Author's Note: I'm getting married in a couple of weeks, so I've been a wee bit distracted and just plain tuckered out burning the candle at both ends – it's the main reason I've totally fallen off the wagon, though trust me, I wish I were writing instead of taking care of all the million details between all heck breaking loose with my clients, and an upcoming wedding. If you've stuck with me and my inability to update, THANK YOU. I have definitely not lost interest, and have been really loving quite a number of the stories on here I've gotten to read lately to feed my addiction, even if my muse got absconded by my wedding planner.
I think we're fairly close to the end of this. I'll try to finish it before the Season 3 start, which I am SO excited about.
The look on Beckett's face was notable when an article in the New York Times landed on her desk shortly after a homicide they just wrapped. It was "coverage" of the homicide that thinly veiled an excuse to gossip about who she was dating than about the victim or the hard work of her team.
"I'm a detective, not a socialite!" She was seething and it was scary.
Rick was torn between wanting to hide or apologize. He sat in his chair, and abandoned the paperclip daisy chain he was making.
"Kate…" The tone he tried initially was placating, trying to hide the offending article – even if he privately thought they looked great in the grainy photo caught by an enterprising photographer as they were leaving a restaurant.
She held up a hand to forestall the words on his lips. "DON'T…EVEN…"
The glare on her face had Ryan pause briefly as he walked towards her desk, glancing back to silently telegraph to Esposito to be equally wary in his approach. Ryan silently passed her a report, taking the moment while she was distracted in skimming it for salient details to raise both his brows at Castle in a, "What did you do to make her mad?" look. Castle shrugged as eloquently as he dared, eyes frantically attempting to signal innocence. Esposito shot him a clearly disbelieving look.
Beckett, without even looking up from the page, bit out, "Stop that. Esposito, Ryan – go bring this guy in. I want him in interrogation. Castle…we're going back to the morgue, and so help me if you say one tiny little thing on the way down there…let's just say I know where your comic book collection is and am not afraid to hold it hostage."
Castle stared at her, unsure whether to take her seriously, but afraid for the lives of his precious comics, mimed zipping his mouth shut and stood up. He even suppressed his yelp when Esposito beaned him in the back of the head with an eraser on the way to the elevator.
He insisted on walking her home, still afraid of her long silences in her conversations – the dangerous one where he was afraid she was thinking, and specifically, where he was afraid of what she might be thinking of. She'd been simmering all day, though a hopeful break in their current case also seemed to lighten her mood. "Kate…," he tried again. He wanted to assure her it wasn't that bad. Good press for the Gotham City crew was good for everyone, right? But he stuck with what he knew. "I'm sorry."
She let out a long breath in the chill air. "I am too." The words made his gut clench, his writer brain in full gear depicting worst case scenarios in nanoseconds.
She paused beneath a streetlamp to look up at him, caught the worry in his face. "Rick." She rarely used his name. "It just makes me wonder how this is all supposed to work. What I do matters. It's not just a ride along for me. The girl who was murdered deserves justice, my team deserves credit, and people know about her because 'Nikki Heat' and 'Jameson Rook' are an item? And strangers take pictures of us outside restaurants?"
Glib things sprang easily to his tongue most of the time but he struggled what to say in this moment that mattered. "You're right – about the victim I mean, and your team. And the whole reason I followed you in the first place is because you are that good."
She snorted in disbelief, a tinge of humor shading her words instead of anger as she interjected, "…and because you thought I was hot."
He seamlessly echoed her with a grin, "… and because I thought you were hot…and while I'm confessing, because I wanted your attention and to peel the layers of the Beckett onion…" He sent her a patented Castle smile designed to charm, provoking the predictable roll of her eyes before continuing in a more serious vein. "You're the best at what you do, because you are who you are – and I take that seriously. I am who I am. I can't control the press, and … I can't stop writing Nikki Heat books, I take who I am seriously too. But who I am is also a man in love with you, and so I am asking you to please not let the damned press get … " He turned his head, suddenly self-conscious and aware that she wasn't beside him anymore.
She'd stopped dead in her tracks when he'd told her he was in love with her, so when he looked back, he was a full stride ahead of her. She was in the deep shadow, outside glow cast from streetlamps. He couldn't make out her face, and she was silent. He turned to face her, feeling his heart thudding in his chest.
He'd literally knocked the wind out of her with his words. It was so Castle, in the casual way he'd worked it in, sneaking beneath her guard. She was still mad about the article, though it kept slipping away from her. She stared at him. This was the man who sometimes irritated the hell out of her, who sometimes knew what she was thinking when they were in sync on a case, and yet could sometimes be so damned obtuse, the man who put her in the public spotlight by making her the basis of two books to date and a movie, who sat by her side when she killed her mother's murderer, who pulled her pigtails and bought her a panda bear, and who drove her absolutely crazy – both in bed and out of it.
"Screw the press." She reached for him and dragged his face down to hers in a searing kiss. He wrapped his arms around her, and they stood on the shadowed pavement on a chilly New York night, making out like teenagers.
She almost missed it in the blare from a passing driver honking when he took a brief breath for air and said to her softly, "You are extraordinary."