Never would she have imagined Castle to react with anything but eagerness at the prospect of sharing a sleeping bag with her. But after she feels his eyes following the shimmy of her hips, the jeans she kicks from her leg to join their pile of coats and boots outside the tent, she notices he looks anxious to even touch her.

"What?" she murmurs, running her palms up and down her calves. They're encased in knit leggings, but her muscles are still gripped in ice, her bones sheathed in it.

"Just weird," he shrugs, mimicking her and resting his palms atop his shins. She almost wants to admonish him for simply wearing those stupid flannel pajama pants he loves so much. She knows he has thermals buried with his ski clothes somewhere in their closet, those would keep him so much warmer. "Not how I expected you first night back in the loft to be."

"It's cozy," she muses, slipping her toes beneath the mountain of blankets. She wants to burrow them beneath his legs, wiggle her feet into the body heat he's always so willingly given her, but he doesn't owe her anything anymore. Not after how she's treated him over these past few weeks, months, after leaving him alone.

"Where's Alexis, your mom?" she asks, but the question hardly fazes him.

"Taking a mini vacation to California to avoid the cold," he mumbles, glaring at his knees.

She arches an eyebrow, only has to sway slightly towards him to knock his shoulder with her own in the confined space of the tent. "Why aren't you with them?"

"I didn't feel like it." His jaw squares. "Besides, you were going to be here and if something happened, I needed to be-"

"Castle," she sighs, quiet and shameful. "You didn't need to stay for-"

"Tell me why you left." Kate pauses, but he refuses to let the silence linger this time. "I won't do this again with you, talk through subtext or pretend there's nothing wrong-"

"I'm not asking you to," she murmurs, curling her knees to her chest and bowing her spine forward to prop her chin to her patella. She's warming up in the tent, the little heaters the size of her fist doing a spectacular job, but her body temperature is the farthest thing from her mind now. She still feels cold.

"Was I suffocating you?"

Her head whips towards him. "What?"

"Was it too much? Or just not enough. Was Bracken right? Was it never going to be enough for you all along-"

"No," she croaks, her hand shaking as she thoughtlessly scrapes it through her hair. He's staring her down, waiting, but she squeezes her eyes shut. Her heart is cracking and so does her voice. "I don't want you to get hurt."

"You already hurt me," he rumbles, the growl in his throat simultaneously shaming her and heating her up. He shifts closer in the confined space, the warmth of his chest at her shoulder. She turns her head towards him, eyes still closed, and swallows hard.

"Not me, not - not your heart," she sighs, biting her bottom lip. "I just wanted you to be safe."

She takes a deep breath, realizes that she came here tonight with every intention of coming clean, didn't she?

"I never stopped investigating LokSat."

He groans, but she can handle his anger, she's grateful for it. She'll take anger over heartbreak any day. "Are you kidding me? That's what this is about? What happened to partners, Beckett?"

"Partners protect each other," she snaps, her eyes finally flaring open to find him crouched beside her, face buried in his hands.

"Protect each other," he agrees, sounding so tired, worn by her. She wears him down so easily these days. She needs to fix it, put him back together and build him back up. "That's a dual effort. Not a self-sacrificing one. You have my back, I have yours. You did the opposite of that. You lied to me."

She blinks, but no, she didn't mean to... it wasn't about lying, she wasn't trying to lie to him. Not again.

Sinning by silence, Beckett. Remember that one?

"If I wasn't with you, they wouldn't hurt you," she murmurs, the mantra she's been murmuring to herself for over three months now.

"You really believe that?" he laughs, but he just looks so... so disappointed with her and somehow that's worse than fury. "I thought - we're supposed to be stronger together. You're supposed to be my wife."

Her hands fist, nails cutting into her palms. "I never stopped being your wife."

"You made me spend our first anniversary alone," he growls and the cracks in her heart multiply, run through the interior of the muscle and cause the crumbling to begin. She's wasted so much time, missed so many moments in these past three months without him, but the fact that he was spending that time alive was her consolation. At least, it was supposed to be.

"The thought of something happening to you, losing you..." She closes her eyes, but the tears still leak free. Dammit. "I couldn't handle it. I've lost almost everyone to this case in some way, Castle. I couldn't lose the most important person in my life too. Not like that."

He's unmoving for a long moment, silent too, and she expects him to leave her alone in the tent, to find warmth elsewhere, away from the chill of lies and betrayals she's brought in with her. But then he's easing closer, thigh pressing against hers, arm banding around her shoulders. Kate immediately sinks into his side.

"Do you ever think about what it would do to me? Losing the person I love?"

She turns her face into his neck, sucking in a breath that breaks, has her biting back a sob against his throat.

Castle only holds her tighter, his cheek sealing to her forehead while one of his hands tangles in her hair. It steadies her, anchors her, and she lifts one of her hands to his chest, clutches the fabric of his sweater in a fist.

"Kate, I love you." The fragile structure of her heart finally collapses, leaving her ribcage in wreckage and causing her sternum to shudder against his. "And if you love me back, you have to stop doing this to me, to yourself," he mumbles into her hair. "No more selfless bullshit. I'm all in for everything. The good and the bad - we handle it all together."

She nods, calming herself with the comfort of his scent in her nose and the warmth of him surrounding her again.

"I'm sorry," she sighs, pressing her forehead to his clavicle. "I just - all I want is to fix this."

"We will. As soon as the power comes back and it's warm enough to leave the tent, we'll go over everything you have on LokSat and come up with a plan together, like we should have all along-"

"No," she huffs, raising her head to meet his furrowed brow and frowning mouth. It has her releasing another sigh, craning her neck to touch a kiss to that downturned corner of his lips. "I was talking about us," she mumbles, pressing her nose to the soft skin of his cheek, feeling the gentle exhale of his breath against her chin. "Everything else comes second to you and me. I thought I was protecting you, us - I've been spending every spare moment trying to figure out any leads, because the quicker I ended LokSat, the quicker I got to come home. Getting back to you has been the only thing keeping me going, Castle."

She shakes her head. Now that she's saying it aloud to him, now that he's said his piece in it all... she broke both of their hearts for nothing, didn't she?

"No more," he murmurs, dropping his chin to knock his forehead into hers, stare straight into her gaze with a warning in his.

"No," she tells him, skating a hand down to his hip, trying to draw him closer, needing him as close as possible. He may be a writer, words mean a lot to him, but so does touch, physical gestures and proximity. She can give him all of that, give him everything back.

Some of the uncertainty fades, but he's still studying her, sweeping his eyes over her face in search of any fault in her truth. She doesn't blame him, not after the past three months of unintentional deception, of prominent heartache.

Let him look, let him see it all; she has nothing left to hide.

"What happens now?" he murmurs, tracing the curve of her eyebrow with his thumb before it can arch in question. "What do you want?"

It's the easiest question he could ask her. Always has been.

"You." She refrains from flicking her gaze to his mouth like she wants to, keeping her eyes locked on his instead. "Whatever comes next with LokSat, with anything else, I don't want to do any of it without you."

The tension twined around his spine begins to drain beneath her hands on his back, relief seeping through the recently developed lines branching out from his eyes, quoting his mouth.

"Come back home." He skims his thumb along the sharp bone of her cheek. "Stay here."

"Please," she sighs, but it's hardly a plea at all. Just relief. So much relief.

She almost wrecked her marriage, almost ruined this.

"Even once the storm passes."

Kate tilts her chin, lips grazing over his. "As far as I'm concerned, it already has."

"I don't want you to be cold," he mumbles, but she can only hum. She can't stop humming with it, the happiness buzzing like warmth through her veins, trembling through her bones, and indulging the smile she keeps succumbing to in their kisses

"Baby, it's cold outside," she teases, grinning as he huffs against her lips. "But warm in the tent."

They're tangled up in the bedding he dragged in from their room, her head on his pillow and Castle's body draped atop hers beneath the blankets, making out in the tent. She barely notices that the power is out, that they're down one heater. She doesn't need them anymore.

Kate tucks her fingers past the waistband of his pajama pants, his boxers, biting her bottom lip.

"And skin to skin contact is the best way to preserve body heat."

He arches an eyebrow. "That so?"

His thigh slides between hers, his hand beneath the layers of her hoodie, her shirt. Kate sucks in a breath, heart pounding with need and everything she's been missing.

"You'll keep me warm," she murmurs, coasting her hands up his sides, dragging his long sleeve shirt up with her fingers. Castle sits up, the top of his head skimming the ceiling of the tent, and tugs the shirt over his head. She's always loved his body, appreciated it, but now, she aches for it.

She reaches for the zipper to her jacket, rolling her shoulders and tossing the hoodie to the side, fingers tripping to the hem of her shirt. Castle beats her to it.

"Hey, is this mine?" He plucks at the worn black fabric that's a little too loose on her. God, how pathetic. She didn't even realize- "I knew you took my clothes."

"I like your clothes," she shrugs. She can't hide it, so she might as well embrace it. "Took a lot of them."

He gasps and she grins, tightens her thighs at his hips.

"Helped to have a few of your things," she murmurs, but refuses to indulge the sorrow that threatens to breach the light in her chest.

"Take me back to your place once this is all over," Rick suggests, leaning over her again, the shirt still trapped between them. "Let me help you pack."

He's challenging her, pushing, testing to see if she'll protest to the implication of packing, bringing her stuff back home. But Kate shakes her head. "Not much to pack. And I don't want to take you there, it's depressing. Just an empty apartment to sleep in."

She expects for him to point out again how she never should have left, to tell her all the reasons she made the wrong decision, he has every right to rub the wound raw. But she should know better.

Castle simply dusts his lips to her forehead. "You'll have my full wardrobe at your disposal in the meantime. You already know you look good in my clothes."

Kate rolls her eyes, but his hands are slipping beneath his shirt to explore her body in rediscovery, scaling scars new and old, lighting her skin on fire.

"I just want to stay here," she murmurs, a pointless statement but all she knows to be true anymore. Screw LokSat, screw all the reasons she justified as necessary to distance herself from Castle, to keep him safe. She can't stay away, not for long. Never for long.

"Good, because you don't have a choice anymore," he quips, only half joking. "Shouldn't have let you leave that first night, Kate-"

"It's not on you and it's over." She dusts her fingertips along the upturned curve of his mouth. "Enough. I'm home."

He's still angry at her, she can taste it in the press of his mouth to hers, the insistence of his tongue, and the bite of his teeth. But he's willing to forgive, she can feel that too in the way he slows to caress her bottom lip, the stroke of his tongue growing almost too erotic for her to handle after nearly three months apart.

Kate curves her hand at his nape, joining the other in cupping his skull, and rises into his kiss. Her tired heart exalts with relief, with want, with the sensation of home that embraces her with his arms.

The power thrums back to life while she's lying on top of him, half asleep and spent, sated. Both of them startle at the sudden return of electricity humming through the air, her heartbeat spiking with a painful kick and her head lifting from his chest. Her hand automatically jerks to her hip, where her gun would be if she wasn't naked and lying in a sleeping bag with her husband.

"Just the power, sweetheart," Castle husks, his voice thick with sleep and the residual heat of all they managed to accomplished in the cramped space of the tent. He tugs the comforter higher at her back and returns his arm to drape across her spine, his chest expanding with an exhale beneath hers.

Her heart calms, settles with the rise and fall of his, but she doesn't return her cheek to rest upon his shoulder. Not yet. She lets her body sink and relax into his, legs sliding to tangle with his and ribcages slotting into place, while her eyes roam his face. The lantern in the corner casts shadows across his cheek, soft streaks of light over his features, content and peaceful, beautiful. Worth walking through a blizzard for.

"Creepy staring," he muses, cracking an eye open to meet her gaze. "You haven't done that since we first started sleeping together."

Kate scoffs, but eases forward to touch her lips to the high of his cheekbone, the bridge of his nose, his chin. He shivers beneath her, shifts to draw her body in more snugly against his.

"Are you good? We can move to the bed if you want," he murmurs, his fingers combing through the tangles of her hair, wild and kinking from the melted snow and the work of his hands. "And I can turn the thermostat up."

Kate hums, but shakes her head.

"I'm good. I like this," she admits, the corner of her mouth quirking. "Making love with you in a tent."

His chest rumbles beneath hers and her smile reaches full bloom.

"We can keep the tent up as long as you want," he promises, tracing her ear with his thumb.

"Just the rest of tonight, until it's warm in here again," she compromises on a yawn, burying her face in his throat. "I still missed our bed."

"I've missed you in the bed," he concedes, but his voice isn't tainted with sorrow. He's too lazy and love drunk to be sad.

Kate tilts her chin to stain her mouth to the underside of his jaw.

"I'll take a few days off this week, we'll spend some extra time getting reacquainted with the bed. Working on forgiveness."

Castle lowers his head to look at her, the corner of his mouth twitching. "You sure you don't have hypothermia in the brain?"

"No, just missed you." She props one of her arms atop his chest, lets her hair fall over her shoulder to skim his sternum. "And it's kinda hard for you to do any proper naked punishing in a tent."