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rick castle

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They settle into something actually resembling a routine, once they decide that this is becoming a thing. (She doesn't like the word "boyfriend". It sounds too juvenile, too trivial for what this really is - which is something that means a lot more to her than a name that smitten teenage girls use.) They don't broach the subject of her moving in, but she's starting to spend more time with him than she does at her own place now that Alexis has moved out for college and Martha has made herself scarce.

Most nights, when she stays up too late filing reports at the precinct, she finds herself taking a cab to him instead, curling up in bed beside him and knowing he'll be there when she wakes up. Sometimes it's a competition to see who makes it to the bed first - if he's in a fit of inspiration, she'll often fall asleep to the sound of laptop keys clicking from the other room.

He always wakes up first. It doesn't matter how much sleep she's had - without fail, he's up before she is unless there's a murder, and then they usually both wake up to the sound of her phone going off. But this is one of those weekend mornings where death seems to put itself on pause. After a particularly long and grueling day at work (stepping on a pressure plate connected to a bomb will wreak havoc on a girl), Beckett's just looking forward to spending a lazy morning in bed.

She rolls over, half-dazed and dozing, reaching out sleepily to him - but her eyes snap open when her fingertips are met with the cool face of the pillow instead, and she blinks blearily while the room swims into view, trying to listen for the sound of Castle nearby.

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"Mm, I did --" he curls his arms more closely around her, thumbs skirting either side of her hip. "I had this amazing dream. This beautiful woman came into my bedroom in the middle of the night. Slipped into my bed." He draws his hand up between them and gently cups her chin with his thumb. "I think she had handcuffs."

"Are you sure you're not confusing truth with fiction?" Beckett asks, in spite of the amusement that tugs up on one corner of her mouth, leaving a crooked smile in its wake. "I'll be the first to tell you that handcuffs aren't really conducive to sleep, and sleep - was all she had energy for. Last night, anyway," she adds, murmuring the words closely against his lips.

"My subconscious may have elaborated some of the finer details," he admits. His thumb skirts the high apple of her cheek, pushing a sleepy curl behind her ear. Her eyes are very green in the half-lit morning. Things about her are softer at this time of day. He likes that she lets him see them.

He brushes the corner of her mouth with his lips. "The handcuffs." A grin, flush against her mouth. "...The trapeze."

"The what?" Her brain is still hazy from sleep, his words taking an extra beat to register, and she finally shakes her head, a resigned smile of amusement crossing over her features before she rises up on tiptoe to press a kiss to his lips instead.

"Don't tell me you're thinking of re-enacting. I'm not sure the neighbors would appreciate the early wake-up," she adds, giving him a squeeze.

"Oh, the neighbors aren't involved." Beat. "Unless you wanted them to be." A signature Castle brow gets shoved high along his forehead, thinking of his neighbor (a sixty-six-year-old muter with three kids living in San Francisco and a husband who yelled at old re-runs of ER) before the hopeful expression comes crashing down. "Yeeeeah. Maybe not so much."

He rolls his head toward the kitchen. "Y'hungry? I put a smoothie on. I can make coffee." Castle the eager golden retriever of the breakfast hour, one or two questions away from bringing her her slippers in his teeth.

Beckett just shoots him a look - one eyebrow raised, mouth slightly quirked - and then shakes her head, extricating herself from the embrace with a small tweaking pinch delivered to his ribs. "Not so much," she echoes, perking up herself at the mention of a caffeine boost.

"Yes to both? I'd offer to make eggs, but - " They both know how it's going to turn out, though she can't stop herself from making the attempt to help out anyway.

There's a reason Beckett reneges on the second half of the offer, and it's what prompted Castle to buy one of those miniature fire extinguishers that you can store underneath the sink. "I'll take care of breakfast," he says. "Eggs, waffles, post-traumatic stress bacon."

They reach the kitchen and he slides the coffee maker out from its grotto, plugging it in. The coffee, like breakfast, is mostly Castle's doman. Beckett has made coffee from time to time, but they have an unspoken understanding that it's just his thing. He could probably conjure up a cup of fresh Kona blend out of thin air by this point.

He ducks into the freezer and pulls out an ice cube tray, handing it to her as she passes by. "There's more fruit in the bottom drawer," he says. "Alexis made sure I was stocked up before she went back to school. I swear, it's like that kid doesn't think I can hack it on my own. I mean, there's fruit in fruit snacks. It's right there in the name. You'd think that that would be enough to convince some people."

She ties her hair back from her face while she's waiting, haphazardly gathering thick curls together in one hand and managing to pull them into something resembling an updo with the hairtie around her wrist. In this environment, Castle leads the way, and although there's a part of her that occasionally has to remind herself to shut up an follow orders without protest, breakfast is typically an event that runs smoothly.

"Now I'm starting to figure out why she worried about leaving you by yourself," Beckett mutters dryly, switching the ice tray from one hand to the other as she nudges open the door of the bottom drawer and peruses its contents. Subconsciously, she's kind of grateful that Alexis has established her own independence, albeit in small ways. The other half of her is glad that there's no one she could potentially be running into in the middle of the night while going to get a glass of water in one of Castle's shirts.

"Well, some of us can still make sure you're not using your selective reading on food labels in her absence," Beckett replies, reaching over to gently brush ice-cold fingers on the back of Castle's neck as she passes.

Castle sucks air through his teeth and rucks his shoulders up around his ears -- "Geez, your fingers are, like, Hoth cold" -- before succumbing to the goosebumps that ripple down the middle of his spine. He dumps a pile of beans into a grinder and caps the top, shoving the first half of a question in before he fires it up: "Since when did --" cue a noise like a lawnmower getting sucked into a sheet metal factory "-- Chinese take-out come with a food label?" He grins and swats her with the edge of a dish towel.

Beckett hides a grin behind Castle's back before heading to the blender. There's a pleased look that arises shortly thereafter when she notices that there's already some fruit thawing inside. She won't prod him about how long he's been up, but it's at least enough time to make a note of her preferences. He pays attention to the little things - it's one of the reasons that makes him as good a writer as he is. The kind of writer that would be courted to write the next installment in a series based around a legendary British spy, to boot.

"I plead the fifth," she replies, dodging the dish towel so that it barely skirts her hip.

He unloads the fresh grinds into a filter and snaps the lid into place, slapping the towel over his shoulder for safekeeping. Castle's coffee making skills, like his writing, come from a highly-attuned ability to notice details. Over the years spent in her company Castle has learned Beckett's preferences for the brew and he likes to pride himself on getting it right most of the time. It's another one of those things -- another one of the details of their relationship -- that he's intensely committed to.

He speaks while he brews: "Well, maybe you should be around more often. You know, to make sure I make the right kinds of decisions about food. Products. Stuff like that."

She can hardly wait for the brewing to begin, hovering near the coffeemaker to just wait for the first few wafting smells like an anxious kid. After a beat, she decides to occupy herself with the smoothies instead, moving back over to the blender to add the ice cubes. She manages to fire it up shortly after he speaks, the story behind his words grating at her, churning the same way that ice and fruit churns up, until she finally shuts it off to speak.

"What, you mean like move in here?"

It is incredibly amusing to watch the circus of emotions jump across Castle's face. It's like he can't believe she actually asked the question, when only moments ago he'd theoretically extended the invitation. He feels his stomach contract around a ball of theoretical possibilities.

"No. I mean, yes. I mean, I've been thinking about it. You know." Suddenly Castle seems overcome by a case of the sentence fragments. He bites down on his back molars and works to throw some conjunctions in there, looking at the front of the coffee maker like he could burn holes through it with his retinas. "I mean, in my head it makes sense. You already keep a toothbrush here and I'm technically closer to the precinct than your apartment."

Those are his arguments, as he sees them: cavity prevention, and a shorter commute.

She doesn't like to beat around the bush, to dilly-dally or otherwise waste her time asking every question but the one she really wants to ask, and if that means being a little more direct than some people would like, it's a small price to pay for honesty and getting the answers. Beckett watches the progression of expressions on Castle's face, raising an eyebrow expectantly, and waits for an expansion.

"True," she murmurs, as if it's not something she's given any amount of thought to - when in reality, she has thought about it, a fair amount. It's a classic interrogation technique, trying to draw the truth out by feigning a remote amount of ignorance. She should feel bad about using it on him, letting him do most of the talking.

And yet.

"No one at the precinct knows we're dating, though," she points out. "Isn't it going to look a little suspicious if we suddenly start carpooling?"

The coffee's going and there's nothing that Castle can do to help it along at this point, which is a bummer, because serious conversations are always a little bit easier when balanced on the back of mindless activities. He turns and puts his hips against the counter, palms hooked up on the ledge. His expression is open; a little plaintive. He watches a little rivulet of melted ice slide down the side of the blender, then raises his eyes to her face.

"So why don't we tell them?"

The question just gallops out of his mouth, fully formed.

Beckett's mouth works open and closed a couple of times, trying to find all of the reasons why that would be one of the most disastrous ideas as she sets up a position leaning against the opposite counter, the movement somewhat helping to line up her thoughts in proper order.

"Well, for starters, what about the fact that the NYPD seriously comes down on interdepartmental relationships?" she points out, though the observation sounds half-hearted when it finally leaves her lips. "We work together, Castle. There's more at stake here than just - if Gates finds out, she could find a way to make sure you're not a part of the team anymore." That, she knows, would kill him as much as it would affect her, even if she doesn't say that out loud.

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