lux noctis

Inspired by #CaskettTFLN – Kate mistakenly texts Rick just after 47 Seconds…

"Ugh."

Kate woke as the traffic bunched up at the junction near her building, her fellow New Yorkers not caring that it was past 2.00am as they honked their horns and shouted through opened windows. She rolled over to grab her cell phone from the table but a soreness between her legs made her throw the comforter off her naked body.

"Oh."

She gingerly withdrew the vibrator from its resting place. "Seriously, who the hell falls asleep with their vibe in their hooha?" Kate eased up from her bed and walked into her en-suite, ran the hot tap to wash her hands and the contraption, leaving it to air dry on the shelf.

When she got back to her phone, she pulled up the text app and tapped out a missive as she fell back into bed.

I fell asleep with my vibrator still in me. I am the Queen of Sad Masturbation.

"Ugh."

A loud 'pling' woke Rick from his dozing, his laptop threatening to slip from his knees before he caught it in time, and lay the machine onto his desk. He picked his cell phone up as he stood and stretched, vertebrae cracking with satisfying pops. He wandered into his bedroom, pulling his pants and socks off before he dropped into bed, waking his phone as he dragged the comforter over himself.

"Oh."

A new text from Beckett. An incredibly explicit text from Beckett. Rick's eyebrows almost reached his hairline. He put his phone down on his nightstand and rolled onto his back, his mind racing. He was meant to be mad with her. She'd lied to him for months. She didn't love him.

But one word in her text was getting to him: 'Sad'. It wasn't an adjective he would have ever used as a modifier for 'Masturbation'. 'Frustrated', maybe, or 'enjoyable'. He rolled over again, onto his side to stare at his phone.

He wondered if she was okay.

Fifty-eight… fifty-nine… si-…

Kate's sheep counting was interrupted by the bright light and loud ringing of her cell phone. She snatched it from the table and frowned. Why was Castle calling her at almost 3.00am?

"Beckett."

"Hi."

"Hey, Castle." Kate heard nothing from the other end of the line, so she pulled the phone away from her ear to look at the screen. Seeing it was still connected, she put it back to her ear. "You there?"

"Yeah."

She lay back down on her bed and looked up at the ceiling. "What's up?"

"You, uh…" She heard Castle clear his throat. "You texted me."

"What, yesterday?" Kate's brow furrowed. Surely she hadn't…

"No, about a half hour ago." Oh, she had. Fuck.

"Oh. Castle, I… I thought I sent that to Lanie, sorry if it woke you." She slapped her palm to her forehead. Idiot, idiot, idiot.

"Actually, you stopped me from dropping my laptop, I was asleep at my desk. So, thanks."

"Oh, you're welcome then." She gulped, trying to swallow the fear that he would want to talk about it.

"Beckett, I know…" A heavy sigh from Castle's end squeezed at her heart. "No, it doesn't matter, never mind."

"What, Castle?" He had sounded like he was about to hang up, and that was the last thing she wanted. Just hearing his voice was soothing, distressing as the topic was. Even though she was trying to stay alert, she could feel the tension leaving her body.

"I know you've been lying to me."

Kate sat up in bed, her heart rate sky rocketing.

"Uh…"

"You remember the shooting." She heard the wince in his voice as he said it. "You told the guy in interrogation, and I was in observation. You told him, but you couldn't tell me?" Now his voice was rising, his emotion getting the better of him, and it had Kate scrambling out of bed trying to find clothes.

"Castle… Rick…"

"No, you can just wait and hear me out." Kate pulled yoga leggings and a baggy shirt from her dresser, yanking them on while she searched for shoes. She found her trainers and heard nothing but silence on the other end of the line again.

"I'm listening, Castle," she prompted him, keeping her voice soft, hoping she sounded as contrite as she felt as she grabbed her keys and purse, heading onto the street to hail a cab.

Rick slipped out of bed and began to pace his bedroom. He could barely believe he'd just brought the one thing that could explode their partnership out into the open. At three in the morning. An irritated hand ran through his hair.

"You said you're 'the Queen of Sad Masturbation', Kate. Who the hell is sad when they touch themselves?"

"Me, apparently…"

He huffed in response.

"And why would you say something like that to Lanie?"

"We're girls, Castle, we talk about that kinda stuff." He could almost hear her shrug. "Can you and I not talk about that kinda stuff though, please?"

Rick grunted, pulling a book at random from the shelf that divided the bedroom from his office. "It's not like we talk about anything, anyhow…"

"Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?" He heard a car door slam at the other end of the line and some words muffled by a hand over her phone mic before she returned to the conversation. "We spend all day together, Castle, every day. We talk all the time."

"Well, that's where you're wrong, Beckett. The complete and utter opposite of correct."

"Oh, really? Enlighten me."

He paced across the room to the window, throwing the book down on his bed before yanking the curtain to the side to look down on the street below as he pressed his palm against the windowpane. "Fine, let's talk about how you lied to me for months. How you lied that you didn't hear me confess my feelings for you, how you lied about your feelings all those months too." He paused for breath, his eyes closing as his whole body drooped.

"Because if you cared, Kate, you wouldn't have let me believe you loved me back, when this whole time that was just a fantasy I made up so I could pretend everything was fine! How could you do this?"

His hand fell to his side, the phone still cradled in it. He leaned forward, his forehead flush against the cold glass as he murmured, "How could you do this to me?"

A few minutes later, he opened his eyes when he registered that Beckett's voice was still coming through the speaker of his phone, though too quiet for him to understand the words. Rick gazed down at the street, listening to the tone of her speech move from angry to pleading to urgent as he saw the blur of a woman hurry out of a cab and into his building.

The sound of a fist beating against his front door shocked him into movement. He heard her voice again through the phone, but it was somehow echoing too. He stood up straight and lifted it back up to his ear, as what he was hearing started to make sense. "…me in, before I have to pick the lock! Castle, please!"

Rick sighed and moved towards the door. No doubt his attentive – nosey – neighbour would be awakened by the racket Beckett was making, so the sooner he got her inside the better, but when he flipped the deadbolt and opened the door, his feet would not move aside for her to enter. "Beckett, what do you want?"

The look of sheer yearning on her face almost made him drop his phone.

"You."

If she weren't being so serious, the way his jaw dropped would have made Kate laugh. She moved towards Rick and sidestepped him, slotting through the gap to slip into the loft.

"Shut the front door, Castle." She dumped her purse on the couch, her trainers on the floor beside it, and turned back, watching him shake his head and comply.

Kate saw him take a deep breath before he turned around to face her. She bit her lip, barely knowing what to say now that she'd made it across to his loft in record time. They were geographically closer, but the emotional distance felt like a wide ravine.

"It's not a fantasy that you made up, y'know." She reached up to tuck some hair behind her ear, her hand falling to her elbow to cross her arms before she shrugged her defensive posture off and began to walk towards him.

"I want you." She tried to hold his gaze but he looked down at the floorboards near his feet. "I need you." She stopped in front of him, and fit her fingers between his, moving her head to make eye contact again. "I love you, Rick."

The brush of her lips to his shocked him into action, and Kate felt him shudder as she pressed against his body, his eyes slipping shut with a deep groan as his fingers squeezed hers and she let herself be carried away by his kiss.

His mind was in a tumbling freefall. Beckett – Kate – had just professed her love for him right to his face, and he had no time to process because she was kissing him.

His heart felt like it was going to beat itself right out from his ribcage.

Rick released Kate's hands and reached to tip her chin up, slicking his tongue along her lip. When she opened her mouth to him without delay he moaned, his knees faltering as he felt her hands questing around his ribs to press her palms to his scapulae. He pulled his lips away from hers, the rapid rise and fall of his chest causing the swell of her breasts to brush against him with every breath as he looked down into her eyes.

For a long moment he just stared in amazement. He felt his cheeks begin to lift into a smile, and he couldn't stop the relieved chortle that bubbled up. He absently wondered whether Kate had ever looked as beautiful as she did in this moment, her tongue trying to peek through her teeth as she smiled right back at him.

He leaned his forehead to hers and whispered, "Wow." Kate's hands lingered as they moved down his back to rest on his hips, and she bumped her nose to his.

"Yeah…" She pulled away from him and yawned into his chest. Rick shifted one of his hands to cup her nape and he circled his other arm around her back.

"Let's get some sleep." Kate nodded in response, and he turned them both towards his bedroom, his arm over her shoulder as she snuggled into his side.

"Hey, so…" Rick squeezed her shoulder and pressed a kiss into her hair. "Did you bring your vibrator?"

"Castle!" She pinched his waist in retaliation but he just grinned.

"Love you too, Kate."

A/N: Massive thanks, as ever, to Jo.