Chapter 6: Dusk Till Dawn
When Beckett is shot in 'Knockout', she wakes up in another world where Castle successfully jumped in front of her to take the bullet and has been declared dead. But his ghost isn't.
Kate wakes once more to the 'real' world, where Castle is very much alive, but her life with his ghost isn't so easily forgotten. This chapter takes place during the first Christmas that follows these events.
She's already up and getting ready for work when the knocking on her front door has her pausing in front of her closet. Kate's lips quirk, because there's no question to who it is, and she drops the pair of boots she was contemplating to let him in.
She opens the front door to his crooked smile and bright blue eyes, a cup of coffee already extended towards her. "Merry Christmas Eve-Eve, Beckett."
Kate rolls her eyes, but accepts the cup from his hand.
"You know that's not a real thing," she points out as he strides inside.
Castle pauses to press a kiss to her cheek. "Sure it is. It's the 23rd, the day before Christmas Eve, hence Christmas Eve-Eve."
She sighs, but catches him by a belt loop before he can slip past her. He arches an eyebrow, but stops without pause, some of the smart ass teasing dissipating from his gaze as she uses her grip to draw him in.
Kate tilts her head to reach his mouth, fingers still curled in the loop of fabric. His chest stutters just slightly against hers, but then he's cradling her cheek in his palm, wrapping his arm around her waist, and humming into her kiss.
She's noticed that moments like these still seem to take him off guard. He loves her, she loves him, and she's shown him, many times. But each time she initiates contact, whether it be a simple morning kiss in her foyer or her body sliding over him in bed, she can taste the soft awe on his tongue, see it in his eyes every time.
Castle's hand steals beneath her sweater, knuckles caressing her lower back, coaxing her spine to arc like a puppet on a string for him.
She grunts, the scar lining her side searing.
"Hurting?" he mumbles, because of course he already knows, fingers already traipsing across her skin to linger below her ribs, smooth over the incision scar marring her flesh. Kate pins her bottom lip with her teeth and nods.
The cold weather has become her worst enemy, stretching her still healing skin, causing it to ache and pull. Her only relief comes from him, his hands on her body after a case, after he comes home with her or she joins him and his family at the loft - an event she still has to sometimes steel herself for. Alexis may not be seeking vengeance for her dead father in their current world, but her weariness of Kate fails to lessen. She doesn't blame his daughter, she would be weary too if her dad was seeing the woman who managed to get him shot.
But she can't let him go despite every instinct that tells her she should, that screams for his safety and for her to retreat to lonely hiding places behind a wall that he's been inside of for months now. She dreamt in vivid detail of what it would be like to have him and now that she does, she won't waste another day.
His palm splays over her scar, warm and soothing, and she hums, nudges her nose to his jaw.
"We should play hooky from work today," he murmurs, tracing his thumb back and forth over the bottom rung of her ribcage. "Curl up in bed and binge Christmas movies."
"Mm, not a big fan of Christmas movies, but don't tempt me," she grins, dislodging her lips from his skin with a sigh. "Have to work today if I want Christmas morning with you."
His lips twitch with a smile, tender and lovely and calling for one last brush of her mouth before she finally pulls away.
Under normal circumstances, she wouldn't have dreamed of altering her normal Christmas tradition of keeping watch over the city. But after experiencing the idea of a Christmas with Castle, waking with warmth in her chest that melted away the chilling ache in her heart, she opted to compromise.
She's still working her usual holiday shift on Christmas Eve, on Christmas day as well, but she won't go in until noon, just enough time for her to stop by the loft on Christmas morning without intruding on his family's traditions.
Castle drifts to her kitchen, finding a spot on one of her barstools while she follows.
"You said we spent Christmas together in the dreamworld, right?"
Kate pauses, the cup of coffee poised at her lips. They don't talk about 'the dreamworld' very often anymore, he knows every detail she was able to remember, but every once in a while, he takes her off guard with a new question.
"We did," she confirms, taking a sip of the coffee, wrinkling her nose at the spike of peppermint. "Castle, did you order a Christmas blend?"
"It's peppermint mocha," he grins and she huffs, disgruntled by the change from her favored vanilla, but returning the cup to her lips nonetheless.
"What'd we do for Christmas there?"
She never planned to tell him, intending to keep the memories to herself, but it eventually became unavoidable.
The idea of spending a summer healing at her dad's cabin after her release from the hospital was just too similar, too much too soon, so when Castle offered her a place of solitude in the Hamptons, she didn't say no. But the foreign place failed to stop the nightmares from finding her - dreams that started the same as her life in the other world with his ghost did, only this time, he was really dead.
Her sobs woke him up every time, calling him down the stairs to her room in the middle of the night. He would sit with her in the dark, consoling until she was truly able to believe he was real, alive. Not a ghost.
"A ghost?" he murmured one night, sitting beside her in the bed with a tentative arm around her shoulders. Still so tentative with her then. A strange contrast after months of having him love her without boundary or restriction, no tentative touches.
She curled into his side, her cheek at his clavicle. He loved her, she loved him back, but aside from a chaste kiss in the hospital, he was careful with her. Too careful.
"Being a ghost does sound pretty cool, though," he mused, circling his thumb over the rounded edge of her shoulder.
"It isn't," she breathed, immediately feeling his confusion permeate the air.
She was afraid to tell him initially, acutely aware of exactly how crazy it sounded, still sounds - she woke up in an supernatural sort of reality where he was dead yet not, a ghost who remained by her side for nearly a year that was really just a few days worth of sleep. But Castle was enraptured from the moment she uttered her memory of waking up to news of his death, to her first encounter with his ghost in the cabin.
Kate lowers her cup to the wooden surface of her countertop.
"Well, I wanted you to spend it with Martha and Alexis, so you went there for Christmas Eve," she recalls, tracing the rim of the mug with her thumb. "But you came back sometime after midnight, spent Christmas night, the day, with me."
Castle nods, but he's staring down at his hands fidgeting in his lap.
"Why?" she inquires, earning the lift of his eyes, a forced smile.
"Just curious," he answers automatically, but Kate narrows her gaze on him. Asking about her dream usually is prompted by pure curiosity and intrigue, but he never appears crestfallen by the answers he receives. Not like he does now.
He eventually breaks under her stare, sighing in defeat, but refusing to meet her eyes.
"I want your Christmas with me to be as good as your Christmas with him."
"Him?"
Castle swallows, his jaw squaring before he speaks. "The other me."
Kate blinks before she shakes her head at the absurdity of the statement, abandoning her coffee to circle the bar. He's sitting on the stool, looking like a rejected little boy, beaten out by his own self, and it's just - all wrong.
"Castle," she murmurs, nudging her way between his knees and lifting her hands to his cheeks. "You are him. It was a dream-"
"Alternate reality," he grumbles, but his hands still reach out, claim her hips.
"But it wasn't reality, not my reality," she insists. "I loved having you then, but I have you now and it's - god, Castle, it's even better."
Her hands slip from his cheeks while she drifts in to drop her forehead to his, palms falling to rest at his chest.
"You died in that dream, alternate world, whatever you want to call it," she murmurs, pressing the heel of her palm to his beating heart, curling her fingers over the spot. "We were never able to truly be happy because every piece of joy was mixed with... so much sorrow," she confesses, able to recall the feeling as if it were real, as if it really did inhabit her for those days of dreaming, those months of an imaginary life. "Here, I woke up and you were fine, for the most part."
Her fingers skim over the healed scar on his arm, just below his shoulder where the bullet seared through him as he tried to save her.
"But I would never give up that dream."
A hint of hurt flares through his gaze, but she doesn't allow him the room for questions, for assumptions. Kate leans forward, her forehead grazing his in a kiss before finding rest there.
"Rick, that dream showed me what waiting can cost. It taught me that if I loved you, I should let you know while I can, that I should stop fighting it or else I'm just going to end up losing you, regretting every moment I could have had with you."
"Kate," he whispers, his hands retracting from her waist to curl around her wrists. He's hanging on her every word, but the truth of how close it came to her 'what if's being a reality aren't lost on him. His grip is firm on her bones, his thumbs sealing to the insides of her wrists where her pulse skips for him.
"That dream showed me how much you mean to me," she finishes softly, sliding one of her hands up from his chest to his throat, touching her fingertips to the reassuring thunder of his life beating beneath. "It led me here. Why would I ever want anything else?"
Kate startles awake at the sound of her front door unlocking the next night. She's never been a light sleeper to begin with, but after her shooting, the bouts of PTSD she's experienced, any little noise yanks her violently from slumber. Not that she intended to fall into a deep sleep tonight anyway; she was hoping he would come.
She checks her phone on the nightstand. It's mere minutes after midnight, officially Christmas, and he knows where she hides the extra key to her apartment. It reaffirms her suspicions, her hopes.
He slips effortlessly into her bedroom, easing the door shut behind him and attempting silence on the tips of his toes to reach her. But she's watching, grinning beneath the sheets, and he must feel her eyes on him.
Castle huffs, pausing halfway through and giving up any pretense of sneaking into her bed. "You're supposed to be sleeping."
She hums, watches him unbutton his shirt and step out of his jeans. She draws back the sheets on the side of the bed that has become his, catching the smile that flickers across his lips at the gesture, glad for it. She wants him to feel certain, to know his place here, to trust that she's firmly here with him. Only him.
"So should you," she counters, shifting as he settles under the covers and snuggles in close to her.
The cold clings to him, his nose red and his hair damp with flakes of snow, and Kate shivers as he tangles himself around her. But she welcomes the embrace of his body, snaking her arms around his torso and pushing a knee between his.
"Had to see you," he murmurs, painting his lips to her cheek. "Want to wake up next to you on Christmas morning."
Her heart flutters in her chest, a pleasant sensation that tickles her ribcage, that only he has ever been able to evoke. The thrill of being in love with him.
It's different than what she felt for him in the dream. It's better.
"I was waiting for you," she admits, pressing her lips to his jaw, letting them curl against his skin. "Had a feeling you might show up. Trying to compete with yourself."
"I am not," he mutters despite her smirk, sliding his cold hands beneath her shirt and grinning as she gasps.
"Asshole," she grunts, pinching his side.
"I don't have to compete with anyone for you," he murmurs, catching the corner of her mouth for a kiss. She arches an eyebrow, but oh - he's teasing the edge of her lips with the fleeting touch of his tongue, the nip of his teeth. "You gave me one of the best gifts for Christmas yesterday, Kate."
His hands are warming along her spine, heating the sensitive skin of her scars, and she rocks her body deeper into his, hums in question.
"What was that?"
One of Castle's hands manages to coast the length of her vertebrae, up to curve at the nape of her neck, fingers in her hair.
"Reassurance," he mumbles into her chasing lips. "You told me how much you loved me-"
"Told you that before," she argues halfheartedly, slipping her arms from between them to submerge her fingers in his hair, drag him closer. "Stop questioning that."
"I know, but-" She huffs, stops trying to shut him up with her mouth even though all she wants for Christmas is for him to stop talking. Castle grins at her impatience, nuzzling his nose to hers despite it. "I never questioned it, I just - I needed to hear it. All of it."
The urgency swirling through her blood simmers from its needful boil, popping and sizzling and molten in her stomach, but she puts it all on hold to dust her lips over his.
"Not even the best dream could ever compare to this, Castle. Whenever you need to be reminded of that, let me know."
He smiles into her kiss and finally - finally - shifts, fits his hips against hers in that perfect way that sets her soul on fire.
"I could use some extra reminding," he muses, gasping as her hand dips below the waistband of his boxers.
"Gladly. Merry Christmas, Castle," she grins, laughing as he smothers her mouth with a kiss, always managing to bring joy into her bed on even the most joyless nights.
"Best Christmas yet," he hums, gentling the work of his mouth over hers into a slow caress that steals her breath.
Kate welcomes the cove of his body over hers, the warm haven she arches into as her heart begins to pound with anticipation, desire, love. She loves him in a way that is both familiar and new, terrifying and beautiful, and no, nothing really could ever compare to the way she feels right now.
"Mine too."