Disclaimer: They're not mine. Never will be.
A/N: Sorry for the mistakes it's not been beta'd. May be a slight spoiler for the 100th ep in here somewhere. Hope you like it!
He needs to find better hiding places…She needs to stop accidentally finding things. She doesn't snoop. But this is the second time she's discovered it.
The first time the little box made an appearance she had been in his office sending a quick email to Esposito about the Sanders murder case they had just wrapped, before heading off to the Hampton's for the weekend. The battery on the computer only having twelve percent life left to it she started looking for the power cord. Usually it was always connected to the laptop, however, this time was nowhere in sight. She had opened drawers, shifted items in them around and nothing.
"Hey, Castle, where's the power cord for the computer?" She called to him.
"Already packed, it's in the pocket of my duffel bag," he answered from the living room where he was talking with his mother before their departure. He was not coming back from a nice relaxing weekend away only to have to come back to a disaster after one of his mother's parties…yes, she still had them even now.
There was more than one pocket on Castle's duffel bag… there were three. So technically she couldn't be blamed for what she had happened upon. The front pocket held nothing but his toiletries, the first side pocket contained the notebook that normally resided by the side of his bed, just for when story ideas popped into his mind at night. She still moved it just to make sure the cord wasn't under it…It wasn't. But a dark velvet box was.
Her stomach fell.
She stared at the object still at the bottom of the pocket. Was it actually was she thought it was? The footfalls coming toward her stopped her from any more investigating. She quickly zipped the pocket and moved on to the last one still left unchecked.
"Find it?" He asked after coming into the room.
"Yup," she answered, holding what she had been looking for in her hands. She didn't look him in the eye as she retreated from the room. "Almost finished here," she tells him after sitting back at the desk.
If he suspected anything, he never let on.
He also never brought the ring out the entire three days they were away.
She finds it now not even in his own home, but hers.
She has no idea where his mind is. He wants her to find it she thinks, because when he's hiding things in his drawer, in her dresser, in her apartment she has to wonder why he's being so careless. She decides not to put his nice clean, folded laundry in his drawer.
Nope.
She unfolds it, throws it back in the dryer. She's not going to spoil this for him…even if he is not trying to be imaginative in where he chooses to hide objects in velvet boxes at.
He enters the apartment just after she walks out of the laundry room, sets the bag of take-out on the island.
"Can I help?" He asks…Now she sees that look in his eyes. He's suspicious.
"You mean, you're volunteering to help fold laundry?"
"Well, I didn't mean for you to have to wash my clothes, Beckett."
"Castle, when you leave your dirty sweat pants and ratty 'Trek yourself before you wreck yourself' Doctor Spock t-shirt in my laundry hamper, exactly who do you think is going to wash them?"
"I just don't expect for you to wash them…I will get to them, eventually." He's talking fast.
She can hear it. He's nervous.
"Well, they still need folded and put away if you want to help," she says. Knowing he will say yes. Not to help her, no. But to keep her from discovering what he doesn't know she's already found.
He does help her. Takes the clean clothes to her bedroom sits on the bed while they fold together. He moves to put what was his in 'his' drawer. Drawer's really because the one drawer wasn't big enough to hold everything he has here. But the drawer she gave him, the drawer that holds what she knows was meant for her. He doesn't move the object out of his way, just places his clothes on top of it, shuts the drawer and walks away.
"Dinner?" He questions.
"Sure," she answers.
Later while lying on the couch watching a movie, his pick, her mind starts to wonder. She's imagining what he may be planning with that box. He knows she doesn't want big, huge, and public. She want's big, intimate.
She waits and waits and waits…she likens it to a time bomb. She's nervous, she's excited, and she's scared and sick.
They've been together for just over a year. She has known this was coming since the moment she showed up at his door soaking wet. He's been resisting the urge to get down on one knee since he woke the next morning to her bringing him coffee.
It still doesn't stop the panic she feels inside knowing what will be.
But it's been over a month and she's found the damn box a third and fourth time and nothing.
Nothing.
She's dying with it.
The not knowing.
She wants to scream at him…"Why the hell are you not asking me to marry you, you ass?" Or "I've found the ring, Castle would you just do it already and get it over with."
She's starting to get angry.
Because really, why the hell is he not asking her to marry him? Maybe he's changed his mind and he really doesn't want to marry her after all. He's had ample opportunity, they're only together every single day and most nights. Well, every night. She hasn't seen her apartment since the second time she found the ring.
The fight that erupts is really not her fault.
Because they've had this same fight since the very first case they worked together. He will never learn to just listen to her. When she says, 'Castle, stay in the car,' she means Castle, stay in the car. His knee still hasn't been the same since the ski trip that really wasn't that long ago. His physical therapist thinks he'll be one-hundred percent when he's healed. But he still has to take it easy when out in the field.
Of course he didn't listen.
That's why at two thirty in the morning they're standing in the middle of the loft after just getting in from the emergency room, fighting.
"You knew that we were going in blind, Castle. You knew."
"I already told you why I did it Beckett. I watched as Caldrony and his partner went in after seeing you go in. They knew you and the boys were in that building. They would have surprised you from behind and after you and the boys separated, one or all of you could have been hurt or worse."
"So you getting hurt…that was worth it?" She asks him quietly. "You almost getting killed…"she stops because she can't finish that sentence. She can't because it's happened one to many times and they keep getting closer and closer to one of them meeting their end.
"I think I've already proved that it to you more than once Kate. Anything is worth it to me, knowing that in the end you're not the one laying in the hospital bed…or in the ground," he tells her, his throat tight with emotion.
"You can't risk your life for me, Castle. You have to stop trying to die for me."
"I'm not trying to die for you Kate. I'm trying to let you live…for me…I need you. Period. I love you and I need you and that's all I need to know when I go rushing into a building where two murderers have you in their sites."
She's crying now. Quiet tears slip down her cheeks as she stands staring at the man who holds her heart, her joy, her happiness, her future. "Castle…" she whispers but he cuts her off.
"I can live without you…If I was forced to. I would have to, for Alexis. I would have to. But that would be just existing Kate.I couldn't really live without you. Couldn't live in a world where your laughter didn't ring, where your eyes never shined, a place where you didn't breathe Kate. You may think I went into that building for you…but no, no it was for me Kate. I went in there for me."
He's no longer standing, during his speech he dropped to sit on the coffee table and that's where he's at when she goes to him. She goes to him with her tears and her ragged breathing and her love for this man and his words so strong she thinks her heart may burst.
"I love you," she says to him. And she may have told him that more than a hundred times by now but each time she says it, she means it more than the first time. "I don't know anything else but that. I love you."
He pulls her down to him. Sits her on his left knee, the one he still dubs the good one, tucks her legs between his own. Kisses her, sharing the taste of both of their tears, "Marry me," he whispers against her lips after they've parted.
A short burst of laughter escapes her landing against his lips. She pulls back only slightly.
"Marry me, Kate?" He asks again just a little louder than the last time. And he's pulling out the box she's seen multiple times in various hiding places, opens it to the ring she knows wis inside.
It's beautiful. It's small without being plain; it's extravagant without being too much. It's perfect.
This is the moment she's been waiting on. Been waiting for the moment she could tell this man that he is the only one who could ever make her whole.
"Yes." She tells him, her voice just above a whisper, the tears falling again, the laughter bubbling up inside again spilling out of her as she answers again, "Yes."
He's putting the ring on her finger even as their lips meet again. It hits her. He didn't have it planned. He was waiting on the perfect moment. And it was exactly how she had imagined it. It was intimate it was huge.
He was her one and she was his done.