Close Encounters 25
"It's late," he commented. Castle winced the second it left his lips, glanced over at Kate with an apology. "Not how I meant it. I just - not like that."
"Well," she sighed. "I am pretty tired."
He kept his mouth shut, just watched her, and she finally shook her head.
"Yeah, it's late. I might go to bed." Kate released James from her arms and the boy immediately slithered straight off the couch, scooting across the floor to get his hands on Sasha.
"Do you - need anything?"
"You asking if I need you to carry me upstairs?"
Castle shook his head, though maybe he was. They'd gotten to a precarious balance and he wasn't looking to upset it. He watched James clutch at the dog even as Sasha got to her feet, bringing the boy up with her. James giggled and draped himself over the dog, cheek to Sasha's back, and the puppy's tail wagged.
Kate sighed. It was a sad sound and it made him reach over and take her hand, lace their fingers together. "Not for much longer, Kate."
"It sucks."
"I know."
She turned on the couch and came and buried her face in his lap, arms wrapped around his waist. He lifted his hand and laid it on her back, slowly rubbed her spine through her shirt. He didn't speak; he had a feeling she just wanted to wallow in her misery for a few minutes.
She was getting stronger, but he knew Kate - she wanted to be everything right this second. Everything for him, everything for their son. She hated to be restricted.
He scratched her back, used his other hand to comb through her hair. It wasn't that short, really, longer than he'd feared. The layers came in around her chin and the back of it was shaggy, like the resulting lack of weight gave her hair the freedom for waves.
It was cute, and when she styled it like Lanie had done, it was sexy, and it made him happy rather than sad. He figured that was a huge step forward for him, not seeing his father's handiwork every time he looked at her.
Sasha and James were doing a slow, halting step around the coffee table, the boy grinning as he lurched along beside the dog. He was practically riding Sasha, so much of him was draped over her back for support.
"Think he's gonna be walking any day now," Castle said softly. "He'll just let go of the dog and keep on going."
James, as if he knew he was being talked about, gave out another hard-chuckling laugh, the one that made him sound older than his years. He stood up straighter, both fists still clamped in the wolf's fur, and the two tandem-walked towards the television, Sasha like a guide dog for the boy.
Kate grunted and lifted her head, turned to look at the baby. "Hard to be miserable with you laughing it up over there, Jay."
James chuckled again and patted the top of Sasha's head, the dog staying so still for him. He put his cheek back to her fur, and the wolves both looked pretty happy with their arrangement.
"No fair. I can't even throw myself a pity party in all this cuteness." Kate was grumbling, but she was also sitting up and looking happier. She stood without his help and only swayed a moment, and when she turned to look at him, she waved off his unspoken offer. "I can do it. I'm just gonna crawl into bed. Shower in the morning."
"Okay. I could - put him down for bed-"
James squawked in protest, head coming up off the dog so suddenly that he lost his balance - and his grip - and plopped down on his bottom on the rug.
"No, don't make him go," she sighed. "He's been staying up until ten."
"Yeah," he admitted. Last night, night before, for at least a week now, bedtime for the kid had gotten pushed back.
"Finish up your work, let him play with the dog. I'll just be sleeping." She did ruffle his hair as she moved away, and he wondered if she was upset with him, or just unhappy with herself and the slow progress of her endurance.
But she didn't want him constantly hovering, and he had to relearn how to let her go. They were much too independent - both of them - to sustain his kind of needy solicitousness for much longer.
And he did have work to do - catching up on the regimen test results from the medical team. She had helped him with it after they'd had dinner, making comments or coming up with the missing pieces he hadn't known, but they were still under that three-month suspension and there wasn't much work for them to keep her mind off of her recovery.
She bent over the baby and cupped his cheeks, kissed him on the mouth as she said good night.
Maybe getting Beckett back to spy work was the best thing for them. He should've thought of that. He had plans to make now.
"Hey," he said, even as he picked up the tablet again. "Where's my good night kiss?"
She turned her head to look at him, raised a little eyebrow. "Gotta wake me up for it when you come to bed."
When he'd finished for the night, Castle glanced up from his work to find his son still wrestling with the dog.
"Okay, kid. You remember the deal."
James lifted his head from the dog to look at Castle.
"Don't give me that. You know what I'm talking about. Being good to Mama."
"Mama?"
"Yup." Castle sank down to the floor and watched his son take fists of the dog and come stumbling toward him. "Hey, look at you, son, that's exactly it-"
He caught himself right after he said it, shook his head against the choke in his throat. James was taking cautious steps with the dog shuffling beside him, but he looked intent on Castle. When the boy got to him, Castle held out his arms and James fell into him, clutching his shirt.
He embraced the boy, softly kissed his cheek. "Not going to call you 'son.' He called me that, you know, and it meant nothing. It was a way to keep from ever making it personal, a way to make me his possession."
"Dadada."
"Yeah, James. That's me. I'm just going to call you by your name, or Mom's nickname for you - Jay. You like that?"
"Mama?"
"She went upstairs to bed."
James made a round 'o' face and pushed off of Castle's chest, like he was surprised. It made Castle chuckle, and he caught the boy by the waist to keep him from toppling over.
"You remember our deal? We're going to make Mommy happy, cheer her up. And you know how we can do that? We're going to work on walking. Won't she be so excited to see you walk?"
"Ock," James echoed, his eyes tracing Sasha as the dog stepped into them.
"Walk, that's right." Castle patted Sasha's back and then nudged her away, wanting to get her clear from James's grasp. "No crutch. Just you and me."
James beamed back at him.
"Yeah, I know. I said it was me and Mommy, didn't I? But it can be you and me, Jay. I've figured that out, at least. You and me doesn't take away from me and Mom." He brushed a hand up over James's spiky hair, smoothed it down. "It's not a choice, is it? I keep thinking it's got to be a choice. But I don't want it to be."
The boy twisted in his arms, wanting to be set free or wanting to get on with it already. Castle could practically hear him rolling his eyes - if he was capable of it.
"Yeah, I know. Get on with it, right? Okay. We're going to practice walking for Mommy so we can surprise her in the morning."
James waved both hands as if in excitement, and Castle got up on his knees to set James away. He let go so that the boy was standing on his own, and then Castle backed up a little, dragging Sasha with him by the collar.
"Okay. No wolf help. Just you and me, James." He held out a hand to the boy, urging him forward. "Come on. You can do it. You're already so close."
James's little fingers spread out as if for stability and he swayed on his feet, clearly thinking about it.
"You got it, Jay. You can do it. Just take a little step forward." Castle scooted back just as James wavered forward. "Yeah, that's it. You got it."
The boy lifted both hands to Castle, straining towards him, but not moving.
"I'm here. All you have to do is take a step. Come on, Jay." He held out both hands now, turned his head for a second to give Sasha a sharp stay. He looked back at James, wriggled his fingers. "You've been doing it all this time. Now without the dog."
"Dadada," James babbled, beginning to look anxious.
"I'm right here. I'm here. Not going to leave you. You know I love you, Jay. You know I do. Come on."
James was rocking on his feet, hands held out to Castle, so he scooted in a little more, nearly touching the boy's fingers.
"Here we go. How's this? I'm not going to leave you out here alone. It might be kind of scary, but-"
All of the sudden, James rocketed forward, taking two running steps right into Castle's arms with a sharp laugh. Castle grunted and fell back, embracing his son, only to get Sasha's licking-tongue excitement all over them.
"Okay, okay, you did it. You were running, but that counts. What a good job, James."
He kissed James's cheeks like Kate always did, cupping the little face in his hands, even as Sasha bounced around them, threading through Castle's raised knees to get at them.
James made a kissing noise back and patted Castle's chest, babbling dadada as Castle hugged him.
"You ready? We'll go again. We can surprise Mommy when I go wake her up for my good night kiss."
"Iss!"
Castle laughed and kissed him, just because he'd asked, and then he set the boy away again. Farther away this time, more than arm's length.
It wasn't a choice; he didn't want it to be a choice. He loved Kate but that didn't mean that the bursting love in his chest for his son was a betrayal of her.
James bounced a little, like he might try jumping this time, and Castle grinned back, held out his arms.
"I'm really glad you're here. You know that? Didn't think I'd be able to say that, but it's true. Love you, Jay-"
And right at that moment, James started walking. Straight for his father's arms.
Kate woke instantly, going from deep sleep to awareness like she hadn't been asleep at all. She held her breath, sensing a presence in the room, something both familiar and other that touched her like fingers on her neck, intimate. She didn't open her eyes at first, too heavy to come the rest of the way, and she guessed it was somewhere around eleven.
Only a little over an hour since she'd gone to bed, and he definitely should be. James. He was in her bedroom.
Where had Castle gone? He couldn't be far behind their little wolf.
She could hear James moving, so silent, intent on something, she didn't know what. She didn't open her eyes to look, drifting a little with the calm sense of him with her. She could picture his sweet face, the tilt of his head and the serious grey-blue eyes, the way he studied and focused until he'd accomplished it. Whatever it was.
What was he doing?
Kate cracked an eye open and saw her baby boy, saw his fisted hands held out before him, walking.
Walking.
Holy shit.
Castle had said it would be soon, but she hadn't really believed it - James was so young - and now look at him. Kate shifted in bed, but James had his back to her now, feet planted firmly before the chair next to the open bathroom door. He was doing something there, focused, and Kate lowered herself back to the bed to watch, keeping quiet.
She didn't want to startle him, standing as he was at the chair with his hands in little fists, moving something around or building something. Did he have his blocks? She didn't see any toys. But he had definitely been walking - that short distance she had seen when she'd opened her eyes.
She wanted to see him do it again, but she didn't want to interrupt his game.
Kate watched him from her spot on the bed, kept her cheek against the mattress, let the pillow hide her. James seemed to be either resting or gearing himself up, but then he turned and she could see what he'd left on the cushion of the chair.
Cheerios?
She was so confounded by the cheerios that she almost missed his first step. He rocked forward and seemed to pitch himself headlong across the floor, rushing towards his next stop. But the whole time - he was so quiet and steady, so silent, a natural gift for stealth. Her little spy baby.
James got to her bedside table, right beside her, and she held her breath to keep from catching his attention. James got a clenched hand up to the wooden top and then opened his little fist. He placed a small Cheerio right before her alarm clock, very precisely, just so. He seemed to study it a moment, and then he wobbled and turned straight to her.
He swayed precariously on the rug before the bed, but his hands remained in stubborn fists. His eye level was below the mattress, and he hadn't seen her yet. James slowly opened a hand as he stood, and revealed his precious cargo.
He had two Cheerios left in that fist, and they seemed to be stuck to his sweaty little palm. He stood there, thinking, waving his hand a little, perplexed at this problem, and Kate pressed her lips together to keep from laughing.
She heard a soft noise that didn't disturb James's concentration, but when Kate looked, she saw Castle standing in the doorway, watching their son from the hall, staying hidden. He put a finger to his lips and she echoed him, turning her eyes back to their son.
The boy managed to get both cheerios unstuck from his hand. He looked so pleased with himself that Kate nearly ruined it by laughing, but she waited, mounds of pillows and bedcovers keeping her hidden, and she watched.
James had one Cheerio in each hand in a pincer grip, and he lifted his head to study his next goal - the mattress.
Kate froze, closed her eyes to keep from ruining it.
She could hear him only barely, the sound of his bare feet scuffling the rug as he got closer, and then his breathing as he worked his way to the bed. She felt the small little bump as his jerky movements made him collide with the mattress, and then she could feel the stretch of the sheet under her as he clung with one hand.
It was a familiar feeling from these last few weeks. Castle liked to turn James loose, let the boy wake her up in the morning when coffee was ready. He would try to climb the bed to get to her, and sometimes he was half successful.
She was dying to know what came next, aching to open her eyes, but she didn't want to ruin it. She wanted him to leave his Cheerios like a little Santa and then go back to his daddy so proud of himself.
But damn, it took everything in her not to peek.
Then she felt little fingers on her face, careful and soft, and she had to open her eyes. She absolutely had to see him.
He was peering at her, close, nose to nose, and she smiled. It made him smile back, the shy one tonight, and he buried his face in the side of the bed.
"James," she murmured, lifting a hand from the mattress to skim his shoulder and up to his head. She saw Castle haunting the doorway now and she gave him a beckoning look, then glanced back down at James. "Hey, baby. What are you doing with those?"
"Daddy?" he asked.
"Daddy's right here."
James made a frustrated noise and she saw he still had his Cheerios, but they were in each fist now.
"Are you delivering Cheerios?"
"Mom-ma!"
She laughed as Castle came into the room. "Yeah, they're stuck in your hand again. I see."
"Uck," he echoed.
She saw Castle squatting down just beyond him, leaving them alone to interact. She reached out and opened his left fist, untangling him from the fitted bedsheet. The Cheerio was perched on his palm. "I saw you walking, little wolf. You like walking?"
"Ock."
"Walking with Cheerios stuck to your hand," she murmured. She rescued both Cheerios from his hands, and she set them in a row on the edge of the mattress between them.
James gave her a beautiful smile, sweet surprise, a kind of dawning adoration.
"Yeah," she hummed. "Not the only one who likes things to line up, Jay."
Castle loomed over James now, inserting himself into their tableau, and James tilted his head back to look, falling backwards into his father. Kate smiled to herself as Castle picked him up, and James silently leaned towards his lonely Cheerios.
But no, he was leaning for her, and Kate sat up and received the boy into her arms. James squirmed in close to her chest and Kate hugged him back, kissing his temple and cheeks, his sweat-and-cheerios-smelling neck.
"Kate," Castle warned.
"I'm okay," she promised. "I'm really okay."
But of course, it was late for her, and it had been a PT day, and she was still exhausted; she'd been woken from a dead sleep. Her arms were shaking so badly Castle might have to take her son before she dropped him.
If she couldn't endure carrying her son, she couldn't possibly hold up her firearm on the range and get her qualification back. Damn it. She really wanted to do that. Next on her list.
"Did you see him walking?" she asked, changing the subject.
Castle grinned and sank down on the mattress with them. "Yeah. We were practicing for you downstairs."
Kate kissed her boy's cheek as he laid against her. "You're all worn out from walking, aren't you? What a good job you did, Jay. You like it?"
"He was excited when I pulled out the Cheerios for reward, but I think he likes hanging on to Sasha more."
James popped his head up to look at his daddy, eyes bright. "O's?"
"You had a lot of O's, wolf. And then you wanted to play with them."
James buried his face back down in her shirt as if ducking his daddy's frown, but then a wide yawn cracked his face.
"James, say good night to Mommy. You need to be in bed."
At bed, James stiffened and wriggled as if to get away, but he went from one side of her chest to the other, hiding his face in her neck. Hiding from bedtime.
Kate laughed, glanced up at Castle. He was shaking his head, but she could see a faint amusement splintering his serious and sober concern.
"I'm okay," she reminded him. "A couple hours isn't the end of the world. And it's even better if you help. Let him sit with us? He'll settle down."
Castle sighed, shoulders slumping, but he never said no. He never said no. Even though they both knew James wouldn't fall asleep like this.
Castle crawled into bed with them and he wrapped his arms around them both, being her strength while hers kept failing.
James lifted his head from her and grinned at them both. "O's?"
"You gave them all away, little wolf," Castle said. "Now lay down. It's bedtime for you and for mommy."
And James laid back down again, though they all knew it wouldn't be for long.
Castle gave up.
"All right. We're done. Mommy needs sleep more than you do, that's for sure, and she's not getting it."
"No, no, Castle, I'm-"
He gave her a look - he knew it was a 'father-face', as she called it, the stern one reserved for when James was being stubborn - but he couldn't help it. She was worse than the baby. He took James off of her chest and swung his own feet out of bed, heading for the kid's room.
"Wait," she sighed. "Wait, let me come with you."
He didn't protest. After a day with PT, she was more wobbly than James, but the boy got his stubbornness from her, that was for damn sure. Nothing Castle said was going to make her stay down when it came to bedtime. She was adamant. It was her new rule - when they were here, James got them both.
Of course, Kate was the one who had been forced to hold Castle down in bed last week. James had been waking up in the middle of the night, and maybe it had started out as needing that reassurance that they both would come when he cried, maybe he had just needed to see their faces, but after days of three in the morning wake-up calls and Castle trudging to the crib and gathering his son to his chest - well, Kate didn't need that either, trying to recover.
James had just wanted to play. It had been King's idea that maybe they should just let him cry it out, see if he'd go back to sleep when they didn't come. But Castle's sense of guilt hadn't been comfortable with that idea.
He'd told her, tie me to the bed if you have to. James had cried and, yeah, sure enough, Castle had woken to find himself handcuffed. When and where in the hell she'd found the energy to do that, he'd had no idea, but it had worked. He hadn't gotten up to get James out of bed that three a.m. and James had cried for a solid hour.
And then fallen asleep.
And hadn't woken up since. Back to sleeping through the night, and perfectly fine.
"Bedtime, kiddo. Stop squirming. It's nearly eleven-thirty," he muttered. But he found himself brushing his lips over James's temple, his cheek, as he waited for Kate at the door.
She made it to him, moving slowly but at least not hunched over. The PT was getting her back into fighting condition, rebuilding her body after the advanced chelation had worn it down so badly. And the sweating helped her get rid of toxins, so even if it made Castle discontent, watching her exhaust herself, he was on board with the sweating.
They still found other ways to sweat.
"Ready," she said, nudging him. "James, baby, no. Don't pull on my hair."
Castle angled James away from her, unwrapping the hair from the boy's fist. He was fast, and he'd figured out that twirling his fingers in her hair made Mommy sappy as hell, and he got his way like that. He was a clever little wolf.
"How fast did he learn to walk?" Kate murmured, her fingers wrapped around James's little fist. "Just in one night?"
"That's not that fast," he answered. "I looked up the baby milestones. Some kids are walking as young as eight months. He's nine."
"Yeah," she said, sounding a little distracted.
When they got to the baby's room, James wriggled a little as if to test the bonds of Castle's arms. He didn't offer any flexibility, and besides, James was rubbing his face against Castle's chest, obviously on his way down.
"It's late, Jay. You'll feel so much better with some sleep." He found a Cheerio in a fold of the boy's pajamas and plucked it out, hid it in his back pocket before James could see it. "Don't fuss, wolf. You got a lot of extra time out of Mommy."
"And maybe no more snacks right before bed, Castle. Stirs him up."
He grunted and gave her another look - she wasn't the one wrangling the kid twenty-four/seven, but that wasn't her fault either. She wanted to be the one. She had absolutely hated being on restricted movement with James.
Castle leaned over the crib and laid James in it, but the boy scrambled back up, clutching the bars and offering his best pouting face. "Daddy." A quivering lip. "Momma. Mommy, Mommy, Mommy."
"Oh, that's - he doesn't call me mommy-"
"Nope. Bedtime. No exceptions, no take-backs, no do-overs," Castle declared. "And if you're not sleepy, kid, you can play with the lullaby machine." He reached in and thumbed on the plastic lights-and-sounds playskool thing; it set up a soothing tone and the screen cast a pale blue glow across James's bed.
"Sorry, baby, but I think Daddy's right. We both need sleep," Kate murmured. She reached in and cupped his cheeks, kissing back and forth until James's giggled, and then she released him, both beaming smiles.
James's was shy, a little awestruck. But he reached for her when she stepped back, fingers out, straining. "Mama."
Castle took his hand and kissed those fingers. "You make Mommy really happy, wolf, but it's bedtime. Love you. You know I do. But time for bed."
He kissed the top of James's head and moved Kate for the door. She went easier than he'd thought, and at the threshold, she was the one to turn off the light.
They heard James's rump hit the crib mattress and then his fingers on the lullaby machine. They could see his face in the blue glow, already growing slack with tiredness. He'd be asleep soon.
Now for Kate.