Wednesday, December 4th
Arching her back in the bed, Kate grins wide and full. This morning feels good, rolling in unhurried and cloaking her in the soft touch of winter sunlight. Wednesday is her day off. Wednesday and Sunday, and she's on call Saturdays.
When she got pregnant with Jackson, Kate sat down with her captain and together they figured out how this would work. It was Kate's biggest worry; really, the thing Castle had to talk out with her over and over before she even agreed to start trying. She doesn't want to miss out on her kids' lives, wants to be whole and affected and in it right along with them.
So far, it works out okay. Sure, she often misses breakfast, is only rarely able to pick them up from school. But she makes it for dinner almost every night, has only missed bathing them a handful of times. The worry that when they get older they'll begin to resent her nibbles away at the base of her spine, but she manages to push it back when her kids curl up with her and tell her stories about school and their adventures with Daddy.
Castle has a meeting with Black Pawn today, took Jack to school on his way to it, so this morning it's just her and Bea. The girl must still be sleeping; otherwise she would have crawled in to snuggle up in bed with her mother already.
Slipping out from between the sheets, Kate curls her toes until they crack and stretches them out again, moves quietly through the loft. The dog lifts his head from his paws to regard her and she stops on her way past his bed to scratch behind his ear.
Upstairs, the loft is shrouded in darkness. Kate pushes the door of her daughter's room open slowly, the splash of purple stars from the nightlight spilling across the floor to guide her way. She narrowly avoids stepping on a Lego brick, skirts the dollhouse and the battleship to reach the bed.
Sure enough, Bea is sprawled on her stomach, a fist tucked up under her chin. Kate settles a palm at her baby girl's back, feels where her pyjamas stick to her skin with sleep-sweat. It's early still, so she goes right ahead and climbs in to her daughter's bed.
The girl rouses just enough to nuzzle into her mother's side, fingers unfurling to tighten again in Kate's own shirt. Bea lets out a soft sigh of contentment, her little body limp and warm as a furnace. Kate eases an arm slowly under her little girl, brings her closer still against her chest, and then she lets her eyes slip closed.
Still early, the blackout blind battling back the splash of sunlight so the room is thick with the same textured darkness as three am. She could sleep.
The rise and fall of her daughter's chest is soothing, the whisper of her breath falling against Kate's ear so she moderates her own breathing to be in time with Bea's. The slow drag of air in and out of her own chest lulls her, the heat of her little girl tugs her back down into sleep.
Kate doesn't even try to fight, just lets it come. The absolute perfect contentment of a lazy morning in bed with her best girl.
When Kate wakes again it's to the insistent call of her daughter's voice, little hands fisted in the loose curl of her mother's hair. Her eyes slide open to see Bea watching her intently, a grin spreading across her face when she sees her mother. "Mommy. You're awake."
"I'm awake."
Curling both arms around her daughter's back, Kate tugs Bea down to lie sprawled against her chest and scatters noisy kisses across the little girl's cheeks and down her neck. Bea squeals and writhes, thrashing around, and Kate can't help but add her own laughter in harmony.
"Mommy, please no more." Her baby girl gasps, fighting for air, and Kate cradles her daughter's head in her palm, her other ghosting up and down Bea's spine. Such a tiny little wisp of a thing, although her voracity for life more than makes up for it.
"How did you sleep, my sweet girl?" Kate murmurs against the fragile shell of her daughter's ear, rolls over and gathers Bea up against the cove of her body. "Any cool dreams?"
"Me and Jack-Jack were swimming in the river. The big one that Daddy showed us the programme."
Ah, right. Last week she came home from work to find her husband nestled on the couch with a child curled underneath each of his arms, an enormous bowl of popcorn apparently forgotten on the table in front of them. Snicket was curled up next to Bea, so Kate went right ahead and snuggled down next to her son, his little body low down enough that she could reach to press her cheek to her husband's shoulder over top of him.
Absolutely enthralled, all three of them. Even the dog seemed fascinated at the glimpse of the Amazon's murky depths, the alien life teeming below the stillness of the water's surface. Kate doesn't pretend to understand it. Sure, once she did tell Castle that she prefers the magic of things that she can see and touch, but that fish with the three eyes and the lumpy body? Yeah. . .hardly magical.
If her daughter's dreaming about that fish, she'd really rather not know about it. "Wow. Did anything nibble at your toes?"
Kate reaches down to tickle her little girl's feet, huffs a breath when Bea draws her legs up and her knees hit the tender flesh of Kate's stomach. Managing to laugh through it, she slides an arm under her baby's waist to draw her in a little closer, hopefully contain any more of her erratic movements that want to surface.
"No nibbling. Only there was ducks." Bea says, sitting up in bed and pushing at the thick curl of her dark hair as it falls into her face. Kate sits up too and leans back against the headboard, snagging a hair tie from the nightstand and lifting her little girl to sit in the hollow of her folded legs.
As her fingers work through Bea's hair, weaving it into a braid, her baby girl chatters on about the other marine life she and her brother shared the waters of her dream with. Kate offers murmured sounds of encouragement, listening to the story intently as her hands work.
This is maybe her favourite thing. The way her kids have inherited their father's love for literature and can't wait to share it with her too, always hurrying to tell Mommy everything they've experienced, be it in their days without her or the things brought to them while they sleep.
Once upon a time, Castle's words tugged her back from drowning. And now her children's tales do that for her instead. Her eyes flood with silly tears and she wishes Rick were here, wants to press her mouth to his in gratitude.
"Okay Beanie Ella. What do you want to do today?" Kate says, injects her voice with a false cheer that comes flooding in for real when her daughter turns around to drop a sloppy kiss to her cheek.
Her daughter clambers out of bed and scurries for the closet, rummaging around inside and coming back with the apron and chef's hat her grandmother gifted her with a little while back. "We please can make Christmas cookies?"
"Of course we can make Christmas cookies, sweet pea. Do you think we could leave some for Daddy and Jack?"
"No Momma. Me and you eat thems all up." Bea offers her mother a sly grin and comes back to take her hand, pulling Kate up to her feet.
Shepherding her daughter out of the room, Kate keeps a tight hold of the girl's hand on the stairs, only letting go once they're in the kitchen and safely on level ground. "Right then munchkin. Do you know the first thing we need to do?"
"Get 'gredients!" Bea shrieks, withering a little under the raised eyebrow her mother sends her. "Um. . .wash hands?"
"Right. Come here then, Little Bean." Kate opens her eyes to her daughter, hefts Bea up onto her hip so she can reach to put her hands under the stream of warm water. Pressing a soft dusting of a kiss to her baby girl's temple, Kate flicks on the radio and sways with her.
Already, this is the most fun she's had in a long time.
Castle's cell phone vibrates hard in his pocket and he jolts, his awareness snapping back to his surroundings. For the past half hour or so he's been firmly entrenched in thoughts of his wife, the press and roll of her body over his last night. Mm, celebratory we-closed-the-case sex is so awesome.
Probably not his favourite, he has to admit. How could it be when contending with the day he proposed, their wedding night, the honeymoon. . .oh god, their first night. Not that every time with her doesn't completely remake him from the core outwards, but there are times that are tabbed with little red flags in his mind, calling him back to dwell on them over and over.
He manages to slide his phone out of his pocket without Gina noticing, by some miracle, and his heart kicks double time in his chest when he sees that the message is from his wife. Unlocking it, he opens up the text to see that it's actually just a picture with no words attached.
His baby girl standing in the middle of the kitchen with flour streaked through her hair, plastering her cheeks and the end of her nose. Still in her pyjamas, and he sees in the reflection displayed in the refrigerator that Kate is too, looks almost as dirty as their daughter.
Looks like you might need some help with bath time, he shoots back, leans back in his seat and wonders what his girls are doing.
Cookies, maybe? Could be. Bea wanted to make them last week and he told her no, but apparently Mommy is easier to break. At least for this.
Her or me?
The text sends warmth flooding to his cheeks and he swallows hard, glances around to make sure that no one else has noticed his sudden discomfort.
Both? Have some fun with her and then oh, so fun with you Kate.
He can't help but picture how she'll roll her eyes, the dusting of pink that will leak onto her cheeks. She likes to pretend that she thinks him childish, but he knows how he gets to her. Oh yeah, Kate Beckett. He definitely gets to her.
Suddenly, he burns to get out of here. He needs to be at home, with his wife, show her just how much she affects him right back. Castle clears his throat and glances at his ex-wife, holds eye contact long enough that she must know before he even opens his mouth. "I have to go. Family emergency. Let me know if you decide anything."
And then he's standing up, shrugging into his jacket and striding purposefully through the door and down the corridor with his publisher's protests snapping at his heels.
Whatever, Gina. A lot of it is jealousy, he thinks. That his marriage with Kate is fundamentally better in every way than his marriage to Gina was.
Perhaps because Kate herself is fundamentally better than Gina. A better person, a better mother and mm, yes. . .a better lover. He really needs to get a hold of himself. It's barely one, at least seven hours before the kids are in bed and he can seek out some alone time with his gorgeous, gorgeous wife.
And that's okay too. He'll get home and help Kate scrub their baby girl clean and then maybe the three of them will go together to collect Jack from school. They'll cook dinner as a family and watch a movie before bed. Maybe his baby girl will fall asleep pillowed against his chest; Jack curled up safe in his mother's arms.
Doesn't matter what it looks like, only that it's this wonderful, malleable thing that he and Kate shape and nurture and help to grow. His family.