Material Witness-Quid Pro Quo (2 x 17, Tick, Tick, Tick and 2 x 18, Boom)
Title: Material Witness-Quid Pro Quo
Rating: T
Summary: "He thinks about it. What she'll find when she opens it, and it's . . . well it's kind of a theme. Another dick move from way back when, but it's all caught up in other things for him. Beginnings and endings and realizations. And maybe it's time they talked about that. About things like that out in the open."
Spoilers: 2 x 17 Tick, Tick, Tick, and 2 x 18 Boom
A/N: Fourth story in this series prompted by the diabolical berkielynn. If you missed it, here's the prologue that sets up the series premise, and here's the first story and the second and the third. They're loosely linked one-shots that can be read independently and in any order you like.
The weirdness of this one, I probably should own.
It's the wrong city. Twenty-four floors up and shrouded in fog, it's the wrong city looming just over the top of the polished marble window sill.
He's uncomfortable-a situation of his own making in more ways than one. He'd only managed to kick off his shoes and struggle out of coat and tie before his mood got the better of him. Before he slammed himself on to the bed to watch the clock tick over until he can call.
He doesn't want to be here. He doesn't want to be a time zone away, twenty-four floors up, confining himself to half an empty bed. The whole thing is like a snake eating its tail. He wasn't supposed to be here. He was supposed to be home by now.
Not home. Out. They had a date and he's an idiot. Something came up. Paula made more of it than it really was-like she always does-and he's an idiot-like he always is-and he agreed stay. Even though they'd had a date.
They don't really do that much. Dates. They see each other all day most days and spend most nights together. Sometimes they'll grab a bite out or catch a movie like they always have. Like they have for years, except it's not like that.
They're careful. They have to be careful if they go out, and it's frustrating. Another place they have to play their roles. Keep their hands off each other. And the irony is they show up on page six now more than ever. Blind and not-so-blind items about problems between them. How they hardly ever see each other any more. About the obvious tension and whether it spells the end of Nikki Heat.
So they don't really do dates and it bothers him more than it bothers her. He'd like to have her on his arm. In his arms. On a dance floor. In the park. Just wandering New York. Wherever. He'd like the chance to dress up and mark occasions and make romantic gestures. He'd like to just be with her and have it not be a thing.
But it's a bad idea, so they don't really do it.
It's not just about her job. He wants those things for them, not for public consumption. That's new. Or really old. It's been about image-at least partly about that-for a long time. With Meredith and Gina and everyone in between, because why not?
But it's not like that now. Not with her. He's not interested in putting on a show any more than he's interested in making her life more complicated than it already is.
So he gets why it's a bad idea. Why out is not really an option for them. It's no one's fault, but it's something he resents more than she does. That's what he assumed, anyway. That she doesn't really care about nights on the town and doing "couples" things. It's what he's been assuming all along, but now he's not so sure.
They'd had plans. A date date. Dinner and a double feature at the Angelika because she's been busy lately. Paperwork and old cases and trial prep. Not much she needs him for, and she's right-he knows she's right-that it's trouble to have him around when there's so much down time.
Trouble. That makes him smile. Or unwinds the scowl a little at least. They get themselves into all kinds of trouble these days.
There's the obvious kind. The kind that will come in handy if they ever find themselves in a Die Hard situation because they've memorized the layout of the precinct from top to bottom and back to front. Because they know every nook and alcove and back hallway. Every shadowy corner big enough for two. Just big enough for two.
There's that kind of trouble. Not as often as he'd like, but way more often than he ever dreamed he'd be able to talk her into. Not that he's always the one talking her into things. So there's that kind of trouble.
But there are other kinds, too. Lots of other kinds. Conversations that wind away from the task at hand. Spaceships and superpowers and the ideal flavor of ice cream if the laws of physics didn't apply. Conversations that turn silly and leave her struggling to fix him with a frown and remind him that one of them has to earn an honest living.
Conversations that skim the surface of something serious when his attention snags on some tragedy they're filing away. When they're putting the punctuation on the end of someone's life story and he gets to thinking. Or she does. Sometimes, though not as often, because she can't. She can't afford to let every case have her thinking like that. Because this is what she does. What she's been doing, day in and day out, for most of her adult life.
But some cases won't let go so easily. Some linger for whatever reason. A fatal flaw or a missed moment or a tragic coincidence. A compelling story and the conversation wanders to lines they'd cross under the right circumstances. Or the wrong ones. Conversations about regrets and last wishes and guarding against the future. About the fact that they can't. That no one can.
And sometimes the trouble is that they're not skimming the surface. They are, but they aren't. They're talking about how the rest of their lives will be as though that's been decided. And he's fine with that. He's more than fine with jumping ahead to the rest of their lives, but he wants to be sure of her. He can't help thinking that subtext should be main text at some point.
He can't help thinking that they're having the conversation without really having it and that's a different kind of trouble. Because he's dense and she's timid and they probably shouldn't talking about the future in code when they can't even get their act together to plan a date.
Or he can't get his act together, because they had a date and apparently that mattered to her more than he realized and they're . . . fighting? It's probably not the right word. When they fight, they fight. There's not a lot of ambiguity to it.
But she's upset. Hurt, and that's so much worse. He'd rather have her angry at him any day than collapsing in on herself. Receding. It rakes at his chest. Guilt, but anger, too. And more guilt from that. The snake eating its tail.
He can't find his feet in moments like these. When he's angry and thinks he has at least some right to be and it gets swallowed up in how fragile she can be. Fragile. That's ridiculous. There's nothing fragile about her.
But she's quick to retreat, and it kills him the way she seems to expect it. Like she expects him to disappoint her. And he did. He did and he has and he probably will again. He definitely will if she won't just say it out loud. What's important and what's not.
He's tired of the fog. He's tired of the tastefully ugly ceiling and the bed and being lonely. He's tired of the wrong city and knowing he's an idiot and he just wants to talk to her, but it's another hour before she said she'd be free. He thinks about murdering the bedside clock.
He jerks upright to a resounding crash and sudden darkness. Something slithers down his forearm and draws tight around his wrist. He lets out a yelp and scoots backward across the bed because . . . the clock is chasing him?
The blue display dances briefly in the black between the bed and night table. There's a second crash, a pop, and the smell of ozone. His heart pounds and his breath comes in tight, shallow pants.
"Gonna let you make it up to me, Castle. No need to get violent."
He jumps at the voice in his ear. Right in his ear. What the hell?
"Kate? What are you doing here?"
"There? Castle, are you drunk?"
"I don't think so." He blinks and tries to get his bearings, but the darkness is absolute. "You're in New York."
"Yes . . ." She draws the word out.
"I'm in the wrong city," he mumbles. He scrubs a hand over his face. "Am I late? I broke the clock . . ."
She laughs and it hits him, sharp and immediate. He misses her.
"I'm in the wrong city," he repeats miserably. He hears something like a sigh on the other end of the phone. The phone. She called him. "Kate, seriously, what time is it? I was supposed to call. I think I . . ."
"Early yet," she says quietly and leaves it at that.
The faint glow of his watch face catches his eye. It is early. She said not to call until 11:30 her time. He must have dozed off and she . . .
"You called. How'd you know I'd be . . ."
"9:08 CST, a disgruntled tweet from WriteRCastle about Chicago cabbies. 10:03 CST a very disgruntled Paula does a very brief local news segment solo . . ."
"Yeah. Paula. Did she look . . . mad?"
"She always looks mad."
"She does. I think it's her eyebrows."
"Or dealing with you."
She's teasing. He knows she's teasing, but they both go quiet, and just like that the bubble bursts.
"Castle . . ."
"Kate . . ."
They dance a while longer, their words starting and stopping at the exact same moment. She draws the kind of breath that means she's jumping in and he wants her to wait. He just wants her to wait.
"Kate!" It's louder than he means it to be and he swears he can hear her jaw snap shut. "Kate, I just want to . . ."
He hears something else then. Something so familiar that it's barely sound at all, but his words run dry.
"Castle . . ."
She's annoyed now, but it's nagging at him and he does the unthinkable. "Kate, Shush!"
She gasps. She actually gasps. He almost laughs out loud. Then he almost tells her she sounds like his mother. Two brushes with death in rapid succession aren't quite enough to shut him up, though.
"You're at the loft! You're . . ." He listens. And apparently she's decided to wait to kill him. She's quiet. "Beckett are you in my closet?"
"Castle, how the hell . . ."
"Eduardo's cab whistle. He always blows three short, one long. It's 11:15 there and it's the . . . second Thursday of the month, so Mrs. Flagg's 'book club' should be just breaking up-and that, by the way, is nothing more than an excuse to kill a bottle or four of good chardonnay. I don't think a single one of them made it two chapters into Frozen Heat and I gave her six signed copies."
"Castle . . ." She's trying not to smile. He can hear it. She'll kill him yet, but she's smiling for the moment.
"Anyway, all the other ladies in the book group live in your neck of the woods. That puts Eduardo outside the Broome entrance trying to grab a westbound cab." He can't resist a dramatic pause and she's still not killing him, so she must be impressed. Or toying with him. "And that puts you, my dear detective, in my closet."
"That was . . ."
"Hot?" It comes out eager. A little too hopeful.
"I was thinking . . . disturbing." She means it a little. She's annoyed. But she's smiling, too. He's managed to surprise her.
"Really? Because it's hot when you do it." He's running with the smile. Running with the fact that she likes it when he surprises her. He knows the feeling. He wants to draw it out. The moment is light and easy and fun and he wants to draw it out.
But then she laughs and there it is again. Longing like a knife and she's sitting in his closet eight hundred miles away because he's an idiot. He goes quiet and she feels it, too.
"Castle?"
"Kate, I'm sorry. I should've come home." He tips his chin up and knocks his skull softly against the hardwood of the headboard.
"Why didn't you?"
She just asks. She asks, and it's not . . . loaded. It's not a test or wary or defensive and he wonders all of a sudden why this seems such much harder when they're face to face. He wonders if he's just making it harder.
"I don't know," he says and he's annoyed that it's a lie, because he does know. Right in that moment, he knows. "I . . . you're busy. And I figured since you didn't need me at the precinct, I might as well . . ."
He trails off and she lets him hang for a minute. She's pissed now. He can feel it crackling through the line.
"So you're punishing me for having work to do." Her voice is clipped, but it cracks a little, too, and he wonders if the windows open this high up. "Kind of a dick move, Castle."
"Well, when you put it that way . . . "
"There's another way to put it?"
"I guess not." There isn't and he doesn't have any defense for it. Nothing but the truth. "I miss you. And not just since I've been away."
She draws in a sharp breath. Not a gasp this time, but he can hear it. He can hear it. "I miss you, too. Castle, you know that, right?"
"Well, you're sitting in my closet, so I suspected." He's grinning, but it stings and he's not sure if all this is him being needy or her being guarded or somewhere in between.
"Told you I was gonna let you make it up to me." She's grinning too, and he doesn't care so much right now. Right now somewhere in between sounds ok.
"Right! And how are you going to let me do that?" He slides down the headboard and gathers the pillows around his head. He lays the phone out on its own pillow-on her side of the bed, because that's how sad a case he is-and flops on to his side as he fumbles the call on to speaker. There's a lot of background noise and no words. She's rummaging. "Beckett, you might want to wait for a guided tour of the porn collection."
He hears her snort, but it sounds like it's coming from a distance. Like she's set the phone down somewhere nearby. It hits him then. What she's doing. It hits him and he wants more than ever to just be home.
"Kate . . ." He curses silently. Why isn't he home?
"This one, I think." Her voice is faint at first. Louder on the last two words as she picks the phone back up. "I like the look of this one."
"Which one? What does it look like?" He grips the phone like it can show her to him. And it can. Of course it can. He's an idiot. "Kate. Kate. Hang up. Face time. I want to see."
"You don't want to use your disturbing stalker skills to guess?" He hears a rattling noise, like she's shaking the box next to the phone speaker. She probably is. "I'll even give you a hint or two."
"Kate." He's pleading and he doesn't care.
"Ok . . . ok, Castle." Just like that, all the playfulness is gone. She's serious. Like she's worried.
"I just . . ." He grits his teeth. He wants to kick himself. "I like being able to give them to you."
"Oh . . . yeah." Her voice is quiet. "You'll be home tomorrow. I can wait."
"No," he says quickly. "No, this is good. I just . . . if I can see. Is that ok?"
"I'm wearing a turtleneck," she says after a second. "So you're out of luck if this is some lame attempt to get a look at my boobs."
His mouth opens and closes a few times and he realizes it's not just him. That as much as he would give anything to be home right now, there's something about this-something about being outside the everyday-that's easier and not just for him. He runs with it.
"You realize, Detective, that I have an exceptionally vivid imagination and a nearly eidetic memory. I can see your boobs any time I want just by closing my eyes."
"Hey, if that's doing it for you, Castle, I can just give you and your 'exceptionally vivid imagination' some time to yourselves . . ."
"No, no, no," he says quickly. "Imagination boobs are only my third favorite boobs. And I want to open your present with you. Non-euphemistically."
"Only non-euphemistically?"
"Kaaaate." He tries and fails to suppress a groan. "I wish I were home."
"Me too," she says and he knows that the words are slipping through his favorite smile. "You might be right about teleportation."
"Of course I'm right," he scoffs. "It's the only superpower worth considering."
"I said might be, Castle. Don't let it go to your head."
"I'm hanging up before this conversation can go any further south."
"Guessing it's pretty far south already."
She's dangerously close to giggling and he wonders exactly how soon he could be on a plane. He buries another groan in the pillow.
"No comment, you wicked woman. Hanging up. See you in a minute."
He snaps on the surviving lamp and winces at the brightness. He thumbs on the phone's camera and winces again. Pretty much everything about him has seen better days. The right side of his face is creased and red from the stiff hotel comforter. His shirt is suspiciously wet about the collar and one side of his head looks like it exploded.
But the screen lights up with the connection request and he can't be bothered with more than a half-hearted swipe at his hair. She has the camera on the box. It sits alone in the middle of the bed, a brown cardboard cube about the size of a hardcover book.
His heart drops.
"Any director's commentary on this one, Castle?" Her voice is light, teasing, and his heart drops a little further.
"I don't . . ." He curses under his breath and tries to remember what it's like to play the game. "I don't suppose I could talk you into picking a different one?"
The camera image rocks and swivels, then tips up and she's in the frame. Cross-legged and heartbreaking behind that damned box.
"Hey." He smiles and waves. He's worried and sick with it. He wishes she had chosen any other one-any other one-but there's the rush too. The same rush he feels every time he sees her, and he can't help smiling.
"Hey." She leans in to the camera. Tips her head to the side and he knows he's caught.
"No," she adds after a quiet moment. He's caught. "I want this one."
"Right. It's your present," he says finally. "No . . . no commentary. Maybe after."
"Castle . . ." She senses his unease. She pulls her lower lip between her teeth and looks away from the camera. "This can wait until you're here."
He thinks about it. What she'll find when she opens it, and it's . . . well it's kind of a theme. Another dick move from way back when, but it's all caught up in other things for him. Beginnings and endings and realizations. And maybe it's time they talked about that. About things like that out in the open.
"No. No, it's ok," he says with a smile. It's not much of one, but he finds some hope somewhere underneath and a confidence he's surprised to feel. "Go ahead."
She slices through the cellophane tape with a fingernail. She pries open the top flap and pulls them out one by one. Four in all, and as luck would have it, she saves the worst for last. She's careful with them. She lays each one in her palm and trails one finger over their faces, the outlines of their blocky, hard plastic bodies. One by one, she puts them aside.
Her face isn't blank. Not completely. But it's close enough that his confidence is short lived. He wants to explain. He wants to defend himself and tell her he didn't know. He didn't know until he was huddled on her corner with the world coming down around his ears. He didn't know until he had her tucked against him. Until it was thick as smoke on his tongue. The irony of being falling down grateful for an excuse to touch her-to hold her up-as they picked their way through the burning remains of her life.
He didn't know. And then he did. He knew in a terrible rush and he had no idea what to do with it. He still feels like that some days. Like he just doesn't know what to do with the weight of all she means to him. But he doesn't tell her any of that. He waits for her.
She tips her face up toward the camera and she's frowning. Working through it.
"Silence of the Lambs." She taps one of them. The one with the iconic mask, he's willing to bet, though he can really only see the tops of their heads. Not a bad likeness, he remembers. For something painted on a tiny plastic cylinder, anyway.
She runs her fingers across the whole lot. Lingers over one, then changes her mind. She picks her up. The lone female figure.
"With your good bag and your cheap shoes." He doesn't mean to say anything, but the quote slips out.
Her head snaps up and he braces, but she's smiling. Something tight and not entirely pleased-with him or with herself-but it's a smile. "Jordan Shaw."
He nods. "More FBI options with Scully, but . . ." He shrugs. He can't read her expression, but he'll go where she goes with this. Not like he has much of a choice. "Redhead."
She barks out something she probably didn't want to be a laugh and looks at him through the wave of hair slanting across her face. "You are such a jerk, Castle."
"Was such a jerk?" It comes out a question, not that he meant it to.
"Was. Were. Not are," she agrees. "Mostly. Still have your moments, though."
"I do." He nods down at his own hands.
He means to leave it at that. She's . . . annoyed. Maybe a little jealous even after all this time, though that may be wishful thinking. It might be his usual instinct to let himself off the hook. Even a self from three years ago. One he doesn't like very much. It's nowhere near as bad as it could have been and he means to leave it at that.
But his mouth is moving and there are words and they seem to be coming from him. They just seem to keep coming.
"I was mad at you then." It doesn't make any sense. Not to her, obviously, though she's listening. Something has her just listening, so he must mean something by it. It's the strangest sensation and it just goes on getting stranger by the minute. "That case. Dunn. You were a person. A whole person all of a sudden. With a life that went on when I wasn't around."
He stops then, frustrated. He's saying it wrong and he doesn't even really know what he wants to stay. But he's going on and she's letting him. "I . . . liked you. Always. And I wanted to know you."
"For the books." It's quiet and he almost misses it.
He looks up, but she's focused on the figurine. Little Clarice. She turns her over and over in her hands. He wishes she would look at him, but decides it doesn't matter. Right now it doesn't matter.
"No. Not for the books. Not for long anyway. I wanted to know you for me. And I wanted you, because . . . well . . ."
He makes a absurd gesture at her shape on the screen and she gives him a sharp look. Another kind of smile. The one he thinks of as the Pissed-Off Special and he wonders yet again what the hell is going on with him. With them. Because it's like she's pulling this out of him somehow. She's hardly said a word and she's pulling it out of him.
"God." He scrubs a hand over his face and tries to talk past whatever is suddenly climbing up his ribcage and stealing all his air. "I'm not even telling this in the right order. I don't even know what I'm telling you."
"It's ok, Castle." It's careful. He must look like more of a wreck than he feels. "Tell me about them."
"I bought it . . . those . . . right after Jordan showed up. Ordered them. Just a dumb fucking joke. I was going to set them up on your desk to . . ." His words break off. Jagged and raw.
"Annoy me?" She finishes. She's not wrong. But it's not the whole story.
"I just remember being so mad at you. I wanted it to be a game. To make you jealous. And at first the whole thing was like this rush." His voice sounds strange in his ears. Mechanical and completely at odds with the way his heart is pounding and the words are scrabbling up his throat. "I wish . . . I wish I could say it was a coping mechanism or denial or something, but I was just that . . . awful. I wanted it to be a game. And it wasn't. He was trying to kill you. Because of me."
"That's not . . ." She makes an angry gesture. Sweeps her palm against the bedspread and the the little men go flying. She holds on to Clarice. "I don't remember it that way, Castle."
He hears her. Sees her. He knows she's saying something. She's upset, but the words just keep coming.
"And then he did kill you. I thought he killed you, Kate. And it feels like I knew I loved you right then. The minute it was too late, I knew that there was this whole amazing life-this amazing woman that I was crazy in love with-gone. Just . . . gone. Because of me."
"But I wasn't gone." Her throat bobs like she wants to say more but she can't find the words.
He'd give her his if he could. He seems to have more than he knows what to do with.
"But you could have been. And the others Michelle Lewis, Sandra Keller. Someone loved them. Someone . . ." He breaks off. He's tired of it. The sound of his own voice. He's just tired of it. He reaches out. Touches his fingertip to the screen. The edge of the little figure's skirt. "They showed up . . . I don't know . . . maybe a week later? I forgot about them and then there they were. It made me sick."
"You kept them." It's a comment. Maybe a question, but no more than that. She's staring down at the plastic in her hands.
"I kept them," he repeats. "Seemed like cheating not to. Whitewashing."
"But you kept them." She draws her knees up and wraps her arms around them. She curls her hand around her shin, the figure clutched tight against it. Her shoulders rise and fall and rise again. She turns to the camera and looks at him. "To give to me. You meant to tell me the story someday."
He blinks. The words are gone now. All of them. "I . . ."
"Do you think we were?" Maybe she has them now. The words. Maybe that's why he can't find them. "Do you think it goes back that far? All the way to Dunn?"
"Were?" One word at a time now. That's all he seems to get. There's a eerie, miserable calm to it.
"It all got complicated right around then." It barely seems like she's talking to him. "I think I knew. Or I thought I did. And everything got complicated."
It dawns on him then and it's like a kick to the chest. "We?"
It's all he gets out and then she's shoving the little plastic Clarice up the camera. "I did not like her. All that reading us out loud. What the hell business was it of hers whether you . . . you cared about me or how I felt about you?"
"I . . ." He grinds his teeth. The monosyllables are getting old, but he can't seem to put anything more together.
"And who the hell wears a skirt into the field?"
"Not you." They slip out. Two monosyllables this time and even in this weird . . . whatever this is that's going on . . . it's the kind of thing she'll kill him for. The kind of thing that would have her flying all the way to the wrong city just to kill him.
"You weren't, Castle." She says it like it's been decided. Whatever it is, it's been absolutely decided. "We weren't."
"Weren't what?" He's annoyed. It's annoying enough on its own when she decides things. Worse now because he has no idea what she's talking about. And it's rarely good for him when she decides things.
"In love." There's an eye roll in there somewhere, but she trips over it, too.
They're talking about it and they're not and he's not sure how he feels about it. It's not their usual subtext, but he suspects it's not the kind of conversation normal people have. Normal might be overrated.
"Uh . . . I'm pretty sure I was," he says finally.
"No." She fires it back, but it's casual. Like she's done with it. "You weren't."
He can't really believe they're arguing about this. But it's him and it's her and it's him and of course they're arguing about this.
"I think I know how I felt when I watched your apartment explode with you in it, Beckett. It's kind of one of the defining moments of my adult life."
"And I know that no one-no two people-who were in love with each other could be that stupid for that long. So you weren't. We weren't. And she . . ." She holds Clarice up and flicks her away like a paper football. "She was nothing but a troublemaker."
"No two people . . ." he repeats. "You don't read much, do you Beckett?"
"Castle."
"See many movies? Poetry? Plays? Because people in love are, like, the stupidest."
"Castle!" She snaps her fingers in front of the camera. "Shut up."
"Yes." He sits up straight.
"You're coming home tomorrow." She's using slow, loud English on him at this point and he can't stop grinning.
"I am coming home tomorrow." He definitely can't stop.
"And we are going out."
"Out? Yes! Out. A date."
"And you are going to give me a present that doesn't suck."
"No sucking." He draws a cross over his own heart, then thinks better of it. "No sucking at all?"
"Goodnight, Castle."
"Maybe two presents . . ."
