Next Summer
Castle fic, set a year after the events of A Deadly Game, in which I attempt to right a few wrongs. It's been in progress for a while, so it doesn't fit with what we now know to be canon, but I'm hoping you'll enjoy it still.
Reviews always much appreciated!
"This was a bad idea, Lanie…" she sighs, staring out of the window as the beach houses come into view, with their high security gatehouses and price tags she could only dream of. Lanie makes a strange noise that sounds something like a laugh in her throat, and turns to her friend.
"It didn't take all that much to persuade you…"
Beckett runs a hand nervously through her hair. "You know this is all some big, elaborate gesture of… I don't know… something, right?"
Lanie laughs out loud this time. "It's all for you, girl, and I think you know that…"
Beckett frowns as the car draws into the street and she catches the first glimpse of the houses – she can't help but catch her breath. They're beautiful, both of them, and she can see the sea in the gap between them, metres away, past long back gardens and a fairly sizeable stretch of white sand.
"Beginning to regret not taking this opportunity last summer?" Lanie raises an eyebrow, but the look her friend shoots her tells her they're not ready to joke about any of that, not yet. Beckett sighs lightly as she stares in wide eyed awe at the Hamptons houses, framed in bright sunshine, set slightly away from the others on the wide strip. Lanie doesn't say anything else, but the words hung unsaid in the air, and they both know what Beckett's thinking about – what if she hadn't been with Demming, what if she hadn't turned him down the first time, what if she'd spent the summer here, with him?
What then? She's almost afraid of daring to ask herself, so she simply stares through the silence as the car – sent for her and Lanie by Castle – draws up right outside.
Ridiculously, her heart does something strange when she sees them all. Ryan and Jenny, Montgomery and his family, Esposito, Martha, Alexis and Castle. Apparently their driver took the long route, and they're all standing on the side of the strip, varying severities of suitcases stacked beside them. Suddenly, she has no desire to get out of the car.
"This was definitely a bad idea, Lanie…"
She's known that, really, since Castle suggested it. Surprisingly, their friendship has survived last summer and everything that happened (though it was everything that didn't happen that was really the problem) but things have changed. There's a big empty space between them now, where before he wouldn't have hesitated to lean right forward into it, almost rudely, make her as uncomfortable as possible – part of her wishes he still would, the other part chastises the more liberal Kate, telling her it's for the best. There's the elephant in the room, the fact that he spent the summer at the Hamptons with Gina and he thinks she spent the summer with Demming, not breaking up with him until he was almost home. It's an assumption he seems to have made, and she's never had the heart to correct him.
She tells herself it's because it would only lead to awkward conversations about fleeting moments that they both missed, that everything's passed now, they should both move on.
She tells herself that apart from a few dates, most of them orchestrated by Lanie, the reason she hasn't seen anyone since Demming is because of her job, she's moved on… just hasn't had the chance to show it yet.
Most days, Kate Beckett is fully aware that everything she's telling herself is absolute crap. But life goes on, Castle goes on, and they both pretend nothing's changed, that they don't feel the sudden solid space between them, not unlike the repulsion of two like poles of a magnet.
That's wrong, she thinks, because they're not alike at all, her and Castle, and she's always seen that as the problem.
But she had no way of arguing when after a difficult case, with the summer approaching, Castle swooped into the Precinct and announced that the adjacent house to his at the Hamptons was free for a weekend and he was offering an all-expenses-paid weekend of cocktails, sand and sunshine.
For the whole lot of them.
Even now, Beckett has no idea how he managed to persuade all of them to do it. No idea how they'd all managed to get the leave from work – she's sure there's someone back at the Precinct wondering slightly bewilderedly where the homicide department have disappeared to – and she knows they wouldn't have done it for anyone other than Castle.
So here she is, Lanie half-dragging her out of the car, in front of two of the most beautiful houses she's ever seen, and she's wondering how she and Castle are going to keep pretending to have suffered acute amnesia with regards to last summer, now they're here.
Now everything she just missed out on is only a hair's breadth away.
"There are, uh, five bedrooms next door… and I've got one spare in my place…" Castle is saying, and before it happens, Beckett knows she's about to be betrayed. Lanie, Ryan and Esposito shift almost inconceivably in the direction of the rented house, and Lanie seems to be refusing the meet her gaze. Montgomery gives her an almost imperceptible shrug, and in that moment she realises she may be able to put to use the large number of ways to kill a person she's managed to compile over her time at the NYPD.
"You can take the spare room with us, Kate…" Alexis says, "It's got a bathroom with a whirlpool bath and everything…"
Beckett will take a metre square outhouse if she doesn't have to be constantly in a twenty metre radius of Castle, but she can't refuse his daughter anything, and with one last, murderous glance at Lanie – what would it take though, really? All her friend has to say was something along the lines of 'Kate and I will share' and the awkward situation would evaporate as quickly as it has appeared – she forces the smile onto her face, and starts to drag her weekend bag in the direction of Castle's Hamptons house.
Only she's a year too late, and under altogether different circumstances. This is practically kidnap; she muses as Castle smoothly slides in and takes her bag from her to carry up the stairs, not leaving her the opportunity to protest. He runs all three of their bag up the stairs, impressively not buckling even under the weight of Martha's, a giddy smile on his face she wishes didn't bring a slight curve to her own mouth.
She takes a deep breath, stepping through the doors, hoping nothing too beautiful will assault her right now, because she's not sure she's ready for it.
As seems to have become the pattern, her prayers are not answered. The high-ceilinged, bright, open hall way leaves her mouth gaping open, and he's standing slightly too close to her, smiling widely, setting her bag down beside her.
"It's beautiful, Castle." She whispers, and without taking his eyes off her face, he grunts his agreement, like the biggest cliché in history, the scene he'd never be able to bring himself to write.
Alexis is too busy dragging her bag up the stairs to notice anything is amiss, but Martha stands slightly behind them, suddenly overwhelmed by the expression on her son's face – she's not sure she's ever seen it before.
Castle finds himself pacing up and down the corridor four times before knocking on Beckett's door.
"Come in, Alexis." He hears, and he has to tear his hand away from the doorknob before he bursts inside.
"It's Castle."
There's a heavy, confused silence. Even in a year, they haven't quite worked out all the rules yet. They certainly haven't figured this one out. He hears her rummaging with something.
"Come in."
He opens the door slowly, his heart thumping in his chest like a horny teenager, and he has to grit his teeth to steel himself. As it is, he has shown remarkable foresight. Beckett is standing in front of the wardrobe dressed in nothing but a modest black bikini with a light kaftan over the top, made of a pale blue sheer material with absolutely no opacity whatsoever. His mouth runs dry, instantly.
She turns to him, her eyebrows slightly raised, a touch of a smile on her lips, and for a moment it's as if nothing has changed at all, the past year hasn't happened.
"You wanted something?" she says in that dead tone he's nowhere near to getting used to, and he realises everything has happened, everything's been all too real. He forces the easy smile anyway.
"Just to let you know that there's going to be a small party on the beach tonight… I'm just headed next door to let them know… I… Alexis would love it if you'd join us…"
She gives a tight smile, and it's more than nothing, and his heart warms.
"Sure." She manages, keeping her lips in tight formation, wondering how much of her it would really take to let loose, just for a second, as if nothing had changed.
"Wear something-" he starts, and then trails off, his eyes shamelessly roaming over her, his expression slightly bemused. "Never mind. You always look beautiful."
A year ago, she would have threatened to shoot him, or made some other sarcastic comment. She would have thought it one of his bad come-ons; she would have rolled her eyes and thought nothing of it. But as Castle turns and leaves the room without another word to her, she feels a wordless response stick in her throat, her chest tighten and her eyes sting. There's something so sincere in his voice she finds her heart beating faster and her mouth turn dry.
He sounds like he means it.
"How come you never come over anymore?" Alexis asks, lightly, casually, but the question makes Beckett's heart thump and a lump rise in her throat. She turns on her side on the sun bed beside Castle's pool and props herself up on her elbow. She owes his daughter honesty, if nothing else, but she can't bring herself to reveal anything, she's become so used to concealing it all.
"Oh, y'know, work's been busy…"
Alexis raises her eyebrows the same way her father does when he doesn't believe a word of the crap that's spilling out of her mouth.
"I thought work was always busy… but you used to have dinner with us and stuff… and do paperwork with Dad… but this year…" she trails off, finishing rubbing in her sun lotion and then passing the bottle to Beckett. "Can you do my back?"
The detective nods, and Alexis turns, facing away from her, holding long red hair out of the way of her pale skin.
"It's complicated, Alexis…" Beckett attempts, and the girl spins round, giving her a disdainful look.
"I'm not four years old, Kate." She deadpans, "You can't brush me off like that. What happened last summer?"
Beckett blanches, her heart thudding. "Look, Alexis…"
"It just seems like something changed between you and Dad by the time I got back from Princeton… he wasn't working with you as much anymore and everything seemed… different…"
She gives a tight smile, takes a deep breath.
"I thought he was bringing you here, anyway…. He seemed so excited about it…"
That almost finishes her off. She rubs the remainder of the lotion into Alexis' back, and the youngest Castle turns round, expectant eyes on Kate.
"He asked me…" she breathes, not able to speak the words any louder, "He asked me, and I said no… and then… everything seemed to fall into place, and I was with Demming, and I didn't want to be with Demming anymore…"
Alexis' eyes widen slightly, but she doesn't interrupt the story Beckett's struggled to tell anyone, for a whole year.
"I broke up with Demming, and I was about to tell your ridiculous, incorrigible father that I would come with him after all… and his ex wife saunters into the Precinct, and he announces they're both going together, for the whole summer…"
At this, Alexis' jaw drops. "He took Gina?" she hisses. Beckett nods.
"I'm gonna kill him." Richard Castle's daughter fumes, twisting her fingers through her hair, infuriated. "He is such an idiot sometimes…"
At least that makes Beckett laugh, and then a small smile touches Alexis' lips, and silence falls.
"I'm so sorry he did that." The girl says, a sympathetic smile on her face. "Gina's a… I didn't think any of us liked Gina…"
"To be fair to him, Lex, he didn't know I'd broken up with Demming… that's my fault… I, uh… he still thinks we didn't break up until the end of summer."
Castle's daughter's expression is unreadable, and Beckett looks down at her feet, suddenly slightly ashamed. "Please don't tell him any of this." She breathes, unable to fathom a confrontation with Castle about all of this, after the months of building walls and pushing unwanted emotions into boxes.
Alexis sighs. "How can two people's timing be quite that bad?" she muses, but gives Beckett a small smile all the same. "I won't say anything, I swear… but maybe… maybe you should…"
The thought of that makes all of her insides clench at once, but she gives the girl a small nod. "I just need some time." She says in a small voice, and instantly loathes how she sounds, so vulnerable and weak.
Alexis nods slowly, her head cocked on one side in slight bewilderment.
Almost all of the next chapters have been written, so they should be up pretty soon!