Authors Note: Yeah, I know it's NOT actually the season but I figured waiting until next Christmas wouldn't make any more sense so here's the collection of some tiny sniplets of a Castle fanfic I wrote for my friends. Hope you enjoy this untimely Christmas present as well.
Disclaimer: No, of course I don't own any rights to these characters, but maybe I'll put that into a letter for Santa next year.
To the honeymilkies
Rick
"Oh look, there they are," mothers cheerful exclamation draws my attention and Kate already heads for the door when I'm still only registering the sound of the bell. I hold my breath just for a single moment, bracing for whatever awkwardness will fill the next couple of minutes as my fiancée swings the door open. I close my eyes in relieve just for another moment when air fills my lungs again and my two girls don't hesitate to great each other with a hug, some seasonal decorated gift bags tangling from my baby's wrist. It's getting better. We'll get better, eventually. I'll learn to adjust to all the change that is flooding my life recently.
Alexis
The little glass angel sits on one of the lower twigs. He's hung it there like every year for thirteen years now. It's always been the same since that one year back then when I nervously packed the fragile little piece of decoration. It's been the first Christmas present I gave to him ever and I could still recall my Dads strange reaction. In retrospect I can tell that he was proud and disappointed at the same time; proud of me, but also realizing that I wouldn't stay little forever. This is another one of these special holidays again. For the first time I'm not at home in this familiar atmosphere but join the brunch as a guest. Everything is about to change.
Jenny
Sure, I could have done with a couple more hours to us, just the three of us, maybe even catch up on sleep, which is – as expected - rare these days. I could have done with some calm moments before the storm of in-laws would grip us for the next few days. Honestly, I'd asked him not to come to his work colleagues' Christmas brunch only an hour ago, when he came back for the third time to get Aidans supplies and I started to wonder if there would even be enough room left in the car for the three of us. But I'm glad we came any way. Just seeing his proud look as he directs the writer how to hold our boy makes me realize that these people are family too; to him and Aidan and all of us actually.
Rick
I can't help but be reminded of a different pair of radiant blue eyes, trustfully laying their fate into my hands, when the tiny little fingers grasp for my pointer. His parents beam with pride as they entrust the most precious thing in the world to my experienced, fatherly hands. How quickly time flows by. One year you sip from a class of milk and eat half a cookie your 3 year old baby girl, who'd fallen asleep on the couch while waiting for Santa, has laid out, and another one you have to hang up stockings for a mathematical constant living on fruits, that gets to share your baby's love.
Kate
It's a warm, fluffy, sugar cotton, all pink feeling that sparks in my stomach at the sight before me. Little butterfly wings are tickling me from insight as they excitedly spread throughout my whole body when five little fingers wrap themselves around a bigger one. The soft seasonal glimming of candles is reflected in two pairs of blue eyes smiling at each other. I can't help my hand travelling protectively south and my mind to a place in the future when I watch them. It will be a very good year indeed.
Martha
Does he know? She probably hasn't told him yet, hasn't told anybody and he'd been way too excited about the preparation for this little festivity to notice. But I can tell. To someone who's seen it before the glow is blatantly obvious, as are the absentminded, soft looks Katherine keeps sending across the room or the still completely filled mug of egg-nogg she hasn't touched in over an hour. Maybe moving out of the family loft and making room for a new period in life isn't that bad of a Christmas present after all.
Lanie
"…and a happy New Year" the wrapping of the gift says that we brought along. Another year's over one that was a hell of a roller coaster ride for this family for sure. Kate could have been killed by a bomb, broken up with her boyfriend, living in DC and working for the Feds, mourning her Fiancés death and maybe even running away because she didn't know how to fit in with Alexis and everything. Now look how far my incredibly stubborn best friend has finally come: from hiding her relationship only a year ago to inviting all of us over for Christmas brunch together with her soon-to-be husband. There had been so many moments that could have broken our special family but we never gave up hope. There's always reason to hope for a change to the better.
Javier
It's almost too sappy, isn't it? It's almost like one of these cheesy Christmas family movies. A professionally decorated Christmas tree looking like a shrunken version of the one at Rockefeller Center dominating the loft, soft music playing in the background, and a bunch of happily smiling people chatting away wishing each other 'Merry Christmas'. Well, it wouldn't be if it wasn't topped of by Baby Ryan. Even Lanie seems to be under little Aidans spell. Who would've thought that the tough woman, dealing with dead peoples bodies every day, fearful of any sort of commitment, melts away because of tiny baby fingers and miniature feet? But surely her onesie can't trump the honorary uncles sizzling rattle. Everybody knows you don't give a kid clothes for Christmas.
Jim
It's hard to decide what is glowing more: the decorated tree with all the little lights shining brightly even at ten o'clock in the morning in the upscale loft or my little girl, who obviously isn't that little any more. But here and now she is my little girl again, after all those years, finally grown to be the woman we always imagined her to be. Johanna would be so proud and happy today to see what has become of Katie even though it includes this strange and somehow eccentric family. You can easily put up with overly dramatic actresses and the fame of a writer if it means your child replaced a reason to die for with various reasons to live for.