Away in the Woods (1/?)
Title: Away in the Woods
Author: wrldpossibility
Fandom: Castle
Characters: Castle/Beckett
Word Count: 2000
Rating: PG (so far)
Spoilers: For S4
Summary: Beckett and Castle are banished to her father's cabin in the woods. Alone. For days. Make of that what you will.
Author's Note: This is just for fun, fun, fun. No precise time period it's meant to fit into; just consider it S4 and we're good. And yeah, it's a WIP. I'm guessing it'll be 3 chapters, but if you know me, it could be more. And it'll be updated regularly, because that's just the way I roll.
In Kate Beckett’s experience, cops can pretty much count on not counting on anything. Even the most carefully made plans are fair game. One minute, she’s at her desk, filing the last of her paperwork for the day and looking forward to a quiet apartment, a glass of merlot, and maybe even a good book. The next, the promise of a relaxing evening is whisked out from under her as swiftly as she’d scissor kicked her assailant earlier that day.
As with most things which lead to a colossal pain in her ass, it had started with:
“Beckett! Mr. Castle! My office. Now.”
They’d filed in like petulant children, Castle taking the lead, Kate determined not to flinch as the door slammed shut behind them. A file lay open on Gates’ desk, and she was still returning the phone to its cradle as they approached her desk.
Apparently, the case Kate thought they’d closed is anything but. Gates gets straight to the point. “Our perp has an accomplice. More than one, in fact.”
“Sir?”
“This thing goes deeper than we knew. A whole crime ring is connected, and-“ she looks pointedly from Kate to Castle and then back again-“they’ve made you. Both of you. At the arrest today.”
“Where we took out our guy,” Kate clarifies. “The one who murdered our vic.” She lays a healthy emphasis on murdered.
Gates looks unimpressed. “Mmmhmm. So Robbery and Vice have stepped in to take over the case, now that, as you so helpfully point out, Detective, the pesky murder part is out of the way. But they’d appreciate you not scaring the accomplices off, what with your shiny mugs that can identify them. So the two of you will need to make yourself scarce.”
They both speak at once.
“Sir?”
“What’s that now?”
Gates radiates impatience. “Just for a few days. Disappear. Preferably out of town.” She dismisses them with a wave of one hand.
There’s no way Kate’s not standing her ground. “Sir, I can’t just-“
“Of course you can.” Gates nods toward Castle. “With him. I'll sleep better knowing you two have each other's backs." She makes a show of looking at her watch. “Starting...now. Have a place in mind?”
Kate stares stubbornly at Gates, but out of the corner of her eye, she can see Castle shuffling nervously from foot to foot. “We could head to my house in the Hamptons…”
Immediately, Gates scoffs. “The one that was featured just last month in a two-page Vanity Fair spread? Good idea. I can see why you’re considered such a valuable asset around here, Mr. Castle, what with those street smarts.”
Kate bites her lip, opens her mouth to speak, hesitates, sighs, and then says, “I know where we can go.” She turns to the door, then looks back over her shoulder for Castle. Realizing she looks just as irritable as Gates, she reverses the frown on her face. “You coming?”
*****
It’s a four hour drive from the city to her father’s cabin. ”Three hours if we take my Porsche,” Castle had countered, and dammit, she’d have been tempted had the stupid thing not been too conspicuous. Instead, they’ll be taking an unmarked, Kate at the wheel.
Picking him up at the curb outside his loft, she pops the trunk to stow a ridiculously oversized Forzieri suitcase. He hefts it in with a grunt, then raises an eyebrow at her overnight-sized duffel, suddenly dwarfed beside the Italian leather handcrafted monstrosity.
“What?” she challenges.
He smirks. “Nothing. You want to run out of clothes, that’s on you.” He’d pauses, musing. “Or, perhaps more accurately, not…” He catches the look on her face and trails off. “On…you. Hey, should we grab something to go? It’s on me.” He grins at her.
In lieu of an answer, she slides behind the wheel and adjusts her mirror before easing into SoHo traffic. The dashboard clock glows 8:15 pm, and her eyes are already trying to close.
“Well sor-rrry,” Castle’s saying, drawing the word into two whiny syllables. “No reason not to turn this situation to our advantage, Detective Beckett.”
Two minutes in, and she already wants to strangle him.
*****
Two hours in, and Kate’s fighting sleep at the wheel. It’s nearing 10 pm, and to say it’s been a full day already would be an understatement. Beside her, Castle’s eyes are closed, his head resting on the seat back. In the light of the dash, his profile radiates warmth. The afterglow from the hostage standoff is still a prominent, if silent, partner in Kate's thoughts, and she finds herself staring at the angle of his jaw before jerking her eyes back to the dark road. Time to wake him up.
“So,” she says. “I’m curious. How would Jameson Rook ‘turn this situation to his advantage’?”
He smiles and lifts his head. “That depends. Is he riding shotgun with Nikki Heat or Kate Beckett?”
As with everything these days, his casual comment hits too close to home. She goes on the offensive. “Aren’t they one and the same, Castle?”
He looks genuinely taken aback. “Not at all.” She feels a pang of regret for unnecessarily taking a jab. Pushing back, even when Castle’s not pushing, has become a bad habit. “You know that,” he chastises. He mumbles the rest into the direction of the side window. “If you didn’t, there’s no way I would have gotten three books in.”
She smiles. This is true.
*****
Sometime past 11 pm, they pull off I-87 and into the Quik Kart parking lot outside High Peak, New York. “We’ll need to pick up some groceries,” she says. “There’s next to no food in the house. I can vouch for that.”
Castle is looking at her intently as he unsnaps his seatbelt. “That’s right. You were probably the last one staying at the cabin, weren’t you?”
She doesn’t look at him as she answers, busying herself locking the car and stretching. “I doubt my dad’s had time to stop by since.” She’s not entirely sure how she feels about bringing him here, to the epicenter of so much intensely personal pain and healing, but it’s too late now. She supposes it’s fitting that when Gates requested a place for her to go and hide, she thought first of this one.
She gestures to him to follow her toward the market. “He usually spends every autumn weekend up here, but since I’ve been back, he’s been entirely too busy checking in on me at my apartment.”
Castle falls into step beside her. “He loves you.”
It's a casual observation, and a fair one, but something in the way he says it makes her risk a quick glance his way. “I know.”
Inside the market, the single cashier at the only lit check stand nods at them, then resumes his browsing of a copy of US Weekly. They make short work of it, cruising up and down the empty aisles for bread, cereal, and milk, and brie, water crackers, and filet mignon, respectively. It’s a curiously intimate experience, divvying up their scrawled list, deciding what they might eat-together-for breakfast tomorrow, lunch, dinner, then likely breakfast again after that. Kate finds herself caught in a momentary panic: what will that look like, that day-after-tomorrow breakfast across her dad’s worn kitchen table from Castle?
He seems much more at ease. After debating over jumbo or chocolate swirl marshmallows (Your cabin does have a fireplace, doesn’t it?), he tosses both packages in the cart and steers it toward the Hershey bars.
“It’s not a campout, Castle.”
“Oh, indulge a city boy, will you?”
She takes the list from his hand, smiling. “What’s left?”
“Drinks. What would you like?” His tone shifts from boyish delight to playful mockery in that way of his that leaves her hanging on his every word. “Or, should I say, what would Nikki like, since it's all the same to you?”
“You know the answer to that.” He looks puzzled, but retains the smirk. She looks at him significantly. “Tequila and limes, of course.” She watches as his face rearranges itself, then leans in closer, until she’s whispering in his ear. “Aisle four.”
Something about the way Castle stumbles away causes her to keep smiling long after the joke is over.
*****
She can’t quite believe it when a trio of limes roll past her along the conveyor belt at check out, followed by two bottles of tequila. And salt. And then several bottles of chardonnay and a bottle of scotch. She raises an eyebrow. “It’s not a frat party, either.”
By the time they’re back in the car, they only have a dozen miles to go. These are slow going though, along single-lane roads that wind through the dark woods on either side of them, twisting and dipping in ways Kate remembers used to make her stomach lurch as a child. She’s not sure why, but she tells Castle this.
“Have you always come here?” he asks.
“Since I can remember.” She smiles. “The property used to be nothing more than a hunting shelter on ten acres to the east of the lake, but after I was born, my mom said she’d stop coming if my dad didn’t improve upon it.”
Castle laughs lightly. The sound is comforting somehow, rattling around in the dark of the car interior. “The power of a woman putting her foot down. Nothing like it in the world.”
“Must have worked. I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t a cozy escape by the lake.”
“Sounds nice.”
She nods, even though she’s not sure he can see her in the dark. She stares at the black ribbon of road, then beyond and beside it, where the shadows of trees blur past. “Some of my happiest memories are here.”
There’s a pause while Castle mulls this over, but when he answers her, his voice is still light. “I’ll try not to ruin it.”
*****
They pull up just after midnight, the white Crown Vic’s tires crunching the gravel of the quarter mile driveway at a slow and grinding pace. The headlights illuminate the single-story cabin as Kate shifts into park, shining a duel spotlight on the paneled wood exterior with slanted roof and planter boxes-long empty-in the windows fitted on each side of the front door.
For a moment, they both sit in the car, studying the dark structure. "You don't think...we don't need to worry about any surprises, do we?" Castle asks.
Kate shakes her head. "We haven't been tailed. And this place is just about as off the grid as they come." All the same, she reaches for her Sig under her seat and cocks it before stepping out of the car. Castle grabs a Maglite and flanks her shoulder. He holds the light aloft as she fits the key into the standard lock and jiggles it back and forth (it's always stiff) and then nudges one shoulder into the door to slide it open (it always sticks). Inside, the beam of the Mag is the only break in the complete darkness. It bounces over a pair of comfortably worn couches facing a massive stone fireplace as Kate slides her hand along the wall, feeling for the switch. She finds it, and they both release a breath as yellow light floods the room.
Kate lowers her Sig, but rests it, at the ready, against her thigh while crossing the main room to the narrow, wood-paneled hallway beyond it, Castle's flashlight leading the way. They clear the bedroom, the bathroom, and the small kitchen, then Kate flips the back porch light to briefly glance at the tiny deck, with its picnic table and chairs beside her dad's ancient BBQ, now covered for the winter. Satisfied, she flips the light back off, and they return to the living room, where she holsters the Sig and breathes in deeply of the familiar, musty air she associates with weekend escape, and more recently, convalescence.
Castle switches the Maglite off and sets it on a side table, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he crosses the room to investigate the darkened fireplace. It's cold in the room; Kate can see his breath in the air when he speaks.
"It's official," he says cheerfully. "We're alone."
Author: wrldpossibility
Fandom: Castle
Characters: Castle/Beckett
Word Count: 2000
Rating: PG (so far)
Spoilers: For S4
Summary: Beckett and Castle are banished to her father's cabin in the woods. Alone. For days. Make of that what you will.
Author's Note: This is just for fun, fun, fun. No precise time period it's meant to fit into; just consider it S4 and we're good. And yeah, it's a WIP. I'm guessing it'll be 3 chapters, but if you know me, it could be more. And it'll be updated regularly, because that's just the way I roll.
In Kate Beckett’s experience, cops can pretty much count on not counting on anything. Even the most carefully made plans are fair game. One minute, she’s at her desk, filing the last of her paperwork for the day and looking forward to a quiet apartment, a glass of merlot, and maybe even a good book. The next, the promise of a relaxing evening is whisked out from under her as swiftly as she’d scissor kicked her assailant earlier that day.
As with most things which lead to a colossal pain in her ass, it had started with:
“Beckett! Mr. Castle! My office. Now.”
They’d filed in like petulant children, Castle taking the lead, Kate determined not to flinch as the door slammed shut behind them. A file lay open on Gates’ desk, and she was still returning the phone to its cradle as they approached her desk.
Apparently, the case Kate thought they’d closed is anything but. Gates gets straight to the point. “Our perp has an accomplice. More than one, in fact.”
“Sir?”
“This thing goes deeper than we knew. A whole crime ring is connected, and-“ she looks pointedly from Kate to Castle and then back again-“they’ve made you. Both of you. At the arrest today.”
“Where we took out our guy,” Kate clarifies. “The one who murdered our vic.” She lays a healthy emphasis on murdered.
Gates looks unimpressed. “Mmmhmm. So Robbery and Vice have stepped in to take over the case, now that, as you so helpfully point out, Detective, the pesky murder part is out of the way. But they’d appreciate you not scaring the accomplices off, what with your shiny mugs that can identify them. So the two of you will need to make yourself scarce.”
They both speak at once.
“Sir?”
“What’s that now?”
Gates radiates impatience. “Just for a few days. Disappear. Preferably out of town.” She dismisses them with a wave of one hand.
There’s no way Kate’s not standing her ground. “Sir, I can’t just-“
“Of course you can.” Gates nods toward Castle. “With him. I'll sleep better knowing you two have each other's backs." She makes a show of looking at her watch. “Starting...now. Have a place in mind?”
Kate stares stubbornly at Gates, but out of the corner of her eye, she can see Castle shuffling nervously from foot to foot. “We could head to my house in the Hamptons…”
Immediately, Gates scoffs. “The one that was featured just last month in a two-page Vanity Fair spread? Good idea. I can see why you’re considered such a valuable asset around here, Mr. Castle, what with those street smarts.”
Kate bites her lip, opens her mouth to speak, hesitates, sighs, and then says, “I know where we can go.” She turns to the door, then looks back over her shoulder for Castle. Realizing she looks just as irritable as Gates, she reverses the frown on her face. “You coming?”
*****
It’s a four hour drive from the city to her father’s cabin. ”Three hours if we take my Porsche,” Castle had countered, and dammit, she’d have been tempted had the stupid thing not been too conspicuous. Instead, they’ll be taking an unmarked, Kate at the wheel.
Picking him up at the curb outside his loft, she pops the trunk to stow a ridiculously oversized Forzieri suitcase. He hefts it in with a grunt, then raises an eyebrow at her overnight-sized duffel, suddenly dwarfed beside the Italian leather handcrafted monstrosity.
“What?” she challenges.
He smirks. “Nothing. You want to run out of clothes, that’s on you.” He’d pauses, musing. “Or, perhaps more accurately, not…” He catches the look on her face and trails off. “On…you. Hey, should we grab something to go? It’s on me.” He grins at her.
In lieu of an answer, she slides behind the wheel and adjusts her mirror before easing into SoHo traffic. The dashboard clock glows 8:15 pm, and her eyes are already trying to close.
“Well sor-rrry,” Castle’s saying, drawing the word into two whiny syllables. “No reason not to turn this situation to our advantage, Detective Beckett.”
Two minutes in, and she already wants to strangle him.
*****
Two hours in, and Kate’s fighting sleep at the wheel. It’s nearing 10 pm, and to say it’s been a full day already would be an understatement. Beside her, Castle’s eyes are closed, his head resting on the seat back. In the light of the dash, his profile radiates warmth. The afterglow from the hostage standoff is still a prominent, if silent, partner in Kate's thoughts, and she finds herself staring at the angle of his jaw before jerking her eyes back to the dark road. Time to wake him up.
“So,” she says. “I’m curious. How would Jameson Rook ‘turn this situation to his advantage’?”
He smiles and lifts his head. “That depends. Is he riding shotgun with Nikki Heat or Kate Beckett?”
As with everything these days, his casual comment hits too close to home. She goes on the offensive. “Aren’t they one and the same, Castle?”
He looks genuinely taken aback. “Not at all.” She feels a pang of regret for unnecessarily taking a jab. Pushing back, even when Castle’s not pushing, has become a bad habit. “You know that,” he chastises. He mumbles the rest into the direction of the side window. “If you didn’t, there’s no way I would have gotten three books in.”
She smiles. This is true.
*****
Sometime past 11 pm, they pull off I-87 and into the Quik Kart parking lot outside High Peak, New York. “We’ll need to pick up some groceries,” she says. “There’s next to no food in the house. I can vouch for that.”
Castle is looking at her intently as he unsnaps his seatbelt. “That’s right. You were probably the last one staying at the cabin, weren’t you?”
She doesn’t look at him as she answers, busying herself locking the car and stretching. “I doubt my dad’s had time to stop by since.” She’s not entirely sure how she feels about bringing him here, to the epicenter of so much intensely personal pain and healing, but it’s too late now. She supposes it’s fitting that when Gates requested a place for her to go and hide, she thought first of this one.
She gestures to him to follow her toward the market. “He usually spends every autumn weekend up here, but since I’ve been back, he’s been entirely too busy checking in on me at my apartment.”
Castle falls into step beside her. “He loves you.”
It's a casual observation, and a fair one, but something in the way he says it makes her risk a quick glance his way. “I know.”
Inside the market, the single cashier at the only lit check stand nods at them, then resumes his browsing of a copy of US Weekly. They make short work of it, cruising up and down the empty aisles for bread, cereal, and milk, and brie, water crackers, and filet mignon, respectively. It’s a curiously intimate experience, divvying up their scrawled list, deciding what they might eat-together-for breakfast tomorrow, lunch, dinner, then likely breakfast again after that. Kate finds herself caught in a momentary panic: what will that look like, that day-after-tomorrow breakfast across her dad’s worn kitchen table from Castle?
He seems much more at ease. After debating over jumbo or chocolate swirl marshmallows (Your cabin does have a fireplace, doesn’t it?), he tosses both packages in the cart and steers it toward the Hershey bars.
“It’s not a campout, Castle.”
“Oh, indulge a city boy, will you?”
She takes the list from his hand, smiling. “What’s left?”
“Drinks. What would you like?” His tone shifts from boyish delight to playful mockery in that way of his that leaves her hanging on his every word. “Or, should I say, what would Nikki like, since it's all the same to you?”
“You know the answer to that.” He looks puzzled, but retains the smirk. She looks at him significantly. “Tequila and limes, of course.” She watches as his face rearranges itself, then leans in closer, until she’s whispering in his ear. “Aisle four.”
Something about the way Castle stumbles away causes her to keep smiling long after the joke is over.
*****
She can’t quite believe it when a trio of limes roll past her along the conveyor belt at check out, followed by two bottles of tequila. And salt. And then several bottles of chardonnay and a bottle of scotch. She raises an eyebrow. “It’s not a frat party, either.”
By the time they’re back in the car, they only have a dozen miles to go. These are slow going though, along single-lane roads that wind through the dark woods on either side of them, twisting and dipping in ways Kate remembers used to make her stomach lurch as a child. She’s not sure why, but she tells Castle this.
“Have you always come here?” he asks.
“Since I can remember.” She smiles. “The property used to be nothing more than a hunting shelter on ten acres to the east of the lake, but after I was born, my mom said she’d stop coming if my dad didn’t improve upon it.”
Castle laughs lightly. The sound is comforting somehow, rattling around in the dark of the car interior. “The power of a woman putting her foot down. Nothing like it in the world.”
“Must have worked. I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t a cozy escape by the lake.”
“Sounds nice.”
She nods, even though she’s not sure he can see her in the dark. She stares at the black ribbon of road, then beyond and beside it, where the shadows of trees blur past. “Some of my happiest memories are here.”
There’s a pause while Castle mulls this over, but when he answers her, his voice is still light. “I’ll try not to ruin it.”
*****
They pull up just after midnight, the white Crown Vic’s tires crunching the gravel of the quarter mile driveway at a slow and grinding pace. The headlights illuminate the single-story cabin as Kate shifts into park, shining a duel spotlight on the paneled wood exterior with slanted roof and planter boxes-long empty-in the windows fitted on each side of the front door.
For a moment, they both sit in the car, studying the dark structure. "You don't think...we don't need to worry about any surprises, do we?" Castle asks.
Kate shakes her head. "We haven't been tailed. And this place is just about as off the grid as they come." All the same, she reaches for her Sig under her seat and cocks it before stepping out of the car. Castle grabs a Maglite and flanks her shoulder. He holds the light aloft as she fits the key into the standard lock and jiggles it back and forth (it's always stiff) and then nudges one shoulder into the door to slide it open (it always sticks). Inside, the beam of the Mag is the only break in the complete darkness. It bounces over a pair of comfortably worn couches facing a massive stone fireplace as Kate slides her hand along the wall, feeling for the switch. She finds it, and they both release a breath as yellow light floods the room.
Kate lowers her Sig, but rests it, at the ready, against her thigh while crossing the main room to the narrow, wood-paneled hallway beyond it, Castle's flashlight leading the way. They clear the bedroom, the bathroom, and the small kitchen, then Kate flips the back porch light to briefly glance at the tiny deck, with its picnic table and chairs beside her dad's ancient BBQ, now covered for the winter. Satisfied, she flips the light back off, and they return to the living room, where she holsters the Sig and breathes in deeply of the familiar, musty air she associates with weekend escape, and more recently, convalescence.
Castle switches the Maglite off and sets it on a side table, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he crosses the room to investigate the darkened fireplace. It's cold in the room; Kate can see his breath in the air when he speaks.
"It's official," he says cheerfully. "We're alone."