The plane shakes and bumps a few times, but it does little to disturb the other passengers. Still over the Atlantic in pitch darkness, Kate flips over the last page in reverence at his story. She becomes aware of the smile gracing her face when she flips the back cover over and closes the book in her hands. She takes a glance over to her right and sees he's still fast asleep. She only pulled the book out after he fell asleep during the movie. She thought the plane showing Heat Wave would be good for a laugh between the two, and for a bit, it was. Seeing Natalie Rhodes try to play a poor imitation of her was funny for a chuckle over nostalgia from their times as crime fighters.
But he fell asleep about two hours ago and hasn't even stirred, still resting his head on the far side of his seat, leaning away from her. She doesn't want to disturb him. He looks too handsomely content in his slumber, like his body has an invitation nailed to the front intended for her to just lean over and lean against him.
She'd love to talk to him though. The ending of Heat Rises got to her, and she feels she needs some solid reassurance that he really was sticking around for her, that she was what kept him around and interested all these years and not her badge.
Nikki turning down a promotion after her captain dies so she could stay in the field because she knew that's where she belonged... it made Kate's throat close. Nikki knew where she belonged, what it was she was meant to do and she stuck with it. Nikki Heat had the strength to know that a field detective is what she was made to do and was strong enough to keep at it. Castle wrote Nikki based on her. He saw that strength, drew on her to portray that strength in his books to form a convincing character in Nikki Heat. But if she doesn't have it, what does that mean?
Maybe it's all a reminder of just how special their time in the field together was to him. While she loved fulfilling the duty of putting the people who rob others of their mothers and fathers, of their sons and daughters, he loved the thrill of the mystery and the excitement of breaking open wide a case that no one else could figure out. Now, with that veil of just being partners gone with her quitting her job... can they still have that chemistry Lanie was always so adamant they had together?
Was she wrong on some level and the only way they can work as a couple is at the precinct? She walked away from it to be with him, but what if the only place they can work is where she left from to get him in the first place?
The plane jolts again in another bounce of turbulence and she decides to use it as a litmus test of sorts, seeing how deep his sleep really is. When all that happens is his head rolling a few times with the place, she makes the decision to test the waters of all her doubts and let her eyes drift shut. Her head quickly becomes listless and within moments, her head is relaxing softly down to his shoulder. There's a moment of thick tension in her body when she waits to feel him shake her off, unwanted.
But when he doesn't, she takes it as an acceptance of her presence on him and relaxes completely down onto his shoulder.
"You know, Beckett," Rick starts as he pulls both their bags from the cab's trunk, waiting for her to come around to him from the other side to continue, "you could've told me you were staying here."
Kate smiles bashfully and brushes her hair behind her ear and drawing in a long breath of the chilly fog rolling through the city. Truth, Kate, don't play it off, she corrects the words formed on her tongue. "I was afraid of how you'd feel about it." She tells him as he pulls out her duffle bag and hooks it onto his left shoulder with his own bag on his right.
He looks over to her with one side of his brow raised slightly higher than the other and stares at her for a moment with his hand on the trunk ready to shut it. "Afraid?"
She blinks and looks down to the street. "Yeah, I mean, I'm what drove you away." She shrugs her shoulders meagerly. "And besides, your mother didn't exactly give me a chance to really refuse her offer to stay here when I told her I was out of a job."
Rick feels a warm smile sneak onto his face as he closes the trunk of the taxi. "She can be a bit pushy when she wants to be." He says, his heart swelling and his veins starting to tingle with excitement at finally getting to see them again. "Or always."
Kate's face engulfs in a smile as she bites back her laughter. "Come on," she says and takes a step forward, pulling on the strap of her duffle bag to steal it from him and put it on her own shoulder.
It's a chilly Sunday morning in the Soho area, with a cold, humid fog rolling through the city. It's colder than usual for the time in late September, but it's refreshing. Rick's senses are still getting used to the smell of being back in the city. The past few months, after he ended his trotting in Asia and moved to the Mediterranean, he's stuck to open spaces and quiet destinations like Doolin. But he's too excited to be home to let the city bother him now. So with a reserved smile as she steals his chance at being a gentleman by letting him carrying her bag up for her, he makes his way into the building.
Kate decides to trail behind him by a few large paces once they step off the elevator and into the hallway. She can tell he's excited to see Alexis and doesn't want to invade on the memory by being in the way. She doesn't want to make this time about herself. She made a promise to the teen to get her dad back, knowing what it's like to lose a father to himself. She's not going to make any illusions about why she went after him though, why she didn't use Alexis when trying to convince him to come home.
Hanging back a few steps behind him, she watches as he hesitates for only a second in front of the door to the loft before opening it.
Rick's heart flutters as he opens the door to his home and steps inside. After more than two months away, running from everything out of his own cowardice that he wasn't strong enough to just admit to, coming home is a fulfilling feeling that's making his stomach tangle in on itself almost joyously and a swarm of butterflies to erupt up and down his spine. Rick paces his way into the foyer just a few slow steps, roving his eyes over the space of the loft, his mental flipbook going through all the memories had in this place, the best and the worst.
He pushes out a content sigh through his nostrils and lets his fluttering heart rest a moment, drawing him back to rest right at home, feeling whole for a moment.
His sensitive ears perk at the sound of a creak on the other side of the loft, coming from his office. "Dad?"
The happy, unbelieving sound of his little girl's voice brings the butterflies right back as he decides to joke with her a bit and play it off, looking over to her with a soft smile. "Have I really been gone that long that you forget what I look like?" He jokes, opening his arms up to her.
"Daddy!" She cries and comes darting through the living room.
Kate watches from the emotional safety of just outside the door, still standing in the hallway, as Rick drops his shoulder bag to the floor. Just seconds after, Alexis flying forward and jumps into her dad's arms, letting him wrap his arms around her waist and lift her up joyously. "Oh," she can hear Rick say as he hugs his daughter, "I missed you, pumpkin."
"I missed you too, Dad." Alexis says and opens her teary eyes, looking over Rick's shoulder and over at Kate, who's watching the scene unfold with a tender heart, feeling pulled into the moment by the teen looking over to her. With the teen's eyes on her, there's a moment when she fears the girl is looking at her and heaping blame onto her. The woman standing in the doorway is the reason Alexis had to go through all this after all. But Alexis seems to dispell those fears by giving Kate a thankful smile and tightening her arms around Rick.
Rick sets his daughter back down but doesn't let her out of his arms. "And don't worry, I got you something."
"Dad," she smiles and shakes her head.
It's then that another voice comes calling from the top of the stairs. "Oh, Richard!"
Rick doesn't let Alexis out of his grip and simply switches to keeping her pinned into his side as Martha comes down the stairs as quickly as her age can let her. "Hi, mother."
Martha comes quickly up to her son, gently grabbing his face and placing a loving kiss to his cheek before hugging him while Rick keeps his daughter held in his side. Kate watches from the doorway, a warmth in her heart at the love radiating from the family. She misses that family love in her life. She loves spending time with her dad, but they both silently decided not to fool themselves into thinking they could be the family they were before her mother died. She's never really given any serious thought to starting a family of her own. She always thought that if it happened, it would happen and she would have to figure out a way to do it and work it around her job.
But she gave up her job. And now she's here.
Martha laughs happily as she shakes her son's shoulders from side to side. "Oh, Richard, it is so good to see you home." Rick simply nods his head as his mother steps back, knowing she has some sort of lecture kept in her pocket for just this moment. "I just knew when Katherine came to us that things would make a turn for the better."
Having her presence announced, Kate feels her heart skip a beat from her place with her arms crossed, leaning against the door jam of the entry into the loft. With what his mother just said, he turns, with his family still hanging from his arms and looks over to his shoulder to see her and smile in almost reverence. Kate feels herself blush as all eyes turn to her. "She does seem to have that effect on people." Rick says with his eyes looking as deeply as he can from his place some six feet away.
Kate chuckles despite herself and nods as a means to look down to the floor. "Well," she starts, guessing her reply is what the three are waiting for, "it's been my job to give people bad news. I thought I'd try my hand at giving them some good news for a change."
The day goes by with Rick doing nothing else than enjoying the company of his family, telling them the few stories that he brought back with him.
It's late in the night and Rick is being his usual alpha self as he turns about the kitchen, a kitchen knife in one hand and a slew of produce strewn about the large amount of counter space the loft offers. The steam and heat are rising from the large cast iron skillet taking up two burners on the stove. The scent of the food is encasing the loft in a feeling it hasn't held in its walls in a long time. Even before he left. But he's probably the only one picking up on it, and even then, it's probably just his foolish heart clamoring for something that he's dreamt of for a long time.
She'd just be so great here. She just fits with his family... with him.
Kate is still hanging back, sitting in a chair at the dining table with his mother while Alexis sits at the island on a stool watching her dad prepare dinner. "Here," Rick says with an excited smirk as he grabs for an onion and the oil, "I saw them do this in Tokyo."
Rick slices the onion in rings and builds the tower just as he remembers carefully with his knife and tries his best to do the simple trick he saw after going after a simple, unsatisfying meal in his wandering aimlessly the streets of Tokyo. After a splash of water, the steam blows off the skillet and out of the hole on the top made by the onions.
"Dad," Alexis says, watching her dad entertain mostly himself, "we have hibachi here in New York too, you know."
"Yes, but the cooks over there were a lot nicer." Rick defends his antics to his daughter. "And besides," Rick says, pointing the end of the knife at her, "are you really going to give me grief when I'm cooking for you again? I saw all those take-out containers in the trash."
"Kate had that covered already, Dad." Alexis says with a smirk and a wag of her brow.
Playing along, Rick looks over to the dining table, where Kate sits with a small goblet of wine she snuck for herself while he and Alexis were at the store. Kate smiles teasingly over to Rick, flicking one of her brows at him. "She did?"
"Yeah, she made this spicy meatloaf the other night what was really good." Alexis almost brags.
Kate looks away from the admiring eyes of her partner and takes up her wine glass. "I've got to say, Beckett, I never pictured you to be the homemaking type."
She chuckles softly and stands up from sitting sideways in her chair and takes a sip of her wine, taking it as a cue to join the two of them in the kitchen. "Just before I left for Stanford, my mom spent the summer teaching me some simple family recipes that her mother taught her." Rick absent mindedly slices the vegetables up on the skillet as Kate slowly paces her way into the kitchen and stops a few feet away from him. "I know my way around a kitchen, Castle."
"This coming from the woman who's eaten the stale donuts from the kitchen because you had to spend the night staring at the murder board and didn't want to go home?" Rick fires at her, a grin on his face as he grabs a bottle of soy sauce.
"For your information," Kate starts, leaning one hand against the island next to him and leaning toward him with her brow raised, "I'd microwave them. Good as new."
"And yet," Rick lifts his finger in the air, "not any healthier."
"Coming from the guy who just spent two months in half the world's times zones, I don't think you're in any position to talk about healthy eating habits." She jabs back, picking at his loose-fitting grey t-shirt underneath his army green cargo jacket he never bothered to take off and simply decided to roll up the sleeves of.
"She's right, Richard." His mother affirms from behind him, fluttering about the kitchen and cleaning up the mess her son is making by cooking dinner. "You look positively starved." Martha says, coming to stand on the opposite of Rick that Kate is at and takes his arm in her hands. "And- ugh..." Martha scoffs as she looks up at her son's hair. "What on Earth possessed you to do this to your hair, Richard?" She asks, running her fingers aggressively and disapprovingly through his new roughish style short hair cut he got just before he left.
Part of his disguise and a new persona to drift into as Alex Rodgers.
After picking at a few hairs on the side of his head with her fingers, Rick reaches up and scratches his head vigorously with his fingers, seemingly getting rid of her touch. "It was summer." He explains in a light tone.
The four of them fall into silence as Rick's attention goes back to preparing dinner, while Kate's attention remains glued to him. In truth, she likes his hair, if nothing else because she always wanted to give his hair that look on her own. She can admit to herself that she's daydreamed in the past of messing up his usually clean and combed hair, letting him go after a fitful and aggressive kiss that left him with unruly hair like he has now, dazed eyes and puffy lips. At the fantasy, her bottom lip is snatched by her teeth and she feels her stomach twist.
"Did you uh..." Rick starts, unaware of him being the object of a trance from just a few feet away as he turns to grab the cutting board with the cuts of meat already prepared, "did you want chicken or steak, Beckett?"
When he turns for his answer and sees her looking straight at him, he catches a twinkle in her eye that he can't ignore. Either she's not hiding it, or she's aware she's doing a terrible job at it. He can't say he hasn't seen that sparkle in her eye before, but it's never been this unreserved. He wishes he knew where they stood, wishes more than anything. He's learned over the years never to assume anything when it comes to her, but there's an invitation calling to him from that bottom lip in between her teeth that he wants to answer.
"U-uhm..." she corrects herself after their eyes catch, but doesn't shake her head as a means to break the gaze as she normally would, instead just decides to answer him, "chicken. Chicken is fine."
Rick gives her a soft nod, but hesitates taking her answer. "You can have steak if you want it, Beckett." He says, waving at the plate of uncooked meat with his knife, only looking away from her for a split second before returning himself to the trance. "There's plenty."
She lets her twisting stomach move up to her heart and feels it swell in her chest, but fights the smile it brings. "Medium rare?"
"Of course," he smiles at her softly and hesitates to end the interaction by keeping the moment with his eyes on her's.
She loses the fight with her smile for a moment and lets it overtake her features. "Thank you."
With that, he shakes his head in the smallest motion, only detectable to her. "No," he says, taking a piece of cooked onion from the skillet with a fork and handing it to her to taste. She's the reason he's having all this. If not for her, he'd still be in Ireland... or where ever he would have decided to go next after Jack abandoned him again. "Thank you."
A/N: If this feels like a bit of a filler chapter, I apologize. I couldn't just go straight into the next scene. You'll understand when you read it. Eager to start the next chatper though. C:
Also, wanted to say a HUGE thank you to you guys. Went through some old stories to compare, and this story got to 400 reviews at only 12 chapters! My record before that is 400 at 15 chapters with my story Reaching. Keep them coming and let me know what you think! Next chapter is going to be amazing!