Castle can't say what pulled him awake, but he can sense the light beaming through the room even with his eyes closed. And then the mattress shifts and dips a bit, and the only reason it would shift and dip would be because another person is in bed with him, and all of a sudden the previous day, breaking up with Gina and watching British movies and eating Indian food and playing Monopoly and sleeping outside Beckett's room and oh, that abrupt confession.

His head isn't pounding. His mouth doesn't feel stuffed full of cotton. His stomach already has its normal morning hunger pangs. There is no way he's hung over, which means there is no way he can adequately explain his hazy late-night admission. And Beckett, goddamn Beckett, would know that, because she is a detective, a brilliant detective, who would have noticed if he'd stumbled into her room drunk instead of just somewhat dazed.

He sucks in a huge lungful of air and moves his hands up to his face, scrubbing at his still-closed eyes. You're in her bed, he reminds himself, you're in her bed because she let you in her bed and then she talked about the future and then she held your hand. And it's true, and it means that everything might be okay, but honestly, honestly, what kind of idiot tells someone he's in love with her before they've slept together, before they've even kissed?

He pries his eyes open, and she's lying on her side, maybe a foot away, staring at him, her hair tousled over her cheek. She smiles as his eyes flick over her face. His throat feels funny at the sight of her, tight and tickly. He's not sure that he can survive this, not if his affection for Beckett continues to mirror the symptoms of anaphylactic shock.

"I like waking up next to you," he says, his voice coming out scratchy, exhausted. "Also, were you watching me sleep?"

"I was watching you twitch violently and generally look distressed," she responds. "I was trying not to be insulted, actually."

"Well," he says, but he loses the thread of his thoughts because stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid has been pulsing in the back of his brain since he'd remembered the night before.

"Castle," she says, suddenly quiet, serious. "It was really late. And it's been an incredibly stressful weekend. And you were exhausted. And distressed. It's not…" she trails off.

"It was silly, ridiculous really, don't know what came over me," he says, latching on to the lifeline she's thrown him, but then she blinks and her eyes stay closed just a millisecond too long, and when she opens them again they are a little darker, a little less joyful.

"Of course," she says, voice just a little too low.

Oh, Castle thinks, so many wrong decisions. "I mean –" he stutters, because now he's worked himself into knots and he's not sure how to untangle himself.

"Don't be inane, Castle," she says, a warning. She smiles again but it's not like how she smiled at him when he was waking up.

"Detective Beckett, I am not an inane man," he responds softly, trying to reengage her by encouraging her to mock him, but she's smiling wanly and he's not honestly paying attention to what he's saying.

"I need Advil and I need food," Beckett says, her voice quiet and unwavering. He knows she's asking (well, demanding) because it will get him up and out of bed and away from her, but he has no argument, no recourse, so pushes the sheets off and swings his legs down and numbly walks toward the kitchen.

(In his mind, running through on constant replay, the morning was different, and it went like this:

Sunlight was sheeting into the room when he opened his eyes and he was surrounded by the reality that he was in love and in bed with Beckett. Her face was three inches from his and her half-open eyes were vortexes, pulling in the light of the room and drawing him slowly, inexorably toward her, millimeter by millimeter.

The only sounds were his breath and her breath, softy swishing in and out in perfect time, and the soft thudding of his heart against his ribcage. He stared at the planes of her face illuminated by the soft dawn light, at the slight dusting of freckles over her nose, at the soft, pink curve of her slightly parted lips, at the messy curls of dark hair, at the deep, cloudy jade of her languorous eyes.

The room was settled in the quiet still of daybreak and even the subtle, steady motion of their chests seemed to be too much movement, their slow expulsions of breath swirling too many molecules of air. Even so, he was shifting, always shifting, drawing closer to her, cutting the distance between them by infinite tiny fractions, and suddenly the realization that she was doing the same, that they were drifting toward each other in the vast space of the bed in the hazy quietness, washed over him, and he was bursting with the knowledge that soon their fingers or their mouths or their arms would slowly, roughly slide together and, oh, if he could only freeze this moment.

But then they were tangling together, still in slow motion, his arms skidding over her stomach, sliding past her ribs to wrap around her back; her smooth calf, then her toned thigh threading between his legs, and he was simultaneously full of crushing desire and overwhelming contentment as they folded around and into each other.

Their lips met, brushing lazily, sleepily together, and their hands languidly skimmed over and then under each other's shirts, then pants, and they shifted and swirled around the bed, still spooled together, until hours later when they finally collapsed in an exhausted, sticky pile of somnolent limbs.)

Instead, he burns the eggs and spills the Advil on the floor. When he returns to her bedroom, awkwardly balancing a plate of food and a bottle of water and a glass of orange juice and three Advil, she is standing stiffly next to the window, leaning heavily on the wall and gazing stonily into the painfully bright light that still streams into the room.

"I have breakfast," he murmurs quietly, shifting the plate an inch toward her and sloshing some orange juice against his shirt. It's immediately cold and sticky against his skin. He desperately hopes that she'll shake her head and call him an awkward klutz and then maybe berate his lack of ability to do something as simple as fry an egg without burning it.

"Thanks, Castle," she says as she gathers up her crutches and hobbles to the small table in the corner of the room.

"You seem…" he starts, but he's not sure why he even began, because he's not going to say listless or sad or, heaven help him, lonely, and so he trails off and leaves his words hanging pathetically in the middle of the room.

"Better," she supplies for him as she lowers herself into the chair. "I'm thinking I'll go home today, actually, get settled back at my place." She has the same tone that she uses in interrogations, silk over steel, the sleek smoothness of her words only accentuating the absolute resolve beneath. He knows, like he knows for every poor suspect that goes up against her, that arguing will only make it worse.

"Oh," is all he says, not bothering to hide his disappointment, as he carries her food over to her.

"I don't mean to seem ungrateful, Castle," she responds in a tone that is not at all grateful, "but you have your life to get back to, and I have mine."

He sits perched on the edge of the bed for a minute as she begins to eat, but she ignores him and, though he opens his mouth again and again to apologize or to argue or to once more declare his undying love for her, he can't think of a way to begin that won't push her even further away from him. Eventually he gives up, gets up, and walks back to the kitchen. He stands in front of the fridge but can't quite force himself to open it, and in the end he just wraps his arms around his stomach and leans his forehead into the cold metal.

(In his mind, in the fantasy that won't stop torturing him, they spent the whole day in bed, unwilling to break apart for anything as trivial as food or water or air, reaffirming their adulation with every touch and every breath.)

x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x

I am sorry, faithful readers, that you had to wait for approximately ten thousand years for this chapter and then it was slightly depressing. My silly job has a way of taking over every bit of my life sometimes. The good (?) news is that, believe it or not, we're starting to approach the end of this particular story, although I'm already thinking of sequel ideas (which is definitely ahead of myself, since first I need to find the time to finish this). As always, thanks for reading and please review!