He had that sick feeling the moment he saw her. Raw, nauseous, he tastes his own bile, the saliva thickening in his mouth. The swirl of emotions too tight to contain. Too primal to hide. His erratic breaths vibrating the echo of his heart.
"What's wrong?" She's drops her hands from securing her hair, her attention turning to him.
He swallows, hard. Willing himself back on to the ground, desperate for a tether, he closes his eyes.
"Castle?"
"Rick?"
When he doesn't seem to respond, she moves from the doorway of the bathroom to sit beside him on the bed, his eyes still shut. Thinking maybe he'd had a bad dream she wants to comfort him a moment before heading off to work.
He flinches as she sits down. "What is wrong?"
"Uniform," the strangled word leaves his mouth with a sacredness that tightens her chest.
Oh.
Oh, Rick.
She touches his lip with her fingertips, "it's not the same one," is all she can manage.
"But you are the same woman."
"No, I'm not. I'm healed, I'm alive, I'm with you. Look at me." He looks into her eyes. She smiles his favorite smile for him. The one they both know is reserved for him alone.
"I am just going to a retirement ceremony today. Nothing more, nothing less. There will be food and formal speeches, none of which I am responsible for. I will smile and greet people and be done by lunch. It isn't like last time, . . . not at all."
His face seemed to soften a bit at her explanation.
"Need to hear more?" He needed a narrative, wanted to imagine her in the setting.
He nodded.
"Okay, I'm probably going to eat the little cheese and crackers they put out. Spill some spiked fruit punch on myself, which won't show because of the color."
He smiles a little at her. Her dark blue dress uniform shirt isn't buttoned and her white undershirt is exposed, he puts his hand on her waist, watching his own fingers as he rubs his thumb along the hem of her shirt.
"I'll probably have to keep Espo and Ryan from playing with their phones the whole ceremony. Do not, under any circumstances text them."
His looks up into her face and his smile spreads. Her schoolmarm warning-stare melts into a smile as she pitches forward to playfully clunk her forehead against his.
"Then there will be lots of hand-shaking. All the detectives will shake hands with all the other detectives, with the old Chief of Detectives, with the new Chief of Detectives. 'Oh hellloooo Detective Beckett," she sweetly mocked, "you still letting that writer-boy follow you around?'"
"And who will protect the city while you are all together? " he finally responds, smoothing a hand across her stomach between her dress blues and her undershirt, around her side, along her back.
"You want to go sit at my desk and keep everything together?" she teases.
"Can I?"
She smoothes a hand over his mussed hair, runs a finger along his ear.
"I hereby declare you protector of the city of New York," she bops him on the nose.
He gives her his full smile. "I love you Kate."
"I love you too, "she kisses him briefly, but he puts a hand to the back of her head, not letting her escape so quickly. The second kiss is sweet and clingy, she has to pull back a little to part them.
When they finally break apart, she strokes his cheek once more before moving to go to work.
xoxoxoxoxox
She has her hat in her hand when she spies him sitting at her desk. He's definitely taken her protect-the-city-duty seriously. He has his laptop laid out on top of her workspace and she can immediately see that he has moved all her elephants to surround it, like he is the center of the circle of life. She grins at the thought, he kind of is.
He stands up and hastily starts moving the little objects back to their places when he sees her approach.
"I see what you did there." He's expecting her to be upset, instead her voice tells him she's charmed. He's so got her.
"Oh, yeah, just making sure my partner's seat was warm."
"Don't need it," she lowers her voice, "I'm taking lunch."
She doesn't even sit at the desk, simply picks up her bag from the floor, spins around and heads toward the elevator.
"You coming Castle?"
oxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
She isn't all that hungry. Too much snacking to fill in those awkward moments between meeting people. She is, however, nursing a frozen coffee drink while he eats real food, regaling him with descriptive sentences of the people she's met today.
"As a writer, gotta say, characterization is a total turn on."
"Oh quit it, if I were describing cheese you'd be turned on."
"Damn straight, your descriptions are downright sexy, or maybe it's the mouth giving those descriptions that's sexy." He reaches over to grab her chin and she pulls away laughing, he can't help but half-stand from his side of the booth, lean over the table and insistently plant a quick kiss on her.
It's enough to make them forget what she's wearing.
Until the waitress drops the tray loaded with dirty dishes and the sound makes everyone jump.
His first instinct is to look in the direction of the sound; hers is to dive under the table. Once he realizes where she is, he's horrified to meet her doe-eyes as she peers up at him from the darkness, on her hands and knees. Her small body is tightly compacted into the space. He can hear her breathing, her inhale and exhale a rapid series of staccato notes.
"It was a tray, Kate. The waitress dropped a tray," he says simply.
He suspects she's about to fall apart, and he certainly isn't going to lay a hand on her like this, but they haven't talked about this. What should his response be? It reminds him of the day she dropped to the sidewalk in front of him.
That damn uniform.
It's a curse.
He slips out of his suit jacket and holds it out to her, waiting for her to take it.
She finally does, a moment after he thinks she won't, wills herself to slide over the smooth vinyl on the seat and sit back up, back into the light from the picture window their table abuts. His jacket becoming her talisman against the dark.
"Put it on Kate."
She opens it up and slides into it, it's huge on her, but she feels the need to wrap it around herself, needs the tightness, wants to suffocate herself in something other than her emotions.
"You cold honey?" a gray-haired waitress appears, clearing their plates.
Kate shakes her head without looking and, thankfully, the woman moves on.
A long moment of silence follows where the woman with PTSD hangs her head in shame. She looks impossibly small, swallowed it seems, by her companion's suitcoat.
"Can I touch you?" He finally asks, and when she shakes her head, he moves to sit on her side of the booth.
He hesitantly sits down, purposefully not crowding her, like he's sitting next to an elusive thing, a vapor, a wisp, and he doesn't want it to blow away. He feels the breath held between them, starts to speak, changes his mind.
"You know what I'm about to tell you has to stay between us," he starts, sees her face relax a bit despite her gaze fixed on her own hands, "but I stole that jacket from a big guy when he wasn't looking."
She's biting her lip.
"He may be after me right now, Kate," his narration tinged with warmth, "I'm going to need someone to protect me on the way home."
She's smirking now. He thinks maybe he's got her.
"What? He's a big guy, scary lookin' too, got a gold tooth, right here," he sneers his lip and scratches at his front tooth and she's drawn to look at his body language.
He smiles at her, more sweet than empathetic.
"I don't know Castle," she finally speaks, "I'm sworn to uphold the law, I can't endorse stealing."
He rolls his eyes to the ceiling, feigning contemplation, "Well then Detective, we have a problem," he looks back at her, "because I see you going down for receiving stolen property," he indicates the jacket with the pointing of his chin.
She's outright smiling at him.
"There is a solution, a way to get out of jail," he lowers his voice conspiratorially.
"What's that?" She'll play his game, she's always loved to play with him.
He crooks a finger at her, urging her to lean in and when she does he kisses her temple and brings his arms around her.
"We could run away together," he whispers in her ear, "go fugitive."
"Hmm," she exhales deeply, relaxes into him, rubbing his arm, "I know a place we can run to."
"Oh yeah?" His lips are planting light kisses in the crown of her hair. He moves a hand to pull the elastic holding her hair in a bun. Spilling it free, he smoothes it out a bit with his fingers and she lets him, laying her head on his shoulder.
"Take me home?"
"Yeah."
She wears his jacket until he takes it from her in the foyer of the loft. As soon as it's off he's pulling at the buttons on her uniform. She lets him. Her typical need to take the lead is exhausted today and her hair spills forward to curtain her face as she watches him untie her dress shoes, unbuckle her belt and slide the dark dress blues down her legs. When he's stripped her body of its cloth omen, he gathers the pile from the floor and unceremoniously dumps the burden in the coat closet, closing the door with more effort than necessary.
She looks so young, white undershirt, white panties, her hair a long curly mess. She's Venus. She's a goddess. She's his. And he's overwhelmed with his love for her, for their story. Today was an aftershock, a vibration finally reaching out from a history that's past. All that's left is a retelling and he wants her to remember it differently, without shame.
Their silence unbroken, he's assertive in his walk as he steps to swoop her up in his arms. Her arms come around his shoulders and she searches his eyes.
Tonight, he will only utter one phrase when he makes love to her, slow and sweet, meant to echo the only redeemable part of that terrible day.
"I love you, Kate . . .Kate, I love you."