A/N: Just a bit of fluff suggested by someone on Twitter, prompted by the image featured on the cover photo.* Set in the Hamptons, in the interim between the series finale and the 7-year time jump.
"Sugar daddy! Sugar daddy! I got a sugar daddy!"
Lily's voice warbled through the open window near where her mother sat reading. Kate set down her book and listened.
"Sugar daddy! Sugar daddy! I got a sugar daddy!"
Maybe it was the cop in her, but her 5-year-old kid's use of a phrase with adult connotations gave her pause. She was about to begin the effort to lift her pregnant body off the couch when Lily came skipping through the French doors, still sing-songing her announcement.
"Hey, Lil," said Kate.
Lily veered off to dance over to Kate and plopped herself on the couch, kicking her bare feet and leaning to plant a kiss on Kate's shoulder. "Hi Mommy."
"That's a new song. Did you make it up?"
"Yep," Lily said. "D'you like it?"
"What's a 'sugar daddy', Lil?"
"Oh! I can show you." Lily bounced back up again and grabbed Kate's hand. "He's in the garden."
Now Kate's overprotective imagination was imagining a stranger in their garden. She had to resist the urge to get her spare weapon out of the safe. Shaking her head at herself, she muttered, "Chill, Beckett. Pregnancy makes you nuts."
"Yeah," Lily agreed. She had no idea what Kate meant, but she had recently picked up on the latter statement, much to her dad's amusement. "Come on, Mommy."
The two of them proceeded outside and around the house, to the patch that Rick called "the secret garden" for its hedges and arbors. He and Lily liked to sit in the sun and talk about daddy-daughter things, into which Kate did not pry. She smiled when she spotted her husband sitting, stock-still for a change, on a bench at the far end. A red plastic pitcher rested on the grass beside him.
Kate was opening her mouth to call to Rick when Lily tugged on her hand.
"Shh, Mommy, we have to be extra quiet," she hissed. Kate nodded, and they moved slowly across the lawn. Rick must have heard them, this close, but he didn't so much as turn his head or speak. One hand was lifted head-high and Kate wondered if they'd been playing "statue". Then she saw why his hand was frozen in place and she looked down to see Lily's barely-contained glee.
Rick's palm faced away from him, his thumb outstretched, and decorating the digit was a tiny, tiny bird - a hummingbird. Not flying or even hovering - just perched on the thumb, its gaze flicking here and there, little head cocking as if asking a question.
"Sugar daddy," Lily whispered.
Now Kate got it. The pitcher was the one they used to replenish the hummingbird feeder with sugar water mixture. Rick must have gotten it on his fingers and attracted the little friend to its current seat. Sugar + daddy = sugar daddy.
They stood staring for another minute; then the bird lifted off Rick's thumb and hovered for a moment, wings beating too fast to be seen. It dipped once and zipped away, off to investigate the newly-refilled feeder.
Rick lowered his hand slowly to his lap and turned his head to grin at the ladies.
"Just making a new friend," he said.
*Image courtesy of Nathan Fillion's Instagram, September 25, 2017: w w w . insta gram p / BZeUe3bAGuY