Author's Notes: This is the first part of something I started writing back at Christmas for Syd15 at Livejournal, who requested it as a gift after the first(ish?) spoilers for the noir episode were released. It's been fed by what we've learned since, but the original concept remains intact, so it features a black-and-white AU version of Castle and Beckett. It's roughly set in 1935, so the historical context will be different. (But again, 1947 wasn't the magic number when I started out. And strip clubs became illegal in New York in 1937, so when the show threw out that date it wasn't reworkable with the plot.) I confess, it's a little dark because sometimes I think about feminism and then I get sad when I think about history. But there is love and redemption and a happy ending, I promise.
Also written as a one shot (sort of), but posting in parts because it's getting kind of long and I feel like I bombard people with text quite often enough around here. It'll be four or five parts all told.
The Blue Butterfly is the wrong kind of dance club down on a street in the wrong part of New York City. The door is non-descript during the day, when only hardened regulars make their way down the staircase that has seen better days, into the haze of cigarette smoke and perfume and the lingering smell of last night's spilled whiskey.
Doors open at eleven.
The first show is at twelve.
The girls work hard and she knows the lunchtime shift is the worst, because she used to be one of them.
The bar isn't truly mahogany, but it's a fair imitation of it. The pad of one finger is running across a groove in the lacquered pine as she thinks that lots of things pass for the real thing around here. It's all about illusions, cheap drinks and cheap intimacy. It's hard times out there, but down here, the girls take off their clothes and Montgomery picks out tunes on the off-key piano and everyone pretends that the twenties never stopped roaring.
She twists her glass between her hands. It's vodka, straight, over ice, but if anyone asks she'll tell them it's water. (It's not lady-like to drink before the cocktail hour. Then again, it's not lady-like to do any number of things she's been paid to do in the past. It's never stopped her.)
Mike Royce is the bartender, always an archetype of the profession: as he finishes up with a customer he sidles over to her drying a glass.
"Cheer up kid," he tells her as she swallows a mouthful of liquor, neat, without flinching. "Whatever it is, it can't be so bad."
(Royce has always managed to skirt the line between father-figure and lover, and his advice is sometimes sentimental, but he means wells, looks out for her. She doesn't have many friends, but she considers him one of her best.)
She makes a face. "I'm sitting around here marking time in this joint aren't I?"
"And how's that different from any other Thursday?"
She drains the glass and sets it down on the counter with a smack. "That's the problem," she says. "It's not."
Behind her, Jimmy is snapping his fingers and drawling out, "Chop chop doll, I don't got all day."
She can tell without turning around that the deal hasn't gone well and he'll be mean all afternoon.
Royce waves away her money. "He's your problem kid."
She shrugs, because he's right and she knows it, but Jimmy's got cush and most men don't these days, and it's still a helluva lot easier than anything else she might occupy her time with.
Besides, she's got a plan.
At night, there's a neon sign that flickers on and off, blue light buzzing, illuminating the alley and drawing business. She stubs out a cigarette beneath her heel as it casts her profile in indigo shadow. There's an envelope tucked into the pocket of her coat with instructions for one of Jimmy's boys. She's read them of course, committed them to memory, even though it never pays to know too much with mobsters. She can feign ignorance and you never know when a little dirt might be useful.
The sigh as she takes the first step down into the club is swallowed by jazz.
Either Royce keeps a fresh martini just the way she likes it beneath the bar at all times or he has an eerie sixth sense. Either way, when her coat is safely stowed away, he hands her a drink. This time he takes her money and, under the guise of giving her change, passes her a wad of notes.
She frowns, "It's too much."
"It's not." Royce frowns back. "Don't grift him on my behalf kid. I do alright."
With a small shrug, her gloved fingers tuck the money into a small split in the lining of her clutch. "Have you seen Coonan?"
"Not tonight. Only one who's remarkable is that suit in the front. He hasn't been in before."
She follows his gaze, nods. "Well. Newcomers are always good for business."
"Maybe," Royce says. She infers from his tone that this stranger might mean an upset. It piques her interest.
When the bartender turns to serve another customer, her gloved fingers close around the stem of her drink and she sips at it, spears the olive and raises it to her lips in a poor tribute to an evening meal.
Her eyes travel the room and she waits.
Only part of her business is done, but Marla knows where to find her and Royce is right, Coonan is nowhere to be seen. The dancer appears first, smiles, and they exchange talk until another wad of money changes hands. She peels off a few bills and hands them back. "You should keep this."
"Kate." Marla has her hands on her hips.
"Don't be a daft Marla. The girls need it more than he does."
"He'll be mean about it."
"You let me worry about that."
Surreptitiously she slips the bills into the top of her stockings beneath her skirt and the conversation ends, because Marla has to get back stage.
Before she sees she senses someone watching her. When she looks up, their mysterious stranger is at the other end of the bar and knows she's caught him looking, and he smiles at her instead of looking away. His eyes are tracking her body but it's not the idle gaze of desire – it settles where other men's eyes might but it wanders from there – and when she stares him down she sees she has found an equal, that he is sizing her up and puzzling her out just as she is him.
Beckett gives him an inviting grin in return, lets her hair fall over her shoulder and takes a seat at an empty table closest to the shadowy corner she occupies.
Moments later, he joins her.
(That smile is bait and most men take it, but she has the sense he's only toying with the idea of her hook.)
They're facing the stage, not each other.
"A fresh face," she says, conversationally. Her eyes dart sideways, glance over his face but he catches her at it. "I haven't seen you before."
"No," he responds, evenly, holding her eyes. "You haven't."
"You've been watching me for almost as long as I've been here," she accuses, but it's light, playful and there's only a hint of the steel behind it that he hears.
"Yes." He smiles. "But you must be used to that."
"I find that being watched by strange men is something one never gets used to."
"Forgive me then." He holds out a hand. "Richard Castle."
Her eyes narrow and she appraises him for a long moment before she takes his hand, shakes it like one of Jimmy's boys would. "Katherine Beckett."
Even beneath her gloves, she can tell his fingers are warm and he brushes a thumb over her knuckles before he drops her hand.
"So." She pulls her hand back into her lap and runs the fingers of the other over it to smooth over the memory of the contact. "What brings you to the Butterfly Mister Castle?"
"Just the usual. I was told there would be beautiful women –"
His smile is suggestive as he says it, and for a moment she forgets to be anything but flattered. She blinks because it surprises her. It's been a very long time since she wasn't immune to sweet talking from men.
"– I wasn't misled."
She has been the sole object of his focus since before they spoke which tells her two things: his real intent is something he feels the need to hide and he is the dangerous kind of charming (the kind that she normally fancies herself).
The honest edge to it is the worst (or best) part, because his curiosity is genuine when he asks her, "What about you Miss Beckett?"
It has also been a long time since she's been addressed as anything except a real looker doll or honey you are one ripe tomato. But she dissects his expression with precision because it's as though somehow he knew to show off his manners, knew that she'd soften at the formality. She's not sure she likes being read as well as she reads people.
"Royce mixes a mean martini," is the excuse she offers him.
They make eyes at each other over their drinks, each knowing the other is lying, sharing conspiratorial smiles. Royce is right, he's probably going to make trouble, but a part of her has always been drawn to such disasters. And besides, this silent poker game they've started playing is the first surprise she's had in months.
The thrill of something entirely new is in her step the entire way home.
Jimmy's out when she gets in. She unwraps herself from her coat in the hall and removes her earrings, holding them in her palm as her shoes make noise against the wooden floors. The house is dark and hers is the only noise; she enjoys the solitude.
She has changed out of her dress and is unpinning her hair in the mirror when he finally stumbles in, fresh with whiskey and cigarette smoke and that means poker, but he's smirking, so that means he won. She turns her head and smiles at him in greeting.
"Did yer get the job done?" he asks.
"Not tonight," she tells him, playing with fire because he's drunk, and he's never been shy with his fists. "Coonan didn't show."
Jimmy scowls, lights a cigarette. "You were probably distracted by your whore friends."
"Hey, whatever they do for it, they keep you in money."
"Speaking of." He holds out his hand and she deposits a wad of bills into it, his share of Royce's takings and a cut of the girls'. He sucks on the cigarette while he counts it with both hands and she holds her breath, listening to the brush of paper on paper and waiting.
"Three hundred bucks. You gotta be kidding me Katie." He glares at her in the mirror and she flinches when he calls her that; it belongs to her father and she hates it when this man borrows it from a good one. "Lord knows I ain't the smartest, but I ain't that stupid and I know when I'm being played."
She knows for a fact and all the illegal card games he's taken her to that that statement is a lie.
"Takings are down Jimmy. You read the papers. They don't call it a Great Depression for nothing."
"You've been lettin' the girls keep their tips again."
"They earned them."
He's rough when he's angry and he pulls her up from the vanity by the elbow, yanking too hard. Struggling makes it worse, but not struggling adds insult to injury so she does. When he shoves her into it, she falls against the mattress, glares at him in the mirror while he sweeps half of her things to the floor. Most of them are gifts, things he buys her to apologise for outbursts like this, and there are few she cares about. He knows what they are though, makes sure the box with her mother's ring in it and her father's watch falls first, so hard that the lid pulls free of one of its hinges and the glass face of the wristwatch cracks.
And then he turns to her, grips her chin between his thumb and forefinger and jerks her face up to look at him when she hides it behind her hair. She knows he's a violent man, has known, since the first, and sometimes he hits her but most times he doesn't.
Like tonight, most times he sees something on her face – fear or sadness or maybe she just looks like his mother – and sinks to his knees in front of her, petting her hair, crying, saying you make me so mad sometimes and I'm so sorry baby over and over.
She gives him a contrite and pitying look, smooths her thumb over his cheek and hugs him against her shoulder.
Sometimes she thinks he doesn't really want to be the way he is, that he's like her in lots of ways because like her, life has never really given him a choice.
In the morning, she takes three crisp bills from beneath the loose floorboard in the hall and walks down to the end of the block where Mister Fischer fixes things. He used to be a watchmaker, but his business has expanded since the crash, whatever helps make ends meet.
She puts the pieces of the box and the wrist watch on the counter and waits until he looks up from his book. It has a German title. (He hides his accent well, but she's always known he was an immigrant. She wonders sometimes, what he has seen.)
"Miss Beckett," he says, regarding her over the tops of his glasses. "Or am I dreaming?"
She rewards him with a look that humours him and dismisses his flattery at the same time. And then she laughs, once. "Henry, stop it, you'll break my heart."
"Ma'am, I would not."
"Can you fix the box again?"
"I have told you before, you have to get a hold on those clumsy fingers of yours."
She nearly tells him that her fingers aren't clumsy, never have been, that as a matter of fact, she's rather good with her hands. But he thinks she's sweet, sees an innocence in her that she's sure she's lost, and it's not work. She charms for business, not pleasure. "I guess I do."
He eyes her, and she gets the sudden sense that the old man can see right through her stories.
"It must belong to someone special for you to keep coming back like this."
She lays a ten dollar bill on the counter, far more than the work is worth, but Mister Fischer respects her, even though everyone in the neighbourhood knows the truth about Jimmy and everyone in the neighbourhood knows the truth about her. Maybe it's because he knows something of belonging nowhere, of always being outside. She's always had the sense that unlike most men, he isn't simply charmed by her looks.
"It belonged to my mother," she tells him.
"Well I'm sorry to hear that Miss," he says, the wisdom of years showing in the way he interprets her words. "Because I gather by your tone that's she's no longer with us."
"No." Her voice is measured. "She's not."
They share a moment of silent sympathy, each knowing what it is like to lose family to tragedy.
tbc