A/N: Based on a prompt from the castlefanficprompts tumblr page. If you follow me on tumblr, you've likely already read this, but since deciding to make it a two (possibly three?) shot, I figured it would be easier to post both parts here.
prompt: Beckett falls through a crack in ice into a freezing river. Castle gets her out and tries to keep her warm before help arrives. Pre-Caskett.
Set mid season 4
"Castle, don't come any closer," she snaps, the ice already crackling under her feet, but she can see him in the corner of her eye, inching closer despite her orders. "Rick."
He pauses at the soft plea of his name. This ice is going to crack, she knows she's going under into the freezing river water within a matter of seconds, but she is not taking him with her.
"Just let me get to you," he tries again, the same words he's been repeating for the last ten minutes, but his weight will sink them both.
It's her own fault they're in this predicament. She was the one who chased after the suspect when he bolted from the car they had been following and raced across the frozen river. But their guy had misjudged the thickness of the ice and he hadn't made it across, the ice collapsing under his feet once he was only a few steps from the other side. Kate had frozen when the suspect had fallen through the hole and that's when she had felt the patch of ice she's currently standing on start to give.
She didn't tell Castle at first, didn't want to alarm him. She merely instructed for him to call for backup, but when she didn't return from her place in the middle of the river… he knew.
"Kate, please."
"No," she croaks, but he's already slipping to his knees in the snow on the river bank, onto his stomach, belly crawling across thin ice for her.
Dammit, Castle.
"Don't," she growls at him, but he keeps coming, all of his concentration on getting across the width of the river, all of his focus on getting to her. "Castle-"
The ice splinters beneath her feet. He stills. She meets his horror filled eyes for just a split second before she goes under.
"Kate!" He's screaming her name, shouting it over and over again even though it does either of them no good.
Her fingers are still curled around the edges of the hole she's fallen through, her nails cutting into the ice floor and he can see just the top of her head fighting to stay above the current, but nothing else. He's trying not to imagine how cold she must be, how much agony her body must be enduring against the rush of the frigid water, but ever since the freezer incident - god, the freezer. It had taken each of them so long to get past the random shivers that had rattled their bones each day during that case, to stop feeling the lingering touch of ice in their veins - he's done more research than he would ever need on hypothermia. He knows far too well what cold like this can do to a person's body.
He has to get her out of there.
But he can't go any faster. His weight, even lying down, is too much for the sheet of ice covering the river that seems like its grown an eternity in width. He'll be lucky if he can get her out without drowning them both.
"Beckett, just hold on," he tells her, just a few feet away. Just a few more feet.
The ice around the hole isn't reliable, but the layer he's currently splayed across seems sturdy enough, not cracking under him, and Castle reaches out for her.
But he isn't close enough, his fingers just barely skirting Kate's.
He wiggles forward another few inches, feels the ice beneath his chest threaten to give, and he winces, but it stays and he grabs Kate's wrist.
It's been maybe a minute since she's gone under, her fingers' death grip on the ice the only thing keeping her body from being swept away with the current like their suspect, but as soon as he has hold of her arm, she lets go, her grip going limp and no, Kate, no no no.
He uses all of his strength to haul her out of the water. The ice begins breaking apart underneath his torso, but he drags them both away from it, risking the danger of standing so he can move quicker, find solid ground before they both sink.
By some miracle - God, karma, the universe, he doesn't care which - he makes it with her in his arms to the other side, nearly collapsing in relief when he steps foot on the snow covered ground. But there's no time to be grateful, not yet. She isn't out of the woods yet.
He jerks open the back door of her cruiser and gently deposits her onto the length of the backseat before moving to the front door, breathing hard as he starts the engine and immediately turns the heat on. He joins her in the back then, stripping his coat off before doing the same with hers, trying not to look as he removes all of her wet clothing - save for her bra and underwear because she would definitely kill him - and wrapping her in his lightly dampened wool coat.
"Kate," he murmurs, finally crawling in with her, shutting the door behind him and tugging her body into his lap. He unbuttons the front of his shirt, having forgotten to slip a t-shirt on beneath the blue button down he knows she loves, and suddenly he's grateful for the dressing mishap he cursed himself for earlier this morning.
He jerks when he parts his coat enough to hold her bare skin against his naked chest, forces himself to breathe through the chill of her skin seeping into his. He read that body heat helps in these situations and as soon as he knows she's warm enough, he'll bundle her in his coat again, but for now, he has Kate Beckett's freezing skin defrosting against his.
He knows he's crossed a lot of boundaries within a mere minute - undressing her, holding her in his lap - but he'll beg for forgiveness later, right now… right now he just wants her to be okay, to wake up.
"Kate," he calls again, stroking his fingers at her cheek. So cold, her skin is like the ice coating the river. "Beckett, you can't do this to me again."
It's too similar to what they'd gone through earlier in the year with the freezer. Her skin has that same ghostly pallor that's haunted his nightmares and she isn't answering him, isn't responding at all. If it wasn't for the beat of her pulse and the weak pound of her heart against his, he'd be truly terrified.
"Cas-"
His gaze snaps down to her face against his collarbone, to the choked gasp of his name.
"Kate?" He brushes the soaked mop of her hair back, shuddering as it drapes across his shoulder, and brushes his hand along her cheek, hoping to keep her with him. "Hey, hey, stay with me."
Her eyes flutter and then she's staring up at him, gaze full of confusion as her teeth start up a violent chatter and her body joins in with shivers and a bout of coughing that shake them both.
"You - you g-got me out?" she questions, her trembling voice sprinkled with disbelief.
He nods, realizes he's started rocking her back and forth, to soothe himself or her, he isn't sure.
"And - and naked?"
The startled laugh bursts from his lungs.
"No, no, just enough to get you warm, Kate. I swear. I didn't look."
She huffs and even the small puff of air that leaves her lips is chilled.
"Worse than the freezer," she mumbles against his throat, cuddling closer to his skin, and he tightens the arms wrapped around her, makes sure the blanket of his coat is covering as much of her as possible.
"Can you feel all of your fingers and toes?" he asks and immediately feels the flutter of her fingers against his ribs, sees her toes doing the same where they peek out from the edge of their coat blanket.
"Yeah."
"Good," he breathes. "Are you getting any warmer?"
The temperature of the car is becoming almost stifling, but he doesn't dare turn the heat down from full blast. He can't risk the cold creeping in and stealing her away.
"Little - little bit. Not numb."
"Backup should be here soon. They'll have an ambulance with them and I'm sure they'll give you something dry to wear. I really am sorry, Kate, I know it's not my place to-"
"Castle."
"Hmm?"
He glances down as her unsteady fingers curl around the back of his neck, sending a shiver down his spine that is only partially from the chill of her skin. He wants to tell her he loves her again, this time she'd remember for sure, but the soft pressure of her fingers drawing him down, drawing his mouth down to hers silences the thoughts, the worries, everything, and all he can do is cradle her shivering body in his arms and kiss her back.
She sighs through the tremors racking her frame, seeming to ignore them in favor of his lips moving over hers, but even her mouth is cold, freezing from the inside out, and he takes her upper lip between his, attends to the chapped surface of flesh with his tongue before doing the same to the bottom.
The tiny moan that escapes her throat when he slips past the warmed barrier of her lips, the gentle arch of her drying body as his hand slips inside the cocoon of his coat and splay across her ribs, eradicates the lingering tendrils of ice in his blood, sending heat rushing through.
"Thank you," she gasps suddenly, and he pauses, forces his eyes open to see her gazing up at him, her eyes shining a warm hazel.
"What - what for?"
Kate pushes closer, sealing every inch of their exposed skins together.
"For saving my life. Again," she grins, a little shy. It reminds him of the timid behavior he saw when she came over for dinner a couple of months ago, after they'd reunited while he and his mother had been trapped in a bank that had just been blown to pieces.
This, he thinks, this hopeful tenderness lining the features of her face is what keeps him waiting on the opposite side of the wall for her. But as her palm drapes over his cheek and as she looks up at him with unguarded eyes, letting him see it all in a way she never has before, he doesn't know if there's a wall still standing between them at all anymore.
"Kate?"
"After this, after we get back to the precinct and sort all of this out, will you come home with me?"
He stares down at her, wondering if maybe the frostbite has affected her brain.
"Castle," she huffs and shit, did he say that out loud?
"Come home with you?" he echoes.
"There's a lot of things we need to talk about, a lot of things I don't want to put off anymore, don't want to waste time waiting for. Not anymore."
He tries not to smile, tries not to get his hopes up too high, not yet, but he can already feel his face beaming with it. "Yeah?"
She bites her still quivering lip and nods.
"I was also hoping you might want to spend the night keeping me warm."
His eyebrows hitch and a flush - finally, some color coming to her pale skin - spreads over the column of her neck.
The knock on the car window startles them both and Rick glances up, sees the flashing blue and red illuminating the dim grey of the sky.
"Here," he murmurs, helping her sit up straight and buttoning the front of his coat for her without allowing himself a glance at her skin.
"Rick?"
"Yes," he murmurs, realizing he had never given her an answer. A more insistent knock comes against the glass and Castle pulls her forward by the lapels of his coat, pressing a chaste brush of a kiss to her mouth. "I'll keep you warm all night, Kate."