No Sleep Tonight

He wakes when the shower goes on, stays on his back in the bed and lets his mind idly drift to the ceiling, hover there while he comes to awareness.

When he rolls onto his side, there's a sleeping boy in his bed. He doesn't reach for the kid, knowing firsthand the consequences, but he watches Dashiell sleep, letting the sounds of the water in the bathroom and the slack face of his son keep him lulled.

The water shuts off and there's silence, the delicate production of stepping out of the shower, the towel, gathering her hair off her neck and ringing it out. He closes his eyes to better hear her as he lies face to face with Dashiel in the bed. He manages to make out the moment before she opens the door and turns his upper torso and twists his head to look at her.

She's brooding, that line between her eyes that meets the shadowed vein in her forehead as she steps into the room. But she sees him watching for her and flicks her fingers at him in good morning, moves to the closet for clothes.

Stark naked of course. He likes that best. She always hangs up the towel to dry before she leaves the bathroom. Or always enough.

He hums to himself and turns back to Dashiell now that she's hidden by the closet, and he must drift off or doze because when he rouses again, she's leaning over him to look at their son.

"He's asleep," Castle says quietly, trying to keep it that way.

"Good. He woke me at four."

"Ah, darn."

"But he fell back asleep," Kate shrugs. "And I didn't have the heart to move him." Suddenly she slaps his chest and closes her fingers around his bicep. "Come on. Get up. I wanna talk to you."

He can't help the startled laugh that pops out of his mouth, but he gets out of bed as quickly as he can and follows her out of the room. Jeans - the top button popped, and probably not zipped up either (she likes to hold them together with a rubber band; silly woman, get maternity pants) - and a white v-neck tshirt. Her hair is wet and drying curly, crazy curly he likes to call it, and she leads the way to the kitchen.

He's still in boxers, but he snags his tshirt from the chair in his study and pulls it on over his head, comes to the bar stool with his brain still muzzy from sleep.

She squeezes his arm as she passes him, sets a glass of orange juice in front of him. He opens his eyes and tries to figure out if he fell asleep again when he sat down or if she had this prepared in advance.

Either one is likely.

"Drink this while I get coffee going. The timer didn't work - and it didn't work yesterday either."

"Need a new one," he agrees and downs the orange juice, hoping the sugar will wake him.

"Could do that this weekend-?" she starts, but he's already shaking his head.

"I'll just get the same one online. Oh, well, unless you want something different? I didn't think of that. Sorry. We'll go together. Somewhere. Get a new one-"

She's got an eyebrow raised, smirking at him, and he winds down, blinks at her.

"No, Rick. Go online, get the same one. That's perfectly fine."

He lifts a shoulder at her in a salute or shrug and knocks back the last of the orange juice. She's already managed to set everything up, and they both stand in silence - or sit as the case may be - while the machine goes through its routine.

"Okay, you're driving me crazy," he finally mutters, leaning back in the chair at the bar and watching her a moment more. "Tell me already."

She's got that preternatural stillness to her of the moment before a kill - a predator locked down and focused, intent on the poor dumb beast in her sights.

That would be him.

"I wanted to give you a chance to wake up first."

"Not gonna happen in the next hour, but you're making me edgy. So just - out with it."

She shrugs as if to say your funeral and then she comes around the bar and sits beside him, a calculated move if ever he saw one.

But when she swings her chair around to face him, one arm curled at her stomach as their knees bump, he happens to see behind the careful planning to a desperation that has his heart pumping faster.

"Castle before - before BK gets here, I want to have some things. . .clear."

He sits back, counsels himself to keep his imagination firmly hobbled as Kate starts. She's patient in her delivery and that patience often unmakes him a hundred times over before she says what she means to say. He's got to be patient too. Wait for her to say it before he invents something worse.

"I've been. . .working out some stuff," she says finally, and her brow is creased already. She keeps her eyes on his knee where her fingers have begun to trace. "It's become clear to me that I'm not always great at keeping you guys priority, but I want to."

Oh, okay. He feels his body relax slightly, ease into it. A kind of confession? He can do that. All right. "I think you're doing just fine, Kate."

She studies him a moment more. "I want us to go to marriage counseling."

"What?" he startles, jerking in his seat with the force of her words. She's just sitting there, watching him take it, and he shakes his head, tries to clear out the rush of panic. "Counseling. I - ah - I thought we were good." His breath dies in his chest and he squeezes a fist to keep it together.

Her hand comes over his in an awkward touch that only makes his ribs contract painfully around his insides.

"Castle?"

He avoids her eyes, studies the way her fingers are still poised at his knee and tries to figure out when it got so bad. When did it get away from him? He's done everything - and she seemed fine, more than fine, what about last night, what was that-

Suddenly she's off the chair and pushing in between his legs, her hands on his thighs and stroking, her head ducking to meet his eyes.

"Castle, okay, take a breath, because you're scaring me a little bit here. Are you gonna pass out? Your face is white."

Maybe he is. Maybe he-

She's shoving his head down, maybe to put it between his knees, probably that, but instead he buries his face in her chest, her belly, and hangs on, his fingers digging into her hips, his mouth closed to keep it all back, in, suffocated.

Her hands run across his back, curl at his neck, her body firm and strong and holding him up. After a moment, she's pushing him away, sitting him up as she frowns.

"You've got some color back. But your lips are - Castle, you feel sick? Maybe you should go back to bed."

"Counseling," he gets out, shaking his head. "You want - we need counseling?"

Everything wipes right off her face, the blankness of her eyes scares him in a deep-seated way that makes his fingers clench at her hips, but in the very next instant, she's curling her arms around him and hugging him tightly.

"No, no. Oh my God. No. I - not like that. Not like that, shit. Castle."

Not like that. "Like what? What other reasons are there for going to counseling except last leg, gasping breath-"

"No, jeez, you're melodramatic." She's still holding on to him though. "For things exactly like this, you idiot. Communication."

He takes another long breath in, can't manage to unattach the associations he's made. "We communicate."

"Castle. Really."

"We do. I'm - don't you - I know I got behind last April, but we figured that out, and I think we're doing pretty good now-"

"Castle. What are you saying here?"

He opens his mouth, closes it. Tries again. "I'm saying this is coming out of left field for me. I'm saying that I thought we were good, Kate. I thought we were good."

"We are good," she insists, her fingers squeezing the back of his neck. "But Castle. Are you seriously telling me that you don't want to be better? That you don't want our marriage to be stronger than it is. That you'd rather us keep having moments like this one where you get sucker punched by what you thought I said?"

He winces and scrubs his hand down his face.

"This morning I made us an appointment with a guy. It's next week, Thursday. He has office hours on Saturday, so I thought that might work out better for us. Or me, really-"

"You made an appointment already?"

She goes still, stares at him.

He closes his eyes, shakes his head. "You did it again." When he drops his head to look at her once more, she's still just staring. "Yeah; you're right. We need a damn therapist."

And then he gets off the bar stool, untangles himself from her, and goes back to bed with his son.

Passive-aggressive son of a bitch.

She drops her coffee mug in the sink and it clatters loudly, but she doesn't even bother righting it. If she wasn't pregnant, she might actually fight him. Wrestle him to the ground and get it all out.

So she made one appointment - he knows this is how she works. He can't keep holding it against her, like she's caused him some damn mortal wound just because she likes to be prepared and get everything lined up before she goes into it.

And it doesn't help that she's got to drink decaf all morning because of that stupid risk awareness thing he found online, about caffeine and the baby, and she has always kept within the proscribed amount, but then that damn study made her anxious-

She doesn't hate him, but she really really doesn't like him right now.

And of course, BK feels it. Great. This time it'll be different, she mocks herself, sliding out of the kitchen and heading up the stairs. They will never be different people; they will always battle at each other like this. Personalities don't change, and she's not sure why she ever thought something like therapy would even help at all.

She should've just kept her mouth shut.

But those damn books.

She startles to a stop in the upstairs hallway, the twist of her heart making her falter. She loves those books. She loves Nikki Heat, loves his words, but they are tearing her up.

She should've led with that.

What is she even doing upstairs? Both of them are down in her bed, stubbornly ignoring her, and there's only Alexis's unused room up here.

Which will be the baby's, soon enough.

Kate wanders inside, doesn't turn on the light, just lets the darkness of early morning steal over her. It barely even looks like Alexis's room, since she moved to Chicago. Kate sighs and heads for the bed, curls on her side on top of the covers.

She should've led with the books.

His own words, coming back to bite him.

In the darkness, she grins at that, hides her amusement in the pillow.

But still. There's an idea.

When he wakes up, the light is strong and intense outside the window and his son has disappeared. Kate's not here either, which he doesn't expect her to be, really, after that scene in the kitchen, but he should go find her and apologize.

Only he doesn't want to apologize. She did it again - she went behind his back and set things up and then sprung it on him and didn't even ask him what he thought.

He can do research too. What does she think he'd do? Just hop online and book the first therapist he came to? He can-

Castle growls at himself and stumbles out of bed, heads for the bathroom and a shower. He knocks his knee into the doorframe and curses, rubbing at his eyes as he hops on one foot towards the toilet.

Ouch. Damn it. This is not his day.

When he goes to lift the lid, he sees something taped to it and pauses, startled so badly he forgets what he's doing.

What is this?

Castle leans over and pulls the sheet of paper from the toilet lid, folds down the tape automatically as he reads.

what she always did was pause. Not long. Just the length of a slow deep breath. That's all it took for her to remember the one thing she will never forget. Another body waited. She drew the breath. And when she could feel the raw edges of the hole that had been blown in her life, Detective Nikki Heat was ready.

Castle lets out a startled laugh, flips it over, but there's nothing more. Just that quote from his first book, not even that well written, now that he looks at it again. He should've said-

Whatever. Can't go back and edit now.

Did Kate do this? Tape it to the toilet lid?

He finds the next one on the shower stall - the first introduction of Rook to the reader.

She wondered what sort of karma payback it was for her to be saddled with this guy.

He doesn't even finish reading it - he knows the rest. It makes him wince, but it's cute too. She likes it; he knows she likes it. Why is she quoting his novels at him this morning?

Or late morning.

This is somehow about the therapist thing, isn't it?

In his closet, on top of his favorite pair of jeans. Like a double message - not only whatever the line from his book means, but also a statement from her that she knows his habits, knows he's going for jeans this morning and which pair he likes best, always puts on.

At times like these, without the work to hide in, without the martial arts to quiet it, the replay always came. It had been ten years, and yet it was also last week and last night and all of them thatched together. Time didn't matter. It never did when she replayed The Night.

Is the therapy stuff about her mom?

He laughs again when there's another one - this time he went searching for it. He finds it on a blue dress shirt that he knows she likes, so apparently she's choosing what she wants him to wear today. Cute.

Nikki. . .let herself wonder what it would be like with Jameson Rook. What would he be like? How would he feel and taste and move?

And then the flutter hit her again. What would she be like with him? It made her nervous. She didn't know. It was a mystery.

Well, that's hot. Even out of context, it's pretty sexy. He remembers it well - Nikki Heat in her bathtub, thinking about Rook. What he remembers even more clearly is how he watched Beckett for weeks after she read the book, wondering if she maybe did think about him in her bathtub, wondering how it was, and if he could possibly spot it, see the difference in her.

He can ask her now. Oh, how cool is that? He can totally go ask her. Where is Kate anyway?

When he goes into the kitchen, she's not there either. Huh. He takes a slow perusal of the space and finds another note taped to the coffee maker. Apparently he is more stuck in his routine than he knew.

Castle tugs off the index card and reads even as he opens a cabinet door for a coffee mug.

Sex with Rook was always smokin' but did not always represent her better judgment, she reflected in hindsight. However, when they were together, thinking and judgment took a backseat to the fireworks.

Okay, well, this is getting less. . .fun now.

It's a near thing, but he manages to stop pouring coffee an instant before it almost ruins her next note.

He swallows hard, all the other index cards stuck in the back pocket of his jeans, and he fishes it out of his mug.

In spite of herself, Nikki felt a tug on a level she didn't control. But then she thought, maybe she couldn't control the feeling, but she could control herself.

Yeah, this is getting distinctly worse.

Castle doesn't even finish his coffee; he takes a sip and goes looking for her, heading upstairs immediately. There's not many more places left, and for some reason, the idea of calling out to her is intensely disturbing.

He doesn't want to hear the silence when he calls and she's not there.

He finds the next index card on the middle step of the staircase, drops his hand from the railing to lift it and read.

For better or worse, Nikki Heat knew how to compartmentalize. She had to. If she didn't put an airtight lock on her emotional doors, the beasts pounding on the steel plates to get out would eat her alive.

Okay, okay, so. . .she's using his words against him? She's pointing out all the ways Nikki Heat is a flawed and human character? What exactly is going on here?

Like a row of breadcrumbs, there's another index card on the floor of the upstairs hallway.

They smiled and looked into each other a long time. Nikki was starting to wonder, What now? This connection they had just made was unexpected, and she wasn't prepared for what it might mean. So she did what she always did. Decided not to decide. Just to be in the moment.

Yeah, okay. So. . .he really does think that's true. And if he remembers right, in the next scene, Rook and Heat have sex - all about being in the moment. Which is exactly what Kate does; she affirms life and their love by going straight for his-

Ahem. Well. Okay. So Kate's figured out that he uses bits and pieces of her own pyschological make-up for Nikki Heat. Is this new information? Hasn't she always known he's using her as the entire basis for this whole series of books?

At Dashiell's door, another index card. He rips it from the wood and reads it in a hurry, his guts churning.

That was the beauty of the wall Rook derided. Rook, grousing about her ability to compartmentalize when that very skill was what made her so sucessful at clearing cases in a whirlwind. She tried to put Rook out of her mind. What she did not need right then was distraction.

This isn't about the Nikki Heat books. This is about them.