82. All right for fighting

Castle kisses gently across Beckett’s gorgeously naked torso and pays slow and detailed attention to the proud nipples, She fits easily in his hands, neat and perfect and designed by some deity to match him exactly.  She pushes up and he draws her into his mouth, gentle teeth and hard suction and she starts to breathe harder, brings one leg up around tight him to encourage him to press against her, but without arms she can’t quite exert the same directional control she was trying earlier.  Castle’s ears are very glad of it, even though the cotton of his shirt is loosely tied and wouldn’t stop her doing anything.  It’s all in her head.  He has no objection to a little bondage play if that’s what Beckett wants, but he doesn’t need it.

He plays for longer with those beautiful, edible breasts, eliciting happy, sexy noises, gasps and occasional pants of Castle, again!  Gradually he slides down her body, hearing the change in the cadence of her breathing as he approaches the jut of her hips, sketching a careful path which promises much… and then bypasses her soaked core to kiss and nibble down her leg to her ankle and then kiss and nibble back up the other leg.  This results, very smoothly, in Castle being perfectly settled in the vee of her legs and Beckett devoid of words that aren’t approximating to stop teasing please. 

“I caught you,” he drawls lazily. “So I get to do what I like.”  He traces the veins through the translucent skin, and she shivers.  “I like teasing you.  I like making you anticipate what I might do.  I like you naked and wet because I’ve slowly peeled your clothes away and touched and kissed you all the time I did.  I like you badass at work; or soft and purring under my hands; or when you’re lithe and sexy and making me groan.  But I like you very best,” he purrs darkly from his vantage point between her legs, “when you’re writhing and desperate and so high up you’ll feel that you’ll never come down.”

He licks a wet stroke through her folds and she bucks against his firm hands on her hips, holding her for the attack of his mouth. Two more strokes and she’s trying to twist, moaning; a featherlight twining of his tongue over the knot of nerves and she’s whimpering because she’s got no breath left to make any louder noise; a furl of the tongue and a slow entry, then another twist and she’s desperate, just like he’d promised; sky-high and right on the edge and he holds her there, keeping her higher than she’s ever been and finally he can’t hold her any longer and she brings him up and into her and cries his name and comes hard around him, and he can too.

“I like you like this, too,” he murmurs in her ear. “Totally loved-up and cuddled up to me and in my arms, all soft and sleepy.”  She makes an indeterminately happy little noise and nestles in more closely.

“Like it too,” she mumbles. “Safe.”

Castle nuzzles into her hair. “Got your back.”

“I know.” Her eyes are shut, her limbs lax.  She’s on the verge of sleep.

“I gotta go.”

“I know.”  He’s starting to detach himself when he realises she’s still speaking.  “When ‘m fixed, I can come to the loft.  You won’t go then.”

“No. I won’t go then,” he says softly, and kisses her.

All the way home he thinks about Beckett being there all night, and when he wakes in the morning. All the way home he’s exhibiting a sloppy, sappy smile, warmth settled around his heart.  He’s still wearing the same smile as he drops into sleep.

When he wakes, though, he remembers that he needs to talk to Jim. This rather deflates his sunny mood.  However, Alexis is bright and happy at breakfast, and a little gentle probing reassures him that she is not feeling abandoned, neglected or otherwise ignored.  All is well in his domestic world.

Over another cup of coffee, with no nice or interesting or gruesome (or any or all of the foregoing) murders to distract him, Castle tries to work out what he’s going to say to Jim. Somehow Beckett asked (well, told, but that certainly isn't a good start) me to talk to you doesn’t seem to be the right beginning.  He also doesn’t feel that it’s his place to say anything of the order of did you know what you actually did and said when you were drunk?  That’s a discussion Beckett has to have.

I’m going to marry your daughter is extremely premature.  As is as soon as she’s ready I want her to move in with me.  It would probably be a really, really good idea to discuss those with Beckett first.  He daydreams about them for a while, though, until he tries to turn his mind to Jim again.

After far too much unproductive time Castle bites the bullet and simply calls.

“Jim Beckett.”

“Jim, it’s Rick. Beck-Kate’s okay,” he adds hurriedly.  “Can I come see you after work?”

“Sure,” Jim says, and then, much more suspiciously, “why?”

“Beck-Kate wants me to talk to you.”

“Really?” Jim says, hope dancing in his voice. “But she won’t talk to me herself,” he says flatly, all hope draining.

“No. But if you’ll talk to me I think there’s a way to fix all this.  Up to you.”

“Okay. Seven.  My apartment.  I’ll call you if I’m running late.”

“See you then.”

Castle breathes a sigh of relief that he’s got this underway and considers his options. He doesn’t much like any of them, but no-one else is trying to fix this so he needs to.  He needs to have a coherent strategy for Jim.  He needs to have another session with Dr Burke, after he’s seen Jim.  He needs to show Beckett that he’s perfectly capable of setting any boundaries he needs to, so that however wrongly and dumbly she might think it, she’s clear that he isn’t saying how high when she says jump.  She doesn’t ask for half enough, emotionally, and he can’t even give her that today: he has to show her that he can say no to her.  At least he doesn’t have to talk to Lanie.  Small mercies.

He sends Beckett a quick text: Seeing your dad tonight. Will be too late to come by after.  I’ll call.

The bullpen is boring. The paperwork is boring.  The cold cases are stone cold and boring.  Espo and Ryan are thoroughly – well, bored.  Montgomery is in his office, being Captainly, so they can’t get up to much mischief, and there are no new homicides.  Beckett is paying no attention to anything outside a bubble about a foot around her desk, and they’re not sure she’s paying much attention to anything outside her skull.  She’d been out of it yesterday too.  Hadn’t even noticed them playing Hangman on her murder board.  Well, not till they were four games in, anyway.  Funny thing is, she looks as if she’s working on a case.  Same inward turned gaze, same wrinkle of concentration between her brows.  Every so often she scrawls something down.  Every so often she makes a face as if she’s tasted something disgusting.

Ryan and Esposito exchange glances and simultaneously stand up and wander to Beckett’s tidy desk, flanking her. They look down, and try to decipher the ink-track roamings of the drunken spider which Beckett’s writing most resembles.  Unfortunately, she realises they are there, and without any subtlety at all pulls a blank sheet over the writing.

“Private.”

“We’re bored,” they whine in tandem.

“How is this my problem?”

“You’re supposed to produce weird cases. We haven’t had one for weeks.  Dumbass didn’t count.  So tell us what you’re working on that’s keeping you so busy the last two days.  You gotta share, Beckett.”

“I told you, it’s private. None of your business.”  Her voice is harsh.  The boys look at each other over her head.  “Leave me to it.”  She appears to take a breath and reset her attitude.  “Give me till lunchtime.  I could use some sparring practice, Espo.”  He nods.

The boys, thankfully, disappear. Beckett is also thankful that her writing is, quite deliberately, completely illegible to anyone but herself.  She can’t get Dr Burke’s words out of her head. Victims of emotional abuse.  She is not a victim.  She’s made herself a success.  Her father might not love her – her face twists – but he didn’t abuse her.  Dr Burke is wrong.

And yet. Since there are only cold cases to look at, there is nothing to stop her brain stewing over the session, and stew it does. 

She’d only done what any normally sympathetic person had done. You don’t push on the sore points when you can see it’s hurting.  No-one does.  That’s not avoiding triggers, it’s basic courtesy. But, a nagging little voice says, but they don’t all get their hair cut and coloured, do they? She had loved having longer hair, had loved being able to style it when and how she wanted, had loved the way her boyfriends could stroke through it.  And she’d cut it.  She’d cut it because her mother had had a style that hadn’t been too different, if more controlled, more professional, more appropriate to a lawyer.  She’d cut it because… because it set her father off.   Because it set her father off down the path of why aren’t you her, I don’t want you, I want Johanna.  Like a toddler crying for his mother, she thinks bitterly and cruelly, and instantly regrets it.  She too cried for her mother, as passionately as a child.  But she’d cut her hair.  It’s still short now.

So maybe she’d over-reacted. She didn’t have to cut her hair.  Her father would have stopped crying for her mom. Except he didn’t, did he? Stop shirking the truth.  He didn’t, and he wouldn’t.  It just stopped him thinking you were she.  So why had she cut her hair?  That same nagging little voice says so you didn’t set him off.  She rams it down, and tries to focus on the cold case file, and for an hour or so she manages it.  Then the voice returns.

What would you say to a woman who changed her appearance so she didn’t annoy her boyfriend, the little voice niggles.  You know what you’d say, don’t you? It’s a warning sign.  She tries to squash that, too.  The cold case only works for half an hour, this time, and then the voice squiggles back to the front of her mind. You didn’t talk about anything that upset him. That’s another red flag.

He didn’t do it deliberately. He never meant to do it.  And that’s the difference.  That’s why Dr Burke is wrong. But he still did it.  You still need to deal with it. Whether he meant it or not.  She can’t deal with the nagging niggle any more.  She shoves it away, notices the boys looking at her chicken-scratch scrawl, quite deliberately hides it and decides that a hard round of sparring at lunchtime is just what she needs to shake her brain up.  She claws back her temper and suggests it.

By lunchtime Beckett is suffering from severe frustration at the cold case and severely irritated frustration at the naggings of the voice in the back of her head. She changes and stalks out on to the mats with the sole intention of taking Esposito apart.  She doesn’t even contemplate a warm up round with Ryan: he’s no match for her at his best, and she wants to lose herself in the harsh physical exertion and total concentration that trying to beat Espo will provide.

Espo looks at the way Beckett has arrived on the mats and the posture she’s adopted and prepares for mayhem. He’s still perfectly confident that she won’t beat him – she never has – but she’s clearly out for blood.  He wishes that Castle had been around this morning to take some of the edge off, because Beckett in this mood is a recipe for disaster.  He doesn’t want anything broken because he can’t pull it back fast enough.  It happened once before, a few years back, when Beckett was in this same mood, and he ended up with a sprained wrist and Beckett with a dislocated shoulder.  Montgomery had wiped the floor with the pair of them.  She’d never said why she’d been so pissed, but he’d assumed a bad break-up.  The odd thing was, she’d been bruised already, as if she’d been sparring the day before, but it hadn’t been with him.  He supposes it could have been with that mountain O’Leary.  Still, she hasn’t been doing that this week.  No bruises.  If he gets out of this mostly alive he’ll get O’Leary over for a round or two.  He could use a sparring partner he’s not sure he’ll beat.

Ryan looks at the pair on the mats and considers running for the MTs now. He also considers calling Castle.  Then he remembers what the gang had done to him the last time he tried interfering for their own good, and decides not to call anyone.  It doesn’t stop him having his phone close at hand. 

For the first few minutes Ryan’s fears are not realised. It’s rough stuff, but Espo’s well in control and playing defensively.  Beckett is a tornado of offence, but it’s nothing that Espo can’t manage.  Then Beckett manages to connect, clearly much harder than she or Espo expected, with a kick, and Espo starts to go on the offensive himself.  After that it’s not exactly clear what’s going on, except that it’s brutal.  Ryan is only too glad he’s not on the mat: he likes all his limbs and head attached and undamaged, and the way these two are flinging each other about it’s not guaranteed that either will be in one piece in five minutes’ time.  He winces as Beckett hits the floor hard, rolls and takes Esposito down equally hard.  It’s all getting a little hardcore for him, and both of them are going all out.

“What the hell is going on here?” Oh, shit.  Coming right now to a fan near Ryan.  “Stand down!”  There is a truly terrifying silence as everything stops.  Beckett’s flat on her back, struggling for breath; Espo’s got his head on his knees.

“What is this?” Montgomery snaps. No-one answers.  “Detective Ryan!”

“Sir?”

“Explain.”

“Beckett and Esposito were having a workout, sir,” Ryan stammers. How’s this his fault suddenly?  He was only watching.

“A workout?”  Montgomery would have sounded less disbelieving if he’d been told he was to be taken to Area 51 to meet an alien.  “That’s what you” – Ryan is sure the word idiots was meant to be inserted here – “call a workout?  Are all three of you crazy?  Get cleaned up and be in my office in less than ten minutes.”

Montgomery marches off, stiff-spined and clearly very annoyed. Esposito stretches painfully.

“What the fuck, Beckett? You trying to kill me ‘cause we got no corpses?”

Beckett slides an eyelid open from her tapped-out position. “Ow,” she says, as she tries to stretch her arm.  “Needed the exercise.”

“Yeah, and now we all need a good story. Captain ain’t looking too pleased.”

“Any ideas?” Beckett tries another stretch, more slowly, and winces before she’s moved her arm more than an inch.  “Ow,” she says again.

“You okay?”

Beckett rolls on to her stomach, and tries a stretch from there. “Ow, ow.  Give me a minute.”

Espo stands up and looks down at her. “What’ve you done?”

“Hurt my arm,” she says through gritted teeth.

“Shit. If you’ve dislocated it again Montgomery’ll have our asses in a sling.”

“No. I know what that feels like.  Just give me a hand to get up.”  Espo reaches out and Beckett lurches to her feet, wincing.  “I think I landed on it.”  She rotates her wrist – or starts to.  “Ow!” 

“Can you manage?” Ryan asks. “ ‘Cause it’s not like we’re gonna help you clean up.”

Beckett glares at him. “I’ll manage just fine.  Cover for me if I take an extra minute, huh?”  She lurches off in the direction of the women’s showers.  Espo dashes in the direction of the men’s.  Ryan sits on a handy bench and, not for the first time, wonders how he’s always in the firing line when everyone else is responsible for the trouble.

With a minute to spare, Ryan and Esposito present themselves to Captain Montgomery. With half a second to spare, Beckett joins them, not exactly looking her normal polished self.  Not at all, in fact.  Montgomery looks the three of them up and down, slowly and disapprovingly.  It’s unpleasantly reminiscent, to Ryan, of being inspected by the nuns at the end of recess in grade school.  Espo is reminded of a particularly strict drill sergeant. 

Beckett is not reminded of anything, being too busy trying to deal with the really quite severe pain in her wrist without letting on to anyone else just how much it hurts. Even brushing her hair had proved impossible.  Make up – well, she didn’t even try.  She’s sure it’s not broken.  She is entirely unsure that it’s not sprained or badly twisted.

“So, Detectives. Would you care to explain just why it was that I discover two of you apparently trying to murder each other and the third spectating rather than stopping your idiocy?”

Er, no. They would not care to explain.  There is a silence, in which Montgomery’s dark face turns darker.

“I needed the sparring practice,” Beckett says, as it becomes clear that no-one else will. And she is the senior detective, so she gets to take the licks.  “So I asked Esposito to give me a match.  He’s the only one who’ll really make me work hard.”

“Work hard? You call that working hard?  Sparring practice is not supposed to be about injuring each other.  That was not a practice.  That was a full on fight.  If I catch any of you doing that again in working time I’ll ensure that you regret it.  Understood?”

“Yessir,” comes bedraggled from all three miscreants.

“Now go and do some real work.”

“Yessir.”

“And at the next inter-precinct championship I want to see you two tag-teaming up so we can turn the others into ground beef.”

“Yessir – What?”

“You two are as dumb as they come fighting like that, but you sure can spar,” Montgomery grins. “This year, I’m gonna win big.”

His best team trails out of his office muttering darkly, which their Captain chooses to ignore for the sake of his wallet. He notices Beckett’s relatively ungroomed state and concludes that she’d spent too long in the shower to get properly tidied up.

Espo and Ryan notice Beckett’s relatively ungroomed state too.

“Yo, Beckett?”

“Uh?”

“Forget your lipstick?”

“And your comb?”

“Since when did you pair become the fashion police? Montgomery gave us ten minutes.  It took me that long to shower and get dressed again.”  She sits down.

“Not using your right hand there, Beckett.”

“I said I landed on it. It’ll be fine later.  I’ll get it checked out after shift.  Lanie’ll take a look.”  The boys look rather too obviously relieved.  “If I need a babysitter I’ll let you know.”

“ ‘S not that. ‘S that you’re goin’ to see Lanie.  You all patched up?”

“Yep,” says Beckett, in a very conversation-closing sort of way.

By five p.m. it is entirely obvious that Beckett will not be getting to the morgue by driving. She can’t bend her wrist at all and she’s had as many Aleve as she can take without poisoning herself.  She departs immediately shift is over, and hails a cab.  She could walk it, but every movement sends claws through her wrist.  She’s beginning to think she’s done more damage than she knew.  Still, Lanie will sort her out.