Chapter 29: In Sickness And In Health

Previously…

When Castle returns to the cabin fifteen minutes later, his hands are filthy and his cheek has a streak of dirt on it several inches long; like a scar. There's a cobweb draped across one shoulder of his shirt and the knees of his jeans are dusty.

"What did you—" exclaims Kate, hurrying over to brush him down. "Castle, what on earth? Did you give the whole generator a make-over?"

Castle laughs, actually laughs at her.

"What?" she asks indignantly, lightly slapping at his shoulder to get rid of the ancient, petrified cobweb.

"A make-over, Kate? What, you think I put lipstick on it, did its hair, maybe a little nail varnish?"

Kate pokes his chest. "Less of your lip, partner."

"There are bikes in the shed," he says, completely changing the subject as Kate leads him over to the kitchen sink to wash his hands.

"Oh…yeah, I forgot about those. Aren't the tires flat by now?"

"Nothing a little pumping won't fix."

The air stills. Kate sniggers helplessly and Castle's eyes widen.

"Mind out of the gutter, Beckett. Grandpa Joe would not be impressed, young lady," he chides.

"But I bet you are," counters Kate, pushing against him as he lathers soap onto his hands so she can reach his mouth and draw a groan-filled kiss from his lips, before she slaps his ass and then saunters casually away to sit on the sofa...whistling.


When Castle has finished washing his hands and finally snaps out of his dreamy daze, he pours them both another cup of coffee and then he ambles over to join Kate on the sofa. He sinks back into the soft, gray cushions and takes a quiet moment to look around. A pair of rattan-backed rocking chairs sit sentry at either end of the sofa, plump, ikat print throw pillows nestling in their warm embrace. A heavy, mahogany coffee table completes the lounge area setup, its scarred surface adorned by a few coffee table books - a large format decorating pictorial entitled Rustic American Home, The National Audubon Society Field Guide to American Wildflowers, a dog-eared copy of The Greatest Hunting Stories Ever Told and a stack of out-of-date National Geographic Magazines. A pair of silver candlesticks, their vibrant, red candles burned halfway down, stand in the center of the coffee table, adding a touch of New York elegance to the bucolic surroundings.

The gray stone fireplace fills one wall, its deep hearth dark and inviting come winter, Castle imagines. A neat stack of split logs and a woven basket of kindling sticks rest off to one side ready for any unexpected cold snap. The overhead light is an elaborate affair made of bleached deer antlers, adding to the rustic authenticity of the place. The writer absently wonders if Jim Beckett or one of Kate's ancestors shot and killed the deer that supplied the necessary for the decorative light fitting.

Castle sips his coffee quietly, savoring the companionable silence for once, and then he tears his gaze up off the red and black, Aztec design area rug to look at Kate. She's weeding through the small stack of mail that has accumulated since her last visit out here, or her dad's, he's not actually sure who visited last.

He hands her the rust-colored, crackle-glazed mug with a smile and a quick jab of his chin, since she seems oblivious to its fragrant presence even though it sits right in front of her. "Here. Made you a fresh cup."

Seems some things about their respective roles haven't changed.

"Thanks," she murmurs, a smile of gratitude curling her lips even as her eyes remain trained on the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection notice to renew her father's fishing license.

"Your dad fish out here a lot?" asks Castle, watching Kate as she blindly lifts the mug of hot coffee to her lips, blows on the dark surface then takes a sip without halting her study of the official reminder for a single second.

"Mm?" she hums absently, going back for more of the coffee immediately.

Castle is slightly stunned by her ease around him, by her lack of wariness or any awkwardness between them. They're still a little shy with one another, a little overawed by the newness of everything when they stop to think about it. But he is surprised by how amazingly comfortable he feels being with her in this unfamiliar setting. There's no work to distract them out here, and none of the cast of characters who always seem to surround them at his home or at the Precinct, vying for their attention, interrupting every single moment loaded with private potential they ever managed to create for themselves as soon as it reached the apogee of being.

Today, out here in this domestic and most rustic of settings, it's as if they've been doing this all the time, just segued right into it while neither of them noticed the quiet transition. The training wheels simply fell off and they are away, peddling hard.


He pauses for a moment, taking another sip of coffee while he mulls those thoughts over. He's re-draughting history already, he realizes with a jolt. That quiet, seamless segue? That's not exactly how things happened, he concedes to himself with a quickening of his heart, a sudden sickening palpitation. Thud, thud, thud. No, the birth pangs that gave way to the here and now were brutally painful, breathtaking, terrifying at times. That night up on the Brooklyn Bridge, there were moments when he thought there was no way back for them. But Kate fought when it counted, she stepped up and she fell to her knees and begged for his forgiveness. She opened her heart, showed him the fear and the ugliness, the weakness and the ferocity she'd kept hidden from him for so long.

"I'm so sorry. I've been neglecting you," Kate says suddenly, her words colliding with his own thoughts to cause a momentary confusion in his brain.

"Hey, you okay?" she asks gently, dumping the pile of mail, the colorful jumble of flyers and junk, onto the small coffee table and turning to face him so that their knees bump.

Castle shakes his head, throwing off the clash of her apology and his own flashback to smile at her. "I'm making myself at home. No need to play hostess," he tells her with ease.

"You asked about fishing. My dad…he loves fishing. Best afternoons he spent up here when I was— Well, in the beginning when I just slept all the time."

"He left you? Alone?" asks Castle, sounding appalled. He edges closer, placing his large, warm hand on her knee, heavy fingers curling over and around her patella, swamping it in warmth.

"I would take a pain pill and be out for hours," she explains gently, knowing how much that healing wound still pains him.

Castle stares at her, eyebrows tented upwards towards his hairline.

"What? I was supposed to just let him sit there all day and watch me sleep?" she asks, her head tilted to one side in sympathy for him and his touching concern for her.

"I would…I—"

Castle pauses, a little adrift, so much he wants to say. He scrubs a hand down over his face before reemploying it to lift his coffee cup. He doesn't want to criticize her father just because he can be an over-protective idiot at times and he knows he owes the man a great deal from what Kate's told him about how her dad gently guided her towards him.

"I know you would have," she says softly, sliding her fingers over the knuckles of the hand that remains on her knee. "And he did too when I was too out of it to notice. As soon as I figured out what was going on, how…how exhausted he looked—" She bites her lip, stares at the red rug and then looks up, right into his eyes. "He's not as young as he once was, Castle. I put a stop to the all-night vigils after that."

"We could have worked a shift pattern, had you covered 24/7," he argues reflexively, seeming to forget that her recovery is long complete. That he's offering a solution to a problem that doesn't exist anymore.

"Next time I get injured in the line of duty, I promise—"

She stops at the sickening look of alarm on his face, the sudden evacuation of color from his cheeks.

"But there won't be a next time, God willing," she hastily tacks on, squeezing his fingers hard. "If I get the flu, strep throat, food poisoning, mono," she adds, poking his toes with her own, trying to make him laugh.

"If you get mono, I'll have mono," he grumbles, though Kate can see that he's faking it and secretly pleased. "Who'll help us then?"

"That's what kids are for," she blurts, spontaneously, but at least he looks pleasantly startled instead of the horrified of a few seconds ago. "Alexis is in the frame if we both come down with something."

"She does make great chicken noodle soup," offers Castle, trying to match her lighter tone.

"Then it's settled."

"What?"

"Partners…in sickness and in health from now on," she declares, offering him her hand to shake.

He kisses her cheek instead, watching her eyes soften with love and relief. "Sounds good."

"No more hiding away. Promise. You can definitely be the one to hold my hair back when I vomit," she grins, laughing when he grimaces.

But this is happy stuff; small promises here and there that light the way ahead. Being here, at her dad's cabin, is filling in all kinds of blanks for him. Like a child's coloring book, he is crayoning between the lines, adding detail, depth, shape and illumination to the dark corners and the faceless monsters that haunted his dreams all those weeks that Kate was gone.


"You done with that?" she asks a second or two later, when their coffee is downed and a companionable calm restored.

"Yep," nods Castle, allowing her to take his coffee mug.

He watches her pad over to the kitchen, her long, bare toes, with their navy blue nail polish, a delicious surprise he discovered in bed last night.

"Then come on. Follow me," she tells him, leaving the dirty cups to soak. "I have something to show you."


The path from the house to the lake is pretty overgrown, though it's clear that there is a path from the flattened foliage and the bald patches in the ground cover where the light sandy soil shines through. They take it single file, Kate leading of course since she knows the way and…well, it's Kate. She always leads the way.

Castle uses the opportunity – and his position as devoted follower - to study her further, permitting himself to look at her in a new light. She's no longer the forbidden or at least unrequited object of his desire, she's his girlfriend now, his lover, and that thought just about blows his mind as he watches her stride ahead on those amazing long legs, sneakers crushing pine cones and dusty bracken alike, snapping dry twigs and stepping over fallen logs, her hair tumbling lose down her back, curls bouncing with every step. To say he is in love with her just isn't good enough anymore. He's been in love with her for such a long time; it became his permanent state of being: a slumbering, omnipresent ache in his heart, a fire in his loins in the dark of night, a longing he could never dull or quench no matter how many hours he spent following her around or just sitting by her side like a loyal companion or some faintly ridiculous overgrown lapdog.

No, this, here, today, now: watching her, knowing what he now knows about her – how impossibly smooth her skin feels beneath his fingertips, the size and shape and perfect weight of her breasts in his hands, the sharp jut of her hip bones when she rolls her body against his, the firmness of her ass, the powerful clench of her thighs, the narrowness of her waist, the feminine curvature of her hips, that hidden tattoo low down on her abdomen, the noises she makes when she comes, the softness of her tongue, the sweetness of her mouth, the ferocity of her kisses…kisses that stole his breath and left him gasping, chasing more, needing more of her like a drug…

Addicted! That's it. He's addicted to Kate Beckett, and happily for him there is no cure. No need, nor wish nor will for one.


"Hey, you okay back there? You're kinda quiet," notes Kate, pausing suddenly on the path to turn around and check on him.

Thankfully Castle's mental gymnastics mean he's fallen slightly behind and so he doesn't go barreling straight into her when she stops. He catches up in a handful of strides, schooling his face so she can't see the expression of pure love-struck awe he's sure is written all over it.

"I'm good. Just…uh…watching my step," he offers, by way of lame excuse for his silence and dawdling pace.

Kate tilts her head to one side and narrows her eyes. "You sure, 'cause—"

Castle looks over her shoulder, drawing in a sharp breath. "Is that the lake?"

Kate smiles instantly and nods. "Yeah. Isn't it beautiful?" she says, glancing back over her shoulder as if to reconfirm its presence.

They turn to look at it together, shoulders and elbows nudging on the narrow path as Kate shades her eyes with her hand. The sun sparkles blindingly on the surface, and Castle is glad of his sunglasses when he fishes them out of his pocket and slips them on.

Kate slides her hand into his and squeezes his fingers lightly. "Come on," she says, leading him to the edge of the clearing, "not far now."

TBC...