In hindsight, his apartment is probably exactly how she would have imagined it, had she given it some more thought. It's spacey and well-furnished and with just the hint of décor that reminds her that there is also a woman living with him.
She shrugs off her jacket and hands it to his awaiting arms before she inhales deeply and lets her eyes wander across his huge book front. Everything will be okay. Exhale.
"So Alexis and Martha are out for the entire night?" she asks, for what has to be the fifth time. She's not sure whether she seeks the reassurance that they are out and that she will not have to face them today, or whether she wants him to tell her that they'll be back by noon, giving her an excuse to leave.
"Yeah, Alexis has decided that she has to seize her time in New York to go to Broadway as often as possible and they decided to make day out of it," he laughs lightly and wanders off towards the kitchen.
"I see," she says on a nervous smile and her fingers pull the sleeves of her sweater up so they cover up her entire palm as she stays in the doorway.
"How does she like Stanford though?" she asks.
"Oh she loves it, she's taking about a million extra courses and I'm pretty sure she's crushing hard on one of her class mates." He starts the popcorn machine and she has to step closer if she wants to uphold the conversation over the sound of the corn flying around and bursting open.
"Yeah, I loved it too." She leans against the counter, fingers grasping at the edge as she watches her knuckles go white.
"You went to Stanford?" he asks, eyes tearing away from the popcorn and up to meet hers.
"Yeah, I was pre-law." She breaks her hand free from the counter to let her fingers brush through her hair, slides them along her neck until eventually they land on the counter again.
"Oh," she hears him say but he doesn't ask further and she feels some of the strain being released from her dangerously paper-white knuckles.
"How long is she here for?"
"Three weeks." He puts a ridiculous amount of sugar and butter over the bowl of popcorn and she starts feeling slightly queasy at the sight.
"She's young to go to university isn't she?" she's not sure whether she's overstepping, she's pretty sure she is, but the question falls from her lips before she can reconsider it.
"Yeah, she had enough school credits to graduate early and get accepted into Stanford." He turns to the machine again.
"Oh, I see." Most of all she sees the stains of sadness that have encroached on him, but she doesn't really know what to do about them.
And so she stays silent and watches the popcorn instead, pretending for one second that the glucose levels of this snack are her biggest issue.
"Make yourself comfortable, I'll be right back," he gestures to the couch in the middle of the room and disappears upstairs.
She frowns at the piece of furniture for a moment and starts an intense staring contest with the object before she finally decides that she has been in near-death situations before and that she should therefore be able to handle an evening on the couch with a friend.
She remembers the time Lanie came by right after she had left the precinct though. And the way she had flinched and grabbed for her, already confiscated, gun when their knees had brushed.
She can do this though.
She can do this.
He gets back down just as she is getting seated. He's carrying two thick blankets and stops in front of her to hand her the purple one.
"So," he says as he plummets down on the couch, "there are several ways to go about this." He looks over at her as if he was about to show her the world and she can't help the small smile tucking at the corners of her mouth.
He's sitting so that there is enough room to fit both of their popcorn bowls between them and she feels herself sagging against the cushioned back.
"We can start with the first Doctor," he loses her at that when he starts listing pros and cons of starting with the first or ninth Doctor before he finally decides to introduce her to the show with an episode called "Rose".
He starts switching between the episodes because, "I know you won't watch it alone and I want you to get a good overview." He's right about her not watching it alone but it doesn't really help her understanding of the story either.
"Castle, I have no idea what's going on anymore," she says at one point and he just grins at her.
"It wouldn't be a good episode of Doctor Who if you did."
He decides that it isn't a movie night without pizza and selects one of the many (really freaking many) brochures from pizza shops all around town.
"Are you staying for dinner?" he asks and she knows that this could be her chance. She could say that she has other plans, and she knows that he'd let it go. But he looks so hopeful and they are both wrapped in blankets and so she says, "yes, but we should have Chinese," instead.
"Oh wow, I had a suspect once, looking exactly like this," she mumbles at the screen, just as some sort of a not quite human creature goes on sucking people inside of his body.
"That bad?"
"Oh trust me it was worse."
"Maybe he was an alien," he suggests helpfully.
"You know, I think that if you had been with me, the alien theory would have been a popular one, considering the suspects I've interrogated."
"It sounds awesome," he says before they both turn back around to face the screen at the sound of the Tardis arriving somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
"So what do you watch for fun then?" he asks, shoveling another chopstick full of chow mein into his mouth. "Except for the glorious show Nebula 9 of course."
She shakes her head a little but he just grins and keeps on eating.
She doesn't want to say Temptation Lane. He'd never let her live that down.
And also he'd probably ask why.
"Baseball," she says instead.
"Oh I didn't know you were a fan."
"The things you don't know about me could fill a book, Castle."
He looks at her for a second, noodles hanging from his chopsticks in front of his face as he nods.
"Yeah, they could very well do that."
"If you could go back to any place in time, where would you go?" he asks when it's close to 11pm.
She thinks about her mother for a moment, about brown hair and hugs that smelled like vanilla sticks.
"I don't know," she says instead.
It's midnight and the fluttering of her eyes is almost too easy.
She knows she should get up and leave. Preferably now.
But she's warm. And she's not alone and for once she can bear it. And so she allows herself to sink back further and her eyes slip shut.
She startles awake at the sound of the door being shut gently. It's the softest of sounds, swirling through the air like dust and still she feels her heart climbing into her throat, drumming against the back of her mouth as if it was trying to choke her.
She manages to stay down, pulls the blanket on top of her head so that the warmth clings to her and clambers underneath her skin until she feels like she is suffocating.
There is someone inside the loft.
She knows, logically, that it is them. Alexis and his mother. She hears their whispered goodnights and the softness of their sock-clad feet on the stairs as they disappear into their rooms on the floor above.
She presses the knuckles of her hands against her mouth, bites down on them until she tastes metal and eventually moves them up to press against her eyes until it is too much.
Someone is in the loft.
Shot.
Her body jerks away from her as if she was physically trying to get away from herself and the blanket tangles at her feet and the edge of the couch is so close and she knows that she has to get the fuck out of here.
She doesn't know how she manages.
She focuses on breathing quietly. Like normal people do. In and out. Rhythmic. Flat.
She won't be able to keep this up.
She hurries to the door. She isn't wearing her shoes anymore but she doesn't notice. The cold of the floor is comfortable, seeps underneath the soles of her feet in a way that's soothing and she prays for the coolness to reach her heart, so it will stop beating in a way that she's sure is going to destroy her other organs.
It's everywhere.
It's too bright and the door is too far away and is she even moving at all?
In and out. Just breathe.
A strangled breath escapes her lips, hoarse and dry and like she was resurfacing from a cool river and gasping for air before the next wave hits her.
She manages to get outside before she sinks.
Her knees buckle about half way through the floor. Her back connects with the wall behind her, the slopes of her spine crack like earth during an earthquake and she drowns on air until she is sitting on the floor. Her legs are pulled close to her chest, even her kneecaps are vibrating with her heart and straining to get away from the short cadenced, staccato breaths that hit them.
She opens her mouth and she wants to scream, but she's never been really good at letting her voice soar and so she just presses her hands in front of her mouth so that they trap every ounce of air and screams against the soft patches of her callused fingers until she doesn't have a single breath left in her mouth.
She stares at her fingers then, at the shipwreck they hold, at the tremors cursing through them like they are trying to mimic her heart in its erratic beating. Like maybe if her whole body was in on the collapse of her heart she'd just become debris and dust and not the breaking.
She just wants to be done breaking.
The light greeting her in the elevator is almost punishingly white and when she turns to look at herself in the mirror she finds nothing but haunted eyes and paper skin that is illuminated in all the wrong ways. Her cheek bones are too prominent and her hair is too soft and tells too many stories of sleep and a warm body next to hers.
She clicks the button for the ground floor and watches as the doors close shut. She tries to breathe in a way that is effective, but all the methods she has been told to use by therapists are useless.
You don't magically start breathing right by counting to a certain number and holding your breath to the count of four. She wishes sometimes there was an actual guidebook to this, like for Ikea shelves and origami.
But there isn't.
And so she is just left standing in a too bright elevator with tiny lights announcing each floor. Breathing into her hands, being pretty sure that she is healing in all the wrong ways.
She considers not going. It's Wednesday morning and she spent the majority of it hanging from her chin-up bar, lifting herself up and letting herself down.
She tells herself that if she is busy she might forget and that it would be a good reason.
But she keeps glancing at the clock.
She keeps staring at her phone, dead, on the nightstand.
She puts on a crème colored coat. And she leaves without looking back.
She's learned how to make herself tall. She had to learn when she walked into interrogation for the first time and learned that women are not treated with the same respect as men, even if they are cops. And so she had learned how to get that respect. She thinks about Castle's mother, the actress. And she thinks that she would be incredibly proud of her performance.
Because right now, she is Detective Kate Beckett and she carries her weight without a tremble in her hands.
She hesitates for a split second before she opens the door to the group.
Most of them are already there. She usually arrives on the spot.
She doesn't look for him.
But he's there and he's already looking at her.
She can't really figure it out when she sits down on her usual chair, the one opposing the window front. His eyes still hold hers and they are-
They are just blue. They are, if such a thing is possible, the word okay.
It's okay.
You're okay.
They speak of no judgement and that is something she truly doesn't know how to work out.
Usually people always have some incredible advice that does nothing except for telling her that life is easy and she still isn't able to work it out.
But he is just sitting there, giving her a small half-wave that tells her that things are okay the way they are.
"So Kate, do you have anything you would like to share today?" Dr. George asks.
She feels the familiar words form, tastes the weight of them on her lips but says, "I had a panic attack last week."
She knows people are looking at her. She knows he is looking at her too, eyes wide, surprised.
She doesn't talk.
"What triggered it?" the therapist asks.
She shrugs and presses her lips closed. Her chest aches with words and her head starts spinning.
"Okay," Dr. George says then, "is there anything else you'd like to say?"
"No," she shakes her head.
"Okay," he says again.
Okay.
AN: I am so sorry it took me ages to update this. I had A-levels and they seriously took all of my time and I couldn't find it in me to work this out properly. They are over now though so I should be back on track with this. Thank you to everyone who stuck with me until now, and thank you to all of those who left me kind words in reviews, etc. You are all gold stars!
Also thank you to Alex for reading through this for me, ily sweetheart:*
(also I changed my pen name yes yes)