24. TwentyFour: Tuesday

Twenty-Four

Kate finds her own way.

Castle gives her a funny look, but she hands him his leather bag and waits for him to pack. Her stuff is already by the front door of his loft, and she was careful to keep him from seeing it before she could explain he was coming with her.

She's finding her own way.

He pulls a pair of jeans from the dresser, giving her a quick look to which she nods, and then he dumps them in the bag as well. A few dress shirts - he still wears them, she's noticed, even though neither of them are going in to work, and she doesn't mind one bit because he looks deliciously crisp in those dress shirts.

He's in another one of his goofy tshirts, (something about In Case of Zombies, with airplane-safety-card directions) but the green makes his eyes look like the Gulf. A little intoxicating.

Kate stops being patient and helps him out, throwing boxers into his bag, the ratty sandals he wears all the time as they walk around the city, the book on his bedside table.

Castle gives her a look, hands off, it says, and she presses her lips together, trying not to smile. "Hurry, maybe, then."

He huffs and turns his back on her, a show of independence, and she does smile then, waits him out.

He gathers a few more shirts, a pair of slacks - where exactly does he expect to go? out? Oh, maybe that's a good idea. They should. Roaming the city has been fun, and pretty heavy too, at times, and they should just-

"We should go on a date," she says, the words tripping out of her mouth before she can stop them.

He turns, his eyebrows raised, genuine surprise flitting across his face. "Yeah. We should."

"When?"

"Friday?"

"You gonna come pick me up?"

"You not gonna be here?"

She shrugs, but yes. She's not going to be here. She's finding her way in this, and part of that is making sure she's truly not using their relationship as an excuse to not think about what she's done. A place to hide, like he once accused her of doing.

"Kate. You're not going to be here Friday?"

"Here? No. Why do you think you're packing a bag, Castle?"

He startles, his hands stilling as he looks down at his leather duffle, and then he glances back up at her with a flush of chagrin. "Ah. Okay. Got it."

She tilts her head at him, a smile tugging at her lips. "Where did you think we were going?"

"I don't know. I really had no idea. But. Okay, well, let me get my laptop and the charger for my phone and-"

She sighs; this is taking too long and she wants to go. She already asked Alexis yesterday evening, talking to the girl quietly at the top of the stairs, trying not to look too hopeful and force his daughter into anything. She shrugged off Kate's concern but she didn't throw open her arms and embrace her father's partner either.

Maybe she should tell him this has his daughter's seal of approval? "Alexis said she didn't mind if you. . .came home with me."

He gives her a little half-smile, lips curling as he shoves his phone charger and laptop power cord into the bag. "Yeah? You talked to my daughter."

She nods. "Maybe I should've asked you before I had you pack, but - Castle?"

"Hm?"

"You want to come home with me?"

In deference to the time of the month, it's still mostly just messing around (you wanna fool around?), but doing it on her couch with her windows open to the broad daylight is exhilarating. Like they're being watched. In fact, he's getting that vibe pretty strongly, and it's strange and a little weird, but the idea of sliding his hand up her inside thigh, drawing his tongue down her neck here, in the same room where he told her, hopelessly, that he loved her and she was driving him crazy and he just didn't want her to die-

Maybe that's all it is. The foreboding painting on her wall and the dust motes drifting through the sunbeams and her hot hands under his tshirt and dragging across his abs, and she's not dead and she's here.

Castle pants against her cheek as she touches him, slips his fingers into the back of her jeans, tugs her closer. She's straddling him, hair in a long curtain around them, enclosing them like a confessional, and he uses the rocking momentum of her hips to shove his hands in her back pockets and squeeze.

She laughs at his mouth, her laughter falling apart into a moan, and he feels her sharp breaths against him. He swallows them up, laves her lower lip with his tongue, sucks at the corner of her mouth.

He lets it go a little wild, lets himself forget where they are and the time of day and month, lets himself lose a little of his being into the dark and swirling depths of mutual need.

And then he gentles his mouth, strokes her sides with his palms, firmly, until she lowers back down on his lap, taking deeper breaths, and his heartbeat begins to climb down.

He cradles her face and kisses her, not exactly chaste but definitely less tongue. She sighs and sinks down against him, momentary respite, before she slides off his lap and stands, holding her hand out to him.

"I like your apartment," he says, coming up and following her into the kitchen.

She says nothing to that, but she does go to open the fridge, and she startles when, evidently, she sees what he's left in there for her.

"You brought your coffee," she breathes, spinning around to grin at him.

"Yeah. I'm partial to the good stuff," he says, a little shrug but unapologetic.

She lets the door shut behind her and wraps both arms around his neck, diving in for a kiss. "You have excellent taste."

He touches his lips to hers again, soft, wet, brushing. "I certainly do."

"Why wait until Friday?" she murmurs. "Go out with me now. I've got nothing to eat here."

"Let's keep Friday special," he says back. "Instead, we go grocery shopping, make dinner here."

"Invite Alexis over?" she asks, giving him a hopeful little look. Because she's trying. She's working at all the pieces, wanting them to fit. He can see it written all over her face.

"Yeah. We'll invite Alexis."

"We," she whispers.

"Getting sappy, Beckett?"

She shakes her head. "Just - pleasantly surprised."

He grips her by the elbows, hanging on tightly. "There was always a 'we' - even before this, always us. Even if you didn't want there to be."

"Did I ever say that?"

He gives her a look.

She sighs and rolls her eyes. "Did I ever say that recently?"

He thinks back, can't pinpoint a time in. . .well, actually, years. She's turned her back, been silent, kicked him out, run away, but she's never point blank told him they had nothing.

At least not since that first year.

"Well then," he says, and somehow the Beckett of that first year - brash and young and strident - gets overlaid this Beckett - Kate and strong and beautiful. And the differences are shocking. She's aged - matured is a better way to say it - but the bone-deep grace and self-assuredness, her beauty and reserve and intelligence have only been magnified.

And it's not just because he's in love with her.

He clears his throat; she's watching him, waiting for the rest of his statement. Before he got distracted by her, he was going to say something profound.

He grins. "Well then, get ready to be pleasantly surprised all over the place."

She laughs, startling and bright and amused with him, and then he realizes how that sounds, but he can't exactly take it back because, yeah that too.

"You want to do a little bit of pleasantly surprising me before we get groceries?" she hums, her hands drawing down from his neck to his lower back. She found some kind of pressure point earlier in the month, some kind of erotic zone he didn't exactly know about, and her fingertips working over him at just that right amount of pressure, sweeping up and around in circles, has his hips rising to meet hers.

"I'd like nothing better," he says finally and lowers his mouth to the open skin at her chest, sucking until she gasps.

It's good with him here, even if he does keep picking up her things and laying them down just a little bit off, as if he's trying to replace every object at just the right angle and coordinate, but he can't quite get it right.

If she wasn't a detective, maybe she would never notice. But it's everything in the apartment; he's put his hands on everything.

When she goes to the cabinets for italian seasoning and all the labels are tilted just a fraction off, she sigs and turns on him. "Castle."

He glances up from the spaghetti sauce, surprised at her tone most likely. "What?"

She realizes a split second before it's going to come out of her mouth that Stop touching all my stuff sounds a whole lot worse than what she really means.

So she doesn't say it. Instead, she hands over the seasoning and shakes her head at him. "If you want to know about anything, just ask me, okay?" Because even her closet was a little off when she unpacked everything, and seriously, what is he looking for among the seasonings or her shoes?

But he can't help himself. He likes to know the whole story; she actually understands this.

"Oh-okay," he says, staring at her. "I don't really have any questions, Kate. I like being here with you. Actually, I love being here with you."

Her shoulders dip with her tension level; she didn't even know she was so stressed about him being here.

But it's good, actually. Maybe this time she can have him help her throw out the box she dumped all her mom's case into. Maybe this week, staying here for a while, maybe she really will figure it all out, how they should be doing this, where they should be doing this.

Finally make a straight path in her wilderness wanderings.

Make her way.