LOG : Open to fanofthegenre

[mmkaternater]

The shooting range was not at all how Castle had pictured it. In his mind, hardened beat cops with bristle mustaches stood around in pairs, comparing their pieces with one another while watching other members of their tribe blast the crap out of tin cans on a fence. He had a whole scene hashed out in his head before he even got to the range: Nikki Heat in Kevlar and a pair of pumps, having an arm-wrestling contest with some cop named O'Reilly -- no, Connor ... no, Espisito -- and then going out to the range with her Glock to sharpshoot a couple of pigeons. Castle had it planned down to the detail on Espisito's badge when he pulled into the parking lot of a squat gray structure. He snorted. It looked more like a bunker than the place where New York's Finest trained their itchy trigger fingers.

Beckett had insisted that they drove separately. That was fine with Castle. He had a GPS and a turbo engine and an overall jonesin' to see both pushed to their peak usages. The car was an incentive for him to finish his latest opus. Of course, the car had come before he'd axed his main character and once he turned in the final draft, he'd worried for two nights that his publisher would come around to his apartment, asking for the car keys.

Castle swung out of the driver's seat and adjusted the sunglasses perched on the end of his nose. A pair of plainclothes cops (you knew them by their walk) came up the walk past him. Their holsters were empty. Castle felt cheated. Here he was, on Beckett's good graces, willing to play along for once. The least she could do was rig up a couple of her boys in blue with some sub-machine guns. A writer had to have inspiration, after all.

He spotted the turned back of Detective Kate Beckett standing across the parking lot, her mahogany-coloured hair reflecting dizzying fractals of sunlight. She had her hands on her hips (he was used to that pose) and she was looking upwind, toward the peak of the parking lot. He was too far away to tell, but Castle just knew that she was tapping her toe inside of one of those pricey shoes.

His smile erupted into a billion watts. "Hello there," he said, trundling the loose gravel beneath his feet as he descended from on high to meet her, "I've changed my mind. I'm not interested in guns anymore. Does this place do C4? I kind of feel like busting prairie dogs the old fashioned way."

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[bestsellingego.livejournal.com]

Castle was still jittery from his first shot. He took his hand off the grip and flexed his fingers, working some of the blood back into them. If he hadn't just about taken the neighboring target's head off, he would have congratulated himself. Well, at least he'd hit something. If his mother could see him now she'd be waving her perfumed scarf in the air and wailing about boys, their toys, and the fall of Western civilization. No, dear old mom had never been too keen on weapons that weren't gag props in her shows. She'd brought home a fake Spanish dueling sword once when he was eleven (she'd brought the Spanish duelist home, too) and Castle had nearly impaled himself on it, fake or not. Ever since, there had been a boycott on all things that poked, stabbed, shot or jabbed holes in the cushions of the living room sofa.

"I told you," he turned over his shoulder, "this is my first time. Take it easy with the criticism, huh? I'm a writer. I've got a very delicate ego." He flexed his fingers a couple more times and wound them under the butt of the gun while she positioned herself behind him. Her hands were small weights on his shoulders. Castle's interest went up like antennae. He did as she said, dropping his shoulders a couple of inches.

"Does this lesson have a happy ending?" he couldn't resist asking, turning one quarter of that rakish profile to get her reaction. She was tight-lipped and unamused and so Castle pulled his masculinity up from the bottom of his stomach and transferred it into the gun.

[fanofthegenre]

He'd hit something, of course, but he still hadn't assuaged Kate's concerns about giving him any kind of firearm. She took a look at his face then, watched the way his jaw tensed. At least he was taking it somewhat seriously now. She was still skeptical, but she took a step back, keeping her eyes locked on his posture and making corrections as needed.

"Your definition of a happy ending is very different than mine, Castle," she retorted, keeping her lips tight and unaffected and watched as he drew in a breath. "Mine? Will be this ending without anyone getting shot, wounded or maimed." Just to be safe, she took another step away from him, making sure to stay out of the line of fire should his firing hand go askew again.

[bestsellingego.livejournal.com]

A thought had crawled into the back of Castle's head while she was talking. Well, not "crawled" so much as "slunk." He tapped his finger along the barrel of the gun, mouth quirking upright at one end. "What do you say we make it interesting?" He turned a half smile over his shoulder and was rewarded with that skeptical look she was famous for. God, she could go on coins what that kind of stoicism. Like a rock. That beat cop brow never moved. He had a sudden keen interest to see what could motivate Detective Kate Beckett to have an emotion.

He turned back to the target and squared his shoulders, drawing his aim on the target at the end of the chute. "If I make this shot, you go to the Governor's Ball with me. And you wear red."