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Two months later

"Aaaaare you gonna let me in so I can kiss you, because I kind of really want to seeing as I haven't in like, three days or something, which, if you think about it, is actually a fairly long time in the grand scheme of things and I think you would probably get pretty mad if I tried to break down your –"

"Okay, okay! Get in here Casanova!" Beckett threw open the door to her apartment and dragged him inside by the collar of his shirt. She stopped, a disturbed expression on her face. "Castle, what the hell are you wearing?"

"D'you you like it?" He stood proudly in her entryway, kissing forgotten.

"Dear God." She couldn't hold in her laughter. Red, white, blue, vague flag patterns, eagles, sequins and something else sparkly. "Metrosexual to the very end Castle." He only grinned the wider.

"Are you kidding me? This is the height of manliness."

"Sure, Castle. Keep thinking that. Now kiss me, you idiot. Don't you know it's been three days?" He wasted no time, and she wasted no space, sinking as close to Castle's patriotic-clad body as possible. It had been three days, three quite long days that Beckett had spent with her father at his cabin for a pre-fourth of July celebration. But now she was back in the city, and Castle was back in her apartment, and frankly, she thought, anything could happen.

Finally they broke apart when Beckett threatened to take the kiss further, but Castle had other things in mind.

"So, are you ready for a fourth of July party to end all parties?" He said, eyebrows raised. Beckett took a step back.

"Perhaps. What would such a party entail?"

"You know, the usual Richard Castle themes: drinking, dancing, wildness…"

"All this to celebrate our grand old country?"

"I thought you'd like that, Mrs. Almost-A-Supreme-Court-Justice."

"You just don't seem the type to want to celebrate Uncle Sam's birthday."

"Are you kidding me? Every day my tax dollars are at work paying your salary."

"They used to be, you mean."

"Yeah, yeah whatever." He waved his hand vaguely. "The point is, where would a mystery writer like me be without the CIA, the FBI and the NYPD to write about. Besides, any excuse for a little get together…"

"Wildness, you say."

"Of course," He inclined his head toward her. "Of course. You couldn't expect any less."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

"Yes, detective, no Richard Castle party is complete without wildness and women."

"Women?"

"Only those who I cannot say no to."

"When have you ever been able to say no to a woman?" She jerked him a little closer, still not forgetting how he had broken that kiss. How she wished he hadn't. "Especially amidst..." she touched her nose to his. "...wildness. Are Lanie or any of the boys coming? Martha and Alexis? You've never been able to say no to Espo, after all."

Castle smiled widely.

"That's the best part of this party. Alexis and my dear mother are spending this holiday weekend with friends leaving my place…" he spread his hands apart. "Open. For any purpose or use which two mature adults such as ourselves could possibly dream up."

"So, basically, booze and sex."

"Yeah, pretty much. You read me so well, Detective."

Beckett glanced around the apartment. It was sweltering here without air conditioning, she had been Castle-less for three days, and there would be nothing here for her over the holiday weekend.

"Okay Mr. Castle, I'll agree to your scam to lure me into bed on one condition."

"Anything," he said, still smiling, his hands now resting loosely on her hips.

"Will there be fireworks?"

"Oh, Detective," Castle said, leaning in closer to her ear. "There will most definitely be fireworks."


July the 4th

"Cheers, dear Detective."

"Cheers, Castle."

Castle and Beckett tapped their glasses together then drank, him deeply into his gin and tonic, her sipping as she looked slyly over the edge of her glass of red wine at him. They were sitting in Castle's loft, two chairs pulled up to the French windows with a view of the street, the skyline and the pending fireworks.

Castle had wanted to take their drinks and blankets and binoculars and plate of cheese up to the roof; he said it was more romantic. Under the thinly veiled guise of enjoying the air conditioning after days of sweltering 90+ heat, Beckett had refused to move from his living room. The truth was that she did think it would be romantic to sit on the roof and watch the fireworks, and later she might even let him drag her bodily up there, but for now– she didn't want him to know she was that soft, not yet.

So instead they peered out of the open French windows (courtesy of air conditioning strong enough to withstand the heat) down into the streets where people hopped from bar to bar and danced on the sidewalk while the high beams of cabs lit their progress. More than one person had already reached the point where they had to stagger from bar to bar.

Castle looked over at Beckett, who was picking at a piece of Swiss from the cheese plate.

"Remember that time we pretended to be drunk?" he asked, jerking his chin toward a couple making their zigzagging way around the corner. She carefully glanced out the window. Of course she remembered. As if she could have forgotten. Castle was still talking. "One of my best ideas. It totally worked, and it was..."

"Castle." She looked at him with eyebrows raised. "We were undercover. There was a suspect. Please."

He shrugged.

"My point still stands. It was amazing." She gave him a small eye roll, and when he reached for her hand she moved it instead toward the cheese plate.

"Aha, detective. So that's how you're going to play–"

In a second her hand was halfway up his arm, pinning his elbow to the armrest of the chair as she gave him a kiss laced with gin and red wine. She heard a hoot from below, but she knew it was aimed at something else entirely because they were hidden from view by the window sash. Still. Then she ruffled his hair until it stood up the way she liked, and sat back in her chair calmly.

"Now that… that was amazing, Castle."

He gulped.

"No argument here."


A little while later, after his third gin and her third glass of wine, they grew pensive. Castle was rubbing at a few raised scars on the knuckles of his right hand. Beckett wondered if he was remembering the way she had bandaged his hand, or the way he had punched the guy in the nose until they were both bleeding, or the way she had almost died.

"Who do you think wears the pants in this relationship, Kate?" Beckett looked over at him. She glanced down at her shorts, then over at Castle's dark jeans.

"Well, I'm pretty sure you're the one wearing pants right now."

"Funny." He gripped his drink a bit tighter.

"Why, Ricky? Are you worried I'll become too domineering for you?" She teased, recalling the dominatrix case they had worked together years ago. He was, after all, the more happy go lucky of them, and even more likely to laugh at a sex joke than her. To her surprise, he remained sober– well, in the reserved sense, anyway, if not the alcohol-related sense. He looked into her, eyes shining.

"That's my secret, Kate. I'm always worried."

She resisted the urge to back away. Evidently three gin and tonics was the threshold at which Castle started pouring his soul out. There were a million things he could be worried about, plenty of them related to her, and she didn't know if either of them could handle any more drama, not yet.

Part of her was put off that he'd gotten this tipsy this quickly. He really was a lightweight. But she eased the drink from him and held his hand instead, a luxury she only afforded him in private.

"I'm right here, Castle."

"I know you are." Suddenly his eyes looked clearer, but she knew it was only a trick of the light. It would take a bit of time for him to sober up for real, and come around. Until then, well… it's never good to focus on sad thoughts when you're drunk.

"I'm glad we're here, and… that's it's the fourth of July." She couldn't care less what day it was, in all honesty. She just wanted him to cheer up. He looked at her with that look she remembered from a million moments at the precinct, the look of a puppy who would do anything for its master. She didn't want that look. She didn't want Castle the puppy, she wanted Castle the equal, Castle who would fight like hell but still walk away when he saw too much pain for himself and the ones he loved. So she smiled at him, not her soft, sexy smile, but her broad, I'm-glad-you're-here smile. And she held his hand tight until he returned the smile. Then she leaned over toward him.

"And anyway, just wait Castle. I can promise that before long, neither of us will be wearing any pants at all."


Castle did sober up, and quick, after she gave him something plain to drink and some cheese and salami from the platter. He had the dignity to look a bit embarrassed, but she silenced him with a stern, "Castle," and they got back to their stargazing and people watching.

"Where are the fireworks?" Castle whined, checking his NYC Events app for the twentieth time.

"Is that all you care about? Sparkly things?"

"I find sparkly things are always at least 75% more enjoyable than non-sparkly things."

"Of course you do. You have the attention span of a cocker spaniel."

"Oooh, Detective. You cut me. You cut me deep." He pretended to look hurt.

One firework exploded in the distance, long and low, so they couldn't see it, only hear it. Castle's eyes grew suddenly wide.

"They're starting. C'mon Beckett, c'mon, 'cmon." And before she could stop him he had yanked her out of her chair and was pushing her out of his apartment, up the stairs and through the door to the roof.

New York on holiday was laid out before them as they emerged on top of Castle's building. Castle grabbed her hand and held it as they approached the edge, and she let him. A gold shower shot into the sky, signaling the beginning of the display.

"There is so much beauty, just so many beautiful things in the world. It's easy to forget," Castle said quietly, and looked over at her. "Beauty everywhere." Beckett said nothing, but she was touched by Castle's words. He was a good person.

They stood in silence for a few minutes as the fireworks escalated, listening to the ooh's and aah's of the people in the city, and the distant, delayed booom as each shower went off. As the fireworks reached their finale, Beckett carefully intertwined their fingers and gripped Castle's hand tighter.

"Even this… is enough." She hadn't meant to specifically say it out loud, but it didn't matter. She meant it. Together, they were enough. "This beauty." The last blue, green and gold sparks rained down over the city leaving the sky deep black-blue before them.

"I think it's time to go downstairs," he said, his eyes shining, but this time with the remains of the fireworks rather than the remains of gin.

"I completely agree," she said in a low voice.

So they pulled each other down the stairs loosely hand in hand, the boom of fireworks still echoing in their ears and each others' voices still echoing in their hearts.