Set a few weeks after 'Cuffed' (4x10).
"I'm outside your apartment."
Kate bolts upright in bed, phone pressed to her ear with tired, uncooperative hands. "You're what?"
"Freezing out here, Beckett. Can you let me in?"
"It's two in the morning. What are you doing outside my apartment?"
"Listen," he starts, sounding genuinely quite sheepish now that she's awake enough to register it. And he's shivering. She can hear it over the phone. "S-snowstorm. The— one on the news. I wanted to be out experiencing it, you know? New York Blizzard. Sounded cool."
"Castle. Stop talking. You're not making any sense. I'm coming down."
Kate hangs up on him — despite his squawk of protest — and shucks on a pair of joggers and a hoodie as she makes her way through her apartment. The downside of this beloved rent-controlled building is that there hasn't been an ounce of maintenance done on the place since the sixties, and there's no intercom-buzzer system for her to just let him in from all the way up here. The lobby doors auto-lock at midnight, which is fine if you have a key to let yourself in with. Except that he doesn't, because this isn't his house. Richard goddamned Castle. Two in the morning. Cold in this stairwell.
Small mercies: he's exactly where he said he would be when she paces into the lobby, huddled against the murky glass of the building's front doors. Castle jumps a little at the snick of her key in the lock, throwing her a boyish grin as she wrenches open the door for him. Fuck, it's freezing out there.
"Are you in a fucking t-shirt?"
Castle glances down at himself as if surprised by her observation.
"Oh, yeah. In a rush."
"It's the middle of the night."
"Can I talk inside?" He whines. "I'm cold."
"You're a child. Get in."
Castle beams, looking genuinely grateful as he shuffles into the lobby, and Kate forgets for a minute that she's tired and angry and awake at 2am because of him. The blue of his eyes. Whatever.
"I fell asleep with the weather channel on," he starts, as if that clarifies anything, and Kate studiously does not look at him as she locks the doors back up.
"Right."
"And when I woke up at midnight, there were all of these severe weather warnings about this blizzard, you know? Two feet of snow predicted. You know how nuts that is here?"
Kate does, actually. She loves the snow, hasn't seen it much thicker than slush underfoot in this city for a few years now.
"Mm," she grants finally, folding her arms as she turns to look at him. Which is a mistake. He's molten gold now that she can see him properly, face flushed with the cold, snowflakes caught and melting on the spiky strands of his hair, the tip of his nose. That childlike joy which she so loves in him, except concentrated, intensified, shining from the bright pink apples of his cheeks. He looks younger than she knows what to do with. Happier, too.
"I just had to be in it."
Kate blinks. "In the… snow?"
"The storm, yeah. I can't even describe it. I just— I so badly wanted to catch a snowflake on my tongue. In my hands. See how hard it's flurrying out there?"
Flurrying. His writer's words.
"And then I was running. I'm not sure why. I think it was the cold?"
He looks at her as if for clarification, like she's got any more of a clue. She can help. She can.
"Sure, yeah. Cold makes you run."
"Exactly, exactly." He's breathing all heavy, smile ineradicable now that she's on his side. "Just started sprinting. Snow kept coming. And you don't get tired when it's like that."
She wants to ask like what, except Kate thinks she already gets it. The wind against you, the snow in your hair, the frost catching at your fingertips. Impossible to slow down.
"So. Blizzard on the news and you went for a jog?"
He nods. Grins wider. Somehow. "And I made a snow angel. There's enough snow on the sidewalk already. For snowballs as well. But nobody else is out so I just made a bunch and chucked them at lampposts. You know how they explode? Even better in this light. The shadows are like supernovae."
Sometimes he says words like supernovae and she really really just wants to kiss him on the mouth.
"Alright, Galileo," she says, because she almost calls him starboy but maybe that sounds too much like a weird term of endearment and she just can't be taking those kinds of risks right now. "Still haven't explained why you woke me up at 2am."
"Oh, that, right. Sorry."
He doesn't sound very sorry.
"I didn't even realise where I was going, actually. Stupid of me, because…" Castle gestures down at his t-shirt, his ratty jeans. It's a more casual look than she's used to, actually, now that she thinks about it. Suits him. Makes him look more like the man who opened the door to her in a laser tag vest their first month of knowing each other. The man she wanted. Even then. "When I finally stopped and got my bearings, I was all the way down Hudson Street. Quite cold. And closer to you than me."
"Closer to the subway than to my front door," Kate huffs, but she catches his eye to make sure he knows that she's mostly messing with him.
"If you want me to go—"
"No," she says, too fast, and she doesn't miss the flash of triumph on his face at her slip-up. Fuck, she wishes he played less poker. "No, I mean, you should warm up a bit at least. You're no use to me dying of hypothermia."
"You offering to warm me up, detective?" He's tilting his head, smirking a little, and fucking hell she can't even really blame the tiredness for the way her whole body goes kind of electric. But she can give as good as she gets, easy. And she always wins this game.
"Yeah." Kate rasps the word, leans in, peers up at him through her eyelashes. "Where do you want me?" She's got him, got him hooked, and when she takes her bottom lip between her teeth Castle goes absolutely still. Then he swallows so loudly that she bursts out laughing and socks him in the bare arm. "God, you're easy. Close your mouth. You're getting a mug of decaf and a blanket and then you're going home."
"Gotta be back in time for Christmas," he says, absently, but he's still staring at her mouth. It's late. Later than it normally is with them. Dangerous.
"Exactly. Now move. I'm cold too and the fucking elevator is out of order again."
reviews appreciated :) hopefully i'll have this finished by christmas!
story is named after the best xmas song ever written btw. everyone go listen to the pogues' fairytale of new york now now now