As promised, I present to you the future Castles!
Thank you to everyone who reviewed/favourited/followed - you're all amazing!
Marlowe is not currently practicing walking in the death traps that are high heels...(safety warning: avoid them at all costs. They're evil.) I don't own anything you recognise.
Kate Beckett had often been outnumbered by men. She was a woman in a very male-dominated job, and as a girl had often hung out with the boys, preferring their antics to those of the girls in her area.
So when the only children she produced were boys, no one was more amused than her father.
"You know," he told Castle after the announcement of his first grandson's birth. "Until Katie found out how babies were made, she was constantly asking us for a big brother, and was devastated when we told her it was impossible." Kate had glared sleepily at Jim as she nursed Nathan Alexander, causing both her husband and her father to chuckle.
When they had taken their son home, it was clear that Rick was going to join in the childish actions of the new-born. More often than not she found them face to face giggling or blowing bubbles of saliva at each other, and it had only gotten funnier as Nathan got older, and then Nicolas came along. The pair of them were inseparable. The seven-year-old was incredibly protective of 'Nicky' who tottered around on toddler's legs after his older brother, insisting he do everything that 'Afe' got to do. Her three boys – or men, as Nate insisted – were incorrigible. Day after day she would come home to find them perched side by side on the kitchen counter with flour in their hair and egg shells scattered around them as they spread gooey cake mixture on her recently cleaned work surface.
Possibly the most trying time was when the third one came along: James arrived four weeks premature just as Rick had left to fly out to a conference about the next Nikki Heat film. Nathan was thirteen and was entering into his first bout of teenage rebellion. His impatience with his parents transferred to Nicky and the house was always filled with their angry shouts as they fought, loudly and dramatically. Neither of them were enthusiastic about another sibling and throughout her pregnancy Kate had to coax them into helping reorganise their old things for the incoming arrival. After their little brother was born it had all changed, but the absence of their father over the first two days proved stressful for them all.
After the twins were born, she swore to Castle that they were never having any more. He was happy to agree – after all, he had his team of five plus Alexis. The youngest boys – Matthew and Joseph – learnt at a young age that their father was the one to turn to if they wanted something in particular, usually an item that Kate had banned after previous experience with one of the others. One time it was custard in the water guns during the summer vacation: Nathan and Nicolas were permanently under scrutiny from the neighbours after they had sprayed caramel sauce all over the building, and she was definitely not going to deal with a similar scenario. Unfortunately Nate would enthusiastically encourage them whenever they visited the college dorms, but she had sternly washed her hands of any and all consequences.
She had found a safe haven in her step-daughter. Alexis was always more of a friend than a daughter, someone she could run to and with whom she could shelter from the current storm of testosterone in the loft. Add in Lanie, and their girly nights in could turn into moments of extreme hilarity, like the time they climbed onto Alexis's kitchen furniture and played air guitar to Queen. Alexis's husband had quickly run out to join Castle and the boys, picking up Kevin and Javi on the way, desperate to avoid the giggling, slightly drunk women stumbling around his living room. As her children grew, it became easier for Kate to spend nights out, but she would always return in time to oversee the bedtime routine and take Castle to bed, dragging him away from whatever gadget he had picked up this time.
Even in the workplace, she was an honorary mother. Promoted to Captain three years after James was born, she was known around the entirety of the NYPD for her protectiveness of all her detectives. Her longest standing 'kids' were obviously Ryan and Esposito. There was a photo of the three of them on her desk next to the Castle family photo from their first days in Homicide. They had started off like brothers to her, intimidating any boyfriend she may have (much to her chagrin) and dragging her along to the pub where they attempted to outdrink her. It had continued like that – and in some ways, still did – but she knew that the beginning of Castle's NYPD career had them calling the pair 'Mom' and 'Dad'. And in a way, she was in loco parentis – they were a team, and she was their leader, setting an example for her boys to follow.
But what had irked her was Castle's dismissive attitude to their sons' often irresponsible actions. His excuse was that he had been the same with Alexis, but she told him over and over that Alexis was one amazing woman that raised him more than he raised her, and that their five boys would not ground themselves for jumping a turnstile, so he had to be stricter. Nothing doing, apparently, so she had turned her strict-mother-who-is-only-looking-out-for-you-but- carries-a-gun-so-beware glare on, reducing all five young men to quivering wrecks as they wrote out reasons why they would not pretend to be Tarzan while drunk, nor would they fill the elevator with balloons or hide dozens of yellow rubber ducks in their college professors' offices. As for Castle, he was confined to the couch for three days while he thought about the negative points of replacing her shampoo with bright green hair dye.
None of them had inherited either parent's understanding of looking smart but being comfortable. At Alexis's wedding she had had to shove them into suits and plead with them to brush their hair, looking to Rick for help only to find him studying his own reflection in the mirror. All five boys had got their father's 'ruggedly handsome' looks and twinkling blue eyes, and Kate found herself welling up with pride at their own weddings as they gazed at their brides with the same love that had never died in Castle's.
Even when they were all adults, the twins at 22, James at 27, Nicky at 35 and Nate at 40, they would meekly follow her as she led them and their own broods through the park as they went for a Christmas morning stroll. And Castle would still bring up the rear, tripping over his shoelaces that he had neglected to retie the other six times and whining about how he was too old to exercise.
As always, a well-calculated, long-suffering look of adoration tinged with exasperation would colour Kate Beckett's features, as she slowed to peck her husband on the cheek. "We'll cuddle later, Castle."
They were her boys, and her boys forever.
How'd I do? Reviews would be lovely, please :)
(I always wanted a big brother...*sigh* I just had to adopt my friends' instead)
Prompts/requests are still welcome! I have a long summer in which to write, so send them on up!
Laters
~wolfergirl
