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Ryan is determined to up Rysposito’s under cover game.

[pollylynn]

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Ferrous loves to sing with Grandmere

[pollylynn]

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Castle is going to be in so much trouble for letting Ryan sleep in his dinosaur costume.

[pollylynn]

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Happy Wednesday from Ferrous.

[pollylynn]

I got a majestic Kevin Ryan for my songwriting sticker this week

[pollylynn]

Jordan Shaw? THE Jordan Shaw??

[pollylynn]

Sending Ryan to Camp Corgo was the right move, Kate. Cc @coraclavia

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cw2aftupGYc/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

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Kate!! Ryan is in SERIOUS trouble. Bring all your police-y stuff. Cc @coraclavia

[pollylynn]

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Ryan just wants Esposito to hear out his undercover plan @coraclavia

[pollylynn]

Title: Innominate WC: 900

“Maybe there’s more going on than just a tryst.” —Richard Castle, Overkill (2 x 23)

Demming is not her boyfriend. Tom is not  . . . Tom Demming is not her boyfriend. For one thing, she is a grown woman, and grown women don’t have boyfriends. They have . . . guys they are . . . seeing—guys whom they don’t know what to call. And if they’re grown women who are also cops, they doubly don’t know what to call them, because there’s the name thing and there’s the label thing. 

The name thing is bad enough. For her, it’s bad enough. For him—Tom. Demming. Whatever.—it doesn’t seem so bad. He calls her Kate with no trouble at all. Over coffee, it’s Kate. When he’s handing her into the cab they’re sharing, it’s Kate. When he kisses her outside the glass door to the lobby of her building, it’s Goodnight, Kate. 

It makes her jump every time. 

She is Katie to her dad, to her overbearing aunts and uncles and cousins. She is—as she’s only just recently been reminded—Bex to the people who knew her before, to the people who mostly bought the act and thought she was cool back in the day. She was, for all too brief a time, Kate to her mom, who at least made the effort in the early days of the most insufferable version of Bex, when she decided she would never again answer Katie. And now she is Kate to Demming. Tom. Tom Demming, who is not her boyfriend. 

To his credit, he calls her Beckett, too. Because he’s a cop. He’s a colleague. He has expertise that just happens to have been relevant to a few of her most recent cases, and that expertise extends to knowing that she’s Beckett at work. When it’s at the board and not over coffee. When he’s holding the door from the precinct lobby out on to the street, and not handing her into the cab they’re sharing—it’s Beckett then. 

It’s probably not worthy of a gold star, the fact that he knows what to call her and when and where to call her by one name or the other. It’s probably not worthy of comment, except that she doesn’t know what to call him. Or, rather, she does. It’s obvious, and even if it weren’t, she has his example to follow, doesn’t she? She knows the what, where, and when of what she should call him, but it doesn’t come easily. 

The tip of her tongue touches the roof of her mouth to make the T in Tom, but it hesitates. It backpedals to a D, and she’s caught up in a Detective Demming spiral at the most inappropriate moments. Or she stalls out entirely, trailing off into something along the lines of oh, you. She tries to make a joke of it—the fact that she trips over what name to call him every single time. He tries to take it that way, but it has to be obvious that neither of his names comes easily to her. 

And the issue of labels is worse. He doesn’t call her his girlfriend. Actually, she does not know this for a fact. But she is of the opinion that he had better fucking not be calling her his girlfriend. She is also of the opinion, if she is being honest with herself (she is not sure that being honest with herself is on the table when it comes to any of this), that the way the very thought of him calling her his girlfriend pegs her rage meter is . . . notable. It is possibly not entirely explained by the fact that she is a grown woman and a cop and she is not anyone’s girl-anything. 

It is possibly entirely explained by Richard Castle and the conclusions he is oh-so-sorry to have jumped to. Despite her stammering—regardless of the wandering tip of her tongue when it comes to calling another man by his name (any of his names)—Richard Castle is almost certainly the one wholly responsible for the spike in her blood pressure as her mind manufactures scenarios in which Tom Demming—Detective Not Boyfriend—might be casually referring to her using the G-word. 

Demming is a Robbery detective, and a good one at that. Demming has a professional network almost entirely different from her own. Demming has perspective on cases that’s different from her own, but rooted in training and actual investigative experience—not wild speculation and a disdain for logic, unlike some people she could (much more easily) name. 

Detective Demming is the man she’s called in to consult of late, and how dare Castle question that? How dare he imply that she would ever—ever—invent lines of investigation, just so that she could see the guy she happens to be . . .  seeing? That guy—whatever anyone wants to call him—is not the guy who gets to write on the murder board. He’s not the guy who gets to tag in on her interrogations.  

He’s the guy who’s been showing up for coffee, who holds doors and hails cabs, who kisses her on the stoop outside her lobby, because they are not at the Why don’t you come up? stage. Not at her place, anyway. Not yet. Or maybe not ever. 

She doesn’t know.  She doesn’t have to know what to call him or when to invite him up.  (If ever.)

And it’s none of his—of Richard Castle’s—business. 

A/N: She soooo wants to deny that Demming is her boyfriend.

images via homeofthenutty

[pollylynn]

Title: Misdeem WC: 950

“I don’t see it going anywhere.” —Richard Castle, Food to Die For (2 x 22)

There are times when he’d like to be a liar. This probably does not exactly set him apart from the masses. Who is out there walking around, drawing breath and sighing it back out again who hasn’t wished they’d been a liar at one time or another? Who hasn’t had a friend solicit reactions a truly hideous new outfit and desperately tried to sell a sincere It’s fantastic! only to have their own stupid, truth-telling face nuke the little white lie from orbit?  Doesn’t he—day in and day out—sit across the table from self-tattling morons who’d like nothing more than to lie their way right out of the interrogation room? He might be—he clearly is—in bad company, but he would very much like to be a liar right now. 

Beckett didn’t seem to mind.

His mother thinks he’s lying. His daughter probably would think he was lying if she had any attention to spare. And it’s not even that he wants to be lying. It should be a lie. That’s the agony of it. 

She should mind. That’s the way of things. This whole Richard Castle: Moral Support for Hire gambit should be one in a long line of his fool-proof plans to get her goat—to make her mind. 

But she doesn’t mind. It’s not a problem. He’s telling the truth, and he’s not even getting credit for it. Not from his mother, who is pursing her lips and shaking her head as she sourly reminds him that he should be getting ready for his date.

He doesn’t want credit, though, not in this instance, and certainly not for this truth. He wants to be the rogue his mother thinks he is—the one his daughter would think he is, if she weren’t, herself, so torn between duty and desire. He wants to be the Hamptons, the seductive allure of fun in the sun that makes Beckett forget all about the microscope-requiring AP exam that is Tom Demming. But he’s not the Hamptons. Or Beckett is not tempted by the beach. Or something. 

It’s a cavalcade of lousy metaphors, so he doffs his gloves and goggles. He extracts a spare watch from somewhere and he picks out a shirt in a color that she likes on him. Or a week ago he’d have said it was a color she liked on him, but apparently he’s no judge at all of what Kate Beckett likes or doesn’t like. That is the only explanation for the fact that she’ll be toting her microscope and slides all over town tonight, completely unperturbed by the thought that he will be out on the town, raconteuring his way through the celebrity chef world with one of her high school gang.  

There’s a moment when she bursts on the five-star dinner scene that he thinks she’s come to make a liar out of him. He very nearly chokes on whatever it is he’s eating at the moment and weakly, hopefully demands to know: Beckett, what are you doing here? 

He has the answer. He’d happily write it for her. He’d set her up with anything from cue cards to index cards to a state-of-the-art teleprompter, if she’d only read the lines with conviction: I’m here for you. I’m here because I couldn’t stand the thought of this. I’m here because it is a problem, and I do mind. 

But that isn’t the answer, of course. She is not interested in cue cards, index cards, or his writing services in any medium. She is not there for him or because she minds or it’s a problem. She’s there for case-related purposes, because the only struggle for her is the one between duty and more duty. 

He tries to work himself up to play the part everyone expects—the one she expects. He makes a respectable showing of it. He whines at length about the food of which she has cruelly deprived him and her good friend Madison. He accuses her of being uncivilized. He has another nanosecond’s worth of a thrill when she bans him from the interrogation. He parses the words giggling over the risotto with our suspect up, down, and sideways, searching for vindication—for the indisputable evidence that he’s been a liar after all, but it isn’t there. 

She’s hissing, red-faced, and thoroughly embarrassed by Madison’s Castle baby fantasy, but it’s . . . generic embarrassment. Or worse, it’s embarrassment for his sake—that he’d play a role in such an outlandish fantasy, or maybe that he’ll get the wrong idea? She’s avoidant when he tries to get her goat with a reprise of the Castle baby fantasy, but it’s . . . impersonal. She wants to get on with the case and back to her date with duty. There isn’t a shred of evidence that she hopped in the Fun Police Wagon and  drove it down to Rocco DiSpirito’s place because she’s bothered by the fact that he was out with Madison. 

He wonders how it’s come to this. He wonders when, because he could have sworn that she minded when he had his ten-second fling with Ellie Monroe, when he was on the radar of Bachelorette Number 3. He would have laid money on it being a problem when Rina scrawled her digits across his palm, when Lee Waxman wanted to trade favors, and when Meredith and the Crazy-Sex Train blew through town. He’s positive that she has minded virtually every woman who has so much as given him a second glance over the last year or so. 

But Madison? She doesn’t mind. It’s not a problem, because she, herself, has ‘Something’. 

That’s the truth and he’d so much  rather be a liar. 

A/N: Oof. This was ornery; and I didn't think this was the lie that would drive the story. Blegh.

images via homeofthenutty

[pollylynn]

Title: . . .  But Verify WC: 900

“I don’t really enjoy being proved right.” —Stan Holliwell, Den of Thieves (2 x 21)

Tom Demming is not a dirty cop. This is a thing she knows. Now she knows it. Because she has damned near dislocated his shoulder getting to know it, and at least one of his thumbs may never be the same, because it was something she needed to know. But she does know now: Tom Demming is not a dirty cop. 

And it’s fine. Her somewhat violent path to enlightenment is absolutely fine. He is laughing about it. They are laughing about the fact that she can and will go from low-key flirting to assuming that he is not only a dirty cop, but a probable torturer an murderer in the time it takes the average Manhattan day trader to order his third quadruple-shot espresso before sun-up. They’re chuckling shoulder-to-shoulder about the complete lack of daylight between her flirting and enhanced interrogation. 

It’s more than fine, it’s nice, isn’t it? Tom Demming, Squeaky Clean Cop, does not take it personally that his torture-free, non-murderer status was something she needed to know—that she needed to establish through evidence. And why would he? Dirty or Clean, he is a cop, and he understands that cops do not have the luxury of being Monica Finches or Carol Thorntons, with their clear, steady gazes and their unwavering belief in the goodness of their men. Cops understand that trust is another word for foolishness, and it’s nice that Demming—a good cop—gets it. 

Except that neither Monica Finch nor Carol Thornton turned out to be foolish, exactly. Paul Finch seems to have been practically cryptozoological: the rare con who actually went straight. More than that, Paul Finch seems to have been the rare human who felt a sense of debt so deeply, he’d risk his marriage, his freedom, and in the end, his life to repay the man who’d once cut his kid brother a break. 

And Ike Thornton . . . well, it’s somehow not much consolation that her Torturer and Murderer Until Proven Otherwise take wasn’t just hers alone. It’s not much consolation that it was based on legitimate evidence, entirely sound logic, and Cop Sense with a proven track record. How can it be consolation when Esposito’s faith was never shaken? More importantly, how can she let herself off the hook that way when it was Esposito’s unwavering belief that had them digging deeper, exposing Holliwell, bagging Victor Racine? 

But, still, it’s fine, right? Esposito, as good a cop as they make them. would never hold it against her. And Demming, with his easy laugh and slightly gawky shoulder bump is not holding any grudges, and that can’t be entirely attributable to the mood boost he must be getting from going from New Guy to Guy Who Helped Bag Victor Racine before the ink on his transfer papers is dry. 

The thought stiffens her spine. She goes from easy laughter to avoiding eye contact—the bad kind, not the low-key flirty kind—in seconds. Demming doesn’t really notice. Or if he does, he soldiers on. Maybe he writes it off to one of ten thousand awkward moments that come with the early stages of the low-key flirtation. 

But the cynical idea that he’s given her a free pass on the Dirty Cop thing because he’s already gotten something out of their paths crossing has her in its clutches in more ways than one. She hates the thought on its own merits. She hates that it occurred to her, even in passing. It’s beyond healthy Cop Sense, isn’t it? It’s not a newsflash that she has trust issues—that she has had trust issues since before they let her put on the badge. But this verges on paranoid, and with Demming’s easy grin flashing her way as he makes more than passable small talk just so that he can keep hanging around, she wonders not at all metaphorically what her damage is. 

But she’s not so consumed with that eternal question that she’s unaware that she genuinely  kind of wonders if it’s true. She kind of wonders if he really “likes the weird ones,” or he heard the clipped version of her last name when she answered her phone at the gym and jumped on the case so he could take another crack at “steadying her bag.” Worse still, she genuinely wonders if really had any interest in that, or if he’d simply spotted an opportunity to connect a fairly rinky dink robbery to a buzz-worthy homicide-with-a-side-of-torture, even if he lucked into the Victor Racine long game. She wonders exactly how much of Tom Demming’s story to believe, and she hates every single one of those thoughts. 

She hears the voice of Richard Castle in her head. Demming is still talking. He’s still clearly doing the math on the timing of the next socially acceptable shoulder bump, and she is wondering about his New Yorker subscription, his potential double life as a yoga studio creeper, and what he’s compensating for with his underprivileged kids basketball angle. 

She is gritting her teeth when she should be flashing a smile. She is white-knuckling the edge of the table when she should be doing her own shoulder-bump math. She is wondering what she really knows about Tom Demming and she’s internally cursing Richard Castle’s name. 

It is the very opposite of consolation that she’s not at all alone in her trust issues. She wasn’t looking for company. 

A/N: I guess my "schtick" for this series is lame apologies about the long time between stories; for a variety of reasons, I have been walking outdoors far more than dreadmilling. I need to get back to dreadmilling. I will do my best to get into some kind of a groove here. In the mean time, thank you to those of you who read.

images via homeofthenutty

[pollylynn]

Title: Motive WC: 1000

“But the truth is, I've never had so much fun being used.”

—Richard Castle, The Late Shaft (2 x 20)

HIs daughter is not in the least interested in Ellie Monroe, not beyond that first blip of startled recognition, anyway. And maybe her interest is briefly piqued by that slightly awkward, double-edged teenage moment where she—the literal teenager—has all but caught him—the figurative teenager—sharing a goodbye kiss with the starlet from the B-movies the two of them loved once upon a time. There’s a quirk of her eyebrow and her jaw drops a quarter of an inch as Ellie brushes by and as he makes a show of gathering her into his arms, but beyond that, his daughter is not interested in Ellie Monroe. 

She is pointedly—perhaps a bit hyperbolically—interested in food. She humors him, playing along as though she has been foraging for sustenance, rather than retiring to the fireside so that the support staff, who undoubtedly made the fire, could serve her and her fellow orienteers some bougie pre-arranged meal accented with whatever minimal forest spoils they’d managed to scrounge up. She tucks into the feast he has prepared and it’s more than a little obvious to them both that her interest in food is compensating for her total, performative lack of interest in Ellie Monroe. 

He thinks, at first, that he’s a little wistful about it. It’s the latest in a long string of signs that she’s not his little girl, anymore. She’s not sitting there, rapt, with her chin propped on her fists, asking starry-eyed questions about the pretty lady or the daring heroine and what she’s like in person. The fact that she is not interested in the recently departed pretty lady is yet another ding in his own larger-than-life SuperDad persona, isn’t it? 

But wistful gives way to relieved. At least relieved is what he thinks comes next. It’s what he calls it, anyway. Interest in food gives way to interest in her trip. Or lack of interest, rather. She’s had fun. She has had fireside sings and ghost stories. She has seen a loon feeding and she speaks with pride about her own ability to handle herself. She speaks a bit high-handedly about some of the girls—she calls them girls and there’s a silent little in front of it—who didn’t handle themselves so well. And it’s clear that she was a bit bored. She’s a bit over that kind of trip. 

He should probably be wistful about that, too. He has a long list of things he would prefer she never be over, starting with plastic tiaras and extending well into the territory where she is jazzed about carrying her own pack through the Adirondacks, but also worried about falling behind on her self-imposed program of reading the classics. He should be very much opposed to her outgrowing Sacajawea cosplay, but instead he’s relieved or something like it. 

The reasons for relief are not entirely clear. Or possibly, he’s not inclined let them come into focus, because they might have something to do with Kayla and math and Ellie Monroe. It might have to do with Beckett—damn her to the Adirondacks with a too-heavy pack—using phrases like throwing herself at you and flicking barely perceptible, yet decidedly real, glance his way when Kayla declares that she and Bobby Mann were in love. 

It is more than possible that this has very confusing things to do with Beckett and his daughter, because his daughter, who is pointedly not interested in Ellie Monroe, is quietly bringing her up as she—totally against orders and in defiance of long established post-orienteering protocols—insists on helping him clear away the feast and tackle the dishes. Quietly doesn’t begin to describe it, actually. She is bringing Ellie Monroe up in such a round-about way that the conversation might need to think about a manageable, well-balanced pack.

“How do they book those shows, anyway?” 

As she asks, she makes a show of scowling down at the cast iron pan she always says he uses improperly. She is going for off-handed and not quite making it there. 

For his part, he is diffusely nervous. She’s avoiding eye contact, and for once he doesn’t mind. 

“Like, you have your book coming out soon.” She clatters plates and platters as she scrapes and rinses, almost as though she hopes he won’t hear her over the din. But she finds her nerve somewhere. She flicks the handle of the sink to stop, at least, the roar of rushing water. “And there’s the movie.” 

“Yeah. Yeah. The paperback and the mo–” He stoops to slot forks and knives into the dishwasher’s basket. He cringes at the memory of his schmoozy call with Tony the Movie Mogul. He clears his throat and presses on. “There’s the movie.” 

“But Ellie Monroe . . . “ Her gaze drifts toward the loft’s front door as though the woman herself might still be lurking in the hallway. ”She hasn’t done anything in a long time.” She leans into the word long. There’s a pause. She sets down the stack of plates in her hand and plants a fist on her hip. She’s making eye contact now, or she would be, if he didn’t have his head down.  “Why was she there?” 

His own gaze drifts toward the alcove leading into his bedroom. His face flushes as he pictures himself hissing Beckett up at the ceiling. He’s half afraid those two syllables might still be caroming around in the ether. Irritation and embarrassment burble up, and he wonders—for a moment, he genuinely wonders—if the good detective somehow intercepted his daughter and put her up to asking this unanswerable question about the why of Ellie Monroe. 

It’s not an unanswerable question, though. It’s a good question, a reasonable question. It’s the kind of question he wants his intelligent, caring, plastic tiara–eschewing, orienteering-outgrowing daughter to know she can always ask him. 

“Show business, I guess.” He shrugs. He turns his attention back to the dishes. He wishes he had a better answer. 

A/N: No, really. Why is Ellie "Viper Mountain" Monroe on that show? And why did no one fix her make-up shade? And banish that raincoat to the Phantom Zone?

images via homeofthenutty

[pollylynn]

Title: Cold Read WC: 1000

“Hmm. Nicely played.”

—Richard Castle, Wrapped Up In Death (2 x 19)

She’s not in the habit of letting him know that he is—occasionally—useful. She acknowledges this still (mostly) unwelcome fact when it's appropriate to do so. Which is to say she does an exaggerated, cartoon-worthy series of double and triple takes to make sure that he is out of earshot, and when her conscience won’t let her get away with not saying something, she says something to anyone who is not him. And preferably to someone she can be reasonably sure won’t repeat the admission within a country mile of his permanently swollen head. 

A year on, she is sheepish about this—her insistence that he is nothing but a hindrance and the grudging nature of her infrequent recognition. In the privacy of her own head, anyway, she is a little bit sheepish about it. In public, his ego, her eagerness to deflate it—it’s part of their routine. Their “public” expect it. That’s what he’d say, and if it weren’t part of their routine for her to categorically deny that they have a public, she’d have to agree. 

So, everything seems to be standard operating procedure in Will Medina’s apartment at first. He is intrigued. He’s inquisitive to the point of being unconscionably nosy, and that’s . . . useful. Of course, it’s disruptive, too. Police nosiness is—and must be—methodical. There’s a by-the-book way to go through the medicine cabinet, a right way to rifle through someone’s underwear drawer, whether that someone is a victim or a person of interest. His way is not the right way. 

But it’s useful, and Will Medina’s apartment is a case in point. It is like a museum. It’s a far cry from a dire, half-furnished SRO or the one-hundred-and-first direct from Ikea place she’s seen that month. It’s full of interesting things, and the fact that he’s acting like a kid in a candy store means that she doesn’t have to acknowledge that some part of her wants that same freedom to press her nose right up against the glass case housing the monkey skulls and turn over the shrunken head looking for a “Made in China” sticker. She’d like to forget for a moment that Will Medina is almost certainly a murder victim, and she gets to live vicariously through him. It’s a guilty pleasure, but it’s useful.

It’s still business as usual after his bachelor accessory crack. She and Esposito tag-team school him on how to read an apartment for its occupant’s relationship status. That’s useful as she gets to talk out mutual conclusions with one of her detectives, and it’s fun, because reminding him of the limits of his boy genius powers is always fun. He counters with some schooling of his own, lofting the well-worn paperback, and suddenly it’s neither useful nor fun. There’s a charged, unspoken moment between the two of them that is decidedly not for public consumption. 

Oh, there’s the line about how she has only slightly misjudged the relationship. That’s dripping with the expected innuendo. She can sense the smirk Ryan and Esposito exchange as Ryan strolls up and unabashedly outs himself as an enthusiastic consumer of chick lit. That’s all part of the Castle and Beckett show. But while the boys are winking and elbowing each other not quite behind her back, he catches her eye and it’s the weight of his hand on the cover of the book speaks—no pun intended—volumes. 

She is suddenly, urgently aware that the kid in the candy store that she, until moments ago, found equal parts useful and disruptive has very recently been in her candy store. He’s had her in his candy store, and her brain needs to stop with the candy store metaphor immediately or sooner. The candy store metaphor is a problem. 

She thinks, with a pang, of the meagre survivors among her book collection—smoke damaged, water-logged to varying degrees, and distressingly piecemeal relative to the whole. She thinks, with sharply escalating alarm, of her well-stocked shelves before the explosion and the hours he had, unsupervised, to rifle through them. Her mind tries to work its way at a gallop through every revelatory item that he might have handled, fondled, scrutinized in those unsupervised hours, but it’s the books her attention keeps snapping back to.

What had she left out on the coffee table, the kitchen table? What might have jutted out from the otherwise neat line of spines to reveal itself as something she’s inclined to return to over and over? What had wavy pages and swollen covers, marking it as a bathtub book and how, exactly, might that knowledge have struck him? 

She feels naked and exposed, and well she might. 

It’s the books she snooped at his place. Oh, yes, she clocked the scented candle on the tub—the scented candles everywhere, actually. She’d raised an eyebrow when he produced a spare toothbrush from some kind of bottomless supply of them. She’d snuck her glances at photos and knickknacks and scanned her share of shelves and drawers and closets. 

But it’s the books she well and truly snooped, down to the gum wrappers he’d clearly used as emergency bookmarks, and the torn-out moleskine pages with their scrawled notes that he’d tucked into the flaps of too many dust jackets to count. It’s the books she’d snooped when she couldn’t sleep, when she got up a second time, a third time, and found it still too early to start making breakfast. She had studied their spines and their dog-eared pages. She’d chuckled to herself about the mix of rigid organization and absolutely haphazard arrangements. She’d speculated on the number of things displayed in prominent places that he absolutely has not read. She had delighted  in every telling detail. 

It’s the books for her. It would have been the books for him. In an instant—in the time it takes for him to catch her eye and thumb the creased spine of a paperback—they both know it’s the books. 

A/N: I can't decide whether Beckett would sooner have Castle go through her underwear drawer or her bookshelves . . .

images via homeofthenutty

[pollylynn]

Title:  . . .  And Sound

WC: 900

“It’s the safest place in the city.”

—Richard Castle, Boom (2 x 18)

He was never going to win this argument. His position is that she should—she must—remain Chez Castle until she finds a new place. To his mind, how long that until stretches out is utterly irrelevant. She should stay. But never in the ancient history or distant future of Ever was he going to win this argument. But damned if he didn’t make it.

“I never even got to try those fabled scrambled eggs!” he insists as he hovers in the doorway of his own spare bedroom like a pointedly uninvited vampire. “Your mom’s scrambled eggs, Beckett!” 

“Never got to try them. Really?” She doesn’t take her eyes off the duffel she is methodically, efficiently, speedily packing. “Then how did you burn your tongue, Castle?” 

“My tongue is fine!” 

The fact that the word comes out thung takes some of the sting out of the sharp retort. So does the sudden reminder of the maddening pain, followed by the intense need to worry at the sorest of the many sore spots with his incisors. And then there’s the fact that she’s talking about his tongue. She has been noticing his tongue. Part of his brain is sure this newly discovered piece of information should—somehow—occupy a central place in his unassailable argument for why she has to stay. To satisfy her curiosity about his tongue. It’s a compelling argument, says this part of his brain.  Fortunately or unfortunately, a different—if not necessarily larger—part of his brain strongly recommends moving away from literally and figuratively awkward tongue talk. 

“My tongue is not the point. The point is . . . ” 

He makes a sweeping gesture that encompasses the duffel that’s nowhere close to full, even though she’s emptying the surface of the bed, the nightstand, and the nearby wing-backed chair at a pace that suggests she’s under the impression that packing is some kind of Olympic sport. The gesture is lost on her, of course. She keeps her back to him as she moves around the room, making her methodical sweep—making sure she leaves nothing behind. As though she has anything to leave.

“The point is this is sad.” It’s an unfortunate, though not inaccurate choice of words. This tableau has strong poor little match girl vibes, Still—the word sad tugs her ever so slowly around to face him, and he wishes that felt like progress. He wishes that having something look at, other than the knot of tension between her shoulder blades, meant that he has scored a hit, but a familiar muscle twitches in her jaw and a part of his brain—he can’t be sure if it’s the let’s talk about your interest in my tongue part or the other one—decides the only way out is through. “It’s sad that you’re living on travel-sized store-brand shampoo and pulling a new pair of underwear out of a plastic pack every morning and you don’t even have enough of those things to fill that cheap-ass duffel bag.”

He has more to say. He has so much more to say about the sheer, stubborn stupidity of her leaving, but she narrows her eyes. That familiar muscle twitches and an unidentified part of his brain pulls the emergency brake. His run-away mouth grinds to a stop. 

“Stole some of that fancy toothpaste. Right out of the medicine cabinet.” She crosses her arms. She treats him to a defiant lift of her chin. “And that zillion-dollar lotion. The big tube.” 

Their eyes travel in tandem to the sagging duffel with its zipper gaping like an exhausted mouth. He wonders if it’s true. Without a word, she double-dog dares him to check—to call her bluff. He crumbles. He had lost this argument before it ever began. 

“Didn’t steal any underwear, though, did you?” he shoots back, but it’s sullen, not salacious. It’s the tongue fixation all over again. Or the tongue fixation in reverse or something. It is in no way helpful, when she’s smirking at him knowingly and turning back to the stupid task at hand. 

“I’ve got eight days before that’s a crisis, Castle.” She tucks something into the duffel with an air of finality. He can’t tell what it is—if it really is stolen, or if it’s something sad she threw on to the counter at a Duane Reade in between serial killer–related catastrophes. She shoulders the bag then, more gently than he would have expected, shoulders past him and out into the hallway. 

He trails behind her. He’d like to scatter irrefutable arguments like rose petals, but he’s resigned. He doesn’t want her to go. He doesn’t think she should go, when there’s no reason for her to deal with skeevy landlords and short-term rentals and creeper neighbors on top of everything else. There’s no reason for her to when she could stay here where it’s safe. 

Safe. 

The unspoken word hangs in the air as they make the turn down on to the landing. She doesn’t set her bag down on the chair. 

She is going. Eventually. She’s the one hovering in the doorway now as they bicker and spar —as they both drag the argument out, even though the winner has been clear since before it started. 

She does go. Eventually. He closes the door behind her and hangs his head. 

“Safe,” he murmurs to the empty room. “Whatever that means.” 

A/N: A thousand apologies for how long it has been since I posted in this series. For a number of reasons I have not been dreadmilling, but I am back on that horse (which is a terrible metaphor for a dreadmill). I hope to be back to posting several of these a week as a continue with the rewatch.

images via homeofthenutty

[pollylynn]

Do you crosspost to ao3? I want to comment on your fics but I'm not willing to do so on tumblr since my mom follows me here

Hello, Anon. Yes, I am Polly_Lynn on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/works

[pollylynn]

Title: Bound and Determined WC: 900

"There’s nothing going on between Beckett and me.”

— Richard Castle, Tick, Tick, Tick . . . (2 x 17)

She is wide awake with a gun under her pillow. Metaphorically under her pillow. A gun literally under her pillow would be unsafe. She flops from her back to her stomach, punching said pillow as she lands, silently cursing his name. It’s his fault she’s wide awake, policing her own internal thoughts for literary correctness.

It’s his fault that she is not, in fact, too tired to argue. She has, in fact, been having a deeply satisfying, one-sided argument this whole time since she stalked off, wine-less and all too aware of the smug smile he was, no doubt, leveling at her back. Or she had been having it right up until the literary policing started. She has been lying here, staring up at the ceiling, at one wall, then the other, at the door with its stubbornly non-moving knob, her mind whirring its way through every jab and cut and devastating blow she could have, should have, would have landed if only she’d taken him up on that glass of wine. Maybe she should have taken him up on that glass of wine. Maybe she should have taken the whole damned bottle to bed with her. 

“Not really,” she tells the ceiling as she groans and flops on to her back again. Her history—her dad’s history—will not really allow her to be a going-to-bed-with-a-bottle-of-wine kind of person. “Which you should know.” She sticks her tongue out at the door and adds another unforgivable sin to his already substantial total. She scowls hard at  the painted white brick the bedroom shares with the living room. She grips the blankets tight in her fists and wills herself not to throw them back, not to tear open the door and stomp back down the hall for the sheer pleasure of sharing with him the highlight reel of insults her brain has spent the last few hours coming up with. 

She grips the blankets tight in her fists and wills herself not to throw them back, not to slip soundlessly from the bed, not to slink back down the hall to pour herself a soundless, clandestine glass of wine. It’s a dual, white-knuckle truth. She forces her fingers to loosen their hold just a little, but the blankets make their cautious way to her chin. Her shoulders hunch. She’s burrowing deeper into the pillows. She’s making herself small, and what’s that about? What is any of this about? 

She is wide a wake, despite the fact that she is exhausted in every possible way. That is his fault. She tries to right herself by returning to this central fact, but the secret hour has struck in which exhaustion wakes up the whole damned internal house and insists on some middle-of-the-night introspection. 

Why is it his fault that she is wide awake? There’s the obvious. She really does want a chance to deliver some hindsight-curated shots about his schoolboy crush on Jordan Shaw. She wants go gloriously off script and rip him a new one for his crack about the sexlessness of their relationship, although now that she thinks about it, that particular theme could use some curation, because what exactly is the problem with him, for once, confirming the sexlessness of their relationship, rather than responding to Jordan Shaw’s shockingly unprofessional commentary with his usual—a sly, maddeningly confident, Not yet? 

Relationship.

That’s the crux of it. She wants, childishly, to rush out there, startle him badly enough that he rolls off the couch, waking at the exact moment that his head connects with the hardwood floor. She wants to shout at the top of her lungs that—oh, by the way—they do not have a relationship, they just have . . . sexlessness. 

That’s what she wants to do, and yeah, it’s a line of argument that definitely needs some work.  But more important, even in her current state of exhaustion, her mind won’t allow it, any more than it will allow her to abuse the word literally. 

He is on her couch, and she suspects that if she were to rush or stomp or creep or slink down the hallway and out into the living room, she’d find he’s wide awake, too. He’s probably polishing his own comebacks and stockpiling riffs about her “ridiculous” jealousy, because he is ever himself, just as she is ever herself. 

He is on her couch, because he is not leaving her alone. Because he feels responsible, and even if he has nothing to offer in the way of protection against a crazed wanna-be serial killer, save his rapier wit and a heart-stoppingly expensive bottle of wine, he is still there when it would have been easier for him to not still be there. It would have been easier for him never to have come at all—to have stayed home making sure his Agent Jordan Shaw in The Recapitator poster is hanging level on the wall of his bedroom. It would have been easier for him to have gone when she started scolding him for his breaches of imaginary protocol. 

There are so many things in the world that would have been easier than him lying on her couch, almost certainly awake—than her lying here with the covers up to her chin, very definitely awake. 

There are so many things in the world that must be easier than this thing—this relationship—they’re in.  

A/N: I am ashamed to admit that I have cracked myself up with the image of Castle's bedroom papered with Jordan Shaw posters. J/K. I clearly have no shame.

images via homeofthenutty