"Yo, Beckett, where we heading tonight?"

Beckett cringes inside, really hoping that Castle's far enough out of earshot that he missed Esposito's question.

No such luck.

"Wait, everyone's going out?" He sounds like a little lost puppy, and she turns to respond but Ryan gets there first.

"Yeah, Houligans. Beckett's birthday."

He spins so fast on the chair that she's sure he must have whiplash, but all she can see is the surprise in his eyes.

"It's not a big deal, Castle. It's just a few of us going for drinks. I thought you'd have some bigger party to be going to on a Friday night." She doesn't meet his eyes, and she really does feel bad for not telling him, but come on, of course he'd blow the whole day out of proportion and do a whole big thing and that's the complete opposite of what she wants.

"What do you mean, it's not a big deal, it's your birthday! Of course I'm free. Wish I'd had a bit more notice to get fully prepared, but no, I'll go as I am."

A few hours later she finds herself trapped next to him in a booth at the local cop bar, faking smiles and laughing along as Esposito and Ryan regale Castle with stories from before he joined them. As she peels the label off her beer she can hear her college roommate in the back of her mind telling her that peeling labels of bottles is a sign of sexual frustration, and finds herself drifting further out from the conversation. He brings her back with a light nudge to her elbow.

"So why the long face? It's your birthday."

She sighs, really not ready to answer that question and go into it. She sees that the guys have headed to the bar for more drinks and it's the just the two of them in the booth for now, and she takes a long swig of her drink hoping that his attention span won't last long enough to require an answer. He's still staring at her with concern in his eyes, and she can't believe she's going to give in like this.

"It... I just don't really do birthdays anymore." She's not meeting his eyes, but she knows that she's giving her time to answer, not rushing her or interrupting her with questions. She likes that about him.

"My Mom always made a huge deal out of birthdays. She went crazy for them. Me, my Dad, distant relatives, she really went in for the whole 'special day' thing. One day I said that I wanted four different birthday cakes and she got them all for me. Any other day of the year there would have been a lecture about my teeth rotting, but on birthdays anything went. Since... since she died I just haven't really celebrated them in the same way. My Dad tried to make it special after she died, but we both knew that it wasn't really the same."

"Yeah." She can sense him nodding at her side, see that he wants to rest his hand on her arm as some kind of comfort.

There's a pause before he grabs her hand, tugging her out of the booth. "Well hey, I might have missed the gift boat, but I can get you a drink, right? You look like you need one and if there's ever an excuse for getting really, really, drunk, it's a birthday, even if it's for uh, non-traditional reasons."

They reach the bar and she leans against it, head still down and not looking at him. She nudges him. "Thanks, Castle."

"For what?"

"Just... for the drink. Thanks."

She's just brought the glass of wine to her lips when there's a knock at the door. Setting it down on the counter she walks over and looks through the peephole.

Of course. Of course it's him. No way he'd let this go, she should have known. At least he appears to empty-handed.

"Castle-"

"You thought I'd forgotten." She turns and makes her back to the kitchen, back to the wine she's been looking forward to all day, and he follows her in, shutting the door behind him.

"Looking back, I realise that was pretty silly of me," she says, leaning back against the kitchen island. "Castle, what's that?"

It turns out he wasn't empty-handed at all, or at least, he'd hidden the huge box around the corner from her door where she couldn't see it.

"It's your gift. Both birthday and house-warming. I realised I never got you anything when you moved in and seeing how your apartment getting blown up was sort of indirectly caused by me..." He trails off, unable to read her face and not knowing how she's going to react.

He breathes an internal sigh of relief as she smiles, her eyes soft and warm. She walks towards him and takes the box over to the couch, laying it on the floor where there's room to open it.

"Aah, I should have known you'd be a careful unwrapper," he says as he watches her carefully unseal the tape and peel back the edges of the paper corner by corner to reveal and plain brown cardboard box.

"Castle, if this is going to be one of those things where I have to get through fifty layers of wrapping to get a tiny box..." He can tell she's joking, but he's still relieved that he didn't go for that old trick this year.

She opens the box, and he can tell by her face that she's a little surprised and puzzled by what's inside.

"You... You had one at your old place, but I never saw it after you moved so I figured it got blown up," he explains as she pulls a traditional acoustic guitar out of the box. "I don't even know if you play..."

His voice trails off because now he really has now idea what she's thinking, but she's running her fingers over the strings and down the neck, a small smile on her face.

There's a moment of silence and he worries if he did the wrong thing, if he should have stuck to chocolates or a novelty card with a flashing badge. She's a private person and he's made this mistake before, and he's even more confused when she rests the guitar against the couch and walks away from him into the kitchen. He's about to say something, rush an apology when she heads back and hands him a glass of wine, correctly guessing that he didn't drive over.

"It was my Mom's." He lets her take her time, watches her brush her hair back behind her ear and fiddle with her glass as she finds the right words.

"When I was thirteen I decided I was going to learn to play the guitar, mostly to impress a boy, and my Mom said she'd teach me. I was... I was an awful student and that particular phase was over pretty soon, even though she was so patient trying to teach me. I think I moved onto my cheerleader phase after that, which lasted all of a month." She giggles at the memory, and he smiles. He loves these glimpses into her teenage years, loves filling in the gaps of what her life was like before everything changed.

"But she said I should keep the guitar, in case I changed my mind one day and wanted to give it another try." She pauses and curls her feet under her, looking away from him to the guitar still resting in front of her. "I never did. After... After she died I kept it. Promised myself that one day I'd take it up again and learn properly. And since then it sat in my living room gathering dust..." She looks up at him and smiles, and god, if the uncertainty and the worry that he'd done the wrong thing wasn't worth it all for that smile.

"Thank you, Castle. It's really sweet of you. Really."

(He buys her lessons for Christmas.)

It's been nearly a month since she left the hospital and three weeks since she 's heard from him. Radio silence. At times she think it must be the intermittent signal, or the weather interfering with her phone, but when she ventures into the nearest town and there's still nothing, she resolves herself to the fact that he's given up. On her.

Her Dad's really trying. Trying to take her fishing for the tenth time since she was a kid. Trying to brighten her days with old movies and books that she read for high school and loved. She knows he's got a cake and some candles stored away for tonight, and she's getting ready to smile her way through it, just like she smiled away through the "happy birthday" he said that morning.

She wants to laugh at how inappropriate the phrase ihappy birthday/i is.

It's late afternoon and she's curled up with a blanket, looking out onto the lake as the sun drops, casting golden rays over the still water. She hears a car race past on the road outside, imagines the dust flying up and the stones rolling to the sides of the track. She wonders what he's doing. If he's writing. She wonders if he's stayed in New York or if he's headed out to the Hamptons. Wonders if it made any difference to his plans that she wasn't around. She wants to know if he's remembered it's her birthday. She's heard from Lanie and the boys, and wonders if they've mentioned it in from of him, or if they'd stay away from saying her name. She thinks about him and how she's treated him and wants to know if they'll ever get them back. If they'll ever be the same.

Her chest aches.

She jumps as the screen door opens and her Dad walks out, hands her a cup of coffee.

"Your phone's been going off. Must be well wishers." He holds it out to her and she takes it, laying it in her lap as she sips the hot coffee.

They sit for a while and he talks about the fair in the town at the weekend, and how it might be nice if they go for the evening. She listens how he reminisces about she used to love carousels as a kid and always got frustrated that they didn't go faster. She offers up a smile, her mind elsewhere, and thinks that Castle would like that story about her. He likes to know about her.

Handing her empty mug to her Dad as he heads inside she unlocks her phone and sees it.

Castle 5.07pm
Happy Birthday. Thinking of you.

She swallows the sob that rises, rubs her eyes and tosses the phone aside.

It hurts. Everything hurts.

She wakes to the smell of pancakes and coffee and the sound of him humming. She pulls the covers higher and curls into them, guessing that she has another three or four minutes before he comes in to wake her up. He's been so excited for this day for weeks now, despite her insistence that it really isn't a big deal and that he knows that she hates a fuss. But deep down she loves that he can do this now; that he can make a fuss of her and spoil her and make her day special. She loves that he doesn't have to hide it anymore.

She can't help but open her eyes when she hears him heading towards her, and she can't help the grin that spreads across her face when she sees him, tray in hand and complete with a mug of coffee, pancakes, syrup, and a single flower.

"Hi." He lays the tray to the side of her and dips down to greet her with a kiss.

"Happy birthday," he whispers, stealing another kiss as she brings her hand up to cup his jaw. "Part one: I made you breakfast."

She giggles, and it warms his heart. "I see that. I have to ask... part one of how many, exactly?" She sits up and adjusts the cushions so that she can lean against the headboard, and rests the tray on her legs.

He's lying on his front looking up at her, but at her question he glances down. "That... that depends on you. I know I can get a bit... over the top, sometimes, but I just want you to have a good day, whatever that entails."

She loves him. This crazy man who's spent the last month talking about wining and dining her and dropping hints about flowers and jewellery and whisking her off here, there, and everywhere so they can celebrate her birthday in as many time zones as possible. She's spent so many birthdays trying to ignore the occasion and the day and she wonders if this is how most people spend their birthday and what she could have had if things had turned out differently.

It's as if he's read her thoughts, and as she brings the hot mug of coffee to her lips he adds, "I just thought that you've missed out on so many birthdays that maybe you should have at least one with the full works."

"Whatever you have planned, Castle, it'll be perfect."/lj-cut