Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop
He walked into the apartment, the notebook closed on the drawing, keeping the secret. 'Still Hurting' was filling the place and Castle knew that it was his mother on the piano, singing along. Meredith wasn't a Broadway fan and wouldn't get caught knowing the notes to a showtune. But the diva of the Great White Way would be ashamed if she couldn't name a tune from the first few measures.
Castle toed off his shoes, leaving them just inside the doorway.
"Hey, Mother," he said, brushing a kiss over the woman's cheek.
Her fingers didn't falter as she gave him a small smile. "Hey, kiddo."
She was back to playing Jason Robert Brown, her eyes focused on the black and white keys. Castle found himself humming along as he went into the study, leaving the door open. He tucked the notebook with Al's drawing into the drawer of his desk, hiding it under a few old leaves of paper with pointless drawings and scribbling of him working through writer's embarrassment. No reason for Meredith to be poking around his stuff and find it.
"Richard!"
The piano stopped as the door closed. He managed to get to the living room in time to see the two redheads pass each other. Martha was going up the stairs to the guest room just as Meredith shook her hair out after pulling off her scarf.
"Richa- Oh, there you are," she said as she turned to face the living room and saw him. She tossed her jacket and scarf over the back of the couch, walking over to where he still stood in the doorway. His eyes weren't on his girlfriend, but on the stairwell where his mother had disappeared to.
Meredith stopped in front of him, one of her heeled feet between his stocking feet, her fingers dancing under the open shirt. "I hate leaving when we fight." When he didn't speak, she tilted her head, moving closer. "What's wrong?"
"We need to talk, Meredith." He was impressed that his voice was level, not a shout to get out and he'd have her things shipped wherever. Before he could make that mistake, Castle turned and ran a hand over his hair, walking around her and sitting on the couch.
"Richard, what happened to your hand?" she asked, following him over and sitting just a little too close for the conversation he was planning.
So he shifted a few inches away, taking his hand back from her lap. "About this morning."
"What about this morning?" she sighed, shrugging her shoulders. "It was a fight. They happen. It's normal."
"Yes, but not this time." Castle closed his eyes for a second, bracing himself for this. "Meredith, this is my mother we're talking about. Not an ex-girlfriend or a friend or an acquaintance. My mother. And she will always come before any of the above people. That includes you." He faltered when he saw Meredith's face fall a little. "Why don't you want her here? What about her drives you to want her gone so much?"
She tried to get up, but he caught her wrist and tugged her back to the couch. This talk needed to happen and she wasn't going to be allowed to run away. "Richard…"
"No, Meredith. Tell me."
"It's going to sound petty and selfish…" Stalling. He gave her a quick squeeze on the wrist. A warning. "She gets more time with you than I do!"
It hits him in the stomach. She's jealous. Jealous of his relationship with his mother. Castle has to stand, pace over to the windows with his hands pulling through his hair to calm down. Meredith is jealous of how much time he spends with his family, his only family.
"I mean, I barely get to see you between auditions and meetings and you writing and going out to dinner with her. And now that she's here," Meredith said, her voice raising a little as she continues, "she'll just have more chances to take you from me. Richard, I'm your girlfriend!"
Time to make a decision, he told himself. So he tried, as calmly as possible, to turn around and face her from across the living room. Not trusting his hands, he stuffed them into his pockets. "Listen, Meredith. She's my mother. If I have to chose, it's going to be her every time. That might hurt, but she's the only family member I have and I am not going to lose that to a relationship with you."
"Are you giving me an ultimatum?" Meredith stayed sitting, the position of prey rather than the predator, all soft red hair and pretty dress and sparkling jewels.
"Listen. Either you get used to Mother being in the loft with us or this," he said with a quick nod in the space between them, "is over. I can't be forced to choose you over my mother, Meredith, no matter how much I might love you."
Instead of feeling conflicted or bad about the statement, Castle felt a few pounds of weight lifted off his shoulders as he kept his eyes fixed on Meredith's surprised blue.
Kate changed out of the jeans and sweater, getting back into the leggings and an old, baggy sweatshirt. She pulled her hair out of the braid, threading her fingers through the strands to untangle them, walking back down the hall to Al's room.
The girl had been strangely quiet the entire cab ride back to the apartment after dropping Castle off at his place. She'd snuggled against Kate's side, her chin tucked down against her chest, playing with the fringe of Kate's scarf. The chatterbox had said maybe three words on the short trip from SoHo to TriBeCa.
She was sitting in the middle of her bed, still wearing her coat and clothes from their trip out, twisting her hands in her lap.
"Hey, Al," Kate said, leaning her shoulder on the doorframe. "You gonna come cuddle on the couch?" Al nodded, slowly. "Change into your pajamas, Allie-bug. I'll get our book and some blankets."
She took the thick blankets from the chest at the foot of her bed, a combination of quilts and microfiber throws that she took out during the winter to fortify their comforters. She tossed them onto the couch before checking the bookshelves. The two of them had been slowly working through Charlotte's Web, a chapter a night before bed usually, but today called for something a little lighter than Charlotte and Wilbur and Fern.
So instead of the worn copy of the children's book, Kate found Dr. Seuss tucked between her mystery novels and the other children's books that had been acquired over the years. Some of them had come from bookstore trips with her daughter, others her father had brought over from storage from when Kate had been that age.
"Mom, can we have Oreos and peanut butter?" Al asked, coming down the hall with her own blanket from the bed around her shoulders like a cape.
Kate grabbed up the girl, swinging her around twice before plopping her onto the pile of blankets of the couch. The laughter that bubbled up out of Al had Kate's heart lightening. "Of course we can, kid."
Al scrambled back off the couch to carry over the small pile of children's books, the blanket-cape still secured around her neck. "We gonna read?"
"Yes indeed. Then we can watch a movie and paint our nails and play with our hair." Kate was taking down the jar of peanut butter and finding the Oreos from where she hid them along with a pair of knives from the silverware drawer.
When Kate tucked her stocking feet under her body on the couch, Al cuddled into her side, ducking under one arm. "What're we going to read first?"
"Hair!" Al said, throwing her arms up in the air as much as possible from her position tucked against Kate's side. "Hair first, read after."
Kate set the Oreos and peanut butter on the ground next to the couch, twirling her finger over Al's head. "Spin so I can do yours."
The girl turned, stretching her legs out along the rest of the couch, wiggling her toes. "Princess braids, Mom!"
Princess braids, huh? "Leia or…" What was another princess with braids?
Al looked over her shoulder with a tilt of her head. "Like yours, Mom. Princess."
Just a plain braid is a princess one? While Al fixed her with her blue eyes, Kate smiled. "I have princess hair?"
"Yes. A pretty braid, please," she said, patting her hair, looking back at her toes.
Kate finger-combed her daughter's hair before starting a smooth braid in the middle of the girl's scalp. Al was mumbling the words to a song that Kate hadn't heard before. As she leaned down closer to Al's cheek to hear the lyrics and grinned; they were nonsense lyrics. Right brained. The girl was living completely in her right brain.
She snapped the hair elastic around the tiny end of the braid that barely reached past the nape of Al's neck. "Done, Princess Alexandra." Kate pressed a kiss to the girl's cheek.
"Your turn! Spin," Al demanded, twisting her finger just as Kate had minutes before.
Kate quickly tugged her hands through her hair before handing Al the second hair elastic around her wrist and facing the arm of the couch. "Have at me. Be kind."
Al giggled, then let her fingers dive into her mother's thick brown hair. "You're gonna have a princess braid too, Mom."
The girl was having a little more difficulty due to pretty much no practice braiding, but Kate was more than willing to let her try her hand at it. She felt her daughter's fumbling fingers try and twist the strands into a semblance of a braid.
Her phone rang, buried under the pile of blankets and Dr. Seuss books. Al dropped the strands of hair and dug for the phone, hitting the button to answer it without checking the caller ID.
"Hello?" Then her face lit up as she heard who was on the other end. "Espo!"
Kate could hear her co-worker on the phone asking how his main chiquitita was. She leaned forward, picked up the remote for the television and DVD player, turning the systems on. As Al chattered with the Latino detective, Kate held up the two options for the afternoon: Little Mermaid or Mulan. Al pointed to Little Mermaid and Kate popped the disc out, setting it on the disc drive, getting to the main menu.
"Yeah, here," Al's saying, holding the phone out to Kate. "It's Espo."
Kate gave Al the DVD remote, whispered to get the movie started and that she'd be back in a minute. She walked down the hall and heard the opening scene of the movie start even in the doorway of her bedroom.
"You get him?"
"Yeah, we got him. What'd he do?" Esposito asked.
Kate swallowed hard, leaning her back against the doorframe. "Tried to grab Al from the coffee shop where we were having breakfast. Wouldn't stop running so I shot him in the leg."
"Al's okay though?"
"Al's fine. We're spending the day on the couch doing all sorts of girly stuff. Keep her mind off it." Kate pushed off the doorframe, walked into her room and sat on the edge of the still-unmade bed. "She was shaken. Listen, I just need him booked. Find something to get him to court. I'll give my statement to IAB when I come in tomorrow for the justified shooting, but I just needed him in holding."
There was muffled yelling in the background of the phone before Esposito came back on. "No problem, Beckett. Anything for my favorite honorary niece."
"Thanks. And send that along to Ryan, too." She heard the man mentioned shout back "You're welcome!" before they hung up.
When she got back into the living room, turning the phone on silent and putting it on the counter, Al was wrapped up in one of the blankets, just her head poking out of the quilt. On-screen, Ariel's sisters were singing under the direction of Sebastian. Both Al and Kate knew that the red-haired mermaid wasn't in that silly shell but rather off searching for treasure with Flounder.
Al's eyes were drifting shut already and Kate didn't see her lasting past 'Under the Sea.' Kate settled next to her daughter after taking down a book from the shelf, kissing her temple before pulling one of the free blankets out from the pile and wrapping it around her shoulders.
Kate was wrong. It was in the middle of 'Part of Your World' when Al sleepily shifted over, placing her head in Kate's lap with a little sigh. Kate ran a hand over the brown hair, leaving the movie going as she opened the book to the title page.
To Kate and her little heartbreaker – Keep your sense of magic. Richard Castle.
She ran her fingers over the slightly indented page, feeling the valley from where the pen pressed into the paper. The last few days had definitely brought that magic that he had hoped for her back into her life.
Now to make sure she didn't screw this strange almost-friendship up with her baggage. They had already gotten a step further than usual; most men ran in the opposite direction when they learned about Al. But after walking in on the author comforting her panicky daughter, seeing how much Al obviously liked the man, Kate was already sure she believed in magic more than before.