Christmas Future (part three of three)

They were plied with coffee and peppermint brownies when they made their way around the Christmas Village. In bags, they carried two bottles of specialty wine that they'd both sampled independently and bought 'for the other' only to discover it was the exact same label, same vintage. Neither were displeased.

They found Mrs Claus again and handed her a little gift for her kindness, a certificate for two hundred dollars of services at a spa they both enjoyed who had a booth a ways down the concourse, and despite Mrs Claus trying to give it back, saying Kate needed it more, they finally got her to go with the holiday spirit.

They had so much fun in the sex toys section of one booth that they were asked to leave, but Kate smoothed things over with the woman by sending Castle out for more hot chocolate while she paid for the things they'd been... fondling. She walked out with three hundred dollars worth of gear and toys they probably wouldn't have time to use but it had been a wild and giddy kind of purchase. And it also had prevented them from getting kicked out by security.

She found him standing before a shop selling more wine and she steered him clear, handing him the bag to show off what she'd purchased. He made interested comments over everything and nearly spit out his hot chocolate at a one particular thing—which she'd been wanting to try—and she had to physically pull him down the concourse to get him moving again.

She did so love that look on his face. And he could also be quite creative.

"We haven't had sex in... months," he croaked.

She winced. "I tried last week. You must have been half asleep because you sort of pushed me off the couch."

"Off the couch!" His gasp echoed down the concourse, rising above the Christmas carolers who had reached a sweet soft part of their song. "That has to be remedied, pronto."

"Not here."

He flushed. "No. Not here." A darting look. "But."

"No."

"When are we going to be more caffeinated and free than now?"

Her breath quickened. She hadn't felt so alive in months. "I am not seriously considering this."

"I think you are."

She was. She whimpered, caught by a strange arrow of desire for this man who endlessly annoyed her and always forgot to put the breastmilk back in the fridge. "Okay but." She shook her head. "Has to be fast. And just me."

"Just you?"

"I can get you when we get home," she hissed. "In the bathroom or something."

He gave her a hard look. "Okay. Yes. Okay, we're doing it. Find someplace... clandestine, Beckett."

They did not, as it happened, do it.

A Transit Authority officer kept making rounds near their vestibule tucked between an empty booth and a waffle stand, and she couldn't get the spirit of things back, so to speak. Castle did try, bless his heart, but her espresso high crashed and she felt the urge to cry come over her instead, and she laid her head against a curved white pillar and gave it up.

He licked his fingers. She could have strangled him. But she gave him the necessary time to adjust, cool down, and it was a far shorter process than it had ever been before.

She gave him an eyebrow when he said, okay good to go.

He shrugged. "We're all tired here, Beckett."

"Too old," she growled. "We are too old."

"For illicit sex?"

"God no, we did promise each other in our private vows we'd never be too old for that."

He grinned and escorted her back into the throng of people. "We did. Which I am grateful for every day."

"Not these days, lately," she sighed.

"No. I'm very old and very tired. But the idea is still there, and that's a comfort."

She laughed. They were heading for an informational kiosk to find out what concourse level their line would leave from, but it took her savvy skills with maps for them to find the right concourse. As they took their place in a crowded car, bags between their feet, Castle leaned over, an arm flexing with the sway of the subway's start, and kissed her cheek chastely.

"What was that for?"

He flexed again, hanging onto the overhead bar, and some of that old espresso high stirred again. "For spending these last few hours with me having fun and not once talking about the baby."

Her jaw dropped. "We forgot to buy him Christmas presents. Like acceptable ones for his first."

He grinned, his body pressed close by the crowded car. "We did, both did. And I kind of love that."

She groaned. "You said we needed real presents."

"Instead," he murmured. "We got ourselves a real present. I think that's better." His lips glanced across her nose as he turned his head, and she saw their reflection in the black windows, standing close, flushed with heat and the last few hours' fun.

They had needed it. A bit of Christmas spirit.

They arrived home laden with shopping bags and delirious with the wine they'd broken out on the subway. Castle, I'm going to hate myself in six hours. But they'd poured glasses of wine in cups still stained with the dregs of their hot chocolate, and the absolute epiphany of cocoa and mulled red wine seemed something they alone had invented. Kate, I think I'm going to hate this concoction tomorrow. No one on the subway line had stopped them, no one had said perhaps they ought to think about this, and while they were neither drunk nor even that buzzed by the time the elevator ascended, it was still a wonderful feeling as they opened the front door.

Until Castle realized his daughter had thrown a party in their absence and all of those people were still here.

Alexis, the demon child in question (he had two of those now), popped up from the couch and hurried over to them, grinning widely. "Merry Christmas and voila! You're home earlier than I thought. Look what we did!"

"Castle," his wife gasped. And then, "Alexis, it's wonderful."

When Castle managed to look past the strangers in his space, he realized the loft had been transformed into their very own Christmas Village. The staircase was decked out in holly and garland and festive white lights that twinkled like stars, while the fireplace crackled with the gas logs over which four stockings hung.

"Where did you get the stocking?" Kate was saying, drawing Alexis into her arms for a hug. "It has his name on it, look Rick."

He was looking. He was slack-jawed and fuzzy-headed and more than a little bleary-eyed as he turned slowly in the foyer and took in the transformation. Alexis must have found all the stuff in storage that Castle hadn't even used last year, because their apartment was filled to the brim with Christmas cheer. The reindeer set with the sleigh was on the dining room table, the wreath made of old glass ornaments and hung over the kitchen, the windows frames were striped in colored lights and—

"Did someone paint those?" Kate gasped. She was pushing farther into the melee, the hands working, the people in clumps on the floor or at the couch or building something in the kitchen. "Someone did this. Who made these? You? Oh, they're gorgeous."

She was touching the winter scenes painted onto their living room windows in white snow. A whole village with fir trees and a sledding hill and a church with its steeple and a star in the sky. The colored Christmas bulbs blinked against the glass and gave off their reflections, as if they were inside the scene of a perfect snow day.

"Alexis," he choked. His daughter slipped to his side and gave him a hug like she used to as a child, both arms around his ribs, her cheek mashed just above his heart. "This is… who are all these people?"

"Do you like it?"

"I… it's amazing. It's glorious. Is that a real live tree?"

"It's a live tree, Balsam fir," she nodded. "After watching Joe Pera's Holiday Special, the one about the trees?, Hugh and Frank went down to the tree lot and hauled it back up for us. And Zoey is making popcorn strings, that's why it smells like burnt popcorn in here. Jalen is in love with Gabriel, and he got that stinker to finally be quiet when he started playing Christmas carols on your stereo, so Jalen is in charge of entertainment. That's why it's so loud in here."

"Gabriel," he gasped. Had he truly forgotten his own son in the midst of this?

A kid wearing a vintage LeBron jersey waved at him; must be Jalen, because Gabe was in his lap, facing outward, chewing on the poor guy's finger and watching all the bright lights and action. "Hey, man. Your baby is cool. He has some high-energy vibe."

"If you mean he's insufferably spoiled," Kate drolled. "Then yes."

The little circle of twenty-somethings around Jalen and the baby all laughed. Castle was pretty sure she wasn't kidding.

"Where did all of these young adults come from?" he murmured to Alexis.

"So, you know how I've been working at the Art Collective in Chicago? I told you I'd been in contact with some artists who live in that subsidized art building down—"

"Oh, yes, yes, that's these people? They're so young."

"Marta and Jovan have a baby themselves," Alexis said primly, stiffening under his arm. "And Jalen—"

"No, hush, I'm not belittling you or them, or this," he sighed. He was still taking it all in. They'd decorated with a theme using his own items and many things they'd made themselves, and not a bit of it was too kitschy or too much. Even Kate couldn't find fault with this, as she made her way back to them in the entry and hugged his other side.

"Alexis, this is amazing. We really… we needed some Christmas spirit in here, and I guess neither of us realized just how tired we were."

"Well, when I video chatted you guys for Thanksgiving, you were both so… down. It seemed more than just tired."

"Gabriel might perhaps be the spawn of Satan," Castle said blandly. "There is that as well."

Alexis slapped at him. "Da-ad. He is not."

But Kate shrugged. "It's a thing we've discussed. How real are evil spirits? Can they inhabit defenseless children? We're on the fence."

"You guys are so funny," Alexis rolled her eyes.

He met Kate's eyes. Her lips twitched. He found himself laughing even though yesterday, oh yesterday, that had been a serious and real conversation they'd had in whispers in the master closet, afraid to wake their colicky, spawn-like baby. He had slept for forty-fives minutes and woken screaming.

Alexis detached from him and headed for the group on the couch. "All right guys, let's break out the ornaments. Dad? You coming? It's time to decorate the tree."

He swallowed roughly, reached out his hand to his wife. Kate took it with a squeeze, a deep breath, and they walked into the fray.

They were directed in opposite tasks, Castle to sort the too-fragile and Alexis-made items from the things that could go on the tree, and Kate to the much smaller box of decor whose label was written in her mother's own hand: Xmas. Simple, succinct, very much like Kate herself.

He became absorbed in his work, handing off ornaments of Baby's First Christmas which featured Alexis's fat baby face and strings of flash bulbs that he had made in some elementary school class long ago. Gabriel watched the lights go up and the younger folks talking, staring up into Jalen's big brown eyes from time to time, and Castle realized he was having fun. Gabe, but also himself. There was music playing, he caught the strain of we need a little Christmas, and had that really been all it took?

When he met Kate at the back of the tree, secluded from the group, each with an ornament in hand ready to hang, he realized she was too.

Having fun.

She gave him a soft kiss on his jaw, a little lick of her tongue, and he hugged her fiercely as the colored lights shone down on them.

Kate hung a wooden ornament of a star painted sloppily in gold glitter. Her finger touched the center, sent it spinning. "I should have said something," she murmured. Her eyes were on the wooden star. "I should have told you I was struggling. That we needed help. That I was scared and lonely and I wasn't even sure I liked my own child."

He squeezed her hip. "And I should have told you the same. That it felt like we were slogging up a mountain, that I hadn't raised Alexis alone and why should we do the same."

She turned blindly into him and pressed her cheek to his. But instead of tears, she laughed. "We're such stupid idiots. Even Alexis would have come running if we'd asked for help."

He winced, drew his arms around her. "Yeah, she would have. She did. Without us even having to ask."

"You did good, raising that one."

"That's the thing, Kate. I didn't do it alone. My mother, two of the guys in my poker-writing club, a couple of mother's actress friends who had grandkids already, even Meredith—we had a little village going."

"Didn't we use to have a village?"

"We did. We should call them. Get them in on this. Because doing this alone sucks."

She laughed again, leaning back, her eyes studying his face. "And—don't be insulted—I need to go back to my therapist."

"I'm not insulted. Can I come too?"

She shook her head. "Not on my days. Make your own appointment." But she winked and kissed the tip of his nose. "We're not totally messing this up, are we."

"Not yet. But we better get that kid some serious first-Christmas Christmas presents."

"You know what else we should do? Push his basinet out here under the tree and let the lights and carols hypnotize him."

He laughed. "Now that's a genius idea." He paused, a deep breath of Balsam fir, his arms around his wife. "Thank you. Kate. Thank you for this."

She leaned in against him. "I didn't do this, but I understand the sentiment. Now let's get back out there and prove to Alexis she no longer needs to put us on suicide watch."

"Hey now. At worst we were merely a flight risk."

He saw her lips twitch.

"Merry Christmas," he told her, even as she pushed him out from behind the tree.

—-