Author's Note: The first of a couple chapters set around and during 2x4 "Fool Me Once."
Then Came Love
Chapter 10
Kate didn't hear from Castle at all for the next two days. Not that she cared or was even keeping track, she told herself and tried hard to believe it. Anyway, the next day was Sunday and since she didn't have an active case, she didn't need to go into the precinct so she wouldn't have expected to hear from him or see him.
When Monday rolled around and he didn't show up even briefly to ask if there were any new cases or cold cases he could help look into, it was odder. The boys at least thought so, Ryan stopping at her desk in the afternoon to ask where Castle was and she'd forced nonchalance as she responded that she wasn't Castle's keeper.
If Castle wanted to sulk, that was his problem. She hadn't been wrong, she told herself. She shouldn't have to give up her privacy or her autonomy entirely just because she was pregnant—with his baby. (Unbidden, she heard again in her mind his voice as he'd referred to himself as a glorified sperm donor and tried not to wince. That wasn't how she'd been treating him. It wasn't.)
What was so unreasonable about not wanting someone else to be there during her own doctor's appointment? A doctor's appointment was by definition a private thing; health information was all confidential, as she well knew. And this kind of doctor's appointment especially was private, intimate.
And really, she and Castle were co-workers and, yes, friends, like she was with the boys and the boys would never dream of insisting on going with her to a doctor's appointment. The fact that she'd had sex with Castle once didn't automatically change things or give him any right to insist on going to a doctor's appointment with her.
Not that he really could have insisted. She knew very well that if she didn't want him to be there, the staff at her doctor's office wouldn't have let him past the waiting room, even if he did find out the location of her doctor's office and showed up. So there.
Tuesday was the third day since she'd last heard from Castle. Again, not that she particularly cared or was keeping track (except she kind of was). So he was still sulking, let him sulk, she told herself firmly as she sipped the ginger tea she'd started drinking in the mornings and wishing even more than usual that it could be coffee. Not only because she wouldn't have minded the caffeine boost but because coffee was a comfort to her but coffee was out thanks to her own body's newfound aversion to its smell (and god, she really hoped that was a temporary thing.) She tried not to think about a bear claw as she consumed her actual breakfast of a banana and some oatmeal before she left her apartment to head to the precinct.
She'd just stepped out into the hallway when she smelled it. One of her neighbors was apparently frying up bacon for their breakfast, the smell permeating into the hallway. She usually liked the smell of bacon but this morning, the familiar smell seemed to assault her senses, her stomach lurching as her gorge rose up inside her. Oh god!
She fled back into her apartment, fleetingly thankful she hadn't had a chance to lock her door, and ran for her bathroom, almost crashing into the door rather than pushing it open in her haste. She collapsed onto her knees in front of the toilet, her stomach heaving, and proceeded to throw up her breakfast. Ugh, oh god…
She gagged again as she hung over the toilet, trying not to breathe through her nose, as she waited for her stomach to calm a little. She sagged against the cool porcelain, resting her head on her hands, feeling abruptly drained in a way that had nothing to do with her now-empty stomach. And felt the sting of hot tears in her eyes as she shut her eyes in an attempt to hold the tears back. Oh, damn. It felt like another indignity on top of the ignominy of throwing up and her current position leaning against the toilet, as if all that wasn't enough to make her feel pathetic and weak, she had to cry about it too. It was all just so stupid! She sniffed in annoyance at her own absurdity. There was nothing to cry about. It was annoying and gross to throw up, no doubt about that, but she was pregnant, it happened.
And—oh god, it occurred to her that she still needed to go to work. Shit. She might not have a job where she needed to punch a time card or something by a certain time but it would be noticed if she wasn't in the precinct at least shortly after the start of her shift.
She refused to call in sick or something just for this and anyway, she still didn't quite want her coworkers knowing, had not decided when or how she would tell Captain Montgomery or the boys, and any more absences from work would make people start to wonder if something was going on.
Oh damn. She lifted her left wrist to look at her dad's watch. Okay, she had maybe 45 minutes or so, an hour at most if she really pushed it, before she absolutely needed to be at the precinct. It wasn't a lot of time, certainly not considering Manhattan traffic, but it was a small window for her to try to regain her composure and get some energy back.
She was just so tired, she thought, sounding petulant even in her thoughts, and her stomach didn't feel settled yet. She really needed to rinse her mouth out and brush her teeth but the thought of standing up felt beyond her at the moment so she didn't move.
More tears pricked at the back of her eyes. Was this—the nausea, the throwing up, the exhaustion, even the tears—really what she had to expect for the next six months? God, she didn't know if she could do this, didn't know how to get through any of this on her own.
Except… she didn't have to go through this alone. For the first time in days, she thought of Castle's offer—well, more like insistence—to join her for her doctor's appointment without irritation or defensiveness. And maybe it was just a moment of weakness but it occurred to her that Castle's reason might not only have been the baby but to help her. He had already shown that he wanted to help her, hadn't he? Looking into her mom's case—what had really gotten her, them, into this situation—yes, she could acknowledge now that he'd meant well in that, and just in the last week, the way he'd brought her dinner, the way he'd comforted her over the Jenna McBoyd case. And now, offering—not to say insisting—to go with her to her doctor's appointment. As a gesture of support, to be there at an appointment that would be another new experience, intense and probably stressful in its own way. A literal demonstration that she was not going through this pregnancy alone.
How had he put it in the John Allen case, that sometimes people did the wrong thing for the right reasons. He should have asked rather than presented it as a demand but it occurred to her that he might have had a point. And maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't be so bad to have him at the appointment.
Because all this—being pregnant and all its attendant effects on her, this whole experience—was new to her and, yes, hard on her. Harder than she had thought or wanted to admit because it was making her do things that were so foreign to her—even something like nausea was unusual for her and certainly the tears were even more so. And even if the morning sickness improved—god, she hoped it would and she hadn't even had it that bad so far—she doubted the rest of pregnancy would be that much easier. She would need to adjust and change, well, everything about her life, not just her diet, cutting out coffee and all, as she already had, but her exercise routine, the way she worked—the thought of months of restricted duty, if not outright desk duty, made her grimace. Everything was going to change. Forever. Even more so after the baby was born. (Oh god.)
She supposed—no, she knew—that she could manage to get through this alone. As her mom had always said, life never delivers anything that we can't handle.
But Castle wanted to help her. And well, she had to admit that she would probably want, even need, more help as this pregnancy advanced. It wasn't an easy thing for Kate to accept, went against all her instincts. She could, she supposed, turn to her dad and Lanie too (once she'd told Lanie about her condition, that was) and in some ways, she knew she would be more comfortable with that but both her dad and Lanie were busy with their own work. And with her dad, she was a little nervous of worrying him and there would be some awkwardness with talking about her body's changes, her bodily functions. And Castle was the baby's father; it was in many ways part of his responsibility to help her. Her own dad had implied as much, as had Castle himself. He wasn't some glorified sperm donor, the words darted across her mind yet again, and she winced.
She still wasn't entirely comfortable with the thought but that wasn't the point. After what Castle had already done, how he'd already shown his willingness to help her, she could compromise on her own comfort, her instinctive independence, and learn to accept some support or help.
Accepting help. She supposed it was just another facet of the changes that were coming, the unfamiliar experiences she would have to try to accustom herself to in these next months and years.
Just as she was going to need to figure out how to manage this… relationship with Castle because it was more complicated than being co-workers and friends. She didn't know how to define it because they weren't sleeping together, weren't dating, but they were… connected, would be connected, permanently, because of this baby. And fine, yes, he did have a right to be informed and involved with her personal life now, in some way, even before the baby was actually born, she could see that now. It was all so confusing and undefined and complicated, damn it.
Ugh, when had her personal life become so complicated—no, never mind, she knew when it had happened, it was everything else about dealing with complicated personal relationships she didn't know. Hell, she didn't really do personal relationships at all; she didn't go on dates (as Lanie perpetually reminded her), had not had any sort of romantic relationship since Will, and that had been more than two years ago.
Until now—not that her relationship with Castle, whatever it was, was a romantic one. Because it wasn't. Really.
She would need to call Castle and, yes, apologize to him and then going forward, figure out how to navigate this strange relationship of theirs.
But none of that was going to happen at this moment while leaning against the toilet, of all things.
And anyway, before anything else, she needed to go to work. Ugh.
After a few more minutes, she pushed herself to her feet. Her stomach seemed to have mostly settled again and she hastily rinsed her mouth out and brushed her teeth, feeling more like her usual self once she had done so.
She made herself a quick piece of plain toast and took it with her as she left for work, carefully holding her breath as she hurried down the hall and then breathing through her mouth once she reached the elevator. She didn't allow herself to breathe normally until she was outside and then was relieved that for the moment at least, her stomach had settled.
She made it to work a few minutes after the start of her shift, earning raised eyebrows from the boys since it wasn't often that she showed up after they did.
"Nice of you to show up for work this morning, Beckett," Esposito greeted dryly.
"Spilled my coffee this morning," she lied, feeling a little twist of guilt. She didn't like lying to her team but the truth was out of the question right now.
Espo eyed her for a moment but thankfully, accepted the answer with a nod as he returned his attention to his computer.
Kate had fully intended to call Castle once she hit a lull but as it happened, no lull presented itself. She got a call from an ADA who was reviewing one of her old cases in preparation for the upcoming trial and spent the better part of the morning reviewing that old case file and then on the phone with the ADA, going over the steps of the investigation that had led them to the killer.
By the time she finished that, it was already the afternoon and she had to deal with a round of the paperwork so inexplicably and irritatingly beloved by One PP, although she found herself distracted at odd moments glancing at Castle's empty chair. The sight of it was starting to niggle at her, a reminder of his continued silence after their argument. (When had she become so accustomed to his presence again? It had only been a month since she'd gone to the loft for that first necessary conversation and less than that since he'd returned to the precinct and yet, somehow, seeing his chair empty did seem strange.)
Much later in the afternoon, she finally found a little window of time and made herself a cup of tea before her planned call to Castle but before she could actually drink it, her phone rang with a new case.
She and the boys were summoned to a private elementary school, one that had hurriedly been emptied out of all students and all other teachers except for one agitated one, waiting in his classroom. There was no body, she noted immediately, but then her attention was drawn to the video screen showing what looked like a portion of a tent inside an apartment.
This already looked like an interesting case but then when she and the boys watched the video, it turned out to be even more so. Oh, this was definitely a new one, not just a murder caught on actual camera (which wasn't all that new) but involved a victim who was supposedly in the Arctic and not, as it appeared, in an apartment. A con man faking a trip to the North Pole? Oh, Castle would love this, she thought automatically.
As if to echo her thoughts, Ryan spoke up beside her. "Castle won't want to miss this. You gonna call him?"
"I'll call him so you can stop pining," she told him dryly before moving away to a corner of the room, noting some of the kids' artwork on the walls and hoping that the kids hadn't been too traumatized by witnessing the murder, as it were, although fortunately, with the way the camera had fallen in the victim's alarm, it hadn't shown anything graphic. Her free hand lifted automatically towards her stomach before she realized and forcibly lowered her hand. Crap, no, she would have to be careful about that now-almost-instinctive gesture because of how revealing it was.
She grimaced a little and hurriedly called Castle.
"Castle," he answered, sounding decidedly distracted. Was something up?
"Hi, Castle, it's me," she began, sounding, as she felt, awkward, uncertain. After all, the last time they'd talked, he'd hung up on her and she had no reason to think his anger had died since then.
"Detective," he greeted her, his voice stiffer than usual but not, she noted, actually angry or hostile.
He didn't say anything more and she inwardly winced at this uncharacteristic brevity on his part. No, he wasn't over it. "We have a new case and, well, it's a little weird so I thought you'd want to be in on it." It came out sounding almost like a question.
"I do like the weird ones," he responded, sounding marginally more like his usual self. "Count me in."
A little knot of tension dissipated, making her realize that she had actually been nervous about whether he would soften enough to come back even for a case. But then, was Castle the sort to hold grudges? He didn't really seem like it. She bit back the urge to thank him for coming. The talk they needed to have couldn't happen now, not at the scene with so many other cops around, and not over the phone. "Okay, then." She gave him the name of the school and the address.
"The murder happened at an elementary school?" he blurted out, sounding horrified.
"It's complicated so you'll find out when you get here," she answered, deliberately bland. "See you soon, Castle."
"Yeah, I'm on my way."
"Castle's on his way," she answered Ryan's unspoken question as she rejoined him and Esposito in front of the screen. "Let's watch it again, see what else we can find out."
They did, pausing the video every few seconds at the first indication of something odd, taking in more details this second time around. The noise—a door closing?—the shadow, the gun, the victim recognizing the killer, the gunshot, the camera knocked down or fallen over, and then the recording stopped with a final view of the actual surroundings, revealing the victim to be a fraud, nowhere near the Arctic. They would need to find where the crime scene actually was. She thought she'd noticed—
But before she could gesture to Ryan to play the video again, she heard the sound of voices outside in the hallway. They were indistinct but somehow, it seemed almost as if something set off an odd resonance in her synapses or an instinct in her body so she knew. Castle had arrived. She didn't know how she was so sure of it—tried to tell herself it was absurd—but somehow, she knew.
And then in another minute, he was there, walking into the classroom.
His eyes immediately found hers, their gazes locking with what she could almost swear was a practically audible click, as an expression she couldn't identify flitted across his face. Then he blinked, greeted one of the unis, and looked around. "Where's the body?"
Ryan glanced at her as Castle joined them before the screen. "You didn't tell him?"
"And spoil the surprise?" she quipped.
"What surprise?" Castle chimed in, joining her and Ryan and she wondered if she was being overly sensitive to note that he hadn't so much as looked her way again. Admittedly, the video screen was pretty distracting.
Ryan allowed himself a quick grin before sobering as he started the video again.
"Do we have jurisdiction in the Arctic?" Castle asked as the video started with the victim's little speech. The victim was very good, very convincing, she noted. He must have been a hell of a con man.
"Wait for it," she advised, pointing out the details she'd already noted.
There was no doubt about how riveted Castle was, entirely still and focused, as the video played and then he gasped and clasped his hands together in dramatic glee. Typical Castle. "That was awesome!" He belatedly realized he'd called a deliberate homicide awesome and quickly corrected himself. "I mean, well, obviously, it was horrible but…" he paused and then finished, "that's not the Arctic."
She couldn't help but roll her eyes a little, even as she felt a flicker of amusement and, more than that, a jolt of energy, making her feel less tired. Something about Castle's enthusiasm was contagious. "That's an apartment. But where?" she wondered aloud. They couldn't get far without the body or the actual crime scene. "Ryan, rewind it. I thought I saw something when the camera was falling." The angle had been odd and it had barely been a glimpse but she thought she'd noticed… "Stop. Right there," she directed and Ryan duly paused the video. "Out the window in the background." It was at an angle and a little blurry but a window meant a view and that could help narrow down location. She squinted.
"That's classic Upper West Side architecture," Castle interjected.
He was right, she noted. She could identify it too now that he'd spoken. She forgot sometimes for all his silliness how sharp-eyed and observant Castle could be. One way in which he was helpful, well, one of several ways. "Take a picture of it, send it to the precinct," she directed Ryan. "See if any of the beat cops recognize it." There was a chance, at least. As she remembered from her own days of being a beat cop, most beat cops got to know the blocks on their beat very well, down to knowing where every crack on the sidewalk was. Identifying a building should be easy, although the blurriness might complicate matters. It was, at least, a start.
In the meantime, she needed to talk to the teacher, a Mr. Wheeler who was visibly upset, unsurprisingly, but calm enough, thankfully. He was able to give a summary of how he had first met the victim and what the so-called Steven Fletcher had said about himself and this supposed trek to the North Pole and, more importantly for their case, that he'd collected $50,000 for it. A pretty big amount of money, more than enough to provide a motive.
"That's a lot of pemmican," Castle commented and at her and Espo's glance at him at the irrelevant comment, he—of course he did—took it as encouragement to expound on what pemmican was. And it sounded like he'd actually tried it too.
She didn't think she'd ever met anyone who had such an endless store of mostly useless information at his fingertips, although it probably made him a formidable player at trivia games. And a very good dad, she suddenly thought. Who better than someone like Castle with his seemingly inexhaustible fount of random facts to answer the endless questions of very young kids, the constant 'why' and curiosity about the world. The curiosity that was still so much a part of Castle too. She was, not for the first time, aware of how lucky this baby would be, how lucky she herself was, had turned out to be, that Castle was the father of her baby.
And she really needed to talk to him.
Not here and she couldn't think about it now. She forcibly yanked her mind back to the present, focusing on the case that was her immediate concern and Mr. Wheeler, who finished telling them what little he knew of the victim, showing them the glossy brochure the so-called Steven Fletcher had created. Kate was starting to develop a sort of grudging admiration for this Steven Fletcher, whoever he was, because he was clearly not some small-time con man but one who put quite a bit of effort into pulling off a long con.
And then, more quickly than even she'd dared to hope, Ryan was getting their attention to tell them the unis had found the crime scene. (She later found out the search had been narrowed down because a neighbor had heard the gunshot and thought to call 911 to report it. Luck, she would take it.)
But first, that meant she and Castle had to drive to the scene, going from the Lower East Side to the Upper West Side. And once they were in her car, alone, some awkwardness returned, now that the distraction of being at the scene was over.
She knew she had to talk to Castle but she hadn't decided what to say. God, she was bad at this kind of thing, bad at personal conversations, bad at, well, admitting she had been wrong. But after a minute, she finally began, "Castle, I—" at the same moment as he blurted out, "About pemmican—" and they both broke off, glancing at each other.
He gestured with one hand. "You go ahead."
Pemmican, she thought, ridiculously, her mind somehow focusing on the word. Castle had actually been going to say more about pemmican—it was absurd but she was somehow a little encouraged. He'd been going to fill the awkward silence with irrelevant nonsense, it wasn't unusual for him but it was also something of an olive branch, a gesture towards normalcy, as if he was willing to act as if they'd never had their little argument at all on Saturday.
"I've been thinking," she abruptly blurted out, not having entirely planned what she was going to say but there was no putting it off any longer, "it would be okay for you to come to my doctor's appointment. If you still want to," she hurriedly added. "You don't have to but—"
"Really?" he interrupted her. "You mean it?"
She met his eyes briefly, irritated to find her cheeks flushing with heat. "Yes, I mean it."
She turned her attention back to the road but not before she saw the way his eyes, his expression, lit up, making something inside her soften.
"Beckett, I—yes, of course I still want to be there. I will be there."
"Oh, okay," she responded inanely. "My appointment is next Tuesday morning, 8:30 a.m."
"Tuesday morning, 8:30 a.m.," he repeated and pulled out his phone to make a note. "Got it."
"I'll text you the address."
"Great, thanks."
There was a pause in which she hesitated, again—oh, damn, why could she never find words for this kind of personal thing—and he broke the silence. "And I'm sorry, by the way."
She blinked at him. "You're sorry? For what?"
"For pushing. I shouldn't have insisted on coming with you the way I did. It is up to you, of course it is. It's just that I want to be involved as much as I can. But I still shouldn't have pushed—"
"No, Castle," she cut him off abruptly. Somehow just hearing him apologize for insisting had made any lingering irritation at his forcefulness the other evening dissolve. "You don't have to apologize. I'm the one who's sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel like I was shutting you out. I was just… surprised, I didn't think… I was thinking of it as a regular doctor's appointment more than anything else and, well, that's something you do alone." That wasn't entirely it, she knew, and inwardly squirmed but made herself continue. "This is new for me, not just having a baby but well, everything else about this situation, and I'm still adjusting to all of it, I guess." Admitting how bad she was at accepting help seemed beyond her and anyway, she reasoned, he did know her, knew her independent streak so surely it wouldn't be a surprise to him. And the complexity of their relationship status wasn't something he needed to have spelled out either.
"It's okay, Beckett. It's an adjustment for both of us."
"But you're already a dad," she blurted out. He was the one among the two of them who'd been through this before; he probably still knew more about the pregnancy experience than she did, having witnessed the whole thing with Meredith.
He made a small face. "Yes, but the situation's different and, well, you're different from Meredith."
Different from Meredith—yes, she supposed so but how did he mean it? She bit her lip on the urge to ask. She didn't want to sound like she was begging for a compliment or wanting to pry into his first marriage, even if she was curious. What she said instead was, "So I guess we'll just have to agree to take this a day at a time as we both adjust."
He flashed her a small smile. "It's a deal."
She returned his smile, feeling a little wave of relief wash through her. Making her belatedly aware of how… bothered she had been by their argument, as if in a strange way being at odds with Castle made her life feel as if it had tilted off its axis. Which was absurd and nonsensical because she and Castle were so different, they would probably be at odds constantly. Or it could just be a strange side effect of the pregnancy, a hormonal imbalance, yes, that was probably it. And arguing with someone, anyone, was always upsetting, even at the best of times so it had nothing to do with Castle specifically.
There was another brief silence but this one felt comfortable as was proven by the fact that he eventually broke it by saying, "I really can tell you more about pemmican."
A small laugh surprised her before she could hold it back. Of course he could and would say such a thing. "I'll pass," she returned dryly. "But I don't remember any of your books involving Arctic explorers so how do you even know so much about it?" Come to think of it, maybe it was a little surprising that none of Castle's books had involved Arctic explorers; it seemed like the sort of thing he'd like to write about.
He threw her a smirk. "And of course you've read all my books so you'd know that."
Naturally, that was what his takeaway would be. "Shut up, Castle, and answer the question."
"You know those two things are contradictory."
She rolled her eyes. And he was annoying again. "Castle!"
"Alexis asked about it when we were reading a book about explorers years ago so I looked into it." His expression softened and he gave her a small self-deprecating smile. "I never liked admitting I didn't know something when Alexis asked a question. I know, it's arrogant to want her to think I know everything."
How could he go from annoying to… sweet so quickly? It wasn't fair. "Not arrogant, understandable. I'd guess most parents enjoy the phase when their kids still think they're omniscient."
He made a rueful face. "Yeah, those were the days," he joked lightly enough but there seemed to be an odd undertone to it that made her wonder fleetingly if something was going on with Alexis. But surely, it couldn't be anything bad, not from what she knew of Alexis.
And the momentary curiosity was forgotten as they were almost at the crime scene, replaced by thoughts of the case. "Somehow I don't think our vic conned the school out of $50,000 because he really loves pemmican."
"No," he agreed, "I think the $50,000 was probably his motive in and of itself. The question is if he was killed for it too."
"I guess we'll find out," she returned as she parked her car.
"'Once more unto the breach,'" he quipped.
Such a writer. "'We few, we happy few,'" she shot back and then smirked at his look of delighted surprise. "It's only Shakespeare, not rocket science. Now, focus, Castle," she chided mildly as she nodded a greeting to the uniform at the entrance of the building.
"16th floor, Detective," the uniform offered.
"Thanks, Ortiz."
She strode into the lobby, Castle keeping pace by her side, and was aware she felt… lighter, less tired than she had been. Because—oh, fine, yes, she could admit it—it really was nice to have him back.
~To be continued…~
A/N 2: Beckett is still in denial but in case the assurance is necessary, I do promise a happy ending…
