8. Hard as Iron

Eventually, half-drunk on the intoxicating effects of kissing Kat, (definitely Kat. His Kat.) Castle realises that it is almost midnight and he should have gone home hours ago.  He reluctantly peels himself away from their mutually enjoyable make-out session and explains. 

“I have to go home.” But he doesn’t move: instead he cuddles her close again. She feels so very right tucked against him; she fits.  It’s surprising: okay, so the very first moment he’d seen her he’d wanted her; but however much he hides it under thick layers of double-edged comments, blatant innuendo, sheer irritating-ness and barely leashed flaming desire; he is, now (it had taken around ten days, till he worked out part of her story and raw lust changed to something else) deeply intrigued by the woman behind the cop; and, though he hasn’t quite realised it himself yet, is already feeling considerably more for her than simple sexual attraction, however heated.

Here in his arms, she fits.  The right size, the right mind: fitting into him as neatly as the two halves of an old indenture would match.  But some of the zigzags are still folded back, not yet matched.  Her secrets.  Her story.  His story has largely (at least as an adult)  been played out in the bright lights of the paparazzi flashguns and the columns of page six: all PR is good PR, from his viewpoint, when it comes to selling books.  She’s a fan: she’ll probably know it all.  Some of it is even true.  But here, now, that’s not relevant, because she fits.

Still, as little as he likes it, he has to go. Reluctantly, he releases his grip, his hands attempting to delay the point of separation, lingering on her slim waist.  Her legs swing away: he has unwanted freedom to stand, to fetch and assume his coat, to leave.  He doesn’t want to leave her: leave her alone in this smart, joyless apartment, a living space with little sign of life, a residence that’s not a home.  But yet she said that she’d spend Christmas with her father, so surely there will be light and life and laughter then.  Surely it will be so.

He shakes off the moment of depression, the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, retrieves his outerwear from where he’d hung it, and notes with disfavour that his cheery Christmas scarf, decorated with fat Santas and drunken red-nosed reindeer, is still damp, clammy as he wraps it round his neck. Nearly-Kat has risen to see him out, and with stunning self-control  he confines himself to a dropped kiss on her hair, and refrains from telling – not asking – her to get her coat and come home with him, to somewhere that can – he can – bring comfort and joy to her bleak life.

Her door closes behind him with a hollow sound by which, he muses fancifully, like Cinderella’s midnight chimes, Kat turns back into Beckett as soon as it closes behind her as she leaves.

He’s far closer to the truth than he realises.

Beckett readies herself for bed in a state of unusual contentment, buoyed on the almost-unique sensation of having spent an evening freed of the weight of her cares and culminating in the strangely reassuring position of being held close without expectations: where she need not be the driver; desire, oh very much so, but softly, slowly. Affection, not simply lust.  She falls asleep with a smile still on her lips.

Even when Beckett wakes, the unaccustomed atmosphere of happiness hasn’t dissipated. She even – finally – purchases an small pack of tasteful Christmas cards and spends a few moments scrawling suitable messages in them: her father, Lanie, the boys.  Not the Captain – that’s brown-nosing and it’s not the tradition.  She looks at the remaining two cards, and considers, chewing her lip.  Finally she scribbles a banal message of seasonal good wishes, conveying no personal sentiments whatsoever, heads it generically to The Castle Family, and signs it with an indecipherable squiggle in which only a B can be discerned as a recognisable letter.

She addresses the envelope neatly in printed capitals and leaves it, with the others, in her desk drawer for later. She is not entirely comfortable with this idea, though she feels she ought to make an effort.  After all, Castle’s intervention had allowed her to purchase a gift for her father that she’s sure he’ll like, and then have a peaceful evening.

Her indecisiveness is disturbed by a new case. She shoves all the envelopes in her coat pocket and gets moving in the general direction of Alphabet City.  In a dingy walk-up bedsit is a twenty-something, who’s been stabbed and then left to bleed out.  The driver’s licence provides a name, Josiah Carver, and his unlocked phone gives them a variety of friends and – ah ha! – family and best guess for a girlfriend.

Castle rolls up to Alphabet City and, soon bored with this banal death, wanders round the bedsit as annoyingly as a fretful five-year old, and almost as usefully. By the fourth occasion of him fiddling with things Beckett is thoroughly fed up and has stopped trying to call him to order.  If he misses the ride back to the precinct it will be his own fault.  However, just as Lanie issues orders for the corpse to be taken back to the morgue, turns to Beckett and repeats her mantra (always the same words) : I need to get him on the slab; just as Beckett turns to Lanie and speaks, he bounds back up to them.

“Lanie,” Beckett says, faux-casually, “I got your Christmas card here. You want it now?”  Lanie looks at her bloody surgical gloves and back at Beckett in disbelief.

“You off your head? No, not now.  Wait till I’m cleaned up and got you some results.  Anyway, I got yours back at the morgue.”

Beckett looks a little chagrined at her own poor timing. “When will you have some results?”

“Dunno yet. Call me at the end of the day if I haven’t called you already.  We can have a Christmas drink after.”  The boys wander up as soon as someone mentions having a drink, looking hopeful.  Castle looks equally excited.  “Girls only,” Lanie says firmly.  Their faces fall.  Beckett takes pity – well, sort of pity – upon them.

“You can have something else instead.” It’s like feeding baby birds.  They all turn to her with shiny-bright expectant faces.  She produces the envelopes and distributes them: interestedly awaiting the results.

Esposito is first to rip his envelope open and discover the card. His shocked face is really quite amusing.

“What the hell, Beckett?” Ryan is merely silently dumbfounded.  Oddly, Castle is suddenly saying nothing at all.  She’d thought he was about to speak, before Espo got in first.  He is, however, now listening very intently.

“It’s a Christmas card, Espo. Surely you’ve had one before?”  Esposito glares.

“A ‘course I have. But I ain’t never had one from you, Beckett.”

“Nor have I,” interjects Ryan.

“I have,” Lanie says smugly. “Every year.”

Castle still says nothing at all. Beckett can feel him looming behind her.  She has the sinking feeling that this is going to raise more questions than she wants to answer.  (So that would be more than no questions at all, then.  She asks questions.  She doesn’t answer them.)

“So why this year?” Espo asks aggressively.

“Five-year anniversary of the team,” says Beckett lightly. “Thought we should celebrate.”  Espo looks dyspeptically at her, and turns his glare up a notch.  It has no effect at all.  It never does.

“If you don’t want it, Espo, there’s a trashcan over there,” points out Beckett.

“I never said that.” Esposito takes a firmer grip on the card, as if he might be deprived of it.  “I’m gonna frame it.  Written proof that you do know what Christmas is.”  Beckett sees the abyss opening right under her feet.  Espo carries straight on dropping her into it.  “Bet you’re still taking the Christmas Day shift though.”

“So?” says Beckett. “Someone has to.”

“Someone don’t gotta do it every single year,” Espo says very firmly.  “When did you last not take it?  Huh?”

Beckett becomes painfully aware that Castle is now looming even more obviously. He still hasn’t said a word, nor has he opened his card.  She firmly cuts this discussion off, from the bottom of the hole she’s got herself into.

“Okay. We got work to do.”

“You always got work to do,” Espo mutters, almost under his breath. It is, regrettably, painfully obvious that Castle has heard it.  “The rest of us got lives to lead.”

“Lanie, call me as soon as you’ve got anything,” Beckett says briskly. “Ryan, you see if you can get any camera footage.  Espo, you start canvassing.  Ryan can join you when he’s done.  Get the uniforms on it, and get that beat cop to give us all the story too.” 

“What are you going to do?” Ryan asks.

“I’m going to talk to the family, then the girlfriend.” She doesn’t need to assign Castle.  He’ll follow her whether she wants it or not.

Unsurprisingly, he’s right on her tail as she goes to her cruiser. She can feel his questions burning holes in her coat.  He barely waits for her to get in and close the car door – she certainly hasn’t got her seat belt done – before he starts.

“You didn’t say you were working Christmas Day.” It’s not – quite – an accusation.  Beckett’s hackles rise as she starts the car.

“Someone has to,” she repeats wearily.

“You volunteered.”  How’d he work that out?  “You volunteer for it every year.”  This is all entirely irrelevant.  She steers in the direction of 2nd Avenue.

“So?”

“So you said you were going to your father’s for Christmas.” And that is definitely an accusation.

“I am.” Her voice is cold and remote.  It doesn’t invite any further interrogation.  It is entirely and distressingly ineffective.

“When?”

“What possible business is that of yours? But straight after shift, since you’re so interested.”  She is furiously, bitterly angry that he’s questioning – and none too subtly disagreeing – with her choices as to how she spends her Christmas.  She buries her fury in her hard, icy shell and doesn’t let it out.  Emotions don’t help, and she doesn’t need to waste them on Castle when he’s in this mood.  She doesn’t owe him any explanations of that choice at all.  And, she remembers, he’s here for research.  She doesn’t want her past, or her father, researched.

“So, this case,” she starts.

“Forget the case, Beckett.” Castle sounds annoyed.  Too bad.  This is simply not his business.  She pulls over.  “What?” he says, shocked.

“Out.”

“What?”

“Out. I have work to do.  You’re not helping with the case, which is what you’re supposed to be here for.  So go home.  Come back when you’re ready to think about the real issue rather than irrelevant diversions.”  Castle stays sitting like a stump in the passenger seat.

“No.”

“Okay, sit there, then.” She switches off the engine, undoes her seatbelt and opens her door.  She has completely lost her temper, and she really does not care that she’s acting like a five-year old by storming off in a cloud of fury. 

“Where are you going?”

“To tell the family.” She steps out the cruiser and slams her door shut behind her. Then she reopens it, briefly: throws the keys in his lap.  “You can drive it now.  You always wanted to.”  She’s summoned a cab and is gone before he’s untangled himself.

He has no idea where the family can be found, because he was bored and not paying attention in the walk-up. That had been a mistake.  He takes the driver’s seat, makes major readjustments to the seat and mirrors, (crashing Beckett’s cruiser is not a good plan) drives it back round to the Twelfth and parks it neatly.  It’s not nearly as much fun as he’d thought driving her car would be.  Then again, he’d rather thought that she’d be in the car with him when he did.  When he takes the keys up to her desk she’s not there, nor does it look as if she’s been there.  She must have gone straight to the family.  He’d have thought she’d have gone back to the Twelfth first.  He considers waiting, and then considers that he’s overstepped enough today. 

In the short drive back it has become borne upon him that he had no right whatsoever to question Beckett’s shift pattern or Christmas Day choices, and also that – for once – she’d been quite justified in handing him his ass for doing so. He’d simply been so appalled by her – well, not lie, but he’d thought she’d lied and that had flicked his switches – and utter disregard of the holiday that he hadn’t thought before he opened his mouth.

He decides that discretion is by far the better part of valour for the rest of the day, and though he would have liked to follow Beckett around to the interviews and ask his own questions and generally assist, he doesn’t trust himself not to say something stupid. More stupid.  So he goes home, uncomfortably conscious that he’s lost every inch and more of ground that he might have gained yesterday.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD”

“Nuthin’ to say to you.” The door starts to shut in her face.  Mr and Mrs Carver are not reacting well to a cop showing up on their doorstep.  If she wasn’t bearing such bad news, she’d leave and pass that information on to the beat cops.  Just in case it might be relevant.

“It’s about Josiah.” The door stops moving.

“Joe? What ‘bout Joe?  What’s that boy done now?”

“I’m sorry to tell you” – she sees them get it before she’s said anything more – “that Joe was stabbed earlier today.”

“Guess you’d better come in, then.”

Beckett’s trained eyes assess the small apartment in a single comprehensive glance as she starts down her questioning. She doesn’t get much out the parents: no enemies (she doesn’t believe that); no misbehaviour (she comprehensively disbelieves that); no knowledge of what he might be doing to get stabbed.  (She does believe that.  This pair may know a lot about a lot of things, but it doesn’t seem like they know much about their son since he moved out.  She’ll get more from the girlfriend.)

She’s no more than an easy ten minute walk from the precinct. Still fuelled on fury, it takes her six.  She isn’t going to be questioned about her choices, still less her reasoning, by a ride-along nuisance.

She reaches her desk in a still-unshed flurry of annoyance, clacking heels warning off any smart comments, and drops the victim’s mobile on her desk, noticing the presence of her car keys and the absence of Castle. By the time she’s got a cup of horrible but caffeinated hot liquid that claims, in defiance of truth-in-advertising laws, to be coffee, she’s refocused on the crime.  She puts the numbers through the database herself and gets the call list.  Just because Ryan normally does it doesn’t mean she’s forgotten how.  Then she drops a note to the local uniforms.  When she’s done that she decides that she’s given it enough time to be relatively calm and takes herself off to interview the girlfriend.

The girlfriend lives back over on the other side of the precinct. She turns out to be a bleached-highlight blonde, whose attributes are only too obvious in her skin-tight t-shirt and painted-on jeans.  She is predictably and volubly emotional.  Beckett thinks extremely cynically that they’ve probably been together a month.  Her assumptions take a sideways knock that she admits she entirely deserves when it turns out that she’s been with Joe for two years and they were planning to get engaged soon – “At Christmas, we were going to have a big family dinner: we wanted to do it at Thanksgiving but Joe hadn’t had the overtime so he wanted to wait so he could rack up the hours and the pay in the run up to Christmas.  He said he wanted to get me the ring I deserved…”  Her voice dissolves into snuffling tears.

“What was his job?”

“He managed a warehouse in Brooklyn. It shipped machine parts.  He just got more hours this summer so we could get married…”  She dissolves again.

“Do you know why he’d be in a walk-up in Alphabet City?”

“That’s where Mick lives.”

“Mick?”

“Joe’s pal. They would’ve been going to watch the game together, prob’ly meeting there before they went to a bar.”

Beckett takes Mick’s full name and address, which indeed matches the address where the corpse was found, and leaves the girlfriend to her unhappiness.

After Beckett’s finished with cross-matching Mick to the phone records, and having sent Ryan and Espo to interview him while she does, it’s the end of the day. Well, technically it had been the end of the day an hour ago and she should have called Lanie.  Oh well, Lanie doesn’t clock-watch either.  She taps the number and sure enough Lanie is still in the morgue. 

“What do we got, Lanie?”

“Not a whole awful lot, Kate. You wanna come over and have a look?”

“Sure. I’ll be there in twenty.”

She shows up in the morgue in short order, and perches on a clean steel autopsy table. There is indeed little to see.  Beckett harrumphs disgruntledly, and turns to happier thoughts than the lack of clues.

“D’you still want a drink now we’re done?”

“Yes. I want cold drinks and hot men, not cold men and hot drinks.”  Beckett refrains from any comment.  It doesn’t stop Lanie.  “What about you?”

“Cold drinks sounds good.” There’s an expectant silence.  “Lanie…”  Lanie mutters, just below audible level.  “What was that?”

“You could do with a hot man too.”

“No thanks. Seen you weeping into your wine enough.  Romance is dead.”

“Sez you,” Lanie says bluntly. “Just ‘cause you ain’t looking doesn’t mean it’s not out there.”  She pauses.  “Or sitting right by your desk.”

Beckett shrugs. “Maybe Santa Claus will drop one off on Christmas morning.”

“The effort you don’t put in to finding a live one, he might as well drop off a multipack of batteries.” Beckett chokes.  Lanie is outrageous.

“Let’s go get a drink,” she says hurriedly, before Lanie can carry on. She wouldn’t put it past Lanie to give her a very inappropriate present, at this rate.

“Sure. And while we’re drinking, you can tell me all about working with Writer-Boy.  That man is cute.  You should take advantage of him.”  She grins lasciviously.  “All sorts of advantages.  I’m sure he’d like to take advantage of you.”  Her grin widens.  “I’ve seen him eyeing up your handcuffs.”  It becomes a snigger.  “And your skinny ass.”

“Drink, Lanie,” Beckett says very firmly. It’s wholly ruined by her scarlet cheeks.  She really doesn’t want to think about all the ways Castle could – did – appreciate her body.  Nor does she want to think about how he went and spoiled it just when she was thinking that he could at least provide the chance to lay her load down occasionally.  She doesn’t need criticism of her choices.  That doesn’t help her cope.  Fortunately Lanie attributes Beckett’s blushes to her outspoken commentary and doesn’t ask difficult questions.   Well, no more than usual, anyway.

When they’ve found a bar and a bottle of wine, Lanie takes another tack. “How come you’re distributing Christmas cards like confetti?”

“What, four cards is confetti these days?”

“It is for you. You never do cards.  Well, one for me and one for your dad doesn’t count.  What’s changed this year?”

“Told you, five year anniversary.”

“Castle hasn’t been around for five months let alone five years, but you gave him a card.”

“Couldn’t leave him out once I’d given the boys one. That would have been rude.”

“Since when have you worried about upsetting Writer-Boy? You shove him away all the time.  You should pull him in and kiss him.  That’d solve your Saturday night problem.  Though so would a skirt and some lipstick.”

“Lanie, I’m fine.  I’m not looking for some Saturday-night stand.”  Lanie growls at her, much to Beckett’s surprise.

“You are an idiot, girl. You should be out having fun, not sitting around fretting and thinking about murder.  You should kiss Castle under the mistletoe.”  That’s a remarkably restrained comment, for Lanie.  “And then you should drag him home by his hair and jump his bones.”  Ah.  That’s not restrained at all.

“Don’t wanna.” She doesn’t.  She’s not spending time with someone who can’t respect her decisions.  That won’t lighten her load.  She doesn’t need to be made to feel guilty.  More guilty.   Sometimes there are no good choices, and all you can do is live with the choices you’ve made.  She turns conversation to the perennial topics of films, clothes and holidays and keeps it there till the wine is done – Lanie, as ever, has the bulk of the bottle – and the evening is over.