there should be stars (24/X)
Title: there should be stars (24/X)
Characters/Pairings: Castle/Beckett
Summary: Four years can make a world of difference. AU.
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Up to Season Four finale.
She crouches behind the kitchen counter, breathing steadily as she listens for the sound of feet. He’s creepily quiet when he needs to be. Last she heard, there was a battle between him and Alexis in the living room but everything has gone still and she has no idea where either of them are now.
Beckett makes the decision to move from the kitchen, holding her gun close to her chest but not so close that it bangs against the plastic vest. Castle is against the door to the balcony, hidden save for the light from behind silhouetting his figure. But he doesn’t seem to see her so she raises her gun, taking aim for his chest.
Her phone rings, loud in the otherwise silent apartment. She ducks back down behind the counter, hearing the shot of Castle’s gun in her direction as she digs for the phone in her pocket. It’s an unknown number but the area code puts the caller in New York.
“Beckett,” she answers, finger still on the trigger of the laser gun.
“This is John Raglan,” the man’s raspy voice answers. “I, uh, was the lead investigator on your mother’s homicide twelve years ago.”
She slides down the side of the counter, vest catching on one of the brass handles and gun clattering noisily to the ground. “I… I remember you, Detective Raglan,” she says even as Castle rounds the corner, his own gun dangling from his hand.
“Listen,” Raglan says. “I need to talk to you about your mother’s case. There’s something you don’t know. There’s a coffee shop at 4th and Main. Meet me there in an hour. Just you. No cops.” The man hangs up.
“Who’s Detective Raglan?” Castle asks, stripping off the laser tag vest.
“He was the investigator on my mom’s case. He said he knows something that I don’t.”
Castle helps her to her feet, catching her as she sways forward into his body. “You going to meet him?”
She pulls on the Velcro straps at her side, shrugging out of the vest. “It’s not like he gave me much choice in the matter. The least I can do is tell him that I don’t want anything to do with the case anymore.”
“But if he has information, information that could lead to your mother’s killer,” he says, taking the vest from her hands, “you should hear it, right?”
“Not if it pulls me back under. I’ve got too much to lose this time around,” she replies, her fingers brushing over the line of his jaw. “Just going to tell him to drop it.”
She is already taking off the t-shirt on the way toward the bedroom, tossing the shirt over the armchair from her apartment that had made its home in the room as she steps out of her leggings. She pulls on the pair of jeans and a thick white sweater before she realizes that he’s lacing up his shoes on the edge of the bed.
“What’re you doing?”
He takes down one of her jackets, holding it out to her. “Coming with you. You need backup and I heard him say no cops. I’m not a cop.”
“You’re not coming,” she says, snatching the jacket from him.
“You said together or not at all, Beckett. You can’t change the rules now.”
She glares. She doesn’t want him there, mixed up in everything, but he has a point. “Fine. Go tell Alexis where we’re going.”
He walks out into the living room, calling a truce to get his daughter out from hiding.
Just going to tell Raglan that they’re not interested. She can handle that.
But she needs the control that driving to the café brings and Castle understands. He doesn’t play with the radio. He chatters about the weather on the ride. He keeps his hands to himself until they’re right outside of the little coffee shop.
He grabs her hand, squeezing it as his thumb smoothing over hers gently. “You’ve got this,” he murmurs before he opens the door to the shop for her.
It takes one sweep of the place to locate the other detective. “He’s over there,” she says, leading the way to one of the window booths.
Castle slides into the booth first, staying close enough that when she gets in after him, her leg is pressed up against his. She’s thankful for the subtle support as she tugs her gloves off, meeting the older man’s eyes across the table.
“Lady, what part of ‘no cops’ didn’t you understand?” the man asks.
“He’s not a cop,” she says shortly.
Raglan turns to Castle, narrowing his eyes. “Who the hell are you, then?”
“He’s someone I trust,” Beckett answers, touching her fingers to Castle’s knee, hoping he understands that she needs to run this conversation.
A waitress comes over, asks if they want anything but only Raglan gets more coffee.
“Detective Raglan,” she says, pulling his eyes up from the steaming coffee in his ceramic mug. “I’m not interested in the information you have about my mother’s case. I’ve put it behind me.”
“I’m dying. Lymphoma. I’ve got six months, tops. I need to tell someone, unburden myself before I die,” he says. “I’ve hidden a lot of sins behind my badge, Detective. But your mother’s case… That one was the worst.”
“Why?” she bites out. “Because you wrote it off as random gang violence when you knew it wasn’t?”
“I did what I was told and I kept quiet,” he returns. “Because I was afraid. About a year ago, there was a hostage standoff in your precinct. You killed a hitman named Dick Coonan and it was a big deal in the papers. People noticed.”
“Who hired Coonan to kill my mom?” she asks, feeling Castle’s hand tighten on her thigh in warning.
Raglan shakes his head, leaning forward on the table. “You need some context here. This thing started about nineteen years ago, back before I ever knew who Johanna Beckett was. Nineteen years ago, I made a bad mistake and that started the dominoes falling. One of them was your mom. There was a -”
The ceramic mug in his hand shatters along with the glass of the window. Beckett’s hand goes to her side, pulling her weapon. But her first glance is to Castle, watching to make sure that his chest rises and falls with steady breaths before she looks out the broken window.
“Everyone, get down now!” she shouts into the coffee shop.
Castle slips from the booth to the ground next to her, pulling aside her jacket. “You’re hit, Beckett.”
“I’m fine,” she gasps, searching the neighboring building for the shooter. “It’s not my blood.”
He moves to check on Raglan as she fumbles for the radio to call in to Dispatch for back up and an ambulance. But she looks over at Castle and Raglan, breathing out his name as a question. All he does is shakes his head.
She takes a deep breath, depresses the button on the side of the radio, and cuts off the dispatchers calls for repetition. “One Lincoln Forty, this is now a homicide,” she sighs.
Careful to avoid the spreading blood, she slides down against the booth to the ground, radio and gun still loosely held in her hand. Her head tilts to the side, sees Raglan’s lifeless eyes staring straight ahead. This is how the case goes; find a lead and it fizzles out.
“Hey,” Castle says softly, dropping the blood-soaked napkins in his hand onto the ground. “Come on. I hear sirens.”
She shoves her gun back into the holster, clipping the radio onto her waistband. He helps her to her feet, leaving lines of blood on her hands. Many of the customers are crying, some are running out the front door in a panic. “Castle, I need to stay and secure the scene. You go clean up,” she says, giving him a gentle shove on the shoulder.
But he steps in front of her, hands on her arms, his eyes asking the questions.
Montgomery is coming through the door, eyes scanning the café and she brushes her fingers along his waist. “I’m fine. Go clean.”
The captain only glances at Raglan’s body behind her before he looks into her eyes. “How are you, Detective?”
“I’m good, sir,” she responds. “Listen, I -”
“Retired NYPD cop gunned down in front of one of my people,” he interrupts, moving them to the side when the medical examiner’s team edges in to get to the body. “I’m gonna have to do a damn press conference. Beckett, tell me you didn’t come down here without backup.”
“We were backing her,” shouts Ryan as he and Esposito duck under the yellow crime scene tape.
Esposito nods, pointing down the street. “We were just down the block.”
Montgomery looks thoroughly unconvinced as the boys head into the café to take witness statements. He turns back to Beckett, sighing. “What the hell am I going to do with you?”
“You let me work this case,” she says firmly even though she can feel the ground being sucked from beneath her feet.
“No,” he throws back. “You’re too close to it. It’s all over your face. You’re thinking, ‘what was Raglan gonna tell me before he died’ when you should be thinking of how you’re gonna catch the guy that killed him.”
She takes a deep breath of the cool January air, lets the sharp sting clear her lungs. “Sir, Raglan was killed because he was going to tell me something about my mother’s case. Nobody knows it better than I do.”
“But I know you,” Montgomery says. “You’re gonna want to pick up those scissors and run around the house with them.” She starts to roll her eyes but remembers who is in front of her and stuffs her hands in the pockets of her jacket. “I’m telling you, walk, don’t run. You go where the evidence leads, not the other way around. Do you read me?”
“Yes, sir,” she states. “Loud and clear.”
She can see Castle through the windows of the shop, wiping his hands on his jeans as he stands to the side, out of the way of the crime scene techs. When she reaches his side, she tries to smile. “You good?”
“Yeah,” he says, turning his hands over. “I think I got it all off my hands.”
“‘Out, damned spot, out,’” she tries to tease, taking one of his hands and wiping off some of the stray water. “It’s different when it happens right in front of you. When you’re close enough to watch the lights go out.”
“Beckett, you can’t investigate,” he murmurs, curling his fingers around hers.
She looks over his shoulder at Ryan and Esposito as they check the trajectory of the shot. “It’s not about my mom’s case. It’s a homicide now. It’s my job,” she insists.
“A homicide that is tangled up with your mother’s case. You wrap yourself up in Raglan’s homicide and it leads to another thread for your mother and before you know it, Kate, you’re dragged down again,” he hisses, keeping his voice as low as possible. “You said you have too much to lose this time. I do too. I’m not going to lose you to this case.”
“You won’t,” she says. “But you need to let me do my job, Castle.”
He catches her as she tries to pull away and check in with the team. “I get to tell you when to stop,” he says. Before she can open her mouth, he shakes his head. “No. If you get too far into the case, I get to pull you out. No questions from you. Got it?”
She wants to protest. She doesn’t need a babysitter. But she needs him. “Fine,” she sighs. And for a moment, she steps into his chest, turning her head so that her lips can skid over his neck. “It’s going to be okay.”
His arm loops around her shoulders, keeping her against him. “When I saw the blood on your shirt,” he whispers into her hair, “I thought you’d been shot.”
Beckett doesn’t need to look up to see the pain in his eyes because she can hear the subtle waver in his voice, the shake of his fingers at her arm. “I’m going to the Twelfth,” she says. “I’ll drop you off at the loft.”
“Not a chance. You’re stuck with me for the case.” He nudges her toward Ryan and Esposito. “Let’s go see where to start.”
She takes one last look at the scene, the marked-off pool of blood and the little evidence cones for the bits of Raglan’s coffee mug and Montgomery outside the coffee shop with reporters in front of him before she takes Castle’s hand and pulls him toward the exit.
Characters/Pairings: Castle/Beckett
Summary: Four years can make a world of difference. AU.
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Up to Season Four finale.
She crouches behind the kitchen counter, breathing steadily as she listens for the sound of feet. He’s creepily quiet when he needs to be. Last she heard, there was a battle between him and Alexis in the living room but everything has gone still and she has no idea where either of them are now.
Beckett makes the decision to move from the kitchen, holding her gun close to her chest but not so close that it bangs against the plastic vest. Castle is against the door to the balcony, hidden save for the light from behind silhouetting his figure. But he doesn’t seem to see her so she raises her gun, taking aim for his chest.
Her phone rings, loud in the otherwise silent apartment. She ducks back down behind the counter, hearing the shot of Castle’s gun in her direction as she digs for the phone in her pocket. It’s an unknown number but the area code puts the caller in New York.
“Beckett,” she answers, finger still on the trigger of the laser gun.
“This is John Raglan,” the man’s raspy voice answers. “I, uh, was the lead investigator on your mother’s homicide twelve years ago.”
She slides down the side of the counter, vest catching on one of the brass handles and gun clattering noisily to the ground. “I… I remember you, Detective Raglan,” she says even as Castle rounds the corner, his own gun dangling from his hand.
“Listen,” Raglan says. “I need to talk to you about your mother’s case. There’s something you don’t know. There’s a coffee shop at 4th and Main. Meet me there in an hour. Just you. No cops.” The man hangs up.
“Who’s Detective Raglan?” Castle asks, stripping off the laser tag vest.
“He was the investigator on my mom’s case. He said he knows something that I don’t.”
Castle helps her to her feet, catching her as she sways forward into his body. “You going to meet him?”
She pulls on the Velcro straps at her side, shrugging out of the vest. “It’s not like he gave me much choice in the matter. The least I can do is tell him that I don’t want anything to do with the case anymore.”
“But if he has information, information that could lead to your mother’s killer,” he says, taking the vest from her hands, “you should hear it, right?”
“Not if it pulls me back under. I’ve got too much to lose this time around,” she replies, her fingers brushing over the line of his jaw. “Just going to tell him to drop it.”
She is already taking off the t-shirt on the way toward the bedroom, tossing the shirt over the armchair from her apartment that had made its home in the room as she steps out of her leggings. She pulls on the pair of jeans and a thick white sweater before she realizes that he’s lacing up his shoes on the edge of the bed.
“What’re you doing?”
He takes down one of her jackets, holding it out to her. “Coming with you. You need backup and I heard him say no cops. I’m not a cop.”
“You’re not coming,” she says, snatching the jacket from him.
“You said together or not at all, Beckett. You can’t change the rules now.”
She glares. She doesn’t want him there, mixed up in everything, but he has a point. “Fine. Go tell Alexis where we’re going.”
He walks out into the living room, calling a truce to get his daughter out from hiding.
Just going to tell Raglan that they’re not interested. She can handle that.
But she needs the control that driving to the café brings and Castle understands. He doesn’t play with the radio. He chatters about the weather on the ride. He keeps his hands to himself until they’re right outside of the little coffee shop.
He grabs her hand, squeezing it as his thumb smoothing over hers gently. “You’ve got this,” he murmurs before he opens the door to the shop for her.
It takes one sweep of the place to locate the other detective. “He’s over there,” she says, leading the way to one of the window booths.
Castle slides into the booth first, staying close enough that when she gets in after him, her leg is pressed up against his. She’s thankful for the subtle support as she tugs her gloves off, meeting the older man’s eyes across the table.
“Lady, what part of ‘no cops’ didn’t you understand?” the man asks.
“He’s not a cop,” she says shortly.
Raglan turns to Castle, narrowing his eyes. “Who the hell are you, then?”
“He’s someone I trust,” Beckett answers, touching her fingers to Castle’s knee, hoping he understands that she needs to run this conversation.
A waitress comes over, asks if they want anything but only Raglan gets more coffee.
“Detective Raglan,” she says, pulling his eyes up from the steaming coffee in his ceramic mug. “I’m not interested in the information you have about my mother’s case. I’ve put it behind me.”
“I’m dying. Lymphoma. I’ve got six months, tops. I need to tell someone, unburden myself before I die,” he says. “I’ve hidden a lot of sins behind my badge, Detective. But your mother’s case… That one was the worst.”
“Why?” she bites out. “Because you wrote it off as random gang violence when you knew it wasn’t?”
“I did what I was told and I kept quiet,” he returns. “Because I was afraid. About a year ago, there was a hostage standoff in your precinct. You killed a hitman named Dick Coonan and it was a big deal in the papers. People noticed.”
“Who hired Coonan to kill my mom?” she asks, feeling Castle’s hand tighten on her thigh in warning.
Raglan shakes his head, leaning forward on the table. “You need some context here. This thing started about nineteen years ago, back before I ever knew who Johanna Beckett was. Nineteen years ago, I made a bad mistake and that started the dominoes falling. One of them was your mom. There was a -”
The ceramic mug in his hand shatters along with the glass of the window. Beckett’s hand goes to her side, pulling her weapon. But her first glance is to Castle, watching to make sure that his chest rises and falls with steady breaths before she looks out the broken window.
“Everyone, get down now!” she shouts into the coffee shop.
Castle slips from the booth to the ground next to her, pulling aside her jacket. “You’re hit, Beckett.”
“I’m fine,” she gasps, searching the neighboring building for the shooter. “It’s not my blood.”
He moves to check on Raglan as she fumbles for the radio to call in to Dispatch for back up and an ambulance. But she looks over at Castle and Raglan, breathing out his name as a question. All he does is shakes his head.
She takes a deep breath, depresses the button on the side of the radio, and cuts off the dispatchers calls for repetition. “One Lincoln Forty, this is now a homicide,” she sighs.
Careful to avoid the spreading blood, she slides down against the booth to the ground, radio and gun still loosely held in her hand. Her head tilts to the side, sees Raglan’s lifeless eyes staring straight ahead. This is how the case goes; find a lead and it fizzles out.
“Hey,” Castle says softly, dropping the blood-soaked napkins in his hand onto the ground. “Come on. I hear sirens.”
She shoves her gun back into the holster, clipping the radio onto her waistband. He helps her to her feet, leaving lines of blood on her hands. Many of the customers are crying, some are running out the front door in a panic. “Castle, I need to stay and secure the scene. You go clean up,” she says, giving him a gentle shove on the shoulder.
But he steps in front of her, hands on her arms, his eyes asking the questions.
Montgomery is coming through the door, eyes scanning the café and she brushes her fingers along his waist. “I’m fine. Go clean.”
The captain only glances at Raglan’s body behind her before he looks into her eyes. “How are you, Detective?”
“I’m good, sir,” she responds. “Listen, I -”
“Retired NYPD cop gunned down in front of one of my people,” he interrupts, moving them to the side when the medical examiner’s team edges in to get to the body. “I’m gonna have to do a damn press conference. Beckett, tell me you didn’t come down here without backup.”
“We were backing her,” shouts Ryan as he and Esposito duck under the yellow crime scene tape.
Esposito nods, pointing down the street. “We were just down the block.”
Montgomery looks thoroughly unconvinced as the boys head into the café to take witness statements. He turns back to Beckett, sighing. “What the hell am I going to do with you?”
“You let me work this case,” she says firmly even though she can feel the ground being sucked from beneath her feet.
“No,” he throws back. “You’re too close to it. It’s all over your face. You’re thinking, ‘what was Raglan gonna tell me before he died’ when you should be thinking of how you’re gonna catch the guy that killed him.”
She takes a deep breath of the cool January air, lets the sharp sting clear her lungs. “Sir, Raglan was killed because he was going to tell me something about my mother’s case. Nobody knows it better than I do.”
“But I know you,” Montgomery says. “You’re gonna want to pick up those scissors and run around the house with them.” She starts to roll her eyes but remembers who is in front of her and stuffs her hands in the pockets of her jacket. “I’m telling you, walk, don’t run. You go where the evidence leads, not the other way around. Do you read me?”
“Yes, sir,” she states. “Loud and clear.”
She can see Castle through the windows of the shop, wiping his hands on his jeans as he stands to the side, out of the way of the crime scene techs. When she reaches his side, she tries to smile. “You good?”
“Yeah,” he says, turning his hands over. “I think I got it all off my hands.”
“‘Out, damned spot, out,’” she tries to tease, taking one of his hands and wiping off some of the stray water. “It’s different when it happens right in front of you. When you’re close enough to watch the lights go out.”
“Beckett, you can’t investigate,” he murmurs, curling his fingers around hers.
She looks over his shoulder at Ryan and Esposito as they check the trajectory of the shot. “It’s not about my mom’s case. It’s a homicide now. It’s my job,” she insists.
“A homicide that is tangled up with your mother’s case. You wrap yourself up in Raglan’s homicide and it leads to another thread for your mother and before you know it, Kate, you’re dragged down again,” he hisses, keeping his voice as low as possible. “You said you have too much to lose this time. I do too. I’m not going to lose you to this case.”
“You won’t,” she says. “But you need to let me do my job, Castle.”
He catches her as she tries to pull away and check in with the team. “I get to tell you when to stop,” he says. Before she can open her mouth, he shakes his head. “No. If you get too far into the case, I get to pull you out. No questions from you. Got it?”
She wants to protest. She doesn’t need a babysitter. But she needs him. “Fine,” she sighs. And for a moment, she steps into his chest, turning her head so that her lips can skid over his neck. “It’s going to be okay.”
His arm loops around her shoulders, keeping her against him. “When I saw the blood on your shirt,” he whispers into her hair, “I thought you’d been shot.”
Beckett doesn’t need to look up to see the pain in his eyes because she can hear the subtle waver in his voice, the shake of his fingers at her arm. “I’m going to the Twelfth,” she says. “I’ll drop you off at the loft.”
“Not a chance. You’re stuck with me for the case.” He nudges her toward Ryan and Esposito. “Let’s go see where to start.”
She takes one last look at the scene, the marked-off pool of blood and the little evidence cones for the bits of Raglan’s coffee mug and Montgomery outside the coffee shop with reporters in front of him before she takes Castle’s hand and pulls him toward the exit.