A/N: HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! You get a Caskett date as your gift from me. xxx

Chapter 7 – The Date

Previously...

"You're wearing lipstick. Sorry, couldn't help but notice," he says, shrugging his shoulders a fraction. "Should I be honored?" he asks, referring back to her assertion just this morning that she doesn't wear lipstick...ever!

If it's possible for a whole city block in the center of Manhattan at rush hour to feel as if it just had all the air, all the noise, in fact let's just call it the entire atmosphere, sucked right out of it, so that only a void of you and her and the dumb thing you just said are left hanging there while you stare at one another; if that's possible, then that's what happened next.

But then there is this ripple, this nudge from the Universe, like a jolt from a defibrillator, and the world begins turning again.

"Wanna go...get a beer?" she asks, scuffing the ground with her boot. "I know a place a few blocks down. It's nothing fancy but—"

Lead me to your master, thinks Castle, wisely neglecting to verbalize this time. What he does manage to do is nod and then smile, before finally saying, "That'd be great," with all the normality and sincerity he can muster.

They head off down the street together, leaving the Twelfth Precinct behind, and Castle could swear that he's walking on air, actual clouds of pink, downy, cottony-soft air. He risks a sideways glance at Kate just a handful of steps in, and finds her looking straight ahead, a tension to her jaw that he wants to soothe away.

With kisses.

It's an urge he doesn't quite understand this early on. He just met this woman a handful of hours ago, and yet beyond the empirical evidence before him – that she is undeniably attractive – there's something more, some feeling in his gut that's telling him to take care, to pay attention, tread lightly and for God sake keep your mouth under control for once. He hopes he's able to heed that voice because he's already starting to like Kate Beckett, and women like her, women of genuine substance, are as rare as unicorns in Richard Castle's slightly bizarre corner of the world.

They cross at the next set of lights and walk a few yards further on before he hazards a second glimpse in her direction, only to find her checking on him at the exact same moment. They smile at one another, awkwardly, and Castle has to fight down the disturbing urge to giggle, which is ridiculous, since he's a grown man getting exactly what he wanted, though he knows for certain that this is no sure thing.

They're walking a knife edge. Or at least he is. He's behaved like an ass pretty much since he met her, and yet here she is throwing him a bone: a couple of beers in some low-key joint she knows. Because that's all this is, he has to remind himself before he gets too carried away. There's still a hell of a lot of work to be done to redeem himself in the eyes of Kate Beckett for tonight to last any longer that a few sips of Peroni and the couple of minutes it'll take for her to peel the label off her own bottle of beer. Because he's pretty sure she's the kind of girl who can't resist peeling the label off a beer bottle. Throw in the fact that he's a near stranger and she'll be shredding beer mats before the hour is up, cop or not.

Heck she might just be doing her Sarge a favor going out with him at all. Maybe she's scared of saying no to Cathy Hardass Halliday. He knows he'd be scared to refuse the woman and his future career doesn't rely on staying in the woman's good graces.

"You're a loud thinker."

Castle imagines he heard these words inside his own head, and so mentally he moves to rebut the statement. But then Kate adds, "Penny for them?" and he realizes that she was the one doing the talking all along. And he just ignored her! Way to go, Rick.

He's so startled that he steps slightly off course, bumping shoulders with her, finding himself having to reach out a hand to steady her by the elbow. Like some giant, drunken oaf who'd fail a field sobriety test in broad daylight, he needs to pull it together, fast. Hearing voices in your head when you're out with the woman who arrested you on a drunken disorderly - with aggravating circumstances that included a police horse and full frontal nudity - just the night before is probably the fastest route to Bellevue, and the quickest way to ensure that there will be no second date.

"Sorry. I was miles away. Not thinking anything interesting. Honest. In fact, you'd be amazed at how inane my brain can be," he blurts, talking at a million miles an hour. "And I mean a lot of the time…"

Exhibit A, you moron! Shut up! Stop talking!

"I'd probably call that statement "Exhibit A"," chuckles Kate, and his heart skips a beat.

Can she really see inside his head or hear his stupid, crazy thoughts as he thinks them? He risks looking over at her again, but there are no clues in her beautiful brown eyes, just the dark curl of her lashes casting crisscross shadows on her cheeks as they raise and lower like butterfly wings. Jeez! Given half a chance this woman could turn him into a freaking poet, and don't he know it!

Dork!

Before he can summon the words to prove to this gorgeous, fresh-faced creature that he isn't a complete goofball, that he does in fact have a real, functioning brain that is actually capable of coming up with some pretty lucid, inventive stuff (stuff a lot of people are willing to pay good money for) Kate says, "Bar's just over there," nodding in the direction of a basic-looking hole in the wall across the street.

Castle scans the nondescript entrance, the shabby door with peeling brown paint that you'd miss if you didn't know it existed, the steel shutter rolled only halfway up so that the blinking Bud Lite neon in the window is more of a guess than a certainty. And for all that it's more speakeasy than chi chi cocktail lounge, he feels a sudden rush of excitement course through his veins. Because it's real, just like her, and that makes it perfect.

They're crossing the street when they're almost run over by a rickshaw cyclist who comes out of nowhere. This twenty-something speed freak, wearing cammo shorts, a Bart Simpson T-shirt that says "Haters Gonna Hate" and a One Direction ball cap turned ass-backwards, cuts right in front of them, riding the wrong way up a one-way street.

"Hey, you…One Direction? Try wrong direction!" yells Kate, jabbing her finger at the nearest street sign to back up her point.

The cyclist simply rings his bell, yells back, "Fuck you, lady!" and gives Kate the finger over his shoulder once he's a safe distance on by.

"The little…he just flipped you the bird," says Castle, staring after the guy with rank indignation, as if he's contemplating running to catch up with him and then taking him to task.

"Whoa, slow down there, John Wayne," says Kate, taking hold of Castle's arm to stop him. "Let him go."

"But he just—"

"And I hear worse from some of my own squad everyday. You're sweet to want to go after him, but I don't need protecting. And I sure as hell don't want to have to explain to Sergeant Halliday how you ended up in more trouble while you were out with me tonight."

Castle likes how that sounds, so he lets it drop since she did just call him sweet. Also, the punk on the pedicab is now a good block and a half further on, and no way is he chasing after a rickshaw in these shoes.

They're nearly outside the dive Kate's brought him to, he realizes with a shiver of excitement. There's a tough looking, muscular guy standing outside smoking. He's wearing a t-shirt one size too small, no doubt designed to show of his hard-won musculature, while military tattoos decorate the inside of each forearm. There's a distinctive bulge around the hem of one pant leg that Castle imagines could be a piece…or maybe an electronic ankle monitor. The writer studies the guy until he's caught staring and is forced to look away. With a creeping realization that fizzes in his brain he wonders if this is a cop bar, if she's actually taking him for a beer to a bona fide cop bar!

"It's not a cop bar," says Kate, smothering that little theory before it can even take a breath, and without so much as a glance in his direction.

Freakier and freakier!

"Don't like to mix business with—" She shrugs without finishing the sentence, though they both know how it should end. In pleasure.

When Castle opens the bar's creaky old door for her, he makes a point of saying "My pleasure," loud enough for her to hear when she thanks him for his courtesy.

If Kate notices the pointed word usage, she chooses to ignore it in favor of striding up to the bar and shaking hands with some skinny, bush-bearded beatnik of a guy wearing suspenders and a red bowtie over a narrow-collared shirt and black barkeep's apron. He's the kind of trendy white dude certain parts of Brooklyn have been churning out for the last few years. There's so many of them now that they're ubiquitous in a certain strata of bar, restaurant, coffee shop and in many boutique men's stores all over town, almost as if there's a secret factory devoted to "bearded beatnik production" hidden up an alley in some forgotten section of Greenpoint or Red Hook.

Castle's busy mulling this phenomenon over when he has another more pressing, nay depressing, thought. Oh, God, please don't let this be her boyfriend, he begs the big man upstairs, momentarily closing his eyes. Because Kate Beckett going out with a guy who owns a beard trimmer, let along beard balm and maybe even beard shampoo, would be a cruelty too far.

"What'll it be, Mr. Castle?" asks Kate, rapping her knuckles on the scarred wooden bar top while she scans the gantry for herself.

Her question yanks Castle out of his "chin sweater as boyfriend material" tailspin and boomerangs him face first into yet another. The formal epithet – Mister Castle - makes it sound as if this young woman is out at a bar with a superior from work or a friend of her dad's…maybe even her accountant.

"Kate, please, it's Rick," he rushes to correct. "And I'll have a whisky, maestro," he says, pointing the barman in the direction of a dusty bottle of Glenmorangie lurking on the top shelf. "And these are on me," he tells the skinny guy, idly pulling his wallet out of his rear pants' pocket, and laying a twenty on the counter.

"I'm sorry. Curse of the job. And you're older than—"

Kate bites her lip and he watches her cheeks slowly flood with color.

"Older than…what? Than this whisky?" he teases, pointing to the 10 year old single malt.

"I would hope so," Kate replies, giving him an amused look. "No, I mean older than I…"

"Expected? Wanted? Am I getting warm?"

Kate sure looks like she's getting warm, if the glow in her cheeks is any measure. "Look, let's not pretend that this is anything more than—"

"Whoa. Whoa. Wait up now," Castle says, holding up both hands in front of him. "More than what?" he asks, keen to get a little clarification.

Kate has the good grace to look guilty. She studies the floor with sudden keen interest before sliding her gaze up Castle's legs and torso to finally meet his face. "More than it really is," she says quietly.

"Which is what exactly? Come on. Enlighten me."

"Sarge said…"

At these two words, Castle turns and begins walking back towards the bar's front entrance, shaking his head and muttering to himself as he goes. "I should have known. Stupid, stupid…" he curses under his breath.

The fact that he engineered this meeting escapes him at this moment. He's too disappointed to be rational about his own part in this concocted date. He wanted her to like him for her own reasons, not because her boss lady ordered her to take him out for a pity drink just to get rid of him.

"Sir, your drink," calls the barman, holding his sturdy glass of single malt aloft.

Kate's heart sinks. The writer looks genuinely disappointed. He practically prostrated himself in front of her before all those cops outside the precinct, he cleared up the confusion over the woman she saw in the car this morning, he spent God knows how long turning Sergeant Halliday into his cheering squad, and he is her favorite author after all. She'd be dumb not to take this chance to have a one-on-one with him; a kind of private interview, access all areas if she plays her cards right. Add to that the fact that he is pretty easy on the eye, great body with or without clothes, excellent personal hygiene now that he's been home for a shower and a brush up, and he's funny, which is definitely something you don't find everyday. That's before you get to the tricky matter of what to tell Halliday if she doesn't at least give him a hearing.

"Watch these for me," she tells the young guy behind the bar, before hurrying to catch up with Castle.

She reaches him just as he stretches out his hand to wrap it around the old brass knob. But with her foot pressed against the bottom of the door, there's no escape. The door won't open no matter how hard Castle tugs. He's trapped.

Kate clears her throat with a dry, nervous little cough, and then she gently touches his arm. "This is just lipgloss by the way. Not lipstick. Thought I should clear that up. Wouldn't want to get off on the wrong foot or anything," she adds, before letting slip a nervous grin. "Acting under false pretences."

Castle turns to examine her face, giving her an uncertain look at first. But the hopeful smile he receives in return begins to restore him pretty speedily. Most of all because he wants to believe that there might be something there between them, no matter how nascent; some frisson or connection that he hopes he isn't imagining and that he hopes she maybe feels too. So he'll take any olive branch that's offered, since he's pretty much desperate for this to go well.

"That's pretty funny," he admits, nodding. "You're pretty funny," he adds, giving her a nudge when she begins to grin even wider at her own silly piece of trivia. "Matter of fact, I seem to have done enough getting off on the wrong foot for both of us, so…"

Kate just smiles shyly, and then looks down at the floor. "I'm sorry. About just then," she tells him, tilting her head back towards the bar. "Sarge kind of strong-armed me into this, if I'm being completely honest."

"I figured," nods Castle, waiting to see if she'll say anything else.

"Yeah, so…" she mumbles, staring at the floor and then right into his eyes, startling him with her courage and honesty.

"Does she do that often?" he asks, sensing a lot riding on the answer. "Interfere in your private life, I mean?"

"If she thinks something is good for you? Dog with a bone," admits Kate, tucking a short strand of hair behind her ear.

"Bit of a mama bear on the quiet, is she?" asks Castle, quite prepared to believe that she is. Even he could see that the woman has a heart, hidden below several layers of fierce bluster though it may be.

"Wouldn't let her hear you using that description. But yeah, she's…she's more caring than you might think."

"I definitely got that impression. If she'd go to bat for me after everything…"

Kate smiles. "Yeah, you really won her round. And I don't always know what's good for me…apparently, so…" She trails off to give him a sympathetic smile. "Sergeant Halliday collects waifs and strays like normal people collect baseball cards. She's…yeah."

The door suddenly jolts in on them and they both have to take a quick step back to avoid being hit in the face by the old peeling relic when a new patron enters the bar.

"Shall we?" asks Kate, suggesting a return to their drinks with the sweep of her arm. "Seems a shame not to now we're both here."

"Guess I could stick around for one," replies Castle, trying to recover his pride, while fooling absolutely no one with this new Mister Cool routine. "If you're twisting my arm."

Kate gives him the sweetest smile and then she leads the way back to their waiting drinks with a murmur of, "Just wait until I cuff you, then you'll know all about twisted arms."

They clink glasses, toasting nothing in particular, and things get a little awkward once more while they figure out how to shift gears on this unplanned, slightly forced event.

"What color?" asks Castle, lifting his glass in Kate's general direction.

"Hmm? I'm sorry?" questions Kate, offering him a wide-eye look of puzzlement.

"Your lipgloss. What color is it?"

Kate grins. "Oh! Uh…clear, I guess."

Castle frowns. "Then what's the point? If it's clear, I mean."

Kate shrugs, and then she flushes with embarrassment. "You know what, I have no idea. It's stupid," she mutters, lifting her arm to rub the gloss off on the back of her hand.

The lipgloss was all Halliday's idea. And why Kate decided to take makeup advice from a woman who wears orthopedic shoes and men's tube socks all day everyday, she has no earthly idea. But with the words "And Beckett, a little lipstick wouldn't hurt just this once. Remember the guy's a millionaire if it pains you to try," ringing in her ears as she came off shift and went to the locker room to change into street clothes, with those words ringing in her ears, what choice did she have.

"Wait! No, don't do that," Castle protests, gently catching her by the wrist before she manages to destroy what little makeup she has on.

Kate's gaze drops instantly to study his large hand, eyes landing on his thick fingers where they're wrapped around her pale, slender wrist, dwarfing her radius and ulna as if they are mere pencil-thick. Her pulse thuds beneath his thumb and she observes Castle's eyelashes flicker with recognition the second he senses the tender, throbbing vein beating beneath the pad of his skin. And then he looks at her. Pupils dilating, their eyes snap together as dark as magnets. She feels her heart sink when he quickly lets her go of her arm, perhaps misconstruing her own unguarded, far too open, facial expression. He's being careful she senses, desperate not to overstep or push in anyway. She has herself to blame for that: for his tentative behavior and the annexation of his exuberant personality, which she suspects he's keeping on a leash tonight.

"Why not? I thought you said it was pointless," she reminds him.

"You look…and please don't break my arm or shoot me for saying this. I'm not trying to be a creep, I swear," he insists, holding up his hands in a gesture of peace and openness.

She tilts her head to one side and narrows her eyes, almost challenging him. "Just say it."

"You didn't promise."

Kate sighs a happy, loose sigh. "I promise," she says, crossing her heart, even if the ridiculous gesture makes her feel about twelve years old again.

"It makes you look pretty…or well, even prettier," he shrugs, scuffing the rough wooden boards at their feet with his fancy, (slightly out of place) Italian loafer.

They're at the bottom of their glasses before they know it, and Kate signals the barman, whose name turns out to be William, for another round. Castle makes no comment, just goes with the flow lest he make her uncomfortable - or come to her senses - now that they're sailing past their one drink agreement and they're both still here, hinting that things must be going well. Or at the very least better.

Kate switches from beer to a glass of what Castle's having, and the move to hard liquor surprises him. She's so slight – willowy tall and slender - and the paternal side of his nature has him wondering what she ate on shift today, how empty her system must be of food by now, and gauging how quickly the single malt might make her tipsy. Add in the fact that Sergeant Halliday is hovering over tonight's proceedings like a specter, with the threat that she will ruin him in ways the Mayor will be incapable of recuing him from, and he plans on doing the sensible thing: making sure Kate takes it easy, maybe gets a bite to eat before much longer, and sees her home safely if she'll allow.

"Just out of interest. How did you know about sexing horses?" she asks out of the blue, jerking him back to the previous night's shenanigans in the park.

Castle blinks a couple of times before answering. "Uh…I worked on a farm for three months when I was seventeen."

"Farm boy, huh?" she grins, looking unexpectedly pleased.

"That got you interested," he chuckles, admiring the healthy glint in her eye that speaks to latent fantasies about tan chests with hard, naked pecs and muscled arms as strong as farm machinery, maybe even a sweaty roll in a hayloft.

Kate blushes. "Shut up," she warns him, treating the floor to a bashful smile.

When she looks up at him again, there's something more serious, less playful about her expression.

"Was it really a bet?" she asks, once again referring back to the night before. "We didn't find anyone hanging around the crowd who would admit to knowing you? Everyone we spoke to said you were alone when you stripped naked and got on that horse."

Castle downs the rest of his drink in one. He clears the fire in his throat with a gravelly cough, fighting back the sudden sting of salt water flooding his eyes for a second before answering. "My…my divorce came through a couple of months ago."

"Oh."

Kate looks uncomfortable and maybe even a little disappointed, he's pleased to see.

"No, it's not what you think," he rushes to reassure her, lest she imagine this is some rebound deal for him. "It's been over for a long time. I'm relieved, tell you the truth."

"So then why the mental breakdown in Central Park?"

Castle blinks hard, eyes widening in amazement before he laughs, loudly. "Wow! You don't pull any punches, do you?" But he grabs one of Kate's outstretched hands when she makes to protest or apologize for her frankness, covering her fingers with his own for a fleeting second and giving them a reassuring squeeze. The gesture is entirely natural but it still catches them both by surprise, as so much is surprising them tonight. "No, I'm impressed. I'm used to people telling me what they think I want to hear. You're…you're refreshing Kate Beckett."

"Or just fresh," she suggests, giving him a self-depreciating smile.

"That's cute. That's very cute," notes Castle, enjoying the verbal swordplay they're managing to engage in now and then, in between the awkward parts.

She's smart as a whip, and that is something he finds incredibly sexy. In fact, it's something he's not that used to finding in most of the women he's spent time with. They want you to sign their chests or for you to buy them dinner at the hippest restaurant in town… Well, he guesses he deserves all he's got, until now. Poor choices bring their own just rewards.

"So, my mental breakdown, as you called it…"

"Look, you don't have to," protests Kate, reaching out to lay a hand on his arm.

They both stare at her hand for a second or two before she withdraws it, a definite frisson of something passing between them in that moment.

"You had to arrest me or "save my sorry ass", as I'd like to think of it from now on. You have a right to know."

"If you're sure. We don't always learn the why of every case we come across or every arrest we make."

"Doesn't that get frustrating?" asks Castle, story-seeker as much as he is storyteller, before he shakes his head dismissively, brushing the query off. "Anyway, I promised you an explanation." He takes a deep breath. "My kid is on her first unsupervised visit with her mom in over a year."

"You…you have a child?" She sounds shocked, and looks so many other things he can't quite put his finger on right now.

Castle isn't used to sharing this information on first dates, if that's what this even is, but something about Kate, and maybe it's just the fact that she's a cop, but something about her makes him feel that he ought to share this private part of his life with her.

"A daughter, yes. Alexis. She's six years old."

"And…you have a problem with her spending time alone with her mother?"

Castle nods. "Meredith is…she's irresponsible. As a parent."

Kate chokes on a laugh as soon as he stops speaking. "She's irresponsible? Compared to whom? You?"

Castle takes her incredulity, and the implied criticism in her question, on the chin. "Believe it or not, I look like Clair Huxtable, in the parenting department, compared to Meredith."

"So your answer to feeling anxious about your child's wellbeing involved getting drunk in Central Park…at night," stresses Kate, "before mounting a police horse you just happened to find randomly wandering around?"

Castle grins sheepishly. "Pretty much."

"Oh, and I almost forgot the part where you were naked," she adds, cheeks flushing, thinking, no way did I forget that part, but he doesn't need to know that yet.

Castle gives her a very direct look, boldly pinning her with his dark blue eyes. "You…you forgot that I was naked, Officer Beckett? Really?" His smirk says it all.

"I was concentrating on the horse, maintaining public safety on scene, as you well know. I had no time to…to observe anything else."

"Right," nods Castle, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. "I thought training standards at the Academy were better than that. Don't you guys have 360 degree vision at all times?"

"Stop it," laughs Kate, flicking him with a bar towel William left lying around.

The temperature in the room seems to have risen a notch or two by the time they've both stopped laughing. Castle feels renewed, reborn, by just an hour of this girl's time. Sixty minutes in her company and the effects are better than any illicit drug he's ever tried, far better than the Zanax and the Zoloft, the Ambien and the bloody Valium he has rattling around in the back of his medicine cabinet at home. The buzz he gets from being round her is far superior to any good bottle of Scotch, no matter the proof or how well aged. She's a revelation.

"I'm really glad you agreed to do this tonight," he says, slightly dousing the light moment in a heavier layer of sincerity.

But if he was worried about Kate, there appears to be no need.

"I'm glad too. You're a lot of fun for—" Her eyes widen when she fails to finish her sentence, capturing whatever word she was about to use at the very last second.

"Think very carefully about what you say next," warns Castle playfully, suddenly appearing to tower over her.

"You're a lot of fun for a rich guy," she winces, realizing how bad that sounds.

"Rich guy, huh? Okay, I think I can live with that."

"Why, what did you think I was going to say?"

"Oh, I don't know. So many insults, so little time."

"Tell me?" begs Kate, playfully tugging on the lapel of his jacket.

It's at this point that Castle realizes she's starting to get a little loose, that the whisky is beginning to hit the spot, her eyes a little shinier than before, her grin a little wider, gestures more touchy-feely. They're also standing much closer together, almost toe-to-toe in a half-empty bar.

"Go on. Tell me," she begs him again, waving at William for another round of drinks before Castle can intervene.

"Eh…I don't know. Old, maybe?"

Kate tips her head to one side to study his face, and he feels the sensation physically as she caresses the contours of his brow, his temples, the sweep of his nose, cheeks and jaw with her smoky, hazel eyes. "You're what…like 31, 32?"

"I'm thirty actually. Hard night last night," he quips, just to see her smile.

"Yeah, so that's not old. Old is my dad's age."

"How old is your dad?"

"Forty-five."

Castle nearly spits out his drink. "How old are you? If that's not too impertinent a question to ask a lady."

"Lady," laughs Kate, shaking her head before taking another large mouthful of her own drink and then slamming her empty glass onto the bar. "Long time since I've been called that. I'm twenty-three."

Castle feels his heart sink. He's not sure what age he thought she was, but her comment from earlier about this being nothing more than…whatever suddenly begins to make sense. She thinks he's too old for her, and with a kid and an ex-wife to boot. Well, he doesn't really blame her.

"Don't look so sad, Ricky," Kate surprises him by saying. "Older men are cool."

Oh, jeez. Please don't let her be drunk, he thinks, scrabbling around to find a new subject to focus on. He comes up pretty blank, since all his brain has time for is Kate Beckett's sweet, smiling face.

"That scratchy wool blanket…the one from the trunk of your car. You use it a lot? I mean, is there much call for covering naked guys in your line of work?"

And this is the best his brain can come up with it? WTF! Yeah, let's get the tipsy young cop, whose main protector at work could rip your head off with her bare hands and feed it to that damn horse you stole, let's get her to think about your naked ass some more. Not obvious at all!

"No. No, you're my first," replies Kate, humor and a little boldness of her own lighting up her face.

Castle swallows slowly, debating with himself how far to push things, how much to flirt, whether or not to take the opening she's given him and run right through it. Good versus evil, his inner demons face off against one another.

His bad side wins.

"Your first? Mm, in that case I'm honored," nods Castle, unable to suppress the smile that's wrecking havoc with the corners of his mouth.

"Yep, until last night I was a naked writer virgin," she declares proudly, and a little too loudly, if the looks they're getting from the two girls further down the bar are anything to go by.

"You feel like getting something to eat?" he asks, allowing the good side of his brain to have some input for a second.

Kate looks down at the expensive, large-faced timepiece on her wrist that could almost be a man's watch. "Actually, I should really get going. Got a shift first thing."

"Right," nods Castle, disappointment crushing his chest so fast that he's left feeling winded.

"Hey," Kate murmurs quietly to get his attention.

"Mm?" mumbles Castle, forcing himself to look at her without disclosing his distress. Or so he believes.

"Don't look so crushed. You'll make me feel bad."

Castle forces himself to brighten, reassembling an awkward smile. "Well, I wouldn't want to do that. I had a nice time is all. But I understand if you've got to go."

"Share a cab?" Kate suggests impulsively.

"You don't even know where I live."

"Actually, I do. Small matter of your arrest report took care of that. I'm not stalking you or anything," she adds quickly.

"I'd be more flattered if you were."

Kate laughs loudly at this remark. "You're crazy."

"I like you," Castle tells her boldly.

"As a potential stalker?" Kate giggles, sobering the longer she absorbs the sincerity she can see in his face. "Sorry. And thank you. I like you too."

They stand looking at one another until Castle clears his throat, denying himself the chance to take advantage of the moment. "Shall we get that cab? I'll just settle up here."

"Oh, no. Please, let me," Kate offers, scrabbling in her pocket for her wallet.

"No, I insist. After the trouble I've caused you the last twelve hours, tonight's on me."

"You sure?"

"One hundred percent."

Kate manages to hail a cab almost the second they hit the sidewalk. That never happens, and Castle mentally curses the Gods who'd provide this kind of transportation manna in New York City on the one evening he'd rather linger by the curb with his date a little longer.

They sit like strangers in the back of the cab, the requisite foot or more of grey pleather stretching between them like an unassailable gulf. Kate stares out of the window at the moving scenery on her side of the cab, seemingly lost in thought, while Castle watches Kate, intending to employ a kind of hair-trigger ability to turn away the second she might be on the cusp of rumbling him.

They pull up outside Castle's loft first, and it's with a sinking heart that he realizes two things: that tonight is over and he won't get to see where Kate Beckett lives. Who's the potential stalker now?

Castle tackles their goodbye with a bravado he doesn't actually feel. "Well, Officer Beckett, I had a really great time tonight. Who'd have thought getting arrested could end up being so much fun. You guys should run a campaign or something."

"What? Like date your arresting officer? No, there are quite enough badge bunnies around as it is, thank you very much. Think I'll pass on being the poster child for that particular campaign."

Castle makes a vain attempt at mock-horror, comically clutching at his chest. "But then what will Sergeant Halliday do with her free time?"

Kate grins, ducking her head so that her short bangs tumble jaggedly over her pale forehead. "Actually, I kind of dread to think. I'm hoping she's off tomorrow when I go in."

"Autopsy?"

"Oh, don't. The woman is the biggest gossip at the Twelfth after Sergeant Bradford."

"I thought Bill and I made a connection last night," says Castle, with a cheesy grin.

Kate eyes him coolly. "Is there anyone you don't connect with?"

Castle boldly eyeballs her back. "I don't know. Is there?"

"Rick…" she says reluctantly, when he reaches out to tuck a spiky strand of hair back behind her ear.

The writer withdraws his hand in a hurry, stuffing the offending appendage into his pocket. "I'm sorry. You…you made things clear right from the start. I'm sorry. I should go," he says, finally grasping the handle that will open the cab door.

Kate looks a little sad when she tells him, "My life is complicated. My— Anyway, I had a really good time tonight."

"You did?" He seems genuinely surprised.

"Yes, I really did," she nods, on seeing that he needs convincing.

"Thank you. For…for everything. Really, I mean that."

"I didn't actually do anything."

"No, you did a lot. More than you'll ever know," the writer tells her, soaking up a last long look at her face.

The cabbie interrupts them, turning round to throw some impatient, unintelligible, hurry-it-along over his shoulder.

Kate takes the hint first. "Goodnight, Mr. Castle," she says, offering him her hand to shake.

"Goodnight, Officer Beckett," mirrors Castle, formally shaking her slender, cool-to-the-touch hand.

"Stay out of trouble, okay?" she warns, though her tone is more one of amusement.

"I'll try. See you around." There's hope and something of a wistful rise in the pitch of this last statement, almost as if he would rather have phrased it as a question.

"Yeah," she says with a reluctant sigh, as Castle slams the cab door closed, before giving her a parting wave through the fog of condensation-smeared glass.

As the cab pulls away, Castle wonders if this is the last he'll ever see of her: an indistinct shape, with a smile he knows would be pretty if he were able to see it, all viewed through the window of a moving taxicab.

As they sail through a junction, bouncing high over a pothole, Kate wishes she knew what he was thinking.

She's only a block from home when she looks down at the seat beside her to see the illuminated screen of a cell phone glowing in the dark. The pixie-like face of a tiny redhead lights up the inside of the cab with her gap-toothed smile.

"Shit," she curses, cradling the phone in her hand, already wondering if he did this on purpose.

TBC...