A/N: This fluffy little Caskett Christmas fic is set in the distant future of my Dangerous Game universe. Happy Holidays, everyone.
Kate Beckett woke up Christmas morning to the sound of Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You blasting in her ears loud enough to rupture her ear drums. She tried to ignore it. Tried really, really hard, because she was having this fantastic dream about an island somewhere in Hawaii where no one ever got murdered and she could spend all day on the beach with a margarita and a book. But she failed. Failed horribly. The song kept pulsating in her ears, and she wondered idly if the floor was vibrating from the obnoxious noise level. It had to be. Then she wondered how many of the neighbors had called to complain.
When she finally convinced herself to open her eyes because, wish as hard as she wanted, the song was not going to go away, she was greeted by the face of Rick Castle less than two inches away from her own. He was grinning like an idiot. A big, giant, Christmas elf idiot. With a Santa hat on. And…what the hell? Was he wearing a clown nose?
"Good morning, beautiful," he said happily.
Kate frowned at the cheerfulness of his voice. How anyone could be that perky this early without any coffee was beyond her. "Turn it down," she muttered.
Rick stuck his bottom lip out in a pout. "Aw, Katie Watie's a widdle Grinchie poo."
Kate rolled over and buried her head in the pillow, but not before she made her first threat of the morning. She was starting early today. "Call me Katie again and I'll break your nose."
Kate felt the bed dip as Rick got on it. She'd assumed he was crawling in to cuddle her like he always did the mornings when he was miraculously up before her and she was grumpy from lack of caffeine. Instead, she felt the bed start to shake. Her body bounced up and down on the mattress, and after a few seconds of trying to ignore him Kate rolled over on her back and started up at Rick, who was jumping on the bed and chanting like a six year old.
"Get! Up! Get! Up!"
"What are you doing?" she demanded, glaring at him.
"I'm waking you up! It's Christmas! We've got presents to open, hot cocoa to drink…" he trailed off and stopped jumping when he realized she wasn't looking at him anymore, but at his sweater instead. He looked down at it, and then back up. "What?"
"What are you wearing?"
He frowned, puzzled. "It's my Christmas sweater."
That was an understatement, Kate decided. It wasn't a Christmas sweater; it was a Christmas display. Rick was wearing a white sweater with a Christmas tree on the front, a tree that took up the entire front of the sweater. The colored lights on the tree were real, actually blinking, and Kate couldn't take her eyes off of it.
"Rick. It lights up."
He smiled proudly. "Yes it does. I special ordered it last week but kept it as a surprise. Isn't it great?"
"It's…something."
Rick dropped to his knees and crawled toward her, stopping when his hands were planted on either side of her head and he was hovering directly above her. "You don't like my sweater?"
"What's on your nose?" Kate asked instead of answering him, lifting a finger to flick the foam ball resting on the tip of his nose.
"Rudolph's nose," he groaned, sounding eerily similar to a sixteen year old girl with an attitude problem. "Duh."
"It looks like a clown nose."
"Does not."
"Does too."
"Does not."
Kate grinned and reached up to run her hands over his Santa hat. "And Santa's hat. You're really covering all your bases here, aren't you?"
"Just trying to get in the spirit."
"You're missing something from the nativity."
"Nah. I put baby Jesus in my pocket."
"You put Jesus in your pocket?"
"It's okay, he can breathe just fine."
Kate couldn't hold it in anymore. She burst out laughing, her head tilting back on the pillow as Rick grinned down at her from his position above her. When her laughter faded Rick lifted a hand and pushed some hair out of her eyes.
"Merry Christmas, Kate," he murmured. He leaned down to kiss her.
"Merry Christmas," Kate said in return, grasping his shoulders as he pulled away from their kiss. "You really couldn't think of a better way to wake me up than jumping on the bed and blasting Mariah Carey?"
"Hey, this is a classic Christmas song. And I had another way in mind, but I was afraid Santa would come back and replace my present with coal if I did that with my home-from-college daughter sleeping in the room next door." He grinned and leaned down to nip at her ear before whispering the rest of his thought. "You're not exactly quiet when I do the sort of things I had in mind."
Kate grinned and raked her nails up his back. "Well I guess we'll just have to wait until after you open your presents to get on Santa's bad side. You've got all year to make it up."
"True. But I can't promise to be good all year."
"I wouldn't expect you too. That would be extremely disappointing for me."
Rick grinned. He captured her lips again, deeper this time, and Kate arched her back into his body as she felt a familiar heat start to blossom in her abdomen. Rick surprised her when he pulled away. "Can I give you your present?"
She stared up at him. "Now? I thought we were all opening presents downstairs with Alexis and your mother."
"Well we are. And I have another one to give you when that happens. But this one is sort of…intimate."
"If you're about to make a sex joke, I will punch you."
"Nope. No sex joke. But now that you mention it, there are so many things I could do with that…Ow!" Rick rolled off to the side of Kate and rubbed his ear, frowning at her. "What was that for?"
"For being ADD. Where's my present?"
"My, my. You are awfully demanding. And apparently quite materialistic. I'm not sure this relationship will work after all."
"Well that's a shame, seeing as I live here. Oh, and I'd probably burn your sweater on my way out."
Rick gasped dramatically and wrapped his arms around himself protectively. "Not the sweater!"
Kate rolled over to her side and propped herself up on an elbow. "How do those lights work, anyway?"
"Battery pack sewed in the back of the sweater," Rick said instantly, rolling on his side and mimicking Kate's body position. "I put in a fresh pair this morning so this baby will run all day long, even when we go to Rockefeller later to ice skate. Isn't that awesome?"
"So awesome," Kate answered dryly. Her eyes suddenly narrowed. "You didn't get me a matching sweater, did you?"
Rick grinned. "Maybe I did, maybe I didn't."
"I won't wear it."
"Yes you will."
"No I won't."
"We'll see, Kate. We'll see." Kate opened her mouth to say something snarky but Rick reached out and put a finger over her mouth. "What I'm about to give you is not a sweater. I promise."
He moved his finger and Kate raised her eyebrows. "What is it then?"
Rick reached into his pants pocket and swiftly producing a small, black velvet box. He set it on the pillow between them. Kate froze instantly. That wasn't…that wasn't what she thought it was, was it? It wasn't a…holy shit, was that a ring?
"Open it," Rick murmured. Kate sat up and then picked up the box with trembling hands. She couldn't breathe anymore. She kept her eyes on Rick while she opened the box, waiting for him to somehow drop to one knee even though he was lying on their bed. Oh God. Was she ready for this? Could she do this? They hadn't even talked about it, they hadn't...maybe it wasn't a ring. Maybe it was earrings.
Kate looked down at the box as the lid lifted. Inside the box was a platinum ring with diamonds set all the way around. It looked expensive. Really expensive. Kate inhaled sharply. Dear God, it was a ring.
"It's not what you think," Rick said softly.
Kate looked up at him quickly. "It's not?"
"No. I mean, it's a ring. But it's not that kind of ring. Not that it hasn't crossed my mind, though. A ring, I mean. Well, marriage. To you. That would be…well, you know. You know how I feel about you."
Kate stared at him. He was stuttering. It was adorable. But she really, really needed to know where he was going with this.
"I hope this is okay," he murmured next. "I don't want to force anything on you. But it's just something I thought of when Alexis was helping me think of what to get you." He reached for her wrist and tapped the place where her dad's watch usually was. "You wear your dad's watch to remind you of the life you saved," he explained. He reached up and pulled the chain with her mother's ring out from under her shirt. "And you wear your mother's ring to remind you of the life you lost." Now he reached forward and pulled the ring out of the velvet box. "I thought you could wear this as a way to remind you of the life you created out of those two lives."
Kate was enthralled. His voice was low, quiet, and she couldn't take her eyes off of his, except to glance down at the beautiful ring he held in his fingers.
"Mostly, though, I thought it could remind you of the lives you change every day. Mine and Alexis's being two of them. Our world is a lot better with you in it, Kate. And I don't want you to ever forget that." He held the ring out for her to see. "It's inscribed."
Kate took the ring out of his hand and tilted it so she could read the inside. Extraordinary KB was carved elegantly on the inside. Kate looked up at Rick, eyes gleaming, and he smiled.
"You like it?"
"It's perfect," she whispered. She leaned forward and kissed him. When she pulled away she fumbled to unclasp the chain around her neck, and then slid the new ring onto the chain with the old one. She looked up at Rick.
"Thank you."
"Anything for you, Kate."
He meant it. She knew that more than she knew anything else in the world. She leaned forward and kissed him then, pushing him onto his back as she moved her body to rest on top of his. She started her hands down toward the hem of his sweater and smiled to herself. She didn't care if anyone could hear what was about to happen; and even if she did, Mariah was still wailing.