66. Hold me

The more than hint of desperation in her mouth is a little worrying. Okay, so she called him, and she’s told him she’s going to therapy, but this isn’t affection, it’s closer to fear.  He accepts the kiss, but envelops her in comforting affection even as he takes back the lead.  As she softens into him, he begins to assert his position, gently owning her soft lips, the cavern of her mouth, claiming with small nips and forceful tongue; with firm hands and enclosing arms. 

Slowly, the unexpected terror in her body abates, and she relaxes, eased. He keeps kissing, less possessive now, slow and deep and sure, showing her that he’s enough, he’s everything she needs; that she’s enough, and everything he needs.  She makes a soft, half-snuffly little noise, and curls in close again, still under his stroking.  He kisses her hair once again, and lays his cheek on her head, her breathing slowed, her limbs lax.

“ ‘S okay,” he mumbles. “ ‘S all okay.”  

The reply sounds like ‘slong as you’re here. 

“I’m here.” I’ll always be here for you.  “You’re here.  It’s all okay.”  He kisses some more, softly, not demanding anything.

“I hate it,” she says, a little later. “Dragging up everything I don’t want to remember.  But I have to.  I can’t do my job if I freak out every time I meet an alcoholic.”

Castle very consciously conceals his stunned reaction to that statement.   That… does not sound at all good.  That does not sound like Beckett addressing her issues with her father.  That, in fact, sounds like she’s just written her father off, and out of her life.  And if she doesn’t deal with her issues with her father, is she ever going to be able to deal, really, honestly deal, with the fact that he is a father too?  This is really not at all good.

“No,” he says slowly. “You can’t.”  Behind his speech he’s frantically trying to think of what he might want to say, and more frantically biting back the words he doesn’t want to say, such as but if you can’t deal with fathers will you be able to deal with me?

“I have to be able to deal with that. And somewhere…” she trails off, and then restarts, “somehow I need to cope with…” another trailing off, and she bites down nervously on her lip, tense again, her hands knotted in her lap, white-knuckled, “with your family.”  She drops her head and gaze.

Castle stares at the top of her head, being all he can see. Of all the things she might have said, that was the last thing he expected to hear.  Absolutely the last.  “Uh?” he manages.  Nothing more arrives.  It belatedly dawns on him that she thinks he’ll be upset that she needs help to be able to cope with his family.  “Beckett?”  No response.  “Kate?  Kate, look at me.”  He turns her face up to his.  Hers is white, and tired, and expecting hurt.  “Kate, it’s okay.  I said I wouldn’t push you to do anything you weren’t ready for.  You’re not ready for the loft, let alone my family.  Though most of the world isn’t ready for my mother.”  There’s a very tiny hint of a smile.  “Don’t push yourself into it.  We’ve got plenty of time.  It’s all up to you.”

She doesn’t say anything at all, merely snuggles back into him and leans once more upon his shoulder, closing her eyes. This only gives Castle a perfect view of the dark rings that have developed under her eyes despite the early hour, and the way in which her skin is thin and transparent, pale under the remnants of her make-up. He doesn’t try to kiss her again, simply continues to hold her safely in the strength that gives her surcease. 

She doesn’t need to try, with him, he thinks. She doesn’t need to try because she is trying, or at least she recognises that she needs to solve her issues with his family.  And that means that she recognises that she’ll see them, which implies that she will come to his loft.  It’ll just take time, and he has plenty of that if she’s safe in his arms.  If she knows she’s safe in his arms.  He smiles beautifully, unseen, and contents himself with cuddling for now.

The peaceful atmosphere is abruptly broken by a distinct rumble from Castle’s stomach. Hardly conducive to romance, or indeed comfort, that.  Beckett starts and comes out of her semi-conscious state.

“I’m hungry. Can we get some takeout?”

“If you want,” she says, “menus are on the counter there.”

“What do you like?”

“Pretty much anything, but pizza’s easy and they’re quick. Pepperoni and mushroom, please.”

Castle attends to the key business of pizza ordering and, when he surfaces, finds that Beckett has changed into soft sweats and removed her make-up. He feels this is likely a good thing, and when she curls up next to him again and lets him sneak his hand round her waist and under the sweatshirt and tee to the soft skin beneath, is convinced of it.  She yawns, widely.

“If you wanna talk,” Castle murmurs, “you can. If you don’t wanna, you don’t have to.  Up to you.”

Beckett lets that soak into her mind, without any real effort to think through what he means. She’s too tired for that, and too tired to talk: her emotional outpourings at the shrink having been quite enough for one day, or indeed enough for an eternity.  But… she needs to fix herself, and that means being able to do her job properly without worrying about needing to recuse herself, or being forcibly recused by Montgomery; and it means being able to cope with the loft and Castle’s family.  Only his family, though.  They’re innocent in all this.

By the time the pizza has arrived, been eaten, the detritus cleared up and sodas finished, Beckett’s yawns are almost continual and it is possible that the only thing keeping her eyes open are invisible matchsticks. Castle runs an assessing gaze over her when she isn’t paying attention (even an exhausted Beckett is likely to complain or take strong measures if she sees him sizing her up like that) and then throws caution and common sense to the wind by simply picking her up and carrying her through to her bedroom.

“Bedtime, Beckett. You need your beauty sleep.”

“Not as much as you,” she snarks.

Castle grins down at her. “I’m not the one who’s narcolepsing” – she glares – “so I don’t think so.  C’mon.  Bedtime.”  She pulls a pair of soft pyjamas from under her pillow, which are surprisingly demure, and disappears to the bathroom.  Shortly there are noises of teeth being brushed.  Castle wanders off to leave her privacy and to consider his options.  There are two, basically, go home or stay.  He could stay.  Arrangements have been made for Alexis’s company tonight – which do not involve his mother, who has been entirely too interested in how often he’s seeing Beckett and staying out late or all night.

He wanders back into the bedroom and finds Beckett tucked up in her bed, upon which discovery he sits down on its edge and traces the delineation of her cheekbones, and then her lips.

“I could stay,” he says, “if you wanted.” There’s a sleepy mutter, followed by the extreme effort of opening an eye no more than halfway.

“You can?” she slurs, sounding as if she didn’t expect that. “Thought you’d need to go home.”

“Not tonight.”

“Stay, then. Please?”

He’ll never need that invitation to be issued twice. He hustles through the bathroom, strips in short order, and arrives beside her in bed in a few instants.  Less than a few instants after that, she’s spooned into his broad, bare chest and, from the tenor of her breathing, only an inch from sleep.  He’ll go find a book when she’s deeply asleep, and read for a while.  He’s not sleepy.  Some parts of him are far less sleepy than others.  One part is very definitely wide awake, and it’s not his brain.

In the morning Beckett winches her eyelids open, stretches extensively, and is greeted by a loud ouch as she inadvertently thumps Castle in the solar plexus.  She feels much better, probably aided by the solid night’s sleep that she’s had.  Castle for real is a lot more useful for sound sleep than remnants of his cologne on her pillows.  Of course, Castle for real has some other advantages.  She turns over and finds bright blue eyes regarding her happily.

“Awake at last?”   It’s not that late, surely?  “It’s after eight.”  That’s not at last.  That’s about – ooohh – an hour too early for Saturday off-shift.

“Too early,” she humphs, and curls into the crook of his arm, intending to close her eyes again.

“No it’s not. I’m going to have to go soon, and I want to” –

“Yes?” she says dangerously.

“ – say hello before I go.”

“Hello,” Beckett says, and shuts her eyes. Castle pokes her in the ribs, and they fly open again, with a suspicious squeak and wriggle.  He scents an advantage.

“Stoppit!” she squeals. “Stop it stop it stop it.”

“You’re ticklish,” Castle smirks. “You’re really, really ticklish.  Detective Beckett has a secret weakness.  How have I not discovered this before?”  He tickles her some more, until she’s ruffled and breathless and squeaking crossly and incapable of killing him, and then leans down and kisses her slowly.  “There.  That’s my Kat.”

Beckett draws her fingernails dangerously delicately over his shoulder, not – quite – scratching. “Kat?” she says ominously.

“In private. Independent, walk-alone, and when you want to be, soft, purring and affectionate.  Kat.”  He doesn’t mention the apartment empty of any reminders, or her belief that she has no family.  “Kat who likes being stroked,” he murmurs, dripping insinuation down her, and does.  She arches her back and pushes into his fingertips and if he wanted to die right now he could simply point out just how much that resembles a cat enjoying their human’s stroking.  A cat, or a Kat, is not a pet.  It’s an independently-minded companion.  He’d better not take that comparison too far.  He might not like it.

“Kat?” she says again, with less of an ominous note. Pet names aren’t really her thing, but while Castle’s stroking her like this it adds a certain frisson to affairs.  She’s never let anyone else call her Kat.  Too close to too many things, too like opening up.  But somehow it feels right, as it had in the Hamptons.

“Kat,” he says definitively. “Between us, though.  Not anywhere else.”  His flexible fingers stroke very acceptably down her spine and then wander further.  There seems no reason not to curve into them and to purr.  Castle turns her over and strokes in a way that definitely keeps her purring, and then takes her mouth assertively and rises over her and smoothly possesses her.  He feels so good: all his bulk and weight and strength surrounding her and within her and over her immensely reassuring; protection from the harsh reality of the world outside her door.  She moves in rhythm with him, climbing together and then soaring into the void.

A while of peaceful snuggling later, Castle detaches himself gently. “I have to go home,” he says.  “Do you want to do something later?”

Beckett gazes at him sleepily. “That’s sweet, Castle, but I think I need some time on my own.  I need to think.”  He raises a brow.  “Therapy,” she says, with an edge.  He should probably have realised that.

“Okay. But if there’s anything you need – food, drink, stories, my scorching hot body” – she snorts – “anything, Beckett – just call.”

She turns to him, now dressed and perched on the bed beside her, sits up and hugs him hard. She doesn’t say anything, but everything she might have said is in her clasp around him.  He kisses her swiftly yet deeply, and then tears himself away.  He just knows that she’s going to spend the rest of the day – the rest of the weekend – brooding.  He holds on very hard to the fact that she actually called him last night because she was upset and wanted his particular brand of comfort, and manages to leave without saying anything inflammatory.  He’d deeply love to have a confidential chat with the therapist, but that’s not a conversation he wishes to open at this stage and nor is it a matter that could ever be progressed without Beckett’s explicit consent. But, but but but, she called him, because she needed him and wanted him and she told him she was going to therapy. 

Progress. Serious, serious progress. 

He bounces home very happily, and even manages to deal with his mother’s later prurient enquiries without exploding.

Beckett resurfaces quite a lot later, and rather later than she would have preferred. There are a certain number of household chores to get through, and some food shopping wouldn’t hurt either.  Before she starts, though, she buries her face in a Castle-scented pillow and luxuriates.

She throws her washing into the machine and sets it off, tidies and vacuums while it’s running, and then starts the dryer before she goes shopping. None of this requires any thought, so rather than thinking about therapy she thinks about lunch and dinner.  She’s not going to go through the elaborate recipes of last week, but she could have chicken shashlik with rice, and there’s no reason she couldn’t get herself a nice dessert either.  Her shopping conforms to her thinking, in sufficient quantity to have some left over for tomorrow’s dinner too.

In a further effort to avoid any prospect of having time to think about therapy, or Lanie, or her father; she spends some quality time considering her extensive shoe collection and selecting out those which are old and damaged, or which – that would be a whole one pair – she never wears. Then she goes and buys some new ones to replace them.  Retail therapy.  Much better than psychotherapy.  Much.  That occupies the whole of the afternoon very pleasantly.  Her wallet is complaining, but she’s not listening.

At the end of the afternoon, with the dusk falling, she’s successfully managed not to think about anything serious at all. She hasn’t answered the call from her father, she hasn’t answered the call from Lanie.  She hasn’t listened to either message.  Maybe later.  Maybe not at all.  She doesn’t need her father’s lies and she doesn’t need Lanie’s criticism.  What she does need is a run, so she does that.  It occupies another hour, by which time she can make her dinner, which occupies another half hour, and then she eats it, slowly.

And then it’s seven o’clock and she has nothing to help her procrastinate any longer. She makes coffee – a large pot of best Javan blend, with creamer and cinnamon on the tray – and takes it over to the couch, and realises that she can’t put anything off any longer. She starts with her phone.

Katie, it’s your dad. I need to talk to you.  I didn’t mean to upset you.  Just like he hadn’t meant it when he’d said go away, I can’t bear to see you, or you’re so like her, I can’t stand it, or why aren’t you her.  Just like he hadn’t meant it when he’d said Katie I need you, you’re what saved me, or if you hadn’t walked away, I’d never have got dry.  They always lie.  Always.  It’s the one constant in her relationship with her father: he always lied.  She deletes the message, and stares dry-eyed out of the window, seeing nothing. 

After a while she drinks her coffee, and forces the message and the hurt in her father’s voice away. He’d always sounded like that: drunk or sober.  Always sounded hurt and saddened that she wouldn’t come to him, that she wouldn’t pick up the pieces for him, that she wasn’t her mother.  Nothing has changed.

She didn’t cause it. She can’t – couldn’t – control it.  And she couldn’t cure it.  But then he’d cured himself – stabilised, sobered up, saved himself – and he’d said he’d needed her.  But, she thinks, that had simply been her thinking she could control it.  Thinking that being there for him would stop him relapsing, that being a family would keep him safe, that his sobriety depended on her forgiveness.  He’d said it, after all: the only way I’d ever see Katie again was if I got dry. I needed her, but she wouldn’t come if I wasn’t sober.  Of course she’d thought that she was a necessary part of his sobriety and his recovery.  He’d said so.  But he’d lied, and she’d believed him, so relieved to have her father sober and alive that she’d have done anything, and did; said she’d forgiven him as he told his story and made amends, and believed it.  Up till now, believed it, until all her repressed hurt and jealousy and resentments started to appear under the harsh light of Castle’s family, and showed her that her relationship with her father was all sorts of wrong.

She should have walked away and stayed away: lived her life not subsumed herself in her father.

She has some more coffee, breathes deeply and slowly, folds up her washing and puts it away: numb domesticity swaddling her brain.

She might as well listen to Lanie’s message now. It can’t get worse.

Kate, please call me. I wanna help.  Not, notably, anything that might translate to I’m sorry for making you feel like shit.  The tone is mildly apologetic: as if Lanie had been late for dinner, or had to bail out on meeting her for work.  Clearly Lanie doesn’t feel that she has done anything majorly wrong.  Fine.

She deletes both messages, and has a third cup of coffee. It’s probably one too many, but she doesn’t really care.  She puts her i-Pod earbuds in and finds a book of no literary merit whatsoever, involving kick-ass women and paranormal men.  No brain required, but it passes the time perfectly pleasantly.  Then again, it’s not meant to appeal to the brain.  Rather lower down, she thinks.  When she gets bored with the story, she has a long hot bath and pays particular attention to her moisturiser afterwards.  It’s ten o’clock, and she can legitimately go to bed.

She’s avoided, evaded and procrastinated all day to avoid doing the thinking she really ought to do, but as she curls into the clean, fresh pillows, devoid of the comfort that Castle’s cologne’s lingering scent would have provided, Dr Burke’s face comes back into her mind. It’s not conducive to sleep.  She’d had the clear impression – Dr Burke’s professional poker face is no match for a top-notch detective’s skills – that at the start of the session he’d been, if not annoyed, certainly close to irritated.  That had changed, though.  He’d become patient and almost sympathetic quite soon.  He doesn’t care, though.  He isn’t affected and it doesn’t matter and he won’t care how she feels – which is just what she wants.  She just needs to work out what she needs to talk about (she cringes) to sort out being back to full force at work.  And, of course, how to get over her petty pathetic envy of Castle’s family.  She doesn’t like feeling petty, pathetic or envious.

Tomorrow, she won’t procrastinate. Tomorrow, she’ll think it through.

As if her mind were waiting for her to make the decision, as soon as she has, she drops into sleep.