Author's Note: Okay so it's been a while since I wrote a Castle fic. Actually, not true I've been writing a (looong) one with a co-author over the past few months but in French ^^Anyhow, this particular story came to me kind of out of the blue, and as usual with fics, I just had to write it down. It's going to be a short fic (two or three chapters maybe).
A biiiiiig thank you to my reviewer/coach/(tyran) for asking every. single. day how my writing is going ^^

CHAPTER 1

"But I wanna come with you!"
"Castle, we are not having this conversation again! You are not coming with us."

Beckett grabbed her coat and put it on, watching as the writer, sitting in his usual spot, crossed his arms over his chest and pouted. She almost smiled at the sight. There was always something about the way he could be so childish sometimes that charmed her.

"I don't see why not" he tried once more "I can be just as convincing as Esposito."

Beckett looked at the Manhattan born, wealthy writer living in Soho and then at her latino, ex-commando partner from Queens and she barely suppressed a laugh at Castle's comparison of the two radically different men.

"No Castle. No" she replied with a hidden laugh "You really can't."

As he gave her another exaggerated pout, she grabbed her purse, ready to head out.

Esposito and Ryan approached them, coats on their arms.

"You can do surveillance with me if you'd like" offered the Irish cop.

Castle's pout only slightly faded. He tried the puppy-eye approach with Beckett one more time to no avail and surrendered.

"Fiiiiine" he conceded with a heavy sigh.
"Pick you up at ten!" Ryan informed him with a grin.

Beckett shook her head, smiling and turned to Esposito.

"I've got a quick errand to run before we go." She looked at her watch before adding "I'll meet you there in about two hours."

Esposito nodded and started walking off, his partner in tail. Ryan spun back as they reached the elevator.

"Oh, and Castle?" the latter turned to face him as he was putting his coat on "Bring the coffee, will you?"

At five to ten sharp a black van parked in front of Castle's apartment building and the writer came out through the front door holding two thermos flasks containing freshly brewed, high quality coffee.
He was dressed casually, wearing a pair of worn jeans, a black polo shirt and the only leather jacket he owned.
He reached the van and got on the passenger seat.

"Ready to roll, partner?" he greeted joyfully.

Ryan just gave him a look and he quietly settled in his seat, muttering something about the whole situation being no fun at all with another disappointed pout.
Today was a succession of disappointments. And yet the day had started out so promisingly...

They had been working on the death of a twenty-seven year old man who had washed on the banks of the Hudson River a week before. Forensics and detective work combined had determined that the boy had been tossed in the river from the waterfront in Jersey. The autopsy had revealed he had most likely sustained major injuries when he was thrown off a moving vehicle – possibly a bike – without wearing the appropriate protective gear.
Their investigation, conducted hand in hand with the Jersey police, had revealed that very morning that the young man was involved in some kind of illegal races down in Jersey. The arrest of one of the participants in such races in the early afternoon had given them confirmation of that fact and they had learnt that another race was scheduled for that night on the Jersey turnpike.
Because the illegal racing world was a very tight-lip environment, the detectives had decided that they needed to go undercover and infiltrate that world.

That's when Castle had literally jumped out of his seat in excitement. An undercover mission involving illegal races was just too good to be true.
There had been discussions with the Jersey police officers and with the captain, discussions he hadn't been invited to take part in and then it had been decided: Beckett would join the race that night.
At that thought, Castle's excitement had grown all the stronger.

Then they had decided she'd need back-up on the ground, so she would be accompanied by a man posing as her boyfriend/agent/mechanic/bodyguard/anything and everything really.
And Castle had raised his hand. And they'd all looked at him and the disappointments began.
They had told him he wasn't fit for the job. He had pleaded. They had turned him down over and over again.

"We need someone with police training Castle..."
"I've proven I can handle my own more than once!"
"Who knows a thing or two about mechanics..."
"I can be pretty handy."
"Someone who doesn't wear thousand dollar suits..."
"I have plain clothes!"
"Someone who can look fierce..."
"I can look fierce."
"Someone who looks like they belong there..."
"I..."

In the end, he'd run out of arguments and Esposito had been assigned to the task of posing as Beckett's 'mack'.

So there he was, a few hours after his first wave of excitement, sitting, utterly disappointed, in the passenger seat of a black surveillance van heading for the Jersey turnpike.
Well, at least he'd get to see Beckett on a bike... from afar, in the dark.
He frowned and slid further down into his seat.
This was no fun at all.

In the meantime, in a deserted parking lot, cars started driving in and parking; each with more horsepower than the previous one. A few bikes joined as well; shiny, loud, powerful bikes. People gathered around; they drank, they smoked, they flirted but more importantly, they raced.
Two by two, cars and bikes faced off on the quasi empty road, leaving clouds of dirt behind them and tyre marks on the asphalt.

When Ryan and Castle parked in the shadows of a nearby forest, the party was already in full swing.
They both moved to the rear of the van and Ryan turned on the cameras as Castle got the night-vision goggles out.
He sat on a chair next to Ryan, looking intently at the screen.

"Alright! What do we do now?" he asked cheerily looking around for something fun to do.
"Now? We wait" replied Ryan while grabbing a thermos and pouring himself a cup of coffee.
"'Wait'? But that's... boring."
"Yup. It is" agreed the detective while taking a sip "But it's also part of the job. You should know, you've done surveillance before."
"Yeah I have..."

"... But with Beckett" he thought to himself.

Not that he had anything against the young detective sitting by his side but he wasn't Beckett. Doing surveillance was indeed one of the most boring aspects of the job, after paperwork, but doing surveillance with Beckett had somehow always seemed fun or at least bearable.
And tonight he felt like he was being punished for something. Not only he wasn't allowed to go undercover with Beckett but as a result he ended up doing surveillance without her.
He wondered if this punishment had anything to do with Beckett's distant attitude towards him these last few weeks and if any of that was related to the awkward moment they'd shared a month before during another undercover mission that required kissing and sharing a room.

Thoughtful, he looked at the moving images on the screens in front of him and his mood worsened.

"Is this all we get to see?" he asked, pointing to the distant, kind of blurry and very greenish video feed.
"Yeah. What did you expect? This isn't a spy movie Castle, this is reality. And the reality is, the NYPD doesn't have the means nor the will to provide its fine detectives with state of the art technology to run surveillance on suspects."
"How do you even get evidence on anyone with that kind of footage?"
"Well the good thing is, tonight, all the evidence we need is gonna be collected by Beckett and Esposito. We're just here to monitor the evening and act as back-up if necessary."
"Yeah but... We can't see... anything."
"We see enough" shrugged Ryan "Why? What did you want to see?"

As Ryan finished his sentence, a new car drove into the parking lot-turned-dance floor. It was a low rider and it was closely followed by a bike that, despite the bad colouring of the screen looked somewhat red.

From the corner of his eye Castle noticed the man coming out of the car and his attention immediately shifted to the bike that was coming to a halt next to it.

"Nothing" he replied absently, squinting his eyes in order to get a better view of the person who was coming off the bike.
"What are you...?"

Ryan, noticing the writer's strange behaviour, turned his head to the screens as well.

"Oh..." He looked one more time at Castle who was mesmerized by the image on screen "Nothing huh?" he repeated with a knowing smile.

The pair watched as Beckett took off her helmet and placed it on the bike. She was wearing a pair of tight jeans, boots and a leather jacket. Castle's heart beat a little faster.
A man and two of his goons approached her and Esposito immediately stepped to her side, wrapping an arm around her waist.
Castle frowned.

"You think they'll be able to get accepted?"
"You're kidding right?" Ryan gave Castle a look and continued "This is Beckett we're talking about. If she wants something, she gets it." The writer smiled at that comment "She'll gain their trust."

They observed their two respective partners chatting with the three men who had approached them.
Although, their back was to them, they could clearly see that Beckett was doing a number on the boys, unzipping her jacket and flipping her hair from time to time.
Castle's imagination started running wild as he imagined what Beckett must look like from the front, knowing very well how seductive she could get when needed. He almost felt sorry for the guys surrounding her.
A few minutes later, Esposito shook the leading man's hand and the group stepped away leaving the two detectives to mingle with the other racers and their posses.

As the minutes passed and turned into an hour of watching Beckett flirt her way through the crowd Castle started feeling a knot in his stomach. For a while he tried to convince himself it was the funny-looking lasagne he had eaten earlier that was playing tricks on his stomach. But when Beckett wrapped her arms around Esposito's waist and kissed his neck in front of a group of racers he felt his heart sink low into his chest and he couldn't blame the lasagne anymore.

"You ok there Castle? You look a little pale..."
"I'm fine. How much longer do we have to watch this?" he asked flatly while pouring himself a cup of coffee.
"No idea. For as long as it takes Esposito and Beckett to get the information we need."

With a resigned sigh Castle took a sip of his drink, closing his eyes. And for a brief moment, the pain in his chest vanished. The sweet, dark aroma conjured up images of Kate, with him; smiling to him, flirting with him, wrapping her arms around him, kissing him.
He had tasted her lips twice in the course of their partnership and each time he'd felt it. This feeling in his chest, this warmth that engulfed him, this impression of complete and utter bliss. There was no faking that feeling. Just like there was no faking the jealousy that was eating him at the moment.

"Huh-oh"

Ryan's voice tore him out of his thoughts.

"What?"

He reluctantly turned his attention back to the screens, hoping he'd be spared another image of Kate macking on Javier.

"Looks like these guys wanna see Beckett on the racetrack" explained Ryan pointing at the men who had greeted the duo earlier.
"What? Wait! I thought all they had to do was mingle with the crowd. Nobody said anything about racing..." shouted Castle, suddenly panicked.

He'd seen the heavy drinking, the cars spinning out of control, the bikes skidding... and more importantly he'd seen the dead body that had brought them there in the first place!

"They'll be ok. I know Beckett can talk her way out of this."

Just then, Beckett got on her bike, helmet in hand.

"Or not."
"What the..." Ryan, sat up in his chair, zooming in on their partners, as if it would make a difference in the world. He saw Esposito looking in their general direction.
"What is she doing?"

Beckett was putting her helmet on. Esposito stopped her and whispered something in her ear. She whispered back and he stepped away as she put the helmet on.
Ryan and Castle watched, powerless as she positioned herself on the starting line. Seconds later her opponent – the greeting man – parked his white-looking bike next to hers.

"We've got to stop them! Do we have surveillance on the road?" Castle got up from his chair, heading for the back of the van "Can't you call the state police to arrest them for illegal racing?"

Ryan slid his chair in front of Castle's path, blocking him from the back door.

"Calm down Castle. She's gonna be fine."
"Fine? Have you seen the way those guys race?"
"Beckett's a big girl! She can handle herself. If she agreed to race, it means she knows she can handle it. You've gotta trust that she can."

Ryan held Castle's panicked look for a while until he saw him settle down a little.

"She'll be fine" he repeated softly.

Castle eyed the screens and saw one of the ladies stepping between the two bikes, flag in hand. He gave another look to Ryan, who was still looking at him reassuringly and dropped his shoulders in defeat before going back to his seat.

Beckett on a bike could have been all sorts of sexy, but right now all he could feel was worry, if not outright fear.
Of course he trusted the detective's judgment and her skills on a bike, but he also cared for her too much to not be concerned.

A few seconds later, the scantily clad woman waved her flag and both bikes disappeared onto the dark road, leaving a cloud of dust in their place.

And they waited.
The other races had lasted around two minutes.
The longest two minutes of the writer's life.

Despite their serene appearance, Castle knew Ryan and Esposito cared enough for their boss to be equally worried.
The three men stared at the dark open road with attention. Waiting for the headlights of the bikes to appear around the last curve of the race.
Castle looked at the timer on the video feed. Only one minute had gone by.

He tried to reassure himself. He knew Beckett had owned a bike. He knew she'd had wild days, probably riding said bike. He knew her ex-boyfriend of a doctor was a biker so she'd probably had some practice with him around. She was a good driver. She was fierce. She was smart... and beautiful and caring... That was irrelevant. But it warmed his worried heart a bit.

He looked at the timer again. Two minutes.
He glued his eyes to the screen, scrutinizing the blurry image for the slightest hint of a headlight.

"What if..."
"Don't."

Then the light appeared. One single light. Too far to determine which bike was approaching. But the fact that there was only one light was enough to give Castle – and most likely the two detectives with him - an ulcer.

"Please be red" he mentally chanted "please be red"

The bike raced past the parking lot to the finish line and came to a stop a few meters later.

"That is definitely not red" commented Castle with a dry voice.