Author's note: Since this chapter is written in Ben's POV, who got to know Alexis by the name Alex and Kate by Katie, I'll stick with these. I'm pretty sure although Castle must have offered him as his son-in-law to go by their first names, he wouldn't think about him as "Richard" or "Rick". Just for you to know why I use these names here. Don't forget, there is always a story. And there is one as well to why I use different names in specific contexts even though it may seem to be a little chaotic sometimes.

Having said so, I like to thank all of you guys, especially my most loyal readers, who keep following this little story. Very special thanks are as always being reserved for my lovely beta annem57 and first time fan APseudonimo, if I may call her so.

Disclaimer: I guess we all know who owns the rights to the show "Castle" and unfortunately it's not me. But I take the liberty to use these characters for playing out my plot. I swear, I'll give them back afterwards.


Chapter 8 – Being affected

Ben's POV

Sunday, May 23th 2021

Ben paced swaying throughout the living room holding his little baby daughter close to him, her right ear pressed against his chest to comfort her with the sound of his beating heart. She didn't seem satisfied though. He knew she couldn't be hungry and he had changed her diapers twice within the last thirty minutes although it hadn't been necessary. She only calmed down a little bit when he carried her through their apartment and whispered comforting syllables into her other ear. But she seemed to refuse falling asleep again, even though her eyelids were hanging low she still managed to hold them open somehow and started to sob or even cry a little louder again every now and then.

He had slid out of bed, careful not to wake Alex, the moment he had heard Jo whimpering from the nursery right across their bedroom. They had only been home two days, and already they had slipped into "baby mode". Ever since Jo's birth Ben had noticed how different she was to her brother. She was that kind of day sleeping kid who preferred midnight walks to the visit to the land of dreams she was supposed to take. He knew a baby that age didn't choose that kind of schedule, but they had managed to make differences between action filled days and calm nights with Nate quite quickly back then and hoped to establish those with Jo soon.

"Let me." He turned at the soft voice of his wife who was entering the living room as well.

Obviously they hadn't been that successful in not waking her up. Alex smiled tenderly when she reached for Jo to take her turn in gently rocking their little daughter back to sleep. After about ten minutes the little girl's whimpering finally subsided, her eyelids closed and her breathe evened out as she fell asleep.

Ben considered going back to prepare Jo's bed but he couldn't take his eyes off his two girls and needed to capture the magic of the moment first. So he went to the cupboard where he kept one of his smaller cameras. He pointed it at his wife, moving a little to get a good angle mirrored nearly automatically by Alex' motion who was used to this action and therefore helped him in turning a little bit to the left until the shadows disappeared. Her face was then mostly lit by the dim streetlights flowing in through the fabric of the curtains. Her head was lowered as she looked down on their baby girl, some stray strands almost brushing over Jo's head, her lips moving as she whispered something to her. When he zoomed in choosing the perfect detail, he noticed that the wrinkles which had previously been curved into Jo's expressions were gone as she had relaxed into the arms of her mother and her mouth was moving in sleep as though she was sucking on something.

He took a shot. And some more too until Alex lifted her head and looked at him not saying anything but the half amused half annoyed question if he was finished clearly showing in her eyes. He smiled back at her, letting the camera sink. Before he put it away he quickly took another picture of his wife who tilted her head slightly to the right shooting him an irritated glare. His smile widened and he shrugged since he could tell by the little crinkles on her nose that she wasn't really mad at him.

When he turned to head for the nursery Alex followed hot on his heels, still keeping a rhythmic sway in her steps. Ben pulled back the duvet so she could lay the sleeping baby down in the crib and tuck her in. He stepped back to let her through, still watching and waiting for her to come back to bed with him. But she seemed unable to break away from their tiny daughter just yet. She was just as fascinated by that little being as he was. Ben stepped up to her, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind joining her in looking at Jo over her shoulder.

"She's so cute and tiny," Alex stated and he nodded affirmatively. "I think I'd forgotten how small and soft babies are," she continued. "And how sweet they smell," she turned to him smilingly.

"No you hadn't," Ben grinned at his wife.

"Yeah, maybe I knew." She leaned her head against his shoulder yawning.

"Let's try to catch some sleep then," he suggested after a moment of enjoying the embrace. He gently pushed her towards the door to cross the corridor to their bedroom. It was probably well past 3 and Nate would be up in only three hours.

They slipped into bed and he reached over her waist again pulling her close, brushing his lips over her neck.

"Night, honey," he closed his eyes perfectly ready to immediately fall asleep.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, Katie will be coming over tomorrow for coffee. Or more like today," she added the last sentence after a brief pause obviously considering the early hour.

"What?" Ben forced his eyes open again. Of course Alex had to start talking when all he wanted to do was sleep, and Alex needed to get some rest.

"I invited her," Alex lifted her head to look him in the eyes and supporting her chin with her forearm resting on his chest.

"You did," he blinked and realized that his response wasn't making any sense or adding anything to the conversation.

"Nate has been asking for her," his beautiful wife reasoned, apparently wide awake while he still tried to focus and follow her train of thought. He settled with nodding, which she took as an invitation to explain some more.

"I'm glad she came over though I never expected her to. I was quite surprised when she apologized for what had happened at the hospital." Ben stared at Alex. He had been surprised too, to even find out that Katie had known his wife and father-in-law before, that she'd actually been Richard Castle's muse for nearly two years, the model for one of his fictional characters. And Ben had been less than impressed that she hadn't even bothered to talk to them about it.

His thoughts travelled back some days to the moment he had been coming back with Jo from her first doctor's appointment. It had been kind of surreal. First Katie had passed by, hardly saying good bye but only waving briefly. And then he had found his wife shocked, his son confused and worried accompanied by his father-in-law who had immediately engaged him in some questioning about the baby, demanding to hold her and obviously doing everything to lighten the mood and distracting them.

Later, when her Dad had left and Nate was having a nap, Ben had managed to talk to Alex about what had happened. Only then he had learnt about Katie being Detective Beckett or Detective Davidson or something, and how they had known her more than a decade ago.

"Do you think we should invite her to his birthday party?" Alex questioned startling him from his reverie. He contemplated that question before slowly nodding.

"I think Nate would be very pleased," Ben stated.

"Yeah, he would be but it would also be a little awkward, don't you think? I mean, Katie meeting Dad and Grams. I don't know if they'd like that," she paused looking at him thoughtfully. "I think Dad was pretty angry at her. You know him: the harder things are, the more he starts to make fun of something and that day he had acted as though he had swallowed a clown for breakfast." Alex paused again, a yawn escaping her.

"But then, it's not his birthday. It's about our son and Nate would like to have her there too. We're lucky that he is too young to really understand what was or is going on and why Katie had acted so weird."

He watched her shutting her eyes muttering the next sentences barely audible, "They're close. Nate would be hurt if we kept Katie from him. She should be there, too. She should."

Ben knew Alex wasn't ready to forgive Katie just yet but she was obviously willing to try, willing to give her a second chance since she had finally stepped up to them and admitted she had been wrong and dealt the worst possible way with the situation she hadn't expected to encounter. And when Alex had made up her mind she could be quite persistent. And since she, despite everything they found out and what had happened, obviously was still convinced that Katie was a friend to Nate, Ben was sure she would gather herself together to forgive her sooner or later.

Yeah, his wife had been quite angry at first, maybe even mad. She had suspected that Katie had known all along, who she was dealing with, without saying, but on recollection Alex had realized that the other woman would have behaved differently, and she had only been able to notice a difference when Katie had brought Nate to the hospital. They had found out later that Katie had only known by then. Ben wondered why she hadn't told Alex right away as soon she had found out. But that was obviously not the most troublesome aspect. The problem seemed to have something to do with the relationship between her father and Katie.

When he'd had the chance to talk to her, her Dad already gone and Nate taking a nap, his wife had filled him in briefly on where Katie and Richard Castle knew each other from. Apparently his father-in-law had been following her at work for almost two years, doing research in order to base Nikki Heat, the leading character of his last Black Pawn series, on her. Alex hadn't told him much about it, putting the topic aside rather quickly, but Ben was pretty sure that there was more to it.

Ben didn't think they'd parted on good terms back then judging by the way they reacted to running into each other by chance. Who would be that shocked or even mad after more than ten years, if it hadn't been something big? He supposed that they may have had a little more intimate relationship than Alex was willing to tell him or maybe acknowledge in the first place.

She had been a teenager back then after all. Ben looked down at Alex, who's head had fallen to his chest heavily, her grip at his waist loosened as her breath had evened out and turned into her typical sleeping noise which wasn't really snoring but an adorable kind of humming sound.

Obviously there must have been a connection between their relationship back then, the end of Nikki Heat and the never-to-be-called-so midlife-crisis of the writer. Although it didn't quite fit together. As far as he knew Richard Castle had left Black Pawn and New York almost a year after giving up on following the cop - which happened to have been Katie. If it had been a reaction to their supposed break up or something it must have taken him quite a long time to process. But Alex had told him her Dad had been with Gina at that time. Ben hadn't been eager to explore his father-in-law's present or past love life before. He even shuddered at the thought that very moment. But it was different now. It affected not only Richard Castle, but also Ben's wife Alex and even their kids.

It obviously affected Katie too. Leaving the recent events aside she seemed to be quite a nice person and he had really liked her right from the start, but now he wasn't that sure about it anymore. All this tangled mess bubbling up from the past seemed to put quite the damper on every attempt to build a friendship with their neighbor. He even wondered if it was worth the effort at all. When Alex still wanted to allow Nate to bond with Katie, Ben needed to help his wife sorting it out first. She'd told him once that her father's complicated relationships had been one of the reasons to adopting the resolution not to mix up her personal life with her professional. He'd figured Alex had been talking about her father's former publisher and second ex-wife but maybe Katie had been another chess piece in the game if Alex had known about it.

By now he had only been quite glad that their life had led Alex and her father to California. Maybe Alex would never have taken that internship with the Chronicle if she hadn't wanted to stay close to her father. They maybe would have never met. He brushed his lips over her head, placing a chaste kiss to her hair.

His father-in-law would call it fate and on times like these, when he realized it could have happened completely differently, Ben was apt to agree with him. He'd never really given much thought about why the New York author had been following his grown up daughter to the West Coast even if he had eventually been drawn back to the Big Apple on expanding Cheimon Publishing Inc., flying to San Francisco every few weeks to stay with them and spend time with his grandson. But maybe Katie had been part of it. By her coming back into their lives, without knowing though, and building a relationship with Nate their past may have begun to affect all of them.


Author's note: Next chapter may be a little delayed due to my TV-themed birthday party this weekend. Guess which character I chose to dress as.