Mother's Glass-A Castle Mother's Day one-shot (Set season 6-ish).
Title: Mother's Glass
WC: ~2500
Rating: T
Summary: "He remembers they were going to do the thing. Together. The Mother's Day thing. That's it. It hits him square in the chest. He stumbles back hard into the edge of the sink. The Mother's Day thing. It was her idea. A quiet, tentative plan spilling out of her in the dark." A season 6-ish one-shot. No spoilers.
A/N: Brain would not STFU until I wrote this glurgtastic thing. I know it's an American Hallmark holiday, but a happy day to all you mothers out there, literal and figurative.
Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.
~William Shakespeare
She was supposed to wake him.
It's his first blurry thought. It bleeds quickly into panic as the numbers on the bedside clock resolve into something approaching sense. It's late. They were going to do the thing. He can't remember what the thing is right now, because the light is bright and they were up late, late, late. They were doing the other thing all the way into the wee hours, and he loses focus all over again when he thinks about that.
He forces his legs off the bed. Forces his feet flat to the floor and thinks about how this works. How knees straighten and weight transfers and what arm goes with what leg so he won't fall over. The five shambling steps to the bathroom take him forever, and it's only the scent of coffee that drags him on.
Coffee. She must be up. She must be making coffee. She's not here in bed. She's not stretched out with her arms flung wide and her knees curled up like she always is in the moments before waking.
She's up making coffee. That's the only sensible alternative, but she's not supposed to be. She was supposed to wake him. And didn't he set an alarm?
He remembers grumbling about Sundays and beauty rest and the fact that his mother of all people in the world understood the importance of that. He remembers muttering about the unfairness of it all. Making a scene so she'd twist his ear and crawl up his body and punish him for whining. He remembers all that.
He remembers they were going to do the thing. Together. The Mother's Day thing. That's it.
It hits him square in the chest. He stumbles back hard into the edge of the bathroom sink. The Mother's Day thing. It was her idea. A quiet, tentative plan spilling out of her in the dark.
I want . . . it seems . . . can we?
And he kissed her. He gathered her up and kissed her everywhere, whispering back.
Of course. Yes. Of course.
She'd smiled. He could feel it all through her. Calm rolling over her shoulders and down her arms. Out through her fingertips and eagerness bunching everything up again. He felt that smile radiating out and through and over, and he thought for the thousandth time that he's never been this happy.
It means more to him than he's ever said. How good she is to his mother. How his mother is good to her. He's never told either of them how much it means.
It's not his way. Their way. His and his mother's. They're acid and sharp edges. Biting and no nonsense, even though things run deep between them. Love, but affection, too. He loves his mother. He respects her and leans on her, and all of that is something he'd never have believed ten years go. Five years ago, really, and it took Kate whispering in the dark to make him see that he owes this to both of them. That he wants it for both of them.
The Mother's Day thing.
He's embarrassed when he thinks how long it's been. Since the days of construction paper bouquets and popsicle stick picture frames, really, though they've had their silent May Sundays since then. They've sat on the couch, side by side, nursing their hangovers companionably enough.
And they've weathered the hardest years together. The awkward handful of times that Alexis wanted to do something-less than a handful, and that hits him, too, how few of them there are, His mother was there. Standing in for Meredith in her over-the-top way. Crowding out the possibility of Alexis really missing her mother.
But it's been years now. Too long, and they were supposed to be doing this together. He and Kate, but she's up already. She's making coffee, and she must have turned off the alarm.
He pushes off the bathroom counter and makes his clumsy way through the office. He can't find his robe, and he's freezing until he does. Until he sees it wrapped around her, the tie cinched tight and dangling to her knees. Then he's not freezing any more.
"Out," she says without turning around.
He blinks like it will help him hear. Like it will help him understand what's going on. Weren't they doing this together?
"Back!" She spins, a pancake turner raised in her hand. "Back in bed. Now. If Alexis sees you, Castle, I will end you."
"Bed?" He yawns hard enough to unbalance himself. His shoulder hits the bookcase and something wobbles to the floor with a crash.
She advances on him, brandishing the pancake turner like she's prepared to explore every avenue of corporal punishment. His robe flares out behind her, baring her legs. Want flares bright in him. He catches her around the waist, but she's too much for him. Too determined. She spins and grabs his arm, twisting it behind his back. She marches him back the way he came.
She yanks the covers up and gestures with the pancake turner. Swats him on the ass with it when he stands and stares. "In the bed, Castle. Sleep. Fake it if you have to."
"Sleep?"
He jumps away, dodging a second swat. His knees hit the bed. He half-falls awkwardly into it. She wrestles him the rest of the way, all efficiency and awake-ness and pancake turner threats.
"The thing?" he asks helplessly.
He's on his back with the covers clutched high under his chin. He sleepily wonders about the big bad wolf and wants her to come right back to bed. He wants her, but he remembers her shy whisper in the dark. He pulls the covers higher until just his eyes are peeping out over the top. Defense. As much for him as for her, but it backfires, apparently.
She clambers on top of him and strips the covers down past his shoulders. She kisses him, hard and hot, and moans into his mouth when his palms slide under the robe and up her bare thighs to curve around her ass. When he pulls her to him.
"Mean!" he yelps. It's confusing. To him and to her until he realizes that she's gone. That she's out of the bed and at the door. Tat she's cruelly retying his robe. Cruelly not here on top of him, which is where she absolutely should be.
Except they were going to do the thing. He thinks they can totally do the thing later. And the other thing now. Because it's not like his mother will be up for at least an hour and that's plenty of time.
"Kate . . ." He props himself up on his elbows, then slinks back down immediately-obediently-when she wheels around to glare. "The thing? We were going to do the thing?"
"The thing?" Her face creases in a smile as she gets it. As she realizes what he's not talking about that. Not right now anyway. "That was never the whole plan, Castle. Sleep. Or pretend. Try not to be bad at it."
He does sleep. It's crazy, but he dozes and wonders what the whole plan is and when she made. A kind of waking dream winds around him for a while. He smells bacon and coffee and wonderful things. He sees Kate in his robe and his mother by the fire late at night, smiling at her. Smiling at the two of them. He and Kate. Kate and Alexis. The three of them ganging up on him.
But he sleeps in earnest at some point. He must, because he starts awake with an inelegant snort when the mattress bounces and there's a curtain of red hair hanging around his face. He opens his eyes wide and her pale, pretty face fills up the whole world. She smacks a kiss to his forehead and pops backward. She flops to sit beside him. She bounces the mattress again as she climbs under the covers and fusses with the pillows.
"Up!" Alexis crows. "Breakfast in bed. I'm starving."
She tsks and prods until he's sitting up with his hands obediently folded in his lap. He grouses at her and mutters about bad habits and where she could have possibly gotten them from.
"You have only yourself to blame," she says as she settles the breakfast tray over his legs. She breaks off a piece of bacon and pops it into her mouth before he can snatch it back. "Literally."
"Literally?" He yawns wide.
"Mom and dad both." She shrugs. "Nobody but you to pick them up from."
His breath catches between his collar bones. A swallow of coffee stalls and burns his suddenly thick throat.
Her eyes are downcast. She's quiet with a nervous smile. Her fingers pluck at the duvet and the seconds pass, heavy with this. Unexpected weight, and he sees her hand in it. Kate's, but Alexis's, too. A plot between them and his mother's stamp in the grandness of everything. Flowers and a mimosa, not just orange juice. Starfruit and pomegranate. Pretty, exotic things and smiley face chocolate chip pancakes.
It's a lie that he's the only one. A wonderful lie. He sees the three of them here. Pieces that fit so beautifully together.
He swallows finally. Hard. At a loss in too many ways. Too many ways. "Sweetie . . ."
She stops him. She turns her smile on him. Growing by the minute. Huge now and not nervous at all. "Happy Mother's Day, Dad."
Morning bleeds into afternoon.
He's shoulder to shoulder on the couch with his mother, forbidden to move. They've both been forbidden to do anything and they're down to lies in their game of breakfast-in-bed one ups-man-ship.
"They were the same," Kate says in passing.
"Exactly the same." Alexis follows her into the kitchen. "Down to the last berry.
"Hell of a woman you've landed, Richard. And hell of a kid you've raised," his mother says. It's grand. Loud enough for everyone to hear, but she catches his hand. A quiet, sincere press of fingers and something shimmering in her eyes that she smiles against. Something she hides away, because this is how they are. "Lord knows how."
"Lord knows," he echoes. He raises the back of her hand to his lips. "Happy Mother's Day."
She's speechless. It's amazing in its own right.
There's more food. Impossibly more food. They descend on it. All four of them, with Kate and Alexis slapping his hands away from everything, insisting that neither of them had so much as a bit of breakfast.
He calls Alexis a liar. He has them all laughing with tales of her thievery, building and building.
"One grape." He turns a pathetic pout on Kate. On his mother. "That's all she left me."
Kate rolls her eyes. She pops a potato chip into her mouth and he wonders. He wonders about her morning. A long, quiet while with his mother upstairs. He wants to know. He pictures his mother pressing her to sample. Insisting that she try everything. Kate demurring. Or maybe saying yes with quiet thanks. He tries to picture it.
He wants to know. He's nosy and greedy for all of her. More than usual even. She's caught him out again with this. Of course he wants to know. A Mother's Day thing. He wants to know if it was hard for her. If it was wonderful or strange or awkward. He wants to know what terrible things his mother might have said and how she wheedled about the wedding and beyond and whatever.
He wants to know, but he doesn't. He's filled up with this tight, brilliant kind of happiness when he thinks about it. Her plotting with Alexis. Conversations and moments and memories with his mother that have nothing to do with him. Her life apart all mixed up with his.
There's a knock at the door. He pops up from the couch, surprised and curious, but she tugs him back even as she rises.
"Sit!" She plants a hand on top of his head for emphasis and dodges when he tries to pull her into his lap.
He turns wide eyes toward Alexis, but she shrugs and presses her lips together. She knows, though. She casts an anxious, hopeful glance toward the door as Kate swings it open and greets her own father with a fierce, quiet hug.
"Jim!" his mother exclaims. She rises and flutters over to them, and he's glad.
He's glad someone is saying something as he slides down the couch and pulls Alexis to him.
They've never done this. Kate and her dad. They've never done anything like this to remember Johanna.
It's one of the things he knows now. Even thought there are still so many pieces of the story she's working through. There's a lot he doesn't know, even now. But he found this out just lately. He stumbled into it one lazy morning, just thinking out loud. Feeling like an idiot a second later. Feeling like an ass when the question registered.
But Kate had just smiled. A little watery, but she'd smiled. No. Never. We . . . never.
He stands. He hauls Alexis up with him. A little bit of a shield, because Jim Beckett isn't a man he wants to face in his pajamas, however close the wedding is.
He waits his turn as his mother throws her arms around the two of them and Alexis raises on her toes to give Jim a tentative kiss on the cheek. Jim grips his hand tight and rests the other heavy on his shoulder while Kate smiles hard at the floor nearby.
His mother shoos them all away from the door. Back inside, exclaiming about home fires and holidays. She tries to wait on Jim, but Alexis and Kate coax her back into the arm chair she wasn't supposed to vacate in the first place.
The two of them fall into conversation. His mother. Her father. She gestures and performs. He laughs quietly. He makes her laugh.
Castle tiptoes away. He creeps into the forbidden kitchen.
Alexis whirls toward him. He catches her and presses a kiss to the top of her head.
"Please," he whispers. "Just a second. I'll be good then."
"No you won't," she says out loud. She gives him a hard look, but she goes. "You're never good." She plucks a plate from Kate's hand with a shrug. "He's never good."
"Don't I know it." Kate plants a fist on her hip and arches an eyebrow at him.
He ignores it. He barrels into her. He wraps himself around her and kisses her breathless.
She pretends to struggle and hisses at him. "Castle! My dad!'
That's enough to make him jump. Her dad. But he holds on to her. He's stupid and reckless and brave enough to kiss her again. Her dad and his mother. His kid. Their family. He's giddy enough to kiss her in front of them all.
"You ok?" She pulls back. She looks him up and down and he wonders what she sees.
He wants to know and he doesn't. She'll tell him later. She'll tease him. A little too much swagger and worry underneath that it was too much or not right or weird. She'll crow about it later. Months from now when he's told her a hundred times that he loved this day and she believes him. A little more of her believes him every day.
"So ok," he says, and it's enough for now. It's almost enough. "Happy Mother's Day, Kate."
He says it low. For her ears only and more than a little worry of his own.
But she smiles again, and that's what he'll remember about this day. Every day leading up to it. Smile after smile from her. The way she laughed against his shoulder and whispered back to him.
"Happy Mother's Day, Castle."