A/N: This is a birthday fic for my dear sweet friend BlueOrchid96. Her birthday isn't until Thursday, but I'm starting the drumroll today because she deserves a big build-up.
This 'what if' was a request from the birthday girl. It follows the explosion in Kate's apartment in season 2, ep. 18 'Boom', imagining how Kate staying at Castle's loft might have gone a little differently...if I'd been in charge and certain people's imagination had a say in events. ;)
"Plays you like a fiddle
Shakes you like a rattle
Takes away your gun
And sends you into battle
Huffs and it puffs
'Til it blows your house down
And you don't know your heart
From a hole in the ground
Stupid love is stupid
Don't know why we always do it
Finally find it just to lose it
Always wind up looking stupid
Stupid"
- Kacey Musgraves, 'Stupid'
Chapter 1 – Ignorance
"Castle, I'm fine. Stop fussing," insists Kate, taking the canvas bag she just retrieved from her locker at the precinct from Castle's hand and then standing awkwardly in the entranceway to his loft with the bag bouncing off her shins.
Twenty-four hours ago her apartment exploded, Richard Castle rescued her from the rubble…naked. If her brain isn't functioning properly right now, she suspects his might not be either.
She has a meager selection of mismatched gym clothes she's not sure are even clean and some toiletries she really should have updated ages ago, a few items she managed to purchase this morning, as well as some stuff she borrowed from Lanie and that is it - the sum total of her life's possessions all in one small gym bag until she gets another chance to visit the scene and pick through the remain of her charred belongings.
"Do you wanna take a bath?" Castle asks, surprising her, more nervous than he usually appears, the cocky, joking, bantering man she knows so well left town for now.
"Is that a none-too-subtle hint?" she challenges back, half wary, half teasing, as she tries to lighten the atmosphere for both of them by pulling at the neck of the beige sweater she's wearing and giving it a sniff.
"Beckett, I'm just asking if you would like to take a bath. No subtext, I promise," he replies, holding his hands up to show he has no ulterior motive.
"Oh. Oh, right," she replies, a little embarrassed and a little disappointed at the same time.
Subtext sounds nice on occasion coming out of writer boy's mouth, and right now might just be one of those occasions. She has lost her home - her touchstone, her safe place, her sanctuary - and she needs normality…fast.
"You must have got pretty banged up leaping into the tub when that thing blew. I thought maybe a soak might help," he tells her, already walking away, dropping his coat onto a chair and then heading towards what she assumes must be his bedroom. "I have Arnica gel in here somewhere if you've bruised anything…and bath salts," he calls over his shoulder, and somehow none of this surprises her at all.
"Of course you do," she mutters to herself, looking around his loft space now that she is alone.
She's been here before of course, but always with the bustle of his family around them. It's beautiful – spacious, stylish and he has so many individual, quirky little items placed here and there that she wants to touch, to handle, to examine and ask questions about. So many curios and coffee table books, photo frames and objet d'art and…
"Beckett? You comin'?" he calls, suddenly reappearing with his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows, his muscular forearms bare.
Kate finds herself staring wordlessly at him, gaping like some brainless guppy for a few seconds, before managing to make a small grunting sound that she hopes he takes for a 'yes' as she follows him into his private space.
She can hear the sound of the tub filling already. His loft has excellent water pressure, naturally, evidenced by the thundering spray echoing throughout the tiled space, putting the drizzle from her own building's ancient, cranky plumbing to shame... Well, no need to worry about that anymore.
Kate stands by the bottom of his bed, staring up at the huge black and white photograph of a bull elephant that looks down from his bedroom wall. The image is oddly arousing in its blatant masculinity, and something about what it says about his bedroom is comforting too – that this is the domain of a male, untrammelled by feminine frippery. There are no perfume bottles on the dresser, no framed photographs of smiling, preening women, beyond one of Alexis and Castle, the little girl no more than six years old riding her daddy's shoulders. No, this space says 'single male'. The bedding and the décor: all rich, dark and rust-colored, the art saying the same. Kate feels at home here instantly, and that unsettles her - why she should think like that at all, why she should care if other women have shared this space with her tag-along shadow, now or in the past. She's upset, she's clinging to something familiar. That is all this is, she tells herself. Nothing more.
Shock has woven a protective blanket around her, numbing her brain, deadening her reaction to the threat and the loss as effectively as any drugs. She feels as if she needs space and yet doesn't want to be alone. She can still feel Castle's arms around her as he helped her out of the tub and through the ruin and destruction of her burning home. She needs more touching and none at all. She doesn't know what she needs…she only suspects what she wants. And she's afraid of what she wants. She's so messed up she's worried it might be him.
"Do you want me to add some bath salts or do you prefer bubbles?" comes Castle's muffled question from behind the open bathroom door.
When Kate fails to answer immediately he reappears in the bedroom drying his hands on a towel, a concerned look on his face.
"Beckett? You okay?" he asks, moving closer to her, but thankfully not close enough to touch.
Kate nods, her eyes still darting around the room, giving her thoughts away to the writer instantly.
"Here. Let me take that?" he says gently, prising the bag from her frozen grip, her knuckles white where they are clamped tightly around the handles.
"Look, Beckett, I know this is…" he begins to say something like 'difficult', draping the towel over one shoulder in a casual way that makes her mouth go dry.
"No. No. It's fine. Honestly. Montgomery was right. I can take it from here," insists Kate, stopping him from opening up an emotional can of worms she's afraid to look inside for herself.
"If you're sure?" he asks, looking at her skeptically.
"I'm a big girl, Castle. I think I can manage a bath by myself…to run a bath by myself," she clarifies, before he can jump in with anything close to a salacious remark.
But he doesn't even try to pick her up on her slip of the tongue. They're both obviously exhausted and emotionally wrung out. He returns the towel to the bathroom and then comes back out, ready to leave her to it.
"I'll be in the kitchen. There are fresh towels over there," he tells her, pointing to a shelf. "Soap, a new toothbrush in the cabinet… So…yeah, if you need anything else, just yell," he adds, stuffing one hand in his jeans pocket, before nodding wordlessly and backing out of the room.
Kate wanders into the bathroom, swirls one hand in the water to check the temperature and then closes the door behind her. Like his bedroom, everything is fitted out with a great eye for style, comfort and luxury. She begins to take off her clothing, dumping her jeans, sweater and shirt on a chair. Her mismatched sports bra and underwear are next. The pile is meager, depressing. She misses her collection of shoes and coats. And oh god, her scarves! She thinks she sounds pathetic. She swallows around the lump in her throat, blinks back the sting in her eyes.
Growing up, she was always one for experiences, valuing them over material possessions. But those experiences turned her into an eclectic scavenger of flea markets and brocante boutiques in the outskirts of Paris, an avid scourer of secondhand bookstores in whichever city she found herself, an amateur collector of object d'art and costume jewelry even when she had little cash to spare – all of that now gone. Only the remnants of fading memories left behind to cling onto. Even her father's watch is gone, lost to the explosion and hungry flames that followed when someone set out to kill her.
She steps into the bathtub, lets the hot water burn her feet and calves, resisting the urge to step back out until she can sink below the waterline, hissing as the heat seeps into her bones, reddens her skin and then finally becomes bearable. And it's like a metaphor for life's trials, she thinks – she has no home, no possessions, but eventually this will become bearable too. But for now she cries quietly in the echoing silence of Richard Castle's en suite bathroom. Her face is shiny with perspiration and tears as she bows her head over her knees, rocking back and forth to comfort herself. The water sloshes in the tub, and she shakes her head, cataloguing everything that is gone – her mom, her cherished family photographs, her books, mementos, clothing…
"Beckett?"
The quiet lapping of the water is broken by a gentle but insistent tapping on the bathroom door.
Kate freezes, sniffling. She grabs a towel, dislodging some water onto the floor. Maybe she was crying louder than she thought…
"Beckett, you okay? I'm coming in."
She barely has time to cover herself before the door is slowly opening.
"Castle," she chokes. "Seriously? Twice in one day?"
"I heard crying," he says, in his own defense, only one shoulder and one foot rounding the doorframe, his head still mercifully hidden.
"I'm fine. I didn't mean to disturb you. Please. Let me finish up in here and…"
She falters, the words stuck in her throat. This is bigger than lost things. Someone tried to kill her last night and…
"Beckett, you don't have to put on a front with me," he says quietly, calling her out on exactly what she's trying to do.
"What if I need to put on a front?" Kate asks boldly.
If he can be honest then so can she.
"Why…why would you need to do that?"
"For myself," Kate answers simply. "It hurts less that way."
"No. Not less," Castle sighs. "Just...differently," he replies, surprising her a little with this insight. "But it also might help to talk about it."
"If I need a therapist, I'll let you know," snaps Kate, angrily swiping at another tear with the back of her hand, frustrated by her own weakness.
"I meant as a friend," he replies patiently, ignoring her barbed remark.
"Well, when I need another friend you'll be top of my list."
She drops back into the water at that, defeated by her own mean streak. He's been nothing but kind and hospitable to her. Hell, he probably saved her life and he certainly saved her dignity, getting her out of there before the fire crew arrived, and here she is repaying him for his kindness by snapping at him.
"I'm…Castle, look, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Any of it," she laments.
"Why? Already got your own shrink?" he jokes, trying to ease her pain and guilt.
"How can you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Be nice to me all the time?"
She hears him shift slightly, the door creaking a little on its hinges as he holds onto the handle and moves from foot to foot before answering her question.
"I like you," he tells her simply, beginning to close the bathroom door again as soon as he's finished speaking.
"Castle, wait," she calls out, her faculties failing her once his head reappears, eyes trained faithfully on the tiled floor.
"Yes?"
"Sorry…I…nothing. It was…thank you," she stammers. "Thank you for letting me stay."
"Not a problem. Stay as long as you like."
A/N: Chapter 2 will be up tomorrow. 'Birthday weeks' are getting to be more popular, and given my track record this might even turn into a 'birthday month'! ;)