A/N: A selection of one-shots based on the full episode re-watch of Season Two of Castle. Each chapter seeks to answer questions that arise during a viewing of the episode, which means they can be AU, set in the future, set in the past - anything is fair game.

Deep in Death

x2x01x

Esposito haunts her desk.

She's not sure why, only that he keeps cropping up in her peripheral vision. Walking by with a file, handing off a key to one of the officers, accepting a coffee from Ryan. Just nondescript enough to be descript.

Descript isn't a word.

Whatever. She does not need another running commentary in Castle's voice inside her own head.

"Espo," she says quickly, lifting her eyes and catching him hovering just there, almost anxious. "You need to get something off your chest?" A raised eyebrow for emphasis since she's not standing and can't use her height against him.

He gives an elaborate shrug that turns into a head shake. "Naw. Nothing at all. We're good."

"Are we."

That shutter comes down over his eyes that Beckett has seen before - in the box, interrogating a suspect who's hiding from her. She doesn't like seeing that look on his face.

He stuffs his hands in his pockets, jerks his chin towards the elevator. "He coming back?"

"If by 'he' you mean Officer Sandusky-"

"You know who I mean." Defensive. Agitated.

She didn't see this coming with him, though Esposito even kind of like the writer monkey. "You have nothing to worry about, Esposito. You and Ryan are still first in my heart." Giving him a cocky grin, tapping her chest with two fingers so he gets it.

He does, and he growls and rolls his eyes. "That's not - he does not make me feel threatened, Beckett. I just meant - you - you know - you forgave him for that?"

"He apologized," she says succinctly. She has nothing else. She doesn't know why the apology worked. (She thinks, in her darkest heart, that she's just messed up enough to want the possibility to always be available, dangling in front of her, to see if she can resist temptation, if she's strong enough now, if she can take it.)

"Well, alright then," Esposito says, shrugging elaborately. "I guess we don't gotta give him the cold shoulder no more?"

His dialectal grammar is always more pronounced when he feels emotional. She doesn't know why it should affect him so much, that she forgave Castle and is allowing him back in the precinct to follow her around again.

But she shrugs it off and goes back to her paperwork, offering only this. "You can give him the cold shoulder for a few more weeks. Won't hurt him to think he's got to earn it."

"Yes, ma'am."

x2x01x

"Hello?" Richard Castle answers his phone uncertainly. It's the Twelfth Precinct's main switchboard, so it could be anyone, including dispatch calling him with the latest murder. But he doesn't think that's it.

"Castle."

"Detective Esposito?" he squeaks, clears his throat to modulate his voice. "How can I help you?"

Is Beckett okay?

"Did you tell her?"

"She wouldn't let me," he says, immediately. "She wouldn't even look at the evidence my guy-"

"Not that," Esposito hisses over the line. "Did you tell her I was the one who gave you her mother's file?"

Castle sinks back into his desk chair. A clever retort is on the tip of his tongue, a chance to hold it over Espo's head, get him back for numerous slights.

But he doesn't.

Instead, it occurs to him that this is not just their professional careers he keeps putting his fingers all over but that this is Beckett's mother they're talking about.

Her mother, who died alone, bleeding in an alley, aware of every blow but paralyzed to defend herself. Dying for what? It wasn't random, it wasn't gang violence. It was her mother.

And he doesn't say any of those clever things that come so easily to his lips.

"No," he answers the detective instead. "I didn't tell her. I won't. Ever."

On the other end, Esposito lets out a grunt. "We're gonna have to razz you for a while, man. All part of the process. You get it."

"I get it," he says, but the detective has hung up.

He gets it. They're a family, the Twelfth is, and while Rick likes to think he brings them all some humor and enjoyment to the morbidity of their days, he won't forget that their lives are on the line.

He's sober now.

No more playing around.

x2x01x