A/N: So this might be my 'Happy New Year' posting, we'll see. In the meantime, thank you for keeping up the encouragement to write with your lovely messages and reviews.

Chapter 5 – Treading Water

Castle sleeps the sleep of the dead. Alcohol, grief, betrayal, self-hatred - all of these factors drive a deep need to escape the reality of his life, and so he sleeps for hours.

Sunlight moves across the bedroom floor, eventually hitting his eyelids, warming them and illuminating his hooded vision bright red beneath the paper thin covering of skin. He recovers some awareness, sound being the next of his senses to return. He lies still, breathing slowly, body warm and still sleep-heavy on a mattress that seems softer than the one he is used to. A feeling of dread, mingled with regret he can't place, creeps up his spine, racing over his scalp, raising the hair on the back of his neck. He searches his memory, tries to fill in the blanks. Nothing is working. He feels lost.

Suddenly he hears movement – the whisper of limbs sliding over cotton - feels the covers lift briefly and resettle behind him, forcing warm air up from down below to caress his face and neck. He holds his breath, tries not to give his wakeful state away until he's ready to face whatever awaits him.

He recognizes the barely audible swish and crack of a page turning, paper on paper, then a quiet blowing sound, followed by swallowing. The rich, fragrant smell of coffee drifts closer, stirring his other senses, and finally he cracks one eye open.

Within his field of vision is Kate's bedroom window - white, gossamer voile curtains filtering the morning sunlight; softening the eager brightness of the day. He blinks and winces, eyes scrunching closed again until he can master control over his pupils, staring down at her dark blue rug to counteract the light display being thrown for him by Mother Nature.

His throat is dry and raw, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, rough as sandpaper, parched and tainted with regret, until he fully smells the coffee and his saliva glands go into overdrive, forcing him to swallow. Finally, he has to clear his throat, giving the game away. He hears a corresponding movement behind him on the other side of the bed – her side – and he freezes.

Kate is unsure whether Castle is awake. She just heard him clear his throat, watches the slight movement of the covers, then nothing further. He has his back to her, hasn't moved from that position all night. It's almost ten now and she's been awake since eight, despite only getting fours hours sleep. She lay still beside him for an hour enjoying the novelty of having him sleeping in bed beside her at last. And while she lay there drifting, she replayed the events of the night before – the ups and downs, how far she pushed, feeling proud of her efforts, of not giving in to the fear still curled up like a snake inside of her waiting to strike. His reaction to her letter was not as she had expected or hoped, but it was a genuine, honest to God, Castle-like response – to blame himself – and she wonders why she didn't think of it that way before. Still, if he blames himself it softens the blow of her lie a fraction, she rationalizes, since her entire focus now is on keeping them moving forward together and preventing him from backsliding into a bar or a bottle or a deeper mood of depression.

When she finally got up to make coffee, she had tiptoed around the bed to watch him sleep. His face bore a surprising frown, an expression you might even call pained, and she had to fight not to reach out and touch him, to smooth the worry lines from his forehead, kiss the crinkles from around his eyes. She's known for a long time how deeply she loves him. But seeing him like that – hurt and vulnerable – only drove those tender feeling closer to the surface, a powerful surge of emotion swirling around her heart, making her insides ache with the need to be with him, to care for him and to let him do the same for her. Now that he's finally here, she's determined he won't leave until they've talked everything through and begun to fix the remaining pieces inside each of them that are still broken.

So she sips her coffee quietly now, her black Moleskin journal resting on her raised legs as she reads her way back through that painful period in her recent past, glancing now and again at her partner's back hoping for some sign of life, since she's anxious to resume the process they began last night in the corner of a dark Bowery dive bar.

Castle needs to go to the bathroom. His bladder is protesting painfully, while his reluctant brain wants to keep him here in bed for so many reasons it isn't even funny. Firstly, there's the fact that admitting to being awake means he'll have to face Kate; something he is definitely not ready for. Secondly, there's the distinct possibility that he embarrassed himself last night and can't quite remember, and that too will lead him down a path of having to eventually face Kate – see point one. Then there's the fact that it's so warm and comfortable in her bed. HER BED! And finally there is his poor, dehydrated, pounding, depressed, hungover head. It may be safe lying here on this pillow – bearable, manageable – but out there in the big wide world of Kate's apartment, he already knows he's going to feel like hell.

Bladder eventually wins out over brain, since the thought of embarrassing himself with a little accident the first time he sleeps in her bed is none too appealing either. So Castle bites his lip, girds his loins, and slowly rolls over onto his back. He finds himself staring up into the most beautiful pair of hazel-green eyes he's ever seen.

The sun has risen higher, the light filtering through the filmy drapes now striking Kate's irises, lending a muted warm illumination to their naturally beautiful color. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours the writer is struck dumb and yet pained by her beauty with a deep, drenching sense of sadness and loss.

"Hey," murmurs Kate, in a soft, hushed tone, a sympathetic smile curling her pale lips. "How's the head?"

Castle blinks up at her, feeling like that guy in the movie 'The Diving Bell and The butterfly' - the one with locked-in syndrome - as if the power to move his eyes is the only motor skill left to him upon waking this morning.

"That bad?" asks Kate, tilting her head, her smile widening marginally, before her face morphs into a frown that matches his own when he tries to move.

"There's a glass of water and a couple of Advil beside you," she says, pointing across to the nightstand on his side of the bed.

His side of her bed.

"Thanks," he manages to say, though the word breaks free of his parched throat sounding more like the strangled croak a bullfrog might make during mating season.

He tests his arms next, planting his hands on the mattress beneath the covers either side of his hips, tentatively supporting his own weight to ease himself up to a sitting position. He's panting and sweating, his forehead screwed up in pain by the time he makes it upright. The ache in his head is splitting, like the aftermath of being attacked by a thug with a sledgehammer. He feels old.

When he glances at Kate, her head is still tilted to one side, her expression one of unfettered sympathy.

"Coffee?" she asks, wincing as she offers him her mug.

"Thanks," he replies, holding up one hand to ward off the hot liquid for now. "I think I'll start with the water and work up from there," he explains, reaching for the glass and the painkillers she's thoughtfully laid out for him.

His head feels a little better after the influx of cold water, only his bladder doesn't. "I…eh…I need to…"

"En suite is through there," she says, pointing to the door in the corner of her bedroom. "Or you can use the bathroom down the hall," she adds, in case he wants more privacy.

Castle doesn't think he'll make it as far as the guest bathroom, though he's reluctant to use her en suite for modesty reasons, which is patently ridiculous given some of the close-contact situations they've been in together – locked in the trunk of a car, cuffed together in a basement, he rescued her naked from her bathtub a couple of year ago for God's sake, and he just spent the night in her bed. So frankly, he should be able to relieve himself in her bathroom without worrying that she'll judge him or whatever insanity is going on with him now.

"I'll just go fix you that cup of coffee," she tells him, swinging her legs out of bed and throwing on her robe with an alacrity and energy that he openly envies.

Castle feels like a geriatric in comparison when he finally lowers his feet to the floor, tests them for steadiness and then winces as he hobbles all the way to her en suite – all ten or so paces – his brain feeling as if it's colliding with the inner wall of his skull, like a bumper car at a fairground, with every gingerly placed step he takes.

He stands over the toilet peeing for what seems like half an hour, glad that Kate isn't on the other side of the door to hear this, not ready to move from partial mystery to full disclosure just yet. As he washes his hands he looks at himself in the mirror. He's unshaven, a dark layer of growth coating his jaw and chin, and there is a jagged red crease, like a scar, imprinted into his cheek from lying on the pillow in the same position all night long. His eyes look puffy and bloodshot, his hair is a disaster that his fingers can't fix and the spare toothbrush Kate left out for him last night is still in the other bathroom. Just great.

He splashes cold water on his face and pats it dry with a towel and then he squeezes toothpaste onto his finger and 'brushes' as best he can for now, rinsing and rinsing until his mouth feels almost fresh. His tongue looks furry, his skin pale, if he ever hoped to win Kate Beckett's heart, now is not the time. He could hardly look worse if he tried.

Finally, he squares his shoulders, sucks in his stomach, and smooths Kate's wrinkled NYPD t-shirt and his own day-old boxer shorts down over the tops of his thighs in an effort to improve on the disaster staring back at him in her bathroom mirror. Nothing is working. So he gives up, takes a deep breath and opens the bathroom door as another wave of depression crashes over him.

Kate is tucked back up in bed – a sight he didn't expect to see. She has her knees drawn up towards her chest again, tented beneath the duvet, her coffee cup in one hand and the old black journal in the other.

She glances up as soon as she hears the door open. "Better?" she asks, with a hopeful, tentative smile.

"I'm sorry about all of this," replies Castle, giving her a humble nod that half falls into the territory of a bow.

"Sorry about…?" asks Kate, shaking her head, like she's at a genuine loss to place what he might be apologizing for.

"My behavior last night. Getting drunk, dragging you out to that bar, all the crap you've had to put up with since…"

"Castle, can you please just stop blaming yourself for a second? You found out that I lied to you about probably the most important thing we've had to face in our…" she shrugs, and then says the word she's been struggling with, "…in our relationship so far. You're allowed to react to that."

"My timing was terrible," he interjects, letting her off the hook again.

"Maybe so. But that doesn't excuse what I did or how I treated you…after I was shot."

He looks at her long and hard for a second, considering his options, where this goes from here. The hardwood floor feels cold under his bare feet, the sun is now lying in lazy stripes across her bed, and the lure of the warm duvet is tempting, only…

"I should really get going. Mother and Alexis will be—"

"I just called them. Spoke to both of them this morning…just to let them know that you're okay," she assures him, watching as his eyebrows shoot up and then gradually relax back down into his face. "Alexis said to tell you that she loves you and she'll be at Piper's all day."

"And my mother?" he half-groans.

"Martha told me that she loves me," smirks Kate, briefly burying her blushing face in her mug of coffee. "For saving you from yourself or something equally undeserved."

Castle smiles for what feels like the first time in days; an expression that feels stiff and unnatural at first, until Kate laughs at both of them and he finds himself joining in, caught up in the ridiculousness of it all. But his mirth is short-lived, the dull weight of sadness settling back on his shoulders almost immediately.

"Feel up to that coffee yet?" she asks, setting her mug aside to get out of bed again, since she called the loft instead of fetching him coffee before, when he was in the bathroom.

"No, Kate. Please. Stay where you are. Really. You look so…comfortable. I can get my own coffee."

She looks relieved – not about not having to get out of bed, but that Castle seems more with it; marginally better already somehow.

"Okay. Great. I left a mug out on the kitchen counter. Coffee's in the pot."

"Yeah," smiles Castle. "I think I've got it," he tells her, backing towards the bedroom door.

"Sure. Right. Of course," she blushes, slapping her own forehead in embarrassment. "I'll stop fussing. You bring me coffee everyday. Why would I think you couldn't manage to pour a cup out of the pot by yourself?"

"No. Go easy on yourself. I doubt I could have tied my own shoelaces last night. I owe you for looking out for me."

He disappears into the living room before Kate can tell him that he owes her absolutely nothing, that she likes looking after him and other more profound things that get tangled up on her tongue when she tries to spit them out.

When he returns a minute or so later, Kate is reading again, her head bowed over the notebook in concentration, brow knitted so that two little creases rise just above her nose. She has her own mug of coffee cradled against her chest for warmth.

She looks up when she hears him closing the door behind him.

"Hey. You found it." She smiles, looking him up and down in an unsubtle way that makes her heart begin to race, recognizing the bold step she's taking by appraising him so openly in the intimate confines of her bedroom.

"All by myself," Castle mocks gently, holding up the mug for her to see, quirking one eyebrow playfully, until a stab of pain shoots through his skull, reminding him that he still has physical limits for now.

"Okay, wise guy. No need to get cocky now you're sober," jokes Kate.

Castle shakes his head ruefully. "I don't think I've quite reached sober yet. Let's stick with hungover and leave it at that, forget the inquisitions."

"Deal," agrees Kate, wrapping her free arm around her knees and hugging them to her chest.

Castle hovers by the end of the bed for a minute or two, quietly sipping at his coffee, and then he begins to wander around her bedroom, picking up things and examining them. He opens her jewelry box, pokes around inside and then closes it again, he lifts small ornaments – a turtle and yet another elephant – turns them over in his large hand, and then lines them up beside one another when he carefully sets them back down. He flicks through books and lets scarves run through his fingers.

Kate watches him in between reading entries from her journal. The words bring home how depressed she was back then, how low her mood and how lonely and isolated she had made herself. Watching Castle prowl around her bedroom this morning is like a gift after all they've been through, and she can't find it in herself to tell him to stop touching her stuff, as she probably would have done not two days ago.

Finally Castle turns around to face her, the box sitting at the bottom of the bed resting between them both. He taps the lid and raises his eyes to meet hers.

"That's quite some collection you've got in there," he says, trying not to smile. He's fighting the feeling that he should leave, go home and lick his wounds, and for the moment at least it seems to be working.

Kate sets the journal down on the bed and crosses her arms over her chest. "Okay, out with it, Castle," she says, feeling her cheeks pink up, her own mouth getting relentlessly tugged up into a smile by the hint of a twinkle she can see in her partner's tired eyes. "Come on. Hit me with it. Take your best shot."

"What?" he laughs, swaying on his bare feet, trying to look the picture of innocence and failing spectacularly.

"I can tell you want to mock me. But you might want to take a look in the mirror first. Man standing around in his underwear, hair sticking up all over the place..." she smirks, trying to get a pop in before he does.

"Low blow, Beckett."

"Maybe. Depends how you look at it."

"And how's that?"

"You were about to taunt me for having kept a bunch of sentimental crap in that box, weren't you? So, least I can do I try and throw you off your game."

"Oh," he nods, knowingly. "So you think you can throw me off my game?"

Kate grins, knees still hugged protectively to her chest. "Oh, yeah. I didn't get this far without know which buttons to push."

Castle might be hungover, but he knows flirting when he sees it. He makes a half-hearted attempt to join in. Fake it 'til you make it, right?

"Buttons? I see. Care to…eh…demonstrate, Detective Beckett?"

"Are you just going to stand at the bottom of my bed all morning or do you plan on getting back in here anytime soon?" she asks, locking eyes with him and resolutely holding his gaze to underscore the challenge she has just thrown down.

Castle's low mood is coloring everything, making him question his own judgment and Kate's sincerity. He finds it nearly impossible to take things at face value – like that letter she shared last night, which he has now parlayed from declaration of romantic intent into some relic that belongs in the past; as if he no longer believes that's how she still feels.

"I…eh…" he stutters, "I really should get going."

"You said that already. Only we cleared up the part where you have nowhere to be and no one waiting for you back home. So…are you getting in or…?"

Kate's sly trick has worked, she's thrown him off his game good and proper, but she isn't quite prepared for the speed at which he gets serious again.

"Kate, what are we doing here? I mean…really. What is this?"

Her stomach drops like a stone.

"It's Saturday morning. We're…relaxing…" she suggests, tugging on the end of her ponytail.

"In bed. With coffee…?" adds Castle.

Kate nods, just a little too enthusiastically.

"Like we do all the time," Castle then says, sarcastically.

Kate sighs. "No. Of course not. But that doesn't mean we can't start. We need to start somewhere, right?"

"Do we? Should we? We messed this up. We hurt each other, Kate. Who's to say we won't do it again?"

Kate slaps her hands down either side of her on the bed in mild frustration.

"Okay, look, I can't promise you that I won't make more mistakes. And I can't speak for you, obviously. But reading this again today," she says, holding up the journal and waving it in mid-air. "It reminded me how dark things were for me before you came along. You make me happier than I've been since before my mother died. And I mean just being around you, Castle, working on a case, standing in front of that murder board, taking a break for lunch. You make me happy. You make me smile and laugh, and call me selfish, but I don't want to give that up."

"Kate, that's great and everything, but we can't go on like we were. Neither of us can. Living half a life."

"Castle, you're not hearing me. I'm saying I can settle if that's all there is, because what there is up until now is pretty great and probably more than I deserve."

Castle shakes his head emphatically. "No. No, Kate, you deserve more. A lot more. We both do," he insists.

"Okay, yes, agreed. But then just let me ask you one question."

"Fire away," he says, unenthusiastically.

"Yesterday, at the precinct, when you brought my coffee you had something to tell me, something you'd clearly been thinking about a lot."

Castle's face hardens at the memory. But Kate carries on undeterred.

"You started talking about the victims, about how you'd been thinking about all the opportunities they'd never have. You said you didn't want that to happen, but then Ryan interrupted us. You were going to say something, weren't you? Something important. What were you going to say, Castle?"

He freezes at the end of her bed, his mug held a little unsteadily in one hand.

"Can…do you mind if I sit for this?" he asks, eyeing up what recently became his side of the bed.

Kate sets her book aside and her own mug and she turns to face the window. "Please," she replies, gesturing to the space next to her.

Castle sits down on the edge of the bed, but he doesn't get under the covers.

"Okay, look, what I was going to say is irrelevant now," he tells her carefully, enunciating each word slowly. "Things have moved on, changed… We're not who we were twenty-four hours ago."

Kate feels her gut twist in pain at the finality she can hear in his voice. Her lie has cut him deep, maybe ruined his trust and faith in her, but she's determined not to give up without a fight.

"No, you're right, we're not. I've been as open as I can be with you. I'm trying to make up for my mistakes. But leaving that aside for a second, you knew yesterday, or at the very least you suspected deep down that I had lied to you about hearing you in the cemetery, and yet you were still going to say whatever it was that was on your mind, before Ryan got in the way. My lie didn't matter to you then. I could see something in your eyes, Castle, an optimism, excitement maybe, a—a drive to make a change. You were going to suggest something big, something important. I know you were. So if you were willing to see past a lie yesterday morning, why not now?"

Silence.

Her gut instinct was right – he was going to ask her to try with him yesterday, to move forward. And now his head is full of doubt, not helped by the depression that has accompanied the large quantity of Scotch he downed last night.

"Castle, what were you going to ask me?" she probes more gently. "I promised last night that you could have any question, ask me anything, and I would answer you. Now I'm the one doing the asking. Please tell me?"

Castle looks down at his hands, fingers weaving together, twisting.

"I…I'd been talking to my mother about the bombing. We—we were discussing the fact that nobody's tomorrow is guaranteed. Bad things happen no matter what you do."

"And?" encourages Kate, her fingers clutching at the duvet just because she needs something to hold onto, and right now it can't be him.

"And…" He sighs. "My mother is a hopeless romantic who thinks the world can be saved by love alone. At heart, she really believes it's that simple," he says dismissively, leaning back against the pillows to drink his coffee.

It's apparent from Castle's body language that he isn't about to tell her what he was going to say at the precinct. He's closing the discussion down without giving her a truthful answer. But Kate is astute enough to guess where his speech was headed, and talking with Martha on the phone this morning only confirmed it, so now it's her turn to take over in the driving seat of their relationship for a change.

"And isn't it?" asks Kate, boldly. "What if Martha is right and it really could be that simple? If two people admit that they'd made mistakes in the past, but they…they still love each other. Wouldn't that be enough to…to get them to take a chance? To put the past behind them and move forward…together?"

Castle's head rises slowly from the spot on the covers he'd been studying, and when he turns his eyes on her she sees the layer of doubt and hurt still swimming there. Not the smile she'd hoped for when she finally forced the words out; no matter how abstract or theoretical a concept they were couched within.

When he turns away again and looks back down at his cup without saying anything, Kate can feel herself getting mad, the need to fight for him rising up in her chest.

She throws the covers back and crawls down the bed again, dragging the box back towards her until it rests in between them, and then she yanks the lid off and tosses it aside onto the floor. She fishes around until she finds the smaller box containing the photographs she's collected and saved over the years, and then she sits back to open the box and grab the small stack of pictures safely stored within.

"Look at these," she says, furiously laying them out on the bed. "I take it you've seen them already?"

Castle nods.

"Okay, so what do you see? Tell me what you see."

Castle shrugs and then he shakes his head a little. "People. Friends."

"And…? What else?" pushes Kate, arranging the photos in a tiled pattern so that he can see all of them at a glance.

"They're just pictures, Kate," he says uncomfortably.

"Is that so?" she snaps. "So this," she asks him, holding the photograph of the two of them in the Old Haunt in front of his face, the one where he was whispering in her ear about Rapunzel, "this is just a photograph? Doesn't mean anything more to you than that?"

He shrugs, noncommittally.

"Don't lie to me!" she yells, finally finding her voice and the source of her passion. "Castle, don't you dare lie to me. Because I know you. I know you better than that. I know that you can see the same thing in these photos that I can see. That everyone who knows us can see."

"That was before," he argues dully, and she knows for certain that he does see it as soon as he concedes the point.

"Before, after…it doesn't really matter. All that matters is that—" her voice catches in her throat and tears brim in her eyes, because she knows everything hinges around the argument she makes now – his face, his fear, her chat with Martha this morning proved it all - and she thought this would be easier by now.

"It's okay," replies Castle quietly, scrambling to get out of bed. "You don't have to say it," he tells her, heading for the door, his shoulders slumped, the same dead expression she saw on his face when he left the precinct in the elevator yesterday and never looked back.

"Don't you dare walk out on me," yells Kate, a sob catching in her throat. "Not when I'm trying to tell you that I love you, dammit. I love you, Castle. Please don't go," she whispers, dropping her head into her hands.

TBC... Love to hear your thoughts. Hope to be back soon with more. Liv xx