That undid both of them. Rick got his arms back around her, his hands going through her hair, his thumb over her lips, his other hand over her back, holding her close, drawing her closer. "Before my mind goes entirely — you just said you love me?"

"You want to hear it again?"

"Yes—"

"How can you hear me when you're doing that?"

"My ears are not involved when I'm kissing your breast—" He drew the words out, illustrating them, making her shudder.

"I do you love, you, Rick," she panted, "but can we please have sex right now instead of talking?"

"Not mutually exclusive," he suggested. His hand did something terrible.

"If you're — doing it right — it is," Kate told him.

"Prove it."

So she did, at least for the moment, so well that neither of them could speak coherently for what seemed a long time after. This time, in the daylight, she hoped she would be able to remember it better. Eventually she could at least breathe normally again. His face was amazing. He kept looking at hers. She found herself kissing him just because she could: not just to drive him wild, not just to try to take all of him she could so deep inside she would never lose him again; but in the quiet moment after, when their bodies had lost the fearful insistence they both seemed to feel. To kiss Castle for all the times she hadn't, for all the moments she had wanted to but fate, or cops, or criminals had interrupted.

"This is what you look like when you're happy," he said, his eyes trailing as far as they could. Sort of a contour view, since she was laid out on top, occupying his chest and looking down on his face. It made for a slow conversation, punctuated as they tried to remember how to speak.

"This is what I look like when I'm naked. And happy."

"I noticed that, too."

"It is possible there's a connection."

"I would always want you to look happy, when you're naked, with me," Rick said carefully, as she traced kisses around his hairline. "But also, I would like to see you happy, sometime, with clothes on. I think it might be amazing. Make the world a better place."

"I could go more places, with clothes on."

"Could we go together?"

"Are you asking me for a date?"

"I am asking for all of your dates, but we could start out a few at a time."

"Did you just —"

"No, of course not. Yes. But not now."

"I could do 'yes, but not now.'"

"Really?" Rick tried to get to one elbow, but fell off, exhausted.

"Yeah," Kate said, throwing it to the winds. "Almost certainly yes, but not now." She kissed his face, his eyes, his nose, because he looked so surprised. "Not now. Right?"

"So after Alexis's graduation, I must have come home and slipped on something, and now I'm delirious. I like this dream. Except for the bruises." They looked, together, at her left wrist. He kissed it, gently, repeatedly. "Last night, you said you'd met up with the shooter —who was named after a segregationist cabbage— he tossed you somewhere, and Ryan pulled you out and you said he got away, and you didn't care. And that you almost died. You don't usually say you almost died. I remember that part."

"Yeah." She folded her head softly onto Rick's shoulder.

"And now you look unhappy."

"Well. I did like being here in Neverneverland, And that shower and that back massage sound really good. But now I want coffee, and you want details."

"I do want details. Somehow they end with me, here. I can't say it's an entirely bad story. "

"It's not the best, except for this part."

"The 'almost' is really good. The 'died,' not good at all. I take one day off and my muse almost dies."

"You quit, not that I want to go there again. And anyway, you needed to go to Alexis's graduation."

"I really did…. One hell of a day, Kate." Rick stretched underneath her. It was delicious. She hung on with both hands, feeling the strength in him from yet a different angle. "I woke up knowing I had told you I was out of your life, and knowing my kid was formally leaving her childhood. And then my ex called and said she wouldn't make it, even though she had said she would. Thank you for not dying." Rick pulled her close, close, and she thought they would start again but then he kissed her neck. "Coffee. My love, and also coffee. And maybe clothes and happiness."

She wondered if that was too much to ask, but there was the sight of him naked, relaxed, with her, also naked, and pretty much relaxed, and it seemed possible.

And because of coffee, they were in the kitchen. Her clothes were in the washer; Kate was in one of his softest button-downs and a pair of sweatpants, and she had brushed her hair. She looked frail and ravishing and increasingly remote. Rick looked at her again. "It's not really clothes, but the happiness is gone."

"You're going to freak on me," she said finally.

"I'm not. You've used your feminine wiles or some other euphemism on me, and I have no freak left."

At least that made her smile. "Your vocabulary's coming back."

"It's only vestigial." He looked at her, and touched her arm. It was so good to have her permission to touch her. It was so good to touch her. "Can you… Are you ready to tell me a little more? If I don't freak?

"I had to talk about this some already yesterday at the station," she assured him. "I can wrap some words around it. More than I can about you."

So he went ahead and hugged her, which she seemed to like. If both of us are worrying the other will freak, maybe it'll be okay.

"Just one thing — the coffee is on?"

He pointed to the two French presses, seething to one side. She stepped back from him, leaned on the counter.

"Okay…Yesterday, I got in early — Espo and Ryan had gone through the rental place's copies of drivers' licenses, found a guy who looked right, ran the license; it was a fake, but they matched the picture, right?" He nodded. "The rental place kept GPS on all their cars, we went there, Espo canvassed the right motel, he told me, we went into the guy's room. We cleared it, I know we did. Montgomery's files were all across the desk… then Maddox came, back from wherever he was hiding, in the hall I guess — he just came in like a locomotive and knocked Esposito out and tried to do the same to me. I chased him onto the roof and we fought…he tossed me and I went over a parapet and … I thought I heard your voice telling me to hang on, but I guess that was Ryan. He pulled me back to safety and … and there was Gates."

"Why? Did she come for the take-down? I thought if sunlight hit her she turned to ash." Rick could see in her face that whatever was in his mind was nothing like what had happened. She stopped meeting his eyes. "Kate?"

"She came with Ryan."

"I thought Ryan was with you." Ryan was always with her and Esposito. Keeping her back. Three of them, it had always been three of them, the real musketeers and he was the kid on the beat, even after four years… "Oh, no, Kate, what—"

"I did something stupid, all right?" Now she was farther apart from him than she had been when he'd left her apartment, when they were over. She began to fill a cup, her hand trembling as she poured. "I did something really stupid, but I also understand why I did it. I don't know if I would do it again, I don't know." Her voice was speeding up, louder. "Esposito and I went on our own, because I didn't trust anyone in the department not to stop me, not to be helping him." She exhaled sharply, and sipped the coffee. "We left Ryan at the Twelfth to keep an eye on the car's GPS. I didn't trust anyone else to do it. We didn't tell anyone but him where we were going, and we didn't have backup. And it was stupid, I know, please don't tell me what I already know. You already told me that when you left my apartment, but I wouldn't listen. You said you wouldn't freak."

So wrong about that. And just who sounded closer to the edge now? The silence in the kitchen went on for days as Rick tried to understand what he had just heard. It was not what he had thought he was hearing, he had seen Ryan with them, in his mind's eye, watching the three of them go through the apartment, uniforms helping secure the scene -no. Rewrite. "So Ryan wasn't with you when you were falling?"

"Maddox threw me and I went over the parapet—"

"The roof?"

"Yeah. The edge of the roof."

Rick took a deep breath, as unnoticeably as he could. Not freaking. Just screaming on the inside. She gave him the coffee cup in her hand, and poured another one for herself.

"I was lucky, I caught myself, I hung on. Maddox seemed to be enjoying watching me hang there. I think he heard Ryan and them coming, he took off instead of pushing me. He shouldn't have gloated, I don't think he's read the Evil Overlord List."

"Nice," Rick said, on autopilot. Nothing else came out.

"Ryan pulled me up just as my hand cramped and I began to fall. He could not have come a moment later." Kate's voice was remote, as she looked at her fingertips. He now they were saw were scratched. The ones that had made marks along his back, that probably had his DNA under the nails if you wanted to go there... "You were completely right, Castle. The case killed me. I knew that as I knew I was about to fall. And then I was alive after all. Kind of a reset button for my priorities."

"Esposito?" he asked. Surely he would be able to think again soon.

"Banged up, but all right. The hotel manager, too. Maddox was gone. Breathe, Castle."

He tried to. "What part of 'Almost died' did I not understand last night?"

She quirked that small smile he loved to see, but it came to him from far away. "The balance of your mind was somewhere else? So Espo and I had to explain ourselves in Gates's office, which I guess we did, sort of. I don't think she knows why we went after him, not really. She knew he was my shooter, but not the whole thing."

"And Gates was all right?"

"Not what you would call… no, not all right. She suspended us both for a month."

"Well, shit."

"And I resigned."

"You what?"

"I quit, Castle. Nikki Heat has left the force. You didn't sleep with a cop last night. And if you say you noticed something was missing, I will -"

He found that he was holding her once again, with as little sense of volition as he had the night before, spilling coffee on both of them. And Kate was smoothing his back.

"Hey. Hey, Castle. Rick. It's all right." "How can it be all right?" Rick found himself asking, into her hair. "You've been— almost half your life— since you were in college —"

"Says the guy who wanted me off my mother's case."

"I did. I do. But -They're not the same thing.—"

"Well, maybe—"

"Sorry. Not my business —" Anything to keep from hearing once again that it was her life. " You were right, the other night. It is your life. But, damn it, Beckett-"

"It is my life, and even if you love me, it's still my life. But I said I love you, and that means I need at least to listen, to hear you out, because it's not just my life anymore. You get a say." Kate looked up at him. "No wonder I never want to tell anyone that. It's not just that people who love me, whom I love — it's not just that they die. Sometimes they want to move to Boston. But when you —since you— the way you love me doesn't make me less."

After he finished crushing her closer, until he remembered she maybe had a broken rib, he pulled his face from the warm quiet place in her hair and look at her hard. It was Kate, it was really Beckett, and she looked fine. Tired, worn, too thin, but fine. Not angry, not unhinged. Someone who had talked about love without slithering through his hands and eeling away. Maybe someone saner than he had ever seen before, with those eyes, those cheekbones…

"If you hear from your Mr. Smith again, will you tell me?" she asked. "Even if my life is your business, even if you have to interrupt, you'll tell me?"

"Will it be easier to get your attention? Will you still speak to me if you get angry?"

"I don't think the boys'll be interrupting us again, and yes, I promised that and I meant it, before you ravished me with your masculine wiles and—"

Castle's phone chirped.