Prompt: (a gif/screencap of) the moment in episode 2x01 when Castle says to Beckett "I could buy you a pony." Also inspired by recent Twitter conversation about same.
She wouldn't even let him ride in her car. He had to go with Ryan and Esposito, both of whom are still giving him the silent treatment. It was a very uncomfortable ride.
"Hey, can we talk about this, please?" Castle entreats, leaping out of Espo's car to catch up with Beckett. She's pulling on her crime-scene gloves, stone-faced.
"There's nothing to talk about."
He falls into step beside her, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world. His gut clenches with the need to persuade her to take him back. He's been miserable all summer, ever since he crossed her clearly defined line (like the idiot he is) and she sent him packing.
"Hey," he says, the idea popping out of his mouth as soon as it's in his head, "I could buy you a pony."
There's the briefest pause in Beckett's confident stride. She cocks her head slightly, as if listening to some internal voice, and then he hears - he thinks he hears - "Okay."
"What?" he gasps, because surely he did not just hear Detective Kate Beckett say he could buy her a pony.
"Okay," she repeats, turning her head halfway toward him, poker-faced. "I'll take the pony."
Excitement swells within him. He can't believe it. He cannot believe it. Of all the times - the many times - he offered to buy Alexis a pony, she never once said "Okay." She said "No, daddy," and "I said NO, daddy!" and "Daddy, we live in a loft in New York City, not a barn." She folded her arms and tapped her little foot and said sternly "Daddy, are you even listening to me?" Never once did Alexis say "okay" to a pony. There was that one time, after he accidentally broke her Luke Skywalker action figure (how was he to know the head wouldn't just pop right back on?), when Alexis made him take her to the toy store and buy a new Luke, and a Leia to go with it, and then they got ice cream sundaes and pedicures, and finally Alexis relented and allowed him to buy her a My Little Pony, but it wasn't the same.
He snaps out of that bittersweet reminiscence and realizes that Beckett has walked off. He hurries to catch up.
"What color?" he demands breathlessly, his mind whirling with possibilities.
"What?" Ryan asks. Beckett just rolls her eyes.
"What color pony? This is important, Beckett."
"Focus, Castle. Crime scene, okay?"
They all look up. Whoa, there's a dead guy in a tree. Castle bounces on his toes with delight. This day is really looking up.
"It's raining men," he can't resist saying, and Lanie looks down to snap at him.
"Castle! What're you doing here?"
"Don't worry," says Beckett, "we're still mad at him."
"You won't be, after you get your pony," he chirps.
A very eventful hour later, they're back at the precinct, and Lanie has pronounced him unharmed by their unexpected run-in with the corpse thieves. He's already thinking about how to fit that into his next Nikki Heat novel when the woman herself, his muse, the lovely Detective Beckett ... tells him to go home. What?
"Home? No! No no no, this case just got good! And I'm, I'm a witness," he protests. "And you still haven't told me what color pony you want."
"Castle!"
"These are important decisions, Beckett." He gives her his earnest puppy-dog look, the one that has never (yet) convinced Alexis to say yes to the pony.
It doesn't work on Beckett either, but at least she agrees to let him work the case with her.
She refuses to let him talk in the car on the way to the victim's home. That's okay. He's busy trying to dredge up the name of that guy he used to know. The one who could get you a pony on a moment's notice.
The next morning he's at the precinct bright and early, armed with phone numbers and hand sizes and price lists. "Beckett," he says urgently, setting her coffee down on her desk and plopping into his chair next to it. "Listen, I need to know your plans for the pony's living arrangements."
"What?" she asks blankly, blinking at him. She takes a large sip of the coffee, blinks some more, and says "What?" again.
"Well, I haven't been to your apartment," yet, he just barely manages to stop himself from saying, "but I'm guessing it's a typically sized New York apartment, and therefore not actually big enough to house a pony, unless you want a miniature, which is a specialized breed with some unique health concerns to think about-"
"Castle."
"-so since you can't keep her at your place, there are several options within Manhattan itself, or if you'd rather-"
"Castle!"
"What?" he startles, bemused. She's rolling her eyes and huffing in exasperation.
"Golden Garden," she says, in defiance of all logic or expectations.
"Golden Garden?" he repeats, completely befuddled.
"Golden Garden," she re-repeats, nodding firmly.
"I - Beckett, I don't know what that means," he confesses.
"Listen." Beckett takes another sip of the coffee and sighs. "My dad has this cabin upstate, okay? We go there all the time in the summer. It's right on a lake, really pretty."
"Okay," Castle nods, still entirely lost, but Beckett can tell him random irrelevant details about her personal life any time. It's all good. They'll get back to ponies eventually.
"And on the other side of the lake," she goes on, "there's this camp, a retreat for inner-city kids with cancer and other chronic illnesses."
"Oh," he says. "Golden Garden."
"Golden Garden," she agrees, nodding. "I used to work there as my summer job every year during high school. Playing games with the kids, nature walks, arts and crafts, pony rides." She looks pointedly at him, and the light dawns at last.
"Ohhh. Pony rides."
"It just so happens that one of their ponies died a couple weeks ago," Beckett says, looking at him with a straight gaze, serious and a little fierce. He nods slowly.
"Gotcha. I got it, Beckett."
"You do?"
"Yeah." He nods firmly. "One new pony for Golden Garden, coming up."
Her eyes soften. "Okay. Thanks, Castle."
"Don't mention it. And we're naming her Kate."
"No way in hell," she shoots back. "Her name is Ricki. Princess Ricki."
He sighs. Alexis would have let him name a pony after her. Probably. Maybe.
Anyway, he makes the phone call, and they get back to investigating the case.
Things get a little crazy. There's poker, and a smoky bar full of Russian gangsters, and Beckett rescuing him wearing next to nothing. He's not quite sure what happened there, to be honest. But they're back at the precinct again and she steps aside to take a phone call, and when she comes back, she's looking oddly at him.
"What?"
"You really did it, Castle. You bought me a pony."
"I bought Golden Garden a pony," he corrects quietly. "Princess Ricki." They both smile.
"Beckett," he adds, sighing deeply. "I'm really sorry. I violated your trust, and I didn't respect your wishes. I was wrong."
Her eyes widen, then slowly soften again. "Yeah, Castle. You were." She looks down at her feet, and then back up at him. "See you tomorrow."
Note: Golden Garden is fictional, but nature retreat camps for seriously ill children do exist. You can find a list on cancer dot net, or google.
