108. I'm still standing

Hot chocolate does not take long. Lighting the fire to toast the marshmallows takes a little longer, but shortly they’re both ensconced in front of the fire with the large bag of marshmallows, the toasting forks, and nothing much else. Beckett is lying on her stomach idly twirling her marshmallow and kicking her feet; Castle has his elbows on his knees and is practically twitching with impatience for his treat to be ready. As soon as it’s turned even faintly coloured he’s pulling his fork back and snatching it off the end.

He pops the marshmallow into his mouth with a look of blissful happiness and then squeaks in pain and fans his tongue.

“Was it hot, Castle?” Beckett says evilly, twirling hers round to even up the toasting.

“Ow ow ow,” he whines. “Hurts.”

“Awwww, poor baby,” she drawls, very unsympathetically, and twirls her perfectly roasted marshmallow out of the fire, letting it cool before sliding it into her mouth.

“You should kiss it better, not be mean to me.”

“I’m not being mean. Mean would be stealing your marshmallows.” Her fingers steal closer to the bag.

Castle’s hand arrives on her back, progresses to her side, and (having checked her drink was out the way on the hearth) rolls her over.

“Uh?” Beckett emits indignantly. “What’re you doing?”

Castle has unfolded, and is looming over her. “Asserting myself,” he says suavely, and leans down very slowly and kisses her thoroughly. “There will be no stealing of marshmallows here, Detective Beckett. Theft will be regarded very severely.” He kisses her again, and imprisons her hands within his, beside her head. She laughs up at him, entirely uncowed by his fake severity. This is probably because it would take her a mere thousandth of a second to have him crying uncle and totally incapacitated. He’s seen her sparring.

“I’m not stealing anything. You offered me the marshmallows and I accepted.”

“You had designs on the bag. It was clear that you were planning a major heist.”

He kisses her again, deeply, and then rolls away, swipes the marshmallow bag and stabs three on to his toasting fork.

“Hey!” Beckett squawks. “Leave some for me.” She sits up and starts searching for the bag. Castle protects it. Beckett scoots past him and tries to recover it, and then casts Castle a scathing glance as he holds it above his head. “I’m not falling for that trick twice,” she says.

“You already did,” Castle smirks, drops the bag, (marshmallows scatter everywhere) and grabs her. “Gotcha, Beckett,” and he hauls her into his lap and kisses her again, much harder and more possessively, his hand in her hair to hold her in place. Eventually he lifts off. “That’s better. You belong here,” he says, provocatively. “Right here with me.”

Beckett opens her mouth. Castle kisses it again. “My Kat,” he murmurs into her mouth. “You know, real cats never do anything they don’t want to. They go their own way, and can’t be driven. I always wanted a cat, but Mother wouldn’t let me have one. So unfair. But there are always cats in theatres – they’re all called Gus, after Eliot’s theatre cat whose name was really Asparagus, but that’s such a fuss” –

“Is there a point to this, Castle, or are you about to break into song?”

He pouts.

“Cats – or indeed Kats” – the revised spelling is audible – “shouldn’t be herded. It doesn’t work. They should be enticed. Cosseted. Persuaded.” His voice moves to a deep, gravelled growl. “Petted and stroked.”

His words hold her more tightly than his arms. She curves in, turning her face up to him, and he accepts her open invitation and brushes lips across hers.

The romantic moment is shattered by the growling of his stomach, swiftly joined by an answering complaint from Beckett’s.

“And fed,” she points out. “I’m hungry. Can we get another picnic?”

“Sure.”

So that’s what they do. This time, though, it’s preceded by finding the marshmallows and post-scripted by roasting them, with a considerable quantity of lusciously creamy hot chocolate and (since there will have to be driving) no alcohol. This time, too, they take the time to tidy up, although Castle assures Beckett that the excellent Joe will deal with the usual cleaning service.

After lunch, the mood is more pensive than romantic. Beckett, snuggled into Castle, is thinking, again. It takes a few minutes for her to emerge from thought.

“What do I do about Dad?” she asks miserably. “How do I know if he’s telling the truth, or messing me up?”

Castle finds himself in a dilemma. He’s pretty sure that Jim is absolutely telling the truth about his love for his daughter, but it is possible that Jim is simply a really excellent liar. However, he has a thought.

“Um…” he says hesitantly, “there might be… well…”

“Spit it out, Castle. I got nothing so anything has to be better. Even if I’m not going to like it.”

“Well…” She isn’t going to like it, but it’s an idea. “Dr Burke has had a couple of sessions with your dad. And he’s not susceptible to manipulation or lies” –

“No, he just does the manipulating,” Beckett points out acidly.

“Yeah, but… maybe if we both go see him, and I tell both of you what your dad said to me and he tells you what your dad said to him and we all discuss what we think of it… erm… maybe that would give you some evidence?”

There is complete silence. It is not punctuated by brisk denial, miserable denial, or furious denial. Nor is it punctuated by enthusiastic assent. It has a quality of deep thought. Castle keeps his arm round Beckett and his mouth completely shut. She leans into him and keeps thinking. Since he’s not being shouted down or argued with, Castle considers that Beckett is considering his off-the-wall idea very seriously. This is a good thing.

“When?” she suddenly says.

“Have you cancelled your schedule?”

“No.”

“Tuesday? You’d be there anyway.”

“I suppose so. It would be a start.” Her voice falls, almost to inaudibility. “I got through Friday. I’ve started. I just need to keep going.”

“You don’t need to do it on your own. I’m here. I’ll let you stand down. Sure we both screwed up Thursday and Friday, but we cleared that up and we’re still standing.”

She moves uncomfortably, colour washing across her face. “I can’t… can’t promise you I won’t do it again. Take it wrongly, lose it, run.”

“I can’t promise I won’t let my mouth run ahead of my brain, or that I won’t lose my temper,” Castle shrugs. “We’re human: we make mistakes. What matters for now is that we try to mend them.” He grins widely. “Or that O’Leary makes us make up.”

Beckett manages an answering grin. “He’s big enough to knock our heads together,” she agrees. “Okay. I’ll try, you’ll try, and O’Leary will umpire.”

“With Pete as back-up.”

“You’ve met Pete?”

“Er…”

“Wow. O’Leary must really like you.”

Castle feels he’s dodged a bullet there. He refrains from explaining the circumstances in which he met Pete. It’s undoubtedly safer that way.

“Now what?” he asks.

“When will we need to leave to get back?”

“As late as you like, as long as I’m home for breakfast. Eight? Get you home before you turn into a pumpkin.” She growls. “Okay, not a pumpkin. Though you are very ed – ow!”

“Don’t even think about finishing that sentence.”

Castle squeaks as his nose is pinched. “No, Beckett,” he whines obediently, and then rapidly tips her into his lap and imprisons her there, lying flat with her head on his thighs and his hand holding her down. “Now, isn’t this fun,” he drawls. “I’ve got you pinned down so you can’t mutilate me any more, and I can do whatever I please.” He follows up by tracing her lips. “Mmmm.” His free hand wanders around her jawline, and down over her collarbones. She wriggles, but doesn’t get to move anywhere much. Since wriggling isn’t going to help, she squirms into a perfectly comfortable position and awaits developments.

Developments arise in the form of a smooth stroke over her side all the way from shoulder to hip, which is very nice, and then being pulled up to be cosseted in and softly kissed, which is even better. She curls in and enjoys herself. Soft making out is very reassuring: it reminds her that there is far more to this than sex. On the thought, she murmurs mine, and nuzzles further into Castle’s neck to murmur again love you, almost unheard. His clasp tightens to hold her close, and he murmurs love you too in return, and then kisses her much harder, more desperately, more searchingly.

“We can get through this, Beckett. We will.”

She doesn’t answer in words. She clutches herself to him, and makes an attempt to meld into his skin. She wants to get through this, but she’s not yet confident that they – no, not they, they are okay again, but she – can manage to get past the issues that her father has left her with.

“Hey, hey. None of that.” Oh. She’s welling up, and Castle’s noticed. “Don’t do that. We can fix this.”

“I can’t win,” she weeps. “It doesn’t matter what I do or say, I’m wrong. Wrong not to tell him the truth then, wrong to tell him what he did now. You saw him Friday. You didn’t see him before, when he was crying about Mom, or telling me to go; you didn’t see him after he got dry. I don’t know what to believe any more. None of it makes sense.”

“Does it have to?” Castle asks, tentatively.

“Uh?” Beckett says very inelegantly and rather soggily.

“Well, in my youth I wasn’t always a model of sobriety” – Beckett manages a waterlogged quirk of an eyebrow – “and sometimes – promise you won’t arrest me? – I even got just a little high, and from what I do remember consistency wasn’t a big part of my thinking. If I was thinking at all.”

“This is comparable how?”

Castle winces. “The more I drank – er, et cetera – the less consistent I got. Okay, so it was mostly trivial: whether I would carry on with Storm; what I wanted for the next semi-major character, that sort of thing… but sometimes it was more important.”

He winces again, at the memory. “Some of my biggest fights with Gina started there. I’d… well. I told her sober that I didn’t want Alexis thinking she could get a different answer from each of us. Consistency, you know? It certainly wasn’t going to be consistent with Meredith, who never paid any attention and always just did whatever was easiest and suited her at the time. So sober, I was really big on consistency between us. But then I woke up one morning and she was really upset and angry and apparently I’d said – in front of Alexis, which was just unbelievably wrong because I tried never to be drunk near her and I never did anything stronger after she arrived – that it didn’t matter what Gina thought, Alexis was my child and it would always be my decision and I’d over-ride her if I thought fit. We weren’t getting on so well by then anyway, which is probably why I got drunk, but I’d never have said or believed that sober. It would have been a really short way to fuck up Alexis, never mind what was left of the marriage.” He squirms very uncomfortably. “It wasn’t the only thing. Just the worst.”

Beckett doesn’t say anything.

“So I can see that it’s possible that he said something dreadful when he was drunk which he really didn’t believe. Whether he did believe it or not, I don’t know.”

Beckett still doesn’t say anything.

“Let’s not think about it now. Let’s go back out. Skim stones. Walk. Just be us and not think about anyone else until tomorrow.”

She looks up at him, wide hazel eyes shimmering under a sheen of liquid.

“Okay. Just us.”

And so they go back out into the faint warmth of the pallid March sun; sheltering each other from the bite of the sharp wind; walk along and skim stones, pick up shells. There are no gleaming quartz facets shining up from the sand, today, but there are plenty of flat stones for skimming, at which Castle is much better than Beckett.

“Aaargh!” she yells frustratedly, as yet another stone doesn’t even attempt to skip before sinking. “How come you’re so good at this?”

“Practice. We’ve been coming here every year for the last ten, several times a year, and I couldn’t let Alexis beat me, so I practiced.”

“I’m sure my dad did that for fishing,” Beckett says without thinking, and then sucks in air against the sudden emotional punch and utterly fails to control her face, eyes or voice. She cries ugly, this time, gasping sobs and crumpled face, the brief slick of mascara clearly not waterproof, the rasp of scratching breath not sufficient to carry her misery; blowing her nose wetly. It’s the all-consuming misery of the child whose dreams are broken on the wheel of harsh reality. Castle tries to take her in his arms but she doesn’t lean on him, though she doesn’t resist. Dr Burke’s last few words ring in his head. Be careful of her…may come back to hurt her later. Here’s later. So he is careful, a light hold rather than the tight clasp he’d usually employ; no other contact, no dropped kisses on the bent dark head, no soft stroking of the hunched, compressed shoulders. When she leans in, if she leans in, then cossetting will be appropriate, but not now.

Beckett can’t stop crying. She can’t even control it. Actually, automatically remembering how her dad used to be, before Stanford, before her mom, before the whiskey and the tears and the tank and the vomit and the guilt and the pain. The days when he used to be her strong, safe dad, who taught her to fish and to whittle; encouraged her to follow her dream and disapproved of her wilder boyfriends.

The days and nights when he fell apart and became the ivy to her enforced oak; the days and nights she’d buried her guilt in work and more work; the day he’d looked at her – stone cold sober, clear eyes – as if she’d hung the moon and stars and sun; as if she was a miracle he didn’t deserve. She weeps harder, as his white, shocked, old face of Friday haunts her – but was he shocked because she’d discovered the truth or shocked because she was totally mistaken?

She feels herself being drawn along the strand and encouraged to sit down on a large, flat rock.   Nothing else is done, or said. She’s shielded from the wind, but she can’t hide from the ten years of pain that’s fallen in on her since Wednesday, since she was forcibly shown – and then investigated – the truth of her reactions and their causes.

A long, miserable space later she’s almost stopped crying, down to occasional gulped sobs and sniffs. Tears haven’t helped. The fundamental contradiction remains unsolved, and remains as simple as it had been from the very first moment: did he lie when he was drunk or lie when he was sober?

She stands up and walks down to the very edge of the water, putting her boots a little at risk from the tide, and stares out as if the grey-blue sea will give her answers, or insight.

Castle lets her go. She’s hidden in her own head, and she needs to work it out on her own. He remembers, belatedly, the key mantra: only you can save yourself. He’d add to that: only you can forgive yourself. They’d forced her – all of them – to see the problem. It might be very dangerous for O’Leary and him to go any further. They almost went far too far on Wednesday, and then he did on Thursday/Friday. Time to stay back, and absolutely not to make any demands in relation to this situation.

In fact, let Beckett save herself, which implies letting her get to a point – by herself – where she can forgive herself.

He watches her watching the sea, scuffing her feet, occasionally taking a swift step back to avoid the clutching waves: at first she’s closed in, hunched tight around herself; arms wrapped in: even though she’s looking out over the ocean somehow her head is bent, bowed under the weight of all her thoughts.   After a while, her spine straightens, she stands a little taller, and a little taller still; her shoulders unfurl; the impression of weight diminishes. In some way, here, she’s recovering herself under the sea breeze and the vast expanse of water in front of her.

Still he doesn’t disturb her. This is as necessary to her as the soft making out, the picnics, the dinner, his assertive lovemaking and the change of scenery: she’s re-establishing who she is, who she wants to be. It’s taken all weekend, almost, and he wishes he – they – could stay longer: out here in the clear light and the fresh wind. They have a few more hours, though. Maybe it’s enough for now. He hopes it can be enough for now.

She turns, as the wind whips her hair, and on her face he sees a strange almost-peace; missing, he thinks, since the last time they were here. He waits for her, even now not meeting her halfway. It’s for her to come to him, it’s for her to work out her own salvation. Only she can save herself. He sits on the rock, and watches her come to him, reach out both hands to grip his shoulders, standing in the space he makes between his spread knees. He finally reaches for her, hands laced lightly in the small of her back, his upward tilted gaze serious. No flirting now, no sex, no silliness or triviality, no jokes to – deliberately – break the mood and change the game. It’s for her to speak: uncover her thoughts and point the way. He wants to start, to show her that it’s all possible; everything’s possible; but he can’t. Jim Beckett – and Dr Burke’s blunt explanations – have taught him that.

“It’s clearer, here,” she says, above his head. “You were right.”

“About what?”

“We both go see Dr Burke on Tuesday. And…” she trails off, breathes in, deeply, gathers herself, “…I guess I’ll need to keep going. Friday. Next week. Whatever it takes.”

“I’ll be waiting for you, after. And…” it’s Castle’s turn to trail off, “…and if we haven’t finished Tuesday, and you want me there on Friday, then…”

She dips her head to his, pauses, leaning forehead to forehead, and kisses his brow in lieu of thanks. He pulls her in tighter, and pillows his head against her shoulder. She leans over to rest her cheek on the top of his head, and stays like that for some time.