X-Factor: Perspiration

a post-ep for 3x03 'Under the Gun' (where Mike Royce betrays Beckett for mere buried treasure)

this follows my post-ep story, X-factor, in which Beckett and Castle are re-learning each other after the Hamptons summer, meeting up for drinks at a diner they've dubbed Halfway, though both are in outside relationships

"I got a sweaty hug." -Castle, 'Under the Gun'

"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." -Thomas Edison

Beckett changes out of her shirt and into something she has on hand - a work-out tank top that's seen better days, pilled at the hem and stretched out in the neck, and a pair of jeans that have a little blood stain on the right cuff. Despite the change of clothes, the detective feels like a faint ghost as she heads out of the locker room, made colorless by the arrest of her former training officer.

Castle is waiting at the elevators, entirely too eager, though she can see through him like he's a ghost as well, straight through to the carefully not-spoken concern. He's afraid for her, for what happens to her when she goes home alone tonight. He doesn't even know about Josh and she's still not sure there ought to be a Josh.

She pretends she doesn't see the concern on him, and she jabs her finger into the call button. The elevator ride is quiet, though he's bubbling next to her, like a pot boiling up, dangerously close to spilling over. It's all feigned, every bit of it, and so is her stern annoyance and the disapproval on her face which tells him he needs to keep a lid on it.

Suddenly, Beckett is just so tired. Of all of it. Just tired.

Can't they just... stop the show? Quit pretending.

But there's still a Gina, even if Josh is out of the country again.

The show must go on.

Beckett moves through the basement, heading for Evidence and the clipboard to sign out the shovels they confiscated on scene. It's Hughes working the desk, and he takes his sweet time, moseying through the shelving units, until he finally hands over the bagged and taped shovels - one at a time over the top of the dutch door - and she takes them and hands them off to Castle, just to see that look on Hughes's face.

Breaking chain of evidence, technically, though they are still in her custody. Castle picks up on it, he always does; he figures out the politics in a room faster than anyone else she knows. He keeps his mouth shut even now, lets her have this moment, doesn't even give her a look for it.

She doesn't know why she's done it either. Poking a bear with a stick, doing that to Hughes. He started it, she thinks. And while that's true, she's never let that kind of petty school-yard behavior be her own. She shouldn't have. Her emotional damage is showing.

Castle rides the elevator with her one floor up, back to the lobby with their shovels, and out past security. The guys at the metal detectors laugh it up with them, ribbing Castle for the shovels and the eagerness, but he's not shy about letting them know they're on a treasure hunt.

She manages an eye-roll for everyone's benefit - and peace of mind (yes, I'm really fine, no, don't worry about me) - and she leads Castle out to her unit parked on the street.

The shovels clatter in the backseat and he jumps into the front, giving her the perfunctory complaint about the spring digging into his buttbone, and she gets in behind the wheel, moving slowly, puts the keys in the ignition.

Here they go.

She coils.

She heaves the spade into the dirt and it sinks. Sinks through sod and rooted-mineral layer, sinks through top soil aerated by worms and grubs, sinks through subsoil made mud from this week's rain.

And then stops, breathing in the humid night air and the faint chill of the grave. Her hands are blistered, mud under her fingernails, grit in her teeth, and the shovel has hit the end of its path.

The work of digging.

Beckett rocks the blade of the shovel back and forth in the slice of earth she's made and loosens what she can, knowing she won't get much deeper than this, not right now. The parent material is still feet below them, but she hopes they don't have dig that far.

The sweat has begun to collect above her right eyebrow and clings, hanging on, keeping out-

And there it goes, leaking salt into her eye and dirt and grit, and she winces, squints her right as she peers out of her left, has to take a step back like that can or will help. The handle of the shovel stays firmly upright without her help, and she presses the nominally clean heel of her hand into her orbital socket.

Castle stops, glances back at her. His broad shoulders tightening the shirt, halting the work.

"Dirt in my eye," she mutters, lest he think she's crying.

She could, she might have, but the work of digging has sweated out the grief. Betrayal has leaked through her pores and run down her back and under her arms and between her breasts and the tears were named sweat drops and it's fine like that.

Kate wipes the corner of her eye with the hem of her shirt and she manages to catch the actual eyeball, doing something not good to it that makes both eyes water.

"I think you're just getting more dirt in your eye," he says then.

The digging has stopped, but in the hunch of Castle's shoulders she sees more than just aches and pains; she sees that he wants to keep going, has to keep going, and he's afraid she'll make them stop.

She's gotten down to eluviated dirt and still there's nothing more for her work than the chance to sweat.

Let's call it sweat. Let's keep calling it sweat.

"I could go for a beer," she mutters. She's done with all this. It's too hard to keep it up, all of it, pretenses and the blisters and the fragile feeling in her chest.

"We'll go Halfway after this?" he asks, eyebrows raising up. "After we find the treasure."

He's so convinced. His conviction half-sways her every time. A + B always = C. For him. Always.

So Beckett goes back to her shovel.

She's just unable to feel the same conviction. A) two shovels and two willing diggers with the addition of B) time enough to dig will always equal C) treasure.

Maybe she's never been willing.

Like now, working her shovel back and forth in the stuck mud of this cemetery grave, she's still berating herself for not waiting for an exhumation order from a judge, or at least the family's permission. And somewhere in her she feels like digging for a thing Royce was digging after means she's agreeing with him somehow or compromising on her own principles. She's still working it out in her head that she should go home and how she can arrange it without hurting Castle's feelings, and how ridiculous it is to be standing in a grave only a few feet above a coffin that they will - eventually - hit and then what?

Maybe she ought to be more willing. That's the flaw in her equation, always has been.

She's just not willing. Willing to do the work, willing to put in the effort, willing to - to be in this thing with him, digging together, searching for their buried treasure.

What if she just - is willing?

What if she decides I want to do this. I want this. I want to see the look on his face when we find it, when we open the chest and plunge our fingers into all that treasure.

What if she put into their treasure hunt what she puts into solving a murder or yearning after justice for her mother's killer? What if that kind of effort goes towards this?

"I want to dig," she croaks out. "I want this."

Castle turns around, shovel in his hand in the cramped space, dirt on his spade, streaks of mud on his jeans and his beautiful striped shirt and the pale moon of his face. He looks like he knows this is about more than some old thief's score.

"What?" he asks her. He lifts the shovel and carelessly dumps the dirt on the edge of their hole. Some of it slides back in, some of it refills what they're building here together, digging for, but that's okay.

That's okay. A few steps back - that's not the end of the world. She can't let it stop them.

"I want to dig, Castle." She nods at him and shoves hard on the handle of her shovel, cracks open the earth with a loud sound, tightens her arms to dig it up. "I'm - this is - we could really find it."

"Of course we could. We will. Can't fail."

"Failing is entirely possible," she says, struggling still with the load of dirt she's trying to pull up. "We could be wrong about this. There are a thousand graves out here. Could be any of them and we're digging a hole in the wrong spot."

"Nope. I feel it. In my guts. This is it."

"You didn't feel it before?"

"Not like this."

She works the shovel side to side, growing more and more frustrated with the way the dirt stubbornly won't open for her. And Castle, the ease of his shovel sinking into the soil makes her mad. And then sad and then she's furious all over again with how she's putting the work into it, she's willing now, and there Castle is, easily turning over another spade of dirt, going back to his spot where he's already at least four inches lower than she is, leaning in to do her work for her.

Why is she always having to work so much harder for less?

"I'm stuck," she mutters.

Castle's arms bunch and release under the striped fabric; he shifts another load of dirt to the top and then puts his shovel into the ground and leans on it. Archetype of the man at work - at rest.

"You're stuck," he drawls.

"It's stuck," she growls.

Castle lifts up and reaches out a hand as if to help her, but she's crouched over the shovel and in this awkward position trying to work the shovel out of the earth, arms straining, and his touch is so light and so unexpectedly caressing that she stumbles.

She trips over the shovel and her hip hits the dirt wall they've sunk into, and more dirt showers down into the hole, but more than that, oh much more, the shovel falls.

And clangs.

The blade rattles as it rocks with the momentum of its jarring fall, rattling against metal. Metal in the ground.

Castle - hand frozen outstretched - stares down. Beckett stares after him, mouth dropping open, and then they're both moving.

They sink to their knees in the shallow grave of their two hours of effort, hands scrambling in the dirt, and the sense of expectation, of crazy and spinning hope rushes through her so fast she can barely see what she's doing.

She's not breathing.

She's breathless in the dirt and Castle's hands keep raking over hers and her fingers twist and tangle with his, and then the shovel is pushed aside and the dirt is dug out and it's a metal lockbox. Wide, shallow, and she was trying to sink the blade past it with every heft of her shovel.

"Oh my God," Castle breathes. "You had it the whole time."

"I..." Kate goes at the lid of the metal box and pries at it with dirty and broken fingernails, and it's no good, it won't budge, but Castle takes it out of her hands and elbows her a little ways off.

"Let me try this," he says, breathless too. He picks up the shovel and swings it down hard.

The lockbox splits with a crack, groan of metal, and there in the flashlight-beamed darkness are bright and twinkling sapphires, burning rubies, handfuls and fistfuls and fortunes in gems. Like round eyes, winking up at them, glittering.

Kate gasps. She can't help it. She hasn't been breathing. Castle lifts his face to hers in the yellow moonlight, the blue flashlight, and the radiance of their treasure is reflected in his eyes.

Kate vaults herself across the open space and wraps her arms around him, gripping the back of his sweaty, dirt-streaked neck and pressing their bodies close, too close, warm and breathing in the excitement.

"We found it," she laughs. "Castle. We found buried treasure."

"I told you so," he exults, and he doesn't sound at all like her mom, but it's so much like her that Kate laughs harder, gripping his embrace so he won't leave it, the mirth bubbling up and spilling over and now she gets it.

Now she's willing to do the work.