The bull pen was filled with people hastily trying to pretend they were innocent and otherwise engaged, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the blown-up image of Bachelorette No. 10 gracing the elevator that Monday morning. It was a survival ploy that served them well when Beckett arrived, all business in leather jacket, turtleneck, and high-heels, at her very most no-nonsense. She looked pretty darn menacing when she held the poster up, with the torn tape that'd once held it up still dangling from the corners. "When I find out who did this, it will be just me and them in the gym until they are beaten to a bloody pulp," she challenged. She didn't even have to raise her voice.

Tossing it with disdainful grace into the trash, she headed over to her desk.

Esposito and Ryan looked innocuous enough, though Ryan had the "I want to say something but maybe I shouldn't" look on his face.

"What?" she snapped at Ryan.

"Good morning to you too, Beckett. There are messages for you."

"Alright. Hand them over."

"They're…umm… You might not want them." He handed her a stack - a much, much larger stack of messages than she ever normally got.

She looked suspiciously down at them, and then started skimming through them. The expression of disbelief on her face pretty much said it all, as did the forceful drop of the sheaf of papers into the nearest trashcan.

Montgomery chose that moment to call Beckett into his office with, "Hey Beckett, I have a message to pass on. Would you step in here for a moment?"

Karpowski slid her chair over while Beckett disappeared into Montgomery's office. "What were they?" she asked in a low voice.

Ryan was trying very hard not to laugh. "Date requests from half of New York. Esposito and I have been doing background checks on some of them." He looked around before retrieving part of the stack out of the wastebasket. "You should see some of these!"

Castle waltzed in at this timely juncture with bear claw and two cups of Dean and Deluca coffee in hand. "Hey guys. Where's Beckett? And what're those?"

"Hey, bro…Beckett's talking to Montgomery and these are messages that came in for Beckett." Esposito grinned, exchanging a look with Ryan.

Ryan offered him the stack with a smirk, and Castle set his goodies down on Beckett's desk before starting to read through them, the scowl on his face growing. "I'm a hero looking for a heroine", he reads aloud, mocking one of them with a nasal whine. He tosses a page into the trash and reads a few more out loud, then exclaims in disgust, "These guys can't even spell!"

Ryan shot a quick glance at Castle while Esposito sputtered. "Hey man, that's Esposito's spelling."

Castle rifled through a few more messages, and then the stack went straight back into the wastebasket again, and Karpowski slid back to her own desk instead of tarrying. Esposito beckoned Castle closer to him and Ryan with a finger. "Yo, Castle...Spill. Date?"

"Later...heads up", Ryan muttered, turning in his seat.

When Beckett emerged from the office, she headed straight for her desk, barely saying hello to Castle who traded glances with the rest of their team. Silently, they worked out between the boys that Castle drew the proverbial non-verbal short straw and got to ask the nosy question.

After a quick throat clearing, Castle asked, "So…what did Montgomery want?"

Beckett barely looked at anyone as she focused on a file, her voice coming out low and between clenched teeth. "That was about your friend Bob the Mayor. He sends his congratulations and commendations for the good publicity I continue to generate on behalf of the NYPD during an election year. Unfortunately, not for any of the work our team does for its own merits." She included them – all of them as partners and teammates – as casually in her commendation as in her ire. She turned to rake the three of them over with a look. "Speaking of which, don't we all have work to do?"

Esposito and Ryan made busy quickly and Castle started doodling circles on a notepad.


"You do realize I had nothing to do with the whole bachelorette thing, right?" Castle asked tentatively as they got in the car to drive to a crime scene that afternoon.

Beckett shot him a sidelong look as she started the ignition, and then nodded. "I realize that. Indirectly though, you've definitely made me more public than I ever really wanted to be."

He listened to her, turning half in his seat to more fully face her. "I'd be sorry - but that would mean not following the course of action that led to shadowing you and getting to be in your life, and having you in mine – and I really can't be sorry about that aspect. I am sorry about anything that even remotely makes people shallow enough to take you less seriously as the really damn good detective you are."

Sometimes it was really hard to stay annoyed at him. She softened enough to send him a small smile. "Are you sorry enough to take me to dinner at that Italian place you've been raving about? Aroma?"

He switched from sincere to boundlessly enthusiastic in a breath. "Abjectly, pathetically sorry enough to do that. And to order the really good bottle of Piccolit that you can't get anywhere else in New York to taste with their homemade olive cake. As good as you'd get in Italy itself."

"I've never been to Italy…always wanted to go."

"I'll take you! Let's go. You would love Italy."

She shook her head at his bounciness. "let's stick to places in New York first. Focus, Castle. We have a case. Would you be able to focus more if I told you it might possibly be related to a longstanding undercover ops involving a pornography ring?"

He perked up, "Really?"

She smiled mysteriously. "Maybe. But right now, it's quiet time in the car."

Silence blessedly reigned for a few moments before he started humming his unique version of action sequence porn music under his breath.

She reconsidered. Actually, it was really easy to stay annoyed at him. "Castle!"


Nearing the end of a long week, Kate was on her way to Castle's place after a brief and totally uninformative call from him asking her to please come over. He'd sounded excited and distracted. Torn between wanting a good night's sleep and a little shiver of anticipation in seeing him in beyond their more professional attitude at work, she'd headed over.

His eyes were wide, excited, and eager, and the kiss he pressed to her mouth was less passionate than perfunctory when he opened the door and ushered her into his living room. "Kate, I need you."

"Oh really?", she asked archly, in a way that made him pause and forget what he was about to say before his idea came rushing back to him and he spilled it out in an excited torrent of words.

"I've been stuck on this scene, and I've found that sometimes to get unstuck, it helps to be in the situation. But even better, you're Nikki Heat, so I thought maybe I could put you in the situation!"

She gazed at him with narrowed eyes, her arms crossing over her chest. "Just what exactly does this entail?"

"Well, I'm considering a scene in the book where Nikki's bound and gagged in a closet. Her abductor isn't ready to kill her yet, but needs to lay a false trail so that the ruggedly handsome Jameson Rook doesn't interrupt them because he and Roach are hot on her trail."

She started in heatedly with a threatening tone, "Castle, I swear if you got me over here to play some kinky game…"

"No! Really. Last time I had Alexis tie me up, but it occurred to me that it'd be so much more real if I tied you up and then watched how you got out of it!"

She stepped in, toe-to-toe with him, menacingly. "Did I actually hear that right? You call me up, ask me to come over and you want me to pretend to be Nikki Heat and let you trap me in a closet to see how I'd get out?"

He looked down at her, and took a little step back. He sometimes wondered how someone smaller than him could project so much more menace. He backpedaled rapidly. "Or…I could rethink that idea…It's a bad one. Clearly. But wait! How about this? You trap me, and then you can tell me what you'd be doing to get out."

She considered it for a moment. This was starting to sound slightly more appealing to Kate. "Let me get this straight. I get to duct tape your mouth shut and do whatever this protagonist in your book would do to you, and watch you worm out of it…and occasionally tell you what I would do if I were Nikki Heat?"

He nodded eagerly, a hopeful look in his eyes. "Yes."

She backed him up another step just for the fun of it before her smile popped out. "Deal. Where's the duct tape?"


Author's Note: Little interludes before another outing. :) There are a few more. As always, reviews appreciated. :)