My first attempt at Castle fanfiction. It's a one shot, an extra scene to the episode When the Bough Breaks. I hope you all enjoy it.

On a side note: I had Jim Beckett call Kate Katie throughout the story because he called her Katie in the episode Sucker Punch. So it's not a typo, it's all in his perspective so that's why I did it.

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A Slip of the
Tongue

Jim Beckett didn’t know what
to expect when he got his daughter’s voicemail message asking for them to meet
at the diner. She had sounded upset, but not her normal way. Her voice had
carried a heavy amount of anger with a trace of sadness and fear beneath it
all. Jim hadn’t heard that combination in Katie’s voice often. She often tried
to hide her emotions and did a good job of it most the time. However, there
were those rare moments when she needed to vent out all of her frustrations. It
used to be she would go to her mother. Now that task had fallen on him.

He ordered their usual: a
sundae with caramel sauce and extra nuts to share. Then he quietly sipped
coffee and waited. It didn’t take long for Katie to walk through the door and for
Jim to gawk at her in surprise. Instead of her usual inexpensive, but good
quality slacks, blouse and jacket, she was wearing a designer blue dress that
fell just above her knees and was a little too low cut for him to comfortable
with on his daughter. However, he had to admit that she looked beautiful. With
her hair teased lightly to make it look simple, but fancy, and jewelry
bequeathed to her by Johanna sparkling around her throat and ears, it was easy
to see why a man would write a book about her. For a moment Jim was taken back
in time to when Katie was only eighteen and bubbling with excitement about
going to prom. She may not have been eighteen anymore, but she was still very
much his little girl.

Katie sat down across from
him and threw her small clutch purse down on the table before picking up a
spoon and scooping up a glob of ice cream. She shook her head at the spoon,
though he doubted that it was the ice cream that was the problem, and then
shoveled it into her mouth.

“So what’s with the fancy
duds?” Jim asked her, hoping that a bit of humor would perk her up a bit.

“I had to go to a party,” she
replied vaguely.

“Did the twelfth precinct win
the lottery?” he inquired, giving her a smile. She didn’t match it.

“It was a release party for
the book.”

No need to broach what book.
She had complained to him last year about Richard Castle and how he had found
her to be his muse for his next book. At first he had laughed, thinking that
she had been pulling his leg. She had quickly assured him that she wasn’t
joking, which had only made him laugh harder. To think that Katie’s favorite
author had taken an interest in her was something that only happened on T.V.

Over the months she had
stopped griping about the book and switched over to Castle. She complained
about his arrogance, his meddling, his inability to follow orders, his annoying
habit of being useful, the way he could be so thoughtful and irritating all at
once, the list was a mile long and it got sillier the longer it got.

“So how was it?” Jim asked
his daughter, “Did you meet any famous authors?”

The question was ignored like
he knew it would be. He was only prying in just a little to let her open up and
explain her problems.

“It’s ridiculous,” she began,
“he wants to give up his own work to live off of someone else’s fame.”

“Are we talking about
Castle?” It was a pointless question. Who else would leave Katie so ruffled?

“He’s acting like it’s no big
deal,” she continued as she scooped up some more ice cream, “he’ll be giving up
his true craft to carry on someone else’s work.”

“Sweetie, I’m in the dark
here,” Jim pointed out.

Katie sighed and put down her
spoon. “Castle is abandoning Nikki Heat and is going to work on something
else.”

“What is he going to work
on?” Jim inquired with curiosity.

She did air quotes as she
said, “A certain British secret agent.”

Jim’s eyes flared open and
his grey brows rose to his hairline. “Are you talking about James—?”

“Yes,” she cut in, “I don’t
even know what the big deal is anyway. Those books and movies are entirely
overrated.”

Jim literally bit his lip to
keep from laughing since his daughter had the entire 007 collection on DVD.

“Nikki Heat was his creation,
why would he want to give that up to work on some tired series?”

“Well he didn’t exactly
create Nikki Heat, she’s based off of you,” Jim argued and sipped his coffee.

“But he’s a mystery writer, not some spy novelist.”

“I don’t think spy is a
genre.”

She let out an inaudible
grumble and picked up her spoon again. After two more bites of ice cream she
was ready to rant once again. “You know what? I’m actually glad. This way I
won’t have him following me around anymore, invading my desk, visiting every
candy store in the city in search for Czech candy that tastes like soap!” She
punctuated her sentence by digging up another spoonful of ice cream.

Jim watched her with
amusement for a moment, but then he remembered how Johanna had behaved when she
had a problem she didn’t want to admit to. Katie was so much like her mother;
perhaps she had picked up some of the same habits. There was something deeper
than just irritation that Castle was trading in Nikki Heat for a famous spy,
something she didn’t want to investigate.

“Then why are you so upset?”
Jim probed gently, scooping up his own small bit of ice cream to sample.

“Because it’s irritating,”
she replied matter-of-factly.

“Why?” he insisted on
knowing.

“Because it’s Castle.”

Jim couldn’t help but chuckle
at that answer. It was one he had heard many times after the writer had entered
his daughter’s life. “True, but you seem more than just annoyed.”

“Well Castle has a way of
pushing all of my buttons until they break,” she mumbled back and he detected a
hint of hurt in her voice.

“Still, you seem angry about
the whole deal.”

“I am angry,” she admitted,
“I’m angry that I’ve been stuck with this cocky writer for months, practically
having to babysit him since he has the mentality of a six year old, and now
he’s going to abandon the project? What was the point in starting it then? Why
did I have to go through with this?”

She stirred up the melting
ice cream in the dish with a furious motion of her spoon. “I can’t believe that
this is how I’m going to lose a partner,” she muttered.

Jim’s brows quirked at the
word that just fell from her lips. “Partner?” he repeated, “I thought he was
just a tagalong.”

She seemed shocked by what
had come out of her mouth as well. “He is,” she replied, “It was just a slip of
the tongue.”

“A Freudian slip of the
tongue,” Jim contended.

“No, just a slip,” she
insisted, but she was looking down at the pool of melted ice cream and caramel.

“So that’s the problem,
you’re upset because Castle won’t be working with you anymore.”

“I never said that,” she
argued.

“Katie, you don’t have to, I
can see it in your face,” he said. She didn’t reply, just stirred up the creamy
mixture in the bowl with her spoon. Jim leaned forward and took her hand,
“Sweetheart, can I tell you something?’

“Sure,
Dad.”

 “Did
you know that every day when I called you and asked you about your day, you
would always tell me about the case you were currently working on?”

“I
hadn’t really thought about it,” she admitted, “but I suppose I do.”

“Well
you would always give me a quick summary, no gory details and no anecdotes
about it. Just a simple procedural run-down.” Jim let out a little sigh. “It
worried me a little, like you might be afraid to tell me about you work in case
I broke down or something.”

She
shook her head. “Dad, I—.”

“Let
me finish,” he chided her gently, “but in the last couple of months, every time
we talk the first thing you say is ‘You won’t believe what Castle did today’.”

“That
I can believe,” she replied, “since he’s always getting into trouble.”

Jim
chuckled, “True enough, but every day now you give me a long, detailed story
about what mess he managed to stir up this time. And always, always, you wind up laughing at the end
of it.”

“I
do?” she asked.

 He
nodded. “Yes, and I’m grateful to him for that…and I think you are too.”

She
looked down at the table for a moment before finally nodding a little. “I suppose
he does make the job more…fun.”

“Yes,
he does and I think you are sad that he may be leaving because you like having
him around. He may tease you and drive you crazy, but he also adds something to
the job you didn’t have before: fun. You need that, Katie.”

It
took her several moments but she finally whispered, “I do.” She pulled her hand
away from his and let out a long, sad sigh. “But it doesn’t matter. He’s got
007 now.”

“I
think if you told him what you just told me, he’ll stay,” Jim suggested.

“I
doubt it. It’s a lucrative offer and with his mother and Alexis under his care,
he’ll take the best offer he can get.”

“Maybe,
but he definitely won’t stay if you don’t try to convince him to,” he replied.

“We
said some things at the party, Dad,” Katie said, now with some guilt in her
voice, “He was pretty angry.”

“A
lot can change in a day,” Jim said, “The book’s coming out tomorrow, I’m sure
he’ll be too busy to be upset over anything you said.”

“Maybe,”
she admitted but she didn’t sound hopefully. She looked over at the clock on
the wall and read the time. “It’s late, I should be going.”

Jim
nodded, hating to see that his words had achieved little effect. “I’ll be first
in line to buy Heat Wave tomorrow,”
he promised.

She
looked startled at his words and quickly said, “Dad, will you tear out page 105
when you get it?”

“Why?”
he asked her with a quizzical look on his face.

“Just…because,”
she gave him the vague answer before leaving her booth. She walked over and
kissed his cheek. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Dad.”

“Bye,
Katie,” he told her and watched her leave.

Jim
sighed and swallowed the last bit of his coffee that had grown tepid with time.
He left a wad of bills on the table and left the diner. He had given Katie his
advice, but she had inherited stubbornness from both of her parents. It was
doubtful that she would tell Castle her true feelings on his new book deal.
Still he hoped that everything would be all right. Katie deserved to have some
fun in her life and Castle seemed to be delivering that well.

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The Next Night

Jim
was glad that he had preordered the book Heat
Wave because when he got to the bookstore, the line to get the book was
nearly out the door. He had spent the day snatching in pages during work breaks
and when he finally got home he was looking forward to reading more. Castle
seemed to have captured Katie’s essence well, though she wasn’t an exact
replica of her. Jim had smiled at the dedication, touched by the honor bestowed
on his daughter.

Nikki
Heat was in the middle of chasing after Rook and a suspect when Jim’s phone
rang. He marked his place in the book and answered, “Hello?”

“Dad,
you aren’t going to believe this,” he heard his daughter say with an annoyed
tone, “He’s doing three books.”

“Who
is?” he asked.

“Castle!
Can you believe it? Apparently Nikki Heat is a bestseller so now he’s going to
be doing three more books on her. Do you know what this means? I’m going to be
stuck with him forever! Oh and do you know what he did today?”

Jim
just smiled as he listened to his daughter prattle on about whatever mischief
her writer tagalong had gotten into. He knew that in a few minutes he would be
laughing with her about the fun her new partner was adding to her life.