Chapter Twenty Two: The sun is going to shine again.
He wakes early, his eyelids cracking open to the surprise of sunlight filtering gently through the gauzy sheers that cover the bedroom windows.
The storm is over. Blown itself out overnight, and apart from the soft cries of gulls and the lulling sound of waves crashing against the shoreline – all is quiet, all is completely peaceful around him. It serves to immediately fill his bright eyes with the sting of tears. It's so different. So startlingly, jarringly different from the manner in which his day began the year before.
Dear, sweet little Jack.
Then it was screaming.
Desperate, terrifying screams that pulled him from the depths of slumber and into a world that had shattered, had seemingly gone forever dark in that moment when it was discovered that a small and infinitely precious little life had slipped quietly from this earth.
Those screams and that loss, the bare beginning of the bitter end, at least or so he'd thought. So he's lived, maybe struggled to live, okay honestly barely survived - until today.
And today . . .
Today there is sunshine in the world again, and calm outside as well as within him. And instead of a dark bedroom, an empty bed, and the sounds of pure agony, he's woken to the soft weight of her snuggled up against him. Her head is pillowed on his chest, the sweet perfume of her skin surrounds him, and the rhythm of her heart is beating right along side of his.
Hope. That's her gift to him today, as it was from the first moment that she walked into his life. Kate was, and she still is, all of his possibilities. He feels it beginning, itching again inside of him. A tumbling maelstrom of ideas suddenly seeking an out, a plethora of words bursting across the freshly fertile landscape of his mind. Images, feelings, scenes, new beginnings and old memories and he just wants to get up out of the bed and find something to write on. He needs to let the words out; he needs to set them free, he needs . . . wow, to write. He needs to write.
He wants to write.
His fingers actually clench with it, his mind whirls in a way he'd forgotten that it could, and the book that's sits unfinished back on his laptop, it's suddenly his once more - it's his story and it's calling to him. It's demanding an end.
Castle blinks heavily and the moisture cradled in his eyes leaks out, slips free and courses with no fanfare down into his hair as he lets himself not grieve, but rejoice for a moment as he acknowledges to himself that he's a writer once more. That 'Richard Castle – novelist' is a part of himself that he can once again claim.
Another gift, another missing part of his life that she's restored to him, and oh he needs to tell her, he needs to share this with her.
Castle looks down his chest at the top of her head, and he'd be lying if he said he wasn't the slightest bit nervous about waking her. About how she's going to handle today, how grief might impact what they've only just started to rebuild. But he has faith in it, faith enough to move through the trepidation anyway, so he lifts a hand to cradle the back of her head, lets his fingers slip easily into her silky curls, lets his other hand softly nudge her awake.
"Kate," he breathes softly.
He shifts beneath her cheek, warm and comforting his presence surrounds her, makes a haven of the bed. Sleep lets go of its claws, and as she drifts up through her unconscious layers she's so immediately aware of him, of the beautiful marvel that is his strong body once more beneath her own.
Kate's eyes flutter open to muted sunlight, and then it hits her. And for one horrible second Kate can't breathe around the sudden sharp jolt of pain.
My sweet baby, NO.
Castle must sense her tensing, must feel the sudden tension that has gripped her body, because the hand that's cradling her head tips her face gently up towards him. The other moves confidently across her bare back in a soothing arc, before it grips onto her bicep and pulls her up fully onto his chest, he gives her no escape, no place to look but at him.
"Breathe, Baby." There's no censure, no anxiety, no pleading in his voice. It's low, calm, so loving, and it works instantly.
The tension in her body eases, emotion rises up to swallow her but it's not just a black tide of grief and loss, it's a complicated potion of which those are only two ingredients. And it's love, her unending, fierce, powerful love for her husband that dominates the mix. Her eyes find his face and he's watching her patiently, the same crazy maelstrom of feelings all over his handsome face.
It centers her, allows her to breathe through the pain. Swift tears swamp her vision and then she's burying her face against the comforting warmth of his neck.
"I'm sorry," she murmur to him, although she's not really sure what she's apologizing for.
"Nothing to be sorry for, " he assures her. "You're still here," he says.
Kate nods, her lips brushing against the skin of his throat, she shakes and then she lets herself just give into the need for tears. The need to just let her grief have at her in this moment, knowing she can swim through it strongly now, to the other side, to the miracle of them that's still real.
Strong, warm arms wrap tightly around her, and beneath her she feels him give in to it too. She clings even tighter then.
It feels so different to cry with her.
For the familiar wave of grief to be only about missing Jackson, for it to be untainted by the horror of mourning for Kate as well. The deep well of loss is still tugging at him, it still blights his soul, but he's holding her and she's holding him and everything is better when that's the case.
He can face down anything with her beside him.
"I had so many dreams for him." Her words are so quiet, for a moment Castle thinks that it's possible he's imagining them, but then she speaks again.
"So many things I imagined he'd grow up to be."
She pushes up on his chest then, face wet and eyes swollen, red-rimmed, her nose is running but she's the most gorgeous to him that she's ever been. Because she's looking at him like he hung the moon and her face is wide open. She's fierce in her grieving but this time it's different, she's so very present with him. She lets him see it – all of it. Withholding nothing she shows him that his love is truly enough again.
This is how it could have been. How it should have been – yes he lets himself wish for that for a moment. But only for a moment and then the writer determinedly shoves the thought away, it has only a minimal - if lingering - power over him.
"I thought he'd want to be a cop." He admits to her quietly. He cups her face in his large hands, pulls her down to his lips to kiss her softly. Because he has too, has to share a breath with her, when he lets her pull back he whispers, "I thought he'd grow up so damn amazed by you that he'd only want to do exactly what you do."
Kate smiles, it's watery and tentative, and she's surprised that she can do this, talk so freely about it, everything that she herself wanted for their baby. It surprises her more that there is even a sense of relief to do it as well – to just share it all with him. How very foolish, how very blind she's been.
"I pictured him wanting to tell stories," she counters. "Just like his father. I always hoped he'd have an imagination, a sense of play as huge as yours, Rick. I dreamed he'd be the kind of person who people gravitated to, the kind of person people loved to be around. I wanted him to have a life full of laughter, to know what it was to love someone with everything that you can be."
She stares down at him, eyes clouding suddenly as she confesses a deeper wish, one that stuns him. "I even dreamed one day he'd have a little sister too."
Oh, Kate. God, Kate.
He pushes up then, pushes her back. Hauls her into his lap and kisses her passionately. A fresh batch of tears make their way down his face and he tastes her mirroring ones on his lips and it's all so overwhelming. The reality of this day, and what it commemorates. The terrible span of a year that now separates them from the last time all their hopes and dreams for Jack were a possibility.
And it hurts. It really hurts knowing that dreams for him are all they'll ever be.
But at least this is real, he thinks. She is real, and he's holding her, he can love her, he can be with her again.
And then he's desperate, greedy for it.
For her. To take her, take her love for him and live within it.
He has to feel her around him; it feels like he'll die unless he's a part of her again.
She's just as needy. Naked she shifts in his lap, her long slender legs winding themselves around his waist. She feels him hardening against her. Trapped against her stomach it's such a heady sensation as he swells and she feels herself growing slick in response - the demands of his body triggering an answering response in hers.
His strong, thick fingers land grasping on her hips, he lifts her and she feels him at her entrance, then he tugs at her, pulls her firmly down onto him, gasping his desperate need for this into her neck.
He sets the pace.
She might be the one on top but its Castle who's taken control. He lifts her and then tugs her body back down onto him over and over, and weak in the knees Kate just holds onto his shoulders and lets him. With each downward pull his body thrusts up to meet her and the impact is jarring, bone rattling, and so damn good. The climb is fast. Especially when she slides her right hand down to brush over their joining, shivering uncontrollably with every thrust that buries the hard length of him deep inside.
"I wanted that," he says suddenly, his oh-so blue eyes burning as they stare into her face.
For a moment she doesn't follow, but then it hits her, she chokes out, "Another child?" And he nods, thrusts even harder inside her, his fingers gripping her hips so tightly now as he moves her upon him that she knows without doubt they're leaving bruises. And then he seems kinda lost to her. Such passion, want, need are controlling him, and he's so hard, so large inside her but she can feel an edge of despair washing through him, taking him over. She can feel all that he wanted for them preventing him from getting there - from finding release.
She takes over for him.
Gently she tugs his right hand from her hip, guides his fingers down to brush through her curls. She pleads with her eyes, moves her body sinuously, sinfully and with artful purpose she rises and falls. His thumb finds her clit and circles it with scant pressure. He teases and torments her, and the despair falls away from his face as pleasure, playfulness wash in.
"Do you still want it?" she asks softly and unthinking because her body is tensing, whiting out in a mind-bending climax a mere second after the word 'it' still slips from her lips. She slumps sated and limp against him.
He flips her onto her back, pins her hands high above her head, and drives his body sharply, fully into again before he replies.
"Yes," he says, the truth once again surprising him as it spills from somewhere deep within. "Yes, Kate. I want to take that risk all over again."