12 Hours Earlier
In a last ditch effort to keep her from avoiding him for the umpteenth time that day, Castle grabbed hold of Kate's arm, fingers curled just below her elbow, and dragged his partner back with him inside the breakroom.
The look on her face after he did so was none too pleased. As he expected it would be, but it needed to be done. She just wouldn't stop running from him.
"Really?" she gives him a look, flicking her eyes down to the hand wrapped around her arm. "Are you sure you want to try manhandling me right now, Castle?"
"I'm not—" He pauses on a groan. Maddening, frustrating woman. "Kate, look, will you just stop for five minutes and talk to me? Please? I've tried asking nicely, I've waited until you weren't busy."
"In case you hadn't noticed, Castle, I'm still at work. Working. That means I'm busy. I don't have time for this."
A growl reverberates from deep in his throat as he runs the thick fingers of his free hand through his hair. She wants to avoid the issue, or rather, keep avoiding the issue. Being in a relationship with Kate Beckett did not make problems between them just magically disappear or cease to exist. It seemed to lead to more hurdles for them to jump over as time went by.
She's upset; of course she is. He'd said something that didn't agree with her, as he usually does, but this time she's not just annoyed, she's pissed off, and this is the fallout; passive aggression in the workplace and avoiding him whenever possible. But he's trying, isn't he? At least he's been trying to fix it. She just will not budge, won't give him a chance to—
"Now if you'll excuse me," she says, turning on her heel and that does it. He snaps.
"Damn it, Beckett!"
Silence.
His heart is pounding, his breathing quick, and she's just staring at him, mouth slightly agape, utterly taken aback by his sudden outburst.
The sound of footsteps approach from behind her and then Ryan and Esposito are poking their curious little heads inside the doorway. Great. Just great.
"Everything okay?" Ryan asks, both he and Esposito looking between the two of them with scrutinizing eyes.
Beckett looks to the boys cautiously, then back at him, and Castle makes the decision for them on what to tell the boys.
"Yeah," he says bitterly, brushing past her to reach over and grab their two reusable to-go cups from the counter. "Just fine," he adds, and she frowns, watching him, as if daring him to say something else. Instead he turns, heads to the opposite exit of the room.
"Where you goin', bro?" Esposito asks.
"Home," he tosses over his shoulder, defeated, and the three detectives watch in silence as he makes his way to the elevator.
Kate grits her teeth as she tears her eyes away from Castle's retreating form. With a shaky hand, she grabs an empty NYPD mug and pours some coffee into it, briskly adding in cream and sugar and stirring it with a rough hand. The boys look between each other, unsure of what to do, what to say to her. She knows they're curious; it's not often that they find her and Castle at odds with each other in this way, so they're worried, want to know what happened. She gets it, but she can't exactly be honest and reassuring with them without blowing their secret relationship out of the water. They've been suspicious enough already.
"Don't worry about it," she says, addressing their unasked questions, then goes for a subject change, "What else have you gotten on Brandy Palmer?"
Brandy Palmer was the victim of the current case they were on. She was a personal assistant for a global franchise, found beaten to death in her apartment two days ago. The team was still struggling to find any solid leads on who may have killed her.
Ryan steps forward, a little hesitantly. "Uh, nothing really. But we may have gotten a hit on her boss' financials that indicates Castle's sneaky suspicion of them embezzling money from the company may be spot on."
Her eyebrow quirks up in interest. Just what she needs, a distraction; something productive to immerse herself into right now, something to help her completely forget about Castle flipping his lid because he just doesn't think before he speaks and she's being stubborn again and neither one of them are good at this relationship thing but God help her, she's hopelessly in love with the guy and—
Ugh. Work. She needs to just work.
"Show me."
She's exhausted. After hours of trying to track down a money trail she was hoping would lead her to evidence that Leon Cartwright was embezzling money from his company, Sunstreet Electronics, she and the boys came up with nothing solid. Brandy Palmer was dead, something in Sunstreet's financials didn't add up, and when there's no known enemies or other reasons family and friends can think of that an upstanding citizen would end up beaten to death in her apartment, they couldn't shake the thought that maybe she'd not been so upstanding after all.
Her autopsy showed that she wasn't into drugs, didn't even have a trace of alcohol in her system, or her apartment for that matter. She lived in an excellent SoHo neighborhood, was loved by everyone they spoke to about her, but family and close friends admitted that she was rolling in debt from student loans. So, they thought, maybe she got greedy. Money is always a strong motive for crime, especially murder. Leon Cartwright is a high-powered CEO of a global franchise and his personal assistant was dead. Perhaps Brandy caught on to some questionable activity and blackmailed him. Leon would have the means and opportunity for hiding his tracks, certainly the money to hold her at bay for the moment until he could call in a hit and take care of the problem.
They just hadn't found it yet, the key to the mystery. And despite her efforts to throw herself into her work and forget about Castle, it wasn't working. She needed her partner in on this and he wasn't there. He wasn't there, because they were fighting again, and that was never a recipe that made for efficient crime solving. He helped her think outside the box, but now she couldn't even concentrate and it only made the situation all the more frustrating for her.
She made a run at Cartwright in his office before she headed home for the night, feeling a little confrontational and needing to let off some steam. She was hoping he'd slip up, hoping that she'd be able to catch something that might give her something she needed. Instead, after a twenty minute chat of him talking circles around her questions, he calmly instructed one of his hulking bodyguards to show her the door when she boldly asked him if he was confident in his skills at playing hide and seek.
He flinched—she saw it—but it still gave her nothing to go on for now and needless to say, she was already in a foul mood before. Now she was fuming.
And that foul mood was about to grow even worse now that she turned the corner from the elevator of her building and found Richard Castle leaning against her door, messing with his phone.
"I thought you were going home, Castle," she grouses, hand shuffling in her bag for her housekey as she approaches.
"I did, hours ago. Had plenty of time to cool my head."
"You said you needed to be home tonight. For Alexis," she says flatly, and tries to reach past him to get to her door lock. He moves in front of it, blocking her. She glares at him.
"She went to bed an hour ago."
"And Martha?"
"I told my mother I needed to go do something. She didn't ask questions."
She sighs. "Yeah, well, that's lovely, Castle, but I'm tired, I'm hungry and I just want to get some decent sleep tonight."
She stands expectantly in front of him, waiting for him to clear out of the way of her door but he doesn't budge, just pockets his phone and crosses his arms over his chest. She should have expected it wouldn't be so easy to get rid of him.
"I want to talk."
"Castle, I don't have time for this—"
And just like in the precinct this afternoon, the calm in his features turns immediately to indignation as he cuts her off.
"You have plenty of time!" he shouts. "We've been busy, I know that, but don't you care about me enough to want to find some time for me? Won't you even give me the chance to talk to you about this for even five minutes?"
Irritated, she steps further into his space, their eyes inches apart from each other, close enough to see every little pore, every tiny detail on the other's face. Just as he catches the slight, angry squint of her eye, she sees it when his upper lip twitches, a nervous tick as he awaits her to unleash her fury.
"That's the problem, though, isn't it? I made us time, Castle. Three whole days all to ourselves. We'd be there right now if it wasn't for..." she trails off, not finishing the thought.
His jaw slackens, surprised. "You said you were okay with cancelling. That you understood."
"And I did. I do! If you need to be here for your daughter, I'm not going to deny you that. It's the fact that my budget apparently wasn't good enough for you in the first place—"
"Wait, what?" he interrupts, surprised. "That's not...Kate, is that what you thought?"
She doesn't answer him, tries to shove him out of the way of her door instead. "Will you move, Castle?"
He shakes his head. "No," and then his tense posture relaxes, his arms dropping at his sides, hands moving for hers but she's quick, sees it coming and steps away swiftly.
"God, forget it. I'll just sleep at the precinct."
Next thing he knows, she's turned her back on him and is walking down the hallway. Running away again. He gives chase, walking just a short pace behind her. The elevator in her building is slow, there's no rush to catch her. He doubts she'd even head to the precinct anyways.
Just as she's jabbing at the call button with her finger, she feels him closing in behind her, his hands at her hips, chest at her back.
"Please stop, Kate. I don't want to fight you."
His warm breath spills over her shoulder as he noses at her scalp, ruffling her hair. She dips her forehead into the wall, frustrated, because she's so angry but she doesn't want to be. She doesn't want to fight him, she never does. But as much as she hates it, sometimes it makes it easier to deal with her feelings, especially the ones she's been feeling since this morning.
And now he's given up the fight, because he knows. She's been hiding it all day but now he knows, why she's so upset, why she hasn't wanted to talk to him, why she's been avoiding the subject at every turn.
"You thought I didn't want to go to L.A.," he murmurs, his lips moving to her temple.
The elevator arrives and doors open but they both ignore it. Her eyes slip shut as he circles his arms around her waist, tugging her back into his chest.
"I get it, Kate. When I suggested we go someplace more exotic instead, I hurt your feelings. You thought I felt like Los Angeles wasn't good enough for me."
She says nothing because she doesn't have to. He's read her like a book, just like he always does. Once he finds the right page, it's all over from there.
"Kate, that's not what I meant. I just wanted to make it up to you, make our trip something bigger because of the fact that I was the reason we cancelled."
She'd be lying if she said that thought hadn't crossed her mind, but when it comes down to it, she still has her insecurities. How do you get a gift for a man who has everything, who has enough money to buy what he wants and do whatever it is he wants to do? So she didn't. She planned a trip for them instead. She'd nearly given in to her feelings that night in a L.A. hotel room with him and she just thought—maybe now that they were together, now that they weren't trying to hunt down her friend's killer, she could enjoy the city of Los Angeles with him like they hadn't been able to before. Far enough away from home to avoid getting caught by family, easy enough on her budget that Castle wouldn't protest to her idea. Which he didn't. But then the issue with Alexis coming home for the weekend came up and they scrapped the whole idea. She cancelled taking days off from work, joined the boys on the Palmer case and here they were, fighting.
Well, maybe not for long.
"Whether it's here, L.A., some luxury hotel in the tropics or a miserably deserted island, it doesn't matter to me. All I need, all I want with me, is you, Kate. Just you."
"I'm not spending any of our anniversaries on a deserted island, Castle," she huffs dryly, a small hint of strain and emotion in her voice that she quickly gets in check, and he notices it, but doesn't comment, instead goes for levity.
"How about a deserted apartment?" he husks into her ear, and can feel the unmistakable shiver run down her spine. She turns in his arms, glistening eyes seeking out his.
"I think there's one down the hall," she offers, then shrugs her shoulders on a sigh.
He smiles, pulling her into a hug. "Yeah?"
She lists into him, her hands reaching for his jacket as she burrows into him, her nose at his throat.
"Yeah."
He embraces her tightly against his chest, pressing his lips to the crown of her head as she relaxes in his arms, the stress of everything draining from her.
"I'm such a pain in the ass," she says after a moment, but he shakes his head.
"I should never have made the suggestion of going to Tahiti after you couldn't refund the tickets. I wasn't thinking."
"I overreacted."
"So did I."
She pulls back from him and says sternly, "Will you shut up and let me take the blame already?"
That makes him laugh.
"Okay." he concedes. "It's entirely your fault."
"Well, I wouldn't say entirely," she starts and on an exasperated groan, Castle slides his hands up to cup her cheeks, his mouth stealing her words in a hard, fast kiss. Her bag drops to the floor as he crowds into her, pinning her back against the wall as she opens for him, their lips sealing as he deepens the kiss.
When he comes up for air, he snatches her bag from the ground, slinging it over his shoulder before turning his attention back to a breathless Kate.
"No more talking," he says.
"No more talking," she agrees, and he lifts her. Her legs come around his hips, ankles locking behind him, fastening her to him, and then her lips are on his again, her hands in his hair as he walks them back to her apartment.
He sets her down at the door, if only so she can get out her key and unlock her apartment door, but once it's open, she jumps him. He marches inside, kicking the door shut behind him, intent on showing her a fantastic three-month anniversary during the few hours they have left of it.
