Back to Where We Have Never Been

A/N: I know I sound like a broken record, but you all are awesome! Seriously. I love how opinionated you all are about Mark's motives and Kate's relationship status. Trust me, I love it. Anyway, my point is that you all rock, so here is chapter 5. Enjoy! :)

Chapter 5

It was 10am on Thursday and the giant flashing screen outside the bank, across the street, announced that it was already ninety degrees Fahrenheit outside. Inside, Kate and Rick sat on the floor of his office, a sea of paper floating on the floor between them. Kate's heels were kicked off in the corner and her hair was pulled up in a messy bun at the nape of her neck. Rick's shirt, which boasted a couple of character's from Super Mario Brothers, was already rumpled and he tugged at the neckline as he emphatically tried to make his latest point stick in Kate's stubborn brain.

"No," he stated again, a little more harshly. "I want the main character to be a woman."

"Why? What do you know about women, seriously?" Kate stared back at him, the hacky sack she had been holding bouncing between her hands, as she threw it back and forth.

"I know plenty about women. Trust me, I have been married twice already," Rick shot back.

Kate let out a small laugh, gesturing with the hand holding the small beanbag at the man seated across from her. "The fact that you have been married twice tells me that you, in fact, know very little about women."

"Yes, well, I am sorry I didn't know my first wife well enough to know that she was going to have an affair with her director and leave me for a wonderful life in Hollywood," Castle shot back.

Kate stilled, the woven sack gripped in her right hand, eyes wide as she took in the information.

"I'm sorry," she stuttered out. "I didn't know."

"Oh, please, just like you didn't know that Gina, my publisher, is my second ex-wife? I know you checked out my fan sites. You have been dropping tidbits of information for days that you shouldn't know already," Castle argued and Kate had the decency to blush in return.

When she failed to come back with a reply Castle paused and held up a hand, gesturing for Kate to throw him the hacky sack. The silence persisted as the bag hit his palm and he kneaded it a couple of times before tossing it back to her. The game of catch continued for a few more silent minutes while he continued to think.

"Women are complex. Interesting. I have written twenty-six best sellers revolving around men. Men are easy to write: the emotions, the drive, the sense of purpose. I've done it. I want to do something else— something more interesting. I want my lead character to be a woman. We have been arguing about this for days. You might as well just give in because I am not going to back down."

Kate narrowed her eyes at him, letting her hand holding the ball drop to her lap.

"Men are complex, too," she argued.

Castle looked at her and let out a laugh, causing her to shift in her spot. "No, no, they really aren't. Trust me, I know. I am one. For instance, your fiancé, if your positions were reversed and you were the one that told him that you were blowing off his family in order to go to some conference, and he was as pissed about it as you are, and trust me I know you are. That little vein in your forehead pulses when you are upset, and whenever he comes up in conversation, it beats like a steal drum band. What is his name, anyway? You never told me."

Castle paused and Kate glared back at him, jaw clenched in response to his questioning look.

"Mark," she ground out.

Great, they were back to the one-syllable answers.

"Thank you. So, if Mark were pissed about it he would have just told you. You on the other hand, just let him go do his thing, telling him that you were happy for him and that you weren't upset at all. Am I wrong? Is that not what happened? Tell me, how often have you talked since you had that conversation? How many times has this same type of thing happened? And while we are on the subject, how long did it take him to propose, anyway? You just justify it all in your head. Mark, on the other hand, would have been gone, long ago, if you were doing the same thing to him."

Kate continued to stare at him, eyes narrow, jaw clenched, nostrils flaring as she rubbed at the pulsing vein in her forehead. When she failed to answer any of his questions, he continued on, a smug grin on his face.

"See? Complex and definitely more interesting."

Kate's phone chose that moment to chirp and she reached over to grasp it as Castle leaned forward and plucked the hacky sack off of her crossed legs. Her eyes flickered over to him momentarily, at the action, but quickly let her attention drift back to the device in her hand.

"Excuse me," she stated as she pushed herself off of the ground and wandered out to the living room, phone in hand.

Castle let out a deep breath and went about gathering up the pages littering the floor with one hand while the other continued to knead the ball. He may have crossed a line.

They had been at this for days and it felt like they had been getting nowhere. Anything he would suggest she would shoot down or pick apart until the original idea was completely gone, but this one thing was something he wanted. He had had this idea in his head for days now but he was presenting it slowly, in bits and pieces, as to not scare her off. The character he had been seeing in his head had first appeared in the bookstore and bore an uncanny resemblance to Katherine Beckett, herself.

An interpreter, English to Russian, caught up in a conspiracy after she overhead the details of a terrorist plot while in Moscow for a conference. It was classic, it was awesome, but Kate would never go for it, at least not like that. He had to sugar coat it, build it slowly. He could do that; he had to, because, now, all he could see when he closed his eyes at night, when he thought about his next novel, was Kate Beckett and her green eyes, long brown hair and coy grin. Spitfire personality. He had to write about her.

"Hello?" Kate said warily into the phone, the number on the caller ID one that she didn't recognize.

"Is this Kate Beckett?" The woman on the other end questioned.

"Yes, may I ask who is calling?" Kate asked back as she rubbed her forehead, in futile attempt to rid herself of the headache that was fast forming.

"Kate! It's Rebecca Harding. It has been a long time, how are you?" The woman chirped and Kate couldn't help but smile as she placed a face with the cheerful voice on the other end.

Rebecca had been a fellow graduate student at UCLA, both in the English department, but working on completely different tracks. They had formed a friendship through their roles as teaching assistants, but had lost contact soon after graduation. The last Kate had heard, Rebecca had been teaching at Columbia.

"Rebecca, it has been awhile. I am doing well, how are you?"

"Great. I am great. I am actually calling because I have a proposition for you. One of our professors took early retirement. His wife has cancer and they decided that they wanted to travel some in case, you know, treatment doesn't go well."

"That's awful." Kate cringed.

"Yes, well, it has left us in a little bit of a lurch, you see, it being so close to the beginning of the semester. We have a job announcement scheduled to go out at the end of next week but we have a short list of people we wanted to ask before the formal announcement is made. Now, I know you are a Stanford girl, but it is a tenure track position. You would make tenure within the next two years, tops. How far are you from that at Stanford?"

Kate shifted and bit into her lip. Tenure? She was at least five years away from that at Stanford. Mark, on the other hand, was up for it within a year.

"Not within the next two years," she answered.

"Exactly. Now, it is comparative literature, but you would have to teach at least one course in contemporary fiction, at least for the first year, after that I am sure you could negotiate."

"Thanks, Rebecca, I really appreciate it, but I…" Kate's sentence drifted off as Castle's words echoed through her head. This was a great opportunity for her. How much had she given up? How long had she waited for him? As much as she did love California, spending the past week at home was reminding her how much she missed her family. Mark would understand that. She should at least talk about it with him before turning it down flat out.

"Look, Kate," Rebecca interjected when Kate failed to finish her sentence. "I don't need an answer now. I'll give you a few days to think about it, but I would need to know soon. Just give me a call back and we can set up an interview and talk salary. Trust me when I say you are our top choice for this position."

Kate thanked Rebecca and her phone slipped from her ear as she pulled it down to press the end button, feeling the weight of it pressing into her palm. Tenure at Columbia? It was a dream job and it was practically being handed to her on a silver platter. Not even silver— it was gold or platinum. Diamond encrusted.

Mark on the other hand, was happy in California. His career was fast tracked. Stanford would offer him incentives to stay. They would probably give him tenure as an opening offer. He would probably be able to get a job in New York, sure, but he wouldn't want to leave. His family was there, all of his friends. He wouldn't want to pick up his life and move all the way across the country for this. In fact, they didn't even know if there were any jobs open for economic professors in The City, at least not ones with the same perks. Times were tough, and even universities were cutting back.

Kate sighed and pushed the lip she had been worrying out of her mouth. She could taste blood from where her teeth had sunk into it extra hard.

"Hey," Castle's voice sounded from behind her and she whirled around. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, everything is fine. Why?" Kate asked, flustered, as she shoved her phone into the back pocket of her jeans.

"You have just been standing in the same spot for at least five minutes. Important phone call?"

Kate could see that he was trying to tread carefully, probably worried that his little analysis from earlier still had her upset. The fact was, that his little summary of her and Mark's relationship had been eerily correct, but she wasn't concerned with that now.

"Just an old friend. Nothing important. What's up?" She deflected, hoping she managed to sound nonchalant. The look he gave her told her she failed.

Castle nodded in hesitantly in response but, instead of calling her out, simply shrugged his shoulders. "I'm getting antsy, need to get out. Want to go for lunch?"

Kate opened her mouth to decline. She had been turning down meal invitations from him for the past three days, but instead, found herself nodding in agreement. She really did not feel like being alone right now.

"Sure. Sounds good," she replied.

Castle's head perked up. "Really? I wasn't expecting you to say yes. Just give me a second to change."

Kate shook her head with a small grin as he scurried off to his room. He was such a child sometimes. She wandered back to the office to gather up her shoes before making her way back towards the door, fleetingly wondering what his reaction would be if she offered to take him to get ice cream.

Castle's head popped out the cracked door to his room a few minutes later, a hopeful smile on his face, as he fastened the last couple of buttons on his purple collared shirt over a white undershirt. His freshly styled hair was still wet with remnants of the water he had used to get it back in place from where his fingers had been running through it all morning.

"Can we stop for ice cream, too?"

Kat could help but throw back her head in laughter at the question and watched, shaking her head, as he grinned in response. He was such a child.

But, oh, it felt good to laugh.