21: Danse macabre

He keeps kissing her, nothing more: she's been ill and she's still tired and she may be responsive and open but he is not an oaf. He'll set the plays, he'll make the decisions, he'll be in charge – but only after she's agreed, accepted and consented. There is a critical difference between dominance and abuse, and it lies in the free and willing consent of his partner. He'd thought that she might be less experienced – but not completely naïve. He shivers again, at the thought of where she might have ended up – that club requires consent and agreement but cop or not – would she have known what she might have been agreeing to?

But she's his, no-one else's, and she chose him. His kisses slow from fierce possession tinged with terror into slower demands: simple almost-vanilla togetherness, and her hands are around him to keep him there. Keep him.

He rolls over and sits back up, a disappointed small meow following him.

"We haven't finished the conversation," he says, trying to get back on his original track of putting this on some sort of footing that doesn't involve misunderstandings and falling apart and both of them wholly unhappy. Beckett turns over and puts her back to him. "Nuh-uh. You don't get to ignore it. You have to talk now." He rolls her over to face him.

"Let's start where we began. I set out some ground rules, for both of us to agree. Did you disagree with any of them?"

There's a pause while Beckett thinks back to the start of proceedings. Regrettably, her memory of this morning is knife-edged sharp, and almost as cutting. Ignore the later part of the – discussion. Go back to the beginning. Rules. No-one will know – but they will go out. It will never affect her work. Safe word and a start word. And no going into the dark alone.

Someone to keep her safe.

"No." That, at least, she is okay with. He'll never get in the way of work, so it'll never happen during a case. Castle smiles beautifully down at her, suddenly smoothly relaxed again.

"Good," he purrs, and lifts her up to nestle her neatly on his lap. "There. All nicely tucked in." He encourages her to lean in and lay her head on his shoulder. "I'll take care of you. You've been ill and you're still tired and you're definitely too thin." His tone turns teasing. "You should put heavy cream in your coffee, and eat more doughnuts."

His fingers stroke over her shoulder and down her arm, landing on her wrist. "See, tiny." He puts her hands together and demonstrates with one much larger span. "I can hold them between my finger and thumb. How do you manage to shoot at all?"

"Skill." He grins, appreciatively.

He stays, idly stroking with no particular aim in mind except closeness and lulling Beckett into a soothed somnolence where she might be induced to say something useful. He hasn't forgotten the lack of answers and the terrifying look inside her head. Never again.

After a few moments more he remembers something.

"My coffee will be cold." He stands up, still with Beckett in his arms (she is definitely far too thin) and conveys them both back to the couch. A brief sampling discloses that the coffee is definitely cold.

"I'll make more," Beckett says, with a definite hint of this-is-my-house possessiveness.

"Nope," Castle responds cheerfully. "You've been ill, so stay put and let me do it." There's a very quiet growl. "Your choice. Be looked after with coffee or be looked after without coffee." The growl is much louder, this time.

"With coffee," Beckett eventually says, and then crossly, "This is totally unnecessary."

Castle doesn't agree with that at all. Beckett accepting that he'll take care of her as and when required – in a number of different ways, depending on circumstances – is very much necessary. If he'd been taking care of her, she would still have been ill but she certainly wouldn't have been this thin and she wouldn't have tried to go back to work too early. Well. She would have tried. She just wouldn't have succeeded.

Fresh coffee arrives in relatively short order, and Castle repatriates Beckett on to his lap and into his arms with remarkably little fuss. When she's had enough coffee to render her human, he takes the empty mug out her grip and out the way, and tucks her in more securely. She looks a little fragile, still.

Fragile or not – and for a hotshot homicide detective with a gun she is remarkably fragile off the job – he likes her curled up into him, soft and sleepy. It fills a gap he didn't know he had: his protective instincts twitching. He plays a little with the wisps of short hair at her neck. Even as Beckett she's very pettable. Privately. Publicly she's about as pettable as a prickly pear.

"Happy there, Beckett?" he purrs.

"Mmmm."

"Good." The purr becomes more of a growl. "Now, why don't you explain why you were looking for the darkness. Properly." There's a short silence, in which pettability is no longer discernible.

"I told you. I didn't have to be in control." Her lips pinch together. Tension is evident in her body.

"It's not that. That might be a part of it but it's not the whole." There's a very long silence. "Talk to me."

Talking doesn't seem to be happening, but he will get answers, no matter how long it takes. He can't protect her if he doesn't know what she's running from.

Beckett isn't happy about being interrogated. She could do this when it was an investigation of possibilities, and even when it became a statement of realities. But she's scared to drag up her own issues. She can't cope with them. How then should anyone else? The silence remains unbroken. The longer she says nothing, the thicker the tension lies; though Castle's clasp doesn't slacken, nor does the fingertip petting at her neck cease.

After another space of emptiness, through which Beckett declines to answer and Castle declines to fill the quiet, it all becomes too much.

"I needed to forget," she mutters. "I couldn't forget while I still had to be in control." She turns her head so her face isn't visible. It's not a lie. It's not exactly the whole truth. But it is a truth.

Castle, not a stupid man, puts two and two together with the information from the file which he can't admit he knows, adds the dates up, which he should have done weeks ago, patches in everything he's heard from Ryan, Esposito and Montgomery, and very rapidly reaches some perfectly accurate conclusions. Ten year anniversary, no results, four years of not being allowed to investigate at all. Beckett wanted to forget her own failure. It matches perfectly with his own earlier deductions, and so he leaves it there. He'll find out why him later. It's enough, for now. Time to provide comfort and stop pushing.

"Come here," he says, more a reassuring nothing to soothe her than a request or requirement: she already is there, and he tucks her in more closely, dropping a kiss on her hair and sensing her curl in and relax. He cossets her more noticeably, until she's completely eased and there is no hint of stress at all.

Unfortunately, eventually Beckett realises that she is not exactly dressed, and starts making sounds that average out to I need to have a shower and sort myself out. The words do not average out to Why don't you come and help? Castle decides to split the difference between his scratching need to protect Beckett from herself and his sheer frustration at her general inability to tell him anything without him extracting it with a scalpel, currently manifesting in a clawing desire simply to kiss her into total submission.

"I'll wait for you," he says, nearly managing to sound cheerful rather than simply forceful. "When you're ready, we'll talk about the next couple of days."

Beckett raises an eyebrow at him, but doesn't argue. Truth to tell, she doesn't want to. Castle's calm assumptions that she'll agree to his ground rules and then that she'll accept him taking care of her maybe ought to irritate her but actually are very, very comforting. He's thought about this. Thought how it might work, (which is just as well because she has no clue how this should work) and obviously has a clear picture of how he intends to proceed – and had made sure she agreed. All of which means that she need not think about it at all, as long as she can trust him to keep her safe – from publicity and from her own demons. And she can.

"Okay." She stays on his lap just for a moment more, then seeks out her shower and clean clothes.

When she walks back out she's wearing a sun-dress. It's precisely not what Castle had expected. He looks her over with considerable appreciation and an underlying question.

"It's too hot for jeans," she says, slightly defensively. This is very true. It is far too hot for anything other than the lightest of cotton dresses. The dress is very pretty. It shows off Beckett's figure very nicely. It also shows off the shadowed hollows by her collarbones and the rather-too-sharp edges of her shoulders. And her usual chain with the ring.

"You are definitely too thin," Castle says, unflatteringly. "You need to eat something." Beckett makes a face at him.

"Way to make a girl feel good, Castle."

"I could make you feel really good," he purrs, and prowls up to her, tipping her face up and wrapping her in. "A proper lunch and a milkshake should do it." She grins, a little unwillingly.

"Lay on, McDuff."

Castle grins in return, with a heavy gloss of admiration for the accuracy of the quotation. "Remy's. Might as well make it your favourite burgers." There's a tiny flick of fear in Beckett's eyes, a hesitation. "Okay. Not Remy's. Somewhere that isn't near the precinct. No-one will know. No-one will guess." He presses her against him. "No-one. Promise." His arms tighten, then release. "Let's go. I'm hungry." While she was getting ready he's managed to squash down his frustration, and looking at the effects of her illness has left him much more on the protective than the possessive side of his personal Beckett-ledger.

They end up at a burger bar some distance from the grazing range of the precinct, higher up the East Side. Beckett sits down with some relief. She'd told Castle that getting a cab was ridiculous: she could easily walk it, but she is now regretting that choice. She's sure he knows it, and he is very loudly not commenting on her pale, drained state.

Red meat and a milkshake restore her somewhat, though she can't face a dessert. Enough restoration, at least, to make light, social conversation and cover up the curling nervousness that someone will see, someone will guess, somehow her secret will leak out and her life will collapse around her.

"So," Castle says cheerily, "what shall we do for the rest of the day." Beckett looks at him, agape.

"What?"

"Well, we've had lunch, and it's a long time till dinner, so what shall we do?"

She is completely blindsided by this casually sociable, easy-going Castle; so much more like he is in the precinct. Publicly acceptable behaviour – not even, really, flirtation. He hasn't laid a finger on her since she opened her apartment door. No-one will guess. No. They won't. It could be any lunchtime on any work day with the boys buzzing round. Unless, of course, people were close enough to see the depths of Castle's eyes, which behind the friendly blue are completely focused on her in a way that reminds Beckett somewhat uncomfortably of the total possession that he's demonstrated when they're in private. Um. Maybe not quite so sociable and easy-going.

She shrugs. "I don't know." She really doesn't. She's lived in Manhattan for almost all her life – Stanford and Kiev apart – but although she could detail the ten most likely locations for murder without a pause she has no idea what to do when she's less than fully fit.

"No idea? Beckett, that's terrible! There's lots to do in New York."

"Yes, there is. But all of it involves walking around." Castle's enthusiastic face falls.

"I hadn't thought of that," he droops.

It's really quite odd, how right now he's so very different. If she'd expected anything of this lunch, she would have expected him to be subtly dominating: making it clear that this is only the beginning of the game, a little discreet touching, a few well-chosen, murmured words. None of that is occurring. And then she remembers how he had been at home when his family were in the mix when she needed to talk through the frozen corpsicle case; how it had been at the fundraiser (and that was work, and he'd behaved exactly as he would have done in the precinct) and when she returned his mother's necklace. In company, he's as different from private as – as she is. Oh. He's behaving as if he's in company.

Of course, that doesn't preclude him from playing the game. But not today, clearly, not when she's so uncertain and had (she winces) spooked spectacularly and fatally last time it had been suggested that they did. The only reason they're here at all is because of Montgomery's interference.

Castle is not nearly as relaxed or easy-going as Beckett thinks. He is merely waiting, and exerting considerable self-restraint in order not to capture her hand in his, or touch her in any way at all. He wants to. He very badly wants to, but she has her chain with its ring around her neck, so he will be civilised. At least for a while. He hasn't missed her slight tremor, not wholly cured by lunch, nor her admission that she doesn't want to do a lot of walking.

"We could watch a movie," he suggests. That would have two advantages: no walking, and a quiet, dark theatre in which some limited contact would be possible: enough to slake his need to have her in his arms.

"Okay."

"Anything you'd like to see?"

"Nope. You choose."

He taps on his phone for a moment or two. "Transformers."

"What?"

"Transformers. The sequel was released last week. It'll be great fun." Beckett is looking at him as if he's absolutely insane. "C'mon. Let's go." He drops some money on the table to cover lunch and a tip, ignores Beckett's reach for her purse, and steers her out the booth and the door.

In the cab – he'd insisted, but he hadn't had to insist very firmly – he possesses himself of Beckett's cool, slim fingers, and strokes his thumb smoothly and deliberately over the back of her hand. Her fingers curl around his as he continues to stroke, pressing her knuckles just a fraction every time till they bend into place and don't leave. Baby steps, back to where they were. Back to where she should have stayed, safe with him.

Transformers has the very large advantage that it is full of loud noises and action sequences, and requires little attention to follow the plot, such as it is. It's therefore remarkably easy to slide an arm round Beckett and pet her a little more. Twenty minutes into the film her head is falling towards his shoulder, but every time it does she realises and straightens up again.

"Just relax," Castle murmurs. "Lean in." He flexes his arm and pulls her closer. "Mine," he whispers darkly into her ear. "Come here, kitten." She startles slightly. "Curl in, and be comfortable. I'll take care of you." She's just about to – he is sure – object when he changes tack. "I'll make sure the Decepticons don't get you."

Beckett sits bolt upright. "I am a cop!" she says. Loudly.

"Shhhh!" someone says behind her. She lowers her voice.

"I'm the cop. I don't need defended."

"Sure you are. But indulge me. It's traditional. The whole point of coming to an action movie is for the boy to cuddle in his girl and protect her from the bad guys."

"Can you pair either shut up or go cuddle someplace else? Some of us wanna watch this movie."

Castle takes advantage of the comment to cuddle Beckett in much more closely. He's relying on her ingrained dislike of publicity to stop her complaining again, and sure enough it works. She's paying more attention to the movie than he'd expected, too. Is it possible that buttoned-up Detective Beckett has a secret fondness for action movies? That has some interesting possibilities for pleasant evenings when they don't want to play… otherwise.

It doesn't occur to him that not only has he moved from the purely carnal through to a much deeper need to protect Beckett (he doesn't realise that he's moved from thinking not just in terms of his kitten but in terms of a whole Beckett, either) and is now advancing rapidly on the trappings of a normal relationship involving dinner and movies and dates and time spent together which isn't just about the (incredible) sexual compatibility.

The movie, naturally, has a happy ending: bad guys (Decepticons) defeated, good guy (human) gets the girl. Castle sighs with satisfaction and escorts Beckett out politely, hailing a cab and instructing the driver to take them back to Broome Street.

"Home, Beckett."

"Why are we going to yours?"

"Dinner. You need fed. I want clean clothes." He drops his voice and manoeuvres so that he's murmuring directly in her ear, inaudibly to anyone else. "My kitten is far too thin. She needs looked after."

"I can deal with my own dinner."

"Yeah, right. You'll either not eat at all or you'll get takeout. You need a proper meal. One that involves more food groups than noodles."

"I like noodles."

"And I like you when you're not skeletal." Beckett makes a noise that wouldn't have disgraced an infuriated tiger, causing the cab driver to startle and nearly run the light. "Noodles have no nutrition."

"Did you learn about alliteration in grade school?" Beckett snips. It's Castle's turn to make an offended noise.

"Best-selling writer here." He smirks. "I know lots of techniques." The phrase drips with insinuation. It's exactly how he would behave in the precinct. Which is why the next thing that happens is, just as it would be in the precinct, his ear being twisted.

The next action definitely would not occur in the precinct. Instead of variants on Ow! Apples! Stop it! Castle reaches up, detaches Beckett from his ear, and imprisons both of her hands in one of his. Having satisfactorily prevented her efforts at amputation, he uses his free hand to run round her shoulders and settle her in, where he can purr into her ear without either difficulty or interested listeners.

"That wasn't nice, kitten. No clawing. If you're going to scratch and claw like that, I'll need to ensure that your claws are kept out the way." His thumbs trace round her wrists, making his meaning plain, then his voice returns to its normal tones. "Dinner at mine. Pasta, chicken, salad. Ice-cream. After dinner, I'll take you home." And back to predatory purring. "And then we'll discuss" – somehow she doesn't think he means talking – "everything else."

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