Epilogue for #CastleFanficMonday
Rick sat at the end of a bar in a place a few blocks from his loft, notebook placed on top of a few napkins to preserve it from the sticky residue of ancient beer spillages, and he watched the patrons around him.
His eyes scanned the room again and alighted on a familiar personage, a quietly confident smile on the man's kind face. This was a man he had met and spoken to before only once, and it had been a pretty important conversation, truth be told. Rick stood to greet the man with a warm handshake.
"Gabriel! How are you?"
"I'm very well, Richard, thank you."
They both sat on the stools at the bar, and the newcomer ordered a drink.
"How are things since I last saw you?"
Rick couldn't help but chuckle, "I haven't seen you since we shared a drink about twenty years ago. Truthfully, I thought you were a crazy drunk guy," He went to pick up his drink but put it down again straight away. "Hang on, that was in this bar too. Are you a ghost?"
It was Gabriel's turn to laugh, "No, Rick. We talked about something that day, do you remember?"
"About the scroll." Gabriel nodded, encouraging him to continue. "You told me to expect it. But it was years in the coming."
"Yes, sorry about that. I'd thought it would be sooner than it was, an occasion arose that might have-… but still. It arrived eventually."
Rick could only nod along. "I'm glad it did," he responded, his tone thoughtful. He glanced up and met Gabriel's brown eyes, twinkling with an all-knowing smirk. "What?"
"Tell me what's on your mind, Rick."
"You sound like a shrink."
Gabriel shrugged one shoulder. "Maybe I am." A group of patrons walked behind them to exit the bar, and one called out to Gabriel.
"Evenin' Dr Burke!"
"Good evening, Bob."
He smiled and flicked an eyebrow at Rick.
"Okay, fine. I want to take Kate away for the weekend, to my place in the Hamptons, but I don't know if it's the right time or if I should wait a bit longer, or… or what." He grimaced and covered his eyes with his hand, "Such an idiot."
"Not an idiot, Rick. You just don't want to mess up and put yourselves back another few months, I get it. Going on holiday with someone you're not quite in a relationship with is a big deal, so tell me how things have been going and maybe we can figure it out."
Rick nodded gratefully, signalling to the bartender for another round before he launched into his account of the last few weeks.
"…And I suddenly realised that when the scroll said, 'He is just like Samson,' it was meaning Samson from the bible, with all his power in his hair – and although I do have pretty great hair, that didn't really make sense at first – but then I looked it up online, and he also tended to fall for untrustworthy women. That was a major clue. When I was out with Ellie, as soon as she started angling to try and take things further I shut it down straightaway. Don't get me wrong, she's beautiful, and smart, and sexy as hell, but I don't want to jeopardise anything with Beckett. She'd shoot me."
Gabriel quirked his eyebrow, smirking, "I'm sure she wouldn't do that."
"Well, I don't know… I think she kinda wants to shoot this other detective, from Robbery. Beckett told me about this hotshot guy who was trying to come on to her at the precinct gym, but she challenged him to spar on the mats and kicked his ass right into New Jersey! Sounded so awesome, and she gave me a kinda… meaningful look when she told me about that, actually, I guess she… I guess she was, um… Huh."
"You getting the idea, yet, Richard?" He gave Rick a warm, expectant smile.
Rick nodded, "Yeah, I, uh… I think I might be."
As Castle described it, Beckett was practically transported back to summers at the cabin with her parents, open fires and toasting marshmallows… it really did sound magical, the Castles' week-long Memorial Day trip to the Hamptons, and that in itself only served to remind her of the scroll message that had changed this morning.
She wants magic.
As soon as he invited her she wavered over whether she would say yes, but when his retort to her trying to poke a little fun at him had made her snort so loudly with laughter that Esposito turned to glare at them she knew exactly what her answer would be.
"Yo, what's so funny?"
"Nothing, Espo…" Beckett called over to him, and lowered her voice so only Castle could hear, "Ask me again later."
Rick's grin was so wide she had to elbow him to get him to listen to Esposito's run down of the scene.
"Beckett? A word?"
Kate looked up from her paperwork and nodded, "Yes, Sir." She replied to Rick's questioning eyebrows with a shrug, and walked into the captain's office. She was barely over the threshold before he request she shut the door.
"Beckett, I've had to shuffle the roster for this weekend, your team is swapped with Mazzara's, so when you've finished the paperwork I don't want to see any of you for the next three days."
"Oh," Kate's eyebrows rose towards her hairline. "Uhm, Sir, may I ask why?"
"Don't you have some place to be?" He gave a pointed look in the direction of her desk, where Castle was scrawling furiously across a sheaf of scrap paper. Kate's mouth twitched into a tiny smile.
"In that case, can I take some of my leave after the weekend, Sir? Come back in on the Monday after?"
Montgomery gave her a knowing smirk, "I thought you'd never ask…"
It was 5.22am on Sunday morning when Kate decided to tell Rick about her – his – scroll. She rolled over in his embrace and watched his eyelids flutter when she nuzzled her nose to his. "Wake up, sleepyhead, you'll miss the sunrise," she breathed, barely having to voice her words with him so close. She pressed her whole body flat against him, gaining a groan and one opened eye. Rick growled and rolled them both, pinning her to the bed without much effort at all before he pressed his forehead to her ear and pretended to fall asleep again.
At least, she hoped he was pretending, because he was pretty damn heavy like this. Unlike the night before, when he'd loomed above her, his hands planted to the mattress by her head, his arms looking like massive trees in the flickering shadows created by the fireplace. Kate shook her head with a dopey grin, straining her neck to latch her teeth around his earlobe and tug, rewarding her with his third sound of the day: a yelp.
He jumped off her, and she took the opportunity to escape the bed, extracting herself from the sheets and streaking across the room to throw wide the shutters. The master bedroom flooded with light, bathing everything it touched with gold, pink, and orange. Kate turned to find Rick propped up on one elbow, watching her with awe. She greeted him with the flick of her eyebrow and a swift glance down the length of his body, though when her gaze returned to his face she realised he had done the same as her and she couldn't help but laugh since he seemed to have gotten stuck somewhere around the middle of her torso.
He grinned sheepishly for a moment, before he cleared his throat. "There's something I want to show you," he husked across the room to her.
"Pretty sure I've seen it all now, Stud…"
He laughed as he climbed out of the bed and went to his suitcase, extracting the scroll, taking it straight over to her, "Here. This is yours."
"Oh… wait, wait!" She shoved it back into his hand and dashed out of the room.
"Uh… Kate?" His voice drifted along the hall to her by the front door, and she grabbed her jacket, pulling the scroll from the pocket.
"Just a second!" she called, scampering back to him in her birthday suit, drinking in his look of delight when she returned, brandishing his scroll aloft.
"I wish I had videoed that, oh my God!" He laughed, his shoulders rocking even when she thumped his chest in retaliation.
She took a couple of deep breaths and they swapped scrolls, making sure to keep their ribbons, his the blue, and hers the purple. As they held their own scrolls for the first time in months, the parchments unfurled, golden and silver starbursts twinkling all around as the words changed. Rick slung his arm over Kate's shoulder and she snuggled into him, wrapping her arm around his waist, feeling him press a kiss into her hair when the words were finally revealed.
This is not the end…
…this is just the beginning.
A/N: I cannot convey just how relieved I am to have finally been able to hit 'complete' on this, my first multi-chapter. Thanks to Jo for the cheerleading and nudging to try to finish, and for making me just get over the fact the way I wrote the beginning changed so significantly in the two years it took me to get to the ending.
Thank you for reading.