Cold Heat
Summary: Standing in a strange hallway wrapped in bath towels, Beckett unexpectedly seeks the steady warmth that Castle offers. The crime scene revolves around them but for the briefest of moments they are lost in each other.
Author's Notes: This one came to me in a dream the other night. It's just a short little scene between our beloved Caskett at a late night crime scene. It may not be an entirely accurate scene in any way (dreams tend to be like that) but I thought it was worth sharing anyway. Set some time in season 4 I guess, but there's not a specific time frame really.
Disclaimer: Whilst I don't own Castle, I believe Stephenie Meyer got the idea of Twilight from a dream. Perhaps this is a sign that I should sleep more instead of working so hard?
The third floor apartment had been booby-trapped upon Castle and Beckett's arrival. A lead had them shouldering their way through the front door a little after midnight on their lonesome in search of the man they were to arrest. Back up was too slow, the partners too eager, too tired and too hungry for the warmth of home. A temporary wave of paralysis drummed its way through their bodies from the shoulders down at the sharp impact of a combined effort to knock the door down. They fell forward in a noisy mix of heavily stumbling feet, filled with the door slamming its newly opened status into existence.
Details were blurry to Castle but he vaguely remembered a rush of freezing cold water stealing his breath away before he could even right his footing. He'd opened his eyes with shoulders hunched way up next to his ears and looked on instinct to the woman next to him. Through jagged pieces of hair jutting down into his vision, Rick saw that she too had been drenched from head to toe with water chilled by a winter breeze. He was subconsciously aware of it floating through an open window from somewhere within the dimly lit apartment. She shivered beside him, her grip on the cold black metal of the service piece tightening as she scanned the room, weapon drawn.
Even with the experience he had gained from the extensive time spent with his family at the 12th, Richard Castle was not a cop. A wheezy gasp escaped his strangled throat and he craned his neck backwards to get a look at the offender, still focused on the icy assault rather than a possible second. Beckett had moved light years faster than him, giving only a seconds glance up to the bucket swinging from a weathered rope above the door which held the writer's attention for longer than it should have. By the time he lowered his gaze again, she was already completing a sweep of the room and was moving to do the same in the next.
It didn't take her long; the apartment was small and looking even smaller now that it was jammed packed full of members of the NYPD. An elderly woman from across the hall, dressed in a thick floral nightgown scraping at the floorboards, had opened her living room for them. The team set up equipment in the warmer apartment, moving between the two homes while they worked. Beckett's search had shown up their murderer's body, sprawled in a distinctively suicidal pose, so she and Castle stood in the hallway, neither exposed to death nor the old woman who pestered the uniforms with questions and tea.
He didn't really remember how it had happened but she stood before him in her underwear with the largest, fluffiest white towel he had ever seen wrapped from her arm pits to her shins. Probably a contribution from the old woman who he could hear chatting off someone's ears, Rick thought. A smaller version was wrapped around his own bare shoulders in heavenly stark contrast to the wet fabric of the jeans that still clung to his legs.
Kate said something in a hushed voice that almost got swallowed in the long hall. "Ryan should have a change of clothes for us soon."
It was simply something to say, he knew. She was watching the crime scene which she longed to be working beyond his shoulder with intense tunnel vision. He didn't know it was because she couldn't bear to look at his ruffled hair and damp bare skin. Not with this many members of the NYPD walking around; it was bad enough that she had let someone convince her to strip down in some lame attempt to not catch pneumonia. Castle simply nodded, reminded of how they had ended up barely clothed in the first place.
None of this is particularly important though. What's important is the thing that happened next.
Uniforms came through the old lady's doorway behind the detective and, in a bustling attempt to get the unexpecting victim out of harms way, Castle lightly clutched at Beckett's elbows, turned her and walked her backwards, further down the hallway. Her face was tired and the uniforms disappeared into the fluorescent light of their crime scene as Beckett took an appropriately distancing step away from him. In some late night attempt at humour, mixed with a bout of hidden seriousness, the man chuckled and used his grip on her elbows to reel her back towards his body.
"Come back! You're warm." It came as an exaggerated gasp of pleasure and disappeared as a quiet statement. Even to his ears it sounded foolish and he instantly moved to release her, burnt by his own opinion of himself.
Rick fought the urge to look up for ice cold buckets of water as the breath was stolen from his lungs for the second time that night when Detective Beckett leant into him. Her hands found his hips, hidden beneath the towel draped over him, and she undid the distancing step she had taken.
A fleeting smile graced Kate's features as she dragged her eyes up from where they had fallen on his chest and finally to his eyes. "So are you."
It was awkward and so incredibly out of character for the both of them that he couldn't help but grin at her like something from a Disney film. She bit her lip at his reaction, scrutinising her words as harshly as he had done with his. Before she could escape, Castle took a mere quarter of a step forward until their bodies brushed and his arms rose to wrap around her cold shoulders. The movement effectively hid her from the erratic spurts of officers occasionally passing from door to door behind the writer's back. His towel was now her towel too and she leaned completely into the warmth of his cocoon as her arms wound around his waist. With her hands resting in the dip of his back, Kate's head fell sideways to his collar bone where her nose scraped his neck.
She drew in a jagged breath, her chest bumping against his. The remaining moisture from their incident made his skin feel a little slippery beneath her cheek and she shifted against it, trying to get some of her damp hair away from her face. Of course, his thoughts were alongside hers instantly and he lifted one towelled hand just far enough to wipe her cheek free of the tickling curls. The man's hand did not return to her shoulder but instead fell to the back of her cranium where he gently massaged her hair with a cupped hand. An attempt to dry it, she assumed.
The motion was relaxing and she found herself breathing in his cologne again with a less jagged breath this time. The goose-bumps along his skin began to fade as Kate watched and she mused at the way the water in their cold wet towels began to warm between them. Unexplainably trying to get closer to his body heat - to him - she shifted once more so that their bare toes overlapped and he drew her closer still, beginning to gently sway. A more comfortable moment escaped her memory and she moved with him, oblivious to anything outside of the towel cocoon and the man she was inside it with. It felt good. A little too good, Kate decided after a moment of bliss when she remembered where they were standing.
And then she was gone; Castle left standing half naked in the hallway of a strange apartment building with a distant draft reaching his chest which felt hot and cold all at the same time after holding Kate Beckett so close. The writer imagined that the ice cube trick she once mentioned would have a similar effect – cold heat. Ryan's voice brought him back to attention and he was ushered into the old lady's apartment where dry clothes ended up in his hands which could still feel the softness of her hair. One towelled hand rubbed over his face to shake him out of the daze but he was only swallowed deeper as the scent of cherries hit him. He never wanted to give up this towel. He didn't want to hand it over to some old woman who had pictures of cats hanging on the wall beside framed cutlery. He would travel the Earth and collect all of the broken pieces of the woman he loved if it meant he could keep her - always. Instead, he disappeared into the ghastly bathroom as she exited, fully clothed. It was not time. Not yet.
Author's Notes: And then, in my dream, there was some random scene on a runaway train which turned into a slinky bus and Castle jumped out the window to save the day…and yeah. Random. You should probably be glad I stopped writing here. I tweaked it a bit so that it made more sense. Originally they were in the suburbs on a front veranda. And there was a helicopter. I have no idea.
I feel I should point out that this is by no means the best thing that I have ever written but, none the less, what did you think? =)
(Also, if you read The 12th, I am working on the next chapter but I'm engrossed in another multi chapter that I'm planning. Unlike this random piece of dribble, I want that to be as close to perfect as I can get it so it's taking up a lot of brain power. Hang in there.)