157. Just don't understand

The afternoon passes in peaceful togetherness, punctuated by a small amount of relaxed making out, every time the movie gets boring, or the fire pops, or the continuous rain hits the window, or they feel like it. Well, relatively small. They do manage to confine their exertions to making out, with a small amount of passing second base. Well, relatively small. And they only ended up in bed once, which is very restrained, Castle thinks. It really could not be said that they’re acting like two hormone-driven teenagers. They aren’t teenagers.

He loves this quiet closeness just as much as the passionate lovemaking, however. His life is loud: played out previously in dramatics and histrionics – his mother and Meredith both – in celebrity parties and the snapping of the paparazzi; in the noise and bustle and formulaic chatter of signings and readings. Now it’s loud with sirens and command and the hubbub of the bullpen. He’s only been quiet with a baby Alexis and when he’s writing. Beckett, whether Kate or Kat or Beckett, and outside the precinct, is quiet. Her apartment is muted, her life solitary. Albeit her reasons are intensely painful, even now that she’s emerging from her tight-wrapped agonies she remains a still centre in a noisy world.

No wonder she inspires him still. At first, it had simply been the shock of novelty: her command persona, her alpha nature and the sheer lust he had felt on first seeing her: the contradiction of the public facets of her personality with her wrapped-tight secrecy. Now, though, she brings him a space of quiet, and he hadn’t even realised till now, till he’s cuddled up with her doing nothing in particular in no particular hurry. He can feel his story forming in his head, but it’s not yet ready to arrive in his fingers. Later, it will be there. Later.

He becomes aware that Beckett-very-much-soft-Kat is humming contentedly and somewhat tunelessly to herself. He looks down at the dark head, planted firmly on his shoulder, and affectionately drops a kiss on its top. She curls in a little more.

“I’m glad we came here,” she says. “Everything’s clearer.”

“Yeah. You’re happier.”

“It’s easier to see what’s wrong when I’m not in the middle of it. When there’s no-one pushing at me.” She stretches an arm around his midriff. “You don’t push. ‘S important. You let me have time to think.” She stays quiet for an instant. “Like seeing that I was upset because I’m not used to arguing with Dad. It’s normal. To argue, I mean. It’s okay. So now I think we – the four of us – should have dinner, maybe Thursday? That way I’ve got Tuesday to talk to Dr Burke about it and I’ll see him on Friday if it all goes wrong. No gap for it to get worse.”

“Okay,” Castle agrees.

“But…”

“But?”

“We need to know how their” – no need to specify – “talk went down.”

“Yeah, and?”

“How are we” – there’s emphasis on that we – “going to deal with your mother?”

“Let’s see if anything your dad said has sunk in. If it has, then it’ll be easier. If not” – his mouth twists – “well, you don’t need my permission to go all Detective Beckett on her, but if it helps you’ve not just got mine but Alexis’s too. I’ve told Mother that if she upsets you I won’t be protecting her.”

Beckett boggles at him. “Huh?”

“I’ve told her not to interfere several times. Maybe she’ll listen to your dad. Maybe not, but if she doesn’t then it’s on her own head. I get exactly why you don’t want her trying to mother you.” He breathes. “Anyway. If she can’t back off then she’ll be moving out.”

There is an embarrassed pause. “Besides,” Castle says very uncertainly, “er… if you were to move in sometime – when you were ready – I don’t want her there.”

Beckett boggles even more, completely wordless.

“Kate?”

“Move in?” she eventually squeaks. “Move in?”

Move in? She’d thought that inlaws was a slip of the tongue… no, she hadn’t. She’d just pushed it out of her mind because so many things aren’t right or fixed yet. But…

“I’m not trying to push you. I don’t mean now, or next week, or even next year. Just…” he runs down.

Beckett recovers her voice. “I don’t not want to,” she says, to a profound sigh of relief. “I just – look, it’s… let’s take this one step at a time, huh? I’ve got to fix seeing you and Alexis together, okay? If I can do that, then I can think about more. I want to come to the loft, and stay over, and… I want to. All of it. But if we” – Castle hears that we with considerable hopefulness – “move too fast it’s going to crash.” She takes a few slow, shallow breaths. “It’s… it’s a goal, okay? My goal.”

“That’s enough for me.” He kisses the top of her head, gently. Then he smirks evilly. “I don’t want you to be under any misapprehensions about my intentions, Beckett. They’re all wicked.”

“Are they?” she husks, only too glad to change the mood from serious to sexy. “You want to have your wicked way with me?”

“Oh, yes. You can’t resist my wicked ways.”

She doesn’t. He doesn’t resist hers, either.

“Richard. You’re home.”

“Stating the obvious, Mother?”

“I want to talk to you. How could you mislead Jim Beckett into thinking that he needed to talk to me rather than you doing it yourself?”

“There was no misleading at all. You haven’t listened to me, so I asked Jim to talk to you. Did you bother listening to him?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Alexis?”

“Alexis!”

“Grams told Mr Beckett that she was sure all we needed was a nice dinner and her giving Detective Beckett advice.” Castle winces. He can imagine exactly how that went down. Badly. “She didn’t listen to anything he said. She thinks that she can do anything because you’re her son.”

Castle turns a cold glare on his mother. “Is that true?”

Martha tosses her head defiantly. “Of course I’d do anything to make you happy.”

“Except, it seems, what I ask you to do,” he says icily.

“But it’s not working. Katherine won’t come here” –

“Why didn’t you listen to Mr Beckett?” Alexis yells. “She’s hurt by seeing a proper family! Why do you want her to be upset? If I don’t care that she’s upset when she sees me and Dad” –

“Dad and me” – Castle automatically interjects, which is completely ignored –

“together, why are you bothered?” Alexis gives her grandmother a searing stare. “Oh,” she says suddenly. “I totally get it. You want her to be upset so you can step in and be her mother.” Alexis’s face scrunches up in disgust. “She doesn’t want a mother.”

“Is that it, Mother? You’re so fixated on your idea that Beckett needs some motherly advice from you that you won’t listen to anyone else?”

“She’s not getting sensible advice from anyone else. If she was, she’d” – But Castle has heard enough.

“Beckett is getting professional help. Yours is not required. You wouldn’t listen to me and you haven’t listened to Jim. Listen now. If you don’t drop this, you will have to move out. I will help you find a new apartment and I’ll pay for it, but you won’t be living here any more. Please believe that I mean this. If I have to find you an apartment myself, I will. I’m not having this discussion with you again. Either respect Beckett’s privacy, and mine, or leave. There are no other options.”

Martha looks at Castle, and then at Alexis, clearly expecting an argument. “I agree with Dad. You’re not helping. If you won’t leave Dad alone, what’ll you be like if I bring someone home?”

Castle chokes, fortunately unseen.

“I don’t want you poking into my boyfriends like you’re doing with Detective Beckett. It’s – disrespectful. Dad gives you a home and you totally don’t respect him. If you’re going to be like this all the time and you put Detective Beckett off coming here like you have already then it doesn’t matter how much we love you it’s not going to work out.”

“Sweetie” –

“I told you not to sweetie me! I’m not a kid any more.”

Castle chokes again, equally unnoticed.

“Just butt out, Grams! Leave us alone and stop butting in and interfering and trying to interrupt Dad and Detective Beckett. You’re ruining everything and you won’t listen to any of us! You totally need to wake up!”

Alexis finishes on an earsplitting shriek of pure rage and stamps back upstairs. Her bedroom door slams. Castle speaks before his mother can.

“You’re not going to split Alexis and me on this. She has a point. I don’t think I can trust you not to walk in on me – you don’t seem to worry about walking into my office or my bedroom whenever you feel like it, whether I want privacy or not – and so I don’t think you’ll respect Alexis’s privacy either. Regardless of Beckett’s position, I’m not having you upsetting Alexis. So you need to do some hard thinking, Mother, because any more overstepping and you will be out.”

Castle stalks into his office and closes its door very sharply.

“Katie? Is something wrong?”

“No, I just wanted to know how it went with Martha and Alexis.” She hears a deep sigh. “Not so good?”

“Well, Alexis gets it.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t say anything about you, though. Just that I hurt you. Martha’s a bit pushy, though.”

“Yeah.”

“She seems to think she can give you advice.”

“You knew that.”

“I didn’t know how stubborn she was about it. How does she think she’s qualified to help?”

“She’s not.”

“No wonder Rick was so angry. I’m surprised he hasn’t murdered her.”

“Don’t you try it. I don’t want to have to arrest you.”

“I guess that would be a bit tricky.”

Beckett snickers. “Yeah.” She sobers. “So?”

“So I said my piece, and then I left. Looked like they were about to have a fight, and I didn’t want to watch that.”

Beckett sighs heavily. “Dammit,” she says, and nothing more for a moment. Then… “Um… Dad?”

“Yes?”

“We thought that the four of us could have dinner at Po on Thursday.”

“You want to? I thought…”

“I wanna give it a go. You called Castle’s family. My turn. Just… let’s keep the heavy stuff for Dr Burke, okay?”

“Okay. You’ll tell me what time?”

“Er… seven?”

“Okay. Seven, at Po.”

“One last thing, Dad?”

“Yes?”

“I’m paying. Well, our half.”

“But…”

“No buts. Me.”

Her father growls, and grumbles, and eventually assents.

“Okay, Katie. But it’s me next time.”

“Okay. Night, Dad. See you Thursday.”

It’s not until she puts the phone down that she realises that she’s had a normal conversation with her dad for the first time in months, or possibly years. Albeit it was short, they managed it. She thinks rather sardonically that they’re united against the Martha juggernaut.

Her phone beeps.

“Beckett.”

“It’s me.”

“Hey, Castle. You only just left.”

“Yeah. I spoke to Mother. Well. I spoke and Alexis yelled. Sounds like Saturday didn’t go so well.”

“I just talked to Dad. He likes Alexis. Your mom… not so much any more.”

“Yeah,” Castle says heavily. “Me too. I just told her that if she couldn’t butt out she’d have to move out.”

Beckett whistles. “You okay?” she asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Wanna come back over?” It’s out before she thinks about it.

“I can’t.” He sounds regretful.

“Okay. Um… I told Dad about dinner on Thursday. I said seven.”

“Yeah? At Po?”

“Yep. He didn’t like it when I said I was paying our half.”

“Don’t blame him,” Castle says teasingly. “You should let me pay for all of it.”

“We had this argument and I already won. We’re going Dutch.”

“You are distressingly independent, Miss Beckett,” Castle says pompously. Beckett sniggers. “Most unbecoming.”

“You do know that this is the twenty-first century?”

“Yes, but I don’t like it.”

“If it was 1909 I’d have a chaperone.”

“Okay, I like it.”

Beckett sniggers evilly. “I bet. A chaperone would really cramp your style.”

“A hundred years ago I wouldn’t have a phone either. So I couldn’t talk to you.”

“Oh?”

“I couldn’t,” Castle says lazily, “tell you just how sexy that fragment of fabric you called nightwear was. How long your legs looked. How it draped gently over your breasts and barely hid a thing. I couldn’t tell you how hot you are when you’re laid out across my bed with that come-on look in your eyes.”

She makes a soft noise.

“I couldn’t tell you how you watch me when I’m above you, how your eyes are deep and dark and endless, how you feel around me, quivering and then exploding and the look on your face when I take you there…”

Another little noise.

“Could I?” he says mischievously.

Beckett growls.

“That’s not nice. Don’t growl at me,” he says reproachfully. His tone returns to mischief. “You shouldn’t bark if you’re not prepared to bite.”

“You like it when I bite,” Beckett points out in a sultry purr that goes straight to his groin.

“You like it when I do lots of things,” Castle smirks.

“So do you. But you can’t come over, so I can’t do them.”

Castle humphs, and just manages not to say this is why you should move in. From the sudden change in the quality of the silence, he thinks that Beckett might have heard it anyway.

“I’m trying,” she says. “I want to.”

“I know. We’re getting there.” He consciously lightens the tone. “I’m not getting frilly pillows, though.”

“Frilly pillows?”

“Don’t women like frilly things?” he says provocatively.

“Have you ever seen me with anything frilly?” Beckett says very ominously.

“No, but you won’t let me look through your drawers so how would I know?”

There is a none-too muffled squawk of annoyance. Castle snickers happily.

“I do not have frills,” Beckett says, awfully.

“Awwww” –

“And if you produce any, I will make you eat them. At gunpoint, if necessary. Frills and furbelows” –

“So hot” –

“are for people with nothing better to do.”

“I can think of plenty of better things to do in bed than play with frilly pillows,” Castle points out, and adds very quickly over Beckett’s intimidating growl, “and on that note, Detective, good night. Till tomorrow.”

Beckett is left growling at a dead line. She occupies herself contemplating ways to wreak revenge on Castle tomorrow, all the way through bedtime.

Castle puts the phone down with considerably happier demeanour, and betakes himself to bed smiling.

Beckett regards her desk, full of mundane or cold or both cases, with disfavour, scrunches up her nose at them, and goes to make some coffee. While it’s brewing, she decides that the only way to deal with the day is to go hard at the boring cases and try to make them go away. That’ll leave the team free for something more interesting instead.

So that’s what they do. By ten, Lanie is refusing to take any more calls on the grounds that police harassment is getting to a ridiculous level. By ten-thirty, the lab won’t answer the phone at all, and its voicemail is full too. By eleven, the techs have locked the door against them and even the lure of proper coffee won’t extract them.

Beckett sits at her desk and huffs crossly. Everyone’s hiding from her, which is not fair. All she wanted to do was get the boring cases shut, and none of the support functions are coughing up the information she needs. Ryan and Esposito regard her trepidatiously and try to avoid her beady eye. Being poisoned by ME Parrish isn’t on their to-do list for the day, and she’s told them that one more call and they’ll have strychnine in their soup. Beckett, who is much nearer, has told them that she wants results and if she doesn’t get them there will be bullets.

Bullets from Beckett or poison from Parrish. Their lives are going to be miserable whatever happens. Fortunately, just before they are forced to choose between the methods of being murdered, Castle wanders in, looking hopeful.

“Any nice murders?” he asks generally.

“Not a one,” Ryan grumps. “Unless it’s mine.”

“Uh? Why are you going to be murdered?”

“If we don’t get results, Beckett’s goin’ to shoot us. If we hassle Lanie again, she’ll poison us,” Espo says bitterly.

“Oh.”

“Can’t you take Beckett out for lunch or something?” Ryan bleats plaintively. “I don’t wanna be dead.”

Castle looks at Espo, who’s nodding. He doesn’t want to be dead either.

“Why don’t you spar with her? Surely she’s not still grounded for that?”

Espo acquires a very calculating look, cut with a rather nasty smile. “Don’t think she is.” He turns around. “Hey, Beckett?”

“Yeah? You got results?”

“Nah.” She scowls. “Your boy here thinks you need some sparring practice.”

Castle cringes. “I didn’t say that. I thought it might keep you occupied while the results turn up.” This statement does not noticeably alleviate the scowl.

“C’mon, Beckett. Bet I can put you down five times before Castle makes it up the stairs.”

“Hey! I’m fit,” Castle wails.

But they’re already halfway up the stairs. Castle and Ryan exchange glances, and follow, rapidly. They might miss something, otherwise. No time to get popcorn, sadly.

Sparring is as fast as ever – faster, in Beckett’s case, but she and Espo have it well under control. It’s a thing of beauty, and even Ryan is glued to the spectacle. Maybe that’s why no-one notices Montgomery until he speaks.

“Very nice, Detectives.” Everyone jumps.

“Sir!” they say.

“I hope you’re practising for the inter-precinct competition?”

“Yessir.” This is always the right answer, accurate or not.

“Good. I don’t remember clearing you for sparring, Beckett?”

“You did, sir, but this is the first time since. My wrist was better two weeks ago,” she says quickly.

“Okay. But both of you be careful. I’ve put a bundle on you, and I’ll be very upset if you do something that means you wash out before you’ve even started.” He pads out as softly as he came. Behind him, everyone slumps in relief.

Half a second later, Beckett sweeps Espo’s feet away because he wasn’t paying attention, and is quite unreasonably triumphant to have suckered him. Triumph is removed very swiftly as Espo dumps her on the mat three times in three minutes. The final time, she stays down, breathing hard. Castle flicks a look at Espo, but he doesn’t seem concerned, so Castle doesn’t go over to her. After a second or two, she sits up and smiles.

“Good one. We should do this again some time.”

“Not for a coupla days. You need a rest in between.”

“Wednesday, then. And you’re going down.”

Espo laughs. “No way, Beckett.”

She grins. “I’ll try, anyway.”

A phone rings from the locker room. Everyone dashes for it.

“Beckett.” Pause. “Okay. On our way.” The phone is swiped off. “We got a body. Ten to clean up, then we’ll get going.”

Castle and Ryan hightail it down to the bullpen to get themselves together. Espo reaches them in five minutes, Beckett, mysteriously perfectly groomed again, in eight. Castle has no idea how she managed that. Magic?

“Okay. Body drop at Seward Park Tennis Courts, off Essex Street. Let’s move.”