She shoves the newspaper away with a grunt, watching it slide over the wood of her breakfast table. Of course, he's in it again. On page six again, of course. There's barely a day she doesn't see him there with his bimbo of the week. It's a beautiful blonde this time, probably half his age, gorgeous body. A model and rising actress, who just launched her own model agency because she's been burnt by the industry too many times and wants to make a change. Beckett remembers how rotten the industry is from her own experiences and a case she once had with Castle. God, damn, she knows way too much about his arm candy. Why did she google her again?
She robs the heel of her hand over her forehead, over her eyes. She needs to stop. He chose to not come back. He chose his ex-wife and his exciting life over her, her baggage, and working insane hours. Her heart still aches with longing.
Her phone rings, making her flinch so hard that she spills her freshly brewed coffee over her blouse and her lap. Damn, that's hot! What a great start to the day. Gorgeous. She takes the phone without looking at the caller ID.
"Beckett," she bellows into the speaker, trying to keep the mess somehow contained while she hunts for paper towels. The coffee didn't taste anyway. It never does. But she's unwilling to make this about him. It's not.
"Hey, beauty", Josh's voice comes cracking through the phone and her shoulders sink. Agh, damn, shouldn't she be excited when her fiancé calls her after days of radio silence because they have both demanding jobs and he's in Haiti again saving children?
"Oh, hey, Josh", she answers lamely rubbing her forehead again. She just wanted a morning in peace, nothing more. Just a morning in peace. But it's not his fault. It is hers because she couldn't stop herself from looking at page six.
"Everything all right?"
"Yeah, yeah, sorry, I just spilled my coffee when I grabbed my phone. Gimme a second." She puts the speaker on and throws the phone on the table, hurrying into the kitchen to get rid of the soaked paper towels and get more to properly clean up. "You're on speaker now, I just have to clean this up."
"Yeah, okay. Take your time. I'm just glad I finally get to talk to you."
"Yeah … Sorry, the caseload is crazy right now. Early days, long hours without really going anywhere. It's frustrating. What about you?" She picks up her breakfast items from the table, wipes them clean, before putting them back down.
"Haiti is really great. The clinic is looking so good, Katie. We're really doing something here. Changing lives. Too much to do in too little time though, like always …. Um, Katie, the clatter is really disturbing. Are you done anytime soon?" She lets her head hang, shakes it slowly. Why is this unnerving her so much?
"Yeah, done. Sorry. Just have to change, but that can wait." She takes the phone and the newspaper it lay on, also soaked in coffee. Damn. She gently dabs the picture of Castle dry until she realizes what she's doing and freezes. Why is she doing that? She wanted to throw it in the trash anyway. Her fingers linger on the dotted low-quality print of his face ghosting over his features. He looks so tired, so lonely. Wasted. His BOTW, bimbo of the week, is cuddling tightly, looking really comfortable on his side. But he … She's noticed it in several articles already, he lost weight, going more for the ruggedly handsome look, seven-day-scruff. Always partying, always high on life, but still … he looks like the opposite of it. Is she the only one seeing it?
Oh, damnit, Kate, you seriously have to stop that. He left. It is none of her business what he's doing. She folds the newspaper right on his face and hurries away to throw it in the trash. It's only then that she realizes that Josh kept talking about his life in Haiti and she has no idea what he told her, but thankfully she catches up quickly, her detective mode in full force as he starts to ramble and justify. He wants to extend his stay. Of course. Again.
"So, you want to stay?" She sighs in relief when he agrees before she can think of anything better and of course, he hears it but mistakes it for anger or disappointment.
"I'm sorry, Katie. I know we finally wanted to plan the wedding when I came back, but they need me here. So if it's okay for you, I'd like to stay a bit longer." The wedding. It feels like a punch in her stomach taking her breath away. She extends her fingers to look at the ring, it feels so heavy even though it's a simple solitaire, not even pretty big, timeless, standard. Yet pulls her hand down as if it would weigh a ton. It kinda does.
She should be excited, shouldn't she? Angry that he postponed their planning again. They've been engaged for almost a year now, but they're both busy with their work. He always either on crazy shifts in the hospital or away saving the world, she with her job working all the time, especially since Castle left she buried herself in work. Took on way too many cold cases to look for new leads on top of all of the open cases right now.
And the still unsolved case of her mother that's hiding beneath the blinds in her guestroom. Josh still doesn't know about it but he doesn't seem to be that interested in her story anyway … her story. Oh, Castle, you ruined me.
"No, Josh, I understand. I'm kind of relieved to be honest. The workload is crazy right now, we have this huge case on top of all the daily murder and cold cases that 1PP wants us to close because we need to improve our image. They are really going crazy because of the upcoming elections. I wouldn't even know when I'd have time to even see you right now." Josh sighs in relief, taking a big weight off her shoulders. This isn't how it's supposed to be, is it? She has to think of Ryan and Jenny, who still make it work somehow, got married this winter, and are now planning a family.
"Josh, how will our life look like after the wedding?" She blurts out because she can't think of anything better.
"Uh, I … I don't know. Probably still pretty much the same right afterwards. Though I hope that we'll have an amazing honeymoon probably not leaving the bed. You'll move in with me, of course, and I think you'll accompany me a lot once we start a family." His tone is so sure even though they never talked about this before. Of course, he said. What the hell? Anger is flaring up in her chest, poisoning her from inside.
"What?", she asks trying to keep her voice calm. "Why are you not moving in with me?" He huffs a laugh as if she were joking, as if it was obvious that she'd leave her apartment behind to move in with him and start a family. He didn't ask her once if she wanted kids. He just presumes.
"Because we don't need both and mine is the most logical decision." Logical, yeah, of course. But she doesn't want to be logical here. Her apartment is her refuge, it took her so long to rebuild everything, to collect the precious furniture and artworks. She hates Josh's apartment. It's big, way bigger than hers, yes, but it's also cold and functional, modern chic with lots of glossy surfaces, cool colors. It's clean. She doesn't want clean, she wants a home and there is no way to make his apartment her home. "It's going to be amazing, especially when our family grows. We'll be having so much fun and time, traveling together, I'll show you the world, show you what we're doing here."
"Wait, you want me to quit my job?"
"Of course, why are you even talking about that? You cannot keep working with a baby, not with our crazy working hours and your job is way too dangerous as a mother." He just decided that for her, without asking her. He just decided it.
"No, Josh. I'm not moving in with you. I'm not quitting my job and go travel with you. I love my job. And I also don't know yet if I want to have kids" She can hear some voices in the background, knows exactly what's coming next. Defeated she closes her eyes, lets her head rest against the fridge where she still stands, heavily breathing to calm her racing mind and heart.
"I'm sorry, Katie, I have to go. We'll talk about that soon. Love you." Then he's gone and she's still sitting there alone in her apartment, reeling from the conversation and his expectations of her, fighting the urge to pull off his ring and run.
Everything hurts when he wakes up. What the hell happened? What is he doing here? He slowly sits up, rubs over the cheek that cuddled with his keyboard, his neck and back hurt like hell from the position he obviously fell asleep in. His head is pounding and he feels like shit. What happened yesterday? What time is it? He didn't party that hard again to have a blackout, did he? Oh, Paula is going to kill him.
Ah, no. Actually, she's not and probably never will again, he thinks as his memory slowly comes back.
He slowly looks around, he's in his office, alone. His laptop wakes up to a new document. He wrote last night? He huffs an incredible laugh. Yeah, must be trash then. He already had several writing sessions after Beckett flashes, short bursts of his old imagination powered by the memory of his muse, but it died pretty quickly again, and whatever he wrote wandered in the trash where it belongs.
His heart aches with the waking of his memory. The liquid sex, the idea of a completely different side of Beckett … this song … oh, god, this song and the pain in her voice. It must have inspired him to write again. Ugh, he's not ready to be faced with his alcohol and unrequited love-induced verbal vomit. No, he needs coffee, a really, really strong one, maybe something to eat, and a shower first, definitely a shower. Ugh, he stinks.
But while he gets up he makes the mistake of throwing one – just one – glance over to his laptop and the blinking cursor. It's only gibberish written there, probably from his face on the keyboard. But curiosity gets the better of him and his eyes wander to the bottom of the document, the status bar containing the stats of this document.
He falls back into his chair, rolling a bit backward from the impact. This can't be true. His face must have written more gibberish than he thought. 87 Pages? He scrolls up, yeah, of course, blank pages after blank pages, some filled with symbols, some with words that don't make sense.
He hits revert to see the last saved state of the document, knowing that he presses save like a maniac when he's working since he once lost two days of hyperfocused writing because the program crashed. The blank pages and gibberish disappear, but it's still 63 Pages and 23.883 words. He wrote last night? Actually wrote?
He scrolls to the beginning of the document. He named it "dancing with heat/heat dance/heat dancing over me?", yeah, that might actually be something to work with. He wrote another Nikki Heat last night? He can still not fathom it.
Now's the time to get up, get some coffee, take a shower and eat something. Yeah, he really should go. But he's too intrigued, so he starts reading and is immediately sucked into the story of Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook, stumbling over each other in a night club where she works undercover as a stripper to capture a serial killer they suspect to be amongst the stripper.
"Holy–", he screams out loud, staring at the screen after reading the first twenty pages. This is good. This is really good. Maybe some of the best work he's ever written. Everything he held back for so long just flooded out onto the page, into Nikki and Jameson, and created a remarkable, gripping story that is already calling him again with its siren song, pulling him under.
"Richard," the singsong of his mother is snapping him out of his haze, letting him come up for air. Confused he frowns. What is she doing here? She barely ever comes by unannounced since she moved out and walked in on him in … very precarious situations. Several times. What is she doing here now? He slowly stretches his tight muscles, letting his spine crack several times really loudly. Ah, this feels better.
"Are you decent?", she calls out, probably standing in front of his bedroom door.
"In here, mother." It takes her longer than it should have to pop her head through his office door. He can vividly imagine how she stood there unsure if she heard him correctly because … it couldn't be correct, right? He never uses the office anymore. Confusion and surprise are written all over her face when she finds him sitting on his desk, staring in disbelief at the 145 pages he's written.
"Are you alright, kiddo?" A colorful, jingling blur strides into his office, comes to him to his desk, her dramatic perfume insulting his alcohol-plagued stomach.
"Uh…"He raises his eyes to her, worry is etched deep in the creases of her forehead, he still cannot comprehend what happened here. He wrote?
"We haven't heard from you since yesterday morning, so I came by to check on you." Her voice sounds like she's talking through a pillow, his head pounding, as he's still trying to get a grip, to understand what happened yesterday that he wrote words that are actually useful, that are actually good. Martha snaps wildly before his eyes to get his full attention.
"Huh?" He blinks, the haze slowly disappearing. Is he in shock? Probably. He didn't write usable stuff since he submitted Naked Heat to Gina that summer.
"Wake up, Richard. What's going on with you? Did you do drugs?" He snorts upset. Drugs? No, no matter how deep he falls, drugs are off limit.
"Mother, you know I'd never do this." But she just shrugs. He rubs his forehead, unsure if he should say something. "I … uh. I wrote."
"You wrote?" She huffs in disbelief, rolls her eyes, as if she is telling him to not take her for a fool. It hurts him more than it should that his own mother finds it unbelieving that he actually wrote. When did he sink so deep? Was it before or after he got fired?
"Yeah, 145 pages. And it's good, Mother." She still eyes him warily, then she quickly crosses the remaining distance, rounds his desk to see it for her own eyes.
"You really wrote, kiddo." Her eyes water as she skims the pages before she sighs and lets her head hang for a second in relief. "I'm glad, I'm really glad. But you definitely need to shower and air the loft. Now."