Will The Real Richard Castle Please Stand Up?
She hums into his mouth and he feels her smile widen, break their kiss. When he lifts his head to look at her, she's chasing after him, her body rising from the couch to find him again, an arm hooked around his neck. He gives her what she wants and soon she's sitting up, legs tossed over his lap, a hand at his chest and one finger smoothing the skin at the hollow of his throat in that way that drives him crazy.
"All this angst over some cheating?" she chuckles. "You're kinda cute, Castle."
He can't help the grin that breaks through the press of her lips to his; he lets his hand drift from her shoulder to skim down her side and flare at her waist. She nudges her nose into his, withholding, urging him to keep talking.
"It was a big deal to me," he gives in, takes a kiss from her again, slips his fingers under her shirt.
"I can see that," she says. She's still amused, and he'll take it. Better than the alternative. "But really. You think so little of me?"
"What?" he gruffs, pulls back to look at her. "No?"
Her eyes are narrowed in the good way, the I'm solving a mystery here way, and she's also working at the buttons of his shirt. That's a good sign. Little bit flirty, little bit teasing.
"That I'd be swayed by some thirty year old crime-"
"Hey now. More like twenty," he sputters, but at her raised eyebrow, he does the math. "Okay, twenty-five. And yes. Because my first writing success is a fraud. You have said, on more than one occasion, how much my books-"
She pushes her fingers to his mouth and shuts him up. He's good with that too, because he parts his lips and takes her index finger between his teeth, watches her eyes zero in on his mouth, the way she struggles to remember what point she was trying to make.
And then he grins and her gaze snaps up to his, clarity returning. It must be slightly more serious than he realized, because she withdraws her fingers to brush her thumb at his chin, skimming under his lower lip, regarding him.
"Castle, I let you torture a man for information. Right in front of me. I turned my back and I walked away, and I let you-"
"Kate," he growls. "If you had tried to stop me. . ."
"I know," she nods, her eyes intent on him. They haven't really talked about this part of it; they've crept all around it. "I knew that then. If I had stopped you, we would've been-" She lifts her hand and gestures away, her eyes avoiding his: done. Over. "And I was selfish, because I couldn't give it up. So I let you torture him. But has that changed how you see me?"
How he sees Kate? Is she kidding?
"No." He sets his jaw and shakes his head at her, realizes his hand might be bruising her hip in his flare of indignation. And while sometimes she really likes that, this isn't one of those times. "No, Kate."
His voice is quiet, strong. Because he can see the flatness to her eyes when she asks what ought to be a rhetorical question, what ought to only be Kate making her point about how strong they are, but which has turned out to be a plea for reassurance.
"No," he says again. "You didn't let me do anything. I chose it. I did what needed to be done."
She's not happy with that either, but they've agreed to disagree on it - even if unspoken. And part of that agreement is that he takes her with him the next time.
She's nodding slowly, her hand brushing over his shirt and slipping into his breast pocket, a little tug that seems entirely uncharacteristic. "Then your first written success being a fraud? That doesn't change how I see you either."
He takes her hand out of his pocket and wraps his fingers around hers, brings her arm up to kiss the inside of her wrist. Her eyes are clear once more, the flatness has sprung back to life, green and gold like the woods in summer.
"Thank you," he offers, and not just for that.
She smiles - radiant, pure - and her body comes in closer; he leans in to kiss her, ready to take up where they left off. But she presses him back, her head tilting as she studies him. "Why now? Why the dreams and talking in your sleep and the. . .shame?"
He groans at her and dips his head to his hand. "Seriously? Is this what I sound like when I ask you question after question? Because this is annoying."
She laughs, a bold sound that he can't help grinning back at.
"Oh, Rick. Yes. It's exactly like this. Turnabout's fair play. So tell me. Why now?"
She's settled back against the arm of the couch and really, he could use the rest of that wine about now, but it's not exactly handy. He'd have to dump her off his lap to reach it. Nothing is worth that.
"Come on," she nudges, lifting one knee to jostle his arm, the heel of her foot getting him good in the thigh, making him twitch. "Tell me. An ages-old crime from your boarding school days. Why's it rear its head now?"
He shrugs at her. "You know how the subconscious mind likes to come out and play when we're asleep."
She huffs. "Really, Castle? You trying to palm off some old line about the mysteries of the human brain?"
He frowns.
She frowns back. "Really, unless you're currently defrauding millions of loyal fans, I don't see. . ."
And then Kate Beckett trails off, and her eyes narrow, and damn, she really is the best detective in New York. In the whole wide world.
"Castle," she says on a rush, sitting up suddenly on the couch. Her grip on his shirt is fierce. "Please tell me it's true."
Wait. What?
"True?" he attempts.
She bites her bottom lip and her fingers curl tighter in his shirt, already three buttons opened so that the press of her fist at his bare skin feels hot and insistent.
"Spill it," she orders. "Tell me everything."
She looks hopeful.
He opens his mouth, shuts it again.
"Castle. I thought you were talking about Jordan Shaw. But it's all about the writing, isn't it?"
"Jordan Shaw?" He gapes at her. "She's like the Federal you."
"Focus, Rick. The writing. I swear if you. . .look, the only reason you'd be having dreams about cheating on that paper would be if you're. . .and if you are, then really, that's. . .better."
"Better?" He raises an eyebrow.
"Just tell me. Tell me about the books."
He cringes and glances to the coffee table, then he finally meets her eyes. "I didn't write those Derrick Storm revival novels," he rushes out.
She lets out a long, almost giddy breath and leans into him, her arms coming around his neck and shoulder in a tight grip. He gets a kiss on his mouth, his cheek, her light laughter on a puff of breath against his ear. "Oh, thank God."
"What?"
"Castle, they're awful. I hate Derrick Storm in those books, and I used to love him. I couldn't even finish the second short they had out this summer, I just - we were having fun and it was so damn boring, and poorly written, and then he was a jerk, he really was-"
He laughs, the sound ripped out of him with equal parts understanding and amusement and just pure freedom. He thought so too.
"Why are you laughing?" she hisses. "Castle. How could you let them do this to Storm?"
He shuts up and rolls his eyes, stroking his fingers down her spine, the elegant curve of it in his arms. "Gina did it. She hired ghostwriters to revive the series, have Storm fake his death. She was afraid that I. . ."
Kate lifts from his neck where she's been practically strangling him with her own relief. "Afraid you what?"
He hedges for a second, then he gives up trying to keep it back. "I would. . .be too happy."
"Be too happy?"
"Too happy to write. To be successful. Her back-up plan in case I couldn't keep Nikki going when I had. . .you."
He winces and waits for it, but Kate's mouth lifts into a slow, cumulative smile, a build up of dazzling awe that has her fingers dipping in his shirt and stroking over his skin and then coming up to cradle his face between her palms.
"Yeah?" she says, that shy voice that always makes him want to puff out his chest like a caveman and assume stereotypical gender roles and be her guy.
"Yeah," he admits easily. Being her guy. "Yeah, but you're my muse, Kate Beckett. No danger in having you."
Her lips are curled so wide in that smile, her eyes illuminated with it, and she pushes in for a slow, seductive kiss, her mouth pliant and rich and her tongue playing along his before pushing deeper. More, always more. She's open to him in a way that makes him dizzy.
He forgets to breathe, pulls her in closer, wants to consume her.
She's still cupping his jaw with her hands and stroking her thumbs under his eyes when she breaks from him. "Castle, let's go to bed."
"Yeah," he roughs out, his feet planting on the floor and his arms wrapping around her waist, shifting forward.
"Castle?" she hums as he stands, her knees tightening around his hips, one heel at the back of his thigh and spurring him on.
"Yeah?" He's reduced to one word already? She always gets him tongue-tied - literally and figuratively. She always has him stupid and stunned with her when she drops all the walls, all the personas - the bad-ass and the detective and the strong woman - and just becomes Kate, lovely and needy and wanting and courageous despite everything. "Kate."
"You tell Gina you don't need a back-up plan. I'm your back-up. We do it together."
Even though he's halfway to the bedroom, he stops in the middle of his study and lifts his eyes from the view down her shirt to meet her gaze - intent and heady and serious.
"We do it together," he repeats. He just gets his feet walking again when she comes back for a kiss, muttering even as she does.
"FBI Agent April Showers? Really? She's ridiculous, a caricature. I thought maybe you'd based her off Meredith."
"No, I didn't write her. And at best, a poor man's Nikki Heat," he agrees quickly.
"Not even," she growls, nipping his mouth with her teeth, working at his jaw and that place where - oh, yes, there. Right there.
He pushes them right past his study and into his bedroom, intent on the dark seduction of her mouth.
She slides her hand in his shirt again, making him clutch her harder. "Storm should've stayed dead. Rook is a better man than he'll ever be."
He takes her to the bed and follows her down, pressing his weight over hers and lifting his head so she has to pay attention. Her mouth pouts and her hips roll up against his in encouragement, maybe a little warning.
Feisty tonight.
"Rook is a better man because of Nikki, but he started out as Storm," he says, needing her to understand. "He had to die, but now-"
"No but," she shakes her head. "The resurrected Storm is a pale imitation, Castle. No one can do it like you."
And with that - the only applause he'll ever truly need - he gives her exactly what they both want.
He loves how she gasps his name.
A/N: I don't usually do author's notes, but this fic wouldn't have been possible without the help of mynameisjeff and his selfless research into the Derrick Storm novels. Call me Kate, but I hated them and I really did try and then somewhere around page five of the second novel-short, I just quit. Thankfully, I didn't have to read them. This fic is also due to those of you who kept asking me about Target/Hunt and what Beckett and Castle's conversation about that torture scene might look like. I couldn't get it out of my head.