Lifeboats
"Alexis will be home any minute, darling." Castle's mother says, as apologetic as Kate has ever seen her. Beckett can't really blame Martha for that; Castle seems if not happy at least more at ease than he has in a long while, but what has to happen next is undoubtedly going to break his heart.
Rick scrubs a hand down his face and fumbles for Kate's fingers, tangling his own with hers and breathing out a crumbling sigh. "I'm gonna have to explain why Kate's staying anyway, might as well get it all over with."
"I don't think I should be here for this." Kate murmurs, the hand not laced with his settling to curve around the peak of his knee. "So I'll head back to my apartment and pack, give you some space."
Martha stands up and smoothes her palms down her thighs, ironing out the non-existent wrinkles in her pencil skirt. Leopard print and entirely impenitent, and not for the first time Kate has to admire the vivacious spirit that pours out of Castle's mother.
When they were young, Rick spent much more time at Kate's place than she at his. He liked the security of Kate's family, the stability of two loving parents and she was happy to indulge him. Young Katie Beckett found Martha more than a little intimidating, and Rick's apartment was always crowded with theatre folk, the whirling kaleidoscope of colour and sound they brought with them enough to drive both Rick and Kate away.
Now though, Kate sees how so much of the front that Martha projects is in self-defense. It's clear that the older woman does love her son, perhaps not in the typical way, but there's no denying it.
"Katherine's right. It should just be you and Alexis for this. So darling, mind if I accompany you? I could help you pack."
Kate wrinkles her nose as she considers it, casting a glance over at her boyfriend to see if he has any objection. He just shrugs, smiling tenderly at her and Beckett makes a snap decision. "Sure, that'd be great. I'll probably have a lot of stuff anyway since I'm here for the long haul."
"Alright well, let's head out now honey. Richard, call when you're ready for us to come back." Martha says, disappearing off upstairs. Ostensibly to collect her bag, but Kate lifts an eyebrow and shares a look with Castle. His mother's way of giving them a little time alone is not as smooth as Martha seems to think.
Shifting closer on the couch, Kate settles her hand at his cheek to keep him in place and leans in to kiss him softly, humming with pleasure when his fingertips find the slice of bare skin at her waist. Pulling back, Kate drops a last burst of a kiss to his mouth and grins at him, trying her best to seem reassuring. "Just remember that she loves you, Rick."
"I don't know if I can do this. I don't want to break her heart."
"Oh Castle, I know. I won't lie; it's going to hurt her. But she'll be okay. You're here for her, and so are Martha and I." Kate murmurs, sifting her fingers through the flop of hair over his forehead and tracing the shell of his ear.
His eyes drift closed and he nods, the tick of tension in his jaw almost painful to watch. "She noticed before I did. I had a lump, and she asked what it was."
"You had a lump?"
"Mm-hmm." He shrugs, rubbing at his neck where Kate imagines his tumour was. Still must be if they're doing chemo, though she doesn't see anything. "Radiotherapy reduced the size of it, but they're doing chemo to make sure it's completely gone."
"Oh, okay."
"Yeah. I played it off as nothing. I don't know how to sit her down and say 'actually pumpkin, I know I said the lump is nothing to worry about but it just might kill me'."
Castle's eyes peel open slowly to meet hers, glistening with barely-contained emotion and Kate lets out a sob, throwing her arms around his neck and crashing her body as close to his as she can manage. "You're not gonna die, Castle. You can beat this."
"I hope so. I'm working towards a life with you, Kate Beckett." He manages a smile, thin and watery as it is, and comes in to kiss her again. "You should go."
"Okay. You know where I am if you need me. And, would you. . .tell Alexis that if she wants to talk to me, about anything at all, she just has to ask. I'm here for her and your mother too, not just you."
Kate chews on her bottom lip as Castle regards her, his face awash with something close to adoration. And even though she's scared, even though the thought that her boyfriend has cancer keeps socking her in the gut every few moments and knocking all the air right out of her lungs, it's so damn good to have him back. To have him look at her like she's everything to him.
"You're extraordinary, you know that?" He says softly, tucking an errant strand of her hair back behind her ear and leaving his thumb at her cheek like a placeholder as he comes in to kiss her.
Warmth floods at Kate's cheeks and she dips her head, watching him through the fringe of her lashes a moment before she trusts her legs enough to stand. It just wrecks her, over and over, how much he loves her. Rising slowly from the couch, Kate stops to kiss the crown of his head on her way past before she moves to collect her shoes and coat.
Martha appears from upstairs and joins Kate at the door and Castle manages to peel himself up from the couch and come to kiss them, his mother's cheek and then Kate's mouth. "I'll call you when it's safe to come back."
"Okay, call me." Kate nods, and follows Martha through the door. Her partner looks desolate, a sucking tide of panic and grief tugging at him, and if she doesn't leave now she never will.
It's stupid, but Kate is so nervous at the prospect of Martha coming to her apartment that she can hardly get her key in the lock, her fingers trembling violently. A warm hand settles at her back and Kate relaxes a fraction, turns to face Castle's mother. "Sorry. Rough day."
"I know darling. Listen, I want to thank you for not running out on him. He was terrified that telling you about the cancer would mean losing you."
"I would never leave him. Not because of this." Kate grits out, finally managing to unlock her front door. She shoves it open with the crash of her hip against the wood and ushers Martha in ahead of her, stepping through herself and pausing to lock it after them.
Resting her weight against the solid strength of the wood, Kate watches Martha turn a full circle in the living room, slow and measured as she takes in Beckett's home. "Wow. This place is just gorgeous."
"Thank you." Kate manages a smile, moving for the kitchen and collecting a couple of mugs from the cabinet. "Coffee?"
"Sure, thank you." Martha nods, settling atop one of the barstools at the kitchen island and folding her hands in her lap. Her gaze is heavy on Kate's back, but Beckett does her best to shrug it off. Somehow, she manages to make coffee without spilling anything or burning herself, but too soon she's finished and there's nothing more to occupy herself with except talking with her partner's mother.
"Katherine, my son doesn't have a lot of friends." Martha blurts out, and Kate lifts an eyebrow in askance, sipping at her coffee. "I know, I know. He has a lot of acquaintances, other celebrities and the people his publicist sets him up with. But people he can turn to? Really, it's only me. Or it was."
Beckett rounds the island and comes to sit at the stool next to Martha, both hands firmly around her mug. "I promised him, and I'll make that same promise to you, too. I'm not going anywhere. I'll be here for him, and you and Alexis."
"Thank you. That really means a lot. I can't tell you how much your presence means to my family."
Kate nods slowly, blinking hard to quell the sudden, silly rush of tears. She hasn't really had a family since her mother died. Of course she still has her father, but Kate doesn't see a lot of him. Her boys at the precinct and Lanie are the closest she's come to family in a long time. Well, until Castle wandered his way back into her life. "I love him, Martha. And I love you and Alexis too."
"I love you too, Katherine." Martha says, settling her mug down on the countertop and standing with renewed vigour, her voice louder and more vibrant than before. "Alright, let's not get maudlin. Since the diagnosis, every conversation I have had with or about my son has been so serious. That's something I've been grateful to you for, as well. You make him laugh."
"He makes me laugh too." Kate grins, standing up to join Martha and placing her mug down next to its twin. "Okay, I'll pack my clothes and things. Could I put you in charge of emptying the refrigerator? I don't think there's much in there anyway, but I don't want to come back to a colony of mould."
"Of course." Kate heads for her bedroom, hesitating in the doorway and turning back to face Martha at the sound of the older woman's voice. "Katherine, I know I never knew your mother very well, but I'm sure she'd be so proud of you darling."
And then Kate does cry, shut away in the bathroom under the guise of packing her toiletries. But it's good, cathartic almost, and she finds that the gaping maw of grief that opens in her stomach is soothed just knowing that she has a quasi-mother waiting on the other side of the door.
Alexis knows something is wrong almost from the moment she steps through the door; Rick sees it all over her face. She tries valiantly to pretend that everything is fine, her usual cheer painfully forced as she recounts her day to her father and flits around the loft, but she gives up the moment Rick catches her hand in his and tugs her to sit down.
"Alexis baby, I need to talk to you, okay?"
"Okay, Daddy." She says quietly, her eyes wide and beseeching like a clear expanse of sky when she blinks up at him. Her hair is in a braid again and it falls over one shoulder, her clasped hands making her the picture of innocence. "What's wrong?"
"Do you remember we talked about my lump?"
"Yes." She nods fervently, two tiny fingers settling at his neck where the tumour used to be so evident. "It was where your superpowers were growing, but now it's gone. Does that mean that you're not gonna be Writer Man?"
"Sweetheart, my lump was cancer." He grits out, his eyes slamming closed. Selfish, but he doesn't want to watch the devastation crash over his baby girl and threaten to drown her. The soft noise of disbelief Alexis releases is enough to make him look at her again though, and he watches helplessly as her eyes fill with hot tears that flood down her cheeks.
She doesn't swipe at them, doesn't make any move to stop the leak of her sorrow, she just sits and stares at him and cries without making a sound.
"I'm sorry, pumpkin. I'm so sorry I didn't tell you. I didn't want you to be frightened. And I've been having treatment, but it hasn't been working so they're going to try a different treatment now. It's going to make me sick at first, but hopefully it'll make me better in the end."
His daughter nods slowly as if she understands, even though he knows she can't possibly. She's nine years old for God's sake; there's no possible way that she can be okay with this. "Daddy. . .are you going to die?"
"No baby. No, I'm going to get better. But while I'm having the medicine to make me better, Kate's going to stay with us. Is that okay?" Rick wants so badly to draw his baby in close to his chest and hold her until she stops hurting, but her spine is rigid and set stiff against him and he daren't touch her.
Alexis finally scrubs at her cheeks, her skin tight with the salt, and she manages another nod. "Yes. Can I go?"
"Of course you can go. But hey, listen. You can talk to me, or to Kate or Gram. About anything at all. Anything that's bothering you, even if it seems silly. We're going to get through this as a team, the four of us."
Rick knows that his daughter is listening, but whether she's really hearing him is a different matter entirely. It would be so like her to keep everything bottled up until it made her rotten inside, and he will do anything at all to protect her from that. Even if what he has to do is back off and trust Kate and his mother to help his little girl work through this.
"I love you, Alexis." Castle murmurs, reaching out a hand to rest at her knee. She flinches and he folds his hands back in his lap, watching in silence as his daughter slides down from the couch and runs towards the staircase. And then he has to stifle a panicked burst of laughter, because even though she's obviously desperate to get to her room she takes the stairs slowly and holds onto the banister the whole way up, just like he told her.
So much childish innocence, and he can only pray that she'll have any of it left by the end of this. It's the main reason why he kept his illness from her for so long. He can't bear to destroy any of the naivety she might have left after his bitter divorce from her mother and watching him splayed across the tabloids week after week.
Gritting his teeth, Castle tugs his cell phone free from his pocket and scrolls through his contacts, finding the name of the woman he loves and dialling her number. And it's stupid, but even just hearing it ring and knowing that any moment he'll be greeted with the soft and soothing sound of her voice, he finds himself relaxing measure by measure.
Rick meets Kate at the door and draws her close against his chest, so grateful to note that there's not even a beat of surprise before her slender arms circle his waist and she arches up to kiss his jaw, the touch of her mouth like a balm to the torn-open places inside him.
"How is she?" His mother asks, closing the front door and settling a hand at his bicep in comfort. It does help, to have the two of them rallying to offer him love and support. Even if it can't fix his daughter's broken heart.
Stepping back from Kate, Castle meets his mother's eyes and swallows the clog of grief in his throat, clearing his throat before he manages to speak. "She's. . .upset. Didn't really say anything. She's in her room now."
"Do you mind if I go and see how she is?"
"Of course not. Go." Rick ushers his mother towards the staircase, ostensibly so she can go and comfort his daughter but also, yes, so he can have a precious moment alone with Kate.
The two of them settle on the couch and he sinks slowly into her side, all of the adrenaline draining out of him and leaving him utterly battered. His head falls to Kate's shoulder and she cards a hand through his hair over and over, her voice gentle at the crown of his head. "She'll be okay. It's a shock, but she'll be just fine, Castle."
They sit quietly for what feels like forever and Rick tries to just focus on his breathing. That, and the gorgeous woman besides him who is going to stay beside him, for the long haul. Eventually, he manages to arrange his thoughts into something that resembles cognition closely enough he's no longer afraid to voice it.
"This has been the worst day." He grits out, sitting up and drawing an arm around Kate's shoulders. Probably too tight, but she doesn't seem to mind. "Having to do this to two of the people I love most in the world."
"I know babe. But it's over now, and you have our support instead of the guilt of hiding it from us." She kisses his cheek, lingering at the corner of his mouth a moment before she draws back and offers him a tremulous smile. "Now, how about I make everyone some dinner?"
"Actually, Katherine." Castle's mother interrupts and he and Kate turn to watch her come down the stairs and head towards them. "Alexis wants to talk to you, if you don't mind. I'll order in."
"Oh. . .right." Kate nods, turning hesitant eyes to Rick. "Do you mind?"
He shakes his head fervently, relief pouring through his bloodstream as she watches him. "Of course not. I trust you. As long as you're comfortable with this?"
"I'm fine." She nods, determination steeling her features. Kate moves for the stairs, halted by the squeeze of his mother's fingers around her arm as the two women pass one another. There's some sort of silent communication that hums between them and then Kate disappears upstairs and his mother comes to sit with him instead.
"I'm proud of you, kiddo."
Yeah. . .he doesn't feel like there's much to be proud of right now.
A/N: Everyone go wish congratulations to Kate Christie for the birth of her son!