This is an AU first Caskett meeting.

Kate opened her eyes to a room that was not hers and a man she'd never met standing at the end of the bed. He held a clipboard in his hand, but his eyes were studying her, twinkling beneath the loose strands of his tousled hair. It took her several seconds of silence to realise that they were the same ones that comforted her every day, even black and white and lifeless on the back page of her dog eared novels.

She swallowed down the glue that had stuck in her throat.

A parade marched through her head, pounding on drums and smashing cymbals as they stomped. Her memory of the night before was a haze of painkillers and coffee. Snatches of conversation and flashing images were breaking through the fog, but she could barely remember walking through the front door. She winced and scrunched her forehead, wishing the blinds weren't glaring with the scorching summer rays.

Richard Castle hung the clipboard back onto the end of her bed and sauntered to the blinds, shutting out the agonising light with a simple twist of his hand. The same hands that had tapped out the words that lured her out of bed on even the worst mornings, the one that reached out from the pages and took hers, rubbing soothing circles onto the back of her hands in a silent promise that she would never be alone.

"Well good morning Miss Beckett," he greeted with a wink.

"What's going on?" she managed, wincing again, but that time in embarrassment at the feeble rasp of her voice. Kate reached for the water jug on her bedside table, but he was there first, pouring the lukewarm drink into a paper cup and whisking a curly purple straw from his pocket while she forced herself to sit. He handed the cup to her with a flourish.

Stars shimmered above his arrogant smirk.

Kate's hesitant hand took it with muttered thanks.

"Why are we here?" she tried again when she had her voice back and immediately wished she'd asked who he was first. Not only would it be amusing to see the smirk slip, but then he wouldn't know about the crumpled copy of his latest novel under her pillow at home so the words could surround her as she slept.

"Well apparently you have a nasty case of the flu and I just happened to be passing by when I caught sight of a gorgeous damsel in clear distress."

Kate raised an eyebrow. "Wow," she gasped. "Is that your best line or do you have even more sexism packed into those million dollar sleeves?"

A flash of a frown passed across Castle's face, he clearly was not used to being knocked back, before the smoothness graced his features again and the twinkle re-sparked in his eyes.

Kate rolled hers.

He was the man who had soothed her to sleep on the nights riddled with images of her mother's corpse and her father's frame crumbling when they saw the police tape. They had both known then that something had happened, something so dreadful that none of them were ever going to come back for it. They had known since they sat down to the meal Johanna had failed to turn up to, but neither had voiced it in the hope that keeping the fear silent would render it useless. All it had done was allow it to break them alone.

And the illusion of Richard Castle, who had talked her through it all, was fast becoming the same bitter disappointment she knew her father must taste when he sucked the final dregs from the bottle and his wife was still dead.

"If it wasn't for me you'd still be cowering against the fierceness of the sun. Not to mention you wouldn't be drinking out of a twisty fun straw."

"You're right, the straw is the best thing to come out of this."

Castle narrowed his eyes at her and it was Kate's turn to smirk. She was deeply grateful that she hadn't immediately freaked out or let on that it wasn't every day that she woke up in a hospital bed to find a famous author flipping through her chart. His ego clearly did not need stroking any more.

"It's always nice to meet a fan." He came closer, perching on the arm of the lone chair at her bedside. She wondered if anyone had been sitting in it. "You know, I'm sure I remember you from a book signing or ten."

Kate opened her mouth in protest before she caught the gleam and realised he was joking. God, she was way too defensive. The grin he gave her told her he was having the same thoughts. What he didn't need to know was that she really had been at a book signing. More than one, actually. She'd been there for the midnight release of his latest Derek Storm novel and listened to his arrogant speech that had somehow been charming when she was surrounded by a crowd.

"So where's the huddle of worried loved ones? I can't see you being the one to call the ambulance."

Kate flinched before she could mask it and immediately regretted her reaction when she saw his gleam dull. "Probably gone to get coffee," she mumbled, but it was too late and the lie was a feeble one. She'd have to get better at it if she was going to be a cop, if she ever hoped to find out who had left her mother to die amongst trash.

She wondered what would happen if she told Richard Castle, this virtual stranger, the truth. Told him that her mother had been murdered not a year ago, that her father was too deep in a bottle of whiskey to be at her bedside, that she'd stumbled in from a day in training and downed a handful of pills to ease the drumming in her head. She wondered what he would say about her father only noticing when he staggered to the bathroom himself and couldn't get the door open because she was curled behind it and when he'd phoned for help his words had been so slurred the operator thought the ambulance had been for him.

It would certainly get rid of him. He'd bolt right out of the door leaving only the faint sniff of sexism. But before he did that he'd give her that awful pitying glance that had sent her retreating into herself with every relative she'd choked out the words to.

She'd kept her gaze trained to the cold stone floor throughout the funeral, but she'd still felt them, like scars whipped into her back.

She closed her eyes against a sudden surge of pain that felt like her skull cracking in two, but before it could crush her she felt another, softer sensation, a gentle hand squeezing her shoulder and the faint tickle of Richard Castle's breath. "Katherine?" His voice floated from above sea, her own name strange to her ears. No one had called her that for more than a year. "Do you want me to get a nurse?" She shook her head, once, struggling to connect this sudden kindness to the cocky overgrown school-boy she'd just met.

The pain was already easing.

"I'm okay," she said, firmly, another rush of shame burning through her. "And don't call me Katherine."

"You sure?" he said, softly, seemingly ignoring her demand. She didn't answer. His hand was still on her shoulder and she felt the circles she'd so often imagined being traced onto her skin.

"Castle," she pushed through her teeth.

His hand stilled and then dropped and she shivered with its absence.

"So you do know who I am, Beckett." He grinned and Kate spiked her eyes at the ceiling, mentally berating herself for the slip up, although he must have guessed she knew. He'd been in her room, a perfect stranger, for several minutes and she had not asked for his name.

"It's hard not to when you're flinging yourself in the face of every camera."

Castle scowled and pouted like a child told he couldn't have a biscuit because it would ruin his dinner, but before he could retort, the door to Kate's room flung open, the wood crashing against the wall with the force. The nurse towered in the doorway, her shoulders drawn back and staring right ahead. Kate raised her eyebrows and found her gaze wondering towards the author who had made himself comfortable in her bedside chair.

"All the entrance needed was a bolt of lightning," he muttered and the nurse gave him his storm in her glare.

"So you're up at last," she snapped at Kate, as if she had been deliberately lazy. Castle sucked in his lips and dipped his head to hide his smirk.

Kate pinched him.

He shot up in his seat, arms flailing. "Ow!" he hissed, earning himself his second glare from the nurse.

She jammed a thermometer into Kate's mouth and took her pulse, using her other hand to check her IV. After another several minutes of poking and prodding, without first even telling her what she was about to do, Kate was ready to jam the thermometer somewhere else entirely. But when the nurse actually said the sentence 'There was none of this namby pamby bed rest when I was a girl' she had to fight of the shakes of laughter that threatened to get her thrown right out of the bed. She didn't dare look at Castle.

They waited until the nurse had marched right out of the door and shut the door with a firm click behind her before they let the laughter burst out. The bed trembled beneath her and her already aching body screamed in protest, but she felt as if she were seven years old again and the teacher had caught her putting stink bombs in her desk with her best friend.

She only stopped when she remembered she wasn't seven years old, and stick bombs, teacher's desks and even best friends were jammed in her past with her mom. She couldn't let herself fall into who she used to be with this man who was going to leave for good in just a few minutes.

She especially couldn't let go if he was going to stay.

"She was the biggest stereotype I have ever met!" Castle said, gleefully, his face shining like a little boy's.

"Yeah," Kate agreed, forcing the laughter into her voice.

Castle noticed anyway. "Are you-"

"You should probably go now," she interrupted, cringing as his hand moved towards her. He drew back. "I'm tired," she added to sooth the wounded puppy that gazed back at her.

He pushed himself to his feet, scraping the chair against the squealing floor. "What are you doing tomorrow?"

"Bungee jumping," she told the wall.

"Well, if you need someone to make sure the harness is secure…"

"Castle."

"All right, all right," he raised his hands in defeat and backed towards the door, almost colliding with the nurse who bustled back in breathing steam.

"You're still here are you?" she snapped at Castle, as if she'd been gone hours.

"Just leaving, ma'am." He gave a smile to smoulder iron, but she just glared and swept him out of the way with one hand.

"Bathroom," she barked at Kate, who seemed to have little choice in her own bodily functions.

Castle winked at her from over the nurse's bulging shoulder. Kate rolled her eyes back. She turned her head as he pulled open the door, but stole a glimmer of his figure disappearing out of it when she thought he'd have marched on without another thought of the rude stray he'd regretted walking in on. All she saw was the corner of his coat, still and peeking through the open door and she snapped her head to stare at the bland sheets instead.

Then she heard the door creak back into its frame and knew he really had left. The sudden quiet made her feel strangely empty, as if he'd been a permanent figure in her hospital room and not a passing visitor there for someone who most definitely was not her. She barely dwelled on it before the nurse was hauling her out of bed and to the bathroom, leaving behind the last shred of control she had over her life.

…

There was a book resting on her pillow when she returned. Although she could not see the title from the door, she recognised it instantly. The same cover started at her from her desk whenever she was lucky enough to be able to retreat to her bedroom away from the stench of alcohol stained on her father's skin. The nurse narrowed her eyes at it, but Kate picked it up and slipped back into bed before she could confiscate it.

She waited until the dragon had flown back out of the door before she opened it, somehow knowing it would not just contain the words of his story.

Kate,

I'm sorry if I was a jerk. It's a bad habit I'm working on.

Yours,

Rick Castle

P.s You should have seen the look the cashier gave me when I bought my own book.

Although she tried to fight the smile, it came anyway. Yes, he had been a jerk. But so had she. She closed the carefully printed words inside the pages and held it to her chest for a moment, as if committing the words to her heart before she closed the book safely inside her bedside draw.

If he did return, he needn't immediately know she had kept it.

Just imagine this is a really charming and witty request for thoughts.