208. Father father, tell your children

Alexis pulls her disappearing act again, with a rather too knowing look which doesn’t really improve Beckett’s tension. Castle steers her towards his office, which is also the route to his bedroom, shuts the office door behind them, and hugs her.

“You didn’t think I was going to let you go home alone, did you? In that dress? Not likely.” He leers horribly. “Someone might try to molest you.”

“I don’t think so,” Beckett says firmly. “Not if they want to survive.”

Castle’s hand slides down her back and settles neatly on her rear. “Mm?” he hums into her ear, and tickles the lobe with his tongue. “I’m surviving.”

“Could be changed,” Beckett snarks, but he presses her closer and she rolls a smidgeon into his hips. He flexes, and keeps her very close indeed. His fingertips sneak round and down to one of those pretty little slits in the skirt of the dress, sliding over the tiny slice of skin exposed, tip-tapping under the fabric. She wriggles, and leans in to kiss him, barely needing him to bend to meet her lips in her heels. Her hands slide up his back, round over his pecs, and finally cup his evening-shadowed cheeks.

Matters heat up very rapidly, after that. So rapidly, indeed, that they don’t make it out the office. Fortunately, the office door is sturdy. Equally fortunately, short skirted dresses can simply be shoved up, panties slid out of the way of wicked fingers and hard hot flesh, pants merely opened until they’re joined in one swift, erotic motion.

Clinging to each other, they reach the bedroom. They should strip each other slowly, with delicate arousal and tantalising eroticism – but they don’t. Clothes are torn off, discarded in a trail across the floor, and they fall on the bed in a tangle of writhing limbs and come together once more.

“What happened there?” Castle asks, sprawled out across the bed with Beckett lax in his arms.

“Well, if you don’t know yet…” she yawns mischievously.

“I mean,” Castle says with awful portent, “I was planning to take things slowly and gently.”

“Mm?” Beckett emits agreeably.

“Yeah. And then you were all sexy and hot and it all changed.”

“Mm. Are you seriously complaining?” She doesn’t sound anything other than sated and content.

“No,” he says, and pulls her over his chest. “Never complaining about you in bed with me.”

“Good.” She distributes herself comfortably over him. “’M sleeping.”

“What happened at the end of the evening?”

“Huh?”

“You were winding Ryan up and then you wandered off and when you came back you looked upset.”

“I’m fine. I’m asleep.” Her eyes are squinched shut. Castle emits a disbelieving noise.

“You’re talking to me.”

“In my sleep,” she says very unconvincingly, and buries her face in his neck. “Zzzzz.”

Castle doesn’t think that pressing Beckett in the small hours of the morning is likely to achieve anything more than a fight, which is undesirable. Besides which, she’s here, which is an improvement on not-here, and if she wakes up enough to remember that she has no clean clothes or washbag, she might also wake up enough to go home. He cuddles up, and tries to go to sleep himself. Some time later, in which he has reached no firm conclusions but has entertained plenty of suspicions, chiefly around the possibility of his mother accosting Beckett, he succeeds.

Not unusually when no alarm rouses Beckett, Castle wakens first, and enjoys some high-quality creepy staring. Unfortunately creepy staring at his beautiful Beckett does not prevent his brain functioning, and right now it’s functioning to good effect. It’s unlikely that any mere actor would have managed to upset Beckett (the reverse being emphatically not the case) and it’s equally improbable that any other theatrical type could have managed it. (the reverse still not being the case) An upset between her and her team and friends, or father, is also unlikely; and any disagreement with Alexis would have been instantly apparent on leaving.

That leaves only his first pick, being his mother. Hmm. He has two, equally unpleasant, options here. Ask Beckett flat out, or ask his mother. Ugh. Neither is at all attractive on a Sunday morning. He parks the whole issue. It can wait.

It does wait. In fact, it waits so long that Beckett has left, which in a way has made Castle’s decision for him. He’ll need to ask his mother. After lunchtime.

After lunchtime rolls around. Castle would almost have preferred a natural disaster, although his mother may qualify as one of those anyway.   He heaves a paper-lifting sigh, and calls.

“Richard, darling,” she enthuses. “Did you have fun last night? Quite the best party I’ve thrown in years.”

“Yes. I told you you’d still got it.”

There is a slight, uncomfortable pause. Matters between them have, after all, not actually been mended yet.   Castle had consistently put off any discussion about anything other than the party.

“Mother, how about coming over for dinner with Alexis and me tonight?” he says. “I” – he swallows – “want to finish clearing the air.”

There is a very noticeable pause.

“Okay,” his mother says. It’s not precisely confident.

“About six-thirty. Alexis will be delighted.”

“And you?”

“Me too.” It’s not untrue. It’s just that overlaying it is considerable worry about how to mend matters properly. Still… it can wait till dinner time.

Beckett had gone home, in a town car on which Castle had insisted – “to spare other people’s blushes, Beckett, when they get a look at your legs. I couldn’t possibly allow you to cause accidents and fights.” Glaring fearsomely hadn’t worked. Castle had simply smirked more widely and completely not listened to her protests at all. On the other hand, she’d been so pleased to escape the expected inquisition that she’d put up with it. She had really thought that Castle would grill her like a hot dog, but he hasn’t.

Strangely, this does not reassure her. Instead, she fears that it simply means that Castle is applying his considerable intelligence and – er – unorthodox skills to what might have happened last night. However, he’s not here, and he won’t be here, and she needs to sort everything out and do her chores before she goes to see her dad for dinner.

So that’s what she does. The thought of last night’s unproductive discussion perches on her shoulder and occasionally pecks at her brain. It would peck more often, but Beckett has a very disciplined mind, most of the time, and is quite capable of ignoring it. Mostly.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Katie. Survived the rest of the party?”

“We all left not long after you.” She grins at him. “I think we’d all done our duty, and Alexis was tired.”

“You looked a little tired too.” He twinkles at her, parentally. “Too much burning the candle at both ends? How’s that chef case doing?”

“We still can’t find Bruno.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. We tried your idea” – Jim smiles, happy to have helped out – “but he isn’t answering the phone. He’s too clever,” she adds, irritated. “Everything we try, he isn’t there.” She makes a very cross face. “I hate it when we don’t get the guy.”

“Like not closing the deal,” Jim says sympathetically. “I don’t like that. It feels unfinished.”

“Yeah. Exactly like that.” She hesitates, wandering towards the kitchen. “Um, Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Um, I want your advice.”

Jim boggles at his daughter’s stiff back. “Sure,” he says. “What’s up? If you’re telling me you’re moving in with Rick, though, I don’t think you need my advice. Blessing you can have.”

“Dad! No.” Jim deliberately makes a very disappointed noise. “Nose out. If it was that I’d just tell you. Though if you carry on dropping brick-like hints, I might not tell you.”

“Awww. If I can’t tease you, who can?”

Beckett growls indeterminately. “I wanted to ask you what I should do about Martha,” she immediately blurts out, turning round.

Jim’s jaw hits the floor, and he sits down considerably faster than he had intended. “You want my advice?” he gasps. “About Martha? Why?”

“Well, I can hardly talk to Castle about it, can I?” Beckett says crossly. “And I’m not going to get any sense out of Ryan or Espo, or even O’Leary.” She suddenly smirks. “Sure won’t get anything out of Ryan. He’ll be too busy keeping Cedric occupied.” She laughs, and Jim joins in. “Anyway. Martha was looking for a conversation last night.”

“At the party?” Jim queries, not impressed. No wonder Katie had appeared thoroughly annoyed. “Hardly the time or place.”

“Too right. That’s what I said. I wasn’t going to get into a fight with her at her big do.” She pauses. “But she’s going to keep hassling me till she gets what she wants or I take her apart again. I don’t want to upset Castle if she wants to mend fences, but I just don’t know.”

“Mm,” Jim hums pensively. “Okay. Why don’t we start with what she actually did and said?”

“She kept trying to talk to us.” Jim interprets that accurately as Katie and Rick. “O’Leary managed to distract her the first time, but then she came back and said we had lots to talk about since I was taking such a big place in Castle’s life.”

Jim winces at Katie’s acerbic tone. Whether she likes it being said or not, she is taking a big place in Rick’s life – about which he is quite delighted.

“I said I didn’t think so.” Jim winces again. True, but hardly tactful. Not that Katie has ever pulled her punches. “She actually stopped me moving away. Castle said it wasn’t the time or the place, and then O’Leary got in the way and hustled her off.”

It’s Jim’s turn to growl. He’s not impressed by Martha’s pushiness.

“Castle thinks she owes me an apology, or explanations. I don’t. I don’t think she owes me anything.”

“Hmm.”

“Then she stalked us again, but I left her to Castle. And then I got a bit tired of listening to Ryan whining about Cedric, so I went to look at the poster – Castle got it framed for her. He was going to present it at the party, but… well… she was such a bitch” – Jim draws a censuring breath – “She was¸ Dad – when she moved out that he just hung it up then. Anyway, I hadn’t had a good look at it. It was really nicely designed.” She stops again, and restarts, acidly. “So of course that was when Martha came up. She said she never meant to hurt Castle. Well, whether she did or she didn’t mean it she managed it.”

“What did you say?”

“Said I was sure she hadn’t,” Katie says laconically. “I lied. I think she was so wound up she didn’t care, and I’m not sure she wasn’t trying to make him feel bad too. But in the middle of a party wasn’t the time. Anyway, she was trying to talk and I didn’t want to. It’s Castle she needs to mend matters with, not me.”

“Seems like you’ve got it all worked out. Why’d you want advice from me?”

Jim is genuinely curious. Apart from anything else, Katie’s still seeing Carter Burke, and he would have expected her to ask him, not her dad. He decides that he’s flattered, and more slowly that they are really, truly, pretty much mended.

“Because you’ve met her. Burke hasn’t – ran like a rabbit when he might have, probably because he knew Castle would ask him to take her on.”

Jim splutters. He doesn’t see Carter and Martha hitting it off. Or indeed being a viable therapy pairing. “Did he?”

“Yeah. Didn’t work.”

“I don’t guess it would,” Jim says. “But that still doesn’t explain why you want my advice.”

“I said,” Katie says, irritably. “You’ve met her. And I don’t know what to do about her.”

“What do you mean?”

Katie acquires a fine line of deep colour across her cheekbones. Jim is suddenly reminded that Katie had been very uncommunicative (which is not precisely surprising) about any part she might have played in the Martha-Rick drama. He is also reminded that he’d thought she’d taken some direct action.

“Katie?”

“I might have told her off,” she squirms.

Jim raises his eyebrows. Well, well. Seems like that look still works. Once in a way. “Mm?” he hums, a little sternly.

“Um… she hurt Castle. So I went and told her what she’d done.”

Katie sounds like the small child who’d, laden with attitude, admitted to attempting to beat up the older boy who’d been annoying her then best friend. She’d nearly succeeded, too.

“What did you say?”

Oops. That was obviously a little too parental. Katie has raised her own eyebrow, and it’s a lot more intimidating solo than his pair are together.

“I said,” she says very coldly, “that she’d managed to hurt Castle, who she claims to love more than anything – at least that’s how she tried to guilt trip me - so badly that he actually thinks that she’d never cared about him at all and she’d blamed him for even existing. That everything he’s done for her: a home, money, love, didn’t count. Then I told her that as far as I could see it was likely true that she didn’t love him. And then I said she had to decide what mattered, ‘cause it didn’t seem to be Castle. And finally I told her that he had thought she was family and loved him – except he might not think so any more.”

Jim is appallingly, terrifyingly reminded of the way that Katie had shredded him in front of Dr Burke. Martha, it’s clear, hadn’t had a hope in hell. Katie might momentarily have responded to parental pressure, but right now she is frightening, and Jim, father or not, is very unnerved by it. He hadn’t understood, there in Dr Burke’s office so many weeks ago, that the intimidating violence of Katie’s personality was not only a product of her agony and anger at him. In that, at least, she is not her mother’s duplicate. Johanna had never had that edge of – well, focused fury.

“You did?” he asks weakly. “Er…what on earth did she do?”

“Don’t know.   Didn’t care.”

“Oh,” Jim says even more faintly.

“But she came round to the loft the next morning.”

“Did she, indeed?” Jim smiles to himself. Not that he’s exactly pleased to be sure that his Katie is sleeping with Rick: she is, after all, still his little girl, but it’s good to know that that relationship is pretty solid. Hm. Maybe he’d better dust off his best suit. Or possibly his shotgun.

“Anyway,” Katie says with a very this-is-not-the-point flavour, “she obviously wants to talk to me. God knows why. And – er – um – I don’t know if I should just let her.”

“Mm?”

“If she’s just going to go back to I’ll be a replacement mother I don’t wanna know. She isn’t, and she’s never going to be. Just ‘cause she’s Castle’s mom doesn’t ever mean she’s mine.”

“You don’t subscribe to the theory that your mother in law is another mother?” Jim says, a little maliciously mischievous.

“Dad! She’s not my mother in law.”

Jim grins wickedly.   “Gotcha.”

“Anyway, no. It’s not the same. It would never be the same.”

Both of them look momentarily sad. Katie recovers first.

“This isn’t the point,” she mutters.

“Well, let’s think it through,” Jim suggests. “You said you thought Rick had fixed things with his mom. If that’s true,” he notes, attorney-cautious, “then why would she want to fix things with you? The way I see it, it’s likely one of three things: she thinks you’ll stop Rick’s relationship with her if she’s not happy” –

“No way.”

“Mm,” Jim emits. “I seem to recall that Rick wouldn’t tell me anything about you, a few weeks back.”

“That’s different. I… didn’t wanna talk to you, then.” They both wince. “Martha wants to talk to Rick, and if he wants to talk to her that’s up to him. Castle wouldn’t have stopped me if I’d wanted to call you. If he wants to talk to her that’s his problem.”

“Mm,” Jim hums again. “She might just want to fix things. Have a normal, adult-to-adult relationship.”

“Normal?”

“Normal for an actress with a taste for overblown emotions,” Jim amends, rather sardonically, “and no filters.”

“Too true,” Beckett mutters blackly. “I thought you quite liked her?”

“If she’s not upsetting you, and in small doses. One pleasant dinner talking about theatre every so often, sure. Too much histrionics spoils my digestion and cheerful disposition,” Jim smirks. Katie makes a face at him. He returns to the point. “Or, I suppose, she could still think you need a mom.”

There is a disgusted noise.

“Yeah, well,” Jim emits. “Even after everything you’ve said. Um – you said what you told her after she annoyed Rick, but I don’t think you ever really explained why Rick finally decided she should move out?” Jim has the nagging feeling that he may be missing a piece of this puzzle. In fact, though he remembers very clearly Katie saying I’ve still got one parent and I wasn’t planning on finding a substitute, he doesn’t remember ever hearing about the precipitating event. Hm.

“Urgh,” Katie mutters, and then shrugs. “She came round to my apartment, tried to tell me she could replace Mom, then guilt-tripped me about moving into the loft. So I threw her out and gave her thirty minutes to get to Castle before I told him exactly what she’d done. He’d told her and told her not to interfere, and that was the very last straw. So he simply told her to choose an apartment and he’d buy it for her.”

Jim gasps gently, even though he knows that Castle had done that. The amounts involved are staggering, even to a senior attorney in commercial law. However, getting past that point, Martha had done what? The woman must have been crazy. He’s utterly astonished that Katie hadn’t shot her. He likely would have, and his temper isn’t quite as hair-trigger as Katie’s.

“Okay,” he muses. “I don’t really think she’s likely to try and be your mom again.” He ponders, during which time he takes dinner out and extracts a couple of sodas from the fridge for them. “I think you should hear her out,” he eventually states.

“You do?”

“Yes. If nothing else, if she’s still a pain then, you’ll know you did everything you could to have a sensible relationship with her. I don’t guess you’ll ever be best buddies” – Katie chokes – “but civility is always helpful.”

Katie looks very sceptical, but then starts to mull over his words. Jim is much relieved to see that. He munches placidly on his own dinner, and doesn’t disturb her.

“Okay,” she decides, after some while. “I’ll think about giving it a go.” Her lips twist. “I don’t expect to enjoy it, though. But…” she trails off. Jim doesn’t press her for more.

“You could always pre-plan it with Carter,” he suggests.

“I guess. I’m not seeing him that often any more.”

“That’s good, but I’m sure he’d still help if you needed it.”

“I guess,” she says doubtfully.

There is a small, punctuating pause. “Now, Dad,” Katie says enthusiastically, “it’s time I beat you at Sorry again.” She smirks. “Highlight of my week.”