December 14: B'shert
"Hi Dad." Kate wraps her arms around her father and sucks in a lungful of his scent, taking just a moment to go back, imagine she's six years old again.
When she steps back her father's eyes are creased at the corners, the sharp cut of his jaw and the hard edge of his cheekbone so familiar even under the crumpled covering of his skin.
"Hi Katie. Rick."
Castle extends a hand to her father and they shake, the fingers of Rick's other hand twining with her own. She knows how nervous he is, how desperately he wants her father to like him. How he wants to prove that he's worthy.
Her dad grins, peers around the two of them and glances down the drive. "Your mother not here, Rick?"
Castle flounders, glancing to her for help, and she laughs, shoves at her father's arm. "Jeez, Dad, could you not remind us of that disaster."
"Oh Katie, I'm just teasing. Your mother is an enigma, Rick. And a truly delightful one at that."
Castle manages a wan smile and then her father is ushering them both inside, locking the door behind them. There's no need, out here, with the nearest town a good ten miles away, but it's a habit her father had gotten into that summer.
She'd needed it, then. The extra security measure. Back when she was being eaten alive by paranoia, when she would pick up the phone to call Castle and have a panic attack instead.
Now, though, it's good. She's good.
"Let me show you to your room and you can put your bags away." Her father leads Castle around to the right, past the kitchen and straight through to-
"Dad? Dad, this is your room."
Her dad smirks at her, nudges the door open with his hip and takes her duffel from her, drops it on the bed.
"I know. I thought you two would want the double. I'll be fine in your single bed, Katie."
"Dad."
He takes Castle's bag too, drops it next to hers. "What? You trying to tell me you don't share a bed?"
"Mr Beckett, I-" Castle's cheeks are wind-bitten, but she can almost feel the heat rolling off of them.
"Jim is fine."
"Jim. I really don't want to inconvenience you. I'd be happy to sleep on the couch."
"How tall are you Rick? Over six feet, I'm guessing. There's no way you're fitting on my couch." Jim ushers them both out of the room, laughing again when Kate stumbles into Castle. He catches her with an arm heavy around her waist, his mouth glancing over her cheekbone.
She turns in to him, kisses him softly. She needs her father to see this, see how happy Castle is making her.
When she pulls back her father is smiling at them from the kitchen, and when he sees her looking he shakes his head. "Don't want the double bed my ass."
"Shut up." She scowls at him, snagging Rick's hand to tug him into the kitchen after her.
"Did you two get dinner yet?" Her father is half inside the refrigerator, rummaging around for something, and she takes the private moment to squeeze Castle's hand, try and let some of her certainty leak into him.
"Not yet, no. We came here straight from the precinct."
Her dad turns, then, throws a bag of salad at her. She catches it with one hand, rolls her eyes at him. "I made dinner. Just pasta sauce, if that's okay?"
"Smells great, Dad. Is this a hint for me to wash the salad?" She shakes the bag at him, has to let Castle go so she can open it.
"If you would. Rick, you're a guest, eat at the counter or the table?" At the sink, her back is to her father and Castle, so she doesn't see whatever face her partner makes, only hears her father's soft noise of sympathy.
"Relax, Son. I'm not going to hurt you."
I know. It's just-" She hears Castle cutting himself off, imagines the frustration he wears so uncomfortably. It doesn't fit the lines of his face, makes him a caricature of himself.
"I understand. You know, Johanna's dad scared the crap out of me. I was so desperate to prove myself worthy of her."
She turns back to see her father with Rick's hand clasped in both of his, smiles when they turn in unison to look at her.
"You two okay?"
"We're just fine, Katie-Bug. You want to set the table?"
She finds placemats and cutlery in the same drawers they've lived in since she was six, hip-checks Castle on her way to the table.
He shadows her, crowding her from behind when she goes back for glasses. "Katie-Bug, huh? Cute."
"What was it your mother used to say? You were a wriggler?"
She groans, smacks at her father with a dishtowel. "Yeah, when she was pregnant with me." She turns back to Castle, finds him looking at her with so much adoration that her bones turn to water and gush over the tiles. "She said I would never keep still, like a squirmy little insect in there, so they just called me Bug until I was born, and then they tacked on the Katie part."
"I like it. Detective Katie-Bug."
She narrows her eyes, stalking towards him with three glasses cradled against her chest. "Don't get any ideas. If you ever mention this to anyone at the precinct, or anyone at all for that matter, you will be the one getting closely acquainted with bugs. Am I clear?"
He swallows, takes a step back that has him coming up against the counter. "Yeah. Okay. Kate it is."
"Okay you two, sit. Dinner is served."
When she sighs again, when she rolls away from him and crosses her arms, her spine like armor set against him, he gives up.
"Kate?" He steps out of bed, tugs open the curtains to let the moonlight lick across the bed and bathe her, turn her into this ethereal and glorious creature. "Kate, love?"
She sits up in the bed, the sheets around her made liquid by the silvery light. "I can't sleep."
"I noticed." He climbs back into bed and gathers her up in his arms, tries the best he can to arrange the jut of her angles against his soft places and cradle her.
She's trembling. He imagines the thrum of it echoing in the caverns between her bones, how her cells weep. "This is the first time I've been back since that summer. And it's not even the same bed and I'm healthy and you're here but I-"
And then she's crying and the hot slide of tears down her face, their suicide leap from the precipice of her jaw, all of it unmakes him. "I know. But you're okay. No one's coming for you. You're safe and I'm here and nothing's going to hurt you."
"I know that." She curls a hand into his shirt, the fabric bunched up in her fist, and he rocks her, kisses her hair again and again. "I don't know why I'm crying, Castle."
"It's okay. It's a catharsis, right? Just let it go. I'm right here." He gets the hand at her back underneath her shirt to smooth over her skin, a pilgrimage over the mountain range of her spine.
Kate cries herself out eventually and he eases them both down until they're curled together, the sheet glossing over their aching places. She's facing him, her forehead at his chin, nose brushing his throat.
"I'm sorry."
She breathes it against him, her toes curling and releasing and curling at his shin, her body so soft.
"Don't be sorry. It's okay."
He nudges ever closer, settles a hand at her chest, her heart right there beneath his skin and hers. It helps, to feel her life steady in her chest. How he needed it that summer, how very much it broke him not to have her.
"But this is a vacation, Castle, and I'm ruining it." She stutters a shaky breath, arches her neck so her inhale is a drink straight from his own mouth.
When he kisses her, he tastes salt at the back of her throat.
"No you're not. I love you. All of you. Even the broken parts. I want you to share these things with me, Kate."
"But it doesn't even make sense. Why would I be upset? Everything's so good, my dad seems really happy and you are so wonderful and there's no reason for me to be hurting." He can feel her frustration in the grit of her body, the tight and careful way she holds herself.
"Have you heard of cell memory? Maybe it's that. Even though you're happy, your cells can remember what it was like that summer and it's going to take them a little time to adjust."
He kneads the rope of her muscle along her back, up across her shoulders, feels the flood of release pouring out of her even before she sighs.
"Hey Kate? I brought your notecard. Will that- do they help?"
"Oh. Yes. Please."
He has all of them for the weekend secreted away in the drawer of the nightstand so he doesn't even have to leave the bed to get it, hardly has to turn away from her at all. She takes the card from him, angles it so the moonlight washes right over it, his handwriting a spidery scrawl.
"It's Yiddish."
"It's beautiful." He loves the subtle nuances of her voice, the way the upward curve of her mouth shapes the words, malleable things bending around the mould of her teeth.
"Yeah? That's you and me, Kate. Complementary." The notecard gets caught up between their bodies when she kisses him, a corner of it catching a nerve at his ribcage and shooting fire down to his fingertips so he can paint it on her with the brush of his hands.
She hums, puts just enough space between them that her teeth knock his lip when she speaks. "You brought my words. What about my gifts?"
"And here I thought they'd make you uncomfortable. You're getting spoiled, Kate Beckett."
"Shut up," she hisses, a momentary duel of clashing elbows and ribs and then she's got him pinned to the mattress, her weight hot and right and settled on his waist. "I like them, Castle. I'm not ashamed of that."
"Good, because you don't wear shame well. Far, far too gorgeous."
He arches his neck and she hesitates for just a moment, laughing at him, before her mouth meets his, like liquid heat pouring down his throat and pooling low in his stomach. She tries to pretend like she's the one in control but when he gets his hands on bare skin she groans, hips shifting over him.
He stills, grins when she keens all in her throat and sits up to look at him. "I brought them. You want today's?"
"Right now?"
"Sure. Then we can get back to this."
She's already shifting off of him, slipping out of bed and pulling on a sweater because even with central heating the cabin at night is pretty damn cold, he's learning fast. He snags her hand, tugs her all the way to the front door before she protests.
"Outside?"
"They're in the car. Actually, you wait here. No spoilers for tomorrow."
She huffs, sitting down on the side table to wait him out. He gets halfway through the door before he's turning back to her, anxiety shifting in his guts. "Kate? There aren't, like… wolves? Right?"
"Oh jeez Castle. Nothing's going to eat you. Just go, would you. And quietly, don't wake my dad."
He walks backwards down the drive, grinning at her the whole way. He even does a little shimmying dance when he reaches the car, shakes his butt just to hear the laughter half-muffled by her fingertips. He rummages in the trunk until he gets it, tugs it free and jogs back up the drive to her.
The thing is huge, a canvas frame that he has to juggle in order to see her. She takes half of it, goes backwards down the hall and into the bedroom, closing the door with a grace that should not be capable of someone's foot.
"What is it?"
"A map of the city."
She studies it, three fingers pressed to her mouth. The moonlight saturates the canvas just enough that they can make out the city blocks, the great floating mass of Central Park.
"What do you do with it?"
He gets the box of thumbtacks from his pocket, red and blue and purple all mixed up in there. "You pin places of interest. Special memories, favorite restaurants, whatever. You're red, I'm blue. And if it's somewhere meaningful to both of us then we use a purple one."
"Wow. That's amazing. But which case is this referring to?" She props the great bulky thing against the dresser, runs affectionate fingers across the top of it as she climbs back into bed.
"The dirty bomb."
"Oh. Huh." She bites at her lip, her eyes tracking him as he slides beneath the sheets with her.
He runs his fingers over her ribs, still wearing the night air, and she shudders. It doesn't surprise him anymore. The curve of her body next to his, how she tugs at him until his arm is an anchor at her waist.
"I didn't want to remind you of almost freezing to death or almost blowing up or almost being exposed to dangerous levels of radiation or of how you went home with Josh and you should have come home with me. So I focused on Agent Fallon's map."
B'shert:
(n.) lit. "destiny"; referring to the seeking of a person who will complement you and whom you will complement perfectly