Rick opens the door to the loft, smiling when he finds Kate standing on the other side. He wasn't expecting her tonight, but she's always a welcome surprise.

"I thought you said you had to work tonight," he says, stepping aside to let her in.

"I did. But Esposito found a hole in our suspect's alibi and when we confronted her about it, she snapped. Full confession."

"Well her loss is my gain."

Kate rolls her eyes, unzipping her boots and placing them near the front door. "So where are the rest of the woman in your life tonight?"

"Mother is upstairs and Alexis is out with Meredith. Apparently she's going to be out of town for her birthday, so she's trying to make it up to her now."

"Is she always like that?"

He sighs and nods, placing a hand on the small of her back and guiding her into his office. "Most years. I feel like she's missed every birthday since she turned five. I guess Alexis is just used to it by now, as sad as that sounds."

She finds his other hand and squeezes it, giving him a half smile.

"But enough of this talk about how bad a mother my ex-wife is," he starts, squeezing her hand back. "I brought you in here because I wanted to show you something."

He sits down behind his desk and powers on his laptop. Kate moves to stand behind him, draping her arms across his chest and resting her head on his shoulder.

"If this is about you getting permission to shadow me, Montgomery already told me."

Rick lets out a frustrated sigh, sinking back against his chair. "Well so much for showing you my approval e-mail."

She kisses his cheek and stands back up, wandering over to browse his collection of books. "How soon do you intend to start?"

"I have to finish Derrick Storm first, so not for a while yet. I figured out how I want to kill him though."

She raises her eyebrows at him. "Really? How?"

"You'll have to wait and read it to find out," he tells her, pushing back from his desk and standing up.

"I thought spoilers were one of the benefits of dating a famous author."

He joins her alongside his books, slipping his arms around her waist. "No, your major benefit is getting a book series based off of you. If a writer falls in love with you, you will never die."

Her arms slip around him and return his embrace as she sinks against his chest. "You trying to tell me that you're in love with me again? Or just that you won't kill off my fictional counterpart like you're going to kill off Derrick?"

"Both I guess," he shrugs.

"You guess?" she asks, leaning back to look up at him.

Rick brings one of his hands up to tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear. "I'm in love with you, Kate Beckett. Again."

She smiles, reaching up to kiss him.

"I love you too," she mumbles against his lips. "A part of me wonders if I ever stopped."

He hums against her lips, stealing another kiss before she pulls out of his embrace and trails her fingers over the spines of his books.

"I remember wanting to call you after I saw Hail of Bullets at the bookstore," Kate says quietly. "Congratulate you on accomplishing your dream."

"Why didn't you?"

"I was in the Academy at the time. And I figured you would ask me why I was there instead of in law school, accomplishing my dream. The conversation would have gotten awkward because you weren't at her funeral."

"I'm sorry," he says softly, his hand at her back. "I should have been there."

"Yeah, you should have."

"I figured you didn't want me there...with how we left things."

She walks away from his touch, pulling down the first Derrick Storm novel from its shelf and flipping through its pages.

"I could have used you there. But I know better than anyone that you can't change the past."

She puts the book back down on the shelf with a sigh. He can tell her mind has drifted elsewhere, off to that dark place he catches her in from time to time when mention of her mother comes up. Rick reaches for her arm and tugs her toward the lounge chair with him. He sits first and pulls her into his lap, letting her curl up against him. His hand strokes up and down her pant leg in a comforting gesture.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to bring down the mood," Kate says softly, toying with his shirt collar.

"Don't worry about it. But uh, can I ask you something for book research?"

"I thought you agreed to keep her case out of your books?"

"No, no I did. This isn't about her, it's about you. I was just wondering how close have you come to death on this job?"

She lets out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh. "I haven't really yet. But I haven't been a first class detective for that long either. Haven't really started getting the big cases until now. I mean I've had a gun drawn on me, but no one has actively tried to kill me or anything if that's what you're asking."

His fingers dance over her patella. "Have you ever thought about it?"

"Death?"

"No, just...pissing off the wrong serial killer or whatever."

Her shoulders lift in a shrug and she brings her fingers from his collar to the tuft of hair at the nape of his neck.

"Only in terms of my mom's case. If it really was more than random gang violence like I'm pretty sure that it was, than I'm sure whoever had her killed doesn't want me to go digging."

"But you're willing to do it anyway?"

She shakes her head. "There's nothing to find. I've been over the evidence so many times and every time I come up with nothing. So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I should have just stayed on the path to supreme court justice."

"You know Ryan was telling me that you were the youngest woman to make detective in the NYPD."

Her lips lift up in a smirk as she narrows her eyes at him. "I thought you said you two weren't talking about me."

Rick ignores her comment. "You must be really good at your job, Kate. Maybe this was supposed to be your path all along."

"Yeah I guess."

"You guess?" he asks with a laugh. "Kate, when we used to play cops and robbers at recess you absolutely refused to be a robber. Do you remember the time you got picked to be one and you sat out the game and watched rather than play the bad guy?"

"That had nothing to do with the titles," she laughs. "I just loved being 'it' and hated being chased."

"Still. I think it's a sign."

Kate shakes her head, batting his chest. "It is not a sign."

"Okay, okay, fine," he concedes, laughter still rippling through him. "But I still don't think that just because you can't find evidence for your mother's murder that you picked the wrong career path. And I haven't even seen you in action yet."

Her head falls back against his chest. "It's just one of those things I think about, you know? How different my life would be if I had stuck to my original plan."

"Do you not like where you've ended up?"

"No, it's not that. But don't you ever wonder what you'd be doing if you hadn't become this famous author?"

"Not really," Rick shrugs. "There's nothing else that I'd want to do. Except for, you know, become a superhero or something like that."

She laughs at that. "I guess you'll just have to settle for being a detective's shadow."

"How much are you going to let me do? Do I get to break down doors? Interrogate suspects?"

Kate hesitates. "Uh, you'll probably have to stay in the car. And watch interrogations from the window. You know, for legal purposes."

"But I'm going to be signing a waiver," Rick pouts.

She strokes her thumb over the shell of his ear. "Babe, I love you, but I can't have you screwing up my investigations. You're supposed to be observing how I operate as a cop, not training to become one yourself."

He continues with his pout. "You say that now, just wait until you see how helpful I can be. I sit around thinking about how to kill people for a living. I know how these people think."

She quirks an eyebrow at him. "Do you?"

"You'll see. My first case on the job, I'm going to blow your mind."

"I didn't agree to let you shadow me so we could have sex at my place of work," she smirks.

Rick pushes on her shoulder. "Get your mind out of the gutter."

"Why? Yours is constantly there."

He narrows his eyes at her and nudges her off his lap. "Fine, you want me to blow your mind like that? Go get in my bed."

"Didn't you say that Martha was home?" she asks, already tugging her shirt off over her head.

"Guess you'll just have to figure out how to be quiet for once."

"You're one to talk," Kate says, brushing past him into his room. "Your groaning is what made her walk in on us in high school. She thought you were in pain."

"Did I sound like I was in pain to you?" he asks, trailing behind her.

"No, because I was familiar with your sex noises. That's just what you sound like."

Rick pauses in the doorframe to his room. "Do I still sound like that?"

"More or less," she smiles, bending to step out of her pants.

He huffs, walking toward her and bracketing her in his arms. "Doesn't seem to turn you off any."

"It doesn't," she answers him, starting to unbutton his shirt. "Because whatever noises you're making, I'm the cause of them."

He hums, bending his head to kiss along the bare expanse of her neck.

"This is true," Rick mumbles against her skin. "You're very good at it."

She smiles, pushing his shirt off of his shoulders. "Finish getting undressed and I'll show you just how good at it I can be."