Repose

A/N: Takes place directly after 7x14 Resurrection and 7x15 Reckoning (Tyson 2-parter)

repose: (n) a state of rest, sleep, tranquility

X

Castle wakes sobbing, and Kate is jerked wildly out of a sound sleep, her confusion severe, his sounds unearthly, a train wreck, something terrible.

The covers shift off of her as he fumbles out of bed. The rattle of grief in his chest is what drags her after. Kate's feet are useless, thick with exhaustion, and she has to grip the edge of the mattress for balance. The comforter is dragged after Castle's retreating back.

"Rick-"

He turns halfway in the bathroom doorway and waves her off, but she can't see his face - he's moving - and she follows after him.

"Rick." She hears his desperate breaths, the suppression of grief. "Castle."

Before she can touch him, he disappears inside the shower stall, water already bursting to life, drowning the rest. Kate stands just inside the bathroom, sleep-dumb and still unable to think.

Sobbing. A terrible sound. Awake? Coming awake? Nightmare or-

Don't just stand here.

She wouldn't want him out here listening to her sob if their positions were reversed. Kate backs out of the doorway and into the bedroom once more, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She was so out, so deeply asleep, that it's still difficult to come fully awake. No dreams, just a deep nothingness, and faintly the impression of a cocoon of warmth she'd been torn from.

She's done her share of crying in the shower before, especially after he was found alive, and herself so relieved that it spilled out like anger. And no way in hell did she want him coming in after her. Some events are private, not because she doesn't love, but because she does.

And Castle? He's more private a person than anyone might guess, so very private that it took her years to figure him out. He sweeps everything under the rug. He didn't even want to talk about the assault charges on him, the ones Tyson filed after Castle apparently 'questioned' him. He blanks over when she tries to say, what happened to the dead impostor, what happened when you thought it was me?

Kate sinks down to the edge of the mattress, tired, exhausted, but certain she won't sleep if he's not there. She fiddles with her wedding ring, slips it on and off, twirls the metal around as she hears the occasional deep-chested noise from the bathroom.

She's not sure she wants to go in there, to see his grief or fear. It's difficult enough to carry her own. She wouldn't do it to him after he was returned; she can only go by her own golden rule. The water cuts off. That was fast. Maybe a good sign. She's not looking to confront him. Just - be here.

She ducks her head, hair falling down like a curtain; all she can see is the gleam of her wedding ring in the faint light of the bedside clock. A sickly green.

A grunt, silence. She imagines she can hear him toweling off.

She draws her knees up, her heels on the edge of the mattress, and she hooks her arms around her legs, waiting.

And then she thinks better of it; maybe she shouldn't be poised on the edge to interrogate him like a suspect. She shoves off with her heels, pushing to put her back to the headboard, and that's when he comes out, dripping water on the hardwood - careless, especially for him - an arm lifted as he scrubs it through his wet hair.

"Rick." Calling for his attention. Reminder - not alone, not alone. See my face.

He stops, drops his arm, a sidelong glance. And then he turns for the closet and disappears inside. She shifts back, trying to get comfortable, trying to get ready for whatever this is, and then Castle comes back out rubbing a hand over the top of his head, clean pajama pants slung low and crooked on his hips, a t-shirt askew on his torso. She wants to straighten him.

Kate holds out an arm to him and he crawls into bed with her, burying his face in her neck for an instant before shifting to lie down. She wriggles down under the covers once more, rolls into his side, happens to hit that spot on his pillow where he was - apparently - crying.

He was crying. The pillow is still damp. That much.

The reality of it hits her, that he just woke up sobbing from dreams, and she sucks in a breath, wrapping her arm around his torso. He drops a kiss to the top of her head and squeezes her shoulder as if to say I'm fine, it's fine, let it be.

"Do you need to talk or just lie here?"

"Lie here," he says. His voice is gruff with emotion. Still.

"Shower help?"

"Beckett."

She noses down into the material of his t-shirt, kisses his chest softly. Shuts up. She spent a whole summer hiding from her own demons, and hurting him deeply in the process, but there was no other way for her - none. Not then, not the wreck she was. So if he needs her to shut up and just lie here with him, she can most definitely do that.

For months, if he needs it. For as long as he needs it.

Because he's here, he's not gone, and she's here, alive, and anything beyond that is such a precious gift.

Castle lets out a rumbling sigh and his arm tightens around her and then he's turning on his side. They're face to face, his bathed in shadows, but she can see that firm set of his jaw, the stubbornness that means he's fighting some strong emotion. Fighting so hard.

"Turn around," he gruffs.

"What?" she whispers, reaching up to touch his jaw.

He flinches and shakes his head. "Kate, please. Turn around so I can-"

She gets it, rolling to put her back to him just so she doesn't have to hear him say please again. He lets out a shaky breath and draws his arm around her even as she wriggles into him. His knee shifts between hers, his arm tight at her waist, and he presses his forehead into the back of her neck, breathing hard.

She strokes the back of his hand with her fingers, over and over, her whole body aware of him. Aware of the tension he still carries, aware of how strange it is for her to see him this raw. He's yelled at her with love like fury in his eyes, he's been a father with a missing daughter, and she thought those were the worst of grief, but this.

He lets out a tight breath and shifts even closer, and the wordlessness of it all - the absolute silence of his struggle - breaks her heart.

But it's as he said. She knows this. For two months she searched for him, so brittle she was sure she would break, keeping it together until she wasn't. Her obsessiveness - the way she fell into her mother's case like a black hole - that same addictive behavior might be the only thing that kept her upright this past summer.

She had two months, and he had two days, but one hour is enough to know. She wouldn't have wished it on him; it's not like they have to be even.

His fingers twitch under her touch. She lifts his hand to her lips and kisses his palm, clutches him against her chest.

After a long time, his body grows heavy, slumping into the mattress, pressing into her spine. When she's certain he's deeply under once more, she turns slowly onto her back, allowing his sleeping form to settle against her.

Kate curls her fingers at his nape and presses her lips to his temple, smelling the damp of his skin and the faint impression of his scent, and beneath that, the salt of his grief and - and terror.

And she knows she won't sleep now.

X

Twice more in the darkness, he shouts awake.

She's gripping his shoulder, an arm around his neck, holding him against her. Not holding him down, no, just here. I'm here.

Castle goes very still, both times, and then drags his body away from her, out of bed. Movement. Exercise for exorcism.

The first time was a shower to get it out, but the next is simply a stalk into the living room, bare feet slapping the wood, and then back again, a glass of water un-drunk. He crawls back into bed and lies down exactly where he was and says nothing, and she doesn't ask.

The last time, it's a trip to the bathroom and brushing his teeth, as if scrubbing out the taste of horror, and when he comes back, she has to call his name, so softly, to lure him back into bed. He comes, but the hesitation is so evident, the lines of his face too soft, malleable, his eyes bruised with shadows like nightmares are pummeling him.

He lies down carefully. He doesn't settle. His shoulders hunch.

She invites herself over, places her head on his chest, chin tilted up so she can kiss the furious scrape of his jaw where the bristles have come in overnight. The light in the room shifts from blue to a washed-out grey, everything looking cheap and faded, ready to ravel out into nothing.

She closes her eyes and presses her hand over his heart, taking careful measure until it begins to slow once more, return to resting rate, and finally his arms slacken, his thighs relax, and he dozes off. Not deep, and she can't move or dare to breathe, but something like sleep. The ghost of sleep, troubled, not at peace.

X

At six with the light truly beginning, she hears the click of the coffee maker's automatic timer go off and Castle flinches, coming awake. With consciousness, a grunt like shock, a hiss that has him shifting away from her, shaking out his arm.

"Fell asleep," he croaks. And she lifts to an elbow to watch him until she catches his meaning - his arm fell asleep where she was lying on him.

Six is normal, an every day morning, but they're not required to be anywhere. She has the day, which means he has the day, and the next as well, and she wishes, almost, that she didn't.

What happened to that dead woman who looked like me? But it's not a fair question when she saw Espo and Ryan's reports in the closure materials for the case. A set-up, the automatic weapons fire rigged to go, the woman taped to a chair and Castle...

There her imagination runs out. She doesn't know. She deals in facts. The boys were quiet. Just a blank, Castle assessed the hostage and determined it was not Detective Beckett.

How?

Well, she knows. She doesn't need a scene from one of his novels, but how? No, she's fine. Bad enough his ragged silence.

She can smell the coffee now. Day off, what does that look like any more? Castle is sitting up against the headboard at her side, splayed on top of the covers like a man who has run a marathon. Struggled all night. He looks worse than he did clutching at her in the elevator early yesterday morning.

She could make him a cup of coffee and bring the newspaper in with it, settle beside him once more and blow on the surface of her mug, inhale the steam, pretend it's nothing, soldier on. She even opens her mouth to say, I'll make the coffee.

But she doesn't. She turns swiftly into him and slides her knee over his lap and presses her body down against his, threading her arms behind his neck. His head pitches forward into the darkness of her hair, like he's been waiting for just this moment, and he embraces her fiercely, a ragged breath that shakes them both. She buries her own face against his neck, gulping down the scent of him that faded all too fast this summer - gone from the sheets, his shirts, even the towels she didn't wash and the pillow she curled against.

Greedy now. Greedy for him.

And then his hands drag up her back to palm her shoulders, as if in hesitation, before he cups her face and tilts her up to look at him. She raises her eyes to see his like an open wound. His thumbs dust over her eyebrows, making her lids shut reflexively, but she struggles to see him, to stay.

"I thought she was you." His voice is so choked she intuits meaning rather than hears sound. "Oh, God. I thought you were dead."

She sits still and takes it, the crazed quest of his eyes over her face, his fingers too tight on her skull, his thumbs stroking as if searching for cracks, fault lines, mistakes - a greed she knows. And then I open my eyes and look at you.

"That's your nightmare," she says. And mine.

And then she's being crushed back against his chest, his embrace as brutal as the images playing out behind his eyes. She takes that too, and revels in it, this love that is pain, pain that's love, because they're alive, they live.

She manages one tight-fisted breath, and then Castle releases her.

"Get the newspaper. I'll make our coffee," he says.

But his hand lingers in her hair even as she slides away and off the mattress. Their fingers tangle, knot, and then-

release.

X

He falls asleep at ten with his head tilted back in an awkward slump, the Arts section open on his lap. She wakes him only a little, just enough to use her detective voice and make him shift at her command. His body falls heavily into her waiting arms, and she carries him down to the mattress.

She peels the bedsheets out from under newspaper and breakfast remains, and finally she pulls the covers slowly over his prone form. His lashes are the softest shadows on his cheeks, like a boy's, and she kisses the angle of his repose.

His hand twitches. He doesn't wake. She curls around his body and takes her lukewarm coffee, sips slowly with her eyes on the morning.

She'll wake him at lunch, suggestive, playful; she'll wake him with her teeth, maybe, or ice cubes down the back of his shirt, or reading page 105 close to his ear, her breath touching him like fingers.

X

"You married me... but you didn't marry what you could make out of me."

-Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner