"It makes you think about all those things in your own life that you don't want to put off anymore." - Kate Beckett
He spends a week in the hospital.
The first four days, he doesn't move. No bright smiles to diffuse the seriousness of the situation or the twitch of his fingers against her elbow as he tells tales of his heroic escape as if he itches to write down every detail. No words from the man who, time and time again, propped her up when she started to fall.
Just the beep beep beep of the machines and her eyes glued to the heart monitor, willing it to keep flashing the neon green mountains and valleys on the dark screen so she doesn't tumble down into the darkness.
Day Five, he wakes up. While the doctors and nurses check his vitals and ask him his name and birthday and what's the last thing you remember?, she runs to the fenced-in smoking area past the pharmacy and sobs against the side of the building. A nurse, cigarette wobbling between her fore and middle fingers, crouches in front of her and asks if she's okay. Kate manages to nod and the woman leaves her alone.
She walks into his room half an hour later and feels the wave of thankfulness sweep through her veins again when his eyes dart over to her instantly.
"Kate, I'm…"
"Don't you dare say 'sorry,'" she says, voice raspy and thin. "I can't take it if you apologize for something that is not your fault. I just can't."
He swallows, nods quickly. His fingers curl into the thin sheet over his legs. "Why are you still over there?" he asks quietly.
She forces herself to release the door handle and walk to the chair pulled up next to his hip, dropping gracelessly into the creaky plastic seat as the exhaustion finally hits her. Someone moved her copy of Wild Storm to the windowsill and the bedside table in front of her looks empty; she had to stop reading only a few chapters in, couldn't stand hearing the words in his voice as he lay motionless next to her.
His hand brushes her shoulder and she startles, her breath shuddering out too quickly. He doesn't stop, his thumb smoothing over the ridge of her cheekbone and she knows he can feel the fine grit of salt lingering there. "I missed you," he whispers.
A strangled noise escapes as her only warning a moment before she clutches at his wrist, her forehead bowing down to rest on his thigh. His free hand, the one not trapped under her body as she cries again, combs through her tangled hair, nails catching on the snarls.
"I thought I'd lost you," she whimpers into the blankets.
He smiles and she feels her heart burst open at the tiniest lift of his lips. "Told you. Can't give up if we want a happy ending."
She shifts her head just enough to touch her lips at the base of his ring finger. "Not giving up. Promise."
When she finally sits up, he refuses to let her hand go so she swipes at her cheeks with her left hand, letting him trace his fingertips over the knuckles of her right hand.
"I should call everyone," she says, already looking for her phone. "Let them know you're ─"
"The nurse said she'd take care of it. Said Mother and Alexis and your dad were already on their way. Just rest, Kate. I'm not leaving." He tugs on her wrist until she gets up, pressing a knee into the mattress at his side and carefully arranging herself against him.
She falls asleep slowly, hand warm on her arm and his heart steady under her ear.
He gets discharged on a Thursday morning.
Kate refuses to let him drive from Southampton back to the city. He joked about taking the keys from her until she dropped her bag onto the sidewalk, her fingers trembling and weak at the suggestion, her breath rushing out at the idea of history repeating itself. Instead of continuing to tease her, he picked her bag up and rounded to the passenger side of the sedan without a word. She pressed her hands to her thighs, willed them steady, and slid into the driver's seat.
He makes her stop at Tate's on the way to Route 27 to buy too many bags of cookies. They sit outside the pretty seafoam green cottage for a while, their table filled with open bags and crumbs covering their pants before she insists they get back on the road.
She picks at the tiny pieces of oatmeal raisin cookie left in the bottom of one of the bags as she drives. He reclines the seat and munches on the rest of the butterscotch.
"Not going to be any left if we keep this up," he says, licking at his thumb and crumpling up the plastic bag.
"If you keep this up, you mean," she replies, swatting at his wrist when he reaches back for another bag of the thin, crispy cookies. "Stop, Castle. We have dinner plans."
He flops back into the seat, wincing when he tweaks his shoulder wrong. "We do? I thought we'd just go home."
"It's just dinner at the Haunt with our family," she tells him, glancing in the rear view mirror for the sixth time in a minute. "If you're not up to it, I'll call and cancel. Everyone will understand."
"No. No, we should. But then home with you, Kate. I need to be home with you."
She nods, focused on the road; she'll freely admit that the story he told of the time between their phone call and being found staggering along the beach near Mecox Bay has made her paranoid about cars traveling behind her. "Always going to go home with you," she murmurs, touching his elbow with a soft smile.
He finds her after two hours in the bar in one of the booths, his fingers cold from the glass of ice water he has been nursing the entire visit.
"Home?" she asks, already abandoning her still-full beer glass on the table. He doesn't step back when she gets to her feet and she ends up pressed against him, his free arm looping around her back and his face buried in her neck. She hums, rubbing her hand over his forearm. "Yeah. Let's go home."
She navigates the route to the subway, guiding him with gentle nudges or little tugs of their joined hands until she pushes him into the only open seat on the car. He doesn't protest and instead, leans forward until his forehead rests on her stomach, his slow breathing warming a patch of skin just above her navel. Not asleep, though, because as soon as their stop gets announced in the garbled language of the train conductor, he sways up to his feet and walks toward the doors.
He moves slowly, the need to rest leaching his muscles of energy, and she focuses on matching his pace, on not pushing it on the walk from the subway to their front door. When he reaches for his keys, his face flashes panic.
"Kate, I don't have ─"
She moves closer, fitting the key into the lock. "We'll get you a new set. Don't worry."
"Want to change the locks anyway," he murmurs, picking her bag up off the floor and pushing the door open further.
He stands in the entranceway as she locks the door behind them, looking far too lost in his own home. Kate links their hands and feels his body relax into her side.
"Come on," she says, taking the bag from his hand and moving into the bedroom.
She has her jeans off, tossed against the wall to deal with tomorrow when she has more energy, and her fingers curled into the hem of her sweater to pull it over her head by the time she realizes he hasn't moved from the doorway to the room. In her underwear, she rejoins him, her left hand rubbing against his side. "Hey. Let's go to bed, okay?"
Castle catches her hand when she steps back, his brow furrowing at the single ring on her fourth finger. "We're not…"
"It's fine," she says quickly, reaching up to brush her thumb over his jaw, the rough stubble abrading her skin. "Whenever we get around to it. It's not as important as having you back." Kate pulls away, heading to the bathroom to brush her teeth and to give him a moment.
They pass when she comes back into the bedroom to get into her pajamas and he looks a little more settled. When he rounds the bed and gets in next to her, though, he loops his arm over her waist and tugs her back against him.
"I need to marry you, Kate," he whispers into her neck, his nose buried in her hair just behind her ear. "Tomorrow. Let's just go to a courtroom, find a judge, and do it. I don't want to keep putting it off."
"Your family, my dad," she starts.
He nods. "Yeah. Just our family. Just the people who matter."
She turns over, letting him pull her closer still. "You know you aren't leaving my side until then, right?"
"More than happy to stay right here," he says, touching a light kiss to her lips.
He wakes her with nightmares twice during the night.
She smooths her hands through his hair and over his shoulders, returning the favor of comfort he gave her for years.
Kate helps him pick out a tie, barefoot in her pale blue dress in their bedroom with her hair loose over her shoulders.
"No," she says, taking the deep blue one from his hands and tossing it onto the bed with the rest of the rejected options. "This." From the hanger, she pulls a blue, grey, and white diagonal striped one, looping it over his head. "It's softer," she explains, watching him tie it from over his shoulder before kissing his cheek.
She slides her feet into the nude heels, waiting in the hallway as he adjusts the collar of his shirt under the suit jacket. He takes her hand on the walk to the elevator, pocketing the apartment keys when they get to the lobby.
He insists on a towncar, a semblance of the wedding they missed, and she doesn't fight him on it.
It will take a while for her to be comfortable with him behind the wheel of a car.
Everyone meets them at the courthouse. Just their family, relations and precinct alike, gathered on the fourth floor outside Room 43 wearing formal clothing but nothing like the pageantry of the Hamptons. Those clothes tainted by the events of that day.
"You look beautiful, Katie," her dad whispers as he gives her a hug in greeting. "He still holding up?"
She shrugs, glancing over at Castle as he referees an argument between Ryan and Esposito. "I think this will help. Getting us back on track and putting everything else behind us."
"And you'll let me know if you need anything," he insists, squeezing her hand hard when she starts to move toward Castle whose eyes keep darting over to her.
Kate steps back into her father's embrace with a heavy sigh. "I just don't know how long he's going to hold it together, Dad," she admits quietly. "Or how long I'm going to hold it together."
Before he has a chance to respond, the judge hustles over to the group. "Detective Beckett, Mr. Castle, I'm so sorry," he says, glancing at his watch. "Judge DeVille just got into an accident on his way to court and I need to cover his schedule. So it doesn't look like I can officiate today."
Everyone's faces fall and Castle weaves over to her side, his hand tight around her wrist. "There's no one else?" he asks. "No one?"
The judge shrugs, already on his way back down the hall. "Not today. Sorry, folks."
He groans, his forehead hitting her temple. "Kate…"
"It's okay," she says, leaning her head into his. "It's okay."
"I just…" He swallows and she can hear the grief and frustration in the motion. "I just want to be married to you."
Kate turns her head just enough to press a kiss to his cheek. "I know, babe. So it doesn't happen today. We'll go get lunch with our family and start planning a real wedding. Third time's the charm, right?" she teases, elbowing him lightly.
"Come on, kiddos," Martha says when her son stays silent. "We'll treat to brunch."
They spend the next two hours over bottomless mimosas and french toast, his thumb smoothing over the bare spot on her fourth finger.
He breaks down on Tuesday.
She lets him cry into her lap on the floor of his office for an hour before he goes into the bathroom and she hears the water come on for a shower.
When he comes out into the living room another hour later in sweatpants and a t-shirt, she stands from the couch, her fingers red from her nervous twisting.
"I'm better," he says before she can speak. "I'm working on it."
"Maybe you could come with me on Friday," she suggests, watching as he walks toward the kitchen. He looks confused, pulling a plate down from one of the cupboards. "My therapy appointment. Or I could give you the hour with Burke. Just…" she sighs. "It helps, Castle. More than you could imagine."
He smiles at her, a tight, sad thing. "Let me think about it?"
"Of course. Yeah. Let me know by Thursday, though? I think he'd like some heads up about the switch, you know?"
"Can do. Want waffles for dinner? I'm feeling like some breakfast comfort food."
She mixes the batter while he heats up the waffle maker and starts microwaving bacon.
Kate keeps an eye on him the entire night, waiting for the cracks to show again.
She picks him up outside of the office building, an iced coffee sweating through the napkins she wrapped around the cool plastic in the heat. He trades her a soft smile and a kiss for the beverage.
They don't talk about the appointment but she sees the effects from even the single meeting as they wander the Upper West Side for the rest of the afternoon.
He drags her into the American Museum of Natural History to the planetarium show and for forty-five minutes, they watch constellations fly overhead in defiance of the time of day.
When they're finally shepherded out of the auditorium and back into the pale light of evening, Kate hooks her finger into the waistband of his jeans and pulls him up close against her.
"You know I love you, right?" she asks in the shadow of the trees in the park. "That I'm not stalling or something with the wedding because of what happened. I'm going to marry you, Castle. I promise."
He cups the back of her head, his fingers tangling in the strands of her ponytail as he forces her up onto her tiptoes with the ferocity of his kiss. Her hands curl into the fabric of his shirt until he tilts his forehead onto hers, his nose brushing over hers. She opens her eyes to find his bright with love and she wonders how she ever imagined she'd manage without him.
"I love you too, Beckett. And I cannot wait to plan our third wedding," he says with a smile. "That was never, ever in question. Ever."
She shifts to rest her head on his shoulder, letting her arms circle his waist and her feet get framed by his sneakers. "Good. But maybe we could go smaller this time. Find a place here in the city. No cars."
He laughs and she can't stop the stuttering giggle in response to hearing that lightness back in his chest. "Absolutely no cars. Everyone takes the subway. We'll comp them all their MetroCards."
Kate refuses to let him come with her to find a dress. She leaves him in the hall when Lanie comes to pick her up looking offended, telling him to instead find them a venue and that he could keep it a secret until the day of the wedding.
He meets her at the door three hours later, wrapping her up in a hug. "I found the perfect place," he declares, setting her back down.
She has to kiss him, to share some of that infectious happiness pouring from him. "Two things off our list then," she says.
"Where's the dress?"
"Alterations," she explains, slipping off her shoes and hooking the heels on her fingers as she walks into the bedroom. "I can pick it up in a couple of days."
He whines behind her, his fingers trailing over her back. "Come on, Kate. I wanted to see it."
"No," she says with a grin, dropping the shoes into the closet and turning to face him. "You wanted me to model it for you so that you could take it off me. And it's not going to happen unless you want to tell me the venue."
Castle frowns and Kate pats his cheek sympathetically.
"You'll be fine until our wedding. I believe in your strength."
"Can I have a hint?" he begs, already working to pull her shirt over her head, her hair falling back down to her shoulders. His mouth coasts along her collarbone, teeth scraping over the thin skin. "Please?"
She gasps, her fingers curling around his ears to tug him away from her chest. "Playing dirty."
"Works for me," he says, nipping at her wrist.
"Fine," she gives in with a flick against his cheek. "It's a dress."
"Not fair."
"A wedding dress, even."
He backs her up into the closet, her back hitting the interior wall as he angles her face up into the hard kiss. With his row of suit jackets at her back and his body in front of her, the sharp scent of his cologne surrounds her in a way that has to be a calculated move on his part. Especially when he hitches one of her legs up to hook at his thigh, rocking his body into hers to draw a strangled noise from her throat.
When they finally make it out of the closet, she has most of her clothes missing and he has kept mysteriously silent about the location of her underwear.
She hates herself a little for telling him how long the dress is in the haze of her first orgasm.
"What're we going to do for food?" he asks from the kitchen, a dish towel over his shoulder as he tends to the boiling pasta.
She turns, resting her chin on the sofa cushions to look at him. "Thought you were making me broccoli alfredo."
"I am," he says, grabbing the broccoli out of the steamer bag in the microwave and giving it a shake before emptying it into a glass bowl. "I meant for the wedding. Most caterers don't work last-minute."
"Babe, we haven't even picked a date. Still time to find someone." She gets up, circling over to the fridge to pull out a bottle of pinot grigio chilling on the door.
He hands her the bottle opener as he drains the pasta in the sink, bouncing the colander to get as much of the water out as possible. "When's your dress ready?"
"Yesterday. Went and picked it up while you were having lunch with Alexis."
"So we could be married right now," he muses. "Let's go get everyone. We'll feed them pasta and get married in our living room."
She pats his hand, passing him the glass of wine. "No, Castle. Let's pick a date."
"July 5," he blurts out as he mixes the sauce, pasta, and broccoli in a big bowl. "Next Saturday. I'll call Hous─ the venue and see if it works."
Kate watches him for a moment, plates tucked under her arm and her hand filled with silverware. His expression mirrors the one he wore on one knee in the soft grass of a playground over a year ago. "Okay. July 5."
He abandons the pasta on the counter, takes the placeware from her hands, and tenderly brushes his lips over hers. She sighs, relaxing into his embrace as he repeats the motion slowly, each pass over her mouth warming her down to her toes. When he pulls back, she sees the wide smile. The same smile he beamed at her when she said yes.
"And I think I might have an idea on who can cater. She owes me a few favors," Kate says, taking the plates back from him to continue setting the table. "Plus, I can always bring up that time we skinny dipped in the fountain in Washington Square Park."
"Madison? Yeah, she'd be great." He pauses, halfway to sitting. "You skinny dipped in Washington Square Park? When? Why?"
"A dare," Kate responds with a shrug, already focused on their dinner and not on the shocked expression still spread over his face. "Eat up, Castle. Might be willing to repeat the event as an early wedding gift to you."
She laughs when he chokes on a piece of broccoli in his haste to finish dinner fast enough.
A little after two in the morning that night, she does a striptease for him in shade of the trees before he chases her across the moonlit stones and into the fountain, their laughter nearly giving them away.
She makes him leave the bedroom as she gets dressed. She can hear him whining from the other side of the door, can hear Martha tell him to be quiet.
Even as she pins her hair up, she can feel the anxiety radiating off him through the solid wood. So when she steps out into the living room, she isn't at all surprised when he spins around to see her so quickly that he knocks one of the photos off the side table.
"Oh, Katherine, darling," Martha sighs, the bracelets on her wrists jingling as she clasps her hands. "You're gorgeous."
She ducks her head, smoothing her hands over the skirt of the dress. "Thank you, Martha," she whispers.
"I'll meet you two at the venue," says Martha, stepping into the hall and closing the door behind her.
He stays silent, still on the other side of the couch with his eyes on her. "Kate," he breathes finally, stepping around the sofa and trailing his fingertips over the skin of her bare shoulder.
"So?" she asks, twisting her hands together and feeling the stone of her engagement ring scrape over her palm. "This work?"
"Kate, it's… You're…"
"Speechless. Must be good then," she teases, reaching up to fix the collar of his shirt, tucking it into place under the jacket.
He loops his arm around her back, tugging her closer until the ivory hem of her skirt hides the polished black of his shoes. His hand warms the wide triangle of skin bared by the back of the dress and she gets to watch his mouth fall open at the discovery.
"Definitely good," he murmurs. "So good." His pinky dips down under the fabric at her back, making her hips jump forward to collide with his thighs.
"Stop," she says, linking their hands as she heads toward the door. "Plenty of time for that after we're married."
He walks behind her; she can feel his eyes on her ass, on how the flared bottom of the dress reveals peeks of her legs. For all their joking about taking the subway, Kate feels a great rush of relief to see Castle's regular driver from Black Pawn waiting for them on the curb next to the towncar.
"Congratulations, Mr. Castle, Miss Beckett," David says when they step out onto the sidewalk. He opens the door for them, holding a hand out for Kate when she ducks her head to sit in the backseat. "Any stops before we head over?"
"Nope. Just avoid ditches and SUVs, please," he responds as he slides in next to Kate.
David grins. "Ditches shouldn't be a problem in Manhattan, sir, but as it's a short ride, I'll try my best."
"Where are we going?" she asks when the driver starts the car up. "I showed you the dress. Tit for tat."
"It's a short ride," Castle repeats. "Really short."
She narrows her eyes at him. "Fine."
Kate hardly has a chance to hold it over him when the car stops along the curb not three blocks from the apartment. Castle opens the door before David gets around the car, helping Kate out.
"Housing Works," he explains, standing outside the bookstore. "It seemed perfect when I was looking. All of the money for the down payment and everything went to helping the homeless with HIV and AIDS. And there are books. Tell me I did okay."
He sounds genuinely nervous so when she turns to face him, she pushes up on her toes to give him a kiss that combines both sweetness and the sharp bite of her teeth on his lower lip. "It's perfect," she says, touching her lips to his once more.
"Hey! Bad luck to see the bride before the ceremony!" shouts Esposito as he walks up from the direction of the subway stop.
Lanie elbows the man, shaking her head. "You two look good," she compliments, pulling Kate in for a hug. "Ignore him."
The rest of their group already made their way inside, all of them spread out over the hardwood floors with drinks in their hands. Immediately, Kate smells the books, the old paper and ink and leather covers mixing with the scent of coffee from the little café and the bright floral from the arrangements set around the tall pillars, strung through the rungs of the spiral staircase leading to the balcony. Someone strung patio lights across the space, the fuzzy light softening the dark wood.
All of it reflects them beautifully.
Her father finds them once they step through the dark green doors. He shakes Castle's hand, whispering something into his ear before Castle moves away to greet his mother and daughter.
"How're you feeling?" her dad asks, handing her a mason jar of water, slices of lemon and cucumber floating with the ice cubes.
"Grateful everyone made it here without bursting into flame," Kate says with a tiny smile. She still can't quite joke about that May afternoon without feeling the heat of the burning car on her skin again, the roughness of the gravel under her knees. "Ready. I'm just really ready."
Jim grins. "Well, you know what they say," he says, looking over at Castle across the room. "Fifth time's the charm."
Kate rolls her eyes, sipping the water from the spiral-printed straw and leaving smudges of her lipstick on the white and red twirl. "Only the fourth try for me, Dad."
"That does put a kink in the saying," he muses. "But you know it doesn't matter. The number doesn't matter. It only matters that you're the last. And you will be. I know it."
Some of that little-girl fear creeps back in and she tightens her grip on the glass so it doesn't fall to the floor. "How do you know that?"
"He looks at you the same way your mother looked at me."
"Dad," Kate whispers, stepping into his hug. She takes a steadying breath as her dad presses a kiss to her cheek. "Okay. Let's do this."
It doesn't take long to get everyone settled; there aren't many people present after their insistence that this ceremony - the real ceremony - be restricted to the ones that truly matter to them. They abandoned tradition: her dad sits in the front row without giving her away, she walks down the very short aisle on Castle's arm, and the bridal party do not stand at their sides.
Castle takes her hands when the justice of the peace steps up to her place. His thumbs keep rubbing over her knuckles and he keeps smiling. She doesn't hear a word the justice says next to her, nothing about love and devotion and loyalty and having a steadfast heart. But she does see the absolutely pure joy on Castle's face and she knows he isn't hearing anything either.
She notices the extra weight, slight as it is, and it provides just enough of a change to break her from the trance.
"Congratulations," the justice of the peace says, closing her folder and stepping back. "You may now kiss your wife."
Sweet and gentle and she can taste the finally in both of their mouths.
His forehead falls to hers, his breathless laugh warm over her face. "We made it," he murmurs.
"Thank God," she sighs, her hands curled around his biceps as if to keep him there. As everyone applauds, she tucks her head into his neck, hiding the tears for a moment. "Thank God, Castle."
They don't have a cocktail hour. Instead, they all move to sit at the two tables clustered together. Not the dozens from the Hamptons. Just two for the twelve of them. Maddie sent her regards and congratulations along with a comfort food menu of fontina mac-and-cheese and thin-sliced steak with baby potatoes tossed in rosemary and sea salt, chicken tenders with a spicy ginger sauce and warm tomato soup.
Castle plugs his iPod into a speaker system, hitting play to start up a playlist they all spent a day coming up with, group text messages adding song after song until the list could play for two days without repeating. A mix of pop and rock and ballads and all those songs that everyone insists on hearing at a wedding.
The Ryans leave first, Sarah already asleep in Jenny's arms. Gates and her husband wish them well before ducking out into the nighttime air. Then the clock hits midnight and the bright wash of adrenaline drains out of Kate.
"Castle? Let's go home," she suggests, wiping at a bit of frosting from their cupcakes still lingering at the corner of his mouth.
They say goodbye to their remaining family outside Housing Works before getting into the car. She can't keep her eyes open on even the short ride back to their apartment, empty but for them. Neither of them bother turning on lights, feeling their way into the bedroom, shedding clothes as they go.
He drapes her dress over the armchair under their seashells after they thoroughly celebrate, brushing out the wrinkles in the satin as she gets them both clean underwear, tossing boxers and a t-shirt at him before getting back into bed. She curls into his chest, his left arm around her back and her head on his shoulder.
As she drifts off, she feels him twirling her rings on her finger, his lips soft against her forehead as he whispers, "I'm so glad we didn't put this off anymore."