Written for prompt 26 ("The right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear", U2) of maritombola; it's like the Italian version of bingo, only better. This is like Castle's tag line so forgive me for the gratuitous use of lyrics in the fic.
-x-
Beckett stepped out of the interview room to find her team huddled around her desk and laughing loudly.
"What's going on here?" she asked, prompting Esposito and Ryan to give her a guilty look and hurry back to their desks.
Castle turned too, swiveling his chair around and revealing the cause of everyone's hilarity. He was wearing a really tacky pair of fake glasses with fake nose and fake mustache attached, the kind Beckett had only seen in children's cartoons.
She refrained from laughing, though it was a very close thing, only because it would have only encouraged the man. Instead she raised an eyebrow at him.
Castle's face, or at least the part that wasn't covered by the novelty glasses, had that particular expression that over the past year Beckett had at first called smug, then stupid, and now just plain old Castle.
"I got these for the next time we have to go somewhere incognito," he said, holding up an identical pair of glasses. "These are for you."
Beckett looked at the proffered glasses and then back at him. "Castle, be serious," she replied wryly. "I just got some important information from our suspect, now is not the time to act ridiculous."
With a quick move she leaned forward and snatched the novelty glasses that Castle was wearing.
Castle pouted. "I'll have you know," he said, "that the right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear."
"Really?" Beckett replied. "You're quoting U2 now, is that the best you can do?"
The look of surprise that Castle gave her was very satisfactory. She sat down and started dialing a number on her phone.
"Besides," she added, "if you haven't driven me crazy already I doubt I'll go crazy tonight."
It took Castle quite a long time (though, in Beckett's opinion, not long enough) to recover his faculties of speech. It was almost worth the knowledge that in the next Nikki Heat book she'd turn out to be a die-hard U2 fan.
"I didn't expect you to get it," Castle said. "Do you want to talk about this hitherto undiscovered..."
"No," Beckett cut him off with a smirk. "Do you want to talk about how we might finally have found our man?"
She couldn't hold back a grin when Castle eagerly nodded and set down the glasses. She also was sure she heard Ryan mutter "Whipped!" right behind her, but it didn't matter. She had no doubt that someone in the office was keeping a tally of all times she'd managed to shut Castle up, and this was definitely a win for Beckett.
