The A-team

His meeting took longer than Rick expected. He's hungry and anxious to get home. So he forgoes the normal route home and takes a detour to avoid the traffic jam. It's a detour, but it's faster at this time of the day. He doesn't like this part of town. He knows that this is where girls offer themselves to men for money. It sickens him, every single time he drives through the neighbourhood.

He tries to distract himself from thinking about the girls before he's even seen them by thinking about his meeting. Gina was harassing him for another book. She's knows he's having trouble writing lately. He's struggling with his characters. Derek is boring him and he doesn't know what to do about it. Every book is the same, the words still come and he still writes the story, but he's not enjoying it anymore. And if he's not enjoying writing it, he worries that his readers won't enjoy reading it.

He's been thinking about killing him off, but he still has a three book deal. So even if he kills Derek off, he needs to write two more books on a dead character. He shakes his head. He'll just have to deal with it. Find some inspiration and get writing. The sooner that third book is done, the sooner he can start writing other characters.

Rain starts falling on his windshield. It starts off as a drizzle, but soon enough it's pouring. It's been like this all day. Raining on and off. He pities whoever is out there tonight. He despises every guy who picks up a girl on a night like this. Or any night, for that matter.

He rounds the corner of the street where the prostitutes are stationed. The street looks deserted at first, but as soon as his car turns around the corner, girls start appearing on the street. Dressed in less than nothing. Make-up is covering their faces, making them look older than they really are.

One of the girls draws his attention. She hangs back, doesn't come up to the street like the other girls. He also notices that she's shivering. She must've been out here all day. He doesn't know what makes him stop, but he does. He stops in front of her. One of the other girls comes up to his car, looking at him like she's just won a prize. She must've noticed his expensive car and thought that he'd pay her a lot of money.

He shakes his head to her and points to the girl behind her. An annoyed expression crosses her face as she turns around and shouts something to the other girl. The girl's eyes close for a second and an expression that looks a lot like despair crosses her face before her features harden and she walks up to him with confident strides.

"What do you want?" she asks him when she reaches his car and he opens the window, there's an edge to her voice. She's not doing this by choice, he knows. She already hates him because he's driving down this street. Join the club, he thinks.

He doesn't know how to do this. So he just says, "Get in."

She looks away from his face for a second. Her teeth ghost over her lower lip before she pulls in her cheeks and seems to have made a decision. She rounds his car and gets into the passenger seat.

She won't look at him while they drive. The hate towards him rolls off of her body and chills the car. He gives her a sideways glance and wonders why he did this. Why would he pick up a prostitute when he hates guys who do that?

Then she shivers and he realizes that it's November, it's pouring outside and she's probably been out there all day. So he turns heater a little higher and puts on the seat heater, hoping to warm her up a little.

Ten minutes later, he parks his car in the garage under his building. "Come on," he says before he gets out and leads her to his front door.

"What? No hotel room?" she sneers.

He frowns. Why would he be living in a hotel room? "No, I have a perfectly fine apartment," he answers and lets her inside. He sees her eyes widen when she takes in his home.

"You want some coffee?" he asks.

"Sure," she says and follows him to his kitchen. He gestures for her to sit down, but she doesn't.

"So what's your name?" he asks her. Her jaw clenches and her eyes harden even more. But she answers him anyway.

"Kate," she says.

"Nice to meet you, Kate," he says as he hands her the coffee. "I'm Rick." She nods, but it's like she doesn't care. She probably doesn't.

"What is it that you want?" she asks suddenly. "Why all this foreplay?"

Oh, she still thinks he wants to have sex with her. "Oh, I'm sorry," he says. "I just… I was on my way home from work and I… I wanted to avoid the traffic jam, you see… so I took the detour… but you looked so cold and I thought you might like to… to uhm…" he's rambling and he knows it. He just doesn't know how to explain himself to her. "I'm not explaining myself very well am I?" he asks.

She just raises an eyebrow, some amusement in her eyes. Under all the caution.

"I didn't ask you to get in the car because I wanted to…" he frowns, searching for words.

"So you don't want to have sex?" she asks bluntly, helping him out.

"No," he says on a relieved sigh. "You just looked so cold and it's the middle of November and I thought you'd might like to get off of the street for a while."

She nods and slides onto one of the chairs next to his kitchen counter. "It was quite cold out there," she mutters. She seems to have relaxed a little bit, but she's still on edge.

"Oh, you want a sweater or something?" he asks and is already half way to his bedroom before her words reach his ears.

"No, that's okay," she says, but he waves her off and gets her a sweater anyway.

"It's probably a bit big on you, but it's warm, so at least that's something," he says as he hands her one of his sweaters. She dons it immediately and sinks into the warm fabric. She looks so small in the big sweater that he wonders when the last time was that she ate.

"Have you eaten yet?" he asks her and she shakes her head.

"I was going to when I –" she stops herself and adjusts her sentence to, "When I got home."

He wonders what she was about to say, but realizes that it's something she doesn't want to share with him.

"You want to have dinner with us? My daughter should be home any minute and she expects dinner to be ready," he grins.

"You have a daughter?" she asks. Surprise crosses her pale face before she shoves it down again, but the question came out anyway. She doesn't trust him, still thinks he wants something from her. He's just going to have to prove her wrong.

"Yeah, Alexis. She's thirteen," he told her proudly. "So… dinner?"

"Sure," she sighs. "Why not?"

"Great!" he exclaims and busies himself with preparing dinner while she watches him in silence. He glances her way every couple of minutes and her expression becomes more and more confused as time goes by. The silence becomes a little awkward and he doesn't know what to do to break it.

Then Alexis enters the loft. "Hey, Dad!" she yells out to him.

"Hi, Pumpkin!" he calls back.

"Who's this?" the girl asks as she enters the kitchen and sees the unfamiliar woman there.

"This is Kate," Rick answers.

"Hi," Kate says and holds out her hand to shake the girl's hand.

"Hi," Alexis says. "I'm Alexis. I don't mean to be rude… but what are you doing here?"

Kate chuckles, "Well, actually I was working and your Dad took a pity on me so he took me here."

Alexis shoots her father a look, "Seriously, Dad?" He shrugs in a way of answering. "What kind of work were you doing?"

Castle almost chokes at the question, but Kate seems to stay very calm. "I'm a police officer and I was doing a job for Vice," she tells her girl. That peaks Castle's interest.

"You're a cop?" he asks surprised.

"Yeah, so you're lucky your intentions were good, otherwise I would've have to report you," she teases him and he lets out a sharp breath.

"What did you think, Dad?" Alexis scolds him. "Picking up strangers at the side of the road… Haven't I taught you better?"

Castle puts on a remorseful expression and Kate lets out a laugh. He forgets to play ashamed for a minute and stares at the girl. "I guess I wasn't thinking," he mutters.

"Clearly," Kate and Alexis say in unison. Oh, great. They're teaming up on him already.

"Wait," Rick says as he suddenly realizes something. "Isn't this… having dinner during work hours against the rules? Shouldn't you be outside and catch some real dirt bags?"

"You kicking me out?" Kate asks him raising an self-assured eyebrow.

"Wh – No, of course not. I wouldn't. Just… curious," he finishes lamely.

"Relax, my shift was almost over anyway, so it's fine."

"But still… Shouldn't you let someone know, or something?" he asks.

"Like who? My boss? He doesn't care, as long as I give him intel on his suspect."

Rick feels his jaw drop. "They don't check up on you?"

"No," she frowns, "should they?"

"Well, it's a dangerous neighbourhood. It's a dangerous job." He doesn't want to get into much more detail with his 13-year old daughter listening in, but Kate needs to realize how dangerous what she's doing can be. "Especially in that part of town. Bad men come through there."

"Yeah? Like you?" she shoots back. He frowns and wonders how he can make her understand when she's talking again. "Hey, look. I know it's dangerous, but I'm a trained cop. I can take care of myself. Plus, the men who pick me up don't expect me to be able to take care of myself, so I have an advantage."

"Yeah, I know you can take care of yourself," Rick sighs. "They would've never given you the job if you couldn't, but I'm just saying... Just be careful." He internally winces at how desperate he sounds over someone he's just met.

"I will be," she says quietly, giving him a small smile. "You know, it's just temporary. I want to be a homicide detective and this is the only way they'll notice me. Hard work as a rookie is not enough. Not if you want to make it to detective as soon as possible. So I hope this'll be enough for them to notice me."

"Don't you worry that they're just using you?" he asks.

"Yeah, it has crossed my mind. But what else am I supposed to do?" she says. He notices the desperation in her eyes. There's a reason why she wants to be detective so badly. She said that she wanted to be a homicide detective, so she must've lost someone. Someone close to her. And the killer was never caught. He can see it now. She wants to be the one to catch the person who killed the one close to her.

Alexis suddenly clears her throat and he realizes that he's been staring at her. "He's not usually this creepy," his daughter assures Kate as she frowns at him disapprovingly.

After that he behaves himself and serves them dinner. Conversation over dinner is amicable. Alexis and Kate seem to get along, for which he's glad. Alexis is in desperate need for a female role model that is not her mother or her grandmother.

Over the next week he starts taking the shortcut more regularly. Just to check up on her. She's there on most days. Sometimes she's not, but then she's back the day after. Sometimes they have a little chat. If her shift is almost over, she'll get in the car with him so he can take her home or to the loft. If she needs to get back to work, he'll let her go with a heavy heart.

After a couple of weeks she stops being at the street. He asks one of the other girls about her, but she doesn't know where Kate is either. She says that one day she just didn't show up.

He drives over to her apartment building. He's dropped her off before, but doesn't actually know in which apartment she lives. He plans to ask the doorman, but the building doesn't have one. The front door is locked so he can't get in. So he's left with waiting and hoping that it won't take her long to come home. Or go somewhere.

The sound of his ringtone is loud in the quiet car about an hour later. "Dad?" Alexis says from the other side of the line. "Where are you?"

"Ah," he says, trying to come up with a believable excuse. He's been gone for most of the afternoon. "I'm in the park, needed some fresh air." It's flimsy, but Alexis lets it go.

"You should come home. Kate's here," she says.

"I'm on my way," he says as he's pulling out of his parking spot.

When he opens his front door, he can see Kate and Alexis sitting at the kitchen island. "Dad!" Alexis calls. She comes over to give him a hug before she quietly says to him, "I'll leave you two alone," and disappears up the stairs.

"Kate?" he asks as he walks up to her slumped figure. She slowly turns around to look at him. The way she moves makes the hairs in his neck stand on end. When she's finally turned around he can see her face for the first time in a week. His sharp intake of breath is clearly audible as he sees the bruises that are covering her skin.

"I would've called," she says, "but I didn't have your number." He expected her to sound weak, but her voice doesn't betray her feelings. It's as strong and certain as ever.

"It's okay," he mumbles as he steps closer. "What happened?"

She looks down at her hands. He notices the scratches and bruises there too. "You were right," she starts, peeking up at him through her curtain of hair. "About it being dangerous. The guy I was collecting intel on… somehow he found out."

He sits next to her and takes her hands in his, stopping her destructive fingers that are picking at one of the deeper scratches. She freezes when his skin touches hers, he can see the colour drain from her cheeks. Despite of that, he holds her hands. Trying to give her some kind of comfort.

"He invited me to come over to his car. I had to keep up my cover, so I got in. He – He took me to a hotel. One of those really gross and skeevy ones. He started telling me that he knew that I was a cop. He threatened me." She stops there. A shiver runs through her whole body at thinking back to that moment.

"Shhh," he whispers, "you don't have to tell me."

"No, I want to. I tried to fight him. He saw me coming and he was too strong. So he hit me and everything went black."

He slowly lifts his hand to carefully stroke his fingers over the cut on her temple.

"I think… If I hadn't texted Royce when I got in the car… And if he hadn't come in when he did… I think that this guy might've raped me." Her voice is very quiet now. Nothing compared to the strong voice of a few minutes ago. She won't look at him, but the hold she now has on his hands is deadly.

"But Royce was there on time, and nothing happened, right?" he asks carefully.

"Yeah. So there's no reason for me to be as upset as I am," she mumbles.

"Yes, there is. Kate, you've just had a very dangerous run with sexual abuse. You have every right to be upset. In fact, I would find it strange if you weren't. Thank you for telling me this. For trusting me with this."

"Thank you," she whispers back. She almost launches into him, her face mashing into his shoulder. He holds her there until her violent shaking eases.

"Can I ask you something?" Her voice is muffled by his shirt, so she pulls back a little.

He nods.

"Can I stay here tonight? I have a concussion from where he hit me and whilst I don't have to be woken every couple of hours anymore, the doctor says that it's best that I'm not alone tonight."

"Of course you can. You can stay as long as you'd like."

This is a new idea. I will post a one-shot for every song on this album. The songs will be the inspiration for the stories. If you want, you can shoot some ideas for future one-shots or maybe an album you want me to do.

I am working on another story that I want to finish writing before I start uploading, but since this is not a continuous thing, I thought I'd share this for now.

This one turned out very different than I intended, but I think it suits the song.

What did you think?

Next up: Drunk (Yes, I've already written a story based on this song, but I'll give it another shot)