Standing on her doorstep, heart pounding and clutching flowers, he's not sure how she'll react.
Half of him expects her to become furious and throw him out the door as soon as she sees him. The other half thinks she'll simply shut the door in his face without a word. It is Beckett after all. He never knows what to expect.
It turns out to be neither, thankfully. She answers the door, with a small, quiet smile and a 'hey castle'. There's a small pause before he responds with a 'hey', and an even longer silence before he asks 'where's josh?'
She looks down, and if he weren't paying close attention, he would have missed that slight tremble in her voice.
"Oh, he's in Africa." A laugh, a sigh, and a look in her eyes that's too brightly painted to be nonchalant.
"He's saving the world." (and yet he can't be bothered to save Kate Beckett.)
"Can I come in?"
(He kisses her, hard. There's an explosion of color behind his eyes, red, orange, yellow, and suddenly he can't get enough of her, her eyes, her skin, her lips. She moans quietly into his mouth, her hands tangled in his hair and he realizes it's the only sound he wants to hear for eternity.)
the flowers are forgotten.
(I'm here, if you need me. Always.)