Disclaimer: none of the characters belong to me and the show doesn't either.
Hi everybody, this is the first story I have written and published for almost 5 years. It's also my first Castle fic. It's been a long time but I recently realised how much I miss writing and remembered how great the community is. I have two stories (House, NCIS) that need finishing and I'm hoping to get around to doing that but in the meantime I thought I might try something new.
Any errors are my own and are due to my being so rusty. I would really appreciate any feedback that would help me to improve.
This could be a one-shot but I have a few chapters written in my head!
I hope you enjoy it.
The change had been almost imperceptible; so tiny that he almost hadn't noticed. But it was there alright.
There was a little bit more of a spring in her step. She was checking her phone more. She was just a tiny bit more eager to head home at the end of the day, instead of hanging around the precinct spending time on paperwork or old cases.
When Castle had called by the Twelfth unannounced one evening to surprise her with tickets to a Naked Gun marathon down at a nearby movie theatre, everything fell into place.
She was standing by her desk seemingly getting ready to go home for the night, and she wasn't alone. As she packed up her purse, she was laughing with a man who Castle had never seen before. He was about a head taller than the cop, with mid-brown hair and eyes that crinkled up at the corners as he smiled at whatever it was Beckett was saying to him. His black suit and confidence in the cops' den suggested that he was in law enforcement himself.
They weren't touching, weren't even standing that close, and to all the world could have looked like colleagues sharing a friendly joke together. But when the man reached for the coat on the back of the young cop's chair and held it up so that she could slide her arms into it, Beckett didn't bat an eyelid and allowed him to help her. As the man settled the coat around her shoulders, he gave them a light squeeze and his hands moved to gently move her long hair out from under the collar where it had been caught.
Throughout they had kept up their chatter as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to be touching her and helping her to get into her coat at the end of the day. When Beckett turned back to face him the man's fingers just barely brushed her cheek and the smile she sent him was relaxed and easy.
Castle stood stock still. It was not the type of interaction that he and Beckett would have. When he touched her there was always a pause while they both felt the heat sizzling between them. That pause said it all really: it was that moment of awkwardness that comes when two people who have been considering going to bed together, but spend most of their time in each other's company ignoring their attraction, are jolted into remembering their desire with physical contact. It was not the type of acknowledgement that happened between people who had already slept together, and it was certainly not the type of easy touch that was evident between two people that were regularly sleeping together.
What Castle had just witnessed was the type of addition that he might make to a scene between his characters Nikki Heat and Rook, just to show his readers how they felt about each other.
Kate Beckett had a new boyfriend that she had apparently been keeping a secret. And standing in the corridor looking through the glass of the bullpen walls, Castle felt once again like an outsider looking in.
All of her talk about not being able to have the relationship she wanted until she could bring her mother's killer to justice and finally send those walls around her heart crashing down had caused Castle to hope. When she had turned up at his book signing he had been furious and hurt after three long months of silence. He had been prepared to ignore her but she had pleaded with her eyes for him to listen, and foolishly he had. In the months that followed he had been doing what he thought she had been asking him to: waiting. He had been waiting for her to give him a sign that she was ready to move on. He had assumed the she had been waiting too and little things like her obvious jealousy when his former muse had shown up out of the blue had allowed him to continue being patient. So it was like a knife to the stomach to see her so relaxed and happy with another man.
The Castle of a few years, even a few months, ago would have strolled over and introduced himself. He would have subtly made it known that this other guy was an interloper because Beckett was just marking time with some guy she didn't care all that much about before she was ready to give herself over to serious, one-and-done relationship with him.
Now he just quietly turned on his heel and slipped away to the elevator before he could be seen by either of them. He entered, pushed the button for the ground floor, and unheedingly watched the elevator doors slide closed. He pinched the bridge of his nose and suddenly found it remarkable that five minutes ago he had had such a spring in his step, and now he felt almost unbearably tired.
When he climbed into his car and turned the key in the ignition his only thought was to get out of the parking lot before Beckett came down to get into her car. He had no desire to see the two of them together again and he was keen to avoid being spotted by her. He didn't think that he would be able to make it through a polite conversation with her new lover. In all likelihood he would just stand there staring at her as she made the necessary introductions; watching her as she watched him for any signs that he would make the encounter awkward for her new man.
As he drove the familiar route home he thought about all the time he had spent following her around. He had never made a secret of his attraction to her and as deeper romantic feelings had developed, he hadn't really struggled to keep them hidden either. When many of the people they had encountered on cases had met the two of them, they had assumed that he and Beckett were a couple. He himself had thought that it was just a matter of time; even going so far as to say to one individual when he had enquired if they were together, "Not yet".
It must have been agonising for someone as private as Beckett to have him following her around like a lovesick puppy, he thought. Sure she had allowed him to become her friend and flirted and laughed with him, but she had made it clear early on that she was not about to have a romantic relationship with him. He had assumed that he would wear her down; that several dedications, numerous attempts at saving her life, and a multitude of 'moments' later she would at last openly acknowledge their attraction and fall into his arms.
He felt foolish. He had laid his heart out for her and for everyone else to see, but he had failed to see that it wasn't the other guys that she was marking time with, it was him. She had kept him close but never allowed him to get too close. He had been the stand-in until something better came along.
He was embarrassed and he had no one to blame but himself.
By the time he pulled in to the parking garage of his apartment block, Richard Castle had decided he was done.
AN: thanks for reading (if you made it this far!). Please leave me a comment and let me know how I did after all this time, and if I should continue. Thanks again and good luck with your writing endeavours!