Prompt 25: Test
(Castle)
He's just starting dinner when the door opens and closes. He hears his wife's heels, his daughter's sneakers, and he smiles because they're finally done with Charlie's driver's test.
He still has his back to them, so he doesn't see Kate's frantic head shaking as he asks how the test went. He spins around, dropping the spatula in shock when Charlotte bursts into tears and runs up to her room.
Castle turns to Kate, and they wince together when a slamming door echoes through the loft.
"She failed?" he asks disbelievingly.
Kate nods. "By one point."
He winces again. "She got one of those guys, huh?"
"Oooh yeah," she says, rolling her eyes. "I think if it were up to him, nobody would be driving. We'll find someone else for her to retake the test with."
He nods in agreement as their youngest, Larissa, bounds into the kitchen and hops up on a barstool. "I take it from the melodramatics that Charlie's driving test is gonna be a taboo topic for a while?"
"Probably a good idea, Ris," Castle says as Nolan joins them, jumping up to sit on the countertop.
"I think someone broke Charlie," he says, swiping a handful of peppers from the stir-fry ingredients.
"Nolan Alexander," Kate says, arching an eyebrow at their son, who promptly slides to the floor, "your sister is not broken, she just had a bad day. Be nice."
He grins and kisses her on the cheek. "When am I not nice?" he asks, sounding far too much like his Uncle Javi as he retreats to the living room.
Kate and Larissa roll their eyes simultaneously, and Castle grins, turning back to the stove. He throws the stir-fry together, adding a little more ginger, the way Charlie likes it. He'll baby her for a few days, they all will, until she gets sick of it. (She's her mother's daughter, through and through.) It's a little thing, in the long run, and she'll be okay.
They always are.