263. Chapter 263

After A Murder is Forever

By

USCBdad

Disclaimer: I have not owned Castle for like, forever. Rating T. Time: See above.

Rick and Kate lay in a tangle of sheets in a haze of post coital bliss. Kate had her head on Rick's chest and he could feel her breasts pushing against his side. She had one long, trim leg thrown over him. She ran a single finger lightly over his chest. A single shaft of moonlight illuminated her face in the darkened bedroom. She hadn't said a word for at least ten minutes.

"Hey." He said quietly.

He thought she wasn't going to answer, but just as he was about to say something she replied, "Hey."

There was more silence. He finally spoke. "Is something wrong? Should I move Linus further away? Move something else?"

"No." She said no more than that.

He stroked her hair and waited for her to speak.

"It was different before you."

He thought about that. "Good different or bad different?"

He waited for her to speak. "I thought it was good then." She paused. "But it was bad. I just didn't realize it was bad."

"Is it better now? After me?"

She nodded. "Better. More like… better than I ever imagined."

"That's good."

There was more silence.

"Three men with submachine guns attacked Ryan and Espo today. They could have been killed. Before you, I thought about death sometimes. Not very often, but I did think about it. But I didn't really worry about it."

She was quiet again. He spoke. "Everyone thinks about death." He thought that it sounded trite, but he felt she was trying to say something important to him.

"I always thought that I'd die of a gunshot wound. Shot to death in a dark alley somewhere. Maybe in some crack house, or abandoned tenement. Or maybe somewhere nicer. A multi-million dollar condo overlooking Central Park or some Wall Street lawyer's office with a great view of the New York skyline. You run into all kinds in homicide."

She stopped speaking again.

"I don't care how great the view is, I don't want you dying. Ever."

She leaned up and kissed him. "I worried about getting shot and surviving. Maybe a head wound that left me with brain damage, or shot in the spine and ending up a paraplegic. If I got shot, I definitely wanted either a kill shot or a nice flesh wound that I could brag about. You know, "That's Detective Kate Beckett. She got a nipple shot off but she's still all woman."

"You are all woman and I don't want any parts of you shot off. I love all of your parts. In fact, I think I have loved all of your parts, at one time or another."

"I think you missed the back of my neck." She teased.

"I can fix that."

She shook her head. "That can wait." She was quiet for a while. "If I didn't die on the job, I'd eventually have to retire. The NYPD has this stupid mandatory retirement age nonsense. I had given up trying to solve my mom's murder, so all I had was being a cop. After retirement I suppose I could have become a PI and continued bringing in murderers. Sort of like Royce. At one time I wouldn't have minded dying like Royce did."

Rick put his other arm around her and pulled her close. "I'd just as soon have you alive. And Royce, too. In spite of the fact that you loved him."

She twisted around to look into his face. "Jealous? Of Royce?"

"Absolutely! Absolutely, Royce and every other man you've ever been with. Right down to the nasty little boy who teased you in third grade and made you cry."

Kate snorted. "The nasty little boy in the third grade went home with a bloody nose. He cried."

"I should have known better." Castle said with as much seriousness as he could manage.

"I don't know if what I felt for Royce was love. I know it was nothing like what I feel for you. Actually, Royce could see how I felt about you better than I did. I should have listened to him. But I didn't."

"Okay. I'm no longer jealous of Royce."

She said nothing for a while.

"Eventually, if I didn't get killed as a PI, I would have had to finally retire. I'd eventually get too old to chase down murderers. I knew that I'd never find my one and done. I'd never have the family like my mom and dad's that I had dreamed of as a girl. I had too many issues, too many walls, too much fear of loving and loosing. I'd end up as an old lady sitting all alone in some apartment with a bunch of cats for company. Everyone would have avoided crazy old lady Beckett. I still probably would have died of a gunshot wound. A lot of cops who had nothing but their job end up that way. "

"When we're old, we can afford lots of cats and everyone will avoid those crazy Castles."

"Really?"

"But no lions."

"Definitely no lions. Linus will have to stay elsewhere."

"I'll make love to the back of your neck a lot, too."

"You could work on the more conventional areas, you know."

He nodded. "You want conventional?"

"I want you."

"You have me."

She was silent for a while.

"And then one day I was shot and I was dying. And the oddest thing happened. The man that I loved was kneeling over me and telling me that he loved me. I wondered how the hell I had let things get to such a state that he'd tell me when I was dying. It didn't seem fair. Actually, it didn't seem real. It took a while, too long a while, to come to my senses. I made you wait way too long. I know I hurt you."

"I'd hurt you before." He said. "And no matter who hurt who or why, it doesn't matter. We're together. We'll stay together. I will never leave you, Kate. Never."

"I know. And now I'm afraid of dying. Much more than before. It bothers me. Really bothers me that I might lose you. But I can't stop being a cop. I can't."

"I'd never ask you to stop being a cop."

"Bracken is out there. One thing we have is that I'm a cop. In addition to you, I have Ryan and Esposito watching my back and the rest of the NYPD. I'm safer this way. We're safer."

"I do love watching your back."

She slapped him lightly. "Be serious."

"You wanted conventional and now you want serious? Do you know who you're talking to?"

She nodded. "The man I love."

More silence.

"Even if Bracken dropped dead today, I'd still be a cop. But being a cop would no longer be what I am, it would be just what I do. And when the time came, I'd leave and we'd go on to other things. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. I'm not what I was before you. I'm not who I was. Now I'm all about being your partner, your friend, your lover and soon, your wife."

"And that's what I'm about." He stopped. "Except for the part about being a wife. I'm not a wife. I could never pass the physical. Not that I have anything against wives. In fact, I can't wait for you to be mine."

She put her hand on his lips to stop his babbling. "Do you ever think about death?"

He thought for a second. "I'm with Woody Allen on that. Death ruins your sex life."

"Deep, Castle. Deep."

"In spite of seeing death every day, I don't think about it at all. Maybe I'm too egotistical to think I'll die. What I do think about is taking all of the pain out of the life of the woman I love and replacing it with joy."

"You're doing a very good job of that,"

"Would you like me to make love to your neck now?"

"Conventional. I wanted conventional, remember?"

"Conventional I can do. I can do anything for you."

Author's note: By popular demand, (I decide what's popular and demanded around here.) I present for your amusement a small Caskett vignette that does not fit the After…series.

Kate Castle walked into their loft and kissed the love of her life.

"You'll never guess what happened." They both said at once.

"You first." Kate said.

"Do you remember Alex Conrad?"

Kate nodded. "The author who tried to muse-nap me?"

Rick nodded. "He's married to Meredith. Poor guy. To keep up with Meredith's spending, he's writing sixteen hours a day, seven days a week."

"He should divorce her." Kate said.

"He can't. Meredith made him sign a killer pre-nup. If they divorce, she gets custody of the family jewels."

"That sounds fair, she's….Oh! Those family jewels!"

"Yup. What's your news?"

"Josh Davidson was walking out of the hospital when a grey, flightless bird zoomed past him and then an Acme safe fell on him. It drove him underground into the urinal of a subway station men's room."

"They can get him out, right?" Castle asked.

"There's some sort of dispute about which union is responsible for that. Both unions are lawyering up. It could take years to decide. Meanwhile, because of the health aspect, him being a doctor and all, the hospital ordered him sterilized. However, the nurse they sent was a former lover he dumped…"

"Oh!" Castle said, putting his hands between his legs. "That kind of sterilized."

Kate shrugged. "It was a small thing anyway." Kate snapped her fingers. "I almost forgot. I ran into Tom Demming today."

"What did he say?"

"Mostly he screamed. I ran into him with the Crown Vic. It was his own fault, he was skateboarding to impress that bimbo from Vice he's been dating and slammed right into me. The doctors say his face will be fine when they scrape it off my front tire, but the tread marks will probably never fade. Tom's no longer fit for duty, but the Chief of Police is using him as a paperweight until he can retire."

"Hey! The news is on." Rick turned the TV volume up.

"Overseas today, a former British police officer, Colin Hunt, was arrested for planning to blow up the Houses of Parliament. " A clip of Hunt being dragged away was shown. "She'll have to (Bleeping) notice me now!" Hunt screams at the camera. (Happy Guy Fawkes Day, everyone.)

"Here in New York, former billionaire Eric Vaughn was released from prison after being convicted of having sex with a champagne bottle on a stolen police horse in public. Vaughn lost his great fortune after self-publishing a book about a NYPD detective and her ruggedly handsome billionaire boyfriend. The book, Mikki Neat, was so unsuccessful that it brought down Vaughn's entire empire."

Kate turned the TV off. "The news is so depressing. I'd rather snuggle with you."

Meanwhile, Will Sorenson found himself in a strange alternate universe where all the women were Kate Beckett and all the men were Rick Castle. "I hate you, Will." Screamed three billion Kates.