Treading Water
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Head Case 4x03
That's what the great love stories are about, right? Beating the odds?
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Coming away from the precinct late, preoccupied by severed frozen heads and her light banter, Richard Castle feels his heart sinking with every step.
And as he slides into the backseat of the cab, it's like the metaphorical bell jar seals over him.
Killing your husband because you've banked on a second life post-cryo sleep and then orchestrating your death in a jail cell seems extreme. Beckett called it a love story and that is just...
Such a window into her soul. Sadly.
Death and doom, star-crossed lovers, warped motivations.
There is no reunion for those two in the future. And if they manage to hook up again in some alternate dimension, worldly or super-worldly, Castle can't imagine that guy is going to be happy his wife killed him.
Seems more like betrayal than love.
Seems like Richard Castle is depressed.
(He's been struggling to find better terminology to use in his daily life, because diction matters, because the words he uses to signify states of being are often cliches, or worse, prejudicial stereotypes, and yet how else to describe his current internal landscape? Is he depressed, chemically, in his brain, or is he made somber by the realization that his sole purpose at the Twelfth is to curtail Becket's efforts to solve her mother's case and thus the wall inside, which means—which means—he's shooting himself in the foot. Every. Damn. Day. He's deflated.)
He has been considering medication. Or therapy. Perhaps therapy is more important to do first than to ask for pills to combat the lethargy.
He hasn't written in... many months.
Since Beckett was shot.
Or, if he's being honest, a bit before that. Oh, a few hundred words here and there, but a best-selling author with a book deadline looming doesn't get to count 338 words about the variations of Nikki Heat's non-existent smile. Nor the 769 words about Rook's inability to pinpoint what it is he's doing here.
Existential crises abound. Inward, outward—forward and backward.
What is he doing here?
He's making the case to not make the case, and she's listening to him. First time in her life she's listened to him about any of this, and doesn't that figure? Because that wall can't come down if her mother's killer is out there.
Which makes zero sense. It makes no sense. Why does grief lead to obsession? What about having no answers means her personal life is stuck in neutral? It's all emotional. It's simply a refusal to process. What about having a quest means all other relationships get shoved aside?
What's the phrase—? Do the work. Do the work, Beckett.
He pulls out his phone halfway home and texts: Old Haunt. I'll be there waiting.
He doesn't even look to see if she reads the text. He leans forward and gives the cab driver the new address.
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Castle has just taken the last mouthful of his scotch when he hears her boots coming through the door at his back.
And his stupid heart lifts.
He swallows the whisky. "I'm disappointed." He swivels on the bar stool to watch her approach.
She lifts an eyebrow, folds herself to the seat beside his. Their legs are long enough that in this position, perpendicular to the bar, their knees knock together. She angles her body to match his, which means an intimacy he didn't know they had. Or that she's willing to explore.
"Why disappointed? You thought I wouldn't come?"
"No," he says. "Disappointed you think that is a great love story."
She smirks, accepts the glass of wine from his bartender. He's stocked the Old Haunt with some pricier stuff, but most of it is for every day drinking, not celebrations. This bottle, however, is a riesling from Germany's Mosel region, and it's kept aside just for her.
"Don't you think it is?" she asks. Sips the wine as her eyes slide shut, savoring.
His belly flips when she does that. After all this time with her, he still imagines what it would take to recreate that face in the bedroom. He imagines what he'd feel, what it would feel like—of course he does—but more often these days, he imagines what he can make her feel. What she'll ask of him. What she'll want. What her desire manifests when they finally—
"Come on, Castle. It has all the earmarks of a classic grand romance. Tragedy, fate, deus ex machina."
He grunts. "So hot you know that."
She smirks again, far easier with his open sensual admiration than she ever has before.
He clears his throat. "Deus ex machina—the unsolvable problem resolved suddenly by the gods from the sky." He nudges his tumbler towards the bartender who returns to refill it. He'll have to nurse this one; he's already had two. "You think freezing his head is the gods' answer to death?"
She hums, glances at him. Maybe it shows on his face, how sobering this 'answer' to ill-fated love is for him, because she squeezes her knees around one of his, a sudden shock of physical connection that has his spine straightening. "Let's get a table, Castle. Some privacy. You seem... you've had a couple drinks already?"
He bends his head over his glass, but his eyes skim the amber liquid and right to where she's placed a hand comfortingly on his trapped knee.
His body is alive, swarming with arousal. Good thing he's had two or this would be unmanageable.
"Okay," he answers. "A table."
She stands, sliding from the stool with a grace that defies the eyes. She waits for him to stand, evidently concerned he won't be stable, but he's not drunk.
Just sad.
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Beckett looks at ease this evening, and she's had maybe four sips of her wine.
While he's had three glasses of scotch and not on the rocks. He feels stupid. He shouldn't have asked for her to show up. She's nothing to do with this. It's all of his own making.
He's the one keeping secrets.
And he's miserable.
"Alright, Castle," she says softly. "Let's get you home."
"No, I'm okay," he says, trying to rally. He offers her a smile, lifts his head from his hands. "Keep talking."
"No one's been talking for a solid five minutes," she says, lifting an eyebrow.
She does a lot of that, emotional cues with facial expressions. "You talk with your body," he says.
Her mouth opens, silent. Astonishment is like a ripple across her face.
"Oh." He sits up straight, sucks in a breath. "I said that out loud."
A faint blush on her cheeks, Beckett presses her lips together and sits back in the chair. She rubs the stem of her wine glass in her finger and thumb and his skin tightens, his body heats up. "Am I talking now?" she asks faintly.
Doesn't quite look at him.
"Yeah," he sighs.
Everything she's saying is I'm not ready.
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Castle is surprised she's come all this way. Right to his front door.
But he won't suggest she leave. He turns in the foyer as he sheds his jacket. "Want some water?"
She hesitates at the threshold, fiddling with the belt of her trench coat like she did her glass. Her eyes slide across the space.
Castle heads for the kitchen, dropping his jacket over a chair so he can open the fridge. A pitcher of filtered water with orange peels and mint is at the ready—thank you, Alexis—and he's poured two glasses before Beckett can say no.
She sheds her own jacket slowly, places it over his at the bar stool. "Thanks." She slides her fingers around the glass and he can see her shifting on her feet, evidently gearing up to gently let him down.
Panic cramps his stomach. He wildly glances around the loft for something to keep her here a moment longer, to keep this going so he can turn things around. It's been an abysmal date—and she doesn't even consider these to be dates, how pathetic is he?—and he needs this to end on a good note.
He finds nothing.
He has no excuses.
"What about dinner, Castle?"
He startles, sloshing water across his hand.
She gives him a weak smile. "I'm starving. I haven't had dinner."
"What—why did you—you should have said something!"
"Saying something now," she chuckles.
"I have loads of dinner options." He turns manically for the fridge again. "I have some frozen ravioli, stuff for spaghetti, there's some penne pasta with pesto—why do I only have Italian?"
"I could go for ravioli. What's in it?"
"Eggplant and butternut squash," he says, already pulling it out of the freezer. He turns back to her to check, and she nods for him to continue, so he pops off the lid and puts a pan on the stove. "We're a pasta-eating family over here."
"Mm."
How many more inane things can he say?
At least she sounds amused.
"So. Castle." He swivels back at her tone, deer in headlights, but she shakes her head as if to reassure him he's not in trouble. "Was wondering if you planned on having your body frozen."
He blanches (letting it be melodramatic) which makes her chuckle (a win!), as he fills the pot with his frozen ravioli (shit, a couple are freezer burned). "I don't think that's my story trajectory, no."
"No? You seem like the perfect mark. Whoops. Did I say mark?"
He throws her a narrow look and she smiles again.
"I mean. Sounds like it's right in your wheelhouse. Go to sleep for a thousand years, Rip Van Winkle, and wake up in the future, all the cool new toys, everything is beyond belief, incredible."
"And lonely," he says.
She pauses. Her elbows on the counter, she clasps her hands together. "Are you... there alone? In this imaginary future?"
He stares down into the pot. "Uh. It's your imaginary future, Beckett. You tell me."
"You could pay for all of us to be frozen alongside you."
He wants to believe that's a very careful way of saying she wants to spend eternity with him.
She clears her throat delicately, as if she hears that fervent belief. "Whole precinct could wake up in the future."
"Nah," he says finally. Taking a deep breath as he swirls olive oil in the water. "To be honest, not sure it works, and I wouldn't want that to be my legacy, you know?"
"Legacy?"
He doesn't like the question in it. "What, you think I have none?"
"Castle, everyone has a legacy, big or small. What is it you want yours to be?"
"That's a deep question for post-drinks," he tries to joke.
She's not smiling.
"I want it to mean something," he says. He stirs the pot, the ravioli spinning in the heating water. "The books are important to some people, and that's not nothing, but it has to be more than just escapism. I hope it can be more than just escapism."
"Your books meant something to me," she says.
His head comes up so fast his neck twinges.
"After my mom's death." She runs a finger in the condensation at her glass. "I needed something." She looks right at him, but doesn't elaborate.
He's heard something like this, this isn't entirely new, but now, tonight— "Oh yeah?"
A beat of silence and then—
"No games?" she says, glancing at him. "Yeah. That's not nothing. And..." Deep breath, a spot of color at her throat. "And you don't have to keep proving yourself. To me."
The water boils over before he can speak.
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