The day was going slowly.
At a painful, mind-numbing crawl.
Kate Beckett pulled another file off the top of the slowly dwindling pile in her "In" box. Two months of non-stop, intensely intricate murder cases had left her exhausted and with a massive pile of paperwork to catch up on.
That exhaustion was the reason Castle had taken his girlfriend to the Hamptons for the weekend to begin with. And if they hadn't taken the trip, Kate mused, her partner would be sitting next to her, playing "Angry Birds" and finding every possible way he could to make the long day a little more bearable.
Instead, she found herself staring at an empty chair, wondering why the minutes seemed to be ticking by in slow motion. She fingered the rose closest to her hand, leaning over to smell it's delicate scent. As her hand pulled away from the bouquet, Beckett took note of the time.
11:00am.
Great.
I can't even go out for lunch yet...
Beckett groaned as she thought about what was probably waiting for her as soon as she stepped outside the relative safety of the precinct. She had dealt with the press during high-profile cases before, but to think about them digging through every aspect of her personal life...she was getting a headache just thinking about it.
That headache was only magnified by the shrill ring of her phone. She picked up the receiver and spoke into it quietly, "Beckett."
"Beckett?" Castle greeted her with concern, overwhelmed with guilt for not being at her side. "Are you okay?"
The detective pulled herself together quickly. "I'm fine, Castle. Just a long day of paperwork, that's all."
"There's no way that that's all, Kate," Castle countered. "Has Gates..."
"She's ignored me since the conference call we had this morning, surprisingly," said Beckett.
Castle tried to act as ignorant as he could. "Conference call?"
Beckett rolled her eyes. "Don't give me that. I'm tempted to think you're still at City Hall..."
The detective could almost hear her boyfriend's smile over the phone. "I'm actually at Black Pawn, waiting for Paula to get off the phone."
"Ah. How's the damage control going?"
"You know what they say about when the horse is out of the barn..."
Castle hesitated for the briefest of moments; just long enough for Beckett to recognize that he was trying (and failing) to come up with a stall. "What is it, Castle?"
"Paula says we need to do a joint interview about our relationship. She's being pretty insistent about it."
The pain behind Beckett's eyes grew to pound throughout her skull. "Castle..." she warned.
Castle, apparently, had his argument all mapped out. "Paula says we can name our terms, so we can say in advance that stuff like your mother's murder is off limits. And-and, and...Oprah's even available *and* she's interested in doing our first interview together."
That piece of news took Beckett by surprise. "Oprah wants to interview *us*?"
"Yeah," Castle chuckled, his voice flipping from nerves to excitement in the span of a heartbeat. "Isn't that awesome?!"
"Kinda," Beckett reluctantly admitted, "yeah..."
"So can I tell Paula you'll do it?"
The silence between them hung uncomfortably in the air as Beckett pondered her answer to the question. "Do I really have a choice?"
"You'll always have a choice, Kate," Castle replied with an intense sincerity. "But I do think this is our best option. Oprah loves authors and loves a good story. There's no way we can come out of an interview with her looking bad."
Beckett finally let out a conciliatory sigh. The press were always going to be a part of Castle's life; it was a fact that she understood going into the relationship. And as much as she wanted to fight the idea, she knew that if she didn't work *with* the press, they would start working against her. And with the tenuous deal with Senator Bracken hanging over her head like a black thundercloud, the idea of reporters digging into her mother's murder and everything that went with it was more than she could stomach. No, the only way to keep the press from doing too much digging was to be as proactive as possible.
"Tell Paula we'll do it."
Hi all! Don't forget to leave comments; I always love to hear what you think. :D In particular, I'd love to hear if I should write up the 'Oprah' interview. I wasn't planning on it (had this whole plan of ending the story on their first red carpet), but once the idea came out of Castle's mouth...are you guys interested? If you want to see it, what questions should Oprah ask? Let me know!
