Back to Where We Have Never Been

A/N: I love writing Johanna. She is awesome. :)

Chapter 18

A travel coffee mug landed with a soft thud on Kate Beckett's desk and she raised her head from her stack of papers to find Richard Castle sitting quietly in the chair opposite her, contently sipping on his own cup of coffee.

"Grande, skim latte, two pumps sugar-free vanilla. Just how you like it," he stated calmly, in greeting.

"It's disturbing that you know my coffee order, you know," Kate greeted back before settling back in her chair and lifting the cup to her lips in silent thank you.

"Not disturbing, observant. We've been getting coffee together at least twice a week for a month, now, and every time you order the exact same thing. It would be disturbing if I didn't know your coffee order," Castle countered, a smirk playing over his lips.

Kate leaned forward to prop her elbows on her desk, her red pen fallen forgotten to the tome of paper in front of her. "It's not going to work, you know."

Castle looked back at her, a hand fluttering to his chest in feigned innocence. "Why Professor Beckett, I don't know what you are talking about."

"I am not allowing you to come and talk to my class," Kate stated with a firm shake of her head.

Castle took another sip of his drink, a smug grin covering his face, one eyebrow quirking teasingly. "That isn't what I was going to ask."

Kate leaned a little further forward, her mouth curving up in an open-mouthed grin, her tongue pressing against the roof of her mouth just behind her teeth causing his breath to hitch as her eyes twinkled at him.

They had been doing this for the past month, since he had shown up at her office and took her out for coffee and then coerced her back to his place for dinner. They had been going out for coffee or for lunch. More days than not, he would text her, show up at her office or call her at odd hours just to talk about random topics; conducting research he would call it. Asking her questions like which was the smelliest cheese and whether she preferred goose down or memory foam pillows. He had given her the first few days of space that she had asked for until he had gotten fed up and started just dropping in on her randomly. Annoying her into submission.

It had pissed her off to no end, but the look on her face when he had sat down in the back row of her Russian Lit class has been worth it. What could he say; payback was a bitch.

She had responded in kind, her hand brushing against his as they walked down the sidewalk, her fingers lingering on his thigh or his arm as he gestured at him to make a point or to gain his attention. Not that she ever had to try very hard to do that. He was constantly thinking about her, looking at her, or reaching out to touch her: simple thing, brushing her hair back out of her face, or placing his fingers on her back to guide her through a doorway. He would help her in and out of her coat just so he could feel the rounded form of her shoulders. And she knew it.

She would smile at him, lean up to kiss him on the cheek or give him a hug that lasted just a moment too long. They were acting like shy teenagers, testing the waters, inching further towards the deep end, the bottom giving out slowly under them and neither one of them cared. In fact, it was getting harder and harder not to dive in headfirst.

Castle hadn't heard anything back from Detective Esposito about the case file, and even though his interest was peaked and he could feel something brewing under the surface, he wasn't pressuring the other man. The voice in the back of his head was still yelling at him to be cautious. He was torn between his curiosity and the look of terror he could only imagine in Kate's eyes. The thought that he never wanted to see that look for himself was as powerful as his curious nature.

Kate was staring at him curiously from across the desk her cup dangling lazily between her fingers.

"You okay?" she questioned, her head quirked slightly to the side. "You were talking and then you just trailed off. That's not like you. Normally I have to threaten you to get you to shut up…"

"Go to dinner with me," he blurted out, interrupting her teasing rant. "Go on a date with me. Dinner, you might even be able to convince me to go dancing if you want. I know a terrific jazz club. I'll wear a tie, you wear a dress and those ridiculously high heels you are so fond of. I want to go out with you and I want to do it so that I can kiss you at the end of the night and maybe, if all goes really well, again in the morning."

She stared at him for a moment longer, her eyes blinking at him a couple of times as she swallowed and looked back down at her desk.

"I, um, I," she stuttered and Castle let out a shaky breath, bracing to push himself out of his chair.

"Rick, wait," she called as he turned towards the door, her arm stretched out towards him, a strong sense of déjà vu falling over both of them. "What about Alexis?"

Castle stared at her for a moment, his head cocked as he looked at her questioningly. "I don't think she would want to go on a date with us."

Kate let out a startled laugh and shook her head as she placed her coffee on the desk and made her way around to stand in front of him, blocking him from the closed door of her office.

"I mean, is she going to be okay with her dad dating her teacher?"

Castle shook his head. "You heard what she said before when we talked to her about the dinners and everything. She doesn't care as long as we are discrete and it doesn't affect her grade. You know that girl, God forbid she gets B because we are fighting. Not that you would ever do that, of course."

Kate let out a small laugh, her arms crossing over her chest as she bit her lip and stared up at him, her choice of flats making her a good five inches shorter than him. "Then, okay, fine. I'll go on a date with you."

"Such a romantic acceptance," Castle teased as he leaned towards her slightly causing Kate's breath hitched in her chest as she felt his lips glance over hers in a barely there kiss.

"You know me," she murmured. "I just have to be mushy about everything."

She swayed up slightly and his mouth drew up in smile as her grinning lips met his, her arms reaching up to wrap around his neck.

"I thought this was supposed to wait until after the date," he stated after the broke apart, his arms holding tightly around her body, pressing her firmly into him.

"Are you complaining? Because we can stop if you are," she questioned leaning in to nibble gently on his lower lip.

"No, not complaining," he countered. "Just getting it straight."

"Okay, good, but if it really is a problem we can always just call this practice."

"Practice is good," he mumbled, nodding slightly, as he bent down to kiss her again. "Practice makes perfect."

"Uh huh," she replied as their lips met and she melted into him once again, her tongue tracing along his lips in a request for entrance. His hands moved up, sneaking under her shirt and across the soft skin of her back.

There was a loud rap on the door and the pair jumped apart, breathing heavily as they stared at each other, attempting to determine what had just happened.

There was a second knock, slightly more impatient than the first, and Kate made quick work of straightening her clothes as Castle grabbed his coffee and headed towards the door.

"So, I'll pick you up at seven?" he asked and she nodded in agreement, eyes wide, as she reached out to push him the last couple of feet to the door, her mind still reeling, trying to figure out what had just happened.

"Yeah, seven is good," she finally replied and he nodded back at her.

"Seven. See you."

Castle turned towards the door, grasping the door knob as Kate reached up to brush a hand through her hair and run her other one over her mouth, wiping the remains of her smeared lip gloss from her skin. He pulled open the door a little too hard, and the young man on the other side jumped back in surprise.

"Sorry," he stuttered as he watched Castle breeze by him, looking back at Kate startled. "I just have a question about the midterm."

Kate let out a sigh and waved him in with a friendly smile. "Come on in Andrew. What's up?"

"Well, a group of us are getting together for a study group tonight and we had a couple of questions we were hoping you could clarify…"

Kate stared at the open doorway as Andrew rattled off the questions and she forced down the smile that had been threatening to spill over. He had actually asked her out on a date and she wasn't sure if she should be scared or excited.

It was true, she had told him she had wanted space, she had wanted time. But every time her hand would brush his or he would help slide her coat up her arms, lifting her hair gently away from her neck, she would feel that spark, that electric jolt that shot through her body like it had the first time they had met. Only now, more than a year later, it was growing stronger by the day, an almost unstoppable force coursing through her body, threatening to throw her forward.

Now, though, it was no longer threatening. The events of the past few minutes had proven her to be thrown. Hurtling through the air, faster than she could ever imagine. The thought of stopping kissing him, once she had started, had been painful. Pulling apart had been gut wrenching. A line from a movie she had once seen floated through her mind as she tried to focus on what Andrew was saying, bent over his notes.

"What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?"

"It never happens. If there's a thing that can't be stopped, it's not possible for there to be something else which can't be moved, and vice versa."

Kate hid her smile behind her coffee cup as she cleared her throat, in preparation to answer the list of questions form her student.

Her fear had been the immovable object, standing firmly in place as the force of Richard Castle and the spark of whatever had been happening between them came dashing towards her. And, by God, in that moment, she was completely elated to be the one that had been forced to move.

Her stomach fluttered once and then her eyes grew wide as Andrew stared at her questioningly across the desk.

"Professor Beckett, are you okay?" The young man asked as he leaned forward slightly.

She snapped back into reality with a questioning hum and a stuttered apology as she rubbed her forehead and settled in to answer his questions as he scribbled away at a sheet of paper. Her own question lingered in the back of her mind.

What was she going to wear?

"Katie, will you please stop panicking," Johanna pleaded as she watched her daughter pull the last two remaining dressed out from her closet. "You have known this man for more than a year. He is completely head over heels in lo…"

Kate whirled around to face her mother as Johanna clapped a hand over her own mouth. "What? What were you going to say?"

"Nothing," Johanna mumbled as she sat on Kate's bed, one leg curled under her, a glass of red wine held in her free hand. "Nothing. I was saying nothing."

Kate narrowed her eyes at her mother and turned back around to face her closet, hands on her hips as Johanna let out a sigh of relief that Kate had dropped the subject.

"I just meant that it doesn't matter what you wear, Rick will be swept off his feet," Johanna continued, raising her glass to her lips to take a sip of wine.

Kate let out a grunt as she tapped her foot in impatience; as if the motion would make the perfect dress magically appear in her closet.

"What about this one? You look beautiful in this one," Johanna asked, holding up a black dress from the bottom of the pile on the bed.

Kate glanced back at her before turning towards the few remaining articles of clothing hanging in front of her. "No, that's the one I wore last year when we went to that banquet."

Johanna let out a light laugh and Kate whirled around to look at her, her eyes narrowed in question. "What's so funny?"

"You. The fact that you remember the exact dress you wore on what you repeatedly stated was not a date more than a year ago. Face it, sweetheart, you have it just as bad as he does."

Kate scrunched her nose at her mother and mumbled under her breath as she made her way over to the bed, adjusting the towel wrapped around her body. "I really need to find some new friends. Ones that aren't related to me."

Johanna pushed herself off of the bed, a dress sliding to the ground with the motion and rounded her way towards the door, flicking her daughter's ear as she passed by. "Remember you said that in a minute."

"What? Where are you going?" Kate called after her as Johanna disappeared into the living room and Kate looked back at the pile on her bed with a pained groan.

"Here," Johanna stated from behind her, a moment later, when she returned to the room.

Kate turned to see her mother holding out a plastic garment bag. "Richard told me where he was taking you tonight and I thought this might be appropriate."

"Mom…" Kate started, her eyes wide in surprise. "You bought me a dress… that's… wait… Castle talked to you about me?"

Johanna huffed as Kate took the bag, and turned to snatch her glass of wine off of the table. "Yes, yes and stop being annoying and questioning everything. Just go try on the damn dress!"

Kate stared at her mother, slack-jawed and turned towards the bathroom without another word. Johanna Beckett had ordered and it was not her place to question why or how.

Kate let out a small gasp as she looked in the mirror and saw her reflection staring back at her. The dress was simple, jade green, and came down to just above her knees. It was not the cut of the dress or the simple pattern that made it extraordinary, it was the way it made her eyes shine that had her astounded. She couldn't help the grin that covered her face. Rick was always saying things about her eyes. Even if she did pretend like she was annoyed by them and rolled the aforementioned body part at him more than once in reply, she had to admit she was flattered. The color was just an added bonus.

She made quick word of fixing her hair, letting it fall in curls over her shoulders and touched up her make-up before exiting her bathroom with a quick twirl for her mother's benefit.

"Katie, you look gorgeous," Johanna gushed as Kate braced herself against her mother's shoulder and pulled on a pair of silver stiletto heels.

Johanna reached into the pocket of her slacks and pulled a small foil package out to hold in front of Kate's face causing her daughter to stumbled, her foot slipping and a heel snapping as she fell to the bed, her mother, standing as poised as ever, still holding the condom package out in front of her.

"Now, tell me, do you need protection?"