Learn to Have Been

August 2014

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Jeremy Preswick was not much a news-follower in his current life, though to hear Emma talk, he'd turned into one sometime during their failed first marriage. He didn't remember it though, so he didn't think it counted.

She did, because it had happened to her, to them, but just not the them of now. Which was why his wife - wife again? - insisted he try to make contact with the police detectives who had helped him reclaim his missing life.

Jeremy Preswick had witnessed a murder once upon a time, had even been shot at, the bullet lodged in a fat Russian novel - all of which he hadn't remembered. Still didn't, honestly. He liked to joke that a penchant for difficult literature saved his life, but what he really knew was that Emma had.

Emma, with his dog, who had allowed him back into her life and wouldn't bullshit him about how hard it had been nor how hard it would be.

That was the thing that had pushed Jeremy to finally call the 12th Precinct - not that his wife kept asking about it, faintly nagging - but that he knew Richard Castle was going to find life difficult in the next few months, and that the novelist's fiance might find it more so.

As Emma had. He wished someone had explained it to him. Explained that what he had done in a former life, as an admittedly different person, actually could be held against him by the ones he loved. Emma had been amazing with him that first year, sweet and considerate and funny, but there was only so much a person could take before it wasn't me just didn't fly any more.

The fact was - it had been him, even if he didn't remember it. And the sooner Richard Castle accepted that, the easier it was going to be for him and his almost-wife. Jeremy Preswick knew it, and he felt it was time to repay the old debt; since literature had saved his life that night, he could save an author some heartache.

And so he was going to share that bit of knowledge with the newly recovered Richard Castle.

Jeremy managed to get through to Detective Ryan one day in August. The summer was hot and most had left the city, but Jeremy knew from the news reports that Castle and Detective Beckett hadn't resumed their Hamptons wedding, nor had they budged much from his spacious loft. Circling the wagons, staying close; Jeremy could understand that feeling.

Detective Ryan remembered him, and he was enthusiastic about Jeremy getting a chance to help out Rick Castle. But it has to be up to him.

Since Jeremy didn't expect Rick Castle to remember him, and if he did, he wouldn't care much what some old victim might say from a murder case five years ago, Jeremy tried to impress upon Kevin Ryan just how important this could be. Would be. Just how much Jeremy Preswick understood being the center of an important investigation and knowing absolutely nothing, doing nothing to help.

But he knew he came off sounding overeager.

He gave Ryan his number in a haze of slight embarrassment and ended the call. He studied the phone for a long moment, rethinking that failed conversation, wishing he'd said just the right thing, but he'd never had a flair for words. He was soft-spoken, and he liked to think before he did speak, but that phone call had been impetuous of him and he hadn't done his best.

When he lifted his head, Emma was standing in the kitchen doorway, studying him. His shoulders slumped but she shook her head, coming to him at the couch, sliding right into his lap like she had used to (she said), like she did now for sure, despite the awkward angle.

He wasn't the asshole who had driven her away from him those years ago, thank God, but he could still be an asshole. It was important to remember that too, to be grateful for this when it was so good.

"I don't think he'll call," he admitted to her. "I'm sorry. I should have-"

"You did just fine, Jer. You did exactly right. At least he knows. They both know."

He nodded and buried his face against her collarbone, her slim and cool fingers coming to his shoulders and hanging on to him, giving him the silence and the space.

He wasn't the old Jeremy, he knew, but he was better. This was better. He could tell Rick Castle that too, if only the man would hear it.

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Jeremy laughed and nudged his finger into Emma's thigh; she startled up from her doze and made a horrified noise, clapping a hand over her mouth.

"No, you weren't drooling. Promise," he told her.

Richard Castle gave a hesitant chuckle and looked towards the detective - Kate - and she was giving him a reassuring smile.

"You meanie," Emma said, swatting his arm. "You should have woken me. I'm so sorry." She turned to Kate and Rick, running a hand over her belly and giving them one of those shy smiles.

He loved those smiles. Made him proud.

"It's not a problem at all," Kate was saying. She had leaned forward on the couch to touch Emma's knee, gave them a wink. "He does it all the time."

Jeremy laughed - Rick's turn to look horrified - but he'd known for a few days now that Rick was slow in developing his sense of humor. They'd had a few coffee dates at the loft, a few private conversations. There was some confusion and difficulty, but Jeremy was determined to be here. Rick was getting there, but-

"I do," Rick said, wincing. "Doze off in the middle of things. It's the physical therapy every day. But it helps."

"I had a long week - late at work every night. I'm mortified. I fell asleep at the theatre too," Emma said, shaking her head. "It's the pregnancy. I feel a nap coming on at any moment."

"Do we need to go?" Jeremy said artlessly. Sometimes he did that, said the thoughtless thing.

"No!" Emma cried, startling with a laugh. "No, no. I'm having a good time. You guys are - a delight. Kate, Rick, please do forgive me. What did I miss?"

Kate shifted forward. "Do you all want some coffee?"

"Oh, no. Don't let us-"

"I could use a cup myself," Kate said. "And it's decaf. Rick?"

"Yeah, definitely," he said. He looked eager, and he turned to Emma with that charming smile that Jeremy remembered from when they had first met. "Don't tell her no, because I'm dependent on Kate for a quality cup. I've completely forgotten how to work the espresso machine. Clean forgot. And I've tried to make it, but I always do something not right. Not how it used to be."

Jeremy flashed a knowing look to Emma and she smiled back, catching his meaning, her lips pressed tightly. She gave a nod and stood up. "Kate, let me help. It'll wake me up a little."

As Emma passed, she scratched his shoulder in understanding and left him to it.

Jeremy sat forward and put his elbows on his knees, rubbed his jaw. "Rick."

The man oriented towards him, guileless eyes, but there was a cloud there. Jeremy had seen that last week when they'd talked too, the way the charm slipped and the real man stood clueless.

"You think about it?" Jeremy said quietly. "What I told you before."

Rick paused, that brief flicker of insecurity and fear that Jeremy knew all too well. He had intimate experience of that sensation, of how your mind scrambled to remember, how you panicked a little because you knew you were supposed to know but it just wasn't there.

"When we met for coffee last week," Jeremy supplied. "I told you about how it had gone for me, and how hard it was to integrate my new personality with my old life. The consequences. You know?"

Rick didn't blink this time; he just hung his head and flexed his hands on his knees. "I know. I'm responsible for what I did even if I don't remember it. But that's not my problem, Jeremy. I remember it."

"You remember that life," Jeremy said.

"I remember all of it. And I know you don't. Of course, there are small things I don't have, and the short-term memory keeps me from figuring out exactly - like the coffee. A windsor knot."

"Writing."

Castle flinched then.

Jeremy rubbed his jaw and glanced back at the kitchen, saw Kate and Emma in conversation over the espresso machine. There was ice cream out on the counter too, which was a nice touch, and it would keep them a little while longer.

His wife was good.

"Writing is a pretty big thing," Jeremy said. "Wouldn't you say? Not a windsor knot."

"Did she put you up to this?"

For a moment, Jeremy was floored to think that Rick saw through him, that the man knew Emma had put him up to it, but then he realized that Rick meant Kate.

"She didn't put me up to anything. This is the first conversation I've had with her that's lasted longer than ten minutes," Jeremy said. "Scout's honor."

Rick nodded. "I believe you. Just she's - she hasn't asked, and I don't talk about it, and I guess I should."

"You don't have to talk," Jeremy said easily. "I'm not your therapist."

"That's for sure," Castle muttered. It was the first time that Jeremy had seen some kind of bitterness on his face, in his tone. That it was aimed at the therapist might be good; his therapist might be cracking him open.

"I just meant - there's this standard everyone holds you up to. Like I said when we got coffee. Emma looked at me and she saw the old Jeremy on top of who I am now, who I'd become now that I have amnesia."

Rick's hands curled up on his knees, and his eyes drifted over Jeremy's shoulder. To Kate, no doubt. He did that a lot; she was probably the one who gave him little nudges, helped him remember. Emma had done that for him too, in the beginning. Until they had a knockdown drag-out fight about it.

"I wanted to remind you," Jeremy kept going, pressing on. "Because it was the most difficult part of integrating my life - the old and the new. What I couldn't remember doing - I still had to suffer for. The things you were that you don't remember have to be reconciled to what and who you are now. But at the same time-"

"Emma took you back," Rick interrupted. "She felt sorry for you and she took you back."

Jeremy cracked a grin, glanced behind him at Emma, saw Kate holding out bowls to his wife. He didn't have much time.

"She didn't feel sorry for me," Jeremy said, turning around and piercing Rick with a long look. "I thought that too at first. But it's not true. It's love. I broke her heart, that first time, and who knows what she did to me, but the love was there. And then, not knowing any better this time, I probably seduced her."

"Seduced me?" Emma exclaimed, coming up fast behind him. She slid around the arm of the couch with two bowls of ice cream and laid them on the coffee table between him and Rick. "Hardly. I seduced you."

She winked and kissed his forehead, her hand on his shoulder in a squeeze, and then she was heading back to the kitchen for the coffee. Jeremy watched her go, saw Kate coming forward with two more bowls.

Time was up.

"Maybe I fell in love, maybe she fell in love all over again. Maybe that's what it was. But it wasn't pity. Pity wouldn't put up with my broken brain. Only love."

He saw he had Rick's attention now, that the man was looking at him but also not looking at him. His eyes fixed on Kate, watching her come towards them with ice cream. Emma handed Jeremy his coffee and he took it, gave her a sly smile.

"You good?" she murmured, sinking down into the couch with him.

He took a sip of the coffee - wow, it was good - and arched an eyebrow at her. She giggled and nudged his shoulder, shaking her head at him.

But he thought maybe he'd said what Rick needed to hear. He glanced over at them, Rick and Kate, and saw that Rick had drawn her to his chair so that she sat perched on the arm, her eyes on him as she cradled a mug of coffee to her chest.

Rick was looking at her differently, Jeremy thought. Seeing her, maybe, for the first time in a good long while.

"My work here is done," he whispered to his wife.

Emma laughed again and put her mug on the coffee table, gathered up both bowls of ice cream. She handed him one. "Don't get smug."

Jeremy shoveled a big spoonful of something that smelled like mocha and cinnamon into his mouth, growling as it went down cold and sharp. "You like me smug."

"I like you. Period."

He felt eyes on them and glanced up, saw that Rick was studying them like a man looking for an instruction manual.

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