Close Encounters 9

Kate woke fast, her breath punctuated by the pounding of her head and the thrum of panic. She was cold but sweating, her skin chilled but her hair and neck soaked with it. She couldn't orient, couldn't understand, and she needed Castle.

Or Castle needed...

Kate flung out a hand and winced as her knuckles scraped rock and found the flashlight. She flipped it on and sucked in a breath but it wouldn't come, even with the light, all the beautiful blue light like the moon; it wasn't helping.

A sharp ache in her breast seemed to travel straight like a blade into her heart and out of her back - the scar. The scar. From the bullet in the cemetery years ago.

Beckett groaned out and flopped onto her back, panting, swallowing it down, but it wasn't right, it wasn't real. It was phantom pain, an ache being pushed off on her, not her own.

She didn't understand.

"Castle," she groaned and rolled to one elbow, tried to get up.

She swayed when she sat upright but the sudden growl of her belly made her drag herself towards his pack. She found the sleeve of saltine crackers and shoved one into her mouth, still pushing past the strange knife in her chest, the haunting.

She swallowed it down and got to her knees; she didn't think it was a hot idea to stand, so she crawled forward instead, the flashlight still perched on the sleeping bag and illuminating the way like a blue path.

She needed water. But. He needed... she thought only that she had to get to him. Nothing else made sense.

"Castle," she called out, heard the heavy rasp of her voice and the fault lines running through it, couldn't make her throat work past the dry taste of cracker.

God, she was starving. Starving. She wanted to put her mouth on something and swallow and-

Shit, she was dizzy. And that sounded lewd even in her head, but the intensity of the feeling, the craving, was the same. It was everything. Castle would know.

"Castle," she called again. She slumped against the side of the cave wall, peered down into the tunnel. She could see the blue light shining strangely inside and the sudden jut of shadows.

She stared and the wave of need didn't recede; it only surged around her, buoying her higher, stronger, until she fucking well might crawl down that tunnel herself and drag him back so he could feed her.

There was nothing. She didn't know. This was like the night she woke at Stone Farm and knew she had to stay awake, keep watch for him, knew he needed something from her even though she'd been completely and utterly alone.

He'd come back a few days later, bruised ribs and a bullet graze on his forearm. She'd lain awake the whole night willing him home.

It was that. It was that now.

Come home, Castle.

The rocks shifted and tumbled; she heard their clatter and echo down the tunnel and she waited there, breathing shallowly past the ache in her back where the bullet had gone in - a long arrow of ache straight to her heart.

It was a feeling like needing him but it went the other direction. Outward instead of in. She didn't understand it, only that she couldn't fall back asleep.

And lurking underneath that was the sensation of hunger. Immediate and vital. Present in a way it hadn't been in days.

She should've taken the crackers with her.

"Castle," she murmured and watched his slow progress through the scree of rocks.

Castle pushed through the tunnel and fell over Beckett, stumbling in surprise and trying to catch her - himself - both of them before they wound up tangled.

Didn't happen. She landed on top of him and his breath went out in a rush. She was staring down at him with a strange glow in her eyes that he couldn't quite attribute to the eery beam of the flashlight.

"Beckett?"

"I'm starving," she murmured and her head tilted. "What's wrong?"

"What?" He moved to try to gently put her off of him but she slipped her legs between his and anchored herself there.

"Two separate things. I'm not sure which one woke me. What's wrong with you?"

"Wrong with me?" he echoed and felt the tightness cramp in his chest all over again, the wince of not enough air.

"Castle," she said, and this time even though her voice was thin, she had a layer of authority that made him lie still under her. She didn't keep prying, she didn't say more, she just studied him. And it felt like she could see everything.

How he was ruined by this. How it was just... more than he could bear. The load was too great and his support pillars had crumbled to dust and the suspension cables had snapped and he was going to fucking pitch carloads of innocent lives into the bay.

"Kate," he said raggedly and closed his eyes to keep her from seeing it.

Her mouth was soft over his, a warm and fluid thing that made him gasp and open for her. Her tongue slipped along his bottom lip and she tasted like salt, necessary and saving, and he couldn't even do anything to help, could only lie there while she breathed life back into this wreckage of himself.

He found his hands traveling slowly from her hips to her thighs, up over her ass to her lower back, skimming his fingers along her ribs to avoid the worst of the scratches, moving up and up until the bruising angle of her bones under her too-thin skin was supplanted by the delicate wisp of her hair at his palms and the harsh relief of her jaw working against his mouth.

He framed her face with his hands and kissed her, artless but soft, their touches of lips and tongue like it was all for the first time.

"Rick," she breathed out.

And even though it leaked out of his eyes like grief it was only an abiding and all-consuming gratitude. She broke from his mouth and licked the salt from his cheeks and hummed as she sucked on his skin. And then she said-

"Feed me, Castle. I'm serious. I'm so hungry."

He laughed, rich and deep, and he had to cup the back of her head to keep his mirth from shaking her right off.

God, he loved her. He loved her.

Everything was going to be fine.

She folded another cracker into her mouth before Castle got a chance to take them away, but she seemed to ignore the raised eyebrow because she swallowed it down anyway.

It shouldn't be so erotic to watch her eat crackers. It was bordering on pornographic - the moans, the way she licked the salt from her lips, her long fingers around the food. He knew it was mostly just more of the natural high of seeing her on the road to recovery, seeing her gaining ground, but damn, it was making him crazy.

"That was fantastic," she sighed and dropped her head to his shoulder. "It's obscene how much I love those crackers. I'm gonna have dreams, Castle."

"You're funny." Like he wasn't going to have dreams about her eating them.

"It's like the ice machine. Remember that thing?"

He chuckled and stroked the side of her face, palmed her cheek when she stirred and oriented to his touch like a cat. "I remember," he said quietly.

"I really loved that ice machine. Made everything blissful."

"Uh-huh," he smiled.

And then the soft silence was punched flat by her next words, out of nowhere. "You know it was all completely out of your control, Rick. And I understand hating that. I understand how that makes you feel so - desperate."

He went still, heart pounding suddenly again.

She curled into him, fingers spreading out along his shirt. "Since we're a long way from Dr King and I think this has to be said anyway - you know I had to do it. I had to. You were going to die. And whatever possible outcome awaited me here, yours was certain. I couldn't, Rick. I couldn't. And you know better than to ever ask me to choose differently."

"I know," he admitted, his voice like gravel. "I know."

She sucked in a long, shaky breath and nodded against him. "I'm so tired. I wore myself out with those crackers."

He held up the water and she waved it off, apparently knowing her limits. For once.

"Okay, sweetheart. You should sleep."

"You should too. I want you to lie with me."

He gave a breath of a laugh at the way that sounded, but she was running her hand lightly over his thigh and tripping up to press her cold fingers under his shirt, his abs rippling at the sensation. It was almost too much.

"Kate."

"Lie with me. Like at Stone Farm."

"Okay, okay," he murmured, giving in immediately.

"Skin," she insisted.

Castle huffed out a breath - it was damn cold in these caves - but he knew the sleeping bag would amplify their heat and give it back to them, wrap them in it. So he eased her back against the rock and grabbed the hem of his t-shirt, pulled it up over his head.

She hummed and smiled at him, that pleased and possessive lilt to her tone, and he only rolled his eyes at her and worked on getting his pants off.

"Please tell me you went commando," she said archly.

"You're naughty. But you're also weak. As a day old kitten, Beckett. So knock it off."

"A kitten," she muttered, wrinkling her nose at him. He batted her hands away when she tried to remove her own clothes, doing it for her. It was a statement about how tired she was that she let him, or else she was buttering him up for getting away with bigger indecencies later.

Yeah, look at that. She was already stroking her fingers at his hip, running along the waistband of his boxer briefs. She wanted to torment him all night?

Fine.

He'd take it like a man. He was just glad she was here to do it.

Castle opened up the sleeping bag and maneuvered her into it, and then he slid down beside her. He got an arm under her shoulders and pulled her over onto his chest; she was sighing out and straddling his thigh, her arms curled in at his ribs, and her eyes falling shut in moments.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead, her greasy and unwashed hair, and then he wrapped his arms around her loosely and zipped them up in their cocoon.

He thought this time they might emerge a little stronger for it.

She woke lazily, realized most of her time was spent coming and going from sleep. Kate turned slowly onto her back and craned her neck to see him beside her. He was watching her, a thoughtfulness on his face that meant he wanted to talk.

"I'm awake." It was permission for him to go ahead. She could talk; talking was maybe the only thing she could do right now.

"We've never had a first date," he said. He didn't look sad, just aware.

"No," she answered. "You're wrong. We have."

"When?"

Kate grinned and lifted her hand between them; he did the same and their fingers slid together, stroking and touching, not quite clasped. "Remember when you abducted me from the road and I said I'd seen you following me?"

"Yeah."

"You were in Remy's," she probed. "At least twice. Maybe three times."

"Yeah," he admitted. His fingers danced with hers, like a thumb war, tangling and snarling, coming apart only to draw back together.

She watched their hands. "It was you," she said again. "You paid my tab. Paid for my dinner and all the lunches and dinners I'd had for... months."

"Yeah," he grinned. "That was me."

"Why?"

He sighed and seemed to search for words, fingers not settled, stroking along her palm. "Because..."

But she knew. She'd felt it in that interrogation room when he'd slipped behind her and uncuffed her wrists, stroked his fingers at her skin.

She hummed. "That was our first date, Castle. You bought me dinner. What a gentleman."

He was smiling now and his fingers laced through hers and held on.

"I should've gotten you stuff."

"What stuff?" she murmured. He could hear the edge of sleep on her voice.

"You know. Stuff. Flowers. Chocolates. Do it like you're supposed to."

"I don't think so," she sighed. Her body turned into his and laid along their joined arms. "You gave me lots of phones."

He laughed. "Not exactly the same."

"You gave me a white iphone case when I was stuck at the Farm. Remember? It sparkled."

He frowned. "Yeah, but..."

"But you were trying to appease me. I know. I still liked it. It was sweet."

"It wasn't appeasement. Okay, a little bit. I didn't mean for it to be appeasement, but that was back in my bullying days."

She grinned against his skin - he could feel it, feel her teeth press at his shoulder and the little laugh she held back. He could almost hear her say it before she said it.

"Castle, sweetheart, you're still a bully."

"But I'm trying."

"You are at that." She was snuggling at him now, breaking the clasp of their hands to stroke up along his sternum and hook her fingers at his shoulder. "You try for me. That's all I need."

"But maybe flowers."

She laughed then. "Okay. Fine. Get me flowers when we get home."

"I will. Purple ones. You like purple."

"Orchids," she hummed.

"I see. Expensive flowers." He was grinning now. "Anything else, baby?"

She had that drifting quality to her voice now. "Strawberry milkshakes. I've been dreaming about strawberry milkshakes."

"Actually."

She lifted her head from his chest and he could've sworn he saw the bright gleam of her eyes even in the darkness.

"Actually?"

"The nutrition supplements I brought. They're strawberry flavored shakes."

"Oh my God."

He would laugh except the desperate relief in her voice sounded too real, too raw, too pathetic. It made his chest ache. He lifted up onto one elbow and checked the time on his watch. Three in the morning but what did it matter? She'd eaten a handful of crackers and seemed to be settled.

"Want one now?"

"Castle," she gasped.

"Yeah. Okay. Let's make you one."

He reached out in the pitch black of the cave just so he'd know where she was, where not to move and accidentally hit her, and his fingers skimmed her neck and felt it wet.

"Kate," he whispered.

"I'm okay," she choked. "I'm okay."

She was crying.

Somehow he knew - of course, how could he not know? with her unable to stop crying even as she sucked slowly at the foil package. Not even a straw and it smelled like metal and tasted like iron, but she put her mouth to the hole he'd punched into the pack and she drank a strawberry milkshake as he held her.

That she needed him to keep her upright, that she couldn't do much more than lean into his chest and let the wet warmth slide down her cheeks - it galled her. But she wasn't going to stop to have a tantrum over her weakened condition. Nothing she could do about being so broken that the tears didn't even have a point.

His wide palm was heavy at the back of her neck, his body bowed over hers, and she felt the fingers of his other hand wiping the tears off her cheeks, skimming the moisture from her neck where it pooled.

He didn't say, Why are you crying? He didn't say, you'll get dehydrated if you don't stop. He didn't say anything at all, but he kept up with the tears and made sure she had his strength because hers was well and truly gone.

When she couldn't keep the milkshake at her mouth anymore, she rested against him, her arms curled up at her chest and her eyes closed, and he touched her. Fingers at her cheeks, her jaw, her neck, drying her off and loving her and understanding.

She was okay; she really was. Just something about the fact that he'd brought her strawberry milkshakes every time, that he'd thought of it here too - not just the doses of morphine and the medical supplies and the specific rations and the heavy insulated sleeping bag - but the things specifically for her.

For his wife. Strawberry flavored nutrition shakes. The inside lining of the sleeping bag was purple. Her t-shirt was white, which he knew she liked because he wore all black and the dynamics of that had always been unspoken but so present. And her underwear. She'd commented about the granny panties he'd gotten her last time in Russia and this time he'd brought her some that were very nearly the same as her favorites at home.

He did those things. Who needed gifts when he was always so relentlessly detailed when it came to her?

"Staying down?" he murmured.

She nodded but handed over the package still two-thirds full. "Can't fit anymore."

He gave a little puff of laughter as he took it from her. "In your stomach you mean?"

"Yeah." She curled in closer, warming her chilled fingers against his skin. "Yeah. I'm tired."

"Yeah, I know," he murmured. "Let me wrap this up and we can try it again later."

She hummed agreement and let out a slow breath, the way her belly filled and churned but stayed. It stayed. It was okay. She'd be okay.

She felt him moving against her, doing everything with one hand as he held her at his chest, and she let him. She just let him because she was so very tired and now full too, she was full and her body didn't know what to do with it, and she wanted to lie down.

And then she was, his warmth carrying her down and holding her gently, carefully, not jostling her, and she curled on her side and had him at her back, his arm for a pillow, and her mouth open at his skin still tasting the faint and beautiful flavor of strawberries.

"Sleep, love," he murmured, and she obeyed.

He left her in the cavern to do a security check just before dawn; the air was crisply cold and stung his eyes as he strained to see through the thin darkness. The Russians were up and moving but not dismantling camp, just preparing for another day's drills and searches.

He and Beckett would have to stay put for another day, most likely. He didn't like having the Army at his doorstep, having no recourse if they came looking, but there was next to nothing he could do about it. Just hole up and focus on Beckett.

Castle went to the bathroom in the deep shadows under the tree, kicked some dirt over the spot just in case. The scent would keep away other wild animals as well, hopefully, and-

Beckett. Oh, jeez. He hadn't even asked. After the shake last night and drinking some water, even those crackers, her stomach had to be ripped out, her whole body out of whack. He had to figure out a safe place, give her some privacy - there was no way in hell she was letting him hover over her while she went to the bathroom.

Damn it. The Russians were going make this next to impossible.

He slipped back inside the main cavern and began exploring the back walls, wondering if there was another tunnel that might split off from here that she could use for facilities. He had no luck though, his fingers just ran over rough rock and jagged edges.

Maybe in their hideout.

Castle went back through the tunnel, belly crawling over the rockslide he'd piled up, replacing it stone by stone until he was sure it would pass the test. He had to hunch his shoulders as he pushed forward and then he was back in the faint blue glow from the flashlight.

He'd left it on because he'd felt this irrational urge to not come back to darkness. He moved towards Kate quietly and picked up the torch, shined the beam slowly around the smaller cavern.

It actually looked more like a basin, a widening of the tunnel he'd come through. Perhaps because of the stream that pushed up out of the ground and ran a few feet before disappearing again. Over the eons it had carved out this space from rock, creating a natural shelf where Beckett now lay.

If that was the case, then the tunnel might go on from here, hidden in the dark corners or by the strange cast of shadows. Castle started at the opposite end from the main tunnel and began inspecting the walls.

He doubted Beckett had gotten much farther than the water when she'd crawled back here, so there just might be something to discover.

Beckett closed her eyes for a breath, a heartbeat really, but he called out to her in that hesitating space.

"Beckett?"

"Yeah," she said. She was sitting up against the wall while Castle explored the rock for openings. She was trying to mentally prepare herself for using the bathroom outside with his bristling concern right at her back - ug, disgusting - but more than that, she was trying not panic about the fact that, right now, she had absolutely no urge to go at all.

Couldn't, in fact, remember the last time she had. That couldn't be good.

"Beckett, you awake?"

"Yeah, I'm awake," she replied.

"Keep talking."

They'd turned the flashlight off to conserve the batteries and because, as she'd pointed out, the beam only made the shadows all the more confusing. She realized now that the thin edge of worry in his voice wasn't actually for her.

Not entirely.

He didn't like being in the dark.

When had that happened?

"Kate," he insisted, his voice low.

"Yeah, I'll keep talking," she said. "Um, oh, I know. I'll tell you a story."

"A dirty story."

She let a laugh pop out of her mouth even though she'd fully expected him to say that. But he wanted to hear her, he wanted her presence with him, and she understood the need.

Maybe it wasn't so much the dark as the not being able to see her.

"Not a dirty story. Not until I can do something about it."

"Darn."

"When I was at Stone Farm after I got shot-"

"I don't know that I like these stories."

"You will. Hush. Let me tell it."

"Fine."

She could hear the scrape of his foot about six feet from her, hear the water moving through its little bed of rock. She liked it, this intimate and close darkness, their breathing in overlapping patterns.

"I read the letter that you wrote me in my detective's notebook."

"Hmm, yeah. I remember that."

"I read it that day you stayed. After the hayloft."

A chuckle came out of the black, a pleased laugh that made her warm. She smiled in memory as well. "I will always remember that hayloft."

"It was what I needed. Maybe you did too, I don't know-"

"Had been needing it for a while. Needing you."

She grinned and smothered it against her hand, tried not to feel so cocky about it. Failed. She loved that they both just sometimes fell apart with it, needing, wanting. Sometimes it didn't matter how awful the day had been or how broken the other person was, sometimes that connection was imperative simply because of those things.

"Keep talking to me, sweetheart."

She startled out of memories and realized she was drifting, her mind still not quite able to hold her here. She should probably drink more of the shake since the IV would run out today. She should probably work harder to focus.

"Anyway. I read your letter. I was just - I don't know, it's my own notebook and you'd been sitting by the window writing in it and I thought, oh, actually, I was probably thinking about my mother's case more than anything."

"One track mind."

"Shut up," she huffed, rolling her eyes in the darkness.

"Don't roll your eyes at me. It's true."

"You can't see that."

"I can feel it."

"Whatever," she muttered, curling her knees up to her chest for stability. "So I picked it up to see how differently we approached the case. You like having the whole story layered out there, walking through it like you're in the middle of things, and I like the timeline-"

"I know this part already."

"Little less criticism from the peanut gallery."

"Get on with it then."

"Anyway," she exaggerated, felt herself smiling despite it. "I guess I opened it up to the middle of that letter. The first one you wrote for me. It was a little melodramatic, a little bittersweet, but it was so... you."

"I'm melodramatic and bittersweet?"

"Shut up. You know what I mean."

"Not exactly."

"Just let me get to the good part."

"I really wish you would."

"Hush," she chided, laughing now and not able to keep it back. It made her whole body ache to laugh, like the muscles had so atrophied that it physically hurt to shake them out again. "Your letter was all about how I'd changed your life and made it..."

"Richer," he supplied immediately, something choked in his voice that made her pause and breathe, listening to him.

"Richer," she finally echoed. "More than it was. And I'd just been - oh, I don't know. There's something about having done so very well in that hayloft only to be brought up short again by not being able to even climb back down the ladder. I'd been stuck up there and feeling miserable and stupid and-"

"No, Kate."

"Well, I had. Past tense. Forget the dumb emotions. What I'm trying to say is that you wrote me this letter at the exact moment I really needed it. I needed those words, needed to feel like I was worthwhile to you at all. And I don't think I ever explained how vital that was, how everything you did after that seemed... so much more."

"What do you mean?" he said quietly, and this time his voice came from her left, much closer, and she knew he'd almost worked his way around to her. Back to her.

"I'd missed you. I'd spent three months focused on healing myself and then there you were and I wanted to prove myself and prove I could still be your partner - not just in work and that damn case, but in all of this too. In love. That we were complements. And instead I'd gotten myself stuck up in a hayloft all afternoon and well into night, and you'd gone back for wine and pain killers and... and you left me there and I don't know."

He was right at her shoulder now. She could practically feel him. She wanted to reach out and skim her hand at his back but she needed first to say this.

"Left you there. In the hayloft."

She hummed, a note of incredulousness in her own tone because it was stupid. She knew it was. "I just missed you, Castle. And I didn't know how to admit to it then. Didn't know what it really feels like to have you so gone that admitting to missing you doesn't even seem ridiculous."

"You missed me."

"Then. Now. The worst part about being so rough, so easily broken, is not having you to just be here."

She felt his kiss an instant before his mouth found hers, unerringly and perfect, the soft and slow brush of his lips to hers like heat and love.

"I'm here," he breathed out.

"Yes," she sighed, reaching up to cup his face even though she could see absolutely nothing. Still she knew. She saw. "You always come back for me."

"I'd do anything, Kate."

She curled her arms around his neck and brought him against her, brought him so close that the black couldn't touch them.