It's the middle of the night and he's sitting on her couch in the half-light while she fixes them both a hot drink. So domestic, too domestic. Alarm bells are going off in Kate's head so loud that she worries Castle can hear them. (One spoonful of sugar, two of creamer, just the way he likes it. Because she knows these things. She almost grates a little nutmeg into the drink, but that's too much, it's all too much, always too much with him).
"Thanks," he murmurs as Kate approaches, passing him his mug as she settles down into the worn couch beside him. The adrenaline started to seep from Castle the minute he crossed the threshold into her apartment, excitement giving way to exhaustion, and she has to fight hard against the urge to smooth a hand through his snow-damp hair and tell him that it's okay to sleep if he needs. She thinks he does need. He's limned with fatigue in ways he never lets show in the daytime, and Kate can't help but wonder if it's her fault somehow.
"Wanna watch a movie?"
Castle blinks, coming back to her. His eyebrows come up. So disbelieving that it breaks her heart a little bit.
"…Sure?"
"What."
"No, nothing." He shrugs. Self-deprecating. "Just nice."
She's not sure what he means by that. Just nice. But she doesn't ask.
"Christmas movie?"
Castle nods, eager again, shining. "Can we watch Home Alone?"
He's such a kid. Against all odds, Kate feels lit aglow by his festive spirit. She hates this holiday, she does, and she most assuredly hasn't been up for watching a Christmas movie in years and years. But here she is offering it anyway, because he's here, right in front of her, his eyes soft like he knows exactly what it means for her to be making the suggestion.
"Sure, yeah," she says, playing for nonchalance and — she thinks — failing a little. Breathless, which is ridiculous. He's tired, though, or maybe just merciful, and he doesn't pick up on it. "Of course."
It's too dark in this apartment for how badly she wants to curl into him, let the warm cove of his body harbour hers. But she does nudge a little closer, a bead of coffee sloshing over the rim of her mug as she presses her side to his. Castle stiffens, doesn't speak. Her fault. She asked him to wait, and he's waiting, he's waiting, but there's something sharp and irresistible about watching kids' films in the dark together which makes Kate wish — just a little bit — that she never asked him to wait at all.
"This okay?"
She feels more than sees as he turns to look at her.
"Yeah," he murmurs, all incredulity. That she's asking. That she has to ask.
She finds the movie. Presses play. "Staring," she mumbles. "Creepy." But there's no heart in it, and it takes another long moment for Castle to finally turn his head back towards her TV screen. He doesn't apologise. Probably because he doesn't need to anymore.
Kate can't figure this out. It's so much easier to ignore this magnetism in the daylight — why? Why? She can see his chest rising and falling with every slow breath in her peripheral vision and it's nothing, it's breathing, but there's something about the very fact of him, his presence beside her, and it's starting to set her teeth on edge.
She wants him. She wants him. And there's no common ground here, no precinct-platonic façade she can force between them when it's the middle of the night and they're alone in her dark apartment.
"Castle," she whispers, which is just a terrible idea. Because then he looks at her again.
"Kate?"
She has to get away from him. She's going to kiss him. She—
"You're all wet," she blurts, and he actually bursts out laughing, thank god.
"Thought that was supposed to be my line," he counters, automatic, and it's like the lights have been turned on. Moment shattered. Which is a good thing. Good. They're waiting.
"Gross. I mean your t-shirt. You're gonna get my couch all damp."
"And here I thought you were just concerned for my wellbeing."
"In your dreams." (She is.) "Want a spare?"
Castle hesitates, scrutinising her. "Don't take this the wrong way, Beckett, but we're not exactly the same size."
"Thanks, Nancy Drew. My dad keeps some spare clothes here."
"Is— would he be okay with that?"
Kate pauses. Why wouldn't he be? "Uh, probably. Yeah. Considering the alternative is you freezing to death in my living room."
"You make a compelling point."
She studies him for a minute, tries to catch the flittering thing in his expression that she can't quite get a hold of.
"Were you ever going to say something?" She asks. Was his plan to just sit and shake for the whole movie?
Castle pauses. She can't read him, can't read the falter. It's weird.
"Didn't want to disturb you," he says, finally, but it's more than that. She knows it's more than that.
"I wouldn't have minded," she returns, but he doesn't seem to have anything else to say. "Okay, wait here. You want pajama pants too?"
He smiles, all grateful as she stands.
"Yeah, please."
Kate leaves him there, feels his gaze on her back as she pads through to her bedroom. Her dad's stuff is where she remembers — a few shirts, couple of pairs of pants — and she picks out the two baggiest things for Castle to try on. He's probably a large where her dad's a thin medium, but these should just about fit. She hopes.
"Here," she says, tossing the shirt and pants at Castle on her way back to the couch. He startles a little. She wonders what he was thinking about, wishes she knew how to ask. "Go change. My bedroom's on the left."
"Bathroom's fine," Castle interjects, and Kate pauses. His eyes are so earnest, oddly desperate. Not her bedroom, then. Fine.
"Okay," she lets out, on such uneven ground and not getting why. It's her job to know why. She hates this so ardently and she's not even sure what this is. "Bathroom's on the right. Second door."
"Thanks," he murmurs, standing, slipping past her.
When he comes back in two minutes later, Beckett can only really gape for a second. The clothes— fit. Sort of. Her dad's long-sleeved shirt is working sort of like a compression jersey, too tight and (god, fuck) defining his biceps in ridiculously sharp relief, snug in all the right places and really quite heinously fucking with Kate's sense of self control.
She's not even going to look at the pants.
But he looks comfortable, and the relief of it nearly winds her, how achingly she wants him to feel at home here.
"Clothes okay?"
Castle nods, flexing a little, getting his bearings. "Yeah. Much warmer."
"Good." Is this awkward? She can't tell. She doesn't get why. She can't work out why he's really here in the middle of the night — got lost on a run? She doesn't buy it — and she especially can't figure out why every move he makes is sending her internal compass skittering round and round in her chest.
"Come sit. We've got a movie to watch."
And he does, takes his seat again beside her. She can do this. They're adults. She presses play on Home Alone.
"You're probably wondering why I'm actually here," he says quietly, out of nowhere, five minutes in. He doesn't look away from the TV to say it and she can't tell if that makes this better or much, much worse.
"You told me already," she returns. An out. A get-out-of-jail free card which really works both ways. "Blizzard. Running."
"Yeah," he murmurs, except impossibly it sounds like no. This is a confession. He's telling her something, something integral, begging her to read between the lines and find him in the fissures there. "Glad you were here, though. Glad you picked up the phone."
Kate wants so badly to understand him. These clues he's putting down for her, the caution to his voice, these layers and layers of subtext between them which she forgets how to sift through until he does things like kiss her undercover or follow her across the country just to sit across from her in a hotel room and tell her that she's a mystery he's never going to solve.
And even then. Even then. Why do you keep coming back, Rick?
She nearly says, I don't understand what you're saying, but that feels too blatant, too much like line-crossing, wall-dismantling, holding all their secrets up to the light. So she says:
"I'm glad you're here too." Which is just as bad, just as honest. But Castle lets it be.
She thinks about the storm outside, thinks about the man in here, thinks about the sight of him all out of breath and covered in snowflakes and at her doorstep in the middle of the freezing night. She thinks about waiting. Thinks about Christmas. And when, inevitably, Castle falls asleep twenty minutes in, his body warm and soft and slack beside her, she thinks about how easy it would be to lean in and kiss him on the mouth so gently that he might never even feel it.
But she doesn't. Not yet, not yet. Instead she takes the half-full mug from his sleeping hands, lowers the volume on her TV rather than just switching it off so that the abrupt pause doesn't wake him. She strokes a thumb over his eyebrow, rests there for a minute, then grabs the soft throw from the back of her couch and drags it up over him until there's no limb of his left vulnerable to the cold air of her living room.
She cares for him, takes care of him, the only way she knows how. Silently. Completely. In the dark.