Fields of Corn
Summary: She's glad he can't see her, or rather the fact that her eyes slide shut at the sound of his voice.
Pairing: Castle/Beckett
Warnings/spoilers: Minor spoilers for "A Deadly Game"
A/N: Thank you to supplyship for her beta work on this
Kate doesn't usually dream. Given her job, and the sort of gruesome things she sees on a weekly basis that have the potential to figure prominently in nightmares, she figures that dreamless sleep has always been a blessing. But lately, she dreams that she's walking through fields of corn. The rows are planted east to west but she wants to go north, so she has to work her way through the field the hard way, moving tall stalks out of her way and tripping on them and the uneven soil.
Why cornfields? That's the part that baffles her. She's lived all of her life in NYC. A handful of summers when she was a kid they traveled to the Midwest to visit her aunt and uncle, but other than that, Kate can't remember any other time that she's been in a cornfield.
Maybe it's about uncertainty. Her relatives' place was surrounded by miles and miles of fields, and the open air seemed to go on forever. As a kid, Kate wondered how they didn't feel lonely? She felt lucky to be able to return to New York and be surrounded by people, activity, sights, and smells. It made her feel connected.
Her phone rings, bringing her back to the present. It's Ryan calling to say that a homeless man was found stabbed to death in a park. She clicks off the phone, slides her gun into its holster, and grabs her keys. Enough with the dream analysis, she tells herself: duty calls.
It's already blistering hot and it's only quarter after nine in the morning.
"Welcome to New York in August," Ryan says as Beckett approaches.
"Yeah."
Esposito is on his phone just a few steps away from them; the call doesn't sound professional in nature but it's clearly not some hot date calling either. She ignores him and crouches down to get a closer look at the stiff.
Ryan is only halfway through running down the details they have so far when Esposito snaps his phone closed and announces, "He's back."
"Who?" Kate asks absently, while she uses a pen to gently lift a few fingers up off the pavement to determine if there is something under the vic's hand.
"Castle."
It has the power to suck the breath out of her for a moment, just that one word, as if that name she hasn't heard in months has control over her unconscious actions. She drops the pen by accident.
"Really?" Ryan sounds suspicious. "I thought he wasn't going to be back for another couple of weeks."
"Came back early, apparently."
"Huh." Ryan turns now, almost facing Kate again as he adds, "Guess it didn't go so well with the ex."
Kate is about to open her mouth to say something – she's not sure what exactly – but that's when Lanie shows up with her crew and Kate is saved from having to come up with a brilliant retort. Whatever it was, it was going to be good, she's sure of that much.
Kate comes home early that evening, which is never a good sign for a new case. Cases like this latest one are the trickiest and almost always end up unsolved for years, if not forever. They are the saddest too, not just for their low solve rate, but because she can't help but think the person was a victim long before they ended up on Lanie's autopsy table. She'd like to think that people at least get the chance to pull themselves together and find something good in their lives before it's all over. But it turns out that not everyone is so lucky.
As Kate turns the key in the lock of her front door, she notices a man down the hall carrying a stack of boxes out of an apartment. She squints a little because he doesn't look familiar.
"Moving out?" she asks.
The man is startled for a moment, perhaps he didn't notice her, and then replies, "Ah, sort of. My uncle lived here but he died last week."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
Despite the heavy load in his arms the man attempts a shrug. "He was in his eighties and lived one hell of a life. We'll miss him, but he wouldn't want us to be sad about it."
"Still, you have my condolences," she replies before leaving him to his boxes.
Kate goes about her evening routine of getting changed into something comfortable, checking the fridge for food, and then pulling open the drawer with the takeout menus. But there's something she can't shake. She hadn't even known the old man down the hall had died. Heck, she hadn't even known the old man. They might as well have been living miles apart, not a few yards.
Her cell phone rings and she hesitates for a moment, but it could be work so she crosses the room to answer the call.
"Beckett," he says, in lieu of offering a hello in reply to hers.
She's glad he can't see her, or rather the fact that her eyes slide shut at the sound of his voice.
"Hi, Castle."
"So, I was thinking that we should celebrate."
"Celebrate what?" It shouldn't feel this way, this easy to fall right back into their comfortable banter, the timing and the sync of it something that she's never had with anyone else, not even the best of the boyfriends she's dated or the coworkers who could finish her sentences. This is different. This is what scared her from the start.
"My completed novel. My triumphant return. My rugged good looks only getting better with age. Take your pick."
She ignores the rest and only responds to the first part. "You finally finished the book?"
"I did." She can hear the smile in his voice. "And it was only mildly torturous."
She does not want to know who was torturing who, but the fact hasn't escaped her that he's failed to mention Gina's name so far.
"Were you thinking Chevy's?" she asks, mentioning the place down the street from the station that they go sometimes to pick up burgers when they are working late on a case.
When they were working late, she chastises herself, past tense not present tense. It took her weeks after he left to get it right in her head, and five minutes after he's back she's making the mistake again. It's a little embarrassing even if it is kept only to herself.
"No." The surprise in his voice hits her as odd. "No, I was thinking something nicer than that. How about I pick you up after work tomorrow?"
She finds herself agreeing before she's thought it through. It's only after they hang up that she wonders if he just asked her out on date.
The morning is dragging along and even her stomach agrees, it's already growling for lunch at 10:45.
She didn't sleep well again last night, this time she was trying to work her way through the cornfield in the dead of night. Some whispered voice kept telling her that if she'd only learned to read the stars for guidance she might know which direction she was supposed to be heading.
She woke up before the alarm and decided to give up and go into work early. Of course it could be that having breakfast at 4:30 was the reason for her body believing it should be lunchtime already.
She gets up from her desk and crosses the bullpen to refill her coffee cup. On the board is their newest case involving a woman who was murdered and the chief suspect at the moment was her lover.
Kate sips her coffee in front of the pictures and receipts and other clues pinned up. But her mind drifts from the case to the woman, and a man, and what can go terribly wrong between two people. She wonders if they were ever in love, at least in the beginning?
When she was eight, Kate thought love was being passed a note that said "Will you be my girlfriend? Check yes or no." It wasn't complicated and not terribly involved either, since the boy was too shy to talk to her at recess. Since that time, she's often wondered why she can't return to a time when things were that uncomplicated, where communication was that simple and straightforward, and where people always said what they mean.
It's a change in the energy of the room that first alerts her to Castle's arrival. People are practically launching themselves at him in their haste to welcome him back. More than a few ask if he's back to stay, to which Castle only flashes them a smile. He handles it like a man who is used to crowds of fans, used to the attention and yet remains largely unaffected by it.
Well, for the most part anyway.
He makes his way over to her desk and sits down in the chair that she can't remember when she first began thinking of it as "his chair." She finally looks up from her paperwork.
"Hey, Castle."
He sets a cup down in front of her that by the logo on the side, she knows came from the expensive coffee bar around the corner.
"For you," he says.
She replies, "Thanks," and attempts to focus back on her paperwork.
"Think you can knock off early?"
"We're working a case, Castle, I can't exactly—"
But the boys interrupt her. "We're waiting on forensics and that warrant, there's really nothing that can be done in the meantime," Ryan points out.
"Yeah," Esposito agrees. "Go on, Beckett, we'll see you in the morning."
She smiles, but in a way that lets them know she's secretly killing them in her brain. "Great." She turns to Castle again, "Let me log off the computer and grab my bag."
He orders dessert and she tells the waiter she doesn't want any. But somehow in his "Castle" way he casually nudges an extra fork toward her and doesn't seem to judge her or question it when she steals a few bites of his tiramisu.
"Apparently keeping a close eye on you actually works," she comments, and then cringes inside because she really did not intend to bring it up. Things had been going so well all through dinner; their conversation was almost… normal. And adult-like. It was kind of freaky.
"There is a such thing as too close." His tone is neutral and his face unreadable, but it's enough of a hint that something went wrong. Ryan's comment the other day about things not going so well with Gina might not have been that far off – not that she's concerned one way or the other, so long as Castle is intact. She doesn't need another murder case piled onto her workload.
"Sorry."
He shrugs a little, and then spears another bite of dessert. He says, "There's a place I'd like to show you…" But before he can elaborate or she has a chance to ask, a couple of fans come up to their table, rather shyly at first, requesting autographs and a photo with him. Castle obliges them and when they realize he's friendly, they relax with him and chat, gushing about their favorite parts of his last book.
Kate silently watches the entire thing play out. It doesn't bother her that she's abandoned for a short time – it's not like she's the kind of person who can't eat alone in a restaurant.
Watching Castle interact with fans is like watching performance art; even if she doesn't get it, she certainly can appreciate all that went into his efforts. Watching him, and more accurately, the way the two young ladies stop just short of actually batting their eyelashes at him, a thought occurs to Kate. She finds the entire thing a little amusing, but she wonders about how Gina or any of the rest of Castle's string of failed marriages and romantic entanglements might have handled this kind of situation. It can't be easy.
Kate never before realized that she always assumed that he was the one responsible for the past failures because he couldn't or wouldn't make things work out in his relationships. She never before considered the possibility that a large part of it could be on the women – that he might have trouble finding someone who is comfortable with all the things that come with his line of work, the kind of woman who is self-confident enough to deal with it. The thought is kind of surprising and obvious at the same time.
Before she can dwell too much, the fans wrap up, thanking him again, apologizing for disturbing their dinner, and then finally move on.
He offers her a sheepish, "Sorry."
She just smiles. "Was there something you wanted to show me?"
His "secret place" is not what she expected: a spot behind an old warehouse on the edge of the river. She's not sure what exactly she expected, possibly something classier or more exclusive, but it certainly wasn't this. Maybe there are parts of him that aren't an open book after all.
They are sitting on the hood of his car, lounging back on the windshield and looking across the Hudson at the skyline. The moon is bright and there are a handful of stars dotting the sky.
"Ever been in a cornfield?"
His head jerks around to look at her, and she can't blame him for appearing a little confused; it does seem to be a question that comes out of nowhere. But she can't help it.
"It's just a question, Castle."
"Well," he looks back at the skyscrapers in the distance. "I used to bring Alexis to one of those pumpkin patches when she was little, and they had a corn maze. We'd go through that every fall."
"A maze?"
"Yeah." His voice drops a little, like he's bringing her into a conspiracy with him. "The key is to follow the kids, they always seem to have a weird sixth sense for how to get out of a maze."
"Does it work if you're not a kid but you've never grown up?"
He recognizes the jibe: "Good one, Beckett," he replies, sounding almost like he's proud of her. Then he turns it on her, "Why the sudden obsession with corn?"
"I don't know." Which is the honest truth, but she wonders sometimes. "I feel like I've been getting all these signs lately that I'm lost somehow, kind of like I'm in one of those corn mazes."
"Lost? As in, without a partner?"
She dryly replies, "Yes, Castle, I can hardly function without you."
"Maybe you could let me tag along on your next case. For old time's sake." He says it like it's nothing, just a throwaway comment. Perhaps even a favor to her that he's offering to do, no big deal. But he's been dropping hints all evening and this latest one is the boldest of them all. She can't help but wonder—
"Castle, do you want to come back?"
There's a moment of quiet before he speaks.
"You have to know," he seems to be choosing his words carefully, "that it's not only because I need inspiration for my books."
She meets his look now. It's rare, this kind of moment, where honesty and gravity can be found in his eyes. "And you know," she licks her lips, gathering the strength to put words behind her feelings, "that it's not just the threat of losing my job…"
He smiles first, she follows suit.
"OK, yes," she says, "it was pretty much the threat of losing my job." They are grinning at each other like fools and Kate couldn't remember the last time she felt this good. But despite that, or maybe because of that, she feels the need to not waste this moment completely. "But you did grow on me."
"Yeah?" His smile settles into something comfortable and familiar in his expression. "Kate Beckett, are you saying that you actually missed me?"
She is ready to toss a 'well, I wouldn't go that far' comment at him, but she can't. "Yes," she replies, and damn the fact that she sounds a little breathless.
"Huh." He studies her for a second. "Who'd have thought?"
"Yes. Who would?"
She'll wait a day or two before she calls him to let him know he can tag along. She wouldn't want to sound too eager after all, or give him the idea that everything should come easy for him, at least not where she's involved. But she'll call him.
And somewhere along the line she must have forgiven the past, because all that she feels at the moment – as he starts to tell her a really dumb joke that he's told her before – is that maybe she has been a little lost, but that's OK if you find someone who is good company on the journey. She wonders if she'll dream of following him through a cornfield tonight.