Disclaimer: The Characters are borrowed, lovingly, from Castle. The plot is likewise borrowed from FlashForward, the novel. I get squat for doing this, other than the pleasure of putting words in their proper arrangements.
A/N: This is a little triffle of a thing, only about 6,000 words total, but I couldn't get it out of my head, when it arrived, fully formed with bags and baggage and holed itself up in the guest room of my brain. It's odd and shaggy, written in one sitting (which I never do) and I had to get it out so that I could get back to working on other things. And now that I've properly undersold it...
Kate Beckett gets home late, just as she has every night since she joined the force. Tonight her lateness had been in service to paperwork around the oddest case of her young career. A copycat killer that wasn't, and a case broken by a writer who was exactly unlike everything she'd ever hoped he'd be.
She had worked a case with Richard Castle. Weird. So weird. And she'd arrested him to boot.
She goes through her fridge, grabs the fixings for a sandwich, happy that she's shopped for once. She also grabs a bottle of wine and opens it before she starts assembling her weak little dinner. Let's the wine breathe.
She needs to breathe herself.
It was a lucky thing that her favorite author had turned out to be such a pompous ass, because even being frustrated by him, she'd been half ready to take up his offer to be mutual conquests. Would that have been a really horrible idea or a really great one?
Horrible. Absolutely horrible. And yet, there was still a bit of regret buried there when she thought about it.
But she was done thinking about it.
She's halfway through making the sandwich when a wave of nausea hits her, and she has to drop the bread, grab the edge of her kitchen counter to steady herself. The room spins like she is drunk, but the wine remains untouched next to the cutting board.
She takes a few deep breaths and the nausea passes.
And then, all of a sudden, she feels herself blacking out.
Next thing she knew, she is walking down an wood paneled hallway she doesn't recognize. It doesn't feel like she's in a dream, everything is clear and sharp and real, but she doesn't seem to be able to control herself either. Her body feels strong, and she moves quickly. She can't make her body stop. It's like she's a passenger inside herself.
She hears a voice near her. Out of the corner of her eye, she can tell there is a woman about her age walking beside her. She's short, with pale skin, long red hair, and huge blue eyes. The woman is staring at a binder she holds in front of her as they walk.
"...and I've moved your meeting with Senator Morrow to Thursday. He wants to talk farm subsidies..."
"He's going to want to talk about H.R. 242," she interrupts. How does she even speak? It's like she's watching, from inside herself, unable to actually control anything.
"He wants to talk farm subsidies, trust me," the redhead continues. Kate finds her vaguely familiar, like she's seen her in a crowd before, but she's not sure where. She wants to look over, get a closer look at the woman, but she can't force her head to turn. She just keeps moving with purpose down the hallway.
"I'll worry about Morrow later. Looking at the weather, I assume my flight is delayed?"
"Um, about that. Fog has everything shut down on the Eastern Seaboard. Flight's cancelled."
"Dammit, I need to be in New York tomorrow morning."
"I know. So I arranged... um ... alternate travel."
Kate and the redhead push through double doors and Kate finds herself on the street. It's cold and dark, with a thick fog laying in close against the building. Kate sees a long limo waiting in the street. She turns back to the redhead.
"My alternate travel?" she asks. She can feel that she already knows the answer, and her mouth is turning up in a half smirk. The redhead, and she really is familiar, is unfazed, and just smiles back. She's about twenty-nine, probably a contemporary or near contemporary of Kate herself. Maybe Kate knows her from college?
"Have a good trip. And say hi to Dad for me."
Kate feels herself smiling fully before leaning in and briefly hugging the other woman. Dad, she thinks to herself - this woman acts like she's a sister. Odd. But Kate's body ... she's having trouble separating what she feels from what her body is feeling for her ... seems unfazed by this fake sister. She ... her body... just squeezes the woman's upper arm, turns, and gets in the limo. Everything is weird, and Kate is rapidly feeling sick at this rollercoaster sense of merely being along for the ride.
The limo isn't empty.
Sitting across from her is Richard Castle.
Richard Castle? Really?
He looks different from how he did when she left him a few hours ago. He's clean shaven, with shorter hair. He's older and he's put on some weight. He looks more distinguished and less pompous. She can feel her body reacting to his presence even more acutely than she did when she left him on the street. She wants him. She slides across the seat and crawls into his lap, kissing him without a moment's hesitation.
It feels both familiar and new at the same time, and she can feel herself reacting immediately, that low heavy feeling just below her stomach. They kiss for a minute or two before she stops it.
"Not that I'm not happy to see you," she says (and at the same time, Kate wonders how she was able to stop when every nerve in her body seems to be yelling for more) and she feels him laugh beneath her, "but where are the girls?"
"I thought we had a rule against mentioning the kids in the midst of doing, you know, this?"
"Castle," she says. Really? She calls him by his last name in the middle of making out with him?
Wait, she's making out with him. What the hell?
"Jo's at a sleepover at Elaine's, and Bennie is going to bring Ellie over to stay with Alexis tonight. Alexis'll bring them both up to New York on Tuesday."
"Oh good. So... is the car taking us all the way to New York tonight?"
"Yup, and the privacy screen is locked."
"Mmmmmm," she says, and goes back to kissing him. She's never been attracted to older men as a rule, Royce excepted, but she finds herself wanting Castle more than she's ever wanted anyone. If this version of Castle, older, confident, comfortable without being arrogant, had shown up for their case together, she would've dragged him off somewhere and never come up for air.
Can you be a voyeur in your own body? Kate isn't in control, but she can hear and feel and see everything. Castle's hands are practiced, and her own move with the grace of experience. She can tell that she ... that this body ... is attuned to Castle's, that this isn't a first time experience. A small part of her mind can feel his wedding ring as his hand runs into her hair, and she can feel her own ring snag on his shirt for a second as she undoes buttons.
The sex is brief, but wholly satisfying, and Kate is sure she could come up with better adjectives if she hadn't just been a witness to herself making love to Richard Castle in the back of a limo... and are they married? Everything about them, how they talk, how they move, screams of two people who are long and deeply connected to each other.
Crap. This is just ... it's just too much for words.
She slides off of his lap when they are done, and they redress, not that they really stripped down, before she rests herself in the crook of his arm.
"So, I have some news," he says, and she can feel her heart rate jumping back up, like she knows what his news is.
But before he can continue, she blacks out again.