A/N: So even though I started writing this before "Belly of the Beast" that ep ended up fitting really nicely into the story I have planned. Enjoy!

The empty swing set looked ominous in the dark. Usually when he was this nervous Castle could feel his heart slamming into his ribs, now however, it was so firmly planted up in his throat that he just felt hollow.

Something happened. Something happened that was apparently bad enough to warrant getting his doorman to wake him up at two in the morning and pass him a note, rather than coming to see him or call him directly.

He hoped he was being paranoid. Beckett wasn't above playing games that would get his blood flowing, and maybe this was another hands on gift like on his fortieth Birthday. It could be she wanted to give him a little cloak and dagger outing as a wedding present. The thought did nothing to stop his hands from shaking.

He thought of her to steady himself. As it was, Rick had been unable to sleep anyway. The complete and unadulterated joy he felt at the thought that in a few hours Kate Beckett was going to be his wife had him, as his daughter had put it, "all aflutter". While he hadn't thought being "aflutter" sounded particularly manly, he also hadn't been able to come up with a better word to explain the nervous excitement coursing through him.

There had been hesitance on his part before his nuptials with Meredith and Gina, the intense fear that maybe he was making a mistake, and now he realizes that down in the core of his being he knew both times he really wasn't committing to forever. The absence of those feelings tonight combined with his fluttering was how he knew.

Kate Beckett wasn't just different.

She was it.

Which is why she had him in knots at the moment. He should never have left her side.

After the rehearsal they had danced together, enjoying the vast balcony of their venue. She had leaned in, nipped at his lobe, and whispered, "I told you, third time's a charm." A caveman that hid in a corner of his mind nearly slung her over his shoulder and carried her home right then. He should have listened to his inner neanderthal.

He was fully under her spell after that. The dark sleeveless evening dress she had on accentuated everything he loved about her body, hugging the best curves and showcasing her fabulous legs to the point where he had actually drooled on himself a little. The worst part was that she had known she was turning heads and she had teased him with it. The lingering touches, the way she lowered her voice a half octave like she did in the bedroom, the heat in her gaze, wound him up, causing the desire to spindle tightly inside of him.

He was nearly panting with need as the night had come to a close. However, he had chosen not to tempt fate. It was after all bad luck to see the bride before the wedding.

She hadn't made it easy for him and his irrationality. Mid way through the night she had begun looking at him more and more like a lioness ready to pounce. As they had walked out together she had denounced the pre-wedding superstition and whispered several colorful suggestions as to how they should continue the evening. He had made a helpless choking noise and changed the subject by offering her his coat. As he flagged her a taxi she had pulled him into an indecently long kiss and he almost lost his resolve.

Staring dumbly he had stuttered goodnight to her. Clearly amused, she had patted him on the cheek and as she slipped into the cab added, "Guess we'll save it for the honeymoon."

A God damned idiot. That's what he was.

He got to the swings, and was startled as a car parked several yards away came to life. It rolled up the street a little closer to the playground and flashed its brights. Castle tucked his hands into his pockets. His right ran along the lining of the denim until he felt the cool handle of his fiance's service pistol, and he calmed slightly. She would make endless fun of his reaction if this turned out to be another prank, but his overactive imagination had kept him alive thus far and he was not sorry for it.

The car's passenger side window rolled down and Castle found himself looking at Esposito in the driver's seat.

"Bro, get in. We got a problem."

Castle slipped in the vehicle and Javi hit the gas before the door was even completely closed.

"Where's Beckett?" Castle choked.

"Taking you there now," he gave a side glance to the writer. "She's alright," he said, waving a hand to dismiss Castle's worst fear. "Got a little roughed up, but you know Beckett, she's a tough cookie."

"The toughest. But what the hell's going on?" The detective didn't take his eyes off the road this time, and Castle got the distinct feeling that Javier didn't want to answer him, and anger began pushing out the fear. "Dammit, I'm supposed to be getting married in a few hours. What happened?" he demanded.

Castle had used the phrase, "his blood ran cold" plenty of times in his novels. It might have been a bit cheap as far as word choices go, but audiences understood it and it was an efficient way to set a tone. Yet despite his intimacy with it, it wasn't until that very second that he understood the feeling. Not until he heard the word that came out of Esposito did he know what it felt like to be chilled right down to your marrow. The next two syllables froze his heart.

"Bracken."

"He sent someone to give her a beating?"

"He sent someone to kill her," Espo said, shaking his head. "Beckett got the goon," he added before Castle could ask, "Shot him in her living room."

"Jesus." His heart stay high in his throat, beating quick as a humming bird.

"I know bro. I know."

"How'd she contact you?"

"Climbed up my back alley fire escape. Sent me to go get you," he checked the rear view mirror then. "She was afraid they were watching your place. I hope you had the good sense to sneak out."

"I'm not actually a dumb ass you know. But how bad are we talking here?"

"Worse than it's been. The guy laying in Beckett's living room? She's seen him before, at Vulcan Simmons' compound."

"Shit. Shit!" he punched the glove box in frustration. "Why now?" Castle wondered aloud. "He saved her life before. She hasn't touched her mother's case in over-" he trailed off a new idea coming to him. "Someone leaked what Beckett saw when she was trying to meet with Lazarus! He knows she put the cops on to Future Forward. He must also suspect she doesn't actually have a copy of Montgomery's file. He wouldn't have risked tipping their stalemate otherwise."

Despite everything Esposito smirked and shook his head. "That was nearly word for word what she put together."

Castle pulled the note the doorman had given him out of his pocket. 'Zihuatanejo. 30 minutes.' was written in Beckett's careful loops. Clearly a thoughtfully crafted clue just for him, a movie reference, a Stephen King reference, and an old case reference all in one. It was practically a synonym for their swing set.

He leaned back heavily in the passenger's seat, glad that even when everything was getting yanked out from under him, some things stayed the same.

"Yeah. We do that sometimes."

Either stress had him hyper aware of his surroundings or the secret tunnel into the Old Haunt had grown a lot more mold since the last time Castle had been down there.

"Remind me to get this renovated for the next time we're hiding from a homicidal politician," he harrumphed, pinching his nose.

Espo swatted him in the back of his shoulder with the heavy MagLite. "Seriously?"

"Ow! Hey! I don't begrudge you you're coping mechanisms."

They made it up the rest of the corridor and climbed through the wall into the bar's hidden basement.

Air entered Castle's lungs properly for the first time as he took in his fiance sitting at the card table in the center of the room. He had moved his poker nights into the speakeasy recently. The depression era decor added a touch of atmosphere his friends envied, and he liked making Patterson jealous. She looked out of place at the empty table, absently stacking and unstacking a line of green chips left out accidentally

Her head snapped up as they entered and she stood just as quickly. She and Castle were holding on to one another before he could draw another breath.

"I'll give you two a minute," Javi said, averting his eyes from the intimate reunion and slipping back into the passageway.

Castle pulled back and gently examined her black eye, his thumb ran gently over the bottom of her busted lip. A dark satisfaction filled him, knowing that the man who did this to her was dead.

"Javi fill you in?" she asked.

He nodded. "You okay?"

She gave a slight nod of her own, "It looks worse than it feels."

"That's good, because it looks pretty bad love."

"You should see the other guy."

She was grasping wildly for a bright side, trying to lighten to mood, and it made his heart clench. "I shouldn't have sent you over there tonight. You should have been home in bed with me."

"Stop. Babe, don't go down 'what if' road. It'll turn you around and around and we'll just end up back here with the same problem. This wasn't your fault."

"Still…" he trailed off.

She took his hand and lead him over to the brown leather sofa in the corner. It clashed with the rest of the room, but it was plush and comfortable. Grisham couldn't hold his liquor like he used to and the sofa had been an easier solution than trying to carry the jerk up the stairs after every game.

He sank into the corner of the couch and they angled toward each other. He was suddenly aware of how very tired he was, and how exhausted she looked.

"Smart hide out, even if it was a hike to get up here from the tunnel."

"It was the only safe place I could think of. We can't be sure who Bracken is watching, or whose phone he tapped."

"And if someone the precinct is feeding him information we really don't have many options."

The thought didn't hang in the air as long as he thought it would. She rested both her hands on his right knee and took a long breath. "I've spent the past few hours trying to figure out what to do," she told him, "My first instinct was to push you away." He stiffened. She shook her head, a signal for him to dismiss the thought. Still, it seemed as though his stomach no longer had a bottom.

"That would have been sufficiently terrible." His fingers covered hers on his knee. This small connection calmed him slightly, and he managed to stop bouncing his nervous leg in the way he knew she hated.

"I knew that if he'd wanted both of us dead he wouldn't have waited to get me alone. He's being careful, trying to minimize collateral damage. So I thought maybe I could call off the wedding, and hit the road alone. I had a whole speech thought up for how you would be better off, how you would be safer without me."

Castle swallowed down the emotion gathering up in his throat, the pain of that alternate future gripping him. "I'm really really glad you changed your mind," he said.

"Since we've met when have either of us been better off without the other? I couldn't run from you. I wasted too much time doing that before." She held his gaze, and a sad smile rose on her lips. "Plus, would it have even worked?"

"I'd have never stopped looking for you."

"That's what I figured. We're partners and I can't make decisions like that on my own, just for my own peace of mind. It's not my life with which to bargain."

Her eyes dropped to the floor. The silence began to extend. There was a nearly imperceptible stiffness in her shoulders and something slightly forced about the rhythm to her breathing. Her features were perfectly schooled, and that's what told him just how terrified she really was right then. Her head tilted back up to look at him, her eyes begging him to say something.

He leaned his forehead against hers. "I love you for not ending that sentence with a preposition," he finally said.

She let out a heavy breath and strangled half-laugh of relief and all but threw herself back into his arms. She buried her face in his neck and he held her tightly, as if gravity would turn upside down with the rest of their world and take her with.

"Castle, I have a plan," she told him after a few minutes of just holding on. She pulled away to meet his gaze. The look in her eyes broke his heart a little, her cool determination clouded together with something warmer, sadder. "It's ridiculous, and dangerous, and maybe also a little stupid but it also just might work."

"That's totally how I roll."

She kissed him then, slow and deliberate. He slipped a hand into her hair and used his mouth to convey how grateful he was that she was alive. She was wearing a genuine smile when the kiss ended, and hope rose in him as he saw it flare in her eyes. They were a little flush, and a little breathless, and somehow carrying much lighter souls than the previous minute.

"I know you trust me. Can you do as I say until I can put all the pieces together?" she asked.

He didn't like where this was headed- he'd never been very good at staying in the car after all- but he also couldn't deny her. "Anything."

"It's going to take quite a bit of acting."

"You have met my mother right?"

Her grin became infectious then.

"Okay, so part one of the plan happens right here," she gestured to the door. "Espo," she called loudly. A few moments Javier popped his head in from the passage.

"You guys ready?"

Beckett nodded. Standing again, she pulled Castle up with her.

"Ready for what?" Castle asked.

Kate turned back to him. "Did you know Esposito is ordained?"

"Huh?"

"It was during my second tour," Esposito explained "You run into a lot of messed up stuff in special forces. Sometimes where a guy was truck down is where we had to bury him, and as we were usually in the middle of nowhere we never had a chaplain. I took the ordination course online so I could preside over funerals, even makeshift ones."

Kate ran a hand up Castle's arm resting it intimately at his collar bone. "I know this isn't what we pictured or what we had planned, but in case things go to hell in the next few weeks I want to at least have this."

"I'm not sure I understand," he said.

She leaned into him the way she had done after dinner earlier that night, her voice barely above a whisper. "It's simple. Javier is going marry us right now," she paused, her eyes searching his, "and then tomorrow I'm going to leave you at the altar."

A/N: Did you read it? If you're down here I think you read it. Click that comment button. Come on. I know you want to. Click it. :)