Close Encounters 15: Never Say Never Again

Castle hunched over the instrument panel and checked their altitude once more, scanning his line of sight with a furrow in his brow.

They'd tracked Black to coordinates deep in the heart of some of the most dense, inhospitable Congo, and now he had to land a fucking plane in the middle of it and hike in to whatever unknown situation his damn father was concocting.

He could punch a hole in the damn instrument panel, he was so furious, but he'd done it to himself. To them. What could he do? She was going to be in this plane with or without him, and like hell he was going to let her go off on her own. More than that, it was his own stubborn denial that had pushed her out here in the first place, and he owed it to her now to follow this through.

"Castle?"

"Yeah. I'm looking," he growled.

"You gonna be pissed off with me for the rest of our time here?"

"You mean, on this earth? I hope to hell not. But at the rate we're going, Beckett, might be true. You have a fucking awesome sense of direction. It's too bad your true north is mortal peril."

"You're pretty melodramatic when you're pissed."

"I'm not pissed," he growled again, twisting his head to look at her. "I'm fucking scared. You scared the shit out of me and I'm still scared."

She closed her mouth and he saw her whole body yearning for him, but he turned his face from her and went back to the controls. If she touched him right now... he had no idea what he'd do. Not like he'd ever really break her, but Beckett liked damage, Beckett craved it on a level that Castle sometimes didn't have control over. And she'd take it from him - she'd take it and give it back and he was afraid that he craved it too.

Punish me.

Fuck, no. After his father's mistreatment, the bruises on her face and the beatings, punishment was the last thing he wanted to give her. Besides, punishment wasn't punishment if she wanted it. And he wasn't prepared for the forgetting that was involved in that kind of... connection.

Shit. Connection. That was all she wanted from him. He knew that; he knew that was how she worked, how she reassured her heart.

Castle swallowed and glanced over at her in the co-pilot seat, the way she hid her face behind her hair and studied the instruments like she knew what she was doing. His chest was too tight, as it had been when he couldn't catch a deep breath, couldn't breathe at all, and the fact that he was healthy enough now to commandeer a plane and take on a coterie of mercenaries was due to her.

"Kate."

Her shoulders hunched but she turned to look at him, hesitance in her lines.

He didn't have the words she needed, not right now, but he had the connection she craved more than even the punishment. Castle reached out and laid his hand over her forearm, lightly, lightly, and traced the soft skin down to the inside of her wrist. She trembled but turned her hand, palm up, seeking his.

He didn't lace their fingers together, he couldn't yet, but he cradled her hand with his own, skimming the softness of her life line with his thumb. Gentle, gentle. He made himself be gentle.

Fastest way to break her her.

He sighed. He didn't really want to break her.

"Rick."

"Find me a place to land, Kate."

He let her go and turned back to the business of setting them down.

Beckett held her breath as Castle brought the Cessna Citation 525 towards the earth. The cockpit was filled with instruments and digital displays, such a cramped contingency of data being pushed out that she had no idea where to even begin.

Castle had no problem looking right at home in the pilot's seat. The white padded chairs seemed contoured perfectly for his legs, and the yoke was in his steady hands. His eyes scanned the instruments, his concentration unshakeable, and the narrow stretch of still-smoldering rain forest was coming at them fast.

The blackened earth below them had undergone the slash and burn method of farming, and while not ecologically sustainable, she was grateful for whatever farmer had done it, because it provided them the only chance at landing the Cessna.

If Castle wasn't mad at her, he'd be explaining everything as they went along, asking her to read instruments or tell him what a display said, giving her instructions and maybe letting her try flying the Cessna. He was naturally talkative; he was the one who offered himself up in their relationship, and it was strange to subsist now in this quiet.

But she'd do it. She owed it to him, to give him that chance to let the anger settle out. She hoped it settled out.

"Beckett," he said. "Safety harness."

"I'm belted in," she promised, glancing back to him.

He flicked his eyes to her with a grimace that seemed aimed at himself. "Good girl. But I was talking about mine. Lean over, baby."

She did, reaching awkwardly for the two sides of the harness belt, trying to push them together over his chest. Her palms were sweating at the natural heat of him - a regimen-induced heat, she thought - but he didn't afford her a second glance.

She'd rather he keep his eyes on the horizon anyway.

She clicked his harness into place and sank back into her own seat, wondered if she-

"Hands on the control wheel," he said shortly. "When I say, I need you to pull back on the yoke with me so we can flare up for landing."

"Okay," she said, wrapping her fingers around the two handles on the Y-shaped control wheel. Yoke, he'd called it. He had his right hand on the black throttle between them, waiting on her. She nodded. "Okay, I got it."

He was gauging their descent, his eyes fiercely blue, studying weaknesses like a predator. Kate glanced out the front window towards the oncoming land and shivered.

"Now," he clipped.

She gasped at the force of it, the resistance she felt as she pulled back, but she could also see the slashed rainforest hurtling towards them at a speed that seemed insurmountable. She gritted her teeth, intent on not letting him down, and the Cessna seemed to shudder around them like a reined beast.

She sucked in a breath, unable to help the thrill that went through her, her heart wild in time to the racing earth. The Cessna touched down with a jolt, the thick trees were flashing by on either side, and the plane seemed to scream forward even as Castle applied the brakes and kept a hand on the throttle.

"Enough," he growled. "Let go."

She did, her body thumping in time to the pulse of the whining engines, and she stared ahead at the fast approaching trees. They were running out of landing strip.

The Cessna bumped and jerked over the uneven ground, the wind fierce around the monoplane, and the trees were rushing towards them.

She tasted the thrill in the back of her throat, and instead of keeping her eyes on the trees, she turned her head and stared at her husband.

Intent, deadly accurate, in complete control, Castle brought the plane to a stop mere breaths from the dense rainforest.

He flipped a few levers, pulled off the headset. She came unstuck and ripped off her own ear protection, scrabbled at the safety restraint. Her blood was pounding, rushing through her thighs and vibrating her chest. She wrenched out of the seat and reached towards him, gripping his harness in her firsts. Castle's eyes locked on hers and she pressed her mouth to his in desperation.

He came in to her, hand gripping the back of her neck and twisting her hair, his teeth catching her bottom lip and tongue stroking. It was short and brutal and necessary and then they were breaking apart and Kate was falling back into her seat, panting.

They had landed.

Castle unsheathed the machete and held it lightly in one hand, checking the blade. This was one of many weapons his father had collected at the island station, but Castle had appropriated it for their trek today, along with a couple of packs carrying ammunition and supplies - though certainly not enough to last them very long.

Beckett was shouldering one of the backpacks, pulling her hair out from under the straps. She collected the long, lank strands of her hair and twisted it at the top of her head, secured it with a rubber band. Where she'd found a rubber band in the clusterfuck that had been their day, he had no idea, but piling her hair up highlighted her angular chin and the fierce cut of her cheekbones in the waning afternoon light. She looked like a warrior, and he was grateful for the show of strength.

This wasn't the Russian steppe, and they weren't crawling out of hell to save both their lives. They were two professional agents with a mission to accomplish and a support team in place at the ready.

Castle pulled the slim sat phone out of his shoe pocket and thumbed it on. While he waited for it to load, he repacked his bag, adjusting the things inside so he could get to the ammo faster. The water canteen went into an elastic pocket on the outside, and his knife was lashed to his thigh in its harness.

He quickly texted Mitchell to let him know they'd landed, and then he activated the tracking link and sent it to Beckett's phone. The sat phone would keep them on Mitchell's radar just in case anything happened, and Beckett could act as his guide from behind him, keep them on track. He stowed the phone carefully back into his boot and stood up again.

"We should avoid the lower lying areas," she said quietly. She was scanning the tactical map on her phone, her bottom lip getting worked over by her teeth.

"It gets swampy, yeah," he said. "Plus flash floods when the rain starts."

"Plenty of trees to scale if that happens, but also - the bugs and beasts. I don't relish coming across native wildlife drawn to the water."

"Bugs are often worse than the beasts," he grimaced. "Have you ever been bit by a blow fly?"

"Oh, gross, no," she flinched. He'd never seen anything gross faze her before. "That's the one that lays eggs under your skin. Have you?"

"Yeah."

"Shit." She wriggled her shoulders under the straps and her mouth twisted. He'd really gotten to her with that one.

"You just have to get it dug out. They don't kill you."

"Stop," she insisted, holding her hand up, her head turning away.

"Really?" he laughed.

"Shut up," she muttered. "It's making my stomach roll."

He was perversely enjoying it too. But he only closed his mouth and shrugged his shoulders back at her, turned to his pack and got everything settled.

"Can I have the extra knife?" she asked quietly.

"I don't know. Can you? You know you don't have a great track record with knives."

She huffed at him and elbowed him out of her way, pulled the extra knife and its sheath from the pile of stuff still packed into the body of the Cessna. He watched her strap it on at her thigh, watched her hands tugging to make it tight, and he couldn't help the surge of protectiveness that rose in him when she kept getting it wrong.

He knew it was petty, that he was rubbing her nose in it at every turn, but he found himself still seriously pissed off that she'd put her own neck to the knife.

Pissed or scared - he wasn't sure which.

Castle leaned in and knocked her hands away, pushing her back into one of the passenger seats inside the belly of the Cessna. She grunted when she sat down hard, but she didn't say anything as he rewrapped the harness around her thigh.

The velcro stayed true but he let his fingers tug on it to check anyway, sliding between the material of her jeans and the black strap, heat flaring in his guts. He glanced up at her and she was staring down at his hands, lust crawling behind her eyes.

"You got our army rations?" he scraped out, his voice raw.

"Yeah," she said instinctively. Her head came up and her cheeks were flushed, but she patted the backpack still on her shoulders. "I checked. All of them."

"Weapons?"

"My Sig, the knife, and the automatic rifle - though it's disassembled in my bag."

"Water."

"Two canteens. You have water?"

"One," he nodded. "It's enough. We're not staying long. We found Black and he'll have provisions anyway. But Beckett - three days out. That's all we get. Three days to hike out, and if there's nothing, we turn around and come back for the plane."

She nodded.

"I'm fucking serious," he said quietly. "You come back with me to the plane, we regroup to Libreville."

"I know," she rasped. "I promise."

He reached out and took hold of the straps of her backpack, hauled her in against him, their foreheads crashing. She sucked in a breath and put her hands at his waist, fisting his shirt.

"Okay," he got out after a moment. "Let's go."

She stayed well behind him, watching the bunch and play of muscle under his shirt as he hacked at the terrain with the machete. He was probably taking out on the underbrush what he wanted to take out on her, but she couldn't help her fascination with the way his body moved through the dense African jungle.

Kate wanted him in a really desperate but inappropriate way.

She knew it was a product of anguish, that she made herself feel better by having him, but she also knew that he was going to explode if she didn't do something to help him. He was deeply angry with her - for reasons she had to admit she didn't quite comprehend - and he was refusing to acknowledge it existed.

Maybe taking a machete to the rainforest would help, but not for long.

He was the kind of man who had been trained to suppress all of it - let it roll right off of him - and she appreciated that. She knew she had enough issues to keep them both occupied, but it meant they tended to forget his.

He was seriously pissed.

But he wanted her too, and that made him angrier, and that was a problem.

If he'd just let her-

Castle whacked at a tree and got the machete stuck in the trunk; he cursed and she sighed, pausing in the trail of carnage he'd left behind. Decapitated birds-of-paradise flowers, decimated vines, orchids shredded, mangrove roots butchered. Philodendrons with thorny protrusions were in pieces, weeping chlorophyll and thready bark.

The rest she had no names for. Sucker roots, tendrils of green, waxy leaves that still held rainwater - not just a few mouthfuls but gallons - an entire ecosystem in miniature, with tadpoles swimming in the deepest pools, a scorpion crawling through a clump of twigs, and a cluster of flies, all within the bowl of a leaf. She saw moss and ferns, air plants with no discernible means of support, mushrooms sprouting over a thick film of decomposing vegetation. And that was just the growth at hip level.

It was a riot of life, and most of it deadly.

Kate hurriedly came to his side and touched his back as he grunted at the tree. "Here," she murmured. "Step back."

Castle glared at her, but let go of the machete's handle. She used her boot to kick at the blade where it was lodged in the side of the tree. After four good blows, it popped out, tumbling to the forest floor.

"Careful," she warned as he bent to pick it up. "I saw a scorpion back there."

"And snakes, I'm sure. Poisonous tree frogs. Man-eating venus flytraps."

Kate glanced to where he was pointing now with the machete and saw he was right. What she'd call a venus flytrap looked to be the size of a cow, the open maw dripping with paralyzing venom.

"Holy shit," she gasped.

"Yeah, exactly. Nice little trip to the woods you've planned for us, Beckett."

Some of the bitterness was gone from his voice this time, the sarcasm not quite so heavily laced with anger. She looked at him and he held out his free hand to her.

"Come here," he muttered. His eyes flickered over her, a sudden reluctant concern.

She stepped closer and he grabbed her arm, drew her against him. When she came at his side, he reached up, covered her shoulder with his cupped palm and seemed to scrape. In a moment he was throwing something deep into the underbrush.

"What was that?" she whispered.

"Spider." He gave her a crooked, pained smile. "Pretty - uh - big. Not sure how'd you react to that."

"I'd be okay," she said slowly. "Rats don't bother me, spiders. How big?"

"Hairy tarantula big," he admitted. "And it filled my whole hand."

She blinked. "Shit."

"Yeah. This is going to be interesting."

Suddenly Beckett's senses were opened and she realized the whole rainforest was alive with sound and movement. Beasts deep in the jungle were out there, just beyond their vision, and a million different insects lurked. It wasn't just the blow flies or the spiders - it was everything. The whole rainforest was aware.

"This is... how are we going to sleep out here?"

"One eye open," he joked. His smile fell flat though and he grimaced at her. "We have a pup tent. We'll have to be very careful to seal it tight."

She nodded and gripped the straps of her backpack, her eyes scanning the jungle ahead. "And Black... he's out here somewhere in all this."

"He must have a station, a depot or a facility. My father's not the type who roughs it, you know."

"Good point," she said, letting out a breath. "All right. Lead on, Castle. Standing still will only let this place grow up around us."

She saw goose bumps flare across his forearms, but other than that, he seemed completely impassive. Castle turned and hefted the machete once more, his phone and the map-tracking system in his other hand, and he started clearing their path through the growth.

But he moved a little more carefully, taking time to pause and inspect his way before carving out their route. And Beckett kept a little closer, her ears filled with the noise of a predatory rainforest.

Hacking away at vines and shit actually helped.

He felt less likely to take her head off now that he'd decapitated a few thousand pretty, delicate orchids. He actually could focus on the map and the tracker still lodged in his father's forearm. He could plot their distance and figure out the remainder.

"We'll have to make camp within the hour," he said finally.

"What?"

She sounded horrified. Castle glanced over his shoulder and saw she was staring at him. "What, what?"

"Why now?"

"Because we're coming up on a river we'll have to cross - it's miles wide, Beckett, and it will take hours. We don't have hours before the sun sets and we're screwed."

She flinched.

"Why?" he muttered. "You afraid to camp with me?"

"No." But her eyes shifted to him and then back to the jungle that even now seemed to crowd them together. "No, I'm not afraid of you."

"I didn't say me," he murmured. "I said camping with me - enclosed space. No room to turn over. Skin to skin."

"You're getting a little ahead of yourself," she retorted. "Don't you think?"

He couldn't help the laugh that ripped out of him. "Yeah. Got me there, baby. Fine. Let's go, then. We only have an hour to find a good place."

She hesitated to come near to him, and he was damn tired of that. So he reached out with his free hand and closed it around the strap of her backpack, hauled her into him. Her breath caught and he knew now - for sure - why she didn't want to make camp in an hour.

She fucking wanted him. Badly.

Well, too bad, Kate. You made your bed. Now lie in it.

Three day limit. That was what he'd told her.

Three days to find Black and track down the last of the regimen. Three days and this was day one. And it was already over.

Beckett pressed the tent peg into the soft, damp earth with the heel of her boot, sinking it as far as it would go.

Day one was over.

Just like that. They hadn't even covered five miles. Five miles. She'd heard stories in training about guys going 45 miles in one day over rough terrain with light packs - about nine pounds - and for some reason, she'd imagined them doing the same. Of course, those guys had been in the midst of deep survival runs, trailblazing up steep hills going at what might be called a mild sprint. She hadn't thought they'd range that far, but five miles?

"Sink it deep, Beckett," he called from the other side. "The ground is so soft from the rain that it will work its way loose in the night."

"I am," she sighed. "It's nearly six inches."

"Deeper."

She didn't miss the double entendre or the look his eyes flashed her - like he wanted her or he wanted to shake her, and either one might do it for him.

She wanted him too, but she couldn't keep reaching out for a man who didn't know what he wanted. Better to keep her hands to herself and let him figure out how to forgive her, how to love her again without it making him furious in the loving.

And if her chest cracked open at even the thought of not having him, she'd manage to survive it.

Right?

Castle went back around the round pup tent and sank her pegs a little deeper. Either they'd already worked their way up or she hadn't pushed them as far in as he'd like, but either way, he used the end of a stick to drive them farther.

Night had fallen quickly, just as he'd thought, and the jungle was a living, breathing, ferocious thing. He swatted at another fly and rolled his head on his neck, testing to make sure he hadn't been bitten, and then he tossed the stick aside and faced the tent.

Had to do it. Nothing else left. Their packs were sealed up and pushed inside, the tent flaps were open for ventilation, the mesh fine enough that it repelled water as well as mosquitoes. He'd made sure they weren't in the basin near the river, so they had a clear elevated space that wouldn't get flooded should it rain and the water head for low-lying land. Also - away from snakes this way too.

No good standing outside in the dark listening to the hornbills and bush babies getting overly friendly.

Time to go inside, hunker down for the night.

Castle dropped to his knees and unzipped one flap, pushing inside fast to keep from letting bugs in with him, and then he zipped it up again quickly. He twisted around in the tight quarters and saw from the flare of the blue glow sticks that Beckett was lying down, flat on her back, her eyes on the mesh side of the tent.

One sleeping bag. He couldn't, for the life of him, remember why he'd thought that had been a good idea. A lighter pack? He'd carry another sleeping bag if it meant the relief of not having to... ask.

For whatever it was they were doing.

He shucked his jacket and shoes, stuffed the outer gear into the insides of his boots to keep critters out - just in case - and then pushed everything towards their feet. She'd already neatly piled up her own things, and when he looked back at her, she'd raised one arm and pressed it over her eyes, the pale skin like an ultraviolet path straight to the nectar of her mouth. He ached to lie down with her, release it all, but he didn't know how.

She'd been willing to kill herself for him and he couldn't take it.

She sighed and turned onto her side, her back to him, and Castle could see the luminous wave of her shoulder, the curve of her neck. He sank to his haunches and sat at the bottom of the sleeping bag, refusing to move. Unable. He couldn't.

There was silence for a long time, her breathing too fast for her to be asleep, his own brain buzzing with need - but it was need he couldn't understand or categorize, and he was afraid of what he'd do. Hurting her seemed the most likely end result - and while physically she'd want it, he would hurt himself more in the process.

Emotionally... maybe he was doing just as much damage sitting here like a damn fool.

Her body seemed to draw in on itself, her face buried in the fold of the sleeping bag, and he didn't know what to do.

Except maybe keep hurting them both.

Castle leaned forward on one hand, his knee down for balance and the whole tent crowding his back, and then he touched the soft shell of her ear where it rose elfin-like in the near-dark.

"Kate," he sighed.

He felt her caught breath, the half-turn of her body towards him.

"I'm crawling in," he murmured.

"Please," she sighed, and it didn't sound like a plea at all, only relief.

Castle slid his body into the space behind hers and somehow, some way, they fit together still.

He kissed her neck, and she touched his thigh, and it wasn't all-forgiven, but it was as close as they could get.