In fact, Kate had nearly nodded off entirely when she heard Alexis’ voice.  It sounded suspiciously like a cheerful ‘Hi Kate!’ but that couldn’t be right – it was two in the afternoon.  Alexis still had class and, barring a family emergency, Alexis would never skip class.

Kate’s eyes snapped open in realisation and her body tensed, ready to act, and she pinned Alexis with a serious stare.  “What’s wrong, Alexis?”

Alexis flinched back and adjusted the strap on her book bag.  “No-nothing?”

“Why aren’t you in class?” Kate asked, her stare softening a fraction.

“Because class is finished for the day?” Alexis said as if she were talking to her dad on one of his more thick-headed days.  Kate frowned – she didn’t like being on the receiving end of Alexis’ ‘are you dense?’ tone and she would be embarrassed to admit how many times she had had it levelled at her.

“It is?  But it’s,” Kate flicked her gaze, and her mouse, to the monitor, “…oh.  Four o’clock.  Apparently.  Sorry Alexis, I thought it was a lot earlier.”

Alexis grinned.  “Dad does the same thing, except I usually catch him writing at six in the morning under the impression that it was just past midnight.”

Kate laughed.  “I guess there’s one thing cops and writers have in common – strange hours.  So what brings you here?  If you were looking for your dad, he’s off on a coffee run.”

“In this heat?  I’m impressed – how did you convince him to leave the Precinct?”

“We drew straws.  Castle picked the short one.”  Kate’s smirk was devious and wiggled a little in her seat.  Alexis raised her eyebrows.

“Let me guess, Dad went first and all the straws just happened to be short.”

Kate’s grin widened.  “Perhaps.  Pull up a seat – Castle shouldn’t be too much longer.”

Alexis dropped down into Castle’s usual chair and pulled her bag onto her lap.  “Actually, I’m not here to talk to Dad; I was wondering if I could talk to you sometime?”

“Of course.  Wanna go grab some coffee now?” Kate asked.  “Clearly I need some.   And, either way, I also clearly need a break.”

“No, that’s alright.  I’d rather not risk running into my dad,” Alexis shrugged.  “I’m just wondering about a summer job, that’s all.”

“Got any ideas on what you want to do?” Kate asked, and then laughed.  “Then again, you probably have prospective employers lined up or you wouldn’t be talking to me, would you?”

Alexis blushed and looked away.  “Yeah….”

Kate leaned forward and looked up at Alexis.  “Hey, hey!  That’s perfectly alright, Alexis.  I’m the same way – there’s no point talking about something—”

“—Unless you’re reasonably certain it won’t fall through,” Alexis finished and Kate grinned.

“Exactly.  So what’s the plan?”

“Well, I was out shopping with Rina on Wednesday and we ran into her boss.  He took one look at me and started gushing about how I was the perfect model for one of his dresses and he offered me a job.  Rina thinks I should take it, Gram says that models have no talent, but if I want to, I should do it and Paige thinks that models are brainless morons and that I don’t need a job anyway because my dad’s rich.” Alexis said in a rush.

Ryan and Esposito, already casually eavesdropping on the conversation, glanced at each other and synchronously rolled towards Beckett’s desk.

“So now I don’t know what to do and I was hoping that you could help.”

“Modelling, huh?”  Ryan said, smirking at Beckett.  Kate glared at the duo warningly.  Predictably, they ignored her.

“Well, you certainly came to the right person for advice, isn’t that right Beckett?”  Esposito had an identical shit eating grin on his face.  Alexis raised an eyebrow and silently prompted Esposito to continue.

“Freaky how she does that,” Ryan muttered as an aside.

“You see, Little Castle, Detective Beckett here was a model once,” Esposito’s grin widened as he ducked to avoid the pen his boss threw at his head.

“When I was seventeen! And what part of ‘don’t tell Castle’ didn’t you understand?”  Beckett hissed.

“Ohhhh!  You meant all of the Castles?” Ryan said.

“Could we tell Mrs R. then?” Esposito grinned and failed to duck this time and Kate’s pen hit in square in the forehead.  “Ow!”

“Scat, you two!  Don’t you have paperwork to file?”  Beckett made shooing motions with her hands and the boys rolled off, bickering.

“Hey bro, is there pen on my head?”

“I dunno man, hold still and I’ll see!”

“Well?”

“I think so—”

There was a smack and a slight yelp of pain.

“Get your hand out of my face, Honeymilk!”

“Are you ever going to stop calling me that?  It’s been years, man!”

Kate rested her cheek on one hand and smirked sideways at Alexis.  “One thing about this job is that it’s never boring.  As for the modelling… if you want to do it, go for it.  Despite it all, I’d really regret not having modelled; it’s a bit embarrassing in hindsight, yes, but better that than spent the rest of my life wondering what I missed.  At the very least, knowledge is knowledge, wherever it came from.”

Alexis smiled and her blue eyes sparkled decisively.  “And it would only be for the summer – it’s not like I want to make a career out of modelling like Rina.  Not that I could; Dad is getting pretty weird about possible careers lately.  He doesn’t want me in a field where someone got killed on one of your cases.”

Kate rolled her eyes.  “How did I miss those conversations?  How many jobs are you down to?”

Alexis rolled her eyes back.  “One – veterinarian.”

Kate winced.  “Sorry, that one’s a no go – the guy we just caught worked at a vet clinic as a vet tech or something.”

Alexis rolled her eyes again.  “Well, I suppose now that everything has been eliminated I can threaten to bum off of him forever like Grams.”

“What’s this?” Castle said, carefully depositing his full load of coffee and assorted pastries onto Kate’s desk.  “My two favourite ladies are waiting for me?”

Kate smiled up at him fondly.  “No, I’m waiting for grande skim latte with two pumps sugar free vanilla.”

“Alas, they were out of bear claws, so I brought you a donut instead.  I hope this is acceptable?”  Castle presented the chocolate raspberry jelly donut with a flourish as Kate dug out her coffee from the tray.

Kate made a show of inspecting the donut and daintily plucked it from Castle’s hand.  She took a bite and winced as the raspberry jelly squirted out onto her hand.  Castle, laughing, swiped a bit of the jelly before it could slide off Kate’s hand and onto her paperwork, and suggestively licked it off his finger.  Kate rolled her eyes.  “Yes, Castle, the donut is indeed acceptable.”

Castle dimpled at her before turning to his daughter.  “So Alexis, what brings you to this fine establishment?”

“Just wanted to ask Kate for some advice,” Alexis said with a shrug and a smile.

“So, did the detective give good advice?”  Castle asked.

Alexis smiled.  “Yes, in fact she did, Father.”

“Of course.  When has Kate steered either of us wrong?”  Castle said with a dopey smile.  “Well, I guess there was that time with the – oh no, that’s wildly inappropriate.  Or the–”

“Castle,” Kate interrupted, “You’ve already used this joke.  Twice.  In the past week.”

“Fine,” Castle sighed melodramatically, “So what were you asking Kate about?”

“Oh, just about a summer job,” Alexis said.

“At the Precinct?  We could carpool!  Or, well, share a cab.”  Castle grinned.

“Sorry Dad, I was thinking about modelling.”  Alexis grinned at her father’s flabbergasted look.

“Modelling?”

“Yes Dad, modelling.  Rina’s boss wants me to work for him this summer.”

“But…!”

“Rick,” Kate interrupted gently, “It would just be for the summer.”

“Yeah, I guess…” Castle said, distracted by Ryan’s furtive ‘get over here’ motions.  “One sec; it looks like Ryan needs me for a minute.”  He ambled off towards the other two detectives and the three began speaking in hushed tones.  Esposito pointed something on his monitor and Castle’s eyes widened as he leaned in closer to the screen.

“Alexis,” Kate said, drawing Alexis’ attention away from her father.  “About what Paige said about you not having to work because your dad is rich?  Work anyway.  My parents had money too and I never had to worry about college funds or anything, but I found that I just felt better if I was providing for myself.”

Alexis just looked at Kate for several beats before smiling slightly.  “Yeah.”  She said.  “I think I’m the same way.”

Castle’s low whistle echoed throughout the still bullpen and Kate and Alexis returned their attention to the men.  “That had got to be one uncomfortable position to stand in – and who holds a tennis racket like that?”

Kate’s eyes widened.  “You didn’t!”  Her green eyes narrowed as she pushed herself up from behind the desk.

“Uh oh,” Ryan said.

“Scatter!”  Esposito commanded and the three men shot off in different directions.  But Kate was only interested in hunting down one man.  The man holding the flash drive.  The man who was going to be sleeping on the couch for the next few days.

“Richard Nathaniel Castle GIVE ME THAT FLASH DRIVE!” Kate yelled as Castle jumped between the closing doors of the elevator.  Karpowski just looked at Castle.  He smiled back widely.

Kate, seeing that the elevator had already left, skidded around the corner and wrenched open the door to the stairs and barrelled down them.

After a few moments of stillness, Montgomery stepped out of his office as Ryan and Esposito slunk out of the men’s washroom.  The three men gathered around the youngest Castle and stared at the elevator in amusement.

“We’re not going to see them for another hour, are we?”  Alexis asked after a long moment.  A chorus of nopes, uh uhs and yeah rights echoed from the bullpen.  “Thought so.  I think I’ll just take the subway home.”

Written mostly because I have a huge soft spot for mom!Beckett fics and because I’m currently on a quest to see how many Castle/Beckett fics I can write without them ever actually kissing.  I’m up to three (by a technicality).  And a half, if you count the half-finished fic languishing on my hard drive.

As ever, thanks is owed, and given, to the lovely Sarah/ObsidianJade for telling me that I forgot important words like ‘not’ and one of Alexis’ lines.  Without her, my stories would be even more nonsensical.

—

It was two am and Katherine Beckett could not sleep.  Not an uncommon occurrence – her all nighters spent staring at the murder board, followed by power naps in the break room, (and that time she broke into the Captain’s office and passed out on his much more comfortable couch) were a bit of a legend in the Twelfth Precinct.  But it wasn’t murder keeping Beckett awake that night.

No.

It was far more frustrating problem.  And it was all Castle’s fault.

The relaxing bubble bath with wine, scented candles and soft, ambient music, while perhaps a good idea for unwinding after a long day of paperwork with none of Castle’s antics, turned out to be not-so-relaxing when she hauled in her collection Richard Castle’s novels.  Even that, though, would not have been a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that the wine went straight to her head (or maybe a little farther south) and she started her own Castle smutathon.

And so, by the time the water cooled, Kate Beckett had spent over an hour in the bath reading in chronological order, of course, Castle’s twenty-six (seven, including Heat Wave) bestsellers (plus the ones that didn’t sell quite so well) purely for the sex scenes.

Yeah.

Bad idea.

Especially, Kate rolled over and groaned into her pillow, since I used to wear off this Castlelust by writing smutty Derrick Storm fic.

But, no, Kate Beckett was not going to lower herself to writing fanfiction for books written by a man she saw damn near every day.  It was bad enough knowing that she had written them in the past, and even posted them to the internet (on multiple sites, even!), but she was certainly not going to lower herself to writing them again.

Especially since, as soon as Castle started following her around, she had mass deleted all of the fanfiction she had ever written about his characters.  Sadly, her resolve had only lasted a week – she had caved to the online peer pressure and reposted all of the fics, mostly to prove that she wasn’t one of the fans who vowed to Never Read Richard Castle Again Since He Killed Off Derrick Storm.

End result?  She was still active in the Castle communities and had watched the explosion of fic that had followed the release of Heat Wave.  It was alarming.  People really liked the Nikki Heat character – there were, of course, the obligatory Nikki Heat bashfics (briiiiing Derrick Storm baaaack!), but overall, the authors seemed to revel in her literary alter ego.

Kate sighed and beat her fist into her pillow.  Clearly she wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight, and her friends had been clamouring for some Heat/Rook smut from her…  How hard could it be to write about Nikki Heat?  She knew as much, more even, about the character as Castle did.  And it wasn’t as if she couldn’t figure out Rook.

Oh, God.

She was not seriously considering writing for a ship that was, for all intents and purposes, her and Castle.

But Castle did, her traitorous mind pointed out.  He clearly has no problems with our alter egos getting it on.

Ultimately, that was what convinced Kate to boot up her laptop, pour herself another glass of wine and open Word.  She stared at the blank document, feeling more embarrassed than the first time she wrote a Castle smut fic – and that had been years upon years ago before there was even a hint of Derrick Storm on the horizon.  She took a large swallow of wine for fortification and, shuddering, she began to write.

Nikki Heat smirked inwardly as she swept, fashionably late, into Rook’s magazine’s cocktail party.  The formfitting wine red dress, accented in gold, drew looks and the lithe, athletic form it cased kept the gazes on Nikki.  Despite all of the admiring stares, Nikki felt Rook’s eyes on her and she turned to face him with a saucy smile.  Rook’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he absently set his champagne glass on a nearby table.  The air between the two smouldered and the other partygoers unconsciously cleared a direct route to Nikki for Rook….

–

“Good morning, Beckett!” Castle swivelled around in a chair – her chair – with a beatific grin on his face.  “Coffee?”

Kate growled faintly, accepted the coffee and glared, annoyed by Castle’s perpetual chair stealing.  Castle looked blankly up at her for a moment before the flash of understanding went across his face.  The man either never bothered to hide his emotions or had inherited more than his charm and flair from the dramatic from his mother.

Seemingly in response to her thoughts (perhaps he inherited the psychic powers as well?), Castle had leapt up and held out her chair in a gentlemanly manner.  With a small smile and a mostly feigned suspicious look, Beckett sank gracefully into her seat and Castle gallantly rolled her forward.  She raised an eyebrow at his antics and he just smiled and gave an extravagant bow.

“My, my Beckett, are those bags under your lovely eyes?  Were you up all night?  Was it murder?  I’m hurt – why didn’t you call me?” Castle’s shocked air turned lascivious and he leaned in, “Or was it a man?”

Beckett rolled her eyes.  “Hardly.”

Castle gasped, one hand flying to his heart.  “It was a woman!  Why didn’t you call me, Beckett?”

Beckett huffed, “Don’t flatter yourself, Castle.  What’s got you in such a good mood?”

“I woke up early this morning – really early – five am early – and I have finally managed to bypass Alexis’ parental controls on my–” Castle started.

“Ah!” Beckett held up a hand.  “I do not need to hear any more!”

“No, no,” Castle said, “You’ve got it all wrong – the parental controls weren’t for, uh, adult sites (why would I need those anyway?), they were for the Castle fansites.”

“The Castle fansites?” Beckett said blankly.

“Yes!  And in the year I’ve been away, there has been a veritable explosion of activity!  My favourite author–”

“Favourite author?”

“Of fanfiction.  It turns out that she had deleted all of her stories, but not because of the killing off Derrick Storm thing, and reposted it in the time I’ve been away.  She hadn’t written anything new, though, until just this morning (it was fate, I swear!) and, whew, let me tell you, that was one hot scene between Heat and Rook.”  Castle sighed happily.  “I really wish I could meet this woman.”

Kate Beckett just stared at him in horror.

—

A/N: My attempts at swearing off writing fanfiction never seem to succeed… which is insanely meta considering the subject matter of this fic.  So, yes, maybe Kate is a little too much like me but, hey, it’s crack!fic.

Unrelated, but awesome(ish) – this fic was the first fanfic posted publicly to Google Wave.  Go Castle fandom!

I blame my beta, Sarah (ObsidianJade), for this fic (even if it was an accidental self-prompt).  Somehow both of the fics I wrote in the past year are all her fault.

PS:  I now know how weird it is for people to write fic about characters who share their name.  I’m still not sure if I should be offended by Nikki Heat or not…

ObsidianJade adds:  I’ll happily take blame for this one, it’s hilarious.  I’d happily take blame for a multitude more of stories from Nikki, but she doesn’t co-operate!