Treading Water
Headhunters 4x21
No problem, Castle. It's what partners are supposed to do.
x
Beckett steps into the conference room, but her hands are shaking. She smooths her palms down her pants, takes a deep breath.
She's shaking.
She hates the fact that police officers like Slaughter remain on the force. He represents everything she's worked against since the detectives on her mother's case failed her family so spectacularly, and the idea that Castle would want to be with—
"Hey. Uh." Kevin Ryan scratches the back of his neck. "Did you, uh, see the deposition the prosecutor sent over?"
Kate focuses on the work before her, which helps to settle the sense of betrayal, the idea that she and Castle can't manage to stay on the same page long enough to move forward.
Which, of course, is kind of the whole point of waiting—they're simply treading water. Not drowning, but not moving forward either.
But Slaughter...
Beckett sits down at the conference table, begins sorting through the deposition. Trial prep. This is her job right now.
She's best at her job.
x
In his office, Castle tilts his head back, finger and thumb pinching the bridge of his nose. He's not quite sure where it all went wrong—he knows only that it went very very wrong.
Oof. His stomach is bruised. That sucker punch will leave a mark.
Slaughter wasn't what he expected. And Beckett didn't respond the way he thought. Which forces him to consider what his motives might have been going into this, why he was restless at home using action figures to enact the scene he's stumped on in the book, rather than any of his many other coping skills for writer's block.
Okay, well, a few of his coping skills would require her participation—eager, avid, sexy participation—and she's prepping for a case with the prosecutor (who is not as handsome as he is), so he was supposed to be leaving her alone. Kind of pathetic to have to call his maybe-girlfriend for help because Slaughter hung him out to dry.
It's what partners do.
No. Actually. What she said to him was, it's what partners are supposed to do. If he didn't know better—
He does know better.
Castle knocks back the last few fingers of his scotch and stands up (it only hurts a little), shuts the lid of his laptop to ignore the stubborn scene for one more night, and he heads to the coat closet.
He might not know where they stand, tentative truce or cautious optimism, but he knows one thing: they're partners.
Time he starts acting like one. Whether she's ready for it or not.
x
Maybe Beckett is a glutton for punishment, coming to The Old Haunt without him, sitting at the bar stool where they first came to that tentative understanding. Maybe she likes rubbing salt in her wounds. Would explain a lot.
Kate takes off her coat, folds it over her arm and leans in against it at the bar. Like a shield.
She asks for the house red, hoping it's not one he's curated just for her. She takes a cautious sip and lets out a breath, somehow disappointed when it is, in fact, nothing special.
Nothing special.
She takes another slow mouthful but it doesn't change. No magic. No miracles, no cheap wine transubstantiating into the good stuff. She rubs her thumb along the stem of the glass, staring at the wood, desperately treading water in her own mood.
The bartender is giving her questioning looks so she asks to sign the tab, tips him more than she should, and slinks off to a table to nurse her one glass. She shouldn't stay; she really shouldn't be drinking tonight but she needed something to take the edge off her tension.
She isn't sure what she was looking for, or why she was looking for it here.
This was a mistake.
(He's a mistake.)
She hates the symbolism of all of it, drinking alone in his bar, coming here to find answers, answers in a bottle. She hates all of this. The past few weeks, the past year, the shooting which brought all of her issues to a head, the whole damn conspiracy which took her mother from her, Slaughter—
"Been looking for you."
Kate yelps, sloshing red wine across her sleeve. "Castle. God."
He flushes, straightens up. "I... didn't mean to sneak up on you."
She shakes her head, tugging on her sleeve to keep the stain away from her skin. Stained. Big and spreading. Like her blood.
"Uh, shoot. Hang on."
He disappears into the crowd. Kate stares at the sleeve of her formerly-white turtleneck, blinking through the burn of tears. Half-panic slow to fade.
"Yeah, we're good, come on." He grasps her by the upper arm, tugging, returning out of nowhere at her side and pulling her to her feet. He has a bottle of dish soap in his other hand, and he's leading her through the after-work crowd and down the stairs to the manager's office. "In here. Right in here."
"Castle," she gets out. Can't breathe well.
He has to release her arm to pull a set of keys out of his pocket. She feels unsteady on her feet but he has the door unlocked and is pushing inside as if expecting her to follow. And so she does.
She does.
He's pulling down a first aid kit from a high shelf—over his head—his coat rides up, his shoulders flexing the seams—he's put on a solid twenty pounds or so since this summer—he doesn't look happy.
He doesn't look happy.
Kate sinks down to a chair because her knees refuse to lock. Her coat tumbles to the floor. Her head swims. Vision murky. Spilled wine and she's battling tears. Everything is messy, inchoate. She can't manage to keep it together.
"Alright, magic fix: three parts dish soap, one part hydrogen peroxide—no wait. Three parts hydrogen peroxide and one part dish soap, whew, almost messed that up, didn't I?" He's chuckling as he approaches with his elixir, soaking a surgical bandage, bringing it to her.
The scent knocks her back. Hard into memory. Surgery, blood, pain. Terror.
"Whoa, hey. Beckett." He catches her arm; she bites down on her tongue to keep from crying out. He releases her. "Okay, sorry, not touching. Just breathe through it, remember?"
She turns her head, nostrils flaring, sucking down a breath, another one, deeper. She settles fairly quickly, realizes her eyes are squeezed shut and opens them again.
He's paused over the sleeve of her turtleneck. Waiting. He doesn't ask. He knows she's quick to panic attacks.
She hates that he knows that. "What is that," she rasps, diverting them both.
"Cure-all for red wine stains," he says. "Tried and tested in the Martha Rodgers household."
"Yeah," she croaks. Hates the wobble in her voice.
He takes it as permission—which it is—to begin dabbing at the stain. Soaks the material with the peroxide-soap mixture. "We'll give it twenty minutes to an hour, and then you can strip and throw this in the wash."
She blinks. Strip.
"I meant—" He's on his haunches before her, and the caring father role drops as he does, sitting back on his ass, arms hooked around his knees. Doesn't look at her. Takes deep breaths of his own.
The stain—and its cure—soaks her wrist, cold down to her bones.
x
He takes her home in the car service. Her home—her apartment. She looks like she wants to cry. From the moment he spoke in her ear at The Old Haunt, she's looked like she's going to break apart.
He's not supposed to be there for that, he thinks. He's pretty sure, actually, that if he stays tonight, he would be staying the night. And that's not what a good partner would do, taking advantage of her in a weak moment.
But he does walk her up to her place, he does linger in her doorway. "You wanna get that in the wash soon as you can," he tells her. He doesn't take his coat off.
She nods, not looking at him, not moving. She has court in the morning; he knows that. He's supposed to leave her now, let her get to bed, get some rest. But.
"Slaughter is awful," he says.
Her head whips around.
"I mean really awful. He's borderline unethical."
"Borderline?"
"Right. No, you're right. Completely unethical." He shifts on his feet and she tosses her coat over a chair. Something livens her up—fury maybe. Injustice. More Beckett now. Stronger. "Borderline illegal?"
She glances at him again, a pause. "Illegal?" She grasps the hem of her shirt and pulls it sharply over her head.
The breath leaves him in a rush. He tries not to want her so badly. "Borderline. But possibly someone should say something."
She wads the shirt up in her hands, gives him a dark look. "You mean at the hearing he invited you to?"
"Shit," he croaks.
She shakes her head and stalks away from him, heading for the washer-dryer stack behind the kitchen. He stays rooted, turning over the thought in his head.
"Wouldn't that be... betraying him?"
"Who, Slaughter?" she calls back. "You've got to be kidding me."
"I don't know. Isn't there a code?"
She stalks back through, wearing sleep shorts, pulling on an oversized shirt that—
Oh.
Yeah. That's one of his. Wow. That's his.
"What code?" she asks. "There's no code for an asshole who twists the law to do his own bidding and is so self-absorbed he doesn't even see how wrong it is."
If she doesn't hear how those accusations parallel his own life—doing whatever he wants because he can get away with it—he's not going to bring it up. "I meant the police code, the bro code, one of the boys. The thin blue line stuff."
"In case you haven't noticed, Castle, I'm not one of the boys."
"I had, yes, I had noticed."
She smirks, a brief flicker, but it's there. "And if you haven't been paying attention, I'm the last one to uphold the boys' club when it has done so much to destroy my family."
Oh. Hell. Raglan. "Right," he says.
She stands before him, her jaw working. "So. Ask yourself if Slaughter deserves your protection." She scrapes her hand through her hair. "I've got court in the morning."
His throat tightens but he nods. "Until tomorrow, Detective." She doesn't reply.
So he sees himself out, knowing it's something of an ultimatum. A watershed.
And he doesn't want to choose Slaughter, but he's not sure she wants to be chosen by him either.
Not right now anyway.
x