Close Encounters 25
He had broken her heart.
His wife had said it, and he'd felt gutted out by the words, but he hadn't been listening, had he? Because he had kept talking. He had broken her heart.
He had to fix that. Or - or help it heal. Something. He couldn't let this go on. He couldn't let her think that she wasn't good enough. That was so very far from the truth. He was just trying to keep her alive.
They got back to the house during naptime and Beckett brushed a kiss to her father's cheek and headed straight upstairs, ignoring Castle still.
He followed her with his eyes until she was out of sight and then he saw her father studying him.
Castle opened his mouth. "I broke her heart."
Jim winced.
"I didn't mean to," he whispered.
"Okay, okay," Jim said roughly, and then Castle was being pulled into a fierce embrace, back slapping and squeezing. He dredged his lungs for a breath, took another when it seemed to work.
"I didn't mean to."
"I know you didn't. Last person in the world," her dad said.
Castle stepped back, feeling stupid and awkward and too large. His shoulders hunched but Jim was moving to the living room and Castle followed, not sure what else to do. Jim sat down in the chair and so Castle sat on the edge of the couch.
Jim rubbed his hands on the arms of the chair as he sank back in the seat. "Believe me. Something I'm quite intimately familiar with - breaking her heart. So you want advice or you want to just talk?"
Neither. He wanted to go upstairs and pick up his son whom he hadn't yet hurt beyond healing. Or really, just get on his knees before her and beg.
"Okay, well, I think my advice is maybe going to make us both uncomfortable-"
"Uncomfortable?" he said, head lifting. What could-
"You know. Wooing her."
Castle grunted, eyebrow lifting, and Jim grinned back.
"You have a son. I'm assuming-"
"Oh, jeez," Castle groaned, laughing now. "All right. Well. Good advice." But they'd already tried that at the gun range. "Thanks. Uh, do my best?"
Jim shook his head, glancing down, and ah, yes, that was where it had gotten uncomfortable. "Instead of that. You want to talk about it?"
He rubbed a hand down his face. "I just don't... know what to do. I'm trying to be what she needs, what we need as a family, just keep her safe. Keep track of - she pushes too far, you know?"
"You can't be everything. No one person is supposed to be everything for us, Rick."
He opened his mouth, ready to offer his defense. But I'm super.
It didn't come out. Jim Beckett kept going instead.
"You shouldn't have to be everything," he told Castle. "That's not your job. Not as a husband, not as a partner either. There's a difference in having each other's backs, trusting each other to do the job, and being-"
"Oh, hell," Castle whispered, tilting his head back. Trusting each other to do the job. He had just called into question her entire ability to be his partner. Fucking hell, how was he this dense?
"Being her partner isn't the same as being her father," Jim said. "And I already failed at that once, Rick, so I don't think she's interested in you taking up that role."
"I'm not trying to be her father," he grunted.
"You treat her like you do James. You're her physical therapist, so you've set the schedule, haven't you? You set her bedtime and when she eats. You-"
"Oh, fuck."
"I'm not saying she doesn't need some guidelines from time to time. I'm not saying she'd be good at doing it herself, the recovery. But one thing I have learned from being her father, she's got to fail on her own to learn her lessons."
"I don't want her to fail," he croaked out. "Failing is - failing was collapsing in Paris."
"That's not true, Rick, and you know it, son."
Castle flinched.
"Sorry, Kate told me not to call you that anymore. It slipped out."
He lifted his head and stared at her father. "What?"
"I won't use it. I understand John Black used it, uses it against you. I'm just trying to tell you that letting her fail isn't the same as dying. You need to see that. When you're helping James walk, you let him go, don't you? At some point you let go of his little hands even if he falls. He gets back up."
"I..." She had told her father not to call him son because of Black? "You can call me son."
Jim blinked.
"And yeah, I let go of his hands. So he can walk on his own. I get it. I see it. I'm - gonna have to learn how to do that." He ran his hands over his face and took a breath. "And you're going to call me son if you want to because that's - that's a good thing. I need to let that go too."
Jim nodded, then put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to stand. "All right. I'll let you go upstairs and figure out how to fix this."
Castle sighed. As Jim went past he patted Castle's shoulder and then touched the top of Castle's head, resting there a moment as if in benediction.
Castle held his breath until Jim got to the door, and then he heard it open and close. He got up to set the alarm and he saw his hands were shaking as he put in his code.
He saw it now, what he'd been doing. He was so afraid he was going to turn into his father that he was breaking her heart.
She felt the cold wash of air the second after the shower door clicked shut. She froze but he was already stepping inside with her.
"Kate, love, I'm so sorry-"
She stiffened as he wrapped his arms around her, the water from the shower battering her front. She tilted her face back to the water to wash the tears off before he could see. But Castle touched his mouth to her neck, his arms hard and strong and not letting her go.
She shivered as he turned them, his body blocking the water. "I'm sorry I said I didn't trust you. It's not what I meant even at the time I said it; the words came out wrong."
Kate gulped, closing her eyes to the whole thing. She had just wanted ten minutes to cry and then crawl into bed and fall asleep. "Can we just not?" she said, shrugging him off.
She managed to get out of the stall, reached for one of the towels hanging on the rack. She swiped it down her face and then squeezed the water from her hair, heard him shut off the shower and follow her out.
"You don't have to talk to me," he said. "But I need to apologize to you."
She turned her back on him and wrapped the towel around her breasts, headed for the bedroom. Before he could touch her, she crawled into bed, towel and all, and buried herself in the covers.
"I see how much you've done, Kate, how hard you've been trying. And not just trying, baby - you've succeeded. You're strong - even if it wears you out - and you're following all the awfully constricting rules despite how much it goes against your nature. I see that, I have seen it."
She pressed her face into the pillow, wished she could cover her ears with her hands and not look childish.
"All this work you're doing for you, and for me too, honey, and I know you have. I'm so damn proud of you for that."
Why? Why did she let this man get to her so easily? Why did she hang on every word he said even as he made her cry?
"And because of that, Kate, love, I've wanted only - I have just wanted to be good enough for you."
She sucked in a shaky breath, felt the wet spot on the pillow under her ear.
"You've given me this gift of your trust, Kate. You trust in me to know you, to guard your heart and your love, and you've trusted me with your recovery, trusted me to set the guidelines and to know what's right for you. And I'm trying to be worthy of it-"
She turned onto her back to see him and he was on his hands and knees on the bed with her, hovering over her. When he saw her face, his mouth twisted.
"Kate, baby. I-"
"What are you talking about?" she choked out, pressing the back of her wrist to her eye.
He blinked at her and then laid himself down with her, arms wrapping around her waist and his chin on her shoulder. She turned her back to his chest and took in another shaky breath, and then she felt his knee pushing between hers, supporting her like he always used to, the towel bunched between them.
"You've been trusting me to know what's right for us, to be the one in the lead right now because I - I'm still hurting, it's still an ache in me, what happened in Paris - and you're being so good to me. But I missed it. You've given me your trust again and again, and I still failed you."
"Failed me?"
"You should have been back at the gun range weeks ago, long before you were off weight restrictions, but I couldn't see that. And I should have. You should be able to trust me and I-"
"Okay," she interrupted him, pressing her hands over his. "Okay, stop. Stop."
He went silent and she sucked in another breath, another, trying to gulp down the urge to cry for reasons she didn't even understand.
"I do trust you," she said finally. She wanted him to know that. She didn't know what else though, couldn't quite untangle how it made her feel. "And I don't want to hurt you by hurting myself."
"I know you don't. I know, baby."
"It's - so hard for me to constantly think - to always hold back. To always be on top of it and never take a step over that line, but I keep trying so hard for you-"
"I know," he husked, drawing her tighter into him. "I do know that, Kate. I see it every single day. I see it in just how much you've progressed in the last month. You have given up so much, Kate. I know you have. That's you, baby. That's who you are, you give everything."
She sucked in a ragged breath, trying to keep from really just losing it. Stupid, it was so stupid to be upset when he loved her and she had her baby and she wasn't dying. It was so stupid when there could have been such worse problems.
"But you - you said being me was what got us into this," she said, feeling it in her throat and pressing behind her eyes. "That I don't know when to stop, I don't know my own limits, that I give too much - and I did, just to keep him, God, Castle, I'd have done anything to keep him, to keep him for you, for us, my baby-"
"Okay, okay, Kate, I know you would, and you did, and he's so beautiful and you've-"
"But that's not enough for you, you want me to be less and I don't know how to do that all the time. I try but it's not-"
"Please, please, don't think that I want less. I don't. I don't at all." He buried his head into her neck. "I only want you to live, Kate. I just want you to live."
She twisted in his embrace, wrapped an arm around his neck to hang on to him. "Well, I am, aren't I? I'm still here."
"You are. You're still here. Thank God."
"Then... then..." She trailed off, not knowing what came next, not even sure what she was saying any longer. Only that it just really sucked to think that she'd been trying so hard for him this whole damn time and it wasn't enough - but flinging herself at it was exactly what he was trying to suppress in her. She couldn't win.
"Then I love you," he whispered.
"What?"
"I love you. I love you, Kate, and I want you here, want you to live, want you to love me back, want you to be able to carry our son and live this life with me. I don't - want less of you or different or something else. I want this. I just want you."
"Oh-okay." She gulped another breath and tried to relax. "Then what - what does that mean for us?"
"It means. It means that I don't bully you, I don't put down these impossible standards that you have to keep trying to live up to. I just want you okay. And I'm trying to be worthy of that, I'm taking the regimen so that I can be that person who has your back and can partner you."
"I... don't see how that goes together. You're just - you need this, and I'm trying, but it's exhausting."
"It's not that I - I don't own you, Kate."
"No," she sighed, blinking through the burn still in her eyes. "You don't own me. But you have me."
He sank down against her, his forehead falling to her chest and she wrapped her arm around his neck.
"I want you to keep living - whatever life you want to live, Kate. Even one that's crazy and flinging yourself into danger and giving every last drop you've got - even one where you'd kill yourself for me. All I can do is just try to be worth it."
She found a breath, felt his body heavy over hers, the heat of his confession at her neck. She gripped his hair and angled his head up to look at her, scooting down in the bed.
"You - you're on the regimen for me, and I see that." Castle who hated the regimen was doing it for her. That was him trying just as she had been trying to hold herself back. "Because you want to - to live here with me in this life. And I didn't understand it before, but you taking this part of your old life into yourself, taking it into this life we have together, that's the same as me restraining myself, holding back, not doing all I want to do just because I want to."
He let out a shaky breath and she knew he was as rattled and aching as she was, that this was hard, but these things needed to be known.
"I love you too, Castle. I figured out your limits and walked within your boundaries and I fought myself on it and didn't say a word against it even though I seriously hate it, and I will keep doing that. I will. Because you love me too, because you just want us both to have this life we want so badly."
"Together."
"Together," she echoed. She felt bruised all over, but she hoped it was better.
"I'm gonna be better," he whispered. "I'm gonna do better about this-"
"I don't need better," she said. "I just need you."
"You need me to not break your heart," he choked out, struggling up to look at her. She kept her arm around his neck and tried to pull him back down, but he cupped the side of her face and stroked his thumb over her bottom lip.
"Castle," she sighed.
"I'll be better. I really don't mean to. I'm-"
"Don't promise the impossible," she husked, shaking her head against the pillow. "We all fail each other."
He grinned, completely incongruent to the moment, and then dipped his head down to kiss her. Soft, sweet, a little innocent. "But isn't that my specialty? Promising the impossible."
She laughed back, like a broken thing but it was there. "All right. Okay. Maybe it is."
"You love me?"
"Course I do."
"Then we can do it."
"You're so confident."
"You make me confident."
"No, baby, I'm pretty sure you had that before we met."
He laughed then and kissed her again, harder kiss, a little teeth flashing. She lifted up and nipped him back, felt his hips fall down into her. Kate grinned and wrapped both arms around his neck, yanked him all the way down.
"You love me?" he whispered.
"You know I do."
His mouth traced hers, all around her lips, little kisses. "You love me?"
"Always. Always love you. Even when it hurts us both."
"I love you," he promised. "I love you."
Kate woke first, heavy from sleep, still feeling raw in places. Castle was draped at her back, and when she slowly turned her head, he was passed out himself. She softly touched his face, worried for him, but at least he was asleep. He hadn't been sleeping much; he needed this.
She stroked his cheek and leaned in across the pillow to kiss his chin. When he still didn't stir, she couldn't help the smile that broke across her lips.
They'd had a pretty big fight, and it had hurt, but they were going to be okay. Took time to figure things out, having a baby wasn't easy, and then all the added crap on top of it.
Speaking of her baby. About time for his nap to be over or else he wouldn't go down later tonight.
Kate lifted her husband's arm, so carefully, and slid across the mattress, got her feet to the floor. Castle grunted and rolled into her pillow, gathered it up with a long sigh. She bit her bottom lip and then tiptoed out of their bedroom.
She found Sasha in the hall, leaned down to pat her on the back, scratch her behind the ears. "Hey," she whispered. "Wanna go wake our little wolf?"
Sasha bounded ahead of her down the hallway, toenails clacking on the floor and announcing their presence. When she stepped through the doorway, Sasha was at the crib, tail wagging, her nose pushing down the bumpers and licking James through the bars.
Kate laughed and came to stand over the dog, looking down at the baby as he got loved on by the dog. James had his hand around Sasha's teeth, and Kate froze for an instant, but the dog was only licking, so careful with the baby, snuffling into James's little palm.
"Oh, good, sweet Sasha. Hey there, James. You ready to get up?"
James waved his hand her direction, releasing Sasha's mouth, his eyes staring up at his mommy.
Kate bent down and lifted her son from the crib, met him nose to nose, grinning at his sleepy, slow smile. "Mommy is so glad to be off restrictions, little wolf."
James reached down for her, wanting to be against her chest and not held in the air by his show-off mom. Kate cuddled him, hand at the back of his head as she squeezed tight enough to make him grunt.
"I know, I know," she whispered. "Don't overdo it. You ready to get up? Maybe we can wake Daddy-"
"Too late."
Kate turned around and found Castle standing in the doorway, hair spiky and boxers wrinkled from sleep or maybe that half-shower he'd had stepping in with her. He had apparently crawled right out of bed to come find them.
"Darn, there go all our evil plans," Kate chuckled. She carried her son to his daddy and leaned in, kissed that scraping scruff of Castle's chin. "Morning, love."
"Afternoon, you mean. You slept?"
"Mm-hm. You dream?"
"Nope. And I just rolled over on top of you, didn't I?" He grinned and reached out for James, but she held him back, kept him close.
With Castle's guilt and her previous restrictions, she hadn't felt right keeping the kid all to herself. But now she pushed past her husband and out to the hallway, ignoring the shake in her muscles as she carried her son towards the stairs. Gun range, the sex, yeah, that had probably all taken it out of her.
"You coming?" she called.
"I already did."
She snorted, turning around as she got to the top of the stairs, holding James close. "You think you're so funny."
"Only 'cause you do. You're laughing right now. That little roll of your eyes is the same as one of James's belly laughs."
"Right," she drawled. "Come on. Let's go. Time for bananas. Right, Jay? I know you're all snuggly right now, but you're gonna be hungry."
Castle followed with a little snort of his own. "You're up and at'em."
"Well, you know. Got a lot done today," she said, celebrating a little, rocking James back and forth in her arms. "We're on our way."
"Fighting with me isn't part of the recovery process," Castle complained.
She made a face at him. "Shut up."
"No," he laughed, following her down the stairs. "Really, it probably should be. Week five, pencil in a fight, get all our issues off our chests. Restart."
"Yeah, well-" She put her foot wrong on the fourth step and stuttered, her heart rate jacking up a little. "Oof, sorry, wolf."
But James wanted nothing more than sleep, warm and cozy, and he buried his face in her neck and blew his lips out against her. She laughed, tickled by it, and she was knocked off balance even as she tried to find the next step. Her hip hit the railing and her knee buckled in just that instant, and she knew.
"Cas-" she gasped, torquing towards him.
She knew she was going down.
He reached for her, but she dumped James against his chest even as her body pitched backwards in response. She felt the sick sensation of nothingness, heard the clatter of panic in her rib cage and movement on the stairs, and then felt the violence of his fingers wrapping around her wrist.
She jerked in mid-fall, swung on the pendulum of his grip, crashed hard into his shins, her own knees hitting the step.
"Kate," he croaked.
"I'm okay," she gasped. "I'm okay. Let me sit."
He was easing them both down, James definitely awake after that rude hand-off, and she put both palms to the step and curled slowly inward, feeling it. Bruised and shaken, and here was Castle crouched with her nearly four steps back.
How in the hell he'd managed to catch her and James both, she had no idea.
"Thank God for you," she got out. Her ribs, fuck. Her hip. Knees. Elbows. And her arm felt wrenched. She lifted her head and his eyes were shining, but so were hers. She probably might cry. "Just startled. I didn't - wasn't expecting that."
"God."
He wrapped his arm around James and kept him down against his chest, but she knew he wanted to reach for her instead. She couldn't stand it if he touched her - it hurt that much. She had bit her lip when she'd been jarred out of the fall by his grip. He was a lot damn stronger than he knew, she thought.
He'd really feel bad if he knew. She wouldn't tell him her whole shoulder was on fire. But she needed some fucking ice. Holy shit.
"Kate?"
"Help me up?" she asked. She wanted to struggle up on her own power, but asking made him soft and sweet, and she could really use some of that instead of guilt. She was just really tired of guilt and guilty feelings and this pervasive sadness from him. "Today has really been a shitty day."
Castle slid closer, bracketed her body with his feet planted wide, and then he slid his arm in slowly around her ribs and drew her up with him. James was close like this, monkeying around as he babbled to himself, his head butting in against them. Clearly, he enjoyed having them both as his jungle gym.
But Castle was the one holding him, the one keeping it together right now. She felt about as fragile as paper.
"You steady?" Castle murmured at her ear. "Want me to let go?"
"Hang on a second." She just needed to catch her breath and push past the ache in her shoulder. Same shoulder, same arm as their very first case - the Chinese spy - where he'd flung her over his own body and she'd attacked their guy. And in Russia - same arm he'd had to carry her with when she'd been so unconscious she couldn't stay on his back.
She needed to switch arms. Or Castle did. Reach for the other side. Shit, it hurt.
"Bruised, honey?"
"Yeah," she admitted. "Um. And my shoulder hurts."
"You hit it against the railing."
She had? She only remembered that moment of vital terror at the fall backwards, all she could put together. "Might ice it. And it's my shooting arm, fuck. No wonder it hurts so much."
"Recoil," he sighed. "And I grabbed you. Not sorry for that though. Was gonna be a vicious fall down the stairs."
Might have killed her. Straight back because she'd turned to shove James in his arms and pushed herself right over in the process. Might well have snapped her neck.
"Fuck," she breathed out again, her face against his chest. "I'm feeling way less ambitious about my recovery right now."
Castle actually chuckled, though it didn't sound quite right. He was trying just as much as she was letting herself not try.
"You need - or want? - me to carry you down, love?"
Her knee had given way with muscle exhaustion at the exact second that her balance had faltered. She didn't trust it, or well, she knew herself well enough to trust that she was close to doing major damage. "PT today, right?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah, I'll just... sink down and sit right here while you take James and put him in his high chair. Then come back and spot me. I don't need to be carried, just watched."
He nodded, cupping the back of her neck and kissing her jaw. "Thank you. I'll be right back."
He eased her down again and she leaned all the way back against the slant of the stairs, closed her eyes.
Fuck, that could have been really bad.
Castle watched her as she sat cross-legged on the floor. Her back was against the couch, and it was a familiar post-nap position, but there was a feeling of brittle and restless tension about it after everything that had happened today.
He'd snagged her by the wrist a half-second before she'd been about to go right down. Her shove on his chest with the baby had done it, been the tipping point, and he'd been reaching for her elbow to simply steady her. That was all, just steady her.
Either she had panicked and shoved James at him, afraid he'd go down with her, or she had felt herself falling for real - not just off-balanced by her brush against the railing. He'd been watching it all, the whole time, but it had been that last-ditch effort to thrust James to safety that had tipped her over the edge.
God, he had felt her elbow slide right through his fingers even as he grabbed for her, managed only to catch her forearm at the last possible moment. Still played in his head, that split second.
He still didn't remember actually making the decision to catch her; it had been that fast. His instincts were always to her, of course, but the regimen - hell. Fucking hell, he was not stopping the regimen. Regular doses for sure. Rest of his life. It was only the regimen that had saved her from falling.
James crawled onto her thigh and pulled himself up to stand, a quiet thing as usual. Castle had recently noticed that when James talked, it was mostly when he was one on one with them, face to face, as if he was just too interested in the world and what was going on to put his own voice into the mix. He wanted to absorb it all; he liked to watch them have a conversation.
But of course, he and Kate were kind of talked out right now. That fight on the way to and from the gun range had cleared the air, but there was still so much going on.
James's fist in Kate's shirt released and then he climbed up her shoulder to the couch where Castle was. Kate huffed, laughing, and put a hand to his bottom to help boost him up. Castle set aside his tablet, locking the screen - he'd learned his lesson on that one after James had somehow sent out a nonsense message to Mason that just so happened to have enough coded key strings in it that Mason sent them a panicky reply back not two minutes later.
This was just stupid email tasks, but he'd rather play with the boy than have Kate try to move much. She was still icing her shoulder every couple hours.
So Castle took James into his lap and dragged the kid across his thigh to sit, wrapping his arms around him and kissing the top of his head. But James didn't want to sit, he wanted to climb. He pulled himself up by Castle's shirt and stepped onto Castle's thigh, only to fall right back down again, giggling.
"Kid, you're as relentless as your mom," he muttered, hoisting James back to standing again.
James wriggled out of his father's grip and down to the couch cushion where he was momentarily distracted by a blue bear teething ring. Melted and warm, and when James put it in his mouth, he grimaced and spit it back out theatrically.
Kate laughed and turned to look at them. "Will you stick that one in the freezer again? I put the race car in the fridge for him. And my ice has melted too." She held up her ice pack.
"You feeling better?"
She gave a little nod. "But another application might be good. Since I have PT tonight."
"Yeah," he said, tucking it under his arm. And then he took a leap of faith and handed her his tablet. "Will you look at this before PT? I need fresh eyes."
Her whole face lit up.
Shit. It made him feel wonderful and awful at the same time; he knew she'd been reining it in, holding back for weeks now, thirty-nine days of tamping down her natural instincts. And he offered a fucking tiny piece of the one thing that always made her feel so in-control and strong, and she took it like gold.
What harm was there in letting her see work emails? He should have assigned her tasks weeks ago. She could task in bed. On the couch. She didn't have to be one hundred percent to do tasks.
"Yeah," she said, smiling up at him. Shy. That was either learned from James or James had gotten it from her, and holy fuck, it was ripping out his guts. He had just broken her heart and now she was looking up at him like it had never happened.
Or that this was all the better for having happened.
Castle framed that smile in his hands and kissed her mouth, smudging it for good. When he pulled back she was all blurred lips and green eyes.
"Uck!" James rejoiced from the couch.
"Yeah, my sentiments exactly," Kate whispered. "Fuck. That's good."
Castle laughed and kissed her again, then stood up to get a teething ring and a fresh ice pack. At the kitchen threshold he paused. "Hey, Kate?"
"Mm?"
"I know you're feeling better. But. Just don't try to climb over the baby gates, will you?" AKA, no stairs, Kate.
"Aye-aye, Captain."
That was a little more smart-alecky than he'd like, but he'd take it.