Thank you to everyone who is reading, reviewing, and supporting. I hope you continue to enjoy the story. Life got in the way this week, so this chapter will be shorter than most, but I'll do my best to make up for it next week.
When Kate blinked herself awake, the first shadows of darkness were beginning to fall outside, and Rick's steady, even breathing behind her let her know that he had fallen asleep too, probably sometime after her.
The fire was almost completely out, and a slight chill was settling over the cabin, even though Kate realized that she and Rick were covered with the afghan from the back of the couch. Well, she was covered with the afghan from the couch, but she had been in his arms, her head on his shoulder, and their shared body heat had kept them warm as they slept.
Kate watched Rick sleeping for a few minutes. He looked so much like a little boy when he slept. She got a mental picture then, of herself and Rick, standing beside their baby's crib late at night, watching him or her sleeping.
Just as Kate was reconciling herself to the fact that she was going to be one of those mothers, the ones who got up in the middle of the night and checked on their kids just to make sure they were still breathing, she felt Rick stir and focused her attention on watching him awaken. "Hi," she said softly, smiling at him.
Rick awoke to Kate's smiling face beside him, the afghan thrown haphazardly across her lap and trailing onto the floor in front of the couch, the arm of his that she had slept on having a pins-and-needles feeling as the circulation returned to normal.
"Hi," he said, his voice rough with sleep. "Did you have a good nap?"
"Mmm-hmm," Kate replied, playing with the buttons on his shirt. "Did you?"
Rick stretched his arms above his head before wrapping them around Kate. "Yes," he replied. "I didn't intend to take a nap, but I was holding you in my arms and watching you sleep and I just drifted off before I knew it. But it's a good thing I had a nap. My wife told me earlier I'm getting lucky later." Rick leered at Kate then, which sent her into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
Rick gave Kate a wounded look as she fought to get herself under control. "Awww, babe," Kate said as she finally regained control of herself and took a deep breath. "I'm not making fun of you, honestly. It's just that when you leered just then..." She trailed off, coughing to cover an impending fit of laughter. Recovering herself again, she said, "I love how expressive you are—your face, your emotions, your words, everything."
"So you're saying that the leer is not my strong suit," Rick concluded.
"Not really, no," Kate admitted. "But I don't need you leering. You turn me on in so many other ways."
"I do?" Rick asked, sliding his hands beneath Kate's sweater, making her breath catch as he slowly rubbed up and down her back.
"Y-yes," Kate stuttered. "And never more than when you're being completely serious and earnest...and...and when you touch me..." She trailed off to kiss him, her tongue tracing the seam of his lips. He offered her instant entrance, pulling her closer as she mapped the interior of his mouth with her tongue. After several heated minutes of kissing and caressing each other on the couch, Kate rested her forehead against Rick's and breathlessly said, "I think we'd better move this to the bedroom, because you're gonna get really lucky right now."
Rick just smiled as he and Kate stood up, leaving the afghan puddling from the edge of the couch to the floor and, hand-in-hand, headed upstairs.
Much later, with moonlight streaming in the window, they lay in bed, wrapped up in the sheets, Rick propped up against the headboard of the bed, and Kate lying sideways in the bed with her head and shoulders resting in the middle of Rick's chest, right above his stomach. Rick had one arm stretched across Kate's abdomen, and she threaded her fingers through his.
"I was thinking," Kate began, "about the baby announcement we'll be making in a few months. We have to tell everybody at the same time. I don't want anybody feeling slighted."
"Definitely not," Rick agreed.
"And when I say 'everybody,' I'm including Gates and her husband," Kate continued. She looked up at Rick. "I want Gates to be one of the baby's godmothers, if she'll say yes."
"And Lanie will be the other," Rick concluded.
"That's what I was thinking," Kate replied.
"Of course, Esposito and Ryan will be the godfathers," Rick continued.
"I wouldn't want anybody else," Kate replied honestly. She bit her lip before asking, "You don't think Alexis will be upset that we don't ask her to be godmother, do you?"
"No," Rick said honestly. "I think being a big sister will be plenty enough for her."
"Good," Kate said, smiling again. She shifted, moving up so that she was now propped against the headboard, lying next to Rick, her hand still in his. "I don't want Alexis to feel left out or excluded in any way." She moved closer to him under the covers. "I think I know one way we can make the announcement special."
"How?" Rick asked.
"What if we have everybody over on Christmas Eve—they don't have to stay, because I'm sure at least Ryan and Jenny will have other plans, their parents wanting to see Sarah Grace and Nick, and Gates will probably have her mother-in-law to contend with again—but what if we had them all over early in the evening, and we told them all at the same time?" Kate proposed.
Rick's face lit up. "That would be perfect!" he exclaimed excitedly. "And I was thinking of how, specifically, to announce it. Something special that we, and they, will always remember, and I have an idea." He looked at her earnestly now as he began to explain what he had in mind.
By the time he had finished outlining his idea, Kate was the one whose face was lit up. "Oh, Rick, that's it! That's exactly, exactly how we should tell everyone! And we'll know by then if we're having a boy or a girl!"
"Ooh, that's right, we will!" Rick exclaimed excitedly. "So are we going to tell them what we're having too?"
Kate considered for a moment. "Yes," she said. "I really think yes."
Rick beamed. "Seeing the looks on all of their faces when we tell them we're having a baby...and then when they find out it's a baby girl or baby boy..." he began.
"I can't even begin to imagine how my dad will react," Kate said, looking concerned then. "He'll be the hard sell. I'll have my work cut out for me even getting him to come over." She paused to brush a hand across Rick's cheek. "You gave Christmas back to me, but he still comes up here every December. I'll have to be really convincing to get him to come by our place Christmas Eve."
"You'll get him there, Kate," Rick said. "And even if our news doesn't give Christmas back to your dad, he'll be happy for you, for us."
"I'm hoping our baby does give Christmas back to my dad," Kate admitted softly. "There's nothing like a Castle Christmas, but when my mom was alive, we Becketts had traditions and Christmas was always good."
"If the news that he's gonna be a grandfather doesn't do it, then once Sweetpea is here, she...or he and whatever appropriate nickname I come up with for him...will give Christmas back to your dad," Rick said with certainty, even as he made a mental note to ask Kate what the Beckett family Christmas traditions were, so they could start incorporating those into the Castle Christmas that year.
"I hope so," Kate said pensively. Her stomach rumbled then, getting both her attention and Rick's.
"What would you and Sweetpea like for dinner?" Rick asked.
Kate considered for a moment. "Burgers, fries, and cole slaw?" she suggested.
"You've got it," Rick pledged. He got out of bed, gathered up his clothes, and got dressed, padding out to the kitchen in his sock feet to start cooking the burgers and fries. The cole slaw, they had picked up ready-made at the grocery store on their way out of the city.
Kate joined Rick a couple of minutes later, wearing his button-down shirt, which he had left on the floor of the their bedroom where Kate had tossed it earlier, and a pair of her yoga pants. Her feet were bare. She retrieved the cole slaw from the refrigerator, got out a plate and a fork, and began to dig in while Rick cooked their burgers and fries.
After dinner, they returned to the living room, where Kate made a beeline for the shelf of board games, and proceeded to soundly defeat her husband at Scrabble three times.
"'Xerosis'?" Rick challenged in the final game. "That's a word?"
Kate picked up the old, falling-apart, paperback edition of The American Heritage Dictionary and handed it to him. "Check for yourself."
"Only because you checked 'quadrat' when I played it," Rick replied, picking up the dictionary.
Sure enough, there it was in the 'x's: "'Xerosis,'" he read aloud. "'Noun. 1) Abnormal dryness, especially of the skin, eyes, or mucous membranes. 2) The normal hardening of aging tissue.'" He looked up from the dictionary to Kate's triumphant face. "You learned this word from Lanie!" he exclaimed.
"Yes, I did," Kate countered. "But it still counts."
"It does," he agreed. Then he added, "One of these days, we should play Scrabble with Lanie and Alan, guys against the girls, and you and Lanie can use cop and medical terms, and Alan and I can use words from sci-fi shows and movies."
"That's actually a really good idea," Kate mused. "We'll have to do that soon. Just not before I have a handle on the morning sickness once and for all, because it really wouldn't be fair for Lanie to know about the baby before anyone else." She got up from her side of the table and sat in Rick's lap, winding her arms around his neck. "Besides, the idea we came up with to announce the baby to everyone is just so right, we have to do it, and for it to really work, no one can have any idea before then."
"The announcement will work out exactly the way we have it planned," Rick vowed, his arms wrapped around her waist.
Kate smiled before touching her forehead to his. "I can't wait to see everyone's faces," she said.
"Well, it won't be much longer. Three more months," Rick replied. He kissed her softly, and when she yawned into the kiss, he pulled back and said, "Tired?"
"Yeah," Kate admitted.
"Then let's get some sleep," Rick said.
They packed up the Scrabble game but left it on the table ("I want a rematch tomorrow so I can win," Rick said. "In your dreams, Castle," Kate retorted. "My dreams come true, remember?" he countered.), then got into their pajamas. As Kate got into bed, Rick found an extra blanket in the chest at the foot of the bed.
"It's September," Kate said, amused, "it's not snowing, Rick."
"I just want to have it handy. I don't want you and the Sweetpea getting cold," Rick said as he dropped the folded blanket on top of the closed chest.
He climbed into bed beside Kate and she snuggled up to him, resting one hand over his heart. "We have the sheets and comforter on the bed, and you to keep us warm," she said. "And you're better than any blanket."
Rick smiled before they kissed good night, then he moved down in the bed to kiss Kate's belly. "Sweet dreams, Sweetpea," he said. Then he moved up again and looked into Kate's eyes. "Sweet dreams to you too, Kate," he said earnestly.
This would be the acid test, Kate reflected silently. She hadn't slept a single night through at the cabin the summer after she was shot at Montgomery's funeral, awakening from screaming nightmares in which she relived the shooting, or worse, in which Rick was shot and she was the one leaning over him in the grass, begging him to hold on, to stay with her, admitting her love for him as she watched his eyes slip closed and his life's blood ebb out of his body and onto the grass beneath them.
"Hopefully," Kate said. She kissed Rick, a long, slow kiss of love and hope and gratitude, and from which they both drew comfort.
Then she laid her head on his chest and, lulled by the steady beat of his heart beneath her cheek, and the warm, solid feeling of their bodies entwined and his arms wrapped around her, prayed to a God that she had started talking to more lately than she had talked to Him in almost 20 years that she would get through the night without any nightmares.
