Lean Wide Out the Window

"What are you doing?" she asks him softly.

Castle turns his head from the wide windows and sees her approaching him cautiously. Like a wild animal. He feels like one - but caged and trapped though. Behind bars.

"Just," he shrugs, lets his eyes drift back out to the view. Buildings upon buildings like a whole mountain range, the pigeons his only company. "Trying to see if there's a secret code in the pattern of lights coming on and going off in that apartment across the street."

She laughs, and it lifts the gloom for a moment, makes him smile as he looks back at her.

"Secret code, huh, Castle?"

"Not really," he admits. "Just now came to me. But you know. Lives of others on display in living color."

"Better than tv?" she muses.

"I can't really see anything," he says. He turns his head because she's so much more interesting to look at. And because she's got a mug of coffee in her hands even though it's late, and her fingers curled around the ceramic like she needs the warmth. "You okay?"

She gives him a startled glance and perches on the edge of the dining room table, cradling the mug for a brief second before she sets it down. "I'm fine. I was just wondering about you."

"Better on the crutches," he says, trying to inject some hope in there. "Shaved a few seconds off my time."

She smiles again, lips together in that thin smile that isn't thin with meaning. It's not a faint smile, it's a suppressed smile, and he thinks the distinction is important.

He has the unreasonable thought that if she stayed with him all day in the loft while his knee heeled, he'd have a book written on her body language alone, catalogued and committed to memory.

She reaches out and ruffles his hair as the dark night creeps inside; her touch makes him close his eyes and lean into it, pretending he's just sitting down, pretending his knee bends, pretending he's not a wild thing in a cage.

Her kiss across his forehead makes his eyes startle open.

"I know this broken leg is like your own version of hell, Castle," she murmurs. It sounds like an apology, sounds like empathy and not pity. It's fascinating how Kate Beckett never sounds like she pities anyone; she is always compassionate, passionate, in feeling with him even back when she didn't want to be.

"It's not hell," he says, even though that's not really true. "You're here. It can't be hell."

She makes a soft sigh and kisses his eyelid this time, lips warm against the cool, thin skin. "That's kind of a beautiful thing to say."

"Does this mean I'm going to get lucky?" he grins.

She jerks back but even with the roll of her eyes, she's trying not to laugh. Oh, she's trying so hard not to laugh that little cracks widen up and break through anyway.

"Way to ruin the moment, Castle."

"But I'm still getting lucky."

Her fingers play at the nape of his neck, stroking, and it sends pleasant little shivers down his spine.

"We'll see," she says, but he knows that means, You will.

"If I look longingly out the window for the next..." He trails off and checks an imaginary watch on his wrist. "Oh, about two hours? Will it mean I'll get very lucky?"

She snorts but slides her butt over the arm of the wheelchair and settles firmly in his lap, a wriggle of her hips as she raises an eyebrow. "Let's skip the window gazing and morose patheticness and go straight to lucky, all right?"

"Oh, yes. That sounds fun."

Castle grips the wheels and spins them around - haltingly, but fast enough that she curls an arm around his neck, holds on. He grins to himself and rolls them down the hallway, careful of shadows that might catch his leg even as Kate's mouth begins a lovely, stirring trail down his neck.

"Wait. Did you call me pathetic?" he grumbles, pausing just before the bed and eyeing it.

"Focus, Castle."

"Yes, ma'am."

Still, he is a little pathetic. Because he can't figure out how exactly he can be smooth about this.

He sighs. There just isn't a way to seduce her - or let her seduce him - and also get into bed gracefully.

And that almost sucks the fun right out of it.

Fun.

He's right, she thinks as she lies in bed and tries to orient her mind towards another Saturday morning. At least she's not on call and the case is wrapped.

Skiing and snowboarding were fun until they weren't. But that kind of fun - the sharp turns of the mind, the planning as she scanned the mountain, the need for balance and agility and skill - that really is what makes her heart pound, gives her that thrill. Castle is the same; they're built alike in that at least.

They haven't been having a whole lot of fun together lately. Awkward and desperate can be fun, but those times are few and far between. And that's not what their whole relationship is based on (oh, though it certainly is fun).

Kate startles hard at the sound of the key in the lock and slips out of bed, hunting for a t-shirt, underwear, something. It's either Alexis or Martha and while his mother has been the soul of discretion, Alexis often comes looking. Which Kate appreciates on some level, since Alexis was the one who found her father when he fell because of the crutches.

She's just tugging her leggings into place when the knock sounds softly at the door; Kate leans out and adjust the blinds so that the morning light is shut out. Then she tiptoes to the bedroom door and slips out into the hallway with his daughter.

Alexis blushes but gives her space. "Hey. Sorry. I didn't realize you were home."

Four weeks ago it was I didn't realize you were here. Now it's home.

Kate smiles and nods down the hall, leads the way as they head back for the living room. "Wrapped the case early," she explains.

"Oh, Dad was excited about that one," Alexis winces, light spilling across her hair and make it gold. "He talked non-stop. Did he ever get in touch with you again?"

Kate sighs and sinks onto the couch, pulls her knees up when Alexis mimics her. "No. We finished it before I realized he'd left me all those messages."

"He misses it," Alexis says, caution in her voice that Kate wishes the last few weeks had erased completely. But they'll get there.

"Yeah. And I'm not being as informative as he'd like-"

"Well, Kate," Alexis stutters, like she's trying not to laugh. "You are doing your job. He's being a baby."

Not as much as Alexis might think. "Still, I wish there was a way he could participate. He tried to facetime with me last week. Did you know that? It was not a success. Gates was about to kill me."

Alexis does laugh then, a lot freer. "I can imagine. Lanie said Dad's been calling her for autopsy results."

"Oh no," Kate groans. "Seriously? I missed that."

"She just told me today," the girl shrugs. "But really. Dad needs a hobby."

"Apparently the 12th is his hobby."

"He does like to snoop," Alexis laughs again. They fall into companionable silence, Kate's thoughts drifting back to the man in bed and his eager mind, and just how much she really loves that, loves the way he just won't give up, the way he squirms and worms his way into the middle of things. He can never leave it alone. He always has to know.

"Oh." Kate takes a breath.

"What?" Alexis asks.

"Oh, his birthday."

"That's in like three weeks. April Fool's. You're good still," Alexis says quickly.

Kate snorts. "I know that. I mean. For his birthday." She tilts her head and watches the morning light pattern over the building across the street, tries to collect the pieces of this idea that's coming in faintly like mist.

"What for his birthday?"

"Snooping," she says automatically.

"You mean a case?"

Is that what she means? "Yes. A case. How..."

"I just think if we can get him interested in a new hobby, then he won't be calling me every after class and asking me to come home and entertain him. Seriously, Kate, he asked for soft shoe last week. He needs something to do."

Entertain him. A hobby. A case. "What hobby?" she mumbles, just to keep the conversation going. Something in this is coming together for her, something of Alexis's complaint and the edges of the morning light on the building's facade are coalescing into this idea.

"I don't know. Something he can do here in the chair. Whatever. Bird-watching. I don't care."

Kate's gaze sharpens to the pigeon duck-walking across the window ledge, but there aren't that many birds in the city. Though Castle - trust him to spice ornithology up with-

"Oh, oh, wait," she breathes, sitting up sharply. "A case. Bird-watching. There was - once in Central Park, a guy who was bird watching got shot and..."

"What?" Alexis mutters. "I don't want Dad to get shot bird-watching. And it's not like he can get to Central Park all that easily. I just figured, give him some binoculars and let his own overactive imagination take hold."

"Yes, exactly," Kate crows, jumping up from the couch and racing towards the dining room. She snatches her phone from the plug where she left it charging last night, checks the messages automatically, but she doesn't know what she's doing, what she's looking for, looking up online, except-

"We're going to... we need to harness that. His overactive imagination, his snooping." She squeezes her hand into a fist around her phone and it's there, all of it, so very clear that she stands stock still in the middle of his living room and can hardly breathe.

This must be what inspiration is, what having a musedoes for him after weeks of frustration and nothing coming. What she does for him.

The whole tableau lights in front of her eyes, framed by the windows of the apartment across the street and - like a sign from the universe, like approval and benediction and blessing - she sees For Lease plastered in the window dead ahead.

Dead ahead. He needs a case.

"Everything's perfect," she gasps. "Alexis. Alexis. Oh, would Martha - do you think your grandmother would help?"

"Kate. Kate, help what?"

"The best trick ever," she grins. "For your dad's birthday."

It's what she does for him. Because she loves him.

Kate's making her coffee in the kitchen when Alexis initiates step one of the plan.

Castle handles the binoculars with reverent fingers and gives his daughter a smile that looks genuine. "Good idea, pumpkin."

"I figured it'd give you something to do," she shrugs, playing it off and picking up her bag. "I've got class in an hour. Gotta go. Love you."

Kate watches Alexis give Castle's cheek a kiss and then leave the loft; Castle is already lifting the binoculars to his eyes and peering out the window.

Play it cool, she reminds herself. Play it cool.

"Castle," she calls, pleased that her voice holds not a trace of her excitement. "You want some coffee before I have to leave?"

He's still staring through the window, scanning the binoculars side to side, and it takes a long time for him to finally pull his focus back to her.

He blinks, then smiles. "Yeah. Thanks."

And then he goes back to people-watching.

This is going to work.

This is really going to work.