Capítulo 128: 128. Take me home
“Where are we going, Beckett?”
Beckett stops dead in front of her car. She hadn’t thought any further than out of Dr Burke’s office. On the other hand, there is a small overnight – over weekend – bag in the trunk. Just in case she felt able to try. Castle crashes into her, trips, automatically puts his hands out to save himself and ends up trapping her against the side of the cruiser. This might have been accidental. Or not.
“Not very smooth,” she snips, glad to have something else to think about for a moment while she tries to decide what to do. What she can cope with doing.
“You tripped me,” Castle says indignantly.
“I did not. You ran into me.”
Castle smirks evilly. “I thought you liked me running into you,” he says, with a complete change of mood. “You certainly didn’t seem to mind” –
“Shut up.”
He pouts. When this adorable expression has no effect on Beckett, he tries practicality. “Dinner will be ready. Slow roast pork, green beans, wine. Very nice wine.” Beckett looks doubtful. “Mission Impossible or other action movies.” She looks a little less doubtful. “Absolute privacy.” Still doubtful. “Chocolate dessert.” That reduced the doubtfulness quotient amazingly, but she’s not answering.
He’s still trapping her against the car. Since he’s there, it seems like a good plan to crowd her, just a little, just enough to make a point. She pushes him back again, which was not the idea. Still, he can take a hint when he’s hit over the head with a brick. He steps back, and tries but fails to look penitent.
“You don’t look very sorry for falling into me.”
“I’m not,” Castle says mischievously. “I like falling into you.”
“Didn’t you just say that a minute ago and I told you to be quiet?”
“Actually you said shut up, but I’ll forgive you for snapping at me. Can we at least get in the car, though? It’s not warm out here.” Castle is, in fact, perfectly cosy in his scarf and overcoat. Beckett still appears pinched and chilled.
“Okay.” She unlocks the car and they both get in. For an instant nothing more happens, till Beckett starts it up and warm air begins to flow from the vents. Castle clamps down on his surging desire to ask – or tell – Beckett where they’re going, and leaves it entirely up to her. He is very surprised when, instead of dropping him at Broome Street and turning for home, which he had dismally expected from the lack of answers, commentary or relaxation, she switches off the engine and follows him out the car, collecting a bag from the trunk on the way.
“Urg?” he says, articulately, taking the bag from her.
“Today can’t get any worse, so I might as well see if I can do it.”
Hardly flattering, or comfortable. Castle wraps an arm round her midriff as they pass the doorman, ignores the doorman’s knowing glance, and conducts Beckett to his loft without ever losing contact with her. She hesitates on the doorstep: Castle waits and doesn’t push – and certainly doesn’t pick her up and sweep her inside – and after a second she steps in.
“Smells good,” she says, though there’s strain under the words. She doesn’t follow him further inside.
Castle puts the bag down, turns round, pushes her coat off her shoulders, catches it and tosses it on to a handy chair, and draws her in to kiss her smoothly but forcefully. His large hands settle around her waist and nape; his tongue leisurely explores her mouth without entertaining any resistance; he pulls her tightly against him until she melts and curves for him. He doesn’t hurry to lift from her soft mouth; he doesn’t hasten to cease to press into her. Only when he’s sure that she’s relaxed into him and her immediate tension at being here has lifted does he stop.
“There,” he says with satisfaction. “Properly welcomed.” He doesn’t let go of her, steering her to the kitchen and keeping her beside him while he drops green beans into boiling water, puts small rolls on a plate and butter in a dish. “Would you put these on the table, please?” Beckett complies, but then stands there, looking around, as if she’s never been here before. “Beckett?” She starts, and comes back to his side to receive the wine bottle.
Castle proudly extricates a joint of pork, smelling deliciously of rosemary and hints of garlic, glazed with honey, and puts the meat on a carving board to slice it. The whole piece neatly and rapidly reduced to gently steaming, perfectly even slices, he drains the beans, pops them in a serving dish and brings the whole lot to the table. Then he looks around it, slightly bemused.
“Ah! Plates,” he says, as if hunting for gold, and produces them. “Okay. Help yourself.” He watches unobtrusively as Beckett takes only a single slice of meat and a few green beans, while he opens and pours the wine. Reassuringly, she doesn’t object to the wine.
Castle had carefully set the table on two adjacent sides, rather than opposite each other, and takes full advantage of his preparation to ensure that his knee is pressed against Beckett’s as much as is possible without pushing her off her chair. She is more nibbling than eating, though the widening of her eyes on first tasting the meat was very flattering. Still, two mice would not have eaten less than she is managing. He refrains from any comment, and reflects that his slow cooked pork will be just as delicious cold in sandwiches tomorrow, or later, or as a midnight feast, as it is right now.
Beckett eventually nibbles her way through the small amount she had taken, sips her way through approximately half of her (not large) glass of wine, and indicates that she is finished. Castle clears away, tuts when Beckett attempts to assist, tuts some more when she points out that he helped at hers and turnabout is supposed to be fair play, and eventually rumbles at her to go and sit down again because if she doesn’t there will be no dessert.
“No dessert?” she wails, insincerely.
“Nope. Not one sliver of chocolate shall pass your lips.”
He produces an astonishingly ornate confection from the fridge, at which Beckett’s eyes light up, and adds a container of whipped cream. She delicately tongues her lips. Castle considers the many advantages of using a well-toned stomach as a plate, and reluctantly abandons the idea, at least for today. On first sight of the dessert, Beckett had sat back down faster than a streak of lightning, if lightning ever sat down. On reflection, that was not one of his better comparisons.
“That looks wonderful,” she says delightedly.
Castle smiles smugly. “Knew you’d like it,” he says. “I couldn’t have my Beckett left unsatisfied.”
Beckett quirks an eyebrow at his use of the possessive pronoun. He sits back down and worms his arm around her. “My Beckett,” he says definitively, and kisses her fast and hard.
“My dessert,” Beckett says, hopefully possessive in her turn. A slice of dessert sized to her satisfaction is produced, which unlike the entrée would feed a family of tigers, if tigers ate chocolate dessert, and is then slathered in whipped cream. Beckett clearly has no concerns about the state of her arteries. Nor is she apparently worried about a balanced diet; or indeed indigestion. The chocolate dessert is gone faster than doughnuts in the precinct, which Castle would have sworn blind was utterly impossible.
“More?” he asks. Beckett looks briefly thoughtful.
“No, thank you,” she says disappointedly. “It will keep, won’t it?”
“Yes. Don’t worry, there will still be chocolate tomorrow.” He waggles his eyebrows villainously. “Though we could leave the cream out. I’m sure we could find a use for it.”
Beckett rolls her eyes. “I could have it on my coffee, I suppose,” she says dryly.
Castle congratulates himself on bringing her to a state of less discomfort or indeed almost comfort with being here, whisks the plates and dessert off the table, flicks the coffee machine on, and tidies up in an unbelievably short time, finishing just as the coffee is ready. Beckett applauds, only mildly sardonically.
“I’ll put you up for a time and motion study,” she says, and grins.
“My timing is impeccable,” Castle preens. “As is my motion.”
Beckett splutters out the coffee she had just sipped, and blushes bright scarlet. Castle smirks, and self-congratulates some more. By way of self-reward, he places his arm around Beckett’s shoulders and cuddles her in. She wriggles a little bit to be perfectly comfortable.
“There,” he says. “Isn’t this cosy?”
“Mmm.”
Beckett is indeed cosy. Her initial discomfort has dissipated in Castle’s reassuringly normal mix of nonsense, care, and innuendo, and being curled into him and breathing in his comforting scent of cologne and masculinity is definitely keeping her more grounded and less miserable than she might otherwise have been.
“I think he meant it,” she says slowly. “He says he doesn’t remember and he’s so shocked by it that I believe that’s true. He says he doesn’t know why. If he was denying it or giving me reasons I’d think he was lying.” She burrows closer into Castle. “I can get that he was hurting so much that it just all spilled over because drunk he had no filters and nothing to stop it. Each man kills the thing he loves,” she quotes acidly. Castle tucks his arm round her and says nothing.
“So… so maybe it was the truth both times. The truth of his pain when he was drunk, and the truth about wanting to hang on to me when he was sober.” Her thoughts drift slowly from her mouth. “He thinks he abandoned me, first.”
Castle says nothing to that, either. He has no right to judge Jim’s actions. He also doesn’t want to think about what would happen if he lost a beloved wife. Not least because he’d like to have a beloved wife, and the only possibility is sitting right next to him.
“I… ought to forgive him. But I can’t. Not yet. I need time. I need to think about it. I think he was telling the truth. I think he really means it when he says there’s nothing he needs to forgive me for. But I can’t just believe it straight away, just because he says it.”
“You don’t have to, Kate. You just have to take your time and think about it. You’ve done the hardest bit – you talked to him, and you listened to him. Everything else will be easier.”
“You think?” but she’s not aggressive about it, she’s wondering.
Castle shrugs. “I guess,” he says ambivalently. “I don’t know. It’s got to be better that all the truth’s out there, though. Yeah?”
“Mm,” she hums, which is neither agreement nor disagreement, and is also the end of her conversation on the matter. She burrows in yet more, and curls her arm around his chest. Her dark head is tucked against his shoulder, so he drops a light kiss on the top of it and drinks the remains of his coffee. Beckett seems to be thinking, or possibly dozing, but it’s clear she’s not crying (his shirt is not damp, so he thinks this is a good bet) and so he’ll just lean his cheek on her head and stay nicely snuggled up.
Something is moving under his head. Castle wakes from a dream of a small cherry-coloured boat rocking in the waves and finds that Beckett is trying to untangle herself from him. In his sleep-fuzzed state, this is not a good plan.
“Stay here,” he slurs. “Comfy.”
“Not comfy,” Beckett contradicts. “Couch. Not comfy.”
“Couch is comfy,” Castle mutters. “Come back here.” About that point he wakes up a little more. “Oh.” His ears turn pink. “Did we both fall asleep?”
Beckett colours up in turn. “Er… yeah.” She yawns. Yawning being infectious, Castle yawns too.
“I think maybe it might be bedtime,” Castle says. It wasn’t exactly how he’d planned the remainder of the evening, nor indeed introducing Beckett to his bedroom. He looks at his watch and discovers it to be midnight. “Um…” he says uncertainly, “…are you okay to stay?” He hardly sounds smooth, suave or sophisticated. Then again, Beckett doesn’t look any of those either. She looks as uncertain as he feels. In fact, she looks much less certain than he feels. Castle revises his thoughts, rapidly.
“Easy question, Beckett. Do you want to stay, if you could?” All that needs is a yes or no answer.
“Yes,” she says without a pause.
“So let’s try.” He waggles his eyebrows lasciviously, and gestures towards the study door. “Come this way, my pretty.”
Beckett makes a truly horrible face at him, but goes where indicated, with a flip of her hair that indicates some disapproval of his phraseology. Castle picks up her small bag, and follows. She stops, partway into the study, and as she had done on entering the loft, looks around as if she’d never seen it before. Castle takes her bag straight through to his bedroom, drops it by the side of the bed he doesn’t favour, and comes back to see her continuing to stand, as still as a stump, approximately two feet inside the study door and therefore not, as she should be, two feet inside the bedroom door. He pads over to her and takes her in his arms, cosseting her. This is, he knows, a huge step, and he won’t hurry it. Pushing will undoubtedly spook Beckett, and there is no hint of a Kat here in his loft. There’s not been much Kate, either. Falling asleep on the couch or not.
And so they simply stay where she stood: no movement one way or the other; he’s gently rubbing circles on her back, not quite a stroke, certainly not massage. Maybe it’s just a mindless, loving caress: wholly instinctive. She’s not quite tense; not quite relaxed; not pulling away; not curving in. They stay like that for some moments, till her head drops on to his shoulder, and her stance softens, and her decision is made. Even then, Castle doesn’t move until she does, one small step towards his bedroom door.
He instantly scoops her up and carries her through. She squeaks in surprise, though surely she knows by now how much he loves picking her up and carrying her to bed? Anyway, he will do so for this first time sharing his bed, even if she threatened to shoot him. He puts her down on it carefully. She yawns, widely.
“You need to sleep. So do I,” he says as he yawns himself, again. “Would you like the bathroom first?”
“ ‘Kay, thanks.” She pads quietly off with her bag. Castle undresses and swathes himself in his luxuriously warm (if old) robe while he waits for her to return. She reappears, with bag, in a silky kimono which shows off several yards of excellent legs but sadly nothing of what she might be wearing (or not wearing) under it, and then glances slightly uncertainly at the bed.
“Which side do you want?”
“Usual one,” Castle says. “Same as at yours.”
“ ‘Kay.” She sits down on the left hand edge, and then leans back against the pillows. Castle watches with mild, affectionate and carefully hidden amusement as her lashes drift downwards and are jerked upward. He disappears to the bathroom to complete his own night time routine, perfectly sure that Beckett will be out for the count before he returns.
Indeed she is. When he returns, only a few moments later, the kimono is messily dropped on the floor – he tidily puts it over a chair – and Beckett is buried under the comforter with barely her eyebrows visible. Her soft, regular breathing indicates sleep, or the next closest cousin to it. Castle slides in on his preferred side – how useful that they aren’t fighting for the same side: that would be very detrimental to marital harmony – what? – that’s a bit premature. He squashes that thought down. She very nearly spooked when his family wasn’t here, she just about made it through brunch somewhere else with them, she’s a long way from sorting out her relationship with her father even if they’re finally listening to each other’s truth. That thought is a very long way in advance of the facts.
On the other hand, a long term plan is not such a bad thing to have.
He wriggles down into his comfortable mattress and his comfortable pillows in his comfortable bed and reaches out to cuddle in his sound-asleep and very comfortable Beckett. His fingers discover a very familiar-feeling covering. A small peek tells him that she’s wearing the same emerald-green babydoll nightwear which he had appreciated enormously in the Hamptons. He winds an arm under her neck, the other around her waist, and falls asleep to dream of an emerald-green Beckett-Kat surrounded by emerald-green cats in a variety of feline, flexible positions. He wakes up, gasping, on its conversion into a nightmare where the cats swarm suffocatingly over him and he loses touch with his Beckett-Kat.
When he realises that it was only a dream and he is still safely in his own bed, unsuffocated and thankfully feline-less, he also realises that his Beckett-Kat is not. There is a space, which is not warm, where she ought to be. The clock indicates that it is three a.m. There is no light in the bathroom, which is the obvious answer. Castle rapidly becomes worried. He switches a small light on, notices her bag still present in his first frantic look around, and becomes less worried. The kimono is present. His robe is not. He concludes that whatever she is doing, she is at least warm while doing it. He also concludes that if he goes hunting for her he will be cold. The kimono, while exceedingly pretty, will not fit him. He makes a small mental note to buy a second robe, tomorrow. He resolutely closes his eyes and tries to go back to sleep. It doesn’t work. Even after switching the light off, it doesn’t work. The faint traces of scent of Beckett are not soothing while she isn’t there.
On the other hand, if she’s got up, there’s a reason. She might simply have woken and not been able to sleep, so got up so as not to disturb him. Or, far more likely, her roiling thoughts have woken her and she is curled up somewhere, contemplating them. He can’t – he listens closely – hear crying. He can’t hear movement. She isn’t packing and running away. Therefore he needs to give her a little space. He lies quietly, and waits. Eventually, he drifts back into sleep, only dimly aware that there is a warm body slipping in next to him and nestling into his side, an arm sliding over him.
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