Rick doesn't show up at the precinct again. The boys watch her with concern, sensing that something has changed. Ryan even gathers the courage to check in on her.
"It's nothing, Kevin," she assures him, but he hardly looks convinced.
"If Castle did something-"
"No, no." She waves him off, but her heart isn't in the denial and her voice sounds too small. She needs to pull it together. "I just… it didn't feel appropriate to keep that friendship going."
Ryan nods slowly. "Captain, this isn't my place, but as your friends, you know Espo and I just want to see you happy, right?"
Kate shoots him a quizzical look.
"You've just seemed… a lot happier over the last month or so," he gets out, shuffling awkwardly in her doorway.
Lanie had said the same thing the other night, when Kate confessed it all to her over a bottle of wine.
"It's just because we have a history," Kate had insisted, her eyes red-rimmed and tired. "Tom is good to me, safe and kind and-"
"Honey, I don't care if it's an ancient, modern, or sexual history. It's been what, a month? A little more? And you've smiled more with him than you've smiled with Tom for the last year," Lanie pointed out. "When was the last time you even took Demming up on his longstanding invite for a nightcap?"
Kate had rolled her eyes, but was unable to offer up an answer, a refusal to the logic. She didn't tell Lanie that she had reached out to Demming the night after Castle kissed her on the swings and delicately detonated their casual romance. Tom was hurt, disappointed, as she knew he would be, but he was hardly surprised.
"Just take care of yourself, Kate," he told her earnestly, rising from the barstool at the pub they frequented on his side of town. "Please."
He pressed a kiss to her temple and left, his drink untouched.
"I'm scared he's just after what he couldn't have," she admitted, curling into the corner of her couch, a throw pillow against her chest. "I believe the amnesia thing now, I do, but that doesn't mean he's a different person. He's still the guy who didn't call for the first ten years, who acted like nothing even happened between us for ten more."
"Isn't that what you said you wanted?" Lanie asked her gently, but Kate couldn't summon the courage for an answer.
"He's still the playboy author who goes on pap walks with a new woman every other month," she deflected instead.
Lanie reached out to drape a hand at her bent knees. "Have you seen him out with anyone other than you this year? Because I haven't. And you know I read the paper."
A watery smile claimed Kate's lips, but she still sighed, dropping her head to the sofa.
Kate blinks away the thought of Lanie, of that conversation, and offers Ryan a tentative smile. "Thank you, Ryan."
Ryan nods, shooting her a smile that was far too sad before ducking out of her office and shutting the door.
Rick avoids the precinct, the swings, practically anything that makes him think of Kate Beckett. He's just so frustrated with her, so tired of feeling trapped between two worlds, and never knowing what the right thing - the real thing - is.
The dreams he thought were memories are strange - always cast with a strange fog that makes him question their reality. Often, they are tangled up with other visions he knows cannot be true - waking with the sensation of a wedding band on his finger, of a bedroom that belongs in a home he's never visited before, of a little girl with two small brothers. Even a damn cat and dog he knows by name. Those mornings are harder, when he feels as if he's waking from a reality he's being ripped from, that he wishes to stay in.
All he knows, all he's ever known since he woke up in this strange place, is that he wanted her. That he belongs with Kate. It doesn't even feel like a choice, just a universal truth.
"Darling, she's just spooked. That's all." His mother has tried to comfort him through his moping, but he isn't receptive to the reassurance.
He doesn't want the reasonings, the why's, he just wants her.
Rick sleeps fitfully most nights. After sitting hours at his desk, applying Gina's first round of edits to Heat Wave, he crawls into his bed grumpy and irritable. It isn't until he's been away from Kate and the Twelfth for a week that he is hit with another melange of strange dreams that he knows, despite the confusion and the weird haziness, are this Castle's memories.
The memories are always blurry, coming to him with a warped, glazed quality. Tonight, he sees Kate. She's… older, which is strange, considering his memories should be bare of her. But no, this version of Kate Beckett is younger, but not a child. Definitely not a teenager. No, she has to be in her twenties in this dream, with worn out eyes and a conflicting youthfulness still clinging to her. She was wearing a black dress - a slim, silky thing that clung to her thin frame and cut low to her breasts.
It was a party of some sort with… with pictures of him everywhere and his book towered atop tables - a book party.
He jerks awake, holding tight to the images in his mind. Stumbling out of bed, he blinks the sleep from his eyes and shuffles toward the library of his office. He scans the titles until he sees the cover of the book that was in his dream. It would have been published nearly ten years ago.
Castle drops the book back to the shelf and starts for the door.
It's nearly two in the morning when the fervent knocking startles her awake.
Kate curses and rubs at her eyes. Snagging her robe, she pads through her bedroom, down the hall and to the foyer.
The pounding on her front door fails to stop and she yanks it open with only a bleary glance through the peephole.
Somehow, she knew it would be him.
"Castle, what the hell?" she hisses, still half asleep as he sweeps into her apartment.
"I had a dream," he reveals, his blue eyes wild and locked on her. "A memory."
"Okay," she mutters, blinking a few times until he is in perfect focus. "It couldn't wait a few more hours? Or warrant a phone call first?"
"It hasn't been twenty years. Not the way I thought." That wakes her up, sends her blood rushing cold. He's staring at her, his blue eyes wide and practically crackling with electricity. "You came to a party I was having. A book party."
"Rick-"
"It had to be about ten years ago, if I'm remembering the right book. Before your shooting, but not by much."
"Wait, I need to-"
"But if we did see each other before all of this," he breathes, closing in on her. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Kate backs away, her head shaking slowly. "Castle, it's not that simple."
"So you did come to that book party. It wasn't a dream," he concludes, eyes brightening with realization, with memories she doesn't want him to have. "Holy shit, you looked stunning."
She could practically see him reliving it while she could feel herself regretting every damn second. The way she had dressed up for him in a tight black cocktail dress, still so young and naive back in her twenties, thinking he actually wanted her there, that there was actual hope she would appear behind the invitation that appeared in her inbox. But she thought... well, that maybe they both just needed the time apart to grow up, to forget about a stupid childhood fight and make amends.
She skipped the cheesy red carpet that was rolled out, entering the rooftop party through a back elevator that wasn't garnering as much notice. His mother saw her first, slipping thin arms around her bare shoulders and kissing her cheeks, fussing over how beautiful she had grown to be and exclaiming that Richard would be thrilled to see her. And with her heart in her throat, she believed his mother.
His reaction to their first meeting after ten years was something she relished, she'll admit that. It took a while, with him constantly surrounded by crowds of people, mostly women, raving for his attention. She caught his eye from across the room as soon as she found the bar, elevated on a platform and illuminated with neon lights constantly alternating colors. From her seat, she was allowing herself to be seen from all angles of the rooftop and like a magnet to its partner, he found her from the other side of the roof.
He was mid conversation with two pretty blondes, but he was bored, no life in his eyes, until they snagged on her. They were shocked into recognition then, ripples of surprise brightening the greyed irises to a vibrant cerulean. It immediately caused her heartbeat to pick up, her palms to sweat. Her knee threatened to bounce as he quickly excused himself and snaked through the crowd toward her.
"Kate Beckett?" he appraised, stepping onto the platform with his eyes warm but more guarded than she remembered.
"Rick," she replied, hiding the smirk she was forcing behind the glass of vodka in her hand. "Nice party."
"Didn't think you'd show," he admitted, taking the bar stool next to hers.
"Ah, so it was a pity invite?"
"No, no," he sputtered, eyes wide. "I just - I sent an invitation to everyone in my contact list and don't get me wrong, I'm glad you're here. I just thought…"
She arched an eyebrow, waiting, wanting him to say it.
"I thought you still hated me," he shrugged.
She frowned, disappointed in him. "Never hated you, Rick. Well, maybe a little."
"I wanted to call-"
"No, I get it," she mused, swirling the glass in her drink, losing her courage quicker than her alcohol. "You've been busy. Books to write, women to marry."
He sighed, leaning forward until his knees bumped with hers. "Kate."
Her chest had ached every time he said her name that night.
"Why don't we go somewhere and talk?" he suggested, but she immediately dismissed the idea.
"No, this is a huge book party for you," she said adamantly, reaching forward to pat his knee, but it came off more sardonic than sincere. "I didn't come to crash it, I just had the night off and came to support."
"Night off from where?" he asked as she set her empty glass on the bar and signaled for her bill. "Put it on my tab," he called to the bartender, who nodded obediently. She huffed and slid from the stool. "Hey, Becks, wait."
But she was already easing her way between bodies mingling across the rooftop, listening as people fawned and fussed over the infamous Richard Castle attempting to follow her.
She reached the elevator and stabbed her finger into the arrow pointing down, cursing herself for being so stupid, for coming here. He was acting like he had no idea about her mom's murder, he definitely didn't know about her dad's alcoholism. No, he didn't know any of it, no longer knew her. He had no idea she was drowning and when she got his stupid invitation in the mail, it felt like a lifeboat, a chance to swim back to the surface from the dark depths of grief. But no, this was just a different kind of hurt.
The doors slid open and Kate stepped inside, releasing a breath of relief when the doors began to close. But then a large palm was slapping against the metal, causing the mouth of the elevator to open once more and allow Richard Castle inside.
"Why did you even come?" he hissed at her, tugging at his bowtie as he stabbed the elevator's button and forced the doors closed. "You obviously still can't stand me over a damn decision my mother made for me when I was still a kid-"
"You didn't have access to a damn phone for the past decade?" she snapped, her spine straightening with hot anger. Anger she hadn't touched in ten years. "Our whole damn lives together and you gave up on us after one fight?"
"Our childhoods, not our lives," he scoffed, piercing the shriveled up thing constituting for a heart in her chest. "I threw myself into my writing in LA, while also working two jobs and getting my GED since my mother yanked me out of school a month before I could graduate. Sorry I couldn't focus on our swing set spat more, Katie."
She shoved on his chest. "Don't call me that, you asshole. You loved me and you were so damn obvious about it and then you just disappeared."
His face paled a shade, but he quickly recovered. "We were teenagers. It's been a decade. Sorry for moving on with my-"
"I needed you," she got out, her voice trembling, her memories of being nineteen and alone on the Manhattan bridge flaring bright in her mind. All she had wanted was him to tell her it would be okay, that she would be okay. "You were all I had-"
"Bullshit," he spat, crossing his arms. "Perfect Kate Beckett with her perfect family and perfect plan. You had everything-"
"Nothing is perfect," she growled, hot tears stinging her eyes, catching his attention. She cursed and swiped at her cheeks before the tears could even fall. "You know I don't have everything anymore."
"I - I know." His voice was still hard, guarded, but worried now, concerned for her. "I'm sorry, that was out of line. I should have called, especially after Johanna-"
"It doesn't matter," she muttered, reaching past him to jab at the lobby's button. Castle shoved her hand away and hit the emergency stop. "What are you-"
"How long have you been back from California?"
She blinked. "What?"
"Your dad," he revealed with a quick wave of his hand, as if the information was no longer relevant. "He told me about Stanford, said you moved back after the funeral to finish school. But I haven't… it's been a few years since we talked last and he always tried not to mention-"
"Moved... you talk to my dad?" she rasped, the grief breaking open inside of her like a dam. "You know about his..." She can't bring herself to say it, not when he's starting at her with widening eyes of confusion.
Rick's brow furrowed. "About what? Wait… Kate, what's going on? Is Jim okay?"
"Oh my god," she whispered, placing the back of her hand to her mouth. He didn't know. At all.
Whether her father lied or had simply been drunk beyond comprehension whenever this apparent conversation between him and Rick took place, he apparently had told Castle she moved back to California as if the murder never happened. As if it hadn't changed the entire trajectory of her life.
"Hey," Rick murmured soothingly, palms curving over her bare shoulders. "Stay with me here. You're supposed to be the first female Chief Justice, why aren't you off being some hotshot attorney in the city of angels, right now?"
Her gaze rose from its focus on the undone buttons of his shirt, finding his eyes so blue and sincere before her. He had lowered his head, craning his neck so they were level, and she lifted a tentative hand to his jaw.
"Those dreams all died, Rick," she whispered, her thumb stretching to stroke the corner of his mouth.
His gaze narrowed, his lips pursing, even as the rest of his body gravitated toward her. She thought of the eighteen year old boy, how he used to look at her, how she must have looked at him. They weren't those people anymore, but-
"Kate." Her name was a warning, a question, a prayer all rolled into the single exhalation of her name.
With the added inches of her heels, she only had to lean forward ever so slightly to touch her forehead to his, to feel the heat of his breath fan across her lips. His hands lowered from her shoulders to curl at her elbows, fingers cinching at the bones, as if he wasn't sure whether he should pull her away or closer.
"Talk to me," he murmured, nudging his nose along her cheek. Her eyes fluttered and her chin tilted up, their lips no more than a breath away.
"I don't want to talk," she whispered before she closed the distance between their mouths and kissed him.
Castle hadn't responded to her for a moment and she wondered if he would really refuse her, standing here offering herself to him, but then his hands slid up her arms, her neck, to cup her face as he kissed her back.
She remembers moaning into his kiss, her arms snaking around his neck while his hands slid down her sides. She remembers him mumbling into the temporary space between their mouths that he had a room in the skyscraper of a hotel. She remembers him struggling to hit the correct button for his floor as she pressed him into the elevator wall and how he had hoisted her into his arms, returning the eager work of her mouth, the impatient movement of her hips and her hands against him. He had carried her to his room, to his bed, and stripped off their clothes.
When she came against him, it was with his name and a gasp in her mouth.
"I missed you," he confessed afterward, lying beside her in the dark with their limbs tangled and bodies loose.
Kate combed her fingers through his hair, his blue eyes alight and on her in the dark. They were sharing one of the starch white hotel pillows; it reminded her of when they used to built forts as kids, share their secrets under the sanctity of pilfered couch cushions and bedsheets.
"Missed you too," she whispered, stroking the warm skin of his back with her fingers.
She meant it.
"You should stay," he murmured, the words hot against her forehead. "After tonight."
She had only kissed him again, long and slow and enough to have him writhing against her for more.
She woke early the next morning, dressing in the dark. She didn't have his current number, his address, and he knew nothing about her life now. Her alcoholic father had him convinced she was off living in California again. Probably because her dad still thought that was the case himself.
She needed to keep it that way. She couldn't drag Rick - successful, thriving, beautiful Richard Castle - into the black hole of her life. It wouldn't be fair, it would only be a mistake, a cruelty.
That's what she told him in the note she left on the hotel stationary, and that she was sorry. So sorry.
Castle looks up at her like he's waking from a dream, his gaze confused and… so very dark.
"We slept together," he husks, taking another step closer, but his brow remains furrowed. "But… you - you left me?"
She pins her bottom lip between her teeth and nods.
"Was that your way of - of getting back at me?" he questions, the pain of it stealing the final vestiges of blue from his eyes.
"No," she rasps, placing the back of her hand to her mouth, forcing herself to inhale steady, even breaths. "No, it wasn't like that at all."
Her back is against the kitchen counter, so she has nowhere to go when he brackets her in with both hands atop the counter on either side of her hips.
"Then what?" he demands.
Her chest shudders. "I was so fucked up, Castle. It had been years since my mom, but I was still a rookie detective and I was struggling with looking into her case, desperate for answers I couldn't find, and when your stupid invitation came... I wanted to see you, but I didn't mean for-" She covers her face with her hands. "You didn't know about my dad's drinking, and I knew once - once you did, once you saw how different I was, you wouldn't want me."
"Kate," he growls, bowing his head to drop his forehead to her shoulder.
"Or that you would try to fix it. I was working nonstop at the precinct and then cleaning up my dad every night from drinking binges, I wasn't - I couldn't do that to you," she chokes out, lowering her hands from her face when she feels his head lift from her shoulder. He looks so ragged, as if in the last ten minutes, he has aged the entire twenty years he had forgotten. "I'm so sorry, Castle. I'm sorry-"
His mouth steals the rest of her words, the delicate brushes of lips from the week before gone. Tonight, he kisses her with purpose, with determination and punishment and need. She groans and shakes her head.
"Rick-"
But his arms are wrapping around her and she's arching into his touch, reaching for him even though it's wrong. Isn't it wrong?
"No more of this," he says, his spine bowing forward as he bends to kiss her, tongue sliding past the weak defense of her lips. "I love you. I have always loved you," he whispers against her lips, causing her heart to beat hard enough to rattle her ribs. "No matter what time or universe - it's always going to be you."
Kate's hands climb his chest, unfurling from the grip she didn't even know she had on the front of his shirt, and drape along his cheeks, his throat, feeling the solid beat of his pulse.
"Let me have you, Kate."
She's nodding before her answer can come, drawing him in with the pull of her hands and the rise of her toes, lacing her arms around his neck and arching into the waiting reverie of his mouth.
Castle picks her up, setting her on the counter as his hands slip beneath her sweater, trailing slow fingertips along her spine, her abdomen, her ribs, like he's intent on learning every inch of her skin. Her head tips back, exposing the length of her throat, the press of kisses that burn her flesh.
Kate draws her legs around his waist, dragging him in tight against her. The muffled groan vibrates through her skin along her collarbone and she wants to feel it against her lips again, hear the mumble of her name in his mouth as he kisses her with fervor and reverence all at once.
"Bedroom," is all she manages, burying fingers in his hair. "The right."
Rick is nodding as he drags her off of the counter, her weight settling in his arms, into the perfect alignment of their bodies. He carries her through the apartment, down the short hallway to her bedroom, bumping into walls and swallowing her laughter the entire time.
"Stay," she breathes before he can lower her to the bed. "Please, stay."
He nips at her bottom lip, a punishment for her own failures, the irony of what she's asking of him. But then he's softening the work of his mouth to a tender dusting of his lips, the heavy weight of desire between them.
"I promise, Kate."