First of all, it's so nice to see that I have such grammar geeks reading my story! I absolutely love it! And I'm glad you didn't mind the grammar lesson...in fact, most of you seemed to love it, and I'm glad! Apostrophe misuse bugs the heck out of me. If you ever see an apostrophe misused in one of my stories, please let me know; I probably just mistyped it and didn't catch it on a proof.
Thanks to all of you for the continuing wonderful reviews! As always, they are much appreciated!
LinMo-couldn't reply to directly, but a pan cookie is just the normal chocolate chip cookie dough mushed into a cake pan instead of dropped in balls on a cookie sheet. Bake it until it's not mushy or gooey. They're thicker and somehow, pan cookies are just really, really good! Warm pan cookie with ice cream and hot fudge on top...yum!
He walked into the living room to find...no Beckett. Where could she have gone? He wasn't that far behind her. As he looked around, he noticed the door to his study was open across the room. Smiling, he took another bite of the cookie as he made his way toward the open doorway.
Sure enough, there she was. He leaned against the doorway, just silently watching Kate as she scanned the titles of the books on the shelves. As she moved around the room, she finally came up against the ladder in the corner. She turned around and looked right at him, as if she knew he was there all the time, and told him, "I can't believe you have a rolling ladder in your library."
"How did you know I was here?" he asked, not addressing the ladder comment quite yet. "I was really quiet."
"Castle, when will you learn?" she asked him, almost rhetorically. She walked over to him until she was standing right in front of him. She brought her hand up to his cheek, telling him "I'm a de-tec-tive," as she patted his cheek with each of the carefully enunciated syllables of the last word. Then she lowered her hand and walked over and sat down casually on the soft leather couch in the sunken seating area and finished, "Besides, you've been following me for years. I figured there was no way you would NOT follow me know, especially after your 'big one' in the kitchen a few minutes ago." The small grin that adorned her face after the words left her mouth definitely had a teasing quality to it.
He pushed off the doorway and sauntered over to the couch to join her. Taking some new liberties that he wouldn't have taken a few days ago, he sat down right next to her, leaving no room between their legs, although he didn't put his arm around her. But he did lean toward her as he said "That big one you gave me was really delicious. Feel free to cook for me anytime."
The double-entendres-both of them-were not lost on her. "Are you talking about the cookie or the lip lock?" His eyes momentarily widened when she actually voiced-somewhat-what had happened between them, without innuendo or plays on words, like they had been doing to that point.
"Either. Both. Take your pick," he told her cautiously, not entirely sure how open or blunt he should be. Innuendo they did very well together. But honesty...blunt talk about feelings...that was something they still struggled with.
She stared straight ahead, and he could see a side view of a thoughtful look when he turned his head to look at her. "Okay," she told him, slapping his knee as she used it to prop herself off the couch into a standing position. Then she surprised him by holding out her hand to him. "Come on, Castle."
He placed her hand in his and she mimed giving him a little heave-ho off the couch. With exaggerated playfulness, he pretended like she really had pulled him with a lot of force, hopping up and sprinting several steps away, dragging her with him because of their clenched hands. While he stopped abruptly, though, she kept going and slammed into his chest, not with a lot of force, but with enough that he had to take a step backwards to balance himself as he tried to catch her.
Except he couldn't.
He wasn't paying attention, but he was at the edge of the sunken part of the sitting area in the study. So when she slammed into his chest, he was incapable of catching himself and fell backwards with a grunted 'oof' sound as he tried to catch himself but failed because of the step. And Beckett fell right on top of him, although her landing was much softer because she landed on him rather than the floor.
He looked up at her with a surprised look on his face. The look on her face mirrored his, before she rolled her eyes at him. "Geez, Castle, I have to say, this is getting a little bit old. This is, what? The fourth time you've fallen down today? Do you have no imagination anymore? I mean, if you want to get me in a compromising position for some lip action, have you ever thought about just, oh, maybe asking?"
He stared at her, dumbfounded. He was still surprised from finding himself on the ground again, but then she was saying...whoa! She thought he planned this?
"What? I didn't...the step...it was an accident!"
She pushed herself off of his chest and sat on the floor by him. "Sure, Castle. You do some crazy things, but I have never seen you fall down that much in one day before, and we've spent plenty of days together."
He was still leaning on his elbows. "But...it's...hey, wait a minute! Some of those were your fault! We already covered that in the kitchen this morning, when you fell and pulled me down!" He sat up as he was speaking and pointed his finger at Kate and then himself when he said the words.
"Yeah, right, Castle. Try to shift the blame to me! What about outside with the snowball, when you..." she trailed off as she remembered that the reason he fell was all because of her, first for baiting him with the 'rubdown' comment, and then because she inadvertently pushed him down when she fell on him when she lost her balance. And then she remembered when she tackled him after the snowblower incident; once again, where she was the cause.
As he could see the wheels turning in her head, realization dawning in her brain that she was directly or indirectly the cause of all of the precarious balance mishaps that she had previously pinned on him, he cocked his head to the side and with a smug smile, prompted her, "When I what, Detective? When I dropped the snowball and then you fell on me? Hmmm, that has a familiar ring to it, just like the episode in the kitchen...you," he pointed at her, "fell on me," he finished, pointing to himself. "So by your own words, Beckett, since you said that I am the one trying to get you in a lip lock by falling on you, then it must actually be you who is trying to get me in the aforementioned lip lock because you are actually the fall-ER, where as I am just merely the fall-EE."
"Is fall-ee even a word?"
"Doesn't matter. I'm proving a point, of which you're very carefully avoiding the implications. And that point is that you are hot for me."
Her mouth dropped open at his blunt statement, delivered with a very cocky, but very cute, grin. But she tried to salvage some of her dignity by telling him, "You're delusional. Did you have funny mushrooms on that sandwich of yours?"
He just grinned again at her attempt at deflection, completely ignoring her sassy question. "So Beckett, you know if you wanted all of this lip action," he said, quoting her first statement after she fell, "why didn't you oh, just ask?" He leaned closer to her, inches away from her face, and continued in a low voice, "Because, you know, I would have happily obliged you."
He saw the fleeting look of uncertainty, before her expressive eyes changed ever-so-slightly into a mask of annoyance. She made a show of rolling her eyes. "I just bet you would. Under the guise of 'french lessons', no doubt?" She stood up, putting a little distance between them as she spoke the words.
Castle followed her as she stood up. "Call it whatever you want. I just know I enjoyed it. Enjoyed it...all the times. Immensely. And I really would like to try it again."
"Yeah?"
"Definitely."
"Why?"
"Beckett. Do you really have to ask? Because if you do, then maybe you need another little demonstration." He stepped closer to her.
She countered by stepping back. "No, no. I'm fine."
He looked at her quizzically. The sudden, strange look in her eyes puzzled him. "What's wrong?"
Her answer was almost immediate. "Nothing's wrong."
"Liar." He stepped closer to her again. "Come on, Beckett. We were just joking around and then all of a sudden, you're somewhere else." He took her hand. "Come here." He led her back over to the couch and made her sit down, and then he sat next to her. He turned so he was sitting sideways, with one leg bent on the couch and his arm on the back of the couch as he faced her. "Now, tell me why you're so serious all of a sudden."
"I came along to help Alexis with her french."
"I know. And it was really nice of you to say it was okay for her to go spend the night with her friends."
But still, she was silent, and he wasn't going to sit and watch her look at her lap when he knew there was something bothering her. "Kate." The use of her first name got her to look at him. "Tell me. Go slowly if you want, but tell me. Because it's going to be a hell of a long weekend if there's something bothering you that you can't tell me about."
Her eyes held his for a moment more, registering the sincerity in his before she looked back to her lap, and then up to the ceiling as she sighed. "We, uh..." she began, but then stopped again.
"Kissed?"
"Shut up, Castle. I'm trying to get this out and I don't need you interrupting me every two words." She took another deep breath, and continued in a soft, yet exasperated voice. "Yes, we...kissed. Several times. But I'm just realizing that I've spent a good part of the day making out with one of the great modern playboys of the western world. And that is so not me. That's not why I came along with you here. And I don't like it."
"The making out?"
She sneaked a look at him, but found it easier to talk to the ceiling so her gaze returned upward. "No, I think you can guess otherwise by what happened before I gave you your cookie. I like that just fine, and that's part of the problem. But I'm nobody's conquest, Castle."
The solemn tone of her voice let him know how torn she was, how conflicted she felt. He put his free hand on top of hers in her lap and gave it a slight squeeze. "You're not my conquest either, Kate," he told her softly.
"Right. I've seen you in action, Castle. You expect me to believe that? You told me you wanted just that very thing right after we met."
He took his hand from the back of the couch and scrubbed it over his face. The past does come back to haunt you. "I know what I said then, but that was then. I didn't know you then. You were just some sexy, beautiful, intriguing cop. You're still all of those things, but now I know that you're a hell of a lot more that that. And I'm smitten by you. Have been for a long time. And Kate? You don't get smitten by a conquest."
She didn't say anything, so he continued. "I know my reputation. But that isn't all me. A lot of it is carefully crafted publicist fodder to sell books. I won't lie and say I haven't had some meaningless flings, because I have. But really, not in a few years. I think you know who that one was. And even since then, I've changed. You're not a conquest to me. You're a lot more than that, and I think if you stop to think about it, you'd have to admit that you know that."
She thought about his words, and both of them were silent for a few minutes. Finally, she turned to him and looked him straight in the eye. "Okay, say we continue this way now...what happens after this weekend?"
"We continue this way, only back in the city. Maybe I could take you out for dinner somewhere?" He paused again and then implored, "Kate, there's something between us. I can feel it, and I know you can too or we wouldn't even be having this conversation."
She was silent again, contemplating his words, his suggestions. When she didn't say anything else, he continued, and tried to put it in more simple terms. "Look, Kate, I know you trust me, to some degree anyway. You've given me your gun before. So trust me now. Whatever happens, I'm going to put just as much into this as you. I promise. But we both have to try, to see where it leads. I want to. Do you?" He paused for several seconds, and then, in rush, blurted out, "?"
At his verbal explosion, she gave him a sideways look. "This weekend, Castle. I'll give it a try for this weekend. But no funny business. Two beds. Clothes stay on. We'll see how it works here and if we can take this home with us or if we should just forget about it. That going to work for you?"
He grinned a cocky grin. "So where do you want to go for dinner in the city? Because this is definitely going to work and we are definitely going to take this home with us."
The mood was now lighter, and they were back to their familiar banter. Although the banter now had the overtones of something else, and that something else provided a new bit of electricity to the exchange. "Pretty sure of yourself, huh?"
"Always."
She rolled her eyes.
"Uh, Beckett?" he asked.
'Oh, no,' she thought. 'Here it comes.' "What, Castle?"
"Can I kiss you now? I mean, neither of us has tripped or fallen down, and you did tell me that I just had to ask, and by saying that I just have to ask, you're kind of implying that the answer will be in the affirmative."
She looked up at the ceiling and pretended to be considering it. "Good points. So if, by your rationale, the answer is an automatic yes, then why not just do it?"
"I'm polite? And the implication was that I only get the yes if I do ask." he suggested.
"Yeah, whatever. Just kiss me, Castle."
"Gladly," he responded as they leaned toward each other, his lips meeting hers tenderly.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Later, after venturing into the kitchen (without falling) to get a couple more pan cookies, they sat on the couch in the study, testing out some of their new-found closeness. He had his arm around her shoulders and she was snuggled into his side, a blanket thrown over them as they looked at a photo album of pictures from the Hamptons house retreats over the years. Kate laughingly looked at photos containing an adorable younger version of Alexis, a young and buff Castle (which she could see because a lot of the photos were on the beach, where he wasn't wearing a shirt), and a blond Martha.
When they were about halfway through the album, though, the room suddenly plunged into semi-darkness as the overhead lights went out, and the soft jazz music from the wall stereo ceased playing. Kate sat up a bit and turned surprised eyes to Rick, seeing his face bathed in only the residual light from the lone window across the room.
"It looks like the storm is getting worse. I think we just lost power."
That's it for now. Hope you enjoyed it! Let me know what you think.
Got a few good power outage things planned. Stay tuned!
Hope the relationship talk wasn't too 'out-there' or heavy for you. I intended to address it a little, but like a lot of my stuff, it just kind of wrote itself and got a little longer than what I originally intended. But I tried to end it on a good note, a little bit lighter, if you will.
Countdown...mixed feelings. Great show, but I came to the realization today that I'd built it up too much in my mind that there would be some sort of positive forward progress for C/B and their relationship. Read too many of the message board posts with people saying that DMB just HAS to be history after this. I started believing it. So when he wasn't, I was pretty bummed (even before the episode was over). But in trying to look at the episode without all of the hype, I could see that it's just a continuation of the other episodes from this year. There's some progress, but it isn't all hunky dory. So I'm just going to hope for the best and try to write a lot of fanfiction in the next three weeks until 3x18 airs. :)
