The Hopeful Lights of Winter
Disclaimer: I still don't own it, and I am back to being a poor student with bills, so I'm even less worth suing.
AN: Castle and Beckett try to navigate the holiday season and a fake separation at the same time. A Winter Ficathon story, and a nightly thank you gift for those involved in the Possibility4Joy project.
The door of the hotel room closes behind her with a heavy thud. Though actually, calling it a hotel room does it a disservice. It's a suite the sites of a modest apartment. The hotel itself is high end but not over the top, boutique. It's too much. At least, it's more than she needs. But her husband had insisted.
And so, now she's a guest in residence, in a room registered under the name M. Rodgers.
Beckett had to give credit to Castle for that one. Booking the suite in his mother's name accounted for the trappings of it all, along with Castle paying the bill without anyone being the wiser. Not that she had wanted him to do it. But he'd refused to cave on the point.
"You need a home base, Kate. Someplace that feels like home even if you can't always be in our home," he'd said that first night, as they had curled around her and laid out plans.
She'd asked about a small apartment when he'd started in about how she needed a place with a kitchen, the cost of a hotel in New York City with his specifications hard for her to accept, even with her husband calling it an investment in her comfort and their future. But, he'd countered that a hotel would be earlier to shed if she had to move quickly. An argument she'd had trouble countering.
"Thought you'd never get home."
She jumped. "Castle!"
He came around the corner from the bedroom to greet her at the door and she dropped her bag as she came forward to greet him. "I wasn't expecting you," she said softly.
"Missed you, couldn't wait for you to find an opportunity to swing by the loft. So I thought I'd pay my mother a visit."
That, of course, had been the other ingenious part of his plan to put the booking in Martha's name. Her mother in law was believably neutral territory for the whole family. So any of them coming and going from the place looked less suspicious to outsiders. That fact, and the requisite kitchen, actually, had made for a much less lonely Thanksgiving than she had anticipated.
He wrapped his arms around her as she settled in close. "Saw you on TV today with the kids," she murmurs. Some press thing she hadn't even known he was doing, about local talent giving back for "Giving Tuesday" in New York. "Looked pretty cute there, Castle. Gonna ruin the playboy image."
He laughed warmly. "Well, it might be time for some rebranding on that front when this is all over. But also, I wasn't expecting to be on TV."
She stepped back to look at him. "Oh?" She'd just assumed the reporters had been part of the plan from the start.
"Nah. Just, I was asked and it sounded like fun. Remember the case last year with the second graders?"
She nodded. "You had fun with that, I remember."
He grinned. "Helping kids with their stories is great. There was this one little girl, I think she was nine. She swore she didn't have a story to tell. But she had drawn this whole elaborate comic storyboard. So I started asking her what was going on in each picture, and by the end of it, we had a whole picture book. She was so excited."
From the look on his face, the little girl wasn't the only one who was excited. Kate's heart flipped. He was so good with kids. And she wants...but she couldn't even begin to think about it. Not right now.
She settled for a shadow of what she wanted to say. "You've got a big heart, Castle. And I'm sure you gave a lot to those kids that they won't forget."
His smile was too big, too knowing as he rested his forehead against her . "Not the only unforgettable giving I pan on tonight."
Oh.
She could work with that.