Happy birthday, Beckett!

[thebestseller]

WHO: Castle thebestseller, Beckett themuse, and you!
WHAT: It's Beckett's birthday, so Castle feels like she needs a little fun and decides to throw a party for her. The fact that she doesn't know about it is just a bonus.
WHEN: Backdated slightly to November 17th
WHERE: The conference room at the precinct
WARNINGS: Everyone on the island is invited, so please, feel free to show up and mingle. There won't be any alcohol, as it's at the police station, unless someone brings it, but then you might get arrested for disorderly conduct, oh, my...

---

Keeping secrets was one of Castle's skills, he thought. And keeping them from Beckett was a nearly impossible task, so when he was able to actually do it, he felt quite proud of himself.

It was sheer luck that he managed to smuggle an entire party into the precinct under her nose, however- but then again, it wasn't much, because he knew she wouldn't want much, and the part where he was even throwing her a surprise party could be delicate to begin with. But there was cake- two cakes, in fact, a handsome red velvet and a chocolate cake Castle had baked himself- some sandwiches and other assorted snacks, and coffee, and hot chocolate, and balloons and presents.

It wasn't the grand party he felt like she deserved, but he hoped she would, at least, enjoy herself.

Now he had to hope people showed up.

Comments

[thebestseller]

Castle also stopped, and he couldn't hide his excitement at the idea. Not only would his surprise party plan work, maybe he could actually go back to doing something.

"I'd like that," he replied. "It'd help me stop feeling so useless, to tell you the truth."

[themuse]

Beckett just shook her head. "Castle, you're not useless." She started walking again, and took a sip of her coffee. "Annoying, maybe. Way too excited about the idea of working with me again, yes. But not useless."

[thebestseller]

"... Well, that's nice of you to say. I've certainly felt that way, though," Castle admitted. "Maybe not useless, but a little too complacent is a better way of phrasing it."

[themuse]

"Yeah, well... It's hard to not get complacent here." She mostly meant it was hard to not get complacent when things seemed to be going so well for them. Just a couple months ago she was desperate to get off the island, but since their first night together, this was almost starting to feel like a reprieve. One she was getting used to way too quickly. "They've set this place up to make it impossible for us to really do anything," she continued. "You can't blame yourself for that."

[thebestseller]

"Yeah... but I still could have tried harder." Castle shrugged and took a long drink of coffee before putting an arm around her waist. Nothing too obvious, but still a gesture of affection nonetheless. "But I try not to spend too much time thinking of the could-haves and should-haves either."

[themuse]

It was a bold movement in Kate's book, but she didn't shrug him away. If they were going to work together, Kate figured she would probably have to be upfront with Shepard about it eventually. But considering the way of the island, she had a feeling fraternization wasn't as much of an issue here and it was back home.

"Yeah, well, I think about them a lot, and Castle..." She pressed her lips together. "You know, if we were home... We probably wouldn't be... together."

[thebestseller]

Castle looked away at that, though he didn't take his arm off her, much as he suddenly wanted to.

"... Probably not," he agreed softly. "But things change. Things have changed here, things have happened that I could never have imagined, and something shifted in our favor."

[themuse]

"What happened is I almost lost you."

It was out of her mouth before she even realized she'd said it. She stopped walking, turning to look at him again. The grip she had around her coffee cup had suddenly become tighter.

"Things at home... They were complicated for me, Castle. It wasn't about you. But being here, especially after..." She gestured to her chest, not wanting to actually say especially after I almost died. "It gave me a little perspective. It made me realize the things I wanted in my life even if it's still taking me some time to accept them." She pursed her lips together. "I broke up with Josh."

[thebestseller]

Castle stopped, taking his hand off her waist before taking her free hand in his own.

"I think some part of me guessed that," he confessed. "Everything, I mean. The complications. And the breakups. Life is pretty damn complicated, and I know that more than ever now. I was angry with you for not speaking to me, sure. When you showed up, though, and then when I was sucked inside that TV and made to face down everything I dwell on but don't like to acknowledge..." He let out a hard breath. "It gave me perspective, too. Life is too fucking short."

He then raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.

[themuse]

Her heart fluttered a little when his lips brushed her hand, and her pressed together lips curved into a smile.

"When I saw that you were here, too, I thought there was a really good chance you'd never want to talk to me again. I meant to call, I just... Didn't know what to say."

Mostly because there hadn't been anything to say. She had known exactly what she was feeling and there still hadn't been a damn thing she could have done about it because she wasn't ready. "I must have tried to tell you how I felt a hundred times back home. But I just couldn't get it out."

[thebestseller]

"If I hadn't been here for a few months... maybe I wouldn't have wanted to right away," Castle murmured. "But I was just so happy to see you. Even if not, you know I would have forgiven you eventually. We can't stay apart, Kate. We're in this together, one way or another. It took too long to spit it out, sure, but... I'm... not exactly innocent on that part, either."

[themuse]

"Yeah, but at least you had the guts to say it." Sure, because she was dying and there was a good chance he'd never get to say it again and that makes for some pretty high emotions mixed with pretty low possibility of it coming back to bite him in the ass. Kate had spent a good chunk of those three months trying to be angry at him for choosing that moment, of all moments, to say it. She wanted to be angry because it felt like a cop-out, or a knee-jerk reaction and it wasn't fair because he waited until the safest moment possible to tell her how he felt and what was she supposed to do with that information? She wanted to be angry for him making it about him again but... She couldn't.

Because the side of her - the annoying side that had, on occasion, tried to tell him how she felt - reminded her this wasn't surprise information. That stolen kiss, the hand holdings, the nearly dying with each other, the cup of coffee he brought her every single morning... He wrote her a three-book long love letter, for Christ's sake. Kate might not have been good at dealing with emotions, but she wasn't stupid.

"You made it pretty clear, Castle," she told him. "You told me plenty of times. I just wasn't ready to hear it yet."

[thebestseller]

Castle put one hand on the side of Kate's face, then leaned in and nuzzled against her softly.

"You don't need to keep making excuses for how you behaved," he replied. "You had to do what was best for you. Sure, it was frustrating sometimes, I'm not going to lie. I would have come back to you and waited for you no matter what, though. Because every minute of this has been worth it for me. Knowing that I'm yours, and that you're mine. It's what I've wanted, what I've hoped for, and the reward has been so much sweeter than I pictured."

[themuse]

"Castle," she breathed. Damn, him being this close in proximity really muddled her mind sometimes, especially now. Especially when he was saying everything right and somehow managing to break her heart and put it all back together at the same time. But it had always been like that with him. At some point, he learned how to say just the right thing to fix her when she needed it the most.

"Thank you," she said. It's what she had trained herself so say when she really meant I love you. "Thank you for being so persistent and so aggravating and not giving up on me. I don't think I could have done this without you."

[thebestseller]

"It's who I am," Castle replied, giving her a soft kiss on the mouth this time. "As you've reminded me before- I'm stubborn and aggravating and don't know when to give up. Now, come on... let's go to the station and find something for me to poke my nose into."

[themuse]

"I'm sure you'll have no problem finding places to stick your nose where it doesn't belong," she teased.

As if she didn't care they were in public anymore - which, she didn't - she put an arm around him and pulled him to her to kiss him deeply. When she backed away, she took his hand and led him towards the precinct.