Title: A Wrinkle in Time
Summary: I often think of ways Castle and Beckett could have met before we meet them. This is one of those ways.
Disclaimer: I don't own most of the characters I write about. If you recognize a name, odds are it isn't mine. But seeing as this is a fanfic website, you probably knew that already.
Thanks again to Sunshiny-Kate, the best beta a writer could ask for!
"Did you know that elephants can't jump?"
"Not at all?"
"Nope."
"Wow!"
"And the average adult elephant eats about 330 pounds of food a day."
"That's almost as much as you eat!"
"Daddy, don't be silly. They have to eat that much because they are huge!"
"How huge?"
"They can weigh up to 11,500 pounds and be over eight feet tall at the shoulder."
"That is huge!"
"I know!"
"It sounds like you learned a lot on your field trip."
"I did. The zoo was fun. But I like coming here with you more, daddy."
"I like coming here with you too, Alexis." Rick Castle said to his daughter as he smiled down at her.
Alexis kept talking, but Castle wasn't listening. His focus was now on a woman siting on a bench a few feet away. When he looked at her she turned her gaze to the elephants behind him, but he wasn't fooled. She had been watching them.
Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail that stuck out from a dark blue police hat. Her uniform was well ironed, but looked nearly a size too big. Even with the distance between them, he could see the bags under her tired, deep brown eyes. Her facial expression was a mix of sadness, frustration, confusion, and exhaustion. Even so, there was no denying that she was beautiful.
"Daddy?"
Castle looked down as he became aware of Alexis calling out to him and pulling on his shirt.
"Yes, sweetie?" He responded.
"I've been saying your name forever!" She said in childlike exaggeration.
"I'm sorry, honey. I got distracted."
"It's okay. You do that a lot."
Castle laughed even though he felt slightly ashamed at the honesty in her statement.
"Well, I'm all yours now. What were you saying?"
"I was asking if we can go get lunch. I'm hungry."
"Of course. I can't let my girl go hungry now. What would you like?"
"Hotdogs!" She exclaimed.
Castle rubbed his chin and squinted his eyes as if he were thinking about hard about his answer.
"Okay. I've made up my mind. We're getting hotdogs."
"Yay!" Alexis jumped up and down and shouted softly.
Castle always tried to figure out how she did that. She could be loud and quiet at the same one and it truly mystified him. He shook his head. His daughter was amazing in so many ways, and she was only seven years old.
Alexis reached up and he wrapped his fingers around her tiny hand. They smiled at each other and walked towards the exit. Castle stole a glance over his shoulder and caught the woman staring at them again, this time with a smile of her own. Like before, she looked away just as his eyes were about to meet hers, the smile fading as as she turned her face from him.
"Daddy, after hotdogs, can we get some ice cream?"
Castle turned his attention back to Alexis. He leaned down and gently kissed her fiery red hair.
"Of course we can, sweetheart." He said as they turned the corner.
They were far enough away that Kate Beckett didn't hear his response. But that meant they couldn't see her and so she let the grin she'd hidden spread back across her face. She had come to the museum to get away from the trials and tribulations of being a rookie cop. Sundays tended to be slow days there and she enjoyed the quiet. And it had been fun watching the man that looked an awful lot like her favorite author and his adorable little girl. Maybe she'd go to a book signing sometime and actually meet him. She smiled at the idea and then sighed, her mind becoming lost in thought.
A few minutes later, her silent reverie was suddenly interrupted by the annoying sound of her beeper. She looked at the number, even though she already knew it was her squad captain. It was time to go back out on her beat. She sighed again and stood up, but found her steps were slightly less heavy as she left. The loving interaction she'd witnessed between father and daughter had reminded her of good memories she had in this same place with her parents. And with the things she saw as a cop in New York City, she needed all the good memories she could get.
Castle sighed. He was bored out of his mind. He'd played with his phone. He'd made up stories in his head about the guys on the holding cell. He'd had three cups of the sorry excuse for coffee from the break-room, which was about four cups too many. Even with his imaginative mind, he was out of ways to entertain himself. He let out another longer, louder sigh.
"Castle, if you're that bored, you can leave." Beckett didn't look up from the paperwork she was doing. "You don't have to be here."
"I'm researching." He replied.
"I'm just doing paperwork."
"Nikki has to do paperwork too."
"Fine. Stay. But stop that annoying sighing." She looked up. "And didn't I tell you to change her name?"
"Yes." He nodded. "But as I said, I have artistic license."
She started to say something but just shook her head and looked back down at her stack of forms.
Castle put his hands together and twirled his thumbs. Seventeen seconds passed before something on her desk caught his attention. He reached out but his hand didn't get halfway to its destination before she spoke.
"Don't touch my elephants."
"How did you even know what I was doing? You're not looking." He said in surprise.
"You're not as sneaky as you like to think you are." She said.
She would never admit that she'd actually been watching him in her peripheral vision. Her eyes had made a habit of wandering to him when he sat next to her desk. Paperwork now took her twice as long as before he'd begin to shadow her.
Castle put his hands back in his lap, not wanting to press his luck by picking up one of the small statues. He sat there quiet for a few moments, then curiosity got the better of him.
"Why do you have elephants on your desk?"
Beckett looked up at him then moved her gaze to the train of pachyderms.
"I just like elephants. They are so powerful and huge, yet they move majestically." She smiled briefly then looked back at him. "My mom liked them too."
Castle was shocked. Beckett rarely talked about her mother.
"She did?" He asked gently.
"Yes. We used to go to the museum and the zoo a lot when I was little. She always wanted to stay in the African Savannah room or at the elephant habitat the longest. We would just stand there holding hands, staring at the elephants." She sighed. "Sometimes, while I was still a beat cop, I would go back to the museum, sit on a bench in the room, and just remember her. You know, I saw you-"
She stopped talking. What was she doing? She didn't open up like this to people, especially not Castle. And why had she been about to tell him that she remembered seeing him there with Alexis one time? That would have totally sounded creepy, and he would have teased her about being a fan. She turned back to the paperwork beckoning to her from below.
He actually let a few minutes pass before he said anything.
"You saw me what?"
"What?" She asked innocently as she signed her name for what felt like the hundredth time that day. How did he sign all those autographs without getting a hand cramp? She shook her head to focus herself.
"You said you saw me, but then stopped. What were you going to say?"
She looked up and met his gaze. She had to think fast to get out of this one.
"Oh. I was going to say I saw that you had finished your coffee."
"Why?"
"I was going to ask for a cup of you were going to get more."
He squinted at her in slight disbelief, but then got up and headed to the elevator.
"Hey, where are you going?" She called out after him.
"To get us some real coffee. I'll be back in a few minutes." He answered over his shoulder.
Before she could say anything else, the doors were closed and he was gone. Now that he couldn't see her anymore, she let the grin she'd kept hidden spread across her face. She reached out and ran a finger gently across the elephants. Then she went back to the paperwork, hoping to make a dent in it before her favorite distraction returned.