For the two other girls at the end of the bar.

Our doubts are traitors,
and make us lose the good we oft might win
by fearing to attempt.

- William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act I, Scene iv

Everything feels heavier after cases like this. The bag over her shoulder pulls at her muscles, her neck aching with the weight of the files she needs to go over for tomorrow, and her back a solid knot from sitting all day. Sitting and staring at the murder board, willing something to pan out.

She pulls the bag in close as she pushes through the turnstile, making sure the strap doesn't catch on the poles as she heads for the stairs and oh, her quads make it known that they, too, are unhappy with her.

They can join the club.

Kate walks past the BP gas station, dodging a taxi as the driver takes a right out of the parking lot without checking for pedestrians. She shifts her bag to the ball of her shoulder in an attempt to relieve some of the stress crawling up her neck when she turns right onto Lafayette.

She gets to Spring Street by the time she realizes she's on the wrong street, finding herself standing on the edge of the park with her hand curled around the case of her phone.

Keep walking. Broome is right there and she can go melt into the couch and not exist for the weekend. But she stops halfway down the block, pushing into the little bar on a whim.

Her bag drops to the floor as she slides onto a vacant stool.

"What can I get you?" asks the bartender, a young guy with his long brown hair tied back with a leather knot.

It was a bad day and a bad case. Her body hurts and her hands are still trembling in her lap as she pulls out her credit card. "Carafe of your most expensive red," she orders, taking the elastic from her bun and shaking her hair out.

The glass appears on a circle coaster, the carafe placed next to it. "Let me know if you need anything else," the bartender tells her before moving down to help a waitress with her drinks.

She almost swallows the whole glass but the first taste of the red makes her head spin with the dark fruit and spices. Sip. Slowly.

After the first glass, her fingers tingle and her head feels blessedly light. Her glass of water sits untouched as she refills the bowl of her wine glass, hands steady and careful.

The second glass makes her heavy again but not with the weight of the case. A pleasant heaviness that settles in her bones and forces her to rest her head against the heel of her palm, swirling the base of the glass on the wood bar.

"Beckett," he sighs, his hand touching her shoulder before it smooths down the wrinkles of her blouse to rest at her wrist. "Why're you hiding?"

She didn't hear him come in. Didn't see him as she stared down at the red liquid and the subtle shimmer of her wedding band from the fairy lights strung across the entirety of the ceiling. Magical and almost enough to make her smile. (She had fairy lights crisscrossing her room at Stanford; they disappeared when she transferred. There was no brightness or magic at NYU for her.)

"Not hiding," she whispers. "Just…" Kate takes a stuttering breath, nudging at the nearly-empty carafe of wine. "Just needed to take a break."

Castle sits on the stool beside her, a wide palm on her thigh. "Come home, okay? Let's go home."

She drops her head to his shoulder, hiding her face in the crook of his neck with her lips tickling his throat. "I think I'm burning out," she admits, her voice too quiet in the summer noise of the bar. "Everything at work makes me so sad."

"Hey. One bad case doesn't mean you're done. You have the weekend off, right?" He waits until she nods, the movement so very small at his shoulder. "So take the weekend. It's going to be okay."

Kate lets him close her tab, keeping her card in his pocket as he hefts her bag over his own shoulder and tucking her in close against his side. Her feet trip over themselves but his arm at her waist keeps her upright as they start the walk down the block to the apartment. Right around the corner and he knows she escapes to the cozy little place when she needs to think by herself.

He unlocks their front door and sight on the dining room table her makes her eyes water, all of the emotion from the week finally bubbling to the surface when she sees the ancient picnic basket.

"I ruined your plans," she says, burying her face in his chest. "You had all this waiting and I was being stupid and getting drunk after work on-"

"No." He ducks his head down, pulling her eyes to his. "Kate. All this can hold. Promise. You want to have a candlelit dinner up on the roof, then we do that. You want to crawl into bed and watch soap operas, then we'll do that instead."

"Stupid," she mutters, kicking her heels off. She has to balance herself on the entry table for a moment, waiting for the living room to stop spinning before she walks to the bedroom. Behind her, she hears him cleaning up the picnic basket, the wicker creaking as he opens the flaps. "No. Castle."

His head pops through the doorway, a bottle of white wine at his chest.

"I want to," Kate sighs. "I want dinner with you in the garden. I just need to change. I need to not be stuck at work anymore, okay?"

Castle sets the bottle on the bureau, coming in close and snagging the hem of her blouse. He tugs it over her head, tossing it toward the closet. His thumb smooths against her ribs. "Whatever you need," he promises. "Dinner was some lame coldcut wraps and a bag of chips but I can make whatever you want if that's-"

"Perfect," she sighs. "That sounds perfect." She steps back, working on the button of her pants and shimmying the grey fabric down her legs.

He's still watching; she can feel his eyes on her as she digs through the unmade bed for her loose pajama shorts and the oversized Stanford homecoming t-shirt she pulled on last night before bed. She slips on her boat shoes, worn so often after their time in the Hamptons this past summer as a late honeymoon that the soles are coming unglued, and takes the bottle of wine from the bureau.

"Let's go have dinner," she says quietly. As if afraid to disturb the almost-peace that finally washed over her own mind. "Need something to soak up that wine."

Castle gathers the basket, letting Kate clutch the wine to her chest as they walk down the hall to the stairs. She lets him hold the door to the roof open as she steps into the heavy, humid air.

Their lawn chairs get unfolded among the vibrantly colorful flowers and he snaps them both open just close enough to the thigh-high wall that they'll be able to prop their feet up against the worn stone. She curls into the bright green chair as he unpacks, trading her a tinfoil-wrapped sandwich for the bottle of wine.

Kate stretches her legs out, the soles of her shoes pressing hard against the wall and feeling the resulting pull in her quads. Her head tips back against the metal bar on the beach chair, still feeling the wine from the bar and making everything light and warm.

His lips brush at her temple, a quiet whisper she doesn't comprehend as he passes her a glass of the white wine. Then he settles in the chair next to her, ripping open the top of the chip bag and placing it between them.

They eat slowly, the noise of happy-hour-goers and taxicabs filling the silence.

She doesn't drink the wine, reaching over to dig through the basket until she finds the bottled water he snuck in during his re-packing of their dinner. The cold water cuts through the lingering red wine, diluting the lethargy stuck in her veins and dampening the unease she's been feeling since she left work.

"I'm sorry," she sighs, angling her head to see his profile in the waning sun. "For not coming home or calling to tell you I was stopping to get drunk because I had a shitty day."

His fingers are gritty with crumbled potato chips when he smooths them over her knee. "You think you're burning out," he says, evenly and without judgment.

She sighs, pulling her knees closer to her chest, her heels balanced on the mesh edge of the chair. "I don't know."

"Kate." He waits until she looks at him. "You've been doing this work for almost ten years. The type of things you see and deal with? It's completely reasonable for that to wear on you."

"I don't want to stop," she defends. "I don't. I just feel like crap lately and this case…" She swallows, turning her face into her knees. "I hate… I hate telling daughters that their mothers are dead."

She wants to cry. Her breath in is harsh and stuttering and nearly becomes a sob on the way out but she had her breakdown already. She climbed the stairs to the sixth floor, found a dusty, half-stocked supply room, and emerged half an hour later with mascara-stained cuffs rolled to her elbows to hide the black marks and a box of paperclips she pretended she had gone in search of.

She wants to cry and the wine in her blood makes it so appealing to just crumble to pieces again right here. Here where he can press her back together and she doesn't have to fake a thirty minute quest for surplus desk supplies.

His fingers curl into her loose hair, tucking it around her ear and clearing his view to her face. Kate nearly ducks away from his gaze but having him as an audience to her weakness no longer makes her ashamed. So she turns to him, her cheek at her thigh, waiting.

"I'm tired of it," she admits.

He leans hard on the arm of his beach chair, his wide palm cupping the back of her neck to pull her close enough for his lips to touch her forehead. "Whatever you choose, Beckett," he murmurs at her ear. "I'll be at your side. You want to take a leave of absence and travel Europe for three months, I'll book us tickets tonight. Want to cut back hours at the precinct, fine. If you want to take this weekend and just not think and then go back to work on Monday, cool. Whatever you want, I'm here."

"Let's start with this weekend," she says, her voice raising in half a question. He'll back her play wholeheartedly; she knows that. He's proven that time and time again yet she waits for his nod to continue. "This weekend first. No work-talk."

Castle finishes his glass of wine, the stemware clinking on the ground as he grabs the second bottled water. "Alexis said she was looking into internships for next year."

"Yeah?"

"I thought maybe you could give her a hand? She figured they might help her law school applications if she helped out at a firm or the DA's office or something for a semester. You have more experience dealing with lawyers so…"

Kate grins and the movement feels foreign for a moment. Amusement pushing aside the weight of grief. "Pretty sure you've had some experience with lawyers, Mr. Castle. I remember your arrest record," she teases. "But I can call Dad, see if he knows anyone looking for an intern." She extends her legs, crossing her feet at the ankle. "There's no right time, right?" she asks, focusing on the sway of a plant in the summer breeze.

"For?" he hedges, sitting up straighter as if he can sense a serious conversation about to happen.

He's not wrong.

"Kids. You said before there was no right time. No way to know for sure that you've got the timing and everything correct," Kate muses. "Maybe we can talk about that this weekend?"

"Kate," he breathes, scooting his chair closer with the metal frame grating loudly on the concrete. "You've been thinking about it?"

She nods, letting her head tip onto his shoulder. "For a while, actually. But not talking about that tonight. Not awake or sober enough. Kids. That's a big decision."

He jostles his shoulder, standing up in the next moment. "Let's go to bed then," he says, already packing everything back into the little basket, tucking the checkered liner in just so. "We can talk about kids and work and the future in the morning."

Castle snags her hand on the walk back to the stairs, kicking the little painted stone out of the doorjam.

She tugs him to a stop in the stairwell, her feet still a step above his when he turns to look at her in askance. It feels foolish, suddenly, the reason she halted him on their short way home but she's just tired enough, just drunk enough to say it anyway. "Thank you," she sighs, her thumb at his jaw with the soft growth of his cheek bristling against her skin. "For having my back."

He just smiles, the barest upturn of the corners of his mouth as she leans down to touch her lips to his.

The quiet of the loft when they get through the front door doesn't feel like mourning anymore; instead, the gentle hum of the refrigerator and the city sounds leaking through the open windows feels like the deep breath of hope.