Command Performance, Ch. 1-A Season 8 Caskett 3-shot
Title: Command Performance
Rating: T
Summary: “There’s no question that she’s going. That she has to go, but she’s had voicemail, email, and mail mail on top of all that from desperate people low on the totem pole who just want to know if they should put her down plus-one.”
A/N: Set a few weeks post-Mr. & Mrs. Castle (8 x 08), so spoilers up through that, though I know nothing about what’s to come. Unconscionably, I’m using an idea of Cora Clavia’s for a story that she won’t want to read. Should be a 3-shot.
She’s been ignoring it for weeks. Months, probably, given the scale of things. The size of the pile on top of it in her to-do tray. The RSVP date must have long come and gone, though that hardly matters. She’s had voicemail, email, and mail mail from higher ups noting that attendance is mandatory for precinct captains. Pointedly noting that anyone thinking of opting out will need a note from their mortician.
There’s no question that she’s going. That she has to go, but she’s had voicemail, email, and mail mail on top of all that from desperate people low on the totem pole who just want to know if they should put her down with a plus-one.
She hasn’t responded at all. Not because she’s indifferent. Quite the opposite. She has post-traumatic-wedding-that-didn’t-happen disorder. Nightmares about Martha’s frenemies burning the venue to the ground because all the space they’d carefully placed between them wasn’t enough. About her Aunt Theresa insisting on delivering a powerpoint presentation featuring intimate stills of her and Castle from 3XK’s surveillance set-up
She’s not indifferent, she’s in denial. She’s been in denial since she slammed back into her body that first unspeakable night. Right here in the middle of her office with a bag filled with God knows what. Since she’d mechanically started to chip away at the mountains of work that had managed to accumulate in just a few days and the thick envelope on top.
The New York City Police Department cordially invites you and a guest . . .
She handles it now. Digs it out from the bottom of a pile that never gets any smaller and runs her finger over the sleek border around the elegant, slanting text. She understands it now. How it’s been a talisman. A fetish with every terrible instinct she has wound around it.
She runs her finger over the date and hears her own voice, out loud more often than not, telling lies.
By then. Long before then. It’ll be done by then.
She picks up the phone. It’s Saturday night, pushing into Sunday, but the harried young man picks up no the first ring.
“Captain Beckett!”
“Yes.” She’s thrown. Embarrassed and belatedly aware that she’d really been counting on voicemail. “From the twelfth. I’m calling about . . .”
“The gala,” he supplies. “Thank you so much for getting back to me. We’re just about to finalize seating, and . . .”
“I’ll have a plus-one.”
She hates how easily her brisk tone masks the guilt. Hates that she’s piling on the grief she’s already caused this poor guy, but she wants this done. Settled, before every terrible instinct rises up again to undo the progress she’s made. They’ve made.
“Of course.” He rolls smoothly with the interruption, then hesitates. “And the name for the place card . . . ?”
She pictures him wincing at the question mark as it tumbles out. She’s sorry for him. He’s just trying to do his job and he doesn’t deserve this. The sharp lash of her tone, but she’s not about to explain that she’s angry with herself. She’s not about to explain that this is crazy and stupid and dangerous, but she’s doing it anyway.
“Richard Castle.” She presses a fingertip to the card stock. Blots out two words. A guest. “My husband will be joining me.”
“Is it a good idea?”
His fingers stall halfway down the buttons of her blouse. It drives her insane. The hesitation and the wary look. The fact that his hands aren’t on her. She yanks at his shirtfront, trying to lead by example.
“It’s a terrible idea.” She bites down hard on his shoulder as soon as the skin is bare. “But it’s done.”
“It’s done?”
He doesn’t bother with the rest of the buttons. He pushes the silk down her arms and gathers the fabric in one fist at the small of her back. It jerks her elbows into her sides and arches her spine. It holds her fast. Keeps her in place as he looms above her, his head brushing the roof of the stupid surveillance van they’ve parked out in the ass-end of nowhere to steal an hour together.
Less than an hour, and now he’s angry with every right to be, and she doesn’t know what the hell compelled her to even bring it up. Here. Now. She doesn’t know if she’s still sabotaging them. If her worst instincts are still driving her, even after everything.
“Your name’s on the place card.”
It’s something he’d say. A ridiculous, out-of-left-field objection that makes him laugh. Makes him kiss her hard and tighten his hold to let her know that she’s not quite forgiven. That they’re not done talking about this, even though he's pushing her skirt higher and higher with his free hand.
“Well,” he breathes as his hand glides up her thigh and back down to her knee. As he tugs hard to lay her out beneath him and pins her with the weight of his body. “A place card. That’s settled, then.”
“It’s because of Christmas?” He sweeps the hair from her neck to press his lips to the skin. She’s stalled in reverse. Halfway through the same damned buttons. Doing them up again, because the hour is spent. “Because of that picture . . .”
“Not because of that.” She lets her hands drop. She braces her palms on the makeshift pallet they’ve thrown together and twists awkwardly to face him. She ducks her head to nip at his jaw. To force his eyes up from her half-open blouse and the bra that she just might have chosen for the occasion. She drags her own mouth up to his. “No one’s fault.”
“Mmmmm.” He nips back, catching her bottom lip. “We’re not lying anymore, remember?”
He’s smiling at her. Looking for all the world like it’s one lie he doesn’t mind, but she doesn’t work like that. She’s all or nothing. She swivels on her knees, bringing her whole body around to catch his hands.
“Not lying.” She kisses one palm, then the other. Guides them both to either side of her face and looks him in the eye. “The picture wasn’t your fault. And I’m not asking you . . .”
“Asking.” He raises an eyebrow at her. He’s not really angry. That’s as spent as the hour neither of them could really afford, but he’s . . . adamant. All or nothing in his own way about what is and isn’t a lie.
“I didn’t ‘commit you to the damned thing without asking’ ” - she rolls her eyes when he gives her a wounded nod of acknowledgement - “because of some stupid picture.”
“Why, then?” He asks quietly, and she knows he doesn’t want to. She knows he wants to say yes. To take every inch for them her paranoia will allow. But he asks anyway, and she loves him all the more for it. “It’s a risk.”
“I know it’s a risk.” She closes her eyes, memorizing the feeling of his thumbs drifting over her cheekbones with infinite care. “It’s a terrible idea. But I want you with me.”
It’s not about the picture. It really isn’t, and it wasn’t the night she picked up the damned phone to reply. He knows that. She’s told him that, and he believes her. He knows better, but the picture is out there. A grainy, long-lens snapshot of the two of them holding hands at Christkindlmarkt. Smiling at each other with their heads bent together in a neighborhood they thought would be low profile enough.
But it wasn’t. So it’s out there, and he’s worried about it. They both are every time it shows up again with the same warmed-over buzz. Musings on the muse and her estranged writer, complete with cutesy phrasing and an excess of question marks in the caption: Heat rekindled??? Holiday heat???
They’re both worried that it’s managed to undo whatever little, sour-tasting good that might have come from those weeks apart. Weeks she left him alone and in the dark, and it’s his idea.
“Being seen in public together at a high-profile event like that . . .” He trails off. Spools up to the next part carefully. So carefully. “It’s an opportunity to . . .”
She doesn’t answer. Can’t make herself, even when she hears the sigh on the other end of the phone.
“Kate. It is.”
I know it is,” she says at last, resigned and hollowed out. “I don’t want it to be.” She closes her eyes, but the ceiling pulses, backlit, against her eyelids. “I want it to be . . .”
“It’s that, too. It’s that for us.” His voice is warm. He’s pouring it on. Not lying, because they’re not doing that anymore. But working on her. “But for everyone else? It makes sense to be careful. To play up the professional angle . . .”
“If you say ‘spin’ or ‘narrative,’ I’m hanging up.” She rolls to her back on the rock-hard mattress and scowls up at the shitty, off-white ceiling she hates a little more every day.
“No you’re not.” He’s smiling. She can hear him smiling, sure of himself. Sure of her.
“No, I’m not,” she says anyway, because she wants him to be sure She’s grateful that he can be. That it’s his nature to be sure, even after all this time.
A/N: Next two chapters up in a few days. Thanks for reading/supporting.