Disclaimer: The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.
A/N: This is a reposting of chapter 2, because I incorrectly formatted it, rendering it all but unreadable. My apologies!
The unflappable Kate Beckett—bad-ass homicide cop Badge Number 41319 and don't you forget it, buddy—is in a full-blown flap. How the hell is she going to get out of here? Here, the ladies room, and the more important here, the skin-singeing situation with Castle. Ugh, she is so sweaty. A few minutes more in this bathroom stall and she'll probably be able to slide out the door on her sweat.
Even in her manic state, she's aware that someone just opened the ladies' room door. It can't be knows-no-boundaries Castle, can it? She's not sure if she's breathing well enough to get oxygen to her brain. Wait. Whoever it is has gone into the adjoining stall. Kate steels herself, then leans down a little so that she can see the feet under the partition. Are there size-12 loafers attached to those legs?
Thank God, they're stilettos. It's the captain. Beckett needs a plan, fast. She's trained to disarm hopped-up gangbangers and homicidal maniacs in a nanosecond, so surely she can come up with something now. Yes! She'll open her stall door, wash her hands and loiter by the sink until Captain Gates emerges. Beckett needs to stay on her superior's good side, to cultivate her good will, assuming that she has any.
"Sir," Beckett says, her hand raised to her face and obscuring half of it. "I hope you don't mind my saying that those are really beautiful shoes. Beautiful."
Gates is briefly taken aback. "Thank you, Detective," she says, and then waits a beat. "Is there something bothering Mister Castle?"
"What, sir? No!"
"Well, he's standing by your desk, looking far more flustered than usual. And he's oddly silent."
"Ah. Right. He's probably worried about my mouth. I mean tooth, worried about my tooth. I cracked a tooth just now," Beckett mumbles through lying lips. "I called my dentist and luckily he had a cancellation. He can squeeze me in if I can be there in fifteen minutes."
"Go on then, Detective. I can't have you wandering around here gap-toothed."
"Yes, sir," Beckett says, all but flinging herself to the stairs to get out of the precinct.
When Gates walks back through the bullpen, she finds Castle still standing in the same spot, looking as if he had been painlessly Tasered. "Your partner has gone to the dentist, Mister Castle, so why don't you go on home?" He looks blankly at her. "The dentist, Mister Castle, to get her cracked tooth repaired."
"Oh." It's really all he can manage, until he summons up a croaky "Night, sir." Somehow, without having to resort to the compass on his phone, he manages to steer himself to the elevator and then out into the sweltering streets. There, with the luck of the supremely rich and the befuddled, he immediately finds a cab to take him home.
He's still dumbstruck. How many minutes have passed since the magical moment in which Beckett groped him? Accidentally groped him. Apparently accidentally, you know what Freud said about accidents. And who is he to question Freud, especially in a sexually charged atmosphere? Where did Beckett go, anyway? Definitely not the dentist.
OK, they need to talk. Ha! There's some familiar territory. They've avoided talking about the freezer and the undercover kiss, but this, this is the big one. No pun intended, he doesn't mind saying. And Kate—yes, right now she's Kate—couldn't help but have noticed. He saw it in her eyes, and eyes are a dead giveaway. The pupils most of all, and her pupils were obliterating her irises. Yeah, this is the elephant in the room, and he doesn't mean the elephant in the giant photo that's overlooking his bed. Whoa, maybe he should keep his thoughts away from his bed. Oh, the cab has turned onto Broome Street. He's home. He should try to decide how to approach Beckett, but he's still too happily addled.
Beckett, as Castle so accurately surmised even in his overheated state, is not at the dentist. She's at home, behind triple-locked doors; she has shed her work clothes and poured herself a drink that could fell a 400-pound bouncer. She texts Gates to say that the dentist is saving her tooth, but that she will be have to be out for the rest of the afternoon. Will the wrath of God descend on her for lying to a captain in the NYPD? Her captain? Well, she was stuck on the case anyway. It would be better to take a breather and come back to it tomorrow, refreshed. Oh, there's nothing like rationalization to soothe the soul, except she's not feeling at all soothed.
Put on your big-girl pants, she thinks to herself as she notices that she's wearing only a flimsy camisole and boy shorts. Imagine what Castle would do if he saw her in those. Forget it. Not going to happen, at least not yet. She'll just go to Castle's loft and apologize. No harm, no foul. We're all grown-ups here, or not. That's it, she'll go. She can think well on her feet. Look how she handled Gates in the ladies room.
Half an hour later, she's standing at Castle's door, finally finding the courage to ring the bell. Please let him not be here, please, please. The door swings open, and a redheaded human bird of paradise swathed in a dress of indescribable colors greets her.
"Katherine! What a lovely surprise! Do come in," Martha says. "Are you here about Richard?" Kate is suddenly rendered mute. "Richard, dear. Do you know what's up with him?"
"Up?" Kate squeaks, trying to banish any image of "up" connected with Castle.
"Yes, well he came back from the precinct looking as if he had been hit by something, but confused, you know? I asked him if anything were wrong and he just said, 'muh, muh, muh.' I thought at first he was trying to say 'Mother,' but apparently not. He grabbed some ice cubes, put them in a glass, went into his office and shut the door. It was the oddest thing."
Beckett finds her voice. "Martha, would it be all right if I looked in on him? Maybe it's something to do with the, er, case we've been working on."
"Of course. I'm on my way out, so I'll leave you two alone."
Alone? Why did Martha have to say 'alone'? Why couldn't she have stayed, flittering and hovering? Beckett knocks lightly on the office door, pushes it and sees Castle by the window. Bite the bullet, she thinks, tear off the Band-Aid, just get this over with. God, this whole mess has reduced her to a barely held together bunch of cliches, another in a litany of embarrassments.
"Castle?" she says at last, as they eye each other from an uncomfortably comfortable distance. "Um. I don't really know where to start. I thought I did, but I don't. This is really hard."
"Hard, Beckett? Hard? Well, as I remember your saying to me once, you have no idea."
TBC
A/N Thank you so much for all the reviews, favorites and follows. They came out of left field, and you've made me, a rookie, stunned and happy. Special thanks to Liv Wilder, FF writer extraordinaire, for the cheerleading.
