This Is the Dreamworld
In response to seilleanmor's fic fugaces labuntur anni (based on a tumblr prompt) and combining it with a tumblr prompt from stanaskatic that was entirely the opposite (and about Corgis). AU from Dreamworld.
"Good thing I didn't die that day, huh?"
It's the first thing out of his mouth when she tells him the news, when she tells him you know that night you showed up...
Her lips twist even as he says it and he knows he's messed it up somehow - is it that she's afraid, is it the bitter taste of memory from that day? - and he takes her by the shoulder and curls her body into his, protective of the thing between them.
"Stupid answer," he murmurs. "Thoughtless. Sorry. I can do better."
"Castle," she sighs. "Babe, can you just be serious?"
Weird, it even feels like that day. The day he counted down the hours of his life, stabilizing shot by shot, dead-end lead by dead-end lead. The day he had to watch it shimmer like horror in her eyes.
Yes, it feels quite a lot like this.
"Are you - excited?" he tries. "I feel a little excited. Cautiously excited."
Her cheek lays against his shoulder, but she doesn't say anything. Maybe that wasn't right either.
"If you, ah, if there's not... I mean, in the end this is up to you. I guess." Well, that feels really awful in a way he doesn't even want to look at. Ending it before it begins. But she doesn't answer that either, her breaths coming fast against his neck.
He tries again. "I'm - this is uh... not the best timing, that's true. I mean, we don't even live in the same city, but-"
"Oh, God," she moans.
"Hey, hey, but. But. We can do this too. We can figure this out. We've figured out everything else - I mean, we are figuring it out. That is, so long as you want to figure this out. With me. Do you want to figure this out with me maybe?"
He knows he sounds stupid; he can't help it.
"Not a maybe," she rasps. Her head tilts back and her eyes study his as if inspecting him for flaws. "A yes. It's a yes. But. Are you okay with this?"
"As in - am I sticking around?" he says, sarcastic and a little affronted. A little.
"Rick Castle. I have a gun. I would hold you here against your will if I had to, so no. That was not asking if you're going to abandon me. Us. Oh, my God, us."
He cracks a grin at that, on a little more even footing now that he knows how very clear and definite she is about this, and then he can't help sliding his palm to her abs and pressing against her belly button, where he knows it is.
"I can't believe you knocked me up," she mutters.
"We've got nine months to figure this out," he says back, ignoring the ribbon of unease that curls in his guts. "We can do this. I want to do this."
"I want to do this too," she says. Her voice is quiet, firm, in control. Even when she told him, when she broke the news, she wasn't demonstrative about it.
Honestly, it's the same face she had in that interrogation room in DC, telling him calmly that their future had been irrevocably altered, that nothing was going to be the same ever again.
Oh, yeah. Exactly like now. A biological weapon both.
"Wow," he says slowly. "I... Kate. I'm so glad I didn't die."
She grunts something and comes in hard against his chest, gripping him so fiercely that he has to label it backlash, like it's only now hit her just as it's hit him. He almost died. He was dying.
If she hadn't found the antidote in time, if that collapse on the front lawn was his final lights out, he'd have missed Kate Beckett having his baby.
He feels so shaky he needs to sit down.
He takes her with him, sinking right into the couch, feels her straddling his lap and wrapping herself around him, mouth to his mouth like air, like life itself, her kiss more desperate and uncertain than he would like, but they can do it. They can figure it out.
He never wants to miss out on this.
"No," she says. Unwavering. She realizes she sounds like her own mother.
Her daughter stands resolutely in front of the windows that face the street, impervious to Kate's refusal, oblivious to the pedestrians having to wind their way around the two of them on the sidewalk. Mother and daughter.
"No. You know there's no room at my - our place." DC is crowded with tourists heading for the metro or the monuments, but despite the summer heat and the threat of rain, no one is impatient, no one is rudely self-important. Even if the lines are blurred grey.
Kate still hasn't gotten over the differences. Definitely not New York.
"Mom."
She turns her head back to her daughter, the five year old with the thin shoulders and dark hair, Kate's own shadow. Like her father.
"No," she answers again.
"But..." Her daughter trails off and gazes back through the window of the pet store, lifts a hand to touch one finger to the glass. Beyond, Kate can see the dogs in their kennels, lined up for inspection, begging for adoption.
It's not a pet store so much as a pop-up Humane Society, a push to get these animals adopted before they're put down.
Her daughter's compassion for strays is as wide and deep as her father's. Or maybe Kate should say, her own. She's the one who picked up him, the ultimate stray.
"Can we go inside?" she asks, turning and giving her mother a sober look. Everything is so serious when she's here in DC, everything is always about being right, doing it right, and Kate has a sinking feeling that's due to her.
"Do you really want to torture yourself?" she asks, but it's a moot point. She opens the door with a sigh and ushers her girl inside. "We can look for twenty minutes, and then we have to go."
"Can I play with one? Just so he knows he's loved."
"Well, that's very considerate of you," a woman says from before them, turning around with a beaming smile and a name tag.
Great. Now they're stuck.
"We're not getting a dog," she warns her daughter.
Brown eyes regard her seriously. "I know. I can pet one though. Without needing it for a pet." She looks proud of herself for that line, proud like Castle is when he thinks he's being clever and amusing.
Kate sighs and reaches out a finger, hooks her daughter's brown hair behind her pale ear. She's in her school uniform still, no time to change. She looks like Alexis sometimes, talks like her too; there's more Castle in his daughters than he might think possible.
"You can pet one," she gives in. The worker with the name tag beams wider, leads Kate's daughter back through the shop towards a private door while Kate follows reluctantly.
She slips her phone out of her pocket and sees a woman with two boys eye her sharply; she's unintentionally shown her weapon on its holster. Kate closes her jacket around her again, thumbs out a message to Castle so he'll know where to find them.
"We have no room in the apartment," she warns her daughter again. But the girl sits down on the floor of the small room, the door closed after the disappearing woman, waiting on her dog. Her dog. Already. Kate sighs and sits on the bench at the far wall.
When the name-tagged lady opens the door again, a short-legged, long-bodied, furry thing comes rippling inside, tongue hanging out, ears triangular and sharp like a fox.
"Mom," her daughter breathes, coming up on her knees. "It's a Corgi. A Corgi. How did they know?"
"We are not getting a dog," she cautions again. "You may play with him but remember. No pet."
"He's so cute. Aw, he's so playful." Her daughter has completely ignored her. Gone. Caught up in the antics of a short dog with a jingling collar. The Corgi goes up on his hind legs and begs, then drops down and rolls over, apparently going through his tricks.
Kate crosses her legs and glances down at her phone to ignore the dog and the girl, the rapport and the adoration. It doesn't help that her kindergartner has a room filled with posters of Corgis, that her computer slideshow of dogs is often the thing she's caught with in bed late at night. That the bedtime stories are always about heroic dog rescues, that she doodles puppies and fox-like ears on her school work.
The door clicks open and Kate lifts her head.
"Ah, of course. A Corgi." Castle stands in the doorway, broad and handsome in his suit, an ironic twist to his lips that matches the rakish and crooked set of his tie. "Kate, how could you?"
"It wasn't me," she sighs.
"Little bug," he rumbles to his daughter. "You're not even going to say hello to your dear old dad?"
"Hi," she says simply, a guileless face peering at him from over the dog. "Do you like him?"
"We can't - we are not getting this dog," Kate warns again, shifting forward as if she can jump between her easily swayed daughter and the dog, protect her somehow. "There's no way to keep a dog, the way we live."
"We said that about her," Castle whispers, coming to sit beside her on the bench. "And yet."
She elbows him off, but he presses his mouth to her cheek and he still - still - manages to make it sensual and alluring and also so chaste.
"Missed you," she whispers back.
"When are you coming home?"
"I am home," she reminds him.
"Semantics," he laughs. "And that's an old, tired line, Agent Beckett."
"Still true," she gives, because she knows he still likes to hear it. "You're my home, both of you. Always home when you're here."
"Fine then," he says with a chuckle, lines pressing deeper around his eyes than she remembered. "When are you back in New York with us?"
"This week in DC, and then I'm stationed out of the field office for - I think three months. There's a big one."
"Classified, of course," he murmurs. Old hurts never feel quite as wounding when they're this well worn. Or so she tells herself.
"We're not getting a dog," she tells him.
"Keep telling yourself that," he sighs. She does. She is.
"We can't. We don't even live together-"
"We do," he cuts in sharply, his eyes flashing to their daughter and back. "It takes some arranging, but we do. And our girl gets the best of both cities - both parents."
"But we are not getting a dog. We couldn't make it work."
"I'll remind you again - this is sounding exactly like what we said about us. And her."
She sighs and tilts her head back. His hand comes over her knee and squeezes in apology.
From the floor, the dog barks and Kate glances down, sees her daughter so in love.
"Rick," she warns.
"I didn't do this. I swear. It really is coincidence that they handed you a Corgi."
But it wasn't coincidence they handed Kate her baby, mewling face and dark swatch of hair, fists up and ready to take on the unusual world her parents had carved out for her. That wasn't coincidence - it was fate, the universe making dreams come true.
One night against her bathroom door in the apartment in DC and here they were, nearly six years later with her husband and daughter flying in from New York to stay the week of her spring break.
It was easier before the girl had to be in school.
"I'll keep the dog here," she whispers.
"Kate."
"He'll come with me. Give her a reason to see me-"
"Don't."
"But true," she shrugs. "She loves her city. I love her city better too, so I understand. Though DC with my family makes me feel..."
"We do whatever we need to. This is how we've figured it out. She loves you; she talks about you whenever we're not together. But when we are together, Kate, I think it says a lot that she doesn't feel the need to win your love."
Oh, that's a beautiful thought. "Thank you."
"You're the same - the two of you. She's silly for me because she knows I need it. But she is most herself with you."
Really. It's too much. It is.
Kate turns her head and kisses him softly on the mouth, a promise and a hope. "The job opening is posted at the end of this week. McCord told me to apply again. She thinks I'll get it this time."
"I would love to have you home, but Kate-"
"I know," she murmurs. "We do this however we need."
"I need a dog," their daughter says quietly into the moment. Kate turns her head and sees the girl on her knees before them, the dog wriggling in her lap.
"No, you don't," Castle says automatically.
If Kate gets the position based in New York... but she might not.
"Rick," she murmurs.
He turns and raises an eyebrow at her and suddenly their daughter is all over her, crawling up into her lap and leaving the Corgi to its own devices, those two strong, thin arms coming around Kate's shoulders.
"Is that a maybe? Mom. Can we say maybe? Please?"
She meets Castle's eyes over her daughter's shoulder, conscious of all they aren't able to give her, conscious of what life they've forced her to believe is normal.
Castle tilts his head, dismissal in his gesture. It's up to her.
"Not a maybe." Kate presses a kiss to her daughter's temple. "It's a - a yes. It's a yes."
She rejoices with a harder squeeze and a slide off Kate's lap and onto the floor, hugging the dog around the neck and effusive in her praise, like their teamwork has paid off.
"What happened to maybe?" Castle laughs softly.
"You told me to trust that it was right, and I did, and look at what we have. I trust in the Universe because it seems to adore you. Didn't you say your dreams come true?"
He raises an eyebrow but he slides his arm around her shoulders and tugs her into his side. "I'm not sure owning a Corgi was ever in my dream plan, but sure. Why not?"
"If I get transferred-"
"When. Let's work out of that dream for a while."
She lets out a long breath. It didn't happen last year, when she thought it was absolutely vital that she be stationed out of New York before school started. But kindergarten has happened with or without her, and not much has she missed that she wouldn't already have missed if she were there.
"When I get transferred, we can sell this place. I'm ready to be back. The dog will be easier."
"The dog," he laughs. "Among other things. I can't believe you told her yes."
"I'm still suspicious you had nothing to do with this."
He holds up a hand in surrender, a smile trembling the corners of his mouth and sinking deep.
"I'm stepping out on faith," she says finally, pressing her thumb into the top of his thigh. "Remember Royal? I wanted a dog before this, and I was always waiting for the right moment, the perfect timing. Nothing comes to me when I think I'm ready for it, Rick. It's always in the fullness of its own time, and I'm learning to accept that."
"Well," he murmurs, his thumb stroking along her shoulder blade. "Better late than never. Let me see about getting us a dog."
And he stands and leaves her on the bench, a brush of his fingers through their daughter's hair as she plays with the Corgi. He steps out to find the name-tagged woman and Kate smooths her hands down her dress pants, takes a long breath.
She has a husband and a five year old daughter. She wants more. She wants in this life they've created, no longer a supporting player.
She sinks to the floor beside the girl and pushes the brown hair from her face. Her eyelashes are so long. "Can you think of a name?"
It's the same question Castle asked her in the hospital when she was born, both of them surprised the day had come.
They thought the name would be the hard part; they'd had no idea.
"I don't know, Mom. Now that he's mine... I don't know."
"It doesn't have to be now," she admits with a smile. "You can give it time. It will come."