"So I was thinking Thai, but I'm open to suggestions." Castle says, coming out of their bedroom with his hair still damp enough that coalescent droplets cling to the very ends, threating to freefall down to his jaw. He rakes his hand through the dark mop, grimacing as it comes away wet and he has to wipe it off against his pants.
And Kate can't help the stretch of her mouth into a sappy and entirely ridiculous smile. For him, as always. She jiggles her knees underneath Brooke to get the little girl's attention. "Hey baby, look at your uncle. He forgot to dry off properly. Isn't he silly?"
"I was hurrying."
"I can tell." She smirks at him, hooking an arm tight around Brooke's stomach where it's soft and round with baby fat so she can stretch her other hand towards him, reel him in. He curls an arm around her shoulders and trails his fingertips down to skim the crown of their niece's head.
Castle's mouth lands at her cheek with so much tenderness, the way their bodies meet always cutting swathes through the teasing and the fighting and the sighs that feel a little too much like real frustration. At their core, the two of them entwine in adoration.
To lose him now would be like having to unstitch herself, come undone in the process. Not that that's going to happen. Low down in her stomach, swarms of butterflies send tiny ripples of desire racing through her system.
They came in hoards when he quietly stood up from behind her, tucked their drowsy niece safely back into the bassinet and returned to stretch himself along the length of her, lithe and immediately responsive. He kissed her with her confession thick around them, coming in to lie flush against their lines and curves like an unshakeable truth.
Yes, Castle. She wants to get pregnant.
Not. . .right now. She's not about to just throw away her contraceptives and let go of any and all self-control she tries to pretend that she possesses. But at some point in the future, yes. She would like to have his children.
She can think of nothing else she wants more. Her whole body sings with delight at the prospect. And from the way he breaks into a grin every time they make eye contact she'd guess that he feels the same.
"Thai sounds great. I'll bathe her while you order."
His arm drops from around her shoulders and he sits back, knees carefully pressed together. His eyes track the crease of his pants and settle on the floorboards, steadily not coming anywhere close to being in range of making eye contact with her.
"Right. Yeah." He mutters, sliding his phone free from his pocket so obscenely slowly that Kate can't help the exasperated sigh, loud enough that it makes Brooke startle and tip her head backward to stare at her aunt.
Kate takes a moment to contort her face into something that makes her niece smile before she shifts closer to him on the couch, her free hand coming up to flirt with his jawline as she leans in. Against his mouth, she hovers close enough to taste. "You wanted to do it?"
"No." He lifts his chin to brush his mouth over hers, sweet and not at all satisfying. "Not- no."
"Then what?"
All of the fight drains out of him and he falls forward, his forehead meeting her clavicle. His groan travels down the footholds of her ribcage and curls in the hollowed out place at her hipbones, a tide of gooseflesh in its wake. "It's stupid."
"Tell me." Kate cradles the back of his head, her lap suddenly filled with two children. And it's not news to her that Castle has a childish side, that he finds it physically impossible to be serious for any sustained length of time, but this is a little much even for him.
Pushing on his shoulder until he sits back from her again, Kate sets her hand at his knee and waits him out.
"I wanted. . .to watch you do it."
"That's it?" Her eyebrow arches almost of its own accord and Beckett presses her thumb into the cleft of his chin, coming in to press her smile to the seam of his mouth. "Castle, I already knew that. I know you love watching me with her."
"I love this side of you. It's kind of weird to see. I mean, I've seen you shoot people. I never would have guessed how amazing you'd be with kids."
Her cheeks flame at that, his adoration inherent in every word that trips off of his tongue. Easy, as if he's not affording himself the time to think about it. "I've always loved kids. That innocence, you know? Finding joy in the simple things. We could learn a lot from them."
"And we will." In his voice, the whole of their future spools together into something fragile but here, beautiful and calling out for her touch.
He beams at her, standing up from the couch and taking her hand to tug her up too. She ends up pressed half against his side, Brooke sandwiched between them, and something about it feels so completely perfect that Kate presses her face into his shoulder and closes her eyes to savour the tranquillity humming in every cell.
She lets him lead her back into the bathroom, propping herself up with a hip against the doorframe and watching as he fills the baby bathtub. He checks the temperature against his wrist and turns over his shoulder to glance at her, a smile quirking the corners of his mouth.
"You good?"
Sinking down to the tile, Kate stretches her legs out in front of her and rests the baby in the valley of her thighs, cushioning her there so she can get her undressed. "We're fine."
"Great. I'll order and watch at the same time, then." Castle settles himself on the closed lid of the toilet and pulls out his phone, tapping in the number for the Thai place from memory.
Taking a moment to observe how he watches her, Kate decides to immerse herself completely in the grinning baby girl in her lap. It takes almost no effort at all to tune out the sound of Castle's voice, not when Brooke is grasping for the fingers descending towards her.
A tiny fist wraps around Kate's index finger and she grins, leaning down to scatter kisses across the little girl's forehead and cheeks and blowing raspberries in the crook of her neck where she's warm and sweaty with sleep that have giggles spilling from the font of her mouth.
She manages to navigate the romper and its hundred thousand poppers without obstacle, but getting the girl herself out of it is in practice so much more complicated than she theoretically assumed. How is it that Brooke has suddenly grown several extra limbs and is proceeding to wave them around so rapidly that Kate can't even get a hold of one?
Eventually, after stooping to pleading with the four month old and praying that Castle is too distracted with his phone call to pay attention to what she's doing; Kate manages to get the baby down to just her diaper.
Castle changed her in between their too-heated, too-fast make out session and the achingly cold shower he took, so it's a simple matter of undoing the tabs and setting her squirming, naked niece into the bathtub.
Kate manoeuvres the girl and cradles her skull in her palm, a hand free to swirl in the water and splash it over her. Brooke's little face crumples, her lower lip trembling as her eyes screw closed and she starts to wail.
"Oh, baby, Mommy said you like bath time. You're okay, come on. Shh."
She leans in to press a kiss to the girl's forehead, hovering there as if the closeness of her body can offer some small comfort. At her side, Castle gets to his knees on the tile and slides a hand into the water with her.
"If you support her shoulders a little more like this she'll feel more secure. Might make her feel better about it." He circles her wrist in two fingers and guides her hand to the correct position at Brooke's back, covering it in his palm and nudging his fingers in between her own.
Kate wriggles her way out from underneath him and sits back on her heels, pressing a wrist to her forehead a moment and using it to scrub back from her face the tiny wisps of hair that escaped from her ponytail. Eyes burning with hot and entirely stupid tears, she stares at the stretch of her pants over her knees.
Castle finishes up with bathing their niece and lifts her free from the tub, swaddling her in a towel and cradling her as he curls his fingers around Kate's shoulder. "Hey, don't beat yourself up. It takes a while to work out what you're doing. Should have seen me with newborn Alexis."
"I made her cry."
"Here." Kate takes the baby from him, towel and all, and cradles the girl close to her chest. Warm and soft and beaming up at her, Brooke splays her hand at Kate's clavicle and brings the other to tangle in Beckett's hair.
She lays her head against Kate's chest and chews on her own fist, already going limp with contentment. Kate kisses the downy hair over and over, draws in that distinct clean-baby smell.
"See. She adores you."
Kate tightens her arms around the girl and buries her nose in the crook of her neck, taking a moment to get herself together. It's so pathetic and her cheeks are aflame, but she's filling up with doubt like a rising tide and she already tastes salt at the back of her throat.
"I'm going to be so clueless."
"Kate," Castle laughs, shifting closer to hook an arm at her shoulders and bring them both in against his chest. He sets his grin against her cheek and rests the tip of his finger against Brooke's palm until her fist curls around the digit. "You think there's a parent in the world that doesn't feel that way? And don't forget I've done all of this before. I'll be right there the whole time."
"That's. . .worse."
She bites at her lip and tries desperately not to look at him, busying herself instead with drying all of the creases and folds of her niece's body.
"Worse how?" Castle sits back as if he can tell that she needs room to accommodate her shame, can't bear to have him near for this.
"That we're not in it together. Learning how to do this together. You'll be laughing at me while I'm getting the most basic things wrong."
He clutches at her, cupping her jaw to bring her face up to his so he can lay claim to her mouth, stroking his tongue inside. It's entirely too hot considering the baby in her arms, but Kate can't help herself. She arches into him and releases a breathy moan that curls like mist around the sentry row of his teeth.
"Kate, no. This is the first time. This will be my first time with our baby. Yours and mine. And anyway, I haven't had a baby for twenty years. Some of it is second nature, but a lot of it is brand new to me as well. Every moment of it I'll be with you, screwing up just as much. Probably worse."
"Okay. Yeah, okay." Kate murmurs, her palm somehow pressed to his chest so she feels the desperate thud of his pulse against her heartline. "Right. Sorry. I was being stupid."
"A little bit, yeah." He teases, taking the baby from her arms and standing to head out to the changing mat he left on their bed. Stopping in the doorway, Castle turns back and levels her with a gaze that makes her liquid, would floor her were she not already cross-legged on the tile. "And Kate? I would never, ever laugh at you. Not now, and especially not when it comes to our children."
She watches him go, muttering quietly to their niece as he lays her down on the changing mat and gets her into a diaper so swiftly Brooke hardly even seems to notice. Kate comes to sit at the end of the bed and watch him change Brooke into a fresh romper.
The little girl looks so soft and warm and sleepy that once he's done, Kate can't help but scoop her up and cradle her close. Her mother always used to say that cuddles after bathtime were her favourite part of Kate's childhood. The weight of her daughter in her arms so perfect, so inherently right that she just wanted to bask in it.
Until this moment, Kate never quite understood.
Now, she almost wants to tell Castle screw the wedding, screw protocol, let's make a baby. That would be stupid, though. They're not there yet, even if the phantom weight of her own children against her chest is a near-constant thought.
And yeah, okay. She wants to be married to the father of her children, not just living with him. "How about May? May seventh."
"May?" Castle raises an eyebrow at her, having returned with a bottle for Brooke and a glass of wine for Kate.
"Marry me. In May."
Kate's heart lurches in her throat at the look on his face, how he sways on his feet and then almost drops her glass in his haste to get to her. Somehow, he manages to crush her in a hug and simultaneously avoid the baby.
"Three months? That's pretty soon."
"I know. I want to be your wife, Rick." She grins at him, kisses her way up from his chin to settle at his temple.
He juggles her and the glass and the bottle until she ends up mashed half against his chest, Brooke cradled in the crook of Kate's elbow with half her weight supported by her uncle's stomach. Kate lifts the bottle to the girl's mouth and waits for her to latch on, grinning when she finally does.
She's never actually fed a baby before. It's amazing, an amniotic bubble around the two of them that stretches to include Castle when he props his chin at her shoulder and kisses her earlobe. "May seventh is a Wednesday. How about the tenth?"
"Sure. May tenth. I don't want anything huge, Castle. Just the people who matter."
"Me either." His words hit the crag of her jaw, warming the skin with their absolute truth. "I've done that twice before and it kind of sucked. I was thinking we could do it in the Hamptons."
"Oh, perfect. Yeah. Let's get married in the Hamptons." Kate breathes, snuggling down against his body and letting her eyes slip closed. They haven't eaten dinner yet, it's probably not even six thirty, but suddenly she wants nothing more than to fall asleep to the steady card of his fingers through her hair.
"Hey Kate?" He murmurs, laughing at her a little. "Wake up a second."
"M'awake. What is it?"
"I love you."
A knock at the door trails after his words, spoiling the moment somewhat. He climbs out of bed and snags his wallet from the nightstand, coming to a halt at the touch of Kate's fingers to his wrist. "I love you too, Castle. Now go get dinner."
She hears him laughing all the way to the front door.