Title: Wide Open Sky
Pairing: Castle/Beckett
Timeline: post-6x23, future!fic. No actual knowledge of season 7 necessary.
Notes: I was inspired by a gorgeous picture (let me know if you'd like to see it) and my love of procrastination.
Their honeymoon was nothing like they'd imagined. There were no lengthy flights, no private island bungalows, just an extra-long weekend carved out of a nearly-packed schedule weeks after the actual ceremony took place in front of a judge and the seven people in the world they were closest to.
It was her idea, both the wedding and their impromptu getaway to the Outer Banks condo that was a third of the size of his – their – Hamptons house. In the case of their wedding day, she'd been done tempting fate, done planning, done waiting for the perfect moment. She'd just needed him and he felt the same, so it made the decision easy. The trip had been trickier. Technically the NYPD determined she'd used her leave, even though their planned honeymoon was turned into a manhunt. She'd taken a week of sick leave after they found him, using the time to take care of him and her own frayed, broken nerves. She had no qualms about using the rest of her allotted sick leave or taking unpaid time off to make a real honeymoon happen, but between their caseload, therapy sessions, and meetings with his publishers to get the logistics of his delayed book tours under control, there just hadn't been time.
She made time. She packed their bags and told everyone important where they could be reached if the sky started to fall before picking him up from a meeting with Gina and whisking him away. The drive hadn't been ideal. It took longer than the eight or so hours she'd been expecting because they stopped as many times as her husband wished to check out whatever he'd deemed fascinating while he was googling their route. It was worth it, though, to see everything in him unfurl as soon as they stepped out of their car and up to their home for the next few days. They had less than a week; they'd make the absolute most of it.
They explored, they walked the beach, venturing into the chilly water sparingly, they made love at their leisure. On their first night there, he'd dragged her outside, plunking them both down in the grass and wrapping her up to tell her a story. The next night, in the early evening, he suggested grabbing a book from one of the packed shelves and reading. After that, every night they'd read on a blanket with the sky open endlessly above them. Silently, aloud, it didn't matter. If they started separately, she'd abandon her book and curl into him after a while anyway, delighting in the gentle touch of his hand on her knee. The absent brush of his fingers over her bare skin as his eyes skated along the page. And when the light finally faded or his voice grew raspy from overuse, she lifted her palm to his cheek and draw him into a slow, steady kiss, loving him a little more each time.
They weren't in the Maldives, making love on a palate beside their private pool, but the stars in the sky were still the same. There were still breathy sighs as they rocked together, there were still gasps when something was just right, a touch or a thrust that made them shudder. There were still soft kisses, biting kisses, kisses that were interrupted by ragged pleas for "More." They were still together.
It wasn't what they'd imagined, it wasn't what they'd planned, but she had a feeling this honeymoon was just as good.
Maybe even better.