Chapter Text
Her desk is full again. She hasn't been gone five minutes and it's full of bright pastel bags and boxes hastily wrapped in paper featuring chubby, smiling baby faces or silver script congratulating her on her upcoming blessed event. And the pièce de résistance—one of those horrible calendars with babies dressed as flowers and the last eleven weeks already Xd out.
She's going to kill Castle the absolute first chance she gets. She'd kill Esposito and Ryan, too, for the part she has no doubt they've played in spreading the story, but she'll wait a while on that. She'll wait until their desks stop filling up with thick wedding catalogs and tacky engagement presents.
"Not that one!" Castle calls out just as she's about to sweep one of the bigger gift bags into the the third box. Fourth, maybe. She's lost count of how many she's filled.
It's mostly cheap, silly stuff—bibs and teething rings and corner-store onesies—but the shelter she called sounded excited enough about it. Better still, they're happy to take it, gift bags and all. She just has to snip off the tag cards and fish for envelopes without actually unwrapping anything.
"Just not that . . . oh, wow." He pulls up short and takes a big step backward. "Wow. You're still mad." Another step. "You are still really mad."
She reaches down to her desk chair and plucks a pink inflatable plastic ring from it. "Oh, why would I be mad, Castle?"
He frowns at the pillow. "This is the wrong kind anyway. totally useless. What you want is . . . " His sense of self-preservation belatedly kicks in. " . . . probably not to talk about post-partum pillows in the workplace."
"You THINK?" She throws it him.
He catches it, considering just a second before he rolls Esposito's chair out and deposits it there. "Ok, ok. But that one . . . the bag. It's not a joke." He edges toward her cautiously. "Look. Not a baby bag. It's for you."
She does look. She doesn't want to, but he's looking eager. He's looking as shy and as contrite as he can manage. She hates to admit it, but he's piqued her curiosity. She tugs at the ribbon holding the two handles together and fans aside the spray of tissue paper. An incredible scent wafts up to meet her. She bends for a closer look.
It's a tiny, tight cluster of fragrant purple. She reaches in to lift it out, surprised to find the the little pot wedged in so carefully and resting on a plastic tray to catch any moisture from the bottom.
"Heliotrope?" She's trying hard not to smile, but it's such a pretty little thing. The color is gorgeous even in the harsh bullpen light.
He nods, trying for neutral, but he's proud of himself. "They're actually pretty easy. Shade tolerant, and they can go a few days without water. Good for window boxes or a roof . . ." He looks uncertain suddenly. "Do you . . . you have to have some place . . . A little bit of outside?" He trails off, his face falling like he's sad at the thought she might not.
"I do," she says quietly, surprised that her voice is a little thick. "I've got a couple things . . ." She starts to tell him. Starts to think that she could show him and shuts that down quick. "I have a place."
"Good." He bobs his head. An eager nod before his eyes drop. "I am sorry, you know." He flicks a hand at the spread of gifts. "Cop humor. Think I kind of . . . underestimated the power. I wasn't . . . for once I wasn't trying to make trouble for you."
"Yeah, well . . . it's a gift, I guess." She kicks at one of the boxes at her feet. She wants to give him a hard time. She wants to make him squirm a little, but the sight and scent of the little clutch of flowers do their work. "If you were really sorry, you'd help me pack these up, though."
He moves instantly, grimacing as he peeks in at one cheap, tacky thing after the other. "The shelter can really use this crap?"
"So they say." She lifts a bag out of the box at her feet and sets it aside. She wants its corner and the leftover space around it for an awkward oblong package. Bath toys or something. "I guess crap is better than nothing at all."
He stills. She looks up and catches him staring at the small bag she's just displaced. "What?"
"Nothing," he says, hurriedly going back to work. "Just . . . nothing. You can send them like this? Still wrapped?"
"It's from you, isn't it?" She knocks the bag with her knuckles. Of course it's from him, now that she looks. The paper is high end. Deep, subdued purples, with shapes punched out here and there. Prams and rattles and a stork carrying a bundle. The padding looks like hand-dyed raffia. No Party City or Dollar Store for him, even for a joke. "Castle!" she says sharply.
"Um. Maybe?" He swallows hard. "Ok, ok. I was weak. But the flowers. Those are genuinely an apol . . . oh, don't look. Just . . ."
He tries to reach past her when she goes for the bag, but she slaps his hand away.
"Baby Heliotrope will end you, Castle."
She has to look now. She snatches it up and plops into her chair, spinning away from him. Her fingers sift through the raffia, brushing something outrageously soft every once in a while.
"Castle," she breathes as she lifts it out. A tiny knit sweater that criss-crosses in the front like a kimono. The yarn ripples with every shade of purple—every shade the flowers will take on as they move through a year's worth of seasons.
"There's a . . ." he stammers. "A little hat, too."
"Oh my God." She reaches for it, her fingers running over every inch as she spreads the sweater in her lap. The frilled little brim with a contrasting emerald satin ribbon running above it. "This is . . . illegally cute. Castle."
"I know." He drops into his chair, leaning to look over his shoulder. "Little girls' clothes. They're like a drug."
"You realize how that sounds?" She twists to give him a look.
"Hey, I have a little girl."
"You have a fifteen-year-old."
"Don't remind me," he grumbles. "I'm telling you, though. Everything is so cute and tiny, whether its frills or tough little overalls. And that's before you even have it on her. When you see it with their chubby little fists and . . . Like a drug," he says again. He clears his throat, embarrassed, but he can't resist. He reaches out to trace a finger around the soft perimeter of the tiny sleeve. "And I obviously just blew ten years' worth of sobriety on these. You might show a little sympathy, Beckett."
She turns to him, scowling. Playing it up like just like him, but the truth is, she's speechless with how weird this is. How ridiculously . . . moving and entirely too prone to make her picture toothless blue-eyed smiles and tiny pink fists. She shakes herself before the moment can get any further away from her than it already has.
"Well. Some little girl down at Phoenix House is going to be the envy of everyone." She folds the sweater, trying not to linger, but it's hard to let go.
"Unless." He's staring at the floor, then abruptly not staring at the floor. Abruptly, he's staring at her and there's no mystery at all to what he's picturing."You could hold on to it."
"Hold on to it?" she echoes and somehow it's not scornful like she meant it to be. She definitely meant it that way, and she can't think how she went wrong.
"You know. For someday." He goes red. Completely red, like he hadn't thought how that sounds, and even so, his mouth keeps moving. "I mean. You can't be thinking of depriving the next generation—the world of . . ." He makes a sweeping gesture, all up and down her body. He's going for salacious. Kidding. That's what he's going for, but his eyes fix on hers, and he's not kidding at all. "You'll want it someday, won't . . . won't you?"
That jars her out of it. The quiet, earnest question that calls up the way he looked at her in Dana Kenyon's office. The way every detail came so easily to him.
"Castle!" She manages to make his name a reprimand, but she's as red as he is. She can feel it from her toes to the tips of her ears. She stuffs the hat in the bag, poking it down on top of the sweater and pushing the whole thing away like it's red hot.
"Ok, ok." He holds up his hands and scans the desk like he's prepping to fend off any and all throwable things. "So we're not at the stage of our partnership where we discuss family planning."
"We will never be at that stage." She hurls an unwrapped pack of burp cloths into the open box between their feet. They land softly, of course. They're burp cloths. It's tremendously unsatisfying. She roots around for something heavy. Something that might break something else, and gives him a narrow-eyed look. "Got it?"
"Never," he says almost evenly. "Got it."
They both go back to the task at hand. Working with their backs to one another now, because it's not quite gone. That awkward, compelling moment lingers just enough that he's as happy to have the busy work as she is. It quickens their pace, at least, and everything's boxed up soon enough.
"Well. That's that." He slaps on a last piece of tape and pushes to his feet, like he's going all of a sudden.
He is. He seems to be going in a hurry, and she tells herself she's glad about it. That they sooner the sun sets on their imaginary daughter, the better.
"That's that. Thanks, Castle." She says, pulling against a tight smile that doesn't know quite what it wants to be. "Thanks for helping me clean up your mess."
"Anytime." He smiles, too, but he's fidgeting. Nervous. Or still uncomfortable.
The idea leaves her with an odd, blue sort of feeling. "Ok. Well. Night."
"Night." He's halfway across the bullpen when he says it. Stabbing at the elevator button and barely giving her a wave over his shoulder.
She looks away. Presses down on at whatever it is that's trying to well up. She scoops up the little flowerpot and sets it carefully back in the bag, trying to remember the lift their scent gave her just a moment ago. She uses her toes to nudge the sealed-up boxes under her desk. She should get someone to help her bring them down, but she doesn't feel like it. She'll take care of them in the morning.
She rolls open the big bottom desk drawer to retrieve her purse and there it is. She has no idea how he—the least stealthy person she's ever met—managed it, but there it is. The purple bag, brimming with hand-dyed raffia and the little hat just peeking out. He's torn the card off the handle. Whatever he wrote originally, he's torn away all of it, save a ragged corner crowded with tiny letters.
For Someday.