December 2016 (part one of three)

"I don't know what to say, except it's Christmas, and we're all in misery."

— Ellen Griswold

Everything was turmoil, the world in chaos, evil powers seemed to triumph, and here they were, hiding out in a cabin on Lake Erie outside one of the smallest towns in Ohio.

Trying not to die.

She could be fatalistic these days. At least we're together, he'd said, when they'd reunited via hospital bed at an undisclosed location hours after being whisked out of New York. A man was dead in their kitchen, blood likely stained the floor, but they were here, ducking for cover.

Tenderly ducking. More like finding one position on the couch that wasn't agony-inducing and then staying there for as long as humanly possible before moving again. There were support people at first, therapists of all kinds, a home health nurse, an acupuncturist, even a cleanser of chakras. The cabin still smelled faintly of sage, pleasing and homebound. But as the winter came on, and their needs were not so extreme, and the snow came in drifts up to the windows, the support melted away.

He'd managed one call to Alexis, nothing at all to his mother, and she knew that killed him. She'd had the one phone call to tell her father to get out of the city, leave, just go, she was in recovery, Castle had managed survive as well, it would eventually be fine. She assumed he had listened and left, isolated himself as he was wont to do. She wondered, sometimes in those small still hours before dawn, if perhaps he made phone calls to the redheads, talked them down from their hysterias in his measured rational lawyer tones, helped them through the day to day.

She hoped.

And laid awake, insomnia at her throat like a predator.

Not Rick. His coping mechanism, since humor fell flat even for him, was sleep. He spent his recovery sleeping, and the sleep let him heal, and yes, she'd been shot twice and he had just the one, but it certainly was galling. Sometimes she woke him just to not be so lonely in the worst of the night.

He never complained. Pretended it'd been a nightmare that woke him and held her hand. As if for his own comfort.

She hated to cry. It would do her no good to cry.

Castle was sleeping even now, that defensive lean he did towards the injured side, and with the sun going down it cast his face in those strangely ultra-orange bursts of light. She thought the vividness of the color meant more snow tonight, that the clouds were low-hanging and hemming in the sun.

His face was in profile, highlighted unflatteringly, the too-sharp jut of his cheekbones and eye sockets from six months of misery. He didn't eat enough; they had protein shakes they were supposed to down in the mornings and neither of them felt much like anything in the morning. It was enough just to get out of bed. A Herculean feat. Usually they lay spent and panting on a couch, a chair, the floor, trying not to cry.

Maybe that was her. He needed to eat. She needed to eat. She had never seen him this…

He had the build of a superhero, she'd always thought, but now there were grooves at his mouth, no longer laugh lines, and the width of his chest was lopsided no matter how many reps the physical therapist made him do.

Oh, but his arms were enticing. Strong and thick. He'd always been thick, but this was—

Kate let out a little breath of wonder, pressed hands over her eyes to stop the sudden stream of tears.

Of course that's when he woke, what he woke to, a semi-violent rush to consciousness at her tears. He groaned as he saw her and wrapped his hand around her ankle, squeezed. "What, what, why," he stumbled out, because he had learned from the other therapist don't diminish her pain, don't tell her not to cry just because it makes you uncomfortable.

It made her uncomfortable, damn it.

"Kate," he mumbled. He sounded weary and he'd just woken up.

She wiped her eyes carefully—she was no longer catlike reflexes and swift precision; everything in her world required pre-planning of motor function and body mapping. "No, it's good, it's a good thing."

"Oh." He didn't sound convinced, because she was required by the therapist (who no longer could make it up to their cabin due to the snow) to be positive about any expression of emotion.

She looked at him again, and it was still there, the orange golden light and the severity of his face, almost brutal in its visage, and those broad wide shoulders, the arms ready to fell trees.

"Lumberjack fantasy," she blurted out.

His jaw dropped.

"No, sorry, it's almost unkind of me to mention it, isn't it? Because we can't—" She waved her hand between them, encompassing the vast space that one end of the couch to the other represented. It was too far to travel. She let out a slow and even breath, control and a hedge against pain. "But it's there for me. Kind of suddenly. And I'm grateful."

"You were crying."

"I said I'm grateful," she muttered. She pressed her hand tentatively to her abdomen and nothing screamed back at her, so she allowed herself the self-soothing massage of the ragged scar. "It made me weep."

"Lumberjack always did make you weep, one way or another."

She let out a pained noise which passed for laughter these days, the suppression of, and he gave her a lazy smile and tilted his head back to the couch. "Then I guess I should admit that all this week I've woken from sex dreams."

"Oh?"

"About you," he said. "If that needed clarification."

"Even better."

He grinned, eyes closed. "Not sure you'd approve."

"If you had another dream about Maddie inviting herself—"

"No!" He laughed, which was taboo in their cabin, and groaned immediately, a hissing of pressure in his throat as he canted to one side. "Ug, Kate, why you gotta punish me? That was years ago and I can't control my dreams."

"You have a thing for the dominatrix," she said blandly.

He grunted and groaned again, giving her the evil eye for that intentional push of hers to his laughter. It hurt him less than it hurt her, and she couldn't believe how good it was to hear.

"Ease up, Rick," she told him softly, repentance and forgiveness in her tone. "Put your head in my lap. I'll do what I can on that pec."

He whimpered and made a slow-motion swan dive towards her, his body full-length on the couch. When he landed in her lap, he did nothing to adjust—he couldn't—it was too much effort.

She had become the cabin expert on soothing bullet scars.

Back when she'd been at her father's cabin, that was, and it translated here.

Kate laid two light fingers directly above his heart and waited. When his body seemed to be sinking into hers, she made circles at the highest point of his scar, and laid her free hand to his forehead, closing his eyes.

The arousal had passed, but not the love. For that she was also grateful.

—