DISCLAIMER: Amazingly I still don't own Castle, despite my generous offer of three dollars and the missing button from my coat, miraculously found today in my washing machine.
Play dumb. The man is probably bluffing; it's practically his chosen career path after writing.
Kate turned around, forcing herself to look him in the eye.
"Castle, what, exactly, am I supposed to have done?"
He grinned at her, rubbing his palms to together in that let's play, Kate way he had that she'd already schooled herself not to react to.
"You know, Becks, I've seen what a buzz it is for you, catching high-end crooks, malicious murderers, thieving..."
"Thieves?" She suggested.
"Thank you. But now, I know what the buzz feels like, I understand the attraction because-"
Castle glided closer to her, his steps punctuating each word.
"-I. Caught. You."
She frowned up at him, ignoring the fact looming an accurate term for his proximity to her. "Buzz is your choice of adjective?"
He waved a hand. "Let's not quibble over descriptions, Detective. The point is, you looked through my private notebooks, I saw you do it, and now..."
He bent, and whispered in her ear.
"I get to punish you."
She raised a brow, ignoring the heat rushing to her cheeks. "Oh, that was original."
He grinned at her. "Are you going to deny it? Because that could be fun."
She pondered her options. "I could do that. Or I could ignore you and call it a night."
She stepped forward; he stepped into her path.
"Or I could bring this up around the water cooler tomorrow. Your choice."
Castle moved aside with gentlemanly after you gesture.
She smiled, grimly. This is what happens when you don't deny your impulses, Kate.
She hadn't planned on snooping. It was pure, spur-of-the-moment, oh-look-Castle-hasn't-locked-away-his-notebook stuff. She'd just wanted to read a little of what he scribbled about day, after day, maybe get a look at how he worked, underneath all that ego and bluster and little-boy pouts.
And now she was going to have to plead insanity.
"Alright, Castle," she began, "I may have-"
"-May have?" He held up a finger. "Could you be a little more specific?"
Castle leant forward, looking left and right as if to impart confidential information.
"I have it on good authority if you don't get specific information confessions don't hold up in court."
He leant back, looking for all the world as if Obama had announced Topless Mondays.
He's going to milk this, and you're going to have to take it. And then you're going to have to find a way to kill him.
Kate gritted her teeth. "I looked, at 6.15pm, in your personal notebooks in the top right hand side of your drawer which you had left open due to the unforeseen circumstances of your mother hyperventilating on Broadway. I read three pages and put them back, during which you obviously saw me and decided to torture me."
He ignored the last sentence. "Actually, she was practicing hyperventilating for a part on Broadway. Alexis was worried. Needless to say hyperventilation is now banned in our household unless it's me. " He perked up. "But, that was an excellent confession Detective..."
She stilled, waiting for it.
"But we, the jury, still have not heard your reasoning for motive."
Kate bit her lip, then shrugged.
" Impulse control issues, too little caffeine. Who knows? I've gotta book, Castle. It's been real."
Castle shook his finger at her. "Nah-uh-uh."
She tensed up. He wasn't going to let her get away with deflection, tonight. Better to give him something than have him harp on for the next week about kleptomania and god knew what else.
"I wanted to see what it was like."
He cocked his head watching her. "You wanted to see what it was like to be you."
She blew out a breath, wishing he'd stop doing that thing that he did where he saw through her skin.
"Maybe." She threw in a shrug, hoped it looked nonchalant enough that she could get out of this conversation stat.
He smiled his wolf's grin her. "Do you want to hear what I think, Detective Beckett?"
Kate winced. "Not really?" she offered.
He made a buzzer noise into his fist. "Wrong answer, Becks- you snooped- I get to psycho-analyse you."
She rolled her eyes at him. "This from the man who thinks there's a deeper meaning to Twinkies."
He frowned. "Do not mock the Twinkies. This is a Twinkie Mocking Safe Zone. Certified by the FDA."
She nodded, gravely. "Ah. Can I go home?"
"No. Now, I think, that you were snooping though my files, grossly violating my personal space and operating way outside the bounds of ethics and morality-a real turn on, by the way- so that you could find something out what other people see in you. You don't know who you are."
She shook her head, vehemently. "I know who I am, Castle."
"No. You think you know, but, see-"
She cut him off with a jerk of her hand, raising her chin defensively. "I know who I am, Castle."
"No. You don't." He said it simply, so without his usual smugness that she got angry, rushing in to fill the vacuum his certainty created.
"What, you think the hours I work, the exhaustion, the dead bodies, the grieving relatives, all of it- you think I do this because I don't know who I am? You think I work my ass off every day, buried hip deep in other people's tragedies because I'm trying to find myself?" She pushed him aside.
Castle followed her as she stalked to her office window, shoved it open. She leant out, breathing in the cold city air, willing it to chill the frustration she felt with him.
With herself, for letting him get to her.
He spoke, and she closed her eyes, pulled her Detective Beckett cloak around herself again. Tried to hear the meaning and not the words.
"You know, very clearly, who you are when you're in this office, Kate. You know who you are when you put on the badge, when you dress in those killer boots and your power colours- red or blue, depending on how bad the case is. You know who you are here, regardless of whether you have station coffee or a gun in your hand."
He paused, waiting, and she nodded, once, opening her eyes to stare out at the city.
"But do you know who you are when you take off your cop's clothes, Detective? When you stand naked in front of your bathroom mirror and wonder who that girl is with all the scars? Do you know how other people see you? Beyond the cop, beyond the woman who works herself past exhaustion everyday because she doesn't know who she is without the work that keeps her purposeful, keeps her quietly desperate for something else?"
He stepped up close. She spun, noted they were almost nose to nose, and stilled, putting on her impersonation of someone that didn't much care if she was touched or not.
She raised her chin and stared at him.
"What do you want, Castle?"
"You looked though my notes on Nicky Heat, so you could see if what I think of you matched up to what you think of you."
He cupped a hand to her cheek, stroked his thumb down her face, once.
"You're not a case you can solve, Beckett."
She sighed. "I know, Castle."
He smiled, suddenly, and dropped his hand.
"But, you know what solves everything? Sex. Let's totally have some."
Kate struggled furiously to control her smile. The damn man always made her laugh at the exact wrong moment. She fixed a stare at him.
"Yeah, Castle. We could just knock boots here in the office and really solve all my problems."
He didn't say anything, just kept watching her face, and the way he was watching her made her thoughts start to slow and lose their sure footing.
Made her realise she didn't know exactly how many steps she was ahead of Castle tonight.
She was about to start justifying, that she didn't actually mean they should knock boots, that, obviously, she was a little nuts. Anything to get him to let her go and be mortified in the comfort of her own home, when she felt her scarf being pulled slowly from around her neck.
The sensation sent a finger of pleasure trailing down her spine and her mouth parted slightly, but for the life of her she couldn't make anything come out.
She watched his eyes flick down to her lips and crinkle slightly, the way they did when he was-
Castle stepped back, gave her a butter-wouldn't-melt smile.
"Your scarf was crooked. Night, Becks."
-Up to something.
He swiftly crossed the room and disappeared out the door, leaving her staring after him.
She'd just managed to close her mouth and remember where she'd put her car keys when he popped his head back in.
"By the way Becks, I do hope you know this means war." He ducked out again.
She blinked. What war? She hadn't started any war. She'd just opened a damn drawer-
"-Castle? What war? This isn't funny!"
She leant back against her deck and looked at the ceiling beseechingly.
"Oh. Shit."
AUTHOR'S NOTES: What's happening? Who knows? Bet Detective Beckett will be feeling more like Kate in a few more chapters, though. Thanks so much for the read and reviews- you guys are making my week, here