Wow...so many of you seemed to like the fork-stabbing incident from the last chapter. Thanks! I was worried about that one, but I guess a lot of you have the same (somewhat warped) sense of humor that I do sometimes. And Steve1961, I refer to something you said in your review, so good premonition type of catch. I was going to put the reference in the last chapter, but I decided to hold it until this chapter.

Here's another relatively long chapter for you. Oodles of thanks to all who reviewed the last chapter; I love each and every review and appreciate them so much!

Disclaimer: I don't own or have any rights to the characters.

Pancakes were finished and dishes were washed.

That is, more specifically, pancakes were finished by both of them, but dishes were washed and dried only by Kate, because Castle said that he was, obviously, injured, and there was no way he could use that arm to lift even a sponge.

She leaned back, dirty plate in her hand. "So let me get this straight. You have a...a...thing on your shoulder that's little more than an abrasion, and somehow it's rendered your entire arm unsuable?"

He pursed his lips and looked up in the air as he was thinking, and then he nodded. "Yup, that about sums it up," he agreed with a smile.

She glared at him, giving him a withering look that said that she thought his excuse was ridiculous. "Lame, Castle, really lame."

He rubbed his shoulder gently. "Well, yes, Beckett, my arm actually is quite lame, if you use the literal meaning of the word. It means disabled, so that movement is difficult or impossible. That describes my situation pretty well, don't you think?" he asked as he leaned against the bathroom vanity.

She just rolled her eyes at him and shook her head as she continued to dry one of the plates.

"Hey," he defended himself, "you stick a fork in me, and I'm done. Done doing dishes, that is," he told her with a wink, obviously pleased with his wit.

She turned her head to him slowly and gave him a pithy look. She waited one beat, two beats, three beats as she narrowed her eyes at him. "You're really proud of yourself for thinking that one up, aren't you?"

"Well, actually, yes. Yes, I am." And then he grinned at her.

She just shook her head and, after grabbing the now clean dishes, exited the bathroom to put them back in their closet kitchen.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"So, assuming we get out today..." she mused as she leaned against him on the top of the freshly made bed a bit later.

"Hmmm?" he murmured back, leaning his head back with his eyes closed, just taking a moment to relish the feel of her cuddled up against him so willingly, so lovingly.

He felt a finger lightly poke him in his ribs and he opened his eyes. "Are you even listening to me?" she asked him.

"Well...yeah. This...us...we're still pretty new to this, so sometimes I just stop to think..." Cognizant of his fork-stab wound, he did a one-shoulder shrug. "I'm just trying to savor the moment. Appreciate...this. You being here. With me. Like this." The arm that was draped over her gave her a little squeeze to punctuate his statement.

"Even though I'm not naked or wearing revealing lingerie?" she prompted teasingly, turning around to look at him.

"Oh, don't get me wrong...I like those times too. A lot." He smiled a crooked smile at her, pure Castle, and she couldn't help but give him one back. "But this is nice for...normal. A new normal." Then he had a thought that made the grin drop off of his face. "Right?"

"Us? Like...this?" she asked, waving her hand between the two of them.

He nodded, still looking for confirmation.

"Yeah. A new normal," she agreed. "Although I'm not really sure what that is."

He gave her a quick kiss. "That, and sitting here like this. And going out to dinner now, or maybe see a play now and then. Or maybe the next time Forbidden Planet is at the Angelica, we could go see it again and cuddle this time. So things like that, but yeah, definitely more of the naked or revealing lingerie parts too."

"So you want to...date?"

"Date?"

"Movies, dinner, plays...aren't those all 'date' types of things to do? So yes, are you saying you want us to date?"

Yes, he supposed they were doing something like that now. But using the word 'date' just sounded so...preliminary. Loose. Casual. Not permanent. And none of those terms described what he felt for her. "Well...no...not really."

She sat up quickly and looked at him in surprise. That was not what she expected him to say. "No?"

He immediately missed her warm weight against his body. He was the one who'd just needed confirmation from her, and now from the look on her face, she was the confused one and needed confirmation from him. "I mean, no, we can't really date date because we're already past that stuff anyway, right? Dating implies...casual, I guess. We're more than that. My feelings for you are not casual. Haven't been for a while."

"Well, what do you call it then?" she pressed, temporarily ignoring the feelings comment. "What are we doing if we're not dating?"

He made a comical face as if he was contemplating the solution to world peace, rather than just trying to put a name on the peace they'd finally found with each other. Then he nodded a few times before saying, "Okay, I've got it."

"Good, enlighten me. And don't you dare say that I'm your prisoner of love or something hokey like that again, or I may have to shoot you when I get my gun back."

"No, it's better, and much more applicable to our situation. Are you ready?"

She really wanted to roll her eyes at his stalling (again), but she restrained herself and simply nodded.

"Okay. We're in a relationship. You're my...significant other." He smiled after that, obviously proud of himself.

She thought about that for a moment. Somehow, the word 'relationship' had more of a serious connotation than 'dating'. He was right; dating did sound more casual. With what they'd been through since they'd known each other, and especially with what had happened between them in the last few days, she couldn't really call them casual. And, she realized, she didn't want them to be considered casual. "Relationship," she said, trying out the word, biting her bottom lip as she thought about how the word sounded, about them. "We're in a relationship."

"Yes?" he questioned, unable to gauge her full feelings on the subject from her thoughful look.

Slowly, she gave him a little smile and a nod, which he found himself mirroring. "Yes." Her word eased the tension that he didn't know he'd been feeling. He was sure of his feelings, had been sure of them for a while. But this whole thing with them...together...it was still so new. And doubts were bound to crop up, as he just found out. Insecuries could rear their ugly heads at any time.

"Actually," she continued, "I suppose we have been for a little while. Just a platonic, hidden one."

He thought about that for a moment. "I guess you're right, and probably more than a little while. Lord knows I haven't—" He trailed off, suddenly conscious of where this conversation was going.

"Haven't what?"

"Nothing."

"Haven't what, Castle?" she prompted again, her voice a little more stern.

He sighed, not wanting to get into this, especially not now, but also knowing that she wouldn't let it go until he told her. "I haven't wanted anything to do with any other women in quite a while. I mean, before the rebound dates from the last few weeks."

She understood, thinking back all of those months; it hit her all at once. "You were waiting for me." He nodded, but gave her a little shrug as if to say 'no big deal'. Except...it was a big deal. He waited for her. She'd known it on some level, but now it hit her like a punch in the gut. And then to find out the truth the way that he had...oh, Rick.

She had another thought then, and she couldn't help but blurt it out. "But what about Serena Kaye? You were...interested..." She couldn't finish. She looked down, still remembering how it felt to see that interest that he had in the woman, and how, though it hurt, she knew she couldn't stand in the way if he wanted to pursue something with her when she couldn't be with him yet herself.

She felt him lightly touch her chin as he gently urged her to look at him again. "As a character study. She was intriguing...her life, her confidence, her knowledge. But not personally. Not like...that."

"You kissed her," she blurted out before she could stop herself.

"Only because I had to stall her." So much for his insecurities; obviously, she had them too. "Look, Kate...that's all in the past. I didn't want anyone else then. Just you. And you..." He was going to say 'didn't remember,' but now he knew that wasn't the case. But he'd, for the most part, come to terms with that, or at least was trying to, so he continued, "You weren't ready for that."

She shook her head. She understood his hesitation for what it was, and she addressed it head on before she could resort to old habits of talking around things. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you that I remembered. It made so much sense then, and now, I...it just doesn't make as much sense anymore."

"Hindsight is always 20/20. But now..." he pulled her back against him. "Let's just enjoy this. Can we do that for a while? Not worry about things in the past that aren't relevant now anyway?"

She laid against him willingly again, grabbing his hand with hers and holding it in a form of silent agreement. They relaxed for a while, and she realized that after her first comment, their conversation had totally derailed from its intended course. "So," she tried again, "assuming we get out today..."

"I'm getting a feeling of deja vu. Didn't we just have this conversation?"

"No, I tried to have this conversation, but you started falling asleep on me—"

"Hey, you're on me, and I was not falling asleep."

"Not what I mean, and don't derail the conversation again. Assuming we get out of here today, what are we going to tell them? Our rogue band of kidnappers?"

"Tell them? Well, first I'm going to ground my daughter for the next twenty or thirty years. And maybe the next time Ryan does a cleanse, I'm going to put laxatives in his lime juice or whatever that vile green stuff was. And I'm going to special order some laxative donuts for Esposito."

With Castle's imagination, she was looking forward to seeing what punishments he could dream up for all of their captors. Although she thought he could come up with something better than laxatives or grounding of his daughter.

"And my mother...hmmmm..." he continued. "Oh, I've got it! I'll replace some of her makeup with some color changing makeup. I saw it in one of those airline magazines in the gag section. It looks normal, and then wham! A little while after you put it on, rainbow-city." And then he laughed in a really good imitation of a mad scientist.

Ah, Kate thought. That was more like the Castle she knew...and loved. The thought gave her a little smile. But she squashed the good feeling down to continue with the topic at hand because she knew how distracting the good feeling—and the man behind the good feeling—could be. "No, I mean, those are all good. Well, good in an amateur sense, anyway." She felt him pull back to look at her, and she sensed that he was about to protest her 'amateur' rating, but she cut him off as she sat up more and faced him again. "I mean, are we going to tell them that we're...together now? That we're in a...relationship?" She stuttered a bit over the word and the status because it just still sounded strange to her, especially after all this time.

She turned around to look at him then, and found a smile starting to bloom on his face. Evidently he liked the 'relationship' term, and it appeared that it superceded the 'amateur' comment enough to banish it from his mind. "Tell them?" he said dumbly.

"Yeah. You know, that what they intended to happen when they locked us in here together actually, uh, happened." And then Esposito's comment from days ago—when they were coming to the loft to 'rescue' Martha—stood out in her mind, and she groaned when she remembered it.

"What?"

She told him about her comment to Esposito and his strange demeanor after that. Well, it was strange to her then, now it made perfect sense.

"So Esposito..." he trailed off.

"Yeah. I just didn't realize it at the time."

"You know, despite the outcome, they still handcuffed me to a bed. And it wasn't nearly as pleasurable as when you did it." He caught an eyeroll from Kate after that comment. "And they put duct tape over my mouth. They really do deserve some kind of punishment."

She agreed. "It's not the outcome, it's the methods." He nodded, and they both were quiet then as they were thinking of how that punishment could happen.

"Hmmm..." he said finally, thinking out loud. "I suppose if they're expecting something, then maybe the best thing we could do for revenge would be to give them the opposite of what they expect."

"So...pretend like we're the opposite of together?"

He nodded with a devious smile. "Like you hate my guts."

She chewed on her lip as she looked at him coyly, reaching out a finger to run it down his chest seductively. "That might be kind of hard to do, especially after last night. And this morning."

Oh, what she could do to him. All it took was a little touch of her finger and a seductive look from her, and he was putty in her hands. Well, most of him was putty; other parts of him were becoming decidedly unputtylike. But his brain turned to mush as he looked at her, and he forgot his previous train of thought. Completely forgot it.

She raised up on her knees on the bed. "I think before we start pretending that we hate each other, we should maybe have one last reminder that we don't hate each other. What do you say, Rick?" she asked him, swooping her face in for a kiss. "But we should probably be quick about it, in case they come back to open the door." She licked her lips and leaned close to him before she asked, "Do you think you can handle a quickie, Ricky?"

His eyes got momentarily bigger as he realized what she'd just said, and he stared at her for a moment, just filing away in his memory banks the fact that Kate Beckett had just asked him for a quickie. Definitely a memory he'd be reliving.

Once he recovered, without a word, he crawled off the bed and walked over to the door, where he grabbed a nearby chair and placed it under the doorknob as a deterrent against anyone who might think to open the door. She had to give him points for that one. Then he walked a few steps toward the bathroom before he turned around, saying, "Are you coming, Beckett? If we're really going to have a quickie, then I think we should really...embrace the moment, and multitask." He waggled his eyebrows as he said, "Shower quickie. Get clean at the same time as..."

With a smile of her own, she got up off the bed to follow him. "Not a bad idea, Castle. Not a bad idea at all."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

They ran around the room, putting their plan in place. Somehow, through running water and many low moans and muffled pants of pleasureful exertion, they were still able to come up with some ideas to make their story of new mutual hatred seem all the more plausible. Castle's shoulder fork-stab wound didn't seem to impede his efforts much, and Kate tried to give him a little grief for it until he kissed her into silence. But aside from that, there was something about talking about hating each other as their actions showed quite the opposite that made the whole experience just that much more...fulfilling. And that semblance of being opposing forces had so long been part of their relationship—even before they had a romantic relationship—that even with their minds on other things, they still managed to come up with a plausible set of supposed clues to leave for their captors to make them wonder and worry about what had actually gone on between the detective and the writer during their several days locked in the room.

That was how they worked best—seemingly butting heads but really being totally in sync to work seamlessly toward a common goal. And that give-and-take obviously hadn't changed despite the change in their relationship.

One of those impromptu ideas, though painful and totally accidental to start, would actually prove to be one of their best 'clues'. After it was set in place, though Beckett still was smarting from the sting, she had to admit that it looked really good. In a bad sort of way. And the fact that Castle tried to make her hurt go away by his own unique methods wasn't all bad either...

So they sat. They sat through the early afternoon, and they decided to eat a light lunch, all the while keeping an eye on the door (now without the chair) for any sign of movement.

But there was nothing. Not in the early afternoon, not in the late afternoon.

They tried to sit apart, preparing for their ruse as they expected their captors to burst in on them at any moment. But as the hours wore on with no word from anyone else, they got antsy and they eventually gravitated closer to each other. They stole into the closet quite a few times for stolen kisses and mini-make-out sessions, thinking that at least the closet would give them one layer of warning if someone were to finally come into the room to free them. But still, nobody came and they could see by the position of the sun in the sky that it was getting later in the day. Where were they?

Rick, despite Kate asking more than once, steadfastly refused to use the Hello Kitty emergency phone to call his daughter. He still figured that she'd be waiting around, expecting him to whine about his situation, and he did not want to give her the satisfaction. And the last time they talked about the phone, Rick got an evil gleam in his eye as he announced one other idea that he'd had to set the stage for their kidnapper revenge. When he explained it, her eyes got big too, but then she agreed. The idea did have merit.

But still, nothing. They waited more, and grew more agitated, wondering when they'd be let out. Beckett knew she had to work the next day, and they guys knew that too, so she was certain she'd be let out. She knew there would be no way they'd want to explain to Gates that she wasn't at work because the guys, Martha and Alexis had locked her in a room in Castle's loft and she was still there.

In the early evening, Rick was playing with the picture app on his phone when all of a sudden, he yelped and threw it up in the air. Luckily, Kate was close enough and with her quick reflexes managed to snag it, but she almost felt like tossing it away when she saw what was on the screen.

"You have a text," she said, somwhat in awe.

"How do I have a text? Texting doesn't work. They disabled it."

"Guess not. Or they reenabled it. But whatever...you have a text. And you'd better read this," she told him.

She gingerly passed the phone to him and watched when his jaw dropped as he read the message. "Uh oh," he said.

"Is she right?" she asked.

They both looked at the message from Alexis again, just to confirm that it really did say what they thought it said. "Are you guys EVER going to come out? Door's only been unlocked for the last five or six hours. What are you doing in there? Wait, I don't want to know."

"Only one way to find out," he said, and they both crept over to the door. Taking a deep breath, he turned the door handle and pulled, and the door came open silently. They both looked at each other in astonishment, and then looked out the door at the first view of the hallway that they'd had in three days.

"Oh, crap," she whispered. "You don't suppose they...when we were in the bathroom...in the shower?" She couldn't go any further with that thought.

"I don't know. I hope not," he said, looking like he didn't like the idea any better than she did. "But the door...the chair was blocking it," he said with relief.

She looked relieved for a moment too, but then said, "What if they tried it and couldn't get in, and figured out we blocked it? And...why we blocked it."

"Way to burst my bubble, Beckett."

"Great, Castle! What do we do now? How can we possibly explain staying in here even with the door unlocked? Especially if we supposedly hate each other?"

Thanks for reading!

I'd love to hear what you think of this chapter.

As you can see, I have a bit of a ruse planned, or they did, until they realized that the door had really been open for a while. But now what will they do? It's fun for me to hear your ideas about where you think this is going, so drop me a line if you want to.

Don't worry; this ruse (if we get there) won't go on nearly as long as the one in 'The Plan'. But so many of you have asked for a ruse, and to see them out of the room and confronting their captors, that I decided to answer you and do something along those lines. Now, I'm just planning if I should wrap this up quickly, like in one more chapter, or go for another several chapters. I have ideas for either way, so now it's just a matter of figuring out the best thing for this story.

I'm xxGoogiexx on twitter and tumblr.