A/N: This is my first forray into the Castle fandom (indeed, the first hesitant steps I've taken beyond SVU). I welcome all reviews and constructive criticism, but please be gentle.
Spoilers: If you don't know how "Knockout" ends, you shouldn't read any further. The premise of this one-shot is basically how I expect TPTB to start Season 4 (or how they can resolve the end of "Knockout" without actually having to do the work).
And here is the obligatory disclaimer: these characters are so not mine.
"Morning Mourning"
The entire ordeal—the funeral, the sniper, the blood, Lanie's sudden presence at his elbow as she kicked into doctor mode, the agonizing wait for the EMTs, the simultaneous hoping that Josh would and would not be on duty at the hospital because he sure as hell didn't want him around but that was one phone call he just couldn't make—was a nightmare. Literally: just a nightmare. Just.
Castle awoke sweating at four a.m. the morning of Montgomery's funeral, heart racing, breath heavy, his unuttered professions stale on his tongue. It wasn't the first time a dream about the good detective had physically affected him the same way, but those dreams were always of a decidedly different nature. The nightmare was new. Terror and panic had settled, rigid and unwelcome, in his body. His first impulse was to reach for his phone to call her, to make sure she was still there, maybe even to ask her to stay home today. He got as far as sitting up and clutching the boxy phone, his thumb hovering over the Send button.
He didn't call, though. It was four in the morning, after all, and as unsettled as he was, he didn't even know what he would say to her.
Despite the hour, he was wide awake now, too anxious to close his eyes, lest the nightmare turn out to be reality, and his waking the dream instead. He shrugged on his robe, slipped his phone into the pocket, and wandered into the kitchen. He stood there for a while, totally without purpose, trying to decide whether to make himself coffee or tea or nothing at all.
This was where his mother found him when she floated into the kitchen herself just before 4:30. "Richard!" she exclaimed with concern when she saw him frozen between the island and the stove.
"Oh, good morning, Mother," he mumbled as she walked past him to the sink. She eyed him warily as she filled a glass with water.
"What are you doing up? Did you get a call?" She knew the Captain's service was that morning at eleven, but she assumed the detectives—and her son—would be able to take the day off.
"Um, no," he mumbled again, turning away from the redhead and leaning forward heavily onto the island.
"Richard, darling, what's wrong?" Martha asked, coming up behind him and hesitating just a moment before putting her hand comfortingly between his shoulder blades.
"I had a bad dream," he confessed, feeling stupid for having put it so simply.
"Oh Richard," she sympathized in that way of hers that always made it sound as if she were about to dismiss the problem.
He shifted his weight, debating whether he should tell her the extent of it, to make her understand why it might have kept him up, why he didn't want to go back to sleep. Maybe she would comfort him, remind him that it was just a dream, that it didn't mean anything, that he'd had a stressful last few weeks, and bad dreams were only natural. But she was also the kind of free-spirited woman who entertained psychics, read tarot and horoscopes, spoke of fate and premonitions, and he was terrified of what she might believe the dream could mean. He bit his lip, resolving to wait for her to give up and move on, afraid of giving voice and thereby additional weight to the haunting memory of the dream.
"Alexis?" his mother suddenly pressed, leaning in over his shoulder and rubbing his back. It touched him, her empathy and commiseration. She felt his muscles relax the slightest bit beneath her palm, and before he could tell her that it had nothing to do with Alexis, she quietly guessed, "Beckett?" There was no guessing to it, really; the minute she said the name, his muscles tensed again. "Oh Richard," she groaned and rubbed his back more forcefully, not even waiting for his verbal confirmation.
He exhaled as he shifted his weight again and hung his head, unable to unwind his panic-corded muscles.
"I'm not going to ask, Richard, not because I don't care, but because you probably don't want to tell me—"
He shifted again and glanced back at her with a tired but grateful smirk. Attentive and doting or not, Martha Rodgers knew her son.
"But you do know how to fix these nightmares, don't you?" she asked, searching her son's face. "Tell her. Or you'll be consumed by regret—and not just in your dreams!" she added with melodramatic flair. She reached up, then, and patted his cheek. He smiled again at her surprising empathy, and she studied him for a moment. "Now go back to bed," she urged. "Today's going to be hard enough as it is." With that, she shuffled out of the kitchen with her glass of water, disappearing up the stairs. Castle gazed after her, absently wondering if she wasn't just a figment of his overactive imagination, too.
Figment or not, her words stuck with him. Regret. When he awoke earlier, which thought had really terrified him more: losing Beckett, or realizing that he, too, was out of time? He stood there contemplating it until the bleating of his phone broke his reverie.
It wasn't the first time she had called before five o'clock in the morning—and he hoped it wouldn't be the last—but he took so long in answering that it almost went to voicemail.
"Yeah," he said into the phone, rubbing his forehead as he answered.
"I'm sorry to wake you," she said quietly but clearly, not a trace of sleep evident in her voice.
"You didn't," he assured her, a sleepy smile spreading across his face from the thrill of having her on the line. And then, as if she was exactly the jumpstart he needed, he pivoted and began the process of brewing coffee. "What's up, we got a body?" he asked, injecting enthusiasm into the question to mask the heavier emotions he was experiencing: residual hurt from their fight, grief over the Captain, terror from the nightmare, and regret about the things still unsaid between them.
"No," she responded, unable to stop the word from riding on a soft laugh. But the laugh was gone a moment later. "I just, um..." There was a long pause, and Castle stilled on his end, nerves on alert. "I couldn't sleep," she finished at last.
He expelled the breath he was holding and flicked his coffeemaker on. His mind flipped through an entire catalogue of questions, burning most with wanting to know why she had called him. "Where's Josh?" he asked quietly, implying that if anyone should be able to help her, it would be her boyfriend.
"Castle, can we not...?" she pleaded, almost whined. "After the last few days, after everything that's happened, can we just... cut the crap? Please?"
He swallowed hard around the apology caught in his throat. "I couldn't sleep, either," he finally told her. It wasn't far from the truth. In the silence, the coffee started gurgling behind him.
She took a breath on the other end, and it sounded like both anxiety and relief. "Yeah?" she asked.
"Yeah," he croaked. He began making his way back to his bedroom. "You know, I'm, uh, glad you called, actually." Inside his bedroom, he headed directly for his closet. "Because... I really need to talk to you."
"Okay," she replied, and he pictured her shifting positions, steeling herself for whatever bomb she imagined he was about to drop.
Castle's hand hovered over a pair of slacks. "Can we... meet somewhere?"
The syllables giving permission were barely out before he was tugging his pants from their hanger. "Yeah. Yeah," she said, her voice very small, rolling the words in her mouth as if she were trying to get used to the idea.
On his end, Castle also pulled a shirt from the closet and returned to the bedroom to dress, fumbling to hold the phone to his ear.
"Um. You want to just come over?" she asked, and he had never heard her sound so vulnerable.
He froze as his mouth went dry, thinking of how many times he had wished she would call him in the middle of the night like this and ask him to come over. "Uh, y-yeah," he finally stammered. "Yes. I, um, I'll be there in twenty."
"See you then," she said, and he did not miss the tremble of nervousness in her voice, though she was trying to sound firm.
"Okay," he breathed just before he hung up. He dressed quickly then, and rushed out the door into the stillness of the early morning, bound for her familiar apartment.
The coffee left brewing in the kitchen went cold.
A/N: Well, there it is, my first Castle ficlet. There's another one in the works, set mid-season 3, involving a breakup... but I don't know if that will ever see the light of day. Thanks for reading this one!