Chapter 1

"No," she cried, still, he thought, delirious. "They're wrong. I want the right blue."

"D'you know what she's talking about?"

"No." Her father looked worriedly at her. "She just keeps calling for the right blue, and I don't know what she means."

A small blue dot in her vision. But it was the wrong blue. It wasn't her blue. She wanted her blue. But it wasn't there.

She whimpered, and even in her fever tears fell: her eyes closed.

"That temperature just won't come down," Demming said. "She shouldn't be" –

"She should have gotten that cut treated straight after she got it," Jim Beckett said irritably, "but no, finishing the case was more important. And now look at her." His irritation drained. "I just don't get what she means about the blue."

Unseeing hazel eyes opened again, and her father bent over her. "C'mon, Katie-bug. What do you want? Tell me what the blue thing is and I'll get it for you."

"Not the right blue," she whispered.

A different blue. Better, but still not her blue. She needed her blue. Warm blue. These were warm blue, but it wasn't the warmth she needed.

"She might mean her blue blanket," Jim said doubtfully, "but…well, okay, she's still got a high fever but she had that when she was small, and I can't think that she wants that."

"Has she got a blue sweater?"

"Don't you know?"

"I only met her two weeks ago."

"So how come you're here?"

Detective Demming cringed slightly under Jim's parental stare. "We were…uh…going to go for dinner when it all went down."

"You're dating Katie?"

"That was the idea," Demming said. "It hasn't exactly worked out well so far."

Jim wasn't listening. "What about Rick Castle?"

Demming shrugged. "He had his chance, and said I was free to try."

"What?"

"He said it. Gotta say, I was surprised. Way he behaved, I'd thought…"

"Yeah." Jim had a thought of his own. "Anyone told him? Or the rest of the team?"

"Not yet." Demming squirmed a little. "I was a bit busy getting her into the ER and then all this and you were her emergency contact so I called you."

"Uh, how about you go call them? I don't think they're going to be best pals with you if you don't."

Demming departed, which Jim considered more of a blessing than perhaps he should. He seemed an okay guy, but Katie hadn't mentioned him, and she chattered – as much as she ever chattered – about Rick Castle every time he saw her. It all seemed very strange to Jim.

"They'll be here asap," Demming said.

"Good. Maybe one of them will know what this blue she keeps wanting is." Beckett whimpered again, but all Jim could pick out was blue.

Less than half an hour later Ryan, Espo and Lanie had all descended in a fluster of babbling worry, annoyance and confusion.

After two minutes of pointless hubbub and blame-slinging, Jim clapped his hands sharply. "Stop that! Katie's sick and you bunch of dumb clucks are making noise and disturbing her. Shush!"

Shamefaced silence arrived on the word.

All that noise, and no clear blue in which she could find peace. It wasn't the right blue dot.

"Okay. Now that you're all quiet, Katie wants something blue. Every time she says 'blue', her fever spikes." Lanie opened her mouth to correct Jim's medical knowledge, caught his eye, and shut her lips again. "So whatever this blue is, she needs it. So what is it?"

Ryan shrugged stupidly. "She's never mentioned anything blue to me." He bent over Beckett, who half-wailed, and whose hands flapped as if to push him away.

I want my blue. Why won't someone give me my blue? That's not it. Go away!

"Nor me," Espo said.

"Most likely Castle would know," Lanie pointed out, tartly. "Hasn't anyone asked him?" Blank faces. "Didn't any of you call him?"

Demming shrank from her gaze.

"We all know you wouldn't, Robbery-Boy. You don't want him getting in the way of your sickeningly sappy love eyeballs."

Espo made a vomiting noise. Jim clapped his hands again.

"Call him," Jim said. "I'm not watching my daughter like this if Rick's got an answer. You can all sort out your romantic issues" – his sarcasm was tangible – "later. A lot later, and not in here."

"I'll call him," Ryan said, and did. A moment later he returned. "He'll be here as fast as he can."

Demming made a face. Jim spotted it, and glared at him. He coloured, and Jim nodded disapprovingly. "Yeah," he said. "My daughter. My call. And if Rick can shed any light on this mystery, then he's going to be here to do it too." He stared around. No-one dared to contradict him. He resembled his daughter in full badass mode to a quite extraordinary degree.

In the hospital bed, Beckett tried to curl up and whimper, forestalled by the line for the intravenous antibiotics. Jim, parentally attuned to her, sat down by the bed and took her hand. She quietened, but didn't regain consciousness.

"You four, go think about what this blue might be somewhere else," Jim rapped. "If you'd told her to get this seen to earlier, then we wouldn't be here. So go fix it. And when Rick gets here, send him in – and the rest of you stay out."

Jim's vicious glare made it perfectly clear where Beckett's – marginally superior – glare came from. The four scuttled for the door. Jim settled back, holding his daughter's hand, and wondering how on earth she could stomach any of those four idiots. He allowed as how his natural worry might be affecting his view, but it didn't change his thoughts.

Not ten minutes later, Rick came dashing in and skidded to a halt just in time to avoid crashing into the bed. Jim, astonished, watched his expression turn from worry to absolute terror as he saw the IV line and Beckett white, whimpering, and unconscious.

"What happened?"

"She cut herself and didn't get it treated. Infection."

"Oh, Beckett," Rick sighed. "Why can't you just take care of yourself occasionally." He leaned over her. She blinked, and the whimpering stopped. Katie's hand went limp in Jim's.

"Right," Jim said firmly. "You are staying." He put Beckett's hand into Rick's. "Sit down here and don't move. This is the first time she's been calm in two hours, so you're obviously a good thing." Rick gleeped at him, which Jim felt added nothing to the sum of human knowledge. "Sit!" he said. It worked on Rick just as well as it had worked on a recalcitrant retriever. Rick sat.

Jim noticed with some interest and more amusement that Rick was mindlessly stroking Katie's hand with his thumb; and with much more relief that Katie was calmer. Her heart rate had dropped, and she seemed less feverish.

The right blue, finally. Her blue. Her blue dot, in her vision. Mine.

Another hour later, Castle's arm had fallen asleep, and, since he had no book, couldn't play games with one hand, and had no-one to talk to, the rest of him was pretty close to following his arm. His eyes drooped.

Jim walked back in, with two go-cups of coffee. Castle regarded it suspiciously. It looked like it might be hospital coffee, which bore a resemblance to real coffee in much the same way that an earthworm resembled an anaconda.

"So have you any ideas what blue Katie might be talking about?"

"Uh?"

"You've had an hour to think about it, what do you think the blue she keeps saying is?"

"You never mentioned blue."

"I did."

"You didn't. You told me to sit down and then you left. You never mentioned blue and anyway I've no idea. Though she'd look lovely in blue…" Castle remembered that Jim was Beckett's father and abruptly stopped that sentence, though his mind continued it for some seconds until Jim growled. He sounded just like Beckett did, only a little deeper.

"I'm asking" – it sounded a lot more like telling – "you to think about it now."

"She hasn't said a word since I've been here. Blue or anything else. She's been totally quiet."

Jim regarded the monitor and his daughter. "She's a lot calmer. Likely you need a break" – Rick nodded – "so take a few minutes and then come back. Whatever you're doing, it's working, so you're going to keep doing it till Katie wakes up."

Castle looked at Jim like he'd never met him before. (Well, he barely had. Briefly, in passing. He surely hadn't been like this on those rare, fleeting occasions.) This was pure Beckett. The iron note of command, the certainty that he, Castle, would bend to the Beckett will. Normally, he didn't, just to annoy her. He wasn't going to annoy Jim. Not with Kate Beckett in a hospital bed with an IV line and a fever.

He slipped his numb hand from hers, and immediately she whimpered. Jim's hand replaced it. "Better be quick," he said. She whimpered again. Castle winced, and practically ran for the restroom, pursued by a thin, high sound that clawed at his heart. He returned in short order.

It's gone. Don't go! Don't go… Don't leave me.

As soon as Castle returned and leaned over Beckett, taking her hand back and then sitting down, she quietened again. The IV was almost done, and a nurse came bustling in to check her signs.

"She should be fine now. I expect she'll wake up shortly, but she might just fall asleep. You can both stay, if you don't disturb her."

"We won't," both men said meekly. The nurse cast them a sceptical glance, but bustled off again.

"Well, Rick," Jim began. "Since we seem to be stuck here, this seems like a good opportunity to get to know you."

Castle's stomach knotted up. He wasn't even Beckett's boyfriend (but he wanted to be, oh, how he wanted to be. He should never have given Demming a free pass to try. He'd known it was a mistake the minute the words had left his mouth and the damn detective had been on it like a wolf on a sheep. Not that Beckett resembled a sheep in any way…) But it wasn't fair to be grilled by Jim when he wasn't even a boyfriend. All the disadvantages and not even a single kiss to balance it.

Jim felt that he had the perfect opportunity to find out just what Rick was like when he couldn't escape. Katie talked about him constantly, so it was his parental duty to make sure he approved. Or if he disapproved, that he didn't let Katie know. She wouldn't be happy. She probably wouldn't be happy that he'd grilled Rick, but being on the wrong side of Katie was the natural state of affairs for the father of an, um, decisive woman.

"Uh, okay," Rick said cautiously. Jim approved of the caution. He wouldn't have approved of fright, but Rick didn't look frightened. Yet.

"I know you're a well-known author, and you're following Katie around for research." Rick nodded. Jim went for the kill. "I read Naked Heat."

Rick's face went blank. "You did?" he said, commendably smoothly.

"Yes. I found it quite…fascinating. Some of the descriptions were…eye-opening."

"I'm delighted that I was able to convey such an effect. It's always difficult to know how one's creative vision will translate on to the page."

"Indeed. You must have a very vivid imagination."

"Yes." Rick smiled sharply. "It's amazing how someone can inspire a character, while still being a different person altogether."

Ow, Jim thought. That was a cut-off if ever he'd heard one. Rick had obviously spotted the line of questioning almost immediately. Hm. Intelligence. He'd need that – all of it – to deal with Katie. Okay. Rick was clearly used to questions about his inspiration, and Jim didn't feel inclined to compare notes about daughters. Asking about his money would be vulgar, and anyway Jim had heard about the loft, which really told him everything he needed to know.

"You know, Katie doesn't really tell me anything about her job. What's it like, following her around?"

"You know," Rick parroted Jim's tone, "I think my daughter would be pretty unimpressed with me if she thought I was weaselling around her friends trying to sniff out things she didn't want to tell me – and she's only sixteen and I'm still responsible for her."

There was an interesting silence, in which Jim's scarlet face endeavoured to set light to the box of Kleenex by the bed.

Finally, he smiled. "Okay, you got me. I'll stop trying to trap you and you can stop parrying. Hi, Rick. I'm Jim." He held out a hand, which Castle awkwardly shook, left handed: his right still being occupied with Beckett. "Katie talks about you a lot."

"She does?" Rick seemed unwontedly shocked.

"Oh, yes. I don't think she even knows she's doing it" –

"I do not" –

"Katie?"

"Beckett!"

"Ow!"

"Sorry sorry sorry," babbled Rick, releasing her hand. She made a very odd noise: her fingers moved slightly towards him, and without apparently noticing or looking Rick's fingers locked back into hers. Jim thought that that was more of an admission than a full-volume holler, and was absolutely convinced of it when Katie's fingers curled around Rick's.

"Uh, what happened?"

Jim produced a full-scale parental scowl. "You didn't get that cut seen to, and it blew up into a horrible infection which put you on an antibiotic IV. What were you thinking?"

Castle watched Beckett shrink into her pillow in embarrassed four-year old style. She almost pulled the blanket over her head, which was cute, funny, and adorable.

"I was catching the killer," she growled.

"And in the four to six hours after that?" Jim inquired.

"It didn't look that bad. I washed it out."

Jim and Castle sighed in tandem. Beckett glared at both of them.

"Not well enough," Jim said, and rapidly dropped his scowl in the face of a planet-levelling scowl from his daughter. "Anyway, maybe you can clear up a mystery for me now you've woken up. While you were delirious" –

"What?"

"You were. Anyway, you kept asking for something blue. What on earth was it?"

Beckett looked entirely and genuinely blank. "Blue?" she queried.

"Yeah. You said 'I want the right blue'."

An attractive little crease appeared between her brows. "No idea," she eventually said.

"I guess we'd better tell the rest of them you're okay," Jim suggested.

"Yeah."

Two minutes later – didn't any of them have other places to be, Jim wondered – the four of them jostled in. Demming went straight to Katie, completely oblivious to her hand in Rick's.

"Kate, are you okay?"

Jim watched Rick's face change, first to annoyance, and then – was that realisation?

"I'm fine," she said flatly. "I'll see you – all of you – at the precinct. Tomorrow."

Just before Jim could make his views known on that subject, the nurse came back in. "Readings," she said briskly.

"Privacy, thank you?" Kate told the room. "All of you. And I'll see everyone but Dad and Castle tomorrow." She glared impartially at everyone except the nurse, who got a smile. "You two stay," she said blackly. "Come back in after the readings and then we'll talk about the discussion you were having when I woke up."

Jim and Castle exchanged identically terrified looks. Everyone else had already fled to avoid the imminent blast radius, even Lanie. They left, casting scared glances behind them and meeting only the gimlet glare of an irritated Beckett.

Far too soon, the far-too-efficient nurse had finished, and Jim and Castle filed back in, rather in the manner of boisterous second-graders sent to the principal's office.

"Now, Dad" – Castle sagged with relief – "what exactly were you tattling to Castle?"

"I don't tattle," Jim tried.

"I heard you. Try again."

"I'm your dad. Stop intimidating me."

Beckett's glare strengthened to around Force 12. "What were you tattling?" she repeated, in tones far more suited to Interrogation One than to talking to her father.

"He hadn't said anything that you didn't hear," Castle interjected. The Beckett glare fell upon him, but remarkably failed to cause his hair to sizzle and erupt into flames. "It's nice to know you talk about me all the time. I knew you liked me." He was especially sure of that because he had taken her hand again, and her fingers had twined into his.

"Dad shouldn't be telling any tales about me."

"It's what fathers do," Castle said happily. "Embarrass their daughters." His thumb slid back and forth over the back of her hand. Jim's eyes dropped to it, and quickly rose again, before Katie could spot his glance.

"I still want to know what this blue thing was, that you kept asking for," Jim said.

"I don't know," Beckett snipped. "I don't have any comfort objects now I'm grown up."

Castle looked like he was about to say something, and then very obviously thought better of it. Jim almost asked him, and then thought better of that, not least because his daughter hadn't dropped the glare.

"Well, if you think of it, let me know, because I can't think of anything either," Jim said. "Now, are they going to let you out of here, or" – he acquired a gamin, mischievous smile – "are they going to keep you in until they're sure you see sense about your health?"

"Dad!"

Castle snickered, and followed with an Ow! as his ear became twisted in the Beckett talons.

"You shouldn't bully him, Katie," Jim chided. "He was the only thing that calmed you down."

"What?"

"Thing?" No-one paid any attention to Castle's insulted wail.

"You were delirious – because you didn't get that cut seen to and it got infected" –

"Leave it, Dad. You already said that" –

"And you kept asking for the right blue. Anyway. Your team and that Demming cop weren't helping, and I have to say," Jim digressed, "that they're all a bunch of dumb idiots who couldn't find their way out of an open barn door" –

"That's my team you're talking about!"

"Yeah, and all they did was argue and squabble. No damn use at all. At least Ryan had Castle here's number and could call him – after I told him to – and he came hightailing in like his ass was on fire and then you calmed down."

Beckett stared at her father. Castle observed Beckett, and kept on stroking her hand, still firmly in his grasp. "I did?" she faltered out.

"Sure did." Jim said, and then had a mildly malicious thought which he didn't scruple to act upon. "You didn't calm down like that for Demming, and he said you were supposed to be going out to dinner together."

Castle winced. Beckett blinked. Jim waited.

"We were going to pick up a burger," Beckett said. "I wasn't aware that you were still vetting my social life, since it didn't work when I was in high school and it isn't going to work now."

Jim winced. Castle blinked. Beckett waited.

"Is that what you were doing?" Castle asked, with delicate malice of his own.

"Dad? Were you grilling Castle?"

Thank you to all readers and reviewers.

Three chapters. Sun/Tue/Thu. From a prompt from Mobazan27: A Small Blue Dot.

If you like my stories, you may like Death in Focus and its sequel Death in Camera, both on Amazon under SR Garrae. Give them a go!