A/N: Thank you for the overwhelming response. How could I not give you the chapter with all those great reviews? :) Happy New Year!
Twelve
The next morning, Kate awoke and groaned immediately. Her eyes felt like her contacts had turned to sandpaper overnight and her throat didn't feel much better. And god, did her head hurt. Yeah, it had definitely been a while since she'd been this hung over.
Moaning like a sick teenager on the first day of mid-terms, she shuffled her feet beneath the covers only to be startled when they came in contact with something. A warm something. A leg, if she was not mistaken.
Oh.
Oh dear.
Had she and Castle…?
Kate's query was confirmed when she opened her eyes one at a time and saw him staring at her, dopy grin on his face. Oh yeah, they definitely had.
"Morning."
"Morning," she echoed.
"Are you kinda hung over?" he asked. She nodded. "Me too."
Kate's eyes shifted towards the end of the bed then to the bathroom on her right. She definitely needed to get up, but she also needed a plan. On the floor, she spied Castle's button-down shirt; perfect.
Delicately, Kate slid from the bed and dropped into a crouch. She would not insult Castle by asking him to close his eyes, but that didn't mean she needed to flaunt herself in front of him. She pulled on the shirt and buttoned it as she stood.
Whoa.
Okay, she definitely needed to move slower than that.
Several minutes later she returned to the bedroom. Castle watched as she approached the bed, sat down, and pulled the covers across her lap. Her hair was a mess, her was eyeliner smudged, and she looked a little bit shy; he'd never seen anything so beautiful in his life.
"You didn't find Mike Tyson's tiger in that bathroom, did you?"
She let out a light, airy laugh. "No."
"You sure?"
"Pretty sure I would have noticed a tiger, Castle."
His grin growing a little wider, Castle pushed himself up so that he supported his weight in right elbow. "So…we got married last night." From his tone, one could have easily interpreted that he also won the five hundred million dollar jackpot in the lottery.
Kate bobbed her head. Yep, that also happened. "We did."
"And…how do we feel about that this morning?"
Kate dropped her eyes to her lap and answered honestly. "I don't know"
She reviewed the prior night in her mind. It wasn't a total blur, though the edges of many of her mental images were hazy. 3XK. Dinner. A fountain. Scotch. Poker. Marriage.
Wedding night.
If anything, all the post-"I do" events layered Kate's regrets. She had been aggressive during sex, as she often was when she had too much to drink. He didn't seem to mind; she recalled him laughing, smiling, moaning out her name…but was he just being polite? She had really taken over, insisting she be the one on top. What if he didn't like that? What if he didn't like her—them? And now…Now, they were married.
Castle sat up slowly, the wrinkles on his forehead increasing exponentially. "You don't know like you regret it? Like you wish you would have looked before you leapt?"
She smiled at the echo of their conversation from the night before. "No." She considered him a moment, the blue eyes so full of light the night before were clouded with worry. If they were going to start a life together they could not start it with a lie, so she had to be honest—one hundred percent honest—even if that honesty made her already touchy stomach want to jump right out of her mouth.
"Honestly, right now…right now I just wish our first time together hadn't been while we were drunk."
"We weren't that drunk. Okay, we were kind of drunk," he corrected at her pointed look. "But what does that matter?"
"Well." Kate picked at the edge of the sheet covering her lap, refusing to meet his eye. God, why did these words have to be so hard to say? "I just though…well maybe…I wasn't…I wasn't sure if you liked it."
Because she had mumbled the last few words, Castle questioned, "What?"
Kate lifted her eyes and repeated loud enough for him to hear. "I wasn't sure if you liked it…me."
Castle let out a breathy noise that clearly indicated nonbelief. In his mind, her words were ludicrous. He pushed himself upright into a sitting positon so he could more easily gaze into her eyes as he spoke. "Kate… You're…you're incredible." Words nearly failed him. Ironic, given his profession, but somehow when it came to her he was always tongue-tied. He cleared his throat to afford himself a moment to collect his thoughts.
"You've always been incredible and after last night you're even more so. Nothing happened last night that I didn't like—love. And you don't have to worry. I don't know that there's anything you could do that would make me think you're not incredible. Except possibly frame me for murder. Then we'd have to see."
When he winked at her, she laughed. Her smile grew and a matching one spread across his face. He leaned over, kissed her forehead, and then slid from bed. Unlike Kate, Castle had no problem strolling across the bedroom in his birthday suit. He didn't even bother to pick up his boxers; he walked right past them and into the bathroom.
Once he was gone, Kate found herself unable to remove the smile from her face. How could he do that? Make her feel so good so easily, so unexpectedly. Even when she was having a dark moment, he could always pull her into the light. That was why she wanted to be with him, wanted to marry him. That inexplicable quality was uniquely Castle's.
"So," Castle said as he exited the bathroom a few minutes later, "breakfast?"
Kate glanced over and noticed he was still naked, which made her shake her head as she bit her lip. "You don't want pants?"
"I need to find out what we're doing first," he informed her. He casually leaned against the doorframe before continuing. "If you want breakfast, I need pants. If you say, 'No, Castle; let's have sex again before we eat,' I don't need pants."
"Wow," was her only response.
He grinned wickedly at her as he wiggled his eyebrows. "So is that a 'yes' to sex?"
She laughed at him; sometimes, his ego was quite boundless. "No, but I'll say yes to breakfast—after a shower…and maybe some Advil." She slid from bed and walked towards the dresser opposite it only to freeze in place. Where the hell was her bag? She definitely had a bag when she arrived but—Oh, right; it was in the other bedroom. The one she originally intended on sleeping in.
Kate turned towards the bedroom exit when Castle stopped her by asking, "Where are you going?"
She gestured dumbly across the room. "My bag is out there."
"Oh; I'll get it." He strolled from the room and returned a minute later, bag in hand. When he saw Kate's skeptical expression he asked, "What?"
"You…you don't even want to put on a towel?"
He eyed her curiously; he had never taken her for a prude. "Do you have a problem with nudity, Kate?"
"No—I'm just confused. I mean…you live with your teenage daughter…"
He clicked his tongue at her. "Do you really think I'd walk around like this at home? Of course not! That's why I'm doing it here." He concluded with a wink.
Kate suppressed an eye roll as she took her bag and thanked him for it. After retrieving her toiletries and a fresh set of undergarments from the bag, she walked into the bathroom. She retrieved the small bottle of painkillers from her travel bag, poured two into her hand and swallowed them instantly. The rest of the items she left on the bathroom counter before making her way to the large tile shower in the room.
Just as the water was beginning to warm up, Kate sensed another presence behind her. She turned to see Castle stepping in the shower. Her brow winkling she asked, "What are you doing?"
He shrugged at her. "Two person shower head."
"Oh I don't think that's a good idea." That was definitely not a good idea. In fact, Kate could only think of reasons why that was a terrible idea.
"What if I promise to keep my hands to myself?" he countered. "C'mon, Mrs. Castle."
Ugh. He was doing that eyebrow wiggling thing at her—the one where he wiggled his brows at an impossibly fast rate. Why did that always make her smile? Every time. Plus, he had called her Mrs. Castle for the first time.
"Fine," she submitted. She unbuttoned the shirt she wore and tossed it out of the shower before stepping beneath the warm spray and letting the water cascade down over her. Yes, this was definitely what she needed to help alleviate the tiny hammers beating against the interior of her skull. Reaching for the hotel provided shampoo Kate squeezed a dollop into her hand and began to lather her scalp.
So consumed by the tension-relieving feeling, Kate momentarily forgot she shared the shower with her new husband. Instead she turned so her back faced the spray and tilted her head back so she could rinse the soap from her hair. Once this task was complete, she opened her eyes and found him gazing at her, hair white with suds.
Only, Castle wasn't just gazing at her, he was staring at her. Starting intently at her like one would stare intently at those mind-bender image puzzles, where staring for a period of time would allow one's mind to process and view a different scene all together. Suddenly, uncomfortable, she desperately fought the urge to cover herself. "You can stop ogling, Castle."
"Wha-" he replied almost startled. "Oh, no. I wasn't it's just… I mean. Last night it was dark and I didn't get to see very well so I…"
"So now you're what? Trying to count my freckles?" she asked, taking a leaf from his book and using a quip to relieve tension.
"No, I just…"
Still confused, Kate looked down at herself and suddenly she knew exactly what he was staring at. He wasn't gaping at her breasts, but what was between them; her bullet scar.
It was quite rare that Kate forgot the existence of the mark that singularly defined the prior nine months of her life. That particular morning, the shock of waking up married to Castle and the agonizing throb of her brain inside her skull took up most of the space typically reserved for thinking about her shooting. Dr. Burke told her to reward herself for thinking of things other than what happened to her that fateful day. Kate found several seconds of amusement in imagining the doctor's reaction to her sudden change in marital status. Then, as Castle took half a step towards her, her attention returned to the man before her.
"May I?" he asked as he lifted his hand gently. She nodded almost imperceptibly. Castle closed the distance between them and brushed his index finger across the raised area. Kate breathed in sharply and Castle snapped his hand back, apologizing.
"No, it's okay," she assured him. "It didn't hurt. It just feels…odd."
Castle returned his index finger to the spot and traced it gently. "So it bothers you then?"
"Sometimes. Mostly when I wake up. After I've been having a-" She stopped herself short of saying the phrase "flashback induced nightmare." "A-a dream or something. So I don't always know if it's psychological or it actually hurts. The other one still pulls sometimes, though. If I raise my arm too quickly the scar tissue will catch, but physical therapy has helped a lot."
The other scar? It took Castle a moment to remember that she had two: one where the bullet entered, and the other the doctors created to fix the damage the shot caused. He used his other hand to search for that spot on the side of her body, just beside her breast and under her armpit. He simultaneously touched both spots and gazed down at her.
Kate stared up at him, unwavering. Castle was the first non-medical professional to touch her scars, but for some reason this didn't bother her. Usually, she viewed hiding her scars a priority. In the male dominated world of police detectives, she needed to show as few weaknesses as possible, and those scars were a gateway to a plethora of weaknesses.
But Castle was different. She didn't mind Castle seeing the scars, touching them with his fingers—his lips. Perhaps that was because those scars weren't just hers, but theirs.
Almost as though he'd been reading her thoughts, he confessed softly, "There's not a day that goes by I don't think about that moment."
She picked up one of his hands in hers and brought it to her lips, kissing her way across each of his knuckles. "I know," she sighed, bringing the back of his hand to rest against her cheek. "Me too."
