Sleep Alone

I could sleep
when I lived alone.

Is there a ghost in my house?

-Is There A Ghost, Band of Horses

It's easier here. Easier to breathe. One foot in and one foot out.

She stands in his hallway with it trembling through her, all of it, making her feel ragged and undone.

One foot in.

One foot out.

She's immobile. She's always been like this when it comes to relationships; she even told him as much. She's not sure why she started this thing with Castle.

Okay, not true.

She knows why.

Whatever it is that she's one foot in with him - it's both of them. Together. And damn, it won't be changing any time soon - it won't change ever.

Because now she's pregnant.

Fuck.

What in the world have they done?

He's the one who opens the door. Lobby security informed him that she was coming up, and then she didn't, and he expected something like this, but to see it in front of his eyes, feel it in his chest like the blade of an axe-

fuck.

What has she done?

She's on her own two feet, stock still in the middle of the hallway outside his apartment door, her hand pressed over her eyes.

She promised. She promised him she wouldn't-

"Kate."

"Shit."

"You need to come inside," he says quietly. "We have to talk."

"I can't."

And then she leaves.

He can't sleep.

He can't make it stop aching, everything. He wants to be sure that she won't - wouldn't - but he can't be. He thought he knew her, but this is different. This rearranges their lives, completely alters Kate's plan - but he's done it before. He knows how it goes.

He can be a single parent again; he's strong enough. He just needs her to keep it.

He can't sleep and he has to know.

So he calls her at one in the morning, surprised as hell when she answers.

He's the one person she can't bear to talk about this with, and the one man she should, and still, the only one who matters. Also?

She doesn't know when it happened, but he's become the one she works things out with. Not Lanie, not her father, but Rick Castle.

She knows that if he could turn it off for a moment, stop. . .doubting or worrying or panicking or whatever it is he's doing, then they could be thorough about this, rational, figure it out.

It would really be helpful if she could have her partner on this.

So when he calls, she answers.

Grateful and sick and frayed with insomnia.

"We have to talk," he murmurs.

Her silence is a pronouncement.

"Kate. You said you wouldn't-"

"I'm not. I wouldn't." And then he can hear her long breath in and a grunt. "What the hell happened, Castle? We were careful. Mostly. Except for that first - but this happened six weeks ago and I-"

"Kate," he says quietly, not sure what it will do. No point in rehashing this. Over and over again. It's done.

"It's done," she echoes his thoughts, and he hears the resignation in her voice.

"Now we should-"

"No, see, Castle, there's decisions, assumptions being made in that 'we' that I haven't even figured out yet."

I versus we. "You're not in this with me?"

"Well, I'm. . ."

Her silence is worse than the not knowing. He wants to go back to not knowing. He wants to go back to finding her in his bed in the morning and brushing the single strand of hair behind her ear and caressing her jaw, and the thing is? He doesn't at all mind having to postpone that motion to get up and see to the baby crying over the monitor.

"Kate. Be in this with me."

"I don't know how."

"Weren't you before?"

"I don't know what-"

Shit.

He swallows, eyes closing, and ends the call without looking, without good-bye.

"You look like you haven't slept all week," he says when she opens her door.

She misses him - or well, she misses his body in her bed. She misses touching him when she wakes up too early, misses feeling him wake as well. She needs something she's not getting, and so she'll make do with this.

"Castle," she says, not in response, just in warning maybe. And then slides her hands to his hip, his abs, fingers flirting. He jerks, but his eyes are dark and terrible on hers, wanting just as much, and she knows they'll be using each other, but she doesn't care.

"Kate," he mutters. His hands are already at her back and slipping under her shirt, tugging it up and off. She lets him look, lets his eyes rove while she stalks closer, jerks the tails of his oxford out of his pants.

He pops open her bra without another word, but lets it hang there as he starts crowding her back to her bedroom. She wriggles to get it off, makes him gasp with the friction between them, and then drags a thigh up his, hooks it around his hip, makes him work for it.

Castle gets both hands under her, hoists her up against him; she feels her back hit the wall, the solid and demanding press of him.

"This is stupid," he mutters. "This is the worst idea-"

"Too late now," she breathes out, hazing his ear with her teeth.

His hips rock into hers. "Definitely too late. I need you - I need this - I don't care what happens, I need-"

"Shut up," she growls, feels the shame of it wash through her body, stain her cheeks, and even though Castle doesn't comment, doesn't even stop, his fingers making inroads on her pants, she gentles the moment, brings her mouth to his jaw with a soft and delicate touch that has him groaning.

"Kate-"

"Sorry, I'm sorry. I don't mean that. Talk to me, Castle." She feels him pressing her open, wider, and cradles the side of his face in her hand, thumb brushing his lips. This isn't who she is, this isn't how she likes it, but she's been lonely without him, lonely with the weight of all the things she can't begin to figure out, lonely with the darkness and the responsibility and the burden of not knowing.

And afraid.

And it's so wonderful to have him like this, together; they banish all the darkness.

"Talk to me, Castle. I can't think about it - but this, this I can-"

He's working her pants off, sliding his palm down her thigh, rocking against her in a rhythm that feels like love.

"I want this, Kate," he cries out. "I want you. I want everything. The baby, you, the way you love me - I know you love me, I know you-"

"I know," she murmurs into his mouth, slipping her tongue inside, stroking gently, easing the ache she knows must be splitting him wide. "I know."

He pauses with his hand against her, his breath hot on her forehead, and he pulls back to look at her. "Then not this. Not like this."

She drops her legs from around him, body trembling, close to the edge, and guides him back into her bedroom.

"Your turn to talk," he murmurs, his mouth at her neck and sucking lightly. His hands splays at her belly, strokes with the tips of his fingers so that she's arching, gasping. "Talk to me, Kate."

But she doesn't have words for what he needs to hear, and even less for what he wants to know. She only has the motion of them together, and the way he feels, and how she needs it to survive.

"I want you," she breathes out finally, the only true thing she can say.

"I'm already here," he says, and his fingers are light against her face, a quirk of his eyebrow hinting at another meaning-

Oh jeez, she's pregnant. He's already here.

"Can't we just do this?" she whispers, her cheek pressed to his shoulder as he strokes his fingers through her hair, off her damp neck. "I like this."

He laughs, a rumble in his chest that she feels in her body. "This is what got us. . .where we are."

"I thought you were about to say this is what got us in trouble."

"Are we in trouble?" he murmurs, his fingers at her neck, paused.

Kate has to think about that one. Not for long, because she knows what her whole being craves, but she just doesn't know if it's right. Or even healthy. "I don't want to be," she says finally.

"I don't either."

"It's not like this - goes away," she says, disconcerted with a conversation that requires so much nakedness. Not of her body, but of everything else. She wants to press her face into his armpit and breathe. Oh, gross, mistake- "Did you not shower today, Castle?"

He grunts and squeezes his arm so that it traps her there; she struggles, laughing at him, and moves away, propping her chin on his sternum.

"I. . .didn't actually," he mumbles, not looking at her.

"You didn't?"

He shrugs, and she gets it suddenly. She hasn't spoken to him in a couple of days, a week, and he-

"Oh," she murmurs, lowers her mouth to his chest in a soft kiss. "I didn't intend to - it wasn't what I - you hung up on me-"

She stops, presses her cheek to his shoulder once more, can't think of anything to complete that sentence really. Except she didn't mean to make him not shower, to make him hole up in his loft and be unsociable and not himself and. . .sad.

"I'm not sure I know what else to do," he says on a sigh. "I just - you know what I want, Kate."

Except. . .

"What do you want?" she says softly, closing her eyes.

"You."

She waits and then it comes.

"And I want this baby, Kate. I can't - I don't know what happens if you don't, except that I do, and I-"

"I do."

He goes still, but his fingers crunch in her hair, tightly, his arm curling up around her neck. "Kate?"

"Castle, that's not the problem," she murmurs, taking in a ragged breath. "Wanting it - that's not the problem."

"What. . .what is the problem?"

How can she tell him that she doesn't know if, in twenty years, she'll still want. . .this?

The baby, it's hers. It's hers, and she's already - it's already not up for discussion. But just how much of her future is she willing to give away? To him?

His arm is tense behind her neck, but suddenly he shifts, turning into her, his mouth pressing into hers in a kiss that makes her breathless. His hand drifts to her stomach, strokes across her belly button, and oh God, oh God, she has no idea, no clue how they're going to do this, but she needs it, she needs him, it has to work-

"I can make this work, Kate," he murmurs, nips her bottom lip. "Give me the chance to make it work."

But she can't answer him, she can't answer him when his tongue, when his body, when his-

oh - this

this is all she can think about.

"Hey," she says, smiling at him as he sits down at her desk.

Castle's chest eases and he hands her coffee. She shoots him a strange look, wraps her fingers around it. She looks like she could use the caffeine, too.

"Castle," she murmurs, a question and an admonishment in her voice.

He shifts his eyes to either side, sees they're basically alone in the early morning precinct rush. "You can have 150 to 300 milligrams of caffeine a day."

Before he even finishes that sentence, she's sucking down the coffee, chugging it like they're in the middle of a drinking contest. He laughs, tries to hide the smirk, but she doesn't even look like she cares.

"Ug," she mutters, cradling the cup to her chest. "That was half decaf, wasn't it?"

"About three-fourths decaf."

She wrinkles her nose and rubs at her forehead. He watches her, trying not to look at her with too much interest, too much concern, too much-

anything.

"Thanks," she says quietly. "I needed that."

"You get any sleep after you left?"

She shakes her head, gives him a little shrug. "Can't sleep. It's - it's not even. . .this," she murmurs. "Just can't sleep. Oh." Kate gives a strange little laugh and curls her fingers over the top of the cup, at the plastic lid, her eyes on him. "Actually. Maybe it is because of this?"

"Insomnia as a side effect?"

"Better than morning sickness."

He gives her a crooked grin, relieved at their conversation last night, relieved that she's joking about it. He can wait to ask her to move in with him until later, right? He can wait to ask her to marry him. He can wait. He can.

She's - Kate Beckett is pregnant with his kid. His. She's joking about morning sickness and avoiding caffeine even though it turns her into a zombie. She's carrying his child, keeping it safe and warm and-

"Don't look at me like that," she says softly, her eyes a warning.

"Like what?"

"You're too sappy for your own good, Castle."

"Yeah," he agrees, nodding his head. Still. She's-

"You can't," she insists, leaning forward. "You start looking at me like that all the time, and I'm going to - I'll freak out on you. You know I will. You have got to be cool about this."

"I'm cool," he says, the words tripping over themselves to get out of his mouth and reassure her. "I'm good. I promise. Cool and nonchalant and already moving on."

She raises an eyebrow at him, but just then Esposito shouts at her from across the bullpen and they've got to go, a body, she's pregnant and about to roll out-

"Castle," she warns, a strong and fierce grip on his ear. He feels his knees buckle and catches himself on the edge of the desk. "I am walking a thin line here - I cannot take you looking at me like that."

"Apples, woman." He jerks away from her grip, but she's already letting him go, moving past him.

He reaches out and takes her by the hip, stalling her. She lifts a deadly eyebrow but he shakes his head at her.

"You can count on me. I'll do whatever you want, whatever you need, Kate."

Her eyes roll, but he sees the way she's clenching her fists and he realizes that his promise was, unfortunately, more of exactly what she was talking about.

He's got to wait. Wait on her. This can be good, can be so very good, but he's got to be patient and let her come to him.

So when she walks away, heading towards the elevator, he stays put. Be cool.

Kate turns, giving him a strange look. "Castle. You coming?"

He shakes his head. "No. I've got - thing with Alexis. You go on."

She startles, her step actually falters, but she doesn't come back; she gets on with Esposito and her eyes are on him like she can't figure him out.

That's better.

Let her come to him.