Because You're Mine

A/N: This is my first Castle fic, so bear with me. I've been inspired by the amazing writing others have put on this site, and I'm constantly impressed by the ability of fans to pick up where the writers of the show leave off. They hint at Caskett at the end of every episode, and the wonderful people on this site find incredible ways to take that teasing and turn into a wonderful new beginning for our favorite pair. So this is my silly contribution. Reviews of any kind are greatly appreciated.

Disclaimer: I do not own Castle or any of the song lyrics contained in this story.

Kate takes her phone from its precarious position between her shoulder and ear. "I still don't understand why you had to make it a themed party, Castle."

"Why a themed party?" Her partner sounds a bit incredulous. "Because, my dear detective, giving the party a theme separates the weak ones from the herd. By giving very specific attendance rules to the attendees, I know who wants to come have a good time with me and who just wants to score free booze and mess with everything in my loft."

Kate smiles as she fluffs her hair, deciding that she needs a bit more hairspray. "You're loft isn't that great, buddy," she says as she rummages through the scattered contents of her cosmetics cabinet.

"Oh my sweet Beckett. You've made breakfast in my kitchen and eaten a good deal of homemade dinners in my dining area. You've showered in my ultra-luxurious, top-of-the-line shower." He pauses for an almost imperceptible split second that someone who does not interrogate people for a living might not notice; but she knows him, and hears that pause, and knows that he is letting his imagination do some work. "I know that you're not coming over here just to spend time in your favorite loft."

Maybe if she was actually standing in front of him, she would suppress her smirk, but she is in the comfort of her own home, shielded from his foppish grin and unrelenting blue eyes. She only has the richness of his voice over the wire, and it is just enough to set loose an unabashed grin as she moves into her bedroom and looks herself over in the mirror.

"Are you done being a pain in the ass?" she asks him. "I have to finish getting ready."

A childish excitement to which he is extremely prone flares through his voice. "How is the dress?" he asks. "How is the cleavage? Should I attempt to ready my eyes for the glorious sight?"

"Relax, Castle," she says, rolling her eyes yet still grinning, amused and annoyed (that is her default setting with him, isn't it?). "I'm June Carter Cash, not Dolly Parton."

"That doesn't mean you can't flaunt your… assets. Give me something to sing about."

Kate huffs. "Thank God Alexis picked out my costume."

She eyes her reflection as she fingers the lapel of her black dress. Slowly her digits descend her frame, brushing the vine-like pattern of white chiffon that crawls over her chest, which is bound quite tightly by the black cotton material. She smoothes her hand against the super-cinched hips that balloon out into a nice full skirt that makes Kate want to spin around like a little girl playing dress up. Her faded leather cowboy boots are her own, a vintage purchase that she acquired around the same time as her Harley.

She turns a bit and checks herself out over her shoulder. Her girls might be completely covered up, but the full skirt is certainly doing her rear end some favors. She looks more full figured than the slender woman she actually is.

"What about the ass, detective?" Castle asks her, his tone low and husky, assailing her ear in a stealth manner. "How good does that look?"

She shoots straight up and turns away from the mirror, a strange feeling wriggling right through her whole body. It isn't that he is being suggestive with her; she is just still unnerved that he is becoming more and more omnipresent in her life, and there's nothing that she, control freak that she is, can do about it. She takes a moment to compose herself, ignore that that comfortable distance she had settled around – that she is here, alone, and he is across town – has been disturbed, like a pebble creating ripples in a calm pool. Damn Castle.

"If we're just going to discuss my body parts," she says, that typical Beckett sternness back in her throat, "then I'm hanging up now. I'll be over in a half hour."

"You and your ass?"

Should she indulge him? A large part of her, the part that is irked that instead of spending New Year's Eve somewhere quiet (her preference), maybe curled up with a book, a glass of wine, and a tub of hot water in close proximity, wants to just hang up, accompanied by a hefty, meaningful eye roll. But there's that other part, that little orb of glowing light that she constantly covers up, the part that has been getting stronger and brighter and less willing to dim into the shadows. That part can't help it.

"Me and my ass will be inside of your magnificent loft in a half hour, Johnny."

She can hear his grin coming through the phone. Instead of waiting for him to reply in that low, slow lilt that she knows Richard Castle, millionaire playboy author, has employed to get hordes of women into bed, she feeds into her better Beckett instincts and just hangs up.

Throwing her phone onto a throw velvet throw lying across her bed, she turns back to her reflection and with knit brows examines her appearance. She's pleased with how her hair came out; loose waves fall along her shoulders – not so different from her average 'do – but she's pinned the top strands up in a slight poof. Very sixties, if she does say so herself. Lanie had offered to help her get ready, but she wanted to take the time to really look at a picture of June and slowly build herself up. She never would admit it – especially to Castle, that overpaid man-child – but she likes dressing up in costume, likes the idea of slipping out of her life, with its thick entanglements, complications, and memories, and becoming someone else entirely. She even likes that this New Year's soiree isn't like another Halloween, where there exists the option to be something supernatural, otherwordly. The theme of this party is "Heaven's House Band" – you have to come as a singer long since gone to the grave.

Satisfied with the overall effect of the costume, she grabs her coat, purse, phone, and keys and heads to the door. She is just about to exit when she pauses and remembers a bottle of tequila on her counter. She bought it months ago, kind of on a whim, but it had been taunting her lately because it had been pretty expensive and she hadn't even opened it. After biting her lip, her hand hovering near the doorknob, she turns and goes back for the bottle (it is her imagination, or does she move a little quickly, as if she wants to outrun her own rationale and get to it before she changes her mind?). She picks it up, heaving the weight in her hand, the smooth, untouched glass against her fingers. She grimaces as she notices how she has to hold on tighter than she normally would have to; her palm is a little clammy.

She denies the thought its birth, that she could possibly be nervous to go over to Castle's.

Reconsidering the tequila, she slowly sets it down and listens to the harsh yawn it makes as she slides it against the granite countertop. The silent apartment is filled by the sound of her nail tapping against the tall, slim bottle of Milagro Romance; her eyes don't move from the funny little cartoon of two people kissing underneath the logo. She wants to stop her smile, but she just can't. Briefly she considers the other alcohol in the house – some wine, maybe a bottle of champagne, a few stray beers. She remembers a nice bottle of Moet & Chandon that Montgomery's wife gifted her after she came home from the hospital, both as a balm for making it through the survival stage of being shot and for everything she had done for her husband. That would be a nice thing to bring to this party, even though it is probably a bit fancy for a fete she has a feeling will be on the sillier side.

She glares at the ridiculous cartoon. Tequila is a bit… presumptuous. It's speaks a bit too loudly as a reminder of page 105 of Heat Wave. Castle will read too much into her bringing over the very kind of alcohol that brought Nikki and Rook together. But – and she can't contain the pursed smile that lightens her face – she knows that if she brings it, all of her friends from the precinct will see that she is willing to tap back into her lighter, more fun side tonight. Kate, the cop with PTSD, the cop who fights as hard as she does because she seeks for others the justice that might forever elude her, can ring in the new year as carelessly and brightly as any other New York City single. And damn it if she needs to celebrate the closing of this year and embrace the promise of a new one.

She puts the Milagro in a brown paper bag and heads out the door, enjoying the sound of her well-worn, well-loved boots against her hardwood floor. It punctuates the silence of the apartment as she sets off for a much livelier space downtown.

Kate has no intention of driving over to Castle's loft because she is being realistic – she might drink tonight. Not wanting to worry about parking or any other car-related issues, she hails a cab and waits shivering in the late December chill for only around forty-five seconds before a yellow car zips to her side. She opens the door, slides across the seat, and wishes the driver a happy new year before she gives him Castle's address.

Settling into her seat, Kate leans her head against the cold cab window. She's glad to find that it's the perfect temperature inside the car. That's always a gamble in New York City in the winter – you bundle up to fight the biting cold and then get inside a subway car or a small store or restaurant and find yourself wet and on fire because of overcompensation brought to you by the thermostat. But the cab is just right, and her nostrils are pleased that the usual strong, sour scent of cab has been significantly dulled by some magic force. Maybe all those stupid move ads are right – maybe anything can happen on New Year's Eve.

Kate laughs soundlessly at her own cynicism. Only a New Yorker would concede that a scentless cab is a holiday miracle. Of course the driver, a dark-skinned African man who is chatting into a Bluetooth, drives fearlessly fast through the congested streets. She looks in a childlike way up at these buildings she's known all her life as she passes them by. With the exception of stopping at red lights, the car zooms past centuries of architecture, formidable evidence of life lived, not giving them any time or attention. Such is the way of New York. But Kate absorbs everything she can, even if it is all just a moving, blurred smear of color against the black sky above. Every day she is forced to focus on the gritty, the worst streaks of the human condition tainting everything good and beautiful that life has to offer. She makes no time for appreciating the total wonder that is living in this city. But tonight will be different, is different. A string of multicolored beads and feathers sway from the rearview mirror, a commercial for a bartending school plays like an undercurrent to the driver's foreign chatter, and the trees in front of the Time-Warner Center are alive with light blue bulbs that remind her of magically enhanced fireflies. The cab swerves in a circle around the pillar atop which stands a statue of Christopher Columbus, his form blotted outside by the heaviness of the night, and then the cab heads down a smooth stream of traffic on 8th Avenue. Before she knows it, she'll be there, at Castle's, having to socialize and be a rejoicing member of polite society. But for now, she looks at all the people on the street – all the people who are moving and engaged and alive – and smiles to herself as she closes her eyes.

Some amazing things happened in 2011. Every case she's closed she considers a little victory, even though it isn't. She was told… she was told that in her line of work there are no victories, only battles. And even though her job involves someone's life being cut short, she relishes knowing that her hard work has attained an answer. Without her putting in those hours and forfeiting her sleep and normal social habits, there would be no period on the end of the sentence for those who loved her victims, only question marks. She did that. She and her partner did that, together. She and her team. They were able to take the total black oblivion that is murder and throw in a little flare of light. She knows that that flare can turn the oblivion into a tunnel, something that can be defined and faced, something that a person can crawl out of.

But 2011 was also filled with horrible things that feel ridiculous and superfluous to even list. But she can't help the quick reel of images that take hold of her brain: Royce, Montgomery, the feel of the bullet shattering her body, the frozen over case of her mother's murder that had been gleaming for a while with promising warmth….

And then there was Castle.

There was Castle on that plane to L.A., Castle pulling the wires of the dirty bomb, Castle slipping a piece of paper into her hand in a bank held up by trained gunmen. Castle diving onto her body to take her out of the sniper's line of fire, holding her in the cemetery grass, begging her to stay with him.

You were a mystery I was never going to solve. Can't he see we're together? You have the perfect partner. Actually, I do. Until we found our rhythm. If I ever have to be hitched to someone, it would be you.

Kate… I love you. I love you, Kate.

She shakes her head, allows the frigidness of the glass on her forehead to bring her to the present. The blaring of a horn as they move across Houston Street is followed by her cab driver throwing up his hands and saying something she can't understand. She sits up fully, starts collecting herself. Her routine before she gets out of cabs is always to make sure that nothing has fallen out of her purse. It's a little compulsive considering her bag is zipped close and has been the whole ride, but she can't stand the thought of leaving something of value behind, something she might never get back. She readies her money to be passed over and clutches the bagged tequila protectively.

The passage of time between exiting the cab and getting to Castle's front door is spent forcing those words out of her head, the ones that still whisper to her when she's alone and thinking of him. Sometimes the brazenness of her lie blows her away; how could it be possible for her to forget the panic in his eyes as he leaned over her broken body? How could she forget his fear, his need, his desperate clinging to her? He used to be a barnacle, a tic, a leech, ignorantly attached to her, taking all he could without her consent. But in the late spring sunshine, on an otherwise beautiful but solemn day, he clung to her in a way that took dynamite to that godforsaken wall inside of her. He had asked her not to throw her life away. He had picked her up and dragged her out of that dark, miserable hangar. And still, she had almost died, and something in his eyes that day was losing life just as surely as she was….

She knocks on the door like she has countless times before. Instinctively, she knows that he will be greeting her in a matter of moments. He will not hesitate to let her inside. He never has.

Kate lets out an untamed laugh, a peal that kindles something soft in those adorable blue eyes that meet hers.

"Well, well, if it isn't J.R. Cash," she breathes with a hint of a southern accent, resting her fist on her hip as she drinks in the man before her.

She hadn't really considered it too much ahead of time, so she is a bit pleasantly stunned to see how much Castle actually looks like Johnny Cash. A lot of it is the costume: a black button down, dark pants, shiny shoes that genuinely seem like a little shoeshine boy has wiped them down with his spit. His hair has been slicked back accordingly. But it all serves to highlight how much of the man himself resembles the Man in Black. He's built like him, big and broad, with a barrel chest, like a man raised out in the fields instead of the wilds of New York City. And his face. The expressive eyes and weathered features work together when pulled in by a snarl frequented by the late country singer. He actually looks like him. All Kate can do for a few moments is stand there, impressed, a bit delighted, and –

No. Not aroused. Definitely not aroused, though he is exuding something dark, deep, and troubled, something she finds quite attractive. Damaged goods and all.

But then he smiles that shiny Castle smile, the one that swoops in like cartoonish sunshine in a sky bloated with gray storm clouds, and she laughs to herself to remember that he isn't a broody troubadour. He's just her Castle.

"You're cuttin' quite a fine figure yourself there, Miss Carter," he drawls in a more than decent impression of Johnny's deep, ragged voice. He holds out his hand to her and she unthinkingly takes it. Both are smiling as he drags her inside to a loft half-filled with faces, some familiar, some not. He promised up, down, and all over the town that this was not going to be one of his A-list bashes that would show up on Page Six the next day. And looking around at the guests, it seems that he has kept his promise.

With a light fluttering of fondness through her chest, she recalls the day at the 12th, a week before Christmas, when Castle suggested – no, informed her of – a New Year's gathering at his place. Her immediate, kneejerk reaction was an eye roll, but he just as thoughtlessly put his hand over hers and asked her to hear him out. While she gazed down through her lashes at their overlapped fingers, he told her that he would only invite people on a guest list that she approved. She looked back up and him and arched her brow. "Seriously, Castle? You're roping me into your party? What are we, co-hosts?"

He smiled and withdrew his hand so that he could rest his chin on his touching palms and laced fingers. "We are partners, after all," he said.

She ignored how his withdrawal took away a slight warmth she hadn't noticed and instead shifted her surface focus back to her paperwork. "Just in here," she lied.

Even though she didn't look back up at him, she knew that he was still smiling at her. She waited for him to say something, but he didn't, and just like he must have known, it got under her skin. She rolled her eyes again and stilled her pen, meeting his eyes full-on, the way that they always have. Equals. Matches. Whatever you want to call it.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked. "Why would you involve me? What, you want to show off your sparkly little muse to all your fancy friends? Put Nikki Heat in a dress and ply her with your finest bubbly?"

She couldn't tell how much she was joking and how much she actually meant by her accusation. But her irritation was furthered by the insistence of Castle's smile that it was there to stay. She was about to huff in frustration when she noticed the grin soften a bit and that certain light that came into his eyes when was being kind yet genuine and open pour steadily through those mischievous orbs of blue.

"I'm actually doing it for Ryan and Jenny," he said. "They'll be getting married a few weeks later, and I know how stressed and exhausted they've been about the whole thing, so I thought I'd give them a stress-free night of fun."

She stared at him, brows slightly drawn, disbelieving and yet not at all.

He seemed to feel the need to further explain himself under that stare. "New Year's is usually a terrible night of pressure for everyone, so I thought I'd open my home to a couple of my very hard-working friends and let them let loose in a safe, welcoming environment."

She did not mean to, but she ended up expressing herself in that way she tended to when faced unexpectedly with the sweetness and generosity of Richard Castle. Like when he showed up with flowers after Raglan was shot right in front of them. Like when he told her about the Johanna Beckett scholarship. She gave him silence, vagueness, a drawn veil that hid a private moment during which he was left outside while she sorted through her feelings. And then she smiled. She would have patted his hand had he left it out in a place near to her own, but instead she settled for rewarding him with a true smile that did not belong to hardened, guarded Detective Beckett, but to Kate.

"Forward me the list," she said softly, a twinkle in her eye.

He learned forward and his grin turned distinctly Castle-y. "Already did."

Now, in a wonderful bubble of heat and low music, inside Richard Castle's loft (and she could never deny it, she does love the place) Kate sees the fruits of his low-maintenance labor. There aren't outrageous decorations, just the lovely, wholesome Christmas accoutrements and a few silver streamers that never detract from the feeling of home that Kate always senses in this place. It always perplexes her, that such a big, elegant space, filled with its many priceless curios and luxury pieces, could feel as warm and snuggly as it does. She suspects it has something to do with its residents, one of which comes rushing towards her from the kitchen.

Kate laughs at seeing Alexis dressed up as Hayley Blue, amused, impressed, and actually a little touched, especially considering that she insisted on keeping her costume a secret until tonight. The potent mixture of these emotions propels Kate to hug Alexis a little longer and tighter than she normally might have.

"You look fantastic," she tells the young woman as she looks her up and down. "Excellent choice."

"And look at you!" Alexis exclaims excitedly, taking Kate's hands and extending them out past their sides so that she can marvel at the entire costume. "I knew it would look great, but you're stunning! Even better than Reese Witherspoon in the movie!"

She tries to quell the blush she feels rise across her skin, especially since Alexis's unrestrained teenage voice is drawing a bit of attention, but then she knows that the attempt is hopeless when she feels Castle's hand fall to the small of her back. He is smiling down at his daughter, that smile he reserves only for Alexis, for family, for the times when all the women in his life interact so positively.

"I tried to convince her to be Roseanne Cash," Castle explains. "I thought it was only fitting."

"Dad, I told you, she's not dead. These were your rules."

Kate giggles and nudges her partner's hip. "Yeah, Castle, separating the weak ones from the herd." She looks at Alexis and feels an unexpected swell of pride, some sudden but strong tug that allows her a fleeting glimpse at parental gratification. "Her costume is perfect."

The redhead smiles cutely (she inherited a grin built on genuineness from her father) and hugs Kate again before her phone beeps and she expertly whips it out and reads a message in no time flat. "I'll be right back," she says. "Paige is having an issue with her costume."

"Go save the day, Hayley," Castle says, smile still beaming like a lighthouse as he watches his daughter rush up the stairs. Kate watches, too, feeling that sharp but pleasant tug settle somewhere underneath the tight binding that cages in her chest.

"She's a good kid, Castle," she says softly, aware that it's not the first time she's said it to him. She feels his fingers tighten against her back in response. The pride she feels now is for herself, for suppressing the shiver that wants to run through her at the directness of his touch.

"I'm surprised she came, actually," Kate remarks, turning to look at her partner without moving enough that he would have to release her. "You couldn't have paid me enough to spend New Year's with my parents past the age of fourteen."

"But Alexis has the cool dad," Castle reminds her, sounding serious.

Kate wants to laugh but settles on a smile so as not to hurt his feelings. "Right. Regardless, it's a bold move for a senior in high school to make."

Castle shrugs. "I think a lot of it has to do with Ashley. She's still reeling a bit from the break-up, and a lot of her friends have boyfriends, so I think she wanted to fly under the radar tonight. But she'll have Paige. She's fine." He unleashes a small, sweet smile to reassure her.

Kate nods, understanding a little better now. "Right, Ashley." She bites down on her lip and glances towards the now empty staircase. "I haven't talked to her about it in a while. I'll ask her to grab coffee sometime this week."

Kate tries to ignore the sparkle that peeks out from under the emotion in his eyes, but it seems to latch onto her quite stubbornly. The blush refuels against her neck and breastbone, and she's suddenly glad that the dress covers what it does.

"You were the one who helped her get through that first night," he says softly, corners of his eyes crinkled from his subtle smile. "I was there doing the dad thing, hugging her and telling her that he didn't deserve her and all that, but you talking to her after dinner that night… it really meant a lot to her."

And it had meant a lot to Rick. And it had meant a lot to Kate. But neither says anything of the sort, just stay in the safe zone that is Alexis, staring blithely at each other from across that ever-closing gap that holds all the words that they don't voice. Words they don't have to, and words that should be spoken alike.

"Where's your mother?" Kate eventually asks, forcing breath into her lungs.

"Please, you think Martha Rodgers is sticking around my lame party on New Year's Eve, the last New Year's before the end of the world, really, Richard."

Kate chortles at how much he sounds like her and lifts up the forgotten bag in her hand. "Well, she'll be sad that she missed cocktail hour with pent-up cops in need of a night of cheer."

"What do we have here?" Castle asks delightedly as he slips the bottle out from its stealthy trench coat. His eyes widen and he gasps as he cradles the Milagro in both hands and holds it out to the light. "Well, well. This should probably do the trick."

"I know that it's not the rarest scotch on earth," she concedes.

"No, no, this is exactly what we need. I'm thinking the safe bet would be some mixed drinks, but my baser instincts lead me to go with shots." His eyes round on hers, full, bursting with undousable flames of excitement and anticipation. She chuckles at this man she's known nearly four years and the child that she's had to both babysit and submit to for just as long.

"Both," she hears herself say, and is immediately rewarded by Castle's boyish whoop of surprise and joy. Yes, tonight she will be Fun Beckett, or she'll pass out trying.

He moves towards the kitchen where a vast, shiny array of alcohol of a sweeping variety is displayed non-garishly along his counter (another sign that he has exercised restraint for this party; he could make the bar at the Plaza look like a frat kegger if he wanted). Kate is a bit shocked – and relieved – that he hasn't gone for the obvious Nikki joke. She decides on this night of new beginnings to take it as a sign. Maybe he's maturing. But then, just as the small bud of hope blooms in her heart, he turns back to her, puts his lips to her ear just as he did in that hallway after their first shoot-out together, and whispers, "This will be sure to turn up the heat in here."

Damn him. Damn that man to the special hell where perpetual pests are sent to spend eternity. But when he leans back and fully beams that shit-eating smirk of his, she does nothing but smile and narrow her eyes a bit. She remains coy as she watches him walk away with her very expensive alcohol. Beckett a few years ago – hell, maybe even Beckett last year – would have punched him in the shoulder for both alluding to her alter ego and doing it so intimately. But just like how she now responds teasingly to his suggestions (like popping one more button) instead of twisting his ear and stomping away, she lets him get away with being himself. Because if he's not maturing, then at least she is, in her own sure, steady way.

The Jameson, she takes it, is courtesy of Ryan and Jenny. The fact that three quarters of the rather sizeable bottle is already gone is also a pretty good indicator of its owners. "How long have they been here?" she asks, pointing at the whiskey.

"About a half hour," Castle answers as he pours a fair amount of tequila into two stout glasses. "They've been looking at my labyrinth aquarium for the past ten minutes or so."

Kate raises her eyebrows and releases a long breath. "They needed tonight."

"Yeah," Castle agrees quickly.

She watches as he pops the top on a fresh handle of Captain Morgan. Immediately the smell of it sends her back to her early days at the academy, and she isn't sure if she's repulsed or nostalgic.

"What are you making?" she asks.

The tequila and rum swirl together in an instant dance when the writer pours an equal amount of the latter into the glasses. "It's called the Queen of Mexico," he replies. "Rum, tequila, pineapple juice, orange juice, lime syrup, and a hint of nutmeg." He looks down to catch her reaction, which is an expression of surprise and a bobbing nod of acceptance. "I thought it was a proper ode to Mr. Cash."

"He did have a fondness for Mexico."

"Exactly. By the way, excellent choice with the Milagro. Not as glaringly obvious as Patron. I dig it."

"You dig it?" Kate aims, leaning back a bit. "C'mon, Castle, I would have thought that you would have gone this whole night without breaking character. Where're hints of the deep south in that voice of yours?"

"Oh, it's a-comin', missy," he says in a near-perfect imitation of Cash, leaning in close to her face. She can smell the musty cologne he wears, different from his usual scent, but most likely chosen to fit appropriately with the costume. She wouldn't be surprised if he researched what Johnny Cash wore and ordered some for himself; not really wanting to know, she bites down the question and instead just enjoys the smell. It's different, but it's kind of sexy. She likes it enough to smile right into his eyes.

"No one told me you were here!" a very distinct voice calls out from across the loft.

Kate turns away from her partner to see her favorite M.E. emerging from the bathroom. And even though she was warned ahead of time, she can't believe the sight of Lanie Parrish dressed up like Michael Jackson circa the one-glove, red jacket, Thriller years. Kate can't help erupting into laughter.

"The King of Pop," she says by way of royal pronouncement as her friend pulls her into a hug. "You look… like something."

"I look fabulous is what you must mean," Lanie says, running her hand that is free of drink (but not silver glove) down her figure-hugging garment. Shiny red leather… indeed, Lanie looks quite fabulous.

"I'm pleased you committed to the look with the jerry curl wig," Castle pipes us. He looks to Kate. "She's one of the alphas in the pack."

"You didn't need to throw a party to find that out," Kate murmurs.

"Damn straight I'm an alpha," Lanie claims, despite the fact that she doesn't know to what Castle is referring (and she doesn't need to, because she owns it). "Just don't let Esposito get wind of that. He still thinks that we didn't work because we were both top dogs."

"Oh, I don't know," Castle says as he goes back to mixing the drinks. "I think that the right relationship can survive two alphas."

Kate arches her brow at him, smirking. "Oh, really? Your marriages teach you that?"

Lanie makes an 'ooh' sound like Kate has issued a low blow, but the detective knows her partner better than that. Just as she suspects, Castle just evenly wields a response.

"I said 'right relationship', Junebug. All you have to do is look to Johnny and June for a prime example of that."

"How so?" Lanie asks, sounding to Kate like she's a bit more than simply interested in an anecdote.

Castle pours orange juice into the cocktails. "Well, the two of them fell into these less-than-perfect relationships before finally giving into the truth: that they were right for each other. And it took forever. He asked her to marry him over and over again, and she always said no. I personally think it was because she wasn't quite sure of him, thought he was using her as a quick-fix for his life. She was his fairytale. But once they finally let themselves dive into it, they got even better because they were together. When two alphas join up, amazing things can happen. They can battle the storm together. They can be each other's armor. When it's right, like it was for them, it's the stuff of legend."

Kate is breathless and still, watching as he goes on completely unaffected. He adds the pineapple juice as he lowly hums something that sounds like "Cocaine Blues", and she finds herself annoyed in that way that tells her that she is not actually annoyed at all. It's that writer thing he does. Spinning out webs of perfect words spontaneously, meaning them, believing them, even when they're fiction… it's a natural ability, and she has never been unaffected by it. It mesmerized her back when he was just a handsome photo in a book jacket; hell, it saved her back then. And it has infiltrated even her strongest barriers like wind caressing battlements since he looked at her, a veritable stranger, a strong-willed detective on the other side of the table, and told the story that has driven her entire adult life. These words he's just issued casually into the relaxed air of the party, they're not his best words. They're not his most creative or spellbinding. But they puncture Kate, give her a moment in which she thinks that maybe she actually is more than what has made her who she is. She thinks that maybe she believes in magic, because she has indeed found it, somehow, in the circulating misery of her life.

"Well," Lanie finally says, snapping her friend back to attention, "I can see why you two picked these costumes."

It takes a moment for Kate to grasp her meaning, and when she does, she shoots the M.E. a dirty look. She's too busy doing that to notice Castle looking over his shoulder winking at Michael Jackson.

It was Castle's idea, of course, to be Johnny and June. He originally thought maybe John and Yoko, or Kurt and Courtney, but then realized that only one half of both of those duos had passed on. Sid and Nancy graced his mind. Though that would have been pretty funny, he realized that slowly – so very slowly – the two of them, he and his partner, have been slipping out of the phase in which it seems quite probable that their partnership will end in a tragic slaying committed by one of the parties. It never even crossed his mind that they should not do a "couple" costume, especially after spending so many endless, terrifying, kind of wonderful hours handcuffed to one another. And she never even put up a fight about the notion, which was like another miracle in the chain of mini-miracles that have been occurring since he woke up in a bed attached to her. Since she told him to hold her hand. Since she told him, "Next time," and filled him with a new ocean of hope that had been quite dry since the summer.

He is just about to add the nutmeg to the drink he is eager to down when Esposito, Ryan, and Jenny find them, trio converging on trio. Esposito, cutting a fine figure as Richie Valens, is looking rather supportive of his partner, Buddy Holly, who is a little glassy eyed but still bearing a decent amount of the weight of Janis Joplin. It seems that Jenny doesn't quite have the tolerance of the woman she has chosen to embody on this night.

"Evening, ladies," Espo says as he takes a swig of his Budweiser. He looks to both women, but he trains his eye on Lanie, looking somewhere between less than affectionate and riled up.

"Same to you, La Bamba," Lanie quips.

"Is that drink ready yet?" Kate throws to Castle over her shoulder.

"Coming 'atcha," he says, placing it in her receptive palm. Without missing a beat, they clink their glasses together and lift them to their suddenly needy, parched lips, but they are halted by Ryan as he adjusts his adorably thick frames that have slipped down his nose.

"Hey, hey, c'mon, guys. You gonna toast without us?"

"Yeah, Castle, isn't that kind of your thing, the showy gesture, the grandiose oration?" Esposito adds.

Castle opens his mouth to defend himself, but Lanie beats him to it (she might be an even bigger alpha male than him).

"We've all already started drinking. You can allow them some privacy."

Unintentionally ignoring Lanie's remark, Kate turns to the novelist and eyes him. "You haven't started drinking yet?"

"Nope," he answers earnestly.

"Not even a pre-cocktail party cocktail?"

"Who am I, Joan Collins? No, I was waiting for you, my darlin' wife."

There is palpable moment of suspended tension that seems quite lost on Castle; he's just smiling sweetly, completely without pretense. Kate won't let her jaw go slack, but she knows that Lanie is most likely performing the action for her. Instead, Kate just looks up at him, feeling like she did when he unthinkingly took Ryan's ring and fake-proposed to her. She's a little thrown off, a little light headed, but surprisingly calm. She feels… natural, in some position that comes just as easily as being a cop does, but brings with it much less pain and sacrifice.

Jenny's high-pitched laugh deflates the moments. She brings what looks to be straight whiskey to her lips and calls out, "I want a Castle speech!"

Castle finally turns away from Kate and lifts his drink slightly. "Alright, alright. To…"

He looks around at all the faces surrounding him and feels that good kind of tightness near his heart that comes with being in the presence of true, lasting friends. He offers them a smile and raises his Queen of Mexico a bit higher.

"To people whose duties this year weren't just to the job," he says. "To those of us who gave" – he pauses and looks at Kate, whose eyes are a bit wide with anticipation, rimmed with the very slightest dew of emotion – "and to those of us who survived."

She has to force the words around the prickly lump in her throat. Damn novelist.

"To Montgomery," she says, raising her glass, and silently everyone does the same.

"To the future Mr. and Mrs. Kevin Ryan," Castle adds.

"Here, here," both Esposito and Kate call out at the same time. Jenny laughs again, already accepting of the last warm stream of Jameson to be found in her glass, as Ryan gazes at her quite adoringly and plants a kiss on her cheek. Kate is glad for them, especially after the year they've all had, and throws back the smooth yet strong cocktail in a gesture of acceptance and willingness.

It's definitely not half bad, the Queen of Mexico. She can taste, underneath the coating of juices, the fineness of her tequila. Already it has lit a lamp in her breast, and she's only had one sip. She turns to Castle to see him licking his lips and looking down into the glass imploringly, waiting for the taste and its inevitable aftertaste to fully settle on his tongue. When it does, he turns to her and nods.

"Not half bad," he says.

"Exactly what I was thinking," she replies. "Good job, Castle."

He smiles at her praise. That one little gesture, coupled with a second long sip, sends a funny singing sound into her heart. He is warmth, she thinks. He makes her feel like this drink does, instantly sated and yet somehow needing more, something she wants regardless of what consequences might come later. But she knows that to achieve the perfect effect, all she has to do is play her cards right.

"Hope you hydrated properly, Detective," he murmurs.

"Oh, I think I have."

Only Richard Castle could pull off a party attended by Mama Cass, Aaliyah, George Harrison, Elvis Presley, Tupac Shakur, and Ray Charles, among an impressive roster of others. Beneath the elaborate costumes, this decent assemblage of those who have passed Castle's survival-of-the-fittest test are friends of Jenny's, Lanie's sister and her boyfriend, a few uniforms and one or two other detectives from the precinct, a couple congenial people who live in Castle's building, and no one from the team entirely devoted to Richard Castle: The Man, the Myth, the Legend. No Paula, no Gina, no one associated with his life as a famous writer. A few people in odd, seemingly random professions show up, people that Castle has met during his Derek Storm research, and they are all lovely and surprisingly detached from his famous persona and instead flock to the giving, humorous man in the Johnny Cash get-up. Kate shouldn't be surprised; it hadn't taken her that long to separate the image from the human being, and there wasn't much there not to love.

They are all having a good time, high above a city so incredibly cracked out on this particular night of the year. And for as frenzied as it all is, it is a totally decompressing setting. They aren't detectives, not tonight. Of course, their sometimes gloomy, always demanding jobs are alluded to, and Kate herself is guilty of it.

After two Queen of Mexicos, she is sipping from a water bottle, plopped down on Castle's sinfully comfortable couch (aren't rich homes supposed to have sleek but completely unwelcoming pieces of furniture?). Espo and Ryan are playing some ridiculous-looking card game at the coffee table, their jeers and yells a bit more slurred and louder than usual. Kate brushes her arms across her eyes and says quite clearly over the din, "I don't like your costumes, guys."

Both of them turn to her, looking deeply insulted.

"Buddy Holly and Richie Valens died in a plane crash," she mumbles. "They died in their youth, in their prime, at the peaks of their careers." She feels an ominous shadow pass over her with her own words. "Why did you have to be them?"

After a moment of quiet, Ryan makes a gurgling sound with his lips. "Jeez, Beckett, way to be a buzz kill."

"Seriously, bro," Esposito agrees, turning back to the cards.

"I mean it," she says as she stands up, legs wavering as she tries to decide whether to get another drink now or go to the bathroom and get the seal breakage over with.

"At least they went down together," Ryan chirps up right before he slams a card down and screams, "Booyah!" His partner issues a rather harsh expletive, which is enough to make a light headed and fuzzy chested Kate head towards the kitchen.

She doesn't want another mixed drink. She wants something quick, something that will take her from this ambiguous place between feeling it and tipsy. She reaches out for the Milagro, but a rather familiar hand comes down on hers and pins it to the bottle, right above the cartoon of the lovers.

Castle and Beckett smile knowingly at one another, saying everything and nothing with unbroken eye contact. But they're not at the murder board. They're not hashing out theory. They're in his kitchen, in costumes, more than ready to let go of the past year and start fresh.

"I want a shot," she says at the exact same time that he asks her, "Do you want a shot?" Their smiles deepen because this is what they do; the coming year, with all its newness, won't change that. Nothing ever could.

Without even the slightest spoken mention of Nikki and Rook, out comes the salt, the lime wedges, and the shot glasses. After the numbing, sweet satisfaction of doing one, they promptly decide to do two more. Not losing herself, Kate goes back to the living room for her water bottle. She has to pace herself. She wants be fun, not a sloppy mess.

Speaking of fun….

"I saw it, Castle," Kate comes up behind him and whispers in his ear. The heat of her own tequila-drenched breath blasts against his skin and comes back to her, and she's strangely satisfied. "I saw the guitar."

Her smirks at her over his shoulder. "Then you've figure out my master plan."

"I should have known."

"Well, yeah, c'mon. It's a dead singers party – were we not supposed to sing at some point?"

If it weren't for those three shots, it would have taken some serious convincing. But she's feeling warm and light and effervescent, and actually in the mood to play. She chooses to be delighted by the amount of thought and preparation Castle tends to put into the silliest things; it's the same that he puts into far more serious matters, but right now, she needs the silly. She needs drunken New Year's singing, and so she goes into his office and pulls out the beautiful guitar that looks awfully similar to the one Johnny Cash used to play.

When he approaches her with knowing, playful eyes, she can't help but murmur, "This isn't…"

He keeps her suspenseful for a moment before he shakes his head. "I picked it up on Matt Umanov Guitars down on Bleecker." He looks it over for a moment, smiling at what is obviously precision craftsmanship. It could not have been cheap.

"You know I have a guitar, Castle," she reminds him.

Her meets her gaze unfailingly, without fear. Always. "I know. And now you have one here."

A more sober Kate Beckett might have gotten angry at such presumption. A previous incarnation of Kate Beckett might have been irked by the needless spending. A Kate Beckett who had not woken up smiling next to this man once might have scoffed at the idea that she should ever spend a significant amount of time at his place.

"Thanks," she murmurs a bit bashfully.

He just stands there looking adorable, looking boyish, but not childlike. He looks like a teenager who has a pretty good feeling that this girl he just asked to the prom, he's gonna marry her one day.

"Look!" Jenny screeches from the other side of the room. "Beckett's got a guitar!"

They've never done it before, but they take to it quite naturally, this duet of theirs. Given confidence by liquor and the sureness of each other's gazes, they set up shop in the living room and beam at their little audience of hazy-eyed, happy partygoers.

"Hello," Castle rumbles, "I'm Johnny Cash."

It's perfect. Kate stifles a liquid-y, liquor-steered laugh and plucks out the first chords of "I Walk the Line."

While everyone claps along, Castle begins to sing:

"I keep a close watch on this heart of mine

I keep my eyes wide open all the time

I keep the ends out for the tie that binds

Because you're mine, I walk the line"

Everyone hoots in reaction to Castle's singing, which of course sounds a lot like Cash, but has a distinct Richard sound to it, or at least it does to Kate. She hears him, and even though she obviously knows it's him, sitting right next to her, accompanying her playing – a first for them, she realizes, her playing guitar in front of him – she loves hearing him in his own voice. It's like a strange reassurance that he's real. She doesn't quite understand it, but she knows she doesn't need to right now. She looks up and sees Alexis smiling brightly and Paige, dressed as Amy Winehouse, recording them on her Flip camera. With an uncontainable smile that she is now vaguely aware is being recorded as evidence (which can and will be used against her in a court of Castle), she continues to play, shivering at the sound of Castle's voice so close to her ear, strumming her heart as if it was made simply of wood and strings.

"I find it very, very easy to be true

I find myself alone when each day's through

Yes, I'll admit that I'm a fool for you

Because you're mine, I walk the line"

Jenny and Ryan, latched to each other, watch with eyes that she knows barely see them, so full of haze are they, but that doesn't make their swaying (sort of in time to the music) and their sporadic cat calls less cute. Esposito does that thing he does, the supportive, brotherly smile, the nod of approval, the little gesture that has been cemented in Kate's mind for years now; it could mean that he is simply enjoying the atmosphere, the one that surrounds her desk at the 12th, now transported under a sweetening holiday light to Castle's place, but she knows better than that, and now she won't deny it. She feels herself getting ready, and she knows that when she is, she'll have the support of her team, her forever backup, of Javier Esposito. That means the world to her.

They finish out the song to a chorus of laughter – which includes Kate's – and Castle starts to bow to his obliging, receptive audience when he realizes that maybe that's not quite what Johnny Cash would do. The beaming before flashbulbs, that's Richard Castle, and when Kate thinks of this, she is barraged by instant, contradictory mental images. She sees him as she did in person for the very first time, waving to an abruptly electrified line of mostly female readers as he walks from a side door to the table set up for him beyond Kate's line of view. Kate hadn't shrieked or hooted inappropriately like the rest of them; she watched him, a little floored by how handsome he actually was in person, and bit her lower lip so that it bulged out to the side, her smile not suppressed so much as thrown in pieces all over he face. She had hugged her book to her chest, but not in a schoolgirl kind of way. It was because that book – her favorite thus far, enough to propel her out of her dark, depressing apartment and to the Union Square Barnes & Noble on her day off – had been substantial enough to make her forget that where she once had a warm chest with a fully beating, slightly bruised, regular heart inside, she now had a blasted-open hole that wouldn't close. He disappeared from her sight until it was her turn, some time later, but that one glimpse, like a brightly burning shooting star across the milieu of everyday life – life without her mom – stilled her overanxious mind in the way his words always had. He was still a stranger, yes, but he represented a glimpse into something better, something fantastic, something that had nothing to do with her shattered life. He picked up her pieces. She remembers thinking, 'So that's him.'

The second image is not illuminated by a cosmic streak. It is a wholly dark image, cold with this thrumming, hidden heat at its center. She was standing half-hidden (not purposely, but she knew that he couldn't see her) at the very back of the line, and she watched as he smiled at the crowd. It was from a sizeable distance, but she knew him well enough to read that smile for what it truly was. He could never not look handsome, framed by a natural charm, a truly congenial manner that she was not sure she possessed even before she came home to Detective Raglan in her apartment (she couldn't really remember) but there was a dimness there that was thrown over him like a shroud, unnatural to his person. Richard Castle, regardless of where on the mood spectrum he is falling on a particular day, is always a fusion of light, but on that day, he was a ghost of himself, in the world but only as much as the darkness around him would allow. And she waited, nervous but determined, knowing that their relationship had fallen into an abyss without a foreseeable bottom and only she, by showing up, by ending the space she had needed and he had of course enforced, could make things right, or as right as they could be for the moment. The rest was the work of the two of them, together… one pulling more weight than the other (or was it both of them working hard, endlessly, just with completely different weights?).

She could never forget his face when he looked up and saw her. Kate. You can make it out to Kate.

The opposing – or are they parallel? – images do not vanish, but embed themselves into her mind, and she knows thanks because of the drinks and the general mood of the night and the way he turns to her – oh God, how he looks at her – that everything will just descend back to everything those moments tell her.

They tell her what she's shoved aside and denied, buried. They tell her what his eyes tell her as the Cash-like lopsided grin of appreciation falls from his face and he's simply Castle, her partner, always. His mind, his mouth – they may be the instruments of his flawless storytelling, but his eyes are as well, maybe even just as much, more, especially in regards to the telling of their story.

They are alike in just as many (complementary) ways that they are different. Perhaps one of those mind-bending similarities is that she has seamlessly begun dividing her life between Before Him and After Him. Those book signings… they are Before and After Her.

She isn't a conquest. She's not one of his ex-wives. She's the one that he fights for every single day, that he lives and works beside, that he was willing and ready to die with on more than one occasion.

And so she just smiles, her heart full of the words he's whispered and she's never said. She's warm, and she knows it's not the drink this time. They both smile, speak with their eyes, and then she looks down, dives under the protective veil of her lashes, not because she can't hold him, can't hold with him, but because that's how he's used to her. That's how he knows her. And sure enough, just as the sharp-minded, detail-focused detective suspects, when she raises her gaze again, he's smiling even wider. That's how he knows her, and boy, does he know her.

One day soon, that's not the only side he'll see.

"More!" someone shouts. Kate and Castle's connection is broken as she turns to find the owner of the voice. She sees Lanie smiling and laughing over near the window, the mischievous gleam in her eye given a matching backdrop in the sprinkling of starlight that is all of downtown Manhattan up and waiting to usher in the new year.

Castle looks over at his partner, asking her approval with a raised brow, like a kid hoping for more candy and barely waiting for the signal of parental approval. Kate just shrugs and laughs, posing her fingers at the proper chords (Johnny Cash's guitarist basically played the same thing in every song) as the group gather lets up another collective, drink-addled cheer.

They laugh their way through "Ring of Fire" and then "Folsom Prison Blues". The tequila and rum have teamed up nicely enough in both of their systems; Castle manages to keep his voice to a low, guttural moan with only a few guffaws and a string of laughs that he manages to keep within character (that man), and she only botches a few chords, not that it's noticed over everyone singing along. By the end of the third song, the group is undeniably rowdy, and now that they've been riled up, there's no use in slowing them down. Ryan stumbles to the piano and yells for everyone to quiet down. He keeps yelling louder and more incoherently as the collective takes its grand old time settling down, and when there's finally some semblance of quiet, he looks out that wide window, at that stunning, television show view of the darkened city he and his colleagues have sworn on their lives to protect, and with his soft smile and happy, light eyes intact, he says, "This one's for you, Cap'n."

The first notes of "Piano Man" flow out of the keys as if coming from a stereo spinning Billy Joel, and everyone is stunned into further, elongated silence. A few of those stationed at various points around the living area are smiling, a gesture executed in different degrees. Some uniforms look calm and reflective; a few seem on the verge of happy laughter. Espo smiles softly as his head and eyes roll toward the floor, his beer raised ever so slightly. Both Kate and Castle understand his subtle nod to their fallen leader.

The writer and his muse cannot be sad. It's been too long a year. They've seen too much. They've hurt too much, for themselves and on the behalves of others. They both privately remember Roy Montgomery as Ryan begins to sing, "It's nine o'clock on a Saturday. Regular crowd shuffles in."

By the time he gets to the next line, a few people have joined their voices to his. Castle and Kate aren't among them, but their stares meet, their grins mirror each other's and connect like magnets, and without a hitch – without any resistance – Castle grabs his partner's hand. Then they join everyone else and belt out "Piano Man" loudly enough to think that maybe Montgomery can hear them from wherever he is.

The name "Heaven's House Band" becomes extremely appropriate for the hour that follows. Castle fuels himself with another shot and casually shouts to the entire room that, wouldn't ya know it, he has a karaoke machine. The minutes are ticking away until midnight, but they seem to fly by as Ray Charles and Sony Bono perform a duet of "Ebony and Ivory", Amy Winehouse and Hayley Blue belt out "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", and Frank Sinatra fails a bit miserably at "Ice Ice Baby". Kate spends the entire time in some close proximity to the kitchen, feeling that in lieu of the security of her gun tonight she always has a table full of liquid courage. She is laughing with Lanie when Castle runs over to her, as giddy as a nine-year-old on a sugar rush (not as annoying a deportment as she once thought) and tells her almost secretively, "We gotta sing."

The alcohol has made laughter easy to come by tonight. She half-snorts and makes a face at him. "Fat chance, Castle."

"Oh, come on. We already played together. You can't possibly embarrass yourself now."

Lanie is giggling (it seems she also finds Castle more cute than bothersome when out of the workplace) but Kate tries to ignore what she takes as encouragement. "First of all, Ricky," she slurs a bit, pressing an extended pointer finger into his chest, "I didn't sing during our little performance hour. And… and two…"

She's caught like cotton in bramble under the sight of his blue eyes on fire for her, her nearness, her attention to him, the name she's called him. She's seen that overjoyed face before, and she can feel the loss of her remaining powers to it. She also realizes that a few of his buttons have been undone and her finger is dangerously close to a widening V of flesh. Castle's chest, breathing so close to her…

"Two," she spits up with an exaggerated shake of her head, her curls shimmying around her, "these people have heard enough of us." She removes her finger from his body and gestures towards the nearby crowd.

"I haven't," Lanie pipes up. "I think it'd be pretty damn adorable to see the two of you singing at the time instead of talking at the same time for once."

Kate turns to give her a look, but it's really no use. Lanie has had a significantly lesser amount of drinks than Kate, and so the detective's reddened, slightly glazed glare is immediately powerless to the M.E.'s straightforward, no nonsense look that's also lightly dusted with amusement.

"Well then," Castle says, "why don't you do me the honor of a duet, Mr. Jackson?"

Both women are surprised by the request. Kate's mouth hangs open, shocked – and a bit annoyed – that he gave up so easily. How un-Castle of him. Lanie looks at her friend and then turns with a shrug back to their host. "Let's do the damn thing," she says, taking Castle's hand and moving with him towards the television. Kate is instantly hot at seeing that his smile doesn't dim in the slightest by having Lanie be his partner instead of her, but she reels herself back in a tiny bit at seeing how that all-consuming fire has gone out of his eyes. The joy and effects of drinking linger and fill their blueness, but that potent explosion caused by desire, connection, adrenaline, and comfort – aww hell, love – isn't there. That's reserved for her, for Kate.

Lanie shoots her friend a look over her shoulder that practically yells, You see what happens when you pass, girl? Somebody else takes him.

Kate half rolls her eyes and allows the tightest smirk as she turns and pours herself a shot of tequila and orange juice. By the time she's taken it, the instantly recognizable opening notes of "Billie Jean" are thumping enticingly through the sound system. Watching Lanie and Castle – and everyone else for that matter – get incredibly into the song makes Kate swallow down her burbling, heated emotions, laugh, and rejoin the rest of the party.

She doesn't know if she wants him to be satisfied by his duet with Lanie or if she wants him to keep pursuing her. When "Billie Jean" ends and Lanie is bowing, Castle, breathless from an incredibly enthusiastic performance, ignores the adulation of the other guests and just leans down towards Kate's spot on the couch. He is extending his hand to her as his chest rises and falls like an overworked machine. There are a few beads of sweat making a laborious trek southward from the hollows in his neck. She raises her gaze from the sight to meet his directly. She bites back a smile and pushes down the decisive emotion coursing through her. Relief. She gives him her hand.

He still wants her. He'll always want her.

He doesn't let her pick the song. Forcing her to stay turned the other way, he promises over and over again in increasing volume that the song will be epic. People are calling out suggestions, but stubborn Richard Castle just ignores them until Kate hears a swift, pleased, "A-ha" from his direction. There is a moment of suspense-ridden silence, and then the name of the song must pop up on the screen, because cheers of approval burst like popping balloons around the room.

A motorcycle engine revs, sounding like thunder broken up by electronic stuttering. For a moment Kate is still in the dark, but just before the swirling piano comes in and gives the song a deeper dimension of – dare she admit it – epic-ness, she understands what she has gotten herself into.

He didn't do it to make her feel uncomfortable or rope her into anything, and this knowledge allows her to smile instead of blanche and shuffle mortified from the room. The introduction is long and sweeping, the sound of it overtaking the entire room, and all the while Castle, Ryan, and Esposito play various air instruments. And then there is the descent, the fall back into silence, and Castle calms himself down likewise to sing passionately into his little plastic microphone, "And I would do anything for love. I'd run right into hell and back…"

Kate wants to resist it. It's such a corny song. It's so dramatic and ridiculous, but by god, if everyone there doesn't throw themselves completely into its operatic insanity. She has a good ten minutes of male solo before she's expected to sing, and she gives herself that time to allow the guilty pleasure of Meat Loaf to seep into her bones. It's fun, they're all having fun, and she loves seeing Castle just being himself. After the heart-crushing darkness of the past year, the sight really lifts a pressing boulder off her spirits. And he does her the tremendous favor of not singing directly to her the entire time; being Richard Castle and all, he puts on a full performance for his obliging, adoring audience by engaging them in every way he can think of. But then the moment comes, and she's so swept up in the warm, comfortable hilarity of it all that she forgets to feel hesitant. She just duets with him.

Her eyes go back and forth from the screen to him, egged on by both the words changing colors and that look that has returned to inhabit his features, the look that has stormed his eyes. The look he reserves for her and the magic they effortlessly make together. Through the song, she lists for him all that she wants him to do for her, for love. She demands from him something that makes it all a little less cold, less old, something that she can take home. I can do that, he sings in reply to it all. Can he take her places she's never known? Can he cater to her every fantasy? Can he hose her down with holy water if she gets too hot? I can do that. The room is laughing, set aflame by the exchange of passion between the partners, their palpable heat filtered through the song. Can he hold her sacred? Can her colorize her life? – she's so sick of black and white! I can do that.

And then a quietness move into the song. It's just the beat, the piano, and her voice. She's reading the words at first, remembering that this tail-end part is a bit more serious than the other verses but unsure of the turn it takes. And so she sings:

"After a while you'll forget everything

It was a brief interlude and a midsummer night's fling

And you'll see that it's time to move on"

She feels a tightening in her chest. It feels like her scar when she moves in a way incompatible with this new flaw forever inscribed in her. But it's in her heart. She turns and looks into two open, silent, screaming islands of blue. His face has fallen a bit and she can feel that hers has as well. But that searing jolt inside of her… he'll hear it if she keeps singing….

"I won't do that," he sings between slowing breaths. He doesn't break eye contact with her. "I won't do that."

Something in her – maybe the flotilla of alcohol anchored near her vocal chords – gets the next words out for her.

"I know the territory, I've been around

It'll all turn to dust and we'll all fall down"

She licks her dry lips and gulps, looking away from him and reading the words changing quite ignorantly on the screen, turning over themselves as if they carry no emotional importance at all. The look causes her to be late in singing them; by the time they come tumbling out in a raw, uncontrollable timbre, her eyes have found his again.

"Sooner or later you'll be screwing around"

Out of the corner of her eye she sees his hand move strangely. His fingers bunch into a knuckle-whitening fist. His whole body subtly lurches forward, but then he stops himself before making any real, noticeable wave. And something tired and true inside of Kate sighs, C'mon, Rick, just come for me. I'm right here.

"I won't do that." He releases a breath that comes to meet her in a caress that seems to apologize. His wanting, rebellious insides reaching out to hers, touching like a mere fantasy. It's not enough.

It's not enough anymore.

She looks at her slanted reflection in the harsh bathroom light. Maybe it's not the light that's doing it; Castle would never live in a place with awkward, clichéd lighting in the bathroom. It must be the lightning being thrown inside of her head, the same upheaval of Kate Beckett control that makes her own face a distortion.

Back in college, the bathroom was always the test. If you went to the bathroom and immediately wilted once you sat down on the toilet, you've had your fill. Can't support the weight of your head? There's no question of your sobriety, or lack thereof. And then there was the follow-up test of one's reaction to one's own reflection. Blank staring, seeing the smudged mascara and flushed cheeks and ruined lipstick as if they belong to a stranger – all key signs of a night in too deep.

It's almost midnight. Fourteen minutes. She didn't come in here simply to hide from that fact, but being alone for the first time since arriving here brings up that instinct in her. The instinct to hide, to avoid, to duck under the waves and hope no one notices her disappearance from the surface world.

She stares into the eyes that supposedly belong to her. She isn't drunk enough to stumble around or throw up, thanks to decent pacing and the occasional snack of water and crackers, but she's feeling it in her veins, the spreading, filling heat of having one's body lifted from one's control. She's made herself vulnerable like she feared she would – like she wanted to – and now she descends into another hallmark of a "good night."

"Detective Beckett," she mumbles to herself, narrowing her eyes, "you need to quit fucking around."

The expletive comes out a bit sloshed, with a few extra letters tacked on in interesting places. She pushes her fingers against her forehead and through her hair. Coming across the pins keeping her flattened poof in place, she makes an exaggerated face of 'what-the-hell-is-this' and rips them from her curls. After mussing around with the pieces a bit, she stills and looks at what is there. She wants to think she's pretty, but only photographic evidence will prove her right or wrong. It's clear that her mind is not to be trusted with straight facts tonight.

There's a knock on the door, and her first thought is, God, go away, Castle, can I not get a moment's peace ever, but she doesn't say anything in response. After a few moments her lips form around the words "Someone's in here" but then the door opens and Michael Jackson comes in and shuts the door behind her.

Lanie frees her head of the wig, gives Kate a knowing look, and then turns to the mirror to shake out her hair. It takes all that time for Kate to finally spit out, "The hell, Lanie?"

The M.E. just focuses on her coif before meeting her friend's eyes in the mirror. That know-it-all look hasn't budged, her sharp angles all wordlessly yelling at Kate like they've done a hundred times before. But now they're in this half-bath together, just them and the persistent, unmerciful light in her head and the muffled sounds of music and chatter on the other side of the door. It really does sound like the faraway rushing in your eardrums that is all that remains of the real world when you dive under water.

"Oh just say it," Kate yells, indignant.

"There's nothing to say," Lanie shoots back coolly in a way that further infuriates the detective. She pulls lip gloss out of her clutch and applies it deftly, leaving behind a stream of thick, unapologetic shine. When she finishes, she rubs her lips together and smacks them before looking at Kate again. "I mean, I have nothing to say. You, on the other hand, have quite a bit you've been holding inside for far too long."

Kate huffs and plops down on the closed toilet seat. "I really don't have anything I need to tell you, Laaay-nee, and you shouldn't make me."

"Not to me, girl, and you know it."

Not able to support her head quite perfectly on her jelly-like, rolling neck, she lets herself droop towards the floor and notices that she's sans shoes. At what point did she take off her boots?

"Kate."

Lanie's voice sounds concerned and deep, too lacking in sass for Kate's taste; she winces at the sound of it but obligingly pulls her head up to see her friend facing her, looking down at her. They stare at each other for a few moments, long enough for Kate to sort of understand what her friend is doing.

"I've never made more than mere suggestions in three years, Kate. You know that. I've never pushed you into him even though we all could tell he was making you better. But Kate, I'm starting to worry that what you're doing to him and to yourself now is borderline unhealthy. It's just not right for people who feel what you two feel about each other to carry on pretending and not saying anything like you do."

Kate rolls her eyes, immediately deflecting. "You should meet my shrink." She pushes her palms into her eyes and takes a few winded breaths. When she looks up at her friend again, past the fading, blinking orbs of gray that she's created through her hands' efforts, she faces concern that doesn't look too different from fear.

She remembers that look. Back after it happened, and during the early, frenzied days at the academy, people used to look at her like that, afraid of what this animal that used to be Kate Beckett was capable of doing to herself. They were worried, but they also felt revulsion that she could see in their eyes. Years later, looking back, she can't blame them, but it sure as hell hurt, just like it does now.

"Lanie, please," she hears herself plead.

The M.E. sinks down to her friend's level and grabs up her hands without ever breaking eye contact. She searches her face as if looking for signs of hurt or damage. Kate rarely sees Lanie this way. Only certain people can thoroughly examine dead bodies – murdered bodies – and carry on with their lives normally. It takes a stoic face and strong stomach. But this isn't Lanie the medical examiner with her in this cocoon of a bathroom in Castle's loft. This is her friend, doing exactly what a friend should do, only Kate doesn't know if she can hear it.

"Honey, why don't you want this for yourself?" she whispers, thumbing back a loose curl from Kate's eyes.

It's those words, and that gesture. They drown her for a strong enough moment in her mother, and it sends her precious few remaining senses out into orbit.

"I want this more than anything," she says quite evenly and loudly, though a tremble possesses her, one that matches the undercurrent tugging at her voice. "And I think I finally want to want this. But Lanie, if I do this, that's it. You know? When I start this with him, that's it. I'm done. I'm done for good, Lanie."

The tiny room fills with silence that's split open by the ragged sound of Kate's breath. She won't cry. She never does. Lanie stares at her, nothing in her face really changing, but Kate knows that she gets it, the enormity of what she's saying in her clipped Beckett way. Lanie has to understand. Her own fears drove her apart from a man who wanted to marry her someday. Kate hopes with everything in her that the simple words she's offered will be enough, because she doesn't think she can say anything more.

Slowly, still keeping the detective's eyes attached to her own, Lanie stands. She holds out her hands and takes a breath, offers a smile. Somehow it feels to Kate like she is the one who has drawn a much-needed intake of air, and it allows her to let her friend help her get to her feet. They look at each other for a moment that steadies the faltering storm inside of her and then they hug, Lanie's arms fully invested in the gesture. It doesn't feel like her mother anymore, but it doesn't matter. Her mother would have been a help had she lived for this, but she didn't, and Lanie's been around since those bodies dropped and Richard Castle was called in for help. So it's good to have Lanie holding her. It's good.

The two women emerge from the bathroom to find everyone trying to decide where they want to ring in 2012. When they spot Esposito looking at them from over near the piano, Kate glances at back at Lanie to see the indecisive look on her face, the mad, inane struggle between anger and longing. Kate gets it. Feeling like she owes her friend, she leans in and whispers in her ear, "It can't hurt to have someone to kiss at midnight. It's just a kiss."

In response Lanie gives her a face full of sass that causes Kate to laugh, but then she starts laughing, too. "I should tell you the same thing, girl."

Instead of denying or sputtering – because what would be the point now? – Kate just lets the laughter fade naturally into a content smile. She looks up to see Castle rummaging through his refrigerator, pulling out bottles of champagnes. So he did splurge a little; that stuff doesn't look like he grabbed it in a bodega. The smile stays on her lips, growing softer by the moment, and she feels how she did before that summer she could have spent with him in the Hamptons if the timeline hadn't been off (she can't shake the terminology she lives and work by). She remembers finally seeing that man for the wonderful human being he is, her total complement, the thing that makes her feel like a normal woman deserving of a good life and true love.

She doesn't want somebody who just makes her better. She doesn't want to be this perpetual broken piece in need of fixing. She wants to be a person who has not only survived but built herself a better life from the ashes of what has been destroyed. I want to be more than what I am. She learned a long time ago that you can't base your happiness on someone else, that it has to ultimately come from yourself, but she knows with absolutely certainty that without that man gleefully popping champagne corks in her favorite kitchen, she would have no self to turn to. She wouldn't be complete without all that he's done, without the way he's pushed himself in, without the way that she now has to let him in of her own accord and welcome him with love when he gets there. It's no less than he deserves and no less than she wants. That's a fact her brain can produce tonight.

It doesn't really matter what she looks like. He catches her staring at him across the space of his apartment that now seems quite empty to her. There's a man here who will think she looks beautiful always, healing scars and all.

The bubbly is overflowing from flutes (plastic ones) and being passed around the room. Everyone has one in his or her hand in no time. The few couples present are huddled together in twos but not isolated from the overall group. All except for the partners, the police officer and the writer. They are watching everyone in contented silence from his kitchen. No one tries to bring them back into the fold. Everyone is enraptured in his or her own happiness, his or her own bubble of descending balls of light and joy, joy to the world.

Castle smiles at Beckett. She returns it like an easy volley. They know this, know each other. They aren't pretending, no matter what anyone says. They've always been able to read each other like a perfectly crafted line of prose; it just might be in a language that only the two of them understand.

"Hell of a year," Castle rides out on a breath.

"Hell of a year," his partner agrees.

He gets closer to her and soaks in the warmth of her breath. If it wasn't moments away from becoming an entirely new year, quite possibly the last year of existence for humankind, he might deny himself the thought, but tonight he won't. He knows that she loves him, even if she doesn't know how to live with the magnitude of that quite yet. But that's okay; truth be told, he might not know either. But they can wait for each other. If they can live through this year, they can wait until they are both ready. It's not about the wall. It's not about the books. It's him and her, running on theories and running into buildings without backup.

"Mighty glad you're here, ma'am," he murmurs, pressing his forehead close to hers. She laughs lightly at the way he eyes her, at the voice of a country singer coming from the absurd author's mouth.

"I'm glad to be back at Folsom," she chirps in June Carter Cash's warbly voice, directly quoting the live album the two recorded at Folsom Prison.

Castle laughs and then his eyes grow mock serious. He is still in character, and she's willing to play along. Somewhere in the distance of the next room over, the countdown begins at ten.

"Tell me you don't love me."

It's just a quote from Walk the Line. It's a dialogue. There're cues to meet, lines to say. It's her turn.

"I don't love you," she whispers.

Confidence, soft like flickering firelight in a lonely, dark wood, fills his smile, his lips close to hers.

"You're a liar."

5… 4… 3… 2…

The year is gone. The first act of so many around the city, the country, the loft is to kiss. A gesture of love, the perfect way to start a new year.

And then there's a man taking a woman's hand and holding it up between their faces in a promise. They did that before, when they believed that they were going to die beside a bomb, but now the closing finality of death is nowhere near them. It's filed back like a case, one among many, a moment that fits neatly with the rest of them. Moments in which Richard Castle and Katherine Beckett were to each other the last breath of life.

"Next year," Kate promises without a hinting of teasing, "let's do it without the drunks."

Everyone has either left already or is trailing out the door. It's nearly 2, and in classic New Year's fashion, once the ball has dropped and the year has officially commenced, people start dropping like flies. Normally Castle would care. He would want to keep the party going. But tonight he offers semi-sober smiles to his guests as they put on their coats, thank him, and make their exit. He sees everyone off, from Ryan carrying a passed out Janis Joplin and nodding a light-eyed gesture of thanks, we really, really needed this, man to Esposito and Lanie, who are both looking happy as they leave not necessarily together, but at the same time. It's so obvious, guys, he thinks as he shuts the door behind his friends.

He turns to see Alexis and Paige cleaning up what remains of the ruins of a truly good night. Everyone pretty much pitched in and got rid of their own remnants before departing, but there are a few scattered pieces of debris that need attending to. He hears the clinking of empty bottles as they gather dejectedly in the recycling bin, the soundtrack of an evening coming to a close, and normally it's a sound that bums him out. But not tonight.

Once the place looks presentable enough to leave as is until the morning, he pulls his daughter into a one-armed hug and looks down his nose at her perfect smile and tired eyes.

"Waiting up for Gram?" she asks.

He blows air out of his mouth emphatically. "Never have, never will," he says.

She smiles deeper into one side of her face, darkening that dimple he's adored forever, and pulls him in for a hug around the neck. "Happy New Year, Dad," she whispers against his hair.

His heart cramps with an instant, fiery swell, sending a sharp pain through his chest. The pain of loving someone so much that it affects you, deep within yourself, because they are a part of you. He smoothes back her long hair and pats her back. "You too, pumpkin."

They pull back and look at each for a quick moment that bespeaks everything they'll eventually hash out, like they always do. They both grew up a lot this past year. They both had their hearts broken. But time makes you bolder, children get older…

Alexis says goodnight before he can ruminate too long. He smiles and watches her disappear up the stairs and into her own room, listens as she softly closes the door.

And then it's just him.

"Castle."

The swelling of fire in his breast picks up again at the sound of her voice coming softly, almost tenderly from his bedroom. He makes himself not run to see her, but his distempered breathing is beyond his control. She's never been inside his bedroom before – well, in reality, that is. When he comes across the threshold he is halted to behold her sitting cross-legged in a pair of his sweats and his old high school class shirt. Her hair is wet but has been combed through. Her face is free of make-up. She isn't really smiling at him, but her straightforward gaze moves through him with the intent of unhinging, of letting him take this in and imagine the possibilities, what this moment has the possibility of meaning.

"Thanks for letting me stay here tonight," she says to him after some amount of time he hadn't cared to measure.

Straightforward gaze, straightforward statement. You don't back down. You don't give up. That's what makes you extraordinary.

He can hear her name coming up in his throat, smuggling itself out of his locked depths, rising to meet the waiting challenge in her eyes.

"Any time," he replies.

The shower cleared her head a bit, and she stopped drinking after the champagne at midnight, so she's well on her way back to full sobriety. Which would be bad if she wanted the conclusion of this night – the dawning of this new year – to be something she went for impulsively, without any control or fear of fear itself. But she's slowly remerging, and she knows what she's doing. Sitting on his bed, in his clothes, after rinsing off in his truly amazing shower – it's all part of it. His voice comes back to her from darker times, but now it brings the very faintest twinge of a grin to her lips.

You've got this.

"So where are you putting me up, Castle?"

He shakes his head. "Uh-what?"

She lets more of her smile free, liking that even like this, in a decidedly unsexy getup, she can distract him. She looks around the dark, cozy room that really smells like him and allows herself to sink a bit into his sinfully comfortable bed. He's fantasized about her in here. That knowledge makes her feel powerful. Usually musing about who has imagined her in such a way disturbs her (it has to when she spends so much of her time in face of deranged, disgusting criminals) but she feels so rightly empowered thinking about it now, in his room, on his bed, so close to the office where he wrote his books about her. Most girls can only assume a man fantasizes about her; most girls don't have page 105 as proof.

What did Natalie Rhodes call it? Verbal masturbation?

"Where do you want to stay, detective?" he asks, locking her down with his gaze. At least, that's what he thinks he's doing. He doesn't know that she has no intention of moving.

"Well, I don't want to put you out," she half-purrs, stretching back on the bed and stroking the pillows, "but this room seems like the perfect sleeping pill."

"Oh, believe me," he says a bit darkly. "It is."

She is about to make a remark about him sleeping in the guest room, something to harmlessly taunt him into staying in here with her, but she's cut of by his step towards her. On his bed. There's something crystalline in his humorless eyes.

"Too tired to go all the way home?" he asks lowly.

She shakes her head. "Didn't want to be alone."

He's taken aback by her honesty; it's rare from her, to receive it up front. As a reward, he closes the length between himself and the bed and reaches a hand out to her. She smirks with a cocked brow up at him.

"You showing me to the guest room, Castle?"

He just smiles softly, that saccharine grin that travels like dawning light into his eyes, illuminates his whole face. "The night's not ever yet," he tells her.

Hands lightly touching but nothing if not connected, the two go out into the living room that was just teeming with anxious, inflated life, now hibernating in near darkness. Castle picks up a remote from his coffee table and clicks it towards his super-fancy stereo system. A moment later a soft, skin-excavating sound travels through the air, wraps around the two of them. It's the perfect volume, not too low but not loud enough to disturb the teenagers upstairs.

Kate tries to hide her grin but it doesn't work as well as she hoped. "I love Bob Dylan," she admits, not looking at him.

"The best people do." Her takes advantage of his flimsy hold on her hand by pulling her into him, into the firmness of his body, where he can feel how lithe and slender she actually is, especially in his clothes. He does it before she can change his course, just like that undercover moment when she reached for her gun and found herself being cupped in his steady, unyielding palm instead. She has amazing cop reflexes, but he's managed to keep up pretty well. He knows all her tricks by now.

And yet he is still amazed by her depths.

"What are we doing?" she asks as they begin to sway slowly.

Bob's voice croons around them, a personal serenade that entraps them in this space and time, this moment. Lady, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed….

Her face is closest to his chest, his lips finding their way on a trail of happy breaths to her ear, hidden by her hair. God, she smells amazing. Fresh, yet familiar, like something that belongs here….

"We're practicing for Ryan's wedding," he says, noticing that she hasn't stopped them yet.

She unleashes a throaty laugh, deep and pure, that puts a hitch in his throat. "Oh, I see. Partners on cases equals partners on the dance floor?"

"That's the rule where I come from." He cautiously yet not fearfully slides his hand down her back, committing to the memory of his hungry fingertips the ridges of her spine, the smoothness of her skin beneath the thinning material of his old shirt. His fingers obey his strict command to clutch at her, express so quietly his need for her, but in a composed way. A way that still leaves her free. Gives her space.

But she doesn't do anything but continue swaying in time with him. Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed….

Kate doesn't know what to say to him until their lazy little dance turns her in the direction of his kitchen and she catches sight of her Christmas gift to him. A top-of-the-line yet vintage-looking coffee maker. Chosen because she owes him. She presses her grinning lips into his body and feels her heart flutter in response to the thrumming of his own precious, life-sustaining organ, moving against her, unrestrained, yearning.

"We have to be better than Lanie and Esposito," she murmurs into his chest.

"Please," he says smugly, his mouth willingly tangled in the drying curls atop her head. "I plan on using that dance floor to redeem the white man's boogie reputation."

It's a bit of an odd statement to have fade them into sweet, content silence, but it does the trick well enough, because they just keep moving together, folded into each other like that, saying nothing. They let Bob do the talking. Because they fail where words really count sometimes, he does the seducing for them. The song ends comfortably, and rising up in its place is the solitary call of the harmonica to the guitar, the two of them locked in a conversation that stills Kate's feet. She stops, pulls her head back a bit, and looks off into the twinkling lights of the gorgeous, larger-than-life Castle Christmas tree.

"I haven't heard this song since…"

He can barely hear her; she might even be talking to herself. So often she does that, goes about in solitude when he is standing right there, receptive to her. But he waits there with warms hands on her body, fine with stopping until she's ready to move again.

He's about to whisper, "Beckett," but then understands what is going on. The song. Oh no. Didn't see this one coming.

She's delicate and seems like the mirror

But she just makes it all too concise and too clear

That Johanna's not here

He instinctively bunches her hair in his hand, attempts to look into her eyes. What he can see of them is a faraway look, her pupils dark like tunnels, going somewhere he's tried to go with her only to cause them both to crash.

"Kate."

To his surprise, she shakes her head. She actually responds to his soft yet earnest call. She's heard him. But he doesn't know what the shake means. It could signal her pulling away. It might make her leave….

Something like emotion flickers delicately along the lines of her lips. Her eyes are screened in by a thin layer of dew, but she comes back from wherever she went. She blinks, turns to him, smiles with her lips faintly but not her eyes; they take a few moments to play catch up, which occurs because they absorb the look on his face. He releases a quick breath of relief. She came back to him.

"She loved this song," she murmurs. She doesn't settle back against his chest, but that's okay, because she keeps direct eye contact with him. "My dad used to play in it the house all the time when she was holed up in her office. She'd be doing work, ya know, saving the world, and he would just want to see her, so he'd coax her out with this song." She starts dancing again, slower now, but the intent of the movement is definitely there. "Worked every time."

Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously

He brags of his misery

He likes to live dangerously

And when bringing her name up,

He speaks of a farewell kiss to me

She is growing heavier in his arms, but he can't bear to have her go to sleep. If she does, then the night is over and there will be a decent chance that she'll wake up and rewind the bit of progress they've made. It happens too often between them, and it's slowly gnawing at all he has left. He knows it's a new year, and he believes in the magic of change – has felt it coursing through the two of them all night – but he needs to steady himself, too. He can't go breaking his own heart.

But she shared with him. She looked into his eyes and started dancing again. She let him in.

But these visions of Johanna have kept me up past the dawn

"Did you do a lot of dancing at your weddings, Castle?" she asks him a bit sleepily as her head once again finds a home on an island of his skin, warm for her, because of her.

"A lot at my first. I had had a good deal of the happy juice. And my second… I probably would have if Gina had let me relax." He cringes a bit at the memory. "A lot of hands to shakes and toasts to make. You know, married my publisher. A great party is really just a front for a great business deal in that scenario."

"And the whole sacredness of marriage part?"

He starts to laugh and then half-reins himself in. She believes in that, and maybe, once upon a time, he would have had a remarkably cavalier attitude towards such an idea. But now…

"I'm saving all the good stuff for my next wedding," he ventures, inhaling her scent, looking over her head at the city that never sleeps, especially on this night.

He feels her stiffen a bit in his hold, but she recovers after a quick moment and keeps dancing (that's the important part, the continued dance).

"So sure you're getting married again, Castle?" she asks lowly, a hint of a smile to her voice that sends quakes through his heart.

"Not a doubt in my mind, detective."

They are quiet for a few moments more, moving as if by the power of that wiry harmonica sound. He begins to feel sleepy, too, lulled by the music and the warmth of her body. He can feel every delicious curve of her, the swoops and dives and hidden coves that just entice him with the call to exploration. He waits for her to do something that will end the silent wonder of this moment that just keeps going (a la, I should go. It's late. Goodnight) but nothing happens. So he braces himself and moves a little closer to the edge.

"I have a song picked out, you know," he says quietly.

"Really?" Her voice is like silk rustling against every empty space inside of him. "Doesn't your wife get a say in that?"

"Nope," he says. She laughs, sending the sound and feeling into his own chest. "No, she can do whatever she wants with the rest of the wedding. A dress made of Tiffany lamps, a three-story cake, whatever she could possibly want, she gets. But I call our first dance song."

She makes like her whole body isn't hurting and healing all at one time, like the process of it all isn't turning her into something she's not sure she recognizes but she knows she has to be. For him.

"What song?" Her voice is small, but he hears her.

"'Songbird' by Fleetwood Mac," he replies.

She swallows back the feeling that manifests in her throat. She won't call it tears – she won't – even though she can hear her mother's voice in her ear, cutting through what feels like a hundred years and just a yesterday. A boy had broken her heart, and Johanna had told her daughter in a patient, understanding voice, "The wrong boys will make you cry when you don't have to. The right boy won't make you cry when you think you should." She didn't understand it then, and maybe she really still doesn't, but she knows that she has to keep her composure long enough for –

For what? There's no time limit to this, no foreseeable end. They're just dancing. Just dancing, and he's just being Castle and talking about dancing with his wife to a song that got Kate through the earliest stages of her mother's death, before she discovered his books. She closes her eyes and envisions herself lying on the hardwood floor, flood-ridden plains of her cheek pressed to the cold surface, with that record spinning nearby, trying to soothe her, make promises to her.

For you, there'll be no more crying…

She can't live her life like this anymore because what she has stringing together her days and breaths and bones now isn't a life. The job gives her brain a function. It spreads something over the pieces of her soul, like lead fusing together fragments of stained glass. It's gotten her out of bed when for so long she thought nothing else could make her face the unfair, horrible world. But that wasn't enough, and as soon as she got herself a shadow – a childish, insubordinate, irresponsible, womanizing shadow – she had to face the music. He barely knew her, but he looked at her and told her a story about herself. And that, Detective Beckett, is why you are here.

Not anymore.

She tightens her hold on him because she can't say the words. There are so many that she wants, needs, to say, but they are held in by those three little utterances that threaten to break everything. She looks up at him; he's staring dreamily out at the Christmas tree. It compress in her chest, the upheaval of everything that is shipwrecked inside of her, threatening to spill out of her with the next coming wave. And she wants it out. She wants him to know. It might destroy everything, but she thinks that maybe, if she knows him like she thinks she does, he'll use some of the patience and understanding he's been building up and find a way to forgive her. If he's the right boy, he won't make her cry even when she should.

It hurts. She hurts. It will shatter everything that this night has led to, but it's right there, this bonfire curdling the tip of the tongue, filling her chest with smoke, signals to come save her, she's waiting, her and all her love, and she can't do it alone.

He looks down at her. He's smiling. His eyes, reflecting all those bright specs of artificial yet magic light, are filled with so much love that they push everything back down inside of her so easily. Three words. His chosen three kept her conscious, haunted her an entire summer, and changed her life. Hers break them. Or save them. Maybe they just add another brick to that wall that she and her partner have been breaking down steadily. Maybe.

"Let's go to bed," she murmurs.

It's as if his smile physically reaches out and touches her. It strokes her with warmth, and combined with the view of the city and the Christmas tree and the sound of Bob Dylan telling her that he could hold her for a million years to make her feel his love, she enters into a feeling of home. Of family.

He is her family. He is her home. Alexis, the loft, the promise buried under every word he speaks to her… it calls her back from the darkness.

It's a new year.

She takes his hand and leads him to his room, stopping to hit the remote and listen to the music fade away. The loft fills with silence. Then the sound of their barefeet padding across the floor whispers a dying song; it makes them sound like children sneaking out of bed.

The empty space makes her see it all. One day, she will have want she wants, and what she wants is a life. She will roll over and hit her alarm clock here, waking with a grumble in this bed. She will heat up late dinners in that microwave. She will play guitar – her guitar – on the couch to unwind after a long week. She will look out the window at the changing seasons with a cup of freshly brewed coffee in her hand.

She will drive his Ferrari. She will bake Christmas cookies for the doorman. She will add Temptation Lane to the shows recorded to the DVR.

She will lie naked in front of that insane fireplace while he massages her back. She will be pressed up against the wall of that apartment-sized shower of his while he ravishes her under the perfectly pressurized spray of the water. She will go into that office when he's working late into the night and give him a little something of her own to brighten his mood and inspire him. She will make love to him on every surface in the place, let her moans and screams echo back to her off of the high ceilings.

She will celebrate birthdays here, and next Christmas, and every Christmas after that. Anniversaries. Valentine's Day. Another New Year's, even better than this one, with less secrets and much more sex.

She will call up her stepdaughter at college and spend an hour talking to her. She will invite her mother-in-law (who will have moved out by then) to lunch on her days off.

She will wear an engagement ring here. And then a wedding ring. She will hang an ultrasound picture on the fridge. She will carry a newborn through the door and be greeted by a room full of homemade streamers and a banner that says "Welcome Home!" She will set up train tracks and dollhouses and play all night, no matter the hour she has returned home from work, no matter what case lies unsolved on her board at the 12th.

She will put up a picture of her mother here, a vision of Johanna that conquers her mind.

She will love here and be loved here. She won't be afraid here. She will be the best, most complete version of herself here.

Because he's here.

Wordlessly – of course – they climb into bed. If either of them is wondering what it means or when exactly this boundary was crossed, it doesn't concern them at the moment. It's late. They dive a bit eagerly beneath the cool layers that make for the perfect temperature and instantly find each other's bodies. He touches her stomach from behind her; she rubs her feet against his. She can feel his breath lying prostrate before her cheek, the cheek that used to soak up an unimaginable number of tears, and she smiles with pride at the steps she has already taken. She's not on the floor anymore. But the songbirds keep singing like they know the score.

She flips over and faces him, presses her fingertips to his temple, to that wonderful mind of his that has saved her more times than he will ever know. She can't say it now, but one day, a day leading up to all those fully lived days she knows will transpire, she will be able to tell him.

And I love you, I love you, I love you like never before.

For now, though, all he needs to know is that, finally, all the songs make sense.