181. Don't blame yourself

Partway through the pizza, Alexis appears to Castle to be bracing herself to take some action. With a major effort of will, he doesn’t do anything to interfere. He has to let this play out, though he’s pretty certain that Alexis is about to try to apologise for Saturday.

“Detective Beckett?” She looks up. “Um… I’m sorry about what I said on Saturday. I didn’t want to make trouble.”

“You didn’t. You didn’t know about the past,” Beckett says seriously. “You can’t blame yourself for something you didn’t know.”

“Your dad said that,” Alexis falters.

“And he was right.”

“But…”

“Were you there when I was nineteen?” Beckett asks bluntly. “Did you stab my mother?”

Castle exhales as if punched. Alexis is stone-still. This is not the tack he would have taken.

“Did you know my dad, or offer him the bottle? No. You had nothing to do with this. It’s not your problem, and it never has been. It’s up to me and my dad to deal with, and you can’t go walking on eggshells just in case you say something that hits a nerve. I don’t want you to.” Beckett is still using the forceful, what-I-say-goes tone with which she’d begun. “We’re working it out, and people dancing round it doesn’t help. It just makes it a bigger issue.” She breathes. “You have nothing to apologise for. So don’t.” She breathes again. “Sometimes people asking the obvious questions shakes something loose. You did. Dad and I are better for it.” She holds Alexis’s eyes. “Listen to me. Don’t take blame on yourself for what others did. It never works out well. I blamed myself for Dad, and look where that got us.”

Castle puts his hand over Beckett’s, cramped round her soda glass. She forces herself to stop talking. Alexis says nothing, trying to process – Castle thinks – that she’s not in trouble; that she did something which actually helped.

“Pumpkin,” he says easily, “listen to Beckett. No-one’s blaming you for anything, and you shouldn’t either. Let’s just have a time-out from the heavy talk and eat the rest of the pizza before it goes cold and then have dessert.”   He gives Beckett a look which says and you need a time-out from the talking too, but I’m cool with what you said. It’s absolutely not how he would have done it: it had no subtlety of language or tact about the circumstances – but it’s rammed the absolute truth into his daughter’s face. You didn’t cause it. You didn’t help it along. It’s not your fault. Alexis can hardly do otherwise than believe it.

They eat the rest of the pizza in contemplative quiet, cut with the inaudible noise of hard thinking, after which Castle summons a server to provide dessert menus as everyone calms down. He turns conversation back to the murder case, which seems safest, and with the production of lavish quantities of ice-cream the tension eases off.

Alexis keeps sneaking peeks at Beckett, who is maintaining a sublimely oblivious surface which is utterly false. It’s fooling Alexis, though, who, teen-like, thinks that it’s all over. For her, for now, it is. He, on the other hand, is now wondering exactly what went down in Jim Beckett’s kitchen. Dad and I are better for it? She’d said the start of forgiveness. Whatever it was, it’s made a major change in their relationship.

Dinner finishes with no other areas of difficulty having been touched upon, and with Alexis regarding Beckett as some fabulous, but slightly remote, goddess (well, she is a goddess, but Alexis doesn’t need to know about that) who holds the secret to entry to Stanford (and from Castle’s viewpoint, the secret to entry to Heaven) and success. Conversation has been comfortable, though the more Castle has mentioned Alexis’s grades and chances of getting into a really good school the more Alexis has squirmed. Beckett has watched with a cool, sardonic smile, and finally told Alexis not to worry, that all fathers are equally embarrassing, and that no, as she’d seen on Saturday, they don’t grow out of it.

“Really?”

“Really. They’ll be like that forever.”

“Totally unreal.”

“Stop ganging up on me,” Castle whines. “It’s not fair.”

“I’m not,” Beckett points out. “I’m ganging up on fathers generally.”

Alexis snickers. Castle looks pained, and incidentally notices that Beckett’s fingers are still tightly locked, now not on the empty soda glass, but together. Hm. Not as cool as she makes out, then. On the other hand, she’s still here, Alexis is happy, and no-one is crying, yelling or shooting. And he is not dead. This is better than he had anticipated half an hour ago.

“It’s time I got home,” Alexis finally says, apologetically.

“That’s okay,” Beckett says. “School’s important.”

“I’ve had a really nice time, Detective Beckett. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Outside, Castle brushes a kiss over Beckett’s lips, notes her chill skin, and can’t do anything about it. He inducts Alexis into the cab that will take them home, hugs Beckett again, and whispers that he’ll call her later.

Beckett goes home with a feeling of achievement, tinged with some discomfort that she still can’t make herself be perfectly easy with Alexis. She chides herself for expecting everything to work out instantly just because she doesn’t need to see Burke every ten minutes any more, and attains the quiet surroundings of her home without further fretfulness.

She is, she realises, somewhat disconcerted by Alexis’s almost-hero-worship of her academic achievements, and more so by her complete non-stress about Beckett. It is, she works out far too slowly, entirely possible that Alexis hasn’t noticed Beckett’s tension: that tension not affecting Alexis in any way except that Castle spends time with Beckett here, not at the loft. In fact, Beckett’s been remarkably – not exactly self-important – but certainly guilty of thinking that her problems would have more of an effect on Alexis than they evidently had.

She arranges herself comfortably in a clutter of cushions on her couch and decides that if that’s the case, she just needs to make herself comfortable with going to the loft. Which still means without Martha there, but that’s not difficult either, since she’s directing and that will, Beckett expects, involve evenings. She contemplates the possibility of dinner at Castle’s loft with both Castle and Alexis, with extreme caution and in great detail, and eventually concludes that it might be possible, soon. Actually, maybe next week. Murder permitting, of course.

She can do this. She can absolutely do this, because she has managed it tonight. It’s just another small step. She’s taken the big step, several times over. The big step was watching Castle with his daughter. Where doesn’t matter. She’s been to the loft and made herself look round its family-home accoutrements. She’s taken that step too. All she has to do is put the two steps together into one. She can do it – and if she can’t do it for long, Castle will understand. He always does.

Her thinking segues into how delighted he’d been with his present, and she drifts into a small cloud of happiness that she’d pitched it right. Such a small thing, to make him happy, notwithstanding that Castle could probably be made happy by a walk in the park with an ice-cream and sunshine, although she’d have to fight him to be able to pay for the ice-cream. He has a huge capacity for happiness, and when she’s with him (or when she thinks about him) it has a tendency to rub off on her. So now she’s done something that she’d hoped would make him happy and it did. She cuddles the feeling close, and wishes that she could cuddle her Castle close as well.

Which is when the door sounds. Padding across to it, she discovers that it’s Castle.

“How did you get here?” she says, flabbergasted, throwing her arms around him and kissing him soundly. “I was just thinking about you.”

Castle’s ears colour. “Alexis sent me,” he admits. “She said she didn’t need me at home and Mother came in at that point declaring that directing her cast into something that would make it past the end of the first performance had exhausted her, so she wasn’t going anywhere that wasn’t the family room with a large glass of wine. So Alexis told me to come see you and – er – here I am.”

“Good,” Beckett says, and tows him to the couch. She plops down next to him, and snuggles in with her head on his shoulder. “I was thinking,” she says. Castle jerks to attention and her head falls off his shoulder. She humphs at him, and replaces it. “I think we should plan for me coming to dinner at the loft with you and Alexis. Set a date. A target.”

Castle boggles at her, and emits only some strangulated squawks which are entirely incoherent. Beckett rolls her eyes, raises an eyebrow, glares, and when none of these tried and tested methods return him to somewhere vaguely adjacent to normality pokes him in the ribs. Hard.

“Ow!” he squeaks. “Don’t do that. It’s not nice.”

“You were gibbering.”

“I was not. I don’t gibber.” Beckett regards him very sardonically. “I was just surprised. Taken aback.”

“If I want to take you aback, Castle, all I have to do is open your shirt and pants and push you over.”

Castle’s eyes darken. “Go ahead. Just don’t complain if I decide to do the same for you.”

“Focus.”

“You started it,” Castle points out innocently, and follows up by wrapping her into him and hoisting her into his lap.

“Dinner. In your loft. With your daughter. Date.”

“It’s not a date, Beckett. I don’t take my daughter on dates – ow! Stop that!” Beckett has prodded his ribs again.

“Stop being difficult. You know what I mean. Date for dinner in your loft with Alexis.”

“Oh. I like date dates.”

“We agreed Friday for that. Stop evading.” She pauses. “Or… don’t you think I should come to the loft yet?”

Castle stops his persiflaging instantly. “No, of course not. I think you should come right now and stay. Lots. But it’s up to you when you’re ready. Always up to you, Beckett.”

“So when?”

“Not this week.”

“I thought that,” she says, and curls an arm around his middle. “Too soon.”

“We can’t miss opening night.” Beckett makes a noise that doesn’t exactly indicate pleasure at the thought. “No, we can’t. Well, you could, but Alexis and I certainly can’t, and… well, it would be great if you would come with us.” He grins, a touch lopsidedly. “Share the pain. If Mother can make anything out of this mess, she’ll have worked a miracle that Manhattan hasn’t seen since… since… since…” He fails to think of something suitable. “Anyway, that’s not relevant. I want you to come with us.”

“Okay,” Beckett says, confusedly, “but couldn’t we go see something more entertaining instead? You know, like – oh, Coriolanus, or Titus Andronicus? If nothing else, I could watch how the murders are done.”

“I bet you like John Woo movies too.”

“Yep. And Quentin Tarantino.”

“Oooh,” Castle says happily. “Will you cuddle me if I get frightened by the bad guys?”

Beckett rolls her eyes despairingly. “Yes, Castle.”

“That’s okay then. I’ll protect you from A Midsummer Night’s Mare.” She snorts. “Now that you’ve finished distracting me” –

“Hey!” she objects –

“why don’t we fix it for a week Friday, because then no-one’s got school the next day.”

“I’ll be on call.”

“If there were a murder, you wouldn’t come to dinner anyway, on or off shift, and I’d be shadowing you. So we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.”

“Okay then,” Beckett says. “A week on Friday.”

“Opening night is Tuesday.”

Beckett acquires a very nasty smile. “I should be at therapy.” Castle’s smile becomes equally evil. “I have an idea.”

“So do I,” he lilts. “Do we have the same idea?”

“We should give Dr Burke tickets.”

“We do have the same idea.” They high five each other, and then collapse in evil snickering.

“That’ll be awesome,” Castle says happily.

Beckett makes a face. “He’ll find some way to enjoy it. Or pretend he does.”

“Yes, but then he’ll have to meet my mother.”

Her face clears. “I forgot that.” She sniggers. “Okay, it’ll still be fun.” She returns to seriousness. “So Tuesday is opening night, and Friday next week I’ll come to the loft. Just… make sure your mother is out?”

“Don’t worry,” Castle rumbles. “That won’t be a problem.” He tucks her in more comfortably, stroking down her arm and cossetting happily. “Now, since I’ve been thrown out of my own home, I’m officially homeless, unless some kind person will give me a bed for the night?”

“Mm, I don’t know. Are homeless people happy to share beds?”

Castle nuzzles into her neck. “They are if you’re in them.” He nuzzles some more. “Better than a teddy bear. They’re boring. You’re not boring,” he says childishly, and then drops his voice to velvet villainy. “You make such interesting noises when I share your bed.” His fingers wander from her arm to her collarbones, pause for thought, and then wander to the vee of her shirt. Shortly, there is no impediment to them wandering lower, or sideways, or round, or under. Shortly after that, Castle’s homeless state is entirely relieved for the evening.

Cleaned up, cuddled up, and completely coddled, Beckett snuggles into Castle’s broad warmth, ensures he can’t escape, and drifts into peaceful repose tucked into the perfectly shaped notch between arm and chest. Designed especially for her, she muses sleepily. She doesn’t need a manual, though The care and keeping of Castles might have been helpful earlier. Now, she simply needs to trust her instincts and her love for him, just like she had earlier in the week when she’d seen the coffee, the other day when she’d seen the book, and bought both on impulse.

Castle rumbles sleepily, rearranges her a tad to be placed to his satisfaction, cuddles her even closer, and falls asleep as quickly as a toddler. Not that he behaves like a toddler. Oh no. Very satisfyingly adult, her Castle. Very satisfyingly and assertively adult male. But now he’s wrapped round her in his usual reassuring fashion. She snuggles down and falls asleep almost as quickly as he had.

Castle wakes in the small hours, wondering sleepily why his foot is falling out of bed when there is always plenty of room in his immense edifice. He shouldn’t be falling out of bed. He becomes vaguely aware that he has been pushed right to the edge of the bed, which isn’t fair. Beckett isn’t allowed to thieve his bed. She’s supposed to share it. About that point, he recalls that this isn’t his bed. It’s Beckett’s. And it’s too small if she’s going to do that. She’s sprawled across it, taking up at least three times as much room as she should. He growls affectionately at her, and tries to push her into a more limited space – that is to say, only occupying one and a half times the space she should. It takes some effort, and is only achieved when he rolls her over and then spoons her in. He drifts into renewed somnolence wondering if Beckett steals the bed often, and if so how he’ll stop her. The best idea seems to be spooning. It certainly pleases him.

Beckett wakes to her nuclear-klaxon alarm, grumps at it, slaps on the sleep button, closes her eyes and pulls the pillow over her head as always – and finds that it doesn’t pull. This is not fair. She tugs harder, and finds that it still doesn’t pull. It transpires that Castle is leaning on it. Humph. On the other hand, not humph. She snuggles back into him and pulls his arm over her head – well, ear.

Ten minutes later the alarm screeches again, and this time Castle makes some very unhappy noises when she doesn’t slap it off.

“I have to get up,” Beckett points out.

“I don’t, though. Play hooky with me. C’mon.” He cuddles her very hopefully.

“Can’t. Comes of having a regular job. I’ve gotta be in for start of shift. No exceptions.”

“I could call Montgomery.”

“After last time you tried to sandbag him? Don’t you want to follow us any more? Because there are easier ways of leaving than with Montgomery’s Captainly boot up your ass.”

Castle grumbles and grumps and grouses and eventually simply ogles Beckett as she exits the bathroom after the fastest female shower in recorded history and embarks on her hair, make-up and clothing. Most unkindly, clothing includes a thoroughly minimal, beautiful and provocative deep red lingerie set, which she takes extreme pleasure in donning very slowly. Castle makes some very animalistic noises at that point, and is only discouraged from some very animalistic actions by Beckett tapping her Glock meaningfully. He humphs, but it doesn’t stop him ogling with considerable attention to detail and a certain amount of intensely provocative commentary. Sauce for the goose, after all…

Beckett leaves before Castle’s commentary can entice her back into bed, and with a suspiciously high colour around her cheeks and neck. Castle lies back, smirks at her departing back, and as soon as she’s out the door bounces up and takes advantage of the fact that he’s been left alone here to investigate. He does not, however, investigate her clothing. That would be creepy and voyeuristic, and if there is any voyeurism to be done, he’ll do it to Beckett in person. He does want to look around her bookshelves, and is perfectly happy with what he finds, in particular the complete set of his works. He grins happily to himself, tidies up, makes the bed, and locks up behind himself as he bounces home.

It still being relatively early, his mother has not emerged from her room yet. Castle makes coffee, and awaits her. He wants to talk about two things: easily and pleasantly the tickets for opening night; and possibly not so easily and pleasantly the arrangements for her moving to her new apartment. All the legalities need to be finalised with his attorney, and he’d like to get the movers instructed in good time. Albeit the moving in date is liable to be Saturday at the end of the month, the more that’s fixed the less argument there will be. He is not going back on this decision. He gulps his coffee and fortifies his resolve. He also texts Beckett, in case she should think he’s deserting her in favour of the recipe book. He receives back a very blandly sardonic (he assumes the latter adjective) text suggesting that Georgian cookery practice might be a good plan.