Disclaimer: The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

She can't think about it, about him being one well-worn, blue-denim layer away from total nudity while he's cooking out there. Where her mother used to cook. Maybe thinking about her mother will keep her from imagining Castle naked. Right. So, Castle, partially clad—but that is one hell of a chest. STOP IT, RIGHT NOW—is standing exactly where she and her father had had coffee yesterday afternoon. It was yesterday, wasn't it? Castle's right. She has to eat. Did she have dinner last night? She can't remember, doesn't know when she last put anything in her stomach, other than the magical coffee he'd made earlier, which she'd had with her meds. She's drying her face, not with Castle's towel, though she's sorely tempted, as she goes over this again. Something terrible is niggling at the back of her brain. Texts. Pain killers. Food. Wait, was there melon? Hadn't Castle offered her melon and she'd turned it down? Why did she do that? Oh, oh, pain killers but no food this morning or last night?

Moving to the open door of the bathroom, she calls out, attempting to sound casual, "Castle? Were there dishes in the sink or the dishwasher when you got here?"

Odd question, he thinks, but he's also pretty sure that she wants a simple answer, not a why-are-you-asking response. "Nothing but an empty mug by the sink."

"Thanks. Be there in a sec." The niggling gets louder, scratchier, and more insistent. She hadn't had any food for almost 24 hours. She hadn't had any coffee after her father left, either, because she had, God help her, spilled the beans. She buries her face in the towel again. But she had to have taken her medicine before bedtime, so she just had water, hence the mug in the sink. Nothing solid. Nothing nutritious. Had that made her loopy? Turned her into that wack job who sent those unforgettable—unforgettable now that she's read them with a clear head, even though she doesn't remember writing them—and mortifying texts, ones that burn in her brain her like some mutant eternal flame? And why has Castle been so nice? He hasn't teased her about them; it's obvious now that he deleted them from her phone when she'd handed it to him. To, to, to what? To protect her? From herself? He replied to only one of them. The Castle of the past would have come right back at her, every time, but not now, and his text hadn't had even a trace of innuendo. Unlike hers. More than that, he'd come here. He'd come all the way here—he must have driven in the dark—just because she (aided and abetted by those little pills) had asked him to keep her company.

She can't put this off any longer, cowardly as she feels. "Calling Sigmund Freud," she says to herself as she walks to the kitchen. "Put down that cigar and help me out here, Doctor."

"You hungry, Beckett?" Castle has set the little table near the window, and he's putting down two plates on it as she approaches. "You'd better be. See what I made?"

She sits down carefully. "This smells fantastic." Her eyes are on the eggs so she doesn't have to look at him; she's saving her courage for what she needs to say later. "Thank you."

"Gotta fatten you up with my home cooking," he says, nudging her with an elbow before taking the chair opposite hers.

Beckett takes a bite of omelet, chews, and swallows. "Wow." She has two more, and follows them with part of a muffin. "Best thing I've had in ages."

Ecstatic that she's finally eating something, he beams. "How about some fruit with that?" He points his head towards the counter. "There's still plenty of melon in the bowl there."

Oh, the melon. What was it about the melon? She swears there are little bits of cantaloupe pirouetting in her head like the hippos in Fantasia. Why can't she think straight? "Sure. Sounds good, Castle."

He almost bounces to the kitchen and back, and offers the bowl to her. "Here you go. Sorry it's not balls, since you like them."

If it were possible for the utterance of one sentence to remove every bit of air from a room, to vacuum seal it and prevent anyone from leaving, this might be it. He freezes. She freezes. She'd been so careful to avoid looking directly at him, but at "balls" their eyes had locked.

"Uh." That's him.

"Uh." That's her.

"You know what?" he asks, his voice skittering upwards to the range of a six-year-old's. "I meant to show you this great photo I took while you were asleep." What? Had he? He's a desperate man calling on desperate measures. Maybe he had taken one of that bird hopping around, it was cute. He'd thought she could identify it for him, since his avian knowledge is pretty much nonexistent. Except about penguins, since Alexis had gone through a serious penguin phase several years ago. They must have gone to see them in the Polar Circle at the Central Park Zoo a hundred times. He shakes his head, pulls his phone out of his pocket, and calls up his photos. "There was this great bird by the porch and I bet you can tell me what it is because I don't know. Total ignoramus about things like that." He holds the phone up to Beckett, screen facing her, just as she had done earlier when she had asked him about the texts. One click and there it should be, his most recent photo. Some kind of bird, with a topknot. Kind of like her ponytail, top-knotty.

Sound? There's sound coming from his phone? His most recent photo is a video? Of what? It's a little muffled, but audible and completely understandable. It's Beckett's voice. "This is your side. Do you like to be on this side? Cuz I like that one. Where I was before. When you came and I woke up. But now you're here and we can go to bed. It's very sexciting to be in bed with you, Castle."

Even with all the writerly skills he possesses, he'd be incapable of describing the expression on her face. Hell, Dickens couldn't have done it. Or Dostoevsky. It's a mixture of horror, shock, surprise, embarrassment, rage, and a just-detectable strain of curiosity. She has a death grip on the phone, and so does he.

"I slept with you? You slept with me?" Her eyes are moving frantically between his face and the blank screen of his phone. She had been ready to apologize about the texting, but not now. Forget that.

"No! No! Never! No, I mean, not that I'd never sleep with you, but we didn't. No. Please give me the phone, Kate. Please."

"You taped me, Castle? What the hell? Why would you do that?"

"I didn't."

"Sure as hell did. That's my voice, and it's on your phone. I don't think your phone, smart as yours obviously is, is capable of deciding to tape something all by itself."

"It didn't. I had to have butt-taped that. I didn't know it. Stop the phone. Turn it off."

Her eyes are so fiery they could detonate something. "Why should I turn it off? When did you take it out of your pocket, huh, Castle? After you got in bed with me? Is there a video of us in my bed? Are there pictures of whatever I called it, sexcitement?"

"I never got in bed with you. I—"

"Will you listen to yourself? You just said, recorded for all the world to hear, for all posterity, that you were in bed with me."

"No, Kate, listen to yourself. You were the one who said that, that we were in bed. I didn't say a word. You want to know what happened? I'll tell you."

"I don't want you to." She's trying to push her chair away from the table and still hold on to his phone.

"We're staying right here. I'll let you have my phone, but you're going to have to hear me out. Give me two, three minutes. You can stay on that side of the table, and I'll be here. But I'm going to explain and you're going to pay attention. You owe me that."

"I don't owe you a Goddamn thing, Castle."

That hurts so much he feels as if he's the one that had taken a bullet from a Mark 11 rifle. He's trying to be understanding, knows that she's confused, but. "You owe me a call, Beckett. One phone call. I waited twenty-five days for it."

He's right. He's right. "Okay." That's all she can manage for now.

"But since we're here in the same place, a phone call is irrelevant. So I'll give you a pass, though there's a certain horrible irony, considering the part the phone is playing here." He stops to catch his breath. He can't pause, though: he'd lose his nerve or his temper, and either one would be disastrous. "You want anything? Water?"

She's feeling watery. It's the last thing she needs. "No."

"When I got those texts from you last night—" Jesus, only last night? "When I got the first one I didn't know what to make of it. Couldn't believe it was you because it didn't sound like you at all. And then a few minutes later the second one came and I realized that if was you. You if you were drunk. But I knew you couldn't be, wouldn't be drinking if you were still recovering from, you know."

"Being shot." She's looking out the window. Her voice is low and emotionless.

"Yes, from being shot. From coming back from the dead. And then it occurred to me that you must be on some powerful pain meds, had probably accidentally taken too much. I did a couple of minutes of research on that." Yeah, telling her about Bernstingle, consulting a doctor she doesn't know about her case? No way. "Then I was positive that that was what was going on. And I figured you must be by yourself, because if someone had been here with you they'd never have let that happen." Like that son-of-a-bitch cardiologist, for starters. Castle wonders if he can sue Davidson for malpractice over this. "So I figured I'd better get up here right away and make sure that you were all right. That's when I texted you back. I was worried." Maybe he could be a little gentler. "And you were without coffee, so who knows what kind of beast I might have encountered when I knocked on the door, right?"

He did that? For her? Because he was worried? Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry. Just say "right." "Right."

"Before I was even halfway here—" no way he's mentioning the stop at her father's for directions, either. He'll hurry, and maybe she won't wonder how he'd known where she was. "Uh, by halfway, you'd texted me three more times. But you said you were going to sleep and I got here before dawn so I waited to come in. And you know the rest. Well, no, you don't. Obviously, or I wouldn't be having to do this. Suffice it to say that you were in pain when I saw you and you came to the kitchen and took your medicine. Didn't want me to help you. Too proud, Kate, to let me do that little thing."

That hurt. She winces, and closes her eyes.

"We went to the porch to have our coffee and in less time than it took you to drink half a cup you were talking. Talking the way you did when you were texting."

Shit, what had she said? It couldn't have been any worse than the texts, could it? She should say something. It's a weak, "I did?"

"Oh, yeah. Look, I understand. I went into the kitchen and checked your prescription: you're supposed to take one tablet, but I saw you take two. You must have made the same mistake last night. No wonder you were—. Look, don't be embarrassed. I'm not holding you to anything, or holding anything against you. It was the meds talking, not you." Oh, he wants it to be her, so wants it to be her. He wants her to admit it that this is the way she really feels, but he presses on. "I tried to get you to eat something, but you wouldn't. And then you were crashing, falling sleep, and told me to carry you to bed." He hadn't intended to reveal that, but he'd found his rhythm and it had slipped out.

"Carry me?" Her voice has plenty of emotion now. Mostly horror, directed at herself. He'd carried her? So that's it. That's why she remembers the feel of his bare chest, being in his arms.

"Yeah. So I did, and when I put you on your bed I was trying to straighten out the sheets a bit for you and you pulled me down next to you. I landed kind of hard, and that must have been what started the phone going. The taping."

Oh, this changes everything. Everything. Absolutely everywonderfulthing. She looks him straight in the eye. In the beautiful blue eye. Both beautiful blue eyes. "Even through an extra layer, Castle? Even though you still had your shorts on underneath your jeans?"

TBC

A/N Thank you, everyone. Special thanks to Raburt221 for making me laugh out loud in your guest review of the previous chapter.