Cheesy On The Outside, Chapter One
Title: Cheesy On The Outside
Disclaimer: I own neither Dr. Horrible nor Castle.
Spoilers? All of Dr. Horrible, everything up to the most recent episode of Castle has a good chance of being mentioned.
Summary: You can't outrun your past, but you can, if you're lucky enough, dodge it. This never lasts though.
Notes: Alright, here marks the start of one of my projects that usually never see the light of day. I know I need to be working on the 30kin3 challenge, but my journal has been collecting cobwebs as of late and that needs to be fixed.
I, like many Dr. Horrible fans, also watch Castle. So one day, my twisted little brain prodded me in the middle of study period (as I was trying to understand Physics, no less) and said "Hey. Hey. Heeeeeey. What if Castle was actually Captain Hammer after the drama of Dr. Horrible? He's started a new life, shaped up, and thinks that's all behind him, but it's not. You can't outrun your past."
At which point I said "For the love of God and Goddess, brain, can you just absorb some physics for ten freaking minutes and then we'll chat?"
And this story was born.
Many thanks to my beautiful and brilliant beta Bee (who tolerates my alliterations) for reading this and drawing dinosaurs all over the manuscript.
Chapter One-Laundromat Blues
He tried to avoid Laundromats now, after the incident a few years back. He never really frequented them, but now it would be fair to say that he outright avoided them. Of course, you couldn’t just say something like “I've never used a Laundromat” to the detectives at the Twelfth Precinct and expect them to just accept it.
“So you’ve never been to a Laundromat?” Beckett was incredulous.
Castle rushed to defend himself. “I’ve been a few times, but I don’t wash my clothes there. I wash them at home.” She opened her mouth to say something, but he cut her off. “I’m perfectly capable of washing my own clothes, thank you.”
“That’s not what I was going to say. Why even bother going to one if you don’t wash your clothes there?”
His face turned pensive, as his thoughts retreated inwards. “I went with a girl once. To meet a friend of hers.” He laughed derisively. “He and I didn’t get along.”
Ryan smiled sardonically. “Who couldn’t like you?”
“Shocking as it may seem, I was a very different person back in L.A. I like to think I’m a bit better now.”
Esposito managed to ask “L.A?” before Beckett’s phone rang, and they had to go back to work.
He didn’t miss Beckett’s look, the one she gave any interesting puzzle she wanted to solve. He really liked her, and that was why he hoped she didn’t figure him out.
***
Kate Beckett usually gave people the benefit of the doubt, but the skinny guy standing by one of the washers was tripping her inner alarm and she was at an utter loss to explain why. He was hunched over, with his shoulders shrugged up as if he was trying to hide from something. She couldn’t see his face. It took more than that to scare her, though, so she didn’t spare him a second glance as she pulled her damp clothes out of the washer and walked behind him to get to the dryers. Luck was not with her that night, as he took that moment to take a step backwards and collide with her. Her clothes hit the floor, and the guy spun around.
“I’m sorry I didn’t even see you, oh GOD, I’m such an idiot.” He knelt down to help her pick up the fallen clothes.
“It’s alright. Accidents happen.” She looked at him, getting a good appraisal of his face. He was blonde, with pale skin and big eyes that made him look even more nervous than he already was. He was muttering to himself, something that sounded like “three PhDs and two doctorates, one of each in the physical sciences, and I can’t manage to be aware of my own surroundings.” He picked up the basket for her, and handed it to her once she had straightened her coat.
“Again, sorry.” He blinked, spasming the whole upper half of his face. His eyes were light blue, with a skittish gleam in them.
“Billy. I’m Billy.”
“I’m Kate.” She offered him a thin, polite smile and went about her business.
“Nice to meet you, Kate.” He continued with his laundry, and she stopped paying attention to him.
After a few minutes, he walked to the dryer next to hers and put his clothes in.
“So,” he asked, “what brings one of New York’s finest to this humble Laundromat?”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw him looking not at her, but at the tumbling knits in the dryers before him. He seemed merely curious in an innocent way, as opposed to a guilty way, so she played along.
“What gave me away? Did I leave my badge on?”
He laughed. “No, that would have been too easy, but it’s not hard to read. You carry yourself like a cop.”
“What else can you read off of me?” She knew she was treading dangerous waters, like she had when Castle had taken his chance to analyze her.
He turned to look at her, and Beckett suddenly felt like a bug under a magnifying glass. Not uncomfortably, but like he was taking in everything and analyzing it. Like she was at the doctor’s.
He turned his ice-blue eyes to hers before he started speaking. “I’d bet that you aren’t just an everyday cop, but a detective. It’s in the way that you stand. Also, I bet that you’re sort of the head honcho of the other detectives. You don’t necessarily outrank them, but you make sure things get done. You’re the serious cop, if you’ll forgive me the epithet. And I bet that’s what makes you somewhat intolerant of people who aren’t as serious as you are. Sure, you put up with them, but you don’t like it.”
She raised her eyebrows in response. “That’s quite a lot of reading.”
He shrugged and there was that huge blink again. “I’ve had practice.” He tilted his head, as if considering something. Her dryer buzzed, and she pulled her clothes out and into her basket.
“How close was I?”
“Spot-on. Surprising, considering we’ve only known each other for the past ten minutes or so.” She started to get suspicious, wondering just how long he’d been “reading” her.
“Well, as I said, I’ve had a lot of practice reading people. I don’t need a lot of time to get a basic sketch. So, you know, I wasn’t stalking you or anything. I’ve been told that I’m creepy enough as-is.”
She turned to face him, but he was digging his own clothes out. He looked sad, sort of resigned.
“Trust me. I’ve seen creepy. You don’t creep me out.”
He smiled at her. “Thanks.”
They walked out of the Laundromat together, and he held the door for her. Their paths split off not long after, and Beckett found herself pleasantly surprised at how nice Billy turned out to be.
“Goodnight, Kate. It was nice to meet you.”
“Goodnight, Billy.”
They went their separate ways, but Beckett felt that she would be seeing him again soon.
***
“Dad, I was looking for one of my shirts, and I found this.” Alexis’ voice carried through to the office where Castle sat, working on the manuscript for the next Nikki Heat book. She sauntered through the door, looking at a black t-shirt. She turned it to face him, and he looked up to see an icon he had hoped would be long gone.
“What is it? It’s kind of tacky.” She turned it back around to frown at the yellow circle with the hammer printed over it.
For a moment, he was speechless. He wanted to tell Alexis the whole truth, but he couldn’t muster up the nerve.
“It’s one of my old shirts. I haven’t worn this thing in years.” He reached for it, and she passed the worn fabric off to him. “It is really tacky though, isn’t it?” He held it up. “What do you say? Should I wear it to the next crime scene?”
She laughed. “I don’t know, Dad. Maybe if you were wearing a cape.”
“Only the lame superheroes wear capes, kiddo.”
His phone rang and he answered, knowing it was Beckett without even looking. “Where am I headed?”
She gave him the rundown, and he was out of the house in a flash.
It was on the third floor of an apartment building with no elevator. Beckett was waiting for him at the door with a pair of latex gloves.
“Watch where you step, Castle. It’s a little messy,” she warned him.
She was right.
The floor had puddles of blood all over, and the pools got larger and larger as they approached the body. Castle noticed an odd glisten in them, as though someone had poured glitter into the blood.
A young woman was pinned to the floor by a huge spike of metal through her stomach, and both her hands were cut off.
“Oh my God,” he muttered.
“Sick, isn’t it?” Lanie stood up from where she was crouched, next to the victim. “Whoever did this most likely killed her by impalement. Just from looking, I figure that she was alive when she was stabbed, but her hands were cut off after she was dead. I can’t be sure if she was conscious during the stabbing until we get her to the lab.”
Beckett’s face was as grim as usual. “Thanks, Lanie.”
Castle looked at the dead woman. She was young, probably in her mid-twenties. Her hair was auburn and trimmed in a rough pixie cut. He could see that she had been very pretty when she was alive, in a sort of cute, quiet way.
“Christina Eberhardt, twenty-nine years old.” Beckett glanced through the rest of the info before continuing. “She was in med school. Studying to be a psychiatrist.”
“Do you think this could have been a patient of hers that did this?”
“She didn’t have patients. The most she would have done, not being certified, was observe cases.”
“So who would go to the trouble of killing her, and then bedazzling her blood?”
“You noticed that too?”
“Yeah.” He rubbed his face and looked away from the dead Ms. Eberhardt. Her face was looking a little too familiar.
“You okay, Castle?” Beckett was looking at him with something almost resembling concern.
“No. Yeah, I’ll be fine in a minute.”
“You’re usually not this affected by scenes, and we’ve seen worse.”
“I know. She just reminds me of a girl I used to date in L.A.”
“Oh? What happened to her?” Beckett’s face was detached, like she didn't quite want to know the answer but was asking to be polite.
“She died.” He took a breath. “Collateral damage, they said. But I’d rather not talk about it here.”
Beckett turned around and took a step towards the door. She paused, and put her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.” She walked to the door. “C’mon, Castle, let’s get back to the precinct.”
***
He didn’t mind leaving his old life behind. True, it wasn’t like he had much to leave behind-his only friend was Moist and they still kept in touch-but he was happy with his new life for the most part. Ever since the E.L.E. had disbanded after Bad Horse had a “racing accident” (whether or not it was an actual accident no one knew, and certainly no one was telling), Fake Thomas Jefferson declined the mantle of leadership, and Dead Bowie made a huge stink about how he should have been leader all along, Billy had worn the doctor’s coat less and less. After about two months, he had destroyed the red coat completely. He kept the white coat, goggles, gloves and boots, for a “just in case” occasion that had yet to actually occur. His room was in the basement of an apartment building, so he had something of a lab set up where he could tinker on his gadgets. They weren’t anything as grandiose as the trans-matter ray, nor anything as disastrous as the death ray, but he had done a good job on building a small freeze ray with the components of his last one and the leftover Wonderflonium he had stolen. He gave lectures from time to time about temporal physics and other trifles at universities, which paid fairly well and gave him a lot of time to himself. He had become pretty good friends with the girl who lived on the third floor, and she had given him some help recently; one of the perks of befriending someone who is studying to be a psychiatrist.
Did he miss the old days? Yes. He missed planning petty crime to disrupt the status quo. But he liked New York, because no one knew him. There was no Captain Toolbox to beat the daylights out of him on a daily basis, no creepy cowboy couriers popping out of dimensional rifts, no frozen yogurt, no nemesis.
One morning, as he was digging through his closet in search of something to wear that would be presentable enough for a hall full of college kids that were no doubt still hung over, despite Halloween being two days ago, he came across the coat. Struck by nostalgia, he pulled it off the rack and tried it on. It fit surprisingly well, and after doing up the last button on the collar he dug around his room for the rest of the outfit. Looking at himself in the mirror, he missed being Dr. Horrible and found that he wanted to go back to the time where his name was known as belonging to someone with ideas.
He reluctantly took the coat off, hung it back up in the corner of his closet, and got changed for his lecture. The goggles stayed on his bed.
Disclaimer: I own neither Dr. Horrible nor Castle.
Spoilers? All of Dr. Horrible, everything up to the most recent episode of Castle has a good chance of being mentioned.
Summary: You can't outrun your past, but you can, if you're lucky enough, dodge it. This never lasts though.
Notes: Alright, here marks the start of one of my projects that usually never see the light of day. I know I need to be working on the 30kin3 challenge, but my journal has been collecting cobwebs as of late and that needs to be fixed.
I, like many Dr. Horrible fans, also watch Castle. So one day, my twisted little brain prodded me in the middle of study period (as I was trying to understand Physics, no less) and said "Hey. Hey. Heeeeeey. What if Castle was actually Captain Hammer after the drama of Dr. Horrible? He's started a new life, shaped up, and thinks that's all behind him, but it's not. You can't outrun your past."
At which point I said "For the love of God and Goddess, brain, can you just absorb some physics for ten freaking minutes and then we'll chat?"
And this story was born.
Many thanks to my beautiful and brilliant beta Bee (who tolerates my alliterations) for reading this and drawing dinosaurs all over the manuscript.
Chapter One-Laundromat Blues
He tried to avoid Laundromats now, after the incident a few years back. He never really frequented them, but now it would be fair to say that he outright avoided them. Of course, you couldn’t just say something like “I've never used a Laundromat” to the detectives at the Twelfth Precinct and expect them to just accept it.
“So you’ve never been to a Laundromat?” Beckett was incredulous.
Castle rushed to defend himself. “I’ve been a few times, but I don’t wash my clothes there. I wash them at home.” She opened her mouth to say something, but he cut her off. “I’m perfectly capable of washing my own clothes, thank you.”
“That’s not what I was going to say. Why even bother going to one if you don’t wash your clothes there?”
His face turned pensive, as his thoughts retreated inwards. “I went with a girl once. To meet a friend of hers.” He laughed derisively. “He and I didn’t get along.”
Ryan smiled sardonically. “Who couldn’t like you?”
“Shocking as it may seem, I was a very different person back in L.A. I like to think I’m a bit better now.”
Esposito managed to ask “L.A?” before Beckett’s phone rang, and they had to go back to work.
He didn’t miss Beckett’s look, the one she gave any interesting puzzle she wanted to solve. He really liked her, and that was why he hoped she didn’t figure him out.
***
Kate Beckett usually gave people the benefit of the doubt, but the skinny guy standing by one of the washers was tripping her inner alarm and she was at an utter loss to explain why. He was hunched over, with his shoulders shrugged up as if he was trying to hide from something. She couldn’t see his face. It took more than that to scare her, though, so she didn’t spare him a second glance as she pulled her damp clothes out of the washer and walked behind him to get to the dryers. Luck was not with her that night, as he took that moment to take a step backwards and collide with her. Her clothes hit the floor, and the guy spun around.
“I’m sorry I didn’t even see you, oh GOD, I’m such an idiot.” He knelt down to help her pick up the fallen clothes.
“It’s alright. Accidents happen.” She looked at him, getting a good appraisal of his face. He was blonde, with pale skin and big eyes that made him look even more nervous than he already was. He was muttering to himself, something that sounded like “three PhDs and two doctorates, one of each in the physical sciences, and I can’t manage to be aware of my own surroundings.” He picked up the basket for her, and handed it to her once she had straightened her coat.
“Again, sorry.” He blinked, spasming the whole upper half of his face. His eyes were light blue, with a skittish gleam in them.
“Billy. I’m Billy.”
“I’m Kate.” She offered him a thin, polite smile and went about her business.
“Nice to meet you, Kate.” He continued with his laundry, and she stopped paying attention to him.
After a few minutes, he walked to the dryer next to hers and put his clothes in.
“So,” he asked, “what brings one of New York’s finest to this humble Laundromat?”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw him looking not at her, but at the tumbling knits in the dryers before him. He seemed merely curious in an innocent way, as opposed to a guilty way, so she played along.
“What gave me away? Did I leave my badge on?”
He laughed. “No, that would have been too easy, but it’s not hard to read. You carry yourself like a cop.”
“What else can you read off of me?” She knew she was treading dangerous waters, like she had when Castle had taken his chance to analyze her.
He turned to look at her, and Beckett suddenly felt like a bug under a magnifying glass. Not uncomfortably, but like he was taking in everything and analyzing it. Like she was at the doctor’s.
He turned his ice-blue eyes to hers before he started speaking. “I’d bet that you aren’t just an everyday cop, but a detective. It’s in the way that you stand. Also, I bet that you’re sort of the head honcho of the other detectives. You don’t necessarily outrank them, but you make sure things get done. You’re the serious cop, if you’ll forgive me the epithet. And I bet that’s what makes you somewhat intolerant of people who aren’t as serious as you are. Sure, you put up with them, but you don’t like it.”
She raised her eyebrows in response. “That’s quite a lot of reading.”
He shrugged and there was that huge blink again. “I’ve had practice.” He tilted his head, as if considering something. Her dryer buzzed, and she pulled her clothes out and into her basket.
“How close was I?”
“Spot-on. Surprising, considering we’ve only known each other for the past ten minutes or so.” She started to get suspicious, wondering just how long he’d been “reading” her.
“Well, as I said, I’ve had a lot of practice reading people. I don’t need a lot of time to get a basic sketch. So, you know, I wasn’t stalking you or anything. I’ve been told that I’m creepy enough as-is.”
She turned to face him, but he was digging his own clothes out. He looked sad, sort of resigned.
“Trust me. I’ve seen creepy. You don’t creep me out.”
He smiled at her. “Thanks.”
They walked out of the Laundromat together, and he held the door for her. Their paths split off not long after, and Beckett found herself pleasantly surprised at how nice Billy turned out to be.
“Goodnight, Kate. It was nice to meet you.”
“Goodnight, Billy.”
They went their separate ways, but Beckett felt that she would be seeing him again soon.
***
“Dad, I was looking for one of my shirts, and I found this.” Alexis’ voice carried through to the office where Castle sat, working on the manuscript for the next Nikki Heat book. She sauntered through the door, looking at a black t-shirt. She turned it to face him, and he looked up to see an icon he had hoped would be long gone.
“What is it? It’s kind of tacky.” She turned it back around to frown at the yellow circle with the hammer printed over it.
For a moment, he was speechless. He wanted to tell Alexis the whole truth, but he couldn’t muster up the nerve.
“It’s one of my old shirts. I haven’t worn this thing in years.” He reached for it, and she passed the worn fabric off to him. “It is really tacky though, isn’t it?” He held it up. “What do you say? Should I wear it to the next crime scene?”
She laughed. “I don’t know, Dad. Maybe if you were wearing a cape.”
“Only the lame superheroes wear capes, kiddo.”
His phone rang and he answered, knowing it was Beckett without even looking. “Where am I headed?”
She gave him the rundown, and he was out of the house in a flash.
It was on the third floor of an apartment building with no elevator. Beckett was waiting for him at the door with a pair of latex gloves.
“Watch where you step, Castle. It’s a little messy,” she warned him.
She was right.
The floor had puddles of blood all over, and the pools got larger and larger as they approached the body. Castle noticed an odd glisten in them, as though someone had poured glitter into the blood.
A young woman was pinned to the floor by a huge spike of metal through her stomach, and both her hands were cut off.
“Oh my God,” he muttered.
“Sick, isn’t it?” Lanie stood up from where she was crouched, next to the victim. “Whoever did this most likely killed her by impalement. Just from looking, I figure that she was alive when she was stabbed, but her hands were cut off after she was dead. I can’t be sure if she was conscious during the stabbing until we get her to the lab.”
Beckett’s face was as grim as usual. “Thanks, Lanie.”
Castle looked at the dead woman. She was young, probably in her mid-twenties. Her hair was auburn and trimmed in a rough pixie cut. He could see that she had been very pretty when she was alive, in a sort of cute, quiet way.
“Christina Eberhardt, twenty-nine years old.” Beckett glanced through the rest of the info before continuing. “She was in med school. Studying to be a psychiatrist.”
“Do you think this could have been a patient of hers that did this?”
“She didn’t have patients. The most she would have done, not being certified, was observe cases.”
“So who would go to the trouble of killing her, and then bedazzling her blood?”
“You noticed that too?”
“Yeah.” He rubbed his face and looked away from the dead Ms. Eberhardt. Her face was looking a little too familiar.
“You okay, Castle?” Beckett was looking at him with something almost resembling concern.
“No. Yeah, I’ll be fine in a minute.”
“You’re usually not this affected by scenes, and we’ve seen worse.”
“I know. She just reminds me of a girl I used to date in L.A.”
“Oh? What happened to her?” Beckett’s face was detached, like she didn't quite want to know the answer but was asking to be polite.
“She died.” He took a breath. “Collateral damage, they said. But I’d rather not talk about it here.”
Beckett turned around and took a step towards the door. She paused, and put her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.” She walked to the door. “C’mon, Castle, let’s get back to the precinct.”
***
He didn’t mind leaving his old life behind. True, it wasn’t like he had much to leave behind-his only friend was Moist and they still kept in touch-but he was happy with his new life for the most part. Ever since the E.L.E. had disbanded after Bad Horse had a “racing accident” (whether or not it was an actual accident no one knew, and certainly no one was telling), Fake Thomas Jefferson declined the mantle of leadership, and Dead Bowie made a huge stink about how he should have been leader all along, Billy had worn the doctor’s coat less and less. After about two months, he had destroyed the red coat completely. He kept the white coat, goggles, gloves and boots, for a “just in case” occasion that had yet to actually occur. His room was in the basement of an apartment building, so he had something of a lab set up where he could tinker on his gadgets. They weren’t anything as grandiose as the trans-matter ray, nor anything as disastrous as the death ray, but he had done a good job on building a small freeze ray with the components of his last one and the leftover Wonderflonium he had stolen. He gave lectures from time to time about temporal physics and other trifles at universities, which paid fairly well and gave him a lot of time to himself. He had become pretty good friends with the girl who lived on the third floor, and she had given him some help recently; one of the perks of befriending someone who is studying to be a psychiatrist.
Did he miss the old days? Yes. He missed planning petty crime to disrupt the status quo. But he liked New York, because no one knew him. There was no Captain Toolbox to beat the daylights out of him on a daily basis, no creepy cowboy couriers popping out of dimensional rifts, no frozen yogurt, no nemesis.
One morning, as he was digging through his closet in search of something to wear that would be presentable enough for a hall full of college kids that were no doubt still hung over, despite Halloween being two days ago, he came across the coat. Struck by nostalgia, he pulled it off the rack and tried it on. It fit surprisingly well, and after doing up the last button on the collar he dug around his room for the rest of the outfit. Looking at himself in the mirror, he missed being Dr. Horrible and found that he wanted to go back to the time where his name was known as belonging to someone with ideas.
He reluctantly took the coat off, hung it back up in the corner of his closet, and got changed for his lecture. The goggles stayed on his bed.