Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop

He doesn't show up at the coffee shop for the next few days. She stops by on her way into the precinct and on her way back to pick up Al from her school. Each time, that table just inside the window with the view of the street is empty or there are strangers sitting there, laughing with one another. But no dark-haired writer with a laptop or a leather-bound notebook.

Kate never brought Al by the shop, not wanting to build up her hopes that the man would be waiting there for her, for them, and not see him.

Of course, that didn't stop Al from asking about Castle every day. "When can we see Rick?" "Has Rick called?" "Can we go get coffee, Mom?" The girl had a dozen variations that all led them to the coffee shop and disappointment.

Kate wondered what she had done to scare Castle off. Had she misread the man and not seen him lacing up his running shoes to go in the opposite direction? She could deal with his absence, but Al was the one she was truly worried about. The girl had attached herself to Castle and Kate was afraid to see what would happen if the man let her down.

Al was over Maria's house for the night, a sleepover on a Friday evening with a bunch of other girls from their class, so Kate was spending a lot of the day in the precinct. She had paperwork to catch up on and frankly, she really didn't want to face her empty apartment. Even when Al wasn't in the apartment because she was over Jim's because Kate was working late, having less than the two of them there always felt wrong. It reminded her of when she was alone, pre-Al, spending her time divided between work, keeping an eye on her dad's alcoholism, and trying to let go of the incident that had driven him into the bottle in the first place.

She's coming back from grabbing the pizza delivery from the lobby when she runs into two bodies. Somehow, she stops the small pizza box and salad balanced on top from toppling over as she trips. The man's arms grab her elbows to steady her on her heels.

"Sorry," she said, shifting the salad box to the middle of the cardboard pizza one. And then she makes another mistake. She looks up at who is still holding her elbows. "Castle? What're you doing here?"

He drops her elbows as if they've suddenly turned white-hot, tucking his hands into his pockets. "Uhh…" Castle turned his eyes toward the wall behind the desk sergeant and Kate could have sworn there was a blush creeping onto his face.

So she looked at the uniform with the clipboard in his hand, scribbling in a form. "What's going on?"

The man didn't look up but kept filling in sections. "Disturbing the peace. Mr. Castle here's a little inebriated."

Now that Kate took a closer look, the officer had a point. The writer's blue eyes were definitely a little heavier than usual but he wasn't swaying or slurring his speech too much. A man that managed to disguise his over-indulgence, but obviously not enough to fool law enforcement. "You booking him?"

"Yeah. He can spend the night in the tank to cool down."

She shook her head, placing a finger on the top of the clipboard and tilting it down. "That's okay. I'll take him." The uniform raised a brow and she just took the clipboard, signing off on a place on the form to say another officer will take custody. "We'll rest it off up on Homicide. Thanks, Officer."

Kate steadied her dinner in one hand, looped the other through Castle's arm, and gave him a nudge toward the elevators. With all of her hands taken, she lifted a knee to hit the elevator button. The car was waiting for them and she gave him a tug into the car.

"Kate, I just-"

"Shush, Castle. Wait until we're at my desk and we can worry about why you were so drunk that you nearly got arrested."

The Homicide floor was empty. It was late and most of the people for this shift were on-call only, not required to come into the precinct. Kate silently thanked whoever had created that silly rule because the world did not need to see this man even this much drunk. She sat him in the visitor's chair, Al's chair, before going into the break room to grab plates and silverware.

She set one of the plates in front of Castle, flipped the cover of the pizza box open after taking her salad off the top, and stabbing the lettuce. "So, what's wrong, Castle?" she asked, using her fork to gesture to the pizza then to his plate. "Eat."

But his hands stayed clasped in his lap, staring across the precinct at the murder board set up for their current case. Kate didn't think he was actually taking in any of the information written up there in three different types of handwriting, but she still used a hand against his jaw to shift his gaze back to her.

"Hey." Kate placed her fork in the empty plastic cover of the salad, focusing fully on the man. "What's going on?"

"She left me." The grief laced in his voice had her scooting her chair closer to him. "Because I wouldn't kick my mother out. So she left."

Kate wanted to reach out, place a hand over one of his, and give it a squeeze of comfort. But she didn't, clasping her hands together and glancing up at him. "Meredith?"

He nodded, slowly, his brows pulling together. "Just like that," he said, trying to snap his fingers but only managing to slide his fingers across each other before staring at the digits like they had failed him.

"When?"

"Last night? This morning? I don't know…" he moaned, his head falling into his hands. "How was I supposed to kick my mother out?"

It's hard, Kate thought, to see your heroes as human beings, feeling emotions and hurting and facing decisions like real people. Like they didn't live on that pedestal you put them on.

"You shouldn't have had to do that in the first place, Mr. Castle." She paused, wondering if the next comments would be crossing some line drawn in the metaphorical sand, but she decided to take the risk. "It was selfish of her to put you in that position."

He didn't speak, just rested his eyes against the heels of his hands, facing the grungy floor of the precinct. So Kate pushed back to her original spot of her desk, picking up the fork, and continuing her dinner until he was ready to talk. She sensed he needed the silence to think before he opened his mouth again.

Kate had finished the salad and was just pulling apart the small pepperoni pizza, strings of cheese still connecting the slices, when his voice broke the quiet.

"Why are you doing this?"

She looked up, peeling a pepperoni off her piece of pizza and popping it into her mouth. "Because I… Because my daughter misses you. She asks every morning, every afternoon after school, even before I put her to bed about going to check the coffee shop for you. And every time I tell her that we'll drive by and then conveniently forget because I know you won't be there since you haven't been there for days, my heart breaks a little. She's worried about you, Mr. Castle, and I hate that I have to lie to my daughter because…" Kate stopped, taking a deep breath and shaking her head. "Because she cares about you and I care about her. Transverse property of equality."

He was staring at her, his mouth hanging open a little at her rant. "Well…"

"Eat. You need the food to balance out that alcohol that had you doing goodness knows what out in public." She took a bite of her slice of pizza.

Castle picked a piece from the box, balancing it with one hand. "Singing," he said a moment before eating some. "Rather poorly, I guess." He nearly grinned when he saw that it was Kate's turn to stare but only shrugged instead. "Didn't inherit my mother's singing voice. She'll be disappointed, I'm sure." He had the slice halfway into his mouth when he shouted, "Wait, what?"

"What?" Kate asked, tearing the crust of her piece in two before biting one of them.

"Al misses me?" He sounds surprised, even to his own ears. "Why would she…?"

"I have no idea, but she does. She likes you." Kate grabbed another slice of pizza and bit it. "Keeps asking why we haven't gone to the coffee shop since last week."

"What happened with that?" he asked, leaning an elbow on the corner of her desk. "With the shooting."

Kate sighed, placing the last bites of the piece in front of her and brushing her hands off over the paper plate. "Talked to Internal Affairs and was cleared after a few hours of answering the same questions over and over again. It was justified; he didn't stop when I announced myself."

"And Al?"

"Calmed down after a day alternating between sleeping and watching movies." Kate didn't mention the fact that she had devoured one of his novels while the girl had slept, wanting to keep the extent of her love for his writing a secret for as long as possible. "I know I said it before, but thank you, for watching her while I took care of things outside."

"It wasn't a problem," he assured her, licking the grease from the pizza off his thumb. "The least I could do in the situation."

Kate got up, folding the paper plate in half and stuffing it into the pizza box, holding the top open for him to do the same with his. She gathered up the trash and started toward the break room, pizza box in one hand, her coffee mug in the other. Castle followed, his steps quieter than the click of her heels.

She poured him coffee in one of the precinct's mugs, handing it over to him before pouring her own. She had to smile when his face screwed up with the first sip. "Lethal. Should have warned you."

"I see why you go to the coffee shop," he said, his voice tight as he fought past the taste of the coffee. "But thank you, for this. Dinner and talking to the officer and just talking." Castle leaned his hip against the counter, watching as Kate sat on the table in the room, her feet swinging below her. "It all helps."

"Glad to return the favor." She sipped the coffee, used to the bitter flavor of the precinct's blend after years of getting her taste buds accommodated to it.

"So, and this might still be the immense amount of alcohol I've had tonight so you'll excuse me, what's the story behind Al?"

Kate knew the question was coming but she still sucked in a breath when it left his mouth. Now was the time, or the minutes after they heard the answer, when everyone turned tail and ran. But he had asked. "It's a bit of a story." When he only shrugged, moving to sit at the table, Kate sighed. "I was having a rough time five years ago or so. One night, it got to be too much and I let it all go. Way too much alcohol at the bar next to my building. Well, one thing, of course, led to another and let's just say that nine months later, there was Al."

"And her father? Not in the picture, but how soon afterwards?" The combination of lots of vodka and his natural curiosity left Castle with no control over his tongue.

Her exhaustion made Kate a little more willing to share. How could she resist his still-sad blue eyes as he looked up at her from the chair, his hands wrapped around the NYPD mug, his hair mussed up a bit. "The morning after." Her smile was a mix of melancholy and nonchalance as she lifted a shoulder. "Don't even know his name. Not that it matters."

"Must have been hard." Castle swirled the mug in the cup of his hands, watching the brown liquid spin into a whirlpool. "Raising her alone."

"I wasn't alone," Kate said, shaking her head. "I had my dad, my best friends, myself. Plenty of shoulders to cry on or hands to hold me up. And I needed them."

They sat for a while, drinking their coffee. Kate stared out into the bullpen, her single lamp providing most of the light in the collection of desks. Solitary. What she could have been had she not made that mistake five years ago.

But Castle was watching her. Her hazel eyes, even in the dim florescent lighting, were pretty, eddies of brown and green and gold. She wasn't exactly frowning, but he figured maybe she was thinking though of who knows what. The mug of coffee was held loosely in her hands, resting on her thigh.

"Her name." He watched her pull out of her thoughts, look over at him, a brow raised. "Any meaning behind it? I mean, Al is sort of a unique girl's name."

There's the smile, he thought as her lips turned up in the corners.

"It's short for Alexandra. She's always been Al to me, though." She took a drink, set the coffee mug on the table before pushing off. "Dad calls her Allie. The only one we haven't liked so far is Alex." Kate refills the mug, determined to get another few hours work in even if it means caffeinating herself to the point where she probably won't sleep tonight.

Castle leads the way, this time, back into the bullpen, Kate at his heels. "Middle name?"

"Why? So you can look her up on Google?" Kate teases, sitting back at her desk. When he only watches her as she clicks the end of her pen. "She doesn't have one. Family tradition."

"Interesting."

She wanted to do some work, have something to show for the night spent in the precinct rather than at home, curled up in bed while missing her daughter. But Richard Castle was sitting next to her, drinking really bad coffee, and hurting a little. So she turned to face him, hooking a foot on the desk so she wouldn't spin in a circle. "What're you going to do about the situation with your mother?"

"Help Mother get over Paul. If Meredith can't support that, then we're done."

Kate smiled softly, nodding. "Seems like a good plan." Then she turned back to her files just as he stood up. "Where're you going?" she asked, looking up at him.

"Home." He said it as if it were the obvious answer.

"No, you're not." That had him stopping in his tracks as he started to take a step toward the elevator. "I just got you out of a charge on your record. I'll drop you at your building once I finish this case file. Sit." She gestured with her pen from his chest to the chair.

He plopped back into the chair, not sure if he was angry at the woman for holding him back or delighted to be spending even a little more time with her. He hadn't worked on Nicole's little tale since his argument with Meredith, not really feeling inspired amidst the angst-filled apartment, but perhaps sitting besides Kate Beckett for a little while longer would get the words flowing again like they were supposed to be.

Kate finished the paperwork half an hour later, trudging through it while ignoring the man next to her. She threw her pen into the mug on her desk, closed the file before placing it on a few others that needed to go down to Records, and picked her keys up from the base of her photos.

"Come on, Mr. Castle. Let's get you home."

They rode the elevator down to the ground floor and Kate swung her coat on before leaving the precinct, buttoning the large black buttons on the grey coat up on the walk to the garage. Castle was at her side rather than behind her, keeping up now that some of the alcohol had worn off.

When she dropped him off in front of his building without him giving the address, Kate shrugged. "Cop memory."

Castle used the roof of the car to get out, ducking back into the car in a manner that reminded her of the last time they were outside the building. "I feel like this is déjà vu, but thanks, Kate."

"Anytime, Mr. Castle."

"Rick." Kate blinked, her brow furrowing. He only smiled, shrugging one shoulder. "I think we can move to first names here."

Her confusion transferred to subtle amusement, a shy smile on her face. "We'll see, Mr. Castle. We'll see."

Then he was closing the passenger side door and Kate watched to make sure he reached the front door, talking to the doorman, before she drove toward home.