The moment the question leaves Beckett's lips, she's not sure if it was the right thing to have said. The tone that shapes it isn't potentially offending, but it's something that's been on her mind since the door gave way under her kick and Castle's name seized up in her throat. He'd been fine, he'd insisted, but she recognized a look of a different nature in his gaze even in the shadows of the motel room. She knew it all too well.
In the brief period of silence that follows, she laces her fingers together and squeezes, a motion meant to settle her nerves and the lingering course of adrenaline still hanging back in her system. She meets his eyes when he finally answers her, the truth so real that it makes it impossible not to lose herself in her own memories. She glances away, back and out to the water, the blue mirror that forms a perfect reflection of their faces above.
She recognizes that look again. She knows those words. She's even said them herself - too many times to count. And she'd always hoped, maybe pointlessly so, that he wouldn't have to feel any of the emotions he's feeling right now. Regret. The bitter pang of guilt.
It's one of the rare moments that Castle's at a loss for anything to say, and she thinks of all the ways in which his sentence could be ended. All of them leave a bitter taste in her mouth and a sinking stone deep in her gut. She studies his profile, the distant lights of the squad car dancing over his jawline. Separates one hand from the other, her palm resting on his knee.
(I almost lost you today)
"I know the feeling," she says, her voice just barely wavering.
He doesn't know how she does it. He's tried to write it a hundred different times, in a hundred different voices; how she can steel herself against the disappointment and helplessness of a lost collar, an unresolved case. Sitting in his office with a laptop and a beer, he's tried deconstructing her thought process brick by mental brick. 'Never quite gets it, though. The shape of it is there, but he can never really write the look she gets at the end of the day, when all the shadows seem to come down around her when she has to send the file to the cold case cabinet.
Except now, he feels it too.
Her hand on his knee brings him back up from the dark. He looks at her. She's turned her face away, her lips hard and thin, but her fingers are five points of warmth that breaks through the cold barrier. She knows. She knows Tyson like she knows Coonan, the man who'd killed her mother; like she knows the hundreds of other criminals that got away with it despite her peerless experience and abilities. He thinks she has to be stronger than even he realizes to be able to handle all that and still come out of it fighting.
"I know you do," he says, and drops his hand over hers.
There's understanding in her eyes as they drift away from his expression, but there's also determination. Tyson might be in the wind now, but she's not going to equate that to a loss. If anything, it makes her even more set on the idea of keeping this one on the backburner. She'd hoped to spare Castle from such an experience like the ones she's gone through too often to keep track of - but maybe it was almost unavoidable, given where he'd been willing to place himself time and time again. In the line of fire, flying headlong into danger.
The least she can do, Beckett thinks, is to return the favor. He's watched her back on case after case - it takes a certain kind of person to be able to do that, she's learned - and she has no problem with doing the same, and then some.
Her hand curls around his, residual warmth from the coffee cup mixing with a little body heat. In the distance, the ambulance fires off a warning blast to alert everyone that it's on the move again - Ryan's probably caved under Esposito's well-meaning threats by now. She doesn't move.
You don’t let go, you don’t back down. It’s what makes you extraordinary.
"I would have missed you," she says, though she doesn't swivel back to face him. And even if it goes without saying, like so many other sentences that are floating to the foreground, she doesn't want to let the moment pass without giving a voice to at least one of them.
Missed you where? And it's a second or two before Castle's brain jogs the distance between her question and the thought it came from Missed you, as in, 'would have missed you if had turned out Tyson had a little more of a shaky trigger finger.' Castle thinks, yeah, and feels the temperature in his stomach drop about ten degrees.
He moves his thumb over the backs of her knuckles.
The same might not necessarily be true if applied to a couple months ago - but then again, Kate, he did ask you to go with him. She's thought about it less and less since the summer ended and he came back to the 12th, but every now and then, Beckett still wonders how it would've been if she'd said yes.
Her hand tightens its grip for barely a split second - and then, in the next beat, she's out of the moment, straightening up with a soft inhale, her fingers slipping away.
"Well, good."
Her tone is back to business, even if her eyes still hold a residual softness.
"It was hard enough dealing with the pouting and sulking from Esposito and Ryan over the summer."
Castle pops the lid off his coffee and takes an experimental sip. Terrible. She probably got it from the lobby of the motel, where they keep the coffee grounds in the same closet with the cleaning supplies. Still, it's warm and it came from Beckett, so Castle counts his blessings and swallows an oily mouthful.
"It's always tough for the kids when mom and dad split up. I'll buy 'em each a pony."
He caps his coffee and stands. 'Shakes his collar out around his chin. It's getting colder. Most of the leaves in Central Park have already turned and dropped by now; winter is coming, and it's coming quickly.
"I'm gonna' call home and let them know I'm all right but, after, you wanna' grab dinner? Being held at gunpoint works up an appetite." Beat. "Probably shouldn't make a habit of it, though."
She doesn't have to see his wince to know the coffee's bad. But she lived on precinct breakroom coffee for a good five years or so before he came along with his espresso machine, so her standards may not be as high.
Beckett joins him standing and shoves her hands in the pockets of her coat. It gets colder the later the hour, but she loves the crisp fall air even at this time of night.
"The dinner or the being held at gunpoint? I know each probably seems equally torturous to you, Castle," she teases, seconds before her expression adopts a little warmth.
"Great. Don't go anywhere." He opens the pool gate and crosses the courtyard to the motel office. Tyson took his cell phone, but Castle's pretty sure the CSU team is going to find it in a dumpster no more than a few blocks away. Nowadays, because of the GPS chip, it's easy to track anyone with a cell phone. That, and the fact that Castle's default ringtone is the guitar riff from Van Halen's "When Push Comes to Shove" mean that Tyson would have dumped it immediately.
The night desk clerk gives him some flack about the phone being reserved for paying guests, but he turns over when Castle reminds him that one of his paying guests had had a gun in his face about an hour ago. His mother answers the phone after the first ring and signals Alexis to hop on. Castle has never been so glad to hear either of their voices. He tells him he's fine, that Ryan's got a couple of bumps but will probably get a medal out of it, and that he's going out to dinner with Beckett to clear his head. He can see her -- Beckett -- through the cruddy glass front of the motel office. She's standing by the pool, a tall drip of gray-black with auburn plumage.
He feels a surge of gratitude. For a lot of things.
When he rejoins her, he feels -- and looks -- much calmer. "My mother says to thank you for her. I'm not sure how I come out looking like a good son in this scenario, but I'm glad you were there."
Beckett doesn't follow Castle's instructions exactly - if only to follow him out of the pool area a few beats behind as the last of the squad cars start to trickle out of the parking lot. She approaches Montgomery before he gets into his own unmarked vehicle, one hand resting on the open driver door.
"Anything?"
The expression on his face is all she needs to know to confirm the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, but he adds a shake of his head, too, just to drive the information home. He rests a hand on top of her own, silent reassurance, an odd mirror of what she'd done only moments earlier with Castle. His eyes look like she feels, Beckett thinks, equal parts relief and regret.
"Let's just be glad we didn't lose any of ours today," she tells him, slipping her hand back into the pocket of her coat and glancing toward the motel office, Castle's profile visible through the dirtied front window. She promises to be the one to take Castle home, and Montgomery's car leaves just as she hears the office door creak open. He looks much better than he had even five minutes ago. She'll chalk that up to a few precious words offered from home.
"Hey," she murmurs, her hand finding her keys in her pocket. "You knew how to warn her without tipping Tyson off. A lot of people wouldn't know how to do that in that kind of a situation."
Beckett finally allows a little more warmth to filter through in her expression. Before, there'd been worry and worst-case scenarios holding it back - but not now. Not with him standing here.
Castle follows her over to her pool car and waits beside the passenger door. She'd put the gumball on the roof for the drive over, and the strobe licked the edges of the parking lot with red light. "I guess I've picked up a few things over the last three years," he admits, ducking into the car when she triggers the door locks. "I do listen to you, you know."
The gumball gets taken off the roof and concealed in the side armrest before they head out. There's no need for it now, and she prefers driving inconspicuously when she can afford to. The parking lot, now empty, is almost eerie in the semi-darkness, one lone street light weakly flickering, and she represses a shiver, turning the key in the ignition.
"So you say," Beckett mutters. "I've yet to see this obedience in action."
"I'd never forgive myself if I failed to constantly surprise you with it."
The heater turns over with the engine and Castle flicks his thumbnail over the vents on his side, releasing a chug of lukewarm air across the backs of his knuckles. He glances over at Beckett. "You've gotta' get Montgomery to update the police car pool. Get, like, an Escalade. Can you imagine the kind of ass you'd kick in an Escalade? The crime rate in this city would be inversely proportional to the number of horses you had under the hood."
"I do not need an Escalade," Beckett insists, turning the wheel in the direction that will take them further into the city and away from the night's earlier anxieties. She relaxes her shoulders, one hand casually resting on the wheel at the customary two o'clock as she briefly tears her eyes away from the road.
"Besides, with city traffic the way that it is, the gridlock alone would force you to rein in those 'horses'."
"Pragmatist," he accuses, and in his mouth the word sounds like a blunt instrument. Though, he has to admit, Beckett's got control of the pool car: threading it through late night traffic, ducking in and out of lanes like a boxer toying with an opponent. They've spent a lot of time in this car. Castle's even made his mark: there's an irregular stain on the passenger side carpet from where he spilled his coffee when she'd gone peeling out of the precinct parking lot before he'd gotten a chance to buckle his seat belt.
Good times.
The city unfurls off to their left, both shadow and illumination at the same time. He's watching the lights at the top of the Chrysler Building as they cross a cloudbank and the question just jumps out of his mouth: "How likely is it that we're gonna' catch Tyson?"
A cab pulls out in front of her after picking up someone at the corner of 42nd right as he asks and Beckett nearly tenses, her lone hand tightening by a fraction on the steering wheel. But her foot barely presses the brake, and there's no other indication that his question had thrown her. Soon enough, she's easily moving with the flow of traffic like the best of them, and they eventually lost the cab when it makes a left onto Park.
"He's got a good head start on us," she admits. There's no reason to sugarcoat the truth.
"But we've got an APB out and pictures of his face at every train station and airport. Plus, there's always the chance that I could lean on Gates a little more, press him for what he knows."
Even as she says the words, she finds herself losing faith in them, but she takes great pains not to let that show.
Castle sits back against the seat, watching the lights of the city as they roll up and over the windshield. "He'll go under again," he says after a moment. "Maybe it'll be four years, maybe four months. He doesn't need to surface until he feels like it."
In the brief period of silence that follows, she laces her fingers together and squeezes, a motion meant to settle her nerves and the lingering course of adrenaline still hanging back in her system. She meets his eyes when he finally answers her, the truth so real that it makes it impossible not to lose herself in her own memories. She glances away, back and out to the water, the blue mirror that forms a perfect reflection of their faces above.
She recognizes that look again. She knows those words. She's even said them herself - too many times to count. And she'd always hoped, maybe pointlessly so, that he wouldn't have to feel any of the emotions he's feeling right now. Regret. The bitter pang of guilt.
It's one of the rare moments that Castle's at a loss for anything to say, and she thinks of all the ways in which his sentence could be ended. All of them leave a bitter taste in her mouth and a sinking stone deep in her gut. She studies his profile, the distant lights of the squad car dancing over his jawline. Separates one hand from the other, her palm resting on his knee.
(I almost lost you today)
"I know the feeling," she says, her voice just barely wavering.
Reply
Except now, he feels it too.
Her hand on his knee brings him back up from the dark. He looks at her. She's turned her face away, her lips hard and thin, but her fingers are five points of warmth that breaks through the cold barrier. She knows. She knows Tyson like she knows Coonan, the man who'd killed her mother; like she knows the hundreds of other criminals that got away with it despite her peerless experience and abilities. He thinks she has to be stronger than even he realizes to be able to handle all that and still come out of it fighting.
"I know you do," he says, and drops his hand over hers.
Reply
The least she can do, Beckett thinks, is to return the favor. He's watched her back on case after case - it takes a certain kind of person to be able to do that, she's learned - and she has no problem with doing the same, and then some.
Her hand curls around his, residual warmth from the coffee cup mixing with a little body heat. In the distance, the ambulance fires off a warning blast to alert everyone that it's on the move again - Ryan's probably caved under Esposito's well-meaning threats by now. She doesn't move.
You don’t let go, you don’t back down. It’s what makes you extraordinary.
"I would have missed you," she says, though she doesn't swivel back to face him. And even if it goes without saying, like so many other sentences that are floating to the foreground, she doesn't want to let the moment pass without giving a voice to at least one of them.
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He moves his thumb over the backs of her knuckles.
"I'm not going anywhere."
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Her hand tightens its grip for barely a split second - and then, in the next beat, she's out of the moment, straightening up with a soft inhale, her fingers slipping away.
"Well, good."
Her tone is back to business, even if her eyes still hold a residual softness.
"It was hard enough dealing with the pouting and sulking from Esposito and Ryan over the summer."
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"It's always tough for the kids when mom and dad split up. I'll buy 'em each a pony."
He caps his coffee and stands. 'Shakes his collar out around his chin. It's getting colder. Most of the leaves in Central Park have already turned and dropped by now; winter is coming, and it's coming quickly.
"I'm gonna' call home and let them know I'm all right but, after, you wanna' grab dinner? Being held at gunpoint works up an appetite." Beat. "Probably shouldn't make a habit of it, though."
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Beckett joins him standing and shoves her hands in the pockets of her coat. It gets colder the later the hour, but she loves the crisp fall air even at this time of night.
"The dinner or the being held at gunpoint? I know each probably seems equally torturous to you, Castle," she teases, seconds before her expression adopts a little warmth.
"Sure. Why not?"
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The night desk clerk gives him some flack about the phone being reserved for paying guests, but he turns over when Castle reminds him that one of his paying guests had had a gun in his face about an hour ago. His mother answers the phone after the first ring and signals Alexis to hop on. Castle has never been so glad to hear either of their voices. He tells him he's fine, that Ryan's got a couple of bumps but will probably get a medal out of it, and that he's going out to dinner with Beckett to clear his head. He can see her -- Beckett -- through the cruddy glass front of the motel office. She's standing by the pool, a tall drip of gray-black with auburn plumage.
He feels a surge of gratitude. For a lot of things.
When he rejoins her, he feels -- and looks -- much calmer. "My mother says to thank you for her. I'm not sure how I come out looking like a good son in this scenario, but I'm glad you were there."
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"Anything?"
The expression on his face is all she needs to know to confirm the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, but he adds a shake of his head, too, just to drive the information home. He rests a hand on top of her own, silent reassurance, an odd mirror of what she'd done only moments earlier with Castle. His eyes look like she feels, Beckett thinks, equal parts relief and regret.
"Let's just be glad we didn't lose any of ours today," she tells him, slipping her hand back into the pocket of her coat and glancing toward the motel office, Castle's profile visible through the dirtied front window. She promises to be the one to take Castle home, and Montgomery's car leaves just as she hears the office door creak open. He looks much better than he had even five minutes ago. She'll chalk that up to a few precious words offered from home.
"Hey," she murmurs, her hand finding her keys in her pocket. "You knew how to warn her without tipping Tyson off. A lot of people wouldn't know how to do that in that kind of a situation."
Beckett finally allows a little more warmth to filter through in her expression. Before, there'd been worry and worst-case scenarios holding it back - but not now. Not with him standing here.
"I'm proud of you, Castle."
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"So you say," Beckett mutters. "I've yet to see this obedience in action."
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The heater turns over with the engine and Castle flicks his thumbnail over the vents on his side, releasing a chug of lukewarm air across the backs of his knuckles. He glances over at Beckett. "You've gotta' get Montgomery to update the police car pool. Get, like, an Escalade. Can you imagine the kind of ass you'd kick in an Escalade? The crime rate in this city would be inversely proportional to the number of horses you had under the hood."
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"Besides, with city traffic the way that it is, the gridlock alone would force you to rein in those 'horses'."
Reply
Good times.
The city unfurls off to their left, both shadow and illumination at the same time. He's watching the lights at the top of the Chrysler Building as they cross a cloudbank and the question just jumps out of his mouth: "How likely is it that we're gonna' catch Tyson?"
Reply
"He's got a good head start on us," she admits. There's no reason to sugarcoat the truth.
"But we've got an APB out and pictures of his face at every train station and airport. Plus, there's always the chance that I could lean on Gates a little more, press him for what he knows."
Even as she says the words, she finds herself losing faith in them, but she takes great pains not to let that show.
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