A Brief Madness, Ch. 3 --- A Caskett S4 WIP
Title: A Brief Madness, Ch. 3
WC: ~3700, this chapter; ~8500 so far
Summary: " Things fall into place between them. He's amped up by the possibility of ghosts. Tugged by the current of story stretching back and back. Twenty years. A hundred. She teases him, a little rough. He pushes back, bolder with her than he's been. He lets his mind wander and his mouth run like he hasn't in months, and it's like this tight, tentative way they've been with each other is breaking down." Set during and after Demons (4 x 06)
A/N: Again, sorry that these come slowly and unexpectedly. Once again, I had the beginning and the rest came only recently.
Beauty of whatever kind,
in its supreme development,
invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
-Edgar Allan Poe
"You look nice."
The words come to her across an expanse of sidewalk. They pull her back around to face him. It's late, and they've already said their goodnights, but everything about him says it's not an afterthought. It's something he's decided on. His feet are planted, and there's a stubborn lift to his chin like he's been working his way up to it. Like he's prepared to argue the point with her.
"Today," he blurts when it's clear she's not arguing. When it's clear she's not saying anything at all. He blushes the next second and twists in place. His feet are planted, but the rest of him seems to wish they weren't. "I mean every day. You look nice, but especially . . ." His hands flutter up out of his pockets in some kind of aborted gesture she doesn't understand. "You look especially nice today."
He isn't mumbling. He's the very opposite of mumbling, in fact, and the sidelong glances they're getting from passersby tell her she's not alone in finding this a little weird. Compliments half-shouted across an expanse of sidewalk. It's weird in general. It's weird for them. Lately and not so lately.
But it's not an afterthought. He gives her one last, slightly miserable look so she knows it's not, and then he's gone. He's disappearing down the subway stairs at speed, and she's sorry to see him go. She's suddenly sorry she didn't say a thing.
Her stomach flutters pleasantly, and one hand rises to touch the bun she'd made an effort with today. A braid and a long rest after all that took out of her. A dozen little pins and another rest, her scars pulling and burning all the while.
But she made the effort and he noticed. She's sure of that. Sure of what he meant, and she wants badly to call him back.
"Thanks," she says faintly, because he's long gone. He's not there to hear or to see the pleased blush rising on her cheeks. "Thanks, Castle."
She puts her hair up again the next morning. She frets over it, worrying that it's too severe after all that. She scowls at herself, freeing a few strands around her face with shaking fingers to soften things. It's an effort to not second guess and take it all down so she can hide. She'd really like to hide, but she thinks of him. The bravery of that stand in the middle of the sidewalk.
You look nice . . .
. . . especially.
She struggles into a new jacket. It's close-fitting. An impulse buy. An aspiration that's found its way into her closet just lately, and she doesn't hate it. She doesn't hate how it skims the sides of her body, or the angle of the stand-up collar running parallel to her jaw. She fastens the burnished-silver buttons and smoothes the hem over her hips, in silent conversation with the pale, thin wraith in the mirror. For the first time in months, she faces herself and doesn't quite hate it.
He's already there when she gets to the precinct. He's in motion. She hangs back a moment and takes it in. The rightness of him here-the household spirit of her desk. The rightness of him, rushing to the board and ebbing away to take in the whole of it. Focused in that manic way of his that fits perfectly with her own methodical approach.
He has a board of his own-the flip side of hers, appropriately enough-and it's filled already. It's absolutely filled with his neat, slanting caps. A story he's been spinning nearly all night from the look of things.
"Did you get any sleep?"
The question is out before she can think better of it. Before the easy intimacy of the words can bring a blush to her cheeks. That follows soon enough, though. He turns, all the manic energy draining out of him in an instant. Transforming. A sudden flare of heat as his eyes sweep over her, head to toe.
"Not a wink," he says, breathless, because she does that to him. She takes his breath away.
Things fall into place between them. He's amped up by the possibility of ghosts. Tugged by the current of story stretching back and back. Twenty years. A hundred. She teases him, a little rough. He pushes back, bolder with her than he's been. He lets his mind wander and his mouth run like he hasn't in months, and it's like this tight, tentative way they've been with each other is breaking down. For her, it's like a long, languid stretch that pops her spine back into alignment.
It's not as pleasant a thought as it should be. It has her counting up the awkward pauses and missing rituals. It has her noticing how out of joint and off kilter they've been all this while. It has her worrying how fragile a thing this is. How delicate a balance they're trying to strike between all the old, familiar things and every possibility. All that has been and is now and might be.
It's hard to enjoy it. Progress and precious things they've come so close to losing. It's hard not to feel grateful and terrified and hopeful. It's hard to feel like this. A work in progress inside a work in progress, but that's what she is. That's what they are, and it's so much better than three lonely, awful months. It's so much better than the alternative.
"Has it always been like this?" She reaches her fingertips toward the window, fascinated at first by the odd sensation of approach. Reminded of the one-way mirror in the box and all the secrets it gives up, every time.
"This isn't your usual slot." Burke lays no particular emphasis on the words, but like everything else out of his mouth, it's a prompt. A nudge in the direction she's supposed to be going.
"Things are good," she says and knows it's defensive. She sees it in the rigid line her arm becomes. The right angle of it against the easy, familiar curve of the chair. She sees it in the reflection that might have been there all the while.
"For you?"
"For me." She sits up straighter and pushes away a fleeting wish that she'd left the jacket on. A fleeting desire for its sleek fit and upright collar. "For the two of us."
Burke just nods. He lets the silence do its work.
"He said . . . he told me I looked nice." She turns again to the window, as much away from Burke to hide the blush as to see herself. To see if it still feels true.
"And that's new?" The words sound skeptical, though that's more likely to be in her head than anything.
"It's different." She turns back to the room. To herself, here and now.
"Troubling?" He spreads his hands, heading her off before she has a chance to bristle at the word. "You say things are good."
"They are. Easier than they've been . . ."
"Since your shooting," he finishes when it's obvious that she's not going to. That she can't for some reason.
"In a while."
She's still as she says it. Preoccupied by something missing. Something she waits for that doesn't come. Her face tips toward her lap, defeated. She feels like she's lost it. Some important thread that was dangling before her just a moment ago.
"And easier is good."
That's definitely skeptical. In and out of her head.
"Of course it is," she snaps. "Why wouldn't it be?"
"You don't sound convinced. I'm just . . ." He lets a sly smile slip. The merest flick of his hand toward the window. "Reflecting."
She laughs. It's tight and high up in her chest. It's worried, but she tugs and things come loose. Looser, anyway, like she has hold of one end of it.
"I don't trust . . ." She shakes her head at herself. At the image in the window with its smoothed-back bun and soft, pretty wisps of hair falling on either side of a frown. "It feels . . . cosmetic. Like nothing is really fixed." She reaches all the way out this time. Fingertip to fingertip with herself. The cool glass soothes the burn on her thumb where the coffee maker scalded her. An instant of relief before he smudges on glass make her blush. Before they leave her furiously scrubbing with her sleeve. Muttering almost to herself. "He's mad. He hasn't . . . he said he'd call."
"Where is he now?"
"Castle? Chasing ghosts." She smirks, playing it off, but the question startles her. It feels entirely out of left field. "He's with Ryan." Except not entirely out of left field, apparently. The words keep tumbling from her mouth. "That's not . . . I didn't reschedule because . . . ." She falls silent. She looks at her hands where they've dropped, completely still in her lap. "It can't be easy, right? It shouldn't be easy."
"I doubt it will be easy in the long run, Kate." There's another sly smile. Two in one session, and it's some kind of record. "If that makes you feel any better."
"It does." She drops her head hard against the low back of the chair. Her scar sends a burning twinge up and out and the high, tight thing in her chest loosens a little more. "It feels like it should hurt."
She dips her chin and rolls her head to her shoulder. She frowns at herself in the window and there's a sudden, sweet, sore flash of memory. A tiny version of her trying to kiss her mother in the mirror, her face screwing up with frustration as she came crashing down on her own lips time and time again. Her mother, trying not laugh, tugging her back from the glass and raining kisses on her skin. Real kisses on her real skin.
"It most likely will," Burke says quietly, as if he's been waiting. As if he knows the moment she pushes the memory away and he knows why. "You care for each other." She feels his gaze on her. The weight of the words he's chosen carefully, like she might spook. Like she might run all over again. "There's work to be done, Kate. Separately and together. And it will be difficult sometimes, but not always."
"Not always," she echoes him, unhappy with the inversion. His word-their word-undone like it's supposed to be a good thing.
Not always.
He comes to her door and it feels like something brand new. With his eyes on her and riotous twist of the braid over her shoulder. She feels loose and undone. Caught out a little, but playful. It's nothing like the last terrible times they've stood facing each other across this space. It's easy and she tries to let it be.
I don't want to say it, Castle.
She trips on that. She feels her eyes fly wide as she lifts them helplessly to his. They're wide, too. Just for an instant, they're wide and shocked and wounded on the keen edge of memory. But they're laughing, too. They're bright and hopeful.
For me. Please.
There's a hint of challenge in it. A hard and soft you-owe-me thrust to it that shocks a smile right on to her face. That lights her up with sudden insight. There's work to be done, and they're doing it. Separately and together. It shocks her right into motion, brushing by him and getting under way.
I ain't afraid of no ghosts.
He calls the night they close the case. The night they leave the precinct, needling each other. Easy in one another's company enough for that, though too many things hang heavy in the air.
He calls, and she's . . . expecting it? That's not quite right, but her voice is level when she picks up.
"Hey, Castle."
"Hey." He sounds like he wasn't expecting it. Like maybe he thought she wouldn't pick up or he's been playing the kind of games she does some times. Fingertips on the small screen. Call-End Call mostly simultaneously. "I . . . not too late?"
"No," she says quickly. But she's surprised when she looks at her wrist. She hasn't been doing much of anything and she's not sure how the hours have slipped away. "Not too late." The line goes quiet. Everything goes quiet enough that she pulls the phone away from her ear, afraid she's somehow dropped the call. "Everything . . . ok?"
It sounds feeble. Lame and weak and wavering, even to her own ear. He laughs, though, like it's a pleasant surprise somehow. It is, she realizes. Her asking him is a surprise, and that burns any other words she might have had right up.
"Thats my line," he says when the moment goes on too long. When it's just too awkward. "Everything ok?"
"With me?" She feels stilted. Stupid. She wasn't quiet expecting him to call, but she was. She has been, ever since Serena and the stairwell.
Even if it's the middle of the night?
Even if.
Ever since he promised, she's been expecting it, but here they are.
"With you."
He says it like it's obvious, but she hears the caution in his voice. It reminds her strangely of Burke. An irritating flash. You care for each other. She's about to lash out. Why wouldn't it be. The words are coiling, a sharp metal tang, but he speaks again.
"I just wanted to check . . ." He sounds a little frazzled. Like he's expecting her to jump in, but she's baffled. This isn't what she wasn't quite expecting. "The case," he says quietly, like that it explains it. It doesn't, though. It doesn't explain anything. "It had to bring things up for you."
She goes white and blank. Another shock and not nice this time. Not giddy and terrifying and playful in her hallway. Memory calls up Pete Benton's words.
When something like that happens, it's burned into your brain. Every detail . . . I couldn't forget it if I tried.
It calls up the half-shared look between them. Her guilt and something searching in him. Wounded and wondering and determined. Something new and old and she's not ready for this. She's not ready.
"Castle . . ."
It's a choked whisper. Airless enough that he must not hear it. He must not hear it, because he's talking again. He's talking, calm and careful and not at all like he knows her for a liar and a coward.
" . . . turning out to be a dirty cop like that. It must be . . ."
He trails off, and the silence helps, uncomfortable as it is. She picks up pieces and puts them together a new way. She hears words that jerked out of her when the lights blazed and she found herself facing Smith. The cold, mechanical sound of her voice as she laid out a story, too familiar in the details, now that she thinks of it that way. The way he'd assumed she would.
"I'm fine," she blurts, stepping on him. On something he was about to say that sounds like a prelude to hanging up. "Castle, I'm . . . it really hadn't . . . Smith. It makes me sick. Of course it does. But I hadn't . . ." There's another twist in the high and tight thing she's been carrying in her chest these last few days. Not her scar, but something in the neighborhood. "I wasn't really thinking about Raglan." She grits her teeth. The round-about name has her angry with herself. Flaring out in all directions. "I wasn't thinking about my mom."
"Oh." He sounds miserable. It makes her think strangely of the other night. The way he twisted in place and still held his ground, calling out to her. "Well. I guess I took care of that. Sorry. Beckett, I'm . . ."
"Castle, it's not . . ." She pushes up from the couch. She paces, wishing he was there again. Wishing he could see and know and wishing this weren't so hard. "I'm . . . not always thinking about it."
"Aren't you?"
The words lash out of him, sudden enough that she thinks they're a surprise to him, too. They're flat and disbelieving. Colder and angrier than anything since the swing set, and there's something a little sick in the way it settles her. There's nothing easy in this moment, and yet she feels better for it. She finds stillness and focus and something to curl her fingers hard into.
"How are you, Castle?" Her words are quiet. She leans a little into you, but keeps it level.
"Me?" He's trying to recover. Forcing good humor into the single syllable. Into the question mark, but it's just that. Forced.
"It's the middle of the night." She drops back to the couch. She pulls her knees up and in, reaching for a nearby blanket and letting her hand fall away without it. "You called."
She waits out the silence and feels like the hardest thing she's done. Harder than sending him away. Harder than not calling out for him before he'd even made the door. Harder than drawing every bit of bravery around her to set a book before him with trembling hands.
"The files," he says finally. Flat and cold, still, but guarded. Hurt, and that settles her, too. She pushes the thought away. There's plenty of time to work on her. They're working on them right now. Working on him, and she's hanging on the words that come, slow and far away. "The money trail to Coonan. You knew . . . Would you have . . ." She hears him swallow. She pictures his fists opening and closing. The white, frigid calm he calls up sometimes. Fury. "Would you have come back? Would we even be having this conversation if I hadn't had those files?"
She feels her nails biting into her palms. Her teeth closing hard and the eternal casualty of her lip. She feels some part of herself rising up. Burning and raining down destruction. Going, though. Going, because there's a calm, miserable part of herself that knows how to do this. That worries when things are easy and settles when everything hurts. There's a calm, miserable part of her that tells the truth.
"I don't know how to answer that."
"You don't know."
There's nothing in it. It's rote repetition without the faintest indication of how it must feel. She drops her forehead to her knees and knows it must muddle her words. It must make this as literally hard to hear as it has to be figuratively.
"I don't, Castle. I don't know how to answer . . . in the last twelve . . . I don't know how to answer any question like that. What I would have done or I wouldn't have done without my mom . . . if she hadn't . . ."
"Okay. Okay. Beckett. We don't have to . . ."
She hears the words from him. Overlapping and repetitious. Trying to soothe her, and it's not the kind of pain that feels right or familiar, even to her. Even as messed up as she is.
"We do have to," she yells-hollers-and she thinks of her tiny self, furious at the reflection of things. Furious at all she could never reach through the glass. "We have to . . ."
"At some point," he snaps. "Yeah, Kate. At some point, we have to." It shuts her up. The sharp bite of the words lancing through her and strange release following. Like something has been festering, and she supposes that's the case. "But right now . . ." She hears him swallow hard. "I don't think either of us can do it right now."
"Either of us," she echoes, in and out of her head, like she'll need the words later. She will. There's work to be done.
"I needed to ask." It's not quite defensive. Not quite conciliatory, either. "But I don't . . .right now, I just needed to ask."
He lets it hang there. They both leave it hanging, and there's that difference again. A thing decided between them for once. No phone or Ryan or Esposito or I was thinking trailing off into the ether. It's a thing they set aside with the best of intentions, however hard this is now.
"Did it help any?"
She wonders if it's a joke. She wonders what it is at all, but he surprises her. He breathes out. A shaky huff of laughter down the line.
"It helped." She hears a smile in it. A tired one, but he's telling the truth. "I should go. Middle of the night," he adds, and there's a smile in that, too.
"Ok," she says, but it isn't quite. She waits for the familiar words, but they don't to come.
"Ok," he says, but it definitely isn't.
She hears movement. The phone sliding over his skin as if he's hanging up. As if they're leaving it like this.
"I missed you, Castle," she blurts it out. Panicked and clumsy. "I don't know if I would have . . . but I missed you"
"You missed me."
His voice is far from steady. There's a waver that knits the words together, and she can't tell if it's anger or longing or disbelief. She can't tell if it's something else entirely.
"The whole time," she forces herself to say it. That and only that. She forces herself to bite back everything else there's time for later. "I missed you the whole time."
"Thank you," he says quietly, just when she's sure he'll never say anything at all. "That . . . helps, too. It helps," he says again, like it's not quite true. Like he doesn't quite believe it yet, and how could he?
"Good," she says when she thinks her voice might be steady. It isn't quite. "Night, Castle."
She adds it quickly, her own familiar words racing out as she jerks the phone from her ear and jams her thumb down hard on the red button. She forces herself up and into motion. She strips off her clothes, tired and sore to her bones all of a sudden. She drops the phone on the bedside table and goes numbly through her night time routine.
She drags herself from bathroom to bed, barely upright enough to claw back the covers and curl herself beneath. She swears she won't look. She swears she's absolutely not touching the phone until morning. But it's in her hand. Her finger is on the button and it's there waiting. A bright blue balloon and familiar words.
Until tomorrow, Detective.
A/N: Thanks for reading this fits-and-starts story.