A/N - All my gratitude to Loretta ( trytryagain357) for letting me run with this idea and to Angie (dtrekker) for cheering me on. Special thanks to Jennifer for looking this over for me.
She didn't believe her. They had to be together. People that are not madly in love with each other do not look at each like that. So they had to be. But she insisted that they weren't.
And only because Velasquez had been her friend for a long time did Gates believe her.
They were friends but there was a line. Beverly had no problems telling Victoria all about the gossip and the rumors and the fact that most people thought they should be together.
But the betting pool? No way. They were friends but the woman was her boss now and there was no way that she could know that they had a pool going on them. A mostly organized betting ring going on in her precinct, right under her nose? There's no way that she could or should know about that. Even if it was a huge pot. That would also come with bragging rights for all eternity.
But then one night they went out. And bought shots like the good old days. A lot of shots. And they were not the young women that they once were. Before Beverly knew it, she was laughing through telling her how everyone was convinced that someone would win the pool within weeks. Then weeks became months and then years and seriously, what were they dragging their feet for?
"Vickie, I swear, they're just ridiculous. Why aren't they making little babies by now?" she slurred, giggling at the thought of a pregnant Kate Beckett in interrogation. The giggling worked its way into cackling and she rested her head on the bar while the laughter wracked her body.
Her drinking partner wasn't laughing though. And where Beverly thought that she would look angry, when she raised her head, her friend looked pleased, a smug smile turning up at the corners of her mouth.
"I had a feeling about that. Just like I've had a feeling about the two of them from the second I met him. He was just a little too eager, a little too pushy."
"You're not mad?" She winced, preparing herself for the oncoming storm.
"Oh, hell yeah, I'm mad. Betting on people's lives? In my precinct? You bet your ass I'm mad!" Victoria's words were forceful but didn't carry a tone of malice. She took a sip of her long forgotten cocktail before continuing. "You think you could get me in on that pool?"
Beverly's jaw literally dropped and she could do nothing but gape at her friend. A minute passed, then two. She heard the words but was convinced that her alcohol sloshed brain had to be playing tricks on her.
Victoria smirked. "Close your mouth, Bev, you'll catch flies."
"You are shitting me." Despite the other, more eloquent phrases in her head, that was the one that made it out of her mouth.
"Nope, not in the slightest," she replied, lifting the glass to her lips again.
"Why?" Again, not really what she meant to say but, yeah. "Why?"
"Because I agree that there're grounds for a pool. And I want in." Victoria shrugged like it should be an obvious conclusion.
Beverly focused on her friend as best she could in her inebriated state. "You got me drunk, you bitch."
She smirked. "Tequila always was your weakness."
It took half a week before Velasquez had the courage to approach Esposito. Maybe it was cowardly to do it on a day that Beckett and Castle weren't there and to ambush him in the empty break room, but so be it.
"Hey, so, um." Yeah, that's a solid start there, Bev.
The detective just raised an eyebrow at her, leaned a hip on the counter and slowly moved the stir stick around his coffee.
She shifted on her feet, almost turned and bolted but forced herself to blurt out, "Is it possible to still get in on the pool?"
His hand froze its movement, his eye brows knotted together in confusion. "The Beckett and Castle pool?"
"Yeah." She wanted nothing more than the wring her hands together but curled her fingers into fists instead, kept her arms at her sides.
"Sure, I guess," he drawled. "Aren't you already in it, though?"
Oh here it comes, the lying part. "Yeah. I'm, uh, well, I'm being proxy for someone." Okay, not really a flat out lie but enough of an evasion to make her uncomfortable.
Esposito turned to glance through the blinds over the windows, as if he thought that someone would be looking on. "For who?"
"Well, that would kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?"
He turned around, a sheepish look on his face. "Yeah, good point. No hints?"
It was at this moment that she was glad she and Vickie had decided to be discreet with their friendship. Most people knew that they had gone through training together but they had had such different career paths after that, everyone assumed they'd grown apart. But they were the only two women in their training class at a time when women were still looked down on for joining the force. That created a bond that they had never broken. When Vickie became her boss, the last thing that Bev had wanted was for people to think that there was any favoritism going on. So they were professional at work and saved the fraternization for off duty hours. And they were worlds better at being discreet than some other people around here.
Velasquez smiled, her lips pressed together, shook her head and mimed zipping them tight.
He shook his head back at her, a conspiratorial smile blooming. "Okay fine, be that way. You got the cash?"
She withdrew the bills from her pocket and passed them over to him. "The note has the date that s-they picked." She quietly panicked, having almost given another clue to who she was proxy for but he was too busy unfolding the slip of paper to notice the hint of a consonant she used.
His eyebrows shot up as he looked at what was scribbled there. "May 7, 2012? No one has a specific date in this thing. We're only making people narrow it down to a particular week."
She shrugged. "That's what I was asked to give you."
He narrowed his eyes at her, dropped his voice, "Do you have insider info? Because I swear to you not even Ryan and I know what's going on with them half the time."
She shrugged again, afraid to say too much. He just stared at her, his gaze growing ever more intense as if she might crack. She squirmed a bit and shifted on her feet but held her ground.
"Alright," he relented, "I'll write it down."
Her shoulders dropped in relief. "Thanks."
It was a few months after that that their secret exploded. No one could tell you how the truth escaped but suddenly, everyone knew. They'd kept a lid on it for a while, damn near a year by most accounts. Most people were in the "I told you so" camp but Velasquez had to admit that she was impressed. Castle wore his heart on his sleeve and the fact that he had managed to keep his hands off his partner when apparently that wasn't something that he had to do anymore was admirable. He had fooled them all.
The bullpen was quieter than she could ever remember. Well, at least outside of the captain's office it was. Probably had something to do with the dressing down that was happening on the other side of the glass. And with the blinds drawn tight, listening was the only way to get gossip out of this situation. At first, everyone acted like they had some kind of work to do very near the conversation in progress. A file to read, an interesting floorboard to inspect. But they all knew that they were doing the same thing and the pretense quickly dropped, hushed voices filling in words that some people missed.
"Do you understand the regulations of the N.Y.P.D., Detective?"
"Yes, sir, but-"
"But you thought that they didn't apply to you?"
"Well, no, sir, it's not that, it's a unique partnership and so-"
There was a scoff and a not subtly muttered, "Unique," that cut off Beckett's words this time. Beverly had no problems picturing Victoria adding air quotes around the word.
There was silence for a moment, deafening, all-encompassing silence. The soda machine in the break room whirred to life so suddenly that a few people actually startled.
Gates sighed, resignation heavy in the exhalation. Wait, was she really going to let him stay?
"Mr. Castle, I've looked through the waiver that you signed 4 years ago and there's nothing in it that states you can't…" She paused and took an audible breath before continuing. "Fraternize with the members of the force. And our regs are specific in stating that that fraternization is only forbidden between employees and seeing as you're not officially an employee…"
Beverly was wrong. This was the quietest she had ever heard the bullpen. No one was twitching a muscle as they waited for their captain's words.
"Much as it pains me, I have no reason to not allow you the access to which you've grown accustomed." There was the creak of chairs being shifted in or maybe floorboards being shifted on but it was clear that these words had everyone's attention. "But for the safety of my employee, I am having an addendum added to your waiver. You will only assist here at the precinct and at adequately secured crime scenes. You will not ride along on arrests or raids or even in person interviews though you are still allowed to sit in on interrogation here. Are those acceptable terms?"
"Yes, yes sir. Thank you, sir." Castle's tongue seemed to trip over the words. There was a rustle of paper where he presumably signed the document.
"Now go home, both of you." Legs of chairs scraped against the floor and the people around the office started to disburse, lest everyone is caught eavesdropping. But they all froze when Gates started speaking again. "Beckett, I expect to see you back here tomorrow, but Mr. Castle, I don't want to see you in this building until there is a case that requires your unique point of view. Let's see how your team does without him under your feet for every case."
Nothing else was said but footsteps could be heard and everyone started walking away a little too nonchalantly as the door opened and everyone's favorite couple emerged, heads down, avoiding any and all eye contact possible. Gates stepped into the doorway to glare at anyone willing to look her way, the steel in her eyes making it obvious that she didn't believe for a second that they didn't all hear every word. She waited until Castle and Beckett started walking to the elevator before closing her door again.
Beverly was at the perfect angle to see her face just before the door fully closed, a triumphant smile stretching her friend's mouth wide.
It took exactly 57 minutes before someone asked Esposito who won the pool and a week and three days until he got up the courage to ask the couple themselves.
Velasquez was walking past Ryan and Esposito's desks on her way to file some booking paperwork, her ears picking up snippets of their conversation with Beckett and Castle. She didn't mean to eavesdrop but it was hard not to hear things in that open of a work environment. It was all standard casework talk, planning their next moves, deciding who would interrogate the guy they had waiting in the box. She was rounding the corner when she heard the squeak of a drawer opening and the familiar rustle of a manila envelope.
"Can I ask you guys something?" Esposito began hesitantly.
Oh my god, this was it. The pool. The long standing pool could actually have a winner or group of winners. She couldn't walk away from this and slowed her footsteps, casually stopped to look over her paperwork again. No harm in double checking that everything's filled in correctly, right?
"What is that?" Beckett sounded defensive, probably put off by Esposito's tentative start.
"Let's talk about this in the break room," Ryan's voice cut in, his tone light. The foursome relocated at the man's suggestion and Velasquez relocated herself to be next to one of the doors that they failed to close.
"Okay, spill, what is going on?" Beckett asked.
The envelope crinkled as Esposito opened it. "Alright, so, we kinda had a bet going on you guys-"
"You kept that up?!" Beckett exclaimed while at the same time Castle crowed, "That's so awesome!" followed quickly by, "Wait, you knew?"
"Lanie told me about it like three years ago. You guys never closed it." It wasn't a question but more of an accusation.
"There never was a reason to." The smirk could be heard in Esposito's tone. "Could you put everyone out of their misery and tell us who won?"
There was a shuffling of papers and then Beckett huffed out a, "Fine," before a tense silence descended.
This was the moment that everyone in this office had been waiting for years and Velasquez was damned if she was going to miss it. She took a deep breath and banking on the fact that they'd be distracted by the document, leaned around the door frame. Beckett was deep in thought, running her finger down the list and shaking her head every once in a while. She flipped a page and about a quarter of the way down, her finger stopped its movement, her eyebrows shooting up nearly to her hairline.
"No way," she muttered. "Castle, look at this." She turned the page toward him as he leaned over her shoulder to see where she was pointing.
"What the…?" His hand moved to pull the page from her but she was already turning it back to Esposito.
"This one. It's, um, exact. The exact date, I mean." She was blushing. Badass detective Kate Beckett was flushed a delightful shade of crimson.
Esposito glanced at the page before muttering, "Velasquez."
No. Way.
She didn't put in an exact date; her bet was on a week about 2 years ago.
But Vickie did. So that meant…
No. Freaking. Way.
She was frozen, stuck in place, shock seizing her muscles. She knew she should move, knew she should continue her task and let Esposito find her quietly later to pass along the winnings. But she couldn't make herself turn and walk away. Then Esposito did a check of the doorways and it was too late.
"Guess you better get in here and collect," he called out.
She closed her eyes for a second and pivoted so that she was standing in the doorway. She shot a glance at Beckett and Castle, found the detective studiously examining the table top before her but the writer was grinning at her, even gave her a quick thumbs up. It was that move that encouraged her to approach.
"Let's get this done before Gates sees." Ryan said, glancing around nervously.
Oh, if only they knew how funny that was.
Esposito started handing her the envelope but pulled back just before her fingers could close around it. "Okay, I gotta ask again, did your person have insider info? You're proxy for this. Beckett, you put her up to it?"
"I have no stake in this, I seriously thought you guys let it go." Beckett raised her hands in supplication.
He eyed her suspiciously for a moment before turning his gaze back to Velasquez and handing her the envelope before he could think twice about it. Again.
She felt the heft of the cash in her hand. It really was a huge pot. But with this tangible thing in her possession, it was time for the final phase of this little scheme. It was the one that Beverly questioned Victoria on the hardest but now was the one that she was looking forward to the most.
"You guys wanna know who really won?" She almost laughed when all four heads turned to her simultaneously, matching expressions of curiosity on their faces. She didn't wait for an answer, just turned and walked out of the room, unsurprised to hear the stampede of footfalls following.
She moved across the bullpen without hesitation, stopping outside her captain's door and gently knocking. Gates glanced up through the blinds and motioned for her to enter. She opened the door and glanced behind her, amused to see the mélange of reactions her entourage was sporting. Ryan looked terrified, Esposito disbelieving, Castle was just thrilled by this plot twist but Beckett looked sick with worry.
"Cheer up, Beckett. It's not like she can find out a second time." When the detective's face switched to a glare just for her, she just grinned back at the woman and turned to enter the office. "I believe these are your winnings, sir."
"Ah, yes. Thank you, Officer. I appreciate your help."
"Anytime, sir." With her back to the detectives, she threw a wink at her friend and whispered, "Thanks for talking me into this."
Gates took the envelope and stood from her desk, made her way just outside the door, holding the envelope triumphantly over her head. By this point, she didn't have to do anything to get anyone's attention so without preamble she declared, "Let this be a lesson to all of you: There is nothing, and I mean not a single damn thing that goes on in my precinct that I don't know about. I'll think of you all when I take my husband out to dinner tonight."
She pointedly raised an eyebrow at Beckett and the men surrounding her before retreating into her office. Once the door was snugly closed, said knot of people all turned to their attention to the officer standing beside the doorway.
She should have been nervous, should have been worried about what they would think, but the thrill of victory was singing in her veins and it made her bold. So she simply shrugged at them and said, "She offered me a cut," before walking away, almost forgotten paperwork still in hand.
Vickie did pay for drinks when they out the next week, not that they could stop laughing long enough to drink much.
I'd love to know what you think.