All She Wants Is, Ch. 4-Illegible-2 x 03 (Inventing the Girl)
Title: All She Wants Is: Illegible-2 x 03 (Inventing the Girl)
Rating: T
Summary: "Damage control. That how she'd spun it to herself, as she'd stood there on the curb. She'd figured it'd be wise to know the worst of it straight off, but it's been most of a day now, and she doesn't know. She hasn't read it."
A/N: Set during Inventing the Girl (2 x 03)
She hadn't meant to leave it on her desk. Truthfully, she hadn't even meant to have it. In the weeks he's been back, she's been on a cruise up the river they call denial, kind of hoping she'd be able to just ignore the whole damned thing.
But the penny had dropped courtesy of Rina-whoever the hell she might be when she's at home-and too many things had suddenly made sense: Everyday New Yorkers, famous for their indifference, rubber necking to make eye contact with her out on the street. The onslaught of incoming calls from numbers she recognizes only vaguely. Two call me voice mails from her dad in the same day. The little red number ticking up and up on the inbox for her non-work email.
The article. That stupid article.
She'd picked up a copy of the magazine at a newsstand in a rare five-minute interval without him dogging her heels. Scowled hard enough at him smirking up at her and the cover declaring him Cosmo's "Hottest Bachelor Ever!" that the poor kid covering the counter before the lunch rush had practically thrown the change at her before scurrying off to help someone less terrifying.
Damage control.
That how she'd spun it to herself, as she'd stood there on the curb. She'd figured it'd be wise to know the worst of it straight off, but it's been most of a day now, and she doesn't know. She hasn't read it. Absolutely cannot bring herself to even skim when she flips to the lede and finds him in that stupid suit, smiling wide with a pouting, bare-midriffed "cop" hanging off either shoulder.
She'd forgotten about it. Pushed it so far out of her mind that she'd just left it there, and of course now he sees it from halfway across the precinct. Derails her train of thought about the actual case in the rush to have his hands all over it.
Oh! You couldn't resist, could you? Pretty nice write-up, huh?
He's grinning like a kid, so entirely, innocently pleased you'd think he'd just come home to find she'd hung his second-grade artwork in a place of honor on the fridge.
She opens her mouth to cut him down. To lash out and say she hasn't read it and wouldn't bother if the stupid thing weren't the latest in a long line of ways he's ruining her life. She's on the verge of some devastating comeback, but he really is like a kid, eager and hopeful and maybe the tiniest bit less sure of himself than he'd like to let on. She doesn't have the heart. She pulls the punch and bluffs.
Yeah. If you like those sorts of fluff pieces.
It's not much of a gamble. Fluff. It's bound to be accurate, but his face falls anyway, and the whole thing is so stupid. Her fingers twitch. She moves to snatch the magazine from him. To shove it somewhere out of sight, like she should've done in the first place, but he holds on tight.
He flips to the picture of her, and she'd like to crawl into some conveniently deep, dark hole, because she'd somehow managed to forget about that part. He makes some comment she hardly hears. Sherlock Holmes and someone or other, but she can hardly hear over the blood pounding suddenly in her ears as she remembers how painful that day was. Having him there at all, and on top of that misery, the photo shoot itself. Being transported back to the summer before senior year.
The way it had been overwhelming all over again. The dissonance between the suddenly, undeniably attractive body in the mirror and the painfully awkward version that lingered in her own head. The then-and-now army of fierce, flamboyant men and women with brushes and sponge wedges and lenses tugging at her, murmuring in her ear and getting in her face.
She jerks herself out of the moment. Ancient memory and recent rage. A toxic mix she tries to claw her way up and out of, but it's too late. They're fighting in pointlessly hushed whispers.
But if you were upset, you would tell me, right?
He digs in, insisting. She digs in, evading.
It doesn't matter, because I'm not upset.
They're both bluffing after that. Carrying on as if they're ok, but neither of them is. Not really, and it all gets tangled up. His issues and hers, then-and-now issues circling around one another to create a fucked up kind of synergy.
She's blasé in the box with Will James. The man's particular brand of sleaze stirs up too many memories of ducking hands and dodging unwelcome overtures. It rattles her, and just when she has to dial back her own fury, Castle comes out swinging.
"You were wearing a lot of makeup today. It made you look like a slut."
James laughs. There's an infinite moment before the tap on the glass when she thinks Castle might go right over the table at him. When she can practically hear the impact of his fist slamming into the photographer's face, and she knows she'll sit back and watch. She knows that some back-then part of her will find satisfaction in it.
But the tap on the glass does come. He drops hard back into himself. Looks to her immediately, like he's embarrassed. Like he's ashamed or thinks he should be, at least.
He disappears for a few minutes between their stalker's alibi checking out and the time they have the husband in again. He walks it off or does whatever he does, and by the time he steps back into the box, has poker face on.
He's subdued with Travis. Almost gentle, where usually he'd be the one picking at the loose threads. At everything this guy doesn't seem to have known about his own wife.
It's productive. That's a surprise to them both if the gaze he flicks her way is anything to go by, but it gets them another name-Wyatt Monroe. She's not crazy about the role reversal, though. She doesn't like knowing it's his poker face without knowing why it's necessary. Why this case and these bottom-feeders when this is workaday stuff for the two of them.
If you were upset, you would tell me, right?
She wants to push the question right back at him, but she's too busy bluffing herself.
It's funny. The big reveal when it comes is funny.
That's "Mr. Castle" to you, missy.
It's hilarious, and he's seven different kinds of hypocrite, but it gets to her a little, too. The fact that he doesn't hesitate at all, though he has to know how much shit it's going to bring him. He marches them both right over to Rina, and the seamless slip into teenage girl speak reminds her he's a father stumbling his way through the teen years more or less alone with nothing like normal-then or now-in his own life to go on.
It gets to her, but there's the job to do. They go on doing this new, peculiar dance as things get uglier and uglier. She lashes out at Teddy Farrow in the middle of the bullpen. He roams Wyatt Monroe's apartment as brazenly as any crime scene in the early days and comes up with Jenna's pink pumps. She has his back and he has hers, though each has their own reasons for not looking the other in the eye when Sierra Goodwin cuts to the chase.
I figured she was gonna give Wyatt what he wanted. I just told her, "It's not the worst thing in the world, you know. You might even like it." . . . I did.
It's nothing new. A story without innocents, save Jenna herself, in the end, but it takes this strange configuration of the two of them to bring even that much truth to light. It takes him slipping the chain with the husband. It takes her sitting back and watching. It takes the two of them to sell the bluff, though he gives her the credit.
The fact is, it takes these precise versions of the two of them. It's anything but comforting.
They're both more than a little bruised by everything. By the fact that there's a new Jenna McBoyd stepping off a bus even now, and they're more open than either of them would usually be about loose ends and the injustice of it all.
A little too open, maybe. They end up fighting again. About the stupid article. About Nikki Heat and the book she hasn't even seen yet. About him and her. The two of them and fact and fiction.
Why didn't you ask?
Why didn't it occur to you?
You'll have it by tomorrow.
They end up kind of fighting, though for her part, it feels like light and air coming in. A little more room for them to be however they are with each other. A little more room for possibility, whether she likes it or not.
Good.
Good.
He gets the last word in. She lets him have it, though she's sorrier than she'd ever admit that he's going. That it's not one of those nights when he's inclined to turn back at the elevator and toss out a casual invitation for a burger or a drink.
She thinks about calling after him. Drawing out the role reversal a little while longer, but her palm lands on the glossy surface of the magazine still lying neglected at the corner of her desk.
She has second thoughts about diving into it. The article. The version of them that's already on newsstands. Diving back into the world she'd long ago decided was not for her. But that's her intention. The task she's set herself as she turns the locks on her apartment door and slides the security chain home.
She sits down with it, cross-legged on the most comfortable part of her couch with a glass of wine and the bottle within easy reach. She flips to the first page and braces herself. Shuts out the images and makes her eye move over the erratically placed blocks of text.
She hates the format, and not just here. She hates the cutesy, present-tense intro that has far more to do with the writer than the subject and the way it's interspersed with faux-exact quotes. She skips around at first. It's the best she can do when she remembers the stupid retro mic in her face.
But it is nice. Even she can't help seeing that in her grudging, piecemeal first approach. It's nice, and that's definitely down to him. There's not a single quote from her, and she's glad of it. But it goes beyond that. Far beyond in the obvious intent to focus on him. She's hardly even an afterthought to Amy, and she has to laugh at the impression she apparently didn't make on the perky young writer.
But even so, she's there. He's front and center, of course. In his own words, as well as Amy's, because he wouldn't be him otherwise. But she's there, woven in to virtually every reply. She's tucked between the lines and out in the open, and it's nice, but it hurts all over again. The pain of him suddenly back in her life and the rightness of it, too. Both truths layered together.
She's everywhere, from the first sentence of the cutesy introduction to the pithy quote that ends the piece, and she really does sound like a cross between Sherlock Holmes and whomever, but that's his version of her. All his, and she warms to it with more than the neglected glass of wine at her elbow.
She decides that she ought to do it properly. For damage control and more. For all the iterations of the two of them that fit together and fight out in the open. That hurt and forgive and bring the truth to light. She goes back to the beginning to do it properly.
A/N: Thanks very much for reading and for your continuing support.
Rating: T
Summary: "Damage control. That how she'd spun it to herself, as she'd stood there on the curb. She'd figured it'd be wise to know the worst of it straight off, but it's been most of a day now, and she doesn't know. She hasn't read it."
A/N: Set during Inventing the Girl (2 x 03)
She hadn't meant to leave it on her desk. Truthfully, she hadn't even meant to have it. In the weeks he's been back, she's been on a cruise up the river they call denial, kind of hoping she'd be able to just ignore the whole damned thing.
But the penny had dropped courtesy of Rina-whoever the hell she might be when she's at home-and too many things had suddenly made sense: Everyday New Yorkers, famous for their indifference, rubber necking to make eye contact with her out on the street. The onslaught of incoming calls from numbers she recognizes only vaguely. Two call me voice mails from her dad in the same day. The little red number ticking up and up on the inbox for her non-work email.
The article. That stupid article.
She'd picked up a copy of the magazine at a newsstand in a rare five-minute interval without him dogging her heels. Scowled hard enough at him smirking up at her and the cover declaring him Cosmo's "Hottest Bachelor Ever!" that the poor kid covering the counter before the lunch rush had practically thrown the change at her before scurrying off to help someone less terrifying.
Damage control.
That how she'd spun it to herself, as she'd stood there on the curb. She'd figured it'd be wise to know the worst of it straight off, but it's been most of a day now, and she doesn't know. She hasn't read it. Absolutely cannot bring herself to even skim when she flips to the lede and finds him in that stupid suit, smiling wide with a pouting, bare-midriffed "cop" hanging off either shoulder.
She'd forgotten about it. Pushed it so far out of her mind that she'd just left it there, and of course now he sees it from halfway across the precinct. Derails her train of thought about the actual case in the rush to have his hands all over it.
Oh! You couldn't resist, could you? Pretty nice write-up, huh?
He's grinning like a kid, so entirely, innocently pleased you'd think he'd just come home to find she'd hung his second-grade artwork in a place of honor on the fridge.
She opens her mouth to cut him down. To lash out and say she hasn't read it and wouldn't bother if the stupid thing weren't the latest in a long line of ways he's ruining her life. She's on the verge of some devastating comeback, but he really is like a kid, eager and hopeful and maybe the tiniest bit less sure of himself than he'd like to let on. She doesn't have the heart. She pulls the punch and bluffs.
Yeah. If you like those sorts of fluff pieces.
It's not much of a gamble. Fluff. It's bound to be accurate, but his face falls anyway, and the whole thing is so stupid. Her fingers twitch. She moves to snatch the magazine from him. To shove it somewhere out of sight, like she should've done in the first place, but he holds on tight.
He flips to the picture of her, and she'd like to crawl into some conveniently deep, dark hole, because she'd somehow managed to forget about that part. He makes some comment she hardly hears. Sherlock Holmes and someone or other, but she can hardly hear over the blood pounding suddenly in her ears as she remembers how painful that day was. Having him there at all, and on top of that misery, the photo shoot itself. Being transported back to the summer before senior year.
The way it had been overwhelming all over again. The dissonance between the suddenly, undeniably attractive body in the mirror and the painfully awkward version that lingered in her own head. The then-and-now army of fierce, flamboyant men and women with brushes and sponge wedges and lenses tugging at her, murmuring in her ear and getting in her face.
She jerks herself out of the moment. Ancient memory and recent rage. A toxic mix she tries to claw her way up and out of, but it's too late. They're fighting in pointlessly hushed whispers.
But if you were upset, you would tell me, right?
He digs in, insisting. She digs in, evading.
It doesn't matter, because I'm not upset.
They're both bluffing after that. Carrying on as if they're ok, but neither of them is. Not really, and it all gets tangled up. His issues and hers, then-and-now issues circling around one another to create a fucked up kind of synergy.
She's blasé in the box with Will James. The man's particular brand of sleaze stirs up too many memories of ducking hands and dodging unwelcome overtures. It rattles her, and just when she has to dial back her own fury, Castle comes out swinging.
"You were wearing a lot of makeup today. It made you look like a slut."
James laughs. There's an infinite moment before the tap on the glass when she thinks Castle might go right over the table at him. When she can practically hear the impact of his fist slamming into the photographer's face, and she knows she'll sit back and watch. She knows that some back-then part of her will find satisfaction in it.
But the tap on the glass does come. He drops hard back into himself. Looks to her immediately, like he's embarrassed. Like he's ashamed or thinks he should be, at least.
He disappears for a few minutes between their stalker's alibi checking out and the time they have the husband in again. He walks it off or does whatever he does, and by the time he steps back into the box, has poker face on.
He's subdued with Travis. Almost gentle, where usually he'd be the one picking at the loose threads. At everything this guy doesn't seem to have known about his own wife.
It's productive. That's a surprise to them both if the gaze he flicks her way is anything to go by, but it gets them another name-Wyatt Monroe. She's not crazy about the role reversal, though. She doesn't like knowing it's his poker face without knowing why it's necessary. Why this case and these bottom-feeders when this is workaday stuff for the two of them.
If you were upset, you would tell me, right?
She wants to push the question right back at him, but she's too busy bluffing herself.
It's funny. The big reveal when it comes is funny.
That's "Mr. Castle" to you, missy.
It's hilarious, and he's seven different kinds of hypocrite, but it gets to her a little, too. The fact that he doesn't hesitate at all, though he has to know how much shit it's going to bring him. He marches them both right over to Rina, and the seamless slip into teenage girl speak reminds her he's a father stumbling his way through the teen years more or less alone with nothing like normal-then or now-in his own life to go on.
It gets to her, but there's the job to do. They go on doing this new, peculiar dance as things get uglier and uglier. She lashes out at Teddy Farrow in the middle of the bullpen. He roams Wyatt Monroe's apartment as brazenly as any crime scene in the early days and comes up with Jenna's pink pumps. She has his back and he has hers, though each has their own reasons for not looking the other in the eye when Sierra Goodwin cuts to the chase.
I figured she was gonna give Wyatt what he wanted. I just told her, "It's not the worst thing in the world, you know. You might even like it." . . . I did.
It's nothing new. A story without innocents, save Jenna herself, in the end, but it takes this strange configuration of the two of them to bring even that much truth to light. It takes him slipping the chain with the husband. It takes her sitting back and watching. It takes the two of them to sell the bluff, though he gives her the credit.
The fact is, it takes these precise versions of the two of them. It's anything but comforting.
They're both more than a little bruised by everything. By the fact that there's a new Jenna McBoyd stepping off a bus even now, and they're more open than either of them would usually be about loose ends and the injustice of it all.
A little too open, maybe. They end up fighting again. About the stupid article. About Nikki Heat and the book she hasn't even seen yet. About him and her. The two of them and fact and fiction.
Why didn't you ask?
Why didn't it occur to you?
You'll have it by tomorrow.
They end up kind of fighting, though for her part, it feels like light and air coming in. A little more room for them to be however they are with each other. A little more room for possibility, whether she likes it or not.
Good.
Good.
He gets the last word in. She lets him have it, though she's sorrier than she'd ever admit that he's going. That it's not one of those nights when he's inclined to turn back at the elevator and toss out a casual invitation for a burger or a drink.
She thinks about calling after him. Drawing out the role reversal a little while longer, but her palm lands on the glossy surface of the magazine still lying neglected at the corner of her desk.
She has second thoughts about diving into it. The article. The version of them that's already on newsstands. Diving back into the world she'd long ago decided was not for her. But that's her intention. The task she's set herself as she turns the locks on her apartment door and slides the security chain home.
She sits down with it, cross-legged on the most comfortable part of her couch with a glass of wine and the bottle within easy reach. She flips to the first page and braces herself. Shuts out the images and makes her eye move over the erratically placed blocks of text.
She hates the format, and not just here. She hates the cutesy, present-tense intro that has far more to do with the writer than the subject and the way it's interspersed with faux-exact quotes. She skips around at first. It's the best she can do when she remembers the stupid retro mic in her face.
But it is nice. Even she can't help seeing that in her grudging, piecemeal first approach. It's nice, and that's definitely down to him. There's not a single quote from her, and she's glad of it. But it goes beyond that. Far beyond in the obvious intent to focus on him. She's hardly even an afterthought to Amy, and she has to laugh at the impression she apparently didn't make on the perky young writer.
But even so, she's there. He's front and center, of course. In his own words, as well as Amy's, because he wouldn't be him otherwise. But she's there, woven in to virtually every reply. She's tucked between the lines and out in the open, and it's nice, but it hurts all over again. The pain of him suddenly back in her life and the rightness of it, too. Both truths layered together.
She's everywhere, from the first sentence of the cutesy introduction to the pithy quote that ends the piece, and she really does sound like a cross between Sherlock Holmes and whomever, but that's his version of her. All his, and she warms to it with more than the neglected glass of wine at her elbow.
She decides that she ought to do it properly. For damage control and more. For all the iterations of the two of them that fit together and fight out in the open. That hurt and forgive and bring the truth to light. She goes back to the beginning to do it properly.
- AS: Heat Wave kicks off with your alter ego Jameson Rook already well under Nikki Heat's skin. Why not start with the sensational true story? Wasn't your first case a copycat?
- RC: A copycat! Yes. Someone-definitely not me, of course-who staged his murders like scenes from some of my earlier books. [RC laughs and gives me roguish wink before turning thoughtful. ] It is . . . Meeting Detective Beckett was a sensational introduction to Nikki and her world. I tried that opening for Heat Wave, but the problem was . . . is . . . [He pauses again, taking in streams of New Yorkers rushing by, coffee in hand, yoga mats on their back. He picks up the thread of conversation with new resolve.] It's hard now-almost impossible-to remember what it was like not knowing her. That's what I wanted to capture by starting with her and Rook in medias res: Two people who each know a lot about the other instantly. I mean right from the start!
- AS: And Nikki doesn't like knowing she's been made . . .
- RC: [laughs] Oh, it pisses them both off. And scares the hell out of them. And they both know they've barely scratched the surface . . .
A/N: Thanks very much for reading and for your continuing support.