When they stumble up the stairs to the living room in the slowly-darkening twilight, he's fairly certain that there is nothing he expects to see less than Jerry Tyson sitting in the armchair that's angled in front of a roaring fire.
"We might need to hold off on that whole getting lucky thing," he murmurs to Beckett, a shiver racing up his spine,chills chasing down his arms.
It's Thanksgiving without Alexis, who'd gone with Pi to Wisconsin to visit some complicated web of the hippie's relatives, without Martha, who'd taken up her latest suitor's offer of a long weekend in Aruba. Beckett had quickly nixed his attempts to bring her to more exotic locals but had consented to a non-Thanksgiving with him at the beach, and they'd had a more-than-lovely time drinking red wine out of the bottle down at the surf and plotting an evening of take-out pizza in bed.
He hadn't entirely been planning on the serial killer lounging in his living room.
"Castle! Beckett! Hi!" Tyson calls out brightly. He's casually holding what at first glance appears to be Beckett's gun on his knee.
"Jerry," Castle says, sensing Beckett's vibrating tension beside him, her sharp, battle-ready huff of air at his shoulder. "We weren't expecting you."
"I noticed there wasn't a turkey in the oven. Not to worry, though – there is now!" Now that he's mentioned it, Castle registers the heavy aroma of roasting poultry wafting in from the kitchen. "Kelly's getting some pies from the car. Luckily some of us are planners!"
"Kelly," Beckett voice rings out flatly.
"She has a Glock, too," Tyson says informatively. "So we might as well just all relax."
"So you can strangle us?" she growls. Castle shifts back, twitches his fingers so that they lightly brush over the thin denim of her jeans.
"We're not here to strangle you," Tyson says chidingly. "Of course. We just wanted to hang out. Kelly was absolutely fascinated by the two of you, and we happened to be privy to your brilliant plan of Thanksgiving at the beach, so we figured, what better way to start the holiday?"
Castle stares. Beckett stares. Tyson smiles.
"You think I have an angle," Tyson says.
"Yes. I think you have an angle," Castle says. "I think that there is no possible way you don't have an angle."
"Well, come sit down. Stay a while," Tyson responds brightly.
"We're fine over here," Beckett grits out.
"Really. Sit! The couch looks like a perfectly comfortable place for the two of you." This time he gestures emphatically with the gun.
Beckett breathes out tightly and walks across the room, Castle following a step behind her. Tyson watches them shrewdly, alertly, the Glock trained with a professional ease on Beckett. She lowers herself rigidly to the couch, and he sits beside her, their thighs just barely brushing, the tension a vibrating, palpable force between them.
"Truth is," Tyson says, "I'm really hoping to get Kelly to marry me."
Castle can't help the sound that vibrates out of his throat, a horrified, incredulous squeak. A sound that he really did not ever think he would make in the presence of a murderous psychopath.
"I know, I know," Tyson murmurs. "It doesn't seem logical. And I have to admit, on paper, I don't entirely seem like the marrying type. But you have to confess she's a powerhouse."
"Do I have to confess that?" Beckett asks flatly.
"Oh, Detective, but she's absolutely entranced by you."
"Hey," Castle growls sharply.
Tyson tilts his head for a beat before he suddenly smiles in understanding. "Oh, no, Kelly would never. We're very committed to each other," he says.
Castle glowers as threateningly as he possibly can.
"Really, I can't believe you would think so little of us."
"It's shocking," Beckett mutters acerbically.
"At any rate," Tyson continues, talking to her like she's an idiot, which makes Castle bristle almost as much as the implication of Kelly's interest, "Kelly is fascinated by you from an aesthetic standpoint, and she was especially enthusiastic about spending the holiday with you. So, I figured, happy wife, happy life, am I right? You two will know soon enough – how's the wedding planning?"
"I'm really uncomfortable with all of this," Castle tells him.
Tyson grins. "Kelly says I overstep sometimes."
On cue, the door bangs open. "Honey! Are they here?" he hears, her voice echoing from the foyer.
He feels Beckett shift beside him. "Honey?" she asks.
"They're here!" he calls back. "Kelly thought we should try it out," he murmurs conversationally to Beckett. "Like Thanksgiving."
"Unreal," she breathes. Castle reaches over and gives her elbow a short squeeze.
Nieman appears in the doorway to the living room, her arms laden with a stack of boxes. "Pies," she explains. "I swore I'd have time to cook, but things have just been so busy lately – I'm sure you understand."
"Busy with what?" Beckett volleys back immediately.
"This and that." She blinks into the face of Beckett's blank stare. "Oh, come now, talking shop is so boring. Makes you age prematurely," she says decisively. "I'm off to check on the turkey. Shouldn't be long now!"
"We put it in a while ago," Tyson explains. "You two sure kept busy on the beach. Kelly almost went and got you at one point – she was worried you'd give yourselves frostbite – but you just looked so happy that she couldn't."
Castle swallows. "That's really creepy, Jerry," he finally says.
"You'll feel better after you've had some turkey."
"You really think we're going to eat turkey with you?" Beckett barely even sounds angry, her voice falling flatly into a disbelieving monotone.
Tyson taps the gun once on his knee. "Yes," he says, a iciness frosting over the edges of his tone. "Yes. I do." As quickly as the coldness appeared, it's gone. "But we'll be eating, too. No need to worry."
"I'm somehow less than relieved," Castle says. Beckett reaches out, lays her hand against his thigh, bumps her index finger along the outside seam of his jeans. He breathes in deeply, lets the light press of her touch offer some thin kind of reassurance.
They sit in silence – still bracingly tense on their part, still seemingly comfortable on Tyson's – until Nieman sashays into the room, a glossy cookbook propped open on her forearms.
Castle blinks. "Is that mine?"
"Fifty Shades of Chicken," Nieman responds. "I'd say I couldn't resist the reference, but really it was the only cookbook I saw."
"I thought you said we were having a turkey," Beckett says.
"We're calling it a turkey," Nieman sighs, "but those things take forever, and we didn't want to overstay our welcome." Beckett taps her index finger emphatically on Castle's thigh in a subtle kind of response. The other woman ignores it, doesn't give the silence a chance to become pointed. "We're having 'Popped-Cherry Pullet.'" She glances down at the cookbook, then up at Castle. "I've got to admit, for a cookbook that seems so inappropriate, there are some interesting recipes."
Castle shrugs, glances from Beckett to Tyson to Neiman, comes up with an absolute dearth of witty repartee. Writing so many murder mysteries and interrogating so many killers hasn't adequately him for a pre-Thanksgiving meal conversation with a couple of sociopaths.
Nieman tilts her chin back toward the book, then reads aloud in a voice that lives somewhere in the rather large borderland between sultry and mocking. "Beneath me is a bed of wet, dark, pitted cherries. The dry heat takes me into its sudden embrace, and my juices flow freely over the torn fruit."
Beckett's knee presses uncomfortably into the side of his thigh as she turns, taking her eyes off Tyson for the first time since they walked into the house. "Tell me she just made that up."
Her gaze is piercing. "Beckett, you forgot to turn off your death glare," he whispers, unfortunately a little too loudly, if Tyson's smirk is any indication.
"We are going to talk about your choice of cookbooks later," she murmurs, her voice pitched low and threatening.
"But for now," Tyson says, "let's eat."
He walks into the dining room, Beckett beside him, Nieman and Tyson and their guns several paces behind. There's a small, admittedly appealing chicken in the center of the table, four place settings (two without knives, he immediately notes), and nothing else.
"I know," Nieman says as they stop just inside the room. "I had the best intentions. Stuffing, two kinds of potatoes, green beans, cornbread…" she trails off.
"Kelly's not quite your stereotypical housewife," Tyson says into their silence.
Nieman glances down at her hands, runs one finger slowly over the sleek barrel of the Glock, sighs out a breath that lasts for a heartbeat too long.
He does not feel sorry for her.
He does not feel sorry for her.
"It looks great," Castle says.
"Castle," Beckett hisses, as though she had a better plan than vaguely comforting the murderer in their dining room.
"Agreed," Tyson says.
Then there's a sudden smudge of silver flying at Castle's stomach. He responds reflexively, jerking his arm up to catch it, staring down at what he realizes is a roll of duct tape that Tyson had produced from wherever serial killers hide their spare bondage materials.
"Detective Beckett," Nieman says, pointing her gun casually in the direction of Castle's torso and clicking the safety off. "Take a seat."
She drops immediately into the nearest chair, her eyes never leaving the Glock.
"Three loops around each ankle and the legs of the chair. Tightly, please," Tyson tells him.
Castle rocks slightly onto the balls of his feet, mentally scrolling through possible offensive maneuvers and odds of survival. "This doesn't seem very Thanksgivingy," he finally says.
"I'm sure you could come up with something about the Pilgrim's oppression of Native American tribes," Nieman says, turning slightly to point her gun at Beckett.
"Got it," Castle says, stepping back in front of Beckett's chair and dropping to his knees, "You're completely right."
Beckett stares down at him, rolls her eyes, and through her anger and desperation he can see the same affectionate tenderness that she has with him so often now. He unravels the tape, starts wrapping it as loosely as he can around her right ankle.
His mouth is about even with her knees, and it is absolutely, inarguably the wrong time, but something about kneeling before her and the duct tape and the sight of her lithe legs sends a too-pleasant current humming through his blood. "You know," he starts to murmur.
She cuts him off, her gaze turning steely. "I absolutely do not want to hear it."
"It's just so rife with possibilities, Beckett," he says, being careful to keep his voice so very low. "We've done duct tape and we've done chairs, so why on earth haven't we –"
"Can we see if we survive this first, Castle?"
"Still not trying to kill you," Tyson singsongs at them.
Castle jerks his head sideways as he finishes taping her as loosely as possible. "Seriously? You have ears like a bat."
Tyson inclines his head in acknowledgement. "One of my many talents. Have a seat."
Castle raises himself into the chair next to Beckett, watches Nieman and Tyson walk around the table. They move easily, casually, but with a deadly kind of awareness that makes him entirely unwilling to enact any kind of desperate plan.
"You're not going to tape me?" he asks.
"Oh holy hell," Beckett breathes.
Nieman hands her gun to Tyson, then stands over the chicken with a knife that looks so much more intimidating in her hands than in the kitchen drawer. "Why?" she says absently as she cuts into the bird with a deftness that is utterly terrifying. "You gonna try something?"
"Nope," he says as she works the knife along the bird's breastbone. "We're good."
She's already serving neat slices of meat onto plates – Beckett's first, Castle can't help but notice with a twitch of his shoulders.
"Isn't she amazing with a knife?" Tyson murmurs in admiration.
Castle leans back in his chair, assessing the scene yet again. He's fairly certain Beckett could get her legs free in a pinch, but it would take some twisting. "I'd be impressed if I weren't a little worried," he says. He pauses, watching her slice and serve. "Do they have competitions for this kind of thing? I'm pretty sure you'd win some type of award."
"I prefer to stick to people," Nieman says with a smile. "Just for cosmetic surgery. Obviously."
"Obviously," Beckett echoes frostily as Neiman finishes serving and sits.
"My offer still stands for both of you," she says, her eyes scanning their faces. Tyson places her gun next to her, rests his at the edge of his placemat. Castle mentally curses the too-wide expanse of his dining room table.
"I don't think any of us are really the type to say grace," Tyson says as he begins cutting his chicken. "Sorry we couldn't give the two of you knives, but better safe than sorry."
"I think we'll both still have to decline," Beckett tells Nieman.
"You just want us to cut it with forks?" Castle asks Tyson.
"It's a shame," says Nieman. "You're so very close." Castle tears his attention away from Tyson to glance sharply over at her, sees the interest crackling in her gaze. He tries to stare her down, but she's too intent on Beckett.
"We debated just giving you both spoons," Tyson continues, too oblivious for it to be anything but an act.
"Eat," Nieman says.
Beckett picks up her fork, looks at it in an absent way that means she's considering its potential uses as a weapon.
"It's free range," Nieman encourages.
"You've got to be kidding me," Castle says, his hand fork freezing halfway through sawing off a bite of chicken. Beckett's shooting him a glare that he's pretty sure means don't eat that, but they spent a long time on the beach and drank a lot of wine and if he were being honest with himself, he'd have to admit that he's more than a little buzzed right now despite the bursts of adrenaline that keep fizzling through his veins.
"She's not," Tyson says cheerily, chewing on a piece of chicken. "And it's absolutely delicious."
"God, I just find that torturing small animals stereotype so passé. I'm all for a good foie gras, but a chicken pumped full of antibiotics that spent its whole life in a windowless, filthy shed for no purpose?"
"Kelly's very passionate about bringing down CAFOs in America."
"I mean really, it's ridiculous what people do to the food they're going to eat." She pauses, chews and swallows a piece of the chicken. "And it's so absolutely needless."
Beckett arches an eyebrow.
"Oh, don't look like that," she says. "That's different."
"Is it?" Beckett asks, her voice entirely without affect.
"Entirely. Find me a person who doesn't deserve to be strung up and crucified six times over. It's why I focus on the outside - at least there we've got a shot at perfection."
Tyson smiles. "Kelly's a realist."
"Kelly's a psychopath," Beckett bites back.
"Well," he allows, "that too. But everyone has their foibles."
"That's a bit of a stretch for the word foible," Castle says.
"That's where your hard line is in this situation?" Beckett mutters.
"If I can't defend my fiancé, I can at least defend the English language."
The table falls into an awkward silence. Castle spends the time mentally constructing the dozen or so acerbic responses Beckett would say if they weren't in the presence of murderers.
"Our goal wasn't exactly to scare you," Nieman eventually murmurs.
Beckett huffs out a frustrated breath of air.
"It's important to shake things up in unexpected ways," Tyson adds.
The table falls back into silence. Tyson and Nieman finish their chicken. Nieman keeps shifting subtly, clearing her throat, tapping her finger against the barrel of her gun. It's disquietingly unlike the steady, intent surgeon that Castle thought he'd had pegged.
"Speaking of that," Nieman says into the silence. "I have something to tell you, and now seems like as good a time as any. There' s a reason that I wanted to try Thanksgiving here."
Castle wonders if this is the moment that she says she's been planning to carve them like she carved that chicken.
Nieman's lips quiver into a hesitant kind of smile that snowballs, growing and growing until she's positively beaming. Tyson stares. "Honey," she starts, and then she just stands there, her entirely body quivering with what Castle could swear is joy.
He gets it a heartbeat before she says it. "You are absolutely fucking kidding me," he says.
"I'm pregnant!" Nieman gets out.
"Good God," Beckett hisses.
"I know it's a horrible time," Nieman is starting to babble, "and I know we've never talked about kids before, but –"
Tyson stands abruptly, wraps one hand around his gun and his other hand around her forearm to haul her out of her chair. Their Glocks knock together as Tyson kisses her soundly, brushing his free hand over her stomach.
"Until now, this was still less awkward than the first Thanksgiving Gina and I were married when Meredith showed up at the door with three of her closest friends in tow," Castle stage whispers to Beckett.
Tyson and Nieman break apart. "We'll leave the pie for you," Tyson says in a voice that would be breathless and elated from anyone else but that is absolutely bone-chilling from him. "Can I get that tape, Kelly?"
She levels her gun at them as Tyson strides in front of Beckett. "Wrists on the chair," he says, pressing down on her forearm when she doesn't immediately comply and rolling out the duct tape efficiently. "Just so you don't chase us down immediately," he tells them as he moves in front of Castle and glances over at Nieman, who still has her gun steadily sighted on them.
"How sweet," Castle says, but the panicked pounding of his pulse does start to slow, almost like some part of him is trusting what Tyson says. "I'd say congrats, Jerry, but I'm not entirely sure you should be raising a child."
"Is anyone ready to have a baby, though?" He lapses into silence as he tapes Castle's ankles and wrists, then stands, not even pausing to gloat as he towers over the writer before he strides away to Nieman, grabbing her hand.
"Happy Thanksgiving!" Nieman tosses over her shoulder as they walk away.
He can hear the front door open with a soft snick and then slam black shut.
He stares at Beckett. "That was an abrupt departure," he finally says.
"I think I can get my ankles out," she sighs after a beat.
He swallows, tries to think of any kind of appropriate response to their evening. "And then we can get lucky?" he asks as watches her wriggle her calves.
"Maybe a quick call to the cops first," she says. "And a new security system." She catches Castle staring hungrily at the chicken. "And take-out pizza, because we are not eating that chicken, Castle."
"Okay," he sighs. "I'd just been meaning to try that cookbook for ages."
"You're not getting lucky for weeks if you mention that cookbook again. There's a flap of tape at your right hand. Try to get it with your mouth."
Castle sighs, starts to contort his torso awkwardly to reach the tape with his teeth. "Is this enough to get you to agree to Christmas in Aruba?"
"Yes," Beckett says emphatically. "Now get moving."
"I guess it's nice, in a horrifying kind of way." She's silent, but he thinks he hears a question in it. "To think that even sociopaths have soulmates," he adds, his voice slightly muffled since his mouth is half full of tape.
"Yes, Castle. It's magical. Happy Thanksgiving."