Title - Heating Up
Author - Alyssa
Rating - T
Words - 963
Summary - In the aftermath of Natalie's Visit to the NYPD Rick Castle Speculates over why he said No to everything he ever dreamed of, in the words of Nikki heat
A/N - So thins is my first Castle fanfiction, I have only watched the first series and some of the most recent ones to i Apologize for any factual error
oh and spoilers for 3 x 11 Nikki Heat
He would always question himself to why he said no,
Like this girl was Nikki Heat the way he imagined her, as Beckett smothered in honey and oozing with sexuality. And yet he turned her down, this girl was concocted from his mind and no small amount of hidden desires, as tunneling down to one thing his ever-burning passion towards one Kate Beckett.
Fantasy wasn't enough for him anymore, he was sick of it, and hadn't written a word in months, his thoughts just kept going back to her, Nikki wasn't based on Kate anymore she was Kate for him at least. Yet with Natalie standing before him it was becoming hard to differentiate between the two.
Real Nikki was Kate
Book Nikki was Kate & Him together
Movie Nikki was a like a Clone of Kate yet somehow Natalie at the same time.
And he was getting confused, he loved Kate real Kate and had admitted that to himself over the summer, but he couldn't get over the idea of book Kate or fantasy Kate of Nikki.
Yet the second Nikki, No Natalie's lips where on his just for a second it was Kate, it was everything he had ever imagined and nothing more, the real Kate would of surprised him, knock his socks off. Kate smelt like Lilies and Gunpowder while Natalie smelt like over priced perfume. Her arms were the wrong shape, her lips not quite perfect, her height too tall, and her hair was nowhere near soft enough.
Natalie was Nikki nothing more than the shadow of his late night longing and well everyone knows late night longings aren't real they rarely ever are real,
Ok well truthfully they were never real, that was the point of fantasy anyway.
Yet there was something about Kate that made him hope and shun the idea at the same time. She was everything warm and real, and apart from Alexis the one stationary thing in his life for the past three years. She was calm and sassy and could handle herself, she wasn't a low life stripper picked up at a downtown bar she was the type of perfect that you only came across once your entire life.
Yet he knew if was to do this there was only going to be one shot at it, she was a one and done girl with relationships, she had told him that on their first case together. It had to be perfect subtle and the ball had to land squarely in her court.
He knew it had to be her call, it would never last if it was his, but if she chose then he was halfway there already, half way to the perfect fantasy he had concocted in his mind, the one where she was al little bit too much Nikki Heat. The one were she was Sexy and Sassy and all his, the one that has between a Zero and Nil chance of becoming true.
So in reality he should have said yes to Natalie, Yet he didn't from the small hope that Kate would eventually accept them, Whatever the hell they were.
Yet he hadn't expected it to be that night, any night but that. Hell he had expected it more at the launch of the First Nikki Heat novel, When she came Rushing into the room after he had been taken hostages by the 3XK, Out of pure jealousy after Natalie stole his coffee, but never now after the case when all the endorphins had stoped rushing, the adrenaline had long since washed away, and 3 days of not sleeping a wink were catching up on him.
He had not expected to be pushed against the elevator wall by once New York Police Department Detective Kate Beckett, despite the fact it was due to a power surge that had sent the elevator plummeting towards the ground. It was actually the first time he had fully appreciated the 12th's three levels of underground parking.
Yet her they where wedged between an awkward space and a hard rock, quite literally, they were currently residing at minus 3.5 floors, point five of a floor lower than should be physically possible but somehow was.
And he was grateful for that, because personally he didn't want Kate to become a smooshed pile of moosh at the bottom of an elevator wreck and frankly he didn't want to be either. But this had to be best-case scenario stuck in an elevator with Kate Beckett all but on top of you.
"Did you sleep with her" a voice cut through my fog laden brain, I had been too busy processing the situation to remember that She was there and that This Was Not another one of those late night fantasy's.
Despite the fact that it was late at night.
This was very much real.
"No" it was a simple non-discrete answer and all that he could manage at the moment. All he could say when her hair was flowing off her shoulders onto his.
And like that he flashed back to the night before when he had been in a similar situation to this, except it was Nikki to him and Natalie to the rest of the world including her. He had hurt her this week he had seen it in her eyes all day, the small sense of disappointment. Yet now he knew why, She thought He had slept with her, and suddenly all the pieces fell into place.
"No, Never why would I want the fake when I still have a chance at the real thing"
As he looked into her eyes he knew why he had said no. Because this was Kate Beckett and he was pretty sure he loved her.