In the same way one deduced an impending downpour from a brooding sky, Katherine Beckett took one look at the woman suspended from the monkey bars in her underwear and braced for a precipitation of lewd commentary.

She knew a strange case lay ahead when that didn't happen. It was hard to miss her partner's reaction because of it all it lacked via his typical wealth of curiosity and macabre exuberance. The first studied look he spared to their victim tightened and narrowed sun-bathed blue eyes into blades of enmity. He looked angered, even offended.

"Caramel, huh?" Ryan tilted his head some at the prone victim. "Maybe the doer has a sweet tooth in addition to liking bondage and public play."

"Safe to assume he's no casual fetishist," Richard said by way of agreement and crouched to run his gloved fingertips along the cuffs that had been latched around the victim's wrists. He opened the pliable catch on each to further glimpse their design.

Beckett's gaze automatically slid to the medical examiner. The other woman was staring back at her. They shot mutual suspicious glances at the man.

"Why do you say that?" Ryan asked.

Thank you. Yeah, Big Rick, why?

The author didn't notice the added scrutiny. He was already cast adrift upon that oceanic imagination, seeking currents by which to merge evidence and theory. The distant quality in his voice gave it away. "This is full-grain leather. Top tier. Most manufacturers use lower quality and compensate with an overabundance of cheap lining. Also, the stitching is too elaborate for machine work. It's a custom piece."

Lanie flicked her gaze back to Kate and mouthed the words: Custom piece?

Beckett shrugged, equally baffled.

Normality returned for a time as the M.E. shared additional information about the condition of the body. Ryan and Esposito called them away afterward and tag-teamed a bit of show-and-tell around the park, pointing out unusable footprints and tracks from a rolling suitcase. Having Castle muse aloud about the conflicts of behavior between an elaborate staging of the scene versus a passionate cause of death was almost normal enough to forget the pinpoints of unusualness.

It was until the boys lamented their lack of clear direction to start investigating from.

Then Castle pointed out, "We have the restraints at least. Get a close-up of the stitching. That's almost as good as a signature. It shouldn't be hard to track down; BDSM shops in this city comprise a small, closely-knit community. Only a handful still do commission work."

Sadly, the boys didn't share Kate's consternation for the sexual proclivities implied by the mystery writer's knowledge of the subject matter. Dammit. Her peers took the data and ran minus any further digging on her behalf. It's not like they weren't given ample opportunity to step up either. Perusing a website full of BDSM devices at the precinct later should have been more than enough to open a line of inquiry. Illegal in twelve states indeed. Who even knows that?

"Those two were gawking at a picture on some website," Kate complained to Lanie at the OCME later, "asking how the subjects could even get into their positions. Admittedly, it was a pretty advanced form of sixty-nining. It looked like the guy was holding the woman in the air upside down and backward by her waist. She had her thighs draped over the guy's shoulders around his face and her upper half was bowed around like a 'C' with her cheek nestled into his crotch. Anyway, Castle takes one glance up from his phone and says it's a sex swing. No giggling or colorful add-on. No nothing. They might as well have asked what time it was. It was a swing advertisement, of course. The site photoshopped out the wires and positioned the guy's hands at her waist to conceal the harness and make it look like a more clever product than it is. Thing is, you wouldn't know that unless you understood the position and its unlikelihood without a support mechanism. Do either of them question Castle picking up on that so fast? Hell no. All they could do was ooh and ahh like numbskulls. They're the worst unwitting proxies ever."

It wasn't until after the tirade ran its course that Kate sensed her friend wasn't getting in on the indignation with the same enthusiasm. She turned from the length of floor space she'd been prowling and fixed her besty with a bemused frown.

Lanie shone a deadly smile back at her.

Uh-oh.

Kate managed not to wince. "What?"

"Oh, I think you know what. I mean, damn. I'm curious. You're fu-fu-fu-furious," she concluded with a mocking stutter for effect and giggled, entirely too pleased with herself.

"Well," Beckett began somewhat lamely with a shift of weight from one hip to the other, "it kinda offends my sensibilities as a fellow investigator, y'know? I can't help it."

An inelegant scoff issued from the back of the other woman's throat. "I believe the second part." Lanie shook her head and turned the chair outward at her desk. Its aged joints gave a squeal as the woman settled in facing her companion. "I think I'm more surprised that you're a little shaken up about Castle having kinks. Name one person we know who possesses more latitude for exploring them."

"I'm not surprised. Everyone has kinks. He didn't say anything about it though."

"Is that what bothers you? Or is it that he didn't ask anything for once—about you?"

"Huh." She blinked, frowned. "That's a great point. This is even weirder than I thought."

Lanie's gaze ventured to one side in contemplation. "He's not exactly an open book in general, is he? I mean, with the real stuff. I feel like you've mentioned that before."

"I have and he isn't," Kate grumbled. "The scales between the meaningful information he asks of me versus what he offers in return is so far out of balance by now it's more of a vertical line pointing down at a sucker." She raised an arm to point illustratively at the top of her head.

The other rocked with humor. "At least he's consistent."

"C'mon. You don't find this a little odd?"

"Honey, he shares a lot less with everyone who isn't you. What's strange is that you're allowing the imbalance to slide. Open up that pretty mouth hole and do something about it. I will give you brownie points for owning up to being curious in the first place."

Beckett started to huff at the woman's teasing but stopped. She frowned, shifting the arms crossed at her sternum against a sudden pricking of concern. "Really?"

"What?"

"Do I convey such a lack of interest in him that it's surprising it exists?"

Her besty ably intuited the underlying twinge of self-crimination. She started to inject an automatic denial by way of reassurance but halted mid-stride. Plump lips resealed. Her expression settled into one of remorseful confirmation. A moment later she added, "In fairness, anytime you encourage the man to take an inch it tends to become a country mile. Look what happened after you told him about your Mom."

Beckett sighed as well, but shook her head. "That was different. Even I'll admit he blundered his way through that with good intentions. That doesn't excuse going behind my back. It's just…" Kate stopped, not knowing what else to add. So she didn't. "That's kinda my point though. After everything that's happened between us, good and bad, I can't have him thinking that I'm not even…" Words failed her again.

"Interested?" Lanie provided smugly.

"Curious," Kate corrected with another shift of her weight. It graduated into motion, ferrying her to an eventual set of her butt on an open corner of the M.E.'s desk. The resolute shelf of the detective's shoulders rounded into a little slump. "I can't have Castle of all people thinking that, Lanie, jeez. There are limits to my hypocrisy."

"What the heck does that mean?"

Beckett meant his books. Castle's writing had intruded upon the desolation of her grief long before the author initiated a literal and less graceful attempt of the same. Few characters or plot twists he created were one-sided things. Every tale was complicated if one looked closely. That was his real marvel to her as a storyteller: he satisfied both shallow and deep readers with the same strokes of narrative. Kate was definitely the latter, and because she had looked for more and consistently found it, slowly but surely the younger version of herself had gone from asking: What does it even matter anymore? to wondering instead: Doesn't it still matter? Maybe to some that wouldn't seem like a terribly dramatic shift of perspective. For Kate, it had been downright pivotal at the time.

"Honey?"

The investigator focused on her friend and offered a wan smile. "Nothing. Nevermind."

"Girl, I'mma smack you."

Kate expelled a gust of humor as she arose and straightened her top to a smoother lie. "You've prodded plenty, trust me. It's good," she concluded softly with a shift of her gaze to the other from beneath the downward angle of her brow. "Thanks. I know what I need to do."

"What you need to do is share with the class. Don't leave me confused."

"Gotta go," the detective lilted airily on her way to the door. "See ya."

The squawk slipped out through the lessening sway of the morgue's double doors in the detective's wake. "You suck!"

"That's not what I'm planning," Kate chided amusedly. "Love ya, pervert."