46. Pay the price

She’s crying again, or maybe that should be still. She hasn’t stopped crying since she said, “Yes,” half an hour ago.  The box of Kleenex is rapidly diminishing, and she’s no prettier weeping when sober than she had been weeping when drunk, only a week ago.  Only a week, since Julia and David Berowitz had triggered disaster.  But no.  This was inevitable from the moment Beckett met the Berowitzes.  The last straw, when her back was already breaking.

He keeps his arms around her, keeps her tight against his chest, keeps passing her Kleenex and stroking her hair, keeps dropping tiny kisses on her head, keeps silent. When she stops crying (should that be if?  So many tears.) then he’ll think about anything else. 

Finally, she snuffles damply to a halt. Her eyes are swollen and red, her nose is also red, and there are mascara trails down her cheeks.  Castle has never seen her objectively less attractive, except when she was also drunk. Subjectively, he’s never seen her more attractive.  At last: true emotion, true feelings. 

She sniffs soggily, and blows her nose, and slumps back into him, still coiled into herself, muscles knotted and tense, face hidden, buried in his shoulder. He takes the option of least difficulty and begins to work at the stiff muscles and tension, pressing firmly to untangle them; not making the mistake of murmuring soothing nothings.  She’s not a child, and she’s not looking for a parent.  Anything but.  It was his being a parent that began the trouble, and that’s still not resolved.  She doesn’t even really want to think of him being a parent.  But under his strong fingers she’s relaxing: soft against him and letting him make this stress better.

But she’s agreed to see someone. Possibly under some duress – from Montgomery, not from him (though he’s just as glad that the point was taken away from him by Montgomery, because he’d been psyching himself up to make the same point with an equally my-way-or-the-highway choice, and he is not at all sure that she’d have accepted it) – but it’s been her decision and he didn’t press her one way or the other.  Of course, he’s nearly bitten through his tongue so that he didn’t, but it’s paid off, because she hasn’t run away, told him to leave, or shot him.

On the other hand, she hasn’t called her father yet, and she’s going to have to do that before the awkward silence when they next meet becomes even more awkward, and possibly then becomes full of loud noise and flying buckshot. (That’s – the buckshot, that is – entirely unnecessary.  He has no intention of fighting this hard and then walking away.  That’s not his trick.  He doesn’t do that.)  The day has worn on: it’s late afternoon and the light is gone.  He sighs.  She’s only just become peaceful, and it’s about to be broken again.

“Beckett?”

There’s a noise that might be urgh.

“Beckett, your dad might just be starting to worry. About your stamina, if nothing else.”

“Wha’?”

“Well, the last thing he knew is that you’d call him later because we were busy. Which we have been.”

“What?”

“Beckett, wake up!”

“Ugh,” she says, but intelligence returns to her face, slowly. “What did you say?”

“We told your dad you’d call later because we were busy.” That slowly percolates.  Then it meets memory.

“No,” she says, crossly, “that’s what you told him.”

“By now he’ll really have polished his shotgun. And loaded it.”

Beckett doesn’t appreciate the humour. Nor does she want to call her dad, especially since the last call had…er, not exactly gone well.  She doesn’t say anything one way or the other.

“He was really worried. He called – must have been pretty soon after he called you this morning, and then that was the second call when we were back here.  He isn’t upset, he just wants to talk to you.”  Castle pauses.  “I think he wants to make sure you’re okay.”

She says nothing, again. Her father had certainly sounded annoyed with her first thing this morning.  Then again, she’d got pretty annoyed right back at him.  She supposes that she ought to call him.  It would be the proper thing to do.  The adult thing.  The responsible thing.

She doesn’t want to be proper, adult, or responsible. She doesn’t want to make her dad feel better by lying to him about being fine.  If she has to talk to him, she wants to spill out all her years-long hurt and bitterness and then simply dissolve into an ugly puddle of acid and venom.  He got to say anything, under the cover of Jack Daniels.  At first it was Jack Daniels… by the end it was anything which was 40% proof or more.  Anything to give him oblivion.  He doesn’t remember any of it.

She hasn’t forgotten a single word.

She hasn’t forgotten a single word that destroyed their family, but somehow he gets to be accepted into Castle’s happy family sociability and doesn’t feel a single pang that he’s no longer a father; he can help Julia Berowitz where she can’t; he caused all the problems and yet he is forgiven and she… well.  She has never been able to say anything.  Words, or tears, didn’t help.

His suffering has brought him redemption.  Hers – only Gethsemane, re-sited to a dank alley, and then an endless Golgotha.   Christmas has never meant love, or forgiveness, or redemption.  Only harsh and bleeding memories.

But still she can’t do that. She can’t descend to that level.  She just… can’t.  Mustn’t.  Because the only thing she has left to cling to from this whole horrible situation is that she has unfailingly supported him since the day he got dry and never, ever done anything to screw that up. 

Until she nearly had, this morning. She absolutely cannot do that ever again.  She can’t live with herself if she screws up her dad. She takes a few deep, slow breaths, trying to calm her pulse and be able to speak in her normal voice; trying to find her usual control and bright, cheerful tone.  Castle’s fingers are still loosening the knots in her shoulders and back: warm and strong on her skin, but as fast as he untangles each hard nodule another appears.

“Okay,” she says, but it’s not an acceptance, nor yet agreement. “I’d better do this.”  Castle looks at her, listens to the adamantine tone, watches the stress rise in her shoulders again, sees pain flicker in her otherwise empty eyes.  She stands up, searches out her phone, doesn’t return to sit next to him.  She stares out the window, takes another shallow, hurting breath, then swipes on her phone and dials.

“Dad.”

“Yeah. Are you okay?”  She sounds totally chipper.  Her face, however, is pinched and her lips tight.  “Good.  Yeah, I’m fine.”  Her voice has a grin in it.  Her mouth does not.  “Yes, he’s still here.”  She squawks, and it’s the first genuine sound she’s made since she picked up the phone.  “Dad!  No!  And if you bring your gun round I will arrest you for threatening behaviour.  That’s totally unnecessary.”  There’s a pause in which Castle expects there is a certain amount of paternal commentary.  He would do so.  Forcefully.  “No, Dad.  Absolutely not.”  Now it’s Beckett being forceful.  “No.  Not at all.”  Another pause, into which many words emanate – Castle assumes – from Jim.  “No, Dad. I’m sorry.  Don’t worry about it.  I’m fine.  We’re good.” 

She’s lying. She’s not fine, she and her dad are not good, and nothing is likely to be fine until she stops lying to her father about how she feels.  It’s her dad who controls himself, it’s he who is strong enough to resist every temptation, every day.  It’s not up to Beckett, and all this self-censorship isn’t helping either of them.  Her face is closed and white, and yet not one single note of stress beyond her normal level of tension – that would be the stress fractures in her voice every moment she talks to her father – is evident.  It brings a whole new, appalling meaning to poker-faced.  She has as much life in her as the fireplace implement.

“Yes, see you Sunday. Love you, Dad.  Bye.”

She swipes off, puts the phone down very gently next to her stone bird, and disappears into her bedroom. Castle is left looking at the space where she had been a second ago, until his brain starts to operate and he realises that she’s probably run for cover.  He pads after her.

She’s sitting on the side of her bed, staring hopelessly into thin air. “I have to do this,” she says.  “I can’t go on like this.”  Castle drops down next to her.  “I can’t screw him up.  I can’t.”  His arm steals round her waist.

“You’re not doing it for him, Beckett. You’re doing it for you.  If it’s good for your dad that’s just a bonus.  It’s not about him any more.  It’s your life.”

“Life’s not like that. I can’t just ignore what it does to him.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” He hopes this will come out right.  “You’ve given him ten years when one way or another you’ve put your life away so he can have his.  But Beckett, right now he’s not just stronger than you think, he’s stronger than you.  Time for you to let him be strong.  I think… I think he might need to be strong for you, now?  He wants to be your dad, not your burden.  I think you should let him.”

There’s silence. There’s been a lot of silence, since eleven this morning. 

Beckett is thinking. Thinking about her dad is marginally less painful than thinking about therapy.  She’d thought, at Christmas, that there had been something of her father re-appearing, but then it had been buried in the pain of Julia Berowitz’s following in her footsteps, through the bitter weather of the winter of alcoholism.  He’d made it through Miami on two calls to her – a year ago, it had been every evening.  She’d not considered the reduction properly: he’d needed to lean on her much less.  He’d pushed her at Castle and pushed at her about having a life.  And, of course, he’d been able to cope with Julia, and with her own subsequent loss of temper at him.  But still… habits are hard to break.

“And if you’re wrong?” she says, eventually.

“I’m not suggesting you cut him loose. Just that you… I don’t know, Beckett.  I don’t know how you let him be your dad.”

Strangely, Castle’s sudden uncertainty is actually almost reassuring. He doesn’t have all the answers either.  It’s not a test, or a demand, or an ultimatum.  It’s a thought.  She doesn’t have to do it, and she doesn’t have to decide now.  She wriggles into a more comfortable alignment, and tucks herself in.

“Okay,” she says uncertainly, and then more strongly, “okay. But… not now.  I can’t do it right now.”

“You don’t have to. Stay here” – he brings his arm a little tighter round her – “with me.”  He thinks for a second.  “Well.  This is your apartment.  You live here.  It’s me who’ll have to stay with you.  If you want me to.”

“It is I.”

“Uh?”

“You said, ‘it’s me’. It is I.  Thought you were a writer?  Shouldn’t you be better at grammar than that?”

Castle looks at her, aghast. “You are criticising my grammar?  You?  When I have with my own ears heard you say ‘What do we got?’  That’s… that’s…”

“Reprehensible?”

“You are not going to win me over with ten-dollar words.” Beckett smirks at him, but under it her eyes are still bleeding pain.  “You could win me over in other ways…”

“And what might those be?” An eyebrow quirks in counterpoint.  She’s trying so very hard to be normal…

“You could stop pretending you’re okay. I know you aren’t, and you don’t need to pretend.  I said a minute ago you should think about letting your dad be your dad.  How about letting me hold you up for a while?  You don’t have to be strong all the time.”  His eyes go far away, and return hot.  “Though I really like it when you do the badass bit in interrogation.  You don’t need to do it here, though.  Just be whoever you want to be when you’re at home.”  He pauses.  But some more blunt honesty is required.  “I want you to stop hiding how you feel.  You do it all the time, and I get that you didn’t want to spook your dad, but I don’t want you to do it with me.  I’m not that fragile, and if you’d only talked to me – even a little bit – earlier we wouldn’t have had nearly as many upsets.”

He tips her chin up and smiles softly down. “It’s a bit late, but how about a New Year’s resolution?  Two.  One each.  You tell me the truth about how you’re feeling instead of hiding it, and I won’t push you to do anything you’re not ready to do, like come to the loft, or make assumptions about why.  Deal?”

She puts her hand over his knee, where his other hand slips over it, engulfing her in his broad span.

“Deal. Just… sometimes I need space.  If you don’t push me then, I’ll tell you as soon as I can.”  She looks him in the eye.  “I might not be able to.”

“As long as you try.” He wraps her in.  “As long as we both try, we’ll be okay.”  He kisses her forehead, gently.  “It’ll all be okay.”  It sounds like a promise, and when he kisses her brow again, a vow.

The smile turns sleepy when she bites her lip uncertainly: his arm tightens around her and she draws in a sharp breath. She’s suddenly very aware that they are sitting on her bed.  She is also very aware that Castle is extremely likely to become assertive, so to speak, if she shows the slightest hint of interest or desire.  It doesn’t exactly take much to make him so.  Privacy and her not objecting.  Nothing else appears to be needed.  Only a single, simple decision.  Yes, or no.  But…

“You’re thinking too loud. Stop thinking so loudly.  It’s not peaceable at all.”  She nestles in, under a slight encouragement from his arm.  “In fact, stop thinking unhappy thoughts.  It’ll disturb you.  Worse” – he grins – “it might disturb me.  Who knows what might happen if you disturb me?  I might turn into a monster.”

“I will remind you that I have a gun.”

“Killing monsters needs silver bullets.”

“Only if you’re a werewolf. Vampires need to be staked.”

“It’s disturbing how hot it is that you know that. Just as well I’m not a supernatural being.”

“I might still shoot you.”

“Let’s not have any shooting bullets,” Castle drawls lazily. Somehow Beckett has become completely wrapped in.  “Let’s think of something else to do.  Any suggestions?”

“No-o.” But she deliberately doesn’t sound convincing.  “You’re the one with the crazy ideas.”

“I have a crazy idea,” Castle says, picking up his cue. She quirks an eyebrow at him.  He pouts insincerely.  “But you don’t like my crazy ideas.”

“Doesn’t stop you producing them in the precinct.”

“I don’t think I’ll be suggesting this one in the precinct,” he murmurs. “You’d shoot me.”  and he dips his head and kisses her, at first softly, teasing gently at her lips until she’s turned into him and opened a little under his mouth and then he stoops to conquer without quarter: firm, sure and insistent that she should soften and then melt into him.  He’ll hold her up, hold her in: strong and stable no matter what; he’ll be the eye of her particular storm, no matter how it rages around them.  The kiss deepens and strengthens, fire licking down his skin and searing his veins, the instant reaction to her being there in his arms tightening his clasp and shifting her on to his lap to have her closer where he can pillage and plunder as he pleases and know that she wants it, needs it… maybe loves it.

Certainly, she trusts it. Him.  She must do, to have cried all down him and not hidden it and told him some truth.  He kisses her more searchingly, still deeper, a hand behind her head and knotted in her hair, holding her in place: his assertiveness turning her softer and lax, receptive.  Not passive.  Never passive, neither is she submissive, but receptive and responsive.  No leading required: no burden of command.  Only her, and him, and nothing else, here and now. 

His hands grasp possessively, his mouth moves round, flickers over the tendon in her neck, the tiny nerve behind her ear, and she mews very softly and then, while he continues his teasing nibbling and her hands come to his shoulders to lock into the soft, thick cotton of his shirt, it becomes the unformed, contented noises that might finally mean that he’s found, or resurrected, soft, strokable Kat.

Soft, strokable Kat whose hands are currently under the yoke of his shirt and stroking over his chest, unbuttoning as they go.  This is… this is the time to stop worrying and thinking and act.

“Is this what you want?” he rumbles, sliding one hand down over her waist, hip, thigh, pulling her ever closer.

“Yes,” she breathes. “You.” 

She curves into him as he reaches down to push off her shoes and then returns to her collar and starts on the fastenings of her formal, work button-down. He goes back to kissing her as his fingers slide the buttons and placket apart, revealing a cream, minimally adorned bra which despite its lack of ornamentation is astonishingly sexy.  That’s probably because it’s framing Beckett’s beautiful breasts, which are a sight at which Castle will happily spend a very long time staring without ever getting bored.  He doesn’t think he’ll ever be accustomed to them.  He traces a finger over the thin line of lace edging and then follows it with his mouth, leaning Beckett back against his arm for convenient access.  She doesn’t entirely approve, since it’s meant that she has to stretch a little to continue touching him.  That was a definite, if muted, growl of discontent.  He’ll just deal with that.  He much prefers her purring and pettable.

He toes his own shoes off, lays her down against her plump pillows with her shirt spread open, and joins her: his arm under her neck. This gives her the chance – of which she instantly takes full advantage – to undo the remaining buttons and push his shirt off his shoulders. 

“Do you want this, or me?”

“Can’t I have both?”

“Only with me. Only with me, Beckett.”

“Both.”