I needed some help on the logistics of this one and I came to you guys on Twitter a few weeks ago and received SO MANY suggestions. I couldn't use them all, but even the ones I didn't end up using got the wheels turning and allowed me to finish this one, so thank you!
#20: What if… they get handcuffed together and trapped in a basement – à la Cuffed – during 3x01 instead, right after spending the entire summer apart?
He loves this dream.
He's been having variations of it all summer and he never wants it to stop.
Him and Kate.
Sometimes they're overtly sexual, leaving him hot and bothered. Actually... that's what happens most of the time. But sometimes it's more normal, the everyday moments he longs to experience with her. Today is like that. It's softer, more tender. He's in bed with her but they're not naked. They're just sleeping side by side, her head pillowed on his bicep.
Castle sighs contentedly. The dreams aren't usually quite this real. He can feel the pressure of her head against his arm, is acutely aware of the scent of cherries infiltrating his nostrils. Huh. He's never been able to smell her in his dreams before.
He can feel his brain inching towards wakefulness, but he fights it for as long as he can. He knows what reality awaits him when the last vestiges of sleep fall away. It's the same one he's been in all summer, alone and miserable at the Hamptons, missing her fiercely but unable to get her off his mind as he struggles to finish Naked Heat.
The space was supposed to help. It was supposed to allow him a chance to get over her, now that her heart belonged to another man.
Gina was supposed to help, too. Spending his summer with another woman should have been the perfect way to get Beckett off his mind. And it had worked at first. Back when he was still so hurt by her rejection that Gina's presence had been a comfort. But Gina headed back to the city after just two weeks, following the fourth time she awoke in the middle of the night to hear him dreaming about Kate.
Despite his efforts, Castle's eyes pry themselves open, blinking rapidly to adjust to the light in the room. Or, rather, the lack of light. Even in his half-asleep state, he realizes something isn't right. With all the giant windows, his Hamptons house is never this dark.
He glances around the room, assesses his unknown surroundings. It's dimly lit, light peeking in through a small window, but no overhead electrical sources that he can see. Wherever he is, it's small. There's a giant rectangular object near the opposite wall, but that's about all he can make out.
Castle turns his head to the left, slowly becoming aware of the scent of cherries that's still overwhelming him despite the disappearance of his dream. His eyes land on Beckett, eyes closed, her head on his bicep and chest rising and falling softly in time with her breathing.
He does a double take.
He's obviously still dreaming.
Castle raises his right hand, pinches himself in the side and flinches in pain. Okay, so this is real then? He's not still dreaming?
He furrows his brow. He doesn't remember Beckett coming out to the Hamptons. He doesn't remember driving back to the city, either. And even if he has somehow made it back to Manhattan with no memory of completing the trip, he hasn't decided if he's going back to the precinct. Longing for her up close is liable to be just as painful as missing her from afar. As evidenced by his current situation.
Yeah. This is not ideal. He's feeling a sudden need to insert a substantial amount of distance between them.
Castle attempts to gently maneuver his arm from beneath her head and sit up, only to find himself tugged back down by a harsh pressure around his wrist and he falls back to his elbows.
What the...? He's handcuffed? To her?
His sudden movements seem to have startled Kate awake and her eyes fly open, wide and searching in the muted light until they land on him.
"Castle?"
"Uh, hey."
"What're you... when..." she stammers, brow furrowed. "I thought you were in the Hamptons?"
Okay, so she's clearly as confused as he is.
"So did I."
She takes a moment to look around the room, observe and assess her surroundings. "Where are we?"
"I have no idea."
"I really don't..." she pauses again, brow still heavily furrowed. "What's the last thing you remember?"
"Being in the Hamptons," he answers. "You?"
"Going to the precinct this morning."
"Was I... there?"
"No, I haven't seen you in months," she snaps.
Wait. Is she angry at him for leaving? He thought she'd be thrilled to have him out of her life.
"We must've been drugged," she decides before he can formulate a reply.
"Uh, yeah, but that's not the worst of our problems."
"What?"
Castle lifts his left wrist until it tugs on hers, drawing her attention.
She whips her head to the left, then back to him. "What the hell? Did you do this?"
"Why would I cuff us?"
"Well I didn't do it."
Castle sighs heavily. "Obviously there's something else going on here."
"Ya think?" she snaps rhetorically as she pushes herself up into a seated position and begins rooting around with her free hand. "My key is gone."
"For the cuffs?"
"So are my badge and gun," she continues. "And my phone."
Castle pats his pockets, finds them all empty. "So is mine. And my wallet and keys."
"Great. So we're cuffed together in a creepy basement with no cell phones," she summarizes.
"Well, I mean... someone will eventually notice we're gone, right?" he offers, aiming for optimism.
"Martha and Alexis?" Kate asks.
"Not if they think I'm still in the Hamptons," he answers. "Though if Alexis doesn't hear from me all day she might start to worry."
"Gina?" she asks, and he doesn't miss the tightening of her facial muscles as she says the name.
Castle huffs a self-deprecating laugh. "There's a reason we got divorced the first time around."
"Oh."
"Demming?"
She drops her gaze to her lap, eyes falling closed.
"You broke up?" he asks. "When?"
"It doesn't matter," Kate answers through gritted teeth. "We need to find a way out of here."
It takes some finagling but they manage to get to their feet. It's awkward, and the first two attempts end in one of them pulling the other off balance, but at least they've figured out how to stand now. Whoever did this to them hooked their left wrists together, meaning they have to either face each other with their linked arms meeting in the middle, or one of them has to uncomfortably stretch an arm across the other's body in order to walk side by side.
"Seriously?" Castle huffs. It's bad enough that he's stuck in close quarters with her; but to be physically chained to her?
Sometimes the universe has a cruel sense of humor.
"Do Ryan and Esposito know you're here?" he asks as they adjust to their new, frustrating proximity. Kate is glancing all around the room, eyes flitting from place to place, frantically searching for their way out.
"No," she answers. "They're following up another lead."
"Great."
"Do you see a light switch?"
Castle glances around the darkened cement room. "No."
Kate turns towards one side of the room just as Castle takes a step in the opposite direction and their arms catch in the middle, the metal of the cuffs cutting into their wrists and shoulders being yanked against their sockets.
"Castle," she hisses, eyes flashing in anger. "Where are you even going?"
"Why do you always have to lead?" he snaps at the same time. He doesn't know why she's so angry at him, but it's making him furious as well.
"Because I'm the cop. Being in the lead is my job." She tugs her arm back to her side, off-balancing him and sending him stumbling into her. Castle trips over his own foot, slams into her.
"Castle," she hisses again.
"Are you always like this in the morning?"
She fixes him with a livid glare.
He bites back an angry retort, gestures stiffly with his free hand. "Fine, lead the way."
They find a light switch, but with the illumination they can see how solid the walls are and that there's no door or window they have any chance of getting through. The only thing they have to work with is a giant metal freezer that's sealed with a padlock – not that they probably want to know what's inside it, Castle thinks.
"Wait a second," he says suddenly.
"What?"
"There was a phone call."
"When?"
"I'm remembering something," he explains. "From before. A woman called me."
"Of course she did."
"No, not…" he huffs an annoyed sigh. "Not like that. She was an acquaintance. She called me and said she was in trouble."
"What kind of trouble?"
"I don't know," Castle furrows his brow, squints as though forcing the burgeoning memory into focus. "I don't remember if she told me."
"Did you go help her?"
"I must have," he assumes. "How else would I have ended up here?"
Kate tilts her head, shrugs one shoulder. It makes sense.
"I don't remember where I went, though. Or how I got there."
Contemplative silence falls for a long moment before Kate speaks suddenly. "There was an apartment."
"How do you know?"
"I'm remembering too," she explains. "Whatever they gave us must be wearing off. I remember an apartment."
"Following up a lead?"
"Probably."
"So then… I was at the apartment too?"
"What's the name of the woman who called you?" she asks suddenly, eyes flashing with a flicker of understanding.
"Maya," he answers. "Maya Santori."
Kate's face falls, and in the split second before she speaks, comprehension dawns on him as well. "Castle, Maya Santori is the name of the victim."
Armed with a renewed bout of motivation now that they have a preliminary understanding of how they ended up here, Castle and Kate redouble their escape efforts. There's a hatch in the ceiling, and if they can just slide the freezer underneath it and climb on top, he can probably hoist her up there to open it.
Their attempts to move it, however, end in heavy breathing and sweaty foreheads, the freezer unwilling to budge from its position.
Castle runs his free hand over his forehead, nods in the direction of the padlock. "I can open this. I'm just not sure we want to."
Kate isn't sure she wants to know what's inside either, but at this point it's probably their best option.
Castle has been attempting to crack the padlock for half an hour when Kate unexpectedly flinches.
"What?"
"I don't know," she answers, turning her back to him. "Something hurts." She reaches around with her free hand, lifts the hem of her shirt to expose her lower back. "Is there…"
"Uh," Castle hesitates at the sudden change in demeanor. He tentatively drops his gaze to the exposed skin, automatically reaches out his free hand to examine affected area. It's red and warm, soft and smooth but with a small raised area in the center.
"Castle…" her voice is softer, much more tentative than it's been since… well, since they first awoke to this confusing mess.
He jerks his hand away as though he's been burned. "Uh, right. Sorry. Yes, there's a needle mark."
Kate tugs her shirt back into place with far more force than necessary. "Well, that explains how they drugged us."
"Maybe this container is full of drugs and needles," Castle suggests, only half-joking.
"If we ever actually get it open," she disparages with a roll of her eyes.
He sits back on his feet, huffs angrily. "Why are you so mad at me?"
"I'm not mad at you, I'm mad that we're cuffed together and locked in a basement."
"Yes, and I'm trapped right here with you, so there's no point taking it out on me," Castle points out.
Kate sighs, moves her left arm closer to him so he can reach the padlock again. "Sorry."
The padlock finally released and they opened the metal freezer to find it full of knives and chains, which was infinitely more horrifying than anything Castle imagined they might find. The knives were sufficient, though, to help them break their way through a stucco section of the wall to rescue the person they could hear breathing on the other side.
While they worked, Kate recounted a newly-recalled memory of another victim, a young, female science teacher named Chloe whose body was found when it came tumbling out a fifth-floor window. Lanie had found Maya's address written on a piece of paper in Chloe's hand, thus sending her to Maya's apartment while Ryan and Esposito stayed behind to talk with the boyfriend.
And yet, none of that explains how they've now found themselves trapped in a basement with a tiger. They're standing precariously atop the freezer that they managed – with the help of the obscene amounts of adrenaline coursing through their bodies – to flip up on its end. It's far from ideal, and the tiger has already jumped up at them three times, but it's the only option.
"I wanted to go with you," Kate confesses as the tiger paces around the base of the freezer, licking her lips hungrily, eyes fixed on them.
"What?"
"To the Hamptons," she clarifies. "I broke up with Tom. I was going to say yes to your invitation."
The tiger jumps again and they step back as far as possible as the freezer wobbles precariously. They're facing each other, toe to toe, joined hands pressed between them. There isn't a lot of room up here and the tiger's paw came dangerously close to their legs on that last swipe.
"Why didn't you?"
Kate purses her lips and raises and eyebrow, as though the answer is obvious; as Castle thinks back to their parting conversation it's suddenly all so clear. "Gina."
The pain that flashes through her eyes says it all.
"That's why you're so mad at me?"
Kate sighs. "I'm not… mad," she confesses. Below them, the tiger paces around the base of the freezer, preparing for her next assault. "Not at you, at least. I was mad at myself for missing my chance."
Castle maneuvers his cuffed wrist so he can tangle his fingers with hers, and she inserts her fingers into the gaps between his without hesitation. "There's still a chance," he promises even as the tiger raises up on her hind legs again, pawing at the giant metal container, threatening to knock it over. "Assuming we get out of here."
They make it out but just barely, thanks to a last-minute rescue by Ryan and Esposito. Montgomery is there too, and all three are surprised and confused by Castle's presence. And, it seems, angry at him on Beckett's account.
Ryan and Espo fill them in on all the details, how the two victims – and ultimately a third as well – were part of a counterfeiting operation gone awry, and how the other two members of the operation – who, it turns out, are the killers – also have connections to an exotic animal smuggling ring. Hence the tiger.
It's a long while before they all begin the drive back to the Twelfth. Castle winds up in the car with Kate, just like normal. Except everything about this day has been so far from normal, including the fact that he's in the car with her again at all.
They don't speak, despite the fact that there's so much to say. True, they were facing death by tiger, but she admitted that she'd wanted to go to the Hamptons with him, and he implied that a relationship between them was still a possibility. He meant it, but that doesn't necessarily mean she still feels the same way. Or that she's not still mad at him. Despite what she said earlier, he has a feeling there's some lingering anger.
But the tension grows as the silence stretches, and finally Castle breaks the quiet.
"I'm sorry."
She glances at him, turns back to the road. "For what?" she asks after a moment.
He shrugs. "Leaving. Flaunting Gina in front of you."
She hums a noncommittal response.
"Hurting you," Castle adds. "That was never my intention. I thought I was doing you a favor by leaving. I didn't know you were planning to break up with him."
Now it's Kate turn to shrug. "It's not like I gave you a reason to believe I was."
"Well I'm still sorry."
She glances his way briefly again, a soft smile on her face. "Thanks."
"And uh," he hesitates before going for broke, "I meant what I said back there. It's not too late. Not for me, at least."
Her cheeks flush pink and she dips her chin enough for her hair to fall forward, concealing the rush of color. It's longer than it was last time he saw her, falling down beyond her shoulders and providing a fairly effective curtain.
"I'm not saying no," Kate says after a long silence. "But I think we need to let things get back to normal first. Is that okay?"
"Does normal mean I'm your shadow again?"
She bites down on her bottom lip but it's not enough to conceal her grin. "Yes."
He gets to come to work with her every day again, and she's smiling at him timidly, and she's just alluded to a future in which they're more than just detective and shadow.
Yeah. He's more than okay with that.
Thoughts?