Just a Dream
A/N: This is my first Castle fic and I'm a bit nervous. The fandom has so many fantastic writers that writing and then posting a Castle fic is rather intimidating. But, I hope I've done the characters justice.
Waves of heat fan Kate's face as she stares down the embankment at her fiance's car, heat she can barely feel as her eyes fixate on the flames engulfing the once beautiful Mercedes. The people and the sounds around her become nonexistent as her entire world narrows to a bleak pinpoint. She's crying and she doesn't know it, tears blurring her vision as she moves to the road's edge and stumbles down the hill toward what was once her life.
The sound of deep, raw moaning slices through her and she wonders briefly at where it's coming from as she trips and slides the rest of the way down the hill. The sound of her name being called out doesn't even register as she blindly rises to her feet and then stumbles, falling to her knees a few feet from the car.
The feel of rocks cutting into her knees through the layers of fabric cuts through her haze and suddenly it all becomes real, and she realizes it's herself that is moaning, sobbing as she stares at the flames now licking all too closely at her, the heat becoming almost unbearable. But she doesn't move because the burn of the heat is much better than the burn she feels in her heart as she looks up and sees a charred body in the front seat of the car.
Her fingers claw into the dirt in front of her as she sobs his name over and over, unable to bear what she's seeing. She hears someone calling her name, but she doesn't respond because whatever it is someone wants from her, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters anymore when her entire life has gone up in flames. They were supposed to overcome the odds, the obstacles, to have their happily ever after, but that is now gone. Everything is gone, everything she's worked for, for the past few years, is gone and she…
Kate feels arms grip around her waist and haul her backwards. She screams, flailing as she tries to free herself, but the strong arms surrounding her don't let her budge and as she realizes they aren't moving back up the hill she quiets, ceasing her struggle. Her hands grip the muscular forearm around her as she continues to cry, eyes slamming shut as a wave of nausea overtakes her. She moans to who she thinks is Javier to let her go, to let her just stay here and die.
When he raises a hand and pushes her hair back from her face, urgently calling her name, she realizes that the scent surrounding her isn't one of smoke, but smells faintly of Castle's cologne, and that the voice calling her name isn't Javi's, but Castle's instead. Confused, she opens her eyes, blinking until her vision clears and she's met with blue eyes. She jerks within the arms holding her, whipping her head around and seeing not the burning car, but the headboard of their bed. Their bed at the loft.
Kate's head spins as she turns back around to Castle, realization setting in that it had all been a bad dream. Not just a bad dream, but a nightmare. A horrible nightmare.
The nausea she'd felt in her nightmare returns with a vengeance as the last lingering images of the burning corpse flutter from her mind. With a moan, Kate clamps a hand over her mouth and stumbles up and out of the bed, running for the bathroom.
Dumbfounded, Castle hurries after her, arriving in the bathroom just as she begins vomiting into the toilet bowl. Grimacing, he steps up behind her and gently gathers her hair in his hands, holding it back as she continues to retch.
When she's finished bringing up everything that had been in her stomach, Kate groans and lays her now throbbing head against the wall as her hand reaches up to flush. After pressing a comforting hand against her back, Castle rises to rinse a wash cloth and fill a cup with water.
As he's wringing out the cloth, Castle peers into the mirror and watches as Kate quietly steps from the toilet room and closes the door. He notices her shaking hands as she reaches up to run them over her sweaty face and through her disheveled hair.
"Kate…" he softly murmurs as he hands her the wet cloth and picks up the cup of water.
"I… I'm…" she stops and runs the cloth over her face, trying to buy some time to compose herself. Only her shaking hands and trembling body betray her.
Castle reaches up to clasp her hands within his momentarily as he pulls the cloth from her hand, and with the other, hands her the water. "Bad dream?"
Tears rim her eyes as she nods and takes the cup, drinking hastily to rid her mouth of the awful acidic taste.
"Want to talk about it?" He's watching her closely, worried at the tears in her eyes, the trembling that wracks her from head to foot, the shaking in her hands as she places the cup down on the counter in front of her.
The tears spill over as she clasps her hands over her mouth, trying to stifle the sobs that want to escape. She shakes her head, doesn't want to talk about it because talking about it means reliving his death.
"It must have been something bad," Castle murmurs, "Bad enough to cause such a visceral reaction," he adds, nodding toward the toilet room. "Was it Bracken? Because Honey, he can't…" He stops when she shakes her head.
"You," she whispers, giving up trying to keep quiet when a sob escapes. "It was you. Burning. In a car," she sobs out in fits and starts as she tries to get it out.
Understanding dawns on Castle's face and with a soft intonation of her name, he surges forward, gathers her up in his arms, banding his arms around her tightly as she wraps hers around his neck. He strokes one hand through her soft hair as the other holds her tight, whispering softly as she cries and tries to him about her dream.
"It… it was our wedding day… and you were driving… out to the Hamptons for the ceremony and… and you called to tell me you had the marriage license… and you said… you said you loved me and I told you I loved you back. But then…" She sobs again, pressing her face against his neck as more tears fell. At her words, he presses a kiss to her temple, murmuring softly an affirmation of that love.
Tightening his grip around her waist, Castle moves forward and lifts her onto counter, stepping between her legs. She lets go of his neck, but brings her hands down to grip his t-shirt as she continues. "You were late. You were only supposed to be twenty minutes, but it was over an hour and then… God," she cries out, shuddering as she clamps a hand over her mouth. "The call… they… they said," her breath hitches once, twice as she tries to gather herself. "They said you…had an accident…and… and there you were, down in the ditch… car on… on fire."
She looks up at him, eyes wide with terror, fresh tears tracking down her pretty face, "And… and… I saw you, only you were…"
She doesn't need to finish, he could tell by the look on her face, the tears in her eyes, in the shivers wracking her thin frame, what she was going to say next. She'd dreamed he'd burned to death in a car accident on his way to their wedding.
His heart broke for her. Whispering softly that he loves her, that he was there and that nothing would keep them from getting married, he palms the back of her head and presses her against his shoulder, then wraps her legs around his waist, before picking her up and carrying her back to their bed.
Instead of laying her in the bed and crawling in next to her, he settles himself against the headboard and her in his lap. With a finger under her chin, he lifts her face to his, thumbs away the last of her tears and presses a sweet kiss to her lips. "Want me to make you some tea?"
"No," she gives a watery sigh, settling her head under his chin. "Just hold me?" she asks as her hands grip his arm, voice wavering slightly as the last of the trembling dissipates.
"Always," he whispers as he tightens his arms around her.
"It was all so stupid anyway," she tells him quietly as she shakes her head in disbelief. "We were trying to get my husband to sign divorce papers –"
"Husband?" Castle interrupts incredulously. He huffs out a laugh, "You were married to someone else?"
"Yeah, for fifteen years and I didn't even know it! I married some guy named Rogan O'Leary during a drunken weekend in Las Vegas during my freshman year at Stanford. At the uh, Drive-Thru of Love."
Castle laughs out loud and shifts so that he can look at her. "The Drive-Thru of Love? How cliché."
He flinches dramatically when she gives him a good-natured swat to the chest. "Wait. How do you get married and not know it for fifteen years?"
She smiles sheepishly. "Didn't I tell you it was stupid? Surely something like that would come up on a background check, right?" She throws her hands up. "Hell, I don't even know anyone named Rogan!" A smile stole over her lips. "He called you Man Parts."
"Man Parts?" he questions with a lift of his eyebrow. "Pray tell what did I do to earn a name like that? Wear tight pants?
"You screamed like a girl when what we thought was Rogan tied up and sitting on a bale of hay turned out to be a scarecrow."
He huffs, feigning offense. "What did he call you?"
Kate bent her head, picking at an imaginary piece of lint from the blanket, mumbling a name.
Castle narrowed his eyes at her. "What was that? Cat?"
She grumbled, blew out a breath. "Kit Kat."
Castle giggled. He actually giggled. At her look of disgust he took it down a notch. "Sorry, Honey but you have to agree, Kit Kat is funny." He turned his head up, as if in deep thought. "Kinda makes me hungry for candy."
"He was a bit of a douche, though. He had a girlfriend, told her he couldn't marry her because he was married to me when we were in college, and I'd been in a coma for the last fifteen years."
"Mrs. O'Leary," he says as if he's mulling over the name. "Did you have a barn with a cow, knock over a lantern?" He smiles when Kate snickers, happy he was able to take her mind off the horror of her nightmare.
"No, but we did end up in a barn on this farm, trying to save this Rogan guy from the Barbosa family."
"The mob?! Good God, Kate, what else did you dream about? Alien abduction? Oh, I know! You, the douche, and the mob ran into a shed filled with knives and other sharp tools as a tornado was bearing down on you?"
"No, Silly. But Rogan was trying to bribe a pastor caught with a stripper named Sapphire and owed $5000 to a group of gun-toting rednecks."
"Even better." He grins down at her, "I can't believe you dreamed you were already married to a guy that was bribing a pastor caught with a stripper, owed a band of Deliverance miscreants thousands of dollars, with us trying to rescue him from the mob." He shifted his arms underneath her, and slid her down the bed, moving until he hovered over her. "Pretty lively dream you had, Almost Mrs. Castle. Last time I let you order us Mexican food so close to bedtime."
Wrapping her arms around him, she pulled his body down to meet hers. "Yeah, well you'll be happy to know you, Ryan, and Esposito were rather relentless in your teasing about me having a 'husband'."
A smile stretched across his face as he dipped his head, brushed his lips softly against hers. "Well, I am rather good at teasing." To prove his point, he pressed light kisses to her cheek, along her jaw, and down her neck to her chest, his tongue peeking out every so often to ever-so-lightly touch her skin as his fingertips descended to the hem of her shirt and slowly drew them in feathery touches up her torso, taking the shirt with them.
"Mmm, that you are," she moaned throatily as his lips and fingers brushed the swell of her breasts.
Castle would have continued to tease, but now he wanted only to completely obliterate the dream from her mind. With that goal in mind, he nipped lightly at the plump flesh his fingers uncovered before rising up and taking her lips in a deep all-encompassing kiss. And the dream, the names Rogan O'Leary, Sapphire, Man Parts, and Kit Kat never came up again.