1. Punch. (Season 3, 'Knockdown')
The first time Richard Castle punches someone, he's in the ninth grade, desperately homesick, and Eric Cameron had caught him crying in his bunk. That was mortifying enough. But when Eric announces to the rest of the dorm that Ricky's a sissy bastard, it hits not just one nerve, but two.
Technically, he is a bastard. He's okay with that, but less so with the whole of Edgewyck Academy knowing it. And technically, he supposes, he does appear to be a sissy. He has no siblings to practice his fighting skills on, and few friends to roughhouse with, thanks to spending most of his pre-Edgewyck life backstage, playing poker with his mother's co-stars and charming the makeup ladies.
It's a lucky punch, catching Eric on the chin and knocking him on his ass. Castle can't quite believe it, and knows he'd better not waste the moment. "It's Rick, not Ricky," he says in as menacing a voice as he can muster, while Eric stares up at him, stunned. He's careful not to ruin the effect, and waits until he's out of the dorm before hissing in pain and jamming his smarting hand into his armpit. He had actually hit someone, just like in the movies, and it had worked! He was a man now.
One thing Castle can't stand is cruelty. He'd sat through Beckett's interrogation of Vulcan Simmons in near silence, though he can feel how rattled she is, has seen how quickly she's lost the upper hand, knows only too well what it costs her just to ask the questions, let alone withstand Simmons' responses.
A flash of shark-white teeth. "He's sweet on you. Makes him brave."
Heat rushes to his face, even as he marvels at the accuracy with which Simmons has read them and twisted that knowledge to his use. He can only imagine how unsettling this thought may be to Beckett later on, but digs at their relationship are taking a distant second or third right now.
He longs to be able to reach over and touch her; to give her some signal that he knows, he understands, and he's right there in it with her. He wishes she knew he'd do his damndest to make it better if only she'd let him. That it killed him to sit there letting Simmons twist the knife, and not say a word for fear of jeopardising the arrest. That he yearns to wipe that shit-eating grin off Simmons's face.
She had left – fled? – the interrogation room, and Castle is on on his way out when Simmons pushes one time too many.
"Oh, you want some too? Come on."
This time, his punch owes less to luck, more to rage-driven speed and the element of surprise. He feels Simmons' teeth give way under his knuckles, and a deeply satisfying spray of blood spatters the bastard's light-colored shirt and jacket. As he's manhandled out the door, he sees something in Simmons' expression that wasn't there before, and he likes it.