Close Encounters 27

Kate woke to the thump of the houseboat bumping against the dock.

Castle was gone and the cabin was dark, James rousing in her arms. She ducked her head back to his and tightened her arms around him, easing his transition to wakefulness. They had made port, then, and would be disembarking soon.

Even through her exhaustion, she was excited to see the place. Castle had bought her a whole damn island for James's birthday. And now that she was a little more clear-headed after her nap, she realized he had probably bought this boat as well.

James stirred, his little fists in her shirt, sucking on his bottom lip and opening his eyes slowly. She smoothed the fine dark hair back from his forehead and he released one hand and yawned.

She smiled and shifted to sit up, taking him with her, wondering if she should try to leave him here. Her father was slumped in the corner of the narrow bench that ran along one sloping side, his sleep unmoved, his cheek pressed to the wood of the paneled wall. The dog was gone, probably had followed Castle.

James lifted his head from her shoulder and looked around, solemn and still sleep-blurred, and then he cuddled back against her, worming closer.

"Hey, there," she murmured, softly kissing his cheek. "I'll bring you outside with me if you stay squishy."

His eyes dropped closed.

"Yeah, I know. We've kept you up so late. Bed soon, little wolf." She got slowly to her feet with the heavy boy braced in both arms, moved hesitantly for the door. James was breathing deeply at her neck, mouth snuffling with sleep-sounds against her skin. She got a hand on the door to the cabin and pulled it softly open.

Her father never woke. She saw he had a fleece blanket over his legs which stretched out along the bench. She paused in the open doorway to watch him, but he didn't even stir. She had no doubt he was completely worn out.

"Dada," James murmured.

"Yeah, let's go find your daddy," she whispered and stepped out of the cabin.

The interior hall had running lights along the floor, but the overheads had been turned off. Probably to keep from ruining their night vision out on the deck. She carried James out of the hall and down to the pilot's room, found Castle talking to a man at the controls with Sasha out of the way under the pilot's wheel. The dog's head came up when they entered, and it alerted Castle as well.

He glimpsed them and smiled, held out his arm to her, silent invitation. She came in at his side and his arm slid around her shoulders, hand rubbing her back before dropping again. He took James from her without comment, the boy giving a content little noise as he dropped his head to his father's chest.

"Kate, this is Marco, our pilot. He's one of ours - and a Nantucket native. Marco, this is my wife, Kate."

"Good to meet you," she said, holding out her hand to shake. Marco had a dark look to him, Greek or Italian in heritage, and close-set eyes that made him seem untrustworthy. But when he shook hands and spoke, his smile transformed his face, his voice was a rich baritone that warmed the room.

"Glad to have you. And thanks for buying this place, really. It needs some TLC after the Agency ran amok over here, you know? Plus the work you've had done on this beautiful boat - I'm in love. I hope you'll let me keep my job."

"Of course," Castle said immediately, as if hurrying past Marco's comments. "It's yours really." Castle didn't want her to know that he'd done work on the boat?

Goofy man. She nudged Castle in the ribs and smiled at Marco. "Rick can be rather lavish, and he'll run roughshod over you about this boat if you let him. Stand up to him if you want something done differently, Marco. Anything at all. He'll listen - even if it doesn't look like he is."

"Hey, now," Castle muttered, actually flushing a little. Marco chuckled and Kate gave her husband a beaming smile, and a kiss against his cheek as she rested her hand at James's back.

"You know I love it," she whispered. "The beautiful boat, the island getaway, the thought and care you've put into it."

She could practically see his chest swell with pride, the deeper breath he seemed to take, the clouds clearing from his eyes. He was worried about her, and he wanted them all safely off the Collective's radar, and he was doing the best he could to appear nonchalant.

She twined her arm through his where he was holding James, and she leaned her cheek to his shoulder for a moment, a press of her body to his so he was reassured.

Marco reached out and patted the baby on the back. "And who is this little one?"

"James," Castle answered, some of his tension releasing. "He managed to catch a nap, thanks to your smooth sailing. We hope he'll fall back asleep for the night."

"I have four of my own," Marco said with a broad smile. "Let me just warn you - he got a couple hours of a nap? He won't be going back to sleep any time soon."

Kate groaned softly and Marco laughed, shrugging his shoulders as if to say, that's the way it is.

But she thought, actually, that James would be happy to find a bed in a home where his parents were close. All it would take would be a few minutes of standing over his crib and stroking the hair at the back of his neck and he would drop right off.

He always did.

Castle had a silent tug of war with her over who would carry James off the boat and down the long boardwalk up to the house, Castle with his fast-healing (albeit bullet) wound or Kate in her recently and still recovering near-death toxicity (plus concussion, plus nasty scrape down her side). Castle won only by virtue of her father, Jim, coming in and gathering James into his arms, cutting off their unspoken arguments.

"Thanks," Castle sighed. Jim also snapped his fingers for Sasha and the dog came to heel without the leash, bounded down the gangway ahead of them.

Kate looked plenty pissed as she glanced between them, but she smothered it and headed for Colin Hunt, who was being attended to by Len. As per Castle's instructions, Len gently but firmly rebuffed her help, doing everything for the once-again-unconscious newfound brother.

Castle had a brother. Holy shit.

Kate was glaring at him; she'd figured out that he'd instructed their security team to keep her from doing any of the work.

But she came back to him, arms crossed over her chest, and stood before him, one eyebrow raised, blazingly hot in her indignation. Righteous as it was.

"You," she said.

"Me," he affirmed. "Because I love you."

She narrowed her eyes at him and he gave her a winning smile.

"Castle, you're close to crossing the line, you know."

He slid an arm around her waist and reeled her in slowly; she resisted only a little. "I know. Me and that line are old, old friends, Kate Rodgers."

"These are all our people?" she murmured.

"All our people."

"Then we're safe," she said, lifting her chin to meet his eyes. "We're safe and you can relax, let Len or me or someone look at your shoulder again-"

"After we clean out the gash in your side," he equivocated.

She snaked her arm around his neck and came up against him, though he noticed she kept her other arm down, close to her wounded side. "Deal."

"James is still clingy," he whispered at her neck. Their people were disembarking around them, good-naturedly rolling their eyes or stepping around the obstacle they'd made right at the gangplank.

"Object permanence," Kate said, laying her head at his shoulder so that she was tucked into him.

"What does that have to do with it?"

"King said this is the time he develops object permanence. When he knows that things still exist outside of his view. Like us. So he wants us."

"Oh." Huh. "That's kinda cool. What's next?"

"Um, something about solving new problems. Finding a hidden object at a new location."

"Right. Like when I hide elephant behind my back - he can totally play that game. But if I hide elephant in the couch cushions, he doesn't get it."

Kate laughed, her arm hooking tighter at his neck. "You play hide and seek with elephant behind your back?"

"Uh. Yes?"

"You're kind of an adorable daddy, Rick Castle." Her kiss was soft and silky, and she tasted like salt.

Like their island. "Come on," he husked, framing her face in his hands. "I want to show you how grateful I am."

"What?" she whispered, eyes blinking, lashes separating, gorgeous.

"How so very grateful I am for this, how you kept our son safe and healthy even though it put you at such risk. How you fought to stay with me, fought to live, Kate, fought against your own natural instincts even, just for me. You're a gift I can never repay, never even get close, but here's a drop in the bucket."

"Castle," she sighed. "A whole damn island is more than a drop in a bucket."

"No, sweetheart. It's not."

He kissed her again and dropped his hands, took the tips of her fingers instead, led her towards the gangway and the island waiting for them in the darkness.

Holy shit. Castle had bought her an island.

Even with the night shrouding the horizon, the stars were brilliant and the moon laid a path. Her father walked behind them with a wide-awake James and she kept turning back to see the little boy's reaction to all the new sounds and sights.

Castle led her by the hand up the moon-soaked boardwalk and she let her eyes roam over the sea grass that waved in the breeze coming off the ocean. The waves crashed on the shore at their back, the dock long and wide, and their whole company moved like a snake up the gradual rise to the house.

It was made of stone and wood and shingle, like an English cottage in the Tudor style, empty flower boxes in the upstairs windows and golden lamps burning down. A detached open garage already housed an electric car, a new skinny model that Castle must have bought to have permanently here, solar panels on the roof soaking in only moonlight.

The men carrying Colin began to divert from the boardwalk towards a path through the thin-trunked trees on the right, and Kate caught Castle's arm. "Where are they going?"

"There's a cottage out back," he reassured her. "Bathroom, kitchen, a few rooms. I thought your dad would like to have his own space. Or if Carrie visited. Whomever."

Her heart was going to burst; he just - he put consideration and effort into everything he did. Nothing was wasted, no attempt half-hearted. She scanned the birch trees that stood in silver sentinels to one side, a thin forest of them atop the cliffside that lead to the beach. Beyond that, the path disappeared and the men were out of sight.

Castle touched her back. "For now, Colin will be in the cottage with most of the security team. The rest of them will be positioned around the island. There are two outbuildings that you can't see from here, one off through the trees, the other just down the coast, and they form our perimeter alarm."

"Wow." She turned slowly in the grass at the front lawn, the massive, sprawling lawn that cloaked the house on the left as well and meandered easily down to a kind of bay. She dipped down and skimmed her hand over the green blades, watched Sasha bounding in great circling loops around them, slinking in and out of the dark. "Dad, put James down in the grass. It's soft; he'll love it."

Jim sank down on his haunches and put James's bare toes to the ground; the boy squeaked and laughed, his old man chuckle, his eyes bright and glancing between the three of them. Jim let him go and he crawled forward on his hands and knees for a moment, and then he dropped his cheek to the grass and laid down.

"Oh, poor baby," Kate laughed, covering her smile with her hand. "Okay, I'm sorry. We'll explore later, little wolf. Dad-"

Her father was already scooping James back into his arms, picking grass from his pajamas. Kate couldn't help running her fingers over the grass again, shrugging her shoulders at Castle's amused look.

Their son had a lawn to play in. That seemed monumental somehow.

Castle offered her his hand and she took it, allowed him to help her stand. She followed her father back to the dirt path that wound through the lawn and up to the dirt-track before the garage.

Her father took James on into the house with the rest of the crew getting things set up and unloaded, but she paused with Castle before the somewhat rundown, two-story house. She could see where the paint was peeling, but the roof was new. She could see how Castle had been working on it.

"It's beautiful," she told her husband. She knew he'd been planning to get it done before James's birthday in October, so he must have everything lined up. And she actually liked the quaintness, the lived-in feel, even if a bunch of CIA agents had been doing the living.

"It was a safe house," he murmured. "A Russian scientist spent twenty years here during the Cold War and when he died, the Agency couldn't figure out what to do with the place."

"I love it," she reassured him. "I kind of even love that a Russian scientist spent twenty years here making it his home."

"Yeah, he - uh - it's possible he worked on the regimen with my father," Castle sighed, his forehead dropping to hers. "Everything is - touched by it. I'm sorry."

"I'm not. I'm so very glad," she told him. She wound her arms around his waist and pressed close to him, the scrape in her side beginning to throb now that she'd been walking around. "Means you're here, means you're alive."

"Means you're alive," he whispered.

"Our family." She slid her hand under his shirt and pressed her palm to the heat of his back, the curve where his muscles met his spine. "That day that I - when Bracken took me out in front of the grand jury building. I hadn't even gotten a chance to tell you I was pregnant. We could have lost him then-"

"But we didn't," he rushed in. "We didn't lose him-"

"Because of you," she said, tilting her head back to see him. "We didn't lose him because he's got your special genetics, Castle. We should have lost him; any other - we would have lost him. So whatever I did to keep him safe, you did too."

"Yeah," he croaked, "you're never gonna convince me that we're equal in this, love. You died for him."

She cringed at the tone of his voice, the not-yet-healed crack that went straight to his soul. She didn't know how to repair it, didn't know if it could be repaired. Talking with Dr King had been making a world of difference, most definitely, but the very idea that he had lost her - for James, because of the DNA inside James - she knew he couldn't get past it.

But he could do these little things. He could buy her a house - a whole island - he could keep showing her his love, and loving their son, and putting in the work. He could take care of her, and she knew, she knew that it eased his heart.

So she clutched his waist and asked him to run roughshod over her. Asked him to be a bully. "I'm tired," she whispered at his ear. "Get me fresh butterfly bandages and a bed, Castle."

He was sweeping her off her feet before she could get the last words out.

"The kid needs to go to bed," Jim warned him. But he handed James over to Castle and said his good-nights, abandoning them to it. James ducked his head against Castle's shoulder and clung to his father like he might be made to leave.

"We'll get him down," Castle promised. Eventually. James was being clingy - squishy, as Kate had started calling it - and Castle felt an answering need in himself as well. Have his family close, together where he could see them. Get to them in time.

"Night, Katie," her father called. He waved as Kate turned on the couch and then he was gone, heading up the stairs for the only bedroom with an actual bed.

Castle brought James with him into the living room, lowered him to stand before the floor-to-ceiling windows. No curtains even, nothing but a couch he'd bought first thing a few months ago, intending to create the whole space around that one piece of furniture. It was a good couch. A hundred times better than theirs at home.

Kate was ensconced on that couch, favoring her wounded side, her skin a little more pale than he'd like. She was tired though, everyone was tired, but just like James, she'd had enough of a nap to keep her going for a while yet.

James stutter-walked to the windows and pressed both hands to the glass, then mashed his face against it as he peered out into the night. From their vantage point, they could see clear down to the dock just past the sea grass and the dunes, the whole beach illuminated with stars as bright as street lights.

Castle went back to the couch and cleared Sasha from his spot; the dog switched places with him, jumping down to stand guard over James. Kate settled in at his side, her arms sliding around his waist, her weariness a tangible thing in the air.

He stroked his fingers back through her hair and kissed her temple. "You good?"

"Mm."

Close enough. He'd take it.

Suddenly the boy pounded the window and rattled the glass in its frame. "James Beckett," Castle warned.

James turned his head to look at them, making his surprised face. Kate laughed, but Castle's heart rate had picked up. He hadn't finished inspecting the place, and he was certain all the doors and windows needed new frames.

But James saw Kate laughing and gave that shy smile back, pounded a hand into the glass once more.

"No, James," he told the boy. "The glass needs replacing. It will break." He could envision the whole thing - one excited drumming session and the entire sheet of glass would shatter and rain over his son, the boy falling face-first into all those jagged shards, sliced and bleeding- "I said no."

James let out a sob and pitched forward into Sasha, clutching her fur and burying his face into her side. Castle jumped from the couch before Kate could even begin, hurried to the boy and gathered him up, pressing his lips to the top of James's head.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, my fault. Didn't mean to put that out there." He cradled James as he stood before the windows, tried to forcibly erase the image from his mind.

Maybe it had been his tone, but he'd been strict with James before. No. Castle had no doubts any longer. None. He just didn't know how to bring it up to Kate.

"It's okay. You're safe. We're all safe, Jay." He wondered if Colin Hunt knew anything about this, about the regimen, the serum, about what happened to them with their twisted up red blood cells, their altered DNA. What might have happened to James.

"Mama," James snuffled.

"Okay, okay. Let's cuddle with mommy on the couch. Carefully." But he kept himself from imagining anything terrible, kept his temper even, filled his head up with his love for Kate, his overwhelming responsibility and adoration of his son, and James began to settle down before Castle even moved from the spot.

He went back to the couch and Kate's open arms, and he purposefully sat close, let himself feel her warmth against him and her sleepy concern for James, let it flow through him.

It calmed him too. He didn't know how much of this James was getting, or even how. It could be nothing more than a more receptive version of what most called intuition, picking up body language and facial movements more acutely than anyone else. It was probably that. He was overreacting.

"Hey, Squishy," Kate murmured, cuddling around them both. "You're so tired, James. You should sleep. You'll feel better if you just let yourself go."

It was probably just their son being attentive to them after they'd been gone, probably just that object permanence thing Kate had been talking about. Castle had scolded him for pounding on the window and he pretty much never got talked to sharply, and he was so far past tired, and now Castle had completely talked himself out of what he had been so certain he knew.

It was nothing. They were simply a close-knit threesome. It was natural that their son would pick up on their moods.

"We love you, we always love you," Kate was murmuring. "Even when you do something you shouldn't. We all make mistakes, little wolf. Now sleep."

It would be better in the morning, after they all had gotten some rest.

"His future bedroom is just through here, with ours off the hall," Castle explained in a low voice. "But it's a few rooms away. What do you want to do?"

"With us," she said quietly. James was heavily asleep lying on her chest, and honestly, she didn't mind staying right here. But Castle would be cramped all night, even if the couch was a monstrous beast that took up half the wall. "Blankets on the floor in our room."

"I pulled out one of the kitchen drawers, actually," he murmured.

"Kitchen drawers?" she laughed, her palm smoothing down James's back. He was truly down for the count, mouth pressed open by the force of his cheek against her. Sasha lifted her head from her spot at their side as if to rebuke them for talking while she was trying to get her baby to sleep.

"All we have for furniture. We didn't have the time to get what we needed. We're lucky his go-bag was in the other car."

"I saw the electric car in the garage," she hummed, tilting her head back to look at him. "And the new roof. You're working on it."

Castle lowered his mouth for a kiss, which hadn't been her intent, but she smiled into it and gave it back. He was being as squishy as their son tonight, his emotions closer to the surface - or as close as Castle ever got them.

"You did a lot," she said when she got her lips back. She lifted her hand from James's back and rubbed Castle's jaw, the scruffy beard he'd kept for her. Might be time to shave.

"I haven't done near what I wanted."

"What other plans?" The interior was as cozy as the outside, though far more spacious than she'd initially thought. With James asleep and her body warm and relaxed into Castle's as they laid on the couch in a wolf pack heap, she wanted to talk with him a little longer, give him the chance to wind down.

He liked to talk, to tell stories about his day or something James had done. He needed to be reassured about them again, and she could keep her eyes open long enough to give it to him.

"Castle," she nudged. Her other arm was still curled under James's bottom, holding him against her. "What else are you doing to the place?"

"New roof went on first, so it's weather proof-"

"I'm not worried," she murmured, fingers brushing his lips to silence the hasty reassurances falling from his mouth. "Dream with me. I want in on the story you're telling yourself."

Castle let out a long sigh and his arms drew tighter for a moment before loosening again. "As much as we can, we take off each summer - eight weeks - and lose ourselves down here. No phones, no computers-"

"Don't take my laptop from me," she husked, smiling at him.

"Fine," he grumped. "Spoil it already-"

"But no work, no meetings, no mission ops - that I can agree to," she said quickly. "And then?"

"And then nothing. No plans. We play with our son on the beach, we swim in the ocean, I'll teach him how to fish, your dad can stay as long as he likes, teach us all how to track in the woods."

"There are deer in these woods?"

"Not deer," he murmured. "Lots of red foxes. I've seen their tracks all over the island. Some of the guys found a nest of babies in one of the outbuildings."

"Oh, we have to show James," she whispered. "And teach Sasha to leave them alone."

"No, let the wolf hunt them," he answered. "They're pests."

"No," she said firmly. "No, nothing gets hunted."

"And what about the fishing?"

"You'll throw it back. Nothing is killed here purposefully."

Castle let out a breath and buried his mouth in the top of her hair. "Okay," he mumbled.

"Okay?"

"You're right, Kate," he husked.

She nodded and glanced down at her son; she had the feeling he would learn a lot. More than most little boys, more than was normal, tracking and survival and the skills it took to hold his own.

Suddenly, she had the strange urge to teach him other things, beautiful things, like music and art and literature, things for the survival of his soul, things his father had been refused as a boy.

"Can we get a piano?" she murmured.

"A - piano? Sure. Why?"

"I want to teach him to play," she sighed. "It's stupid, I know-"

"It's not stupid," he said fiercely. "It'll be good for him. You know how to play?"

"A very little," she admitted. "Do you?"

"I - used to," he said woodenly. She felt him shake his head. "Mother taught me when I was small. Four or five. I would play and she would sing and practice for a musical or - I don't know - there were men who wanted her to sing."

Kate caressed the side of his face, angled her neck to kiss him softly. "We'll teach him. Or. Or your mother?"

"If she shows up for lessons," Castle sighed.

Yeah, there was that. "We'll teach him. Or maybe violin or guitar or - I don't know. Anything. Something creative."

"Unlike me," he said.

"Or me, though I had dance for years."

"You did?" He sounded stunned. She laughed and turned to look at him, disturbing both Sasha and James so that the baby mewled and the dog gave them a look.

"Okay, okay, I'll hush," she chuckled, petting both of their wolves, Sasha behind the ears and James down his back.

"Guess that's why you're so graceful," he murmured at her temple. "James could do dance."

She was surprised; all his talk about hunting and tracking, she'd thought Castle saw boys a certain way. "He could," she answered.

"Good balance and control. And grace like yours shouldn't be wasted."

She huffed, glancing back to look at him, but he seemed serious. Of course Castle would think about it practically. He had never been given the opportunity to find joy in anything for himself alone.

That had changed, of course, but it was an old pattern of thinking that wasn't likely to stop. She didn't mind. They were partners; she would her best to take up where he was weak, just as he did for her. But the positive side was that Castle had no predetermined directions for James; dance or piano or tracking in the woods, didn't matter to him so long as the boy wanted to do it.

"There'll be a lab in one of the buildings," he said then. "But between here and those perimeter stations, it's endless trees, beach, and hills. The sky is clear and shot through with stars and there's a cove at the back and side of the house, down the boardwalk that direction, where it's safe to swim."

"We should swim," she murmured. "After he goes to sleep? Swim in the moonlight."

Castle shivered and she remembered the story he'd told her about the girl in the loch who had slit his throat, the girl he had killed in self-defense in Ireland. Colleen. Skinny-dipping with her one night. But the scar had faded to nothing at his collarbones and she skimmed her hand up and over the skin.

He caught her wrist and kissed her fingers. "We'll go tomorrow. Skinny dip in the ocean in the stars, anything you want. But for now, we should sleep. Give the wolf to me; I'll carry him to our room."

All she had to do was loosen her arms and Castle had him, tucking James into his chest and shifting to stand.

It was a beautiful place, but he was right. She was so tired. They needed rest. Tomorrow they could discover everything else.