Castle wanders into the precinct, finishing up his phone call as he steps off the elevator. "Yeah, Paula, that sounds perfect. Yeah, close the deal. Thank you. And to you."
He spots Kate at her desk and makes a beeline to her. He has so much to say. More than could be said over a response to her latest e-mail. Yes, her e-mail. There were no doubts anymore, she had given herself up.
"Hey," he says, by way of greeting.
She looks up at him and wow she seems nervous. He probably freaked her out by not responding last night. He should have thought of that.
"Hey," she says back.
Okay, small talk first. Lead with the movie news go from there.
"I uh, I just got word from Paula, my agent. They want to turn 'Heat Wave' into a movie. You're about to be immortalized on the big screen."
She glances back down at the file open on her desk. "Actually Nikki Heat is going to be immortalized, not me."
"Yes, well, technically, but it's been widely publicized that you are the inspiration. So who would you like to play you in the movie?"
He needs to get off this topic, talk about what really needs to be said here.
"Whoa. Are you kidding? They're really making a Nikki Heat movie?" Ryan asks, walking in with Esposito. "Dude, did I call it or what?"
"Ah, congrats, bro," Esposito grins.
"Thank you!" Castle says, returning his smile. "Hey Beckett, can we -"
"What do you think, can we get James McAvoy for detective Raley?" Ryan asks excitedly, paying no mind to Castle trying to get Kate's attention.
Kate's desk phone rings and Castle almost groans when she picks it up. When did it get so hard to talk to her without all of these distractions?
"I'm gonna go with Javier Bardem," Esposito says, still casting the Nikki Heat movie with Ryan.
"Beckett," she says into the phone.
Castle sighs, realizing he's not going to get the moment he needs to talk to her right now and joins back in on the movie discussion. But the discussion doesn't last long, as the phone call quickly reveals a killer anonymously reporting a murder he committed himself. Someone claiming to be a 'fan,' but of who or what they're not really sure.
He doesn't get her alone again until they're standing outside of the morgue waiting for Lanie a few hours later.
"Do you think we've stumbled across a serial killer?" Castle asks, trying to start out with small talk again. "I mean, calling in your own kill definitely sounds like a guy who wants the attention and has plans to do it again."
"I wouldn't be surprised," Kate shrugs. "I just hope we can catch him before he kills again."
He scrubs a hand through his hair, trying to figure out to phrase this. "So umm, I think you and I need to talk."
She smirks at him. "Isn't that what we're doing now? And don't even try to tell me that you're the killer. You were standing right next to me when he called."
"No, no nothing to do with the case. This is about emails. Our emails to be exact."
The smirk drops off her face and that same nervous expression she greeted him with this morning comes back.
"Castle, I -"
"You guys are going to want to see this," Lanie says, popping her head out of the morgue.
Typical. Next time he is definitely skipping the small talk and jumping right to the point.
Kate shoots him an apologetic look before turning to Lanie. "Something off with the body?"
"No, it's not that. Cause of death is multiple gunshot wounds, he had a martini before he died. What's weird are the bullets. There are letters stamped on them like our killer was trying to spell something."
They follow her over to the table where she has the magnifying glass set up over the slugs. Castle looks at them first, reading them in the order Lanie has them laid out.
"Kinki?"
Kate shakes her head, nudging him out of the way. "Let me see." She stares at the letters for a moment, solving the puzzle relatively quickly. "Nikki. Like Nikki Heat. That's why he called me. That's why he said he was a fan. He dedicated this murder to me."
Castle stares at her, feeling a tightening in his chest. He's starting to feel responsible for this. He created this character, based her off of Beckett, and now it's produced some kind of psychotic stalker.
Kate touches his arm, drawing his focus back to her. "This isn't your fault, Castle. Just like those murders based off of your books two years ago weren't."
"Oh, so I'm not responsible for the crazy I inspire?"
"Certainly not when it leads to murder."
He gives her a small smile, moving to cover her hand on his arm with his own. And he swears he hears her breath catch in her throat when he does. Her eyes lock onto his and she starts to say something when Lanie clears her throat and Kate steps back away from him.
"We should go tell Montgomery," Kate says, already heading towards the door. "Thanks Lanie."
Castle doesn't follow her immediately, still slightly dumbstruck by the exchange.
"I take it you two haven't talked yet," Lanie muses, pulling on a new pair of gloves.
He narrows his eyes at her. "How much do you know?"
She smiles back. "Enough. She'll come to you, Castle. She's just scared."
"Am I really that scary?"
She gives him a sympathetic look. "It's not so much you as a person as it is the idea of you. But don't worry. I'm pretty sure you two want the same thing."
She doesn't like Jordan Shaw. Doesn't like the way she plans to take over what has become a very personal investigation. Doesn't like the way she acts like she's looking down on her for having a celebrity tagalong. She likes even less the way Castle seems so in awe of her and her fancy FBI gadgets. That jealously she had experienced with Kyra was coming back, but it was worse this time. Worse because Shaw was just an over glorified version of herself. And one Castle seemed all too happy to help.
It was also probably worse because she knew how Castle felt about her this time around. She knew that he wanted more, but this case had kept them from really having a chance to talk about it. And they needed to. She had made the conscious decision to give herself up last night, to stop playing the game. And when she woke to no new email from him, she worried that she had made the wrong move. But he was clearly itching to talk about it, had been trying to get her alone all day until Shaw showed up. As if she needed another reason to dislike the woman.
"What is he doing?" Shaw asks, snapping her out of her thoughts.
Kate draws her gaze away from the passenger side window and up to the rearview mirror where she sees Castle playing with some type of goggles he found in the backseat.
"He um, touches things."
Castle goes on excitedly about the night vision goggles and his plans to incorporate the FBI into his next Nikki Heat book, earning an eye roll from Kate.
"So how long have you two been sleeping together?" Shaw asks, way too casually.
Kate nearly chokes, suddenly very glad she left her coffee back at the precinct. "I'm..we're - we're not sleeping together - we - he-"
Castle starts chuckling to himself in the backseat and she swears she hears him mutter "yet" under his breath.
"He just observes me," Kate manages to get out.
"Yeah, I've seen how he observes you," Shaw smirks.
She knows she's blushing now, wishing their suspect would show up already so they could get the hell out of this car and move on. This also doesn't bode well for any future relationship she and Castle may partake on. If people can already tell they have a thing for each other when they haven't even addressed it face to face yet, how obvious is it going to be if they actually do become a couple?
"No, she's right," Castle finally chimes in, deciding to actually help. "Aside from my second wife, this is the most sexless relationship I've ever been in."
Shaw clucks her tongue. "I've been profiling for a long time. I'm hardly ever wrong."
She isn't entirely wrong. They may start sleeping together in the near future. And okay wow, that thought is really freaking her out.
"Maybe you're just psychic," Castle mutters from the backseat.
Kate whirls around and shoots him a death glare and he just smiles back innocently in return.
"So if you're not sleeping together," Shaw continues on. "Why do you keep him around?"
Because even though it's not happening yet, it probably will. Because he thinks he can love her someday. Because she actually likes the idea of that.
"You know I can hear you?" Castle asks.
"He's actually proven to be surprisingly helpful," Kate tells her.
Shaw eyes him out of the rearview mirror as he discovers her taser in the backseat. "Hmm have to take your word on that."
As Shaw tells him to put the taser down, Kate adds another mental note to her list of reasons why she doesn't like the woman. She doesn't see in Castle what she sees in him, and she's way too confident about her assumptions.
To say that she's on edge would be an underestimate. She hears floorboards creaking outside of her apartment and opens her door with her gun pointed right at the man's head...at Castle's head.
She sighs, lowering her gun. "What are you doing here?"
"Wine?" he asks, lifting up the bottle in his left hand.
Kate shakes her head, stepping to the side to let him into her apartment.
"So what happened to your security detail? I didn't see anyone outside," Castle says.
"I sent them home," she shrugs, rolling her eyes when he shoots her a look of disbelief. "I'm a big girl, Castle. I can take care of myself. I'm not this guy's intended target anyway. He's obsessed with me, he doesn't want to kill me."
"You don't know that for sure. He could escalate."
"And if he does, I'll be ready for him. Now did you really come over here just to bring me wine and check up on my security detail?"
"No," he says, shaking his head. "But do you want any? It's a 2000 Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Perfect for decompressing, just like Shaw suggested."
"Oh well, if Special Agent Shaw said so," she mumbles, unable to hide the bitterness from her tone.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Castle asks, eyeing the seemingly clean wine glasses by the sink and going to retrieve two of them. "Do you have something against her?"
"No, it's just - I see the way that you listen to her, the way that you look at all of her fancy equipment. Now my murder board's not enough for you? Now you need a smart board?
"Are you jealous?" he asks, a smile spreading across his face. "You are, aren't you? Just like you were with Kyra."
She bristles at that, moving to put the wine glasses he retrieved back by the sink and to pull down two clean ones.
"I'm not jealous," Kate tries to protest, but she doesn't even believe herself when she says it. "And stop building theory with her. You're supposed to be building theory with me."
"It's kinda cute how insanely jealous you are," Castle laughs, pouring the wine. "But also ridiculous. I'm not interested in Shaw. I think we've established that I'm interested in you."
She lets out another sigh, sinking back down onto her spot on the couch, Castle taking a seat to her left. "The real reason you're here comes out. So go ahead. Ask."
He stares down at his wine glass for a moment, finally lifting his eyes to look over at her. "Did you know it was me before you said I was your favorite author and I admitted to being him?"
Kate takes a sip of her wine, savoring the flavor on her tongue before answering. "I had my suspicions. Divorced single writer living in New York with the perfect daughter. You saying 'until tomorrow' instead of goodbye."
"And yet you never said anything."
"If I had told you as soon as I knew that it was you, the emailing would have stopped. It might have taken us a hell of a lot longer to be honest with ourselves about our feelings."
"Our feelings?"
She ignores his comment, moving forward with her own question. "When did you start to suspect me? I could probably pinpoint it in our conversations because you started talking to me differently, but what tipped you off?"
"It really wasn't your online presence that tipped me off, Katie let me do most of the talking. But you...you were different in person. You were opening up more, incorporating all of these little touches. It was like my words about me having feelings for my partner were affecting you...since you're my partner and all."
Kate sips at her wine again, before placing the glass down on the coffee table and drawing her knees up against her chest.
"Why do you think you could love me someday?" she asks softly.
He smiles, setting his wine glass down next to hers. "Because you're extraordinary. Just like the book dedication says."
"Castle -"
"You feel it too, I know you do. That hesitation earlier today when Shaw was asking about our relationship? It was because you don't know what label to give us anymore. You don't know what we are anymore than I do, and that tells me that you want more too."
"What, so a few weeks of messages through a dating a website and suddenly we're a couple?"
He shakes his head, reaching out so his hand rests on her elbow. "No. Two years as partners. Two years spent unconsciously memorizing each other's orders at our favorite post-case restaurants. Two years of me, how did you put it, pulling your pigtails. I'm not asking for your hand in marriage here, Beckett. I just want to go out on a date with you."
Her right arm releases her knees so her hand can rest atop his on her left elbow. Her fingers brush across his skin like she's already trying to memorize the feel of him.
"How is us going out on a date, any different from us going to eat at Remi's?"
"Because the date will probably involve kissing."
Her fingers slip through the gaps between his, lacing their fingers together. "So you want this, huh? A relationship with me."
His thumb rubs over her pinky finger. "I want my partner to fall in love with me, so I can fall in love with her."
Kate hums. "And this partner of yours. She wants this too?"
"I think she does. I just think it took the anonymity of a screen name to get her to realize that."
She bites down on her lower lip, her gaze drifting between their intertwined hands and the light blue of his eyes. "You know what your partner wants, Castle?"
"Hmm?"
"She wants you to kiss her."
