It's 4.30 in the afternoon and Kate Beckett is running out of things to do.
She's cleaned her kitchen spotless, vacuumed everything - even her bookshelves - done her laundry, washed her hair, and even watched a guilty episode of Temptation Lane. She shouldn't be this restless, this unable to entertain herself. Not after just one day of unemployment. What is she going to do with all the days ahead? What if she never finds another job? What other jobs can an unemployed ex-cop who doesn't want to be a security guard even do?
I know. We'll go to Hollywood, and you can work as a consultant on some procedural where they never listen to a word you say, and I'll hang out on our back deck in Malibu writing scripts about a beautiful tv show consultant who solves crimes in her spare time, waiting for you to come home so I can ravish you.
God, even in her head he can still make her smile.
She left him after breakfast, after one more heated make-out session against the kitchen counter threatened to become an all-out session on the kitchen floor. Apart from that not being the most comfortable place in his otherwise very comfortable loft to make love, the last thing she wants is for Alexis to find out there's been a seismic shift in their relationship by walking in on them while they're in the middle of making the earth move. Just the thought of being caught in the act by someone's child is enough to make her blush like a twelve-year-old with her first crush. Even if that child is legally an adult, it's not an experience her past relationships have prepared her for.
Of course, nothing in her past relationships has prepared her for this one. A man with a grown child, a man who loves her so much he trembles when he touches her. A man she loves, god, crazy love that makes her heart pound with something like panic, only it's not. It's just...so very, very much.
It's going to take a bit of getting used to, this feeling so much.
But also? She's more than a little bit sore now that all the adrenaline is gone. Her arms feel like they've been wrenched from their sockets and put back reversed, there's a pulled muscle in her inner thigh, and probably in the back of her neck, and none of these things are a relic of making love. That's an ache of a different sort, and she would like to be able to walk without looking like she's been on a horse for the last six months.
At that last thought, she feels her face stretching into a wide, idiotic grin. He's a bit to straddle, is Castle, a large frame that has, okay, grown a little larger since they first met. Once, he must have been as tightly sculpted as the men she usually picks, but four years of hanging around the 12th eating like a cop has covered him over with a comfortable layer of mostly happy fat. Not that she's complaining. Actually, she really likes the way he feels, like a giant warm teddy bear she can wrap her arms and legs around. It's just that certain muscles haven't had a whole lot of exercise this last year.
That's what she should do right now. Exercise. Run this off, this overflow of emotion, this odd aimlessness (she's not used to having nowhere to go and nothing to do, it's that and not ridiculously missing him when they've only been apart for what, five hours?). She's been off-schedule since she got shot, her mileage down, her old sparring matches never resumed. She got her ass handed to her on that roof, and while that was its own kind of unwinable stupidity, she's not unaware that a year ago she'd have been a much better match. Stronger, faster, more agile. She likes the feel of her body under her control; she doesn't want to lose that just because she won't be a cop anymore.
She won't be a cop anymore.
Wow.
She's so not ready to think about that right now.
It's better in the park, the pulled muscle stretching as she runs, feeling the power begin to flow through her veins as she comes to the end of the first stiff, painful mile. At last she finds her stride, breath coming easier now, wiping out that restless-on-the-edge-of-panic thing she's been fighting since she left Castle's apartment. It's still there, but smaller, like a feeling of being watched from the shadows, of forgetting something important, of being in the wrong place while something awful is happening to someone she loves somewhere else. All of which she knows is in her head, echo of the PTSD that nearly took her down earlier in the year. She doesn't want to keep running to Burke like she needs therapy to get her through the start of this relationship, but it is probably something she should talk to him about. It's going to drive her crazy if she starts feeling like she can't be away from Castle for more than five minutes without plagues of locusts (or worse) raining down.
Back in her apartment, the feeling she's forgetting something is still there. It's not the precinct, there's nothing left for her to do there. It's not Esposito; she called him when she got back from Castle's just to see how he was taking the suspension, and found him up in the Bronx, playing tag with his nieces. It's not her dad, who she wants so badly to tell, but she's not ready to talk about this yet, not just yet, her happiness all bound up in so much misery and anger and stupid, stupid bravado that almost got her killed. Again.
It clicks into place so suddenly she can only surmise that she's been completely blocking it out. As her obsession blocks the sun from that window, throwing her office into shadow, even on a bright, warm day like this.
Kate throws open the shutters holding her improvised murder board, and bit by bit, photos and printouts and post-its, begins to take it all down.
Her phone chirps at her an hour later. Him, sending through a picture of himself and Alexis, holding giant scoops of straciatella out towards the camera.
I told her. She said 'finally'. And then we went for ice cream. How are you?
Kate holds her phone out to the window, open now, a cool breeze blowing through the fronds of a small fern she's set on the sill, the late afternoon sun making the circles etched into the stained glass glow. She snaps the photo and hits send before she thinks too much about it.
She holds her breath until the reply comes, a picture of him doing the Home Alone face. Or maybe it's The Scream. Either way, it makes her laugh, disperses the watched feeling once and hopefully for all, replaces panic with joy, paranoia with love.
Oh god, she loves this man so much.
It's 7:15 when she gets back to the loft, fifteen minutes early, but she just couldn't stay still any longer, and even walking to slow down the travel time didn't help. It's crazy to be all jacked up about having dinner with someone she's known so long already, but it's a date. With Richard Castle. Okay, it's like a date, but not really a date, because a date would mean they're just now getting to know each other, and she and Castle went right past dating into forever, so it's not like she has to worry about getting her makeup just right (though she had to give up on the eyeliner because her hands were shaking too much to draw a straight line) or what to wear (though her bed is now piled with rejected choices) or what they have in common to talk about (not a problem) or getting called into work in the middle of dessert (so definitely not going to be a problem tonight).
So what is she so goddamned nervous about?
She catches the reflection of herself in the polished steel doors of the elevator as she waits for them to open and now she knows why Castle's concierge smiled so knowingly at her when she came in. She looks just a little flustered from walking too fast, a little disheveled, her colour high and her breath coming in audible little huffs. She looks like a woman in love, about to go and get her man, and for god's sake, why is his goddamned elevator so goddamned slow?
But it's Alexis who opens the door to her impatient knock, and Kate has to take a quick step back, catch her breath, jolted like she's just put her foot down on a step that isn't there. Her training kicks instinctively into gear, checking the girl's face for tells, her body posture for signs of discomfort. She's a little stiff, a little shy. Or perhaps, Kate realises, Alexis is only reflecting the way she herself feels. Because this is going to be something different between them now, isn't it? Alexis isn't going to be the distant daughter of a close friend any more. Kate isn't going to be just someone her father knows. She's going to be in the girl's life now as something else, her dad's lover, a parental figure of some sort. Perhaps one day even her stepmother, but that's too far in the future for any of them to think about right now, when she and Castle haven't even been together for twenty-four hours.
'Hi,' Kate says, and then can't seem to get any farther. Castle said Alexis was okay with this, but what if she's not, what if that cool appraising look Alexis is giving her is how she really feels, but she didn't want to hurt her Dad's feelings-
And then Alexis is giving her a hug, short and sharp. 'Don't hurt him,' she whispers fiercely into Kate's ear.
Kate hugs back before she realises what she's doing, holding the girl in place. Would she have done this yesterday? The day before? It doesn't matter, she's doing it now. She got here, however long it took, and this time she's not going to be able to keep one foot out the door. 'I won't,' she whispers back. And then, 'I'm done being an idiot. I promise.'
She feels Alexis' laugh ripple through the girl's body before she hears it. It's okay to let go now, to draw back far enough to check each other's faces for truth while things shift and reconfigure between them. It occurs to Kate that Castle's daughter will be gaining a mother at just about the age Kate lost one, and how very odd it is that she'll be there for all the milestones in Alexis' life her own mother will be missing in hers.
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
Kate puts a hand over her heart, checks for the ring silently framing the gunshot scar. She stopped wearing it two years ago for reasons she's not entirely clear about, even now. But with the murder board gone, it felt like time to put it back on. She wants her mother with her on this journey. Not for her death, but for the way she went at life full-tilt, the way Kate did too, before. She thinks maybe she's ready to have that back now, to love the way her mother loved, the tenderness and the passion, and yes, even the fights, those stupid teenaged fights that Kate wished for a long time they'd never had. She hopes now that one day she can have those kinds of fights with Alexis, the kind where it's okay to get angry because you know you're loved. And that there will be tears and hugs and apologies and ice cream when it's all done.
For now, though, it's a tentative smile, and a stepping back, letting Kate through the door.
And there he is. Looking like he wants to lick her from head to toe, like he can't believe she's here, like he didn't believe she was going to come back to him after all, and god she can't bear to wait another second to have him in her arms.
'Seriously, you two are sickening,' Alexis snorts, even though they haven't done anything yet, Kate hasn't even moved. 'I'm going to my room and giving you fifteen minutes to get that out of your system or I'm not going out with you two in public.'
'Uh-huh,' Kate agrees happily, reaching for Castle's shirt to pull him closer, close enough to drown in that magnificent, impish smile.