Last chapter, folks. Thanks for coming along for the ride. Hopefully we'll all survive tomorrow night...oi vei.
[…and] then the light and climate will be changed in a way impossible to foretell.
She's changed him.
She laughs when he tells her that, and he knows why. It's because in a lot of ways, all she can see is the ways he's changed her. And he has. She's still and she breathes better than he does sometimes and she's this exquisite being that is so completely at peace with her dozens of scars that sometimes he just marvels at her.
But he's changed, too. He's realized that sometimes, it's okay to move. Okay to run after things. He ran after her. He's learned to run, learned to breathe without cramping. He remembers the cramps vividly. Demming and Josh and a sniper that made her die in his arms and her body, huddled in a ball on her floor, sobbing. But she taught him to breathe. Brought out the fighter in him at the same time he brought out the lover in her.
On the morning of her first day back at work, she wakes up just like she did that first morning in the Hamptons. He does too. She gets ready for her run. He watches. She starts to leave, stops at the door. She turns around, biting her lip.
"Castle."
He sits up. Something is wrong.
"What is it?"
"Come with me."
Oh. Oh.
He bolts out of bed. She laughs quietly, puts an arm out to stop him when he tries to rush past her. "Hey. I'll wait."
He hurries anyway.
When he steps out on the concrete after her, he panics for a second. He is not in shape enough for this. But no way in hell is he not going.
"Ready?" she asks.
He nods. "Always."
Someday it'll be cliché. Not today.
X-X-X-X-X
She is absolutely crazy about him.
There's sweat dripping from his forehead but he's grinning at her as he follows her back into her apartment. Kate isn't entirely sure why she invited him to come, but she did, and she's glad, and God, she's crazy about him.
She closes the door behind her, turns around to face him. He's staring at her. He's not grinning anymore. For a second, she drifts back to the look on his face when he asked her to go with him to the Hamptons. The way he'd enveloped her in his arms when she said yes, and the way she'd let him, her forehead resting on his shoulder. That's when the two halves of her life collided, and all that survived the collision was who she's become, him, and a new perspective that's changed everything else.
She reaches forward and peels his t-shirt off of him, dropping it on the floor at their feet. He watches as she rests her hands on his chest, one hand over his heart. She kisses the place where his collarbone sinks, right in the middle of his chest, and feels him exhale slowly underneath her lips. She parts her lips, darts her tongue out to brush his skin, and tastes the saltiness of his sweat.
She clutches his sides as she kisses across his chest slowly, trailing her tongue over his skin. She wants to say something, wants to tell him how much he means to her and how she never thought that case could be anything other than a nightmare. She can't think of the right words. Instead she keeps kissing him, tracing her nails lightly over his skin. She moves her mouth up the column of his neck, stops right in front of his lips.
His hands move along the small of her back, underneath her t-shirt, and then he lifts it over her head. He trails the tip of his index finger along the contours of her skin next to the outline of her sports bra. She holds his gaze and lifts her arms, takes the bra off and drops it onto the floor.
He closes the distance and kisses her. She kisses him back, holding him insistently against her body, her naked chest against his. He walks her backward toward the bathroom. Once there, he reaches around her, turning the shower on as hot as it will go. She pushes his shorts off next, then holds his eyes as she pulls her own off. He wraps his arms around her waist the second she steps out of them and guides her backward into the shower and under the spray.
They're soaked in seconds but she doesn't notice, wrapped up as she is in him. They've done this a dozen times now since that last night in the Hamptons, but it's still new. Still electrifying. The energy builds between them and then spikes when he presses her against the tile wall. They kiss until she's dizzy, the heat of the water mixing with the heat of him and them and God, she's never felt this way about anyone.
He breaks their kiss, presses his forehead to hers. He says her name, breathes it like a prayer.
"Thank you," he says.
She runs her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. "For what?"
He pushes away a strand of wet hair that's stuck to her cheek. "For letting me in."
Her heart races, or maybe it plummets, or maybe it's actually rising in the air, higher and higher, and she's rising with it. Their eyes hold. He trails his hands down her sides then down the backs of her thighs. He lifts her and she wraps her legs around him.
When he moves into her, she lets her head fall back, her eyes flutter closed.
"God, Castle."
He peppers her collarbone with kisses. He moves out and then back in, and she tries to remember how to breathe.
"Beautiful," he whispers.
That doesn't make it easier. He leans into her, his mouth at the curve of her neck. She clings to him, her arms and legs wrapped around him. When the heat starts to build and the edges of her vision start to get fuzzy, she murmurs into his ear.
"Castle," she calls urgently. She needs to say it. "Castle, I…" He thrusts harder than before, deeper, and she sees stars.
"You what?" he says, his breathing ragged. Hers is too.
Another deep, rough thrust, and she digs her nails into his skin. He sucks on her shoulder, hard enough to leave a mark.
"Kate?"
"I love you," she tells him, gasping for breath. "Castle, I love you."
The second the words are out he hits the right spot and she falls over the edge with a moan. Amidst a fierce shiver, somewhere in the middle of her fall, she feels his breath next to her ear.
"Love you too."
And then he falls too, and when she comes back to herself, he's setting her feet back on the tile. He pulls her in close, his chin resting on top of her head, and she breathes him in. His hands move across her back, ghosting over her skin, his mouth suddenly next to her ear. He pulls her earlobe into his mouth; she shudders, wonders if he'll say something, but he doesn't. There's nothing else to say.
They wash each other and then dry each other, too. His arms come around her from behind as she leads him back into the bedroom. She turns to look up at him.
"Want to go catch some bad guys?" she asks.
He smiles. "I thought you'd never ask."