Treading Water
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Cuffed 4x10
If I ever have to be hitched to someone, it would be you.
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Forty-eight hours after they were cuffed together, Castle is interrupted from the writing by the ring of his phone. He saves his work, leans over to grab for the phone from the edge of his desk (where he put it to minimize distractions). He flips it over to see the face and is surprised to see it's her.
Calling him.
Only two days since they were handcuffed to each other in the most frustrating and extreme of situations.
He's so surprised that she is the one calling him that he answers with the first thing that pops in his head:
"My dear detective, I see you broke first."
She hangs up on him.
X
She calls back almost immediately.
He's so relieved he apologizes first, chagrin tasting bittersweet on his tongue. "I apologize, that was juvenile of me. You'd think I'd have learned by now."
"Well, I'm the one who doubled down on the juvenile behavior by hanging up," she sighs. Her voice in his ear sends shivers down his spine. Does he have a thing for contrition? Maybe he does. She goes on, "It felt too accurate, like calling you first was breaking down, and I've done a lot of that lately."
"Ouch," he breathes. "That doesn't particularly bode well." For our relationship.
"It doesn't," she murmurs. "So I called you back—"
"I am sorry for going right to juvenile behavior," he hurries in. She has to know he can be more than that. "I should know by now you don't particularly appreciate the constant jokes."
She's silent for so long, he begins to squirm.
He ruined the whole thing with an ill-timed joke. She might have been calling with some deep confession, some wound of the spirit, and instead of waiting to read her level, he made a ridiculous playground joke. She—
"Are you always the first to apologize?" she murmurs.
His mouth opens, closes without a word coming to mind. But she's quiet, as if that wasn't rhetorical but an actual question she needs an answer to. "Well, I suppose I've been conditioned," he chuckles. "Living with my mother and daughter."
"Oh, that..." Another dark sigh. "Is it possible that they are never in the wrong?"
He grunts and sits back. "You sound like my therapist."
She doesn't laugh, but he can almost hear a smile. "Maybe because your therapist is my therapist."
"Oh. No, actually."
"No?" Did she just squeak? "I thought you—I shouldn't have assumed. You don't have to tell me. There's such a thing as patient confidentiality and I—"
"Your therapist was supposed to see me, but on the day, one of the partners did my intake. I liked her, so I've stuck with her—a Dr Miles."
"Oh, Cynthia, yes she's very good." A hesitation. "Dr Burke wouldn't see you?"
"He was otherwise occupied." He waits a beat, tries not to smirk. "I got the impression... with you."
Kate laughs then. It's not the delighted one, but there is definite amusement in the tenor, short as it is, brittle as it is. "Ah. Since you and I are often experiencing the same harrowing situations, it would stand to reason we would need separate therapists."
He lets the amusement fade slowly, a mellow silence between, as he draws enough confidence to ask. "Have you seen him for... this?"
"I haven't," she admits. "There are some things that never... Have you? Dr Miles, I mean?"
"No," he admits. "But I have to confess, yesterday, I was just so relieved to not have to consult you with every movement. I went first through every doorway. I even held the door open for an invisible you, and then I made a nasty remark to invisible you... which Alexis overheard and gave me a long troubled look for. I reassured her I was seeing a therapist. I just didn't tell her not for this."
Kate is laughing again. He smiles in return, feeling warmed by her obvious pleasure, at being able to make her laugh, a joke that lands appropriately rather than the fumbled attempt at the beginning of this call.
"Well, Castle, since we're in confession. I called because I have this weird phantom limb thing going on. Like you, yesterday it was just such a relief not to have you chained to my side. But today... every time I move, I feel a little tug on my wrist, like a bracelet."
"I'm your phantom limb?" he smiles.
A softer hesitance, as if it says more than it should. "Yeah." She clears her throat. "Would you... like to come over?"
He closes his laptop lid. A hot jolt in his stomach that he has to wrestle down into something manageable. "I could bring dinner with me. Have you eaten?"
Another pause. He wonders if she's doing the same thing he is, tamping down expectations, wrangling with a yearning so fierce it cuts. "I haven't eaten yet. That would be good."
"Chinese okay? I could get an assortment."
"That sounds good," she murmurs.
He glances down, winces at the boxers from last night, the ragged t-shirt. "Uh, gonna have to give me forty minutes or so. I haven't showered yet."
"You haven't showered?"
"I was writing."
"Um, okay. Forty minutes. I'll be here."
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"You were writing?" she says, opening the door. His nod of affirmation draws the knot of her worry even tighter. "Castle, you shouldn't have let me interrupt your writing."
"It's fine," he shrugs. The bags of Chinese takeout rustle. There's a really good place between their apartments which they usually raid. "I was at a stopping point."
They sort the cartons in silence, companionable, opening up mushroom pork and fried rice and mixed veggies, finding serving utensils and plates, both choosing chopsticks as if in understanding. While Kate grabs a couple sparkling waters from the fridge, Castle has started filling his plate. She follows his lead and scoops out a mix of everything—he got all of her favorites, and his own—and she trades off cartons with him as he finishes. They head for her couch and each claim an end, settling in with drinks and full plates.
For a while they just eat. She doesn't even notice that they've pulled quiet around them like a blanket until she lifts her head and sees him opposite her, staring off into space, sparkling water in one hand balanced on the end of her sofa. She wonders what he's thinking, wonders when Castle went so wordless, wonders why she never noticed he could, in fact, be quiet.
And then she realizes what he's looking at—the split second before he rises, and goes across the living room for it.
She's already blushing when he plucks 'Heat Wave' off her end table. He's not wordless; he's shocked speechless.
"Alright," she sighs theatrically, "you caught me."
"Were you reading Nikki Heat on your day off?"
She wrinkles her nose and stabs at pork with her chopsticks.
"Oh no, no. You are not getting out of this one." He returns to the couch with the book, his plate abandoned on the end table, and sinks down right beside her. She lifts her water to keep it from jostling, and he opens to her bookmark—the dust jacket flap—to find she's near the end. "You're reading it again?"
Kate hides a smile in her plate. "Or I'm just now getting around to it."
He gasps.
She laughs, unable to stifle it any longer, and curls her legs under her, balancing her plate on her knees. She tucks her toes in under his thighs and he drops a hand to her ankle as he flips through his own book. "You haven't highlighted a thing."
"I don't need to highlight," she says, "I have a very good memory."
He scowls as if he doesn't believe it, and she shifts into him, putting her plate on the end table near her to have her hands free. He sucks in a breath and goes still; she presses her arm against his and reaches across his lap to fan the pages back to near the very opening scene.
"Like this."
"What?" He sounds confused. The good kind, where she's too close and he's scrambled. She likes that.
"I have a good memory. I can visualize where it is on the page. Like this mistake."
"Mistake," he croaks. "I had the copy editor—"
"It's not a copy mistake. It's a... continuity error."
He gasps again.
She chuckles, runs her finger down the left-hand side of page six.
"Oh the scene with the annoying brat and his nanny leaving so they can interrogate—"
Her finger lands on Nikki made a note to take her niece to it on the weekend. That little girl loved animated movies.
"Oh damn," he breathes. "Supposed to take that out."
She sits back, but she doesn't feel triumphant at all.
Castle groans. "That's a big mistake to miss. My editor—we decided to keep Nikki Heat an only child, as an isolating factor for the character, even though it reflected your life a little too closely. So then I had to go back through and catch all those places where I hinted at a brother—"
"Isolating factor?"
He pauses his ramble to look at her. They're very close—that perfume ad nose-to-nose thing he wrote about in 'Heat Wave' between Rook and Nikki which she and Castle do from time to time on a case as well. He blinks.
She shifts back an inch and his eyes clear. He nods, thumb at the mistake on the page. "Yeah, you know. The elements of a character which create the perfect combination for the overall arc—Nikki is isolated, she tries and fails, so she reaches out to her people for help, finds strength in numbers. Not in this book, but it's setting up—"
"Isolating," she murmurs.
"Um. I can see how... uh... that does reflect a bit on your own, uh, life. But I wasn't intending to make a comment—"
"I wish you hadn't taken it out."
He flinches.
"I wish she'd been allowed at least that little niece." She returns to her plate in silence.
x
Castle clears their plates and washes up in the sink, forgoing the dishwasher as he tries to think of a way to get this night back. With soap ringing his wrists, and the hot water going down the drain, he still has nothing.
"He's house-trained too," she calls from the couch. He looks up. She lifts an eyebrow. "Much as I appreciate it, why don't you get back over here."
Castle wipes his hands on a dish towel and leaves the plates to dry in the sink. He comes back around as she sips at her sparkling water, obviously watching him with an intent he doesn't understand.
She pats the cushion near her, where he had snuggled up with his own book earlier, doomed this night with his cavalier self-absorption. Let's talk about me. He picks up the Nikki Heat and drops it on top of the overstuffed ottoman she uses as a coffee table, sinks down beside her. She's still sitting with her back against the arm of the couch, her knees pressed into his thigh, observing him. "What's this Nikki about?"
He swivels his head. "The one I'm writing?"
She nods.
"It's... me working out some issues with it," he says obliquely.
"About me getting shot?"
He does very well not to flinch. He's been braced for this conversation. "Don't worry," he says, slinging her a crooked smile. "Everyone knows Nikki Heat is a lot of wish fulfillment, not a lot of truth."
She nods slowly, her bottom lip pulling into her teeth. "I find it has a lot of truth." Her knees press hard into his thigh as she adjusts on the couch, tucking her feet under her more tightly. "Like the isolation factor."
He sighs. "It's not—"
"But it is," she murmurs. "And where in the story arc, do you think, am I? As Kate Beckett."
She's so determined to have this conversation, that he comes back with a warning retort. "You mean character development?"
"Ah." She folds her hands in her lap. "You're right. I stand corrected. My character development."
He doesn't answer. She knows the answer. She hid out in her father's cabin for the summer. Didn't even tell anyone she was there. So.
Seems obvious.
"Hm." She leans into his thigh again, her knees two bony points against him. She could bruise him like this. (He wouldn't mind.) "So Nikki is probably ahead of me, in the next book."
"It's not a competition," he answers faintly.
She tilts her head. "But she is. If you're going with wish fulfillment rather than... reality."
"Hell, Beckett, reality left the page in book one. Page one-oh—"
She tilts all the way forward—for a half second he thinks she's falling into him—only for her lips to brush his moving lips.
He stops talking abruptly.
Her breath skirts his mouth. She touches another kiss there, lightly. Invitation rather than hesitation, and he knows what this is.
Kate Beckett trying to keep up.
He still turns his head to meet hers, nose brushing, and leans into it. Their mouths collide, but the awkwardness is a moment.
The rightness is forever.
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