He's pouring her wine first. Carefully tipping the goblet toward the spout of the bottle as he tips it, gentle with the perfectly aged alcohol. He stops pouring when the goblet is about half full and tips it back upright, setting it down to the granite countertop with a light clink.
"You've looked at the activities and everything, right?" She asks from the couch, a dark brown with large, plush cushions you can almost sink into. Kate has the footrest up with one leg crossed over another, still dressed in her jeans and t-shirt. Her hair is down in soft curls, both sides held back behind her ears, staring intently into the screen of his laptop open on her thighs.
Rick is in the middle of putting the cork back on the wine while eagerly looking over to the bottle of scotch sitting next to the whiskey glass off to his right. "I've sort of skimmed them." He says honestly.
He takes the bottle and twists the cap off, pouring himself a healthy two fingers. They'd ordered room service for dinner since the fridge was only stocked with bare essentials, just enough to make them breakfast that afternoon. Kate had ordered a plate of parmesan chicken alfredo, most of which is sitting in a suite-provided container in the fridge, while he'd ordered a cheeseburger with seasoned potato wedges. The potato wedges are the main reason most of her alfredo is sitting in the fridge. But there were more than enough of them, at least enough to keep another bout of frustration from boiling up again.
Looking forward to how well the whiskey will wash the still-fresh taste of the spices down, he takes up her wine and moves over to the couch to join her. She first looks up to spot the glass of wine, just like she does whenever he hands her a cup of coffee at the precinct, the left, or her apartment, then follows it with a smile aimed at the glass, then aiming it up toward him, widening it just a bit to make her eyes shine.
"Thank you," she says in a small voice, reaching up to grab the stem of the glass. Rick moves silently around the back of the couch to sit in the other end, relaxing back heavily in the plush cushions. "So," she says after sucking her teeth with the first sip, almost making the word an audible sigh at the taste of the wine, "you haven't decided what you wanted to do?"
Rick stops his glass an inch away from his lips, pausing before looking over to her, seeing she's staring back into the screen of his laptop. "What I wanted to do?" He asks, surprised she'd ask him.
Kate, bringing the goblet back up to her lips, stops and looks back over to him with a taken aback smile. She hesitates, seeing his expression as if he didn't even think she wanted to do anything while they were here at all. Rick and Kate, she wants them to be Rick and Kate. She breathes out heavily and lets the glass fall back down to her lap. "Rick..." she starts softly, "we're on vacation."
That surprises him even more. It makes his heart flutter. Vacation together... he can't help but wonder if she sees it as a big a step as he does.
"You didn't think I brought us all the way up here and booked the nicest room on offer in a four-star resort just to lock the door and have us argue for a month straight, did you?"
Rick takes in a breath to reply, but holds it for a few seconds, thinking over his response. "Well, I'm sure that's been suggested by one of your more sadistic friends." He says, trying to use a quip to keep a layer of ice forming over the conversation by bringing up the topic.
Kate guffaws and rolls her head over, rolling her eyes with it. "I'm the one with sadistic friends? Please..." she says, taking up her goblet to take a long sip, "your friends have fantasies about death and write about them."
"Psh!" Rick counters, looking away and taking a long sip from his own glass. "You mean my poker group?" He asks her while turning his head slowly back to her. "Sure, Patterson's friendly, but that doesn't mean he's my friend."
"Come on, Castle," she slips up, bouncing in her side of the couch to turn herself a bit more to face him, "a guy like you? You have to have friends." She says, not believing him. "Like," she quickly continues, "who's your best friend?"
Rick stops, looks forward with a deep, hard expression. "Before we started dating?" He asks, turning to look at her unbelieving yet anxious and excited eyes. "You."
It feels like she just got hit with... a bucket of warm water. Not stunned but... shocked she didn't remember just how close they were before they started dating. "Really?" Her voice is soft, lifting up as if he just gave her one of the nicest compliments he could have.
But Rick shakes his head slightly before lifting his whiskey back up to his lips, looking hard back at the blank screen of the TV. "There was this one guy I knew in boarding school but..." he trails off, taking another long swig from his glass, "he kind of hates me now for proving he murdered his parents."
A flash of him skitters through her mind, making her weak fingers clamp down on the thin, delicate stem of her wine glass. He looked so let down. Not broken, just... hurt. Damian was the first one to believe in his writing. Without the guy who murdered his own parents, Richard Castle wouldn't exist, his novels wouldn't exist, the books she read after her mom was murdered wouldn't have been there.
Thinking all this, briefly overshadowing his point, makes her feel desperate for him, a brief moment where even his existence feels as delicate as the stem of her wine glass, already feeling ready to snap at the pressure she's pinching it with.
"Until we started dating?" She asks after a very long pause, voice sounding a bit more sly. That gains his attention away from him swirling his alcohol around the bottom of his glass in a steady tempo. With a smile, she lifts her glass up to cradle it into her breasts. "Is there a reason I can't still be your best friend?"
At first, Rick just stares at her. "I think Lanie might be kind of angry. She's already threatened to put me in one of those freezers more than once." He quips, smirking slightly. Kate smiles, but feels her heart tug. Her tone was sly and playful... but a part of her was serious.
Letting her head fall momentarily, she lifts it again, flipping her hair back over her shoulder with the motion. "Either way," she decides to change the subject back to what started the conversation in the first place, turning back to face forward and look to the screen of his laptop, "we're still on vacation, so... did you have anything you wanted to do first?"
Just taking his glass from his lips, he shrugs. "I was thinking of heading into the town that's down the road tomorrow."
Kate smiles as she clicks over to another tab. "Yeah, it's supposed to be pretty tourist-trappy."
"Adds to the fun." Rick points out, pulling the lever on the side of the armrest to make his footrest pop up. "You know, getting to watch people make things in front of those big windows."
Kate chuckles as she scrolls the page on the town. "Yep, then go inside and pay three times the prices you normally would." There's a pause while Rick finishes off the last of the whiskey circling the bottom of his glass, while Kate takes another long sip, making it halfway through her wine. "What about hiking?" She asks, looking over to him. "There's a trail that heads up into the hills. That could be fun." Rick only responds with a slight smile and a nod. "Or we could rent a boat..." she says, looking back to the screen of the laptop, "go fishing. We could sign up for parasailing."
There's another pause, silence enveloping them. She stops rattling off suggestions after he stopped responding. After a silent minute or two, she sees him turn to look out the sliding glass door to the balcony. "Wasn't there something you wanted to do first?"
Kate pinches her brow curiously, following his eyes out the door, only seeing total darkness apart from the reflections of the lights of their room off the glass.
Stars...
The instant she remembers, the laptop gets pushed off her thighs, the footrest gets shoved hard back into the couch, her glass gets set down onto the coffee table, and her legs practically leap over his footrest still up. Rick chuckles and slowly pushes the footrest she just jumped over back into the couch and follows her.
She pulls the door open fast, but is slow to head out onto the balcony. Rick watches from right behind her as her gaze is already on the sky, slowly padding her way out toward the railing. He takes the first step outside and then takes another step off to the right to watch her expression. Her mouth is hanging open in amazement. It's not until she blindly reaches out in front of her to feel for the railing that the corners of her lips start to turn into a smile.
Dear god, this woman is beautiful, he thinks, feeling his stomach knot painfully.
He eventually meets her at the railing and looks up, smiling with her. The sky is littered with bright specs of dancing light. They got very lucky in that the moon isn't in the sky tonight. It's just the stars.
"Wow..." she says on a quiet breath. "They're gorgeous, aren't they?"
"Yeah..." he says, looking at the stars, but the ones shining in her eyes, "they are."
It was a good night. A good first night.
Their first vacation together. It isn't until now that it's hitting her. They've been away on long weekends together. But to be out here on vacation... for who knows how long. It wasn't until she was unpacking her pajamas from her suitcase and unpacking her toiletry case that she realized most of the stuff she'd packed came from the loft. She only grabbed a little clothing and her tennis shoes from her apartment.
Where would they be if everything with Vaughn hadn't happened?
Kate shakes her head and spits the toothpaste out into the sink, realizing it's pointless to think about. A trap, if nothing else.
Dressed in a baggy, dark red t-shirt and a pair of satin red pajama pants, she puts her hands into her hair, twisting it up into a messy bun, securing it tightly with a hair tie. On a sigh, she grabs the bottle of lotion and quickly turns to head back out to let him have the bathroom. But with her hand on the bottle of practically brand new lotion, a sickening memory fills her body. Her feet and ankles suddenly feel cold and clammy, her hands feel weak and shaky, her lungs feel like they have to struggle to breathe.
It was that night that made her see what she'd let happen to them, what she'd done.
Can she blame him for being distant and absent if she's been the same way... and not even for the first time since they've known each other?
It was that night that made her realize just how close she was to losing him, and it happened because of her. Her attitude, her suspicion of his intentions... not even questioning his integrity and caring nature, but forgetting it even existed.
Kate looks down to the white and green plastic tube of her favorite lotion, her thumb moving over the brand name.
Rick shuts off the lights in the room, leaving the recessed lights directly above the counter on before moving toward the open doors to the bedroom. The glasses are all washed and put away, all the food from their dinner is put up, and the dishes from room service are taken care of. He goes through the doors, turning around to close them with a light, slow click before turning, unbuttoning the few buttons done on his tan and brown flannel shirt, only looking up to scan the room when he pulls it from his shoulders.
He stops at the corner of the massive bed when he sees her sitting in the armchair in the far back right corner of the room, eyes down to her lap. She's already dressed for bed, her hair up in a tight, messy bun. He loves it when she wears her hair like that to bed. He doesn't have to deal with the tickle of her hair when he goes in search for just the right spot to nuzzle into. It was an invitation she always knew and was always very eager to leave open for him when she wore her hair up like that to bed. The warm pull of the soft skin on her long neck that his lips knew exactly what patterns to trace on.
"Everything okay?" He asks and continues slowly through the bedroom, pulling his flannel off, leaving himself in just a black t-shirt and jeans.
She looks up with a pleasant smile, lifting up a new bottle of lotion. "Fine, I just..." she waves about the bottle in the air, "I forgot my lotion at the loft and had to grab the one they had in the cupboard." He gives her an acknowledging nod, slowly turning the corner of the bed. "Can't get this one open either." She says on a soft chuckle, looking back down to the bottle sitting in her lap.
Rick nods and approaches her, stepping around the matching footstool in front of the armchair, stretching out his hand.
She smiles softly and hands the bottle to him. When he takes it and looks at the plastic wrapping enveloping the cap, he stops briefly. This one looks like it would be really easy to open. In fact, it looks like she already got it started... but stopped. After the fight they had this afternoon, hurling accusations at her like a game of dodgeball, he doesn't want to assume anything. Maybe the plastic is just caught on a misplaced spot of glue or something.
Using the same method he used on the bottle from two nights before, he twists the cap off, the plastic easily coming with it. Once the plastic is off and he twists the cap back on the tube, he hesitates before handing it back to her, because she's not moving to take it back.
Rick sighs softly, pushes on the footstool behind him with the back of his leg and sits down in front of her, leaving a wide enough space to put her feet up on his lap. With one hand holding the bottle and the other out in front of him, signaling her with a curl of his fingers and the softest of smiles, she seems to fight her excitement and lifts up her right foot up to him. Rick squirts out a small dollop of lotion into his palm, just like he did last time, and very slowly starts to work the lotion into her skin.
Her heart is pounding excitedly. Rejecting one of his foot rubs made her realize the morning after just how much she adores them. A part of it does have to do with him being the man she loves, but in actuality, he is really talented at it. He knows just where the pressure needs to be put, where her tendons need the most working out. But it's a minute or two into him slowly working his palms across the top of her foot and up the back of her ankle that she realizes something.
It's in the way he's touching her. How slow and deliberate he's going, how he's using his palms more than he is his fingers, how his thumb is softly petting her skin at the end of every slow, methodical path his palm makes against her foot and ankle.
The last time she remembers him being this slow, deliberate, and methodical, almost like he's committing every part of her to the memory of his hands like he's not sure when the next time he'll get to feel it... was their first night together.
"I'm so sorry, Rick." She spits out suddenly and emotionally.
The motions of his palms stop first, then he looks up to her a few seconds after, brow arched and eyes searching.
"About the other night, I'm sorry I acted the way I did." Rick sighs audibly and slowly tugs her foot off his lap, causing another pause between them. "I'm sorry I accused you of only wanting sex. I just..." she omits part of her sentence in her head before starting it, "I just forgot."
Rich searches her expression even harder for a long moment. "Forgot that I care about you?"
Kate dips her head down, looking down to her lap in shame. Because that's not what she forgot about. Her heart forgot about who it was she was with. That night, her heart wasn't with him. It was with Josh. Which is to say it wasn't even there at all.
"If it means anything..." she says softly, still looking down to her lap, "your reaction is what made me realize how close I was to losing you." She can feel that earned her his eyes back, softer, wanting her to look back. She lifts her head and he's still looking her in the eye with a soft, wanting expression on his face. She smiles and shrugs her shoulders, "It's what brought us here."
Is that the way she feels? That she was just one night away from losing him? He was angry with her, sure, but... losing him?
"Kate..." he says in a tight voice, "you were no closer to losing me than you were the night we were first together." He tells her honestly, the emotion needed to say it making him feel vulnerable.
When all she does is stare back at him, he feels he just made a mistake, that maybe she's thinking how he could say that with the way they were acting. But she surprises him when she quickly leans forward, takes his jaw in her hands, pulls him forward, and kisses him just as hard and passionately as she did that night. His lungs suck in as much air as they can while still make him feel like he's suffocating, just like that night. His hands lift up to do something, but can't seem to figure out what that something is, just like that night. His lips respond, making her hands pull at his face even harder to pull his lips deeper into hers, just like that night.
But unlike that night, when she lets his lips go, she's very, very slow to lean her lips off his. She instead pets his cheeks with her thumbs, seeming to revel in the feeling of the tickle his lips are making against hers. After a long moment, she pulls back, slowly trailing her hands down his jaw and down his chest, leaning back and giving him a watery, emotional smile. "Thank you."
Rick feels an honest smile bloom onto his face as her hands slowly retreat back into her lap. He stands up, leaving the bottle of lotion on the stool and standing up, heading for the bathroom and taking what he plans to wear to bed with him. Entering the bathroom, he takes a quick survey and notices she already unpacked everything from her toiletry case. Honestly, it's a blessing when compared to how Gina would unpack her things in the bathroom on their vacation. Just like how it was in the loft. A complete mess to him, but an organized mess to her.
Kate, however, she's always been orderly and neat with her things. Even at the loft where her things already took up a large space on the counter near the second sink closest to the bathroom door. Just like at the precinct, her things were always in order and even appealing to look at. Rick chuckles to himself and grabs the simple plastic storage bag he used as a quick solution to carry his things in from the cupboard and turns for the sink, first taking out his electric razor and charging cable, then his mouth wash, and lastly his toothbrush and toothpaste. Organizing his things as well he can on the opposite side of the sink as her, he crumples the bag up against his chest and turns toward the small trash can next to the sink on the floor.
When he reaches down to toss the bag in, his eyes catch something underneath a pile of crumpled-up but unused tissue paper.
Still smiling incredibly birghtly, Kate finishes rubbing the lotion into her hands and is about to stand up from the chair when she sees him appear in the doorway to the bathroom.
It's when she looks over that her smile finally falls.
Rick, holding the bottle of lotion he opened for her two nights before, is staring down at it with a blank, unbelieving expression, his brow hard. He slowly starts toward her and at first, she thinks he's going to sit down on the edge of the bed, a distance of about four or five feet away. But he surprises her when he pivots at the last moment and makes to sit back down onto the footstool directly in front of her, still looking down to the old bottle of lotion.
There's a very long, tense moment of silence between them, his eyes never leaving the bottle in his hand. "I uh..." she starts, voice heavy, "I guess I'm not living up to the whole not scheming and plotting thing too well, am I?"
He doesn't offer any reaction and swallows thickly before starting. "Uhm..." he says, trying to see where his tone would start, and corrects himself. "First off," he starts quickly, looking back up to her with a lift in his brow, "you don't need to open a new bottle of lotion every time you want me to rub your feet."
All she can do is nod and look back down to her hands.
"Or any other part of your body." He finishes, letting her know that he was joking. And she smiles, brightly. A few soft chuckles and she's listing her head off to the side. "And secondly..." he says, his tone shifting back down, "if you are going to open a new bottle of lotion every time you want to talk to me about something... then we're going to be here for a very long time and you're going to need a lot of lotion."
She laughs audibly this time, her shoulders bouncing. Her eyes open back up and she looks over to him, gazing into his blue eyes.
He gazes back, smirking softly. "I just want to know what I did to make you think you had to do something like this just to talk to me."
Her breath is pulled from her lungs at the sudden shift in his tone and the complete misinterpretation of what she did. "No, Rick, I..." she starts, struggling on her words. "It's just that..." she still struggles, and it's a moment before she grits her teeth and decides that she has to tell him. "Josh would do things like that."
That makes his heart knot painfully.
Shaking her head and looking away, she doesn't look back when she continues. "He would always do things like that just because he wanted sex and I was just... I was just never in the mood, I had been at the precinct all day or on a canvas all day or running down leads with you, or I'd just gotten my life saved by my partner for the umpteenth time and I was tired. So he'd constantly do things and I always hated it because I knew he wouldn't do any of it if he knew there wasn't a small chance I ever was in the mood." She says quickly, frustration evident in her voice. But it's gone when she continues. "He never did any of it just because he cared about me."
That makes his heart sink, because he knows now what she's saying. "Kate, I don't know what you and Josh were like and honestly, I'd like to keep it that way but I do know one thing." He says, pausing until she looks back up to him. And when she does, his eyes are shining with hurt. "You didn't love him."
It makes her heart twist just as much as his.
"So..." he says, voice shaking ever so faintly, "you saying you acted that way because someone you didn't love did something similar..."
Another long pause. "Can you still forgive me?"
Still, another long pause waiting for a response, a painful wait. "Can you promise not to forget?"
Kate looks away. "My mom used to tell me... the best way to remember to do something forever is to forget to do it once." She looks back at him, a sad arc in her brow. "If it almost cost me the man I love, I'll never forget how much I love him ever again."
He's still searching her eyes, watching as they shine back at him with a look of renewed hope.
"And that man is you."
A/N: Geez, the blanket the blanket the blanket THE BLANKET! She went to bed for a nap with NO blanket, she woke up WITH a blanket. HMMMM!?
Anyway, hope you enjoyed this pretty long chapter. Moving next month so things might get hectic as far as upload schedule goes. Thanks for the understanding. /=]