Title: How to build Sandcastles.

Author: eyrianone

Rating: T

Summary: With no quest and no job there is still a summer to fill, and for Kate Beckett that means that everything right now is just . . . Castle.

Disclaimer: (From ViaLethe) – 'Words are mine. World ain't.'

A/N: Expect snippets of a summer – of a relationship evolving – and a love growing confident.


All we need is the truth in our hand.

Someone to call a friend.

Never fear the darkness.

All we need is just the sun in the sky, and the hope

of a summer to come with the meaning of love.

'Unknown'.


Chapter One: Telling Jim.


It's the first time she's actually left Castle's loft in the two days they've officially been 'together', and if the truth be told – Kate already misses him and he's been out her sight for about twenty minutes tops.

She's pathetic, just insanely, pathetically in love with him.

And Kate Beckett is inwardly amazed at how little she cares that he's finally dislodged everything else and set up residence at the center of her world.

Because she's truthfully, hand on her repaired-heart, tell no lies, never been so walking-on-air happy in her entire life. Never.

How is it possible to feel like this? So totally . . . alive.

And on the one hand she's just so bliss-ed out that everything in the world seems like its completely perfect, and on the other she is under no illusions that some of her realities have yet to fully sink in.

Like unemployment.

Like the end - no, not the end – the cessation, the conscious and deliberate ceasing of a life-quest.

It should freak her out – it really, really should – and it would have in the past - but now she can't seem to get there. There is no panic, no anxiety, instead there is just . . .

Castle. Everything right now is just . . . Castle.

She can close her eyes and picture him above her, his handsome features painted first with happiness, and then twisting into ecstasy that she's put there. She's sore in certain places that haven't seen action in a year and have suddenly gotten more attention in the last forty-eight hours than should physically be possible.

She can't stop the words 'I love you Castle' from spinning through her mind on perpetual replay and then falling out her of mouth every single time they come together.

And she's going to tell her father about them today – that they're an item – finally. Because her joy in this – it's too big to keep it in and she knows even though he's never said too much about it that her father has always secretly been rooting for her and Rick.

So Beckett's glad she has some good news for him today – because she honestly doesn't know what he'll think about the rest of it – about her resignation and her decision to let her mother's case go. She believes he'll be happy about it – she really believes he will – but she just doesn't know.

She's meeting her Dad at their usual upper west-side cafe- the one they've been using to meet up for breakfast or sometimes just coffee - since the day they both agreed his sobriety seemed to have finally stuck. He'd managed ninety days, and it seemed so monumental, they were both so relieved to get there that they've never changed venues in the intervening years – a superstitious ritual between the two of them that celebrated that victory without the need for further talking about it.

It's now simply a part of their father/daughter routine, and when she walks through the familiar door this morning, Kate isn't at all surprised when she finds Jim Beckett already waiting for her – he's always been an early riser.

He's grabbed a seat by the window to soak up the late spring sunshine and with his nose buried in the paper and a steaming mug of coffee in front of him – Kate takes advantage of his absorption to watch her father silently for a moment. To soak up the weather lines of his face and the familiar stubborn set of his jaw. She's pleased to see he looks more relaxed these last few months, more his old self. Because stress had made him lose a lot of weight in the aftermath of her shooting – and it's not like he had much to spare there to begin with. She also knows he made himself attend of whole slew of AA meetings during her recovery – that though he never – not once - said anything, he had to get help during that time in order to stay clear of the lure of the bottle once again. She's so sorry for that, that he had to nurse her through it alone – but he was the only one whose presence she could tolerate at the time.

The only one she could bear to see her as she was afterwards – so broken.

The memories call forth – as they always do - the bright echoes of remembered pain and a sudden tightness around her scars – and Kate wishes for long moments as she studies her father's gentle face, that she could have let Castle in back then. Let him be the tremendous source of strength (for both of them) that he is, wants to be - instead of being afraid to acknowledge any of it. It seems so silly now – now that this giant seismic shift in their relationship has finally occurred – it's hard to remember when you're feeling so happy - what you were so afraid of?

Loving him is just so easy - so effortlessly easy in the end.

It's living without him that's just – unthinkable, and if she's being honest, that is what she's always been so frightened of, that hurt, that devastation – all that emptiness she can so vividly remember seeing in her father's eyes for so many years – and sometimes still.

Because though losing her mother was like losing a limb – losing Castle would be the extrication of her soul – that wound from which there is no healing, and Kate knows her father of all people – will understand this.

She wonders if he'll be afraid – or happy for her? And she wonders why she's never asked him if he still believes it's worth it?


Jim Beckett looks up from his paper and his coffee when his daughter pulls out the chair on the other side of the table from him so that she can take a seat. He smiles automatically, the sight of her tall, lean and strong frame, her highlighted hair cascading around her shoulders and complimenting the green of her eyes – making her look more like her mother every day – it never fails to move him.

And then she meets his gaze as she sits, a smile curving her mouth and a "Hi Dad," falling from her lips, and his smile kinda falters as his mouth just gapes open in response.

Dear God. What on earth has happened?

His daughter's gorgeous eyes are filled with clarity – and it's stunning.

Mossy green with flecks of gold dancing in their sparkling depths, and clear, so clear they look bottomless and he's never . . . no not never . . .but not since his wife died, not in all the intervening years . . . since then Kate's eyes have always held shadows . . . and this morning – they're . . . gone.

This is his child sitting there, looking across at him. The little girl he used to read too, and push on the swing set - the one who was always laughing and full of mischief, with too much daring for her own good and his wife's unstoppable drive.

This is the child that was lost thirteen years ago, replaced in a single conversation by an adult with dark places in her soul.

Lost – never to be found again – or at least so he's always thought; that loss the cost of Katie's adoration of her murdered mother – the cost of his own desertion when he abdicated his parental duties and drowned his shattered heart in an ocean of booze.

But she's back – the daughter he hasn't laid eyes on since that fateful day, she sits grinning at him and he reaches out his hand, grabs for her – afraid she's just an apparition – feels his heart stutter when he encounters the subtle strength of her grip instead.

"You're staring at me Dad." She tells him fondly, softness and gentle indulgence in her voice that he doesn't ever recall.

His mouth, he finds, is suddenly dry, he shakes his head to clear it. But she doesn't disappear, this perfect, glowing, beautiful creature – this incarnation of his missing half – she just grips his hands harder . . . and waits for him to collect himself.

"Katie?"

His daughter nods, squeezes his hands again.

"Yes Dad?"

Jim Beckett swallows hard to clear his clogged throat.

"Katie . . . what's happened?"

The smile on her face brightens, turns inwards as well as outwards. Adoration washes across the planes of her face, illuminates her within . . . and Jim Beckett is stunned again at this transformation in his little girls' appearance. She's always been beautiful – even with the shadows - always, but today she's just . . . radiant. And then he knows. As the words to describe her go through his mind he understands suddenly exactly what this is that he's seeing in her – he recognizes it, remembers his own joy in it. Love.

And for his Katie . . . this can only mean one thing.

Richard Castle.

"Wait – don't tell me." He says around a brilliant smile. "It's Rick."

Her face goes shy. Draws in on itself, a natural reaction she's had since she was little, as she pulls her happiness back inside herself, guarding it zealously, as splinters of it, rays of sunshine continue to leak out through the fan of her eyelashes. Her smile is even shy, almost tremulous and she bites her lip – another habit since childhood – and he's so happy, so insanely happy for her. And for Rick too . . . Jim has never been blind to the writer's obvious love for his only daughter.

Kate nods, secrets flash across her face, a telling blush stealing into her cheeks and Jim forces himself to bite back a smile . . . some things a father is not meant to know.

"Dad I . . . you're right . . . we're together Dad – Castle and I . . . we're together now."

She pauses, and then decides its better to get the rest just out – like ripping off a band-aid. "And I need to tell you that I quit Dad. I quit the NYPD . . . I just walked away to be with him; to give us a chance at a life out of the shadows. I walked away from Mom's case Dad – for that chance, with him. I had too – because he's more important – I hope you can understand?" There is the purest sense of wonder all over her words he notices – even as she admits to something he can tell she's afraid he won't approve off. She's so wrong, he's insanely happy that she's chosen her own life - it's so beautiful to him. Her courage so achingly familiar.

"I'm really happy for you sweetheart; for both of you." He tells her. "Rick's a good man . . . and he undoubtedly loves you."

Kate sighs. "Yeah he does. I mean he really – he really does Dad . . . I'm just sorry it took me so long to accept it."

Jim nods. "Your mother was the same if you remember. It wasn't quite four years I'll grant you, but she took at least three before she opened her eyes enough to see me standing there. As smitten with her as your author is with you; magic women – the pair of you – bewitching – in every way."

Kate smiles softly, as she hears Castle in her father's words and then she grasps the opening.

"Dad . . . it is worth it – isn't it? After what happened to Mom, if you could go back, would you still risk the abyss, would you still choose to suffer the pain of her loss in payment for the time you had together?"

Tears fill his eyes, but it's the easiest question she could ask him, and he holds on extra tight to her hand now.

"Oh Katie." He whispers. "In a second, in a heartbeat – she was worth it – always."