A/N: This story is the sequel to my story Run. I highly recommend you read that fic before this one.

After Run I just knew that Kate and Castle's story wasn't over and that's where this sequel came from. I hope you enjoy it! (And yes, I did get the title from the Justin Timberlake song :) )

Not a Bad Thing

One

Kate Beckett slowed her walk to a shuffle as she approached the apartment door. A foot from it, she stopped her progress all together, took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly as she stared blankly at the door before her. Another day over; another day leaving her even more drained than the day before. At least she was finally home.

Pulling the key ring from her pocket she paused and thought, Is this really home? She let that thought simmer for a moment before shaking her head and shoving the key in the lock. She was most definitely too exhausted to have that internal discussion.

Pushing the door open to Castle's loft, Kate tossed her purse and keys on the table by the door while simultaneously toeing off her heels. She took two steps into the apartment when she spotted him emerging from the office looking just as he always did: jeans, button-down shirt (today was a blue plaid), and a broad smile.

"I thought I heard you," he said, taking a detour on his path to the kitchen to walk over and give her a kiss on the cheek. "How was your day?"

She followed him, hoping he would provide her with an alcoholic beverage of some sort, and sighed, "Really fucking shitty. Oh-" She stopped short when she spotted Castle's orange-haired daughter seated at the kitchen counter, school textbooks beside her. Heat crept into Kate's face and she mumbled, "Sorry Alexis."

Alexis whipped her head towards the older woman causing her long hair to cascade down her back. "Don't worry, Kate," she said with a slight chuckle. "I hear much worse at school on a daily basis."

Kate gave the girl a muted smile as she passed. From her own school days, she knew this statement to be fact. Though, if she had to guess, harsh language nowadays was probably such commonplace it practically lost meaning. Still, cursing around Castle's daughter was not something she felt comfortable with doing, just like she would rarely, if ever, be heard dropping an F-bomb around her father; it just wasn't done.

By the time she rounded the corner of the counter and entered the main kitchen area, Castle had already poured her a glass of her favorite red wine. With a smile and a gracious head nod, she accepted it and took a long sip. She shut her eyes and swallowed, letting herself feel the liquid as it slid down her esophagus. With a quick exhale she opened her eyes and leaned back against the counter.

Lately it seemed one glass of wine was the bare minimum necessary to unfurl from days spent with Banner and the other lemmings at the FBI and Kate hated that. She had never been the I-need-a-drink-to-relax type nor did she want to be. Though it was more often than not just one glass, it still made her feel as though she was teetering on the edge of alcoholism. Much to his credit, Castle did his best to help, but that day had taken more of a toll than Castle's ridiculous jokes could repair.

As he pulled ingredients for dinner from the refrigerator, Castle gazed at her over his shoulder. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Later," she sighed. After I finish this glass, she added silently. After another sip, she turned the question on him. "How was your day?"

"Oh it was great!" He beamed as he began to dice tomatoes. "I got the new cover art for Crossroads; it looks really good. I'll show it to you after we eat."

"Oh good. Did they make the farmhouse look less spooky?" she asked, knowing that was his number one complaint about the first cover.

"They did! Now it doesn't look like gruesome murders take place there."

"But Dad," Alexis interjected, putting down her pencil and looking up at him. "Didn't a murder take place there?"

Castle paused his dicing and reviewed the book plot in his mind. "Technically, yes, but that cover art made my book look like it was a horror story, which it is not."

Alexis shrugged. "Maybe you should write a horror story."

"No," he responded firmly, scooping a handful of tomato pieces from the cutting board and dumping them in a bowl. "I am friends with Wes Craven; I do not want to be Wes Craven."

With a chuckle, Kate shook her head and took another sip of her wine. Though it had been four months, sometimes it was still hard for her to believe that her boyfriend possessed notoriety to the point where he could reference friends who were actual celebrities. If she wanted to get technical about it, her boyfriend could have been considered a celebrity as well, but she did not like to think about that, especially not then, as it would most definitely require a second glass of wine.

"So what's on the menu tonight, Castle?" she asked.

"Oh a little of this, little of that. It'll be a wonderful surprise to your palate." As he winked, his daughter guffawed.

"Yeah, 'Surprise this chicken is about to expire.'"

Castle shot her a look, which she didn't notice as she continued to do her homework. Kate caught it, though, and it made her smile. By far one of her favorite things about him was his rapport with his daughter. They could play off one another so easily; it was a delight to watch.

As Castle continued to prep their meal, Kate took a seat at the kitchen counter beside Alexis. She had long since given up on offering help to Castle. When he was cooking, the kitchen was his domain. If he wanted assistance, he would ask, but save a request, she found it wise to keep out of his way. Instead, she sipped her wine and gazed over to see which text Alexis was working out of. Geometry—not one of Kate's favorites. If she had been forced to choose a favorite during her school days, she would have chosen math over English, but she preferred algebra to geometry. Either way it didn't matter; Alexis was the smartest sixteen-year-old Kate had ever met and never required any assistance or input on her homework.

As Castle passed by the counter on the way to the fridge, he placed a small foil wrapped square object on the counter in front of Kate and winked. Her smile broadened as she picked up the piece of chocolate and peeled back the wrapping. He knew chocolate with red wine was her weakness and he never missed an opportunity to exploit it.

While the rich flavors mingled pleasantly on her tongue, Kate reflected on their one hundred and twenty five day courtship with renewed amazement. By her own standards, her relationship with Castle could easily have been considered a whirlwind. Typically, four months into a relationship, Kate barely would have breached the spending the night at each other's place (weekends only!) phase, but now she was spending almost half her nights at the loft and recently acquired her own key.

For the prior four months, Kate's brain and heart remained locked in an epic battle. From the beginning—from their first week together on the run and solving a covered-up murder—Kate's heart knew there was something special about Castle and also from the beginning, her brain tried to fight it every step of the way.

After her inaugural dinner with the Castle clan which served as their official first date, she tried her best to approach their relationship rationally since everything leading up to that point between them had been anything but. Her brain was continuously searching for downsides and flaws—reasons to run—but her heart simply would not let them be found.

She loved the way he sent her random texts through the day to make her laugh or let her know he was thinking about her. She loved the way he seemed to make great effort to get to know her and everything she enjoyed. She loved listening to him tell stories—about his life or about something random that happened to him that day. Most of all, she loved that when he hugged her, he made her feel as though nothing would ever be wrong in the world again.

As promised, Castle's dinner concoction was a delight to her taste buds and, after the meal was cleaned up and Alexis had retreated to her bedroom to finish her homework, Kate joined Castle in the office where he showed her the cover art for Crossroads.

By the end of his second week back from being a fugitive, Castle had re-written the book's ending so that the main character, Timothy Chance, brought his father's killers to justice, which he decided to do in memory to Tony Ciardi, the real life inspiration for the character who had tragically been murdered before discovering the identity of his own father's killer.

Once the book was complete, the publishers at Black Pawn insisted on taking the book to print right away in hopes of capitalizing on the public notoriety the author had during the six days he lived his life on the lam. When Kate learned of this, she was appalled at the concept of anyone profiting from the deaths of two innocent people, but Castle explained it was merely the way the soulless marketing division of the publishing world worked at times.

"Very nice," Kate agreed when he showed her the cover art. "Do they have a release date?"

"Three months," he said. "Pre-orders start Monday."

"Exciting," she said with a supportive smile.

He nodded, kissed her forehead, took her hand and led her to the loveseat in the office. They sat at opposite ends and he scooped up her legs and placed them in his lap. Once he'd begun massaging one of her feet, he asked, "So what happened today?"

She sighed and rubbed the fingertips of her right hand over her forehead before looking over to him. "Just more of the same I suppose. A senator's son was caught trafficking drugs across state lines, but instead of getting charges the whole thing was just smoothed over by Banner." She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and shook her head. "I know a few pounds of pot aren't the same as a few dead bodies, but it just…"

"I know," he said, giving her foot a squeeze. He knew how the injustice ate at her and watching it over and over certainly didn't make it any easier.

She sat up and pulled her feet from his lap, hugging her knees against her chest as she looked at him. "I wanted this job, Rick; I swear I did but I just… I didn't realize it would be like this." She picked at a stray thread in the seam of her pant leg as she continued. "I suppose I had a glamorized version of it, but I'd been in law enforcement before and I just thought it'd be the same, but it's not…it's politics and handshakes with winks and 'You scratch my back I'll scratch yours' deals. There's no justice—not real justice."

Castle nodded, understanding. Night after night she'd told him similar tales to the point where he wondered how anyone ended up in federal prison at all.

"I just…I hate it. I hate my job," she concluded. As the words escaped her lips, she felt a weight lift along with them. She had thought many times about her dislike for her job, more and more over the recent weeks, but she had never said the words out loud to even herself, let alone to anyone else.

"So quit," he suggested simply.

She gave him a serious look. "I can't quit."

"Sure you can."

"No, I can't."

"Why not?"

She shook her head at the preposterous notion. "Because, I'm not a quitter. I can't…fail."

Castle chuckled; she made failure sound as though it was akin to premeditated murder. He scooted closer to her on the couch and placed one of his hands on her knee. "Kate, listen to me. Do you know how many books I started writing and didn't complete? Dozens. That doesn't mean I failed—that means I thought something would work, I gave it a good try, and in the end it just didn't pan out. That's not being a quitter; that's being human."

Kate tilted her head to the side and chewed on her bottom lip. His words made sense in theory, but she wasn't sure she could apply them to her own life. "But I just don't know…"

"Kate this happens to people every day, all over the world. They take a new job, try it out, and find it's a bad fit so they quit and find a new one. It's not like you've been there two weeks. It's been nearly a year, right? And, Kate, I promise you, if you don't like it now, you won't like it in another year either."

She groaned inwardly. He was certainly right on that point—she could not foresee any scenarios where her enjoyment of her job rose steadily over any time period let alone a year. "But what would I do?"

Castle thought on this for a moment. If there was one thing he knew for certain about her, it was the fact that at her heart she was a cop and he knew she would not find happiness unless she was helping others by putting bad people behind bars. "Could you go back to the NYPD?"

She shrugged and tucked her feet underneath her. It was an idea she'd toyed with, but had not put much hope into it since she was unsure it was even possible. "Maybe, I don't know."

He smiled at her. "You never know until you ask. Is it something you'd want?"

The corners of her lips tugged upwards ever so slightly. "I loved being a cop, Castle; I did. It felt like…the thing I was meant to do."

"Well then you have to go back," he said matter-of-factly.

"It's not that easy."

"But you'll at least look into it?" he asked. After a moment, she nodded in confirmation. "Excellent. So, will you stay tonight, or do you need to go home and give your punching bag with Banner's face on it a few hearty slugs?"

Kate chuckled. "You know it's a dart board not a punching bag."

His eyes sparkled slightly as he leaned towards her. "My mistake." He pressed a sweet kiss on her lips before repeating his earlier question. "Staying?"

"Staying," she confirmed. Then, with a smile, she allowed him to lead her into the bedroom.