Chapter 6

A week into nightly calls from Beckett, Castle was simultaneously delighted by the connection and exceedingly worried that she wasn't mentioning her father at all. Anything but, in fact: every time he asked about him she simply said "Fine," and then the conversation was firmly shut down, turned away, or closed off. He didn't push. He was also more than slightly concerned that she was always already in bed, by nine p.m., when she dialled, which he thought was more than usually exhausted. Beckett had – pre-shooting, of course, which made just a little bit of a difference – seemed indefatigable. Now, she seemed to be tired all the time. She was undoubtedly pushing herself far too hard, and she certainly wasn't explaining that either.

"Hey, Castle." It was her regular evening call. "How are the Hamptons today?"

"Well, there's cold beer, there's been warm sunshine, and the pool was perfect…. You should have been here. Peace, quiet and solitude."

"Isn't anyone else there?"

"Nope. All on my own. Editing." He made a grumpy noise. "I hate editing."

"Because it proves that you can be improved?" she said provocatively.

"I'm the pinnacle of perfection, the acme of ability" –

She snorted. "And yet you need to be edited."

"Just like you feel you need to wear make-up," Castle retorted.

Beckett sniggered. "I'm not claiming to be the ideal woman. I don't want to be on a pedestal – besides, have you ever seen a statue with a cast on its arm?"

"Guess not. I still hate editing, though. And I'm lonely. You should come here for a while."

There was an odd silence. Normally Beckett had simply reminded him of her words in the hospital.

"Not yet," she eventually replied, and then hurriedly added, "I can't swim with a cast on."

Castle recognised the evasion, and wondered the more about what was really going on up in Cherry Ridge Forest.

"How far did you walk today?" he asked instead.

"Nearly a mile – there and back. I'm getting there. I wish I could run…"

"All in good time."

Beckett muttered darkly. "Anyway, I can do a lot more than last week."

"Good. I don't want to take you out to dinner with a cast on: it limits the options so much."

"I can manage cutlery just fine."

"Yeah, but you're also a hundred and forty miles outside Manhattan and another hundred and twenty from here. And you won't come any closer which is just totally unfair."

"What's my incentive?" Beckett husked.

"My company isn't incentive enough?"

"I'm still here."

"You're not thinking about all the advantages keeping company with me would have. My charm, wit, personality" – Beckett spluttered – "sweeping you off your feet, hugs… and of course, I can cook."

"I can cook too," Beckett replied crossly.

"Not with a cast on. And after dinner, there would be all sorts of attractive and exciting options, for both of us."

"Oh?"

"You're attractive. I'm exciting."

She choked. "Exciting?"

"I could excite you," he oozed, starting the game.

"Oh?" she said sceptically, which had, over the week, become a coded signal for talk dirty, Castle.

"Oh, yes. Any way you like it."

"Mmm?" she enticed.

"I'd be looking at your legs. Not a tail, note. Though I still think you'd be a totally gorgeous mermaid."

"No such thing as mermaids. Though I do like basking in the sun by the water."

He pouted, and was perfectly sure that she could hear it even though pouting didn't make a sound.

"You'd be out by the pool. In a bikini, basking. I'd offer you sun lotion, because it's really warm here and you wouldn't want to get sunburn." Unspoken, but heavily implied, was that she might burn in other, more metaphorical, ways. "You'd agree."

"I would?" Another part of the game they played. She pretended to resist, he enticed and teased and used all his words and voice to puncture the pretence, until he was sure from small sounds and heavier breathing that she was… relaxed, should he say, and ready to sleep.

"Of course you would. You love my hands massaging in the cool lotion, stroking softly up and down: first your calves, then over your knees, silky skin under my fingers and palms, perfectly smooth, trailing upward. Just a little upward, at first: one leg, then the other."

She hummed contentedly, a little edge of heat in the sound.

"A little further upwards, with a little more lotion: the liquid spreading creamily, over the long, lean lines of your legs. You make a little noise, and press into my hands. Your breathing is a fraction shallower, a touch faster; your cheeks have a tiny flush." He grinned down the phone. "You know what I'd do, don't you?"

"I know what I'd do."

"Mmm?" Castle enquired.

"Tip you into the pool," she snarked.

"Nuh-uh. You couldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because by this time I'd be kneeling between your legs," he drawled, and heard a soft inrush of breath with considerable satisfaction. "There's no way you could push me into the pool from there."

"Kneeling?" she breathed. "I like you kneeling."

"I'd like you kneeling too." It was further than they'd gone yet, but each night had taken them deeper into a mutually erotic conversation. "But this time I'm kneeling between your legs, massaging sun lotion into your thighs, one leg at a time. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"Mmmm." She sounded satisfied.

"It's a really sexy bikini, too. Black, with little bows at the sides. High cut. Makes your legs look even longer." His voice had developed an underlying growl. "More to stroke. All the way up." Another tiny noise. "Right to the edge of the fabric, and then I'd start… on your stomach. All the way to the edge of the bikini top. Round your shoulders – it's very important to protect your shoulders," he smirked, and knew she heard the smirk.

"So I should employ you as a masseur?"

"That depends. What sort of massage do you like? Tension curing? Thai?" He paused. "Tantric?" he added, with a wickedly erotic drop of his voice.

"You choose," she said, unusually undecided.

"Hmm… so many options. If you've been doing all those exercises, maybe you need the knots smoothed out. You'd need to turn over, of course." There was an unconvinced mew-mutter. "Maybe not. In that case, maybe a little attention to your heart chakra…"

"That's what you call it?"

Castle ignored the snark. "I'd start with tiny little circles, just in the dip of your cleavage, where the golden skin isn't covered by your black bikini. Very delicate, gradually widening, moving further" –

There was a crash.

"Beckett?"

Nothing.

"Beckett!"

But there was no reply. Castle cut the call, and frantically tapped out a text. What happened? Call me.

Beckett tore down the stairs, heedless of her still-weakened state and broken wrist, to find her father ruefully picking up the shards of a saucer from the floor.

"Are you okay?" she gasped.

"Yes. It was wet and it slipped." He looked at her. "I'm not hurt, Bug. I'm okay."

She walked more slowly across the floor to hug him. "Good. One plaster cast is enough in the cabin. I don't wanna go back to Manhattan just yet, unless you do?"

"No. It's too humid for me. But… don't you want to see your friends?"

Beckett blushed, which her father regarded with interest. "I've been talking to Castle," she admitted.

"That's nice. You know, if he wanted to come here…"

"Dad!"

He grinned. "Gotcha."

"Okay. G'night."

"Night."

Back upstairs, Beckett looked at the text from Castle, and tapped back all okay. Dad dropped a saucer.

A second later, her phone rang.

"Are you okay?" Castle blurted out. "You took off like a scalded cat and I heard a crash and I thought you were hurt again."

"I'm fine. Dad dropped the saucer and it smashed."

"Okay, but why'd you take off like that?"

There was a pregnant silence.

"Beckett, look, you don't normally spook at loud noises, and I really don't think dropped plates sound anything like a shot even if it was that" – she made a very strange noise – "You did say that the snapping branch startled you."

"Oh."

"But I don't think it was that at all. I think it's something else."

"Do you." It was a flat shut-down.

"I do, but you're just going to brush it under the carpet whatever I say," Castle said, suddenly and unexpectedly exasperated.

"It's fine."

"Fine. Yeah, sure."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just another thing you won't talk about. Just like you wouldn't talk about hearing me till I forced it. I said I wouldn't arrive on the doorstep which is the biggest concession I've ever made in my life and you still won't talk to me about anything that matters."

"This isn't your problem. There isn't a problem anyway."

"No? And there's the whole problem right there. You won't let me in. You don't want support. You just want… right now? All you seem to want is a phone sex line. You can find those in the directory."

"I don't even know if there is a problem and you want me to spill my guts?"

"No, I just want you to behave like you actually want a relationship."

There was another horrible silence, as Beckett tried and failed to find an answer to that. She did. But she didn't want Castle entangled with her father if he – oh fuck, how could she suspect it, it was only apple juice, she checked – was drinking. Been there. Didn't want to go there again. Certainly didn't want to drag in anyone else.

"Fine. When – if" he said with deadly precision – "you think you can ever manage to talk, call."

The call was cut. Beckett looked at her phone in disbelieving misery, thumped it down on the nightstand, and shivered her way through a night-time routine; after which she curled into bed and tried to sleep. It didn't work.

In the Hamptons Castle slammed his phone down and headed for the Scotch. It was just the same as every other time. Never told him anything she didn't have to. She didn't trust him. Well, the hell with it. He wasn't going to call her back. It was up to Beckett.

He buried his anger and upset in single malt, and then went to bed, where he slept extremely badly.

In the morning his resolve had hardened. He wasn't going to call. He was damn straight sure that she was worried about her father drinking; that she'd thought that he'd fallen; that she'd hightailed it, heedless of her own state, to check on him, terrified – but she wouldn't talk about it and she wouldn't tell him the truth and she wouldn't take support from him. If she couldn't even talk about important matters, then there was no point talking. He hadn't forgotten that he'd had to pry from her the admission that she'd heard him.

He left his phone in his bedroom and went out to have breakfast by the pool, in the sunshine. The fine weather soothed him: he found his laptop, poured more coffee, and lost himself in writing, paused for lunch, and wrote more: bleeding out his emotions into the words on the page. He didn't go and look at his phone once. He thought about it quite a lot, however.

Beckett didn't sleep well either. In fact, she barely slept at all. When the sun rose, so did she, some way before six. She could hear her father snoring in his room, deeply asleep.

Now or never, she thought, and sneaked out of the cabin, closing the door soundlessly behind her. Even if he woke, her father wouldn't expect to see or hear her early: her relentless exercising had left her exhausted and her worries had left her enervated, so she hadn't been up for breakfast with him for a few days.

She hated herself for doing this, but it had to be done. She had to prove it, so she could tell Castle there was no problem.

Her father's fishing bag was right there. She searched it, opened the bottle, sniffed, and detected only apple juice. Then, however, she started to search the rest of the outbuilding.

And there, right in front of her, when she opened a battered chest, was another bottle. She opened it, knowing before she did what she had found, sniffed and for good measure and proof tasted, and almost vomited on the spot.

Whiskey.

Whiskey, all over again.

She stumbled out of the outbuilding, having put the whiskey bottle back exactly as she had found it, and walked as far as she could to a sunny clearing, in exactly the opposite direction from the fishing pool. It should have been raining, stormy, hailing: not bright, beautiful sunlight. She slumped on to the grass and wept. All her suspicions had been justified, and how long had he been drinking and she simply hadn't noticed?

She curled miserably on the grass, still weeping slow, ugly tears. She'd been through all this, twelve years ago: five long years of misery and worries. Her mother's death had sent her father spiralling downwards in a few short weeks; her own flat-lining had done it again.

Her fault. She had been shot, and he had fallen.

No. No!

Her shooting was not her fault. It was on the sniper. Her father's fall was not her fault. If she had learned anything the first time round, it was that she hadn't caused it, couldn't control it, and couldn't cure it. It was all down to him.

She started to cry again, as she remembered what she had had to do the last time. Walk away, and wait it out: wait for him to hit bottom and decide what meant most to him. Wait for the knock on the door. Wait for the phone call.

Wait. All over again, wait, and hopelessly hope.

Crying, she fell asleep.

She woke to find the sun had moved round and she was lying in shade, chilled in her thin t-shirt and cotton shorts. Her back hurt, and when she cautiously tried to stretch, the scars on her chest pulled painfully. She had no watch, but she was pretty certain that her father wouldn't have noticed – or necessarily, now he had found the whiskey bottle again, cared – that she hadn't been there.

She draggingly picked herself up, awkward with only one usable arm, and trudged home. She had no idea what to do. Well. Except. She could call Castle and talk to him.

She could. She just didn't want to show him the total collapse of her life. Bad enough that she had been injured, was still recovering, and then went and broke her arm. He hadn't exactly been impressed by that accident. He wasn't likely to be impressed by the latest disaster. There was no good option here. He'd said he wanted her to talk, but when she'd actually told him about the broken arm all she'd got from him was a lecture as if he were her parent. She wasn't having that again.

The cabin was empty. Beckett made herself a strong coffee, sat down, and assessed her very limited options, in the same way that she had done years ago. Just as they had been years ago, eventually they resolved into one option. Leave.

She went upstairs and packed her bag. She could make it through the evening, and then leave, leaving her father an explanatory letter – all over again. She would call a cab to get her to Roscoe, and then work it out from there. She did some searching, and found that there was a bus to New York late afternoon. Fine. Her father would go fishing, and she would go home.

She could manage at home. She'd have to.

Castle finished off a particularly tricky paragraph, saved with a sense of considerable satisfaction, and realised that it was late afternoon. He went inside, and examined the contents of the fridge for ideas for dinner. There weren't many. Finally he discovered some steak, salad, and corn cobs, which would do. He couldn't claim to be hungry, despite the lack of lunch.

While waiting for the steak to marinate, he took himself to shower and remove the sun lotion from his body. On the way, he checked his phone. Nothing. He couldn't imagine why he was in any way surprised by that.

He had his lonely dinner, called Alexis, and then returned to writing. Mostly, though, he stared out over the sea and wondered why he couldn't have fallen in love with a nice, normal woman who behaved in nice, normal ways and wasn't so damn difficult to deal with. The porcupine picture she had sent had been only too accurate.

The glorious colours of the setting sun didn't cheer him at all. In his mind, love was supposed to involve mutual support, and talking, not silence and doing it alone. Well, he was damned if he was going to call her. When she wanted a proper relationship, she could call him.

No-one called him all evening.

In the morning, he left his phone in the bedroom, shut the door on it so he wasn't tempted to check it, and forced himself back to his laptop, where, with some effort, words began to emerge, and then flow, and then flood. Consequently, he entirely missed the soft chirping that would have indicated a call, and later missed a second set of cheeps. When he finally did look at his phone, he didn't recognise the number, and there was no message.

"Do you need anything from Roscoe, Katie?"

"No, are you going?"

"Only if you wanted to go. I don't need anything."

"We've enough fish for a week," she said lightly, concealing her true thoughts and plans. "Unless you're sick of fish."

"Never. Okay, then. After I've washed up I'll tie a few flies and then go and catch some more."

Beckett made a face. "I'm off for a gentle walk," she replied. "Maybe today I'll get to a mile."

"Pretty good. Don't overdo it, though. My nerves won't stand a relapse."

They already didn't, you just aren't admitting it. If you'd only said, we might have headed this off. Instead I'm waiting for you to go fishing so I can write you a note and try not to drop tears on it, and then leave. I can't take this all over again. I can't help you stop. I guess I'll go back to ACOA.

"I'll be good."

"Okay. See you later, Bug."

She gave him a quick, one-armed hug, and went out for her walk. When she returned, he was gone.

Awkwardly, she brought her bag downstairs, found paper and pen, and tried to compose a note. Almost as the cab arrived, she finished it, took her watch off, and left it on the paper.

Dad,

I know you're drinking. I found the hidden bottle, and the apple juice so I wouldn't know. I can't take it again. I can't save you. When you're sober, let me know. I've gone back to Manhattan. My friends will make sure I'm okay.

Katie.

And then, as she got into the cab, she switched her phone off.

Hope everyone in the USA had a good 4th of July.

Thank you to all readers and reviewers.