Castle's face lit up and his eyes softened as he took the cup of coffee that Kate was holding out to him. "Good morning," he said and looked into the mug. It had been so very thoughtful, but he'd seen her try to run an espresso machine before and it wasn't pretty. He took a small sip anyways and was delightfully surprised to find it was good. Really good, he thought now taking a bigger gulp. "What did you do to this?"
"You'll never know," she teased him. She expected a pout in return, but then when he was looking at her with an expression somewhere between shock and amusement she didn't quite catch on. "What?"
"Oh nothing," he said playfully and took another drink from his mug, his eyes still trained on her and filled with amusement. Well this just wasn't fair. She was the one who was trying to tease him. "I was just a little scared to drink this. I've seen you try to make a cup of coffee before."
Kate's jaw dropped a little bit. "You've only seen me try to work that high tech thing you bought for the Precinct, Castle. I know how to work a regular coffee machine, you know. I do own one."
"Well I guess I know now. Seriously though, what did you do to this?" he asked her pointing to the mug in his hands that was now almost empty.
"I don't think I wanna tell you that," she shot back at him and almost stood up when she caught movement from the other side of the room. She whipped her neck to the right and saw Martha walking down the steps in a bright set of silky purple pajamas. Martha's eyes were half closed as she trudged into the kitchen without even taking notice of them on the couch. Apparently, she wasn't actually awake yet.
The two, sitting quietly on the couch, watched while Martha shuffled around the kitchen. First she opened the fridge and just looked in it for a full minute, apparently trying to decide what looked good. She grabbed a dish out and lifted the lid off to look inside it, and then brought it up to her nose to smell it. Her face twisted into a frown and she resealed the lid, all but throwing the container back into the fridge and slamming the door shut.
Then Martha opened the freezer, and looked around. Frowning again after another minute, she shut that door, too. Now she walked over to the cupboards, and moved around a couple of small boxes and bags of food and snacks. Apparently unsuccessful in finding breakfast, Martha shut the cupboard and stalked over to another one. Her hands disappeared into the cupboard that Kate could only see the side of, and then emerged with a glass and bottle of wine.
When Martha filled her glass and set the bottle on the counter, Kate couldn't help but to burst out laughing. Martha jumped and looked over at the couch, where Kate and Castle were sitting and watching her.
"Good morning Mother," Castle said to her before getting up and walking into the kitchen. Kate followed close behind, still trying to keep the smile off her face.
"Oh! Hello Detective Beckett, I didn't expect to see you here this morning," she said over her wine and then looked over to her son. "You didn't tell me we'd be having company Richard. Care for a glass of wine, dear?"
"Thanks, but no," she replied. "I'm actually here for business today. Castle here thinks I don't have what it takes to write a decent story, so I figured who better to show me the ropes."
"Yes, he's always been quite cocky."
"Well I never said that," he said looking over to Martha with his jaw agape when she shot him a glare. "She just implied that writing doesn't take the same level of critical thinking as her detective work. I wanted her to try and write something."
Martha watched as the two shot each other glances and stood at an awkward distance from each other between the counter and the island in the kitchen. A mischievous smirk ran across her face. "Well I'll just go ahead and leave you to it then," she said with a knowing glance at her son. "You guys better get started." She picked up her glass and the bottle of wine, and started to walk out of the kitchen.
"Not so fast," Castle said grabbing the bottle out of her hands to seal it and put it away. "You need to eat some food for breakfast."
"Honestly Richard .." Martha muttered and walked back over to the fridge again. She rummaged around in the fridge for two full minutes and then came out with the same container she had thrown back in there before. She just looked at it and then shrugged, grabbing a fork on her way out of the kitchen.
….
An hour later, Kate and Rick had each had an omelet and some more coffee for breakfast and retreated into Castle's office. Martha had showered and changed, deciding to make herself scarce for the day. The two were each sitting in a big comfortable across from each other. They had been sitting in silence for a few minutes after Martha had left, giving Castle a wink on her way out when Kate hadn't been looking.
"Okay so what do you do?" Kate asked Castle expectantly.
"Hmm?" he sounded in response. He had been staring at the picture behind his desk, lost in thought.
"When you're going to write a book. What's the first thing you do to get started?" Kate was looking at him eagerly. Little did he know that this was all very exciting for her.
"Oh, right. Well usually I don't do much actual writing until an idea hits me. I have to know what I want to write about, and who I want my characters to be. Do you have any ideas?" he asked her.
She had been listening so intently to what he had been saying that she almost forgot to talk. "Well … um .. no, I guess I hadn't really thought about it."
"Exactly that's the difficult part!" he said walking over to one of his shelves and pulling out a leather-bound book. He made his way over to his desk and tucked it under his arm to open up his drawer and rummage around for a pen. When he came up with one, he walked back over to her and held them out to her. "Here."
She took the book and pen from his hands and just looked at them for a minute. Opening the book to look inside of it, she flipped the pages around and found them all blank. "What is this?"
"Write," he told her. "Write down what you're thinking about, anything that comes to mind. A scene, a character, a problem. Just put it all together on the paper until you have an idea."
She smiled and clicked open the pen, she could do this. Then he started to disappear through the doorway and her head shot back up. "Wait, where are you going?"
"I'll be back, don't worry. I'm just gonna give you a few minutes to get that started," he replied, giving her a glance before disappearing into the living room. Kate opened the notebook back up and got started.
….
Another half an hour had passed and Kate was still sitting in Castle's office. Her pages had barely anything written on them and she was chewing on the back of her pen. Meanwhile, Castle had returned to his seat across from her and was intensely focused on trying to throw cards into a hat 8 feet in front of him. Over the past ten minutes he had built paper airplanes, discovered a new game on his iPhone, and tried to be sneaky about taking a picture of Kate's concentrated face for her new caller ID. He apparently had the attention span of a goldfish.
"Jeez, will you just stop," she said looking over at him, the frustration clear on her face. He wasn't even being very noisy.
He just smirked at her. "What? Is it too difficult just making stuff up? All out of ideas, Detective Beckett?"
It was, but she wouldn't tell him that. She'd been trying to think of different scenarios she could use, or different characters. But every time an idea popped into her head for a crime scene, she realized a minute later that it was one that she really had seen, and all of the characters she could come up with were people from her cases. She couldn't just write a mystery about something that had really happened. Apparently that wasn't an option, but she couldn't just out and tell him she had no ideas. She was the one who had brought herself into this.
"No, I was just thinking. I don't think writing a mystery is a good idea for me," Kate told him. "How about a romance?" She sent him a smoldering look and cocked one eyebrow, causing his mouth to open a little and the cards in his hands to drop to the floor.
Gosh I'm having so much fun writing this. I also had to write Martha in, because besides KBecks, she's my favorite character on the show. I hope everyone liked it. I sure needed to write something a little more calm after the finale last night. I'm still freaking out about it. Let me know what you think, and I'll have more up soon.