A Dash of Summer
Dashiell isn't happy about getting a shower after the beach, but Castle just doesn't have the time to let him wallow in a bath.
"Hurry up, buddy." Castle knocks on the frosted glass door and calls over the sound of the water. "Stuff to do today."
"Hurrying," Dash yells back. Castle hears the end of his word cut off in a giggle of choking water and he shakes his head.
"Hey, kid, don't drown in there."
He moves away from the door and heads back through the kids' bathroom towards the hall, literally runs right into Kate and Ellery.
"Hey guys," he murmurs, leaning in and scooping up his little girl.
She squirms in his arms, avoids his kiss, and drops back to the ground. He watches her dart away, heading for her room, and he gives a look to Kate.
"She's excited," she apologizes. "Allie asked her to come to the bridesmaids' lunch. Which - by the way - is in thirty minutes. I need the boys out of the house."
He grunts and rubs a hand down his face. This weekend is turning out to have very little to do with vacation and a lot to do with work.
"Hey, none of that," Kate murmurs. She's sliding her arms around him and coming in closer, that seductive thing she does with her hips and her fingers at his spine, tunneling under his shirt. "Don't be a baby."
"I'm not being a baby," he mutters.
"You're pouting a little," she hums, her mouth brushing his.
"No, I'm not. I just miss my wife."
Her teeth tug on his bottom lip, just enough so that he feels it, and she gives him a kiss at the corner of his mouth. "Miss your wife?"
"And my daughter. Both my daughters. Dash and I are buddies, but there's only so much guy time a man like me can take."
Kate laughs, bright and amused, her arms around his neck as she pulls back to look at him. "You're hilarious."
"I'm serious," he grumbles.
"That's what makes it so funny. Such a manly man. Back off, ladies; he's all mine."
"Shut up."
"Should we all go get manicures after lunch? Family trip to the spa?"
"You're teasing me, but that sounds like a good idea."
"No, baby. Sorry. No time for that." She shakes her head at him, still laughing.
He gives her a melodramatic sigh and squeezes her hard, arms crushing her ribs to make her breathless, and some of her indulgence disappears, eyes darkening on his. Her tongue darts to her teeth and she leans in for him.
"Oh, but we got time for this?" he laughs softly.
"No. More's the pity." She sighs and nudges her cheek against his, eyes closing so that he feels her lashes, and he raises a hand to the back of her head, suddenly worried about the change in the air, the tension in her body.
"Hey, you okay?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," she soothes, but she's soothing herself.
Castle holds her, keeping close, rubbing his hand up and down her back. There's nothing to say because there's nothing going on other than the things they've always been dealing with, and he can't make that better.
It sucks, but he can't make that better.
"Miss your mom?" he sighs.
She nods against him.
"Your dad's coming out here after lunch, right? You two should-"
"No, I'm okay," she says, drawing back. She skims her fingers under her eyelids, presses to the corners for a moment. If she was crying, he can't tell now. "I keep wanting to ask her - to just call her and ask her what I'm doing wrong with Ella, or how to deal with Dash's drama, or what happens next, but she's not here."
He keeps his mouth shut because she does best working it out in the silence. Her hand presses to her forehead and then drops and she's giving him a smile now. It's a little watery, but it's there.
Some days, Castle wishes Roy Montgomery had never opened his mouth that night at his retirement party. If the man had just gone on out the door as planned, if he had just kept it to himself like he'd done for the last decade and instead put it on the FBI like he was supposed to...
But of course, then they wouldn't know the truth.
She squeezes his bicep and leans in, kisses it. "Thank you."
"I didn't do anything," he protests.
"You did enough," she murmurs. "Now let me find Ella and get her dressed."
"Love you, Kate," he adds. It's the best he can do.
She strokes her fingers at his jaw, a moment of tenderness that makes his breath catch, and then she pats his cheek a little harder and winks. "Why don't you take your son to the spa? The two of you can get manicures while the girls have their fancy lunch."
"You mock me," he threatens with a growl. "And yet, I'll do it. And when Dash asks me if he can get black fingernail polish for the wedding - I am so letting him."
"Dad," Dashiell squawks, entirely affronted. "I don't wear fingernail polish!"
Castle huffs and turns to find his son standing in the hall with the too-big towel clutched around his skinny hips, dripping wet all over the floorboards. Kate laughs and pushes him towards Dash, heading for the opposite direction.
"I was messing with your mother," he sighs, gripping his son by the back of the neck and turning him around. "Come on. Let's go."
"This is kinda cool," Dash says excitedly. His feet swing from the bar stool as he and Castle eat ice cream at the old-fashioned counter. "It's just the guys and just the girls today."
"Well, for a little while longer. We'll come back together for the wedding." Huh, kinda apropos that way. Nice. Castle pulls out his phone and opens the notes to write that down, and he sees the message he left for himself to write Kate a poem.
Whoops. That totally got forgotten.
"Hey, guess what, Dash?"
"Hm?" His son has a spoonful of mocha ice cream in his mouth and he lifts both eyebrows as he looks at his father.
"I'm going to write Mom a poem, and you're going to help me."
Dashiell drops the spoon, shock crawling across his face. "I can write with you?"
Whoa, okay. His kid gets it - the books and money and being published. He has to, based on that face. "Yeah, of course. Of course."
Dashiell glances down at the floor where his spoon has landed, but Castle stays him with a hand, slips off his own stool. He picks the spoon up and places it on the counter, pushing it towards the serving side, and holds a hand up to the waitress but she's busy and doesn't see him.
"Here, my man. Take my spoon. I'm done." He hands his son the one from his bowl and dips it into the scoop of grape that Dash got. "Gotta put away the last of it. Mocha and grape. You have some of the weirdest taste buds."
Dash doesn't even falter. "How do I write a poem?"
"Well, I usually start with the idea first. What I want to talk about."
"Huh."
"See, we're writing one about mom, so that makes it easier."
"Is this a love poem?" Dash says skeptically, one eye squinting as he digs into his ice cream again.
"Hey, man. You love Mom, right?"
"Oh. Yeah. I guess so."
"You guess so?" he laughs.
Dashiell flushes and dips his head, speaking into his ice cream. "I love Mom," he mutters, like it's embarrassing.
"Well, then that's what we talk about."
"What else?"
"Since it's about how we love Mom, you gotta tell me some reasons why you love her," Castle says. "I'll take notes and then we'll arrange it into a poem."
"Why is a poem not a novel?" Dash's feet are swinging, thundering at the counter, and Castle leans over and presses his hand into the boy's knee to stop him.
"Well, a novel is really long and it's written in prose. A poem is in what they call verse. Although, huh. Now that I think about it, there are prose poems as well."
"What?" Dash grunts. "They're breaking the rules."
"They are. I agree. But actually, we might end up writing Mom a prose poem. It sort of depends. I'm not much a poem writing guy, but Mom likes them so I do it for her."
"Like the books you write for her?"
"Sort of."
Dash puts his chin in his hand and sighs. "I can't write a poem."
"Sure you can. It's just a short way to write a story. You know how words sometimes have all these cool meanings? Well, you get to play around with words like that in a poem."
Dash looks confused, but at least now a little more willing. "I like words."
"All right, so tell me why you love Mom."
"Because she's Mom."
Right. Castle hesitates, but he goes ahead and writes that down anyway. Never know with a poem. "Can you tell me why though? Like - yeah - she's Mom. But what does she do?"
"She stays awake with me," Dash says quietly.
"Oh, that's good." Wow. That's really good. He jots that down and can't help adding a few phrases to it that spill out after: in the lightest of the dark hours, the breathing of the world, when the coffee perks so do we.
Not the best stuff, but the mood is there. He can get back to it later. "Anything else? Why else is Mom... Mom?"
"We talk about stuffs."
"Stuff." The grammar sometimes really kills him. And Kate thinks it's cute so she reinforces it, totally undermining all his work.
"Yeah. Like all stuffs. Like you do too. My friend Miller said that his mom tells him he ought to shut up."
"Whoa," Castle grunts. "That's... a different way to do it."
"I wouldn't be any good at shutting up all the time. But Mom said this morning that she's proud of me when I talk but also proud of me when I'm silent. She said you were really silent when I was born."
That's not exactly his recollection of Dashiell's birth; he mostly had a lot of bumbling nonsense coming out of his mouth. Stuff about the splinter theory of problem solving, like he was some kind of philosopher. And then after she'd bled out and nearly died, it was a lot of just... he's pretty sure he proposed to her five times at least.
"Mom appreciates people who choose their words wisely," Castle says finally. "She thinks before she speaks. Not many people can do that."
"You should write that one down," Dash says, leaning over his arm to peer at the screen. "Wait, I didn't say that. When the coffee puh-puh-parks?"
"Perks. You can read that?"
"Course."
"Has Mom been reading with you at night?"
"Yeah, we're reading Harry Potter."
"Oh, man," he mutters. "I wanted to read that with you. When did you guys start that?"
"Couple weeks ago," Dash shrugs.
Where was he? Oh. Working. So not cool, Beckett.
"What's perks, Dad?"
"Oh, that's what we call it when the coffee is brewing. Percolating. It's a short form. I guess it should be p-e-r-c maybe."
"Is that like a dog perks up his ears?"
"Huh. No." He rubs his jaw, still distracted by the Harry Potter introduction that's happened without him. He should have been there for that. "Uh, ears perking. Well, that could be the same kind of thing. Do your ears perk up when you drink coffee?"
"Not my ears," he giggles. "But I guess I get... coffee with Mom makes it okay to be awake."
"Oh, buddy, that's good too. I'm writing that down. See? You can so write a poem. You're good at this."
"I am?" Dash says, looking pleased. His face curls up a smile and he shovels another bite of ice cream into his mouth.
Castle chuckles and taps out Dashiell's confession onto his phone. Coffee with Mom makes it okay to be awake.
"You know what else about Mom?" Dashiell says suddenly, sitting up a little on the stool.
"What?"
"I like the way she smells."
Castle grins and meets his son's happy eyes. "Yeah, buddy. She smells pretty great, doesn't she?"
Dashiell sighs and wriggles on his seat. "She smells like Mom."
And even though Castle was thinking more about that soft spot at her neck or the fall of her hair, the light touch of her perfume at a book release party or the heavy press of her lotion along the arc of her legs, now he's thinking about just Kate, how her presence lingers everywhere. The scent of their home that she carries, embodies. And how that is poetry in and of itself.
"I did good?" Dash asks.
He presses a quick kiss to the top of his son's head. "You did good. We'll knock this out and give it to Mom at the wedding."
Kate is poetry. He likes that a lot.