63. Always be friends

“So you didn’t meet at the Academy?” Castle asks.

“No. O’Leary was a class or two ahead of me.  I heard about him, though.”

“You did?” O’Leary says, clearly surprised.

“Oh, yes. Everyone was still talking about the Bigfoot who barely fitted through the doors and had to get his uniform made specially.”  She pauses, but Castle can tell there’s more to it, not least because O’Leary is trying to prove that a tectonic plate can cower.

“Don’t, Beckett. That’s not fair.”

“They were talking more about the night someone challenged you to lift weights.” That doesn’t sound terribly interesting, but O’Leary is quite definitely cringing.

“Please, Beckett. Just stop now.”

“Weights?”

“That would have been fine. It was just that some bright spark suggested that some of the other rookies would do as weights.”

Castle snorts with laughter. “Are there pictures?  Please tell me there are pictures.”

“No pictures.” O’Leary is trying to hide behind a very inadequate bottle of beer.  “But his name is legend.”

O’Leary acquires an evil glint in his eye. “Beckett, how about I tell Castle here about how we met?”  She squawks and threatens, but between O’Leary’s desire for revenge and Castle’s enthusiasm for hearing the tale (again) – and between the two men exchanging a mischievous glance of complete agreement and then making sure that she can’t maim, vivisect or shoot either of them by holding her hands (Castle approves of O’Leary doing that, when it saves him a world of pain) – the whole tale comes out.  It’s just as hilarious the second time around, which is possibly fortunate as it disguises the fact that Castle’s already heard it.

“I’ll get you for this, O’Leary,” Beckett threatens.

“Aww, sure you’ll try. I can still out spar you.”  Beckett descends into a grumpy cloud of blackly ominous mutterings.  O’Leary, whose bravery clearly knows no bounds, pats her on the head.  “Fair’s fair.  You’re so cute when you’re sulking.”  She punches him in the ribs, which appears to have the same effect on O’Leary as punching the chair cushion would have.  None.  The ominous mutterings reappear, not noticeably diminished even when Castle finally stops laughing.

Some dinner restores moderate harmony – or at least Beckett has stopped scowling. O’Leary and Beckett trade stories and shared memories, and Castle understands that though they may have “drifted”, as O’Leary put it, they were very close.  Not close enough, though, for Beckett to confide in O’Leary.  Another round is collected, and conversation restarts.

“You’re looking a bit better,” O’Leary says, peering at Beckett much in the manner – and size – that one of the faces from Mount Rushmore might do. “You looked sick when I got here.  Something wrong, Beckett?  If you give me a bug I’ll be pissed at you.”

“I’m fine. No bugs.”

“Hm,” O’Leary says sceptically. Castle admires his courage but not his discretion, and starts trying to come up with a way to change the direction of the impending conversation.  “So if you don’t have a sick bug, what’s the bug up your ass?”  O’Leary’s innate intelligence and investigative nous is clearly heading to the surface faster than Jaws when killing Quint.  “Something bothering you at work?”

“Aside from Castle? No.”  Beckett manages normal-level snark.  O’Leary is not deceived, though he does snigger.

“Okay, so not work.” With Beckett carefully placed in between them, Castle can’t nudge him to divert the oil-tanker.  “Is your dad okay?”

“Fine.”

“Not fine, then,” O’Leary says equably. “C’mon, this is me you’re talkin’ to.”

“Nothing’s wrong, O’Leary. Leave it.”

Castle manages to meet O’Leary’s eyes over the top of Beckett’s head, and is surprised by the resolve in them.

“You never could lie to me,” he says. “Don’t try now.  You looked sick fed up when you were dealin’ with Mr Berowitz a couple of weeks back, an’ I still don’t know what you were doin’ playing Missing Persons.  You sounded shook up when I called you about him, even if you were tryin’ to hide it.  An’ then you turned up searchin’ for him again to hang out with us rather than your own bullpen, which was weird, looking like hell, and you weren’t too keen on leaving with Castle here either.  Didn’t call you on it then, but you still look sick now.”

O’Leary puts a meaty arm around Beckett, which looks like more of an arrest than a provision of comfort. “I never asked you about it before, years ago.  Might’ve been a mistake, that.  But you’ve looked off every time I’ve seen you in three weeks and if it’s not work it must be home.”  He looks at her.  “So since it’s not Castle here – seein’ as he’s alive and with you – must be your dad.  An’ I know what fine means when it’s you sayin’ it.  It means it’s not fine at all.”

Castle stays extremely quiet. It is faintly possible that O’Leary might achieve the generally impossible, and get out of the next five minutes alive.

“Not your problem, O’Leary. Let’s stick to the beer and stories.”

“If you don’t wanna talk, we won’t.” This sounds familiar.  “Just don’t not talk till you make yourself sick, ‘kay?”  Bit late for that one.  “An’ whatever’s wrong with you and your dad, try’n sort it out.”  Oh shit. Not the best thing to say.  Beckett says precisely nothing, for an instant. 

“Since my father just made it pretty clear I’m not enough family for him, I won’t be trying to sort anything out.” Her tone would cut glass.  Her face is by no means as smooth.

“Oh, Beckett,” O’Leary says gently. “What’s he done this time?”  He’s still got an arm round her.  His eyes meet Castle’s again.  Castle takes the message entirely accurately and places a very tentative hand on Beckett’s knee.  She doesn’t react.

“It doesn’t matter.” She takes a drink of her soda, and says nothing more.

“ ‘Kay,” O’Leary says. “If you wanna come out, lemme know.  Let’s have another drink and talk about something else.” 

She briefly turns into him, turns away again as his arm lifts. It’s instantly replaced by Castle’s arm.  He notes with some interest that Beckett doesn’t hesitate to lean into him much more than she had with her pet mountain, and notes further the stress in her shoulders.  He’s learned an awful lot in the last couple of hours, mostly in the last twenty minutes.  O’Leary was obviously the best friend Beckett had, maybe outside Lanie, but unlike Lanie knows when to back off.  A good enough friend to be able to touch Beckett without being brushed off or shot – and indeed for her to take some swift reassurance from it.  But – she still hadn’t confided in him.

“Excuse me a moment,” Beckett says. Castle shifts slightly to let her out and is relieved to note that she doesn’t pick up anything that might indicate her leaving without farewells.

“She’s not right, is she?” O’Leary asks, or states.

“Not really. But she’s doing something about it.  Least, she was till her dad screwed up.”

“Uh-huh.” O’Leary sounds unconvinced.  “You make sure she’s okay.”  It’s not a request.

“As much as I can.”

Conversation turns as Beckett approaches the table. Shortly, it’s a lively three-way discussion about baseball, which continues until the end of the evening.  Beckett collects herself into her coat, picks up her purse and automatically checks her phone.  She makes a noise of considerable displeasure and deletes a number of messages  without even listening to them.  This is followed by another noise of displeasure as she looks at the remains, and she puts the phone to her ear.  By the time she’s finished listening she has acquired an expression that would clear forests without a single woodchip being left to tell the tale.  She swipes at the screen to delete all remaining messages and doesn’t say a single word about why.

O’Leary glances over her unsuspecting head and scowl at her phone to meet Castle’s eyes. “Who?” he mouths.

Castle shrugs, likewise unseen by Beckett. “Her dad, or Lanie, or both,” he mouths back.  O’Leary lifts his squirrel-tail sized eyebrows.  He looks almost pensive. 

“Up to you, Castle,” he says silently.

“C’mon, Beckett. Home time.  School day tomorrow,” Castle says cheerfully, and gets a growl for his trouble.  “Night, O’Leary.”

“G’night,” O’Leary rumbles. The door vibrates a tad in sympathetic resonance.

Castle maintains a friendly (or something like that) arm round Beckett all the way back to her apartment, interspersed with undemanding commentary on O’Leary’s massive size and how the two of them (O’Leckett?) must have terrified lowlifes all over the Sixth’s patch. He goes up with her, without asking and without complaints about it, and wanders through her apartment as she concocts coffee.  Her phone is still making occasional whining noises as new messages arrive.  He’s counted three since they left the bar.

“Someone’s keen to talk to you.”

“It’s Dr Parrish, and I don’t want to talk to her. She hasn’t any new evidence for me and I don’t need her telling me off.”

“Fair enough.” He pads towards the kitchen, the coffee, and Beckett, who has shucked her shoes and coat and is fussing with a French press and grounds.  He waits till the hot water is poured, and then wraps an arm round her waist.  “Got you,” he says happily.  “Turn round?”

“Why?”

“I want you to.” When she doesn’t, though he can see the smile flirting with the corners of her mouth, he places big hands round her middle and turns her bodily.  She squawks. 

“What are you doing?”

“Turning you round. I like you this way round.”  He bends down and kisses her before she can protest his manhandling, and she softens and cedes to him as he does, opening to his searching tongue and over a hard thigh, curving into him as he exerts a drop of force, a smidgeon of strength and asserts firm masculinity as she melts.  He explores and seeks and finally conquers, heat building between them as his hands roam her back and hers slide round his neck to hold him to her.  He untucks her shirt to allow him to stroke smooth skin –

And the door sounds.

This is unexpected, and very unwelcome. Beckett looks as confused as Castle does.

“Who’s that?” they say together.  Beckett detaches herself, with an expression that suggests that whoever that is, they are not Beckett’s best friend right now, and tiptoes to the door.  She looks through the peephole, emits a muffled noise of absolute fury, and turns on her heel to return to Castle.

“It’s Lanie, isn’t it?” he says.

“Yep. She can stay standing in the hall till kingdom come, for all I care.”  The knock sounds again.  “We’re not here.”  Beckett repatriates herself to Castle’s very willing arms.  Then his phone rings, shatteringly loud in the quiet apartment and – Beckett knows this because he had caught her out like that weeks ago – shatteringly audible through the front door. 

“Oh, shit,” Castle growls.  “That’s screwed it.”

“Why do you think my phone’s on vibrate? After you sandbagged me” –

“And aren’t you glad I did?” Castle murmurs –

“I’ve kept it on vibrate.” Castle considers saying I’d like to keep you on vibrate and rejects it as inviting fatality.  His.  “Now what?” she says crossly.

“Well, she knows I’m here” – he frantically tries to smooth his hair down. Beckett tucks her shirt in – “so she’s going to keep knocking till you open.”  Suddenly he acquires a truly evil expression.  “Or…” he says insinuatingly.

“Or?”

“Or we could really give her a show.”

“What?”

“If I opened my shirt, and you looked a bit ruffled and seriously kissed and untucked, then” –

“No.”

There’s another forceful, angry rap on the door.

“It would put her off.”

“No, it wouldn’t. All it would do is raise more questions, as if she doesn’t pry enough.  I don’t need Dr Parrish prying any more.”

Castle looks just a little disappointed that she won’t play along with his idea, but eventually nods, in time with another fusillade on the door.  Beckett’s patience snaps on the sound, and she stalks to the door.

“You’re disturbing the peace,” she says coldly. “Isn’t it obvious I don’t want to see you tonight?  I’m busy.”

Castle has never actually seen someone explode with fury before. It’s quite fascinating. Lanie’s face is suffused with blood and she can’t form coherent words.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t stopped her jamming a foot in the door so that Beckett can’t close it in her face.

“Go home. I didn’t invite you here, and I don’t want you here.”

Lanie finds her voice.

“You need an intervention. I’m not leaving till you listen to me and agree to get help – and I don’t mean Writer-Boy there. Proper help, not some amateur.”

Beckett has suddenly drawn on a more frightening aspect than Castle has ever seen on her. She is icily, glacially furious.  Lanie abruptly appears to realise that she has truly fucked up.

“Kate? Kate… I didn’t…”

“Remind me of your psychiatric qualifications, Dr Parrish?” There’s a half-beat pause.  “Ah yes.  You don’t have any.  And your authority over me?” Another half-beat.  “Ah yes.  None.  Likewise your right to storm into my building, disturb my neighbours, insult my invited guest” – Castle startles at the defence – “and ruin my evening.  Give me one reason why I shouldn’t arrest you right now and take you to the nearest holding cell for breach of the peace?  Or should that be drunk and disorderly, since clearly you are not in your senses?”

Castle holds his breath and stays very silent and still, out of Beckett’s view. In this mood, she could as easily turn on him as on Lanie.

“Kate, we’ve been friends” –

“My friends don’t tell me I’m a fuck-up.  My friends don’t broadcast my affairs across the entire bullpen and try to weasel information out of my other friends.  My friends don’t make judgemental assumptions about situations they don’t understand.  And my friends don’t come round making demands and shoving their way into my apartment to tell me how much of a fuck-up they think I am all over again. So explain to me exactly how you think you’re my friend, because I don’t see it any more.”

There is a very unpleasant silence. Lanie is shocked silent.

“I see. You can’t.  Shut the door as you leave, please.  And don’t bother coming back here.  You’re not welcome.”

Castle watches, astounded, as Lanie retreats in disorder. The door slams as Beckett shoves it shut behind her. 

“Who the hell does she think she is?” Beckett yells. “Coming here and disturbing the whole block and trying to tell me what to do like she’s my mother and I’m fifteen again?  My mom was never that stupid.   Even my dad wasn’t that stupid.  She can fuck right off and never come back.”

“Now who’s waking the neighbours?” Castle asks calmly.

Beckett whirls round to turn on him and finds herself wrapped in against him. She draws in breath to rend him limb from limb and he forestalls all of it by bending to kiss her hard with complete possessiveness.  She fights back, though, possibly the first time she’s not yielded to him; invading his mouth and he can taste the hot anger sparking from her tongue, the fury in her lips and the grip of her hands.  She’s wresting herself away from him to free her hands and rips his shirt open, tears her mouth from his and bites down on his shoulder, licks hotly over the nerve in his neck and nips again, fire blazing in every move and it lights him up; he hauls her against him and forces her head back to his so he can take her mouth again and then march her backwards to the bedroom: she fights for dominance all the way but each time she finds it Castle fights back, drinking down her anger till he can drop her on the bed and land over her, pinning her down and still devouring her mouth: her struggle to take command pushing him to conquer her. 

He fights to find room to strip her shirt and pants: she pulls one hand from his grip above her head and opens his zip and belt, dives inside to grip him and slide hard and hotly from base to tip, aggressively working him as he divests her of bra and then panties and there’s nothing soft or gentle about her, she’s fuelled on fury and primed with sheer rage and in this mood there’s no stopping her. All he can do is match her, and she’s opened his after-burners.  He drags her hand away and surges into her in one hard, fast movement so she cries out loud and he’s pinned her hands beside her head again: it’s rougher than they’ve ever been together as he grips and she claws and he takes her in total possession and she writhes beneath him and arches to him and cries out again and goes limp as he comes in a hot rush. 

Another facet of Kate Beckett. That’s the incendiary temper she’s never shown him before: the virago of fury after Lanie left.  The icy rage – that, he’s seen, though not quite in such depth: directed at him a month ago, but not that explosive fury.  That’s the temper that she’s been locking down ever since her dad got sober, ever since she found it didn’t help.

There’s a huge amount of locked down Kate Beckett that’s only now rising to the surface. Castle is sure that this is not the end of the fallout from her five years of self-imprisonment.  Everything’s shifting, like the plates that stick below the San Andreas Fault, and suddenly unlock and shift, leaving chaos and disaster behind them.  He hopes, suddenly chilled, that whoever her therapist is can guide her through a more controlled release of pressure.  Lanie can cope.  An explosion like that with Jim… might just be fatal.

She’s trying to move, and Castle realises that he’s still lying over Beckett, caging her against the sheets and probably too heavy for her. He rolls off, the sheets soothing on his lacerated shoulders – she’ll have finger-marks where he’d held her wrists – but keeps hold so that she has to roll with him and ends up lying on top.  She is not at all relaxed or eased by a bout of angry sex, and all he can do is be there with her and provide stability.

She is still muttering imprecations blackly into his chest, the exact nature of which he thinks it much better not to know. When she slides off, he lets her go: unsure how to deal with the aftermath of her blazing rage, where he’d have known what to do with the chill anger which he’s always seen before. 

“Who does she think she is?” cuts the air. Your best friend, Castle thinks, and reflects that for her best friend, Lanie’s Beckett-reading skills are sorely lacking.  There’s a short pause, which may or may not be Beckett chewing the pillow in still-flaming fury.  Oh.  It’s not.  “I needed a friend, and all she did was make me feel like shit.”  That’s not fury any more.   It’s misery.

“I think she might have realised,” Castle notes dryly. “That wasn’t exactly subtle.”

Beckett doesn’t answer. Castle props himself up so he can see her and finds only her back.

“She used to be my friend,” Beckett says unhappily. It sounds like a disturbingly permanent change in her view.  “Guess she isn’t now.”

Castle considers the likely result of saying you shut her out too and decides that death is also a disturbingly permanent change.  It’s true, though.  He thinks a little more.

“She said – when she called me after she called you – that she wasn’t going to let her best friend kill herself without trying to help. She wants to help.”

“She isn’t helping, though. She just makes it worse.”  Beckett buries herself in the pillows.  “I don’t need her making it worse.  I don’t wanna see her.  All she does is make me feel even more of a fucked-up failure than I already did.  I tried to play nice on Thursday and she wouldn’t, and ever since she’s been on my case.”

So. Despite the fury and the hard words and the ignoring of calls, Beckett is actually really, truly hurt by Lanie’s behaviour, and – as usual – hiding it as hard as she can manage.  Seems to be the Beckett way.  Get hurt, lock down, lock out, carry on minus the hurtful influence.  She’s not very good at giving second chances – except her father, where the only outcome of second chances was more hurt.  Another learned response. 

He wraps her into his arms, and makes a nondescript noise which Beckett could take as agreement.

“Sleep on it, Beckett. Everything will be better in the morning.  I have to go home, but I’ll see you in the bullpen tomorrow.”

He has to go, eventually, when he thinks that she’s asleep, and in his wrong assumption he’s necessarily gone when Beckett’s later tears fall. No family, one fewer friend, one more fuck-up.