This "first" takes place a couple years in the future and was inspired by a prompt from Christy811.
—
He follows her off the elevator and over to her desk, where Esposito is waiting. He's holding a file that he hands off to her when she gets close enough. "That's the still from the security footage. She's all set up in interrogation one."
Kate gives him a quick nod, flipping open the file to glance at the slightly grainy image. "Thanks, Espo."
"No problem, boss."
She reaches for her coffee cup and lifts it to her mouth, but pauses before taking a sip, wrinkling her nose slightly.
"You okay?" Castle asks.
She nods, pursing her lips in distaste. "Yeah. I'm just…ugh. I feel a little queasy suddenly."
"You haven't gotten much sleep these past few days. Probably just catching up with you," he says.
She nods absentmindedly, already distracted, already moving on to the next step.
They've been slammed with cases the past couple weeks. None of them are terribly mind-bending or time-consuming, but the sheer quantity has everyone working double time. Neither of them has gotten a full night's sleep in over a week.
"Alright," she says, refocusing her attention to the file in her hand. "You ready?"
He nods and she returns her mug to her desk, gathers the file to her chest, leads the way into the interrogation room.
The suspect is a young woman with blonde hair and wide, blue eyes lined heavily with eyeliner and a thick coat of mascara. She looks bewildered. She watches Kate and Castle file into the room and sit down across from her, mindlessly rolling a huge wad of gum around in her mouth, tapping her long, ornately painted fingernails on the tabletop.
"Afternoon, Ms. Perkins," Kate greets her coolly, folding her hands in front of her, leveling the woman with her detective stare.
"You can call me Suzy," the woman replies, her voice lilting with a heavy twang straight out of Brooklyn.
"Alright, Suzy," Kate continues. "Can you tell me what you were doing in the Muddy Cup earlier today?"
"The Muddy Cup?" Suzy repeats. "Oh, right. The coffee place. Yeah, I go there to get my caffeine fix every mornin'. Non-fat caramel macchiato with an extra pump of caramel and just a dash of cream. Sometimes I have 'em put some whipped cream on the top. Just for, ya know, funzies and stuff."
"Funzies," Castle murmurs, working hard not to smile. "Right."
Suzy nods and lifts a hand to point at him, the bracelets on her wrist jangling. "See? He gets it. So yeah. That's what I was doin' there."
Kate nods. She has that look about her that Castle loves—cool, confident, entirely unimpressed, her face a mask of professionalism, completely tuned in, focused. "Do you know this man?" she asks Suzy, pushing a picture of the murder victim across the table.
Suzy picks it up, studies it, her head tilted to the side. She smacks her gum a couple times, drops the picture and then shrugs. "Not sure. Just looks like a guy."
"Well," Kate says, her tone clipped. "He was murdered this morning. In the coffee shop you were in obtaining your caffeine fix." She pauses, pulls out another picture and shows it to Suzy. "You were also seen fleeing the seen of the crime just moments after he was shot."
"Shot?" Suzy squeaks. "Oh my God."
Castle watches, thoroughly amused by all the theatrics, as Suzy huffs a little, lifting her hand to fan herself. "Holy crap. I had no idea. I didn't even hear a gun or nothin'."
She stills suddenly and Castle can practically see the gears turning in her head, putting all the pieces together. She presses her palms to the table, leans towards Kate a little. "Wait," she says. "I didn't do nothin'. I didn't even see nothin'."
Kate hums a little. "I see."
"Look," Suzy says emphatically. "I was freaking out. I was, like, buggin', ya know?"
"Why were you buggin'?" Castle says, repeating the colorful phrasing just because he can't resist.
"Because of these!"
Suzy reaches for her purse and pulls out a handful of tampons, tossing them on the table. Kate lifts an eyebrow. "Tampons? Really? That's you're alibi?"
"Yes!" Suzy cries. "Look, lady. You gotta listen. I was in there, waiting for my macchiato, when I reached into my purse to get some cash and then I see these tampons and I'm like, holy shit, 'cause I realized I hadn't got my period this month, so I booked it outta there to get one of those pee sticks, ya know? To see if I was knocked up or not."
Castle sits there calmly, waiting for Kate to swoop in again. When she doesn't, he turns towards her, finds her staring past Suzy at the wall behind her, a faraway look in her eye. She's tapping the table, one finger at a time, her mouth moving like she's counting to herself.
"Um, Beckett?" he asks, curious and also a little worried. If this is a tactic, he's never seen it before. "Everything good?"
She stops tapping, goes still. "Oh, my God," she breathes, her face frozen.
"Kate, are you okay?" he asks, forgetting that they're in an interrogation room. He leans towards her, lays a hand on her arm. She startles slightly at the touch, looks down at his fingers curled lightly around her wrist, turns brimming eyes to his face.
"Kate," he says, alarmed now. "Kate, talk to me."
She draws in a gasping breath, lets out a sound that's half sob, half laugh. "Castle, I'm—"
"What?"
She swallows. "I'm pregnant."
"What?" he breathes.
He stares at her, dumbfounded, his world zeroing in on her face, her shining green eyes, her trembling smile. He watches as she presses a hand to her still-flat stomach. She's pregnant. Kate is pregnant.
"Kate," he whispers and his voice cracks around that one syllable.
"Um, can I go or what?"
Castle jumps at the question, looks over to find Suzy regarding them with a bored look on her face. "I-uh…We…"
He stutters to a halt. He's completely incoherent. He can't find words beyond the ones she just gave him. Pregnant. She's pregnant.
The door swings open and Esposito and Ryan appear. "We got it from here," Esposito says.
Kate stands immediately, reaching for Castle's hand, dragging him on stumbling feet towards the door. She pauses in the doorway to share a grin with the boys before leading the way out of the interrogation room and into observation.
As soon as the door is shut, he grabs her, backs her up until she's pressed against the wall. "Holy crap," he says. "Is this really happening?"
"Yeah, yes." She sighs and drops her head back against the wall, closing her eyes. "I can't believe I didn't realize sooner."
"You were busy," he says.
"I'm two and a half weeks late, Castle. That's really late."
"You were sleep deprived. Frazzled. Catching murderers."
"I guess you're right," she hedges, but he can tell it actually bothers her—the fact that she didn't catch on sooner. She likes being in control, never letting anything slip through the cracks. She's going to have to get over that one if she's going to survive motherhood.
He leans in and presses a firm kiss to her lips, the most sure-fire way he can think of to get her mind off of things. "I love you," he says, shifting his lips to her cheek. "I love you so much."
She hums in agreement or encouragement or both, her fingers curling around his neck, playing with the short hairs at his nape. "We shouldn't get carried away," she murmurs.
"I want to get carried away," he says.
He presses his palm to her hip, his thumb brushing under her shirt to the bare skin of her stomach. She gasps and arcs against him, her mouth opening against his, her tongue delving deep, sliding against his, across the roof of his mouth.
"I-I don't mean…like that," she manages to get out, moaning softly when he wedges a thigh between her legs. "I mean, I'm…I might not be pregnant."
He stills at that. "What?" he says.
She smiles at the disappointment on his face, draws him close enough to kiss. "I haven't taken a test or anything, Castle. We should make sure."
"But I'm—" He swallows, realizes he's dangerously close to whining. "But I'm so excited."
She grins, kisses him again, her body shifting in the cove of his arms, her hips bumping into his. "I know."
"Two and a half weeks, right?" he says. She nods. "And that's really late right?" She nods again and he relaxes a little, draws her close. "I really want to have a baby with you," he breathes feathering kisses along the line of her jaw, the soft spot behind her ear.
"Me too," she says, her voice soft. "Me too."
—
They stand in the bathroom beside each other, staring at the tests lined up on the edge of the sink. "Six tests," he breathes.
"All positive."
She turns towards him and sinks into his arms, the relief and the happiness and the hugeness of it all shuddering through her, making her breathless. "I'm really pregnant."
He laughs softly, presses a kiss to the crown of her head. "Yes, you are."
She closes her eyes, squeezing him a little tighter. "Castle, I—"
She stops, not really knowing what she wanted to say, but the words are clogged in her throat anyway. She closes her eyes, feeling it all rise up inside her, cracking her open. She's going to be a mother. Going to have a baby. With Castle.
She can feel herself melting apart with it, becoming sappy and sentimental and she kinda hates it, but she also loves too, mostly loves it, actually, because how can she not feel like all her dreams are coming true?
She lifts her head from his chest to look at him and she can see it there in his eyes, too—the happiness so wide and infinite that he's practically vibrating with it. She wants to say something, to tell him everything that she's feeling, but she doesn't know how, doesn't know the right words to—
"I love you," he murmurs.
Oh. Right. There they are.
She grins. "I love you, too."
—
So I just realized that all these oneshots end with I-love-you moments, which, you know, isn't really a bad thing I guess, but I'll try to mix it up a little next time. Lol.