Jim Beckett stays for dinner, studying Rick throughout the meal. He's leaving afterwards for a week at his cabin, Rick learns, but as his gaze flicks between the two of them, Kate propped up on the couch with her meal in the form of a smoothie while Castle pushes his food around on his plate, he wonders if her father is reconsidering leaving at all.
It's Kate's reassurances, he's sure, that soothe her dad's worry, murmured words between the two of them that Castle doesn't hear but seem to put the older Beckett somewhat at ease.
More at ease than when he walked in to see his daughter's face in the middle of a murder board at least.
After he's pressed a kiss to her head, emphasized that he'll only be a phone call away, and leaves her with an 'I love you', Jim meets Castle's gaze, nods towards the door.
"We've already had this conversation before, Rick," Jim tells him under his breath. "Her life is worth more than her mother's death. I was betting that you would be the person to convince her of that. Don't give me reason to doubt it."
"No sir," Castle promises, accepting the hand Jim holds out to him.
"And if anything happens, anything at all, you call me. I have reception out there and I can be back immediately," her dad reminds him, squeezing Rick's hand.
Castle nods. "Will do."
"Have a Merry Christmas, Rick," Jim sighs, finally offering him that tired smile Castle's come to see as a comfort. "You deserve it."
"So do you," he says automatically, because he does. But he has a feeling Jim Beckett stopped believing he deserved the good things in life years ago.
"He's not mad at you, you know," Kate says once her father is gone.
"Mm, I'd beg to differ," Rick chuckles, strolling through the foyer and into the living room where she sits on the sofa, the lights of the tree reflecting in her eyes.
There are hoards of presents underneath it, most for Alexis, a few for his mother, some for him, and a couple for the woman on his couch. He's grateful that he did most of his shopping before her shooting; it would have been the last thing on his mind otherwise and Christmas would have felt a little less magical for him without the joy of showering his family with gifts.
He's always has something small for Kate every year even though he tends to not see her during the week that Christmas falls, showing up in the new year with a tin of cookies or some of his and Alexis's homemade peppermint bark. This year, he steered away from the idea of baked goods, making something different for her. Something inexpensive and minimal, something he knew she wouldn't complain about him spending money on. But that was before her shooting.
Since then, he's managed to come up with a few more gift ideas that won't be too overwhelming for the woman he loves who doesn't remember him, but will still give her something to open on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.
"You just shook him up," she murmurs, flicking her gaze to the stairs, drawing his attention away from the tree. "Maybe not just him."
Castle sighs. "I shook up the whole household, it seems."
Alexis was upstairs when Castle and Beckett emerged from his office. She came back down for dinner, offering a small smile to Kate and sharing a knowing look with Jim Beckett, but she didn't speak to Castle for the half hour she spent pushing her food around on her plate. She retreated to her room as soon she got the opportunity and he doesn't expect her to come back down by her own volition.
"Go talk to her, Castle." He glances back to Kate, watching him with too much empathy in her eyes. He hasn't earned it, he knows that. He's aware that it'll take longer than a couple of hours to make up for going behind her back where her mother's case is concerned. But she isn't holding it against him now. "Tomorrow's Christmas Eve and I can tell how much you guys love this time of year. Don't let this ruin that."
"I plan to talk to her," Rick nods, stepping up to stand in front of her and offering up his hands. "But let's get you to bed first."
"I'm not-"
"Yes, you are," he quiets her protest before it can begin. "You barely got any sleep last night and you've been out all day, fitting in multiple therapy appointments-"
"Two," she corrects. "It was only two and they were both just consultations."
"My point is that you had a very long and tiring day and on top of it, you had to come home to me ready and waiting to make it even harder."
Kate bites her lip. "Home?"
"Yeah, you-" Oh… when is he going to stop slipping up with her? Especially right in front of her? "I didn't mean to imply that this was… I know you have your apartment, I just-"
"I know what you meant," she chuckles, sucking in a breath before lifting forward and accepting the hands held out to her. "But Rick?"
He draws her up with practiced ease, lacing an arm around her waist to keep her movements as steady and smooth as possible. "Yeah?"
"Home's not always about location," she murmurs, not pausing in her shuffle to the bedroom, not even when he nearly stumbles in his haste to steal a glance at her face. But she's pointedly not looking at him. It's the most confounding part of it all, he thinks, how she can be so brave now, but still appear just as cautious, just as afraid as making one wrong move, as he is.
"You're right," he nods as they pass the massive tower of the Christmas tree and make their way through his office. "By the way, like you mentioned, tomorrow is Christmas Eve and I figured I'd run through the plan with you."
Her step stutters a little. "The plan?"
"Just our usual Christmas Eve traditions," he explains, tightening his arm ever so slightly around her waist as they walk through his bedroom entryway. "We start the day off pretty normally, but around noon, we usually go ice skating in the park. Traditions were changing this year anyway since Alexis was going to bring Ashley along, Mother will be teaching her last class of the year and putting on a small performance for the family and friends of her students, and so I figured you and I could do something."
"Something?" she hedges, expelling a sigh of relief once they finally reach the bed. "Castle, do you see how much effort it takes me to get from a couch to a bed?"
"Nothing strenuous. We don't even have to leave the house." He pulls the sheets and comforter back, helps ease her legs up and onto the mattress, and lets her settle her back against a couple of pillows. "We can watch more movies on the couch or bake more Christmas goodies. You can help me wrap the last of the presents I have for Alexis. We can go back up to the roof-"
"None of this is what you usually do this time of year," Kate points out. "You should go ice skating with Alexis like always, or go see your mother's play-"
"Beckett, I am not tagging along with my daughter and her boyfriend, not if I can't bring you. Maybe next year." Ooh, he hopes there's a next year for them. Ice skating with Kate on Christmas Eve sounds like a dream. "And I'm definitely not going to my mother's play."
"Why not?"
"You've never been to one of her plays," is all he has to say.
She leans back into the pillows, snags the blankets with her fingers. "I'll think on it."
"All I ask," he grins, easing back to give her space. "Anything else you need?"
Kate glances to the nightstand, her usual set up of water, a pill bottle, and a sleeve of crackers making up the surface of the bedside table.
"A good book," she frowns, glancing past him to peer into his office. "Do you have something I could borrow?"
An idea pops into his head like a lightbulb flicking on.
"Yeah, let me grab it." Castle trots out of the bedroom, through his study, and back into the living room, spotting one of her gifts sitting below the branches. He snags the red and green wrapped square, brushing his thumb over the shiny gold bow. He jogs back to her with the present in his hands, an excited smile claiming his lips. "Here you go."
Her brow furrows. "What is that?"
"One of your Christmas gifts, but I don't mind if you open this one early," he explains, holding it out to her.
"A gift? Castle, I don't want-"
"It's nothing," he assures her, pushing the present into her hands. "Really, I didn't spend a dime on it."
Kate narrows her gaze on him, not believing a word of it.
"Kate," he wines. "Just open it."
"Fine," she grumbles, dropping the present into her lap. She opens it slowly, tormenting him, slitting her thumbnail along the taped edges of decorative paper until it falls away to reveal the book inside.
The tips of her fingers dust along the bold lettering of his name.
"Is this… Nikki Heat?" she murmurs, studying the infamous cover of Heat Wave with an arch of her brow and curve threatening to form along the corner of her mouth.
"The first in the series," he confirms, surprised to find his hands sweating and his stomach indulging in tiny flips of nerves.
"Is she naked on the cover?" Kate sighs, as if she should have known. "I'm sure this didn't get me made fun of at work."
"Just a little," he admits sheepishly, but she's smirking when she looks up at him. "Look, I know it's a little presumptuous, but give it a chance."
Give me a chance.
She wads up the wrapping paper in her fist, lets him toss it in the small trash bin in the corner of the room.
"Go talk to Alexis." She grits her teeth as she shifts in the bed, shaking up the fragile arrangement of her body to relax further into the pillows at her back, and curls her fingers around his book. "I want to get some reading in before I pass out."
She waits until she can hear the sound of his footsteps upstairs, until she hears the opening of Alexis's door, to actually open the book.
It's unrealistic, silly to even entertain the idea, but the more wishful part of her is hoping this book will provide her with some of that Christmas magic that Castle keeps going on about, that the pages inside will hold the chapter of her life she's currently missing, help give it back to her.
Kate flips through the first few pages, the title page, the table of contents, catching the dedication between her fingers.
To the extraordinary KB and all my friends at the 12th.
Extraordinary. It's just like the other word that keeps ringing a bell when he says it, the way 'always' has rolled so rich and warm off his tongue. Just another piece of the puzzle in her mind that doesn't yet have a place to fit.
Kate swallows down her disappointment and turns the page.
It was always the same for her when she arrived to meet the body.
The lamp in his room is still on when he comes back downstairs from talking with Alexis, but the woman in his bed is asleep, his book open across her ribs, her hands cradling it there.
He grins. She fell asleep reading his book.
Castle pads quietly through the bedroom to turn off the lamp, carefully lifting the book from her hands as he does. He grabs a post-it note from his nightstand to mark her place, noticing she's already on chapter nine.
How long was he upstairs with Alexis?
He changes into his pajamas in the dark before he circles back around to his side of the bed, slipping under the sheets as carefully as he can. Doesn't stop Kate from stirring awake.
"Alexis okay?" she mumbles, blinking a few times before her blurry eyes are able to focus on him in the moonlit darkness.
"She's fine," Castle whispers, offering her a tired smile. "We talked through everything and I stayed with her until she fell asleep."
"Good," Kate hums, closes her eyes, and begins to roll onto her side before she winces at the movement, reminding herself that the position still isn't an option.
"Get any reading done?" he murmurs, shifting a little closer to her in the bed, getting comfortable while she's still awake and he's at less risk of disturbing her.
"Enough," she yawns. "S'not that bad."
He huffs, mutters about how mean she is as she grins at him without even opening her eyes. "Go back to sleep."
"Like them so far," she slurs, the smile starting to slip from her lips and her breathing beginning to even out. "Heat and Rook."
"Yeah, they have an interesting dynamic," he muses, gently brushing back her hair.
"Like us," Kate sighs before she can drift away.
Castle lays his head down, watches the gorgeous rise and fall of her chest, the sign of life that he's yet to stop marveling over since he saw her for the first time after she was shot.
"Not quite," he mumbles, thinking fleetingly of all the plans he had for Nikki and Rook, the ones he tried to flush from his brain the day she told him to get out of her apartment and her life. "Almost. Maybe almost."
When Kate wakes on the morning of Christmas Eve, it's to an empty bed and the sound of the running water beyond the closed bathroom door.
Castle's been innocently sleeping beside her for the past few nights, neither of them ever really acknowledging the fact that they share a bed. Besides, it's just for the sake of her injury, nothing personal. At least that's what she keeps telling herself.
She's become accustomed to waking alone most mornings, her hours of sleep so thrown off that she fluctuates between waking up too early or too late, but today, it's only ten o'clock when she checks the alarm on his nightstand. A pretty normal time for someone to awaken on a holiday morning, right?
It makes her even more disappointed that she managed to miss waking up while he was still there.
Kate stretches her arm across the abandoned space of the mattress, screwing her eyes shut at the daily slice through her sternum that greets her every morning. She breathes through it, lets it pass before she focuses once more on the simple task at hand. The sheets are still warm beneath her palm and she draws her hand back, bends her arm to seal it against her bullet wound, willing the light pressure stabilize her.
Once her vision ceases to blur and the morning ritual of a riot in her chest calms to a dull roar, she digs her heels into the mattress in a practiced move to maneuver herself into a more reclined position against the pillows. Sitting up helps her breathe with less complication and gives her better access to the items on the nightstand.
Grudgingly, she pops one of the painkillers into her mouth, downs it with the glass of water. If she's going to be spending the day with Rick, feeling overwhelmed with Christmas cheer, she should at least prepare herself as much as possible.
Unfortunately, beyond taking her pill, drinking her water, and forcing down a few crackers, she's unable to do much more without his help in the mornings. She's far too stiff after the prolonged period of lying down.
The only thing left on the nightstand is his book. She tugs it from the table and into her lap, opening to the page she left off on and dropping the folded post-it note he must have placed inside for her to the comforter. She managed to cram in almost a hundred pages before her eyelids started to droop, exhaustion taking over. She's loathe to admit just how much she's enjoying his writing, his characters of Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook.
She clocks one more glance to the closed bathroom door, the stream of the shower still resounding audibly through the room, and returns her attention to his book and the unfolding story that he wrote for her.
He bets too much on the assumption that Kate will still be asleep when he emerges from the shower. He takes his time under the heat of the spray, doesn't rush the process of shaving his face, tightening the wrap of his towel around his waist when he realizes he forgot to grab his clothes to change into.
Castle quietly eases the bathroom door open, prepared to slip out into his bedroom without waking Kate. But as soon as he steps out of the bathroom, he sees that Kate's already wide awake and sitting up in bed, Heat Wave open in her lap, her hands tight and knuckles shining ivory around the hardback, her lips parted and her brow in a troubled crease.
Shit, please tell him she isn't reading the part he thinks she's reading.
"Beckett?"
Her eyes flash up to him, a darkened brown with a halo of heat around her irises. Oh, he's seen that look before, in a dimly lit parking lot seconds before she kissed him for the first time. It intensifies as she notices his state of undress.
"There's a sex scene in the book?" she whispers, lowering the book to her side. "You wrote about us... why didn't you tell me we-"
"Because we didn't," he hisses hastily, his entire face flushing hot. "We never... its fiction."
"Why?"
And she looks so damn frustrated.
He blinks. "Why - why what?"
She growls and shoves the covers from her legs, stabbing her bottom lip with her teeth as she swings them over the edge of the bed. "I'm not having this conversation while I'm sitting in your bed."
"Kate, will you just-" But she's already planting a hand to the nightstand, pushing herself to her feet with a pained gasp. He strides forward, prepared to brace his hands at her hips, stabilize her until she can breathe without wincing, but she shakes her head, tries to wave him off. "Beckett-"
"None of this makes sense," she gets out, squeezing her eyes shut and visibly doing her best to refrain from doubling over. He waits for her to breathe in and out a few times, slowly and stretching the damaged remains of her chest until she can open her eyes, straighten her spine. "We really never-"
"No," he groans, scrubbing his hands over his eyes. Why did he let her read that damn book? What was he thinking giving her a book all about her? A 'love letter to Kate Beckett' as Paula so bitterly likes to remind him. Of course with two characters that so closely mimic Kate and himself, their fiery dynamic, she would assume the content inside was more fact than fiction.
Including the well-talked about sex scene on page 105.
Kate's staring up at him with that shocked arousal still prevalent in her gaze. "Did anything ever happen between us?"
"We - we've kissed," he nods, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Just once. And it wasn't… it wasn't real or anything-"
"How can it not be real?" she demands, her brow furrowing deeper.
"Well, we were trying to save Ryan and Esposito and there was this guard, so I figured we needed a distraction-"
"And your bright idea was to kiss me?" she deadpans.
He shrugs, suddenly feeling far too exposed in just the towel around his waist. "It worked."
"And after that?" she presses, watching him reach for the robe draped over the armchair next to his bed.
"What do you mean after? We saved Ryan and Esposito, saw the paramedics, and then everyone went home," he explains, pushing his arms through the robe and tugging it on snugly across his chest, cinching it firmly around his waist. "One of those things we didn't talk about after it happened."
She purses her lips. "Who saw the paramedic? Did one of us get hurt?"
"I - I just hurt my hand," he murmurs, flexing his previously bruised knuckles out of reflex. They rarely flame with that intense ache anymore, practically healed by now, but he doesn't think he'll ever lose the phantom pain of his bones cracking as they connected with Hal Lockwood's face.
Her gaze drifts to the ball of his injured fist. "How?"
"Punched a sniper in the face when he tried to shoot you," he answers as casually as possible, hoping she'll just let it go.
She flicks her attention back to his face, meeting his eyes. "How long ago was this?"
"I don't know," he fibs, pretending to ponder it. "A few months ago."
Kate's gaze slips back to his mouth. "It was too late to go back after that, wasn't it?"
He doesn't even try to pretend he doesn't understand, doesn't ask any questions, can only sigh in agreement.
"Yeah, Kate. For me, it was definitely too late."
He doesn't understand the devastation on her face, lining her features, only that this entire conversation is causing his heart to burn. He doesn't like to remember how it felt to kiss her, how it felt to have her surging up against him, hands in his hair and heart pounding in time with his. How it felt to have her kiss him back.
"Listen, I'm going to get dressed and then-"
"Kiss me again."
His mouth goes dry. She's lifting her eyes to meet his, the initial surprise of reading his book gone but her pupils still thick with lust and sparkling gold.
"Kate," he murmurs, already prepared to back away, to retreat, save her from making a mistake.
"Are we back to being just friends, Rick?" she challenges, squaring her jaw, because oh, he's managed to hurt her with the unspoken rejection, hasn't he? He's managed to make her think he doesn't want her with every fiber of his being. "Would you kiss me if it was her asking you?"
"Stop it," he mutters, but she advances a step, just a breath away and close enough for him to feel the heat radiating off her body. "It's no different. We couldn't come back from that and we wouldn't be able to come back from this either."
"Maybe I don't want to," she counters, bearing down on her long abused bottom lip, the flesh already starting to swell from its time under her teeth. "I already told you what I wanted, Rick. I don't have to remember the past two years to know how I feel about someone."
"How do you feel about me, Beckett?" he decides to press, decides to make her prove it. He cares too much, too much to risk screwing this up. "Since you seem to have already figured out how I feel about you."
Her throat ripples, but she doesn't back down. "How hard is it to understand? I told you that I wanted you, Castle. What do you want?"
His brow hitches close to his hairline. He's just not used to her being so… so blunt, so bold, not when it comes to them. No, when it comes to their relationship, the complications of it, she's usually tight-lipped and ready to run, move right past whatever new life-threatening moment threatens their tenuous balance.
She keeps asking him what they are, what they were before the memory of him was wiped clean from her brain, but he doesn't have the answers. He never did.
But he's always known what he's wanted.
"You." He lifts his hands to her face, cradling her cheeks in his palms, and catching the flare of surprise in her eyes before he leans in. "You think you want me, Kate? You have no idea how much I want you."
And then he shows her.