TWO – Gingerbread

Setting: Castle Season 6

Clearing his throat, Castle stood in the middle of the kitchen and raised his hands out to his side saying, "Here ye, here ye! I officially welcome all of you to the first annual Castle-Beckett family gingerbread decorating contest!"

From her spot at the table, Alexis cheered and clapped her hands. Down the table from her, his mother lifted her wine glass in salute. He then turned towards the eat-at counter, where Kate and her father sat looking a bit skeptical, which naturally did not deter him in the slightest. He merely pushed up the sleeves of his sweater and continued his theatrical announcement.

"The rules are as follows: you can decorate a miniature house and/or a gingerbread person cookie however you see fit as long as you only use the decorating ingredients provided. The competition is timed at one hour, which includes building and decorating time! At the end of one hour, we will each vote for our favorite decorated item. The votes will be anonymously placed in this bowl and whichever creation gets the most votes wins!"

"Does the winner get a trophy?" Jim asked, gest clearly in his voice as he gave his daughter a side-eye; Kate laughed.

"Well, as a matter of fact, Jim: they do." With pride, Castle walked over to the counter just beside the refrigerator and pulled out a small item from its hiding spot behind the coffee machine. He placed it in the palm of his hand and then held it out for all to see. The trophy, which was about four inches high, had a small gingerbread figure atop a gold pedestal labeled "Best Cookie," which wasn't the exact same as a gingerbread house, but it was a close as he could find on the internet.

Kate laughed loudly. "Oh my god, there really is a trophy."

"Of course! Now, are there any questions?"

Alexis's hand shot up in the air.

"Yes, Alexis?"

"Question—are we restricted to traditional gingerbread house shapes?"

Castle laughed as though his daughter had asked if she was allowed to use white icing on her creation. "Of course not! The only restriction is you must use the ingredients provided. Any other questions? No. Well then…" He checked his watch quickly so he would know their exact starting time, "GO!"

With the minutes counting down, Castle trapped his tongue between his teeth, hunched over his designated spot by the stove, and got to work.

When planning their holiday celebration that year, the gingerbread house-or-cookie competition had come to his mind almost right away as a must-do event. Now that he and Kate were engaged and had begun talking about ideas for their wedding, he truly felt it was time to begin their own family traditions. The holidays were of course the most important time of year for those shared rituals, so he wanted to come up with at least a few ideas. More importantly, he wanted something flexible enough that could be enjoyed by both adults and by the children he dreamed they would eventually have. The decorating competition was perfect for that.

Thankfully, Kate seemed to agree it was a fun idea, though expressed surprise when he told her to invite her father as well. His response had been a simple, "Why not? He's family too." Though she hadn't said anything, the look on her face told him she was utterly touched. He was pleased to know that, but in his mind there was no alternative. Kate Beckett was the woman he was meant to love. Legal documents or not they were already a family and as such her family was his so of course he wanted Jim Beckett to join them. Though he understood the elder man was hesitant at first, Castle was glad he had ultimately agreed to join them.

"Oh, Richard, you know these pieces don't really fit together all that well," his mother complained.

As he held two of the sides of his house together tightly so the royal icing would set, he reminded her, "They're gingerbread not Legos, Mother."

Kate let out a laugh and he glanced to his left to see that she and her father were working together to construct a house. Castle let out a loud, fake gasp. "Are you two cheating?"

The detective gave him a look. "No. If I recall correctly there was only a rule about ingredients, not helping other participants."

"Bu—that's implied!" he balked.

"Why don't you just mind your own gingerbread house?" she said. Then she playfully stuck her tongue out at him.

After stretching his neck from left to right, Castle regained his resolved and quickly finished the construction of his house. When originally thinking of what he could make, he thought briefly about making a gingerbread version of her desk at the Twelfth, but then he realized that since he had ordered a standard set of gingerbread house pieces from a bakery in the city, that probably would not work out without a lot of manipulations on his part. Instead he decided to keep his house structure simple and classic, but to really raise the bar when it came to his decorations.

Hours of research into gingerbread house styles led Castle to choose the best of all of them for his creation. He used square piece of cereal for the roof and white icing to create a brick effect on the sides and front of the house. Broken up Hershey's chocolate bars made windows and the door was fashioned from six thin pretzel sticks laying side by side. Originally, he'd thought of creating a log cabin effect by covering the entire façade of the house with the sticks, but then decided that would clash texturally too much with the roof. With all that complete he began sticking multi colored M&M's to the roof line with icing to mimic decorative lights and just as the hour time limit ran out he lined the roof peak with red and green gumdrops and a stack of three round peppermint candies in place of a chimney.

"Okay everyone! Times up! Put down your icing bags!"

"Ugh already," Alexis whined, but Castle didn't give in.

"Sorry, Pumpkin—the time limit is part of the challenge. Now, let's walk around and look at everyone's and then cast our votes!"

Putting on his most serious expression, Castle began to examine everyone's decorations starting with his mother's. She had evidently given up on the house, because two dilapidated walls and half a roof sat on a plate pushed off to the side of the table. Instead, she'd chosen a gingerbread person and given them long hair and a sweater on which she'd used sprinkles separated out by color to create a gradient effect; it looked pretty good. Alexis chose to make a house, but made it a topsy-turvy one. The house sat on its roof peak but was otherwise decorated in a fairly traditional fashion; he gave her credit for creativity.

Next, he checked out the father-daughter houses. While they had made two separate ones, they were decorated mostly the same. Jim's had a solid white icing roof with gumdrops at the peak, similar to what he had done himself. Kate's roof had intricate swoops in icing that were dotted with larger M&M red and green candies. Other than the fact that Jim chose square windows and Kate had made hers with rounded tops, the main part of their houses looked almost the same.

"Wow, great job everyone—these look awesome!"

"Maybe next year we can have some colored icing options, Dad," Alexis suggested.

Castle tapped his temple and then pointed to her. "Great idea—I'll write that down in our Christmas ideas file."

After several more minutes of examining houses, Rick handed out small slips of paper and reminded everyone not to vote for themselves. Then, he collected all the papers in a bowl, shook them around to mix them up, and began tallying the results. "Okay we have…two votes for Alexis, one for Martha, and one for Castle and one for Rick, both of whom are me…so there's a tie!"

"Both of yours were very good," Jim said.

Grabbing the small trophy off the counter, Rick walked over to his daughter and held it out to her. She eyed him skeptically. "You're not going to make me do a tie breaker?"

He laughed and said, "No, not this year. You can hang on to the trophy for now, but just so you know: next year, it's on."

She narrowed her eyes in a challenge, but only for a brief second. Then she threw her arms around his neck, hugged him, and said into his ear, "You're right, it's on!"

Still laughing, Castle walked over to see Kate's father and said, "I'm really glad you joined us, Jim. Thanks for humoring our little contest."

Jim glanced over at his daughter then said, "Actually it was a lot of fun. I don't think we ever decorated a gingerbread house together."

"Really?"

"No," Kate answered. "We decorated cookies as a family, but never houses. I think I made one in school one time, but that would have been using graham crackers, not real gingerbread."

"Well then," Castle said, slipping his arms around her shoulders, "I'm glad I started this tradition for us."

Leaning into him she agreed with ease. "Yeah, me too."

A/N - thanks for reading & reviewing :)