Fic: "By The Company You Keep" (Castle/Homicide crossover)
This started off as an entirely silly idea I e-mailed to likeadeuce over lunch, and then...went somewhere. Huh. I didn't think my brain still did that.
All you have to know about Homicide to *understand* this is that Frank Pembleton is awesome, though if you do know his character, there are more layers.
Castle wants her to come over for dinner.
“To talk about the case,” he says, giving Kate his Soulful Expression #5 (she categorizes them by degree of sincerity; 5 is mid-range). “I’ll cook.”
“That scares me.” She takes her notepad away from him--how did he get his hands on that, anyway?--and reaches for her coat. “And I can’t. I have plans.”
“I’ll have you know I’m an excellent cook,” he says, bouncing on his heels like some kind of ridiculous overeager puppy. She should start carrying chew toys in her pocket, the kind with the little squeaker inside. She could distract him with the noise and then throw them into traffic whenever he started to get in the way.
“I just told you, I have plans.”
“Yeah, but I ignored you, because that was a sad, transparent lie to get rid of me.”
She laughs, flipping her hair free from the collar of her jacket. “Castle, a stupid little white lie doesn’t even make my top ten ways to get rid of you.”
“So you admit you’re lying.” He sounds absolutely triumphant, like he’s won the game and expects a cookie.
“No.” She grabs her keys and gives him a stern look. “I’m not. I have plans for dinner already.”
He narrows his eyes for a moment, and then his eyebrows dart up toward his hair. He really has the facial expressions of a cartoon character. “You have a date?”
“Castle.” She sighs and pushes past him toward the door. He follows, of course. He’s like a fungus, she can’t get rid of him. “I’m having dinner with my mentor.”
“You have a mentor?” He sounds delighted, like while he was waiting for that cookie, someone gave him a pony. “Is that who taught you to reject humor and joy?”
She rolls her eyes and bumps the door open with her hip. “Goodbye, Castle.”
“Have you told him...or her. I do not make gender assumptions. At least not since my publicist told me to stop. Have you told him or her or gender-nonspecific pronoun I can’t think of off the top of my head about me?”
She stops, glancing back at him. “Oh, yes. I told him all about you.”
“Yeah?” He grins, his expression ticking over to a Smug #3. “What does he think of my work?”
She starts laughing and can’t quite stop, just shakes her head and starts off down the sidewalk, his calls of “What? What?” lost quickly to the street noise.
**
“I finished the fourth one of those books. Your writer friend’s books.”
Kate glances up from her food, raising an eyebrow. “Still hate them? And he’s not my friend.”
“They’re trash.” She’s never met anyone who can make a statement of opinion sound like carved-in-stone fact the way Frank Pembleton can. “Feather-weight, lazily-researched trash. Entertaining enough for the simple mind seeking a simple pleasure. They’re candy. Jolly Ranchers for your head.”
She taps her fork against her plate, trying not to smile. “Well, he’s obviously trying to do better on the research side of things. Unfortunately for me.”
“Civilians following cops around. In my day they never would have allowed it.” She’s never met anybody who attacks an egg cream with quite as much self-satisfied glee as Frank Pembleton, either.
She points at him with her fork. “You tell me stories all the time about that civilian they sent out with you in Baltimore. The...photographer.”
“Brody?” He shakes his head. “Brody did not get actively involved in cases, or consider himself some kind of...of expert with an artistic contribution to make. Brody was essentially a doorstop.”
“Still. I’m just saying, your statement was not accurate.” She finishes off her coffee and pushes the cup toward the edge of the table. “And don’t say back in my day as if you’re old.”
“I am old, Beckett.” He never calls her Kate, always Beckett, and he spits out the syllables with emphasis and relish, heavy on the B. “Old and decrepit and broke-down.”
“You are not.”
“Put me out to pasture. Call the glue factory.”
“Give it up, Pembleton.”
“They don’t make glue out of horses anymore, do they? Did they ever or was that a myth?” He takes another drink of his egg cream and looks at her expectantly.
“What?” She eats a fry and rolls her eyes at his meaningful silence. “What?”
He leans forward slightly, like they're sharing a confession. “How’s your friend?”
“He’s not my friend.”
“He wants to be.”
“Yeah, well, we all want things we can’t have.” She stares back at him challengingly, Satisfied? at the tip of her tongue.
He grins and settles back in his seat, beaming at her with cheerful approval. She doesn’t get that from him all that often. He’s in a really good mood tonight. “What is it with people who think everyone should be friends?”
“I have no idea.” She nods at the waitress as the woman walks by and scoops up the empty coffee cup. “I’m sure she’s a very nice person, but I don’t want to be her friend. Castle would be trying to get her entire life story.”
“My partner in Baltimore.” Frank pauses, like he always does when he begins a story like that. He tugs at the cuff of his shirt and clears his throat before he continues. “My partner in Baltimore, he always wanted to be friends. Play softball, have barbecues. Come over for dinner.”
She rolls her fork between her fingers, watching the light bounce off the cheap metal. “Castle invited me over for dinner.”
“Of course he did.” Frank’s voice rises a little, settling into his operatic, story-telling range. “These people, people like him--”
“And your partner?” He hesitates again, and she puts the fork down; she should really remember not to interrupt him once he gets going. It takes him a minute to find his stride again, and he hates that. It makes him mad. More than a few--hell, more than a dozen--meetings between them have ended abruptly because of that.
This time he picks up the thread again. “People like them, they don’t understand that those things aren’t what matter. They are signifiers, but not the signified. Someone can mean a hell of a lot to you--can be tremendously important to you--without being your friend.”
Kate frowns at him. “Castle doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Of course not.” He glances at his watch and starts digging for his wallet. “I’m just an old man rambling on.”
“Are you leaving?”
He tucks some money under the edge of his plate. “I have to look over Olivia’s math homework before she goes to bed. Pre-calculus. She gets all worked up about it.”
“Isn’t she only...what, twelve? Why is she doing pre-calculus?”
He gives her a stern look. “My daughter is gifted and talented, Beckett.”
“I should have guessed.”
He eases out of the booth and puts on his hat. “Don’t be friends. No matter how much he begs and carries on.”
“I don’t intend to.” He nods and leaves--no goodbye or goodnight, not from Frank Pembleton--and she eats the last few fries in silent communion with her reflection in the window.
Friends are for other people.
**
“Come on, Beckett, come to dinner.” Castle is doing the eager-puppy thing again, practically running laps around her desk. “We solved the case, we got the bad guy.”
She stacks her files together and measures them with the first knuckle of her finger. “I want to go home and sleep.”
“There are hours for sleep after dinner.” He pauses and grins at her. “My daughter wants to meet you.”
“She does?” Kate gives him a skeptical look. She can’t imagine why that would be true, but it doesn’t fit with the way Castle talks about his kid for him to use her as a bargaining chip.
“Yeah.” His smile always gets less playful and more genuine when he talks about Alexis. As much as Kate will admit to liking anything about Richard Castle, she likes that. “You’ll like her. She’s great.”
Kate clears her throat and straightens the files again. “Is she a walking inconvenience and troublemaker like her father?”
“Nope.” He is positively beaming. It’s more endearing than her worldview allows him to be. “She’s gifted and talented. And wonderful.”
The phrase makes her pause; it’s an entirely meaningless coincidence, but she’s been trained to notice those. At any rate, by the time she dismisses it he’s taken her silence as a chink in the wall.
“Come on, Beckett. One dinner won’t kill you.”
“Not tonight.” She shakes her head, looking around for her keys. “But tell her I said hi.”
“I’ll keep asking, you know.”
She doesn’t quite smile. “I know. But we’re not friends. You know that, right?”
“Call it what you want to.” He grins and tosses her her keys. “I am not a slave to language.”
“You’re a writer.”
“Exactly. That makes me the boss.” He winks at her and heads out the door before she can find a retort. She grits her teeth and puts on her coat, looking at the spot where he’d stood with a glare that turns into a grudging smile.
Pembleton is right; she’s not the kind of person who wants or needs a friend. But she’s sort of looking forward to the thought of getting back at Castle tomorrow.
All you have to know about Homicide to *understand* this is that Frank Pembleton is awesome, though if you do know his character, there are more layers.
Castle wants her to come over for dinner.
“To talk about the case,” he says, giving Kate his Soulful Expression #5 (she categorizes them by degree of sincerity; 5 is mid-range). “I’ll cook.”
“That scares me.” She takes her notepad away from him--how did he get his hands on that, anyway?--and reaches for her coat. “And I can’t. I have plans.”
“I’ll have you know I’m an excellent cook,” he says, bouncing on his heels like some kind of ridiculous overeager puppy. She should start carrying chew toys in her pocket, the kind with the little squeaker inside. She could distract him with the noise and then throw them into traffic whenever he started to get in the way.
“I just told you, I have plans.”
“Yeah, but I ignored you, because that was a sad, transparent lie to get rid of me.”
She laughs, flipping her hair free from the collar of her jacket. “Castle, a stupid little white lie doesn’t even make my top ten ways to get rid of you.”
“So you admit you’re lying.” He sounds absolutely triumphant, like he’s won the game and expects a cookie.
“No.” She grabs her keys and gives him a stern look. “I’m not. I have plans for dinner already.”
He narrows his eyes for a moment, and then his eyebrows dart up toward his hair. He really has the facial expressions of a cartoon character. “You have a date?”
“Castle.” She sighs and pushes past him toward the door. He follows, of course. He’s like a fungus, she can’t get rid of him. “I’m having dinner with my mentor.”
“You have a mentor?” He sounds delighted, like while he was waiting for that cookie, someone gave him a pony. “Is that who taught you to reject humor and joy?”
She rolls her eyes and bumps the door open with her hip. “Goodbye, Castle.”
“Have you told him...or her. I do not make gender assumptions. At least not since my publicist told me to stop. Have you told him or her or gender-nonspecific pronoun I can’t think of off the top of my head about me?”
She stops, glancing back at him. “Oh, yes. I told him all about you.”
“Yeah?” He grins, his expression ticking over to a Smug #3. “What does he think of my work?”
She starts laughing and can’t quite stop, just shakes her head and starts off down the sidewalk, his calls of “What? What?” lost quickly to the street noise.
**
“I finished the fourth one of those books. Your writer friend’s books.”
Kate glances up from her food, raising an eyebrow. “Still hate them? And he’s not my friend.”
“They’re trash.” She’s never met anyone who can make a statement of opinion sound like carved-in-stone fact the way Frank Pembleton can. “Feather-weight, lazily-researched trash. Entertaining enough for the simple mind seeking a simple pleasure. They’re candy. Jolly Ranchers for your head.”
She taps her fork against her plate, trying not to smile. “Well, he’s obviously trying to do better on the research side of things. Unfortunately for me.”
“Civilians following cops around. In my day they never would have allowed it.” She’s never met anybody who attacks an egg cream with quite as much self-satisfied glee as Frank Pembleton, either.
She points at him with her fork. “You tell me stories all the time about that civilian they sent out with you in Baltimore. The...photographer.”
“Brody?” He shakes his head. “Brody did not get actively involved in cases, or consider himself some kind of...of expert with an artistic contribution to make. Brody was essentially a doorstop.”
“Still. I’m just saying, your statement was not accurate.” She finishes off her coffee and pushes the cup toward the edge of the table. “And don’t say back in my day as if you’re old.”
“I am old, Beckett.” He never calls her Kate, always Beckett, and he spits out the syllables with emphasis and relish, heavy on the B. “Old and decrepit and broke-down.”
“You are not.”
“Put me out to pasture. Call the glue factory.”
“Give it up, Pembleton.”
“They don’t make glue out of horses anymore, do they? Did they ever or was that a myth?” He takes another drink of his egg cream and looks at her expectantly.
“What?” She eats a fry and rolls her eyes at his meaningful silence. “What?”
He leans forward slightly, like they're sharing a confession. “How’s your friend?”
“He’s not my friend.”
“He wants to be.”
“Yeah, well, we all want things we can’t have.” She stares back at him challengingly, Satisfied? at the tip of her tongue.
He grins and settles back in his seat, beaming at her with cheerful approval. She doesn’t get that from him all that often. He’s in a really good mood tonight. “What is it with people who think everyone should be friends?”
“I have no idea.” She nods at the waitress as the woman walks by and scoops up the empty coffee cup. “I’m sure she’s a very nice person, but I don’t want to be her friend. Castle would be trying to get her entire life story.”
“My partner in Baltimore.” Frank pauses, like he always does when he begins a story like that. He tugs at the cuff of his shirt and clears his throat before he continues. “My partner in Baltimore, he always wanted to be friends. Play softball, have barbecues. Come over for dinner.”
She rolls her fork between her fingers, watching the light bounce off the cheap metal. “Castle invited me over for dinner.”
“Of course he did.” Frank’s voice rises a little, settling into his operatic, story-telling range. “These people, people like him--”
“And your partner?” He hesitates again, and she puts the fork down; she should really remember not to interrupt him once he gets going. It takes him a minute to find his stride again, and he hates that. It makes him mad. More than a few--hell, more than a dozen--meetings between them have ended abruptly because of that.
This time he picks up the thread again. “People like them, they don’t understand that those things aren’t what matter. They are signifiers, but not the signified. Someone can mean a hell of a lot to you--can be tremendously important to you--without being your friend.”
Kate frowns at him. “Castle doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Of course not.” He glances at his watch and starts digging for his wallet. “I’m just an old man rambling on.”
“Are you leaving?”
He tucks some money under the edge of his plate. “I have to look over Olivia’s math homework before she goes to bed. Pre-calculus. She gets all worked up about it.”
“Isn’t she only...what, twelve? Why is she doing pre-calculus?”
He gives her a stern look. “My daughter is gifted and talented, Beckett.”
“I should have guessed.”
He eases out of the booth and puts on his hat. “Don’t be friends. No matter how much he begs and carries on.”
“I don’t intend to.” He nods and leaves--no goodbye or goodnight, not from Frank Pembleton--and she eats the last few fries in silent communion with her reflection in the window.
Friends are for other people.
**
“Come on, Beckett, come to dinner.” Castle is doing the eager-puppy thing again, practically running laps around her desk. “We solved the case, we got the bad guy.”
She stacks her files together and measures them with the first knuckle of her finger. “I want to go home and sleep.”
“There are hours for sleep after dinner.” He pauses and grins at her. “My daughter wants to meet you.”
“She does?” Kate gives him a skeptical look. She can’t imagine why that would be true, but it doesn’t fit with the way Castle talks about his kid for him to use her as a bargaining chip.
“Yeah.” His smile always gets less playful and more genuine when he talks about Alexis. As much as Kate will admit to liking anything about Richard Castle, she likes that. “You’ll like her. She’s great.”
Kate clears her throat and straightens the files again. “Is she a walking inconvenience and troublemaker like her father?”
“Nope.” He is positively beaming. It’s more endearing than her worldview allows him to be. “She’s gifted and talented. And wonderful.”
The phrase makes her pause; it’s an entirely meaningless coincidence, but she’s been trained to notice those. At any rate, by the time she dismisses it he’s taken her silence as a chink in the wall.
“Come on, Beckett. One dinner won’t kill you.”
“Not tonight.” She shakes her head, looking around for her keys. “But tell her I said hi.”
“I’ll keep asking, you know.”
She doesn’t quite smile. “I know. But we’re not friends. You know that, right?”
“Call it what you want to.” He grins and tosses her her keys. “I am not a slave to language.”
“You’re a writer.”
“Exactly. That makes me the boss.” He winks at her and heads out the door before she can find a retort. She grits her teeth and puts on her coat, looking at the spot where he’d stood with a glare that turns into a grudging smile.
Pembleton is right; she’s not the kind of person who wants or needs a friend. But she’s sort of looking forward to the thought of getting back at Castle tomorrow.