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Perchance to Dream
co-authored with chezchuckles

When Castle wakes, her side of the bed is empty, cool to the touch.

He rubs a thick hand over his face and turns his head, tries to make sense of the numbers on the clock. A five, some fours. Early, then. He wishes he had heard her phone - whenever it was she left.

But murder never sleeps.

Castle winces. Not a good line. Over-done. He'll think of another, later, when it's not five in the morning.

He's drifting on half-written lines - no rest for the weary; the nightmare of murder - when he hears noises from just beyond the open bookshelves.

Castle jerks awake, alert to the movement past his feet, and he pushes up to his elbows to look. He sees the faint outline of her profile through the collections on his shelves, and it gets him moving, if not entirely awake.

When he steps through the open door to his office, he sees Kate in her robe, hair in a knot at her nape, coffee cradled one-handed against her chest.

She's rifling through his desk drawer.

"Kate?"

She startles so hard that the coffee sloshes to her wrist. "Ow, hi."

"Hi," he says, amused, mildly curious. "It's early. Did you get a call?"

"What? No. Not on-call this morning," she says, licking the side of her palm, the edge of the mug.

His guts clench and his gaze narrows down to the curl of her tongue. "What're you doing?"

"Couldn't sleep. Thinking too much." She shrugs, but he notices that's not an answer for what she's doing rummaging through his desk. He doesn't mind or anything - she can take whatever, use whatever - but it's still not the question he asked.

She's been like this lately. Reserved. Not that Kate has ever been really great at breaking herself open - and not that he thinks she ought to be. He likes the mystery, loves the mystery. But he did think that once they got married, it would be a matter of a few pointed questions before getting the heart of her. Magically, almost.

The reality is, she doesn't always give up her secrets. Oh, he has her love, he has her heart; he knows that. But maybe he's too tired this morning to go digging.

"Come back to bed," he says, holding out a hand to her.

She blinks and glances down to her coffee.

"You don't have to sleep," he says. "Just stay in bed with me while I sleep."

Kate wrinkles her nose at him, a little laugh. But it's not funny. She's been first out of bed for the last eight or nine days, restless, and if she's unwilling to talk about it, if there's even an it to talk about, then fine. But come to bed, Kate.

"All right," she sighs, shaking her head slightly. She takes his hand and he squeezes her fingers, leads her back to the bedroom with him.

Kate places her mug on the bedside table and crawls in on her side, sliding her legs under the sheets, her robe still on. He gets in on his side, finds his pillow and his place still warm, and he shifts a little towards the middle of the bed.

She lets him, giving him only a lifted eyebrow for encroaching on that invisible line, but she's sitting up against the headboard and there's room. There's always room, but usually when the morning sun breaks through the blinds, it heats up the bed too much and makes it over-warm.

"Come here," she mutters, patting the mattress by her hip. He wriggles in and wraps an arm around her thighs, his head on her unused pillow. She strokes her fingers through his hair and cups the back of his skull.

Her kiss to his temple is dry and warm, and he closes his eyes.

But. "You okay?" he mumbles.

"More than okay," she says softly. "Go to sleep, Rick."

"Wake me when you shower."

"I will."

Right before he's dragged into sleep, he wonders if she wanted him to dig, if she's waiting for him to be his usual annoying self and push her until she gives.

He's too sleepy to make his mouth work.

She's jittery. Frenetic.

It's better than caffeine, working on this little project.

It's the same restless energy she feels at the beginning of every case, the kind that kicks her mind into overdrive. Only this time there's no grief, no darkness in her search.

She rolls her shoulders and arches her neck, tugging her spine straight after an hour of being hunched over the laptop on Castle's desk. She leans back in the same chair where her husband writes about her and taps the end of a Heat Wave marketing pen against her teeth. The cheap plasticky click echoes through the silence of the loft. It's not often she finds herself at home alone, especially not in the middle of the day.

The tendril of a memory comes curling back - no, not a memory - but the atmosphere of being wrapped in solitude. Alone. It's how she used to spend all her time, and now it's foreign, as unexpected as catching the scent of her grandmother's perfume on a passing stranger.

She doesn't get much solitude these days, so she takes a moment to savor it. Stretch in it. She used to be the type of person who needed time alone to recharge, and it's a constant surprise to her that she doesn't seem to need it when she's with Castle. They're so comfortable, so in tune, that she's able to recharge even with him there. Or maybe she just drinks up the energy that rolls off of him. She likes to think that he needs her to steady him, to siphon some of that hyperactivity.

She flicks her gaze to the top of the screen to check the time. An hour to go before she's due to meet Castle for dinner after his radio interview. She still needs to shower and get dressed, but if she's quick she can spend another half hour on her project.

As she scans the words on the screen, questions snap and burst like popcorn in her head. Her whole body hums, alive and zipping.

Maybe it's the secrecy of it that's so thrilling. But it's a good secret this time, not pain and death hidden behind a pair of shutters. Just a spiral notebook filled with neatly printed notes and lists - her own timelines. And a browser history full of websites that she'll clear later so Castle doesn't snoop and spoil the surprise.

Her project is almost finished; it's taken her weeks, weighing pros and cons, doing her research. She's formed a decision, finally, and it gathers on her tongue, almost ready to be shared with him.

Suddenly, a key turns in the lock. Kate listens for the weight of the footfalls that follow. One step - and she knows it's him.

She's caught in his office, still in the middle of her research project.

Well, no time like the present.

"Kate?"

"In here, babe," she calls.

Castle gives her a running commentary as he moves; she can hear him hanging up his jacket in the closet, setting down his keys on the kitchen counter, making his way to the office. "I know I'm back early but the interview got cancelled, and no one decided to tell me," he calls out. "We can still go out, just give me a few minutes to-"

He pauses in the office doorway with one sleeve rolled up and the other in the midst of being un-cuffed.

"Whatcha working on?"

Kate smooths her hand over the open pages of the photo album that's next to the laptop, part of her research. Castle comes around behind her and leans over the back of the chair, digging his chin into her shoulder in just the spot that makes her crumple defensively in on him. She swats his jaw away before the tickle turns into a laugh and he catches her grin with a kiss.

"Wishing you could trade me for a younger model, huh?" he asks, pointing to his own face in once of the photos. He's nearly twenty years younger, a little smoother, a little slimmer.

"Nah. I'd take seasoned, mature Rick any day."

"Hold on, let me get my phone out. Say that again; I need video evidence that you think I'm seasoned and mature."

Kate laughs, then runs a finger over the album page, over the scrunched red face that's barely half the size of Castle's hand.

"I can't believe that's really Alexis," she says.

The moment hangs. A pregnant pause, she thinks. Jeez, she really does have babies on the brain. Couldn't be a more perfect opportunity, really, seeing as she's about to ask him to knock her up.

She's carrying what feels like the entire internet's worth of baby facts in her head, and she feels prepared. Armed. She knows how important it is for the mother and child to have skin-to-skin contact in the beginning. In one photo a father was following suit, and her eager mind had replaced the guy with an image of Rick, his shirt open and their baby's ear against his heart.

But when she opens her mouth, she chickens out. When she tells him she's ready to start a family, she wants it to be eloquent. A gift.

So instead of gathering her courage and lining up whatever words will come, she pushes herself up from the chair and heads for the bathroom.

"Care to join me in the shower?" She looks over her shoulder and catches him staring longingly at the computer screen and the closed spiral notebook. Oh, you just can't handle not knowing what I'm up to, can you Ricky?

But he rouses and follows her, tearing himself away from his own curiosity. She'll have to reward him for that later.

In the bathroom, there's not an ounce of his former hesitation. He sings as he undresses, then catches her for a twirl and a dip. He plants a wet smooch on her before releasing her, spinning her out so fast she has to catch herself. The countertop is cool beneath her palms, and she watches him in the mirror. The urge to see him as a father - as the father of her child - suddenly swamps her.

The words stutter out of her mouth before she gives them permission to leave her heart.

"You know, I've been thinking." She fidgets with her toothbrush, avoiding his eyes in the mirror. "When we get around to this whole kid thing, I think I might want to stay home with them for a while. Maybe for the first year or so."

He laughs.

She cringes. It didn't come out at all like she wanted. Too many conditionals, too many wishy-washy maybes. She meant to outline her logic and then her conclusion with reasoned conviction.

She knows what she wants, and it's to stay at home for the first year of their baby's life, of their new family.

But Castle is chuckling as he steps into the shower. "Yeah, right, you?"

Suddenly, there's no air. She's frozen. Inert. Standing like a naked idiot in the middle of their bathroom.

She's never felt so vulnerable.

At midnight, long after their dinner out, Kate comes back to the office - the scene of the crime. It's perfectly silent, perfectly still. Usually there's life here, in the books on the shelves, in the characters that Castle creates, in her own excited search. Now it just feels like something has been lost.

Her notebook is right where she left it, the plain black cover camouflaging it in the dark. She doesn't bother turning on a light - she doesn't really want him to know she's up. She slumps down into the chair and stares at the silent laptop.

Has all her work been for nothing?

All through the meal, she was distracted. Off-balance. She thinks Castle noticed - he better have noticed - but he didn't pry. There was a time when he would have, but he's learned to give her space. Knows she sometimes needs to just work things out for herself first.

After they came back from dinner, she undressed with him, brushed her teeth next to him, and kissed him chastely before he tucked himself into bed. He passed out before she even got to her side, so she headed into the office instead.

She pulls the laptop onto her thighs and opens it, bathing the room in blue light.

His words play over and over in her head, stinging her numb. Yeah, right, you?

Three little words and she's questioning if she should even be a mom, much less a stay-at-home mom.

She leans back and closes her eyes before tears have a chance to fall. She breathes in on a count of four and out on eight, using labor breathing techniques she read about earlier. Not completely useless, was it?

Four... eight. Four... eight.

She ought to do what she came here to do. The last thing she needs is Castle seeing the obsessive nature of her research in full display on his laptop.

She starts to close the tabs on the browser, getting into a rhythm. Click, click, click. Closing her dreams one by one.

She stops when she gets to the page with the picture of the father holding the baby to his bare chest, kangaroo care, and something gasps back to life inside her.

This is still what she wants.

And damn if Kate Beckett doesn't fight for what she wants.

She opens her notebook and starts looking for the strongest pieces of evidence. Her most keenly felt reasons for wanting this. She'll put together a case so she can properly defend her decision when she approaches Castle again.

She won't give up on her dreams before she's expressed them with the passion they deserve.

Castle wakes with an attitude, already grumpy and whiny even in his own head. He thinks he's had a dream about the Twelfth and Esposito stealing his chair and then maybe Beckett told him go find it all on your own, I'm mad at you.

It's just a dream, but the feeling persists. Frustration and huffy indignation.

Castle grunts as his limbs twitch with the last of it, and he rolls over, chilled by the air over his exposed shoulders.

But her side of the bed is empty.

Castle blinks and can't quite comprehend the pillow, the limp blankets. He runs his hand over the sheets. Cold.

He lifts cautiously, but her robe is gone from the chair so it's not just a bathroom break.

Castle lumbers out of bed and cracks his jaw with a yawn, glances at the clock as he stretches. Huh, not quite three in the morning. Plenty of time yet to go back to sleep. He'll find Kate and cajole her into bed; more sleep should get rid of the headache behind his eyes too.

He bumps his toe against the side of the door, yelping a curse as he hops forward, only to stumble to a halt in the office. Kate is asleep at his desk, her head slumped over one arm, the laptop screen black as it too has succumbed to sleep. He moves cautiously on a toe that throbs, leans forward to brush the hair off her face.

She doesn't stir. She's sacked out, hard, and he gently tucks the hair behind her ear, strokes the strands off her neck. Below her, a little notebook is revealed, ink filling the pages. She was using his pen too, it seems, and he can see words here and there just past her chin.

It's a timeline, he thinks. Month to month. He can't make out any more of it, but if she's up at night working, then it must be important.

He doesn't want her to wake here alone, crick in her neck, like he's done so many times himself. "Kate," he murmurs, touching his hand to her shoulder. "Kate, back to bed."

He leans over and touches a kiss to her cheek, catching the scent of journal paper and her lotion. It's an intoxicating combination - his wife and words.

"Kate."

She shivers and her eyes flutter open, just that fast. But she doesn't seem to see. He lifts up to give her space to wake, rubbing her back, and she licks her lips and rolls her head.

Kate groans and pushes off the desktop.

He tries to smother his amusement, bending close. "Hey, you fell asleep. Working on something?"

When she straightens up, her cheek is creased from the pen, and she rubs both hands over her face. She clears her throat but she doesn't move.

He reaches past her and presses his fingers against the journal's pages. From this angle, he can read a few words. "Is this baby stuff?" he asks, unable to help himself.

She stiffens.

But Castle grins, his hesitation overwhelmed by the defensive way she crouches over the journal. "Don't worry so much. You're gonna be a good mom," he murmurs, curling his fingers around her upper arm. "Come back to bed, Kate. We'll have plenty of sleepless nights ahead."

The challenge in her eyes falls away and she finally stands up, closing her journal and the laptop as well. She comes with him through the doorway and back to bed, shedding her robe while he watches in appreciation and no small amount of weariness.

He gets into bed rather fumblingly, and she slides in under the covers, offering him her back. Castle lays his hand on her shoulder, feeling her tension begin to melt, and he mirrors her position, already sinking into sleep.

Castle navigates the breakfast tray carefully through the doorway and steps up to the bed. He glances down at Kate, asleep on her stomach with her face mashed into the pillow, and he sets the tray down on the bedside table. He leans over her and brushes the curl of hair from her eyes, but she doesn't stir.

"Kate," he murmurs, then sing-songs her name until she cracks open one eye. He's been doing a lot of this lately. Her midnight project. "Hey there, Sleeping Beauty."

She grunts and turns her head away, but he laughs and sits at her hip, catching her shoulder before she can roll over.

"Wait, wait," he chuckles. "I've got breakfast. And a proposal."

She flashes her left hand at him, but instead of the middle finger, she wriggles the ring. "Already proposed. Married. Done deal." Her hand drops back to the mattress and she tries to curl in, like she wants to escape the morning.

"Done deal," he promises, bracing his hands in the mattress at her hips and leaning in to kiss her neck. He feels her shiver and he nudges his nose into her hair. "I have - shall we say a proposition? For you. Kate."

She shifts to her back and looks up at him, eyes heavy-lidded. Her hand moves to fumble at the bedside table, catching a leg of the tray and making her wince before she finds her phone and lifts it.

He presumes she's checking the time because she squawks at him and groans. "Castle. What the hell-"

"Come away with me."

She shifts and sits up, putting her back to the headboard. She scrapes a hand through her hair, holding it on top of her head, keeping it off her face.

"This weekend, just us. Might be one of the last times we can."

"What are you talking about?"

He doesn't explain right away. He just lifts the tray from the end table and lays it over her lap, and then he gets into bed next to her, letting their shoulders touch. She's presented with a plate of fruit, a wheat bagel with strawberry cream cheese, and the perfect cup of espresso (he knows her guilty pleasures and he loves showing her he's been paying attention; the strawberry cream cheese is a recent discovery).

When she sees her notebook on the tray, she goes still.

"You weren't just talking out loud, were you?" he says, plucking a blueberry from her plate and popping it in his mouth. Casual, cool, collected. He knows how to do this. "I know you. I know how you operate. You already have it all planned, Kate, don't you?"

She places her hand over the journal, her fingers lightly caressing the cover. "I was doing research." She glances at him.

Kate is wearing that pink jersey that dips off one shoulder, the short-shorts with those little blue anchors all over the white material. Her hair is a mess around her face, and the beauty mark under her eye, the lack of mascara or eyeliner, make her look young.

But she's also so very determined. He can see that this morning when he couldn't before. "I read your research. You have some rather specific deadlines."

She sets her face. "Not getting any younger and my career-"

"It's not a battle, Kate," he says quietly. He lets his lips furl into a smile, a kind of peace offering. "You don't need to give your defense. I already told you - I want this." He drops his hand over her wrist and curls his fingers up into her palm until she takes it.

"You just gonna seduce me with coffee and strawberry cream cheese? Is that your proposal-?"

"No," he smiles, bringing her hand up to press his lips lightly to her knuckles. "No, I propose we go away for the weekend. Come with me to the Hamptons house and let me properly seduce you."

"Properly," she hums. Her eyes flirt with his, her smile teasing the edges of her lips. "And what then?"

He lifts his hand to cradle the side of her face, wanting her to know it's not a tease. "Then we make a baby."

A laugh bubbles out of her and he grins back, leans in to capture that mirth, that surprise, straight from her lips. She giggles again but he's smothering it in his kiss.

Her fingers caress his ear and then tug. "That sounded kind of dopey, Castle. Make a baby?"

"That little notebook was serious enough," he mutters against her mouth. "Now it's time for some fun."

"Won't happen right away," she warns, still holding him off.

"Don't care." He pushes in to steal a kiss and she gives it, growling a little now, shifting into him.

The tray jerks hard as she yelps, groaning and separating from him. "My knee. Ow. I forgot the stupid tray."

"Trying to straddle my lap. Getting started fast-"

"Your fault," she mutters, leaning against him as she rubs her shin. "Planting that over my hips like a chastity belt."

He laughs and nudges into her with his shoulder. "I think it's a beautiful idea, Kate. Staying at home with the baby."

She freezes again, but it's only for half a second - and if it's her old defense mechanism kicking in, doesn't matter. She's his wife, and it takes only that moment, there and gone, before she slides her knee out from under the tray and over his thighs.

He frames her hips with his hands, looks up at her leaning over him. Lifts an eyebrow at her.

"You do?" She palms the back of his neck and settles in his lap. "For... how long do you think?"

He grins. "For as long as you can stand me at home with both of you."

Her smile twitches, but her face grows serious. "You're right. I'll be back at the Twelfth in no time - begging for my job just to get away from you."

He growls and grips her, and she laughs at him, hanging on, and there's something so beautiful about the sound of that laugh-

It's joy.

That's what it is. She's joyful.

And they're going to have a baby.

Kate wraps both hands around her coffee mug, letting the heat loosen the sleep from her fingers. The world is a watercolor of aquamarine and coral, stripes of sand and sunrise spread out before her. In the city, she likes to sleep late on her days off, but here on the coast she rises with the sun just to catch the cool zip of breeze before the day magnifies.

She pushes her bare toes against the deck to send the porch swing rocking. She hears laughter over the white shush of the waves - the high-pitched ripple of a child's, the deeper rumble of a man's. On the edge of Castle's property, a tiny girl escapes from her father's arms and wobbles on fat, unsteady legs until he scoops her up. She's in a white cotton sunhat and a silly little two-piece bathing suit. Her tummy pokes out, round and smooth, and her father holds her high in the air to blow raspberries against it.

Kate waves at them, keeping one arm over her chest to keep her robe closed. The man smiles and raises a hand, apology and greeting both, then slings the girl up onto his shoulders as they turn back to their own slice of beach.

Kate takes another sip of coffee, savoring the caffeine while she still can. Because, with any luck, it won't be long before there's a child on the beach that's hers. Not long before it's her unshaven, bleary-eyed husband blowing raspberries at six in the morning like a besotted fool. She grins behind her mug, warm and full and so very confident that they've made the right decision.

A month ago, standing on a street corner eating hotdogs between interviews, she'd asked Castle if she should get her birth control device removed. She probably could have broken it to him more romantically, but he'd been predictably enthusiastic about it.

Since then, she's been seeing babies everywhere. Against the odds, they've all been cute, all bright and well-behaved, and she knows parenthood isn't going to be a Gerber commercial, but she's broody and it makes it all look like heaven. It surprises her, this sudden rosy-glassed ache for a baby.

But it's right.

She's with the right man, and it's finally the right time. Whatever doubt she's been harboring, however motherless she still feels, she finally believes that she's ready to do this.

She eases off the porch swing and heads back into the house. Seeing the child on the beach reminded her that spending quiet mornings drifting in and out of sleep beside her husband will become the exception, not the rule.

Castle's on his stomach, taking advantage of her early start to sprawl out over the entire bed. The sheets are twisted around him, covering only the essentials, and the comforter's in a pile on the floor. His hair is ruffled and downy, his lips parted. He looks so adorable she can't even be mad that he has her pillow stuffed under his armpit. She grabs her phone from the bedside table and takes a quick photo before she drops her robe and crawls onto the bed.

When she tugs her pillow away from him, he stirs to make room for her with a sleepy, careworn smile. She slides in along his body, front to front, face to face. His eyelids flutter closed as she traces her thumb over his brow.

She'd be content just to trade the same single breath back and forth between them, but her lungs start to plead for fresh air. She scoots down and presses her forehead to his lips, fitting her nose under his chin so she can breathe. She hitches her leg over his, and he slides his thigh between hers. Not to arouse, just to get closer to her. It's how they used to lie in the beginning - oblivious to the heat, limbs wrenched into uncomfortable angles. His arm winds under her neck, strokes down over the length of her spine. The other hand feathers idly over her thigh, then settles on the gentle curve of her belly. There's nothing there - not yet - but there's something magical in the heat of his palm against her.

The way he's holding her seems to mirror the deep peace that's blanketed over her bare body. She wishes she could see what they look like, asleep together on the precipice of something entirely new.

They're not perfect - never have been - but in this moment they're the very picture of love.

A bird's eye view of hope.

A/N: It was such a wonderful experience to co-write this with chezchuckles. She's one smart lady! We started with the really interesting idea of exploring how people sleep next to one another depending on the mood of their relationship, and it turned into this lovely little journey between Rick and Kate. Hope you enjoyed it.

We'd both love to hear your thoughts - the story is posted under both our names so if you have a sec head over to her page too and give her some love!

Bri x