Silver & Gold: Part Two
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He's feeling proud of himself when he puts Mia down for a nap so they can do therapy. Proud of himself because he's been doing this work for them, and Mia only asks for two night-night songs before he turns on her naptime light, and he's ahead of schedule when he walks into the office for a Skype session with Dr Burke. Kate is already fiddling with the settings on his laptop (she hates the warm screen, always turns it back to blue light: it doesn't look right), and he has a measure of puffed up chest thinking about what a good place he's in, they're in.
He sits down, and she slides a hand over his knee and kisses his jaw—it's her version of pride, he realizes—being intimate is how she proves to herself they're still good. It's in the same vein as her worries just before they got married, when she kept saying, I don't want us to be like other couples, and get boring.
"A couple of puffed-up idiots, aren't we?" he breathes, and she head checks, a startled frown— "Nothing, no. Go on. Call him."
Dr Burke's intern, a woman with big neon blue glasses and a tendency to chide the man, is the one who answers the call and sets them up. "He's just finishing up. He instructed me to remind you to do your homework."
"We did," Kate answers, holding up the sheets they filled out. "And yes, in detail."
"Very good." Matilda, her name is, he thinks? Might not be good that he struggles to remember the name of their therapist's go-between. Not that Matilda or Coraline or some other vintage-made-cool-again-name is standing between them and their psychiatrist, or rather, Kate's psychiatrist, but that she facilitates the virtual sessions because Dr Burke can't be bothered to learn technology.
He's thinking too hard about this. He needs to let things go.
Dr Burke comes onscreen stage left, carrying his ubiquitous notepad and the leather binder, sets those down offscreen, says something to Matilda who leaves them. They hear the door shut—Castle always waits until they hear the door shut because Kate is prickly about oversharing, or sharing at all—and Dr Burke sits down, and Castle says, "Hey Doc, we're doing pretty good this week."
"Are you now." No inflection, just that resonant voice which gives even him nice prickly sensations down his spine. He told Kate he's kind of turned on by their therapist, and she told him who wouldn't be, that voice and they had sex against the closet door (because it was five in the morning and the baby wasn't up yet and his mouth runs away with him when he's exhausted but it was really good sex, and he thinks that's really all it is, memories of really good sex after a unserious joke he told because in truth Dr Burke makes him nervous he'd doing everything wrong, and now it's just a Pavlovian response).
"Thanks for seeing us virtually again," Kate says.
He inwardly groans.
Sure enough, Dr Burke settles back in his office chair and says the dreaded, "And do you think you'd be willing to come to an office visit soon? In person, Rick."
He feels called out. "I feel called out." Because feeling words are high value currency. Neither his wife nor his marriage counselor look impressed. "I don't know." No.
"That's a no," Kate says to Burke. But her hand drops to his knee again in a squeeze. "I got my booster shot in October, and Rick has an appointment this week for his."
"That make you feel more confident about going outside your bubble, Rick?"
"Is this a marriage counseling session, or is this grief therapy?"
"If you think your grief doesn't enter into your marriage—"
"Fine, fine," he mutters. "And I was feeling really proud of myself, of us, before I walked in here, I'll have you know."
"We've had sex three times this week," Kate says helpfully. "Spontaneously, I mean."
"That's very good to hear, Kate."
He has stopped going crimson a long time ago. It helps to have her fingers doing lovely things to his knee while she brags about his sexual prowess. She likes creativity, because it means they're not boring. They don't share those details though.
"Well, and other things," Castle adds. "Other important things. We had Robert over to the house, maintenance, like we said, patching things up on the interior and not just outside. And the boys and Mia were all in the heated pool, she had a really good time, the boys too, so that's really a step forward for me."
"It was outside," Dr Burke notes. "Studies have shown that there is a reduced risk in open air."
He grimaces.
"Which you knew," Kate nudges. "He knew that. It's why he's allowed Mia to play with other kids outside."
"She's too young for a vaccine yet," he growls. "You think it's nothing to take her to the homeless shelter, but I don't want to kill my kid, sorry for that."
There's such an awkward silence after his outburst, even he knows that was all kinds of awkward, and he struggles to master it, to at least not let his voice break when he corrects.
"My kid's kid," he breathes. "I meant to say."
Her hand stays right on his knee, squeezing, solidarity, no harm done, all that. He scrubs a hand down his face. When did this marriage session become about him?
"Kate, how do you feel about Mia being in the house so much?" Dr Burke says.
She straightens, stiff spine, and Castle has known her long enough to know that's not good. "Of course I love her being with us. I love her! It's not that. I'm not trying to shove her out the door." She takes a fast look at Castle, far more panic in her eyes that he would like to see, more self-defense that should be necessary if she truly weren't, in fact, trying to shove Mia out the door. "It's just that she's not our kid, Rick. She's Alexis's, and Alexis will come back for her. Some day soon."
He swallows roughly.
"And what happens to you," she husks, "when you lose not just your mother, but Mia too?"
"She'll always be—be my granddaughter," he tries. His voice is so weak it's pitiable. He can't look at her; he didn't realize she knew, was thinking all along, how pitiful he's replaced our kid with Alexis's kid.
"Yes," Dr Burke answers him. "She will always be family, no matter whose house she lives in. And your roles are fluid. But I do see that in this liminal space, where it's impossible to define what those roles are, that there is a potential for a lot of hurt. For you both. Right, Kate?"
She makes some kind of agreeable noise.
"For now, let's keep in mind that we've settled on one thing: You two are doing what's in the best interests of the child. You are giving her the care, love, and support she needs, no matter the personal consequences, because she is a child, and you are the adults in her life."
"Oh yes," Kate says quickly, glances once to him as if in apology, "And she needs socializing. She needs other children who will check some of her selfish responses—we give her the world, Rick; she doesn't have any siblings to share our attention—and also, just as a matter of basic boredom. She's energetic, so lively and curious, and she needs people, just like you do. Sitting trapped in your beach house isn't healthy long-term."
Oh great, back to him. And was that a dig on what got them here in the first place? They're in therapy with her psychiatrist because last year, after his mother had died, he wanted to sell the place and she said no, so he yelled at her, I'll do what I want with my god-damned beach house.
Remorse still swamps him, and she's shining with apology, and probably she did choose her words carefully because Kate always does, not like him, who just fills the void with words until something happens, until some lock is turned or pain is triggered—
Dr Burke interrupts. "Rick, did you print out the thing I sent you about grief?"
He sighs, rubs a hand at the back of his neck. "Yeah, I did. About the decisions we make during the grieving process?" It's why he never sold the beach house.
"About the state of grieving," Burke corrects firmly.
"I did," he nods, putting some enthusiasm in it. "I really did. I've got it on my desk here, it's a good push when I don't feel like doing the edits to the book."
He sees Dr Burke take a beat, realizes too late he was parceling out his grief into solely his professional life and ignoring his personal. Dr Burke leans in to the laptop's camera. "Rick, I need you to print out a second copy, please, and leave it beside your bed, or by the coffee maker, somewhere you can see it when you're not solely forcing yourself to do work."
He grimaces. "I didn't mean… look, I even emailed it to Alexis. Not even texted it, like I wanted to. You said not to, let her look at it in her own time, and I did that, I emailed it to her. I think it could benefit her too."
"I believe I said not to send it at all, and if you had to, to email her that you learned something helpful in therapy and let her ask for it." Dr Burke's look is so very neutral that Rick flinches. "And the response?"
"Uh. No response, no. But I think that's honestly because I emailed it. Kids these days, you know, they don't use email, they do everything texting, which is why I wanted—"
"How would you feel if you'd received unsolicited advice about how you're grieving?" Dr Burke interrupts sharply, raises his eyebrows. "In fact, how did you feel when your wife tried to share what she learned in therapy, when you were threatening to sell the beach house out from under you all?"
Oh, hell.
"If you consider Alexis and her behavior over the last year and a half, after your mother died, if you really think about where she is now, and what's going on with her, maybe you'll find some parallels with your own."
He sucks in a breath. Kate, in her chair beside his, gets up and comes to sit on the arm of his, her bare foot coming down on his thigh to balance herself, and probably him; her fingers comb through his hair. "It's okay," she murmurs, so very quietly the therapist can't hear.
She's supposed to stop 'letting him get away with it' Burke told them. Taking him off the hook. Dismissing his acting out as grief and therefore an entirely fine way to treat her, or their marriage, or whatever it is. She's not supposed to.
But she does anyway. Her fingers carding through his hair are the most soothing thing in a hundred years of grief, and he wishes they weren't on camera so he could turn his face into her side and—
Cry? Put his mouth on her? It could go either way.
"Richard," Dr Burke says, calling him back. "Print out a copy for your bedside table, please, and write down examples for each listed on the sheet. Examples of your behavior or feelings, which confirm the truth of each statement."
The state of grief. "I wish I could move out of this state," he grumbles. "It's got a crappy view. Flat, no mountains, no ocean, nothing good to look at it. Just endless… nothing."
"Well there's a statement," Kate breathes.
He grits his teeth.
"Kate," Dr Burke calls, reminding him again this is supposed to be his marriage counseling, not just all focused on him. "Kate, let's start with our usual. One thing you love about Rick."
She takes in a deep breath, but she doesn't leave the arm of his chair to pick up her notes, their homework from last time. She always memorizes her answers; she really is trying. "I love that he—that you," she looks at him, like she's supposed to, "—that you put on lotion now after you get out of the shower."
He laughs. They're not allowed to read each other's homework, and that took him by surprise. "I didn't expect that." Lays his hand at her back to keep himself balanced. "That's… okay."
"And Kate, why do you feel love for him because of this act?"
She frowns, a crease between her brow that she gets when it's difficult. As all things relating to feelings are for her. She's very much a go-with-her-gut kind of woman when it comes to the emotional landscape; she tells him it's why she married him after all, despite the whole world conspiring to keep them apart. It felt right, but don't ask her what those feelings are, other than love.
"What is it about putting on lotion?" Dr Burke asks. Castle can see he's about as equally bewildered as Castle himself. "You said now. Is this a habit that's changed?"
"Oh. Yeah," Castle answers. "I didn't used to until her."
"Oh?"
"Oh," Kate says, glancing at him. "Oh, it's… because you listened to me."
He raises his eyebrows.
"He was complaining all the time, at the precinct, about how dry his hands were, and one winter, it was really bad, his skin was cracking at the knuckles, and all around his cuticles, and I told him it was because he was losing moisture, that's what paper did."
"She said I needed to put lotion on when I got out of the shower, that it creates a barrier. Look, I was ready to try anything, really, at that point." He rubs his hand up her back. "If you'd said slather myself in butter, I'd have done it. My hands hurt too much to type for long periods, and I wasn't getting anything written, and I'd just met this hot new muse, a detective—"
She grins back down at him.
"—so I was doing a lot of writing."
"So Rick, you started using lotion. Okay." Burke clears his throat and Castle is brought back to the why of it all. "Why is that a thing you love about him, Kate?"
"We weren't even together," she says. Pacing herself, finding the words as she feels her way through. She's studying his face as if he might have an answer for her. "We weren't together and you listened and took my advice, you're still doing it, you have an incalculable number of body lotions in there—"
"Which you steal," he grins.
Rolls her eyes. "Which I sometimes steal, yes, but you listened to me." A long exhale. "You can't know how many times, as a woman, some guy looks at me like I'm hysterical, or ridiculous, or not staying in my lane."
"Oh." He grips the back of her jeans. "But I didn't treat you like a woman?"
She laughs, touches his ear. "Not precisely that." Her fingers rub his earlobe in a way that should not make him squirm, but holy hell, woman. "You treated me as an equal." She still rubs his ear, which is so damn distracting it manages to prevent him from thinking for her, which is one of his biggest problems, supplying her with the words and not letting her get it out herself. "You see me as a person. A human being with ideas, good or bad, to be tested out and argued the merits of. I love you because—"
She huffs and stumbles to a halt. Gestures at Dr Burke as if Burke is gonna help her out here. He won't, he never does. He insists she come up with her own language.
Her language can't be his, or Castle's. Her language has to be her own.
She returns to frowning. "Because you're metrosexual? Because… because you don't use 'gay' or 'girly' as insults. Because you were raised by a complex woman and surrounded by complex women and then you raised a complex woman on your own, and yet I have never once heard you moan about it, or say women can't drive, or even pit yourself against women as if it's you versus them. Not once. I love you because there are no sides; we're all just humans."
He fists the back of her jeans in an effort to control the urge to pull her down in his lap and do unspeakable things on camera. Mia's nap only lasts for another hour and he wishes they weren't in therapy right now. She does too. He can feel the tension in her, the leaning in.
"And Rick?" Burke says finally. "Did you write down something you love about Kate?"
"I did," he cracks. His voice actually cracked. "But I can't just hear that and not say anything, not respond—"
"You're not supposed to have to respond," she interrupts.
"Then I'm changing my answer," he says stubbornly. "I love you because you called my mother complex, and then my daughter that too, and you don't mean it as an insult. You actually think complex is a good thing."
She groans, sinks her face in her hands.
"What is this, Kate," Dr Burke says instantly. "What is this feeling?"
"It's only because I'm the most complicated of us all," she mutters. "So that was about me, in the end, wasn't it? Not about Rick. The homework is to make it something about him, not about me."
He topples her now, into his lap, pulling her hands down from her face. "No, it was good. It was really wonderful, don't do that." She jerks as he tickles her sides, a laugh escaping despite herself. "I love hearing it." He closed his hands around her wrists, trapping her hands in her lap. She has to look at him, and he smiles, hoping it's encouragement. "It's your house too. I never meant that. I never meant—"
She clutches his shirt with hands manacled by his own. "I know." She's forgotten Dr Burke is on the laptop, because she leans in and brushes her mouth against his in a way that makes him electric. "I knew then. You love me."
—-xxx—-