A/N: Sorry for the wait, especially after I posted the first two chapters so close together. I'd actually written a lot of the second chapter already by the time I posted the first... so I won't normally be that fast about updating, unfortunately. Anyway, enjoy chapter 3!

When he pressed Beckett's doorbell for the third time, he wasn't sure whether he was more irritated or worried. He'd told her he'd be there at eleven, and it was now ten after. Why wasn't she answering her door?

He let out a breath when he finally heard footsteps. So she was home, at least. When she finally opened the door, pink-faced and bleary-eyed, all traces of annoyance vanished from him. "Hey, Castle," she greeted him in a voice that sounded as if it hadn't quite woken up yet. "Sorry. I, um… I just woke up."

He smiled. "So you slept better, I gather?"

She looked down and contemplated how to answer for a moment. "Just… longer," she finally said.

He felt a familiar little flutter of worry, but consoled himself with the belief that this trip was exactly what she needed. "We'll fix that," he promised. "Are you about ready to go?"

She looked back at him and rolled her eyes. "Castle. Do I look ready?"

He noted the T-shirt and cloth shorts she was wearing, as well as her unkempt hair and lack of makeup. "I guess not…"

She shook her head. "I'm not even packed. Sorry. I was planning on doing it this morning… I haven't slept this late since college."

"Don't apologize, I'm not in a hurry. Tell you what. I'll go get coffee, you get dressed, and when I get back I'll help you pack. Sound good?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Thanks. But, um… don't get my usual."

"Okay… what do you want?"

"I don't care," she said quickly, "I just want something different. You pick. I'm sure I'll love whatever it is."

He smiled. She must have realized what she'd said as soon as it left her mouth, because her face immediately started to redden. But he just nodded. He was pleased with this. Not only did she trust him to choose her beverage for her, but she was doing exactly as he thought she should. Changing her routine. Starting fresh. Her coffee order might have been a minor change, but it was a change nonetheless. "Okay. I'll be back. With coffee."

She nodded. "Good."

The next time Kate answered the door, Castle was pleased to note that she looked a lot more like herself, probably the most she had since the incident. Her hair was straight and brushed, she was wearing jeans and a fitted t-shirt, and she'd put on a little bit of makeup. Generally, she just looked a lot more put together, and somehow that just reassured him. He knew it didn't mean that everything was as it should be, but at least it was a little closer.

"I brought coffee," he greeted her, handing her a cup.

"What did you pick?" she asked.

He nodded toward the cup. "You tell me."

She took a sip. "It's good."

He smiled. "I'm glad."

"What is it?"

"You tell me," he repeated.

"Ah." She took another sip and frowned. "I honestly don't know. It's not vanilla… caramel, maybe?"

He shrugged. "I'm not telling."

She rolled her eyes. "So it's top secret coffee?"

He nodded. "Top secret."

"If I get it right, will you tell me?"

"Maybe."

"Then I'm just going to drink it and not worry about what it is."

"Good plan."

She stepped back, nonverbally inviting him inside. When he followed her, a part of him expected the apartment to be different, somehow changed. It seemed wrong that as her life's work hung in the balance, when the woman herself seemed to have lost some of her vibrancy, her apartment would remain the same. But it had. He hadn't been here many times, but at least to his eye, it looked exactly the same. It didn't seem inexplicably dark or empty, not larger or smaller than it had once been. This reinforced the conclusion he'd come to earlier: Beckett was not Nikki Heat.

When he was writing, a major event in the main character's life affected everything. No small detail was untouched. Everything was seen through a filter: it became darker or brighter, or maybe it just changed color. But real life wasn't a novel. Things changed, and things stayed the same. This was what he had to show Kate. While her job might have been a part of who she was, it wasn't all of who she was. There was more to life, and there was more to her. She was a person, not just a character. She was his friend. Not just his muse.

"So, have you started packing yet?" he asked once he was inside.

"Uh…" she shrugged. "Not really. What do I pack? I don't know how long we're going to be gone, or what I'm going to need…"

He shrugged. "So just pack everything. Pack enough for two weeks, because that's when we know we have to be back. Go with an assortment. Everything you know you'll need and anything you think you might need. If you forget something, we can always get it later. Just pack a foundation. It's not life and death." He sat down on the couch and prepared himself to wait, used to the speeds at which his mother and daughter normally packed. "If there's anything I can do to help, let me know. Otherwise, take your time."

She nodded, digesting his advice. "Okay," she finally said. "Give me ten minutes."

He couldn't wrap his mind around this estimate. "Take your time," he said again. "It's not like we have a deadline."

She rolled her eyes. "Ten minutes," she repeated.

It didn't matter how many times she repeated it, he wasn't going to believe it. But he nodded, letting her go on thinking that he did, and took his iPhone out of his pocket as he sank further into the couch.

He wasn't any closer to achieving three stars on the level of Angry Birds he was playing when Beckett came back into the room with a fairly large suitcase. He swore loudly at his phone before he realized she was there.

She raised a bemused eyebrow at him. "What?"

He jumped, fully realizing her presence for the first time. "Oh. This… game." He looked up from it and noted her suitcase. "What can I do for you?"

"You can get up and come on. I'm ready to go."

He looked back down at his phone and noted the time. It hadn't been more than ten minutes. It might actually have been a little less time. "Really?"

She nodded.

"That was fast."

"I told you ten minutes."

"But… I didn't believe you."

She rolled her eyes and glanced at his phone as well. "Let me see," she said.

Still puzzled, he handed it to her.

She looked at the phone, studied it for a second, and smiled. A few crashing sounds later, she handed it back to him. He looked at the screen. Level cleared. Three stars. All he could do was gape at her. "How…?" he managed.

"Are we leaving, or what?"

Still staring at his phone, he closed the game. He looked up at her. "Yeah. Let's go." When he stood up she took the handle of her bag, but he walked to her instead of the door. "Let me take that," he offered.

"No, it's okay, Castle. I'll get it. It's kind of heavy."

"I got it," he insisted. "Really."

"Fine." Her hand brushed his briefly as she gave him the handle.

He faltered a little as the full weight was transferred to him. She was right, it was heavy. Heavier than he'd guessed from its size. "Geez Bec—Kate." He looked away, having remembered her sensitivity about being called by what she considered her "work name" after it was already halfway out of his mouth. He planned to break her of that—after all, Beckett was still her last name—but not all at once. "What do you have in here?" he asked, meeting her eyes again.

She shrugged. "I did what you said, and packed everything I thought I might need."

"For two weeks! What did you do, pack sixty pairs of shoes?"

She bit her lip to hide her smile. "Not sixty…"

"Fifty-nine?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Maybe. You're the one who offered to carry it. Are you rescinding that offer?"

"Oh no, I'll carry it. I just can't figure out got so much weight in a bag this size. It's not that it's small, it just defies the laws of physics."

She shrugged. "I'm good like that. Can we go?"

"Yes, we can go." He took the bag and led the way out of the apartment so that she could lock the door behind them, and then proceeded to lead her out of the building and to the car.

"What did you do, rent a car?" she asked when he popped the trunk of a large silver sedan in the parking lot.

"Yeah, I didn't think all our stuff would fit in the Ferrari. I made sure to get something with a lot of space." He didn't mention that he'd also gone out of his way to make sure that the car he rented couldn't in any universe be mistaken for a police car.

She nodded. "Smart."

He got into the driver's seat and she the passenger's. "They also told me it has a seriously kickass sound system." He smiled. "Shall we test it?"

She shook her head quickly. "No. No music."

He frowned. "No music? Why?" They often listened to the radio when they were in the car together, and he couldn't understand her sudden aversion to it.

"I just… don't want it right now." He didn't miss the slight shaking of her voice, nor the fact that she swallowed hard after speaking, as though fighting back tears.

"Okay," he said gently. "We'll leave the radio off." He couldn't even begin to understand why, but now didn't seem like the time to push.

"Thanks," she whispered.

He nodded, but he felt the knot that had been forming in his stomach tighten. It was becoming increasingly apparent that this trip was not going to be a normal, relaxing, beginning-of-the-summer vacation. He'd known this from the very second he suggested it, but somewhere in the back of his mind he'd been picturing himself lying on a beach chair beside Kate reading or talking while they tried to soak up the sun's first summer rays. He'd pictured roasting marshmallows and telling ghost stories late into the night, and wading knee-deep into the still freezing cold surf. He'd pictured driving the two hours to the Hamptons with the radio cranked up, belting out lyrics or bantering about whose music taste was better. He hadn't imagined the tension he could feel in the air, the heavy silence, the feeling that if he said or did the wrong thing at the wrong time she would literally break.

He wasn't sorry he'd offered to do this, but there was no way he was going to be able to handle this much strain for two straight weeks. This had to help her. Something that happened while they were away had to help, even if just a little. Enough to take the edge off of her pain. Enough to dull her apprehension. Even if the threat of losing her job didn't turn out to cause Beckett's demise, seeing her in so much pain without the ability to really do anything would surely cause his. If the pressure of this tension kept up, he would surely combust.

Eventually, he came to the conclusion that the ten straight minutes of dead silence in the car wasn't helping either of them. "I think you're really going to like the Hamptons," he said off the cuff.

She started at the sound of his voice. Apparently he'd pulled her back into the car from some other faraway place. She forced a little smile and nodded. "I'm sure it's great."

"It's a nice place to escape," he told her. "It'll be good for you."

She sighed. "Castle, will you please stop telling me what I need and what'll be good for me? I'm coming, aren't I?"

He nodded, but didn't say anything else, feeling a little cut by her words. He was only trying to help, and just the other day she'd asked him to tell her what she needed. Maybe he was trying a little too hard now, but she was really making him work. He usually didn't have to wrack his brain to come up with things to say to her. Their conversations just flowed, effortless. And when there was a period of silence, it was usually comfortable, not awkward.

This time, the first person to break the silence was Kate. "I'm sorry," she said. "You're breaking your neck trying to help me and I'm snapping at you."

"It's okay."

She shook her head. "No it's not. I didn't mean that, I'm just… I'm in a lot of different places right now."

He nodded. "I understand."

She sighed. "Can you please just not understand for once? Get mad at me. Tell me I'm impossible. Yell at me. I deserve it."

He smiled, but without any real joy or amusement. "Not now, but I'll work on it." He realized that he was probably lying, just appeasing her again. The last thing he wanted to do was make life any more difficult for her. He was a patient man in general, and he had even more patience for Beckett than he did for most people. Even if she upset him, it would take a lot for him to actually get angry with her, and even more for him to let her know.

"I would appreciate that." She looked at him pointedly, like she guessed what he'd been thinking.

"Just… try to be here," he suggested.

She frowned. "What?"

"You said you're in a lot of different places. Try to be here. Just here. In the moment. If it sucks you can change it, but you can't change places where you're not. You can't change the past or predict the future. Just be here."

She nodded. "I'll try."

"Good."

"But it won't be easy."

He shrugged. "Nothing is really easy, is it?"

She thought about this for a moment. "No," she finally said. "Nothing really is."

I... don't have a lot to say about this chapter. For once. I guess I'm hoping it speaks for itself. Let me know what you thought of it and it's very likely I'll love you forever. :) That's all.

Oh, one other thing that I'm now adding in after the fact. Remember how I mentioned that I changed a lot between the first version I wrote of this story and what I've posted? And I said I was going to put the original version somewhere so you could read it if you want? I finally did. So this is basically the original version of the first chapter and some of the second chapter of this. :) Here's the link, just take out the spaces:

http:/ isayitslove13. tumblr. com/post/10181419355/ original-more-casketty-first-draft-of-two-weeks