38: Dreams in which I'm dying
Beckett goes home, tired and deeply dissatisfied with the day. Camera footage was helpful, but she needs prints, Lanie's report, and a bit more about the bullet; and she feels that she didn't exactly bring her top game to the park today. And then, of course, there was the book. Couldn't resist, could he? Always the clown, in public.
He hadn't even thought of the consequences. Why should he? There would be none, for him. Only for her: first, the boys' joshing and ragging, but then it would inevitably leak out to the rest of the precinct, and then from there to the outside world. Rick Castle – celebrity, superstar and playboy – dating NYPD Barbie, who's the inspiration for his next book. It's a tabloid hack's wet dream, reopening the box she'd hoped had been locked shut after the fundraiser. And gossip hacks dig, and ask questions, and drag up the past and the present.
It hadn't even been deliberate, merely thoughtless. Stupid. Casual. And thinking that, deep inside where it doesn't reach her conscious mind, it adds unseen weight to her belief that it's merely want.
She changes, and goes out to run: looking for calmness and serenity in her old habits. She doesn't need the dream, tonight: a long hard run will beat back the bitter taste of not enough, not fast enough, and the equally bitter taste that it had been Ryan who'd remembered – and she'd forgotten: it would have been fine if she didn't know she'd forgotten that because he is supposed to remember – about searching for the wallet. She doesn't need to seek out the dark every time she's a little raw, and if she looks for it too often she'll never escape it: she'll be found out and exposed and ruined: lost in a different dark. So she runs far and fast until she's cleared her head and calmed her mind, and then she heads for home, to search out a warm bath despite the August heat, in her cool, serene apartment decorated in cool, serene pastels, and then she'll sleep in her cool, serene sheets.
She doesn't need it, she tells herself, and lies. She knows that if Castle – not Castle. He. Her anonymous, faceless dream-lover, who doesn't exist outside her head and apartment – turns up and puts the slightest pressure on her, a touch or a kiss or a word, she'll instantly give up and give in and be submissive kitten-Kat for him. She knows that if he tries to make things right she'll accept it, simply to keep her route down into the concealing, saving dark. (Simply to keep him.) She can't resist and she knows she won't, if she's given only the slightest push. But here and now, she'll take a different route tonight.
Castle knows he's screwed up. Worse, he knows exactly how. He'd promised her he would never tell anyone, and by playing the class clown he's pretty nearly done just that. If there hadn't been a few moments together, after the boys left, to finish their drinks (and all that then ensued) on Friday night, he couldn't have carried off that saving lie. He's also not wholly sure that the boys believed him. There had been a very perceptive look in Esposito's eye, and he wouldn't bet against a small "discussion" happening at the next available opportunity. Well, he'll be prepared for that. For now, he needs to mend matters. Beckett's been quiet and locked down ever since she'd opened the parcel.
He doesn't get a chance. Footage arrives, actions are assigned, the team slides into its rhythm. There isn't a moment when Beckett isn't either working or with one of the others. He's sure it's all entirely necessary. He is also sure it's a deliberate tactic. He doesn't call it out, but sticks to providing coffee and theories in roughly equal quantities, just as he normally does. He'll deal with it – with her – later, after they're done for the day.
After they're done, though, Beckett takes off like a scalded cat. She doesn't take the book with her, either. Castle casually repossesses it, avoids Esposito's meaningful look with an ease developed by years of avoiding the same look from an endless supply of teachers, and departs. He departs just as far as the Old Haunt, orders a beer and some snacks in lieu of dinner, and settles down to waste some time before he lets himself into Beckett's apartment and waits for her to return. He is perfectly certain that her first act will be to go for a run, and her second a bath. He is perfectly certain, too, that speaking to him is not on her to-do list for today.
Well, that's too bad. Speaking to her is very high up his. Right at the top, in fact. He is not letting this relationship founder on misapprehensions again, after the disaster of the last three weeks. He's only just got her back, and she is not running off again. His kitten's paws will be firmly buttered. He flicks through the plumbing book, decides that he's not interested in a career change, drinks his beer and picks at the snacks, trying to work out what to say. Or indeed whether to say anything at all, given that kissing her, or holding her, seems to work so much better than talking.
No. He'll start with words, because he can't keep using her own predilections against her like this. It's not helpful. Though… it's odd that she hadn't had more of a reaction to him telling her how he felt, on Friday night. She only really seemed to get it when he'd pulled her in and kissed her hard. Talking first, then, and if that doesn't get his point – apology, Rick, you screwed up – across, he'll consider other means of communication.
Castle strolls out and saunters down the street to find a cab, arrives a tactical distance short of Beckett's block, and walks the last few yards in no particular hurry. He reaches her floor, dismisses any thought that this might be pushing his luck, raps briskly on the door and, no answer being forthcoming, uses his key to go in. He then improves the shining hour by making himself coffee and sitting comfortably but unobtrusively in the main room. He resists a very strong temptation to look through the papers on her desk, which would be creepy and not appropriate at all. He would really much rather know that Beckett had put her gun away before they start this discussion: it's not beyond imagining that she'll shoot him partway through, and if she even suspects that he's been near her desk she'll shoot him first and not ask any questions at all.
By the time Beckett shows up, it's close to full dark and Castle is at once both fretful and frustrated by her absence. Matters do not start well.
"What the hell? What are you doing here?"
"Waiting for you to get home.
"Why?" It's not a friendly question.
"I wanted to talk to you and you ran off."
"Maybe that should have told you I didn't want to talk to you."
"Well, after last time when I waited to see if you'd be ready to talk and all you thought was that I wasn't interested, this time I want to talk to you before you start believing that all over again."
There's an unimpressed noise. Castle notices Beckett's style of dress, and rapidly draws the correct conclusion.
"Where have you been?"
"Out."
"Out where? Running?" He puts a twist on the words that makes it clear he's not wholly convinced. That particular answer does nothing to relieve his frustrated fretfulness, and his need to love her, have her be his kitten, or simply have her be his.
"Not your problem." The snap in Beckett's voice recalls him to reality. He came here to apologise, not to fight.
"No, it's not," he admits, covering his reluctance to accept that it's not his problem if she's off running in the dark. She's supposed to run to him if she's looking for the dark. Saying this will, however, be entirely unhelpful at this point. Later…well, that might be a different matter. First, however, he will try to make this right with words. "I came to talk to you. Apologise. I thought the plumbing book would amuse you."
"Ri-ight." That's dragged out in a wholly cynical drawl. "And are the future comments in the gossip columns supposed to amuse me too?" The cut-glass edge on that statement should have opened his throat. He stops hard before he answers in kind, or worse, silences her by kissing her.
"No! I don't want that. I don't want this to be out there. Well, I don't care, but you do, so I don't."
"Really." That drops like a cannonball. "You're not exactly doing a great job of stopping it, are you?" Castle winces.
"Okay, I get it. I screwed up. Sending it to the precinct was dumb, and I'm really sorry I did that, but if I hadn't… if I'd sent it here… would you have liked it?"
There's a disgruntled mutter. It's less hostile than a moment ago, the improvement coming hard upon his apology, but he couldn't call it precisely friendly, or inviting.
"Yeah," she eventually says, grudgingly. "If you hadn't sent it there."
"C'mon, Beckett. I came over to make it right. Least you can do is accept the apology."
Castle stands up, and takes the opportunity to pull Beckett gently towards him and then, as he sits back down, on to his knee.
"What are you doing?" she snips.
"Saying sorry," he says, and kisses her softly. "I'll be more careful of you." Beckett emits a soft, almost-unhappy little noise, and doesn't answer.
"I brought the book for you," he says, wondering why she's sounding unhappy, and gestures at it. Beckett takes the opportunity to slip away from him on the pretext of flipping through the book.
Castle is not impressed by that. Sticky and sweaty she may be, but in her shorts and a rather form-fitting tank top, she's appallingly sexy: the lithe muscles beneath the glistening skin lean and strong and shapely, and a reminder to him in every inch that this fierce ferocity lets him own her and dominate her and turn her to a soft submissiveness. He could take her, in a fight, but he'll never need to prove it: she doesn't want to fight him, she doesn't want him to force her to submit. She only wants to surrender, and only to him.
She should be sitting – no, she should have stayed curled up in his lap so he can pet and cosset her. But she didn't. She ran off. His frustration and worry get the better of him, and he tugs her back and pulls her down and kisses her much harder, not apologetically at all: one hand at her neck holding her in, one on the bare skin between tank and shorts. Just like every other time, as soon as he pushes, she concedes; as soon as he exerts the slightest level of domination, she surrenders, falls into it. Into him.
"You were going to have a bath, weren't you? Hot and wet and silky-smooth." She nods, tucked against him. "Soothing and relaxing." This second nod is more reluctant. She doesn't want him to pretend it's more than it is. "I can think of plenty of other ways to soothe and relax you." He gazes down at her, eyes dark and focused only on her. "But I think we'll start with the bath." His voice has slipped into the deep, commanding, velvet-over-iron intonation that has always persuaded her to fall into his arms and words and body. She doesn't even try to stop herself plummeting. She can have this, do this right. All she needs to do is collapse into her dream-world with her dream-lover.
It's all a dream when a bath appears and he uses it to bring her screaming in satisfaction and then washes and dries her to leave her still soaked and trembling with renewed need; it's all a dream when he decorates her with collar and cuffs and pinions her hands with the short chain behind her; it's all a dream when she kneels naked in front of him and then uses her mouth on him at his command; it's all a dream when he leaves her kneeling there with her head pillowed on his thigh and plays with her till she's desperate again. It's still all a dream when his big body covers her and he takes her down into delicious oblivion, then pets her for a while and tells her he doesn't want to go, but has to, but he won't leave for a little bit, insisting on holding her close until she falls asleep in his arms.
It's not a dream when she wakes alone in the night to find herself unheld; when she showers and cleans herself and then sits in solitude in her living room, staring unseeing at the soulless city lights, wishing that she had the courage to tell the truth and walk away from this: one more dead-end relationship in her dead-end life. But she wants it too much; she needs it; she's addicted to the dark (she's addicted to him) and she can't give it up. Just like she can't give up her mother's case. Both dead ends, just like the whole of her adult life: one long series of dead-ends.
It was only a dream. She returns to her bed, strips and changes it so that there's no trace of anything that might remind her that this wasn't a dream. When the bed, and she, are cool and clean, she curls around a fresh pillow and sleeps, dreamlessly.
If it's only a dream, it won't hurt when it's over. Dreams can't hurt you.
Only the living can do that.
Castle is reasonably satisfied with the evening. He apologised in words, and only then did he play with his kitten, who, just as he had hoped but not entirely expected, had been a little more pettable, a little more cuddled in afterwards. He had only left because he had to, being required at the loft at some ungodly hour to see Alexis off to camp for the rest of the summer. He hates it when she's away, but she enjoys it, so he puts up with it. But even so, he wishes he hadn't had to leave Kat. He feels very strongly that he needs to prove something to her: possibly that he really does love her.
In the precinct the following day, the case is breaking wide open, largely thanks to the footage the boys had found, the wallet that the canvass had found, and the prints that CSU had found. It's just as well. The next body has already dropped, and only bringing in the first killer is giving the lab, Lanie and uniforms time to work their collective magics. Then there's a third, in the same day, each of the cases simple and brutal, not requiring the team to apply their particular brand of harsh intelligence and off-the-wall quirkiness.
The boys relish the chance to stretch their detecting muscles and try to prove – show off – how clever they can be. Beckett seems to Castle to be allowing it, stepping a fraction back, not competing with their swiftness to instruct uniforms, or to seek the answers from Lanie and CSU. All through the day the team – and it appears to Castle to be right back to being a team – does what it does best: solves murders.
Castle doesn't expect to evade the twin-track interrogation from Ryan and Esposito for long, and sure enough he doesn't. They corner him in the break room mid-afternoon.
"Okay, Castle, what's goin' on between you an' Beckett?"
"Nothing that wasn't going on six months ago." He's quite proud of that answer. There's a short pause as the boys count back – on their fingers. Ryan gets there first: Esposito being better at counting shots in targets.
"March… no, February. You weren't here in February. Or March."
"Exactly," Castle points out, smugly. It's not even a hint of a lie. Perfect truth, and perfectly misleading. Esposito scowls blackly.
"I still wanna know what was goin' on Friday night."
"Sure," Castle says blandly. "Tonight? Where d'you wanna go?" His total insouciance is clearly a surprise to the boys.
Espo names the same sports bar that they'd gone to the very first time, to general agreement, and the intimidation party breaks up. Castle's perfectly sure that he can deal with the boys without either lying or giving away any of the true situation – even the version that could be printed in a family newspaper. He won't even reveal that much. He makes himself a mugful of coffee, then thinks and makes another for Beckett, who is glaring at the evidence and clearly needs solace in the form of caffeine.
The balance of the afternoon passes. Uniforms bring in the perpetrator of the third murder – they're still looking for the second one – and Ryan and Espo call dibs on interrogation before Beckett has managed to open her mouth. Castle decides that watching the boys interrogate – which he almost never gets to do – would be a good idea to allow him to expand the repertoire of the Roach pairing in Nikki Two, which he ought to start planning, and wanders off to Observation in the expectation that the grilling won't take long.
It doesn't. It's nasty, brutish and short. Very short. Confession obtained with record-breaking speed, the boys return, triumphant.
"Got him," Espo says, with vicious satisfaction. "Spilled his guts all over the table. Easy."
"Record time," Ryan says happily. "Just time to write the report before quitting."
"Nicely done," Beckett says, smiling. "Let's see if you can do the report that fast."
"Sure we can. We got an incentive."
"Incentive? Castle's four-dollar words rubbing off on you?"
"No, but he's buying the beers for the three of us tonight. Boys' night out."
"Shift starts at eight. If you're hung over, don't look for sympathy here."
There's absolutely no change in Beckett's voice, tone, posture or expression that Castle can detect. She doesn't seem bothered in the slightest that the three of them are going off together, though her commentary on their likely activities is sardonic in the extreme. This time, of course, they've said they're going for a boys' night, so she's hardly likely to want to come along. The last thing they hear is a particularly sarcastic comment on how poorly Ryan holds his beer, and an instruction to Espo to make sure the other two get home safely, which is thoroughly insulting. He'll deal with that piece of naughtiness in some very mutually pleasant ways, soon.
Thank you to all readers and reviewers. To those who have asked and are not on PM, there are 44 chapters in this story.