75. With a little help from my friends

Beckett’s steps slow as Croxley’s approaches. All that this results in is Castle and O’Leary flanking her in a posture that strongly suggests to her that if she stops moving forward of her own volition she will be moved forward through theirs.  This is not fair.  Pair of big bullies.  Accent firmly on the big part of that.  Either of them is, regrettably, quite capable of lifting her up and moving her on.  Together, she’s got no chance.  And while she doesn’t know how fast Castle can run on sidewalks, (he only just caught her over sand) she does know that O’Leary’s reaction time and arm length is very likely to stop her before she’s really had a chance to escape.

She has no desire to see Lanie’s condemnatory, accusatory face at all. She isn’t even sure how she got talked into this, because Lanie’s many messages haven’t given her the idea that Lanie wants to play nice.  But something about O’Leary’s wide face and sincere eyes – and the years she’s known and trusted him – has walked her right over here.  She grips Castle’s hand, large and warm around hers, and tries to find her calm surface.  It’s only Lanie, and it’s only as long as she wants to.  She doesn’t have to stay.  She doesn’t have to take any crap.  Castle will stand with her – he’s said so, though he was talking about her father – and O’Leary’s promised that if it doesn’t go well they’ll all leave.  She’s got her friends beside her.  She can get through this.

She tosses back her hair, lets go of Castle’s hand, and strides out; hits the bar door without hesitation and steps in. The two men behind her exchange glances but not words, and stay half a pace behind.

“Hey,” Beckett says coolly to the three in the bar. Castle and O’Leary come to a stop behind her.  It looks, to Espo’s well-trained and suspicious eyes, like they’re the flanking guard.  He acquires a feeling of some nervousness.  Beckett doesn’t look precisely receptive.  Lanie’s hackles are already rising.  He raises eyebrows at Ryan, who taps Lanie’s foot.  Strangely, Lanie looks more nervous, not to say downright scared, than pissed.  She eases down.

Beckett sits down with a swish, Castle and O’Leary still flanking her. There is a remarkable lack of space around the table, suddenly.  Castle has the rather uncomfortable feeling that the lack of space is not only physical.  The atmosphere has become close-confined and stuffy.

“Beer, Beckett?”

“Coke, thanks.”

“There’s a tab running,” Esposito says. “It’s in Castle’s name.”

Castle shrugs. “I expected that.”

O’Leary grins widely. “I hoped,” he says.  “What does everyone want?”

“Is this where you demonstrate how to carry five beer bottles and a soda at one go?” Beckett snarks at him.

“Yep. It’s a good party trick.”

“Show me?” says Castle happily. “Maybe I can do it.  That would be good at my parties.  Everyone would be really impressed.  Patterson can’t do that.”

“S’easy. All you need are long enough fingers.  Put your hand out.”  Castle does.  “Hm.  Small hands.  Maybe you couldn’t do it.”  O’Leary puts his immense hand flat on the table. 

“Small? My hands are not small.”  Castle looks around, horrified.  “All of you put your hands on the table too.  Ryan, Espo, put your hands out.”  Everyone does.  “See, not small.”

It’s true. Castle’s hands are certainly bigger than Ryan and Espo’s.  Beckett manages not to wriggle or blush at the thought of his hands.  They’re amazingly skilled.  But next to O’Leary’s frying pans masquerading as hands, they are small.

Castle goes up to the bar with O’Leary and comes back with five beer bottles, but not the Coke. He smiles a little sheepishly.  “Couldn’t manage the glass too.”  Beckett quirks a cynical eyebrow.  Castle waits a half-beat, till the beers are deposited, then favours her with a scorching glance that should have curled her toes.  He drops back into his seat next to her and presses a knee against hers, where it’s not obvious.  Shortly O’Leary descends back into his, somewhat in the manner of an iceberg calving, and deposits the Coke.

“Isn’t this cosy,” he rumbles cheerfully. “All pals together.”  Esposito shoots him a glare.  “Hear you’re good at sparring.  Beckett said it.  Wanna try a few rounds sometime?  I could use a tough workout.”

“Bring it on, mountain-man.” But Espo manages a comradely grin, reflected in Ryan and Castle’s faces.  It’s just as well that the men are all so content with each other, because Beckett and Lanie are as tense as a Siamese cat facing a terrier.  Castle knows which is which, but is not yet either beered-up enough or stupid enough to say so.  Gradually a silence descends on the whole table.  Nobody seems inclined to break it.  Each of the men are looking between the women, who are watching each other and not saying anything at all.  It’s all about to go horribly wrong.

“So when does the naked mud-wrestling start?” Castle asks. There’s an instant of shocked silence.

“You sex-crazed jackass,” Beckett and Lanie yell in unison – and then look at each other, astonished.  Beckett’s lips quirk.  Lanie produces a half-smile.

“Give us some space, boys,” Beckett says. “Lanie and I need to talk.”  When they don’t instantly move, the snap of day-to-day command enters her voice.  “Leave.  Now.  Find another table.”  She thinks for a second.  “Out of earshot.”

The men depart. Quickly.

“That worked,” Castle says happily. “Beers on me?  Just in case we need to break up the mud-wrestling?”

The other three can agree on that.

Back at the now-vacated table, Beckett and Lanie have fallen back into uncomfortable silence. Beckett’s swirling the straw in her soda.  Lanie’s picking at her beer mat.  Both of them are sneaking sidelong peeks at the other.  Beckett swallows.  Lanie gulps.

“You made me feel like shit,” Beckett says bluntly. “I don’t need that.”

“You were diving straight down the rabbit hole. You don’t need that, either,” Lanie says, equally harshly.

“Wasn’t up to you to tell me I’m a fuckup.”

“I’m your friend. If I don’t, who would?”

Voices are beginning to acquire annoyance. Tempers have risen, rapidly.

“Are you saying I’m fucked up?”

“I’m saying” –

“Is there a problem?” O’Leary rumbles from over Beckett’s shoulder. Lanie stops talking.

“Butt out, O’Leary,” Beckett snaps. “This isn’t your business.”  Lanie follows it up with a glare that promises scalpels, without anaesthetic.

“I’m saying that I wanted to make sure you were getting help,” Lanie says more temperately, as O’Leary departs.

“What you said was that I was fucked right up.  What you did was try to start a fight in the bullpen, in public, in front of my team.  What you’ve done is try and make me do what you think I should do and tried to drag in pretty much everyone who knows me.  You don’t know anything about my situation now and you only made it worse.”  Beckett is not temperate.  Nor is she quiet.

“You girls okay?”

“Girls?” they snap in tandem.  “Butt out, Espo!”  Espo retreats, rapidly.

“Jackass,” Lanie says bitterly.

“Too right,” Beckett agrees. There’s a short pause.  Beckett twiddles her straw and sips the soda.  Lanie swigs at her beer and shreds the beer mat some more.

“I didn’t mean to make you feel like shit.”

Beckett, already opening her mouth on a further grievance, closes it. “I… okay.” 

There is another pause. The straw snaps.  The beer mat is a small pile of scraps.  Castle approaches and is greeted by a twin-track, vicious glare.  He retreats before he gets within five feet.

“ ‘M” – they each start.

“You go.”

“No, you.”

“ ‘M sorry,” Beckett mutters.

“Me too,” Lanie mumbles.

They peek at each other through their respective eyelashes.

“Didn’t mean to yell at you. I just wanted to help.”

“Should’ve known that. I… just wasn’t in the right place.”

“ ‘M sorry,” Lanie mutters.

“Me too,” Beckett mumbles.

Banished to the other side of the bar, the four men squeeze themselves around a table that isn’t quite out of earshot. They don’t at all believe that Beckett and Lanie are going to kiss and make up that easily.

“So who’s gonna break up the fight?” Espo asks cynically.

“Take it in turns. O’Leary first.”

“Hey!” O’Leary protests.

“Beckett’s not your boss, neither of them are your girlfriend, and you’re the only one who can get both of them out of here in one go,” Ryan points out smugly. “All you have to do is pick them both up by the scruff of the neck and take ‘em out.”

“And then run like hell,” Castle points out. “Beckett’s still got her Glock.”

“Does Lanie know that?” Esposito asks. “Shouldn’t someone have told her?”

“Didn’t you?” Castle and O’Leary ask in unison.

“Oooops,” Espo says unrepentantly. “Musta forgotten that.”

“Like you forgot to tell me that Beckett wasn’t gonna be here?” Ryan mutters blackly. “You set me up.”

“Yep. An’ you deserved it, tattling to Lanie like you did.  So stop bitchin’.”

“Looks like someone needs to interfere,” Castle says. “Voices rising, posture spoiling for a fight – this is all about to go wrong.  O’Leary, you’re up.”

O’Leary casts him a volcanically fiery glance. Clearly, Mauna Loa sized or not, breaking up the fight isn’t in his game plan for the evening.  “You owe me, Castle.  This is not what I signed up for.  I thought we were friends,” he says pathetically, and then sniggers.  “I’m the one person who isn’t looking for the naked mud-wrestling.  Not from those two, anyway.”  He runs a deliberately mischievous look over Ryan and Esposito.

“Not cool, bro. Not cool at all.”

O’Leary rises to full skyscraper height and grins down. “Couple of pretty boys like you?  Very cool.”  He’s distracted by Castle’s sharp whistle and gesture to the other table, where tempers have risen dramatically.  He ambles over, rumbles inaudibly – then suddenly winces and retreats in a way that in a less enormous man would be described as a fast scuttle.

“What, big guy? Scared off by two girls?” Espo is very nearly taunting.

“Your turn next.” O’Leary looks across.  “ ‘Bout now, I’d say.”

Espo returns much faster than O’Leary had.

“Now who’s scared by two girls?”

Espo glares, bitterly.

“Just for that, it’s you next, Castle.” Castle winces.  “Like right now.  They’ve stopped talking again.”

Castle gets to within ten feet, takes one look at Beckett’s face, takes another two steps with quailing courage but in the hope that he’ll get away with it if he makes her very happy later, sees the promise of pain, suffering and evisceration in Lanie’s expression, and abruptly decides that his happiness will be more likely if he is not in the ER. He reverses direction, rapidly.

“Not so brave now, are you?”

“Never claimed to be. You three are cops.  I’m not.”

“What’s going on?”

“Huh?”

Beckett and Lanie are standing up, putting on coats, and clearly preparing to leave. The four men look at them, worriedly.

“Where’re you goin’?” Espo blocks their exit.

“Somewhere civilised.”

“Women only,” Lanie states.

“But… but…” Castle stutters.

“Butt out. Lanie and I need time without you lot butting in.”

“We know what you’re doing. We don’t need you doing it.”

“What?”

But Beckett and Lanie are out the door.

The men look at each other and shrug.

“Guess it worked,” O’Leary rumbles.

“Suppose so,” Castle agrees, a little miffed that Beckett’s disappeared rather than snuggling up to him. He’d wanted to take her home, after.  Still, he’d thought that she needed to be pals with Lanie again, and it seems like they’ve sorted it out.  Probably.

Another round of beers appears, and they settle in for the evening.

Beckett and Lanie don’t say much on the way to Matilda’s. Some harmony might have been restored, but it’s still not entirely comfortable.  Both of them feel they’ve behaved rather… well, childishly.

They find a table, order polenta crostini with mushrooms so they’ve got something to nibble, Beckett has another soda and Lanie a glass of white wine.

“That’s better,” Beckett says with some satisfaction, looking round. “Lost them.”

Lanie nods in vigorous agreement.

“So,” she says, “you wanna talk, or you wanna eat and have the civilised evening we were gonna have a month ago?”

Beckett appreciates the way Lanie’s put that. “Let’s start with food and civilised.  It’s not… I don’t wanna talk much.”

“Okay. But…” – Lanie looks like a mischievous sprite – “you gotta share one thing, Kate.”

Beckett raises an eyebrow. “What?” she says suspiciously.

“Are you dating Writer-Boy?”

Beckett splutters out her soda. “Lanie!”

“So you are.”

“Not your business.”

Lanie smirks evilly. “Well, that evening a month ago I was going to tell you that you should find someone who’d keep you warm – or keep your sheets hot” – Beckett nearly chokes – “but since you’ve done it all yourself how about we talk about something else?”

“Yeah. Something else.”  Lanie looks questioningly at her.  “Movies.  Or make-up.  Or…”

“Or men.”

“Not men. Weren’t the Banana Splits that we left behind enough for you?”

Lanie chokes on her wine and goes purple as she tries to stop laughing.

“O’Leary’s still cute.”

“Yeah, and still with Pete. Stick to the attainable.  You could try Espo.  He’s single.”

“When I want someone whose only conversation is guns I’ll try Espo.”

“So the next week after never, then?”

“Yup. And don’t suggest Ryan either.  If I want pathetic blue eyes I’ll get a puppy.”

Beckett snickers. “Wasn’t going to.  You’d walk right over him.  If you want that, go down the ten-cent store and buy a doormat.”

“You didn’t get a doormat,” Lanie says with a slight edge. “Wouldn’t tell me a damn thing.”

“Who?” Beckett says, faux-innocently.

“Anyone. What’d you do, sew their lips shut?”  Beckett smirks.  “Or threaten them?”

“Nothing you wouldn’t have done, Doctor Moreau.”

Lanie splutters, and pours herself some more wine. “Mean, Kate.  Very mean.”

Beckett sips her soda. There is a pause.

“Are we good, Kate?”

“Yeah.   We’re good.”

“Okay. Shall we get some more food?”

“Yeah. I’m hungry.”

Nobody says anything in the bullpen the next day, apart from a few comments about the unkindness of Beckett and Lanie going off without the others. The team is easier than it has been in quite a while.  To Ryan and Espo, Beckett seems some way calmer.  To Castle, ambling in at lunchtime to see if there is anything interesting happening and disappointed to find that there is nothing, she is certainly calmer, but nothing like as peaceful as she should be.  He doesn’t say anything, though, simply ambles off again, knowing that he’ll be round at her apartment later on tonight.

Beckett simply makes it through the day. She’d not slept particularly well, despite sorting things out with Lanie.  Every time she’d dropped off, she’d been woken by unsubtle nightmares involving stripping naked in public.  She doesn’t need Freud to explain those to her.  She’d resolved to talk to Dr Burke, but that doesn’t mean she has to like it.  She drags off to his office at the end of the day.

“Good evening.”

“Hey.”

“In the previous session, I asked you to reflect upon your reactions to the Berowitzes. Have you had an opportunity so to do?”

“Yeah. But…”

“Mm?”

“Can we talk about something else?”

Dr Burke is surprised. Mainly, he is surprised that Detective Beckett wishes to talk about any matter, unprompted.  This should, however, be encouraged.  “Certainly.”

“I want” – Detective Beckett hesitates, and Dr Burke emits an encouraging noise – “to-talk-about-Castle’s-family,” she blurts out in one breath.

Dr Burke’s surprise is only indicated by a slight raising of his brows. He is quite astonished by that statement.

“Certainly,” he says again, in default of being able to find any other words. “Please begin.”

“Uhm…” Detective Beckett does not appear to know where to begin.  Dr Burke rapidly assembles his own thoughts.

“Please start by explaining Mr Castle.”

Detective Beckett manages a skewed smile. “Explaining Castle?  That would take a while.  He showed up as a person of interest on a case, round about September last.  He tried to chat me up” – this does not, in fact, surprise Dr Burke – “and when I wouldn’t play he weaselled his way into the precinct by leaning on the Mayor.  The Mayor – and my boss – play poker with him.  He claimed that I’d inspired his latest character.  So after that they let him shadow me.”

“And he has a family, I believe you have mentioned?”

“A daughter. And his mother lives with them.  Martha Rogers – she’s an actress.”

Martha Rogers? Dr Burke recognises the name.  Off-Broadway theatre is not his preference, but he has been forced to sit through it with friends on occasion.  He calls up a very vague memory of an overly-flamboyant redhead. 

“So Mr Castle has a daughter of – how old?”

“Fifteen, I think.”

“And you have met his family, you informed me. You told me that you and your father had attended a dinner at Mr Castle’s home.”

“Yeah. But I’ve been there before.  And…”

“And?”

“And I’m really unhappy seeing him and his family because it reminds me of how my family used to be and I hate that I can’t just get over myself. So I wanna sort that.”

Detective Beckett looks thoroughly unhappy and ashamed. Dr Burke finds this unsurprising, but also unwarranted.  It is, in his experience, normal to be envious and unhappy of people who are enjoying a happy existence which a patient has previously experienced, but which the patient has lost through no fault of their own.

“I see.”

Dr Burke is, paradoxically, extremely satisfied that Detective Beckett has raised this issue, even though normally he would not permit a patient to divert from his carefully structured course of treatment. He is a firm believer in the efficacy of his methods, and is disinclined to depart from them without a very good reason.  However, Detective Beckett has been ill-served by her previous therapist, and is proving a very complex patient indeed.  Therefore, it is wise to allow a certain degree of deviation, if it will encourage her to talk freely.  As well, her introduction of this subject means that he does not need to do so.  He recalls their previous discussion of this point, which had been triggered by Detective Beckett’s father’s ill-considered words.  Detective Beckett had, at that point, not mentioned any desire to be able to see Mr Castle’s family.  Dr Burke deduces without difficulty that his earlier conclusion that Detective Beckett is enjoying a romantic relationship with Mr Castle had been entirely correct.

“Please tell me, chronologically, about your meetings with Mr Castle’s family. It would be preferable, and more efficient,” Dr Burke notes, a little acerbically, “if you were to include your feelings during each meeting as you describe them.”  He has little hope that this will occur without some further, detailed, questioning.  It is really a great pity that the use of scopolamine is both unethical and, for psychiatry at least, ineffective.