Author's Note: I did promise more talking so here it is…
What Is Supposed To Be
Chapter 3
Beckett was silent on the way back to the precinct and Castle tried not to feel apprehensive about it.
He didn't even know why he should be apprehensive. He hadn't actually done anything.
But he hadn't exactly been comfortable all evening long, had felt antsy and irrationally guilty during the entire dinner with Serena, the sense of wrongdoing turning his food into sawdust in his mouth. He'd felt as if he were cheating.
He wasn't cheating, he told himself for approximately the thousandth time. For one thing, he and Beckett weren't technically together. Well, no, that didn't sound or feel true either. There might still be a wall but she'd said she wanted him to wait for her, that she didn't want him to love someone else. It wasn't exactly a declaration of love but it was enough—more than enough for now. And he'd promised to wait and he kept his promises. So they might not technically be together (yet) but he was still… committed to Beckett. (And really, who was he kidding, he would give Beckett a ring tomorrow if he thought there was even the remotest chance she would accept it and wouldn't run for the hills.)
Even so, it wasn't like the dinner was a real date; it was a distraction, a ruse, one that Beckett herself had suggested, and he had no intention of doing anything with Serena except for having a nice dinner and interesting conversation. For research purposes and a diversion for Beckett and the boys.
But he couldn't help but remember the look on Beckett's face when she and the boys had emerged from Serena's hotel room to find him on the floor. And fine, it probably hadn't helped that Serena's idea of making sure he was okay had involved her hand on his chest and her bending over him in a way that ensured he got a nice view down her dress.
He hadn't looked! (Okay, he hadn't looked much. What, he was a man and he wasn't blind and her… assets were right there!)
Beckett's expression had been, well, mostly shocked but beneath the surface, there had been other emotions lurking, something darker, something he couldn't put a name to.
Finally, when he thought he might actually crawl out of his own skin in his nervousness, he ventured, "Beckett?"
"Yeah, Castle?"
Are you angry? He bit the question back. One thing he did know was that asking such a question to a woman was never the right thing to do. Besides, he and Beckett didn't talk that directly. Although he thought their days of not talking about this sort of thing should really be coming to an end right about now. Not talking hadn't exactly been working for them. (No, outright lying worked so much better, a tiny voice in his mind interjected sarcastically. He tried to squelch the little voice of his lingering anger. He couldn't think about that now. Didn't want to think about it at all but he knew that was too much to ask and avoidance never solved anything.)
"You're quiet," he finally said, inanely.
She flicked a glance at him. "You're the chatterbox, remember, Castle, not me."
He relaxed somewhat at the teasing he heard in her voice. Teasing was good. If she was teasing him, she wasn't mad at him. And her teasing gave him the courage to go on. "Just making sure nothing's wrong."
"I'm fine," she bit off, her tone a little too clipped for his liking. He tensed again but her tone wasn't angry; it was more her 'I don't want to talk about it' tone, the one she tended to deploy right before deflecting. And on cue, she added, "You want to explain how you ended up on the floor?"
"You told me to stall and distract her so I tripped getting out of the elevator."
"You tripped?" Now she sounded amused.
"Yeah. Well, pretended to trip, really. I mean, I can be a klutz but I'm usually capable of walking on a flat surface without falling," he joked.
She shot him a sideways glance. "You're changing up your M.O., Castle," she drawled, her tone bland.
He blinked, confused. "I'm what?"
"The last time you needed to distract someone, you used a different method."
The last time—wait. Was she actually referring to… that thing they never talked about? He almost choked on air as he was abruptly bombarded with memories of the bite of the cold air, the dark alley, the feel of her hair in his fingers, the taste of her mouth, the sound of her moan…
He tried, and failed, not to lose himself in the memory for a moment and had to force his brain back to the present, scramble for coherence, words. "I… uh… this was different." He had considered kissing Serena to distract her for about half a second but decided against it because he'd already felt guilty enough just having dinner with Serena. He wasn't such an idiot that he would compound that nagging guilt by kissing Serena, even if it was just a ruse. (Besides, he didn't want to kiss anyone besides Beckett.)
"Different, huh? Yeah, I suppose it would be different to kiss a thief and a murder suspect."
Oh right, that. He hesitated but decided to forge on. "Ah, yeah, about that, I don't think she did it."
Kate shot him an incredulous look. "Are you kidding me, Castle? We have the emails and the equipment from her hotel room and you're saying you think she's innocent? You know, having a nice rack doesn't automatically mean she's innocent," she said caustically.
"That's not why I think she's innocent!" he protested. It wasn't. "It's because she told me outright over our dinner that she used to be a thief. Why would she do that if she was involved with this one?"
She scoffed. "Yeah. Or she could be feeding you just enough truth so that swallowing the lies is easier! You know that's what the best liars do."
They had arrived back at the precinct and she opened the door in an irritated silence. (Okay, so he might be reading too much into the atmosphere—a writer's weakness—but he could swear by the set of her lips that she was still annoyed.)
She stalked back into the precinct, not waiting for him as she usually did, and he hurried to catch up. "Look, Beckett, I'm just saying, it's a possibility and maybe you should go in there with an open mind."
"Yeah, I don't think you're thinking with the right body part there, Castle."
She was jealous, he realized, and perhaps a little… insecure. The word startled him. He didn't tend to associate insecurity with the kickass Detective Beckett he knew so well but from what she'd said earlier about thinking he was with Serena, the intonation in her voice…
He needed to fix this. He would never want Beckett to be hurt in any way and beyond that, the thought of Beckett doubting herself just seemed wrong. He put a hand on Beckett's back and ushered her with him around the corner of the hallway.
"Castle, what—"
He dropped his hand once they were around the corner and in the somewhat more secluded hallway leading to the property room. "You're wrong," he blurted out unthinkingly.
Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "What?"
He quickly backtracked, belatedly realizing his mistake. Stupid! How was it that Beckett managed to reduce him, a wordsmith, to such incoherence? "Before, you suggested that I didn't kiss Serena because she was a thief and a suspect. That's not why."
Her expression softened almost imperceptibly but he, who had spent the better part of the last three years studying every expression that crossed Kate Beckett's face, saw it. "Then why didn't you kiss her?"
"Because I met this woman a couple years ago, see, and she became the standard to which I compare all other women." He went on, deliberately keeping his tone light. "And Serena's too blonde, for one thing."
"Too blonde?" Now he could tell by the shape of her lower lip that she was biting the inside of it to keep from smiling. (What, he'd practically made a study of the shape of Beckett's lips.)
"Yeah. Because this woman I met who changed everything is a brunette. She's also tall, smart, gorgeous. Thinks she can leap tall buildings in a single bound and carries the weight of the world on her shoulders."
She made a soft sound, something between a gasp and a strangled laugh. "She sounds like a handful."
"She can be but I'm pretty sure I drive her crazy a lot of the time too so I think we're even."
A small smile escaped her and he returned it, his heart lifting as it always did at the sight of her smile. "Yeah, I guess we are."
He opened his mouth to respond but before he could, another voice intruded. Because of course that would happen.
"Hey." Ryan poked his head around the corner. "There you are, Beckett. Clumsy," he nodded at Castle in acknowledgement.
Yeah, he should have known the boys were going to be giving him a hard time about the tripping thing.
"She's waiting for you in Interrogation One," Ryan went on.
"Thanks, Ryan. Be there in a sec."
Ryan nodded and glanced at Castle again. "Try not to trip on your way."
Castle gave a fake laugh, making a face, but it was lost on Ryan as he retreated.
"Come on, Castle, you can go watch with the boys."
Wait, what? "You're benching me?"
She shot him a look. "Since you've just been trying to convince me that Serena's innocent, I think it's clear that you can't be objective about her. Besides, Gates wouldn't like the way it looked to have someone who was just sharing a cozy dinner with the suspect in the interrogation."
He opened his mouth on automatic protest but had to admit that she was right. And it wasn't as if Gates was a big fan of his mere presence to begin with. Damn.
"Gates doesn't like anything," he settled for muttering under his breath.
"Maybe not but she's the Captain so deal with it."
"I can still pout about it though, right?"
That got her to shoot him a grin. "I would expect nothing less from you, Castle."
He smirked at her, his spirits restored at the sight of her smile, the sparks of amusement lighting up her eyes. She shot him a last teasing look before disappearing into Interrogation and he felt his heart give a silly little leap as usual whenever she gave him one of those sparkling looks from beneath her lashes. He was such a lost cause; he couldn't even seem to stay angry at her for long. Couldn't stop himself from reacting to every smile she gave him, every teasing glance. And it was worse now because, well, a man couldn't be totally head over heels in love with a woman who seemed determined to keep a certain distance between them and then have that woman tacitly admit that she returned his feelings and not be completely giddy for days, weeks, possibly even months, afterward.
He mentally shook himself. They still had a case to solve and right now, he had an interrogation to observe. He took a moment to school his expression into sobriety before opening the door to the observation room. He might be ridiculously besotted with Beckett but he didn't need to make that quite so obvious to the boys.
The case was solved and Serena Kaye was, thankfully, gone.
Kate didn't even bother trying to pretend not to be glad to see the woman leave. She might not have turned out to be involved in the murder and it wasn't like anything had actually happened between her and Castle but Kate still couldn't bring herself to actually like the other woman. Strutting around in her heels and sexy dresses (seriously, who dressed like that when she was working?) and flaunting her no doubt unscarred voluptuous body.
What Kate no longer had. She tried not to think about it but the thought kept edging into her mind ever since coming out of Serena's hotel room to see Castle lying on the floor with Serena bending over him in a way that Kate just knew would be giving Castle a perfect view down the front of her dress. The sort of pose Kate couldn't imagine striking anymore because her cleavage now featured an ugly knotted lump of scar tissue. There was nothing sexy about a bullet hole.
She shoved the thought out of her mind as Castle gave her a small smile. "Another case closed."
He was—she could tell he was—deliberately sounding (and looking) bland, not a hint of expectation in his voice but the words were a reminder of their agreement—promise?—to talk more once the case was over. And now it was.
So that would be her cue. Oh god oh god. A flock of butterflies had taken up residence in her stomach, flapping around as if caught in a windstorm. She abruptly found it a little hard to breathe.
(So pathetic.)
This was Castle, her best friend. She could talk openly to Castle. Right? All she had to lose was… him.
Shit, that hadn't turned out to be reassuring at all.
"So now that the case is over, you want to get a burger?" she suggested, feeling ridiculously shy, girlish, like a teenage girl about to ask a boy she had a crush on to the Sadie Hawkins dance. God, what this man could do to her.
His smile deepened. "Remy's?"
"Yeah, sure."
He heaved a sigh of exaggerated relief. "Good because I'm not sure I can afford a more expensive date."
She felt herself flush. A date. He'd called this a date. And it really kind of was, wasn't it? But she responded to his distraction. "Why can't you afford it?"
He pulled a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. "Because the museum just slapped me with a bill for that exhibit I broke."
She blinked at the paper. Oh, wow, that was a big round number. More than what she made in a year or two years for that matter. "Whoa."
"I know. You'd think they'd cut me some slack, after the whole helping-to-solve-a-murder thing."
He was puffing up his chest in mock indignation and she had to bite her lip to control her smile—because the alternative was beaming at him like a loon and possibly blurting out that she thought he was adorable. "Well, don't worry, Castle, since I was the one who invited you, the burgers are on me. Consider it the NYPD's way of paying you back for your assistance."
He pretended to think about it. "Thank you, Beckett, I accept. One more day to stave off having to live on bread and water."
She suppressed a laugh, some of her tension unwinding. "Yeah, you could put Alexis through college with that amount of money." She couldn't imagine why the bill was so high since the TVs in the exhibit had all been old and basically worthless ones except to someone who collected antique electronics but she supposed being designated as "art" put a premium on it.
"I know," he groused with so much exaggerated petulance she felt another bubble of a laugh rising inside her. "I mean, it's not like I broke that stupid exhibit for fun. I was trying to solve the murder of their own museum director. Where's the gratitude, their support of civic duty?"
She clicked her tongue against her cheek in mock commiseration. "It is really hard to be you, isn't it, Castle?"
He gave a loud, entirely fake gasp as they stepped onto the elevator. "Are you mocking me?"
"No," she deadpanned but knew he could see the smirk tugging at the corners of her lips.
"You are. You're mocking me." He clapped a hand to his chest. "I'm wounded, Beckett. Can't you spare some compassion for a poor father who will probably need to sell his internal organs on the black market to pay for his daughter's education?"
Silly, ridiculous man. Her smile broke free (not that she was trying all that hard to hold it in). "You know, Castle, you did bring all this newfound poverty on yourself. You could have just said that the fist was inside the television. You didn't have to make such a big scene out of breaking the exhibit."
"Have you met me?" he scoffed, throwing a histrionic hand up in the air. "It's a basic maxim of writing that you should show, not tell. And besides, Martha Rodgers's son does not just tell people things; that's boring. I was taught from an early age the value of dramatic presentation."
Even while declaiming, he automatically held the door open for her as they left the precinct. It was a mild evening so they fell into step on an unspoken agreement to walk the handful of blocks to Remy's.
"I'm sure your mother will be very proud of how you followed her precepts," she retorted dryly.
"She won't be when I start charging her rent in order to pay off the museum bill. Hey, I like that idea."
"Castle!" she scolded although she couldn't inject any actual indignation into her voice since she knew he didn't mean a word of it.
He made a face at her. "Fine, spoil my fun. It was only a suggestion. Anyway, I still say it's ridiculous that the museum is charging me that much for that piece of so-called art. I mean, really, if I ran to a junk yard and picked up an old TV as a replacement, would anyone even notice the difference?"
He was being silly but she couldn't help the rush of affection—face it, Kate, love—spilling through her veins because she knew perfectly well that he was carrying on in this ridiculous vein to set her at ease. Because that was what Castle did.
She pursed her lips and tilted her head, pasting on an expression of mock thoughtfulness. "Yes, I think they would. I'm sure the artist put a lot of thought into which specific televisions to place where and I thought the piece was an insightful symbolic representation of our current celebrity culture."
He threw her an exaggerated pout. "You're mocking my pain. I really wish you'd stop being mean to me."
"Well, where's the fun in that?" she quipped.
He laughed aloud at that sally and she grinned, feeling a silly, giddy thrill wiggle through her. She liked the sound of his real, honest laugh, liked the way it made his eyes brighten, and she really liked being able to make him laugh.
Just as he was always able to make her laugh. And he was still trying to make her smile. Even after he knew she'd lied to him. Something squeezed at her heart at how easily he forgave her. He had such a kind heart—a heart that he had, somehow, entrusted to her. Oh god. She needed to do so much better, needed to be so much better.
And that had to start now, with honesty first.
Their elbows bumped companionably against each other as they walked and on impulse, she linked her arm with his. They didn't touch often, not really, but she did need to be better about showing him, somehow, since she knew herself too well to think that the words to bare her heart would come to her easily.
She felt rather than heard the quick, almost imperceptible stutter of his breath but then he moved on, switching to grumbling volubly about the artistic merit, or lack thereof, of the exhibit he'd broken. She let him patter on, ducking her head to direct a small smile at the pavement, safely hidden by the curtain of her hair. They did need to talk, seriously, and she didn't kid herself that the conversation they needed to have over dinner was going to be easy, but for now, at least, she could just enjoy the sound of his voice, let his familiar light tones flow over her.
Her smile faded as she wondered, not for the first time, how on earth she had ever managed to go three months without talking to Castle, without hearing his voice or seeing his smile.
They reached Remy's in short order to be greeted with the usual familiarity and good cheer by Susan, one of the regular waitresses, who seemed to have essentially appropriated them as her special charges whenever possible in their visits to Remy's.
They both greeted Susan and ordered their usual cheeseburgers with fries and a shake (strawberry for her, chocolate for him) but once Susan had bustled away, a silence fell.
Kate took a drink of water, both because her mouth suddenly felt dry and also to buy some time, and then finally looked up at him to see him watching her, his gaze steady and warm and reassuring. And somehow, it was as if his gaze loosened her recalcitrant tongue.
"I'm sorry I…" She faltered on the harsh word, lied, and finished instead, "didn't tell you that I… remembered."
She needed to apologize again but as beginnings went, it was not the most felicitous one as the reminder, the unspoken reality that she'd lied to his face, had the warmth vanishing from his eyes and then he abruptly dropped them to fix his gaze on the table. He was shielding his expression from view. The knowledge hurt in some indefinable way. Maybe because it was evidence of how hurt, even angry, he still was, but even now, he didn't want her to see that.
She felt her throat start to close up on a lump of emotion but she forced herself to rush on. "I—it was… selfish and stupid but it just… hurt too much at first and I… I couldn't untangle everything that happened that day in my head. I was… too messed up." Drastic understatement. She heard him draw in a sharp breath but he didn't respond and she forced herself to continue, swallowing back the constriction in her throat. "And I never meant it to go on as long as it did, never meant not to call, but I was such a wreck. I couldn't deal with it… I just…"
"Kate," he sighed, interrupting her. "You told me this already. You don't need to explain."
"Yes, I do," she contradicted him. Her lie about not remembering wasn't the only way in which she'd wronged him. "I just… I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt you, Castle."
At that, he finally looked up at her again. "I know."
Something about the utter simplicity of the statement, the unwavering confidence in it, caught at her throat. "I missed you," she blurted out unthinkingly. Because it was true. She'd missed him every day, every hour. And it occurred to her now that she hadn't told him that in their brief conversation at the swings last month.
The set of his lips softened just a little. It wasn't a smile, not quite, not yet, but it was getting there. "I missed you too."
She managed a faint twitch of her lips, a little bit of warmth kindling in her chest. She said nothing more and for a moment, their gazes meshed and melded and she thought, fancifully, that in the brief silence, the tear in the fabric of their relationship was being stitched up. (She had spent too much time with a writer when she started thinking in such terms.)
She wished—oh she really wished—that could be the end of it, that they could move on, but she knew there was more she needed to tell him.
She'd promised herself she'd be honest with him.
"Castle."
"Hmm?"
"I—you should know…" she hesitated. God, she didn't want to look… weak… in his eyes. She didn't want to look weak in front of anyone but to him… His was the opinion she cared most about. She wanted so badly to be… extraordinary, wanted to be the person he thought she was.
But she'd told Dr. Burke that she didn't think Castle would think less of her. She knew he wouldn't.
"I'm in therapy," she finished in a rush.
His eyes widened ever so slightly but he didn't otherwise react.
"I went back, after…" After she'd frozen in that first case back.
"After you passed the mandatory psych eval," he supplied helpfully. Yes, that too. And of course he knew. Knowing him, he'd no doubt researched every single one of the hoops she'd needed to jump through to get cleared again for active duty.
"Yeah. I'd told him that I didn't remember because I wanted to be cleared to work but then in the Sonia Gilbert case, when I… froze." She paused, swallowing back the memory, the humiliation of that moment. She hadn't wanted to admit it, had told herself over and over again she'd be fine. She was a Homicide Detective and she'd faced down guns before and she refused to think that anything would be different on this side of a bullet wound. And then… she'd frozen like any rookie facing down his first gun. Frozen like the proverbial deer in headlights. "I… you were right. I wasn't okay. So I went back. It's hard," she admitted in lame understatement.
"Kate…" he breathed. "I didn't know."
She managed a wry twist of her lips. "I never told you before. Nobody except my dad knows." She let out her breath, tried to make herself meet his eyes, but found herself focusing instead on a spot between his eyebrows. Her breath was, again, a little shallow. God, she was so bad at this, at talking about things like this. "I told you once that I wanted… someone to dive into it with." She heard him suck in a quick breath at the reference but forged on before she lost what little courage she had. If she stopped now, she had the bad feeling she wouldn't be able to bring herself to continue. "But you were right when you said that I was hiding, keeping one foot out the door. I'm just… bad at this, at relationships. I don't know how to dive into it. But I want you to know… what I said the other day, I'm trying to get better. I'm… trying," she said again dumbly.
"Kate, I… it's okay. I get it and I'm not going to push you into anything you're not ready for." He reached across the table and lightly grasped her hand, making her gaze jerk to his hand covering hers, her heart fluttering. They didn't do this sort of thing, hold hands, but it occurred to her that maybe they should because it felt good. His hand was warm and comforting and she just… liked the way it felt.
Her throat seemed to have closed up but she turned her hand over so she could curl her fingers around his in turn and for now, she thought, she hoped, that was enough. And when she lifted her eyes to look at him, she saw that he was, for the first time since this painful but necessary conversation had started, smiling. Just a slight curve of his lips, a smile that existed mostly in the light in his eyes, but it was a smile. And it gave her hope.
There was a beat of silence and then he added, with somewhat forced lightness, "You're not getting rid of me that easily, Beckett."
She huffed a laugh as she knew he wanted. "Foiled again," she managed to joke.
He smirked. "I'm like the proverbial bad penny; I keep coming back."
"You are certainly persistent," she agreed, not even trying to disguise the warmth in her tone.
"I'm really quite amazing like that," he boasted with mock seriousness.
She laughed and at that point, their burgers arrived, necessitating that they stop holding hands.
By some unspoken agreement, they didn't return to the serious conversation over dinner, keeping things light, with him, as usual, doing most of the talking, telling funny stories from times he'd taken Alexis to various museums when she was little.
Kate let herself smile and laugh and make teasing rejoinders, feeling the sense of rightness she felt so often when she was with Castle settle over her, the sense that there was nowhere else she would rather be. And now, she could simply accept it as true without reservation or denial.
She paid for their burgers, as promised, and Castle thanked her with another joke about her saving him from starvation.
As always, Castle opened the door for her but after she stepped out onto the sidewalk, she turned and as he joined her outside, stepped into him, wrapping her arms around his waist.
He stiffened for just a moment in surprise since they didn't hug either but then he was banding his arms around her, holding her in place.
She nestled her head against his shoulder, for a moment just letting herself breathe in his familiar scent. (When had his scent become so familiar to her anyway?) It was as if a tight little knot of fear she'd been carrying around for months loosened inside her at just the feel of his broad strength against her, the reassurance that he was staying with her, that she wouldn't lose him. Oh, she had needed this…
"Beckett?" he breathed, his tone cautious.
"You told me once that you're a speed reader," she blurted out, directing her words into his shoulder. What she wanted to ask would be easier to get out if she wasn't looking at his face.
"I am," he agreed slowly, confusion clear in his voice at the apparent non sequitur.
"I'm not a speed reader, Castle, so you're further along than I am, but we're reading the same story. Can you—will you give me some time to catch up to where you are in this story?" She felt rather than heard his breath stutter a little as he understood what she meant, what she was really asking. She wasn't good at this but speaking in subtext was easier.
His hands splayed on her back tightened a little before he answered, "Yeah, Beckett, I can do that," he promised. "I know I read fast," he added, falling in with the subtext.
She let out her breath. "Thank you, Castle."
She turned her face into his shoulder, breathing in his scent. She knew she would have to step away soon enough and they'd walk back to the precinct for her to pick up her car and then she would drop him off at the loft while she continued on to her solitary apartment, the usual end to her day.
But she would let herself stay in his arms for just a moment longer, as a reminder and a hope and a promise for where they were headed.
~To be continued...~
A/N 2: To the guest reviewers wondering, I plan for this fic to be 5 chapters.
Thank you, everyone, for reading and reviewing, especially the guest reviewers I can't thank directly.