I originally posted this on my tumblr, but fanfiction dot net was being contrary and would not allow me to post it here until now. My apologies for the delay! This is an extremely, extreeemely late birthday fic for the amaaazing allylobster. I hope you like this!
An Entirely Different Dance
A post 2x24 AU
Caskett
T
Stalking into her apartment – her temporary apartment – Kate Beckett has to fight the urge to slam the door behind her.
She shouldn't be pissed. She has no right to be pissed.
And yet, she is. Her chest aches with it, the anger, the frustration.
The mortification.
How could she have been so stupid? For a quiet, insane moment, she had thought that he had wanted her. That they could've been something more, something real. Something terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time. Something she had been running from ever since he offered her seven different kinds of fast food as penance for Dick Coonan slipping away.
Well, that joke is on her, isn't it? Because he's off to the Hamptons with his ex-wife and publisher while she is, and will continue to be, here in the city alone.
Especially since even Lanie has bailed on her.
Albeit yes, her friend has a reasonable excuse for postponing their hastily made plans, and if she weren't still so embarrassed that her boss and her colleagues had witnessed her attempt at going away with Castle, she would be ignoring the fact that she had asked for the weekend off and working the case with her team. Instead she's home, clutching the neck of a too-expensive red wine in her fist and wondering exactly how bad it would be to just pop the cork and drink the damn thing straight from the bottle.
Well, it wouldn't be the first time.
"Ugh."
Her groan echoes around her sublet, bouncing off the empty walls, serving as a reminder for how little she has settled in, how warm and cozy her old place and Castle's loft had been. Maybe that's what she'll do this weekend: she'll finally make this place feel like home, even if it's only for a few months while she looks for another apartment. She can make this place hers. Just hers.
But first, she needs to rid herself of this day. No, this year.
Her shoes are the first to go. She loses almost four inches, but her feet celebrate being free of their confinement, and some of the tension in her spine melts away.
She leaves the heels in the middle of the walkway, allowing a smile to touch her lips as her mother's chiding voice echoes in her head.
One of these days, Katie, you're going to trip over those.
She hasn't yet.
Her slacks are next to go. They land in a crumpled heap halfway between the door and the kitchen, where she sets the wine down on the counter and fishes a corkscrew from one of the drawers. She'll pick everything up later, right now she's cutting loose.
Yeah, she's a cop gone wild, all right. Leaving her clothes all over the floor like regular rebel.
Her first swig of wine goes down a little rougher than she expects, leaving her swallowing hard, swiping the back of her hand over her lips. Her eyes water – because it burns, damn it – forcing her to set the bottle down and suck in a few steady breaths.
Well, at least her pity party is hopping. For the next bit of entertainment, maybe she'll spill on herself and ruin a perfectly good work shirt.
"What a mess," she mutters, curling her fingers around the wine bottle once again and pushing away from the counter. "All this over one irritating, immature, self-centered jackass."
One immature, irritating, self-centered jackass who had spent a year worming his way into her life, past her defenses, chiseling cracks in the long-standing mortar of her walls only to walk away with moons in his eyes and his arm around a blonde.
Fuck.
Flopping onto the couch, she takes a long drag from the bottle, trying in vain to soothe the painful stutter of her heart. The wine warms her as it settles in her belly, heats her cheeks, but still disappointment, embarrassment press on her chest.
It's twelfth grade and Brent Edwards all over again. Except she's a grown woman this time, and she can't even hate Gina the way she had hated Maddie, because the woman likely has no idea what she had spoiled. Not the way her high school best friend had.
Jesus, now she really is wallowing. Mourning this quasi-break up exactly the same way she had senior year. Only this time her mother won't be coming home to find her plastered and bawling. Johanna won't be taking the bottle away from her and downing an impressive amount of her own before killing Kate's angsty, sad music and blasting the greatest hits of disco and Motown.
Come on, Katie, her mother had said, tugging her inebriated ass off the couch. This will make you feel better. Dance.
It hadn't at first. As graceful as she usually was, the alcohol had made her gangly and uncoordinated. More than once, Johanna had needed to steady her as they bobbed to the music. But eventually, eventually her mother's plan worked; the moment she began to giggle was the moment the hurt slipped away.
And now her mom is gone, and she's left nursing her wounded heart alone.
Kate fights the tug of emotion, the crush of sadness threatening to drag her under, taking another swig from the wine bottle. She hasn't had much, but after eating small meals all day and drinking the beer at Castle's going away party, her head already thrums a bit.
She should probably eat. Or at the very least order something for when she really does get hungry. If she's lucky, it'll arrive just as the wine really starts to hit her.
She gets her usual order from the Chinese place down the street, thanking the woman on the other end of the call before hanging up and tossing her phone onto the coffee table beside the remote for her stereo.
Dance, Katie.
A quiet, choked laugh spills from her lips. Oh, what the hell?
Maybe it will make her feel better.
Nearly forty-five minutes later, she's strutting through her apartment, using the nearly empty bottle of wine as a makeshift microphone, crooning Higher Ground with Stevie Wonder. Admittedly, Stevie's more on-key than she is, and she's about a half second behind him, but it's a pretty stellar duet nonetheless. Forget police work, her big break is coming any day now.
And, if the opening tinkles of the next song are anything to go by, Gloria Gaynor's going to be the one to help her get it. Johanna Beckett would be so proud.
"At first I was afraid, I was petrified…"
It's amazing that she hears the thud of a fist against the door, intent as she is on reclaiming her strength and professing her continued survival. Still, she executes what her mom used to call a "disco twirl," making it to the door just as a second knock bounces off the metal.
"I'm here, I'm here, sorry. Sorry," she apologizes before the door even swings open. "I hope you weren't standing out here lo– Castle?"
Whatever good feelings she had managed to scrounge up evaporate as her stomach drops to her feet. Instead of the usual delivery guy – the youngest son of the restaurant owner, she thinks – her visitor is none other than the man she's been doing her damndest to forget all night.
"Ah, hey, Beckett. Hey," he offers, looking for all the world like a schoolboy on a first date; part awkward, part hopeful and eager as his eyes skim down her body to the tips of her bare feet, and oh, she… isn't wearing pants right now. Great. "You– are you busy?"
Clearing her throat, she throws a question back to him. "What are you doing here? I thought you were riding off into the sunset for the summer with your ex-wife."
Her… whatever he is – was – shakes his head. "We got halfway there and turned around."
She doesn't care why, she really doesn't.
"I thought you'd be on your way to Jersey with Demming," he says when she doesn't ask him for an explanation.
"We got halfway there and turned around," she replies dryly, watching his chin lower. He doesn't need to know that they never left, that the only bag she had packed was her duffle bag to go with him.
"Touché."
"What are you doing here, Castle?" Kate asks again, sinking against the edge of her door. Her buzz might be fading already, and even though it's mostly empty, the wine bottle in her hand has grown heavy.
His chest rises under her scrutiny, his tongue darting out to lick his lips. "I owe you an apology."
Damn right he does. He owes her an apology for inviting her at all, knowing she was with Demming. He owes her an apology for making her want the sea air, the beach, and him when she had the world's nicest guy ready to whisk her away. And dammit, he owes her an apology for turning around and yanking all of that out from underneath her.
"Forget it," she says instead, lifting the bottle to her mouth. "It's done. I'll see you in the fall, Castle. Enjoy the Hamptons with your ex when you finally get there."
"I'm not going. Not with Gina. Inviting her was a mistake when I had invited you first."
"I said no," she protests, licking her lips. "I had other plans."
Plans she had lied to him about, she reminds herself as something flashes in his eyes, some measure of the hurt she'd seen reflected from her own in the mirror earlier in the evening.
"Still, I extended the invitation. Going back on it the way I did was wrong. I'm sorry."
Sucking in a deep breath, she straightens. "You came all the way back to tell me that?"
"No," he answers, his eyes straying down her body once again before snapping back to hers. She lifts an eyebrow, bans the beginnings of an amused smile from her lips. So not subtle, Castle. "Well, not just that."
"Then what?" Kate pushes, flexing her fingers around the neck of the bottle. Forgiveness is already beginning to slide through her limbs, leaving irrational stirrings of hope in its wake.
Her food needs to arrive soon before she does something ridiculous and stupid. Before she pushes away from the door and grabs his shirt, before she drags him against her and claims his mouth with hers, before she–
He steps closer, sucking in a deep breath. "To ask you to come with me. Which is what I think you were going to do earlier, before Gina walked into the precinct."
"Castle," she starts, squaring her shoulders. "Look, I accept your apology, but it's– I don't want to be your second choice. Or your second first choice, whatever."
"And I don't want to be yours," he counters. "But if the concert you were having in there is anything to go by – and were you dancing? Tell me you were dancing."
"Shut up," she orders, cutting him off, ignoring his growing smile.
"Fine, no dancing. But judging by the fact that I walked up to you singing the ultimate break up song, and the nearly empty bottle of wine in your hand… you wanted to come with me, didn't you? You were going to come with me."
Humiliation heats her cheeks once more, beating out the urge to snap at him for being right. "I thought that was what you wanted." It comes out far too soft, too vulnerable, for her liking, and she has to turn her head, hide her eyes to keep him from seeing everything.
"It is," Castle insists, pulling his hand from his pocket. His fingers hover between them but he doesn't touch her. "Kate."
"What?" She tries to sound annoyed, tries to summon some of the exasperation she's known for, but she fails miserably. Instead she sounds hushed, breathy, anticipatory.
"Come with me this weekend. We can leave tonight, or tomorrow morning if you want," he corrects, dropping his eyes toward her bare legs, the bottle she still clutches. "You're not going to Jersey with Demming, right?"
She nods, pursing her lips. "We broke up; try not to dance a jig."
"I'll save that for when you say you'll come with me. Same deal as before, a friendly getaway. Nothing more if that's what you wa–"
"Ms. Beckett?"
Castle slumps at the interruption, twisting just far enough to reveal the delivery boy she had been waiting for all along. The kid looks on, his body coiled with discomfort, his eyes too-wide as he fights to hide it.
"Hi," she greets, cringing at being caught half naked and almost wine-drunk with her shadow crowding her against her door while that damn CD blares from inside her apartment. "I, ah, sorry. I'm all paid up, right?"
"Ah, yeah. Yes. Here you go," he says, stumbling over the words. "Thank you."
He's thanking her? For what? The free show he's getting?
She watches Castle take the bags, as she remembers the obscenely large tip she had included when she put the order on her card. Yeah, that's why the kid is thanking her.
"Thanks," she echoes, watching him scurry away. Once he's gone, she turns her attention back to Castle, taking the food from his hand and nudging her door open wider. "You wanna come in? Have the rest of this conversation somewhere more private?"
His head bobs in agreement. "Think I can mooch an eggroll?"
She nods, stepping back to let him go first. "Sure, Castle. I'll even let you have some of my tangerine chicken."
"Thanks," he says, glancing over his shoulder to watch her slip back into her apartment and shut the door with soft fingers. "I didn't even realize how hungry I was until I smelled your din-ner!"
"What the hell?" she asks, making her way to him.
One of these days, Katie, you're going to trip over those.
She still hasn't tripped over her shoes, but Castle just did, landing in a graceless heap beside the offending heels. Whoops.
"You booby trapped your apartment, Beckett."
A chuckle escapes without permission, but she simply shakes her head and continues to the coffee table to deposit her wine and the food. He doesn't wallow for long, rolling onto his side and then his knees before getting to his feet to join her.
"I needed a night off to unwind, let loose," she spares a glance at his lips before she adds, "drop my top. No picking up after myself allowed."
"Ahh. Well, not to be nitpicky, but while you've lost your shoes and your pants, you still have yet to drop your top," he says, mischief lighting his eyes when she really does laugh this time.
"Night's still young, Castle," Kate starts, unpacking the food with fumbling hands. "Never know what'll happen between now and tomorrow when we leave."
He stops, giving her a long look as if he wants to be sure he heard her right. That she'll come with him to the Hamptons and start this weekend over. "In that case, maybe we need to open another bottle of wine."
"Mmm," she agrees, looking up at him from under her lashes. "You do need to catch up, after all."
He kisses her as they polish off their entrees, stretching across the empty couch cushion between them to cup her face in his hands, his thumbs stroking the line of her jaw. He tastes sweet and spicy, like wine and the tangerine sauce from the dinner they've just shared, and her hand flutters mid-air before cupping the back of his neck to keep him from breaking away and retreating. Not that he seems to be going anywhere voluntarily.
"So, disco queen," he murmurs once they part for air, ignoring her swat in favor of trailing his fingers down the line of her neck, resting his forehead on hers, "you gonna turn the music back on and show me your moves?"
"No," she answers, firm in that. "But toss the food containers in the trash and meet me in the bedroom, and I'll show you an entirely different dance."
A/N: Many many months ago, allylobster prompted a post-season 2 fic where (forgive me for paraphrasing a bit, I'm going from memory) Castle comes to apologize to Beckett and catches her belting I Will Survive. - I'm sorry if I bungled the prompt, Ally, but I hope you like this anyway!