Misconception
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Kate touches his arm, something entirely and wonderfully soothing about the way she strokes her fingers over his forearm just below his shirt. And he is - almost - soothed.
Almost.
"It's okay. He won't mind that Martha and Alexis already know." She's leaning in close, and now that he has the distraction of Jim Beckett looming on his horizon, it allows him to see something else very clearly.
This is what Kate looks like when she's in love - and she's been in love for... all this year. At least. At least. She's bumped shoulders with him and given him that same look from the side of her eyes; she's smiled at him with her whole heart in it. She's been like this for months now, even when she was discomfited and unsettled by him, even when she was being elusive - she was in love with him.
And he felt it; he knew it somewhere in him, responded, warming to the sun burning in her eyes. But without the words as proof, as his cornerstone, it was all too easy for her looks and smiles to fall like a house of cards. An illusion that collapsed.
But her eyes, her looks, her touches say she loves him, even if it's hard, even if they have to tell her father, even if his family is driving them crazy with their interruptions.
He lays his hand over hers and tries to be calm, to rest in the assurances she already gives. "Tell him soon though?" he says quietly. He knows his mother is listening attentively, but when has she not?
Kate smiles. It just - knocks him down, seeing her like this and knowing what it means. Knowing. Having not just the strength of his own beliefs, but hers as well.
"Tonight," she says. "After dinner, I can call him. I'll tell him then."
"You can't deliver news like this with a phone call."
She blinks, her smile fading as she withdraws just slightly.
He grips her fingers. "Kate. On the phone? No. If it were Alexis-"
Martha interrupts with a snort. "Oh, God forbid. Not for another few years." She holds up a hand as if to ward off a vision of the future.
Castle shudders. "Only a few? No. That would make our kids - no."
At his right, Kate suddenly chokes. He turns quickly to look and she's smothering laughter into a hand. Still, he's pretty sure he sees that same bubble of desperation. Kate having his kid and his kid having a kid. And-
He has to shake that off. Put it out of his mind. "Please, for the sake of fathers, have a face-to-face conversation."
"O-okay," Kate stutters. "I'll see if I can meet him for break-" She shakes her head, a little bite of her lip as she swiftly rakes her eyes over him. "Lunch. A late lunch, I think."
Late lunch. Because they'll be - ahem - sleeping in.
His heart picks up, his chest grows tight like his skin doesn't fit. She snakes her fingers over his knee and slides up his inside thigh, and Castle grunts, catching her wrist.
"Ka-ate."
He tries not to crush her fingers, but he's afraid he's lost some control here. He's always prided himself on his endurance and stamina, his concern for his partners in bed, but they're not in bed and she's going to break him.
She's going to break him tonight.
"It'll be fine, Castle," she murmurs. Her voice is some rare combination of melodic and husky, like she breathes sex. "I'm a grown-up, not a high school senior."
He gulps, some of that sex disappearing at the words high school senior. Like his own daughter, she is someone's daughter too. "Maybe I should talk to him first? Before we go in there and drop a bomb like this. Or, hell, maybe we shouldn't lead with the being pregnant part, but I should ask him instead for his permission-"
"Did you miss the part where I said I'm a grown-up?" she cuts in. "And what makes you think you're going with me?"
Castle gapes at her, rallies fast when he realizes she's not kidding. "Kate. Of course I'm going with you."
"Not if you're going to pull that stone age crap - asking permission."
"Well, a heads-up would be nice, don't you think? Respectful at least."
"Of whom? It's not respectful of me to ask someone else for permission to engage with me in a relationship that will change my whole life - not to mention shape my future and every decision I make from here on out?"
Castle glances quickly to his mother, but she's no help at all. She's chuckling and sipping wine like she's at a show, and she pretty much is, because Beckett is clearly just getting started.
"Or is it that you're being respectful of my dad? Because he had such big part to play in any of this? What you and I have found, or the work I have put into fixing my issues that he had a role in creating anyway?"
Oh, hell. There's - something very deep and dark back there. He forgets sometimes that he father was an alcoholic, that she had to save his life.
"Castle, no one gets to give you permission to knock me up," she growls finally, "but me."
"Oh, no, not that. I just want to offer your dad a kind of head's up," Castle says, relieved. "A way of acknowledging his role in your life and now - well, I'll have a role in your life."
"That doesn't sound any better."
"I'm-" He does a helpless shrug, casting another look at Martha for help. But he's getting nothing. "I'm not sure what's wrong with talking to your dad."
"How would you like it if I asked your mother if it was okay if I took you back to my place and had my way with you?"
Martha laughs, sparkling and rich, and Castle gives her a withering glance. "I'm not asking your dad if it's okay if I have my way with you. That's hardly respectful. I'd like to ask him for your hand-"
"Well, guess what, Castle? He doesn't have my hand. I do. He can't give me away - he doesn't have me."
He huffs. "If you did ask my mother to marry me, to give me away, I'd think it was actually sweet. Considerate. You're right, you're not a high school senior, and I'm not the captain of the football team, and we didn't do something stupid under the bleachers, Beckett. What I want to do tomorrow is have lunch with your dad and talk to him - the same way you sat down with me on that couch and talked with Alexis."
That shuts her up.
He lets out a breath, but he's all charged up now, battle-ready in that way only Kate Beckett can accomplish. Equal parts frustrated and turned on, the way she does it for him, pushes him to find better words, to do better.
He really wants his mother to leave.
"Martha," Kate says, her head swinging to his mother. "May I have your permission to-"
"Kate," he groans.
"Permission granted, darling," his mother says, waving a hand. "Have your way with him. And actually, it is rather sweet, just as he said. To be considered."
Kate sighs, as evidently she doesn't feel she's made her point, and she hasn't because Castle is right. No matter how old Kate is, she's still Jim's daughter.
And yes, it's her own hand he's asking about, but he does feel they're in damage control mode right now.
"Beckett, I just don't want your dad to hate me," he blurts out. "He's your family. And you're mine. So - he's family too. Which means we all have to somehow get along even if it's just at Thanksgiving."
He won't dare mention Christmas. They'll have a baby by Christmas. Oh, my God, they'll have a baby for their first Christmas together.
"You're my family too," Kate says then. Her eyes are that melting chocolate brown, softening towards him. "And my dad already likes you, Castle. You have nothing to prove."
That still feels like a no on the lunch.
"I want to go," he tries again. He has to try. This feels like a test of their promises. If she can't take him with her to talk to her own father, then she's going there to confess, not to celebrate.
Her lips thin in a line, but she squeezes his knee and lets go of him. "We'll see."
Kate takes up her fork again and moves to resume dinner, but he can't. He hasn't won, it doesn't feel like, and before she took this conversation off the rails, he was trying to say something.
He's trying to stand up for them, trying to make a stand for them, after the last few weeks of savagely denying them.
"We're partners, Kate." He pauses to be certain the words are right. "And it may not be life or death back-up we're talking here, but it is life. Our life. You ought to - you might need me in there."
Kate puts her fork down. She's studying him, and it's a great effort of will to prevent himself from squirming in his chair.
"Okay," she says finally. She pauses so long that he thinks that might be all he's going to get, but then she speaks. "I ought to need you. But if you even hint at asking for my father's permission-"
"No, no," he hastily assures her. "Wouldn't dare."
She gives him a long stare, and then he really does squirm.
The edges of her lips quirk; she gives him a crooked smile like she knows exactly what it's costing him.
But now that he's finagled an invitation to lunch, his low-level anxiety returns. If he can't respectfully ask her father's permission, he's not sure how this is going to go well for him.
At all.
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