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.
AN2: Please bear with any errors tonight, I had to pull an all nighter last night for finals and I might be a little out of it. Okay, a lot.
With everything going on in their lives she wasn't sure if it was possible for them to just have a day of doing nothing, even if she did have the day off. But it was definitely worth planned on and aiming for. She had already told Esposito, he could get used to his only in pending promotion by handling whatever came up unless some drastic public spectacle required her attention. She hadn't had too difficult of a time getting him to agree, he may not have known why she needed the time to wind down, but he understood that she did.
The hardest thing about coming and going well keeping their secret was the act of coming going. So since she was already at the loft, she had no intention of leaving anytime soon. If she could just have this day, maybe the next one in her own home without worrying about what was going to happen next, she might be able to pull herself through the next week.
"I put the French press on," she heard her husband's voice from the doorway. "and Alexis was out a little while ago and brought back some of those ridiculously good filled croissants from the bakery down the street. Which means I don't particularly plan on getting out of bed again anytime soon."
She grinned at him. "You read my mind. And that was awfully nice of Alexis."
He brought The tray of pastries and coffee over to the bed, and set gingerly down on the edge, before setting the tray down as well. "Well honestly I think it was a little bit of a bribe. She borrowed my card key to your place, said something about having some time to help keep up the appearance of visiting my mother. I'm not sure I want to know why she needed to do that, but –"
She broke off a piece of croissant and popped it into his mouth. "Hush, I don't need you in overprotective dad mode right now, babe. Just our own private time to think about."
His blue eyes lit up and he smiled at her, even as he works at the unexpected bit of croissant. "I'm pretty sure I can do that."
She raised an eyebrow and his general direction in agreement. "Somehow I thought you might," she said with a smile.
And they definitely manage to make the most of breakfast in bed and their particular brand of alone time that morning. Thankfully, no one in her jurisdiction had decided to be involved in a high-profile murder, and so her Saturday was her own. Or at least, it was theirs. But at some point they both give up on finding the fact that everything they've been through in the last several weeks has been physically and emotionally exhausting.
It was after a break from an actual nap that he suggested pulling out his iPhone and putting on the Harry Potter audiobook editions he'd finally been able to download. "I've heard the performance was incredible, but I never got around to picking it up when they were on CDs."
He looks like a kid in the candy store, and she can't blame him. It was not something she would've thought to do to spend a cool December afternoon and evening, but she was good with it if it meant she got to stay curled against his side in their bed.
So she watched him pair his phone to a Bluetooth speaker and they curled up against each other to listen. At the end of the day she wasn't even worried about the fact that they had barely gotten three chapters into the first book before getting distracted.
Priorities.