No Secrets

We have no secrets.
We tell each other most everything
about the lovers in our past, and how they didn't last. . .
Sometimes I wish, often I wish
that I never, never, never knew
Some of those secrets of yours.

-We Have No Secrets, Carly Simon

Castle is really only just looking for the spatula when he finds it. It's her junk drawer, and while he knew it was the junk drawer and in theory a spatula would never be in a junk drawer, he was just pulling out all the drawers in his search with the hopes of stumbling upon it miraculously so he can make her pancakes.

Smiley face pancakes because she deserves them after the way that whole entire mess turned out.

He spent last night at her place - newly fumigated - with the excuse that he needed to inspect the apartment for insect carcasses, clean up any tiny dead bodies that might have perished during the chemical warfare waged against the building, but she only laughed and reminded him of his girly screams when faced with rodents.

He didn't know her place was being fumigated for rodents, he pointed out. She neglected to mention that.

But there were no little bodies of either kind, and she said it wasn't really rodents; it was a precautionary measure to keep their building free of bedbugs.

Ew.

Way worse.

So why he went looking for a spatula this morning when he's not barefoot (can't quite make himself put his bare skin to any flat surface of her apartment, even though he had no trouble putting her bare skin to the counter and- )

Off topic.

There's-

He found-

This is-

He's jumping to conclusions, right? There is a perfectly decent and reasonable explanation for a woman to have index cards in her apartment.

They're leftovers, right?

(You didn't see them in this drawer pre-fumigation when you went searching for a rubber band because she said rubber band but what she meant was one of those hair band thingies and she rolled her eyes at you because-)

Okay, right. Not leftover index cards from a case. Some-

He's already padding silently for her living room windows, the closed shutters, his fingers out to hook beneath the wood even though he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to at all.

The living room windows are bare.

But it's never been the living room windows he's had to worry about, has it?

Castle's feet take him inexorably toward the office, and he sees it immediately.

Immediately.

Tape on the shutters, the outline of rectangles where the light isn't coming through.

He realizes he's gripping the index cards too tightly when he feels the sting of a papercut and hisses, bringing his hand to his face to inspect the damage.

(Delaying the inevitable, Rick. Just open the shutters.)

He drops the stack of index cards on the desk and sucks on the meaty part of his hand where it's actually bleeding, and he studies the shutters in front of him.

Does him no good to worry; it's best to face the obsession head on. He's already dreaming up how very badly this next intervention will go when he tugs open the shutter doors and the window is revealed.

And it's not her mother's case tacked up there.

It's him.

Castle.

His life spread out like a murder board.

She's playing footsie with him at the table, and he must not be catching on fast enough, because she finally stabs her fork into her pancake - smiley face and all - and growls at him.

"Okay, Castle. Spit it out."

He lifts his head and stares blankly at her for a second, because all morning he's been trying to figure out why, just why. Why. Why does she feel the need to semi-stalk him-

and YES. Okay. He hears the irony inherent in that mental statement. But she's right. It's weird. It's not research. It's intimate and a little violent in its intimacy. It's like he woke up to find she'd cut off his-

No. Not really. He's getting worked up because Kate Beckett has a murder board on him like her boyfriend is something that needs figuring out, solving. Like a crime's been committed.

Though she's totally hot and sexy when she's solving, so if she wants to solve him then-

"Castle. What the hell is going on with you?"

"I found it," he blurts out. Totally inelegant and completely moronic.

"Found. . .?"

It. It, Kate. IT. The thing you've hidden in your apartment and-

"The murder board."

She wrinkles her forehead and he nearly - almost, it's a close thing - reaches out to smooth them away with his thumb, but jeez, that is a supremely bad idea. Instead he makes a fist and puts his hands on the table beside his plate, carefully, and then waits for Kate to explain.

"What murder board?" she says finally.

He doesn't mean to. But his eyes must dart to the office window and the shutters, because her face clears so suddenly and so quickly that it's like instant understanding has dropped over her, and then he's ashamed and embarrassed because she looks almost mortified.

Her face flushes, that pretty pink tinge to her cheeks and her throat that he's seen only in one other circumstance - under him - and yet, it's not at all the same. But it is.

It's intimacy.

"Sorry," she blurts out and presses the heels of her hands to her eyes and ducks his gaze altogether.

Wow.

What?

"Am I. . .going to die soon, Kate? You figuring out your best time frame?"

A laugh bubbles out of her and she lifts her head, eyes both tremulous and amused, and then she's shoving back from the table and holding her hand out for his.

He has to unfurl his fingers from the fist he's made, and then her cool palm meets his and tugs him up and leads him over to that window.

They stand before it much the same way they've stood before a hundred other murder boards, and that one - that important one, her mother's case - as well, and then she reaches out and unfolds the shutters, letting the whole length of the thing spread out before them.

Her fingers are still gripping his hand tightly, like she's going to make sure he can't and won't let go, but he studies the murder board with that abstract fascination that fell over him earlier this morning.

"I wasn't exactly hiding it," she says defensively.

"What exactly is it?"

"A timeline," she shrugs and lifts two fingers to one of the index cards, smooths it down where it's starting to curl.

His birthday, Alexis's, his marriages, his first bestseller, his last (Nikki, oh, yes, it's strange to see her hand write Nikki Heat's name), the day they met, the day they - oh. Well, Kate Beckett, getting a little soft aren't you?

He likes that she's put herself on his timeline. That so much of her information meshes with his, not just the day they met and the day she came back for him, but also a lot of other little things, now that he's looking. A fuzzy date for when he apparently told her some story about a little kid drowning? When was-

Oh, right. Ha. Yeah, she asked why he was obsessed with death.

Ug, there's Damian Westlake. Right around Valentine's Day. He kinda hates that one of their first almost-together/getting-there Valentine's Days was about how his mentor and friend was discovered to be a murderer. Lovely.

Though should he expect any different with them? He and Kate are rather built on murder, aren't they? A sacrifice of blood for the-

Heh, okay, he's getting morbid. His thoughts have a tendency to spin thriller plotlines all day long if he lets them, but what about this?

She's marked the Tyson case, and-

"Castle, say something."

"I'm reading," he replies then turns his head to look at her. So nervous, her fingers flexing around his, shifting foot to foot before the murder board. Timeline. The timeline.

"It's not anything bad," she says finally, giving him a sideways look and biting her lip.

"It's. . .a little strange."

"Says the man who followed me around for four years, scribbling down notes about my mannerisms and my police procedure and how many cups of coffee I drank and-"

"Okay. Yes. But I'm a writer. What's your excuse?"

He can actually see her catch her breath. Her head swivels to him and he gets a tentative, shrugging smile.

"My excuse? I'm. . .your girlfriend?"

His grin is slow, not because it takes him that long, but because he's relishing the way that sounds from her lips, the way she looks at him, half-amused and half-hopeful, and the way it warms him up, head to toe.

"Okay. So. You're investigating me."

"No. Not - a little? Not like, going through your bank accounts and-"

"Like you had Esposito and Ryan do earlier," he notes, nodding.

She groans and her shoulders slump.

"No, no," he hastens. "Not judging. Thought we were to the joking about it phase."

"Is this something I need to apologize for?" she asks.

He laughs and jiggles her hand a little, making her look at him. "I don't even know what this is, Kate."

"I'm just. . .trying to do my job."

"Your job."

"You did yours, Castle, and now what you know about me fills - so far - four books."

"So far," he murmurs, agreement and pleasure.

"I was trying to even us out."

"You could just ask me," he laughs, smirking at the layers upon layers of note cards. "Plus, it looks like you know quite a lot." Ah, yes, there it is. Sophia Turner. To his eternal shame. He won't and can't regret Clara Strike, especially because Kate told him once that Strike was kind of her hero at one point (mushiness ensued after that confession), but he does regret ever baring any part of himself to that woman. Traitor, sleeper spy, whatever she was.

"I knew more than I thought," she says quietly. "But I didn't want to ask."

"Why not? It's not like I didn't ask you. I was really endearingly persistent-"

"Annoyingly-"

"Endearingly," he emphasizes. "Persistent. About my questions. So you could be the same." He laughs a little and turns to look at her, and something hesitant and uncertain in her face makes him pause. "Kate. Why didn't you just ask me these things?"

"I didn't want. . .your answers," she says finally. She swallows and finally looks at him.

He chuckles at that, because it makes absolutely no sense, and really, girl logic, something, because now she's biting her bottom lip and letting go of his hand to cross her arms over her chest, defensive and withdrawing.

"Kate," he laughs. "Come on. You didn't ask because you don't want the answers, but look. Here are all those answers. Or well, quite a lot of them."

"These are. . .answers. But not yours," she says, as if hesitant to even speak. His eyebrows knit together as she stands there, because he honestly doesn't get it.

"Okay, clue me in. I have no idea what's going on here."

She sighs and shrugs a little. "I just wanted to know. I felt like I should know you at least as well as you know me."

"You writing a book?" he murmurs, giving her a crooked smile, trying to make her laugh.

But she doesn't. "No, but. . .shouldn't I have enough material to write one anyway?"

"Uh. Yes? But you're not a writer so I'm not sure what this has to do with. . ."

"Meredith said-"

"Oh jeez," he groans. "Are you serious? No. Come on, Kate."

"No, wait. Listen."

He turns into her, hooking his arms around her waist and pulling her in closer, hips bumping, a reminder of how she kept saying, just us, just the two of us. No one else between them.

She sighs. "Meredith - well, no. I asked her. What happened. Sorry, that was personal-"

"Clearly," he interrupts, nodding to her timeline, "-personal isn't exactly a problem."

She shrugs him off again, but her eyes don't meet his. "I just - I don't know. I asked Sophia too, and maybe it's a thing now? Wondering. Because it seems impossible sometimes that anything could ever happen to us, impossible that you, of all people, would ever give up-"

He winces and clasps her a little tighter, but she keeps on going, like she doesn't even notice.

"So I just asked. And I didn't like Sophia's answer either, so I don't know what made me ask Meredith, but I did."

"You didn't like her answer?" he asks, because now he's curious. Meredith's never been spiteful or mean-spirited, so he can't imagine.

"She said she didn't know you. That you knew her so well - enough to write books. But she never did know you. And that whenever she asked, her questions were tossed off, joked about, the subject changed."

She lifts her head to him, and now he sees it, so clearly, what he couldn't understand before.

She's worried she doesn't know - deep enough, well enough, detailed enough. She's worried more that it matters - the quantity of events she can place on his timeline. That the amount of information is more important than the quality of her knowledge.

And more than that, she's worried that if she asks, he'll do the same to her as he did to Meredith.

"No." He shakes his head, huffs a little sigh at her. "Kate. What did I tell you about Meredith?"

She keeps her mouth shut though, still regarding him.

"She's crazy. Remember that? Kate, she's crazy. Crazy fun, crazy silly, crazy crazy. And yeah, having dinner and a couple hours out when you're both on your best behavior is the crazy fun part. But the rest of it? Not fun. Why do you think Alexis did her best to kick her out?"

"I thought you put her up to it."

"No. Never," he says intently. Both because she needs to know that he will never place his daughter's needs second - Kate can't expect him to - and also because Meredith pulled the wool over his eyes for a long time too.

"Okay," Kate says slowly. "Alexis. . .didn't want Meredith there. I guess I thought she was being conscientious? She felt bad for me or. . .I don't know. It was all awkward."

"No, she wasn't being that nice. She's too sick to be that nice, Kate."

He gives her a little laugh, but Kate's still stiff and worried. So he tugs her back with him until he hits the desk, drops down on top of it so he can tuck Kate up against himself, a little closer, more reassuring, easier on his back.

"Meredith is crazy. So when she tells you our marriage fell apart because she didn't know me - you gotta translate it from crazy."

Kate tilts her head and gives him a look.

"Okay, and to be perfectly honest, maybe she didn't know that much about me. But she didn't really listen either. You think Meredith has ever made it not about her? And," he continues, getting into it now. "I can tell you from experience that it is never a good idea to let a crazy person know too much about you. That stuff comes back to bite you in the ass. Hard."

Kate huffs a breath at that, almost a laugh, and she loosens a little in his arms. "I shouldn't have asked."

"You could've asked me."

"Okay. Then. Why?"

He can't help the sliver of a grin that catches in his lips. "Kate. I think we just cleared that up. She's crazy."

"Castle."

"It's true. She is. And you can't ever trust a crazy person. They are never there for you, they don't show up to their own daughter's first day of kindergarten, nor her last day of high school."

And now it's getting a little melancholy and bitter, so he cuts it off at that, shakes his head at Kate.

She's still regarding him like a thing to be analyzed and figured out, but he can deal with that. He's seen that look before, knows what happens after when she makes up her mind.

"And Sophia," she says quietly.

He thinks for a moment, tries to put some effort into it. He asked himself that question enough times.

"Actually, I don't know, Kate. Maybe now it's clearer to me. She was - ah, a traitor. Which seems so bizarre. But she couldn't - she kicked me out of her life, basically. I never understood it. I wasn't willing to wait for those walls to come down, but probably - they never would have. There were a lot of lies."

Kate comes against his chest, curling up in his embrace. "That makes sense. I don't think you can ever trust what she said about anything, Castle."

"Pot, meet kettle."

She laughs at that, brushing her nose against his neck. "Okay. Fine. I'll take what Meredith said with a grain of salt."

"A grain of crazy salt."

"But she's not all bad."

"She's not." He waits, because surely there's more to this conversation. He still wants to get at why she didn't ask him this stuff. "Kate. You could've just asked."

"Maybe you didn't want to say."

"You know, I don't have little drawers of stick men and private stuff, Kate."

"Sure you do. Maybe not physically, but everyone does. I didn't know if you wanted me rummaging around in your private stuff."

"Feel free to rummage around in my private stuff, any day."

She smacks his shoulder but laughs, tilting her head back to look at him, her hips pressed into his for counterbalance. "I like that you joke about it," she says suddenly. "Even if that's not really an answer, it's. . .I needed to laugh. You make things a lot less grim."

He grins down at her, leans in to press a kiss to her careful and considering mouth. She hums and makes that satisfied little noise that he loves, adores, and then she pulls back to look at him.

She still seems watchful. He should do something about that. "Since we're saying this stuff. The stalking you, following you around, writing down notes about you? Beckett, I still can't read your mind. And the look is obviously sometimes still lost on me. Even after four years, you are a mystery. And don't even pretend like you don't do that on purpose."

She laughs and her grin curls up at the edges, her eyes shimmering into a burst of amused agreement.

"And it's okay if I'm a little bit of a mystery to you, too. You don't need to murder board me, Kate. Because when it matters, you know."

She sighs a little, that indrawn look on her face, eyebrows furrowed, but he goes on before she can interrupt his perfect, revelatory train of thought.

"When you arrested me-"

She tenses.

"Listen," he murmurs, stroking his hand up to her cheek, brushing her hair back. "I didn't know what to think. The worst part was wondering if maybe you thought. . .maybe. . .but you didn't, Kate. You believed me. You believed in me. You can't have that kind of conviction unless you know me."

Kate crashes forward into him, her arms wrapped around his neck and her lips at his jaw, his ear, trailing grateful kisses until she meets his mouth. Her kiss is deep and mindful and purposeful, like she's proving it to him and herself both.

When she steps back, a hand to his chest and her fingers toying with the material of his sleep shirt, she's looking up at him as if he's remade the world.

Her whole world.

It's amazing.

"Yeah, I do know you," she says slowly. "The things that matter. But I don't think it would hurt to know all the little things too. Come on, Castle. Only fair. You got quite a head start on me."

He grins and laces his fingers together behind her back, tugging her even closer, nudges her with his hips. "You could interview me. Twenty questions. Oooh, no, I know. Truth or Dare!"

She laughs and arches an eyebrow. "You wish."

"Oh, I do. I really do. I fervently wish."

"Maybe if you're lucky."

"We've gone over this. Look at my life, Beckett. I get lucky."

She presses her fingers over his mouth and shakes her head. "I think I'm more than okay with not knowing some things."

He grins around her hand, pushes a kiss into her fingertips and then knocks them away to kiss her mouth. Once. Twice. Again. She unfurls against him, a slowly awakening thing, and hums into it.

"But maybe," she murmurs, drifting a kiss over his cheek to breathe at his ear. "Maybe I'll follow you around for a day. See how you like it."

"I already like it. Bring it on."