Chapter Text
Richard Castle was having the time of his life. Not only was he a ruggedly handsome, wildly popular, and stunningly successful author of historical fiction, but now he was also one half of a powerful crime-fighting duo and partnered with an amazingly beautiful and intelligent detective who had (grudgingly) agreed to be his muse.
Plus he was holding a gun.
It was a real gun too, bullets and all, not one of those wimpy stun guns the civil defense force used or even one of the swanky laser pistols that were not strictly legal but seemed to be everywhere among the well to do of New New York. As he stared down the site of the pistol at the holographic target, with his muse flush against his back no less, it occurred to Richard Castle that this must be what Heaven was like.
Now all he had to do was hit the damn target.
When they had told him that Beckett had gone to the shooting range to blow off steam (and how sexy was that?), he had high-tailed it down there as fast as he could.
To ask her about the captures.
Yeah, that was it.
He had flirted, of course, given her a hard time about targets being easier to hit if they were standing still or something. She had given him that look, and all of a sudden his bluff was called. The gun was surprisingly heavy in his hand, something real and frighteningly permanent in the all too ethereal world of Londinium. Then she had touched him and the damn thing went off, bullet skittering off into the darkness, far wide of the target.
"Shot too soon," he'd quipped.
"That's OK Castle, we can always just cuddle".
God she was hot.
He really did want the captures. Then he could show them to his contact and maybe get some sort of lead on this. He wanted to catch this guy, not just to impress the girl, (although he hoped she would be impressed), but because it was right. It was Justice. That's what he loved the most about working with Beckett, more than the thrill (which was considerable), and even more than the inspiration she provided. When he worked with Kate, they got the bad guys.
So she had challenged him, three shots at the ten ring. One would get him access. Unfortunately, he was beginning to realize that as far as gun play was concerned, he kinda sucked. The gun jumped, and his muscles ached, and the bullets just would not go where he wanted them. He needed those photos.
For Justice.
His eyes found the target and he raised the weapon. Something washed over him then, something strange and a little frightening. His shoulders relaxed, his arm stilled, and the target seemed to fill his vision. He felt confident, and strong, as if he had done this hundreds of times before. Time slowed to a crawl. Between one heartbeat and the next, three shots rang out, and the ten ring sported a single hole.
He blinked.
What The Hell?
Then Beckett was congratulating him and he said something smart-alecky about her being a good teacher or some such but his brain remained stunned. What had happened? How had he done that? It was pretty bad ass, he had to admit. He just couldn't seem to shake the utterly unsettling feeling that, in that moment, he had not been Rick Castle at all. He had been Someone Else.
And that scared the everliving Hell out of him.
Somewhere, far out in the black, Malcolm Reynolds turned over in his bunk.
Who stuffs a person in a safe, anyway?