PROMPT/REQUEST - From FanCaskett
Lanie and the boys get tired of the subtext and decide to set them up on a blind date with each other.
Set during/after "Food to Die For" (2x22), borrowed the poker scene from "A Deadly Game" (2x24) but this episode isn't relevant to the story, I just realised Castle doesn't have known friends (that I can think of, anyway).
Sorry it took so long.
Enjoy : )
THE SET UP
In a single moment, with nothing more than a few carelessly spouted words, everything can change.
The air can be sucked from the room, leaving your lungs screaming out for the oxygen they so desperately need.
Beckett stood, silenced by her old friend's candour. Although, she knew she shouldn't have been so surprised, Maddie had always been frank, to the point.
Brutally blunt.
"No, I get it. You're hot for Castle."
She could laugh. Hot for Castle. The absurdity of it all, she should be laughing.
So, why wasn't she?
Why was she silenced?
Frozen, wide-eyed, with a sickening fear settling in her chest.
She wasn't ready for this.
"You want to make little Castle babies," Maddie continued, completely unaffected by Beckett's slack-jawed expression. "Why couldn't you just be honest?"
Little Castle babies...
If she thought too hard about that, she would be sick. Because that thought didn't terrify her, as it should.
Why didn't that terrify her?
This conversation terrified her.
Knowing that Castle was on the other side of the mirror, listening to Maddie's totally unsubstantiated ranting, terrified her.
Totally unsubstantiated.
He was listening.
Shit!
"Maddie," Beckett whispered, mortified.
He was probably laughing at how small she had shrunk, how comically pathetic this was.
The detective, with a crush on a world-famous author.
A crush so obvious that even a friend from her past, someone she hadn't been in contact with for years, could see it.
"What?" Maddie huffed, allowing Beckett a chance to talk.
But finding words in the scramble that once was her brain was a futile quest.
"He can hear us," she eventually informed her friend.
She expected shock horror.
Something that mirrored her own torment.
Instead, Maddie perked up, walked toward the mirror and began conversing with the man who stood behind her own reflection.
Maddie wasn't upset at all. She didn't feel vulnerable, violated, betrayed.
But Beckett marinated in it all.
A truth she had been cradling so carefully in secret had been torn from her hands and left out in the elements, exposed in it's fragility.
She was never going to live this down.
"Maddie! Sit," she ordered, desperate to reclaim control.
She had been moving quick, trying to avoid him, but not quick enough, evidently.
He stepped out of the observation room, directly into her escape route.
"You don't really think she did it, do you?" he asked as they locked eyes.
She dropped her focus to the ground, sidestepped him and continued on her way to her desk.
He followed, working hard to keep her pace.
Couldn't he see that she was trying to get away from him?
She could feel heat rising to her cheeks and she could only hope it wasn't an embarrassingly obvious shade of pink.
That was the last thing she needed right now.
She took a deep breath. This was fine, he was distracted by his concern for Maddie. Chances were, he wouldn't even mention what he had overheard.
"Well, until I can rule her out, it doesn't matter what I think. She has motive."
She lowered herself into her seat, biting the inside of her lip as Castle took his place beside her.
She could feel his eyes on her, could feel them burning, prying, invading.
She needed it to stop, just for a moment.
A single second of reprieve, that's all.
"Yeah, she also has an alibi, which you're conveniently ignoring."
The accusation hit hard. It was insulting, wounding.
He was doubting her, turning against her.
"I'm not ignoring, I'm just rechecking," she defended.
Did he really think he knew Maddie better than she did?
Did he really think that she wanted her friend to be guilty?
"I asked her to stay in town in any case."
"Yes, I know. I heard."
He paused, his silence unnerving.
She looked at him, for the first time since almost plowing into him moments ago.
"Everything," he added with a smirk.
Her stomach dropped.
He found this funny. He was laughing, at her.
If the ground beneath her opened up and swallowed her whole, it still wouldn't be enough to save her from this embarrassment.
Three days later...
He received a text around 3pm, inviting him to join the team for a few drinks to celebrate the speedy closing of their latest case, just in time for knockoff.
He had been unaware, until that moment, that there had been another case. In fact, he hadn't heard from anyone in the 24 hours that proceeded the text.
He knew why: Maddie.
She was Beckett's friend. He crossed a line. But Beckett had told him it was fine, why was he being punished for her deception?
He probably should have been more upset by the cold shoulder he hadn't realised he was receiving, but the boys were reaching out now, so he accepted their invitation.
Hours later, he arrived at their usual watering hole.
He spotted the three of them - Ryan, Esposito and Lanie - in a booth toward the back of the bar.
As he approached, their conversation lulled into an uncomfortable silence.
"Hey Castle," Ryan greeted him, awkwardly picking at his thumbnail.
Three sets of guilty eyes avoided his.
Suspicion stirred in his gut.
"What's going on?"
"Nothing," Lanie said with a smile, sliding along the booth and patting her hand against the pleather, signalling for him to take a seat.
But she hadn't convinced him.
He huffed out a laugh, a desperate attempted to diffuse the tension his presence had created.
"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were talking about me."
No one said anything.
Nothing at all.
No attempt to reassure him, no snide remarks about how they had better things to talk about.
Nada.
If he were a less confident man, he probably would have been bothered by it.
Instead, he was just... distracted.
Distracted by what wasn't there.
Who wasn't there.
Her absence weighed heavy on him.
Was she mad at him?
"Where's Beckett?" He asked.
Lanie looked across the table to Espo and Ryan, who exchanged glances.
Okay, mystery solved.
They had obviously been talking about Beckett before he walked in.
But what didn't they want him to know?
"She's with Tom," Lanie admitted.
"Demming?"
Stupid, perfect Demming.
"They've been hanging out lately," Ryan explained.
As if he wasn't already painfully aware of her new friendship with Demming.
"We were just trying to pry Lanie for information," Espo added.
His eyes locked to Lanie's.
He could feel his desperation seeping through but he couldn't restrain it.
"And I told you, I'm not gonna gossip about my friend."
Damn.
As much as he didn't want to know - because, honestly, he didn't want to know - he was frustrated by Lanie's reluctance to offer any sort of breadcrumb.
Just a little trickle of information.
Just enough to know for sure that he really didn't want to know.
That's all he wanted, all he needed.
"Look, Demming's a good guy, but I don't know, I feel weird about him dating Beckett," Esposito said.
"They're not dating!" Lanie argued.
That was for his benefit.
He knew it.
He appreciated it.
But, it wasn't enough. Because now, he did want to know.
Was this friendship actually platonic?
Or was it more a mutually beneficial arrangement type of friendship?
Nope, he didn't want to know.
He could bear the thought of her with Demming, of her with anyone. Not since he had been shown a glimmer of hope.
He clung to that glimmer as if to save his life.
"Why do you care so much, Javi?" Lanie teased, her own little twinge of jealousy beginning to show.
"I don't care," Esposito shot back, more apologetic than he probably intended.
"I do," Castle blurted, earning him three intrigued stares.
Shit.
He didn't mean to say that out loud.
"I just think she can do a lot better than Tom."
The man's name left a bitter taste on his tongue.
Jealousy.
He wouldn't even try to deny it at this point.
"Any suggestions?" Ryan baited him, not bothering to hide his amusement.
Yes.
"Not off the top of my head."
He shook his head, as if that could make him any more convincing.
The collective groan in response to his answer was all the proof he needed: they could all read him like a book.
They all knew.
Later that evening...
Lanie headed to Beckett's apartment after just one drink with the boys.
She enjoyed their company, even without Beckett's presence, but she had more pressing concerns right now.
She stopped by a liquor store on her way, picking up their favourite bottle of red.
She knew that a little wine would make her friend more open to suggestion.
More open to what she had been planning.
Bottle in hand, she knocked on Beckett's door.
"Hey, Lanie." Beckett smiled as she opened the door. "What are you doing here?"
"You said you weren't feeling like going out, so I figured we could stay in."
Beckett stepped aside, inviting her into the apartment.
"I thought you were with the boys?"
"I was, but you're more fun."
She walked to the kitchen, making herself at home.
She pulled two wine glass from the top cabinet and began pouring the wine.
"I don't know how much fun I'll be tonight," Beckett confessed.
Her friend's mind was elsewhere, she couldn't have that, she needed her to focus.
"What's wrong?" she asked, hoping whatever was occupying her friend's mind would be a relatively easy fix.
"Tom asked me out." Beckett sounded confused by this development, as if it had come out of nowhere.
"Aren't you guys already-" She finished her thought with a shrug. A very suggestive, implicative shrug.
"No! It's not like that," Beckett insisted.
"You've been spending an awful lot of time together."
Too much time, if you ask Castle.
"Yeah, I like Tom, he's good company. But I didn't think it was like that."
"One day you'll realise that the guys that hang around you don't have the pure intentions you think they do."
How this woman had made it this far in life being so clueless had absolutely baffled Lanie. She passed Beckett a glass of wine, before taking a sip from her own.
"Hell, if I looked like you, I'd assume everyone was trying to date me."
"Just, not Espo, who jumps at any chance to spend time with you but couldn't possibly be into you," Beckett jested.
"Girl, don't you even get me started on the signals you've been ignoring."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
This woman had to be joking. Surely no one was that blind. If everyone else could see it - hell, if Javi could see it - surely Beckett could. Castle was crazy for her! He may as well carry around a flashing sign that says 'I love you, Beckett.'
Together, they walked to the living room and sunk into opposite ends of the lounge.
"So when is the date?" Lanie asked, trying to gather the necessary information for step one of her plan: get this date cancelled.
Beckett curled up, tucking her feet underneath her. "I said no."
Step one: complete.
"Why?" She didn't have to ask, though.
Because of Castle...
That much was obvious.
"I don't really know," Beckett lied.
Lanie sighed, watching as her friend sipped from her wine glass, avoiding her eyes. She knew that this was never going to happen organically: Beckett and Castle.
They were both so far in denial, they would never find their way out of there. Not in this lifetime, anyway. She knew she had to intervene. On to part two of her plan.
"Let me set you up on a date," she blurted the question, taking Beckett by surprise.
Surprise wore off quickly, though, and she began to argue against the idea almost instantly.
"No way," she declared. "Not again. Last time was horrible. And I already have dates to avoid, why would you think I need to be set up?"
"Because you obviously don't want to date Tom. But, you have to admit, the time you've been spending with him lately... it's like you've been using him as a crutch for what you're lacking right now."
"I have not been using him," Beckett defended.
"Please? I have a friend in mind and I honestly think it might work out this time," Lanie pleaded.
"No."
"You won't even consider it?"
Beckett sighed. "I'll think about it, okay?"
"Okay." Lanie smiled victoriously.