Slow Burn
Chapter 17
They finally fall asleep around one thirty.
Castle turned the air conditioner off and they opened the French windows, leaving the curtains slightly parted to allow fresh air to seep inside. They grin at one another in the dark, heads on pillows, eyes glittering like nuggets of coal as they lie, resting, face-to-face for the first time.
"You're so beautiful," Castle says. He strokes her cheek and presses a kiss to her forehead. His soft lips linger against her warm skin for several breaths until her eyes slip closed.
"Thank you," she replies. She grasps his wrist before he can take his hand away, squeezing for emphasis, meaning so much more than gratitude for this compliment. "Thank you for staying the course, for hanging in there while I got myself together. You have this…amazing knack for making the impossible seem possible, Rick. Don't ever leave that behind."
When they finally drift off, the night air and the day's excitement give rise to vivid, surreal dreams. Physical exhaustion keeps them under until Kate wakes for no reason just after four. She knows where she is, there is no nightmare expelling her from sleep, but she's grateful for the quiet, pre-dawn moment anyway. She rolls over onto her side to watch her partner sleep. Castle is the stillest she's ever seen him, sacked out on his stomach with his face mashed into the pillow.
She reaches out to him, hovering her hand close to his head. She wants to touch his hair again, to feel its youthful silk, its fragrant welcoming softness against her hand just as good as she had imaged it, but she is fearful of waking him.
What little light there is steals in with the dawn and catches her engagement ring. The diamonds flare with a sweeping flash like the beam from a lighthouse while the emerald glows like a phosphorescent sea. Kate is absorbed by their beauty and by the family history behind the beautiful ring. She resolves to sit down with Martha as soon as she is able to ask this strong, determined, resourceful woman everything she can remember about her own mother. That Castle chose to give this family heirloom to her when two other wives have come before provides a strange kind of comfort and pride. That he believes her a worthy keeper of this family ring proves to her they are each other's one and done, and let the past be damned.
Though she is utterly silent as she admires the ring and its giver alike, Castle seems to sense her watching him. He slowly blinks his way from sleep into wakefulness and then comes the smile. A big, beautiful smile.
"Hey," he says, languidly, his voice hoarse with sleep. He absorbs her features with such care that it can only be love, the deepest, best kind of love that comes from knowing you have found your soul mate. "Mm," he hums, reaching for her.
Kate rolls over and surrenders to the power of his arms when he draws her across the mattress in against his warm body, wrapping her up like a human burrito in an embrace she feels she is experiencing for the first time.
They snuggle into one another, her back against the smooth, broad wall of his chest. The remains of her perfume and a faded trace of his cologne mingle with the sharp scent of sweat and sex that waft up from beneath the warm sheets to tickle Kate's nose. She wiggles her ass and he shimmies his hips until they slot together perfectly, his knees tucked into the back of hers, his arms around her arms, a heavy hand settled on her stomach. They make sounds of contentment to be together like this. At its core, it's such a simple thing, but it feels more precious than many more "valuable" things they might possess between them.
Castle nudges his chin into the dip between Kate's neck and her shoulder joint. "I love this," he whispers and she nods, adding a simple, "Mm, me, too," to the early-hour discussion.
"Were you watching me sleep just now?" he asks playfully, running his finger around and around her navel.
Kate smiles and squirms but doesn't answer right away.
"I can feel you smiling, Beckett," Castle says, giving her a squeeze.
"Yes," she admits, wriggling again. "Okay, yes. I was watching you sleep."
"I guess it is kind of a novelty, so I'll let you off this time."
Castle can't see her face, but her eyebrows flare upwards with the arrival of a sudden memory. "It is a novelty," she says slowly, "but it's not the first time I've watched you sleep."
His face appears beside hers. "What? Oh, do tell."
Kate's smile widens. "Yeah. You remember when we were cuffed together in that dirty basement?"
"Mm. With a tiger for a next-door neighbor. Put me right off Frosted Flakes."
"Yes, but before the tiger. I woke up first. I was lying beside you and my hand was on your chest. I didn't know where I was at first, and…" She hesitates.
"What?"
"You were so hard to rouse. It must have been the drugs."
"Wait til morning then tell me if it's the drugs," Castle jokes.
"Good to know. Anyway, when I tried to wake you, you mumbled, "don't get up yet, stay in bed" as if that was something we did all the time. The way you said it was so sweet." She smiles as she remembers that day. "It was as if we were together in the dream you were having...as if we were simply picking up a conversation midway through. When I said your name, you were smiling, and then you said, "Kate, hi," as if you weren't at all surprised to wake up next to me."
There's a brief silence before Castle sighs. He kisses her shoulder and says, "Wishful thinking, that's what that was. Wishful thinking."
"You remember that stupid chest freezer? The one we tried to move?"
"I remember your hot ass backed into my crotch when we tried to push that monstrosity. I've never had to try so hard to marshal my powers of self-control. The noises you were making!" He guffaws.
"Yeah, well, I think I felt your powers of self-control. I felt something really hard anyway."
They chuckle and she twists in his arms. They lean in for a kiss at the same moment, still smiling so much that their teeth clash.
Kate stays close. She plays with his ear again. Always tugging on it as a punishment in the early days, now she strokes it as if seeking forgiveness. "Did you always want this?" she asks in a whisper. "For us, I mean. As an end game? Marriage…" She smiles softly. "Kids? Was that how you saw us down the line after we started working together? As a family?" She sounds shy and hesitant as she forces herself to pose this stilted list of questions that come out of her mouth like a sparse string of beads.
Castle strokes her hair and then tucks some of it behind her ear so that he can fully see her face. "I wanted you. From the second I laid eyes on you, I wanted you, Kate. But…that first night…"
"After I arrested you?"
She smirks, and they laugh and fall together, hugging, their bodies shaking as they giggle. "Yes. That first night and then on that first case, I lusted after you. I mean, look at you." He eases back to skim his hand down her naked body beneath the sheet, staring until Kate snuggles back against him when the fresh air gets to be too much and she shivers. "What man wouldn't? You're beautiful, but you never use your looks…well, unless there are Russian mobsters involved and then all bets are off. You are so classy and yet so hot. But after that first case, I was all about your mind." He tries to stay straight-faced, but he can't for long and he laughs. "No, that's a lie. I was all about your hot body and your hot mind."
"At least you're honest."
"I'm trying to be," he says in all seriousness once more. "And to go back to your question, you know how it is, there isn't a moment when you think: this is it. My respect for you grew from watching you work, how smart you were, how fair, how goddam tough. But I think my love for you came from a different place. It came from watching you with my daughter, how patient you are with my crazy mother, from seeing how you put up with me and all the bullshit I threw in your path."
She kisses his jaw and smiles against his skin. "Like never staying in the car?"
"Nothing ever happens in the car, Beckett," he jokes before becoming serious again. "Later, it came from learning your story, how you fought your way through your grief to help others, realizing how hard life must have been for you and your dad. I felt so privileged when you let me in, so proud to call myself your partner and your friend. Forget the books. Working with you has been the most productive period of my life. I am at my best when I'm needed, and you gave me an opportunity to give something back. You are an extraordinary woman, Kate. You still surprise me every day."
"Long may that continue," she says, nudging his nose with her own and stealing another kiss. "Just wait til you see how bad I am at keeping the fridge stocked or remembering to collect my dry cleaning…that'll definitely surprise you."
Castle stills her with a finger to her chin. He looks into her eyes and says, "I don't need a wife, Kate. Not in any old school, Neanderthal sense. I'm not marrying a homemaker, though I do want to make a home with you. I just want to spend the rest of my life with you. I'll collect your dry cleaning. I promise never to leave the fridge bare. Let's just live each day and have fun, together. In between solving murders, of course."
"Mm. Yeah, we're gonna have to find a way through that H.R. regulatory nightmare."
"You think Gates might throw me out?" Castle says as if this hasn't occurred to him yet.
"I think we need to take a very close look at departmental regs. I'll get my dad to look into it. Quietly."
"After we tell him why we need him to do it, of course. I feel bad I didn't ask him for your hand."
"Castle, what were you just saying about not being a Neanderthal?"
"Yeah, but I'm also a dad. I'd be kind of mad if some guy Alexis was dating didn't come to me first."
Kate laughed. "What? So you can have a hit put out on him?"
"Laugh all you want. Us dads have to stick together. I'm sending your father a fruit basket or something to apologize."
"Gummy Bears," Kate whispers into Castle's ear before trailing her lips over his neck. She pauses beneath his jaw to suck lightly as if he is a sweet treat. "He likes Gummy Bears," she repeats, squealing when he tweaks her sides and she crashes her mouth against his.
Kate feels hot and achy when she wakes from another round of needy, languid sex that was actually the most loving, spiritual thing she's ever experienced. Castle touches her in ways, and in places, that no other man has thought to or tried. He opens her up, clichéd to say, like a proverbial flower, so that her limbs are loose, her sex aching for him with a deep, throbbing intensity she now craves and hopes will stick around forever. She gives her body to him with the kind of generosity and trust she has only ever seen performed by him. He is like a teacher to her in that way, a kind of spiritual guide, and to even think like this, given some of his past behaviors, has her laughing inside. But it is true, all of it.
They wake again at nine to a gentle tapping on the door of the suite.
Kate nudges Castle awake as she pulls the sheet up to her chest from around her waist for modesty's sake. "Rick, there's someone at the door," she hisses, prodding him again.
Castle grunts even as he sits up and swings his feet to the floor in the automatic response of a parent used to nightmares and bellyaches and early starts for school or camp.
"Put your shorts on!" Kate laughs when he heads towards the door buck-naked. "Here!" She finds his boxers at the bottom of the bed, balls them up and tosses them at his chest.
She's no sooner fluffed her hair, rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and piled some pillows up behind her than a uniformed staff member pushes a breakfast trolley into the room. The cart's wheels squeak in protest and the cutlery rattles like a xylophone as it mounts the threshold and slows its roll across the thick pile of the bedroom carpet. He brings it to rest over by the small dining table.
"We didn't order breakfast," Castle tells the young man. He looks at Kate for confirmation and she shakes her head automatically.
Kate really only has eyes for her partner. His hair is sticking up at the back, and the front has flattened down over his forehead. His bare legs show muscular thighs with well-developed calves, covered by a light coating of glossy hair. His belly is smooth and surprisingly taut, his chest broad and powerful, and those arms… She's so in love with him, inside and out, and it hits her hard in the chest, making her heart ache, making her fear just a little, since this is her Achilles heel, the pebble in her shoe that has prevented her from walking up to him time without number to take his face in her hands, kiss him senseless and just tell him how she feels.
She takes a deep breath and holds it for a couple of beats before letting go. Her heart continues with its rapid tattoo, but she is moving past that now. They are lovers. They are engaged to be married, no matter how crazy that might sound. They have chosen to do things back to front, the world is still turning, and she's in love with him, so much in love that her breath catches in her throat.
Castle tips the guy to get rid of him. He looks at her with concern as he hands her a note that was tucked into a bud vase of freesias stationed in the center of the cart. "You okay?"
She nods, swallowing down a painful lump of unattended grief, grief that still burns like undigested food, a painful regurgitation almost two decades after the fact: the night of her own last supper when she and her dad gaily ate dinner without her mom. Her mom who was already dead in an alley by the time their plates were cleared and the check paid.
"What's this?" she asks, because the room is still almost dark, the only light a sliver of sun cutting in through a gap in the drapes like the slash of a knife. She breathes again, slowly, deeply.
Castle walks to the windows and opens the curtains all the way. Sunlight streams in on a brilliant new day. Kate breathes out and unfolds the note. "Lanie sent us breakfast?" she says, looking up to find her fiancé stretching high and wide, his magnificent body filling the open balcony window.
"Stop right there! Don't move a muscle," she calls out to him, grabbing her phone off the nightstand and fumbling for the camera app.
Of course, Castle lowers his arms and turns to see what all the fuss is about.
"I said stay as you are, Mr. Castle," Kate demands, sounding so much like Detective Beckett that Castle does as he is told.
He raises his arms in another mock stretch. "You mean like this?"
They both hear the shutter click on her iPhone and Castle lets his arms drop. When he turns to face her, he's laughing. They both are. But Kate continues to take photos as he walks towards her. He has his stomach sucked in and he puts on an exaggerated wiggle of a walk, swinging his hips like a Victoria's Secret model.
When he gets close enough, Kate tosses her phone onto the bed and beckons to him. She grabs his hands and drags him to her. "You look really good in the morning. Good enough to eat," she says, licking her lips before she pulls him down on top of her and crushes her mouth against his.
Castle braces himself above her on those muscular arms she loves so much that she's seriously considering cutting the sleeves off a few of his button downs or creating a mandatory tank top Tuesday uniform policy for the bullpen. He grins down at her, sweeping in for tiny kisses, brief pecks on her lips, cheeks, eyelids, and nose. "If you're feeling hungry, I think your friendly neighborhood M.E. already took care of that."
"I can't believe Lanie sent us breakfast."
"With a bottle of champagne no less. But you need to have a word with her about what constitutes waking hours on a weekend."
"That girl always was an early riser."
Eventually, genuine hunger stops them making out and they get up. They push the tablecloth-draped cart over to the balcony doors and settle outside in the sunshine to eat, both dressed in matching hotel bathrobes.
"What did the note say anyway?" Castle asks.
Kate is sitting with one foot up on her chair, the other bare leg dangling as she scoops segments from a pink grapefruit with practiced skill. She has the sleeves of her robe pushed up above her elbows and she's naked underneath except for Castle's boxer shorts, which she stole from him before they got around to breakfast.
"Her note is kind of cryptic. Well, she'd like to think so. But we're detectives."
She passes the hand-written note to Castle. It reads, Congratulations, Kate and Rick! Wishing you a successful partnership. May you solve life's mysteries as well as you solve crimes together. Love L&J xxx
Castle looks up to find Kate smiling at him, a glass of champagne in hand. "Better do as the lady says and celebrate."
"But…how could she possibly know?" He seems baffled.
"I don't think we were very subtle on the dance floor." She pauses. "And I may have gone to see her after you proposed to me in the precinct on Friday."
"May have?"
She winces, wrinkling her nose. "Okay, I did. I went."
"What did Lanie say?"
Kate laughs at the memory of her friend's reaction. "She screamed. A lot. Like really loud. You'd have hated it."
"Hey, I'm used to teenage girls, remember. I'm probably immune at this point and deaf to their higher frequencies. But did she actually say anything aside from screaming?"
"She assured me that you were being serious when you proposed, and then she threatened to…I think she said, "tan that man's behind," when I told her about Javi bursting in on us." Kate's face becomes more serious when she says, "She also guessed I wasn't as happy just going to the wedding as your plus one as I was making out. She warned me not to let you get cold feet, either. She's the reason I came over to see you the other night."
Castle raises his own glass. "Then our toast should be to her for helping us see what's been right under our noses for so long."
"To Lanie," Kate says. "A great friend and the best maid of honor a woman could ask for."
"She's going to be your maid of honor?"
"Makes sense, right?"
"It does," he says with a slow, creeping smile that fails to mask his excitement over where they are now: that the woman of his dreams is already planning her wedding. He raises his glass. "To Lanie. Remind me to give her a big hug next time I see her."
Kate runs a bath and they soak in the tub together until the bubbles burst and the water goes cold, finally rinsing off in the two-person shower, taking advantage of the suite's every amenity before the time for checkout comes around.
Castle sits on the edge of the bed watching Kate apply her makeup. She's using a shaving mirror she brought from the bathroom and placed on the desk where natural daylight floods in through the balcony doors.
He's so restless with excitement that he's unable to sit still in one place. So he stands behind her chair and studies her with utter fascination, massaging her shoulders while she sits in her underwear, deftly wielding a mascara wand. "You used to say that staring was creepy," he reminds her, leaning down to kiss her neck.
The kiss tickles and she curls around him, tilting her head towards his and raising her shoulder to cocoon his face in against her neck. It's an automatic reflex – this leaning in - where in the past she might have pulled away. To watch her need him now, to see how much she wants to be with him, it brings tears to his eyes.
By the time it gets to noon, they're still running around the room hunting for Kate's discarded underwear and carefully folding her dress into Castle's larger overnight bag. He watches her wiggle into the jeans and button-down shirt she wore to the precinct the morning before when she went to the Twelfth to clear her workload to allow her to take a half-day off for the wedding. What she ended up with was a whole lot more than a half day's leave.
"I would have worn something a little fancier," she says, slipping her feet into ballet flats that leave her shorter than him for once, "had I known we were going to be on our honeymoon."
They both laugh at how ridiculous that sounds. But it is special, too. They are building a new level of intimacy, new shorthand, new memories that are private and exclusive to them alone. Pretty quickly in their work life, everyone around them could see the high level of synchronicity they shared, both in how their minds worked and in the words that came out of their mouths. Now they get a chance to take that perfect fit to a whole new level in their private lives.
When they go down to the lobby, only a few minutes late, Castle pays the bill and then he joins Kate out in the sunshine on the front steps of the hotel where he takes her hand.
If the powder blue Bentley hadn't been waiting for them out in the parking lot, the previous day and night might have felt like a wonderful dream. But their carriage awaits and it hasn't turned into a squad car or a pumpkin, and for that, they are immeasurably grateful.
The breeze picks up and confetti blows across the gravel in swirls like rainbow dust devils as they stand side-by-side on the hotel steps and look out at the car. Castle gives her hand a squeeze and tucks her into his side. He leans down to kiss the top of her head. "Ready to go back to real life?"
Kate looks up at him and smiles. "Real life is a place I really want to be. I haven't felt that way in a long time. Thank you, Castle. For giving that back to me."
He drops their bags at his feet and sweeps her up into a crushing hug, lifting her off her feet and slowly spinning her around. "You make my life complete, Kate Beckett," he whispers hoarsely into her hair before setting her back down and slanting his mouth over hers for a bruising, breath-taking kiss.
A/N: Not sure if this is complete or TBC. I had planned to carry on, but I'm not sure I'll be able to and I don't like to leave readers hanging. Let me take a few days to get to a better place and then we'll see. For now, thank you for reading, Liv