Sorry it's been so long, guys! It's been a busy couple of weeks, what with AP exams and various other things. I promise I won't leave the next chapter for so long. Enjoy!
It was a few weeks later, and Kate sat at her desk, rubbing at the nape of her neck, and trying to relieve the burning pressure behind her eyes. Blinking rapidly a few times, she glanced over at the clock on her desk. Eight at night, and they were still no closer to catching the son of a bitch.
"We've got the phone records," Ryan told her, holding them up as he passed by her desk. "And I'm almost positive it's Deckerman. But it looks like we'll be here for a while. No sane person makes this many phone calls to dozens of people, every day. He's playing with us. Trying to make the case harder to solve."
Beckett sighed, running a hand through her hair, which fell around her face in a tangled curtain. "Alright. You and Espo take the phone records; Castle and I will take the receipts we found at his place."
"Got it, boss. Conference room?"
She nodded. "Get everything set up in there, and I'll be in as soon as I get the receipts from evidence. I want to get this done tonight, Ryan."
"And we will," he assured her. "It may take us until some god-awful hour of the morning, but we'll get it done." He turned away, and headed towards the conference room, calling out to Esposito as he went.
When Kate returned from the evidence room with the large bin of receipts, Castle, Ryan, and Esposito were waiting for her in the conference room. She set the bin down, and looked over at Castle as he handed her a take-out container from Remy's. Ryan and Esposito were both already eating their sandwiches, as they went over the phone records with a highlighter, searching for any inconsistencies.
While she began to eat, Castle started in on the receipts, looking them over carefully, before sorting them into piles – one for menial things, like groceries, and gas, another for bills, and a third for unnecessary purchases. When she finished with her burger, she started on the receipts with him, purposefully picking out the bills – they gave her an excuse to lean across his chest to put them in the correct pile, and an opportunity to brush a hand across his knee as he gently rubbed the small of her back, momentarily out of sight of the boys.
Despite their searching, though, by ten, no one had found anything of importance, and the boys were struggling to keep their eyes open. Beckett noticed, and finally gave in. "Espo, Ryan, Castle. Take the break room couch in hour shifts, try to get some sleep."
Ryan and Esposito nodded.
"You take the first shift, bro," Ryan told his partner as they exited the conference room. "I need to call Jenny."
Kate looked up quickly, glancing over at Castle with a slightly panicked look in her eyes. "Do you need to call Martha and Alexis?"
"I called them when I went to get Remy's," he reassured her. "It's fine."
Accepting his answer, they continued working in silence; hardly noticing as Ryan came back into the room, then back out as he and Esposito traded shifts for the break room couch. Finally, at midnight, Castle placed a hand on her arm, alerting her to the fact that Ryan's shift had just ended, and that he had the couch for the next hour.
"Come on," he told her, stretching out a hand to help her up. "You need to take a break for a couple of minutes. At least let me make you a cup of coffee if you refuse to sleep."
Too exhausted to protest, she took his hand, and got to her feet, allowing him to press a hand to the small of her back as he led her into the break room. Closing the door behind them, he pressed a hand to her cheek. "You need sleep, Kate. You can barely keep your eyes open."
"Castle… Rick, I can't. I have to finish going through the receipts," she objected, pulling away slightly.
"And they will still be there in an hour," he promised. He caught her eyes, looking at her with concern etched into the lines of his face. "Lie down with me for an hour, and we can go back, and we can catch this guy. But you'll never get anything done when you're this exhausted, love."
The moment she heard the simple, yet sincere term of endearment fall from his tongue, her resolve was gone. Her posture drooped somewhat as he took her hand, pulling her over towards the couch. After a moment of shifting around, moving elbows and knees so they didn't dig in, Kate rested her head on Rick's chest.
"Close your eyes, Kate," he instructed. She did, and a moment later, felt his hand come to rest on the top of her head, brushing her hair down, and out of the way of her face.
"Goodnight, Rick. Love you."
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head before wrapping his arm firmly around her waist. "Love you, too, Kate."
That was how Ryan found them, when, forty-five minutes later, he came into the break room for a refill on his coffee. He paused for a second, noting the tight grip that Castle had around Kate's waist, and the way her nose was buried in his neck, her hand clenched in a fist around his button-down shirt, laying just over his heart. Looking back for a moment at the conference room, he pulled out his phone, and texted Esposito.
Breakroom. Now.
A few moments later, Esposito appeared in the doorway. "What is –"
Ryan shushed him, and nodded towards the couch.
His eyes widened. "Do you think they're finally…" he trailed off, knowing that Ryan would understand what he meant.
Ryan nodded. "I think so. I mean…" he cocked his head to the side. "Look at them."
Esposito was quiet for a moment, before stating simply, "I don't know whether to be more surprised that they kept this from us, or that he actually managed to get her to sleep while there's an active case."
Finally, they turned away, and started up the coffee machine, needing that extra jolt of caffeine to keep them awake.
It was the sound of the coffee maker that woke Castle. His eyes opened slowly, and he breathed in deeply, inhaling the scent of coffee. It was his quiet exhalation that alerted Ryan and Esposito that he was awake.
"What time is it?" Castle asked, when they turned around.
"It's about five to one," Ryan replied, taking a sip of his coffee. "Your alarm is probably about to go off."
With his free hand, Castle reached into his pocket for his phone, careful not to jostle Beckett too much, and flicked off the alarm. He felt Ryan and Esposito's eyes glued to him, watching to see what he would do next. Ignoring them, he lifted his hand from Beckett's waist, and ran his fingers through her hair. He chuckled at her response: shaking her head in annoyance, and pressing her face further into his neck as she clutched his shirt tighter. He continued stroking her hair, and she finally lifted her head, looking up. She quickly squeezed her eyes shut at the light that Ryan and Esposito had turned on to make their coffee. One hand still in her hair, he lifted her chin so he could look at her, and gently wiped away a smear of eyeliner underneath her right eye.
She opened her eyes again, smiling at him. Without looking away from him, she said, "Ryan, Espo, could you leave the coffee machine on, please?"
"Okay, that's just creepy," Esposito mumbled. "She didn't even see us."
Castle shifted, sliding out from underneath Kate, murmuring, "Go on. I'll meet you in the conference room with your coffee."
She nodded, readjusting her shirt and cracking her neck before shooing Ryan out in front of her, and gesturing to Esposito to take the couch.
An hour later, when Esposito came in to let Ryan know that it was his turn, Castle sat up straight. "Kate. I think I might have just found something."
Wide-awake now, she sat up, and leaned in closer. "What've you got?"
He pulled the small stack of bills towards him. "Okay, look at all of these. Now, I know I live in a more expensive part of New York, but it seems to me that a normal person's electricity and water bills should be a little higher than this.
He was right – the expenses were unusually low.
"What I'm thinking," he began.
"Is that Deckerman isn't actually living there," Kate finished.
"And hasn't been. For a while, now."
"But then how do we figure out where he is now?"
Castle paused for a moment, and then turned to Ryan and Esposito. "Did Deckerman have location services on his phone before he disabled it?"
Ryan nodded. "We've got co-ordinates for all of his calls up until he got rid of it."
"Okay, can you look at all the calls he made late at night or early in the morning, and see if there are any that repeat? Then we might be able to figure out where it was he was staying."
Ryan and Esposito pulled the phone logs closer, and a moment later, Ryan said, "I got it." He pulled his computer towards him, and typed in the co-ordinates. "There."
"Yes," Kate hissed. She scribbled down the address on a spare post-it note, and stood up. She made her way towards the door, telling them, "I'm going to go call Gates." She had just opened the door when she turned back, hurrying over to Castle's side. Placing a hand on each of his shoulders, she leaned down, pressing a kiss to his cheek, whispering (though not so quietly that Esposito and Ryan couldn't hear), "I love you." Then she hurried back out of the room, cell phone in hand, leaving Castle to the boys as she went to call Gates.
The Captain answered her phone on the third ring. Her voice groggy, she grumbled, "Gates."
"Captain, it's Beckett. We've just found a probable address on Deckerman," she told the woman, before rattling off the street name. "We can go after him now, if you like."
The Captain sighed. "Good work, Beckett, but wait until morning. That's a dangerous part of the city, the guy is a psychopath, and you have no backup. Go home, get some sleep, and I'll see you and your team in the precinct at eight thirty."
"Yes, Sir. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Good night, Detective."
Kate sighed, clicked off her phone, and returned to the conference room, where she found Castle sitting ram-rod straight in his chair, a somewhat terrified look on his face.
"What's wrong?" she asked him, coming up behind him and placing her arms loosely around his neck, leaning into him slightly.
He pointed at Ryan and Esposito. "They're kind of terrifying when they go all big brother on you."
She turned her gaze on the boys. "If he wakes me up in the middle of the night because he's having nightmares about whatever it is you threatened him with, I will kill you." She gently squeezed Castle's shoulder, and told them all, "Now, go. Get some sleep. Gates wants us back at eight thirty tomorrow morning."
They nodded, and followed Beckett and Castle out of the room. Ryan and Esposito stood in awkward silence as the elevator descended, and Beckett leaned back in to Castle, letting him wrap his arms around her.
"Okay," Esposito remarked after a minute. "That's just weird."
Ryan nodded. "We all knew it was going to happen eventually, but it took so long, and now that it has, it's just…"
"Weird," Esposito finished.
Kate laughed, nudging Castle with her elbow.
"Wait," Ryan started, looking concerned. "How long has this been going on? How did we not notice this before?"
Kate and Rick started laughing, much to Ryan and Esposito's confusion. The elevator doors opened, and they started walking towards the parking garage.
"Don't worry, guys," Kate told them, struggling to contain her laughter. It was two in the morning, and she was beginning to feel the effects of the sleep deprivation, despite their hour on the couch. "Your big brother speech was only a few months late."
"Months?" they asked simultaneously.
"To be fair, I was gone for two weeks of it," Castle amended.
"Yeah, but the number of times I texted you should have clued them in."
"Not to mention the fact that you left work for three days to take care of Alexis," he added.
She shook her head. "That doesn't count. I'd have done that even if we weren't dating."
"Have I told you how much I love you, recently?" he asked, stopping her, and spinning her around to face him.
She grinned, and wrapped her arms around his neck, reaching up on tiptoes until their lips were mere centimeters apart. "Why, Mr. Castle, I don't believe you have."
"God, I hope they're not like this all the time now," they heard Esposito mutter.
Kate pressed a quick, chaste kiss to his lips, and turned to wink at Esposito as Castle placed an arm around her waist.
"Come on. Let's get home, okay?"
Kate nodded. "See you tomorrow, guys."
Alexis had waylaid them as soon as she saw them at the door. "Dad! Is Kate okay?" she asked, looking with concern at the way Kate was slumped against him.
Kate lifted her head, and smiled. "I'm fine, sweetie. Just tired."
Rick rubbed her back gently, as he asked Alexis, "Why are you up this late, pumpkin?"
"I just came down to get a glass of water. I was just about to go back upstairs." She walked over to give her dad a hug. "Night, Dad. Night, Kate," she added, giving Kate a hug and a hesitant kiss on the cheek.
"Goodnight, 'Lex," Kate whispered, trying to hold back tears in her tired, over-emotional state, as she ran a hand over the girl's hair, and planted a kiss on her forehead.
"Let's get to bed," Rick whispered, pulling her into the bedroom. "Or you'll be exhausted tomorrow."
She nodded, and let him lead her to bed.
Thanks so much for reading! Be sure to let me know what you liked/didn't like, and always feel free to tell me what you want to see - I'm always looking for new ideas.
~Erin