169. Turn me inside out

She hits her desk with seconds to spare, much to everyone’s amusement except hers.

“Hey, Beckett, what’s kept you? Is there a shoe sale at Saks that you had to get to?”

“Nah, can’t be that. No bags.”

“She could get them delivered.”

“No shopping, boys,” Beckett says firmly.

“No? So where’ve you been? You missed dim sum lunch. Gotta have a good reason for that.”

“Sure I do.”

“And?”

“That’s for me to know and you not to find out.”

“Beckett,” they whine. She rolls her eyes, and then glares in a way which is decidedly not humorous at all. The boys decide that they don’t need to know. They’d like to know, obviously, but not at the expense of their testicles. They might need those. They do notice that Castle is not whining right along with them, and being as they are hotshot detectives, they detect that he might well know what Beckett’s been doing all lunchtime. C’mon, it was dim sum. Beckett’s normally in there with the faster-than-light chopsticks, so there must be a really good reason for her to have missed out.

A small amount of discreet observation later tells Espo that Castle certainly knows what went down at lunchtime. He’s given Beckett one of those concerned glances that tell the experienced observer that he’s worried about her (that man has no poker face at all where Beckett’s concerned, which makes it deeply weird that he manages it all the rest of the time and especially when picking their pockets over the poker table), Beckett’s returned a small smile that equally clearly says later, and Castle’s relaxed completely.

“Hey,” Espo nudges Ryan. “You think Castle knows what’s up?”

“Sure he does. You think he’s gonna spill? I don’t.”

Espo considers. Castle has been notably silent on the subject of Beckett every time he’s been pushed. On the other hand, the team (which includes Castle) needs to be tight.

“Maybe not. I don’t want her goin’ off ill again, leavin’ us all the paperwork. We got a right to know that.”

“She doesn’t look ill.”

“So? Didn’t last time.”

“This is not a good plan, Espo,” Ryan says dispiritedly.

Beckett appears to be working through her cases the next time Castle goes to the break room. Espo had considered waiting for the next time he went to the restroom but then decided that that would simply be rude. A man’s time in the restroom is sacred and should proceed in silence.

“Yo.”

“Espo,” Castle returns, with a too-intelligent look in his eye. “No, I don’t know. No, I wouldn’t tell you if I did. Yes, everything is okay. Are we done now?” He turns back to finish off both coffees. Espo is quite sure that it’s against the guy code to be drawing pretty patterns in the foam. The thought takes his mind off the bright blade of Castle’s perception that’s just cut him off at the knees.

“Yeah. But…”

“It’s okay,” Castle says with emphasis. “Leave it. If you need to step in you’ll know, like with Lanie.”

Espo growls, agreeing but not particularly content, and retreats. Ryan regards his scowl without sympathy.

“Told you it was a bad plan.”

Espo’s scowl intensifies. Ryan retreats to the safety of screening camera footage.

“Espo bothering you?”

“No,” Castle says sunnily.

“Hm,” emerges with scepticism.

“Really no.” He smirks evilly. “I think I’m bothering him, though.”

“When I need a protection detail I’ll let him know. He can organise it from his walker because he’ll be eighty-five.”

Castle splutters out his coffee, and chortles. “Mean,” he says, eyes sparkling.

“I don’t need a nanny.”

“I’d like a night nurse, rather than a nanny,” Castle smirks evilly. “One who’d make sure I was comfortably tucked up in bed and” –

“treated for the flu?”

Castle pouts. “Not quite what I was envisaging. Goodnight kisses were more like it.”

Beckett smirks nastily right back at him, and then turns back to her cases, passing Castle the next folder.

“There. See if you can find anything useful in this one.”

“Does it have nurses?”

“No,” Beckett sighs. “No nurses.” She blinks. “I haven’t seen Lanie for a while.”

“Lanie’s not a nurse.”

“I know that.” Her voice says dumbass. “I wonder if she wants to go out sometime?” She looks at Castle’s mischievously crinkling eyes. “Women only.” He pouts again, and then drops it when she simply stares him down. “But not tonight.” He looks studiedly hopeful. “I need to do some more thinking,” she says quietly. “I need to finish it off. Understand.”

He’s about to say something when Montgomery wanders absolutely not meaningfully out from his office, gazes around at some suddenly very obviously hard-working detectives, and wanders back in, radiating Captainly authority. The bullpen is very quiet for some time thereafter. Even Castle doesn’t talk, though that’s got more to do with his wonderings about what Beckett has worked out over lunchtime and why she isn’t finished yet than any ability to keep his mouth closed when Beckett is trying to concentrate.

Beckett doesn’t want to discuss her unfinished thoughts with anyone until she’s finished sorting them out for herself. Castle doesn’t look precisely reassured by her last words, but Montgomery’s piece of careful Captaining is a pretty clear signal that he’s noticed a certain lack of work being done. Since being carpeted by Montgomery is a stress factor she really doesn’t need, she provides an apologetic smile to Castle and puts her head down for the rest of the afternoon.

Beckett is entirely unsurprised that Castle follows her out with a determined-to-hitch-a-ride demeanour.

“Yes, you can catch a ride home,” she sighs. Castle simply grins.

“It’s my bounden duty,” he says pompously, “to ensure that you get home safely.”

“I am dropping you off. How’s that ensuring I get home safely?”

“Um…”

“What you really mean is am I okay? Yes. But I need to do some more thinking and – er” – she blushes – “you’re a distraction.”

“I sure hope so,” he leers cheerfully. “I could distract all the worries right out of your head.”

“Not tonight.”

She has to be firm about that. Because, yet again, she’d rather do almost anything, including amputating her own leg without anaesthetic, than finish the thinking she has to do. But she’s not a coward and she’s not an idiot and if she ever wants this fixed she has to do the thinking. And considering. Her lips twist at the lemon-bitter taste of that thought.

“Shooting Burke won’t solve anything,” Castle points out with feeling.

“I’d feel better,” Beckett replies automatically, and then, “How did you know I was thinking about Burke?”

“You looked like you’d bitten a lemon. It was obvious.”

“Okay, I won’t shoot him.” She pulls up. “See you tomorrow.”

“Till tomorrow.” She is entirely unsurprised when Castle brings her face to his and provides her with a kiss that tightens every muscle she possesses. “There,” he says with satisfaction. “Now you won’t forget me.”

“Like that’s possible in twenty-four hours? It takes a lot longer than that” –

“To forget perfection?”

“To move your ego out the way.”

“Mean. Very mean.” But his fingers are threading through hers: warm on her leg. “I’d better go and work on my self-esteem, since you’ve zeroed it.”

“Not possible. You’ll be bouncing in tomorrow just the same as ever.”

“No, not unless you make me feel better.”

Beckett rolls her eyes at him. She knows what’s coming.

“I want another kiss. To make up for you being mean.”

“What are you, six?”

“And then some. You owe me a kiss.”

He looks pleadingly at her, eyes wide and limpid and innocent. It’s entirely insincere, she knows he’s simply messing with her, and she still can’t resist leaning in and providing him with the kiss he wanted.

“There. Happy now?” But she can’t manage too much snark.

“Yep,” Castle says cheerily. “Till tomorrow.” He slides out the car before she can retaliate.

Beckett turns for home, and for once is grateful for every stop light. It can’t delay it for ever, though, and soon enough she’s home, making mac ‘n’ cheese and salad, and then tea (not coffee) while her thoughts run around her head. She supposes she’d better try to chase them down and corral them.

Okay. So at lunchtime she’d worked out that she’s got to avoid falling into the pattern of thinking the way someone else thinks she should. Okay. So if she’s worked out that she shouldn’t feel guilty about her own feelings and she should trust her instincts – why did she get so wound up about Martha’s words anyway? How could she have been so easily knocked over? It’s not like she’s stunningly fond of Martha, to say the least, and they barely know each other anyway. The only way that could hit her that hard is if it connects to something else, so she’d better find out what it was before someone else trips the issue – she really does not need a rerun of the mess she’d got herself into with the Berowitzes. She sips her tea.

Oh. If she was completely reconciled to what she’d done, she’d not be so easily overset. Ugh. That’s back to something she’d touched and backed off from: she hasn’t forgiven herself. That’s why she isn’t trusting her instincts, either.

None of which is anything to do with considering the compromises Castle’s made and what, if anything, she gave back in return, which is the homework she’s supposed to be doing. She has another sizeable mouthful of tea, and forcibly redirects her skittering thoughts to think back to all the times he’s compromised – in her view.

She draws a neat line down the middle of a sheet of paper, and starts to think. Half an hour of focused thought later, she has a bullet point list, very like she might have for a homicide, of the times she thinks that Castle’s made compromises. Dauntingly, it runs all the way down the left hand side. On the right hand side, she simply writes down exactly what she had, or hadn’t, done in response. Then she makes herself a very strong pot of coffee and takes out her emergency supply of chocolate. And then she reads it back, wincing at each line. It seems unbalanced, to her: the scales tilted and overweight on the left hand side. She adds a few points, folds it up, leaves it for now, and takes herself, the half-pot that’s left of her coffee and her few fragments of remaining chocolate to curl up under her warm comforter and try to straighten out her head. She’s deep down chilled, despite the May warmth only now leaving the air. Her actions appear pathetically inadequate, compared with Castle’s.

On arriving home at the relatively early hour of six p.m., Castle takes refuge from a pile of interior design magazines and a lively discussion between his mother and daughter on the merits of a tiger-skin rug (fake, he assumes) in creating a Bohemian ambiance suitable for an award-winning actor by slipping unnoticed into his office. Behind him, the design argument rages without a single pause.

He’s happily logging into his favourite websites (the ones where all his fans congregate and adore him in fulsomely overstated terms, but it’s nice all the same) when his phone rings with an unfamiliar number.

“Rick Castle.”

“Mr Castle,” says a very familiar tone.

“Dr Burke? What – why – Beckett?”

“Detective Beckett is, to the best of my knowledge, perfectly well.”

Castle breathes out a long sigh of relief.

“I wish to ask you to undertake an exercise for me.”

“Yeah?” Castle drags out, suspiciously.

“I am relying on Detective Beckett’s permission to discuss her treatment with you, which she has not revoked. She has been asked to list the occasions on which she considers that you have compromised, and then list her actions, or lack of actions, in response. I wish you to undertake the same exercise, from your point of view.”

“I see,” Castle says slowly. “That explains quite a lot. She said you’d asked her to. I guess you want her to see that her view and mine don’t match up.”

“It would be true to say that I expect there to be some substantial differences,” Dr Burke says carefully. “Your mother’s visit has left Detective Beckett uncertain of her position, and has not assisted her in dealing with her own guilt relating to her actions towards her father.”

Castle growls. “You don’t say. Tell me something I didn’t know.”

“I suspect that is very little, where Detective Beckett is concerned,” Dr Burke responds dryly. “Will you be able to undertake the exercise?”

“Yes. What do you want me to do with it?”

“Please perform it in writing, and then supply it to me prior to Friday’s session, if you are able?”

“Okay.”

“Thank you. It may be most sensible for the initial portion of the session not to include you, so that Detective Beckett may consider your thoughts without being tempted to discuss them with you. That, of course, will be her decision, but I recommend that you have some means of occupying yourself with you. Goodnight.”

“Bye.”

Castle regards his phone warily, in case a snake, or a frog, or a unicorn, might emerge from it next; any of which would be no more surprising than Dr Burke’s call. It puts Tuesday evening in perspective, he supposes, though he’d probably worked most of it out. Beckett thinking that she isn’t enough, again. He expects that Dr Burke is going to point out to her the differences between what she thinks and what he thinks in each circumstance. With some considerable amusement, he starts on his share of the game. On balance, as he works his way down the list of every time Beckett probably thinks he’s compromised – which is not at all the same as each time he thinks he’s compromised, which he marks with an asterisk, which asterisk appears considerably less often than one time in three – he thinks that in addition to not being present, he’ll absolutely not tell Beckett that he’s been asked to do this. Either she’ll argue that he shouldn’t do it, or she’ll want to see his list and then argue with his answers. Neither is conducive to his mental harmony. Much better to avoid the issue. It’s for his own good.

He snickers to himself, and carries on tapping at his list. He’ll e-mail it to Dr Burke, and it’s a lot faster to type it if he’s going to do that. Also, it might be legible. His handwriting is not.

Some time later, he finishes, saves the document for later review, and pads out to discover if the art of interior design has been sufficiently violated for one day. From the Titian stereo soundtrack, it appears that Jackson Pollock’s style met Caravaggio’s and they didn’t get on. He considers running off to find his own personal Botticelli Venus and then remembers that she wanted to think. He retreats, rapidly, before he is asked for an opinion, which will only get him in trouble.

Dr Burke considers Mr Castle’s list of compromises and actions, which had arrived early that morning under a short covering note explaining that the starred lines are the ones he believes to be compromises, but that he’d included all the actions that he thought Beckett would regard as compromises. Dr Burke laments once more the loss to psychiatry occasioned by Mr Castle’s early decision in his life to take up novel writing as he reads through the neatly organised list.

He compares it to Detective Beckett’s list, which had been dropped off at lunchtime. Hers is handwritten, but equally organised. It is however, much briefer in form. Each incident is described in the sparest of terms. Interestingly, however, both lists cover exactly the same events. Of course, Mr Castle does not consider the majority of those events to amount to compromising on his part. Dr Burke is reminded that he had thought that Mr Castle simply absorbs Detective Beckett’s moods, without, in general, being overly affected by them, and then acts. Here is the proof of that thesis.

Dr Burke is intrigued by the breadth that Detective Beckett gives to the concept of compromise. It is no surprise to him that she considers perfectly ordinary give and take to be such, however, when she has for ten years measured every action against the unattainable paradigm of the perfect daughter. It is equally no surprise that her guilt is reasserting itself, when she appears to believe that so many actions require reciprocity. Dr Burke, on reading Mr Castle’s list, observes without any surprise whatsoever that Mr Castle considers Detective Beckett’s romantic inclinations to be ample reciprocity. Dr Burke is quite capable of interpreting the subtext, veiled as it is. He would hardly be the practitioner that he is could he not.

He contemplates both lists thoroughly, analysing them in the light of both personalities, and becomes distressingly aware that the next session will approach the field of relationship counselling. Of course, he is as competent in that field as in every other, but it is an area in which he has heretofore had very little interest, and he is not inclined to alter his outlook in anything more than a temporary manner simply because one particularly complex case requires it.

A short time later Dr Burke’s analysis is complete. He completes his work by placing a brief call to Mr Castle, to remind him that he may be asked not to be present for some part of Friday’s session, and leaves his office to catch his train back to Westchester. Yesterday he had advised Mr Beckett that he need not attend on Friday, and had been pleasantly content that Mr Beckett had both understood and been heartened by the circumstances.

In Grand Central Station, Dr Burke discovers to his considerable irritation that he has left at his office both his copy of the New Republic and a discussion paper on the advantages and disadvantages of medication vis-à-vis more traditional methods of psychiatric treatment. He does not have time to return for them, as he endeavours never to miss having dinner with his wife. He is very grateful for their marriage, which has now lasted for thirty-five years for which they have enjoyed considerable happiness. He would, he muses, be quite devastated were he to lose her, although this is, he hopes, unlikely for many years to come.

He turns his mind away from the pleasant thought of an evening with his wife to the much less satisfactory issue that he now has nothing to read on the hour’s journey home. He had read the daily newspaper on his journey this morning, and there are no other periodicals in which he takes an interest which he has not already perused. His irritation increases. He has mere minutes before he will take up his place upon the platform, carefully assessed to ensure that he will exit with least difficulty at his stop. He cannot bear the thought of having no reading material. He resigns himself to the inevitable, and rapidly enters Hudson News. There, his eye lands on a book written by Mr Castle, which is prominently displayed in an ostentatiously self-promoting fashion. Dr Burke, already short of time, recalls his thought that he might better understand Mr Castle were he to attempt to read one of his novels, and reflects wearily that he might as well do so now, when he has no more important matter to which he might attend. The thought does not improve his mood. Wincing internally at the vagaries of so-called popular taste, to which the lurid cover art is undoubtedly intended to appeal, he pays and hurries to his train, concealing the cover of the novel as he sits down. With no expectation of any enjoyment at all, he opens it.

Sixty minutes later, he very nearly fails to notice that his station has been reached, and has to hurry off the train, flustered.