Close Encounters 20: Happy and Glorious

for You
because you're still here after twenty of these
and you deserve something happy and glorious for them

When Castle yanked the sweat-soaked t-shirt over his head and threw it towards the bench, he heard his wife cursing from the locker room showers.

"Oh, shit," she moaned.

He moved away from the lockers and saw her standing before the mirror, inspecting her hip. Kate was only in yoga pants and that not-fair, so-hot lace bra, freshly sweaty from their cross-fit training session. He'd followed her into the locker room on the Office's sub-level gym, intending to have some fun in the shower, but she was rubbing her fingers over the stretch of her stomach.

"Shit, shit, shit," she hissed.

Castle laughed and came up behind her in the mirror, framed her hips with his hands to move her fingers away from her belly. Kate had been trying to clean up her language since the baby could 'hear' in the womb, but neither of them were very good at it. "What is it now?" he said, squeezing her hands.

"My tattoo," she growled. Her eyes were fixed on the mirror, but his were on her, the curve and steel of her.

He grinned when she finally met his eyes. "Hot."

"It's not hot. It's stretched," she huffed. "This is all your fault."

"It's not stretched," he laughed. "I swear. No, Kate, it's-"

She shoved him - hard - away from her, and he laughed again, trying not to be an ass.

"Kate, baby, wait a second. Wait." Castle grabbed her around the waist, the best he could, fingers at the bare skin of her hips. "Look, hang on. It hasn't stretched."

"It has." She turned in the mirror again and touched her fingers to her hipbone - or where her hip bone was supposed to be, had been, would be again in about twelve weeks. "The letters have definitely stretched."

The Russian letters hadn't stretched; she was wrong. "I know your body pretty well, don't you think?"

She rolled her eyes and then gave him a death stare in the mirror, but he wasn't deterred. A pregnant Beckett was feisty and a little vicious and damn strong, and he liked pushing her as hard as she liked shoving back.

"I know your body, Kate Beckett. It hasn't moved. And your Russian bear is fucking hot," he murmured. She was all narrow-eyed suspicion, but he pressed his palm to her skin, still able to cover the black outline of the bear, the Russian inside it. Distinctly morose and entirely befitting the Beckett who'd gotten it so long ago, but it reminded him of that core of strength in her, the woman who had survived thirteen days in a cave alone.

"It'll stretch in the next few weeks though," she muttered. "Fuck. I'm so - angry."

"Angry?" he chuckled. "Baby, surely you knew that might happen when you got it?"

"No. I wasn't - this isn't a tattoo a pregnant woman gets."

"I don't mean - shit. Beckett, come on. You didn't once stop to think about how it would stretch when you got pregnant?" She wasn't stupid; she was an intelligent woman who thought things through, saw all the ramifications. She was a damn fine agent because of it, had been a great detective. And even a nineteen year old freshly mourning her mother wasn't going to make a stupid decision.

Kate's fingers curled, her eyes avoiding his in the mirror. "When I got this, Castle, I wasn't planning on being pregnant."

"Ever?"

Her jaw was set - against him - and she turned around, pushed out of the crowd of his body and towards the showers. The lacy black bra was calling his name, but he wanted to hear more about what she'd been thinking when she'd gotten inked.

"Kate. Ever?"

She flipped on the water in the skinny, curtainless shower stall, crossed her arms above her stomach. It still did funny things to his guts to see her, see the baby growing, her body changing. For the most part, Beckett had been just as grateful and pleased as he had; this was the first time he'd ever heard her frustrated with the way pregnancy was shaping her.

"You know what it says," Kate said finally. "The Russian. You know what it means."

He knew what it meant; he'd looked up the Pushkin poem the moment he'd read those words inside the angry bear, found the book of poetry on her shelves in her apartment and read her college notes.

It had made him want her, made him intrigued by her furious and unapologetic grief. Her mother had been murdered and she'd taken a vow. Castle himself had never encountered that kind of pure and honest feeling before. He'd been the machine, and she'd been filled with intensity, and so of course he'd been moth to her flame.

"I know what it means," he admitted, reaching past her to test the water. Cold, freezing cold, and he nudged the faucet, using it as an excuse to touch that tattoo with his other hand, as if for balance.

She shivered. "I wanted to be that, have that power despite the sadness."

"You are that," he murmured. "You are. We are, aren't we?"

"That's the thing," she sighed, a sad little smile. "I never thought there could be a we."

"Us?"

"Not just us - anyone else at all. Just me. It was a crusade, an obsession - you saw how I was. No one else could fit, Castle. So there definitely wouldn't be any stretching going on. No marriage and babies in that world."

He pressed two fingers to the black bear, felt her skin rippling under his touch. He loved how she reacted to him, but he was proud too of how he'd been the one to break through to her, he'd been the one to stretch her.

More ways than one.

"I marked myself," she said suddenly. "That's what I did. I branded myself with it so that - so that there'd never be an us, never be that life. I was going to bring my mother's killer to justice. And so to make that happen - to make it impossible to do anything else - I got a tattoo."

Even though Castle had known that about her, he had never put words to it, how she'd radically altered herself for him after being so determined, and for so long, to put on blinders to life and not allow herself happiness.

"I've got scars," he started, his thumb pressing against the edge of the bear and sliding over it, making her shiver again. "I've got scars - and you know all their stories. But spies aren't allowed to be marked, to have those distinguishable characteristics that might let us be recognized-"

"I don't want it removed," she whispered.

"No, love, that's not - no. I don't mean that. I mean, I admire you. I wish I'd had a reason. Ever. I wish I had wanted something so much, been so passionate... I never had a reason to get a tattoo. But I do now. You. You'd be my ink."

Kate tilted her head, that look of hers where she was smiling but didn't want to smile, to give it out so easily. She pressed her lips together but he ignored the allure of her mouth and instead framed her hips with his hands and squatted down, kissed the barely stretched Russian bear just below her hipbone.

Kate sighed, her fingers coming to the back of his neck and stroking in his hair. He smiled against the tattoo and stood up again, the locker room now swirling with steam between them. She sucked in a breath and blinked, her eyes on him, and Castle stepped into her, an arm sliding around her waist.

She pressed her mouth to his jaw and nipped his skin, teeth sharp, the rumble in her throat making him aware.

"Shower, Kate," he husked.

"Mm, good idea. Wanna help me out of this thing?" She shifted his hand and his finger slid under the strap of her bra, hooked. "Bought it with you in mind."

"Hell, yeah."

"Happy third trimester," Logan laughed, raising his glass to her.

Kate rolled her eyes. "Happy brand new lab," she said.

Castle was on the far side of the newly-appointed working quarters for the Regimen Medical Team. The RMT, as Castle was calling it, had needed greater security and a more clandestine designation after Threkeld's kidnapping. Stone Farm just wasn't ideal any longer, and Ragle had been all too happy to have their 'science project' moved off his premises and out from under his purview.

She and Castle had done it themselves, nestling their Stone Farm people inside of a huge, multi-national corporate headquarters on the fiftieth floor of an imposing skyscraper in downtown New York. There was room for the all the various experiments that Boyd and Logan had running, and the anonymity to focus on the regimen.

Castle always said it was easiest to hide in a crowd. Even Threkeld was able to leave his apartment in the city and walk to work, despite everything.

"How's Gerald?" she asked Logan quietly.

"He's okay," Logan nodded. Dr Threkeld might never be the same again, and for that Kate - and she knew her husband as well - felt responsible. "He's leaving his house to come to work, so that's a positive sign."

"I heard Dr King was visiting with him."

"Yeah. Not officially, of course." Logan winced and rubbed the top of his head; he'd recently shaved it close so that the hair bristled sharp. It made his ears stick out like he was a ten year old.

She liked it a lot. She had dreams of eventually cutting James's hair like that in the summers and being able to rub her hand over it.

That she had visions like that at all was different for her. She had always relied heavily on Castle's optimism and sense of inevitable and glorious happiness - his my dreams come true rationale - but lately, she'd found those visions coming easier for her.

Hope.

"What?" Logan muttered. "You're staring at me."

"Yeah, the hair-"

"Shut up."

"Bend down. I want to rub your head for good luck."

"You're such a brat," he grumped.

"My wife is a brat?" a voice said. Castle came up behind her and slid his arm around her waist, kissed the side of her neck with a little more wet tongue than was appropriate. But he released her and didn't hang on her, and she was grateful he had some restraint.

"Don't you think his shaved head is perfect to rub for luck?" she told him, nodding to Logan. "Come on, let me at least touch it."

"Will it cut you?" Castle joked.

"You're not supposed to be encouraging her."

"She requires no encouragement. Beckett will do exactly as she wishes with no help from me," Castle grinned. But he nudged one of the lab stools her way, using those silent bullying tactics he'd taken up lately.

She wasn't tired; her feet didn't hurt. The start of her third trimester didn't mean she was going to collapse. In fact, at twenty-eight weeks, she had more energy than she'd had in the first six weeks. That might have been due to not having bruised ribs, granted, or that she now had twenty-eight weeks worth of supplements fueling her body, but she felt strong, healthy.

Her center of balance had shifted, her hips were a little wider, and she could cross her arms over her stomach and rest them there, prop them like a shelf - but that was about it.

"How's your wife like New York?" she asked, switching the subject back to what she'd been meaning to get to.

Logan shrugged. "She's an outdoors girl at heart, so it's not her favorite place right now. But I think it will be okay. She's got the night shift in the Emergency Department at Sacred Heart. She really likes that. The busyness."

"She's a nurse, right?" Castle asked, taking a sip of his drink. "Does she want in on the project? I mean, she could-"

"Naw, I would drive her crazy," Logan admitted, giving them both a self-deprecating smile. "I already drive her crazy. She wants me out of the house. Out of the way. And thanks for that, the house. I can't... it's pretty amazing. And she loves it."

Kate and Castle had searched for weeks trying to find the perfect place to put Logan and his wife Alyssa, the ideal home for a couple of transplants, both of whom were used to small towns and open spaces. The townhome had been expensive, but after they'd sold the villa in Rome, it had been actually quite affordable. They'd bought both the townhouse and the duplex that Boyd and Threkeld lived in.

"How's Gerald?" Castle asked then, like it had been the question he'd wanted to ask all along.

Kate smiled and leaned in to kiss his cheek for it; he looked startled but he was listening to Logan repeat the news, so she drifted away from them. She rescued her glass of white sparkling grape juice and headed for the men clustered around one of the new lab tables.

"Dr King," she smiled. "Thanks for coming to our party."

"Pretty momentous. They've done a lot of work here."

"So have you," she insisted. He was part of their team; this group had all banded together to help her and Castle not only survive, but thrive. So much of their current regimen was based on some quick thinking and harried research to produce the best results, and while Kate still didn't love watching those pregnant rats jog on their spinning wheels, she had to admit it was working.

She could spin the wheel for as long as James needed.

"Hey, Kate," Dr Boyd called to her, shifting into the group. He had a glass of wine in his hand, and it was mostly gone. He looked the most relaxed she had seen since they had moved everyone to New York. "Kate, I need to apologize."

"Apologize?" she laughed. Dr Boyd was usually so cheerful, and the wine had put a sparkle in his eyes, but his words belied it.

"We've nicknamed him. We shouldn't have, but we couldn't help it."

"Nicknamed... oh, James?" she said. She pressed her lips together to keep from laughing again. Dr Boyd was looking quite remorseful.

"Oh, no. No. Harry, don't-"

Kate interrupted Logan as he approached and tried to warn Boyd away. "Hush, you. Let him finish. He was about to confess all to me."

Logan groaned as Boyd opened his mouth. "We couldn't very well put his name down in lab work or record keeping, of course. We're all trying to keep the secret-"

"Yes, I know," she said warmly. "We appreciate it. Whatever nickname you've come up with is - I'm sure - quite okay."

"We call him Charlie Echo," Boyd sighed, his shoulders slumping. He gave her a sad look from behind his glasses, as if hopeful for forgiveness but not expecting it.

"Charlie... Echo?" she said.

"Because he's Charlie One," Logan muttered, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

Kate turned around and saw Castle had come up behind her, his body framing hers. "What's this?" he said.

"They've given the wolf a name," she said, smiling at him over her shoulder. "Charlie Echo."

There was a moment of held breath as they all looked at Castle, waiting on his response, and then Logan sighed. "Echo for short."

Castle barked out a laugh and it broke the tension; his grin seemed to light up the whole room. Kate laughed with him, rubbing the top of her stomach where James liked to camp out and squirm when he heard his father's voice.

"Echo," Castle said. "I like it. That's great."

"It's not official - there are, of course, absolutely no mentions of James as a little human. I promise our records are-"

"We know you're being discrete," Kate reassured him. "And we all have aliases in this family. One more can't hurt."

Logan snorted, but even he had seemed ill-at-ease about telling her. "You call him a wolf and a jungle parasite. We figured Echo wasn't too bad."

"Not bad at all."

Beneath her hand, James shifted and stretched, apparently curious about all the noise. Castle's fingers came to her lower back and knuckled against her spine; a knot unwound at his touch and melted away, pain she hadn't even known she'd had.

She still wasn't spending the rest of this party sitting on a damn stool.

Castle watched his wife as she balanced on a stool at the far end of the lab. She was beautiful, and it wasn't because she was pregnant with their son. It wasn't the regimen either. It was something about her posture - the round curve of her shoulders and the straight line of her back that looked both casual but not tired - just strong.

And it was the compassion in her eyes as she talked with Gerald Threkeld and his wife, the little touch to the wife's hand, the smile that was a toned-down version of her usual radiance just to keep from scaring him. Threkeld was a changed man, but he could be rehabilitated. The work was helping.

"We have a good idea," Boyd said, standing in front of Castle with a plate of cheeses. He munched on a cracker and nodded. "We have a very good idea of the projection of his growth."

"Echo," Castle mused, smiling back at the man.

"Yes," Boyd flushed. He picked up his wine glass from the table beside him, sipped. He was still pink-skinned with the alcohol he'd had the last hour or so, but he wasn't sloppy about it. Quite neat, in fact. "Mary says by October, but I'm still placing him mid-November."

Castle was amused by how well the two had gotten along - Kate's OB and the fixated Dr Boyd. "Why do you two think so differently?" he asked. He spotted Mary Dennison conferring with Logan in another corner; they were petting the pregnant rats.

"She thinks physical growth is an indicator for all things. But look at you."

"What about me?" Castle laughed.

"You've not aged ahead of your time, despite advanced healing. Whatever your physical growth - your healing doesn't come at the expense of years of your life."

"Huh."

"In fact, you operate and perform at the level of a much younger man. Your sperm count and your recov-"

"Ah," Castle interrupted, holding up a hand. "Let's leave conversations like this between me and my wife."

Boyd laughed heartily, causing Mary and Logan to turn and look. Before Logan could come on over and check on the man, Castle waved him off. Boyd wasn't harming anyone.

"My - recovery, so to speak," Castle said, "is an indication that I'm not an old man?"

"Not older than your years. In fact, much younger. My argument is that Echo's gestation rate might actually be longer."

"Oh, please do not tell Kate that."

Boyd blinked, and then he laughed again. "Oh, yes. Well. I will endeavor not to alarm her. I have told her that I thought longer than nine months, but I won't insist."

Longer than nine months. Shit. They were so close now that all Castle could think about was what happened when their nine months was over, when their deal with Black ran out. What would they do when the shield of her pregnancy didn't cloak Kate any longer?

But if they had more time...

"Don't even think it," Kate said. Suddenly she was right before him, pointing her finger at Boyd. "I know what you're telling him. There's no way in hell I'm carrying this kid for longer than nine months."

Boyd smiled at her, entirely spellbound of course. "No, no. I won't insist. I just think it's such an interesting question."

"Question all you like," Castle encouraged. He didn't mind the man running the gamut of the regimen, letting permutations out into the air. He wanted that. It was the whole point of this lab in the city, giving their team the space and funds to do whatever was necessary to keep them alive - Kate, their son, himself.

If it meant he and Kate had to entertain Castle's father's whims just to get answers for these guys, then that's what they'd do. He was beginning to grow used to it - the constant tidbits that came and went from John Black, the snatches of information he sent Kate just to prove he was still in the game. They dutifully gave everything over to their Regimen Medical team, making sure to keep this place completely off the radar.

Of course, wasn't that how his own father had started with the Collective? Setting up secret labs off the government's payroll...

He couldn't think about that right now. The RMT was about saving his family.

"How'd it go?" Ryan asked him quietly. Castle nodded back and crossed his arms over his chest, standing in the command center.

"Good. Think it was good."

"And Threkeld?"

"He's doing better," Castle insisted. "Really. The work helps. He's dedicated to the work; he sees applications in his own field that he wants to adapt. We're trying to find ways to allow his usual research, and now that we're not under the CIA's umbrella..."

Ryan scoffed. "It's not like that's gonna make it easier, Castle."

He winced and shrugged. "Not easier. But less red tape. We'll find ways to work from the ground up and he can publish his research in JAMA, that kind of thing. There's a team out of Johns Hopkins that's doing pioneering work in his field with some of the same elements. He's been sharing data with them. Cautiously."

"Sharing data," Ryan said warily.

"I know. But it's... it's no good if all this shit we've been through is for nothing. Saving a few lives - even if it's my own, my family - that's good and right. But saving thousands from some incurable blood disorder?"

Ryan shook his head, seemed to wince. "Well, all right. I see what you're saying. It still feels shaky, all that information out there. And Threkeld doesn't seem the most stable right now."

"He's the one that wanted the data out in the public domain," Castle answered softly. "He wants his work to be put to good use. And he had a good point: the more teams who are working on this kind of thing - blood disorders and mitochondria function in cell regeneration - then the bigger the pool is. One day maybe we're using something the Johns Hopkins guys found to help my son, you see?"

A woman from the department that ran the Eastern bloc came scuttling past them, headed to her work station, and Ryan and Castle fell silent, only watching the activity in the command center. They'd been careful about the story they'd told these last four months: Threkeld had retired after his ordeal, Stone Farm was being reorganized under Ragle's exclusive control.

If anyone had noticed that a male nurse and a doctor had gone missing from Stone Farm, there had been no rumors, no speculation. The lab in the city wasn't on the CIA's payroll either - it was funded by himself and Kate with help from his father.

It irked him to no end, but the money was so well-concealed it was untraceable. His father had been doing this too long to leave a trail, and Castle's own money came from investments he'd spent nearly twenty years accruing. It was now held in trust in James's name, a boy without even a birth certificate yet.

Though he would. He and Kate were in agreement about that. James wouldn't be a shadow child.

"Is it settled?" Ryan asked then. "The whole... RMT?"

Castle glanced around him at the command center's humming activity, the respect his team members gave him, the efficiency. "As settled as it can be."

"And Beckett?"

Castle grinned. "She's good. Ready to stop being pregnant, but we've only got six weeks now."

Ryan elbowed him. "Sarah Grace is looking forward to it. Play dates, right? Arrange their marriage now."

Castle laughed and it felt good, talking with a friend about their children, forecasting their lives.

He never thought that would be him.

But it might. "What do we do when Esposito has a kid?"

"Javi?" Ryan snorted. "Right."

"What? You don't think he will? People used to say that about me."

"No, not that. I don't think he'd let his kid marry yours."

Castle laughed so hard that people turned around to look.

He clapped Ryan on the back and pushed him off towards his station. "Right. Good point. Get back to work, Ry. I've got a budget meeting I'm late to."