Other Flowers for Your Grave
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I own other things than Castle. Rating: K Time: In an AU following the first Castle episode.
Richard Castle was stuck. He had zoomed through a full chapter of Heat Wave and had even had time to go back and do a slight polish on the chapter. He'd go over it again several times during the writing, and do a thorough polish when the book was done.
But now he had a problem. He had come up with four ways for Nikki and Rook to get into and out of the trouble he needed to get to the next part of the story. All four were very good ideas, in his opinion, but they were mutually exclusive. He had to pick just one. He might be able to use the ideas if and when he wrote another Nikki Heat, but that did not help him now.
He was about to close his laptop and get himself a nice Scotch on the rocks when salvation arrived, in the form of a knock on his door. He closed his laptop and went to the door.
"Detective Beckett. What a nice surprise."
"Castle, can…" She began.
"Come in and let me take your coat."
Castle busied himself helping her with her coat and putting it in the closet.
"Castle, I need…"
"I was just about to make myself a Scotch. Can I get you something? I know, a glass of Chateau Neuf de Pape. Just the thing."
Kate opened her mouth to speak, but Castle was already headed for his wine cooler.
He decanted the wine, then poured himself a drink. He handed Kate her glass of wine.
"Would you like to sit down?' He asked.
They sat together on a couch.
"How's your wine?" he asked, as soon as she'd taken a sip, and before she could say anything.
"Wonderful, as always, but Castle, you could have been killed yesterday."
He smiled.
"Oh, I know you were mad at me, but I don't think you really would have shot me."
She rolled her eyes.
"Not me, Castle. Harrison Tisdale. He had a pistol pointed at your head."
"I told you. The safety was on. There was no danger."
She glared at him which caused him to move away a bit.
"Safeties can be turned off. It takes a fraction of a second and another fraction of a second to pull the trigger and kill you."
"I have great faith in your abilities. You'd have stopped him."
She took a deep breath to keep from screaming at him.
"If I was as good as Wyatt Earp, Annie Oakley and that sniper from the movie, I couldn't have stopped him in time. You could have been killed."
"I don't think he had any idea that the safety was on. I doubt he had any real knowledge of firearms. Just enough to shoot his sister at very close range. I've met people like that before. They think the mere act of having a gun in their hand makes them deadly. A foolish way to think in my opinion."
"You don't know that!" She insisted.
"We could ask him?" Castle said brightly.
She sighed.
"I'm sure his lawyer would love for you two to have a nice chat about whether there was any possibility that Tisdale would kill you."
"You're being sarcastic."
"You noticed." She said with faux sweetness.
He smiled.
"Look. It's all in the past. Nothing happened, so let's just let it go."
"You can't do things like that." She said, almost ready to scream at him.
"I have to. I have to protect you."
"You have to protect me? Have you forgotten who has years of training and also has a gun?"
"No, but you're my muse. Do you have any idea what would happen to me if something bad happened to you?"
"I don't believe this. I just don't believe this." She muttered.
"Remember, I told you that I killed off Derek Storm because he'd gotten boring, predictable. That wouldn't have bothered Gina one bit as long as the money kept coming in. She'd have been happy if all I could write were Derek Storm coloring books. I've seen writers that let that happen to them. They keep at it, maneuvering the same cardboard characters through the same predictable plots against the same shopworn villains to the same inevitable conclusion. They call people like that hacks. I didn't want to be a hack."
"And all this concerns me how?" She asked.
"When I killed Derek Storm, I needed a new character. After all, I'd written plenty of bestsellers before I ever thought of Derek. I decided to write about a jaded private eye in 1920s San Francisco who also wrote for pulp magazines. Kind of an homage to Dashiell Hammett. I was about two chapters into it when I noticed my character was basically a skinnier Derek Storm with a trench coat. I dropped the idea."
"I decided that I'd try a horror book. Zombies and vampires were big, so why not. My main character was a woman who was fighting the zombie apocalypse. Again, I looked at the character I'd written and decided I might has well have called her Derekette Storm. Again, I quit and went after something else."
"My next try was a western. Cal Ford, US Marshall. No need to ask, he was Derek Storm in a Stetson."
"Next was science fiction. My main character was a hotshot smuggler pilot who always looked out for number one. This time he wasn't entirely Derek Storm, but he might as well have been called Han Storm, or Derek Solo."
"I came to the horrible conclusion that maybe I was already a hack with nothing new and different to say. I kept trying and trying, but I couldn't come up with anything that didn't sound like a Derek Storm book. Talk about depressing."
"And then you walked into the book launch party, shoved your badge in my face and hauled me off to the precinct to talk to me about a copy cat killer. And before I knew it, Nikki Heat came into my mind and I began writing."
"It's not like I had any choice. Tisdale was copying the murders in your books."
"Oh, please, Beckett. You missed me, otherwise you would have sent Ryan and Esposito to pick me up."
"Sure. And as soon as they mentioned my name you would have told them all about our prior…relationship."
Castle smiled and stared off into the distance.
"I still remember the first time I ever saw you. I was coming back from a walk, and there was this amazingly beautiful woman, sobbing her eyes out. Oddly enough, she was a police officer."
"I was not sobbing my eyes out. I got a little teary eyed is all. I had spent a year with my therapist trying to let go of my mother's murder. I knew that if I kept at it, I'd go down a rabbit hole and never come up. And, after a year, I had let it go. Then, all of a sudden, I felt like a complete failure. I'd become a cop to solve her murder and now I was giving up. I got…teary eyed."
"Sobbing or teary eyed, I could hardly just walk on by as if nothing was happening. I had to do something to help you."
"Castle, you offered to buy me an ice cream."
He looked puzzled.
"It always worked with Alexis. Still does, if you must know. And, you accepted my offer."
Kate smiled briefly.
"It did help, actually. Of maybe it was just that someone was concerned enough to stop and try to help. Not many New Yorkers would do that."
"And I didn't stop with just the ice cream. I asked you out to dinner and you accepted. Although I did have to try very hard to get you to say yes."
"You did, and still do, have quite a reputation. I didn't want to be just another notch on your bedpost."
"That you will never be, Beckett. Never. And I got a few ideas for the Derek Storm I was working on, and I gave you a few ideas, too. Remember the Collins case?"
"Everybody was very impressed that the "hot rookie" had figured that one out. I would have given you credit, but if I had let people know I was seeing Richard Castle, I never would have heard the end of it."
"And you were seeing Richard Castle. All of him." He said with a smirk.
She nodded.
"I was determined that at the end of the first date, I'd give you a brief kiss on the lips and no more. And that's exactly what happened."
"But you did agree to another date." That smirk again.
"Yes, and eventually we ended up in bed."
"I still don't understand why you broke up with me, Kate."
"I told you why."
"Okay, I heard your explanation, but I don't understand it.
She sighed and changed the subject.
"So, you're really going to be following me for this Nikki Heat book?"
"I am. Oh, I finished a whole chapter today. You need to read it and maybe you can help me on a problem I have with where Nikki and Rook go from there."
"Probably to bed." Kate muttered. "You're still going to call her by some stripper name?"
"Heat is a slang term for the police. Nikki Heat is a cop's name."
"In other words, I'm not going to get rid of you?"
"You won't and you're going to have fun with me around. You need some fun in your life, Beckett. And you need some pampering."
"So we're right back where we were years ago."
With that, Kate began unbuttoning her blouse.
"What are you doing?"
"Castle, certainly you've seen a woman take off her clothes before."
She finished unbuttoning her blouse and took it off, revealing a lacy black bra underneath. She walked to his bedroom, taking the bra off as she went. She turned and looked at him.
"Are you coming, Castle or are you just going to stand there with your mouth hanging open?"
He closed his mouth.
"I'm right behind you."
Kate quickly kicked off her shoes, pulled her slacks and panties down and off, and pulled down the covers on Castle's bed. She looked up at him.
"if you expect me to get out of bed and take your clothes off, forget it."
"No…It's just that you're so incredibly gorgeous."
She laughed.
"You've had dozens, hundreds of women in this bed who're better looking than I am and you know it."
He shook his head.
"I've never seen anyone like you Beckett. Never."
He quickly stripped and got into bed. At first, he kissed her softly and them with more passion. She opened her mouth and invited his tongue in. They explored each other's mouths and then Castle began working his way down her body, scattering kisses on her neck and shoulders before beginning on her boobs. While he kissed one, he would stroke the other. Then he pushed her boobs together and took both of her nipples into his mouth and sucked on them.
Next, he kissed down her flat stomach, working on her tight abs, licking her belly button just a bit. Then he positioned himself between her legs and began pushing his tongue into and out of her, then licking her engorged clit. He happily kept at it until she grabbed his hair and growled at him.
"Dammit, Castle. That's enough of your tongue. I want your cock inside me. Now."
"Just let me do one more thing." He said.
"Now. Do I have to beg you, Castle?"
"You will never, ever have to beg me for anything." He said as he moved quickly up her body.
He slid into her easily and began slow and easy, upping the pace and causing her to moan with passion. She threw her arms around his neck and wrapped her long legs around his hips, pulling herself up so that she could get more of him inside of her.
When he finally climaxed, he remained on top of her, gently kissing her face.
"I don't know how you do it." She said.
"Weren't you paying attention?" he said with a grin.
She slapped his chest.
"No, you idiot. I had two orgasms. I've never had more than one before. Never. And you have given me three occasionally."
"You should have mentioned it so I'd know exactly what to do next time."
"Your ego is already big enough. You don't need any encouragement from me."
"You encourage me just by your existence."
Kate put an arm around him.
"I wish I was strong enough to resist you, Castle. Richard Castle who gives me two orgasms, who solves crimes by remote control, who knows just when I need ice cream and who spoils me outrageously with wines I could never afford and dinners at places a cop like me would never see the inside of. And you make me laugh when I need it. You have no idea how many times I've needed a laugh and you provided one."
"Beckett, you're the strongest person I know. But why would you want to resist me?"
"I told you when I broke up with you before. In a month, two months, maybe six months, you'll want to move on and if I fall for you, you'll break my heart like nothing since my mother died."
"Beckett, you have to take chances in life. Take this one."
"I know what's going to happen, Castle."
A month, two months, maybe six months later. Okay, it's really six months later.
He heard the key in the door and turned to see Kate Beckett walk in.
"So, Mulroney confessed?" He asked.
"You should have been there, Castle. He cried like a baby. Said he didn't mean to do it."
"He accidentally put eight bullets into the man?"
"Something like that. What are you doing in the kitchen? Is that a cake?"
"Of course. We're celebrating an anniversary today, Beckett. Don't you remember?"
Kate thought, but couldn't come up with an anniversary that coincided with today.
"Okay, what anniversary is it?"
"Six months ago you said I'd move on in one or two or sixth months. It's been six months and I haven't moved on. Neither have you. Are you ready to take a chance now?"
She was very afraid, but she was.
The End
Author's note: Next up is Castle's Platoon, a prequel to Vengeance and Battle Group Castle, describing Castle's first command as a mercenary soldier. I regret that Kate Beckett will not be in this as they haven't met yet. But she will be in whatever I write after that. I promise. I'm still writing Castle's Platoon, so it'll be done ….eventually.