One shot. Trust me, its authentic. Everything I wrote, I feel. Except I don't have a 'Castle' to call. .

Don't own them, etc etc etc.

Thanks for the feedback so far! I added a few things that I tried to change last night, but it didn't work. I'm so glad you all like it. The funny part is that if this wasn't categorized under 'Castle' I could quite literally, editing nothing (other than Castle's name), be writing about me... every word. haha. :)

There was a certain unsettling feeling she got about falling asleep in the dark. Not just in the dark, but specifically, at night, alone. It seemed too sharp, too abrupt, like she had some unfinished business to attend to. Even if she thought she didn't, it always seemed so, with the way her head swam when she tried to fall asleep. Puzzles begging her to solve them; to put them back together so that they made sense in her life. Unresolved relationships, conflicts, people she loved, people she loathed. None of them were respectful enough to let her get some much needed rest.

The past two nights, she hadn't even slept in the darkness at all. It was only when the light started peeking in her window that she had been able to put her thoughts aside and finally fall into her pillows. And that was just one night; the other, she had gotten up as though she had slept, moving through her day running only on coffee and a piece of toast. Although intrigued with the fact that she was going strong, barely feeling tired or hungry, even when she was at work, for over 24 hours, she secretly wondered what was wrong. It had to be something. Things like this didn't just happen to people whose lives were in balance.

Tonight, unlike the other two nights, she was actually exhausted. Thoughts didn't just race through her mind like usual either. They lingered. Paperwork she had to complete, what she had to do at work tomorrow, and how she was going to handle another day without her mother being in her life the way that she was supposed to be.

The thing that annoyed her the most was the simple fact that she was lonely. It shouldn't have bothered her as much as it did in that moment, but it ate away at her, giving no mercy. She hated being tied down by such a useless emotion. She was a strong, fiercely independent woman, and the last thing on her mind should be how she longed for human contact, let alone keeping her awake! Even so, all she could do was stretch luxuriously around the body pillow that was her only bedfellow at the present. She imagined what it would be like to have someone next to her, and how it would feel to brush her lips up against the skin of her companion. Knowing full well who she wished it could be, she imagined breathing in his intoxicating sent so vividly, she swore she could smell it right now...

Cursing at herself and flipping over for the twenty seventh time, not that she was keeping count, she closed her eyes again. It was exactly this kind of thinking that kept her awake. She nuzzled into her pillow, breathing in a mix of her natural scent and every bath and body product she used on the pillow case. Hmm. I *do* smell like cherries, she thought. Taking another deep, calming breath, she tried to clear her mind, and finally sleep.

Several minutes passed by, and huffing angrily, she sat up in bed. Grabbing her phone, she absentmindedly started going through it, looking at pictures, and justifying deleting some old ones. She scrolled through her contact list, barely looking at it, but rather watching the contacts roll by as she flicked her thumb over the touch screen. Giving it the biggest scroll she could manage, she let her thumb rest, drifting to think about something someone had told her recently.

"It's when you don't look for it, that love happens," her friend had told her. "And when it does, it will be the easiest thing you have ever done in your life, and the hardest."

She pondered that a moment and looked down at her phone, staring wide-eyed at the contact her thumb had ended up resting upon. Dropping the phone out of surprise, she only noticed that she must have bumped the touch screen just enough to make it dial the number when she heard the ringing come from the speaker of her phone. Diving on top of it, she quickly hit 'end', but it was too late. It had rang, at least three times.

It's 4am, she thought to herself, there is no way he heard it, trying to be logical. But of course there was something she couldn't avoid. Every phone nowadays had caller ID. She knew she was screwed...

But she didn't quite grasp how screwed she was until her phone started ringing, the same contact name appearing on the ID as she had just dialed.

All she could do was stare as Castle's ringtone blared from the phone's tiny speakers, and his name lit up the screen.

This was meant to be a one shot... but I am thinking of either writing what Castle was doing when she was trying to get herself to sleep, or just continuing on and hearing her try to talk her way out of it. :) Thoughts?