#csatle

[allthingseurope]

Burg Hochosterwitz, Austria (by Stefan)

[zombilenium]

Killeen Castle, County Meath, Ireland,

Image credit: Toby Keel for Country Life / Future

[pollylynn]

Title: Dumb Show WC: 900

“I don't know where she gets it from. Honestly I don’t.” 

—Martha Rodgers, A Rose for Everafter (2 x 12)

He is not at all a fan of Kate Beckett’s Richard Castle impersonation. He’s not a fan of her callous, but cutting, outside-her-head insights, or her little game with the chair and full conjugation of the verb to yank. He does not appreciate in the leastthe impromptu “. . . in the style of Richard Castle” tale she weaves, because he’s not doing his usual weaving. So, no: Not. A. Fan. 

He would like to broadcast this news far and wide. He would like the official record to mark him down as Not a Fan, but he does no broadcasting all. He can hear his mother already. He can hear Alexis, the boys, Montgomery, and—heaven forfend—Lanie. He can hear every last one of them in crystal clear surround sound, and he has no interest in discussing the fairness—or lack thereof—of his not-a-fan-ness. So he says nothing. He does not broadcast. He simply stews.  

And he makes bad decision after bad decision. Except is he really making them, or is she—with her truly terrible Richard Castle impersonation—forcing him into them through some cosmic doppelgänger trickery or something? She’s probably forcing him, which is good news, because his bad decisions have been pretty bad. 

In no particular order, kissing Kyra was a bad decision. It was, in fact, the worst kind of bad decision, because it seemed like a good one, every step of the way. Meet Kyra. In no way complicate or compromise the case. Prove the piss-poor Richard Castle impersonator wrong. Prove that talentless—and by the way, mean—hack super-duper wrong by upping the ante with a romantic location. Tell himself, every step of the way, that this was all about Kyra—helping her, supporting her, protecting her from the dark forces of Greg, the almost certain murderer. There’s not a single moment in which the plan seems anything but foolproof until the kiss is happening. Until he’s aching for this woman, except not the one in his arms, not at this moment, and not this Richard Castle. He’s aching for a woman who isn’t here on behalf of a man who isn’t anywhere and it’s her fault. Beckett’s. Kate-Beckett-as-Richard-Castle’s. 

In no particular order, going for the jugular with Greg was a bad decision. That’s her fault though some kind of telepathic trickery. On the surface he had seen immediately that he was going to have to be extra Richard Castle, because she had suddenly shifted into an even more extreme than usual anti-Richard Castle mode. She’d taken that complete just-enough-play rich boy—that complete tool at his word, so what was he supposed to do? Not take the bait. Greg and the jugular were some kind of double bad decision and entirely the result of some kind of head fake on her part. She’d hung back in the interview, kicked him out, and then given him the full-court press. That’s not what Richard Castle would say . . .

How the hell would she know what he would or would not say? She does an impression of him so bad that it’s driving him into . . . this. 

He’s wasting his time on an unworthy adversary across the interrogation table. He is missing the obvious and compelling story about the Cheating Groom and the Vengeful Bride. (But only because she’s clearly stolen it right out of his head with her dark, terrible impression magic.). He is kissing the woman who has been . . . a totem for nearly twenty years. She has been the impossible dream and the ridiculous standard. She has been the thing protecting him from real feeling, real commitment, real everything, and he has just kissed her out of existence. 

He is . . . snapping at her in an elevator. Beckett, not Kyra. Beckett-as-Castle. It’s another in-no-particular-order bad decision. He is freezing her out and thinking—unfairly, unkindly—that all he’s doing is his best Kate Beckett impression, because turnabout is fair play. He’s unconvinced. After all is said and done with Kyra and Greg and the failed eleventh hour seduction, he is not convinced that he’s treated her fairly at any point in this case. 

The kiss, he knows, will linger, then fade. It’s already something he has to concentrate on if he wants to call up that shiver. Going after Greg with such vicious gusto—he’ll roll his eyes at himself over that. 

But snapping at her, freezing her out when she was only asking, that’s all, sticks with him. She was just asking.

He picks up the phone late that night. It’s unlikely to endear him to her, but he picks up the phone anyway. 

“It was a bad break-up,” he says before she can even form the first syllable of a groggy Hello? “And it was a nonevent. Which made it worse” 

There’s a pause on the other end of the line. Everything in him is tense with the desire to fill the silence, but he’s contrite, so he waits it out. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, her voice halting and tentative. 

“No,” he says quickly. “ I don’t . . . I don’t have anything to say about it.” There’s another pause. He worries that she’ll rush to fill it. Or she’ll hang up. But she waits it out, too. “It was bad. That’s all there is to say. But can we just . . . talk?” 

“Yeah,” she says quickly. Maybe she’s contrite. “Yeah, Castle. We can talk.” 

A/N: They're turning into one another and it's only season 2, friends.

images via homeofthenutty

[skygirl5]

[witeksphotospoland]

Kraków, Poland - the castle Wawel seen from backyard.

[pollylynn]

Title: Doth Protest WC: 900

“It doesn’t matter, because I'm not upset.” —Kate Beckett, Inventing the Girl (2 x 03)

The idea that she would tell him—him of all people—if she were upset is positively laughable. But it doesn’t matter, because she's not upset. 

But if she were—if there anything at all were to be bothering her—she has plenty of people she could go to. Lanie, for example. She could hypothetically go to Lanie in any situation involving being upset. Except, of course, she is not upset, and if anyone were to infer that she was, they'd be mistaken. 

Lanie may actually be mistaken on this point at the moment. There was some definite side-eye coming from Lanie’s direction back at the crime scene, totally unjustified, by the way. Just because she wasn't in the mood for Cinderella jokes with a young woman dead on the ground. Just because she may have—only may have, mind you—snapped at him for providing accurate information, well, so what? Suddenly that’s side-eye worthy? 

But whatever. Even if Lanie is mistaken—even if she is needlessly on high alert at the moment—the fact of the matter is that Kate could and would go to her if she were upset. (Which she isn’t.) 

And there’s the boys, too. Of course they’re hors d’oeuvre–downing idiots who show up at Castle-level soirees under the thinnest of pretexts, salivating to know more about the jail-bait conquests of the man himself, but they are still solid go-tos in an annoying little brother sort of way. So there’s another two people way, way, way ahead of Castle in the line of people she’d go to in the event of upset-ness. 

The boys, individually and together, may also be laboring under some delusions regarding her current state of mind. It’s all silliness, but their sudden appearance at the launch may not be entirely about finger-sandwiches and swag bags. It may not even be entirely about Sierra Goodwin’s near nudes by Will James. They may be . . . pointlessly looking out for her in some ill-defined way, for some ill-defined reason? 

She’d like to blame Lanie and her side-eye, and it's always possible that the three of them, in their capacity as her first line of defense in case of upset, have been huddling up. But it’s also possible that they’ve imagined a certain acid in her tone as she initially briefed them on Rina of the Eyeliner Phone Number, when she took pains to make it absolutely clear that she’s barely out of training bras, and here and now as she gives them the low-down on the Big Baby Sitter Reveal. They have such vivid imaginations, those boys do, but there is—and has been—a complete normal amount of acid in her tone. Why would there be any more or less? It’s not like she is upset. 

When she publicly drags Teddy Farrow in the bullpen, it’s because Teddy Farrow deserves to be publicly dragged. When she allows herself to comment on Wyatt Monroe’s low-life nature after Sierra’s revelations, it’s because Wyatt Monroe is an actual low-life. None of her behavior and nothing she has said over the course of this case—up to and including something that may have constituted a slip indicating that she may or may not have seen Showgirls—means that she is fussed, distracted, off her game, or in any way upset. 

That is her stance on the issue (or non-issue) right up until the final interrogation of Travis McBoyd. He doubts her all the way into the room. He is literally on her heels,  doubting her, and she bears it with the patience of a saint—something an upset person would be very unlikely to do. She forbids him to speak, but that’s just solid police work, and does she or does she not roll with it when he pushes Travis just enough that the man from Ohio is agitated enough—upset enough, if you will—to start spilling? 

She gets her confession. She gets more than that. She eliminates the possibility that Travis McBoyd will recant, that he’ll claim he was coached, that he’ll lawyer up and try to worm his way out of the admission in the heat of the moment. She plays the recording that breaks him. 

And it is upsetting. 

Castle applauds her on her ballsy bluff, but she fends off the praise. She says out loud for all to hear that Travis McBoyd loved his wife and wouldn’t have wanted to relive her death. But “all” are not there. 

He is there and he reads between the lines. He knows she’s fixated on the fact that she’s just made the man relive something worse, and he knows her well enough not to try to ease that guilt. Not right now. 

He is there and he wants to know what other justice she’s managed to wring out of an unjust world. He assumes she’s managed it, and it’s something that he can enjoy the poetic justice of the end of the careers of Sierra Goodwin and Wyatt Monroe. It’s something. 

He is there when she finds herself taking hold of the conversation and—in the most glaring, obvious way possible—steering it toward the stupid book that the stupid Cosmo writer has already gotten to read. 

He is there when she needs someone to go to with her upsets, big and small, enormous and utterly silly. 

He is there and she wonders when that happened. 

A/N: Look, folks, she literally could not be less upset, okay?

images via homeofthenutty

[pollylynn]

Title: Privy Council WC: 1000 Episode: Meme is Murder (7 x 05)

Richard Castle 2.0 was little more than busy work from the start. The web-mercial paradoxically set in a brick-and-mortar bookstore, the way-too-old art student who’d signed on to collect footage for the making of the making of video, all the buzzwords about tapping in, logging on, and whatever other nonsense he’s been spouting—it has all been slapped together to fill the time, to fill the space of one month. 

Oh, it’s had some practical uses, too. He has made the right noises over the last few weeks. He has nodded at the appropriate time and mirrored the enthusiastic expressions of everyone in however many rooms he’s been. He has kept Gina off his back by feeding out just enough line at a time to make it look as though he cares—as though he is, at this point, at all engaged in how the books do. 

He is engaged in that on some level. Richard Castle 1.0, at least, is invested in how Raging Heat does, even if he truly would not flinch if someone dropped every last copy of Wild Storm into a volcano. Nikki needs to do well. Nikki needs to say yes. Nikki deserves his full attention and his best effort, but busy work has felt like all he’s had to offer to anyone.

And for all that this has been busy work, he’d found himself experiencing some blips of excitement—excitement, rather than the gnawing guilt or nerves taut to the point of snapping that have been his constant companions over the last few weeks—at the prospect of seeing his name, seeing Nikki’s name trending. He has imagined, with anticipation rather than dread, hitting refresh constantly and watching his views, his retweets, his mentions creeping up and up. Busy work or no, he’d been holding out hope for some kind of eleventh-hour reboot to come out of all this stupidity, just as the clock runs out on the month she’d asked for. He’d been holding out hope that he’d have something, however stupid, to show for himself.

But it’s not just that the entire idea of Richard Castle 2.0 stupid. It’s not something that’s simply inane and innocuous, this thing he’s let himself get roped into in the name of saving face, dodging wrathful bullets fired from the grassy knoll known as Black Pawn, killing time. 

The bodies of Abby Smith and Cam Magani make that clear. The fear behind the eyes of Notable German Nobody, Mary Fuchs, and the trauma that now stretches out infinitely before Oren and Kent Wilder definitely make that clear. The shadows that cling to Bill Garrett, the shadows closing in on her make it all too damned clear that nothing about this is innocuous. 

They’ve had this argument a hundred times before. She guards her privacy with ferocity. And she knows far too much about the sinister potential inherent in the social media he loves so much. But he does love it. He loves the drama and the thrill of the quick, cheap shot. He adores the way moments simply crash over the entirety of that hyperbolic, microscopic world only to be forgotten when the next puerile-to-the-point-of-outrageous thing comes along—he loves the Bourbon-Street-getting-hosed-down-at-dawn-on-a-Sunday feel of  it. 

He has loved it up to this point, but it’s possible he’s off it forever. It’s not the stupid web-mercial. It’s not that he’s an auto-tuned clown and a disembodied bouncing head. It’s not that his inability to pronounce his own name and his complete failure to grasp even the most basic concepts of physics that has him down with the virtual world for good. 

It’s what the virtual world has done to her. It’s what the anonymity and total lack of accountability she has long despised have ultimately demanded of her in the course of this case. The interrogation of Adam Lane hangs over her. The person she was forced to become to save the lives of two young men clings to her, and it is not at all lost on him that said young men, trauma or no, will go out tomorrow to ruin even more lives, and they’ll make a million dollars every minute or so while they do it. 

“It wasn’t you, Kate.” He’s had enough of watching her from the darkness of the office doorway as she sits with just the tips of her toes in the spill of light through the glass wall. 

“No?” She snorts softly. She doesn’t startle. She’s probably had enough of him watching, then, too. “Who was it then?” 

“A role.” He pauses a minute behind the overstuffed leather chair. He’d like to crowd in with her. He’d liked to wrap her up in his embrace, but this is not the moment. Stifling a grown, he lowers his stiff, sleep-deprived body to floor just behind the tips of her silvered toes. “A part you had to play.” 

“And where does that come from?” It’s somewhere between a retort and an earnest question. “Everything we say—everything we think to say in moments like that, everything we do. It’s all in there.” 

“In there.” His voice is leaden. He’s surprised that the two syllables don’t drop right through the floor and on to the heads of the neighbors below. “Where else would it come from?” 

“Castle—“ 

She follows where his mind has gone with ease. She’s followed him all the way back to Montreal, to wherever he picked up Dengue Fever. She sounds stricken. She reaches for him, to turn him to face her, but he snatches her hand from the air. He fixes his gaze on the glass wall, on the city beyond and suddenly they’re having this conversation about who he is, what he’s done, who she is, who she has, of necessity, been. 

The clock is running out on their month, and they’re having the conversation. 

A/N: Not even the one, true Ray can impart morphousness to this. 

images via homeofthenutty

[pollylynn]

Title: Dutch WC: 1000 Episode: An Embarrassment of Bitches (4 x 13)

To say he is not inclined to share would be an understatement. Oh, he is generous. He has no sense of proportion when it comes to showering others with things they want, things they need, things he thinks they’d like. He buys historic bars on a whim, after all. He keeps upgrading the break room cappuccino machine so that they’re never suffering the horrors of the last model’s coffee. But those not are his things. They are things he gives, not things he shares. He is not a sharer, except—as he is certain she’d rush in to add if she were privy to his inner monologue—in the oversharing sense.

He is famously not a sharer when it comes to his daughter. In addition to being what some would call overprotective (he, of course, would call it just protective enough), he is . . . greedy. He wants badly to be her go-to guy, and that has, on more than one occasion come right up against his all-encompassing love for her. He wants be her everything, but he also wants her to have everything—like a grandmother she confides in, a role model Beckett, in Lanie, and wacky uncles in Ryan and Esposito, though he’s not entirely sure of the value add there.

He wants her to have friends, even if they have absurd-to-the-point-of-tragic names, and even if the friendship is forged in the melodrama of being rejected by one school in all the universe. He wants all that and more for her. He just . . . also wants her all to himself and he never wants her to need anyone but him. Is that so unreasonable?

It might be unreasonable. It’s probably unreasonable. But what is he supposed to do? He’s felt this way all her life. He has never wanted to share her. Except that might not be precisely true. Actually, he knows full well that it’s not even imprecisely true. It’s a retcon, plain and simple.

He would have given anything to share her with Meredith. It’s been so long since he wrote the legend of his distaste—famed in song and story—for sharing his daughter with anyone that he can’t be sure if he ever harbored any fantasies that he’d be able to share her with Meredith in any meaningful way. But he knows that he’d have laid his ego on the altar and gladly set a torch to his need to be the center of his daughter’s universe, if it meant that she got to have a present, functional mother, too.

On the one hand, it’s a strange thing to be contemplating right now. The origin story of his parental greed doesn’t really need an exhaustive read. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense that it would be on his mind, given that he’s on the precipice of having to share her with God knows who as she leaves home for the first time.

But it’s not really about that. It’s not about his kid being poised to leave home, except ins so far as the Castle household is strongly pro-melodrama, so everything is about his kid being poised to leave home.

But it’s really about Royal the dog. It’s really about Kate Beckett, co-parent extraordinaire.

He is shocked when she suggests the shared custody arrangement. He does a full-on double-take, because even though they’ve been timidly trying to be generous with one another, it’s obvious they’re both miserable at the prospect of not being the one who gets to have Royal as a houseguest. And it just never occurred to him that two people could just . . . do that. They could just share.

And it’s a delight to share Royal with her. He trots along in Royal’s wake through the frigid January air to get him home. He has the best time spoiling him, drafting his highly intelligent, yet still lovably derpy inner monologue on the fly. He expects his mood to plummet as the time to take him to Beckett’s draws near. He expects the dread of the sudden quiet and cavernous emptiness of the loft to settle into his soul at any minute.

But that’s not what happens. He stalls. Of course he stalls, but Mr. Squeaky really did go missing, and it takes him a while to scare up a car service that doesn’t bat an eye at the idea of Royal as passenger number two. But there’s no dread. There’s a quiet stirring somewhere behind his ribs. There’s a flutter of excitement at the idea of sharing this whole experience with her.

And when he and Royal finally make it, she does not disappoint. She pretends to be stern and disapproving. She says, with a long-suffering sigh, that she’ll be the bad guy, and he can be the fun one who has ribeye on hand, free-for-all furniture, and a long hallway for fetch.

But she’s kidding. She’s being grumpy for the sake of grumpiness. She is being grumpy because the alternative is grinning all over her face, because she adores Royal, who is quite obviously soon to have run of the entire apartment while she dials up seven kinds of takeout in the hopes of identifying something Royal loves better than ribeye.

We can switch, he wants to say. He wants to tell her that she can be the good guy on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and he’ll do Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. And they’ll figure out Sundays as they go along. He wants to see her eyes narrow, he wants to hear the disbelieving cluck of her tongue when he announces that he can definitely be the bad at least three days a week.

He wants to tell her that they’ll be better than fine, because they’re better than fine already as friends, as something more on the horizon, as partners. They’re better than fine at all of that, and it’s so obvious that they’re going to crush shared custody.

A/N: Yes, I'm recycling a notion from . . . what? Three or four episodes ago? That's how without morphousness THIS is. (But they would make great doggy parents.)

Images via homeofthenutty