For once it was his phone that woke them.
"Who's it?" she muttered, burying her face in his pillow as he extricated his arm from around her waist to stretch for the nightstand on her side of her bed. He looked down at his iPhone screen with confusion.
"An old friend of mine," he said, his voice still gruff with sleep but coming alive with perplexity.
"Old friend know what time it is?" she grumbled because any friend that called at five in the morning was no friend of hers.
Castle shot her an apologetic glance and slipped his fingers into her hair as he answered the call.
"Damian," he greeted, soothingly stroking his fingers through her tousled locks, grazing her scalp with his short nails, and she closed her eyes, pressed her forehead into his hip. "Nice to hear from you, is everything-"
Kate's eyes opened at the pause, lifted to study Castle's face in the early morning darkness as his features contorted with uncertainty.
"I – yeah, I do have a working relationship with the NYPD."
His hand fell away and she raised her head, curling her fingers at his thigh to steal his attention. She already didn't like the sound of this.
"Sure, give me half an hour."
"Wait, what's going on?" she questioned as he began to unfurl the sheet tangled around his waist. "Why is this guy asking about your connection to the police?"
"Damian Westlake is my old friend from boarding school. His wife was murdered this morning and I think the officers on the scene are treating him like he's a suspect," he explained incredulously, tugging open the early Valentine's day gift she had given him - a drawer for his belongings at her place.
She shrugged even though he wasn't paying attention to her. "Well, maybe he is one."
Castle stopped in his tracks and gave her a disbelieving glare over his shoulder, as if she had spoken something highly offensive.
"Kate, this guy would never kill his wife. He wouldn't kill anybody."
"How can you say that? You know just as well as I do that-"
"Not him," he insisted, vehemently, defensively, surprising her a little.
She opened her mouth to argue just as her phone began to vibrate, dancing across her nightstand and causing the already present tension between them to spike. When she saw it was dispatch calling, she said a silent prayer that she would not receive the case of Damien Westlake's murdered wife.
Her prayers went unanswered.
Castle looked uneasy as he waited for her to get dressed, but when she stepped into her heels, he caught her by the hips, brought her against him for a kiss that made her wish they could crawl back into her bed and press the reset button on this morning.
He kissed her like they were going into battle.
"At least now I can tell Damian the finest detective in New York City is working his wife's case," Castle pointed out lightheartedly as he dropped his lips to her forehead before stepping away, but the dread was a heavy stone in her stomach.
Castle was already too involved, too emotionally invested with a biased view that could interfere with her investigation. They had butted heads on cases before, but when it became personal – which it almost always did with them – it was dangerous.
They were going into battle alright, probably with each other.
She hated his stupid espresso machine. Drinking the brown sludge their old coffeemaker brewed was better than dealing with the uncooperative, complicated, over extravagant appliance that always burned her hand with its random fits of steam. She had probably just pressed the wrong button, but as far as she was concerned, it was his fault the contraption had seared her fingers. All his fault, everything.
"Can I give you a hand with that?"
Kate squared her jaw at the sound of his voice in the break room's entryway, soft and apprehensive, but she was still so angry with him. He had questioned her ethics as a cop, turned her into the villain for doing her job and it hurt coming from him, because he was supposed to be her partner, the person who stood beside her and her judgment without question. He was supposed to be on her side.
But he was most definitely not. And neither was his coffee machine.
"I got it," she snapped, trying again to coax the machine into just giving her one damn cup of caffeine before she lost her mind.
"You just have to-"
"I said I got it."
As if to spite her, the contraption blew again and she struggled to contain the billowing steam to no avail, feeling her face flush in frustration and embarrassment. But then he was coming up behind her, pressing his back to her chest, working his arms around her to get at the plethora of buttons. His fingers moved efficiently and the beautiful dark liquid came streaming out of the spout with no trouble.
Stupid, prejudiced machine.
She huffed, but Castle wrapped his arms around her waist, held onto her before she could escape and brushed a chaste kiss to the side of her neck.
"I hate fighting with you."
It wasn't an apology.
"What are you doing here?" she sighed, keeping her eyes on her filling cup.
She had told him to go home after they had fought in this very same room yesterday and he had stormed off without protest, fuming over her unjust investigation and how she was just another clueless cop slandering his friend. She felt foolish for it, but she had still expected him to call that evening, like he always did when they spent a night apart, and when he hadn't, she'd fallen asleep with tears staining her pillow.
She hated fighting with him too.
"When I told Damian the best detective in New York was working his wife's case, I meant it. And I'm - I'm sorry to have doubted you," he murmured into her skin, his thumbs working in slow circles over her abdomen. "If you let me back, I promise I will do my best to remain objective."
Kate repressed the scoff, but untangled his arms from her waist, retrieved her finally made cup of coffee, and started for the conference room overflowing with Westlake's financial records – more seemingly damning evidence for Castle's idolized friend.
"That may be harder than you think."
The next day, as Damian Westlake was escorted into a police cruiser for the murder of his father all those years ago, she waited for him in the glow of red and blue against the building. Castle came down the concrete stairs with his shoulders slumped and his head down, such heavy disappointment claiming his usually bright face.
"I'm sorry I ruined our Valentine's Day," was the first thing he said once he reached her and she cocked her head to the side.
"It isn't ruined," she murmured, subtly slipping her hands inside his pea coat, splaying her fingers over the cage of his ribs. "I still plan on taking you out to a candlelit dinner in a couple of hours, wearing that new dress I bought last week, and seducing you into spending the night with me."
He arched an eyebrow, but grinned down at her – some of that sadness dissipating. She knew his heart wouldn't be all in tonight, that a part of him would mourn his misplaced trust in someone he had grown up admiring so greatly, but that was okay. She could be there for him through this.
"Walk you home?" he asked and she nodded, hiding their intertwined hands in one of his coat pockets.
"About what you said the other day," she started as they strolled away from the Westlake's apartment and further down the sidewalk, because this had been bothering her since the moment it had come out of his mouth and she had been waiting for the right moment to bring it up. "You would still be a writer. No matter if Damian had encouraged you all those years ago or not, I'm positive you still would have become an amazing writer, Castle. Because someone would have seen your talent sooner or later, someone would have believed in you just as much as Damian had, just like I do now. You would still be you."
They had come to a stop at the crosswalk and he was staring down at her, love and gratitude brimming in his clearing blue eyes, and she wished they were already at her apartment so she could take him upstairs with her, have a little pre-dinner date.
"You believe in me?"
She huffed a gentle laugh, took a moment to affectionately palm the side of his face.
"Of course."
"Thank you, Kate," he replied softly, glancing behind them at the officers already driving away before dusting a kiss to her temple. "For the record, I believe in you too."
Castle showed up at her apartment later that evening to pick her up for their dinner date with an armful of white lilies - her favorites. He wasn't completely recovered from watching his mentor be led away in handcuffs, but seeing Kate so brilliantly dressed and flushed with excitement did lift his spirits.
He hadn't treated her too fairly over the last few days, he hadn't even been sure tonight was still going to happen after how he had acted, but after they had come to a truce amidst the investigation, she had reminded him of how understanding she could be. She had reminded him that she wanted to be there through everything, even the difficult parts, be his partner. The apologies that she had waved off earlier as he had walked her to her apartment still felt inadequate.
"Ready?" he asked once she had replaced the old flowers with the fresh bouquet in the vase on her kitchen countertop.
She answered, but he was too distracted to catch her words. He couldn't help marveling at the sinfully tight, deep purple dress she wore. The silk fabric was so soft under his fingers when he slid his hands to her waist, and as they smoothed across her back and he felt the deliciously bare expanse of her skin, he was tempted to convince her that they spend the holiday in her bedroom.
"C'mon Castle," she chuckled knowingly, placing her hands on his chest and walking him backwards towards the door. "Feed me first."
"Oh, wait," he murmured before she could quite literally push him out the door.
Their last Valentine's Day together had been stinted and awkward, the two of them still new at this relationship thing, and he had been too afraid to buy her anything, too afraid to overstep, but this year he produced a jewelry box from the inside of his suit jacket.
Her eyes flickered down to the gift in his hand.
"It's not a ring, promise," he said as she accepted the little black box and Kate rolled her eyes at the assurance, but flipped the lid open nonetheless.
Castle watched her hopefully as the amusement left her face and her lips parted in soft surprise.
"I know it's not as special, not like the gift you gave me, but when I saw it, it - it reminded me of you, and you could still probably wear it at the precinct since it's not too flashy and-"
"It's perfect," she whispered, lifting one hand to his cheek and carefully extracting the bracelet with the other.
He had never put much thought into buying a gift for a woman, usually just picking the most eye-catching necklace or the most sparkling pair of earrings in the store, or even giving them the money to buy a present for themselves (at least that had been the easiest course of action with Meredith), but Kate was different. Kate was special and he had wanted sincere thought put into what he bought her, especially after she had given him a piece of her space earlier in the week. He already had some room in her closet, but the gesture of owning one of the drawers in her bedroom felt more intimate and meaningful and he wanted his gift to match.
He had spent days searching, quickly giving up on browsing in well-known places like Harry Winston or Tiffany's, and eventually ending up scouring the internet instead. When he ventured on to a site of handmade, designer jewelry one night, it took him all of ten seconds to spot it.
The unique, gold bracelet made up of thick, braided brown thread and rows of skull heads had caught his eye immediately and he had ordered the jewelry before he could think better of it. It had been such a far step from his comfort zone to purchase something he thought she might like and for a week, he regretted the decision and almost bought her diamonds.
He was glad he had stuck with the skull bracelet.
"I love it," she beamed up at him, withdrawing her hand from his face and fastening the bracelet around her wrist. He helped when her fingers fumbled, smoothed his thumb over her metacarpal bones. "I love it," she repeated, drawing him down for a kiss, taking a moment to sweep her tongue past his lips, stroked it over his in a maddeningly slow form of gratitude.
She slid her hand down his arm, tangled their fingers, and guided him out the door.
And despite the last few days – the fighting, the accusations, the sadness – they still had a nice dinner in a romantic, but secluded restaurant in Tribeca. She still flirted with him, convinced him to come home with her – as if he had planned to do otherwise – and when they returned to her apartment, she slammed his back into her front door.
"Beckett," he chuckled between the sloppy kisses she smeared across his lips, his jaw, his throat. "Slow down."
She'd had too much wine with their shared dessert - her favorite brand, the kind that made her body all warm and loose and needy - and he had been forced to endure the longest taxi ride of his life with her body pressed against his, her lips assaulting him incessantly with ferocious intent.
"Shh, Castle," she grinned, nipping at his ear. "I've been waiting all day to cheer you up."
He stilled her for just a moment, held her body to his in the form of a hug, because he had almost forgotten the kind of day they had endured before this, how miserable he had been. She made him forget all the bad and embrace the good.
He loved her.
"You already cheered me up, Beckett."
He lifted her up, took her to bed, and made sure she knew how grateful he was.