Author's Note: In which Lanie gets her say. Enjoy!

What the Heart Wants

Chapter 16

Kate couldn't decide if she was relieved or disappointed that she got a call from Dispatch for a new case first thing the next morning so she didn't even have time to stop off at the precinct. Instead, she only made a quick stop at a coffee shop to pick up a coffee—and tried not to wonder how many days it would be before Castle would be back and providing her with coffees and smiles (and kisses, couldn't forget kisses).

Of course, another person having been murdered was never a good thing but since that part was out of her hands, she thought she was more relieved than not. She didn't enjoy doing paperwork at the best of times and on a day when she was already afraid she'd be hopelessly distracted thinking about Castle, working a case which would inevitably focus her attention was probably better. Also, having an active case would mean she didn't have as much time to think about missing Castle.

She found Lanie squatting by the body, a middle-aged man who looked like he'd been stabbed. She nodded a greeting to her friend. "Lanie. What have we got?"

Lanie gave her a brief scrutinizing glance, her eyes narrowing, and Kate wondered what her friend had observed, but Lanie didn't comment. "Beckett, welcome back. Vic's a white male, in his 50's, stabbed and then dragged behind the dumpster to hide the body. No sign of a real struggle and we'll need to wait to get him back to the lab to get a more exact time of death and a tox screen, see if that tells us more."

Kate nodded, observing the body as dispassionately as she could manage, her eyes finding a monogram on the cuffs of his shirt that read either GRC or CRC, the first letter too smudged by what could be mud or blood to be clear. It wasn't as if she'd needed any reason to think of Castle but seeing his initials echoed in the victim's momentarily snared her thoughts before she shook it off. Absurd. "He's well-dressed," she commented aloud. "Any ID?"

"No wallet so it could be a mugging but I did find this," Lanie responded, pulling out an ID badge. "For Mt. Sinai St. Luke's uptown. He's a doctor, Gregory Cambeson."

"A doctor ending up mugged in an alley downtown," Kate muttered, more to herself than to Lanie. "Let me know when you have more info."

Lanie nodded briskly, returning her attention to the body, while Kate swung around to meet the boys, who'd been talking to the uniforms and the people who Kate guessed had discovered the body.

Later, after Kate had visited the hospital where the vic had worked, she got a text from Lanie and headed over to the morgue.

Lanie greeted her with another narrow-eyed look of scrutiny, a faint smirk tugging on her lips, and it gave Kate a moment's warning before Lanie started with, "We need to talk, Beckett. I think you've been holding out on me."

Kate blinked. "What?"

"You had sex," Lanie announced with all her trademark subtlety and discretion.

Kate choked on air, cursing the blush she felt creeping into her cheeks. "What makes you say that?"

"I can tell. Your eyes are bright and you look… loose, like you've had a release of tension."

"That's it?"

Lanie narrowed her eyes at Kate. "Well, no, there's also the fact that you have a hickey on your neck."

Kate automatically clapped a betraying hand to her neck and then could have kicked herself when Lanie smirked. Damn it. She had noticed the hickey that morning and had chosen to wear a collared shirt to hide it because she didn't have a suitable scarf. Her collection of scarves had been incinerated when her apartment had exploded and it hadn't been a priority to replace them. She made a mental note to acquire some scarves. She should have realized a collar wouldn't be enough to hide the hickey completely from Lanie's eagle eye.

Lanie smirked and then sobered. "Kate Beckett, did you find a guy to have sex with up at your dad's cabin?"

Kate gaped, involuntarily grimacing at the mere idea of sleeping with a random guy, sleeping with anyone except for Castle. "What? No! And I wasn't at the cabin."

Lanie raised her eyebrows. "You weren't at the cabin? Then where did you go this weekend? You almost never take actual days off and when you do, you always go to the cabin."

Kate bit her lip. Right, she'd known she would need to tell Lanie about her and Castle some time and apparently that time was now. "I was in the Hamptons. With Castle."

Lanie's eyes went wide. "You had sex with Castle?" Predictably, that was where Lanie went with her admission.

Kate flushed in spite of herself and knew that was answer enough. Sure enough, Lanie almost punched the air in glee. "It's about damn time!" Her expression collapsed into a frown. "But wait. Last I heard, he'd walked off into the sunset with his ex-wife and you were swearing you'd get over him. How did that turn into you sleeping with Castle?"

"He broke up with Gina weeks ago," Kate answered quickly.

"That wasn't what I meant," Lanie retorted dryly. "I know you too well to think you'd have slept with him if he hadn't. But how did all this happen? How did you even know he'd broken up with her and how did that lead to you spending the long weekend with him? Come on, Beckett, spill."

It occurred to Kate that she hadn't really told anyone about her phone calls with Castle. First because there hadn't been anything to say, they had just been talking, but then even when the calls were lasting longer, when they were talking every day, she hadn't mentioned it. Mostly because she wasn't in the habit of talking about her personal life at all but she also hadn't known what to say either. It had just been phone calls, really, nothing out of the ordinary—except that it was out of the ordinary for her. And even now, even with Lanie, she found she wanted to keep her new relationship with Castle to herself, clutch it close the way a miser would hold onto treasure. Wanted to preserve the little bubble where it was just her and Castle.

Which was irrational and silly, she reminded herself. They weren't children and it wasn't as if Alexis didn't already know. And she'd already planned to tell her dad the next time they met up.

"He called me a couple weeks ago, just to say hi, and we… started talking," she explained briefly.

Lanie huffed out an exasperated breath. "And? Come on, Beckett, you know I'm going to pry it out of you anyway so you might as well tell me the whole story. How did talking on the phone turn into you spending the weekend with him?"

"He invited me. Or technically, Alexis invited me."

That made Lanie blink. "I thought Alexis was spending the summer at Princeton."

"She is but she spent the long weekend in the Hamptons and she asked Castle to invite me to join them because she wanted to talk about colleges," Kate explained, more comfortable talking about Alexis.

"Smart girl, thinking about colleges already," Lanie commented.

"Yeah, she really is," Kate agreed, smiling.

"So you and Alexis are buddies now too? That's convenient, since you're now sleeping with her dad."

Kate tossed a half-hearted glare at Lanie. "Shut up, that's not why—I would be nice to Alexis no matter how I felt about Castle."

Lanie smirked. "I know that but your reaction does tell me a lot about how you do feel about Castle."

"Lanie…" Kate groaned. "Did you have something about the case to tell me or did you just call me here to interrogate me about my personal life?"

Lanie waved a dismissive hand. "The tox screen results aren't back yet but they should only be a couple minutes so I have time to finish interrogating you first and then we can talk about the case."

"You sneak," Kate accused but without any real heat. It wasn't exactly unprecedented for Lanie to squeeze in time to corner Kate about her personal life because, she was honest enough to admit, otherwise she very well might evade any personal conversation whatsoever.

"So…" Lanie drew the word out interrogatively, raising her brows.

"So, what?" Kate had a very good idea what Lanie was getting at but she wasn't about to help her friend along.

"So you had sex with Castle and…?"

Entirely unbidden, memories, images of the night with Castle flashed through her mind—the way he'd looked at her, the way he'd touched her, the way he'd felt inside her—and she clamped her lips shut, trying not to flush or squirm or otherwise betray herself in any way. What had happened between her and Castle was private, personal, and she had no intention of sharing any of it, even with her best friend.

"So how was it?" Lanie prodded after a long minute.

"Lanie…"

"Don't 'Lanie' me. Come on, Beckett, I've been watching the sparks fly between you and Castle for the last year and I read that part of Heat Wave that certainly lived up to the title so you've gotta give me something."

"It's personal."

"Do you see anyone else here?" Lanie waved a hand towards the vic, concealed beneath the sheet. "And he's certainly not listening, so spill. I want details, girl."

Details, ha, never. "It was good," Kate answered as uninformatively as she could.

"Kate…" It was Lanie's turn to whine. "Just good? Come on, with Castle's reputation and the sexual tension between you too, that's all you have to say?" She paused and then added, "Unless you mean it was a letdown and Castle really isn't as good in the sack as his reputation suggests?"

"What, no," Kate blurted out before she could think about it. That was so far from the truth she couldn't even imagine…

Lanie gave a sly grin and Kate realized her friend had been baiting her. And she had fallen for it, like any rookie. Damn it. "Aha, so he is good."

Kate narrowed her eyes. "Lanie."

"Ka-ate," Lanie mimicked, stretching her name out into almost two syllables. "So how good is he?"

She always seemed to forget that Lanie's middle name could be persistence. Kate mentally threw her arms up in the air in surrender. "It was amazing," she bit out. "Happy now?"

Lanie gave a cackle of glee. "Amazing, huh? He really must be good."

"And we are never talking about this again," Kate stated flatly.

"As someone who's had a front-row seat to watching you and Castle dance around your attraction for more than a year now, I think I should get more details than that."

"Too bad because I'm done talking about this."

Lanie pasted on an exaggerated pout. "You are a mean friend, Kate Beckett, not to share any juicy details for those of us who don't have a celebrity in our beds." She sobered. "Wait, just tell me one more thing."

"Lanie…"

"I just want to make sure this wasn't just some vacation fling and you aren't doing something stupid to cut off your nose to spite your face."

Kate gave her friend a look. "Your faith in me is astounding," she drawled.

Lanie didn't even attempt to look sorry. "I know you, Beckett, that's all."

Okay, so Lanie might have a point but that didn't mean Kate had to admit it. "It wasn't just a fling. Castle and I talked and we're… trying for this," she managed, not smoothly. And now, she couldn't help the blush scorching her cheeks, ridiculously. She hadn't blushed when talking about sex with Castle but she did when talking about their relationship—how irrational was that. Or maybe not so much because sex was something she was more accustomed to and she was no stranger to how little sex could mean, but a real relationship was not, was something she didn't have much experience in. And this relationship with Castle meant more, already, than any other relationship she'd had. Terrifyingly so.

Thankfully, Lanie didn't comment on Kate's clumsy confession, only studied her for a moment, a faint smirk playing around her lips. "Well, good. And now, you can relax, Beckett, interrogation's over." With that, she'd switched to giving an update on the case, which had allowed Kate to switch back into Detective mode, shrugging off her discomfiture.

The update didn't take long and Kate was soon on her way, texting the boys with the salient facts and that she was on her way back to the precinct, only to pause, a ridiculous ribbon of pleasure wiggling through her when she saw that she'd received another text, from Castle this time.

Do you miss me yet?

Silly man. An irrepressible smile curved her lips as she sent him a quick response—maybe, maybe not—picturing his answering pout.

When she had called him yesterday when she'd returned to her apartment, he had whined about missing her already, making her laugh and tease because it had, after all, been only a couple hours since she'd left the Hamptons. He had spent some time trying to wheedle her into admitting that she missed him already too, which she'd steadfastly refused to do, mostly to tease him and partly because she thought it was utterly absurd to miss him when it had only been a few hours. It was stupid, really it was, she had never been the clingy sort and she had no intention of starting now—and yet… She might not admit to missing him but, well, her apartment had felt oddly… empty, not as comfortable, too quiet. Which was ridiculous because it wasn't as if Castle had even been in her new apartment yet so she absolutely should not feel as if something was missing. It was irrational and crazy… and true. Damn it.

Kate sternly managed to shove all non-casework-related thoughts out of her mind for the rest of her day, helped by the near-constant influx of more information about the victim that they kept finding out, the pieces coming together to help form a picture of the vic and his life. As usual, she really did enjoy her job, the challenge of it, and if the process wasn't quite as entertaining without a certain person—she wasn't going to dwell on it. Her job wasn't meant to be entertaining anyway.

But for all her bravado, she felt a ridiculous surge of happiness swamp her the moment she heard his voice at the other end of the phone line. "Beckett, your telepathy is almost scary. I was just about to call you myself."

She allowed herself to smile at his silliness. "How many times do I have to tell you that there's no such thing as telepathy, Castle?"

"You can't prove it doesn't exist. You can't prove a negative."

"Must you be so ridiculous?"

"Must you be so rational?" he parroted back at her.

"I'm a cop, Castle; it comes with the job description."

He heaved a fake sigh. "Yeah, and you seem to enjoy spoiling my fun too. I don't know why I like you so much."

The half-teasing sentiment really should not make her heart flutter. "Yeah, well, you're a little crazy."

"Only a little?" Since when was a smirk audible?

"Fine, a lot crazy."

"Crazy about you, that's for sure."

She rolled her eyes, sternly instructing her silly heart not to react. "So cheesy, Castle. I expected better from a bestselling author."

"Even I can't be brilliant all the time."

"That's quite the concession from you, oh vain one," she needled.

"Beckett," he whined, dragging her name out into more syllables than it actually was. "Did you call me just to be mean to me?"

"No, but now that you mention it, it sounds like fun."

"I'll hang up," he pretended to threaten.

"Truce! I'll be nice," she promised, laughing.

"Good," he huffed.

She could just picture his adorable pout and smiled to herself, realizing belatedly that her hand had come up to wind a strand of hair around her finger. Oh, she really had it bad, twirling her hair while talking to her boyfriend—oh god, Castle was her boyfriend, ridiculous as that sounded—on the phone. "I told Lanie about us," she told him, changing the subject. "Or rather, she guessed and I admitted it."

"How did she guess? Lanie hasn't even seen me in more than a month!"

"Yeah, well, somebody left a hickey on my neck that I couldn't completely hide and after that, Lanie pried the truth out of me."

"Sorry," he said, sounding smug rather than sorry.

"Liar."

"Okay, you got me. I'm not sorry. But what did Lanie say?" he quickly switched gears.

"She said it was about time," she answered since she was not going to go into the rest of Lanie's interrogation.

Castle gave a hoot of laughter. "That sounds like her."

Kate huffed a little in belated amusement. "Yeah. And it occurred to me that we never really talked about telling other people about, um, this." She hesitated, inwardly writhing. Ugh, she hated this sort of thing, talking about personal things. It occurred to her that one downside of these phone calls with Castle was that it did mean they needed to talk. It made it harder to evade or get distracted by kissing or touching.

"Okay," he said slowly and she heard the faint frown in his voice. "But I thought we did talk and you said you were fine telling Alexis."

"I am. I'm fine with telling your family and I'll tell my dad when I see him this weekend but I meant, at work."

"Oh." He hesitated and she wondered why, what was causing this uncharacteristic reticence in Castle, who'd spent the last year worming his way into her personal life. "You mean, you want to keep this a secret at the precinct?"

It was her turn to hesitate, his question abruptly reminding her of something she'd forgotten about—or more accurately, had tried to block from her mind. The bet—that stupid pool going around about when she and Castle would sleep together. Oh god. She hadn't even thought—but now, she did and she could just picture it, the jokes, the smirks, the gossip. All the worst aspects about her job, about being a female cop.

And Castle was a celebrity too. Shit. Another thing she hadn't really taken into account, had tried not to think about. It had been weirdly easier in the Hamptons, easier because, like Castle had mentioned, in the Hamptons, he wasn't the only big name and his wealth was nothing special, and she'd been away from the fish bowl of the precinct too. It had been easier to focus only on him, on them, in their little cocoon of privacy.

Now, she was back in the real world, her real life, where she had to deal with gossip and rumors, magnified by Castle's fame. Oh, shit.

"I don't—I hadn't thought about it," she finally managed, not smoothly, as she tried not to sound like she wanted to cringe.

"We don't have to tell people, if you don't want to," he conceded after an awkward pause. "As long as we can be together outside of the precinct, that's enough for me."

Oh. Oh, damn. Kate bit her lip. Was that—there was just a faint trace of something in his voice, something that wasn't quite hurt but it indicated that he wasn't happy about it either. And what he'd said too, that being with her outside of the precinct would be enough, as if he was somehow settling.

No. She couldn't ask that of him, didn't want to do that. All her instincts might be in favor of privacy, that was her way, but she wasn't unaware of the implications of asking for a secret relationship. She dealt with secrets every day and secrecy generally implied something embarrassing or suspicious or illicit. None of which applied here and she would never want anyone, especially Castle, to think otherwise.

"No," she blurted out before she'd realized she was going to.

No, she cared about Castle more than that. Cared about him and his feelings more than her own wish to keep her personal life private. (She wasn't sure she'd ever felt that way before, this acknowledgment that someone else, their happiness, their well-being, was so important to her. But now…) It was a little surprising but she realized she could—and would—compromise on her own wish for privacy for his sake.

"No, I don't want to keep it a secret," she managed to say. The gossip, the intrusive questions, would be annoying but then again, she was used to shutting down or otherwise ignoring rumors and gossip about her in the precinct.

"You don't?"

Something inside her twisted a little because he sounded surprised, although she supposed he had some reason to be. As he of all people knew, she wasn't exactly given to openness about her personal life. But she swallowed back the ridiculous lump forming in her throat, trying to sound light. "I work with detectives, Castle, how successful do you think we'd be at keeping it a secret? I know just how subtle you are." (Not.)

"You don't think I can be subtle?" he huffed in mock offense. "It'd be like stealth dating! Or ninja dating. Because that would be so cool!"

She hid a smile. Trust Castle to put it like that. "Yeah, well, you can save your stealthy ninja skills, or lack thereof, for something else," she advised him dryly.

"Ooh, does that mean I can tell the boys you're my girlfriend now?"

"Don't push it, Castle," she shot back but couldn't help her smile, the lift of her heart.

"I'm not! I'm being reasonable! If I weren't, I'd suggest that we take an ad out in the Ledger announcing the news."

She snorted in spite of herself. "Why would you need to? The Ledger already took care of that months ago. Because I seem to remember a line about us being 'romantically involved.'"

"'Rumored to be romantically involved,'" he corrected, "and that's different."

"How is it different?"

"They were only rumors and everyone knows you can't always trust rumors," he informed her airily.

"You only say that because you're used to having rumors about you speculated on in the press."

"Well, yes, I do have a certain amount of experience with that," he agreed, more smugly than not.

"It's not a compliment. And secret or no, we're going to have to keep it professional in the precinct because NYPD regulations prohibit partners from being romantically involved."

"Would that really apply since I'm not actually a cop?"

"Oh, now you remember that you're not really a cop?" she mocked. "It's a loophole and I think it's what Captain Montgomery will rely on but I'm not so sure the higher-ups at One PP will agree so we should still be careful."

"Are you sure about that because I have this fantasy involving you and the interrogation room and—"

"Castle!" she cut him off sharply, glad that he couldn't see her flush. "That is never going to happen."

"Are you absolutely sure about that because that's what you said about being with me at first too and now look what's happened."

"Castle!" she tried to smother her laugh. "That is not the same thing." The man was ridiculous. And outrageous. And why didn't she find it annoying?

"Oh wait," he broke in, his tone shifting, becoming serious. "There's one more thing and no joke this time but if we're talking about telling people, we should talk about the press because they will find out eventually."

All amusement died at the reminder, her other concern when it came to privacy. "Oh, right," she said flatly.

He sighed. "I'm sorry, Kate. I wish I could promise it won't happen but I can't. All I can do is try to contain it but there's only so much I can do. I know you're not going to like it but I can't prevent it entirely."

It was her turn to sigh and then bite her lip. "I know, Castle, I don't blame you for it."

"But...?"

She let out a breath, aware of her visceral reaction at the mere idea of having her private life splashed over the gossip pages. The reaction after the "rumors" in the Ledger's blurb about Castle had been muted but any public confirmation of Castle's relationship with her wouldn't be so easily quieted. She'd followed enough of Castle's publicity, the gossip about his love life, over the years to know that.

If anyone had told her months ago that she would ever accept her personal life becoming the subject of tabloid gossip, she would never have believed it.

"I'm going to hate it," she admitted.

"Kate…"

She closed her eyes for a moment, pictured his face, the way he looked at her sometimes. "But I understand that publicity is part of your life, part of your job, and…" she paused, trying to formulate the right words, "if I'm going to be part of your life, then I accept some publicity as part of the bargain."

"God, I wish I could kiss you right now."

"Yeah," she agreed quietly. Oh god, yes, she wanted that too.

There was a moment of silence in which she could almost swear their mutual longing practically vibrated over the phone line (oh god, had she actually thought that?).

But then it was over as she heard him release a somewhat uneven breath and then he went on, in an attempt at his usual tone, "So did you get a new case today?"

She accepted the change of topic with some relief. Better to return to their usual theorizing about case work—she might still miss him—but there was no need to make it harder by dwelling on it either. So she told him about the case, about Dr. Cambeson, whose personal life showed no red flags, happily married to all appearances and with two teenage kids, and whose professional life they were starting to look into.

And as usual, he chimed in with theories, ranging from the victim being a spy (of course), to being a blackmailer, to being in with the mob. Also as usual, she laughingly batted his theories back and it was almost as if nothing had changed between them at all. They were still friends, still partners.

It was all very much as their earlier calls had been until the end, when they both reluctantly acknowledged that they should get off the phone as it was late and she needed to be up at her usual early hour to get to work and his phone was about to run out of battery.

"Have a good night, Beckett."

"Night, Castle."

"Hey, Kate?"

It was ridiculous how her heart seemed to stutter just at his use of her first name. "Yeah?"

"I miss you."

And there went her heart again. Her throat felt tight, stupidly. She really wasn't good at this, saying these things. "I miss—my personal coffee delivery boy."

She tried to make it sound teasing but it came out sounding like what it actually was, a lame cop-out.

But he gave a soft huff of generous laughter anyway. "I'll see if I can have a word with him, make him hurry back to his barista duties."

"That would be nice. Night, Castle."

"Til tomorrow, Beckett."

She smiled as she ended the call at this reminder that Castle could not just say 'night,' even as she felt absurdly dispirited at the knowledge that she would be going to sleep in her solitary bed. She might not be able to say it in so many words but she did miss him. A lot.

~To be continued…~

A/N 2: Just one chapter and an epilogue to go. Thank you all for reading and reviewing!