Author's Notes: Wow, I'm a little shocked by how many e-mails I had this morning from people favouriting and story alerting and reviewing - thank you all. I'm guessing you're all terribly excited for the episode tonight (aren't we all?), but if you need something to help pass the meantime, here's part two.

The next night, Richard Castle is back at the Butterfly, leaning against a wall in the back, unobtrusive to most but a standout to her. (She knows this room, and that spot has a view of the audience but not of the stage.)

Magnetism draws his eyes up when she enters, and her fingers curl in her gloves in a half-greeting.

He nods.

Royce is looking between them as she approaches the bar and she knows he's seen it all, is foretelling the future far before he should.

She clucks her tongue. "Take a hike Royce. You think too much."

"Kid, he's going to make trouble for you."

"Trouble is something I'm used to."

Royce shrugs. That's probably true.

"So give me the lowdown."

"On our new patron?"

"No, on the president." She presses her lips together. "Yes. On this Mister Castle."

"Not for nothing, but I think he's sniffing around-"

"- into something he shouldn't be," she finishes the sentence for him. "I thought so as well. Do you know any more than squat?"

"The whispers are he's a private dick. And he asked me about you."

She narrows her eyes at him. "Baloney."

"On the level."

"Do you know anything useful?"

"Likes his whiskey."

"Pour me one."

"Oh Katie." Royce grins at her. "You're stuck on him."

"I am not."

He looks far too knowing as he pushes her drinks across the bar. "Whatever you say kid. Whatever you say."

She does her best to prove Royce wrong, but their sporting repartee about nothing in particular feels more like a kind of verbal foreplay than any kind of real argument. In fact, the only thing about him that makes her frustrations genuine is that she can't get a serious response out of him when she asks him again why he's there.

To see you.

She frowns at his answer like there is a right one and that is absolutely not it.

Beckett likes to know what goes on at the Butterfly, likes to stay one step ahead of Jimmy and his boys.

It's part of her plan and despite appearances, she has a lot to lose.

Jimmy is waiting in the front room of the apartment when she gets in but the lights aren't on. She sets her keys and her purse down on the hall table and takes off her shoes, one, then the other, holds them in her hand so the clack of heels doesn't wake him. When she flips on the light, he moves and it scares her half to death.

"You find Coonan?" he asks.

"No dice." Her hand is at her chest. She waits for his response, catching air until the shock fades.

"Still? That kid better pray someone's killed him already."

"You've got bigger problems though." She sighs, sinks into an armchair opposite, but moves when he gestures for her. This is a part of the informal contract implicit in their relationship, a begrudging symbiosis almost on both parts.

She thinks they might have loved each other once, when she was younger, not in any real way but with the fascination of children: her like a school girl with a crush, him with the eyes a boy reserves for a shiny new toy. Some of the gloss has faded – she's older, wiser and less youthful in appearance – but still, he hasn't left her yet. Sometimes she thinks he needs her in a way she doesn't need him: to tell him that he's a fine upstanding citizen when his Catholic guilt becomes too much for confession alone to bear, to help him pretend that this is how domesticity should be.

Still, they manage, he keeps her in nice things and she keeps him in business and silently works at her own agenda. (She's too smart not to have one.) And most days she doesn't regret not becoming a typist or a switchboard operator or sticking with the job at the Butterfly.

The weight of his arm presses down against her shoulder and she tries to ignore it for as long as she can when his hands start to wander. "There's a private dick lurking around."

Jimmy's hands are suddenly being kept to himself. "What's he asking questions about?"

"Mike says nothing yet, or at least, he can't make head or tail of it."

"What about you?"

He's giving her a hard, scrutinising look, one she recognises as a prelude to jealousy.

(It's not just because she's property to him. There's insecurity behind it as well, like he knows he's buying her and there'll be no reason for her to stay if someone else starts paying. It's true but it's not. She's always had her reasons.)

Beckett lifts a shoulder, leans back against the sofa, closes her eyes and assuages him. "I don't have a clue. I hardly spoke to him."

"You look tired sweetheart."

When she cracks an eyelid, he's softened towards her; his hand is reaching out to tame a stray curl.

"Oh I am. I did laps of that joint looking for Coonan and I've got nothing to show for it."

"You tell him that when you see him, and you tell him I don't like it when he keeps my girl waiting."

"I will."

"And I want you to find out about this sap lurking 'round poking his nose into our business."

"How do you suppose I'm going to do that?"

He grins at her. "Baby, you ain't ever had no problems getting the goods from a fella before."

She closes her eyes again and nods once. That's true.

At least, it always has been in the past.

On Friday, The Butterfly puts on more respectable entertainment for an entirely different crowd. She often wonders what the weekday regulars do on weekends. There's a back room of course, where the girls earn spare change, but it still draws a different kind of customer when those who are lucky enough to have a nine-to-five are done with the drudgery of it. It's the front room that sees the most of the make-shift alterations. The tables are pushed back to line the walls creating a space at the foot of the stage which makes do as a dance floor and the old piano is moved centre stage, sharing the limelight with flashes of brass and up-and-comers on the music scene.

(Tonight it's Lanie Parish, who's beauty rivals her voice. She's black, but she talks smarter than most of the riff raff that hangs around, and Beckett considers her a friend, an equal. They always talk about getting out, about having money and the freedom to do as they please.)

Richard Castle is waiting for her at one of the back tables. He waves her over before she has a chance to talk to Royce, but she doesn't miss the bartender's smirk. When she gets her next drink she'll be sure to tell him he's insufferable when he thinks he's right.

Castle gives her a smile and pushes a martini across the table toward her. The olive bobs in the glass and she watches it and then lets her eyes shift to her companion's face. He's reading her too. And she thinks Royce is wrong; they're at a different kind of mutual purpose. Whatever he's doing here, the detective thinks she can help him. And maybe she can.

(He waxes far too lyrical for someone in his line of work. Her grim experience with the reality of crime might be the perfect foil for his tall stories and sweeping theories.)

He raises his glass and offers her a pleasantry in greeting.

She smiles.

They finish their drinks and the song changes; one of his favourites, he says, as he asks her to dance.

The floor is crowded, so he holds her close, a practical excuse to do so, but for all the cover it provides, his hand remains high on her back. She leans into it, spine arching for his fingers to slip against the silk of her dress just for a moment, before she remembers herself. A wicked thought always invites another though, and she's suddenly impatient to get the information she wants from him by any means necessary.

Her hands run down from his shoulders to the breast pockets of his suit.

"So Mister Castle."

Her fingers creep in patterns and she's looking up at him from under her lashes, fixing on his eyes then his lips then his eyes again like she's thinking about kissing him.

This kind of power, the kind that she has over men, is exhilarating. She never really tires of it, especially when they're clever, like Beckett's decided he is. It's her genuine enjoyment that makes her good at this part. For some women, it's a con from start to finish, but her secret is that by the time she's acting her mark is almost always too far gone to notice.

(He's an exception and he isn't, because with him, she doesn't think she'll have to act like she's enjoying anything, if it comes to that. And she's acutely aware of how much she desires that outcome.)

"Yes?" he asks her, reaching up to curl his fingers around hers against his lapel. He shifts her hand, holds it between them.

"There's been something I've been meaning to do all week," she says, soft, and steps into him like a slinking cat. "We've been dancing around each other and I've been meaning to ask you to-"

She edges her mouth towards his and they watch each other until he closes his eyes and she moves to breathe it in his ear. "- tell me, what are you really doing here?"

He opens his eyes.

The look she gives him is imploring and impudent, satisfied and coy, because they both know she's played him.

As the band changes tempo – something slower – he drops her hand. "Okay fine," he says, "I'll tell you."

"You've been meaning to anyway," she wagers, frowning at him over her shoulder when he pulls out her chair for her. "But you were feeling me out first."

They both smirk at the implication of that.

"Well rumour has it you run around with some pretty mean fellas. They might not be too keen on what I'm about to ask you see, and I don't want any more trouble than is strictly necessary."

"Well that depends on what you want to know." She pauses, drops the lilt in her tone and says, seriously, "But you don't have to worry about me running to Jimmy on you. Hell, I make enough trouble with him for the both of us."

He nods and looks around the room as he pulls a photograph from the pocket she was pawing on the dance floor. "Do you know a Clara Wood? A source told me she used to work here."

The face is familiar. She runs the pads of her fingers over the shot – Clara, composed, almost stern, and surrounded by what looks like three sisters – and nods. "I recognise her. She didn't go by that name, but they never do."

"Do you remember the last time you saw her?"

"It was a while ago now, a few months at least." She looks up at him. "But it's a revolving door around here. The girls come and go. They get boyfriends or office jobs or they up and join the circus."

"Any idea which it was, in her case?"

Beckett's teeth sink into her carefully painted lip and the photograph catches against the perspiration of their drinks when she tries to slide it back across the table to him. "She was running around with one of Jimmy's boys, Pulgatti, but most of the girls are or were at some point. And he joined his brother up in Sing Sing for taking some poor sucker out for a ride months ago. Come to think of it, it'd be about the same time I last saw her too. Why? Who's asking after her?"

He taps the picture. "Oldest sister. Clara turned up dead a few months ago and the cops weren't making a decent job of finding out what happened to her."

"So you're going to?"

"As best I can."

"Well it wouldn't be the first time one of the boys has lost his temper." She sighs. "I wish I could say it was, but a dead hooker never raised any eyebrows around here or anywhere else."

"Will you help me?" he asks. "If I share what I know with you."

She nearly laughs. "And why would I do that?"

"You've got a soft spot for them." Their hands rest together on the table without touching and he thinks about edging a finger towards hers, but he doesn't, just hesitates on the verge of it. "The dancers I mean. And besides, I'd have thought you'd enjoy the challenge."

"What do you know?" She arches an eyebrow and pulls her hand into her lap and taps her foot where it rests under the table.

"She was found in the East River."

He continues but she stops listening, because that makes it open-shut in her book, but intriguing because it means Jimmy's involved, and directly. No one would ever accuse him of being the brightest of men, but he has a nose for the business and a dead girl with family enough to come looking for her would usually be something he washed his hands of entirely.

Then again, she knows him, well.

And that means she knows something is afoot.

She offers Mister Castle her assistance.

They meet almost nightly for the next week. She's still waiting on Coonan at the club and Jimmy is cooking up a spot-fixing scam with his illegal bookmaking buddies before baseball season starts so she can work (and play) without drawing much notice.

(When he asks, she feeds Jimmy a story about a husband making trouble for one of the dancers and then he's not at all bothered by the PI's continued patronage.)

She's playing them both though, tightrope walking a line, because Castle has information she wants about what she's convinced is Jimmy's crime, but she's not entirely sure the detective will approve of what she decides to do with it, if and when she decides to do anything at all. And Beckett wants to hide the fact that it might not be as simple as us vs. them for as long as possible, not just because it's a tactical move. She knows part of her is far too concerned with pleasing him and she's fighting it.

This night is easier than most, because they're arguing about his next move, what it should be, and something about how he tries to charm her sets her on edge.

They trade in banter over six martinis, which is four too many. When she declares it time for her evening to end, he's up with her and saying something about walking her out that makes her wary, but he helps her into her coat and precedes her up the stairs despite her protests, which are gin-fuelled and sound less severe to her own ears than they should.

Castle takes her hand to give her help she doesn't need as she ascends the last step, but she lets him, lets him keep holding it when they step outside into the street. The night is crisp but not cold, and the fresh air puts their earlier quarrels to rest. She suddenly feels far less annoyed with him, which is infuriating, in its own way.

It smells of rain and they're eyeing each other, but with more obvious intent than all their other looks. Gin has never affected her much, but now it's practically humming through her, like the coursing blood in her veins and she feels incredibly aware of her body, of her mouth, of his, of the way it's calling to her eyes and her lips.

She breathes and she knows he's waiting, for her to move first, but she doesn't, finds herself unable. It's not because of Jimmy; there's another fear underneath that one. And it's because no one has ever stopped her like this before; in this moment she honestly feels as though apart from the rise and fall of their chests nothing else in the world is moving.

She bows her head. "I should go."

He sighs, thumbs over her hand in a gesture she finds increasingly maddening each time he does it. "Goodnight Miss Beckett."

She chances a glance at his face. "Kate," she corrects him quietly. "Call me Kate."

"Okay. Goodnight Kate."

He drops her hand and steps backwards and she swallows. "Goodnight Mister Castle. I," she pauses, fights the urge to frown at herself. Liquor is a haze that she loves at times and hates at others. "I'll be here tomorrow night."

"Then so will I."

"I guess I'll be seeing you," she says, lips twitching to smile. And really, the way that small promise makes her chest bloom should be a warning. (And it is, but she ignores it because it's a pleasant feeling and she's not had many in the way of those of late.)

"Until tomorrow." His expression is tentative and adoring, and he looks like he wants to reach for her, but he puts his hands in his pockets instead, turns and walks away.

She watches him disappear around the corner before she lets out the breath she's abruptly aware that she's holding and leans back against the grimy wall behind her. Her hand comes away dirty and she's briefly sorry for the state her dress must be in, but not nearly as sorry as she should be. No, most of her regret is split between the fact that she let him walk away and the fact that that is something she regrets.

She walks home wrapped in the fast-slipping hug of gin as it drizzles.

tbc.