A/N: For those of you who read this within a few hours of the time I posted it, I'm sorry! I did put breaks in between the scenes, but I used stars instead of the actual formatting lines that I guess I should've used, which used to work for me, but apparently they didn't come through for some reason. Since I get confused when I try to read it without the breaks and I wrote the thing, I can imagine you were probably irritated with me for that. I fixed it, and it won't happen again. Thanks again to the reviewer who pointed that out.
Something else that was pointed out to me (thanks!): I really didn't give much of an idea of context here. Figure it's set somewhere around the beginning of the third season.
To everyone who reviewed: thank you so much! I love getting feedback, it's incredibly rewarding. And I love how most of you seem to be enjoying my writing! I promise to do my best to keep it coming. This chapter just kept getting longer on me. Hope you like it!
Kate collapsed on the couch as soon as she got to her apartment. She squeezed her eyelids shut, trying in vain to stop her head from throbbing. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt this awful. She grabbed the blanket off of the back of the couch and covered herself with it. She thought sleeping would help, but her head was hurting too much to allow that to happen. She knew she should take something, but she was also positive she didn't have anything that would help in her medicine cabinet, and there was no way she was leaving the couch, let alone the apartment.
"Call if you need anything," she heard his voice in her head. She almost laughed. She would not call him. She just couldn't do it.
Her stomach growled. Crappy as she felt, apparently her appetite was unaffected. She got her phone out of her pocket and scrolled through her contacts in an effort to figure out what kind of food to order. She sneezed as she was scrolling and had to stop for a second, and she smiled involuntarily when she opened her eyes again and realized what was highlighted. Castle, Richard. She wasn't sure why, but she selected it.
His voice ran through her head again as she looked at the text message screen her phone had opened. "Kate? Feel better." He didn't often call her Kate, but for some reason she wasn't exactly sure of, she liked it when he did. And for once, she really wanted to take his advice.
She tried to press the back button on her phone to continue her restaurant search, but in her exhausted, semi-delirious state her finger must have slipped and she hit "send" instead. "No!" she said aloud, trying to cancel it. Her voice barely came out. Great, now I'm losing my voice too, she thought. Her phone read "message cancelled," and she breathed a sigh of relief. All she would have sent him was a blank text, but still, she didn't want him to know she'd been thinking about him at all, even if she was delirious. In fact, she didn't want him to know she was delirious.
She found her way back to her contacts, and this time skipped the browsing and went straight to the number of her favorite Chinese restaurant. But then she remembered what she'd discovered just a minute ago about her voice. "Hello?" she tried to say as a test, feeling ridiculous for talking to herself. It sounded like a strained whisper. She tried clearing her throat, but it hurt, and didn't seem to help her voice at all. "Great." She couldn't order food with her tiny shred of a voice, all the decent delivery places were staffed by people who barely spoke English. Clarity was a must.
She whimpered. She was hungry but she couldn't order food, and there was no way she was getting up to make anything. She was tired, but her head hurt too much to sleep. She was freezing and the light blanket she kept on the couch wasn't doing her much good. The only way she could possibly be more pathetic was if she called Castle, and that she would not do.
She couldn't figure out why she kept thinking of him, anyway. Although he was the only one who said so, she knew there were plenty of other people in her life that would drop whatever they were doing and bring her what she needed if she asked. Her best friend and the guy she was dating were both medical professionals for God's sake, and she knew that either one of them would come over immediately if she just called. But it was Friday night, and she was sure that Lanie had a date to get ready for after work, and the thought of Josh seeing her looking as unkempt and miserable as she was positive she did right now made her nauseous, a feeling completely unrelated to her sickness. Their relationship was still new. They were still blissfully ignorant of most of each other's imperfections, and she saw no reason for that to change just yet.
Then there was the fact that she was probably contagious and would feel terrible if she gave what she had to any other living human being. For the most part. She briefly had the idea that she should go back to the precinct and breathe on all the murder suspects in the holding cells, but she quickly dismissed that because it would mean she'd have to get up.
The truth was, unless she was legitimately dying, she wouldn't call anyone. It was just part of who she was. She wouldn't inconvenience other people for own benefit.
She lay there for what felt like a pretty long time, but she wasn't doing anything, so it probably seemed to her like longer than it was. Then she heard her buzzer ring. She had no idea who it could possibly be, but not seeing an alternative, she got up and answered the door. She held the blanket around her body, but still felt a rush of cool air around her as she got up, and shivered. She opened the door, and her eyes narrowed when she saw who it was.
"Castle?" she croaked. "What are you doing here?"
His eyes filled with genuine compassion. She would have been touched if she wasn't so annoyed that he was here and seeing her like this, wrapped in a blanket and looking, she was sure, worse than she had at work. "You lost your voice now? Geez, whatever it is you have sucks."
She said nothing, partly because it hurt to talk, and partly because she didn't have a response to that. She considered nodding in agreement, but remembered she wasn't admitting to Castle that she was sick, so she just stood there, staring at him.
Undaunted, he held up the bag he was carrying. "I brought you a care package. Let me in for a second? I promise I'll leave in less than two minutes."
She sighed and moved away from the door, which she knew he would take as an invitation. She was right. He followed her into her living room and set the bag on the coffee table, sitting on the edge of the small, not especially comfortable lounge chair and leaving the couch for her to reassume. She did, but now she sat instead of lying down.
He took a plastic bowl-like container out of the bag. "Best chicken soup in the city," he said, his eyes twinkling. "If you're hungry. If not, you can heat it up right in this container later." He pulled out a much smaller plastic bottle. "Advil. In case you didn't have any. To help get rid of your headache and fever." A plastic pouch. "Sore throat drops. They're peppermint, and they actually taste pretty good." A small cardboard box. "Tea in all kinds of different flavors." And, it looked like last, a teddy bear. "And this might look like an ordinary teddy bear, but it's not. My mom got one of these for Alexis, and she loves it. You put it in the microwave, which might seem cruel, but I promise this little guy won't feel a thing. It heats up and apparently has some kind of nice girly scent. It was intended for, ah, you know, that time of the month, but Alexis loves to just hold it when she's sick, or even just when it's cold outside. So… whatever." He let it sit on the coffee table.
She couldn't help but smile, especially at the teddy bear. It was ridiculous, but nice.
He grinned. "Yes, a smile. I was trying to get you to do that all day."
She half-rolled her eyes, but it hurt her head. "Thanks, Castle," she said. "That's sweet."
"Not a problem." He paused. "I got your text."
"What? I cancelled that!" She used more force than she should have to say that, and grimaced in pain.
"Well apparently it sent anyway," he said, grinning. "It was just a blank message though, did you actually type something?"
"No," she said quickly, shaking her head in case the word didn't come out. It did, but just barely.
"I figured you were thinking of asking for something but changed your mind," he explained, "so I brought everything I could think of."
She started to say something, but he held out a hand, stopping her.
"You don't have to say anything to that. I can tell it hurts you to talk, and I honestly don't care if I was wrong. I wanted to help out a friend. Just promise me you'll use at least one of the things I brought."
She nodded.
"Excellent. That's all I wanted. Can I do anything for you?"
She took the soup. "Spoon," she whispered. "Drawer in the kitchen."
"I can do that," he said, immediately getting up. He came back a second later with the spoon. "Anything else?"
She nodded in thanks and picked up the Advil. "Water?"
"Just a second," he said, going back into the kitchen.
She started to eat the soup. It really was good, and the warm liquid felt amazing on her throat. Soon he came back in and handed her the water. "See, isn't that soup good?"
She nodded.
"Anything else?"
She shook her head.
"Do you want me to leave?"
She didn't respond for a long moment, continuing to eat her soup. Did she want him to leave? Finally, she shook her head, slowly and slightly.
He tilted his head, surprised. "You don't?" He sat down in the chair again. "Okay."
He actually sat there without saying anything until she finished eating.
"Wow, you were hungry," he observed, as the bowl was empty. "That was a pretty big container."
"I didn't eat much today," she said, her voice starting to come back a little, although it was still hoarse.
"You sound better," he said. "Behold the healing powers of soup."
She smiled and opened the Advil bottle. She held up her water glass for a split second as if toasting, and took two. "Thanks for all this," she said. "You should go. I don't want you to get sick."
He waved her off. "I never get sick."
"Yeah, neither do I."
"Okay, but I'm a dad. Parents have a special kind of immunity. See, little kids get sick all the time, and at first their parents get sick every time they do, because we have to take care of them. But then after awhile, our immune systems get stronger and we stop getting sick when our kids do, and eventually we're immune to almost everything."
She raised her eyebrows. "Well, I'll admit I'm not a dad." This seemed to be the closest thing to a witty remark she was able to come up with at the moment. "But even if that's true, don't you need to get back to Alexis and everything?"
He made a face. "Please. She'll be in bed by eleven whether I'm home or not."
"Not a whole lot of parenting you have to do there anymore, is there?"
"No," he said sadly, "not a whole lot. And you have no idea how much that scares me."
"I have some idea," she said, smiling. She involuntarily shivered.
"Let me heat up that bear for you," Castle offered. "I promise it'll make you feel better."
"Don't make promises you can't keep," she grumbled, but she didn't try to stop him from taking the bear.
He went back to the kitchen, but this time took a different route, purposely walking right past her, and let the back of his hand brush her forehead. "Geez, Kate, you're hot. In more ways than one." He'd been trying to make a joke, but his face showed concern, not amusement. "That Advil you took should start to help soon, though."
"How in the world did you do that so fast?" She frowned, annoyed.
He smiled, but carried the worried look in his eyes. "Practice. Alexis used to hate it when I felt her forehead."
"Are you remotely aware that I'm not your six-year-old daughter?"
"No. Not right now. Why, is that a problem?"
A flicker of a smile crossed her face, but she quickly extinguished it. This was Castle. She should be completely irritated that he was treating her like a little kid when, clearly, he was the immature one. But strangely, she really wasn't. It was nice to have someone taking care of her for once. But she couldn't tell him that… could she? No, she certainly couldn't. "Yeah, of course it's a problem." She sneezed so hard that it actually hurt a little. "Oh, my God."
"Do you want me to leave?"
"I already told you I didn't. But if you want to leave, you can. I'll be fine, you know."
"I know you'll be fine eventually, I just don't want you to be completely miserable until then."
The corner of her mouth twitched up slightly. "Okay, then do the thing with the bear."
He smiled. "Done."