Close Encounters

"Good job, doc," she whispered, winking at him.

Castle smiled back, and Kate slid in close enough to wrap her arm around her husband's waist. She watched her son as he slept, laid out alongside Sasha, the dog curled protectively around their new charge - Tock.

"A couple stitches," he murmured. "That's all. Got good experience working on you."

She pressed her lips together; she knew he'd wanted to stitch up the cut on her thigh. "It's fine, Rick. Bleeding stopped before we even got on the plane."

"I worry."

"It's not cute."

"That's not what you said earlier, baby."

She snorted at him and shook her head, but she couldn't help tugging on his belt loop and drawing him after her. She went to the couch, stepping carefully over the tangle of bodies on the floor, puppy and dog and boy, and Castle came with her. They sank down together, and he twined around her, arms and legs both, her back to his chest.

Castle's chin sank down on top of her shoulder, his cheek rubbing against hers. She brought her hand over his at her stomach, stroked the backs of his fingers as she watched their son.

"So I guess he gets a dog of his own after all?" she said.

Castle chuckled, shifted behind her so that she could lean back, her cheek against his shoulder now, fitting in against him. The sun was beginning to rise after their long, middle-of-the-night emergency surgery, and her body was heavy with exhaustion.

"I guess so," Castle answered, his lips at her ear. "Though we should ask around, see if someone's lost a dog. Before we tell James he can keep it."

"Not a wolf though," Kate said.

Her eyes were falling shut and her senses narrowing down to the point of Castle's palm at her thigh, his other hand stroking lightly along her ribs.

Ribs. His ribs. "Am I hurting you?"

"Already mostly healed, Kate. And no. Not a wolf. Maybe a wolf-dog like Sasha - somewhere back there."

"James is calling him Tock," Kate smiled, tilting her head back to look at Castle. "I read him The Phantom Tollbooth - he adores that book, especially when Milo and Tock rescue the princesses from the castle of air."

Castle laughed softly at her ear, his palm spreading wider over her torso, his pinky finger inching under her shirt. The heat bloomed between them, easy and right. "I might have to read that book now."

"You didn't tell me how you guys found him. Why was James up in the middle of the night?"

Castle's hand paused. "Dream," he sighed finally.

Kate stiffened and the twist of guilt on Castle's face made her force herself to relax. Nothing was wrong with him, with either of them, nothing was wrong. If James ever did... need the regimen, they had enough, plenty; they had what it would take.

"He's fine, Kate."

"He's just a little... super," she murmured, reassuring herself. "A dream?"

"I'd call it a little more than super," Castle said carefully. "He woke me because he dreamed a dog hurt in the snow and so we went out there and it started snowing and there was Tock."

She pulled out of his embrace, crossing her arms over her chest and chewing on her lower lip. "Castle. Are we having this conversation? Because the last time I brought this up, you nearly bit my head off."

"Last time he was a nine month old walking a little ahead of schedule. Now he's... dreaming. And the dreams have some basis in reality, Kate."

She shivered and glanced at their son, side by side with his best friend and the little rescued puppy. "One dream, Castle."

"No. This is two."

"Two?" she hissed, her head jerking around to stare at him. "Castle."

"The first one wasn't - I didn't realize until after it had already come and gone. I should have said something, but I didn't want it to be true. For your sake, because of - and for mine too. And for his. I don't know what this means for him."

"Wait. Back up. The first dream he had. Tell me." She made an effort to relax, chill out. James was fine; healthy check-ups his whole life if maybe a little too healthy. He'd never been sick a day in his life. It wasn't exactly normal, but it was normal for a Castle.

"Remember when that building in Samara went up?"

She nodded, her throat closing up, the remembered sensations of ash and intense heat. She hated Samara, hated that part of the Russian steppe. It'd been a last-minute operation and necessary - they'd saved a young man's life and successfully exfiltrated their agent under cover - but she would never be completely at ease there.

"You said - a hunch," she murmured, closing her eyes. "It wasn't a hunch."

"It was. Honestly, Kate, I don't know that I... it was a combination of things. The building had been tagged with a riot of graffiti. I just happened to see one word in Russian before we headed inside."

"Which word?"

"Everything."

She murmured the Russian word and shook her head. "So?"

"That's... our word," he said, shrugging his shoulders at her. "I mean, kinda stupid, I know. To have a word, but we-"

"It's not stupid," she said quietly. "You're everything to me, Castle. I wouldn't say that word lightly."

"I don't take it lightly," he rumbled. His voice sounded thick, serious. He was staring at her. "It's a weighted word for us - but in English. And seeing it scrawled on the side of a building shouldn't have meant anything."

"But it did."

"James had a dream. He told me he was reading funny words. At the time, I just figured his sleeping brain was reordering letters or whatever. But he spelled out the word he saw: B-e-c-b."

"Oh, oh that's - if you don't know Russian, and you looked at весь you would spell it with English letters. Oh, God."

"Yeah."

She pressed her hand to her forehead, mind racing. "It's... okay, it's a strange coincidence. But Castle, it could be anything at all. I don't believe in psychics or ESP or - I don't even know. All that stuff seems true because you want it to be true, but it's really generalities that could apply to anyone."

"We don't know, Kate. That's the point. But it became a message to me, just as you said. Applying it to me, it meant something in that moment. And so I yanked us out of there."

Goose bumps crawled across her skin. She felt unnerved by the strange connection it presented.

"Okay, then," she whispered. "Your DNA is in him. And we both have to admit that we don't know what it does. We have no way of knowing, Rick."

He bowed his head and rubbed at his eyes. Sometimes he had headaches now, because of the regimen?, but that was something else they had no way of knowing. All of it was unknown, and at least James had his father going ahead of him, trailblazing.

"We're in uncharted territory here, sweetheart," she murmured, drawing her arms around his neck and sliding into his lap. She closed her eyes to feel him breathe, every rise and fall of his chest, the clear sound of his heart beating.

"He's fine," Castle said. His hand cupped the back of her head, fingers tangling in her hair. "I'm fine. We're good, Kate. I promise."

"I've started believing in your promises," she sighed. "Even though I shouldn't. You shouldn't. Life can turn out so differently from what we intend."

"Life is already what we intend, isn't it?" His forehead lifted from hers so she opened her eyes, saw him nod towards the sleeping bodies on the floor. "We intended that. And this here." His hand released her hair and trailed around her neck, down to her chest, pressing his fingers to her heart. "This between us. Intentional, Kate."

She nodded, closing her hand around his, keeping him there. "It's work, and I choose it, and even if loving you isn't really something I ever meant to do, I don't know what I'd be without this."

"There will be no without."

Empty promises from any other man. But she believed him, believed in him, them, and what they did together. They'd created that unique boy asleep with his dogs, they'd created the force of nature that was their burning, thought not consuming, love for each other, and they'd done it against the odds.

"No without," she echoed. Her mouth came to his cheek, the give of skin and the scrape of his scruff at her lips, raw. She brushed back and forth, tantalizing them both, her body ready to accept anything he had to offer.

"We will do," he gruffed, "whatever we have to do to preserve us. A few dreams can't hurt us."

"I know," she confessed. "I believe. And if a few dreams save our lives, bring us back to each other, then I don't care how or why."

She cradled his face in her hands, let herself inspect the dark pupil and the fierce love that radiated from it in bursts of blue that were seamed with light.

He came in and broke her concentration with a kiss, lips to lips, mouths opening now and swallowing stumbling breaths, tongues and heat and intensity. She pushed her hands under his shirt and climbed his abs, pressed her palms to his chest to feel him.

"Let's leave the wolf pack out here," he murmured. "Take you to the bedroom and do this right."

"Yes," she insisted, wanting his shirt off, his hands on her, wanting harder and his hand over her mouth to hold it in. "Castle, now."

He stood from the couch, wrapping an arm under her ass to hold her up, and carried her off even as the sun finally broke from the earth and entered the cabin with grey-white, dazzling dawn.

Beckett wrapped her fingers around the mug to keep them warm, brought her knees up to the porch swing. It was snowing again, but the flakes were loose and light, lacing the tree branches and dappling the porch railing. She'd brought the quilt from the bottom of the bed to block the wind, but she'd also pulled on one of Castle's FBI sweatshirts and stolen one of his Christmas presents - thick wool socks.

"Uh-huh. Thought I'd find you out here."

She glanced over her shoulder and saw her father standing in the doorway, shaking his head at her. He was wearing the gaudy red button-up sweater that James had picked out for him in a fit of sudden independence. Deer stags were knitted with brown yarn into the pockets. It looked like her father adored it; she should have known.

He shifted and called back into the cabin, "She's out here."

From inside, Carrie shouted back, "Ask her if she wants special egg nog."

"You want?"

Kate laughed. "Yeah, actually. My coffee is getting cold."

"Here, let me take your mug and I'll have your husband bring it out."

She leaned to the side and reached across the distance, holding out the coffee cup to her father. Jim took it and winked at her, let the porch door slam shut after him. The sound brought Sasha slinking around the side of the house and up the steps, her tread careful and slow.

"Hey, my sweet girl," Kate called to her. She held her hand out and Sasha came up to her, licking and nuzzling Kate's palm. "You feel better in the cold, huh? Or maybe the puppy was getting on your nerves."

Sasha woofed low in her throat and settled down right below the porch swing, her muzzle on her paws. Kate leaned back against the wooden slats of the swing and the door opened again.

Castle came out with two mugs, handing her one.

"Thanks."

"No problem. It's extra spicy, Carrie said."

"Did Mitch...?"

"He's not coming," Castle sighed, sinking down onto the swing beside her. She had to scoot over and rearrange the quilt to include him, but as always, he was hot-blooded against her, heating her up.

"Mm, you feel good," she murmured, dipping her mouth to the mug. She smelled the rum in the egg nog and when it hit her tongue and slipped down her throat, it created a little burn that spread through her limbs.

"What're you doing out here?"

She shrugged. "Miss my mom." But it wasn't entirely the truth. Christmas was - had been awful to her once upon a time. He'd been infected with a super bug that had nearly stolen him from her, and all their talk about James's dreams, about the regimen, had brought it up again. The grief of watching him suffocate in a hospital bed would never leave her.

"Your mom." His arm spread over the back of the porch swing and his fingers touched her shoulder. "And?"

She chewed on her lower lip to keep the heaviness out of her voice when she answered. "Yeah. And."

He knew; he knew now what it was like for her, how sometimes she couldn't battle past that feeling that she might lose him. Even after all this time, here it was, another ghost to haunt her at Christmas.

"Not happening, Kate," he said quietly. "Not going anywhere. Neither is James."

She came into him, let him take her weight, and some of the sadness as well, and the cold winter air pushed sharp and clear in her lungs to dispel the malaise even as his heat warmed her. Alive, alive, breathing under her ear.

"It's how it is," she answered finally. "No matter the house filled up in there, or the way James looked when he opened his Army knife - just how it is."

"I know," he said. His fingers came to her neck and squeezed, his thumb bumping over her spine. "Next time grab me though? I'll come out into the cold with you, sweetheart."

She smiled, her hands around the mug, and took another sip to delay the inevitable. They should probably go back inside, back with her father and Carrie, his mother and their son. But the twilight through the trees and the bare dusting of snow made her content to stay, content to feel his heart beating under her, a steady assurance, a promise of the future.

The door opened and Kate turned her head, saw James standing on the porch. The puppy had been appropriated by Martha, who'd exclaimed over the poor thing, so James's hands were empty.

But she bet the Army knife was in his pocket.

"Hey," Castle said, first the break the silence. As usual. "You cold standing out here?"

James shrugged. "Not really," he replied, eyeing their nest with something like apprehension. "It's cold out here but I'm warm."

Like his father, Kate thought. Jim had cropped James's hair too short on the back and the sides, but the front hung over his brow in spikes, hiding his snow-blue eyes. Those were Castle's too, the eyes, and she wondered what other genetic markers her super spy had left on their son.

Sleeping DNA. She had to believe that whatever the future held for their son, she and Castle could make it right, make it work - just as they had made it work since they'd met.

James moved towards the swing and dropped down on his haunches beside Sasha. "She's getting old, isn't she?"

Kate sighed. "Yeah, honey. She is. She's an old dog."

"She has trouble on the stairs now. I know. I seen her." James reached out and petted Sasha slowly, moving over her nose, back along the top of her head, and down to her ruff. "She follows me when I'm out in the woods, but she doesn't run any more."

Castle shifted forward and wrapped his fingers around Sasha's tail, petting. "You're smart to notice all of that, Jay. She probably shouldn't be trying to keep up with you. She might need to take more naps during the day too."

James put his elbow on his knee and his head on his fist. "But I still love her."

Kate lifted her toe and nudged his knee, making him rock back. "That's good. You don't stop loving her just because she can't play with you like she used to. And now you'll have Tock to wrestle and be rough with."

"After Tock gets better, you mean."

Castle chuckled. "You're right. After he gets better."

James lowered his torso and put his head near Sasha's, wrapped his arms around her. "I won't play rough with you and I'll let you sleep all you want and I'll be gentle. I promise."

Kate lowered her foot and brushed it over the top of Sasha's body, watching her son love on the dog. He was always down with the dog, from the time he'd been a baby, fascinated with their Sasha, reaching for her fur with both hands. Now James lifted his head, giving them both a closed-faced look, from his mother to his father.

"Can I crawl in with you?"

"Of course," Kate said, unwrapping the quilt once more. Castle was already reaching out for James, drawing him up with a hand around the kid's upper arm. He crawled in with them, a little stiff, her reserved boy, but he laid his cheek against his mother's shoulder and let Kate tuck the blanket around the three of them.

Castle wrapped his arms around them, tugged both of them into his chest, layered together on the porch swing. His nose nuzzled into Kate's ear, a puff of breath as he teased her, and suddenly James twisted around, wrapped his thin arms around their necks, hugging them tightly.

Surprised, Kate hugged him back, felt Castle at her side doing the same. She rubbed her palm through his spiky hair and kissed his cheek softly.

"You okay, James?"

"It's a good Christmas," he mumbled. "Right? It's a really good Christmas."

"Yeah," Castle said quietly. "All of us together, the new puppy in our family-"

"My Army knife."

Kate laughed, brushed her hand through her son's hair again. "Let's not forget the knife."

Castle caught her eyes, his grin all too smug. See? I told you every boy needs a knife.

"I had this dream too," James said then.

Castle went still, as if listening and studying, but Kate pulled enough away to look at her son. "You had this dream?"

"Yeah. It's a good dream. I like this dream the most. Christmas is my favorite."

Kate felt her eyes swim, but Castle's fingers gripped her neck and pulled her down to him. Instead of finding anything to say to that, her son's heartfelt contentment, she kept her silence, taking James's lead, and they stayed curled up on the porch swing together, a family, watching the snow drift through the dark sky.

Stay Tuned for New Year's Eve/Day - a Castle Christmas Special post: Advent