After the three miles in the park, Rick insists on walking back to their loft. He's dripping sweat and he's got the makings of a blister on his big toe. His right knee pops when he extends his leg, loud enough for Kate to raise her eyebrows at him.
"All right, all right," he grumbles. "I'm probably falling apart. No old man jokes."
Kate gives him that pleased smile but doesn't attempt the humor, which is good, because he's not really in the mood to laugh at how quickly he's let his body rundown. Before Kate got pregnant, Castle spent some time making an effort, as he confessed earlier. Now, he's lucky if he can get in a few reps in the weight room. Kate at least has access to the 12th's sparring and practice room. He's got a couple of machines and a kid who can't be left alone.
Jeez. He needs to get on top of this again.
Dark clouds linger in the sky, obscuring the last of the setting sun. He smells burning ozone, but hasn't seen lightning yet; the air is heavy. Castle rubs his hand across the back of his neck, mopping sweat, and wipes his palm off on his shirt.
He sneaks a look at Kate and snags her hand, lacing his fingers through hers as they cross the street. She doesn't step closer, but she does squeeze his hand back.
Also, he could swear that at the turnaround tree, Kate was clutching his shirt, but when he managed to glance back, she was darting away from him, pushing the pace. But he's pretty sure she'd been holding on to him.
She's changed. She's still Kate Beckett of course, but she's. . .enhanced. Which doesn't sound as good as he meant it, but the idea is there. When Kate woke up after their first night, he didn't know what to expect, but she stared at him in bed (he'd been staring at her first, of course), and then got up, took a shower, got dressed.
Like nothing happened. He'd played it her way, getting out of bed while she was in the shower, brushing his teeth over the kitchen sink with toothpaste he swiped from her linen closet, trying to plan out his next move.
The coffee was already brewed thanks to the timer, so he made up a cup for her and put it in the bedroom on top of her dresser, next to the box where she'd put her gun and badge the night before. He made breakfast then, listening closely for her once the shower shut off, the sounds of her opening drawers, blow-drying her hair, the silence of her putting on makeup.
She came out of her room fully clothed, but with that mug in her hand, a smile ghosting her lips. She kissed him, rubbed her thumb over his bottom lip, looked at him as if he was completely unexpected.
He hadn't thought she'd still be so enigmatic, but he'd fed her breakfast and watched her check messages on her phone, then got dressed and departed with her, separating down on the sidewalk. He went home; she went to the precinct.
He remembers the rest of that day. They didn't say a word to each other about it, but Beckett kissed him when he left and texted him yes to his dinner suggestion. They ate, she laughed with abandon at something stupid he did, and then she went home alone. He got to kiss her, slowly, with relish, and then she left and he didn't get to follow.
Kate's different now. She doesn't go home alone, of course, but the idea of her not talking to him about something big like that. . .pretty much unheard of these days. She's still a mystery, but she's not unknowable. She's a mystery that he's getting to read, page by page, and while he probably knows how this one ends, it's still amazingly well-written; it still captivates him. She's still extraordinary.
Castle glances over at her, squeezes her hand, enjoying the silence between them for a second longer before he needs to talk, explain to her some things now that they're apparently having these conversations.
"Kate."
"Hm?" She looks over at him absent-mindedly, and his heart catches at how beautiful she looks, disheveled and glowing with sweat, her hair curling at her neck. He can't even say it, can't even tell her; it gets stuck in his chest.
He takes a moment to come down from that, clutching at her hand in his, taking deep breaths, and she loses interest, her eyes going back to the people on the sidewalk as they slide through the crowd.
He feels okay now. "I was thinking about something."
"Uh-oh." She grins at him.
"Yeah. Well. Hear me out."
She squeezes his hand, even shifts so that she's walking closer to him, less distance. He likes that, less distance.
"There's this German-language poet, he's kinda famous-"
"Rilke?"
He laughs and glances over at Kate. "Wow. I keep forgetting you read!"
Kate bumps her hip into his and narrows her eyes at him. "You know, the first time you told me that, it was amusing, Castle. The second time, yeah, okay, I get it. Now? Starting to sound less like a compliment and more like-"
"Okay, okay. Jeez. You just surprise me sometimes, Kate. And that *is* a compliment."
She rolls her eyes at him like she doesn't believe it. "What about Rilke?"
"Oh. Yeah." Castle shakes his head, squints in the fading light. A ripple of thunder shimmers through the air. "Anyway, he's one of Alexis's favorites-"
"Mine too," she says softly.
Castle looks over at her, truly surprised now. "Really?"
"Back. . .after," Kate says, brushing off his question with a gesture.
After. Oh. After her mom died. He knows that she used his own novels as a form of escapism, but he should've realized she read voraciously. "Weren't you studying literature. . .before?"
She gives him a brief head nod, suggesting that she's not comfortable talking about this. Sometimes she gets like this, unable to extricate the good memories from the tangle of tragedy. He lets it go for now.
"Well, Rilke has this great line about love."
"Oh, jeez, Castle. Really?" But he knows that she's just trying to alleviate her own serious mood.
"Come on-" he grunts, elbowing her away from his sweat-soaked tshirt, getting her in the ribs.
"All right. Lay it on me." She's rolling her eyes; he doesn't even have to look to know.
"It's in his book Letters to a Young Poet-"
"I've read that."
"It was a really helpful book for me, back when publishers were rejecting me left and right-"
"When were *you* ever rejected?" she snorts, pushing into him again. When has she started doing this? Knocking into him with her hip, her shoulder, pushing him around. Kinda funny, actually. He likes the sudden meeting of their bodies, brief and chaotic.
"At the beginning. Just like every other author. Rejections are brutal."
"Aw, poor baby-"
"Yeah, I know. So sad for me."
She quirks her eyebrows at him and he grins back.
"So he says in this book, in one of his letters, some really interesting things about love, about how women and men are different, and about marriage. Sometimes I'm not sure if he's feminist or what, but the point is, he has this whole letter about love, about the right way to love."
"I remember it."
"You do?" Castle glances over at her, tugs on her hand to get her to slow down a little bit. Kate gives him a look of her eyes; she's more serious than he meant for this to get. "How much of his book do you remember?"
"I remember a lot of it. He says young people err at love."
"He does." Looks like Kate took Rilke to heart as well, which makes him love her more than he can possibly understand. She's read Rilke. She's read Rilke and loved it, and he loves her for it.
Kate lets go of his hand to walk around a mailbox, pushed by the crowd, but reclaims it when she finds his way back to his side. "He says that they fling themselves at each other, and scatter, and lose themselves for the sake of the other. He thought that was wrong, and felt that it would soon fall away with the modern age. I can't recall the exact quote, but-"
"I can," he says, giving her a glimpse of a grin. "He says that some day, he sees a shining of it on the horizon, a glimmer of this some day. . .some day there will be women whose names don't mean the opposite of masculine, but their names mean something in and of themselves, something that makes one think, not of a helpmate or limitations, but of life and existence. The feminine."
"Yes," she says softly, and her footsteps slow again. "And the rest?"
Castle clears his throat and stops at the crosswalk, watching her. "He says that this will change how men and women love each other."
She nods once, then quotes, "'Love that consists in this: that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other.'"
Castle keeps his mouth shut, lets that statement echo against the traffic in front of them, resonate along the concrete and sidewalk and buildings. Two solitudes.
The light changes and they cross; Kate has pressed closer to him, and when the crowd around them thins, she cradles his hand in hers, presses it against her chest.
She takes a breath. "'Do not be frightened, if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen-'" She chokes on it, falters.
Castle sighs, finishes it as best he can remember. "Don't think that life has forgotten you. Instead it holds you in its hands; it will not let you fall." Castle brings her fingers to his lips and presses his mouth against them, watching her. "Looks like you read more than mystery novels after your mom died."
She nods again. Castle keeps them walking, slower now, his tshirt sticking to his back. He's itchy, but certain that this is a conversation unlike any other he's had with her before.
He recalls the rest of Rilke's letter. "He talks there about not shutting life out. About letting life be painful and anguished and agitated because you know that it's working on you, working for good, that it's progress towards where you want to be in life."
Kate nods again, then looks over at him, everything in her eyes. "Rilke meant a lot to me. He was big about having inner solitude, about listening to yourself to find the truth. He was willing to let pain transcend. That was appealing to me back. . .then. And this is where all that pain transcended to." She gestures between them with their clasped hands. "This was always where I wanted to be in life."
He smiles gently at her, almost afraid that all this emotion will scare her away. "Kate. You asked why I didn't tell you I wanted you there, at the publicity things."
"The splinter," she says softly. "Doing it my way."
"Yeah. I wanted you to do what you needed to do, Kate. Like Rilke said. Love isn't flinging yourself at the other person, forcing myself on you, dissolving our individual selves into the morass of confused communion. . .instead, love is two solitudes protecting, bordering, saluting each other."
Castle watches her as he talks, watches the way her eyes absorb what little light remains.
Then her brow furrows and she turns to look at him. "You've done good, Castle. Protecting. Bordering. Saluting." Her lips curl at the corners, like she might smile. "I didn't realize you were doing it, but you were. You always do. But sometimes, Castle, we've got to start letting you do it your way. Only fair."
He takes a relieved breath and smiles back at her. "You do the same for me, you know. Of course, I'm always going to be the kind of person who wants less solitude, not more, but you do the same for me. You let me be. . .the best me there is."
Kate stumbles beside him, pushes her forehead to his shoulder as if to hide, then laughs softly, moves away to rub his sweat off her skin, wrinkling her nose. "Sweaty."
"Sorry," he laughs. "Someone forced me to run three miles in the heat."
"Castle."
He's still grinning at her when she lifts up on tiptoes to press her mouth to his, all too briefly, but hot and intense in that small amount of time.
"'Life has not forgotten you; it will not let you fall,'" she says softly as she pulls away, pressing her lips together, then giving him a tender smile that burns all the way through him.
"I love you too," he says.
