Author's Note: In honor of the natal anniversary of our beloved Prompt Overlord, Lou aka inkycoffee, I give you this story, based on a prompt that Lou gave me so very long ago that she probably doesn't even remember it. I hope it satisfies nonetheless. Happy birthday, Lou! *smooches*
Something's bugging you
Something ain't right
My best friend told me what you did last night
Left me sleepin' in my bed
I was dreaming, but I should have been with you instead
-Wham, "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go"
"Kate. Kate, wake up."
She groans and swims up to consciousness, her eyes gritty, throat dry. She blinks as the room comes into focus. Oh. She fell asleep on the couch? She had just meant to sit down for a minute after getting in from the airport...
Her boyfriend is sitting next to her on the couch, a scowl creasing his whole face as he stares down at her. A sense of dread begins to spread through her as she struggles to bring her body upright, scrubbing a hand across her face. Her brain is fuzzy from the unintended nap.
"Josh?" she creaks.
Then she sees the two much-folded sheets of paper in his hand. Her body goes cold, her skin prickling as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped down her spine.
"What are you - that's private," she snaps, snatching at the paper. She's suddenly very, very much awake.
"I found you asleep on the couch with this in your hand," Josh says gruffly. "Who the hell is Royce, Kate?"
"Mike Royce," she sighs, sitting up fully, letting her feet fall to the floor. "He was my training instructor after I got out of the police academy. He was murdered earlier this week."
"Uh-huh." Josh nods, not bothering to offer any sympathy. "And that would be why you had to rush off to California without a word?"
"I texted," she protests, frowning, knowing that she should be more contrite. But the displeasure radiating off her boyfriend is contagious, and she's buzzing from jet-lag and fitful sleep, achy and stiff from dozing off on the couch - not to mention all the stress and strain of everything that happened in L.A. So she can't bring herself to be conciliatory, not when she just caught Josh reading her private correspondence. Not when she has an aching, nagging feeling that she knows exactly how this conversation is bound to end.
Josh scoffs, reaching into his pocket with stiff angry movements, pulling out his phone.
"Gone to L.A. for a case. Back in a few days," he reads off the screen, biting out the words as if they taste bitter. He lowers the phone and looks over at her again. "Not exactly forthcoming, Kate."
"What-" she begins, but he interrupts with a low growl.
"He went with you, didn't he? Castle."
The bitter bite to his tone on her partner's name puts her on edge. "Nothing happened," she says firmly, angry now. The anger is easy. Easier to focus on the surface allegation rather than what lies beneath it. "We went to L.A., we solved the case, we came back. That's all."
"That's all," Josh repeats, sighing. He seems to deflate, the fire going out of him as his body slumps back against the couch cushions.
She just looks at him, unsure what to do. She should reach out, she thinks; her hand should feel the urge to touch him, to reassure. But it doesn't.
"He's right, isn't he?" Josh says after a moment, quietly. He jerks his head, indicating the pages in her hand. "Some guy I never met, but he knew you better than I do. Or he saw what I've been trying to pretend not to see."
"Josh," she says, but it's a weak protest at best.
He leans toward her now, meeting her eyes. "Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me he's wrong." His gaze shifts back down to the paper. "Risking our hearts is why we're alive," he reads. "You're not risking your heart with me, Kate, and we both know it."
Tears begin to prickle at the edges of her eyes and she bites her lip, looking down, wishing she could deny it. "I'm sorry," she says quietly.
"It's okay," Josh sighs. She looks up again, meets his eyes again, and sees that he means it. "Really," he adds, "we should have stuck with how we started out - a no-strings-attached hookup. We were good like that."
She nods slowly. He's right; although it hurts to admit it - in fact she's quietly terrified of it - the truth is, she and Josh were never going anywhere. And they both know the reason why.
Josh reaches into his pocket again, pulls out his keyring. She watches his long, nimble fingers as they separate her apartment key from the rest, twist it off the ring. He holds it out to her, his expression blank now. What can she do but take it?
"I don't think I have anything else here," he says coolly, "but if anything turns up, you know where to find me."
She nods again, looking down at the key, turning it over and over in her fingers. And that ought to be a sign too, right? She's been dating Josh for almost nine months now, and he doesn't have anything here at her apartment to take with him when he goes. Not a change of clothes (he keeps those at the hospital), not even a toothbrush or a razor. He hardly even needed the key. The number of times he has spent the night here could be counted on one hand. The number of times she has been inside his apartment, let alone stayed the night, is even smaller.
He stands up, and she does too, wincing a little as she unfolds her stiff legs from underneath her.
"I really am sorry," she says, looking up at his face, which has softened out of the scowl she saw when he woke her.
"I know," he says with a short nod. "Listen ... do something about it, okay? Like he said." He nods toward Royce's letter again. "Don't keep hiding, running away. Don't make this be for nothing. You deserve to be happy, Kate."
Her lips twist in discomfort, but he lets it drop. He steps forward and enfolds her in an awkward hug. The scent of his aftershave, sweat, and hospital detergent tickles her nose, and it smells foreign, unfamiliar, even though it's the way Josh always smells. That's a sign too, she knows.
She hugs him back, lightly, politely, and then he pulls away, smiling unconvincingly, not meeting her eyes.
"Bye," he says, and leaves.
Beckett puts Royce's letter down on the coffee table - the pages have gathered still more creases from her fist and Josh's - and looks blankly around her living room. Her eye falls on her overnight bag, still sitting next to the front door where she dropped it when she came in. She shakes her head a little, realizing that she's still wearing the same clothes she wore on the plane. Did she really just walk in the door, kick off her shoes, sit down on the couch, and fall asleep? The whole trip must have exhausted her a lot more than she realized.
She picks up the bag and takes it to the bedroom, starts unpacking mechanically, her mind a defensive blank. When the bag is empty she puts it away in the closet, strips off her clothes, and goes into the bathroom.
A quick shower makes her feel a lot less grimy, washing away the sweat and grease of travel, and now she's wide awake. It's almost midnight, but doesn't feel like it.
Towel wrapped around her body, she opens her pajama drawer, then hesitates and slowly closes it. She opens another drawer instead and takes out yoga pants and a plain t-shirt.
She still isn't thinking about anything. It's like she turned off her brain when Josh walked out the door. She's operating on autopilot.
Minutes later she's dressed, her damp hair up in a casual ponytail, and she's pushing her feet into flats and picking up Royce's letter, carefully re-folding it, tucking it into her purse. She still doesn't allow herself to think about anything at all while she shrugs on a light jacket, puts the purse over her shoulder, and leaves her apartment.
She's in a taxi sitting at a red light a few minutes later when her phone buzzes with a text. Her skin prickles as her eyes take in the words and the sender's name.
Castle.
You still awake? his message reads.
She chews on her lower lip, staring at the words for a long moment, and then her thumbs are moving across the tiny keyboard.
Wide awake. You?
His reply comes quickly. I'll probably be up all night. Shouldn't have napped on the plane.
Sense-memory hits her hard at the words: sitting next to him in first class, watching him sleep. The peaceful lines of his face in relaxation; the gentle rise and fall of his chest; the affection that swelled in her own chest until she had to turn her head away, struggling for breath as she forced her eyes to the window.
She pays the taxi driver and gets out. Stands on the sidewalk gazing up at the building for a long apprehensive moment before she takes in a breath, squares her shoulders, and walks through the front door.
She thumbs her phone again as she gets into the elevator, this time bypassing the text-message app and pressing the call button.
"What's up?" he asks without preamble. "Don't tell me there's another body."
"No, no new case," she denies, smiling a little.
"Oh, good. That would be pretty cruel, when we just got back. No rest for the wicked, and so forth."
She chuckles dutifully; doesn't know what to say. Her knees suddenly feel a little unsteady with nerves.
"Beckett?" he asks again, quieter. "Everything okay?"
She doesn't know how to answer that either. "Castle..."
"Hey." His tone is gentle, as if he knows everything that's going through her head right now. Maybe he does. "Just tell me what I can do."
She takes another deep breath. "Right now I just need you to open your door."
A pause. "Okay," he says slowly, and she hears the rustle of clothing, the creak of a chair, the slap of bare feet on hardwood floor. "I take it you don't mean that metaphorically."
"No," she says, and then he opens the door and they're looking at each other.
Castle has been sitting around the loft, moody and at loose ends, intermittently kicking himself for falling asleep on the plane. As a seasoned traveler, he normally takes pains to stay awake on those west-to-east cross-country flights, to ease the transition across time zones. But this particular trip to L.A. had been more tiring than usual, both physically and emotionally, so he broke his own rule.
Well. No, if he's being honest with himself, it was an escape.
Sitting next to Kate Beckett in first class for six hours had been hard enough on the way out to L.A., and that was before everything that happened out there.
So, yeah, now that he's home and nursing a glass of scotch in his silent study, he can admit it to himself: he allowed himself to fall asleep on the plane in self-defense, to protect his battered heart from the excruciating experience of sitting next to her and being unable to touch her, unable to tell her how he feels.
He came close, of course, on that couch that night (try as he might, he can't keep his thoughts from drifting back there). He opened up to her in that moment, maybe more than he has in the whole time they've known each other. It was the unreality of the setting, so far from home; it was the forbidden thrill of going rogue, investigating the case they'd been ordered off of; it was the way she softened when she talked about Royce, her eyes and voice growing pensive in a way he has rarely if ever seen. It was all of that, coming together in that moment to set him aflame with the need to express at least some small portion of how she makes him feel.
Stupid, maybe. Stupid and inappropriate, for him to say those things to her in that moment. But she responded in kind - that's the part he can't seem to shake - she didn't brush him off or make a joke of it, the way they usually do. You're not so bad yourself, Castle.
It's just as well that she spooked herself with that admission and fled back into her bedroom. He was on the verge of doing something even more stupid, something he would have immediately regretted. Because no matter what he might think of Josh - more specifically, of Beckett's relationship with Josh - Rick Castle is not that guy. No. She's in a relationship with someone else, and he'll respect that, damn it, no matter how much it hurts.
But he can't help wondering, after everything that has happened between them (you're not so bad yourself, Castle), how much longer will he have to wait? Or is he an idiot for waiting at all?
And so, brooding over all of that, he finds himself staring at her contact on his phone, his thumb hovering over the "call" button. But it's late, approaching midnight, and she's probably asleep. Like he should be.
He hesitates. He should let her sleep.
He decides to text instead. If she's asleep, a text won't wake her. If she's awake ... Well, he hasn't fully thought this through, he realizes, even as his fingers are tapping out the message and hitting Send.
Are you awake? it reads. He blinks at it, suddenly wishing he could take it back. Stupid. He isn't drunk, really, but maybe he should put the whiskey away.
But her reply comes with startling speed, and he replies back, and before he quite knows how it happened, they're talking on the phone. They don't do this. He doesn't think she has ever called him when there wasn't a body. And yet, here they are.
She seems uncertain, unsettled. He can't put his finger on it, but from the handful of words she has spoken, he gets the sense that she's struggling with something. When he asks if she's okay, she sighs his name and a shiver goes through him, the little hairs on his arms and the back of his neck standing up. He's heard her say his name a thousand different ways over the years, but this one is new. This is a middle-of-the-night, whispered-into-the-darkness, full-of-yearning rendition of his name, and he doesn't think she quite realizes just how raw it sounds.
"Just tell me what I can do," he coaxes, nudging his empty glass aside. His heart is pounding, his palms suddenly clammy, and he isn't quite clear-headed enough to analyze why.
He hears her inhale deeply, and then she says, "Right now I just need you to open your door."
Another thrill rushes through him and he finds himself rising to his feet, moving across the room as if pulled on a string. "Okay, I take it you don't mean that metaphorically," he says stupidly, and dimly hears her response as his hand closes around the doorknob and turns.
And there she is, Kate Beckett on his doorstep at midnight, with her hair up in a loose ponytail, her clothing casual, her forehead bearing that tiny crease she wears when she's upset about something.
She's so beautiful it takes his breath away, as tired and trite as that sounds. But it's true. For an instant he literally can't breathe.
"Hey," she says softly, and he snaps out of it, pulling the door open wider to usher her inside.
"Hey. Come on in."
She walks in, twisting her hands together nervously. He doesn't take his eyes off her as he closes the door, swiveling his body to track her movement into his home. He's still trying to understand.
In the middle of his living room she pauses, turns to face him, and says quietly, "Josh and I broke up."
"Oh," he says, blinking, because of all the things she might have said, he definitely didn't expect that. "Um ... I'm sorry." He isn't. He should be sorry, but his pulse is racing, his mind whirling; he's dizzy from trying not to imagine what this means. "What, uh, what happened?"
Beckett shakes her head slowly. "He, uh, he read this." Castle realizes that she's holding something between her fists, twisting and fiddling with it: a scrunched-up mess of paper.
"The letter Royce wrote to you?" he asks, frowning. "He read it?" The thought is almost incomprehensible.
"See for yourself," she says in a rush, unclenching her fingers from around the paper, thrusting it toward him. "Here."
It's Castle's turn to shake his head, pulling back. "What, no," he denies, staring at the crumpled pages. "That's your private business, Beckett."
Something flares in her eyes at that, a rush of anger or excitement that he doesn't quite recognize, but this Beckett is more familiar at least, all hard defiance and determination.
"I'll read it to you then," she grits out, unfolding the pages. He winces, instinctively recoiling - it's really none of his business - but he can't escape the lure of her voice, low and throaty with barely restrained tension as she reads out Royce's final expression of contrition and remorse.
"Beckett-" but she ignores him and barrels onward. From the deep breath she takes, the way she tightens her jaw, he knows that she's about to get to the important part of the letter. Whatever that might mean.
"Now for the hard part, kid," she reads. "It's clear that you and Castle have something real, and you're fighting it."
He sucks in a startled breath, feels his jaw drop as he stares at her. Royce wrote this? Really?
She keeps her eyes resolutely on the page, despite the fact that - he can tell - she knows the words by heart, has read them a hundred times already.
"But trust me," she goes on, speaking faster now in what he suspects is an attempt to disguise the tremor in her voice, "putting the job ahead of your heart is a mistake. Risking our hearts is why we're alive. The last thing you want is to look back on your life and wonder...if only."
On the last two words she lifts her head, making eye contact. His eyes are wide with amazement; hers shine with a dangerous combination of defiance and trepidation. He sees the paper wavering ever so slightly in the air, betraying the trembling of her hand, but she doesn't back down. She holds his gaze, and he stands transfixed, thoughts tumbling headlong over and over each other in his head.
"Kate," he breathes, and watches her shudder slightly at the use of her first name. "Is that ... is that true?"
"Is it true that putting the job first is a mistake?" she lobs back, blatantly deflecting, but he won't be drawn into humorous banter. Not now, not after all of this.
Reaching out, he gently wraps his hand around hers, which is still tightly gripping the pages of Royce's letter. The merest touch of skin to skin sends a warm tingle through him. From the way her breathing speeds up, her eyes widening as she gazes up at him, he guesses that she felt it too.
"Is it true that we have something real?" he says, very quietly.
"How should I know?" she responds, her voice tight with nervousness, though she hasn't attempted to pull her hand away. "I'm not - I'm not good at - this." Her eyes slide away, frustrated.
Castle nods slowly. He knows this about her, of course. Beckett isn't good at relationships, at emotional intimacy, at opening up. And yet, he can't help thinking, here she is. Taking a step. Isn't she?
His thoughts are still whirling. It's clear that you and Castle have something real, and you're fighting it. For once he has no idea what to say, but he takes a gamble of his own: he tugs on her hand, lightly. Swipes his thumb across her knuckles at the same time, and watches the sweep of her eyelashes down, then up again, a slow blink, her gaze still fixated on a spot of nothing off to the side.
It works. She doesn't resist his pull; she takes a step closer. And before he can decide on what to say, she murmurs, "I came back."
"What?"
She lifts her eyes to his again. She still hasn't removed her hand from his grasp - or removed his hand from his own arm, which she is more than capable of doing. Her expression is still clouded, that same little crease between her eyebrows showing her unease.
"I came back," she says again. "Out of the bedroom. The other night, in L.A. But you had gone to bed."
His grip tightens almost involuntarily around her hand as the words sink in. If he had waited a few more minutes - really? Is this how it's doomed to be with them? No. He refuses to accept that.
He gives another tug on her hand and she takes another small step toward him. In her flats, with her hair up in a ponytail, gazing up at him with wide eyes and that tiny frown, she looks small and fragile. But looks are deceiving. He knows better than that.
"Why?" he asks softly. He rubs his thumb across the back of her hand again and watches her shudder. All the uncertainty has left him now; he knows exactly what he's doing. "Why did you come back?"
She huffs out a breath, makes a gesture of frustration with her other hand. "I wanted," she says, "I wanted," and she doesn't know how to complete the phrase, but he can't wait any longer; he pulls on her hand again, tugs her body flush against his and kisses her.
Beckett feels dizzy, turned upside down like a careless swimmer in the ocean. She nearly lost her nerve the moment Castle opened his door, but with Royce's and Josh's words ringing in her ears, she pushed herself forward, headlong into this terrifying, exhilarating conversation with Castle.
And somehow, just as her confidence was faltering, his was strengthening. The symmetry of it registers vaguely at the back of her mind as something to be appreciated in full later. But right now, Castle's mouth is on hers and all rational thought has fled.
His hand releases hers at last, to go sliding around her back and hold her close; the pages of Royce's letter flutter to the floor. Castle's tongue slides along hers and she clutches at his broad shoulders, her knees going weak.
This is nothing like their first kiss, so many months ago in that cold alley, tinged with desperation and guilt. There's no act to hide behind. There's no careful artifice in the way Castle touches her here and now, no self-consciousness to the way she presses herself into him, her fingers digging into his skin, her mouth moving against his. He tastes the moan bubbling up from her throat and she feels his chest vibrate with a deep growl of satisfaction.
Her nerves reassert themselves at that, and the kiss ends with her gasping, trembling in his arms as his nose brushes against hers and he pulls back to smile into her eyes.
"You wanted what?" he asks, humor brewing in the curve of his cheeks, and she has to struggle to remember what they had been saying before that devastating kiss. "To take a risk?"
Risking our hearts is why we're alive. "I," she tries, but she doesn't have words for how scared she is. "I told you I'm not good at this, Castle."
A real smile spreads across his face at that, and god, he's gorgeous. Her heart thumps painfully against her ribs with the realization of how far gone she is for this man.
"Practice makes perfect," he declares, pulling the elastic off her ponytail, slipping his hand into her hair, his thumb sweeping along her cheekbone. She leans into another kiss, heat flooding her body. Yeah, she could get used to this. With practice.
She doesn't really register the odd metallic scratching sound until Castle is suddenly stiffening, his hands jerking away from her as if he's been burned. Staring at him in bemusement, she finally realizes - some detective she is! - that it's the sound of a key in the lock. Her cheeks burst into flame and Castle puts a respectable three feet of distance between them, just in the nick of time, as the door opens and Martha comes sailing in on a cloud of perfume and alcohol.
"Tra la - oh! Richard, and Katherine, darlings," the diva trills beneficently, her many bracelets chiming against each other as she gestures toward them like a game-show host. "Back from the land of sun and fun, are we, then?" Closing the door behind herself, she peers at them with unsettling, if alcohol-fueled, shrewdness. "Brought some fun back with us, did we?"
"Mother," Castle sighs, turning to envelop her in a perfunctory hug, giving Beckett a moment to turn her head aside and collect herself, running a hasty and probably futile hand through her hair. "Good party?"
"Oh, you know," Martha shrugs melodramatically, waving her hands in the air. "Bread and circuses, my boy, bread and circuses." She pauses, reining in her mood with studied artlessness. "Catch your friend's killer, did you, Katherine dear?"
"Yes," Beckett clears her throat, nods, "yes, thank you, Martha."
"Lovely. Well, time for me to turn into a pumpkin, darlings." The redhead sashays off toward the stairs, waving a hand over her head. "Don't worry, I'll be asleep within moments, can't hear a thing up there, my dears, I assure you. Nighty-night!" And she's gone, leaving a fog of mortification in her wake.
Castle stands for a long moment with his hand over his eyes, sighing. Beckett can't help a small smile at the sight. But Martha's untimely appearance has cleared the fog from Kate's mind, bringing her gratefully back to the surreal, determined calm that carried her all the way here from her apartment.
So when Castle lifts his head and sighs her name, she says only, "I should go." But before disappointment can bloom in his eyes, she steps closer and softens the statement with the slide of her hand up his chest, the soft brush of her lips across his. She doesn't resist when he snakes his arm around her waist again and takes another slow, deep kiss from her. She cups the back of his neck and returns the kiss, but when they part, she steps back, steeling herself.
"I have to go," she repeats, and he sighs again, nods reluctantly.
"Yeah. I guess." He grimaces. "Yeah. We should both get some rest. Long day."
"Yeah." And oh yes, she feels it all of a sudden, despite her nap on the couch earlier. She's tired. Really tired. Staying here with Castle - tempting though it is, oh god, so very tempting - wouldn't be the right choice for tonight.
He watches her bend over and retrieve Royce's letter from the floor, crumpled and smudged. She folds it haphazardly and pushes it into her purse.
"Castle," she begins apologetically, but he steps forward again, taking her hand.
"We'll talk tomorrow?" he prompts, and he means more than talk. And he means more than tomorrow.
She nods. "Yeah. We will."
Relief and delight wash across his face. "Okay." He squeezes her hand. "Okay."
Hand in hand, they walk to the door. In the doorway they share one more long, slow kiss, and Beckett comes perilously close to making the wrong choice anyway, consequences be damned - his mouth just tastes so good, the strong hard lines of his body against hers, the all-knowing touch of his hands - but she pulls herself away. It'll be better, she tells herself, after some rest, and maybe even some conversation. They'll have plenty of time.
"Until tomorrow, Detective," he says lightly, his fingers twitching in the air as if they yearn to latch on to her again. She takes a step away, and another, reluctantly.
"Until tomorrow," she answers, and that beautiful smile lights up his face again. She has deliberately chosen not to give her usual response, and his eyes sparkle with the understanding of everything that it means.
The elevator doors close around her and she puts her hand into her purse, touching the rumpled sheets of paper, saying a silent thank-you to the memory of her old instructor. She knows she's going to sleep well tonight.