Are we breaking more laws than we already have?”

He stopped them abruptly. “You say that like it wasn’t worth it, but we both know just how worth it it was. If you’ve already forgotten,” he said, invading her space, “I’ll be more than happy to refresh your memory a few times when we get home. I’ve been thinking about it all night, just like you wanted me to.”

“I definitely haven’t forgotten,” she assured him, drawing a slow finger up the line of his jeans’ zipper. “But I do like your idea.”

Rick kissed her hard and fast. “Ninety minutes, I told the kid. I’m such an idiot. Whatever, I’ll carry you home, let’s go,” he said, bending to lift her.

“Oh, my God, Castle, stop!” Kate cried out with a swat of his arms. “Relax. Tell me why we’re here at Dance Club Keys.”

He released an exaggerated breath and shook his body out. “Okay, I’m good, I’m back, and we are going, hang on,” he said, guiding her to a spot where she had a view of the water out behind the house, “right down there.”

The boat was docked about fifty yards away, its outline adorned in tiny twinkling lights like a holiday tree, and like the house it accompanied, it was grand and worthy of attention, as it awaited them.

“You have a key for that, too, I suppose?” Kate asked audibly dazzled.

“Nope, no work for us, this round. Someone else gets to steer her. We get to just sit back and enjoy the ride. You want me to carry you down there? I was all prepared.”

Kate poked him in the arm and pushed him ahead. “Walk. I’m fine.” He took a few steps and then let her catch up. “But maybe I’ll let you carry me to bed, later.”

Rick looked up at the sky and mouthed a thank you to the heavens.

xxxx

“So, who owns this thing and that house?” Kate asked from the curl of his arms, her hand angled up behind her at the back of his neck. “You seem to have made friends down here with some pretty impressive people, Castle.”

He twisted for her ear and whispered. “Takes one to meet one,” he joked. “I have been pretty lucky, though, yeah. Everyone’s really cool and laid back. They’re just here to relax and enjoy life, you know?”

“What’s relax?” she said humorously and earned a squeeze. “I can’t believe how peaceful it is out here. We live so close to the water at home and I never take time to appreciate it.”

“Well, to be fair, the last time we were in it we weren’t having much fun,” Rick said, alluding to their daunting ordeal in the Hudson River, “so maybe that’s your subconscious at work, protecting you.”

“Ah, right, your girlfriend, Sophia.”

Rick maneuvered her body around in his arms so they were facing each other, her back against the boat’s railing. “Clearly, that relationship was lacking in many, many areas, not the least of which was her hope that I’d survive. I’d like to think the two of you differ in that regard.”

Kate tucked her hands into the back pockets of his jeans, dropped her forehead at his chest. “You know what they say about assuming, Castle,” she said with a wink in her voice. “I would really like to take you home tonight, though, so maybe try and stay clear of the edge, just in case.”

“I thought I was taking you home tonight.”

“I know you did, and now that you’ve wooed me with this view, can we please go sit and have some of that champagne?”

They sat out on deck together beneath the stars, the water calm and quiet on that Sunday night. Exactly one week before, Rick had been alone in a house that wasn’t his, staring blankly at a television that wasn’t his, because his attempt at the day’s writing had been just as futile as the prior day’s, and wondering what in the hell he was going to do about it and everything else, while trying to project to the rest of the world that nothing was wrong.

Kate had brought with her all the things that were missing, all the pieces of him that had been broken and scattered, and she’d done it with just one small bag hung across her likewise wounded body. She’d done it in spite of fear, in the face of doubt and pain, and where he’d once imagined her to be one of the strongest human beings he’d ever encountered, he’d become, as he sat there with her in that moment, entirely certain of it.

“You’re quiet, all of a sudden,” Kate remarked as their journey back towards shore began. “That almost never happens. What’s goin’ on?”

“Marry me.”

Without a beat, Kate chuckled and reached for the champagne bottle. “How much of this did you have, Castle?” she asked, shaking it in the air.

He looked back at her thoughtfully, weighed her reaction. “Okay, but I’m going to ask again,” he pledged, and then he was quiet once more.

Chapter Text

The tiny sound of the methodical drip of the faucet echoed throughout the hush of the room as they sat across from one another in Rick’s soaking tub, Kate’s return to New York now just hours away. They’d spent the majority of the last two days doing little more than being together in the calm of that place, that place that was once his alone but had become theirs, and there was nothing either had wanted more.

“You didn’t tell me what your dad said. Was he pissed you’re here?” Kate had finally given in and returned his calls after nearly two days of his attempts to reach her.

“He was pissed I didn’t tell him I was leaving the city, because of my leg and everything, but not that I am where I am. It’s fine. I’m a big girl. I know what I have to do when I get back and I’ll do it.”

Rick angled for her exposed leg and brushed her ankle with his lips. “Yeah, you have to not get shot, anymore,” he wisecracked. “I’m in full support of that plan, in case you were wondering, as are Ryan and Espo, I’m sure--especially Ryan.”

Kate snickered at the truth of it. “Poor Ryan. Espo gave him such shit. I’m telling you, you would’ve been proud, but I’m almost glad you weren’t there. I’m not sure he could’ve handled it from both of you.”

“Well, I’ll definitely have to make a trip up there after I prepare some worthy material.” He winked at her proudly. “Get it? Trip?”

She rolled her eyes. “Worthier than that, I hope.” He leaned back and settled against the tub’s curve. “Look at you. I knew I could make you into a bath person,” Kate told him noting his placid state, her fingertips tracing lazy lines along his submerged calf at her side.

“As long as you don’t mind me smelling like lavender. I mean, I probably would’ve gone for something like football or beer-scented beads, if I’d had the choice, you know, manly.” He pulled an arm from the water and flexed his bicep.

“Oh, yeah, that’s you, Castle, Mr. Sports. Sorry, but I’m pretty sure we won’t be seeing typing at the Olympics anytime soon.” With her toes, she sent a splash in his direction. “And it doesn’t matter, anyway. You’ll always smell like you to me.”

He crinkled his dripping brow with uneasiness. “What does that mean? Is that a good thing?”

Kate thought on it a moment, about how the scent of him affected her, and about how much she’d missed bringing it home with her from the precinct every night during their time apart. “I remember when we were sitting out on the front porch the day I got here, before any of this happened, before we’d said much of anything, really, you passed by me on the breeze and it was like these few seconds of pure happiness that I hadn’t felt in so long.” With hers resting up along the tub’s edge, she used his leg for leverage to pull her body upright and into his, his lips her purpose. “So, yeah, it’s a good thing. It’s one of my favorite things.”

He reached out and set her wet hair off her shoulders, their skin pink and marked by the sun. “You’ve made me many things besides a bath person, you know that?” Her eyes asked for more, though she spoke no reply. “Like inspired and proud and grateful and--”

“Sad and hurt,” she interrupted, knowing and hating both were true.

Rick ran a hand through his hair and pushed it away from his face. “Yes, Kate, and sad and hurt, but hear me and believe me when I tell you I’m not those things, anymore. These three...four, whatever, days with you have been some of the best days of my life, and that’s where I want us to be. I want us to be right here, in this moment, not back there.”

She’d managed to sidestep her brain’s persistence thus far, but tomorrow would mean back to the city without him, and she had no idea what that meant for them. “Rick, this is not me saying what I’m about to say to pressure you or anything like that because I’m not, but I’m flying home tomorrow, and you’re not coming with me, and I honestly don’t know when or if you’re ever going to, so maybe we should talk about how this, us, is supposed to work.”

“Marry me,” he said for the second time in as many days to yet another incredulous response.

“Castle, I’m being serious.”

“Okay.” He took her gently by the ankle, maneuvered her body so his was secured around hers from behind. He kissed her shoulder, sampled the beads of water on her skin. “I want to be wherever you are, but to make that happen, I need to tie up a few things down here with the house and stuff, first, that’s all. With my mother out of the loft, I was planning on coming up to check on things pretty soon, anyway.”

“You have yourself a true bachelor pad, now,” Kate said. “Lucky you.”

“You realize that means you’ll finally be able to live out that fantasy of yours to have me in every room of the place.”

She gave him a playful nudge in the gut with her elbow. “I’m sorry, whose fantasy was that?”

“God, if you only knew.”

Kate pulled his arms in tight around her. “So, you’ll come home with me?”

“Always,” he whispered at her ear, and she instantly felt the power of their word in her bones.

xxxx

Rick held her hand in the car all the way to the airport, never once relinquishing his grip. They left the house in the early light of morning, Kate’s flight set to depart before noon, and with the timetable for his return to the city after her set in the only place it could be for the moment: soon.   

“Sure you don’t want to quit that dead-end gig you’re stuck in and run away with me?” he teased, her posture of distraction palpable. “I like island you.”

Kate turned and eyed him quizzically. “You really want to leave the city in the hands of those other two yahoos? That seems unnecessarily cruel, Castle.” She raised their clasped hands and pressed a kiss against his. “I like island me, too, with you.”

“You’re right. I’m obviously not thinking clearly. See what you’ve done to my brain?” He let a moment pass before he went on. “Hey, all of this really happened, right? I really lived these days with you. I’m not going to wake up later underneath some coconut tree with a huge lump on my head, am I?”

She’d had the very same fleeting thought as they lay naked in bed the previous night, curled around each other in the dark. So many things about them seemed to make so little sense. The hows and the whys had begun to stack up from the very beginning, yet they’d somehow found a way to defy them, even when the battle appeared impossible to win.

“Well, I don’t know what your plans are for this afternoon, Castle,” she replied with a smile, “but your hand feels pretty real to me right now, so I guess all of this must’ve happened.”

“You weren’t sure, either, were you,” he said more than asked.

“I’ve had a moment or two, yes, I admit, but I woke up this morning and felt you in bed next to me and I decided I was just going to be in it and to live it, be in the moment, like you said, especially if I have to be without you now, again. I need to have this, to carry all of this with me, Castle.”

“Hey, it’ll only be for a little while, and then I’ll be there, I promise.”

“I know,” she acknowledged softly, the reality disappointing still.

xxxx

It’d taken them less time to get to the airport than expected, so Rick had parked the car and helped her inside himself, despite her anticipated insistence that it wasn’t necessary. He’d prompted her to use both crutches on their way in, though she’d only understood why once he’d disappeared for several minutes before the courtesy cart pulled around for her--something he’d arranged, of course--and she’d proceeded to give him shit for it. They’d kissed, they’d held each other, they’d made a plan to talk later that night once she’d gotten herself settled in at home, and before he’d gone, he’d whispered of a small token he’d hidden for her inside one of the pockets of her bag.

It wasn’t until she’d gotten to her seat on the plane that she’d gone in to find it. There it was, the paper label pulled from around a large, plastic water bottle, like the one he always kept beside his bed, folded up into a square. Upon opening it, she’d found a drawing of her slumbering face that Rick had created during one of their nights together, unbeknownst to her, and words written in his hand scribbled all around it.

Both were coarse, no doubt the lack of adequate light available to him at the time largely to blame, yet utterly beautiful to her in their rawness, and she’d read his words with quickened breath:

#

                You take my breath away. You always have, but with you here beside me, I realize I never truly knew how much my heart could feel. I wish you could see how peaceful you look. My flawed attempt at capturing it could never do the story justice. I know you’re still on a long journey that hasn’t found its end, but I hope when it does, you feel on the inside the way you look on the outside at this very moment.

             KB, you are my nights and my days, my heart and my soul. Because of you, I am more than I’ve ever been, and your love is more a gift than I’ll ever find words to express. So, for all the sketches you lost to the wind, I offer this to hold in their place. I know it’s not much, but it’s made with love, and give a guy some credit, would ya? It’s a damn label from a water bottle.

                                                                                                                #

She’d finally told him of her dream after they’d made love the night before, of the sketchbook and the flowers and the wind, of the sadness she’d felt looking back at that field and finding two people for whom she felt such profound love were both gone. He’d understood the fear and the confusion, the instantaneous loneliness she’d experienced in that imaginary world, because he’d felt the very same as he’d stood outside the glass of the interrogation room that day and heard her say those words.

She wasn’t certain how many times she read it over the course of the flight home, but the words continued to play after she tucked it into her pocket, close. It’d been just a few hours, but she missed him around her already, and while in one minute she found that absurdly silly, in the next it felt entirely seductive, the sensation of his hands and his mouth on her lingering in the most merciless and divine of teases.

Though it wasn’t part of their agreed-upon plan, once she made it off the plane and into the terminal at JFK, she found a quiet corner and dialed his number, if for no other reason than to hear the voice of the heart that penned what she just spent the better part of three hours reading.

“Any coconut sightings?” she asked amusingly when he picked up, absent any formal greeting.

“You’ll be happy to hear my head is lump free, Detective. How was the flight? How did your leg do?”

Kate didn’t care about any of that in that moment. “I loved what you wrote for me, Castle, what you drew. I loved them. I don’t want you to not be writing, anymore.”

“I’m workin’ on it, and I’m glad you loved them. You looked so beautiful,” he thought aloud, his dip into the memory audible in his voice.

“When are you coming up here, again?”

“Soon,” he told her. “Now, get out of there. Go home. Call me later.”

“I will. Try to write something today, okay? You can read it to me tonight before I go to sleep.”

The truth was, he’d already found his day’s inspiration, and he already knew what the something would be. The wheels were already in motion, and though she didn’t know it, they’d be taking him directly to her.

“You have yourself a deal,” Rick said, looking out the plane’s window at the tarmac below.

In just a few hours he’d be back in New York, too, without a thing in his possession other than what was in his pockets when they’d left the house that morning. He hadn’t left Miami after he’d dropped Kate off at the airport. In fact, he’d only made it a few miles off the grounds before he’d pulled off the road and started making calls to charter companies to see who could get him to her that night, and, luckily, he’d found one. Money brought misery to many, he knew, but it also opened doors, and there were few times he’d felt more grateful that he had it than on that afternoon.

After his flight arrangements had been set, his next call hadn’t been to Kate. His arrival would be a surprise to her, mostly because he could feel his pulse quicken when he imagined the look on her face, and also because he did things big and rarely simple and this undertaking had both of those covered. No, his next call hadn’t been to Kate Beckett, but to Jim Beckett, who, after an agreeable, albeit brief, conversation, would also be his first stop once he landed.

xxxx

Rick used a car service for the short ride from Teterboro into the city, bypassing a stop at the loft to ensure he’d get to his arranged meet with Jim on time. He’d suggested a coffee shop close to his office as he’d have to return to work when they were through, and he was already waiting at a table inside when Rick arrived, surprisingly ahead of schedule though he was.

“It’s nice to see you, Rick. It’s been a long time,” Jim said shaking Rick’s extended hand and offering him a seat.

“Nice to see you, too, Jim. Thanks for agreeing to meet me on such short notice. I know you’re a busy man and I’m sure you were surprised to get my call, so I appreciate you finding some time.”

A waitress wandered over, but Rick thanked her away.

“I will admit I was somewhat surprised, yes, but I talked to Katie earlier and she told me she was on her way home from you, so the timing made some sense. I guess I’m just curious why the face-to-face. Is there something wrong?”

“No, no, nothing to worry about, no.” Rick cleared his throat around his nerves and decided to come right out with it. “Well, sir, on most days I wouldn’t consider myself much a man for tradition, but because you’re as close as you are with Kate and because you mean as much to her as you do, it’s important for me to talk to you about this.”

Jim set down his cup of coffee, his understanding about what was taking place evident in his expression. “You want to marry Katie.”

“I do, very much, yes,” Rick said without any hesitation. “Jim, I don’t know how much Kate has told you about our time apart or the reasons for it, but I’ve just been lucky enough to spend the last four days with the most exquisite woman I’ve ever known, and there is nothing I want more than to spend the rest of the days of my life with her, as well.”

“Katie keeps things close, Rick, you know that, but there was something different about her without you. You’re the only one since Johanna, and I don’t know what it is about you because she tells me you drive her crazy,” Jim said with a gentle smile, “but it seems you’re the one. You’re the one she needs.”

“Yeah, she tells me I drive her crazy, too. Sometimes I feel the same about her, if we’re being honest men, here.”

Jim raised his cup as if to toast to it. “Tell me about it,” he said. “Now imagine having two of them like that. I was definitely outnumbered. Katie’s just like Johanna was.”

Rick knew well, of course, having shared a home with his mother and his daughter for years. “I think I have some inkling as to what you mean,” he empathized, wildly understating his appreciation. “I love your daughter madly, Jim. I don’t know any other way to say it, despite the fact that it’s my job to know just that, and I promise you I’ll make it my every day’s goal to see that she feels it.”

“I believe you will, Rick. After everything she’s been through, that’s exactly what she deserves.”

“She doesn’t know that I’m here, so I was going to head over to the apartment after this and surprise her. I’d like to ask her tonight. Would you be okay with that?”

It was Jim’s turn to extend a hand and he did. “I’d be okay with that,” he said and Rick just about flew out of his chair.

xxxx

Kate had arrived home and immediately stepped into a hot shower to wash off the flight, but it’d felt different without Rick’s body there, without his hands on her as the water ran down her skin, and she’d wished she could’ve just blinked her eyes and made it so. Her want of him had once felt overwhelming in its power, had kept her mind occupied with fantasies unrealized, but now that she’d had him, it had per positively dazed.

Refreshed yet weary, she dropped onto the couch with the only edible items left in the place, an apple and some toast, and reached for her phone. It rang three times before Rick answered--she had no idea from the back of a cab on his way to her--and his voice was every bit what she needed.

“Miss me, yet?” he asked like he already knew the answer.

“Parts of you,” she quipped, ever prepared for the game. “What kind of trouble are you up to without me?”

He couldn’t tell her everything, but he did share a bite of truth. “You told me I should write, so I’m writing. How about you? And, please know that whatever your answer is, I will be imagining you’re doing it naked.”

“Well, it’s Wednesday, so I’m washing all my windows.”

“What a thing!” he blurted. “Washing windows is my euphemism for--”

“Castle,” Kate swiftly interrupted. “I’m sitting on the couch with sweats on and a bruised apple in my hand. It’s all terribly sexy.”

The cab was stopped in traffic just blocks from her building and hadn’t moved in a couple of minutes, so Rick tapped on the partition and signaled the driver that he was going to get out and walk the rest of the way. “It is to me. Hey, Sexy Sweats, listen, can I call you back in a few minutes? I need to run and take care of something.”

“Sure, I’ll go refill my Windex bottle,” she said in jest.                                                        

Rick paid his cabbie, sliding him an extra twenty for the kind loan of his pen, and climbed out of the car for the sidewalk. In less than five minutes, he found himself inside Kate’s building and on his way upstairs, the memory of his previous trip there still painfully fresh in his mind, his nervousness equaled if not surpassed.

Stepping up to her door, he started to reach into his pocket for what he’d tucked away, but opted to leave it in place until the right moment presented itself, say nothing of the fact that he wanted his hands free for what was about to come. He knocked and he waited, and when he heard the click of the lock, he quickly tidied himself up, tugging his shirt straight and running a hand through his hair.

“I actually knocked this time, and you forgot this in the car,” he said to a face of absolute shock, pulling an elastic hair band from around his wrist. “I thought you’d probably need it.”

“Castle, what are...you flew all the way up here to bring me this?”

“These are important to girls, no?”

Kate stared back at him, her mouth all but hanging open, like she was trying to figure out if he was truly standing in front of her or if he was some figment of her fertile imagination. “How did you get here? Did you plan this?”

“You have to kiss me before I tell you because I haven’t stopped thinking about it since you left,” he told her, his gaze fixed on her lips.

With her shock replaced by relief in his actuality, she moved in and rewarded him hotly for his gesture, her own body likewise compensated. “I can’t believe you did this,” she panted before she captured his mouth again, his arms lifting her body off the ground and carrying her back inside.

“No crutches?” Rick asked when he set her up on the kitchen island and went back for the door.

“I sat all afternoon, Castle. I need to start building my strength back up so I can get back to work. I don’t want to be stuck here, anymore, or behind a desk.” She grabbed for his shirt and pulled him between her dangling legs. “Tell me how you got here,” she insisted, having given what he’d asked.

“No, I didn’t plan this. I dropped you off and I got back in the car to drive home and I barely made it out of the airport before I realized how unready I was to be away from you, so I turned around, hopped in a private jet to Teterboro, and here I am.”

She granted him access when he slid his fingers beneath her thighs to anchor his position. “Let me guess. You just happen to know a guy with a plane.”

“No,” he said with a taste of her neck, “I have a credit card. Today is a day I really love being rich.”

He brushed across a spot with his tongue and Kate sucked in a breath. “As opposed to all the other days?”

“Right, yes, just today,” he replied humorously. “You know, I don’t think you realize what it is you do to me, Detective. I don’t think you ever have.”

She drew back to look him in the eye. “You don’t think I can feel that?” she whispered. “I definitely can.”

“That’s not what I meant, but it likes that you noticed.” Kate reached down for the button on his jeans, never breaking their eye contact. “Wait, can I ask a favor before you make it impossible for me to put two coherent words together? Can I borrow your shower for five minutes, first, so I can feel like more of a human?”

“All I have in there is lavender soap,” she said with grin.

“You know what I like,” Rick purred. “Five minutes. That’s it.”

She signaled silently towards the bedroom with a tilt of her head and watched with a bite of her lip as he disappeared.

xxxx

With only a towel wrapped around his waist, Rick came back into the bedroom moments later to find her waiting. In his haste to honor his promise, his tanned skin still dripped with water, his hair was mussed and untended. Kate was now dressed only in a loose t-shirt, its sheer fabric hanging from her shoulder at one side, and she sat at the edge of the bed and drank in the sight of him, conjuring up images of all the things she wanted to do to his body once he took those remaining four steps towards her.

“Detective, what impressive water pressure you have!” Rick said, playfully drawing a literary reference, and he could immediately see it wasn’t lost on her.

“All the better to clean you with, Writer,” she replied in kind. “You look hot.”

He gave himself a once-over with the cue. “Flattery will get you everywhere, and you don’t look so bad, yourself.”

“I meant from the shower,” she told him puckishly. “Lose the towel, Castle.” Rick took two steps towards her but said nothing, reached down and plucked his jeans from the floor. She watched as he reached into the pocket and came out with something, let them fall, again. “What’s that?”

“This? This is why I’m here.”

Kate eyed it suspiciously. “A napkin? I thought I was the reason you were here.”

“You are. You’re the reason I’m here. You’re the reason I laugh. You’re the reason I feel inspired. You’re the reason I’m a better man every day. You’re the reason I see the world in new ways. You’re the reason I understand what love should be.” He began to unfold the napkin. She hadn’t moved a muscle.

“Castle…”

“You’re the reason I write, Kate, and you told me I should write something, today, so here it is. This is what came out.” He opened it fully and held it up for her to see. Marry me, it said, and that was all. “I know you thought I wasn’t serious when I asked you. I know you probably thought it was just words I spit out in a moment because that’s what I often do, but I was and they weren’t. Kate, I’ve known since the beginning that you were love for me. I can’t explain how and I can’t explain why, but that feeling was more powerful than any words I could ever think of.”

He closed their remaining distance and set himself down on one knee, the towel loosening and dropping from his body with the motion, eliciting a crook of her eyebrow.

“You sure know how to get a girl’s attention, Castle,” she remarked.

“This was all supposed to be a lot more dignified, just so you know. I even talked to your dad first. Something tells me you would’ve expected nothing less from me than a total mess, though, so maybe it happened as it should’ve.” He gave himself a disapproving shake of the head. “And I suppose I might as well just pile it all on, here, at this point, and tell you that in addition to being towelless, this epically classy proposal is also one without a ring, but you should definitely agree to be mine forever despite all of that because the credit card that paid for the jet to get me here will also be made available to you to pick out whichever one you want.”

Kate pushed herself up from the bed and gently took his face in her hands. “You wrote for me.”

He held the napkin up, again, this time with overt pride. “On a water bottle label and a napkin. That’s how much I love you.” His focus suddenly faded into the distance. “Note to self: buy paper.”

She giggled and reeled him back in with her touch. “I thought I’d lost you,” she said, feeling every bit of how close she came to that reality.

“I thought I’d never had you.”

“You did,” she told him, settling the hair behind his ears.

Rick rose to his feet and gathered her into his arms. “You didn’t. I’m right here.”

They remained that way for several minutes, immersed in the presence of one another, until Kate finally gave him what it was they both wanted.

“Castle, you should pick that up,” she said.

“I should...What?”

Kate looked down at the floor, at the carpet around his feet. He’d let go of the napkin when he stood and it had floated off behind him. “No husband of mine is going to be leaving wet towels all over the bedroom floor. I’ll tell you that right now.”

“Shit, sorry,” he said, kneeling for it without consideration of her words. It was only then that it hit him. “Wait, did you just accept a wet, ringless, naked man’s awkward marriage proposal? Is that what you just did?”

“He did ask very nicely.” Rick blindly tossed the towel over his shoulder and it landed just inside the bathroom door. “Oh, that’s very good,” she commended, sliding her shirt up over her head and matching his backward fling. “Can we celebrate, now, please?”

“I’m going to celebrate every damn day for the rest of my life,” he said, meeting her lips in a slow, deep kiss.

“And lucky for you, Castle,” she said once they separated for breath, “the one-year anniversary gift is paper.”

**

Farewell, you two, with profound thanks. My love for you and your magic is forever and always.

K