That's What Secret Lairs Are For

Disclaimer: I still don't own it, and they're way more evil than me

AN: Tumblr fill for the Castle Sentence Meme. A Castle quote out of context for a prompt. In this case, "Can I say something that will probably annoy you?" - Set between Desciple and The Good, the Bad and the Baby.

For amtepe, for the prompt, Kate, who waned to know why we never mention the lair, and CB, for the beta and general awesome.

She's watching him as he's brushing his teeth, and he's not usually the one to have a problem with the staring in their relationship. But, he has to admit it's a little awkward when her eyes meet his in the mirror. He spits. "What Beckett?" He asks, curious as to what has her standing behind him in the bathroom, looking pensive.

"Can I say something that will probably annoy you?" she asks.

He turns, so that he's facing her directly, and laughs a little. "Sure, but isn't that my line? In fact, I'm pretty sure that was exactly my line." He tries not to think about the conversation they were having at the time. It's only been a week or so, and it still feels too soon in so many ways.

She gives them a little laugh in return, but she's doing that adorable thing where she's biting her lip and looking a bit nervous.

"Kate?" he asks. "What is it?"

"It's just, I'm sorry. You were really nice about Linus and everything, and I love our seashells, and I feel badly for even bringing something like this up again but –" she drifts off, and her eyes cut to the side. He has a sense he knows where this is going, all of a sudden. Then, she takes a little breath and finishes, the last words coming in a rush "that thing creeps me out, okay?" Her mouth clamps shut, her lips a tight line, and she looks down, like she's embarrassed.

He finds that a little weird, honestly. She's embarrassed that she's bothered by the life-sized Boba Fett his bathroom? Weird, only because she had shown no such compunction telling him about her issues with the Linus the Lion.

"Kate -" he starts carefully. He likes his figure, he does, but he trying to be better about this shared space thing, and besides, he gets the sense that there's more going on here than just territory.

"The thing is," she cuts in on him again, "he's - vaguely person shaped, okay? And sometimes, lately, in shadow at night? I wake up and come to the bathroom and I think there's someone standing behind me. Like there's an intruder. And I know I'm a little more keyed up than most sometimes, because of my job but..." she trails off and looks away.

Castle gets it, suddenly. She won't say it, but this is about Tyson. About that threat that he, or his crazy girlfriend Neiman, or both of them, left inside that USB drive. It's about the fact that Tyson has broken in here before, bugged his place - their place, that he was watching them. It's about the fact that she doesn't even want to admit there's still a chance The Triple Killer is alive, but she's been looking over her shoulder for the past couple of weeks, just like him. And so, Boba Fett makes her jumpier than he did before.

Castle reaches out and snags her shoulder, dragging her the short distance into his body. "Kate, if it bothers you that it's here, it doesn't have to be here. Don't worry about it, okay?"

She pulls back a little to look at him. "Are you sure? I know you just made the same kind of concession with Linus and –"

"And I'm not keeping score. I know I gave you a hard time about that, but, I'm learning. And besides, this is different." He doesn't say how or why it's different, but he tries to project his understanding in his eyes. He doesn't want to bring up Tyson in their home if he doesn't have to, but he wants her to know that he knows.

He feels her let out a little sigh of relief and curl closer against him. He lets them stay that way for a moment, then pulls back and hefts the life-sized figure under one arm. "Besides, that's what secret lairs are for, right?"

He hears her startled bark of laughter before he even turns back to face her again, and has to struggle to suppress his smile.

"You have a secret lair?" She asks, sounding doubtful.

"Behind the hidden door in my office," he says, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world that she should have known for ages by now. "Want to see?" He raises her eyebrows at her, genuinely filling with glee at the prospect of surprising her with it.

"The hidden what?" Her own eyebrows raise, and then she shakes her head with a smile. Like she thinks maybe she should have known all along, too, and he grins.

"Going to let a girl in the secret clubhouse, Castle?" she asks, teasing him.

"Kate Beckett, what do you take me for?" he asks, putting on an entirely facetious display of being affronted by her suggestion as he shifts Boba a little under his arm. "Besides, always room for you. Plus, now it's kind of our secret lair, right?"

"Cheesy," she mumbles, but she's wearing that light, bright smile he loves so much, all traces of her earlier unease and tension gone. He loves happy Kate best of all, because he feels like they unearthed this part of her together, a treasure she'd been guarding but finally allowed him to dig deep enough to reveal.

She lets him pull her toward his office with the hand that isn't dragging the life sized Star Wars figure. When he reaches out and taps the appropriate spot to reveal the hidden room, he hears her gasp behind him. He pulls them all a bit further in - himself, Kate, Boba and all - and then turns back to see her taking the whole thing in with shining eyes, loving the surprise of it all, he thinks.

Totally worth it, he decides as he settles the bounty hunter in his new home. This is definitely what secret lairs are for, if you ask him.