No Sleep Tonight
a Dash companion
I got you on my mind
And it's time to make you see
So I'll just make this a little more obvious
-No Sleep Tonight, The Faders
Kate just manages to get her keys out the moment Castle opens up their front door. She grumbles as her laptop case goes sliding, but she catches it and steps back in surprise when she sees his jacket on, Dashiell wearing his Yankees sweatshirt and in his daddy's arms.
"Where are you going?" she blurts out, her laptop case straining against her fingers, her feet throbbing in her shoes, hair falling in her eyes.
"What're you doing home?" he says back, looking equally taken aback.
"Uncle Mo made me knock off early," she says, wrinkling her nose for Dash and leaning in to kiss the boy's cheek. "Hey, baby. Where're you and Daddy going?"
"Eat, eat, eat!"
Castle gives a flickering smile. "Headed out for dinner, actually. You look beat. No wonder he told you to leave."
"Not only that," she mutters, dropping her case to the floor just inside the entry, stepping out of her shoes with a sigh. "He banned me from the precinct for the weekend."
Castle lifts his hand to her stomach, strokes two fingers lightly over her shirt with a quirk of his mouth. "Probably smart?"
"I feel useless, sitting at the desk while the boys chase things down. They don't need me there. I keep thinking - I should just give Espo lead on this case and let him run it. But then I'd be doing less than I already am. Still. . .I'm so tired," she moans, finally giving in and slumping into him.
Dashiell immediately leans for her, hand in her hair, one little finger in her eye, and she gives a soft laugh, lifts her head to look at her boy. Both boys.
"Hey, you should go take a nap," Castle suggests, a hesitance to his voice that makes him quickly clear his throat as if trying to get rid of it. "Take a nap. Dash and I will get take out and bring it back here, wake you for dinner."
Oh man. It's so tempting. It is so very tempting.
She reaches for the boy. "Want me to take Dash-"
"I've got him. He can wait forty minutes to hang out with you." Castle takes a step back, already untangling Dash's grip on her. She lets him, watches him stride down the hallway.
She's already shifting forward to chase after them when Castle calls over his shoulder, "Go to bed, Kate."
She halts.
Yeah. A nap would fix things.
Ah, now she gets it.
Go to bed indeed.
Kate shrugs off her loose shirt, unzips her dress pants, staring at the white box he's left for her on the bed. Wrapped with a red velvet bow and positioned on her pillow, elegant and tasteful and a reminder.
It's got to be his book, the advanced reader's copy. It's kinda their thing, ever since that first one. While he writes it, she waits; she delays gratification all year just so she can read it fresh on the printed page.
Kate slips an oversized shirt over her head, grabs leggings and tugs them on. She coasts her palm over her belly, curls her fingers around the bump as she crawls into bed. "Hey, BK. Thanks for hanging with me. I promise I'm gonna let you sleep now."
There's nothing in response, baby's probably already falling asleep - good idea - but she slides under the covers and puts the box in her lap, propped up against the headboard and relishing the moment.
It's the book about their Butcher case, so she's technically already read it. But he promised there was more to it - she hasn't seen the new ending, just the scenes that related to the resolution of Heat and Rook's case. The Carver, Castle is calling him here.
She's actually excited for it. She knows how it goes - both for Nikki and herself - so the dread that was present when she first read Castle's unedited manuscript is now long gone. Just anticipation.
It always impresses her how Castle makes Nikki Heat both so very much Kate Beckett, but also her own woman. Nikki starts in Kate but ends in Heat.
Oh, he'd probably like that. She'll have to remember it and tell him later.
With the book propped up on her stomach, she abandons the idea of a nap and dives into his novel instead.
She has the sexiest husband alive.
He writes her books.
It goes behind the firewall, gets eaten by the dark beast that Nikki keeps chained in her head.
Compartmentalized. It works.
But as Nikki looks over at Rook, she realizes it only works for her.
It doesn't really work for him.
A body lands hard on her knees and Kate startles, tips the book to see her giggling son sprawled on the bed. "Hey there, baby boy."
He crawls up towards her, and Kate slides a receipt in the book, opening her arms to him and dragging him up against her chest. His knee pushes into her stomach and she knocks it away, kissing his cheek in consolation.
"No climbing Mommy," she admonishes, turning her head to see Castle entering the room slowly.
He must see she's got the book, but he doesn't say anything about it. "Ready for dinner?"
"I love it," she says with a grin, even though the last passage is haunting her in a way she didn't expect, can't parse. "It's intense."
"Dinner's intense?" he says with a cocky grin, pushing off the doorframe to head for her.
"Your book. Don't be dense," she says, rolling her eyes at him. She wrestles Dashiell to the bed and holds him there, pushing on his chest to make him giggle breathlessly. Her son's hands clasp around her wrists, riding out the deep pressure, his eyes wide and adoring on hers.
"He's been craving it all day," Castle murmurs quietly.
"Julie said some days would be worse than others," she says back, hesitantly lifting her face to his. But he's okay, it seems. He's okay. That's good.
"We started a new game, didn't we, Dash?" Castle says suddenly, reaching in past Kate's pressing palms to snatch the boy. Kate watches with a grin as Castle tosses Dash up in the air, catches him, tosses him again. It's not far - he's almost two and heavy - but enough for the drag of gravity to make his eyes droop and his mouth fall open in a breathless laugh. Another thing Julie has taught them - but it's not a new game; she's seen this before.
Kate grins at them both. "So. What's your new game?"
"Tell Mommy." Castle sits on the bed again and drops Dashiell to perch on his thigh, his long body now curling up around his son's. She sees him whispering in Dash's ear to prompt him, and Castle's fingers are creeping up Dash's legs.
Dash is laughing now, his eyes following his father's trek, clearly loving whatever's about to come, but he manages to get it out between giggles. "Bear hunt. Daddy, bear hunt."
Castle's arms suddenly spring up around Dashiell and clamp around his torso like a vise - oh, or a bear trap. Kate laughs as Castle growls and squeezes Dash in his arms, pretending to put up a fight as he wrestles his bear to the mattress.
Dashiell giggles so hard that his face turns purple, and then Castle bounces him on the bed and lets him go. "I got a bear, Mommy. Look at that. He's just a cub, but he'll do."
Dash scrambles up and launches himself back into Castle's arms. "More, more. Bear hunt, Daddy."
Kate watches as they go through the whole elaborate thing all over again, grinning as Dashiell is left breathless and practically wheezing on his back. She can see the change in him already, how his body looks more relaxed, his shoulders at ease and no longer up around his ears, his eyes more willing to meet hers.
He doesn't scramble back up and throw himself at Castle this time either; he gets up and moves to Kate again, wrapping his arms around her neck and pressing his cheek against her collarbone.
"Aw, hey, wild man. You caught?"
"Caught."
"Only took two this time," Castle says, his voice soft as he reaches out to lay his hand on Dashiell's back. "Hour ago it was five. Thirty minutes before that it was twelve in a row."
"Deep pressure. If he craves it, Castle, then-"
"I know. I'm just saying."
She meets his eyes, but she doesn't see frustration. Just a lot of relief. She was the one who attacked this thing like it could be solved, and then had a bad few weeks where she broke down at the realization that this was for life. This week has been Castle's turn, but maybe he's coming to grips with it.
She tries to steer them back to happier thoughts. "The book."
He gives her a flashing look, almost shy. It's startling in its insecurity. She forgets sometimes that this is his greatest strength and his greatest weakness, all in one.
Or maybe she is. She doesn't like that thought.
He clears his throat. "Yeah? You're liking it."
"Just started it. Didn't get a nap at all - had me enthralled. And I already know what happens."
He cracks a wide grin that splits his face, makes his eyes crinkle and her heart flip.
"Since your book prevented me from sleeping, you should feed me now," she says, pushing past the flutter in her chest to dig her foot in his thigh, get him moving.
"Feed me!" Dash yells from his spot at her chest, then lifts his head. "Feeeeeee-"
"Okay, okay," Kate laughs, jiggling him a little. "We got it. You're hungry too, wild man. Let's go eat."
Castle sets the kid in his new booster seat, trying it out again and hoping it'll stick. Julie said the old one probably didn't register with Dash, or maybe it was too smooth and plastic-feeling so he didn't like it. Something. They've got this blue rubber thing with corrugated grooves in the seat.
Dash seems to be able to feel it, to know where he is when he's sitting in it, or at least he does a lot better job at staying in his chair when they use it. Of course, at lunch today, he stood up and kicked it aside, then jumped up and down in his chair with his hands on the dining room table.
If Alexis had done that as a toddler, Castle would've thought she was nuts. Lost it. Had a break with reality. But it's just par for the course with Dash, and he's beginning to believe that it's also just a boy thing.
His mother says he himself was pretty rambunctious. He's learned a whole new respect for his mother lately, if Rick was anything like his son growing up.
"How's that, wild man?" he says, pushing down on Dashiell's shoulders as he settles him in the booster seat.
"Feed me!" he yells back, and then giggles, giving his father a sly look from underneath his flop of hair.
Kate passes behind them both, her hand first skimming Castle's hip, then moving to Dashiell's ear to give it a little tug. Castle catches her fingers and squeezes, but she shakes him loose to go get dinner.
The pregnancy has made her pretty hands on lately, but it's still his same old Beckett.
"Okay, buddy. Want some of the Pow chicken?"
"Pow! Pow!" Dash starts bucking in the seat, his whole body in a wave of excitement, and Castle presses down harder on his shoulders, a couple deep pushes that eventually communicate enough to the boy's sensory system that he settles down.
"I got it," Kate says from the kitchen, already with a kid's-sized plate in her hand - bright blue with trains, of course. "You get his milk?"
"Yeah," he says and moves to the fridge while she carefully arranges cut up pieces of spicy chicken and some fried rice from their Chinese cartons. The kid likes it hot. Beckett will eat the spicy chicken too, but it's a little much for him. If he wants to have any feeling left in his mouth, he'll stick with the sweet and sour.
Kate's already got the plate in front of Dash when he comes back with the milk. The kid has Pow sauce smeared on his fingers, his lips, one cheek - he's touching his tongue to the chicken with a grin. He asked their regular Chinese takeout place what ingredients they used in it, and Castle was horrified to hear it was habanero peppers and tabasco sauce mixed with something he couldn't translate, but sounded like fire.
And Dash eats the Pow chicken one right after another, licking his fingers and going back for more. No wonder the kid was thoroughly unimpressed with Castle's tired old pasta and chicken routine. Poor thing. He's been eating cardboard his whole life.
"No Pow chicken?" he asks Kate, noting that her plate is empty of the stuff. She usually digs in right along with him.
"Uh, no," Kate laughs, giving him an eyebrow. "BK can't handle it."
"Ah, good. Girl after my own heart."
Kate's smirking at him now, but it's that faintly tender one that he's been seeing more of lately, like she's been caught unaware and can't hide it.
He averts his eyes, as if she needs her privacy, and goes to fill up his own plate with sweet and sour.
She shoves him out of the bathroom. "You go - do. Whatever. I got this."
Except this is the part he likes, bath time and sleepy Dash and the snuggling. Kate does too, of course, and he'll let her have it, but she seems to think he needs time off or something. She keeps taking over duties when she's home like she doesn't want to burden him.
"I want to-"
"I've not made it home for dinner all week," she says softly. "I can do this. It's not-"
"But I want to, Kate." He wraps his fingers around her wrist and tugs her hand off the doorknob, glances past her to the filling tub. "I like it, more when you're here too. We'll do it together."
She blinks, startled, but she smiles at him. "I didn't think of it like that."
"He's a wild man in the bath, but he's fun."
She grins wider. "He is fun. And really, a lot less wild now that we know. It's made - all the difference to me. Figuring him out."
He swallows past the tightness in his throat, the burn of gratefulness, but he nods and nudges past her into the bathroom. He grabs the bubble bath from the cabinet and shakes it at her. "We've been doing this. It's bright green when you pour it in, but makes clear bubbles. Dash loves it."
Her smile drops a little and he curses himself for rubbing it in, how she's not here, how she misses bathtime so much, but he didn't mean it like that. Yeah, last April he was behind in his writing and he let things get out of hand, but it's not like that now.
"Are you-" she starts, but he reaches out and snags her fingers, shaking his head.
"I'm good, Kate. Book's written. Done. I've got ages before I have to think about the next one. Till BK's born at least."
"Ages, huh?" she grins, then lifts to brush her belly against his, kisses his mouth with a light press of her lips. It's hot for all the ways it's not, and he wraps his arm around her and takes more, massaging two fingers up the knots in her neck until he tangles in her hair.
He feels her hands curl at his hips, stroking, and breaks slowly from her, breathing in the humid air from the water roaring into the bath, caught by the hunger in her eyes.
"Dash," she chokes out. "Too quiet."
He startles away, surprised by how intensely she wants him, and by how avidly he responds, and then he goes looking for the wild man.
She knows Castle is watching from the doorway, and that's fine. She loves this moment with Dashiell, rocking in the chair under the window. They moved his crib so that the light doesn't fall on him anymore, so now the chair is where the crib used to be.
She cradles the back of his head, her fingers at the nape of his neck, her thumb ranging behind his ear, but she keeps that firm pressure at his back with her forearm, giving his body the constant feedback it needs to finally relax.
"Castle," she murmurs, and the darkness shifts, resolves into her husband as he comes inside. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me," he laughs softly, but he does come and sit at her feet, his back against the leg of the crib. "We should convert this into a bed soon. Before BK gets here. Give him a chance to get used to it."
"Hm," she agrees. But not tonight. Dashiell picks up his head from her chest, heavy with sleep, and she feels the brush of his soft hair through her fingers as he turns to look at his daddy.
Castle leans forward as if the two of them are communing in some telepathic way. Kate eases her son's head back down, rocking slowly, and suddenly his body sags against her.
She's so startled that she pauses, caught unaware by how quickly he fell asleep, and she forgets to rock. Dashiell rouses at the cessation of movement and she curses herself for it, pushes back with her foot to keep going, but it's too late.
"It might take a while," Kate sighs, glancing over at Castle.
He nods, stands back up. "I'm just distracting him."
He leans over them, hands braced on the arms of the rocking chair, and he brushes a kiss to the top of Dashiell's head. She can feel Castle's hair at her cheek, and some instinct or urge has her angling to put a kiss against his temple before he retreats.
He goes still, and then his head turns to her slowly, his eyes black in the dark room. She's surprised by it, for some reason, surprised by both of their reactions, and that seems entirely ridiculous.
Castle pushes in and takes a kiss from her mouth, slips his tongue along the seam of her lips, not asking inside, just lingering. Still, she opens for him, lifts a hand from Dash to catch at Castle's ear, hold him to her for a deeper kiss.
He breathes hard against her mouth, his lashes tickle her cheek as he halts there. "Kate."
"When he's asleep."
She hears Castle's little growl and grins, but it's either not dark enough or he can feel it because he strokes his thumb down her neck, starting right behind her ear, that spot that makes her hips flex.
He smiles back as he stands, and she knows that he knows, and it's not even something she can hide.
Why does she want to hide it? She married him, for goodness sake; he's gotten her pregnant twice now. Why does she feel the need to keep it all off her face?
Compartmentalized. It works.
But as Nikki looks over at Rook, she realizes it only works for her.
It doesn't really work for him.
Kate stares after him, feels the restless urge to go after him, but Dashiell rubs his face into her chest and she has to do this first.
Ease her son into sleep.
Then figure out. . .all of this.
She can't sleep, and it's not just because Castle is draped all over her like a breathing, heated blanket.
Kate works one arm out slowly, untangles her leg from his, then slides out of bed, damp with perspiration. She slips on a tshirt and his boxers, which already fit snugly in a seriously depressing way, and then she heads out of the bedroom and into his study.
The Nikki Heat books line up like soldiers on the bookshelf right behind his desk, and she has to maneuver around the chair to slide into the dark space there. She runs her fingers over their spines and tugs the first one out of its space, lets the pages fall open naturally somewhere in the middle.
She skims standing up, looking for the slightly longer sections of Nikki Heat introspection. Of course, one of the reasons she loves his books are the distinct lack of emotionally fraught paragraphs; he lets the action show the reader exactly what's happening. The Hemingway iceberg principle, in some respects.
She's moving too quickly to dwell, but she does have a few favorite parts; she lets herself build into those moments and read them word for word before moving on. When she feels she's gotten a grasp on Nikki from that first book, she reshelves it and pulls out the second.
Her back twinges, a cramp flaring down into her legs, so she grabs all the rest of the Heat books and moves towards the couch in the study. She sits cross-legged and opens the second book, skims it as well.
It takes hours to go through them like she wants, and she's got to stop and trace her fingers over the dedications - who said yes being one of her favorites but in such a melancholy way. Kate finds the paragraphs, just like in this latest novel, which give her the clues she needs to solve this mystery.
And even though she doesn't like what it says about her, what it says about him or their marriage, even though it should have been obvious all along and even though her insides feel sliced with a thousand cuts, every word bears it out-
Nikki can't possibly - at her core - love Rook like he loves her.
Or. If she does, he won't ever know it because Nikki Heat, like Kate Beckett, is a closed and locked door.
He's shoved violently awake by the jostle of the bed and a sound in the darkness.
"Dash?" he mumbles as he half-rises, but Kate is pressing a hand into his chest.
"No," she says quietly. "Just me."
There's a thickness to her voice that swamps him, but his exhaustion overrides intuition and he's falling back down to the pillow, curling on his other side to give her room, his back to her as the soft movements of the loft at night steal over him once more.