For my darling Bee, because she asked, and for Ris and Nen because I really do owe them a lot of fluff.
Not particularly spoilery, but people are fussy so Jenny/Ryan baby spoilers?
"Kate, you're freaking out."
Kate spins on her heel, hands on her hips. "I am not freaking out."
"You are pacing, and sighing and your lip is chewed to shreds. You're freaking out."
"Well, aren't you? I mean, Jenny-"
"Made one comment about babies. She's eight months pregnant, Kate. She's hormonal, and she blurts things out. Like with Javi and Lanie asking them when they were going to get married. She didn't mean anything by it."
"You said yourself you wanted more kids."
"Kate, I said I wanted the option of having more kids. That isn't really the same thing. Kate, if the time comes to it then we'll talk about it. But you're freaking out so obviously this isn't the right time. Kate, seriously. Just calm down."
"When is the right time? I mean, is one of us just going to casually drop babies into the conversation and see what happens?"
"If that what works…"
"Castle"
He leant back against the sofa with a sigh. "I don't know what you're getting at here. Is this a conversation about babies or is this not a conversation about babies?" Kate stares at him, hands on her hips before lying down on the sofa legs thrown over his thighs, arm over her eyes. "Kate?"
"Do you ever think about it?"
"Babies?"
"Well, a baby. With me. Our baby." She lifts her arm up, raises her head to look at him. "I know it's only been a year and a half, but do you ever think about it?"
"You've stopped freaking out, right? Cos I don't want to say this and then you freak out because I really don't want you to freak out."
"No freaking out. Pinky promise." She holds out her hand to him, pinky finger extended and he wraps his own around it, gives it a little shake. "Go on, tell me."
"Okay, so… there's a boy. And he has my eyes. And your sense of compassion. And he asks questions. Lots of questions. So many questions that it gets really frustrating at times, but he just really loves knowing how things work. Things and people. He loves people. He makes friends with everyone, and talks non-stop, and is kind of boisterous but he knows when to say sorry. And he loves his sisters, and his parents."
"Sisters? Plural?"
"Alexis, obviously. And then we're gonna have a little girl, and she's got your eyes, and your hair. And she completely adores her brother. Follows him around, with her thumb in her mouth and a blanket in her hand. And he tells her all about everything. And she listens. She's a very good listener. She cries a lot at night, and we think she's going to be a scardy cat, just like her father. Only, when she's older she turns into a little trooper, just like her mother. And when she eventually learns to read, she devours every single book in the house. She's like a little Matilda, only we won't make her resort to reading the phone book. She has my imagination, only much worse. It's a planet, or a space rocket, or a submarine, a blanket fort is a cave filled with bears. We're the bears, by the way."
"That's… thorough. Castle, that's-"
"Well, you did ask. And that's not even starting on the house."
Kate sits up, eyes wide. "The house?"
"You don't think we're going to have room for two kids, plus Alexis and my mother when they stay, and the dog in this place?"
"The dog?"
Castle grins. "One just like Royal. Unless we want to go find Kay and get him back. I don't think she'll be particularly happy, but we can always give it a shot. So a five bed roomed house-"
"Five? Seriously? What do we need five bedrooms for?"
"Well – there's one for us, one for the boy, and another for the girl, a spare room and then one just in case."
"Just in case?"
"Well, you know accidents happen. And if there are no accidents then we turn it into a gym. Or a theatre. Or the dog can have his own room. Would having a swimming pool be too much considering I – we- have one in the Hamptons?"
"Castle, just stop. Stop, there."
"Are you freaking out?"
"No, I am not freaking out. I am definitely not freaking out." She pushes up off the sofa, heads towards her bedroom. "I am going to go and take off all of my clothes and lay on my bed and if you're not there in one minute then I am going it alone."
Castle eyes her with a raised eyebrow and a knowing twinkle in his eye. "Are you feeling broody all of a sudden?" Kate turns on her heel, hair flying around her shoulders as she marches away. "Don't run away from me, Beckett!" Castle calls after her, pulling himself up so he can follow. "You're feeling broody and you want to have a baby."
There's a vicious jab in his shoulder and he winces, rubs at the spot ruefully. "I do not want to have a baby."
"Maybe not now, but you're thinking about it just as much as I do. You basically just admitted to it."
"No, I didn't." she turns on her heel again, pulls off her soft cotton jumper and leaving her in nothing but her soft cotton bra. "I said I wanted to get naked. That is not saying I want a baby."
"You want to practice, though."
"Castle, stop with the babies. Enough with the babies. Babies are in the future. I don't know when in the future, but they are in the future and I don't want to think about the future right now because I want to get on that bed and I want you to take all of your clothes off and I want us to spend the rest of the night eating pizza, and drinking beer and having really hot sex. With no mention of anything baby related."