Highly Overrated
Disclaimer: Don't own anything you might recognize. If I did, you'd know it by now...
A/N: Hi, all. This is my first take on Castle and its characters: hope I won't spoil them too much while playing. This fic—Caskett—is slightly AU (obviously), but it does still roughly follow the events of 3.11 and subsequent episodes. Hope that you'll enjoy it!
0o0o0o0
Clubbing was definitely not an activity Kate Beckett would willingly participate in. She wasn't usually opposed to grabbing a bite with her colleagues, or having a drink in pleasant company (which, let's face it, more often than not included the very same colleagues), but the mere thought of entering a crowded, sweaty space occupied by tens or hundreds of other bodies, grinding themselves against one another in sync with blasting, deafening music, didn't appeal to her. Much.
However, on this particular Saturday night (two days after 'The Natalie's Shadowing Nightmare Experience', as she started referring to it in her head, came to an end), when a group of people from the precinct decided to go and check out a club Ryan's new fiancée seemed to fancy, Beckett surprised herself with a willingness to join them. And she did. After all, the occasion was worth it: Ryan got engaged! She wasn't sure how Javier was going to feel about this—such big changes in a police officer's life never went unnoticed by their partner—but for once she wasn't the one who had to do the moping-around-thinking-hard-thoughts routine. She could simply celebrate a friend's happiness, and wash her own insecurities down with a couple (or twelve) glasses of something unnaturally colored, and highly inebriating.
Insecurities. Nice one, Becks, she thought grudgingly when, around one a.m., she found herself in the ladies' room, and almost jumped out of her own skin when she saw Natalie Rhodes' skimpily clad form out of the corner of her eye.
Turns out—wasn't Natalie at all.
Mirrors. Strange little things, Beckett pondered, slipping into the very last cubicle, locking the door and pulling her legs up onto the bowl, much like she once did at the precinct, while searching for steamy bits in Heat Wave. She'd liked looking at herself in mirrors, ever since she went out of the 'ugly duckling' phase of early teens. And even though sometimes—after a bad breakup, or a particularly hard case, or on a Friday night—she didn't exactly enjoy the sight of her reflection, she never got crazy-scared of it.
Not until four days ago, when she first saw a walking-breathing version of herself, perfectly imitating her body language, voice and intonation.
You should be flattered, Castle had said—the same man who'd initially despised the idea of Natalie portraying his beloved (did she really just think that?) character on the big screen! And she answered…
'Till she steals my boyfriend and murders me in my sleep? Because at that moment it seemed like the worst thing that could happen, given the circumstances.
Which, clearly, wasn't the worst possible scenario after all.
At first, Beckett didn't understand why she reacted to what she saw the way she did. Perhaps it was the shock. Perhaps looking at Natalie in 'Nikki's' attire really did disturbed her, pulling her into a completely new dimension of weirdness. Yeah, it might have been that.
Bullshit. Nice dodge, Becks; too bad it didn't work out.
When she heard the faint thump of a box falling down, and looked up and into the elevator to see… what she saw, she did not register straight away that this was Natalie Rhodes doing… what she did, with one Richard Castle.
She seriously considered the possibility of the woman in the elevator being herself. Detective Kate Beckett of NYPD.
Of course, it lasted but a second. The elevator doors closed, and Beckett was left alone with her rebellious mind. And she did not like it one bit.
Why haven't she as much as pondered the possibility of Castle giving into Natalie-slash-Nikki's seduction plan? It wasn't all that improbable, given Castle's past of a notorious womanizer. Well, alright, so he was currently involved with his ex-wife and publisher—but truthfully, Beckett couldn't remember the last time he'd mentioned Gina's name. Fine, he could've been keeping his relationship private—but again, when did he ever do that? Perhaps there was trouble in paradise. Perhaps the relationship didn't work out, again. Perhaps Castle simply didn't want to share the news—not with her, at least. Which was fine, no matter what her hart had to say about it. But back to the main topic—Castle and Natalie-slash-Nikki, or: The Writer Meets His Ultimate Creation, or: Pygmalion, 2.0.
Now, here's a puzzler: at first, she was sure it couldn't happen. Then, after she saw what she saw (she'd never had any problems with four letter words before), she thought it inevitable, and was quite furious. Then, on the next day, in between coffee splutters and Natalie's astonishment, she felt unbelievably relieved she'd been wrong. Which was strange, and troubling, and not nice, because she has no business at all in knowing with whom Castle slept, or not.
No business at all. And yet, she was doing this again: thinking too much, creating wild scenarios in her mind while faced with a situation she couldn't handle.
Beckett stifled a groan, and massaged her temples in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the slowly building headache. She was pretty sure it could have been blamed on the monotonous thumping of the base, vibrating through the lavatory walls and paper-thin cubicles. Or even if it couldn't, it would be. Later, when it was gone.
"Kate? You in here?"
Thank God for Lanie 'The Lifesaver' Parish.
"Just a sec!", she answered, jumping down from the toilet bowl and flushing the water to cover up her real reason for being here in the first place. She opened the door, and smiled at her friend, who gave her a tired look and rolled her eyes at the door.
"I was under an impression that Irish people liked a different kind of music. Something with more melody, and less brass instruments."
"Well, at least you've learned something new tonight," Beckett offered sympathetically, and went over to wash her perfectly clean hands. Lanie simply snorted.
"Haven't we all. This has been quite a week, I am told. Too bad I had to hang out with the stiffs most of the time. When Javier first sent me a photo of your clone, I almost fell off my stool."
It was Beckett's turn to roll her eyes. "Was I the only person who did not enjoy this situation?"
A shrug. "I wouldn't know about it. But I did hear that Castle enjoyed it far less than he could. Any comments on that?"
Beckett made a show out of checking her makeup in the mirror. No Natalie-induced hallucinations this time. Good. "What can I say? He resisted quite a temptation. Gina should be proud of him."
Lanie frowned. "What does Gina have to do with it?"
Beckett met her eyes in the mirror, and blinked slowly. "Well, they are in a relationship, aren't they?"
This earned her a giggle and a head shake. "Don't think so. Castle's changed his Facebook relationship status to 'single' almost a month ago."
"Castle has a Facebook account? And he befriended you?"
"Sure. We like to share music video links on weekends."
"Shouldn't he be at least a little concerned about all the fans that might stalk him over there?"
"Oh, he's not under 'Richard Castle'—he's an 'Alexander Rogers', you know."
"Oh."
"Exactly. And speaking of Mr. Castle-Rogers—we were thinking it was a good moment to excuse ourselves, leave the happy couple on the dance floor and go over to The Haunt for a nightcap. You in?"
This was not a good idea, Beckett was sure of it—not in the state of a complete inner turmoil she was in. On the other hand: the last time she'd been to The Haunt was on the night after they'd closed that case, and she was quite curious to see what Castle had done with the place. And since asking him to give her a private tour of the place would be stepping onto a particularly thin ice… Well, going over there in a safe company of work buddies might have been the best possible solution.
"Sure, why not," she agreed, feigning reluctance. "It can't be much worse than this place, right?"
0o0o0o0
It wasn't. Worse, that is.
In fact, it was quite pleasant.
Castle apparently let the well-established atmosphere of the place triumph over his own expansive personality, and refrained from introducing too many changes in the décor. He did add some black-and-white vintage photographs of the city in unobtrusive, wooden frames, changed the worn out rug covering the floor, and invested in new cutlery—but that was all Beckett could spot at the first sight. Or the second, or fifteenth, as she sat in a booth next to extremely smug-looking Lanie, and an unusually chirpy Javier. A waitress—cute, but not enough to be considered Castle's obvious choice for the next conquer, Beckett decided—brought them their drinks with a warm, friendly smile, despite the late hour. There still some clients left, perched on the stools by the bar and in the second, smaller room in the back, where in pianist sat. Beckett and her colleagues, however, chose the emptier front room, from where they could observe both the flow of people in the pub, and the never stopping beat of New York nightlife behind the windows.
And, oh, Castle himself was nowhere to be seen.
Beckett found that she actually enjoyed The Haunt, with or without its owner in tow. Castle was right: this place did smell nice, and the aroma brought to mind the 'good, old times', when people weren't always in a rush to get to this or that seemingly important place in time and space. One could really sit back, and breathe in the peaceful feeling. It was nice, especially after an upbeat evening.
"This might just become our default hanging-out-place," Javier said from over his pint. "The beer's mighty good."
Lanie chuckled. "Mighty good? Whoever uses that word anymore?"
"It's late, and the beer's… real good," Javier explained, lamely trying to man up in his companion's eyes. Beckett hid her smirk in a glass of wine: if the two of them thought for a moment that they could kid anyone as to the nature of their relationship, they were in for a bumpy ride of cutting comments and oh-so-careful observation. She couldn't wait to tell Castle about it.
Still smiling to herself, Beckett raised her eyes and saw the man in question, chatting animatedly with some elderly fellow, down in the second room of the pub.
He didn't notice them yet, engaged in a lively conversation with a (supposedly) faithful client. The old man was grasping his sleeve with pale fingers, pointing to a ceiling—Beckett looked up and saw a darker stain near one of the corners: judging from Castle's expression, there was quite a story involved behind its appearance. She would ask him about it, later—after she shared with him her observations on Lanie and Javier—and they would laugh, and think of some witty ways to tease them, and—and this wouldn't be right, because she would never, ever know for sure what he saw when he looked at her: whether it was her, Kate Beckett, or Nikki Heat, or some mixture of the two. They would talk, and solve new cases, and have coffee, and she would still wonder if…
Castle turned, and their eyes met.
She saw the wrinkles around his eyes deepen, the way they did when he went from a 'casually amused' expression to a genuine smile—and suddenly he was shaking the other guy's hand, probably thanking him for sharing the story, and crossing the room to join them at the table. Lanie moved to make some space for him (by sitting closer to Javier, of course), and he slipped into it easily, clasping his hands on the table top.
"So," he said, smiling wickedly, "I just heard the most exquisite story about this place…"
As he talked, capturing Javier and Lanie's attention completely, Beckett leaned back against the wall and sipped on her wine, watching the scene before her with half-lidded eyes. Perhaps she was wrong to anticipate a change in their relations. Maybe she was trying to complicate things more than necessary. After all, he was still Castle—and she was still herself, not Nikki, and most certainly not Natalie.
Perhaps it was all going to be alright.
TBC…?