193. She's leaving home

By the time the removers have been supplied with, and drunk, their coffee and returned upstairs with promises of substantial largesse if they can only succeed in packing his mother up by eleven, without killing her, (he feels he has to add that qualifier) Castle is more than a little stressed. He considers very carefully whether to provide assistance, for all of half a second, decides that discretion is the better part of valour and retreats to his office, though he leaves the door open in case he is needed.

There is a certain amount of high pitched – er – discussion upstairs, but since no corpses slither horribly down the staircase Castle declines to intervene, though the loft’s atmosphere is becoming more and more strained. At five to eleven, he mounts the stairs to find out what the state of play is.

It’s surprisingly quiet, though that does not imply peaceful or relaxed. There are many boxes. Alexis is sitting on top of two of them, directing operations. His mother is creating chaos almost as fast as the removers are bringing order.

“Mother,” he says, “don’t you need to get to the theatre?”

“But we’re not finished,” she snaps.

“We’ll finish for you.”

“Evicting me already? I should have expected that. You can’t wait to get rid of me.”

Castle recognises this as the beginnings of the histrionic argument he’s been expecting to arrive since six a.m., and clamps down on his temper. Again.

“I don’t want you to be late for your pre-matinee efforts,” he says through gritted teeth. “Seeing as you’re off-off Broadway’s new directing star.”

“It’s so nice to know that you’re considering my welfare and my future, Richard,” Martha says acidly. “I’d begun to think that you’d forgotten that.”

Alexis cringes in the corner. The removers find it necessary to remove some boxes right out of the room and down the stairs. Castle’s teeth grind.

“I brought you up and made sure you always had a home. I did everything to keep our family together, and you’re destroying it.”

Castle’s temper snaps. “You sent me to boarding school. After I went to college you barely saw me from one end of the year to the next. Then you married that con artist and didn’t even tell me you were getting married. The next time I saw you was when you turned up destitute on my doorstep thirteen years ago and you’ve been here ever since. I’ve made sure you had a home. So don’t guilt trip me about what you did for me as a child. I know what you did and what you sacrificed and how you struggled but it was your choice to keep me. Just like it was your choice to keep interfering with Beckett despite being asked to step back. You chose this. So quit the crap. You are moving. Right now, you’re going to go and direct your matinee. Tonight, you will be in your own apartment. We will have got it ready for you. This time, no-one is leaving you homeless or penniless.” He catches an infuriated breath. “Because you’re still family. Not that you seem to appreciate it.”

Martha regards him, white and shocked.

“Just go,” he says. “We have to finish this,” and he turns away from her.

“Richard…”

“No. I’m not having this fight any longer. Go and be a star, Mother. It’s what you deserve.”

She leaves without another word being said, her shoulders shaking. As she reaches the head of the stairs a muffled sniff can be heard, followed by the rustle of a Kleenex.

Castle slumps down and sits on the floor. “That went well,” he says bitterly.

Alexis slides off her perch and comes over to hug him. “She’ll come round,” she says. “She’s just scared.”

“Yeah. Well.” He pushes it away. “Where’d the men go?”

“Hiding.”

“Wish I could’ve,” Castle says under his breath. “Let’s get them back up here. Is everything packed?”

“Dad…”

“Don’t worry, pumpkin. Let’s just get this finished.”

Castle doesn’t see Alexis’s worried look at the back of his head, since he’s exiting the room to find the removers.

The men turn out to be in the kitchen, indulging in a no-doubt much needed drink. Neither of them say anything. There is a slight aura of man-to-man sympathy.

“Okay,” Castle says, “let’s get going again.”

At that point the door sounds. Castle goes to it to find Beckett on the other side.

“Is it safe?” she asks, and then actually looks properly at him. “Oh,” she adds, and hugs him. “Rough?”

“Mhm,” Castle mutters. The hug tightens. When she lets go of him, the two removers are regarding him with some admiration and a definite sense of can-I-have-one-of-those-too-please? It doesn’t do much to improve Castle’s mood. Fortunately they remove themselves upstairs, from where Alexis’s best organising tones can be heard. The remaining boxes transfer from upstairs to downstairs and then from downstairs to the removal truck. Castle watches to ensure no damage is done, and he, Alexis and Beckett carry lighter boxes, leaving the two big guys to deal with the heavy items.

By one p.m. everything seems to have been cleared. Castle bribes the men to go and have lunch on him for an hour or so, and after they come back they’ll all go and start unpacking at the other end.

Lunch at the Castle loft is quiet. Martha’s parting shots and Castle’s loss of temper hang over the table like a shroud, and while Beckett leaves her hand over Castle’s knee as much as she can manage, it doesn’t lift a single particle of his gloom. Even Alexis is suppressed, though she’s regarding Beckett with a hopeful kind of look, as if Beckett is a small light in the darkness. It’s not exactly where Beckett expected to find herself, in anyone’s opinion. As soon as the sandwiches are eaten, Alexis disappears, and Castle beckons Beckett through to his office.

He shuts the door behind her and grabs her, burying his face in her hair and holding on to her as if she’s his lifebelt.

“It was awful,” he says to the top of her head. “Mother at her dignified tragedy queen worst. She hates me for making her move out.” He sighs, with a hint of moisture. “I hate me for making her move out,” he adds miserably. “But we can’t go on like this.” He sniffs. “I didn’t want this to happen.” Beckett pats his shoulder, and then strokes him comfortingly. “Why can’t she just act like a normal mother?”

“Come here,” Beckett says softly, and realises that she’s borrowing one of Castle’s techniques for soothing her when she’s upset. It seems to work, since he nuzzles deeper into her hair.

“All that about how she sacrificed for me. She’s my parent. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to go?   She didn’t have to keep me. Even then, she could have given me up, or…”

“But she didn’t.”

“That’s not the point,” Castle bites out. “The point is that she chose to keep me. So blaming me and making me feel guilty that she did forty years on is a complete headfuck. Has she felt like that for the last forty years?”

Uh-oh, Beckett thinks. This is about to go totally wrong. She doesn’t let go of him, though he’s anything but clinging to her now.

“Even if she did give up everything, surely taking her in and everything I’ve done since she turned up here makes up for it? Or don’t I get any credit for that? After all,” he emits acidly, “I can afford it. It’s not a sacrifice.”

Ouch, she thinks, and pets him, trying to give comfort without actually having to find words which, try as she does, she can’t locate. She becomes aware that he is very close to angry, masculine tears: devastated and strung out on the day so far. He’d expected, she remembers, that it would be his mother who would be emotionally wrecked. Instead, it’s Castle, forced to a decision he never wanted to make, and burdened with the blame for other people’s bad choices. She moves him to a chair, and sits him down before sitting in his lap where she can continue to hold him close and pet him. His face remains buried in her hair; his hands still.

And suddenly she’s not sympathetic, she’s angry.

Angry not at Castle, but at his mother, at the bitter words that have hurt her Castle, her love. She is absolutely not having this. She’ll deal with Martha later. Right now, she is going to pull this poison out and drain it.

“Stop saying that complete crap,” she rips out. “None of this was your fault. You’re still not responsible for her choices. We talked about this. You talked about it with Dr Burke. He told you not to feel guilty and he told you not to sacrifice your own life for hers. You’re not to do what I did. You hear me? You’ve done more than anyone would have done. You do nothing but give.” She draws a fast breath and doesn’t let him get a word in: her voice rising. She shakes his shoulders, hard. “Your mother is having a tantrum. Nothing else. You still love her and she still loves you but she’s behaving like a toddler. Just like with a toddler, you’ve set some reasonable limits and because she’s never hit them before she’s making a fuss. She’s picked the thing most likely to hurt you and I am not listening to you beat yourself up about it when it’s utter crap. She chose to screw everything up and ignore you. It’s your life too.” Another fast breath. “Stop blaming yourself. This is not your fault.”

The last words are delivered with skull-crushing force. Castle’s spine straightens without any input from his brain as her tone goes directly from ears to bones. He’d thought Montgomery was intimidating. Roy Montgomery has nothing on an enraged Kate Beckett. Clearly the other side of soft Kat is actually a sabre-toothed tiger. And she still hasn’t finished.

“If you don’t get your head out your ass about this I’ll march you off to Dr Burke right now, in cuffs at gunpoint if I have to, and leave you there until he’s fixed you. None of this is on you. So get up from that chair and stop it right now.”

And then she hauls his head round to hers and kisses him in a way she has never, ever initiated: wholly in command and in charge, ravaging his mouth without his permission but suddenly with his complete surrender. Far too soon she pulls back from him, her eyes blazing and her expression terrifying.

“Up!” she orders. “We are going to do this and you are going to stop blaming yourself.”

There is the sound of applause from the doorway. Beckett subsides into flaming embarrassment at the sight of Alexis.

“See, Dad? Grams was just being a pain in the ass.”

“Alexis!”

“Don’t ‘Alexis!’ me. You listen to Detective Beckett, Dad. Now go and talk to the movers. They came back five minutes ago.”

Beckett goes an even darker red. Given the choice, she wouldn’t have been kissing Castle in full view of his daughter and two random removal men. She looks around hopefully in case there is somewhere to hide. Since Castle is doing what his daughter has just told him to do, she can’t hide behind him.

Alexis shuts the office door with herself on the same side as Beckett. There is an extremely awkward silence.

“Um… I’m glad you said all that to Dad.”

“Uh?”

“He won’t believe me, so maybe he’ll believe you.” Alexis droops. “Grams was really horrible to him, and it’s not fair. Now he’ll be upset.”

Beckett straightens her own spine. “Not if I have anything to do with it,” she says.

Alexis brightens up. “Promise?”

“Yes.”

Alexis departs. Beckett wonders what on earth she’s just promised. On the other hand, Castle may be a kind, forgiving soul, but she is not. Martha Rodgers has just made a very big mistake. Mother or not, there is no way that Beckett is allowing her to hurt Beckett’s Castle like this. This evening should be very, very interesting. She smiles, and there are knives and blood in her expression.

The removal men avoid Beckett’s gaze almost as assiduously as she avoids theirs. It makes communication a tad difficult, but Castle, though locked down tight, seems to have a fairly clear idea of the location of the major items, and Alexis deals with the decorative matters. Beckett carries boxes and doesn’t proffer any opinion at all. By the end of this evening Martha will have had an ungracious plenty of her opinions. Oh yes.

Castle is locked down because his two emotional options are to finish with the movers, go home, and then either throw everyone out of his house so that he can have the temper tantrum he wants to have, in private, or throw everyone but Beckett out of his house so that he can take her to bed and lose himself in her until he feels better, again in private. Neither would be fair to Alexis. Since he is a better parent than his mother, he won’t upset Alexis like that. However, his fragile temper displays itself in politely curt instruction to the movers, who are carefully exact and do precisely what they are told.

By five-thirty everything is completed. No doubt, Castle thinks bitterly, it will all be wrong, but he’s past caring. It’s done. The movers remove themselves and the packaging, Beckett very domestically pushes a vacuum cleaner around the rugs (the domesticity really doesn’t suit her), and Alexis titivates the pictures and posters. Pride of place goes to a new poster of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which his mother’s directorial debut is prominent. He’d planned to present it to her at her party, but right now he doesn’t care. He’ll find her a different present. A sacrificial lamb, perhaps. Or a scapegoat.

He looks around, and is satisfied that no more can be done.

“Let’s go back home,” he says to the others.

“Okay,” Alexis assents.

Beckett flicks him a rather are-you-sure look.

“I think we all deserve a drink. Beckett, I still have some Blue Mountain…” Truth to tell, he knows he should let her go, do what they’d discussed and have a small dinner with only himself and Alexis, allowing the two of them to find their familial equilibrium again, but he doesn’t want Beckett to go just yet.

“If there’s coffee, how could I refuse?” she says, achieving lightness with some effort, and packs them all into her cruiser to take them back to the loft.

The drink is awkward. Alexis keeps casting shy glances at Beckett, who is tense in a way she hadn’t been earlier. Castle desperately wants to have his arm around her, to take comfort from her body tucked into his, but he can’t do that with Alexis there. It’s not appropriate, no matter what he’d said to Beckett about Alexis working out the situation.

Beckett drains her coffee in a way that indicates that the day is, for her, over, bids farewell to Alexis, who tactfully excuses herself upstairs, and collects her light jacket. Castle escorts her to the door, and turns to her before she presses the handle down.

“I’m glad you were here,” he mutters, wrapping his arms around her. “I wish…”

She hugs him close. “You and Alexis need some time together. Tomorrow… look, call me, okay?” She plants a kiss on the small part of chin that’s all she can reach. “I’ve got no plans, so…”

“Okay.” He sounds despondent, and she kisses him again: he turns his head so that she can meet his mouth.

“It’ll be okay,” she promises. “It’ll all be okay.” Castle holds her very tightly for a further moment, and then allows her to leave, her sneakers making no sound on the hallway. He feels unreasonably as if she’s disappeared, a cobweb caught by the wind, leaving him only fragmented strands where she should be. If only she had been able to bring herself to stay.

Alexis returns downstairs to find Castle morosely flicking through takeout menus without really looking at any of them.

“Detective Beckett wouldn’t stay?” she asks, disappointedly. “I thought…”

“No,” Castle says heavily. “She said tonight was for us to be a family.”

“Oh. But…”

“No.”

“But… I thought… I thought she was going to stay to cheer you up.”

“She’s not ready. She was going to come over next week.”

“Okay,” says Alexis doubtfully. “But I wish she’d stayed.”

“Me too,” Castle says miserably. He makes an effort. “Thai, Chinese, or pizza?”

“Let’s go out. Can we have Mexican? We could walk up to Rosa Mexicano. Please, Dad? Otherwise we’ll just stare at the walls and then you’ll mope.”

“Okay. Whatever, pumpkin. Let’s go and eat too many tacos and too much guacamole.”

“No sombreros. No singing.”

“No fun,” says Castle, but his heart isn’t in it and both of them know it.

Beckett hadn’t wanted to leave at all. She’d wanted to stay, cuddle Castle and keep him happier: listen to him recover his usual joyfulness, or be there to give him the contact he is very likely to need. Sex might not solve problems, but lovemaking can make up for a hell of a lot. She also knows that Alexis will be thinking that she, Beckett, had meant that she would stop Castle being upset by staying, and is likely a little confused and upset herself that Beckett had left.

She’ll explain to them both in due time. They’ll understand, when she explains why she didn’t stay now.

It belatedly occurs to Beckett that she’s been so angry with Martha all day that she’s barely worried for a second about Castle and Alexis as a family unit. She stops off at home to pick up her shield and for a drink of tea – not even her best Ethiopian coffee will compete with the Blue Mountain which Castle had shared with her – and contemplates that. She’d barely thought about the close relationship Castle and Alexis have, and she certainly hadn’t been stabbed or stung by it. Okay, so they hadn’t exactly been their usual bubbly and chattery selves: no jokes or smartass comments, but they’d been doing things as a family and she hadn’t twitched an eyelash, she’d simply pitched in and got on with helping out.

Dr Burke had said it: she couldn’t expect to be comfortable and fixed with one visit, but this least comfortable of visits had left her more comfortable thereafter. Not that much of it had been in their home. Still, it was easier. Lots easier. So maybe, just maybe, her instinctive agreement to the invitation for her dad and her to dinner – wasn’t a reversion to bad habits, but really was because she was less stressed by it, more familiar with it, just plain better about it.

She drains her tea and sets her cup down with a confident click. Time to go and deal with Martha Rodgers.