Just Be Patient

xxx

They sit on her couch and sip the wine she poured even before he made it to her apartment. He took the half-empty glass from her fingers and took a healthy swallow and she came with him, followed his lead, sat close beside him with her knees drawn up and pressing into his thigh, and he appreciates that.

Because now he can set down a half-full glass on her coffee table.

Half-empty. Half-full.

He grins at her and stretches his legs out on her couch, burrowing under her until she huffs and falls into his side, holding her own wine glass up and out of the way. He gives her smoldering looks until she rolls her eyes and puts her glass on the coffee table as well, gives in to him.

When she's adjusted on the couch, lying in front of him with his arm around her waist and the other under her head, she turns on the television and they zone out with late night talk shows and the soft, rhythmic motion of her fingertips on his forearm.

xxx

He must have fallen asleep because he wakes the moment the television clicks off, startles on the remnants of a dream. She chuckles and taps his arm to let her go, loosen up, and he does, rubbing at his eyes.

"Come to bed," she murmurs, dragging her hand through his hair and then pushing on his forehead. "I'm getting a crick in my neck."

He struggles up after her and follows, shrugging his shoulders as he feels the pains in his own neck, the tightness in his back. He isn't paying attention as he walks and so he gets a faceful of her hair before he can stop himself; she pats his cheek and slips past him.

"Gotta put the wine up, glasses. Go ahead, get changed."

"What about you?" he mumbles.

"I've already got my pajamas on. I'll be right there."

The exchange has woken him up a bit more and he shuffles into her bedroom and mindlessly opens his drawer, draws his shirttails out of his pants, starts unbuttoning his cuffs. Kate comes back before he finishes, and he idly watches her putter around her room, putting things away, closing the lid to her wooden box, smoothing lotion into her hands.

She ties back her hair and slips into bed and he attends to himself again, pulls pajamas out of the drawer, folds things neatly because he likes the orderly touch of her room.

When he crawls into bed beside her, they lie in the darkness, awake and breathing, for a long time. That nap on the couch has given him just enough rest to make his body alert to every movement of hers.

And then she rolls onto her side and props her hand under her cheek and he turns his head to look at her.

"Did you tell Alexis I was in therapy?"

He blinks dumbly at her and wishes there was more light to gauge her reaction. "I - uh - might have said. . .there might have been a conversation about the strongest woman I know being in therapy?"

Her fingers uncurl in the bed between them, push across the sheet to touch the inside of his elbow. "Oh, yeah?"

"Is it bad that she guessed correctly?"

Kate gives a little laugh in the textured darkness, her finger strokes over skin. "Not bad. I don't mind."

"Wait, how did you know she knew?" he murmurs, trying to figure out when his daughter has even had the time to be away from him.

"We talked."

"When?"

"Yesterday. You left your phone at my desk to go bring up our lunch-"

"That delivery guy was clueless," he mutters, still not over it.

"She called, so I answered."

Just in case, he hears. "Thank you."

"Not needed," she says softly. "She asked for Dr Burke's name and number."

"Oh?" he gasps, turning on his side now and trying to make out her features in the hush and mute tones of night. "She really did? She was so against even the thought of it."

"She sounded apprehensive, and she didn't want any details. I offered. . ."

Oh, she offered. . .to share? Details? "Yeah?"

"She's finding her way, Rick."

He nods and the bed shakes with his motion; he realizes he's worked up again and flops onto his back, breathes it out.

She comes in and aligns her body with his, warm skin and soft cloth against his side, the brush of her hair under his chin.

"I hope she goes to therapy. Just to talk, you know?" he murmurs.

She gives a humming laugh, more noise than anything. "I know."

"Yeah, guess you do. She didn't want them to give her pills. She-"

"-wants to be a normal college kid," Kate finishes quietly. "I told her that was a misconception. If there is a normal, then she can only find it faster if she has help."

He lets out a long breath, the kind that normally comes after a bout of crying, and he feels easier for it.

She twists her head on his shoulder and he feels her soft kiss. "Also? She told me, I hear it's work. Know where she might have gotten that from, Castle?"

"Could be you," he answers. "By way of me. I have the tendency to use you - sometimes verbatim - to solve my parenting issues. For going on five years. Until now, I've managed to claim all the awards for my successful child-rearing abilities, but the truth eventually comes out. Better now than later."

She actually laughs at that, and it makes him smile up at her ceiling, her hair ticklish at his chin, her body warming him.

"All the awards, huh?" she says, her fingers now spanning his ribs. "What awards are those?"

"Dad of the Year. Best Dad Ever. My coffee mugs say so."

"You also have a coffee mug that says, I'm kind of a big deal, but we all know that's patently untrue-"

She yelps when he pinches her side, her laughter falling off into the room, echoing around them. She's a little twitchy now - that'll teach her - and she keeps gripping his fingers to ward off another attack, but he just curls them up in her hand and brings that hand to his mouth, kisses her wrist.

"You denying I'm a big deal?" he says, pressing his smile to her skin.

She comes closer, back at his side again, and her fingers shake his loose to run through his hair. "Well, you're kind of a big deal to me," she admits. A little sigh, the soft and soothing comb of her fingers.

"Ditto, Beckett."

He closes his eyes and she stops moving, her hand draped at his neck, their bodies warming the bed, and yet his brain won't turn off.

He wonders if Alexis has actually called Dr Burke yet. Or any therapist. Maybe she was only humoring him. She needs to call. She has to call.

"We've had dinner together every night this week," he starts. "She's got to see someone. She's got to talk about it."

Kate presses her fingers into his spine, the bones at his neck. "Castle. Just be patient. You used to be good at it."

He huffs but he sees her point.