Chapter 189: 189. Don't give up
“Do you want to get some lunch, Castle?” Beckett asks, midway through a Monday without murders.
“Sure. Remy’s?”
“Yeah.”
“Remy’s?” Ryan asks hopefully.
“Not with us,” Beckett says smartly.
“You never want us around any more. Too busy with your new friend.”
“And what’s Wednesday, then? Chopped liver?”
“Wednesday?” Espo says.
“I told you. Wednesday. Beer and dinner. Tribeca’s Kitchen. You two, Lanie, O’Leary, Castle, me.”
“You never told me about Wednesday,” Espo says darkly. “I might be busy.”
“Are you?” Beckett asks unkindly. “If you’d had a date you’d have been announcing it to everyone, ‘specially after the fuss you made about Ryan’s date at the weekend. And I did tell you.”
“I can introduce you to some pretty girls, Espo – ow! That was my foot you just trod on, Beckett!”
“Sorry,” she says insincerely to Castle. “Wasn’t looking.”
“Distracted by my rugged good looks.”
“More like by your excessive use of hair gel,” Espo, who has never knowingly used a male grooming product except aftershave in his life, says.
“If you had hair, bro…” Ryan steps in to defend Castle.
“I got hair! I just don’t need to mess with it like you wannabe models, like anyone would want you to model …”
The argument rages as Beckett and Castle slide away without being noticed. Attack with sprayable hair products may be imminent, and neither of them wish to be part of the chemical warfare.
“Why’d you want lunch?” Castle asks. It’s not that lunch is completely unprecedented, but there are small signs of an ulterior motive, and he’d quite like to know what’s going on. Well. His insatiable curiosity is desperate to know what’s going on. Beckett doesn’t look overly stressed, and she’s certainly not irritated with him (though she is getting very irritated with the lack of interesting cases), so it can’t be anything too awful.
“I had dinner with Dad last night,” she says, and stops there.
“Mm?” Castle says encouragingly. Dinner between Jim and Beckett is good, especially if she’s not stressed or tearful afterwards. Matters are clearly improving.
“I asked him to show me the photo albums he showed you.”
Ah. Oh. Oooppppsss. That… might not be so good. Not that the photos weren’t utterly adorable, and make him, now he thinks about them again this far on, think of small people with dark hair and hazel eyes, but… he can’t imagine Beckett being that impressed by his having seen them.
She isn’t. She is volubly unimpressed. Admittedly, maybe he shouldn’t have pointed out how adorably cute a baby Beckett had been in the middle of her tirade about her father’s perfidy – but she was – but he does think that a big (bad) Beckett telling him that the next time he and her dad gang up on her will be the last hour they see life from the living side is a touch unreasonable.
“So you just wanted me to come out to lunch so you could complain about your dad and then threaten us both?”
“No-o,” Beckett says slowly, and munches a handful of fries.
“Mm?” Castle eats his burger, and waits.
“Dad’ll likely come to the housewarming party,” she rushes out. “He wanted Burke there, but I told him it wasn’t a good plan. But he’ll come. I didn’t want to say in front of Ryan and Espo. He expects me to go, though.”
“Up to you,” Castle says, to buy time. He doesn’t think that this necessarily justifies lunch, but a nice lunch is always better than a quick sandwich.
“I got to thinking about it.” Her hand steals out over his, and stays there. “I think I should come, but I wanna talk to Burke before I decide.”
“Should?” Castle inquires, cautiously. He doesn’t want shoulds, unless Beckett is really clear that it’s not an obligation that he’s imposing.
“I need to make sure that it’s not just because you want me to even if I really didn’t want to, or because I would feel guilty if I didn’t even though I might hate it, but because I won’t hate going more than” – she blushes – “anything else,” she finishes, rather incomprehensibly.
“Okay,” he says slowly. “So shall I invite the others already?”
“Yeah. Yes. Soon.” It sounds a little like she’s trying to bolster her own resolve.
“Wednesday. I’ll see them all then, anyway.”
“Yeah.” She eats a mouthful of burger and chases it with a gulp of milkshake; repeats, repeats. Her words appear to have dried up, but her hand hasn’t moved from his. It doesn’t move at any stage till she tries to pay the check and Castle sneaks in ahead of her.
“Hey!” she complains. Castle merely smirks. “I was going to pay.”
“Too bad,” he says. “I wanted to.”
“What if I want to?” Beckett says. Castle flicks her a glance. There’s an undertone there… oh. She’s said this before. She doesn’t like it when he pays for everything.
“If you want to, you can pay next time,” he notes.
“I do want to.”
“Okay then. I’ll behave.” He smirks. “At least when it comes to paying restaurant checks.”
Beckett glares, rolls her eyes, and on neither having any effect on Castle’s happy smile, humphs, which has no effect either.
Back in the bullpen Esposito and Ryan are still sniping at each other across the desk, in moderately good-natured terms. It takes them a few moments to realise that Castle and Beckett are back and no-one has brought them lunch. Castle scuttles out before they can wreak revenge. Beckett puts her head down and works on existing cases until the boys give up.
Tuesday isn’t much different, though before they go for lunch Beckett informs Castle that she’s paying and if he tries to pay he won’t be invited for lunch again unless Espo’s patted him down to take his wallet away. He pouts spectacularly and grudgingly acquiesces. His mood is not improved by the audible sniggering of Esposito. Letting Beckett pay doesn’t sit well with him, but he recognises that if he doesn’t let her buy lunch she’ll feel very second-best in the relationship. He hasn’t forgotten that he didn’t like feeling second-best, way back when.
End of day rolls around, and Castle politely walks Beckett out. Of course, he has an ulterior motive, which is to sneak a kiss or two before she sees Dr Burke.
“Will you come round after I’ve seen Burke?” she asks.
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I?” Castle smiles, with a considerable proportion of lazy seduction. “I haven’t seen you properly for quite long enough.”
“You’ve seen me today, yesterday, Saturday, Friday…”
“Yes,” he murmurs into her ear, “but you were wearing far too many clothes for far too much of the time.” Since there’s no-one else in the vicinity, he smoothly settles her against him and rolls his hips just enough to point his meaning, and follows up with a wholly assertive taking of her mouth. “See you later,” he says, and saunters off, leaving her to betake herself to Dr Burke’s office and try to calm down along the way.
“Good evening, Detective Beckett.”
“Hey.”
Detective Beckett sits down in a relatively relaxed fashion, which Dr Burke is pleased to see.
“Would you like to discuss your dinner with Mr and Miss Castle on Friday?” he asks. “Or is there another issue about which you have been thinking?”
“Dinner was okay,” Detective Beckett says.
“Mm?”
“I didn’t say easy,” she points out. Dr Burke had noticed that, and does not require Detective Beckett to point out anything relating to her word choices. He is perfectly capable of understanding the subtleties of small word changes.
“Mm?”
“It was sticky at the beginning. I didn’t have anything to talk to her about – how do I know what to talk to a teen about? And I’m hardly likely to find common ground if I talk about my experience, am I? How to clear up after an alcoholic isn’t good conversation.”
Detective Beckett stops, and looks considerably surprised at her own words.
“You seem to be more disturbed by the dinner than you had thought,” Dr Burke says gently. He is unsurprised by this. “Let us explore this a little further. It is evident that you did not believe that you had these feelings, and certainly you cannot have expressed them either at your dinner, or subsequently. If we draw them out now, they will not poison your thinking.”
“Okay,” Detective Beckett says doubtfully.
“How did you feel about visiting the loft for the primary purpose of having a family dinner with Mr Castle and his daughter?”
Detective Beckett’s mouth pinches. “Scared,” she forces out. “I didn’t want to go at all, even though I suggested it.”
“But you attended, nevertheless. Why?”
“I said I would. I said I was ready and I thought I was right up until a couple of hours beforehand. I wasn’t worried about it until Castle went home to cook.”
“I see.” Dr Burke says nothing further.
“I got there, and then Alexis didn’t have anything to talk about and neither did I. We tried to start with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but there wasn’t much to say. I couldn’t think of anything.”
Dr Burke rapidly considers the surprising point that Miss Castle had had nothing to say. His experience of both his own teen daughters and their friends and of Miss Castle would normally incline him to believe that conversation would be continuous and delivered at machine-gun speed, whether or not Detective Beckett said anything. It is unusual for that not to be the case. Of course, there is a possibility of external interference with Miss Castle’s torrential flow of inconsequent and occasionally unfortunate conversation.
“Is it possible,” Dr Burke enquires, “that Miss Castle’s attempts at conversation in your previous meetings, whereby she has inadvertently triggered difficult subjects, may have led her to be very cautious in her words? Or, indeed, might Mr Castle have asked her to take more care?”
“I guess. Anyway, Castle said dinner was ready before it got really obvious. They talked about school over dinner. I don’t know anything about that, either. I said some stuff about how freshman year is a time to get organised and have good foundations, but that didn’t seem to help anything.”
“How did you feel, listening to the conversation?”
Detective Beckett’s lips twist again. “Uncomfortable,” she says unhappily. “But it wasn’t nearly as bad as the first time. I just listened, and it wasn’t at all how it was when it was me, so it wasn’t as bad. But…”
“Mm?”
“But I should have been able to say something. I just couldn’t think of anything to say.”
“Why do you think that was? After all, you had been able to carry your share of conversation both at your father’s and at the casual dinner you had after that. What made this occasion different?”
Dr Burke watches as expressions play across Detective Beckett’s face. Finally she speaks.
“It was at their home.”
“But you had a dinner at your father’s apartment.”
“That’s not my home. Our home.”
“And…?”
“The loft’s a family home. Oh.” Realisation dawns, gratifyingly quickly, considering Detective Beckett’s ordinary inability to consider matters of emotional importance swiftly. “It’s the first time since… well, that I’ve been in a family home.”
“Indeed. Naturally, you were uncomfortable. However, you did not leave.”
“No.” Detective Beckett settles back into her chair.
“Do I infer that the situation eased?”
“Alexis asked about my freshman year at high school.” Detective Beckett smiles. “And then I had an idea. I knew I didn’t want to talk about home” – the smile fades – “but Castle was getting concerned and it was all going wrong so I talked about things that would wind him up.”
“Oh?”
“Boyfriends, fun – and tattoos.” Detective Beckett snickers. “Alexis played up to it and Castle nearly exploded.”
“Did your technique succeed in reducing your tension?”
“Yes.” Detective Beckett sounds satisfied with herself.
“To what extent?”
“Um… enough. I was still a bit stressed, but I didn’t want to run out the door any more.”
“Good.”
“I thought I’d really done it,” Detective Beckett says thoughtfully. “I really thought it was all okay and I’d got over it. I didn’t realise I was still so tensed up about it.” Her face falls slightly. “Does that mean it’s not all fixed?” she says unhappily.
“What do you think, before I comment?”
“Probably not.” Detective Beckett pauses, while Dr Burke waits. She does not appear to have completed her thought. “But it’s better. One visit wouldn’t fix everything, would it?”
Dr Burke declines to answer that immediately. “Do you consider that you would return, if invited?”
“I think I was invited. So was Dad.”
“Explain, please?”
“Alexis asked me if I’d bring Dad.”
“I see,” Dr Burke says, judicially, leaning forward. “How did you respond?”
“I wasn’t thinking about that. I’d been thinking about other things, so I just said yes, if Castle invited him, and didn’t realise till afterwards.”
“Mm. So, Detective Beckett, your instinctive, unthinking response was agreement. Please consider that reaction, starting with a consideration of the response you might have given had you taken time before answering.”
Detective Beckett considers her fingernails, apparently in preference to the question. However, she eventually does begin to ponder the point. This is obvious to Dr Burke from the contortions of her face, which, whilst they would be amusing in a child, are merely excessive in an adult. It appears that Detective Beckett has absorbed some of Mr Castle’s less desirable characteristics.
“If I’d thought about it, I’d probably have said no,” Detective Beckett admits. “I wouldn’t have been happy about it.”
“Mm. So why was your instinctive response different?”
“Maybe,” she says, uncertain of her conclusion, “even though I was more stressed by it than I realised, underneath I was okay enough with it to be able to go back?”
“That is possible,” Dr Burke says. “It appears to me that you are in two minds about such family events. You are still made very nervous by them; but at the same time you are now able to endeavour to recognise and deal with your emotions in such a way that you are also able to contemplate repeating the experience.” He pauses. “Alternatively, your underlying desire to mend matters is coming to the fore. If the latter should be the case, then you need to be extremely careful not to fall into the trap of automatically assuming that others’ feelings are more important than your own. It would be unfortunate to revert to that habit.”
“About that…” Detective Beckett emits.
“Yes?” Dr Burke is immediately worried, although he does not, of course, let it show.
“Castle’s mother is having a housewarming party.”
“She has moved out, then?”
“She will on Saturday,” Detective Beckett says laconically. “I don’t expect it to pass unmarked.”
Dr Burke acquires a smile that, did he but know it, is very similar to Detective Beckett’s own sardonic visage. “I expect not. Still, please explain the connection as you see it?”
“Castle asked me to go to the party. I wasn’t sure. I think I should go, but…”
“Mm?”
“He’s going to ask some others.” Detective Beckett regards Dr Burke’s expression with some amusement, only lightly tinged with sympathy. “Don’t worry. You aren’t one of them.”
“Mm.” Dr Burke is much relieved. A roomful of actors would present him with an evening of extreme discomfort. They are invariably in search of validation of their incorrect assumptions – that is, when they are not endeavouring to make themselves interesting by assuming personalities and indeed disorders. Dr Burke is only interested in patients who are in genuine need of his services. This does not, naturally, mean that they are aware that they are in such need – for an example, he need only consider Detective Beckett’s original presentation.
“It’s the team at work, Lanie, O’Leary and Pete, O’Leary’s partner. And Dad.”
“Why does Mr Castle want to invite these people?”
“He says it’s because he likes them all.” Detective Beckett exhibits extreme scepticism. “He probably does like them all. Castle likes pretty much everyone, and they pretty much always like him. He’s part of the team, too, so he’d invite them.”
“But you do not believe that reasoning,” Dr Burke states. Entirely reasonable of Detective Beckett, since nor does he. It is perfectly obvious what Mr Castle is doing.
“No. He’s making sure I’ve got” – she pauses briefly – “safe people around me for when I need them. So that if he’s occupied it’s not a problem. He said he’d invite them whether I came or not, though.”
“Mm. I agree.” Dr Burke does not specify with which point he agrees. In point of fact, it is both.
“So I thought about whether I wanted to go at all. I don’t know. Obviously Castle wants me to. And I want to do something that he’d like, but I don’t want to do it just because he’d like me to,” she says over Dr Burke’s breath.
“Mm?” hums Dr Burke, only a touch reassured.
“I don’t want to go if it’s going to be awful, but I don’t want to not go if it’s just that I wouldn’t enjoy it much.”
Dr Burke perceives that Detective Beckett has, once more, undertaken a process of detailed consideration outside of his treatment room. How very gratifying.
“Do continue,” he says encouragingly.
“I can’t decide if I don’t want to go because I’ll need to see Martha in a social situation – she’s the host – and I really, really don’t want to see her at all and I especially don’t want her picking at me about everything; or if I don’t want to go because it’ll really upset me; or if I don’t want to go because I simply won’t enjoy it as much as anything else I could do that evening.”
Detective Beckett’s wording is hardly precise. It is, however, illuminating. She appears to have taken to heart the concept of compromise, although she has not mentioned the word. She is, in fact, endeavouring to balance her emotions and her relationship with Mr Castle; which is exactly what she should do.
“If it’s the last, then I should just suck it up and go. If it’s the middle one, then I probably shouldn’t. If it’s the first, I just don’t know.”
“I agree with your analysis of the options,” Dr Burke pronounces. Detective Beckett appears extraordinarily relieved. “When is this occasion taking place?”
“I’m not sure. Castle said at least three weeks from now.”
“In that case, you have time to consider. We may discuss it again if you wish to do so, but it is not essential that you decide now.” Dr Burke casts a glance at the clock. The session is almost complete. “Are there other matters which you wish to discuss?”
“No, not today. I had dinner with Dad again, but it all went okay. I asked to see our photo albums.”
“Oh? Why?”
“I wanted to see them. I might have talked to Dad about Mom, but… not yet. It wasn’t the right time.”
“What did you do instead?”
Detective Beckett suddenly colours. “Dad had showed these ones to Castle. How he could…” she trails off. Dr Burke understands perfectly, and conceals a parental smile.
“I see. How unfortunate,” he sympathises.
“It was fine, though. I was glad I’d asked. We were fine.”
“Very pleasing.”
“Mhm.” Detective Beckett emits.
“I shall see you next Tuesday, then?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Dr Burke sits down again as Detective Beckett leaves. Really, her progress is very pleasing. Surely no lesser psychiatrist could have achieved these results.
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