A/N: A special thanks to the wonderful Alex, who read over this for me ages ago.
Castle takes a deep breath standing outside of her room, just out of sight from the patient inside. It's been exactly a month since Kate Beckett was admitted to the burn unit of the hospital after surviving the explosion of her apartment and she's proving to be one of their most difficult patients yet. But he can't blame her, not after all she's been through and the still long road of recovery ahead of her.
So he plasters on a smile, enters her room with a chirp of greeting and a new set of charts displaying her progress, and receives a scowl in return that has her wincing.
The flames only kissed her face, caressed her cheeks in first-degree burns, singed her hair and licked at her ears, but the damage becomes worse along her neck, down to her shoulders and chest. The most severe of the burns, though, decorate her legs, her sides, and her back.
"Sanders told me you refused to do your physical therapy," Castle starts, pretending to read off the chart, choosing not to repeat the other man's choice words about her. No, she isn't the most pleasant person in the burn ward, rarely did they have a patient who was, but he's never expect her to be. Her life has been turned upside down, her body scalded by flames, her home in ashes - he considers it a victory that she's willing to wake up each day.
"Sanders is an asshole," Kate grumbles, diverting her gaze to her exposed legs, glaring at the recovering limbs.
"I'm sorry I wasn't in for your skin grafting today," Castle murmurs, hooking the chart on the edge of the bed and easing towards her.
"I don't need you around to hold my hand," she bites out, but the words are raspy, raspier than usual. Her vocal cords are still healing from the excessive smoke inhalation that leaves her straining to speak sometimes, but she's making progress, slowly reclaiming a voice he's realized is quite beautiful.
"Shh, no need to lie, Kate. I know I'm your favorite nurse."
"I hate you," she grunts, but her left hand softens from its tense fidgeting at her side when he brushes his index finger over her knuckles, over the waxy path of pale skin and ruptured blood vessels. Her right hand is practically untouched, healed from the superficial burns it sustained. It frustrates her more, he thinks, to have pieces of her body that survived the fire without the scarring that will inhabit her flesh for the rest of her life, to see the intense contrast between the smooth and the devastated skin.
"It looks good," Castle comments, grazing his eyes along her left leg, over the patches of skin that will aid in healing the worst of her burns.
"It looks like I'm a patchwork quilt."
"I like it. Patchwork quilts are filled with stories, you know. Each patch has a different one."
"It hurt," she sighs, twitching her bad hand under his. He brushes her arm in response, careful when skimming the damaged skin of her forearm, her bicep.
She shifts under the graze of his fingers. Castle pauses over the muscle that she forces into a flex, showing off one of her latest accomplishments.
"Does it hurt when I touch you?"
Something flashes in her eyes, a flame of a different kind.
"No. I don't mind when you touch me." His fingers travel up to the exposed skin of her neck at the murmur of permission, caressing the line of her throat stained in blotches of discolored skin still trying to heal, up to the line of her jaw seared with the scar she received when her burning apartment collapsed all around her, upon her. Kate watches him with curiosity and challenge as he skims the bone of her cheek, traces the ear she can barely hear out of now. "It's… nice to be touched again. Especially by someone who isn't repulsed."
"Burned or not, you're far from repulsive," he huffs, withdrawing his hand because this has to be some form of inappropriate contact. Sure, he's just examining his patient, checking the healing areas of her skin, but the familiar tension simmering between them says otherwise.
"Burns and scarring cover my body from practically my head to my toes," she mumbles, usually angry when they fall into this conversation, but now… her words are tired. Everything about her is tired, exhausted from the extensive recovery process, from the constant companion of pain that is always spilling through some part of her, from being so obviously miserable. "I don't blame anyone who's unsettled by my appearance. I'm not a fan of it myself."
"I've seen pictures of you from before the fire, you know," Castle murmurs the secret he never planned to share, earning a horrified dart of her widening eyes to his face. The surprise fades a mere second later, though, the idea of him snooping is hardly a shock, he's sure. Did she really expect him to refrain from researching her, from devouring every morsel of information he could find on the remarkable detective who has the most outstanding closure rate in the city and once upon a time looked absolutely adorable in her uniform? "You were stunning."
Her lips purse with indignation, but he lifts a hand in supplication. He isn't finished.
"You still are, Kate."
She scoffs at him now, frustration pinching the corners of her eyes.
"You still have a gorgeous face," he continues even as she pretends to ignore him. "And those eyes I can never quite determine the color of." The edges of her lips flicker with the threat of amusement. "Plus, you still have a killer body. It's just covered in a story now."
"That doesn't make me feel better," she rasps, but her damaged hand extends outwards, searching for his on the edge of the hospital bed. Rick twines their fingers, studying her swollen hand, her fingers like wax, scorched from the flames that tried to melt them.
"Then I'll remind you how striking you are every time I see you until you believe me," he states, smug and sure of himself, because it isn't a lie.
He's been with quite a few women in his time, beautiful women, all stunning in their physical appearances, but despite the burns and scars scattered across her body, Kate somehow manages to outshine them all. Her wit and dry sense of humor, her drive and determination, the kindness he's seen her show towards the other burn victims she's encountered throughout her time in the ward - it all encourages the crush he's seemed to develop on her, it makes him feel things he hasn't before. It makes him wish that he could be more than her nurse.
But she doesn't need to know any of that yet.
"Actually," he says before she can protest his promise. "Once you're well enough to be transferred out and I'm no longer your nurse, I'm going to ask you on a date, Kate Beckett."
A laugh bubbles past her lips, the first laugh he's ever heard from her. It happens to be the most wonderful sound he's ever heard.
"And if I say no?"
"I'm persistent," he quips. "And we both know you're attracted to me, especially when I wear my scrubs."
Kate pins her bottom lip with her teeth to suppress her smile, shaking her head at him the entire time.
"I don't need a pity date from you, Castle."
"Pity date?" he repeats with mock offense, smacking his free hand to his chest, creating a scene to keep that smile in place. "I am taking advantage of the chance to go out with the hottest patient in the ward."
"Funny," she drawls, but her lips have bloomed into a gentle grin he's never seen before and her eyes are shining like stars instead of embers. He has the sudden but intense yearning to make Kate Beckett look like this for as long as she'll allow.
And oh, there may be a reason to make that smile grow even more brilliant.
"Almost forgot," Castle murmurs, digging in the pocket of his pants, coiling his fingers around the jewelry box. "I have something else that might make you feel better too."
Kate inclines her head towards him, wincing at the scorched skin on the side of her neck that pulls with the action. But her concentration shifts from her pain at the unfurling of his hand, her brow furrowing when he presents her with the palm sized box.
"What is it?"
"Beckett, telling you what is in the jewelry box before you open it would be extremely anticlimactic."
She rolls her eyes and snags the box with her good hand, shakes off the fingers he has curled around her damaged one so she can ease the box open.
Her lips part once she does, breath catching. Her eyes go wide as her fingers graze the gold of the chain.
"You… how did you find it?" she whispers, lowering the box to her lap but withdrawing the chain carrying the ring. Her mother's ring.
She told him about the lost keepsake a couple of weeks ago, on one of the particularly harder days of her time here. It cracked his heart wide open to watch the anguish fill her eyes, sent anger coursing through his veins to learn that she lost not only her home because of the bastard now securely locked away in the tombs, but also her most prized possession.
Which led into the truth about her mother.
He doesn't think the fissures instilled in his heart during that conversation will ever heal completely.
"I went to the scene last week, asked them to comb through your place one more time, as thoroughly as possible," he explains, recalling all of the bribing he did. His wallet may need some extra time to recover as well. "They found it beneath the worst of the wreckage, along with your father's watch. I have that too, but it had a nasty crack in it, so I'm having it repaired. Is that-"
"Castle," she chokes, digging her teeth into her bottom lip, but the moisture still gathers and pools in her eyes, trickles down the healed skin of her cheek.
Not once has he witnessed Kate cry for any reason other than physical pain and it shoots an arrow of panic through his chest.
"I'm sorry," he begins to stammer, but Beckett only releases a watery chuckle at his expense. She reaches to reclaim his hand with the fingers not intertwined in the gold chain he bought to replace the soot stained string of ashes the last became.
"I don't want you to be sorry," Kate breathes, the gentle smile back and lacing like a welcome noose around his heart. "I - this is arguably the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me. Thank you."
"Anything for you," he murmurs. It takes him a second too long to realize what he's said, that he means it, but her expression doesn't falter or change, still soft and lovely and making him wish he could crawl into the cramped hospital bed with her and just stay.