A/N: Thank you for your continued support and love for this story. On we go...
"Give a little love it'll all come back
Throw a little out it'll make you glad, oh, oh."
- Mostar Diving Club, 'Give A Little Love'.
Chapter 4 – Fixer-Upper
'What to wear? What to wear?'
Kate stands in front of her closet with her hands on her hips, inwardly chanting these words to herself as she surveys the wide range of options. The pressure to choose something quickly and dress before Castle's baked pasta dish completely dries out in her ferocious oven is quite something. She flicks her eyes back and forth over hanger after hanger - from the seductive to the down right homely - and then she sighs, grabs a trusted pair of faded blue jeans from a high shelf and a slouchy, soft grey tee with a scoop neck and a curved hem.
Deciding on underwear is an even more difficult prospect than clothing for once. Her head is all over the place as to what she wants, hopes or thinks might happen tonight. In the end, she errs on the side of caution, selecting a smooth, white t-shirt bra and a pair of matching silky panties. Not too sexy, but not too shabby either.
In the end, she looks well put together, but not as if she tried too hard.
She goes into the bathroom and quickly checks her face out in the mirror. She has no make-up on after her shower, and she looks tied and pale under the bright lights. But then that's what she is – exhausted and pretty achy - after being shut beneath ground for hours, drugged and left without food or water. No point hiding the fact, since Castle was with her the entire day and must be feeling something similar.
'Don't get up yet, stay in bed.'
She blushes at the memory of her partner's murmured plea when he first woke beside her on that grubby mattress and how it had felt to hear him say those words to her. How normal it felt to hear him ask her to stay in bed with him, as if waking side-by-side was a common occurrence for them. And when he rolled over and smiled at her, her name 'Kate', falling warmly from his lips along with that lazy, sleepy smile... She had been as hooked as she was terrified by his easy assumption that that's who they were now – lovers sharing a bed together, instead of hostages chained to one another in some Godforsaken, damp basement.
She touches her fingers to her lips, strokes their pillowy-soft center and traces their familiar outline as she watches herself in the bathroom mirror. She kissed him today. She kissed him and he kissed her back until he couldn't anymore. A ripple of excitement passes through her, spreading outward from her chest like the widening, concentric circles on the surface of a pond in the wake of a falling pebble. The hairs on her arms rise up, the skin on the back of her neck prickles and her nipples tighten beneath the obscuring layer of her t-shirt bra.
She kissed him today, and maybe it didn't end so well, but he's here now and Dr. Burke would be proud of her for taking that step, because she felt it, all day she felt it, in the way they worked together, the way they moved together... They are a team, and if they never get to be anything more than that, she has never felt more in sync with anyone, and so she kissed him, and yeah…it felt really good.
A knock on the bedroom doorframe startles her out of her romantic reminiscence. She hears Castle cough loudly a couple of times and then clear his throat to announce his presence.
Her hair is more or less dry now, framing her face and falling around her shoulders in a series of loose waves. She quickly combs her fingers through it to tame it a little and then goes out into the bedroom to find out what Castle wants.
"Sorry to…eh…interrupt…" he says, his speech slowing to a crawl as he takes a good, long, distracted look around her bedroom.
"Can I help you with something?" asks Kate, crossing her arms over her chest, her head slightly tilted to one side as she watches him do a slow one-eighty sweep across the room, taking everything in. She has to engage in fierce combat with her facial muscles to prevent herself from smirking at him.
"Uh…yeah! Salad servers," he declares, with a sudden jerk of awareness, as if he has just realized where he is and what he's been caught doing.
"Salad servers?" repeats Kate with amusement, waiting until Castle drags his eyes away from her bed to look at her before she goes any further. "You came into my bedroom to ask me about salad servers?"
"Yeeeeaaah?" he replies, a little uncertainly.
"I that some kind of sex thing I'm not aware of?"
Castle chokes on his own tongue, if the noises coming from his throat and the deep puce color of his face is anything to go by.
"A sex thing?" he repeats.
"Yeah. You're a father. I don't need to tell you have that works…or do I?" she smirks, enjoying his discomfort for a change. An old joke he tried on her once in front of Lanie, and one she's happy to throw back at him tonight.
Now that she's dressed and feeling in control of her own environment again, she's getting her sass and her confidence back.
"Funny, Beckett. Very funny."
Castle looks around again, much slower and more fully this time, not even attempting to hide his interest in absorbing every tiny detail of her inner sanctum, since Kate doesn't seem to mind too much that he's there. Well, he assumes she doesn't mind since the threat of physical violence has yet to manifest itself.
"So…this is where the all magic happens," he nods sagely.
"I'm—excuse me?" blurts Kate, staring at him.
He gapes at her like a goldfish in a bowl, mouth opening and closing slowly, but no words come out. This last statement sounds so different, so much seedier, floating out there in the intimate calm of her bedroom, than it did when he previewed it inside his head.
"The clothes, your hair...I meant, obviously. You know, given how beautiful you always look," he quickly tries to explain, pointing towards her open closet.
Kate narrows her eyes. "Did you come into my bedroom looking for fashion tips or hoping to find me naked? Because if it's the former, Castle, I have to say I'm getting kind of worried."
Castle looks down at his feet and then back up at Kate. "Technically, I haven't crossed the threshold of your bedroom yet, since my feet are still out in the…uh…the hall. Would you like me to leave?"
"Ha! Now he asks," laughs Kate, slipping her feet into a pair of leopard print flats and heading for the door.
She brushes past him, not enough space for both of them in the narrow doorway, so her bare arm skims his chest and her hip bumps his on the way past. The physical connection is stimulating, shocking even, catapulting her back several hours to earlier in the day, when there was no way they could escape touching one another, even if they had wanted to.
"Feed me and we'll talk," she says quietly, glancing back over her shoulder at him.
Castle has taken his coat off at some point while she was getting dressed, she notes. He's wearing a dark green plaid shirt with accents of red, white and yellow shot through it, over dark, navy jeans. These strong, forest colors really suit him, and Kate is forced to concede, to herself at least, that she might be scared as hell, but she's glad he's here with her tonight and not with some mystery woman she conjured up in her head.
"Castle? You comin'?" she asks, when he lingers in the doorway, his head still trained towards the inside of her bedroom, feet rooted to the spot.
"Huh?"
"Dinner? You…you were worried the food was going to get cold," she reminds him. "That's why I threw this on," she explains, plucking at the hem of her grey tee.
"Right. Dinner," he repeats, finally snapping out of his daze.
He catches up with her and then strides past her on his way to the kitchen – a man on a mission.
"You…uh…you look great by the way," he tells her, briefly glancing up from uncovering the two plates of bruschetta he's been keeping warm under some aluminum foil. "Go sit at the table. I'll bring this right over."
"Thanks," replies Kate, feeling a little bit redundant, almost as if she's a guest in her own home tonight. "You need me to pour the wine or…?"
"Already done. Glasses are over on the table. I—I made the call for both of us…opened the bottle of red I brought over. I hope you don't mind?"
"Italian food and red wine…dynamite combination. Can't beat it," she murmurs to herself, plucking one of the wine glasses from the table and swirling the ruby red liquid around the balloon shaped bowl with her fingers wrapped lightly around the slender stem.
She studies the label on the wine bottle in the middle of the table, inhales the rich aroma of the Argentinian Malbec – fruity and smooth – a blend of plum, raspberry and fig with an after-hint of spice. The man knows his wine, she concedes, taking a tentative sip and immediately falling under its spell.
Kate gently deposits the glass back down on the table and steps back to survey her partner's handiwork. Castle has been a busy boy while she was in the next room getting dressed. He has two place settings laid opposite one another - mats, napkins, cutlery – he even found her clear glass water jug and matching glasses. The mango wood salad bowl that she bought last summer from Williams-Sonoma, and has never had occasion to use, is filled to the brim with a mixture of lush green leaves, chunks of beef tomato, black olives and anchovies. The dish has been dressed with olive oil and scattered with grated Parmesan. Her matching salad servers are dug into the center of the simple salad, wooden handles propped against opposite sides of the bowl.
So much for Castle's assertion that he came to her bedroom to ask for those. She tucks this little nugget of information away for now, happy to torture him with it later.
"And here we go," he says warmly, startling her when he appears from behind with two plates balanced in one hand, waiting on her like a pro. "Bruschetta al Pomodoro," he announces with a flourish.
Kate smiles at him, she can't help it, and then she moves to take the nearest chair.
"So…wow! You've really outdone yourself tonight, Castle," she congratulates him, raising her glass of wine and clinking it against his.
"Thank you," he shrugs self-depreciatingly. "As it's a celebration, I'd like to make a toast."
Kate feels a ripple of nervous anticipation pass through her.
He holds up his wine glass. "To my partner, Kate—"
Kate stops him before this can get any weirder. "Castle, we're the only two people here, in case you hadn't noticed."
"Yeah. And I want to make a toast. You have a problem with that?" he challenges, still holding his wine glass in midair.
Kate shakes her head. "No, I guess not," she admits, while quietly quaking inside.
He raises his glass a little higher and begins afresh. "So…to my partner, Kate…"
"Yes, I think we all got that part," mutters Kate stiffly, lifting her napkin and brusquely shaking it out into her lap to distract herself from Castle's worrying little speech.
She hates not being in control, not knowing what is coming next. And tonight, she's had no idea what was coming next from the very second he called her on the phone.
"If you're going to keep interrupting me…"
"The food will go cold," points out Kate, lifting her knife and fork.
"Then let me just say this. After that experience, if I ever have to be hitched to someone, it would be you," he tells her, with a nod of gratitude and clink of glasses.
"Hitched?" smirks Kate, head snapping up from her food to regard Castle with a look of devilment on her face.
"Hitched? No, I didn't say hitched. I said cuffed…handcuffed. Not hitched. The colloquial or any other connotation or meaning," he rattles out, clearly a little flustered.
Kate grins at his discomfort, like the tigress that got the heavy cream. "It's okay, Castle, I understood what you meant," she assures him. "And for what it's worth, if I ever have to spend another night handcuffed to someone again, I wouldn't mind if it was you either," she tells him genially.
"Really?" he asks, eyeing her skeptically.
"But next time, let's do it without the tiger," she adds, casually spearing a juicy chunk of tomato and bringing it to her lips.
Castle nods, smiles, places his wine glass down on the table and then lifts his own cutlery to begin eating.
Barely a beat passes before his head shoots back up…
"Next time?"
TBC...
Ha ha! Last few lines were not mine, as I'm sure you spotted immediately. One lovely reviewer lamented the loss of them from this story, given I cut the last scene of 'Cuffed' to fit this setup, so I thought I'd add them back in right here. Love to hear your thoughts.