Summer Heat
Chapter 1
Heat is making them sluggish. It is making the air thick in the precinct saturated with everyday smells in unrelenting stagnant concentration, mixing with perspiration and making them unbearably irritating. A shocking few of New York's elder finest seem unflappable. Never once rolling up a sleeve, never needing to mop a brow, veterans of a time when air conditioning was a luxury and no guarantee. The rest are a quietly grumbling mess of sweat stains and as much exposed flesh as can be allowed without actually removing any major articles of clothing. Slowly the prison of closed-toed shoes had begun being slipped off under desks until the smell of well-footrace-worn shoes, feet, and the sour peppermint tang of Oder-Eaters that quit working long ago overpowered any other smell. Growing so pungent that Captain Gates - in classic red power suit with rolled up sleeves and unbuttoned jacket revealing a bright blue silk lining and matching camisole - demanded all shoes replaced to their rightful owner's feet immediately and for the rest of the day.
Castle himself has his formerly crisp white dress shirt unbuttoned down nearly to his torso and sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He would remove it completely if he were not absolutely certain Gates would yell and make him go home if he wore nothing more than blue jeans and an undershirt.
He wishes he'd brought his laptop in this morning. His phone lost its allure hours ago after checking twitter, browsing his favorite writing blogs, the news, trolling the message boards of his own website, twitter, a few games, twitter again. His battery is going and there is nothing new to see. Not on the whole internet. He's seen it all. Feels like it anyway. He could be writing. Should be writing. Instead he is trying not to stare at Beckett as she squints at paperwork while he, out of sheer boredom and some strange writer quirk of need, catalogs the smells in the open room.
First is people. Not a bad smell, just people. Soaps and shampoos, antiperspirants, hairsprays, and colognes all mixed with sweat and fabric softener.
Next is coffee. Not the lovely smell of freshly made espresso but coffee from the pot that is inexplicably still in the break room despite the beautifully crafted work of Italian engineering sitting right next to it on the counter. Whatever. If people still want to drink coffee that tastes like hot asphalt then more power to them, no skin off his nose just so long as he and his don't have to drink it. It's burning. The trace amount of 'coffee' that is still in the pot, condensing and scorching on the heating element. Cooking down to a hot, bitter brew until it is inevitably poured out and fresh hell is percolated.
Then there are the office smells, office smells that are a cousin to library smells. Scents he loves. That paper and ink combination that makes that newsprint cocktail tinged with mildew. It is faint but he notices it. Ancient office furniture contributes. Filing cabinets filled with long forgotten scraps of decomposing paper. Certain things in the precinct are new. Computers are relatively new, obviously, the metal tables and chairs in the interrogation rooms and the like, but so much of everything else is old. He'll go with 'vintage' or 'well worn' but really they are old. Like the green leather sofa or his own chair. The chair's thick brown burlap covering releases a faint must that maybe only he can smell. That chair cannot have been made any more recently than 1973. Younger than he is, sure, but still older than his partner.
Last, best, is Beckett. Kate. Yeah. Sweaty Kate. Perhaps the best Kate. He knows all her smells best of all. Shampoo that is fruitier than he always thinks she would use. It's all coconut and lime and every time he gets a hint of it in the air it makes him crave a pina colada and her. That sandalwood-y body wash that has just the barest hint of spice. Eucalyptus maybe? And cherry chapstick. THE cherry chapstick. The same one that when he first noticed it years ago was smitten like he was in the 5th grade again. Like the first girl he ever kissed - really kissed, not just a peck under the monkey bars. Her lips tasted like grape soda. It appeals to him. That base part of him that is a boy with a serious crush. Beckett wears cherry chapstick. And it's hot.
"You're staring again."
He is. He doesn't deny it, only shrugs. She is stating the obvious not complaining. Beckett rolls her neck, pulls her arms up over her head, straightens her legs, feet pointed, and stretches until she's almost completely out of her desk chair. Whether she is giving him something more to stare at intentionally or not doesn't matter. It is a beautiful view.
She releases the stretch with the small grunt and pulls at her button-down as she sits straight again. She can feel Castle's appreciative gaze on her. It's doing nothing to cool off the stifling heat. Like the white dress shirt that has wilted down and is clinging to his back and shoulders, molded to every dip and curve of muscle and bone. That's not helping either. She is trying not to look. She has done surprisingly well at focusing on the paperwork in front of her but the heat is getting to her, making her brain slow and focus wane. Think about something else.
Beckett bores a hole in bottom of her coffee cup with her eyes. As if she does it long enough she will be able to manifest a fresh cup. A solid minute but nothing happens. She sets the cup down with a sigh and pushes back in her chair grasping the backs of the armrests with clammy fingers.
They need a murder. It is terrible and she hates herself a little for even thinking it but it's the truth. They are every one of them going to go stir-crazy sitting, stewing, in this heat with nothing to do but paperwork, the occasional deftly hidden game of solitaire, and muffled curses or prayers for the A/C repair men to work faster. She isn't wishing for a murder, honest; but if one has to take place, and statistically it must, then it needs to happen in their jurisdiction. That is just all there is to it.
Ryan and Esposito aren't fairing any better by the looks of it. Their good-natured jabs at one another this morning turned to less than good-natured ones by late morning; a rare showing of a spat between the two driven only by duel frustration. Castle (more humorously accurate than she admitted to him) referring to it as a lovers quarrel. The last hour a tentative peace treaty of quiet "thanks, bro"s and "no problem, man"s has led to ruling peace. They too need some real work to sink their teeth into.
The entire precinct is unusually quiet, Castle included. It's eerie. He sits, legs loosely crossed, running absentminded fingers around the label of his half-frozen water bottle. He had the forethought to place an armload of bottles in the freezer this morning. Half an hour ago he triumphantly pulled a half-frozen bottle out and pressed it against his face. She tried not to laugh at his exaggerated glee and succeeded in only smiling wide and asking if he and the bottle needed to be alone. Her joke backfired with his muttered "maybe" and him running the already perspiring bottle down the side of his face and across the stubble on his chin, leaving fat tears of water rolling down his neck. She wondered if she licked them off his skin the drops would still feel cool on her tongue. Beckett swallowed her smile down thickly and returned to her paperwork.
That same bottle now sits creating a puddle on the coaster, shrinking iceberg rapidly melting within the plastic. Castle watches it now out of evident boredom like it is entertainment and not simply a water bottle. Every new bead of sweat it forms and builds and starts to slide down under its own weight he catches, licks them up with the pads of his fingers.
She's staring at him, at those wet fingers. She pulls her eyes away, strangles on a swallow, her throat a desert, and tries to blink the image of those moist, methodical fingertips patiently working over her.
"You okay?"
"Hmm? Yeah." The word latches in her throat, she tries swallowing again. "Yeah, just thirsty."
"Here."
He passes her the water bottle and her eyes widen without her permission. As if somehow he is offering something more entirely than just a sip of water.
"No cuties, promise."
She laughs. It's awkward and loud but it makes him smile. She takes the bottle from him but doesn't drink.
"I'll go make us some coffee."
Oh, coffee. Yes. Maybe staring into her cup did work. She is manifesting coffee, just in a different way.
As he walks behind her before snatching her cup off the desk he slicks two ice-cold, still wet fingers along the back of her neck under the sheet of tumbling hair.
She gasps and he rumbles a laugh as he walks away, as if he thinks that it is the cold that makes her gasp. As if it is a silly, harmless prank. It isn't. Oh, it isn't. Not the way the flush runs up her body and into her cheeks. Not the way her heart pounds so hard and fast that blood is a rushing river in her ears and heat floods her veins. Beckett is so eternally grateful that Ryan and Esposito are focused on being pleasantly civil to each other that they missed the whole thing. They would ridicule her until she threatened them if had they seen it.
How had Castle not seen it? How could he possibly not know at this point how his touch affects her? Was he not paying attention to her reaction when he rubbed circles into her hand that night at her apartment? Clueless man. He needs to be more careful.
A lone droplet of water slides from where he placed it on her neck down into the dark recesses of her collar in a slow decent and she wonders how soon she'll be able to return home to her air conditioning and a cold shower.