Close Encounters 11

He heard the thunderstorm crash outside and saw the bathroom mirror flare blue with lightning. He winced and glanced over his shoulder to their bedroom windows, wondered if Kate had gotten back inside before the rain had started.

Castle lifted his chin and studied his neck in the mirror, narrowed his eyes at the strip of scruff that had been itching him all afternoon. He'd been tempted to grow it out just for a change of pace, but he wasn't sure he was going to get past this initial stage.

Kate liked it though; in bed last night she'd scratched her fingers at his jaw over and over right when she was the most tired, her hand curled up under his chin. He loved that feeling, like she couldn't help herself, and so if the itch in his neck was distracting, he'd figure out how to handle it until the beard grew in.

Castle sighed and finished tugging his dress shirt out of his pants, threw it towards the closet, rolling his head on his neck. He ached in strange places, and he knew it was due to being perched on the narrow edge of worry all week, trying to be brave. But Kate had been doing mostly paperwork and computer searches, so it wasn't like she was pushing herself that hard.

If this was all it was, he could handle her type of recovery. He could take it gracefully. Plus he knew a few fun ways to de-stress and let her feel in control again - there was that old friend, his black hood, and the fuzzy purple handcuffs she was always so clever with.

Oh, and the last time they'd gotten a little kinky, it was that-

The thunder crashed and boomed with a ferocious clatter through the house. Suddenly the door alarm shrieked painfully from downstairs, making the hair stand up on his neck as he felt the storm push its way inside.

Kate?

He jerked out of the bathroom and threw himself down the hallway, yanked his gun still in its holster as he scooped it off the stair railing.

"Kate!" he yelled, taking the steps two at a time as his heart pounded in time to the storm beating hard against the house. "Kate!"

A darkness hurtled itself at him before he even made the landing and he rocked back on his heels, nearly brought his weapon up before he realized it was her.

"Kate, what are you-"

"Oh God, Oh God," she cried out, her nails digging into the bare skin of his shoulders. She was drenched, soaked to the bone and still in her work clothes, her hair plastered to her face and her eyes wild. "God, Castle, Castle - I can't - I can't - she's not-"

"Hey, hey, slow down. Slow down, love." He cupped the back of her neck and drew her in against his chest but she fought him, her nails making vicious streaks down his back as she jerked him down the stairs. "Kate, hey now, what's-"

"I can't," she gasped, her body already turning away from his. Before he could catch her, she was hurtling out the wide open door, the thunderstorm pouring in the entryway.

Castle gaped after her, too stunned to move, and then the vicious brutality of the storm dumped a sheet of water inside. He sprinted outside after her, calling her name as he hit the stoop, slammed his hip into the railing with a curse, biting his tongue with the agony of it.

"Kate!" he bellowed, tripping down the stoop and onto the sidewalk. He was drenched in seconds, the wind lashing his hair into his face and making it impossible to see through the deluge. "Beckett!"

"Castle!" She came hard into him from out of nowhere, her fingers scrabbling at his naked torso and gripping brutally. "Oh God, she's gone. She's gone; I can't - I can't-"

He gripped her by the wrists, her skin clammy and slippery with rain, and he jerked her into him. "Kate. Slow down. Tell me what's wrong."

Her face was twisted, a tangled hank of hair snaked across her eyes. She writhed in his grip as if she couldn't stand his touch, and she shook so badly he could barely keep hold of her. Panic attack.

"Beckett."

She stumbled and broke his hold; she turned from him again, wrenching towards the street, but she fell to her knees, face blanched white, body crumpling. Castle lunged for her, scooped her up before her head could hit the curb, and she groaned.

"Kate," he whispered, scared shitless now and completely helpless to understand. Her panic attacks had never made her this - crazy. "Kate, what's going on? What's going on?"

She brushed a hand over her eyes and then her lids snapped open. "Castle. God, I can't find her. I can't find her and she's terrified - she's so afraid - and I don't - it's all my fault - my fault because I couldn't-"

"Who? Who's afraid? Kate, love, take a breath." He sat her up and she struggled to her knees, pushed up off his shoulder. He followed her to her feet and she swayed, eyes slipping shut like she was going to faint, but she reached back and clutched his belt, her wet shirt slapping against his chest.

Her lips were blue.

"Breathe. I need you to breathe. It's just a panic attack-"

"No," she growled, jerking back from him. "It's Sasha. Castle, it's - I can't find her. She's gone."

"You're barefoot," he said.

She was shivering, her hair in her face, her fingers frozen as she gripped his elbow. He shoved her back towards the still-open door, realized he'd dropped his weapon on the stoop.

Shit.

"I lost her, I lost her, I lost her," she was chanting, pushing back on him, trying to get away.

"You're freezing and barefoot and you need to sit down, Kate."

He tried herding her back towards the door, but she ducked under his arm and he had to twist on the spot and grab her by the back of her shirt, wincing when he felt the seams give.

"I have to find her, Castle. I have to get her. God, she's got to be terrified. She hates storms." Kate struggled against him, pleading in her voice, her hand pressing hard against his shoulder as she tried to resist.

"I know; Kate, I got it. I understand. I'll-"

"It's my fault. I couldn't bear to look at her even though I knew she - I knew it made her upset and I-"

Castle scooped her up before she could take another step and he hauled her back inside. "Kate Beckett, you get in the damn house and let me look." He slammed the door on her and clenched his fist so hard he realized he still had his weapon in hand. With a muffled curse, he turned back around and wrenched the front door open once more, the alarm still shrieking, and Kate was standing there.

Crying. Silently. It flayed him alive.

She stared at him. He sighed and laid his weapon on the entry table, held up both his hands in surrender before her. "If you put your shoes on, Kate-"

She jerked towards the coat closet and a pile of running shoes tumbled out; she dug through a few and found her neon sneakers, pulled them on. He wanted to throttle her, wanted to wrap her in blankets and hide her away in their bed, but more than that, he wanted her okay.

So he turned towards the alarm panel and punched in the all-clear code, followed by the false alarm sequence. He was torn between the dog's safety and hers, but he wasn't sure she'd ever forgive herself if something happened to Sasha. So they had to find the dog first, and then they'd deal with whatever break she'd had out there in the thunderstorm.

Kate turned back to him with a sweatshirt in her hands, threw it against his chest. He just managed to catch it when she turned an apprehensive look to him. "I'm not crazy. I haven't lost it. I just - I panicked because she's out there alone and scared, Castle, and she's our - she's our puppy. And I lost her."

"Hey, we'll find her. She's just crawled into a small, tight space to wait out the storm. You know she likes to hide."

Kate nodded and he took the risk of yanking the sweatshirt on over his head, her face disappearing for a moment before he could see her again. But she wasn't on that hysterical edge of panic; she was shivering and blue-tinged and she looked like a drowned rat, but she was solid enough.

She reached for him, pushing her hand into the front pocket of his sweatshirt and hanging on. "We were in the back. But I think there's got to be access to the street, and I don't know - she was gone for... a while. I - I had some kind of..."

He jerked his gaze back to her as he reset the alarm. "What? You had what?"

She shivered and stepped outside into the rain again. She wouldn't look at him. "Just got dizzy for a second."

He reached for her elbow; shit, she was drenched and freezing. "Dizzy? Is that why you went down out there and nearly busted your head open on the curb?"

"Castle. We don't have time for this. Sasha is out there - it's been at least thirty minutes-"

He grit his teeth but she pulled out of his grip, headed around the house away from him, towards the neighbor's. She was a thin, bony figure of a woman, but she was also a warrior.

And he'd better stop fighting against her and start fighting alongside her. Because she was damn well going to get her way.

He'd get to the bottom of that dizzy for a second bullshit the moment they had their dog back.

"Kate," he called out, hurrying to fall in at her side. "First, let's check out the doorways and those basement steps of all the residences, okay?"

She shot him such a grateful look that it made his guts clench. Like he would've left her to do it alone.

"Let's find our puppy," he sighed, sliding his hand down into hers and holding on. At least this way he could be sure she wasn't going to faint again.

She could barely see through the storm, felt only Castle's hand hard around hers as they called for Sasha, his fingers bruising every time the wind whipped her hair around her face. The wet strands snaked and writhed, slapped her cheeks and got in her mouth and eyes, but she was the one who saw the dog first.

"Sasha!" she gasped, stumbling down the steps nearly two blocks from their own home. The dog was low to the ground, soaking wet, trembling, but trying to put a brave face on it.

Kate hauled Castle down after her, both of them tripping as they hit a bicycle chained next to the railing, falling towards the dog. Sasha yelped and whined at them, crammed tightly into one corner where the concrete stair met the wall, and Kate reached her first, laid her hands over the poor beast's panting body.

"Castle, your sweatshirt. Give me your sweatshirt; she's soaked."

She stroked Sasha's fur, flung the water off the ends of her fingers, went back and caressed the sharp rise of her muzzle. "It's okay, honey, you're okay. We're here; we found you."

She felt the damp sweatshirt at her shoulder and reached back for it, brought it over Sasha's trembling sides, wrapping her up. Castle muscled in past her, gathered the dog in his arms and stood. Sasha licked him weakly, chin and cheeks and lips, and Kate kept her fingers tucked into the dog's collar, couldn't let go as they mounted the steps up to the sidewalk again.

Castle carried Sasha the whole way home, slogging through wind-driven rain, their faces against the storm. Kate could feel every ache in her body now, the sting of her scraped skin, but she kept up Castle's pace, just wanted to get inside with the dog where it was warm.

At their own front stoop once more, Kate rushed ahead and pushed open the front door - which she realized they'd left completely unlocked. The alarm beeped at her and she used a shaking finger to disarm it, felt Castle at her back with the dog as he squeezed into the entryway.

"Put her in the kitchen," Kate said, nudging him that way.

Castle went without a sound and she knew he was furious with her, but she toed off her sneakers and shucked her soaking wet clothes, rubbing her thighs where the material had chafed as she'd run. The soles of her feet were raw, her skinned arm was letting her know it wasn't happy, but she followed Castle back through to the kitchen.

He'd grabbed a towel from the clean stack on top of the dryer down in the basement and poor Sasha was curled up in a tight little ball on the tile, ducking Castle's rough handling.

"Rick," she sighed, taking over the job from him. He sank back on his heels for a second, watching her swaddle the puppy, and then he made a noise in his throat and stood, dragging off his own clothes.

"I'll get you something dry," he rasped, leaving her in the kitchen in just her underwear.

Whatever. Not the time to coddle him.

Even though Sasha couldn't be called a puppy anymore, Kate still soothed her and cradled the dog in her lap, taking care to dry between the pads of her feet, wipe down her belly, smooth the fur at her ruff again and again as Sasha bristled with every clap of thunder.

"You're okay, wolf. We found you. Got scared, huh? I should've taken you back inside, and I'm so sorry. But you're okay now. I got you."

Castle reappeared in sweats and a black t-shirt, dropped yoga pants and a t-shirt for her onto the kitchen table. He'd included one of his plaid shirts as well, the soft one she loved, and it made her heart soften.

"I'll take her," he murmured. "You get out of those wet..."

"Panties?" she murmured, arching her eyebrow at him.

That remote, blank fury broke on his face and he sighed, but she could see she'd gotten him, made him laugh somewhere under that super spy shell.

She waited for him to sit down and take the dog from her and then she stood, leaning down to kiss the corner of his eye. "Thank you."

He was cradling the dog like a baby, like she'd been doing, and he only shook his head. "Kate."

"Let me get dressed. Then you can yell at me all you want."

"I don't want," he sighed.

She scrubbed her fingers through his wet hair, kissed him again, and turned to get her clothes.

Whatever fury he'd felt towards her had begun to recede as he'd carried the dog through the rain. He'd felt the shiver and shake of Sasha's body against his, the low whine in her throat, the way she kept licking his chin and neck in submission. As if to say, Please don't leave me out here.

And he hadn't been able to untangle that impression with the last few miles with Kate on the Russian steppe, carrying her home.

So when she sank down on the tile floor next to him and propped her chin on his shoulder, her chest pressed to his back and her arms coming around his waist, the last of it drained away.

He took a hand off the dog's back and lifted it to palm the side of his wife's face, closed his eyes at the clammy touch of her cheek. She kissed his hand, his wrist, lifted her mouth to his neck and hummed so that the cool of her skin was offset by the heat rising in his.

"Kate," he murmured.

"I'm okay. The dog's okay. It was just an unfortunate confluence of events."

"Using the five dollar words doesn't make me feel better," he muttered. But it did. She was so smart it was sexy, and it helped that her fingers slipped under his t-shirt and stroked at his skin; it helped that he could smell him on her in that plaid shirt. "I can't believe you did that."

"Castle, I - the storm put the wolf in her and I closed my eyes. I just closed my eyes for a moment - a few minutes - and when it started to rain, she wasn't there."

"Not that. You. You. Stumbling around outside in a lightning storm with no shoes-" He bit it off, closed his eyes again, sank down into the warm feeling of the dog in his lap and his wife pressed to his back. "I'm trying to be brave, but holy shit, Kate, you're making me piss my pants with it."

She choked on a laugh that made him smile back, but she pressed closer, one knee shifting over his thigh like she was trying to share his lap with the dog. He huffed something at her and let go of her wet hair to draw his arm around her, keep her balanced, and the dog wriggled in the wrappings of the towel to greet Kate as well.

They were a hopeless, tangled mess but none of them would move apart.

"I don't mean to do that," she said, her mouth nudging his cheek, trailing a kiss. "It's not my intention. I couldn't find her. And she was alone. And-"

"I get it," he said heavily. Because he did. And therapy and working her ass off at the office with him and trying to get back into things because she didn't want to be that broken woman in a Russian cave. He got it. "Just..."

"I know."

He nodded and turned his head into hers, their cheeks bumping, noses nuzzling. He felt her breath against his lips and opened his mouth to say something else, anything, but she pressed a soft kiss to everything he might have said.

"Forgive me?" she whispered.

"Nothing to forgive."

"Love me?" Demure lift of her eyes, tilt of her head, innocent and guileless and seductive.

"That better not be a question," he growled, making her chuckle, her lips spread into a smile. "Because there's everything to love. You just braved - barefoot, I might add - a crazy thunderstorm to rescue our idiot puppy."

She gave a little caught-sigh of a laugh, pulling her face back from his to look at him. "And my brave husband. Carrying our idiot puppy home."

Sasha gave a whining yelp and wriggled between them, her damp tail flashing across Castle's knee. He grinned and turned to Kate. "She heard you."

"Heard you, you mean."

"Yeah, but you kept it going," he smirked.

She flicked her finger in his ear and hunched over Sasha, loving on her, letting the dog lick her face as she murmured nonsense into the those pointed, eager ears. Castle leaned back against the kitchen wall, his lap filled with - sigh - both his girls.

"We need another male around here," he muttered. "Balance out this love fest."

She laughed and lifted her head to him. "Don't think for a second that a little boy wouldn't take my side in everything."

He narrowed his eyes. But yeah. That was probably how it would go. "You're irresistible. All the Castle males will fall all over themselves for you."

A faint current of unease slithered through his guts, the reminder that his father was still on a substation in North Africa, the station keeper giving Castle only terse replies to his queries.

"Don't go," she whispered suddenly, her arm sliding around his neck and drawing his gaze back to her. "Don't. Stay here with me."

"I'm here," he said.

She studied him, her fingers curling at the nape of his neck. "I'm hungry and we should eat one of your wonderful dinners, but can we bring everything upstairs and curl up in bed like we used to in my apartment?"

"Of course," he said immediately. "Everyone can stick close. We'll get warmed up again."

And the triumphant smile on her face made him realize they'd started something. A precedent. A tradition. Sometime in the future, it would be the three of them and another warm little body snuggled down with them, his only dinner a bottle at first, but over time...

His throat closed up and he crashed forward into Kate, wrapping his free arm around her so tightly that she gasped and murmured in his ear even as Sasha squirmed and whined between them.

"All of it," he whispered, didn't even try to make himself heard over the storm and the dog and Kate's words. "I want all of it with you."

He could be brave.

She'd known that Rick Castle was a man of depth when it came to his love for her, but she hadn't realized just how tender and wide that made his heart. He'd always been her badass spy, and she'd taken it for granted that he was badass in everything. Kate had struggled in the CIA because she couldn't compartmentalize that far, so the idea that Castle could when it came to the job but couldn't when it came to her...

She'd just never imagined.

Their dinner dishes were on the floor beside their bed but she wouldn't get up to take them downstairs, not just yet. Castle laid on his stomach with his head in her lap and his arms around her waist, and Sasha was snuggled up against his side; Kate was the only one sitting up in bed, leaning against the headboard. She felt like the guardian of their little family while the thunderstorm waged war outside.

Castle wasn't asleep though; in fact, his eyes roamed the room, seemed to be hypnotized by the forks of lightning that licked the sky. Kate stroked her fingers through his hair, arranging and rearranging the flop of bangs over his forehead and the arrows down his neck. It'd grown longer and he hadn't gotten it cut yet; the ends were smooth and oily now from her fingers, soft.

She made designs on his scalp and traced her love in runes along his neck, scratched her fingers at the scruff growing in at his cheeks. She spread her palm to it, rubbed slowly to feel the rasp of it all the way up her arm and into her belly.

He gathered in a long inhalation, his whole body moving with it, and she saw his eyelids fall deceptively shut.

And then, just as she'd thought, he used the quiet to rumble a question out at her in the storm dark bedroom. "What did you mean - you were dizzy?"

Kate had no reason to hide anymore - all of her natural inclination to close ranks now meant curling in around him, the soft center of his generous heart. She felt her body tilting over his even as she formed her answer, felt herself canting towards him as if she could draw him inside her.

"I was doing a pretty good job of staving off a panic attack," she said quietly. The thunderstorm boomed, cracked straight through the house, and Sasha jerked in the bed but didn't whine. Still, Castle lifted his arm and encompassed the dog, shielding her.

"And then?" he asked.

She didn't need the prompt but it brought to mind once more how much she'd kept her mouth closed when it came to giving out these kinds of details - and it only hurt him, the not knowing, the wondering, the fear. "And then just when I felt better, more in control, I just - I fell over."

"That why your arm's skinned up?"

"Yeah. Thankfully, I'd already sat down outside, getting a handle on things. It was a wash of dizziness, Castle, and I could stand up after a second and it was fine. But then Sasha had disappeared and the lightning started and..."

"All that," he sighed. "God, I'm so tired. It feels like we've been at this day for days."

"One day for days?" she hummed, amusement filtering her voice. "I know what you mean."

"This whole summer has felt like that," he said, turning a little onto his shoulder so that he was looking up at her.

Kate skimmed her fingers down the side of his face as she leaned in over him, rubbing her thumb at his jaw, the sensation of his almost-beard making her insides feel raw. "It's been one thing after another."

"We're staying stateside for a while," he promised, lifting a hand to her in the darkness and playing with her hair. She went still as he fiddled with the ends, flipping it over and over his fingers, wrapping it around his thumb. It made her skin light up with sparks, shots of electricity right to her guts, curling her toes.

"I've got to re-train," she said finally. "And catch up on what we've missed. Mal was telling me about the network crash just last week."

"He's on top of it," Castle said quickly, dropping her hair. "But yeah. Yeah, you're right. I'm in charge and I need to damn well act like it."

"You're okay. That wasn't a slight," she defended, brushing her own fingers through her hair to put it behind her ear. He lowered his hand and turned back onto his stomach once more, his nose a hard line at her inner thigh.

"You know that guy from IT with the long hair?" he said.

"Bryce? Something."

"Him."

"What about him?"

"I think he has those photos," Castle said carefully, his words a mumble against her thigh.

She stroked slowly down his spine and back up again, his t-shirt wrinkling under her hand. "What photos, baby?"

"Of you."

"Of me?"

"And Vadim."

"Oh," she murmured. "Does that bother you?"

"Does it bother you?"

She curled her hand at his nape. "No, Rick. It doesn't bother me."

He sighed, his arms drawing in and propping him up to look at her. "It bothers me. Less now though. But."

"I know," she murmured. "Still, you knew Black would have someone as back-up."

"Used to be Deleware. I always knew what was coming with that squirrelly little son of a bitch. But Bryce was hired recently. I don't know him."

"So get to know him. Does he know about - everything?"

"I doubt it. Black doesn't let people in on the whole picture. As we've found for ourselves." Castle shifted in bed and sat up, making Sasha whine and nose her way closer. Kate moved to one side and Castle joined her at the headboard, patting his lap for the dog.

Sasha yawned and stretched, acting so nonchalant, and then lightning flashed terribly across the room and in a dart of pure panic, the dog was pressed hard into Kate's ribs, her head buried in the pillow between her and Castle.

"Oh, shh, hush, Sasha. You're okay." She curled her arms around the dog and petted her until the shaking stopped; Castle gave her an amused lift of his eyebrow. Kate had to bite back the urge to compare what she'd done for him not minutes ago for what she was doing for the puppy now.

Who knew her badass spy was such a big baby?

"What do we do about Bryce?" he asked finally.

"Keep close. Keep an eye on him. The photos don't matter to me, Rick. But whatever he might be telling Black - that matters."

"I've put in a call to the substation where I sent him. I should be able to make contact with the keeper, see what the hell is going on over there."

"My guess is your father's got him wrapped around his finger," Kate snorted. "But we'll see. Honestly, Rick, if Black stays in North Africa and leaves Europe - and us - the hell alone..."

"But will he?"

She sighed. "I don't know."

Castle reached over and hauled Sasha into his lap so he could scoot closer to her, his head coming to her shoulder. She smiled to herself and brought her hand up to the side of his face, placed a soft kiss to the skin at his wrinkled, worried forehead.

"And Bracken," he added quietly.

"We're working on that already. Me and Mal went through some of the bank accounts today."

"Oh?" Castle murmured, lifting his head. Both eyebrows raised. "Because of the arms smuggler. Oh. Smart. That is smart, Beckett."

"I know," she said simply, smiling at him.

"Good, we'll keep on that. In fact, I might try to use Bryce on that. Bracken was my father's... nemesis for years. They hated each other; Black wanted so badly to assassinate him that he was willing to risk me to do it."

Kate went still, the thought revolving in her head. She hadn't considered that before. How Castle had been at risk in that mission when he'd been playing dead, how slapdash it was for Black, how he'd taken a chance with Castle's life just to murder Senator Bracken. And Black never took chances with his son's life.

This was serious. They were playing with fire involving Bryce in this. But. Bracken out there and free was a threat to their family.

"Okay," she said quietly. "Bryce. And he can feed that information back to Black and..."

"Maybe they'll damn well take care of each other," Castle grunted.

Kate pushed on his shoulder, rolling her eyes at him, but the idea held a grim appeal that she didn't want to look at too closely. "And you?" she asked.

"We damn well take care of each other too," he said, but he had a wicked grin on his face and a smile widening the lines at his eyes.

She really had taken care of him, hadn't she? She'd broken him a little, made him ragged like he'd said, but she'd made it better too.

"We take care of each other," she agreed.