Damn, already one o'clock? Had he really been writing that long? After dinner Rick set off to polish up his new story, promising Kate he'd only be a little while. Five hours later there he was, with still some work left to shape out his words.

In bed, Kate had been tossing and turning, half asleep as she tangled her limbs into the sheets, gradually removing every tucked corner and edge from the mattress. Sleeping like this reminded her too much of darker times, unsettling to her consciousness and even her body. Her rest remained shallow as long as she knew he was absent. Everything was cold. Too cold.

Frustrated, she got up, dragged herself with the sheets that clung around her, and walked out to his office, leaning against the shelves as she watched him maintain focus. It took a couple minutes before he realized she was there.

"I know, I'm sorry," he started. He gestured to the screen for blame but she waved her hand to dismiss him, walked forward, and rested her arm across his shoulders as she looked at the screen.

"How's it goin'?" She asked, her undertone groggy and weak.

"I got a lot done but I can't get this one part right," he said as he looked back at the screen. He sighed and turned to face her, a deep ache penetrating him when he saw the exhaustion caked on her face. "Come on, let's go to bed," he said, urging her as he stood up. She kept him down on the chair, shaking her head at him before kissing his cheek, then down to his chin, and then the base of his neck.

"Do what you gotta do, I just wanted to see how you were doin'. I'm gonna try to go back to bed," she said, starting to walk away. In a flickering thought, he tugged and pulled on the sheets she wrapped around herself, her slippers permitting some sliding along the floor to bring her back to him. "Castle—!" She exclaimed with a laugh. He smiled at her and she mirrored it, but with contradicting angry eyes and furrowed brows.

"Stay with me," he said. His voice soothed her ears, each syllable like a caress against her heart. A tender man. A loving man. Her man. She pondered it, her lips shifty to suppress her consideration at the thought of staying up with him on a school night.

"Baby I told you I have to get in early tomorrow," she said. Her words expressed her belief but her tone spoke otherwise. He could hear the weak resistance in her voice, and he loved it. He knew she wanted to stay. And she knew that he knew.

"If you're not gonna be sleeping, you might as well be here," he said. She looked away from him, still fighting it, but he didn't wait for her approval. He went for her hand and pulled her onto his lap. Her face expressed her reluctance but her body willingly came, and it fit snug into him as she settled in, her legs pulled up to hang over the armrest and her torso wrapped by one of his arms.

"Are you gonna get stuff done with me on your lap like this?" she asked, clearly skeptical.

"As long as you don't try anything—which for the record, I'm not against." He looked down at her with a grin, only to see one returned as she shook her head like he knew she would. As he went back to work she just gazed up at him with hazy eyes. She studied him, zoned in on his work, and unconsciously twisted and tugged on the neckline of his shirt. He didn't seem bothered, so she kept going, more comforted and settled now than the moments before in their bed.

"It's funny," he started up again, "I thought about this before. Before we were even dating."

At the thought she picked up her head from his chest, sitting up a little more to face him. "This?"

"Yeah. I mean…I just thought that this would be something that would happen if we ever got together. I'd write late into the night sometimes, and some nights I'd imagine you with me, like this." He sat on his words, just musing, reflecting back to days before—life before her. "I don't know, it's just funny that now, I can't imagine what it's like not to have moments like this, without you. Then I think of when I was gone, how that must've been—how that still affects us, what we have. I guess I'm saying…I just don't want to take this for granted."

How well she understood him. It scared her at times how he could feel the same things as her—the same wants, fears, to the very letter and degree. These very moments not only made her feel secure and safe and right with him, but they reaffirmed her trust for him…her faith in who he was as a person, who he was to her, his love for her, and everything in between.

"I think about that too. I still think about all those nights you were gone. Every day and every night…it was like all that time, everything, you had been a dream and then someone shook me up to wake, and you were gone, and so was that life. Every day and every night was like finding that dream again, trying to go back. Mornings were…I don't know, thinking about it already—" she cleared her throat, trying to hold back, swiping away the tears starting to pool in her bottom lids. "I don't wanna find myself missing you like that. I don't think I could bear it. I'd lose everything else. Everything. Everything but you—your love, being able to love you. Everything but you."

His eyes curved in, turned in earnest, looking on his wife with such pain. Just holding her, he pressed his lips onto her head, breathing into her hair. He knew he could never relieve her of the things she felt in all those months of his disappearance, but he knew efforts had to be made to get her to a place where she could find some semblance of peace. He brushed back stray strands from her face and rhythmically rubbed her arm, almost consoling. "I'm always here. And when I'm not, I promise I'll find my way back—again, and again, and again. You're home."

Hearing the words again in his head, a flash lit his mind and he darted to type out the last few lines he'd been working on:

As much as he didn't want to admit it, no matter what Rook would always come back to Heat, and her to him. Some kind of bind existed between them. It was like his soul demanded to him, "it's her," and for that he couldn't turn away. He'd always return to her again, and again, and again.

When he finished, he discovered a sleeping Kate, slowly dozing further into him. Her mouth hung a bit, some drool seeped into his shirt as her lips trailed the surface of it. He chuckled, though weakly, a heavy haziness overtaking him all at once. Too comfortable to move, he shifted aside his things and propped his feet up, then Kate's as well, and shifted around for the optimal sleeping position.

It'd be a long night like this, but he liked this dream anyway.

He loved this dream.