fanofthegenre | [ late night at the precinct ]

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oom,
rick castle

[ late night at the precinct ]

Long nights of paperwork are nothing new for Beckett.

Spending the dull hours of the evening filing away even duller paperwork is a routine she's grown accustomed to; the life of a detective isn't always preoccupied with chasing down a suspect or interrogating a guilty party. Sometimes, there's the moments that aren't always worth writing about, the files she somehow manages to let pile up while she's doing the more exciting parts of her job. It's a vicious cycle, the way the tedious work tends to sneak up on her when she's least expecting it.

Every now and then, her eyes flick to the clock, tracking the time, gauging how many hours she has left to finish what she's working on before she'll be getting absolutely no sleep at all. She's the only one here, apart from the night guard working the desk downstairs, and every now and then she stops to stretch, or to refresh her coffee after fiddling with some of the dials on the espresso machine - the machine that nearly requires a PhD from Starbucks to know how to use.

Sitting back down again at her desk, she rolls her shoulders and then her neck, settling in to wrap up a few last-minute details on the open file in front of her.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He's reading the dust jacket description for Unholy Storm when she reappears -- a pared down, relaxed version of herself. It's nice. A change. Her slender arms are pale, with just the barest constellation of freckles over the backs of her wrists. Her mouth is pink and unpainted, as soft-looking as a figure in a Ruben. He smiles and turns the book over in his hands.

"Guess I made an impression," he says, then winces when he sees the photo of himself on the back of the dust jacket. "I mean, look at me --" he holds up the book, a younger, more Top Gun haircut'd Richard Castle staring back at her "-- were we ever so young? Or into Soundgarden?"

He slides the book back onto the shelf.

"Nice jim-jams, by the way."

Beckett grins, glancing back and forth between younger and older Castle. For the most part, the smile is the exact same, the overall confidence, but there's a little more maturity in the expression of the one she knows, a little more wisdom acquired over years of writing and living.

"It's hard to believe, isn't it?"

She crosses the room to the shelf he's standing by, plucking up a photo in a simple silver frame, and hands it to him. It's her and her mother, years ago, both tanned and happy. A young Kate Beckett is all legs in this photo, hair cropped short, a smattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose, free of the weight of responsibility. It's a reminder of simpler times.

"I'd lend you something to wear, but it'd be about three sizes too small, and you'd look ridiculous," she jokes, watching his face as he glances over the picture.

Castle has seen pictures of Johanna Beckett before, but this is far more intimate and, from what he can tell, the physical similarities between mother and daughter are more easily recognized than the photos that accompanied the case file. "Think you aged better than I did," he comments, handing her the photo.

"Don't worry. I'm used to spending the night in my clothes. And I'm used to couches." His hint to her that he's okay with crashing on the floor or the couch or wherever she decides to put him.

She takes the sidestep of a compliment with little more than a small smile, setting the frame back on the bookshelf and twisting it slightly to return it back to its original position.

"I don't know what that says about you, but it's a pull-out, so it's not too awful. I'll go grab some sheets," she murmurs, and sets off to do just that.

When she returns, a stack of blankets, sheets and a pillow in her arms, she sets to work on making up the makeshift mattress, pulling the couch cushions off and gently laying them aside.

Castle helps her offload the hardware and then wrangles the folding mattress from its frame, the whole thing folding up and out, accordion-style. "This takes me back," he says, shrugging out of his coat so he can move more freely with the frame, "I used to have sleepovers with some of the other ne'er-do-wells at my first prep school. Not that there was a lot of sleeping involved. 'Mostly we just sat around watching the Saturday Night Creeper Feature and wondering what 'real' girls were like."

He finally gets the frame onto the floor, the mattress flopping tiredly in tow. Castle grins, running a hand through his hair. 'Gives Beckett a rogue's grin. "Thank god we grow up, right?"

"Somehow I find it hard to believe that you ever had any difficulty with 'real' girls," she answers, pausing in her unfolding of the mattress cover to make the finger quotes. She tucks one side under, then stretches across to match it up on the other side.

It's then that the thought hits her. She's been having difficulty sleeping since the night Coonan was shot: to the tune of screaming, even, on the particularly bad nightmares. She tries not to allow the concern to show in her face, but there's a worry there that Castle will discover this has been hitting her harder than she's chosen to reveal.

She turns away under the guise of fluffing up the pillow.

"Believe it or not, I haven't always been the paragon of male perfection you see before you," he admits casually, piling up pillows against the back of the couch like he's throwing into the strikezone. "Kinda' had an ugly duckling period." Which, thankfully, didn't last too long. Aesthetics are important in this business. James Patterson's a great writer, but you don't necessarily want to join him in the hot tub.

The edge of the sheet's come up on her side as they've been tugging and pulling and Castle leans over the mattress to shove the corner back into place. While amending, he says, "Anyway, I really appreciate this. And I promise --" he straightens and makes an invisible 'x' across his chest "-- I'll be on my best behavior."

A beat.

"Now, where do you keep your unmentionables?"

Edited 2010-02-12 04:19 (UTC)

Beckett chooses to respond with a vicious snap of the blanket to unravel it from where it's been folded, leaning down to smooth it over the sheets. The living room's probably the warmer room in the house, but it never hurts to prepare an extra layer just in case. There's a small part of her, though, after that comment, that wouldn't mind letting him shiver.

"Same place I keep my guns," she adds smoothly, moving around to his side of the mattress to tuck the blanket underneath the edge. She straightens up with a sigh, looking down at the handiwork.

"Well, I guess that's everything. Bathroom's down there, and my room, but I'm fairly certain you'll only need to find one of those in the middle of the night."

She's half-convinced he'd mix the two up on purpose.

Castle drops to the edge of the mattress and bounces experimentally a couple of times. He tugs his foot up over his knee and starts to undo his laces, casting a mock-cautious look up at her. "Do you keep any guns in your bathroom?"

She crosses her arms over her chest, looking down at him with mild incredulity.

"Of course not."

"Just checking."

He tosses the topmost blanket toward the bottom of the mattress and slides his legs beneath the sheets, undoing in less than two seconds what it took her five minutes to make up.

"And if I wake up in the middle of the night and need a glass of water?" He folds under her stony expression. "Right. 'Get it yourself, Castle'."

"Look - "

She unfolds her arms, letting them hang loose at her sides, her expression melting some.

"I'll probably be sleeping light anyway. I've been doing that these days, so if you need something, you can ask for it."

She hasn't noticed that tiny admittance about her stress; he'll either pick up on it or he won't.

A divot appears in his brow. Pieces of the evening are starting to slide together, like parts of an elaborate Beckett jigsaw puzzle. Late night at the precinct; paperwork piled high -- what, to avoid coming home to something? To forget for a while?

Suddenly, she looks smaller and more fragile than he's ever seen her.

"Yeah," he says quietly. "You know, you can, too."

"I know," she says, possibly a little quicker than she intends to. She draws in a breath, manages a smile that probably looks as forced as it feels, and lets her eyes scan over the bed, then once around the room.

"You're all good for right now?"

Her gaze finds his again; it's easier for her to talk, to forget about another sleepless night lying ahead of her, when she's not the one being placed under the microscope of concern.

"I think so." He shimmies between the sheets and tugs the pillow beneath his head, rolling those big, cornflower blue eyes up toward her. "'Still a negative on those unmentionables, right?"

"Castle."

There's a sharpness as well as a fondness in the way she utters his name; one hand braces along the back of the couch to keep her half-propped as she leans forward, hovering over him.

"This, right here? As close as you're going to get."

Dangerous is a good word for it. She's counting on her arm to hold her. One slip and she'll be right on top of him.

He knows he shouldn't, but Castle can't help but grin. It's just his nature. He can no sooner resist winding her up than she can resist shooting him down every time he tries. He consciously prevents himself from pushing his shoulders back into the couch, suggesting that he's retreating.

Electricity jumps from his eyes to hers.

"I can work with this."

Edited 2010-02-12 05:11 (UTC)

"Good."

The corners of her mouth are fighting not to turn upward; a few more beats and she's straightening up again, sliding around the mattress and dodging scattered couch cushions on the floor to head down the hallway towards her own bed.

"Go to sleep, Castle," she calls over her shoulder, flicking off lights as she goes.

Once she settles in her bed, sleep doesn't come easy. In fact, it's a long time before she drifts off, the red glowing lights of her digital clock burning a semi-permanent image behind her closed eyelids, and when she finally does sleep, it isn't for very long:

I need him alive.

That's right, you do need me. Now back him off or Castle dies.

The sounds of her cries, deep in sleep, are clearly audible even through the door; she tosses and turns restlessly, as images of Coonan's blood gushing over her hands mixes with the memory of Castle looking at her, helpless, fear in his eyes.

"No, please, no," she whimpers, fighting an invisible enemy before she wakes herself and sits up with a jerk, breathing hard.

He was just being nice. The mattress is actually a pain in the ass. And the hips, and the back. The wunderkind ergonomics guys who design pull-out couches always seem to forget that people have spinal columns and that, generally, they're not the kind of thing you want a big metal bar impinging on.

Castle spends about fifteen minutes throwing his body around on the mattress, trying to find the position of least resistance, uprooting the sheets in the process. It's no use. Castle's no sooner gonna' get any sleep on this couch than if he was shacking up in one of Kim-Jong's "luxury hotels."

The chair by the bookshelf will do. It's big, deep, and looks like it's seen its fair share of occupants over the years so the cushion will be pretty pliant. 'Copy of Unholy Storm in hand, Castle drops into the chair with a luxuriant sigh; this is far and above the conditions on the couch. He cracks the spine of the book and begins to read, using the streetlight outside for light.

He must have drifted, then dozed. (Is my writing that boring?) Something -- other than the jab of the book corner beneath his ribs -- woke him up. He strains in the dark, leaning forward, to hear.

Beckett.

And like that he's up, bumping elbows along the hall, trying to navigate her apartment in the dark. Heart hammering in his chest. His ribs feel like they're about to crack outward, every pulse of adrenaline leaving a stain underneath his tongue.

He pushes the bedroom door ajar.

"Beckett?"

She flinches away when the door creaks open, revealing a silhouette; instinct briefly wins out over logic and she fumbles for the light on the bedside table, trying to make out whoever it is - if she can just get to her gun, the one she keeps in the drawer -

The light clicks on and she glances back, only to freeze, her eyes adjusting while her heart feels as though it's going to beat out of her chest. It's Castle, looking mussed and a little dazed from recently being woken up, and Beckett sags back against the mattress.

Right now, she's never been more grateful to see him standing there - even though fear is now giving way to embarrassment, slowly and gradually.

"I - I'm sorry," she stammers, her voice cracking on the last syllable. "You know, I was afraid that was going to happen, because it's been happening, and it did again, and I woke you up, and I'm so, so sorry." As the words continue to spill out of her mouth, faster and faster, she can feel the sound of her voice shaking, tremoring, as she clutches fistfuls of the rumpled sheets and does her damndest not to shed any tears over this.

Light splashes on the walls and Castle's got an image of Beckett in his head that he'll take to his grave: her sitting in the middle of the bed, sheets drawn up around her waist, her long neck bent forward as she wills herself not to cry. The sight of her hits him in his solar plexus.

"Hey, hey, hey, now hang on..." He crosses the room and, for once, he's not taking inventory. He sits on the edge of the bed and puts his hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay? What happened?"

Jesus, she's shaking.

"I can't stop seeing it," she says, shaking her head, looking down at her hands as if she's almost expecting to see something there. "Can't stop picturing the way I felt his life just go out of him right there, under my hands."

When she looks over at him, she can feel her control slipping, her face crumpling up as her eyes glisten over.

"He was the only chance I had, the only one who knew who - who would want to do that to her, Castle?" It turns into a question halfway through, and she shakes her head, a teardrop tremoring on her jaw before it drops onto the bedsheets.

"Who would want to have my mom killed?"

He sees it, too. In his quieter moments. Sure, he's been on the line with Beckett in the past -- that's part of the job (well, it's part of her job and he's insinuated himself right there alongside her) -- and there've been a few heart-in-throat moments where one or both of them would have probably come out on the wrong side of the equation if they hadn't been very lucky.

Coonan had been different.

He remembers losing track of the guy for a second (just a second; barely a blip on the radar) and then feeling the greasy muzzle of a gun digging into his scalp. Beckett's in front of him, her body squared in an Isosceles firing stance, tight as a piano wire. Pop! Pop! Pop! Who's playing with fireworks in the precinct? And Coonan's weight slumping down, Castle's arms free, his foot scudding fecklessly on the tile. Red tile.

Castle closes his eyes.

"I don't know," he whispers.

He draws his arm around her shoulder, folding her toward his chest.

She goes without hesitation, reservation, drawing herself up and in against him with a shaky sigh that she's forced to breathe through for a moment before it regulates again. After a while, she doesn't hear her heart pounding in her ears anymore, and other sounds turn up to take its place: the faint chugging of the radiator in the living room, the audible ticking of the old grandfather clock in the hallway, the sound of Castle's breathing, sure and steady against the crown of her head.

She clings in the interim, her hand clutching onto his shirt, sniffling once, leaving the remnants of her tears to soak in and dry on the finer fabric, crying silently, and it's a good while before she moves to lift her head, her nose brushing against the side of his neck while her eyes, their lashes damp, stick to her cheeks with each blink.

"I lost my mother to that son of a bitch," she whispers, her hand moving from his chest to graze along his cheek as she presses her forehead to the other one, breathing a little easier with every inhale and release.

"I don't know what I would've done if I'd lost you, too."

It takes a lot to stop Castle's world from moving. 'Habit of the trade (and hers, too, he supposes) to always be running, chasing the next idea, trying to figure out the missing piece that'll tie all the little details together. His mind is a rat's maze of half-finished novels. He can't go anywhere without peering under rocks, looking for the things that ordinary people would take no notice of.

He'd been profiling Kate Beckett since the first time they met. Trying to learn her habits, to understand what made her put her life on the line seven days a week, at the cost of family, friends and anything remotely resembling a personal life.

When she took down Coonan, he stopped profiling.

He draws his hand over the nape of her neck and gently pulls her away from him, just enough to place a kiss to the crown of her head. Then he gathers her back into his arms, sheltering her against his chest, as if he truly believes he can protect her from the things that keep her up at night, inside and out.

"I'm right here," he tells her quietly. "I'm not going anywhere."

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