Author's note: The tale grew in the telling, and since it was a little cute one-shot it had no timestamps tying it down. Which it now desperately needs, thrashing and fainting in coils. This all grew in response to WriteChristineR's lovely Constant (.net/s/8097715/1/Constant) although my Ryan may vary and I hope she forgives me.

Also the best set of timestamps in the world are in Muppet_47's Waiting Game (.net/s/7495021/1/Waiting_Game_)

Monday Morning, about 8:30 - Lanie's apartment

Javi was awake. Lanie kissed him on the forehead. "Coffee?"

"You know, you're beautiful in the daylight, too."

He looked, in her mother's expression, like he'd been dragged through a knot-hole. She was still running on old med student-style nerves, had been zipping around for the two hours since she had woken him to check that he was just sleeping. "Damn it, Javi."

"Bedside manner, much? No wonder you work with dead people."

"What you're gonna be…" she couldn't finish the threat. She'd seen him beaten up before; that little water-boarding escapade with Lockwood hadn't left him looking good but today was somehow worse. She brought them both coffee, got back under the covers. Which he had stolen, so she took his coffee away, with vengeful satisfaction, putting the cups on the bedside table and hauling the sheet and the blanket and her poor bedspread back into place. Better now, no drafts. She returned his coffee.

"It's 8:30. I'm calling Beckett."

"Don't be hard on her, Lanie."

This was not what he usually sounded like. "What do you mean?"

"You've been angry all night."

"I have, just about. But not at her. Much."

"Yeah. It took more than just her to get me in trouble."

Lanie sighed. It was actually better, not having to argue all the sides in her head. "This particular time, you couldn't have done it by yourself. Shit, Javier, you're not this kind of officer. You're not a loose cannon, you're sane and 'by the book' and 'chain of command,' that's how you got where you are."

"Chain of command," he said.

"Beckett?"

"Yeah. But not entirely."

"Montgomery."

"Yeah."

"He was about keeping her safe."

"She'd have gone off by herself, you know. She was that far out there. Ryan didn't help, telling her she was out of line. He should have come with us."

And somewhere out there, Lanie knew, Ryan was telling himself he'd been right, and how they were ever to get past this she didn't know. She picked up her phone. Kate answered on the first ring.

Monday Morning, about 8:30

So Alexis was in the loop. Kate knew she ought to worry about the daughter whose father she was planning to seduce again as soon as possible but she needed food, and at any given time one of them seemed concerned about the outside world. The real world. The people they needed to call. It passed back and forth. "You're being the responsible adult," she realized, not really intending to say so.

"My kitchen. I'm the host."He was putting together what appeared to be a high-end deli platter for her, smoked salmon and red onion and what looked like real, ripe tomato and capers, and she suddenly realized she hadn't eaten since early the day before. "I hope for your sake you like onion?"

"Yes." She watched as he put roughly twice the cream cheese she would have considered enough on each bagel half. It looked great. Sesame bagel, her favorite.

"And you had a hard day, yesterday, it can be my turn. Although I seem to get distracted rather easily."

"And you don't like the look of the day coming any more than I do."

"We seem to have agreed you won't throw your phone away —"

"Or yours—"

"That was another thing I was thinking about yesterday. They're my friends, too. It was worse than my divorces, I never liked my in-laws. Last summer —

"When I wasn't there—"

Rick nodded. "When you were getting better, I saw what it was like for them to lose somebody, even temporarily. You make a lot of difference in that department, Kate, —I'm not second-guessing you here, this was yesterday— I was wondering what it would be like without me. Because I knew it would be like high school, it would be hard for them to be friends with me if you and I broke up." He stuck the analogy out there and she didn't disagree. Work-husbands and work-wives. " But you're much more important, integral. This is going to be like putting a harpoon through the Twelfth. If you were going back, you and Esposito at the same time, would they keep your team together?"

"I'm not sure. It would depend on how much Gates wanted to punish us. Seriously, to transfer us out of her jurisdiction, to bust me down a rank? Or she could just put a nasty note in our permanent records."

"All that takes a lot of administration?"

"She doesn't have to do a formal inquiry to suspend us for a month. But that doesn't mean she won't, if she gets a sniff of how much we were covering up."

"Can she do an inquiry, if you've resigned?"

"It'll be a lot harder for her to get results."

"Which wouldn't have influenced you—"

"No," Kate said. "I wasn't thinking that clearly at the time. I just saw that I could go, and not come back. I want out of all that, Castle. I want out of —" she paused. More than she had considered. "I want out of not being able to trust anyone."

"Please eat," he said. She hadn't noticed the plate he'd put in her hand.

"Will you stop looking so sad?"

"Maybe I should eat, too."

Her phone rang. "Lanie!"

"Kate. Are you all right?"

"Yes, I'm at Castle's. I'm sorry I didn't call you back sooner—"

"Sooner as in, 'after someone tried to kill you?' As in 'before you got the bright idea you needed to go after him yourself, so he could try to kill you? Or as in, 'after you threw you badge in Gates's face'?"

Kate could hear another voice in the background of Lanie's call. "I asked you not to go hard on her."

"Esposito. Is he okay?" Kate asked.

"About as well as someone with a concussion and a beating gets," Lanie said. " I woke him up every two hours last night but I don't think he's too badly concussed. You didn't get knocked out?"

"I don't think so. Maybe a cracked rib?"

"And you were lucky it wasn't every bone in your body."

"I know." They were silent. "You're angry at me."

"I'm angry at everybody."

"I think I'd rather you yelled at me."

"Javier seemed to think you had had your fair share from Captain Gates. More than fair."

"He tell you I quit?"

"Yeah. I don't think it's a good thing, but I can understand it."

"I'm sorry."

"Your badge, not mine."

"I meant getting Javi hurt. In trouble."

"Yeah. Same thing, I don't think both of you going off alone was a good idea but I can understand it. I don't think he was an idiot to go with you, either, or to keep it quiet."

"Thank you, I think."

"So you're at Castle's? What's up with that? Javi said he was off the team."

"Yeah… Umm, that was true, but it didn't last."

"He really needed to be at Alexis's graduation. Although in retrospect, if you've gotten killed, I doubt he would have felt better."

"No, that wasn't it. Although he really did. No. There was stuff. Ummm…"

She could almost hear Lanie's antennae come to bear. "Just tell me, Kate, I could use some good news."

"Umm. I spent the night here. At his apartment. With him." Despite everything Kate felt herself curling up inside with happiness. "It's all good."

"You really going to try to get away with that? (She spent the night with him)," Lanie said, half to her, half, presumably to Javi. "What's all good? (Hush, wait a minute, she's talking.)"

"Him. Me. Us. Really good." We're dating for possibly the rest of eternity.

There was a tussling noise from Lanie's end of the phone; then she heard Esposito's voice, "Damn it, Beckett, I put my badge on the line for you and he gets the girl?"

"It sounds like you have a girl of your own, there," said Kate, smiling. "You okay?"

"I'm told I am, yeah," his voice sounded a little hoarse but strong. "Dr. Parish here says I can't do anything heavy lifting for the next week or so, but I don't feel too bad. You?"

"Rib. Maybe my shoulders could be a little better but on the whole, fine. Look, Javi — I need to say 'thank you' and 'I'm sorry' —"

"You need to not say any of that right now. Heavy lifting."

"Later, then?"

"Ideally not," Esposito told her firmly. "I'm more sorry we didn't get the bastard. So you're gonna stay with Castle for awhile?"

"I haven't thought about it —"

"Because Maddox is still out there."