Close Encounters 16

They ran through the dog park with Sasha on her leash keeping a steady pace; the dog's tongue was out but she was merely trotting at Castle's side. The morning was brisk, cool in the dawn light, and perfect for the sweat breaking out on his forehead.

Even though it was only late February, spring had shaken the trees, pushed green buds out on the limbs so that their way was spotted with tiny reminders of life. He felt good, strong, his lungs expanding easily and his heart rate sedate, and right at his elbow, Kate had no trouble staying in stride.

She'd pulled her hair back into a tucked-in pony tail at her nape so that tendrils curled around her neck and ears. She had worn a long-sleeved shirt in a bright green that matched the trees and the pale sky that cracked open with light. She looked as healthy and bright as the day.

The stress had finally dissolved from both of them. The tension in their relationship sparked as it always did, but it didn't seethe. A couple weeks of getting themselves back into the groove of things at home was all it had taken - time.

Time to forgive. Time to let the rough edges smooth down, to not see a knife at her throat every time she spoke, to grow used to the idea of his having the regimen. Boyd and Threkeld were working on it; Castle had regular appointments at Stone Farm - but so did Kate. Jungle parasites. Anemia. Whatever she needed, she had the medical attention to take care of it.

They were doing it together. Their habits hadn't changed, but at least he thought they were making the effort to be purposeful in their relationship. They'd always taken care of each other, picked up the other's slack, but now it was about doing specific things to build on what they had.

Kate had started a maintenance program with the CIA and forced Castle to join her. An eight mile run every day and a Krav Maga session every other night, with yoga in between. It eased something in him to see her defending herself, and that had been the point of course. His trust in her fight to survive was no longer quite so shaky.

Even with work and training, he still needed the physical outlet for his paranoia - thus building the panic room in the closet of the extra bedroom upstairs. He'd figured that going all the way to the basement might not be feasible, and the extra bedroom was a more convenient location. Being upstairs wasn't ideal for a sustained siege, but it would give them the time. With Black out there and unaccounted for, it soothed Castle to know there was a space just down the hall should their home be breached.

"You're ridiculously happy," Kate said then, her breath steaming in the early morning air.

"I am?"

"This morning when I got up for coffee, you had a really goofy smile on your face," she said. Her voice vibrated with amusement. "You having dreams about me?"

The vision rushed back to him with startling and sharp clarity, the knife and the hot smell of blood. "I..."

She laughed and pushed her pace a little more, sprinting ahead of him so that Sasha strained at the leash to follow. The conversation faltered as he chased after Kate, and when he caught up to her under the trees, she jogged in place for a moment, just watching him.

"It was about the Army," he said finally. "A dream about the Army."

"Good dream," she said, not asking, just telling. She put a foot on the bench and stood on the seat, draped her arms around his neck and tugged him into her. "You have sexy dreams about the Army, sweetheart?"

"I guess so," he murmured. Her mouth was close, tantalizing, and she was curling her fingers in the sweat at his nape, zipping electric current down to his toes.

"Tell me about the Army," she said. Her kiss touched the corner of his mouth lightly. "I don't know anything at all about your time over there. Only that you were in some kind of test group."

"Yeah, the first tour. Sixteen of us volunteers," he offered. He tilted his head at her to shake out the images of putting a knife in his father's throat, as pleasant as they were, and she bumped her hips into his chest, standing tall before him. "But first - this isn't going up on some kind of secret timeline is it? Because I'm not saying a word if you're gonna use it against me."

She froze.

He let a smile slip across his face. "Too soon?"

"You bully." She laughed, though the strain was still there between them, what she'd done to all the stories he'd given so freely, without restraint, the classified secrets in his head that had been tacked up to a closet door so she could run to his father. Her arms relaxed around his neck. "No, no secret timeline. Besides, you took my closet and made it into a panic room and now it's filled with wood dust and plaster."

He grinned, realized maybe that was part of why he was doing it. "Oh, yeah. I did."

"I didn't do it to hurt you. I made copies of the notebook because I would never rip those pages out. I-"

"You copied it and used it to chase after the one man who wants you dead."

"I pieced together your life," she sighed. "I wanted to know. Everything. I still want to know. I didn't want anything else to touch you, to hurt you."

But you hurt me.

She wrapped her arm around his shoulders, the other cradling his head, and she pulled him into her, his ear hitting her stomach so that he could hear her breath in her chest. He hung on to her and she stroked her fingers through his hair. "I cherish your stories, the letters you write to me and only me. You took the timeline down and gave me back my necklace, but sometimes I think you're still holding on to them both. Still keeping it back from me."

Maybe he was. Maybe he hadn't figured out how to give things that had been thrown back in his face. He had a hesitation now when he opened his mouth and it was just going to take time to get past it.

But it was time to start.

"I served in Kuwait from '96 to '99, when Black recalled me. After the twin towers, I went back to the Army Rangers until 2003. I had a week's furlough in New York before a permanent assignment in Ireland. You know how Ireland turned out for me. Honestly, I felt pretty good about being with the Rangers even if I was actually working for the CIA's Special Operations Services. It was pretty much the same job, only I assassinated key Taliban leaders before they could be taken prisoner. Or - you know - black ops stuff in the middle of a patrol."

"Wow. Hey, wait. You were in New York in 2003?"

"Yeah," he answered, then realized. "Oh. Where were you?"

She stared at him. "I was here. I was - when exactly was your week furlough?"

"November."

"Shit," she gasped. "We - I was here. Just graduated from the Police Academy. I did the parallel track thing, Criminal Justice in college and the Academy, trying to speed it up, because I was just - wow - I was desperate to open my mother's case. I had been on patrol since March."

"Oh, a baby Officer Beckett," he grinned.

She slapped his shoulder. "My TO was Royce - you know about him - and I'd - shit. I was always having to go pick up my father from some bar. I had handed out my name and number to all the places he went so they'd call me instead of the guys working that beat, and then Dad started finding new places, so that summer I was basically hitting up every bar in Manhattan."

He gripped her hips and titled his head back to look at her, his strong and tall wife. He couldn't help imagining the girl she'd been in 2003, only twenty-three and so fragile, still drowning in her mother's murder and not able to hold it together.

By the time he'd gotten to her - she'd already drowned. Gone. She'd told him that before, but somehow the visceral desperation of that time had never quite hit him.

"If I'd seen you..." he sighed wistfully. When he was thirty-three and still frustrated with the way the world was broken, so soon after the towers had gone down, furious at his father for yanking him out of the Rangers just when he'd thought he was doing some good fighting terrorism...

"Castle, sweetheart, if we'd met each other, it would have been a disaster."

"Yeah, I was... pretty cocky and angry back then," he admitted. "Black had just reassigned me and until then, the Army had really been my only independence. I didn't know then that what I was angry about was the lack of control over my own life. I didn't even know there was a life to control."

Her fingers stroked the hair at his nape and she leaned in to kiss him softly. "Well, I'd have been even worse. My father was an alcoholic and I spent every night scraping him off a stool - or the floor. Depending on how quickly they called me. Angry at your father? I understand that."

"It is... so much different now," he sighed, admitting the truth.

He wanted his father erased. Gone. And Kate's... Jim was the man he looked to for that kind of guidance and acceptance and love. At least they had him.

"What would you have done if we had met?" he said quickly. November of 2003. She'd told him once that she'd had these flings about once a year, a one night stand thing that she could be in control of, no strings; she hadn't wanted connections. "Would you have gone out with me?"

"I don't know," she said honestly. "You know I - you give a lot of yourself away to me, Rick. And so the control would've appealed to me. And well, of course, you're fucking hot. And in an Army uniform? Whew."

He laughed, pleased despite himself, and he wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her off the bench. Sasha had picked up some kind of scent and was nosing around the base of a tree, the leash slack in Castle's hand.

"I'd have taken you to dinner first," he promised. "Before we went to your place."

"My place?" she mused. "How presumptuous of you."

"I know what you like."

She laughed again and her teeth flashed in the dawn light, her body drawing closer to his as their sweat cooled them off. "You do. You know what I like."

"It'd have been awful," he admitted then. "I'd have - well, wanted to impress you and been so thoroughly impressed by you that everything would've gone wrong. I'd have tried to take you to this vegan place I always went to back then. Because hot, New York City girls of course had vegan."

"Vegan place?" she muttered, curling up her nose. "For dinner?"

"This Iranian couple owned it - I know, don't ask - but they spoke Persian and at the time I didn't know a word of Persian and it was nice. To just be... nothing. Not a cipher."

"Iranian vegan place," she groaned. "Castle, I'd have refused."

"I wouldn't have let you."

"There is no way in the world I'd have gone along with a vegan dinner knowing that all I wanted was to get you back to my place and probably handcuff you to my headboard."

He grunted and buried his face in her neck, brutally recalling how good being handcuffed by her could be. "You tease."

She laughed and curled her arms around him, up on the toes of her sneakers to kiss his cheek, his jaw, her laughter resonating. "Hey, I have an idea."

"What?"

"Let's do it. Our might have been first date."

"What?" He lifted his head and gave her a crooked smile, confused. "Our first date was-"

"Not the road where you abducted me. Our might have been. If we had met in 2003 in some bar while you nursed your anger and I stormed mine into every establishment my father might possibly drink in. Let's do it."

"A date."

"A 2003 first date. Just you try to take me to that vegan place."

He grinned back, imagining it now. "Does it end with me handcuffed to your headboard?"

"Of course."

"Then yes. Yes, I'll go out with you, Officer Beckett."

She laughed now too, so delighted and happy that it made Sasha bark and come back to them, pushing her body between them in an effort to share.

They were going on a date.

He'd dressed in what he remembered the uniform being back then - the black t-shirts and cargo pants, his black boots that he at least this time left discreetly tucked under his pants. He wore a light jacket in case she'd need it later, a worn-thin army jacket in dull green. It had taken him a long time to break the habit of a uniform as his go-to casual attire.

Beckett was in wide-legged jeans and a short, sleeveless shirt with a deep v-neck. He liked it, liked even better that he could see the slope of her breast as it disappeared into her bra.

"You did that on purpose," he said. She was shrugging into a grey wrap sweater; he slowly pulled her hair out from under the material of the collar.

"I did. Would have then too," she said with saucy smile. "You know me."

One a year, she'd told him once. She'd let her hair down for one a year, and then it was back to the grind, the daily effort of struggling against grief and obsession and darkness.

And him? Yeah, he'd have taken her up on it. He'd been desperate for connection, for something real, and even a weekend in bed with a woman who planned on never seeing him again was more than he'd ever gotten. And it would have made him ache in those dark places, where his mother had left him and his father had neglected him, and he would have enjoyed the ache, fed the ache, wanted to hurt because at least then he was alive.

"I'm so glad we're not them," he said suddenly. His throat was tight with all the ways he might have missed her, had she not held on as long as she had, had he not managed to coast through his father's program until he met her.

Her hands came to his cheeks and her mouth to his in a kiss, fierce and saving. He wrapped his arms around that slim waist, the soft fuzz of her sweater making him warm, and he let himself get a little buried in the way she loved him.

"I'm glad we're not them, too," she murmured. Her mouth glanced at his temple and she pushed him back, made him stand up straight again. "But I'm ready to have some fun. So come on. No more moping. I want you to show me a good time."

He smiled slowly and did his usual trick - or what had once been his usual trick - of sliding his fingers down the inside of a girl's arm and finding her palm, wrapping his hand around hers.

That used to make the assets all follow his lead, taking them by the hand, intimately like that. A promise of things to come.

She laughed and wriggled her fingers back in his, sent him a sly look. "Oh, don't think I don't know all your moves, Agent Castle."

"Only a Ranger now, Officer."

She bit her lip and the grin split in half, no less joyful. "Fine, then. Where are you taking me, Ranger?"

He opened their front door with his free hand and tugged her outside after him, Sasha watching from the foyer with a positively radiant look at being finally left alone. He locked the door and let himself drop into his cover ID as he turned around.

"Where am I taking you? For me to know, and you to find out."

"All right," she said, a note of suspicion and caution in her voice. "But I reserve the right to veto."

"You can always say no, Beckett. But you won't want to."

"I don't know, soldier. I'm pretty adept in saying no."

Oh, he bet she was. Had been. She probably really had been. "Baby, I bet you're pretty adept in a lot of ways."

She broke just a second to laugh, turning her head away, amusement bursting to life. He was glad; he didn't really want to be those people. Not entirely.

"Come on. We've got a long trek to the subway."

She let him lead.

"You'd have been this paranoid?" she murmured in his ear. They were standing close together on the subway with that 'lean in' kind of posture that new couples always had; she couldn't help herself.

Truthfully, she would be leaning into him anyway, the way his body filled the car like he had command of the whole operation. She saw a number of other women on the subway train eyeing him as well, looks his direction, and she couldn't even feel possessive over him because he was just like that.

They had taken the long way - a different long way - from their apartment, just as they always did. Their run in the dog park this morning had been the dog park in Harlem, closer to his old CIA apartment than their own house, because Castle's brand of paranoia had been given tighter screws ever since they'd come back from the Congo.

This was his coping mechanism. Well, paranoia and truly inappropriate humor. All these bald comments he made, the blunt truth of things, just to get a rise out of her, see if he could make her blush.

"I'd have been worse," he murmured. "Because I didn't know the city as well."

Hmm, interesting. Her spy back when he'd been a soldier, his black t-shirt and the military hair cut. "Was your head shaved?"

"Naw," he drawled, shooting her a charming smile. "It was shorter than this but it wasn't buzzed."

She reached out and combed her fingers at the nape of his neck where he'd cut it shorter when they'd gotten home from the Congo. Said he was hot - hot in February. Of course he was - now at least. Ever since the combination of serum and stabilizers. She liked the feel of the short hairs against the pads of her fingers. Especially since it was still appealingly falling in his eyes over his forehead.

Castle finally ducked his head and shrugged off her touch, eyes narrowed at her for it. She wanted to smile but she wouldn't. She wasn't going to be her 2003 self tonight, no way. She didn't much like the woman she'd been eleven years ago; she liked now.

The car screeched at their stop, or the stop Castle had apparently intended to be theirs, because he reached out for her hand and brought it up against his chest, kissing her knuckles, before guiding her out onto the platform.

The crowd was thin, and they picked their way to the escalators easily. Castle couldn't just ride up, of course; he climbed at a brisk pace, advancing steadily towards street level. She didn't mind; she wondered if she'd have minded it eleven years ago.

More importantly, would he have done it? She didn't think he would have, actually. He'd have picked the place, yes, but they wouldn't have been able to weave in and out of pedestrians like this, so effortlessly together, with such ease. She could anticipate his next move and his body was attuned to hers; they were seamless, and they didn't need words for it.

He would have talked to her though. She was pretty sure about that. Not because he would really want to, but because she wouldn't be able to let up. Best defense was a good offense, so she'd have been interrogating him, trying to upset his natural reserve, take his details hostage. They still did it, from time to time, the back and forth that built cover IDs or case theory, created a ruse or diffused a tense situation.

But the difference of eleven years, four of those together, was that she wasn't the woman who needed the defense against him. He had bulldozed right past those defenses, and she'd left them in the dust long ago.

"Castle," she called out. He didn't pause his forward march, but he did give her a swift glance backward. That was all she got, all she needed. "Would you have made it, you think?"

"Made it."

She let the question hang there, let him think about it. His hand around hers tightened and he pulled her up next to him on the sidewalk.

"Sweetheart, I needed you too much to have been able to let go. It would've gotten scary for you."

"Scary for me?" she murmured. But her heart was still fluttering over the idea that she might have been good for him. Had been good for him.

"Stalker type," he said firmly. "Phone calls in the middle of the night to check you were home. Following you on the street without your knowledge. Shadowing your patrols. I'd have been arrested for sure."

She hummed and leaned in to kiss his cheek. "No. You'd never be a stalker," she soothed. "I could never arrest you."

"Love, are you forgetting how you met me?"

Kate laughed, startled with how much she'd let him have back then, how she'd just let it go. And why? Because he looked ruggedly handsome in a suit? Because the dark thrill of having her hands cuffed behind her in an interrogation room had suddenly switched into her having his secrets out faster than he knew?

Yes, and more. "Because I needed you too much to let you go," she answered herself.

Eleven years ago? He might have bulldozed right past her defenses then too. But she wasn't sure she could have survived it.

He probably couldn't have survived her either.

Farbod's.

Beckett laughed and smacked his ass for the cheeky grin he gave her. "We are not eating vegan," she insisted.

"Oh, we are."

"Was this the place you always went? Where they spoke Persian?"

"Farsi," he murmured.

She sighed. "Fine, Farsi. Isn't that the same as Persian?"

"Yes, but I know Persian now. And we call it Farsi."

"But then, back then when you didn't know Farsi... you called it Persian."

"Exactly."

"Sometimes I really hate you," she sighed. "And I am not eating vegan on our might have been first date. I am seriously starving, Castle. This new program we're on - ah, bad word for it..."

But he didn't wince, he didn't have that cloud come over his eyes when she mentioned his father or what had happened. Instead he shrugged and gestured to the hole-in-the-wall little place. "First date awaits, Beckett."

"No," she decided. "I'm taking you somewhere else. Somewhere I know a hot young soldier like yourself has always been dying to go."

"I never was dying to go to those strip clubs. I swear, they always made me."

She laughed and nudged him away from the door, pushing him back towards the center of the city. "There's a place you'd love. Actually, I don't think you and I have ever been."

"Of course we haven't. I've only just met you. I don't often pick up girls from bars, Officer, but I always put out on the first date."

She clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from giggling, horrified with how easily he was getting her today - why in the world was she so giggly? She started dragging him down the street towards the Jewish deli she and her mother had always loved.

Would she have taken him there, just as now? Some long-buried instinct to bring him home. "My mom and I always went to this place," she told him. He deserved her stories too, just as many as the ones she'd pored over in his notebook. "I'd meet her there because it was close to school."

"Where is there?" he said softly. He was close at her side now, and he was doing the leaning in, trying to catch her words.

"Ernie's Deli. Hot soup, cabbage rolls, the best sandwiches you've ever had in your life. I'd forgotten about it until just now," she admitted. "It wasn't my favorite place, honestly. I wanted fries or I wanted some chic salad like all my friends."

"So you kind of buried the memory," he murmured. His eyes were so kind. She'd never noticed quite like this before. Such a gentle man. She'd often wondered what would have happened to him if his mother had kept him away from Black, but now she wondered what would have happened if they'd had the last eleven years.

"I did. I guess because my mom was gone and those weren't particularly stand-out memories - they were just normal."

"Have you been back since she died?"

She was startled to realize that since she died had replaced since she was murdered. And had been replaced for a year or so now. "Yes," she answered finally. "Dad and I. And I took Ryan one day when he needed a pep talk."

"Oh, so this is a - this place holds meaning," he said. "Kate. You wouldn't have allowed me to get near this place. No way."

"I think.. I would have," she said, probing the theory in her head for cracks in the foundation. "I think, yes, I would have. I'd have seen the vegan place and - how would you have explained that? You'd have told me that you only eat from that strict diet, and I'd have seen that look on your face I saw when you told me you never ate syrup with your waffles or you had never gotten Chinese takeout."

"What look?"

"Like an orphan," she huffed. "The boy left behind." She swallowed hard at the way it hit her now, the clutch of her throat as if she might cry. Over the past. Over things she'd fixed already. "One look from you like that, Rick, and I'd have wanted to bring you home."

"Are you telling me my considerable charm and massive wit weren't the things that won you over?"

"Oh, your considerable something won me, that's for sure."

He grinned and that wave of sorrow was washed right out again. Castle might have been an abandoned little boy, but he wasn't now. She had him. She'd always have him.

"So come on. I'm taking you home."

"To a Jewish deli," he deadpanned. "All right. Bring it on."