Walking through the streets at dawn
We dance by empty carousels
Singing about the Sacré-Cœur
-Paris, Lana Del Rey

A small gift before I go on holiday tomorrow. For the midnight club, who make me want to say so many things that I don't have the words for. And for Audrey, my every-chapter muse. I love you all. So much.

At the bottom of her spine, she has a crescent-shaped scar, miniscule enough to be forgotten in the inky mystery of the night.

Castle never prompts her to talk about it. He never prompts her to talk about the scars down her sides or between her breasts, he never prompts anything. She has taken a step and no longer is he pushing.

She no longer needs prompting.

Kate whispers secrets to him every night. Confesses stories with twinkling eyes and a diaphanous heart. The scars pulled at first, on her side. Sometimes the gunshot scar burns. The one at the bottom of her scar was from her third day on the job, an unlucky incident with a suspect and a barbed wire fence.

He roams her skin with his hands, lips, tongue, remembers the taste of her creamy interrupted skin. Learns her. Her story. As though he could ever amount to writing it.

She whispers French like love letters into his ear. "Je t'aime plus que tu ne le sauras jamais."

Words. They're supposed to be his forte.

"Castle."

Words and whispers surround him, cherries and curly hair that spills around him, lips and love that whisper forevermore.

"Castle."

"Hmm. Kate."

Her body is pliant, soft, beneath his hands, her lips at his jaw and her fingertips tracing hearts onto his chest. A target.

"Wake up, writer-boy."

His eyes flutter open, watching the way the darkness shifts from shadows to the brilliance of her beautiful smile. She's above him now, elbows resting either side of his head, fingers combing through his hair. He smiles, nudging his head into her palms when she leans down and presses a kiss to the tip of his chin, teeth scraping lightly.

"Kate. It's 3am." His voice is gravel, she is shining.

Kate smiles. "So it is."

"Uh, any particular reason you woke me up?"

Kate drops her head to his shoulder, finger tips ghosting again and again over his lips, watching him with a shy smile that should be shown as art in galleries.

"Busy day yesterday. Will be today. I didn't get to speak to you all too much lately."

When they'd embarked upon this- them. He'd thought them to be like tiny paper boats, voyaging out into the depths of the ocean. One mistake and everything will go wrong. They're fragile, and the world is unpredictable.

But when she smiles at him like that.

Oh, how he loves their journey on board their tiny paper boat.

"What're you writing?"

He looks up from his laptop to find Kate standing in the doorway, hip propped up against the wood, head tilting to the side. Curious eyes, lips curling upwards at the edges, softening the fine architecture of her face.

"Oh- Uh- Just some Nikki Heat. I fell behind."

"Hmm." Kate hums, slowly crossing to the room as she raises her eyebrows. "And it has nothing to do with, I don't know. . . Meeting my Dad in three hours?"

"I've met your Dad before." He rebuffs, quickly closing the word document and his laptop.

Kate reaches the desk, thighs pressing against the wood and she squints, analyzing him. "Yeah, but as my partner, not as my boyfriend."

Okay. So she has him there.

Castle looks down at his feet, squirming under her gaze as he tries to concoct some wild story that will distract her; some wild story that will make her roll her eyes; point out all its flaws; silence his ramblings with her lips and her tongue and her hands. Sometimes teeth.

But when he looks back up at her, her eyes are soft, and he remembers that she has dived in for him. For her. For them. She isn't Meredith. She isn't Gina. She isn't an endless list of artificial women. This is Kate. Katherine Beckett. And she's looking at him the way that melts his heart, astounds him because, sometimes, he doesn't know why she fell for him. He was so arrogant at the start.

But she's here and she cares.

"Okay. Yeah. I- I admit it. I'm nervous. He's your dad, Kate, and he only wants the best for you and I. . ."

He sighs, looking down at his hands. These hands, which have been so responsible for the letters on the printed page, have earned his comfortable lifestyle- But he never has them for her. Never. Perhaps if he did, he'd be enough.

He feels pressure beneath his chin, and then she's tipping his face to meet hers, fierce eyes burning as they stare into his.

"And you don't think you're the best for me?"

He swallows around his words. The way she says hers. So full of disbelief. It makes him want to agree, even if perhaps he never will.

He's silent, so she leans across the desk, one palm planted against the wood and the other caressing the hard line of his jaw, pressing her forehead against his. He can smell her, everything, cherries and softness and the smell of his laundry. Domestic. It hits him suddenly and then he's drunk on it, entranced by her.

"So wrong." She whispers between them. Between their hearts. "So wrong, Castle."

He pushes against her forehead slightly, testing the limitations. She doesn't let him break their connection, one hand reaching around to cup his neck, hold him to her.

"I just want him to like me."

"He will, Castle, he'll love you." She assures him. "And even if he doesn't, it doesn't change a thing. Okay?"

Her eyes are strong, relentless, gripping him tighter at the neck. Perhaps if she held him any tighter, she would break through to the blood in his veins, leave her mystery and her beauty and her elegance like whispers in his bloodstream. As though she's not already consumed him enough.

"Okay." He whispers.

Kate pushes forwards, the awkward angle making her lean across the desk, lips fierce against his as she gives all she possibly can with her band-aid covered heart. He takes it all and returns it all with his ink-stained own.

He wants to say 'I love you', but she is so fierce, he doesn't want to startle her.

She knows anyway. She's always known, all this time, in all these ways.

It turns out that Kate Beckett giggles.

Stomach full of warm food and perhaps a little too much wine, she leans her cheek on his shoulder as they stumble down the New York street, hands tangled and clumsy. The street around them is dark and empty, Kate had wanted to take a walk after their date, despite how she'd been in the world's most sexy pair of red heels that he, admittedly, would rather like to see her in without the dress, back in his thousand thread count sheets at home.

But she's happy and bubbly and it rises from her, escaping her and instantly he's wishing he could capture it in a jar. Something to keep forever.

"You're giggling."

"You giggle."

"You're drunk."

"So are you!"

She giggles again, into his shoulder as they stumble, hitting a street lamp as they go. There's no noise in this empty part of the city, and most respectable individuals are already asleep. So he's surrounded by the sound of her giggling, the clatter of her stumbling heels on the pavement, the sound of their lips meeting again and again and again when he just can't resist anymore.

"Castle." She huffs between kisses. "We're in public."

They stumble time and time again, to and fro with stolen kisses, touches, glances, until he's pushing her against a nearby wall and she's not quite sure whether it was she or him that had been resisting before.

"I like this." He tells her, pressing an open-mouthed kiss against the pale arc of her throat.

She lets out a laugh. "Doesn't everyone?"

"Not- I- Well, yes, that too. But this." He waves between them, watching the crinkle of her eyes turn soft. "I. . . We have fun. We're- We're together and we have fun."

Kate nods shyly, hair playing with the hair on the nape of his neck. "Yeah. I- I like this too." She confesses, blushing lightly, revealed beneath the graceful light of the moon and the fractured warmth of the streetlamp.

When she does nothing but stare at him, smiling shyly and blushing, he steps out and holds out an arm to her like a gentleman. Winks at her. "Let's go home, Kate."

Not once does she make a remark about the word 'home'. She tilts her head to the side. "And have some naked fun?"

He laughs at her forwardness, even as she's pushing her arm through his. "Well, obviously."

Her eyes twinkle with mischief, pressing one last tender kiss to his lips. "Lead the way, writer-boy."

He leads, she follows.

Laughing and laughing and laughing. Until their cheeks turn numb and the air around them swirls with it.

He almost loses her.

He almost loses her the first time she says 'I love you' and he almost breaks down right there. Watching her standing there so still, so fragile, tears rolling down her cheeks with a bruised heart as she confesses words he's felt in every touch, every glance, for so long now.

He can't kiss her or hug her or even touch her because if he does, he will lose her. He can't even shake her hand.

There's a goodbye in her words but he will not let her go.

So many things have stopped them before.

Just another ripple in the ocean.

He buys the ring the next day.

She goes out to lunch with her Dad to explain the mysterious voicemail she'd left him, explain to him that she's okay, reassure him that she's fine as much as Castle needs confirmation of that himself.

So she leaves for the afternoon, and he aches to follow her, because there are so many things out there in that world that want to take her away from him. But he understands that this is something that she needs to do alone, that she does not need crutches, and she'll always come back to him. Some way or the other, they find each other time and time again.

He goes for a walk. Purposely away from the café he knows she and her father will be in. It's just a harmless walk, until he passes the jewellery store, and then backpedals.

Sitting there. It's her ring. Hers.

He'd thought about it. Before they were even together. Kate in a white dress and walking down the aisle to him.

He'd never branched further than thinking about it.

And then suddenly he's leaving the store with a ring in a velvet box dwarfed by his trembling hands and he's thinking about too many futures to possibly fit into one reality.

But. If he could. He'd live them all with her.

Her mother's case. Vaughn. A job offer in DC.

She always comes back. No matter how many times she leaves, or he leaves her, or they simply push one another away.

So he asks her for always and loves her with all of his heart and more.