To my dear, awesome reader-friends who have spoken up about this in reviews or messages: You are the reason I am continuing this fic. I feel obligated not to let you down a trace longer- in fact- I'm breaking my "Fanfiction is for the summer season" rule to write this. Castle has been SO INTENSE lately; some of it brought me back to the feelings that persuaded me to indulge in this little fetus of a fic, in the first place. You know the feelings I mean…anger, with the writers, with Castle, with Beckett; ecstasy, over every Caskett moment, so pregnant you feel as if you are exploding, and, most importantly, ravenous- wanting, craving, needing more if one wishes to survive past the following Monday.

Without further ado, I acknowledge that I have nothing at all to do with Castle, own simply the creative thought of this story, and am not affiliated with anyone affiliated with the show's production, as much as I kneel beside my bed at night, praying that I may and might.

Onward to…!


Chapter 4 :: The Morning After

Dreams. Dreams all night: clips, still images, sometimes entire movies. They were so real, in fact she'd believed they were reality, until these moments, when the thick cloud that separated her dream world and the real one was thinning, and she became aware of her unconsciousness.

Everything ached; her joints, her limbs themselves, even her nose and the sleek reddish brown hairs on her head throbbed asynchronously. Waking was slow. She felt adrift, and wobbly, and very much hung-over, but that last feeling didn't compensate for...this. Her eyes refused to open and her legs and arms were stiff, paralyzed. This must be similar to how it'd feel to be thawed after freezing- that is, the kind they do when you die.

Maybe she was dead. Maybe she was in a coma...what had happened? The last thing she remembered had been...er...right! The tub...her beloved, porcelain bathtub where she'd been pleasantly soaking...waiting for Lanie! Yes, it was growing easier to keep her fingers gripped on her thoughts. Then...then there was...she was weightless- that's all. Nothing more would come- until she felt like she was drowning, suddenly, like she had been dropped into scalding water where her unconsciousness stood stubbornly strong against her will to move, to survive. She was drowning, but instead of her lungs, her heart ached, pressing against her ribcage, unable to contain its own mass...her veins shrunk, receded painfully; she whimpered.


The body struggling against her heated sleeping bag of blankets woke her honestly. She blinked several times before gently removing her arms from around her best friend's shoulders and waist, grasping her mental surroundings. Yesterday's farewell party, Esposito...mmm, Bryton's birthday, and Beckett. Kate.

Lanie adjusted herself so that she didn't fall off the small twin-size bed, nudging the squirming Beckett as kindly as she could. "Honey? Break through it, it's a new day."

Beckett squirmed beneath her, mumbling gurgled Yiddish and thrashing her arms once she gained the control. Lanie realized what her friend was reliving, and mimicking actions preformed not twelve hours prior, grabbed Kate's upper body and lifted her up. Beckett sputtered air from her mouth, body jerkily relaxing, eyelids fluttering.

"Shh, baby girl you're safe, you're dry." Lanie patted Beckett's cheeks, massaging her shoulders with her free hand. The surface skin of the detective was bumpy and heated; whatever nightmare she'd been having, Lanie wanted no part of.

"Ca-Castle!" Beckett whisper-shouted. Lanie pushed Beckett's hair back, her head falling to Lanie's chest. "No, no, just an accident. Have some water before we're really in trouble- your skin is terribly dehydrated."

Beckett jolted free of her paralysis, very much awake. "Where is he?"

Lanie retracted her grip and squared herself to Beckett. "Oh honey no. You're the one who had the accident." She'd realize where that preppy writer boy was soon enough.

Beckett's eyes shut, her face pained. Bingo.

"Oh don't you worry, we'll get to his brown nose later. You have bigger problems, at the moment." Beckett, as if by magical force, took on a bruised expression. "Holy hell, Lanie. What happened?" Lanie's eyebrows shot up.

"Well it sure looked to hell like you tried to off yourself, until they stabilized you here and found traces of lithium in your system. A lot of lithium in your system, like it was buildin' up. The good men got to you alright, though, and forced it all outta you. At that point, nobody knew where you were, 'cause ya mouth would garble a smidge then be silent as your pulse for seconds too long. In the end, them fiine doctor men figured you out and sent your gurney here to recovery."

"I swear, if you're yanking me-"

"Check your pumped pancake of a tummy."

"No way."

""Wayyy."

"I can't believe..."

"...some sexy man saw you half naked? Neither can I. You're blessed with all the fortune."

"Not my choice words..."

"I took it upon myself to give him your number."

"You what?" She slapped her hands on the sheets.

"Oh, live a little! I wrote mine..."

"You're a piece of work, Ms. Lanie."

"I seem to do most work for you, nowadays." She placed a plastic cup of water in Beckett's hands and brought it to her mouth.

Her girlfriend smiled as the rim of the disposable Styrofoam met her lips, and she laughed as she realized just how dry they were.


About a week later and with not so much as a tweet from Castle, Detective Kate Beckett sat promptly at her dingy aluminum desk, filing a report. The desk itself was as messy as she'd ever allow- cascading stacks of paperwork skittered around the edges, with various office supplies and her official name plate facing the rest of the precinct. One thing was odd about the arrangement, say, the three empty bottles of doctor-prescribed water encasing her papers and flyers and post-it notes reminding her to accomplish various things…as her eyes grazed over a random one, she inhaled quickly as she read: Blowjob, Demming, in Castle's signature scrawl. She quickly ripped it off the top of the stack it was stuck to-she hoped it hadn't been there long enough for others to notice-and crumpled the paper in a tight fist.

She hadn't spoken with Demming, really…at all. Once, right after her brush with death, he'd been one of the first to visit her at the hospital (as soon as she was cleared with a prognosis of life), reigning in flowers, a teddy bear, a shower of his remaining feelings for her. She timidly admitted to herself that seeing him brought on a hint of butterflies to her then-abused stomach, which would literally have been quite hurtful…but she knew the tinglies were wrong. Demming was a good guy, a really…really good guy. He was even kind and caring enough to back off when she abruptly broke things off between them when she'd decided to take stock and invest in Castle a week back… Overcome with physical pain, she realized her fist had tightened so that her skin stretched thin over the white bone of her knuckles and her fingernails were pressing dangerously into her flesh, the post-it note now crammed tightly against the skin of her palm.

It wasn't fair to Demming, to lead him on. It wasn't fair to her. That's why she'd thanked him properly for his concern, and quickly shooed him out of her room so she could rest.

Rest. As if. She'd had nearly a week of "resting", and half her heart still hung limply in her chest. First day back on the job, and she was noticing how alone the job was, void of all things Richard Castle: nobody asking her questions all day about precinct gossip, reading aloud, animatedly, amusing articles from local newsprint, or whining about when the next case would roll in. She was filing through this pile-up faster than she could remember plowing through other large amounts of overdue work, although, she'd never been out of the precinct this long, ever. That fact alone was ammunition enough for her to fight for the right to her own case of poisoning, though for the second time that week, she was overruled by doctors and the captain, who had handed the case over to a different precinct entirely (refusing to disclose which, specifically), just to make sure Beckett wouldn't try and take a peek at the case file. It was something about her doctors warning the captain about possible chronic poisoning and her now unstable capacity for withstanding toxins. Truth be told, she'd fudged a phone call to him, using Lanie's expertise to give her the green light on being on active duty, again, not two hours ago. She'd had enough of this desk, of sitting, of being victim to her thoughts, and most directionally, the gaping wound swelling in her ribcage, signed by none other than Castle himself.


Ryan and Esposito sauntered over to Beckett's big block desk carefully. Ever since the attempt on her life, they'd been especially protective of their mistress, but their earnest eyes spoke of something more than loyalty, more than faithful coworkers. Without looking away from her work, she addressed them. "Whatever it is, it can't be as bad as this paperwork." When neither of them responded side a short nervous glance at each other, she continued, "It's absolutely radical enough that a suspect's suicide conclude an investigation, but for the report to treat the incident like he's just another number to the death toll..." She lost her drabble as she ran out of lines on the paper and promptly continued using her own.

"We've got a case. A routine traffic stop turned up more than one unhappy teenager- it wasn't drugs he was packin', either." Esposito spoke first.

"Or, a politician was thrown off the top of a parking garage, and the prime suspect is not the woman carrying his child…but his wife." Ryan added, dramatically.

"A mailman was found mauled by a great dane, who is now in custody." Esposito flipped some pages on his clipboard.

"But nobody thinks he's actually guilty." Ryan quipped with an uplifting smile.

"Don't you two have work to do, instead of listening to reports and snatching the ones you want?" Beckett stopped writing, placed her elbows on the desk, and bore through them like a vulture might.

"We've had a lot of down time with you abse-" Esposito knocked Ryan in the ribs with an elbow of his own. "What he means is, we've cleaned our plates, mother Beckett." Espo finished, seriously.

Beckett bit her lip, eyeing the pair. "Did you make those up?"

"Alright, consider us caught- we selected the cases we thought would help you move on from, well, you know." Esposito rubbed an invisible speck from his badge onto his shirt.

"We're also up to date on the affair between Manett and Wilmont, in case your week off has put you behind on important happenings like this." Ryan crossed his arms, hopeful.

Beckett thinned, "You two are almost intolerant," she pushed her hair back, behind both ears. "Let's take one apiece- winner gets free drinks." Her brown eyes glinted with the challenge.

Being the team that they were, Ryan and Esposito proudly put in their hands. They started to turn, but stopped, and peeked back at Beckett. "Hey," Ryan offered. Beckett paused and raised her eyes to meet theirs. The fight in them was barely visible. Esposito took the first line: "If you need anything-"

"A slip of gin in your coffee, a crate of piranhas shipped to the Hamptons, anger-management therapy…" Ryan supplied, "We're here for you." Esposito finished. Both of them nodded, the smiles nowhere to be seen on their faces. Beckett stalled, not fond of this emotional confrontation. She was the one who needed to be strong for them, not vice-versa. "Thanks, guys. That really means something. Why don't you head home? I'm pretty wiped from this nothingness; we can start fresh on those homicides tomorrow." She tried to look as genuine as her tone.

"Night, then." They quickly chirped, and with lackadaisical waves of goodbye, practically raced each other to the elevator.

"Night." Beckett bowed her head.

"Until tomorrow."

Beckett's head nearly whipped up, facing the empty, worn brown chair beside her desk. That voice, that voice that she'd heard every day for the past two years-almost constantly-was a phantom. The precinct was barely populated now, as long days of work were being tied up and put to bed as early as possible. Kate sat up in her chair, closed her eyes, and made a wish. Like she used to when she and her mom would watch shooting stars sprint across the sky at night, she put her whole heart (more appropriately, broken, heart), and soul into her wish, despite the lack of a shooting star to whisk its magic upon her. She counted thirty-two breaths in and out (it was much easier to breathe her age when she was eight, humph), and slowly opened one eye at a time.

Her world shook, at what she saw in front of her- dark hair, captivating eyes, a toned body with right-fitting clothes- Demming.

"Tom!" Beckett squeaked.

"Kate," Tom breathed.

"I just wanted to run a case by you…are you alright?" He squinted at her, obviously concerned about her ritual. She didn't expect him to understand.

"Yeah, yeah, all's well. I just needed a sec…this paperwork is murder." She awkwardly giggled at her joke. Demming smiled, unconvinced, but not willing to push the issue. Castle would understand. Castle would pursue the issue. Castle would offer her resolve to the issue.

Beckett nodded to the file in his hands. She noticed his coat folded over his arm. "You have a case, for me?"

"I just thought-"

"Sure." She cut him off, hurriedly. She wondered why a robbery cop was inquiring to a homicide one. They were, after all, strictly professional these days.

"It's pretty…windy. Somehow a robbery ended up in triple homicide…your name was the first to my mind." He grinned, trying to share a secret glance with her. But they didn't have anything to be giving secret glances over.

Beckett let out a steady gap of air from the side of her mouth, "I'd be happy to take a look."

"Great." He didn't move.

"If you could just…" she gestured to a pile near the front of her desk, hostage to a plethora of sticky notes. One of them, she caught with a glimpse, had a stick drawing of two people kissing…explicitly, with a banner "'Beckemming' since April 2010" above the characters. Kate, internally, slithered off her chair, under her desk, and melted into a puddle of goo. She was looking away, at Manett and Wilmont sweet-talking each other up a few desks away, when she heard Demming chuckle, and the file land pointedly on the bundle of paperwork.

"Thanks…" she mumbled, incredulously.

"Any time." Tom flashed his signature, sexy smile, and she felt her expression warm. He was about to open his mouth again as he touched his coat, but Kate knew better, and had already returned to thoroughly examining the case open before her- she'd already cheated and pulled the one she thought would distract her most. Here's a hint: it wasn't about the politician, his wife, and his baby momma. Demming's footsteps lead away from her desk seconds later, and she peeped her eyes upward, watching yet another good man she'd disallowed access to the core of the Beckett Onion go, wanting to cry. Castle was everywhere, Castle was nowhere. She verbally groaned, wondering how many more post-it presents he'd left for her…her only condolence being that he was writing books inspired by her, about her.

It seemed that neither of them would truly be escaping the other, this summer.

Little did she know, someone was making that very difficult for one, Richard Castle.


END CHAPTER

Alright: I did my homework on a LOT of this chapter, although if you know anything about lithium poisoning, I may have blurred a few lines here and there. That's because I wrote the first (lost) half in a place where I didn't have any of my references available. Ah, poo, right? Anyway, it ended up working out quite snugly, the whole lithium ordeal. I have a bit up my sleeve, but a few things to think about, too...

Ideally, we're headed for a short time skip, and the meeting of a new very special someone for our lovely detective friend and the reuniting of our favourite crime-fighting couple, but after that, I'm considering skipping ahead again, to more current times, as that is where my Castle brain currently laps. Or, I could start an entirely new fic about the now, and keep this one behind, catching up to now. Thoughts? Voice 'em! I'd also appreciate feedback on this chapter, especially, since I haven't written much of anything in a bloody long time, let alone Castle. Thanks to common sense, I salvaged the "lost" part of this chap. from my old phone, and just cranked out the rest, no problem. I can only pray that continues. I appreciate every review, and encourage you to stay tuned~!

[Lily Mc xx