Coptus Interruptus 2
Coz anticipation is like a threadbare sheet. One poke and it’s holey.
Characters: Castle/Beckett, appearances of ensemble, a couple of crazy original characters
Genre: humour, smut, romance, ust, lewd, AU, a version of S4
Spoilers & Warnings: knowledge of 4:01 and 4:02. Overuse of em dash and ellipsis.
Rating: R
Summary: Castle’s confused at dawn and on his way to a meeting with Beckett and Gates when his cab is delayed.
A/N:For previous chapters, please click the author: rosie_spleen tag at the bottom.
coptus interruptus 2
He’s a ball of confuselment. A snuffly bug of super-energy in the wrapper of a man. A wobbly wabbit of yes, she wants me, no, she’s waiting. Maybe, it’ll be tonight as long as she was referring to me on the swings and not some other random relationship. He even feels like a pod of tightly packed uber-whales, swimming upstream against a flagging rudder that doesn’t know whether to be stiff, soft, flat, flimsy, pert, puckered or penetrable.
He doubts he’s ever been so confuzzled in his life.
Castle also appears unable to pronounce the word confused in his mind and has been working through the Captain Ahab reference for the entire first part of the trip into the precinct. Had Beckett been hinting at something to do with Moby Dick, with emphasis on the second word? Did Kate think he had magnificent gills, or does she want to check his under carriages in case of barnacles? Would he and Beckett take on the role of seafaring mutineers, throw Captain Ahab Gates overboard during the day, while making bodice-ripping, gale-force love as the sun sets over the watery horizon?
It’s more than likely he’s in the mental doldrums.
The day she’d told him about her wall, he’d been ready to mount something - perhaps a white steed, perhaps a bulldozer - and bludgeon through it with the force of a Josh shove in a hospital waiting area. But if Doctor Motorcycle boy couldn’t smash down the Beckett Barricade, then there’s no use Castle thinking about that particular analogy. He is already closer to crumbling the erection than Josh. Beckett’s wall, her brick erection, he means, rather than other things, the other erect things ... you know ... there’s that too, but he’s referring to her walls of erection ...
Oh, who is he kidding?
When she’d smiled at him in front of the cover of the Derrick Storm graphic novel and told him that she was ordering one to be supportive, he wanted to bullock against the Beckett Barricade with his own head. He’d decided against it when he weighed up that lapsing into unconsciousness was sure to affect his libido, and that a non-responsive Castle was worse than an unprotected turret.
He thinks so anyway.
And when she’d alluded to her breasts being naturally enhanced enough without the need for implants, he donned his best fraternal face, tried to imagine what a brother might do in that sort of situation, and attempted to laugh it off. What he really wanted to do was to laugh her bra off, but it was neither the time nor the place to poke a hole in her wares ... um, that’d be WALLS, Castle!
Walls?
Oh no! Now there might be more than one? At this rate, he’ll be seventy years old, won’t be able to remember what sixty-nine felt like - not with Beckett, anyway - and he’ll be ramming his old man fists into her walls and complaining of osteoporotic breaks to the fingers. If he gets further than her opened gates.
Urgh. Iron Gates. Captain PermaFrost.
But back to Beckett’s Barricades. The only female-made Everests on the planet, more multiple than the Great One of China, so numerous and massive, they can be seen from his property on the moon.
With the naked eye. With the naked anything, because if it’s Beckett and nudity, he’s there with bells on, if that’s what takes her fancy. Hmm, or a bow? Yes, perhaps a bow ...
The cab swerves as it takes a corner, and he stops himself asking the driver to slow down in case they hit one of the Beckett Barricades. Or even a wall! He doesn’t want to be involved in a car wreck on the familiar route to the precinct, especially after he’s been specifically requested for an audience with Captain Ahab. Castle has nearly died twice this morning already due to massive reactions threading through his newly-awakened body. He almost choked to death when Beckett has asked if he was ’up’ - um, without going into too much detail, there really was no question about that - and the second time, he’d nearly suffered from asphyxiation to the lower part of his body.
If he tried to explain that to his cab driver of the moment, Castle is sure the learned man would think that Lower Body Asphyxiation was a fictional condition. However, while researching unusual deaths for ‘Storm Approaching’, he’d unearthed the story of a man who had dropped dead the moment he stood from his bed due to the sudden rush of toxic blood.
Castle had PRESSED his own lower body so earnestly into his mattress while Kate had been making little subconscious sounds in his ear, pausing and drawing breath while on the phone, that when he finally got out of bed, his entire hormonally-loaded blood stream had surged south. He’d been dizzy. It was almost as if he had run around in circles at the bottom of her wall trying to find the exact way to come at it
Them.
Um, to penetrate them. The walls. The erect Barricades of Beckett.
He leans his head against the backseat of the cab. If there are now multiple walls on the inside, will there be a multiple payoff once the Beckett Barricades are breached? He certainly thinks so, but it’s going to take a handy man - a very dextrous and highly-skilled-of-finger man - to be able to reach right up, slip inside and start to stroke those very mountable-
‘Hey! Whoa, whoa, whoooooa What the hell?’
Castle is flung out of his erotic imaginings by the sharpest braking interaction he’s had since Kate threw him out of her bed during his dream last Friday night. Now that had been an amazing dream, but he can’t think about that while his face is implanted into the rear headrest of the front seat. It’s lucky it’s only his cheek pressed into the headrest, as his lower regions are so rigid, he doubts they would have survived much impact.
Snapped off comes to mind and it makes him shuffle back into his seat in a hurry.
‘Oh, man! Dude, I’m so, so sorry,’ says his cab driver, flicking at his dreadies and using his non-driving hand to worry his goatee between his thumb and forefinger. ‘But fuck me, brother, lookit THAT. Can you really blame me?’
Castle is about to utter something about inappropriate language and offer general paternal advice about running a comb through one’s hair and getting it cut once in a while, when his attention is drawn to exactly what’s happening outside. Wow, but they’re already within walking distance of the precinct, he’d been so involved in extracting every last bit of double entendre from Beckett’s Barricades that he hadn’t realized what’s going on out-
Oh, but that’s ... that’s ...
No, it’s not ... it’s not ... oh, but God, yes it is. It really is!
But ... but ... how can it be ...? How. Can. Thatbeeee ...
‘Brother? Do you see what I’m seeing?’
Castle most certainly is, but he has enough presence of mind (the part that’s not wading through the gutter nearest her stopped Harley) to close the mouth that’s been ajar and the eyes that have been drooling. How long have they been stopped, looking? Castle could check to see if the cab metre is still running and deduce from there, but he cannot glance away.
Why would he?
‘Man? Do you see that?’
Um, maybe to tell the cabbie to shut the hell up
‘Yes, yes, I see,’ he snaps, in two-minds about whether to congratulate Cab Driver Dreadlocks for his amazing taste in the female form, despite having hair that appears to be woven from muddied sackcloth. ‘I do see, brother. But I’ll have you know ... I’ll have you know ... that ... that ... that particular ... person ... woman ... oh, yeahhhhhhhh ...’
Ignoring the fact that Cabbie Dreadlocks has made exactly the same exclamation from the front seat and appears to be licking the inner window pane of his car, Castle tilts his head sideways to see just what Beckett is doing to her bike. What she’s doing to her bike while wearing jeans and leather. Um, what she’s doing riding her bike IN jeans and leather on the way to the precinct as dawn is breaking over the horizon and ...
Then the hair spills.
And it’s like a fucking fountain of life, immortality, fortune, fame and other stuff he just doesn’t really know what to do with ...
If Castle was writing prose about this particular scene, he mightn’t know where to start. Maybe with her stance, although that would totally denying that the hair ... oh, sweet jesu! the HAIR ... isn’t the main character in this ‘Ode to the Beauty of Beckett and her Barricades’.
Perhaps he would write about her position - one leg hoisted over the seat of her bike - and couple it with the riveting line of her body, as she perches low, almost horizontal above the front gas-tank. Or he could wax lyrical about her clenched fists, working against the non-functioning clutch, tensing against the handle grips, pumping in anticipation of firing up the machine. Fisting. Grasping. Working the holds?
If only.
But ultimately, he’d describe the point at which she disembarks - that butt, he hasn’t watched it so closely since the night in the club when she walked away from him to dance around Oz - and the hair. Castle would be able to write an entire chapter on Beckett’s dismount, and his fingers would hit the keyboard with the speed with which they want to zoom into her hair.
Because, yeah her hair? It’s what has Cab Driver Dreadlocks and himself ooooohing into a squirm as they steam up the inside of their taxi.
Just .... ewwwwww, but Beckett draws Castle back in before he can puff a word to The Dreadlocked or offer him money to get the cab outta there and stop watching the bike barricade fall.
Beckett removes her helmet like he’d expect her to emerge from beneath his duvet. She pushes up so incredibly slowly, sooooo slow-er-ly, it hurts Castle to anticipate. He’s never experienced physical pain from anticipation before, and it’s not just a general discomfort in the nookie region of his boxers. It pounds his head, lobs balls against the back of his eyelids, crisps his heart to a hot, soft pulp, and hardens the rest of his muscles into the shape of a beanpole.
No, that’s just within the nookie region, it seems.
The helmet is lifted like a black, waxy trophy, and then the hair? It waterfalls, again. And again. Oh, then some more. It descends in a tussle of browns and blondes, curls and muss and treacle-softness made for his fingers to lick. Or flick. Or suck. He doesn’t know and he really doesn’t care which alternative is given. All Castle wants to do is go and sit astride her seat, grin at her hair and run his hands through its softness, only to end up with palming that place at the base of her neck where he can see a hint of skin between her leather and ... and ... and ...
Hair.
As though she knows she has an audience - or even so that she can see more easily? - she stands fully, bends forward from the hips and whips her hair over into a full tousle. She’s so dishevelled, he feels the need to smooth everything, so rumpled, Castle wants to handle. It’s all so much about nature, nurture, visual, visceral ... hair ... porn, that Castle is simply overcome by this one-man eye-gratification scene.
Actually, two men. He has to pay this perverted Dready so he can chug his grotesque, sleazy cab to the other side of NYC and find his own hair-licious babe to watch. Beckett’s Barricades are all his. Castle’s not sharing a single one of her erections.
‘Dooooood? Who is this chick?’ mutters Cab Driver Dreadlocks, just as Detective Beckett gets wind of a stationary cab lurking suspiciously at the scene of the hair-shrine, and comes over with her badge peeking past her leather coat. ‘Oh, man! She’s a cop as well! Now that’s so damned hot! I’m dying here.’
‘And that’s quite enough out of you,’ says Castle, hurriedly reaching for his wallet and shunting a wad of money and a look of disdain towards his driver. He opens the door the very instant that Kate moves in on the cab, looking to ask someone to roll down a window so she can assess the situation. Seconds ago, that ‘situation’ might have involved him, with his mouth stuck to the window like a suckerfish adheres to his favourite piece of the goldfish bowl.
If a suckerfish is allowed in a goldfish bowl? But that’s neither here nor there, and only takes his morning mind back to Moby’s Dick, Captain Ahab and Sperm versus White whales when he should be thinking about the meeting with Captain Subja Gates.
‘Castle?’ says the hair-liscious one, throwing him that sexy surprised look. Castle shuts the door on Dreadlock cabbie and feels the growl of the dirty motor as the vehicle drives away with the grunge of webbed locks flapping behind.
‘Kate!’ he says with a smile and a spring to his step, and his boxers. ‘Thought it was you, but couldn’t be sure, being on your ...’ he gulps, as if by saying it, he might have a heart attack. ‘Bike, and all ... and the totally unexpected leather, well, what you’re wearing ... the leather, and ....’
Castle trails off when he sees something in Beckett’s face that spanks of bemusement ... um ... if ‘bemusement’ is a hot enough word for a grin that is equal-parts delighted, teasing, romantic, captivated. God, for a man who could read this woman’s backstory within a week of knowing her, he’s certainly become a less perceptive study. Maybe he’s blinded by all the seafaring phone talk from earlier.
She steps towards him, helmet in hand and his knees go slightly askew when he imagines his very own helmet in hand. Hers.
‘I decided to ride in today, Castle. Wanted to roar up to the meeting with Deli Gates and do some burnouts on police property.’ She dips her head the instant he looks at her mouth. She’s close enough to him that only one very small helmet would fit between them. Luckily, her motorcycle one is at her side.
‘You ... rode?’
‘Ah, yes!’ She knows his knees are weak, he’s sure, but she continues on as if the notion of ‘riding’ couldn’t be interpreted sexually. 'But the bike cut out for some reason. I was having trouble starting it when you came along, and spent ... what, an hour in the back of that cab with that guy?’
He laughs. To cover his tracks, to buy him time. To extend their scoreboards of secrets and lies to 2-1 in his favour, because he knows. He’s always known that she knows (and perhaps she knows he knows that she knows?) and today he is going to remedy everything. By the time the sun dips low over the Harley chassis, she’ll be owning her remembrance of the cemetery declaration, be hot in his palm, be nubile in his noobs ...
‘We were disagreeing over the fare.’
‘Really?’ she quips, turning back to her bike and laying her hands all over the leather of the seat as though feeling for a distention it just doesn’t have. ‘I thought you were going to offer a girl a ride, take pity on a broken-down, mountless biker. Chick.’
‘I-I- um ... I thought you’d-’
‘Did you think I’d rather walk than ride, Castle?’ she says, over her shoulder as she slinks the lengthiest leg in the world over that freakishly lucky seat with no distention. There’s only one palpable thing alive at this dawn, at this very moment, and it’s nowhere near her seat. Unfortunately. ‘Riding is so much better than walking. Than anything, really, except for the best ever ... for the best ... ever ... ohhhhh ...’
Damnit Beckett! Not only did she have him at ‘mountless’, she also cut off the end of her description with the roar of a sick engine wanting to ride onwards. Upwards. Inwards, and as she makes to reapply her helmet as some women would their lipstick, Castle wants nothing more than to write this scene with a distended suckerfish piece of her hair.
Dipped in ink.
A leather-clad hand reaches out from within the fumes and the dust of dawn to pull him towards the grunt of the bike, and he steps into the space as readily as Dick stepped into the magic land of the Faraway Tree trunk.
‘Get on, Rick. The cops won’t care you don’t have a helmet.’
Castle would laugh or conjure crass thing in his mind if he wasn’t so aroused by riding behind Beckett in leather and (quite possibly) lace with only her hips to hold on to and the inside of his thighs pressing into her posterior Barricade.
‘Let’s show Gates what we can do on a bike!’ she says.
As they pull away from the spot on the sidewalk, Castle suddenly loves being one wobbly ball of confuselment.
Characters: Castle/Beckett, appearances of ensemble, a couple of crazy original characters
Genre: humour, smut, romance, ust, lewd, AU, a version of S4
Spoilers & Warnings: knowledge of 4:01 and 4:02. Overuse of em dash and ellipsis.
Rating: R
Summary: Castle’s confused at dawn and on his way to a meeting with Beckett and Gates when his cab is delayed.
A/N:For previous chapters, please click the author: rosie_spleen tag at the bottom.
coptus interruptus 2
He’s a ball of confuselment. A snuffly bug of super-energy in the wrapper of a man. A wobbly wabbit of yes, she wants me, no, she’s waiting. Maybe, it’ll be tonight as long as she was referring to me on the swings and not some other random relationship. He even feels like a pod of tightly packed uber-whales, swimming upstream against a flagging rudder that doesn’t know whether to be stiff, soft, flat, flimsy, pert, puckered or penetrable.
He doubts he’s ever been so confuzzled in his life.
Castle also appears unable to pronounce the word confused in his mind and has been working through the Captain Ahab reference for the entire first part of the trip into the precinct. Had Beckett been hinting at something to do with Moby Dick, with emphasis on the second word? Did Kate think he had magnificent gills, or does she want to check his under carriages in case of barnacles? Would he and Beckett take on the role of seafaring mutineers, throw Captain Ahab Gates overboard during the day, while making bodice-ripping, gale-force love as the sun sets over the watery horizon?
It’s more than likely he’s in the mental doldrums.
The day she’d told him about her wall, he’d been ready to mount something - perhaps a white steed, perhaps a bulldozer - and bludgeon through it with the force of a Josh shove in a hospital waiting area. But if Doctor Motorcycle boy couldn’t smash down the Beckett Barricade, then there’s no use Castle thinking about that particular analogy. He is already closer to crumbling the erection than Josh. Beckett’s wall, her brick erection, he means, rather than other things, the other erect things ... you know ... there’s that too, but he’s referring to her walls of erection ...
Oh, who is he kidding?
When she’d smiled at him in front of the cover of the Derrick Storm graphic novel and told him that she was ordering one to be supportive, he wanted to bullock against the Beckett Barricade with his own head. He’d decided against it when he weighed up that lapsing into unconsciousness was sure to affect his libido, and that a non-responsive Castle was worse than an unprotected turret.
He thinks so anyway.
And when she’d alluded to her breasts being naturally enhanced enough without the need for implants, he donned his best fraternal face, tried to imagine what a brother might do in that sort of situation, and attempted to laugh it off. What he really wanted to do was to laugh her bra off, but it was neither the time nor the place to poke a hole in her wares ... um, that’d be WALLS, Castle!
Walls?
Oh no! Now there might be more than one? At this rate, he’ll be seventy years old, won’t be able to remember what sixty-nine felt like - not with Beckett, anyway - and he’ll be ramming his old man fists into her walls and complaining of osteoporotic breaks to the fingers. If he gets further than her opened gates.
Urgh. Iron Gates. Captain PermaFrost.
But back to Beckett’s Barricades. The only female-made Everests on the planet, more multiple than the Great One of China, so numerous and massive, they can be seen from his property on the moon.
With the naked eye. With the naked anything, because if it’s Beckett and nudity, he’s there with bells on, if that’s what takes her fancy. Hmm, or a bow? Yes, perhaps a bow ...
The cab swerves as it takes a corner, and he stops himself asking the driver to slow down in case they hit one of the Beckett Barricades. Or even a wall! He doesn’t want to be involved in a car wreck on the familiar route to the precinct, especially after he’s been specifically requested for an audience with Captain Ahab. Castle has nearly died twice this morning already due to massive reactions threading through his newly-awakened body. He almost choked to death when Beckett has asked if he was ’up’ - um, without going into too much detail, there really was no question about that - and the second time, he’d nearly suffered from asphyxiation to the lower part of his body.
If he tried to explain that to his cab driver of the moment, Castle is sure the learned man would think that Lower Body Asphyxiation was a fictional condition. However, while researching unusual deaths for ‘Storm Approaching’, he’d unearthed the story of a man who had dropped dead the moment he stood from his bed due to the sudden rush of toxic blood.
Castle had PRESSED his own lower body so earnestly into his mattress while Kate had been making little subconscious sounds in his ear, pausing and drawing breath while on the phone, that when he finally got out of bed, his entire hormonally-loaded blood stream had surged south. He’d been dizzy. It was almost as if he had run around in circles at the bottom of her wall trying to find the exact way to come at it
Them.
Um, to penetrate them. The walls. The erect Barricades of Beckett.
He leans his head against the backseat of the cab. If there are now multiple walls on the inside, will there be a multiple payoff once the Beckett Barricades are breached? He certainly thinks so, but it’s going to take a handy man - a very dextrous and highly-skilled-of-finger man - to be able to reach right up, slip inside and start to stroke those very mountable-
‘Hey! Whoa, whoa, whoooooa What the hell?’
Castle is flung out of his erotic imaginings by the sharpest braking interaction he’s had since Kate threw him out of her bed during his dream last Friday night. Now that had been an amazing dream, but he can’t think about that while his face is implanted into the rear headrest of the front seat. It’s lucky it’s only his cheek pressed into the headrest, as his lower regions are so rigid, he doubts they would have survived much impact.
Snapped off comes to mind and it makes him shuffle back into his seat in a hurry.
‘Oh, man! Dude, I’m so, so sorry,’ says his cab driver, flicking at his dreadies and using his non-driving hand to worry his goatee between his thumb and forefinger. ‘But fuck me, brother, lookit THAT. Can you really blame me?’
Castle is about to utter something about inappropriate language and offer general paternal advice about running a comb through one’s hair and getting it cut once in a while, when his attention is drawn to exactly what’s happening outside. Wow, but they’re already within walking distance of the precinct, he’d been so involved in extracting every last bit of double entendre from Beckett’s Barricades that he hadn’t realized what’s going on out-
Oh, but that’s ... that’s ...
No, it’s not ... it’s not ... oh, but God, yes it is. It really is!
But ... but ... how can it be ...? How. Can. Thatbeeee ...
‘Brother? Do you see what I’m seeing?’
Castle most certainly is, but he has enough presence of mind (the part that’s not wading through the gutter nearest her stopped Harley) to close the mouth that’s been ajar and the eyes that have been drooling. How long have they been stopped, looking? Castle could check to see if the cab metre is still running and deduce from there, but he cannot glance away.
Why would he?
‘Man? Do you see that?’
Um, maybe to tell the cabbie to shut the hell up
‘Yes, yes, I see,’ he snaps, in two-minds about whether to congratulate Cab Driver Dreadlocks for his amazing taste in the female form, despite having hair that appears to be woven from muddied sackcloth. ‘I do see, brother. But I’ll have you know ... I’ll have you know ... that ... that ... that particular ... person ... woman ... oh, yeahhhhhhhh ...’
Ignoring the fact that Cabbie Dreadlocks has made exactly the same exclamation from the front seat and appears to be licking the inner window pane of his car, Castle tilts his head sideways to see just what Beckett is doing to her bike. What she’s doing to her bike while wearing jeans and leather. Um, what she’s doing riding her bike IN jeans and leather on the way to the precinct as dawn is breaking over the horizon and ...
Then the hair spills.
And it’s like a fucking fountain of life, immortality, fortune, fame and other stuff he just doesn’t really know what to do with ...
If Castle was writing prose about this particular scene, he mightn’t know where to start. Maybe with her stance, although that would totally denying that the hair ... oh, sweet jesu! the HAIR ... isn’t the main character in this ‘Ode to the Beauty of Beckett and her Barricades’.
Perhaps he would write about her position - one leg hoisted over the seat of her bike - and couple it with the riveting line of her body, as she perches low, almost horizontal above the front gas-tank. Or he could wax lyrical about her clenched fists, working against the non-functioning clutch, tensing against the handle grips, pumping in anticipation of firing up the machine. Fisting. Grasping. Working the holds?
If only.
But ultimately, he’d describe the point at which she disembarks - that butt, he hasn’t watched it so closely since the night in the club when she walked away from him to dance around Oz - and the hair. Castle would be able to write an entire chapter on Beckett’s dismount, and his fingers would hit the keyboard with the speed with which they want to zoom into her hair.
Because, yeah her hair? It’s what has Cab Driver Dreadlocks and himself ooooohing into a squirm as they steam up the inside of their taxi.
Just .... ewwwwww, but Beckett draws Castle back in before he can puff a word to The Dreadlocked or offer him money to get the cab outta there and stop watching the bike barricade fall.
Beckett removes her helmet like he’d expect her to emerge from beneath his duvet. She pushes up so incredibly slowly, sooooo slow-er-ly, it hurts Castle to anticipate. He’s never experienced physical pain from anticipation before, and it’s not just a general discomfort in the nookie region of his boxers. It pounds his head, lobs balls against the back of his eyelids, crisps his heart to a hot, soft pulp, and hardens the rest of his muscles into the shape of a beanpole.
No, that’s just within the nookie region, it seems.
The helmet is lifted like a black, waxy trophy, and then the hair? It waterfalls, again. And again. Oh, then some more. It descends in a tussle of browns and blondes, curls and muss and treacle-softness made for his fingers to lick. Or flick. Or suck. He doesn’t know and he really doesn’t care which alternative is given. All Castle wants to do is go and sit astride her seat, grin at her hair and run his hands through its softness, only to end up with palming that place at the base of her neck where he can see a hint of skin between her leather and ... and ... and ...
Hair.
As though she knows she has an audience - or even so that she can see more easily? - she stands fully, bends forward from the hips and whips her hair over into a full tousle. She’s so dishevelled, he feels the need to smooth everything, so rumpled, Castle wants to handle. It’s all so much about nature, nurture, visual, visceral ... hair ... porn, that Castle is simply overcome by this one-man eye-gratification scene.
Actually, two men. He has to pay this perverted Dready so he can chug his grotesque, sleazy cab to the other side of NYC and find his own hair-licious babe to watch. Beckett’s Barricades are all his. Castle’s not sharing a single one of her erections.
‘Dooooood? Who is this chick?’ mutters Cab Driver Dreadlocks, just as Detective Beckett gets wind of a stationary cab lurking suspiciously at the scene of the hair-shrine, and comes over with her badge peeking past her leather coat. ‘Oh, man! She’s a cop as well! Now that’s so damned hot! I’m dying here.’
‘And that’s quite enough out of you,’ says Castle, hurriedly reaching for his wallet and shunting a wad of money and a look of disdain towards his driver. He opens the door the very instant that Kate moves in on the cab, looking to ask someone to roll down a window so she can assess the situation. Seconds ago, that ‘situation’ might have involved him, with his mouth stuck to the window like a suckerfish adheres to his favourite piece of the goldfish bowl.
If a suckerfish is allowed in a goldfish bowl? But that’s neither here nor there, and only takes his morning mind back to Moby’s Dick, Captain Ahab and Sperm versus White whales when he should be thinking about the meeting with Captain Subja Gates.
‘Castle?’ says the hair-liscious one, throwing him that sexy surprised look. Castle shuts the door on Dreadlock cabbie and feels the growl of the dirty motor as the vehicle drives away with the grunge of webbed locks flapping behind.
‘Kate!’ he says with a smile and a spring to his step, and his boxers. ‘Thought it was you, but couldn’t be sure, being on your ...’ he gulps, as if by saying it, he might have a heart attack. ‘Bike, and all ... and the totally unexpected leather, well, what you’re wearing ... the leather, and ....’
Castle trails off when he sees something in Beckett’s face that spanks of bemusement ... um ... if ‘bemusement’ is a hot enough word for a grin that is equal-parts delighted, teasing, romantic, captivated. God, for a man who could read this woman’s backstory within a week of knowing her, he’s certainly become a less perceptive study. Maybe he’s blinded by all the seafaring phone talk from earlier.
She steps towards him, helmet in hand and his knees go slightly askew when he imagines his very own helmet in hand. Hers.
‘I decided to ride in today, Castle. Wanted to roar up to the meeting with Deli Gates and do some burnouts on police property.’ She dips her head the instant he looks at her mouth. She’s close enough to him that only one very small helmet would fit between them. Luckily, her motorcycle one is at her side.
‘You ... rode?’
‘Ah, yes!’ She knows his knees are weak, he’s sure, but she continues on as if the notion of ‘riding’ couldn’t be interpreted sexually. 'But the bike cut out for some reason. I was having trouble starting it when you came along, and spent ... what, an hour in the back of that cab with that guy?’
He laughs. To cover his tracks, to buy him time. To extend their scoreboards of secrets and lies to 2-1 in his favour, because he knows. He’s always known that she knows (and perhaps she knows he knows that she knows?) and today he is going to remedy everything. By the time the sun dips low over the Harley chassis, she’ll be owning her remembrance of the cemetery declaration, be hot in his palm, be nubile in his noobs ...
‘We were disagreeing over the fare.’
‘Really?’ she quips, turning back to her bike and laying her hands all over the leather of the seat as though feeling for a distention it just doesn’t have. ‘I thought you were going to offer a girl a ride, take pity on a broken-down, mountless biker. Chick.’
‘I-I- um ... I thought you’d-’
‘Did you think I’d rather walk than ride, Castle?’ she says, over her shoulder as she slinks the lengthiest leg in the world over that freakishly lucky seat with no distention. There’s only one palpable thing alive at this dawn, at this very moment, and it’s nowhere near her seat. Unfortunately. ‘Riding is so much better than walking. Than anything, really, except for the best ever ... for the best ... ever ... ohhhhh ...’
Damnit Beckett! Not only did she have him at ‘mountless’, she also cut off the end of her description with the roar of a sick engine wanting to ride onwards. Upwards. Inwards, and as she makes to reapply her helmet as some women would their lipstick, Castle wants nothing more than to write this scene with a distended suckerfish piece of her hair.
Dipped in ink.
A leather-clad hand reaches out from within the fumes and the dust of dawn to pull him towards the grunt of the bike, and he steps into the space as readily as Dick stepped into the magic land of the Faraway Tree trunk.
‘Get on, Rick. The cops won’t care you don’t have a helmet.’
Castle would laugh or conjure crass thing in his mind if he wasn’t so aroused by riding behind Beckett in leather and (quite possibly) lace with only her hips to hold on to and the inside of his thighs pressing into her posterior Barricade.
‘Let’s show Gates what we can do on a bike!’ she says.
As they pull away from the spot on the sidewalk, Castle suddenly loves being one wobbly ball of confuselment.