Author's note: So here you go, the first chapter. Be patient with me and the story. I don't know how often I will be able to update once my last semester at college starts but I'll do my best.

I have a pretty good idea of where I want the story to go and at the moment there is a lot of case related stuff. I hope you'll like it anyways =) And wow, I'm really surprised at how many of you have already subscribed to the story, thank you!

From here on I'm in pretty unknown territory. I try to research as much as I can to be authentic but with some stuff like medical things I can't always be 100% sure, so forgive me for that.

I'll shut up now and hope you like the chapter.

Chapter 1

Detective Kate Beckett was driving her car through the crowded New Yorker streets getting ready to do her job. It wasn't easy being a cop but she liked what she was doing. To her it was a way of coping with her own past, the past she couldn't forget and couldn't solve. But she'd never lost hope and she knew that with what she was doing people with the same experience as hers wouldn't lose hope either.

She passed around the corner of Amsterdam and 88th, found a parking space and got out of her crown vic. It wasn't hard to find the crime scene with all the busy voices coming from it.

As she walked up to the yellow tape and ducked under it she heard a familiar voice.

"Good morning, Detective," it came from her left. She looked up and smiled at Richard Castle, her civilian partner in crime solving.

"Good morning back, Castle," she said and he returned her smile.

Richard Castle… she thought with a heavy sigh. Oh how he'd gotten on her nerves years back when they first met. Sure, he was and still is her favourite author but why he'd had to pick her as his inspiration for a new book was beyond her even now. Still, over the years she had learned to accept and enjoy his presence and even more so, his help. He may be annoying from time to time but his insights, his theories could actually be really helpful because even when they were wrong they helped her jog her memory and come up with something herself.

And then there was one fact that she only recently had come to fully admit to herself and that was that she had fallen for this writer harder than any other guy ever before. She had never wanted to let it on but she could not hide from her feelings anymore. Just like now she could feel the butterflies in her stomach every time she saw him or even just thought about him and she knew it was the same for him. But she had not told him a word. Not that she loved him and not that she knew that he loved her. It was probably the biggest secret she had ever kept. Even more so, probably the biggest lie she had ever told anyone. I don't remember anything…

Pulling her out of her thoughts Castle handed her a coffee and she smiled a little broader at him. The coffee. One of the small things she appreciated about Rick. It was his way of looking out for her. "Thanks," she said gratefully, taking the coffee and carefully sipping from it.

"So what have we got?" she asked as her team caught up to her and Castle.

"A wonderful good morning to you too, Detective Beckett," came the snappy answer of Detective Ryan. She just rolled her eyes at him and then looked at Detective Esposito.

"Fill me in, Espo."

Esposito threw a grin at his slightly flabbergasted partner – who by now should be used to such a treatment – and then beckoned Beckett to follow him to the victim.

"Caucasian male, approximately sixteen to eighteen years old, no ID. Lanie says COD is most likely blunt force trauma to the head but she's gotta check back at the morgue, as always."

Just as he finished with that they reached the body where ME Lanie Parish was still crouching over the young man's figure. She'd heard the last part and added: "I can also give you TOD back at the lab. It was freezing cold last night, so it could be anywhere between 7pm night before last and 5am this morning".

"So who found the body?" Beckett asked and this time Ryan was the one with the info.

"The poor lady over there. " He pointed over to an old woman talking to Officer McCarthy.

"She placed a 911 call at 6.30 this morning. Said she was walking her dog when he ran off and she had to follow him. Moaned a lot about it, too, with her being old and slow on her legs. She'd eventually caught up with her dog who had most likely smelled something behind the dumpsters. That's when she'd found the boy."

"Okay. Make sure we get her full statement and then canvass the area for any witnesses and a wallet. Castle and I are going back to the precinct to find out who the vic is. You should take a picture as well to show around. Maybe someone in the neighbourhood knew him."

Ryan and Esposito nodded and walked away to do what they were told while Beckett leaned down to examine the body again. She felt Castles presence next to her and it gave her a twinge in the stomach. She didn't know for how much longer she'd be able to hold her feelings back. Knowing he loved her as much as she loved him and not being able to just dive into a relationship with him was heart-wrenching. But it had been her decision and she had to live with it. She also still knew that she had to be ready first and she wasn't ready yet.

This time it was Lanie pulling her out of her thoughts with that "Get on with it, girl"-look she always had when Castle was so close to her. Kate ignored it and looked at the boy on the ground. He was slender and tall with blond hair that made his young face look even younger. He was wearing worn out jeans, a T-Shirt and noting but a rather thin jacket. It had been cold over the last couple of days, he must have been freezing.

To Detective Beckett it was always hard to see another dead body, how could it not? But with kids it was the hardest. She valued life and the boy here had his taken away from him far too soon.

"Esposito said COD was blunt force trauma but what about those bruises around his neck?" she asked her best friend.

"Maybe they're hickeys" Castle commented. She ogled at him and supressed a smile. She'd wondered where his out of place comments had been and was glad he wasn't completely shutting up at the moment. She was always glad for some distraction of this kind at a crime scene; it made things a little easier to cope with.

But Lanie raised an eyebrow at him and looked at Kate again.

"First, they're not hickeys. Second, I don't think that strangulation is cause of death because those bruises aren't deep enough. He was in a struggle all right but as I said before you'll get you're details once I'm back in my lab."

Kate nodded and started to look through the boy's pockets. Not that they had not been checked already but she liked to be in control so she did everything herself again. There was nothing to be found that CSU or the boys had not already taken care of so she got up again.

"Call me, when you know TOD or find something odd!" she told Lanie, then looked at Castle to tell him to get going. He got up again as well with a sad look on his face and nodded.

Together they walked back to her car and on the way she cast repeated looks towards him, wondering what was wrong.

"You alright, Castle?" she finally asked, not sure whether it was a good idea. He just looked at her and nodded his head back to where the body was.

"He's not that much younger than Alexis…"

She could have guessed. Of course his thoughts were with his daughter, they always were when children, or in this case teenagers, were involved. She nodded slightly, an understanding smile on her face.

"He probably isn't. But did you look closely, Castle?"

"Why?"

"His clothes, his skin, his hair. He lived on the streets, Castle. He didn't have a home. This is going to make it harder for us to figure out his identity but as sad as it is, kids from the street have a hard time; they live on the edge of everything. The edge of society, the edge of life…It's not fair but it is what it is…"

Now it was his time to nod.

"You're probably right, but it's just so sad and I couldn't imagine…" They had gotten to the car by this time and Beckett placed a hand on Castle's arm.

"We will find out what happened, we will solve this case like we always do," she told him reassuringly and he smiled at her, lips pressed together, before she opened the car and they both got in.