A/N: Inspired by the prompt: "Beckett gets to know Castle while he's married to Gina." Originally a fill for Tumblr that grew into a story of its own.
"I found love where it wasn't supposed to be
Right in front of me
Talk some sense to me"
-I Found, Amber Run
She drops the manuscript on his desk with a loud slap. It has his fingers startling over the keys of his laptop, his attention snapping out of the story and up to his publisher.
"I see the writer's block has passed," Gina states, something that would usually thrill her, but she looks far from happy about the progress. Instead, she nods to the pile. "Here's my notes."
Rick's brow furrows as he glances to the papers, what he now assumes must be the printed pages of the chapters he just finished. He turned them into her two nights ago, feeling so accomplished for beating his deadline.
"I thought you preferred emailing them back to me," he murmurs, the confusion spreading. Why does she look so mad at him?
"I thought this batch deserved handwritten care," Gina sneers and Rick closes his laptop.
"Gina, what's going on? I thought you'd be happy that I'm ahead of schedule for once," he points out, feeling her irritation growing, seeping through his senses. "Do you not like the direction it took? Or was there something else that I didn't-"
"Why don't you look at my critiques," she cuts him off, her eyes darting insistently down at the pages.
Rick huffs and grabs the papers, begins flipping through them, his fingers slowing as his eyes register over the words. Not hers. No, there's not a single red-penned mark on the crisp, white sheets.
These words are all his.
"Where did you get this?" he whispers, his grip tightening, wrinkling the pages. "Did you go through my laptop?"
"Yes, I did," Gina confirms without hesitation or shame. "I knew you'd never cheat on me, not after that first wife of yours. But you and that cop…"
"We are just friends," he growls, returning the papers face down to his desk.
"You do not write about a friend like that," Gina hisses, digging her manicured, pink nail into the back of a page. "God, Richard, it's so obvious. This character, this Nikki Heat, is her and you write about her like she's the eighth wonder of the world."
His jaw tightens, but he can't exactly deny that now, can he? Especially when Gina knows his writing better than anyone else.
"Are you in love with her?" she asks, the question leaving her lips like it's nothing, like it's the most ordinary question in the world.
Did you do the dishes? Have you finished the chapter yet? Are you in love with the cop you've been shadowing for six months?
The cop with the dead mother and the elusive smile that's been making fleeting but frequent appearances for him. The rookie who is so hardened by grief but has slowly began to soften through late night talks over decaf coffee and lunch dates at Remy's, a handful of dinners with his daughter. The woman who enraptured him with her gorgeous eyes the moment they met while she was working a stint in Vice.
He was doomed from that very second, wasn't he?
But Kate has always known that he's married and he never let himself forget. As Gina herself pointed out, he's been cheated on before and he would never show anyone else the same betrayal. Gina is a good wife, a good publisher, a good surrogate mother to Alexis whenever he stopped trying to keep his daughter all too himself. It's something he's trying hard to work on, a flaw within himself that Gina continues to point out, that he's doing his best to fix. Always working on something for her.
Relationships are work, he's always known that and he's always been willing to put in whatever effort necessary. But shouldn't some parts be effortless? Wasn't loving someone also supposed to be easy too? He's never been able to feel that in his last three and a half years with Gina. And god, he's tried, has been trying for so long, but it's as if they're a puzzle with a piece missing.
So why is it so easy to feel it with Kate Beckett?
"Richard," she prompts, crossing her arms with impatience.
"I - I don't know," he confesses, even though he does. He didn't mean to, tried so very hard not to, but his heart leapt into Kate's hands months ago, willed her to hold onto it.
Even though she doesn't want it, or just won't admit to wanting it. Her eyes flicker to his wedding band every time he thinks she starts to let herself.
"It was an accident. We're just friends, never been more. Not even close," he swears, not that it helps. Doesn't change the fact that he has feelings for someone other than the woman he's married to.
He meets Gina's cold glare, but he can read her well enough to see that she does believe that. And, apparently, she found nothing on his computer that caused her to think otherwise. Nothing, except thousands of words about a smart, savvy detective whom he seems to describe with an affection that's all too telling.
"But it's over now anyway. She doesn't want me shadowing her anymore."
Gina's brow arches. "Why?"
Because, apparently, everyone figures out how he feels before he himself is even clear on it, he wants to say. But also-
"There was a case last week with a suspect who pulled a gun and - and it just got too risky," he recalls, remembering the horror on her face as she stared up at him from the ground, scanning his body for the bullet he almost took for her. "Scared her."
It was more than a risky gunfight, though. It was the hours that followed. It was standing in an alley just outside the crime scene with her eyes too bright and a rasp lacing through her words.
"There's something I need you to do."
He took a step closer to her, ready for whatever she asked of him. "Name it."
"I need you to go home," she murmured, shoving her hands into her pockets and lowering he gaze to the dirty concrete. "And stay home."
"Forget it," he answered without hesitation. "Beckett, I'm fine. We're both fine, the bullet-"
"Was too close," she finished for him, her eyes rising to meet his with a hard glare. "Castle, you're - you matter to me." His heart skipped. He went from an annoying tagalong to mattering and he hated how much it mattered to him, how much she mattered. "Which is why I can't keep letting you put yourself in danger. You've already done enough research for a hundred books-"
"It's not about the books," he argued, watching the elegant line of her throat work through a swallow that disappeared beneath that damn NYPD turtleneck that he too often pictured nudging out of the way with his nose, devouring the skin beneath with his mouth. "Not anymore."
"Then why do you keep coming back, Rick?" She knew exactly what she was asking, knew the consequences of an honest answer. But he still lifted a tentative hand to her cheek, stroked his thumb to the slash of her cheekbone, surprised that she let him. It was his first time touching her like this; it was the last.
"You know why."
Kate's eyes fluttered shut and she curled her fingers around the wrist at her jaw. He held his breath as she rested her cheek in the embrace of his palm before squeezing his wrist and stepping away from him, her eyes already mourning.
"Goodbye, Castle."
He hasn't seen her since and he hasn't been so miserable in a long time.
"Explains the constant moping," Gina mumbles, brushing back a stray strand of hair with a flick of her wrist, trying so hard to be indifferent. To hide how much he's probably hurt her.
"Gina," he sighs, pushing back from his desk to stand. "Regardless of it all, I'm sorry. I'm truly sorry. As soon as I felt… compromised, I should have stopped going to the precinct, I should have-"
"Are you in love with me?"
His heart stumbles at the question, sinks.
"I - of course I love you," he murmurs, but his wife shakes her head.
"They're two different things, Richard." Her eyes fall to his desk. "But you already know that."
His mouth feels dry, tongue too thick in his mouth.
"I know you love me," she continues, chest rising and falling with a deep breath, steeling herself. "But we never quite fit, did we?"
He notices her shift into past tense, knows it's purposeful.
"I - we could try counseling," he suggests, even as the rock in his stomach weighs heavier at the idea.
"I'd rather we quit trying to fool ourselves. Our marriage has been nice, convenient, but we both know it's been over. Even before your precious Nikki Heat came into the picture," she mutters, but he lets her have it, lets her hit him with the strike of bitterness. He deserves it. "I'm going to stay with my sister. We can talk to Alexis about all of this a little later. Together. You owe me that much," she adds with a narrowed look before casting it back down to the papers on his desk. "In the meantime, be sure to sift through those pages."
We'll talk to Alexis together.
Shit, he's not ready to tell his daughter, to let her down again.
Castle opens his mouth to respond, but Gina is already turning her back on him, striding out of the room with her head held too high. He watches her go, heart in his throat and guilt drenching his insides.
Rick glances down to the stack of pages, lifting them once more to scan through the pile of black and white sheets until he reaches the end, the slim addition of papers that have a different feel to them, can't be his writing. No, he withdraws the files, these definitely aren't pages from his laptop's word documents.
They're divorce papers.