Demitasse

"Is he here?" Kate asks the moment she spills through the door, and at the counter Nina lifts her head. She gets a nod, and then Beckett is already barreling her way through to the back room and clattering through the door.

Her husband is on the couch, fingers laced together and trapped between his knees, and she stumbles onto the cushion and winds her arms tight around him. Around his head really, cradling him to her chest, and her lips land in his hair. "The boys told me you were working with Slaughter. What the hell, Castle?"

"I'm sorry," he says and he worms his way out of her grip. He tugs back to look at her and he settles a hand at her cheek, the pad of his thumb tapping the very tip of her nose. It makes her blink, makes her startle, and his lips tug in a little grin. "Didn't mean to scare you."

"How many times did you almost die the last time you worked with him?"

"Six?"

He's sheepish, head turned half away from her now, and Kate tucks her knees underneath herself and rises up, looming over him. "Six. And that was with me watching over you the whole time, having your back from afar. What would possess you- I was out of state, Rick. What if things had gone bad?"

"I don't think you really get to lecture me right now, Beckett," he says. His eyes are flint and tinder, and Kate withdraws and tucks herself in against the arm of the couch. He's angry, the tick of his jaw and the thinning of his lips making her swallow. "Even if you had been in the city, it's not like we're partners anymore. Not like you would have done anything."

"Castle, no," she says. Her voice is a pitiful, wailing thing and she surges into him again, climbs clumsily into his lap. Hands at his cheeks, she pins his head in place and ducks to catch his eyes. "Always partners. You're- of course I would have been there. Of course I'd have your back."

He turns his head sharply, breaking out of her grip, and underneath her his body is cold and carefully crafted as marble. Kate sits back on his knees, wanting to drape herself all over his chest instead. "It doesn't feel like it, Beckett."

Her mouth opens, but there's no reassurance she can give without spilling all of her secrets like bile, making her gag on the way up. She'll take him hating her if it means he's still alive and still wading through his days in blissful ignorance.

"Slaughter tried to set me up with someone. A rebound. And the thought of. . .you've ruined me." He scrapes a rough hand over his face, but when he lets it drop his fingers curl into the meat of her thigh. "I want my wife back. Things were so good, Kate. What happened?"

"I can't," she pleads, coming in close again and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. When the boys called to tell her that they'd closed their case with Slaughter's help, that Castle had been running around with the guy again, she had sunk heavily onto the end of the bed in her hotel room and breathed carefully through the hot work of panic through her system. "I love you."

"Stop," he roars. He dislodges her from his lap and standing up to pace in front of the couch instead. "Stop saying that. It doesn't mean anything. Not unless you start acting like it."

Kate brings her feet up onto the couch and wraps her arms around her bent knees, hands hidden in their sweater paws. Her husband has his back to her, his shoulders unnaturally low as if he's fighting the urge to bring them up around his ears.

"Castle," she says quietly, and his fingers twitch. "I know I'm being unfair. I know that."

"So stop." He whips around to face her again, and the spill of desolation down his face makes her heart thrash in her chest.

Shaking her head, she holds out a hand to him and he comes back to the couch, sinks down to sit. A careful measure of space between them, but she reaches across that chasm and enfolds one of his hands in both of hers. "I can't yet."

"Slaughter told me I have to put your needs first," he says. He's still carefully not looking at her. "He said that if I really love you - and God, Kate, so much - I have to not let you go through this alone."

"I'm not alone," she says immediately. Her thumb is working against the metal of her wedding band again, her engagement ring around her neck. It's a cold press against her scar whenever she shifts, but she needs it. "Castle, you're on my mind all the time. Everything I do, every minute of the day. You're the small, clear voice in my heart."

"Recycling my daughter's speech," he huffs, but there's a tiny seed of a smile flickering at one corner of his mouth.

Kate strokes her thumb back and forth at the seam of his wrist, the skin there so soft and warm, and he tugs on her hand until she comes in close. She lets him tuck her underneath his arm, his other hand tracing aimless patterns against the thigh of her jeans, and Kate rests her head against his chest.

"I thought I have been putting you first," he says quietly. His fingers press on her shoulder before she even starts to lift her head. "I thought I've been doing that the whole time I've known you. You didn't want to be together, so we weren't together. You didn't want to talk about things, so I shut my mouth. My whole life revolves around you, Beckett."

"I know it does," she says. Kate wraps an arm tight around his waist and she fists a hand in the material of his plaid shirt, just over his hip. "I don't deserve it."

That makes him stiffen, his chin pressing hard against the crown of her head, and the tips of his fingers flirt with her collar bone where it peeks out from underneath her sweater. "Yes you do. Don't say that, Beckett. You give so much to other people, put so much into your job. You deserve to have someone who is unfailingly here for you."

"And you deserve a wife who-" she cuts herself off, because God. She was about to spill her guts, about to apologise for not being able to let this case go, but he doesn't even know that there is a case at all. And if he catches that scent, he'll come tumbling down the rabbit hole after her. "You deserve more than me."

"Hey," he grunts. "Don't talk smack about my wife. She's my best friend too, you know. And one of the reasons I love her is her tenacity, her drive."

She gives him the smile he's searching for, and when he dips down to steal a kiss from her mouth she lifts up against him and kisses him right back. His tongue slicks inside her mouth, fingers sifting through the mess of her hair and Kate slings a knee over his lap and sinks down.

His hips jerk and she gasps, breaks away from his mouth to pant and fist both hands in his hair as his lips work their way down her neck. His tongue darts out to flick against her pulse and Kate's hips rock down sharply, the weight of him between her legs making her whole body flood with clean, cold arousal.

"God I miss you," he says into the curve of her shoulder, his teeth scraping the muscle there before she can fathom a response.

Smoothing her fingers over the back of his head to gentle him, Kate kisses the corner of his mouth when he lifts his head to her. "I miss you too. I'm so glad Slaughter didn't get you killed."

It makes a shock of laughter escape him and that pleased smile comes to his lips, his hands petting clumsily at her now. There's no finesse to her need; she can only squirm around the hook of lust in her guts.

"We're gonna be okay," he promises. His hands are at her back now and his palms press against the wings of her shoulder blades, thumbs at her ribcage. He holds her there to let her see the certainty on his face. "Kate, whatever this is, whatever this space is for. You get it done, and you come home."

"I'm trying," she whispers. Kate winds her arms around him again and comes in close. "Boys said you got hurt. Your nose was bleeding?"

He swipes his fingers above his lip as if he's expecting the blood to still be there and she darts in to kiss him, mindful of the press of her nose against his cheek. His face must ache; he's certainly less animate than she knows him to be, less eager to twist and contort so that she'll smile.

"Still hurts," he admits. He pinches the bridge of his nose between two fingers and Kate circles his wrist and tugs his hand gently away, skims her fingers over his nose. It's not broken, not swollen, but he hisses when she makes contact. "Ouch."

"Sorry baby."

His smile blooms wide and he tips his chin up, seeking her mouth. Her kiss is tentative, fingers tracing over his ears and down his neck, around and around in drugging circles. It has him practically purring against her and she smiles, has to break away from his mouth.

"I'm proud of you," she starts. His eyes go comically wide and he blinks hard, his mouth opening and then snapping shut again. "You listened to Slaughter when nobody else would. Saw the good in him. I love that about you, Castle."

She braces for it, but he doesn't yell again, doesn't tell her not to say that she loves him. Instead he slides an arm around her shoulders and hauls her in against his chest, lips at the crown of her head. "Love you too."

"And I know he's kind of your friend, so I'm sorry," she starts. He goes very still beneath her and she kisses his chest through his shirt, fingers at his thigh and stroking. "But I'm really glad I missed seeing him. That man, Rick-"

"He's not my friend," Castle blurts. His other arm comes up and he traps her in his embrace, kisses the long slope of her neck. "Not- the way he talks about women. About you. I saw a new light to him this case, but he's still not my friend."

She smiles, can't seem to help herself, but with the way he's wrapped around her she doubts he can even see it. "What did he say about me?"

"Well he kept telling me how hot you are. Like I don't know," he huffs. Castle's fingers skim the swell of her breast and she shivers, presses her thighs together. "And he told me that you have it bad for me."

"I hate it when he's right," she scowls, but there's a bloom of joy at one corner of her lips and she lets him see it.

Castle leans in and his happy mouth meets hers, their kiss clumsy with twin goofiness. He's wounded still, she knows that, but for this time once a week she gets to pretended that everything is normal, that she and her husband are just another lovestruck couple.

It's- God, so selfish. So awful of her, but she's not about to stop. Not when the craving to have him beside her, beneath her, is a living thing inside her belly that wakes her up in the middle of the night with its chewing.

"Beckett," he whispers. Kate tugs back enough to see him, gets the brush of his fingers across the edge of her jaw like a reward. "Slaughter told me to stop asking permission. And he's right. So prepare yourself, honey. I'm laying siege."

She swallows, gulps really, and he kisses the dip at the base of her throat. Kate cards her fingers through his hair, but the longer they're together the more her need rots away in her core.

It would be wrong to have him like this, on the couch in Nina's back room. She wants their reunion to be special, to be like that first night only more, the metal of his wedding band cutting cold into her palm. So she won't ruin things.

"I should go."

"Okay," he says, and there's no calamity to it anymore. He sits back on the couch, hands at her elbows when she leans in to kiss him goodbye, and when Kate closes the door on him he even smiles.

A/N: Sorry this is delayed, and a little shorter than usual. NaNoWriMo and assignment deadlines for university are sucking the life out of me.