68. Simply the best

Dinner happens. Hugs happen.  Speech does not happen.  Beckett hiding in Castle’s large shoulder happens, and still no informative conversation happens.  Castle is more than a little concerned that Beckett didn’t call, but he’s not sure if he’s worried because she’s not that upset or because she is that upset.  He can’t actually tell how upset she is over the session, but whichever it is, she needs his company whether she asks or not.

“You know you can talk if you want to,” Castle tries.

“Yeah,” says Beckett, which finishes that line of discussion before it’s even begun. He continues to cuddle, and wonders (she’s right there in his arms, which always goes straight to his hindbrain) if assertiveness is what she’d like, right now.  No decisions, no thinking, just yes or no. 

His arm around her strokes smoothly down her back, and finishes up over the curve of her ass. She presses into his hand.  It’s almost like a week ago, thankfully not the angry, furious, scalding sex of Wednesday, nor the complete exhaustion of Friday.  He moves a little more firmly, intent in the pressure and placement of his fingers, seduction in his strokes.  He still hasn’t come up with a better way to ease her after therapy, though he wishes he could, because he’s fairly certain that sex – or even lovemaking – isn’t a complete solution.  On the other hand, it seems to work for Beckett, and it’s damn sure that it works for him.  Well. Beckett works for him.  Messed up or not messed up.  She’s so deep under his skin she’s never going to come out. 

He lifts her face to lean in slowly and descend on her mouth, taking his time, exploring, stroking and then retreating to suck her lower lip in, a gentle nip to convince her of his authority, and she murmurs yes and softens into contented compliance to his lead, responds and opens and cedes and eases for him; turns into him and swings her legs up to be tucked in his lap so that he can take more, and while taking, give. 

He kisses round her sharp jaw: a fraction finer, a tad tighter than last week; nibbles on the nerve in her neck to make her squirm and when she does moves downward as her head drops back to expose her neck and clavicles. Thick fingers delicately undo her buttons and whisper across her cleavage, lips follow as he lays her back and leans down over her; her hands slide into his hair to hold his head to her chest to tease and taste, sliding thin fabric and narrow lace over hard peaks and softer curves, twining his tongue till she’s breathing harder and arching up into him.  He undoes her bra, slides her shirt from her shoulders and off to who cares where, runs fingertips under the rim and over the malleable flesh to cause her to shiver, not with cold, and sigh, not sadly.

Castle considers, with the very tiny portion of brain which is not utterly lust-fuzzed and concentrating on making his Beckett-Kat feel very, very good, whether he should carry on here, or pick her up and carry her to bed. Carrying her to bed has the huge advantage that it reinforces the assertive masculinity that always turns her on and that she seems to need to relax her more often than not.  It suddenly occurs to him that the people she’s normally most comfortable with are big, or tough, men.  There’s Lanie, or there was, and there’s Ryan – but it’s O’Leary, and Espo, and now him, who seem to help her most, in very different ways.  He parks that thought for later digestion: now not being the time for stopping to think, and decides to split the sexual difference.

His hand wanders from breast downward to the button and zip of her dark dress pants, opens both, and slides over the smooth cotton, cupping briefly and then carrying on down to take the pants away. It’s enormously erotic to have her half-naked, only in her underwear, responsive to his touch and caught in his clasp; and when he returns a hard palm to cup her again she writhes against him and he can feel dampness through the fabric.  He puts his mouth back to her breasts and leaves his hand where it is, pressing, moving very slightly above the cotton, stimulating sensitive nerves and bringing a whimper from her.  It only winds him higher, harder: knowing that he, only he, elicits these desperate noises, that only he sees this side to her; his hands and mouth become possessive, predatory as he takes her full lips again and slips fingers beneath her panties and slides his thumb across her: owning her reactions and now the whimper is a moan and she wants him, wants more, emitting his name on a high breath and lost in him.  All thoughts of waiting to reach her bed flee.  She’s here and she’s his and so wet and hot and tight around his fingers and there will be time later for more but right now he needs her to shatter just where she’s caught against him because she’s his, only his, and only he can give her this, only he will give her this; forever.  He moves his fingers in her and his thumb on her and she’s crying out and writhing and he sends her flying and breaking and spent.

When she opens her eyes, dark, hazy and sleepy, still lax and limp across him; he smiles lazily, consciously projecting comfortingly forceful maleness. “That’s better, isn’t it?” he growls dangerously.  “Let’s make it better still.”  He stands, sweeps her up into his arms, looks down at her hotly and pulls her tightly into his chest, carries her to the bedroom and places her on the bed, peels her bra from her and returns to laying long, leisurely strokes over her curves.

How does he always know what she needs? He’s surrounded her and enfolded her and let her cede control and the lead and it’s exactly, perfectly, the antidote to therapy.  No need to decide, barely a need to ask.  Only to say yes, to accede, and then to allow Castle to take her away, to let her be Kat in whatever way she wants: now, as so often, to be lost under his big frame and the bulk and hard strength of his body, to feel his muscle holding her safe.  She stretches and arches into his slow, intent petting; not troubling even to try to prevent herself emitting the soft, contented purring that will show him that Kat’s come out to play.

She’d been scared, she vaguely remembers, way back before Christmas, that being Kat with Castle would be going too far, sharing things she didn’t want to share: simply letting him get his own way like he always seemed to. Now, that seems ridiculous: she’d been so wrong about that.  Being Kat with Castle is… everything she didn’t know she needed.

“You’re purring,” he says, in the velvet-smooth baritone that promises sin and delightful wickedness. “I like making you purr.”  His hand slips from her hip to her thigh, fingers lying as still as a stalking leopard.  She mews quietly, and tries to move so that his seductive hand slides to her soft centre.  “Here you are,” he says into her ear, “wearing nothing but your panties, soaking wet, tousled and sexy and spread out; thinking about undoing my shirt and pants” – how did he know that?, although she supposes it’s not exactly a difficult deduction – “wondering what I’ll do with you next” – she is wondering, but not about whether she’ll enjoy it – “and watching me watching you.”  The voice slithers into her ears and down her nerves and slinks into her core, where it swirls sensuously.

“What should I do with you? I could do lots of things” – his fingers draw a little pattern – “that you’d like.  Question is, what would you like most tonight?”  Beckett doesn’t think that’s anything other than a rhetorical question, especially when Castle leans down and kisses her before she can open her mouth on an answer.  On the other hand, it does allow her to open his button-down and run her hands under it to reach warm skin over firm muscle and grip his broad back, and then to tug him down to cover her, flesh to flesh.  Well.  She tries to tug.  Castle declines to be tuggable.

“Naughty, naughty,” he husks. “Just wait.  We’ll get to that.  Just let me lead.”  He acquires the expression of a well-fed lion, who nevertheless could still manage dessert.  “But you can certainly undress me, if it makes you happier?”  Stupid man.  Of course it will improve her mood.  Castle is a very nice thing to look at.  Nice and large (in so many ways), well-defined without being too body-builder.  Mmmm.  She eases his shirt off and essays some focused stroking of her own, ending up at his waist, where her practised fingers find his belt buckle and then no resistance at all to her fingers opening it, his fly, and sliding his pants from his extremely pattable ass (she pats it, mischievously, as she’s passing it) to leave him in silk boxers (really, does he have any other kind?) and – er – assertively present, so to speak.   She purrs happily, all her troubles put away for now, and curves up against Castle.  He kisses her hard, conquering without resistance, and then starts to travel southward, pinning her hands with his until he’s reached his goal and is looking up at her with a hungry, wolfish expression that leaves her soaked and mewling without a touch.

And then he holds her wide and settles down and her hands hit his head and she can’t get breath to make a noise as he feasts. He is so good at it.  She dissolves into the sea of sheer sexual satisfaction and lets the deep waters close over her head, drowning as his mouth and tongue work her deeper and deeper and take her there all over again.

When she recovers, Castle is lying beside her with an arm under her neck. She rolls towards him, and before he’s fully registered that she’s awake she’s astride him, wriggling into a placement that slides over his undiminished erection.  He pulls her down to his mouth, shifts on his own account and then thrusts once to be fully and very satisfyingly within her.  It hadn’t quite been the idea, but she’s not going to complain.  And then he rolls them over and covers her and it’s only the man and the motion and magnificence.

“How do you know?” she says, curled into him, half sprawled over him.

“Know what?” Castle asks lazily, playing with little wisps of her hair where they’re floating over his shoulder.

She blushes. “What I…” – there’s a pause, which Castle doesn’t fill – “…need.”  He stiffens under her in surprise, and then clearly has to think about it.

“Observation?” he says hopefully. “I know when you’re unhappy.”  She cuddles down against him.  “You just need someone to lean on occasionally.  That’s what” – there’s a very odd hitch in his voice – “friends are for.”

Beckett notices the hitch, and its placement in the sentence, and doesn’t press the immediate point. She isn’t entirely sure that friends is the word he’d first thought of.  Still, it’s not wholly right.

“Partners, Castle. Partners.”  That’s not wholly right either, but she’s not – yet – in a place where she can go further and be able to make good on the word.

His arms tighten round her. “Partners?” he repeats, almost sounding shocked.  “Really?”

“Yes.” She has a sudden horrible thought.  “But you don’t get a badge or a gun and you still can’t be a cop.”  She knows Castle is pouting without even having to look.

“But what if the bad guys come?” he says, humorously plaintive. “How am I going to defend you?”

“Uh-uh. I defend you if the bad guys come.”  She stops abruptly, and continues in a very different, much more serious tone.  “You… do this for me.  It’s… more than enough.  You’re more than enough.”  She buries her face in his chest and refuses to look at him.

Castle stares open-mouthed at the ceiling, and then when he’s recovered from that stunning statement enough to move his head stares open-mouthed at the top of Beckett’s dark head, which is all he can see. For possibly the first time in his adult life, he has absolutely no idea at all what to say.  All his armies of words have flown out of his head.

“Me?” he eventually squeaks. He doesn’t sound like himself at all.  Beckett tries to worm her way into some form of hiding.  No no no.  She doesn’t get to say that and hide.  No hiding.  He gently, but inexorably, pulls her up till he can see her face – blushing crimson and she won’t look him in the eye – and then kisses her, equally gently and inexorably.  If he’s what she needs – if he’s her partner, and it’s just occurred to him that she has never named him so before: he’s said it, but she has not – if he is more than enough, then…then that’s huge.  Life-changing.  Because if she can say that, with that expression, then there is more.  Much more.

But right now, what she needs is him to hold her close, and kiss her, and take the lead and let her be Kat, and show her that he’s hers, in every possible way; that he’ll take care of her when she needs it and have her back when she needs that. He’ll be her rock, her stability, her firm ground.  And she… well, she’s already everything to him.  She’s fixing herself, and that is more than enough for him.

And so he cossets her close, and pulls her in, and makes love to her in the smoothly assertive fashion that she enjoys most, and she responds with the soft openness that he loves best, and finally they fall wrapped together into sleep.

Life is frantic next day in the precinct. The first bloomings of spring have brought out the crazy in people, and the workload has spiked.  None of it is tricky, or clever, or Beckett-flavoured, but all of it needs dealt with.  The team hunkers down to hard work, with Castle providing fewer insane theories and more coffee.  As so often happens, they work their collective asses off for twenty-four hours, and then they have to wait.  Lab results, camera footage, phone records, bank records, all seem to be on a go-slow.  Beckett fusses and frets and threatens, but nothing gets her any information any faster, and at  five p.m. on Thursday they are stuck.   Nothing will arrive before tomorrow.

At that point Beckett’s phone rings. She looks at it with considerable irritation, expecting that it will be – in no particular order of annoying/infuriating/upsetting-ness – Dr Parrish or her father, who have each taken to attempting to call her once a day.  She’s not interested in speaking to either of them.  Really not.

It’s not either of them. Her irritation drops away as soon as she recognises – it takes a moment – the number.

“Hey, O’Leary, what’s up?”

“Beckett,” he says cheerfully, “I hear that you’re all waiting for data. I beat you Twelfths to the punch, but the lab an’ everyone tells me that the guys in the Thirty-Second take so long to solve their cases that they have to get the results a second time cause they’ve died of old age, so I can’t get mine either.”

Beckett laughs. The entire bullpen flips round to look at this lately unusual sight.

“So I thought you and Castle might have time for a beer?”

“Sure I do,” she says, “let me just ask him.” She lowers the phone for a second.  “Want a beer with O’Leary, Castle?”

“Sure.”

“Yeah, that’s all good. Where – not Molloys again, huh?  I’m tired of green.  How about Esperanto, Avenue C?  ‘S near here.”

“You’re gonna make me come all that way down there, Beckett?”

“Yep,” she says briskly. “Anything to avoid the Irish bar again.  See you around seven.”

Esposito wanders over. “Out with O’Leary again, Beckett?  Don’tcha love us any more?”  He attempts to bat his eyelashes, and looks entirely ridiculous. 

“Never did,” Beckett sniggers unkindly.

“C’mon. We wanna come too.”

“Nope,” Beckett says firmly. “Had lunch with you.”

“We were all in the bullpen for lunch, Beckett,” Ryan pipes up. “I wanna meet your mountain.  C’mon.”

“Nope,” she says more firmly. “Not happening.  Not today.”  Espo scowls, and Ryan pouts.  Clearly he’s been taking lessons from Castle on the side.  Unfortunately Beckett is immune.  Castle’s pout doesn’t work on her, so Ryan’s certainly won’t.

The boys are still muttering blackly under their breaths when Beckett starts to pack up, though they also take it as their signal to leave and find their own bar. Castle, having only to put on his coat and ensure he doesn’t forget his phone, is perfectly ready in seconds.

O’Leary hasn’t made it to Esperanto before they do.

“Drink, Beckett?”

“Yeah. Can I get a beer, please?  Breckenridge.”  Castle conceals any hint of surprise and instead tells himself that if Beckett’s having a beer, she must be in a rather more relaxed mood than earlier in the week. 

Standing at the bar, he also recollects the errant and escaped thought that he’d had on Tuesday: that Beckett is surrounded by big or tough men. Or both, of course.  O’Leary is both.  He, Castle, doesn’t pretend to be tough in the way that the cops around her are tough, but he’s not little, and he’s not a wimp either.  And Espo is seriously tough.  Even Ryan is pretty tough, though he hides it well.  He looks around, soaking up the atmosphere and the large butterfly decorated screen above the bar, and for a moment wishes that he hadn’t placed Nikki’s fictional precinct up near West 75th.

“Hey, Castle,” rumbles behind him. How does a man that size sneak like that?  “Mine’s a Mexicali.”  Castle adds it to the order.  O’Leary’s looking at the butterfly screen with a sneaky smile.

“Food? I was going to get us some snacks, or we can get real food in a minute.”

“Let’s get some chips and guacamole. And salsa.”

“Oh, and pico de gallo.”

A container-load of chips is ordered along with the beers, and the two men return to flank Beckett, who’s beginning to look as if they might have had to brew the beer rather than buy it. The quizzical semi-glare diminishes when she finds that there will shortly be chips, and then casts her vote for dinner too.

“So why are you all so busy?” Castle asks, by way of conversation opener. Beckett looks at O’Leary, O’Leary looks at Beckett, and they grin happily at each other. Beckett makes a you-go gesture at O’Leary.

“Spring is sprung,” he says, and Castle is infected by the joint grin to grin too at the familiar words, “the grass is riz.”

“I wonder where the killers is,” Beckett chimes in, and Castle snorts.

“We never did find a good next line, did we?”

“No. But I’m quite keen on them being in jail.”

“Sure you are, butterfly.”

“Butterfly?” Castle squawks.