castle fanfiction, castle/beckett - one plus one [2/?]
one plus one.
Author's Notes: Okay. So remember this? And how it was all "let me fix canon with sex"? Well apparently my mind decided that Castle and Beckett boning off-screen in Dial M For Murder was definitely happening, and then this decided to continue itself, but you don't really need to read that first because basically the only thing that happened was boning, so. Secret relationship fic. It's happening. But this little interlude had to happen in the meantime. So I bring you part two. There is sort of a plot in this one. I don't know whether to be triumphant or apologise...
(Anyway, the whole thing is going is entitled lessons in love and basic mathematics. It has it's own tag now. I'm just going to continue until they man up and add sex to canon.)
Edits by Kim (hummingfly67), with thanks.
For them, reality comes far too soon.
He leaves her with two empty mugs just before eight in the morning, which is still new when he steps out onto the street, wet with dawn. There's nothing out of place, just the start of an ordinary day, suits on the sidewalk already, New York traffic blaring in all its glory and the sun, starting to hint at clearing away the clouds. The mark her teeth made on his shoulder and his coffee cup in her apartment are the only signs that it ever happened.
Somehow he expected more to be different.
Alexis is waiting for him in the kitchen with one hand braced on her hip and greets him with a teasing, “You missed curfew.”
“Am I grounded?”
“Depends.”
She’s scrutinizing him in a way that reminds him of Beckett at crime scenes and he thinks it’s going to be a long day of that, things that remind him of Beckett; Beckett at crime scenes, Beckett at weddings, Beckett naked licking water from his shoulder.
“Where were you?” his daughter asks.
It’d be easy to tell her there was a case, but the lie would spiral quickly, because their cases go on for days and he can’t really pretend to be coming and going when he’s not. Besides, they skirt the issue, but she’s old enough to fill in the blanks when it comes to sex. And he doesn’t lie to her, wouldn’t even consider it except that this might be too new to share. He does anyway.
He sighs, runs his hand over his face. These, perhaps, are the consequences. “With Kate.”
His beautiful, intelligent, funny daughter infers a lot from his use of Beckett’s first name. She comes over and hugs him and says, “Well then, I suppose she kept you out of trouble.”
Alexis still fits under his chin; he rests it atop her head. “She did.”
“Are you okay?”
“I think so.”
His daughter steps back and beams, one of the smiles that surprises him with how much he loves her. “Good. I have to go, I’m late already.”
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
She laughs and pauses at the door, turns back and says, impishly. “I’ll remind you of it when I do it to you.”
He starts to call after her, but the door closes and there’s no point.
Martha swans in and he pouts. “They grow up far too soon.”
“Not in your case,” she teases, sets a mug down in front of him and gives him a knowing look.
“Mother, stop asking.”
“I’m not.”
“You are, with your eyes.”
(There’s rarely a time when she’s not reminding him that she’s an actress and the face she’s giving him is all high drama.)
“Well, spare the details -”
“Why? You never do.”
She slaps his arm and sits beside him. “I don’t need to know a thing except that you’re happy.”
As he says it, he realises it’s true. Whatever else, whatever the weight of it, whatever she wants but doesn’t want, he is … hopeful. He thinks maybe he should’ve learned by now, should be more cautious in his optimism, but he hasn’t, isn’t, can’t be.
“I am.”
His mother smiles, hugs his shoulders. “Good.”
It takes Beckett until midday to panic, which she does, calmly and quietly, over the last of the paperwork from the Bailey case until five thirty five precisely.
Monday nights mean Doctor Burke's office. It takes her half an hour to get across town in peak hour traffic and only slightly less to do it on the overcrowded subway. This particular Monday evening, she chooses the subway because being pressed up against an overweight drunk and a stockbroker who's staring down her shirt is still better than being alone with her thoughts. The train lurches from stop to stop and all its passengers are forced to dance. Her hand is inside her coat, on her service piece, the badge at her hip digging into skin under the weight of a woman carrying a screaming, crying child.
Beckett is jealous of the kid.
She wants to lean over and tell him that she knows, it sucks, and he's lucky because he's still allowed to cry about it in public. The next stop is hers though, and she escapes the quickly staling air without letting the enjoy it kid that she’s thinking pass her lips.
The glance over her shoulder as she climbs the stairs two at a time even in heels isn't something she'll tell the therapist about even though she should. It's the first time she's had the lingering sense of being watched in months and she puts it down to the fact that tensions are running high beneath her scar today, that there are too many thoughts echoing inside her head.
In an unconscious gesture, she touches her mother's ring beneath her shirt and pushes through the double doors without looking at her reflection in the glass. Inside, the carpet of the lobby dulls the percussion of her shoes and it's blissfully quiet. She could use a wordless, silent hour, but she knows that's not what she's here for. With a sigh, she drags her feet into the elevator and jabs the button for the fifth floor and waits.
And then does more of the same inside the small room before the smaller room beyond, where Doctor Burke will sit in one armchair and she'll sit in another and tap her heel until she figures out exactly how to say what she needs to say.
In fact, the pause isn't a long one. Words come almost immediately after they exchange greetings and the usual, symptoms, sleep, any concerns? No? How was your week? It's always the same, but not in a way that she begrudges. He can be businesslike, brusque when she needs it, but he always knows when to listen. She sees that today is no exception.
"My friend Ryan got married yesterday," she says.
"Oh?"
"It was a ... nice service."
Doctor Burke senses that there's a punch line. They sit there in silence for a moment, silently reading each other - they both do it for a living, just in different ways - and finally, he decides she needs to be prompted. "Milestones like that can make you think about your own life, about where you are and where you'd like to be."
"Castle," she says, and then stops, frowns a little and thinks perhaps that rather unintentionally speaks all her volumes for her, because it's where she is and where she wants to be and yet. "He was there. We ... talked."
"You sound like it wasn't a good conversation."
"No." She's suddenly all hands in a way she never is outside these walls, all palms over fists and twitching fingers. "That's not it at all, it was, we ... I said... well, that's the problem I seem to be having. The more I think about it, the more I think that I didn't really say anything at all."
"But it was a conversation that you felt you should mention. Why?"
"We slept together." There's always a point where she breaks and honesty comes. This time she sounds impatient with it because there are things she wishes he could guess without her having to say them.
Doctor Burke's hands are folded and the steeple of his fingers is supporting his chin.
Beckett continues before he can comment; he's on the verge of it and she's not quite sure she's ready to hear whatever it is he has to say. She chooses how she frames it, because the truth - that she'd been four drinks down and really, really wanted sex - doesn't quite sound as good as she'd like. (And besides, that fact doesn't change the others, that she chose him, that she promised him it was a start. They were always going to need a catalyst for change. Better it be this, normal one, than a bullet or a hostage negotiation or a tiger in a basement.)
"Because I just... found myself wondering why we didn't before. I'm all out of reasons."
"So you don't have doubts?"
She swallows and meets his eye and can tell she's caught. "We talked before-" (and during, but that doesn't seem relevant, it's just distracting her with the memory of it) "- he said he didn't want to do it by halves."
"What did you want? What do you want?"
"That," she says. "I want all of it. I have for a long time. I told you... that the reason I asked him to wait was because I didn't want to do what I always have before. I didn't want to make a complete mess of it because I-” she pauses, selects her words carefully, “I don't want that for him."
"And that's what I'm asking, what you do want."
"Everything," she says, the agitation that was fuelling and growing with her last words falling still at this, the quietest truth, which she is as sure of now as she was last night, and the night before, and the night before that. In fact, she can't remember not being sure. She knows, intellectually, that she wasn’t and not that long ago but her memory plays tricks. Her hands are at her elbows and she hugs them against her body. "I want the last chapter of the book."
"The happy ending?"
"No." She pinches her sweater to a point where her arm curls, picks at the fabric. "A life can never be entirely happy."
"For better, for worse."
She nods. "Maybe not that, exactly, but something like it."
"But you're afraid." He leaves the sentence hanging, waits for her to finish it her own way.
"Not like I was. Because I'm not like I was, then."
"No." Doctor Burke smiles at her. "No, you've made a lot of progress."
(It's been a combination of pills to help her sleep and breathing exercises and CBT, talking, facing things she's been putting off for a long time.)
"It feels like a normal, healthy amount of fear." Because surely anybody in her position would feel some apprehension, have some reservations. She came to love him so slowly that he’s already in every aspect of her life and she’d feel the loss of him, acutely, chronically. "The thing is, for so long, it's been two steps forward, one step back with us. Now we've taken this step, I don't know how to not step back."
"It's not something you can undo."
"I don't want to." Her hands twist around on themselves but then she rests. There’s a hint of her sense of humour in it, because she’s well aware of how it sounds, and if it were Castle, she’d add an eyebrow and breathe it over his ear, make him wonder. But it’s the therapist, and they both know she’s not talking about sex anyway. “It was good.”
"Can I offer some advice?" he asks, though given his exorbitant hourly rate it's mostly rhetorical. She's not paying him for nothing.
Still, Beckett nods.
"You keep telling me what you don't want. Focus on what you do want. That's why you step back, because you're not looking ahead."
Sometimes, it's worth every cent.
He answers her call on the first ring, like he's been waiting all day with his finger poised. She feels a little guilty about that.
"Hey," she breathes into the phone, drawing her coat closed against the crisp air. She's pacing in the street without deciding on one direction or another, back or forward, but she makes herself stop. Without motion to ward off the cold, huddled closer to the warm air escaping the lobby of the building as people come and go, she waits.
"Hi," he says, and there's a clatter in the background, Alexis' voice, then quiet. "Sorry. We were just finishing up in the kitchen."
"Oh, I'm sorry." Beckett closes her eyes, leans back against the wall behind her and wonders why it's so awkward. They talk like this a lot - she's always ringing at inopportune moments when they have a case - so she doesn't know why it's suddenly so hard when they don't.
But this is the way forward, this is the first step towards what she wants, so she breathes, in and out, three seconds each time and when she opens her eyes, it's to the realisation that each step is same as the first step, that that's the nature of motion, it's just that with time it will get easier, practiced, become habit, inertia. Maybe it has been for a long time.
"No. I ... wanted to talk to you."
"I did too." She smiles - a small, calm smile - which he hears over the line even though it's silent.
"I know," he teases. "You called. That's usually how it works."
There's a moment of nothing but the static of the line before she laughs and says, "Usually I know what to say."
"Honestly Beckett, I feel your pain. You should see the pathetic attempts at text messaging I've been drafting all day."
"A novelist, stumped by 140 characters? The perils of the information age."
He can imagine her face as she says it, all raised eyebrows and a lilting chin and winning smile.
"In my defence, too many words were the problem, not too few."
"Does that mean you have a lot to say?" The smile's still in her voice, but the laughter is gone; she's serious.
"After you," he says, then adds, devilishly, "Lately, I'm learning that it's best to let you make the first move."
The quip has something of a truth to it though. She's been wondering why he hasn't been bothering her all day by any means necessary - texts, calls, e-mails, hell, skywriting. This newer, more restrained version of him still sneaks up on her sometimes. Despite the quiet way he’s been there for her since the summer, she still expects loud, still expects him to push. Maybe part of her has always wanted that. Instead, she pushes herself for him.
"Not over the phone," she says. "Can you meet me after you eat?"
"You can join us, if you want."
"Not... we need to talk first. Without an audience."
He sinks a little at that. "Okay. Where?"
"I'll pick you up. Just... let me know when you're ready."
She hangs up and he stares at the phone thinking I've been ready for forever and rueing the fact that he'll never get a chance to use a line so perfect it could've been scripted.
(Still, he thinks, despite the drama, it's not quite true. She's made him ready, made him better. One day soon he thinks he'll tell her that.)
When he closes the door to the passenger side, she's drumming her hands against the wheel, parked illegally and already looking over her shoulder searching for a gap in the traffic. She finds one and then it grinds to a New York halt and she spares him a glance. There's a takeout container full of food in his hands.
"I'd have brought you flowers, but you sprung it on me," he says as he holds out leftover pasta for her inspection.
As the light changes, she gives him a look out of the corner of her eye as though she's deciding which part of the combination of gesture and words she's going to pick apart first.
"In my defence, it was Alexis' idea." Beckett doesn't believe that for a second and he can tell. He continues, doing his best to look charming. "I already fished out the mushrooms for you?"
"Romance isn't dead," she finally manages to say, when she's done being a little overwhelmed by all the ways he's made a study of her in details, but she's only half-joking. Ordinary, everyday gestures of affection have always been more her than the grand sweeping ones anyway.
"More importantly-” He changes the subject and when he does, she's surprised he's managed to wait so long to ask. "-where are we going?"
"Brooklyn," she says, simply, which he already knew, just as he knows that's all the answer she's going to give.
They take the Manhattan Bridge, and he watches the arches of the Brooklyn Bridge over her shoulder, studies the lights and her profile and the neutral line of her mouth and wonders.
At the top of the park, the lights of Manhattan wink at them from across the East River. She climbs up onto a picnic table and lets her feet rest against the seat, holding her hands out for the now-cold fettuccine. She actually is hungry; he knows her too well.
He sits next to her and lets her eat in silence for a few moments, until the effort of walking up the hill well and truly fades and he's left shoving his hands deep into his pockets to ward off the cold. "Why here?" he asks her.
"I don't know." She sets down the plastic container behind her and rubs her gloved hands together. "I didn't want to do this in the city. It's quieter here."
"The view doesn't hurt."
"No." She lets her elbow nudge into his side. "It doesn't."
"My spidey senses are tingling though. It's significant somehow. Tell me, how'd you find it?"
"First hit on Google."
"Seriously Beckett."
"I..." she trails off. “In the summer, after I got back from the cabin... I wandered a bit."
"Figuratively and literally?"
She nods. "Something like that. And I needed to get my strength back. This was a hill worth the effort."
"You’re leaving out the most important part,” he says. “That you didn't want anyone in the city to see you like that."
He sees her hesitate and then he sees her dive in, sees her resign herself to honesty and wishes just once, that she’d give it without the pause.
“No.” The words are measured, careful. “I didn’t. In my defence, recovery didn’t bring out the best in me. I-” It hangs like her breath, light against the dark of cold and night. “I didn’t want you to see me like that. I thought it would be hard, for both of us.”
“Probably.” He stares straight ahead, past the gentle slope of Brooklyn, past the lights of the city and the haze of its lights and winter smoke and what he sees at the end of that stare, she doesn’t know. “I needed to see you like that. The way you were. Alive.”
"Castle." She sighs. “I’m so sorry.”
He waits to find the right words, something he isn’t overly familiar with but has learned is best, with her. “I’m not sure there’s anything to apologise for. I used to. Over the summer, I thought that it was something you didn’t see in me that was there, that you didn’t care enough, because if you did, you would have called. But we were just at cross purposes. You needed space and I needed the opposite. It was a train wreck of a situation Kate. Don’t apologise for that.”
She tugs at the sleeve of his coat. “Just because there’s no one wholly to blame doesn’t mean I can’t be sorry. You’re right. It was a mess and I was a mess and I never did any of it intending to hurt you. But I did. And I will always be sorry for that.”
His lips twitch and she presses her lips together, amused because she can see he’s thinking that’s not what you said when we met. “Stop. I’m being serious here.”
“I know.” When he looks at her, she sees that he is too, in his way. He reaches over and takes her hand where it’s curled around the point of his sleeve. “You still haven’t told me why you brought me here.”
“For the same reason I chose it in the summer,” she says, “This is outside our world.”
The urban jungle is bright from across a black expanse of water, all light and water, and her fingers twist around his, willing him to understand, but he already does.
He nods. “Neutral ground.”
“Something like that.”
“Because you have something to say.”
“Don’t sound so worried,” she chides, falls back on humour though all of her is uncertain. “You liked what I had to say last night.”
“The mood is different.”
She falls against his side. “It doesn’t have to be.”
“Maybe it does.”
The breath she takes idles before she’s really done with it, and then she nods, starts. “You gave up on me.”
“What?”
“In the summer. I know I didn’t call. I know I gave you no reason not to. But when I went to see you, at the signing, you’d given up on me.”
“No.” He doesn’t shake his head, doesn’t sound imploring, just tells her it like it’s a fact and there is no way she can argue with it. “The problem wasn’t that I gave up on you. The problem was that I couldn’t.”
“That’s not a problem.”
“It was for a while. But I wasn’t just mad at you. I was angry with everything, all of it, and the only reason for that kind of anger is pain. I’ve never taken to well to it. That’s why I could never be a Hemmingway or a Poe. I’ve been accused of being drawn to other people’s tragedies, and that might be true, but I’m not such a fan of my own.”
“Neither am I. Yours I mean. And mine too, lately.”
She's moving her feet in ridiculous high-heeled boots that come up over her jeans to just below her knee and his eyes are tracking them, their lines, the movement of her legs. He's trying not to think about them wrapped around him, but it's a hard thing to forget.
“I don’t want to hurt you again,” she says, finally, finding it in her to trust her voice.
“Even if I ask nicely?”
(But it’s not a joke, not about sex.)
“Even if. I meant what I said last night Castle." Her teeth worry into her lip but she relaxes under the weight of his arm when he folds it around her, leans into his side. "About it being a start. It's not that I don't want things to change, because I know they will. When I said that I didn't want that, I wasn't being realistic or honest because I -"
She pauses to sigh and he finishes her sentence for her. "The relationship you want. You're still not sure if you can do that now."
"Not the relationship I want," she corrects, quietly. The wind reaches out and swallows it but he hears her. "This relationship."
“That you want?” he says, slowly, studying her.
He’s smiling at her in the most ridiculous, infectious way that she can’t help but return it, fondly exasperated. “You must know that by now.”
“A start.” He looks down at her. “What does that mean?”
“That I'm working on it, on everything, me, but I need to do that without a safety net. I know that you’re there - you always have been Castle, even when I didn’t really want you to be - so it’s not that. It’s not you at all. It’s just that I don't want you or anyone else to be the lynchpin. I have to be that for myself." She pauses, measuring his reaction to her words, distracted by his hand wandering, thumb pressing into the skin behind her ear. She finishes as he lets his fingers work under her chin, an invitation: "I don't want to need you. That's not love."
It’s cold and their lips shiver together, but it’s warmth that spreads through her, quieter than before but present, ever-growing. She always used to think it would be consuming, madness, abandon. But it is and it isn’t. It’s constant too, steady, a truth or a natural law, one plus one is two, he is, she is, they are. She tastes him, lets it still the rush of thoughts, feels it all lazing in her limbs and her chest and between her legs and then she’s breathing and his forehead is bumping into hers and he says, “You don’t need anyone.”
"I don't want you to give up on me,” she states simply, even though it’s an admission and she feels unsure, not of her words but of his, of what will come next. "Not again. I know I asked you to wait-"
"And I have."
"I know. I know that. But I still need you to be patient with me.”
“Beckett, I would’ve waited forever.”
“But this is different.” She turns over their clasped fingers, tugs at them until he looks at her. “It’s less… clear cut.”
“Nothing is absolute.”
“No, but just… if the area is ever too grey for you don’t doubt that I am in this.”
"Yeah." He stares at their hands, folded on her knee. "Me too."
Even with the heat on the entire way back to the city, his hands are still cold when they get back to her apartment, which she knows because he has her up against the door, freezing fingers inside her before she can remove both her shoes. Their coats are shrugged to the floor at their feet and she’s curling up the remaining heel into the wall and pressing forward into his thumb and gasping. His teeth catch against the skin exposed by her unwound scarf and she turns her head, invites his mouth up along her jaw and then mumbles nonsense encouragement into it when he kisses her.
With clumsy fingers, she finds the zip of her boot and moves to tug it at the same time as he finds a place to press against that sends her shuddering forward. The zip pinches at her finger, catching her nail and she swears, falls forward until her faces rests against the shoulder of his shirt and keeps cursing, but it’s less no, more yes. Her fingers claw at his arm, find purchase, keep her upright. She tenses, comes, slick, against his hand but he makes her body greedy. There’s a fog in her limbs, at the back of her knees and creeping down her front, but under it all her pulse says more more more and her hips seek it.
Inside her, his fingers still but his thumb keeps her body humming, trailing lazily up and over and against and oh.
She falls against him entirely and he hugs her there, where they have come to rest. When her breathing slows, she pushes him back, inspecting the damage to her nail as she does. She frowns. “That really hurt.”
“Need me to kiss it better?” Castle teases, trapping her hand against his chest and tugging it up to his mouth. He kisses the inside of her wrist then traces its contours with his fingers. They tap over her pulse and this, then, is love. She sees it on him and it sends her teeth into her lip, but it’s not out of fear, exactly. She wants to be worthy of it.
It’s a trance but she breaks it, falls back on what she knows, hums low in her throat and reaches down to properly pull off her boot and her jeans, watching as he watches with fascination. (It’s a way he’s always had of looking at her, lust but … curiosity. And she knows he really does want to know all of her.)
Beckett smirks, glances down at her hand skirting the front of his pants. “Isn’t that my line?”
“Could be.” His fingers glance along her hip as she busies her fingers with belt buckle, zipper, waistband. “But I have another idea.”
“Another outlandish theory Castle?”
(She fists her hands and tugs and then he’s not wearing pants, and their clothes and their shoes are making mess together.)
He slides a palm beneath her shirt, the backs of his fingers brushing against her stomach and she gives him a look as she gasps at it, like she knows exactly what that sound does to him, like that does something for her.
Her nails scratch against his hip in the wake of her hand, and then she’s palming at his erection.
Castle braces them against the wall so her back is flat and her hand is trapped between them, still curled around him. “Not so outlandish.”
Their mouths dance, all tongues and breath licking at her cheeks and his hips jerk against her hand. It traps her against the wall. When her head thuds against it, she lets her lips linger against his lightly.
“Well share,” she mumbles, hooking her free arm around his shoulder.
“I don’t think you mind my outlandish theories Beckett,” he says.
“That’s your theory?”
When his hips rock back, she suffers the loss of contact, is about to chide him for it, but then his palms are flat against her thighs and he’s sliding off her underwear with his thumbs and she realises he’s not quite done explaining himself. The hand between them moves to rest against his shirt.
“No,” he continues, against her ear. “That’s a fact.”
She kicks the pile of their clothes aside and lets her leg crawl up his calf by the heel until one of his hands comes up to brace it. She curls it around his waist. His other hand is sliding up her body; it lingers over her chest eliciting a moan, but continues until it finds her cheek, tracing over bone. “I think,” he murmurs, pulling back to look at her, and she thinks for a minute that he’s going to say too much, some kind of admission, because it’s all over his face. Instead, he gives her a sly smile and says, “We should test the integrity of this door.”
His hips search for hers and there’s a pleasant lack of friction, because she’s wet with want, but she’s raised on her toes and they can’t quite negotiate the shift of position. Their hands meet between them.
She smiles.
And then inhales, groans out, “Good theory.”
“You think?”
Her fingers grip his shoulders for leverage. “Convince me harder.”
He does.
Her head knocks the door which moves behind them in rhythm, all cause, all effect. For her, it’s pleasure that isn’t building to anything, not desperate, frenzied, not in need of release. She brings one of her palms to the side of his face, holds his cheek until they’re looking at each other. “The door’s going to hold Castle.”
(It could be about something else, about them.)
And then Beckett leans back and her scarf falls, trapped between her neck and the wall and the wool tickles at her thighs. She closes her eyes and he watches her lips move as she gasps. It’s the way they part for air; it’s all of her, everywhere. His hand tightens at her hip, leaves marks in its wake but he needs to hold onto something, because everything else feels lost, in sensation, in body-wracking orgasm, in- “- Beckett.” He closes his eyes and his forehead rests against the cool wall beside her head. “Kate.”
He leans forward and breathes her hair, feels her smiling against his cheek as he stills, her hand stroking along the back of his neck.
“You’re right about one thing,” she sing-songs in his ear. “I do enjoy your theories.”
“Knew it,” he manages, between the need for air.
She unhooks her leg and stands on both her feet experimentally, reaches out and takes both of his hands. Now they’re warm, hot, and his fingers curl around hers. She bows her head and the scarf falls to the floor and she stares at their hands, dazed, surprised at how well they do this. Not the sex - she always knew that would be good, he always thought it would be great - but the after. There’s no awkward dance for clothing or stilted conversation. They just pick up where they left off.
He drops one of her hands to lean against the wall, slides down to the floor and tugs at her other one, still clasped in his until she slumps down beside him.
“One day,” he says, “We’re going to have to use the bed.”
“Tomorrow,” she promises, closing her eyes and leaning into the wall. She can tell without opening her eyes that he’s grinning. “I’ll take off all your clothes too.”
“I have nothing against nakedness,” he tells her, “As my record shows.”
She snorts.
“But your clothes are more of a problem for me than mine.”
“I’ll take mine off too.”
“Tomorrow?”
It’s a serious question.
She considers it for a second. “Third time’s the charm, right Castle?”
“Thought you didn’t count.”
“Just for that, I’m making you wait until Wednesday.”
They fall quiet and lean against her door, nudging shoulders, until he whispers against her hair. “I’ll wait for as long as you want.”
She nods. “I know.”
“So you should know that I could never give up on you.”
There’s nothing to say to that. She yawns and rests her head on his shoulder. “You should go.”
“I know.”
Still, they linger for moments more.
It’s another step forward, a good start.
Author's Notes: Okay. So remember this? And how it was all "let me fix canon with sex"? Well apparently my mind decided that Castle and Beckett boning off-screen in Dial M For Murder was definitely happening, and then this decided to continue itself, but you don't really need to read that first because basically the only thing that happened was boning, so. Secret relationship fic. It's happening. But this little interlude had to happen in the meantime. So I bring you part two. There is sort of a plot in this one. I don't know whether to be triumphant or apologise...
(Anyway, the whole thing is going is entitled lessons in love and basic mathematics. It has it's own tag now. I'm just going to continue until they man up and add sex to canon.)
Edits by Kim (hummingfly67), with thanks.
For them, reality comes far too soon.
He leaves her with two empty mugs just before eight in the morning, which is still new when he steps out onto the street, wet with dawn. There's nothing out of place, just the start of an ordinary day, suits on the sidewalk already, New York traffic blaring in all its glory and the sun, starting to hint at clearing away the clouds. The mark her teeth made on his shoulder and his coffee cup in her apartment are the only signs that it ever happened.
Somehow he expected more to be different.
Alexis is waiting for him in the kitchen with one hand braced on her hip and greets him with a teasing, “You missed curfew.”
“Am I grounded?”
“Depends.”
She’s scrutinizing him in a way that reminds him of Beckett at crime scenes and he thinks it’s going to be a long day of that, things that remind him of Beckett; Beckett at crime scenes, Beckett at weddings, Beckett naked licking water from his shoulder.
“Where were you?” his daughter asks.
It’d be easy to tell her there was a case, but the lie would spiral quickly, because their cases go on for days and he can’t really pretend to be coming and going when he’s not. Besides, they skirt the issue, but she’s old enough to fill in the blanks when it comes to sex. And he doesn’t lie to her, wouldn’t even consider it except that this might be too new to share. He does anyway.
He sighs, runs his hand over his face. These, perhaps, are the consequences. “With Kate.”
His beautiful, intelligent, funny daughter infers a lot from his use of Beckett’s first name. She comes over and hugs him and says, “Well then, I suppose she kept you out of trouble.”
Alexis still fits under his chin; he rests it atop her head. “She did.”
“Are you okay?”
“I think so.”
His daughter steps back and beams, one of the smiles that surprises him with how much he loves her. “Good. I have to go, I’m late already.”
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
She laughs and pauses at the door, turns back and says, impishly. “I’ll remind you of it when I do it to you.”
He starts to call after her, but the door closes and there’s no point.
Martha swans in and he pouts. “They grow up far too soon.”
“Not in your case,” she teases, sets a mug down in front of him and gives him a knowing look.
“Mother, stop asking.”
“I’m not.”
“You are, with your eyes.”
(There’s rarely a time when she’s not reminding him that she’s an actress and the face she’s giving him is all high drama.)
“Well, spare the details -”
“Why? You never do.”
She slaps his arm and sits beside him. “I don’t need to know a thing except that you’re happy.”
As he says it, he realises it’s true. Whatever else, whatever the weight of it, whatever she wants but doesn’t want, he is … hopeful. He thinks maybe he should’ve learned by now, should be more cautious in his optimism, but he hasn’t, isn’t, can’t be.
“I am.”
His mother smiles, hugs his shoulders. “Good.”
It takes Beckett until midday to panic, which she does, calmly and quietly, over the last of the paperwork from the Bailey case until five thirty five precisely.
Monday nights mean Doctor Burke's office. It takes her half an hour to get across town in peak hour traffic and only slightly less to do it on the overcrowded subway. This particular Monday evening, she chooses the subway because being pressed up against an overweight drunk and a stockbroker who's staring down her shirt is still better than being alone with her thoughts. The train lurches from stop to stop and all its passengers are forced to dance. Her hand is inside her coat, on her service piece, the badge at her hip digging into skin under the weight of a woman carrying a screaming, crying child.
Beckett is jealous of the kid.
She wants to lean over and tell him that she knows, it sucks, and he's lucky because he's still allowed to cry about it in public. The next stop is hers though, and she escapes the quickly staling air without letting the enjoy it kid that she’s thinking pass her lips.
The glance over her shoulder as she climbs the stairs two at a time even in heels isn't something she'll tell the therapist about even though she should. It's the first time she's had the lingering sense of being watched in months and she puts it down to the fact that tensions are running high beneath her scar today, that there are too many thoughts echoing inside her head.
In an unconscious gesture, she touches her mother's ring beneath her shirt and pushes through the double doors without looking at her reflection in the glass. Inside, the carpet of the lobby dulls the percussion of her shoes and it's blissfully quiet. She could use a wordless, silent hour, but she knows that's not what she's here for. With a sigh, she drags her feet into the elevator and jabs the button for the fifth floor and waits.
And then does more of the same inside the small room before the smaller room beyond, where Doctor Burke will sit in one armchair and she'll sit in another and tap her heel until she figures out exactly how to say what she needs to say.
In fact, the pause isn't a long one. Words come almost immediately after they exchange greetings and the usual, symptoms, sleep, any concerns? No? How was your week? It's always the same, but not in a way that she begrudges. He can be businesslike, brusque when she needs it, but he always knows when to listen. She sees that today is no exception.
"My friend Ryan got married yesterday," she says.
"Oh?"
"It was a ... nice service."
Doctor Burke senses that there's a punch line. They sit there in silence for a moment, silently reading each other - they both do it for a living, just in different ways - and finally, he decides she needs to be prompted. "Milestones like that can make you think about your own life, about where you are and where you'd like to be."
"Castle," she says, and then stops, frowns a little and thinks perhaps that rather unintentionally speaks all her volumes for her, because it's where she is and where she wants to be and yet. "He was there. We ... talked."
"You sound like it wasn't a good conversation."
"No." She's suddenly all hands in a way she never is outside these walls, all palms over fists and twitching fingers. "That's not it at all, it was, we ... I said... well, that's the problem I seem to be having. The more I think about it, the more I think that I didn't really say anything at all."
"But it was a conversation that you felt you should mention. Why?"
"We slept together." There's always a point where she breaks and honesty comes. This time she sounds impatient with it because there are things she wishes he could guess without her having to say them.
Doctor Burke's hands are folded and the steeple of his fingers is supporting his chin.
Beckett continues before he can comment; he's on the verge of it and she's not quite sure she's ready to hear whatever it is he has to say. She chooses how she frames it, because the truth - that she'd been four drinks down and really, really wanted sex - doesn't quite sound as good as she'd like. (And besides, that fact doesn't change the others, that she chose him, that she promised him it was a start. They were always going to need a catalyst for change. Better it be this, normal one, than a bullet or a hostage negotiation or a tiger in a basement.)
"Because I just... found myself wondering why we didn't before. I'm all out of reasons."
"So you don't have doubts?"
She swallows and meets his eye and can tell she's caught. "We talked before-" (and during, but that doesn't seem relevant, it's just distracting her with the memory of it) "- he said he didn't want to do it by halves."
"What did you want? What do you want?"
"That," she says. "I want all of it. I have for a long time. I told you... that the reason I asked him to wait was because I didn't want to do what I always have before. I didn't want to make a complete mess of it because I-” she pauses, selects her words carefully, “I don't want that for him."
"And that's what I'm asking, what you do want."
"Everything," she says, the agitation that was fuelling and growing with her last words falling still at this, the quietest truth, which she is as sure of now as she was last night, and the night before, and the night before that. In fact, she can't remember not being sure. She knows, intellectually, that she wasn’t and not that long ago but her memory plays tricks. Her hands are at her elbows and she hugs them against her body. "I want the last chapter of the book."
"The happy ending?"
"No." She pinches her sweater to a point where her arm curls, picks at the fabric. "A life can never be entirely happy."
"For better, for worse."
She nods. "Maybe not that, exactly, but something like it."
"But you're afraid." He leaves the sentence hanging, waits for her to finish it her own way.
"Not like I was. Because I'm not like I was, then."
"No." Doctor Burke smiles at her. "No, you've made a lot of progress."
(It's been a combination of pills to help her sleep and breathing exercises and CBT, talking, facing things she's been putting off for a long time.)
"It feels like a normal, healthy amount of fear." Because surely anybody in her position would feel some apprehension, have some reservations. She came to love him so slowly that he’s already in every aspect of her life and she’d feel the loss of him, acutely, chronically. "The thing is, for so long, it's been two steps forward, one step back with us. Now we've taken this step, I don't know how to not step back."
"It's not something you can undo."
"I don't want to." Her hands twist around on themselves but then she rests. There’s a hint of her sense of humour in it, because she’s well aware of how it sounds, and if it were Castle, she’d add an eyebrow and breathe it over his ear, make him wonder. But it’s the therapist, and they both know she’s not talking about sex anyway. “It was good.”
"Can I offer some advice?" he asks, though given his exorbitant hourly rate it's mostly rhetorical. She's not paying him for nothing.
Still, Beckett nods.
"You keep telling me what you don't want. Focus on what you do want. That's why you step back, because you're not looking ahead."
Sometimes, it's worth every cent.
He answers her call on the first ring, like he's been waiting all day with his finger poised. She feels a little guilty about that.
"Hey," she breathes into the phone, drawing her coat closed against the crisp air. She's pacing in the street without deciding on one direction or another, back or forward, but she makes herself stop. Without motion to ward off the cold, huddled closer to the warm air escaping the lobby of the building as people come and go, she waits.
"Hi," he says, and there's a clatter in the background, Alexis' voice, then quiet. "Sorry. We were just finishing up in the kitchen."
"Oh, I'm sorry." Beckett closes her eyes, leans back against the wall behind her and wonders why it's so awkward. They talk like this a lot - she's always ringing at inopportune moments when they have a case - so she doesn't know why it's suddenly so hard when they don't.
But this is the way forward, this is the first step towards what she wants, so she breathes, in and out, three seconds each time and when she opens her eyes, it's to the realisation that each step is same as the first step, that that's the nature of motion, it's just that with time it will get easier, practiced, become habit, inertia. Maybe it has been for a long time.
"No. I ... wanted to talk to you."
"I did too." She smiles - a small, calm smile - which he hears over the line even though it's silent.
"I know," he teases. "You called. That's usually how it works."
There's a moment of nothing but the static of the line before she laughs and says, "Usually I know what to say."
"Honestly Beckett, I feel your pain. You should see the pathetic attempts at text messaging I've been drafting all day."
"A novelist, stumped by 140 characters? The perils of the information age."
He can imagine her face as she says it, all raised eyebrows and a lilting chin and winning smile.
"In my defence, too many words were the problem, not too few."
"Does that mean you have a lot to say?" The smile's still in her voice, but the laughter is gone; she's serious.
"After you," he says, then adds, devilishly, "Lately, I'm learning that it's best to let you make the first move."
The quip has something of a truth to it though. She's been wondering why he hasn't been bothering her all day by any means necessary - texts, calls, e-mails, hell, skywriting. This newer, more restrained version of him still sneaks up on her sometimes. Despite the quiet way he’s been there for her since the summer, she still expects loud, still expects him to push. Maybe part of her has always wanted that. Instead, she pushes herself for him.
"Not over the phone," she says. "Can you meet me after you eat?"
"You can join us, if you want."
"Not... we need to talk first. Without an audience."
He sinks a little at that. "Okay. Where?"
"I'll pick you up. Just... let me know when you're ready."
She hangs up and he stares at the phone thinking I've been ready for forever and rueing the fact that he'll never get a chance to use a line so perfect it could've been scripted.
(Still, he thinks, despite the drama, it's not quite true. She's made him ready, made him better. One day soon he thinks he'll tell her that.)
When he closes the door to the passenger side, she's drumming her hands against the wheel, parked illegally and already looking over her shoulder searching for a gap in the traffic. She finds one and then it grinds to a New York halt and she spares him a glance. There's a takeout container full of food in his hands.
"I'd have brought you flowers, but you sprung it on me," he says as he holds out leftover pasta for her inspection.
As the light changes, she gives him a look out of the corner of her eye as though she's deciding which part of the combination of gesture and words she's going to pick apart first.
"In my defence, it was Alexis' idea." Beckett doesn't believe that for a second and he can tell. He continues, doing his best to look charming. "I already fished out the mushrooms for you?"
"Romance isn't dead," she finally manages to say, when she's done being a little overwhelmed by all the ways he's made a study of her in details, but she's only half-joking. Ordinary, everyday gestures of affection have always been more her than the grand sweeping ones anyway.
"More importantly-” He changes the subject and when he does, she's surprised he's managed to wait so long to ask. "-where are we going?"
"Brooklyn," she says, simply, which he already knew, just as he knows that's all the answer she's going to give.
They take the Manhattan Bridge, and he watches the arches of the Brooklyn Bridge over her shoulder, studies the lights and her profile and the neutral line of her mouth and wonders.
At the top of the park, the lights of Manhattan wink at them from across the East River. She climbs up onto a picnic table and lets her feet rest against the seat, holding her hands out for the now-cold fettuccine. She actually is hungry; he knows her too well.
He sits next to her and lets her eat in silence for a few moments, until the effort of walking up the hill well and truly fades and he's left shoving his hands deep into his pockets to ward off the cold. "Why here?" he asks her.
"I don't know." She sets down the plastic container behind her and rubs her gloved hands together. "I didn't want to do this in the city. It's quieter here."
"The view doesn't hurt."
"No." She lets her elbow nudge into his side. "It doesn't."
"My spidey senses are tingling though. It's significant somehow. Tell me, how'd you find it?"
"First hit on Google."
"Seriously Beckett."
"I..." she trails off. “In the summer, after I got back from the cabin... I wandered a bit."
"Figuratively and literally?"
She nods. "Something like that. And I needed to get my strength back. This was a hill worth the effort."
"You’re leaving out the most important part,” he says. “That you didn't want anyone in the city to see you like that."
He sees her hesitate and then he sees her dive in, sees her resign herself to honesty and wishes just once, that she’d give it without the pause.
“No.” The words are measured, careful. “I didn’t. In my defence, recovery didn’t bring out the best in me. I-” It hangs like her breath, light against the dark of cold and night. “I didn’t want you to see me like that. I thought it would be hard, for both of us.”
“Probably.” He stares straight ahead, past the gentle slope of Brooklyn, past the lights of the city and the haze of its lights and winter smoke and what he sees at the end of that stare, she doesn’t know. “I needed to see you like that. The way you were. Alive.”
"Castle." She sighs. “I’m so sorry.”
He waits to find the right words, something he isn’t overly familiar with but has learned is best, with her. “I’m not sure there’s anything to apologise for. I used to. Over the summer, I thought that it was something you didn’t see in me that was there, that you didn’t care enough, because if you did, you would have called. But we were just at cross purposes. You needed space and I needed the opposite. It was a train wreck of a situation Kate. Don’t apologise for that.”
She tugs at the sleeve of his coat. “Just because there’s no one wholly to blame doesn’t mean I can’t be sorry. You’re right. It was a mess and I was a mess and I never did any of it intending to hurt you. But I did. And I will always be sorry for that.”
His lips twitch and she presses her lips together, amused because she can see he’s thinking that’s not what you said when we met. “Stop. I’m being serious here.”
“I know.” When he looks at her, she sees that he is too, in his way. He reaches over and takes her hand where it’s curled around the point of his sleeve. “You still haven’t told me why you brought me here.”
“For the same reason I chose it in the summer,” she says, “This is outside our world.”
The urban jungle is bright from across a black expanse of water, all light and water, and her fingers twist around his, willing him to understand, but he already does.
He nods. “Neutral ground.”
“Something like that.”
“Because you have something to say.”
“Don’t sound so worried,” she chides, falls back on humour though all of her is uncertain. “You liked what I had to say last night.”
“The mood is different.”
She falls against his side. “It doesn’t have to be.”
“Maybe it does.”
The breath she takes idles before she’s really done with it, and then she nods, starts. “You gave up on me.”
“What?”
“In the summer. I know I didn’t call. I know I gave you no reason not to. But when I went to see you, at the signing, you’d given up on me.”
“No.” He doesn’t shake his head, doesn’t sound imploring, just tells her it like it’s a fact and there is no way she can argue with it. “The problem wasn’t that I gave up on you. The problem was that I couldn’t.”
“That’s not a problem.”
“It was for a while. But I wasn’t just mad at you. I was angry with everything, all of it, and the only reason for that kind of anger is pain. I’ve never taken to well to it. That’s why I could never be a Hemmingway or a Poe. I’ve been accused of being drawn to other people’s tragedies, and that might be true, but I’m not such a fan of my own.”
“Neither am I. Yours I mean. And mine too, lately.”
She's moving her feet in ridiculous high-heeled boots that come up over her jeans to just below her knee and his eyes are tracking them, their lines, the movement of her legs. He's trying not to think about them wrapped around him, but it's a hard thing to forget.
“I don’t want to hurt you again,” she says, finally, finding it in her to trust her voice.
“Even if I ask nicely?”
(But it’s not a joke, not about sex.)
“Even if. I meant what I said last night Castle." Her teeth worry into her lip but she relaxes under the weight of his arm when he folds it around her, leans into his side. "About it being a start. It's not that I don't want things to change, because I know they will. When I said that I didn't want that, I wasn't being realistic or honest because I -"
She pauses to sigh and he finishes her sentence for her. "The relationship you want. You're still not sure if you can do that now."
"Not the relationship I want," she corrects, quietly. The wind reaches out and swallows it but he hears her. "This relationship."
“That you want?” he says, slowly, studying her.
He’s smiling at her in the most ridiculous, infectious way that she can’t help but return it, fondly exasperated. “You must know that by now.”
“A start.” He looks down at her. “What does that mean?”
“That I'm working on it, on everything, me, but I need to do that without a safety net. I know that you’re there - you always have been Castle, even when I didn’t really want you to be - so it’s not that. It’s not you at all. It’s just that I don't want you or anyone else to be the lynchpin. I have to be that for myself." She pauses, measuring his reaction to her words, distracted by his hand wandering, thumb pressing into the skin behind her ear. She finishes as he lets his fingers work under her chin, an invitation: "I don't want to need you. That's not love."
It’s cold and their lips shiver together, but it’s warmth that spreads through her, quieter than before but present, ever-growing. She always used to think it would be consuming, madness, abandon. But it is and it isn’t. It’s constant too, steady, a truth or a natural law, one plus one is two, he is, she is, they are. She tastes him, lets it still the rush of thoughts, feels it all lazing in her limbs and her chest and between her legs and then she’s breathing and his forehead is bumping into hers and he says, “You don’t need anyone.”
"I don't want you to give up on me,” she states simply, even though it’s an admission and she feels unsure, not of her words but of his, of what will come next. "Not again. I know I asked you to wait-"
"And I have."
"I know. I know that. But I still need you to be patient with me.”
“Beckett, I would’ve waited forever.”
“But this is different.” She turns over their clasped fingers, tugs at them until he looks at her. “It’s less… clear cut.”
“Nothing is absolute.”
“No, but just… if the area is ever too grey for you don’t doubt that I am in this.”
"Yeah." He stares at their hands, folded on her knee. "Me too."
Even with the heat on the entire way back to the city, his hands are still cold when they get back to her apartment, which she knows because he has her up against the door, freezing fingers inside her before she can remove both her shoes. Their coats are shrugged to the floor at their feet and she’s curling up the remaining heel into the wall and pressing forward into his thumb and gasping. His teeth catch against the skin exposed by her unwound scarf and she turns her head, invites his mouth up along her jaw and then mumbles nonsense encouragement into it when he kisses her.
With clumsy fingers, she finds the zip of her boot and moves to tug it at the same time as he finds a place to press against that sends her shuddering forward. The zip pinches at her finger, catching her nail and she swears, falls forward until her faces rests against the shoulder of his shirt and keeps cursing, but it’s less no, more yes. Her fingers claw at his arm, find purchase, keep her upright. She tenses, comes, slick, against his hand but he makes her body greedy. There’s a fog in her limbs, at the back of her knees and creeping down her front, but under it all her pulse says more more more and her hips seek it.
Inside her, his fingers still but his thumb keeps her body humming, trailing lazily up and over and against and oh.
She falls against him entirely and he hugs her there, where they have come to rest. When her breathing slows, she pushes him back, inspecting the damage to her nail as she does. She frowns. “That really hurt.”
“Need me to kiss it better?” Castle teases, trapping her hand against his chest and tugging it up to his mouth. He kisses the inside of her wrist then traces its contours with his fingers. They tap over her pulse and this, then, is love. She sees it on him and it sends her teeth into her lip, but it’s not out of fear, exactly. She wants to be worthy of it.
It’s a trance but she breaks it, falls back on what she knows, hums low in her throat and reaches down to properly pull off her boot and her jeans, watching as he watches with fascination. (It’s a way he’s always had of looking at her, lust but … curiosity. And she knows he really does want to know all of her.)
Beckett smirks, glances down at her hand skirting the front of his pants. “Isn’t that my line?”
“Could be.” His fingers glance along her hip as she busies her fingers with belt buckle, zipper, waistband. “But I have another idea.”
“Another outlandish theory Castle?”
(She fists her hands and tugs and then he’s not wearing pants, and their clothes and their shoes are making mess together.)
He slides a palm beneath her shirt, the backs of his fingers brushing against her stomach and she gives him a look as she gasps at it, like she knows exactly what that sound does to him, like that does something for her.
Her nails scratch against his hip in the wake of her hand, and then she’s palming at his erection.
Castle braces them against the wall so her back is flat and her hand is trapped between them, still curled around him. “Not so outlandish.”
Their mouths dance, all tongues and breath licking at her cheeks and his hips jerk against her hand. It traps her against the wall. When her head thuds against it, she lets her lips linger against his lightly.
“Well share,” she mumbles, hooking her free arm around his shoulder.
“I don’t think you mind my outlandish theories Beckett,” he says.
“That’s your theory?”
When his hips rock back, she suffers the loss of contact, is about to chide him for it, but then his palms are flat against her thighs and he’s sliding off her underwear with his thumbs and she realises he’s not quite done explaining himself. The hand between them moves to rest against his shirt.
“No,” he continues, against her ear. “That’s a fact.”
She kicks the pile of their clothes aside and lets her leg crawl up his calf by the heel until one of his hands comes up to brace it. She curls it around his waist. His other hand is sliding up her body; it lingers over her chest eliciting a moan, but continues until it finds her cheek, tracing over bone. “I think,” he murmurs, pulling back to look at her, and she thinks for a minute that he’s going to say too much, some kind of admission, because it’s all over his face. Instead, he gives her a sly smile and says, “We should test the integrity of this door.”
His hips search for hers and there’s a pleasant lack of friction, because she’s wet with want, but she’s raised on her toes and they can’t quite negotiate the shift of position. Their hands meet between them.
She smiles.
And then inhales, groans out, “Good theory.”
“You think?”
Her fingers grip his shoulders for leverage. “Convince me harder.”
He does.
Her head knocks the door which moves behind them in rhythm, all cause, all effect. For her, it’s pleasure that isn’t building to anything, not desperate, frenzied, not in need of release. She brings one of her palms to the side of his face, holds his cheek until they’re looking at each other. “The door’s going to hold Castle.”
(It could be about something else, about them.)
And then Beckett leans back and her scarf falls, trapped between her neck and the wall and the wool tickles at her thighs. She closes her eyes and he watches her lips move as she gasps. It’s the way they part for air; it’s all of her, everywhere. His hand tightens at her hip, leaves marks in its wake but he needs to hold onto something, because everything else feels lost, in sensation, in body-wracking orgasm, in- “- Beckett.” He closes his eyes and his forehead rests against the cool wall beside her head. “Kate.”
He leans forward and breathes her hair, feels her smiling against his cheek as he stills, her hand stroking along the back of his neck.
“You’re right about one thing,” she sing-songs in his ear. “I do enjoy your theories.”
“Knew it,” he manages, between the need for air.
She unhooks her leg and stands on both her feet experimentally, reaches out and takes both of his hands. Now they’re warm, hot, and his fingers curl around hers. She bows her head and the scarf falls to the floor and she stares at their hands, dazed, surprised at how well they do this. Not the sex - she always knew that would be good, he always thought it would be great - but the after. There’s no awkward dance for clothing or stilted conversation. They just pick up where they left off.
He drops one of her hands to lean against the wall, slides down to the floor and tugs at her other one, still clasped in his until she slumps down beside him.
“One day,” he says, “We’re going to have to use the bed.”
“Tomorrow,” she promises, closing her eyes and leaning into the wall. She can tell without opening her eyes that he’s grinning. “I’ll take off all your clothes too.”
“I have nothing against nakedness,” he tells her, “As my record shows.”
She snorts.
“But your clothes are more of a problem for me than mine.”
“I’ll take mine off too.”
“Tomorrow?”
It’s a serious question.
She considers it for a second. “Third time’s the charm, right Castle?”
“Thought you didn’t count.”
“Just for that, I’m making you wait until Wednesday.”
They fall quiet and lean against her door, nudging shoulders, until he whispers against her hair. “I’ll wait for as long as you want.”
She nods. “I know.”
“So you should know that I could never give up on you.”
There’s nothing to say to that. She yawns and rests her head on his shoulder. “You should go.”
“I know.”
Still, they linger for moments more.
It’s another step forward, a good start.