A/N: Just another little post-"Always" scene. I like to think of it as being that night, but it could realistically be any time in the future. It's short and sweet, and I wasn't actually intending to post it; I just love writing these two compelling, challenging people. Hope you enjoy – I love hearing all your thoughts and feedback!
He's not sure exactly what has woken him in the middle of this staggering night, but if he had to guess, it would be the shock of another body beside his, after all this time. Finally. He blinks his sleep-crusted eyes open, and the wind is knocked out of him all over again as he takes in the sleeping woman beside him, her hand splayed protectively across his chest. He'd half expected to wake and find that it had all been a dream – sometimes, he wondered if she'd ever even existed at all, or if he'd simply concocted the last four years in his overactive imagination, the product of exhaustion, writer's block, and a desperate internal desire for a life he'd never realized he wanted.
She was so extraordinary to him that a part of him was sure she couldn't exist, outside the confines of his own mind. Never in his life had he been so endlessly captivated by another human being, save his own precious daughter. He wrote mysteries for a living; he'd never expected to be confronted with such an enigma in reality.
If he had imagined it all, though, he mused, when he finally woke up, he would write the greatest bestseller the world had ever seen. But even the notion of the book he could write about his time with her paled in comparison to the experience. No sensation, no pleasure, no drug in the world could equal the feeling of waking up to her tousled chestnut hair on his pillow, her freezing foot nudging his. He'd seen "Inception" – if this was a dream – he'd make like Leonardo and just keep dreaming it. A lifetime alone, dreaming of her – something about that was poetically heartrending. He didn't care.
Wrenching himself from the telltale spiral of a writer's thoughts, he carefully extracted himself from her embrace, so as not to wake her. Padding into the living room, he stood silently by the window, watching the last few lights of the city flickering through windows where people carried out their lives. The wonder he felt at the evening's events overwhelmed him, swelled his heart, and left him simultaneously awestruck and calmed. He struggled to accept the reality that Kate Beckett lay sleeping in his bed. Sleeping soundly between his Egyptian cotton sheets, the embodiment of perfect happiness he'd only ever been able to dream of.
He knew she wasn't perfect – Oh God, did he know – but as he wandered back through his darkened apartment to stand in the doorway, watching her sleeping – he could not see her as anything but. Shards of light from the window refracted golden stripes onto her bare skin. He swore he could still smell the scent of her hair on him, remembered the way it felt like silk in his fingers. Her face was a kind of peaceful that Castle attributed not to her unconscious state, but instead to her resolution to put her mother's case to rest. He realized, belatedly, that this was likely the most untroubled rest she'd had in 13 years.
Like a moth to a flame, that thought drew him to her. Like the ghost of a shadow, he slipped back to his side of the bed, drawing back the sheets to slide in beside her. Just as his hand grazed the material, she awoke. The look she fixed him with had him falling for her all over again. She didn't ask what he'd been doing, why he'd elected to leave their bed in the middle of the night; she simply reached for him, the corners of her mouth stretching slightly into a shy, sleepy smile.
"Castle," she whispered, as he lowered himself onto the mattress, settling her head on his capable shoulder, hand back where it belonged on his chest. And as he cradled a living, breathing Kate Beckett to his disbelieving body, he said a silent prayer of thanks for writer's block, self-absorbed ex-wives, CIA mishaps, and sniper's rifles, because despite the tragedy that had marred both their lives, without it, neither of them would have gotten here.
"Castle?" Her voice startled him out of reverie. He could hear her smile through the next phrase. "You're thinking so loudly it hurts. Go to sleep – you can worry about how to write it in the morning."
As he drifted off in the wee morning hours, the smile on his face mirrored hers. For all his musings, he realized, for all his efforts – that was the crux of being a writer.
There was no way his words could ever capture all of her.