milliways_bar | (no subject)

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A man sits at the bar, his dress shoes tucked under the beam of the stool he's currently perched upon. He's got a hell of a shiner and half a mind to believe the rumours now that he's got proof: lefties can throw a punch, and then can do it hard. His black bow tie is undone, lying limply around his neck. He's in deep discussion with Bar:

"No, that thing Hemingway said about drinking. You know what I'm talking about. 'Something something sober, you'd know better if you kept your mouth shut.' Come on, you've gotta' know this --" he leans forward, half imploring.

Bar produces a dry vodka martini and a copy of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.

Rick Castle takes a sip of the martini and uses the Bartlett's as a coaster. "Succinct," he says, "Hemingway would have liked that."

[ short, declarative tiny tag : rick castle ; kate beckett ]

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"At least you can hide out here for a little while until your bidder comes to collect," Beckett teases, picking up her glass but not taking another sip just yet, letting the previous one sink in. There'd been a moment where she had been tempted to bid just to see the look on his face, but the complete shock and horror as Castle's mother took the stage were the only things she'd needed to glimpse.

She puts the glass down and starts to remove her earrings, brow furrowing slightly.

"Yeah," he says, sullen, swirling the pouch of ice around on the top of the bar and watching the water tracks it leaves behind. He leans heavily on his arm and glances sidelong at her.

"Maybe you should let me have a gun," he says, "what if she wants to teach me tantric pilates?"

"For the last time," Beckett says, even though she is perfectly aware that it isn't, nor will it ever be the last time she has to say this to him, "you are not getting a gun. Honestly, look at you. I don't even what to think about what would've happened if you'd had a gun to throw into the mix."

"Didn't see you do any better," he points out. "Maybe the government should start looking into car door control laws."

"That's beside the point," Beckett protests. "I'm not putting a gun in your hands. End of discussion."

She punctuates her sentence by finishing the rest of her drink.

Hey, you can't fault him for wanting to jump back into the loop of and old, cyclical argument. He'll leave it for now. Besides, he's more interested in the way she gulped that drink. If she had been a marathon runner, she may as well have just thrown it into her own face. He scoops the olive out of his own glass with a pinkie.

"Bob and I are getting together for cards later this week." He says it casually, though he's aware that he's name dropping. "I could cut you in if you promise to hold your end up."

His words take a little longer to reach her ears after he utters them. She blames it on the alcohol's quick effect, because Bar apparently seems to make her drinks somewhat stronger than most places.

"You want me to play cards with you and the mayor," Beckett says, dead-pan. "In exchange for giving you a gun? That's insane."

"Nuh-uh. Gun's an accessory at this point. It's a fifty dollar buy-in. What I'm talking about now is straight cards. Me, you, the mayor, the DA, a couple of high ranking federal judges. You get in there --" he aims his finger at her, like he's siting down the barrel of a gun "-- you could get those new Kevlar vests your department so desperately need."

"Subject myself to a few hours of cards in exchange for vests?" She frowns in thought. "You're cutting a deal for what, exactly? That can't be all there is to it. There's something in it for you, too, otherwise you wouldn't have extended the invitation."

Pausing, Beckett nudges her nearly empty glass to the side.

"Besides, I think the mayor knows enough details about me already."

Castle looks affronted by the suggestion that he's been playing dress-up and braiding the mayor's hair in his off-time. "I didn't tell him anything that wasn't entirely factual," he rebuts. "Just that you were one heck of a cop, that your department needed more funding that it was getting, and that you would look absolutely dynamite in a Kevlar vest that, you know, protected your internal organs like it was supposed to."

He pops a ripe olive between his lips and offers her a congenial smile.

Another brief internal debate, and Beckett finally acquiesces with a jerk of her head.

"Alright, I'm in. But I'm still not convinced there isn't some catch attached to this."

He shakes his head. "No catch, no strings. Just cards. You can handle a friendly card game, right, detective?"

"I can handle whatever you can handle," Beckett says challengingly.

He raises an eyebrow. Now that's the Kate Beckett he knows and aspires to build a book series on the back of. He finds that he's more positively endeared to her when she's in a good mood, like she is now. Dour Beckett makes him think. Pissy Beckett makes him work. Just-collared-a-perp-while-wearing-a-red-dress Beckett is infinitely easier to get along with.

"Except for the dancing," he points out, if only to tease her. "You were pretty wooden back there. The force doesn't offer free ballroom dancing lessons along with firearm certification?"

As much as she loathes to admit it, she can be difficult to communicate with when she's in one of her moods, and most of the time, she'd rather be firing off a gun at an unmoving target than actually making an attempt to talk out her feelings. It's the way she's wired, she makes no move to apologize for it. But something tells her that Castle doesn't mind that quirk in her.

"It was an opportunity to scope out a subject, not a ballroom dancing competition," she answers. "I wasn't aware I was being judged."

"What, are you kidding me? The women in that room were rating you on technique, presentation, creativity and relative threat level. Trust me, you were being judged." He tames his smirk, turning it into a halfway smile. "Don't worry. I'll give you some pointers before the next big charity ball."

"The next charity ball," Beckett echoes, already sounding skeptical. "As much as I enjoyed watching you get bid on like a slab of meat, I think that's going to be the last ball I go to for a long, long time."

"So what do you do when you're not enforcing the force?" he asks.

"I do lots of things," Beckett explains. "I read. I go to the shooting range. I... go out every now and then."

Ah. The 'every now and then' was the clincher. Castle saw Beckett as the kind of person who was fully committed to her work -- even when she wasn't at work. He guessed that she'd spent more of her fair share of weekends at her desk at the precinct, filling out paperwork or shuffling through cold cases. She was obsessed with order, a slave to the law, and a patron of old memories she couldn't escape.

Hey, I should write that down.

"And do what?" he asks, rescuing a flock of orphan olives from the tray that Bar has been so kind to provide.

It's difficult for her to lie about having multiple hobbies outside work when most of her weekends actually consist of working. Aside from that, Castle's figured out how to read her in an almost frighteningly accurate manner. It's difficult to pull any kind of wool over his eyes.

"I have a drink or two with Lanie when our schedules match up," Beckett answers.

"The M.E.?" he asks. "I like her, she's nice. Pretty hardboiled. I mean, how do you get into a career like that, anyway? You're going around the Career Day fair in high school and all of a sudden," he sits back, as if stuck by an epiphany, "I think I'll visit the medical examiner's booth. They sure do have the keenest candy."

He levels his hand. "But, you know, to each his own. You could say a lot about people who go into law enforcement." He claims his drink and holds the trim of the glass against his lips, tucking his eyebrows up toward his hairline, "or the entertainment industry."

"That's not exactly how it works," Beckett counters, before she recognizes the fact that he's pulling her leg. Outside of work, Lanie's the closest thing she has to a friend, and she doesn't admit to having many friends to begin with. It's just the way she is.

"Entertainment industry. That's what you call it these days?"

"I provide a service," he says seriously, setting down his glass.

"In return for money. What an interesting comparison," Beckett answers, smirking.