A/N: Thank you for the love and the giggles following the last chapter. Glad I can still surprise some people. ;)

Chapter 14 – The Ex Effect

Over the course of the next couple of days Kate Beckett learns several things about herself: things that she hadn't quite noticed or properly identified before, as well as several completely new things that only rise to the surface as a result of current circumstances in her life.

A good "for example" might be that sexting - although it would be another couple of years before this word would enter into global lexicon - was something she was rather good at. For now she simply traded flirtatious, suggestive text messages back and forth with a certain writer without having to put any label on it at all beyond good, harmless fun.

Another thing she would learn was that more people took a genuine interest in her life and cared about her future than she imagined, even when she thought she was being invisible – capable, competent, reliable and self-aware, yes – but invisible. Only she didn't blend in as much as she thought she did, and it turned out that wasn't such a bad thing after all.

"Him again?" nods Jurkowski Friday lunchtime, as they sit parked outside a Korean nail bar in Alphabet City, eating hot pastrami heros off wax paper wrappers, fiddling with their cell phones while trying to ignore the noxious fumes of acetone and acrylic nail glue wafting in through the open windows of their Crown Vic.

"Him who?" asks Kate, feigning innocence as she taps out a reply to Castle's latest text message which reads: What are you wearing? ;)

She smiles to herself without thinking to hide it from Jurkowski as she types back: A little black number. You?

"Give it up, Beckett. You grin like a loon every time your phone chirps. I haven't seen you this happy in like…forever."

"Shut up. I'm a happy person," she insists, shielding the screen of her phone from prying eyes as she nibbles on a slice of dill pickle.

Jan snorts and Kate throws him a glare. "So I don't wear my heart on my sleeve like you or…or wander around humming "Whistle While You Work". Doesn't make me an unhappy person."

Jan ignores her jibe, too good-natured and mature to feel slighted. "Things are going well with the writer then?"

"Would you—" she fumes, looking over to find Jan staring out of the window at a little kid who's busy trying to prize a quarter off the ground that some joker has glued to the sidewalk with gum.

"What?" he murmurs, barely glancing at her before returning to study the three year old, who now has dirty nails when he triumphantly holds up the sticky coin to show his mother.

"Nothing. Forget it."

"No. No, if you have an issue you'd like to discuss, by all means share it with the class, Beckett. I insist. Good partner relations and all that."

"Good— Okay, how about you just stay out of my private life?" she asks politely.

"Done," Jan replies instantly, surprising Kate, who expects to have more of a battle on her hands.

She's about to thank him when he adds, "I'm just glad you actually have a private life for me to stay out of. For a while there I thought I'd been partnered with a nun. No offense."

"None…taken."

Oh, God. Is that how people in the squad see her: as some prudish celibate?

"Halliday know about your date?" Jan asks, catching her off guard, since she's still reeling from his last remark.

"No! How do you know about my—"

"Ha! Gotcha!" he laughs, slapping the dash. "About damn time too. Wait 'til I tell Elizabeth. She'll be thrilled."

Kate frowns, so many pieces of information flying at her all in one go. "You…do you tell your wife everything?"

"Pretty much."

"You tell her what you ate for lunch, dinner, how many cups of coffee you drank?"

"Mm-hmm."

"What about our tour? She get to hear about that too? Collars, tickets, every little stop and frisk?"

"Ya-huh," he drawls, mindlessly staring out the window again, watching a bodega owner this time, as the man floods the gutter with water and soggy, dark leaves from a huge flower container.

"Doesn't that get really boring? You reliving your entire day, Elizabeth having to listen to every dull little minute?"

"Depends."

"On what?"

"On how you tell the story."

Kate's mind immediately flits to Castle's enquiring face at the word story. There's another guy who's always hunting down every last little detail, positively wringing them out of every situation he finds himself in. "What story?"

"The story of your day. See, Elizabeth likes to hear detail. She wants to know peoples' names, what they were wearing, what I found in a teenager's pockets when I patted him down, what flavor donut you got on break this morning, where we stopped for lunch and who paid. Yada yada. She likes to hear all of it."

Kate frowns, wrinkling her nose. "Why?"

"I think she likes to hear the sound of my voice, since we usually catch up on our days after we've put the kids to bed."

"You have an okay voice, Jan, but a blow-by-blow? Of this?" asks Kate, indicating the street around them with a sweep of her hand, where life carries on without drama or incident ninety percent of the time.

"Also…also…I think it makes everything less scary for her too, if she knows what I'm doing. And that you're here doing it with me," he adds, giving her a sidelong glance.

Kate is kind of touched by that: that Jan's wife's way of controlling the uncontrollable is by facing her fears head on, instead of burying her head in the sand the way a lot of police spouses do. She's also touched to hear that the woman values her place by Jan's side, backing him up in case of actual difficulty that goes beyond which flavor of ice cream to choose on a hot day.

"She loved the story about the naked writer on horseback. A genuine celebrity for once. Hoowee! So when I tell her you guys are dating…"

Kate shifts uncomfortably in her seat, balling up the rest of her sandwich and tucking it back into the greasy paper bag. "We…look, we're not really dating."

"You've been out with the guy a couple of times now right?"

"We had a beer and we went out for coffee. Once. No big deal."

"Beckett, you're never off your cell the last few days. And what about all the special deliveries at work, huh?"

"He stopped those ages ago."

"Did you ask him to?"

"Yes."

"See. There you go. If you hadn't of stopped him that flood of gifts would have kept on comin'."

Kate shrugs, knowing he has a point. Castle's campaign to win her over would have continued unrelenting unless she'd stepped in. "What's your point?"

"My point? My point is…the guy is keen. When's the last time someone took this much of an interest in you?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Kate asks, rather defensively.

"Just sayin'. You could do a whole lot worse than dating this guy. So…you know."

"No, I don't know."

"Just…don't blow it."

"Blow it? How exactly would I blow it?"

Jan sighs, and she can see him debate whether or not to say what's on his mind. In the end, honesty wins over good sense. "You…you have this habit of pushing people away." He holds up a hand to keep her quiet before she can jump in and refute what he just said, as he can see she's about to. "Now I understand you like your privacy. Who doesn't? But we've been partners for over nine months now and I still know diddly-squat about you."

"Nothing to tell."

"Now I know that ain't true. But I'm a nice guy, so I'm gonna let that little fib slide even though I'd kick my kids' butts for telling trumped-up stories like you just did."

"This job takes up all of my time and—"

"Well, then you're doing it wrong," interrupts Jan.

Kate looks startled by her partner's admonishment. He's not usually so outspoken when it comes to anything remotely non-job related.

When he carries on, his expression is earnest, as if he really wants her to listen to him and take his message on board. "I have a family, Beckett. A wife, two kids. I coach my daughter's Pee Wee soccer team on Sundays. I collect Civil War medals that I find at flea markets and swap meets, and I'm a volunteer cook at a Polish nursing home once a month. My job is full on, but so is my life."

Kate is speechless.

"Now, I'm not saying these things to make you feel bad. Each to their own, I say. You wanna clock off at the end of the week, go home, do your laundry and then never leave your apartment for the rest of the weekend, be my guest. But I'd hate to see you make your life be just about the job. Sure, you're gonna make a great detective one day. I'd bet my pension on that. But you know how little it takes for all of that to be gone in the blink of an eye. You get injured on the job, and, if you're lucky you're behind a desk for the rest of your career. If not…what exactly was it all for?"

"I hear you," mumbles Kate, instantly thinking of her own mother: of all the hours she put in as a lawyer, devoted to helping other people, while she and her father ate alone, went on cinema trips by themselves, even put up their Christmas tree without her one year. And for what? So that she could end up dead in an alley?

"Just give the guy a chance. I know he acted like a Class A jerk in the beginning, but sometimes people grow on you if you let them. We have this saying in Poland: Okazja na nikogo nie czeka. It means opportunity waits for no man. Don't let this chance to have a little fun in your life slip through your fingers, Beckett."

Kate can feel a heat rising in her cheeks, and she reaches out to wind her window down a little further. After their sexual encounter in bed the other night, albeit over the phone, he's definitely growing on her. No question about that. As to whether she has room for a relationship in her life – especially with a man who has a child and his mother in tow – well, that's a question for another day. For now, she's simply looking forward to Saturday, to their dinner date, and whatever fun that might bring.

She's home cleaning her kitchen later that evening when her cell phone rings.

"Hey." She smiles without thinking as soon as she answers, nerves like fireflies alighting in her stomach.

"Hey, yourself. What you up to? This a good time?"

"Uh…yeah," she replies, glancing around her small apartment at the disarray of pots and pans stacked on her counter top, at the sponge mop and bucket resting in the corner and the row of sparkling glasses sitting upside down drying on her drainer.

He might be coming into her apartment tomorrow night for the very first time, and, yeah, she might be going a little overboard preparing, considering he's not going to be inspecting the state of her floor or the inside of her cabinets if she does decide to allow him over the threshold. But if nothing else, the task is keeping her mind occupied, because after her chat with Jan and her growing anxiety about the date, she needs something to distract her.

"I was just…cleaning," she admits, tossing a ball of used paper towel into the open maw of the trashcan. The paper hits the rim and bounces in on the back of a perfect jump shot from Kate.

The word cleaning is out there before she stops to consider that Richard Castle is no slouch in the motive department. He'll have her figured out before she can say—

"Got visitors coming over, Beckett?" he asks slyly. She can hear him grinning down the phone line.

Fuck!

"No," she answers airily, "just thought I'd do a little spring cleaning while I have some free time."

"You know you're a terrible liar," Castle tells her, eliciting a sharp intake of breath.

"And you're far too presumptuous."

"Maybe, but I know one thing," he says, rather smugly.

"Should I even ask? This is a trap, isn't it?"

"If you let me into your apartment tomorrow night, I won't be checking the cleanliness of any surfaces…except maybe one."

Kate's eyes grow large and she blushes furiously. Total trap. "That's—"

"Too much?" he chuckles.

"A little…for six-thirty," she reminds him, after checking her watch. "Why are you calling so early anyway? Shouldn't you be burning Tater Tots right now or checking homework?"

Castle laughs at her parental characterization. "Actually, I usually make dinner for Alexis from scratch. But tonight she's eating at a friend's house. I'm picking her up at 7.30pm."

"So you were at a loose end and you thought you'd…harass me?"

"Harass?"

Kate laughs. "Okay, badger then. Interrupt, pester, plague, torment, hound…eh…exasperate, annoy..."

"You have the sexiest vocabulary, you know that?"

"You sure it wasn't just my vocabulary you thought was sexy the other night?"

He's clearly grinning again when he says, "I thought were weren't going to talk about that."

"You're right. We're not."

"So why are you…"

"Forget I said anything. Let's keep it PG."

"Me and my big mouth."

"I thought we said we'd keep it PG."

"Kate Beckett!" exclaims Rick.

Kate laughs at Castle's show of being outraged. "Sorry, couldn't resist."

"Do you promise to be this wild tomorrow night?"

"I don't even know what your plans are yet. Any idea what time you're coming over to pick me up? You were supposed to text me that information yesterday, remember?"

"I got distracted, okay. If there isn't already a game called Words with Friends*, someone should invent one."

"Better make that Dirty Words with Friends."

"Ah, the deluxe edition," chuckles Castle, laughing even harder when Kate joins in. "So, tomorrow night. I can't believe it's tomorrow night!" he exclaims, sounding a little over-excited.

Kate rolls her eyes. "Steady on there, cowboy. We said low-key dinner. We're not painting the town red…or any other color for that matter."

"Yes. Sorry," he coughs. "I'll behave. Would seven-thirty be okay?"

"Uh…sure. Yeah."

"Will that give you enough time to get home and change?"

"I'll be ready. Don't you worry."

"Great. Listen, I have to go now. Alexis' friend, the one she's visiting tonight, she just moved to Williamsburg with her mom after her parents got divorced. Anyway, I said I'd have a drink with Jill, that's Caitlin's mom, while the girls finish watching their movie so…"

A stab of pure envy shoots through Kate almost leaving her winded. She leans on the counter to steady her breath and scrape herself back together enough to deliver a convincing goodbye sound bite that won't leave him suspecting anything. "Sure. Not a problem. Go…enjoy your drink. I'll see you tomorrow," she ends breezily.

Castle is still in the process of asking if he can phone back later once Alexis is home in bed. But Kate hears none of this because she has already ended the call, feeling sick to her stomach with an emotion she's never encountered before: jealousy.

She goes to bed around 9.45pm, taking a new book, a hot drink, and an Ambien with her in anticipation of a restless night ahead. Her mind has been whirring with all sort of stupid, pointless, idiotic thoughts since she abruptly signed off on her phone call with Rick.

They're not exclusive; of course they're not. They haven't even been on a proper date yet, and this woman he's meeting tonight is obviously someone he's known for some time, if she and her daughter have moved out of the city and Alexis is still friends with her kid. Besides, their drink is chaperoned by two six-year-old girls, who're probably braiding each other's hair and eating Mallowmars with their hot, sticky little hands right now. How intimate can their evening be with Alexis and her friend in tow?

But it still bothers her. Her mind is in turmoil when it really shouldn't be. She's a grown woman, an NYPD cop no less, and New York has a big dating scene. The fact that the man she's chosen to get involved with is none other than celebrity author, Richard Castle, who regularly haunts Page Six and a host of other assorted gossip columns, seems to have slipped her mind amidst the flurry of flirtatious text messages, the cozy late night chats and the tame coffee shop non-date thing the other day. Even their shared masturbation incident is no sign of a commitment. She's behaving like a total child and she needs to buck up her ideas before tomorrow.

So she drains the last of her tea, reads two pages of her book - reaping zero benefit from the task, since she doesn't take in a single word - and then she turns out the light to begin a restless session of tossing and turning, way more angry at herself than she is at Rick or this Jill woman.

She's barely ten minutes into a fitful doze when her cell phone begins to vibrate on the nightstand. She wakes up groggy and groaning.

"Beckett?" she whines into the end of the lump of black plastic she hopes contains the microphone part of her cell.

"Oh, God. I knew it. This is too late to call, isn't it?" whispers Castle, sounding a little out of breath.

Kate struggles to a sitting position in bed, hugging the covers over her knees. "No, it's…what time is it?" she mumbles, rubbing at her eyes.

"It's a quarter after ten, but you were sleeping, Kate. I'm so sorry. I just wanted to say goodnight and—"

He abruptly stops speaking, and Kate can sense there's some issue he wants to bring up but doesn't know how.

"What?" she asks, giving him no help at all.

"Are you mad at me?" he blurts, the words sliding out into a void of heavy silence.

"Mad. Am I mad at you?" repeats Kate, trying to buy herself some thinking time.

"You heard me the first time, Kate," Castle says, a little tersely.

She sighs. Her response is contrite. "No, I'm not mad at you. I…what right do I have to be mad? What reason?" she stumbles on, making an absolute meal of things.

"I've known Jill Franks since Alexis was in kindergarten," he begins to explain. "She and Mike decided to get divorced last year after—"

Kate is mortified. She attempts to get him to stop saying anymore for the sake of his friend's privacy and his own dignity. "Please, stop. You don't owe me any explanation."

"As I was saying," Castle carries on, ignoring her plea. "Jill and Mike got divorced last year after Jill cheated on him with her Pilates instructor."

"Oh."

"Yes, oh. They just moved in together. All three of them. They're sharing his apartment in Williamsburg. Caitlin wanted Alexis to see her new bedroom and Alexis misses her terribly, so I agreed she could go over there even though it's a school night. Jill wanted to thank me for recommending a divorce lawyer, though why she bothered to ask me…" he trails off into embarrassed silence.

"Why wouldn't she ask?" queries Kate, verbalizing the only words she can think to come up with right now, her head is in such a mess.

"Because I pretty much gave Meredith carte blanche to take whatever she wanted. There wasn't much lawyering involved in my divorce. Still, Jill seems happy enough with what she got from Mike and the Pilates guy was great with the girls while we talked, so… All's well that end's well, I guess."

"I'm sorry," says Kate, chewing on her lip in discomfort.

"Forget it. No harm done. I just wanted to call and set your mind at ease."

"Did you think I was worried?"

"Were you?"

"I have no right to be worried. We just met. We're not even dating. You've clearly known this woman for a lot longer than you've known me and—"

"Kate, were you worried?" Castle presses.

"Maybe. A little," she admits, feeling feeble as she gnaws on her poor lip with her central incisors.

"Good."

"Good? What's good about it?"

"Because it means…I don't know how to say this."

"Try."

"It mean there's something there…between us. It means it's not all on me, okay?"

"What's not all on you?"

"This. Whatever it is we're doing. I don't want to be that guy again. Not after what happened with my ex. I don't want to be the one who gets the pitying looks when he walks into a room, I don't want to be the cause of people's sudden silences and strange behavior."

"Are you sure that had anything to do with your ex and not more to do with you?"

There's beat or two of silence before Rick laughs. "That was mean."

"Made you laugh though."

"Yeah, it did. Thank you."

Another patch of dead air stretches between their apartments and whatever cell towers their call is bouncing off before Castle speaks again.

"Did we just have our first fight?"

Kate covers her eyes with her hand. "Oh, God. I think we did."

"And we…we had phone sex before we even went on a date or kissed or anything."

"Jeez. You're right."

"Are we doing this all wrong?" whispers Castle.

"Kinda ass-backwards?" suggests Kate.

"Yeah. You think that means we're doomed?"

"Did you do things in the right order with Meredith?"

"Pretty much. Oh, except for the part where she got pregnant and then I proposed."

"Right," winces Kate, since his answer kind of blows the theory she was about to suggest.

"Do you believe in fate, Kate?"

"I…I'm not sure. I never really thought about it before."

"I do."

"You sound…really certain."

"Will you allow me this one eccentricity on your behalf?"

"Just one?" she asks, starting to giggle.

"I mean it. Will you let me…please?"

"I actually have no idea what you think believing in fate will do in this circumstance. But, okay. Yeah, I guess it won't hurt."

"Good."

She thinks he's kind of nuts, but in an adorable, hopeful, vulnerable kind of way.

"Should we say goodnight before we walk into anymore minefields?" she suggests.

"I think we just disarmed them all."

Kate shakes her head, wondering at Castle's amazing capacity for optimism. He doesn't realize how little he knows her. There are minefields galore hidden just beneath the surface. One single, protracted, honest conversation with her, and he's going to step on any one of half a dozen buried devices that could cost him whatever they have forming here. She hopes for both their sakes that he's able to be as disarming tomorrow night as he's proved to be on the other scant occasions they've spent time together.

"Sleep well," murmurs Kate, exhaustion pulling on her far more strongly than the desire to keep this phone call going.

She needs time alone to decompress after her little jealous freak-out. Because she knows one thing for certain: being with this man will leave her awash with similar challenges as regular as the ebb and flow of the tide. Women will come out of the woodwork if they think he's about to be taken off the market by some twenty-three-year old female cop. It's the law of the jungle in Manhattan. She looks young and naive, unpolished even. He's a catch for age appropriate women and cougars alike, and when those jungle drums start pounding—

"Night, Kate. Sweet dreams," he whispers in her ear, and then he's gone.

TBC...

Note: *Words With Friends wasn't invented until 2009, and sadly not by Kate and Castle.

Also, I know NYPD uniforms are dark navy, but visually they can pass for black, hence Kate's text to Castle that she's wearing "A little black number." ;)