Disclaimer: The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.
The moment they walk through the door of Brasserie Flo, Castle understands why Kate chose it. The restaurant has been at the same site for almost a century, and though it looks nothing like her apartment instantly brings it to mind. There are old painted ceilings laced with polished wooden beams; stained glass; brass rails, rich colors.
"I saved up so I could come here once when I was a student," she says, squeezing his hand. "It's not wildly expensive, but it was way out of my league then. This time I don't have to skip dessert or have just one glass of the house red."
"May I have dessert?"
"You may. Two desserts, if you want."
"And a glass of very fancy wine?"
"Absolutely. My treat." She's feeling giddy and she hasn't had a drop to drink yet.
He's about to respond when the maître d' appears and Kate unleashes a rapid-fire and enthusiastic stream of French, not a word of which Castle understands. Whatever it was, it obviously pleased the tuxedoed host, who escorts them to the best table in the restaurant, pulls Kate's chair out for her, and bows.
Castle hasn't opened his menu. Instead, he's looking at her looking at hers. "Aren't you hungry?" she asks.
"Starving. But I'm leaving the ordering up to you. Surprise me." He can see how pleased she is, as her cheeks pink and her eyes gleam. When the waiter returns she delivers another spirited bit of French and Castle thinks he hears "langoustines" swimming around somewhere in the order. Those skinny lobsters that he loves. Excellent.
The food is as beautifully presented as it is delicious, but Castle is distracted even while he eats. The place is filled with light: sun comes through the windows and windowed doors, and mirrors reflect it as well as the lamps. Every time Kate moves her hand the diamond sparkles as it catches the light, which in turn catches his heart. He still can't believe it. That ring had been locked in his desk for so long, and for every moment he'd thought they might be eventually a couple he'd had ten when he'd been afraid that they wouldn't. Still, even if the odds had been 50 times worse, he'd have hung on to hope. He'd have hung on until they were old and gray, except now they're going to get old and gray together. But not for a very long time. They're going to have a long time together.
"Castle?"
"Huh?"
"Are you all right? Do you want to try something else?"
"No, no. It's perfect."
"But you're plate's still half full and mine's licked clean—"
"You licked your plate?" He's stunned. "How did I miss that?"
"Figure of speech, Castle. But I worry when I eat twice as much as you do."
"You said yes."
"I said yes?"
He nods vigorously.
"About what?"
"About getting married. I proposed to you and you said yes. I'm still—I'm still. It's still sinking in."
He'd thought he'd been dazzled by the light bouncing off her ring, but it's lusterless next to the smile she gives him. "Still sinking in for you, huh? It was a total surprise for me, you know, but apparently you'd been thinking of it for ages, right through Hallowe'en, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Martin Luther King Day, Groundhog Day, Presidents' Day, Easter, Fourth of July." She knows, even as she ticks off these holidays, that she's omitting Memorial Day. That one is too painful to bring up, even now.
"You forgot the most important one."
Oh, shit, he noticed. "I did?"
"Valentine's Day. That was really tough."
No, he hadn't noticed! Or maybe Memorial Day is too painful for him to bring up, too. "It was? I don't even remember last Valentine's Day. I probably ate leftover Chinese food at home."
"Remember the Cano Vega case?"
"Sure. Murdered baseball star."
"We ran into Joe Torre and I introduced you. You were completely flustered, tongue-tied. Nearly fell over your own feet. It was the cutest thing I've ever seen. I never knew that side of you, Kate, never knew it was hiding underneath that cool-as-can-be Beckett, and it made me love you even more. The Sunday after we closed that case was Valentine's Day and I wanted to show up at your door with a big chocolate heart and a teddy bear wearing a little Yankee hat."
"Would that have been a melted chocolate heart?"
That makes him chuckle. "Might have been."
She leans forward and looks at him with so much love that he can hardly breathe. "If I'd opened my door on February fourteenth and seen you like that, my heart would have melted, right there. You melt my heart, Castle, all the time. You know that, right?"
Since he doesn't want to cry in the middle of lunch in the middle of the restaurant in the middle of Paris, he just nods his head and reaches for her hand, picks it up, turns it over, and kisses her palm.
She can see that he's holding back tears, and understands why, so she switches to a lighter mode. "Castle? Eat your lunch. I don't want it to go to waste, and we're not getting on that plane with a doggy bag."
So he does finish his lunch, and dessert. And most of her dessert. Kate pays the bill and while she has two more chats—one with the waiter, one with the maître d'–he wonders why everything in French sounds so sexy. Or maybe it's just her speaking French, a potent combination. On the way out he shakes hands with the waiter and the maître d' and says "Merci beaucoup" in what he thinks is a reasonably good accent.
"I'm so happy that you liked this place, Castle," she says as they get into the waiting car.
"I did. Thank you for taking me there."
"Thank you for taking me here."
They hold hands all the way to the airport, but they don't say a word.
Once they've checked in they wheel their bags to the first-class lounge; it's going to be late when they land at JFK, and they don't want to wait around there, either, since they have to be at the precinct early in the morning. He could beg off, but she can't.
"I'll be back in a minute," he says, after they've had coffee.
"Okay."
Ten minutes pass, and he's not back. She'd assumed he'd gone to the men's room, but now she begins to fret. She waits five more minutes. No dice. No Castle. Now she really is worried. She walks to the bathrooms and stands outside until a man comes out, and asks him if anyone else is inside. He says no.
Twenty minutes, and she's almost frantic. She clicks on her phone to call him when she sees him, plastic bag in hand, coming her way. "Geez, Castle, I was beginning to panic. You went shopping? I should have known."
"Yeah."
"But we were just in one of the shopping paradises of the world. Oh, wait, you got a cheesy airport present for Alexis. Or your mother?"
"Nope, I got something for you."
"A cheesy airport present for me? Why?"
"Because I didn't buy you anything in Paris."
She waves her left hand in front of his face. "Remember this? I'm pretty sure a huge diamond counts as a present."
"But I didn't buy it here. It can't be a souvenir of Paris if I bought it in New York."
"This engagement ring is the most incredible souvenir of Paris ever. And you gave it to me on the Eiffel Tower. How much more Parisian can you get?"
"Technically I gave it to you in the car. You almost knocked it out of my hand on the Eiffel Tower. Anyway, I owe you a present from our trip. I'm sorry it's not wrapped. Seems wrong to me. I mean, if you call yourself a gift shop you should damn well have gift wrap."
"Castle? I don't mind." She puts her hand in the bag and pulls out the present: a white tee shirt with red and black lettering.
J'AIME PARIS.
"You could wear it as a nightgown, Kate."
"I will. Thank you. I'll wear it to bed as soon as we get home tonight, and you can unwrap me."
"God, I wish you hadn't said that. We won't be home for at least ten hours, and I'll have to wait all that time with that vision in my brain."
A few hours into the long flight home, Kate says abruptly, "I have to tell the Captain about us."
"What? Montgomery?"
"We have to tell him some time, Castle. He's the one I'm most worried about, because you and I are not supposed to be dating."
"I thought that we established that we're not dating."
"Right. We're engaged, which is a giant step past dating. And I don't want us not to be able to work together, do you?"
"No. But if I have to choose between working with you and marrying you, there's no choice at all."
"I want us to do both."
"I do, too. Can't we just keep it secret for now? At least that way we can be together at the precinct for a while, anyway."
"First of all, it would mean lying to Montgomery, or at least hiding something from him, which in this case is a really bad idea. I may have been able to keep my feelings secret from the boys for a couple of days, but that was my limit, and it was hard. And now? No way. I don't want one of us slipping up at he precinct, which is bound to happen, and have that be how he finds out. I'm hoping that he'll let you stay for a while."
"Kate, I'm not a cop, as you like to remind me. So shouldn't we be exempt from that rule?"
"That's what I'm banking on, but I don't know how much rule-bending we can do."
She's quiet after that, looking out the window as she holds his hand. At some point she's aware that he's no longer awake, and she turns her head towards him. He's canted slightly towards her, eyes closed, a sweet expression on his face. Maybe he's dreaming. She's noticed, in the short time that they've been together, that he's a napper, a really good napper. He can fall asleep for twenty minutes and be completely refreshed. She wonders if it's because he's a writer, or because he raised a child on his own. A child. Alexis. Oh, God, how is Alexis going to react to all this? Kate's ashamed that she hasn't even thought about it. What kind of a future stepmother doesn't consider that right away? They haven't even set a wedding date and she's already a cruel stepmother. At least she doesn't have to worry about Martha, knows they'll have her blessing.
It gnaws and gnaws on her, and she feels all the joy and warmth of the last two days slipping away. "Castle. Castle." She shakes his knee. "Wake up. Please."
He's coming out of a surprisingly deep sleep—maybe not so surprising, since they've slept very little in the last two days. The tone of her voice worries him; when he opens his eyes and sees her face, he's alarmed. "What's wrong?"
"I'm a horrible person."
"A horrible person? What?"
"I didn't think about Alexis until you were napping. How is she going to feel about me barging into your life? Why didn't I ask you that the minute you proposed? I'm stealing her father."
"Kate, Kate, Kate." He kisses her softly. "You're not stealing her father. You're not barging into our life. She adores you. And if you'd asked me about Alexis right after I'd proposed, I'd have been shocked. Appalled. Insulted. You shouldn't be thinking about my teenaged daughter while we're kissing on the top of the Eiffel Tower, okay?"
"But. But you have to tell her as soon as we get back. You have to go down to Princeton and tell her, you can't call."
"I already did."
"You called her? Castle, no!" She covers her face with her hands. "You should have told her in person. I feel terrible."
"I did tell her in person. The first day I didn't come in the precinct? I wasn't at home. I drove down to New Jersey, took her to lunch, and told her everything. Well, not everything. The PG-13 version. And I told her I was going to take you to Paris and ask you to marry me. I practically had to tie her down to keep her from calling you and spilling the beans. She squealed so loud the waiter dropped our sodas on the floor."
"So she doesn't mind?"
"Doesn't mind? She's ecstatic."
"That's in the abstract. She doesn't know I said yes."
"She does. I called her when I was buying the shirt. You'll have an email waiting for you when we get home, full of exclamation points and smiley faces."
"Really?"
"I promise. Do you feel better now?"
"Yes."
"So you won't mind if I go back to my nap?"
"I won't mind."
He sleeps for a long time, but she can't. Her mind is racing. She thinks about the depths of her unhappiness just a few weeks ago, and how she feels now. It's wildly improbable. Impossible. But it happened. She leans against him, feels his breathing shift for a moment, then even out, but not before he takes her hand again. And they sit like that, one of them asleep, one of them awake, and the awake one lets a song unspool in her mind.
Just in time,
I found you just in time,
Before you came my time
Was running low.
She runs her hand lightly across his cheek. His eyes move a fraction, but he doesn't really stir.
Now you're here,
And now I know just where I'm going,
No more doubt or fear,
I've found my way.
For love came just in time,
You found me just in time,
And changed my lonely life
That lovely day.
A/N Merci. Or, now that they're about to land in the U.S.A., thank you, readers.
