134. The name of the game

Not five minutes after Beckett arrives at her apartment she finds, entirely expectedly, Castle knocking on the door. He bounces in, casts an all-encompassing glance over her, and contents himself with a hug, at least until Beckett lifts her face from his shoulder, when he kisses her invitingly presented lips. One should never turn down opportunity.

“You okay?”

“S’pose,” Beckett grumps, stepping back with a sharply irritated click of heels.

“What’d he do to annoy you this time? Breathe?”

“I told him we’d all be playing Sorry on Friday and all he said was that that would be fascinating and he’d enjoy it. He didn’t even blink!” Beckett’s indignation is reaching ever higher pitches.

“He what?” Castle squawks. “How was he not even surprised? He’s not human, Beckett. He’s an AI from an Asimov novel. He must be. He’s from the future. If we tried to take a blood sample we’d get coolant fluid.”

“Time travel is a myth. The Three Laws of Robotics are fiction. Dr Burke – unfortunately – is human.”

“No, no. He must be an alien. No human could fail to be surprised at that. None.   You wait and see. He’ll crack his skin and a huge green slimy plantazoid will emerge like the one in Little Shop of Horrors and it’ll eat the patients and the furniture and the building and the whole of Manhattan and” –

“Stop, Castle!” He does, and looks falsely wounded. “There are no aliens. Dr Burke will not turn into a carnivorous plant.”

“You wanted to turn him into a frog the other day,” Castle points out.

“I didn’t say I could, though.” There’s a pout from Castle. “I know the difference between fantasy and reality.”

“So do I,” Castle purrs darkly at her. “Fantasy is what I dream about doing with you. Reality is when I do it.”

Beckett’s mouth opens and shuts and doesn’t say anything. She is blushing violently, but her eyes are wide and dark and full of forbidden knowledge.

“Like this,” he growls, and reaches for her: large hands closing around her hips, drawing her in. “Whether it’s fantasy or reality, it always starts with you right here in my arms, close against me. Every single time. You, fitting exactly against me, curved and soft and melting in: knowing that you’re mine.” The furry velvet of his deep, possessive tone rubs across her nerves. He drops small kisses over her hair and slants her head to move down and nip her ear, then follow up with another tiny kiss.

“We didn’t get to talk about dexterity yesterday,” he murmurs. “I think we should explore it now.”

“Mmm?” It doesn’t sound like much of an objection.

“Mm, yes. There are so many forms of dexterity, Beckett. Hands are only the beginning.”

“How about lips,” suddenly-Kat purrs, and demonstrates slowly and thoroughly from his mouth, via his ear, and then down his neck.

“I see your lips and raise you tongue,” Castle growls, and takes her mouth without mercy, stripping open her button-down as he does and then proving the dexterity of mouth and tongue all the way down to small firm breasts, which causes his gorgeous Kat to demonstrate that dexterity comes with claws, currently biting into his shoulders.

“Raise you fingers,” she husks, and flicks open buttons to set her hands under his shirt and on to hot bare skin.

“Raise you fingers,” and he slips his hands down over her ass to pull her tight against him and straightens up to roll into her and walk her backwards to her bedroom, his fingers dancing over her rear as he does. “See? Dexterity.” The fingers venture into dangerously seductive territory, then retreat. They – dextrously – wander around as they please, unbuckling and untucking and undoing and then tip-tapping so gently that his Kat doesn’t realise her pants are barely staying on until they aren’t. Fortunately at that point they’re already at her bed, just as Castle had calculated. He pushes her gently backwards to fall on her fat pillows: her shirt billowing open and her pants discarded.

“Dexterity,” he says. “Mm.” And then he proceeds to prove dexterity of all areas, deftly evading all Kat’s efforts to prove her own until he needn’t worry about that because she’s lost all dexterity as a result of his. At least for a while, and then she proves her own talents and after that neither of them can so much as pronounce dexterity for quite some time.

Afterwards, Castle re-dressed and Kat clad in her silkily strokable kimono, they’re curled up together on the couch, contentedly quiet – well, Castle’s Kat is occasionally emitting a happy little humming noise; and Castle is occasionally talking without saying anything much at all. It’s more a gently warming stream of affectionate nothingness.

“Are you okay with Friday?” Beckett suddenly says.

“Uh? Friday?” Castle fumbles out, confused. “What about Friday?”

“Friday. Dr Burke. Sorry with Dad.”

“Oh. Yeah. No problem.” His inconsequent thoughts take over. “Bet we find that he’s good at it.”

“I hope not.” Clearly Beckett is hoping for Dr Burke’s crushing defeat. She doesn’t like him any better now than she did at the start, even if she accepts that his method is working. Thinking of which…

“You’ll like this, Beckett”

“What?”

“If Dr Burke gets too much, I’ll just tell him that he’s the basis of a character. That’s not going to make him happy.”

Beckett sniggers nastily. “No way.” She stops. “Is he?”

Castle simultaneously blushes and smirks smugly. “I haven’t decided. I’ve got some notes.”

Beckett’s snigger turns into an even nastier full-out laugh. “Can Nikki shoot him?” she asks hopefully. “Or maybe he could be the villain.”

“Or get eaten by lions.”

“Or fall into the Hudson.”

“Or be kidnapped by aliens.”

“Not aliens. That’s silly.” But Beckett’s smiling and happy and cheered up, albeit at the expense of the unlucky Dr Burke. “Anyway, I should have asked you about Friday.”

“ ‘S okay. I’d have offered.”

Beckett snuggles closer in. “Thanks, Castle,” she says, but there’s much more in her voice and expressive eyes than the words alone convey. Unexpectedly, she says, “Are you okay?”

“Me?”

“You. Yesterday you were a bit wound up about your mother.”

“Yeah,” Castle says heavily. “She just won’t leave well alone.”

“You’ve listened to enough woe from me. If you wanna… er… Anyway, ‘m here,” she trails off in a very small and embarrassed voice. Castle hugs her hard.

“It’s okay. I don’t wanna talk about her now. But maybe you should clear a closet so I can move in at short notice?”

Beckett takes the clear hint to leave it alone for now. “I don’t know, Castle. Where would I put all my shoes?” She laughs, and kisses him. “You’d need to build me a shoe rack to go under the bed.”

“Me? Woodworking? Oh no, Beckett. You can’t domesticate me like that.”

She pouts at him, bats her eyelashes, and says in a very insincere and sugary voice, “But sweetie, real men do DIY.”

Castle roars with laughter and then takes hard possession of her mouth. Beckett’s giggling (giggling!) so much that she doesn’t offer up the least resistance to his raid, and so he conquers without quarter until giggles are replaced by soft moans.

“Real men,” he growls in a gravelly baritone, “use their hands however they think fit. My hands are good at writing. And they’re good at you.” Said hands trace down from her nape to the opening of her kimono, and delve inside, to play wickedly with the curved, malleable contents. “You fit my hands perfectly,” he rasps, and demonstrates: her breast filling one large palm. He rubs a thumb over her nipple, and she gasps and grips his arm, squeezing firm muscle. “Just right for fondling.” He gives the last word a lubricious intonation that conveys slightly sleazy wickedness. She wriggles under the touch, and then indulges in some fondling of her own.

Regretfully, Castle detaches both himself and Beckett from each other, before he doesn’t go home at all.

“I’ve got to go,” he murmurs.

“Hmph.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Beckett does nothing to help him leave. In fact, she pulls his head back to hers.

“I really do need to go.   I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Night.” She stands and pads with him to the door, and he can’t resist a final kiss, plastering her to him and rolling his hips against her till she’s lax and breathing hard, till he’s almost ready to take her back to bed, or just to take her right here. If he does that he won’t leave. He has to leave. He just really, really doesn’t want to leave.

He wrenches himself out the door, and takes his uncomfortable self home. When he gets there, he is still wound up, but not so much that he doesn’t start to feel more than a few pinpricks of conscience that he’d shut Beckett down when she’d only been offering the same as he’s repeatedly given her: a space to talk. She’d been offering an unjudgmental ear, and he’d squashed it. He doesn’t, he realises, want to confess his irritation and annoyance with his mother – his parent – when she’s got so many issues with her own parent… but actually that’s just an evasion. He feels unhappy and guilty that he could have lost his temper so much with his mother that he actually threatened her with eviction. He ought to respect her as his parent, and all the effort she’s put in to keep their bodies and souls together when he was young. Except – she’s not exactly respecting him either.

It’s all too difficult for late at night. The only thing he can do is to push aside his own discomfort at admitting there are any flaws in his family life, and take up Beckett’s rather astonishing invitation, given the depth of her own problems – which should be all on which she needs to concentrate – to let her help him.

Behind him, Beckett takes her uncomfortable self to a tepid shower, and then to her cool sheets. Her dreams are confusing and nightmarishly unpleasant, and when she wakes in the small hours, disoriented and shocked, Castle isn’t there. She sighs unhappily, turns over, and disciplines herself back to sleep. In the morning, she’s still a little unsteady, and the more she tries to get past it, the more she realises that it’s because Castle wouldn’t tell her what’s wrong with him. She doesn’t like Castle being out of sorts: it disconcerts her; and not turning to her makes her feel a little second-best in this partnership; a little bit the weaker link. She doesn’t like that, either. Still, he hadn’t forced her to talk when she didn’t want to, so she should respect him in the same way. He’ll – as she had – talk when he’s ready. It had taken her months. She wonders if he’d had this same feeling of slightly second-bestness, and if he had, how much it might explain.

For the next couple of days, the bullpen is full of mundane murders and casually caused corpses. The team snaps into action, Castle does duty as chief coffee-concoctor and general helpmeet, since the only enjoyable part of the day is going to the crime scenes – that’s interesting, but then it’s all waiting for the lab, the prints, the camera footage – there isn’t even anyone to interview, nor grieving relatives to tell. This is no fun. On the other hand, the snap, snark and sparkle of Beckett and team at full forward momentum is fun, even if the corpses aren’t. So the remains of the week pass.

“Jim Beckett speaking.”

“Jim, this is Carter Burke.”

“Hello.” There is an entirely predictable note of alarm in Mr Beckett’s greeting.

“Your daughter requests that you attend her session on Friday,” Dr Burke says bluntly. Such bluntness is most likely to relieve Mr Beckett’s stress, rather than wasting time on pleasantries.

“Again?”

“Indeed.” There is a short silence.

“Why?”

“She is continuing to try to comprehend her own feelings and to understand her relationship with you.”

“You mean she can’t decide if I’m a manipulative liar who emotionally abused her or just a pathetic, unreliable lush,” Jim says bitterly.

“If she thought those to be her choices, Jim, as I have previously pointed out, she would not ask for you.” Dr Burke does not, quite, snap. Detective Beckett’s self-disgust is quite enough to have to cope with. He will not permit Mr Beckett to follow the same path. Genetics does not determine personality. Experience does, in his view, backed up by his own research.

“However, your daughter, no doubt as a consequence of her occupation, requires evidence and proof sufficient to satisfy her own doubts and alleviate her own long-held misconceptions and misgivings. She must prove to herself that you have forgiven her for leaving you.”

There is another silence, lasting slightly longer.

“Guess that’s me told,” Mr Beckett eventually says, ruefully. “It’s not about me, is it? It’s all about Katie. You’re wrong about one thing, though. She’s always been like that. Nothing to do with her job. Whether that’s nature or nurture I don’t know.”

“Mm. In any event, she wishes that you should be present on Friday. However, there are two matters of which you should be aware, beforehand.”

“Oh God,” Mr Beckett emits. “What now?”

“I believe these matters to be more positive than any earlier items.”

“They could hardly be worse, Carter. So far I’ve discovered that she thinks I abused her emotionally; that I told her to leave because she wasn’t Johanna; that her original therapist was criminally incompetent; and that’s without even starting on everything she said last time. She said she couldn’t grieve because I was such a mess and couldn’t support her. So I really don’t think we can get much worse.”

“This is very hard for you, but I assess that, with the assistance of your sponsor, you are coping.”

“I have to. If I don’t, I’ll certainly never see Katie again. At least this way there’s a chance.” Mr Beckett’s tone changes from unhappy to determined. “So what do I need to know this time?”

“Your daughter intends that we should all play a board game.”

“She what?”

Mr Beckett’s fierce intelligence comes to the fore.

“She wants us to play Sorry? Really?”

“Indeed. Your daughter, Mr Castle” –

“I bet. I just knew Rick would be in there somewhere.” –

“yourself and I are all to play. I have never played this game, and I expect it will be very interesting.”

“At least it’s not Monopoly. That always used to end in a fight. Katie doesn’t like losing.”

This does not surprise Dr Burke in the slightest.

“None of us did.” Nor does that.

“Why on earth does she want us to play Sorry?”

“She thinks that it might make discussions easier. She spoke fondly of playing this game at Christmas, and shortly thereafter.”

Dr Burke hears the sounds of Mr Beckett blowing his nose.

“Okay, that’s one surprise. What’s the other?”

“She wishes you to start the conversation.”

Dr Burke hears a strangled splutter. “Is everything all right?” he inquires hastily, into Mr Beckett’s coughing fit.

“She wants me to talk?” Mr Beckett splutters. “What about?”

“That is why we are talking now.” Dr Burke pauses. “If you were able to speak entirely freely with your daughter, what would you say to her?”

“I don’t know,” Mr Beckett says dispiritedly.   “Nothing I’ve said so far’s made the slightest difference. I keep saying I’m sorry but she doesn’t believe me.”

Dr Burke changes tack. “We are to play a game which your daughter carefully selected as a Christmas gift for you and which, she has informed me, she had very much enjoyed playing with you both on Christmas day and for some time thereafter. Indeed, it appears that until the misunderstanding which caused a breach with you occurred, she had felt that it was the closest that you and she had been in many years. I therefore consider that it is very likely that the selection of this game is important, even though I also believe that the original idea to play it may have originated from Mr Castle.”

“Damn straight,” Mr Beckett agrees. “There’s no way Katie came up with that idea. So Rick’s still trying to fix things? That’s good to know.”

“Oh?”

“He’s totally on Katie’s side – as he should be. I wouldn’t think much of him if he wasn’t. But he’s a father too, so he can see both sides, even if he’s planted on the other one,” he says, rather wistfully. “He’s good for her. She can’t push him around. She needs someone who’ll stand up to her.”

Dr Burke is not sure that Mr Castle stands up to Detective Beckett, precisely. He would characterise it as letting her exhaust herself, and then presenting a route forward at a moment when it is most likely to be accepted. It is, in fact, an ability to absorb her moods, much as the sea absorbs a punch. He registers a momentary annoyance at his overly-descriptive thought. Really, Mr Castle’s ridiculously imprecise language is almost infectious.

“Be that as it may, Jim, though I do not disagree with your conclusions, it would be helpful to consider why your daughter might wish us all to play a game rather than simply talking.”

Dr Burke allows his comment to register, and waits patiently as Mr Beckett ponders the point.

“It was great, playing it at Christmas,” Mr Beckett eventually says. “Katie was really relaxed. Actually, looking at it now, I’d never seen her so relaxed. I teased her a bit about Rick, but mostly we played the game and, you know, Carter, we had fun. She even hugged me before she left. Properly, not some socially conventional gesture.” He pauses for further thought, and stays quiet for some few moments.

“Maybe she’s trying to take some of the stress out the situation?” he asks doubtfully. “If we’ve all got something else to think about, then it won’t be such an intense meeting?”

“That is certainly a possibility,” Dr Burke says with some emphasis on the indefinite article.

“You said she’d picked this game because it meant something to her,” Mr Beckett muses. “Um… maybe she’s hoping that it’ll remind her how we were then? Maybe,” he says more certainly, “maybe she’s hoping that it’ll show her what I really feel? That something about doing something – well, normal, sort of family thing – will help?”

“I strongly suspect so.”

Mr Beckett shrugs. “I guess we’ll find out. Usual time?”

“Yes. I look forward to it. I have never played this game, and I look forward to finding out how one does.”

“You’ll enjoy it. Good night, Carter.”

“Good night.”