Chapter 26: What you doin' in your bed?

Castle's holding her close again, turned over so that she's on top. She's tired, now playtime's over. Time to go home. She tries to roll off him, but he's not letting go.

"Lemme go," she yawns. "I need to go home. 'M tired." She makes another attempt to move away.

"Why'd you need to go home? Stay here. Much better."

Castle is not at all impressed by her idea. He's finally got the next stage of what he wanted, and it's all going to be spoilt because she won't stay with him. She's admitted she's his; she's given in to him, let him take her deeper into the water; and she won't stay? No. Time for some enjoyable, delicate persuasion, he thinks. He runs a warm hand over her back and down, slides her leg up around his waist, strokes wickedly along her inner thigh.

"You sure you wanna go home? I think you should stay here, let me keep you warm." He turns her fully into his chest, and pulls a cover over them both. "See? Just what you want." He slides hard fingertips a little further, tantalisingly. "I want you to stay. I'll show you why you should." Dark suggestion slithers under his tone to slink over her skin, settle into her synapses. Seduction lounges languorously about her, and temptation whispers in her ear. Just a little while longer, it murmurs, just a little longer under his possessive, wicked hands would be so good.

"Show me," she purrs, and nips gently at him where her mouth lies against his clavicle. "Show me then, Castle."

And he does, all over again, until she bites nails into his back and claws him closer, deeper; screams out his name and lets him own her; and despite all of her intentions falls asleep in the nest of his arms, just where, and how, she should be.

When she wakes, some time past midnight, it's because she's cold. Castle's stolen the whole of the comforter, most of the pillows and all but six inches of the enormous bed; and he's not wrapped round her to keep her warm any more. It seems like a good time to take her leave. She quietly dresses partway with such clothes as made it into the bedroom, wincing slightly and contemplating a hot soak with plenty of bath salts; leaves a hastily scrawled note on the nightstand next to him, picks up her shoes and slips out of the room; snags her T-shirt, jacket and purse in the main room; finishes dressing and sneaks silently out of the door. She'll definitely need a long, hot bath before she starts her day tomorrow, but the remaining slight ache along her thighs and deep into her core is a pleasurable reminder of the hot night just finished. She's home and in her own bed less than half an hour later, sound asleep. Her dreams scorch through her slumber, every detail amplified and repeated; outlining games they haven't played yet. But in her fantasies, they do, and she blazes, twisting and moaning in her sleep.

It never occurs to her that Castle expected her to stay the whole night. Even if it had, she wouldn't have stayed. That's far too close to getting involved in a relationship, and neither of them want that. They'd each said so. She hasn't noticed that that isn't what Castle said. She hasn't noticed that he carefully omitted that part.

Castle wakes at false dawn, dim light trickling into his bedroom where the curtains are still wide open, searching around him for Beckett. He sits up, looks around, listens. She's not there, not in the bathroom; when he stumbles out of bed she's not sleeping on his couch, as she had on hers. Her clothes are gone, he perceives. She's gone. He goes back to his room, and notices the paper on his nightstand.

Castle. Gone home. See you. Beckett.

What the hell? No. No fucking way. She is not doing this again. She did this at hers, but at least then she hadn't left the building and he could take her back. This time he's more than a little mad. He's absolutely furious. What is her problem with just staying with him? It's not as if she isn't enjoying it: he's sure of that. She's given in to him, admitted she's his. So she should stay put. Stay put and let him make her feel so good in all the ways he knows she'll like. Next time, whispers a dark little voice from a primitive corner of his mind, next time use her own handcuffs on her. The thought is so very, very appealing, in so very, very many ways. It's certainly worth considering. Mutually.

It never occurs to Castle that Beckett might have regarded admitting she's his as merely part of the game, only applicable to this time and this place. He's so blinded by his still obsessive need to have her with him that any assumption other than that she's getting fully involved simply doesn't hit his brain. And why should it? He's never failed to get everything he wanted, all his dreams have always come true. Just like this one's coming true.

He returns to his bed, breathing in the scent of sex and Beckett, falls back asleep to hot hard dreams of everything that they might do together; gentler reveries of her cuddled up close, soft and warm and always, always where she ought to be: right next to him.

Castle means to find Beckett the next day and discuss (so to speak) the finer points of bedroom etiquette: in particular his strong preference that she stay around afterwards; but somewhere in between the need to be in when Alexis returns from her sleepover, the chaos attendant on his mother's walk of shame and, worse, her apparent need to tell him slightly more than he has any desire to know, and a sudden inspiration that sends him full tilt towards his keyboard and doesn't wear off until several hours later, he finds that it's nearly evening. He also finds that he's still not pleased with the outcome of the previous night, when he reads back what he's written. Nikki and Rook are not getting along well, in this section. They're fighting over trivial things, staying apart when they should be together (nothing Freudian about that slip) and generally butting heads at every opportunity. It's good writing (he is always honest with himself about the standard of his writing) but he's dancing on the tightrope of including emotions that have nothing to do with Nikki and Rook and everything to do with Castle and Beckett with every further chapter that he writes. How to show her that she should want more than a succession of one night stands, more than a short affair?

Oh.

What happened there? Four days ago he hadn't worried about that: hadn't even been sure that he wanted any sort of an affair, let alone a long term affair. But that had been before he'd seen her put her life on the line, before he'd dived to save her, before they'd – together, one team, partners – taken down the bad guy with the bullets flying and a very uncomfortably real risk that either or both of them would end up injured or dead. Only yesterday, he could have lost Beckett, before he'd really found her. And that event, that thought, that possible outcome, has kicked his thinking into overdrive. He does want something that lasts longer. He'll decide how long it lasts, not some crazed criminal with a gun. He's saved her life, put his brains and his muscle and reactions to good use: achieved something that matters, outside the celebrity bubble. He's almost surprised by how quietly secure that makes him feel. It's all very well being pack alpha over the jackals and vultures that attend celebrity, wealth and fame. It's quite different when you prove it by protecting the alpha lioness, because she actually needs help, not because you think she should want you to take care of her, not because it makes you feel good to look as if you're shielding a beautiful woman from trouble, not because you assume she needs protection. Because she's going to risk her own life every time the job demands it, and dammit she will not do it without him there beside her.

She will not.

Quietly, unobtrusively winding into the back of his mind where he doesn't notice its insinuations, is a considerable change in tone. Six weeks being constantly around the Twelfth has altered him, already. Being around cops, who don't care about money or status, but who care very deeply about taking down the right bad guy, (it would have been so easy for Beckett to stick with the crazed fan, ignore Alison Tisdale's brother, but she wanted the right answer, not the easy one) who banter and josh and use some very politically incorrect terms indeed – but who put their lives on the line for unappreciative strangers, and have each other's backs, every day; without complaint and indeed with enthusiasm – Esposito taking down a bad guy is definitely enthusiastic. They are, in short, sincere. True good guys. And it's rubbed off on him in a way he hasn't noticed and would never, if asked, have expected. Though he doesn't consciously know it, he's begun, and in fact is some considerable way past begun, to lose the shallow, anything I want as soon as I want it and drop it when I'm bored attitude that has defined the last twenty years of his life, outside his own front door. He's becoming a different man.

He's still annoyed with Beckett, though. She shouldn't have sneaked out, gone home. She should have stayed. She's his. She said she was. So she should have stayed. Next time, he'll make sure she stays. This time, he wants an explanation. The idea that Beckett might not feel that she owes him an explanation doesn't reach his cortex. He taps out a carefully composed text. Missed you this morning. You should've stuck around. He'll see what that brings. But tomorrow, he'll have an explanation. No-one's ever gone home on him. Oh. That's because no-one's ever been here before, that he wasn't actually married to. No-one, ever. Another rule that Beckett's shattered, and he hadn't even noticed. He'd only worried about no-one being home so that they had privacy, not to protect Alexis.

Ah. That's another thing. Beckett hasn't really noticed Alexis, any time. Others have tried to make nice about her, and even with her, tried to get to him through his daughter. He's stopped that short. Beckett, though, isn't trying to make any sort of impression on Alexis. Ordinary civility, appropriate to a polite teen, yes. But, as ever, Beckett was simply focused on the case, and Alexis was irrelevant to that. He doesn't know if he's hurt that she isn't striving to get to know his family or relieved that she isn't. It's not relevant, anyway. It's not as if they're going to come into close contact.

Beckett reads Castle's text with a hint of irritation. She doesn't appreciate him trying to suggest she should have stayed. They both know this isn't a snuggly, cuddly, fluffy relationship. She's not up for publicity, anyway, or walks of shame past his family. She'd rather go home, be home, alone, in her own space, where explanations of any sort will not be required. She doesn't answer to anyone about, or indeed reveal, her personal life, and she's not going to get into a position where that might change. She leaves the text unanswered, and continues with her quiet Sunday evening, planning for the week ahead.

Plans are, as ever, flexed when a grisly body is found late Monday evening stuffed in a safe, broken and mutilated, missing a finger. A home invasion, carried out with considerable brutality, and some very valuable jewellery drifting in the wind. Beckett, slightly reluctantly, calls Castle. She'd have preferred a couple of days more without him, after the weekend. It all seems to have become more than a little intense, and she'd rather forget – and hope Castle forgets – any admissions she might have made in the heat of the moment about being his. She doesn't want to be anyone's, she doesn't want a relationship, and Castle in possessive mode should be kept strictly confined to the bedroom. There, it's hot. Outside, not so much. Not at all, in fact.

Initial study of the crime scene undertaken, body removed to the morgue with Lanie crooning over it (it's really rather creepy at times, how she talks to the dead), Beckett realises with resignation that she is not going to be able to continue for much longer avoiding Castle's oppressively intent gaze and clear desire to discuss her departure from his loft. He's been trying to corner her for some time, despite the need to get on with the job, and she's tired of the dance. She doesn't see that there's a need to talk about it, or about anything. She briefly considers making the boys take him with them, but that will only work for one trip and she'll spend the next two hours on evasive manoeuvres if she does. She grits her teeth and prepares to shoulder a wagonload of irritation.

She's not wrong. Castle starts as soon as she's pulled out into the cursedly slow-moving traffic.

"You didn't answer my text."

"What text?" That's wholly disingenuous. She knows exactly which text. He's only sent one, since Saturday night. Still, let him think she gets thousands of texts, instead of very few.

"The one I sent yesterday," he points out, as if she should know instantly. Beckett pretends to think.

"Oh," she says with an air of sudden recognition, "that text. It didn't ask any questions so it didn't need an answer."

Castle grinds his teeth audibly. Beckett looks wholly innocent and concentrates on the almost-gridlocked traffic.

"You sneaked off without a word." He only just manages not to say You were supposed to stay. Or worse, I wanted you to stay. Or still worse You have to stay with me. He has to remember that she says she doesn't want taken care of, nor does she want a relationship. He has to remember that he needs to make her think that neither does he.

"You were asleep," she says airily. "It would have been a shame to wake you, so I left a note." She makes it sound so utterly reasonable and normal and not something that should upset anyone in any way at all. "You're really cute when you're asleep. You look so much younger with all your wrinkles smoothed out." Castle squawks, then recovers. She's trying to divert his attention. It's not going to work.

"You didn't have to go. You could have stayed." There's a short silence, during which the tension perceptibly grows. When Beckett answers, her tone has altered: less airy, more direct.

"I wanted to go home. Sleepovers are for kids."

"You didn't say that when I stayed at yours." He's beginning to sound childishly sulky.

"I didn't expect you to stay," she says casually. It's only one semitone away from I didn't want you to stay.

"Well, I expected you to stay. I thought we'd sorted that point out at yours."

"What point?" She has no idea what he means.

"That you stay put. Or I make you stay put." As soon as it falls out his unregulated mouth, he expects fireworks. Instead, she laughs.

"Seriously? You meant it?" What? She sounds as if she hadn't even considered that he might have meant it. "That was just for that night." That's not even a hint of a question at all. No, it wasn't just for that night. It was a statement of how it was going to be. And he has just enough sense and control not to say that here and now, because being dumped out at the side of the road will do nothing to advance his strategy.

He's floundering, again. He used to be calm, smooth and always, always in control. When he got himself into the Twelfth, he thought that he was in command of the situation. When he pinned Beckett to the mat in sparring, won the bet and took her out to dinner, he thought he was in charge. Even when they exploded into scorching sex, it was all still on track. Except it wasn't, and it isn't. It never has been. Everything he knew, or thought he knew, doesn't apply. She confounds him at every turn, leaves him struggling in her wake, and she doesn't even know that she does it. He needs to regroup right now, because this is about to go horribly, horribly wrong. Trying to be protective doesn't work. Trying to be possessive certainly won't. Being irritating will at least lower the temperature.

"Well, I'd meant it as a continuing invitation, but if you want a fresh invitation each time I'm sure I can arrange it," he oozes, smirking. It works. Beckett rolls her eyes but the danger is temporarily averted. He oozes some more. "Or you could just invite me."

"Manners, Castle," Beckett raps, though it's her normal level of irritation. "Well-brought up people don't demand invitations. They wait till they're asked."

"I don't like waiting. It's boring. I don't do boring. Especially when there are so many interesting ways to spend my time." He wriggles his eyebrows and leers villainously.

"Patience is a virtue, Castle. You might as well cultivate one virtue. Though it's gonna be really lonely, hanging around with all your vices."

Castle growls very softly, which goes straight from Beckett's ears downwards. "Here I thought you liked my vices, Beckett. Especially when they match yours so very neatly." Oh, that's a low blow. Especially in that voice. Certain mutually acceptable vices swim up into her conscious mind. However.

"We have a case, Castle. That's more important than your overactive imagination." She can feel his assessing gaze.

"I don't think it's my imagination that's overactive, right now." He pauses meaningfully. "You're blushing, Beckett. Thinking naughty thoughts, are you?" Smooth molasses slides over her, coating her nerves. "Maybe you'd like to come out to play?" And that is just entirely unfair, because the case comes first and she doesn't want to be induced to think about anything else till it's done. She has to give the case her full attention, deliver justice for the dead.

"I have a case. No time."

It's true. She doesn't shift from the precinct for any length of time. The boys go home, and she stays on, relentlessly hunting for connections until she can't prop her eyes open any longer; starting again too few hours of haunted sleep later. Underneath it all, she's proving to herself that she's still as good, as focused, as determined and diligent as she ever has been; that nothing interferes with her work. She doesn't ask herself why she feels the need to do so, at the expense of all other possibilities, when for much of the time she's spinning her wheels, repeating lines of enquiry she's already exhausted.

Castle comes by the precinct for extended periods of observation; meaning in fact extended periods of feeding his obsession and fantasising about taking Beckett home with him, which only leave him mentally and physically frustrated; but though Beckett seems to appreciate his visits – or at least she doesn't threaten to maim or kill him more than once per hour – there's no hint at all that she might want a more intimate form of company, and any time he implies the possibility he's shut down hard. He doesn't like this case, he decides. In other cases, there's been more room for him to speculate and theorise and help and most importantly be involved. And of course to flirt and annoy Beckett until she shifts from irritation to anger to hot and then to the physical. So far on this one there's nothing to theorise about, and no involvement.

The fewer results there are, the more Beckett retreats into her own little world where there is nothing and no-one but the case, and the more tension there is around her desk in the bullpen. He'd like to take her away from it, even for an hour, relax her. But there's not a single opportunity, not a chance for that to happen, and with every hour that she passes in the precinct she's strung more tightly.

Thank you to all reviewers. Please keep telling me what you think.

Hope all of you in the US had a good 4th of July.