1) I'm spoiling you.
2) The Valentine's day update was either going to be this date or Archery. Archery won, but I couldn't get this out of my head.
3) This one's… a little different.
Date Nights & Canvas
It was her turn to plan date night.
Since her hours were so sporadic, the two of them tried their hardest to make sure that they had at least one date night a month where they actually went out on a real date and did things normal couples did. When Rick first mentioned it, Kate had teased him mercilessly, telling him that he was so the girl in their relationship. He took it all in stride however and didn't back down, so she agreed to it.
Now, she looked forward to their date nights more than anything else.
So far, Rick had taken her out to a nice restaurant (with a mandatory new dress and shoes), took her ice-skating (he was terrible), took her to an old black-and-white movie at the Angelika (We'll always have Paris…), a Yankees game (they lost to the Phillies) and indoor go-karting (she didn't even know there was any place to do that around the city).
When he had told her after dinner at the loft with Martha and Alexis (who had come home from college for the weekend) that he thought it was time for another date night, she had caught him completely off guard when she asked if she could take him out this time. He had asked her why and she just shrugged her shoulders and while he knew there was more to it, he agreed. She had to fight him when she said that she would pay for everything, but eventually she won that battle as well.
Let me romance you, she had said, then I'll take you home and you can invite me up for coffee and then I'll have my wicked way with you.
The whole point of these date nights were so they could spend time together outside of work. In reality, Kate knew another hidden agenda was Rick's desire to make her have more fun. And she truly was having fun. Now she wanted to prove that she could plan something fun for the two of them.
Of course, that led to a completely new thing to worry about. She wanted to do something with him that she didn't think he had ever done before.
It took her a week before she finally came up with an idea, after passing the place on a whim and stopping in. She stood in the lobby for a few minutes to speak to the teenager behind the counter, who then introduced her to the woman who owned the place. She looked at some of what the woman had done and immediately knew that Rick would love it here. He had been complaining recently that the he had felt a little "artistically stifled" (he refused to call it writer's block) and she had a feeling that this would help. She talked to the woman about bringing him in and they picked a day it would work for both of them and Kate paid for their session in advance.
Two weeks later, she was on her way to pick him up for their date. When he opened up the front door, she immediately handed him a pair of white pants and a white t-shirt and told him to go change out of his dress shirt and slacks. He had raised an eyebrow, but did as she told him after he saw that she herself was dressed in all white as well. He asked her about shoes and she said it didn't matter and in a few minutes they were down in her car, driving the short distance to their destination.
On the outside, the building looked completely inconspicuous. She grabbed his hand as he met her on the other side of the car after she parked and immediately walked them into the building.
The walls on the inside of the art studio were completely white, except for a few paintings and posters that adorned the walls. She walked purposefully towards the desk that sat directly in the middle of the room, greeting the same teenager that she had seen a few weeks before and checking in. The girl walked out the door through an archway and returned a few moments later with Sunshine, the woman who owned the studio, in tow.
"Hello again, Katherine!" she said, flinging her arms open wide in front of Kate, "I'm so glad you're here."
Sunshine was… something else. If it weren't for the fact that she was Kate's age, you'd think that she was a flower child from the 70s (though, with a name like Sunshine, she clearly was a product of the decade). She had long hair well past her waist, running down to her back in dirty blonde waves. She was dressed in all black (she had told Kate that she and Rick needed to wear all white) and she was barefoot, long feather earrings dangling from her ears.
"And you must be Richard!" Sunshine said loudly, clapping her hands together (Sunshine also didn't like nicknames). Before either could register what happened, Sunshine moved over to Rick and placed a loud kiss on his cheek. He startled slightly and only relaxed when she pulled away, but Sunshine quickly insinuated herself in between them and grabbed each of them, Rick by the hand and Kate by the wrist, leading them into the room that she had just come from. Rick looked over Sunshine's head at Kate and gave her a questioning smile, and she smiled in return, hoping that it looked encouraging.
In all honesty, she was slightly worried too. Sunshine was a little more… hands on than Kate expected her to be.
They went through the archway and into the other room, another one with stark white walls and hardwood floors, the only difference from the other room being the lack of a desk and the station that was set up between the two windows in the room.
"So Richard…" Sunshine said as she finally let go of them and moving to stand in front of them once again "…Katherine tells me you're a writer."
Rick smiled at Kate, wondering just how much she revealed to this woman.
"On my better days," he said, all the while still smiling.
Sunshine threw her head back and laughed, reaching out and putting her hand on his forearm.
"Katherine tells me that you've been struggling recently?"
Rick quickly looked over at Kate, the annoyance clear on his face. Kate lifted her hands up in surrender, and gave him a small smile. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He knew she wouldn't bring it up unless she thought she could help him. He forced a small smile on his face.
"The past few weeks haven't been my better days."
Sunshine laughed again and Kate pursed her lips.
"Well Richard," Sunshine said, placing a hand on his chest, "I believe that this will help." She pointed towards the canvas. "I want you to paint something you feel," Sunshine said, looking directly at Castle, "Something that makes you feel… passionate and… wild."
Rick nodded his head, trying to bite back a laugh at how ridiculous she sounded. He looked at the trays full of different color paints on the side of both the four foot square white canvas hanging on in front of them on the wall.
"I think I can handle that," Rick said, smiling at Kate, "where are the brushes?"
Kate smiled as Sunshine answered.
"You are the brush, Richard."
Rick looked at Kate and his entire face lit up.
She brought him on a date that is essentially finger painting for adults.
She really did know him too well.
He watched as she leaned over in her white tank top and white skinny jeans and pulled off her shoes and socks. She looked up at Rick, smiling as she quickly pulled her hair up into a ponytail. He followed suit, taking off his shoes and shoving his socks inside of them. He picked hers up and tossed both pairs over to the side of the room away from the tarp covered floor and canvas and grabbed her hand, moving her over closer towards the wall.
"Just let it all out," Sunshine said, looking at the two of them from a few feet away from them.
Castle stood in front of the canvas for a moment, a fist placed against his lips. Kate could see his mind going a mile a minute, his eyes darting across the canvas, clearly trying to plan out what he wanted to do just like he would with one of his stories. It was fascinating to watch.
But that's not what they were here for.
Without giving herself time to change her mind, she reached out and dipped her finger into the closest tub of paint, which just so happened to be yellow, and swiped a curved line near the center of the canvas.
He looked at her and she calmly answered the question in his eyes.
"We'll make it work."
Rick smiled at her and dipped his hand into a different tin of paint, this one green, and painted a slightly thicker line on the underneath her yellow one.
"We always do," he said with a smile.
They worked side by side for probably half an hour, moving around each other, caking their fingers and palms with different color paint and transferring it onto the canvas with an ease that seemed habitual.
Well, at least most of the paint ended up on the canvas. Kate quickly realized why Sunshine had told them to wear all white. Kate had multicolored splotches of paint all over her clothes, and most of them not accidental. And Rick wasn't any better. Whenever they thought the other wasn't paying attention, they would lean over and swipe their fingers across the other, leaving trails of color in their wake.
And most of the paint didn't even land on their clothes. Rick was sporting some fierce light blue and red tiger stripes on his arm and Kate had some dangerous looking purple war paint on her cheeks.
She was having fun, and if his smile was any indication, he was having a good time, too. He began to attack the canvas with a fervor that told Kate that he had found the image in his mind and he was going for it. He had the story of the painting in his head and he knew how to get to the ending.
Her smile grew. It felt nice being able to help him once and a while when he had helped her so much.
"It looks good, you two…" Sunshine said, interrupting Kate's thoughts. Rick smiled down at Kate and Sunshine continued, "… but it seems like something's… missing."
Kate and Rick's smiles turned to frowns.
"It's pretty," Sunshine said moving towards Rick, "but where's the passion? Where's the excitement?"
Sunshine slowly ran her hands up and down Rick's back before leaning into his ear, "It's missing a certain… touch."
Sunshine wanted touch? Oh, she'd give her touch.
As soon as the woman had backed away enough, Kate dipped her hand into the dish of light purple paint off to the side before reaching out and putting her hand over his back pocket and squeezing his ass. He jumped and yelped. When he looked behind him and saw the bright purple on his pants, he smirked at her. Dipping both of his hands into some of the blue paint by his side, he lunged towards her, quickly wrapping his arms around her and immediately placing his paint covered hands on her ass, pulling her closer to him. She let out a little squeal and tried to push herself away from him. He let go of her hips momentarily and she twisted away from him, managing to reach out and dip her hand into a vat of paint she could reach, laughing the whole time. She felt his paint covered fingers reach out and grab the side of her neck, twisting her head again as he pressed his lips fervently against hers. Her laughter quickly subsided into a drawn out groan as she lifted the hand not covered with paint to the back of his neck, her fingers playing with the short hairs she found there.
For a moment, she forgot where she was. She ran her index finger from his collar down the front of his white shirt, a straight red line from the collar down to his belt buckle. Angling her face towards his, she simultaneously pressed her hand flat against the front of his hips as she pushed her tongue past his lips and into his mouth. He pushed himself closer to her hand, the reaction immediate and uncontrollable. She smiled against his lips when she realized what she had just unintentionally done.
Sensing the shift in her attitude, he pulled away from her slowly, immediately eyeing her suspiciously. Kate bit her lip and glanced down to where her hand was still resting against his zipper. He pulled his lower body away from hers (reluctantly he might add) and looked down at himself, taking in the line of red down his chest, and the bright red blotch in the shape of her hand, right on the front of his pants.
He looked at her, the shock clear on his face.
Kate shrugged, a wicked smile on her face.
"How's that for touch -"
She barely finished her sentence before she found her back pressed against the surprisingly dry canvas, feeling the few spots of still wet paint transferring to her skin. He immediately dropped his lips to her collarbone, sucking on the skin there that he knew drove her crazy. She rolled her shoulders back against the canvas, feeling it stretch slightly underneath the added stress of her weight, the slightly wet paint sliding against her shoulders.
Kate wasn't sure how he managed to do it, but somehow he had managed to get his fingers into yet another thing of paint. She felt the cool brush of paint against her neck and she quickly pulled away and looked at him and then the canvas, taking in the line of brown that he had just traced along the side of her neck.
"Rick…" she gasped, still breathless from his kiss, "… you'll ruin it."
In response, Rick pressed his lips against hers again, short in length but with bruising force, and effectively putting her right back where he wanted her.
"I'm doing what I was told…" he murmured, leaning towards her ear, his fingers skimming past her hip, "… I'm painting what drives me wild."
Rick sucked her earlobe into his mouth and any argument she had was completely lost.
He finished tracing her shape against the canvas, never letting his lips leave her skin, before wiping his finger off on his shirt. He leaned in and kissed her lips gently, telling her without words that he loved her before pulling her gently away from the canvas so they could stand in front of it together.
In theory, it really shouldn't have looked good. But somehow, it did. It looked really good. For a detective and a writer anyway. The background was a swirl of thick strokes of different color, red and green and purple and yellow and orange and blue splashed across the fabric with the white still breaking through. And then there was the distinct shape of her (well, at least her shoulders and her head and her waist and hips), outlined in brown where he had ran his hands around her as he kissed her, permanently etched along the sea of colors.
"Not bad," he said, looking at the canvas.
Kate smiled at him and leaned down to the black tin of paint, dipping two of her fingers in it before turning to him. She grabbed his wrist with the hand not coated in paint, lining him up exactly as she wanted before outlining him the same way he had done to her. She pulled him away dipped two other fingers in the brown paint and quickly went to work. It took her only a few moments before she was done, and when she pulled back and went to stand next to him again. He looked at her and smiled, leaning down kissing her gently before twining his fingers with her paint covered ones.
The way she had outlined his shape, it looked like she had painted him standing behind her. Where her figure had previously been armless, she had painted them so they looked like she had them wrapped around her, with his arms holding them both together.
She clearly was not an artist. Her painting skills were crude at best, but it was them, and it spoke wonders to the safety and comfort and love she felt when she was with him. Now, it was -
"Perfect," she heard Sunshine say before hearing the sound of a photograph being taken.
Kate looked back at the woman. She had nearly forgotten that she was there.
Kate took in the woman, her hand still wrapped up in Rick's. The woman was standing behind the two of them, holding an old-fashioned Polaroid camera in one hand, the developing picture in the other.
Sunshine caught her expression and smile, all the while shaking the photograph in her hand slowly. She looked at it and then handed it over to Kate. The picture was of the two of them standing with their backs turned to the camera, Rick with a purple handprint on his ass, and Kate with two much larger blue handprints plainly visible on the back of her own pants, other random splotches of paint on their clothes from their teasing. You could vaguely see the blue lines on her neck where Rick's fingers had been, the paint that had gotten in her hair when he had pushed her against the canvas, and the stripes that Kate had painted on Rick's arms. Kate stood about a head shorter than Rick, their fingers still wrapped around each other's. Through the space between them, you could vaguely see their canvas, their figures front and center.
Kate tore her eyes away from the picture and looked at the woman again. Sunshine smiled at her, and Kate realized that this is exactly what she wanted to happen. The look in her eyes said that Sunshine had seen what was in the picture far before Kate and Rick had, and she knew that when they saw it too, it was going to be beautiful.
They just need a little push to let go entirely.
Kate smiled at Sunshine and nodded, telling her that everything was okay before looking back to Rick, who was still staring transfixed at their canvas, and squeezed his hand before handing him the photograph.
Maybe this woman wasn't so bad after all.
A month and a half later, Kate had finally moved the last of her boxes from the van downstairs into the living room of the loft. She looked around and sighed in content, happy that she was now officially moved in and now all that was left to unpack. She really wanted to leave it until tomorrow, but she knew that the quicker she got it done, the better it would be for everyone.
Sighing (this time out of resignation), Kate lifted up a box of what she knew contained clothes and started to carry them towards their bedroom. Rick would be up again in a few minutes after he tipped the driver for the moving van. If she could get everything to the bedroom, maybe she could get him to help her get it all out of the boxes.
The door to the study was open and she walked through the doorway, intent on heading for the bedroom. She looked over at his desk, and stopped short, almost dropping the box she was carrying.
Behind his desk, where the photograph of the square staircase that she was sure had some meaning to Castle but one she had never understood, was their canvas.
She wasn't sure how long she spent staring at it, incredibly touched that he had wanted to put it in a space that he obviously spent so much time in. She didn't even know when he had gone to pick it up. Sunshine had mentioned wanting to keep it in the studio for a little while to help get the word out, and they had agreed because more than anything they just wanted to get home and help wash the paint off of each other.
"It looks perfect there doesn't it?" He said, wrapping his arms around her middle.
Still holding the box in her hands, she shook her head at him.
"You didn't have to put it up," she said modestly, "It doesn't really go with the décor."
"Nonsense," he said, pulling the box out of her hands and setting it on the floor beside them. He turned her around and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, bringing her into his chest. She wrapped her own arms around his torso and pressed her cheek against his heart.
He kissed her hair and continued, "It's the single most inspiring thing about this room."
She leaned back and looked into his eyes, making sure he could see how much it meant to her before leaning up and pressing her lips against his, kissing him languidly, not making any move to deepen the kiss.
When she felt his hands tease the skin of her waist, she pulled away from him.
"We should start unpacking me."
Rick shook his head, "I'd rather be undressing you."
"You'll have plenty of time for that later."
Rick paused to think for a moment before he made a decision. He shook his head decisively, "Nope, there's plenty of time for that now."
Kate bit back a laugh and Rick continued.
"I think I need to welcome you home," he said, pressing his lips to her neck.
Kate hummed, "And what exactly did you have in mind?"
"I don't exactly have a plan…" he said into her skin. Kate tried to bite back a moan. "… but I think we'll think of something. After all…" he removed his lips from her neck and Kate watched as he glanced over to the canvas hanging on the wall, before looking back at her, pulling her t-shirt over her head, "you are very… inspiring."
1) I had a gym teacher named Rainbow Aphrodite. We're friends on facebook. Don't go hatin' on my flower child name.
2) Sunshine is such a shipper.
3) I'm a Phillies fan.
4) Love it? Hate it? Let me know what you think!
