Chapter 3: I ain't got a fever

Naturally, when he wakes up the dream-Beckett is gone. He considers going back to sleep to find it again, but his plan is interrupted by a very real Beckett brandishing the medicine bottle and a spoon.

"Open wide," she says, with far more evil amusement than is strictly warranted or indeed fair. He'd rather she were open wide. Still, the surprise on her face when he obediently does so is worth the ticket price.

"You must be dead," she says unflatteringly. "You're not complaining."

"Mmmmf," Castle manages, around a mouthful of medicine. "I want to be better."

He really doesn't get why Beckett twitches before her excellent poker face comes into play. It occurs to him that, in fact and in defiance of his expectations, he does feel a lot better. Not good, but he is fairly sure that he is likely to live, which is a distinct improvement on yesterday.

"Breakfast?" he asks plaintively. He is hungry. Chicken soup is not filling.

"Huh?"

"Breakfast. A meal eaten in the morning to break the night's fast."

"I know what breakfast is, Castle."

"May I have some, then?"

Beckett regards Castle suspiciously. He looks much better. At best, tonight is going to be her last chance at acquiring a really good night's sleep. Though she still doesn't understand how she was snuggled into Castle when she woke up. Extricating herself without waking him had required significant effort and flexibility.

"You still have to keep taking the medicine for the rest of the week."

"I know." Castle makes a face. "Otherwise I'll be responsible for a plague of giant mutant superviruses" –

"Bacteria."

"Whatever. Mutant bacteria, then – taking over the world."

Beckett rolls her eyes.

"I have to get to work."

"You won't make me pancakes?" Quite unexpectedly, Beckett blushes. Brightly. Really, positively, blushes.

"I don't think I have anything to say thank you for," she snips. Castle pouts.

"I could arrange it," he leers.

"Right now you couldn't raise an eyebrow," Beckett snarks back. This is not entirely true. He can certainly raise an eyebrow. He raises both, to prove a point. Then he has a sudden flashback to his hallucinatory Beckett in its minimal nightwear, and finds, to his considerable relief, that other areas are able to rise too. Marginally. His eyebrows waggle villainously, and the leer increases by a few watts.

Beckett glances at her watch and squawks. "I need to go. See you at lunchtime. Don't get into trouble. Don't do anything that might make you sicker. And do not come to the precinct. If you do I will bring you home in handcuffs."

Castle opens his mouth. "Promi" –

"Shut up, Castle." He closes it again.

When Beckett's gone on a cloud of haste and irritation, Castle is swiftly bored. He has no inspiration, but he's not quite tired enough to flop back into bed and do nothing. He mooches on the couch for a little while, but can't find a movie that he wants to watch; he makes himself a coffee, not incidentally resetting all the buttons to the correct places and smiling affectionately to himself about Beckett's complete inability to use his coffee machine properly. He has a thought, and spends a few moments writing out some detailed instructions for her. Maybe it'll encourage her to hang around here a little longer. Then he hides them. She might just shoot him for implying she can't make it work.

Eventually, he installs himself comfortably on the couch again, with more coffee, opens his laptop, and desultorily plays Spider Solitaire and similar games. He loses. By the time noon comes round, he starts looking at the clock. By twelve thirty, he's wondering where Beckett is. By twelve forty-five, he's sulking because she hasn't shown up. By twelve fifty, he's starting to speculate about disasters. When she opens the door at twelve fifty-three, he's convinced that she's been shot. Again.

"You're okay!" he squeaks, relief draping each word.

"Why shouldn't I be?"

"I expected you earlier."

"Castle, you know lunch is never an exact time. It's not even one. We were busy – not a new case," she says hurriedly – "Gates wants all known paperwork cleared up. She dislikes me enough already without her having an excuse. I had to get it done. I've only got ten minutes. Can you just take your medicine and I'll bring dinner back with me – something better than soup?"

"No need." Castle smiles very smugly as she opens her mouth on the question. "Unlike you, I have a well-stocked fridge. Can you cook?"

"Yes," Beckett says crossly. "I just don't often have time. Now take the medicine because I gotta run." He does, she does, and the loft returns to boring quietness. Castle drinks the remainder of the soup and eats the last of the bread. Since he feels a lot better, he shaves, without any difficulty whatsoever, and then, since he's on a roll, has a shower. Then he discovers that the shower was one effort too many. He barely manages to dry himself before he falls back into bed.

That medicine is still affecting his brain. He'd swear that the bed and pillows on the other side to his preference carry the faint but very familiar scent of Beckett and Beckett's moisturiser. This is really, really weird. Maybe he should report this side effect to Dr Kovach. Or the AMA.

He crashes into sleep with the apparently Beckett-scented pillow clutched tightly against him.

When Castle wakes, it's around four and he appears to have had an idea in his sleep. Much as he likes his hallucinations, it's really not mentally healthy to be having them all the time. He'll prove to himself that it was all a fake. All he has to do is remember what she said, because there was a name in dream-Beckett's muttering. He'll remember the name, Google it, and it'll turn out to be a checkered-shirted lumberjack in Montana. That'll cure him. He simply has to pin down the name.

This proves rather difficult. For a man with a notoriously good memory, he's having real trouble. He ponders. Lurk? No. Jerk? No. Dirk? That sounds more plausible, but it's not quite right. He ponders some more. His head is beginning to hurt, and he hasn't even lifted it from the pillow. He ceases pondering in favour of a glass of water, which involves the considerable complication of getting out of bed. It's quite unreasonably difficult. Maybe the shower had been a bad plan.

Burke. Doctor Burke. That sounds more likely than anything else he's thought. He'll just check him out, and then he'll be cured. And then he'll spend some quality time working out how to persuade the real Beckett into snuggling on the couch with him and watching a movie. He'd persuade her to a lot more, given half a chance, but he's so tired and still ill and falling asleep halfway through is hardly likely to impress her.

There are a lot of Dr Burkes in the world. But none of them moonlight as Montana lumberjacks. Castle, for whom intense tedium is fuelling his voracious curiosity, decides to research a little more deeply. First he wipes out all the Burkes who are not in New York. Then he limits it to Manhattan. That leaves him with one. So he looks up his professional qualifications.

It's taken him a mere twenty minutes to be staring at the screen and hyperventilating. That was not what he had expected at all. There is a real Dr Burke, practising in Manhattan, and who is a psychiatrist who consults for the NYPD. This is – dynamite. It's blown his brains out.

It wasn't a hallucination. That was the real Beckett, really in his bed.

The real Beckett is – seeing a shrink? Uh?

He makes a slight recovery and patches up the fractured fractals of his brain. If that was real, then… the rest of what she said was – might be – real too. What else did she say?

Another twenty minutes of pondering, interspersed with scrawled notes, passes before he thinks he's got everything. Then he hides it in a desk drawer, falls back into bed because he is ridiculously tired all over again, which is not fair because he should be better by now, and keeps on thinking.

First up, since he still can't believe it, Beckett was really in his bed. He only wishes that he'd been capable of doing something about it. She had, he remembers, only been in his bed once before, after the bomb that had wrecked her apartment. Hmm. They might never have spoken about it, but that didn't stop him thinking. He knows she'd wanted comfort and reassurance because she'd been scared and shocked and not sleeping. Traumatised, really – oh.

Oh. Shrink equals trauma equals… oh. Oh. Right now she's cuddling up to him every night because she needs him – because she's scared and shocked and can't sleep all over again. Well now. This could be remarkably interesting. Oh yes. Beckett's seeing a shrink to get better. Based on the balance of her nocturnal mutterings, she's doing it so she can tell him, Castle, the truth. And further, she's doing it in order (he so hopes this is right) to dive in. With him. She thinks she has to be better (from what? The shooting? The aftermath?) to have some mysterious "him", but then she'd said she could tell the truth – and shouldn't have lied, and the only person he's dead sure she's lied to is him. He's known that right from the moment she woke up.

Why she couldn't simply tell him is a different point, but, let's face it, it's not as if either of them have ever really told each other anything outright. That coded discussion on the swings suddenly makes a lot more sense, too.

Well, well, well. This is all very, very hopeful. Now, how best to achieve a satisfactory outcome before his family get back? He thinks that he'd better start by ensuring that Beckett shows up in his bed tonight. Okay so – one – don't tell her he's guessed the truth. Two – make sure she thinks he's still pretty sick – that won't be hard. Three – listen very carefully to anything she might say in her sleep. She's positively loquacious in her sleep. And four – wake up before she sneaks off. He'd really like a good look at that nightwear. Well, a brief look up close and then a slightly longer look at it lying on the floor. There. Perfect plan.

He falls back to sleep – yet again – on a cloud of happiness.

Beckett's afternoon could not be described as either happy or productive. Not in her terms, anyway. Productive would have meant solving a case, and dealing with paperwork is not solving cases. But it does have to be done, and Gates's frigid glare every time she exits the Captain's office is not conducive to slacking. All three of them are working as hard as they can, and as a consequence the pile of outstanding paperwork is reducing more rapidly than in some weeks. Still, they all leave pretty precisely at the end of shift. No point in doing overtime when there isn't a case to pursue.

Beckett gets home to silence, and rapidly assumes that Castle is asleep again. She's halfway through raiding the fridge to find something that she can fix for dinner when she realises with consternation that she'd thought of this as coming home. That's… worrying. Terrifying, in fact. This is not her home and until she sorts her head out with Dr Burke there is absolutely no chance that it will be. She mustn't think like that. Especially, she shouldn't already be thinking how nice it will be to be curled up in the same bed as Castle. So she won't. She drags her errant thoughts back to the extensive contents of the fridge and finds chicken, mushrooms, some herbs and some cream. Perfect. She will make chicken stroganoff, with rice.

So that's what she does. It's simmering gently when she starts to search the cupboards for paprika. She can't find it. She can't find any spices, which strikes her as odd. She also realises that she hasn't heard a peep from Castle since she came in, which is also odd. She deduces that he is asleep, and confirms it by sneaking a peek round the bedroom door.

Oh. Oooh. That's pretty. Mmmmm. Castle is lying on top of the covers wearing a pair of relatively restrained silk boxers and not a lot else. Mmmmm. Even if he's not perfectly healthy right now – and if he's asleep again then he's really not healthy – he is a very handsome sight. Not classically handsome, it's true. But she doesn't like the lanky model type: she likes someone big and broad who can make her feel cosseted and safe. And there it is, laid out in front of her. Mmmmm. But he is asleep. Which means, her naughty mind reminds her, that she's safe to sleep with him again tonight. She doesn't have the heart to wake him. Besides which, he's making that cute whiffling noise again and she intends to rag him about it. If she's teasing him about that she doesn't have to think about what she's doing. Maybe she could record it and play it back when he denies it…. She smirks nastily.

She goes and searches the kitchen for spices again, and finally finds them right under her nose in a rack on the wall. Couldn't Castle keep them in a cupboard like the rest of the world? Humph. She'll go and wake him. It'll make her feel better. And reassure her that he isn't any worse. He'd been awake yesterday, so this doesn't seem like an improvement.

She really tries not to drool over the impressively extensive musculature, and very nearly succeeds. Fortunately, Castle is still sleeping and can't see her face or the slow, detailed gaze she sweeps up and down his body. Those boxers don't hide a lot. And there is a lot which isn't well hidden. Mmmmm. Very nice. Very nice.

Eventually she stops ogling – she'd call it admiring – and shakes Castle gently to try to wake him. It doesn't work. She shakes a little harder, noting that there is very little wobble across his pecs and none at all on his stomach. Still nothing. Beckett's patience, never exactly extensive, gives out. She shakes him hard.

Next thing she knows she's sprawled all over the floor. Ow. What the hell happened there?

"Sorry sorry sorry," Castle is repeating. "Sorry. I didn't mean to push you."

"Huh?" is all Beckett can manage.

"I was dreaming and I thought you were a burglar so I shoved it away except it was you." He's swung his feet out of bed and is reaching down to help her up, catching her hands, still repeating "Sorry, sorry. Are you okay?" It's just a shame that when he pulls her up he misjudges it – and his own state – tugs far too hard and instead of being sprawled all over the floor Beckett ends up sprawled all over Castle.

Castle is a considerable improvement on the floor. Happily, Castle's automatic reaction to her falling on top of him is to wrap his arms around her and hang on tightly. He's very pleased to see her. Very pleased. And she is rapidly becoming aware that she is equally, though rather less obviously, pleased to see him.

This is a bad idea. This is a really, really bad idea. But somehow no matter how much her mind is telling her body that, her body doesn't seem to want to move. Her body, in fact, wants to press in close, nuzzle his neck, and then kiss hell out him. Her brain is in control of her body, however. So she won't be doing that.

She's not doing that. She's not doing much about untangling herself, either, but she is not kissing Castle. Brain 1, Body 0. She starts on the complicated and unwelcome process of untangling herself. Castle is not helping. If he weren't ill, she'd suggest he was actively hindering, and take extreme measures. But he is ill. So instead of embedding her fingernails in his ears, she will carefully extract herself. He's still whimpering sorry sorry, which he seems to think will make up for not letting go of her. (It might. But she's not admitting that.)

"It's okay, Castle. I'm not hurt. A bit surprised, that's all. Where'd you learn that?" Castle smirks.

"At the gym."

"Huh," Beckett says. "Want some dinner?"

"If you're sure you're okay." It sounds sympathetic. Until Beckett catches his twinkling eyes. "If not, I could kiss the sore bits better."

"Not necessary. And if you want some dinner, put a shirt on. I don't want to look at your chest all evening." Of course she doesn't. She wants to snuggle into it, all night. Or it could be pressing down on her. Or she could be pressing down into it. Or… This is not helpful. She manages to pull herself away and exits the room before she can do anything stupid. Like fall back on top of Castle.

Castle lies quietly for a moment to recover his composure. Ill or not ill, he's fairly certain that if he'd hung on he could have exerted enough force that Beckett wouldn't have been going anywhere. He'd been very severely tempted to kiss her – and from the way her eyes had dilated she wouldn't have objected. But he's not quite convinced – the state of his body notwithstanding – that he is in a fit state to carry through, and it doesn't seem sensible to spoil their first time together. On the other hand, he could probably achieve quite a lot if Beckett sneaks into his bed again… Now that has some possibilities, if he's careful.

He tugs on a dark blue shirt which he knows Beckett likes and some sweatpants and wanders out with some trepidation to find out what Beckett's view on dinner, and her ability to cook, might be. He is not expecting cordon bleu, given that Beckett lives on takeaway and caffeine. In fact, he'll be very happy if it's edible.

Thank you all, especially guests and those who don't accept PMs, who can't be thanked otherwise.