Treading Water
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Heroes & Villains 4x02
Ann, you're a good cop. And you've got somebody who cares about you. Don't be so driven by the past that you throw away your future.
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Kate Beckett likes flirting.
No. She likes power.
She likes that flirting creates a certain reaction, a kind of temporary insanity, which makes people do things they wouldn't ordinarily.
Like Rick Castle. All the money, fame, and writer's wit can't pull him out of this. Powerless. Because of her, sitting beside him at a bar for one drink, just one, and flirting. Almost suggestive. She's in control of this, even as it feels like it all might spiral out of her control.
Which, if she starts thinking about it too hard, means that when she's flirting, she is also indulging in insanity, allowing herself to lose control, to fall as it were, into this madness shared by two.
"Oh God," she laughs. "That was an X-Files episode."
His laughter is textured in response, the troughs matching something in her chest that dips whenever he smiles like that. "Was it?"
"Come on, you watched the X-Files," she banters.
"I did not."
"You watch all the ridiculous shows, Castle. Of course you did. Don't demure for the sake of extending the conversation." She feels quietly triumphant with that repartee, and she salutes herself with her wine glass—she will not drink his scotch tonight—for keeping it real. "You said no games. No double talk. Tell the truth."
"That is their motto."
"No," she scoffs. "The Truth Is Out There. That's their motto."
He grins like a fool and she realizes she's revealed something of herself she was carefully not.
Had been not revealing. To anyone. For decades.
What she's like when she's in love.
With a show.
A fan. Of a show.
Not a writer.
"You," he hums, eyes narrowing, "Detective Beckett, are a fan." He draws it out with such relish she actually blushes. "As the kids would say, you lurv it."
"No," she says, pulling back. "Definitely not what the kids would say." Shakes her head. "And don't try to be one of the kids, Castle. You're far too old."
"You lurv The X-Files," ignoring the jibe. "You're one of those X-Files freaks."
"Castle," she says, making sure her voice is measured, authoritative. She gives him cop-mode as sternly and completely as she knows how, and he does wither. "In the X-Files fandom, you are not an X-Files freak." She lifts one eyebrow. "You're an X-phile. With a 'ph.' Get it right."
His jaw drops.
She's not even embarrassed. She takes a slow sip of her wine, letting the flavor sink in, ruminating on its notes. She thinks he must have given the bartender this bottle so he would claim it was simply the house white, when in fact, she's certain it's a fairly expensive label. Something she might buy for herself on a splurge, not quite the one held in reserve for celebrations, but almost.
Almost.
This could almost be a celebration of something.
Castle closes his mouth, one corner crooked like he might smile. He lifts his scotch to her. "You win that round." He takes a sip, studies her. "And you're right. I did say it. No games."
She sits up a bit straighter (even though it pulls at her chest). "Finally."
"The two of them. Paul Whittaker and Officer Hastings."
She doesn't do him the injustice of looking away. Even as her heart jolts from the slippery fingers of her control. "Yes?"
"She didn't have any idea," Castle murmurs. "She was surprised. That he would take the fall for her. That he was in love with her."
Kate swallows. She has to make a concerted effort to release the too-tight hold on her glass of wine. In vino, veritas. She promised him only one, promised herself this wouldn't be something she could blame later on the alcohol. "She knew."
His face changes swiftly. She cannot follow any of it, what it means, what he sees, what he's thinking.
What he feels.
It is, then, still a game, isn't it?
They are still speaking of each other in metaphors, talking about them in figurative language. It's what he's good at. It's what she's learned to use as a wormhole through her galaxies of damage.
"I know," she says abruptly. "Rick. I know."
He sucks in a breath, shiny-eyed, and she reaches out and clasps his hand.
"You already took the fall for me. You tried to jump in front of a bullet. Don't think I don't know that."
What was that? That change in his face, that shift in his eyes?
She squeezes harder, trying to get to him, reach him. Pointblank, no games. "It's why it's so painful," she scrapes out. Clears her throat, refuses to take a swig of wine like a crutch. "You were this close—" She holds up her thumb and finger, the hair's breadth difference. "This close to taking a bullet for me. Because of me. I don't want you to think that doesn't matter. But it is why it took me so long to call you." She can do this. "It scared me. How close you were to that bullet."
Castle seems to deflate before her very eyes. She doesn't understand this reaction, or why he releases his glass of scotch to suddenly hold her hand in both of his.
A shiver of apprehension goes down her spine.
He lifts his gaze. "Thank you." A furrow appears, that twitch in his mouth that turns down instead of up. "I... needed to hear that. I didn't even realize how much." His thumbs brush across her knuckles, sweeping back and forth. "I might still have been angry about you for that. The silence." Back and forth.
Her eyes fall to the motion. The tenderness of it, the almost unknowing way he caresses her in this moment of honesty.
She nods, trying to gather the threads of their conversation, of her own thoughts. Why are they sitting at his bar drinking after one of the most ridiculous and embarrassingly relatable cases of her career? Why can she not take her hand back? Why did she just admit to him that she tries not to think about the shooting, anything at all about the shooting, anything anything anything—
"Breathe, Beckett."
She takes a gasping inhale. Draws her hand back. Scrapes it through her hair for a moment's pause, regroup, think.
What was she saying about flirting?
Oh, right.
The power.
And the utter powerlessness.
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