FIC: "Less Well-Paid," Richard Castle/Kate Beckett, Castle AU
Title: Less Well-Paid
Author: geonncannon
Fandom: Castle
Pairing: Richard Castle/Kate Beckett
Word Count: 2,138
Category: AU, drama
Spoilers: Basic series info turned on its ear.
Disclaimer: They don't belong to me.
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Call it dark, and call it dub-con. This ended up a lot darker than I thought it would be. You've been warned!
Author's Notes: Written for the 'prison' prompt on my AU Bingo card.
Summary: A muse and a writer, in a room.
"There are two kinds of folks who sit around thinking about how to kill people: psychopaths and mystery writers."
The words were written at the top of the first page in her notebook. He said it during their first meeting, that tense day with the guards on either side of the table and his wrists bound by shackles. He had said it so nonchalantly, so casually, that she was almost charmed by the smile that went along with it. That was the reason he'd gone uncaught for so long. Richard Castle was a technically diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, but that didn't pop on the page according to her editor. And while she might have called him a sociopath, she decided to appease him by using his own descriptor.
Now, four years later, she was less afraid of him but no less nervous about these get-togethers. She dressed in a turtleneck and a houndstooth skirt with white stockings. Two ribbons of curled hair fell on either side of her face, hanging on the rims of her eyeglasses as she waited for the door to the visitation room to be opened.
The guard finally stepped out and gestured that it was okay for her to enter. "We'll be right outside," he reminded her, as he always did, and she nodded rapidly before going inside. The door closed behind her and she looked back, as she always did. After the second year she had asked for privacy during these sessions to ensure Castle was comfortable opening up to her. She exhaled sharply and walked to the table. She arranged her notebook and recording device, smoothed her skirt over her rear end, and sat primly on the edge of the chair provided for her.
"Have you ever seen Silence of the Lambs, Clarice?"
She clears her throat and looks down, pretending to write so she won't have to look at him. "No. I don't... like those kinds of movies."
"You should rent it. It's relevant to your life."
She might have been Clarice, but he was not Hannibal. She looked up as the door across the table was opened and Richard Castle, convicted murderer, was escorted in. He looked taller every time she saw him, more imposing and threatening than she remembered. His hair was slicked down against his skull, but a few feathers had broken free and stood askew. He wore his typical white T-shirt under an unbuttoned denim shirt.
He turned to the guard and presented his hands, smiling as the restraints were undone. "Thanks, Albie. Keep the Mercedes running. I shan't be long." He clucked his tongue and walked to the table. "Ms. Beckett. Has it been two months already? The days just fly by in here." He winked at her as he took his seat.
"Mr. Castle."
"I read your latest installment. Very nice work, Kate."
She glanced over her shoulder to make sure the door is closed and no guards are looking in. She relaxes somewhat. "Thank you, Rick."
"Mr. Castle, you've been convicted of more than twenty murders--"
"Twenty-six," he interrupted, "but who's counting?"
She cleared her throat and focused on the tight and precise handwriting on the page in front of her, the questions she'd written the night before while sitting in bed. She toyed with the edge of the page and wondered if he would like to know that she'd been in a silky slip and panties, mostly nude from the waist down, as she thought about what to ask him. She wondered if he would imagine her skin supple and pink from her bath, and she looked over the rims of her glasses at him. He was smiling, so she cleared her mind.
"Last time, we started to talk about your childhood. Do you want to continue with that?"
"Sure."
"You told me that you always had an interest in the macabre. Death and dying."
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the edge of the table with a wistful smile. "I used to sneak into funerals, graveside services. I had to pretend to be sad, so that everyone would assume the sad little boy in his best suit was supposed to be there. Why would a kid dress himself up, right? So I wandered through the mourners and, if I was lucky, I got a chance to see the body."
"Why did you want to see the body?"
"To see how it was different. Death changes a body, Kate. It's so hard to describe." He chewed his lip as he searched for the words. "I wanted to understand death. I wanted to understand what it was like to... see a person go from one to the other."
"So you began killing."
He leaned back. "I tried to make it up in my head, play make-believe, but it didn't work. My mother was constantly moving me from one town to the next, searching for the spotlight, so I never had a chance to put down roots. One day I was in Oklahoma, and I realized that Mother wouldn't get the part she was auditioning for. That, that knowledge of impending departure was freeing to me. I knew that I wouldn't have to deal with any consequences of what I did that day. So I stole candy from a 7-11. Heh. I kissed the pretty girl I'd seen on the bus."
"And you murdered the manager of the hotel where you were staying."
"Mother sent me to pay and check out. I decided if I didn't pay him, I could keep the money for myself. It was so easy, Kate. And after that, I started plotting scenarios to repeat it. I would take the people around me and come up with scenarios where I could get that thrill again. Then I'd take the most likely one to work and put it into action."
"Why didn't you ever... stop? Try to do something productive with your... sk-skill?"
He chuckled. "After that first murder, my fate was sealed. You asked me once why I didn't just write down my Murder Books and try to get them published. I did that with one of them and it got rejected twenty times. I figured that was a sign from the gods. Besides, if I did become a best-selling author, I'd become a celebrity. Eventually some intrepid reporter like yourself would dig it up and I'd be ruined." He shrugged. "Besides. Writing is hard work. And I was having way too much fun. But we've been through all of this before, Kate. Why don't we talk about you for a change?"
Her eyes widened behind her glasses. "Me?"
"I know you became a reporter because of your mother. But why not a cop? If just to catch the bad guys who hurt your mom?"
Kate didn't want to talk about it, but they had an agreement. Quid pro quo. She closed her eyes and thought about the moment a year ago... just one year? The wall of the private room is hard against her shoulders, and she bites the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out. She knows the guards will come running if they hear her scream so she fights the urge. His hand is rough on her thighs, and his breathing is hard as he pushes aside her panties and touches her through her thin leggings. He fingers her to orgasm, rutting against her. She can feel his hard cock through his pants, but he doesn't try to take it out. Finally, sweating and weak-limbed, he retreats and looks at the moisture on his first two fingers as if wondering where it came from.
"I couldn't be a cop," she said, returning to the present. She faced him head-on, no blinking or looking away this time. He leaned forward.
"Why not?"
"Because if I looked for the answers and couldn't find them, it would drive me insane. So instead I became a journalist."
"Neat little stories, already tied up in neat bows."
"Beginning, middle and end. Like a novel."
Castle smiled. "So why are you so obsessed with me, Kate? Why do you come down here every other month to sit in a room with someone who killed more people than Jeffrey Dahmer and write down my insane ramblings?"
"I want to know what kind of person could do these horrible things, like what was done to my mother, and still live with themself."
"You know, some of the people I killed had families. Some of them left behind daughters. Before I was captured, I was probably the boogieman to them, too. What do you think they would think of you?"
A mental flash of herself - on her knees, Castle's cock rising from the open fly of his prison uniform, knowing she has to be quick as she takes him into her mouth - and she had to look away.
"They probably wouldn't think too highly of me. I don't think very highly of myself."
He raised an eyebrow but didn't push the issue. "I think you want to be Sophie Turner. You want to try profiling me, figuring me out. Agent Turner put me in a cage, but you... you want to domesticate me. You want to fix me. Do you think I've stopped just because I'm behind bars? I have so... much... inspiration here." He sounded like a kid in a candy store. "I couldn't stop even if I wanted to." He leaned across the table. "I've written so many stories lately, Katie. And you're in some of them."
Kate went cold. She remembered Agent Turner's appearances in the Murder Books entered as evidence in Castle's trial. She was never a victim, but a beacon of light to counteract the darkness cast by Castle's killer archetype. She always arrived too late and, after the murder, her character and Castle's engaged in graphic, sometimes depraved sexual congress. The stories were so horrifying that the prosecution tried to add charges of "metaphorical rape" to Castle's crimes.
And now he was writing about her.
She was ashamed of the thrill that gave her, and she knew he could see the flush in her cheeks.
"I think I'm ready to go back to my cell." He sighed like someone who had just spent the afternoon watching the game from his favorite rocking chair. He stood up and walked back to the door. He knocked for his handlers while Kate remained in her seat. He kept his back to her.
"I'll see you in two months, Mr. Castle."
"If not before."
She froze. "What? No. Two months i-is the arrangement."
He nodded as the door opened and the guard secured him again. "I know. But I've just been... so... inspired lately. See you around, Ms. Beckett."
Kate remained seated long after he was gone.
#
The first night, she couldn't sleep. She stayed on the couch with a gun in easy reach. She stared out the windows, words from the news report echoing in her brain. "Escape... manhunt... sociopath."
The second night she passed out from exhaustion and woke screaming, certain he was in the room with her. The news update said he was "at large." Such an innocuous phrase...
She finally went back to her own bed on the sixth night. On the seventh, she woke with a large, warm hand over her mouth. It muffled her scream as the dark shape next to her bed moved closer. "Sh. Don't make me do anything I regret, Ms. Beckett."
Her eyes were round with terror. He pulled the blankets down and she knew his eyes would already be adjusted to the darkness. She knew he could see her. Could he see how her heart was pounding? Was it a visible tremor against her ribs? She was wearing her pajama shirt and panties, and felt naked under his gaze. The fact he could see her while he was still just a shadow to her was terrifying... thrilling.
"I thought it was time we... collaborated."
Kate swallowed and nodded slowly.
The bed sagged under his weight as he lowered himself on top of her. She heard him drop something hard and metal on the nightstand and closed her eyes as her body rose to meet his. The clothes he wore were rough against her soft skin but she didn't care. She spread her legs and pointed her toes in the mattress as she rose toward him.
He never killed Sophie Turner in his books and, despite all their confrontations during the pursuit and his eventual arrest, she was still alive in the real world.
She took comfort in that knowledge and closed her eyes, letting him take control of her.
Later, if need be, she could tell herself it was all just part of the nightmare.
Author: geonncannon
Fandom: Castle
Pairing: Richard Castle/Kate Beckett
Word Count: 2,138
Category: AU, drama
Spoilers: Basic series info turned on its ear.
Disclaimer: They don't belong to me.
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Call it dark, and call it dub-con. This ended up a lot darker than I thought it would be. You've been warned!
Author's Notes: Written for the 'prison' prompt on my AU Bingo card.
Summary: A muse and a writer, in a room.
"There are two kinds of folks who sit around thinking about how to kill people: psychopaths and mystery writers."
The words were written at the top of the first page in her notebook. He said it during their first meeting, that tense day with the guards on either side of the table and his wrists bound by shackles. He had said it so nonchalantly, so casually, that she was almost charmed by the smile that went along with it. That was the reason he'd gone uncaught for so long. Richard Castle was a technically diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, but that didn't pop on the page according to her editor. And while she might have called him a sociopath, she decided to appease him by using his own descriptor.
Now, four years later, she was less afraid of him but no less nervous about these get-togethers. She dressed in a turtleneck and a houndstooth skirt with white stockings. Two ribbons of curled hair fell on either side of her face, hanging on the rims of her eyeglasses as she waited for the door to the visitation room to be opened.
The guard finally stepped out and gestured that it was okay for her to enter. "We'll be right outside," he reminded her, as he always did, and she nodded rapidly before going inside. The door closed behind her and she looked back, as she always did. After the second year she had asked for privacy during these sessions to ensure Castle was comfortable opening up to her. She exhaled sharply and walked to the table. She arranged her notebook and recording device, smoothed her skirt over her rear end, and sat primly on the edge of the chair provided for her.
"Have you ever seen Silence of the Lambs, Clarice?"
She clears her throat and looks down, pretending to write so she won't have to look at him. "No. I don't... like those kinds of movies."
"You should rent it. It's relevant to your life."
She might have been Clarice, but he was not Hannibal. She looked up as the door across the table was opened and Richard Castle, convicted murderer, was escorted in. He looked taller every time she saw him, more imposing and threatening than she remembered. His hair was slicked down against his skull, but a few feathers had broken free and stood askew. He wore his typical white T-shirt under an unbuttoned denim shirt.
He turned to the guard and presented his hands, smiling as the restraints were undone. "Thanks, Albie. Keep the Mercedes running. I shan't be long." He clucked his tongue and walked to the table. "Ms. Beckett. Has it been two months already? The days just fly by in here." He winked at her as he took his seat.
"Mr. Castle."
"I read your latest installment. Very nice work, Kate."
She glanced over her shoulder to make sure the door is closed and no guards are looking in. She relaxes somewhat. "Thank you, Rick."
"Mr. Castle, you've been convicted of more than twenty murders--"
"Twenty-six," he interrupted, "but who's counting?"
She cleared her throat and focused on the tight and precise handwriting on the page in front of her, the questions she'd written the night before while sitting in bed. She toyed with the edge of the page and wondered if he would like to know that she'd been in a silky slip and panties, mostly nude from the waist down, as she thought about what to ask him. She wondered if he would imagine her skin supple and pink from her bath, and she looked over the rims of her glasses at him. He was smiling, so she cleared her mind.
"Last time, we started to talk about your childhood. Do you want to continue with that?"
"Sure."
"You told me that you always had an interest in the macabre. Death and dying."
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the edge of the table with a wistful smile. "I used to sneak into funerals, graveside services. I had to pretend to be sad, so that everyone would assume the sad little boy in his best suit was supposed to be there. Why would a kid dress himself up, right? So I wandered through the mourners and, if I was lucky, I got a chance to see the body."
"Why did you want to see the body?"
"To see how it was different. Death changes a body, Kate. It's so hard to describe." He chewed his lip as he searched for the words. "I wanted to understand death. I wanted to understand what it was like to... see a person go from one to the other."
"So you began killing."
He leaned back. "I tried to make it up in my head, play make-believe, but it didn't work. My mother was constantly moving me from one town to the next, searching for the spotlight, so I never had a chance to put down roots. One day I was in Oklahoma, and I realized that Mother wouldn't get the part she was auditioning for. That, that knowledge of impending departure was freeing to me. I knew that I wouldn't have to deal with any consequences of what I did that day. So I stole candy from a 7-11. Heh. I kissed the pretty girl I'd seen on the bus."
"And you murdered the manager of the hotel where you were staying."
"Mother sent me to pay and check out. I decided if I didn't pay him, I could keep the money for myself. It was so easy, Kate. And after that, I started plotting scenarios to repeat it. I would take the people around me and come up with scenarios where I could get that thrill again. Then I'd take the most likely one to work and put it into action."
"Why didn't you ever... stop? Try to do something productive with your... sk-skill?"
He chuckled. "After that first murder, my fate was sealed. You asked me once why I didn't just write down my Murder Books and try to get them published. I did that with one of them and it got rejected twenty times. I figured that was a sign from the gods. Besides, if I did become a best-selling author, I'd become a celebrity. Eventually some intrepid reporter like yourself would dig it up and I'd be ruined." He shrugged. "Besides. Writing is hard work. And I was having way too much fun. But we've been through all of this before, Kate. Why don't we talk about you for a change?"
Her eyes widened behind her glasses. "Me?"
"I know you became a reporter because of your mother. But why not a cop? If just to catch the bad guys who hurt your mom?"
Kate didn't want to talk about it, but they had an agreement. Quid pro quo. She closed her eyes and thought about the moment a year ago... just one year? The wall of the private room is hard against her shoulders, and she bites the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out. She knows the guards will come running if they hear her scream so she fights the urge. His hand is rough on her thighs, and his breathing is hard as he pushes aside her panties and touches her through her thin leggings. He fingers her to orgasm, rutting against her. She can feel his hard cock through his pants, but he doesn't try to take it out. Finally, sweating and weak-limbed, he retreats and looks at the moisture on his first two fingers as if wondering where it came from.
"I couldn't be a cop," she said, returning to the present. She faced him head-on, no blinking or looking away this time. He leaned forward.
"Why not?"
"Because if I looked for the answers and couldn't find them, it would drive me insane. So instead I became a journalist."
"Neat little stories, already tied up in neat bows."
"Beginning, middle and end. Like a novel."
Castle smiled. "So why are you so obsessed with me, Kate? Why do you come down here every other month to sit in a room with someone who killed more people than Jeffrey Dahmer and write down my insane ramblings?"
"I want to know what kind of person could do these horrible things, like what was done to my mother, and still live with themself."
"You know, some of the people I killed had families. Some of them left behind daughters. Before I was captured, I was probably the boogieman to them, too. What do you think they would think of you?"
A mental flash of herself - on her knees, Castle's cock rising from the open fly of his prison uniform, knowing she has to be quick as she takes him into her mouth - and she had to look away.
"They probably wouldn't think too highly of me. I don't think very highly of myself."
He raised an eyebrow but didn't push the issue. "I think you want to be Sophie Turner. You want to try profiling me, figuring me out. Agent Turner put me in a cage, but you... you want to domesticate me. You want to fix me. Do you think I've stopped just because I'm behind bars? I have so... much... inspiration here." He sounded like a kid in a candy store. "I couldn't stop even if I wanted to." He leaned across the table. "I've written so many stories lately, Katie. And you're in some of them."
Kate went cold. She remembered Agent Turner's appearances in the Murder Books entered as evidence in Castle's trial. She was never a victim, but a beacon of light to counteract the darkness cast by Castle's killer archetype. She always arrived too late and, after the murder, her character and Castle's engaged in graphic, sometimes depraved sexual congress. The stories were so horrifying that the prosecution tried to add charges of "metaphorical rape" to Castle's crimes.
And now he was writing about her.
She was ashamed of the thrill that gave her, and she knew he could see the flush in her cheeks.
"I think I'm ready to go back to my cell." He sighed like someone who had just spent the afternoon watching the game from his favorite rocking chair. He stood up and walked back to the door. He knocked for his handlers while Kate remained in her seat. He kept his back to her.
"I'll see you in two months, Mr. Castle."
"If not before."
She froze. "What? No. Two months i-is the arrangement."
He nodded as the door opened and the guard secured him again. "I know. But I've just been... so... inspired lately. See you around, Ms. Beckett."
Kate remained seated long after he was gone.
#
The first night, she couldn't sleep. She stayed on the couch with a gun in easy reach. She stared out the windows, words from the news report echoing in her brain. "Escape... manhunt... sociopath."
The second night she passed out from exhaustion and woke screaming, certain he was in the room with her. The news update said he was "at large." Such an innocuous phrase...
She finally went back to her own bed on the sixth night. On the seventh, she woke with a large, warm hand over her mouth. It muffled her scream as the dark shape next to her bed moved closer. "Sh. Don't make me do anything I regret, Ms. Beckett."
Her eyes were round with terror. He pulled the blankets down and she knew his eyes would already be adjusted to the darkness. She knew he could see her. Could he see how her heart was pounding? Was it a visible tremor against her ribs? She was wearing her pajama shirt and panties, and felt naked under his gaze. The fact he could see her while he was still just a shadow to her was terrifying... thrilling.
"I thought it was time we... collaborated."
Kate swallowed and nodded slowly.
The bed sagged under his weight as he lowered himself on top of her. She heard him drop something hard and metal on the nightstand and closed her eyes as her body rose to meet his. The clothes he wore were rough against her soft skin but she didn't care. She spread her legs and pointed her toes in the mattress as she rose toward him.
He never killed Sophie Turner in his books and, despite all their confrontations during the pursuit and his eventual arrest, she was still alive in the real world.
She took comfort in that knowledge and closed her eyes, letting him take control of her.
Later, if need be, she could tell herself it was all just part of the nightmare.