Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox. I'm just having fun, I make no moneys.
I talked to Gates over Skype while Natalie took a nap, filling her in on what had happened.
"I think, Detective," Gates said gravely, "that you and Castle need to hide in some place more remote. Without cameras. Most of the Hamptons are under video surveillance, broadcast on the internet. It's no wonder they saw you with Natalie and came after her."
Fifteen minutes of privacy were up. At times as a cop, I celebrated having cameras everywhere, at this moment, I did not. No wonder they found her. "We'll take her away. For the rest of the break. We won't let her out of his sight."
"I hope not. Go and hide her."
"I know just the place," I said, getting out my phone.
On my phone, I dialed Dad.
"Hi honey, how's spring break going?"
"Not well. Dad, I need to ask a favor about your cabin in Vermont."
Alexis brought home the cuckoo bird from Aviary for Nat that night. She woke up and we had a calm dinner with grilled steaks and potatoes, and Natalie wanted to watch the Little Mermaid.
"Alexis," she noted, laying down on top of me. "You kind of look like her."
"I've been told that my whole life," Alexis said. "You know you who look like?"
"Who?"
"Princess Aurora. Sleeping Beauty."
Natalie blushed. "Thank you for the bird," she said.
"You're welcome. I hope you like it."
We watched the movie for a few more minutes and Alexis, Natalie, and I sang along with Kiss the Girl. It was so much more fun when there were three of us singing together. Rick came in the room right at the end of the song and joined us right as the eels overturned the boat.
"Can we pause the movie?" he asked.
"Sure," I said, picking up the remote.
"Nat, after what happened to day," Castle began, "we talked to Kate's dad, and he says it's okay for us to stay for the rest of spring break in his cabin in Vermont. We don't feel like the Hamptons are safe right now."
"You have another house?" Nat asked, surprised. "How many houses do you guys have?"
"Just these two," Castle said. "We're going to Vermont."
"I've never been to Vermont."
"It's a bit of a drive," I admitted.
"Oh," she muttered.
"Do you want me to come along?" Alexis asked.
"You had friends you wanted to see this week, didn't you?" Castle asked.
"I did," she admitted. "But…" Alexis could be kidnapped at a wild party and used against us, too.
"We'd like to have you come along," I said.
"Do you even have room in that cabin for all four of us?" she asked.
"I think we do," I said. "It'll be fine."
We turned the movie back on and Castle went back to the sunroom to write and the movie finished.
"What a great movie!" Nat sighed.
"It strayed pretty far from the book," Alexis noted.
"It was a book?" Nat cried.
"Yes," I said. "Hans Christian Anderson wrote it."
"In the story, the sea witch gave the Little Mermaid legs, but they were always in pain and always bleeding. She had long a short period of time to make the prince fall in love with her, and so they were dancing, and she's in all this pain, and he says to her, 'yeah, I'm in love with that girl over there.' And he never looked twice at her."
"Did she die?"
"Yes, indeed she did. But only after the Sea Witch tried to get her to kill the Prince. She flung herself into the ocean and became a daughter of the air because her soul was so pure," Alexis said.
"That's depressing!" Nat cried. "And they always say the book is better than the movie!"
"Hans Christian Anderson basically wanted to put stories out there that were warnings for Victorian children," I said. "Fairy tales weren't always meant for just children, but adults, too, so they were actually pretty scary. I can get it on my Kindle if you want to read it. But we won't be able to download it when we get to Vermont. There's no internet out there."
"Really?" Nat cried, jumping up. "Is it like camping?"
"No. The cabin has electricity and running water. It's on a lake, though."
"Cool! Can we watch another movie?"
It was only seven, entirely too early for Nat to go to bed, but I didn't want her brain melting from too much TV. "Why don't we do something else?" I asked. "Like, play a boardgame?"
"I've got a few games on my iPhone," Alexis offered, looking up from her phone and her beer.
"Can we have a sock party?" Nat asked.
"A sock party?" I repeated. "What's that?"
"It's when we wear socks and listen to music and dance on hardwood floors."
"A dance party! That sounds fun!" Alexis cried. "I've got the music on my phone!"
"I'll go get some socks!" Nat volunteered. She ran upstairs.
Alexis turned on Talk Dirty to Me on her phone. "No," I said. "Change it."
"What? Why? It's not okay?" Alexis asked.
"The lyrics. I don't want her hearing them and thinking it's okay," I said. "She asked me today if a bird was an asshole."
"I'll change it." She changed the song until it started playing something similar-sounding. "It's Talk Nerdy to Me, a parody. Don't worry."
"I'm back!" Natalie shouted, jumping down the last three steps on the staircase. She had socks on, now.
"House rules, no twerking."
"Aww!"
"Real ladies don't twerk," Alexis pointed out.
"Don't you know how to dance any other way?" I asked.
"Well, sorta. This is the NeNe." She clasped her hands and held them out in front of herself and started tapping her toe to the side.
"Oh, so that's the NeNe," I said. It was kind of stupid, no real skill involved.
"Yeah. Can we play some One Direction?" she asked.
"Sorry, I don't have them downloaded to my phone," Alexis admitted, going to the phone. She tapped the screen and a new electronic song started playing. "Oh! This one is pretty popular!"
"Who is it?" Nat asked.
"Samantha Who." I recognized Somebody Loves You started playing.
"Oh, I love this song! I cried. "It reminds me of when I was kid in the 80s!"
"Wow, you're old," Natalie teased.
"Hey! I'm not that old."
"Kidding!"
"What kind of dance moves did you do in the 80s?" Alexis asked. "The Robot? Break Dancing?"
"No, everybody forgets that those weren't the only two moves we did. I did this one all the time in elementary school after Madonna did it on the American Music Awards. It's the Running Man."
"Show us!" Natalie cried.
I did my best running man, although it had been years since I had even attempted it. Alexis and Nat burst out laughing.
"Hey!" I cried.
"That looks so dumb!" Natalie giggled.
"Are you even getting anywhere?" Alexis cackled. "You might as well be on a treadmill!"
"Forget me ever showing you guys the Roger Rabbit. And to think I danced for ten years at the American Ballet Theatre."
"No, show me!" Alexis cried, gulping down the last of her beer. "It'll be a hoot at the next retro party I go to!"
"Knife in my heart!" I cried.
I spent the better part of the night dancing with the girls until Castle came in, and offered to show Natalie how to dance with a partner. She jumped at the chance as he taught her the single liddy and the brush turn from swing dancing. "I thought only gay guys danced!" Natalie cried. "And hip-hop stars!"
"Hey, let me tell you something; when I was about thirteen, I was given the option to sign up for any elective class I wanted in school. All the sports filled up really quickly, shop filled up, and then I saw the prettiest girls in school all gathered around one table, and I thought 'that's the class for me!' It was social dance. That's how I learned."
"Really?"
"Yup. No competition; all the girls wanted to dance with me. They'd fight over me everyday at lunch. And at the spring dance, they all lined up to dance with me, I spent the night surrounded by girls while all the other boys were leaning on the walls, watching, too shy to ask them. It was one of the few times my school principals actually liked me. So don't make assumptions that any man who can dance is gay."
"It all makes sense, now," I joked. "How you dated every socialite under the age of thirty in Manhattan!"
"There's nothing sexier than a man who knows how to tango," Alexis added in. She was a bit buzzed at this point. "When they're all dominant and can lead, you know they're good in bed. How do you think Chase and I met?"
"Earmuffs!" Castle cried.
"But it's ten o'clock, time for us all to get to bed," I said, checking my watch. "We need to leave for Vermont in the morning."
That night, I could hardly sleep, listening to Alexis and Natalie giggling and talking in her room, watching another movie when they were supposed to be sleeping. It was funny and I enjoyed hearing it, it was so cute. The idea of adopting Natalie seemed so right at this moment. She had only lived with us for three weeks, but I loved her already. I made a terrible foster mother if I had to give her back. I'd be wrecked.
I rubbed some lotion in my legs and went back into the bedroom where Castle was still on his computer, messing with what he had written, frowning at the screen.
"Killing your darlings?" I asked, climbing into the bed.
"Yes," he grumbled.
I gently closed the computer and took it away from him. He groaned slightly. "Put it down, Castle, and come to bed. I want to be with the most popular boy in school who stole everybody's hearts, Ricky Rogers. Show me how well you can dance."
He leaned into kiss me, and I held him close. It had been so long since we had made love, it was probably before Nat moved in with us. We tried to be quiet, considering that Alexis and Nat were just down the hall, but it felt fresh and brand-new. I could live like this forever; knowing Natalie was down the hall having a slumber party with Alexis and our family was safe. I felt closer to Castle than I had in the last year tonight. We were a family. And my damaged, partially-destroyed uterus didn't matter. I felt whole and happy again.
"You know," I said in the post-coital bliss. "I'm beginning to think I'll be fine if we never conceive. I want Natalie to be our daughter. Do you want that, too? Do you want to adopt her?"
"And... Beckett finally comes around," he said, stroking my hair out of my eyes.
