Command Performance, Ch. 3-A Season 8 Caskett 3-shot
Title: Command Performance, Ch. 3
Title: T
Summary: "She arrives alone. It's part of the plan. A part she's quickly inclined to think of as really, really stupid, because he's good at this and she's not. Because she wants this to be about them, and it's not."
A/N: Final chapter. Set a few weeks after Mr. & Mrs. Castle (8 x 08), though not based on any spoilers for the post-hiatus season
She arrives alone. It's part of the plan. A part she's quickly inclined to think of as really, really stupid, because he's good at this and she's not. Because she wants this to be about them, and it's not.
She walks the room, trying not to second-guess everything from the dress to the more dramatic look she's gone for with her hair and make-up. It's black tie, and the gown is classic, but there's a not-so-subtle divide between the more conservative, masculine-leaning looks on her female colleagues and the splashier numbers sported by the wives and girlfriends who far outnumber them.
She weaves in and out of knots of people she knows and doesn't know. Either way-known or unknown-they all go too quiet, then too loud as she approaches. It's nerve wracking. Infuriating for any number of reasons, but she goes through the motions on her own. She shakes hands and pretends not to notice how many introductions involve people looking right past her. Right over her shoulder, as though her famous husband might materialize.
And then he does. There's a sudden, too-possessive hand on her hip. A sudden, too-hearty apology for being late, and she doesn't have to play at consternation. She doesn't have to feign stiffness as she lifts her cheek to meet his lips, because he's not late. Not according to the plan.
The plan was for her to do the cocktail hour solo. To put herself through the flesh-pressing part of the evening, making excuses for him all the while. Assuring anyone who asked that they must've had a miscommunication. That he'd surely be there for the speeches and seated dinner. The plan was for her to sell the estrangement. To sell the evening as little more than a public appearance for the sake of her career.
But he's here, peeling his arm from around her just long enough to shake hands with some starry-eyed wife of someone she really couldn't care less about. He's here.
"I'm sorry. Would you excuse us?" She breaks right into the woman's gushing review of the latest Derrick Storm. "Rick and I haven't had a chance to touch base . . ."
She lets the words trail off to carry whatever implication they will, and the quiet fury simmering underneath the smile she flashes at Lieutenant and Mrs. Whoever isn't an act. It's an alternative to throwing herself at him. An alternative to a little violence and not a little want.
Because fury and desire have always gone hand in glove for them.
Because the sight of him in a tux has always been enough to bring her to her knees.
Because he never gets the bow tie quite right without help, and the thought of him dressing alone in their room cuts deep.
Because she's never been so glad he can't stick to a plan to save his life.
The double-edged truth of the last though catches in her throat. She doesn't wait for a reply from the couple. She doesn't wait for any kind of graceful exit. It's an accidental save when she turns on a heel and jerks him along with her. An accidental performance when she shoves him though a pair of doors and out on to a Juliet balcony hardly wide enough for the two of them.
"I'm sorry." He only just waits for the heavy curtains to swing back in place, shielding them from view, before he's wrapped around her. Before his lips are burning over the skin of her shoulder and his broad hands are spanning her back, welcome, blessed warmth between her and the frigid air. "I know. I was supposed to wait. "
"Why didn't you?" She groans against his chest, too relieved to really be frustrated. Too worried to let herself really be relieved. "Castle, it was your idea to . . . we agreed . . . "
He steps back. Holds her out at arm's length, though there really isn't any room.
"I saw you," he says, awed. Overcome, and she feels her own face light up. Feels her skin flush with pleasure, despite the cold. "The red carpet. They're posting pictures." He trails his fingers along the arc of the necklace. Smiles at the pretty combs winking in the ridiculously complicated up-do Alexis had managed. He folds his arms around her, again, tight like he's managed to miss her in the last five seconds. "I saw you and I couldn't wait"
He's good at this. The party and the plan, and she hates the hour she suffered through without him, because he's good. He flirts a little too hard. He's courtly and over-the-top with first wives, low-voiced and edgy with the younger, late-in-life upgrades. He hangs back a little too long with the boys, clinking glasses and talking big.
He plays the role to perfection. He's everything she thought he'd be the first time she wore this dress. Self-important. Brash. Loud and utterly superficial. And in between-in stolen moments and hidden touches-he's everything she knows him to be. Observant. Playful. Sweet and fiercely protective. Fiercely proud, and it kills him to walk away from the hundred slights-verbal pats on the head and sidelong glances at her cleavage-that are so much an everyday part of the Old Boys Club she's long since learned to let them roll off her.
But he does walk away. He acts the bored playboy and wanders off for another drink. And if he's not exactly grateful for the out, she has to admit it's good for the act. The way it builds the the tense armor around him. Every time she pointedly doesn't watch him go, every time she makes a slightly shame-faced apologies and trails after him if the conversation's bad enough to peg her own meter.
It's all well and good, so far as the plan goes. It's practical, and by the time they sit down to dinner, she'd swear it's official. She'd swear there's not a soul in the room romantic enough to doubt that however they might have started out, the two of them have an arrangement, not a marriage.
The plan is a success. A dismal, unqualified success.
There's dancing after dinner. Someone whose pay grade she can't even see from her vantage point announces the group like they're a cookie being thrown to the assembled company for sitting more or less politely through a handful of droning speeches.
She looks for him when the music starts. Not at all bad big band arrangements of standards. She tries to look for him, but she's newly popular. Castle's late arrival has revived the interest of a dozen or so people from the early crowd in meeting her.
He's newly popular, too. Surrounded by a bright, sparkling sea as husbands drift off to the bar or the bathroom or just outside for some air, trying to delay the inevitable. She watches him slip away from one obvious invitation to dance after another. Sees him nod in her direction with an apologetic what can you do look as he plucks heavily ringed fingers from his elbow, his shoulder, and once, with difficulty, from actually inside his tux jacket.
It puts a crack in his facade. Their eyes meet, and she see too much that's familiar. Weariness and frustration. Longing. It's enough. The whole room suddenly sounds like whispers around her. Furtive looks from him to her and back again in the low light and it's enough.
"Excuse me," she says loudly. It's abrupt enough that the older man she's talking to bristles visibly. She overcorrects in her haste to get away. She drops a heavy hand of her own on his sleeve and draws a hard look from his wife. "Both of you. Would you please?" She blushes on command. That and the chastened smile she flashes seem to mollify them both. "I think my husband . . . " She lifts her chin toward the edge of the dance floor where Castle hasn't quite extricated himself.
"Of course, dear." The woman lifts Kate's fingers from her husband's jacket. She sends her off with a shove the might have little to much oomph in it. "You go keep that young man out of trouble."
"That's the plan." Kate flashes another apologetic smile as she goes. As she whispers the words to herself all over again. "That's the plan."
"Sweetheart!"
His voice booms out, high above the music and the chirping array of women around him. It's far too loud, and so obviously relieved that she almost wants to laugh. Almost, but sweetheart hangs sticky-sour in the air between them. It's not something he calls her. It's not something she calls him, though it's good for this last bit of stage business.
"Rick."
She pitches her voice lower, arching an eyebrow. Outwardly, she's every inch the long-suffering wife correcting the husband who's far too prone to overindulge. He takes the cue, knotting his hands behind his back like he's used to getting caught.
She pivots to place herself pointedly between him and the woman he's yet to shake off. She flashes him a smile so brief and heated no one else in the world would register it. He does, though. He answers with a feather-light brush of fingers where the vee of the dress dips lowest. With a rough, meaningful tug at the trailing laces.
"Kate Beckett, Captain of the Twelfth." She thrusts her hand toward the woman, forcing her back one step, then another. She answers the late-in-lifer's dubious, annoyed look with a grip that's more than a little bone crushing. She drops it one beat past emphatic and turns back to him. "Rick." She gives him a smile that's all teeth. Fierce for the crowd and something not entirely different for him. He swallows hard. "Everyone's dancing."
She flicks a glance toward the center of the room, and mercifully, it's true. Mercifully, the top brass seem to have accepted the fact that they need to lead by example, and the parquet dance floor is filling steadily.
"Everyone," he repeats. "Well, Captain," - he leans into the title, and that's something for the crowd and something not entirely different for her, too - "then I guess we should do our duty."
They're silent in each other's arms, both more overwhelmed than they'd bargained for. In each other's arms it's harder to balance on the pin's head of what they are and what they ought to seem to be. He recovers first. Or breaks maybe. It's hard to tell the difference.
"This is agonizing." He grazes her ear with his mouth, stumbling a little for show.
She stiffens, her fingers going white against the black of his jacket. "I'm sorry . . ."
"No," he cuts in, turning them too swiftly for the music, so they're at odd angles to most of the crowd. He risks brushing her cheek with his own. "Don't be sorry. A little agony . . ."
He lifts an eyebrow. She turns her face away and presses her lips together, breathless with laughter and want. "A little?"
"Ok, a lot of agony," he admits. His hand smooths possessively over the satin curve of her hip for a fraction of an instant before it retreats to a more socially acceptable height. He leans away, spinning her out to arm's length and back into his body. "The dress."
There's so much bound up in just those two words. Surprise and memory and history. Time wasted and time well spent. Stubbornness and the hard work of relenting on her side and his. Underneath it all, the immediate he agony of a story untold and desire. Always desire.
It quiets them both. One song comes to an end. They stop a few steps late. Their hands fall away from each other and drop to their sides. The uncertainty doesn't last a moment, though. He pulls her back toward him. She stumbles a little, and it might pass as resistance of anyone's watching. It might look like he's a little drunk and she's a little fed up with covering for him.
It might look like that, but she doesn't care. She's pouring the story into his ear. Disjointed phrases passing between them. A story surfacing like an island chain, because that's all they've ever needed.
"The loft?"
She nods and feels regret rumble through his chest. He plucks lightly at the web of laces, filling her head with images.
"My mother?"
It jerks her spine stiff. The seeming non sequitur that's definitely out of place where her mind has gone. She blinks at him, nervous suddenly. Giddy, though, too. It means a lot to her. How this came to be tonight. It will mean more to him. She knows that, and she has trouble finding her voice.
"Alexis." She's the one to turn them awkwardly this time. Too fast for the song, but she wants the shadows of this particular corner. She wants to hide with him in plain sight, and when she's satisfied, she lets her fingers drift to the pretty, twinkling combs in her hair. She lets them drift to the warm weight of garnets that sit, just so, on her collarbones. "But Martha played her part."
"It's beautiful. You're beautiful."
It's a stammered whisper. Tension in his arms as he tries to maintain the gap between them. Answering tension in her own, because it's smart. It's the plan and the last thing she wants to think about right now. The last thing she wants intruding on this, so she sinks her fingers into the moment and holds on. She tips her face up toward his and meets his eyes, clear and bright, even in the shadows.
"I wanted you to know . . ." Her voice fails her utterly this time. He tightens his fingers at her waist in sympathy. In a gesture meant to say it can wait, but she doesn't want it to. She breathes deep and goes on. "I wanted you to know I haven't forgotten. How we got here and how hard we fought." Shame gets the better of her. Guilt. "You fought, mostly." She pushes past it with another shuddering breath. "I won't forget."
He's silent a long time. She sees his pulse pounding in his throat and the labored rise and fall of his ribs. She feels the warmth radiating off his skin, and she doesn't know if she's grateful for it or not. For his silence.
"Come home with me." The careful words are hardly more than air stirring against her skin. "Tonight." He lets one finger, then another tangle through the laces low on her spine and the words come more quickly. More urgently, and there's no doubt at all she's grateful for this. "We'll . . . we'll figure something out. Just come home, Kate."
"It's a risk," she smiles down at their feet. They're hardly even shuffling now, and she wonders absently what it looks like from the outside.
"I know. It's a terrible idea." He smiles, too. She doesn't look up. She doesn't need to. She feels it running through his whole body. "But I want you with me."
A/N: And finished. The original idea came from a conversation with Cora Clavia about how the red dress must have survived the bomb and fire and should make a reappearance with better hair. So: stolen. Also, I literally only realized this morning that this is the same basic idea as Morbidezza, so I've already written it. Oh well. I thank you all anyway for reading and supporting.
Title: T
Summary: "She arrives alone. It's part of the plan. A part she's quickly inclined to think of as really, really stupid, because he's good at this and she's not. Because she wants this to be about them, and it's not."
A/N: Final chapter. Set a few weeks after Mr. & Mrs. Castle (8 x 08), though not based on any spoilers for the post-hiatus season
She arrives alone. It's part of the plan. A part she's quickly inclined to think of as really, really stupid, because he's good at this and she's not. Because she wants this to be about them, and it's not.
She walks the room, trying not to second-guess everything from the dress to the more dramatic look she's gone for with her hair and make-up. It's black tie, and the gown is classic, but there's a not-so-subtle divide between the more conservative, masculine-leaning looks on her female colleagues and the splashier numbers sported by the wives and girlfriends who far outnumber them.
She weaves in and out of knots of people she knows and doesn't know. Either way-known or unknown-they all go too quiet, then too loud as she approaches. It's nerve wracking. Infuriating for any number of reasons, but she goes through the motions on her own. She shakes hands and pretends not to notice how many introductions involve people looking right past her. Right over her shoulder, as though her famous husband might materialize.
And then he does. There's a sudden, too-possessive hand on her hip. A sudden, too-hearty apology for being late, and she doesn't have to play at consternation. She doesn't have to feign stiffness as she lifts her cheek to meet his lips, because he's not late. Not according to the plan.
The plan was for her to do the cocktail hour solo. To put herself through the flesh-pressing part of the evening, making excuses for him all the while. Assuring anyone who asked that they must've had a miscommunication. That he'd surely be there for the speeches and seated dinner. The plan was for her to sell the estrangement. To sell the evening as little more than a public appearance for the sake of her career.
But he's here, peeling his arm from around her just long enough to shake hands with some starry-eyed wife of someone she really couldn't care less about. He's here.
"I'm sorry. Would you excuse us?" She breaks right into the woman's gushing review of the latest Derrick Storm. "Rick and I haven't had a chance to touch base . . ."
She lets the words trail off to carry whatever implication they will, and the quiet fury simmering underneath the smile she flashes at Lieutenant and Mrs. Whoever isn't an act. It's an alternative to throwing herself at him. An alternative to a little violence and not a little want.
Because fury and desire have always gone hand in glove for them.
Because the sight of him in a tux has always been enough to bring her to her knees.
Because he never gets the bow tie quite right without help, and the thought of him dressing alone in their room cuts deep.
Because she's never been so glad he can't stick to a plan to save his life.
The double-edged truth of the last though catches in her throat. She doesn't wait for a reply from the couple. She doesn't wait for any kind of graceful exit. It's an accidental save when she turns on a heel and jerks him along with her. An accidental performance when she shoves him though a pair of doors and out on to a Juliet balcony hardly wide enough for the two of them.
"I'm sorry." He only just waits for the heavy curtains to swing back in place, shielding them from view, before he's wrapped around her. Before his lips are burning over the skin of her shoulder and his broad hands are spanning her back, welcome, blessed warmth between her and the frigid air. "I know. I was supposed to wait. "
"Why didn't you?" She groans against his chest, too relieved to really be frustrated. Too worried to let herself really be relieved. "Castle, it was your idea to . . . we agreed . . . "
He steps back. Holds her out at arm's length, though there really isn't any room.
"I saw you," he says, awed. Overcome, and she feels her own face light up. Feels her skin flush with pleasure, despite the cold. "The red carpet. They're posting pictures." He trails his fingers along the arc of the necklace. Smiles at the pretty combs winking in the ridiculously complicated up-do Alexis had managed. He folds his arms around her, again, tight like he's managed to miss her in the last five seconds. "I saw you and I couldn't wait"
He's good at this. The party and the plan, and she hates the hour she suffered through without him, because he's good. He flirts a little too hard. He's courtly and over-the-top with first wives, low-voiced and edgy with the younger, late-in-life upgrades. He hangs back a little too long with the boys, clinking glasses and talking big.
He plays the role to perfection. He's everything she thought he'd be the first time she wore this dress. Self-important. Brash. Loud and utterly superficial. And in between-in stolen moments and hidden touches-he's everything she knows him to be. Observant. Playful. Sweet and fiercely protective. Fiercely proud, and it kills him to walk away from the hundred slights-verbal pats on the head and sidelong glances at her cleavage-that are so much an everyday part of the Old Boys Club she's long since learned to let them roll off her.
But he does walk away. He acts the bored playboy and wanders off for another drink. And if he's not exactly grateful for the out, she has to admit it's good for the act. The way it builds the the tense armor around him. Every time she pointedly doesn't watch him go, every time she makes a slightly shame-faced apologies and trails after him if the conversation's bad enough to peg her own meter.
It's all well and good, so far as the plan goes. It's practical, and by the time they sit down to dinner, she'd swear it's official. She'd swear there's not a soul in the room romantic enough to doubt that however they might have started out, the two of them have an arrangement, not a marriage.
The plan is a success. A dismal, unqualified success.
There's dancing after dinner. Someone whose pay grade she can't even see from her vantage point announces the group like they're a cookie being thrown to the assembled company for sitting more or less politely through a handful of droning speeches.
She looks for him when the music starts. Not at all bad big band arrangements of standards. She tries to look for him, but she's newly popular. Castle's late arrival has revived the interest of a dozen or so people from the early crowd in meeting her.
He's newly popular, too. Surrounded by a bright, sparkling sea as husbands drift off to the bar or the bathroom or just outside for some air, trying to delay the inevitable. She watches him slip away from one obvious invitation to dance after another. Sees him nod in her direction with an apologetic what can you do look as he plucks heavily ringed fingers from his elbow, his shoulder, and once, with difficulty, from actually inside his tux jacket.
It puts a crack in his facade. Their eyes meet, and she see too much that's familiar. Weariness and frustration. Longing. It's enough. The whole room suddenly sounds like whispers around her. Furtive looks from him to her and back again in the low light and it's enough.
"Excuse me," she says loudly. It's abrupt enough that the older man she's talking to bristles visibly. She overcorrects in her haste to get away. She drops a heavy hand of her own on his sleeve and draws a hard look from his wife. "Both of you. Would you please?" She blushes on command. That and the chastened smile she flashes seem to mollify them both. "I think my husband . . . " She lifts her chin toward the edge of the dance floor where Castle hasn't quite extricated himself.
"Of course, dear." The woman lifts Kate's fingers from her husband's jacket. She sends her off with a shove the might have little to much oomph in it. "You go keep that young man out of trouble."
"That's the plan." Kate flashes another apologetic smile as she goes. As she whispers the words to herself all over again. "That's the plan."
"Sweetheart!"
His voice booms out, high above the music and the chirping array of women around him. It's far too loud, and so obviously relieved that she almost wants to laugh. Almost, but sweetheart hangs sticky-sour in the air between them. It's not something he calls her. It's not something she calls him, though it's good for this last bit of stage business.
"Rick."
She pitches her voice lower, arching an eyebrow. Outwardly, she's every inch the long-suffering wife correcting the husband who's far too prone to overindulge. He takes the cue, knotting his hands behind his back like he's used to getting caught.
She pivots to place herself pointedly between him and the woman he's yet to shake off. She flashes him a smile so brief and heated no one else in the world would register it. He does, though. He answers with a feather-light brush of fingers where the vee of the dress dips lowest. With a rough, meaningful tug at the trailing laces.
"Kate Beckett, Captain of the Twelfth." She thrusts her hand toward the woman, forcing her back one step, then another. She answers the late-in-lifer's dubious, annoyed look with a grip that's more than a little bone crushing. She drops it one beat past emphatic and turns back to him. "Rick." She gives him a smile that's all teeth. Fierce for the crowd and something not entirely different for him. He swallows hard. "Everyone's dancing."
She flicks a glance toward the center of the room, and mercifully, it's true. Mercifully, the top brass seem to have accepted the fact that they need to lead by example, and the parquet dance floor is filling steadily.
"Everyone," he repeats. "Well, Captain," - he leans into the title, and that's something for the crowd and something not entirely different for her, too - "then I guess we should do our duty."
They're silent in each other's arms, both more overwhelmed than they'd bargained for. In each other's arms it's harder to balance on the pin's head of what they are and what they ought to seem to be. He recovers first. Or breaks maybe. It's hard to tell the difference.
"This is agonizing." He grazes her ear with his mouth, stumbling a little for show.
She stiffens, her fingers going white against the black of his jacket. "I'm sorry . . ."
"No," he cuts in, turning them too swiftly for the music, so they're at odd angles to most of the crowd. He risks brushing her cheek with his own. "Don't be sorry. A little agony . . ."
He lifts an eyebrow. She turns her face away and presses her lips together, breathless with laughter and want. "A little?"
"Ok, a lot of agony," he admits. His hand smooths possessively over the satin curve of her hip for a fraction of an instant before it retreats to a more socially acceptable height. He leans away, spinning her out to arm's length and back into his body. "The dress."
There's so much bound up in just those two words. Surprise and memory and history. Time wasted and time well spent. Stubbornness and the hard work of relenting on her side and his. Underneath it all, the immediate he agony of a story untold and desire. Always desire.
It quiets them both. One song comes to an end. They stop a few steps late. Their hands fall away from each other and drop to their sides. The uncertainty doesn't last a moment, though. He pulls her back toward him. She stumbles a little, and it might pass as resistance of anyone's watching. It might look like he's a little drunk and she's a little fed up with covering for him.
It might look like that, but she doesn't care. She's pouring the story into his ear. Disjointed phrases passing between them. A story surfacing like an island chain, because that's all they've ever needed.
"The loft?"
She nods and feels regret rumble through his chest. He plucks lightly at the web of laces, filling her head with images.
"My mother?"
It jerks her spine stiff. The seeming non sequitur that's definitely out of place where her mind has gone. She blinks at him, nervous suddenly. Giddy, though, too. It means a lot to her. How this came to be tonight. It will mean more to him. She knows that, and she has trouble finding her voice.
"Alexis." She's the one to turn them awkwardly this time. Too fast for the song, but she wants the shadows of this particular corner. She wants to hide with him in plain sight, and when she's satisfied, she lets her fingers drift to the pretty, twinkling combs in her hair. She lets them drift to the warm weight of garnets that sit, just so, on her collarbones. "But Martha played her part."
"It's beautiful. You're beautiful."
It's a stammered whisper. Tension in his arms as he tries to maintain the gap between them. Answering tension in her own, because it's smart. It's the plan and the last thing she wants to think about right now. The last thing she wants intruding on this, so she sinks her fingers into the moment and holds on. She tips her face up toward his and meets his eyes, clear and bright, even in the shadows.
"I wanted you to know . . ." Her voice fails her utterly this time. He tightens his fingers at her waist in sympathy. In a gesture meant to say it can wait, but she doesn't want it to. She breathes deep and goes on. "I wanted you to know I haven't forgotten. How we got here and how hard we fought." Shame gets the better of her. Guilt. "You fought, mostly." She pushes past it with another shuddering breath. "I won't forget."
He's silent a long time. She sees his pulse pounding in his throat and the labored rise and fall of his ribs. She feels the warmth radiating off his skin, and she doesn't know if she's grateful for it or not. For his silence.
"Come home with me." The careful words are hardly more than air stirring against her skin. "Tonight." He lets one finger, then another tangle through the laces low on her spine and the words come more quickly. More urgently, and there's no doubt at all she's grateful for this. "We'll . . . we'll figure something out. Just come home, Kate."
"It's a risk," she smiles down at their feet. They're hardly even shuffling now, and she wonders absently what it looks like from the outside.
"I know. It's a terrible idea." He smiles, too. She doesn't look up. She doesn't need to. She feels it running through his whole body. "But I want you with me."
A/N: And finished. The original idea came from a conversation with Cora Clavia about how the red dress must have survived the bomb and fire and should make a reappearance with better hair. So: stolen. Also, I literally only realized this morning that this is the same basic idea as Morbidezza, so I've already written it. Oh well. I thank you all anyway for reading and supporting.