A/N: This chapter is inspired by some memories and recollections from my own childhood. Hope you like it! (My sincere apologies if you come across any typos)

Disclaimer: All the characters belong to Andrew W. Marlowe, though they have found their own way into my heart.


5 weeks and 4 days later…

Keeping hold of his son's hand, Castle wound his free arm around his wife's back and pulled her very close, squeezing Gigi between their chests. "I love you," he whispered to Kate between kisses.

"I love you, too." Before pulling apart, Beckett pressed her lips to Rick's twice more, not worrying at all that someone might recognize them. They blended right into the crowded airport. They were just another normal family at the Departure Hall in Terminal 3, saying goodbye to a loved one who was about to board an airplane.

"Alright, come here buddy." Castle reached down and scooped Oliver up in his arms.

"Can't I come with you, dad?" the boy said.

"I'm afraid not, kid. I'll be working a lot this weekend. Maybe next time."

"OK."

"Now… You be a good boy, alright?"

"Yes, daddy," he nodded.

Castle crushed his son into a big hug and then whispered something in his ear. "Deal?" the writer said when he pulled back, offering one pinky finger.

Ollie hooked his pinky around his dad's and said, "Deal."

"What are you two talking about?" Kate wanted to know.

"It's something between men, right kid?"

"Right."

"O-kay," she held up one hand, palm open toward them.

Putting Oliver back down on the floor, Castle took Gigi from Kate's arms and hugged her, too. Then he handed his baby girl back to her mother and grabbed the handle of his carry-on luggage. He was about to say something when a female voice echoed loudly through the speakers in the great hall. "Okay," Castle started again when the lady finished her announcement. "I should get going or I'll miss my flight."

It was at that moment when Gigi's young mind must have finally realized her dad was leaving, because when he turned around and started walking toward the security check-point, she began to whimper.

"Dada," her small lips quivered and she extended her arms toward her father's retreating back.

Hearing her high-pitched voice, Castle rushed back and yanked her from Beckett's arms again to squeeze her tightly against his chest. When he pulled back to kiss Gigi's temple, Kate saw tears flooding not only her daughter's eyes, but her husband's as well.

"Rick, are you crying?"

"Well, of course I'm crying," he replied with plain serious emotion. "My baby girl is sad because I'm leaving. And I'm not allowed to shed a few tears?" And with that, father and daughter embraced each other once more.

"Now, now… Come on. It's only for three days," Beckett commented, taking Gigi again. "Rick, you'll miss your flight."

Castle gave everyone one last quick kiss and headed to the priority lane. The luxury of flying First Class was that he didn't have to wait in the long queues that tended to form at the security checks.

"Momma, I can't see," Oliver said all of a sudden, his voice dripping with desperation, as he rose on the tips of his shoes to try and see past the crowd.

She crouched down, snaked an arm around his back and stood again, pulling him up against her side.

With both kids balanced on her hips, Kate waited until Castle got through the metal detectors. Then the three of them waved him off as he moved away and disappeared into the sea of people.


"Ollie! Gigi!" Beckett called out as she reached the top landing. Making her way into the corridor, she had to swoop down multiple times to pick up an action figure, a toy airplane, a pair of used Spiderman socks and a T-shirt turned inside out. "It's bed—time." She halted at the door and frowned. The baby girl was lying belly-up on the carpet, in the middle of her bedroom, and Oliver was kneeling at her feet, with a tub of Pampers wipes next to him. And he was… "Honey, what are you doing?"

"I'm changing Gigi's diaper," he answered, his tone casual, as if this was something he did every day. He pulled the diaper from under his sister's butt and put it aside.

"Oh… And why are you doing it, sweetheart?" Kate stepped over to them, picked up the wet diaper and rolled it in on itself. Then she set it on the changing table along with the stuff she'd collected from the hallway.

"Since he's gone, daddy told me I was the man of the house and I should help."

"I see. So that was your little secret, uh?"

She knelt beside her son to help him fasten the sticky tabs to the front of the diaper, but he pushed her hand away, stating he was more than capable of doing it alone. When he finished, he slid his sister's feet inside the legs of her pajama and click-closed the snap fasteners.

"Perfect, honey. You did a great job. Thank you." Kate scooped Gigi off the floor and held her in front of Oliver, their heads level. "A goodnight kiss." The boy leaned in to press his lips to his sister's. "Say 'Night-night Ollie'," the detective told the toddler.

"Nait-nait, Ollie."

After zipping her inside the sleep sack, Beckett laid Gigi in her crib. Taking Oliver's hand, she switched the lights off and together they exited the nursery.

"Momma, I miss daddy," he mentioned as he climbed on his bed. "When is he coming back?"

"He'll be back soon, love." She adjusted the covers around him so he wouldn't get cold, and then sat down on the edge of the mattress. "Just two nights. Sunday afternoon we'll go back to the airport to pick him up."

Kate combed his hair back with her fingers, pushing it away from his forehead and eyes, and thought he really needed a haircut. She made a mental note to make an appointment for the upcoming week.

"And, where did daddy go?"

"To Los Angeles." She leaned in and gave him a kiss.

"And, where is Los Angeles." He pronounced it 'Losaengeliz', in a single word.

"Oliver, dad already showed it to you, last night."

"But I want you to show it to me again," he said, using one of his too persuasive smiles.

Kate stared at him for a moment. The persuasive grin held on his lips; he was a real innate charmer. For a change, and with a sigh, she ended up complying with his wishes. Fetching the World Globe from across the room, she settled herself next to Oliver, on his bed, stretching her legs over the multicolored lined duvet and leaning her back against the headboard. The boy slithered his way under her arm and snuggled against her side, pillowing his head on her right breast.

"Let's see…" Beckett started, swiveling the globe on her lap to the North American continent. "We live in New York..." The tip of her finger went to the dot that was the city on the map. "And daddy flew to Los Angeles, which is all the way across the country." The finger pressed to the globe drew an arch from east coast to west coast.


It was almost six-thirty in the morning when Oliver woke up. After a short detour around the bathroom, he crossed the upstairs hallway and walked into his sister's bedroom. It was dimly lit by the faint pink light of a small lamp in the shape of an elephant, plugged into a wall socket near the changing table.

He tiptoed silently over to the baby cot. But it was unnecessary. When he peered through the bars to spy inside the crib, he discovered Gigi's eyes were open. She was lying on her side, with an Eeyore plush and her doll hugged to her chest, pacifier being sucked in her mouth, and her gaze fixed ahead, outside of her bed.

Oliver pressed his face to the railing and said softly, "You want to get out?"

When she smiled, the dummy fell from her mouth. Not without effort, she rose to her feet, body trapped inside the sleep bag. Sticking both his arms between the bars, Ollie helped Gigi undo the zipper so she could slip out of the sack. Then, with no further help needed, she climbed nimbly and expertly up and over the handrail and got out of the crib.

They descended the stairs as they had been taught to do by their parents, sitting and sliding on their butts down the steps, one at a time. When they reached the floor downstairs, they walked hand in hand to the master bedroom.


"Momma…" Oliver's whisper came from far away, through the thick haziness of sleep. She felt a small, warm hand land on the one cheek that wasn't sunken into the pillow under her head. "Momma." The voice grew louder.

Beckett peeped open a heavy lid and, after a moment of absolute blindness, she glimpsed Oliver's bleary silhouette in the dark room. Behind him, the glowing green numbers on the clock flashed 6:37. Oh, god. She'd barely been asleep for five hours.

The night before, the detective had stayed awake until the wee hours. She could have recorded it, but she'd still preferred to watch the live broadcast of the show where Castle had appeared as a special guest.

Now, part of her brain regretted not having recorded the interview and having turned in earlier. Kate could hardly move her left arm to place her hand on top of her son's on her face. "Honey, just let me sleep ten more minutes," she murmured, barely conscious, her eye closing again.

Before drifting back into a deep sleep, she thought she felt the faint brush of Oliver's kiss.


When she opened her eyes again, it was already light. The time on the clock read 7:22. Rubbing her face to wipe away the remnants of slumber, she rose up on one elbow and strained her ears. The door to Castle's office was closed but, seeping through the well-stocked book shelves that served as walls, came the echo of soft and sweet laughter.

Opening the door, Kate stepped into her husband's study, flooded with the subtle brilliance of morning light. The pastel hues of dawn were starting to leave room for a clear blue sky, only interrupted by a few thin, thread-like clouds in the horizon, resembling white brushstrokes across a landscape painting.

Beckett found her two babies huddled up under a blanket in one of the armchairs in the office, their short legs barely dangling over the seat's edge. They were watching cartoons on the children's channel. Some funny scene played out on the flat screen, evoking another peel of giggles to ring across the room.

As she crossed over to them, Oliver caught sight of his mother and turned his face to her, a big smile still lingering on his lips.

"Hello, sweethearts." Kate crouched in front of them.

"We're hungry," Oliver said with a sweet grin.

"I'll make you breakfast right away," she answered, and gave them a kiss. "It's sunny. How about we make plans with grandpa?"


Around ten-thirty, they met up with Jim in Heckscher Playground, located in the south-west corner of Central Park, between 61st and 63rd Street. Two hours earlier, Oliver had insisted to his grandfather over the phone that he teach him how to bat. He needed to practice before he took him to his first baseball game.

The subject had been brought up a couple of weeks back. Beckett didn't exactly remember why, but she'd mentioned to her son she had been three years old when her father first took her to a game. Oliver had grabbed the phone and called his grandpa immediately, demanding to know why he was almost four and hadn't been taken to the stadium yet.

The next day, Jim Beckett had shown up at the loft with two gifts of apology for his grandson. The first one was the promise to take him to the first game of the League's new season. The second was a complete kids baseball set. It included a bat, a leather glove, a baseball, and a uniform of striped pants, a jersey with the colors and logo of the family's favorite team, a cap and knee socks.

Today was officially the day Oliver used part of his present for the first time. The uniform had stayed at home. Even though the morning was sunny, it was still too cold to wear such light clothes on the first Saturday of February.

"Momma!" Oliver yelled out from a few yards away. "Are you watching?"

"Yes, honey. I'm watching," she replied, dividing her attention between observing Oliver and giving Gigi her fruit snack. The toddler sat in her stroller, warmly wrapped inside its dark purple sack.

"Oliver," grandpa Beckett said. "Here we go. Ready?"

"Yep!"

Jim threw a pitch aimed straight at his grandson. Ollie swung the bat but its end passed a second too late, and bat and baseball crossed paths a couple of inches apart. Of the seven pitches they had done so far, Oliver had missed six. The only time he'd hit the ball, it had been just a graze, and he only managed to send it two yards away from his feet.

Upset, the boy dumped the bat and strode toward his mother, stamping the ground with his shoes. "This game is stupid!" he muttered through clenched teeth, his gaze fixed downward.

"Hey! Where did you learn that word?" Setting the plastic bowl holding Gigi's fruit down on the bench, Kate grabbed her son's arm and placed him between her legs. "I don't want you to say that word again. Understood?" Ollie kept staring at the concrete underneath his feet, his brow furrowed and his lips tightly pursed. "Oliver, look me in the eye." He obeyed. "Understood?" she repeated.

"Yes…" he murmured low. In the same instant, his anger evaporated. His hazel green eyes welled up and his lips quivered. "But, mom. I can't do it…"

"You cannot expect every first attempt to be a success, sweetie. It's all about practice." She wiped away the two tears under his eyes and adjusted his knitted hat and the woolen scarf wrapped around his neck. His cheeks and nose were flushed pink from the cold. "Come on. Go back to grandpa. Concentrate on the ball." She patted his butt encouragingly. "Go."

Dragging his feet slightly, Ollie walked back to his makeshift home plate and picked up the bat from the sand. Jim approached him, gave him a few more instructions and placed him in the right position. Then, taking hold of the boy's arms, they repeated together the arc movement Oliver had to perform to sway the bat. After that, Jim moved away a few paces. When he threw the ball, Oliver answered with his swinging movement. Bat and ball met in the exact same point in space and the latter shot away and sailed across the air, drawing a perfect invisible arc. A few seconds later, the ball landed in the trees surrounding the playground, sixteen yards north of the boy's position.

"That's it, Oliver!" Jim exclaimed.

"Woo-hoo!" Kate jumped off the bench and cheered.

"Momma, I did it!" Oliver bounced with joy and, dropping the bat, he flew to his mother. "I DID IT!"

"Yes, you did!" Kate said as her son melted in her embrace. She lifted him off the ground and pressed a big kiss on his cheek. "See how you can do it?"

Oliver laughed in response. Then his eyes, beaming with happiness, descended to his sister. "Gigi, you saw that? I hit the ball!"

The toddler answered with a smile and clapped with her chubby hands.

Grandfather and grandson practiced pitching and batting for another twenty minutes. Meanwhile, Kate took Gigi to the swings and pushed her gently back and forth. When Jim's knees started to feel the exertion of so much physical exercise, Oliver burned some more energy running around the concrete jungle, crossing bridges, hiding in the tunnels, gliding down the slides and climbing up the big rocks. But when a large formation of clouds invaded the sky, concealing the sun —their only source of heat that winter day—, they gathered their things and left Central Park.

They took shelter from the ice cold wind in Le Pain Quotidien, a bakery-café specialized in organic products located a block south from the park, at the corner of 7th Avenue and 58th West Street.

By the time the detective and her father finished their lunch, the little ones were fast asleep inside the girl's buggy, exhausted from all the exercise from the morning. Despite all the din and the loud, indistinct murmur of voices —the place was packed with people— Oliver and Gigi slept peacefully, the baby girl sitting in her brother's lap, both leaned back into the stroller's seat.

A senior couple sat on the table next to them. The elder woman, with a kind face, skin wrinkled with age, and gray hair pulled behind her neck, hadn't taken her eyes off the kids for the past fifteen minutes.

"They are really lovely," she mentioned to Kate when their gazes met.

"Thank you," the detective grinned.

"You and your husband must be really proud," the woman said.

"Yes, we are." Beckett's gaze dropped back to the kids. Gigi's mouth was slightly open and a thin thread of drool trickled down her chin and onto her cardigan.

Jim signaled the waitress for the check and folded his arms on the table.

"Dad, you want to come home for dinner tonight?"

"Thanks, honey. But I already have plans." Kate raised a quizzical brow, suddenly wondering if her father might be seeing someone. And by someone she meant a woman he had forgotten to mention. Jim chuckled softly and added in clarification, "My clients invited me to dinner to celebrate we won their case yesterday."


A curtain of precipitation that wasn't exactly rain nor snow, but rather a balanced combination of the two, had been falling down at intermittent intervals the last couple of hours. The small flakes of sleet shone oddly white in stark contrast with the dark night.

In the loft's dining area, warm, orange flames sparkled in the fire place. Its flickering light reflected on the polished wood of the table's surface. Kate was sitting at the head, Oliver to her left in his Trip Trapp chair; and Gigi to her right, in her highchair. They were having one of the detective's specialties, and Oliver's favorite dish. Honey chicken wings. It was his favorite because it was one of the few dishes he was allowed to eat with his hands and get as dirty and sticky as he liked.

But, since her daughter was too young to eat alone, Kate had to get her hands dirty, as well. For the past twenty minutes, she'd been using her long fingers to remove the chicken meat off the bones and shred it into small pieces. Half the time, Beckett ate the chicken herself. The other half, she placed the tiny bites in front of Gigi so she could grab them with her hands and bring them to her mouth.

From the tip of the nose to the edge of the chin, Oliver's face glistened with a slimy film of honey juice. His hands were also smeared with the same reddish brown dripping stuff, microscopic chunks of meat and sauce filling the half-moon spaces underneath his fingernails. Reaching out, he took another wing from the platter. When he sunk his teeth in it, his long hair fell forward and, before Kate could stop him, Oliver pushed it back with a dirty hand, leaving a greasy coating with traces of food on the brown locks.

Clucking her tongue and releasing a long exhale, Beckett turned back to Gigi. She put a small piece of chicken inside the toddler's awaiting mouth and licked off the remaining of sauce on her fingers.

A moment later, Kate felt Oliver softly tapping her shoulder. "Momma."

"Yes, sweetheart." She turned to him but immediately flinched backwards, away from his reach, when Ollie leaned forward toward her, his hands raised and dangerously close to her face. "Stop!"

"Want a kiss, momma?" he laughed mischievously, puckering his gooey lips, surrounded by equally gooey cheeks.

"Oliver. No." Stretching her arm across his chest, Kate stopped her son's advancing movement and kept him at a safe distance. A second set of high-pitched chuckles slipped from his mouth as he tried to grab her cheeks and pull her close. "Finish your dinner. Then you and your sister are going head first into the tub to scrub all that sticky grime off your faces."

The boy's butt made contact with the chair's seat again. Even as he popped a fry into his mouth, another giggle of amusement left his lips.


Clean, their skin smelling of the sweet fragrance of the baby shower gel, and dressed in their PJ's, the three of them stepped out of the steamy bathroom. Kate spread a hand towel across the end of the king size bed and ordered the kids to lay down face up —but upside down— on the covers, with their heads resting at the foot of the mattress.

Switching off all lights except for one bedside lamp, Kate knelt on the floor at the end of the bed, next to the kids' heads. With a blow-dryer in one hand and a brush in the other, she started drying and combing their wet hair. It was a ritual her mother, Johanna, used to do with her when she was little. And it was something she'd always loved.

The sound of the hair dryer, the warm air it blew, and her gentle fingers untangling Oliver and Gigi's damp locks, always evoked the image of a much younger version of herself, stretched out on her parents' bed, eyes shut, the hot air blowing delightfully over her head and her mother's hand brushing her hair with the utmost care and delicacy, all of it drawing her into a state of drowsiness, making her feel safe and protected. It was one of the sweetest memories of her childhood she always associated with the words calming, relaxing and pleasant. But mostly, home.

Now, as if starting a family tradition, she loved to do it to her children. The good thing about this technique was that most of the times, even with the fan's noisy buzzing sound purring close to their heads, both kids usually fell asleep before she was done drying their hair, meaning there was no fussing or crying at bedtime.

And that night was no exception. Turning off the hair dryer, Beckett carefully laid Gigi and then Oliver under the duvet. She tucked them in, dropped two kisses on their foreheads and flicked the bedside lamp off before walking back into the bathroom to blow-dry her hair.


The hands in his watch said it was a little past five in the morning. Getting home, Castle should have known he would encounter himself with something like this. When he pushed the half-open master bedroom door, he found his wife and kids sleeping together in the same bed. Quietly, he took off his shoes and clothes, and put on a T-shirt and pajama pants. Fumbling his way in the dark around the bed, he leaned over Kate.

"Make me some room?" he whispered in her ear. "Oliver invaded my side of the bed."

"Hey…" Kate's voice croaked with sleep. "But, what are you doing here?"

"They cancelled my Sunday morning appearance —something about a strike—" he paused a moment to softly kiss Kate's lips, "and instead of waiting almost a day for my plane to leave, I managed to catch tonight, well last night's, last flight back."

"Oh…"

"So? Scoot over?"

Being careful not to crush Gigi behind her, Kate made some room for him, moving to the center of the mattress. Castle crawled under the covers and snuggled up against her so as to not fall off the bed.

"I missed you so much." He looped an arm around Kate's waist, pulling her just a bit closer.

"We missed you, too," she murmured into the crook of his shoulder.

"I won't leave you again." He hugged her and pressed his lips to her temple. "Next time, you're all coming with me."

"Sounds perfect."


Thanks again!