Disclaimer: The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

She needs to talk to a doctor? Why? And why doesn't she go to one in Williams? Did she hurt herself by overdoing the PT? She seems to be in less pain, but she's hiding something. If she wants to go all the way into the city it's serious. Wait, the phone call. She was talking to her doctor. Or Lanie? No. The doctor. She made an appointment with a doctor who's going to see her in two days. That's incredible. Unless your heart has stopped or you have a knife sticking out of your skull it takes weeks to get an appointment with a doctor in Manhattan. Something must be very, very wrong.

Then why is she smiling? Apart from the doughnut. Which, by the way, she didn't finish. And the way she was going after it? She left it on her plate: there's definitely something going on.

He squeezes his eyes shut so hard that it hurts. Oh, God. It all makes sense now. Why she's smiling, but why she doesn't want to see a local doctor in this little town where gossip is served at every meal. She's pregnant. That son of a bitch Davidson got her pregnant and now he's off saving lives on some other planet or anyway an inaccessible country at least 10,000 miles away instead of being here getting ready for the birth of his own kid. Josh is never around. He'll be a terrible father. Kate said she was through with him, that the guy is a total jerk, but that was before she knew she was pregnant. What if? He can't bear the idea. What if the doctor she just called wasn't her own doctor but JOSH DAVIDSON? What if they're getting back together? The guy is probably already kayaking up some filthy river to get to an airport so he can go to the doctor with Kate.

"Castle! Castle?"

His head whips around. Kate isn't lying on her side any more, she's sitting up, and she's looking at him as if he's lost his mind. Lost that instead of his heart, which is in the process of shriveling to nothing, leaving a useless resonance chamber in the middle of his chest. "Yes?"

"Josh?"

How does she know he's thinking about that bastard? Does she think he was eavesdropping and heard her talking to him? "I wasn't listening in on your call, I promise. I just figured it out. It's—geez. I guess, I mean, congratulations."

"Have you been taking my painkillers or something?"

"What? No. Why would I do that? Oh, and you have to stop taking them, as of today. I'm sure they're not good for you."

"Well, then your new girlfriends, Luanne and Billie Sue, must have slipped something into your doughnut, because you're making no sense at all. You just yelled 'Josh,' out of the blue."

"I did?" He'd said that out loud? That's it. He has to end this torture. Time to rip off the Band-Aid. That's something she really knows about, ripping off a bandage. The way she had the other day to show him the wounds that Josh had tended. "Kate, it's okay. I know. I'm not happy, and that's not right—I mean, I am truly happy for you. You'll be a wonderful mother." He starts to push himself up and she pulls him back down. God, that woman is strong.

"What the hell are you talking about? Start with Josh, please, loath as I am to hear his name."

"You are?"

"Yes, I am." She shudders. "You know that."

"Is it because he doesn't want the baby? The responsibility? Because if that's what it is I'll help you every step. I'll take care of it as if it were mine, I promise. I mean, if you'd let me. And I'd never let him get within fifty blocks of the baby. I have incredible lawyers. They could get a restraining order you wouldn't believe."

Saucer-eyed would not be an adequate description: her eyes are like dinner plates, if dinner plates were greeny-brown with amber flecks. Maybe he could find a ceramist who could make some.

"Baby? You think I'm pregnant?"

He shrugs. Mister Nonchalance. "Well, yeah."

"Why on earth would you think that?"

"Why on earth not? It's the only explanation that made sense after you ran from the room when you were eating a doughnut saying you had to make a phone call and you went to your room so obviously you didn't want me hearing the conversation and ten minutes later you come out all smiles like the doughnut moment never happened and you lie down and read your best-of-times book and I'm beginning to wonder now if the foolishness part is describing me and then you read more and don't say anything until all of a sudden you say let's have lunch on the grass and we do and I thought we were having a great time with the skyline and then you ask me to drive you into New York in two days so you can see a doctor so it was pretty easy to figure out why, once I looked at all the clues."

She shoves him on the shoulder so hard he falls over.

"Castle, you doofus. I'm not pregnant. I'm not having a baby." She pulls up the hem of her tee shirt and pulls down her yoga pants just enough to expose a large patch of skin on a belly so flat you could use it as a level. "Does this look like the stomach of a pregnant woman?"

It's hard for him to look, or not to look. "Well, you know, it's early still."

And suddenly there she is, folded against him, all but nose-to-nose with him. "Castle, listen to me. Josh and I were pretty much done a week after the bomb thing. We didn't officially break up, but we weren't together, either. Then I got shot and he was sure that I'd coming running back to him, if I ever get strong enough to run again. And then I told him it was over. Finished, finito, fini. I haven't had sex in three and a half months."

Five hundred choristers just reinflated his heart with the "Hallelujah Chorus."

"Kate."

"Mmm?"

"I really want to kiss you. Just on the lips, I promise."

She knows she shouldn't say it while she's in the middle of saying it, but her mouth is three seconds ahead of her brain. No contest. "By lips I assume you mean the ones above my neck?"

They laugh even harder than Castle and Susanna had over "I'll have what she's having."

"We really have to toe the line," she says, once she's able to speak.

"Does that mean I can kiss your toes?"

"Does that mean you're a foot fetishist?"

"It does not. So can I kiss you on the lips that are right here tantalizingly close to mine?"

"Yes."

He does, and she kisses him back, but they both stop before they're breathless and likely to get even more so. "This is worse than being fourteen," he says.

"It is? Were the girls you knew at that age better kissers than I am?"

"Of course not. But when I was fourteen I couldn't even imagine what I know now."

"You got that right, Castle." She giggles, and with less effort than she had expected gets to her feet without any assistance. Except then she looks down and he's still lying on his back with his azure eyes locked on her and she wonders if she has the strength to resist dropping right down on top of him. "I need coffee," she says, because she can't say what she really means, which is, "I need a drink," or, more to the point, "I need you." And she goes inside and with only slightly shaky hands makes a pot of coffee.

"Since you're not pregnant," he says, having sneaked in and stopped about a foot behind her.

"Jesus, Castle, you nearly gave me a heart attack."

"Sorry, sorry. It's just that if you're not pregnant why do you have to go to the doctor? Since I'm taking you, I though it would be all right to ask."

Her heart rate is still way higher than it should be. She puts off answering by fixing their two coffees, very deliberately, but eventually has to hand him his mug. "You're not actually taking me to the doctor, you're taking me to New York, which I appreciate. But I'll go to the doctor by myself and I thought while I was there you'd probably want to go to the loft and get all your hair stuff and more shoes and whatever you've been missing while you were here. And don't say 'hair stuff?' like you don't crave it daily. And if I haven't said so before, I really admire that you haven't companied once about not having things you're used to like your 200-jet shower."

"Twenty-seven jet."

"Whatever."

"You're avoiding my question, you know. Which not only makes me more inquisitive but also makes me worry."

"You don't have to worry," she says softly.

"I don't have to worry? You were shot. You died. You're back, but you're still so thin and—. And you know, not as strong as I'm used to."

"You think I'm vulnerable."

"Yes."

"And fragile."

"Yes."

"I'm a lot better than I was. I'm so much stronger."

"I know."

She sighs, sets her mug on the counter and looks out the window for a time before she picks up the conversation again. "You were right about one thing in your wacko speech about my being pregnant. One of the reasons I don't want to see a doctor in Williams is because everyone knows me, and despite the Hippocratic Oath there are eyes and ears all over, and pretty soon at least some of what I talked to the doctor about would be on the menu at the diner and your beloved Land o Goshen." She stops for more of the liquid courage of Jamaican Blue, which is now cut with only a third decaf. "I need to go to my own doctor. Talk to her. For her expertise and for my peace of mind. I haven't seen her since I got out of the hospital. Do you understand? So don't worry. Nothing to worry about."

"I do understand. And I apologize for being nosy."

"You? Oh, Castle, I have to remember this moment."

"Speaking of remembering this moment, the world's biggest bee is buzzing around the screen. Look at it. I could be in a horror movie about mutant insects."

Dipping her head a fraction, she takes a close look. "You're right, it's huge. You know what we should do? Make a beeline for those doughnuts. Before the flying predator chews its way through the screen and carries a honey-glazed off in its six hairy legs."

Castle dashes to the table, grabs the paper bag to which he'd returned the doughnuts earlier in the afternoon, and clutches it to his chest. "Would a bee even want these doughnuts? The honey-dipped ones, isn't that sort of cannibalistic?"

She can't dash, but she makes it to the table and sits down. "May I have one, then, please? Spare the bee from doing something awful."

"Of course. And I'll join you." He's primed and ready for her to make that sound again, The Shampoo Moan. She does not disappoint. It could be even more erotic than the moan she made over the cinnamon doughnut, or it could be that his reaction to her reaction is heightened by the kiss they'd had and his relief that she's not pregnant. He wishes that he'd had the wits to turn on his phone and tape her. Covertly.

"You really got four of these doughnuts for only five dollars?"

"I know, they should sell for for fifty."

"Gotta say, that was some beeline you made for the bag, buster."

"Triple alliteration, nice."

"I bet we could come up with a ton of words beginning with B, right in this room."

"You're on, Beckett. There's a B."

"Bag."

"Brown bag."

"Big brown bag, Castle. Three-pointer."

He scans the room. "Baseboard. That should be worth two."

She licks the honey glaze from the side of her thumb, looks right at him, and smiles broadly. All her teeth are showing, and the tip of her tongue. "Balls."

A/N Many thanks to the ever-resourceful mobazan27 for the beeline prompt. Off to NYC in the next chapter.