milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Beckett is running.

To work out, mostly, but also to clear her head.

(There's a lot in there that needs clearing.)

She's outside, dressed just enough to stay warm and trying to make her way back to the bar before it gets too dark and she's forced to dodge demon bunnies or whatever else lurks out in the shadows. By the time she returns, she's made good time, and stops to do a few finishing stretches, hoisting her foot up onto the railing and trying to touch her nose to her leg.

She's got headphones in, so she may not hear you if you approach quietly. And we don't advise sneaking up on her, either.

[ tiny tag: rick castle ]

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She cups a handful of water in her palm and promptly deposits it over his head.

"I think you need to learn a couple of things about cooling off."

"C'mon, Beckett. Don't tell me you never had a summer fling." He scrubs at his face, succeeding in screwing more salt into his eyes. 'Has to dunk his head to clear them.

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

The details of any summer romances she may or may not have had are not going to be shared so easily.

"I would, actually." Getting personal stories out of Beckett is like trying to get blood from a stone. Castle has discovered that she is only slightly more opaque than everybody else he knows. He pulls water toward his chest with his arms, righting his balance.

"Although, there are times when I'm willing to believe that you were born with a badge and a gun."

"I'm sure anything you could come up with for Nikki Heat would be much more scandalous than any stories I'd have to offer."

She lets the movement of the water carry her towards him in a slow sway before fanning her arms out when she gets too close.

"Probably," he admits, tilting his head back to catch the last rays of the sun as they slide lazily toward the waterline. "Right now I'm considering the possibility that Nikki Heat spent some time in the Far East, learning martial arts from a rickety old Chinese guy named Dong Long." That wide, line-feeding grin. He shakes his head.

"Come on. Truth is stranger than fiction anyway. And this is strictly off the record. I'm not in writer mode, I promise."

"You really think anyone would buy that?" she asks, tilting her head with a following laugh and then leaning back, letting her upper half float on the ocean's surface.

"There may have been one or two purely innocent kisses shared behind cabins. Nothing too scandalous."

Now, Castle knows a thing or two about summer camp -- even when it's performing arts camp -- and he's pretty sure that "purely innocent" doesn't begin to enter into the roster of scheduled activities. There's plenty more there that Kate Beckett's being cryptic about, and he's all right with that. She gives him just enough to work with and his imagination takes it from there.

"I can't see you doing arts and crafts," he admits, easing off the behind-the-cabins kissing for now. "Pinecone owls and birdhouses. You were probably all about archery and canoeing, right?"

"And hiking and swimming, plus everything else they tell you not to do, like sneak out late and prank the boys' cabin."

In fact, she was usually the ringleader behind most of their stealth operations, a fact Castle can probably deduce all on his own by the way her mouth curves into a subtle smirk.

The light's getting tawny, but there's light enough to see the sly, nostalgic smirk on Beckett's face. He grins and kicks off the bottom, shoulders sending a short wall of water behind him. "Well, when someone puts laxative in Epositio's coffee, I'll know where to point the finger of blame."

"Oh, you don't want to tangle with me, Castle."

There's as much playfulness in her words as there is the promise of a threat.

"What? You gonna' short-sheet my bed? Replace the ribbon in my typewriter with a Fruit Roll-Up?" He sends a small wall of water toward her, his grin full and cheeky.

"What kind of amateur do you take me for?"

She clucks her tongue against her teeth and then responds with a splash of her own.

This can only escalate.

Castle wipes the salt water out of his eyes with the side of his arm and comes at her, the both of them circling like two leviathans of Greek mythology, ready to engage in theological combat.

"I'm a Pisces," he says. "I've got an advantage in water."

"You can barely stand as it is. One little nudge and you'd be done."

She'd be hovering in anticipation if she wasn't already drifting through the water, bobbing up and down, waiting for the prime striking opportunity.

"Nudge?" he spits, affecting affrontedness. "Done? Look, I might spend most of my days lazing around my apartment with the New York Times book review, but you remember all those times you told me to stay in the car and I didn't? I think we can both agree that I'm pretty athletic. You haven't seen me in water. I'm like a swordfish. A very handsome, erudite swordfish."

"You didn't stay in the car because you wanted the story, even if it meant getting shot at or losing us a suspect." Beckett's eyebrow twitches as if pulled by an invisible string.

"Athletic? Really?"

"Erudite swordfish," he emphasizes, swinging toward her with both arms open, ready to pluck her off the sandbar.

"You've definitely got the nose for it," she counters, bracing herself for his counterattack.

That's an insult and it stings Castle to the core, upsetting him enough that he drops his arms (and his jaw) for a couple of seconds, opening himself up for a Beckett-style offense.

"Oh, come on. Your nose is perfectly normal-shaped."

She even pokes the end of it, gently, with a dripping finger and an accompanying grin.

He scrubs at the end of the offending nose, wrinkling his upper lip. "You're just trying to make me feel better." Which is characteristically unlike Beckett, which charms Castle -- which makes him able to push her shoulders underwater without too much guilt attached.

He doesn't get her completely underwater, but he still comes fairly close - the surprise of it is really what gets her, and she surfaces with a charged look in her eyes.

"Oh, Castle, you don't even know what you've gotten yourself into."

She uses her footing in the sand to spring forward, hands landing on his shoulders to bear her weight and (hopefully) knock him back under the water.

She's light but effective and he goes under, bubbling the entire way. 'Gets to the surface looking like a drowned penthouse rat, his hands maneuvering from her shoulders to her ribcage. He pulls her backward with him, a good three feet, his grin wide and salt-rimmed.

"Is that the best you've got?"

She's too busy laughing to answer, and even if he does drag her under with him, the look on his face now was totally worth it.

"Hold on. I'm taking a mental picture."