Matter Out of Place, Ch. 8-Post-Belly of the Beast (6 x 17) Caskett Multichap. Now Complete
Title: Matter Out of Place, Ch. 8
Rating: T
WC: ~2900, this chapter; ~20,000 total
Summary: "He says there's nothing wrong. He says he's fine. They're fine. Most of the time, she believes him." post-Belly of the Beast (6 x 17).
A/N: Final chapter. Thank you for reading.
It's awkward. So far from the instant relief she'd imagined-fantasized about feeling when they finally reached the heart of all this-that she's spun by it. She's quiet and unsure. Uncomfortable and she hates feeling that way with him. She hates feeling that way here. Uncomfortable.
He is, too. He's not quite sorry he asked. Even so, there's something that leans forward about him. Something determined to do this. But he's at a loss, too, and even the melancholy closeness that had settled over them there on the kitchen floor is gone now.
"I'm hungry," she says in a small voice. "And my butt hurts."
"Me too." He doesn't quite laugh, but he helps her up. Exaggerated chivalry, then a wince. "Mine too."
They survey the mess of the kitchen. Nothing is halfway to anything. Everything is scattered. Pulled out of its rightful place and it's hard to see where sense might come from.
"I can cook . . ." He begins doubtfully.
She cuts him off. "Snacks." She thinks about it. "Junk food. Beer. The roof."
He nods. Smiles as he reaches down for the picnic basket and busies himself. He likes when she's like this. Imperious about foolish things. Playing and not playing. She wishes that would work here. She wishes anything would work here.
"The wife?" She turns on him, the question consuming her. The need to know what the right answer could be. "What does that even mean?"
He doesn't look up from his task. His hands are efficient, even though the bandage gets in the way. He's tidying as he goes. Sneaking fancy cheese and real bread into the basket side-by-side with boxed cookies and marshmallows. He's thinking, though. She knows from the precision in it. The care and satisfaction as he makes things come together. He's thinking, not stalling.
"Did your dad know Josh?" He looks up for that. "You said I could ask anything." He grins at her, but there's something hard beneath it. The name still leaves a bitter taste for him after all this time.
She bites it back. The urge to argue. To shake him. It's not some idle question. It's not just stirring up, or deflecting or whatever, because he wouldn't. She knows that. She knows.
"He knew of him," she says, her tone as even as she can make it. It's bitter for her, too. She turns to the cabinet. Roots around for the cheap chocolate bars he mocks her for. She hides her face. "He knew we'd been seeing each other."
He's silent long enough that she turns. It feels like breaking. Being the first to flinch, but she hates that it even rises up like that. Something childish and leftover. She turns. He's still working. Clearing away the things they won't need and not quite hiding a pained kind of smile. Something that might be satisfaction if this weren't such a mess.
She's exasperated. She's trying to give him room for this. She's trying to listen, but she's lost.
"Castle . . ."
". . . He came here."
Their words overlap. She stares at him, blinking.
"Your dad. Not Josh," he says, as if that helps. As if that's what has her speechless. "Right before Montgomery died. When Lockwood escaped. He came here."
It's just a jumble of words. It's syllables and the oddest expression on his face. Like he's stiff with fear from the memory. A panicked teenage boy facing down his date's father.
The penny drops.
"He asked you . . . you came to my apartment."
"He was . . ." He moves to her. Abandons the busy work at last and takes her hands. "Kate the thought of losing you, too, was destroying him."
He stops. It catches up with him. The terrible thing on the tip of his tongue. The terrible truth.
"And that wasn't enough to stop me." She says it for him. She knows this. She knows her own part. She's made what amends she can these last two years. She's worked with Burke and taken risks. She's leaned on her dad. Confided in him and tried to make up for lost time. "Knowing what it would do to him wasn't enough." The words fall off her tongue and stall. The inside of her head is a wash of light. Blinding. "He thought you were enough."
He shakes his head. Rushes to get words out, even though he stumbles over them. "I thought he was asking me as a father, maybe, or that he . . . misunderstood." He's miserable. He's blushing and embarrassed, but he presses on. "I thought he must not know about Josh . . ."
She turns their hands over. Hers on top now. She strokes her fingertips over his palms. She skips over the bandage. Moves higher along the inside of his wrists. He does it for her sometimes. It soothes her. That intense focus and the way he invests all of himself in the simplicity of touch. It calms her like nothing else.
She'd give him that now if she could, but his mind is working. He watches the movement. His eyes follow the swaying, side-to-side pattern of her fingers, but he's struggling.
"I asked you to walk away. For them." It hurts him still. It hurts her. The events of that awful night laid out one after the other. "Even though I wanted . . ." He curls his palms around hers. A brief squeeze. A smile before he turns back to his work. "You know. You know what I wanted."
She knows. She knew then, and she's sick with the burden of memory. All these sins between them. That night. A year on. All the way up to the storm.
"I threw it in your face." She turns a jar of something over in her hands. "Both times. When you asked for them and when you asked for youself."
"It wasn't that simple. " He plucks the jar from her hands. He sets it in the basket-the very last space-and taps down the flaps of the lid. "Either time. We both know that." He turns to her again. "And it's not . . . it's not just about having one person worth living for. I don't think that's how it works for us. For anyone, maybe."
"So how does it work?" She chafes her thumb over his palm. "What do we do?"
"For now, we eat." He slings the picnic basket into the crook of his elbow. He tugs her along. "The roof. Beer. Junk food."
They feed each other in the long light. Bits of chocolate and cookies that dissolve on their tongues. Fruit slathered in caramel. Fancy cheese on crusty bread and spray cheese on lousy crackers. Ice cold beers that sweat and send liquid running down their fingers.
It's warm. The air is thick with a storm that won't quite come. It holds on to the sun. It feels good, though. Even the sweat pooling behind her knees and underneath her breasts. A solid, real reminder that it was a good day. Whatever it is now, it was a good day.
He tells her stories about his adventures with Sarah, and that's good, too. The way he spins easy lies for her, even though he's tired. Even though the not-good parts of the day gather in shadows around him.
"I'm telling you, she's a scrapper. She wrestled a bear." He pops a grape in his mouth, his eyes wide and mock sincere.
"A rare, New York City park bear." She laughs.
"Huge." He spreads his hands wide, then tall. "Maybe she really is Esposito's."
"Castle!" She swats at him.
"What?" He ducks away. "Kevin Ryan has many fine qualities, but only a fool would back him against a bear."
She chases after him. She suddenly doesn't like the space between them, so she sweeps the remains of their feast off his lap and clambers into it. She wraps herself around him and rests her head against his shoulder.
"You're not the wife." She tugs at the collar of his shirt. Emphasis. Elaboration.
"I don't mind . . . having the wife is good. I can be the wife." He looks shy all of a sudden. Embarrassed. Struggling again, though not quite the same way. "I mean . . . of course I want to be the person you come home to. And I want you to always know there's me and your dad and my mother and Alexis . . . that we all need you to come home. That's not . . . I don't mind that."
She thinks of Jenny. Of Sarah, kicking in his arms. She thinks of Ryan's voice, firm and insistent, on the other end of a phone line fading in and out. She thinks of smoke and flame and the end of everything.
We're going to lose the phone soon, Beckett, so . . . there's something I need you to do
Kevin. You don't want to . . . not like this.
Beckett. I need to talk to Jenny. Now.
She's struggling, too. Like it's all here, but she can't wrap her arms around it.
"You're not just the wife."
It's not what she wants to say. She doesn't know what she wants to say. She doesn't know.
"Kate." He sounds alarmed, like he's just realized something. He kisses her, then. Swift and sure. "Not with you. I know who I am with you." His hands fumble at her waist. At the hem of her shirt and his fingers stutter up her ribs like he can lay hands on all the things he knows. "I'm . . . I think I'm doing this wrong. I'm saying it wrong. I'm not worried about who I am with you or what I am to you." He kisses her and the truth is in it. That he is here, body and soul, and she is, too. "I know that. With you, I know."
She thinks of Elena. Because it begins with her, even if it doesn't end there. Even if it stretches on and out and cuts deep.
"But they treated you like the wife." She has an image in her mind now. Nothing new. Nothing they haven't talked about it, but she can picture it. For the first time, she really sees it. Him racing into the precinct. Into the chaos, because they knew by then. They kew how badly it might go and no one had so much as picked up the phone. "Gates. Ryan and Esposito."
His head sinks lower. He buries his face against her shoulder like he's shrinking away from bright light, and maybe he is. Maybe they both are. He nods, and even that's an effort.
"Like . . . like the person who gets the phone call when . . . when it's all over." Every word is tight and small. Angry. Devastated. "Like the person you keep out of the way until it's all over, one way or the other."
"No." She tightens her arms around him. She presses her mouth to his skin. Her teeth. Hard enough to hurt. "No. That's not right. It's not right."
"I don't know." He eases her back. Disentangles the two of them them to sink one hand in her hair. To study her face. "I don't know if I could have helped or if I would have made it worse or . . ."
"It doesn't matter. That's not the point." She's still, eyes fixed on him, because she wants him to know. "You're my partner and you should have been there. You belonged there. Not alone. Not wondering like that. We're a team."
He nods. His eyes are wide and he swallows hard like he'd like to say something. He doesn't though. He leans into her again, and he's quiet. His breath moves in and out. Steadier over her skin after a while.
"I'll talk to them." She drags her fingers through his hair. "We'll talk to them. So everyone knows how it will go."
"Except it's never going to happen again." His head pops away from her shoulder. He gives her a shaky, exaggerated frown, eager to joke about it. Eager for it to be something less awful. "Because . . . volcano. If it's going to happen again, volcano right the hell now." He's joking and he's not. Not quite.
"I wouldn't do it again," she says suddenly.
It startles him. The kind of morose playfulness he's only just managed to muster turning to guilt.
"Kate . . . I'm not asking you for that." He brushes his thumb over her lips. "I'm not asking you not to do your job. You didn't know it would go wrong."
She's grinds her teeth. Bites back something she doesn't mean. She's. . . annoyed. Not with him, with herself, though she grabs his hand and pulls it from her lips. He looks contrite. She waves it away. She wants to promise him this. She wants him to know that there's more to this than just her not leaving him behind.
"I knew it was giving up a day off. An afternoon with you. Giving that up for . . ." She trails off. He's not asking for that kind of promise, but she's giving it. "I don't have anything to prove. I'm a good cop. And, yes, I left and I came back and so what? I'm done bending over backwards. I do the job and I come home to the wife."
"Ok. " He smiles. Holds her gaze for one serene moment. "I can definitely be the wife if it means you come home."
"But we still talk to them, Castle." She hates to ruin it, this moment of peace-some kind of success at last-but it feels like this is what she can do. They can do together.
"You don't think . . ." The words start and stop a couple of times, but he sets his jaw and goes on. "I'm not a cop. I do know that. You don't think I'm over-stepping?"
"I think I want Ryan and Esposito to be absolutely clear and have our backs. And Gates, too." She grimaces and he huffs out a laugh. She holds him steady. "We talk to them so everyone knows exactly what I want . . . what we want if anything does happen."
"We still talk to them." He nods. He looks away. Off into the city like he's making his mind. Like he's remembering that it helps. "And I talk to someone."
The words are quiet. Serious and more than a little miserable on his part, but they fill her up with light. Hope. She loves him for saying it. She didn't even realize how it was creeping at the back of her mind all the while. The fear that it had gotten lost in everything else tonight. That he might not mean it.
"Yeah?" She peels herself off him. She turns his face to hers and asks again. "You talk to someone?"
"I do. I don't want . . . this anymore." He holds up the bandage. "And it's not . . ." He sighs. "It's obviously not going to go away on its own. Which I know you tried to tell me."
"Not easy to hear." She drops her hands from his face. She turns her arm over, takes his fingers and draws them the length of the scar there.
He remembers. He raises both her hands to his lips. Kisses her wrists gently. He hesitates, then. He's got something else to ask.
"Anything, Castle."
"Thanks." He gives her a sheepish smile. "Anything . . . ok. So, someone. Not Burke, I know that. But maybe . . . someone he can help us find. Someone who works with the wives?"
He grins at her. Bright and real this time. He's eating it up, because that's how he is. Resilient. Something painful an hour ago-ten minutes ago-and now it's a joke.
He's eating it up, but she burns a little. She feels stupid. Someone who works with cops' families. Of course.
"Hey." He tugs at her hands. He waits for her to look at him. "You're not . . it doesn't bother you, right?"
"No," she says swiftly. She slides her fingers between his. "No, I'm glad. I'm really glad. I just should've thought of it. Of course Burke would know people . . . I just . . . I feel dumb. "
"I know." She stiffens. He backpedals immediately. Realizes how it sounds. "No. Not that. You are not dumb.I just mean . . . our lives are strange. But not that strange. But I didn't think of it until Jenny called. What we talked about. I've been so . . . just trying to put one foot in front of the other. But lots of people have to deal with this stuff. Not will-you-pretend-to-be-a-drug-distributor-you-vaguely-resemble-ooops-she's-actually-an-assassin-working for-your-mother's-murderer things, but . . . wives, families. Not just cops. So of course there would be people for that, right?"
"Right."
"So we do this. Lots of talking." His head tips back against the the brick wall behind them.
"Rough for you, Castle." She nudges him.
"I know, right?" He smiles. His arms rest easy at her hips. He leans his forehead against hers. He breathes deep. "This . . . I feel good. I feel . . ."
"Lighter." She slips from his lap to sit beside him. To lean her head against his shoulder and turn her face up to the sky. To the lights of the city. "It's good to have a plan."
He nods. Sneaks a sidelong glance at her. "Even though it's never going to happen again."
"It's never going to happen again."
It's a lie. They both know that. But it's the right lie for now.
They tell it together. They'll do what they can to make it true.
They're both lighter.