Castle fanfic -
He Bought, She Bought
Take a trip to the farmer's market. Enjoy the sun!
September 5, 2010, 8:39 a.m.
It was the Saturday morning before Labor Day, and the weather was gorgeous. Kate Beckett was at the Soho Farmer's Market. She'd gone for a run with a nylon fabric shopping bag and a twenty stashed in her sports bra, and here she was, at the slightly-more-upscale farmer's market in SoHo, foraging for produce in the Urban Jungle. She was enjoying her weekend solitude, knowing full well that she'd be among the few manning the bullpen on Monday, when most of the other NYPD union members would be off at a massive picnic. She didn't really like picnics much... all those people with their kids, all that squealing and giggling and the sack races and stupid team-building crap. She already had a team. Most of a team. Part of it was gone: Castle was gone, off to the Hamptons with his blonde harpy's claws firmly dug into his manly biceps. And she wasn't sure she wanted him to come back, except that she wondered what it would be like to do a three-legged race with Castle and fall down with him at her side, laughing. Just for, you know, team-building purposes.
"NO. Not going there," she told her ovaries, which were pinging softly somewhere deep in her lower abdomen. Damn mittelschmerz.
She got a coffee from the bearded hipster with the portable-roaster-and-one-cup-at-a-time setup. When she asked for "two pumps of sugar free vanilla and nonfat milk," he just scowled at her from under his curled mustache.
"This is mountain-grown Hawaiian Peaberry coffee. We do not besmirch its pure essence with artificial sweeteners and nonfat milk," he scolded. The Unsullied Mountain-grown Hawaiian Peaberry coffee was slow in coming, and it was hellaciously bitter, and he only had artisanal organic shaved loaf sugar and whole milk, so she made do with what he had. She'd gone running. She'd paid $4.25 for the coffee. She'd waited 6 minutes and 14 seconds for it (according to the clock outside the jewelry store). And damned if she wasn't gonna enjoy it.
As she stood sipping her still-too-hot drink, she stared across at the window of a small bookstore to see Richard Castle staring back at her. She jumped slightly, her heart doing a flipflop that might have been either horror or joy. And then she realized, "Oh. Flat Castle." It was a cardboard cutout of her nemesis/chronicler/worst nightmare/secret wildest fantasy/former best friend/disappearing act ghost disappointment. She mumbled, "No matter where you go, here you aren't."
She found herself fancying something sweet, and her nose was drawn to the churro cart, just past the "Heritage Squash and Pumpkin" booth.
She bought a churro, and leaned against the low wall of a small local park to nibble on its brown, sweet, spicy length. A man passing by her gave her a disgusting leer and murmured, "Looks tasty, honey." She scowled at him, then bit the churro- hard, chomping on it and continuing the death stare until he backed away slowly, sweating a little.
"Yeah, keep walking, Bozo," she snapped. You don't have to be a cop to be terrifying. Just live in New York during sundress season. Women learn fast.
Now completely turned off by the prospect of eating her churro in public, she tossed the rest of it to a family of three crows who were poking around in the grass. Richard Castle's voice in her head piped up, from sometime last spring, before he went away and didn't call all summer and still hadn't and where the hell was he and good riddance. "I love crows. They're almost as smart as ravens. You know the collective noun?"
"Yes, Castle. A murder of crows."
"That is so hot." He was playing with a piece of string, tying an incredibly complicated knot. A monkey's fist. She'd had to look it up, when he wasn't looking. "A knot of toads."
"A skulk of foxes. An exaltation of larks."
"A bevy of beauties." He'd looked at her sweetly and waggled his eyebrows. "But there's only one of you."
Still sitting on the park wall, she blushed, even though he wasn't there anymore, and took a sip of her miserable cup of bitter injustice. Her memory of Castle nattered on in her head.
"You know crows can use tools, right?"
"Bend wire to collect food. Open gate locks to steal dog food. Yup."
"But they can't make chains out of paper clips."
"Nope. It takes someone really special achieve that level of engineering mastery."
Speaking of tools. Why hadn't he called?
Maybe because she'd been an abrasive bitch one too many times? But... he hadn't seemed to mind. If anything, the challenge just seemed to rev him up.
Maybe if she'd been nicer to him, he wouldn't have left. Had she been a bitch? Why had it felt like flirting? Why hadn't she dumped Demming sooner? She sighed, stopped back at the "Heritage Squash and Pumpkin" booth, and bought some zucchini, both in dark green and pale yellow with green stripes.
"Courgettes", Castle whispered in her head. This was from sometime last May. "I know this French hotel where they're grated with carrots and parsnips, sautéed with butter, salt, and pepper... so simple, but it's perfect."
"You mean you eat something other than sugar?" she'd smirked.
He'd looked at her wordlessly for a moment, then a devastating, lazy smile had overtaken his face, and Kate was blushing again. "Yes," he'd said. His blue eyes fixed on hers, then a long, slow blink. She'd had to get up and go to the water fountain to clear her head.
That was all he'd said. But she knew what he meant. Damn him.
Even this early, it was a little muggy, and the sun was warm. She felt a gentle trickle of sweat down the middle of her back. She went to the Rooty Tooty Veg and Fruity booth, where she was greeted warmly by Manuela, whom she'd seen at the Soho farmer's market every other summer Saturday since she bought her apartment. (You don't buy an apartment like that on a rookie's salary, not in Manhattan. She'd inherited some money from her mom, her dad had kicked in part of the down payment, her Aunt Teresa had a spare $10,000 lying around. If not for their help, she would have been renting a closet in a 5th story walk-up in Queens, at least for the first few years when she was doing traffic and beat work).
Manuela had gray-streaked hair pulled back in a bun, but she was still young and wore her fifth child in a backpack as she worked over the tables of fresh vegetables. "Good morning, Kate!" she cried.
Kate beamed at her, and at Renaldo, who was ten months old. He gave her a smile, and she exclaimed, as she did every time she saw him, "Who is that big boy on your back?"
Manuela shrugged. "Aw, we were out pickin' apples and found him up a tree. I think he's some kinda monkey."
"At the rate he's growing, he'll be like King Kong in no time." Kate grabbed a plastic bag and sorted through a mixed pile of carrots: white, orange, deep-red, purple, yellow. "These look amazing. But it's always hard to decide whether I want to go with the long, thin ones or the shorter, fat ones."
"That's something you have to decide for yourself, honey! It depends on what you plan to do with them." Manuela laughed, then winked at her.
"I am not gonna go there," Kate thought. "The weather's still hot, so salad."
"The skinny ones don't even need to be peeled."
Kate picked out some medium-sized carrots in orange, red, and creamy white, enough to last the week (the last orange carrot was doomed to lie in the bottom of her crisper drawer, slowly mummifying into a black and twisted wreck of its former vibrant self). "So what else is good today?"
"Everything, honey, everything. The apples are from Blueberry Hill – no, don't bother with the Red Delicious, they just look pretty. Go for the Gravensteins – just the end of their season. They don't look like much, but smell. Amazing, right? The absolute best for sauce."
Kate nodded and selected three squat green apples, streaked with red, russeted on their humped shoulders.
Manuela added, "And look – the last of the cling peaches. The farm has this one little hollow where it's colder and blooms later, so the peaches are late too." She glanced past Kate for a moment, welcoming an incoming customer with a bright smile.
Kate picked up a glowing, burgundy-streaked yellow peach and sniffed. "Mmm."
Behind Kate, a man's deep voice said, "Smells like summer in here."
She just nodded at his voice inside her head, remembering... wait. He'd never said that.
She whirled. "Castle?"
End chapter 1
Wow. I've received more reviews on this story than any other. Thanks to all the likers, followers, & guests. I'm up to multiple chapters and it seems to be warming up as it goes...
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