Prompted by Kait who knows exactly what to say to make me write her something Happy Galentine's/Valentine's Day.
I.
She's annoyed. Annoyed that he's here and that he weaseled his way into following her around just because he knows a guy and that he brings her coffee and knows what she's like but that's not the end of it. She's far more annoyed that when she pulls up to the crime scene at 5:30 this morning he's already there, talking with the uniforms next to their victim. Her victim. The victim.
He must hear the car door close because he looks over and immediately starts walking her way, two cups of coffee in his hand.
"Good morning, Sunshine," he smirks, extending one of the cups towards her, "It looks like you could use this."
She was only supposed to be on call this weekend, and had stayed up stupidly late reading one of the many books that she hadn't had the chance to start and had only been asleep for a few hours when the call came in. He must have bribed a uniform to have them call him if something came up, because god knows she wouldn't have called him if it was up to her.
She's trying to come up with a retort when she hears another car door close. She looks away and see's Lanie setting down her coroner's bag by the body and crouching down to get to work. She rolls her eyes at him instead of saying anything and takes the coffee he's still holding out of his hand before she walks over to Lanie, pulling her gloves out of her pocket before crouching down on the other side of the body.
"Girl," Lanie says, "you got yourself coffee and didn't bring me anything?"
"I didn't bring it," she mutters, not looking away from the victim, "Castle gave it to me when I got here."
She can sense Lanie shifting to look at her, but dammit she's not in the mood to talk about this right now.
"Are you telling me that man not only beat you to a crime scene but he also made the time to make you a cup of coffee?"
"Yes." She hopes that's the end of it, but when Lanie doesn't move or say anything else, she finally looks up, and when she speaks again she can't keep the exasperation out of her voice as she says, "What, Lanie?"
Lanie looks away, her face the picture of innocence as she looks down at the body.
"Nothing," she says, "It's just cute. That's all."
She hears his footsteps walking towards her before she can respond to Lanie and the desire to
"So," he says, far too awake and excited for her tastes, "what did I miss?"
"Nothing," she says quickly. She lifts her coffee to her lips without thinking, the first sip warming her body all the way through. She closes her eyes at the feeling before she realizes what she's doing, when she realizes what she's doing, her eyes snap open, and she glances slightly towards him, hoping that it wasn't noticeable.
He's smirking at her.
Damn him.
II.
She's balancing on the tips of her toes trying to get that shelf she really needs to stop putting stuff on. She huffs the hair out of her face, annoyed with its current length for the umpteenth time that day, and she lets out a little cheer when she pulls the jar she was reaching for from its spot on her shelf of unopened, replacement food jars. That should work well.
He'd been talking all day since he got that Russian lollipop while they had been canvasing. Whenever there was a break in the murder conversation, he would talk about how the lollipop wasn't really a good lollipop by normal standards, but that different people become accustomed to different tastes and textures throughout childhood, and that what may be gross to some people is actually really delicious to other people. He acted like they didn't already know that, but then he started spitting out facts from some obscure Swedish study that had been published the year before and he just wouldn't stop talking.
"Like Alexis," he'd said, "she likes sweets, and she likes savory, but she doesn't like to mix the two together. I, on the other hand, grew up taking spoonfuls of peanut butter and adding a dollop of whipped cream –"
"That's disgusting," she'd said.
"Hey don't knock it until you've tried it, Detective. It's perfectly pleasing to the palate."
She hates herself as she opens up the jar of peanut butter and peels the seal off the lid before she heads to the fridge.
Maybe it was the fact that he wouldn't stop talking, or the fact that she had just gone on her run after such a long day and her body was demanding that she give it sugar, but she pulls out the can of whipped cream she keeps in the fridge for days when she feels like treating herself to a little extra sweet and grabs a spoon on the way back to the jar of peanut butter. She knows this isn't going to be good but she can't stop the curiosity that's bubbled up inside of her chest, as if trying this is going to make her understand who Richard Castle is as a person.
Her phone rings. She picks up the call and uses her shoulder to hold it up to her ear.
"Beckett."
"Hey. Hear me out. What if our victim was a member of the KGB?"
She rolls her eyes as she dips her spoon into the jar of peanut butter.
"Castle, if our victim was a member of the KGB, don't you think there would have been evidence left behind of the murderer? I don't think she would go down without a fight."
He's quiet for a minute and she takes the cap off of the whipped cream with her teeth, shaking it slightly for a moment before she began to put some on top of her spoonful of peanut butter.
"What's that noise?"
She stops dead, dropping the spoon onto the counter with a loud clang and she knows that he knows.
"OH MY GOD –"
"Shut up, Castle, it's not a big deal."
"You're eating my snack!"
He sounds so excited that she finds her lips turning upwards without her consent and she quickly tamps it down before he hears that through the phone, too.
"I didn't even know you would be the type of person to have whipped cream in your home, Beckett. Unless you keep it for when you have –"
"Goodnight, Castle."
She hangs up the phone and throws the spoon into her mouth without thinking and pauses for a moment as she lets it sit on her tongue. It's… not good. She's right. But she can imagine little Richard Rodgers eating this on the counter of his apartment, a younger version of his mother simultaneously wanting to yank the spoon from his mouth, but not stifle his creativity and imaginative spirit in the process. She shakes her head and begins to put all of the ingredients away when her phone buzzes with a text. She doesn't even have to check to know that it's from him.
I've got loads of sweet-tooth secrets, Beckett. All you ever have to do is ask.
III.
She doesn't know when it started happening. Better yet, she doesn't know when she let him start getting away with it.
In this building, in her career, she's built herself up around her last name. There are very few people who get away with calling her by her first name, especially in this building, to the point where sometimes she forgets that Beckett isn't her first name at all. It comes so naturally at this point in her life. Detective Beckett. She had to stop herself from saying her name was Beckett when she met that doctor in the bar the other night -
He comes running into the bullpen with her coffee in one hand, chanting her name as he rushes in and spins out of the way of the officers that are actually getting paid to be there and she tries to avoid the knowing stare from Montgomery in his office at the same time she tries to hide her smile. When he reaches her desk he looks slightly panicked, and there's a moment when she's nervous that something is actually wrong.
"Kate! Thank god you're here."
He puts down her coffee and sits in his chair, simultaneously moving it closer to her with his foot.
"My daughter has a boyfriend."
She rolls her eyes as she picks up her coffee. She should've known.
"I thought she's been seeing this boy for a while now?"
He nods, "She has been. But now it's official. He's her boyfriend."
"She's a teenager, Castle. She's bound to have boyfriends."
He blanches a little bit at her pluralization and she hides her smile behind her coffee as he tries to recover.
"But this one is different," he sputters, "he's older and smart, and what happens if they break up but she realizes that she likes older men and then she starts dating someone 10 years olde-"
"Relax, Papa Bear. I don't think Goldilocks is going to be sleeping in any strangers beds."
He chokes on his coffee and she almost feels sorry for him. These past few years she's watched his daughter grow up, and she knows he's having a hard time dealing with it.
"Castle, she'll be fine. She's a smart girl. She'll figure out what's best for her."
His eyes soften a little bit, his face returning to its normal color as he takes a deep breath.
"You're right," he says, sounding more like he's trying to convince himself that it's true, "Of course you're right."
She gives him a small smile and turns back to the stack of folders in front of her, opening one while she twists a pen between practiced fingers.
"Hey Kate?"
When she looks up at him, he's staring at her, all nervousness gone.
"Thank you."
She doesn't respond, but she smiles at him again. He smiles back, takes out his phone, and settles back into his chair, content to sit in silence for at least a moment while she tries to finish her stack of work and not think about the fact that he came to her with his problem and not his publisher/ex-wife/current girlfriend.
She pretends she doesn't notice that Montgomery is still looking at them.
IV.
She can't help it.
She can usually control it. Usually. When her PTSD rocked her to the core, she managed to keep her distance from him. When the bank exploded it was a little bit harder to manage, but she did.
She's angry at him – even angrier at herself for the fact that her car is sitting at the bottom of the Hudson River and she's sitting in the backseat of an SUV next to Castle and his ex-muse is in the front seat, silently fuming and refusing to tell them anything. Her hair still isn't dry and she feels so grimy for how this has played out so far. She hates that she's lying to the boys because of Sophia, hates that Castle still has this implicit undeniable trust in this woman, hates that she feels the need to trust her as well even though her gut is telling her that something isn't right about this entire situation.
When she looks over at him, though… He looks so unlike himself. He's staring straight ahead out the windshield, hardly blinking as the city disappears around them and they begin to make their way to their destination, a building they still haven't seen the outside of, and she's sure there will be hoods tossed from the front seat any moment to keep them in the dark.
She doesn't care about that. Not anymore. The man sitting next to her saved her life. Again. He pulled her from a sinking car and pulled her out of the river and she wants to tell him that she loves him. She really thinks she'll love him for the rest of her life and she's sitting in a car with him and a woman he used to call his muse and she's still not ready. She's not ready but she's close and he saved her life again tonight and maybe that's enough.
She can't help it then, and she moves before she can talk herself out of it. She only does it when she's sure that Sophia isn't glaring at them in the rearview mirror, and it's awkward because of the distance, but she leans over, as quietly as she can across the leather seats, and lets her head rest on his shoulder. It only lasts a second, her temple bumping against his jacket before she returns to her side of the backseat, her eyes refusing to leave him.
He breaks eye contact with the outside world and looks over at her. He doesn't smile, doesn't do anything except stare right at her with the same expression that was on his face earlier, and she doesn't register his movement until she feels his fingers brush against the back of her hand. Her skin breaks out in goosebumps, but when she feels him start to pull away she stops him, winding her index finger around his own to keep the backs of their hands touching on the seats.
When Sophia looks back at them again, he hooks his finger around hers, grounding her to him, even as he shifts to look back out the window.
She's angry at him, and she's so very angry at herself and Sophia and this case, but she smiles.
She doesn't feel as empty as she imagined she would have.
There's an anticipation that's fizzling up through her chest and out towards her fingertips as she takes the stairs two at a time to get to her final destination. Once she decided where she was going, autopilot had taken over, and she got here in record time. She's sure she looks awful, and if she could play this out any other way she'd be dry and made-up in a dress that would leave him speechless but she thinks that this is almost better, more true to character.
She should have known that this was where she was going to end up. She leaves a trail in her wake as she moves and while she's sure she'll have more reservations in the morning right now she doesn't care who follows it. She doesn't care who will follow her path of water-stained footprints right to her door. She knows they won't be surprised that it's come down to this moment. Her fist taps on the surface and of his door and she lets out a breath as she waits.
They've always been running towards this.
"What do you want, Beckett?"
There's a moment of fear when the adrenaline stops pumping and she truly realizes that this is going to change everything. She doesn't know how this is going to play out, but she knows he deserves the truth that's racing her heart up her throat, so when she opens her mouth she lets it free.
"You."
Inspired by the Thought Catalog article
4 Really Obvious Signs You Two Are More than 'Just Friends'
by Julie D. Andrews