Hello all :) This is a post-finale fic. I know it's not how Season 3 will go, but I wrote it anyway. It starts in the midst of A Deadly Game and progresses from there.
"Time's running out, Gina. And when it does, Naked Heat is going to the back of the queue. I'm not letting all our other writers get pushed back for Castle."
Gina sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. Damn Richard Castle. She's going to kill him when she finally gets ahold of him.
"I'm working on it, Chris."
"I understand that. But if Castle doesn't get this in on time, Cartwright's next book could be behind by up to a month, and Hanson's too. Not to mention what the rushed first printing will cost you."
"I know."
"Have you talked to him?"
"He's avoiding my calls."
"Go knock on his door."
"I'm not a goddamn intern, Chris. I know how to work with my authors. Castle's book will be on time, and it won't jeopardize the schedule of our other authors."
"Fine. But I'm holding you to that."
The dial tone buzzes loudly in her ear, and Gina hangs up the phone before groaning in frustration. Isn't Richard supposed to be less of a pain in the ass now that they're divorced?
He had been. He'd turned in his manuscripts on time, charmed the press, and made millions. He was just fine until he'd killed off Derrick Storm and met that muse of his. What's her name? Beckett.
Well damn her too.
Heat Wave had been on time. It was incredibly successful, better than some of the Derrick Storms, and Gina was thrilled. Why wouldn't she be? Money in Richard's pocket was money in hers.
She'd heard the rumors, of course. They started out quietly, probably just a press pull courtesy of his crazy agent Paula. Then the rumors started to get louder, right around the release party. Gina had seen the pictures. Real-life Nikki Heat was all legs and cheekbones and much too pretty to be a cop, and Gina assumed that if Richard was dedicating a whole series to her, then Detective Beckett must really be something else in bed. Because honestly, was Richard even capable of following one woman around for that long without bedding her?
Apparently, shockingly, he was. Because when Martha had picked up the phone yesterday and said Richard was on the way to the precinct and unavailable to take her call, Gina had just come right out and asked her. Martha had laughed, that lilting, full laugh that belonged on the stage, and said that no, Richard did not have the pleasure of being anything more than Detective Beckett's friend.
What the hell.
So she'd called Beckett, thinking maybe the muse could inspire the writer to stop acting like a hormonal puppy and start writing. That hadn't worked either, because she still hasn't heard from Richard. And now here she is, dealing with this shit, and God, she will strangle Richard when she sees him.
She picks up her phone and dials his landline, taking out her frustration on the buttons. She's stunned when Alexis actually answers, because she'd assumed Richard would've trained his daughter not to answer calls from his evil ex-wife when he's dancing so close to missing a deadline.
"Alexis. It's Gina."
Gina can't bring herself to be offended by the awkward pause on the other end of the line. "Oh. Hi."
"Can you get your dad for me?"
"Sure-"
"Wait. Don't tell him it's me. Tell him…well, I don't care what you tell him. Tell him I'm that detective woman if you want."
"Detective Beckett?" Alexis asks.
Before Gina can answer, she hears Richard in the background. "Beckett? Beckett's on the phone? Give me the…hello, Detective. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Gina can't contain her smirk. "Hello, Richard."
"You're not Beckett."
Gina lets out a sharp laugh. "No, I'm not."
He sighs. "What do you want?"
"You know what I want. And I wanted it two weeks ago."
"I've been…busy."
"Busy doing what? Playing cops and robbers?"
There's a long silence, and then the soft clicking of a door in the background. He's probably gone into his office, away from Alexis. Gina leans back in her chair and stares at the ceiling.
"What are you doing, Richard?"
"I'm drinking."
Probably scotch. High end stuff. "I don't mean now. I mean with this book. What's gotten into you?"
"I've got…I'm having problems."
"With the book? Or with the muse?"
There's another long silence. Gina clicks her manicured fingers on the armrest of her chair and takes a deep breath. God, this woman has really gotten to him. The continued silence on the other end of the line tells Gina everything she needs to know. Richard's infatuated with his muse, and judging from the last chapters he'd sent of Naked Heat, in which Nikki Heat flirts shamelessly with a hot robbery detective named Schlemming, Detective Beckett doesn't feel the same way.
Richard, however, is still following her around. And the more he follows her around, the less he writes. Gina sighs again. The only way Naked Heat is ever going to be finished is if she can get Richard away from Beckett and anything that makes him think of her. His mansion in the Hamptons is probably her best bet, since it will be summer soon and there'll be parties and rich blondes looking to have a good time. If she can get Richard the partier back, maybe she can get Richard the writer back.
But how to get him away? If he's still following Beckett when she's so obviously interested in someone else, he has it bad. She can't play on the jealousy, because if they fight then he'll never write Nikki Heat again. It has to be a somewhat amicable breach. Gina raps out a faster rhythm with her nails. How should she play this, what can she…
It hits her suddenly. Of course. How could she forget that annoying sense of nobility he tries so hard to keep out of the press? If letting Beckett go means saving her some trouble, letting her be happy…Richard will jump at the chance. She just has to tell him how high.
"You can't do this," she starts, her tone softening to just the right level.
"What are you talking about?"
Gina cuts right to the chase before he gets distracted. "Is she happy?"
"What?"
"With that detective. With Schlemming's alter ego. Is she happy?"
If Gina cared, his silence would be painful. "I don't know."
"I think you do."
On the other end of the line, Richard lets out a heavy sigh. "Yeah. Yeah, she is."
"So what are you doing?"
"I…don't know."
Oh God, this is pathetic. Gina straightens in her chair and examines her fingernails.
"Look, Richard, even if she wasn't happy, even if you had a chance to tell her how you feel…how could you? She doesn't fit in your world. You really think she could be the supportive woman hanging on your arm while you sign chests?"
Richard still doesn't answer, and Gina pictures him taking a swig of scotch and staring mournfully at his laptop.
"I saw pictures of the launch party," she tries. "She looked uncomfortable. Like it was the last place in the world she wanted to be."
"We had a fight. I was acting like a jackass."
"And you think that's what made her uncomfortable? Think about what she looked like before you spoke to her, Richard. She hated it, didn't she?"
"She could get used to it," Richard insists.
"Are you sure? She'd be okay with you flirting with other women just because you have to uphold your rep? She'd understand your mansion in the Hamptons and your affinity for really expensive wines and food?"
"That's not everything I am," he argues. "I'm other things, too."
"Don't be ridiculous. Everything about you screams Page Six. I know it; she knows it…why don't you? She doesn't fit, Richard. And it's not fair to try to make her fit."
Gina lets the silence linger for a second, just to let her words sink in, before starting again.
"Besides, what happens when Nikki Heat is done? What then? What happens when you stop shadowing her? Aside from Nikki Heat and murder, what do you two even have in common?"
She hears the slow release of breath, and she knows she has him.
X-X-X-X-X
Javier is staring at the scene in front of him in stunned horror when Lanie says something in his ear.
"Who is that?"
She's talking about the blonde who's hanging on Castle's arm like she owns him.
"Ex-wife," he answers. Castle had shown him a picture once when they'd been swapping horror stories about exes with Ryan.
"Son of a bitch," Lanie says in disbelief.
Castle puts his arm around the blonde and they turn away. The look on Beckett's face is heartbreaking.
"I'll kill him," Javier snarls.
Lanie shakes her head. "You don't even know what happened yet."
She's right, he doesn't, but he does know what he told Beckett the other day about Castle, and he does know that Demming didn't look very happy getting on the elevator a little while ago. Beckett's hard to read and unpredictable, but Javier's not an idiot. She likes Castle just as much as Castle likes her, and yet somehow Castle's walking away with his ex-wife and Beckett looks like she just got emotionally bulldozed.
"Do you see the look on her face?" he says angrily.
"Of course I do," Lanie snaps back. "But she's Beckett; she doesn't need you to rescue her."
"So what do we do?" Ryan asks.
"Nothing. I'm her best friend. It's my move."
The doors to the elevators aren't even closed before Beckett turns her back on Castle and his ex-wife. Javier watches as she reenters the room, clutching her beer bottle like it's keeping her on her feet. The overpowering urge to throttle Castle takes over again. Javier wants to go back in time and take back what he told her the other day, wants to do whatever it takes so that she won't have that look on her face anymore.
The thunk of Beckett's beer bottle on the table snaps him out of his violent thoughts. She smiles dimly at the group in front of her and sighs, running a hand through her hair.
"Well, I guess there's no point in having a party for Castle if he's not here, is there?"
She's met with silence, and Javier watches as she shifts awkwardly in front of them.
"No, not really," Ryan pipes up after a moment.
Beckett smiles at him, then at Javier. "Want help cleaning up?"
Her voice wavers just a little, and Javier clenches a fist. "No," he answers gently.
"Okay. See you Tuesday."
She's out of the room in record time, heading for her desk, and Lanie is in hot pursuit.
X-X-X-X-X
"Kate."
Kate ignores her and pulls her coat on. Lanie stops next to her.
"Kate," she says more insistently.
"Hey," Kate answers as if she hadn't heard Lanie the first time, turning toward her with what's supposed to be a smile. Her eyes are glistening and her movements are stiff, almost jerky. It's nothing like the Kate she knows, the fluid movements and controlled reactions, and Lanie suddenly regrets telling Esposito not to kill Castle.
"Let's go get margaritas."
"I'm tired," Kate says, reaching for her phone and her bag. "I think I'm just going to go home."
"You hate that sublet."
"It's not that bad."
"Kate-"
"Don't," Kate interrupts, and Lanie stops instantly because she's caught it, the voice waver. She fights the sudden urge to step forward and wrap her best friend in a tight hug.
"Talk to me," Lanie tries, changing her tactics. Letting what happened casually slide by and hoping for an explanation later isn't working, because Kate isn't going to be around later. The sirens are blaring and the locks are turning, and every second that passes transforms the detective in front of her into Fortress Beckett instead of Kate.
"There's nothing to talk about."
"What just happened with Castle?"
"Let it go, Lanie."
Kate turns and heads for the elevator without another word, and Lanie can do nothing but let her go.
X-X-X-X-X
Kate spends five minutes alone in her sublet before she feels like the walls are closing in on her and she needs to get out. The precinct gym reminds her of Tom, the shooting range reminds her of Castle…where can she go? She wants to get lost. Wants to blend in with something larger than herself, wants to fade away. So she puts on her running shoes, shoves her headphones into her ears, hits the streets, and starts running. She doesn't know where she's going, doesn't know why, but she knows she's going somewhere and that's enough.
The farther she gets from her sublet, the faster she runs. The words are on repeat in her head, playing over and over again. I know I'm not the easiest to get to know. It's been great. See you in the fall.
See you in the fall.
She's been running for a long time. She maintains her fast pace anyway, the slapping of her feet on the concrete drowned out by the deafening volume of her iPod. There's a lump forming in the back of her throat, something pushing to be let out from somewhere down deep, but Kate ignores it and runs faster.
She darts across a street in a neighborhood and finally comes to a stop, doubling over, wheezing. She straightens and searches the area around her desperately. Her gaze settles on a trashcan in a nearby alley, and she barely makes it there, gripping the sides so hard her knuckles turn white, before she throws up.
X-X-X-X-X
Kate spends the holiday weekend alone. After her run Friday night, she gets back to her sublet and opens a bottle of wine. She doesn't bother pouring it in a glass, and instead drinks right out of the bottle. She takes a shower, and when she's done she calls the pizza joint down the block. They deliver a huge pizza, but by the time she's finished most of the bottle she's only eaten half a slice.
The sublet is tiny compared to her old apartment, and Kate can feel the walls closing in around her again. She's drinking the wine so fast her mind is in a pleasant fuzz, but it's not enough. She wants to forget everything; wants to forget the stupid risk she'd taken at a stupid time for a stupid reason, but she can't. She can't forget the way she feels about him anymore than she can forget the plummet her heart had taken when she'd watched him walk away with Gina.
Maybe he won't come back.
She doesn't know why that thought suddenly pops into her brain, but it does. She runs through the scenario in her head as she picks a piece of pepperoni off of her half eaten slice of pizza. Castle and Gina spend the summer falling in love again. He comes back in September, tan and smiling, and announces that he and Gina are going to get married. Again. Gina doesn't want him in harm's way, which is exactly where he is when he works with the NYPD; therefore, he's not going to consult anymore. Instead, he'll spend his days in bed with Gina and writing.
Thanks for everything, she can hear him saying. It's been great. I'll send your wedding invitation in the mail.
God, it's not even real and she feels sick. She takes another swig of wine and reclines on the couch. It's too short to hold her long frame, so her head rests on one armrest and her feet dangle over the other one. She peels the label on the bottle and stares at the ceiling, wondering how the hell she got here.
She'd had a plan. A don't-fall-for-Castle plan. It was simple: never take him seriously, don't talk about her personal life or his, and avoid physical contact at all costs. She's at least stuck to the last one. Thank God.
Her first mistake was that she'd told him about her mother. After that, all kinds of personal things had flooded out of her, and he'd shared a fair amount too. They'd gone from author and detective to colleagues to friends. She'd been standing on the threshold of something more when Gina had showed up.
Mistake number two was taking him seriously. One word, extraordinary, and she'd been ready to give him her heart on a silver platter. His jealousy over Demming and the idea of losing him during their "break" had made her get out her platter again, but just like at the launch party, she'd been left standing with her heart in her hands like an idiot, wanting something she had no business wanting.
And that, really, is the problem. That she wants something she can't have, shouldn't have. What was she thinking? World famous novelist Richard Castle, swimming in cash and women and anything he could ever want, and Kate Beckett, NYPD homicide detective with a tragic past. It doesn't fit. They're from two different worlds, and they belong in two different worlds.
Kate takes a sip of wine and glances around her sublet, allowing herself a rare moment to wallow in how unfair life can be. She finally works up the courage to take a chance, to tell Castle that maybe she'd like to take him up on all the innuendos he's been throwing at her from day one, and it backfires on her. What else is new?
Her eyes fall on the window that leads to the fire escape. After a long moment of debating whether or not she wants to move, she gets up and opens the window. She steps out onto the fire escape and leans on the railing, staring out at the city. There's noise and a weird combination of food and gasoline smells, and there's a little bit of a breeze blowing through the city. It tousles her hair, and Kate sighs. She tips her wine bottle at the apartment complex across the street in a mock toast.
It's going to be a long summer.