Misconception
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He stands in his closet once more, wading through clothes he has no use for, no understanding of, with Kate Beckett smirking before him.
"Do you need help?" she says. Coy. She's being coy. Did he ever in his wildest dreams expect this? Oh, in his fantasies, sure, but that's what a fantasy is - unreal.
This is very real.
Forget packing.
Castle reaches out and cups her jaw, draws them together with the force of his want. She tries to laugh but his mouth is on hers and instead it just parts her lips for him and he kisses her, he kisses her, he finds himself artless when he does.
Her arms wind around his neck and it causes her body to rise against his, friction so lovely he groans. He's bent in half over her and she's stretching up on her toes and he wants more of this, this intimate press of skins, this slide of bodies, until they burst into flame.
Her hands grip his ears and pull his face away; he's left stunned and hungry for her mouth, focused on that smudged line of her lips and the way her knowing grin is ruined by breathlessness.
"Pack," she says. Her voice is husky. Aroused. She wants him too, but she apparently still has words.
"Pack," he repeats. He has no concept of it. Why can't they just-
"I have no idea what you'll need, Rick," she says softly. "You have a lot of product."
"Product?" he squeaks. Toys pops in his head and now she blushes furiously - oh wow, Beckett blushing, that is so incongruous - and she tweaks his ear with her fingers which should say, no, you idiot, but it doesn't at all.
It says, oh you know it.
He swallows hard and his head nods on his neck and he can't breathe quite as well as he was - was he ever breathing around her? - and she smooths her fingers down his jaw and flirts with his adam's apple even as it bobs.
"Castle," she prompts.
"Pack. Yes. Pack." There is a duffle bag on the shelf at his side, open and ready. He managed one t-shirt (thinking he wants to see her in that one too) and a pair of boxers. There should probably be more.
"Are you okay with this?" she says suddenly. "I'm kind of hijacking you."
"Hijack away," he says earnestly, sliding his arms around her waist. Loose enough that she could slip out if she wants. "I think you have fantastic ideas."
"I'm just tired of being interrupted and - caught off guard by all the things I haven't had the time to think about, let alone make decisions. You know?"
"I definitely know."
She shifts in his arms, but it's not to get away. She's just squirming, as if she can't find a good place to stand. "I'm a deliberate person until I've made up my mind. And then I just go for it, everything else be damned-"
"I really like that about you," he grins, hoping for smooth, afraid he's only managed sappy.
"But it's difficult to just - go for it - when we're so... crowded."
"Yeah," he sighs.
"And I know your mother is right-"
"Rarely."
"-about us needing to have a real conversation-"
"You heard that?" he tenses.
"But Rick, this isn't the time for serious and sober and practical. I have done practical to death and I am so sick of holding back and not - and not - not having you because I'm letting serious things get in the way."
Castle draws his arms tighter and steps into her troubled space, tugging just firmly enough to bring her against him. Oh, how she fits. She presses into him with a long sigh, her cheek brushing his jaw. He loves holding her, being able to hold her; just a few weeks ago, he remembers seeing her walk into the break room with her shoulders at her ears and her back stiff and just longing, so badly, to follow her in there and wrap himself around her.
Hold her up long enough for her to find her feet again.
When he thinks about that day, and how she maybe already loved him - she did love him, she does; why is that so hard to convince himself of? - and already pregnant and maybe she guessed it, and he was in the middle of gearing himself up to confess everything, lay his heart at her feet and drop to his knees before her - when he thinks of that day, he desperately wishes he had.
Just to have gotten the chance to hold her like this.
"I'm okay," she says roughly. And that's when he first realizes she's not exactly okay, she's as emotional as he is, and maybe it's pregnancy hormones or the news itself, the aftershocks of it, but she's in this just as much as he is. And she's scared when she thinks about it too much, and probably excited too based on those grins she shoots his way when she thinks he's not looking, and it's too much for tonight.
"I'm with you," he tells her, his lips near her ear. "I'm with you on this one. Serious and practical will come soon enough - and quickly. Give me tonight, Kate. Give us tonight. Forget all the issues about our families and our living arrangements and doctor's appointments-"
"Stop listing all the things I'm supposed to be forgetting," she growls.
Castle laughs, loosening his grip on her with the release of that feeling - light, caught unawares by her unexpected humor. "You're right. I could, instead, list all of the things I want to do to you with my mouth."
"Oh."
"Starting here." His tongue touches the skin just below her ear, at her neck where her pulse has begun to thrum. He scrapes his teeth there. "Taste you."
"Oh, God."
She's both clutching his arms and leaning away from him, apparently can't make up her mind, and he allows himself the slow, unhurried time to seduce her neck.
Kate whimpers, but the noise grows more fierce, lifts into one of those growls, and her fists clutch in his shirt. He's going to have wrinkles. He's never going to get rid of them; he'll want them for a memento forever.
"Much as - oh - I love this, gonna have - have to stop," she pants at his ear. No authority whatsoever. Just how undone can he make her? Just how mewling and trembling and in his thrall? He wants her naked. On the bed, body rising up for him. He wants to tease all night long.
He loves this t-shirt. Loves riding his fingers under the hem and skimming her bare skin, loves feeling the flinch and flutter of her abs as he strokes the backs of his hands against her.
"Oh, God, Rick," she moans.
He flirts with the slim button of her dress pants, she angles her mouth into his and sucks at his bottom lip, urgent. But he can't be deterred, distracted. He draws a line up to her belly button and circles.
Her hips buck against his touch.
"Will you just-" she pants. Her mouth glides against his, down his jaw, a lazy franticness that he finds shockingly arousing. She can drag her lips, slow and hot, in a kind of endless kiss, but she's whining like it's already rough and hard.
"Kate, please."
He can barely breathe for touching her. For her mouth open against his skin, over his neck. His fingers are desperate to slide somewhere hot and-
"Pack."
She forces herself off of him, even clutching handfuls of his shirt. Her eyes are wide and dark as the whole universe, everything in him existing within that space.
"Pack."
He can't understand what she's saying.
"Damn it, Castle. I will drag you home with nothing. Find some pants or - or - whatever it is you have to have for tomorrow and come on."
"Tomorrow," he echoes, blinded by the blurred haze of her mouth, aroused and desperate, speaking.
"Lunch with - with my dad."
"Oh," he croaks, and that does it. That just - cold showers him quite effectively. "Lunch with your dad."
Kate releases his shirt and raises a shaky hand to comb through her hair, holding it back on the top of her head, closing her eyes. "I am not willing to do this in your closet. Bad enough our first time was in a damn hotel room."
"Bad?" he gets out.
Her eyes flash open. Her mouth parts. A breath through her lungs that makes her chest expand in such an appealing way with that arm raised. Heaving fantasy.
"Good. Tawdry," she says. Her hand releases her hair and comes out to coast his chest. "Hot. That's the private story. That's for us alone."
"And tonight?"
She tilts her head and takes another step into him, traces the line of his hip with a finger, inwardly. "That's private too, Rick Castle."
He captures her wrist and brings her hand against his chest, lets her feel the pulse of his heart so she knows where else it beats, just as hard. "I'll have you know - it will be just as hot, just as tawdry. There will be no story you can tell, Kate Beckett. Not a single word."
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