168. We can work it out

Beckett avoids her homework all the way home. Well, she needs to concentrate on the road. Definitely. It’s not like the Manhattan streets are wide and empty. Then she needs to concentrate on her parking. The space is very small. Well, it is if you’re driving a truck. With a family-sized trailer.

Similarly, the route upward to her apartment requires concentration, in case she should trip on a previously unperceived ridge of flooring between the building door and the elevator, or the elevator and her own door. Courtesy of her attention, no such hindrance besets her, proving that her concentration was justified.

Once in her own apartment, however, Beckett is perfectly aware that there are no ridges, traffic, or indeed any matters of which to beware. Therefore she has no excuse to avoid her homework. Still, she would like a coffee, she needs to tidy up, it would be a nice idea to rearrange her shoes into colour order… When she reaches the last thought, she bites her lip and recognises that she’s being ridiculous. She makes the coffee, though.

She’s just about to press the plunger on the French press when there’s a knock on the door and she realises it’s Castle.

“Hey,” she says, rising up on her bare toes to kiss him. Castle is not at all averse to being kissed, and makes it clear by kissing her back enthusiastically. “Coffee? I was just making some.”

“Sure, thanks.” He follows her through, prowling contentedly at her heels, like a dangerous big cat currently inclined to playfulness. The kiss has removed most of his more intense worries, but he’d still like some more reassurance, and coffee with cuddling will certainly help.

It takes her a few moments to speak, but by now he’s adept at recognising a Beckett who will, eventually, force important words from her mouth; and he’s equally adept at creating the atmosphere in which she – many people, but it has been far more difficult to mould it to Beckett’s tight-wrapped silences so that they unfurled with him – might articulate her thinking.

“I worked it out,” she says, clipping off each word as if she doesn’t like them. “With Burke. Same old issue. You’d dealt with the only external obstacle and all that was left was my problems. It wasn’t even you. All me.”

“Yeah?” Castle queries softly, though he isn’t quite following her thoughts.

“Yeah. It felt like everything was moving too fast again. Like I had to do something I wasn’t ready for, even if I didn’t want to. But the only person making me feel like that was me.” She looks at him very seriously. “It wasn’t you, okay?”

What wasn’t me? Castle thinks. Though it’s good not to be blamed for whatever’s going on. He thinks about what Beckett has just said, idly drawing patterns on her upper arm.   You’d dealt with the only external obstacle. To what? What obstacle… oh. His mother, of course. Okay, so think, Rick. He draws a small spiral, up and down, a double helix; up and down and round about. Moving too fast? She’d said I’m not ready on Monday, and again a moment ago. Not ready for what?

“I’ll get there,” she promises, weight falling in her words. “But I’m not ready to be there yet” – and it suddenly becomes clear. She’s not ready to come to the loft. She’s also not looking at him.

“I get it.”

“Do you?” There’s a bitter edge, directed firmly at herself. “All this time and nothing in the way except I still can’t come to your loft because I still can’t deal with your family. I want to…” She looks at him as if she thinks he might not believe her.

“Didn’t we have this discussion? We’re having dinner at your dad’s on Saturday, and you’ll take the next step when you’re ready. When you’re ready.” He assesses her mood. “And I bet Burke told you the same thing.” The subsonic growl emanating from Beckett tells him he’s right. “So just park it. Stop thinking for a while. You are dealing with my family, and we’re doing just fine with it.” He smirks nastily. “Anyway, I still haven’t invited you back again, so you can’t come. You still have to wait for an invitation. Manners, Miss Beckett.”

His humour doesn’t seem to be helping. “Stop fretting. It won’t help. Come here instead.” He hoists her up and plops her into his very receptive lap, where he can kiss her assertively and then pillow her head on his shoulder and keep her very close indeed. “There. It’s okay if you’re not ready. I’d much rather you got it right and came when you were ready instead of forcing it and it all going horribly wrong. It’s not a race.”

“It’s dumb. I should be happy that another thing’s out the way, and instead I’m scared.”

“You think I’m not?”

“Huh?”

“It’s all changing. I thought my family was all settled – weirdly, but settled. And then all this happened and suddenly my mother turns into every satirist’s dream smother-mother and Alexis discovers her inner teen tantrum mode and your dad starts trying to get protective like you were sixteen again and Burke dissects both our heads without anaesthetic every week. Well, mostly yours, but mine isn’t exactly unscathed either. O’Leary was right.”

“Uh?”

“We should run off to some uninhabited island and live there.”

“I wish. Why didn’t you say you were scared too? I thought – anyway, you don’t mess around, you just fix things. Like moving your mother out. I knew you were upset but then you just fixed it. You fix things,” she says again.   “I’ve still not fixed anything.”

“I didn’t have much to fix.”

Castle stops. Anything further is unlikely to be helpful. “Why are we back to this anyway? I told you it’s up to you and we don’t need to worry about it. It’s not even a setback and you’re fretting. Stop fretting. It doesn’t suit you. You’ll get wrinkles. Let’s think about something else. What are you going to cook for Saturday night? Can you cook anything except Georgian?”

“Yes,” Beckett says offendedly. “I can. Lots of things.”

“What, then? I wanna know what dinner will be.”

“Wait and see.”

“Last time you said that I persuaded you to tell me.”

“Did you? I don’t remember that.”

“Really?” Castle purrs. “I don’t believe you. I think you remember exactly how I persuaded you. I think it’ll work this time, too.”

It’ll certainly be a better idea than blurting out of course I want you to move in and if you’d only say the word we could do that tomorrow after work. Not least because he knows that she wants to, but she’s scared of it all going wrong by moving too fast when nothing’s fixed. Which is perfectly reasonable, but frustrating. For both of them.

“Mm,” Beckett emits, which doesn’t sound exactly like heartfelt lust. In fact, she’s rather – well, undefined right now. He scraps the idea of indulging in some heated making out and/or bedsheet tangling, and sticks with cosseting for the moment. Anyway, she’s nicely curled around him and while she’s thinking – and she is – he can peacefully contemplate the next part of his book, which he does.

His reverie is broken by Beckett’s shift in position. She isn’t any more defined than earlier, and she doesn’t, on inspection, look any happier either.

“How can this mess be enough for you?” she says quietly. “You do everything and change your life around and put up with my dad and me no matter what, and I can’t give you anything back.” She tries to slide away. Castle doesn’t let her go. “I can’t even come to your loft. How can you not be upset by that? You have to be. And your daughter. What does she think of all this? How does she feel that I’m sleeping with her dad and then can’t even say hello to her without wincing? How can she not be unhappy about that?”

Castle hears the echo of his mother’s words, and mentally curses her. Beckett assuming another load of guilt and unhappiness is exactly what was not needed just as everything was getting better. Time for some blunt reminders. He is not going to help her wallow in unhappiness.

“Stop,” he says firmly. “You’re talking nonsense. Just because my” – he smothers the word idiot – “mother says something doesn’t mean it’s true. If I wasn’t happy I’d say so.” He swallows, and goes for it. “Or are you not happy, and looking for a way out?”

“No!” The instant of life falls away. “But I wouldn’t blame you if you were.”

“I’m not.” Castle gives her shoulders a shake. “Stop being so downright dumb. If I thought you were hurting Alexis I wouldn’t be here. Just like when you tried to use it to drive me away. It didn’t work then and it’s not working now. You can’t get rid of me.” He shakes her again, gently. “What’s all this really about? Everything was going right. For a change,” he adds bitterly.

Beckett makes another attempt to move away. “No, you don’t. You’re not running away. I’m not letting you.” He clasps her more tightly. “If you’re not looking for the exit then stay put and talk to me. Or don’t talk to me. But stay put. You know it’s always better when you’re with me.”

“Yeah, and what do you get out it?”

“You,” says Castle, simply. It stops Beckett in her miserable meanderings. He takes advantage of her silenced state. “What did Burke say to you to start this off?”

“He asked why I was feeling guilty about not being ready for…”

“Moving in,” Castle says. “Even though I haven’t asked you to.”

“I know that.”

“So? Why do you? I don’t see why you need to feel guilty about anything as long as we’re both happy. I’m happy – except when you start being miserable and getting into difficulties where there aren’t any. That doesn’t make me happy at all, so you shouldn’t do it. So why’re you feeling guilty again?

“I said. You do all the fixing and compromising and making it work…”

“Really?” He places a hand on her forehead.

“What’re you doing?”

“Checking your temperature, since you’re obviously delirious.”

“What?”

“You went to fucking therapy, Beckett. How’s that not trying to fix things?” He’s annoyed, now. She’s being dumb. He’s more irritated because it really had all been going well until his mother had laid a guilt trip on Beckett. “You went to therapy and you’ve been working it out ever since. You’ve come out with the family, you’ve come to the loft, and you’ve agreed to a dinner at your father’s. So how are you not trying?” His voice has risen. “Stop listening to what other people think. It doesn’t matter. Especially when they’re wrong.”

He tips her face up, hard fingers enclosing her jaw, blue eyes flaring furiously. “We’re not going round this loop. You don’t need to feel guilty about any of this and I said I’d tell you if you were putting too much on me and I would but you’re not. So just stop it.” He closes his mouth by main force and drops his hand. Beckett is looking at him as if she’s never seen him before. As he watches her expression, he also notices that there’s liquid pooling, brimming in her eyes – an instant before she drops her head and turns away from his view, trying to escape him again.

“No.” He brings her back, sweeps his thumb gently across the fine skin below her eyes. “No crying. No guilt. Just us. Just you and me, here and now.” She buries her head in his shirt again.

“I wanted to be able to come to the loft and now that it’s real I can’t do it when it ought to be easier,” emerges.

“When you’re ready. Not when you think you ought to. Stop thinking about it. It’s not relevant. This is all that matters,” and he tugs her out of his shirt and kisses her, gently but with intent. “We’ll be fine. Nothing else matters. Especially not my mother’s stupid statements. She’s wrong.”

“See, you’re doing all the compromising and fixing.”

Castle emits a growl that would scare a silverback gorilla. “And last week it was you comforting me when I was upset and trying to fix that. This isn’t a one-way street. What does it take to get you to see that? Actually, the hell with that.” And he simply swoops in and takes her mouth with absolutely no compromising at all. If nothing else, she can’t deny her confidence in her own responses, whatever else she’s unsure of.

Astonishingly, it works. It might have been born of annoyed frustration, but assertive physicality has always cut straight through the other issues to remind them both of who they are together, and it’s doing so now. He tastes and takes and cradles the back of her skull to bring her close and keep her there and show her that there’s no doubt in his mind of where their future lies, and she accepts his lead just as she always has.

He stops, and tucks her into his arms again. “Let’s not think about it any more. Let’s just” – he smiles sleepily – “make each other very happy, right here.” and he kisses her again, with just as much intent but less force: encouraging her to slide into the soft, comforting Kat-ness that’ll ease her and please him. Her hands slip into his hair, thumbs cupping his face and scraping on the shadow of beard beginning to appear around his chin; she curls in close and presses against him.

He stands up with her still in his arms (and he will suffer for doing that if he doesn’t up his gym time), and takes her through to her bedroom, but he sits down on the bed with her on his knee and doesn’t do anything other than take his time over possessing her mouth, loving the feel of her lips on his, her tongue arguing that he should let her win him over, her hands holding him in a little desperately, as if he’d run, or she might, without that tight grip.

“Not leaving. Not ever leaving you, Beckett,” and that seems to be enough: she relaxes and melts and gives in, and then they’re lost.

“Your mother hit it square on. All the worries about not doing enough, like not caring enough about Dad, like I couldn’t be good enough. Just like I never felt I’d been good enough for Dad. After all, he’d have rather had the whiskey than me.”

“You’re still working through that one,” Castle says, but she doesn’t seem to hear it.

“And she came here. I thought I was safe here. Nothing to remind me.”

Castle thinks about the abstract pictures, the lack of photos, the neutral décor: only the bird and, now, the small red stone which he had given her to give a hint of personality; and wonders about that. There’s so little here, that maybe it can’t block the memories.

“What did Burke say about that?”

“We didn’t talk about it.”

“Yeah?”

“He told me to consider why all these feelings were happening now. And to consider when I think you’ve compromised and what I did. Or didn’t do. He’s really big on me considering. I’m so tired of thinking.”

“So don’t think, for a while. Snuggle up and do something else.”

“One-track mind.”

“Not at all. I was thinking of reciting classic American poetry. Hiawatha. It’s your mind that’s in the gutter. My intentions were completely pure.”

Beckett makes a rude and disbelieving noise. “This is pure?” she says, running a hand over his naked form and arriving at a firm indication of potential impurity.

“Could be,” Castle says lazily. “Pure male beauty” – she snorts – “purely perfect proportions” –

“Pure conceit?” –

“and pure pleasure,” as he rolls over and rises above her and employs pure wickedness to leave her soaked, squirming and then sated.

“I have to go. But… look, it’s okay. I’m not in any hurry. You don’t need to be. Just – trust me to tell you the truth about how I feel, huh? That hasn’t changed. Hang on to that when you’re doing all this considering. I’m not lying and I’m not leaving.” He bends down to plant a brief kiss on her lips, then leans his brow on her forehead. “I love you.”

She pulls him down and kisses him far more passionately. “Love you too.”

Surprisingly, she sleeps soundly. Her shower clears her head further, possibly because she’s not trying to think. She shoves all her difficult thoughts and considerations to the back of her brain to ferment – or possibly fester, she thinks with black humour – and determines to leave them till lunchtime when she’ll go for a walk (if no new body has dropped) and think it out while her feet are moving.

Her plans look as if they’ll be completely derailed when a new body drops almost as soon as she’s entered the bullpen, but a focused morning’s effort by the four of them leaves them waiting for all the usual searches, and having had no useful input from next of kin (an elderly uncle whose memory isn’t the best any more and whose eyesight is sufficiently poor that his spectacles are more like bottle-bottoms.) or the one friend they could track down, it’s another waiting game. And so lunchtime rolls around.

“Castle,” Beckett says quietly.

“Urg? Yeah?” She watches his brain emerge from whichever game he’s playing now.

“Could you have lunch with Ryan and Espo today?” He casts her a piercing look. “I want to think, and I need to do it on my own. I’m going to go over to Tompkins Square, walk around a bit, see what shakes out.”

“Bit like staring at your murder board?” Castle says.

“Exactly like, but I need to move.”

“Okay. As long as you call me if you get so upset you don’t want to come back?”

Ow. That’s pointed. And possibly justified, after last night.

“Okay.”

He smiles beautifully at her. “And then I’ll call O’Leary to go get you, because you’re less likely to shoot him than me.”

It’s another sunny day, and once Beckett has eaten her lunch and entered the park she folds her jacket over her arm so that she can enjoy it, turning her face up to the sunshine and wriggling her shoulders in the warmth. However, she doesn’t have any too much time, so she’d better start her thinking. Considering.

Despite the sting, she pulls out Martha’s words about Castle and Alexis’s feelings. They’d taken some time to sink in: deferred to the need to deal with Castle’s unhappiness, which had been far more immediate, and his dealing with her initial shock. But then they’d mixed themselves into her feeling that she should be able to move faster… ah. Here’s the evidential thread to pull; the cord that leads to motive. It’s so simple, in the bright sunlight: someone had once said it, she thinks irrelevantly: sunlight is the best disinfectant, electric light the most efficient policeman. She has no idea why she remembers that; however, the principle is what she needs. Drag out the poisoned needles of Martha’s careless, manipulative lies, and disentangle them from the long-standing weave of her own issues around not doing enough for her father, being unlovable because of her own behaviour in abandoning him, and then doing everything for him to prove – to him? To herself? – that she was worthy of love…

Spot the pattern, Detective. She’s perilously close to trying to prove to Castle that she’s worthy of being loved, by doing something she’s neither ready for, nor comfortable with. He’s not asking her to prove anything, though. Park that, because it feeds the thinking about compromising. Back to Martha’s words. Hitting her insecurity point-perfect in the bullseye. It would make Richard so much happier…it would reassure Alexis too…he really wants you to be able to come to the loft. It’s exactly how she thought about her father. He’d be so happy if she …came to dinner every week…showed him she still loves him…doesn’t resent him…forgave him. And so she thought she had, except she hadn’t, and it had taken Dr Burke to unpick that mess. And here she is, falling into old bad habits, because someone else tells her she ought to. Just like the first therapist had told her she ought to grow up and get over it. It’s as wrong now as it was then, for the same reason.

Incompetent interference. With, or without, good motives. But either way, it’s wrong. The first therapist was wrong and Martha is wrong and Beckett’s instincts are right. And no matter how much she’s in love, no matter how much she loves curling into Castle’s warm bulk and solid strength, no matter how good they are together – she is not ready.

She has a right to do this in her own good time.

But right now she’s on Montgomery’s time, and she’s got less than ten minutes to get her ass back into her desk chair. She skedaddles.