February 2010

The screen saver bounced around on his laptop and Rick stared at it, leaning back in his chair and flexing his fingers. Designed to make him feel guilty, the you should be writing mantra wasn't going to mock him today, not the least because he had been writing.

Tens of pages since he awoke at six this morning, and if it wasn't time for a coffee now, well- it was time. Past time.

He pushed back against the desk, standing and drumming his fingertips against it before striding through the hall and into the kitchen, switching on the espresso machine and pulling a double shot.

He watched in satisfaction as the liquid made its way into his cup and, splashing some milk in once it was done, he brought it to his lips. What had he been thinking, trying to exist on tea just because he was in England? He'd been setting himself up for failure, he admitted to himself, his eyes closing as he tasted the rich coffee on his tongue.

A chime interrupted his reverie and he put the cup down, frowning and making his way to the front door. Alexis had a key, and he wasn't expecting anyone else. He opened the door to find a mailman there, package held aloft toward Castle as the man requested he sign for it.

"I wasn't expecting anything," he told him, and the man grunted in response, indicating with a dip of his head for Castle to take the box.

He carried it inside, his grin stretching across his face as he recognized the handwriting scrawled across the top. He cleared his throat, trying to fight the smile, the sheer joy that was welling up in him before laughing, a quiet chuckle. No one was here to see him dashing into his kitchen like an idiot just because he had a package fromKate, so why shouldn't he enjoy the moment?

Beckett had sent him a present. The possibilities were endless and he beamed at the box, running a fingertip over her neatly printed name in the top corner. What would he find? He frowned, realizing he had no idea; none of their conversations since he and Alexis had returned from Paris had contained any clues about a mystery gift, let alone any indication of its contents.

His patience wearing thin, he reached again for his cup of coffee, gulping down the last of it, before grabbing the kitchen scissors from the drawer, and sliding a blade between the cardboard and the tape.

Open at last, he pried the two sides apart, blinking at the contents that were nestled in bubble wrap.

Reese's Pieces. At Alexis' instruction he knew, now, where he could buy them here in London, but that wasn't the point. Kate had obviously been listening, in spite of laughing at him when he'd ranted about how much he missed American candy last week.

Below the chocolate was a little police car. He pulled it from the box, driving it along the counter and chuckling. Hours of distraction in that one. The last object was a mug. Cradling it carefully in his hands, he examined it. An NYPD mug. That was perfect. He threw a glance in the direction of his espresso machine. So what if he'd just finished a coffee? It was time for another one.

He rinsed his gift, picturing the mismatched collection in the break room at the precinct. Kate always seemed to favor the heavy blue mug but he'd always chosen one emblazoned with the NYPD logo. He'd told her it was because he loved playing cop, but it was more than that, had been from the very beginning.

It was pride.

Different to his interactions with Sophia at the CIA - and really different to his interactions with his contacts at MI6 - he'd been part of a team that made a difference in people's lives.

It didn't hurt that Katherine Beckett was the most fascinating woman he'd ever met, and if he was going to be entirely honest with himself, it didn't hurt that she was hot. When it came down to it though, their connection was undeniable. As much as she liked to tell him that she'd been catching killers just fine without him, he knew he was a vital part of the team.

So why had he been so quick to tear it all down when Paula had come to him with the offer of Bond? He shook his head as he made the second espresso, the smile gone from his face as the coffee filtered into the NYPD mug. He'd been foolish, that much was certain. A few hot-headed words on his part and Beckett's - she wasn't blameless - and it was his second marriage all over again. The impulse to run before he could be held accountable, combined with a deep seated fear that he really wasn't necessary to the team at the Twelfth had brought it all crashing down, leading him… here. To London. England.

He shook his head, taking the coffee from the machine and gazing again at the logo on the mug.

But all wasn't lost.

He was writing more than ever, and he was reconnecting with Beckett. He and Alexis would see out the semester here, he'd finish up his Bond obligations, and they'd go back home, where they belonged.

Still, the nagging fear buzzed in the back of his mind. Could he and Beckett really recreate what they'd had? Phone calls and messages, emails and care packages were one thing, but what happened when they were both in New York again? How would that even work?

He sighed, rocking the NYPD car back and forth with his free hand before letting it shoot away from him. It crashed into the box, falling to the floor and taking the package with it, and he set his coffee onto the counter, retrieving the candy and the bubble wrap that had fallen, pausing as something else poked its way out, landing face up on the floor.

A postcard, the night skyline of the world's greatest city confronted him and he reached for it, his hand shaking as he picked it up and turned it over.

For your coffee until you get back to the Twelfth. -KB

Until he got back.

He grinned. He was going back to the precinct.

"Please tell me you've wrapped up all your paperwork?" Lanie's voice was a moan on the other end of her desk phone, and Kate bit back a laugh as she replied.

"I have." She grinned, closing each of the programs on her desktop and shutting the machine down. The stack of manila folders beside her were ready to go to records. All in all, it had been a productive day. A boring case devoid of any interesting features had been all the slower without Castle there throwing around his wild theories. At least it had been an easy solve, and one more family was going to bed with answers tonight, so there was that.

"I'm dying to get out of here too," Lanie continued. "Are you free for a drink if I meet you in half an hour?"

"What about your Jane Doe?" she asked, trying not to frown. It had been disappointing to be assigned Perlmutter today, but her visit to the morgue meant she knew what - who - Lanie was working on, even if no one knew who she actually was.

"She'll keep until the morning," Lanie grumbled. "I've got COD, just need an ID."

"Oh. Well, good." Beckett pursed her lips, casting her gaze across the bullpen. At their own desks, Ryan and Esposito were deep in conversation, apparently unaware that the clock had hit five and that the closed case meant they were free to go.

Snatches of their discussion drifted across the room. "You ask!" Ryan said, only to be met with a scoff of derision from Esposito.

"I ain't touching it!" came Espo's retort, and she shrugged, turning her attention back to Lanie.

"So do you want to meet up, Kate? That new place around the corner from your apartment, maybe?"

"Oh, um." She brought her thumb to her mouth, gnawing on the nail as she considered. "I have… plans. Sorry."

"Plans? Spill, girl," Lanie demanded.

She shook her head, her hair falling across her face as she dipped her head and lowered her voice. "There's nothing to tell. I just have… something to do."

"Something, or someone?" The accusation was enough to make her roll her eyes.

"Lanie! It's not like that." From the other side of the bullpen Beckett noted the moment that Esposito and Ryan jerked their heads up, their eyes on her.

"Then what's it like?"

"I have a… phone call. I told someone I would call… them after I was done with work tonight." She tried to remain gender neutral, but the snort on the other end of the line told her she wasn't fooling her friend.

"Well, tell someone that you'll call him after you have a drink with me."

"Well," she hedged. The idea of confessing - not that she had anything to confess or feel guilty about - was appealing. "I can't just call at all hours, you know."

"Oh yeah?" The mirth in Lanie's voice raised her suspicions, and she shot another look at the guys. Both were suddenly very focused on paperwork, but even from a few desks away Beckett could tell that whatever Ryan was purporting to look at was upside down. "This wouldn't have anything to do with a certain mystery writer in a different time zone, would it?"

"Lanie!" she hissed. "How did- no!"

"Please, Beckett. I know you. And I know you like to stay connected, but you don't need to be a detective to have noticed that you and your phone are joined at the hip these days."

"I'm not- how did you know it was Castle?" she demanded, keeping her voice low.

"Jav- Detective Esposito may have mentioned something." Kate rolled her eyes. Well, that little Javi slip answered that question. It was clearer now, what the two of them were gossiping about at their desks. She cursed letting Esposito see the caller ID when Castle had phoned earlier this week.

"Right. Well, yes, it's true. I have been speaking to Castle occasionally, and yes, I told him I would call him tonight. But it's nothing, it's just two friends. It's like… he's consulting by phone."

"Uh-huh. Consulting on a closed case?"

"Well. Not exactly. But you know, he's writing Bond now, and-"

"Save me your excuses," Lanie said.

"It's not like you tell me all about your secret relationship," she countered, doing her best to fight the unfounded accusations with fire. But Lanie just laughed.

"So you admit it's a secret relationship?"

Crap. No. She didn't need to admit anything of the sort, because it wasn't a relationship, secret or otherwise.

"Face it, Kate," Lanie said. "There's been something between you and Castle since the day the two of you met, and now you're in a long distance relationship with the guy."

"Hey," Alexis called out as he made his way through the front door. "How was your day?"

"Good," he told her, pleased that this was an honest report. Now that he knew in his heart that this was just temporary it made the days go a little faster, and made the mundane conversations he was having over at MI6 a little more palatable. Just a few more months of this and he could go back to his loft in SoHo and his life in New York.

"Have you been shadowing your spy again?"

He wrinkled his nose, setting his laptop down on the counter and taking a seat beside his daughter. "You're making it sound much more exciting than it is," he informed her. "And no. I went in to headquarters, was bored in under ten minutes, and I've been at the pub writing for the last three hours."

The pub, at least, had turned out exactly the way he would have hoped. Reminiscent of the Old Haunt, in which he'd whiled away many an hour before Alexis was born - writing, playing darts, drinking - the traditional English pub down the block from his apartment was everything he'd ever wanted in a bar. Although he supposed here it was just a pub, and that the adjectives traditional and English were redundant. The place was perfect though. Dark enough to have atmosphere, but not too dingy to pump out chapter after chapter. Crowded enough to have character, but not so busy the barman resented him for nursing a single pint for hours on end.

"So the book is going well?"

"Yeah, it really is." Again, it felt good to be giving an honest reply, rather than a doctored version of the true events. This was what Nikki Heat had brought him, he realized. Months, years even, of writing Derrick Storm, the words had coming slowly and painfully - had killed in him the desire to be the best. It was a switched had been flipped; the need to write was once again his constant companion.

Until now, he'd never really understood how Patterson knocked out more than a book a year, but the rush of writing Bond while simultaneously writing the second Nikki Heat had sparked something within him. For every chapter that he finished and sent on to his publisher he allowed himself to get lost in Nikki for a few hours, and it had become a race to make each of the chapters of both books as good as possible; the less notes his editor had for him the more time he had for Naked Heat.

He grinned. Beckett was going to kill him when she found out the title of the next novel.

"Dad?"

"Sorry, sweetie. I got distracted. Lost in the books, I guess."

"Books?" Alexis narrowed her eyes at him, and he swallowed. So much for an honest conversation. Until now, he'd omitted telling anyone about his personal writing project.

"I, uh- I might have found myself writing a little bit more Nikki. Just, you know, for fun."

"How much is a little bit?" Alexis' expression screamed skeptical, and he chuckled.

"Just… a few chapters, that's all. But don't worry. Bond is going well. I'm not neglecting that."

"I hope not," she said, her brows furrowed as she launched into chastising mode. "Remember, you signed a contract, and you have to-"

"Alexis," he cut her off. "It's fine, really. I'm making the deadlines. You don't need to worry."

She ducked her head. "Sorry."

He reached out, cupping her face in his hand and pressing a kiss into her hair before standing. "No problem, sweetie. Now, what do you want for dinner?"

"Burgers."

The answer was so definitive that he laughed, pleased that the decision had been made and they weren't going to hum and haw for a half hour before deciding on something. "Done."

"You know what I was thinking, Dad?"

"Mmmhmm?" He looked up, surprised to see the concern back on her face as she bit her nail.

"Are you happy here? Because I am, but I know that I'm gone a lot, with Emma and the others from my class. And I was just… worried about you."

"You don't need to worry," he assured her. "I'm fine."

"Sometimes you just seem so… quiet," she continued, and he shrugged.

"I'm not sure that's a bad thing," he said. "You should be pleased that I haven't been arrested since we've been here."

"Right," she agreed. "And, well, I know you and Detective Beckett have been talking a lot, and you keep saying there's nothing going on, but you're not dating either, and so maybe you should? It's nearly Valentine's Day, and-"

"There's nothing going on," he interrupted her. "Not with Beckett and me." Lie, his mind supplied. But if there was something going on it didn't count, because he couldn't define it, had no idea what it was. "But I don't want to date." I don't want to date anyone but Beckett. The sentence completed itself in his head without his permission. "I don't want to date," he said again. He needed to get Beckett out of his head. "I just want to concentrate on writing. Get Bond done."

"Are you sure you're okay?"

Castle's gaze caught the NYPD mug, pride of place on the counter and he swallowed. Another few hours and Beckett would be wrapping up for the day. She'd promised to skype him when she got home; by then, Alexis would be in bed and he would be able to keep their conversation to himself.

"I'm fine, Alexis, really." He grinned at her, hoping the smile reached his eyes as he lied again. He couldn't figure it out, so it was almost true, right? "And there's nothing going on with Beckett and me."

A/N: Thank you guys for your sweet words! x And of course all the credit to Kylie and Jamie for catching my typos and Australianisms and convoluted sentences that need to be kicked to the curb! x