WORTH WORKING FOR
CHAPTER TWENTY
MARCH
"Katherine, darling," Martha croons, practically floating into Kate's apartment, her arms outstretched.
Kate wraps her arms around Martha, grinning as the older woman squeezes her before stepping back. "Hi, Martha."
Martha takes Kate's hands in hers and gives her a long look. "Oh, darling, you're coming along well," she says. "May I?"
"Of course." She glances over at Rick as his mother cups her belly, and she grins at the resigned look on his face. "How was the rest of the tour?"
"Wonderful." Martha gives her baby bump a gentle rub, then takes Kate's hand and leads her to the living room. "It's good to be home, though. These old bones don't travel as well as they used to," she jokes.
"Oh please, Mother," Rick says, appearing with a glass of wine, which Martha promptly accepts. "You love it."
Martha nods. "I do, it's true. I'll miss the company, but being here was more important than renewing my contract. Besides," she continues after a long sip of wine, "I have a few potential opportunities on the horizon. So I may not be in your way for very long."
Rick sits next to Kate on the couch and curls his fingers around her knee. "You're never in the way, you know that."
"Yes, and I'm grateful. Now, Katherine, my son hasn't kept me in the loop as well as I want." She waves her hand, dismissing Rick's protest. "How is everything? You're both healthy?"
Kate smiles, pressing her palm to her belly. "Yeah, everything's great. He-"
She's interrupted by a knock on the door, and Rick squeezes her knee when she moves to get up. "I got it," he murmurs, brushing his lips to her temple as he stands.
Kate feels her cheeks warm when she catches the knowing look in Martha's eye. "Everything's great," she repeats quietly.
"Kate, your dad's here."
She grins and stands, and she steps into her dad's hug. "Hey."
"Hi, Katie," Jim murmurs, squeezing her once before letting go and shifting his gaze behind her. "You must be Martha."
Martha shakes his offered hand with a flourish. "As promised."
Kate leaves them to get acquainted, but keeps an eye on them even as she joins Rick in the kitchen. "What can I do?" she asks, noting the array of vegetables on the counter.
"Um." Rick glances around, then motions to the vegetables. "Make a salad from that?"
She grins and grabs a salad bowl. Thanks to Rick's oven breaking and the replacement still a week away, they're at her place instead of his, but Rick still insisted on taking point on dinner.
"Why would I make you do it when you're working all day?" he'd asked, and frankly, she didn't disagree. Being on her feet for the better part of the day is starting to get more and more tiring, so she was happy to let him take over for the evening.
"You're nervous," Rick says quietly, interrupting her thoughts. He drops pasta into the pot of boiling water before leaning against the counter next to her.
She hums in agreement. "Can you blame me? They're polar opposites. If they don't get along, things could get complicated," she points out.
"Things?"
"Yeah. You know, birthdays, holidays, any kind of family event. We'd have to hold separate ones, or if we didn't-"
"Hey." Rick takes her by the shoulders and presses a kiss to her forehead. "You're spiraling. We're all relatively mature adults, Kate. It'll be fine."
"You were right," Kate admits hours later, settling herself against the arm of the couch, facing Rick as he sits at her feet.
He lifts her feet and shifts closer so they can rest on his lap, and he presses his thumbs into her arches, grins when she moans. "You need to be a little more specific," he teases. "I'm right about a lot of things."
She rolls her eyes and nudges his thigh. "Funny. I meant about our parents."
He hums and nods. "Don't get me wrong, I was a little concerned going into tonight, too. Mother can be…" He pauses, tilts his head in thought. "She can be a lot. But she adores you, Kate. There's no way she wouldn't like Jim, too."
Kate feels her cheeks warm. "Your mom barely knows me," she points out. "How can she adore me?"
"Good judge of character."
She chuckles and then falls silent, relaxes into his touch. She doesn't even realize she closed her eyes until she's woken by Rick lifting her into his arms, and she curls her fingers into his shirt collar. "I'm awake."
Rick brushes his lips across her forehead. "Now you are," he teases. He sets her down when they reach her bedroom, and he kisses her softly, palms her rounded belly. "Get some rest, Kate. I'll let myself out."
"Or," she stops him, holding him close so he can't step away, "you could stay?"
The corners of his mouth lift, and he nods. "I'd love to."
"No Writer Boy?" Lanie asks a few days later, looking up as Kate walks through the door.
Kate shakes her head and fixes her gaze on the far wall while her friend examines the dead body on the slab in front of them.
The nausea she suffered throughout much of her first trimester almost completely disappeared when she hit her second trimester. But sometimes, if the crime scene or victim is gruesome enough…
"You good?"
She nods at Lanie's concerned question, and she turns to face the screen that currently shows a magnified view of the victim's head wound. "Blunt force trauma?" she asks.
"Yep." Lanie makes a few notes on her clipboard and continues her exam. "Haven't seen Rick in a few days," she says, failing to hide the curiosity in her voice.
Kate rolls her eyes and perches on the edge of her friend's desk. "He's been writing this week. Has to meet a deadline."
"Mm-hmm." Lanie glances up. "How's it going with that?"
"With…" Her face warms at the glare Lanie gives her. "Yeah. It's good. Things are good. He's good."
Lanie straightens up and crosses her arms. "You said 'good' three times. Who are you trying to convince?"
"No, he is. He's great. It's just…" She sighs and shrugs. "I don't know. Sometimes it feels too good to be true." When Lanie just stares at her, disbelief written all over her face, she shrugs her shoulders. "It probably sounds dumb-"
"Damn right it does."
"He's just this perfect, laid-back guy. And I basically upended his life with this kid he never asked for," she says, motioning to her belly. "He says he's excited, and I believe him. He's been nothing short of perfect."
Lanie raises her brows when she falls silent. "But?" she prods.
"But I've been nothing but drama," she admits, shifting her gaze to the floor. "I'm not easy to be around, Lanie, you know that. I never know when something will set me off and make me think I'm in danger. I mean, jeez, last week I ended up a hostage and I wasn't even on duty. And that night-"
She trails off, runs a hand through her hair. "I had a dream, Lanie. I dreamt about the robbery. Rick was at the store, too, and he was shot. He was shot, and as he lay there dying, I saw the shooter's face." She takes a deep, shuddering breath. "It was me," she whispers. "I killed him."
Lanie steps close and rests a hand on Kate's arm. "It was a dream," she reminds her, her thumb rubbing circles to try and soothe her.
It doesn't help.
"I was fine," she continues quietly. "I'd stopped being so hyper-aware of the target on my back, that whoever was behind my mom's murder, and my shooting, is still out there. I've known, tangentially, that my life is at risk every day. But I was living with it. I wasn't letting it dictate my life."
"What changed, Kate?"
She lifts her watery gaze to her friend's. "What if I'm wrong?" she whispers, her voice cracking with emotion. "What if I'm not in this unspoken stalemate? I've pulled Rick into this life, this-" She pauses, searching for the right word to describe her relationship with Rick.
"You're in love with him," Lanie says, a smirk tugging at her lips and a knowing gleam in her eye.
"I-" Kate scoffs. "No. I care for him, obviously. I'm not in love." She holds Lanie's gaze for a long minute, until she realizes that she can't deny it anymore. Not to Lanie, and not to herself.
She sighs and covers her face with her hands. "Shit."
"Mm-hmm. So, what are you gonna do about it?"
MID-MARCH
Nothing.
She does nothing about it, about her realization - well, her admission - that sometime in the past six months, she's fallen in love with the father of her child. She doesn't tell him, doesn't allude to it.
Instead, she buries herself in her work.
Rick voices his concern when she has her third double shift in a row, but she insists that she's fine, that the precinct is short-handed, so she's helping pick up the slack while she can.
Before she knows it, two weeks have passed, and she moves into her third trimester without fanfare.
Well, almost none.
Her doctor had told her that she may start to feel more extreme changes and that they happen more suddenly than previous ones, and as usual, Dr. Stevens was spot on.
Like the raging heartburn she suddenly wakes with on St. Patrick's Day.
"You get a call?"
She looks up from her perch at the counter, and smiles softly at the tired look in Rick's eyes. She doesn't blame him; it's barely after five in the morning, and she was already fast asleep by the time he came to bed. He can't have gotten more than a few hours of sleep.
She shakes her head and leans into the kiss he brushes to her cheek. "Hmm-mm. Woke up, couldn't get back to sleep." She presses her fingers to her chest, tries to alleviate some of the pain. "Do you have Tums or anything? This heartburn's killing me."
"Yeah." He disappears into his room for a minute, and emerges with a bottle of Tums. "They're under the bathroom sink. You know you could've snooped, right? What's mine is yours."
"I know, I just…" She shrugs. "It's your home, your space. I feel weird about snooping without your knowledge. Makes me worry that I'll overdo it. Overstay my welcome."
Rick scrapes a hand down his face, his wide yawn as he does reminding her of the hour. "Kate-"
"Go back to bed," she interrupts him, scraping her chair back and standing. "I'm gonna go in, get an early start to the day." Ignoring the knowing look on Rick's face, she heads back to the bedroom, grabs her clothes from her overnight bag, and goes to shower.
They've had this conversation more times than she can count - and she's had it with her therapist even more - but even though Rick frequently insists that she never needs to ask him for anything, she still feels like she should.
She has a hard time accepting generosity from others, always has. She's risen through the ranks in the NYPD thanks to her ambition, drive, and no small amount of grit. So she's used to doing things on her own, succeeding on her own.
Even when she told Rick she was pregnant, she didn't expect, or even ask, him to help. He simply jumped into the deep end with her, no questions asked. And it's taken time, but she doesn't worry anymore that he'll decide that a relationship with her is too much work, and cast her aside.
The struggles and anxiety she had early in their relationship about his generosity are basically gone, too. Her self-worth isn't tied up with her and her mom's unsolved cases, so she doesn't think anymore that she doesn't deserve it.
Most of the time.
What's mine is yours.
Still, his words echo in her mind as she showers, and she takes a few extra minutes just to stand under the spray of the water, takes several deep breaths to try and calm her racing heart.
Why is she stuck on that one sentence?
Technically, they made a foray into a relationship - a romantic one, not just friendly co-parents with mutual attraction to each other - a few months ago, right before Christmas. But they haven't really had any conversations about it since, and although she's let herself open her life to him, her heart, she still can't seem to put both feet into this relationship.
They've never talked about anything long-term, both about their parentage and their relationship in general. They're just taking it day-by-day; or, at least, she is. And, as he has since they met, he's letting her lead.
But over the past few months, she's been spending more and more time at his place; she's to the point now where she's here more often than she's home. He's told her multiple times that she's always welcome, as he is at her place, but despite that, she's never given him a key and doesn't have one for his apartment.
Exchanging keys seems like a step towards commitment that she isn't sure she's ready for.
Rick is back in bed and asleep by the time she finishes getting ready, and she gazes at him for several long seconds. Part of her wants to climb back in next to him, sleep for a couple more hours. She has no real reason to go into the precinct at five in the morning, even if she is filling in for a vacationing Gates.
So why are you running?
Dr. Burke's voice rings in her ears, and she sighs and turns away from the bed, heads out towards the front door. Her brows furrow as she catches the scent of coffee in the air, and her heart swells when she spots the travel mug on the counter.
She isn't running. She's just going to work three full hours earlier than usual, to file and do paperwork and grunt work for other people's cases.
That's not running, not from commitment or feelings or anything else. She isn't scared, or unable to process her emotions, or anything else that Dr. Burke has suggested. Her inability to tell Rick how she feels about him, even when it's on the tip of her tongue, when she sees how he looks at her, has nothing to do with that. It's simply that she has enough going on that she can't add anything else.
She takes a sip of the coffee, and she closes her eyes and smiles.
God, he makes a damn good cup of coffee.
"So, you bolted." Dr. Burke meets Kate's eye roll with nothing more than his typical professional stare.
"No, I told you, like I've told Rick, that I'm putting in extra time while I can," Kate argues, squirming to try and get comfortable. "Just because I'm not in the field anymore doesn't mean I can't do my job, so that's what I'm doing. Doing the grunt work frees up others to pound the pavement."
Dr. Burke's brows lift, and Kate rolls her eyes again. "The timing was a coincidence," she insists.
"You went into work three hours early because Rick gave you Tums."
Kate sighs. "Well, when you put it that way, it sounds silly," she murmurs. She's silent for a long moment, then sighs again. "I guess it wasn't really the Tums."
"What was it?"
She shifts her gaze to the window, unwilling to look at her therapist, to see the knowing gleam in his eye. She's only been seeing him consistently for the six months since she returned to work, but in that short time, he's learned more about her than she realized she's even shared.
"I thought I moved past it."
"Past what?"
"This whole…thing." She waves her hands around, trying to make some sense of the jumble of feelings inside her head. "All he said was, 'what's mine is yours,' and I freaked out. Okay, I guess I did bolt. I couldn't deal with it, so I hid in my work."
"You retreated to your comfort place," Dr. Burke agrees, lacing his fingers together. "When you're faced with the unknown, or something you're not used to, you go to what you know, what's comfortable. For you, that's work. It's your fight or flight kicking in."
Kate scoffs. "I'm a cop. I'm supposed to run towards problems, not away from them."
"A relationship is different from a crime scene or chasing a suspect."
"I don't get it," she says quietly after a long pause. "I've been fine. Nothing's happened, so I thought I was past my trauma, my anxiety about relationships. I thought I wouldn't feel the need to run any time he's fucking nice to me."
"You're not past it, and you probably never will be. Not entirely." When she glares at him, Dr. Burke just levels his gaze. "Healing isn't linear, Kate. You're learning how to deal with issues when they crop up, but it's an ongoing process."
Kate sighs and runs a hand down her face. "Well," she breathes, "that's discouraging."
"It can be. But it's part of the process." Dr. Burke leans forward. "You've made a lot of progress in a relatively short amount of time. You ran yesterday, but you now recognize why, and overall, you don't do it nearly as often as you used to. That's growth."
"I guess," she mutters. "Rick was annoyed, though. I just hate that I make him feel that way. I wish…" She pauses. "I wish running away from my feelings wasn't so automatic."
"You're used to doing things on your own. You have a team at work, but you don't have a direct partner, right?" When she nods, he continues. "Even in romantic relationships, you've kept one foot out the door, you've said so yourself. Independence is your default."
"That's not necessarily a bad thing," he continues, interrupting when she starts to argue. "There are situations where it's appropriate. What we're working on, what you're getting a lot better at, is recognizing that it's okay to accept help in your personal life. To let yourself trust in a romantic partner."
The corner of Dr. Burke's mouth quirks. "You have the feelings, Kate," he points out. "You want to have both feet in your relationship with Rick. I know you're scared, but maybe it's time to consider taking a chance."
She's distracted when she leaves Dr. Burke's building, her thoughts jumbled, head pounding. At the end, he'd encouraged her to at least talk to Rick and define their relationship, and consider telling him how she feels.
If only it was that easy.
She chuckles to herself as she digs her phone out of her bag and turns it back on.
Kate Beckett: was shot in the heart and survived, runs at the idea of telling a man she's in love with him.
It isn't the telling, she reasoned with Dr. Burke. It's the potential rejection. If she confesses her feelings, and he doesn't share them, or brushes her off, she can't just walk away. She's having a child with this man. He'll always be in her life, so if she upends the proverbial apple cart only for it to backfire…
Her phone vibrates in her hand, and she almost drops it when she sees Rick's face on the screen.
Speaking of…
She takes a deep breath and answers. "Hey."
"Tell me you need me."
Her heart skips a beat. "What?"
There's a long sigh at the other end. "I'm at the bank with my mother," he explains. "She's trying to get a mortgage so she can move out, but her credit isn't great so the rate's insane. I've offered countless times to help, but…" He trails off, and Kate imagines him running his fingers through his hair, tousling the locks…
She shakes her head. Not the time to lust after him.
"Anyway," Rick continues, "tell me you caught a case and you need my help. Save me, please."
Kate chuckles, lets his voice wash over her and calm her racing heart. "Sorry, but no. I'm not working today."
"Did I forget an appointment?" Rick asks, panic bleeding into his voice.
"Not the OB, I had something else. I should be home soon, though, maybe you can come over, keep me company while I fold laundry," she teases.
Rick doesn't respond, and she looks at her phone, checks that the call is still connected.
"You still there?" she asks.
"Yeah, sorry. Something weird is going on."
She listens as he describes the actions of three people in scrubs, and when he says the bank's about to be robbed, she almost laughs. It's been less than a month since she was caught up in a robbery of her own. The same thing happening to him would be like something out of a movie.
She's about to tell him to curtail his imagination, to go back and help Martha get her loan, when she hears words that make her blood go cold.
"Everybody get down on the floor!"
A/N: Just as an FYI, I got a little behind on writing (and it's turned out a little longer than I originally anticipated), so I'll be posting as I write from here on out. I have other things to post in the meantime - things that are already written - and I promise, this is the only fic I'll work on until it's done. Thank you for your presumed patience!