Magnification Chapter Two

He was fiddling with the radio again. Something obnoxious and blaring came on and he hit scan before his hand returned to the gearshift. They were still on the highway—less shifting required.

She was going to murder him in the front seat of his Ferrari, and they hadn't even made it to the Hamptons yet.

"Why won't you let me plug in my iPod again?"

"This is earthy, Beckett. We need to absorb the local flavor. Become one with the people. Breathe in the culture."

"The culture of overheated Manhattanites invading the beach for the last gasp of summer?"

He was apparently undeterred by her pithy sarcasm.

"You don't want to listen to the same tired old playlists on your first real vacation in what, like a decade, do you?"

Ouch. Well, it kinda had been a decade. Damn.

"They are not tired or old and they are my playlists, thank you very much."

She squinted at him through her sunglasses, hair wisps whipping around her face from her French braid.

"I even made a new one titled 'vacation'."

"Let me guess, it includes selections of unusual alternative rock intermixed with punk and the occasional throwback to the nineties."

How did he know this shit about her? There was only one U2 song from the nineties.

"Fine." She reached for the floorboards, dug in her shoulder bag until she snagged one of her ear buds and tugged out the white and silver rectangle. She was untangling the wires when his palm dropped on her inner thigh fingers squeezing.

"Uh uh. No you don't. We are in this together. No surreptitious iPod listening."

"Really Castle? You're putting your foot down about my iPod? We've been in the car less than an hour. We're never going to make it through nine days without killing each other if you're going to play Neurotic Nazi Cruise Director about my taste in music."

"Just humor me on this one. We're almost in range."

The warmth of his palm left her, and he hit scan again. A soft, melodic jazz station filled the speakers.

"Ah… Good old WSHR. You can only get this on the road. The house is too far north, so we've only got it for the next hour or so."

His whole posture relaxed—head leaned back into the headrest, shoulders dropped, fingers unclenched from the steering wheel.

It was really quite soothing; top down, sun shining. She felt herself let out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding.

Well, maybe radio wasn't such a horrible idea. She dropped her iPod back in her bag and covered his hand where he had rested it on his own denim-clad knee.

As they took the cloverleaf from 495 to cross the island toward 27, things turned decidedly more rural. It was amazing to her that only an hour from the city, there was this amount of blue sky and green foliage.

Kate hadn't spent time in the Hamptons, and she had never seen photos of Rick's house, so she just assumed it was a showplace. All she did know was that it was beachfront, from all their stories of stepping off the deck and being practically in the sand. She knew there was a library, and a big one from all accounts, since Alexis had asserted that "most" of their books were up there. If she was honest with herself, Kate was just as excited about that as she was the promise of sun and sand.

Free time came to her rarely. Not by necessity, of course. She'd chosen to ignore all the vacation time on her paycheck printout. She donated some occasionally to wounded officers or new moms. They had good reasons to need the time off. She had certainly gone through her sick leave after she had been shot. But that time never dipped into her vacation days.

She had never felt the need for a vacation, aside from the occasional day to stay in bed and read a book or go for a long ride on her Harley. And she hadn't had a family to cajole her into a trip.

She couldn't pinpoint her reasons for putting Castle off all summer. He had started bugging her about going to the beach almost as soon as they had started dating. Something about vacations made her twitchy. Spending uninterrupted time around other people with no real purpose, no goal—it just didn't sit well. She was already teetering on the edge of Castle overload on the few full weekends they had spent together with nothing to do. He was sweet and wonderful, and the sex was absolutely, mind-blowingly gorgeous, but there were only so many hours in a row one could spend making love, and when he got bored, Rick tended toward clingy.

In the very beginning, she was so enraptured with having him, with loving him, that she'd barely noticed his needy moods—she'd had them, too. They had reassured one another that all of it was real.

But as the summer peaked, and Alexis' move into the dorm at Columbia finally happened, she saw his boredom surfacing more often. It didn't help that Frozen Heat was all but released, and that the promotional events weren't yet in full force.

When Kate had free time, she needed to spend at least some of it alone. Needed to regroup and find herself apart from him. All her insecurities about moving in had been allayed. She loved him. She loved his family. She wasn't going anywhere. But that didn't mean she didn't need some alone time occasionally.

She had taken to going for longer runs on weekends, stopping for a while in the park to read the paper. And she'd booted him out of the loft on a few occasions when she just wanted to yell at him for hovering and twitching. She'd sent Ryan and Esposito paintballing with him one Saturday while she tackled a Patterson novel and took advantage of his rooftop lounge chairs.

In general, they had negotiated all those bumps well. But now, nine days of each other without a case to work or a novel to write—things might get sticky. It was a bit of a crucible, this trip. A test of whether they could coexist, if not peacefully, then at least without loss of life or limb.

She had been musing out the passenger side since they had turned on to 27, looking toward the ocean. When he turned off on a side street in the middle of East Hampton, she figured they must be nearly there. But he surprised her by pulling into a small parking lot at a grocer's.

"Alexis asked me to stop for a couple of things at the market. Apparently, she and mother are making us a feast tonight. You coming?"

She grinned at the switch.

"I should stretch my legs."

The store was not what she'd expected at all. This was no fancy gourmet shot catering to wealthy upper crust city tourists. A round and sleepy Bassett hound was lazing on a rag rug in one sunny corner. He opened one eye and nearly lifted his head at their entrance, but then seemed to think better of it and tacitly deemed them harmless.

Rick shook hands with the man restocking a shelf. Kate would put him in his mid-sixties, with silvering hair and laugh lines a-plenty. He seemed to recognize Rick right away.

"Haven't seen you in a while, Rick. How have you been? And who have you brought to meet me?"

Castle laid the flat of his palm across the middle of her back, rubbed absently up and down as she leaned in to shake the man's hand as well.

"This is Kate. Kate, this is Ethan Stone, owner of this fine establishment."

He was tall, tanned, and lean, sparkling green eyes smiling at her from behind smart-looking glasses. She couldn't help but notice the similarity between Castle's plaid button down and Ethan's. He looked… comfortable. At ease. In his element.

"You told me about this one, didn't you? Last time you were here? Something about not being able to convince the right one to come up?"

Wow. Well, that might deserve to be addressed later this week. Rick was blushing, but Ethan plowed through.

"So what did you have to bribe her with? Doesn't look like the diamonds and pearls type."

She chuckled at that very correct assessment.

"You'd be correct about that, Mr. Stone. No, he didn't have to bribe me. I'm here of my own free will."

"Good for you! You're going to like it up here. And you've got a great tour guide. He'll keep you away from all the tourist traps."

Rick had slipped off to the produce section, seemed to be contemplating avocados.

"You all should check out the wine tasting later this afternoon if you don't have beach plans."

"We might do that. Alexis and mother have dinner plans for us, though, so we may be helping chop and stir."

"Yes, I heard all about it when they were in here last night getting supplies. You're in for a treat!"

Rick had his requested ingredients bagged, and Ethan met him at the register, made quick work of ringing him up and making change. Rick looked over to her with a furrowed brow.

"For some reason, that only makes me worry."

Ethan raised his hands in a gesture of surrender as Rick met her by the door.

"Hey, they started with all the right raw materials at least. I can't be responsible for what they do to my vegetables once they get them home."

"No one can be held responsible for what happens when my mother enters the kitchen with intentions of anything other than refilling her wine glass. Good to see you again."

"Nice to meet you, Kate. I'm sure I'll be seeing you this week."

She smiled and gave him a little wave as they pushed out the door.

"He seems nice. Knows you pretty well."

"We've been shopping here for as long as we've had the house. He watched Alexis grow up in the summers."

It had taken her time to get down to the version of him that was flowing so easily in this place. She wondered for the millionth time what might have been if their wires hadn't been crossed two summers before… But that pointless speculation did no good for either of them.

"That's sweet. I didn't really think…"

"What?"

She needed to tread lightly—didn't want to make him self-conscious.

"You seem very 'you' here."

He reached for her hand, interlaced their fingers as he walked them along the store fronts in an indirect route back to the car.

"This place was always an escape. I could be real here. Alexis' dad. Martha's son. The guy trying to find his daughter's favorite ice cream after she sprained her ankle doing cartwheels in the sand dunes. Ethan ordered it for me, by the way. Always makes sure he has it in stock over the summer."

She bumped his hip, playfulness overtaking her, making her feel younger, less encumbered by her scars. She wanted to turn cartwheels on the beach.

"So, home? Or sightseeing?"

"Your mom and Alexis are only here for the weekend. The sights will keep."

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A/N: I'm going to ask you for something, dear readers. The next chapter is M, and I'm going to post it under a separate story with the title "Magnification," RIGHT NOW on FFN and extraordinary lines. ALL of the remaining chapters of this story will be found under that title. I'm letting you know because if you want to continue to receive alert emails about this story, you need to go click on "Magnification" and follow it, or follow me as an author. Posting under the old title is getting to be too tricky, since the original story was only T-rated, with the separate M-chapters, and so I apologize, but it's too confusing. Also, the other story in the "Enlightenment" universe that already has 10+ chapters, is called "Jump," so go click on that one and follow if you are so inclined. Thanks so much for humoring me, and THANK YOU for reviewing, following, favoriting, etc.

-Kate