Compartmentalization Doesn't Work

She's bent into a contortionist's pretzel on the wood floor of his upstairs hall when he realizes this is ridiculous.

"I should just pull the mattress off the guest bed," he huffs. "Duh."

She lifts her head from her knees and blinks at him. "Oh. Yeah. Do that."

Castle feels every old bone in his body as he levers himself off the floor and he hears Kate snickering, kicks at her feet with his toes to drop her down. She kicks back and trips him up as he heads down the hall.

"Uh-huh. Spy in your blood. Right."

He narrows his eyes at her over his shoulder and promptly walks into the door frame of the guest room. She's laughing at him and trying to smother it.

"Hush, my daughter is trying to sleep," he hisses, overacting because she's giggling a little - yeah, that's a giggle - and because this was her idea and it's kinda sweet. And also his toe is seriously throbbing right now. Ow.

"Go get me my mattress," she shoots back.

"What happened to doing this together?" he mutters, but he's not really serious.

He wanders inside the room and strips off the bedding first, feels Kate coming up at his back to help. They work side by side, throwing the sheets and comforter and pillows into a pile in the hall, trying not to laugh when one of them stumbles, dragging the mattress off the box springs and sucking in their breaths when it thuds loudly to the floor.

"Oops," she mutters.

"Oof, help me." He waits for her to grab her end again and then they duck-waddle the mattress awkwardly to the doorway, staring at the narrow threshold.

"Oh, oh, wait. On its side, Castle," she laughs.

Ohhhh, right. Yeah. "Wow, I'm tired," he says, shaking his head as they fight to flip the mattress onto its side.

It wobbles and tilts precariously; he feels it coming, sees it coming, but neither of them can do anything to stop it. He gets smacked in the face with a queen-sized mattress and pushed violently back into the wall.

"Are you laughing?" he groans, his mouth mashed into mattress.

"No-o," she gulps.

"You are. Get it off me."

"Death by Mattress. Ooh, new title, Castle."

"Mattress Heat?"

"Ew, that - that does not sound good."

"Will you just lift this thing?" he growls.

"You gotta push on it too. I can't do all the work here."

"There could be some subtext to that I think," he says, even as they get the mattress back on its side and off of him. She's tilting her head as she studies him - probably a line down his face where it smacked him, rumpled hair - oh, bedhead! perfect - and yet she seems a lot more serious than the situation warrants.

"Some subtext," she says slowly, nodding.

Wait. What? Oh, she can't do all the work.

Huh. "Let me think on that one," he says finally then inclines his head towards the door.

They push together and slide the mattress out into the hall, and then he strategically places it a bit down from Alexis's door so she won't step on them to go to the bathroom.

"Okay just let it drop," she directs him.

They let go and the mattress falls towards the opposite wall and-

sticks.

About six inches off the ground.

"Huh," he mutters.

"Is the mattress too wide for the hall?" she whispers.

He eyeballs it and then winces. "Could be."

"No, no way. I'm tired," she grumbles. "I want to sleep."

"You could go back down-"

And then she's clambering up onto the slope of the queen-sized incline and - and - and jumping. Bouncing really, to be technically accurate, but she huffs and rocks her body down into the mattress and it starts to scrape down the wall, slowly, bending to her will and desire.

Smart move.

"Help me, Castle."

He climbs up next to her and lends his weight to the effort, putting his back into it, and then he grins at her when he realizes.

"Hey, we're both humping the mattress."

"Shut up."

"I mean, it's funny. Mattress Heat. Because you're rocking-"

"I said shut up."

He narrows his eyes at her and gives the firm mattress a sharp shove. It hits her right as she comes back down on a bounce and she flips off the top end and down into him, both of their bodies crashing hard into the wall.

"Ow," he whispers.

The door opens.

"What are you guys doing?"

He opens his eyes to see his daughter standing in the hallway with her arms crossed over her chest and a very Beckett raised eyebrow.

He swallows hard and glances to the aforementioned Beckett.

She's frozen too.

"Dad," Alexis says with a little sigh at him. "I know you're trying really hard here to be happy and funny and keep it light for me. I know. But this is. . .a little much."

He swallows and tries to get to his feet, finds that Beckett has already managed to oh-so-gracefully stand and appear regal and dignified and poised before his daughter. As if she was never sprawled underneath him on a bare mattress and pressed against a wall.

"And Beckett," Alexis goes on. "I really didn't expect you to encourage him. Why don't you guys just. . .go back to bed?"

Kate's mouth drops open for a heartbeat, but then she wraps her arms around Alexis in a hug and whispers something that he's not privy to. He narrows his eyes but his daughter's whole demeanor softens from it's one in the morning, why are you such a child? to oh, daddy just like that.

Okay, that works for him.

"Fine," Alexis sighs. "Sleep out here. But. . .can you make me a promise?"

Castle tenses. "Uhh. . ."

"Just sleep. Okay? I don't want to hear. . .all this."

Ohhhh, not good.

"We weren't - doing things!" Kate gapes.

"More's the pity," he sighs. "But we already-"

Both women turn to him with deep and dangerous murder in their eyes and he shuts his mouth quickly.

"Alexis, it was just trying to get the mattress in place," Kate answers. "But no. We promise. Just. We'll be quiet."

His daughter nods and reaches out to hug him, and he'll take that too. Her arms come around his neck and squeeze, and he can't help threading his fingers into her hair and cupping her by the back of her head and breathing her in. He straightens and lifts her off her feet and she's murmuring dad, dad in that same small voice she had when he found her in a damn cage and it rushes over him so fiercely that he can't let go. He couldn't open his eyes and move on if the world crashed down around his head.

"Rick, come on," Kate is saying, her fingers stroking over his biceps, his shoulder, his side. "Rick."

I'm not, I'm not letting go, I'm not-

"Daddy," Alexis says, right into his ear and her arms are around him. "You have to let me go sometime. Tonight. Preferably."

"How about tomorrow?" he chokes out.

"It is tomorrow."

"Darn. Always using logic against me."

"Only because I love you."

He sucks in a breath that is entirely too ragged and he lets her back down on her feet and she steps away from him, her hands going slowly, her eyes on his as if she's making sure he's really okay.

But it's her he's worried about. Her innocence and her sweet little girl smile and the way she attacks life.

"I'm going back to bed now," she says firmly. "And you go back to. . .the mattress on the floor."

He gives his daughter an appreciative smile for the attempt at humor but he doesn't take his eyes off of her. She wriggles her fingers in a wave, glances once more to Kate, and then shuts her bedroom door.

"Well that was unfortunate," Kate sighs.

"Yeah, and it was your idea," he mutters back. He gives a louder sigh to offset the real sigh that wants out, aching and lonely, and he turns to Beckett with a pitiful look. All a mask. All a facade, and he knows how deep they go, but does she?

Kate is studying him and he thinks maybe she does. But she never calls him on it; she may never in their lives call him on his emotional bullshit. Instead, she leans over and shoves the mattress into place in the hallway and it flops to the floor, wedged tight wall to wall.

"Help me make up the bed," she says then, and even though her voice is resigned, he thinks maybe she doesn't need to call him out for his false bright spirits and the forced hilarity.

Maybe her willingness to play along is all he really needs to crack right open.

She has always been able to get to him.

He starts making up the bed.

He's on his back and he can feel his finger twitching on his chest. He's being pulled slowly and ever surely up out of his sleep, and the twitching becomes an itch and he moves.

His eyes open to find Kate peering over him, her hair made golden in the glow of the nightlight plugged into the bathroom and spilling out around them.

Her hair is making his finger itch.

"Castle," she says again, quiet, intent, persuasive.

"Huh?" he mumbles and somehow he catches the soft ends of her hair in his fingers and traps it. She blinks and pulls back a little, but he holds on.

"Castle, your daughter."

He's awake now, sitting bolt upright, his heart pounding, and then he hears the little noises, the small and alone noises, and his body won't work to get him there, to get him up, and into her room, and to stop it, to stop it.

He trips in blankets and maybe Kate, but his hand is on the knob and he twists the door open and pushes inside. It's not dark, and he doesn't think Alexis just fell asleep reading, not with the soft blue light of her phone bathing the room in such a deep and relentless hue.

It's a nightlight app.

The phone displays a little florescent butterfly and it pulses softly; the room shifts between a deep blue to a pale purple and back again.

And his daughter is crying in her sleep.

Kate is sitting cross-legged on the mattress when he shuts Alexis's door softly after him. He gives her a wan smile and she doesn't smile back, just waits for him.

He drops beside her, lays his face at the soft skin where her neck meets her shoulder, and he tries to breathe. He feels her fingers running through his hair and massaging his nape, over and over.

He sighs and lifts his head.

"It gets better?" he asks.

"Yes."

He nods slowly then wraps an arm around her shoulders and drags her down with him to the mattress. She touches her fingers to his chin and then against his chest and he tries the smile again, finds it's less watery than before.

"Didn't think you'd be doing the up all night parenting, did you?" he says, the humor in it a little bitter.

She gives him this funny, soft look and her lips nudge upwards. "At least not so soon."

At least not...

"Oh," he rushes out, a little startled noise, and then the reality of it hits him so hard that he can't breathe. "That's not a good idea. Not at all a good idea. I can't keep them safe - they're never safe anymore, Kate. There's not - there's so many ways to lose them, to slip through the cracks, and I told her - I warned her about the information she put out on that blog, but she still-"

He gets her hand over his mouth and the hard press of her body against his, and that strange, rhythmic shushing as she shakes her head. He's entranced by the murmur and the hush, Castle, and the feel of her fingers at his lips and he blinks slowly back to now.

Castle releases the tight hold he somehow had on her waist and he closes his eyes to breathe, opens them again. She draws her fingers over his mouth and gives him an apologetic wince.

She speaks quietly. "I didn't see anything wrong with it either. It's just the risks of life, and I'm so sorry it happened to her, but Castle, God, Castle, she's safe. She's home, and she's going to be okay. Don't dwell on it. Don't live back there."

He nods. She probably knows a lot about that - dwelling on it.

Her fingers curl at his chin and she pushes in to give him a brush of a kiss. "If there's anything I've learned - and it's been mostly within the last year with you - it's that there's too much good in life to worry about all the bad."

"There's a lot of bad," he rasps.

"You're only saying that because it's three o'clock in the morning and you're tired," she shoots back.

"And because I just held my college-aged daughter like she was three years old again and. . ." And there are whole hours that are missing. Whole chunks of day where he knows he was focused solely on Alexis to the exclusion of all else - the exclusion of breathing, sleeping, eating, functioning at all beyond the realm of what it took to get her back.

She seems to be waiting on him. She's done a lot of that today.

A lot of that waiting through this whole thing, though. Hasn't she?

The subtext. It's there, if he's man enough to read it now.

"I should've called you," he says slowly.

She's just looking at him in the intimate darkness and he sighs and closes his eyes against it. But he tugs her up against his side and she arranges herself slowly to fit.

He feels his body loosening. "I should've called you. And are we just gonna blow right by that parenting comment from before?"

"Yes," she says firmly. "Yes to both. Blowing right by it."

"Uh-huh," he mumbles. Sleep tugs at him, alluring, but he remembers something else in the darkness. "Did I step on you to get to her?"

"Only a little," she sighs.

Oh, the subtext. Not just tonight. "I'm sorry, Kate."

"Go to sleep if you can," she murmurs, and her fingers stroke at his sternum.

"What about you?"

"I'm right here."

Yeah. Yeah, he's beginning to really see that. "You sleep too. You must have stayed up this whole time listening for her."

"I'm a light sleeper," she says quietly, her voice trailing over him like silk. "Don't worry about it, Castle."

He hums. "Good practice then."

"That is not blowing right by it," she warns.

And this time the grin that flutters to his lips is real. Even if sleep takes it quickly.