A/N: Here's the last chapter of Third Time's the Charm! Thank you all for the reviews, favorites, and alerts - seriously. Love you all for it. To Pluto and back (since the Moon is far too close for the amount of love I feel for you all).
Disclaimer: I look a lot like a full-time college student. A female college student at that. So, I'm not Andrew Marlowe.
The snow had been falling steadily since eight o'clock that morning. Kate was sitting on the staircase, watching the white balls float down past the window. The precinct was empty – most of the officers had called in due to the mess that the streets were becoming. The only people there were her team. Someone – she assumed Castle – had dragged in a tree and the group was busy decorating it with objects they found lying around the precinct. The holiday station on the radio was sending "Blue Christmas" into the air. Ryan was crooning along to the amusement of everyone.
Christmas was a hard time for her since she turned twenty. That was the first morning that her mother hadn't awoken her up with the smells of breakfast cooking. The first morning that her mother hadn't wielded a camera like a gun, snapping photos every five seconds. The first morning there hadn't been laughter filling their Manhattan apartment around the Christmas tree decorated with mismatched ornaments that each had a story behind them. Instead, she and her father had slept late, made their own breakfasts, and silently exchanged gifts. There had been glances toward the empty spot on the couch where Johanna should have been sitting, nursing a cup of peppermint tea.
Since then, Kate had become used to spending the day alone. She would call her father when she woke up, wish him a "Merry Christmas" and assure him that she would be over the next night for dinner. Dressed in her pajamas, she would sit on the couch, watch Christmas movies all day, eating only holiday cookies and hot chocolate before going back to bed.
She pulled her hands into the dark blue sweater, playing with the fringe on her white scarf. This year was different. Everyone had drawn the overnight shift at the precinct, so she had company. It was unusual for her. Hence the reason she was hiding out on the stairwell and not hanging spare handcuffs on evergreen branches.
"Beckett?" Lanie was three steps up the staircase, holding an extra mug of hot cocoa with a dollop of marshmallow crème floating in on top. "You gonna come decorate with us?"
Kate took the mug, the warmth seeping through her fingertips. "Yeah. In a minute."
She watched the marshmallow dissolve slowly. The snow was still falling when she stood up, walking down the steps to join the group. The tree was amusing. Handcuffs hung next to snowflakes cut from old case folders, crime scene tape wrapped around it. At the top was her badge, clipped onto one of the branches. Someone had managed to scrounge up all of the presents and placed them under the tree. It was a tradition for their group to exchange gifts – limited to one per person. Every year, Kate tried to hide her gifts for the boys a little better, but someone kept tracking them down, reminding her that she worked with a group of detectives who knew their stuff.
"Are we going to wait until actual Christmas to open presents or are we doing it now?" she asked, taking a careful sip from the mug and licking away the film of marshmallow that coated her upper lip. She rolled her eyes when she caught Castle staring at her, his mouth gaping open a little. "Is Alexis expecting you to be at home tomorrow morning?"
Castle shrugged. "She'll sleep in. Plus, I told her I might be late."
"Now, then," Lanie decided with a clap.
Everyone found a seat, pulling them over to make a horseshoe around the tree. Lanie was dividing up the presents into piles. Kate curled her feet under her, then felt Castle's hand rest on her's. Without a word, she curled her fingers around his, smiling at her knees. She hoped that the little jolt of electricity she felt when he touched her never went away.
Castle went first as the newest member of the team, juggling the set of plush Angry Birds from Lanie as expertly as if he had grown up in the circus. When Esposito joked as such, Castle chucked the red one squarely at the man's face.
Ryan proudly toasted the group with the set of pilsner glasses from Castle with a call of "Slàinte!" while Esposito flaunted the booklet of passes to get out of paperwork from Kate.
It was the final box on her desk, wrapped in lavender paper with a white bow. Everyone was watching as she pulled the bow off, sticking it onto Castle's forehead playfully. His brow felt warmer than usual, but she wrote it off as too many layers in the already heated precinct. The peek of robin's egg blue through the lavender had her hesitating, her breath catching in her chest. But she continued, balling the lavender paper up and tossing it into the pile under the tree.
Kate sat, looking at the box in her hands without opening it. Her mind raced through possibilities of what could be contained in the innocent blue box that every girl dreamed of getting. Her thumb brushed across the silver scrollwork lettering declaring that it was, indeed, from Tiffany and Co. With a steadying breath, she tucked her hair behind her ear and opened the top of the box, revealing a cream ring box nestled within the robin's egg blue.
Castle watched as her eyes widened, as her breath hitched. Her fingers were shaking a little, so he could tell that she knew what was in the velvet-covered box. She turned the bottom half of the box over, tipping the ring box into her palm.
There was a collective gasp when Castle shifted off the chair that he had claimed as his own that first day in the precinct those five years ago.
"Bro, what're you-" Esposito stopped his question when Lanie slapped a hand over his mouth, her other hand covering her own mouth, hiding the huge smile.
Kate was speechless as Castle took the ring box with two fingers. Slowly, her eyes rose from her now-empty hand to his face. Her mouth hung open a little as she searched his eyes for a hint of humor that would signal some huge joke on her. But the blue eyes were all seriousness.
"Katherine Beckett," he started, wiping his palms on the thighs of his jeans, "five years ago, you walked into one of my book signings. You were a breath of fresh air, completely different from the type of woman I was used to. You certainly didn't cling or follow me around like the others. Honestly, you infuriated me because I couldn't pin you down." He looked up, saw that her brows were pulled together, not in anger, but in an obvious attempt to keep her emotions at bay.
"Over those years, I have seen you at your absolute best and your worst. I've broken your heart and you've broken mine. We've fought and made up. I've made mistakes in my life, but meeting you wasn't one of them. I will never, ever regret you, Beckett."
Kate reached up, wiping away a tear that somehow found its way onto her cheek. Her eyes flicked over to Lanie, who was obviously holding in squeals of joy by covering her mouth with her clenched hands.
"I want to be there for you every morning with coffee from our favorite café. I want to be there for you after a hard case, to make you dinner and let you fall apart if you need to. I want you to be there for me, to yell at me when I'm not writing or when I overstep on a case or forget to do the laundry. I want family dinners at Thanksgiving and more Christmases just like this one. I want to be there with you when we finally catch the man behind your mother's murder. But most importantly, I want you. You once said that you weren't the type of girl who tried out marriages. I did. But I like to think that I'm the 'third time's the charm' type.
With his thumb, he flipped open the box. Inside was the ring he and Lanie had picked out those weeks ago. Even in the dim lighting of the precinct, the diamond sent rainbows onto the ceiling and her face. Castle watched as her eyes looked from his face, down to the ring, then back up.
"Beckett, will you marry me?"
She smiled, ignoring the couple of tears that snuck past her defenses. He looked so nervous, his hand shaking just the tiniest bit as he held the ring out to her, kneeling on the dirty floor of the precinct, surrounded by their family.
Reaching out a hand, she placed it on his knee. Then, her green eyes met his blue squarely. "Yes, Castle." Her voice wasn't as steady as her gaze was, but it was full of confidence.
The expression that spread across both of their faces could only be described as pure joy. With the applause of the team as a soundtrack, Castle pulled the ring from its nest in the box and took Kate's fingertips, slipping it onto her finger. Then, in the same motion, he tugged her onto her feet as he stood up, pulling her against him.
Right before kissing her, he whispered against her lips, "I love you, Beckett."
"I love you too, Castle."
A/N: This was supposed to be the end of this story, but as I edited, I realized I left out a detail that I wanted to slip into it. But with the flow of the story, the right moment never presented itself. So there will be a short epilogue following.
Until then, review please! It takes a few moments and makes me smile.