Richard Castle may be a skilled poker player, but he's got his tells, just like anyone Beckett figures she wouldn't make for a very good cop if she couldn't read them like a book. She imagines he thinks he keeps his feelings for her buttoned down pretty well. Since the day of the shooting—the day of the I Love You—they've pretty much resided in 'don't ask, don't tell' territory, with the occasional detour into 'skate around the truth' and 'call my bluff' for a change of scenery. But day to day? Mr. Less-than-Subtle is usually just that.
It's the little things that give him away: the extra second he lets his hand rest on hers while handing her her cardboard cup of coffee in the mornings (never forgetting the two pumps vanilla), the look that holds her in place when he asks how she's doing, signaling to her that he means it, the way he's always at her shoulder, comforting as the service piece on her hip.
He plays it cool until it's time to take down a perp, and then he's all adrenaline and protective instinct buzzing around her, or it's time to interrogate a particularly classy perp, and he needs to be dismissed before he attempts a right hook. Sometimes it's retroactive: like when he's gone home hours before the delivery from China Palace shows up at the precinct, the invoice stapled to the bag reading only, eat something.
Sometimes he surprises her, and then the smile's on her face before she can check it. He smiles back, and in the breath that follows, his silent challenge says 'see?' and 'trust me' and 'we can do this', and sometimes even 'I told you so', which is exactly what she has coming, but never leaves her feeling played. Instead, it lightens her mood even as the weight of his gesture settles over her, and she lets it rest there like a cloak around her shoulders. She knows it's selfish, and she wouldn't admit it to anyone else, but she needs it to keep her warm at night.
She thinks she's pretty smooth, but Castle hasn't logged hundreds of keyboard hours tapping into the human psyche for nothing: he'd like to think he's no stranger to the pendulum that is female emotion. And maybe Beckett would like to think she's above all that, but the only person she's kidding is herself. (And if he's reading her right—which he is—she's not getting very far in that department, either.) He asks her about the day in the cemetery—the day of the I Love You—and she lies. He asks her again, and she lies again. She can't even look at him while she does it, and he wonders: does she think he's an amateur? And here's what he notices: each interaction takes a little more out of her. With each mention of that moment, she changes the subject a little more quickly, her tone a half-note closer to the panic he knows she's burying, and this last time? She'd actually grimaced. It's not that he wants to win her over by wearing her down, but…oh, who's he kidding? He'll win her over any way he can. He brings her coffee, but that's a gimme. He gives her his ear, glad to be her sounding board when cases go south, or—sometimes—ghosts come back to haunt her. He buys her dinner when he can get away with it, and sometimes when he can't, and when she complains that her rent's being raised, he tells her he knows a guy at the rent control board. He doesn't…c'mon, is he supposed to know everybody? But he knows the name of her landlord and knows his way around his checkbook. In the end, he doesn't do it—please…she'd kill him—but the ache to help her only strengthens his resolve to someday earn that right. Gifts are out—Kate Becket doesn't have much use for things, a foreign concept in his experience with women—but time spent, whether logged on the job or off-duty, is in. She's stopped pushing him away; even his unannounced presence at her door garners an immediate smile, full and bright, and in it, he sees a glimpse of a Kate he's never known: whole and unscarred. Her self-proclaimed wall may not yet be down, but the chinks are showing, and through them, he sees something worth fighting for. Better yet, she does, too. He can see it in the effort she makes to keep him close, in the looks she gives him when she thinks he's looking away, the kick of surprise-turned-bafflement-turned wonder crossing her face with a tinge of heat that makes him think with equal wonder: she's crushing on me right now and then the moment is gone, but the warmth of it remains, toasting him. She seeks his council, and not just for irony or a source of mockery, either, and she calls him at home, and she counts on him—he hopes—more than she counts on anyone. And so the next time he asks about the shooting and the poker face returns, he'll still be able to see it for what it is: a bluff. An attempt to hold the proverbial gun steady, even as her hand trembles. And he'll understand: he's not her target, and never has been. Maybe they'll take out that particular demon together, or maybe he'll have to continue holding her at bay, but either way, he'll eventually be able to take that hand, and lower it, and take that gun, and slide it away. And maybe then being unarmed in front of him? Will finally be ok.