AN: Oh, look! A new chapter!
The next few days passed in a content but rapid blur. Alexis' graduation speech was a resounding success, not a dry eye in the house, including Kate's, much to her surprise. The girl's speech really struck a chord with her, made her realize what she might have missed out on if she had gone through with her ill-thought plan all over again. Kate thought back over the last few days, which had been hard, but they had fought through them together. The simple fact that they had persevered turned the memories into pleasant ones rather than making them seem like the brutal battles that they truly were.
One of the days was just one hard conversation after another. They sat down to watch a movie together, and Castle pulled out the same beer they had at his 'going away' party at the precinct two years prior. The beer brought back those memories, and how disappointed she had been that Gina had taken her place for what could have been the beginning of their relationship; that first trip to the Hamptons that never was, but should have been. At the look on her face, Castle pushed until she finally relented, and told him about how she was about to tell him that she wanted to go with him when Gina showed up. He looked devastated and completely upset with himself at her revelation. She just shrugged it off and they sat there in silence for a while, just sipping their beers and staring blankly at the movie that had long been forgotten.
Later, after a lot of silent self-flagellation on both of their parts, they had made it through dinner and were lying in bed together. Out of seemingly nowhere, he asked her what she had done this last summer, after she had been shot. She didn't know what to tell him, so she shot for the truth, and told him that she mostly sat out on the porch of her father's cabin wrapped in a blanket and stared out over the water for hours at a time. She explained that eventually her father had given her a pad of paper and a pen and told her to stop bottling her feelings up, or she would end up emptying another bottle to compensate. He mentioned something about energy not being created or destroyed, just transferred into another type of energy. She didn't know he was that big of a science geek, quoting the first law of thermodynamics, then she realized that she must be a science geek too for knowing which law that came from. He was right though, by bottling up her emotions, she would eventually need to take something in to fill that void, like he had. So instead of bottling it up, she released it, began journaling first, then just writing whatever came to her mind as she sat and stared out over the water. It turned out she was a bit of a romantic, a poet, or at least that's what her dad said when he found one of her poems on the floor of the cabin that had fallen from her notebook. She had snatched it up like a teenager would her diary, not prepared to share her feelings with anyone but herself. When Castle asked if she would show him one day, she was hesitant, but when he hurriedly turned over, away from her in bed, she thought he was upset, and tears began to well in her eyes.
"Castle, please, I – I just don't know if I'm ready to share those feelings with anyone, especially not you, a lot of those feelings were about you, and not all of them were warm…" her voice was small, not that of the detective, but of Kate, the girl, the woman, who had fears and dreams and fears of dreams.
He turned back over quickly, holding a thick leather journal out to her, "Kate, I'm not upset, I was just grabbing this. Maybe if you read what I was going through then, you might understand why I want to know what you were going through too?" He paused for a few moments, "Here, you take this, and I'll go write for a while or something."
She took the journal gently from his fingers and opened it as he left, expecting his neat script, but witnessing something entirely else. On the page she opened to, the words were scrawled, they seemed angry and as if they were written in haste rather than his usual deliberate, flowing script that made her feel all gooey for no apparent reason. As she read his words, she could see why they seemed angry, they were. He was mad, mostly at himself, it appeared, but further down the page she saw a number in a larger type, she skipped ahead to that, '29 days, she still hasn't called'. As she continued reading, page after page, the count increased and his writing became more and more clipped. He kept blaming her non-communication on himself, and then finally, one day, what should have been day 47, there wasn't a number, just a short entry with 'if not for Alexis, this would all be over now'. She drew a sharp breath, her eyes filling with tears again. She turned the page, expecting another entry, but found none. Confusion set in, and she flipped back to that brief, heartbreaking sentence and ran her fingers along the words. She set the book down, and sat up, intent to search him out and just give him a long, hard hug, and of course, get some clarification. When she found him, he was leaned over in his desk chair, his head in his hands, no doubt worrying over what she might think of him and the vulnerability that his journal showed. She rubbed her hand over his back and ran her fingers through his hair, gently pulling his head up to look at her. His eyes held all the fear that hers had when he had turned away from her, he was worried she would leave him over this.
"Tell me what happened on day forty-seven," she ordered softly, needing to know.
"I slipped and fell in the bathroom, hit my head on the edge of the counter and again on the floor, and shattered the glass I was holding at the time, which cut me pretty good. Alexis found me knocked out in a pool of blood about twenty minutes later, she had come to check and see why I wasn't presentable and at the front door, we had planned to go out to dinner that night. It's a good thing she found me, the doctors said, I had nicked a vein in my arm and was bleeding out pretty good by then. Alexis was freaked out of course, called 911, tried to staunch the bleeding and crying all at the same time. I didn't come around until I was in the back of the ambulance with her tearstained face leaning over me. I got some x-rays and an MRI to check and make sure my head was fine, which it was, and they insisted that I be monitored overnight for both the head injury and the blood loss." He pulled up the sleeve of his Henley, showing her a scar that she hadn't noticed in the last several days. "That was the day that I realized my life was too precious to spend pining for you when you obviously didn't care. I stopped writing in the journal, finished revising Heat Rises and went on my merry way," he said bitterly, an edge to his words, much like the shard of glass that cut him, his words cut her.
"I'm so sorry, Rick. I'm so sorry," she sobbed, pulling his head to her stomach and hugging him as tightly to herself as she could. He wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, their embrace natural despite his seated position. Tears ran down her cheeks and fell into his hair, he pulled back at the sensation, and quickly stood, cupping her face in his hands.
"Kate, you weren't the one that slipped on the wet floor, it's not your fault," he whispered, trying to take the weight off her shoulders.
"Maybe not, but Rick, what I did made you give up on me, on us," she cried softly even as he wiped the tears from her cheeks.
"Not forever, just until you came to me at that book signing," he told her truthfully, "I was bitter, mad, I admit, but Kate, when you told me about your wall, I could relate, and I was instantly under your spell again." He took a deep breath, "At least until that admission in your interrogation. I felt like a fool all over again after that, and to a degree, betrayed, by you for lying to me, by myself for even letting me get that attached to you again. We're past it now though, right? That's all over with?"
"Yes, no more lies, and no more secrets," she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "So tomorrow morning, we're going to go back over to my place and get that journal and those poems, and we're going to read through them together," she stated firmly, sure she would stick to her word if she said it with enough conviction.
"There's more you need to read of mine, then," he sighed, and pulled open his desk drawer, a black portfolio appearing from inside a hidden compartment in the drawer. Inside there were pages upon pages of an unfinished manuscript. "That is how my next book was slated to begin until you pulled me back from the edge, Kate. It would have been the end of the series, over before it really even started, just like us." He looked down into her eyes, his heavy with long hidden emotions, "but you changed that, Kate, you changed a lot of things with a few simple words. Your words on the day of the signing gave me more hope than seeing the light of the sun glint off the symbol that adorns Superman's chest."
She let out a huff of a laugh. "God, Castle, you're such a nerd," she laughed lightly, her tears finally drying up.
Though slightly surprised in the change in relationship status between the two, Alexis seemed fine with the outcome. Her father seemed genuinely happy for the first time in months, and though she knew she could blame Detective Beckett-Kate- for the depression, she could also thank her for this change for the better. So in typical teenage girl fashion, she shrugged it off and focused on more important things, like what she was going to wear to her graduation under her gown, and finalizing her plans to visit her mother in California shortly after graduation. This was a relatively new plan; seeing as her father had new plans, she decided to make some of her own.
When the ballistics came back on their victim, Costas, Ryan and Esposito were instantly worried. They argued briefly over whether or not they should interrupt Castle and Beckett's little love getaway before finally settling on not bothering them until they got something concrete, as it could have just been a coincidence. The more they looked into it though, the less likely that seemed. They went to the Montgomery's house to question Evelyn about the shooting, and discovered what had been taken. There's no good reason to take a photo album unless you're looking for someone, and if that was the case, they figured they had better let their boss and her partner in on it soon. They just needed to get some solid leads on who actually killed the guy before they plucked the lovebirds back away from the nest.
"You know, technically since Beckett is on vacation, as coworkers we aren't obligated to tell her anything…" Ryan reasoned as he leaned against the break room counter, sipping at his fresh cappuccino.
"But as friends, I don't think that would go over very well," sighed Esposito, slamming the door to the fridge after finding it empty.
"We could just say that we were taking her wishes into consideration when she told us not to call her," Ryan tried again, hoping his partner would agree. He didn't want Beckett running headlong into this thing again only to end up dead this time.
"Yeah, until a name with a lot of evidence connected to it shakes loose, we keep this to ourselves," Esposito finally agreed with a stony nod.
The car ride out to the Hamptons was both quiet and loud. The top was down on his convertible, and the wind was tousling their hair, hers more than his, as she wore it down and it whipped around her face occasionally. She seemed so carefree with the wind in her hair, her sunglasses pulled down over her eyes as she threw her head back and relished in the feel of the sun on her skin… her very exposed skin. She wore a mid-length sundress, showing off just about as much skin as he could handle, not that he was looking, he was definitely looking at the road ahead of them, not her. They didn't speak much, just small bits of chitchat here and there, that was the quiet. They talked briefly about the things they were driving past, or the song that the Shuffle Gods had chosen, but the loudness came from what sat in the trunk. In the trunk, wedged in with their suitcases, sat an innocuous looking box, a box that held every journal entry, every bit of literature, and every poetic outburst from Kate's time away that last summer. They hadn't gone through it yet, and planned to together at the house in the Hamptons.
"Geez, Castle, this is some eclectic music taste you have here…" Kate laughed softly as after a mellow Mumford and Sons song, a very risqué rap song came on in which a woman requested to smell the genitalia of her boyfriend. She went to hit the skip button, but he grabbed her wrist as she drew near.
"Wait! You can't skip it! The Shuffle Gods will look down and frown upon us and play Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift if you hit the skip button!" He attempted to dissuade her, but she was not easily moved.
"Okay, dork, but that's a risk I'm willing to take," she snorted, hitting skip.
"We clawed, we chained our hearts in vain…."
"Oh My GOD!" Castle yelled, as first he cranked the volume and then pumped one fist in the air in triumph as he drove, "I TOLD YOU! The Shuffle Gods are not to be trifled with!" He nodded along to the song, smirking as she smacked her forehead with her palm. His smirk turned into a devious grin as the chorus started, deciding that he should belt it out with Miss Cyrus. "I CAME IN LIKE A WRECKING BALL! I NEVER HIT SO HARD IN LOVE! ALL I WANTED WAS TO BREAK YOUR WALLS!" He crooned skyward.
Her embarrassment was evident, her face in her hands, or at least that's what he thought. The truth of the matter was, she had covertly pulled out her phone and was surreptitiously recording his little act as a piece of future blackmail material. When he finally glanced over and noticed her shoulders shaking in what was obvious laughter, he snaked a hand across the center console and gently ran his fingers over her bare upper back.
She whipped her head up to look at him and that when he saw the phone she held. "Oh come on, Kate! You better not have recorded that," he whined, turning the music down so it would settle under their conversation.
"Why not? You took those naked pictures of me, why can't I have a video of you singing Miley Cyrus at the top of your lungs?" She smirked at him.
"Because I can't blackmail you with those naked photos, I can only enjoy them, whereas you can either enjoy or blackmail me with that video," he bemoaned.
"You're right, I can enjoy blackmailing you with it," she teased, saving the video and putting her phone away. "Don't worry, I only intend to show Lanie, maybe the boys, and of course Alexis! We need to bond over something, might as well be over your foolishness being captured in full HD video," she taunted.
"Laugh it up Beckett, just laugh it up, maybe I won't show you where the sauna is!" he threatened, but he soon realized he had no ground to stand on.
"If you don't show me where the sauna is, how will you ever catch me in it naked and have your wicked way with me?" she intoned salaciously.
He choked on his own tongue for a few moments before he gained the ability to breathe again. "Naked?" he whimpered, swallowing thickly as the rest of her question trickled slowly through his brain, "wicked way?"
She rolled her eyes and turned the music back up as a newer Coldplay song came on. She let her head sink back into the headrest and just let the music take her away.
If this little conversation was any indication as to how their trip would go, he was excited as ever to get on with it. He revved the engine slightly, and she peeked an eye open at him.
"Careful, Castle, wouldn't want to have to write you a speeding ticket," she warned.
"Right, sorry, my foot slipped," he explained.
"That better be the only time I hear that today, and the only appendage you refer to as slipping," she pressed.
He picked up on her innuendo instantaneously, and couldn't help but volley one right back, "Oh? You sure you don't want me to depict what I'm doing to you as I slip my stiff cock into you soaking center?"
Her jaw hung open, never in a million years expecting those words to come from his mouth.
"Keep your mouth open like that and I may have to put it to a better use than catching flies, Detective," he hummed, his meaning evident with the way his eyes glanced at her, then his crotch, then back to the road.
"How much further?" she asked on a shaky breath.
"Just about there, couple more turns and we'll be there," he smiled warmly, looking forward and missing the hungry look in her eyes.
She rubbed a hand down his front, getting dangerously close to some very prominent male anatomy and breathed in his ear, "Good, because I can think of a better use for my mouth too."
AN: Well, there you have it! This final year of college isn't completely sapping me of the holy writing spirit! ... I linked all of the songs mentioned on my twitter, msmorg, if you want to have a listen.
Thanks for reading!
Feel free to review!
- Morgen
