Author's note: Though this is essentially a complete one-off, I find it to be completely self-indulgent and not a little fluffy. Therefore it goes here, with headcanons, rather than as a stand-alone story.
Rick Castle is anxious to get home.
No. Anxious is the wrong word. Anxious implies a worry, some kind of problem, perhaps a fear. He is not anxious.
Say, rather, eager. Rick Castle is eager to get home. Because Rick Castle has left at his home his beloved daughter, who is going away soon (not far, but still, away), and his girlfriend, without whom he would not know how to breathe. He is eager to get home, because he wants to be with them, to bask in their presence and let them pick on him and tease him and gang up on him and generally make him incredibly happy.
The elevator in his building has never taken so long, he thinks, in his life.
He has been gone all morning. He had to go. He didn't want to, but he had to meet with his publisher and his lawyer and sign papers. Kate wouldn't go, even though he asked her to – something about absence and fondness. He's plenty fond already, but she just laughed and put on lounging clothes and refused to even contemplate the idea of shoes.
The elevator bell dings and he spills out onto his floor and double-times it for his apartment door – and he pauses in the act of inserting his key, hearing the sound of laughter from the other side of the door. Laughter. His daughter and Kate are laughing together.
He pauses, closes his eyes, and leans his forehead against the door briefly, so grateful for what he's got that he can't quite breathe. Then he recovers himself, enters, and takes in the scene.
Alexis is sitting on the couch, holding two long, pointy sticks and a lapful of brightly-colored string, and Kate is behind her, leaning over her, guiding her hands. "Pull the yarn forward," Kate is saying, "and then stick the needle in the front. Then wrap it around and pull it up." She suits action to words, moving slowly, while Alexis watches. Then she moves her hands and Alexis repeats the action, a bit clumsily.
"Like that?" the girl asks.
Kate nods. "Exactly like that. Go again, to the end of the row."
Alexis does so, the tip of her tongue poking out of the side of her mouth as she concentrates. Once or twice, Kate corrects her gently, correcting her hand movements, and soon Alexis's hands are moving steadily in the correct ways as she loops the bright yarn over and over and over.
He clears his throat and they both look up. Alexis grins brightly, holding up the object in her hands. "Dad! Did you know Kate knows how to knit?"
"I did not know," he replies, moving toward them and leaning down to press a warm kiss to Kate's lips.
Kate grins at him. "My grandma taught me when I was four. And another layer peeled."
"You've been knitting since you were four?" he asks, boggling at her.
She nods. "Yep. I can crochet, too, but I like knitting better."
"So, what are you making?" he asks, leaning over Alexis to look at the confusion of yarn in her lap.
"A mess, right now," Alexis replies, smirking. "But eventually, a dishcloth. And if that goes well, maybe a scarf."
"Cool." Castle grins. He nudges Kate. "What are you making?"
Kate laughs. "Currently I'm in the middle of a hat, three pairs of socks, a Fair Isle sweater, a skirt, two scarves and a lace shawl."
He boggles at her. "All of that?"
She grins. "Over time. I've actually been working on the shawl the longest – I cast it on the night I dragged you out of your book launch party to come and be questioned." She leans around the couch and grabs a familiar canvas tote bag. He's seen that bag before – it was at the end of her couch in her old apartment, and he's seen it tucked beside the armchair in her new apartment. Now it's beside the couch in his loft, and he realizes as she reaches into it that it must be her work bag.
She draws out a mass of white fabric – it's light as a spiderweb when she places it in his hands, and when she helps him spread it out, he realizes that it is some of the finest, most detailed lace he's ever seen. Alexis gasps, surging up for a closer look. "Oh my God," she breathes. "That's gorgeous."
Kate blushes slightly. "Thanks," she murmurs. She slides onto the couch next to Alexis, pulls a plastic-covered sheet out of the knitting bag and consults it, and then takes the incredibly thin needles in her hands. Castle watches over her shoulder for a minute as she begins to work the shawl, tiny stitches appearing as she works, and then he watches Alexis as she works with the thicker cotton yarn in her own lap. Finally he shakes his head. "It makes my eyes cross watching you," he admits.
Kate laughs. "Then go write."
He leans over her shoulder again to kiss her warmly, and then he follows directions.
He comes to know that lace shawl incredibly well; she works on it a lot over the summer. She works on other projects as well – she finishes both pairs of socks, the hat, and one of the scarves – but the shawl becomes her go-to project for when she's sitting quietly on the couch in his office while he writes. He finds it there one day, in a little wicker basket, and he lifts it up to have a look. It's long – longer than he is tall – and amazingly intricate. He can't imagine how she has the patience to sit there for hours on end, making those tiny stitches.
But of course she doesn't; he realizes that when he thinks about it. She's constantly having to rip it back because she's missed a stitch, and even when everything is going perfectly, the mental peace that the knitting provides often makes her fall asleep right there on the couch. No wonder it's taking her so long to work on it.
He asks her about it one night in July. He's learning more about knitting from listening to her and Alexis talk about the craft, and from occasionally getting curious and looking things up online. He's learning about Fair Isle and Aran and cable – enough, at least, to recognize what the words mean – and he says, "Is there a special name for those kinds of shawls?"
She raises an eyebrow over her needles. "What do you mean?"
"Is it just a shawl, or is it something special? You know, like a sweater versus a Fair Isle sweater or something."
"Oh." She looks down at the lace, and he suddenly realizes that she is blushing. "It... it's called a wedding ring shawl." She swallows hard. "Because when the yarn used to be hand-spun, a mark of the spinner's talent was that a full-size shawl would be fine enough to pass through a wedding ring."
"I see," he says softly. And, for once, he's pretty sure that he does. He grins at her.
She grins back, and goes back to knitting. He goes back to his computer, but he only writes for a few minutes. Then he starts looking for wedding rings.
Waiting is about the hardest thing he's ever done, but he does. He waits, and he holds onto his secret, and he watches while that shawl gets longer, half-inch by half-inch. Until finally, one night in December, he glances up at a tiny rattle and he realizes that it was the sound of the needles, bare, falling into the basket. He watches as she runs the lace through her hands, searching for flaws, finding none, and smiles when she sits back with it spread across her lap.
He reaches into the drawer and opens the little black velvet box, palming the diamond engagement ring, and comes to sit next to her, lifting one corner of the shawl. "Well," he says softly, "shall we see if it works?" Without waiting for an answer, he draws the corner of the shawl through the ring, pushing it across the lace until it is in her lap.
Her hands only tremble slightly as they drop to the fabric, drawing the shawl the rest of the way through the ring and then holding it in her hands. "Looks like it does," she says simply, her voice only a little shaky. Then she slides the ring onto her finger.
She wears the shawl at their wedding in March.
He watches, as months pass, different projects go in and out of the bag and the basket (and the other basket at the house in the Hamptons). He watches her make scarves and hats and sweaters and socks – sometimes for herself, sometimes for him, sometimes for others. She makes a full layette with a matching blanket when Jenny gets pregnant for the first time. When it starts to get cold again, she makes him a ridiculous hat with bobbles on the top, and he wears it everywhere. She gives a scarf and a pair of mittens to the doorman. He watches her make all of these projects.
And then one day in mid-February, he realizes that she has a secret project. She's been very casual about it, but it's something that she won't let him see. It hits him one day when he comes in the door and she immediately changes projects, shoving it down into the bottom of the canvas bag.
She's never kept any of her projects secret from him before, not even the ones that were for him.
He doesn't pry. It kills him to wait, but she really, really doesn't like it when he ruins things for her. So he waits.
And one night at the beginning of March, just before their first anniversary, he comes out of the bathroom one night to find her lying on the bed, holding it in her hands. He comes and sits down next to her, and she hands it to him, her eyes shining.
He holds the little green onesie in his hands for a long time, letting his fingers run over and over the incredibly soft yarn, tracing the tiny little rook she picked out in darker green. And then he looks up at her, feeling the tears well up in his eyes. She smiles at him, and he smiles back. Then he slides his hand into her hair and he kisses her like she holds his entire future inside her body.