It's good to feel you are close to me in the night, love,
invisible in your sleep, intently nocturnal,
while I untangle my worries
as if they were twisted nets.
It's good to feel you are close to me, Pablo Neruda
Untangle My Worries
After Rachel leaves with Beckett's badge and gun and her whole life secured away in her bag, Castle closes the door with a heavy finality. Like closing up this chapter of Kate's life, and when he turns back she's staring at him and her whole body is slack with shock. Castle snags her hand before she can run away and lick her wounds in private, brings her up against his chest. Head settled against his shoulder, Kate slips her hands around his waist and holds on, weathers the storm in the cove of his body.
"You didn't fight her. You didn't beg for your job back." He murmurs to the crown of her head, tries to keep his voice low and soothing and entirely free of accusation.
Kate makes a noise perilously close to a whimper and breaks free from his embrace, moves for the couch and sinks down, her whole body operating outside of her control. She curls up in the corner and he can't help but follow, barely taking a moment to pause before he gathers her against him and cards a hand through her hair.
She doesn't get to escape him. Not now, not with his ring heavy around her neck. Oh, and that's something too. Castle reaches for the clasp of the necklace, unhooks it and lifts it free from her so he can tip both rings onto his palm. He threads her mother's ring back on and fastens the chain around her neck again, slides the engagement ring past her knuckle and presses a kiss next to it.
If Kate doesn't have a job, Kate doesn't have a reason not to wear his ring.
"Castle." She whispers, curls a little closer and fists a hand in his shirt. It's so much, too much like his daughter when she was tiny, seeking solace and safety in the plane of his chest. "Castle. I think I wanted them to fire me."
"What do you mean?"
Struggling upright, Kate brings her knees up to her chest like armour, but all the same she snags his fingers in hers and presses them to her chest. Right over her scar. "The job wasn't me. At all. The grey areas, not getting to see the whole picture. I'd never be satisfied with that, never be able to make peace with it. But I'm not a quitter, Castle. I couldn't have quit."
"So you did something to make them fire you instead?" He offers, finds himself surging with pride at that. It's . . .brilliant, really. And so like her. So exactly like her he's amazed he didn't see it coming.
"Yeah. Was that stupid?"
He manages a wry smile, leans in to press his mouth to hers. "No. Kate, honey, that was genius."
"But what am I going to do now? No job, and I don't want to stay in DC but I have nowhere else to go." Kate's eyes slip closed and she scrubs a hand down her face, props her chin in her palm to look at him.
He growls at that, comes in for another kiss. This time it's bruising, intense and ripe with barely-contained lust. "Tell me you're kidding. Of course you have somewhere to go. You just agreed to move in with me in DC, so move in with me here instead."
"You want me to move into the loft?"
"Well, yes, but it doesn't have to be. We could look for another apartment, or get a brownstone and a garden and a dog. I don't care, as long as it's you and me and our home." He shrugs, drums against her kneecap with his fingertips.
Kate has that same socked in the gut look as when he showed her the key to the DC apartment, her mouth wide like she's drowning. "I love the loft. But what about Alexis and Pi and your mother?"
"Alexis doesn't technically live here anymore. Of course she'll always have a home here, but she's at college now. She's living her own life. And my mother adores you, Kate. She's been trying to get me to ask you to move in almost since she found out about us dating."
She chews at her lip, regards him carefully. "But Alexis-"
"Kate." He grits out, snags her fingers in his again. "I don't care what anyone else thinks, this is my house and you are my wife. If you want to move in to the loft I'm not going to let my daughter stop you. And anyway, she hardly has any right to complain what with Pi and everything."
"I'm not your wife yet." She murmurs, but there's a thread of joy there that he can work to draw out, let her light up with it.
"Not yet, no. But soon. Soon, Kate."
"Okay. But I'm not your kept woman, Castle. I'm not just going to live here and not have a job and mooch around. I know you can support me, and I know that you want to, but that's not me."
He grins, tucks the thick curl of her back behind her ear. "I'd never try to make you a kept woman. And I know you're not with me for my money, for what I can give you. Also, you'd be the worst housewife in the world. You'd go stir-crazy inside of five minutes."
"Mm, yeah. Can you imagine?" She smirks, shaking her head at him.
"You'd be terrible at it. So you get another job, Kate. There's no rush. I can support you in the meantime. And if you don't want to take my money directly you can just pawn your ring or something."
"No." She says, surprising both of them with the fervour of it. She drops her right hand to cover her left, effectively cradling the ring in her palm. "I love my ring."
Castle beams at that, relief sloshing in his gut. "I'm just kidding. Let me do this for you, please?"
"Okay." She falters a moment, uncertainty blossoming across her face. "Do you think maybe Gates would take me back?"
"You'd go back to the precinct?"
Kate nods, drops her knees to come in against his side again. "Yeah. I miss it, Castle. And I'm good at it; I know what I'm doing there. It feels like home."
"Then I think it's worth asking her. Maybe everything can go back to how it was before."
"No." She lifts up to press her mouth to his, a soft burst of a kiss and the cool touch of her fingers at his ear. "Better than before."
A/N: I refuse to believe that Kate didn't know exactly what the consequences would be when she leaked that info to the press. Honestly, it was over when she gave Castle the pen drive.
Tumblr: katiehoughton
Twitter: seilleanmor