The Hopeful Lights of Winter
Disclaimer: I still don't own it, and I am back to being a poor student with bills, so I'm even less worth suing.
AN: Castle and Beckett try to navigate the holiday season and a fake separation at the same time. A Winter Ficathon story, and a nightly thank you gift for those involved in the Possibility4Joy project.
This day had not been going on at all like she had planned, but to be honest she couldn't remember the last one that had. But still, everything that seem capable of causing impediments to her goals today seemed to find a way to do it.
Elbows up on her desk, she dropped her head into her hands and massaged her temples. She had wanted the promotion, it's true, but now she wonders if she had thought through how much of being a Captain was going to be meeting after meeting. Even being more hands-on than her predecessors, it still seemed like she spent more time on bureaucracy than she did on helping victims. And normally, she could live with it. But today? Today not so much.
Last night had been great, and she loved that they were finding a way, however they knew how to work their way through this situation as a team. She wished they had begun that way, wished she had his creative touch all along.
The now ever present and irritating sound of an incoming reminder on her phone startled her. She looks up, wondering what she could possibly have missed.
"Shop for Jenny," it reads. Ugh. She had forgotten, Jenny and Ryan's baby shower was coming up in several weeks, but she'd wanted to take advantage of the early holiday shopping climate and try to find some nice things early on, take a few things off of their plate. She knows how stressed out Ryan has been about needing all new things for this baby, and not getting a promotion of his own.
But after yet another long day, she's tempted to just put it off once again as she has for the last several nights the message has appeared in on her phone. But at this rate she'll just keep on putting it off until whatever early advantage she thought she might have was long gone. What would Castle do, she wondered.
He'd go online, she thought suddenly, in a hit of inspiration. She called up the children's furniture store she'd been planning to hit, found the pieces she wanted easily enough, and added them to her cart.
And then, she saw it, down in the bottom row on her screen, under "you may also like," and she fell in love. A grey and white quilt, little stitched elephants on parade. On impulse, she added it to her cart. And not for Jenny.
Twenty minutes later she'd bought not only the Ryan baby's gifts, but she'd outfitted a half of a grey and white nursery with accessories and toys and bedding. For a baby that has yet to be conceived. They'd been talking about it, planning, and then...
And she had a whole theme going, all these elephants and she should talk to him before she does something like this, never mind they should make the baby first. Before she has mobiles and rockers and bedding and bookends, for heaven sakes. But she bought it anyway. She has everything shipped to her father's, telling herself she can pass it off as going overboard for her friend when it arrives in several hopefully nondescript boxes.
This time when her phone chirped, it rang with an incoming call, and lit up with his face on the screen. Instinctively, she blushed, feeling caught.
"Hey," she said quietly into the phone.
"Alexis is at some overnight study thing with a bunch of her friends," he said without any real preamble. "I started pulling out Christmas lights, but I'm home alone and ordering too much pizza."
The words "home alone" make her blood sing. She has her coat on before his voice, low and rich, manages the words "Come be with me."
She'll just take the back door and watch movies with him on the projector amid a mishmash of his over the top holiday decor half in and half out of storage. It sounds like heaven.
Hours later, she confessed her shopping spree as they lay tangled together in bed. She expected - she doesn't know what. But it wasn't for her husband to pull out his phone with a soft "show me?"
She did. And by the time he swiped his way through one more order screen, she'd lost that sense of shock. Instead, she felt her whole body come alive with warmth at his small purchase: a set of ornaments for the tree, an elephant and - oh and a lion - that say "Baby's first Christmas."
"Since we're planning ahead," he said, and he left the part about - for next year - out, but she heard it anyway. And though the timing was truly probably as terrible as it would ever be, she craved it.
So, she decided, they can plan ahead. For next year. Why not?
AN2: Because someone will ask, Pottery Barn Kids. Search elephants. Yes, really. It's ridiculously adorable. You're welcome.