They settle into something actually resembling a routine, once they decide that this is becoming a thing. (She doesn't like the word "boyfriend". It sounds too juvenile, too trivial for what this really is - which is something that means a lot more to her than a name that smitten teenage girls use.) They don't broach the subject of her moving in, but she's starting to spend more time with him than she does at her own place now that Alexis has moved out for college and Martha has made herself scarce.

Most nights, when she stays up too late filing reports at the precinct, she finds herself taking a cab to him instead, curling up in bed beside him and knowing he'll be there when she wakes up. Sometimes it's a competition to see who makes it to the bed first - if he's in a fit of inspiration, she'll often fall asleep to the sound of laptop keys clicking from the other room.

He always wakes up first. It doesn't matter how much sleep she's had - without fail, he's up before she is unless there's a murder, and then they usually both wake up to the sound of her phone going off. But this is one of those weekend mornings where death seems to put itself on pause. After a particularly long and grueling day at work (stepping on a pressure plate connected to a bomb will wreak havoc on a girl), Beckett's just looking forward to spending a lazy morning in bed.

She rolls over, half-dazed and dozing, reaching out sleepily to him - but her eyes snap open when her fingertips are met with the cool face of the pillow instead, and she blinks blearily while the room swims into view, trying to listen for the sound of Castle nearby.

When Beckett wakes up, there's a crick in her neck and a fuzzy feeling in her mouth - not to mention the pounding on the inside of her skull.

She groans, sits up slightly, starts to stretch, and promptly realizes she's fallen asleep on the couch in Milliways. Again. Only this time, she's not alone. Slowly, she cranes her neck to the side, wincing at the tension, and is promptly greeted with the sight of Jack's sleeping frame, his eyes closed, his head tilted to one side, and despite her headache, she starts to smile a little.

The temptation to wake him up herself is strong, but she doesn't want to scare him. Instead, she starts to ease herself off his lap, trying to be as quiet as possible, hoping to potentially get in a shower before he even gets up.

Martha's phone call is the first tip-off that something's gone wrong at the motel.

The second is the five or six calls Beckett makes to Castle over the course of the next fifteen minutes, the five or six calls that he repeatedly neglects to answer. This coming from a man who makes it a point to pick up the phone within the first three rings of her calling - and, between that and the strange way Martha had told her he'd sounded (with an added out-of-place "I love you" to really bring the oddness home), Beckett's on high alert.

It didn't make any sense. Gates had gone down too easily, especially for someone who was supposed to have taken a four-year hiatus from strangling blondes. And on the way over to the motel, her squad car's lights swirling overhead, a number of theories begin to scroll through Beckett's train of thought before settling on the scenario she'd managed to completely overlook in the process.

Jerry Tyson - the man who'd settled to a deal to gain early release on drug charges, the man who was so terrified of Gates that he was worried his acceptance of said deal meant being murdered on the inside - is the Triple Killer.

She couldn't have known that Tyson had gotten away with barely less than a minute to spare before the squad cars came roaring into the motel parking lot. Beckett has no idea what to expect when she ascends the stairs up to the room, gun drawn and at the ready. The room is dark, ominously so. Her heart lurches in her throat when the door bursts open under a blow from her boot. Ryan's on the floor and groaning, a bruise purpling his temple. Castle, tied to a chair, blinks, dazed, and turns away from the light as it spills abruptly into the room.

Dread melts into relief, though her eyes are still scanning around for any potentially lingering threat as the sound of Esposito's footsteps grow louder behind her. She holsters her gun and moves for the rope around Castle's wrists (green and white nylon, just like the others), swallowing back the lump in her throat.

"I'm so glad that you're okay," she murmurs.

Vast understatement.

-

Twenty minutes later, the team's done an entire sweep of the motel - but Tyson's gone.

Ryan's sitting in the back of the ambulance, putting on a brave face and refusing any medical treatment until Esposito literally threatens to strap him down onto the stretcher.

Beckett hasn't seen Castle since before the sweep started; now, coffee in hand (albeit crappy coffee from the 24-hour place next door), she performs a sweep of her own - and, eventually, recognizes a familiar silhouette sitting on a bench next to the motel swimming pool. It's uncovered, she notes, as she makes her way through the gate to join him. Never mind the fact that no one will be swimming on an October evening in New York. The water's illuminated from within, casting a blue pale over the series of emotions flickering over Castle's face.

She joins him. Hands him the coffee. Stares out into the still pool.

Combing the parking garage for any sign of the third victim's body proves fruitless. The killer - whoever he is - isn't sticking to his normal M.O. of leaving the body where he's killed them, either. Forensics bags the lone pump, the clumps of blonde hair, swabs the places where her blood had spilled, but Beckett isn't hopeful yet. Changing his tactic means he's becoming more unpredictable, getting harder to pin down, but the fact that she's being sent home after feeling like she and her team can actually be a help is weighing heavy on her shoulders. Her protests fall on Agent Shaw's ignoring ears, and she leaves feeling more helpless than before - a feeling she doesn't appreciate having at the moment. It's not until she's climbed into her car and left that she realizes Castle's still there, but something tells her he doesn't mind being left with another brilliant mind to build theory with.

The unit, a small trio of suits wearing earpieces, are waiting in various places throughout her apartment building by the time Beckett gets there, a bag of takeout Chinese in one hand. The sight of them only re-emphasizes her frustration over the situation, and her other hand tightens around her keys when she lets herself into her apartment. She makes a point of checking all the windows, combing rooms, and then pokes her head out into the hallway and tells the guys to head on home. There's no point in keeping them around when everything's perfectly secured and she's got a gun in her bedside drawer - and one in the living room, too.

Beckett changes into a loose-fitting shirt and a pair of jeans and cracks open the Chinese, mixing rice and veggies together with her disposable chopsticks. Fifteen minutes in and the casefile is spread out on the couch in front of her, and Beckett settles in Indian-style, combing over the information: crime scene photos, eyewitness accounts, victims' backgrounds - searching for anything she might be missing, anything Agent Shaw and her team (and her "smart board") haven't pinned down yet.

Long nights of paperwork are nothing new for Beckett.

Spending the dull hours of the evening filing away even duller paperwork is a routine she's grown accustomed to; the life of a detective isn't always preoccupied with chasing down a suspect or interrogating a guilty party. Sometimes, there's the moments that aren't always worth writing about, the files she somehow manages to let pile up while she's doing the more exciting parts of her job. It's a vicious cycle, the way the tedious work tends to sneak up on her when she's least expecting it.

Every now and then, her eyes flick to the clock, tracking the time, gauging how many hours she has left to finish what she's working on before she'll be getting absolutely no sleep at all. She's the only one here, apart from the night guard working the desk downstairs, and every now and then she stops to stretch, or to refresh her coffee after fiddling with some of the dials on the espresso machine - the machine that nearly requires a PhD from Starbucks to know how to use.

Sitting back down again at her desk, she rolls her shoulders and then her neck, settling in to wrap up a few last-minute details on the open file in front of her.

[ after this ]

Beckett wakes to an empty side of the bed and a sledgehammer pounding on the inside of her skull.

Slowly, she eases to a sitting position, releasing a groan with the effort, and lifts a hand to her forehead while the other fishes around on the bedside table for that glass of water she clearly remembers being there.

Clumsy fingers unintentionally knock the cup over, the contents splashing onto the carpet as Beckett reels forward onto her feet with a wave of nausea and an "oh, God."

If anyone's looking for her, she'll be in the bathroom praying to the porcelain gods for the next couple minutes or so. After that, she looks in the mirror, sneering at her own reflection.

Beckett's apartment is still depressingly devoid of any and all Christmas decorations when she and Kate pass through the door from Milliways.

She tries not to look too sheepish about it; it's not like she has anything to be ashamed of in terms of her living situation, because admittedly, she's set up pretty well. There are a few boxes of decorations piled haphazardly in the middle of the living room, along with a particularly tall one leaning against the wall - which has a few telltale fake green branches poking out of the top.

"Well, I already went and got everything out of storage - and don't start," she says, interrupting Kate's initial protest.

"Besides, now we can just get right to the decorating," she points out.

[ late nights have early mornings ]

Beckett's an early riser by nature. Years of surviving on little to no sleep have equipped her for this kind of thing.

It's the reason why she's the first to wake up, blinking sleep from her eyes before she even realizes where she is or what's going on. The hangover hits next - a headache that starts to pound in her head, and she rolls over onto her back with a groan, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose with one hand.

Her other is pinned, for some reason, and she pries it out from underneath - Bill?

She blinks a few more times, and slowly, the events of last night come back in a rush - of sweat, skin, sex. It still hangs in the air, on her body, around the three of them, and she mouths a quiet oh, my God before she staggers off to the bathroom to splash some water on her face.