So, I finally managed to get a start on a new story, it'll be a multi chapter kinda post watershed fic. Hope you enjoy, let me know what you think & thank you for reading!
Dance again
Kneeling down, Castle looked up at her with those puppy dog eyes, obviously trying to be patient, waiting for her answer. As patient as a man waiting for a woman to answer his proposal can be, anyway.
She took her time thinking it through, before letting any kind of reaction appear on her face. He really got her there, totally surprised her by saying the only thing she didn't anticipate, didn't calculate when planning on how to handle the possible scenarios, the directions this conversation could take, always being painfully aware that it most likely wouldn't be pretty for either of them.
Kate really had expected everything ranging from Castle breaking up with her - giving up on them (wasn't she going to?), over despairingly begging her to stay, to telling her he was going to come with her, that they would make it work. So she could take the job in D.C. that meant leaving life how it used to be behind and starting all over again. Because that's what she wanted, that job.
Or so she thought at least, now she wasn't so sure about that anymore. Now that this sweet man sitting in the sand on a playground in front of her, the intent look in his eyes only partially masking his adorable unease, had offered her all of himself without asking anything but her commitment in return.
"Whatever you decide."
Suddenly her career, the wonderful opportunity, didn't seem so important anymore, next to Castle, who deserved to have his family around and his friends and the woman he so desperately loved, that he was willing to let her go chase her dreams, if only she agreed to become his wife and leave her heart with him.
And that's probably what did it for her, what made her face lighten up, what made her pondering expression vanish to let a broad grin take it's place, what made her fall to her knees herself to throw her arms around him and kiss him and tell him
"Yes, Castle, yes!"
Finally. The music was playing again.
It's 3:41 am, he is as fast asleep as possible considering the uncomfortable position his tired body had taken after he allowed himself to close his eyes for a few minutes. Still sitting in the hard plastic chair, still grasping her small hand in his larger one, but bend over, his head resting half against the frame of her bed and half against her thigh.
When her thin hoarse voice gets through to him, his lids shoot up, no sleepy haze covering his sight. He'd been waiting for that moment for the past 8 weeks after all.
"Yesss... Casss-tle, yesss"
It sends a rush of adrenaline through his veins, that first time hearing her after he spend so many days worrying he might never be able to again, thinking about the last words she said to him, the last things he said to her, silly things, silly words. That silly fight. She couldn't die on him now. Not when their last memory together was a nasty argument, declaring they were done. And not ever. Stay with me. Just don't die.
Castle's eyes fall to her barely open ones, her gaze unsteadily wandering around until settling on his when he starts to speak,
"Kate! Oh my God Kate, your awake! How do you feel?"
Her throat is sore, she has difficulties to breathe, let alone forming anything close to coherent sentences. Heavy fingers are slowly dragged along her cheek, so tenderly you'd think a too intense touch could break her fragile face.
The never stopping ache in her head makes her close her eyes in pain, her hand rising to rest against her temple.
"I'm sorry, did I hurt you? Oh Kate, I'm so glad you're okay!" Castle's voice is soft, bringing her to a reality that just doesn't want to make any sense to her yet.
"Wha... Whahappen'? I... ow... my..", Kate manages to press out between gritted teeth, tapping her chest, when a violent cough rumbles trough her torso and shakes her weak frame.
"Shh, it's all good, you'll be fine, let me call a nurse, I'll be back in a second, sweetheart."
The chair beside her bed creaks under the sudden loss of Castle's weight when he gets up and to the door on the other end of the room.
Kate now gets a clearer vision, noticing all the beeping machines surrounding her, a terrible déjà vu of waking up after her heart surgery making her nervous and anxious, her erratic breathing accelerates with her heart rate, causing the monitor to make even more frantic noises.
She senses him hurrying back to her side, two nurses and a doctor on his heels. Castle's hand closes around hers again, ripping her out of that painful retrospection that almost drowned her once more, being as vivid as the first weeks after the shooting, when she woke up screaming in the middle of the night, bathed in her own sweat.
"He there, welcome back. Honey, listen, you need to calm down. You're confused and afraid, that's totally normal. It's gonna be okay", a friendly looking woman in a white tunic tells her while a man in scrubs checks the machines, the IV line and the infusion bag.
Intimidated by three strangers scurrying around her, Kate tries to find Castle's eyes, focussing on the familiarity of his face rather than all these things that are happening so fast that she lost track of them. One moment she is wrapped up in Castle's - her fiancé's - arms and a single short blink later she lies here in a hospital bed, unable to think straight, her whole body hurting like crap.
What the hell happened to her?
