Title: Second Anniversary
Author: dftwinkie (individual authors listed in the chapters)
Rating: T (mostly PG but one has a few swears)
Spoilers: All aired episodes
Disclaimer: They are not ours, we just love them
Esposito
"Okay, here's the thing I don't get." Javier leans back against the counter, watching Lanie clean up for the night. "How could two people who obviously like each other still be in that much denial?"
Across the room, the ME has her head buried in a cabinet full of supplies and sharp objects, but Javier can still hear her acerbic snort.
"You got that right. They've been working together for what—a year and a half?—and they're still floating down that river in Egypt." She heaves a sigh and emerges with a spray bottle. "I've lost so much money on those two."
Javier smirks and fingers the book in his pocket. He's just updated Lanie's guesses for the Beckett/Castle hook-up pool (May 16th, for the record). That and the case file in his other hand are his ostensible reasons for visiting. His real reason is disinfecting a table at the moment and looking pretty damn hot, even in shapeless scrubs.
Lanie continues, "Obviously Beckett doesn't completely trust Castle yet. He's changed, though."
"More to him than meets the eye."
"Exactly. And I have also told her—more than once—what meets the eye is pretty damn fine. Why not go for it, see what happens? " Lanie sighs. "Our Beckett, though ... she's gotta see what'll happen before it happens."
"Thought a girl sometimes likes all that spontaneous stuff."
Lanie tilts her head at him. "Sometimes she wants to be sure about things first. And you can't always be sure about Castle. Equal-opportunity flirter, that one."
Javier nods, looks down for a moment, then locks eyes with her. "If it was me? Wouldn't be having that problem."
From the subtle way Lanie goes still, she knows they aren't talking about Javier's undying love for Kate Beckett.
He smiles into the silence and half-salutes her with the file. "Dr. Parish."
"Detective."
He saunters off, feeling her eyes on him the whole way.
He and Lanie have been flirting as long as they'd known each other. It's been nothing serious, just something to pass the time at crime scenes and in the morgue. But during the last year, Javier has started thinking about making some changes in his personal life. His latest hook-ups have seemed like they were missing something. (Not sex. No problems there.)
Castle has been his inspiration, or rather his example of what not to do and how not to do it. Javier remembers the Demming and Gina fiasco early last summer all too clearly, as well as the oblivious way Castle returned to shadowing Beckett in the fall. All year, he's seen them reconnect as they built theory, then drift away to pretend to be happy with other people. There have been coded looks and conversations with undercurrents. He's noticed all the tiny ways Beckett opens herself to Castle and the hesitant way Castle pursues Beckett, but nothing that's produced any forward momentum. Javier supposes that some people would view this as an epic love story: one person who is taking so long to open up she may have missed her chance; another who hides behind being an open book.
Sometimes it all seems like such fucking bullshit.
He's sad for both of them. Well, more for Beckett, because that girl deserves some happiness in her life, something more than just a nice guy.
Javier will be damned if he'll let the same thing happen to him. Or to Lanie.
Author: DefenderofHelplessSemicolons