Obviously I don't own Castle… duh :')
…
A man sits in a diner, nervously fiddling with some salt and pepper shakers.
It's rather crowded, but that's to be expected. He is in a diner, on a Saturday, at lunchtime, across the street from one of the biggest malls in New York. That's why he'd thought ahead, came here especially early to ensure they got a table, because if he's getting a chance to have lunch with Kate Beckett he isn't going to bloody well blow it because he couldn't find a table.
So here he's sat, for the last twenty minutes, both his excitement and apprehension growing as the time dragged out. He's still slightly early, but she should be arriving soon.
He hopes he'll be able to breathe now she's out of that dress and back in street clothes. He thinks it'll make his mind a little less cloudy.
"Hey." Of course he's wrong. He simply waves at her, not trusting his voice. In a stunning dress or simple top and jeans, she never fails to take his breath away.
He'd been staring at that door constantly for the last fifteen minutes and he looks away for two seconds? How did he miss her coming in?
A waitress comes over and takes their order and he has to stop himself from ordering extra food for her, to try and make up for lost time and most of all, weight.
But then she's gone to make their food and they're both sitting there staring at their hands, neither willing to be the first to talk.
"Why am I here Castle?"
A woman asks a man the question that's been on her mind since she'd left Dawn's Boutique earlier today
"To catch up." He knows the excuse sounds lame, but what else is he supposed to say?
Kate lets out a humorless laugh raising a single accusative eyebrow.
"Catch up?"
"Yeah… hear about what you've all been up to over the years…"
"Why do you care?"
"Huh?" He thought she'd be a bit pissed but hadn't expected this reaction.
"I'll see you in the fall." She barks sardonically.
"I had every intention of coming back Beckett. I just..."
"Just what?" She snaps, because intentions aren't good enough; they can never just make up for what he did.
"I just…" He can't tell her. Not right now when she's acting like this. "…I didn't think you needed me anymore."
"Needed you?"
"I mean the team! I was just some annoying writer with his crazy theories that occasionally actually helped but got in the way most of the time, right?"
She sees no sign that he's acting. Did he really think he was such a burden?
"Occasionally? Castle you helped us crack lots of cases! Sure some theories were more…inventive than others, but we may not have found some serious criminals and locked them away if it weren't for you."
She's supposed to be giving him a hard time and that's what she comes up with? Don't let him sweet talk his way back in Kate.
Who's she kidding? When he looks like that and just seems so extremely down on himself, how can she add to that now?
No. She's mad at him. If he's got issues, that's his problem.
"You really think that? That I helped? Could have helped these past two years?"
"These past two years? Well we'll never know about that now, will we?"
He'd seen a glimmer of hope in her little pep talk but the wall has shot right up again with the mention of his time away.
"Look, I meant to call. I did."
"Well you didn't. You sent a book with a quick thankyou in it. You didn't even say goodbye."
She's supposed to be showing no emotion, that's how she'd interrogate any other suspect, but she can't stop the little break in her voice at the last part, it had really hurt. But he wasn't allowed to know that. She had to get a handle on these emotions of hers.
"I know, and that was wrong, but I want to make it up to you?"
"You're not coming back." She says immediately. She let him back once after he'd messed with her mother's case, but this was different. He hadn't even tried to come crawling back this time.
"I don't expect to just be forgiven like that. I'm not sure I want to be, or if I want to come back."
Now she's confused. So he goes away for this long, asks to meet up for lunch and he doesn't even want to come back?
"What I do know is that I want to keep seeing you."
"Seeing me?" That took her by surprise; he wanted to 'see' her? What was that supposed to mean?
"Once a week, for coffee, lunch, maybe dinner. I can ask you questions and you can tell me about the most gruesome murder of the week, how the boys are doing and of course the Captain and Lanie."
"Aren't you supposed to be writing a book?"
So she's still been keeping up to date with her Castle fansites, that's promising.
"You mean the book I've supposed to have been writing for a whole year now?" He laughs somberly. "I guess I lost inspiration."
She's saying no. Of course she is. He goes away for all this time and wants a weekly meeting just from one measly lunch? No way. Never. Not in a million years. Not in a billion years!
"Sure."
Wait what? What just happened?
Well he was staring at her with those puppy dog eyes that she used to say never worked on her, when in fact, they never failed. Oh God she said yes…
She said yes! She really said yes! He was going to be seeing Kate Beckett every week for a private catch up session. First lunch then maybe he could persuade her to come round for dinner in another lovely dress and they could-
Wait a second. He's missing something here. Forgotten something. Wait a minute!
"Won't your boyfriend mind?" He assumes he is still just the boyfriend as she hasn't got a ring on her finger.
"Boyfriend?" Kate responds confusedly.
"You know, pretty robbery detective. Demming I believe." Like he could ever forget.
Oh god. He thinks she's still with Demming.
Kate averts her gaze sadly as she replays the memory of breaking up with him in her mind, and more significantly what had happened just after she'd broken up with him.
Castle of course assumes the sad expression has been caused by some heartbreaking separation after a good long relationship between the two.
"You broke up?" He asks quite softly just failing to hide his immense shock.
'If only he knew' she thinks sadly, glad to not have to answer the question as their food arrives.
They sit there eating in silence for a while, but this isn't what he wants it to be like, they used to be able to talk about everything, well except for some things…
"So what's the coolest, weirdest, most gruesome case you've had while I've been away?"
He asks suddenly, shocking her slightly but immediately gaining her attention.
A small smile adorns her face and he's never been so relieved to see it.
"Well where to start really? Alien abduction? A psychic that predicted her own murder? Superheroes? Ghosts? Do I need to go on?"
She laughs at the picture in front of her, his jaw looks like it will need to be surgically removed from the floor.
"Alien…psychic…ghost... How much have I missed?"
She laughs and it fills the whole room and makes his confused look turn into a completely triumphant one. They'd both really missed that laugh.
But she can't let him think he's just off the hook like that, it still hurts, what he did.
"This doesn't mean I've just forgiven you, you know." She says suddenly, his smile turning it one of the most serious expressions she's ever seen to him.
"Yeah I know. And I don't expect you to have. I'm just asking for a chance, to earn back your trust, eventually."
She looks away and ponders on this for a while as he grows more and more anxious, she can't just back out of this all now can she?
"Once a week?" She asks when she finally looks up, meeting his gaze.
"Once a week."
They stay there just staring deeply into each others eyes, each searching for something unknown.
"I missed you." He finally says.
She smiles softly but doesn't say anything.
"Any chance you may have missed me too?"
"Naah." She draws out slowly, a smirk appearing on her face,
"Not even a little bit? A tiny little wittle bit?"
She laughs again and he thinks he could never stop loving that sound.
"Yeah well, I did have to get my own coffee." She admits reluctantly.
But he can see the tender smile beginning to form. She's missed him too.
"So… alien abduction you say?"
"Of course you'd start with that one."
"Well it was one of my most popular theories and it would seem, by the sound of it, that I was right."
"Sorry, think again Castle."
"What! No little green men?"
"See again with the assumptions, why do aliens always have to be green little men? Aliens could look like anything."
"So you admit you believe in them!" He cries out amusedly.
"No. I never said that." She says quickly, trying to backpedal out of this as fast as she can.
"Your words strongly implied it."
And just like that it is back to the way it had been before. Well not fully, they both know there's a lot of trust to be won back and a lot to be forgiven for. But it's a start, one he is overjoyed with personally and one she 'doesn't mind really'. Nope, she doesn't mind it at all.
A mother walks through the door of her son's loft apartment
"Richard?" She calls but receives no reply.
She hears typing coming from the study.
'Maybe Alexis came home to do some work after their shopping trip.' She thinks as she takes off her coat, beginning to walk towards the room.
But when she gets to the door, she's completely taken aback by the image in front of her.
Richard. Her son, Richard Castle. Typing. And not just typing, but typing furiously at the poor defenseless keyboard that seems to be struggling to keep up.
"What are you doing?" She cries out before she can stop herself.
He breaks out of the trance he's been in for hours and looks up confused, barely acknowledging her presence.
"Why hello to you too Mother. What do you think I'm doing? I'm writing."
"Writing what exactly?" she asks flabbergasted.
"A book of course Mother, I am an author after all."
Then he's back again to his energetic typing, leaving her staggered as she takes a few moments to process this, then a few more, and a couple more. Well quite a lot more actually. Before she wanders out of the room and into the living room, going for a glass of wine only to find the bottles Richard would usually just leave on the counter recently, away in the wine cooler, where he'd once kept them for special occasions. And there's only one bottle, which seems to be the only alcohol in the whole apartment.
Martha Rodgers has no idea what is going on with her son, but she's never been happier about it.
A woman relaxes in her bath, sipping a glass of wine and reading one of her favorite books.
She loves this book, she'll never admit that to him, but she does. It's the one that's signed. The one she waited in line for an hour to get signed by the one and only Richard Castle. No longer is she filled with dread at the idea of reading one of his books, and she's so relieved. She's really missed this and she'll never tell him but… she really missed him.
And now she's going to be meeting up with him every week, but that doesn't mean anything. Does it? I mean it's just coffee, right?
A man sits at his computer, inspired.
He's writing. He's really writing. And you know what? He thinks it's kind of good. Really good, even.
It's a new story, about a female detective. She's smart…cunning even, sophisticated, sassy and incredibly sexy, maybe even a little stripper like.
And then he realises. A smart, sexy, female stripper detective? Oh god. It's her. He's writing her all over again. Nikki Heat.
But that had ended; he'd thought he'd finished with that character. He hadn't wanted to, but writing about Kate would mean thinking about Kate, and thinking about Kate would mean thinking about Kate and Demming and how much he'd screwed up and how much he now missed her.
So he chose not to and thought he'd put her behind him. Of course now he realises his mistake, thinking a character inspired by Kate Beckett could just be put behind him had been a foolish thought.
But she was back now, Kate that is, back in his life once a week. And even more, she's no longer with Demming! He kicks himself for being too afraid to come back earlier now. Who knows how long ago they broke up?
He makes a mental note to ask her, subtly though, just bring it up in casual conversation somehow.
And what would she think of this, another Nikki Heat book?
Would she be mad? Probably if not definitely he thinks.
But you never know, she seemed to have missed him at least a little bit and the lunch had been pleasant, just like old times even.
So maybe she'd be happy, feel flattered in a way even...
Naah. Kate Beckett, the most private person he'd ever met, pleased at having another book written about her? Yeah right. In his dreams.
He'd have to ask her if it was okay, not now when he'd only just taken his first step on the long road to forgiveness, but he will, because he can't risk losing her again.
He looks over at the clock, finally becoming aware of what time it is.
11:23am
Wow, they say time flies when you're having fun, but he got back from meeting Kate around two o'clock when something deep inside him stirred, sending him straight into his office to write, that means he'd been writing for the best part of nine hours!
Now even for him, that's impressive.
He yawns, the exhaustion slowly beginning to catch up with him, so he decides he's done enough for one day before leaving the room, collapsing onto his bed and falling asleep before his head even hits the pillow.
His dreams, for once, aren't haunted by 'what ifs' and thoughts of being alone forever, instead they are full of the cherries and what he hopes to be a happy ever after.
An always.
…
So another chapter for you lovely people! I got to update both my stories today so I'm rather happy about that and should update this again, as usual, in about a week.
So what do you think so far? I'd love to hear and thanks to all the previous reviewers and alerts I really REALLY appreciate them :D
Also review if you have any ideas for the future of this story I love hearing other's ideas and incorporating them to mine.