"Don't shoot! Beckett, it's us!"
Kate rises from her place beside him, her weapon still raised and trained on the men dressed in all black riot gear in the doorway, her chest heaving with the steady rhythm of her breathing.
"Rick, Alexis, stay behind me," she instructs, her voice cool but low, deadly as she approaches the two men, but Castle stands and Alexis does too, their guns mimicking Kate's, aimed at the heads, the brains. It has to be the brain.
"We've got your back," Rick reminds her, noticing one of the men's eyebrows arch with something akin to intrigue.
"Beckett, we understand why you're hesitant, but it's us. The real us," the smaller of the two pleads their case, lowering the handgun to his side. "We knew it was a long shot, but we're raiding the city for survivors. Thermal energy detectors located you guys and we had hoped-"
"Who is we?" Kate snaps, her shoulders up to her ears, her posture feral. "And what the hell are you talking about? What was that shaking?"
"We're fighting back, Beckett," the other man speaks up, his gun falling to his side as well, but Castle, Kate, and Alexis keep theirs in position. "Survivors from the Twelfth and any other surrounding precincts, fire stations, or military points were picked up a few days after the Arrival, the tsunami. Been underground for months."
Both men flinch when Alexis blinds them with her high-powered flashlight, shining the beam directly into their eyes.
The first man winces, the other cursing in a language that Castle's almost certain is Spanish, and Kate takes the opportunity to move in closer, Rick trailing at her side, inspecting their squinting eyes.
"No shine, they're human," Kate announces the verdict, the grip on her gun easing, but she doesn't release the weapon. "Now, what do you mean you're fighting back?"
"Against the aliens," the first hisses, rubbing at his eyes once Alexis clicks off the flashlight, leaves the two blinking against the temporary vision impairment. "Anyone found alive was recruited."
"And literally taken underground. It's the only place that's been safe this entire time. The only place E.T and his friends haven't claimed," the Hispanic man mutters. "But we ain't gonna be bottom dwellers. We're taking the world back."
"There are underground sectors in 25 of the 50 states. Luckily, New York made the list," the smaller guy quips, but there's hardly a lightness to his tone.
"How do we know you aren't working with them?" Alexis demands from Kate's left, her eyes like sapphires in the darkness, burning bright and hard as stone.
The taller man flinches, as if his daughter had just slapped him. "How dare you-"
"Back off, Esposito," Kate growls, her finger on the trigger and her body swaying towards Alexis.
"Aiming a gun at me over some people you don't even know, Beckett? You serious?"
"Javi," the other man sighs, his eyes anxiously roving the apartment. Lingering unprotected in a decimated apartment is probably far from ideal when the unscripted version of World War 3 is happening outside.
"Don't know?" Castle cuts in, shoulder to shoulder with Kate. This Esposito guy is rubbing him the wrong way already and part of him wishes he had been an alien so the excuse to blow his brains out would be warranted.
"You think just because you shacked up with Beckett in the middle of an alien invasion you suddenly mean more than two guys who are like brothers to her?" Esposito challenges, his nostrils flaring, and Rick's fists clench around the rifle.
"I'd bet on it," he growls, and Kate reaches over with one hand, drapes her palm at his forearm, soothes some of the simmering rage rushing through his veins.
"It's not a competition," she reminds them, a voice of reason amidst the testosterone filling the air, and Castle takes a deep breath to contain himself. "But these people," she continues, tilting her head back and forth between Rick and Alexis. "Are family to me. Don't question their importance."
Castle cuts his eyes to her, his heart stumbling at her reference of 'family', but Kate is stoic, strong, revealing nothing to the men who had apparently known her before the world had been turned upside down.
"Guys," Ryan steps up with a placating hand raised between the five of them. "There's a lot to discuss and explain, on both sides apparently, but it isn't safe here. We just hit the Outsiders in the area with our first wave, which bought us some time, but we need to get back to base while the opening is there."
"How far is it?" Kate questions, her weapon finally descending to her side, encouraging Alexis to do the same, and Castle reluctantly follows suit.
"We've been using the subway tunnels for navigation. Our base is even further underground, but we can take the subway entrance just down the street from here, have relative cover on our way there," Esposito explains, his qualms about Kate's loyalty seemingly put on hold in favor of the mission at hand. "The Outsiders rarely come down there, but if they do, we can just pick them off as we go."
"You call them Outsiders?" Castle inquires, earning a shrug from the two.
"There's a poll going back on base. Outsiders is winning. What do you call them?" Ryan tosses back, adjusting the police vest strapped to his chest.
"Assholes," Castle mumbles, catching the flicker of Kate's mouth, the twitch of Ryan's lips as well.
"That works too."
"What did you use to cause an earthquake?" Alexis asks, but the one called Ryan is looking around again, practically bouncing on his feet now.
"What if we tell you while you get your things?" he suggests and the three of them nod, turning their backs on the men with a good deal of uncertainty and hastily shoving what little supplies and personal belongings they have into two backpacks – Kate's and the one Rick and Alexis had been sharing when she had found them.
"I think before all of this happened, most of us were aware that the government had secrets," Ryan begins. "Well, turns out they knew about extraterrestrial lifeforms watching our planet from a galaxy far, far away months before the Arrival."
"Apparently, aliens aren't into coexisting," Esposito mutters with a scowl.
"From what we know, contact was made, minimal conversation was had, but no agreement was reached that didn't involve eradicating the human race. There was little time to prepare, but the military had some 'in case of emergency' weapons and bunkers in place."
"And they waited nearly three months after the invasion because…?" Alexis inquires, slinging her smaller bag over her shoulder and scrutinizing Ryan with an interrogative glare Castle thinks Kate would be proud of.
"We'll talk more once we're closer," Esposito decides, checking the hallway and jerking his head forward. "We need to move now."
"Stick close to Esposito, I'll cover you," Ryan instructs, stepping out into the hallway, but Kate touches Alexis's shoulder before they can follow.
"You remember what I taught you?" Kate whispers to his daughter, earning a nod that shakes free some of the terror she's been bottling up, but while afraid, his daughter still looks determined, ready for a battle. "You stay close to me, to your dad, and you shoot first."
"Got it," Alexis nods, filing out the door behind Ryan, and Kate turns to him.
"Same goes for you, Castle," she states, reaching out to cup the back of his neck with her palm, arching on the toes of her boots to smear a kiss to his mouth. "You stay right next to me."
"Easiest instruction I've ever received," he grins against her lips, his hand at her waist as they turn for the door, their belongings split between the three of them and strung across their backs.
He spares one last look to the inside of her apartment before he exits with Kate, trots down the hall with the rest of their newly formed group, Ryan jogging behind them. He divides his gaze between his daughter and Kate, vows to do whatever is necessary to keep them safe once they step out into whatever awaits them outside the apartment walls that had become their haven.
Before the invasion, she would make the walk to the Franklin street subway station on a daily basis, the routine quick and simple, but today, it felt as if they ran for miles just to make it to the tunnel's entrance.
The ground still trembled beneath their feet, the cracks in the sidewalks threatening to rip open and swallow them whole, while the sky glowed orange with smoke and beams of blue, gunfire and explosions thundering through the air. Esposito fires a few shots and Rick does too, hitting anyone who aims a weapon in their direction, foreign bodies decorating the street, but Kate, Ryan, and Alexis are able to preserve their bullets for the time being.
The bombs going off in the street, the cause for the tremble of the earth beneath them, are taking out most of the enemies anyway.
Beckett does her best to keep her gaze trained on the flash of Alexis's hair in front of her, the reassuring brush of Rick's shoulder bumping hers every few steps, and the shout of Ryan from behind.
She can't make out what her former colleague is saying, her hearing muffled by the bombardment of noise, but her heart exalts with relief once they're descending the dirty steps into the darkness of the subway station. A light on Esposito's gun illuminates the long abandoned train station, glinting off the smudged turnstiles, and Kate sucks in a shallow breath, keeps her gun raised as they scan the area.
Dust and debris trickle through the grates overhead and Esposito wordlessly points towards the tracks down below, leads them over the turnstiles and to the edge of the waiting area.
"Base is two miles from here. We'll walk the tracks, stick close to the walls," he instructs calmly, his voice low but just loud enough for them to hear over the muffled riot overhead. "I'll jump first. Red next, Beckett and her boy, Ryan takes up the rear again."
Esposito disappears over the edge, his flashlight shining up towards Alexis a moment later, and Castle nods his approval when she glances back to him over her shoulder before descending to her rear on the ledge, slipping over with a quiet squeak.
"Bend your knees when you hit the bottom, helps absorb the shock from your anklebones," Kate murmurs, squeezing his bicep before she lowers to her ass on the grimy yellow cautionary line and drops from the edge, grits her teeth the second her feet hit the unsteady ground.
Esposito catches her elbow to steady her and she nods her thanks, attempts a pursed lipped smile, an apology for earlier, but the man she once saw like a brother won't spare her a glance.
Castle lands beside her with a grunt, flicking his eyes between her and Alexis as he regains his balance and Ryan jumps after him.
"Let's move," he calls to Espo and they begin their trek down the metal tracks, single file and remaining in the shadows with the dimmed light of Esposito's weapon their only guide.
They walk in silence and Kate focuses on what lies ahead, not on the rumble of the streets above them, the abandoned train they pass, eerie and swamped in dust and cobwebs, reeking of death and destruction that makes her eyes water. She focuses on Alexis in front of her, Castle behind her, and tries to ignore the panicked swell of her lungs inflating inside her chest, the horrific but reoccurring thought of the enclosed space that is the subway tunnel collapsing in on them.
Castle's knuckles graze the bottom of her spine and she reaches back for him, slides her hand into the warm embrace of his palm to calm the explosive beats of her heart, the hitched state of her breathing. Her nerves are at an all time high, the conflict of wanting to trust men who were once 'her boys' at war with the fear of the unknown, of stepping into uncertainty, a trap.
The Outsiders had turned them all against each other. Rather than banding together, working as a united front to defeat those who had invaded their home planet, human beings had become their own worst enemies. It was exactly what the aliens had wanted and it was stronger than any high-tech weaponry. It was what had sealed the fate of mankind.
Though, this journey to a potential safe place with other humans willing to fight back, revive humanity, has a strange sensation blooming to life in the pit of her stomach. An ember of hope.
"Just up ahead," Esposito whispers back to them, but Kate can't see anything except extending darkness, the beam of Esposito's light illuminating a steer of the tracks in a direction that's been out of order since long before the Arrival.
The tunnel is littered with slashes of wooden boards, the walls decorated in faded graffiti and the ground littered with garbage. Kate is just about to speak out with a question, but then Esposito shoves one of those boards out of the way, kicking a broken piece of train track to the side, to uncover a steel hatch that is barely noticeable amidst the dirt and darkness.
"The lower we go, it may feel harder to breathe," Ryan explains while Esposito struggles to turn the thick wheel until he can lift the hatch open, revealing another tunnel of blackness, this time in the form of a staircase. "But just keep calm and stick close, just like we are now."
Esposito descends first again, Alexis following after him with another reassuring glance back to Kate and Castle, and Kate steps in after her, keeping a firm grip on Rick's hand as they travel further down into the earth below.
A deafening slam makes them all jump, the echo of it bouncing off the walls that are cold and hard like steel when Kate touches her fingers to them, but it's just Ryan sealing the hatch, grunting with the effort of locking them in tight. Kate had never been claustrophobic before, but it takes all of her concentration to continue breathing without issue as they continue down lower into this carved out layer within the earth.
After what feels like an eternity of climbing down the steep set of stairs, a freezing burst of air slaps the exposed skin of her face, the ground evening out beneath her feet, and Rick crowds at her back, the heat of his chest a welcome juxtaposition.
A red glow illuminates the room and Esposito powers off his flashlight, reaches forward towards a keypad attached to a wall that obstructs them from going any further, a huge steel door resembling a vault standing sentinel in front of them.
"State your name and verification code, please," an automatic female voice commands from overhead, a speaker positioned somewhere Kate can't see.
"Javier Esposito, code number 73964."
"Kevin Ryan, code number 73495. Three survivors in accompaniment," Ryan relays, stepping up beside Rick, and offering Kate a reassuring lift of his lips, and strangely enough, it has irrational tears clogging her throat.
She never thought she would see Kevin Ryan again, let alone smiling, and it washed relief through her blood.
"Access granted."
The thick, vaulted door unlocks and both Ryan and Esposito move forward to haul it open, an impressive amount of strength necessary to widen the entrance enough for them all to pass through.
But Kate stumbles to a stop once they're past the entryway.
"Whoa," Castle mumbles at her side, his eyes shining under the lighting – actual, electricity driven lighting – overhead.
A long hallway of grey walls stretches out before them, leading to an opening in the distance where they can see people milling around, their voices traveling down the hallway to meet them.
"How many people do you have here?" Kate whispers.
"About seventy," Esposito answers, leading the way once more. "About twenty state and military leaders, around fifty survivors including us. But it's a three hundred person capacity bunker."
"How the hell could they fit something like this underground? Let alone without arising any suspicion?" Kate questions, her eyes roving the walls that are like rock beneath the trail of her fingertips, uneven and rough, strong and unbreakable.
"Like we said, the government had taken precautions long before the Arrival. Turns out they started building this thing decades ago, little by little," Esposito explains, sounding a bit put out as he relays the information, and she doesn't blame him. "But as far as we know, most of the people who actually put in the work didn't even make it here."
Castle flexes his fingers within the grasp of hers, unsettled by the news, and he isn't alone. Uncertainty still swirls through her guts, distrust and the instinct to fight their way to safety buzzing through her veins, sizzling in her fingertips.
"There's enough food for everyone, water too?" Alexis inquires, falling back to flank Castle's opposite side, looping her arm through his. Her other hand still flirts with the gun at her hip and Kate can't seem to remove her fingers from her weapon either.
It feels too good to be true, too strange to be surrounded again by people who are real humans, and not out to kill them.
"Plenty," Esposito nods without turning back, slowing to a stop at the mouth of the massive room the size of an auditorium, filled with foldable tables and chairs, littered with people dressed in uniforms like Ryan and Espo, and others dressed in street clothes like Kate and the Castles.
"We have to check you in, explain how you got here, but after that, you'll have your own rooms, beds too, and three meals a day," Ryan adds, the anxiety that had deepened the lines of his face draining under the soft lights of the bunker space. "It's not great, but it's better than being out there."
"You've been here for the most part, though, right? Safe? What would you know about being out there?" Castle asks, irritation but no malice in his tone, and Ryan deflates a little, nods his understanding.
"Just - just from what I've seen and heard, of course. "
"You never answered my question," Alexis pipes up. "Why wait this long to go out looking for survivors?"
"It took awhile to get adjusted here, strategizing and training, figuring out the species overtaking our planet. Preserving the human race is a priority, but we didn't have the resources to start looking for survivors until this month. Besides, we knew anyone who lasted this long were the ones worth saving," Esposito answers for Ryan, but his gaze is trained straight ahead, eyes like a soldier, and Kate recoils at the response.
"Worth saving?" she repeats incredulously.
"Just the way it is, Beckett," he replies with a shrug. "You and your people are here. That's all that should matter."
"I should get you guys checked in," Ryan says quietly, nodding towards one of the main corridors lining the surrounding walls. The place reminds Kate of a labyrinth, a spider web system of hallways that led to this main room that they had spilled into from the subway entrance, and they leave Esposito to follow Ryan down another thread.
"The invasion changed him, Beckett," Ryan explains once they're deeper into the hallway, Esposito no longer in sight. "He wasn't always like this, but it's like he went into autopilot once we got here, straight into soldier mode after he lost Lanie-"
"Lanie?" she whispers, grief rushing up from her chest without warning, and Ryan stutters in his step, an apology flaring in his eyes. "Lanie didn't make it?"
Ryan hesitates; Castle squeezes her hand tighter. "She made it. Just… not as herself."
Kate purses her lips, inhales through her nose to quiet the thrum of outrage, and swallows it down.
"Espo is the one who had to end it and it just - it ruined him, Beckett. Our friend is still there, just… buried beneath it all."
Kate nods her understanding, too stunned by this series of revelations – her former teammates alive, her former best friend dead, an underground military base housing survivors and artificial lighting – to respond with anything more.
"I think you'll like the man in charge, though," Ryan murmurs once they reach another door at the end of the shorter passageway, knocking twice before pushing the door open.
"Why am I not surprised?" a familiar voice huffs and Kate's breath catches.
"Roy?" she states in disbelief, watching Captain Montgomery stand from a shabby wooden desk in the middle of the room, dressed in a simple uniform like the boys, his a navy blue rather than the customary black. "I cursed myself a million times for making you take the day off when this all started, Beckett, but somehow, I knew you'd find a way to make it on your own."
Montgomery comes forward to clap her on the shoulder, gives her a genuine smile despite how exhausted he looks standing in front of her, how he appears years older rather than months, before he turns his eyes to the man and the teenager standing next to her.
"Sorry, I should have properly introduced myself. I'm Beckett's former police captain, Roy Montgomery," he announces, holding his hand out to Rick first, and then Alexis. "Nice to meet… wait, Rick Castle?"
"I thought the name 'Montgomery' sounded familiar," Castle gasps. "You came to a few of my poker games, didn't you?"
"Indeed I did," Montgomery nods, flicking his eyes down to Castle's opposite hand, still twined with Beckett's at their sides, and quirks an eyebrow at the two of them. "You came here with Detective Beckett?"
"I met him and Alexis after it all happened," Kate supplies, tightening her grip on Castle's hand.
"I'm glad," Roy sighs, something in his eyes going dull. "Most of the people here came alone."
"Evelyn? The kids?" Kate questions softly, but her former captain gives a gentle shake of his head. "Captain, I'm-"
"We've all lost people, found people too," he offers with a strained spread of his lips. "Ryan will show you to some available rooms and we can have a briefing in the morning. You all look exhausted."
"So do you."
"Don't sass me, Beckett. I've been protected by walls for the majority of this thing, you haven't. Go get a few hours of rest without having to keep one eye open," her captain instructs with the same look he used to give her when she would fail to leave the precinct before midnight. "We'll catch up, have that proper briefing in the morning."
The three of them nod and follow Ryan back out into the hall, towards another short corridor that is lined with doors every few feet they pass.
"Okay, so uh, I don't know how you want to do this," Ryan starts, opening one of the doors, to reveal a square room with two beds inside, made up with plain white pillows, white sheets and flannel bedspreads, each pushed up against the far walls, and a table separating the two of them, much like a small motel room. "We have rooms like this, which are usually for families, but we also have the single rooms, which are smaller, but obviously more private. And some rooms even have bunk beds-"
"Two bedroom is fine," Kate interrupts, adjusting the strap of the backpack beginning to weigh heavily on her shoulders. "Thanks Ryan, really."
Ryan hesitates, but darts in to embrace her in a quick hug. "We're really glad you're alive, Beckett. Team isn't the same without you."
Kate releases Rick's hand to return Ryan's brief embrace, forcing a smile for him when he pulls away and trots down the hall. "Signs for the showers are on the wall, extra clothes are in the same section, and I'm room 303 if you need me!"
"I like Detective Ryan," Alexis states once he's disappeared, leaving the three of them standing in the doorway of the foreign bedroom.
"Way more than Esposito," Castle scoffs, the first to step inside, gingerly setting his pack down on the foot of the slightly bigger bed, glancing back to Kate with a hesitancy that she wants to eradicate as soon as possible.
"Esposito wasn't like that before," Kate sighs, nodding for Alexis to enter first before easing the door shut behind them. "This world now… it's changed us all in one way or another."
"Were Ryan and Esposito your partners in the NYPD, Kate?" Alexis asks, descending to the opposite bed and releasing a pleasant sigh as the slim mattress sinks beneath her weight. It's the first time his daughter has seen a bed in at least three months, a sleeping bag on the living room floor her resting place for too long, and Kate grins at the sight of Alexis in a moment of respite.
"Yeah, and Montgomery was my captain," she nods, dropping her bag next to Rick's, stepping around him to mimic Alexis and relish in the softness of an actual mattress beneath her body.
"And Lanie?"
"Alexis," Castle murmurs with a shake of his head, but Kate waves him off.
"She was my best friend." Kate eases towards the wall, making space for Castle on the bed and nodding her head for him to join her when he remains standing too far away. "But from the sounds of it, she… they got her too."
Kate folds her arm onto the pillow, rests her cheek to the angle of her elbow, and releases a deep breath, tries not to imagine Lanie in any other way than how she remembers her.
"The same thing happened to Gram," Alexis confesses quietly, scraping back her bangs from her forehead, and Rick drops heavily to the edge of the bed, a sigh racing past his lips and a slump inhabiting his shoulders. "It was before we met you, not long after it started. We were on the move and she was on first watch that night."
Kate divides her gaze between the girl across the room, pulling her knees to her chest, and the man settling down next to her on the bed, his eyes empty, trained on the ceiling as his head hits the pillow. Her heart is already clenching for the sucker punch this story is sure to deliver and her hand travels to rest on Castle's chest, her palm over the ragged beat of his heart, as if she can soothe the blow it'll bring him too.
"I woke up to her trying to smother me with a pillow. Dad thought she was going crazy, but then… when he pulled her off of me, he saw the eyes," Alexis recounts, picking at the pattern of the thin comforter, her eyes dry, but alive with memory, repressed trauma. "He had to-"
"I did what I had to do," Castle interrupts, one of his hands lifting to cover Kate's at his chest, pinning her fingers to his sternum through the unsteady rise and fall of his breath, but her lungs have seized with silent horror. He'd had to kill his mother, hadn't he? "It wasn't her, Pumpkin."
"I know," Alexis says without hesitation. "I know."
"And no matter what happens, it's my job to protect you," he adds, turning his head to shoot her a reassuring smile that Alexis returns with her eyes a soft, calming blue. "I'll do anything. For both of you."
His gaze drifts from Alexis back to Kate, the smile still in place, but his eyes fierce with promise, so much in the depths of cerulean that it nearly chokes her up, steals her heart in a way nothing ever has before. Kate shifts onto her elbow beside him, leans forward to press a firm kiss to his mouth. She realizes a second too late that his daughter is watching, that Alexis had yet to learn of their most recent relationship development, but when she abruptly pulls back, lifts her gaze, she notices a knowing smirk on the girl's lips.
Of course his daughter had had her suspicions about them, but had they really been so bad at hiding it?
"That goes both ways. We stick together, the three of us," Kate affirms, easing back onto her side while Alexis does the same, tugging the comforter over her body, over her shoes and the pistol she won't let go of.
"Because we're family?" Castle inquires, quirking an eyebrow at her, and Alexis does the same, a swirling combination of hope and curiosity flickering in her gaze.
"I meant what I said," Kate replies, snagging the blanket and pulling it up to cover them both. She won't kick off her shoes either, neither will Rick, and her gun is still holstered to her waist, the rifle beside the bed and within Castle's reach.
"That's a yes," Castle grins, eliciting a chuckle from Alexis with his exaggerated wink, and Kate pinches his side as she molds her body to fit against his, watching the subtle quickening of his breath, the ripple of surprise in his eyes, with smug satisfaction.
She may have told him she loved him mere hours ago, may have kissed him a few times since, but they'd never done this – shared space and body heat so intimately.
"It's a yes," she confirms with a grin, slowly snaking her leg around Castle's beneath the blankets, biting back her laughter as his breath hitches. "Now, go to sleep, Lex. You look exhausted."
And she knows she's right when Alexis simply nods, her eyes already falling shut. "Wake me if we gotta go," she slurs, tugging the blanket up closer to her chin.
"We will, Pumpkin," Castle promises, sliding his arm around Kate's shoulders, waiting until Alexis's breathing has eased into a steady rhythm to return his gaze to Kate. "Should one of us stay awake, keep watch?"
"Yeah," Kate sighs, allowing her hand to tread lightly over his chest, migrating up the path of his throat to caress the thickening stubble peppering his jaw, his cheeks. "But I don't think I'll be able to stay awake. And neither can you."
"Do you think we're safe? Truly safe?" he asks her while her fingers traverse the shell of his ear, smooth over his temple, eliciting a soft rumble of appreciation.
"For tonight, yes," she whispers, willing herself to believe it. "And if anything happens, we've all become such light sleepers."
"True," Castle chuckles, catching her hand and smearing a kiss to her palm, touching her fingertips to his lips, and Kate curls her fingers there, tries to catch each individual brush of a kiss. "You're the only reason we're here, you know?"
Her brow furrows and she lowers her fingers to his chin. "What do you mean?"
"Ryan and Esposito came back for you. If it wasn't for you, Alexis and I-"
"Stop," she murmurs, pleads, coaxing him to lie on his side to face her.
"Kate, I owe you-"
"Shut up, you don't owe me anything," she growls, fisting one of her hands in the neck of his t-shirt, inching closer to share his pillow. She had never been good with relationships in the past, with sharing space and pieces of herself, with sharing words. But he needs them, deserves them, and she does her best to articulate the overflow of emotion that roars in her chest. "You don't owe me anything, Castle. I – I wish I had met you and Alexis before the world ended, I wish… for so much, but despite the bad timing, I'm still here with you. I have you, your daughter, in my life and you… you make me happy, Rick."
His eyes glimmer with delight. "Yeah?"
"Even happier than I was before the invasion," she admits on a sheepish laugh. "So yeah, consider us even."
Castle gives her a real smile, one that stokes that ember in her stomach, coaxes it to sparkle with the beginnings of a flame, a slow burn as he leans in to kiss her mouth, his tongue painting the seam of her lips until they part for him. She swallows down the moan the taste of his mouth, the attention he pays to her bottom lip and the burn of his body against hers, evokes, fists her fingers in the soft locks of his hair to control the flare of need spreading through her system.
"I love you," he gasps, just loud enough for her to hear over the deafening pound of her heart in her ears. "I love you, Kate."
She touches her lips to the bone of his cheek, inhales the scent of sweat, oil, and the rich aroma of Richard Castle beneath. They have to stop, cannot go any further with his daughter sleeping feet away, and he knows it, the wide spread of his palm between her shoulder blades, the soothing stroke of his fingers through her hair, confirms it.
But the grin of his lips against her forehead is far from innocent. "And I can't wait to show you."
Kate shudders and buries her face in his neck, nips at his skin when he laughs at her. "I hate you. Go to sleep."