Author's Note: I was delighted to get to be at the Castle panel at ComicCon on Sunday, and while I didn't get to interact with the cast (unless you count a shy glance at Stana Katic four feet away, and deciding not to hassle her for an autograph despite her seeming very gloriously gracious with fans even while staff is trying to herd her off), it was just a pleasure be there. They were really incredible fun. There are YouTube clips online with the panel, and they premiered the first moment of Season 3, which has also appeared online since. I sort of prefer my take in "Inevitable", but I do admit to liking Andrew Marlow a very great deal after the panel discussion. My notes from the panel are posted on my LiveJournal. Anyway, seeing the cast spurred me to finally get back to this story. Kavi gave me the excellent advice that I'd be more motivated if I knew where I was going with this. I very much admire Corlando for writing hers out in its entirety before posting, but it "feels" close to its end before Season 3 starts. This is partly short because I'm actually figuring that out. I'd label this perhaps a transition series of vignettes...
They were due to leave in the morning, and the pull of their lives in New York was tangible on the eve of their departure. She was quieter, and he didn't want to push things, didn't want to rush things after the magical couple of days spent.
Their last morning together, he cuddled her against him while she slept and he watched the sun rise and the way it made her skin glow 'til the light was bright enough to make her eyes blink against it as she woke. And then she closed them again while they made love.
"You know what I really regret?" he mused aloud as the town car was weaving its way through New York streets. He watched her, wondering how her profile, after literal years of watching her, still caught his attention.
"What?" Her focus was already on her phone. No urgent messages from the precinct – unless one counted the voice mails from Lanie wanting to know what happened and insisting that Kate hit the morgue immediately upon her return. His words broke through her focus, and she lifted her head and raised her eyes to his, her defensive mechanisms on standby to see if she should be alarmed by his words.
"That I never did get to see you in the little red bikini you brought."
That brought a quick smile to her lips, and she rolled her eyes. The town car pulled up in front of her apartment, and he caught her hand as she turned to exit. He wasn't quite sure what to say – he knew he had to go home, wanted to see his daughter, and yet he wasn't quite ready to let her go either.
"See you in the morning?"
She leaned in and gave him a hard, quick kiss while their driver pulled her suitcase out of the trunk. "See you in the morning."
He watched her go in the window and was glad to see her turn back to watch him leave. He sent her exagerrated puppy dog eyes and she laughed before disappearing into her building. He whipped out his phone to text her with, "You're going to miss me tonight. I'm going home to a pair of redheads!"
However fabulous the vacation (and far too short), it was still good to be back.
It was good to be back in the morgue getting coerced into sharing far more details than she normally would with Lanie – not that the blush she was trying to hide and the smile that kept creeping up on her face didn't give a fair amount away. The temperature of the morgue rose.
When she got to the bull pen, things looked relatively normal. A fresh cup of coffee was sitting at her desk, and Castle was flipping idly through the case files on her desk, disrupting their order, while Ryan and Esposito ribbed him about his sunburn.
"Castle! Get out of my chair."
Just as Ryan was on the verge of taking his own first drag of caffeine from the espresso machine, Esposito dropped the receiver of his phone into its cradle and called out, "Let's roll."
The team geared up and headed out with Castle tailing them…just like old times. He still liked to watch her walk, the intent look in her eyes, and if there was an added twist in his gut of protectiveness, of fierceness now that she really was in his life beyond being a colleague or a friend.
And he daydreamed while she drove, humming under his breath. While she thought he was daydreaming something juvenile and wondering if he would soon shut up, he was dreaming of taking her home to their home, building a long-term plot in his head, constructing the scenes like he did in his novels, trying to figure out the right approach...
Right now, he was still counting his blessings that she let him come home with her that Saturday night after a dinner date, that he got to share her bed. He lay back in it, inhaling the light scent of her - of cherries - from the sheets. He glanced around, and idly reached over to look around in her nightstand.
She took a deep breath, running her fingers through her hair one last time, eyeing herself in the over-the-sink mirror of her bathroom. What she was wearing is undeniably sexy, something Nikki Heat would wear – a confection of seductive satin and garters from Agent Provocateur that she knew would bring Castle to his knees.
Turning, she opened the bathroom door, the golden light from it spilling into her candlelit bedroom. The seductive tease on her lips died abruptly in favor of an all-too-familiar exasperated, "Castle!"
He was nosing around in her bedroom.
"Holy shit, you really do sleep with a gun!" He turned with a guilty cast to the slightly hunched stance of his shoulders, one hand already up, dropping said gun back into her nightstand drawer. And then he saw her, really looked at her. Now it was his turn for the words to fall away, because all he could do was stare at the backlit outline of her standing in the door, one hand on her hip – and the cover model silhouette of Naked Heat had nothing on Kate Beckett.