Good evening everyone.

First off, I just wanted to say thank you to those of you who have added this to your alerts and favourites, it really does mean the world to me.

Secondly, just a little note to anyone waiting for an update on A Real Lisbon Family Christmas, I intend to have the next chapter written as soon as I possible can do. I'm debating over a couple of ideas, and I just want to make sure that I keep it on the right track. So, as ever, please just stick with me for a little while longer.

I couldn't sleep, and so I thought an update was in order.
This is yet a little more into the fateful night.. I promise that the next time I update it will be in order to move into the actual plot (if we can quite call it that) of this story.
Enjoy.

Two

Rational thinking told her to get into a taxi, go home, and get some sleep. Rational thinking told her that this was a ridiculous, adrenaline fuelled plan; a plan that wasn't really a plan at all, and certainly didn't have any definite result. Rational thinking told her that there was a reason why he hadn't answered his phone. Rational thinking had no place in the world. Not tonight.
Tonight, all her thoughts were Richard Castle. The whole world was pulsating with the promise that she would be able to rescue the fractured remnants of their relationship, wrap them up in her trembling arms, and prove to him that this thing between them, whatever it turned out to be, deserved a chance to survive. They had been through too much for it to just be over. She had been through too much to go through losing him. Kate Beckett was no longer Kate Beckett without him. Without Castle, she was right back on that roof top, grasping hopelessly to a world that was done with her. And so, like all natural disasters, the aftershock pushed her further and further into the moment that would leave its impact on the entirety of her life.
Her head too filled with the magnitude of what she about to do for coherent thought, it was her body alone that ran the familiar path, through the bitter rain and bitter people, to the door that held her life in its hinges.

Her hand shook as she reached out to knock against the door, pain splintering through the numbness of the cold. She didn't move, didn't breathe.
The door opened, and the man that the entire world was illuminated with was stood, all too suddenly, inches away from her, and she still couldn't move. Still couldn't breathe. Because he wasn't really there at all; Richard Castle, the most infuriatingly wonderful man that she had ever known was gone, replaced by someone whose eyes didn't shine the way they were supposed. Here she was, faced with a prospect that she had been too emotional to consider, and not a single cell in her body knew how to respond.

"Beckett, what do you want?"

And then, without her even realising it, her heart and her mind had finally collided; were finally agreed upon their place in the world, and they were screaming out the truth that she had known all along.

"You."

Castle knew that despite everything the future held, the world would never again feel quite so utterly consumed by their love as it did now. The sun would come up, and reality would set in. A reality which still felt a million miles away as the rain beat as steadily as the heart pressed against his own, and his head swam with the dizzy memories of salt stained kisses. Here in the safety of the moonlight it was just them; two people who had collided with such force that the universe would crumble at their feet if they were ever to separate. All that mattered was the feel of her soft body pressed securely against his own, salted tracks of sweat and tears clinging to them as if they knew they had been a part of something much more than the outside world could possibly conceive. The room hummed with the shockwave carved out of two people who had been headed towards this very moment for their whole lives.

The world would keep turning. The seconds would keep passing. The night would soon be over, and the halcyon hours spent under the moonlight would dissipate along with it. Reality would set it, and the world would once again pull them in. Questions asked. Answers given. Tears shed. Truths faced. This night had been a magnificent whirlwind of revelations and blinding passion, but they couldn't stay here forever. They had to move one, no matter how daunting in seemed; they had to grow into something that was more than just two people, existing together, without a single thought to the city outside the windows.
Which is why Castle dreaded the heavy wave of exhaustion that wanted to pull him into sleep. It was why he was fighting with all that he had to stay awake, if only for another second. He wanted to savour them, just being together, before anyone or anything had a chance to tarnish it. Because here he was, blissfully surrounded by nothing but the touch and the taste and the scent of Katherine Beckett. By everything that she was. By all that they could be.

Castle felt the subtle shift of Kate's body against his, her head tilted so that she could speak without the warmth of his neck swallowing her words,
"Go to sleep Castle," her voice crumbled around the edges, echoing the exhaustion the he was feeling, "we have the rest of our lives to worry about reality."

"Promise?"

"Always."

To Be Continued.

I couldn't quite get the ending as I wanted it, but I hope that this update didn't disappoint.
Please let me know what you thought if you get a free minute to do so.
And thank you for reading.

Katie.