A/N: This chapter is a bit longer, but then again I think most chapters from now on will probably be at least this long... Also, please note that while some lines are pretty much the same as in the pilot, this is only to draw a parallel. Sometimes the same situations will have different outcomes – and that's sort of the point here, otherwise there would be no sense in writing this fanfic ;-)
Please let me know if you have any comments, suggestions or simply if you like it (or don't). Any review, good or bad, is greatly appreciated!
"What can you tell me about the murder?" Rick asked as soon as Detective Beckett and he stepped out of his building in direction to the unmarked police issued Ford Crown Victoria parked a few yards away from his building. He had left Alexis with his mother in the loft – or maybe he had left his Mother with Alexis… it really depended on which way he looked at it.
"In here? Nothing." She stared at him solemnly, going around the car to the driver's door. "At the station? I'll let you know everything I want you to know."
"Oh, come on! Really?"
Beckett barely managed to stop her eyes from rolling at the writer's childish antics simply because she had neglected him information on the case. As she reached the right front door, she noticed he was staring at her with a curious look on his face while he stood anxiously by the front door on the left side of the vehicle, waiting for her to unlock the doors so he could be let in the car.
"You can get in the back seat," She told him as she put the car key in her door's lock to manually unlock all doors.
"Why?" He complained, with a wary expression. "I'm not under arrest, am I?"
"You're not under arrest, Mr. Castle, but I'm taking you in for questioning and it's protocol that you sit in the back of the cruiser." She stared at the author until he was intimidated enough to get inside the car, sitting in the back seat. Then, climbing into the driver's seat, she added, "Plus, I got this feeling that having you in the front with me would be as annoying as if you were an 8 year-old boy on his way to the amusement park for the first time."
Smirking, he quipped, "Well, I'm all man. You can check for yourself if you'd like."
Rick could see the female Detective roll her eyes in the rearview mirror this time while she settled in her seat and started the car in silence.
No sooner had Beckett started driving around the streets of Lower Manhattan away from his building and towards the 12th Precinct than she felt his eyes on her again, expressing the same curiosity she had seen on his face before they entered the car. Annoyed, she kept looking ahead. "What?"
He quickly refocused his eyes, amused that he had been caught staring. "Nothing."
Noticing that Detective Beckett was no longer looking at him in the rearview mirror, he once again started watching the brunette cop. Rick had the feeling – and his feelings almost never failed him – that he had met this woman before, and he was racking his brain trying to figure out where he could have encountered her in the past. Before he could catch himself, he once more began openly staring at the right side of her face – the only part of her he could get a glimpse at from their current position –, and suddenly he was startled when the Detective, who hadn't taken her eyes off the street for even a second, berated him for 'creepily watching her' and told him to stop being weird and just be quiet.
After that, Rick had alternated between looking out through the car window to the slowly passing restaurants and stores and sneaking a peek at the beautiful Detective as she concentrated on steering the car, a guarded look plastering her face. She noticed he had managed to remain inconspicuous for about ten minutes, which in current New York rush hour traffic didn't afford them a whole lot of miles of travel – she was thankful that the station was close enough for them to reach their destination in a couple of minutes –, before he gave up the pretense of watching the scenery and focused his eyes on his driver solely yet again. She didn't know what he was thinking about, but she could feel the wheels turning in the writer's overactive mind.
Upon hearing her sigh – a sound so small that he probably wouldn't have noticed had he not been paying close attention to the cop –, the author looked away, attempting to pretend he hadn't been watching her intently as he searched his brains for the reason to why her face seemed familiar to him.
"What?" There was no denying the exasperation in Detective Beckett's voice.
Ok, so he had been caught.
Perching forward on the car seat, Rick noticed the way Beckett's eyes fleeted in his direction before he spoke. "Have we met before?" He posed his question to the brunette's right cheek.
"What?" She said again, but this time her voice was laced with surprise. Managing another swift glance in his direction, she quickly added, "No."
Sensing her discomfort, although he could not pinpoint the reason for it, he tried again. "Are you sure? I'm not usually wrong about this kind of thing."
"What thing?" Kate asked, furrowing her eyebrows as nonchalantly as she could manage and hoping to everything she believed in that the slight excitement she felt inside at his remembering her face – even if he didn't know the reason why he recognized her – did not spill out with her question.
"Remembering faces," He took the words right out of her mind.
"I'm pretty sure we've never been introduced, Mr. Castle." She tried her best to look impassive. There was no chance the Detective would let playboy Rick Castle, a person of interest in her investigation, know she was a fan of his, especially if doing so would cause her to admit she had spent hours in line to get his latest book signed.
"Please, call me Rick." He graced her with an annoyingly cute grin. "And I'm pretty sure we have met before – there is no way I would forget someone as stunning as you."
Frustrated with him (and, honestly, with herself, for being affected by his blatant and cheap flirting), she parked the car in front of the 12th Precinct before she replied, hoping he wouldn't call her bluff, "As I said, Mr. Castle, we haven't met." After she had killed the engine, she turned around to face him in the backseat, with a devious gleam in her eyes. "Not unless I've arrested you before." She hoped this would shut him up.
All too satisfied with his rap sheet, he announced, "If you haven't been a homicide detective for your entire career in law enforcement – which I'm sure you haven't –, then that would certainly be a possibility."
She raised her eyes at him in disapproval and merely got out of the car, walking around it and opening the right back door for him to get out. "Please follow me, Mr. Castle."
He stepped out of the cruiser, smirking at her, and then followed the Detective inside the police station, keeping his eyes trained on her, observing the way she unwittingly commanded attention inside the precinct, the way her hips moved with the subtle bounce that accompanied each stride she took. She was an authoritative woman, he could tell, and no one could deny how beautiful she was.
Rick could not help but wonder what a woman like that could do to him in bed.
He continued following her, this time to the elevator, watching her while she remained facing the closed doors on the way up, chewing her bottom lip. He wanted to watch her every move, but also wanted to get a rise out of her. "You have beautiful lips, you know that?"
She just shot him a censoring look, though he noticed a faint blush taint her cheeks (or so he hoped), and walked out of the elevator as soon as the doors opened. "Please accompany this officer to the interrogation room, Mr. Castle," Beckett told him, gesturing to the male police officer who had been sitting at the desk closest to the elevator. Then, she directed her words to the uniform. "Put him in Two, ok? I'll be right there." At the officer's nod, she thanked him and started walking towards the bullpen.
Not being someone known for obeying orders quietly, Castle grinned and raised his voice just enough to get her attention – and that of a few officers hanging around. "So you still won't tell me about the murder?"
He watched in triumph as she stopped walking, took a deep breath (he was sure she had her eyes closed for the three seconds she must have been silently counting in her head as well) and then sauntered into the bullpen ignoring his words. Only then he accepted his escort into interrogation room two.
After spending a few minutes talking to Detectives Ryan and Esposito to learn about Richard Castle's record with the NYPD, Beckett walked to the break room to get herself a coffee and try her best to calm her beating heart. She still could not believe she was going to interrogate one of her favorite authors.
Oh, who was she kidding? He was her favorite author! Rick Castle was a great writer, and she found his stories were always spellbinding (granted, his earlier works were not the best books ever written, but still…) and, on top of it all, he was probably the sexiest novelist alive.
Before she knew it, she was fangirling all over again.
It was Richard Freaking Castle!
She had felt like a regular fan at the signing event she attended the previous month, but at least then she had prepared herself to meet the author. She knew then that she would not get to talk to him for longer than a couple of minutes, and that he would act his best to be charming to all his fans – just like the papers said he always did. Also, back at the signing she didn't have to act professionally, even though she was proud to say she managed to keep her fangirl instincts to a minimum.
But now, she was expected to be a serious New York Police Detective, not some stupid groupie. And no matter how long she had spent telling herself to calm down before she went and picked him up at his apartment, now he had more time with her to try and charm her barriers down… her professional and personal sides were definitely not getting along well at the moment.
At least his childish egotistical behavior so far had been enough to keep her silly attraction to him to a minimum.
She felt herself calming down at that. Taking the last gulp of her coffee, she mentally chanted that he was just a regular guy. Just like any other person of interest in any investigation. There, that's more like it. Just Mr. Richard Castle.
That's it.
Once she had finally felt ready to go in, Detective Beckett marched out of the break room and into interrogation room two, leaving star struck Kate behind in her wake. The door hadn't even closed behind her before she directed her first words at him. "Well, Mr. Castle, you weren't lying about your background before – you've got quite a rap sheet for a bestselling author: disorderly conduct, resisting arrest –"
He interrupted her with a sheepish smile and a small shrug. "Boys will be boys."
She continued reading the file in her hands, "…stealing a police horse –"
"Uh, borrowing." He corrected her.
"…while you were nude, it seems." She looked up at him at that, raising her eyebrows in question.
"It was spring," He said, as if that certainly answered everything.
"Of course." Suddenly, his shameful act didn't seem too sincere to her. Sitting across from him at the table, she narrowed her eyes but kept a smirk of her lips. "And every time the charges were dropped."
"What can I say? The mayor is a fan." He leaned over to her and spoke, leering. "But if it makes you feel any better, I'd be happy to let you spank me."
She brought her face a few inches closer to his. "Mr. Castle, this whole bad-boy charm thing that you've got going might work for bimbettes and celebutantes. Me? I work for a living. So, that makes you one of two things in my world: either the guy who makes my life easier or the guy who makes my life harder. And trust me, you do not want to be the guy who makes my life harder. Got it?"
That seemed to sober him up, if only a bit. "Okay."
Beckett continued with her interrogation, feeling more comfortable with the situation each question she got to ask, as if she were a wild animal who had been caged for years and now had finally been given the chance to return to its natural habitat. She found that Castle was being surprisingly cooperative, even if he still managed to throw a few innuendos here and there. He even agreed to make all of his fan mail available to the NYPD for inspection. That is, provided he got to help on the case.
"I'm sorry?"
"Well, if this guy is copying my books I'd like to find out why."
"There's no need for you to be here with us for that, Mr. Castle –"
"Please, call me Rick," he cut her off once again.
"We'll let you know as soon as we arrest the person responsible for this."
"I'm sure you will. I'd just like to be here when it happens."
Beckett sighed. "Well, I'd have to talk to my Captain –"
"I can wait." He interrupted. Again.
"…but I'll see what I can do for you," she told him, looking straight into his eyes. She never made a promise she didn't intend on keeping.
For the first time during the entire interrogation, he kept quiet, simply staring back into his eyes. "Do you know you have gorgeous eyes?"
She immediately broke eye contact with him, lowering her face to stare at the table, suddenly shy. Of all the things he had said to her so far, for some reason that was the one thing that brought an actual blush to her face.
Of course he noticed it. And, in return, that brought a smile to his face.
She got up from the table without replying to his compliment, intent on seeing her Captain about Castle's request, but he interrupted her just as she was about to leave the room.
"Are you certain we haven't met before?" Watching her exasperated frown at being asked this same question over and over, he was quick to continue, "I'm sorry I keep asking this, but this has been plaguing me since you picked me up at the loft." He took a small breath before continuing. "It's just that, I can't help but feel that I've seen you before. And not because you could have arrested me." Then, with the most alluring grin he could manage, he added, "And certainly – albeit, unfortunately – not because I've met you in a more intimate way."
Against her better judgment, she felt his words and smile affect her. Trying to temper her reaction and hoping to appease him at the same time, she replied, "Maybe we've just crossed paths before somewhere in the city." And with that she left the interrogation room.
Pursing his lips, he got up from the table and murmured to himself. "May be."
He then stepped out of the interrogation room and, just as he did so, he saw the beautiful Detective already talking to an older man – probably the Captain in the Homicide Division. Rick looked around for a while, taking in everything all information he could (a white board, a couple of male Detectives who kept staring at him funny, a lot of people walking around and group of younger female officers who were giggling to his far right), until he saw Beckett walking back in his direction.
"Well, Captain Montgomery says that, given the circumstances of these murders, your assistance could actually prove to be a valuable asset to us. So, you're in. Unofficially, of course." Although she didn't seem that upset about all this, the tone in her voice did not carry a whole lot of happiness, either.
His voice, on the other hand, was laced with plenty of cheerfulness for the both of them. "Great!" He beamed. "I'll bring you the letters first thing in the morning."
"Thank you, Castle."
He smiled internally at the small concession she made by dropping the 'Mr.', at least. He extended his hand to her. "Until tomorrow, Detective."
After a beat, she shook his hand with an almost imperceptible smile. "See you tomorrow."
TBC
(All characters, the homicide case plotline and even some of the quotes in this fanfic don't belong to me. This is made available for entertainment only and not for profit. No copyright infringement is intended.)