Kate and Rick, 2019 (two of two)

Kate felt mildly lethargic when she stepped out of the bath. She draped the warm towel from the heated rack around her shoulders and hugged it against her body to ward off whatever chill might come in through the fortress of their home. As if that were possible. Castle knew how to live well, and while she no longer gaped in awe at his Batcave, she still sometimes forgot that this was hers to luxuriate in.

Heated towels, heated tile floors, windows so well insulated that even touching the glass didn't give her that dart of cold. She didn't have to feel the winter if she didn't want to.

She could, literally, stay inside their loft for the rest of the winter. They had the money for her to hibernate from Christmas through January, just until the worst of it had cleared out and her head wasn't cluttered with pain-laced memory.

She sighed, smudged the heel of her hand over the mirror's fog even though he hated the smears it left behind. (She would remember, this time, to clean the mirror later.) She peered at herself in the wobbly reflection, but she didn't see the heartsick teenager in her eyes; at least there was that.

She was glad Castle had offered to deal with the Christmas boxes. He knew they'd packed that away forever; he knew her story. His knowledge of her, being inside her walls, made it all so much easier; for neither of them had to speak the words aloud. She could say please, you and he could say of course, always and that was that.

She dressed, perhaps particularly to reward him but also to lift her own mood—the red lace bra from last year's Valentine's Day, and the green silk thong he'd bought at St Patrick's, because he was that kind of man, and because she enjoyed the control it gave her over him. Over that she wore the soft jeans with a designer hole in the knee (and one little distressed patch at the back pocket that he loved to push his finger into), then she went hunting in their closet for a sweater.

She chose the cream cashmere in a cowl neck, glanced down to be sure the red bra showed through enough. Her hair was wet so she went back to the bathroom to towel it dry, letting it wave around her shoulders, curling up at her face.

Was she intending to seduce him? Maybe a little. It had been a rough day, emotional, awkward, draining, winter-deep cold, and he was always her heat.

She walked down the hall to come at him from behind, stepping into living room where the foyer opened up. She saw him sprawled on the couch inspecting some childhood ornament and she shook her head. "Hey, tiger."

He immediately flushed red and sat up straight, all attention. She smirked and took a deep breath that lifted her breasts, and his eyes dropped down. Perfectly to plan.

And then he tore his eyes away from her and looked to the box on the coffee table before him, reached forward.

She pouted.

He drew out a hardcover book whose author photo flashed familiarly in the lights. "Hey, among all the adorable five year-old Katie memories, I found this. With your mother's things."

She stepped into the living room and sauntered his way, but the book itself took a little seduction out of her step. She paused at the end of the couch, now her gaze on the book as well, as she recognized not just the author, but the title.

The very book. "Oh."

"This is yours, isn't it?"

She nodded, felt her own cheeks flush red.

"Whoa, whoa, okay." He came to his knees on the couch like an eager child, grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her around to sit with him. "Tell me, tell me. There is an awesome story here. You have a signed copy of my first book, Kate Castle."

She hesitated. "How do you know it's not my mom's book?"

He grinned broadly. "You spilled your signature coffee on it." He brought it to his nose and inhaled with relish. "Vanilla."

She grinned widely, actually relishing this. "Not my coffee. Yours."

Arrested with the book to his nose, he was frozen with shock.

She did love that. It had been a while since she'd surprised him. "You spilled coffee on my book, Rick Castle."

He lowered it to his lap, staring at her. "When? How? Oh no, was this in the precinct that day I—"

"No." She plucked it from his hands and opened to the blank page between dedication and the start of the first chapter. "It was the day you signed it for me."

His jaw dropped.

She had seen copies of his signed books in stores over the years, she had been to book signings with him; she had never seen him flip to a random page and messily, hastily sign his name with a ballpoint pen. He always signed the title page. He always used a black permanent marker. He always asked for their names.

Not with her.

"When," he croaked. But she could see him searching back through his memory. In vain, it seemed. "When. Kate."

"Hold on," she said, laying her hand over his forearm to still his racing, building horror. "Let me tell you a story."

"You never tell me stories."

She shot him a glare; he widened his eyes and shut his mouth.

"When I was twenty, the first Christmas after my mother's death—it was that very same year, you know, and yet it felt like a thousand years all at once—"

"Twenty," he breathed.

"I'm backtracking a bit for context," she warned him.

He nodded eagerly.

"My father called me, drunk, to say he had sold the apartment; it was an obstacle to his sobriety." Castle winced and she gave his arm a squeeze for that solidarity. "He left the city, left me."

"Oh, Kate—"

She held up a hand. He shut up again. "It was, in the long run, better for him. It did finally help him sober up. But there were more than a few bad times, where I was the one picking him up from a bar and…" Not the story she wanted to tell, and not her story to tell. "That Christmas, I used some of my mother's life insurance money and went out to California. Rented a cabin near some protected parkland, the redwoods, right on the coast. It was lonely and bleak and powerful."

He was rapt.

She chewed on her bottom lip. "I had… an experience there."

His whole face lit up, kid at Christmas.

She held up her hand again, shaking her head. "That's not this story. But that... vision? experience? gave me purpose, and I called Detective Raglan, the only contact I had for the NYPD, and I asked him how to get into the Police Academy."

"Oh. Wow."

She couldn't even remember the dream of policing like she used to. It was a jumbled up mess in her head. Diving off the cliff, that was all she recalled clearly, diving off a cliff into her new life.

She held up the book. "This was in the cabin I rented. I stole it."

He choked. "I—you—what?"

"After that experience, I knew exactly what I waned to do, where I was going in my life. It was a calling. I was restless then, bored, seeking affirmation that I wasn't crazy? I don't know. It was this book that… cemented things. Made it feel not only real, but fate. I'd had this weird… I don't know, it was like a spirit guide? Oh God, no, don't do that, Castle—"

"No! What? Nothing, I'm doing nothing. I won't speak." He pantomimed zipping his lips.

She didn't want to say. She wanted to say. It had been formative. "I know you know his, that your books got me through the worst of her death. Because you right wrongs in these pages." She ducked her head, fanned open the book. "Um. I became a fan after that."

"Yes you did."

"If you can't be quiet—"

"I'm quiet," he squeaked. "So quiet. Shhh."

She chewed on her bottom lip. This was stupid. That night of drinking and mourning and nearly falling off a cliff. What had she really seen?

Suddenly he cupped her jaw and brought her face up, fingers combing through her hair. She had a dizzy sensation of deja vu, and he lightly, softly kissed her lips.

"I would never belittle or make fun of any experience you had or have or will have, Kate. I want only good, wonderful, magical—"

"I know," she rasped, caught off guard by the switch. She held his hand to her cheek, kissed the meat of his thumb. "I know. Which is why I'm telling you about this book. Which I stole. And four years later." She tugged his hand down, laid it over the book. "I was late to your book signing in Harlem."

The color drained out of his face. "Dream of Foxes."

"What?"

"The store in Harlem. Dream of Foxes."

She didn't remember. "Sure. I—"

"You ran into me at the employee entrance."

"No. You ran into me."

"And spilled my coffee on your book!" He glanced down, seized the book from her lap, sniffed it again. "I knew this smelled familiar… the owner of the bookstore, her name is Lucille, was Lucille—that bookstore was gone the next year and I specifically asked my publicist, my new publicist, that was the promise I made myself after nearly missing Alexis's ballet performance—"

"So that was true," she smiled.

He stopped mid-stream, blinking at her. "What was true?"

"Alexis's ballet performance. I thought you were giving me the brush off."

"God. Never."

She smirked. "Mm, sure."

"You—I don't even—you were that woman. I… can't even recall her face."

She laughed at the horror-stricken look on his. "If we're being honest, I barely looked at you either. I was too… um, mortified to have stood out there waiting like a groupie."

He grinned, devilish. "You were a groupie. You still are."

"Am not. Never was." She lifted her chin, pointed to the book. "You spilled coffee on the book that had promised me I'd get answers, get justice." She felt it all soften. "And then you delivered."

"I can't believe I didn't even ask for your name signing that book."

"Castle," she huffed, taking his hand. "You didn't just sign a book. You delivered on your book's promises. You helped me get justice for my mom."

His eyes, when they lifted to hers, were very blue, as blue as the California ocean. He swallowed and cleared his throat and bobbed his head, and she knew she'd made him a little emotional.

She leaned in, his hand cradled in both of hers, to brush a kiss to his lips.

When she pulled back, something in his face… something in the motion of her thumbs rubbing circles…

"Oh, Kate," he husked. "I had no idea."

She startled, for an instant, back at a roof top party with a man tapping a Sharpie against his chin and smirking at her juxtaposed with a cliffside dare and the crashing waves against rock.

"What?" he rasped.

She shook her head. Tried to clear the image of ocean blue eyes and too many beers. "Just… thankful for you, for all this you've made for us while I was… clueless and walled up and damaged."

He grunted in abnegation. "That's not who I met that night outside the bookstore, and not who I met that night at my book launch our very first case."

That night on the cliffside…

"Come here," he rasped. Pulled her until she was draped awkwardly at his side with his arm around her. "Do you know why I first brought you that vanilla coffee?"

"What? No. When?"

"When I first started getting you coffees, I was just trying stuff out, you know? You drank it black, that monkey piss—ug—and so I started ordering shots of syrup in your coffee wherever I bought it. Seeing what might get you."

"Oh." She'd had a vague idea he had been paying very close attention to her coffee.

He squeezed her shoulder. "First thing I tried was vanilla syrup, fat free, because you're you."

She snorted.

"And it worked. It brought a smile to your face."

She smiled now, buried it in his neck with a grimace because fine sometimes his little acts of love had totally gotten to her. Always had gotten to her.

"I used the vanilla because that's what Lucille used, that day in her bookstore. That was the day I had the best coffee I've ever had in my life. Right before the best book signing of my life. That was the first time I really understood what I was doing there, how I should be doing it, investing life into the words I'd written so people would want to read more. Really, I think it was her coffee. Well, and her poetry. I found out later she's a well known poet—"

"Wait." She sat up, pushing off his chest to stare at him. "Dream of Foxes? Are you saying you met Lucille Clifton?"

He gave her a wide-eyed face. "You know her?"

"Oh my God, Castle."

"Wait, is she a bigger deal than me?"

She slapped his chest and flopped back down against his side. "I can't believe you did a book signing at Lucille Clifton's store and I was five minutes too late off my shift to meet her."

"Beckett," he threatened, fingers digging into her side. She suppressed a laugh and squirmed against him.

"Your ego is fine," she said, pressing back the smile. "It's not like Clifton saved my life one night on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean."

"Wait, what?"

She grinned, looped an arm around his neck and kissed him. "Did I forget to mention the… ghost I met out on the cliff that night?"

—-