Chapter 4: Wait, Why Can't We Take The Batmobile?

A/N: Why is taking fictional characters and dropping them into contrived (but sadly drawn from real life) situations so much fun? Is that the wrong question to ask?

"Oh hell, what now, Castle?"

He has pinned her between himself and tile of his oversized shower. The robe she had been wearing is now decorating the side of the tub. His clothes have formed the Oregon Trail of Nudity across the floor of his bedroom and bath. All in all, a productive few minutes. Until he stopped.

"I'm waiting for the meteor," he says.

"What?"

"The meteor. Or the giant Earthquake. Whatever it is the Universe is going to throw at us to further prevent this from happening."

"This is happening, Castle. Or it will once you move."

"You say that, but any mo..."

He is interrupted by a knock on his bathroom door.

"See?" he asks her.

"Are you sure this is one of those situations where you wanted to be right?"

"Well, no... but..."

The knocking grows more insistent.

"You may want to answer that," she says.

"It's just the Universe, here to tell us we can't have sex."

"Just get it over with."

"Yes?" he calls out, turning off the shower so he can hear.

"Richard, darling. Some of your friends are here, looking for Kate," his mother says through the door.

"Seriously?"

"Why would I make that up, dear? Did she head home? She's not in the guest room."

"Which friends, Mother?"

"That detective, Esposito? And the pretty medical examiner that Alexis is working for."

"Okay. I'll be right out."

He drops his head against the tile, burying his face into the crook of Kate's neck.

"Seriously, did we do something wrong in a past life?" he asked into her bare skin. "We're just trying to have sex once. Is that really too much to ask for?"

"Just once?"

"Well, once as a downpayment on the million other times I'm planning."

"Rick, even if we had sex twice a day, it would take a few thousand years to get through a million times."

"Okay, four times a day then, and please don't do the math. You have to figure out how to get us out of this."

"Why me?"

"Well, because one, they are looking for you, and two, because it's my job to get us into the these situations, and yours to get us out."

"I don't like that arrangement."

His mother knocks again. "Richard? I thought you were coming?"

"I thought I was too," he says, under his breath. Kate thumps him in the arm.

"Just drying off, Mother," he says in a louder voice.

"Please hurry dear, they seem rather agitated, and I'm starting to worry about Kate too."

Castle groans, hears his mother leave again. He pushes away from Kate, steps out of the shower. He grabs two towels, hands on to Kate, dries his hair off with the other. As she dries off, he grabs his other robe off the back of the door, watches sadly as she shrugs back into hers. He's not enjoying the number of times she's gotten re-dressed tonight, but takes solace in the fact that he gets to get her naked again later. They are getting quite good at the runup to the event. They'll be Olympic quality by the time the actual event happens. If it ever does.

"I'm just going to go tell them some story."

"And you think that's going to work?"

"Better than telling them that my mother can't find you because I had you pined against my shower wall."

She thinks for a second, "Yeah, you need to get out there. I'll just ... stay here."

Twenty minutes later, Castle finds himself in the passenger seat of a Smart Car. Beside him, Lanie half-drives, half-rants. In even the best of circumstances, he'd find the overgrown golf-cart to be a tight fit, but it's made more so tonight by the presence of Javier Esposito in the car. Since it's only a two-seater, and Castle utterly failed to talk Lanie out of dragging him along, he's forced to have Esposito ride along, propped in his lap.

In an effort to give Esposito as much room as possible, lest the man snap and decide to kill Castle with his thumb, Castle has taken to tilting his head and shoulders back as much as possible, which makes him feel like he's twelve and trying to staunch a nosebleed. Subsequently, all he can see is the ceiling of the car.

His plan to get Lanie and Esposito to leave quickly did not work. He had left his room and spun a tale for a pissed off Esposito and frantic Lanie about how Kate had been in his neighborhood and had gotten caught in the rain, but had to leave. They'd asked why, and he'd ... okay, he'd extemporized, maybe a tad too much. There might have been mention of time travel. He isn't sure. By the end, he wasn't even paying attention to himself, simply trying to avoid mentioning anything about the shower. How Kate was still in the shower. How he really really liked that showering involved nudity...

Even now, squeezed into a tin can listening to Lanie and Esposito bicker, he can see her in his head, the how the stream of water hit her shoulders, ran down over her collarbones, lower, until...

Okay, so it's probably not in his best interests to get aroused while Esposito is sitting his lap. He needs to focus.

"Lanie, why the hell are we in this car again?"

"Mine's in the shop and my cousin is the only person who'd loan me one on short notice. There was no way in hell I was traipsing across Manhattan in this crap on foot."

"Are you sure you need all three of us?" It pops into his head, then, that he owns enough cars that they each could have had their own. None of them would have even get in this hamster ball, much less double or triple up. Not for the first time, he wishes his brain could keep up with the events of the night. Or be in the same time zone, at least.

"We brought you along so you could help. She's not at her place, she's not at your place, can't be at the precinct."

"Why can't she be at the precinct?"

"Didn't you say she came over for a few hours tonight?" Esposito asks. "Didn't you talk to her at all, bro'?"

Well, how does he answer that one, without explaining that talking wasn't high on their list of things to do tonight?

"Um, a little. Not about work though."

"Just CIA space alien time tra..."

"She quit, Castle," Lanie interrupts in a huff, "Which is why we need to FIND. HER." She enunciates the last words hard enough that Castle can feel them in his chest, like she's poking him.

His phone starts to ring. He goes to grab it, but realizes that it's in the front pocket of his jeans. The front pocket that is currently situated under Esposito's ass.

"You gonna get that, Castle?"

"Um..." He slides his hand into his pocket as gently as he can. He can feel the phone, but can't pull on it unless he gets his fingers around the bottom edge. Unfortunately, this requires bending his hand in such a way that causes Esposito's eyes to grow huge.

"Bro... cuppage?"

"Just grabbing the phone... I swear, just the phone."

He gets his phone loose, puts it to his ear. "You quit?"

"Yes, I quit. That's a tomorrow topic. Focus, Castle," Kate says on the other end of the line.

"Easy for you to say, Kate."

"Kate! Where is she?" Lanie asks beside him.

"Kate, where are you?" he asks. He'd feel stupid asking a question he knows the answer to, but thus far, no part of this night has made him feel smart.

"I'm at my Dad's Cabin."

"How the hell did you get there?"

He can hear her eye-roll through the phone. "I'm not actually at the cabin. I'm still in your bathroom. But you are going to tell Lanie and Esposito I am at the cabin, that I needed a few days away, and that way, no one will think to bother us until at least Monday."

"Oh, I like that. Why didn't you..." he trails off. "... think of that before I left?" would give him away.

"I'm a little distracted tonight, Rick," she says, obviously getting it anyway. "Or I'm trying to be. Besides, that yarn you spun for them obviously didn't work, so..."

"Yeah, yeah," he says to her. "Kate went to her Dad's cabin to unwind for a few days," he tells Lanie.

"Where is the cabin?" Lanie asks.

"Come on, Chica," Esposito says, "She'll be fine up there, obviously wants to be alone. Tell her we'll talk to her in a few days, Castle."

"You hear that?" he says into the phone.

"Yup."

"She heard," he says, hanging up. "So, can you take me home, maybe? Not that having Javi here on my lap isn't a thrill."

"Better not be a thrill, or you can just go ahead and walk back to that place of yours."

Somewhat placated, he convinces Lanie to drop him back at the loft. The night is feeling sadly repetitious.

"Darling, did you all find the lovely Detective that quickly?" he's asked as he walks in the door.

His mother is in the kitchen. Apparently the whole Lanie and Esposito drama has given her a second wind, or at least a second thirst. She has a $300 bottle of 2010 Burgundy open on the counter.

"Mother, is that one of my new bottles of DRC?"

"A chaotic night deserves a soothing influence, dear."

Crap. He feels his eyes starting to roll, stops them. He guessed right earlier, it does hurt. He should apologize to Kate.

Kate. Right. She's probably still hiding in the bathroom.

"Richard. Did you find Kate?"

"She, um, called me. When we were out. In the car. Driving," he says. Lying about sex apparently makes him babble. "She's fine. Just decided to get away."

"Away, dear, to where?"

"Oh, um, her father's cabin?"

"Oh, lovely. This is an excellent time of year for that. Where is her father's cabin?"

"I, um, don't know?" He can't think of any place plausibly close, given that his mother last saw Kate a little over an hour ago.

Martha nods, let's the subject drop. She pours more Burgundy into her glass, and Rick cringes. He's not against sharing, per se, but he'd hoped to open that particular bottle with Kate, now that things were turning around.

"So, kiddo, now that the drama with Kate is finally put to bed..."

He cringes a second time, now at her word choice. He wishes Kate were put to bed.

"...my friend is still available."

"Wait, what?"

"The one I told you about, from my school? She's still available."

"Are you trying to set me up, Mother?" He prays that Kate can't hear this.

"Well, unless you have a good reason not to try dating again. It might do you good. Unless you have a better idea? Like, maybe, inviting Kate to stop hiding in your bathroom?"

"She's not ... it's not..." He gives up. "How did you know?"

"She left her clothes in the dryer, kiddo."

"It's not what it looks like. She just didn't want to face her friends tonight."

"Which is why the two of you ducked into the shower together twenty minutes before they arrived?"

He's been defeated by a master. He can admit it.

"When did you figure it all out?"

"Oh darling, I'm mature, not blind. It doesn't take a lot of reasoning to put two and two together when you come home to find the woman your son is in love with wearing nothing but a bathrobe and you are off buying condoms. It's just like your senior year of High School all over again. What was that poor girl's name again?"

"Imogene," he says. He'd managed to completely block that incident out of his mind. "If you knew, Mother, why did you..." he can't find the words, so he just makes a hand wavy gesture in the air. That's what the night has reduced him to - random flailing.

"I've been waiting almost four years for this. I wasn't going to miss the opportunity to have you two squirm. I didn't know you were going to get interrupted again. Which reminds me, shouldn't you go rescue her from your bathroom?"

He shakes his head. He's done fighting against this night. He goes back through his bedroom into his bathroom. Kate's still there, in his robe, sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning her back against the tub.

"That took longer than it should have," she says as he walks in.

"Well, one does not simply brush off Esplanie."

"Tolkien and shipper references at the same time? Really, Castle? I can't believe I am still considering sleeping with you, when you say things like that."

"Yes, well, you get my references, so..." he says, shrugging. He catches sight of the thing in front of her, "Are those q-tips?"

"And band-aids, yes. I got bored, and there aren't a lot of things to do in a bathroom once you've showered. You're the only man I've met who owns cuticle scissors."

"Only one secure enough in his masculinity to admit to owning them." He's actually sort of impressed. With the scissors, band aids and q-tips, she's managed a decent miniature of the Eiffel Tower. Another hidden talent. He'll have to remember that for when their kids get old enough for Popsicle projects.

Popsicle projects. Kids. Crap, he really hates his brain tonight. Bad brain. Bad bad bad gun jumping brain.

"Can we please get out of here now?" she asks.

"Um, yeah, except..."

"Oh god," she says, looking up at him. "There really is a meteor coming, isn't there?"

"Not unless you count my mother. She figured us out. She's, um, waiting to interrogate us, I guess."

"That's it? Not that talking to your mother about my intentions was high on my list of plans tonight, but, if I'd known, at least I could have gotten out of here earlier."

"Yeah, well, just be happy you didn't have to grab Espo's ass."

"I wouldn't have minded that as much." At his horrified look, she continues, "What? He has a nice ass."

"I'm not touching that."

"Sounds like you already did."

"Just...let's go face the firing squad."

"Talking about sex with me is like facing a firing squad?" she asks, as he helps her to her feet.

"Just for that, you're answering all the questions she has."

"Toughen up, Castle," she says, lightly slapping him on the shoulder. Getting confined to his bathroom has obviously made her a bit giddy. He'll remember that for the future.

A/N: Espo is better than Esposito. Fewer letters, nicer balance. Cuter.