#josh davidson

[do-it-for-the-fandom]

Fic prompt: I know this is sort of a strange one but Kate’s thoughts about Josh, or something to do with Kate and Josh

A gentle ending...

"I've been waiting for this," he said softly as he lowered himself into the seat by her bed. "If I'm being honest, I'm surprised you waited this long."

She stared at him as she tried to decide which emotion to settle on.

She was hurting, upset after having come to the heart-breaking decision to end their relationship. He had been perfect, in almost every way, and she really liked him. But she knew that wasn't enough.

Not now that she knew...

But as he sat beside her, indicating that he had no intention of leaving, her sorrow bled into anger. This was hard enough, without him having to make it worse by being stubborn.

Anger diffused into appreciation... relief. Sure, he was being stubborn, had to have the last word. But the words he spoke were soft, understanding. As far as making things worse goes, this really wasn't that bad.

"What do you mean?" she asked after a moment, confused by what he had meant by waited this long.

"I mean... I expected to be one of the first people you pushed away," he explained with a simple shrug of the shoulders. "You sent Castle packing over a week ago. I haven't seen Lanie or the boys come by in a few days..."

"They have jobs - lives - why would they want to spend every spare moment in a hospital with me?"

"Because they're your friends and they care about you."

He placed his hand over hers, gently brushed his thumb along the bruise where her IV had been removed. She was set to be released today.

The plan was to head to her father's cabin, to isolate herself from the world so that she could focus on her recovery and rehabilitation.

She knew that Josh wanted to be there with her, but she couldn't put him through that knowing how this was going to end.

As much as it hurt, as great as he had been to her, for her, she needed to end this now. Save them both from even more heartache.

"You don't have to hide from us," he added. "You don't have to push us away."

"That's not what I'm doing," she defended, avoiding meeting his eyes.

"I know I've been a little overbearing, checking in on you every chance I get. I'm sorry, I'm just worried-"

"I know."

"If you want time, a little space, I understand. And I'm happy to give you that, but we don't have to give up on us."

She shook her head. "It's not just time, Josh."

They sat in silence, processing the moment.

"How long have you known?" he asked, earning him a confused look from her. "That this was done."

She swallowed the lump in her throat, deciding she would answer any questions he had. She owed him that much.

"After Royce died, I started to re-evaluate things," she confessed. "My job, my relationships... everything."

"So, what? You've been trying to let me down easy for weeks now?"

"No," she answered definitively, shaking her head. "I've been so confused. I have a lot that I have to figure out and you deserve better than waiting around for me to figure out what I want."

He pressed his lips into a fine line, nodding his head, and she knew he was holding back whatever it was he wanted to say.

"I'm sorry." Words could never describe how sorry she truly was.

"I hope that you figure it out, Kate, whatever it is that you want."

He rose from the chair, pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

"You have this troubling little voice in your head that tells you you don't deserve to be happy. But you do."

He let go of her hand and left.

As he walked away, she briefly considered that maybe she was making a mistake.

She did really like him, loved him even. But that wasn't enough.

And they both knew that.

[pollylynn]

Title: Cut and Thrust WC: 800 Episode: The Dead Pool (3 x 21)

Zack Lindsey would be alive today if he’d simply gone for the jugular and made a snap decision to utterly destroy his rival. That’s probably not the right take-home message from the young man’s murder. It’s equally true that he’d be alive today if he hadn’t placed his faith in an unworthy mentor. That’s a take-home message that hits far too close to home, for him and for her. So he’ll stick with the wisdom of following the gut instinct to reduce one’s rival to a fine powder.

It’s worked out kind of well for him, after all, at least in the case of Alex Conrad. Contrary to his daughter’s usual wisdom beyond her years, giving his mentee the benefit of the doubt was clearly never going to get the job done. Total victory required dirty tricks and a heavy-hitting support squad. Total victory required going for the jugular. That’s one take-home message from that whole situation. He’s not sure it’s the right one, though. He’s not even sure it’s the most interesting one.

He’s trying to walk things backward from where they are now to where they’ve been over the course of Zack Lindsey’s death by lack of killer instinct or death by simply lousy instincts. Where they are now is alternating between their usual—and mutually enjoyable—sniping and silence that’s both companionable and thrumming with a kind of roller-coaster excitement. Where they’ve been has been a struggle he doesn’t understand the whole of.

Truth be told, he understands very little of it, starting with why he signed the permission slip for Alex Conrad’s NYPD field trip in the first place. More accurately, he doesn’t understand why he didn’t tell her he’d signed it. One possibility is that he’d simply lapsed into his default position on asking permission versus begging forgiveness. Another, more likely scenario is some unconscious and stupendously stupid scheme to pay her back for Natalie Rhodes.

He’s just as unsure about her motives throughout the whole struggle as he is his own. Oh, he gets the obvious, on-the-surface motiive. She is absolutely seeking vengeance against him for blind-siding her with a second troublesome writer, and she has no qualms whatsoever about going for the jugular. She pointedly finds Alex Conrad untroublesome. She produces business cards from the ether and invites the newcomer to give her a buzz, to pick her brain about procedure and cases. She giggles over text messages, even though he’s already bleeding out.

He gets that she’s punishing him. But he wonders if there might be more to it than that.

He hates himself for wondering where Josh is in all this, but seriously, where is the guy? He is, alas, all but sure that Doctor Motorcycle boy remains a rival whose jugular really needs attending to. What he’s not at all sure of is whether it’s confidence or cluelessness that leaves him unconcerned about Alex Conrads bearing muffin baskets. What he’s definitely sure of is the fact that he wouldn’t be leaving a certain detective’s evenings so consistently free if he were—oh, if only—in the man’s position.

Leaving Josh aside though, as he’d very much like to do, he comes back around to her. He comes back around to the moment just before this one—the moment just before the mutually enjoyable sniping and the silence thrumming with roller-coaster excitement. Yes, there had still been an element of punishment in that. She’d been knocking him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper for his rival-annihilating antics.

But she’d also been forthright in a way that she usually isn’t—in a way that they usually aren’t—and he’d surprised himself by answering in kind. He’d said right out loud that he was jealous, that he was upset to see her spending time with someone else. He’d said right out loud that he wants her all to himself, and damned if that didn’t set some kind of record for blindingly obvious truths he’s told her.

She’s been setting her own kind of record, too, he thinks. He doesn’t understand the whole of it, but he knows the confessions in the moments just before this one haven’t been one-way. She has asked and he has answered and they know where they stand when it comes to troublesome writers who aren’t him.

But he has to wonder what it all means in the wider world. He hates himself, but he has to wonder about Josh and what would happen if he just kept confessing—if he told her he’s jealous, it upsets him to see her spending time with someone else. He has to wonder what would happen if he just came out and said he wants her all to himself.

A/N: The love eyeballs at the end of this are asymptotic to actual morphousness. But there is no morphousness here.

images via homeofthenutty

[formlines]

Raven Drum 

Josh Davidson

[kate--beckett]

In general I’m pretty indiferent to Josh, we didn’t see much of him, I know he was a good guy, I can even be thankful since he helped to save Beckett’s life. But the way he acted at the hospital, pushed Castle into the wall, blamed him for Beckett’s shooting and even Montgomery’s death, that was uncalled for and despicable. He was worried, I know - everybody was - but that wasn’t the place nor the person to direct the anger. I wonder if Beckett ever found out about it and what did she say.

[grabnetsrik1]

"Oh God,I was just shot. How far along am I, do you know? Did my actions hurt my baby?" 

Now complete

[buckleyswift41319]

If anyone was wondering, I still can't see Victor Webster's name without thinking of that stupid Josh Davidson Fairly OddParents meme.

[pollylynn]

Title: Gladiator WC: 900 Episode: Setup (3 x 16)

She doesn’t know how to fight.

It’s an embarrassing revelation this late in life, but here she is, a year into her thirties and belatedly realizing that she’s never learned to fight. It would be nice if there were some feel-good explanation for it—that her problem-solving skills are so superior, that her parents modeled an idyllic relationship, that she’s some kind of zen master.

It would be nice, but she’s well aware that she doesn’t so much solve problems as she brute forces them; her parents had their knock-down, drag-outs, and it was always a two-way street. And the way she’s abusing her phone this morning suggests the likelihood of the Zen Master Committee tapping her for membership anytime soon is pretty low.

Her skills in the How to Have a Fight arena are so limited that she’s not even sure how she wound up in this one, which is pretty messed up, given that she’s very sure she’s the one who started it. He’d blindsided her. Josh had completely blindsided her with the announcement that he was heading off to Haiti before his laundry from Africa would have a chance to dry. And she, apparently, had blindsided him with her You’ve Got To Be Fucking Kidding Me response.

He’d been reasonable. He’d taken her hands in his and tried to make her sit and talk things through. He’d even hit her with a carefully gentle Kate, where is this coming from?, which had accomplished nothing other than pegging the relationship-based rage meter she’d been unaware of until that very moment.

He had been reasonable at the start, but that’s over. He is no longer being reasonable. He is texting, though her responses aspire to be terse. He is calling, though she answers solely to bite out that she is working—that she will be working until who knows when. He is here—at the precinct—which is exactly the last place she needs, wants, or expects him to be.

And he snaps at her. It’s a shock to the system, because this is what not reasonable actually looks like. He hisses at her because Castle has shown up with his-and-hers coffee in tow and he’s pissed about it. He has, up to this point, been concerned, surprised, frustrated, unhappy . . . but now he’s pissed, and she wonders how many fights with Josh she has had without having prior to this moment.

She wonders what fights she should have been having, because he’d had no idea she’d give a damn if he went sailing off again for some indeterminate length of time, and she, until five second ago, had had no idea that Castle was a problem. Inaccurate. She’d had no idea that Josh had any idea that Castle was a problem.

He is a problem.

The world is ending, or her part of it is, anyway, and she’s stuck with him. He’s peering through the zipper flap and imagining the vaporization of New York City. She feels closer to miserable, petulant tears than she thinks she’s been since she was waiting on her learner’s permit. And the sting at the corners of her eyes—the thickness gathering at the back of her throat—isn’t about the end of the world at all. It’s about the fact that she has no idea how to fight.

The tears are a downstream effect of the fact that she’s here and he’s here, and all she wants to do is tell him about it. And so, of course, he asks. She snaps at him to change the subject—to stop talking about the end of the world—so of course he asks: How’s Josh? Those are the two conversational gambits he has at his disposal: Josh and the end of the world.

It comes pouring out of her—her resentment of Josh for being the person she was attracted to in the first place, self-loathing for being so needy that she’d try to keep him from his work, and between the lines, her deep embarrassment the she doesn’t know how to fight for something, fight with someone; she doesn’t know what to fight about or how far to take it.

All of it comes pouring out to him—to Castle—and it’s like she so comprehensively doesn’t know how to fight that she’s managed to show up on the wrong day at the wrong ring for her bout. All of it comes pouring out at the end of the world, and she knows it’s not a coincidence that she’s here with him—with Castle—and not at all with Josh, and it’s easy. She’d like to write it off to adrenaline or the fear of dying with things unsaid.

But the fact of the matter is that it’s easy with him. It’s easy to talk about everything and nothing, now, tomorrow, or at the end of the world. The fact of the matter is that it’s not a coincidence that he, of all people, is here at the end of the world and it’s not exactly true that she doesn’t know how to fight.

She has fought with him. She has fought for him. She has fought alongside him. And here they are, at the end of the world, and she doesn’t know how to fight with anyone else. She wouldn’t know how to begin.

A/N: Swirling anger about morphousness.

images via homeofthenutty

[pollylynn]

Title: Apprised WC: 900 Episode: Countdown (3 x 17)

She was doing her job. She doesn’t know what the hell he was doing. He doesn’t resent the jibe she can’t resist landing as Fallon tries to explain himself away. Far from it, he revels in her laughter. He feels like he’s sinking into it—the loose-jointed, exhausted triumph that rolls off her as she tips back her beer, then laughs and laughs as she tells the utterly ridiculous story of the two of them saving the world. No, he doesn’t resent it at all. But he wonders how true it is. He thinks—he strongly suspects—that it can’t be all that true. She has to know what the hell he’s doing, doesn’t she?

She has to know that her name was the first thing to fight its way out of the slow-motion chaos in his head as he struggled back into the world. It’s not that she’d have heard it through the grapevine. It’s not as though Josh—whose face, by the way, had swum into view just as he resurfaced and had him convinced in every inch of his tarnished soul that he’d died in that freezer and gone to the hell populated entirely with Doctors Motorcycle Boy. Anyway, it’s not as if would have scampered out of the ambulance to deliver that awkward news, hot off the presses. But whatever tales Josh did or didn’t tell, she has to know that she’s the first name on his lips, post–near death experience.

He thinks she does know. Just that morning and forever ago, he’d been convinced that she really did know, when he showed up—again, like he always shows up—two coffees in hand and a lame joke about warmth and caffeine at the ready. He’d just left his family. He’d sent them away and come back to face the end of everything with her, and it’s not as though he’d been looking for a gold star, not then and not now.

He’s not looking for for a merit badge for civilian stubbornness and insubordination while trying to save the world. He has absolutely no entitled male delusion that she’ll be . . . grateful for his devotion or something. But he wouldn’t say no to a flicker of recognition. Some tiny sign that she does, in fact, know what the hell he’s doing would not go unappreciated.

There are moments when he thinks she’s already given him that sign. There are times when he thinks that maybe it hasn’t been so tiny. He thinks with a pang of how quietly she had answered when he’d asked what Josh coming back meant to her. He thinks with a pang of that unguarded moment as the words seemed to slip out of her into the thin February dawn.

He thinks about the two of them as characters. It’s a coping mechanism. It offers the distance he doesn’t want, but probably needs. He calls action and watches the scene from three rows back.

He Is the person who is pretty damned clear about the what the hell is doing. He is the person who asks the question he does not want the answer to: So. . . what does that mean to you? She is the person who probably knows that the hell he is doing and answers as honestly as she can in the moment. She does not dissemble, and he thinks that paradoxically means that she knows what the hell he’s doing and she doesn’t take the out. She doesn’t deflect or stun hi silent with a None of Your Damned Business glare.

In the scene he’s watching from three rows back, he can see that he knows what the hell he’s asking, and because he matters to her—because they are friends and partners and, strange as it seems, they are each the other's go-to confidant—she answers as honestly as she can. It means we have a chance.

And there’s his sign, he thinks. There’s his flicker of recognition, and he wishes he’d never thought to wonder how true it is—Actually I was doing my job. I don’t know what the hell he was doing.

He wants to despair. Despair sounds downright relaxing as the back of his skull goes clonk against the back wall of the elevator, and he wonders if he should get in his car and head for the Hamptons without looking back. He wonders what the hell he is doing, and turning the truth of that question back on himself seems mature. It seems grown-up and sensible and supportive and respectful. It seems restful and he is weary, body and soul.

But her laughter echoes through him in the end. Even as the elevator carries him down and away from her, he feels it in his bones, giddy and disbelieving as she threw herself into his arms right there on the street, loose-joined, exhausted and triumphant just now as she teased him, dissolving into nothing as she listened intently, eagerly to what might come after You know, I was thinking . . .

She knows what the hell he is doing, and so does he. That’s true, and right now, the math of it is complicated. But the thing is, he knows and she knows. And he just saved the world. The two of them just saved the world together. He knows how lucky he is, and he can do complicated.

A/N: There's no lack of morphousness like near-death lack of morphousness. Also, I am sorry for the. hell filled with Doctors Motorcycle Boy—way too amorphous.

images via homeofthenutty