The Second First Day
Chapter 1
The corners of Kate's mouth curled delicately upwards before she even opened her eyes, the discernible hum of her muscles from a night spent wrapped around his both wicked and welcome. She could practically hear her own body's buzz invading the morning hush of the room, and she was hit with an instantaneous high, one she couldn't have imagined she'd now find herself basking in following the events of the previous days.
She stretched out her legs beneath the rumpled sheets and rolled onto her back, her skin warm and bare, and slowly opened her eyes, expecting to find him lying next to her as he was when they fell asleep just a few hours before, but, instead, finding a piece of paper set atop his vacated pillow. She freed her arm and reached for it, calling out his name as she attempted to blink the clouds of night away, but she heard no reply.
Holding the roughly torn paper embarrassingly close so she could manage to read what was written there in her fog, her quiet smile returned, Rick's words confounding yet perfectly him, the him who was now more to her than he'd ever been. It took her a moment or two, but she eventually remembered where her phone was, blushing at the image that came, the one of him pushing her jacket from her body onto the floor as their mouths played, the jacket that was now draped over the arm of the chair in the corner beside her.
She climbed out of bed without a care as to her state, the loft, she now knew, hers and hers alone, and dropped into the chair with his note still in hand. His phone rang three times before he answered, and she felt her excitement and curiosity grow with each.
"Is that how it is? You do that to a girl and then you leave?" she replied to his almost boastful morning-after salutation.
"Excuse me, but I'm pretty sure you were the one that did it to me one of those times," Rick came back before asking the question he was already dying to know the answer to. "So, did you follow my instruction?"
Kate knew exactly what he wanted to hear, but she had no intention of giving it over so easily. "I called you, didn't I?" She glanced again at the words he'd written beneath Call me when you wake up and she felt her body involuntarily react. "Is this the part where I tell you I'd love some eggs and some waffles and you come through the door with them moments later? Because I'd really love that part," she continued on when he didn't respond.
"No, this is the part where I remind you how well I know you and I can tell the answer to my question is yes."
She shook her head and rolled her eyes, as she so often did when he opened his mouth and his ego came spilling out. "Fine, no, Castle, I didn't get dressed before I called you. Do I win some sort of prize for that or something?"
Rick exhaled an utterly incoherent sound. "I don't know about you, but I sure do," he crowed. "Now, tell me where you are and what you're doing and don't leave anything out."
"Where am I? I'm right here where you left me, Castle," she snapped. "Where the hell are you?"
"Ouch, okay, I guess I deserved that." And then came the bad news. "And, um, I'm...on my way to Philly," he said, though it came out as more of a question than a statement, his voice gaining an octave or two somewhere along the way. "On the train. It's the Acela, though, so I'm moving pretty fast," he added of no help whatsoever.
"Did you...I'm sorry. You're what?" Kate responded with puzzlement, sitting naked in his loft all by herself.
"Look under your pillow," he told her. "I left something for you."
Kate pushed out of the chair with a huff and crawled back into bed, tossing her pillow aside to see what was beneath. "A key? What's this for? Do I get to lock you up somewhere for ditching me when you get back from your trip?"
"It's not a trip. It's just a few hours. With everything that's been going on, I almost forgot all about this thing today." An announcement of the train's impending arrival at 30th Street Station began squawking overhead and he paused until it came to an end. "Shit, we're almost at the station. Look, I promise I'll explain everything later. That's my key to the loft in your hand. Stay as long as you want, naked, of course, and then take it home with you. I should be back in the city by 8PM at the latest and I'm coming straight for you."
"Assuming I don't take off for Cleveland while you're gone," she teased, more disappointed than angry.
"God, please don't. It killed me to have to leave you this morning after...everything. It's killing me now knowing where you are and what you look like when you're-"
"I'll be home," she said, jumping on the rest of his thought with her soft assurance. "Come get your key."
"Can I get something else, too?" he pushed behind a smile.
"Depends how good your explanation is," she said, drawing her own sword. "Enjoy your cheese steak, Castle."
She hung up without another word, facing a first day without anywhere to be, without responsibility, and without the one person she wanted most to spend it with.
xxxx
It felt too strange to sit around the loft alone, and she was too wired to go home, so Kate tucked Rick's key into the pocket of her jeans and stepped out into the city to wander. On most days, the streets she found herself walking were merely a way to get from here to there, from the precinct to a crime scene, from home to work and back again, but it was a very different world on that day, and she was very different in it.
Lost in her own thoughts, she travelled twenty-six blocks before realizing she'd done so, never having made a turn to the left or the right, absent a destination, which felt both liberating and terrifying at once. In the middle of block twenty-seven, she weaved out of the throng headed both with her and against her and pulled out her phone, bringing up Lanie's missed call notification and dialing her number.
"Hey, Kate, I've been worried. I called you last night but you didn't answer. Javi told me what happened. Are you okay?"
"I'm okay, yeah. Sorry I didn't call you back earlier. Things have been kind of crazy. Will you have a few minutes if I stop by in a little bit?"
"Absolutely," Lanie told her. "I just finished with a body, so I'll be in my office doing the paperwork. Come on down."
Kate showed up thirty minutes later with a coffee for herself in one hand and a tea for Lanie in the other. She didn't know how much Javi had already told her or how much she actually wanted to talk about the fight and the roof and all of it, but she knew she wanted to see her closest friend, someone she always found strength and comfort in.
"Thank you for this," Lanie said as she pulled her in for a hug. "I'm so glad you're okay - well, in one piece, at least. I can't imagine you're really okay after everything that happened, but I expect you'll probably tell me you are." The disapproval in her tone was evident. "You really quit?"
Kate settled into the chair on the other side of the desk, her finger tracing the rim of her coffee cup nervously. "I slept with Castle," she confessed without looking up, moving off the NYPD without acknowledging the actual question at hand. "Last night. I slept with Castle last night." She repeated it multiple times, as though she suddenly couldn't quite believe it herself.
"Wait, I'm sorry, you did what?" Lanie all but shouted before taking a moment to try and gather herself, though with little notable success. "You're telling me right now that you, Kate Beckett, slept with Richard Castle last night. As in had sex with? In a bed?"
Kate grinned ever so slightly, but enough that she knew she'd done it. "Yeah. And, two of the times."
Lanie practically jumped out of her chair before falling right back into it again. "I'm just saying thank God we are in a medical facility right now, because I'm about to require some serious attention. Two of the times? Two of the times you had sex with Castle, last night." She downed a sip of her tea and took an audible breath in and out. "Okay, here's what's going to happen: first, you're going to tell me how many times you had sex with Castle last night, and then you're going to tell me every other damn thing about it."
Kate turned and looked over her shoulder at the open door. "Why don't you try talking a little louder, Lanie. I'm not sure all the dead bodies heard you," she wisecracked.
"Girl, please, if you were hearing what I'm hearing right now, you'd be talking the very same way. Now, spill."
Kate remembered every second of it - every sensation, every sound, every touch - and it was all so close to the surface, right there for her to live over and over again. "We had a fight, Lanie, a really awful fight, and I thought he might be gone for good. This case, my mom's case...I've just been locked in this room somewhere with it for so long."
"All he ever wanted to do was help you get out of that room, Kate," Lanie said, abruptly composed.
"I know," she replied, both saying the words and believing them. "And then after yesterday and Gates, it was just him. He's what I still had, Lanie. He's what I always have."
"And then you had lots of sex," Lanie blurted in a return of her previous animation. "And how ma-"
"Three times," Kate broke in, knowing what was coming.
"I swear, if I could manage to stand up right now, I'd come over there and hug you. You know that, right?" Lanie picked up a file folder from her desk and began to fan herself with it. "Now can I ask why the hell you're here with me instead of with Mr. All Night Long? I mean, three times. Hell, if it was that good, I'd only leave the man to get a damn snack to give me energy for the next round. I mean, I assume it was good. Was it good?" she asked like a splendid gossip.
Kate laughed, both at the expression staring back at her and the positively rhapsodic state she was witnessing. "Yes, Lanie it was great. And Castle's in Philadelphia, apparently."
Lanie immediately dropped the folder and her jaw. "On the day after…please tell me that Philadelphia is some weird-ass nickname for he's out buying you flowers or something because I do not even understand."
"Well, that makes two of us. I woke up this morning and he was gone. He left me a note to call him, I called, and he answered from a train. He said he'll be back tonight, so I guess it's not that big a deal, but..." Her face, her whole demeanor, didn't match her words, though, and Lanie could clearly see that.
"Oh, come on now, you're not talking to a Kate Beckett rookie here. I've known you long enough to see that it is a big deal, and after what you two have been through to finally get to last night, I can't say that I blame you. I mean, I know the man worships the ground you walk on, so I'm sure it had to be something important for him to leave like that, but he's going to owe you big time, and you need to make sure Richie Rich pays up."
"I'm sure I'll think of something," Kate said with a chuckle. "Maybe it's for the best. I need a nap, anyway, what with the whole almost dying thing and then being up most of the night." Lanie picked up the folder again with a proud smile. "I'm going to head home, I think; leave you to your reports and your bodies. I'll call you later."
"Hopefully you'll be busy later and you won't have time to call." Kate dropped her coffee cup into the trash can and turned for the door. "I mean it. You make sure he makes this up to you, young lady, understand?"
"Yes, Mom, I've got it."
"Hey, wait, speaking of bodies. Twice in the bed and once...?"
"Kitchen," Kate said over her shoulder. "We needed a snack."
"Ooo, girl," Lanie chirped to an empty doorway.
