December 10 - I'll Laugh With You
I'll laugh with you till it's Christmas in the room
-Christmas in the Room, Sufjan Stevens
He hears her voice, feels her fingers, wakes.
She's reluctant and apologetic over him, her mouth forming a kiss he senses rather than knows. A moth at his lips.
"I have a call," she whispers. "I'm sorry."
It takes him a moment to orient, and then the details begin adding up - she's already dressed for work, the air has that faint touch of humidity from her shower, the scent of her shampoo and the light fragrance of lotion drifts down to him. The clock remonstrates with a fiercely red 5:48.
She's leaving for work. He can't come.
"I need to clean up after the party," he murmurs finally. And he does; he made her stop last night, took the plates out of her hands and dragged her away. "You go."
She smiles, her moth-wings landing between his eyes. "Call you later. Give you all the good details."
She's gone before he realizes he's falling back asleep.
He's up by eight, the dishes done by nine. The housekeeper came Monday, so it's up to Castle to collect the trash and straighten the furniture. He has to run the vacuum cleaner too, just a few rugs, and then he gathers the trash bags to take downstairs, piling everything up by the front door.
Since he's going, he'll take the recycling too. That's another thirty minutes of picking through the bin and separating stuff out; they just don't have the space to have individual collection bins in the laundry room. Might have to change that, figure out a new system. Kate's good at that kind of thing. Or he can do it - he has the time, now, right?
When Castle has it all bundled and his arms loaded down with trash bags and recycling bags and stacks of newspaper, he barely manages to twist the knob and get the front door open. He's watching his feet as he crosses the threshold, eyeing the door frame to make sure he clears it, so that when the protruding trash bag bumps something in the hall, it doesn't quite register.
Not at first anyway.
He shifts the load in his arms to see what he's gotten caught on, and he's met face to face with a camel.
Castle shrieks and drops everything, trash and newspapers flying, recycling clinking heavily, glass rolling against the parquet floor as he jumps back.
There are three plastic wise men and a camel in the hallway outside the door.
Holy-
"Kate Beckett."
When did she do this? Before she left this morning at five am?
His heart is pounding, trash is strewn at his feet, and a doe-eyed plastic camel watches him serenely, a wise man perched on his hump. The other two are standing in a line, bearing plastic gifts, and they are - all three figures - lit up inside with an ethereal glow.
How in the world did she do this? He's grinning like an idiot as he fumbles in his back pocket for his phone, ignoring the trash on the floor, calling her immediately.
When she answers, he doesn't even say hello. "So what church is missing its wise men from the outdoor nativity?"
She laughs, a wonderful rich sound that melts across the line and settles over his shoulders like a warm blanket. "Mm, you've only discovered the wise men?"
"There are more?"
"Then you must have only gotten to the hall."
"Hang on." He puts her on speaker and slips the phone into the breast pocket of his Oxford shirt, stoops down to collect the bags of trash and the recycling. "I'm taking stuff down to the trash room. So I have to - gather it up again."
"I figured on you taking the trash out sometime today," her voice comes from his pocket.
He gets the load balanced once more, starts down the hall, leaving the three wise men in a line approaching his door, like they bear gifts for the occupants of the loft. When he punches the call button for the elevator, it takes a moment for the car to arrive.
"I don't see anything-"
"Just wait."
The elevator doors open and a beaming, wide-winged angel fills the entire back of the elevator.
"Holy cow. How did you ever manage to get that in here?"
She's chuckling on the phone and he crowds into the elevator with the life-size plastic nativity angel, the wire and gold tinsel halo bobbing as the car descends.
"I am so putting this guy in Alexis's room," he crows, a little creeped out by the beatific face. "Wait, is this all?"
"Not quite."
"Did Eduardo help you?"
"He's the one keeping Gabe on the elevator."
Castle laughs, trying to imagine the other apartment dwellers being confronted by the angel as the doors opened. The car pings to announce the basement floor and he steps off, leaving 'Gabe' back behind him. He'll need Eduardo's help to get the angel off the elevator.
"Where are you now?" she asks.
"In the basement."
"Oh, good."
"No, Kate, you're good."
She laughs and he reaches the serpentine hallway that snakes behind the underground garage. It leads to the various units' storage cages, and the trash room lies at the very end.
He passes their own storage, but there's nothing telling, nothing out of place. "Hey, do you have the keys to the storage-"
"I've been filching yours," she says, her voice echoing in the damp concrete.
"I need to make you a copy," he sighs. He should have done that when she officially moved her stuff; they've been carting loads down here off and on all week.
"We'll get there," she murmurs, apology accepted in her voice.
When he makes it to the trash room, he wriggles to pull down his sleeve over his fingers - he really hates touching the trash room door, hates taking the trash down here anyway, but he has to because it's too much for the chute and the recycling has to be carried down and sorted, but it is always so bone-chilling and dark down here. There's not a light bulb and the apartment board can't get an electrician in to fix that problem because the wires don't go this far, but he has to just man up - be brave - so Castle opens the door.
A flock of sheep (two) and a shepherd are radiantly beaming light through the whole space. "How?" he gasps. "How are they lit up?"
"They're solar powered, and they've been chilling on the roof for a couple days," she laughs. "They're gonna go dark at any second, so I'm so glad you made it in time."
"They'll go dark?" he says nervously.
"You've got maybe an hour. Surely we don't have that much trash."
"No, we're good. Only one trip," he grins. "So - shepherd, sheep, angel, wise men. We got all the attendants. Where's the holy family?"
The phone is instantly quiet. He pauses in his work; the trash bags thud as the arc of his throw lands them into the big bin. He hears something in her silence, preoccupation.
"Kate?"
"Sorry, work. Um. What did you ask?"
"Nothing," he says. He has her attention now. "Kate? Thanks for lighting up my day."
She laughs softly, so much pleased pride in that sound.
"See you later?" she says suddenly into the room. His phone is still in his pocket; it makes it sound like she's hiding behind the shepherd.
"Yeah. I'll see you later, Kate. Now I gotta figure out how to get these guys upstairs."
"Good luck with that."