3. Me, myself and I

Beckett is just a little discomposed that Castle has apparently left all the decisions up to her. She doesn’t want to make decisions, tonight, beyond the single vitally important one of consent.  She thinks that her consent is relatively obvious, since she could have done him serious damage at any point and hasn’t.

“It’s okay, Castle. It’s good.”  She thinks that’s enough, especially when she snuggles into his shoulder, relaxed against the firm muscle.  Much to her disappointment, he doesn’t go back to kissing her, nor does he move on to anything else.  Instead he holds her close-cuddled, and murmurs in her ear.

“Not Katherine, or Kate, or Kathy.” You what now?  Surely he’s not back to names.  She doesn’t want nicknames, or pet names.  She just wants one evening when she can put everything down and not think.  Just one evening to be soft Kat not hard-ass Beckett or kick-ass Kate, or Katie.  To be Kat, but in her own mind, not in anyone else’s voice.  “Mmmm.  I don’t think any of those fit.”  He’s nibbling gently at her earlobe.  The voice and tone and action spread smooth sensuality down her skin, seeping in and soothing her slight disquiet at the direction of the conversation.  A little less conversation, please, Castle.

“Fit what?” Beckett asks distractedly, far more focused on the wide frame surrounding her and the gentle, rhythmic movement of fingers at her shoulder and waist than on his words.

“Fit my character. Can’t call her Kate.”  Beckett sighs in considerable and not at all concealed relief.  “Katherine and Kathy just don’t work.  Not badass at all.”  He pauses, and considers.  “Nor are they quiet, soft and relaxed, like you suddenly are now.”  He leaves that hanging, too.  Beckett’s not sure that she likes him picking up on her current state.  But it’s just this evening.  Back to Beckett-normal in the morning.  She curls in and lets the slight scent of cologne and male settle around her.  It’s... reassuring.  Comforting.  And rather too arousing for her own good.  She wiggles into a thoroughly comforting alignment.  Hard fingers flex against her, then release slightly and keep circling, stroking, far away from any intimate areas.  It really doesn’t make the slightest difference to her reactions.  She doesn’t realise that she’s emitting a contented little unformed noise.

“Kat.” What the hell?  Contented noises cease instantly, as does soft relaxation.  No. No.  She’s only Kat inside her own head, inside her own apartment, and alone.  No-one else gets to see Kat.  No-one.  “You’re purring.  That makes you Kat.”

She didn’t want this. She’s returning to being Beckett faster by the minute and all she’d wanted was one freaking evening where she didn’t have to be Beckett, or Kate, or Katie.  But she doesn’t want Castle to work out that she just wanted to be Kat.  She certainly doesn’t want him to call her that.  He might ask why.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not purring.”

“It’s a perfectly acceptable short form. Or would you prefer Kitty?  It’s a bit old-fashioned now but – ow!  Let go of my ear, Beckett!”  She lets go as he looks wounded.  “That wasn’t nice.  Just when we were getting on so well, too.” 

He catches her wrist just before she takes another run at removing his ear. Clearly he’s hit another sore spot.  He’s remarkably good at that.  He’d rather be remarkably good at hitting – er – sensitive spots.  So to speak.  He’d better steer clear of this too.  But in the near future he’s going to find out why Kat is such a sore point.  He suddenly foresees a reasonable amount of hard thinking – no, deducing – in his future.  Shortly before an entirely unreasonably large amount of kissing Beckett.  Back to lightening the atmosphere, before she realises that she’s still in his lap and stops being there.

“I know,” he says happily. “Split the difference.  KitKat.” 

 “I’m not a candy bar!”  She just has time to contemplate the magnitude of her mistake in engaging with this idiotic discussion before a grin splits his face in two.

“There are certain similarities,” he smirks. Then his expression changes subtly: the smirk becomes more of a lazy, sexy grin, his hand slips from her waist to her hipbone, the arm around her shoulder grips just a little more tightly.  He carries on before she has a chance to stop him.

“It’s long and slim, with a smooth, attractive covering and substance within.” She opens and closes her mouth without producing words.  “It tastes rich and sweet.”  His eyes are intent.  “I like to take the covering off.  Sometimes” – his voice is lubricious – “I just can’t stop eating it.”  

If he is actually talking about chocolate she will dine on her best Ferragamos, without sauce. But she can’t call him out on it because he is ostensibly referring to candy bars and if she admits by one single look or word that she knows perfectly well that he is referring to what they might do she’ll never be allowed to forget it.

 “Better go find some, then.  There’s a Seven-Eleven round the corner.”  That sounds perilously close to a dismissal.  Castle doesn’t want to be dismissed: it wouldn’t be any fun at all.  Nor does he like the very standard sharp, sardonic tone in her voice.  It’s far too similar to how she is normally, and he’d just been starting to enjoy the softer version.  Hmmm.   Maybe not talking would be a good plan, especially as she’s tensing up and any moment now she’s going to work out…

Dammit. She has.

Beckett stands up. And it is, clearly, Beckett who stands up.  Whoever that softer woman was, she’s gone.  But emphatically not forgotten.  “Thank you for seeing me home,” she says, and moves significantly in the direction of the door and, more importantly, away from him.  Castle receives the distinct impression that it’s not just a physical separation but an emotional and mental distancing as well. Hell. That was entirely not the plan.

“My pleasure, Detective.” His devious brain provides him with a new plan.  All Beckett’s tells inform him that she’s not happy about something.  All her previous tells and reactions inform him that she probably wasn’t unhappy about being kissed.  All he needs is a few minutes to assemble his thoughts.  “Could I just borrow your bathroom a moment?”  He picks up his jacket and drapes it over his arm.

Beckett nods, once, sharply, and points him briskly in the right direction. Castle has no need of the bathroom, strictly, though he avails himself of the facilities in order to create the right impression.  Then he swiftly removes some of the bills from his wallet: enough to buy himself coffee and a pastry, (he’s hungry) and meet a cab fare home if this doesn’t work; and puts it carefully on the floor (to avoid noise) where it’s not obvious to the casual viewer but could easily have fallen out of his pocket.

When he returns to the main room there is a noticeable atmosphere of hurry up and leave already which is more than slightly tinged – in fact soaked with – a colouring of because I’m upset and want time to myself. Nothing like living in a houseful of women to teach you about emotional undercurrents.  Well, if he’s got his timing right he should return, having done some thinking, just at the point her upset might actually be on display; and while he really doesn’t want Beckett upset he does think that some comforting support, coming from a shoulder currently located around three inches from his chin, might get him some answers and kissable, kitten-like, not-Beckett.  Or alternatively, if he hasn’t arranged all these disparate thoughts into a coherent whole, he can go home and pretend he didn’t notice his missing wallet till tomorrow in the precinct.  Everyone carries enough change in their pants pockets to get the subway, and he is no exception, so the explanation will still stack up.

Beckett politely shows Castle out and repairs to her bedroom, feeling stale, flat and very unprofitably miserable. Why can’t she have even one night where no-one wants anything complicated, or wants support, or answers, or justice, or seeing inside her head, or anything?  She’s just so tired of carrying the weight of it all.  It’s been so long, and she’s so exhausted by it.  She’s not hungry any more, and she doesn’t want to start tomorrow tired.  She washes, lost in thought and oblivious to her surroundings, and changes into her favourite heavy, silky robe, wondering why she hadn’t just followed her instincts and dragged Castle into her bedroom when she had the chance. Probably because you’re too controlled, Kate. Her mouth twists unhappily.  She finds a book and curls up in among her pillows and comforter, just like always.

Castle enlists the aid of his phone to find the nearest open coffee bar or similar place where he can sit and think with the aid of some caffeine. It’s a little further away than he’d like, and it’s still sleeting, which is rather unkind when it’s not even December, but the coffee is good and they have some very acceptable carrot cake.  He finds a quiet chair well away from the whining draught biting from under the door and settles down to ponder. 

On the basis of the pattern of vodka drinking, he hit a sore point when he suggested that her parents called her Katie. Start there.  Why on earth would that be a sore… oh. Oh.  He knows this.  Or at least, she not only didn’t deny it when he told her his deductions of her story, she more or less confirmed it. Someone close to you.  Oh fuck.  And since her birthday card was signed by her dad it must have been her mother.  Oh fuck.  Because the second belt of vodka went down wholesale when he’d said that lawyers marry lawyers.  Which would be her parents.  Which implies a very happy home life, until it all went wrong.

So what flicked the third switch, then? Ah yes.  He’d asked who cops date.  Right now, she isn’t dating anyone – conclusion: bad break up, not too long ago.  Which given Beckett’s work ethic and general level of seriousness could be anytime in the last couple of years, or even a bit more.  Well, this cop ought to be dating him.  He’d be a cure for bad break ups, he thinks smugly.  She’d certainly appreciated him earlier.   But then he goes back to pondering why she’d suddenly tensed up and realised what she was doing and called it off.

She didn’t like Katie.  Okay, that’s not a surprise.  She didn’t like Kathy.  Also unsurprising, given how he’d described a Kathy.  He suspects, based on his own parental experiences (of his parent and as a parent both) that she was only referred to as Katherine when she was in trouble.  That is a bit of a shame, because he could really get used to the sound and feel of Katherine in his mouth.  Not to mention the taste.

It was Kat that sent it plummeting into all sorts of wrong. Kitty and KitKat were simply amusement value and didn’t provoke the same reaction. Kat, on the other hand, stopped her purring and raised her tension level back to normal.  So, something’s up with Kat.  Okay, leave that for the moment.  He takes another healthy draught of coffee and savours the cake.

What else? What else, he thinks, is the enormous difference between Beckett-normal and Beckett-at-home.  Or, possibly, Beckett-in-his-arms.  Beckett-normal is sharp, sardonic, wholly in command and barriered higher than the Hoover Dam.  Beckett-in-his-arms – well, wasn’t. That Beckett wasn’t a Beckett at all: she was soft and probably strokable and pettable; she cuddled into him like a contented cat would, boneless and utterly relaxed; and she clearly didn’t want to take the lead at all.

Oh. Two insights there that he could have used a lot earlier this evening.  One, that she didn’t want to take the lead.  Is it possible that the wholly-in-charge Beckett occasionally gets tired of being wholly in charge?  It seems a tad unlikely, but then the events of the entire evening have been a tad unlikely.  Even more unlikely, is it just faintly possible that curled-like-a-cat-and-purring-not-Beckett is in fact Kat, inside her own front door?  That’s not something she’d want to have known outside said door.  Including, naturally, known by him.  She doesn’t trust him to keep that quiet, and to be fair he hasn’t exactly given her any reason to believe that he’s in any way discreet.

So if he hadn’t flicked the raw edge, where might he be? Well, if he hadn’t called her Kat, she’d still be tucked into his lap and in a very kissable position.  More, she’d quite explicitly said it was all okay, all good; which is consent.  So maybe they’d currently be exploring a little further round the baseball diamond than simply kissing.  Kissing was good, though.  Kissing Beckett is something of which he should do a lot more.  An awful lot more.

And all this thinking has conveniently occupied a length of time sufficient for him to have waited for a cab, put his hand in his pocket to check, automatically as one does, that he had his wallet, found he didn’t, looked frantically around him, and then made his way back to Beckett’s building; on which mission, when he arrives, he does not forget to set the scene by asking the doorman if he’d picked it up.

The doorman is sympathetic but definite: no wallet dropped or handed in here. Castle fakes considerable annoyance at his own stupidity and a serious dose of worry; blesses the talent that he inherited from his mother and tells the doorman that he’d just like to check that he didn’t drop it at Detective Beckett’s, or in the elevator.  The doorman sizes Castle up – a little protective, a little intimidating: Castle hopes that his own doorman would behave similarly if stray boys came round wanting to see Alexis on a feeble excuse like this – and, evidently satisfied of Castle’s sincerity, passes him on up.  The wallet, though he looks to left and right as if searching, is naturally nowhere to be seen, since he left it in Beckett’s bathroom, and (he hopes) it’s still there.

He taps on the door. For a long moment, nothing happens: no movement is audible from within.  Then the door opens, accompanied by an exasperated sigh emanating from an exasperated Beckett, wearing a garment that his fingers itch to stroke.

“What is it, Castle?”

“I can’t find my wallet,” he says apologetically, demonstrating its absence. He certainly doesn’t want her to know he’d staged this.  “I definitely had it when we got here because I had it when I paid for the cab.  It must have fallen out my jacket.  Have you seen it?”

“No.” Beckett shakes her head, disarmed by the credible cause for him to have returned.  “But I wasn’t looking.”  She makes an expansive gesture around the room.  “Feel free to look round here.”  Swift thought flicks across her face, the Detective building the picture of what he had done.  “You were in here – oh, and in the bathroom.  I’ll look there.  You can look in here.  Don’t break anything.”

He skims a glance around the room, wanders to the window and checks under a side table, makes sure he doesn’t knock it and damage the small amethyst bird which is sitting on it. It looks rather fragile.  Like Beckett.  She’d had that certain glimmer in her eye that argues upset, but it had been a controlled upset, rather than emotional storms.  As controlled as Beckett always is.  He’s never seen her otherwise.

She needs something to cheer her up. A present, perhaps, for her birthday, dressed up as a reward for finding his wallet.  When she finds the wallet, they can discuss rewards.  Dinner, he thinks.  A belated birthday dinner, somewhere classy and discreet: he can arrange that for tomorrow.  But for tonight, reward might well equal kiss.  On which thought there’s a triumphant squawk from the direction of the bathroom.

“It’s here, Castle.” Beckett reappears, on a cloud of you idiot how did you not notice you’d dropped it? He manufactures an expression of considerable relief.

“Thanks. Losing it would have been disastrous.”

“What, you’d have had to get the subway like us mere mortals?”

“No, I’d have had to notify fifteen different card companies. And I’d have lost all my coffee loyalty points.”  Beckett looks slightly more impressed, and a lot more horrified, by the last sentence than by the first.

“I can see that the last might have been a problem,” she says sardonically.

“Are you telling me that wouldn’t have been a problem for you? You mainline coffee.  Where do you keep your IV line?”  She grins in a rather you-got-me-there way, and shrugs, just exactly the same way as she’d have done at the precinct.  The remaining small hints of upset are covered almost perfectly – but, as she’s walked across the room, brandishing the wallet, to where he’s standing, still by the window, the signs are not quite wholly concealed.  Three more steps… two more… one more – range.

“Here you are,” she says, and holds out the wallet, expecting him to take it. He does indeed reach out.  It’s simply that he’s not reaching for the wallet.

“Here you are,” Castle says with considerable satisfaction, which in hindsight, Beckett feels, should have tipped her off, and instead of reaching for the wallet reaches for Beckett, puts both arms round her, and draws her in.  He is, she finds, ridiculously snuggly.  Far more so than her pillows.  A little while ago she’d been wishing she’d just dragged him into her bedroom (assuming, of course, he wanted to, but it was pretty obvious earlier that he wanted to) and now here he is back again, and still indicating that he’s interested.  Well, she’s clearly not going to be able to stop taking charge of events, but if she wants it, she can definitely have it.  She stands still in his embrace, leaning against him, neither starting anything nor definitively stopping, considering whether she can bear to shoulder any further decisions other than yes.

And then the decision is taken out of her hands.

Castle had waited a moment or two to see what Beckett might do: top of the probability list being telling him to let go. However, he thinks that there is a faint chance that she might go back to being the soft not-Beckett of whom he’d quite like to see a little more, and a slightly higher chance that she might at least be receptive to some more kisses.  So when she leans against him – though disappointingly it couldn’t be described as curving in – he thinks back to his deduction that she might not want to be in charge all the time, (he’s still not at all sure about this idea) waits to see; and, when she doesn’t take any decisive action, reasons that he can take some mildly decisive action without being on the wrong end of a harassment suit or, much more likely, a hard knee to the testicles.

He curls his hand round Beckett’s chin to raise her face to his, leans down slowly and inexorably and takes her mouth, gently searching for entrance. Her hands come up to his shoulders: one sliding into his hair; he wraps one arm round her back to keep her body close and sets the other on her neck.  And abruptly she lets him in and her stance alters from the previous marginal leaning in to curving close and all the hard, controlled lines have softened and flowed and he’s not sure how this transformation has occurred but it seems like he’s got something right. 

So, much like earlier, he repatriates them to Beckett’s overstuffed couch and carries on exploring her addictive lips and mouth with Beckett suitably and comfortably – and addictively – arranged in his grasp. And, again just like earlier, Beckett seems to be perfectly happy not to make any further decisions at all.  Which Castle still finds very odd, because if he’d been asked to bet on it he’d have placed a substantial amount on Beckett being very vocal about her wants and not-wants, and more than that on her driving the course of events.  Except she isn’t.  It’s not that she’s passive or unresponsive, but she doesn’t seem inclined to push for anything more.  He pauses, trying to think of a way to ask the questions he wants to ask without spooking her.

Beckett is currently of the opinion that not having to take any decisions would be really good. Maybe she can simply wait and see how this plays out for a while, though she might need to be decisive at some stage.  Oh.  That would be now.  He’s stopped everything: he isn’t even petting her.  He’s not going to give her what she wants most: a chance to lean on someone else and let them take the strain for a little while, it seems, so she might as well have something she’ll like instead.  Up to her, again.  She drives her tongue into his mouth, and takes the lead before he’s realised it.  She clearly isn’t going to get what she really wanted: a chance to put all her burdens down and be soft Kat who wants something different; but if she can’t have that then she’ll settle for a different form of relief.  It’ll be good, she’s sure of that.

It’s just not what she really wanted.