565. Chapter 565

After Clear and Present Danger

Episode 7.02

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: You can clearly see I don't own Castle. Rating: K Time: See above.

Kate lay nestled in Castle's arms, tired and sated. He ran his hand gently over her hair. "I missed that."

She smiled. "I missed that, too. I missed you."

"Me too. I still feel like I have two months of everything to make up to you."

"You don't owe me anything. Whatever happened to you happened to you and now it's over. Maybe we'll find out what happened and maybe we never will. Whatever happened was not your fault. All I care about is that were back together. And I intend to see to it that we stay that way."

Castle pulled her a little closer. "What would you do if you had the suit?"

"Changing the subject, Mr. Castle?" She teased.

"No. Just acknowledging that the previous subject is closed. We will be together. Always. So, what would you do?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? Really?

She nodded. "If I had suit like that, I'd be tempted to use it on the job. Instead of getting a search warrant, I'd just slip into someone's house through an open door and look around. I wouldn't worry about a warrant for a phone tap or any other kind of surveillance, I'd just walk into Finn Rourke's bar and listen to him plan to break the law, just as I would with all the other criminal families and gangs in New York."

"That would be so cool." Castle enthused.

"And so illegal. We need to get search warrants and such for a reason, to keep the government from getting too powerful."

"Sure, but you're not the government, you're…"

"The remarkable Kate Beckett?" She asked. "I do work for the government, you know. So it's okay for me to have this power, but not some other police or intelligence type that you don't know? What did you say to…What was her name?"

"Dr. Zharkov?"

"Not that name, Flash Gordon. It was…Sarkov. You told her that she might be making a deal with the devil and maybe the government shouldn't have this kind of power?"

He nodded. "Okay, point taken. But I do get to keep seeing you in your invisible suit, right?"

"Oh, that invisible suit? Any time you want." Castle was silent for a minute. "Something wrong, babe?'

"Just thinking. You really can't put the genie back in the bottle as they say. Look at nuclear weapons. Seventy years ago there was one nuclear power, the US. Now there are, what, nine? And there are others that could get nuclear weapons if they wanted to badly enough. Who knows, maybe in another seventy years everyone will have invisibility suits and that'll be the new normal. And we'll all be worrying about something else."

"Do you know what I think?" Kate asked.

"What?"

"The problem isn't with technology, it's with people. If we had better people we wouldn't have to worry about the technology."

"How do we do that?"

Kate smiled at him. "Well, I'm still wearing my invisible suit, so we could do some practicing on how to make a better person."

"The old fashioned way?"

Kate just giggled.

Meanwhile, Kevin Ryan had a serious need for an invisibility suit. As he always did before the start of the night, he checked the crowd from behind the curtain. Suddenly, his eye caught the profile of a familiar looking blonde. "No, it couldn't be." He said under his breath. He looked again. He couldn't get a good look at the blonde, but she moved just a bit and Ryan could see what who she was sitting with. "Lanie! What the hell is Lanie doing here?"

He moved to the far side of the stage to get a better look. It was Lanie. And Tory Ellis. And Jenny.

"Oh shit. This can't be happening. My wife and two people from work?"

"Ryan," the manager barked. "It's show time. Get ready. The crowd out there looks like a bunch of hungry wolves who've just found a ton of raw meat." The manager laughed. "Which is pretty much what we have for them."

"No, wait. I can't do this…"

The manager didn't hear him since the music had begun and he dancers had taken the stage. Their first dance was as soldiers. Within seconds the dancers had taken off their breakaway shirts, exposing their tightly muscled chests and abdomens, glistening with oil. That's when the trouble started. One brunette, apparently part of a bachelorette party that had been drinking heavily staggered up on stage and began dancing. Worse, she began to do a strip tease.

"Ryan!" The manager yelled. "Get her off stage! I don't have a license for female nudity. Get her off now!"

Ryan nodded. "Yeah. Yeah." Ryan went out on stage, being sure to keep his face away from the audience. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to see that the brunette had been joined by another member of the bachelorette party, a somewhat chubby redhead. As Ryan grabbed the brunette to pull her off stage, the redhead grabbed him. As he turned to see who had grabbed him, he got a face full of the redhead's boobs. He grabbed both women, which turned out to be a mistake. He lost his balance and fell on the stage, on top of the redhead, with the now topless brunette under him. Both women squealed with delight. The brunette wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him while the redhead reached around and started to undo his belt. Trying to get away from the two of them, Ryan rolled offstage to the left, unfortunately with both women still hanging onto him.

Luckily, Ryan couldn't see Lanie, Tory and Jenny laughing at his antics until they cried. They and the rest of the audience could see the side curtain on the stage moving and could hear female squealing and male cursing.

The music ended and the dancers, at least those who weren't laughing too hard to be of any help, went to Ryan's assistance. First the redhead, more or less dressed, was taken to the edge of the stage, kissed by two male dancers and gently put back on the floor. However, the brunette had somehow lost her top and her bra. When two dancers brought her out on stage, the manager was there with a table cloth to cover her. She got kissed and then blew kisses to the cheering crowd before being lowered to the floor.

Next the dancers dragged Kevin Ryan on stage. He got a standing ovation, the more so because everyone could see what had happened to the brunette's bra. It was stuffed halfway down the front of Ryan's pants.

When Ryan looked out before the next set, he saw that Jenny and her friends had left.

Early, early that morning, he snuck into their bedroom, hoping Jenny was asleep. She wasn't.

"Did you have to come and see that?" He asked, sheepishly.

"You wouldn't tell me exactly what you were doing. You were so secretive, so when Lanie told me what it was you were doing, we just had to go see for ourselves."

"Esposito just had to shoot his mouth off to Lanie." Ryan said angrily.

"Don't blame your partner. I would have found out about it eventually. And the longer you made me wait to find out, the angrier I would have been."

"How mad are you?"

Jenny shrugged. "Just a little bit."

"Do you want me to quit?"

"Are the women always like that?"

Ryan blushed. "No. They almost always go after the dancers. I've gotten pinched a few times, that's all."

Jenny giggled. "You do have a very cute bottom, Kevin."

Ryan blushed furiously.

"Kevin, I'd be happier if you were in some other kind of work, but we need the money for Sarah Grace. Now, why don't you get undressed and I'll show you how a woman should treat a handsome man like you."