A/N: Fair warning: this is one of those epilogues that is also the beginning of something else. That's the problem with modeling your stories after a TV show: it never really ends! :)

Solid Ground
Epilogue: Rematch

Kate woke up when he reached the back of her knee. Castle was very slowly running one finger up the outside of her leg, starting with a question mark around her ankle bone and moving on from there. His fingertip trailing lightly through that sensitive little valley just behind the tendon is what drew her back to consciousness.

She groaned his name. "Castle."

As a master of subtext, he could tell that the meaning of this name-groan was very different from the one he had heard a few hours earlier. There was a word for words like that, when they held opposite meanings... He would think of it later.

"Yes?" He responded with all the innocence he could muster when his finger had progressed to drawing a rather low circle on her abdomen.

"Castle." Her voice was half-muffled by the pillow, but still managed to sound threatening. "I was sleeping."

"Sweet or savory?" he asked.

"Sleep is always sweet," she stated flatly, her eyes still closed.

"No, for breakfast. Would you like pancakes, or eggs and bacon?"

"Why are you asking me this now?"

"You're right. There's no question: we should definitely have both. All three."

"No, I mean why are you asking now, instead of after I woke up?"

He nuzzled her neck with his stubble. "I'm going to make you breakfast in bed. I needed your input. Besides, you don't usually sleep this late. It was a toss-up whether I'd get an irritated 'don't wake me up' now or an irritated 'why didn't you wake me up' later."

She frowned a little; it did seem awfully bright in her bedroom. "What time is it?"

"After eleven."

That woke her up, and she half-turned to face him. "That can't be right. I never sleep this late."

"We've had a hell of a week, Kate. Maybe your body is starting to let go of thirteen years' worth of stress." He flattened his hand low on her stomach and held her flush to him. "And I'm not just saying that to divert attention from the small amount of actual sleeping we did last night."

As if she needed a reminder. She was pleasantly sore from all that not sleeping.

She started to shift. "I should get up and shower. Whatever you want to make sounds fine."

He frowned. "Breakfast in the shower could be problematic. Will you get back in bed afterwards?"

"We'll see, Castle. No promises." In truth, she was feeling unusually lazy. The defining case of her life was closed, at least her part in it was, her employment status was ambiguous at best, and she had nowhere to be until her dad got back to town tonight. Maybe she would get back in bed for breakfast.

Castle sensed the odds were in his favor and pressed his advantage. "Allow me to highlight the merits of this arrangement. First, the location is convenient for post-carbo-load napping. Second, it's also convenient for post-nap entertainment." The hand on her stomach strayed momentarily lower to illustrate. "Third— contranym!" His hand stilled.

Still schooling her reaction to number two— had she always been this insatiable?— it took her a moment to register number three. She turned to look at him and saw that his mind was suddenly elsewhere.

"We should have breakfast in bed because of contranym? Is that related to our methods of protection talk the other day?"

Castle's attention blinked back to her, but not fully. "No, that's not— sorry, different train of thought jumped back on the tracks. But it gave me an idea... Take your time in the shower." He tightened his surrounding arm and kissed her neck in a parting hug, then rolled out of bed, shrugging on the robe he brought from home over his boxers. He also grabbed his laptop out of his bag before exiting the bedroom.

Kate smiled when she realized what was going on. She had seen a similar look on his face many times, when pieces of their case suddenly fell together in his mind. Until last week, however, they hadn't spent much time together not focused on work, even when they weren't in the precinct. She hadn't been privy to moments like these when he was struck by a moment of story inspiration, when suddenly Castle became Richard Castle, not the minor celebrity but the actual writer who got him there. Strangely, recognizing that moment felt almost as intimate to her as two minutes earlier when they'd been lying together mostly naked.

She lay flat and stretched languidly, then after a few minutes of feeling his side of the bed cool, she got up. The shower could wait.

x-x-x-x-x

Castle sat on her couch, typing furiously. Contranyms had given him an awesome idea for an exchange between Nikki and Jameson. He just needed a couple minutes to get this outlined...

"So is that sweet or savory?" He smiled to hear her question as she entered the main room. She was wearing his shirt again, this time over a pair of shorts.

"Definitely savory. This is the fillet mignon of dialogue. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about breakfast. I just need to get a few things down to flesh out later."

He finished typing his thought and looked up at where she had come to perch on the arm of the couch. He considered her for a moment before he spoke. "You know, it's amazing."

"If you do say so yourself."

"Not the dialogue. Although it will probably qualify for a 'sharp and witty.' I mean you. Even half-asleep and incoherent you still manage to inspire the best work of my career."

She smiled at the very Castlesque compliment and tried not to show the quiet thrill it gave her. "Incoherent, huh? You really know how to flatter a girl."

He snapped his laptop shut and set it on the table. "Speaking of flattery, have I mentioned how incredibly sexy you look in my shirts?" He circled her wrist and pulled her down next to him on the couch.

"Your shirts are comfortable," she shrugged. "Clothes off the rack don't feel this way." She didn't add that she also loved the subtle smell of him that permeated the weave of the fabric.

"I would offer to put you in touch with my tailor, but I'd much rather meet your thread count needs this way." He ran a finger and thumb down the row of buttonholes to where the first button connected just above her scar. His other hand slid up her thigh under the hem, but it soon encountered a barrier. "As your self-appointed fashion consultant, I don't recommend these shorts, though. The shirt works much better without them."

"Better for whom?"

"Mutually beneficial, I'd say." He started unbuttoning the first button in line, but she stopped him.

"Breakfast first, Project Runway, then we'll talk wardrobe."

x-x-x-x-x

The food was ready, and Castle was in the process of loading it onto a tray when he froze with a sudden realization.

"Kate, it's Sunday."

"Yeah, so?"

"So you promised me a rematch."

So she had. Exactly one week ago they had been playing strip crossword, and despite his suspicions of foul play she had won. That was before the call from Mr. Smith, before Alexis was taken, before anyone else was aware that they had finally moved forward as a 'they'. And only a day before that, their 'they' had begun.

If she thought too long about how much her life had changed in the last eight days, it made her a little dizzy. In a twisted kind of way, her visit from The New Guy on Castle's balcony had been reassuring. If there was some kind of larger shadow organization at work, that explained why Drake's house of cards collapsed so quickly after just one (admittedly damning) piece of evidence came to light. It gave her hope that he would not get off easily. Or at all.

Let other people worry about conspiracies and kingmakers. Whether or not she went back to the 12th, Beckett still thought like a homicide detective, and unlike Castle she dealt in facts, in specific crimes to be solved. There would always be powerful men serving unknown agendas; that wasn't her war to wage. If they stayed out of her business, she would stay out of theirs. But men like that always left footprints in her world, and messes to clean up; Drake was evidence of that. She suspected that the current truce wouldn't last forever, but she wouldn't be the one to fire the first shot.

For now, she had another challenge to meet. "You think you can take me? Feed me first, then you're on." She turned to the door to get the neglected paper and the crossword it contained.

"Oh, I'll take you all right. In so many ways. But we're already low on clothes. As referee of the suspiciously self-serving rules, tell me: will that be a problem?"

She turned to give him an evil grin as she opened the door. "Don't you remember, Castle? That's when it really gets fun."

Still grinning, she turned back to pick up the paper only to discover that someone had just picked it up for her.

"Dad!"

Jim Beckett looked at his daughter with an equally surprised expression, then over her shoulder at the familiar man in a robe standing in her kitchen.

Castle set down the tray and looked at Kate. "Good call on the shorts."

I don't have a name yet for the follow-up story, but keep an eye peeled if you're interested. I do know it'll be a wee short thing compared to this one. :) Thanks for reading, everybody!