Inspired by a tumblr prompt, thought it was too long since I uploaded anything. Enjoy.
I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus
Underneath the mistletoe last night.
She didn't see me creep
Down the stairs to have a peek
She thought I was tucked
Up in my bedroom fast asleep.
Then, I saw Mommy tickle Santa Claus
Underneath his beard so snowy white.
Oh, what a laugh it would have been,
If Daddy had only seen
Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night!
Christmas morning is supposed to be for laughing, for his five year old son to be bouncing on his knees because it's Christmas and presents and Santa came and the milk is gone, and Daddy the reindeers ate the carrots. It is not for his five year old son to be bouncing on his knees because it's Christmas and screaming something about Mommy and Santa. Kate is somehow completely out of it, sleeping through the early morning screaming fit with enviable ease.
"Keane, Keane, calm down monkey, come on-" he tries to draw the little boy towards him, to cradle him in his arms until he's calmed down enough to tell him what happened, but Keane is having none of it, fights against the pull of his fathers arms. "Keane, you're going to wake your momma up."
"Don't care!" he shrieks, which he thinks may have woken Kate up a little bit, if the furrow of her brow was anything to go by. "Don't care, don't care, don't care!"
"Keane!"
But he's met by the stubborn determination of his wife in retaliation and in the end there's nothing for it but to push himself out of bed, loop his arm around Keane's waist and carry him out of his bedroom and into the open area of the Loft. He turns the Christmas lights on, filling the room with a possibly over extravagant number of lights, but it looks too good for him to care. All the meanwhile there are silent tears streaming down Keane's cheeks, leaving a trail along the wooden floor as they go. As soon as he deposits the five year old on the sofa he's off again, running for the tree and searching through the also possibly over-extravagant pile of gifts underneath it. It takes Castle a couple of minutes to realise what he's doing, and by the time he does so there's at least five different labels strewn across the floor. Two for him, two for Ria, one for Ira, who are both still blessedly asleep upstairs, and all of them are from Santa. He's skipping the ones from everyone else.
"What do you have against Santa Claus, Keane?"
It's possible he's learnt that Saint Nick is not real, that all the ones from Santa are just more presents from his parents. Of course that's possible, but he hopes that's not true because he wants his kids to believe in fairy tales for as long as physically possible. He's lifting Keane up from the floor as he speaks, away from the presents that he's attempting to vandalise, sits with him on the sofa so that he can't escape.
The boy is sulky, bottom lip sticking out, but there's something else in his eyes that tells Castle there's more to this story than simply not believing in Santa. He just needs to wait it out.
"You know when you're married?"
"I do know when you're married. What about it?"
He plucks at the hem of his safari pyjama trousers, bright green and orange things crowded with elephants and lions and zebras. "When you're married you aren't supposed to kiss other people."
"Well, no. Unless it's family."
"But like the way you and momma do it. The yucky kind."
"No, no you're not. Why?"
"I – I was awake last night. And I know I shouldn't have been but it was Christmas and I was excited and I just couldn't sleep Daddy and I just wanted one more cuddle so I was going to come downstairs because just one more cuddle and I knew I could sleep and I was at the top of the stairs and I could hear Momma talking to someone and it didn't sound like you so I peered through the gap at the top and it was Santa, Daddy, all red and fat and jolly and with that gimongous beard and I stayed as quiet as a mouse because he couldn't know I was awake Daddy, he just couldn't, but I couldn't move so I watched because it was Santa, I saw Santa, but then…"
He's trying to bite back a laugh at this point because he knows where this is going, knows just what Keane is about to say. "But then…?"
"And Momma kept looking at him like she looks at you, all gooey eyed and disgusting and I hope I never look at anyone like that ever because I would rather live in a dumpster, and then she kissed him. Daddy, Momma kissed Santa and you're not supposed to do that, the only people she's supposed to kiss are you, or me, or Ira and Ria, and Grams and Lexis, and Grandpa. Is she allowed to kiss Santa?"
"Is this why you were ripping all the labels off?"
"I don't like Santa anymore. He's going to steal Momma and you'll get a – a – Daddy, what's that word-"
"Divorce?"
"Yes, and I don't want to go to the North Pole just to see Momma because it's cold up there and it's cold enough here and I hate wearing my coat anyway."
"Keane, me and your mother are not getting divorced, and Santa is definitely not going to steal her away to the North Pole. I promise."
She was more awake than she let on when Keane had come rushing in. She'd barely fallen into bed three hours before, maybe an hour after finally seducing Castle out of that ridiculous(ly sexy) Santa outfit, and even that was half an hour after she'd stumbled in through the front door after finally closing what she hoped to be her last case of the year. She's on call for the rest of the year, can spend the rest of the holiday with her family and she is so looking forward to it. But now that her very own body warmer has vacated the bed she can't seem to fall asleep again, so she leaves the sanctity of the covers and seeks out the two fifths of her family that aren't asleep. She hopes the twins are asleep, anyway. And it's a very strange conversation that she walks in on.
"Why am I moving to the North Pole?" She asks, crossing over to the sofa, curling up against her husbands side, reaching over to pull Keane towards her. "Momma's staying right here, you know?"
Keane comes to her willingly, but the look he keeps throwing her makes it seem like she's completely and utterly betrayed him in some way. "But you were kissing Santa! You're not supposed to be kissing Santa!"
Oh. Well. That explains it. It's Castle's damn fault for wearing the thing in the first place, if he hadn't come up behind her and whispered ho, ho, ho in her ear in that deep gravelly voice that he reserves for the bedroom then she wouldn't have turned away from the sink and completely plundered his mouth. It's entirely his fault, and he's looking at her like he's well aware of it. Smug jackass. "Keane, I was not kissing Santa."
"You were!" he yells, pushing away from her this time. "He had the red coat and the red trousers, and he had the big white beard, and the hat and the boots and it was Santa and I know it and you can't lie! You shouldn't lie, you always tell me that because it's your job to work out when people are lying but it doesn't mean you get to do it to because that's just not fair!" He's lashing out now, clenched fists connecting with her shoulders and they don't hurt, it's pretty ineffectual but they keep trying to drill it in to his head that violence is never the answer, and he knows the drill that when he punches or kicks it's five minutes on the mat by the dining table.
And when Castle deposits him there, he curls up with his back to them, and she shouldn't be, because her biggest boy is traumatised by this, but the situation is so ludicrously funny that she has to bury her head into Castle's ribcage to stifle her laugh. "What are we supposed to do about this, Kate?"
"You're gonna have to put the costume back on."
"And ruin the illusion of Christmas?"
"Well it's better than him believing I'm moving to the North Pole. Come on, surely you can come up with a plausible explanation for having been dressed as Santa?"
"Because I know you have a thing for it?"
"Anything but that."
He chuckles, presses a kiss to her cheek and disappears into the bedroom, trying to locate the many pieces of clothing that she'd thrown in any direction in her haste just to get rid of them. She finds herself sagged against the arm of the sofa, a cushion underneath her arm, and somewhere between watching the play of the fairy lights on the wall and the furniture and the Christmas tree and trying to count down how long Keane has left on the mat, she can feel her eyes closing. Just for a couple of minutes – just…
"Kate!"
She sits up in a fright, the sight of a red clad, bearded men right in front of her making her almost jump out of her skin. "Castle." she hisses, pressing a hand to her chest to try and tame her wildly beating heart and trying to get her breathing under control, "Don't do that."
"Sorry. I think Keane's asleep too, if it makes you feel any better."
She groans as she pushes herself up off the couch, only half stumbling in her just awake state, and crouches down by her seen. "Keane, baby." He mumbles something, rolls over onto his back with an arm flung across his arms. "Keane, come on, wake up."
He stretches, a bare foot pressing into her knee, and then his eyes are fluttering open. It couldn't have been more than ten or so minutes they were out of it, but he looks in danger of dropping off again any minute as he struggles up into a sitting position. "Momma? Why – where my bed?"
"You're on the mat, but you fell asleep. Can you remember why you're here?"
He presses a palm into his eye, wiggles it around in an attempt to wake up. "'Cos… I…" he's cut off by a sudden yawn, and he wobbles dangerously, "hit you. I think."
"And should you hit people?" He shakes his head numbly. "What do you say?"
"I'm sorry Mommy." She smiles at him, holds her arms out and he falls into them as easily as he fell asleep. His arms loops around her neck, face pressed against the soft cotton of her t-shirt. Getting him back into bed will be no problem at all. It seems his eyes are still open though, because all of a sudden his head is snapping up and he's straining to see past her head. "Santa!"
Kate turns, finds Castle by the tree re-attaching some discarded labels back onto the correct parcels. "Momma, it's Santa and we're awake and I'm supposed to be asleep-"
"Hey, hey it's okay, Keane. Santa understands, doesn't he?" The Santa in question nods his head, blue eyes twinkling above the beard. "See, no harm done."
"Can I talk to Santa, momma?"
She's by the stairs by now, and she turns back around. He's already been awake for… she doesn't know how long, and five minutes more won't hurt. He slides down her body, landing as steady as a mountain goat on the floor and then he's running across the floor. She thinks this will be most amusing, wants to listen to what her son has to say. She doesn't expect the vicious prod to the protruding stomach underneath the red jacket – it would make anybody wince, but she knows full well that Castle just has a pillow stuffed under there – and then Keane is looking up at him with a fierce kind of determination that makes her chest hurt.
"She's my Momma. And she's Ira and Ria's too, and she's our family, and I don't care if you're Santa or if you have reindeers and penguins and bazillions of elves that make lots of amazing toys for everybody, but she belongs here with us because she loves us and we love her and she's ours, not yours." Santa meets this torrent of words with remarkable composure, doesn't say anything, just gives the small boy a nod, which Keane then returns. "Okay, good. I'm glad we agree. And she's a detective and she has a gun so if you try any funny business-"
"Keane, okay, that's enough. Santa is very busy tonight, remember?"
With one more attempt at looking fierce and ferocious and terrifyingly scary, he turns on his heel and returns to her arms. There's a warm glow in her heart, a kind of pride at how defensive and protective her eldest littlest boy is of his family. He's asleep on her before she reaches the top of the stairs, and she tucks him in under his jungle covers with the tigers and the monkeys and Castle swears that's a sloth in the top right corner. One quick check to the twins and they're still both asleep, Ria's thumb firmly stuck between her lips. Okay. Good. Everyone's where they should be. Castle has retired back into the bedroom, but the lights are still on. She's torn between being safety conscious and turning them off like she should, but they're just so pretty that she can't bring herself to do so. They'll be okay for a few hours.
"Well that was…" Castle says as she appears in the doorway. He's undressed already, back in his soft flannel pyjama bottoms and t-shirt, looking warm and cosy and inviting in bed.
"Interesting." She huffs, barely pausing as she joins him. "You are never dressing up as Santa ever again."
He's grinning at her now, that lewd wiggle of his eyebrows that has her slapping his arm. "Well, we wouldn't have gotten into that palaver if you hadn't nearly had your wicked way with me on the kitchen counter."
"Well it's not my fault that you looked so good in it!" she counters, but she's too tired to argue, pulls back the covers of her side of the bed and they look cold but the moment she's settled Castle is right there, wrapping himself around her and her toes brush his calf and he doesn't even complain about how cold they are.
"You know, it's a good job you're not moving to the North Pole. I think you'd have turned into an ice cube the moment you passed the Arctic circle."
tumblr: sirmcsteamy
twitter: ktkatics