The third time happens about a week later, after they've solved another case. Beckett overhears Castle on the phone with his mother, talking about an art-show opening that he's planning to go to as a favor for a friend. Based on the clues that she gathers from his conversation, and a bit of simple detective work, she identifies the gallery location and the time of the event.
She has enough time after work to go home, change into a breezy little cocktail dress, and get out to the gallery, arriving just as the party is getting underway.
She circulates for a while, nibbling hors d'oeuvres and sipping a glass of wine, pretending to admire the art. After ten or fifteen minutes she spots him; she doesn't look his way, doesn't approach him, but she can sense when he notices her. And she imagines she can feel the heat of his gaze from across the room.
Moving casually, Castle works his way over to her and spends a moment examining the painting she's standing in front of.
"Nice use of color," he offers after a moment, and she smirks a little, but nods.
"Yes. I think this one is my favorite."
"Oh. Did you see the one over there, the forest?" he asks smoothly, gesturing. She nods again, cocking her head at the painting before her.
"That one's impressive also, but there's just something about this one that speaks to me."
"I like a woman who knows what she likes," he murmurs with a quirk of his lips. He holds out his hand. "I'm Rick."
"Kate," she gives back, taking his hand, letting him hold her smaller one clasped in his broad palm for just a heartbeat longer than propriety allows.
It turns out that this art gallery, which is housed in a former warehouse space (so very hipster), has its restroom all the way in the back, at the end of a long concrete hallway: all very modern-chic and, incidentally, soundproof. And just a few minutes of desultory, pretentious art-gallery flirting later, against her better judgement, knowing what a terrible idea it is, Beckett is doing it anyway: following Castle down that hallway, into that small bathroom, letting him lock the door behind them, letting him fuck her from behind against the concrete wall.
Her hands are flat on the wall, slippery with sweat, and the skirt of her cocktail dress is bunched around her waist, her thong tugged aside by his sure fingers. She heard the crinkle and rip of the condom wrapper a moment ago, and now he's inside her, hot and hard, short sharp thrusts. The heat of his body suffuses her, his hot breath gusting across the back of her neck. It feels so good, so damn good that her eyes squeeze shut and she grits out a curse through clenched teeth.
She slips a hand down to touch herself, but he swats it away and replaces it with his own. His thick fingers slide across her stomach and past the thong, seeking, finding, drawing a long strangled moan from her when he presses and circles in just the right spot.
His other hand moves up to cover hers where it's pressed against the wall. His hips are still pushing steadily into her, and he slides their joined hands higher, stretching her, making her back arch, and she cries out and then bites her lip to stifle it. He thrusts harder, faster, his fingers rubbing her, and she presses her lips together tightly to hold back a scream when she comes, feeling him go still and then jerk convulsively behind her.
She stays there leaning against the wall, panting, while he tosses the condom in the trash and washes his hands. Then, without a word, he cracks the door open, peeks out, and quickly leaves.
She locks the door again and sits on the toilet until her breathing steadies and her legs stop trembling. Then she gets up, adjusts the thong, smooths down her dress, splashes some cold water on her face, pats her hair. The woman in the mirror looks a little flushed, a little rumpled, but not too much like she just got fucked in a concrete-slab-walled bathroom. It'll have to do.
She doesn't think about the fact that this was the first time she initiated the game, rather than letting him do it. She makes her way back to the gallery, retrieves her coat from the coat-check, and flees.
And so it becomes a pattern. After almost every case, they put aside Beckett and Castle, and they become Kate and Rick, two carefree single adults just looking for a quick hookup. They meet, pretend to be strangers, flirt, and fuck.
It's a different hotel bar each time, or sometimes other venues - art shows, book signings, coffee shops - but the hotel bars work best, because the bedrooms are conveniently right there. Once in a while they end up at some awful, sleazy pay-by-the-hour motel, which is a different kind of thrill: the dirty feeling of knowing that there can be no possible way to misinterpret or misrepresent what they're about to do.
Some unspoken rules are mutually understood from the beginning and always followed. They never use surnames; they never break character; they never ask particularly personal questions during the flirting phase; they never go to either of their homes. They never fall asleep together. They never leave together.
And they never, ever, ever talk about it. Not before, not during, and not after. At the precinct, at crime scenes, wherever and whenever they're investigating a murder, they are Detective Beckett and author Castle, never the slightest hint of anything else.
It's weird, perhaps, but it's working for Beckett. She can't admit it even to herself; she doesn't let herself think about it, at all. As long as she doesn't think, she can pretend that it's just a series of unrelated vignettes, not a cohesive narrative with direction and purpose. And that's how she needs it to be, because she can't bear to let emotions get involved. Not when she knows (she thinks) exactly what kind of man Castle is. Not when she is the kind of woman (she thinks) she is.
So she has to ignore the fact that, while Castle is getting to know her better and better at work, helping her solve cases, slowly becoming a part of the team, at the same time he's learning her body as well. They're learning each other's bodies, in fact. It's the only thing that occasionally threatens to jolt her out of the pretense: the way he knows exactly where to bite her neck to make her knees give out; the way he knows that her right nipple is more sensitive than her left, and that she likes them both to be handled roughly; the way he has learned exactly how rough she likes it, and how to hold her on that line between pleasure and pain. And on her side, she knows how firmly he prefers to be stroked; how he likes it when she tugs on his hair while he's going down on her; how giving him shallow kisses and refusing to deepen them will frustrate him into losing control.
But she can still pretend. She can tell herself it's not unrealistic that two strangers who just met in a bar know how to pleasure each other so perfectly. She can tell herself that it doesn't mean anything when, once in a while, at the precinct, she catches a whiff of Castle's aftershave and her body reacts automatically in Pavlovian fashion: her nipples tightening, her thighs clenching.
At work, in her role as Detective Beckett, she is similarly lying to herself. She's pretending that Castle is still nothing more than an annoying tagalong who occasionally happens, by pure luck, to have an idea that breaks a case open. She's telling herself that her job is no more enjoyable than ever. She's still clinging to her perception of herself as the type of cop who works best without a partner.
Then one day they're standing in a hospital corridor, Beckett trembling with weariness and the weight of guilt over having gotten her FBI ex-boyfriend nearly killed, and Castle ruins everything. He brings up her mother's case. He reveals that he has been digging into it - after she explicitly told him not to! - and he tries to put a file folder in her hand, to tell her what he's found, but she can't. She can't hear this. The whole thing is crashing down around her.
"This is the end," she tells him, her voice as cold as it has ever been. "We are done." And she walks away.
She spends a miserable summer. Work is busy, as it always is when the heat and humidity make people cranky; but every case closed is a case closed without Castle, and Beckett is the crankiest of them all. Ryan and Esposito don't ask. Montgomery doesn't ask, though she sees him watching her with pursed lips, often while talking on the phone.
For the first week or two, Castle calls repeatedly, leaves multiple messages, on both her cell phone and her work phone. She deletes them all without listening to them. Eventually he stops calling.
Her father invites her up to the cabin for a week, but she declines. She does try; she goes up there for a couple of days, and has to bite her tongue the whole time to keep from telling her dad all kinds of things that she doesn't need him to know. He gives her calculating looks that she can't bear, so on the third morning she hugs him, slings her duffel bag onto her back, and rides her motorcycle back to the city.
She throws herself into the job and tries to pretend she's fine.
She stands in a cool shower at the end of almost every day, washing off the sweat and grit, and sometimes she touches herself and pretends she isn't thinking about Castle's fingers, and she gags on anger and despair even as orgasm overtakes her.
September arrives, and Montgomery tells her blandly that Castle will be coming to the precinct to shoot some photos for an upcoming magazine article about his book. The very thought leaves a sour taste in her mouth: his book based on her, the idea of which once made her heart leap with astonished excitement. Not any more.
Montgomery also tells her that she'll be expected to make herself available to the reporter writing the story. He doesn't need to say that everything she says should be positive and reflect well on the NYPD; it's fully well implied and understood. She sighs and acquiesces.
Seeing Castle again is every bit as painful as she might have guessed - and more so, when he's wearing that awful pinstriped suit and has two models in ridiculously skimpy 'slutty cop' outfits hanging all over him. Beckett very carefully wipes the scowl from her face and forces herself to be both polite and politic in her interview with the reporter.
And then, as she should have expected, there's a case, and there's Castle tagging along again, and somehow they're falling back into the groove of investigating together. It infuriates her how easy and comfortable it feels.
The case spins off the rails, and the next thing she knows, Castle is in a Russian poker bar, in way over his head. She sighs explosively as she realizes what she's going to have to do to get him out of there intact.
"What're you gonna do, lip-gloss 'em to death?" Esposito asks skeptically as she climbs out of the van.
"Something like that," she snaps, and channels all of her fury and frustration at Castle into the sway of her hips and the smoldering of her heavily lined eyes to charm her way past the bouncers.
She gets there just in time. "You're a cop!" the killer is growling at Castle, his gun held steady, and she steps in quickly, pulling on her Russian accent with ease.
"Him, a cop? Don't make me laugh, he's barely even a man," she raps out sharply, strutting into the room. She swallows down her satisfaction at the flash of pure astonishment in Castle's face when he sees her, hears her.
She takes down the suspect in short order, firmly ignores Castle staring at her ass, and goes back to the van to put her clothes back on before any cops other than Ryan and Espo can get an eyeful.
Back at the precinct, Castle starts mouthing off about her mother's case again. She can't believe it. She turns to ice and tells him to leave. Thankfully, he does. She sinks back into the welcome distraction of paperwork.
But an hour or so later he's back, with, entirely unexpectedly, an apology. She sits stunned as he gives his little speech, which, from the sound of it, he probably composed and rehearsed on his way over. Still, it's heartfelt; she can see that he really means it, every word.
Finished, he turns and walks away again.
Of course, she breaks. She calls out to him: "See you tomorrow."
She doesn't look at him as he leaves, but she can imagine the tiny smile lighting up his eyes. Those deep blue eyes that so enticingly cloud over when she takes him in hand and - Oh God. Oh shit. She knows what she's going to do, self-restraint and self-respect be damned.
She takes a few deep, careful breaths, and tries to calculate the probability that Ryan and/or Espo told Castle what she said in the van. On balance, given how all three men reacted to her undercover outfit, she thinks the odds are good.
She finishes up the paperwork, changes back into her slutty-Russian-girl costume, and takes the train to Coney Island.
She's sitting in the Russian cafe with a cup of borscht, debating how long to wait, when Castle comes in. He spots her immediately, but allows the waitress to seat him a few tables away. Then he makes a show of noticing Beckett, looking surprised, leaning over toward her.
"Excuse me, have we met?" he asks with his boyishly charming smile. "You look very familiar."
"No, I do not think so," she replies in her Russian accent. "I don't know many American men."
"Really? That's too bad," he says, still smiling. "How long have you been here, in America?"
"Almost a year," she answers, ducking her head faux-bashfully as he gets up and moves to take the seat across from her. "I come for university, but is hard to meet people." In Russian, she adds, "People who are worth meeting," and watches his face.
His eyes are smoldering, and she sees that the accent and her shy new-girl-in-town persona are seriously turning him on.
"I'm sure it is ... hard," he agrees, still wearing his friendly smile. She gives back a small twist of her lips.
"That is, how you say, second meaning?" she murmurs, lowering her lashes. She lifts her spoon and takes another mouthful of borscht.
"Double meaning, yes," he agrees, watching her eat. "Your English is excellent."
"Thank you. I practice a lot." She takes another spoonful. "You are not hungry? The vareniki, they are very good."
"No, I'm not here to eat," he answers, still watching her mouth. "I was hoping for some vodka, actually, but it looks like this place doesn't serve alcohol."
"No, they do not," she agrees. "There is liquor store on corner." She gives him another coquettish look and adds, "Right next to hotel."
"Oh. I see," he says, his voice deepening, husky now, and she can feel it vibrating in the pit of her stomach.
In moments she has finished her soup, put down some cash, and followed him out the door. He puts his arm around her, too familiarly, like a stereotypical boorish American man, and she plays the part of the easily impressed foreign girl, giggling lightly and allowing her body to tilt toward his as they walk toward the liquor store and then past it, to the cheap sleazy flophouse she called a hotel.
Within minutes they're in a room, and she knows that the cleanliness of the place doesn't bear examining too closely, but that won't be a problem. Not with the way Castle has her pinned against the door, groping her body urgently as he ravishes her mouth.
She digs her fingers into his hair, hard, not caring if her nails scratch his scalp. She welcomes his tongue into her mouth, his soft lips hot and insistent on hers. She already feels weak with the pleasure of it, after so long, after all these weeks of being furious at him, of telling herself she was over it, of pretending she didn't miss him. She did miss him: between her legs, in her arms, in her mouth. In the precinct.
She pushes that thought aside and lifts one knee, wrapping her leg around his waist, grinding herself into him. They both groan desperately.
He practically rips her clothes off, and his own, and in what seems like the blink of an eye he's pressing her down on the bed, shoving into her. It's too hard, too fast, and she loves it. She cries out and writhes under him, sinking her fingernails into his ass.
She remembers her disguise suddenly in the space between one hard thrust and the next, and she begins to moan in Russian, gasping and muttering guttural words of pleasure.
"Oh God," he groans against her neck, "that's so hot," and he slows down, bracing himself over her on one elbow, slipping his other hand between their bodies to touch her just the way he knows she likes it. She slams her head back on the pillow and lets out a string of Russian curses as she comes, hard, nothing but white light bursting behind her eyelids.
When she can see again she discovers that he's still inside her, thrusting slowly, watching her. His fingers are still between her legs, gently stroking. He keeps that focused, intent gaze on her as he slowly winds her back up, until she's moaning and desperate again.
Then he removes his fingers, wraps a hard hand around her hip, and flips them. She's on top now, gasping and cursing in Russian as she grinds down frantically on him until they both go hurtling over the edge.
Afterward, they collapse in a sweaty heap together, but only for a moment, because it's uncomfortable. The bed is lumpy and too narrow for two of them, unless they're going to cuddle, which they aren't. They don't cuddle. It's not part of the game.
She gets up, takes a look at the tiny filthy bathroom attached to the room, and decides she can wait till she gets home.
She pulls her clothes back on, looks down at him, and says "До свидания." And she walks out, leaving him lying naked on the bed.
And so they get back to it. They're investigating cases again, and they're playing the strangers game again. The sex has a new edge after the emotional wasteland of the summer, which, like everything else, Beckett refuses to think about.
It gets harder to find places to go, especially after Castle's book comes out. Suddenly it seems like everyone knows them, recognizes them. They can't pretend to be strangers in any random mid-Manhattan bar any more. They start going farther afield, trying sleazier places - including a couple of biker bars, where Castle's eyes are wide with awe and Beckett just knows, somehow, that he'll find a way to work a menacing leather-clad motorcyclist into one of his books - and hotels farther out from their usual areas.
Beckett freaks out a little when she hears that Heat Wave includes a sex scene, but she's relieved when she reads it and finds that it bears no relation to ... anything they've done together. By the time she gets to the end of the book, though, she's not so sure that relief was the right response. It's too clear that Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook are kidding themselves when they try to act like it was just a one-time thing, just sex, nothing serious. Her chest clenches uncomfortably when she finishes the book and sets it aside.
She doesn't know what to think about it, so she doesn't. She carefully puts it out of her mind.
A/N: Thank you for all the nice comments about this story so far! I hope you continue to enjoy it. The final chapter will be posted tomorrow.