Juice Cups and Coffee Mugs


IX. I Wish Tonight

x

Castle is awake instantly, disoriented, uncomfortable, his neck spasming with pain.

"Did you fall asleep?"

He cracks an eyelid, peers around. He's on the wide, deep couch in their living room, slumped over in an embarrassingly telling manner, his head tilted back and a crick in his neck and shoulder. "Eh-sh-yeah-"

She laughs softly, sinks down onto his lap before he can gather himself together. He grunts and sits up, a hand clasping her knee to keep from accidentally dumping her to the floor. He clears his throat, licks his dried out lips, rubs his free hand down his face.

"I took Chaplin outside," she murmurs, a kiss to his forehead. "You were really out."

"Haven't slept well lately."

"I noticed," she says, stroking the nape of his neck. "Chaplin was excited to see me."

"Yeah, that's not good," he admits. "Sorry, I think that was something like six hours." He shifts on the couch and sees the dog nosing around the kitchen, searching for his food. "Aw, Chap, buddy. My fault. I haven't even put dinner out. Or for you, Kate."

"Let's go out." Her fingers are rhythmic on his nape. "It's only eight."

"It's already eight? Did your meeting go long?"

She groans and drops her forehead against his cheek. "I'm up against a wall at every turn. It's close to impossible to get people to change their ways, Castle. They aren't even listening to me. They immediately start thinking of a defense, a way to excuse their behavior."

"That's bureaucracy for ya," he mutters, not quite with it yet. Still struggling. He was deeply asleep when she woke him. "What time did you get home?"

"Seven," she says softly, kissing his jaw. Her fingers at his nape are so cool and soothing. His eyes are growing heavy again. "Never mind, babe. We'll eat in. I'll make something. I remember seeing those frozen raviolis Alexis made."

"Yeah, still in the freezer," he answers. "Do you mind not going out?"

"Not at all." She smiles kindly and he realizes he must look rough.

He rubs a fist in his eye and drops it again, squeezing her knee. "At least I'll have practice at the sleepless nights."

She shakes her head, kisses the corner of his mouth. "I'm afraid it doesn't really work that way. But good try. Dinner tonight, you can have a little wine, and we'll go to bed early."

"I don't need to drink-"

"It'll help," she says, shifting off his lap to stand. "No arguments, Rick."

x

They choose the paint color together, but it's just shades of grey. One this way, one that, but he has an opinion about everything, and they finally settle on something dove-like and soft. As they paint the newly finished dry wall, she has an idea.

"Stripes. Horizontal. Fat stripes. Won't that be cool?"

"Did you just say cool?"

She wrinkles her nose at him, moves to stand by the open windows, takes a deeper breath of the fresh air. "Come on. Stripes."

"We've already done one whole wall."

"No, not the whole room, Castle. Seriously."

He looks blank.

"Just one wall," she points out. "The crib wall. Or well, no I guess we're putting the changing table there."

"Oh. One wall." He glances to the wall at his back, shrugs. "Grey? Or were you thinking turquoise to match those sheets."

Kate bites her bottom lip, grins a little around it. "Um. You'd let me?"

"Let you?" he scoffs.

She bounces on her toes, stalks across the close room to him. Throws her arms around his neck and forces him into a kiss. "Thank you, thank you."

"Don't thank me. You're doing all the heavy lifting," he says, and his hands frame her stomach. Obvious now, to anyone, and everyone, and she doesn't mind him touching like she did before. She's gotten used to it. It's all the rest of the world she doesn't want touching.

"I'm not that heavy," she preens against his kiss. Kisses him again because he smells like paint and God help her, she really loves the smell of paint right now.

"Back to the window," he growls.

She huffs, but she slowly breaks away from him, slinks back to the window to keep out of the paint fumes. He eyes the opposite wall and tilts his head.

"How do you propose we do this?"

"Go back to the paint store, find a turquoise that won't damage your eyeballs," she says, still smiling. He picks up the roller and goes back to painting the interior wall, avoiding the detail work of the door frame which she's supposed to be doing in incremental shifts.

"Painter's tape," he says finally. "And a damn long ruler."

"Seamstress tape," she says. "The flexible kind? It's long."

"But flexible. How fat a stripe? We need to measure the whole wall-"

"We have those measurements from the guy who did the dry wall for us."

"Oh, yes. You're right. Okay. This might be do-able, but are you sure you wouldn't rather get professionals in here to do this?"

"I want us to do it." You to do it, she knows she's really saying. "I want to rock him to sleep in the room we made for him."

His head darts around to look at her, and she gives him that moment, the connection of their gazes, how irrefutable it all is. What they've accomplished together, what they're creating. The story they're telling.

"Turquoise stripes it is," he says, humming as he resumes painting.

She picks up her small brush and moves back to the door frame to do the fine work, angling her body to keep from smearing the unborn into the paint.

"Timing you," he says. Until she needs a break by the window again.

"I know you are." She depends on it.

She depends on him.

x

"What's wrong?" he says in the darkness. He likes her angled close like this, the pregnancy pillow on the floor instead of between them. But he's wary of falling asleep. His nightmares have been brutal, this time including a pregnant Kate as she drops, shot to hell, on the loft floor.

The real Kate shifts beside him, huffs. "I'm starving."

He laughs. "Come on. I'll make you something." He doesn't stop to let her demure, simply pats the knee thrown over his hips and nudges it down, lifting upright.

She moves at that, gets out of bed at her side. She's wearing that pink oversized jersey, her hair caught up at her nape, messy. She looks nothing like the captain of a precinct, especially not with the unborn leading the way.

He drags on his robe; the air conditioning is on high these days despite the nights being so much cooler. She's always overheating, sweating at the least provocation.

Her fingers snag his and they traipse the short distance across the living room and to the kitchen. Hand in hand. She raps the table carelessly, bumps into a kitchen chair in the dim light coming through the windows. He glances back and she waves him off; her balance has been tricky since the unborn really started growing out.

For his part, he taps the ultrasounds on the fridge, the sheaf of them from their last appointment. Definitely a boy, though the image they display on top in the chip-clip magnet is the one of the unborn sucking his thumb.

Ridiculous kid.

He's grinning and she gives him a sideways look, shaking her head.

"Sit," he offers, but she doesn't, follows him all the way into the kitchen. "What're you in the mood for?" he says, opening the pantry to look.

"Surprise me."

"One of those nights, huh?" Last time she said that he pushed her into the shower with him, and she was pretty surprised. Twice, she said, but he counts that first one, she doesn't, and so he'll go with three. She says the unborn and the hormones compound the issue, as if that means it doesn't count. It totally counts, even with hormones helping things along.

Kate tugs his ear. "I know what you're thinking, you lecher."

He laughs, throwing a glance over his shoulder at her. She dimples, and she doesn't really have dimples, but something about a pregnant Beckett makes her more Kate all the time. More clever, maybe.

"Too tired, but thanks for offering," she says, blowing him a kiss as she settles on the bar stool. He chuckles at that too; he's more exhausted than she is. He can admit it.

He gathers ingredients without thinking, collecting things, finding a pan, turning on the burner. "Did you see what got delivered?"

"Yeah," she brightens. "From my dad. He's going a little crazy."

"He's excited. In his way." He opens the fridge, scans the contents. "It was cute though. I need to put up the crib."

"We have time."

He shoots her a dark look, withdrawing ingredients from the low shelf. "Not really."

She snorts, but she's making slow circles over the unborn, runes on her belly to ward off spirits. Or maybe just soothing a roving kick. She's watching him but she's not watching him, that inward listening, and he begins lining things up on the counter by the stovetop.

"I want to read your book," she says, out of the blue.

"I have many."

She laughs, distinct, surprised. "No, the baby book you got. I've read all of your many best sellers, Rick Castle. Don't you worry."

"Working on this one now," he offers, tentatively. She hasn't asked to read it and he doesn't know what that means, but the second he hesitates, she's straightening her spine and avidly watching him. "Alright, okay. You'll critique it?"

"I'm not a critic," she warns, drawing back.

"But you'll tell me if it rings true? You know Jameson Rook too. About as well as I do."

She shakes her head. "This is Rook before Nikki. What do I know?"

He finds that makes him sad. "But you know me." He knows that doesn't make sense. "You know the kind of person I was before I met you."

"You say that, Rick, like you weren't this person."

He gives a helpless shrug, working on her midnight snack - four a.m. snack. "But the crazy person sex and the book parties and signing fans' chests-"

"Oh, right. Like that was really you," she scoffs. "All persona, if a little desperate."

"Wow."

"What?" Acting innocent. But he doesn't care at all about the dig regarding his desperation.

He cares about how easily she dismisses it all. He grins. "We've come a long way, baby."

She flicks her fingers at him as if it's nothing, but he's actually impressed with them. The work they've done to get here. He abandons the skillet on the stove to hunt her, clasping her knees in his hands.

From boobs in your face sour to like that was really you scoffing - a long way. She does know him, even the pathetic version of him, killing Storm and seeking something new.

He plants a kiss on her, smacking, and she uses a foot to push him away. "Finish up. I'm starving."

"Yes, ma'am."

It's only when he turns back to the stove that he realizes what he's been putting together. It's the same meal he promised to make for her the day they were shot. It's the same ingredients, the same impulse to take care of her in the small ways he can, and he never noticed until this moment.

It doesn't even cause a blip on his radar.

Maybe if he falls asleep tonight, his dreams will be kinder.

x