Chapter 9

Kate stood beside the bathtub as it slowly filled with hot water and floated her fingers through its dancing cloud of steam, her lungs welcoming in its warmth with every breath. There was no sound but the pacifying rhythm of the splash. There were no thoughts but those of him. She was hundreds of miles from where she lived, but with Rick, there, she was home.

Only a t-shirt and panties covered her body, the jeans and sweatshirt that accompanied them already kicked aside, and her hair now hung free, a frame of loose waves and curls around a face brightened by a gentle smile he unknowingly inspired.

"I'll take this view over a wall of windows anywhere." From the doorway, Rick spoke soft and sweet. "I've had so many dreams about you, and not one of them comes close to how incredible it feels to be able to see you like this when I'm awake. I am awake, right?"

The look she gave over her shoulder assured him so.

"Is it going to embarrass you if I tell you things like that when I think them?"

Kate perched on the edge of the tub. She wasn't sure how long he was there watching her before he let her know it, but what she saw in his eyes she wholly understood, because the same had often been written secretly in her own.

"No," she answered, a convincing enough performance she thought. Foolishly. He knew her better than that.

He stepped into the room and pushed the door closed behind him, pinned the room service menu between his knees while he lifted his shirt over his head, tossed it onto the pile of her discarded clothes.

"I thought we agreed we were going to stop doing that."

"Doing what?"

"You can tell me it embarrasses you if it does, Kate. I'm a big boy. I can take it." He extended the menu, and she took it from him before he stripped out of his pants. "Just tell me the truth. Whatever it is. That's all I want."

Kate dropped the menu to the floor, turned off the running water, and moved into him. "It's not…I guess it does, a little bit," she admitted, going against her impulse to insist otherwise.

She trailed her hands down over his chest and settled them at his waist. "It's just new, that's all. It's just different. It's four years of being a certain way with you, Castle, of acting a certain way, and now standing in a fancy hotel room half naked together, about to take a bath. I'm still getting used to all of this." She let the pinch in her brow find calm. "But that doesn't mean I want you to not tell me things like that when you think them."

"Yeah?"

"If you didn't, you wouldn't be you, and it's you that I want." The smile returned to her eyes. "Even the romantic sap you. Now, help me out of this shirt so we can get in this thing."

She hadn't yet told Rick of what happened to her in that Chicago suburb early that morning, to her body once so broken by similar instrument in front of his eyes, or warned him of what he was about to uncover, and it hit her too late how much she wished she had.

"I enjoyed several of the things you said just now, so I'm going to oblige despite the vague insult."

"Slowly, Castle, okay?" she petitioned when he reached for the hem to lift, and then there it was, the bullet's ugly stamp that fanned out across her ribcage and curved around toward her back. It looked even uglier than it did just a few hours before, more menacing in color and texture, like the real fight was just beginning.

"Beckett, what…how did this happen? When?"

Kate grabbed his hand and squeezed. "I'm okay, Castle. It's okay. It hurts like hell if I poke at it or move too quickly, but it's just a bruise. I was out in the field this morning. The guy got off one shot and it hit my vest. Castle, look at me. I promise, I'm fine."

"The way I hugged you. You didn't say anything." Wanting but hesitant, his fingers hovered above her skin. "I had to have hurt you."

"You didn't know, Castle."

She lightly stroked his cheek to help soothe the ache she watched come over him, one she recognized from his visit to her hospital bedside the year before when she extinguished the light of his hope.

"Even if you did, I wouldn't have stopped you. All I've been thinking about for weeks is touching you and you touching me, and I'm not going to let anything ruin that. Come on," she said and finished undressing, "get in with me."

Rick let her get situated in the tub before he climbed in and anchored himself behind her so she could use his body as a pillow. It was quiet between them for a spell, and it was his voice that eventually broke the silence.

"I don't think I have the words, Kate, to make you understand how hard it is for me to wake up every day and know something could happen to you, and that I won't be there to be able to stop it. I'm so proud of the choice you made, and at the same time I hate that you're so far away. I feel helpless and afraid and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it."

Kate guided his hand across her breast and secured it beneath hers atop the scar that was the forever emblem of a killer's failure. She knew Rick believed he also failed that day, but never for one second had she ever joined him in that belief.

"You were standing next to me in the cemetery, Castle, and I still ended up with that bullet in my chest. You were there and you couldn't stop it and that wasn't your fault. You can't protect me from everything. I know you wish you could, but you can't."

"I still have dreams about it," he said. It wasn't something he'd ever shared. "Sometimes they're so real, like it's happening all over again. I can hear the sounds of it, the screams. I can smell the cut grass and the blood."

She was asked in therapy at one point about what she imagined the experience of that day must've been like for him, about what she imagined it would've been like for her if he'd been the one shot. She recalled not being able to answer right away because of the knot in her throat. Even the hypothetical of it was more than her heart could bear.

"I have them, too. Not as much as I used to. I'm glad," Kate said but softer, like it was a thought that inadvertently slipped out. "When I hear the sounds, it's your voice. That's the only part of it I ever want to remember."

As she spoke, she brought his hand back down beneath the water and settled it between her legs, and with just a whisper of his touch, the pain in her body and her mind was cast away. It didn't matter for how long, only that he understood he alone possessed the power to free her, and so, there in that bathtub and in that bed, she showed him, over and over again.

xxxx

"We're not staying long. I mean it," Rick said for the third time since they climbed into a cab outside the hotel. He let go of Kate's hand when they reached the loft door, dug for his keys. "An hour here, tops."

"Castle, relax. You've told me that, like, six times already. This isn't a big deal. I've known your mom and Alexis for four years. We all like each other. We all get along. We'll stay however long we stay."

Rick dropped his chin, and his keys.

"God," he whined, his face scrunched, "please don't let my mother have heard that. Beckett, this is supposed to be our weekend, yours and mine." He bent for the keys, straightened, and planted his back against the door. "And this kind of does feel like a big deal. They haven't seen you since we started…" He managed to catch the X-rated version before it flew out. "Since we, you know."

Kate didn't have the same success containing her amusement.

"I know very, very well." She stepped into him, let her weight rest against his. "Stop being such a baby, Castle. The only thing they and we are going to do in there is catch up. We're not trying to hide anything. We don't need to put on some kind of a show or pretend like we are or aren't something we are or aren't."

"What if they-" He sighed off her look and his shoulders slumped. "An hour, tops."

"For your sake, I hope so," Kate dropped into his ear as he turned to let them in. "I'm not sure how long you're going to be able to handle knowing I'm not wearing any underwear."

Until that second, he wasn't aware of that tasty tidbit, and until the door pushed open and he saw Martha and Alexis standing there in wait, it was one of the greatest seconds of his life.

"Hello, darling!" Martha threw open her arms.

"Mother," Rick replied, expecting the hug that veered left and landed on Kate instead. He couldn't see Kate's face but knew her ribs likely paid a hefty price. "Easy, Mother, Beckett had a tough day at work yesterday and didn't get much sleep last night."

Alexis chimed in with the requisite "Gross, Dad," before gifting each a peck on the cheek. "It is," she seconded when her grandmother gushed about how lovely it was to be seeing Kate again after so long.

"I'm happy to see you both, too. I'm sorry we didn't have a chance to talk before I left. Getting ready for the job and the move while I was still working at the precinct, I didn't have time for a whole lot."

"You're here now, Katherine. That's all that matters," Martha announced. "Come in. Sit down. Tell us all about this exciting new life of yours in D.C. Richard doesn't share much with us these days, I'm afraid. Now that the two of you are"- She waved that suggestive hand of hers in the air-"I think my son is trying to keep you all to himself. Understandably so, I suppose."

Rick stopped pouring wine in the kitchen.

"How about you don't talk about me like I'm not here, Mother. And the only thing I'm trying to keep Beckett is happy."

"I'd like a glass, too, darling, and bring Alexis a soda, would you?" Martha paid his interjection no mind whatsoever.

"And the tortilla chips, Dad."

There were only three of them, and yet Rick wasn't sure he'd ever felt more outnumbered.

xxxx

The plan was for an hour, tops. The problem with that plan was that it underestimated one of its key players: Martha.

The group was nearly half into hour three when she sent Rick off to the market to fetch some more wine, and her design wasn't only for a breather from him and the sour puss he'd worn all evening, but hopefully for a few minutes of alone time with Kate as well.

"Go on, darling. Send him a hello from me," she told Alexis, who seized the opportunity of Rick's departure to steal away for a phone call to her beau. "Richard isn't thrilled about the boyfriend development, as you can imagine. I wouldn't be surprised if he were having the young man followed, quite frankly."

Kate giggled because it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility, not because it was. "They're both really special."

"Honey, ain't that the truth," Martha concurred in her whimsical way. The two were seated side by side on the sofa, and she shifted closer. "I wanted to say, Katherine, if you'll indulge me in a moment of maternal mush here, that I couldn't have been more thrilled to learn that you and Richard were able to find your way back to one another. I can only imagine how difficult a time it was for the two of you, but to see my son come out of the dark place he was lost in and into this extraordinary light has my heart lifted."

She reached over and squeezed Kate's hand.

"The circumstances that first brought your lives together were tragic and awful, and heaven knows you've both been touched by tragic and awful since, but what's kept them together is far more powerful than either and I don't think Richard would mind my saying that in these few short years, you've filled his with such joy, Katherine. With such joy. I'll never be able to thank you enough for that or to fully express the joy it's brought me. I only hope he's done the same for yours."

"Thank you, Martha." The sentiments had tears in Kate's eyes. "He has. Castle's changed the way I see so many things, most of all myself, and that's been the hardest and the best thing that's ever happened to me. I'm grateful every day, for him and for all of you, for always making me feel like I'm a part of your family."

"You are and you always will be, no matter what. Don't you forget that."

When Rick came walking back through the door, he found the two sharing an embrace, caught Kate's "I love you," and felt both curious and warmed at once.

"I love you, too, darling," Martha reciprocated, taking both of Kate's hands. "Well, well, speak of the devil. Now that he and that storm cloud of his are back, maybe you two lovebirds should fly off together, huh? Enjoy the rest of the evening alone in that fancy nest of yours."

"I couldn't agree more. That's the best idea you've had all night, Mother," Rick threw in on approach. "You can consider these a thank you," he said, all but shoving the two bottles of wine he purchased in her face and hooking an arm around Kate's shoulder, leading her off toward the door.

"Tell Alexis I had fun and I'll see her soon," Kate called out into the air. He wouldn't even let her turn back, let alone stop so she could get out a proper goodbye. "Thank you again, Martha."

"See you tomorrow, Mother," Rick said as they disappeared out the door that he left open behind them, and then it was back to the Carlyle, and too soon another parting.