Lightning Flashes - Chapter 10
The file in her hand hits the desk with an all-too-satisfying slap, earning looks from several of the other detectives in the room. Any other time she might be embarrassed by her display of anger, her loss of control. She's not this time, though.
This time, she feels justified in her frustration.
They've been on this case for days and they're nowhere closer to where they were when they first caught it. What few drips of leads they seem to be getting are drying up so quickly, they don't even manage to interview someone before the trail ends.
Not that she's able to do much of the interviewing. No, she's still stuck riding a desk at the precinct, waiting for the okay from Montgomery to return to the field while Esposito and Ryan – Ryan, who'd been hurt just as badly as she had but hadn't gotten so damn wrapped up in playing house with Rick Castle and Alexis that he'd been able to get his ass back to work and back out there sooner – get to go wherever they're needed, where they might make some progress on this case. She gets to make phone calls and run financial reports, only occasionally having the chance to talk to witnesses and people of interest when they're brought into the station.
And all that spare time is good for is reminding her how stupid she'd been. How she'd allowed herself to believe in something that isn't real and never was. How she'd let herself get swept away by a story – a fictional idea not dissimilar to the ones in Rick's books – and had forgotten the obvious:
They're from entirely different worlds. He's… him, larger than life and seeking effortless fun and excitement to match him, and she's just a cop with a luggage cart of baggage she hauls behind her each day.
It was just stupid of her to entertain the idea of anything else.
"Yo, Beckett."
"What?" she snaps, twisting to face Esposito. (She'll just pretend the motion doesn't cause a twinge of pain across her ribs; the last thing she needs is for her team to think she's not back in fighting shape.)
The other detective doesn't seem bothered by her abruptness, but she does catch a flash of concern in his eyes at the way her hand lifts to her side and drops a split second later. Thankfully, he doesn't comment on that.
She lifts an eyebrow, glancing past him in search of his partner. These debrief conversations usually go faster with all three of them involved.
"Ryan's downstairs following up on something the roommate remembered about the landlord," Esposito says off her look, "he'll be up in a few. He didn't want to lose the call getting on the elevator."
Kate sighs but nods, sinking onto the desk to wait for their third team member. Esposito moves to drop his jacket over his chair back before joining her in her study of the murder board.
"Everything okay?" he asks after a few minutes have passed in silence.
Kate picks at her cuticle, giving him a short nod. What else is she going to say? That she's spent the last few days feeling idiotic and humiliated in a way she hasn't experienced since her awkward years of high school? Esposito doesn't need to know that. He doesn't want to know that, either.
"Yeah, fine," she says instead.
Esposito nods slowly. Judging by the look on his face, he's not convinced, but he does leave it at that.
"Thanks," she adds after a moment. He's a good guy, even if she doesn't want to spill her guts to him. Better than some, she might add.
She offers him a grateful look to punctuate the words before turning back to the board in front of them.
"So, Ryan said the roommate remembered something?"
Esposito nods. "Yeah. I didn't hear the whole thing, but it sounded like the landlord did something weird a while back. Ryan wasn't sure if it meant anything, might not have even been shady at all, just strange, but you know him."
She exhales a quiet laugh. "Yeah, Mr. Thorough."
It's what makes Kevin Ryan a good cop, especially for the undercover work they'd poached him from; nobody made it that deep into the Irish Mob without covering every angle. And that's why it had been so important for her to go in after him this last time, even if it sent her life into a strange kind of tailspin.
"Hey guys, sorry about that," Ryan calls, taking large strides to join them at Beckett's desk. "I had to find out what that was about."
Beckett nods. "And? Wait, no, start at the beginning."
The boys exchange a look, gesturing back and forth for the other to start.
"You first."
"No, you go, bro," Esposito insists.
Beckett rolls her eyes. Her team can be thoughtful and sweet and prove they're some of the best detectives in the NYPD, and then the rest of the time, they're a couple of idiots.
"Why don't you start together," she says, her voice wry. "Each take a sentence."
"Oh, good idea."
"Yeah, we'll do that," Ryan adds, subtly fist bumping his partner.
"Guys," she sighs.
They share a grin at her frustration – children, she works with children – before Espo gestures for Ryan to continue.
"Okay, so–"
"Detective Beckett," a voice from the elevator cuts through Ryan's explanation, drawing their attention over Kate's shoulder. An officer stands in the middle of the elevator doors, looking hesitant but amused at the same time. "You've got a visitor."
At her furrowed brow, the young man steps to the side, revealing said guest.
Rick Castle stands tall, his palm splayed against Alexis's back through the carrier he has strapped to his chest. She sees his eyes sweep around the room, taking it all in with barely concealed excitement before his gaze lands on her and he swallows.
Her lips purse and she shifts her attention back to the board and her fellow detectives. "I'm in the middle of a debriefing."
She tries to ignore the looks she's getting from everyone in the bullpen and gestures for Ryan to continue. Castle can go home. He can go back to his spontaneous lunch dates and his ridiculous flirting and leave her out of all of it.
"That's okay," she hears Rick say to the officer – presumably in response to her dismissal – his voice breezy and unconcerned, "I'll wait until Detective Beckett is finished. Maybe in the break room?"
Kate rubs her forehead, pinching the bridge of her nose.
"Friend of yours?" Ryan murmurs, bemused.
"Don't. Don't ask."
She exhales, muttering a request for strength under her breath. "It's fine," she says, turning to find Rick and the officer from the desk approaching. "Let him wait in the break room."
Her friend grins, tapping a happy rhythm on Alexis's back. "Great."
"There's coffee," Esposito offers, his smile predatory despite the innocence of his words.
Castle sees right through that, snorting. "Yeah, right. I've heard enough about the coffee here to know better."
Esposito snaps his fingers at being caught. "Damn, I thought that would've worked. Well, it was worth a shot, I guess."
"Why don't you focus on taking a shot at our case," Beckett says, crossing her arms over her chest. She needs to get this conversation back on track if she has any hope of keeping her later one on the rails; the last thing she needs to do is go into whatever this will be with Rick already flustered.
She sees Castle grin out of the corner of her eye. Of course he's enjoying this, delighting in sowing the seeds of chaos in her squad room. This is probably the highlight of his day. Still, he makes his way to the break room without further antagonism, leaving her to finish her conversation with Ryan and Esposito.
With the next steps laid out for them, she sends the boys to their desks to run down a few more leads via the phone but lingers at the board instead of moving to join her friend in the break room.
Being at odds with Rick is so foreign to her, she doesn't know what to say to him or even where to start. Yes, they've argued before – hell, half of their early relationship was based on them bitching at each other about something or another – but this feels different. Rougher.
Swallowing hard, she squares her shoulders and crosses the bullpen to get this over with.
"Hey," Rick greets as soon as she pushes the door open, shifting Alexis in his arms and checking the floor around him. "Okay, pumpkin, I know you had both socks two minutes ago. How did you lose one?"
Kate snorts. Leaning over, she scoops up the offending piece of clothing, holding it out to him. "One of the great mysteries of the universe."
He nods, taking it with grateful fingers. "Speaking of mysteries, how's your-"
"Rick, you didn't come to ask me about my case," she interrupts, crossing her arms over her chest. Her chin lifts, a little defiant.
Her friend's mouth opens and closes a couple of times without sound coming out. "I – no, I didn't."
"Uh huh. So, what do you need?"
Castle blinks at her abruptness before swallowing and shaking it off with his usual joviality. "We hadn't heard from you in a few days and Alexis wanted to come say hi and see how you were settling in now that you're back at work."
Kate barely manages not to gawk at him. That's how he's going to play this visit? Just breeze past the other day? Pretend nothing happened at all and she's just been unnecessarily busy the last couple of days? Not that they'd woken up in his bed, that he'd nearly–and then–
"It's fine," she answers, clipped. She reaches out to touch Alexis's hand but retreats after a few seconds before the baby can grab her in return. She can't right now, she just can't. Because isn't that part of all of this? He's so willing to hand his kid over to her so he can go off and play.
She loves Alexis, of course, so much it hurts, but she's not her mother. And Rick's… actions the other day suggest she's not much of anything to him, either.
"Everything's back to normal except Montgomery still has me riding a desk."
"Ahh," he says, hefting the baby when Kate steps back. "Well, I could try to work my magic on R–"
"Don't you dare. Do you think I want you coming in here and throwing your influence around? Just because you occasionally play poker with my boss?"
"And your boss's boss, and his boss, and the guy who signs most of your warrants."
Her eyes narrow at his flippancy.
"You really think this is funny, don't you? Showing up to make small talk after–playing the 'I know your captain' card, all of it. You don't get that this isn't a joke to me, do you? Even after all this time?"
Confusion mars his brow. "Kate, hey, I didn't mean anything by it. I–"
"No," she interrupts, scrubbing a hand over her face and pinching the bridge of her nose. "You never do mean it, do you?"
"What the hell does that mean?"
Her breath escapes as a slow sigh. "It means… it means you don't even know when you're being serious or not. It means you're perfectly content to say one thing to me and another to everyone else, and then do something else entirely if it suits your whims. You're 'Mr. Hands-on Dad' until a lunch date or another charity dinner falls into your lap and then it's 'Kate, you'll watch the baby, right?' as you try to prove something to someone – and you have no idea if it's to yourself or to others."
She watches the words land and feels a tiny measure of remorse. Still, she continues,
"You're so busy trying to cling to who you were five years ago that you've forgotten to see that the world has moved on from your asinine playboy routine – or maybe that's why you do it, because you're scared–"
"Scared?" he scoffs. "You're one to talk about being scared."
"You're scared you might have to settle for less than an empty head and a supermodel and you might actually end up caring," she spits, pretending he hasn't spoken. "You know what? Forget it," she exhales, squaring her shoulders as she sees him revving up to fight harder. "I have actual work to do. Take your kid and go home, Castle. I don't have time to be your on-call babysitter today."
She leaves the break room without so much as a backward glance and heads down to Evidence to pull the victim's personal effects like she and the boys had discussed earlier.
Rick and Alexis are gone when she returns, and a now-cold mug sits in the center of her desk.
Ryan looks up from his computer, offering an almost-sympathetic smile that does nothing to settle the anger that still bubbles in her chest.
"Find anything?" he asks instead of stating whatever else is on his mind.
"Brought everything up with me." She shows him the boxes she'd lugged up. Her side only hurts a little bit from it, which is a win. "Lenny downstairs had homemade breakfast burritos today – this batch is especially pungent."
Her fellow detective winces. "Good idea. You want help looking through that stuff?"
She shrugs. He's probably running a search right now, so poking through the vic's belongings no doubt beats watching a progress bar advance – or not.
"You okay?" he asks a few minutes later as she thumbs through the receipts in the victim's wallet.
"Fine. Why wouldn't I be?"
"It's just, uh, that sounded kind of ugly in there earlier."
"Yeah, well…" she trails off, not sure where she's going with that.
Ryan nods. She supposes he's pretending to understand any of it – not that she's much better off.
"Look, Beckett, I'm not trying to pry or get in your business–"
"And yet I have a feeling you're about to do that anyway."
"But I just… when we were under and you'd taken that beating for me, you were in bad shape that first night. Really bad shape. And you were talking at one point." Ryan rubs the back of his head, his neck. "You said his name a few times. The little girl's, too."
She freezes, her mouth falling open.
"They didn't hear any of it," he assures her quickly, knowing where her mind went; the danger she could've put Rick and Alexis in by babbling about them while concussed. "It was just me in there with you. Anyway, I just thought you'd want to know about it. I dunno if it helps…"
It doesn't. If anything, it makes it worse. Not only does she have a better idea of what happened in the first few hours she doesn't quite remember, but she has an even larger reminder of how pathetic she is. In some of her worst moments, she'd been thinking of Rick, wanting Rick, and he…
Doesn't even want her on a good day.
Licking her lips and ignoring the lurch in her chest, she gives Ryan a short nod before going back to work.
"Thanks," she adds, pretending not to see the sympathy in his eyes.
Thanks for your patience! Hope you liked this - I promise, these two morons will get their ish together soon.