71. Ease your pain

Beckett is sitting staring into space when her door is firmly rapped by Castle. She manages to stand up, open the door, and meet his eyes.  After that she doesn’t need to do anything but let him take care of her.  He simply soothes her by being there.

“Wanna talk about it?” he says softly after a minute. She can’t answer, and Castle doesn’t – thank God – press.  He wanders off, and shortly the kettle is boiling and coffee appears, including creamer, nutmeg and cinnamon on the tray.

“Thanks,” she says dully. She hasn’t even asked how he knows, or why he remembers, how she takes her coffee at home.  She should have thought harder about can’t control.  She’d known it, and forgotten it as soon as he got dry, till now.

Castle watches her doctor her coffee with the spices and creamer and privately wonders if a couple of Valium, or sleeping tablets, wouldn’t be a better idea.   She wraps her hands around the mug and he realises that she’s changed into a heavy roll-necked sweater and sweatpants.  She looks weighed down, somehow: tired (no surprise there), strained (nor there) and dull; her alpha personality gone out, and not replaced by feminine Kat.  Simply squeezed out, and replaced by nothing.  She’s cold, he realises, and drops a warm arm around her.

“You can’t control it,” she mumbles.

“Huh?” Castle says. “Can’t control what?”

“Them,” she mumbles further. This makes no sense to Castle.

“Who, Beckett? Who can’t you control?”

“Don’t cause, can’t control, can’t cure.”

He’s heard that somewhere, quite recently, but not recently enough to be at the front of his mind. He’s trying to recover it, but as ever, the more he tries to catch it, the faster it runs away.  He lets it run, in the hope that it will run all the way round the fractals of his frontal lobes and reappear, exhausted, so that he can identify it.  In the meantime, he’ll cuddle Beckett and finish his coffee and let her mumble as miserably as she needs to until she says something that she actually wants him to answer.

“I really hate therapy,” she says very unhappily. “Dragging up the past.  I don’t wanna think about the past.  It’s past.  Gone.  It doesn’t matter any more.”

That’s not true, Beckett. We’re all products of our past, and you are definitely a product of yours.  He doesn’t say that.  “C’mere,” he murmurs suavely, and pulls her in to be properly tucked into his side; his arm closing tightly around her.  “You don’t need to think about it.”

“Yeah, I do,” she spits out. “As if therapy wasn’t bad enough, I get homework.”

“Homework? That seems a bit unfair.”

“Damn straight,” she says, in a phrase that would suit Esposito better but at least shows a sudden flash of spirit. Unfortunately it doesn’t last beyond the full stop.  “At least this time it’s not about the past.”

“Mmm?” Castle hums encouragingly, hoping she’ll say more and talk out her pain.

“I had to” – she stops, takes a breath, and another – “remember,” she forces out. “Before tonight’s session.”

Well, that explains Espo’s cryptic call. He strokes smoothly down her arm and doesn’t ask what she had to remember.  He knows.  She’ll tell him in her own good time, but he’s not going to precipitate tears when she’s only just recovered some game. 

“This time’s a bit better. I only have to work out why I was so irritated with Julia in the context of the can’t control piece.  I can do that.”

Castle suddenly remembers where he’d heard that phrase. It had been all over the alcoholism support groups.  Ah.  Sounds like Beckett’s been realising that she’s been thinking all this time that she’d been helping her father but that actually she’d fallen into the trap of thinking she could control it by constantly being there for him.  That’s going to hurt.

“And?” he says encouragingly.

“And she was just denying that there was any problem at all. She thought she could control it by ignoring it and letting me deal with him every time he did something she couldn’t cope with.  She was pushing her problem on to me.”

“No wonder you got cross with her,” Castle says, though he doesn’t think that’s the whole reason by any means. He wonders if Beckett’s going to continue her line of thought out loud, if he can simply manage to make noises that indicate agreement and if he resists any temptation to lead the witness.

“Yeah.” She nestles in, in a rather more satisfied way.  “Still…” she mutters.

“Mmmm?”

“That seems too easy.”

“Uh?” Castle says, in default of saying yes, Beckett, it is too easy, you’re missing the point of therapy.  He is pretty certain that the therapist wants Beckett to recognise that she was irritated by Julia not taking any responsibility, where Beckett had taken far too much.  In addition, he wonders whether Beckett was, subconsciously, angry that Julia could get help from her, but she couldn’t get help from anyone.

He’s pretty certain that Beckett hasn’t made the second step yet, but he doesn’t say anything. It’s not for him to second-guess Beckett’s therapist or Beckett’s thinking.  And, of course, he likes being alive.  He likes snuggly Beckett too, and neither will continue if he opens his big mouth.   On the other hand, snuggly Beckett has just kissed his neck, which he really hopes makes her feel far better and happier than thinking about therapy.  He leans down a little and kisses her in return.

Unfortunately, that’s where it stops. She emits a tiny, dissatisfied hrrmph, and relapses into thought.  Castle takes the opportunity to play with her hair, until Beckett realises that he’s winding it into tiny braids and starts to object.

“Stop fidgeting, Castle, please? I don’t want braids.  They don’t suit me.”

Castle obligingly untwists each tiny tail. “You’re thinking, though.  Very quietly so I can’t hear what you’re thinking.” 

Beckett makes a face at him. “The point of thinking, rather than talking, is that you can’t hear it.”  Castle makes a face right back.  “Anyway, me thinking isn’t helping.  I don’t want to think about it any more right now.”

“Don’t you?” Castle, who recognises a hint when he’s hit in the face with it, purrs darkly, dropping into the deep seductive baritone that he knows will seep under her skin and leave her… relaxing, let’s say. Relaxing right into his lap.  On which thought, he puts her there.  Assertively.  And then he slips his hands under the heavy sweater, also assertively; and then slides them smoothly up and down, assertively, which asserts the sweater upwards and the sweatpants downwards and leaves an expanse of beautiful satin skin for him to play with.  Assertively, naturally.  And equally naturally, it works. 

Beckett hums contentedly and curls into his chest and then curves into his hands, and very soon she’s purring. Once she’s started to purr she should be induced to stay that way, which is becoming easier and easier as she opens to him – not only her body, but her mind.  Right now, she wants distraction, but he thinks that maybe after that she’ll want to think some more, and she might just emit some words.  That she’s emitted any words at all about what she has to do in therapy is quite a step.  He concentrates on distracting her, which is very distracting for him, and very pleasurable for both of them together (she is wickedly naughty) and they end up wrapped up together in her bed.

He thinks she’s more-or-less asleep, utterly lax and spooned against him. He thinks back, unexpectedly, to the very first time, when it had been spectacular – but superficial – sex, and she’d rolled away and been just a little resistant to being cuddled in afterwards.  Not like now, when it’s no longer simply sex, but making love, and she makes it very clear that cuddling is desired, and desirable.

“Julia got to lean on me,” arrives on the air. “I never got to lean on anyone.”

You could have, Castle thinks bleakly, if you’d ever asked. O’Leary, Lanie, Espo or Ryan would have been there.  But maybe by then it was already too late.

“There wasn’t any family and there wasn’t anyone at Stanford. And Dad was no help.  He just cried every time I mentioned it.  So I didn’t.”  There’s a suspicious sniff.  “Julia just unloaded all over me.”

Castle strokes her arm with the one that’s draped around her.

“How can I be angry about that?” she says despairingly. “She needed help, but it annoyed me.”

“Maybe that’s what your therapist wants you to work out?” says Castle, rather than saying because you’re only human, Beckett.  There’s an unhappy mutter in response, and she tries to burrow deeper into his clasp.

“It’s all past.  I’ve moved on.”

Like hell you have.

“The only reason I’m doing this at all is to be okay if I see your family and get Montgomery off my back.”

At least that’s in the right order. But what about your Dad?

“I don’t need to go over all that past to do that. I just need to get my head round your family not being like mine.  Like” – she considers for a second – “like I’m a cop so I can appreciate a movie star but I don’t need to be one.”

You’re trying to convince yourself, Beckett. Don’t you see the trap you’re falling into?  Castle clenches his teeth closed.  He’s happy that she’s wanting to do something that will enable her to spend time at his, with his family.  He’s entirely unhappy because this is the wrong route to achieve that.  She’s got to sort out her issues with her own father.  But she hasn’t mentioned him for over a week in any context at all and as far as Castle knows she’s decided he simply doesn’t exist.  It’s faintly surprising that Jim hasn’t called him, Castle.  After all, Lanie keeps trying.  Almost immediately he has a pang of guilt that he hasn’t at least told Jim that his Katie is okay.  For a given value of okay: mainly meaning not okay at all but leaning on me when she can’t stand straight any more.

He cuddles her in as closely as she evidently wants, nuzzling her hair and surrounding her with warmth and comfort. She’s not ready to hear the rest, and he’s not really ready to say it out loud.  But it’s there, either way, and he thinks that she pretty much is too.

Castle wakes up, regrettably, alone, mainly because he’s in his own bedroom in his own loft. Noises off indicate that Alexis is up.  Non-noises off indicate that his mother is not, or not here.  Either is perfectly acceptable.

He ambles out to discover Alexis on her way out in search of spring wear and her friends, and then discovers the coffee machine is in perfect working order. He makes himself a large mugful and sits down to survey his immediate future, which is, curate’s eggily, mixed.  Kat-Kate-Beckett wants, needs and probably loves him, which is excellent.  She is going to therapy to deal with (among other matters) being able to see his family, also excellent.  She’s re-established relations with O’Leary, mostly excellent as long as O’Leary doesn’t manage to trip some past problem, which he – mostly – hasn’t yet.  On the other hand, she has cut Lanie out and is thoroughly upset about Lanie’s overbearing efforts to help: not good.  She isn’t – yet, it has to be yet – using therapy to deal with the real issues; also not good.  And, of course, there’s the whole situation with her father, which is on the bad side of appalling.

Castle still considers very strongly that he should be pointing out to Lanie how she isn’t helping Beckett; but far more importantly he is becoming more and more squirmingly unpleasantly aware that he needs to give Jim something. Just in case.  Just in case of what, he really doesn’t want to think about.  He looks at a clock and discovers that it’s barely nine a.m.  Time to pull himself together and then do all the things he really doesn’t want to do.  He’d rather experiment with home-grown colonic self-irrigation, using sulphuric acid.

“Jim?”

“Rick? Rick, what’s been going on?  I keep trying to ring Katie and all I get is voicemail.”

“Jim, she’s okay. That’s what I called to tell you.  She’s fine.  I said I’d look after her and I am.”

There’s a silence that radiates unhappiness.

“If she’s so fine,” Jim says, unsurprisingly bitterly, “then why won’t she take my calls?”

Castle had known that this would arrive almost immediately.

“Because she’s as pigheaded as you are,” he says bluntly, to a shocked gasp. “She’s upset and angry and she’s not in a place to see past it, so she’s simply not talking to you.  You want to apologise, but Jim, she is not ready to hear it and the more you try the more pigheaded she’ll get.  Just trust me to take care of her for now.  She’ll come round.” Probably.

“And what am I supposed to do? Leave her to it?”

“Up to you. What’s Ed suggest?”

“Leave her to it,” Jim says quietly. “Wait till she’s ready.”

Castle says nothing, very loudly. Eventually, he opens his mouth again.  “You take care of yourself, Jim.  Kate’ll come round.”

“Last time it took her three years,” Jim spits out. “You going to keep her away from me that long?”

“I’m not a fool and don’t you dare suggest I’m some sort of Svengali. I’m not stopping her seeing you or talking to you or to anyone else.  But if I say a single solitary word to her that makes her think I’m taking your side in this – and I’m not, be really clear on that – she won’t be speaking to me either and if that happens then there’s no way on God’s earth that anyone will get through to her.   If you really wanna mess this up, then that’s the way to do it.”

More silence.

“All I wanted was to be her Dad,” Jim mumbles. I think you’re long past being able to do that, Jim. I think you might have lost that ten years ago.  “Now I can’t even get to talk to her.”

“Did pushing at her ever work when… before? When she was younger?”

There is the inaudible sound of mental cogs whirring.

“No-o.”

“Well, then.” Castle lets that sink in.

“I don’t like it. There’s more going on than you’re saying but you wouldn’t tell me anything last time and I don’t guess you’re going to change that now.  You better know what you’re doing.”

“I do,” says Castle confidently. Fuck, I hope I do, he thinks. 

“You better.” The bravery bleeds out of Jim’s voice.  “I should say thanks for telling me Katie’s okay, but…” 

“I get it.  Take care, Jim.”

“Yeah. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Phew. That was just as unpleasant as he’d thought it might be.  He’s lying to Jim.  By implication, he’s potentially deceiving Beckett, and that gripes his guts.  But… lesser of two evils.  Jim absolutely has to stay sober, because the only route out of this labyrinth is that Beckett sees that Jim can do it himself, and stops trying to do it all for him.

Buoyed up by having managed one difficult-tending-to-ghastly call, he ponders how best to approach the allosaurus formerly known as Dr Lanie Parrish, ME. Let’s see now, the last time Beckett saw Lanie, Beckett metaphorically ripped her to bloody, salted shreds with Castle as witness; and the last time he saw Lanie off duty was a week ago, when she wasn’t happy.  So what can he say to her that isn’t a betrayal of Beckett?

He’s not got any further down that line of thinking when his mother crashes in, full of the joys – and champagne – of after-show parties. Maybe this show will last a little longer than most?  He retreats to his study, being keen neither on being cross-examined about Beckett nor about when Jim and Beckett might next be invited over.  Since the current answer to that is a cold day in hell and he doesn’t want to explain that either, it’s best to be out the way.

He messes around with fragments and shards of possible stories, not to any great effect, for a while; puts in an online shopping order for food for the week, messes around some more, and eventually puts his feet up on the desk and thinks very hard about Lanie. It gets him nowhere, because he keeps falling over the point that to get through to Lanie he would have to explain about Beckett’s dad, and that’s a non-starter for a million different reasons.

Which point, absolutely naturally because his luck is so far out this morning that he’d need the Hubble Telescope to find it, is interrupted by his phone, which turns out not to be anything interesting or attractive (such as Beckett) but Lanie, in full hunting cry, no doubt.

“Castle?”

Oh. Not quite full hunting cry.  That almost sounded normal.  “Hey, Lanie.”

“Is Kate there?”

“No,” he says, and waits to see what will happen next.

“Good. I wanna talk to you about her.” 

Castle’s heart falls out through his toes.

“Lanie, I told you I’m not getting into this. You gotta sort it out yourselves.”

“I want you to get her someplace I can talk to her.”

“You have got to be joking. Tell me you’re joking, Lanie?”

“No. You’re the only one she’s listening to.”

“How long’s that going to last if I sucker her into turning up somewhere just so you can yell at her again? No.”

“I wanna talk to her.”

“Sure you do. Like every other time?”

“If she wasn’t so freaking pig-ass stubborn…”

“If you didn’t yell maybe she wouldn’t be so freaking pig-ass stubborn, did you think of that?”

“You ‘n’ Espo are about as much freaking use as a” –

“Espo?”

“He said the same. Neither of you know Kate like I do so how the hell would you know what works.”

Castle, who has been getting steadily more irritated, decides that he’s really had quite enough of pig-ass stubborn Lanie (he likes the descriptor, though).

“Better than you, since she’s still fine with us. If everyone’s got a problem with you maybe it’s you who’s the problem?”

Lanie cuts the call on him. If she’d been on a landline, his eardrums would have burst from the slam.  Still, Espo?  What’s that been all about?

Castle, for whom curiosity is not so much a besetting sin but a hitherto undiscovered by science component of his DNA, takes no more than a second or so to dial Esposito’s number.

“Castle? What you doin’ callin’ me?  Beckett okay?”

“Yeah, she’s fine.” Esposito makes a very rude noise which Castle ignores.  “No, Lanie just called trying to bully me into siccing her on Beckett – which I didn’t, before you get started on that,” he says quickly, “and she said that you said that she shouldn’t yell.  So…” he lets that trail off enticingly.

“Lanie wanted me to tell Beckett to listen to her. Told her to do it herself.  An’ then I told her if she stopped yellin’ she might have better luck.”  Castle hesitates for a moment.  “You there, bro?”

“Yeah. Espo, I’ve got an idea.”  Esposito’s sigh is audible and would destroy houses.  “No, really.  If we can get Ryan to play along.  And play patsy, but we don’t need to tell him that.” 

Esposito sniggers. “Okay, so what’s this crazy idea?”

“How about you and Ryan get Lanie out, and tell her to wind her neck in and do something to patch it all up, and I’ll take Beckett somewhere else, and tell her Lanie’s wanting to patch it up; and then we can try and put them in the same place without them blowing up?”

“Not so crazy. Thought you were gonna suggest us all goin’ somewhere together, with that mountain O’Leary to keep the peace.”

“That’s a good idea,” Castle enthuses. “He’s big enough to keep them apart.  I’ll get him with us, and bring him along if it all works out.  But you still have to get Lanie on side.  I’m not going to be the target in a firing range.”

“Me neither, bro. Me neither.”  Espo pauses.  “So how’s Ryan gonna be the patsy?”  He sounds deeply satisfied with that idea.

“Well, it’s pretty clear he’s wanting to get Beckett and Lanie in the same place, which is what we want, so it shouldn’t be too hard to make him think that Beckett, O’Leary and I are going to be where you’re going, and then he’ll tell Lanie, and we’ll be done.”

“I like that,” Esposito sniggers. “Oh boy.  You’re as sneaky as a snake when you wanna be, aren’t you?  ‘Kay.  You deal with Beckett and O’Leary, an’ I’ll set up Ryan.  Seeya Monday, bro.”

“See you,” Castle says, more cheerfully.