Super brief post-ep for Undead Again, which I absolutely loved. What a collective sigh of relief it produced across the fandom.
I kick it with no beta, so the mistakes are ALL mine. I needed to feel hopeful after a day like today. This has been languishing on my HD, so I decided to do a little polish and toss it out there. The Lettter is still on my agenda, I wrote on it the other night. Just took a longer route I didn't plan on. Sorry for that delay.
xo
It's Tomorrow
The muffled noises of morning traffic work their way into the loft. Through the closed office door and across the great room, the Keurig hisses to life as Alexis makes a morning cup of cocoa. A half bagel pops out of the toaster. The pantry door squeaks open, a jar of Nutella is retrieved and plunked down on the countertop.
Water is running upstairs - Martha awake as well.
Castle lays in the cool, gray morning light of his bedroom, smiling to himself, welcoming the sounds of the new day; heartened about what is to come. Hoping like he hasn't dared to hope in a while. It blooms in his chest and courses through him until it lands in his fingertips, which pluck at the sheets and skip over the surface like little dancers.
His fingers, they ache to trace the line of her cheek and trip over the shell of her ear and smudge the welcoming bow of her lips and blaze the trail for a welcomed kiss that says without doubt – I love you, Kate. I love you always.
Which, apparently, she knows. But hasn't been able to work herself around to meeting in kind...not quite yet. But last night? For the first time in a while, he thinks maybe, somewhere in the near future, she sees them being on the same page. Almost. Almost there.
She's in therapy. It's a relief to know. Not because Kate, following the sniper case last fall, is a noticeable basket case. But because anyone in her place who didn't need a little help after all she's endured would be hopeless, closed off, inhuman, a robot.
But Kate? She feels it all, always has, and knows she has to deal with it if she wants a life.
A life.
With him.
Just maybe.
He can't help but think it over and over-
"Tomorrow?"
-until is spills out of his mouth on a laugh.
"It's tomorrow," he says on a whisper, to himself, just loud enough to fill the space of his bedroom. The smile that splits his face is uncontainable.
Out of nowhere, the phone on his bedside table trills to life. Almost everyone he loves is within the four walls of this house, so there's really only one person it could be. He grabs the phone off the table and swipes to answer, low and amused, without even looking at the screen.
"You missed me, just admit it."
It's awfully early for the warmth of her laugh, the smile in her voice, but she gasps, airy mirth, and- "Castle, we caught a body."
"Maybe so, but tell me you haven't been laying there, wanting an excuse to call me."
"Will you believe me if I tell you otherwise?" his partner asks.
"Hmmm... nope."
"I thought not."
It's quiet for a few seconds. Not uncomfortably so. The total opposite, in fact.
He hears her humming, forming a thought.
"What?" he almost whispers into the dark of his room.
"Need a bear claw this morning. Come to think of it, make that two."
"Whatever you wish, my fair detective, but I've never seen you eat more than one."
"For Lanie. It's early, and she's probably already out the door. Just to be nice."
Castle pops up on bed and throws his feet out onto the carpet, already in mission mode. "Bear claw and a chai latte for the best friend, it is. Excellent strategy, detective."
"Strategy?" she inquires, her voice still smiling.
"Oh, it's very important for the best friend to like me. Vital, frankly."
This time, the laughter he hears is almost a gasp; he's taken her completely by surprise with that one.
After a third lungful of air, she manages words. "You sound awfully sure of yourself, there, Castle."
"After last night, I think I could fly. And to prove it, I bet I use my superpowers and beat you to the crime scene."
Scrambling. Mad, sheet billowing, shoe tripping, scrambling translates across the airwaves. She doesn't even say goodbye as he hears her bare feet slap across the tile floor in her bathroom.
Castle pitches his phone backward toward the bed as he crosses the threshold into his own lavatory, certain that he can hear a tinny hoot of laughter from his phone as it bounces off the mattress and lands with a thump on the floor.
"No cheating!" he shouts, hissing as the dives under the too-hot spray of the shower. Surely the call is disconnected by now. Just in case, though.
Castle reaches for a plastic bottle and grins like an idiot, lathering an over-generous handful of shampoo into his hair.
Best. Morning. Ever.
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