*Okay, so, here we are again…almost a full year later…yeah. I'm really going to try to update more regularly, I promise. I'm thinking once a week, but we'll see how that goes. Anyway, enough chit-chat, here we go!

(Kate)

She let Castle pull her into his lap, their food long forgotten. She folded into him, buried her face into his neck and breathed him in. Something wet dripped into her hair, and she realized that Castle was crying.

Kate hated that she'd made him cry, hated being the cause of his pain, however indirectly. She wanted to beg him to stop, but doing so felt selfish, especially given that he'd always offered her a shoulder to cry on in the past. If she wanted to have any kind of relationship with him (and she did want a relationship with him. So badly.), there needed to be a mutual give and take of support and comfort among other things.

"Other things", she realized, included trust and honesty. And there was something that she'd been holding back from Castle for far too long.

"Castle," she whispered, "there's something I need to tell you." Kate shifted in his lap so that she could look him in the eyes. "About…about the day I got shot."

His eyes widened, obviously more than a little shocked. "Okay…"

She looked down, and then back up, licking her lips nervously before starting. "When you asked if I remembered anything from my shooting, and I told you that I didn't, I lied." She tilted her head back for a moment, blinked back tears. "I remember everything from that day, Castle," she admitted. "Everything. I remember you telling me that you love me. It's been in my head for months. But I was so broken, I still am, and I was so scared that I would ruin everything that I actually almost did."

"Kate, no." His hand on her cheek interrupted her monologue. "You are not broken."

She sniffled. "You told me the one thing I'd been wanting to hear for over a year, and my response was to shut you out and run away for three months. That's not exactly what I'd call healthy behavior."

"Maybe not," he agreed. "And while I didn't like being shut out, I don't blame you for running. Who's to say I wouldn't have done the same in that situation?"

She smiled sadly, brushed her fingers through his hair. "You wouldn't have run," she said. "It's one of the things that I…" She stopped, suddenly terrified of what she was about to reveal.

"What, Kate?" Castle asked, though his soft smile indicated he knew what she was about to say. "One of the things that you…what?"

"It's one of the things that I love about you." She kissed him gently. "Because I do love you, Rick. More than I think I can ever say."

He kissed her deeply, tangling one hand in her hair and pulling her flush against him with the other. She moaned, flashing back to their "first kiss" in a dark alley. She melted into him, needing to be as close to him as humanly possible. God, why had she waited this long to kiss him again?

When they eventually broke apart, she sagged against him panting heavily. "Wow," she managed, laughing softly. "Just…wow."

"In case you were wondering, I love you too, Kate." Castle's grin was a wide, besotted, beautiful thing, and she couldn't help brushing her lips against it a few times more.

She settled against him and gave a contented hum. "Stay with me tonight." Castle waggled his eyebrows, and she laughed. "Not like that." She ducked her head, embarrassed. "I just don't know if I'll believe that any of this happened if you're not here in the morning."

His goofy leer turned into a fond smile. "There's no place I'd rather be."

(Castle)

He woke in the middle of the night, disoriented and very much alone. Kate's scent washed over him, and he grinned, remembering everything from their date. She loved him. Kate Beckett loved him.

And was apparently an insomniac, he mused, noting that the sheets on her side of the bed were cold. The only thing that kept him from panicking was that they were in her bed. And she had been the one to ask him to stay. She wasn't running anymore.

It didn't take him long to find Kate, the only light in the apartment beckoning to him from her study. Her laptop was on, playing footage from a DOT camera, but she wasn't watching. She was studying her makeshift murder board, and he couldn't help but wonder how many sleepless nights she'd spent in that very spot.

"Hey," he murmured, slipping in behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist. "Couldn't sleep?"

She shook her head. "I had a nightmare," she said softly. "I couldn't get back to sleep, so I decided to look over some surveillance footage that Ryan sent me, and then this was just calling to me, even though I haven't found anything new in months, and…"

"Kate, stop," he said. "It's okay. I get it. Some nights I'll wake up from a nightmare, and the next thing I know, it's dawn and I'm still sitting on Alexis' bed staring at a picture of her."

She turned in his embrace, got her arms around him too. "Sometimes I forget how much you've actually been through. And so much worse, too. I lost my mom, but you. You lost your baby. I can't even begin to imagine what that feels like."

"I hope you never have to know," he told her. "It never goes away, does it?"

She shook her head again. "No, but it gets easier…eventually. And I've got you now." She smiled. "You help. Have since before we met."

He returned her smile, tucking that admission away for later. "You help, too."

Kate pulled out of his embrace, took his hands in hers, and started leading him out of the room. "C'mon, Castle, let's go back to bed."

"Lead the way, Kate. Lead the way."


*quick note, obviously Kate knows that Alexis is dead, but she doesn't know the circumstances surrounding her death