Disclaimer: The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.
A/N And the story continues, after all!
Beckett feels like death on a Triscuit, sitting on the bathroom floor and trying not to wake Castle, really trying, because he'd been up late writing and should sleep for a while. Resting her head against the cool pedestal of the sink, she wonders how something this tiny, barely a blip on the pregnancy radar, could be responsible for such overwhelming nausea?
"Listen, you little monster," she whispers. "Stop making me feel so sick." She is suddenly overcome with remorse, so powerful that it momentarily suppresses her queasiness. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean that you're really a monster. I meant that nicely. One of Daddy's favorite movies is Monsters, Inc. He'll probably watch it with you a hundred times. He loves nice monsters and so do I." And then she throws up.
"Oh, God," she says, after getting back on her feet and rinsing her mouth out. She tiptoes back to bed and looks at Castle, who's out cold. She'd never noticed it before, but he really does sleep like a baby. She drowses for another half hour, until the alarm goes off. She's surprised to find that she's in the bed alone—not actually alone, she corrects herself, looking at her belly which is still flat as the screen of her phone. She hears Castle coming, his bare feet slapping on the floor.
"Peppermint tea," he says cheerily as he walks into their bedroom, hoisting the mug as it were a trophy.
"Thank you, I think."
"You think? I ordered this specially, Beckett. It's organically grown on the dappled hillside of somewhere."
"Right." She sips it. "Not bad." She sips again. "Pretty good. Considering."
"Atta girl." He slips into bed next to her. "You feeling okay?"
She waggles her hand back and forth. "Meh."
"Won't be too much longer."
"Tell that to your child." She knew she shouldn't have said that. He leans sideways, peels up the hem of her shirt and moves his lips about half an inch above her navel.
"You hear that, BG? Your mom needs to feel better. Time for you to settle down in there." He sits back up and beams. "That should do it."
She can't help laughing. "Sure. So, you gonna call the baby BG for the entire pregnancy?"
"Unless you decide you want to know the gender after all, that's correct. BG for Boy or Girl."
"Then shouldn't you be saying Bog?"
"Absolutely not. Our kid is not a marsh."
"Or a swamp."
"Or a fen."
"Definitely not a fen, Castle. Sounds too much like Fenway Park. This baby can't have a name, even a prenatal nickname, that's associated with the Red Sox."
"Exactly. I'm sticking with BG."
She staggers through the day, and the next and the next, wishing that her morning sickness would come to an end. Sometimes it's afternoon sickness, which is worse because the boys don't know she's pregnant and stare cluelessly but curiously at her when she dashes off to the ladies room.
One evening she and Castle are lying at opposite ends of the sofa, reading on their iPads. He's allegedly engrossed in a novel, but she knows better. The book in question would not elicits those sotto voce "oohs," soft "wows," little smiles, and barely restrained fist pumps. She'd bet a significant amount of money that what he's really doing is looking at the latest in bassinets, cribs, changing tables, car seats, carriers, bouncy chairs, high chairs, play mats, baby monitors, and strollers. The man is in baby paraphernalia heaven.
She pokes his foot with hers. "Enjoying that book, Castle?"
"Huh?"
Such a giveaway. "Must be a good book."
"Right! It is. Totally engrossing."
That's the kind of fib she can live with, and she lets it be. She's checking his facial expression every few minutes and it gives her an idea. She gets up and starts walking to the bedroom.
"You okay, Beckett?"
"Fine. Just gonna do something. Keep on reading."
"Something" involves her gray stationery and a pen, which she collects and carries to a chair, where she sits down and begins to write.
"I finally have a name for you that I like: PB. I haven't told your father; he'd say that I chose it because peanut butter is my favorite food. He'd be partly right, too, because I do love my super-chunky peanut butter. What it really stands for is Pink and Blue, which somehow became the colors for babies: pink for girls, blue for boys. It's dopey: we should all wear whatever colors we want. For instance, your father's favorite shirt is pink. I love it when he wears blue, but only because it makes his blue eyes even bluer.
"Yesterday he was wearing a blue sweater and I told him that I hope you have blue eyes like his. And you know what he said? 'I don't care what color the baby's eyes are, as long as they're not pink. Pink eye, get it, Beckett?' Your father loves to make jokes like that. You'll find it out for yourself, but I'm just giving you fair warning. Pink eye, PB, is not fun and it's not the color of anyone's eyes. It's a nasty infection that makes the white of your eye and your eyelid turn pink for a while.
"Daddy and I don't care whether you're a girl or a boy, we'll be happy no matter what. The difference is that your father wants to know before you get born and I don't. When we were at the doctor last week he said, 'If it's a girl, I'll be tickled pink!' When I asked him what he'd be if you're a boy, he said, 'I'll be tickled pink with a boy, too. See? I can be a sartorial rebel just like you.' He says things like that a lot, too. When you're old enough to read this, you can ask him what he meant by sartorial rebel. He loves explaining things.
"Even though I think of you now as PB, I also call you ah. Ah is a wonderful word, a sound really, that you make when you're happy. In your case it's that, but it also stands for almost here. You aren't really almost here, you're months and months away, but still. You're here with me all the time, which is kind of weird. Weird in the best way. Until I met your father I was by myself a lot and I liked it, or thought I liked it. I do still need some time by myself, and he knows that and leaves me alone when I do. Most of the time I'd rather be with him, though, not by myself. Ah!
"Now I have you with me wherever I go. When I first found out about you I figured that after the first few days I'd be used to the idea and wouldn't think about you every minute, at least until you started kicking me. But guess what? I do think about you all the time. Not every minute, but almost. I know you aren't talking, but I think I hear you saying you'd like us to go to sleep now. I'm listening to you! I'm going to brush my teeth and get into bed.
"I wonder if you can feel it when I brush my teeth? That's the kind of thing your father would wonder about, and now I am. That's what happens when you love someone: you start reading each other's minds."
Except she doesn't make it as far as the bathroom. She falls asleep with the letter on her lap, and doesn't wake when the pen rolls onto the floor.
Castle is mentally composing a letter to BabyBjörn about the inadequate color choices of their updated bouncy chair when he realizes that Beckett has been gone for quite a while. Not only that, she's not made a peep, which is a little worrying. He pushes himself off the sofa and heads for the bedroom, since that's the direction she was going—he checks his watch—two hours ago? The instant he puts his foot info his office he sees her, half curled up in an armchair, with something on her lap. She must have drifted off reading a magazine; he'll pick her up and put her to bed.
It's not a magazine, though, it's the stationery. That stationery. She must be writing him another letter! He'd assumed that was in the past, but here's evidence to the contrary. Should he read it now or wait until she leaves it wherever she's thinking of leaving it? He puts his weight on his left foot, and then shifts it to his right. There's nothing wrong with taking a peek, surely? The letter is for him. There's no federal statute involved, anyway, since it's not in the mail.
He'll just look at the first paragraph, how bad a sin is that? No sin at all. Not even a transgression. A minor infraction, at most. Besides, she's written on two pieces of paper: this is a long letter and must have lots of paragraphs, so in the grand scheme of things? First paragraph it is. She'll never know.
Worried that she'd feel him exhaling, he takes a deep breath and holds it while he starts to read. PB? Oh, my God, that's adorable. He's grateful for the speed-reading course he took years ago, because he gets right through the sartorial rebel section before he has to breathe again. Okay, so it was three paragraphs, not one, but he's stopped now. It's killing him, but he's not going to read the rest. He tiptoes back out to the living room.
"Beckett!" He says it again, louder. "Beckett?"
She rolls her head upright against the back of the chair. She must have nodded off for a minute.
"Beckett?"
He's coming! She grabs the stationery, folds the papers in half and shuts them inside the nearest book, which is on a small table at her elbow. "Hey, Castle. Sorry, I guess I was napping."
"Whatcha reading?"
Oh, hell, Mister Inquisitive. She doesn't even know what's in her hand. "Um. Oh, it's your Ferrari manual. Very interesting. I thought maybe it should go back in your car though. In case you, uh, you know, need it. On the road."
"Okay, thanks." If she only knew how desperate she looks. He'll play along. "Here, I'll take it."
She clutches it so hard she bends it. "No, I want to read something in here. About cylindrical cleaning." Cylindrical cleaning? What is she thinking? "Remember that time, you know, when we got locked in the trunk of that GTO? In the Pandora case? And you were amazed that I knew about muscle cars."
"Of course I do." Of course I do, we were thrust together in a dark, enclosed space, with you all but sprawled on top of me and I wanted—. "Cylindrical cleaning, huh?"
"And other things. I mean, Castle, who knows? The baby and I could be in the Ferrari without you and if it broke down I'd want to know what to do. It would set a bad example if the baby thought I was some pathetic, helpless female who knew zilch about cars."
He has to hand it to her. If he were on the other side of the interrogation table from her, he'd believe every word of this. "Good point. Want some tea before bed?" Give her a little time to take that letter out of the manual, where she clearly stashed it, and let her hide it wherever she wants.
"Oh, yes. Yes, please. Thanks, Castle."
He retreats to the kitchen, taking more time than necessary to brew a mug of tea, and making more noise than usual on the trip back to the bedroom. She's sitting up, leaning against the headboard, when he comes in.
"I washed my face and brushed my teeth and I'm all ready for bed," she says happily. "Is that my tea?"
"It is." He hands her the mug and sits down beside her. They chat dreamily about nothing for a few minutes, and when she finishes her tea he reaches for the empty mug. "You gonna sleep now?"
"Yeah. Turns out growing a baby makes me ridiculously tired."
"Mind if I go next door? I want to write for a while I'm feeling inspired."
She kisses him lightly, topples over, and attempts a wave. "Night, Castle. Love y—." She's out.
Back in his office, he opens the top drawer of his desk and removes a legal pad and a pen. He looks towards the bedroom door, then at the lined yellow paper, and begins.
"Right now you're the size and shape of a little lima bean, which is funny (or maybe not so funny) because your mother is the color of a lima bean every morning. Pale green.
"I like knowing this about you because by the time I get to hold you you won't be lima beanish at all; you'll be a miniature mix of your mother and me. Hey, I'm sorry about the alliteration, but I'm feeling a little sappy right now. Someday I'll explain why too much alliteration is a bad thing, but not now.
"People don't give lima beans—I'm talking about you, BG, even though you'll outgrow the lima-bean stage by next week—the respect they deserve. They're originally from Guatemala. I wonder if they speak Spanish? Maybe something else, because lima beans have been around for thousands of years, way before any Spaniards landed in the Americas. Anyway, my point is that people turn their noses up at lima beans, which they shouldn't because they're amazingly healthy, full of vitamins and minerals and fiber. I won't bore you with a science lesson; just take my word for it. And remember that if anyone offers you lima beans say yes. They're part of your heritage! You were once a lima bean yourself. And don't worry, eating one isn't cannibalism.
"I think your mother got a lima bean stuck up her nose when she was about four and had to go to the emergency room to have it removed. Please don't do that, okay? I'm a big fan of family traditions, but that wouldn't be a good one.
"Next time I write you'll probably be the size of a fig. Big as a fig! I can't wait to give you a Fig Newton. Those are seriously great cookies."
He folds the sheet of paper in three, puts it inside a white envelope, shuts it in his desk drawer and smiles.
TBC
