Don't Give Up on Me

When Richard Castle meets lawyer Kate Beckett on the subway he has no idea how she might change his life-and help him deal with his dark past. Caskett AU

One

Taking in a slow, deep breath, Kate Beckett clicked the home button on her cell phone to brighten the screen so she could look at the time. Only three minutes had passed since she last looked which was disappointing, because it felt like at least ten. Then again, each passing minute during which she was trapped inside the stifling subway car felt exponentially longer. Also with each passing minute she began increasingly worried about just how long they'd be stuck. The last thing she wanted was for her "stuck on the subway" story to be the one that reached national news.

As she watched the time on her phone tick from 5:25 to 5:26, Kate frowned and slipped the phone back into her bag. All hope of making it to her evening yoga class began do drift away. True, once the subway got moving, she was only about twelve minutes away, which meant she could still plausibly make the class, particularly if she changed really quickly, but she also knew her instructor was very strict with latecomers, so assuming the subway did not start moving right that second she wasn't going to make the five-forty-five class. She shut her eyes and held her breath for about twenty seconds, but when she pushed out the air through her lips the car had not begun moving. Grumbling to herself, Kate tilted her head back, trying not to focus on the sweat droplets now traveling the length of her spine.

In all reality, she wasn't that upset about missing yoga. Yes, she attended that Wednesday class fairly religiously and she enjoyed the stress relief that yoga brought, but more so, that Wednesday yoga class was her excuse to leave work early one day per week. Technically, she wasn't even leaving early, as her eight-thirty start time did permit a five-p.m. departure, but when was that actually realistic? Certainly not with her case load. Certainly not while she was still trying to prove herself. Generally, leaving around five earned any of the newer employees and curious gaze from the higher ups, but when she coupled that with, "Going to my yoga class; see you tomorrow," and followed through with staying much later on the other days of the week including Friday, she generally got a pass. She knew she'd earn herself a bit more flexibility sooner than later, she just wasn't quite there yet.

Opening her eyes again, Kate lowered her chin and caught movement to her left. A man sitting on the opposite side of the subway car from her had stood and was removing his topcoat and blazer. She couldn't really blame him. Despite the chilly early April air outside the subway never seemed to cool down and when a car was stagnant as long as theirs had been, the thickness of the air felt oppressive.

When the man turned back around and tried to neatly gather his coats together, he caught her eye, and her first instinct was to look away. Then, cautiously, she glanced back to him and saw he was approaching. She immediately felt her face flush (more than it was already flushing in that heat) and realized he was going to take the seat beside her, which was presently taken up by the backpack of a twenty-something kid sitting carelessly while listening to music so loud she could hear it through the headphones.

The man approached, cleared his throat and said, "Excuse me," loud enough for the boy to hear. He smiled, pointed at the seat, and the kid grumbled before hefting up his backpack and dropping it to the floor. Kate scooted over as much as she could to give the man, who was well over six-foot, as much space as a subway car bench had to offer each individual rider. She watched him sit and then gazed curiously for several seconds while he just smiled at her. Then, he leaned in and muttered, "Wanna place a bet on when that cat will stop screaming?"

Despite her frustration with the situation, Kate laughed. Gazing down towards the opposite end of the car, she once again heard the pitiful howl that absolutely sounded like a wounded, dying creature about to draw its last breath. The cat's protests had started about five minutes after the car stopped moving. At first, she wondered what kind of wild animal had entered the car, and half thought about pulling her feet up off the floor just in case, but then she saw the middle-aged woman making hushing noises towards the black mesh carrier bag on her lap. That's when she deduced the sound came from a cat—or, rather, she hoped it was a cat and not some other animal in the bag. Then again, it was New York, so she would have believed almost anything.

Leaning back towards her new seat-mate, she said, "I doubt he'll stop until we start moving again."

The man hummed and nodded in agreement. "Can't say I blame it. If it was socially acceptable to me to be yelling right now, I probably would be."

"Right."

Grinning once again, he held out his hand towards her and said, "I'm Rick, by the way."

Kate placed her hand in his, but she hadn't needed the introduction. She'd spotted famous author Richard Castle inside her Wednesday subway car for the first time a few months earlier. She actually hadn't believed it was him the first time, since despite living in Manhattan, she'd never actually seen a celebrity before (save that one time she accidentally stumbled across a movie premier, but she didn't really think that counted since it was an organized event and not an "in the wild" sighting). Two weeks later, she'd seen him again and was more convinced that time. Ever since, she saw him with surprising frequency given the fact that even though she took the same train every Wednesday, it had many cars and she never was too particular about which she got on.

"I'm Kate."

"Nice to meet you, Kate. You're on your way home from work, I assume."

She trapped her bottom lip briefly with her teeth. "Well, I was going to yoga, but since the class starts in…" She paused to look at the time on her phone again, "fourteen minutes, I don't think I'm going to make it."

"Probably not." He then looked around the car and frowned. Turning back to her he asked, "What's the longest you've ever been stuck in a subway car, you think?"

She swallowed a laugh and leaned back in her seat. "I don't want to answer that, because I'm afraid it's going to be this."

"Fair enough. I've been stuck around a half hour before, but that was—oh!" He gasped and then stopped talking when a garbled announcement could be heard overhead.

For perhaps the fiftieth time Kate wondered why New York City subway cars had what had to be the worst public announcement system available on planet earth. She didn't think she had ever heard one that was clearly audible. More often than not, the announcer might have been speaking in an alien tongue for all she understood. That time, however, she though she caught something that was actually rather unfortunate. "Did that say twenty more minutes?" she asked the writer.

"That's what I heard."

She let out a huff of breath. "Great." So that was the end of her last strand of hope that she'd make yoga—not that she really minded. She could do a few stretches in her apartment when she got home; she just wanted to get out of the tin can she was trapped in beneath the city streets.

"So…what is it that you do, Kate?"

She grasped a bit tighter to the straps of her purse, running her thumbs over the smooth leather to distract herself from how uncomfortable warm she was. "I'm, ah, a lawyer."

"Interesting. I'm a writer."

Without missing a beat she said simply, "I know."

The glint in his eye growing a bit mischievous, he responded with, "Do you?"

She hummed. "Yes. And I'm pretty sure you even saw me reading one of your books about two months ago." It was very shortly after she started seeing him, and she hadn't been reading the book in hopes that he'd see it and her—truly. She just saw him, thought about re-reading one of her favorites, and then low and behold there he was one day when she was about halfway through it. She looked up, saw him, and he quickly looked away—too quickly, as it happened. She thus suspected he saw her reading his book, which she found amusing at the time, but hadn't thought much about it since.

He dipped his head and chuckled. "Guilty as charged. So since you know who I am…am I making you nervous by sitting here?"

"No." In truth, she half thought about approaching him on more than one occasion, but always decided against it if for no other reason than it was slightly impractical. Having a conversation on a moving subway car was certainly less than ideal. Most times it was hard to hear the other person, so conversing typically needed to be restricted to a few key words like, "My stop" or, "Sorry" in the case of accidentally stepping on someone. That was not the scenario in which she wanted to greet one of her favorite authors and thank him for writing such interesting tales. Besides, every time she saw him she was hurrying to yoga and presumably he was trying to make his way somewhere as well, so she never felt she had the time. That being the case, being trapped in a subway together seemed as good a time to converse as any.

"Good," he continued. "I hope I didn't make you uncomfortable and I never mean to stare, I'm just always fascinated when I see someone reading my books."

"I see," she said, not quite sure how to interpret the statement. It sounded a bit conceited, and she knew if she had to listen to Rick Castle wax on about how wonderful he thought he was, he no longer would be one of her favorite authors. Yet, there they were, trapped in a subway car together.

Just as she was contemplating moving to sit by the screaming cat, Rick continued with, "What I mean is: it's interesting to me from a demographics perspective. I always want to make sure my novels remain interesting to those who like my work and of course my publisher conducts surveys and gives me the results, but I never know if that's altered or manipulated data. Sorry…I'm probably boring you."

She nodded with slight relief as his statements didn't sound conceited at all; they merely made him invested in his craft, and there was nothing wrong with that. "No—no it makes sense. Everyone has different tastes and you're probably not marketing towards…kids in high school."

He laughed. "Um, no; not really. Actually, women between the ages of thirty-five and sixty-five are my main demographic."

"Well I'm not in your demographic, but my mother is."

"She reads my books, too?"

She nodded and gave him a soft smile. "Yeah we usually read them together. I mean, when a new one comes out, we read it at the same time and discuss it like a mini book club." She turned her eyes to her lap after that statement, feeling a little embarrassed, because when she heard it aloud it made her sound far more like a fan than she wanted to.

"I love it—that's great; glad to hear it."

"We enjoy it. They're good books, Mr. Castle."

He tilted his head and his gaze softened. "Please, call me Rick. We're friends now."

Though she wasn't sure that she would call them 'friends' as she very much doubted they'd be seeing each other outside of that subway car, she didn't have a problem being on a first name basis with him. "Okay Rick…tell me: what are you doing on the subway? Don't writers work from home?"

He hummed and adjusted the pile of coats in his lap. "Most do, but writing can be so isolating. I like to get out and see the world—find inspiration."

"I see…so is Derrick Storm going to be trapped on a subway next?"

He chuckled. "Maybe. We'll see."

They sat in a companionable silence for a few more minutes before the subway car jolted and then slowly began moving once more. Kate instantly proclaimed, "Oh thank god!"

The writer smiled then, a few seconds later, leaned in close to speak into her ear. "I'm sure we're both going to want to run out of this car at the next station but, before then—how about I take you and your mother out for coffee sometime?"

"What?" Not because she hadn't heard him, but she was shocked at what she was hearing. They didn't even know each other and now he wanted to take her mother out for coffee?

"I want to take you and your mother out for coffee for your next book club meeting. Is that okay?" he said into her ear once more, presumably thinking she hadn't actually heard him over the rush of noise now filling the moving car.

Not sure what else to do, Kate nodded a bit dumbly and said, "Okay; if you want."

"Great. Great! Here—your phone." He requested, holding his hand out to her. She took it from her bag, unlocked it with her thumb print, then handed it to him. With no small amount of disbelief, she watched as he entered his contact information into her phone before handing it back to her. "Call me and we'll set something up, okay?"

"Okay." She agreed, then accidentally bumped her shoulder into his as the subway car squealed to a stop at the next platform. Unsurprisingly, at least half the car stood and began to file out. Rick stood, but she almost didn't, her mind still on yoga. Then, once she remembered that she'd already missed the start of class, she stood as well, because she had to switch to a bus to get back to her apartment.

Once out on the street she heard Rick laugh and say, "Crap; it's still cold out."

She turned to see him juggling his coats and held out her hand to assist, feeling it was only fair since he'd so generously offered to have coffee with her "book club". He thanked her for her help and then offered to get her a cab, to which she said, "No, thanks; the bus stop is only two blocks away."

"Okay. I look forward to your call, Kate; have a good evening."

She smiled and said, "You too," before shouldering her bag, stuffing her hands into her coat, and turning to walk westward. She'd only made it half a block before she glanced back over her shoulder, and laughed to herself, knowing her mother was never going to believe her when she told her who she talked to on the subway that night.

Stepping inside his apartment that Wednesday evening, Richard Castle began shrugging off his coat and then immediately grimaced; he could still feel the remnants of clammy sweat down the length of his spine. Damn stuck subway, he thought to himself as he quickly hung up his coat and then walked directly into his bedroom to change. He tossed his blazer on the bench at the end of his bed, then unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it into the hamper along with his t-shirt. He then got a clean t-shirt from his dresser and pulled it on as he walked through his bedroom and into his office. From the back of his desk chair he grabbed the light gray hoodie he'd left the night before, and then finally he walked into the kitchen to get down to his initial purpose upon arriving home: dinner.

After washing his hands at the sink, he grabbed a glass from the cabinet, filled it with water, and drank it in its entirety. Then, he filled the glass again before walking over to the pantry and examining the contents. As he reached out for a box of angel hair pasta, he found his stomach filled with that strange knee-jerk reaction of anxiety and fear that his cabinets were not filled with Kraft mac and cheese or every flavor variety of instant ramen noodles. Many, many years had passed since he needed to feed himself on a shoestring budget, but old habits died hard.

As he readied the rest of the ingredients for the garlic shrimp pasta dish he was making that night, Rick thought back to his time on the subway. Specifically, to a gorgeous brown-haired woman named Kate he was quite pleased to finally have the opportunity to talk to. As much as he definitely had not wanted to be trapped in that subway car, Kate certainly had made the misery worthwhile.

When Rick rode the subway at rush-hour, his purpose was almost entirely research-based. He could people watch for research just about anywhere, the evening subway commute somehow always provided the most worthwhile ideas, particularly when he was trying to find new scenarios for Derrick Storm to find himself in. When he did these observational journeys, sometimes he made notes, but mostly he used them for later inspiration. He rarely remembered specific people or incidents unless they were…well, very memorable.

The first time he saw Kate, it wasn't her that he noticed first, but his book. He was instantly amused and flattered, as he always was when seeing his books being read in public, but when he saw the woman's face, he immediately found himself even more intrigued, for not only did she seem younger that his normal demographic, but she was stunningly beautiful.

Over the next few weeks he saw her intermittently and realized it was not just her beauty that he was attracted to, but that little hint of mystery in her smile. There was something going on there—something he was dying to find out about but, alas, he knew finding out would be impractical as striking up a conversation in a moving subway car was only slightly more practical than doing so in a crowded bar with a live band playing. He thought about perhaps following her when she got out of the car one evening, but that felt a bit too stalker-ish, so in a way the stopped car had perfect timing.

As he cooked his dinner, Rick glanced probably a few more times than he should have down at his phone. It was obviously ridiculous to expect Kate to call him that same night. For one, she probably had to coordinate schedules with her mother. Plus, as a lawyer, he assumed her to be a very organized and logical person—not someone who would call merely hours after getting his number as that generally tended to ring as a little desperate, or perhaps too eager. Still, he hoped to hear from her sooner than later as he was very anxious for their coffee get together—very anxious indeed.