190. Friends in need

“Hey, Castle,” Beckett says with a bright glance upward, not that she needs it to identify her caller, as she opens the door.

“Hey.” Castle, true to his earlier words, wraps her neatly into his arms and indulges himself with some highly provocative kisses. Beckett is not objecting in any way, and in fact is indulging herself with some highly provocative touching. While this is very nice, and exactly what Castle would like, it does make him wonder what she isn’t telling him about her session, since she’s clearly aiming for a very different occupation of the evening from talking. He kisses her some more, while wondering, until an utterly filthy use of fingers tips him firmly into the view that the best place to continue any discussion is Beckett’s bed. Thinking stops quite shortly after the decision, in favour of action.

“I talked to Burke about the party,” Beckett says, afterwards, snuggled over him with her head on his chest where, undoubtedly not co-incidentally, he can’t see her face. “I didn’t get anywhere.”

“Uh?” Castle emits, too amazed that Burke had not set Beckett on a definitive path to comment.

“He agreed with all my thinking, but I still don’t know what to do.”

“So decide later,” Castle says comfortably. “See how the weekend goes. See how next weekend goes.”

“Next weekend?”

“Mother will be gone. You could come for dinner again – and stay.” He pulls her up over him so he can see her face. “If you wanted.”

“I want to,” she says slowly, and with emphasis. “I don’t know how I’ll feel when I know it’s Alexis there too. Could be an interesting conversation over breakfast, couldn’t it?” she adds acidly.

“I think she’s worked out that we’re not just playing Sorry,” Castle says dryly. This statement does not help.

“That’s not the point,” she says, rolling away from him. Castle doesn’t approve, and rolls her back, exerting some force to achieve it.

“Come back here. What is the point?” He keeps her facing him.

“I’ve hardly been to your loft and suddenly I’m spending the night?”

“So? Alexis knows enough about why you haven’t been to the loft to understand.” Castle observes Beckett’s scarlet face, and finally understands that she’s thoroughly embarrassed. “Why’re you so embarrassed about this? It’s not like I parade women through the loft. I never did that. Only the ones I was actually married to spent time in the loft when Alexis was there.” This statement doesn’t help either.

“We aren’t married.”

“That could change,” Castle says, deliberately annoyingly, and takes the precaution of hanging on to Beckett’s hands before she can change him from living to dead. “Anyway, what’s that got to do with it? It’s not a requirement.” She makes a very peculiar noise. “Not that I wouldn’t like to be married to you, but it does seem a little hurried, and I wouldn’t want your dad to think you’d been forced into a shotgun marriage. He’d shoot me.”

“Not before I do,” Beckett growls, trying to free her hands to work considerable and painful mayhem.

“Look, Alexis isn’t going to care. But you don’t have to stay if you can’t deal with it, so long as you come for dinner.” He rolls over, rolling Beckett at the same time. “Say you’ll come for dinner, and then let the rest work itself out.”

“Okay. Dinner.”

She flops back against the pillows. Castle leans down slowly and intently and kisses her with some force and more possessiveness, which causes her to stop considering killing him and start to respond in a much more friendly manner. His hand swoops down the length of her body and pauses for a moment on her hip, where he finds that it is very easy simply to turn Beckett into him and re-align her leg up round his middle and therefore have free access to her glorious responsiveness. He slides slowly into her and holds her close until they move slowly to gentle completion.

“You’ve got your pass for tomorrow night?” she asks sleepily.

“Yeah.” He cuddles into her. “Till tomorrow,” he says, without making any significant move to get out of bed.

“Night.”

But it still takes him a further length of time to extract himself from Beckett’s bed, and every time he has to he dislikes the necessity more. If she’ll only stay at his, there will be none of this unpleasant leaving business. He plots darkly all the ways he might convince her to stay, the first time she visits after his mother is gone.

“This ain’t like Molloys,” O’Leary rumbles as he enters, audible to the entire establishment.

Beckett sighs. “Do you ever go anyplace else?”

“Sure I do. But only if you make me.”

“Join the gang,” Esposito says very bitterly. “You only get dragged to strange bars. We got dragged to some bullshit experimental theatre crap an’ had to sit through it all evenin’.”

O’Leary’s saucer-sized eyes sparkle. “Anyone alert the newsies?” he jibes. “Don’t recall that your rep includes theatre.”

“Fuck no,” Esposito bites. “Theatre’s for wusses like Ryan.”

“I like the theatre,” O’Leary rumbles mildly. “Don’t think I’m a wuss.”

Esposito regards him dyspeptically. Before it can come to an argument, Beckett intervenes.

“I thought you liked the circus, O’Leary? Especially when you got to be the strongman.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Neither’s picking on Espo. Stop it.”

“Okay,” O’Leary says amiably. “So you tell me how come he was at the theatre with you?”

“Yeah, girl,” Lanie adds. “You’re not so keen on experimental theatre yourself. And if you invited these guys” – for some reason Beckett hears lunkheads – “how come you didn’t invite me?”

“Or me?” O’Leary says, contriving to look as plaintive as a grizzly bear sized man can look.   It’s not terribly successful. He hasn’t quite mastered the puppy look as practised and epitomised by Castle.

“Didn’t want to lose my friends,” she says lightly.

“What are we?” Ryan asks.

“I get to see you like it or not. Anyway, you were on the case. O’Leary wasn’t.”

“Case?” O’Leary drawls. “What case?”

Ryan and Esposito fall over themselves to explain, with considerable profanity and disgust in Espo’s case and a few comments of a very critical nature on the staging and actors from Ryan, who is clearly aiming for his next job to be that of NY Times theatre critic. Castle stays quiet, Lanie adds a few technical details of the autopsy until everyone tells her to shut up so their drinks and food stay in their stomachs, and Beckett awaits disaster.

“An’ so Beckett sent me off with Castle to visit his mom,” Ryan explains, “an’ get her involved for a technical take on things.”

The mountain moves. That is to say, O’Leary sits upright in surprise. “You got Castle’s mom involved?” he says with amazement. “After your dad I thought” – he stops, at Beckett’s vicious glare. Unfortunately it’s too late.

“You knew about this?” comes in various forms from Lanie, at a soprano pitch which would shatter glass, Ryan, who simply sounds plaintively left out as usual, and Espo, who has produced a fearsome growl last heard from Colonel Kurtz and appears to be about to enjoy the smell of napalm in the morning.

“How come you knew and we don’t?” arrives with menaces.

“Because O’Leary was there in the beginning and you were still at the 54th doing organised crime,” Beckett says coolly. Espo is not notably impressed by this reminder that, however tight the team may be, O’Leary has been tight with Beckett for much longer. “It had nothing to do with the job,” she carries on. “When we needed Castle’s mom on the case she was asked. Who asked her doesn’t matter, because I decided we needed her and pushed it through Montgomery.”

O’Leary settles himself again, rustling napkins on other tables. “Okay then,” he drawls. “Guess it’s not a problem.” He pauses a beat. “But you still gotta explain why you din’t invite me to the theatre. I’d’a liked to have seen this play.”

“Trust me, bro, you wouldn’t.”

“You can still go,” Castle points out. “It’s a success. Even the critics liked it.”

“Huh?” emits Espo, utterly dumbfounded. “Your mom pulled it off?”

“Your mom?” O’Leary repeats. “What’s your mom got to do with it?”

Castle explains, briefly and with a considerable lack of any detail relating to Beckett’s interactions with his mother outside the case. O’Leary regards him with bright, intelligent eyes which clearly say I know you’re missing out a ton of detail and thankfully doesn’t articulate the point.

“Interesting,” O’Leary comments, taking around a full minute to finish the word. “Can’t ‘zackly say it’s simple, but seems like it worked.”

Castle looks around the table. Ryan is relatively calm. Espo and Lanie, on the other hand, are fulminating. Beckett’s hand has, under the table and without anyone noticing, migrated to be clinging to his. She clearly expects there to be a row. His fingers stroke over her tense hand.

“Lanie, I’ve known you ten years and you have never, ever mentioned that you like experimental theatre. In fact, last time I suggested we went to see Shakespeare you told me that you’d rather poke pins in your own eyes and then eviscerate yourself with your own scalpel than watch – quote – that mediaeval crap,” Beckett says.

Lanie’s mouth opens and shuts like a gobsmacked goldfish. She doesn’t have any sort of an answer to that, and the unexpected guerrilla attack leaves her defenceless.

“Shakespeare’s not mediaeval, either,” Castle says unhelpfully. Beckett elbows him, before anyone else does. “He’s not. Far too late. Elizabethan.”

“Shut up,” everybody says. Castle looks hurt and subsides into his beer.

“I hate theatre too,” Espo complains. “You still made me sit through it.” He turns to Lanie. “You were lucky. It was total crap an’ there wasn’t any beer. Least Beckett’s dad c’n talk about baseball. The shrink din’t talk about anythin’.”

“Shrink?” screeches Lanie. “What shrink?”

“My shrink,” says Beckett flatly. Lanie stops screeching. The noise is replaced by a laser-like glare. Beckett reflects it straight back at her. “You told me I needed help,” she says. Lanie gobbles like a turkey. “Now you’re complaining that I got it?”

“No, but…”

“No buts,” Beckett says. “Can’t have it both ways.” She smirks at Lanie, who turns a satisfying shade of purple, and then laughs.

“You wait, girl,” Lanie threatens. “You just wait.”

“I still don’t get how Bigfoot there gets to know an’ your team din’t,” Esposito growls, scowling at O’Leary and Beckett more or less equally.

O’Leary, who has been amusing himself by stretching his legs out and maliciously appreciating the envious glances from lesser men (those under six-foot-ten, that would be), rumbles into life. “I was Beckett’s team back in the day. Long before you were, little man.”

Castle looks at Beckett with more than a hint of worry in his eyes. The gang is not precisely making nice or gelling, and in fact it’s beginning to look more like the start of a free fight than a pleasant sharing of fries, food and beer.

“Stop it, all of you,” Beckett raps out, suddenly very much in charge. “I didn’t get you out so you could all start arguing and spoiling the evening. It’s not a competition and none of you get to try and play the I’ve-known-Beckett-longer-or-better card.” She glares impartially at everyone bar Castle. There is a certain amount of cringing and hiding behind beer bottles; and a brief pause.

“So why are we all here?” O’Leary asks. He obviously feels that his size will save him.

Castle takes over. While in-charge Beckett is incredibly hot, he doesn’t think that there’s a need for any more I’m-in-charge-ness. Tempers are fragile enough.

“I wanted to invite all of you to a party,” he says happily.

The response is not precisely enthusiastic.

“What ain’t you tellin’ me, Castle?” Esposito growls. He still hasn’t recovered from the play.

“Whose party?” says Ryan, suspiciously.

Lanie and O’Leary merely look very sceptically unconvinced.

“Guys, it’s a party. Free booze, all night, good food, interesting company. Why’re you all so reluctant?”

“I’m going,” Beckett notes. Fortunately Castle controls his face, though she’ll have bruises where his surprised grip clamped round her knee. However, it doesn’t seem to help.

“You went to that bullshit play,” points out Esposito. “An’ you suckered me into goin’ too. I’m not goin’ anywhere till you an’ Castle tell us exactly what this party’s about, an’ who’s givin’ it.” He scowls.

“Yeah,” Ryan supports. “Spill.”

O’Leary wriggles his squirrel tail brows and looks quizzical. “We-ell,” he drawls, which comes out as waaallllll, “I like a good party, an’ if Castle here’s payin’ for all the beer an’ food, I can stand a whole lotta theatrical types.”

“How did you know?” Castle wails. “It was supposed to be a surprise.” His last words are drowned out by the much louder and more desperate wails from Ryan and Esposito, modulated with some ear-splitting harmonics from Lanie.

“Actors?”

“It was obvious,” O’Leary says, with an iceberg-scaled grin. “Somethin’ ‘bout the way you said ‘interestin’ comp’ny’. That’s what we call detectin’ over at Central Park.” The grin, impossibly, widens. “Like I said, I like theatre. Did a bit, once upon a time.”

All wailing abruptly stops, stunned into absolute silence by the sheer unlikelihood of O’Leary having ever trod a stage.

“Say what?” shrieks absolutely everybody. The entire restaurant is silenced and turns to look at their table. O’Leary blushes brightly at the attention, thereby increasing the air-conditioning requirement by at least four degrees.

“Er…I was in the high school drama club,” he admits, trying to cringe. Since mountains find it difficult to cringe effectively, it doesn’t work. Beckett regards him very sceptically, but doesn’t say anything. Castle, from the way in which her hand had slipped into his over her knee and the tip-tap of her fingers, thinks there might be more to it than that. He’ll find out later.

There is more hubbub and noise, which takes quite a long time to subside. O’Leary munches his food and lets his scarlet cheeks cool while the noise swirls around him.

“Why d’you want us at this party anyway?” Espo challenges. “What’s it for that we need to go?”

“My mother’s moving out,” Castle says, trying to make it bland. “This is her housewarming at the new place. She’s inviting all her friends. I’m paying, and so I want my friends. You guys, and my poker pals.”

“You’re not inviting that shrink again?”

“No.”

“Thank Christ,” Esposito emits, quite unfairly.

“But your mom’s inviting all these theatre types?” Ryan reminds everyone in the guise of a question.

“They’re her friends. Well, cronies, and enemies that she’s on speaking terms with this week.”

“I thought you said you wanted us because we’re your friends,” Lanie says.

“Yeah?”

“Sounds like you want this lot as security.”

Beckett sniggers.

“No,” Castle says in a put-upon manner. “I want my friends. C’mon, guys. It’s gonna be fun.”

“I’ll come,” O’Leary says easily. “An’ Beckett says she’s goin’, so that’s two.”

“My dad’ll come,” Beckett says.

Esposito looks a little less pained. “Your dad? I c’n talk about baseball with him, I guess. ‘S better than talkin’ ‘bout crap plays.”

“So are you going?” Ryan asks.

“Might as well,” Espo notes, with a lot of cool-boy non-enthusiasm. “You heard Castle say free booze an’ food.”

“If you go, I’ll go,” Ryan says.

Everyone looks at Lanie. Lanie looks back. “Yeah?” she says combatively.

“C’mon. You’re the last hold-out. You gotta come too.”

“It wouldn’t be the same without you,” Beckett says, carefully not specifying what that might mean.

“Okay. But you all gotta promise that no-one’s gonna make me do anything that involves dead old white men.”

“Only the ones in your morgue, Lanie.”

Everyone snickers. Having achieved what he wanted, to wit a quarantine zone for Beckett to protect her from his mother, Castle turns the conversation to the remarkable lack of any interesting murders for the last week or so and how is he supposed to write a book if nothing happens for him to put in it? No-one appreciates his commentary, and in the fuss he causes (quite deliberately) everyone forgets the early part of the conversation – and in particular they don’t start asking detailed questions about Dr Burke, Jim, his mother – or any of those people’s dealings with Beckett.

Beckett notices the turn in conversation, but is too relieved that her friends will attend the party really to worry about what they might have asked about the recent past. She can do this. She can make it through this party.

More pertinently, right now she could do with going to the restroom. Conveniently, the restroom does not accommodate more than one person. Lanie, who is suddenly regarding her beadily, has the aspect of a hunting dog on the scent. Beckett knew there was a good reason to like this place. She has a very uncomfortable feeling that Lanie might start asking some very pointed questions, quite soon. Well, she can forestall that without the same sort of falling-out that had happened the first time round, but not tonight. Definitely not tonight. Tonight she is going to have drinks (okay, soda, but still, it’s the principle which counts) and food (there are some very nice desserts in a cabinet downstairs) with her friends and no-one is going to ask her difficult questions which she doesn’t want to answer.

When she gets back to the table O’Leary and Esposito are not-quite-butting heads again. This time it’s about the relative weights they lift. Ryan looks glum, until Castle points out that no GQ models look particularly muscled up and that he, Ryan, seems to have a wider social life than any other detective in the bullpen. Castle does not mention his own gym routine, Beckett notices.

The party breaks up, not too late, following the frankly excessive consumption of desserts and fries. Ryan, Espo and O’Leary go their separate ways, Lanie decamps for Grand Central, and Castle smiles happily at Beckett.

“See,” he says, “all sorted. Enough people to keep my mother well away from you.” He snickers. “I think I’ll introduce O’Leary to her.”

“I thought you liked him?”

“Yes, but he said he was interested in experimental theatre. And besides which, Mother’s Dream might need an understudy for Snout, as the Wall.”

Beckett snorts with laughter. “Don’t tell him that. He’ll probably volunteer.”

“About that. I got the feeling you knew more about his play-acting career than he was saying.”

Beckett almost giggles. “Yeah. O’Leary’s done a lot more than he was saying. He told me once he was part of some am-dram group in Queens, and if you pour enough beer down him he sings.”

“Sings?”

“Bass. What did you expect, with a windpipe that long?”

“No, O’Leary can sing?”

“Yes. It does cause small tidal surges and birds fall out of the sky, but he can sing.”

“My mother will adore him.”