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It’s not widely known that Detective First Grade Kate Beckett is intensely curious, albeit only about certain matters. Then again, next to Castle, who is as curious as a mischievous kitten about everything that passes his writer’s nose, and then even more curious about the things that don’t, but ought to, (such as Kate Beckett, preferably without outerwear) it might be difficult to notice. It’s much more widely known that she is an excellent detective, so it’s difficult to understand why observers haven’t made the obvious leap of logic. All excellent detectives need to be intensely curious.Normally that curiosity was wholly focused on the case, on who did it, on the motive, means and opportunity of each witness and suspect. Who are often the same people. But ever since Castle came around – not that she had ever admitted it – a proportion – sometimes a very large proportion – of that same curiosity had been focused, very secretly, on him. Of course, that was perfectly understandable. He entered her life as a suspect. Of course she was curious, in a detective way. Then he was a pest. So she became curious about that. She called it curiosity about how to get rid of him. Then he saved her life. About that point her curiosity developed an independent streak that she’d have paid a fortune – or the level of Castle’s Nikki Heat advance, which is likely the same thing – to get rid of. Because her curiosity, ever since, had been poking and prodding and pushing her to find out everything about Castle. And by everything, it meant right down to his skin. All of his skin. And certain areas under his skin.It is very widely known that Detective First Grade Kate Beckett is a woman of iron will, steely self-control, and a closed mouth. Which is why no-one, least of all Richard Castle, had discovered the extent of her curious streak about him when it might have done some good. Or indeed that she had one at all.For the last four months, though, her curious streak, at least as regards Castle, has been quiescent. Being shot tends to have that effect. And now she’s been back for a month, it’s only focused on why he came back round at all. She doesn’t know where to start with him. She doesn’t know how to tell him she had lied – is still lying – to him about that day. She doesn’t know how to bring down her walls to tell him why. And she doesn’t know how to tell him that she isn’t really fixed from the shooting at all. It’s entirely fair to say that this has not been a good day. For a start, it began at 5a.m. Even for Beckett, that was early, especially when she’d not gone home till past eleven. The team didn’t know that, and although Castle had been giving her some very curious looks as she smothered her yawns she was quite confident that careful and extensive make up had covered the signs of little sleep and much stress. It all seemed to be improving when they got a genuine lead.It all fell apart quite quickly when the suspect got a shot off and winged Beckett in the upper arm before Esposito turned him into pulp. She supposes, bitterly, it’s lucky it wasn’t eight inches left. Been there, done that. Got the scar. The wound wouldn’t have been quite so bad, except that in trying to avoid the shot she fell awkwardly and dislocated her right shoulder too. That hurt like a bitch, and she’s spent the last four hours in an ambulance and then the accident and emergency department of Bellevue having her shoulder put back and being patched up with Castle hovering like a fretful fly and making an amount of noise that was almost as irritating. It’s ruined her shirt, which is blood-splattered, has a hole in it, and makes her look like an extra from a John Woo movie. Which she hates. Though she likes the movies. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, they’ve made her wear a sling for the next few days. Which is positively ridiculous. She’d raised absolute hell when they’d tried to immobilise the arm with more than just a sling. Wholly unnecessary. So is the sling. She’d ditch it, if they hadn’t made some quite unwarranted and highly unreasonable assumptions and told Castle, who they’d seemed to assume had far more influence and/or authority over her life (so that would be any) than he does, to make sure she wore it. And then told him to make sure she didn’t use the arm too much for a week after the sling is off. It’s her right arm. How can she not use it? The doctor had left before she got her brain in gear to correct him. Anaesthetic always slows her up. She doesn’t know what they gave her but she remembers very little – except Castle’s constant buzzing – of the last four hours, right up till the doctor’s instructions.And just to complete the absolute perfection of her day, Castle won’t let her drive her cruiser. (She doesn’t even know how it got to the hospital, though she suspects Ryan of aiding and abetting.) It wouldn’t have hurt to leave the sling off for a little time. So right now she’s in the passenger seat, sulking and (not that she’d admit it) in some considerable pain with another half hour to wait before more painkillers are allowable, and Castle is driving. Today officially qualifies as a bad day.She hadn’t thought it could get worse. But it does. And it is, of course, because it always is, Castle’s fault. While she’d been sulking with her eyes shut trying self-hypnosis to take away the pain – which hadn’t worked, who are all these people – idiots! - who recommend it? Beckett’s sure that they’re on something a lot stronger than self-hypnosis before they start that, and could they send the strong stuff her way right now? – he’s not been taking the quickest route home.“Castle?” she mutters crossly.“Yeah? You know your car is really uncool. It doesn’t do anything” –“Castle!” she snaps. Very crossly. “Do you have any drugs?” “No. What sort of drugs? I know a man” –“Don’t tell me. Somewhere in your extensive list of dubious and frankly criminal contacts you know a pusher. Purely for research. Forget it. Painkiller drugs. Legal ones.”“Yes.”“Hand them over.”“Can’t. I put them in your purse. I’ll get them when we get to the loft.” Beckett winces, and makes a noise of extreme disappointment and pain. “But that’ll not be long.” She squawks. It doesn’t carry anything like the force it should. Probably the necessary force is fully occupied trying to heal her arm.“Why are we going to yours?” Castle looks seraphic. Her bad mood isn’t annoying him at all.“Because I’ve got the painkillers?”“So have I. They’d still be in my purse if we went to my apartment. Which is where I live.”“Nope,” he says cheerfully. What does he mean, nope? She’s opening her mouth on a series of pain-fuelled and ill-tempered remarks on the subject when he carries on. “You’re not to use your arm. You’ve to keep the sling on.” He looks not just seraphic but positively pious. “The doctor told me to make sure you did.” He’s sounding as if he’s the Angel Raphael, so saintly is his voice. It’s rather spoilt by the smirk that has developed on his face. Beckett wants to slap it off, but her arm hurts too much and she doesn’t want the car to crash. At least, not with her in it.“So you’re coming back to my place.”“No!”“Yes. No arguing.” He can’t say that to her. He can’t tell her what to do. He can’t do this. But it seems he is, and she hurts too much to argue. “You’re staying with us until you’re better. You can’t do anything with one arm. You can’t cook, or wash up, or even shower without getting the wound and the sling all wet.” The seraphic look turns wicked. “You’ll need help for your shower.” She growls. There is no amusement or flirtation in the sound at all. “Okay, too soon?”“Far too soon. I can’t stay with you. I want my own apartment and my own things and my own bed.” Oh hell. The anaesthetic’s got to her. Castle never lets an opportunity like that pass him by.“I’m sure you’d like my bed.” And there it is. “It’s exceptionally comfortable. You’d sleep like a baby. Not that babies actually do sleep well. You’d sleep like a child.” He looks happy.“There’s one huge disadvantage to your bed, Castle.” He looks confused. “You’re in it.” He pouts.“Most women would think that’s an advantage.”“Well, I’m not most women. And I can’t stay with you.”“You will. I’ll sic Gates on you if you don’t.” He looks very smug. And it’s a killer argument. Gates may not like Castle, but she’ll like Beckett disobeying medical advice much less. She humphs as loudly as she can manage without jarring her arm, which turns out to be barely louder than a belching mouse, and sulks wordlessly but very, very loudly all the way back to SoHo. Naturally Castle has a spare parking space in his building. Despite that meaning that she’ll only have to walk as far as the elevator, it makes her cranky. Crankier. When he helps her out the car, she’s horrified to find help is actually necessary. In fact, her knees are wobbly, she can’t use her arm to push herself up and out, and she’s in pain. All the anaesthetic has worn off at once.He doesn’t let go of her. And she hurts so much she doesn’t even care. He keeps an arm round her waist until they’re inside his door and then installs her very gently on the couch, produces the Lortab from her purse, gives her the dosage and a glass of water and stands over her till she takes them. She manages to say Thank you, Castle, with extreme gratitude and relief. It’s the last thing she remembers till morning. It’s fair to say that Castle does not regard this as a good day either. Watching Beckett get shot (again. He didn’t like it the first time.) and sitting in the emergency room was not in his plans for the day. At least this time she wasn’t dying. He really, really hates her being hurt. It’s not fair that her beautiful, oh-so-touchable-if-only-he-didn’t-think-she’d-shoot-him, skin is damaged but maybe she’ll let him kiss it better – in his dreams, Castle. He would say in his wildest dreams but his wildest dreams tend to be rather more…explicit. A lot more explicit. Quite definitely X-rated, in fact. But much as he’d have preferred that shot not to happen at all, because it is doing nothing for the health of his heart or his stress levels, once Beckett is patched up he perceives one or two advantages to the situation. In fact, his Pollyanna tendencies are in full flow.Advantage one: he gets to drive. Beckett never lets him drive, and now she has to. So even though she is sulking blackly in the passenger seat and if looks could kill he’d be a little pile of cinders on the floor, he’s driving! Though the car is very boring. If he touches the police controls, which are the only interesting thing about it, arm in sling or not Beckett will kill him. So he can’t. And otherwise it has no redeeming features at all. Not like his cars. They go fast and look good. This does neither, comparatively. But he’s driving! He bounces, just a little, in the seat. Until he remembers why he’s driving.Advantage two: Beckett has one arm – her right arm – in a sling. And she’s right handed. So she’s going to need some help. He likes being helpful, generally – that’s why he’s in the Twelfth (well, and the books, but that’s at best an eighty-twenty split now and every time he looks at Beckett the balance tilts further) even if they rag him unmercifully about it – but he’s never really had the chance to be helpful to Beckett personally before. Well. That’s not true either (he thinks briefly of Coonan, and the small matter of $100,000; and when her apartment blew up, though she was – as ever – always at work and she didn’t need any help, simply a place to stay) but he’s never had a chance to be helpful like he’s her family. Intimately helpful. Maybe family is the wrong word. Like he’s her – not boyfriend. That’s ridiculously cutesy and schmaltzy and just wrong – lover. That’s it. Lover.Advantage three: this grows squarely out of advantage two, and he really shouldn’t be thinking like this when Beckett’s injured but he just cannot help it. She’ll need to stay with him. He can provide all the help she needs at his. And maybe, when she’s feeling better, he can show her all the good reasons she should stay that aren’t connected to help. Because four months ago, or so, he’d thought she’d near as dammit told him that they had a chance. Until it all went wrong.He likes these advantages. He likes them very much.He does not like the fact that Beckett, quite understandably, is not in a good mood. In fact, she’s in an absolutely foul temper and although it isn’t exactly directed at him it isn’t exactly not either. None of his usual smart comments seem to cheer her up. But when he pulls up in the parking under his loft and finds that she can’t even get out the car without him helping her, things improve. Indeed, though he’s sure she’ll never, ever, admit it, she not only looked very grateful but she also didn’t object at all. Then she didn’t object to his arm round her. Then she didn’t object to him keeping it there, all the way to settling her comfortably on the couch. And then she – for Beckett, anyway – showered him with thanks and promptly fell asleep. Sleep is something that he is perfectly certain she hadn’t had much of at all the previous night.Castle’s reasonably muscular, though it’s not that obvious, but looking down on Beckett out cold on his couch he has a problem. He could relocate her to the guest room. But. But it’s upstairs, which means carrying her upstairs, which means negotiating his way around the stairs with a long-legged Beckett completely limp in his arms. But, however careful he is, (and he would be as careful as if he were juggling eggs) that carries a very high risk that he wakes her, or jars her arm. Neither is an acceptable outcome. There’s only one acceptable outcome.He clears the route to his bedroom and pulls back the comforter. He knows that Beckett will probably kill him for this, but he’ll die in a good cause. He returns, picks her up as carefully as if she were a house of cards and carries her through to lay her just as carefully on the bed. At that point a further problem occurs to him. Taking off her shoes is very simple. He does that. And those funny little nearly-sock things that women seem to wear instead of hose when they’re wearing pants.Her shirt is blood-spattered. He feels a little sick, when he thinks about that. She can’t stay in that. More to the point, it’s got a bullet hole – rip – through the sleeve. It’ll never be mendable, and anyway he can’t exactly see Beckett plying a needle and thread. Doesn’t fit with the Glock. He goes back to the kitchen and finds a pair of sharp, large scissors.
Hmm. Better take her dress pants off, too. He suspects that they are also bloodied. He really does not like that. He’ll get them cleaned for her. She’ll like that. She might like it enough that she doesn’t shoot him when she realises that he’s undressed her. Explaining this is going to be tricky. But his motives are pure. Honestly. He undoes her holster – oops, should have made her take that off before the painkillers kicked in – how would she have taken it off one-handed?
He
should have taken it off her before the painkillers kicked in – and breathes a very quiet sigh of relief when neither that, nor unbuckling her belt (that provokes some rather inappropriate thoughts, and he has to remember the blood on her shirt and the ghastly feeling of absolute terror when the shot rang out to retain full control), nor undoing and then very, very carefully taking off her dress pants –
oh my God
is that what she wears underneath? He is so dead. – wakes her.
This was a really bad idea. It’s just that the alternatives seemed worse. And he is a mature adult and she’s hurt and he certainly isn’t going to do anything inappropriate because he is a good man no matter how much he loves her and wants her, but his dreams are never going to be the same ever again. And he hasn’t even cut her shirt off yet. He grits his teeth. He never, ever thought that given the chance to take Beckett’s shirt off he’d be hesitating. Then again, he didn’t think she’d be in a sling, doped on Lortab, and asleep either, if he were given that chance. He’d rather thought that it would have involved a nice dinner, some wine, (not too much) and a natural progression from kissing to touching to mutually undressing each other and exploring and…and… and this line of thought is really not helping. He forces his very undisciplined mind back to the reality at hand. Injured, bloodied Beckett needs to sleep comfortably. Therefore he needs to make her comfortable. Therefore, regardless of the considerable attractions of her style of underwear, he had better stop thinking like an uncouth frat boy and sort himself out. He slices up both sleeves of the shirt, (like some Napoleonic-era surgeon, he flatters himself) carefully avoiding touching the sling, and across the shoulders till it’s in two pieces, one over and one under her. He deals with the underneath one first, slipping an arm under her neck and lifting her fractionally to pull it out. He nearly has heart failure when she murmurs and moves a little, in case he’s woken her and spoiled everything. Heart failure is exacerbated when he realises that the murmur equates to mmmm yes Castle and the move is a very tiny snuggle into the crook of his elbow. Well, well, well. What’s the closed-off Detective Beckett been hiding all these months? Because he’s no slouch as a detective either and that, my dear Watson, is what we civilian consultant detectives technically call a clue.Which thought is also not helping.He uses the moment he takes to dispose of the back of the shirt to calm down. Then he visualises, for the third or fourth or maybe four hundredth time, the crime scene and the shot and the ER and Beckett hurt. But not dying. This time, not dying. And then he takes the bloodied front away and oh oh oh she matches her underwear sets and oh oh oh he will dream about this for the rest of his natural life which may only be twenty-four hours long. But she is, even with a bandaged arm, the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his whole entire life. He looks at her for a few moments. He’s entitled to do that much. After all, he may never have the chance again. Especially after the next, and very thankfully last, bit. He simply cannot see how to get the bra off without jarring her arm or – or possibly and – waking her. With considerable regret for the ruined beauty of the underwear set, and considerable thanks to whoever invented front-fastening bras and that Beckett was wearing one today, he snips through the shoulder straps, undoes the front, tries very, very hard to keep his eyes averted (he is a good man) and carefully pulls it off and pulls the comforter over her.He is, after all, only a man. Not a saint, or a seraph, or an angel. And from what he’s already seen tonight, none of those would be able to resist Kate Beckett either. He pulls his bedroom door mostly shut behind him. He needs coffee (or a brain wipe) and then he’ll open the private file on his laptop that he uses when it all gets too much like after the vampire case and after the Lockwood case and he’ll write out everything he can’t say or do or demonstrate. And then he’ll take care of himself. Again.He writes for some time. Then he stops writing, takes a short break, and afterwards considers the situation. Kate is sound asleep in his bed. He is now tired, and wishes to sleep. He also wishes to survive the next eight hours. But. Even though he knows he should go and sleep in the guest room himself, he can’t. He needs to be with her in case she needs anything in the night. He wouldn’t hear her from the guest room. He needs to be there, with her. He slips carefully into his bed and falls asleep mercifully quickly, though sleep is interrupted by being woken by a definitive snuggle against him. With iron control he manages to limit his response (apart from the automatic reaction of certain uncontrollable areas of his anatomy) to a very gentle hand on her hip, which seems to suffice. He never thought he’d be so glad to wake up and get out of a bed that contained Kate Beckett. Nor did he think he’d be glad of a lengthy meeting at Black Pawn. But both are, this morning, true. He leaves breakfast, another dose of Lortab and a note, and departs quietly.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
When Beckett wakes up she feels much better. Just as well. This does not look like a guest room. This looks like Castle’s bedroom. There’s a dull ache in her arm and a more persistent one in her shoulder still, but it’s a lot better than yesterday’s agony, and she’d really, really like a shower. About that point, it occurs to her that she’s also mostly not dressed. What the hell? She will kill him. Probably. But she’d have hated worse to sleep in bloodstained clothes. Okay. She won’t kill him. It was very kind of him to make her comfortable. Really. She ungrits her teeth and steals a handy robe, which falls nearly to her ankles and smells deliciously aromatically of Castle’s familiar aftershave, which is also big enough on her that the sling is covered and it closes, and looks out into his study. He’s not there. She goes back into the bedroom and looks around. There are two more Lortab on the nightstand, and a note.Gone to a meeting at Black Pawn. Back at noon. I have a solution for you showering. Don’t – heavily underlined – try to shower before I get back. Coffee made for you. Cereal (don’t make that face, Beckett) on the counter and milk in a jug. You won’t need more than one arm. Take the Lortab first! RCIt’s surely the remains of the shock of being shot that’s warmed her heart. She takes the Lortab, uses the bathroom, (that’s awkward, one-handed) drinks her coffee, forces down a third of the cereal (she hates cereal) and, fairly quickly as the drugs kick in, starts to feel human again. With a few significant differences from normal. The drugs have rather lowered her normal inhibitions. And with this low-inhibition variety of recovered humanity, comes curiosity. It’s after nine. Castle won’t be back till noon, at which time they will discuss exactly how she ended up in his bed mostly undressed. And whether he was there or not. She has a vague feeling that someone tucked her in, and an even more vague feeling that someone was tucked in beside her, though that might simply have been wishful thinking. But until then, she is alone in his loft and, her painkiller-fuzzed brain points out, she has the perfect opportunity to investigate. Or – though this is really not a nice way to put it - indulge her rampant curiosity, which appears to have returned with a vengeance after its four month vacation. It’ll take her mind off the remaining aches in her arm.Beckett calls on her detective knowledge of how to search a room without it being spotted and works her way around, somewhat more fuzzily as the painkillers keep working. Mmmm. Silk boxers. Very… strokable. More so with something – or someone – inside them. Finest cotton shirts. Also very… pettable. With someone’s very …pettable… pecs inside them. Pants – not interesting. Also not required. What on earth is this?Hidden at the back of the closet, behind a couple of dozen undershirts of, no doubt, the finest quality, (this is Castle, multimillionaire and lover of luxury) is a small pile of cheap, ratty t-shirts. Beckett extracts them one handed with extreme care and discovers that they’re all superhero tees. From the label, though, they’re all a bit small for Castle. Ahhhh. They’re all a bit small for Castle now. Men fill out a bit in their twenties. Hmmm. Castle’s old t-shirts. She buries her nose in the pile. It smells indefinably of Castle. Hmmm alters to mmmmm. She has another cup of coffee, now more than a little stewed but she can’t help that with one arm, and thinks, as far as the painkillers allow. Curiosity has certainly served a purpose. But. It’s after eleven and she doesn’t exactly want Castle to know she’s been – er – investigating. That’s the word. He’d be far too pleased with himself and his general attractiveness. She goes and very carefully and awkwardly puts the t-shirts back exactly where she found them, and then returns to her coffee.She really shouldn’t be considering what she is considering. Theft is a crime. But it’s only petty larceny because the value of a pile of ratty t-shirts can’t be more than ten dollars. You couldn’t give them away on the street, the state they’re in. And they don’t – certainly won’t – fit Castle now. And the most important thing – she wants them. They smell like Castle. They remind her of Castle. And right now she badly needs some comfort when she goes home alone at the end of a long day because she’s too scared to ask Castle to come home with her. So these would be the next best thing. She’s fairly sure he’d never notice. Even if he did, she’d give them back. So it’s not even theft. It’s just… borrowing. Sure, it’s without asking, but it’s borrowing.Actually, she could just put one on now. The robe is very nice, but she’s tripping over it and it’s a bit warm (she doesn’t think about why she’s so hot) and it’s a damn nuisance she has no clean underwear but at least she’s got a pair of panties on. She wonders where her bra went. She wonders how on earth Castle got her undressed without waking her. But mostly she wonders if the top t-shirt – the Incredible Hulk: and she’s always liked green – would go over her sling. Only one way to find out. She picks it up with her left hand, lets it drop down and unfold on the way, and then wriggles into it with some difficulty and quite a lot of swearing as she jars her shoulder despite the sling. But it’s on. It fits very nicely. Pleasantly sloppy, if she didn’t have the sling. A bit short, though. Only barely mid-thigh. She’d better find her pants. She’s sure she can get them on one-handed.A brief look round fails to disclose her pants. A more detailed one reveals the remains of her ruined shirt – she doesn’t just mean the fact that it’s in two pieces – and, to her enormous annoyance, her ruined bra, in the study trash. The set she’d been wearing yesterday had not been precisely cheap. Couldn’t he just have left the bra on? It’s at that thought that the full magnitude of what had actually happened last night hits. She turns scarlet from forehead to toenails.Castle had undressed her. She emits a wail that wouldn’t have disgraced a full-blooded banshee, although banshees are not known for their blazing scarlet blushes. He’d undressed her. And she hadn’t been awake to appreciate it. She wails again at the unfairness of life in general and yesterday in particular.A few seconds later it occurs to her that she should have been offended that he’d undressed her, not offended that she hadn’t been a party to it. If she turns any more scarlet she’ll turn into a boiled lobster. Not a good look. Especially since she still hasn’t found her pants. She pads back out and finds that the coffee is now so stewed that even she, inured to appalling coffee by years of the precinct version, cannot drink it. And she can’t make more because – a clock catches her eye – the way her luck is running if she tries it with one hand she’ll scald herself and if she takes the sling off Castle will walk through the door and then he’ll look at her plaintively and she’ll remember just how worried and frightened for her and unhappy he was yesterday and she will feel guilty and unhappy for upsetting him.As if she didn’t feel guilty and unhappy enough about lying to him for four months. She can at least get a glass of water. One-handed. She’s ridiculously pleased when she manages it. She’s ridiculously upset when she has to stop herself plumping down on to Castle’s insanely comfortable couch for fear of hurting her arm. She’s ridiculously annoyed when she realises she’s forgotten to find a book. She locates one. The Tiger in the Smoke? Well, she’s never read it. That’s a good start. Then she discovers that reading a real book with only one hand is not easy. Where’s a Kindle – her Kindle – when she needs one? She gives up reading in favour of planning her escape to her own apartment, eschewing such staples of escapology as rope ladders, knotted sheets, skeleton keys in favour of – top of the list – pants. Though if she walked out dressed like this she might receive more offers of assistance than she could handle. Castle had dropped off Beckett’s pants at his own dry-cleaning service and promised them infinite bounties if they’d have them ready by noon: an offer they had accepted with alacrity and some amusement, fortunately the latter only after he’d left. Possibly they shouldn’t enquire how he had come into possession of a pair of bloodstained ladies’ dress pants. The answer is sure to be discomposing and possibly gory.The Black Pawn meeting, while vital, is boring. Castle’s obvious desire to be elsewhere is no different from normal, nor is his constant checking of his phone. All three participants are only too glad when they are done: Gina and Paula because Castle is difficult to organise even on his best days and this is clearly not one of those; and Castle because he desperately wants to get back home and make sure Beckett is okay. He’d only managed to survive the meeting by calling to mind the picture of Beckett in underwear in his bed, which while extremely pleasant had also been rather – discomforting. The remembrance that he’d – very gently – kissed her before he’d left is also not helping his suavity and coolness. The fact that no matter how hard he tries not to think about it, the feeling of her snuggling into him and the murmured sleep-drenched words she’d uttered as he undressed her are imprinted on every fractal fold of his brain has rendered him almost incapable of any other thought. At least when he returns home she’ll be wrapped in the voluminous (on her) robe that he had left in easy view and reach. That way he can hand over her pants and lend her a t-shirt of Alexis’s (who had gone through a phase of sloppy tees, any of which will do for now) and then they can have a sensible discussion about what to collect from Beckett’s apartment for the remainder of her enforced stay in his loft. Perhaps she’ll feel up to going and getting it. If she doesn’t, she’ll just have to let him do it for her. An errant thought covering the potential contents of her underwear collection makes him grin. He reaches his door bestrewn with dry-cleaning, some not-at-all-basic underwear which he’d had a great deal of fun choosing, a small roll of plastic and some medical tape, perfectly happy with the plan he’s concocted.He’s perfectly happy right up till he opens the door.Ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod oh fuck. All he can see are legs. Miles and miles and miles of legs. Eventually – somewhere about the state line – there’s a hem. What the actual fuck? Is she trying to kill him? His hindbrain has plotted a coup in just that one glance. It’s perilously close to succeeding. He has control. Really he does. He stands absolutely frozen in the open doorway, mouth open and jaw dropped. Eventually he finds some words.“What are you wearing?” That, he instantly perceives, was a huge mistake. He just about manages to close the door. Beckett is standing up very slowly – no doubt to avoid paining her arm, says a very faint remnant of sense, but it’s so sexy – and all he can see are those legs extending and extending and ohmigod she is wearing… she is wearing… that’s his t-shirt. Where did she find that? How did she find that? Why did she find that? That thought sticks. Unfortunately it exits his brain via his mouth.“Why were you searching my closet, Beckett?”
Ah. Ooops. Busted.
“Er… I needed a t-shirt and I found this.” She looks at his rather disbelieving and abruptly smugly amused face and goes on the attack. “Why wasn’t I dressed? Where did you sleep? And where the hell are my pants?”“Your pants are here. I got them cleaned for you.” He brandishes the dry-cleaning bag as proof. Beckett slips slowly across the floor to reclaim her property and entirely fails to notice the effect this is having on Castle, mainly because she’s intent on getting rather more dressed.“Thank you,” she says automatically, and returns to the main questions. “Why wasn’t I dressed? Where did you sleep?”“I – er – undressed-you-because-your-clothes-were-all-bloody-and-you’d-be-uncomfortable-if-you-slept-in-them,” Castle blurts out in one embarrassed and small-boy guilty breath. Beckett stops in her tracks and raises a very quizzical eyebrow.“And? There were two questions.” Her eyes develop the glare that cuts suspects into shreds before she even opens her mouth. “Where did you sleep?”“Um…er… in my bed?” He’s not dead yet. This is a miracle of Biblical proportions. And not being dead, Beckett’s insanely long legs are working remarkable effects upon his brain. Which is his only excuse for what happens next. Beckett takes one more step in the direction of the dry-cleaning bag which he is holding and without any permission from his brain at all his arms come out and wrap her very gently in and when she looks up he simply kisses her.It starts off gentle. It even stays that way for a time. A time, in this case, being approximately one picosecond. Well, it’s a time. Just a very short time. It would have been a rather longer time if Beckett – Kate, if she’s kissing him or he’s kissing her it’s Kate – hadn’t opened her lips to him and run her hand into his hair and her tongue into his mouth and generally made it clear that she wasn’t objecting. Anything but. And that, my dear Watson, is what we civilian consultant detectives call proof.It’s entirely unclear what happened there. However, it’s entirely clear that kissing her is firmly on Castle’s to-do list. How convenient that it now also happens to be on hers. For the rest of the day, potentially. He feels really, really good. He’s really, really good at kissing her. He obviously thinks she’s really, really good at kissing him. Suddenly she’s not scared of kissing him at all. In fact, she should have done this long ago, not just squashed down the one previous time and pretended it never happened. Maybe the t-shirt has passed on some superhero powers. And then she simply stops thinking at all. His tongue explores her mouth until she starts making little noises and fighting back so that he’s making little noises and he’s got one hand in her hair and one on her back and ooh kissing him is a really, really excellent way of taking her mind off her troubles. He moves off her mouth and kisses round to her ear and nibbles gently on the lobe and then – ohhhh – flicks his tongue very wickedly just inside and makes her wriggle and -
Ow!
And it all comes to a shuddering and painful halt. She’s wriggled her injured arm right into a firm chest and it doesn’t matter how careful he’s been because she’s done something stupid and now he’s going to start apologising and stop doing much nicer things but ow, ow, ow that hurt.Unwanted tears from the sharp pain puddle in her eyes, and she droops. Castle’s reaction is quite as rapid as his previous one but not nearly such fun. He’s blurting sorry sorry sorry I shouldn’t have done that are you okay and that is so exactly not what she wants him to say and why was she stupid enough to get winged anyway and it’s all spoiled. He steers her to the couch and all she can think of to do is sit down very, very carefully so as not to make her arm hurt more and now he won’t even come and sit next to her. The sharp pain and sharper disappointment, and the effect of the painkillers, have reduced her to the mental state of a cross small child.Castle is horrified at himself. Kate is injured and he’s acting like a jackass and kissing her and not thinking at all. She’s not herself and he’s taking advantage of her even if she did co-operate. And now she’s hurt her arm again and she’s nearly crying. Kate never cries. He thinks he’d better take himself out the way before he does something else to hurt her. Or kisses her again, to stop her crying.“Castle,” she whimpers pathetically. He stops on the way to the study. “Can I have some painkillers, please?” “Not yet.” She winces, looking up through helpfully damp lashes. It still hurts, but she’s shrugged off her hurt-child moment of idiocy in favour of a very different thought. “Will you sit next to me?” She sounds like the worst sort of wet-blanket pathetic wimp. He doesn’t even appear to think how unlikely that is.So he does, carefully placing himself on her left hand side. She knows that she is shamelessly playing on his good nature. But it wasn’t at all his fault that she jolted her arm. The drug has settled round her brain and is currently giving her some very interesting ideas. She’s not letting go of something that felt like a very good thing without a fight. And if that takes nefarious means and dubious acting – she’s prepared to do it. She looks up at him. He looks like he’s about to start apologising again. No, no, no. No more apologising. Not unless it comes with some more kisses. This time, she’ll be more careful.She snuggles in. Castle does exactly what she’d expected and hoped, and puts his arm very carefully round her shoulders. She snuggles a bit closer. Then she – cautiously – swings her legs up over his lap. That has a much nicer effect. He – very cautiously – lifts her into his lap and cuddles her in without touching her arm or the sling at all. She leans on that nice broad shoulder and contemplates the advantages of playing the pathetic card. Shame that she can’t keep it up for more than three minutes and only in circumstances of exigency. Still, she’s used the three minutes for the best. She’s on his lap, cuddled in – albeit carefully – and it’s very nice indeed. She tucks her head in between his shoulder and his neck.
Okay. So Kate is all snuggled in and clearly wants comforted. He can do that. But cautiously. No more kissing. Or anything else of that nature. He puts his arm round her without employing any pressure at all. It’s therefore a mystery why she’s snuggling closer. It’s a bigger mystery why she’s swung her amazing legs over him. But he’s not turning her away. If she wants petted and comforted because she’s hurt that’s okay by him.
It slowly dawns on him that this was a major mistake. The mistake in question being that he thought she wanted petted and comforted. She’s just nipped at his neck. And she’s advancing on his mouth. What the hell? She’s hurt. Drugged. Not in her right senses. He shouldn’t encourage her. But it might be bad for her if he thwarts her. And he really doesn’t know how to stop her without hurting her arm or upsetting her. He can’t stand the thought of her miserable. Miserabler. Or something. He’ll just let her do whatever she likes.Whatever she likes seems to mean kissing him. Now what? He’s sure this shouldn’t be happening. He’s sure she’s supposed to rest, take care of her arm, and not be making advances to him. Even if it is extremely pleasant. Or, more accurately, all his dreams coming true. He is absolutely certain this is not what the ER doctor meant at all. But he still has no idea how to stop her and the more she kisses him the more he responds and the more she kisses him again and this is already completely out of hand and when did painkillers three hours ago become an aphrodisiac? Because he really cannot think that Kate would behave like this, however much he’d have liked and encouraged it, if she wasn’t doped up on painkillers. Actually, he really cannot think.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Beckett is perfectly satisfied with the audience’s reaction to her acting, especially as now she doesn’t need to act any more. She likes having her own way. Right now, her own way mostly encompasses kissing Castle for a while longer. So she does. Eventually, though, she has to stop. Mainly because only having one arm, and already having ruined this once by jarring her injured one, she can’t continue this without risking ruining it again. She reluctantly stops kissing Castle and tucks back into his shoulder. Comfort hadn’t been her primary objective in sitting on his knee, but she could use some of that too. Since his arm doesn’t move from its gentle presence round her, that’s achieved. If it weren’t for the hole in her arm and the damn sling she’d do something a lot more obvious about it. Though… messing with Castle’s head actually is rather fun. She wonders, still fuzzily, how long it’ll take him to realise before she either mends or – less likely – takes pity on his confusion and tells him.There’s a short pause in proceedings, while they each organise their scattered thoughts. Close physical contact, and in Castle’s case severe physical discomfort arising from that contact, is not really helpful. Beckett, still considerably more than somewhat impaired by the effects of Lortab, which have left her unable to concentrate on anything for very long, and by Castle’s cologne, isn’t really getting anywhere except to wish she had some toiletries and clothes. Suddenly she remembers something.“You said you had a solution so that I could have a shower. What is it? I’d really, really like a shower.” Castle grins widely. This, he can help with.“I got some plastic and some tape. We can cover up your arm in the sling and tape it so no water gets in.” Kate’s looking at him with an extremely odd expression. Castle looks back, confused. He thought that would be thoroughly acceptable. “What’s wrong?”
Right. Okay, Castle. He’ll just cover her arm in plastic and tape it. Right. How
exactly
does he think he’s going to do that without her taking off her – oops, his – t-shirt. Kisses are one thing. Topless in his living room – despite him having undressed her, which point she will return to later - is perhaps a touch further than she feels like going on a first non-date. At least with a wounded arm. But – she really wants a shower. And to wash her hair – oh. Ah. How’s she going to do
that
with one hand? She deals with the easy point first. Or at least the one that will provide her with a moment’s amusement.
“How were you planning to get the plastic on and tape it round my arm, Castle?”“Well, if we just – oh.” She watches with fascination and not a little malice as light – and embarrassment – dawns on him. “I didn’t quite think that through.” He bounces back remarkably quickly, though. “I know!” Oh Lord. Another Castle idea. “If I got a really big towel, and you – er – wrapped it round the – er – key areas –”“You mean my chest.” He squirms.“Well, yes. But then you’d be – er – covered. And I’d be really, really careful.” He looks ridiculously hopeful. It’s clear he wants to help. And actually, that’s not such a bad idea.“Okay. Let’s try it. But just one hint that you’re trying to feel me up, or any suggestions about helping me wash” - Castle forcibly shuts his mouth on one of those – “and I will go home to my own apartment.” Somehow. Probably. Possibly. Well, actually, not at all. She’s not sure she can remember the address through these painkillers. But she doesn’t want him starting something she can’t finish.Amazingly, it works, though there is considerable embarrassment, mostly on Castle’s side, as they go. Beckett, despite her minatory admonishments and her extreme lack of desire to be topless near Castle in circumstances in which she is unable to use it to best advantage, is not particularly self-conscious about her body, and she really does want a shower. Which brings her back to the much more difficult problem of washing her hair.“Castle, we’ve sorted the shower, but is there any way I can wash my hair too? Or do I need to book a salon appointment?”“Well,” he smirks. She’s actually glad to see it. It means he’s stopped fretting about upsetting her. Good. She doesn’t need him tiptoeing around like she’s at death’s door. They’ve done that once. It wasn’t a success. She likes their normal snark and banter mode far better.“No.”“You don’t even know what I was going to say, Kate.”“You were going to offer to help.” He looks pious, and professionally offended.“Was not.” Beckett raises both eyebrows in a patented attitude of complete disbelief. “If you had ever been in my bathroom” –“In your dreams, Castle.” She ignores her earlier visit to his bathroom.“Oh yes. In my dreams you have definitely been in my bathroom. Shall I tell you some of them? You were” –“Shut up.” Shut up, Castle, because she can’t act on any of his undoubtedly remarkably interesting and equally undoubtedly arousing ideas, which is entirely unfair. She might not have chosen being shot (again) as a way of discovering how nice kissing Castle can be, (high stress rescue missions to save Ryan and Esposito notwithstanding) but, having realised, being made to wait to act on that because some lowlife winged her and she put her shoulder out is not helpful. These drugs are having an amazing effect on her thinking. She’s sure she’d never have had any of these thoughts without their help.He’s stopped talking entirely. “Let’s go back to talking about washing my hair, Castle. Nothing else.” He pouts.“In my bathroom there is a bath.” Yes, okay. And in other news? Though a bath would be even nicer than a shower, if only she could get in and out it safely. Which she isn’t willing to attempt. “And on that bath there are some taps.” Ee-I-ee-I-oh? “And on those taps is a shower attachment.” Yes, Macdonald, but that doesn’t actually solve the problem here. She still only has one usable hand. If her hair were still short, now, she’d just about be able to do it in the shower. But it’s not. “I’m not seeing the answer here, Castle.”“After your shower, when you’re dressed again – oh! I forgot, I got you some underwear” – she just stares at him and before she can open her mouth on the thoughts charging through her brain he carries on - “I can wash your hair for you with that.” She gapes at him.“You?” And then… “Underwear?” He ignores that. It seems the safest option.“Yes, I can wash your hair.” Her stunned face percolates. “Kate, how do you think Alexis’s hair got washed? I did it.” She’s silent with surprise. “I even know about conditioner. For girls, that is. I don’t suppose you’d like mine.” She makes a peculiar noise. “What? How do you think my hair looks this good?” Beckett splutters.“Okay. We’ll try it. But Castle?”“Yes?”“Call me a girl again and I will lace your coffee with ipecac.” He looks confused.“I can’t shoot you. Which I normally would do if you called me a girl.” Castle grins very widely. Kate’s almost back to normal. He’d thought that particular phrase would work. “Now. Do you want me to wash your hair or not?” Phew. She’s temporarily forgotten about the underwear question, and he is certainly not going to remind her. He likes his ears. They suit his face. They do not suit the floor, which is where they may end up if she remembers how the clean underwear has arrived.“Please.” The shower is awkward but not – quite – impossible. Drying herself is also awkward but not – quite – impossible. Though on both counts there is a decidedly blue tinge to the air around Beckett by the time she’s finished. Swathed in her towel, she returns to the bedroom, from which Castle is tactfully and mercifully absent, and discovers that while she has been casting vile imprecations at the soap, he has left – ah. He’s left an extremely attractive, very sexy and astonishingly expensive (she’d looked at these, looked at her bank balance, and reluctantly decided she wouldn’t buy them this month) set of matched bra and panties on the bed. It’s even a front-fastening bra. She considers the logistics of putting on the bra as she wriggles awkwardly into the panties. She can do this. She’d better do this, because the alternative is no bra at all. She is not asking Castle for help fastening her bra. Unfastening it, now, says her unhelpfully vivid and drugged imagination – that’s not a good thought right now. She adds it to the pile of thoughts for when her arm is better, and returns to the logistical problem at hand. Or up arm, to be precise.
Okay. She’s got this. She has the sense to adjust the shoulder straps before she starts. Maybe she could take the sling off for a moment –
Ow, fuck, ow
! Maybe not. Okay, try again. Strap over the slung arm,
very
carefully. So far, so good. Now, use the slung arm to hold that side in place and wiggle the other arm into its strap – thank God for flexibility and thrice-weekly yoga classes. Success. Now for fastening the front. The air acquires a renewed bluish aspect. Finally. Adjust the cups. Check the mirror to ensure it’s all in order –
Wow. She really should have bought this set. She retrieves the Incredible Hulk t-shirt, wriggles into it rather more adroitly than earlier, looks at her cleaned, pressed, perfect pants – and ignores them.
Showers are a wonderful source of good ideas. Even if she’d spent most of it swearing at the scuttling soap. Castle has been occupying his mind – or at least that small portion of it which is not screaming at him to go and help Kate shower – in designing a suitable lunch for an underfed, one-armed woman. Mac-n-cheese seems indicated. Ice cream, if Kate would like some. Comfort food. He’s still more than a little worried about her. Notwithstanding the return of the Beckett snark, it’s not at all like her to be as woebegone as she had been. It’s not like her to kiss him either, very unfortunately. And – he hasn’t heard the expected shriek of outrage at the underwear. That is very seriously worrying. He frowns. He contemplates going to enquire, but hasn’t come to any decision when Kate solves the problem for him by re-emerging round the study door. Solves one problem, anyway. She’s created a much more – pressing – problem.“Would you mind washing my hair?” she says nonchalantly, just as if she doesn’t know she’s fried his brain. Why hasn’t she put her pants on? He got them cleaned especially quickly. Is this some cruel payback for the underwear? She’s still only wearing a mid thigh t-shirt – his t-shirt: he’d had it when he was sixteen and he’d had his first serial story published over eight editions of the school magazine, whichever school he was at then, he’s lost track – and that is just not fair because he knows what she’s wearing underneath and she’s definitely wearing the bra. (There is a lack of a particular form of sway and that thought is not solving his current problem at all though he knows exactly what would and it is not currently possible so he’d better forget it.) There’s a slightly odd undertone to that request. If it weren’t this very confusing, drugged-up version of Kate, whom he understands even less than usual, he’d think it were husky. Almost… flirtatious?“Please?” she says hopefully. He stutters out an automatic assent and stumbles after her to his bathroom. Five seconds later he stumbles out again and makes rapidly for Alexis’s bathroom to raid her shampoo and conditioner. By the time he returns he’s managed to recover some semblance of suavity. But his t-shirt never fitted him like that. It’s not that it’s fitting her form - the sling has put paid to that – but its length. Or lack of length. Those legs should be illegal. They’re a lethal weapon. A new form of cortex-scrambler. Who needs death rays, when you could just show armies Kate Beckett’s legs and watch said armies fall at her feet? Of course, then they’d start a new war over her. So maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea after all… He becomes aware of an expectant silence.“A little help here?” Ah. Oh. Yes. Lots of help. Yes. Maybe she could help him – No! Hair washing. Just hair washing.“Yes, okay, sorry. Just thinking about how best to do this.” Saying how best to do you is unlikely to improve his health. “I’m afraid you’ll need to sit on the floor and lean back over the bath.” Kate complies. She’s becoming aware that there may be blood still in her hair. Ewww. She leans back and tries not to show the feline smile that wants to slink over her face. He really hasn’t thought this through, has he? She has. She tugs at the bottom of the t-shirt. To ensure it’s out the way of the water, of course. The fact that it makes it stretch interestingly over her chest and gape at the neck is entirely accidental. Of course.He really didn’t think this through. Oh fuck. Except that’s firmly (not a good word choice, Rick) off the agenda. How is he going to get through this when every time he looks up all he can see is straight down her – his, dammit! – t-shirt and tantalising more-than-glimpses of that underwear and he should have bought plain cotton - something that a nun might wear – or anything less seductive than he had done. Hoist on his own very painful petard. He concentrates very hard on getting Kate wet – no! – getting Kate’s hair wet; on massaging her – no! – her head and lathering the shampoo; rinsing her hair – more wet – stroking conditioner through it. It would all be much, much easier if she weren’t making happy little pleased noises that he would much rather hear because he was stroking other parts of her in bed – no!He’s never thought of hair washing as foreplay before. He might need to reconsider that. He breathes very slowly and does his very best to ignore Kate’s – surely unwitting? – effect on him. The sooner he finishes this torture the better. It occurs to him that he’ll need to comb it out for her. She’ll never manage it with one arm. He’s seen Alexis deal with her hair often enough to know that long hair needs two arms if it’s not to be excruciatingly painful. He rinses Kate’s hair thoroughly and wraps a towel round her head.“Thank you,” Kate says, and somehow it slithers off her tongue like silk slipping to the floor – no! The last image he needs in his mind is silk slipping off anything. Or anyone. Or one particular anyone who is still sitting on his bathroom floor – oh. Oh. Oh God. She needs help to stand up. Oh God. He can do this. He can.Beckett would, in fact, prefer to have some help to stand up. It’s not that she couldn’t do it herself, if she had to, but leaning back over the bath is just a little awkward, and she needs to stretch out her spine. Still, looks like Castle’s suddenly lost the plot again. She folds her legs elegantly under her and manages to achieve kneeling without hurting herself or inelegant collapse. Her concentration on avoiding attempting to use her right arm leaves her completely unaware that Castle has come around the bath to help her and is now – she abruptly discovers – standing right in front of her as she looks up. Mmmmm. That’s a nice view. Very… contoured.
Ah. That’s a very – interesting – relative position. But he must have imagined that swift flash of predatory satisfaction across Kate’s face. Surely. Clues and proof notwithstanding. He’s letting his own desires take over. Surely.
“Want some help up?” he squeaks.Beckett considers an answer, or better still a gesture, which will make it quite clear both that she’s noticed his – er – condition and that she isn’t objecting to anything about it other than her inability to – er – assist him with curing it. Temporarily, of course. She acquires a feeling of irritation. She is not possessed of infinite – or any - patience, once she’s decided on a course of action. But right now leaning forward is not going to help anything.“Yes. Please.” She extends her left hand to take his. Castle ignores it. Instead he crouches down, places both hands round her waist, and surprisingly athletically stands up again, taking her smoothly with him. Well now. That little display of flexibility was impressive. Maybe he’s been doing yoga too. She’s thought once or twice that he knew a little more about yoga than casual acquaintanceship would imply. Right now, though, she’s mostly thinking that he’s forgotten to let go, and further thinking that it feels rather nice. She’s just about to look up, smile widely, run her tongue over her lips and hope that he takes the hint (mainly because without heels on she can’t reach his face and she can’t climb up him without hurting her thrice-damned arm) when he speaks.“We” – who’s this we? – “need to comb your hair out.” Oh. Beckett’s sure she could manage that herself. But having her hair washed had been very nice and if he wants to carry on then even that limited contact is much better than none.“Okay,” she says amiably. “How?”“With a comb.” She growls, very unamiably. “You sit down, I sit next to you or behind you.”“Are you sure you know how to do this?” Castle grins.“Yes. Top class hairdresser here.” Beckett growls again, accompanied by a roll of her eyes. “I’ll even pay a forfeit” – Beckett looks very interestedly at him – “that does not involve my mutilation, injury or death” – she looks disappointed – “if I hurt you.” He grins again. “You can’t possibly shriek louder than Alexis used to.”“Okay. But I get to choose the forfeit.” Which will involve bodily contact. Just not necessarily of the injurious variety.Castle suddenly realises that he’s still got his hands round Kate’s waist and she hasn’t maimed him yet. In the back of his mind, the circuits of deduction finally start to spark into life. His unconscious deductions take into account the sleep-soaked muttering and snuggling, her reaction to being kissed, her kissing him (doped or not) and finally the t-shirt and absence of pants; put them all together with him unaccountably not yet being dead, and finally come up with some very interesting conclusions indeed. It’s a wilder theory than he’s ever come up with before. Maybe that’s why even his, very broad, conscious mind isn’t listening. Because if it were listening it would be hearing Kate Beckett is trying to seduce you. Combing out Kate’s hair becomes another stern exercise in self-control. She’s making contented, happy little noises again, even though he’s refused to try to blow dry it. There’s only so much he can cope with, and running his fingers through Kate’s hair any more is well beyond that. It’s probably just as well that the insistent, persistent yammering of his hindbrain hasn’t made it to his cortex.After their late lunch, Beckett dismally realises that although she is clean, that has nothing to do with being recovered. Her shoulder aches a lot, and she really ought to take a couple more painkillers. But she’s going to step it down. The strong stuff is really giving her some very odd ideas. “Castle, have you a couple of Tylenol?” He looks very sharply at her.“Tylenol? Shouldn’t you have a couple more Lortab?” She will not be looked at in that I-know-you’re-minimising-this way. Even if it’s true.“Tylenol,” she says firmly.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Castle had refused to give her anything but the Lortab. It didn’t matter what she said, he ignored it. And since it seemed to be a choice between Lortab or nothing, it was no choice at all. She’ll deal with that, in due course. Those taken, Beckett contemplates with disfavour the next subject of discussion, being the combined questions of why she was sleeping in Castle’s bed last night, where she’s sleeping tonight, the presence or absence of Castle’s family, the ridiculousness of anyone thinking she needs a sling and to rest her arm, and basically the lack of necessity for her to stay here. Except that Castle put his foot down once before, and she’d stayed here for weeks. But Gates is not Montgomery, and surely Gates will not back Castle? She hates him. Surely she won’t. Thinking of cop things, where’s her gun? Oh yes, it’s on the nightstand. That’s fine, though it really ought to be locked away. Where’s her purse? She doesn’t remember seeing that. That’s mildly worrying, that she knows where her gun is, but not her purse. She should be more worried by that.“Castle,” she inquires, “where’s my purse?”That’s a question Castle would have much preferred that Beckett didn’t ask. It’s not that he’d hidden it, it’s just that the answer is going to provoke more difficult questions. He backs away from the couch on which he’d been about to sit down.“It’s upstairs, in the guest room.” Here we go. Why does Kate Beckett have to be such a good detective? Even in pain and doped on painkillers she’s like a wolf on the fold. Her words and expression confirm his fears.“And why, Castle, is my purse in the guest room while I – by your own admission – was not?” Her tone was developed in a thousand interrogation rooms. There is no option other than truth.“You fell asleep on the couch straight after you took the Lortab. If I’d tried to carry you upstairs you’d have woken up because I couldn’t have got you round the curve without you hitting the wall. So I put you in my room.” The sardonic quirk of her eyebrow pricks his pride. “I could so carry you upstairs.” The eyebrow quirks further. Pride is currently being attacked by a thorn hedge. Common sense is disappearing out the window. She isn’t saying she doesn’t believe him. She doesn’t need to. It’s written in every line of her face.Beckett is perfectly certain Castle could have carried her up the stairs if he’d really had to. But she doesn’t have to let him know that. Especially when she thinks – or possibly the Lortab think - that, properly encouraged, he’ll prove it. Honestly, she sighs. She thought he was intelligent. He’s being remarkably dense. What is his problem? He’s in love with her, dammit, he’s thoroughly physically attracted – and he’s doing absolutely nothing about it despite her blatant invitations. If he doesn’t get the point shortly she’ll need to take extreme measures. She suddenly remembers that she can’t take extreme measures, and wastes a second in useless regret. It vaguely occurs to her that the latest dose of Lortab must be reducing her normal inhibitions at some way past light speed, but she can’t muster the mental strength to put them back. Under the influence of the drugs, she doesn’t even want to. She develops another attacking gambit.“Really. Hmm.” Her extreme (and faked) disbelief is patent. Castle takes half a step forward and stops. Dammit. “Not much of a curve on those stairs.” Another half step. Beckett stretches out her legs and examines them. Castle’s eyes automatically lock on. Ready, aim, fire. “No. I don’t think I would have hit the wall.”“You would have.” Another eyebrow quirk. For God’s sake, Castle, take the hint and show me. “I don’t think so.” “I’ll prove it.” Finally, Beckett sighs to herself. I really thought I’d have to ask you outright. Those drugs are really, really good for lowering walls. She’d never think this way if she wasn’t on drugs. She likes these drugs. Though maybe that’s a side effect of the drugs too. This is all very circular. Stop thinking, Kate, and enjoy it.It turns out to being re-organised to standing up – cautiously – walked to the stairs, picked up, carried up three stairs, and finding that she does, indeed, hit the wall. Ow. Even if it’s only her feet. Castle carries her back down the stairs, smirking.“Told you so,” says Castle very smugly. She’ll let him have his moment of smugness. Especially as he’s forgotten to put her down. “See? Putting you in my bed was the best thing for you.” About that point he remembers to put her down. Shame. On the other hand, he’s forgotten about sloping off to avoid her. She repatriates herself to the couch, Castle follows her and sits down beside her. That’s a lot better. It would be even better if he was a little closer. The painkillers are making her a touch sleepy. She could do with a pillow.Castle is beginning to acquire the conscious impression, aided by his hindbrain applying a metaphorical baseball bat, that Kate is suggesting that he gets considerably closer to her than he normally thinks is conducive to his continued good health. He wonders if this is the first step to him being declared clinically insane. She’s behaving as if closeness would be welcomed, but she’s drugged. Good intentions slug it out in a pitched battle with base desires, eventually agreeing a truce. He’ll put his arm round her, and leave it at that. His ears and nose remain intact. He guesses that means that this is acceptable touching. It also seems that Kate has ceased to interrogate him.That happy state of affairs lasts a whole minute. (He counted.)“Why didn’t you sleep in the guest room?” He really likes these drugs. That didn’t even sound like an accusation. It was an ordinary question. Amazing. He really, really likes Kate on drugs. She’s not the fearsome person of the precinct, she’s – soft. Affectionate. Friendly. Not glaring. Not inflicting physical violence. Though he misses the snark. If she were snarking, he’d be a lot happier about whether her other actions are of her own volition. Right now, he’s not at all sure of that. Which means that acting as he’d otherwise like to is crass advantage-taking. Because if he were sure she were completely in command of her thoughts and actions, rather than his suspicion that they’re only driven by the painkillers and will abruptly reverse the moment she’s Lortab-free, he’d be very inclined to accept her invitations. (You mean you’d have her in your arms and bed in half a second flat, Rick.) But she’s doped up and her arm is in a sling and although there are a lot of things he could do for her that don’t involve her making any effort at all, that doesn’t mean that she wouldn’t be moving, after a short while. Which might jar her shoulder, since she wouldn’t accept the immobilisation. Which would not be helpful. Just like none of these thoughts are helpful.She’s waiting, not patiently, for his answer. More truth required. More risk of death. He doesn’t like this game.“Because I wouldn’t have heard you if you needed something.” He is positively, astonishingly, astoundingly amazed at the look on her face. She actually looks delighted with that answer. He must get himself some of this Lortab, if it can change the personality this much. He could feed it to Gina. Or Paula. Or even his mother, on occasion. Even – now here’s a plan – to Captain Gates. He slaps his errant mind back to Kate. Her expression has changed. He’s sure he hadn’t imagined that brief look of delight. But now it’s her normal – well, slightly fuzzed – cool, amused, face. He considers for a moment. Consideration one is telling him that Kate hasn’t pulled out of his arm, and adding it to his earlier thoughts to come up with a total that interests him extremely. He parks that total for just a little later. Consideration two is telling him that he’s run mad.“Good answer,” she says. A severe attack of common sense stops Castle saying anything more. He remembers something, with extreme gratitude, which prevents him indulging in a fit of dentopedology – the art of putting both feet firmly in his mouth and down his throat. No matter how drugged Kate is, Castle saying Are you trying to seduce me is very unlikely to go down well. “We need to get you some things.” An eyebrow rises interrogatively. It would be better if it wasn’t accompanied by confusion, which only confirms Castle in his ever-growing belief that Kate is too doped to know left from right. He takes a step back. “You need to tell me what you need so I can get it from your apartment.” Confusion disappears, replaced by distinct annoyance.“I’m not staying here.” She wants to go home. If she can’t do anything about it, she doesn’t want to be in close and frustrating proximity.“Yes, you are. We had this argument.”“I won’t.” Castle picks up his phone and taps a speed dial key.“Espo? Hey.”“Yeah, I got Beckett here.”“No, she doesn’t like it. But those are seriously good drugs.”“Yes, I’m still alive. I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”“Espo. Beckett wants to go back to her own apartment. She can’t use her arm and she’s so doped she can’t think straight. She hasn’t seriously threatened me once.”“Yeah, it’s a really bad idea. Will you go tell Gates Beckett’s ignoring medical advice not to use her arm and to stay some place where she doesn’t have to use it?” Kate’s infuriated yell could probably be heard at the Twelfth without the phone.“Don’t you dare, Espo.” Espo is clearly made brave by Kate’s absence. Or he’s intending to use Castle as a human shield.“You will? Thanks, man.” The noises coming from Kate indicate an imminent explosion. Castle evades Kate’s attempt at a left hook, goes upstairs and retrieves Kate’s purse, and then her phone. He expects it to ring any moment.Two minutes later it does. Kate manages to hold it and swipe on. Castle catches a glimpse of the caller. It is indeed Captain Gates, and from the sounds of it she is in full iron-assed mode.“It’s not necessary, sir.”“I can manage at home. I’m fine, sir.” “A graze, and a dislocated shoulder, sir.”“A sling, sir.”“Not to use it, sir.”“At least a week, sir.” “But, sir.”“Yessir.” She hands the phone to Castle with a decided humph.“I don’t like you, Mr Castle. I don’t like you in my precinct and I don’t want you in my team. But you have connections and very, very occasionally you turn out to be useful. This seems to be one of those extremely rare occasions. I want Detective Beckett back as quickly as possible. If she is left to her own devices she will not take the correct actions to recover. You will ensure that she does. If her recovery is delayed I shall attribute blame appropriately.” Click. Ouch.“I can’t stay for a week,” Kate mutters. “There’s no room.”“I told you, there’s a guest room. Anyway, Mother’s away.” “Alexis isn’t.” Kate suddenly realises what she’s said. “I need my pants.” She starts to stand up, obviously realises her right arm isn’t where it ought to be and wobbles. Castle, who thinks he’s now in quite enough trouble that a bit more won’t matter, steadies her with a slight grin and a hand on her hip.“Okay, what do I need to pick up for you?”“You’re not going to my apartment without me.” Castle looks her up and down and grins more widely. “So you can rootle through my underwear, Castle? And my other stuff? Not likely. You can take me and I will pack.” Castle coughs meaningfully and taps her sling. “I can pack with one hand. You can carry the case.”“You’d better get dressed, then.” He smirks. “I’m not letting you go out dressed like that.”“Even my dad never used that line.”“You can stay in dressed like that with me, any time.”“Shut up.” She stalks off to put her pants on. She adds a sashay, just to keep him guessing. Sashay is rapidly replaced by another round of cursing as she tries to do up her pants with one hand. She won’t ask for help.“I could do that for you,” leers Castle from the doorway. “Maybe I should, if we want to get to your apartment this week.” Beckett growls. “I can manage.” The errant button finally slides into place. The zip is easy, after that. Castle’s still leaning in the doorway, watching her with a slightly odd expression. “What?” clips Beckett.“Just – that’s my t-shirt. Don’t you want one of Alexis’s?” Beckett regards him as if he’s gone mad.“No. I want this one.”“Oh.”“Is there a problem? I’ll give you it back.” Tomorrow, when she’s got her own clothes. Then she’ll quietly borrow all of them. If she brings the right case, they’ll all fit. She’ll give them all back. Eventually. When she’s ready. Castle is thinking as he steers Beckett’s car through Manhattan. This is a dangerous activity, he knows. He’s thoroughly intrigued by her admissions, and has no intention of revealing them to Beckett. Yet. The summer had been appalling: dead silence from her for three months, during which time he’d written ever bleaker short fiction and published it under a completely untraceable pen name online. The online critics had loved it. It hadn’t been a consolation. Then she’d come back, as silently as she had left. The only reason he’d come back at all is because she’d come to his book signing, and just before he’d told her where to go she’d said that she’d broken up with Doctor Motorcycle Idiot Boy and he’d seen something flicker through her eyes. It had looked like desperation. So he’d followed her to a park and some swings, and she’d stumbled through a sort of an explanation of her state, which hadn’t explained any of what she’d done, really. There’s been just enough to let him see – though he’s sure she’d hate that he did, but he observes, it’s what he does - that there’s still something wrong, something that she – as ever – isn’t sharing. She’d been shaky on the gun, the first case back. He thought she’d got over it, by the end. But it’s been over a month now, and even though she’s pulling her gun the same as she ever was, Esposito’s looking at Beckett in a very peculiar fashion more and more often. He knows something’s wrong, too. She’s strung tight. Tighter than normal, and her eyes shift around too often, too quickly; her movements don’t flow as smoothly. She says she’s fine, and he thinks she believes it. He doesn’t.
And. And there are some other oddities. She’d said she didn’t remember anything about the shooting, but there have been some sidelong glances, and occasionally an odd expression in her eyes, as if she’s trying to piece something together, as if she doesn’t believe her own thoughts, as if she’s looking for something in his face. There are times when she’s missing. She doesn’t answer her phone, or a text. Those times tend to coincide with lunch hour, or first thing in the morning, or late in the afternoon, when shift ought to end, if it weren’t Beckett, who still, despite no doubt being some way from recovered, spends too much of her waking life in the precinct. It’s not like her to be out of contact. It’s unheard of for her to be out of contact when there’s a live case. And yet she has been, and when she comes back she’s even more wired than she is the rest of the time.
He’s beginning to think she remembers far more than she’s saying. He’s beginning to think that she’s missing because she’s at medical appointments. He’s beginning to think that they’re more than just physical therapy appointments. And now she’s here, in his loft, for at least a week, and doped into a state where those walls she talked about, that he hates because he can’t do anything about them, seem to have fallen down.If only he didn’t believe that they’d fallen simply because of the drugs. His earlier mood of considerable good humour has retreated somewhat. He’s very seriously considering whether to use the interesting effects of strong painkillers to extract some answers from Kate. It seems the only way he’s likely to get any. But first, they need to get Kate a week or so’s worth of her things. And since she won’t let him help her pack, which he feels is really rather unfair, he might as well wander round her apartment. If he happens to notice any useful information – evidence – to back up those extremely interesting conclusions and his other suppositions; well, that might be helpful. Because there is surely much more going on than she’s admitting, and he can’t be her partner properly, have her back as he should do, if he doesn’t know anything.He parks neatly and competently in a space near her door, and goes round to help her exit the car without hurting herself. She’s still in this strangely unfamiliar state of acquiescent softness. He doesn’t know quite how to deal with it, and, although the kisses and snuggling had been very, very pleasant, (oh yes) he is not at all happy that, the more he thinks about it, the more he believes that they had far more to do with drugs than Kate’s own volition.Up in the apartment, Castle is delegated to pull Kate’s suitcase out of its location. He’s fairly sure that she’d considered doing it herself first, though he supposes that he should be grateful she didn’t, since Captain Gates has made it clear that she will blame Castle for any delay to Kate’s return. After that, though, his presence in her bedroom is definitely not required, requested, or wanted. “Shall I make us coffee, Kate?” She suddenly looks a lot brighter.“Please. That would be great!” Which only worries him more. Politeness, yes, almost always. This disconcerting enthusiasm is more than somewhat over the top and definitely out of character. He goes to make the coffee, by now relatively familiar with her apartment layout and the foibles and quirks of her coffee machine, and keeps thinking. His main thought is now around something he’s been putting out his mind since noon. What if Kate heard me in the cemetery? Which, because Castle is an intelligent and perceptive man, is swiftly followed by Why wouldn’t she tell me?, after a short detour through some infuriated variants on what the hell is she playing at? He went round that final loop, all summer long when she wasn’t there and didn’t call, and he still doesn’t know the answer to that last question but since he does know that something is wrong with Kate he is sure that all three questions go together. He’s also sure that all three questions go with his three earlier thoughts: the symmetry of deduction.The coffee machine dispenses its wares before he pursues those thoughts any further. Castle calls Kate’s attention and presence to the coffee, and puts it neatly to her left.“Is there anything more you need, Kate?” He waggles an eyebrow. “Help with packing? Help with selection?” He sees her glare with some relief. “No thank you, Castle. I can manage. It’s fine. Just a bit slow.” Coffee done, Castle disposes of the mugs, domestically washing them up, since Kate can’t. When he’s finished, since there’s no sign of Kate apart from a faint haze of irritation oozing from her bedroom door along with an undercurrent of disgruntled mutter, he wanders round, investigating the contents of her bookshelves, peering out her window to see if there is anything interesting going on in the street – and getting, entirely deliberately, closer and closer to her small desk, covered in papers and very conveniently close to the far end of the bookshelves. The papers on the desk include bills, in which he has no interest, and forms, in which he immediately develops a close interest as soon as he sees the box labelled Practitioner. He can safely move away, now. All he needed was the name. He’ll look it up, later. He taps his phone and types into his memo pad app Carter J Burke. An answer.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Eventually the haze of irritable muttering diminishes to nothing and Kate reappears, looking less than pleased and somewhat ruffled. “Are you done, Kate?”“This is not necessary. It’s ridiculous. I’ll be fine here.” Castle emits an exasperated sigh under his breath – no point poking the tiger – and wanders over towards her. When he gets there, he looks down – down? Oh, she’s got flats on – at her, pointedly regarding her sling.“Kate. You’re doped to the eyeballs – which makes an interesting change from your usual self – you can’t use your arm and every time you try to do anything you wince. I could hear your commentary when you were showering.” He grins. “You shouldn’t use language like that, you know. Those were very naughty words. They’ll pollute my delicate ears.” He stops grinning. “I know you think you don’t ever need any help at all, but this time you do. You’re staying at the loft. Just accept it – or do you want another discussion with Gates?” She shakes her head. “If it makes you happier you can take me out for dinner in return, when you’ve got two arms again.” His hindbrain gets the better of him. “You can take me on a date.” She growls, but it sounds less than forceful. Hmmm.“In your dreams, Castle,” she glares. “But don’t think I’ve forgotten you and Espo siccing Gates on me.” She sighs. “Yes, I’m done.” It seems to Castle that the last dose of Lortab is beginning to wear off, and when he glances at his watch and finds that it’s well after six o’clock he’s sure of it. Time to take Kate home. He likes that thought. He collects the suitcase, politely waits for Kate to lock up, and conducts her into the car to go back to the loft. She’s gone suspiciously quiet, and the first time he hits an unavoidable pothole there’s an unconcealed gasp and wince beside him. By the time they get back through the traffic and the potholes she’s slightly pale, and doesn’t object at all when Castle gently helps her out of the car, takes her and her suitcase to the loft, and installs her in the upstairs guest room. Packing had been painfully slow, though Kate is fairly sure she’s included everything she needs. She doesn’t want to have to borrow from Alexis. Certain current matters are proving to be tricky enough with one hand (thank heavens for the supply in her purse, and for the necessary predictability that the Pill brings) without adding that embarrassment to the mix. As the painkillers wear off, her mind has cleared sufficiently to plan what she needs. Unfortunately that has also cleared her mind sufficiently for her to regard her earlier behaviour with some horror. Not, though, because she’d been kissing Castle. That still seems to have been rather a good idea. But because she shouldn’t have been kissing him without telling him the truth, and she still has no idea how to tell him the truth. Any of the truth. Therapy is only dealing with pulling a gun properly. It’s not – yet – dealing with any of her other issues. Such as her constant tension and hyper-vigilance, that Esposito – and probably Castle – has likely noticed; and her guilt about the summer. She doesn’t even understand for herself why she didn’t just tell the truth. But she’d almost died, she was in constant physical pain or doped up to soften it till she couldn’t think straight – is there a theme here, Kate? You haven’t exactly thought straight today – and she’d been about to ditch Josh. That encounter hadn’t been particularly pretty, either. And so it had just all been one complication far too many for her to handle, and in sheer cowardice she’d taken the easy way out. Lied. And then run away and hidden. And she still is lying, and she still is hiding, and she still is too much of a coward to resolve it.The drugs had masked all that lying and hiding, earlier: taken away the guilt and unhappiness and uncertainty and inhibitions and walls. Shame that’s worn off. Because if it hadn’t she might have managed to do this. Instead she has to work out how and where to start ripping open her scars without the anaesthetic that the painkillers were providing. Not that the drugs had helped her last time round, recovering from almost-death, when she’d had the chance.She circles round her dilemma pointlessly, repetitively and without coming to any helpful conclusion at all, all the way back over the Manhattan roads. No matter how careful Castle is he can’t avoid all of the plague of potholes. Each of them jars her more painfully, and so by the time they’re at the loft (she wants to think home, but it’s not her home and that’s her own fault too) there’s a continuous ache in her shoulder and she is only too happy to let Castle’s large, warm grip support her and help her get out the car. His grasp is unreasonably comforting. She admits very privately to herself that staying here is probably a good idea. She feels a lot more fragile than she would like, mentally and physically, and being around Castle helps. A lot. It doesn’t matter what it is, he always seems to know how and when to provide the support she needs. He’d been there to help her draw her gun, first case back: between Espo and Castle somehow they’d dragged her through it, kept her whole, until she could do it for herself again.And all she’s given him back is lies and cowardice, in return for his unfailing support. And the other feeling. The one he doesn’t know she knows about.Somehow, she’s upstairs in a tastefully decorated guest room, at which point Castle immediately disappears. Shortly Kate hears some conversational noises. Ah. Alexis. Castle has realised that so far today, courtesy of Alexis staying over at Paige’s last night, he not only hasn’t spoken to his daughter, he hasn’t told her about Kate. He needs to remedy that, right now. He hastens to Alexis’s room, taps and enters.“Pumpkin? Alexis?”“Dad! Are you okay? Why are there elephant-strength painkillers on the table? What have you done? Why didn’t you answer the phone?”“Phone? You rang? When?” He pats his pockets frantically. Alexis looks slightly pityingly at him and speed-dials him. Her ringtone sounds downstairs, and she cuts the call. Castle looks blank. “I must have left it in the study. I’m fine, Pumpkin. They’re Kate’s painkillers. She” – he changes his sentence swiftly from she got shot: Alexis is still extremely sensitive on that subject – “fell and dislocated her shoulder. She can’t use her right arm” – Alexis winces in swift sympathy – “so I said she could stay here for a few days.”Alexis looks piercingly at Castle, who looks straight back. He’s not asking Alexis’s permission, but if this is going to cause difficulties he’d like to know now. He’s rather relieved by her reply. “I don’t mind, Dad. But… I know you’re back at the precinct, and following Detective Beckett again, and you won’t stop that, but take care of yourself, too, okay?”“I will, Pumpkin.”
Castle returns in short order, firmly instructs Kate to stay sitting down, which is exactly what she wants to do, and makes the bed in a few deft, quick movements. He doesn’t make a single risqué remark while he does it, which would be deeply disappointing if her arm didn’t still hurt so much. How can it still be so sore? It’s been a day already.
“Castle,” she asks, trying not to sound too pathetic, “where did you put the painkillers?”“Oh – downstairs. On the table. I’ll go” –“Thanks, but I can manage.”“No. You look awful, Kate.”“Thanks, Castle. Way to make a girl feel good.” But it doesn’t carry the usual snark, and she’s still pale.“I’ll get them. You sit there. Or better still, lie down. The bed’s done.” He grins, but it looks a little forced. “I’ll join you there, if you want?” She manages half an eye-roll, and his grin becomes more natural. “You can unpack, if you feel up to it. Or I’ll do it for you. Always wanted to know what was in your” –“Stop right there. Or I will tear out your tongue and feed it to the pigeons.” The glare is still only half-strength, though. Castle subsides, still grinning.“Bathroom’s through that door.”“I remember, Castle. Unless you’ve completely remodelled in the last year or so?” He shakes his head, and bounces off. Castle returns with the Lortab, some water, the plastic and the medical tape and is not wholly surprised to find Kate still in the same chair, unpacking not started. She’s remarkably quick to take another dose.“D’you want dinner, Kate?” He sees the first inklings of I-don’t-want-to-impose rising. “I have to make it for Alexis anyway, so…” He leaves that hanging, and considers the advantages of small-chopped stir-fry for one-handed eating. Feeding each other has its place, in rather different, pleasurable and considerably more advanced circumstances, but that’s not an option here and now. Kate seems to be retreating from her drug-induced openness back to her normal reserved position, and he’s fairly certain that pain and embarrassment at being imposed on him is causing it. It’s hardly an imposition, though. Not at all.Finally she nods. “Thanks. I’ll unpack while you’re doing that.” There’s a clear implication of while you’re out the way and can’t see what I’m doing. That might just be that she doesn’t want him peeking at her underwear. On the other hand, this is Kate-I’m-just-fine-Beckett, and it might equally be that she doesn’t want a witness to her disobedience to doctor’s orders. “Don’t take your sling off, Kate, or use that arm,” Castle says, rather parentally. Kate bristles.“I’m not an idiot. I’ve been a good girl and taken the painkillers. I’ll manage.” Castle rather doubts that, but he’s gone as far as he should. Kate is not looking particularly receptive.“ ‘Kay. Dinner in about twenty minutes, then.”Once Castle and his rather unhelpful comments on how she should treat her arm have disappeared, Kate looks tiredly at the suitcase and slowly unpacks it into the bureau and closet. At least she remembered her Kindle, which she sets on the nightstand. She puts her cosmetics and wash kit into the bathroom and wishes plaintively that she could just sit and soak in a hot bath with a good book – not a Kindle. Kindles don’t mix with water. She compromises by just sitting. On a chair. Which isn’t nearly as consoling, but at least means that she can get up and go down to dinner. She’s fairly sure that if she lies down the next thing that will happen is that she’ll either not be able to get up without significant difficulty or she’ll fall asleep. If she falls asleep, then she won’t hear Castle when he says that dinner’s ready and then he’ll come in; and Castle, a bed and she all in the same place is really not a good idea right now.The evening is not improved by discovering that she can’t even have a glass of wine with dinner, though Castle’s cooking is as good as usual, and she can eat it with one hand. She suspects him of planning it that way, and is profoundly grateful for his consideration and tact. She is also profoundly grateful that Alexis keeps up a flow of unstressed conversation about college possibilities and that there is none of the tension that Kate had expected following the summer’s events. Or at least if there is – and Alexis has not been particularly easy around Kate since – Alexis is trying to get past it.
Events. Yes. Well. That’s one way to put it. Events. She contributes to the conversation with a small part of her brain and considers the
events
of the summer with the rest of it. It’s no more productive than her thinking in the car, and when dinner is done and her attempt to help by clearing cutlery from the table turned down, she pleads exhaustion, with which no-one disagrees, reclaims her gun on the grounds that she shouldn’t leave it unattended and retires to wash and struggle into a sleep tee and shorts as best she may. Castle’s t-shirt would be nicer, but she doesn’t have an excuse to keep it on.
That doesn’t stop the treadmill of her unproductive thoughts, and regrettably the Lortab are not yet having their previous disinhibiting effect. Besides which, Alexis is here. She turns to her Kindle and the familiar pages of Storm Fall.Downstairs, Castle has completed the clearing up; Alexis has disappeared, presumably to continue her lengthy conversations with Ashley and her quest for admission to college; and Martha remains absent. She’s not due back for a few days yet, which is fortunate. Kate doesn’t need noise and drama, she needs sleep, peace and comfort. In view of the lack of company, Castle ignores his impulse to go and check on Kate and repairs to his study for a little gentle research.Dr Carter J Burke, Google reveals, is an NYPD-approved, experienced and well-qualified psychiatrist. This surprises Castle somewhat, as he’d rather expected him to be a cardiac surgeon, but chasing the surprise is a swift wash of relief. If Kate is actually seeing a shrink, then maybe, just maybe, she’s trying to address her issues.He adds that thought to the pile of earlier thoughts. First she practically tells him she’s stepping in, albeit in the subtext of the eulogy. Still, she was pretty clear. Then she gets shot seconds later, almost dies; runs away and doesn’t call; ditches her boyfriend somewhere in that mix; comes back without notice; seeks him out – and doesn’t talk about any of it. She’s not fully right; not wholly in the job. She’s seeing a shrink, and probably still the physiotherapist. And finally, she, under the influence of some very strong drugs, snuggles in and kisses him and does her doped-up best to seduce him. Hmmm.Some swift deduction leads Castle to the idea that, ignoring the summer, Kate feels a great deal more for him than she’s ever admitted and that he’s ever let himself believe. However, for some reason she’s hiding it. Hmmm, again. Her normal – pre-shooting – calm confidence in her innate ability to be who she is, be the top cop, has been missing ever since she came back. And if she’s not confident on the job – and she isn’t, though it’s gotten better since a month ago – then it stands to reason that, since her life is her job and her job is her life, that lack of confidence will bleed into everything.
Ah. Some light dawns.
Justified
– if you’re Kate – lack of confidence outside the job. She knows just how much she’d hurt him over the summer. He’d told her, outside the bookstore. She’s walked warily around his feelings since. There’s been a remarkable lack of mildly provocative looks and comments from her, an almost unnoticeable hesitance, an uncertainty. Until now, when she’s drugged up and he’s had to touch her to help her.
It’s not just the job she’s unsure of. It’s him. She’s been leaning on him – and Esposito – a little more, relying on them to get her through the day. But it’s not the way he’d like it to be. It’s as if she’s expecting that he’s only there to be her work partner, the same degree of relationship as she has with Esposito, the same platonic support. It’s as if she doesn’t dare look for anything more: that she thinks that what she told him there on the swings a month ago has left him unwilling to step forward. Except he hasn’t stepped forward because she said she needed time to bring her own walls down, so he stepped a little back, like he thought she wanted, toned down the banter a very little, kept the flirtation level low. His thoughts still blazed, but he managed to keep them to himself. But what if that were wrong? What if that wasn’t what she meant? Drugged up, he’s found out more truth in a day than in the last month of following her around, and it seems like the truth is that she very definitely wants him. Even drugged, if she hadn’t wanted him she’d have killed him for kissing her, not participated enthusiastically, and certainly not initiated some more kissing.Well now. Maybe his decision to simply step back to platonic – mostly platonic – support could usefully be revisited. Maybe if he makes it a little clearer that he’s still ready, willing and able to stand with her, in every sense, in every way, this enforced visit to his loft might produce some unexpected benefits. Yes. Clearer. Affectionately clearer. Because stepping forward is something he thinks he would like to do a lot more often. The familiar pages of Storm Fall are rather too familiar. They do nothing to stop Beckett’s whirling, confused thoughts, but the Lortab are finally making her sleepy and she’s only too happy to succumb. She wakes from a dreamless sleep, which in itself is an unusual blessing since the summer, to find that it’s 1 a.m. and she forgot about a glass for some water; Castle having taken the other one away. Her shoulder is stiff and dully painful, but the bullet graze is quiescent. One small mercy. She manoeuvres herself out of bed and finds with some relief that there is enough ambient light that she won’t wake anyone by turning one on to go downstairs. Going downward, the rail is also on her left. She pads quietly down, as smoothly as she can manage.There is still soft light leaking out through the bookshelves of Castle’s study, but it doesn’t look as bright as it would be if it’s from the study. She’s not sure whether that’s a relief or a disappointment. She’s imposing enough on his life without settling down for cosy chats in the middle of the night. She turns to the kitchen and tries to remember from earlier where the water glasses live before she starts opening cupboards. If Castle is still awake, she doesn’t want to disturb him. Cosy chats in the middle of the night are very, very dangerous. They might lead to actions, or confessions, that she’s not sure she’s ready for. She doesn’t deserve this consideration, and she shouldn’t be using Castle as a comfort blanket if she can’t tell him the truth.She selects a cupboard door and opens it quietly. It’s full of plates. The next has mugs. She’s trained to observe, dammit: how can she not remember something that simple from the morning? The third, thankfully, has glasses. She picks one out and sets it down with a soft click so that she can close the cupboard. This business of only having one arm has gotten old really fast.She knows he’s there without even looking round, and when she does sure enough Castle is leaning on the doorway of the study, still dressed, and watching her with some interest.“If you’ve been awake all this time you could have stayed down here and watched a movie,” he suggests softly, in the low tones of parenthood, of someone who’s used to having to keep the noise down at night. He eases towards her, still quietly.“No, I just wanted a drink.” This is a mistake. Being here, now, is a mistake. He’s right there in front of her and even in the dark his eyes are bright and she wants so very badly just to lean in and lean on him; because it hurts so much, and he could take all the pain away. She doesn’t only mean her arm. But cosy night-time cuddles would be even more dangerous and unfair than cosy night time chats, and without the drugs she doesn’t have the courage to start to undo this mess.“Night, Castle.” His half-raised hand drops a little way, pauses, and reverses course to end round her shoulders, gently tugging her in. There’s a swift squeeze, and then release.“Night, Kate. Till tomorrow.” He’s gone before she can decide what to do.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Beckett is woken by her alarm, which she’d automatically set to her normal 6 a.m. wake-up time. She feels better. She’d like a shower, but that means wrapping her arm. She considers the plastic and the tape carefully. Then she sneaks downstairs – she doesn’t want to discuss this with Castle or Alexis – locates the scissors that Castle had conveniently failed to put away, and manages, with some difficulty and an unworthy number of profanities, to cut a suitably sized piece of plastic with her left hand. Then she spends a little focused time trying to find the end of the tape. At least for that she can hold the tape in her left hand and find the end with her slung-up right. A few more mild profanities escape.Wrapping her arm causes more irritation. But she manages. She smiles with considerable satisfaction. She can do it for herself. One obstacle down. She takes her nice hot shower bathed in a smug glow, and dries off and dresses – slowly and awkwardly - with only minor jolts to her arm. The heat of the shower, even transmitted through the plastic, has eased the dull ache in her muscles. She even manages her make-up. In fact, she looks just like normal. Except for the sling and the slight bulge of the dressing over the graze, of course. She slides her belt on and manages to clip on her gun.Look almost like normal Beckett, feel almost like normal Beckett – time to be almost normal Beckett. At least that way she can try to pull herself back together, recover some confidence, and think. So she doesn’t take a dose of Lortab, though she tucks them into her pocket, and goes downstairs with a measure of her normal swing.It’s later than she’d like, and she’ll have to take some form of transport, but she’ll still be in the bullpen by 8.30. She lets herself out quietly so as not to disturb anyone and picks up a cab. Walking or the subway seems a little bit… hopeful. Being knocked about by the morning New York commuters is not in the game plan. Fifteen minutes later she’s in the precinct, in the break room, and finding that it’s possible to make a coffee from the espresso machine with only one hand if she’s careful. She takes the coffee back to her desk and starts on the paperwork. At least, she tries. Hunt and peck typing with one hand is not soothing. In fact, it’s hugely frustrating. But it’s better than nothing. Here, at her desk, in her place, doing her job, she can feel a bit more like herself. Maybe if she can do this, she can regain some stability. Maybe if she can regain some stability she can also regain some of her courage. Maybe then she can tell Castle the truth. She pecks determinedly at the keys, as if each keystroke will return to her a measured dosage of her confidence and courage.Ryan and Esposito turn up coincidentally at the same time, cast casual heys at Beckett, wander into the break room to get their own coffee – and then produce simultaneous double-takes and shoot back out.“What the hell, Beckett? What’cha doin’ here?” Esposito sounds deeply unimpressed. “You’re not supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be resting your arm.” Ryan doesn’t sound any more impressed.“C’mon, guys. I can’t sit at home all day doing nothing. I’ve gotta do something. Anyway, I’m fine.”“Really, Detective Beckett?” Oh shit. “My office. Now!” Gates does not sound happy. Beckett trails after her, not at all comforted by the we-told-you-so looks on the boys’ faces.Gates shuts the door very sharply behind her and glares at Beckett. “Was I not perfectly clear yesterday, Detective? Did I not understand correctly that you are not to use your arm for a week?” Beckett nods. “So why are you here?”Beckett doesn’t have an answer to that beyond I wanted to be normal again. Which doesn’t seem like a good thing to say to her boss. Gates is not notably sympathetic. There’s an unpleasant pause.“Does Mr Castle know you are here?”“Nossir.”“Call him. I want to speak to him.” Beckett just looks at Gates, flabbergasted. “Now, Detective.” Beckett does what she’s told, and hands her phone over before Castle answers.“No, not Detective Beckett, Mr Castle.” The horrified squawk is audible well beyond the phone.“Were you aware that Detective Beckett was in the precinct?” Louder horrified squawks, carrying considerable negative flavours.“You will be here within twenty minutes to take her away.” That sounds like violent agreement.“I expect you to ensure that she does not appear back in my precinct for at least a week.” She swipes the phone off and hands it back while the sounds of Castle trying to get a handle on the situation are still babbling in the background.“You will not come back to the precinct for a full week. You are on medical suspension and I expect you to honour that. That is a direct order, Detective.” Gates fixes Beckett with a Medusean glare. “You will stay where Mr Castle can take care of you.”“Yessir,” Beckett says unhappily.“Go and be ready to leave. I don’t want Mr Castle here for any longer than necessary either. If you are not here there is no reason for him to be here.” There is a distinct flavour of Thank heavens for that in Gates’ comment.Beckett trails back out of the office to renewed I-told-you-so looks from the boys. Her attempt at a glare has no effect. She is certain that when she isn’t looking they’re snickering. Gates, however, is not snickering. Gates is regarding her with a look that could only have been practised on naughty children. It says very clearly do as you are told or suffer. That phrase normally finishes with the consequences. This variant simply stops at suffering. Beckett droops miserably at her desk and waits without any enthusiasm at all for Castle to turn up. He’s there in less than fifteen minutes, unshaven and clearly rather thrown together, exchanges greetings with Ryan and Esposito and turns to Beckett. He looks tight-lipped and serious, where the boys can’t see.“C’mon, Beckett, better get you out of here before Captain Gates explodes.” It’s a good effort at his normal tones. It doesn’t fool Beckett at all. Castle is not happy with her either. She follows him out in silence. She can’t think of anything to say. The elevator ride proceeds in more silence, all the way to the car park.It’s not her cruiser. It’s Castle’s car, presumably, not the Ferrari but a smooth and rather less noticeable Mercedes. She realises with a pang of guilt that even under the lash of Gates’ tongue he’s picked a car she can get into relatively easily. He shuts her door, takes the driver’s seat, reaches over and finishes fastening her seatbelt for her; and doesn’t say a word, all the way back to the loft, all the way in, all the way through putting the coffee maker on.Beckett had never thought that Castle could so effectively make her feel absolutely awful. She guesses that this is a parental technique. She hadn’t meant to get him bawled out by Gates. It was hardly his fault that she’d gone to work. And her shoulder is hurting again, which is entirely unfair. She fumbles for the painkillers in her pocket, and makes for the stairs, where she can go and be miserable in peaceful solitude.“Coffee, Kate?”“No, thank you. I’m going to” –“You’re going to sit down on the couch, drink your coffee, take your painkillers and stop.”What? He doesn’t tell her what to do. He never tells her what to do. He makes occasional suggestions. Occasional suggestive suggestions, too. But he never, ever tells her what to do. She’s so surprised she turns round, away from the stairs, and finds Castle practically on top of her, steering her to the couch.“Now, do you need some water to take those horse pills?” She nods, dismally. Her shoulder is hurting more with every moment. It becomes borne upon her that she should have taken the pills before she went out, like she was supposed to, and that if she had done she wouldn’t ache so. Not in her shoulder, at least. Castle comes back with a glass of water, waits till she puts the pills in her mouth and hands her it. She swallows and leans back, only to find an arm behind her rather than the back of the couch. Castle’s put himself carefully to her left and curled his arm round her and it’s stupidly comforting. She closes her eyes for a moment, wishing this could be real, wishing it wasn’t all poisoned by her own cowardice.Castle waits quietly for a while, till he thinks the painkillers are starting to kick in, enjoying being able to hold Kate.“Why did you go to the precinct, Kate?” Not Beckett. Kate. Kate needs to explain why she slipped out quietly before anyone was up. Not that she could have written a note, Castle realises, because she’s not left handed. Kate needs to explain why she was so desperate to be Beckett that she ignored all common sense.“I…” what? “I thought I could do something.” She recovers some of her normal personality. “I managed a shower and dressing so I went to work. Just like usual.” There’s a soft sigh from Castle.“You didn’t take your painkillers, did you?”“It didn’t hurt when I got up or after I showered. I was fine. I took the tablets with me, anyway.” It’s the self-justification of the criminal caught red-handed.“Why the precinct?” Castle is at his most persistent. But he’s still got his arm round her and – undeserved benefice – he’s not getting angry with her. That would be one thing too many, right now. Enough is wrong in her life already without Castle being angry with her as well. Though the undertone of disappointment is almost as hard to bear.“I wanted to be normal.” She realises what she’s said only after she’s said it. Those damn drugs are messing with her again. But very strangely, Castle hasn’t pounced on that. She chances a look up from under the concealing mass of curls. He looks rather thoughtful. That may well turn out to be worse than pouncing.Castle is indeed thinking furiously. He’d been woken by Kate’s ringtone, which was bad enough, but then to find an icily angry Captain Gates on the other end had been worse than almost anything that it could otherwise have been. And then to hear that Kate had been pig-headed stupid enough to go to the precinct had not improved his day. Why Gates should think that he had any ability to stop Kate doing anything at all – especially when he was asleep in a separate room; maybe he should alter that – escapes him. So he’d gone to get her, as ordered, and it had been instantly apparent that she hadn’t taken the pills, she hadn’t thought through what she might do with only one arm, that even the boys thought she’d run mad (and normally they put up with every insane action she might take) and whatever’s in her mixed up head she isn’t mentioning any of it.Except that she’s just said – under the increasing influence of these wonderful, truth inducing, drugs – I wanted to be normal. For a given value of normal, clearly, since Kate’s normal doesn’t have much to do with anyone else’s. Hmmm. Okay, so Kate’s trying to prove she’s still Beckett, in the only way she ever does – headfirst, headlong into action. Even if action is a desk and paperwork. He’ll think about that later. Right now, Kate is drooped within the curve of his arm, barely touching it, and not saying anything at all.He tightens his arm slightly and tips her chin up so he can see her. She looks a little dopey and a lot miserable. It’s equally clear that she’s expecting some form of commentary on her actions from him. Hmmm. That’s not a good plan. He’s not her parent and doesn’t want to be. She’s an adult, and entitled to her own stupidities, just as he’s entitled to his.“I’ve got an idea,” he says happily. It’s just occurred to him. “If you can’t go to the precinct for a week, let’s be tourists.”“Huh?”“Let’s be tourists. C’mon. We’ll go and do all the touristy things that you never do if you live here.” He bounces, very slightly. “Top of the Empire State Building. Ellis Island. Even the Staten Island Ferry. It’ll be fun.”Kate looks at him as if he’s grown an extra head. “Tourists?” she repeats, as if she’s never heard the word before. “It’s October.”“So? No real tourists getting in the way. No queues for ice cream. C’mon, Kate.” He opens his eyes wide, deliberately pleading. He knows it works on her more often than she admits.Beckett looks at Castle. She supposes she’s got nothing else to do for a week except mope and read her Kindle. Or cuddle up to Castle, which for all the previous reasons is still a bad plan. Though Castle is very gently cuddling up to her. Which she doesn’t understand, just like she didn’t understand last night’s hug. But. She’s disappointed Castle quite enough today, and he’s done so much for her in the last month, this is a small thing to make him happy. It might even make her happy. For a while. At least it’ll take her mind off her woes, which are now even more manifold than before, albeit somewhat distanced by the drugs.“It’s only half-past nine. We could go anywhere. Where shall we go, Kate?”Beckett thinks for a few moments. Castle’s right, living in Manhattan means that – apart from special exhibitions at the museums, occasionally – she never goes to the tourist sites. But the painkillers make her a little sleepy and she doesn’t want to be walking for miles when, depressingly but clearly, it’ll only make her tired and cross and her arm will hurt.“Ellis Island.” That way she can sit on the ferry and look out the window and maybe there will be benches and places to sit in the museum. She doesn’t really know. It might be interesting, though right now anything that isn’t staring at four walls while trying to get her life under any sort of control would be an improvement.“Okay,” Castle enthuses. “Let’s go.”The first problem arises when Beckett discovers that – given that ferries in October are not warm – she doesn’t have a coat that will fasten over the sling. She’d not bothered doing it up this morning, seeing as she’d been in a cab, so she hadn’t thought about it. Then Castle won’t hear of her taking the sling off to put her arm into the coat. There is a short and childish standoff of the will-won’t variety until Castle squeaks A-ha! and produces a coat of his own which is warm; although Beckett thinks, quite correctly, that it is far too large and makes her look like an over-inflated Michelin Man. It also contains soft traces of Castle’s aftershave, which she finds stupidly comforting, just like the man himself. Castle does a good job of not laughing at her over-padded appearance. Not laughing much, anyway. The sparkle and gleam in his eyes is a major give-away.He insists on a cab to the ferry terminal, too. Beckett’s sure she could walk it. Castle won’t hear of it.“You’ll get knocked or tripped or fall over or a hole will open up in the space-time continuum and a stray time-traveller will kidnap you,” he says, all in one breath.“Or none of the above,” she replies dryly. “Aren’t you being just a little over-protective, Castle?”“Didn’t you hear Gates? If you so much as stub your little toe she’ll blame me. I’m terrified of her,” he says in a falsely shaky tone. He intends to make Kate smile in mutual appreciation of the natural disaster that is Captain Gates in a bad mood. Or indeed, in any mood, since her emotional range runs from A – for Antagonistic – to A – for Appalled – usually at the sight of Castle. Gates is very limited, in Castle’s opinion. Not suitable for a character at all. Instead of the amusement he expects, though, Kate curls into the oversized coat and into herself and simply produces a quiet semi-agreement.By the time they get to the terminal at Battery Park, Castle has come to the conclusion that Kate is blaming herself for Gates ripping into him. Except that - for Gates – she actually hadn’t. It had sounded much more like an alliance. Admittedly, a forced alliance, rather like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but still an arrangement of mutual convenience. An alliance to fix Beckett. Of course, Gates only meant Beckett’s shoulder, so she would be back on the job. It’s he who intends to fix Beckett rather more completely. Still, Gates has helped to provide the opportunity.
Anyway. If Kate is blaming herself, that’s not necessary. Nor is it helpful. Kate seems to be unhappy, in a very reserved and understated and typically Beckett way, about far too many things right now; starting with her health, continuing through her ability to do her job, and encroaching on their relationship. Whatever that relationship may be. And it all goes right back to the twenty minutes before she was shot. Seems like that bullet caused a lot more damage than he’d have thought possible. Surely Beckett’s been hurt in the line of duty before? Maybe a small chat with Esposito is indicated. Castle’s sure that Esposito is aware of far more than Beckett might like, around this situation. Hmmm. Yes. A chat with Espo, in the extremely near future.
Battery Park is rather busier than Castle thinks is helpful – at least until it occurs to him that if he wants to provide affectionate encouragement it provides the perfect opportunity. He’s already on Kate’s right, making sure that if someone does knock into her it won’t be her injured arm that takes the hit. However, if he simply does that – he puts his arm round her – she’ll be far more protected. The fact that he’s getting to hold her into him is merely a serendipitous accident. Right.The fact that she hasn’t pulled away, maimed his nose or ears, threatened to break his legs or shoot him a full five minutes and most of the walk to the terminal later is, he feels, far more than a serendipitous accident. He just hasn’t decided whether it’s a drug-induced happy haze (he really appreciates these Lortabs, and he’s not even the one taking them) or a step forward, or both. Any way around it, having Kate snuggled into him – well, through about six inches of padding, and he wonders distractedly if this coat is really flattering to him since it must make him look even wider than he is and in his view ruggedly handsome does not equal grizzly bear sized – is an improvement on not having Kate snuggled into him.The ferry is not busy, and around eighty percent of the original passengers get off at the Statue of Liberty anyway. Even without it being busy, though, Castle is very conscious that Kate is looking around more than usual, more sharply than her normal cop observations, more rapidly. She’s – nervous. Wired. She’s not paying him any attention, but flicking her glance to and fro, around and about. The bright autumn sunlight through the ferry windows, glinting on the deck, seems to be keeping her attention; he can feel harsh tension even through the padded coat, under the arm he won’t remove from her. She still hasn’t commented on that, hasn’t asked him to take it away. Hasn’t cuddled in closer, either.Acquiescence, not agreement. But not disagreement, or lack of consent, either: he knows all too well what that looks like: he’s seen it all too often in others; and Kate’s hardly shy of disagreeing with him any and every time she feels like it. So. So stick with this level of affectionate encouragement, hoping to show her that he’s not pulling away from her, and see what happens.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Ellis Island is fascinating, Beckett has to admit. She’s not much on geography, but she’s quite fond of history, though most of it had centred round Russian history. Unfortunately, the few benches are outside the main exhibition, and they are – despite it being October – full of people. Less than a third of the way round, interesting as it is, she’s already starting to wilt. It’s not that she’s tired, exactly, but she feels drained. Fragile. The dull ache in her shoulder isn’t quite there, but it isn’t quite absent. Which is very irritating. And Castle doesn’t have his arm round her any more either, because it had been clear from the first second through the door that while she wanted to approach it logically and in chronological order, he was going to flit from one eye-catching display to another, completely randomly. So in order not to kill each other, they divided.But now she simply wants to sit down. She doesn’t even have heels on: this weariness is ridiculous. She comes out from the main exhibition and manages to squish on to the end of a bench. It’s only for a moment or two, till she’s caught up with herself again. Then she’ll go back in. She’s enjoying this, she realises. She simply needs a short rest. It’s very soothing, here. There are no splinters of bright light flashing through the windows on this side of the museum, no sudden flickers at the edges of her vision as hurrying people make sharp, unexpected movements. Gradually Castle realises that he can’t see Kate. This is not – quite - worrying. On the other hand it’s not quite what he wants, either. He meanders round until he’s sure she isn’t in the main exhibition hall, and then exits past a rather interesting looking display relating to music and instantly spots her on the end of a bench, somewhat slumped. He wanders over.“You okay, Kate?” He’s relieved when she raises her head and looks pleased that he’s there.“Yeah. I just needed a moment or two.” She pauses briefly. “I’m… really glad we came. This was a good idea. Something different.” She smiles, for once unguarded. It’s heart-stopping. When she stands up, turning back to the exhibition, Castle can’t help but take her hand, casually, as if this happens every day. Somehow, some way, she’s acting as if she’s comfortable with him again, comfortable in a way she hasn’t shown before. He wonders how long it will last, and more cynically, how long before the latest dose of drugs wears off, and then releases her, with reluctance, when she goes back to her logical progression. On the ferry back, Castle notices Beckett closing up again, her stress level rising, once again seeming to be caused by the flashes of light and the scurrying, hurrying people and their jerky, random movements. Time to go home. Time, maybe – she hasn’t had another dose of painkillers and maybe she’d appreciate some wine instead – to try to talk?“Kate?”“Mmm?” It sounds distracted, in the way it often has when she’s concentrating on a case.“If you didn’t need your painkillers, you could have some wine when we get home.” There’s a pause, while she considers that.“Let’s see.” She grins, though it’s hardly wholehearted. “Better not do anything to let Gates think you’ve corrupted me.” Castle snickers happily.“More than she already does, you mean? She hates me. She took one look at my ruggedly handsome face the first day she met me and decided she hated me. She didn’t even wait for me to say anything”–“What, so you could give her a reason to hate you?” Castle growls.“Mean, Kate. Very mean.” But he hears the trademark snarkiness with relief. This day out has done her – and definitely him – some good, he thinks. Not least because he’s managed to keep an arm round her for a large part of it. “Anyway,” he says with emphasis, “she hates me. I could give her diamonds and she’d hate me.” He’s hoping that Kate will pick up his subtext – that it’s not her that’s caused Gates to be annoyed at him, it’s her, Gates’s, natural state of being.“I wouldn’t do that,” Kate says dryly. “She’d arrest you for bribing a cop.” She pauses, and grins again, wickedly. “It’s good for you, you know.”“What is?”“That one person in the world doesn’t like you.”What did Kate just say? Could that have been a genuine admission that Kate likes him? Good grief. Of course he knows she does – like him, that is, though it hasn’t got to like like until yesterday - but she’s never, ever said it out loud. He pulls her in tighter and mentally curses his padded coat, the sling, gun-toting low-lives and painkilling drugs, all of which are preventing him taking the actions which he wants to take. Castle insists on another cab back to the loft over Beckett’s protests and quite unfairly won’t give her time to find her own wallet and pay for it. “You can’t pay for everything, Castle. I wanna” –“My idea to be tourists. So I get to pay.” He sounds as if paying for it is part of the treat. Maybe for Castle it is. He likes giving people things. What do you give the man who has everything? Well, you could start with the truth, Kate. That would be an unexpected present. She retreats back into the uncomfortable fortress of her thoughts as they reach the loft.“Wine, or painkillers?” Castle interrupts her thoughts. Beckett considers carefully. Wine would be extremely nice. Normal. But then if she needs painkillers later she won’t be able to take them. She flexes her shoulder very slightly.Ow.“Painkillers,” she says, depressedly, and sits down. “I’d rather have the wine, though.” Castle looks sympathetic, and pats her knee reassuringly. “Maybe tomorrow, Kate. You haven’t had nearly as many tablets today.” She supposes not. Maybe if she’d had some more she’d be able to talk to him, rather than circling round her own inadequacies and backing away from solving this impasse. She backs away from that too, and pulls out the packet.A glass of water appears before she can even ask or stand up to find one. Just another way Castle knows what she needs, often before she does. Just another reason to feel guilty. She swallows down the painkillers and wishes that they’d provide her with the happy, completely uninhibited feeling that she’d had the first day. She begins to suspect that the effects had had at least as much to do with the remnants of whatever they’d poured into her at the hospital as the Lortab. Then she remembers that she’s let Castle cuddle her in all day today, and hold her hand in the museum, which must be due to the drugs. Then she feels hopelessly guilty again.She doesn’t understand Castle’s sudden turn to affection. Well. Is that really true, Kate? After all, she’d crawled all over him, peppered him with kisses, and generally made it clear that she wanted more. But he’d not taken any sort of advantage of it. It belatedly occurs to her that he was perfectly well aware that she was drugged up and quite reasonably felt that she wouldn’t be behaving like that if she weren’t. Which she wouldn’t have. But not for the reasons he thinks. If only it were that simple: that she actually didn’t want him. If only it weren’t that she wants him far too much, and far too deeply, to base it in lies and cowardice and guilt.And yet he’s being affectionate, in a comfortingly physical fashion that demands little except her acquiescence – not even explicit agreement, though he’d no doubt expect her to disagree violently if she objected – and which doesn’t push her into the blast furnace of desire. It would be only too easy for him to take them both there: one hard, searching, demanding kiss would do it. If she weren’t in a sling, of course. Just like one hard, searching, demanding kiss had done it, months ago in an alley. If there hadn’t been a different purpose, overriding everything else…if there hadn’t been the knowledge that Ryan and Espo needed them… well. There had been a car, or a wall, and if there had been nothing stopping them… Oh, she knows too well what could have happened. She knows all too well that she could take them both there, too. She nearly had, there in an alley; she nearly had, yesterday.And yet he’s being affectionate. Simply, merely, affectionate. And she shouldn’t let him but she hasn’t stopped him and truth be told she doesn’t want to stop him, ever; because he’s currently the only thing that’s holding her up and she thinks, here, now, that that just might be the case permanently. She hurts too much to hold herself up, and she thinks he knows that. But she shouldn’t be leaning on the joint props of Castle and her own lies. One or the other, but not both.The therapy’s not helping her heal: soon enough, fast enough, enough in any way at all. Being here isn’t helping her. She wants to go home, and think, and be alone to hurt without needing to pretend that she’s managing fine; without needing to impose on the apparently infinite capacity of Castle’s good nature and the words he doesn’t know she heard him say; without his unbearable strength reflecting her own weakness; without his courage reflecting her own cowardice. She doesn’t deserve him, and until she can be enough to deserve him; enough to tell him the truth; she shouldn’t be here.Castle watches Kate retreat into the corner of the couch and her own head. She looks unhappy again. She thinks too much, and right now, from the miserable twist of her mouth, she’s thinking about the summer, or the shooting, or something arising from it. She never had that expression before the summer, and now he sees it far too often. He retires to the kitchen to prepare dinner – pasta, he thinks: another dish that can readily be eaten one-handed – and consider. Back to his thinking yesterday.She remembers something. Or everything. She wants him – or she showed she did. But she’s not asking for anything, except when she was doped up. She wants to be normal. But she’s only getting more tense, and more unhappy. Hmmm. And of course, she’s seeing a shrink. Um. Maybe there’s a way to start this conversation.“Kate, do you have any follow-up medical appointments this week?” Her head jerks up. Maybe that was a little unsubtle. “I mean, that we need to plan our tourist trail around?” That’s an interesting expression. Kate looks – hunted. Or possibly haunted. Or just plain terrified. That was absolutely not the idea. But then she smooths her face to a decent variant on her normal cool smile and goes searching for her phone. He’s perfectly sure that the fact that doing so means that Castle can see neither her hands nor her face is quite deliberate. Her hands are very expressive. For the last ten minutes they’ve been twisting together, until he’s barely able not to go and hold them and stroke them still and soothed again. It’s still an attractive option.“No. Not till next week.” She smiles. It’s almost her usual smirk, though her fingers still twine together. “So there’s nothing to stop your ice cream jag – oops, I mean your sudden wish to be a tourist.” It’s a good effort. Very well acted. It’s just a shame that Castle has spent three years seeing through every last evasion, and so this one is no barrier. There is a very off-key note sounding in his head, suddenly.Castle makes a childish face at her. “It’s not the ice cream, Beckett. Don’t you want to see Manhattan through new eyes?” He sees a comment rising and heads it off. “Where shall we go tomorrow? We’ve got the whole day.”“You choose. You let me choose today. It’s your turn.” She sounds as if she shouldn’t be allowed to choose twice.“You’re my guest. You get to choose.” And suddenly it all starts to go wrong.“I’m not your guest. You had to take me in like some stray cat, because there was nowhere else for me to go and you felt sorry for me and then Gates ordered you to this morning.” She sounds utterly defeated by the situation. “I’m not a guest, I’m an imposition. You shouldn’t have to do this. You don’t deserve to be treated that way.” She stands up, ungracefully as she forgets the absence of her right arm, and catches her balance with a jerk and a hissed breath.“I shouldn’t be staying here, getting in the way. It’s not fair on you.”He’s still mentally reeling from that, not turning round until she’s halfway up the stairs, too far behind her to stop the door of her room shutting quietly, too far behind to reach her before the bathroom door locks.You shouldn’t have to do this? He doesn’t have to do this. He wants to do this. It’s what partners do, isn’t it? He’s blindsided by the switch in her reactions from yesterday to now. It’s as if she’s been spooked by something, and he doesn’t think it’s anything he’s done. If she’d been spooked by his actions today, he’d have known about it well before now. Mechanically, he returns to the kitchen and finishes his cooking. He can cook and think at the same time. The cooking is considerably more productive than the thinking. What’s not fair on him? Having Kate here? That’s very fair. He’s been hoping to achieve that ever since she moved out the last time, with more and more intensity as time has gone by.
Oh. He’d thought it yesterday. She’s not sure of him, or the job. Except he’d got that partly wrong. She is sure of him. She’s sure he’ll do whatever she needs him to - that thought makes him happier – but she thinks he’ll do it whether he actually wants to or not. That thought does not make him happy at all. She thinks she’s presuming on his good nature, and doesn’t understand that he
wants
to take care of her. Despite accepting his displays of affection. But that doesn’t fit. She can’t possibly – as a detective - believe those two inconsistent things at once: not understanding that he wants to take care of her and yet appreciating the affection he’s been providing all day.
So something else is wrong.You don’t deserve to be treated that way. What way? She can’t possibly think that he’s being treated badly. Well, no worse than Gates treats him all the time, and Kate has walked very carefully around him and treated him – since the bookstore – unusually gently. He’d much rather she didn’t. He liked their usual sharp-edged conversation. Who does she think is treating him badly? She? It’s the only possibility he can think of.What’s changed, then, that she’s feeling like that? She never used to – ah. Before the summer. She never used to be this nervous, this insecure, then. She hadn’t wanted to stay the previous time, but there hadn’t been this biting tension, this inability to relax around him without the good drugs. And now even with the good drugs she’s no longer relaxing as quickly.What are you thinking, Kate? More importantly, why? He’d thought this yesterday, too: that she remembers more than she’s admitted. If she remembers what he said… but she told him she didn’t, right there in the hospital; watched him leave. If he’d gone back into her hospital room five minutes later, instead of going home, what might he have found? When she remembered might suddenly be a very important matter indeed. Which leads him to the logical next step – did she ever not remember?When did Kate Beckett start lying to him? He thinks the answer is – the instant she woke up from surgery.Why did Kate Beckett start lying to him? He hasn’t a clue.And what’s it doing to her, to keep on lying to him? Because it is perfectly clear that it’s tearing her apart. Not to mention what it might do to him. Except that it is also perfectly clear that the one thing which is absolutely not the reason that she has lied to him, and is lying to him, is that she doesn’t want him. He is sure of that. Bone deep sure, after these two days. If he’d deduced this series of lies before that knowledge, it might – would - have been different. Not that he isn’t hurt by it. He is deeply hurt that she can’t just tell him the truth and let the chips fall as they may. Fall right into his hands, in fact, because if she would just tell him the truth about what she remembers and the truth about her feelings then he could repeat what he said. He hasn’t dared to, since he shied away from it outside the bookstore.This changes everything, if he’s right. Everything. She cares, and she remembers, and she’s breaking on her lies - tacit and explicit, respectively - about both those things.While he’s been thinking he’s automatically prepared dinner for the three of them. Pasta, a piquant, slightly spicy sauce; a salad that’s more finely chopped than usual; bread cut smaller than he normally does. Perfectly suited to the one-armed diner. He calls up and Alexis comes bounding down the stairs, followed, a moment later, by Kate. Alexis puts out everything: Kate offers to help and is cheerily but firmly told by Alexis to sit down out of the way and not strain her arm. Castle doesn’t get a chance to say anything, but he thinks the more. Kate’s redone her make-up – it has that newly put-on look that he’s seen in the theatre many times – and while her eyes aren’t reddened and he doesn’t think she’s been crying he’s also sure that that particular piece of control is the result of years of practice.Dinner passes without incident only courtesy of Alexis’s inconsequent – Castle thinks deliberately inconsequent – chatter about school and Ashley, colleges and movies. Kate contributes a few anecdotes about Stanford, though noticeably none about NYU or the Academy, and it seems to deceive Alexis. It doesn’t deceive Castle in the slightest. When Kate’s offer of help to clear is refused again – by Alexis, again, with the best possible motives – he intervenes.“Coffee in a second, Beckett. It’s almost done.” He’d put it on as soon as they’d started to clear up. She never turns down coffee, and she won’t do so now, because whatever she might be thinking the last thing that Kate Beckett will do is let Alexis see that anything is wrong. And if Kate will just go and sit on the couch, Alexis is sure to disappear to spend another small country’s GDP on calling Ashley, and then they can have some time together. He’d say to talk, but there’s a rather fine line to walk here between working out what’s wrong and pushing Kate to the point she leaves. He isn’t prepared to bet against her having spent the half hour before dinner packing.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Beckett considers the coffee cup which has arrived by her left hand and the Castle which has arrived on her right. The coffee is simple: it’s hot, caffeinated, delicious and hers. Castle is not simple at all. Though he is hot and no doubt delicious, he’s not hers. She curls around the warmth of the cup and into herself in the comfortable corner of the couch that she’s annexed. He’s not hers, and until she manages to tell him some truth, he can’t be hers. Of course, he won’t be hers five minutes after she opens her mouth. She has no illusions at all about the magnitude of her lies, or the likely effect of admitting to them. His response to her running away for the whole of the summer hadn’t exactly been reassuring, in this context. Nor should it be. She curls up tighter, thinking bitterly that she must resemble a particularly paranoid porcupine, and drinks her coffee.“You’re thinking too loud, Kate. Stop thinking, and relax.” That really doesn’t help her. Nor does the arm tucking itself around her and gently but persistently pulling her against him. She wants the nice, disinhibiting, comforting drug effect back. That way she could simply cuddle in and enjoy this and just do what she wants to do, which right now encompasses nibbling her way up his neck on to his mouth, and not worry about lies, or guilt, or Castle walking away. All of which are much on her mind, right now. She doesn’t resist his careful tugging, though. It’s too much effort and she’s unhappy enough as it is. Precipitating that storm is one step too many, even if not doing so adds another straw to the camel-back of her guilt.Or she could just let him have what he wants. Except of all the bad ideas she could have had that must be the worst. Pretend she doesn’t know what he wants and provide some sort of faked relationship-lite? She knows what he wants, and part-time foot-out-the-door isn’t it. It isn’t what she wants, either, if she ever stopped pretending. How many lies can she bear? She isn’t even managing to deal with this one. Adding more won’t help.Her coffee doesn’t provide her with any answers, and the slowly building brain-numbing effect of the Lortab she’d taken, which is not at all mitigated by the caffeine, doesn’t help her think straight. Castle’s closeness is also not helping her think straight. Gradually thinking seems too much effort, and Castle’s suggestion of relaxing, and his arm around her shoulder encouraging that, seems much more attractive. Beckett leaves her worries to their own devices – they’ll return soon enough, when the drugs wear off – and her thinking until tomorrow. Maybe she should just keep taking the tablets on a carefully timed schedule, and stay in the pleasantly unworried haze which they provide until she can go home again. She realises that she’s leaning into Castle’s nice warm chest and her bare feet are tucked up under her, and decides fuzzily that that’s the best place to be for now.At least, it’s the best place to be until Castle starts asking about tomorrow. She doesn’t know about tomorrow. She doesn’t currently know about tonight.“You choose,” she says. “Surprise me.”“Surprise you? You? You hate surprises. You like plans, and certainty.” Oh. She supposes that’s true. It just sounds so very… drab. Castle relapses into thought beside her, and Beckett continues her hazy non-thoughts. It’s all very peaceful, until Castle’s phone chirrups. He looks at it and groans, then mutters unhappily.“Wassup, Castle?”“Gina,” Castle humphs. “It’s her way of making sure I turn up to meetings.” He looks deeply pained and somewhat annoyed. “I forgot I had another meeting tomorrow morning. Cover art.”“Guess that solves the problem of where to go, then. I’ll just stay here and read.” And, Beckett suddenly remembers, take quiet and illicit possession of some of those t-shirts. No. She doesn’t need to do that. One will do, and the Hulk is already hiding in her case. The more her guilt and unhappiness bites down on her, the more she feels that she needs something at home to cling to. But one will do.“Promise you won’t go anyplace without me?” Beckett hesitates. Even through her haze that sounds a little – weighted, and Castle’s arm around her is suddenly less relaxed.“Like where? I’m hardly likely to want to go shopping, or out.” Which isn’t quite an answer, of which Castle swiftly makes her aware.“Like the precinct, or your own apartment” – dammit, Castle, why do you have to see me so clearly? – “or anywhere, really. Wait for me to get back? Please?” She can’t resist those wide blue eyes. Not in her current state. Not at all, really, though normally she manages to resist for rather longer.“Okay.” There’s an unflatteringly obvious easing of the stiffness in Castle’s arm. As if in reward for her good behaviour, he draws a little pattern idly on her arm, below the dressing. She hums, not entirely in contentment.“What’s wrong?”“I want the sling off. I want my arm usable. I want to be at work.” Really, Kate? Is that really such a good plan? She’s spooking at the sunlight, on today’s evidence. “I want to be able to take a shower without looking like an accident in a shrink-wrap factory.” There’s an unusual edge of petulance on that which he thinks she doesn’t notice. But he really can’t help his snort at the image she’s conjured up.It’s possibly just as well Kate’s in a sling. Her left arm is just sufficiently awkwardly placed that he’s caught her hand before she wreaks painful revenge. Conveniently, that means he’s holding her hand. He fails to let it go, quite deliberately, when she tugs. Castle hangs on to it tightly, and produces his very best annoying grin. He’s decided that the right side of the line is to be his usual self, cuddle Kate in as much as possible, and worry about extracting truth in a day or two. Watching Kate earlier, she’s so close to breaking on this that she might just break down, before she leaves his loft. And now he’s elicited her promise that she won’t leave tomorrow – which he suspects very strongly was in her mind – so there’s a chance of sorting this out.“I’m not so stupid that I’m going to let go, Kate. If I do that you’ll twist my ear.” A swift flash of frustration flares in her eyes. “But I have an idea. A really brilliant idea.”“Confident much, Castle? How do you know I’ll like this idea? If this is another one of your way-out suggestions…” Castle grins widely.“I’m so sure that you’ll like this idea that I’ll put a bet on it.” Kate regards him very doubtfully.“What sort of a bet?” she says, slightly hazily through the mist of painkillers. “Nothing major.” Just a little more, Kate. Just a little more. Another step…“Okay.” Castle conceals the impulse to yell in triumph and looks happily down at her.“If I win, you agree to stay here for all the time you’re supposed to without trying to go to the precinct for the next week, or home, or out without me. If I lose, you can do as you please.”“Okay,” Kate’s saying dubiously. He can see she thinks there’s a catch, but she can’t spot it. Probably because the catch isn’t in what he’s just said. It’s in what he’s going to do while she’s staying here.“So what’s this brilliant idea that I’m going to like?” Castle grins like the Cheshire Cat.“You don’t need to have a shower, Kate.” She looks at him in horror.“I can’t not shower!”“You can have a bath instead.” Her jaw drops. “Wouldn’t you like that much better? You wouldn’t – if you were careful – even need to use the plastic: you could just balance that arm on the side of the bath.” His voice drips with enticement. He can see understanding slowly – so slowly – dawning in her eyes.“A bath? A real bath? No plastic? No need to wrap my arm?” Those drugs are back in the ascendant, Castle can tell. It’s something about the rising enthusiasm in her voice. That same disconcerting, jarring, very un-Kate-like enthusiasm that he’d seen yesterday. It doesn’t exist in undrugged Kate. He doesn’t think she’d have that sort of childlike enthusiasm in any situation – that’s his style. Though he’d very much like to find out what sort of enthusiasm she’d display for some very unchildlike situations. If she weren’t drugged. And if, when she wasn’t drugged, she also wasn’t breaking apart.“I told you you’d like it,” he murmurs smugly. “I win.” More than just her agreement not to flee. He’s won at least a week’s worth of time to try to sort this out. Kate’s still murmuring a bath happily under her breath. He’s not even sure that she knows it. He settles her back into him.“Hang on a minute, Castle.” Ah. She might just have spotted the tiny little issue that he wasn’t mentioning. He’d thought the drugs had fuzzed her brain sufficiently for her to miss that. Oh well, he has an answer for this too. “Where is the bath? I didn’t see one upstairs.” Yep, Detective Beckett on the case.“My bathroom.” There’s a significant pause. That’s odd: Castle had expected a minor explosion, or at the very least a helping of outraged spluttering. When he looks at Kate she’s acquired a small half-smile into which he thinks it might be better not to enquire – at least for as long as he thinks that her reactions are not her own. Much as he would love to kiss her – and that smile is unbearably inviting – it would be wrong. He’s skirting the hem of his own ethics quite carefully enough simply by holding her at every opportunity, and right now he’s walking the cliff-edge, because he thinks if he only kissed her he could extricate all the answers he so badly needs to solve his conflicted thoughts.He compromises by drawing some more little patterns and waits for Kate to come up with any further comment. It doesn’t take long. It’s almost exactly not what he expected.“I didn’t bring my bubble bath.” It’s a jaw-droppingly insane non-sequitur, delivered in a plaintive tone that makes him smile. “I’ll find you some. We’re bound to have bubble bath somewhere.” Alexis or his mother must have something suitable. “You can borrow a robe from me.” One that covers everything. Why did he think that this was a brilliant idea? As soon as she said bubble bath his mind turned to a picture of Kate in a bath. He’s a little surprised it took that long: after all, he’s seen Kate naked in a bath. Okay, so her apartment had just been blown up and the towels were on fire – but still, it’s not a forgettable image. This is not helpful. Not helpful at all.“T-shirt.” What? No. She already did that and it was also not helpful. “Your robe’s very nice but it’s too long and too heavy. I’ll trip over it and hurt my arm. Please?” That is unfair. He can’t argue with that, because he can’t possibly take the risk that she’ll get hurt again because of something he insists on. “Okay. Do you want to come and choose one now?” Anything to take his errant thoughts off the fact that Kate’s mouth is right there and he’d only have to lean down a few inches to solve all his problems for the next – ten minutes. Because it wouldn’t solve anything at all. It won’t solve the problem that she’s lied to him. It won’t solve the problem that she’s still lying to him. It won’t solve the problem that she’s startling at the sunlight and any sudden movement. It won’t solve the problem that he’s hurt by all the lies and all the wasted time and all the things she doesn’t talk about.It won’t solve any of these problems until she comes off the drugs or talks to him or both. There’s an elbow in his ribs. “Ow!” He realises that Kate must have answered some time ago, because she’s far less tucked in and far more trying to stand up. He reaches out and balances her. Another compromise. He’d far rather reach out and bring her back on to his lap. T-shirts, Rick. T-shirts. There must be one or two that aren’t going to leave him stupefied.This was not a good idea. This was really, really not a good idea. Why has he let Kate back into his bedroom, for God’s sake? Even fully dressed this is a very bad idea. And why is she sitting on the bed? This is not fair. This is really, really, not fair. He rummages in his closet, finds a pile of t-shirts, and drops them on the bed next to her. He should have insisted that they do this in the main room. He should have. He still should, because now Kate has tucked her feet up under her and is wholly on his bed and this is worse than having her asleep in it nearly naked because at least then she was unconscious and injured and he could be somewhere else entirely, rather than in his bedroom listening to Kate making contemplative little humming noises of happy contentment from his bed.Beckett is contemplating the t-shirts and not making any effort at all to resist the pleadings of her disinhibited mind. The few remaining neurons of normal, sensible mind tell her that if she can have a nice long hot bath tomorrow morning she might be happier, and she’ll be able to think. The much greater proportion of neurons which are currently enjoying the Lortab and its amazing side-effects are telling her two things: the first being that she might be able to annex more than one t-shirt; and the second being that Castle’s bed is very comfortable and she should spend some quality time in it. She’s entirely oblivious to Castle’s building tension.Beckett selects a rather soft t-shirt with an appealing picture of Dangermouse on the front and finally looks round at Castle. “C’n I borrow this one?” He isn’t answering. In fact, he isn’t even looking at her. He has the strangest expression on his face. He looks like he’s suppressing an incipient desire to explode, or run away, or scream. Beckett unfolds her legs carefully – falling off the edge of the bed would not improve anything, painkillers blanketing her brain or not – and has mostly managed to get her feet on the floor and her weight rebalanced before she stands when Castle’s strained control finally gives out.He’s – gone? That’s weird. Beckett would have thought that he’d be only too interested in which t-shirt she picked out, if only to ensure that she returns it. (But she won’t. She likes this one. It’s cute.) She pads out through the study and vaguely notices that Castle is completely missing, which she attributes to a bathroom break. She’s almost right. When he hasn’t returned after a few moments she meanders up the stairs to bed, even though it’s barely ten, dozily considering the appealing prospect of a long hot bath. A last snippet of sense tells her not to go and draw a bath now, but to save it for the morning, when it will do her more good. It only just outweighs the idea that she should go back down and find out what’s wrong with Castle, suddenly. She snuggles down with her Kindle propped on her knees, wearing Castle’s t-shirt, and even switches off her alarm. When she slides into sleep she’s still consoled by the faint scent of his aftershave impregnating the fabric and the cotton-wool blanket of the painkillers.Castle had retreated to his bathroom because the only alternative was leaving the loft entirely, possibly for a short trip to the North Pole to cool off. Well, the other alternative was showing Kate just what he could do for her despite the unfortunate presence of a sling, and he is a good man, so that wasn’t an alternative at all. He hears her pad by, then upstairs, and allows a safety margin in case she has a sudden brainstorm and returns, then he sits down at his desk and starts to think.Sudden bursts of lust notwithstanding, he is worried about Kate and hurt by Kate in roughly equal proportions, and while he would far rather she were staying with him than not, it’s not doing much to clarify how he feels. Okay, Rick. Sort your head out. She’s hurt him. Badly. She’s lying to him about two fundamental matters: how she feels and that she knows how he feels. That’s one thing. Leave that for a moment, and consider the next thing. He’s worried about her. She’s spooked and unhappy and tearing herself apart and he can hardly bear to watch it. Leave that, and take the third thing. He’s so overwhelmingly in love with her that he’s prepared to trust that she has a good reason – at least in her eyes – for lying. Which is pathetic, but he can’t help how he feels. Leaving her when she needs him – and when he knows she has feelings for him: if she didn’t that would be entirely different – is simply not something he’ll ever be prepared to do. He has to be able to look in the mirror.So where does that leave him? About where he was at eight o’clock this morning, really, and still wondering what the hell to do. There aren’t many options for that either. Ask outright, and watch Kate run like a rabbit. That’s not a good plan. Not ask, step back, and let it fester till they have another fight like the one just before the summer and watch everything fall apart. Also not a good plan. Or – and he likes this one best, just like he’d liked it two hours ago – not ask overtly, step forward affectionately, wait for Kate to break on her own integrity and then put the pieces back together. That one has the happy advantage that he can keep trying for a more…um… physical arrangement. When she’s clear-headed. And a more comforting arrangement, just like tonight, when she isn’t.Problem parked, he opens up his laptop and finds that Gina has kindly (ha!) sent him several different options for the cover art, all of which are not particularly accurate, not particularly similar to the first two, and not particularly likely to sell books. He liked the previous cover style – the silhouette. He sends Gina a slightly sharp note to the effect that he wants the same cover style as was used for Heat Wave and Naked Heat and then reduces his irritation by checking out the fan sites. Five proposals of marriage, fifty proposals of a considerably less formal nature, all from complete strangers with undoubtedly fake photos, and five hundred or so pleasant comments on his writing later, he’s a little happier. It’s also nearly midnight, and Gina hadn’t failed to remind him that their meeting was at nine. Bedtime.But before he goes to bed and dreams pathetically about Bathtime-Beckett, or Bedtime-Beckett, or Kissable-Kate, (that one might actually be achievable) he ought to check that she’s okay. He had, after all, abandoned her. He tiptoes up the stairs, notes that Alexis is asleep and wonders idly how much her cell phone bill is going to cost him this month, and notices the slight pool of dim light leaking out from the not-quite-shut guest room door. He just knows he’s going to regret his next move.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Castle sneaks into the guest room and discovers the puddle of light is from the small attachment to Kate’s Kindle. He’d have thought she’d like real books better – she’s got enough of them in her sublet. There’s enough light from the open door that he doesn’t need it to prevent himself falling over something. Still. He uses it like a flashlight to check her over – not check her out, he doesn’t need to do that – sling still on (amazingly), dressing still on (likewise), sleep t-shirt on – wait a moment. That’s his t-shirt. He watched her borrow it but she only wanted it to use instead of his all-covering robe. At least, that’s what he’d assumed. So why’s she sleeping in it? Because it’s yours, idiot, says a persistent little voice in his head. He finds it very difficult to believe that, but he can’t think of any other reason.He peers more closely at sound-asleep Kate, long dark lashes on unpleasantly pale cheeks, cheekbones pressing sharply through her skin. He’d thought, two nights ago, that the thin drawn look had simply been the shock of the bullet and the wound and the dislocation. He hadn’t looked too closely, because he’d been too busy controlling his wayward impulses, and later he’d been nine-tenths asleep and desperate not to cuddle in. He should have realised when he’d lifted her that she was lighter than she should be. He’s not that fit.Seems she’s not physically better either. Slim is one thing. Skeletal would be another, and she’s nearer to the latter than the former. Looking at her now, she’s stretched thin and taut: Frodo bearing the Ring, Beckett bearing the weight of her lies: as difficult to throw away as the One Ring, as like to bind her. What will she have to sacrifice, to rid herself of the curse? The crease between her eyebrows is clear, and the fine bones of her wrist exactly delineated. Even asleep, she looks exhausted.The Lortab is out on the nightstand: only two left in the blister pack. That’s for tomorrow, then. After that it’ll be Tylenol. And since he’s seen Kate popping Tylenol for three years, he knows that it doesn’t have the same interesting side-effects as these have had. That, he thinks, is very definitely a double-edged sword. If she’s not doped, then he needn’t worry about her reactions not being real – or not what she would want to reveal, more likely. On the other hand, she’s very unlikely to be quite so complaisant. Not complaisant at all, in fact. It’s just as well he’d extracted her promise before the Lortab were done. She may be lying to him, but she won’t break her word. Though he notices that the suitcase is not packed, so maybe he’d been just a little paranoid.
Anyway. Standing over her staring is not getting him anywhere.
Staring is creepy, Castle
. He hears Beckett’s normal clear, sharp tones ring in his head. He turns out the small light on the Kindle, waits for his eyes to adjust, (falling over will not improve matters) and sets the reader quietly down where it had been left.
He really had meant to leave, then. He really had. But seventeen years of being a parent – and three of ever-increasing want-turning-to-love – switch on the automatic reaction of leaning down and planting a soft goodnight kiss on her cheek: the reflexive, habitual night-time benediction which heals troubles and protects the sleeper from the monsters under the bed. (Alexis had had a book, he remembers. Jitterbug Jam, where the monsters were scared of the people.)She shifts, restlessly, and for a terrified, frozen second he thinks she’s waking as her eyelashes flutter, but then she settles again.“Do ‘t ‘gain, Cas’le,” she slurs in her sleep. One should never refuse a lady. Especially when one doesn’t want to. So he does, still softly, and in her sleep her arm comes around his neck to try to pull him down and in. It costs him dearly, to detach her, and himself: not to kneel by the bed and stay in her arm, but to leave; not to give in to his desire to strip and wash here, and slide in beside her, and hold her close and never let her go.In his lexicon of truly bad ideas, that last idea is right up there. It’s too soon, and too raw, and he’s too near to the summer’s pain and she’s too near to broken. He exits, rapidly and silently. When Beckett wakes the loft is silent, and when she looks at the time it’s almost nine. She can’t remember the last time she slept that long. She does remember that downstairs there is a bath, and that Castle’s made her free of it. When she goes down she finds that there is coffee again, with a short note to the effect that Castle will bring her lunch back with him, that he isn’t having her scalding herself on his watch by trying to make coffee herself, and a rather more sarcastic comment that she’s never managed to make his machine work with two hands so she shouldn’t try with just one, which makes her grin. She takes the coffee to Castle’s bathroom and turns on the taps. Then she notices the bottle of bubble bath – clearly sourced from Alexis – on the side, adds a generous splurge – and then sits down and tries not to burst into tears. It’s one demonstration of care and generosity too many. She doesn’t deserve this. It’s all too much – he’s opened his home to her again, and this time she knows that it’s because he’s opened his heart too. It’s overwhelming her. She’d leave, pack and go home and hide away, except she’s promised not to. And even if she hadn’t, Castle’s sicced Gates on her once already and she is perfectly certain that he’ll do it again if he feels he ought to.She sits in the bath and ponders. Unblanketed by the painkillers, she knows what she should do. She should talk to Castle: tell him the truth. She simply doesn’t want to, because she doesn’t want to watch her life go down the toilet the moment she confesses her lie. Though how would that be worse than it is now? She’s constantly guarding her words around Castle, advance-proofing every sentence in her head so that she doesn’t reveal the truth or doesn’t damage the heart he’d like to wear on his sleeve; constantly spooking at the flashes of light or the sharp movements around her, which is not improving at all from the first time she came back; hiding her thoughts and reactions from Ryan and Esposito so that they don’t see just how ill-equipped she currently is to do her job. Her life is already in the toilet.It’s just that at least now she gets to see Castle each day and he’s there to (unknowingly, on his part) get her through each day. She doesn’t know how she’d cope without that. She’s got used to him being around, and although she frequently wishes she’d never used the ghastly, junior-high-school freshman comment about pulling her pigtails, (had she been on something that day? She must have been) she depends upon him being there, right now, to anchor her to a better reality than the black hole of the rest of her life.Maybe if she wasn’t so otherwise troubled it wouldn’t be such a big deal that she needs him around. If it wasn’t for all the other problems she might be able to deal with this one – or at least deal with the fallout afterwards. But here and now she can’t deal with everything. She can’t actually deal with anything. So she’s sitting here in this cooling, no longer bubbly bath, looking at the shrapnel of her life falling around her and trying to think of any excuse at all which means she gets to keep Castle around.Eventually she gets out, goes and dresses in her own clothes, takes the last of the Lortab and hopes simultaneously and completely inconsistently for Castle not to come back for some time and for him to come back right now.After a while, and most of the coffee, reading in the family room begins to pall, and the Lortab have had their effect of distancing her slightly from her reality. Beckett, however, doesn’t feel any happier. She remembers that she had liked the comfort of Castle’s bed, and buoyed up on the Lortab on an empty stomach she thinks that she’ll just borrow it to read. Only for a few minutes. Lots of undoubtedly soft pillows to lean on, a comforting scent of Castle, and he won’t mind because after all he’d put her in it to sleep. But she won’t still be there when he gets back. She’ll only take a little time and then she’ll go back to the main room and the couch. Just long enough to cheer her up. It’ll be as good as the real thing. Nearly. Castle has had an idea on the way to Black Pawn, and being Castle acts upon it as soon as it’s floated into his head. His idea is that he should see Esposito, and rather quietly discuss whether the symptoms he, Castle, thinks he sees are matched by the ones Esposito sees. A couple of texts later arrangements have been made to meet around noon. Conveniently, Ryan is not available. Esposito merely refers to that as whipped. That’s rather helpful. Castle and Esposito long ago reached an accommodation of views about Kate, tacitly agreeing that it needed both of them to keep her out of trouble. They’ve never seen the need to discuss that further – especially not with Kate. They don’t need to discuss it with Ryan: he’ll just go along with them. But… Ryan’s never been able to keep a secret from Kate, and Castle very definitely does not want her finding out about this right now. Nor will Esposito. He’s in enough trouble already after Castle roped him into the Gates affair.Black Pawn is tedious. Gina is tedious and irritated. Paula is… Paula, and irritating. And the designer is an absolute pain, Castle decides. In fact, the designer should be dropped in the crocodile pool at the Zoo. If there isn’t a crocodile pool at the Zoo, one should be built, specifically to drop this idiot into. Castle doesn’t want a new look. He wants a consistent look that sells his books. Series should look the same. It’s tidy on the shelves. It also lets people spot them easily, and therefore they’re more likely to buy them. Is that so hard for everyone to understand? Castle’s only too glad when it’s all over and he’s got his own way so he can amble off to meet Esposito. Esposito is late, which is unusual. It turns out that with Beckett (precinct business, so Castle amends his thoughts to be Beckett-referenced, not Kate) away Gates is even more irritable than usual.“Short-handed, so the paperwork’s backing up. Makes her worse. Her own fault. She shouldn’t have barred Beckett.” And there’s the opening.“You think not?” Esposito glances sharply at Castle.“You agree with Gates.” It’s not a question at all. “What’s on your mind, bro?” And swift upon the heels of that statement, “What’s wrong with Beckett?” This time floats between them.“You tell me. I’ve seen you watching when she can’t spot you. What d’you think’s wrong, Espo?”Espo leans forward, drops his voice, as if Beckett might at any moment turn up and overhear him. “I think she ain’t recovered. You know I told you ‘bout the diner an’ the backfire, after my last tour?” Castle nods. He remembers. “She looks like I felt. She’s wired up.” Castle nods again.“Yeah, Espo. We went to Ellis Island yesterday – I thought a trip might take Beckett’s mind off her shoulder and the sling and killing me for siccing Gates on her.” He digresses momentarily. “She’s not exactly keen on the sling. Has she ever had one before?” Espo considers.“Nah. Then again, Montgomery would have let her hang around and do paperwork, sling or not. Gates just benched her again. ‘S not surprising Beckett’s a bit upset.” He stops, throws another sharp, interrogative stare across the table. “What happened? You don’t sound like it was a happy picnic day.”“Beckett kept startling. Light flashes, sudden movements nearby, anything unexpected, really. It wasn’t obvious, but she never stopped looking around.” Esposito turns the stare up a notch to approach a glare.“What’cha thinking, Castle? You got thoughts an’ I got thoughts. Do we got the same thoughts? ‘Cause my thoughts tell me Beckett ain’t right. My thoughts tell me Beckett’s got PTSD, an’ she’s hiding it.”“We’ve got the same thoughts, then. The painkillers seemed to help, but they run out today, and she can’t rely on them.” He grins, digressing again. “They’re damn good drugs, though. She hasn’t threatened to kill me once.” Esposito raises amazed eyebrows. “Hey, Espo, do you think we should get some and spike Gates’ coffee?” Espo almost looks attracted by the idea, but then gets serious again.“You think Beckett shouldn’t be on the job,” he says, almost threateningly. “Why?”“She’s not right, Espo.”“So? Bein’ somewhere she knows’ll help.”“She’s getting more stressed every day and you know it. I’ve seen you looking at her and worrying.”“She’ll get past it. ‘S not as if she remembers. She just needs a bit of time.”Esposito trails off at Castle’s enquiring look. “You think she does remember,” he says blankly. That’s not a question, either. Fast, flickering thoughts rip across Espo’s face. “Helluva thing, rememberin’ bein’ shot. Could leave a lotta stuff behind.” Castle waits for the other shoe to drop. “Hang on. She said she didn’t remember anythin’. Why’d she wanna say that if she did?” Castle shrugs. Espo carries on around mouthfuls of his lunch.“Maybe she thought she wouldn’t be let back for much longer if she let on.” He thinks. “Nah. Can’t be right. She’d still have to pass psych, an’ prob’ly get counselling.” He thinks for a while longer, as Castle addresses himself to his own lunch. “Dunno,” he concludes, munching thoughtfully. “You sure?”“Not sure. Pretty sure, though. Seems most likely.” It’s Esposito’s turn to shrug. “You’re the one who” – he chokes, takes a second to recover, and alters what he was about to say – “observes her.” He glances at his watch. “Gotta go.”Well, that didn’t really help anything. Except that Esposito agrees about the PTSD. No more insight than when he began the day. Espo clearly had a hard time swallowing the idea that Beckett would pretend not to remember. Could he be wrong? But he really doesn’t think that he is.He remembers to pick up lunch for Kate: favourite sandwich, can of soda, fruit. And a bear claw, even though it isn’t for breakfast. If even Esposito, who knows Beckett better than anyone except him, can’t think of a reason for her to pretend to forget everything, then there’s a really deep reason. There must be a really deep reason, because now he knows that she has feelings for him. Maybe a little display of practical affection will help to elicit it. He hopes she liked the practical tokens of affection he’d left her. When he gets home Kate’s not in view, oddly. Castle puts her lunch down and investigates the couch, (in case she’s out of sight and suddenly deprived of voice to greet him) then upstairs, peeping into the guest room, and finally his study. She’s not in any of these places. Worry niggles at his brain. He’d made her promise. She doesn’t break promises – does she? He goes back upstairs. Suitcase still there. Toiletries still there. Ergo, Kate still there. The question is, where?He takes himself back into his study and opens his laptop, intending to do some work to distract himself, or alternatively mess around and play games and surf the net and procrastinate while waiting for inspiration to arrive, and indeed he manages to do so for several minutes. About that point he realises that there is breathing coming from his bedroom. After a brief panic he realises that since the outer door was firmly locked when he came in, he’s found his missing Kate. He peeks round the bedroom door rather cautiously.Her back is to the door and she’s half buried in pillows. Disappointingly, she’s also fully clothed. Still, she’d been fully clothed last night and it hadn’t exactly helped his self-control. It’s not helping now. He swallows hard.“Kate?”That was a mistake. She slams to sitting upright and whips round and it’s absolutely clear that she’s just wrenched her arm. Mainly because she is swearing vilely and sheet white. She manages to stop that, though not before Castle’s taken the few steps necessary to reach her.“Castle?” “Hm?”“You’re back already? That was qui… Oh.” She’s just seen the clock. “It’s later than I thought.” She’s going a very fetching shade of pink, which is better than the white of a second ago. In fact, she’s thoroughly embarrassed. It’s very cute. Saying that will certainly get him into trouble. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be in here.”Castle resists – with the aid of clamping his teeth together – the strong desire to say No, you should definitely be in here, just not with all your clothes on, and smiles. From the confused expression on Kate’s face, it’s not a happy, friendly smile. The way she’s staring at him, he might as well be a starving lion. It dawns on him that his smile probably doesn’t have much to do with friendly comfort and affection and probably does have a great deal to do with his predatory desire simply to kiss hell out her and then extract all of the truth.She’s still wincing, and her face is back to white, as she carefully swings her feet to the floor in front of Castle. It’s clear she’s going to stand up. Castle’s overly developed sense of helpfulness, aided and abetted by his overly developed sense that Kate should be within his arms, leads him to put both hands round her waist (which is indeed frighteningly slim) and stand her up. It might have helped if he hadn’t been helpful. It might have helped if he’d let go once she was upright. It might have helped if she hadn’t looked up in surprise with her mouth open on an exclamation. It would certainly have helped if his good intentions hadn’t flown out the window and he hadn’t kissed her.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It’s not affectionate, that’s for sure. Electric, possibly. Explosive. And utterly insane. Just like last time, she’s opened to him despite the pain she’s been in. Just like last time, her reaction to him increases his to her increases hers to him in a feedback loop that’s twisting them tighter, closer, higher and this time he’s holding her close enough, firmly enough that she can’t move her arm to hurt it, gently enough that he won’t hurt her. She’s kissing him back like he’s the last man in the world and his hand is in her hair and the other sliding round her waist and down to hold her in and this is how he’d dreamed it, night after night after night: this is how his dreams had begun.It’s not how they’d ended. Oh no.Oh no. He can’t do this. She can’t do this. She’s not herself. He has to – ohhh, she’s just nipped his lower lip and it feels so good – he has to stop. He lets go and steps back, hands clasped behind his back to prevent himself taking her back into his embrace and starting again and this time not stopping. “You can’t do this, Kate. We can’t do this.”She half-leans forward, pulls herself back, looks for an instant totally confused – and then as if he’d slapped her. And then her face drops immediately into its cool, frozen mask. She’s out past him faster than her pain should have allowed her to move.Oh hell. It takes him half a second to convince his feet to move, and then he’s taking the stairs three at a time to catch up before she thinks he’s rejected her. She’s already put the suitcase out when he falls through the guest room door. When she looks up at his crash landing a foot inside the room her face is still completely closed off and cool. It looks, in fact, like… exactly the same expression as she’d had when Gina turned up at the precinct and Kate had waved him off for the summer.Oh shit. Sudden, appalled realisation hits him. He’d always thought that she’d gone off with Demming for their little lovebird weekend (not that he was bitter or anything) and then they’d found out it wouldn’t work after that. No-one had ever indicated anything else. Oh. No wonder the boys, and Montgomery, had been so pissed off with him when they’d arrested him again. Kate had been steeling herself to accept his invitation. And then Gina had walked in, and Kate’s expression had closed down just like it is now, and she’d said have a great summer, see you in the fall. And he hadn’t understood till right this moment.“Were you going to come to the Hamptons with me when Gina turned up?” That was not at all what he meant to say. Kate doesn’t react at all. She’s awkwardly opening the closet and she’s about to start packing. The suitcase is gaping, swallowing down his sense and his hopes and all chance of happiness if he doesn’t mend this right now.“Were you?” blurts his undisciplined mouth.“What does that matter?” She’s picked up the fresh pants and is laying them in the suitcase, one handed and clumsy. He can’t see her face for the long hair falling around her. Her voice is completely cool and controlled. “It was a long time ago. You went with Gina, wrote your book, had a good time.” She stands to collect a pile of tops.Castle moves rapidly and removes the pants from the suitcase and the tops from her left arm.“You’re not leaving.” He puts it all back in the closet, fending Kate off as he does.“What do you think you’re doing? Give me those back! You can’t force me to stay here. I’m going home. This was a mistake.”A mistake. The words hit him, shrapnel-spray, shredding the easy accommodation he thought they had reached. She’s still speaking.“I shouldn’t have agreed to stay here. You shouldn’t have to put up with it.” He hears you shouldn’t have to put up with me. Maybe he also hears you don’t want me. “I should go home. Better for all of us.” No, it wouldn’t be.“You are not going anywhere.” Castle takes the high-handed approach and swings the now empty suitcase on to the top of the closet. There’s no way Kate can reach it without standing on a chair and two usable arms. Probably. “Gates ordered you to stay here and you promised you would stay here and that’s what is going to happen.”No it isn’t, Castle. She doesn’t break her promises – unless the other side breaks theirs first. He’d implied he wanted her. He’d said he loved her. And he’s just pushed her away. So since the other half of this deal had been that he – had feelings for her, and he doesn’t, beyond casual, friendly affection, she’s not staying. So it won’t matter if she breaks her promise and it won’t matter if she leaves these clothes here because she can’t reach the suitcase or get it down the stairs. She’ll get her stuff back somehow. One of the boys will collect it for her. Or Lanie, via Alexis. They seem to have some sort of a bond. You don’t impose on your partner like this: staying and being waited on. Partners are for work, and the job, and solving crimes. Not for propping up your screwed-up life.At least there’s no need to tell him the truth, now. He never meant it anyway, so what matter if she heard it or not? She calls on all her training and skill and preserves a perfectly emotionless voice and face, sits down on the armchair and waits for Castle to leave.“Please let’s not discuss this now. I’m going to read for a while, till my shoulder stops hurting. I’ve taken the painkillers.” So please go away. I don’t want you here. I don’t want you in here if there’s nothing more than partners. Just let me cope with that in peace. She stands, picks up her Kindle from the bed and returns to the chair, hiding the pain in her shoulder and the pain in her heart.“Kate… it’s not what you think.” No, it isn’t. It’s not what I thought at all. She pretends to read the page, presses down to turn it though she hasn’t absorbed a single word. She doesn’t look up.“Castle, I’m sorry, but my shoulder really hurts and I just want to be on my own till that stops.”“We’ll discuss this later. When your shoulder isn’t hurting.” He sounds as if there can be no doubt of that. No, we won’t. Because Alexis will be home and at dinner and then I’ll be in here and then I’ll be gone. She doesn’t let that show, either, turns another unread page. She hears Castle leave and rises to shut the door. She’d misunderstood. Just like last summer, she’d misunderstood. It had just been a shock-induced reaction to the shot and her dying. Well, she’s been here before. Last summer. She coped then, she’ll cope now. She’d misunderstood the affection for something more, when clearly it’s just another manifestation of protective, almost-parental Castle, looking after those who need it in his normal, affectionate, tactile way. Nothing more to it than that. Beckett is hurt, Beckett needs help, Beckett needs comfort: therefore, Castle will provide it. Lortab and hugs will make her feel better.She feels so much worse.She retrieves her purse, considers it, and folds up the two t-shirts of Castle’s small enough to fit. She can always have them. The man himself… well, she’s clearly not going to have him, is she? He’d pushed her away from him. That’s a clear statement if ever there was one. She’d only have needed a hint. She doesn’t stay where she isn’t wanted. She cringes at the thought of how she’d behaved under the influence of the Lortab. At least she can blame the drugs. And then they’ll never need to talk about the last four days ever again.
Time to go home, Kate. Time to go home.
The Kindle, fortunately, is immune to light showers of water. When Alexis arrives home Castle is in his study and Kate hasn’t been seen downstairs since he left her doorway. Time has passed in an unhappy haze, and Castle hasn’t managed to write anything other than ghastly miscommunications between Nikki and Rook all afternoon. Naturally, therefore, Alexis is bright and happy. Or at least as happy as she’s been since Stanford turned her down. Idiots.“Hi Dad,” she grins.“Hi Pumpkin. Good day?”“Yes. Aced my history test” -“Told you so.”“– started putting together my applications for other schools.” Castle chokes. “Got you,” Alexis smirks. Castle mutters almost under his breath about serpent’s teeth and his failing sanity until Alexis waltzes off, pausing on the way.“Where’s Detective Beckett, Dad?”“Upstairs, reading. She didn’t want to go out again today.” He produces the normal pout which he uses when someone doesn’t like one of his ideas. “I thought we should go and be tourists.”Alexis looks at him fondly. “You just wanted an excuse to wander round buying ice cream cones.” Castle acquires a wounded expression. “Of course not. I don’t need an excuse to buy ice cream.” He pauses. “Cotton candy, now… I could take Beckett to Coney Island!” Alexis snickers and disappears. Castle breathes a sigh of relief. Fooled her. He goes back to thinking about earlier. He can’t say Kate if I hadn’t stopped we wouldn’t have stopped. Nor can he say Kate I don’t want to get into it with you when you’re doped. Nor can he say I know you lied. Plus or minus and I don’t care that you did but tell me the truth now. None of those are the right place to start. One of them, though, is a place he needs to go.Nothing’s any clearer at dinner time. Castle has come to the conclusion that the only way he might actually be able to salvage today’s mess is by kissing Kate some more, but she doesn’t come down until Alexis does, which is not helpful, or hopeful, and then on Alexis refusing her help to clear up after dinner she politely requests two Tylenol, which Alexis provides with much offering of sympathy, and then retires upstairs again with a polite explanation that since her shoulder is still hurting she’s just going to stay in the very comfortable pillows that they’ve provided and try to fall asleep early. Pain, she says, makes her snappish – she produces a relatively creditable rueful grin – and she doesn’t want to inflict that on her charming – a more sarcastic grin as she looks at Castle, and a genuine smile for Alexis – hosts.“Night, Detective Beckett,” Alexis chirps.“Till tomorrow, Beckett,” Castle follows.“Good night,” Kate murmurs. Castle thinks she looks tired and stressed again, but puts it down to the shoulder, the need for Tylenol, and being thwarted. She can’t go anywhere without her suitcase, and she can’t reach that. In the morning they’ll talk, and he’ll fix it. Upstairs, Beckett is considering the results of the successful uses of careful and extensive make-up in hiding one’s miseries as she cleans up before bed. The wash bag won’t fit in her purse, but her make-up will and she’s got spare body wash and hair products at home. She’ll work out how to cover her arm. It’s only another couple of days in the sling anyway. Or she could use a scarf or something that won’t matter if it gets wet, and just cover the dressing. That should come off soon too.
Anyway. It’s not as if she won’t have time and space to work it out. Rather too much of both. She turns for the bed and curls into the pillows. Plenty soft pillows, to smother one’s feelings. She’d rather have a less soft place to rest her head, with a slow smooth beat under her ear. But it’s not on offer. So there’s no point in wishing for it. She sets her alarm for five, turns her Kindle back to the last page she remembers reading, and lets the Tylenol take away the ache in her arm. Soon enough it also takes away her desire to stay awake.
At five a.m. the quiet buzz jolts Beckett awake and she dresses, still cursing the awkwardness of one-handedness, quietly ensures she has her purse and her gun, checks that her wallet is sufficiently full for a cab home, and sneaks silently down the stairs with her shoes in the hand in the sling. She doesn’t put them on until she’s carefully closed the loft’s outer door behind her. She’s home twenty minutes later, locking her door behind her, and settling down gratefully into her own bed, the crumpled t-shirts in her grasp. Her bed has become, this last month, familiar with the posture of her misery, and welcomes her in to comfort her. Castle wakes in his own comfortable bed with a feeling of some hope that today he’ll manage to sort matters out with Kate and explain that while he really, really likes kissing her he’d rather she was doing it while in her right mind and preferably with both arms available. Maybe the best way to do it is to simply go back to cuddling her at every available opportunity. Maybe he can manage to convince her to talk about what else is wrong. And maybe not. That’s a long, hard trail waiting to be ridden.He wanders out to find Alexis and the coffee both at breakfast but no sign of Kate. That doesn’t worry him. She’d probably wanted to sleep longer, and perhaps she might feel uncomfortable in front of Alexis, given yesterday. He doesn’t start to worry until he realises, some time later, that it’s close to ten and he’s heard nothing that indicates that Kate is awake. Worry nags until he succumbs to its goading and goes upstairs to investigate. The guest room door is pulled mostly shut, but it doesn’t look dark, which suggests opened blinds. Maybe she’s reading. Maybe – likely – she’s hiding from him, and the embarrassment he’s sure she feels because he messed up his words yesterday: she won’t exactly feel like spending time in his company when in her eyes – he is sure – she threw herself at him and he didn’t want it. Didn’t want her. She probably feels like a stupid teen fangirl meeting the idol she’d built up a fantasy around, and the truth of the situation dawning. He winces, understood agony clutching in his gut. He’s got to sort this out, fast.He taps on the door, quietly, just in case she is asleep still. There’s no answer. He taps again, more loudly, and still there is nothing. He pushes the door open and goes in, hoping that he isn’t going to intrude on a half – or not – dressed Kate. He can barely cope with a fully-dressed Kate, let alone one in only a towel.Her possessions are all there. For a second that gives him hope. But then he realises that she is not. The bathroom door is open, and she isn’t there either. He’s been up since before eight, and she hasn’t been down.She’s gone. She promised to stay. She promised. And she’s just upped and left. Couldn’t reach her suitcase, and so desperate to leave that she left everything and broke her promise. She planned it. Made sure he couldn’t talk to her because she was only there when Alexis was, sneaked out before any of them were up. How did it get to this? How could doing the right thing go so wrong? How is he looking at the empty space where Kate Beckett ought to be – just like the first summer, when she walked away because he pried; just like the second, where she wished him a good time and watched him walk away without the single word that would have made him turn back; just like the summer just gone when she lied to him and ran away because she hurt. Just like now. She’s run away because she’s hurting. And he doesn’t believe for a moment that it’s her shoulder that’s hurting.He makes another cup of coffee and sits down to consider his options. They seem rather limited, right now. Go after her, or don’t. He could set Gates on her, but that smacks of stool-pigeonry and is liable to reduce any chance of anything good to the same state as Hiroshima on August 7 1945.She’ll have to come back for her things. Won’t she? He considers. It is possible – given the fragility of the détente between Alexis and Kate – that Kate, via Lanie, will arrange for Alexis to clear her belongings. Well, that can be stopped. If she wants her clothes and toiletries back, she will have to come and get them. The only problem is that that could take weeks – she appears to have an astonishingly extensive wardrobe – by which time she’ll be even more convinced that he doesn’t care than she is now.He could ask the boys to go and find her and bring her back. Except that is such an unbelievably dumb idea that he can’t even imagine how it got into his brain in the first place. It’s not that they wouldn’t – he’s been aware for four months that they would back him up in anything that meant that Kate opened her eyes and fell into his arms – but he’s not that keen on either admitting to his stupidity or involving anyone else in his love life.
But. But there is one way to do this. Lanie. Lanie has also made no secret at all of what Kate should do with regard to Richard Castle. Lanie has expressed that in some very earthy terms indeed. And Lanie is a doctor. Okay, so she only doctors the dead, but she’s a doctor. A-ha. A plan begins to form in Castle’s head.
Lanie can give Kate medical orders – and for some reason that Castle’s never understood, Kate will do what Lanie tells her. His thoughts digress for a moment. Kate doesn’t take orders from anyone, outside the precinct – there she doesn’t take them from anyone but Gates, and even then he’s seen her wriggle around the edges or avoid the situation where she’s given orders she won’t like fairly frequently. Kate, in fact, brooks no let or hindrance from anyone on God’s green earth at any time. She must have been hell to manage, as a child and teen.So, Lanie. Why does Kate allow Lanie to tell her what to do? Another thought pops into his head. Kate has, very occasionally, allowed him to tell her what to do. Or rather, given in.
Hmmm. It dawns on him extremely belatedly and slowly that Kate Beckett needs a safety net. And that’s Lanie. And him. Someone has to tell her to stop, slow down, halt. Up till he showed up, it’s been Lanie, her best friend. Since then - well, since sometime after, undefined and unnoticed – it’s been him too.
An alleyway, some months ago, insinuates itself into his thinking. He’d not waited for permission then: he’d swooped and conquered, and she’d been right there in it with him. He’d not waited for her opinion the time when her apartment blew up, he’d simply told her how it was going to be and somehow, amazingly, made it stick. He’d done the same this time, he’d simply told her how it was going to be (okay, backed up by the threat of the wrath of Gates) and it had come about. She’d given in. And every time it had been in extremis. The last hope for saving Ryan and Esposito. The only place to stay: Lanie’s sublet isn’t big enough for two. The only person… his thoughts roll out ahead of him… that she’s let look after her.Oh hell. She only let him do it because she thought it meant, or he felt, something more. And now she thinks it doesn’t. Not only that, but she remembers exactly what he said as she poured out blood on to the grass – he is suddenly perfectly certain of that - but by now she’ll be sure to think he didn’t mean that, that he only said it to try and pull her back from the brink.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Lanie. Yes. Lanie. Castle begins to plot and scheme in earnest. Lanie can bring medical pressure to bear on Kate: can tell her believably that she is not permitted to be on her own with her arm in a sling and the dressing still there – at least, not permitted to be on her own when there is someone else ready, willing and able to look after her. Surely, if Lanie puts her foot down, Kate will listen? Surely? He dials.
“Lanie?”“Writer-Boy. Where’s my girl? How come you never called me to let me know she was hurt and I had to find out from Espo? What exactly happened?”Castle takes a moment to explain the tale of Kate’s shoulder and arm, with particular reference to the amazing side-effects of the painkillers. Even without any of the more – er – private details, Lanie is snickering happily before he’s done. “So she’s been high on and off for three days? I wish I’da seen that. I’ll remember that for the next time. You gotta let me talk to her. Oooh, I’m gonna rag her so much about this.”Castle thinks that involving Lanie may not have been such a good plan after all. “C’mon, put her on. I wanna talk to her.”“Um, Lanie… Kate’s not here.”“You what now? Whaddya mean she’s not there? Espo said she was staying with you till the sling came off, and by my reckoning that’s not for another three, four days.” Her voice changes. “What the hell is going on here, Castle? Where’s Kate?” And that’s the Lanie that they all regard with fear and loathing in Manhattan; the one who will face them all down without turning a single straightened hair.“What have you two” – idiots is clearly inserted into that space – “done this time?” Lanie is far too good at deduction. But at least she’s not blaming Castle alone. Then again, she knows Kate too well. There’s a short silence, while Castle considers his options for not being eviscerated on one of Lanie’s cold slabs – before he’s actually dead. Before he’s come up with a good answer, Lanie starts down her own deductive path. Castle really wishes she wouldn’t do that. One fearsome woman ripping his thoughts out his head is quite enough. He really doesn’t need Lanie to do it as well. She can’t even see his face, for heaven’s sake.“I didn’t do anything,” Castle says plaintively. “That was the problem.” There’s an anticipatory silence down the phone. It doesn’t take long for Lanie to break it when he doesn’t continue.“That’s not an explanation. Spill, Writer-Boy.”“I-wouldn’t-kiss-her-because-she-was-doped,” Castle rushes out.“Whaddya mean, you wouldn’t kiss her? You’ve been trying to kiss her – or something” – Castle chokes on Lanie’s salacious tone – “since the moment you met her. Now you’re telling me that Kate wanted you to kiss her and you didn’t take her up on it? You expect me to believe that?”“She was doped, dammit. I’m not taking advantage of her like that.”“Very gentlemanly,” Lanie says very sarcastically. “So how’s that role working out for you?”Castle splutters. “I’m always gentlemanly. Anyway” – he goes on the attack – “what do you suggest I should have done? Let her do something she’d regret as soon as she wasn’t half-high? If Kate didn’t kill me you three would do it for her.”There’s another short silence while Lanie digests that. “Okay, I get that. You’re right. So why are you calling?”“I think Kate’s gone home. She just left all her stuff and she’s gone. I don’t think she’ll talk to me.”“Have you even tried?”“Well…”“No, then. You better try. I’m not getting in between you and Kate. That’s like standing in the Korean DMZ. Or in the middle of a nursery fight. And I am not giving fake medical advice just so she comes back to your loft.”“Lanie. I don’t want you to tell lies.” Much. Though it would help. “But she was supposed to stay here till the sling was off and Gates has ordered her to and you know what Gates is like. She’ll bench Kate for longer if she finds out Kate’s disobeying orders.”“And how will Gates find that out?”“She just will. She’ll use terrifying mind powers to discover the truth and we’ll all be assimilated to become Gates-clones and” –“Castle.” He can see Lanie rolling her eyes even though she isn’t there. “Stop talking. Gates doesn’t need to find out. Kate can probably survive on her own even with one hand. You know that. She lives on takeout. So why are you so keen that she comes back to the loft?”Castle says nothing. Because I want her to doesn’t seem like a reason that will satisfy Lanie. He compromises. “Why should she struggle when I’m happy to look after her for a few days?” There’s a disgusted harrumph from Lanie.“You’re not going to leave this, are you?” she says resignedly. “Okay. I’ll help. But first you try to call her and then you go round before I go anywhere near this disaster.”Castle winces. He’d hoped that Lanie would smooth his path a little. Seems like that won’t happen.“Okay, Lanie. But when Kate shoots me you need to make sure I get the best medical care in the city. Or the showiest funeral. If not I’ll come back and haunt the morgue.”“Sure you will. Comp’ny’ll be welcome, Writer-Boy. Even if it’s you or your ghost.” She cuts the call while he’s still gibbering.Now what? He stares unhappily at his phone, and the speed dial list, Kate’s number at the top of it. He takes a deep breath and taps. Beckett wakes up around half-past eight. It’s no improvement on when she went to sleep. Her shoulder hurts, because she’s tried to turn on to it a dozen times; her arm hurts, under the dressing, for the same reason; and her chest hurts. For an entirely different, large and blue-eyed reason. She sniffs determinedly and gets up. She’ll make herself coffee. She can do that.She can, carefully, fill the kettle; put coffee in the cafetiere with her left hand, only spilling a little of each scoop; (she’ll clear up later) she can pour water into the cafetiere without scalding herself. It takes a little longer to work out how to hold it still and press the plunger, but eventually she manages that too. She drinks her coffee with considerable self-satisfaction. She’s got this. She doesn’t need any help.She looks around and realises that she’s left her Kindle at Castle’s loft. That’s really annoying, but she’s got plenty real books and most of them have been read enough that they lie flat without any persuasion at all. Still, she avoids Castle’s books and the picture on each back, all of which seem to be staring at her disappointedly. She picks out a book of Chekov short stories and settles back to her coffee. It’s almost enough to drown her sorrows. Almost.Time passes, slowly. Only two more days of this sling, Beckett tells herself. She flexes her shoulder a little, and it doesn’t feel nearly as painful. She decides she doesn’t need any more Tylenol just yet. Save them for later. They won’t help the other ache, anyway. She wonders if she should go out. Go for a walk. Maybe go for a walk in Central Park. Plenty space there, not much risk of being jarred accidentally. In a little while, when she feels a little more like doing anything except moping and sniffling like some grade school kid. It’s ridiculous. They weren’t even dating. It’s not like it’s a break-up. They were partners and they’ll stay partners. It’ll just be like it was.She doesn’t want it to be just like it was.But that thought brings her back to the other problem. Even if he had wanted her – and she’d been so sure, ever since he kissed her in an alleyway, that he did want her, ever since he’d been pleading over her bleeding-out body that he loved her – she can’t have him without telling the truth. But there’s no point, she thinks again, re-opening that can of worms. No need to tell the truth.Suddenly she needs to be anywhere but inside, staring at the walls. She slips on her flats and grabs – well, cautiously lifts - her purse, makes for the door. No need to have her phone, she’s not on the job and not on call. And if she’s thinking that she doesn’t want to speak to anyone and certainly doesn’t want to explain her actions of the last few days and specifically this morning, well, no-one but she needs to know that.Her phone starts ringing in her empty apartment about the point she’s crossing the first intersection in the direction of Central Park. Castle listens to the phone ring out and eventually go to voicemail and doesn’t leave a message. He’ll try again later. Knowing Kate, she’s probably gone to try to convince some unfortunate junior medic to take off the dressing and the sling. He hopes she doesn’t succeed. Her obvious pain yesterday doesn’t incline him to think that she should have the sling off early.He goes back to thinking. It gets him nowhere that he hasn’t already been. An hour later, he calls again, and when that goes to voicemail again, this time leaves a message. Kate, call me. Then he has a sudden idea, and sends her an e-mail. With a read receipt. When she opens it – and she will, out of sheer curiosity – he’ll know she’s with her phone, at least. He wanders off to try to write for a while, wanders back later to make some lunch, writes some more, tries not to think about the expression on Kate’s face yesterday, writes some completely useless paragraphs which don’t fit the current plan for Nikki Four, which doesn’t have a name as yet either – embryonic would be overstating its current level of development: it’s barely made it to blastocyst stage; and eventually resorts to computer games and making paper aeroplanes which don’t fly well or sometimes at all, a little light exercise to try to reduce his physical restlessness, listening all the while for the chirp of his phone.It’s five o’clock before it chirps, and Alexis is long home and dealing with her homework, while Castle’s still messing around with Nikki Four and paper aeroplanes, neither of which has done anything to alleviate his ever-increasing worry. The chirp is, as he expected, simply the read receipt from the e-mail. There is no answer. Yet, he thinks. No answer, yet. Surely she’ll answer.Dinner passes off quietly. Alexis, though curiosity is sparking in her eyes, doesn’t ask about Kate. Most likely, she assumes that Castle has done something to upset Kate. She’s usually right about that. At times, Castle simply existing has upset Kate. If only it were that simple. Alexis disappears again – her umbilical cord – oops, cell phone – to Ashley no doubt calling her – and Castle returns to his study and his phone. As the day has slowly passed, he’s realised that Kate’s sneaking off to run away – again – has left him once again bitterly hurt. She’s simply assumed, despite his actions and – if she remembers them – his words, that nothing he’s showing or telling her is true. He doesn’t know why she still thinks like that, after everything. It hurts, that she doesn’t see the truth of what he feels – or worse, that she does see it and doesn’t trust it to be true. He thinks that it’s one or the other, and doesn’t know which he likes least.He’s hurt, but it doesn’t stop his brain working. She lied. She’s run. She thinks he doesn’t care. Ah – the piece he’d forgotten, earlier. She’s insecure about her whole life – the life she so nearly lost. For the first time, he thinks, she’s really seen how fragile her life can be. She’s lost confidence in herself, her ability to do her job, which is still far more of her life than it should be, and him. So it’s not a long step for her to believe that him trying to do the right thing in – er - difficult circumstances is really him pushing her away. Especially when she thinks she already pushed him away, by running off the whole summer. Yes. Walking warily can easily transform into flight.
Okay. It’s close to eight p.m., and he really cannot believe that Kate hasn’t got home by now. He taps her number, and waits for her to pick up. This time, if she doesn’t, he is going round, and he will not be leaving till she comes with him. He thinks about that for a second. There are some possibilities there.
Kate doesn’t pick up. He sighs.“Alexis,” he calls up.“Yeah, Dad?”“I’m going out. I might not be back till really late. Don’t wait up, okay?”“Okay, Dad.” There’s a slight pause. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”“That’s no fun, Pumpkin. You never do anything immature.” There’s a snicker from upstairs as Castle swipes up his jacket and leaves. The doorman of Beckett’s building nods pleasantly at Castle as he saunters in. He’s relatively used to seeing him, and doesn’t bat an eyelid when Castle stops to pass the time of day – Castle’s happy interest in all the people and events that pass his nose has had an ulterior motive since the day he met the doorman. Doormen. He’s made sure to meet all of them. Now he’s putting it to good use. The doorman allows as Detective Beckett had come home early that morning – he’d had it from the night shift – and gone out around ten, ten thirty. She’d not come back till five, and she’d looked pretty beat, what with the arm and all. Has Mr Castle come to see her? (Well, duh, yes.) Castle nods, agreeably, and the doorman grins.“Go right on up, Mr Castle. She could use some comp’ny, for sure, with that arm.” He doesn’t need a second invitation. He’s in the elevator in a twinkling of one of his big blue eyes. Which twinkling winks out the instant the doorman can’t see him any more. Went out at ten thirty and came back at five? That’s not a day out, he thinks, that’s a deliberate avoidance strategy. Irritation meets hurt and their shotgun wedding produces determination. Castle strides out the elevator intent on Beckett giving him some answers, and raps firmly on her door. Central Park is not especially busy. Nor, however, is it especially warm, given that Beckett can’t fasten her coat over the sling and in an unusually sensible moment has not taken the sling off to put the coat on. She’s realised that the fastest way to get the sling off is to do what the doctors have instructed. Doing what she’s told, medically, is not, however, exactly her natural habitat, and she’s irritated by the necessity. Still, if it gets her back to normal – relatively – faster, she’ll do it. Possibly through heavily gritted teeth, but she’ll do it.She’s a little cold. She stops off for some nice hot coffee, made by someone with two usable arms, and considers the empty day unrolling bleakly before her. Might as well get used to it. She’s got another five days before Gates lets her back, and judging from the boys’ expressions they’re not going to do one single little thing until then to let her help them. She could always be a tourist, she supposes. On her own. It doesn’t really appeal, but she doesn’t have a better idea. She drains the cup and takes off in the direction of the Planetarium. If she sees the show it’s soothing and dark and quiet and she can stay sitting down. It might even be interesting.It is interesting. So interesting that Beckett spends a considerable proportion of the afternoon there too, not noticing the time pass, wandering around and stopping every so often for coffee. She’s a lot less achy, she notices. At least around the shoulder. Finally, however, she looks at her watch and realises that unless she wants to fight her way through the rush hour hurry and scurry she’d better leave. She makes it home just before five and automatically checks her phone. There are two missed calls from Castle, a voicemail and an e-mail, which she opens with some curiosity. She doesn’t normally get e-mail from Castle, only texts. Call me, it says. So does the voicemail. She doesn’t. If she calls she’ll have to explain why she sneaked out, and explaining I thought you wanted me with the implication of just like a stupid little fangirl fantasy is sufficiently humiliating that she’d simply rather not. She’d rather just forget it ever happened. Maybe later she’ll be calm enough to construct a message of It was a mistake letting Gates bully you into letting me stay and it wasn’t working for either of us that doesn’t also sound like I never want to see you again. Right now, that’s an intellectual effort she isn’t capable of making. Telling the truth - I’ve been lying to you for four months that I didn’t hear you but now you’ve made it clear you don’t want me regardless of what you said so let’s pretend none of it ever happened and just be work partners again – over any communications medium is such a disaster that she can’t contemplate it.In default of anything else to do, and recognising that firstly she hasn’t taken any painkillers and secondly that, practically, dinner is going to arrive from one of the many excellent providers of architectural Styrofoam, she awkwardly manages to open a bottle of decent Californian white – screw tops are a wonderful invention, she thinks – and settles down with a small glassful. In the harsh glare of twenty-twenty hindsight, drinking it is the best thing that’s happened all week. Some time later she orders her dinner. Pizza. She only needs one hand for pizza. She pours some more wine into her glass. It’s not as if she needs to get up in the morning.Pizza duly arrives. Contact with the outside world is minimised by Beckett spending some focused time with her wallet before the delivery boy shows up so that she doesn’t end up dropping all her change on the floor in front of him. Not dignified. Not at all. When her phone chirrups, she’s not really in a position to answer. The phone is some distance away, in her purse. The pizza, though, is in her lap, and the wine glass in her hand. By the time she’s sorted all that out, one-handed, and stood up, the phone’s stopped chirruping, and since it doesn’t then indicate a voicemail there’s no point struggling to investigate right now. She’ll finish her dinner first. The suspicion that it’s Castle calling has, of course, nothing at all to do with her lack of urgency. She’s been benched, so it can’t be a body, so it can’t be urgent. Simple.She returns to her pizza, and when that’s done struggles through washing her pizza-flavoured hand one-handed. She is truly over this sling. Although at least she hasn’t dropped her dinner down her front. Having to wear a bib would be truly humiliating. As if she weren’t humiliated enough already. (Fangirl, says a bitter little voice in her mind.)The wine doesn’t have anything like the softening effect of the Lortab, either for her shoulder or her thoughts, Beckett muses unhappily. She’s about to fall back into the useless circling round her own cowardice when the door sounds. She’s instantly convinced that it’s Castle, simply from the tenor of the knock. She doesn’t want this.But she’s being cowardly enough. How much further does she have to descend before she isn’t Beckett any more? Not far, says the voice in her mind. Not far at all. Can’t do your job, can’t handle flashes of light and sudden movement, can’t tell your partner the truth. What’ll it take, Detective Beckett, before you hit the bottom? You getting hurt again? Him getting hurt? Why not go the whole hog and get him killed? If you can’t do your job it’ll happen. If you don’t tell him the truth you’ll not be able to do your job.She has to get away from that thought. She can’t deal with that thought. Anything is better than that thought.She goes to open the door.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
On his way over, Castle had prepared all sorts of persuasive arguments designed to reassure Kate that he wanted her to stay, that it was no trouble or imposition having her in the loft (rather the reverse) and that he’d have offered up his guest room and skills as a chef regardless of Gates. He had also been planning to remind Kate that Lanie would disapprove of her stressing over surviving on her own when there’s a perfectly good friend (ouch) ready, willing and able to help out. He had even been prepared to stoop to full-on emotional blackmail – along the lines of Alexis thinks that you won’t stay because you think she’s uncomfortable around you, but she’s not and it’s upsetting for her that you think so, which I know you didn’t mean. Followed by: so come back and show her you didn’t mean it.(And then he wonders Did you mean to upset me, Kate? That’s not helpful thinking either. Whichever the answer is, though the fact that she clearly hasn’t even considered whether he might be upset is convincing him more and more that she isn’t currently on the same planet as normal, it’s unhelpful. She’s currently on Planet Kate. Messed up, silent, and full of blocked off areas. His own bitterness surprises him.)When Castle knocks on the door, Beckett takes sufficiently long to answer that the bitterness he’s feeling joins the irritation, hurt and determination in a poisonous foursome. He’s now not only determined, and more than a little impatient, he’s downright angry, by the time she opens it. Which might be why, despite all his carefully thought through persuasive arguments, he forgets all his normal suavity and any hint of the idea that he should be persuasive and reassuring.“You’re coming back to the loft with me,” he rasps.“I’m not. This is my home and I’m staying here.”“No, you’re not. You were ordered to stay with me and that’s what you’re doing. Get your purse.”“Like hell I will. You can’t tell me what to do. Where do you get off telling me to leave my own home?”“You were supposed to stay with me and you are damn well going to stay with me.”“I wasn’t ordered to stay at yours and I’m not going to. I was ordered not to go to the precinct. I can manage just fine on my own.”Castle steps forward and through sheer size and bulk – and possibly the aura of anger boiling off him – forces Kate to step back or be walked into. From Castle’s point of view, that might be a good result, though in his current state he’s not entirely sure that touching Kate wouldn’t set the fuse burning on the gelignite. Unfortunately, Kate doesn’t seem to be thinking that being in his arms is the right path.He shoves the door shut behind him – the stairwell has already heard far too much of this argument – and then keeps prowling inward until Kate is forced to sit down or fall on to her couch. Clearly that doesn’t improve her raging temper. Fuelled up on his own incendiary anger, Castle doesn’t care.“You can say you’re fine staying in your own apartment as much as you like. It might even be true. But stop dancing round pedantry. You know perfectly well that both the medics and Gates meant you to stay with me.”“You’re ignoring the words? You? Well, I’m not. I wasn’t ordered and I’m staying right here.” She glares up into Castle’s furious face, not intimidated at all. “There’s no reason to stay with you. I’m fine. I’ll see you in the precinct in a week. Enjoy the free time, without needing to babysit me.”“You would rather be on your own than stay with us?” He’s incredulous.“I’d rather be on my own than foisted on my partner. I wouldn’t stay with Lanie or Espo or Ryan either. This isn’t about you, Castle.” He ignores the last sentence, since it’s so obviously a lie.“None of them have the space. I do. This is all irrelevant anyway.” He makes a dismissive gesture. “You’re coming back with me.”“Nope,” Kate says defiantly, picking up her wine and taking a courage-boosting swig.“Okay,” Castle raps decisively. His anger of a moment ago is abruptly gone. He has, in fact, had a brilliant idea. Kate flicks a very suspicious glance up at him. That does not sound like acceptance of her point. She acquires a feeling that absolute disaster is looming over her. She never used to think that disaster came in packages of six foot two with eyes of blue. Boy, did she ever get that wrong. Castle looks profoundly, and very smugly, self-satisfied.“If you won’t come back to the loft I’ll simply have to stay here. You were ordered to let me take care of you.”“You can’t. You need to be home with Alexis. You can’t leave her all alone.”“Alexis is almost 18 and sensible. She can be trusted to be left alone. You, on the other hand...” He lets the implication, that she can’t be trusted to be left alone and isn’t sensible, hang unspoken between them.“What the hell? You’re not staying here.”“How are you going to stop me? Call the cops? Espo and Ryan won’t arrest me. Everyone else is scared of Gates. And Gates will put you on report if you call her.” He smiles. Probably. It has a few too many sharp edges to be a true smile. “One way or another, Beckett. Here or there.” A few more teeth appear in his not-smile. “I hope your bed’s big enough for both of us. I’m not sleeping on your couch again. It’s far too small. Besides which, you shared my bed. Turnabout’s fair play, Beckett.”Beckett – absolutely not Kate, right now – appears as if she’s about to explode. It’s just as well she can’t pull her gun. If looks could kill, his head would be on a pole decorating the Brooklyn Bridge. His body would be decorating at least five different landmarks, one of which might well be the front door of the Twelfth Precinct.He watches the realisation that she’s got no way out spill over her face, swiftly followed by anger, chased down by an expression he has no idea how to interpret because it looks like shattering misery at the prospect but that can’t be right, and as rapidly followed by her full-on interrogation blankness.“I guess there’s no choice, is there? Yours.” Her voice is bitter. She goes to get her make-up, drops it in her purse and picks up her coat. Castle automatically moves to take it from her and hold it for her to slip into, but one look at the flaring fury in her eyes has him dropping his hands.She doesn’t say a word all the way down in the elevator, manages a casual Bye for the doorman; who winks at Castle once Beckett can’t see, clearly assuming that a rather better state of relations exists than the current Cold War; and reverts to a state that Castle, had he wished to ensure his instant and agonising demise, might have accurately described as a sulk. The cab ride proceeds in frozen silence on Beckett’s part. Castle, at the start of the cab ride, thoroughly content that he’s got his own way, is fighting a strong urge to laugh. Beckett-as-four-year-old is very cute. At least, it would be a very cute sulk, were it not for the considerably more complex upset that it’s hiding, and his complete lack of any understanding of what is currently going on in her head.He’d thought that if he went to see her she’d realise that it wasn’t an imposition, that he did want her, and that she’d come back without a fight. Instead, he’s practically had to draw a gun on her to move her and she’s as closed off as he’s ever seen. By the time the cab gets to Broome Street Castle’s as silent as Beckett, all desire to laugh wholly gone.Castle’s doorman receives the usual friendly greeting and then silence re-descends in the elevator. Given that it’s now close to ten (and even that’s a lot earlier than he expected, though he’d hoped that the delay would be for rather more pleasant reasons) Castle expects the loft to be dark, punctuated by occasional teen squeaks from Alexis’s room. He is therefore somewhat surprised when light floods out the door as he opens it. A moment later it’s clear why. Castle stops dead in the doorway.“Darling!”“Mother?”“Yes, darling. We closed a little early. The critics were simply vile.” Martha makes an expansive so-what-all-for-the-best gesture. “So I’m home. Isn’t that just absolutely spiffing?”Castle is distracted from the trailing thundercloud also known as Beckett just behind him.“Spiffing? You may have been born in 1930 but is that any reason to use the slang?”Martha tilts her nose in grave offence. “Your math is as appalling as your manners, Richard.” Beckett can’t help her strangulated cough. Martha, naturally, notices. “Katherine? How lovely.” – there’s a dramatic pause as Castle moves in and Beckett’s sling comes into view – “What happened?”Martha bustles over, full of extravagant sympathy and theatrical, if genuine, concern. Castle seizes the convenient opportunity.“Kate dislocated her shoulder so she’s staying here till her arm is better and usable again.”“Well, of course she will.”
Perfect. Some things he can rely on his mother for. Some very few.
“Katherine, you must treat our house” – he coughs meaningfully –“all right, Richard – as your own. I won’t hear of anything else.”Castle smirks infuriatingly at Kate, whose look of frustrated fury would have done credit to King Lear faced with Cordelia’s obduracy. For once, Hurricane Martha’s trail of havoc is playing right into his hands. Fortunately, Kate manages to clear her expression before Martha sees it, and returns a soft, polite answer. It’s as well Martha can’t read her thoughts. Martha could currently usefully star as the Christian in a modern reality version of throwing the Christians to the lions, which would be immensely satisfying. Though she might frighten the lions.“Kate’s already safely installed in the guest room, Mother.” Martha looks mildly disappointed by that news. Castle doesn’t enquire into that expression. He doesn’t need to.“I need to freshen up,” Kate says, calmly. Her gritted teeth are very well concealed, in the circumstances. “Excuse me, please.” The vitriolic look she casts Castle should have seared his eyebrows right off his face. She is going to kill him. She can’t even throw herself on the bed and pummel the pillows in rage, because it will hurt. When she gets the sling off she will shoot him. She’ll dismember him and dance on the shreds. She lies down frustratingly carefully and contemplates the virtue of screaming into one of the overly plump and luxurious pillows. She doesn’t need Castle to look after her in this platonic, semi-parental fashion. If they can’t have the sort of relationship she thought he wanted – that she wanted, when she’d managed to sort herself out, if she could ever manage to bring down her walls, if she could only tell the truth – then they should stick to being partners in the precinct and solving crime. They’re good at that.It’s only that she’d thought they could have been good at so much more. Downstairs, Castle is receiving a highly coloured and extensive account of the manifold evils of the Pittsburgh critics and the inadequacies of the rest of the cast.“Honestly, kiddo, not an ounce of acting ability between them. Hopeless.” She sighs tragically.“You must have felt right at home,” Castle says sardonically. Martha looks outraged.“The critics loved me,” she says with satisfaction.“And I’m sure you’ll treat me to every last snippet, Mother. But right now I need to go and check that Kate has everything she needs.”“Do give her my love, darling.” Pause. “I’m sure she’d appreciate a hug. You always did when you were hurt.” Castle’s just considering with some disbelief that last statement, implying, as it does, that Martha had had at least one maternal instinct, once, when she speaks again. “Of course, you could just kiss it better.” She quirks a perfectly plucked eyebrow.“Thank you for that interestingly impractical and medically nonsensical suggestion, Mother. However, I think Kate would prefer Tylenol.” He digs out the packet, ignoring his mother’s not-so-sotto-voce asides. They seem to be on her current favourite theme of you should kiss her, she’d like it. Castle has every intention of kissing Kate, at an appropriate time, but not with his mother around. He doesn’t need an audience. Especially not since, now that she’s off the good drugs, there’s a better than evens chance that he gets slapped.He wanders upstairs without listening to any further helpful commentary from his mother and taps on the guest room door. There’s a noise, which he chooses to interpret as Come in rather than Go away. He pushes the door almost shut behind him. Sound carries in the loft, and he doesn’t need his family eavesdropping.Kate is lying on her back on the bed staring into the blank white of the ceiling. This position is not helpful. Her hair is spread over the pillows – he likes it in this longer style. The sensory memory of washing and combing it slides over his fingers. The imaginary sensory memory of running his hands through it in his bedroom and his bed slithers down his synapses. The very real memory of doing exactly that in a dark alley and then knotting his fingers in her hair to hold her in place while he kissed her crashes down his nerves and pools precisely where it had that previous time.This was a mistake, the back of his mind says, in calm and reasonable tones. It goes entirely unheeded as Castle sits down on the edge of the bed.Kate continues staring at the ceiling.“I brought the Tylenol up for you.”“Thank you.” It oozes dull, tired pain.“Do you want some now?”“No, thank you.” More sub-sonic pain. It’s perfectly polite. She could be talking to anyone.“Will you want your hair washed, tomorrow?” Talk to me, Kate.“No, thank you. I’ll make a salon appointment. I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”“It’s no trouble.” That falls into a disbelieving silence. “Look at me, Kate.” She doesn’t. “Why did you sneak off home this morning?” She turns away, attempts to roll on to her side, forgetting the sling; hisses in pain. Bright liquid glistens momentarily in her eyes. Castle reaches out in sympathy, then pulls his hand back.“I’m fine. Doesn’t your mother want to talk to you? She’s been away for a week or two.”“No. Stop changing the subject. Why did you go home?”“I wanted my own bed,” Beckett says flippantly, locked down as tightly as she can manage. Castle’s patience snaps.“Stop lying to me, Kate.” It’s only when his lips snap shut on the hard T of her name and he sees the light-speed flash of agony across her face that he realises what he’s said. Apart from that one reaction, she doesn’t even quiver, wrapped so closely around her pain that there’s no room for anything else.“I’d like to get ready for bed now, please,” she says, as well-mannered as a debutante at her first ball. “Thank you for the Tylenol.” Beckett watches Castle retire, temporarily thwarted. If only I could stop lying to you. But I’m too scared to do that, and anyway you don’t care enough for me to make it worth the risk.Removing her make-up is remarkably easy. Her face is already wet. She doesn’t take the Tylenol, either. They don’t cure heartache. Overly plump and luxurious pillows muffle sound surprisingly well, she discovers. Beckett is woken by the noise of normal teenage morning. Well, normal if you’re Alexis. Every other teen in the world needs pried out their bed with a crowbar, and more so at the weekend. How Castle produced Alexis is a complete mystery. Especially considering Martha.On looking at her watch it’s not even eight thirty and there’s no reason at all to get up. Plenty not to, in fact, not least of which is that she wants to shower or bathe and only the first is possible while avoiding Castle. But she can’t find the plastic and a bath is soothing and anyway on reflection – and despite her lacerated heart – she has the uncomfortable voice of her conscience telling her that she is not behaving well at all and that in fact she has put Castle to considerably more trouble than she would have done had she simply stuck it out and not run away home. She becomes unpleasantly aware that she had let her violently hurt feelings dictate her behaviour rather than applying some common sense to the situation and simply stepping back while remaining at the loft. She buries her head in the pillows and tries to work out how to put this back to what Castle evidently wants: a work relationship where all a hug means is the equivalent of a feed-the-birds fist bump with the boys. Think, Kate.
Right. Stay here, quietly and tidily, don’t get in the way, go out in the daytime as much as possible and leave the family alone in the evening. In short, don’t get involved in their family life beyond normal, adult civility. That’ll bring this back to partners-at-work. First, though, she’ll need to apologise to Castle for the inconvenience. As long as she doesn’t have to explain. She stuffs her head under the pillows again. Under there, she doesn’t have to face the world.
Unfortunately, she can’t stay there for ever. When she hears the rumble of Castle talking, the sounds of Alexis replying, then the front door open and shut and discovers that it’s now after nine she reluctantly pries herself from the fortress of pillows and comforter and wraps herself in Castle’s all concealing robe, which has mysteriously migrated to this room without any input from her at all. The more covered up she is, the better, in this brave new world of work partners. Shame she doesn’t have access to the soma pills.Downstairs Castle is not in view, Martha is undoubtedly not up yet and there is no coffee left. Beckett doesn’t take any steps to change the last issue. She’ll ask Castle politely for the use of his bath and then go out. Plenty coffee bars in Manhattan. She taps on the study door.There’s no answer. A careful peek round the door reveals an absence of Castle. A tentative tap on the bedroom door followed by another careful peek also reveals an absence of Castle. In which case, Beckett thinks, he must have gone to another meeting, though she’s amazed that there are publishing meetings on Saturdays. Anyway, he’s out the way, so now is the very time to borrow his bathroom. If he isn’t here she can’t be getting in the way. Nor can she get into any embarrassing situations. His bathroom does, after all, have a lock. She employs it and starts to draw the bath.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Castle had stayed up rather too late, pretending to write. In reality he’d messed around with games and fan sites again: he’s doing far too much of that lately, but he’s lacking in inspiration and until some hits him he’d rather procrastinate than write badly. He’s then woken by Alexis making her breakfast, and since he’s awake and the alternative is lying in bed trying to work out what on earth is going on with Kate, which is not productive of either answers or happiness, he might as well get up. Even if it’s only just after eight.It turns out that Alexis has plans for the day, but Castle considers the silence of the loft and decides that now would be an excellent time to do some shopping for such essentials as food and drink, while no-one (he means Kate) seems to be awake. They leave together: Alexis to meet her friends (where do all these early-rising, clean-living teens come from, Castle wonders. It’s unnatural.) and Castle for the store.Shopping doesn’t take him long. Although it would have astonished Gina, Paula and certainly Kate, Castle is actually not nearly as chaotic, bumbling and disorganised as he pretends to be. It merely stops Paula and Gina making him do anything more than he absolutely has to. Kate – well. That’s a bit different. On meeting her, he’d almost immediately fallen into the pattern of being a bit comical, a bit of a bad boy, and a lot flirtatious, though he’s never concealed his intelligence. Generally, although he’s occasionally been very different when she’s needed him to be, it’s worked for him right up until the moment he kissed her in an alley. Around that point it stopped working for him very fast indeed. He managed to sit on the ensuing feelings of she will be mine right up till the bullet hit her.Now he really doesn’t know what to do. Kate’s single. Kate’s made it very clear that she’s a lot more interested than he’d known. But Kate is currently in a galaxy far, far away and whatever was and is happening in her mixed up head he’s profoundly screwed it up by trying to do the right thing. And of course, she’s lying to him. He still thinks that the fastest way to solve this would be to kiss her, now that she’s not drugged any more. Maybe when he gets back they can talk. Or something like that.His thinking has taken him home. The loft is still quiet, which at least means that his mother is still abed. He doesn’t remember leaving the study door open, but he really can’t be bothered with that triviality now. He is a bit surprised that Kate isn’t down by now, and drinking his excellent coffee. Still, he won’t disturb her. He puts the machine on to make another mugful for himself and finishes putting away his groceries.It’s at that point that Kate emerges from his study door, slightly damp around the edges and definitely soaked around the hair, swathed in his overlarge robe. She emits, entirely inadvertently he is sure, a horrified squeak on seeing him. If she hadn’t, she might just have managed to sneak past without him noticing. Probably not, though. He can sense the scent of her body wash at twenty paces.“Did you have a nice bath, Kate?” It’s not an entirely innocent question, though Castle’s tone is his usual enthusiastic-Labrador friendliness. Thoughts of Kate in baths are not good for his blood pressure. It tends to drop like a stone almost everywhere north of his belt.“I’m sorry. I would have asked you but you weren’t here. I couldn’t find the plastic to take a shower. I’ve tidied up.” Her voice is very quiet and apologetic. Every word fractures his heart. She’s just as closed off as last night. And she’s apologising for doing something he’dsuggested– nay, invited – that she do, as if she’s overstepped.“You didn’t have to do that.” Curiosity gets the better of him. “How did you manage to tidy up with one hand anyway? She doesn’t answer, lifts the un-slung shoulder and drops it again, a lopsided half shrug.“Want another coffee?” he offers up hopefully.“No, thank you.” It’s the same quietly apologetic tone. “I’ll go get dressed.” Which, Castle realises as she disappears up the stairs, is not at all the same as Not just yet but that would be good once I come back down. Well, he’ll fix that. She never refuses coffee, and if he makes her one she’ll sit and drink it. Provided his mother doesn’t appear, he can get this back on the right track. He puts a mug by the machine for her.About that point he also realises that she hasn’t – can’t have – had a first coffee, because she can’t operate his machine with two hands (it’s the only thing she can’t do, it seems) let alone one. And he hadn’t left any made for her. It looks as if she didn’t even try to make one. There wasn’t a mug out. The fissures of dread gape more widely around him.She’s uncomfortable here. The realisation is as precise and perfect as a flawlessly cut gem. The implications slice, scalpel sharp and just as painful, into him. She’s uncomfortable around him. He hasn’t worked out what that might mean, or why it should be so – surely his coming to bring her back makes it clear he wants her here, with him? – when she’s back, padding down the stairs, her driving, alpha personality completely gone. He would barely recognise this woman in the street. Well, of course he would. He couldn’t not recognise her. But she’s nothing like the woman he loves, the one who can’t be stopped by a nuclear bomb. Or a bullet through her chest. She’s got her coat and her purse. No.“I’ve got coffee for you.” He hasn’t, quite, but it’s dripping into the mug before he’s finished the sentence. She is not running off again. A very strange expression flickers over her face. It looks like unhappiness, interlaced with disbelief and discomfort: a tapestry of tension. Her eyes drop to the polished floor.“You shouldn’t have.” He doesn’t get a chance to answer that before she takes his breath away. “I shouldn’t have left yesterday without speaking to you. I’m sorry you were put to the trouble of coming after me. I won’t do it again.” She might as well be a child reciting her lesson, then promising to learn it better next time, to appease a disappointed parent.“Kate, stop this.” She pays no attention at all, as if he hadn’t spoken, as if what he’d said hasn’t registered, hasn’t moved the air to meet her ears.“I’ll get the sling off on Monday. I’ll be out your way by the evening.” Same tone. As if she’s in the way. (She’s not.) As if she doesn’t deserve to be here. (She does.) He’d heard that tone from her on Wednesday. And Thursday. And then he’d kissed her and then he’d stopped and done the right thing and then she’d gone home and now it looks like she’d planned to go out immediately without even having had a coffee or saying more than this flat, unhappy apology. What are you thinking, Kate? You should be here. All the time. “I’m going to go out: leave you all in peace. I’d have left you a note so you knew, but you’re back, so I can tell you in person. I’ll be back this evening.” What the hell? No, she will not be going out on her own all day and only coming back this evening. No. Fucking. Way.“Kate.” Finally, something gets through to her. She raises her eyes to him. It’s not reassuring. “Go and sit down and I’ll bring our coffee.” He’s sure her first instinct was to say no: her lips were already forming the N. But she doesn’t: she turns away and does what she’s told; puts her coat and purse down near the door first, and moves towards the couch. Which is also not at all reassuring, especially when she tucks herself into a corner in a posture which howls defensiveness and pain. He can’t even sit next to her, unless he’s prepared to take the risk that he can manage it without hurting her right shoulder or arm. She has quite deliberately ensured that the corner is on her left. Well, she’s miscalculated there. She never remembers how much bigger he is than she. Then again, he’s only used it twice in their entire acquaintance, once in an alley and once in an aircraft hangar. Maybe it’s time to use it again.He brings both coffee cups over, puts them on the table, and sits down as close as he can manage without touching her. She shrinks further into the corner, with another quiet, apologetic murmur, this time of thanks. He’s had enough of this. When she leans forward to take the coffee, he puts his arm along the back of the couch and waits.She doesn’t lean back, instead balances her elbow on her knee and hides her expression in her coffee mug. He supposes he should be grateful that she’s drinking it – grateful? When did he start being grateful for any small bone she throws him? No. This is not how it’s going to be. He is not getting sucked into gratefulness. She is going to tell the truth and they are going to put this on the footing it should have been on since she got shot instead of… of standing with him. And that does not involve gratefulness, on either part, nor does it include this apologetic I’m in the way attitude. He plucks the coffee mug out her hand and puts it out of her reach as she gasps in annoyance, and for the first time since he brought her back here there’s a reaction that sounds like Beckett, not some drained shadow who doesn’t seem able to muster a single eye roll. He’s almost relieved, until she slides back into the corner, wrapped back up in her shell. Oh no. Not happening. So not happening. His arm descends around her and he moves in close enough that she has no more room to manoeuvre. The last thing that Beckett had wanted was Castle home before she was finished bathing and fully dressed. But it had taken her far longer than she expected to wipe round the bath and clear up the drips on the floor and her wash and hair products. Still, she’s a guest, and she’s not going to cause inconvenience. She’ll leave it perfectly tidy, even with one arm. Seeing Castle domestically unpacking groceries left her with no room to escape. She’d even worked out that if she tried really hard she could leave a short note (though the less said about the neatness of the writing the better) simply saying that she’d be out all day so that she wouldn’t be any trouble to them. And now he’s here before she’d managed that and the day is all going wrong already. She escapes upstairs without committing to anything and comes back down with her coat and purse, ready to make her apologies and get out. She’ll work out what to do with herself in the first decent coffee bar she comes to, aided by caffeine. It will certainly involve her hairdresser. She desperately wants her hair properly washed. Rinsing it through with a hand-held shower, barely able to get the shampoo or conditioner in, does not do it for her.Apologising is as difficult as she’d thought it would be. Every word falls into a void where there’s no emotion, no reaction. He’s put a cup of coffee on for her and she can’t see that she can leave before drinking it. She’s been quite bad-mannered enough already. It’s just the same as him bringing coffee to the precinct or a crime scene. It’s just part of their working relationship. She’ll accept it in the same spirit. She wants to cry.Instead she does what she’s told. It’s easier than any other option, and certainly better than provoking a row which will lead to trouble. Don’t be troublesome, Kate. Castle’s doing you an enormous favour. She sits in the corner, sling outwards so she can’t knock it on the arm of the couch; not incidentally also making it into protection against those deceptively comforting, meaningless hugs. Feed the birds with Espo and Ryan, hug Beckett. Work partners. That’s what they are. That’s what he wants.She hides her expression behind her damp hair, falling heavily around her face, and drinks her coffee, trying to see how she can get out of this suffocatingly awful atmosphere and the claustrophobia of her own misery. She can’t break it by telling the truth: if she has to stay here till Monday, she can’t do it if she’s told the truth because then the atmosphere will be unbearable. He’ll want her to leave, but he won’t say so because his own conscience will force him to let her stay, and they’ll both know that it’s completely over.He’s taken her coffee away. He knows never to do that, and the gasp of ire that escapes her is instinctive. She’s about to react as she normally would when she remembers that this is his home and she is merely an uninvited guest, foisted upon him. She simply acquiesces to his action and retreats back to the corner, searching out the words to tell him that she’ll be out his way for the rest of the day, just like any weekend when she’s not on duty, when they don’t have a body. She doesn’t belong in his weekend family life.Now, she never will. The large arm curling around her and the wide body moving closer is not welcome. Well. That’s not true at all, is it? It would be very welcome if it actually meant anything. He’s noticed her quietness and he’s trying to cheer her up. Any moment now he’ll tell her some silly story about something, anything, or produce a mad theory about the last perp. Just like he does at work. He doesn’t need to. This isn’t work and he doesn’t need to try to cheer her up.“It’s time I went out, Castle. If I’m going to get to my salon appointment I’ll need to go now.” She starts to reorganise herself to stand up.“I’ll take you.” Castle is perfectly sure that there is no salon appointment. Apart from anything else, unless she booked it yesterday, which she’s already admitted (without realising it) that she hadn’t, it’s too early for her to have done it. He’s not acquainted with any salon which opens before ten. He’s also not acquainted with any salon which cuts hair well (and Kate surely goes to one of those) which has randomly available appointments on a Saturday.“No, thank you. You’ve got things to do. It’s not like there’s a body to deal with.” She starts to rise.“Sit back down.” Castle’s tone is firm.“I have to go.”“No, you don’t. There is no salon appointment. There is no reason for you to be out all day. There’s no reason for you to go out at all except that you don’t seem to want to be here. How often do I have to tell you that it’s no trouble you being here before you believe me?” He pauses. She hasn’t sat back down. So he stands up too. She’s still in flats, and he looms over her, five full inches taller than she and broader by more than that. She is still far too thin after the summer, but it’s better than it was. He’s about to use all that physical advantage to do something that will either pay off in spades or get him killed.He puts his arm round her and marches her into the study, shutting the door behind him. And then he forces her face up to look at him with a big hand under her chin and kisses her hard, sliding his hand round to the nape of her neck and locking his fingers in her still-wet hair. Just like in the alleyway, she opens for his forceful invasion and he takes instant possession: holding her softly enough not to hurt, tightly enough that she can’t mistake his feelings for friendship. He is going to disabuse her of this wrongheaded idea that he doesn’t want her here and the only way he can see to do that is by showing her how much he does. It’s perfectly, beautifully clear from her response that she wants him too.When he thinks that she’s got the point, he lifts off her mouth. “You staying here is not a trouble. You are not going out all day on your own. If you want to go out we’re both going. You are not going home on Monday. The doctors said you’d need help for a week after the sling was off and you’re staying here till then. You’re not even allowed back to the precinct till Wednesday. So stop apologising for being here. I want you to stay here till you’re better.” He holds her gently against him.He’s just congratulating himself, possibly for not being dead, when it all collapses around him again.“We can’t do this. You can’t do this,” she says, miserably. “We’re work partners. Stop trying to pretend you feel anything more. I know what you really believe. You showed me yesterday. You’re just trying to make the next few days more comfortable by making me think you didn’t mean it. You didn’t think I would believe that, do you? You showed me what you wanted and it isn’t this.” She’s pulling away from him with every word, study door opening, halfway to the outer door, snatching up her coat and purse clumsily with her left hand: most of the way to running. She always runs, he thinks bitterly. She never waits for an explanation. The sharp slap of the outer door closing behind her cracks through the loft as if it had landed on his face: the harsh blow of failure.
Gone. Again.
The elevator arrives blessedly quickly. Beckett has no idea how long she can preserve her control, but she grits her teeth and manages to wave an entirely faked cheerful goodbye to Castle’s doorman. She walks down and picks up the subway at Canal Street to South Ferry. She’s going to sit on the Staten Island Ferry until she can work out what to do with herself all day. Maybe looking at the cold grey of the Hudson will calm her down. She’s entirely forgotten about the salon.
It does. There’s no sunshine, so there are no startling gleams of light to spook her. It’s not vacation, and it’s not the weekday rush, so there aren’t many people moving randomly to surprise her. Nothing to trigger her ever-increasing PTSD.Detective training has taught Beckett to trust suspects’ – or witnesses’ – instinctive reactions, not the ones they’re trying to convey. Castle’s instinctive reaction was to push her away. She can’t trust the first couple of days: she was too doped to know right from left. Yes, he’d started it. But then he’d pushed her away and told her she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t kiss him.It never occurs to her that him pushing her away wasn’t in any way an instinctive reaction. It also never occurs to her that Castle might have been concerned about her ability to consent under the influence of the Lortab. All she sees is that he only wants to be work partners: that she’d misunderstood and she’s missed any chance they might have had somewhere between a bullet and now. Suddenly, it’s almost a consolation that her own lies would have ruined it anyway. Can’t miss what you’ve never had, Kate.She curls into her coat and watches the river flow by. The river flows, it flows to the sea, wherever that river goes, that’s where I wanna be. If only she could be that easy rider. The rest of the song slides unbidden and unwanted into her head. Take me from this road, to some other town. All he wanted was to be free, and that’s the way it turned out to be. She doesn’t like that song any more. She sniffs defiantly and blows her nose. Again. The song doesn’t leave her head till she’s off the ferry. It’s just as well her mascara is waterproof.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
At least the Hudson has been sufficiently placid for her to see what there is to do on Staten Island. Rather more than she’d imagined, in fact. She can be a solo tourist for another day. And maybe she’ll call Lanie: meet her for dinner. In which case manners dictate that she should tell Castle that she won’t be back for dinner. She texts accordingly, before she either thinks better of it or calls Lanie. Even if Lanie’s not there, or not available because she’s continuing her on-off booty call relationship with Espo, she won’t be going back to the loft till late evening.She takes the bus from the ferry terminal to Snug Harbour and spends the remains of the morning looking around the gardens, stopping now and then to sit on a bench and forcibly not thinking about Castle. He hasn’t even acknowledged her text. It confirms her views. She gets lunch locally, and while she’s sitting over that, picking it over desultorily and awkwardly and not really eating at all, calls Lanie.“Hey, Lanie,” she says, very normally.“Girlfriend! Where are you?”“Being a tourist. Seeing New York. Eating a nice lunch.” Lanie growls, with a heavy hint of answer-the-question.“Where are you, Kate?”“Staten Island.” Lanie chokes.“What-the-hell-you-doin’-there?”“I told you, being a tourist. It’s nice. Peaceful.” Lanie is not in the slightest deceived, it appears.“Lonely,” Lanie says with some emphasis. Beckett gets the feeling that calling Lanie may not have been such a good plan after all. “Why are you there on your own when Writer-Boy would be happy to escort you anywhere you want?” There’s a short, unhappy silence. When Beckett speaks again, it’s in tones which don’t invite questions, or sympathy.“He’s a work partner, Lanie. That’s all.” Lanie is not, regrettably, put off. Nor does she understand the message Beckett is trying to deliver. Being Shut up about this, Lanie. I don’t wanna talk.“Don’t be stupid, girl. If he was a work partner why’s he chasing round making sure you’re staying with him?” Beckett doesn’t realise the implication of that statement, either, being that Castle has spoken to Lanie about her.“Gates ordered him to. Simple. If he wants to stay chasing murders he’s got to do what she says.”“Yeah, right. You just tell yourself that, girlfriend. How stupid can you be about Castle?”Beckett’s misery-fuelled temper snaps on the instant, breaking on the wheel of her pain.“Lanie, butt out. Castle’s the one who wants to be work partners. He’s made that perfectly clear. I don’t want to hear anything more about it. Save your matchmaking for yourself. You might have more luck.” She stabs the phone off. It rings again almost immediately. She doesn’t even look at the caller ID before she turns it off entirely. Back in Manhattan Lanie stares at the screen of her phone as it goes to Kate’s voicemail again. No point trying again. Lanie knows Kate, and knows exactly what she’s done. She’s turned her phone off completely. Shit. She’s mishandled that one, for sure. It hadn’t occurred to her, either talking to Writer-Boy the other day or to Kate before now, that Kate might truly believe that Castle doesn’t care about her any more. Lanie’s really got that one wrong. How has she, Kate, managed to get to that conclusion?Lanie’s considerable curiosity and sharp intelligence get to work faster than the Seven Dwarves can sing Hi-Ho. Castle and Esposito aren’t the only ones who’ve noticed that Kate hasn’t been wholly right since she came back to Manhattan, and while Kate had taken Lanie out for dinner and drinks (soft drinks, in Kate’s case, which in itself should have made Lanie worry more: Kate may not drink excessively but it’s not like her to turn down even a small glass of wine when out to dinner) very shortly after she’d returned, to explain exactly why she’d run off for three months without a word except to say that she was taking extended sick leave; Lanie hadn’t been satisfied with that explanation at all. Esposito hasn’t shed any light on the subject either, but he’s inadvertently revealed enough for Lanie to be sure Kate’s struggling with, at the very least, mild PTSD. Still, Kate told Lanie that she’s seeing a shrink, so Lanie is, for once, content that Kate’s doing the right thing.At least, she had been content. Right up till five minutes ago. Now she’s massively discontented. Discontent, though, makes her brain think faster. O-kay. Castle wouldn’t kiss Kate because she was drugged up. Very moral, but in this case pretty much the stupidest thing he could have done. Surely he could have managed that a bit better? It’s not as if he doesn’t know how. But Lanie is confused, which is not a feeling she appreciates when it comes to her friends. How come Kate is so sure Castle suddenly doesn’t care when everyone around him knows that he’s been head-over-heels in love with her for years? Castle had said he wouldn’t kiss her. Hold on. Lanie realises that she hadn’t asked Castle the obvious question. Slap yourself upside the head, girl. How did Castle know Kate wanted kissed?Lanie squeals like a teen fan girl and grins like a sabre-toothed tiger. Kate must have kissed him first. Her smile drains off her face. Shit. Kate kissed Castle and – for entirely good but hopelessly dumb motives – Castle wouldn’t play. Shit. Kate’s been treating Castle like an unexploded bomb since she got back anyway.Oh fuck. Lanie puts her extensive knowledge of her friend together with her deductions and rapidly comes to some conclusions that tell her that this disaster is worse than the Great Train Wreck of 1918. Kate knows she treated Castle appallingly over the summer – Lanie hadn’t scrupled to tell her so, either, not that it had really been necessary – and Kate has been very cautious around him ever since. Lanie thinks that Kate is not at all sure that Castle hasn’t just decided that she’s not worth the effort. If only, Lanie thinks further, Kate had heard Castle in the cemetery she’d know that however she behaved after her near-death he would forgive her. (Quite amazing. Lanie wouldn’t have forgiven that behaviour. No sirree.) Actually, Kate currently – based on today’s call – is absolutely, immovably sure that Castle no longer cares.So, Kate finally did something right and kissed Castle – at exactly the wrong moment. He thought it was the drugs talking (or kissing) and wouldn’t play. She’s interpreted that to support her massive post-summer insecurity about his feelings. And now it’ll take a bulldozer to move her conviction that he doesn’t care. What’ll Caterpillar supply on next day delivery? No wonder she’s running. Her appalling pride won’t let her stay around anyone when she thinks she’s been rejected – especially not since Lanie is unpleasantly sure that Kate now feels she threw herself at Castle like one of those squealing fans at his launch parties. Oh, Lordy, what a mess.Lanie leaves her thoughts to fester for a while. A bit of helpfulness (or meddling) wouldn’t hurt, but some planning would be useful. And then a chat with Writer-Boy. Back on Staten Island, Beckett is determinedly swallowing her lunch, forcing the bites down her choked throat. She has to eat. She’s still too light, and she’s got to get back to fighting weight. Even if she doesn’t want to eat at all.She spends the afternoon trailing round the Chinese garden, which she likes, and the contemporary art gallery, which she doesn’t. But she likes the latter better than the idea of going back to the loft. Finally, when it’s a choice between leave voluntarily or be frogmarched out by the staff, she meanders miserably back to the ferry terminal and sails back to Manhattan. It’s getting dark, and cooler. She shivers, and tries not to look at the shifting reflections of the Manhattan lights in the water. She knows what they are. It’s what they aren’t that’s ambushing her every moment. She’s only too glad to get off and take the subway back up into SoHo to find somewhere to eat.She checks her phone when she emerges. Two missed calls from Lanie, no message. That’s it. Clearly Castle got her message and is quite content with the arrangement. She finds a small Italian restaurant where she can have pasta which she can eat with one hand and some wine. It occurs to her that she hasn’t needed any painkillers all day. That would be great, if she didn’t suspect that it’s because the pain in her heart is drowning out all the physical pain.She eats her dinner as slowly as possible, orders dessert, eats that, orders coffee, drinks that, has a refill. By the time she’s done it’s after nine. She reluctantly settles the check and drags herself back to the loft. When Beckett fled Castle was left staring at the door. Eventually he stops that unproductive act and clears up the coffee mugs. That mundane task leaves a lot of space in his head for thinking. His first thought is amazingly, childishly, happy. Kate’s sweet on him. That, at least, was obvious from her reaction. It’s just as well the first thought was happy, because none of the rest are. He’d been sure he could convince her if he only kissed her properly; if he only kissed her when she wasn’t doped. He’d been sure that she would believe him, then, that she’d feel the truth in his body, in his lips, in his arms.She doesn’t believe him at all. She only believes that he doesn’t want her; because that’s what he showed her. He doesn’t know how to fix that.Some time later his phone chirps. When he reads Kate’s text his desolation is complete. He doesn’t answer. There doesn’t seem any point. He hasn’t the faintest idea what to do now. He’d been so sure kissing her would work. Now all he seems to have is the memory of her in his arms and the acid burn of the disbelief and pain in her voice. You showed me what you wanted and it isn’t this. No. It isn’t that. He didn’t want that.He wanted so much more.A quiet lunch later – quiet on Castle’s part, his mother doesn’t stop talking for an instant and for the first time Castle understands why Kate tells him shut up, Castle on a regular basis – he returns to his study and contemplates the walls. Nothing happens except a monumental failure to win at any computer game at all until mid-afternoon, when his phone rings.He knows it’s not Kate because he’d programmed a ringtone for her specially to irritate her. My Girl. The Temptations version. She winces every time he reminds her, and then she normally aims for his ear. Ryan and Esposito just snigger, and Alexis usually sighs parentally.It’s Lanie. She doesn’t seem to be in a happy mood.“What the hell have you done to my girl?”“Nothing. We had this conversation. I didn’t do anything.” “Yeah, I remember. You were a perfect gentleman.” Her tone would carve rock. “You stupid dumbass idiot man.” And now she’s simply angry. “Do you know what you did? Do you?”“Why don’t you just tell me, Lanie, instead of yelling?” Castle says bluntly. Then he has a thought. “You spoke to Kate. Where is she?”“Staten Island,” Lanie says, with an underlying tenor of not far enough to protect me from her temper.“She yelled at you, didn’t she?” he asks.“No,” Lanie replies, somewhat evasively. “She did. She got angry and then she cut you off at the knees. What did you say to her?” His tone is gently enquiring, borrowed from Beckett’s palette of interrogation tones. He can see Lanie’s resigned shrug as if she were there with him.“Told her not to be stupid.” Castle fills in the rest of that sentence with about you and understands perfectly. “Then she said that you were the one who wanted to be work partners.” Her voice rises again. “So what the hell did you do to my girl, Castle? We all know how you feel. We were all there when you told the world. How come she thinks exactly the opposite?”“If you find out, you tell me.” says Castle acidly. “Seeing as you’re her best friend maybe you can make sense of what she’s thinking. I sure can’t.” He drops the harsh tones abruptly. “I thought… I thought I could show her she was wrong. She kept apologising for even being here. Kate apologising for that – it’s just wrong. Against Nature. Like a two headed sheep.” Lanie snickers, despite the subject.“Well, somehow you’ve convinced her you don’t care. Congratulations, Writer-Boy. She thinks you wanna be work partners. So you better find some way to either sort it out or cut loose.”“I’m not leaving.”“You’d better sort this out, then, Writer-Boy. ‘Cause if you don’t you might be leaving in a box, if I can’t get to Espo before he gets to you.”On which unfairly threatening note Lanie cuts the call, leaving Castle no happier than when it began. He knew what the problem was. It’s simply that the only solution he could think of hasn’t worked. He forgot to ask Lanie if Kate was still having dinner with her, though it didn’t sound like it. He looks at Kate’s earlier text again. It’s horribly polite. Please don’t expect me for dinner. I have made arrangements so as not to inconvenience you. I won’t be late. Beckett.The only good thing to come out of this whole spectacular debacle is that Castle is inspired to a particularly dark chapter of potential usefulness in Nikki Four during which Nikki and Rook quarrel violently over a seemingly trivial issue. Castle knows exactly where that’s coming from, but he’s so pleased by the quality of his writing that he keeps it, despite the rather-too-accurate depiction of how he feels. He can always tone that down later, in editing. By the time he’s finished it’s time to make dinner. He’d been planning lasagne, when he shopped, but since there’s no need to cater for Kate (he catches a hurt breath before it escapes) he’ll do a chicken dish. He spends the next little while losing himself in the discipline of good cookery and making sure he concentrates on his chopping. Lack of concentration is likely to lead to lack of fingers, which is not helpful for a writer.Dinner passes off with the aid of Martha’s theatrical style of description, giving rise to occasional sardonic comments from Castle and impressed ones from Alexis. (surely she’s learned that her grandmother exaggerates by now?) Kate’s absence is successfully and untruthfully attributed to meeting Lanie and dining with her. Martha swallows it wholesale. Castle’s not entirely convinced that Alexis does, but he’s not inclined to enquire. No point prodding a sleeping lion.Some time after nine, when Castle’s settled down with the remains of the pleasant white wine they’d had with dinner – or the third of the bottle that was left after his mother had refilled her glass – there’s a quiet knock on the door. It has to be Kate. Who, Castle suddenly remembers, doesn’t have a key. She’d given it back the day she’d found her new apartment, and in those days that made perfect sense: not an insult or a rejection but a sensible course of action. He should have found her it again. But then, he’d thought that he’d be going about with her, so it wouldn’t have mattered.He opens the door.“Hey.”“Thank you.” Hell. It’s the same, quiet, I-don’t want to be in your way tone as when she left. He takes her purse from her and slides her coat from her shoulders – shoulder – before she can object or evade him. He ensures that he strokes her frame gently – lovingly – as he does. It has no apparent effect at all.“Come and have some wine. I hate drinking alone.” He grins, the same happy expression he’d have used before the summer. “After all, I’ve got the example of my mother to worry me.” There’s a very tiny smile. Well, quirk of lips. Maybe that’s the way to do this. “C’mon. You can’t let me turn into my mother.”“I thought that was daughters, not sons?” Kate looks at him sceptically. It’s almost normal. If only she would come and sit down. But… she hasn’t run away upstairs. Yet. And she hasn’t taken her purse and coat from him. Yet. He can do something about that. He puts both down near the couch and rapidly produces a wine glass for her. He waggles it enticingly, puts it down and fills it. There’s a swift flash of uncertainty, then something that looks depressingly like polite resignation to the inevitable.“Thank you,” she murmurs unemotionally, and comes to sit down. She doesn’t see another option that involves behaving like a civil, rational adult. One extended incident of behaving like a tantrumming child is quite enough. It’s about that point that she notices that she has no option but to sit with her sling to the far side of Castle. That was sneaky of him: putting her glass there. Almost as soon as she’s thought that she shakes it out her mind. It’s got nothing to do with sneakiness, because he’s got no reason to be sneaky. It’s just like a dozen other times when she’s been here about a case and they’ve had a civilised glass of wine and talked it over.Castle preserves a blandly pleasant expression and resists an urge to bounce happily. He sits down – close, but apparently not too close – and collects his wine glass. He’s just opening his mouth on a variation on how was your day, what did you do? – as opposed, say, to what did you say to Lanie? – when his mother swishes down the stairs in an eye-wateringly multi-coloured kaftan. He blinks rapidly to avoid being blinded by the fluorescent glare.“Katherine, how lovely. Did you have a nice evening with Dr Parrish?” Castle almost misses the look of complete incomprehension flicking through Kate’s eyes.“I had a nice evening, thank you.” Ah, Kate. Not quite a lie. Also very unlikely to be the whole of the truth. She’s sipping her wine. How to hide your thoughts in one easy lesson. Kate should write a book on that subject. After all, she’s a world expert. Unless drugged, says a little voice in his head. He squishes it back down. Drugging people is wrong. Though since doing the right thing was also wrong, it seems whatever he does he can’t win. Well, he can. One way or another, he’s going to get her. This is not helping.“Well, darlings” – Kate’s wince is palpable but fortunately not visible – “I’m off out. Time to paint the town.” There’s a soft, tired, sigh of relief next to Castle.“I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time, Mother. Please try not to pay for the bar bills of the whole of Manhattan’s acting community on my credit card.”“Pshaw,” ejaculates Martha, clearly still in her Thirties role. “You have no faith in me, Richard. I never pay for my own drinks.”“No, just everyone else’s.” Martha sniffs offendedly and swishes out in true Grande Dame style. Castle takes a reassuringly large gulp of wine to recover, or possibly to blot out the likely level of his mother’s bar bill.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The loft is, somehow, more relaxed with Martha gone. Or possibly, Beckett thinks, it’s just the effect of some more wine, dulling the situation into merely a pleasant evening with Castle after work. Or at least making it possible for her to get through it without too much upset. She can’t think of anything to say, so she stays quiet, sipping her wine slowly and hoping that Castle won’t ask anything difficult. Two days. Two days and then the sling is off and she can go home. Whatever Castle said about staying longer. She simply is not going to remain here after that. This needs to get back to a good working relationship. With the emphasis firmly on working. She flinches at the thought.Castle notices Kate’s small movement away from him and her withdrawal into herself. A few days ago – even yesterday - he was hurt that she’d been lying to him. She still is lying, but seeing the way in which she’s drawn her horns in and locked down because she thinks he doesn’t want her, he’s a lot less hurt and a lot more determined. He can deal with an awful lot if he’s sure that Kate cares for him, and now he is. It’s amazing how knowing that can make him so much less stressed. Of course, he still has to work out how to get her back to realising that he cares for her, and – no less difficult – she’ll need to admit her lies. And so will he need to admit some things. He’s not lied, though. Small consolation. He’s not lied, but Beckett will think of it the same way as if he had. He’s omitted crucial information. He’s taking a crucial decision for her because he’s not telling her what he knows; depriving her of the right to decide for herself. And he isn’t telling her any of it. Oh hell this is suddenly complicated, even by the standards of complicated that he’s become used to in this relationship.
So. He needs to ‘fess up. She needs to ‘fess up. And he needs to convince her that he still cares just as much as ever, and that she should be his, and vice versa. There has to be a proper order to do this that will bring them out in the right place. He simply has to find it.
He sloshes down the remains of his glass of wine and refills it, offering Kate some more first, which she declines. Hmmm. She’s unnervingly close to the bottom of her glass, and he is positive that she’ll depart for her room as soon as she finishes. Unless, of course, he does something to stop her. Time to take another chance. Carefully, though.He moves a little closer. Kate, as expected, unobtrusively slides sideways. He slides after her. She slides further – and finds the end of the couch in the way. He slides far enough that he’s touching her thigh with his. Then he puts his arm round her and listens with some amusement to something that comes out as very nearly a Beckett growl of irritation.“What are you doing?” But she hasn’t relaxed at all. That was definitely not the plan. She was supposed to relax.“Hugging you,” he says, deliberately happily. “You look like you could use a hug.” Another nearly-growl. The tension in her stiffening frame rises.“You don’t need to. It’s not like we’ve had a nasty case.” And back to quiet resignation, without any drop in tension at all.“Yes, I do. You look tired. I’m supposed to stop you doing too much with that arm.”“I don’t think anyone meant hugging me.” She tries to pull away. Castle isn’t having that. He tucks Kate in tighter, carefully avoiding the sling. Conveniently, that means that he’s dropped his hand from her shoulder to her waist. Inconveniently, she’s suddenly even more horribly tense under his encircling arm. He eases off, and she relaxes marginally. Seems like this is not going to be a good moment to push his point.“See? All better.” He moves his arm up to the back of the couch, away from her. Kate relaxes a little more. That’s depressing. It’s even more depressing when she stands up.“Night, Castle.” He pouts at her.“I haven’t finished my wine. You’re supposed to be protecting me from following in my mother’s footsteps. How are you going to do that if you’re asleep?”“You’re a big boy, Castle. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” She only realises what she’s just said when he smirks slowly at her. She’s perfectly certain she’s blushing. Definitely time to leave.“You’re no fun,” he grins. She preserves what she thinks is a bland, unbothered face; covering a sharp stab of upset. No, she isn’t any fun. They can have fun catching killers together. That’s the deal. Nothing more.“Nope. Night.” She trudges to the stairs and up to bed. All the time she’s washing and getting ready for bed she’s thinking alternately how nice a hug would have been if only it had meant anything at all and how much she shouldn’t get used to it. And, of course, that she shouldn’t let herself get into these situations when he doesn’t know the truth. Two days. Not even two whole days. Just tomorrow, really. She can deal with one more day. Especially if she goes out for most of it.Castle stares into the remnants of his wine and wonders why he feels like he’s going backwards with Kate. Now she isn’t even comfortable with a short, mostly asexual hug. Nor was her reaction to his joking reassuring. She looked hurt by it, not amused. He retires before anything more can go wrong with the day. On current performance, he’ll be hit by a small meteorite falling through his window.Or, of course, if it’s things going wrong he wants, he could just tell her what he’s been hiding for almost a month, and try to have a discussion about that. Maybe if she sees that he’s not going to hide it from her any more, then she won’t hide from him. Maybe if he’s open now, the month of silence won’t matter. Maybe if she kicks off about it he can cure that by telling her he knows she lied too.Maybe this is an appalling idea. He simply doesn’t have a better one. They have to talk. Somehow, some way, they have to talk. The next day isn’t really any better. Kate borrows the bath, tidies the bathroom before Castle can intervene – breaking down a locked door isn’t something he’s good at – and declines coffee before he even thinks about putting it on. Then she goes right ahead and improves the shining hour.“I’ll get out your way now. See you after dinnertime, Castle.” She’s got her coat on while he’s still flapping his lips wordlessly. It galvanises him into action, if not words. He stands in front of her, while he tries to find the right words. She goes left. He goes right. She goes right. He goes left. Repeat a couple more times. Castle suddenly snickers, reaches out, catches her waist and twirls her round in a rather amended waltz hold: right arm round her waist, left on her shoulder.“One two three, one two three,” he hums, smiling, and twirls her right back into the study where she has a choice between sitting down or staying in Castle’s arms. It’s all happened so fast that her head is still twirling round – or the room is – before she realises that she’s been diverted.“That’s better,” he says happily, and gently pushes her into sitting down. “Now, do you want a coffee?”“No, thank you. I want to go out.”“Let me get my coat too, then.”“You’re not coming.” Castle looks squarely at her, suddenly serious.“Yes, I am. You’re not going to avoid me by going out. I told you, you’re not going out all day on your own without me.”“I don’t want you with me. I was fine without you yesterday and I’ll be fine today. I wouldn’t normally see you at the weekend if we don’t have a case and I don’t see any reason to change that. You do what you usually do and I’ll do what I usually do. Just like normal.” Castle sits down on the arm of the chair and clamps his hand over her wrist. “I want to come out with you. You liked it fine when we went to Ellis Island. Together. So what’s changed now?”“We both know that I was doped and you felt sorry for me, so you thought up a plan to take my mind off it. Now I’m not doped so you don’t need to worry. My shoulder doesn’t even hurt any more, and the sling comes off tomorrow. Back to normal, Castle.” She gathers her nerve. “Just what you wanted, me all better and everything back to how it was.”“No, it is not.” It’s not clear whether it’s not what he wanted or not back to how it was. Or both.“Don’t make this more difficult than it already is, Castle. Haven’t all your observations taught you that instinctive reactions are always the most telling? You made your point, and that’s fine.”Castle bares his teeth in a feral grimace that bears only a tenuous relationship to a grin. “Instinctive reactions are always the most telling, are they?”“Yes,” spits Beckett. “So don’t give me all this bullshit about wanting to come with me today. You want to come with me to the murders and find out the stories. Work partners. That’s fine with me too.”“Really?” says Castle in a quietly interested tone. “That’s what you want?”“Yes.” Because that’s what’s on offer. Takes two to tango, and since she’s obviously not a desirable dance partner she’ll quit the dance hall sooner than be a wallflower.“Liar.” He says it perfectly calmly: an irrefutable truth. Kate doesn’t react at all. “Let’s just talk about your instinctive reactions. Where should I start, Kate? With you snuggling into me and murmuring my name when I put you to bed? With you kissing me? With you wearing my t-shirt and not much else? With you asking me to kiss you again and pulling me in when you were asleep? Which of those qualifies as a working relationship? It doesn’t seem much like a working relationship to me. It seemed like you wanted something more.”The colour is draining from Beckett’s face. Her voice remains controlled and cool, but Castle can feel the biting tension in her wrist and hand. “I was doped. You were not.” There’s a clear implication of so my reactions weren’t reliable. But yours were. “The drugs wore off. Back to normal. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.” Oh fuck. This is all falling apart, exactly in the way he had believed it might. It’s not going to work.Castle decides that if this route isn’t working, it’s time to rip the scabs off the wounds of her lies. She’s not going to believe him if he says I don’t want a working relationship, I want you, so he might as well force some honesty and then tell her that it doesn’t matter, that he doesn’t care that she lied then, as long as she tells the truth now and then believes in him.“So when were you intending to tell me you heard every word in the cemetery and never forgot anything?” It’s instantly clear that he’s made a fatal mistake.He’d thought she was white before. Now she’s corpse-like, staring at him through dull, deadened eyes; not a hint of personality remaining in her face. When she finally swallows convulsively, then speaks, her voice is utterly lifeless.“I should have guessed that you knew.” She pauses, breathes in harshly, starts to stand. Castle’s grip prevents her rising. Her voice doesn’t rise, doesn’t change. “Take your hand away. The game’s over. The charades are done. I understand perfectly. I lied to you in the hospital because it was easier than telling the truth and dealing with your feelings when I couldn’t deal with my own life. Now you’ve found out, before I had the courage to tell you, and that’s why you pushed me away, because I lied to you. You’re a really good actor, Castle, but you don’t need to act any more. You don’t need to pretend that you care.”He tries to speak, but she rolls right over him. “Don’t say it. Don’t lie to me. Isn’t one of us lying enough? Just let me go home.” He drops his hand from her arm. “It’s up to you whether you still come to the precinct. We’ll still want you there,” she says as she stands up. She sounds as if she doesn’t expect him. There’s not a single hitch in her emotionless voice as she carries on. “I’ll call you when a body drops. You can decide what you want to do then.” She’s utterly closed down as she finishes.“I wouldn’t have forgiven me either.” It sounds like a judgement.“I’m going home now. Please will you lift my suitcase down?” He half-shakes his head. “If you won’t, I will.” He nods, silent.She walks out the study, greets Martha with a steady voice and a pleasant smile, and goes up the stairs. She doesn’t hesitate, or look back down. Her self-control is absolute. At least it’s all in the open now. No more lies. She’ll be home in less than an hour. She enters the guest room, takes off the sling, and starts to pack up her wash things. It’s only one day early: she can do without it now. She needn’t watch Castle lift down the suitcase, all she has to manage is for him to take it down the stairs when she’s done. One hour. That’s all.One hour, and then she can start on the rest of her life. Castle doesn’t follow Kate for a moment, hearing her greeting his mother as if she hadn’t just pulled down the temple on top of herself. He’s just watched her destroy herself on her own integrity because she won’t even admit the chance that she’s wrong about his reactions. I wouldn’t have forgiven me either. That’s it, isn’t it? She can’t forgive herself, and she can’t imagine that anyone else could either.He forgives her. He’d forgiven her before he’d even been sure she’d lied.He follows Kate upstairs, taps on her door and enters without waiting; hoping he’ll find some emotion breaking the permafrost of her control. He can hear her putting away her wash kit.“Mother will ask why you’re leaving, you know.”“So you can explain that the sling’s off and I’ve gone home. Or whatever you like. Tell her the truth, if you want.” There’s no intonation, or hesitation, or emotion, in her voice. “Please would you lift my case down.” He does as she asks. There’s no mileage in refusal or contradiction here and now: she’ll only do it herself. He swings it down and waits. When she exits the en-suite it takes him a moment to realise that the sling is off, lying forlornly on the bed.“You can’t have that off.”“Leave it, Castle. It’s not your problem.” At least she hasn’t said It’s fine. She’s starting to put everything away: neat, precise packing. Every so often there’s a very tiny, suppressed hiss of pain. Kate ignores it. Just like she’s ignoring Castle, leaning on the wall and watching her intently, waiting for the moment she breaks.“I’ve known you were lying since Tuesday. Do you think I would have brought you back here on Friday if that made the slightest difference to me?”“Don’t, Castle. Don’t tell me comforting lies. At least leave me the dignity of some honesty about how you felt.” She breathes slowly, in and out, in and out; the way she’d learned over the long months of pain. “It would never have worked, anyway. I’d never have been able to bring my walls down to let you in. I was wrong when I said I could.” And breathe some more, and don’t admit the truth. No point in admitting the truth, that your walls were just about to fall.“I want to go home now.” She shuts the case with a sharp click, a metallic scrape as the zip closes, punctuation of the thin-stretched silence. “Please will you take this downstairs for me. I don’t want to run the risk that I damage my shoulder any more.”He hears, steel-sharp, I don’t want to stay here any more.“And if I don’t? If I tell you I want you to stay here? If I tell you it doesn’t matter that you lied?”“Forget it. Actions speak louder than words, Castle. Your actions didn’t lie, and now I know why. I never expected anything different once you knew the truth.” She doesn’t say once I told you the truth. She never got the chance to bite that bullet. “Please take it down for me. I can manage from there. Your doorman will hail me a cab.”Castle says nothing about that. This is not the place to have a discussion about any matter at all. Too many interested ears. He picks up the suitcase and takes it downstairs. Then he calls his car service and arranges for a town car. Finally he picks up his own coat.“Darling, where are you going? And why have you got a suitcase?”“Kate miscounted. She can take the sling off today, so I’m taking her home.” He can’t help the slight edge on the last words. His mother raises her brows.“I thought you said she was staying here?”“She was, until she was better. Now she’s better, so she wants to be back in her own home.” His mother looks sharply at him. Castle returns a look that says very clearly Do not say a word, Mother. It has as much effect as it usually does.“What have you done, Richard?”“Castle has done nothing,” Beckett says politely as she comes downstairs. Fortunately, Martha doesn’t see Castle’s wince at that, as she transfers her attention to Beckett. “He’s been a perfect host, but now the sling is off and I can go home. I was only ever staying here while it was on. Now I can use my arm again I’ll be fine.” That lying, destructive fine again. “Thank you for your hospitality.”She moves to collect her case. Castle forestalls her by picking it up himself. “I’ll bring it down.”“You don’t have to. I can manage. It’s got wheels.”“Don’t be silly, Katherine. You should always let men carry your case. It makes them feel needed.” Beckett shrugs dismissively where Martha can’t see her. Still, she’s not going to provoke a scene.“Thank you,” she says civilly, and turns to the door.“The car isn’t here yet,” Castle says. Beckett flicks round to him.“What car? I said I’d get a taxi.”“Easier to get a car. It’s on its way. They’re usually here in a few minutes.”“Thank you.” It’s simpler to acquiesce. No point fighting. The situation is quite bad enough already and losing the last wisps of her tenuous control over her roiling emotions is not going to help. She got herself into this position and eventually she’ll get herself out of it.At least he might still be there at work. He hasn’t said he won’t be. She might even manage to get back to her best if he’s there. Even if it’s nothing more than a work relationship. That’s better than nothing.Probably.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The five minutes or so before the car eventually arrives drags on for five years. Beckett’s lost in her own little world, not looking at anything except for her white-knuckled hands in her lap, Castle’s looking at Beckett, and Martha has gone upstairs, unwilling to sit through a situation that even she, her rhinoceros-tough skin and overwhelming personality notwithstanding, recognises is not going to be assisted by her presence. Finally, Castle is notified of the car’s arrival, and they progress in silence to the door of the building.Castle puts her case in the trunk.“Thank you for letting me stay,” Beckett says, barely raising her eyes to him. The small amount he can see tells him that she’s right on the edge of breakdown. In an odd way, that’s precisely what he wants to happen. He’d thought much earlier in the week that if he waited for her to break on her own granite-hard integrity he could put the pieces back together again. Well, it may not have happened quite the way he’d expected, but she’s about to shatter.Then he has to get through the other problem. The one she doesn’t know is impending after they get to hers. He is absolutely not having that discussion anywhere anyone else might be present. So much to deal with. Her lies, his evasions. And what will all this do for her PTSD? It’s mild – he thinks, so much basic research has taught him - right now. He really has no idea if this will be good, bad or neutral. She’s already right on the edge.He opens the door of the car for her, watches her settle herself as he closes it, reminds the driver of the address – and walks round to get in the other side, as previously arranged with the service. Much to his surprise, Beckett says nothing at all about that.Beckett has said nothing because she’s expected this from the moment Castle said he’d called a car service. There is nothing to say, and even if there were, saying anything isn’t going to change what he does. Castle is surprisingly, appallingly stubborn about certain matters, and this is obviously one of them. Don’t argue. Just accept, and get through this. Half an hour. You can do half an hour, one tick at a time.It takes twenty-five minutes to get to her apartment, when it should take fifteen. Every extra moment ratchets the stress level higher, and the suffocating silence falls more thickly. Castle does nothing at all to try and reduce it. He can either watch Beckett block herself off, if he tries to pass this off with a joke or a smart comment or just pretend it never happened like they always do, and then watch her never so much as try to open up ever again – because that’s what she’s just told him she’s intending to do – or he can precipitate the discussion that he wasn’t willing to have in his own loft with the interested ears of his mother and/or Alexis in close proximity. It’s time to throw the snowball, and start the avalanche.Beckett manages a nod and smile for the doorman. Castle manages a rictus grin, which seems to fool today’s man, for as long as it takes to get to the elevator. By the time Beckett’s door is open the half-hour is up and all she wants to do is curl up on her own and weep until she’s an arid pile of sand. Then she’ll put it all behind her and get on with the rest of her life, and never talk about this week ever again.Scars heal, eventually, whether they’re on your skin or your heart. As she had expected and feared, Castle brings her case in for her and closes the door with himself on the inside.“Thank you,” Beckett says in a rigidly controlled, very quiet voice. Castle hears the breaking point approaching and suspects that he’s got around two minutes to decide how to handle it. The first bit is very, very simple. It’s after that when it’s going to become very, very complicated. “I’ll be fine now. You’ve been very kind.” She moves to take the case, intending to wheel it into her bedroom. Castle catches her wrist and stops her.“We need to talk.”“Nothing to talk about. Said it all.” Her words are chopped off, as if letting them linger would reveal more than she would like.“You talked. I didn’t. Now it’s my turn.” He lets go, goes to her kitchen and without so much as a by-your-leave rapidly finds mugs, coffee, and switches on the kettle. “Sit down, Kate. Have a coffee. You haven’t had any coffee yet today. Just drink it and listen to me.”She pushes the case into her bedroom and returns to sit on the couch. She can still get through this, one tick of the clock at a time. She can. But caustic misery is dissolving her control from the inside, faster than she can reinforce it. Still, he should have his chance to have his say; to vent his spleen, or clear the air. If it’ll mean that he keeps coming to the precinct, she can do this. Until she’s better, she needs him there. It’s entirely his choice, though. She’s lost any shred of a right she might have had to ask him to stay. Suddenly everything’s a threat; every shaft of light; every unexpected noise. Her protective shell is thinning with every second he spends making coffee in her kitchen, as if he belongs there; every instant he doesn’t speak, as if he doesn’t need to talk to have the right to be here.Coffee appears in front of her. It’s the final blow to the fragile porcelain of her control. Time has run out on her. She’s already shattering before he even opens his mouth, while he’s still standing before the couch. The dull ache in her shoulder which has been there since she took the sling off is utterly subsumed in the agony she can’t wall off any more. She jerks to standing in one frantic motion, heedless of the sharp pain that causes in her arm, turning away from the room to hide the tears running unwanted and unstoppable down her face. She won’t use her misery as a tool to make him stay. Emotional blackmail is a technique she’s seen far too often and viscerally despises: the last resort of the feeble or abusive. She moves blindly, reflexively, for the comfort of her bedroom: away, anywhere but here.She walks straight into Castle, who’d carefully positioned himself to achieve that result the moment he heard the first sound of breaking Beckett, and finds herself held tightly against him. She can’t muster the discipline to fight it: needs his strength to replenish her own.“You didn’t let me talk,” he murmurs plaintively to the top of her head. “I don’t want a work relationship.” She flinches into another spasm of agony. “You’re not letting me talk. I want a real relationship.” Castle sits down, taking Kate with him, unwilling to let her go, and tips her face up. “Don’t you want one too?” She ducks her head, sobbing hopelessly into his shirt – he’s seen her upset, very occasionally, but this is nothing like that: this is everything from the summer, everything that she’s failed to deal with for four months, falling in at once - and it doesn’t seem as if any of what he’s said past I don’t want a work relationship has registered in any way at all. He waits patiently for the typhoon to blow itself out.She doesn’t quieten for some time, struggling for control and failing to find it; failing to put her shutters back up and block from his view all the feelings written across her face and in the lines of her body against him. Even when she stops crying, she’s not in any way calm.Her gaze is darting everywhere but his face, her muscles tight and frantically fibrillating, and suddenly he recognises it as the hyper-awareness that has been growing since she got back: that he’s seen on the ferry, the precinct, the cases. So he does what he’s wanted to do to try to cure it since he first noticed it, but couldn’t ever do in the precinct: holds her in and cradles her head against his chest to protect her from the ambushing streaks of light; murmurs soft nonsense into her hair to mask any random noise. “Shhh, shhh. It’s okay. I’ve got you. It’s all okay.” Gradually – far too slowly – the tension in her body decreases as he cossets her. He cuddles her closer as she softens. “Just stay here. It’ll all be okay. I’ve got you. You’re safe with me.”She crumples in his grasp, crushed by the weight of her own lies, her own integrity, her own inability to meet her own standards. Castle sees and finally understands, in a way he hadn’t when it was simply his solitary thinking that brought him to the same conclusion, just how fragile the Beckett construct really is – eggshell thin, on this evidence. He wonders, almost hopefully, whether that really means that her walls are equally thin: far thinner than he’d thought.That is not important right this moment. What is important is showing his Kate, currently spooked and shattered and shivering however hard she’s trying to stop and recover her control, that she can still depend on him. No. Not still. She can depend on him for all that she did before and so much more besides: she can depend on him for anything, for everything. Dive right in, Rick. You’ll never get a better chance. Scratch that. You’ll never get another chance.“I want a real relationship,” he says again, more loudly. This time she hears him: there’s a convulsive clutch of her fingers into his saturated shirt. “Don’t you?”There’s no sound, at first. But her grip tightens and she stays close and there’s a faint movement of her head that might be a nod if it were only more definite; and then, finally, a whisper of yes. It’ll do, for now: it’s an admission. There will be time for more, later. Now, it’s time to move the discussion a little sideways. If only she’ll talk…“What’s making you so wound up, Kate?” And amazingly, she does talk.“I thought I’d gotten away with it.” Castle emits a questioning noise. “I thought I was fine. I didn’t have any of this when I was” – she stops hard, draws in a rough breath, continues – “at the cabin. I didn’t have any problems with the light or the noise or movement. Then I got back and it was okay until that perp pulled a gun the first time out” – Castle remembers that. He’d been almost as petrified as Beckett when she couldn’t draw her gun fully, and for very good reason. She’d not seen herself bleeding, she’d not been the one trying to staunch the bright blood there in the sunshine – “and after that it began. Ever since then it’s been slowly getting worse.” She pauses, and Castle strokes reassuringly over her back. She’s still not looking at him, though by now she must surely be able to replicate every thread of the open neck of his shirt.“Have you talked to anyone about it?” There’s an unintelligible mutter into his sodden shirt front. It seems entirely possible that it will be even more sodden in the immediate future. He wonders wholly irrelevantly whether cotton can absorb less or more than its own weight in water. “Sorry?”“I was getting to it but the gun issue was more important so I started there and we haven’t completely fixed that yet. We haven’t even started on the rest of it.” Castle tries to disentangle that and comes up with confusion. Though it does explain why she can now draw her gun properly if she needs to. He supposes that this might well have been the most important problem to cure, in Kate’s eyes. Anything that interferes with her ability to do her job… oh.Oh. Got it. It all comes together in one instant. For whatever reason she had originally lied, until a few minutes ago, Kate was, and maybe still is, convinced that he’d walk away the moment she admitted she had lied from the outset about remembering everything. And she knows, and he knows, that her behaviour in running away all summer left him on the verge of leaving – he had left, and then come back because of that very partial, unsatisfactory discussion on the park swings; she knows, and he knows, that she barely made it through that first case, and only because he and Espo had hauled her past her issues. Right. Okay. She’s been depending on him being there; relying on him, far more than he’d thought. (He wishes she’d just said so, but that’s not his Kate.) In fact, she’s been relying on him continuously, ever since she came back. No wonder she’d said – thinking he wanted nothing more – that she was happy to be work partners when every instinctive reaction said she wanted more. No wonder she told him she’d still call when the next body drops. She’d have killed herself pretending that a work partnership was enough, just to be able to do her job well. And eventually she’d have broken under the strain.She was already breaking under the strain. Castle admits to himself that he knows nothing at all about PTSD, its triggers, or how to help it; beyond a little light research which was not really very informative. But he cannot imagine that spending all your – wholly excessive - working hours concealing your lies while simultaneously knowing that to get you through the day you need the person you lied to and that if you make a single slip you’ll lose them – even without the fact that you care for them and you’re hiding that too – is helpful in any circumstances, let alone if you’re suffering from a form of stress disorder. He’d seen her winding herself tighter and tighter; he’d seen her nervousness getting worse day after day; and he’s watched her coming closer and closer to breaking with every moment she’s spent in the loft.Now she’s broken. Now what? It’s obvious, isn’t it? Put the pieces back together.He pets her shoulder gently, runs his fingers through the curls of hair drifting around her neck when she doesn’t flinch from him. Hmmm. Maybe not more heavy conversations, just yet, since the important matter is out. Maybe something else. Something small, and trivial, and right back to the beginning of the week. Rewind. Rewind them, to before… well, before the drugs wore off.His mind drifts, for a moment, to way back when, when Alexis must have been nine or ten, and (like seemingly all pre-teen girls) was devouring boarding school stories. (She’d wanted to go, of course. He’d ducked and dived and hidden his devastation at the very idea of her leaving home and she had, like most pre-teen girls, grown out of it. Just as well, because he’d never have allowed it.) But he’d bought her a number of old-fashioned books, and one of them, better written than most, (not that that was difficult) and certainly more interesting, being set in the Austrian Tyrol, had had a doctor recommending hair-washing as a way of reducing stress. Which seems pretty nonsensical to Castle, but although Kate’s hair feels clean through his fingers, she never did get her salon appointment yesterday, and she can’t be satisfied with her own one-handed ministrations or she wouldn’t have wanted the salon appointment. So, let’s offer something seemingly small, seemingly trivial, and reassuring: something that had comforted her before; something to calm her down. He can’t take the next step until she’s calmer.“Kate?” There’s a murmur below his neck. “Kate, would you still like your hair washed?” There’s a small nod.“I can do it,” floats up to his ears from somewhere south of his chin. Really, Kate?“Raise your arm above your head, then.” He knows it’s mean. Kate raises her left arm.“See, fine,” she nearly-snarks. He hears it with some relief.“Now your right arm. Which you knew I meant.” It gets halfway before there’s a very unsuppressed yelp of pain. “Knew it,” Castle says smugly. “You can’t do it. At least, you can’t do it without hurting yourself. So let me help.”Beckett, wrung out and by now hopelessly confused by the situation; still hung up on I don’t want a working relationship and its one-eighty degree flip from her assumption that it meant I don’t want you at all to Castle’s bold statement that it means I want all of you; still unable to push past I wouldn’t have forgiven me to Castle’s evident disagreement; is more or less incapable of deciding anything more difficult than whether the sky is above her. Actually, that’s quite a difficult question, given the way that Castle’s turning her world upside down and inside out. It is, quite simply, easier to give in than to resist.“Okay.” But for a moment she doesn’t move at all.“You need to find towels, Kate. I’ll get your wash bag out your case.” He grins, though she can’t see it. “I won’t peek at your underwear.” Reassurance first. His own evasions afterward. He hoists Kate up. “Towels. Shoo.” There’s a slightly more Beckett-like displeased noise which he deals with by simply pushing her gently in the right direction.Castle manages to find the wash bag, does not – quite – succumb to the immense temptation to riffle through her underwear although the odd glimpse he gets is very tempting, and joins Kate in her bathroom where she’s setting out a couple of fluffy towels. He puts the wash bag down and examines the scene. Shower attachment – check. Shampoo and conditioner – in the bag, check. And one Kate, looking very strung out and currently wrapping a towel round her neck. Doesn’t look like there are going to be any interesting views down her shirt today. Not a helpful thought.By the time he’s finished washing and then rubbing her hair most of the way dry, Kate is notably more relaxed. How very odd. He’d never have expected that. Maybe that nineteen-twenties book had been on to something – it would certainly be a cheaper way of relaxing than fish pedicures. Unfortunately the relaxation is destroyed when she stands up – or tries to – while forgetting that her right arm is still rather sore. While she’s still hissing with the pain, Castle resorts to lifting her by the waist, and while she doesn’t object, it doesn’t exactly cause her to snuggle into him either. Though given Castle’s current state of uncomfortable arousal that may be just as well. Washing her hair, even without the previous view, is doing nothing for his self-control, and while he knows where he’s intending to take this next, he isn’t going to do so without some care. He needs a calming moment of his own.Beckett would like nothing better than to snuggle in and simply lean on Castle’s broad, supportive strength. (And she doesn’t only mean the physical variety.) But for a moment she does nothing. After a notably short pause, a hand detaches itself from her waist and slides gently and insinuatingly up her spine to the nape of her neck. It stops there, for a time, and the large fingers attached to it play with some damp wisps of curly hair escaping the general mass. She’s hypersensitive to the hard pads of his fingers, the implication of restrained strength in the very lack of any pressure. He touches things. She knows that: she’s watched him pick up and put down and fiddle and fidget for three and some years. But he almost never touches her with intent – just that couple of times when she was conscious, and that one time when she wasn’t. She shivers, and doesn’t realise that she has until she’s wrapped in more closely. The hand at her neck slips round and its thumb runs along her jawbone, sneaks underneath the point of her chin and encourages Beckett to look up.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It would have been fine, if she’d not just brought her eyes up to meet his but kept them there. But the look in his eyes as he gazes down at her is one she can’t bear to meet for more than an instant: strength and certainty and hope and just a smidgeon of nervousness – and love. Under and over and through every other expression. She drops her eyes from his too-honest look. Unfortunately, held closer as she now is, that leaves her looking squarely at his mouth. Before this week, the last time she remembers being this close to his mouth, half a second later it was invading hers. The persuasive thumb at her jaw slides over the delicate skin of her cheek, flirts with the hollow under the sharp line of bone, slides back down again; and, rather than returning to its lodging, detours to slide across her abused lower lip.“You shouldn’t bite it so much,” Castle murmurs, and now in her quiet apartment his voice falls over her as he speaks, as gently as a cashmere wrap enveloping her. She becomes aware that his hand at her waist is now stroking smoothly and slowly over her t-shirt. “It’s bleeding.” He slides his thumb over it again, and heat rises in the air around her. The soft stroking at her waist encourages her inward. The whole atmosphere has changed, imperceptibly moving from comforting reassurance to an intense awareness of her position in his arms, an inch or less from his wide body, bare inches from the full lips from which she can’t remove her stare, six months or half a second (she doesn’t know which, or maybe it’s both) from the last time she was in this position.“I should kiss it better.” She’s barely registered that when his head bends and his wicked thumb pushes her face up and the last inch of separation closes and his mouth is soft and persuasive on hers and no thought of any kind is needed to open and let him in.And then he’s not persuasive in any way at all. He takes her mouth with complete assurance: confident and conquering and certain of her response; that she’ll melt and flow and give in to their mutual desire, so long tamped down and hidden. She’s pulled still tighter in, pressed against firm muscle and thick hard weight, the hand at her waist now falling to the curve and dimple in her lower spine, fractionally above the swell of her ass. It’s as blazingly incendiary as the first time he pulled her in and kissed her; as self-reinforcing as a chain reaction. His other hand locks into her hair, preventing her moving anywhere to which he doesn’t consent.It certainly no longer appears that he doesn’t want this. The way in which he’s holding her: tight and close and somehow possessive, implied assumption that she should be in his grasp, under his mouth; the way in which he’s kissing her, smooth, sure and seductive; yet with a feeling of leashed, almost-desperate passion barely held back: all of these come together and she drops any last resistance to her own wants; lets him take as he pleases and then gives back in kind. Her arms slide round his waist: even in the furnace of stoked desire she’s not yet inflamed enough to forget the pain of lifting her right arm. But with every stroke of his tongue and proof of his desire her confusion as to what he wants is dissipating like the morning mist and her own desire is rising like the sun.Castle eventually lifts his head from his careful exploration of her mouth and regards Kate with considerable satisfaction, looking at her clouded dark eyes through equally dazed blue ones. They’re still standing in the bathroom. They’re still standing in her bathroom when there is a perfectly good bedroom with a perfectly good bed right there. But – he is still a good man and he absolutely has to be sure that she wants this – him – too now that she is not hurt and not high and not thinking that he is pretending. He is definitely not pretending. It’s painfully clear – to him – that he is not pretending.“Kate,” he husks. She makes a very small noise. “Kate, if we don’t stop now we won’t stop and you need to say now if you wanna stop or if it’s not what you want or it hurts or” –“Shh. It’s all okay.” His own words, back at him. “I’m clean, and protected.” That last word is… unexpected. “Me too. But are you sure?” He’s looking at her with almost-frantic wide blue eyes, desperate for her to say it, not to hide in looks and subtext and implications. If she says it, he’ll hear if it’s true in her voice.“I’m sure.” And there is no hint of a hesitation or evasion in her voice or in the way she moves against him, and there is more Beckett in her voice than in the whole of the last week when she says, “Now shut up and kiss me again.” He obeys. He’s not exactly obedient to her orders, as a general rule, but he can be obedient if it suits his book. In this case, it exactly suits a book he’ll never publish.He shuts up and kisses her again: hard, fast and sure; firm grip as he walks her out the bathroom and into her bedroom. He’s forgotten about his evasions and the need to explain, forgotten that after this he’ll need to tell his own truths. He’s forgotten that she needs to tell the rest of her truths. She’s in his arms and under his mouth and very shortly he will – carefully, so as not to jar her arm – show her just how good they can be together, how good they can make each other feel, slowly and gently. There will be plenty time to explore athletic variations in a week or two, or a month or two, or a year or two or twenty-two or two hundred and two.He concentrates on kissing Kate some more, softly; asking for more, not demanding it, seeking and entreating and accepting her searching tongue in even trade, brings her to sitting on the bed then takes her mouth deeply and while he’s there lays her back, still both fully clothed: lifts off to choose a side which he thinks is least likely to risk her arm and leans back over her, smiling down in a rather predatory fashion.And then he slides an arm under her neck and bends all the way down to kiss her some more in a very different way and she pulls his head down to her just like she did in her sleep, but this time she’s not asleep when she murmurs do it again, Castle. His free hand ranges along the lean length of her torso and lightly over the curve of her hip, not yet touching anywhere irrevocable, taking the fabric of her soft t-shirt (she hasn’t worn a button-down all week) upward on the return stroke to reveal a slice of too-pale skin and, slashing across the white, a still livid scar from the emergency surgery that saved her. He doesn’t show by word or action that he’s noticed it at all, still exploring her mouth, not softly now but demanding more, demanding that she accept that this time he’s not in the passenger seat but driving; that she accept him. He slips hard fingertips over her taut, sharply outlined abdomen, the edge delineating her hipbones; moves back up to take the cotton over the xylophone of her far too obvious ribs. He’ll feed her, proper food to build her up to full fighting weight again. When no-one’s looking, she’s so very fragile, this side of twice dead; so like to break again, if he’s not there. So much he knows: but he’ll be there, and then she’ll not break. He won’t let her break again.He stops thinking when she starts to undo his button-down and her slim hands search out his skin, slipping over the muscle and stopping to skim his nipples. At that point his instincts take over and the only thing left in his mind is ensuring that whatever he does, he doesn’t wrench her arm. His own hands slide gently up under Kate’s t-shirt and find the lower edge of a bra. His sense of touch tells him it’s silk; and then that it’s still front-fastening. How convenient. In a little while, that will be very convenient indeed. Right now, though, his goal is kissing her some more, touching her smooth skin, learning her slowly and then showing her how he can heat her up and turn her on. He glides back down to her hip and across, undoes the button and zip of her pants, and stops kissing her for a moment in order to sit up and remove them. He hears Kate’s appreciative noise with considerable pleasure, but when she starts to sit up and – again – hisses because she’s automatically used her right arm, it’s not so good. He lowers her back down.“Don’t do anything. Just let me do it all, this time. You’ll get your turn when you’re not wincing every time you accidentally move further than your arm will go.” He pauses, and smiles naughtily. “Or we can stop, and wait, if you prefer.” Kate growls in a way that very clearly says that the latter is not a desirable option.He slides her pants off, sliding his hands over the outside of her legs as he goes, admiring them without any effort at all to hide his hot, intent gaze, and drops them carelessly on the floor; draws a line over the arch of her foot and suddenly grins as she squeaks and wriggles. (She’s ticklish, he realises, and while that’s not the reaction he wants to provoke now it’s one that he intends to have considerable fun with later.) It’s an unusually girlish reaction from the exceedingly cool, mature, Detective Beckett. Maybe there’s a fun-loving side to her as well, that he hasn’t previously ever seen. When he starts to draw a slow line from the jut of her ankle upward, avoiding the back of her knee since now he has no desire to hit a ticklish spot at all, (but sensitive spots, oh yes) her breathing tightens and anticipation oozes into the air. He stops his line some way short of the top of her leg and returns to the t-shirt. That’s a little more complicated, owing to the need to take care. Still, the first step is very simple. He rolls it up.“What are you doing, Castle?”“I thought that was obvious,” he smirks. “Undressing you.” An eyebrow lifts at him.“Really? And here I thought you were trying to build a tower out of matchsticks.” She looks very blatantly down his body and smirks herself. Castle splutters, and retaliates by running a slightly more forceful hand than he’d originally planned over her ribs and right up to the very edge of the curve of her breast. Kate sucks in a breath. Castle possesses himself of her left arm and, despite the fact that her left arm is perfectly mobile, she allows him to keep it and then manipulate it so that it’s out her t-shirt. Having now had a practice run, as it were, he does the same thing with her right arm and amazingly achieves its escape from the imprisoning t-shirt without so much as an indrawn breath. Very shortly the t-shirt is on top of the pants on the floor, and Kate is lying in front of him in yet another matched underwear set that really, really shouldn’t be allowed. It’s detrimental to the brain function.Beckett watches Castle’s eyes darken almost to black and his expression change to focused intent. He’s looking at her as if he never intends to stop. (Oh. He never has stopped looking, right from the first day. She’s just never noticed it being quite this intense before.) Just his look sends heat washing across her skin; his touches and kisses have left her wanting more; and letting him set the pace seems very attractive right now. He runs a hand gently round her face and down her neck, over her shoulder, rests it on her waist, which is neither one desirable place nor the other; slips his other arm back under her neck and lifts her into him without any particular effort, leaving her straddling him. It’s pretty clear he enjoys this position. She wriggles delicately and listens to Castle’s breathing change, the sharp flexing of his hands on her. That’s better. She leans in and takes his mouth, presses closer and he supports her as he falls backward and then turns and she’s flat back down with him over her and how he managed that without causing so much as a twinge is a mystery she’s never going to bother solving because he’s just stroked his palm down over her breast and even with her bra still on that feels very, very nice. She arches slightly into it to encourage him to carry on.He’s still playing with the fabric, though mysteriously this results in her bra being open and largely out the way, when he stops kissing her mouth and licks round to nibble her ear and find small spots that make her squirm slightly and mew softly when he kisses them. “Like that? Let me do it some more.” He does. Making Kate mew is definitely a pastime he could spend a lot of effort on. Then he moves down and licks and sucks and oooh he likes her moaning even better. He runs his hand down over her stomach and right to the rim of her panties and pauses for just long enough for her to be able to make it clear if she wants to stop. Given that she’s applying her wicked little hands to his belt, not scrupling to diverge slightly lower, it doesn’t seem s-oh that was not fair but it feels so good. Ambidexterity – in some matters – has considerable advantages, though he’d rather hoped that he’d get the chance to please Kate before she got that far. Well, that can be arranged.He sits up briefly and slips off his shirt and pants, then returns to wrapping one arm around Kate and taking her mouth firmly, one hard thigh pushing between her legs and she brings one long limb round his waist to roll in and open out and he clasps her close with one arm to hold her hurt shoulder steady and still and protected and glides over her ass and cups her and Christ she’s wet and hot and pressing into his fingers and fine silk feels even finer when it’s damp. He slides the silk this way and that, teasing, and the way he’s holding her it’s an added bonus that she can’t retaliate because if he lets her this will all end far too soon; and on that thought his fingers find hot flesh below the silk and flicker through soft wet folds and Castle she can say his name like that for the rest of his life so he slides over nerves and back again and Castle! she cries again and he plunders her mouth to steal her frantic breaths and his hand moves and oh she’s so tight around his fingers and he finds a rhythm of in, out, over that leaves her hips writhing against him and she is just so fucking hot all for him and he thrusts his fingers deeper and works her harder and she grips and clenches and shudders and gasps into his kiss and comes apart around his hand and it is just the sexiest most beautiful thing he has ever seen in his whole entire life so far.He intends to see her like this for the rest of his whole entire life: satisfied and flushed with desire and indubitably, always, and forever and ever his.She feels him lay her on her back while her eyes are still shut and senses him shuck his boxers and then he slides her panties down and off and when she opens to look at him he’s leaning over her again and the look on his face is dangerous and oh you’re in too deep Kate she’s all the way in and it looks like in a moment he will be too. In more ways than one.But before that, he starts to play again and his hands slide over her and down and entice her legs apart and tempt her with delicate, tantalising touches and slow teasing and still he stops her reaching for him and stroking him and that’s not fair because she wants to play too but he isn’t letting her.“Let me do it for you, Kate. Just enjoy it. No need for you to do anything at all.” She ought to disagree. She ought to do something for him. But his thick fingers slide and play and curl and oh it’s so much easier just to agree with him and let him take her there and oh finally he’s above her and he slides slowly and gently home and ooooohh he feels so right when he’s there and filling her and fulfilling her. She thinks dreamily that he must be holding back, to be so slow and controlled, and doesn’t understand how he can be doing so. And then he starts to speed up and shift from an andante tempo to allegro and she doesn’t think about anything anymore at all because all that’s left is sensation and the movement and the moment and him. Only and always and totally him. He reaches and touches her and steals the scream out of her mouth and he moves again once, twice and as she comes again he couldn’t be deeper or closer when he does too.He rolls off and brings her close in. “Are you okay? You aren’t hurt?” Beckett drops a lightweight kiss on his chest, being the only point she can reach, and shakes her head.“Not hurt.” She lapses into what he thinks is a contented, curled-in, silence. Her small hand links into his and grips more tightly than he might have expected from the flavour of her quiet. It feels like she’s clinging to a safety line. He turns on his side and looks at her, blue eyes into green.“I’m here, Kate. I’m not leaving.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Some reasonable time later, when this delightful new pursuit of cuddling a receptive and cuddlable Kate Beckett has sufficed for the moment (well, not really, but there is a limit to how long they can spend snuggled up together naked on a Sunday afternoon without raising some difficult questions when Castle returns to his loft) and finally cleaned up and mostly dressed, Castle is nervously considering his options for telling the truth. Almost equally nervously, he’s considering his options for prising the rest of the truth out of Kate. He’s under no illusions at all that he’s heard all, or even most, of it. He’s hunting for his missing sock under the bed, desperately delaying.He really does not want to break her – break this – before they’ve even had a chance to begin. But Kate’s almost destroyed herself and any hope of a them on her reaction to her own lies, and he can’t see that waiting and hiding and risking that she’ll discover his secret – and risking that she’ll take her principles and break him on them like a butterfly on a wheel – is a good plan. Honesty, Rick. It’s your only hope of a future. “Why are you digging for dust bunnies under my bed, Castle? If you don’t like the state of my apartment, I’ll pass you the vacuum and rubber gloves.”Castle can’t resist, despite his terror of the next few moments. “I’d rather see you in a maid’s outfit – ow!” Kate has delivered a very Beckett blow to his backside, protruding out from under the bed.“Dream on, Castle.” She casts a suspicious glare at his feet, which are all she can see. “What are you doing?”Here goes.Castle emerges, bearing a stray sock, and puts it on, without speaking. He starts slowly and heavily. From the first syllable, Beckett’s tension rockets. She sits down hard in a chair, not on the couch next to him. It’s unpleasantly reminiscent of being interrogated.“When you… Your first case after you got back, about two, three days in – I got a call.” Beckett – abruptly not his Kate at all - raises an eyebrow. “He didn’t say who he was. He said… he was a friend of Montgomery’s.” Beckett’s gaze turns angrily intent, but she doesn’t speak. The atmosphere of the interrogation room rises further around them. “He said… he said that Montgomery had some files, connected to some real big shots. He – Montgomery – was using them to keep his family safe.” He stops.“So what, Castle? Why’d he call you about that?” He swallows, hard.“He said you were part of the deal. Your safety.” She’s staring at him, speechless, pallid. “He called me to make sure I kept you away from it.”“Away from what?” But she thinks she knows.“Away from your mother’s case.” There’s a ghastly, graveyard silence. Castle says absolutely nothing more. There is nothing more he can say, until Beckett says something.“Well,” she finally bites out, “seems like ER doctors aren’t the only people who mistakenly thought you might have some influence over what I do or don’t do.” There’s another long, chilly silence. “Precisely when did you get this call?”Castle breathes a sigh of considerable relief at the timing of the call. “After you went after Halstead.” There’s a slightly less ferocious atmosphere. Very slightly.“So when you said I'm not telling you to walk away, I'm just saying … give it time what did you mean? Until you thought I was ready? When would that have been? Another week, another month, another year? When were you going to stop lying to me?”“When you stopped lying to me.” That falls like a killing blow. “You don’t lie, I don’t lie. No more lying, Kate – direct or indirect.” There’s a note in his voice she’s never heard before: this is the way it will be, no disagreement brooked. “It’s not just ER doctors or faceless voices that think I can influence you. Montgomery did.” He watches her eyebrows climb again. “And your father. Your father came to see me, before the summer. He knew he couldn’t stop you. He asked – he begged me - not to let you throw your life away.”His hard tone doesn’t change at all. “So I didn’t tell you. You couldn’t even raise your gun at that time. What good were you going to do chasing ghosts and finding monsters if you couldn’t defend yourself? Glare them down?” His voice becomes edged with bitterness. “I couldn’t stop you the first time. You wouldn’t stop then. I asked you, and you wouldn’t stop.” He pauses, waits, hears only silence. Not, surprisingly, in this silence, the same unforgiving harshness of that night before the summer. Beckett is thinking. Her first, knee-jerk reaction had been the same as it always was, and is: no-one has the right to tell her what to do. Not her father, though she’ll listen to him he lost that right long since. Not Montgomery, who might have had it but who lost it in his betrayals and atonement. Not some mysterious voice on a telephone which hasn’t spoken to her but worked through an intermediary. And especially not Castle, who’s never been in the sort of relationship with her where he might have had that right, even if everyone in sight thinks he is or has or does.
Except. Except that she has let him, or at least not fought nearly as hard as she might have against it, twice. Which isn’t a lot, but is twice more than anyone else has managed in the last few years. And then, since the summer, more. She’s allowed him to talk her out of going after any shred of evidence wholesale, and let him persuade her out of another immediate run at suicide-by-contract-killer. She’s allowed him to take care of her, and she knows that if she’d really wanted to she could have avoided both staying at his loft originally and going back there. In the end, if she’d really put her foot down he would neither have been able to march her out her own sublet nor would he have been able to stay: on her couch or in her bed. But she didn’t.
So why didn’t she? First, last and only, because she remembers everything. Remembers how Castle tried to take the bullet for her, remembers how he knelt over her trying to press the blood back into her body, remembers exactly what he said and the tone in which he said it. Eidetic recollection; freeze frame; the last picture before the lights went out. And short seconds before that she’d been telling him that they would have something more. (If she hadn’t been shot, she’d have been breaking up with Josh that same day. Instead, it had been the day she came round. She couldn’t face him, either.)What she remembers is that Castle would have given her everything, including his life for hers. Greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friends. If she’d known that a week earlier – if she’d wanted to know – she might have done it differently. But she hadn’t known and hadn’t sought to know and hadn’t wanted to find out.So he does have a right. She faces that squarely. He would have saved her at his own expense if he could have, and that gives him a right to make demands, and to ask her to stop. He has the right, a contract made in a cemetery on green grass under blue summer skies and signed in her own blood flowing over his hands.Even if he didn’t want a real relationship (but he does) then he would have the right. And she needs him to have the right, because someone has to tell her she’s spiralling down, when she can’t or won’t see it for herself. Isn’t that why she was so desperately trying to keep him around even though she thought he didn’t want her? He can’t stop her – and she shouldn’t rely on him to stop her: it’s up to her to stop herself and expecting him to do it for her is another form of emotional blackmail – but she needs a voice of reason.Finally she speaks, quietly.“There was nothing else to hold on to, Castle.” She draws a ragged breath: once, twice. “Foot out the door relationships, partners and friends. That wasn’t enough to stop me.”It punches into his gut. If he’d been braver then – if he’d said what he really felt – could he have stopped this? She carries on, oblivious, looking into some memory he doesn’t see.“It was one thing too many to deal with when you asked me what I remembered. Too much, too soon. Too much of a coward to tell you the truth. It all hurt too much. I couldn’t tell you I heard you because by the time you told me it was already too late. I’d made my choices and I’d been wrong.” She bows her head. “Dead wrong.”There’s a cold span of silence as that sinks into the air around them, her deliberate – he’s sure it’s deliberate – choice of words freezing the moment.“Even now, you saying that there’s a file… I want to find it. I want to be up and out and searching for it.” Her gaze is flicking round, never pausing on anything; he can see the small tense tics building in her muscles, the twitching of her foot and the twisting of her fingers. She’s hyper-alert again. “I want to find something.” She stands and starts to pace, Castle watching from his post on the couch, leaning forward.“Something that makes it all worth it. Being shot, dying, all the pain of recovery. The PTSD and the therapy and the lies and the hurt. There has to be something to make it all worth it.” She stops pacing and stares out the window. “Otherwise what was the point? What’s been the point?” Her spine is rigid as steel, the tendons of her neck tight as the support wires for a suspension bridge. All of it is holding up her control.“And then I came back. I almost couldn’t do my job. And you and Ryan and Espo got me through it somehow and I couldn’t tell you anything because you’d leave.” She draws an almost-sobbed breath. “I’d have left, if I were you. I’d never have followed me after the bookstore or put up with something that wasn’t even an explanation, but even if I had I’d never have stayed if I’d known about the lie. So I couldn’t tell you until I could do it without you. When I could do it myself I could have told you.” Another harsh, stormy breath. “But there was no point expecting more when I knew you’d leave, as soon as I could manage to tell you the truth. And you were just the same as you always were. You never talked about anything. I thought…” She spins around.“Why do you put up with it? Why do you never make demands? You just let it wash over you and never seemed to want anything more. You could have -” She stops and turns back to the window, staring unseeing out over the Manhattan streets and skyline.“I knew you could tell me to stop. Just like in an alley, just like in the hangar. Just like when you said “We will find them, we will make them pay. Just not today.” I needed – need – you there to tell me to stop – to be someone I’d listen to. So I needed to be better before I could tell the truth and watch you go.” Her voice falls away almost to nothing, dead leaves drifting down. “Once I was able to stop myself.” The same dead drifting tone.“When you pushed me away I was sure you’d changed your mind. Given up. I’d pushed you away once too often and then lied to you. It was obvious, really.”Castle’s been listening to all this truth, not wishing to stop the cathartic flow, but that is just too much to bear. “You were doped to the eyeballs, Kate. I didn’t know whether it was you or the drugs. I couldn’t take the chance that it was all a drug fuelled mistake or that you’d shut yourself off and never mention any of it again.” He sees that hit, and rises to come to her where she’s still facing out the window, stands behind her and crosses his arms over her, pulling her back into him. “I couldn’t have borne that.” She doesn’t relax at all.“But I couldn’t do anything without you there. So if you weren’t interested, there was no point telling you that I’d heard you. You’d only leave right then, and then I wouldn’t even have the job. It was all falling in around me.” She turns into him, struggling for control and failing to find it. “All because I didn’t have the guts to tell you I’d heard you. I knew you’d walk away and I couldn’t lose you.”Castle tightens his arms around her. “I never made demands because I didn’t have any right.” There’s no answer, for a moment. They both know what he isn’t saying: half-hearted relationships to hide away in; a summer in the Hamptons that never happened.“I told you, I’m not leaving you now. But I’m not simply going to be a safety line. I’m only going to tell you that you should stop if you let me have the right to – and vice versa. A proper relationship, Kate, not the messed up mistakes we’ve managed so far.” He tips her chin up so he can see her face. They have to sort this out now. He thinks he knows the answer but she has to step up. “What do you want?”“You.” Though the way she buries her head in his chest immediately after saying that doesn’t exactly indicate certainty. Castle waits a beat, and when she doesn’t say anything further pushes the point.“Kate, do you want a real relationship or just me shadowing you? We can’t go on like this, never saying what we want. I’ve said what I want and you need to do the same.”When she finally says something it’s choked out, and Castle realises that her silence has more to do with an inability to say anything without her voice breaking than any lack of desire. “Real.” Her head is still buried in his chest. He may have wanted truth, and may have thought that the only way he’d get it was if Beckett broke on her own lies, but he does not like this broken Beckett at all. She’s still very, very tense.“How can you want a real relationship with someone who lied and can’t even do their job properly? I spook at the sunlight and every unexpected noise. I can’t do it myself and why should you prop me up? That’s not your job.”Well, that’s a new variant on insecurity. Castle, without letting go, moves both of them to the couch and sits down with Kate tucked in beside him, buying himself time to think of an answer which isn’t the rather unbelievable – to Kate, not to him – I don’t care as long as you’re with me: supporting each other is what lovers do. Unless you’re Josh, he supposes, who’d rather have been in Haiti. Then again, Kate was at the job, in preference. Chicken and egg, though he’d not be sure, if asked, who was which.“When you first got back you couldn’t draw your gun. Now you can.”“Only because you got me through it.” Castle cuddles Kate in tighter and tries not to notice how her back is to him and her arms round her own knees, rather than – preferably – round him. “This is getting worse, not better. No point being able to draw my gun if I’m shooting shadows. Someone’ll get hurt. You didn’t sign up for that, either.”“Actually, I did. Way back when.” He grins. “I remember it very clearly. You stood in the corner of the conference room glaring fiercely enough to melt steel and asking if you could shoot me now. Then you went off on the case and left me with the precinct lawyer and a pile of forms a mile high which weren’t interesting at all. It was very unfair of you. Anyone would have thought you didn’t like me.” He pouts. It doesn’t seem to help. “I knew what I was getting into,” he says more seriously.There’s an indistinguishable mutter from somewhere around Kate’s knees which adds nothing at all to the sum of human knowledge. Castle considers the many benefits of kissing Kate again but rather sadly concludes that now is not the time. Proving the non-work relationship doesn’t really help the instant issue, which is doing the work. Or not, as the case may be. A thought floats back into his brain from earlier, before they’d fallen into bed. Where, it also occurs to him, Kate had been perfectly, confidently, herself. If her stress level doesn’t reduce very shortly, perhaps kissing her (and maybe more – even better, as a form of relaxation, than fish pedicures or hair washing) isn’t such a bad plan after all.“Kate, you said you were seeing someone. What did they say about stress and PTSD?”“We haven’t talked about it. Drawing my gun was more important.”“Don’t you think,” Castle says very cautiously, completely unsure of his conclusions, “that the stress of all this” – he doesn’t want to be too specific – “might not have helped?” There’s a very thoughtful silence, at that. He continues, still cautious. “Maybe if we’ve straightened this out and neither of us is trying to hide anything from the other it might be less stressful and you might not get quite so tense?”More thoughtful silence, coupled with some relaxation back against him, which is considerably more hopeful than at any time since they got out of bed. He doesn’t make the mistake of pulling her closer, or round to face him, or on to his lap, though the last is unbelievably tempting: simply to bring her into him and show her (again) how good they are together and how now that the truth is told they should just spend some quality time enjoying each other and not being stressed or upset or worried at all. He does allow himself to play gently with wisps of hair. He washed it, after all, and he should ensure that he did it correctly. It’s enough of a connection, for now, with his arm around her.Beckett is thinking once more. When she’d told (or should that be confessed to?) Dr Burke that she remembered everything, she’d then steered well away from any discussion of why. Sure, she’d been focused on the immediate problem of hesitating on the draw, but he had suggested that not dealing with both her absence of amnesia and her reasons for claiming its presence was – he had said primly – likely to be unhelpful in the longer term. Chalk one up to the account of too-clever shrinks. That he was entirely correct does not make her feel any better disposed towards him. That it is quite likely that all the extra stress has made her PTSD far worse than it need have been is also unhelpfully accurate. Yet, after a moment or two, during which Castle stays quiet, she finds that she does feel better. She eases back further against Castle and his solid, reassuring bulk. She finds that odd, too, on reflection: that such a simple thing as his size should matter so, and help so. Then she realises what she’s just thought and, much to her chagrin, emits what could only be described as a gurgle.“What’s that, Kate?” Castle asks.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Just a thought,” she replies. “What thought? Penny for them. It.” The light tone and return to familiar banter immediately brings a certain measure of normality. Beckett unfurls herself from the defensive position she had adopted and turns in the crook of Castle’s arm to be beside him, smiling naughtily.“Nope. Not telling.” She is definitely not telling him that she’s effectively just thought Size matters. The rest of that conversation doesn’t bear thinking about.Castle takes his own cue from the relaxation of Kate’s lithe body (which he intends to see more of, soon) and her return to a position in which he can both see her face and, if he so wishes, take possession of her lips without requiring either of them to become contortionists. Though, he thinks irrelevantly but arousingly, Kate admitted to taking yoga classes, so maybe she - ooh, and that position they all thought was impossible but she said was perfectly possible so definitely she can move in very mysterious ways. Ooooh. This is, however, not helpful. Yet. Time to lighten the mood. Fortunately Kate can’t see his mischievous expression.“I’ll make you tell me,” he says, portentously.“Yeah, right. How?” Beckett is only too happy to play along with a better mood.“I have my ways. My silver tongue,” he says salaciously, waggling his brows. Beckett tries and comprehensively fails not to blush when the tip of his tongue appears between his lips. “Why, what a filthy mind you have, Beckett. My words would persuade you to tell me. Words, Beckett. Nothing else. I’m quite shocked at the direction of your thoughts.” His voice is dropping into the smooth, deep, seductive tones in which he’d said I should kiss it better. His free hand drops on to her leg and rests there; too high to be entirely innocent, too low to be teasing.And then he crushes her into him so that her shoulder can’t move or be hurt and evilly tickles her, leaving her at once giggling and squeaking in outrage and completely at his mercy. “What were you thinking, Beckett?” She squeaks some more as his wicked fingers torture her.“Not telling. Stoppit!” as he tickles her again.“Nope. Tell me, Beckett. What were you thinking? I can keep this up all night, you know.” It’s just too good an opening to ignore.“Can you, now? Keep it up, that is.” The tips of Castle’s ears turn a delicate shade of pink, but his eyes turn a predatory shade of midnight dark.“Well, well, Beckett. Sounds like your mind is firmly in the gutter.” He’s stopped tickling her ribs. His hand is definitely not tickling her ribs. It’s moving decisively across and upward. His tone strokes around her and slides along her skin. It makes her wonder why she bothered dressing. It suddenly seems to have been a particularly useless activity. “Maybe I should try a different method of persuasion.” Now his words are all slithering southward and pooling damply between her legs. His hand has stopped imprisoning her and run into her hair. His voice is soft, and slow; sinful, and seductive. “Now what might be an appropriate answer to that? Should I show you?” Beckett wriggles. Castle leans slowly towards her, letting her discern for herself his intentions, not at all hurried. He has no intention of hurrying. No need for speed: slow seduction is just as attractive, and far less likely to cause unfortunate movement. He has to remember she’s still injured. Or at least, if not still injured, still recovering. Her eyes are fixed on his mouth as it moves towards her: she touches her tongue to her lips in invitation. His hand spreads around the back of her head, the nape of her neck, and aligns her face the way he wants it, without resistance. His other hand drops back to her hipbone and needs to exert only a small amount of gentle authority to convince her to turn towards him and her legs to swing up over his lap. Which act, conveniently, allows him to pull Beckett on to his lap and on to his mouth.He explores, slowly and gently, tasting her lips, teasing her; not pressing for anything deeper until her lips start to dance and evade and she pushes her tongue into him. Then he pushes back, still slow, but firmly, making it clear that he’ll set the pace that he chooses. She makes a small noise but lets him have his way, soft against him as he slips his hand under her t-shirt and rests it on bare skin, circling lightly and sensually, no need to hurry, all the time in the world to stroke and pet and please and love her. No need for fierce desire or hard possession. Not here, not now. Here and now it’s a time for slowness and gentleness; for him to show his certainty and for her to rely on his strength.His careful fingers search a little higher under the cotton t-shirt, creep upward from her waist to her ribcage and across to her sternum, pausing there to draw the slow, wicked patterns that promise much but – at this point – do little. He only realises that slow might not be Kate’s intention when cool air wafts across his chest and he perceives his shirt to be completely unbuttoned and small, delicate and entirely evil fingers are playing over his pecs and encroaching on his flat nipples. Castle stops kissing her and looks slightly downward. “What are you doing, Kate?” he asks teasingly. She smiles, notably more relaxed than a few moments ago.“Encouraging you,” she husks. “You seemed a little tentative.”“Not tentative, Kate. There’s no need to rush. Relax and enjoy it.” Kate makes a growly little noise redolent of minor irritation. “Take it slowly.” He smiles sensuously. “It’ll be worth it. Just let me set the tempo. Stop hurrying.” The slow, smooth tones seep over her; and though she’s not normally in any way a passive participant, his drawl dragging over her ears and mesmerising her into a world that contains only the two of them leaves her open to his hypnotic suggestion that she should just succumb to slow, sleepy sensuality: give in and let herself be appreciated at his leisure. It’s a very appealing suggestion, suddenly. Not passivity, she realises, but peace. She only needs to be peaceful. She draws a slow line back up over his nicely muscled chest and on to his neck. “Okay,” she agrees. “No hurrying,” and drapes herself around him, relying on his arm for support.Castle lowers his mouth on to hers and goes back to slow, lazy kissing at no particular pace, using all his expertise to leave Kate pliant, relaxed and receptive. Her responses slow from the demanding, slightly desperate forcefulness she had started with into an equally leisurely return. His fingers slip back under her t-shirt and draw idle, random patterns round her waist. Gradually, the patterns roam further afield, nudging at the edge of her bra and the waistband of her pants, though the pace and intensity of his kiss doesn’t alter by a fraction. Her breathing catches a little: less smooth; her hand slides further round into his hair and keeps his head to hers.Castle’s slow pace and refusal to be hurried, coupled with the delicate small strokes he’s laying across her, is winding Beckett higher in a way she wouldn’t have believed possible. He’s only just approaching touching anywhere significant, and while usually she would have been vocal about her likes and dislikes and certainly suggestions as to what she expected, the careful build-up and her consequent building anticipation is leaving her at least as aroused as a more direct method would have. She wriggles as his fingers finally start to slip along the edge of her bra, sliding the fabric across her breasts. She’s been so effectively brought higher that the results are instant: her fingers bite into Castle’s shoulders and she gasps into his mouth. The lace on the bra cups is just sufficiently rough that it stimulates her sensitive skin; the fabric moving over her nipples rubs heat into them which pours downward and flares low in her body, turning her liquid and melting.The lazy kiss turns harder, deeper; still slow, but searching and sure. Beckett answers in kind, running her own fingers down over Castle’s chest, teasing at the buckle of his belt, content to return the same slow, focused petting. There’s a noticeable shift in the cadence of his stroking: slightly harder, his hand now definitively over her breast; the hand that’s still behind her head dropping back, encouraging her – not that much encouragement is necessary – to lean back further, expose the curve of her neck and her sharp-edged collarbones at the scooped neck of her t-shirt: but she doesn’t want to let go her hold on Castle’s nape and pulls him with her. Well. She tries to pull him with her. Very unfairly, he doesn’t move. Even more unfairly, not only has she been moved, but that means he isn’t kissing her any more. Oh. That’s because he is very carefully and far too slowly slipping her t-shirt up and off and ohhh his mouth has slithered down to nibble softly at her neck and then nip gently at the point of her clavicle, not hard enough to leave the slightest mark, and now, again, the air around her is much hotter than it ought to be on an October afternoon. She slides his shirt off his shoulders.It’s the last thing she’s able to do for some time. Castle sweeps his lips down to the curve of her bra against her cleavage and rivets his attention on applying a wickedly mobile mouth to her breasts. She’s already so over-sensitised that when he takes her into his mouth and sucks gently she moans and writhes under it, needing more. She whimpers as he undoes her pants, still playing his mouth over her breasts, now freed from her bra. Her hands are back in his hair, trying to steer him to where she wants him, but he won’t be moved. He’s slid off the couch to kneel beside it and she’s not sure how he managed that without her noticing but since his lips are travelling south and the air is scorching around her and there must be far less oxygen than usual because she needs to breathe more deeply, she isn’t thinking about anything much other than his mouth and his hands and him not stopping.Castle is very conscious that Kate would be very happy if he speeded up. But that’s not the game, today. Another time they might try hard and fast and rough, but not now, not when she’s so unusually fragile in both mind and body: now is for smooth and slow and the extremely satisfactory results of anticipation. The way she’s moving against him, and trying to pull his head around, anticipation is clearly very effective. He parks that thought for later, and with it the potential uses of talking dirty for increasing anticipation when touch is not appropriate, or possible. He nibbles downward, a little gentle pressure, a soft stroke of tongue to relieve it; stops that very pleasurable pursuit to slide her pants off slowly; returns to it just as Kate is starting to try to sit up so that he has to take her shoulders and lay her back down.“Don’t hurry, Kate. There’s no hurry,” he smiles rakishly. She huffs, the irritation she no doubt intended to convey rather undermined by her flushed cheeks and almost-nakedness. “I’ll take care of you.” There’s a growl. He grins. “You didn’t believe that I could keep it up. You should never have doubted me,” he says sweetly, and flutters his fingers slightly south of her navel. The breath she gulps in prevents her replying. The kiss that lands on her mouth is equally effective. The fluttering of his fingers moves further down and develops into long, languorous strokes that glide over her panties and send her arching into his touch. He calls on all his control and continues with the same measured pace until Kate’s moaning and squirming against him and trying to issue orders which he’s ignoring just as he usually does. And then he stops entirely and gathers her up in his arms and takes her back to her bedroom because really, heavy petting on a couch is just so adolescent and in this he has every intention of both of them being very much adult. Definitely.Being picked up like a toy doll is really not something Beckett experiences very often. Or indeed at all. But, strangely, just like earlier in the week, the sheer size and strength required to do that is very, very reassuring. Also very arousing, in the circumstances. His pecs and biceps flex in a very appealing fashion. She suddenly understands the appeal of those sloppy romances where the main point seems to be some oversized – and over endowed – gorgeous male with muscles on his muscles, though since this year’s flavour of romance novel gorgeous male appears to include all sorts of non-existent paranormal monsters she thinks she’ll just keep that thought to herself. The last thing Castle needs is to believe in more insanely idiotic theories. (The last thing she needs is for him to know that every so often she reads romantic novels of any sort. He’ll never let her forget it.) Well, if he turns furry under a full moon she’ll know he’s more werewolf than wolfish. And then he plops her down on her bed and she stops thinking all these irrelevant thoughts.If she’s not going to get her own way – and it’s fairly clear that not only is Castle stubbornly unwilling to be diverted from his plan but that any effort she might have ordinarily made to physically and forcibly divert him will founder on her still-feeble shoulder – then she’ll just relax and – mmmm – enjoy the view. Which she has to admit is very enjoyable. She’s enjoying it very much, especially as Castle’s pants hit the floor. Looks like he’s enjoying his view too.However much he’s enjoying the view, though, it doesn’t seem to incline him to speed up. Couch or bed, it’s the same deliberate, erotic kisses and strokes until she’s back to arching in and panting and he’s slipped further and further down until all she can reach is his head but ohhhh she doesn’t want to disturb what he’s now doing because Castle his mouth is wicked and his tongue is devilish and Castle yes it’s not only the view that he’s enjoying and he’s driven her so high before he even began this that she’s dissolving into meltwater and he’s drinking her in and yes, more, now and ohhh Castle.Beckett notes that Castle looks extremely smug. Then again, he deserves to. He’s very, very good at that. Excellent, in fact. He can practise on her any time, to maintain his skill levels. Beckett’s flopped out like a rag doll, hoping that she might recover some muscle movement and brain function before, say, Wednesday, when he gathers her up and snuggles her in and whilst it’s clear he’s up (so to speak) for another round he seems to be perfectly content to wait for her.A little later she thinks that it’s her turn to show her appreciation. And if she has a small, naughty idea that she’ll show him just how frustratingly hot slow appreciation can be, well, sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander. She turns round from her spooned position and finds that she’s neatly level with Castle’s chest and all the – er – significant areas are within easy reach. No need to stretch or move awkwardly. She rubs her lips over his collarbone and slips her hand down between them, and begins to prove that slow, languorous stroking, whether with hand or tongue, is not Castle’s province alone.She’s only made one mistake. Not even a mistake, really: but she’s forgotten something.She’s forgotten that Castle has two working arms, five inches of height, and at least fifty pounds weight on her. And whilst he’s perfectly happy to let her play with him for a time – quite a long time, really, during which he makes quite a number of interesting noises – there comes a point where he’s tired of being a toy and takes a considerably more active role. He pulls Kate up and pins her down under his bulk and catches her troublesome fingers in his hands and her wicked mouth with his own and opens her and pushes in slowly (even though he wants to surge into her) and fills her up and feels her tight and hot and wet around him and then her hands gripping hard over his broad back and her sexy little noises becoming louder and her incredible legs wrapped round him and he thrusts and she arches and ohhh this couldn’t be more perfect. Outside, late afternoon is beginning to draw in, and the earlier sunshine has dulled. Beckett pulls on an oversize t-shirt of her own – she is definitely not yet ready to explain why two of Castle’s t-shirts are currently lurking under her pillow – and wanders out of her bedroom to investigate the contents of her fridge. These are, to say the least, limited. Some curdled milk – ugh – some butter, and two bottles of white wine. There’s something that might originally have been salad but is now a nasty smear of brown. It may be mutating, for all she knows. She dumps it in the trash before it can take over the world, one squelch at a time. The milk goes down the sink.“Did that once contain food, or is it just an art installation?” Castle comes up behind her and looks over her shoulder into the empty fridge. “Art installation,” Beckett says sarcastically. “That’s why it’s taking up space in my kitchen.” She looks into it as if two steaks will magically be found hiding in its corners.“Well, I don’t see any food.” She can feel the idea bouncing round his head before he starts to speak. “You could come back and eat at mine. I’ve got food.”“I don’t think…” He bounces straight on.“Good food, good wine, and you’ll save me from the wrath of Mother.”“Huh?” Beckett says blankly. What’s Martha got to do with anything?“Otherwise she’ll spend all evening telling me off” –“Like that ever works on you.”“– for allowing you”“What? Allowing? Has your mother been smoking something?”“– to go home when you shouldn’t even have the sling off. And then she’ll spend all evening drinking my best wine and still telling me off for not…” Castle sees the rest of that sentence unrolling and stops it in its tracks. Kate, regrettably, doesn’t follow his lead.“Not what?” she smirks. “Keeping you.” Kate stops in her tracks. Castle’s tone is far more serious than she’d expected from his previous little-boy dislike of being told off by his mother.“K-keeping me?” Castle shrugs. Truth.“According to my mother, who has been telling me this ever since your apartment was blown up, I should have – quote – persuaded you to stay by whatever means necessary – unquote.” Kate gapes at him like a goldfish.“And she was right.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“At least – she might not have been right then, but she’s right now. You shouldn’t be back here. You should be staying with us at least till the doctors said you didn’t have to take care with your arm any more.”He doesn’t say – but Beckett hears it very clearly all the same – you should stay with me all the time. This is far too early for that discussion, and fortunately Castle seems to recognise that too, however loud his thoughts. It would be particularly stupid even to think about big decisions when they haven’t even got to a relationship for more than five minutes, and it’s not as if their history gives rise to optimism. Though maybe they’ve already made most of the mistakes, since there have certainly been plenty of those.“I know you can look after yourself and you’re an independent woman and even that you sleep with a gun – but couldn’t you at least eat at mine for another week?” He widens his eyes at her appealingly. “You don’t even have any food in, and you shouldn’t be carrying heavy weights with your sore arm.”“Takeout works, you know.” Castle makes an unimpressed face at her. “I cook much better than any takeout. You’re denigrating my chefly skills. That’s not kind, Beckett.” She’s perfectly sure of his next words. “You should eat with us so I can prove that I’m a much better cook. Oh – and so that you actually eat. You didn’t even notice we didn’t have lunch.”This is not news. She often forgets that she hasn’t had lunch. But then, largely courtesy of Castle’s unobtrusive efforts, she has breakfast every working day, so it’s not so bad. And he does cook very well, and it would be better for her than E-numbers and MSG, and she’d thought just the other day that she needed to put on a little weight because she’s too thin. And their current connection (or something like that) is very, very fragile. Mainly because she’s very, very fragile. Compromise. Not something she’s particularly good at. Homicide does not demand compromises. Not her bit of it, anyway. She should practice it. In a minute.“I thought you’d had plenty to eat today.” Castle chokes. “But okay. I’ll come back for dinner, but then I’m coming back here.”That’s a considerable improvement on Castle’s expectations, today’s significant steps forward notwithstanding. While he’d far prefer Kate to stay with him properly, meaning all the time and preferably in his bed, eating with them is at least a reasonable solution. It’ll do, for now.His mind skitters off to a different question. “You didn’t tell me why you were giggling. C’mon, share the joke.” Kate acquires a particularly Beckett-flavoured uninformative smirk and shakes her head.“Nope.” Especially not after round two. He’ll be far too self-satisfied and smug. Even if he’d also be completely justified.“I could bribe you.”“What with? If you take the precinct coffee machine you won’t last five seconds before you’re in a cell. It won’t be me who arrests you, either.” Castle makes a deliberately disappointed face.“Why, Detective Beckett. Are you really telling me you wouldn’t take the opportunity to handcuff me?” Scarlet spreads over her cheeks at his suggestive tone, but she’s not letting him have the point.“Of course I wouldn’t. You’d enjoy it far too much. I’d leave it to Captain Gates.” Castle looks momentarily horrified. “You wouldn’t! She’d leave me in the cells for weeks.” Beckett smirks at him. It’s clear that she would. “Okay, if bribery won’t work I’ll try other forms of persuasion.” He waggles his eyebrows. The scarlet spreads a little further.“I’m not persuadable.” “I’ll persuade it out of you.” Beckett looks disbelieving. Castle resolves that he’ll find out what the joke was – one way or another. Right now, however, if dinner is to happen at all they’d better get going. Which means Beckett getting dressed in something that she might leave her sublet in, rather than a sloppy tee. “We ought to go.” Beckett disappears back into her bedroom and eventually returns, during which time a number of unparliamentary phrases have seeped under the door, in a silky top and dress pants. Castle politely holds her coat for her and watches, privately slightly worriedly, the care with which she slides her right arm home. Clearly she shouldn’t have left the sling off. Equally clearly she won’t put it back on now – at least, not in front of his family. Dinner is relatively relaxed, by Beckett’s recent standards. Martha regards her a little quizzically, but Beckett is well able to preserve a smooth expression. She has no intention of discussing anything over the dinner table. With anyone. When it’s over, she makes her excuses, intending to leave.“Darling,” Martha shrills, “surely you don’t have to leave already. The night is young.” “Unlike you, Mother,” Castle mutters sotto voce. Not, unfortunately, sotto enough. There is nothing wrong with Martha’s hearing at all.“Richard, that was quite uncalled for.” She looks him up and down disapprovingly. “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything.”“I’m simply following the example set for me.”Beckett smiles, rather sardonically, and sits back to watch the floor show.“Darling, if you had followed my example you’d be a star.”“Mother, may I remind you that I am the bestselling megastar author who is housing you and funding your Bergdof habit, not the other way round?” Martha makes a dismissive gesture. Beckett snickers.“If it weren’t for me you’d never have been a writer. If I hadn’t scrimped and saved and corrected your atrocious handwriting so that it could be read you’d never have got your book deal.” Castle looks affectionately at his mother. “Mother, when I was writing In a Hail of Bullets you were touring in Seattle and I was in college.”“And the Old Haunt,” Beckett mutters, sufficiently sotto voce herself that Martha misses it. Castle doesn’t, from the quick crinkle of his eyes, rapidly replaced by an I’ll get you later expression which wriggles down her spine.“Pshaw,” ripostes Martha, still in Thirties mode. “I made you the genius” – her tone and expression make it clear that she’s entirely unconvinced of that – “you are today.” Beckett splutters and whispers, “Lobachevsky.” Castle picks up the reference and mutters in return, “If only Mother would plagiarise rather than improvise she might get more roles,” and then puts on a wholly faked wounded expression as his mother looks up.“Mother, I hate to introduce reality into your world – it only ever results in my best wine going missing – but I am a self-made man. At least since I ignored you and went to college. If I’d followed your advice I’d have been an actor, probably on some minor show on the sci-fi channels that wouldn’t get a second season.” It’s Martha’s turn to look wounded.“I could have made you a star, with a little coaching.”“After all, you’ve got the hair and skin products,” says Beckett mischievously. “What more might you need, Castle?” Castle looks round.“A hot girlfriend with whom I can construct an appealing pair name? Brangelina is very passé.” Beckett preserves a perfect poker face despite her strong desire to laugh. Martha is watching her beadily and is clearly about to say something utterly outrageous.“I need to get home,” Beckett says, a little hurriedly.“I’ll see you there,” Castle says decisively. “Can’t let you wander the mean streets of New York without your gun.”“At least I’ve taught you some manners,” Martha can be heard muttering in the background in a not very finely judged stage whisper, which she presumably thinks Beckett can’t hear and Castle can. “You should take advantage of my teaching and kiss her already.” It’s possibly as well that Martha can’t see Beckett’s face. “Why are you seeing me home, Castle? It’s nothing to do with the absence of my gun, is it?” Beckett says, once they’re in the taxi.“Well…”“Well?” That’s a brisk interrogation tone if ever he heard one. It’s just a shame that under the flickering of the streetlamps and the neon signs he can see Kate closing up and the sharp glances beginning to increase in frequency, gaze hunting all around her as the light levels change. He slides a little across the seat of the cab and puts his arm round her. As he’d expected, she’s stiff, and her muscles tight. “Because you didn’t like the flashes of light or sudden movements when we went to Ellis Island. So I expect you didn’t like them on the way home from Staten Island either. So I thought I’d come with you in case you didn’t like them now.” He pulls gently. “I wouldn’t want you to shoot some innocent street sign because it flashed you.” She snickers.“If I’m going to shoot things that flash me you’d better watch out.” But she’s still tense, even in the crook of his arm, and she hasn’t objected to being put there.Her apartment is cool, and dim.“Safely home, Castle.” Yes, Kate, but you’ve been wired all the way back, still darting glances at each scuttling, sharp-edged shadow, and your hand is still reflexively reaching to the space on your hip where your gun ought to be. The next time her hand reaches there he catches it and then stands in close in the gloom.“Lights?” he asks hopefully. “Don’t need them.” Kate looks up at him – he still finds that angle very strange. He’s not used to smaller, fragile Kate-not-Beckett, who needs him, and shows it. “Thanks, Castle,” she says sincerely.“Any time.” He has a happy thought. “Where shall we go tomorrow?” He thinks for a moment, and grins. “You deprived me of a trip to Staten Island.” She winces slightly, and he takes it as an opportunity to cuddle her in. “I haven’t been there in years. Since you took away one of my essential tourism experiences I get to choose where we go.”“You still wanna be a tourist? Why?”“Research,” Castle says happily. That excuse covers a multitude of sins – actual and prospective.Okay, Beckett thinks. It’s sure to have more to do with Castle’s childlike enthusiasm for life in general – and his desire to take her mind off her shoulder – than research, but she won’t shatter his illusions by asking detailed questions. Even if her arm is better. Mostly.“So I’ll come by around ten to collect you.” He bends a little to take her mouth and hold her close against him, enveloping her until he feels her relax enough into him that he’s prepared to let her go. Every instinct screams at him not to let her go, to stay, to give her anything, or everything, she needs; but he can’t stay. He’s pushed – and won – enough for today, and Kate is clearly tired.“Till tomorrow, Kate.” And he’s gone.Beckett takes herself slowly to her bedroom and prepares for bed. Though she’d have eaten her Jimmy Choos rather than admit it, she’s tired, her shoulder is now quite definitively sore and she has no sling to support it because she left that on the guest room bed at the loft, and notwithstanding large, reassuring, comforting Castles cuddling her, she is still somewhat stressed. She hadn’t told him that she didn’t want the light on because it makes everything a little too bright, when she feels like this. But it’s not as bad as it was. Not at night, not in the dim, soothing, urban light.She brushes her teeth and washes, and then slips into one of Castle’s t-shirts in preference to her own sleepwear. It still smells very slightly of his cologne, which, she realises, had been permeating his bedroom. It probably won’t, by the morning. Her sleep is frequently less than wholly restful, this side of the summer. She’s woken drenched and breathless a few times. She’s woken, startled, a few times more than that. Whether drugged or not, she’d slept better in Castle’s loft than in her own home. Maybe the t-shirt will help.Maybe the man himself would have, but she hadn’t asked.Her thoughts scrabble round her head with sharp rat claws: the vermin of her choices. Her choices. There’s no-one else to blame. She’d not listened – and sure, Castle hadn’t exactly made his views clear: he’d backed away from the truth of his feelings, but she hadn’t even tried to hear what he was saying in that last fight – until Montgomery was dead on the hangar floor. She’d chosen to go after Lockwood and hunt down her mother’s killer, and if it hadn’t been for Castle she’d have been dead with Montgomery. That had shocked her into clarity. She’d chosen – and with twenty-twenty hindsight that had been the right choice – to drop the case and stand with Castle, to believe in his feelings and trust her own.And then she’d been shot. Someone had shot her, and intended to kill her, and very nearly succeeded. If it hadn’t been for Castle’s hard, strong hands trying to keep blood in her body… Walls were a cowardly excuse: a way to avoid making a decision, to have her cake and eat it too. She’d known what she wanted, there on the podium giving the elegy, and then she’d been handed an excuse and immediately resiled: run away. She’d explained it to herself as the shock of the injury leaving her in no state to make drastic decisions, but in fact it had been exactly the opposite. To find that she’d been so badly wrong that someone would shoot her over it when she’d thought it was over – when she’d been prepared to drop it and move on with her life – had made her question every decision she’d made in that awful week between Montgomery’s death and the funeral. And somewhere in there she’d missed her way: she’d made the snap decision to run to the cabin to clear her head and only succeeded in losing it. The days had flowed into one another and her turbulent thinking hadn’t calmed at all. She’d become more uncertain of Castle’s feelings with every day she didn’t see or speak to him; and she hadn’t been brave enough to call, because she knew she should never have left without telling him and every day it got harder to explain why she had. But she’d been scared that the extent of her mistakes and the proof of her ability to make the wrong choice meant that she was mistaking Castle’s feelings, and she couldn’t face the thought of him leaving because she thought he meant something other than she did. Just like she’d thought had happened this week gone.She hadn’t seen that she was making the wrong choice all over again. So she put all her walls back up to block off the niggling thought that she shouldn’t be choosing death over life, and convinced herself that it was for the best, that she wasn’t able to sustain a relationship until she’d solved the case; that she shouldn’t drag innocent parties into it. Someone had tried to kill her. Which had moved her reactions, she suddenly sees, from being about her mother (which if she’s truthful with herself she had finally moved past, in that ghastly week) to being personal. So she’d gone after it, hell for leather, because now it was about her. Her survival, her case. Not even a single degree of separation. Fill in one rabbit hole, and immediately dig a new one to dive straight into. How to repeat your mistakes, in one frighteningly easy lesson.Now she sees. She’s gone right back to being shelled by the same problem while hiding in a different foxhole. First it was about justice for her mother. Now it’s about justice for herself. Or possibly revenge – and she can’t, right now, tell the difference.She needs to sort this out. She gets out of bed and makes herself a coffee (coffee never stops her sleeping, even if it wakes her up in the morning: it’s her thoughts that keep her awake) then curls up on her couch and starts to think logically for the first time in four months.Start with the fight. She’d more or less asked him to tell her how he felt, and he’d backed off, and she’d been hurt and angry and rejected, and pretended to herself it was all about him telling her not to go after her mother’s case. She’d only allowed him that one less-than-half chance, and when he hadn’t taken it she’d shut down and thrown him out. Even though he’d given her the opportunity to tell him what she thought they were. She’d not taken it either. Both of them too scared to tell the truth. She might have heard what she now thinks he was trying to say. I really care about you. Then, he might have heard what she was asking. Do you really care? Do you love me? She might have heard what he was asking. Could you be happy with me? Could we try? But she’d thrown him out. First bad choice.Yet he’d still turned up to save her, and she hadn’t fought it as hard as she might have, in the end. And off the back of that, she’d decided to try to make a go of it, and started to say so. First (only?) good choice.And then she’d been shot. And Castle had saved her again – twice in a week, which even with their record of ending up in death-defying situations is a little lively – and then… And then.She’d woken up, and everything hurt. She’d prised the information out the doctors, not without some difficulty, and realised that she’d been dead. And then the whole construct of her previous choices had all fallen in on her. She’d lied to Castle the first time he’d come by, because she couldn’t stand to see the truth in his face and to know that she’d completely fucked it up: she couldn’t see a way out of the situation – permanently at risk – that her choices had left her in. She doesn’t quite know how she hadn’t shown the truth to Castle then, though it’s as well he hadn’t come back in five minutes later, when she’d been sobbing into her pillows. Drugs seem to be the only way she ever allows her feelings to escape, and she’d certainly been well doped at that point. She’d ditched Josh, later that same day, because she couldn’t stand to see him when she knew that she’d been far happier that Castle had come to see her than that Josh had – and Josh had known it. It hadn’t been a pleasant discussion, though it had been mercifully short. So, Kate, why’d you lie? Why’d you really lie? She cringes, alone in the shrouding dark. At base – because she’d not wanted to admit even to herself that she’d been wrong, and Castle had been right, and she should have let the case go and chosen Castle much earlier. She should have said something honest, instead of letting the first row develop. She shouldn’t have lied, after, but she’d taken the easy way out, when everything around her was too hard to bear. But then she kept lying because she didn’t want – couldn’t bear – him to leave. Because she needs someone who’ll tell her the truth. Which he will, because he loves her.And she’ll listen, because she loves him.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
She doesn’t notice when she slides, drained, into sleep, still curled on her couch, some way into the small hours of the morning, the dregs of her coffee cooling on the table beside her. The soft grey dawn creeping through her windows doesn’t wake her, the slightly brighter light of a crisp October morning doesn’t induce a single flicker of her eyelids.The knocking on her door does. Eventually. She creaks over to the door, stiff and aching from her unplanned night on the couch, establishes that it’s Castle holding a bag that likely contains breakfast, and opens the door without thinking about her night-clothed state further than to ensure she’s not visible from the hallway.Castle, having slept as peacefully as a child the previous night, (though his dreams had definitely not been childlike at all) bounces round to Kate’s sublet full of the joys of fall. Falling into bed, that is. Mists he can live without, though mellow fruitfulness is very pleasant, especially when applied to Kate. Since he knows that Kate is an early (far too early) riser but at best a sporadic eater of breakfast if left to herself, he stops by a bakery and ensures that she’ll at least start the day on a normal note. One bear claw, coming right up. He’s a little confused when his light tap on the door produces no response. He knocks a bit harder, and then more firmly still, and is just on the point of calling Kate’s phone before really starting to worry when there’s a sound of movement inside and the door pulls open with Kate behind it.His first thought is what the hell? She’s still in a sloppy, vaguely familiar design of t-shirt that she’s clearly slept in, she’s moving stiffly, she looks more like a raccoon than a human – and it doesn’t look like it’s because she forgot to take her mascara off, either. He puts the bear claw on a convenient table and draws her in.“What’s up, Kate? Forget to set the alarm? Have my rugged good looks affected you that much?” Make light of it, don’t show the worry, make a joke. Especially if it will keep Kate in his arms. She feels right, there.“I’m” – he expects the next word to be fine and is wholly blindsided when Kate doesn’t finish that sentence at all. “I didn’t sleep so good.” Good grief. An admission of something that might, in the next universe over, be weakness? Hold the front page. He hugs her in closer, through the rather excessive volume of t-shirt. This one would almost fit him.Hold on. The reason this one would almost fit him is because it is his, not because Kate buys oversize t-shirts to sleep in. His ill-disciplined mouth takes over from his brain. “That’s my t-shirt. Why have you got my t-shirt?” There’s no answer, and if he weren’t holding on to her he’s fairly certain that she’d be behind her bedroom door and possibly exiting her sublet via the bathroom window and fire escape in ten seconds flat. A picture swims into his mind. Wednesday, late at night, when he’d checked that Kate was okay and put out the light on her Kindle. She’d been wearing his t-shirt then too, and he’d not believed the little voice in his head that had persistently nagged him to believe that it was simply because it was his. Hmmm. Maybe he should have, since it looks more and more like the voice might have been right.Instinctive reactions, again. He needs to trust what they’re telling him: they’ve been correct so far. Right now, they’re telling him that, for whatever reason, Kate wanted to be (needed to be?) reminded of him while sleeping. Or, looking at the dark bruised circles under her eyes, not sleeping. Hmmm. That – the t-shirt, not the absence of sleep – is rather hopeful, really. Still, standing here like a tree stump isn’t going to move matters along any. Kate’s not evincing any further desire to move, wrapped against his wide chest, either. He grins briefly to himself, drops a kiss on top of her head because he can’t resist her messy, deep brown curls in the slightest; then swoops down, hoists her up, and repatriates them both to the couch, plopping down with Kate safely in his lap.It’s a helpful side benefit that one angle of vision shows him the several miles of Kate’s excellent legs without a great deal of inconvenient clothing covering them to spoil the view; and another angle gives him an equally unspoilt vista straight down her – his – t-shirt. He’d thought that they could visit the top of the Empire State Building – the very top, the 102nd floor, not the lower viewing platform on the 86th storey. It’s a clearer day than last night’s weather forecast had promised, so carpe diem, he had thought when he woke. Not only in relation to the Empire State Building. If they’re going to be tourists, they should do what a real tourist would do. And a nice day out, with a substantial likelihood of quiet handholding, or arms round shoulders or waists, occasional small kisses (larger ones can wait till later and one or other home) and generally a relaxed day at no particular pace, followed by dinner somewhere quiet and unflashy, had seemed like just the remedy for all their mistakes.Given her state, though, he’s rapidly recasting his entire plan to take account of his current armful of still-tired Kate, who is, for reasons presently unknown to him but which he intends to extract, thieving his t-shirt. (Only one? Perhaps he should take inventory.) How did she manage that, anyway? He’d watched her pack, and he is quite certain that he would have noticed his t-shirt entering her case. Still, that can wait. He doesn’t like this tired, probably-unhappy Kate: he wants his badass Beckett back in business, though maybe with just a few elements of Kate. The ones where she’s Kissable-Kate, for preference. He daydreams happily about Kissable-Kate (and so on…) for a moment or two, content to prolong this peaceful interlude. Being tourists can wait. The Empire State Building isn’t going anywhere. He becomes aware that Kate is lax and heavy against him, her face tucked into his shoulder. Looks like they won’t be going anywhere for a good while yet. Well, there’s no hurry. He rearranges himself into a more comfortable position, utilising the corner of the couch for better support and hoping that he won’t end up with a fatal case of pins-and-needles in his arm, and then relapses into a reverie of his own; planning out Nikki Four. He loses himself in his own extensive ability to drift in his imagination and characters for hours on end. Every so often Kate starts and tenses, though never wakes, then curls closer into him, and somehow that quiets her again. Deep in his own thoughts, he doesn’t notice the time pass until Kate shifts, stirs, and stretches; then suddenly startles awake and stares at him.“What’m I doing here?”“Umm…well, you let me in, I gave you a friendly hug, and the next thing I knew you fell asleep.” He pouts. “That’s not very flattering, Beckett. I thought you liked my sparkling, witty conversation.”“Incessant chatter, more like.” But it doesn’t carry the normal flash and snark; and anyway she’s right there and still a little soft and sleepy and it’s just adorable. So he kisses her. There’s no option, really.Her lips open below his and he can’t quite cope with how responsive she is to him (not that he’d be any different if she’d kissed him first) as she twines her tongue over his and investigates the recesses of his mouth and she is obviously waking up very quickly as her hand comes up round his neck and runs into his hair and makes it perfectly clear that he should carry on. So he does. One should never disappoint a lady. Especially one who carries a gun.He kisses her more deeply, senses her half turn into him and drops his hand to her hip, ruffling up the cotton of the tee and finding only a minimal edge of bikini brief under it. Her right arm is tucked in between them, making inroads on his button-down as it rapidly becomes an unbutton-down, so he retaliates with the arm behind her holding her close in and his free hand gliding up under the t-shirt and reaching the unconfined curves of her breast and that is just so hot because every other time she’s been fully dressed and now she isn’t and reaching under that shirt to find naked flesh is giving him all sorts of ideas about other times that this highly desirable outcome might occur. Nights, and mornings, curled up together in his (he only thinks his, unconsciously assuming she’ll want to share his much larger home) big bed, exchanging kisses and stroking and more. Just like now. His fingers play delicately with the curve of her breast and then move less delicately and more demandingly to rub and roll and pinch gently and learn what she likes – all of that, definitely – so he uses a large palm to cover her breast entirely and mould and press and she pushes back into his hand and runs her surprisingly soft fingertips down over his torso and teases him in a different way, flicking over the front of his pants not quite firmly enough for Castle’s taste. Well, if she can, he can.Beckett finds herself leant back as Castle’s hot mouth moves round from her lips to her neck, his tongue sketching little patterns on her throat and while she’s still gasping out her wordless appreciation his hand moves down and cups over her brief panties and oh his hard hand and the wicked words he’s murmuring into her throat leave her incapable of thought beyond yes Castle more now and palming him harder, faster till he pulls her hand off him before she can make him disgrace himself because he’s so close and so hard and he whispers this is not how it’s going to be and circles her through the panties and she falls back and opens wider and whimpers as he slips past the fabric and through the wet heat and brings her will-she-nil-she higher and higher without ever letting her drop back far enough to return the favour. And then she’s moaning and moving and wholly his as he drives her over.When she manages to convince her eyes to open – even that is more effort than her utterly lax body seems to want to make – Castle is looking very self-satisfied, if somewhat strained.“Now isn’t that a nice way to wake up, Beckett?” She smiles slowly, content to let him have that much.“I’ll agree it has its merits.” She pauses, and her smile turns to a smirk. “Was that what you meant by tourism? Because if it was you should just have told me that your plan included the Museum of Sex.” Castle splutters.“How do you know about the Museum of Sex? Is that how you know about different makes of handcuffs?” He develops a slow, wicked smile. “What aren’t you telling me about your past, Beckett?” Suddenly he looks very disappointed. “But you haven’t anything interesting at all hidden under your bed.”“What use would anything be under the bed? If I had anything, that is.”“You never answer my questions,” Castle grumps. “You still haven’t told me what the joke was yesterday, and now you won’t tell me about your past. It’s not fair. I’ll have to find a different way to persuade you to talk.” His fingers move, and Beckett squirms. “Like that, perhaps?”Beckett’s fingers start to move evilly on their own account. Fair’s fair, after all, and she’d certainly like to return the favour. There will be time enough to discuss their relative experiences – in the most useful and practical ways – later. Lots later, when none of this is quite so new: when they’re both wholly comfortable with each other and the situation and this barely-begun relationship. They’re so good at messing up, but now it’s time to build something stronger. And right now even plain vanilla tastes like it comes with sprinkles.She wriggles her fingers just as if she were distributing sprinkles over her ice cream cone, and takes Castle’s heavy indrawn breath as an indication that less is definitely not more in this case. She squeaks in surprise when he tugs her hands away – that is just not fair – pushes her off his lap – ditto – and then stands up and swings her up and makes for the bedroom in long fast strides. Beckett’s triumphant smirk could have lit up Times Square for a week.“Who needs a Museum of Sex?” Castle purrs into her ear as he deposits her on the bed. He’s undressed in a twinkling, and next to her. Her naughty fingers return to the fascinating game of let’s make Castle groan. She’s winning. She likes winning. Even if Castle’s trying to play on his own account: looming over her in a distinctly predatory fashion and slowly leaning down to kiss her with complete authority and absolute possession. She’s not keen on submitting to authority, as a rule, but she likes these kisses. She does wonder, briefly, how Castle can be simultaneously so comfortingly gentle and metrosexually in touch with his feminine side out of bed and yet so confidently masculine in it; but then decides that it really doesn’t matter as long as he doesn’t stop. She certainly isn’t going to. Here, now, this is the only place she’s felt that she’s her pre-shooting self without the good drugs helping her along.Castle, left brainless and drowned in the sensations Kate’s inducing, finds enough co-ordination to roll the t-shirt up and, still carefully, over her right arm. After that there’s no carefully about it. The t-shirt hits the floor at some speed, but then Kate’s elegant hand slips down and round and strokes him firmly and feathers over the bulbous head and it’s time to change this up because he can’t stand this game any more and she’s so very ready for him and he strips her panties and opens her wide and slides into the hot cradle of her thighs and teases, drifting over her, two slow slides and then thrusts home and Kate half-screams and he silences her with another hard kiss and both her hands are biting into his shoulders and clawing him closer into her tight body and he never, ever wants to let her go and they both fall over the cliff together.She’s asleep again. Castle wonders just how much Kate Beckett hasn’t been sleeping, to be this tired. Normally – before – she seemed to have the stamina of a rhino: always the last out and the first in; apparently capable of surviving and thriving on ten minutes’ snatched catnaps for weeks on end. Of course it couldn’t really be like that, but it certainly seemed to be. Then again, he never saw what she did on her days off (did she have days off? Not as many as she should have had, he thinks.) so it’s possible that she spent them asleep, like a cat. His mind drifts into a happy picture of Kate curled like a cat on his lap, soft and pettable, purring contentedly, and he wraps around her, perfectly contented himself.Tourism is overrated. A little while later Kate hasn’t so much as twitched, and Castle has run out of inspiration for Nikki Four without either his laptop or some paper and a pen. He’s also unpleasantly aware that he could use a shower. He detaches himself carefully, covers Kate up in case she should become cold and then investigates her bathroom with some success, though by the third time he’s knocked his elbow on the shower frame he’s thinking that Kate should just move in with him today and starting to plot how to pack her apartment up and hire a removal company without her noticing or objecting.He’s dried and dressed and, relatively speaking, back to his normal presentable, ruggedly handsome self when he hears a noise which with a little luck will be Kate waking. It’s not. It isn’t, however, anything worrying either. Well, not worrying in terms of Kate’s state. It is deeply worrying in terms of his continued ownership of his wardrobe. Kate is now clutching another of his t-shirts (how many has she stolen?) and is cuddled up around it as if it’s her comfort object and she is still three. Where was she hiding that... oh. It must have been in her bed. Both his t-shirts were in her bed? One on her earlier, one in her hand and squashed into her cheek now? Don’t be such an idiot, Rick. It’s all she thought she had of you.He wanders out to let her sleep in peace, locating a pen and some paper and shamelessly borrowing her desk. Inspiration flows out from his fingers and soon he’s lost again. “Castle?” He jerks out his mental world to find Kate behind him. She looks rather... disconcerted. “You’re still here.” Yes, Kate. Where else would he be? “I thought you’d gone. Can’t be much fun watching me sleep. Not good host behaviour.” She’s trying very hard to make a joke out of it, but he can hear the note of insecurity behind it. She’d really thought he might not be there.“I couldn’t leave. You sleeping was so inspiring I’ve written a whole chapter.” He waggles the pages covered in illegible scrawl at her, as proof. “Could you go back to bed for me? I’m way behind schedule and Gina’s threatening me with torture if I don’t get something in shortly.” He looks deliberately hopefully at her. “Please?”Beckett splutters with mirth. “Go back to sleep or go back to bed, Castle?” She watches with amusement as his ears turn pink again as he realises what he’s said. Still, it only takes an instant before his eyes turn dark and intent and his smile seeps slowly into seduction.“Well…” He reaches for her. She dodges.“I’m hungry.” She looks at her wrist, tuts with irritation when she realises she hasn’t put her watch on yet. She looks around. “How is it after lunchtime? How long have I been asleep? Why didn’t you wake me?”“There’s a bear claw somewhere, to feed you. You’ve been asleep for about three hours. In addition to the hour or so you spent asleep on my lap earlier. What am I, Nytol?” Kate smirks and he hastily carries on before she takes up the feed line. “I didn’t wake you because you looked like you needed the sleep.”“Oh.” Kate frowns. Castle isn’t sure if that’s a frown because he’s essentially saying she looked tired (she didn’t. She looked utterly exhausted.) or because she knows he’s right and she did need the sleep. “Have your breakfast. Have some coffee. That always kick-starts your brain. Then have a shower.” He smiles. “I can wash your back, if you like?”“Not this time,” she says absently, already aiming for the kettle and coffee, completely missing Castle’s stunned, delighted face behind her.
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Coffee helps. Coffee always helps. The bear claw helps too, though Beckett could have easily put away another couple. Once she’s also had a shower without plastic wraps, noticeable pain or inconvenience, managed to put her damp hair into a messy tail and succeeded in getting dressed relatively readily, she feels almost human. Almost Beckett.“Where shall we go, Castle?” He jumps.“The Empire State Building. All the way to the very top.” He shuffles together his handwritten pages and folds them away into his inside pocket. “But first, some lunch.” Beckett doesn’t argue. Lunch sounds good. Normality, in the form of a sandwich and soda in some convenient place, sounds even better. She feels more rested than she has in weeks.Castle leads on to an out-of-the-way and excellent lunch bar – how is he so well-acquainted with the area around her building, Beckett wonders? She lives a reasonable distance from his loft. Through sheer will – and the sure and certain knowledge that she hasn’t a cat’s chance in hell of paying for her own ticket to the Empire State Building – and a glare that would level the Rockies, she manages to pick up the lunch tab without Castle arguing about it for more than five minutes.“How’s your arm?” Castle inquires on the way out.“Fine,” Beckett answers reflexively. Castle raises parentally-interrogative eyebrows in some disbelief. In response, she flexes her shoulder a little, and then, when that doesn’t hurt, a little more; realising as she does so that Castle is – not, she thinks – coincidentally on her right. Protectively so. Oh. Um. That’s… sweet. Also unnecessary, today. However, it is sweet, and if it makes him happy… well, she’s not at all inclined to disagree. “Really fine.”“Good,” Castle murmurs, tending to a rumbling, satisfied purr. He sounds rather like a sleepy lion might. The reason for his satisfaction becomes obvious when he tucks an arm round her and neatly fits her into him. That’s sweet, too. Very…acceptable. “Shall we walk there, Kate?” Why not? Especially if it means that she can stay snuggled in like this.“Okay.”Beckett can’t remember when – or if, though she’s sure she must have at some point – she last went up the Empire State Building. It’s a spectacular view, on a bright fall day. All Manhattan, laid out like Lego below them. Wow. Castle’s idea of being tourists was really good. They perambulate around the topmost viewing deck, Castle not letting go of her for an instant. Now he’s unobtrusively holding her hand, which is, she supposes, somewhat more discreet than actually hugging her. Though it’s probably far too late for discretion. They’ll have to deal with that, sometime: but they can cross that bridge when they come to it.About that point, she also realises that, one way or another, and despite the bright sharp sunlight ricocheting off the steel and glass of the Manhattan skyscrapers, she isn’t startling. Yet, perhaps. But she isn’t. She also doesn’t feel anything like as stressed as she has done for the last month. (or four) She should have tried truth much earlier, she thinks, and sighs. Naturally, Castle notices.“What’s up, Kate?” She hunches her shoulders, not really sure what to say, looking out over the cityscape without really seeing it, the steely flow of the Hudson on its way to the sea. Castle slides closer and stands behind her: almost but not quite touching her, almost but not quite supporting her.“Why?” she says, eyes locked some way beyond the horizon.“Why what?”“Why do you do this? Why do you want this? Why do you just keep on coming back no matter what? I dropped off the grid, and lied to you, and it just doesn’t seem to matter to you what I did. How can you keep on forgiving?” When I couldn’t if it had been me? hangs in the air. She’s said that before. She’s asked this before, only yesterday, and he hadn’t answered.Castle hears the real question, why do you put up with me? this time, because finally he’s listening to more than her words: to the tone and undertones and unspoken questions that really matter: hearing her desperate insecurity and need for reassurance about how he feels. He crosses his arms round her and holds her against him where she can, if she wishes, lean into the bulk of his body and can’t escape, and arranges his thoughts. I wouldn’t have forgiven me either, she’d said. And just now she’s implied that she wouldn’t have been able to forgive the same level of hurt. Except. Except that she did forgive him. Think back, right back to standing outside a hospital room more than two full years ago, right back where this all began. It’s about your mother. And she fled, as far and as fast as she could: locked herself down and ran away and made damn sure she didn’t see him for three months. He’d written and edited and waited and plotted with the Gotham City crew. But when Montgomery invited him back and he’d apologised – she’d forgiven, though it had been clear that the depth of his betrayal had nearly been fatal. After he’d slept with Ellie Monroe, then walked away with Gina, in the summer – she’d forgiven. When, short days ago, he’d admitted his secrecies about her case, she’d thought for a little while – and she’d forgiven. What has he to forgive? Demming, and Davidson. Her silence, and her lies. When she’d finally come back from the summer, and he hadn’t been there – she’d come to find him: taken a first step to mend matters. It seems about even.Ignore the other relationships. They’ve both had those. They weren’t able to, or capable of, having one with each other; neither of them ever said they wanted one with each other anyway. So they both went their separate ways into separate half-hearted relationships. That’s not about forgiveness, on either side, it’s about accepting that they each have pasts: they’ve each made mistakes. Stupid, and childish, to object to that, not to mention a bit late. Here, looking over the city, the altitude can clear away their pasts.So, if she could forgive when he’d hurt her by overriding her wishes and then her right to make her own choices, why does she think he’d be any less able to? No. That’s wrong. She doesn’t think he’s less willing or able to forgive. She thinks she deserves less. Or that her crimes are greater. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t; but that’s like comparing the Rockies to the Andes: the differences are pretty immaterial. He’s seen her do this before – this whole last month or so. She doesn’t think she deserves anything more than the basics: a work relationship, civility. She doesn’t want to impose, won’t ask for what she wants, would rather chew her own arm off than ask for help. Not that he’d asked for what he wanted, after the first weeks after he met her, as what he wanted gradually changed from an affair to a relationship to forever.She doesn’t think she deserves anything. Hmmm. That doesn’t feel quite right. She doesn’t think she deserves anything she hasn’t earned for herself. That’s a little better, but still not accurate. She doesn’t think that she’ll receive anything from anyone – doesn’t feel she can rely on anyone. Except she relies on him, and Espo, and Ryan, and Lanie. Everyone else isn’t reliable. Montgomery’s betrayal was the final nail in that coffin. But that’s still all wrong.Never mind, for now, why she has such lack of confidence in her right to be the recipient of his feelings. Just accept that as an is, not an if, and deal with the instant question.“Because I’ve screwed up too, and you’ve put up with it.” That simple, and that complicated. “Why don’t you deserve the same?” He turns her round and lifts her face, drops a reassuring kiss on her forehead, and leaves her with that thought. Now is not the time to push. The answer to why do you put up with me, Kate might be a step further than she’ll go right now, and he’ll never get a second chance to ask it and receive an honest answer. But he’s sure why, now. As sure of what she feels as of what he feels.He kisses her again, affectionately on the tip of her nose, and smiles down; tucks her in and perambulates them round again, pointing out buildings and landmarks like an over-enthusiastic tour guide till Kate tells him that she’s lived here in Manhattan pretty much all her life and actually she does know which edifice is the Chrysler Building and which verdant area is Central Park.“Edifice? Verdant?”“I have an extensive vocabulary, Castle.”“So hot,” he mutters. He looks around. “Sun’s starting to set, Kate. Can we stay up here and watch? I’ve never seen sunset from up here.” He looks ridiculously hopeful as he widens his eyes at her. Beckett considers. She’s been fine all afternoon, since she woke up: the hurry and bustle of the Manhattan streets as they walked here didn’t frighten her; the sharp fall sunlight glinting and reflecting hasn’t spooked her; the tourists around her haven’t startled her.Castle is, he knows, taking a chance; perhaps pushing his luck to the limits. But either way, he thinks, he wins. If Kate doesn’t spook, or shiver, or startle, then his theory that confession and truth, from both of them, will reduce her stress level and improve the PTSD, however marginally, will be borne out, and they can stay wrapped together and romantically watch the sun set over Manhattan. Sappily, he thinks that would be very nice. (though he’s never going to let on that he’s even thought that to Kate or the boys. He’ll be ragged about it for years.) If she does, then he can gather her in, take her out of here and soothe, calm and protect her; just like the other day; and see if that works again. Either way, he wins, he thinks again.“Okay,” Kate answers; outwardly confident, though he sees a doubt squirming, maggot-like, behind her deep hazel-green eyes.“C’mon, then. Let’s find a good view.” He tugs at her hand, and, amazingly and unusually, she follows him. It’s an interesting change from him trailing behind her.Sunset is beautiful. Beckett has never seen it from up here, nor has she stopped to admire it much when down in the mud and the blood of murder in the grid of streets below. In this, as so often when they’re on the job, Castle has come up with a seemingly ridiculous but ultimately brilliant idea.It’s all fine, for a while. But once the sun drops further, crimson, blood-coloured light casting red reflections, dissolving into neon and sodium streetlamps and sharp-edged clawing shadows; it starts to become less pleasant: the cruel beauty of a stalking predator, and quite as dangerous. Beckett shivers, not with cold. Instantly, there are two arms around her, a hard physical presence behind her: Castle having her back in the most literal way imaginable. Surrounded by him on three sides, the salient of her fearful self is no longer subject to a pincer movement by the enemies of her guilt and cowardice and lies, but reinforced by the safety and security of his presence. Not Ypres, this. The Relief of Mafeking, perhaps. Or of Beckett.“Do you want to go back down now?” Castle’s soft, undemanding tones fall quietly against her still-present tension. She leans back into him, taking ease from his breadth and the enveloping gentleness of his arms.“In a moment,” she answers. She can stand another moment, one tick at a time. One slow heartbeat, one deep breath, both behind her; at a time. Just as long as he’s there, supporting her.And so she stands, watching the last light of the sun slip below the skyline, safely shielded. When the last deep garnet-red rays fade, and the city lights are bright around them, it’s enough. No more. She’s done enough for now, for today.“Let’s go, Castle.” She turns, only then realising that he’s not shifting. In this brief moment, no-one else is there. Castle loosens, but doesn’t release, his grasp; so that when she turns they’re face-to-face and one of his hands comes up from her waist to her shoulders to press her in and when she looks up he simply kisses her hard and fast and then lets go of her before anyone else arrives.“Now let’s go,” he murmurs. Beckett, deprived most unfairly of the opportunity to retaliate by a new elevator-load of visitors, fixes Castle with a glare and clicks sharply to the elevator. There’s a definite aura of hmmph around her, which Castle meets with an only slightly triumphant grin and then winds his fingers into hers.“What now?” Beckett asks when they’re back on the street. Castle hasn’t let go of her hand yet. She hasn’t tried to remove it, either.“Dinner,” Castle replies happily. “There’s a nice Italian restaurant round here.” He leads them to a very unobtrusive door where, naturally, Beckett thinks acerbically, still a little irritated that she hadn’t been able to return the kiss, the maitre d’ instantly recognises and enthusiastically greets Castle, and smoothly ushers them to a table in the corner. Castle, equally smoothly, pulls out a chair for Beckett and politely seats her. She only realises after she’s sat down that the chair he’s directed her to has its back to the window and allows her to see the whole room clearly: no risk of half-seen, startling movements.Kate’s sudden smile rips through Castle’s suave shell like a sabre. Not her usual cool, shuttered, sardonic, cynical, amused quirk of lips, but wholly open and honest. And all, only, directed at him. He didn’t know that she could smile like that: he’s surely never seen it before. He can’t have. If he had, he’d have handcuffed her to him and never, never let her out of his sight and grasp. It stops his heart. He reaches across the table and lays his fingers over hers, speechless. When she laces her fingers delicately through his it feels like a promise, a benediction.And then the smile drops away, back to normal. But just the memory of that smile twines round Castle’s heart and gives him perfect confidence in the outcome. Their outcome. The soft-shoe shuffle of the waiter inquiring about drinks or wine, olives or grissini breaks the mood. A few distracted moments later, food and wine have been agreed upon and ordered. Strangely, garlic has not figured in either order, without a word being spoken.Equally strangely, conversation is not punctuated by flirtation or innuendo. They discuss only resolutely neutral subjects: the exhibitions at the Met; new films – on which they generally cannot agree; music – on which they violently disagree. They do agree on the excellence of the food. And the wine.Castle doesn’t deliberately keep Kate’s glass topped up. On the other hand, he doesn’t hesitate to refill it, or his own, either. Not his place. She’s all grown up and she can manage her own intake. Still; and although he prefers a modicum of sobriety so that there is no risk of misunderstandings – nor of one’s partner falling asleep at inconvenient moments (very damaging to the ego); he wouldn’t mind at all if she were a little more relaxed and loose-tongued. They haven’t finished – they haven’t started – the earlier discussion. Why does he put up with her, why does she put up with him; why do they both forgive when they both hurt each other so badly? And stitched through that – why are – no, were – they both so uncertain of each other?But, set against that, this dawn of their new day: the way in which today has proceeded, and yesterday: the sudden move from incomprehension and denial, secrets and lies, to understanding and acceptance; from hard words and anger to gentleness and… well. And love. So, at least, he hopes, although he is, now, close to certain. And so he thinks the time has come to talk and be honest, without it all spilling out in shatteringly emotional argument where they hurt each other both wittingly and unwittingly, and still don’t ever solve the problems; the time has come not to hide in subtext and denial and other people, not to keep secrets. Time to be truthful.Their meal concludes with coffee, of course – what else? It wouldn’t be them without coffee. But even that familiar distraction can’t put this off for ever. It’s not even particularly late, despite them not hurrying at all.“May I see you home, Miss Beckett?” Castle flirts. Kate looks at him sidelong, clearly not at all deceived by his tone, and then decides not to take issue with his suggestion.“Of course, Mr Castle,” she says smoothly. Castle holds her coat for her and notices that tonight there is no hesitation when it comes to sliding it on to her right arm. He’d always thought that dislocations took longer to heal. “Will you need PT for your arm?”“No more than I’m already having. I’ll just add it to the pile.” Castle has a mental image of a pile of Becketts all doing various exercises (and all dressed in remarkably minimal and/or tight exercise gear) and snorts.“What’s the joke?” He’s just about to tell her when he remembers that she wouldn’t tell him the joke.“Not telling you,” he says in an extremely and deliberately childish sing-song. Kate throws him a very piercing look.“That’s not fair.”“Yes it is. You wouldn’t share the joke when you were sniggering to yourself, so I’m not sharing mine with you.” Besides which, if he does, she might just shoot him. Or detach his ears or nose. Kate humphs at him. He smiles, in a particularly irritating fashion. The humph gets louder. In a moment, it will grow into a camel, just as if it were the Kipling story.“C’mon, Castle,” she wheedles. “Tell me.”“Nope.” A camel-sized humph duly gallops up.“I wanna know.”“I wanna know your joke, too, and you wouldn’t tell me.” Beckett considers for only an instant.“I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours,” she lilts seductively, and watches Castle’s eyes widen. Then he recovers and smiles wickedly.“Okay, as soon as we get to yours.” Maybe the humour of slightly dirty imagination will give them a more serious space in which to talk.Beckett’s sublet is still dim and quiet. She switches on a couple of sidelights, but leaves the main lights off; the illumination scarcely sufficient to banish the darkness; offers more coffee, which is declined, and, at least as much as a delaying tactic as anything else, shares her errant thought with Castle. He is, predictably, thoroughly and smugly self-satisfied about it. Even when she points out that she was referring to his height and breadth, not any of his – er – other attributes, he’s still smirking smugly; and spends a moment or two proving the use of a substantial size and weight advantage in close quarters contact. Beckett isn’t nearly as impressed by Castle’s thoughts, although once he’s demonstrated how impressed he is by his thoughts she’s rather more receptive. At least, she isn’t trying to amputate his ear any longer.But finally they’ve each run out of reasons to delay. Time for the hard questions, time for the hard answers.Time for the hard truth.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“You asked why,” Castle begins. “Why put up with you, why forgive you, why you.” None of it is a question. “I could ask you the same questions: why put up with me, why forgive me, why me.” He stops, and swallows. Kate is horribly tense against him. “But I don’t think that’s really the question here.” She looks up at him questioningly, face half-hidden in the shadows and her hair. “The real question here is why you thought you didn’t deserve to be happy?” He leaves it hanging there, and holds on to her hard. No running, no evasion.“What do I give you? You give, all the time. Solving crimes, following me, having my back, being there.” Her voice rises on the last words. “You give everything. It’s what you do. You give. I don’t give you anything.”“Well, maybe not – if we discount the inspiration for a series that sells by the million and made me a fortune – not one cent of which you would accept when it was offered.” She doesn’t know how much of it he’s donated to the Johanna Beckett Foundation. She never will. “Or discount giving me the chance to do something useful and meaningful – and fun. Or discount giving me useful advice about my daughter?” Kate looks entirely unconvinced. He doesn’t get the chance to carry on to the most important thing, as she runs over him.“Or the chance to get killed. Or the chance to sit around and wait and try to solve my shooting while I don’t call, don’t write, don’t send you flowers – and can’t solve it.” Her tone is acid. “Or the chance to listen to me lie to you. What do I give you except an endless number of ways to get hurt?” She won’t look at him, her tones hard granite, not admitting disagreement. “I don’t give anyone anything. Never have. Likely never will.”“Total bullshit. You give people everything you are. Everything, Kate. Answers and justice and closure. You’d have killed yourself pretending that work partners was enough just so that you could keep pouring yourself out into solving other people’s misery. You never stop giving.” He forces her head round to look at him, to see the truth of what he sees. “You came back early because you couldn’t bear not to be doing your job. You spend your whole life in the precinct and you barely leave it.” Blinding realisation hits him. “It’s not that you don’t think you deserve to be happy. It’s that you put everyone else’s happiness ahead of yours.” She’s shaking her head. “You do. First in, last out: your team gets their downtime but you never take yours; every case is an insult until it’s solved. Giving everyone else the answers you don’t have.” She forcibly shuts off his words with a hand across his mouth, barely short of a blow.“That’s what you think. Always seeing the best in people, always the good. You want the truth? I came back early so I could find my killer.” He flinches at her venom. “Not to help anyone else. Every minute I spend on someone else’s case is a minute I’m not spending on my own. And you know what? I hate it. I have to find everyone else’s killers but I’m not even allowed to look for my own. Everyone else gets closure and I don’t.” Her voice drops, and she tugs away to stand and stare out over the city, her rigid back to him.
Ah. Much more becomes clear. Guilt not only about her inability to live up to her own standards when dealing with him, but guilt that – just for once – she wants to put herself first: deal with her own life and concerns.
“Have you?”“Have I what?”“Have you actually taken one single minute away from dealing with other cases to look at your own? Because from where I’m standing – right next to you – you haven’t done one single thing differently this side of the summer” – he can’t say dying – “than from before it. You tried to go into the precinct on Wednesday, dammit, when you couldn’t even use your arm. If you’re looking at your own case then you’re not doing it on the wholly excessive time you spend in the precinct, you’re doing it instead of sleeping.” There’s a very slight movement. “Are you?”“I was stuck. But now we know something. You knew something I didn’t. You’ve got a lead and I want to follow it.” She turns round, blazing with her agony. “Why can’t I have closure? Don’t I deserve it?”Castle sees the corrosive effects of a long-cold case all laid out before him like the city had been earlier, and just as regular. Time for shock tactics. He’s never seen Kate this wound up before.“Yes. But you won’t find it if you’re dead. Again.”There’s complete silence as he lets that sink in.“I said I’d help you find him. I will. But not yet. We will figure this out. We will find them and we will make them pay. Just not today. Not today, Kate.” He stands up to join her at the window. “You haven’t changed. You’re no less than you were four months ago. You haven’t given one single jot less of your blood and bone and heart to the others. Whatever you want to do, you’re still giving everything to those other families.” He stops speaking, holds her close, still feeling the resistance to his words in her iron-framed control.“You deserve the same closure as you give to everyone else. But you can’t do it alone. We’ll do it together, in time. But Kate, that time is not now.” He stops again. “You said you need me to tell you when you ought to stop. I’m telling you now. If you go after this now, alone, you will be dead. Again. Even if you’re not shot, you’ll kill yourself with overwork. Because whatever you say you want to do, you’ll never allow yourself to give one drop less effort to anyone else’s case. You can’t do justice to your own case yet. We don’t have the information, and right now there’s no way of getting it.” He looks down at the top of her head. “If I thought we could, I’d tell you how. I got nothing. You got nothing. We have to wait.” And finally she sags slightly.“When does it end, Castle?” she whispers, desolately. It’s concession to his point, acceptance. “When does it end?”“I don’t know.” He can’t tell her comforting lies. That won’t help. “But it doesn’t make you less. You should know better than to think that. The families of the victims for whom you stand aren’t less, are they?” She doesn’t answer. “Are they? Do you think they’re less? Do you secretly despise them for having a relative murdered? Is that why you think you’ll give them anything less than you ever have before? How often do you think it’s their fault?” His words and tone whip-crack through the air.Finally he’s pierced the armour.“Are you mad? Of course I don’t. I wouldn’t. It’s not their fault! It’s the killer’s fault.”“And your mother’s murder wasn’t your fault. And you being shot wasn’t your fault. It’s down to the killer. How often do you tell other people that? Why don’t you believe it for yourself? You didn’t pay the sniper to shoot you, or Coonan to kill your mother, so how is any of this your fault?”He can hear her quick shallow gasping breaths in the silence, slowly beginning to slow and smooth out as he waits, allows quiet for a space until that’s sunk in, the edge of anger eroded.“None of this is your fault. None of this means you don’t deserve to have a life. None of this means that we can’t get you justice. So stop feeling guilty about things you aren’t even guilty of doing. You’re not letting anyone down, you’re not giving anyone less than your best, you’re still standing for the dead.”He draws her back to the couch, encourages her to sit down next to him again, wraps a warm arm around her. She’s crashing down the same emotional cliff that she’s been on since she came back. This time, though, he’ll not arrive just too late to catch her. This time, he’s holding the net. She doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing, really, to say. She simply needs to absorb reality. He’s dead certain – not an accidental phrase – that none of this skewed thinking had ever occurred to her before the summer. He’s dead certain that she’d never have been so wrong about how she’s behaving if she hadn’t lost almost all her usual confidence in her ability to do the job. (and her confidence that he’d still be around) Or, in fact, isn’t it the other way round? She got shot. That makes it personal. She fell down the rabbit hole when it was her mother, came out it – more or less – until a series of shocks that brought it front and centre: his findings, Coonan, Lockwood. Third time’s the charm. This charm, though, was poisonously malevolent. The third shock, Lockwood, then Montgomery dead as part of the same chain, and then the bright flash and the bullet. She’s lost her confidence in doing her job because she wants so badly to go after her own case. She doesn’t feel that she can do both – because she can see herself aiming for a different burrow leading into the same rabbit hole that she nearly lost herself down all those years ago. She lost her confidence in him because first she ignored him asking her to stop and then ran away because she couldn’t deal with the implications.I see you, Kate. I see you. Can you see yourself? Time to stop talking, and let her consider; here in the comforting dimness. All he needs to be, right now, here and now, is her voice of reason. All he needs to do is to hope that she listens. She said she needed him to tell her when to stop, she said that he was – is – someone she’ll listen to. She’s given him the right to ask her to stop. But in the end, it’s up to her whether she does stop – or not. Foot out the door relationships, partners and friends. That wasn’t enough to stop me. He’s not likely to forget those words any time soon. He hopes desperately that a real relationship, where she knows how he feels, is enough.Beckett is thinking, shaken to the core by the strength of Castle’s statements. She’s spent so much time looping round the fact of her shooting, the need to find something, anything, that would make all the wasted time and pain and near-death worthwhile; so much time miserable over the fact that she couldn’t initially draw a gun, that she was slowly spooking more and more with every passing day, that she was drowning in her own lies; that she’s lost sight of the fact that she hasn’t dropped a single investigative ball. She’d seen it herself, last night, that she was diving straight back in. She’d also seen that she needs someone – Castle – to tell her the truth. So listen to the truth he’s telling you. This was not your fault. They don’t have any more information. They don’t have the file. She’s not fully fit – mentally or physically – to go after it, and they have no idea where to start.She has to step back from the edge.And then she realises that in all this thinking, whenever it’s come to the case, she’s thought they. Which tells her very firmly where she should be standing: not alone on the edge looking down into the abyss, but with Castle. She reaches out and takes his hand, curling her fingers round it.“You’re right. It’s not my fault.” She inhales, exhales, inhales slowly again. “I need to solve this.” His heart drops. But she’s still clinging to his hand, still sitting close in the curve of his arm, still not standing or fighting or protesting or running. “But it can wait. It can wait until we’re ready.”“We?” Castle asks quietly.“We. Both of us. Together. We will make them pay.” His own words, right back at him. He’s done it. Talked her down off the ledge, bought them time to make this work. Through honesty, too, kept her safe – with her consent. And most importantly – she’s agreed that they will do it together, when the time comes. His hand flexes where it’s locked with hers: swift hard acknowledgement.It’s late, now. They haven’t dealt with the whole, but they’ve scaled the main face. Kate’s quiet; almost tranquil by his side, eased. Peaceful. He hasn’t seen that in some time: months, in fact, now he thinks about it, not since they took Lockwood down the first time. It’s enough for tonight, if that’s what she needs. Should he stay or should he go, he wonders; for the first time this evening indecisive, unsure. Uncertainty is banished when Kate yawns widely and stretches out from under his arm. “I need sleep,” she says. Castle stands up, starting to look for his coat. “Where are you going?”“Home?” he says. Kate looks ridiculously disappointed. Hmm. Maybe he’s got that guess as to what she wants wrong. Play it out a little.“Oh. Okay. Guess I’ll see you t” – she stops on the consonant, regroups – how can she still not ask for what she really wants? – “on Wednesday at the precinct.” Castle crinkles his eyes up in a smile. Despite how tired she is, he’ll play this out a little further yet. She’s cute when she’s tired and not thinking too fast.“Or tomorrow? I wanna go to the Natural History Museum. I love the dinosaurs and the dioramas.” Kate looks marginally happier, though not much. This is fun. Possibly fatal, but fun. If she wasn’t so tired she’d realise he was winding her up.“Okay.” She heaves herself up from the couch, eyelids drooping. All the smile has run out of her with another jaw-breaking yawn. Castle catches her as she stumbles vaguely in the direction of her bedroom.“Or I could stay.” She looks up at him.“Stay?”“Yep.” He sees light dawn. “Took you a while,” he grins.“You… you…”“You should ask for what you want,” he says very smugly. “How’m I supposed to know what you want if you don’t tell me?” She tries for a glare, and nearly achieves it before she’s interrupted by another yawn.“ ‘M going to bed. Come too.” She tries to take a step and finds that she’s stuck. “Castle, let go.”“Nope,” he says amiably. “I like doing this.”“Doing what?” Kate says suspiciously – and sleepily. If she were less sleepy she would certainly be more suspicious.“This,” he replies happily – and swings her up into his arms before she can protest to carry her back through to her bed and drop her in the middle of it. She isn’t staying there, though. “Where are you going?”“Teeth. Wash. Then bed.” Oh. Okay.“You got a spare toothbrush?”“In the cabinet.” She tries for another glare. “My turn first.” He doesn’t argue. By the time he’s done, she’ll be out cold. No point in making her life difficult.And so it proves. By the time he’s washed up and found the toothbrush – sparkly lilac? Really? How… girly. Very un-Beckett. He bets it’s the last one from a multi-coloured multipack, bought on the run from a twenty-four hour store in the interstices between cases – she is indeed out cold. She’s also wearing his t-shirt. Again. He slips in beside her in boxers and spoons in. Castle wakes first in the morning. This is a considerable surprise. It’s somewhat less of a surprise, given what he’d deduced about why she had stolen two of his t-shirts, (is it only two? He’d better check) that Kate’s nose is pressed into the meeting point of his shoulder and neck. He carefully detaches himself, leaves her to sleep, goes to investigate the possibilities for breakfast – and remembers that Kate’s fridge is merely a decorative accoutrement playing no active role in her life or kitchen. Oh well, coffee will suffice for now. It’ll have to.Coffee finished, Kate still out for the count, Castle indulges (or something: it’s still far too small) in a shower, borrows a rather feminine razor rather than looking like a panhandler, (sexy stubble is one thing, unkempt is simply notacceptable) dresses, and recovers yesterday’s scrawled output from his jacket to continue where he left off. Except he can’t. Every time he tries to put himself into Nikki Four, currently in yet another tense situation, he thinks back to the extremely pleasant sensation of snuggling up to Kate and then waking up with her. He can cope with rather a lot of that. The rest of his life, in fact. Once that settles in, though, inspiration sinks fangs into him and he starts to scribble. It’s just as well, really. If inspiration hadn’t bitten, he might need to think about the next part of their unfinished conversation, which he would really rather not. Bluntly, he thinks, she might have said, in extremis, that she does want a real relationship, and her instinctive reactions are definitely all pointing in the right direction, but actually persuading her – well, both of them – to admit the truth might be quite difficult. Here in his head it’s terribly, wonderfully easy. Out loud, vibrating in the air – that’s a very different, difficult matter. He goes back to scribbling.Beckett wakes up slowly, blearily wondering why there’s a dent in the other side of her bed and why everything smells rather more aromatically of Castle than the t-shirt ought to after a few days, until she remembers that Castle stayed. At least – she thinks he’d said he would stay. In which case, where is he? She pads out to find him, and fails to notice that she’s assumed he’ll still be here.“Castle?” Ah, there he is, writing. She takes a moment to admire his shoulders. “Castle?” she says again, a little louder.He spins round and smiles delightedly. It punches right into her gut. He smiles like that so rarely: as does she, he normally produces his bright, practised social smile: sincere, but hardly revealing. She smiles back, openly.“More coffee, Castle?”“How’d you know I’ve already had coffee?”“Detective, remember? That and the fact that you’ve left out the coffee and two mugs, and one of them is used.”“Yes, please.” She swings off in the direction of coffee. Castle prowls after her, and when the kettle is on takes the opportunity to sneak his arms round her and steal a kiss. At least, the plan was to steal a kiss. That turns out to be a hopeless misconception. The misconception in question being that he could stop after one kiss. Or that Kate could. They only pull apart when the kettle clicks off and Kate realises that coffee is a possibility. Castle isn’t offended by that. Well, not much. Besides which, they ought to finish their conversation, now Kate isn’t yawning widely any more. Not till she’s had her coffee, though. Sensible conversation will not happen till caffeine hits her system. He takes the opportunity to curl his arm round her shoulders, and ponders the best way to conclude their discussions – in a form which provides a permanent, real relationship – before she goes back to work tomorrow.Beckett, under the influence of spreading caffeine, is waking up. She’s remembered that she’s allowed back to work tomorrow. And that means that she’ll have to deal with her worries – oh. She won’t. Because she’s still not to overuse her arm for another few days, which means that Gates will have her on desk duty till next Monday at earliest. And Castle will insist that she eats at his, because he already has insisted, and he cooks far better than she does, and that means that, whether or not he comes to the precinct to annoy and amuse her while she’s wrestling with the paperwork, at the end of the day there will be a safe harbour in which to anchor. But, she realises, she still has no idea why Castle, who gives her everything and has asked for nothing in return except the chance to stick with following her around, should behave so. Even if they have found a whole new level of relationship. In which case, now – or never, because she’ll never gather the nerve to ask again. Or to answer, for that matter.“You never answered me,” she says, seemingly out of nowhere.“Huh?” says Castle, articulately.“Why do you do this? Keep on coming back. What do I give you?”And there’s the opening, gaping wide in front of him. Which will it be on the other side – Golgotha, or Elysium? Here goes.“You said what do you give me? Turn it around, Kate – what do I give you?“Love.” Finally, she doesn’t hesitate. Truth is, she’s known it at some level for years.“And that’s what you give me. Love.”She kisses him with all the words she wants to use. There will be time for words, later. Much, much later. He lifts off her mouth and smiles brilliantly down at her, picks her up and takes her back to bed. Some considerable while later, Castle cuddles Kate close and considers a thought which has just occurred to him. She stole his t-shirts because she didn’t have him. Now she’s got him. Or he’s got her, which is much the same thing.“There’s just one thing more we need to sort out, Kate.” She tenses, instantly.“What?” She clearly thinks there’s a major issue.“Now can I have my t-shirts back?”