She didn't heal from the gunshot wound properly.

Most days the pain is manageable, a dull roar that hides beneath her bones and waits until the night descends to turn her muscles into unbearable knots that leave her breathless and paralyzed, but so many hours of flying, sitting cramped and immobile in an airplane must have done some damage. The beating she had taken from Maddox only hours before the flight probably hadn't helped either.

But it's the middle of the night – in France, anyway – only a couple of hours since she had parted from Castle in the living room, claiming the need for rest and smearing the quickest of kisses to his jaw and leaving him gaping before disappearing into the guest room he'd directed her towards. It hadn't been a lie, her body had just failed to cooperate, keeping her awake and in agony long after she had shed her jeans and crawled under the beautiful comforter and soft sheets of his guest bed.

After so many hours of tossing and turning, biting back groans of pain, she just needs a drink, a quick sip of water, but her body is threatening to send her crashing to the gorgeous tile of his Parisian apartment with the flares and spasms overtaking her torso.

She almost makes it, barely three feet from the fridge, when she has to sit or risk passing out. Her back hits the island a little too hard and her head makes a loud smacking noise when she drops it against the wood behind her and tries to breathe.

She should have known it would wake him.

"Kate?"

She can hardly breathe, let alone speak, when he finds her, concern turning his eyes a fierce midnight blue, and she knows that her hands clutching her ribs, her chest, are a dead giveaway to what has sent her to the ground.

Castle kneels down next to her, brushing her hair from her face and scanning his eyes along the length of her coiled body.

"Will medication help? Tylenol, Aspirin, anything?"

She shakes her head, manages to gasp a ragged no, but he's still thinking, his brow furrowed with concentration.

"What about heat?"

A heating pad can be useful, the warmth usually successful in easing her tightly wound muscles when they get to this point, but of course she failed to pack one. She's lucky she packed a decent amount of clothing and toiletries in her haste to catch a flight out from New York. But it wouldn't matter if she had; they've yet to retrieve her belongings from the hotel.

"Don't have anything," she gets out, but Castle appears undeterred.

"I have an idea."

She nods, doesn't even care what it is, but when he slowly eases her back from the wall of the island and carefully slips in behind her, she understands all too well. Her back flattens against the broad expanse of his chest, his knees bracket her thighs, and his hands – his large, warm hands – slide beneath her own, cover the parts of her that ache and throb.

She knows he's only trying to help her, that this isn't a sign of affection or an attempt to feel her up, but Kate turns her head, presses her forehead to the skin of his neck and breathes.

"Thank you," she whispers, feeling her body slowly but steadily relax and loosen as the minutes pass, the knots of thorns unraveling under his touch. "I know I don't deserve-"

"Stop," he mumbles, dipping his cheek to rest at her forehead. The heat of his skin, the scrape of his stubble, the prominent smell of his aftershave wrapping around her senses - all combined with the agony climbing up and down the rungs of her ribs - has the urge to cry welling up within her damaged chest, behind her tired eyes.

"Martha," she gets out around a thick swallow. "She told me Alexis graduated early. Went to Stanford?"

He grunts in affirmation, sounding less than pleased about the change in subject and recent development, but her lips curl.

"I was rooting for Columbia," he huffs, and she covers one of his hands, fits her fingers between the spaces of his and offers a gentle squeeze.

"But I know how proud you must be," she prods, unfurling her knees just slightly, uncurling the tight coil of her limbs.

"Of course I'm proud," he admits on a sigh. "It's just - not the same. So much changed."

Her limbs have begun to relax, but her chest tightens at the words.

"Is she going to visit you? While you're here?"

"She might," he hedges, one of his thumbs strumming up and down, playing the row of bones beneath like strings of an instrument. "She has quite a few summer internships lined up though, so I doubt it would be any time soon."

She can't help the relief that courses through her system at the news. Alexis is not her biggest fan, she's well aware of that, and imagining the girl showing up to see her father only to be greeted with the sight of the woman she's grown to despise over the past year is a nightmare she doesn't think she's strong enough to face.

"Even if she came in right now, it'd be fine, Kate."

Beckett scoffs, regretting it as the spikes twining around her ribs rattle, puncture her lungs, but she still shakes her head against him, feels the flutter of awareness spread through her bloodstream when he clutches her tighter.

"You know it wouldn't," she protests softly, nudging the hard ridge of his jaw with the tip of her nose. "And that's okay, Castle. She deserves to be angry, so do you."

"I'm tired of being angry," he sighs, buries the confession in her hair. "Too tired."

The scar between her breasts throbs in time with her dilapidated heartbeat and Kate reaches for the hand beneath her sternum, guides it up so his broad palm catches the hard pounding in her chest.

"Tell me all of the good things," she whispers, lifting her face to dust her lips at his jaw, abrading her flesh on the stubble, savoring the burn. "This past year - tell me everything I missed."

She feels him swallow, listens to him sigh, and revels in gentle delight as he relaxes at her back, the warmth of his arms going loose but still remaining.

"Well, Mother is pursuing her acting career with renewed fervor. Again."

A whisper of a chuckle tumbles past her lips and she swears she feels him smiling too. He continues on about his mother, doing as she asked and recounting the past 367 days since they last saw one another.


His words have started to slur, his in depth walkthrough of the fourth Nikki Heat novel steadily falling apart.

"Castle," she yawns, shifting in the cradle of his body, and he blinks, the grit of sleep crowding in the corners of his eyes receding. "You awake?"

"Yeah, right here." He squeezes her shoulder, too tired to startle at the warm press of her face to his clavicle, the nuzzle of her nose at his throat. The sun is breaching the slit of the curtains, rays of light streaking along the floor he's still sitting on with Kate Beckett. And oh, jeez, the entire reason for this – she shouldn't sleep here.

"C'mon Kate," he coaxes, wincing at the ache in his knees as he tries to maneuver his feet beneath him. "Let's get you to bed."

"No, stay," she hums, lifting a hand to his chest, hooking fingers in the neck of his t-shirt. "With me."

"Okay," he relents, allowing himself to savor it for a moment, the feel of her body in his arms, the knowledge of her wanting him. "But not on the floor."

"Anywhere," she sighs, her eyes still closed, her body still curled against him, not making much progress. But his lips still quirk at the word.

Castle decides his best course of action would probably be to carry her, despite the challenge it presents to his own body, but he isn't that old yet, and really, Kate would be light in his arms to begin with, should be practically weightless now. Rick finds his footing on the tile floor, secures his grip on Beckett, and ascends into a standing position with little trouble, quite impressed with himself as he cradles her to his chest and starts for the guest bedroom.

Her hand tightens in his shirt on the walk there, the steady exhale of her breath hot against his neck as she presses in closer, cuddling into his chest. It nearly has him stumbling into the wall.

"Time's it?" she sighs out, her lashes fluttering against his jaw, and it's too much too soon, too many touches he's only ever dreamed of having. "Castle?"

"Almost six," he manages to reply, entering the quaint guest bedroom and reaching the unmade bed in three long strides. "About midnight New York time."

He deposits Kate on the bed gently, easing her onto her back, careful not to place too much pressure on the tender side of her frame. Castle snags the edge of the sheets she must have shoved away whenever she awoke earlier in the night to venture into the kitchen, balances one fist on the mattress near her shoulder while he tugs the Eygptian cotton up to her waist. Her eyes are in slits when he glances to her face, shimmering gold and a soft shade of green in the final vestiges of fading moonlight streaming in from the window with the glimmers of city lights, watching him.

"Will you be okay?" he asks, nodding to the spot beneath her ribs where his palm had resided for the last couple of hours, warming old wounds.

"Should be," she mumbles, unfolding one of her arms from atop her waist to slide the back of her hand up the mattress to collide with his fist, her thumb absentmindedly grazing his thudding pulse. "But would you mind lending me some pajamas until we grab my stuff from the hotel?"

Castle glances down, noticing for the first time like an idiot that she's still in her attire of a light grey t-shirt and dark denim jeans from earlier. "Oh, yeah, of course. Should have thought of that sooner," he mutters, lifting from her bedside and scrambling for his bedroom across the apartment. Some host he is.

He tries not to picture Kate in the large t-shirt and flannel pajama pants that will likely flow past her toes, tries not to imagine her in his clothes, period. Because he's daydreamed about the image before, created scenarios in his head of her engulfed in his pajamas or drowning in his dress shirts, fantasized about the reasons why she would be borrowing his clothes in the first place.

None of those fantasies went quite like this.

"Here you go," he murmurs as he trots back inside the guest room, holding out the garments to her and berating himself for the stupid gallop his heart speeds into when she smiles at him. "Did you need any… help?"

Her smile twists at the edges, morphing into a sleepy but delighted little smirk. "Not this time, Castle."

"T-this time?" he echoes without thinking, his mind racing at the implication, spiraling out of control when her brow arches in return.

"Night, Rick."

His swallow is thick as he makes a stumbling exit from her room, quietly closing the door behind him. For a long moment, he stands in the strengthening sunbeams painting the apartment floor outside her door, dazed and wondering if maybe he's dreamed all of this, her. But the lingering taste of pizza is still clinging to his tongue beneath the mint of his toothpaste, the smell of cherry blossoms and her shampoo is stained into his skin, assaulting his senses and reminding him that this is most definitely not a dream.

Kate Beckett flew to Paris to find him and now she's sleeping in his guest room after spending two hours curled in his arms on the kitchen floor.

It's not how he would have written their reunion, not like a single one of the thousands of times he's played the potential scene over and over again in his head, but surprisingly, he doesn't mind this unexpected twist in a plot he never imagined would come true. Actually, he thinks this may be better.