Hey guys. I apologize for how long it has taken me to write this down and it's not even as long as my other chapters.

My excuse for it? Well, life happened.

Hope you like this one.

CHAPTER 5: HIDE FROM ME

April, 3rd

This is what you should know about me: I'm bland.

I'm milk. Worse, I'm water. Worse yet, I'm a water glass – at least

water can change shape or become some other form, like ice or vapor.

Instead, I'm bland and rigid and everyone can look right through me

and see that there's nothing. I've got nothing.

I'm walking wallpaper.

Gregory Galloway – As Simple as Snow

Dusk slowly descends upon Brussels as Kate and Rick continue with their game of questions. Kate is surprised about how well-behaved Rick is; he doesn't pick at her, with unwanted questions and intrusions into her private life. He does ask her if she has a boyfriend, though.

She just laughs and shakes her head.

(She also notices how he seems all too happy about that.)

They grab lunch to-go in a little restaurant and sit down on a bench in a park next to Quai a la Houille, green trees surrounding the pathways waving through the park. There's a playground situated in the center of the park, and Rick sways for a moment with the weight of all the things he could've had; little girl with bright blue eyes, tugging on his hand impatiently, 'Daddy, come on', he would hear, then pick her up and swing her around and blow a raspberry into her tummy and then she'd run away, laughing, towards the playground.

It hits him with a force he doesn't expect.

"Are you okay?" Kate asks and grabs his carton of Chinese when it looks like it's about to fall to the ground. Rick looks at her and convinces himself that it's okay as long as Kate's with him and he's not in New York – he wishes it was enough.

"Yes," he lies. "I'm fine. Let's eat, shall we?" And then he takes his food and dives into it with a fake smile upon his face and his eyes carefully trained away from the kids climbing the ladder to the slide in front of him.

Kate's wondering if she's done something wrong by the time Rick avoids her gaze for the third time. Maybe he just got disinterested in the story I've been telling him or he's got his head wrapped around something else, Kate thinks, but somehow, she knows it's not her fault, judging by the way he still sits close to her, his knee brushing over her leg with his bouncing leg.

He's nervous, she realizes then. His eyes keep stranding from one spot to another, never staying too long on one spot.

"Hey, Rick," she prods, and his face swivels towards her.

"Yeah?"

"I have an idea. Come with me," she tells him, throws their empty food containers into a curiously and it makes Kate's heart flutter a bit when she sees the nervousness and the sadness disappearing from his blue eyes, instead leaving a not-so-subtle smirk on his face and more color in his cheeks.

Rick takes her hand, stands up, and with one last glance at the playground, he exits the park with her.

As they step on the street, Rick realizes they're still holding hands, with just slightly linked fingers, making him falter his step for a moment. He thinks she doesn't notice, but a second later, she has both of her hands back in her pockets and her face carefully hidden beneath the mask of her auburn hair, but she doesn't quite succeed in hiding her blush.

Rick listens to the sounds of the busy EU capital city and people going to work and people having breakfast, everything surrounding him; a New York City person, who is used to the crowded streets and noisy people, enjoys finally being able to hear something other than just traffic and talking on every step of the way.

Brussels looks beautiful, and as Rick and Kate reach the Grand Place, the main square in the city, with the old buildings looming over them, Kate reaches into her backpack and produces a black and silver Polaroid camera, then insists that Rick poses in front of The Town Hall.

She takes a picture and waits for it to appear on the Polaroid paper, while Rick asks a random passerby what else there is to see in Brussels. Apparently, you can't go wrong if you go see the European parliament.

So after Kate shows him the picture and laughs at him making a face on the photo, they try to find the parliament, but fail a few times along the way, and in the end, they just sit down in the park, bask in the afternoon sun and eat hot dogs they bought from the street vendor when Kate's stomach rumbled so hard that people around them looked funny at her.

After they finish their hot dogs, it's well past two already, and the sun falls on the planes of Rick's face, the bridge of his nose and the swell of his lips. Kate sighs internally at herself, then lies down next to him, as he rests his arms along his sides. There is a content smile on his lips, and she hasn't thought about him as beautiful in the past few hours they've known each other, but it's what he is. He's just indescribably beautiful.

When he turns to look at her and gives her a crooked grin, her stomach gallops and her mouth quirks up uncontrollably. She chastens herself, looks up at the sky and has an inner monologue that consists of don'tfallforhimdon'tfallforhimdon'tfallforhim and don'tlethimindon'tlethimindon'tlethimin. It causes her head to hurt, but she decides to take it for the sake of her fragile heart.

Somewhere around when her eyelids start dropping and the light breeze brushes through her hair, Kate hears Rick's voice somewhere close to her.

Her eyes slip back open and she presses her cheek against the green grass. Rick is really close. Too close for her to consider it appropriate for right now. So she pushes him back with a hand to his forehead and curses when a few strands of his hair slide through her fingers, teasingly caressing her skin and making her shiver inside.

"What are you doing?" she finally croaks out.

"I'm watching you."

"Why?" Rick smiles and reaches up to tug her hand away from his forehead to his chest, where he entwines her fingers with his. "Because you're beautiful."

Kate is pretty sure that by now she's colored bright red all over her face and her neck, but still keeps the hope that he doesn't see it. And then he smirks and shatters that hope in a millisecond.

Kate becomes aware of the warmth in her belly then, and extracts her hand from his out of caution. "Thank you," she doesn't forget to say.

After that, they lie on their sides, facing each other. Kate's eyes look bright green, almost as if they were a mirror image of the grass below her lovely cheekbone. She has a little smile painted on her face, right on the edges of her mouth: that laugh lines that trail from the curl of her nose to her lower lip.

She looks divine in that moment, with the sun shining down on her warm body and the sweep of her eyelashes against her pale skin. Rick tries to think back and remember a woman who'd look lovelier than Kate, but he finds nothing. In the darkest and deepest corners of his writer mind, he finds no one more beautiful than Kate.

And he's selfishly glad to be able to look at her now, but he despises not being able to lift his hand and draw goose bumps onto her skin with just the pads of his fingers, and his mouth.

With that thought, he remembers Meredith and how he used to adore her beauty, too, but with her come the memories of an unlived life of an unborn beloved.

Rick shuts down again and looks away from the entrancing eyes in front of him to the skyline of the trees against the sky above his head.

"Rick…"

"Hmmm?"

"Tell me a story." With that, he looks, surprised, at her and opens his mouth, unsuccessfully trying to form words. Kate laughs and flicks his chin with her pointer finger. "Just tell me a story, Rick. You're a writer, you should have a big imagination, shouldn't you?"

Rick smiles slyly and nods. "I do have a very… big imagination. And of course you'll get your story, Miss Beckett. But just tell me the genre, so it'll be easier for me."

"The genre, hmm… Let's say sci-fi. I gathered from your passion about Star Wars, that you must love it, so what the heck. Tell me a sci-fi story."

Rick grins and cups her cheeks with his palms, excitingly murmuring, "You are going to love this!" He releases her immediately after (leaving Kate freaking out inside her head when she wishes his hands would stay on her skin), and starts weaving a story, with a twisted plot, which he sometimes forgets even himself and Kate has to help out.

By 6 PM, they realize they've spent whole afternoon in the park talking, so they stop with the story even as Rick jokes that they could write a novel together, based on the ideas that keep flowing between them.

"No, thank you. I'd rather keep my sanity, while I'm still young," Kate throws back to him instead, and chuckles as Rick pouts and follows her out to the street.

Thoughts?

Sorry if it's not as good as the other ones. I kinda just wanted to get it up here.

Ariela