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pollylynn · 4 years

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Title: Newsflash WC: 1000

She has a late-night milkshake hangover, a day off, and someone is pounding at her door. Only one of these is a good thing. She rolls herself off the couch—because apparently she slept on the couch—and mumbles Coming. Coming! in a sandpaper voice that she can hardly hear, let alone whoever’s on the far side of the door.

She’s out of it. She only just remembers to pull her hands back from the locks to check the peephole first. She plants her palms for balance and blinks the sleep out of one eye. Somewhere beneath the cotton ball layers that are currently lining the inside of her head, she thinks it’s him. She thinks it’s Castle, and she’s ready to read him the riot act for darkening her doorstep—on her day off, no less—when they literally just parted ways a few hours ago.

It’s not Castle, though. One peek, then two, confirms the terrible truth.

“Lanie,” she breathes. It’s practically silent, but the reaction is as immediate and startling as if the name has just summoned the woman from the ether.

“Kate, I know you’re in there.” Lanie’s fist comes down hard enough to make the safety chain jump. “You think I won’t make a scene out here? ‘Cause, girl, there’s about to be a scene.”

Kate makes her clumsy hands work fast. Fast. She knows better than to test her friend’s patience.

“Lanie, what—“ She doesn’t have a chance to finish the question. Lanie barges through the door with enough force that it bangs open and jars spindle-legged telephone table under the mirror. A stack of mail goes sliding to the floor. Kate looks at it in despair, too tired and stiff to even think about bending to gather it up.

“What”—Lanie whirls to face her, brandishing a folded newspaper for dramatic effect—“is this?”

“The paper?” Kate’s heart sinks. She drags over to the couch and her body sinks to the cushions. “It’s—it’s in the paper?” She pulls the rumpled blanket to her midsection and buries her face in her hands. It’s half about hiding, half about willing herself into alertness. This is a disaster. “How can it be in the paper?”

“You tell me.” Lanie drops into the armchair at right angles to the couch. She crosses one leg over the other in a posture that says she’s not going anywhere any time soon. “You tell me, Kate Beckett, ‘cause I’m thinking this is quite a story.”

“It’s not!” She turns her palms up to the heavens. “There’s no story. It was late, and we were both hungry. It was a milkshake and some fries. How does that wind up in the paper?” She falls back against the arm of the couch and addresses the ceiling. “Do they just follow him around? Do they have a freakin’ life-style reporter covering the Remi’s beat in case people like him decide to go slum—” She trails off, suddenly disturbed. Lanie is quiet. She’s far too quiet. Kate sits up abruptly, her spine rigid. “Lain . . . what’s . . . what’s in the paper?”

“Nothing as interesting as all that.” Lanie gives her a sly smile as she tosses the paper in the approximate direction of the couch.

She has to make a quick lean to catch it, and she nearly overbalances right off the cushion. She really is so tired, a fact she can see Lanie taking mental note of. Kate curses silently to herself as she spreads the paper open across her knees to find Brad and Amanda eating dessert off one another’s spoons, Brad and Amanda laughing with their heads bent together, Brad “helping” Amanda into a cab, his hand resting far too low on her hip to be at all helpful.

She studies the grainy pictures, and for a moment, she’s faintly amused. She pictures a photographer lurking among the potted plants out front and shooting through the window. Faint amusement slowly fades, though, as the awkwardness of the situation penetrates her late-night milkshake hangover.

“Lanie, I’m sorry,” she begins, “I know Brad’s your friend and I asked you to fix me up, and then I—”

Lanie waves the apology off with an absolute gesture. “Girl, I got myself over her as soon as I saw that to see if we needed to get rid of Brad’s body.” She folds her hands demurely on one knee, looking like the world’s most determined supervillain. “And here I find Brad and Miss Thing running off together is not the breaking news story.”

“There is no breaking news story.” She drags her fingers through her hair. “No body hiding. No breaking news. Nothing to see here.”

“Mm-hmm.” Lanie gives her a skeptical once-over. “Then how come it looks like I got here about ten minutes after you did your walk of shame?”

“There was no walk of shame!” She undermines her own indignant reply with a reflexive pull of the blanket up to her chin as she realizes—much belatedly—that she not only slept on the couch, she slept in her clothes. “It was just . . . late.” Her teeth come together hard. She resets. “It was just a milkshake. I didn’t even let him pay!”

“So he tried to pay,” Lanie says with a cool nod. “And why was it so late anyway?”

“We were just talking,” she grumbles down at her own knees.

There’s a flutter somewhere around her midsection, though, as she recalls their sudden awareness of the exasperated looks the waitstaff were casting at the table they’d been holding down for hours, apparently. There’s a flutter as she remembers blinking at the tell-tale pink licking at the sky in the east as they finally pushed through the doors into the January cold. There’s a flutter, but she shakes herself out of it.

“Talking. That’s it.” She meets Lanie’s gaze, stone faced. “No ‘breaking news’.”

But Lanie isn’t convinced. No one in that particular apartment is exactly convinced.

A/N: Lanie sees what’s going on. Hmmm.

images via homeofthenutty

#Castle #Caskett #Castle: Season 2 #Castle: The Third Man #Kate Beckett #Richard Castle #Lanie Parish #fic #fanfic #Fanfiction #Fan Fic #Fan Fiction #Writing #Hmmm

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