The last few days have taken on a pattern. Unconvinced that Castle's shooting is solved, Beckett goes into the Twelfth early each morning. She works on the case before Montgomery gets in, but doesn't dare reopen her mother's file. She is grateful that her team haven't had a fresh body drop in days and her time is spent catching up on paperwork and chasing up old cases.

She excuses herself from the precinct dead on five each evening so that she can stop by the hospital on her way home. Each time Beckett tells Castle (and herself) that she's only staying for five minutes; that she's just checking up on him, and updating him on the case. Never mind that there are no new leads. Raglan has been declared Castle's shooter, and the case has been officially closed.

Each time, Beckett finds herself staying longer and sharing a meal with Castle and his family. Castle refuses to eat the hospital fare, and Alexis has happily ordered in for them each night. Sitting in the stark hospital room each evening, they banter about everything under the sun; including time-travel, zombies and vampires. Unsurprisingly, Castle manages to make a case for why each of these things probably exists, and she refutes every one of his theories with sound logic. She's seen the expressions Martha and Alexis are giving the two of them as they jest with one another though, and she's not sure she's quite comfortable with the knowing looks on their faces.

For that matter, she's seen the looks Castle is giving her. And she's not sure she's comfortable with them, either.

The worst part is, that while she's not sure she's ready to admit it to herself, she thinks she's returning his soft looks with some of her own.

She gets to the hospital early this afternoon; Montgomery had shooed her out of the precinct at three telling her she'd done enough unpaid overtime over the last few years, and it wouldn't hurt her to take a little time off. She's almost suspicious of him making allowances for her but she doesn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. She hadn't wanted to be the recipient of another knowing look from Ryan and Esposito either, so she'd made a beeline for the elevator and taken the subway to the hospital.


Kate taps on the door, surprised to see Castle standing, fully dressed. She blushes as she realizes she's been staring just a moment too long.

"Beckett." He turns and smiles at her knock.

"Hey, Castle." Kate smiles back, handing him a coffee. "It's the real thing this time," she promises, and his eyes light up.

"Thank you," he says, and his fingers brush hers just a moment longer than they need to as he takes the cup from her.

"What are you doing dressed?" she asks.

"I'm out of here," he says. "I'm just waiting for the last doctor to sign off on it, and Alexis is coming by…" He glances at his watch. "Any minute now." His left arm is strapped to his chest, but he's otherwise mobile, and Kate watches in silence for a moment as he takes an appreciative sip from the coffee, then puts it down to continue packing a few more things into the overnight bag on the bed.

"Nice." Beckett nods. She's happy for him; he's been a better patient than she would have predicted but she knows he's been going stir crazy confined to these four walls. "Home, huh?" It's become kind of comfortable, coming into the hospital each day, and she wonders whether she needs an invitation to stop by the loft, whether they'll continue spending time together.

"Home, kind of, yeah," Castle says, struggling to fold a t-shirt one handed before giving up and just shoving it into the bag. "We're going to go out to the Hamptons, actually. I have a place there, and Alexis wants to get away from the city."

Kate's heart sinks when he mentions leaving the city. But she's got no hold on him here, she reminds herself, so she pushes the thought aside. "Alexis is still kind of freaked out, huh?"

"She is," he agrees. "I can always tell something's wrong when she wants to miss school." Kate smiles to herself. He's a good father.

Something else occurs to her. "Does she blame me?" she asks quietly.

"What?" Castle shakes his head frantically. "No. She's upset, but she knows it's not your fault." He smiles softly. "It's not your fault. You know that, right?"

Kate ducks her head and nods, changing the subject. "Can I help?" She indicates the packing.

"Sure. But there's not much left to do."

Kate smiles and puts her own coffee down, walking into the little bathroom off his room. She picks up his toothbrush and razor from beside the sink and she tucks the two objects into the toiletries bag that already houses his toothpaste and soap, rolling her eyes as she realizes just how domestic this is.

"What are you smiling about?" Castle asks her when she comes out of the bathroom and unceremoniously dumps the bathroom products into the top of the open bag. "You didn't find any dirty magazines in there, did you? Because I swear, they're not mine."

"Please," she retorts. "Like you could shock me, Castle."

"Oh, I could shock you, Detective," he tells her, and she feels her heart skip a beat as their gaze locks.

"Hardly," she says, trying for a little levity, and looking away. "After all, Castle, I've worked in Vice, you know."

"I know," he tells her, a raise of his eyebrow suddenly setting off an unfamiliar feeling in her stomach. Butterflies, she recognizes, and some part of her inner monologue mocks her, and she closes her eyes for a second. Why? She wonders. She and Castle have spent the last few months tripping over one another, flirting with their boundaries. They had been living in never-gonna-happen land, but that didn't mean the innuendo hadn't been a lot of fun.

Suddenly, though, never-gonna-happen land feels a lot more like gonna-happen land, and Beckett opens her eyes to find his impossibly blue ones fixed on her. They're on opposite sides of the bed, though, staring at one another across his overnight bag, and she looks away at last.

"So Gina's given me an extension," he tells her. "On account of not being able to type one-handed." He winces. "Or write actual sentences when I'm on painkillers."

Beckett cocks her head. "That was the voice of experience," she says. "You've tried to write on painkillers before?"

He nods, and the look of woe that comes into his eyes causes to her chuckle. "A few years ago. Minor car accident-"

"Not that minor, as far as the car was concerned," a voice interrupts, and Kate turns to the source. "It was a disaster."

"Thank you, Mother," Castle smirks at Beckett though, and she smiles back. "It was just so dull, though. I think I'd rather wreck a Ferrari-"

"I think I'd rather you stopped getting yourself into trouble," Alexis chides as she steps into the room, a few paces behind her grandmother, and Castle groans, conceding defeat.

Beckett's cell chimes then, and she narrows her eyes at the phone before taking the call. "Beckett." She steps into the corridor to take the call, and groans as she realizes it's dispatch yet again.

"Murder?" Castle asks, when she steps back into the room, and she nods.

"Murder." She's struck by the urge to reach over and cover Alexis' ears, but she restrains herself; no doubt the girl has seen and heard worse, living with a mystery novelist. "A piano player over on Broadway."

"Oh!" Martha lifts her hand to her heart. "That's terrible! Who would kill an artist?"

"So many people," Castle mumbles, and Kate has to stop herself from chuckling at his inappropriate comment. "Oh," he adds, his wide eyes fixing on Beckett again. "The doctor's going to come by any minute now, to let me go. So can I come?"


When Kate gets back to her apartment it's impossibly late and she flops onto the sofa. The case is anything but the open and shut ones from last week, and it has taken all her reserve to work through what she could this evening before finally calling it a night. She's been on her feet from the moment she got to the scene, and she kicks her heels off, sighing in relief as she wriggles her toes. More than once tonight she'd glanced at the boys and found herself longing for Castle.

She's being silly, she decides. She's solved cases for years without him, and just a week ago, she was ready to throw their whole relationship away. It's different now though, she muses. It shouldn't be, perhaps. She wishes his shooting didn't feel like such a wake-up call, but it does. It's forced her hand. She's still gun-shy, but she's realized she needs Castle in her life. More to the point, she wants him in her life.

Sighing, Kate hauls herself up from the sofa; she had come home to get a good night's sleep in her own bed, not to exchange the precinct sofa for her own; experience tells her that she'll wake with a crick in her neck if she lets herself fall asleep here.

She connects her cell to her charger in the bedroom and strips off, then pulls on some pajamas without bothering to remove her make-up. Her phone chirps, and she pulls it across the nightstand. She's expecting it to be one of the boys, something case related, but she's pleasantly surprised to see it's a message from Castle. Sleep well, Detective.

Sleep well, Writer, she returns, and she falls into a dreamless sleep.


The next week slams Beckett, and her thoughts are forced from Castle to the details of the case at hand. She and the boys trace every twist of the case, but they're left with dead ends at every turn. Each evening she comes home only to eat, fall into bed, and message Castle. If she's entirely honest with herself, it's messaging Castle that she's come to look forward to.

He's been texting her during the day, too, and on more than one occasion she's been torn away from the case by the low buzz of her cell in her pocket. Likewise, on more than one occasion (once in the morgue and twice in the bullpen) the boys or Lanie have had occasion to call her out on the soft smile that's found its way onto her face.

Her threats to bust the boys down to traffic are falling on deaf ears, and there's nothing she can threaten Lanie with.

The texts Castle sends through are mostly funny, and a little sexy, and she wonders how many can be attributed to the drugs he's on. Surely he'd stopped taking the strongest of the painkillers by the time he'd left the hospital?

How's the case? He asks one morning, and when she replies to say it's fine (a lie), his somewhat off-topic response causes her to drop her jaw indignantly. I'm sitting by the pool, Detective. If you were here I'd rub lotion on you.

Another afternoon finds her chuckling at her desk. Just pulled my stitches… the moaning that occurred would have left even you blushing, Detective.

I'm sorry I went behind your back and hurt you, he writes one evening, and she has to blink the tears back from her eyes, because she knows he is.

I'm worried about the boys, he texts her at one stage and she texts him back right away. Why? His response is immediate. I'm not there to supply your coffee… hope you're not punishing them just because you don't know how to use the machine in the break room.

The night before they solve the case, he's got three words for her that bring a rueful smile to her lips. I miss you. Kate misses him too.


A/N: Thank Trish and Kylie for the beta! And thanks to you guys for reading! One more chapter!