Here's the idea as presented by DeadPigeon: Take 3 completely unconnected words (the more incongruous the better) submitted by someone else and make a maximum 1,000 word story based on them.
Three Story Words: Exorbitant, Martyr, Horoscope
Words Submitted by: DeadPigeon
Chapter Rating: K+
Word Count: 1,380 (Oh yeah. WAY over the allotted word limit. Not my fault. Castle just wouldn't shut up. **yes I am using the 'Blame the Fictional Characters' defense**)
Story Completion Time: Over 2 Hours (Also WAY longer than it should have. Apparently this story is just filled with too much muchness. Hopefully that muchness doesn't translate into suck.)
It has taken him three months. Three months of working around her schedule, three months sneaking to the front door trying to not wake her and failing, three months of plotting, hinting, gently nudging her to stay in bed with him and read the Sunday paper. This is the Sunday it happens. It has to be. The stars have aligned. Kate's off today. Off-off - as in not even on call. Coffee has been brewed and is sitting in their respective mugs both on his nightstand. And she is still asleep. It's well after 7:30, pushing moment by moment into the 8 o'clock hour and she's still asleep. This has never happened. At least not that he can remember.
Castle latches the front door soundlessly, folds the thick stack of inky pages – pages that will leave smudges on his shirt and raise to awareness the swirls of his fingerprints – and tucks it under his arm, takes a breath and holds it then rounds the door. Still sleeping. Miraculous. Hm, miraculous. This NEVER happens. What if she's getting sick? No. She's fine. He's being silly. He wants to wake her up. Make her play with him. That is a terrible idea. TERRIBLE. One does not wake up a beautifully sleeping police detective. Not one that's spent the last four days chasing down slimy killers responsible for putting a body in the Hudson. If Sleeping Beauty had been working homicide Price Charming would have been an ass disturbing her rest. Doesn't mean he doesn't still *want* to.
It's a little thing. He knows that. Knows that reading the paper, propped, mostly silent, passing sections back and forth is perfectly routine. Ordinary. And not fundamentally different from the Sunday mornings that they have spent together doing basically that exact thing across the kitchen table. The kitchen table, that's the difference. He wants to do that *in bed*. Wants to be perfectly mundane and blasé and domestic. With Kate. In bed. He's not asking an exorbitant favor. Then again he's not *asking* at all. He doesn't want her to acquiesce to him. He wants it to just happen, an organic manifestation of their comfort being together.
Fantasizing over reading the paper in bed is ridiculous. He knows that. And no other word but fantasizing is as accurate. No way to downplay it. That's what he's been doing. Picturing her reading aloud to him the pertinent details of only the interesting stories she reads. What art exhibit is opening they might be interested in; the latest posturing of local politicians; the devastating toll after a newly minted martyr in the Middle East; box scores. He pictures the words curling out of her mouth in vanishing perfection like the steam rising from their coffee. He would do his part too. Read her only the comics that make him chuckle; his horoscope despite the fact he knows she'll roll her eyes; crossword puzzle clues even though he doesn't need her help but desperately wants it.
Castle slides back under the covers as easily as he can, the spot still warm where he vacated minutes before, and places the newspaper on the comforter in between them, headlines facing Kate. He picks his mug off the table and watches the steam lift and disappear. It always makes him think of Kate and he has no idea why. His writer brain should come up with some excellent metaphor comparing the sleek and ever changing perfection of the two but he doesn't. The connection will just have to remain a mystery not unlike the woman.
The first sip is always the best. Hazelnut, cinnamon, nutmeg and brown sugar all punctuated with best coffee. The flavoring is his own blend. He buys plain half and half as soon as the weather starts getting cold and concocts it himself. Kate thinks it tastes weird – too many flavors – but she's wrong. It's delicious – it tastes like winter – but he won't tell her that. She can stick with her boring old vanilla if that's what makes her happy. He blows across the surface of the cup casting ripples and pushing clouds of heat in the air. He's not trying to cool it. He's aiming the smell like a missile directly towards Kate's face. It's not intentionally waking her up if she smells coffee. It's not. It's also not working. He blows harder. Hard enough to push the overly full cup to brim over and send fat drops of sticky hot liquid running down his fingers. Ouch.
Kate rolls over. Rolls onto the paper – it crinkles – he holds his breath. This is it.
Long fingers find their way up from the warm depths of the covers to shield her eyes. In between knuckles he sees mossy green slits open then close.
"Time is it?"
"After 8:00."
The corner of her lip pulls up in a smile like it is being lifted by a string. The mossy green slits open and close a few more times before standing wide for keeps.
"Is that coffee?"
"Uh huh."
He twists around for her mug while she braces and hoists herself up, leans her back against the headboard same as Castle. She braces with one hand square in the middle of the paper.
This is it.
It is several cautionary sips and sighs later before she speaks again.
"8:00? Really?"
"8:00's not that late."
"It is when you go to bed at 9:30."
"You had a long week." That was the truth.
She hums her agreement and takes another sip.
"Thank you for the coffee." She casts him a smile. One of the ones he's just now getting to see. One that he's just now learning. It's her still-half-asleep-disheveled-and-still-cute-as-hell-smile. It would knock his socks off if he were wearing any. "You have something else for me?"
The paper.
He thinks it but doesn't say it. He wants her to get there on her own so he simply raises an eyebrow in question instead.
She answers him with her free hand to the back of his head and coffee warmed mouth on his. Not what he was expecting. Sneak attack of the best order. Her kiss is as unhurried, as sleepy and sexy as the woman herself. With the little maneuvering room he has he still finds a way to get fingers up the sleeve of her shirt to the skin of her shoulder. Skin hot with sleep and tattooed from the sheets. Languidly she pulls away, his lips sad to see her go.
"Mmm, like cinnamon." She doesn't say this to him, just says it. It is something she does. He learned to quit commenting. She does it at random times after kissing him, normally when her guard is completely down and she doesn't realize she's doing it aloud. Like he's a Baskin Robins. The 31 Flavors of Richard Castle. Every time it tickles him with excitement to think that she might actually be as fixated on all the little things about him like he is with her. The little things. Like the paper.
Castle plucks the top section and peals it away from its counterparts leaving still an inch from which to choose. Sets his cup aside, snaps the paper at the fold so it will stay up, starts scanning at the top left corner and working his way down but *really* watching her out of the corner of his eye. Nothing. She sips her coffee. With every sip her eyes get clearer. He opens to the second page, then the third, then the forth. Kate sets her now empty mug on the nightstand.
"May I have a pen?" She asks. His top drawer is littered with writing implements and paper. He never knows when an idea will come to him that will vanish once his feet hit the floor. Best be prepared. He hands it over. She snags his lips again quick, filled with tongue and gratitude.
"What's that for?"
"The pen. And bringing me coffee. And bringing the paper. You want to help me do the crossword puzzle?"
He hopes she doesn't call him out on why he's grinning like an idiot and strangles on the word 'yes'. It won't come out of his throat so he nods. He would love to do the crossword with her.