Close Encounters 2


"What are you doing?" he chuckled, felt her hand squeezing his wrist as she dragged him through the stacks.

The New York Public Library was quiet for a Friday afternoon, hushed, and their footsteps were loud against the wooden floor.

"Slow down. Not a race," he laughed, just glad to be with her. He'd been holed up at the 'office' all week, working on her mother's case, looking into medical examiner data from across the boroughs, and when she'd shown up at his place-

Mm, good surprise.

"Here," she said sharply, a little breathless, and pulled him to the periodicals. The journals and magazines were laid out on slanted shelves, their back issues stacked below each one. He spied several boxes of microfiche, but she was bypassing those to show him her laptop.

"What is this?" he asked, his throat choking suddenly as he read the title.

The New York Times.

Archives.

"I have to be on their wireless to access the database," she explained, tugging him over so he could see the screen.

"What are you doing?" he rasped, rooted to the spot, his eyes caught by the bold, black title: Broadway Productions, 1970.

"You're poking around in my life, Castle; I thought it was only fair that I do the same."

His heart pounded painfully, his fingers flexed before making fists at his side. "Beckett."

"Oh, it's Beckett now?"

He growled and stepped back, realized his hand was reaching for a weapon that wasn't there. Five weeks into a six-month sabbatical and he still ached for his service weapon. His father would say it was a crutch.

It was.

He scraped a hand down his face. "What have you done?"

"I looked up your mother."

"You don't even have a name-"

"I had enough. And I found someone I think is your mother," she amended, raising a hand defensively to him. Castle made an effort to relax his stance, lower his voice.

"You don't know-"

"Read the article, Castle."

"No."

She narrowed her eyes at him, came forward to crowd him back into the bookshelves that closed off this space from the main aisle. "Castle."

"I'm not interested."

She leaned in, her fingers sliding at his waist and hooking over his belt, tugging. He swallowed hard - it really wasn't fair, the way she blatantly used her body to get him to obey her - and tried to close his eyes against her.

"Fine," she gritted out. "I'll summarize it."

"Beckett-"

"It says, After a long-speculated hiatus, the incredible Martha Rodgers returns to the stage in-"

He shoved her away, spun out of the alcove, stalking for the stairs, the exit, a way out-

"Richard Castle, do not walk away from me."

His body halted before he could even make up his mind one way or another; traitorous legs, the way they turned him around to face her.

Her eyes were dangerous. "You don't get to ignore your past while you go mucking through mine."

"There's no mystery here, Beckett. No crime to solve. I don't need to know whodunnit," he said, fighting the last five weeks of sloppy mental discipline to regain his edge once more. His father had been right - their kind wasn't meant for this - the sharing, the emotional shit that made everything off-balanced.

"You do," she said firmly. "You need to know, Castle, because deep down-"

Shit, she didn't get to analyze him, not while she was barely hanging on herself, drowning in her mother's case, sucking up every last second of their time together by roughly demanding more - sex or working on the case, sometimes he didn't know.

"-deep down," she continued, stepping closer, stalking him like prey. "You need to know it was worthwhile. Abandoning you. If it was worth it - if her career took off, if she was fulfilled - if she replaced you-"

"Fuck."

"-if she missed out. Because I can tell you, Castle; I can say it all day, all night-" She gave a breathy little sigh and stroked her fingers down his chest, made him tremble with it. "-how very much she's missed out on, not having you in her life, but that's not enough for you. You need the story, you need to know-"

He groaned and claimed her mouth with his, his tongue ruthless and brutal, his teeth scraping hers. He felt her hips jerk hard against his thigh and he clutched her shoulders, slid down her spine to draw her up against him.

A throat cleared somewhere to his right and she yanked back, her breathing hard and heavy against his cheek, her body pulsing against his.

"Mm, not here, Super Spy," she murmured. "Read the article. Then we'll go home."

A little information for sex. Fine.

He took another ragged kiss from her mouth and then let her go with narrowed eyes. "I'm warning you, Beckett. Pull another stunt like that-"

"And what? I'm kicked off the team?"

Her evil laughter followed him back to the alcove.


"You liked it?" she asked.

She didn't normally allow for this - the talking in bed, the cozy chitchat - but Agent Castle had a way of breaking all her rules.

He laughed. "Oh, yeah."

He laid with his head pillowed on her thigh, his body stretched between her legs, and she couldn't help stroking her fingers lightly through his hair, buzzing and sated and - happy. She was happy.

Shit.

Castle smiled against her skin and lifted his head, blinking hazily at her, and then crawled up her body to lie beside her. "More than liked - that was fantastic. And kinda kinky, Beckett."

She hummed, still wordless in the spell of that untimely revelation of happiness from her admittedly-broken psyche, and let him drape himself over her, all the blanket she needed even in the brittle cold air of his apartment.

"Your mother," she said finally, needing to hang on to something.

He grunted and his grip on her waist tightened, digging into her hipbone. She bruised him; he bruised back. It worked.

"Can we not-"

"You get to ask me personal, intimate questions like Where was your father that night? and I can't do the same?" she said quietly.

"You didn't ask me where my father was-"

"Don't be cute," she muttered, felt him grin in response.

"You think I'm cute?"

"Ug, no. Cute is for babies. I think you're hot," she smirked, felt him shift against her in arousal. She liked that, liked it a lot.

"Admit it," he whispered. "You do think I'm cute."

"No."

"And we'd have cute babies too."

"Shit, Castle. I told you to stop-"

"And I said I don't want to talk about my mother. I don't want to discuss my mother. I don't care what happened to her."

Babies for his mother? Hmm. . .she might be willing. She might-

Shit. No. Who was she kidding? She would never be willing to talk about kids with him. That was ridiculous - and a surefire way of making herself shut down.

But his mother. . .

"Fine," she sighed, wrapped her arm around his shoulders to pull him against her. "Your kids would be cute."

He laughed and lifted his head from her, eyebrows dancing. "Beckett. Our kids. Our kids."

"You are crazy, you know that? We have no time for kids."

"But they'd be cute."

She rolled her eyes and felt his fingers slip along her ribs, trying to tickle her. "I'm not ticklish. Give it up."

"No way. You just said my kids would be cute - means you've thought about it. What else are you lying about?"

"I have not been thinking about-"

"With my eyes, right?" he pushed right through. "Your mouth, my eyes. Adorable."

She groaned and shook her head. "You have entirely killed the mood."

"You started it."

She grinned wickedly. "Oh, yes. Your mother. Let's move on to that now, shall we?"

"Not only is the mood killed, it's been maimed and left in a freezer, Beckett."

She laughed at that, felt that stupid, silly joy lifting up in her chest. It was all out of proportion to the last three weeks' ragged edge of grief and rage she'd been drowning in - like a whirlpool in the ocean, an inverted typhoon swallowing her whole.

"Those are my kind of murders, Castle."

He sighed and his mouth traveled slowly over her chest, up her neck to her jaw.

"What happened to maimed?" she muttered.

"You said it was your kind of-"

She lifted her knee and dislodged him, laughing even as he huffed. "Your mother. You read the article."

"So."

"So she tried to support the both of you-"

"Speculation."

"Hear me out."

"I don't have to know-"

"Castle," she insisted, not sure why she was. Maybe because she wanted a partner in the swirling depths of emotional imbalance. Maybe it was just that misery loved company - nothing more.

Maybe she wanted to do for him what he was doing for her.

To her. Not for her. Doing to her.

Right.

"Castle, she had you in April of 69-"

"We could try that-"

"Focus. And not on my body," she growled, dragging the sheet up with her foot. He stilled her movement, scooted closer instead. All her rules - broken. Every last one of them.

"Okay, okay. Focused. But later on your body?"

"She had you in April-"

He groaned. "Dead, dying, dead. Maimed. Mutilated bits of carcass-"

"She went back to the stage the next year, tried to reprise her role-"

"To some success," he sighed, and now his cheek was against her shoulder, his body still tense but at least a little more willing.

"To some. But the article mentioned rumors. It's likely that everyone in the business knew she'd been pregnant and unwed."

He was silent, and she sighed, stroked her fingers up his spine.

"Castle I searched the Times for three years after that and found no mention of her."

His body seemed to tense against hers, nearly imperceptible. So he was listening then.

"I did find a review in a smaller magazine, Off-Off, which mentioned a Mary Rodgers in a couple of different low-budget productions. No idea if that's her."

"What are you trying to say?"

"I think she tried," Kate murmured, drew her lips to his forehead and pressed a kiss there. "I think she must have tried. To keep you. But no one wanted to hire an actress who had baggage - who was chained to a baby-sitter or who needed to bring her toddler with her to rehearsal-"

"All speculation," he roughed out, but she could feel him swallowing hard, feel the clutch of his fingers at her hip.

"It is," she admitted. "Complete speculation. And I've only gotten to 1973 in the archives. She left when you were. . ."

"Five."

"Five," she breathed out, again found herself being taken over by the image of a little boy on the steps of his private school, waiting for his mother's taxi, maybe sitting on top of his suitcase, chin in his hands, staring mournfully down the road. "You're right, Castle."

"What - right about what?"

"Your eyes. They'd all have your eyes."


He flipped the pancakes and smiled widely, pleased with himself.

"I'll domesticate you yet," she murmured, her body suddenly pressing close at his back. She kissed the bare skin of his shoulder. "I'll never understand how you can always be so damn warm. It's freezing in here and you're walking around shirtless."

"Well, you're walking around in only my shirt. That keeps me plenty warm, Beckett."

She pinched his side and moved around the range to sit at the lone bar stool in front of it. "If you don't turn up the heat, I'm gonna have to put on pants."

He dropped the spatula into the pan and hurried for thermostat. "Wouldn't want that. It'd be a crime to hide those legs."

She snorted at him, but he did actually nudge the temperature up a little more, heard his heat kick on. He kept it cool because he liked it cool, but a nice side benefit was the way she burrowed into him in bed, their skin pressed together. So he was reluctant to permanently alter the presets.

"Your pancakes are burning."

He ran back to the stovetop and cursed as his fingers burned on the spatula, hissed and yanked the pan off the burner. "Crap. I was doing so well."

"You were," she said sympathetically, sneaking another slice of strawberry. "But Castle. You have fruit. You've already wowed me. So don't worry about it."

He scraped the crispy edges off the pancakes and added them to the stack already on the plate. He hadn't realized his methods had been so transparent. He was trying to impress her - he wanted this permanently, and even though she wasn't resistant to his six months off, he definitely knew she was resistant to anything more.

She said it didn't work between law enforcement professionals.

Of course, he'd gone straight to the CIA's secure location and looked up which law enforcement professional it hadn't worked out with. Asshole. Sorensen. FBI. No wonder.

Castle sighed to himself and pulled butter out of the fridge, grabbed the syrup from the counter, and placed everything in front of her. "Here you go. I'll eat the burned ones eventually."

"I don't mind," she said, shrugging. "Come sit."

"I only have one stool."

"Then stand," she huffed, rolling her eyes at him. "And eat with me. I hate it when you just watch."

He grinned back and leaned in to kiss her mouth, taste a little of those strawberries she'd been snacking on. Her fingers coasted at his jawline.

"I like to watch," he murmured. "You're sexy. And sometimes, entirely without meaning to be, you're adorable."

"You lie," she said heatedly.

He grinned, repressed the laughter, but there was a spark in her eyes too, even though they were narrowed. "Eat your food."

"Are you eating too?"

He shrugged. He'd try, but he'd spent so much of his life on a strict diet - the rigorous training schedule and the lean proteins, healthy fats of the nutritionist's plan for all the field operatives. Of course, his father's discipline gave it an added element of rigidity that he was slow to shake, even after five weeks.

"Come on, Ricky," she teased, arching her eyebrow at him. "Try a bite."

"Did you dump syrup on it already?"

"No," she hummed. "No butter yet either. But I can make you want it."

He'd have eaten anyway, just to be companionable, but it was better like this, her teasing the food in front of him, wicked and alluring. He knew of a few places he'd gladly lick syrup-

"Won't hurt you; I promise. You have no body fat on you, Castle, and a few carbs isn't gonna make a difference."

"You still going to want me when I'm tubby?" he asked mournfully.

She laughed and shook her head. "No. Not a bit."

"Then this is an evil plan to sabotage our relationship and I won't be party to it."

Her grin was wide, a little pleased, a little. . .tender, maybe? She'd gotten used to him, hadn't she? His plan was working.

Maybe too well, since she seemed insistent on finding his mother, like she had the right to splay out the guts of him-

Okay. Well, maybe he saw the similarities. He was doing the same to her.


"You missed a spot," he murmured.

She watched him lick syrup from her thumb, felt the slick abrasion of his tongue travel down her nerve endings like razor wire. His eyelids were heavy when he looked at her, and she danced her fingertips across his jaw, leaned in to kiss his sweetened mouth.

"Mm, didn't miss a thing," she hummed back, smirking at him when his breath hitched. "Like syrup now, don't you?"

"Definitely can see the appeal. And you're sticky," he grinned, nipping at her thumb again, swirling his tongue over the spot. "You done yet, cause I want to take you back to bed."

"No syrup in bed."

"You don't need syrup, Beckett."

She grinned at that, couldn't help it, and drew his hips into the vee of her legs, tighter, closer, so that the hard length of his thighs pressed hers apart. "I'm done with pancakes, if that's what you mean."

Against her neck, he growled something she couldn't understand - could only feel - and it made her back arch, her body aligning with his as he lifted her off the bar stool.

"Hurry," she murmured.


"We gonna make it out of this bed today?" she said against his collarbone, sighed into the heat of his skin.

"Why should we?" he grumbled, his arms tightening around her. She liked it though. Didn't know why, just - liked the way her flesh seemed to melt into his, unable to move, safe.

He could draw his weapon and bring down an armed suspect faster than she could - they'd gone head to head on the CIA's virtual trainer, and then once more on the NYPD's module, to her defeat - and he had some kind of self-defense skills that exceeded her Krav Maga (she didn't know what and he'd declined to say), and he was sniper certified.

Safe was putting it mildly.

It wasn't only that she didn't need to worry about that kind of thing - he could hold his own as a partner - but she didn't worry about him disappearing when she wasn't there. Not that she thought he'd purposefully disappear, he'd been clear on that, but just-

Arg. She wanted him. Shit, she wanted him and she wanted him around, for later, for life, for whatever, and it helped knowing that he was so damn capable.

He could be rated most likely to succeed on any mission he undertook. Which meant he'd. . .

come back to her.

Shit.

How was this happening to her?

She didn't need any-

"I don't want to talk about my mother," he said suddenly, his arm squeezing around her shoulders. "But maybe I see what you're doing here."

"What?" Beckett lifted her head from his shoulder to look at him. He had his eyes on the ceiling.

"Turn about fair play, right? I know. I'm digging into your past, so. . .yes, you have the right to dig into mine."

She pushed up to her elbows and it made him cast his eyes down to her; the deep pit of grief in them nearly swallowed her.

And then it was gone. Masked behind the iron curtain of his learned self-control. His father's doing - the discipline, his training, his rigid schedule. She'd made him depart from so much of that - jeez, she'd just gotten him to eat pancakes and lick syrup-

Well, she was good for him; she could see it. But he was letting her be. He was allowing it to happen.

And what was she doing? Clamping down on him at every turn, ignoring his questions, her help recalcitrant at best, deceitful at worst. She lured him away from the hard parts with sex, and sex wouldn't sort out her life.

(Castle wouldn't sort out her life either. But-)

"Okay," she breathed out. "Deal. I dig through yours, you dig through mine."

"We'll be even."


"I'd rather be in bed," she huffed, but she followed at his side through the dark bowels of the safe location.

"You're the one who wanted to know the moment I found anything-"

She sighed and shoved on his shoulder, moving him not an inch, his body still rock hard and at attention even so deep in his lair. "I didn't mean for you to get an app for your phone that would alert you every second-"

"It's handy."

"It's annoying," she groused. "It wakes me up nearly every hour."

"You're too sensitive."

"Or you're not sensitive enough-"

His fingers skittered at her neck and dipped below her shirt, making her arch, breath leaving her on a gasp.

"I think we're both sensitive, wouldn't you say, Beckett?"

Shit, he did that so easily. She grunted something as he squeezed her hip, wondered when exactly it'd gotten this bad.

"At least the hood stayed home. Where it belongs."

He let out a strangled chuckle at that, gave her a raised eyebrow even as he unlocked the door with his key card. "You would say that."

"You loved it."

His face split wide into a grin that transformed him - badass to breathtaking - and she stumbled to a stop beside him with her heart beating too hard in her chest.

"Here," he said, nudging her inside his office. She moved at the touch of his fingers to her back, tried to keep a discrete distance from him just to tamp down on the flame of arousal that lit through her whenever he turned soft.

"So what did you find?" she said brusquely, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Don't know yet. That was just the alert for the computer search query. Results returned."

He bent over his workstation, the sleek Apple computer with its wide screen waking up at the touch of his finger. He shouldered her out of the way, his back blocking her view, and input his password to unlock it.

"Secrets, secrets," she murmured, smirking at his back, unable to help trailing a finger at his bicep.

"State secrets, Detective." He turned to look at her over his shoulder, smirking back, and the crackle of awareness made her sway towards him.

Thankfully, he didn't seem to notice, just resumed working at his computer, hunched over it as he scanned the information on whatever program it was that he'd done the query. He wouldn't even tell her that much, and it was frustrating to be on the outside edge of her mother's case, watching him do the work and unable to control even-

He shifted to one side and stood, suddenly close to her, how proprietary he was with her, how his hands had to touch and his hip bump hers and his space invade her own. And how she absolutely despised herself for craving it.

"Beckett."

She glanced away from the wide curve of his palm and towards the computer screen, undone, but he was taking her by the shoulders in a fierce grip.

"We'll find him. I swear to you. We will get to the bottom of this."

What?

Oh. He thought she was-

Wait.

"What did you find?" she hoarsed out, knowing it was arousal but letting him go on believing it was vengeance.

"Sit down," he said quietly and pushed on her shoulders to guide her into the chair. She shook him off, stepped away, faintly becoming aware of the roar, the clamoring alarms that were going off in her head.

She stared at his computer screen until the results began to make sense.

"There were - are - others?" she whispered.

"Beckett. I - It's - a professional killer."

"What?" she gasped, felt her knees turning to water. She fought to stay standing, to not need that damn chair, and she grabbed the mouse to open the first case.

"This guy. Wait. I know him. A clerk. A judge's clerk or - I don't know, but he's related to my mom's case. And this-"

"Beckett. Look at the number. Thirty-eight victims matching the knife wounds-"

"Oh my God."

"-mean this is a hired killer. The medical examiner I talked with noticed that there are no hesitation marks - that the pattern is not random but actually methodically executed-"

"Are you saying - are telling me that someone put a hit out on my mother?" she growled.

"Yes. Beckett. I'm saying. . .yes. A hired killer did this. I suspected as much when I first saw the file, but I couldn't be sure. I didn't want to say anything until we got the results."

She paced hotly to the other end of his office, burning, came back to round on him. "You thought my mother had been murdered by an assassin and you said nothing-"

"Kate," he said, grabbing her by the back of the neck and pulling her against him.

She gripped the hard, dangerous line of his biceps and dug in, let her nails break his skin because he could damn well take it and she hated him, hated this massive, manhandling asshole who-

"Kate," he murmured, his mouth close to hers, glancing across her cheekbone with an infinite patience that only made her more furious.

"The damn son of a bitch who did this-"

"We will find him. That's a given. What I don't know - what I can't promise, Kate - is the man who ordered the hit. . ."

She stiffened but his fingers were caressing her neck, his thumb at her jaw, his mouth hovering over hers in an attempt to soften her.

And it was working, despite herself. She could feel her body respond to him, conditioned to his touch, the call of his hands, even as a brilliant and fierce and destructive black arose in her. Black. Everything was being sucked right out into the maelstrom.

Until he put his mouth on hers.

Lightly, barely a kiss at all, just the sweet brush of his lips against hers and the fine, delicate way his too-big hands cradled her face. The adoration of his kiss, the tenderness, broke into her like light.

"Castle," she moaned, felt the tremor run through as she broke apart.

"I will do everything in my power to help you end this, Kate Beckett. You have everything."