Treading Water
A/N: At the bomb memorial, when Castle has the somewhat childish conversation with his mother, for the sake of this story, he's upset that Beckett hasn't talked to him about what she remembers, that it came out in an interrogation before he could hear it from her, and he reacted melodramatically. Since she already knows, there's no need for a big conversation where he tells her he's in love with her, and he feels foolish, disheartened by the fact that they're only treading water. They've not managed to really stop the game; they've been speaking in subtext even though they both agreed, at the beginning of this fanfic, to be clear with each other.
At the end of the episode, Beckett asks if they want to go for drinks, just us, and Castle says he's going to head home. Since 'drinks' has been their way of reconnecting, of speaking the truth, this is a red flag for Becktt.
We'll pick up from there.
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47 Seconds 4x19
Sinning by silence... It's not smart. It's not brave. It's cowardly.
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She texts Alexis.
Beckett meant to ask him about his daughter, see how she was doing after being at the morgue with the bomb victims, but he cut out before she could find her way. She and Alexis have a tentative understanding since the bank robbery, and she thinks the girl will appreciate the check in even if she never responds.
And maybe it will score some points with the girl's father.
She's surprised, however, when Alexis texts her back. I'm doing okay, but I think it really got to Dad. He's been brooding in his study with a glass of Scotch since he got home.
That pulls Kate up short.
He would rather drink alone than with her?
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Castle tilts his head back, a long sigh pulled out of his guts.
He doesn't know what to do, what to think. Where to go next. He needs some time with this truth, time to let it sink in. Process.
She knows; she remembers. She lied to him, and yes that cuts, that's foolishly deep. He was certain they had an unspoken understanding, all those veiled statements on his couch or hers. The truth, though, is that nothing has ever really been said. And he's had a tendency to write his own story, a better story, the story he wants to read and not the one that's actually happening.
She has, each time, managed to alleviate those nagging doubts.
Just. Not this time.
What is the real wounding here, why does it make his stomach sour, his heart sink?
It's not really her silence about those memories—it's the silence itself. It's the knowledge that they're nowhere near their goal. He's been deluding himself. Thinking that a handful of meet-ups for drinks and dinner constitute a real relationship. That swapping stories about their childhoods or sharing embarrassing stories from growing up at all means intimacy, means real progress. They have not said the things that absolutely need saying.
Neither of them. Not her, not him.
He is complicit.
Make-out sessions on her couch or sneaking into his office after dessert—it's denial. Vanity. They've both been creating a mutual deceit, an illusion, where she doesn't have trauma she hasn't worked through, and he isn't withholding vital information about her mother's case and thus perpetuating her trauma.
That's the real truth.
There's no next step for them while he continues to keep his secrets.
Sinning by silence.
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Kate texts Alexis when she gets to their front door. The girl comes down and opens it, gives Kate what could be construed as either a smile or a grimace, but also allows her inside.
"Dad doesn't know you're coming?"
"No," she admits. "Thanks for keeping it quiet. Was hoping to surprise him, shock him out of his funk."
"Might work," Alexis shrugs. "I'm, uh, online with friends. Do you mind if I make myself scarce for this?" A definite grimace. Kate hopes the girl doesn't know they've been making out when— "You can let yourself out, right? You have a key."
She... doesn't have a key like that.
Does she?
Before she can think further than but he gave me his key after my apartment blew up, Alexis is heading back up the stairs and leaving Kate alone before the door. Frozen.
Did he intend this kind of thing all the way back then? Letting herself out. Using that key.
She finds herself astonished by both the key-giving timeline and also the idea of letting herself out some hazy point in the future, locking it behind her because it's so late/early she doesn't want to wake anyone, hoping he's the one who finds her bra and not his mother.
Far far too specific a thought.
Kate shudders, spooking herself, and turns toward the living room, determined to face that future, even if it does scare the shit out of her.
He's coming out of his office right as she's heading for it and they both yelp and startle, his drink sloshing, her heart the same, liquid and spilling over.
"Beckett," he croaks, even as something in her responds to his rumpled clothing, the disheveled hair, the grim darkness.
"Castle."
"What are you doing here?"
She rocks on the balls of her feet, tries not to sway towards him: morose, brooding, bad boy is not how they ought to start this.
Is it? Are they starting this or are they well on their way already?
God. She has issues.
So many issues, because the thunderclouds building in his eyes are far too alluring, the largeness of his hands and the width of his shoulders and the set of his jaw—which is, she thinks, against her (but why)—she wants all of it. Craves it.
Let him batter her. Let him smash her to pieces so she can't overthink this.
She heads straight for him, hands out, grasps him by the jaw as she takes him.
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"Can't," he gasps. Pushes her by the shoulders, breaks the kiss. "Can't, we have to stop. Stop."
She looks—
"Kate," he whispers.
Distraught. Distressed. She presses her knuckles into her mouth and turns away. Mumbles something about assault you before he can catch her.
"Beckett," he growls, frustration snapping at his surface.
She goes still, shoulders hunched. He remembers that feral posture from the night in her apartment, trying to talk her down from a panic attack. He threw away that belt.
He sets his drink on an open shelf near a typewriter, reaches for her. A too-rough grasp of her shoulder to make her turn to him. "We need to talk. Honestly." Even as she tries not to let him spin her, her chin is coming up, her body braced.
As if they haven't made out a hundred times and been told to stop by the other. As if this is new.
It is new. She knows it, he knows it. What waters they tread now. "Too many damn secrets," he grunts. Shock rolls across her; she stiffens, blanks her face. His heart flips sickeningly, sinks. "I need to—we need to talk. For real."
"You are upset with me," she accuses. "At the precinct. I could tell... you shut me out."
"I was grappling with... something."
"What?" she pleads.
He opens his mouth but can't imagine where to start.
How does he tell her? How does this at all work out well for them?
If she can't even tell him to his face that she remembers the shooting—and it would be that simple, a mere mention of the fact that those memories are intact, that's all it would take, right? She says to him, I remember everything, and it would be known between them, what was still being unsaid, what shouldn't yet be professed because... because they're still working on it, because she's in therapy and so is he, because the memories are associated with trauma, because love isn't something she can reliably give herself when this other, larger, bigger thing still swamps her.
If she tells him she remembers then she doesn't have to say—
But then he does.
He does have to say.
If she speaks the truth, then he necessarily must.
Sinning by silence.
All along, both of them. They have never managed to drop the subtext, stop the game, be honest with each other.
They're nowhere at all.
"I need some time to think," he rasps.
Her face goes white.
"Not like that," he croaks. "That's not—"
But it is that. Isn't it? Because her truth is tangled in his, and if he tells her there's a man out there who knows who had her mother killed, then she'll go at it, ruining the whole point of all the secrecy, the half-truths, the omissions.
To keep her safe. To keep her alive.
She'll kill herself just to put it to rest.
They can't do this.
"Castle," she whispers. Her hands in fists but they're trembling, and he thinks his are too.
"We're supposed to be waiting," he says, stepping back. Wary. "We haven't done that, haven't given you the time you asked me for. I shouldn't have been pushing—"
"But," she breathes. Stops. Her eyes are dark, alive, in tumult.
He thinks this could save them. For a while. A reprieve until he can untangle the mess of their shared delusion—extricate himself from the blind ignorance of their lust and find a way to live like this.
Without her.
"I'm sorry for railroading you, all those times. For not trusting in the process."
"You didn't railroad me," she husks. A flare of life, of fight, in those depths. "You weren't doing anything I didn't want."
"But we both knew better," he murmurs. Treading water. He promised to give her the time she needed to put her mother's case to rest, but she cannot—she cannot—do that without running afoul of her mother's killer. For now, they have to simply tread water.
There is no way forward.
"Rick," she says, swallows.
"I won't do that to you," he whispers. And as she reaches for him—it seems instinctive—he shakes his head, steps back. "I can't do that to you. Don't ask me to do that to you."
Hurt you.
She turns her head. Breathes. Hands release, smoothing down her pants at the thighs. "Okay. I... hear you. Okay."
She leaves his loft.
Alive.
He's keeping her alive.
He is such a coward.
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