The storm has died down, but it's still pouring. Rick can hear it still pounding against the house from the laundry room that's just off the kitchen from the hallway that leads to the stairs.

In just a pair of pants, he stands in front of the washer and dryer, her clothes in a wet, soaking pile on top of the dryer. It's only been about ten minutes at the most since they decided to separate, lethargically trailing their hands off each other, lazily coming back to the world. After he had pressed up off her, ghosting her hands up his back and down his chest in a way that makes it so he can still feel her touch now, he'd sat back in the other end of the couch and she sat up after him into his side, rubbing his chest with that lazy, sexy smile and kissing his neck.

After a few moments of that, she stood up, still stark naked, and stretched her arms up to the ceiling before leaning back to stretch her back. He could have taken her back right then and there at how perfect her body looked. And she knew it by that smokey look she gave him over her shoulder, her wet hair still falling over her eyes as she reached over to grab his dark burgundy shirt that laid draped over the corner of the coffee table, slipping it over her arms as she went into the kitchen.

He gathered up her clothes from the floor after putting his jeans back on and is now getting ready to put them in the dryer for her.

On a hard breath, his heart feeling a strange mixture of full of love, yet cautious, like a balloon that's overinflated almost, he pulls her shirt out from under the wet pile of denim that is her jeans and lays it out on his hands. He looks over his shoulder and out into the hallway, listening for her in the kitchen and hearing some movement of the cupboards.

She spilled coffee on her clothes when she fell. He dries her clothes like this, she'll smell like it all day, probably bake the smell into her clothes. He shakes his head for a moment and decides to toss all her clothes in the washer, pour in some detergent, and starts it through a quick cycle. She might be a little irritated that her clothes have to go through an extra cycle. But...

His throat closes in that moment. He believes that she loves him. He knows that.

But can she stay that way?

His heart gets tighter as the thought seems to snake its way into his body, poisoning every ounce of romance, passion, closeness, and love that he felt so confident in as he gathered up her clothes. He physically grits his teeth and forces the thought away as he presses the start button on the far right end of the panel on the washing machine before glancing outside through the window to his right. It's still pouring rain, the limbs of the evergreen trees are wafting up and down, and he can see that Cecelia and Greg are home for the day judging by the light on in their front room across the street.

Another soft rumble of thunder echos from the distance where the storm has moved on to and Rick brushes a hand down his bare stomach for a moment before turning out of the laundry room. But he stops at the doorway when he looks up from the hardwood floor and into the kitchen where he can see her standing at the island, her back facing him. His eyes rove over her hungrily, her long, perfectly toned, naked legs coming out of a wrinkled dark burgundy dress shirt that has the sleeves folded up her forearms.

She makes it so easy for him to go crazy. It's like she knows just what to do. With a towel in one hand, padding her wet, very sexily stringed hair that's still drying from the rain, one leg bent and side hem of his shirt showing off just enough of her perfect hip bones to make his mind go blank, it's like she's giving him a gift that he's never allowed to open. Just torturing him with her body and her mannerisms.

He breathes a hard, unsteady sigh as he takes a long moment to watch her.

He has to get over this. He's never going to be happy with anyone if he doesn't.

After another few seconds, he moves his eyes down to the floor again, not sure how to approach them anymore, where they stand, until he sees her grab for her phone from under the towel that sits in a pile in front of her on the counter. He watches silently as she puts it to her ear. "Hi, Dad."

Rick's heart ices over as he listens to her. Everything inside of him falls in that moment, the tiny glimmer of hope now just seeming to wave at him tauntingly from the other side of a canyon like a Road Runner cartoon. He understood before they broke up. She had a job to do, her career was the most important thing and in some twisted, self-deprecating way, he understood that and was willing to tag along for the ride as long as he was part of the ride with her. That job interview made him see that she never had any intention of bringing him along with her in her life at all. It was easy to stay his usual optimistic, hopeful self before that.

"No, I'm fine." She continues softly, just above a whisper. "No, nothing like that. It's just that uh..."

Rick cranes his head forward, the same hopeless feeling burying him.

"Dad, it's Castle." He hears her say, almost making him sick. "It's finally happening." She says as he's reaching out to brace his weight on the door jam. "So I... I can't leave, not now." His breath stops, his heart squeezing cautiously, tightening his skin. "Yeah, I'm sure." She continues quietly. "Dad," she chuckles softly, "it's what I'm out here for."

Rick watches from the doorway of the laundry room, amazed to the point of almost not believing it. When he finally lets go of the breath he's holding, he finds himself smiling.

"Thanks, Dad." She says after another pause. "Yeah, I'll call you later."

She flicks her hair around her shoulder as she moves her phone off her ear, pressing her thumb to the screen before setting it down to the counter again and picking up the towel to put it over the ends of her damp hair. Watching her for a second, he feels that slow-working poison lose its grip on his system. She really does want this, doesn't she? She really does love him.

With a quivering heart, Rick quietly pads his way out of the laundry room, down the hall a few paces until his bare feet hit the cold tile of the kitchen. Her back still facing him, he slows as he sneaks up behind her, putting his hand low on her hip, ducking underneath the hem of his shirt and easing her body forward into the edge of the counter before slowly pressing his body up against her.

Kate's heart flutters wildly at the sudden yet all too slow feeling of his sensuous hand on her skin before feeling his firm body and his hips press against her ass, leaning her into the edge of the counter in front of her. "Ha..." she sighs eagerly, leaning forward a bit as she reaches behind her, searching for him.

She can sense him reach up with his other hand before he hooks her hair around his finger and pulls it away like a curtain, revealing her neck. Her breath hitches in a gasp when his hand on her hip snakes around her waist and engulfs her while he leans in and presses his lips to that spot a few inches below her ear that's like the x on a treasure map that he already has memorized and sucks on it for just a second before letting the small patch of skin go with a soft pluck, leaving his lips brushing against her neck.

Her hand finally finds his hair and she weaves her fingers through it, taking a fistful of it to pull his mouth back on her as her head lobs off to the side. His arms circle around her fully, hugging her body to his solid chest while he gives her neck another long, romantic kiss. He lets her go with another pluck and trails his lips up her skin to her ear. "Your clothes are in the washer." He whispers to her in a deep, gruff voice.

Feeling dizzy, she weaves her fingers through his hair before moving her hand to his jaw. "Did they need washed?"

"Well," he says lightly before teasing her with another kiss, "you spilled coffee all over the place."

"Ha..." she sighs another soft chuckle as his lips capture another patch of her skin, his arms moving out from around her while his hands grab her hips, pulling her against him but pushing her against the counter at the same time. "You have no idea how much I've missed this." She sighs, her voice weak and heavy, her head lobbing off to the side.

He stops, the motions of his lips coming to a screeching halt. He pulls away from her and she can feel a distance fall between them at what she just said. She reaches down and puts a hand over his, taking it with her as she pulls it to go around her midsection, looking over her shoulder, catching his eyes and blank expression. "You left me, remember?" He challenges her.

Her eyes sting, her heart cratering at what just happened as she spins around in his arms to face him, putting her hands down on his chest and fanning her fingers out, looking up to his eyes. "I didn't mean it like that. You know that."

Rick breathes out a cold breath, his eyes falling down between them. He could grieve and whine about those weeks, hell, months, after she left for DC. How he felt his entire life wasn't just over, but not even worth living. How he forced himself to get up again and get better. But what good would that do now? He just offers up a stiff nod and gives her hips another soft squeeze as he moves in blindly to kiss her. Kate complies and cranes her neck back to accept his lips, kissing him fully but quickly. She retreats slightly after it breaks, but silently gestures that it's not because she wants him to leave by snaking her arms around his chest.

Rick lets go of her hips to brace himself against the counter, leaning back to look at her and sees her looking up at him with those big, brown eyes. "You told me yesterday that you missed what we had together." His eyes get heavy as he looks away from her. She lets her hands rove jealously over the firm muscles on his back before entwining her fingers together at the small of his back.

He breathes a shaky breath, trying to harden it as it leaves to no avail. "I do." He says, trying to hide the painful furrow in his brow that gives away his true emotions.

Kate smiles softly, not letting the feeling of their closeness get lost in the weeds of their conversation. "Rick, I missed us too." She tells him confidently. But by the sound of the hard breath coming out of his nostrils and the look that clouds his eyes when he looks away, she knows he doesn't buy it off hand. "You don't believe me." She states plainly, her arms falling limply around his waist but still hugging him.

"You said yourself that you were fired, Beckett." He says in a dark voice, but looking back up to her with a vulnerability glimmering in his eyes. She feels her throat close when their eyes meet. "If you never did whatever it is you did to get fired, you wouldn't even be here right now."

"That doesn't mean that I didn't miss you, Castle." She softly urges him, pulling on his body again, looking up to him with emotionally honest eyes. After a small pause, her mind thinks back and a smile sneaks passed the tense situation that she tries to shake away.

Rick's brow creases when he notices. "What?"

Kate just smiles wider. "You said I never thought about you, but I was just thinking about when my partner was driving me home after I got fired."

His throat constricts tightly as she mentions a partner. "A..." he tries, not wanting to sound that insecure about the fact that being partners was their thing and how they fell in love, "a partner?"

She looks up to him a bit nonchalantly and shrugs. "Yeah, she was kind of a hard nose. You know, by the book, dedicated, good at her job." She explains quickly.

She, is all he can think of. That's where his mind stopped. "So, what happened?"

Kate fights a smile and rolls her eyes in classic fashion. "She had hired a moving crew to help move my stuff and they were just getting started on my bedroom when we got there." She tells him, the fact that they're still pressed against each other in only one article of clothing each slipping her mind for now as it seemed so normal for them before. "I um..." she trails off, feeling a blush heat the sides of her neck, "I might have flipped out a bit on one of the movers when they got to my dresser and tried to take out your drawer."

His heart flutters cautiously inside of his chest. "Really?" He asks with a slight, surprised smirk.

"I almost dislocated the guy's arm." She says matter-of-factly, looking up to him with a purse in her lips.

His brow shoots up. "Over my drawer?"

Her eyes soften and her smile graces her features again, feeling her hands splay out against his back again. "It was all I had left of you."

He doesn't know how to respond. He's never had to deal with anyone feeling that way before. No one ever has. "At least you had something." He says in a heavy voice, looking away to avoid eye contact.

But she catches it. "Rick, I'm tired of us hurting each other." She says, pulling at his waist to regain his eyes. "I want to move forward but I won't do it without you. So," she stops, straightening up her posture but not moving her arms out from around him, "let's talk about it, okay?"

"Hmm..." he attempts, only succeeding in a low groan, "okay." He agrees after a few seconds of silence and shrugs his shoulders in a stiff motion. "What do you want from this?"

Kate feels a smile tickle the corners of her lips, almost excited to answer the question for him. She reaches one hand between the open folds of his shirt and pulls out her necklace, taking hold of the engagement ring and holding it up for him, watching as he notices what she's holding and seeing his expression deepen. "I want you to put this ring on my finger." She says confidently. "And I want us to get married... something small and intimate, that's just about us. I want us to... talk about starting a family." That catches his full, rapt attention. "And I want us to be together and be in love and be married." She rambles before looking back down to the ring with a watery smile shining across her face.

Rick breathes softly as he leans against her a little more, looking down to the ring with her. After a moment, he reaches up and takes it from her. "So, you never put it on?" He asks, testing the waters.

She just smiles and shakes her head. "Nope." She says, letting her hands fall down to his abs. "I mean, I wanted to. I was about to a couple times. But I no, I never put it on. It didn't seem right."

"So you," he tries again, insecurity and frailty coming into his voice as he looks back and forth from the ring to her, "you never even tried it on... just to..."

Kate lets out a breath and wraps her arms around his waist again. "What are you trying to say?"

"Nothing," he says with a feigned lift in his brow, waving the ring about, "it's just uh... wanted to see if it fit is all."

That makes everything inside of her stop to a dead halt. She reaches back around and takes the ring from him quickly. "You had it sized?" She asks, taking another closer look at the ring.

"Well, when I saw myself proposing to you in my head and you saying yes, I didn't exactly see the ring not being able to fit on your finger." He explains, trying his best to make it sound light hearted and humorous.

A bright, open smile quickly overtakes her features, making her features light up with happiness. She pinches her lips together and wraps her arms back around him, pulling him as close to her as she can. "Castle, if we're going to do this again, we both owe it to ourselves to do it right."

All he can do is let his neck crane and give her a small nod. "You're right."

"So," she starts for both of them, "I've told you what I want. What do you want, Rick?" She asks him, trying to sound as sincere as possible.

He feels a part of him ice over, having to talk about it. A part of it makes him feel selfish, demanding of her. "What I want... is..." he starts in a shaky, uneasy voice until he finally looks over to meet her eyes, "not to come last."

The tension that snaked around her a few moments ago falls away as she hears his answer, a smile coming back to her face. "You're all I want, Rick." She says softly, reaching up to run her fingers down his cheek and over his stubble. "There's nothing else but you."

"And I don't want you to look back and see that as a bad thing." He says right after her, looking up to her and making all of her happiness and confidence fade by the sorrow glimmering in his eyes. "I don't want you to choose me now and then ten or fifteen years down the line be telling our kids what you could have been if not for me." He explains with more emotional honesty in his voice than intended. "I don't want to resent having put that ring on your finger because you could have had someone like Vaughn or... or you could have taken that job at a powerful law firm but can't because you're stuck with me."

But Kate's worry stops when he mentions the job. She hasn't thought about Claire's job offer in weeks, just because it doesn't mean that much to her. "You know about that?"

Rick's jaw clicks. "Your dad told me about it."

Kate flattens her hands against his back and pulls him into her again. Maybe this is what Sierra was talking about. She can see the hurt in his eyes that he normally hides so well under that clever disguise of that ruggedly handsome smirk and those baby blue eyes and square jaw. She can feel it when their eyes meet. "Rick," she starts softly and moves her arms out from around him, grabbing both his wrists that he's using to brace himself against the counter behind her and moves his hands to her scars. She places his right hand firmly over the scar in the center of her chest, through the opening of his shirt, and his left, she slides up the bottom to the long, jagged line of her surgical scar.

His breath catches when he feels them, but he doesn't dare move.

"You know what these are, Rick." She tells him as she holds his hands against her body for a long few moments. When she's sure he'll keep them there, she moves her hands to his chest. "You were there when I got them... and I wouldn't be the same person I am now if you weren't there for me." She slowly moves her hands up his body until she's framing his jaw with a gentle touch. "But I made the mistake of assuming that just because mine were fresh, that you didn't have any of your own... and that they still didn't hurt."

His breath shakes at it leaves his throat, his finger circling the scar on her chest and his thumb petting the line of the scar on her side.

"You helped me heal mine because you loved me." She tells him, petting his jaw. "I want to do the same for you, Rick... for the same reason."

Rick pets her scars again with weak-feeling hands, his eyes locked onto the soft outline on her skin of where the bullet hit her. When she gently pushes on his jaw, he looks up to her, only seeing openness... a willingness to hear him out and help.

"Do you still believe that I love you?" She asks, wanting a real answer because she's honestly afraid he lost faith in it already.

Rick can only swallow thickly, his eyes shimmering, and answer her by moving his hands out of the openings of his shirt and wrap his arms around her, hugging her in a tight embrace.

She doesn't waste any time in flinging her arms around his neck and holding his body against her. Because a part of her wants to know what it's like. When she got her scars, she looks back now and wishes she could have just admitted to herself that she didn't just need him, but wanted him to help her, comfort her... hold her. And now, putting her arms around him, she takes it as a sign that he's at least admitting that he needs something more from her. And as she turns her face into his neck, tightening her arms around his neck, she feels closer to him.

She breathes out a long sigh and reaches up, putting her fingers in his hair. "I'm not going anywhere, Rick."

His hand runs a patch up her back as he holds her, staying silent.

"I'll be right here." She reassures him, running her nails in a soft pattern against his scalp, her heart swelling to bursting as the next word forms in her mind. "Always."