A/N: If you missed it, there's a separate M rated one shot that details the events between the end of chapter fifteen and the beginning of this chapter.
Jane Doe
Kate Beckett's bare skin is pressed against his. The entire lengths of their bodies are flush, her skin so warm and good, and she presses kisses wherever she can reach. His pecs, the inside of his bicep, up to his shoulder. Everywhere her mouth touches he feels it acutely, replies in kind with the brush of his fingers over her.
He had thought nothing would ever top their first night, the relief and the awe and the jubilation they shared, but he had been wrong. Tonight has been perfect. Shifting a little to get comfortable, Rick looks down at his wife where she is pillowed against him and his heart leaps.
She loves him. "That was. . ." He trails off, absolutely lost for words. It isn't the first time that Kate has rendered him speechless, and it certainly won't be the last, but she huffs a laugh and rolls onto her stomach to look at him. Her chin is hard and pointy at his chest and he winces, nudges her to move.
"Yeah." She laughs, wriggling her body up the length of his until their mouths brush together in a tender kiss. Well, it starts tender, but they are naked after all and after a two month famine he burns with need for her and he can't help but slick his tongue past the seam of her lips. A hand carding through her hair, Rick lifts his hips and delights in the moan that breaks loose from her and tumbles into his mouth.
When he manages to get control of himself, just a little, he pulls back to breathe and Kate rolls off of him to lay on her back by his side instead, both of her arms twining around one of his. "Has it always been this intense between us?"
"Yes." He grins, letting his eyes close, and a stream of memories flick past behind his lids like ticker tape. There are so many images that he doesn't even know where to start. Kate, proud above him or sprawled loose and limp underneath the weight of his body. "Our first night was mind-blowing. After waiting so long, I don't think it could have been anything but incredible. And then it just seemed to keep getting better and better."
"Do you have a top ten?" Kate murmurs, a knee coming up underneath the sheets until she can trace her toes down the length of his shin.
Grinning wide, Rick spreads his hand at the curve of her spine, his fingertips just skimming the top of her ass. "No. Too many amazing times with you. Our wedding night, Kate."
Against him, he feels the silvery line of her shiver and she huffs a breath, nose nudging at his cheek. "What was it like? Our wedding."
"It didn't go exactly to plan." He says gently, his arm tightening to draw her a little closer against him. Yeah. Their wedding - when it eventually happened - was amazing because he got to make Kate Beckett his wife, finally. But before that. . .jeez.
"What happened?" Kate asks, and he feels the hum of awareness just underneath her skin. Sliding into detective mode, and hell if it doesn't make him want her desperately. But this, the story of how they finally made it to being husband and wife, she deserves from him.
Sitting up, Rick waits for Kate to sit too and palms the back of her head to bring her in for a kiss. He lingers, still hardly able to believe that she really loves him again. When he climbs out from the bed, it's only to tug on a fresh pair of boxer shorts from the drawer and find a shirt and underwear for his wife.
He throws them to her and she snags them in midair, smirking at him as she slides her way into the clothes and reaches out a hand to him. He goes willingly, of course, knotting their fingers so their knuckles clash together and slipping back into bed with her.
An arm around her shoulders, they get comfortable and Rick clears his throat, drops his hand to cover her knee underneath the sheets. "We were supposed to get married in May of 2014. But things didn't exactly work out that way."
"Uh huh." Kate murmurs, tipping sideways until her cheek meets his bicep. It reminds him so much of how it was between them in the days leading up to what was supposed to be their dream wedding, the physical contact that neither of them could seem to resist the call of.
"So, three days before we were due to get married, we went to get our marriage licence. And it turned out that we couldn't, because you had been married to someone else and technically, you still were."
"I was married?" She chokes out, twisting around to stare at him. He shrugs, glad that at least he can smile about it now. It hadn't bothered him, knowing that Kate had been married previously. How hypocritical would that be? No. What bothered him was how much it seemed to upset her. "To whom?"
Smirking at her, Rick makes his eyebrows dance. "To Rogan O'Leary."
"Oh my god." Kate groans, covering her face with her hands and sighing long and loud. He laughs, curling his fingers at her shoulder to draw her against his chest for a hug. "Rick, I'm so sorry. That must have been awful."
Well, it was. And then it completely became irrelevant, after everything else that happened. "It's okay, love. Don't worry about it now. Anyway, you went to see him to get him to sign the divorce papers, but things just started going wrong from there."
"Like what?" Kate asks, tentative as if she's afraid of what comes next even sitting here in the middle of their happy ending.
Rick hesitates for a moment, trying to figure out the easiest way to say the rest. The way that will hurt her the least. "Our venue and your dress both got ruined. Rogan went missing for a brief time. It looked like we weren't going to have our perfect wedding."
"That sounds awful." She says mournfully, as if grieving for the heartache of their past selves. He offers her a tender smile, as if to cushion the blow of what comes next.
"We managed to rescue as much as we could of our day. We moved everything to the Hamptons. Rogan signed the papers. You wore your mother's dress. You had gone ahead of me to get ready, but when I was on my way to the Hamptons my car was run off of the road. It was found on fire, in a ditch, and you thought for a short time that I had burned to death inside of it."
She gasps, a hand flying up to press against her mouth. Her eyes are wide and she stares at him, her brows furrowing hard until her forehead creases up. "Oh god, Rick."
"Shh, it's okay." He murmurs, circling her wrist with two fingers and drawing her hand slowly away from her mouth, leaning in to replace it with his lips. She hums into their kiss, her whole body seeming to arch upwards, and it kills him to break it off but there's so much more he needs to say. "When they put out the flames there was a body in the car, but Lanie was eventually able to identify it as not being mine. I'd been kidnapped by the triple killer."
"I remember that case." She blurts out, frowning again. It's ridiculously adorable, the way she looks right now, and he has to stare down at the gentle grey wash of their sheets rather than look at her. "Why on earth would he kidnap you?"
"Ah. . .he and I have some history. Anyway." He says pointedly, a glance flickering in her direction. He's completely willing to explain to her the story of Tyson, but not right now. Not when his whole body is still loose and liquid and he can taste her inside of his mouth. "You found me. Eventually. And we decided that we just needed to be married; none of the rest of it mattered. So we went to City Hall with your dad, my mom and Alexis and we just got married."
"That's so sad. 3XK stole our perfect day from us." Kate whispers, and she looks so desolate that he just has to kiss her again. Hand slipping up underneath her skirt and seeking the supple curve of her waist, he strokes his hands over her warm, bare skin until she softens and leans into him.
Once he's sure that she's halfway distracted, he pulls back and skims his mouth over the bridge of her nose, across her cheek and over to her ear. "All I needed - all I've ever needed - was for you to be my wife. So no, it wasn't sad; it was the happiest day of my life apart from the births of our children."
"Still." Kate murmurs, teeth catching in her bottom lip. "I hate that it happened that way. That you got kidnapped, Rick."
Rolling her underneath him, Rick nestles his hips in the cradle of her thighs and captures her face in his hands, kissing her deep and thorough until she's sighing and boneless and her fingers curl at his neck. "Doesn't matter. You're my wife, and we have a beautiful son. And you love me. How we got here, all of those hurdles? They can't hurt us anymore."
"Okay." She grins, and then she's tugging him back down to her mouth.
Cliché as it may be, he forgets the entirety of their history. Forgets anything that isn't his wife, and the feeling of their skins kissing underneath the sheets and the tender adoration so ripe in the way she touches him. Their wedding - the way it happened - has never bothered him. Not when it means he gets to have this now.
They slept in.
Completely not on purpose, but the two of them burst through the surface of unconsciousness, gasping for breath as Rick's phone vibrates hard against the nightstand and it rings out, shrill and obnoxious. Kate groans and shoves a pillow over her head, her husband's voice as he answers the phone coming through muffled and far-away sounding.
"Mother? Oh. Right. Of course. See you soon. Bye." There's a beat of silence, where Kate assumes Rick ends the call, and then his hand comes to her shoulder and he rolls her over to face him. "Kate. Mother and Marlow are in the lobby. On their way up."
"Oh, crap." Kate sits bolt upright in bed and then carries on going, almost crashes onto the hardwood in her haste to escape from the wonderfully soft cage of their sheets. Scrambling for a moment, she pulls on a fresh pair of underwear and Rick's t-shirt from where it's draped over the armchair by the window.
It's a little thin, sort of threadbare, but it's comfortable and it covers her to mid thigh and so it's just going to have to do. When she turns back to face him, carding her hands through her hair and praying that it'll flatten, she sees that he's pulled on pajama pants and is studying his reflection in the mirror above the dresser. "I look like I've been ravished."
"Well." Kate hums, taking a couple steps towards him and looping her arms low down around his waist, arching up onto tiptoe so she can rest her chin at his shoulder and meet his eyes in the mirror. "You sort of have been."
"So worth it." He grins, tilting his head until he can brush his mouth against hers. Kate kisses him back for just a moment, and then she steps away and tangles their hands together to lead him through to the living room.
A knock on the front door sounds out through the loft and they head to open it. Rick ushers his mother inside and Kate leans down to scoop up her son when he charges at her, tugging off his backpack so she can snuggle him properly. "Hey there, my beautiful boy. I missed you. Did you have fun with Gram?"
"Yes, Mommy." Marlow beams, and when she smiles back her son giggles and buries his face against her shoulder, both arms looping around her neck.
Shifting him to get a little more comfortable, Kate turns to face her husband and mother in law, flushes a little under the lifted eyebrow Martha sends her way. "Did you two have a good night?"
"We did, thank you Mother." Rick says, an edge to his voice that Martha must pick up on because she doesn't push it any further. Leaning in, she kisses first Rick's cheek, then Kate's and then finally Marlow's before she takes a few steps towards the still-open door.
"I must dash, the school calls. I'll see you all soon." Martha lifts a hand in farewell, fluttering her fingers at Mal when the boy lifts his head from his mother to offer his gram a shy smile.
Leaning her hip against the doorjamb, Kate frees a hand from around her son to hook two fingers in the waistband of Rick's pants and draw him closer to her, a shiver of pleasure darting through her body when her husband slings his arm low down around her hips. Swallowing, she smiles at Martha before dropping a kiss to her son's forehead. "Thank you so much for having Marlow."
"My pleasure, Katherine." Martha says, and then her eyes twinkle and she smirks, gaze flicking from Kate's bare legs to the equally naked plane of Rick's chest and back. "I'm glad I was able to give you two the opportunity to. . .talk."
Oh jeez. This is ridiculously embarrassing. Obviously Martha knows that Kate and Rick have sex; they have a son, for goodness sake. But knowing as an abstract concept and knowing exactly what they were doing all of last night are two very different things.
Martha strides away down the corridor, graceful and poised, and Rick closes the door and crashes into it, forehead meeting the wood as he groans. "Well that was horrific."
"Oh come on." Kate huffs, tracing the edge of his spine with a fingertip all the way up to his nape. "I'm sure she's delighted."
At that, her husband turns to face her and leans in to kiss her softly, grinning against her mouth until their kiss dissolves. "Not as delighted as me. I love you, Kate."
"Ew!" Marlow shrieks against the shell of Kate's ear, squirming to get down. "Gross kissy face!"
Laughing, Kate sets their son down on the hardwood and lets him charge off, watches as he clambers up onto the couch and sets about the very complicated business of taking off his sneakers. When Kate turns back to Rick he glances at her and grins, drawing her into a sidewards hug. She arcs her neck up to kiss him, fingers drawing circles low down at the bare skin of his waist.
"I love you, too." She says, and the way he looks at her makes her heart sing out. It seems like nothing is really all that different here, on the other side of this watershed moment for their relationship. Their son is still his giggly, chatty, hyperactive self. Rick still loves her, and she still loves him back. The only difference now is that she gets to show it, after so long waiting to be certain.
Rick breaks away from her side to join their son on the couch, opening his arms to the boy and frowning. "Does Daddy not get a hug, Marlow?"
"Here, Daddy." Their son beams, launching himself at his father and pressing open-mouthed, slobbery kisses over Rick's cheeks.
Heart turning to some gooey, ridiculous thing in her chest, Kate waits a beat in the entranceway before she covers the ground that separates herself from her family in a few quick footsteps and sinks down on the other side of Mal, grinning wide at her little boy when he wheels around to face her. "Why don't you tell me and Daddy all about what you did yesterday?"
Yeah. She's interested to know just what their son was doing while his parents were reaffirming their marriage and the love that runs so rich and deep and thick between them.
It's completely against all of their rules, but he doesn't think that Kate will mind all that much. And anyway, he's being careful; before he brings their son anywhere near the precinct he texts Ryan to make sure that it's safe for Marlow to be at the 12th.
When the elevator doors peel apart and the bullpen is revealed, Mal shrieks with delight and charges straight for his mother's desk. "Mommy, we are surprising you!"
"I see that." Kate laughs, lifting their son to sit on her lap in the desk chair. Spinning around to make their little boy erupt into laughter, Kate wraps both arms around his little belly and rests her chin on top of his head, seeking out Rick.
The way she looks at him, across the bullpen for any number of her colleagues to see, makes his blood rush. He feels kind of woozy, like he should maybe sit down, so he heads for his chair and sinks into it, wrapping a hand around Marlow's foot and completely dwarfing the tiny boy.
The boys come barrelling out of the break room and Esposito scoops Mal out of Kate's arms and lifts him high, lowering him back down to stand on the surface of Kate's desk and fist bumping with the toddler. The boys chatter with their nephew and Rick takes the small slice of privacy afforded to them to drag Kate's chair closer to his own and lean in, brushing a kiss to her cheek.
"I know you don't like when I bring him to work. But I missed you. And I checked with Ryan that it's safe." He says quietly, tucking the spill of her curls back behind her ear. For that, he earns himself a nod and a small, cautious grin.
He gets it. This is her workplace; here, she is professional and serious and respected. She can't really afford for the boys to see the two of them being sappy, being over the moon for one another. "I'm glad you two are here. I missed you too."
"Detective Beckett, what's-" Their captain calls out, poking her head out from around the door of her office. Catching sight of Marlow, Gates' whole demeanour softens and she strides into the bullpen, opening her arms for Rick's son. "Marlow, hello there. Look how big you've gotten."
"Cap!" Mal grins, reaching up for Gates until the captain picks him up. It had been truly astonishing, seeing Gates with their brand new baby boy. Rick had sort of assumed that, since their son is half him, the captain would harbour an automatic dislike for this new little person.
It hadn't been the case at all. Gates had offered heartfelt congratulations, had actually hugged him. Him, Richard Castle, and from over the captain's shoulder he had watched as his wife's eyebrows shot upwards into her hairline.
Gates has actually been wonderful, has offered plentiful advice for Kate on managing her career with motherhood. And both Marlow and the Ryan girls adore her, clamour for her affection on the rare occasions they see each other.
"Now tell me, young man, are you here to see Mommy or to see me?" Gates is saying to their son, making him dissolve into giggles and torque his body in his effort to turn around and look at his mother.
"I wanted to see all everyone."
Gates huffs a laugh at that, handing Mal over to Ryan when the detective touches a hand to the boy's back. "Good answer, Marlow. Alright, detectives, go take your lunch break."
By now, they know better than to argue. Rick takes Mal back and nuzzles his nose at his little boy's cheek, waiting in his chair for Kate and the boys to get their coats and scarves before the whole group of them pile into the elevator.
"Where do you wanna go for lunch, peque?" Esposito asks of Rick's son and Marlow grins, his cheek flush against his father's.
Kate has her palm at Mal's back, the three of them tethered together. "I want a hot dog."
"Hot dogs for everyone?" Ryan questions, gets a nod of agreement from everyone else.
When they spill out onto the street Marlow starts to squirm and Rick pauses a moment, letting the three detectives carry on a little way ahead. "Buddy, I can't set you down right now. It's so busy; I don't want you to get squished or lost."
"I not want down, Daddy." Mal huffs, patting his father's cheek in a way that somehow manages to be condescending, even in a two year old. "I want my mommy to carry me."
"Oh." Rick grins, glancing ahead to see his wife waiting with the boys for him and Marlow. "Kate."
Striding back to them, Kate skilfully weaves her way around a gaggle of tourists and leans in to kiss Rick's cheek, thumb tracing the shell of his ear. So in love with him, so tender and affectionate, even out here on the street for the whole world to see. "What's up?"
"Little man wants you to carry him."
"Oh, he does?" Kate's whole face comes alight with a pleased little grin and she takes Marlow from Rick's grip, cupping the curve of their son's skull and holding his body close. "You okay, sweet boy?"
"I love you, Mommy." Mal says, burying his face against Kate's neck. Settling a palm low down at Kate's spine, right where her hips flare out, he nudges her forwards and the three of them make their way to join Ryan and Esposito.
There's a hot dog vendor a couple blocks away from the precinct that they frequent and they fall in line, the boys making faces at Mal when he peeks at them from over Kate's shoulder. With their son distracted by his uncles, Rick takes the opportunity to kiss his wife.
When he pulls back, it's only far enough to rest his forehead against hers and smile at her, rearranging her scarf at her neck. "You okay? If he gets heavy I'll take him."
"If he gets heavy I'm giving him to Espo." Kate laughs, shaking her head. "Tío is the one making him wriggle around."
Laughing along with his wife, Rick ruffles their son's hair and shares a tender look with her. "He's lucky. There are so many people that love him."
"And his parents love each other." Kate says, quiet enough that the boys won't hear. It makes Rick's guts twist hard and he sucks in a sharp breath, still just completely floored by that. For all these weeks he's hardly dared hope that things may ever even get close to being okay again.
And yet here they are. Just as wonderful as they were before.