People who knew Richard Castle – the real Rick, beyond the glamour, beyond the mask – knew that he was predictable in his unpredictability. For instance, if you were to find him suspended by a mountain climbing rope, wearing a pair of heavy duty spectacles and all black garb, pivoting slowly, trying to catch the bead of sweat before it fell onto the floor, while trying to get a CD out of a laptop, you'd think he was a spy. Unless the rope were tied to the first floor landing of his SOHO loft, he was approximately 3 feet off the ground, the spectacles were swimming glasses, and there was a can of pop next to the laptop. Then you'd just think he was crazy. Or you might be his intelligent, mature-beyond-her-age daughter, Alexis, and wouldn't bat an eyelash while stepping around him to get to the kitchen.

"Hello, carrot-top."

"Hello, not-Ethan Hunt. Research?"

"Research."

He didn't get famous just for his devilishly handsome looks, and chocolate boy gone rogue page six stories. Although those did help sell his books, famous young novelist, Richard Castle, earned his fame from his job. Writing. That thing he loved doing which actually earned him pretty big bucks. He was a lucky son of a gun.

Though his perennially cheery countenance, golden retriever like enthusiasm, and teenage boy-brain remarks often classified him as the fun-loving smartass category, there were a few things he took seriously. Kind of.

Among these things were family and close friends. And writing. Kind of.

It didn't always seem like it, but he did put in a lot of work into his – well – work. The means to the end may have included many a shenanigan, but in the end, a carefully crafted story always reached the editor's desk. Eventually. Probably after the deadline. Usually after the deadline.

Sometimes he got a little too method with his writing. Like the time he had to re-do the false divider in his apartment after seeing the efficacy of using watermelons as weapons. (He wanted to put in a bookshelf there anyway.)

Or like that other time when he failed so spectacularly at mountain climbing, that he wrote in a secret hidden passageway into one of his spy novels because he didn't want his protagonist to suffer mountain rock burn.

Or like that one random plot idea day when he decided to take the subway to figure out logistics of public transport. It made him come back the next day because random plot idea day evolved into a cool plot of having a hostage situation on a train, and his spy protagonist being undercover. So he took the journey once every day (cause there's only that much of public transport one can take in a day), took different routes, and tried to study the details.

He studied the tunnels, the way the lights flickered, clattery noises the bogie made, the cell phone network flickering. He studied the people – some anxious, some lost in thought, some with their heads buried in books or newspapers, jiggling their legs, bobbing their heads to too-loud-for-headphones music.

Sometimes he'd get recognized, he was hot in the presses after all, but mostly he got left alone. People minded their own business. Mostly.

He came back again for the third day in a row of probably five. Looked, listened, smelled - his senses absorbing the life, brain converting everything into words.

He came back for the fourth, and then again for the fifth. On the fifth day, even before boarding the train, he had a moment. If he were to describe the moment, he'd say it was an infinitesimally small fracture in time where he felt hot and cold all at once. Like flame blooming in his chest, and a water-balloon bursting on his head. Tiny currents starting at his neck, running down his spine, all the way into his fingers and toes - making them curl. It was like nothing, and something. Something he'd felt before. In a past life? In his dreams? In his books? But it's nothing he remembers feeling before. A resurrection of a memory of nothing, a phantom held just out of reach. Over in a split second, that had him take a deep breath in to expand his chest, and shake away the cobwebs that seemed to have materialized in his mind.

On the fifth day that was cloudy, with the smell of petrichor wafting through the small enclosed spaces, the damp feel of the breeze that made its way through the traffic of people on a public commute. On the fifth day, he looked up, and time froze. It didn't stop, no. It just slowed to crawl just like the train had before it stopped at the station. The new set of New Yorkers stepped in, and the train jolted to restart its journey. The passengers found their seats, or poles to lean on. The train picked up speed, but time didn't. When he looked up, it froze.

She took off her jacket before sitting on the still dry seat, and held it a fraction away from herself as she gently shook it. His eyes followed her hand that gave it a couple of pats, shaking lose a few drops that fell to the floor. The same hand rose to her face and moved a damp clump of hair off her cheek, and then proceeded to comb gracefully through her hair.

If he could think, he would think about how he'd probably look like a wet dog trying to shake himself dry. If he could think, he would think that she didn't look so much like a wet dog, as she did some sort of aquatic Goddess rising into the realms of dry land, spreading her energy. If he could think, he'd probably think he ought raise his jaw back before it left his face and fell to the floor.

He was, however, slightly impeded by the fact that his grey cells seemed to have deserted him. He did have a fleeting thought that if he'd shake his head, he'd hear a few lose parts clunking around. It was a fleeting thought though, one he couldn't pay attention too, because it was all focused on the beautiful woman who just then met his eyes.

While externally he just blinked owlishly back at her, internally he was having quite the struggle. His body was playing tricks on him. He felt like throwing up. Throwing up rainbows. He felt like he'd suddenly gained a whole lot of superhero level strength. Strength he would use to build a pedestal for her to stand on. He felt like clutching his heart and scolding it. It had no business beating so loudly she could probably hear it from all the way across him.

He felt the jolt brought on by the sudden change of inertia. Knew this was his stop, but he stayed on anyway. She felt it too. The jolt. It was probably what triggered her to look away from him. Hide the rose tinted cheeks behind the curtain of dark chocolate strands of her hair.

Rick found it in himself to look away for a second. Do the courteous thing. The thing that didn't make him seem like a psychopath on a train journey. But he felt more than saw her turning back to him, and his poor, weak body turned to her too.

And then she smiled a small little thing. A slight quirk of the corner of her mouth, as her teeth dug into her lower lip. Her eyes looked straight into his just for a moment – an infinitesimal fracture in time – before they looked down at her lap.

He turned to the person beside him. He wanted to make sure that no one actually physically punched him in the gut, because though he didn't quite remember that happening, it sure as hell felt like it did happen. Considering that the person beside him was a school-aged girl with well-manicured nails, he ruled it out.

She was about to look at him again, he'd bet on it. But the train jolted again, and it seemed to have startled her. A few people had already gotten up, had already started making their way out of the now stationary train. She got up, standing behind a couple. Just before getting off, she looked over her shoulder at him. She gave him an almost apologetic smile.

Her eyes looked so green. But they'd looked brown just a moment before, and he thought maybe it's the lighting. Maybe it's his imagination. Maybe she's his imagination too. Rick Castle wasn't an overly modest person. Some would even say he was full of himself. But he knew for sure that he wasn't that good a writer. She had to be real. She was real, and she was off the train, and why was he still on it?

He stood up, determined. Determined to do what, he hadn't quite figured out yet, but he let his body take the lead. A few people got in, and he moved towards the doors just as the started sliding shut. He felt like a cliché. Being trapped on the other side of the door. He raised his hand to the glass, trying to catch – what exactly? Trying to catch a lost moment? Trying to catch her.

Just before he got too far, when he allowed his eyes to open (when had he even closed them?) he saw her, not ten paces away, her hand raised, palm facing him, fingers curling in a hello. A goodbye.

She turned. And then he was too far way.

He got on the train on the sixth day, trying to match the time as closely to the fifth as he could.

He got on the train on the seventh day, and it would have been the last.

He got on for another week after that, each day, the disappointment an ever-growing weight on his shoulders.

He got on again, because he couldn't bear not to. And on the fifteenth day, when he was trying to look away from the opening doors, when he was trying to avoid another crack in his heart, he felt her more than he saw her. He turned towards her, as she spotted him. He scooted over so he wasn't obnoxiously occupying space enough for two, like he had been doing for the last ten days. She made his way next to him, her expression inscrutable. She sat down, all fluid movements and grace as she looked straight ahead. As he did too, coward that he was.

"It's Kate," she said softly.

He turned to her, heart tripping over itself as he tried in vain to contain his blooming smile.

"Rick."

Her hand stretched out in the small space between them, and he could have sworn his world seized for just a moment. An infinitesimal fracture in time.


A/N: Wow, I haven't written in a very long time. Sorry if this was absolute crap, I've lost my ability to judge.