58. 59 and 60: Tuesday and Wednesday

59 & 60

Kate is pushed violently from sleep.

Her heart pounds as she lifts her head, a gasping clutch at air, and then she realizes that Castle's leg is slung over her hips and his arm is around her neck, tight.

She wriggles out, escaping that sensation of night-time panic as she does, and slips out of bed, pushing her hair out of her eyes. Kate heads for the bathroom, getting some distance, and runs water in the sink, splashing it in her face, as she tries to recall what woke her.

No dreams that she can remember-

Oh well, actually. She was dreaming about the beach. Oppressive heat, the sun in her face, searching for her shades in the bag and not finding them. The water curling at her toes. She can't understand why this would wake her up, doesn't know why it's nearly midnight and she's sweaty and awake.

Kate rubs her eyes, dries her face with the towel, and cracks a yawn as she heads back into their bedroom. The moonlight is brilliant and blue, illuminating a path right back to their bed. Castle lays in the middle, sprawled, which is actually rather unlike him-

Oh.

It was his dream.

She bites her lip and crawls back into bed, strokes her palm lightly down his back. His whole body is rigid with some vision, sweat sticking the sheet to him, his breath labored. She can see his eyes moving rapidly behind his eyelids, and she brushes her fingers through his hair.

He doesn't ease, doesn't move, doesn't speak. She thinks she's heard that the muscles are inactive, almost paralyzed during REM sleep; Castle is definitely dreaming. He must have woken her, and Kate - so used to waking herself in the night with her own nightmares - automatically assumed it was more of the same.

She carefully slides down in bed, facing him, and presses her hand against his chest. His heart is pounding. It could be good, it could be terrible; she has no way of knowing.

He looks different in the moonlight with his body trapped in dreams. Like he's battling with something, like he's striving. Wrestling it out. Maybe the dream is good - maybe he's riding on the back of a dragon through a night sky, or maybe it's awful, and someone is dying, and he can't reach them.

Kate studies the lines of his face, draws her other hand to those harsh edges of his nose, smooths her fingers along his jaw. His eyes twitch back behind his lids, and she leans in closer to kiss the soft spot just under his chin.

Warm, sleep-heavy, a little damp with perspiration - his body is so large in the bed. He has his own smell; it's begun to permeate her clothes, settle in her hair, so when she wakes up, she smells the back of his knee or the side of his neck. And warm; he's so warm.

Kate slides in a little closer, draws his arm over her waist to get it out of her way. She presses a kiss just above the collar of his tshirt, wonders why he sleeps in a shirt at all since it's so hot in Belize. They have air conditioning, but it sometimes barely makes a dent in the afternoons.

Her mouth is at his neck when he swallows; she feels it against her nose and smiles, lets her body curl into his, sweaty as it is, hot as it is still in their room. She scissors her legs under the sheets and finds his hip with her hand, liking the beached shipwreck of his body.

Oh, that sounds rather insulting. But it's not. It's beautiful and thrilling, a new thing suddenly washed up on her shore, a discovery of her own in the darkness. He's usually awake for this, she thinks with a smile, and brings her own body close to his, pressing against him.

She can feel him breathing, doesn't know when his rapid bursts of air shifted to this slower in and out. His back is still taut with unreleased energy, but there's less tension, more power in it. Maybe his dream has shifted to something pleasant, maybe he's coming out of his REM cycle.

Maybe he feels her too, and responds to her touch.

Kate grins in the darkness and shakes her head against her own foolish thoughts, humming as her body heats. She endures it for a little while longer, waiting for him to settle, waiting for his dreams to finish, even as the air grows stifling. A final stilted breath against her hair and then Castle is completely at ease again, melting into the mattress.

She escapes while she still can, slipping away from him, tenting her tshirt to get some air, blowing her hair off her face. It's sticky again, and the clock is flipping over past midnight, and the moon is so white and wide in the sky, like a gaping smile.

She turns away from him, her fingers still tingling with the sense memory of his body, the plane of his back and the jut of his hipbone, and she closes her eyes again.

Sleep opens its arms to her, cool and dark, and she walks in.

She wakes with a little moan as her consciousness is dragged up, feels her body so heavy and deep in the bed.

Fingers at her hip, dipping into her waist. "I had a sexy dream about you. Wanna try it?"

She laughs, still with her eyes closed, pushes her body back into his. He clutches at her thigh, drapes over her, an elbow to the mattress and making her dip towards his arm. He chuckles in her ear and his mouth is wet and warm at her jaw.

"Back to sleep, Castle."

"In a minute," he murmurs, and the sounds of the words reverberate in her bones.

"I'm tired. You woke me once already."

"I did?" he gasps, and his body is practically angled over hers now, his face in front of her while his legs tangle behind hers. "For this? No way. I surely would have remembered-"

"No," she smiles, opening her eyes. His are feral blue and brilliant in the darkness, hungry. "A dream I guess. You were still asleep."

"Did you feel me up, Beckett? Is that why I had such a sexy dream?"

"You were well on your way already-"

"So you did feel me up. I knew it. Usually those kinds of dreams have help. If you know what I mean." He settles back with a sigh of appreciation, his palm running up and down her side over and over, petting or settling, she's not sure.

"No, actually. I don't know what you mean," she says, turning her head to look at him just over her shoulder. "And no. You can't show me. Let me sleep."

"Yes, but see, those two things aren't mutually exclusive. That's the great part. I can feel you up while you sleep, and-"

"Why are you so awake?" she interrupts, elbowing him aside to see past him. The clock says it's only two in the morning. "Castle. Back to bed. Now."

"I'm already in bed. And so are you. So close your eyes, have sweet dreams-"

"You aren't allowed to grope me in my sleep."

"Sure I am. Sharing a bed with me is tacit permission to-"

"I can find another bed," she says, deadpan, watching him with still and untroubled eyes.

His mouth drops open. He blinks. "No. Don't - no."

She grins and twists just a little to press her mouth to his, closed, quick, maybe a little too happy for two in the morning.

"You really were feeling me up," he mutters against her lips, rolls with her to snuggle at her back, too large, too warm, too heavy, but good even so.

"Maybe a little. Nicely. No groping was involved."

"For the record, groping is okay with me."

She laughs again, a soft sigh of a breath, and feels his arm draw around her, his forehead tucking in at her neck, his nose against her spine, lips at her back. She laces her fingers through his and brings his palm to her chest.

He gropes.

She kicks back at him and he yelps, laughing.

"Message received, Beckett."

Her dreams are hot - sun and sand, and then his body, the press of him against her - and she doesn't know if it's because of his illicit groping or just the suggestion of possible groping, but the next morning he won't tell her.

He just grins at her and makes his eyebrows dance, offers her a long, smoldering kiss that has her reaching for more.