Writer Man Discovers His Super Powers
When Detective Heat saw the voluptuous blonde hanging on Rook's arm, her eyes narrowed and her jaw set, but she showed no other outward signs. If that|
The phone rang and startled Castle out of his intensity of focus, made him drift for too long a moment in the in-between where he was still halfway stuck at Heat's desk and halfway fumbling automatically at his own.
He answered with a rush of breath, using one finger to hit the delete key against If that as the thread of his thought disappeared. If that what? Had he been about to write hussy? Huh, Beckett was creeping in to Nikki Heat again.
"Castle."
"Whoa, hey," he muttered, blinking hard as his realities collided. "Beckett."
"You didn't call."
"What time-" He craned his neck and checked his phone. 10:48. "Oh, whoops."
"You writing again?"
"Uh. Yes. I lost track of time. I was just going to sit down and edit the last chapter, but now I've got this whole. . ." Oh, right. He'd been about to type, If that woman got any closer, she'd|
"Are you writing right now?"
Castle sucked in a breath. "No. Yes? No. No, I'm stopping. Saving it. And-"
"Oh, whatever, Castle. I'm coming over."
"You're. . .what? You don't have to - it's nearly eleven o'clock."
"I'm not spending the whole time on the phone competing with Nikki Heat. I'm coming over. Tell Eduardo to let me up."
"Oh," he grinned. "Yeah. Good. I'll be. . .here."
He grunted when the phone rang, completely spoiling his train of thought. Rook made his way through the|
"Yeah?" he sighed. Rook made his way through-
"Castle. Did you tell Eduardo I was coming up?"
Oh, shoot. "I - forgot. Put him on."
He heard the rustle of the phone being passed and winced at the too-formal tone in Eduardo's voice. "Sir. You are expecting a visitor? It's after eleven."
"Yes, yes, Eduardo. Really, you've got to get past this rule; no one else enforces it. Kate's going to be coming over at all kinds of times - she's a detective with the NYPD and her hours are variable."
"Yes, sir. Visitors must be-"
"Eduardo. Really. Let Kate come up." Castle was already getting to his feet and heading for the door to unlock it.
He heard the exchange of the phone and then Kate's huff, but she didn't speak to him; the line dropped. He winced and flipped the deadbolt, opened the door with the laptop still cradled in one arm, a hip against the frame as he waited. He tapped a couple more words into the document, -against Detective Heat's desk and crossed his arms. 'Are you jealous? Because it looks|
A sharp flick to his ear had him lifting his head in a startled gasp, but it was Beckett, smirking at him like she didn't want to smile but couldn't help herself. "Hey there, Writer Man."
He grinned back and clutched his laptop to his chest, leaned in and kissed her. "Man, huh? Like that."
"You would," she murmured, drawing back and nudging the laptop screen. "Go ahead. I know you want to. Finish the scene or chapter or whatever."
He watched her for a moment as she carried her bag towards the bedroom, those long legs in dark tights and calf boots, her hair a mess like she'd taken a shower and just crawled into bed waiting on his call.
Had she been waiting on him?
He grinned and followed after her, standing in the doorway between his study and the bedroom, watching her shed her coat, unzip her boots to toe them off. She turned back to him and narrowed her eyes, and he realized that was the same look he'd written into Nikki Heat.
She seemed to study him. "You write in bed?"
He shrugged. "I can."
"But do you?"
"I was at the desk," he hedged, but he stepped into the bedroom. "But if I sit there too long, my back hurts."
"Perils of being old."
"Hush your mouth," he growled.
She laughed and put a knee on his bed, scraping a hand through her hair. "That's not exactly what I meant. After cold calls and hunching over phone records - I understand the feeling. You coming in?"
He watched her sink down on her heels in the bed, and he nodded eagerly, but he was torn. He'd get so distracted with her right there, and he had this great flow going, in the zone, but with her warm and soft and amusing, Nikki Heat didn't stand a chance.
She was still waiting on him. "How'd this start? You were moaning about the chapter when we left work."
He gave it up and climbed into bed with her, the laptop balanced in one arm. Maybe he'd still get it written. "I fell asleep in my chair, staring at the screen, thinking I'd just pretend to write until it was time to call you-"
"It's not a set time," she interrupted, and she was rolling her eyes at him as she settled against the headboard. "Just, you know, before it's too late."
"Too late?" he asked, propping the pillows up behind him and trying to get comfortable.
"You're pretty wordy, you know, Castle." She pushed on his shoulder and added her pillow to his, giving him enough support to balance the laptop on his thighs and sit up. "You tend to prattle on."
"And you love it," he muttered. "You don't need that pillow?"
"I'm fine. Just write. Finish your story - you fell asleep pretending to write and somehow woke up actually writing?"
"Oh, I had this dream."
He turned at her snort and saw her lean in against his shoulder. He lifted his hand and couldn't help palming the side of her face, his thumb over the sharp angle of her cheekbone.
She yawned and her eyes slipped shut. "You had a dream."
"Yeah. I dreamed that I had a sibling I didn't know about-"
Her head jerked upright and her lashes framed wide eyes. "What?"
"Yeah, just a thing. Whatever. And in my dream, it was a sister, and she was hot-"
"Of course she was."
"My sister, Beckett. It's not like she was - this was an unbiased opinion only."
"Of course it was."
He grumbled at her but she was yawning again and her body was laid out more along his hip now instead of his shoulder, slumping down in the bed. It freed his arms up so he could type and he impulsively saved his document again and set his fingers to the keyboard, half-reading the last few lines as he recalled his sudden burst of inspiration.
"So then I woke up and knew the exact scene - Rook has a sister and walks in with her and Nikki doesn't know-"
"Oh, I see," she murmured, and her forehead was against his thigh, her body curled in the bed.
She had no idea, she didn't see at all, did she? She was falling asleep on him. Castle grinned and dropped a hand down to her hair, fingers carding through the waves, and she let out a little sigh.
"And?" she murmured.
"And then I wrote," he said softly. He moved his hand back to the keyboard and grinned, couldn't help liking the juxtaposition of having Kate curled in his bed while Nikki Heat kicked Rook out of hers.
She woke to his - quite confident - hand on her.
"Does Writer Man have special powers?" he mused.
She gasped a laugh and curled into his body over hers in bed, her arm hooking around his neck. "Wow. Wow, okay. What a way to wake up."
He grinned into her neck and she fisted his hair until he stopped teasing.
The rumble of his voice hit her especially hard and she wondered if she'd been dreaming about him. His words were rich in the darkness. "So, what's the verdict?"
"Special powers. Yes, you do," she panted, then squinted past him to look at the alarm clock. "It's two a.m., Castle. What are you doing?"
"Other than checking out my special powers? Writing." He moved back from her and she tried to catch her breath. The light from the bathroom spilled in over his face; he looked pleased with himself.
"Isn't writing necessarily a special power?" she muttered. "Wait. Why am I having this conversation? It's two in the morning. And you woke me."
"I wanted you to read this." He pouted prettily, even batted his lashes a little. She rolled her eyes but sat up as she yawned, tugging on the the twisted up legs of her tights. She was sleep-sweaty, or maybe just turned on, so she shimmied them off, smirking a little at the slack-jawed look on his face.
"Give," she said, holding her hand out for the laptop even as she dropped her leggings off the side of the bed.
He dumped it in her arms and blinked at her, then shook his head and leaned in against her shoulder as she settled back. "Here. This scene. Tell me if it sounds in character."
"No case spoilers?" she murmured, shrugging her shoulders to get him to stop digging his chin into the hard point of her clavicle. "Ow. Lift up."
He shifted back and grabbed a couple pillows, arranged them at her side and came back; she narrowed an eye at him, but it was a pointless endeavor.
"No case spoilers," he affirmed, his mouth at the slope of her shoulder now for a soft kiss that made her skin ripple. "Wait. Which case?"
"The spy stuff with Nikki's mom."
"Oh. No, nothing for that."
"Good," she said with relish. The laptop was hot against her thighs and she lifted her knees to get a better angle, tucked her chin into her chest to read. Castle was watching her, she knew, but she'd gotten used to it.
And, of course, his words always sucked her right in.
Rook tossed a glance over his shoulder to make certain that Detective Heat was noticing, and then he sauntered out of the precinct. Let her go on thinking the woman on his arm was actually on his arm. She'd never believe long-lost sister, anyway, now that she saw conspiracies around every corner and was paranoid about every person in her life after Petar's betrayal.
She didn't want to tell him what was going on, fine. He could keep secrets too.
"That seems kind of petty," she muttered. "Why would he-"
And then the meaning of it hit her, the natural implications of this storyline, and she realized that last year's Frozen Heat hadn't really sunk in at all, had it? She'd been in such a good place and feeling finally in control, and he'd watched her read it, the two of them tangled up on the couch, and at all the lines where he described Nikki as so much like Kate or referenced something that had happened to them, she had just turned into him and they'd - had some fun with that.
Yeah, so the fact that Nikki was keeping it a secret from Rook hadn't registered. The fact that Castle wrote Heat's old boyfriend into an enemy spy hadn't-
Oh wait. Old lover as enemy spy?
"Is Petar - did you write that because of Sophia Turner?" she asked, turning her head just a little to nudge his cheek with her nose. Too close there, Castle.
He lifted from her shoulder and shrugged, but the truth of it was pressed back behind his eyes. He had. Oh. How had she completely ignored the Castle of it all? He was the author, he was the one whose experiences informed his work. Just because Kate's own history with men included - so far - two men who'd badly betrayed her and a father who had, at one point, abandoned her as well, didn't mean that Castle was blatantly stealing from her life again.
He'd stolen from his own.
"She's dead," Kate said quietly. "I'm sorry."
His mouth flattened into that surprised line, that hesitating look where she thought maybe he was too touched to speak. He'd hadn't expected that from her and she was pleased to have known enough to say something.
"And Rook's long-lost sister?" she added.
He shook his head and she realized this was probably the first conversation they'd ever had where she'd done all the work. He really was as closed off as she was, or at least in some things.
But then again, here it was all spread out on the page. No wonder he never felt the need to talk about this stuff or really dig deep into whatever issues he had - fatherlessness, his mother, Sophia turning traitor, even Kate herself.
"Would you like siblings?" she said finally, thinking it was neutral territory for them, a nice place to start a slow exploration. "I never wanted a brother or sister. But I could see the appeal."
His whole body eased at her words and she brought her bottom lip against her teeth, thinking. Weighing the evidence. He didn't have to talk; she didn't have to know. But it was nice to know, wasn't it? To have things about him surprise her, revealed slowly like a gift.
"I think I always wanted more people around me," Castle answered, and now his shoulder was against hers and his head tilted back into the pillow bunched up behind his neck. "So probably that would mean brothers and sisters. But doesn't have to be."
"The boys are brothers," she said into his sudden stillness.
He let out a little laughing breath. "Yeah. So - I'm good."
He had people now, that's what she heard. He'd found his life narrowed down to the pinpoint of his daughter and mother, and he'd been looking for more. For - what? Substance or roots or some kind of-
Well. He was looking for people. He wanted more people around him, he'd said, but he'd once had plenty of people circling him, looking for one thing or another. Maybe that was the distinction. "You have to be careful, I guess, about the people you let around you."
He shrugged and she felt his body sinking a little deeper into the bed. "That's for sure. Not so much now - I don't stay in those same circles all week, every day. It's now on the periphery. I'm at the 12th instead. I have - there are more important things to think about."
"Not the white whale anymore, are you?" she laughed a little.
"Huh?"
"Nothing," she said softly, hearing the tired in his voice, the struggle to keep talking with her. She turned and watched his eyes closing then widening as he fought sleep. The laptop was still propped up on her knees and she'd read the scene, and she knew he was waiting for some final word on it. He liked to share, liked even more that instant reassurance from a reader that it worked.
"I like it, especially how you describe him walking out. It makes me sad. It makes me understand." . . .You.
He curled onto his side, and his hand settled at the crease where her hip met her raised leg; his fingers stroked along the skin under her shirt. When he hadn't called, she'd worn her pajamas over to his place, her coat thrown over, boots on, and now she had his attention, barely dressed as she was.
She lifted her hand from the edge of the laptop and skimmed the soft hair of his forearm, touching and being touched.
They didn't have to talk about this stuff; talking only made her anxious, the words got away from her and made her feel like she was failing him - and herself - in some fundamental, crucial way. And he seemed to work everything out on the page without having to talk about it. So not talking. . .
"This saved?" she whispered.
"Mm, yeah. Saved."
She hesitated only the briefest of moments and then she closed the lid of the laptop and leaned over to set it on the floor. When she came back to his side, his eyes were already shut and his body was warm and relaxed. She scooted down to rest face to face, lifted a finger and stroked the edge of his jaw.
He startled and came to, the soft brown lashes framing those bedroom-dark blue eyes. She leaned in and kissed the pliant wreck of his mouth.
"Thank you for writing it all out. It helps to know."
The talking could wait for the morning. She skimmed her thumb over his mouth.
He sighed suddenly, his fingers curling in her shirt. "I love that you read."
Kate only smiled and nestled closer.