85. 86: Monday

86

He wakes to coffee - decadent, overpowering - and disorientation. He feels upside down and crowded, his body flushed with heat, unable to move.

Castle grunts and warmth shifts around him, flows, liquid and soft, and he opens his eyes.

"Morning," she whispers, and she ducks in close to brush her lips across his forehead.

She is somehow wrapped around him. He's on his side of the bed, but she's in the middle, her arm hooked around his neck with her palm on his chest. He feels her knee at his back so that he's lying on her drawn up leg, half in her lap.

"What are you doing?" he murmurs, blinking up at her.

"Saying hi." Kate smirks, but it's a softer thing. She turns her head and sips at her coffee, lips kissing the mug, and Castle suddenly feels her hand at his chest, her thumb rubbing over and over in the hollow of his throat.

He thought those were just dreams. She really did wrestle him into her lap sometime early this morning, and then murmured her love to him as he fell back asleep.

Weird.

Beautiful. Look how beautiful she is, her hair wild around her head, her mouth in a wide smile as she looks at him. Her thumb lifts and strokes the edge of his eyebrow, and she leans down to kiss his lips, strange and wonderful.

When she lifts again, she curls her arm back around his shoulders, her knees at either side of him and squeezing.

"What time is it?" he asks, his voice a croak. It's possible he shouted last night. She just - yeah. She's amazing.

"It's ten," she says, and leans over to place her mug on his bedside table. He turns his head to watch, feels her chest pressing against his cheek, and even as he wishes he hadn't turned his head, he sees a glass of water and another mug there on the table.

She brought him coffee and a glass of water, like he usually has beside his bed.

Wait. "Ten?" He moves to sit up, stunned, but she holds him down with her arm at his chest, draws her other leg up to hook around his hip. "Kate. It's ten."

"You needed some sleep," she says. "I think I wore you out."

Despite the flash of heat that goes through him at her casual words, he still can't help the astonishment.

"But why are you still in bed?" Even on vacation, the latest he could keep her here was nine. And every other day it was seven, and she was up to run or swim in the pool or eat breakfast on the back deck.

When she finally answers, her fingers curl along his collarbone, up his ribs, stroking to his sternum. "Wanted to start the day with you."

Oh.

Castle lifts his hand and covers hers over his heart, brings her palm up to his lips to brush a kiss against her skin.

She was waiting for him. Waiting to start a new day.