Notes: This chapter and the next take place at the end of 2x14 "The Third Man." Because after all we'd been through by mid-Season 2, we deserved to go to Remy's with Caskett.

Part Fourteen: Secret Agent

With her dress bag draped over his arm, Castle gently ushered Beckett into the elevator at the Twelfth. "Some people just don't know how to act on a date."

"Especially on a first date," she agreed, letting him press the button to their destination.

"Exactly."

They rode down toward the lobby, standing side-by-side, both looking forward. In the safety of proximity without eye contact, Beckett ventured to ask: "So how'd you know I'd like Remy's?"

Castle grinned. She'd set him up for an easy response; how long had he wanted to say this to her and stand a chance that she would believe him? "I just know you that well."

"You do not."

Ooh, shut down. Or maybe not.

"Is that a challenge?" he asked, facing her. "Because if it is, I'd be glad to raise the stakes."

She chewed her lip for but a moment. "Just what did you have in mind?"

"I'll guess your order."

"You'll what?" she laughed. "Castle, last week you brought me food from four different places because you couldn't pick just one. There were four different countries represented on my desk. And no Chinese, by the way, which now you know is my go-to."

"Food and drink," he insisted. "If I'm right, I take you home." When she arched one menacing brow at him, he quickly amended: "Your home. The door. Walk you, cover cab fare, whatever. Just deliver you and your dress bag here"—he lifted it more into view—"to your place unscathed."

Admittedly, he was still feeling a little guilty that he'd sent Tipsy Beckett off alone after Kyra's wedding dinner, even though Beckett had assured him she was sobering and perfectly capable of such things as paying a cab and using a key.

She'd been right, but he'd been worried, and she hadn't picked up the phone when he'd called later. He'd had to restrain himself from running to her apartment.

"Really? That's what you want?" she said, turning her head to meet his eye again, but retreating very quickly even as she maintained her confidence. The elevator bell rang and the doors opened to the lobby, and Beckett stepped out ahead of him. "Wouldn't you just like a chance at winning back some Gummy bears?"

A year ago. Kate Beckett remembered their card games from one year ago, and for a moment, hearing Beckett talk about their shared past was almost as wonderful as a mention of the future.

He buried the joy and smirked instead. "At least this time I didn't suggest playing for clothing," he accidentally announced to the room. The crowd around them was just large enough for his comment to draw minimal attention. He guessed Security had more important things to be listening for. As he caught up to her, he lowered his voice to add: "I don't think Remy's would appreciate that."

She ignored his tangent; turned on her heel to face him. "All right, and if you're wrong?"

Ah, Beckett. Always prepared for him to be wrong. If she could see the scoreboard in his head, she would finally realize that the odds were against that.

He simply replied, "Then I'll pay your bill."

Win-win for Richard Castle. Didn't matter which way the wager turned out. He went ahead and gave himself a tally now.

In the cab along the way, he opened his notepad and tore out a page.

"What are you doing?"

"Guessing," he said. "I'll write it down and you can check it later." Suddenly, he looked up from the notepad, pen waiting in-hand. "One crucial question first."

Yes. Curiosity officially piqued.

He waited half a beat longer than necessary just to savor her expression and silently dubbed it her Interested Face. Then: "Want to split an order of fries?"

She shook her head at him, her lips pressed into a faint smile, but her answer was positive. "Fine. Sure."

"On me," he insisted. "So I won't count it toward your order."

"Anything to make guessing a little easier, eh, Castle? Narrowing it down?"

He folded the piece of paper and tucked it into his coat pocket. "I'm just being practical. They're really generous with the fries. I'm hungry, not barbaric."

"Mm-hmm."

He was eating a burger, just minding his own business, when they walked in and sat down.

"Castle!" she laughed, a little more loudly than usual for public dining, and immediately restrained herself.

But it was enough to get Vince Minaret's attention across the room; enough to get a glimpse of them sitting together and enjoying themselves, even though he was too far to hear their conversation, save for Kate's outburst.

He remembered the night last fall that he'd met Kate at the book launch party—how they'd talked over drinks and he'd gotten up the nerve to ask her to leave with him; how she'd followed him out to the sidewalk and he'd kissed her right there in the middle of a crowd just because he couldn't stand waiting any longer.

And then the realization he'd had by the—what, fourteenth?—time that Kate said Castle's name.

At that point, he'd studied her eyes. "You think about him a lot, don't you?"

Her voice had been unusually weak in response: "We see a lot of each other."

She'd looked at his lips, but he'd kept reading her eyes. He saw a quiet fury there, a desperation that seemed to have less to do with arousal and attraction and more to do with a need to repress something.

She wanted him to kiss her, but not because she wanted him to kiss her.

And he didn't.

Instead, he waited until she met his eye and summoned every fiber of his willpower to forgive her—hell, forgive himself—for what he was about to do: tell her gently, "It was nice to meet you, Kate," then proffer his hand and walk away.

It wasn't simply the fact that Kate had repeated Castle's name so many times; it was how she had said his name—as though for no other reason but to taste it on her tongue.

Vince knew that sound, that subtle smile. Even in the midst of her frustration, it became increasingly obvious that she was distracted with the very thought of him. And, despite all of her verbal complaints, she was obviously not so strongly opposed to thinking of Castle that she could turn off the distraction, even in the middle of making out with someone else.

It takes a secure man to pursue a woman whom he knows to be thinking, mid-kiss, about another man. Secure being the euphemistic term.

And Vince was just secure enough to admit that he was not such a man.

In fact, that was the moment Vince had realized that being with Kate—for just one night or for anything more—would make him no better off than Victor Medtner, futilely chasing Nina.

A work of biographical fiction, Grin was ultimately a love story. Even though Alexander was gone, Nina's love for him long outlasted their years of marriage.

Vince knew and respected plenty of people who remarried after a spouse's death, and in that way, Medtner wasn't wrong to love her and believe that she would love him in return. Especially when she tried to care for him as more than an old friend and a companion in her misery. But the fact of the matter was that Nina did not want another love, and Medtner did not respect that; kept pushing when what Nina needed most was support, not pressure. And that was wrong.

Of course there was a difference between Nina, who had lost her husband of almost a decade to cancer, and Kate, who, for all he could tell, was pissed off at a man she wasn't even dating. One shouldn't have necessarily reminded him of the other.

There was just something about that passion—even passionate anger—and that wistful longing that was too palpable to avoid. Even if he hadn't written it once before, it would have been impossible not to sense it in Kate. He probably just would have taken Kate to bed and relished the charge of energy in her without caring that it wasn't all for him.

But he had written it. And for the first time, he understood a little of what Medtner felt. When Vince first wrote the novel, he related most to the more heroic Alexander Grin—in that way that authors do when they covet what their characters have. He never thought that he would relate so well to the character that he'd designed to be a jerk.

In this case, Kate's interest in him was easily clouded with her loyalty to another, and that was enough to suggest to Vince that he was only going to be a minor character in Kate's life. And not just any minor character, but that guy. That night he'd realized he didn't want to be that guy.

He hadn't wanted to think that way. Every bit of testosterone in his body would have liked to accept even a one-night stand for its own sake if that's all that it was to be. And really, what was stopping him? If Kate was willing and everything was consensual and they weren't cheating on anyone—what was the harm?

At the time, he couldn't really explain it. A disconcerting experience for a man who makes a living with words.

He'd enjoyed Kate's presence and personality like no one in a long time. And none of that had faded with the realization that he could have her. But no matter how badly he wanted her, wanted release, wanted escape, he didn't want to be the only one wholly lost in the moment.

They'd connected in light of—in spite of—their loneliness and frustration. But it's hard to help each other forget when one person is hell-bent on remembering what she's escaping and says his name like she misses the taste of it.

So maybe Kate's love and grief were not as great as Nina's, and Vince's initial intentions were less honorable than Medtner's. But he didn't have to push, didn't have to be the jerk. He could make a decision that he could live with. He could care about an acquaintance at least as much as he cared about a character in a book.

After all, much of reading and writing hinges on our ability to care about strangers. And so does not being a dick.

No, he would not be Kate's Medtner. He would not kiss her and hope that it would convince her to choose him instead; to forget the man who had her heart, even in his absence.

Kate had been available—he still believed that was true at the time. She just hadn't been available, tied up as she was in her unspoken bond to Richard Castle.

And now it seemed to Vince that Kate had finally come to terms with that. A harsh critic of writing who was later discovered scratching away in her own notebook in the corner of a café, Kate Beckett had likewise gone from groaning about Castle to laughing happily in his company. And even more, if the Ledger had it right.

Awkwardly enough, Vince's own book agent, Suzanne Cherish, was the one who discovered the blurb.

Suzanne was a diehard Richard Castle fan who would gladly step in for Paula Haas (or just about any woman in his life) if the opportunity ever arose. It was because of her that Vince was at the Heat Wave book launch in the first place, and when it came down to it, it was because of her that he ended up at the open bar looking dejected and alone and hungry for any human interaction worth a thought.

Not that he had expected her to be great company—a brunette bombshell who never liked to arrive at a party alone but who then preferred to circulate solo—but he'd hoped, dragging him to this thing, that she might be at least mediocre company. She could be clever and charismatic when she wasn't so self-conscious or self-absorbed. She had persuaded Vince to go to the book launch under the guise of networking, but Vince had suspected her of ulterior motives—officially confirmed upon spotting her with the red strap of her cocktail dress dangling off her shoulder while Castle signed her skin with a borrowed pen.

Gave new meaning to the phrase "double agent." No doubt she had approached the other writer to check on his status with Paula and investigate his publishing plans.

If he hadn't found such good company in Kate, Vince wouldn't have left the open bar any time too soon.

He really needed to look into getting a new agent.

But for now, he had this one. And when he'd arrived at her office to go over his latest contract, she was poring over the cover of the Ledger. She'd squealed with both excitement and a sort of keening pain, gasping for air and showing Vince the paper as her only means of telling him just what had incapacitated her:

Though claiming to be single, Richard Castle is rumored to be romantically involved with Detective Kate Beckett, inspiration for Nikki Heat, the heroine of his novel. Bachelor Number Nine might not be on the market much longer.

Vince didn't have the heart to tell his agent just how lovely Kate Beckett was in person, let alone that this development was a long time coming.

He looked up again at the couple in the booth across the room, pangs of jealousy and what-might-have-been tempered with a not-so-modest sense of self-satisfaction in his ability to read people and even a bit of genuine happiness for Kate, if not for Rick Castle.

He'd thought she was sexy when she was angry; it paled in comparison to her joy.

Kate laughed a laugh that lit up her whole face and playfully smacked Castle's hand from across the table. They were obviously in the honeymoon stage of the relationship, where they couldn't resist touching each other even fleetingly, and every glance and gesture was electric.

Three months since he, a mere acquaintance, had suspected it himself. It was about damned time.

"How'd you do that?"

"Easy," she said.

He fumbled with his straw wrapper, his hands not quite managing the detail work he was asking of them. In his frustration, he murmured a list of the things his hands could do—at least, those fit for public dining: "I write. I fence. I pick locks—"

Not an entirely bad list of hobbies to confess on a first date, or pseudo-date.

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that," she interjected about the locks, just as he said, "—I have great dexterity. Very deft fingers."

She avoided his eyes, letting his comment slip by beneath hers. Deft fingers. She would pretend she didn't hear that, too.

But she did reach across the table and helped him fold his straw wrapper until it approximated the lovely three-dimensional star that she'd made out of her own.

She expected his hands to be warm, but they were cool because he'd already picked up his milkshake while she'd been busy crafting. After that, she ignored the touches, the closeness, investing her attention instead on coaching him, but her hands never wandered far from his.

Meanwhile, Castle was out of his mind with sensory overload—the cool dampness left on his hands after holding the cup, the contrasting warmth of Beckett's occasional touch, the very instance of Beckett's touch.

The way she said things like, "Here, try this" and "Just like that" in a soft but steady voice that coaxed him to arousal.

The glint in her eye when his misshapen star was done, and he was just about to say something to celebrate it when she flicked her own star right off the table at him and laughed.

And he was gone.

Kyra had made the stars shine, but Kate made stars soar.

He sent his sailing back at her.

No pillow fights in the book, he'd promised her once. And no straw wrapper star wars. But that went without saying.

And they never stopped smiling.