A/N: To all you guys who have been reviewing, thank you so so much!
A cheer rose up at his appearance and Esposito whipped the scarf off his head, revealing the Old Haunt and a collection of his writer buddies standing beside a sign that read, 'Kiss your single life goodbye, Castle!'
Beneath the painted banner hanging from two opposite sides of the bar, stood a promiscuously dressed 'police officer', service cap set at a jaunty angle on her head, hair falling down around her face in luxurious brown ringlets instead of being pulled into a tight bun. The only button done up on her costume shirt, left little to the imagination, not that Castle would have found that hard anyway.
"Go on, Castle," Esposito catcalled behind him. "We all know you love cops gone wild."
"Yeah, Beckett will never hear of it," Ryan added.
In front of him, Patterson, Lehane and Conrad laughed and cheered, all of them familiar with Kate both from his books and recent launch parties and from occasions where she had happened to be in the loft during their poker games. As he dithered, the stripper in a sorry excuse for a police uniform, postured and posed, pouting and pushing her lips out in what was apparently supposed to make her look sexier.
Digging up his former self, when that kind of party would have been the highlight of his night, Castle plastered a salacious grin on and leaned towards her.
A second cheer rose up as Castle's lips touched hers for the shortest possible time before he pulled away and yelled, "Who's gonna buy me a drink?"
Conrad dashed forwards eagerly and thrust a bottle of beer into his mentor's hand. The music was cranked and Castle's eyebrows rose as the 'cop' began undressing, first loosening he knot of her tie. The hat was removed from her head and slung lopsidedly on Castle, who had frozen, beer halfway to his mouth. His stiff body didn't go unnoticed by Ryan, who sidled alongside him, perhaps the only other guy in the bar who wasn't excited by the show.
"Sorry. It was Javi's idea, I couldn't persuade him otherwise."
"It's fine," Castle said with a wave of his hand, trying to dispel Ryan's worries, knowing how much effort it must have taken to corral together his writer friends and everything else they surely had planned for the evening. Tipping the bottle in his hand into his mouth, it only took him a minute or so to neck the beer down. He could feel a belch building, and he wouldn't normally down his drink all at once – he hadn't done it since college – but if he was going to survive an evening with a stripper, he was going to have to be wasted. "I'm gonna get another drink. You want anything?"
Ryan shook his head but followed Castle towards the bar anyway, leaning against it as he watched Esposito beginning to dance with the stripper he had hired.
Castle bought himself three shots of straight vodka before he began nursing a scotch on the rocks, only looking up from the glass when someone bumped his shoulder.
"Congratulations, Mr Castle."
"Perlmutter?"
"Yes, who did you think it was? Merry St Nicholas?"
Castle ignored the sarcastic barb. He was long used to them, both from Perlmutter and Lanie. Their occasional mocking seemed to be the only trait the two MEs shared. The difference was that Castle knew that even if Lanie was sometimes sharp with him, it was in good humour and she did like him.
"So…"
Perlmutter didn't give Castle the time of day, instead turning to the bartender and sliding a twenty dollar bill across the bar-top as he asked for a whiskey. Whatever conversation Castle had been having with him was apparently over. As soon as Perlmutter had his glass, he was walking away.
"Did you guys invite Perlmutter?"
Ryan glanced down the length of the bar where the ME had now taken up residence with his whiskey. "Maybe he's on the precinct memo list…"
"You guys invited the whole precinct?!" Castle was horrified. What if an email had been sent to Lanie or someone who would tell her? Or worse to Kate herself? He couldn't imagine her being pleased that he had kissed the stripper who was now being thoroughly enjoyed by Javi as she delighted in showing him that she was also an exotic dancer.
"Well, we filtered out some people obviously. The Captain-"
"-Please tell me you took Kate out of the list!"
Ryan nodded. "What do you take us for, Castle? Idiots?"
For a second Castle toyed with the idea of answering yes, thinking that there had been times where both Ryan and Esposito had been perhaps a little slow and naïve. The first thing that came to mind was how long it took them to find out he and Kate had even started dating. The memory of standing awkwardly in Kate's apartment the morning after she'd told him she just wanted him made him swallow. He still didn't understand how Ryan had believed his ridiculous – and stammered – reason for being there.
"How'd you pull all this together then? Get the guys here?" he asked instead, nodding towards his select group of writer friends.
At that moment, Javi appeared and clapped him on the shoulder as he leaned further over the bar and asked for a beer. "We're detectives, bro. It wasn't exactly hard." Bottle of beer in hand, he returned to the centre of the bar and somehow managed to lure the stripper/exotic dancer away from Conrad, who had replaced him as her dance partner whilst he was gone.
Rick and Kevin simply watched.
"Oh yeah, right there," Kate moaned, shivering under his touch with her eyes closed in rapture. "Oh God, your hands are magic, Antonio."
Lying on another massage bed, Madison smirked to herself. Her own masseuse's skilful hands didn't quite compare to Antonio's, but she wasn't the one who was apparently unable to sleep without a man-pillow.
After their first massage with Antonio, Kate had insisted on a second after sleeping awkwardly, getting a build of up tension through her spine and neck from having to actually use a pillow instead of Castle's chest. They'd been sleeping together so long, usually spooned together, that it was odd to be without him. Lately, she'd taken to lying with her cheek on his chest and her hand resting beside it, ring visible even in the dark. The previous night, she'd spent thirty minutes on her back, tossing and turning, before reaching out to the night stand and turning the light on so she could see well enough to rearrange the pillows. Madison had been the only one fortunate to see Kate that morning curled around one, arms wrapped around it and hands clutching at the silky pillow case, bare inches from her head, when she went to wake her on Lanie's orders since they apparently had a busy day booked. It had taken some persuading, but Kate had finally managed to get Lanie to agree to postpone their plans until she'd had another massage.
Madison raised her head out of the hold in the bed for a minute to look over at her best friend curling her toes in pleasure and smiling serenely.
"Careful, Becks, you'll make Rick jealous."
Kate rolled her eyes. "He's not here, Maddie. Besides, he may be a good masseuse, but even his hands aren't as sinfully good as Antonio's."
"Oh, he's got massage skills, has he?"
Kate chuckled at Madison's assumption that she was talking about Rick's abilities in bed. Although Kate hadn't in fact been talking about his sexual prowess, it was true that he was something else in that department. Kate still blushed and bit her lip every time she thought about their first time. It was like nothing she'd ever experienced, and every time since it still blew her mind so far into space she often thought she'd be drifting there in a post-coitus haze forever.
"You wouldn't believe his massage skills." Kate left it up to Maddie to interpret whether she was talking about how good a masseuse Castle was or what good sex they had.
Shaking her head, Maddie smirked again. "You definitely hit the jackpot there, Becks. I still don't know what took you so long but I'm glad you're happy," she said as she dropped her shoulders again and put her face through the hole in the massage table so Ana could move onto her upper back.
"Thanks, Maddie."
"So, what do you say to one last night of madness before the big day? Relive those crazy high school days? You know it'll be a lot easier this time around – we won't have to sneak into clubs with fake IDs."
Kate would like to be able say remembered the kind of nights Madison was talking about vividly, but the truth was most of the time they had already been so drunk from Madison's parents stash of wine that they were colliding with bouncers. She thanked her lucky stars now that most of the time the bouncers refused them entry without even looking at their unconvincing IDs on the grounds they were too drunk and that they had returned to one of their houses to sleep off the alcohol before anything could happen. The only trouble they'd ever gotten into was a few groundings from their parents when they smelt the alcohol on their breath the morning after.
Castle pushed the glass forward on the bar, sending it toppling over the edge with a crash as it smashed on the hardwood floors below.
"Oops," he slurred, before yelling louder, "Sorry! I can pay for that!"
Ryan laughed. "You are so hammered."
He had been sat at the bar drinking for about forty minutes and he knew that what Ryan said was the truth. But then again, that was what he had been aiming for. Whilst everyone else had been partying on, sharing drinks with the stripper and trying to dance with her, he and Ryan had been chatting, talking about the wedding plans and how everything was going with Jenny's pregnancy. And then he had been suggesting baby names, each of which Ryan had politely turned down.
"Balthazar," Castle suddenly shouted.
"Balthazar, what kind of name is that?"
"A cool one."
"Well, sadly, I don't think Jenny's going to go for it. Besides, we've already established about five times that we're having a girl."
"Right, sorry, I forgot," Castle replied, almost falling into Ryan as he nodded with movements that were too exaggerated and jerky.
"Yo, Castle, someone's asking for you. Must be another writer friend of yours," Esposito hollered. Castle looked up and saw him pointing someone in his direction. He held up a hand, waving the guy over, expecting that he was probably more likely to be a fan since Castle didn't recognise him but thought he looked familiar enough that he'd likely seen him at a few signings or readings.
"Hey, what can I do for y-"
Castle's breath whooshed out of him as the guy sucker-punched him under the ribs.
Chaos broke out across the bar. In front of Castle, the guy yelled, "That was for my brother." Ryan leapt to his feet, also shouting, "Hey, hey!" Esposito was suddenly there, subduing the guy from behind, holding his wrists at his back in lieu of handcuffs, all whilst Castle sank to the floor, groaning and wheezing as he tried and failed to get some air.
"Castle, hey, Castle!" Esposito nudged him with a foot, as he called out to him. "You okay man?"
Ryan kneeled down, casting a concerned glance over Castle before helping him up and steadying him against the bar. "You okay?"
Kate found herself agreeing to Maddie's idea, listening to her make suggestions for where they would go whilst Antonio and Ana finished up their massages. Madison was still suggestion clubs from their teenage years, most of which had probably closed down since anyway, when they met up with Lanie, Martha and Alexis.
"So, Lanie, what are these big plans?" Kate asked as soon as Maddie stopped for breath.
"Well, since it's our last day here and we're going back to the city this evening, I thought we'd test out those mud baths, make the most of the hot springs, get our last facials and have manicures."
Everyone in the group nodded and Lanie went to talk to the resort staff to organise their activities for the day.
"I'll be fine," he gasped, clutching his stomach and wrinkling his shirt, not that he particularly cared about that. As he straightened up, determined to continue their evening, Castle ignored the spread of pain through his abdomen. "See, I'm good," he reassured Ryan, patting his shoulder and trying not to grimace.
Ryan helped him back into his seat, apparently unconvinced then helped Esposito manhandle the perp away from Castle, the task requiring them both since neither of them were sober like he was. In the back of the bar, they stood guard over him until uniforms called by the barman arrived and carted him away.
When they came back out to the bar, Castle was back to his jovial self, apparently completely pain free as he lobbed unopened beers to Conrad and laughed with Lehane, Patterson and Connelly when he fumbled and dropped the last bottle.
"You need me to handcuff the bottle to you so you can't drop it, Alex?" Castle quipped, causing sniggers to erupt from the other three crime writers again.
"Handcuffs?" Ryan mumbled, turning to Esposito. Grinning at each, a plan began to form. "We're on the same page, right?"
"Oh yeah," Esposito assured Ryan.
Without even needing to elaborate, the two of them rejoined Castle, declaring he wasn't drunk enough and that the next round was on them.
Kate arrived back at the loft later than they had expected with Martha and Alexis in tow, all three of them feeling more relaxed and refreshed than they had for days.
"Lanie definitely knows how to throw a bachelorette party," Martha said wistfully as she took her bags up the stairs to her bedroom. "I feel ten years younger!"
Kate smiled, glad that Martha had enjoyed the weekend and that it hadn't been at all awkward with her there. She said goodnight to Alexis, who had disappeared into her room the instant she was inside, muttering something about finally being able to Skype Pi, and called a similar farewell to Martha before trailing through Rick's empty office and into their bedroom.
She frowned when she saw the bed sans Rick and still made up from the morning. With the lights in the loft all switched off, it didn't seem likely that he was there. Walking to the bed, she lifted her bag up and began searching through it to find her phone, which she then had to plug in since Lanie had apparently left it on for the battery to run out over the weekend. Sighing, she returned to the bag to find her charger.
Once the phone was charging, she switched it on and pulled up her messages, finding that after a few moments six or seven all from him arrived simultaneously and that she suddenly had a number of missed calls and a few voicemails. Checking the most recent text from Rick, she read that he was out with the boys for an impromptu bachelor party. Quickly texting him a reply, telling him to have fun, Kate set the phone on the bedside table and turned back to her bag, looking at it distastefully before deciding that her unpacking could wait until tomorrow.
Castle groaned, recognising the pounding in his head as that of a headache caused by a hangover from the feeling of his brain being pressured as though it were under a vice of squeezed by a shrinking skull. He tried to roll over, only then realising that he was sitting in a chair; not lying down, and that he couldn't move his hands because they were currently handcuffed together behind the chair. Blinking, he opened his eyes and stared around in confusion as he realised he was chained to his chair at Beckett's desk. "What?" He had no idea what was going on, he didn't even remember going to the precinct. The last thing he could recall was Patterson yelling, "Let's hope this one lasts longer,' as Esposito and Ryan helped him out onto the street, telling him they would take him home.
He craned his neck, searching for either of the detectives and finding no-one behind him, the precinct apparently empty.
"Help!" he bellowed, trying to make his voice carry as far as possible. Where the hell was everybody? The precinct was open and running all hours and there was always at least one team of homicide detectives working. "Help! Anybody here?" After a few more shouts, he gave up, wincing because he'd only worsened his headache and apparently for no reason since nobody came running.
A/N: Let me know what you think! Thanks for reading!
