She picks Josh up at JFK when he comes back from Dakar, amazed that she has somehow become one of those women standing just on the other side of customs, waiting for her man to come back from his adventures in the world.
She sees him before he sees her, not difficult considering he's six foot eight and towers a full head above everyone else on the flight. A few others have noticed him too, notably a small gaggle of giggling teenaged girls standing to her right, and she tries not to feel stupidly proud when Josh's gaze settles on her and his tired face suddenly brightens as if someone has turned on a stadium light behind his eyes.
His stride quickens and lengthens and before she can actually think about what's going to happen he's holding her so tightly her feet are a good six inches off the ground. 'I wasn't sure you'd be here,' he whispers into her hair, and she feels a small shiver run down her back.
'Neither was I. I'm in the middle of a case,' she says, and he immediately deflates, as if she's let his air out to bring him down to average size.
'Okay. Well, thanks.' He sets her back on her feet and reaches for the duffel bag he'd dropped when he swept her up in his arms. He looks like a child who's reacting bravely to the idea that Christmas won't be coming this year, and she suddenly feels nothing less than awful, unworthy.
'So I'll have to get up early, but we can have tonight,' she adds quickly, and if anything it makes her feel worse to see the bright lights immediately snap back on.
0—0—0
Traffic on the BQE is awful, so she doesn't talk much, alert for any space she can zoom into, just to make it feel like they're making some kind of progress. Josh talks instead, turned towards her in his seat, occasionally reaching a long arm across the car to stroke her hair, or rest on her thigh. Tiny touches, not quite sexual, not quite not, as if he wants to reassure them both that he's really home. It's sweet but annoying, and she finally takes his hand and just holds it for a moment to get him to stop.
''I'm sorry, I forgot you don't like to be pawed in public,' he says, and it's true, she does feel as if her privacy is somehow being breached, with every other driver free to stare since there's no need to watch the road. 'I just haven't been able to think of anything else this week, except seeing you again, being able to touch you. Have my way with you. Or better yet, let you have your wicked way with me.'
She laughs and he lifts their clasped hands, takes one of her fingers into his mouth. His tongue is hot and wet, and suddenly she is too, which she's damned sure was the point.
'I'm driving, Josh,' she says, but she doesn't pull her hand away.
'You're driving no faster than I could walk and have been for the last half hour. Just keep your eyes open, and I'll do the rest.'
At which point the traffic inexplicably loosens up and she laughs again as he groans in disappointment. 'Once we're home,' she promises, pulling her hand away to signal before zooming into the next lane, 'you can have me any way you want.'
0—0—0
They wind up at her apartment because the heat has been off at his for the last six weeks, and it'll be full of stale dust and unopened mail. She makes him wait at the door while she checks for mess (or so she says), but really it's because she can't remember if she left the shutters on the secret murder board open or closed, and she is so not ready to talk about that right now.
Her apartment has the usual signs of its occupant being face-down in work for weeks on end: her cupboards are bare of anything but basics, the fridge is full of leftover takeaway in various stages of decomp, and there's a considerable pile of laundry in the basket in her closet. But in general, she tends towards obsessive tidyness in times of stress and once she's hidden the board it's presentable enough. She clears two wineglasses and an empty bottle of Chateau Neuf-du-Pape off her desk, remnants of last night's "work-related" drop-by, and it occurs to her that she's going to have to break Castle of that newly developed habit now that Josh is back.
It's a thought which makes her inexplicably sad, even though she sees him more days than not.
'All clear?' Josh asks from the hall.
She puts the glasses in the sink and the bottle in the recycling, takes one last look, and answers, 'Yes.'
She really needn't have worried about his seeing the shutters open, or any other signs of slovenliness for that matter: Josh's expression makes it clear he's not seeing anything but her right now. Which is both a little frightening, and very very hot. Hot like his mouth on hers, and his hands (warm despite the cold hall she'd left him standing in) already under her shirt deftly unclasping her bra, and the hard bulge nuzzling her belly which needs to be inside her now, up on the kitchen counter where the height and the angle are so absolutely perfect she's out of her head and out of consonants in less than fifteen minutes.
He leans over her when she's finished, tickling her cheeks with little kisses. Inside, he's still buried deep, and she closes her eyes as he rocks his hips, just enough to make her back arch involuntarily and a moan escape from her lips.
Goddamn him, he is just too fucking (literally) good at this.
'Cold,' she complains, and he wraps his arms around her as she is and carries her to the couch. She's on top now, straddling his lap. Her turn to fuck him, and his eyes go wide as she clenches all her inner muscles tightly and begins to do just that.
0—0—0
'You are hotter than a hot thing,' he says later, as they're curled in her bed, lazily stroking each other to sleep. 'You know that?'
'Mmm. Been told.'
'But you're my hot thing. Right?'
She lifts her head from where it's nestled in the hollow of his shoulder, suddenly wide awake. 'What do you mean?'
'I mean you're the one. I realized that on my second day in Africa. I was holding this baby I'd just operated on and he was so tiny, Kate, his head just fit into the palm of my hand. And I wanted you to be there to see that, to see this little guy, and to see what I can do so you'll understand why I have to go away to do it and you won't feel left behind or like I don't love you enough to stay and you'll forgive me for not being there when you need me sometimes because you're the one I want to come home to when I'm done.'
He's said the words in a rush and now he's holding his breath and so is she because she has absolutely no idea what to say. The feeling she's having right now, the closest word she has to describe it, is panic.
'Don't,' he says quickly. He curls closer, tucking her head under his chin so she can't look at him any more. 'Don't answer, don't even think about it right now. I'm not saying marry me and have my babies and let's build a house in the country to raise them. I just want you to know I'm in this as far as you want to take it. In case you had any doubts.'
She flattens her hand over his heart, feels it beating strong against her palm. 'Okay,' she whispers, grateful when he seems to take that as answer enough. For now.
0—0—0
And then he's waking her from a hazy dream of danger, tugging on her hand, not too gently either.
'Kate. Get up. Now.'
'What? I don't-'
She lets Josh pull her from the warmth of the blankets, too disoriented to resist, and not quite certain she hasn't woken from one dream into another. 'This,' he answers, dragging her to the window behind her desk, where the shutters are now open and the sun is rising through the post-its and the papers and the gruesome crime scene photographs. 'Kate, what is this?'
She wraps her arms around herself, small protection against the chill she feels coming from inside, colder than the morning air on her bare skin. All the shutters are open, there are things on the kitchen counters that weren't there the night before, and she has the same sudden, overwhelming feeling of suffocation she did the night Castle said it's about your mother.
She keeps her voice low to hold the anger down. 'You're going through my things now?'
'I was letting some daylight in. I wanted to make you breakfast.' He goes to the board and pulls down the picture of her mother crumpled in that alley and holds it out. 'What is this?'
She snatches the photo out of his hand. 'My business, that's what it is.'
'You said your mother died but you didn't want to talk about it.' He points to the board where the name Johanna Beckett, written in Kate's own hand, proclaims the truth. 'That's your mother in that picture, isn't it?'
She walks over to the window without answering, puts the photo back where it belongs and closes the shutters again. Only when everything is hidden can she manage to breathe deeply enough to answer, 'Yes.'
'Your mother was murdered?'
'Yes.'
'And you keep it…you have photographs? And evidence? In your…Jesus, Kate, this is so morbid.'
She whirls on him, fury suddenly whipping out of her control. 'This is what I do, Josh. I'm a homicide detective. What the hell did you think that meant?'
'But this is your mother.'
'This is a case that I'm trying to solve.'
In her bedroom, her alarm clock goes off, reminding her that there's another case waiting, and she's already taken more time off than she should.
He follows her into the bedroom. 'But he knows, doesn't he? Castle. You told him.'
'Josh, I'm not having this conversation standing here naked when I'm late for work,' she says, slapping off the alarm.
'Fine,' he snaps. 'But we're going to talk about this later.'
'No. We're not.' She finds her robe jammed between the mattress and the bedstead, and flings it on. 'Unless I bring it up, the subject is off-limits from now on.'
'But you'll talk about it with him?'
He looks hurt, lost, bewilderingly small for such a large man. She holds her breath, unable to form a response. The truth is too much, but to say no would be an outright lie, not as easily forgivable as a lie of omission. None of this is anything she wants to share with Josh. Castle knows all about her darker self; he has an uncanny knack of reading what she can't express, and she's only now beginning to realise how much she's come to rely on him for that. On his ability to understand what she wants to say without her needing to say it. And so, like the time she told him about her mother, it sometimes becomes possible for her to speak the unspeakable. But only to him. She doesn't want that with Josh, doesn't need it. What she needs is the light he brings, hands that hold lifesaving tools instead of weapons, a man who's cheerful, unmarked, uncomplicated. Blessed.
'Josh.' She walks up and puts her hands on either side of his face for emphasis. 'I work with Castle. I don't sleep with him. I don't tell him things I do tell you. But he's my friend, and he's a good friend and I value him. Now I need to get ready for work, so you need to go.'
He takes her hands off his face and holds them. 'I will go when you tell me what happened to your mother.'
'Then you'd better get used to sleeping on the couch.' She pulls her hands out of his and fortunately for him, he doesn't try to hold on because she can feel the anger building again.
'Kate, you can't live with that in your apartment.'
She goes to the closet and yanks out a towel, keeping her back firmly to him. 'I can, and I do. I don't tell you not to go running off to Senegal, don't you dare tell me how to live.'
She storms into the bathroom and turns the shower on full force, not surprised to hear the front door slam shortly after. Their argument seems to hang in the air like the steam that follows her into the bedroom when she's done, making her feel stupidly, furiously alone. Making her wonder if maybe he's right, and her obsession (she knows that's what other people would call it) with her mother's case is indeed morbid, and if the reason Castle understands it is because he's just as morbid as she is when all the evidence is weighed up. Murder is her job and she chose that, yes, but something about it calls to him as well. And despite all that she's told him about herself, Castle has still never answered her question about why he writes about blood and death and the worst things that people can do to each other. Perhaps he doesn't even know.
Dressed, she zips up her boots and stares at herself in the mirror. New clothes, new hair, new home, so much is different since her old apartment blew up. It's taken almost a year to rebuild what was lost in that explosion. How much more can she really stand to lose?
0-0-0-0-0-0
Author's note: I didn't lie about the end of Mornings being out for beta, it's just we all agreed it wasn't the right ending for this story. So, still working on the *(&$^ thing. Sorry.
