Chapter Seven: Nostalgia
Most girls would be happy with a bunch of flowers or some big romantic gesture. He had a problem though because Kate Beckett wasn't most girls.
He had been an ass, said something without thinking and now she wasn't speaking to him. With previous girlfriends he could shower them with gifts and they would find it easy enough to forgive him but Beckett wouldn't be happy with showy and big. She'd said before that he couldn't buy her affections and he wasn't about to do anything that may make her even angrier than she already was.
For the first time in his life he hadn't been able to talk his way out of it. Words were his thing but it had been a particularly long and frustrating week at the precinct and she was already at her wit's end so simply putting on the Castle charm wasn't going to be enough this time.
She was currently in his bedroom reading a novel and while he usually would be in there with her he couldn't face the frosty reception he knew would greet him if he stepped foot into the room. When they had closed the case he was afraid that she wouldn't come home with him and would instead retreat to the solitude of her own apartment but had been pleasantly surprised when she had silently followed him into the cab that waited for him outside the precinct.
They hadn't said a word on the ride back to the loft and he had trailed several steps behind her as they walked through the lobby and waited for the elevator. He had opened his mouth to speak several times on the ride up to his floor but every time he opened his mouth she had glared at him so he wisely thought it better to not say a thing.
Now he was sitting in his darkened office staring longingly at the door to his bedroom, wanting nothing more than to have her pressed up against his side as she read and he wrote a chapter for his new book. He hadn't meant to say what he did, frustrated words the result of a lack of evidence and a lack of sleep. Now he had absolutely no idea how to make it up to her.
Running a frustrated hand through his hair he grabbed for his laptop, thinking maybe if he wrote inspiration would bleed into this real life situation. Opening up the lid he blinked when the welcome screen didn't immediately greet him. Jabbing at the power button he groaned when nothing happened. It was flat and his charger was plugged in next to his bed and there was no way he was going in there without some sort of game plan as to how to make this better. Shutting his laptop with a little more force than was necessary he decided he would just do things the old fashioned way and rooted around in his top drawer to find the notebook he usually used for occasions when he felt like going old school.
When his fingers hit soft leather he paused, momentarily confused before he pulled out a small, leather bound book. He smiled as he ran his fingers down the spine remembering when he had bought it. When he first started shadowing Beckett at the precinct he had been delighted to discover she took notes in a small notepad when they were on a case. It had reminded him of the old detective stories he had read as a kid and seeing her pull it from her pocket and flip it open, her pen flying across the page as she noted down details for the case had delighted him to no end. He had even on one occasion begged her to wear a deerstalker hat just like Sherlock Holmes had only to be on the receiving ends of one of her famous Beckett glares. Not wanting to be left out he had rushed out and bought his own notepad to take notes in but his had turned into a place where he could write down anything that popped into this head while in the precinct.
Now it was filled mostly with observations he had made about her as he sat watching her work. Sometimes it was a word or two here or there, other times he had written poems, inspired by something she had said or the way that the light sometimes reflected through the window and made her look like she had an almost ethereal glow. His fingers had written on those pages the words he had been too afraid to say in those four years.
Suddenly he knew exactly what he needed to do. Flipping through the notepad until he found the page he wanted he stood and headed with determination towards his bedroom door. He was prepared for the fight that would greet him on the other side of the door but still took a minute to breathe before he pushed it open.
The room was illuminated by the soft glow of the lamps that sat on his bedside tables and he smiled when he saw her asleep with the book she had been reading resting on her chest. It wasn't unlike her to crash like this after a long case and he could picture a young Katie Beckett falling asleep in a similar way, too stubborn to stop reading to admit she was tired.
He gently slipped the novel out from her fingertips then replaced it with the notepad. Grabbing his charger from where it was plugged in next to the bed he took a moment to study her before dropping a quick kiss to her forehead and headed back to his office. He didn't want to be there when she woke up and read the words he had written years ago. She would come to him when she was ready, he only hoped the gesture would do the trick.
He was so happy that he finally got to be with her, not at all nostalgic for the guy who had had to hide his love and write it all secretly down in that small leather book.
He loved her and she loved him and it was that fact that made him positive that she would forgive him and that they would be okay.
