Work Text:
Rick Castle has a complicated relationship with the blank page.
Most people don’t get that.
“Seriously, dad?” Alexis would laugh at him as she rollerbladed through his office and back out into the living area, leaving behind a wake of chaotic and joyful air (she was always careful to avoid knocking into the bookcases). “It’s not even a real page. You’ve done this before, you can do it again.”
“Hush, child,” Rick would sternly yell after his daughter as she disappeared into the kitchen, “you know not of what you speak!”
She thought the blank page scared him. A lot of people did.
*
“Richard,” his mother would say impatiently as she paused in his office, putting on gloves or a jacket or rifling through her purse for something, “those books aren’t going to write themselves. You have mouths to feed, a mortgage to pay.” She would wave a hand for dramatic affect. “You must get on with it.”
“Funny,” Rick would mutter to himself as his mother turned around and left, “I don’t remember signing up to feed your mouth.”
She thought the blank page demoralized him, gave him stage fright. She would think in those terms.
*
“Really, Castle?” Kevin would say as he rushed into the breakroom to make himself a cappuccino and found Castle seated at the less rickety table with his laptop in front of him. “How much time do you spend just staring at that cursor anyway?”
“You don’t get paid by the word, do you?” Javi would add, stealing Kevin’s cappuccino as he breezed past, a couple file folders in hand. “Hey!” Kevin would squawk, but it wouldn’t matter, he would have made two cappuccinos as a matter of course.
“I’m not staring,” Castle would mutter, mostly to himself since Kevin had also already left, “I’m thinking. Cogitating. Contemplating, even.”
The blinking cursor on the blank page terrified him, they thought. And they were right.
But only sometimes.
*
Beckett woke up one glorious Sunday morning, glorious because a) it was ten o’clock already; b) she didn’t have to go to work today; and c) she could smell coffee from downstairs. She rolled over and, yep, Castle wasn’t there. She stretched, reaching up to the top of the headboard and down to the very edge of the bed, and she smiled.
When she went downstairs, dressed in cozy jammies and robe (it was Sunday, remember), she paused in the kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee, and then she wandered into the living area. Rick was on the couch, laptop in hand, looking down at the screen, his fingers not moving. He looked up, smiling, when she sat down next to him. He stole her mug for a sip.
“Hey,” Kate said, giving his shoulder a little push with no force behind it. He smiled again, angelically, and she laughed at him. “Do you need a refresher?” she asked, nodding to his empty mug on the coffee table.
“Nah, I’m good,” he said, “you got enough in the pot?”
She nodded and curled up, her hands wrapped around the delicious warmth of the mug. She peeked at his laptop screen, smiled when she saw the blank page, the cursor blinking.
“How’s it going this morning?” she asked.
Castle settled back into the couch. “Oh, fantastic,” he said. “So far, my heroine has fought off 18th century pirates, been kidnapped by human traffickers and rescued both herself and the other women who had been trapped in one of those railroad containers, and she’s invented a new kind of pen that writes in invisible ink, only the pen itself is also invisible so she immediately lost it.”
Kate laughed. “All in one morning, huh,” she said.
Rick nodded, looking extremely pleased with himself. “And what is your heroine supposed to be doing this morning?” Kate asked, still deeply amused by her husband and his imagination.
“Oh, that,” Rick said dismissively. “She’s got a homicide she needs to investigate, who cares about that.”
Kate snuggled into Rick’s side, smiling to herself, while Castle went back to daydreaming at his blank page on the laptop screen. That was the thing she knew and most people didn’t get, you see. Sure, sometimes a blank page could be terrifying, all that pressure to write something down and no idea forthcoming.
But sometimes the blank page was more exciting, more thrilling, more opportunity, than anything Rick Castle could actually put into words.