Chapter 2: Wherein Batman Braves a Place Far Scarier Than Arkham Asylum so That He Can Buy a Mop Bucket.

A/N: Still contrived, but sadly all drawn from reality. I find I like torturing these two far too much.

"Shit."

"We need to work on your pillow talk, Castle," she responds as he pulls away.

"Sorry, it's just..."

"What?"

They had managed to successfully make it to the bedroom on their second try, and even managed to get naked with a minimum of fuss. Castle had had a slightly surreal moment when he realized Kate was in his bed after telling him she loved him, but like any good superhero, he'd been able to recover and get back to business, such as it was. Well, until now.

"I just realized, I don't have any condoms. Are you on..." he asks, trailing off.

"No, I had to go off of the pill because of the surgery."

"Still?"

"Well, I haven't had a reason to go back on, recently," she says with a sigh. "Obviously I'll renew my prescription tomorrow, but ... you're sure you don't have any?"

"I threw them out."

"Why?"

"They were taunting me."

"Taunting you?"

"Yes, taunting me. You know, with their non-use."

"What about your mother?"

"If my mother has a stash, then I really really really don't want to know about it. Let's just go ahead and assume that's a no."

"Don't you, you know, have a guy?"

"For this?"

"What? You have a guy for everything."

"No, Kate. I do not have a middle of the night condom delivery guy because such a guy DOES NOT EXIST."

"Yes, well, there should."

"Not debating the point. You know, I think I accidentally gave that pizza kid a fifty dollar tip. I wonder if that would buy me a trip to the store?"

"Nothing's going to be open this late anyway."

"No, I refuse to believe that. We live in the Greatest City on Earth. Gotham. The Big Apple. If I can get 24 pirates who can sing in Russian to show up on a half-hour's notice, I should be able to get some condoms."

"How do you know you can get ... you know, I don't even want to know."

"My point is there has got to be a drug store open at," he says, looking at the clock. He laughs. "at 8:15 PM."

"It's only 8:15? Oh, thank god." She covers her eyes with her forearm, laughs in giddy relief.

"Right, good. I'll go, be back before you can count to a hundred."

"It is raining pretty badly out."

"Are Kansas farmhouses flying down Houston Street?"

"No, not that I saw, no."

"Yeah, I'm going then. You don't go anywhere."

"Hmmm... I was thinking of showering."

"No, no, no... don't put that image in my head. Not that it's not a good idea. Just, you know, save it for when I get back and am all wet too."

He goes out the front door of his building, breaks into a run. He's normally an indifferent jogger, but tonight he's pretty sure he makes the half-mile jog to the nearest Duane Reede in approximately fifteen seconds. It only takes so long because he has to stop for a few lights.

He looks like the Abominable Rain Monster when he enters the drug store, but really couldn't care less.

The condoms are in an aisle euphemistically labeled "Family Planning" (Shouldn't it be family preventing? Castle thinks to himself). Annoyingly, they are locked in a glass case, like they are fire extinguishers or jewelry, so he has to find someone who works at the store to help him. Sadly, the only person he can find is another seventeen year old. The kid's a clerk and looks like the basset hound version of the pizza kid. Castle explains what he needs, and then follows basset-boy back to the condom display case, wonders idly if his daughter is the only teenager in New York who doesn't look like a terminally bored pooch. Maybe it's a national epidemic, this canine-depresso-itis. Maybe he needs to get word to the press. Maybe he'll be a hero for discovering K9-Mary. Maybe he's lost his mind. He just needs to get his condoms and go.

The kid opens the case, and Castle finds himself paralyzed by the choices. Really, do there need to be forty different types of condoms?

"Dude, um, you know, I kinda like these ones..."

This kid cannot possibly be trying to give him advice, can he? Castle shakes his head, because no, just no, and grabs the first box he can reach, storms off to the front of the store.

The other clerk, who has finally made an appearance, is manning the register. She's a small, spherical woman who has grown into a realm of indeterminate age and ethnicity. While he waits in line, Castle amuses himself trying to narrow down the choices. By the time it's his turn to check out, he's decided she's either a 45 year old Indian woman, or a 94-year old Japanese one.

"No, you don't want these," she says, picking up the box. Her accent is Slavic by way of Jamaica. "These are no good. Come. I'll find you better choice."

"No, really, I'd like to check out please."

"You regret it. Come. Come."

He wants to argue, but she moves deceptively fast, trundles off to the back of the store so that he has no choice but to follow, especially since she's taken the box with her. When he gets to the back of the store, she already has the case open.

"You are big man. You prefer these," she says, handing him a box.

"Okay," he says. It seems faster than arguing.

"Or, you vigorous?"

"What?"

"Energetic? Full of pep?"

Pep? Really? Do people still say that?

"Um, I guess so."

"Then you take these instead," she says, handing him another box. "I let you choose. Both good. Much better than the crap you pick out first."

He's about to actually choose when he hears a voice in the next aisle.

"I can't possibly be the first person who has asked you tonight where your umbrellas are," says a girl. He can't see her, but he can pick out his daughter's voice anywhere.

"Dude, I don't know what to tell you."

Well, sure. Of course Alexis is here, he thinks to himself. Because tonight was going too easily. He's pretty sure that if she comes into the family planning aisle tonight, he will end up having a kiloton-level freakout event, followed by exploding in a fireball of hypocrisy, given why he's in the aisle himself. He has to get out of the store. Now.

"Look, I'll just take both, thanks," he says to the oblate spheroid clerk. Before she can answer, he turns and goes the back way down the aisle, away from his daughter and the clerk who apparently calls everyone dude. He gets to the end, peaks down the other aisle, sees a frustrated Alexis with two of her girlfriends and the clerk, looking around. He ducks behind the end cap when they look towards him.

How would Batman handle this?

Well, Batman would probably never be in a Duane Reede, of course, but it seems unfair to let reality creep into this part of the night, when it's been blissfully absent for the rest. Castle walks down the row, ducks into the housewares aisle, trying to walk normally, but looking more like a bad imitation of a clumsy mountain lion stalking its prey. Since, at some point, he's going to need to buy the multiple boxes of condoms he has in his hands, he can't give them up, but he really doesn't want to have the conversation that will ensue if his daughter catches him with them either, so he's got to hide them in some way.

He grabs a mop bucket off the shelf, drops the boxes in there. Sadly, this doesn't really hide them, so he walks down the aisle grabbing a box of garbage bags, some sponges, some Woolite, air fresheners, citronella candles, light bulbs, a tire gauge and clothing repair kit, until the bucket is full and the condoms are hidden at the bottom.

He's starting to enjoy himself by the time he reaches the end of the row, surprised by how many non-drugs one can buy at a drugstore. Duane Reede shopping has not been a large part of his life until now, but he sees how terribly convenient they can be. Maybe they need a spokesperson. Someone who has to handle a lot of diverse situations, like fan mobs and bomb defusements. He knows someone who is available.

His little celebrity endorsement fantasy has him distracted enough that he turns the corner, runs smack into his daughter.

"Ooff..." Alexis exclaims, looks up. "Dad? What are you doing here?"

"Oh. Um... just had to pick up some things."

"In the middle of a rainstorm? What could you possibly need?" she asks, looking down into his bucket. The condoms are well hidden, but he tries to angle the bucket away from her anyway. She takes a mental inventory. "Dad, what the hell kind of mess did you make?"

"Oh, no, no mess, just figured... you know, for the future."

"You were so overcome by the possibility of mosquito attacks, flat tires, and gently washed wool that you braved a rainstorm, apparently without an umbrella, to pick up supplies?"

"And why are you here, dear daughter, instead of out making merry and getting into mischief?"

"Elspeth's umbrella broke. We're going to a party a block from here. Thought we could duck in, get another, but we were having trouble finding them, and the clerks are ... not helpful."

"Elspeth? When did you befriend a ninety year old widow anyway?"

She gives him a look. He wonders, briefly, if the women in his life are hurting themselves with all of their aborted eye rolls.

"Yes, well, we finally found one, so we're going to go check out," Alexis says. "You ready to check out too?"

"No! I mean, no, that's okay, honey. I need one more thing. You all go, get out of here, get back to your fun."

"What's the last thing? We've been all over this store, could probably help you find it."

"Oh, no, it's just ... I forgot. I forgot what the last thing is."

"Oh, okay. Well we can check out then."

"I think I'll just keep wandering around, try to see if something jogs my memory."

"Are you sure you're okay, Dad? You seem really agitated and weird tonight."

"I'm sure, honey. Go have fun."

"You sure, Dad?"

"Go. Go."

She gives him an odd look, seems to know he's lying but apparently she decides not to call him on it, because she turns and goes back to her friends. He wanders the store, checking the front until he sees the gaggle of girls leave. He waits another minute, then checks out.

He gets the dude clerk this time, works hard to avoid eye contact lest the kid try to talk to him again.

"That'll be $138.44, dude."

Castle blinks, shakes his head. Maybe the convenience isn't quite worth it, he thinks, and screw the celebrity endorsements. He hands the kid a credit card. He takes his things, heads back out into the storm.

He gets about a block before he realizes two things. First, it's not really smart to carry a bucket in a heavy rainstorm unless you are trying to collect rainwater, and two, he probably didn't need to buy the bucket and tire gauge and the rest since they were merely there for concealment until Alexis left. But, he chalks the lapse in thinking up the fact that it's now been nearly an hour since he saw Kate, which means an hour of delaying sex. That's not good for anyone's mental processes.

He pulls himself into a doorway, dumps the rainwater out of the bucket. He drops the bag with the rest of his stuff into the bucket, then pulls out a garbage bag to cover the entire thing. He contemplates using another of the trash bags to make himself a sort of poncho, but realizes that, given the way the night has been going, it's likely that his impromptu poncho would end up choking him or getting him arrested or something. He'll just run.

Run back to a hopefully still naked Kate.