Lily - their ocean lover - had run for the water as soon as her feet hit the sand. Kate rushed off after her to make sure she didn't head too far in, leaving Castle alone to wrangle the twins, the towels, the toys and the picnic basket.
Fortunately, this wasn't his first rodeo and he was fairly certain he had figured it all out.
The trick was to keep the boys distracted; make them feel useful.
"Reece, buddy," Castle called out to the toddler just a few steps ahead of him on their journey down the beach. "This bucket and spade is way too heavy. D'ya think you can help me out with those big, strong muscles?"
"Hulk strong!" the boy declared in a rough grumbling tone as he flexed his arms.
"I strong, too!" Jake - never one to miss out - stated as he tugged the beach ball from where it sat tucked between Castle's hip and wrist.
With the inflated plastic armrest gone, Castle's arm dropped back against his side and the picnic basket he had clutched in his hand banged against his calf.
"Sorry Daddy," Jake said before running off to catch up with his brother.
"That's okay, Bud."
Castle smiled to himself as his little helpers, just a few yards ahead of him, picked out their spot for the day and dumped the toys on the sand.
"We wanna swim, too," Reece complained as Castle laid out the picnic blanket and anchored each corner with whatever he had available to stop it from blowing away in the breeze.
"Help me set up and then we can all race to Mom! How does that sound?"
"Yeah!" the boys cheered.
They dragged the bag of sand toys to the edge of the blanket and Jake began to pull out each toy, one by one, then hand it to Reece who would then place it onto the blanket.
"No, boys- that's..."
The boys stopped what they were doing and looked up at their father with beaming smiles.
"You know what? You're doing a great job," Castle praised them, accepting that scattered toys were a much better alternative to scattered twins running down the beach in opposite directions. "Keep going."
He watched as the boys got back to work with unbridled enthusiasm, working together until the very last toy had been unpacked.
"Swim now?" Jake asked.
"Yeah, buddy, we can swim now."
"Race!" Reece reminded them eagerly.
"Go!"
Jake and Reece took off down the beach, pushing their little legs as fast as they could go. Fortunately, as fast as they could go (especially on soft sand) was the equivalent of a brisk walk for Castle's much longer legs.
The squeals of delight when the first wave rushed over their little feet gained the attention of Kate and Lily, and Castle rushed the last few steps to catch up to them.
"Daddy, I'm a mermaid!" Lily called as she splashed about.
"I'm the mermaid queen," Kate bragged as she waded from the waist-deep water to help him with the boys.
"Daddy can be the king," Lily offered as she joined them. "I'm the princess. Jake and Reece can be the brave knights that protect our underwater kingdom!"
"No, I wanna be shark!" Jake protested.
"Sharks aren't allowed in my kingdom," Lily warned him.
"Sneak in!" Reece encouraged with a mischievous smirk. "And eat her!"
"Yeah, I will eat you!" Jake laughed.
With a playful squeal, Lily took off running through the shallow water - slow enough for her brothers to think they actually stood a chance catching her - and the boys chased after her with their arms in front of them, clapping their hands together in a 'chomping' motion.
As Kate turned to watch their kids play together, Castle stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder.
“We made some pretty sweet kids,” he commented.
She leant her head against his. “Yeah, we did.”
“Do you ever think about, maybe, just one more?”
She pushed his hands from where they had - accidentally - stopped to rest on her stomach.
"Not a chance, Castle," she warned.
"Kidding." He smirked and pressed a kiss to her cheek before running toward the children.
"We need to save the princess, my queen!" he called over his shoulder.
She smiled and shook her head before joining them again.
A story of Kate pregnant with Jake and Reese, including her announcing to her pregnancy to Castle, followed by them discovering their having twins, all the way to their birth. Please and thank you!
Jake takes one look at the pizza on her plate and the cup of coffee in her grasp and cackles.
"Momma, you can't drink coffee with your pizza!"
Kate grins, lifting the drink to her lips. It's a bit cool by now, but still good enough for her. "I can't? Why not?"
Her son flops over in his wicker chair, giggling hysterically into his arm. "It's for breakfast!"
Warmth floods her belly at his joy. He's been so serious these last few weeks after the disappointment of being cut from the team while Reece made it (and how they can justify cutting a seven year old from a non-traveling baseball team instead of just finding a place for them somewhere else is still beyond her, but that's a battle Castle has convinced her not to fight for now), it's just nice to see him happy and silly again. Even if it's at her expense. He doesn't seem bothered at all anymore that his brother's at practice and he isn't.
"Well, it's kind of breakfast time, isn't it?" she asks, making a show of glancing at her watch. "It's brunch."
He giggles again, pulling his legs underneath him in the chair and reaching for a slice of pizza of his own. "S'a silly way to say 'lunch,' Momma."
She grins, tilting her head. He's such a little sass, just like her and Castle both. "Yeah, you're right. But you know Daddy brings me coffee all the time. So I think it's okay for me to have coffee with my pizza, too."
Jake takes a bite of pizza, chewing thoughtfully. "If you say so."
Castle quickly pulls up the pants on his son before he goes into the living room, only to spot his wife eyeing a suspiciously thick envelope in her hands.
“What’s what?” he asks as he comes closer and she holds it up to him.
“‘Photos inside’, when did you order photos? And what kind of photos?” she asks and his lips pull up in the biggest grin possible.
“They’re here!” he exclaims with happiness.
“What’s here?” she questions again and he just grins.
“Open it,” he challenges her.
She narrows her eyes, but he doesn’t have to say it again because she’s immediately slipping the envelope open and pulling out the photos… only to start laughing at them.
“When did you take these?” she laughs as she looks through the ten photos he’d ordered only three days ago.
“Do you remember when you were checking in at the precinct this tuesday, we went to the photo studio then just for fun. Also wanted to surprise you with something you can have on your desk once you go back to work,” he explains and she smiles big at him.
“You’re just too sweet,” she says, stepping onto her toes to peck his lips before she turns to their son in his arms. “And so are you with this handsome hat of yours.” She kisses his cheek too and he giggles.
Kate laughs at him as he starts to gurgle. Castle chuckles as he looks at the picture Kate had stopped at. It was the one with Reece in a shirt and a hat, holding onto his hat as if he’s trying to hide his face like Michael Jackson used to do. Jake hadn’t even wanted to have the hat on but somehow Reece had seemed to enjoy it a lot. Jake had seemed more interested in the boa and it made Castle snicker at the thought of him sometime in the future sneaking into his gram’s boa-collection.
“These are truly amazing Castle,” Kate says as she once again looks at the photos.
“You think so?” he says with pride in his voice, happy with the fact she enjoys his surprise.
“Yeah, in fact, I think we should go there all of us, take family portraits,” she carefully suggests and he immediately nods.
“Yes, we definitely should! Maybe we could go on Sunday, Lily comes home tomorrow so I think we better give her a day to relax from being all alone with mother for four days,” he says and her smile saddens a bit. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just miss her,” Kate shrugs her shoulders as she bends down to pick up Jake. He’s been happily playing with some of his toys while they’ve been talking but now he’s probably jealous of his twin getting all the attention. “Hi baby,” Kate greets her son with a kiss to his cheek as well.
Castle chuckles and puts his free arm around her back. “I told you it would feel weird the first time she’s away for a couple nights.”
“I know you did, but I still didn’t believe you,” she mumbles, and snuggles into his side while snuggling with Jake who’s giving her a warm hug. She sighs. “At least it’s only one more night.”
“That it is, she’ll be home in just a few hours,” Castle says, kissing her forehead. “Until then we can snuggle our twins.”
She smiles, her two boys immediately looking up at them with knowledge that they’re talking about them.
“Definitely,” she agrees and she hugs his side as they both lift up the twins and puts all their foreheads together.
The women made their way down to the beach towards the boys who were sitting well away from the ocean as they played in the sand.
“Good job, guys!” Kate praised.
“Mama, I was just gonna yell at you,” Jake said as the two women reached the boys.
“You were? Why?” Kate was a little nonplussed.
“We need some water, Mama,” Reece broke in. “The sand’s stickin’ but not very good.”
“And you were all the way up there,” Jake pointed to the house, “So I woulda had to yell.”
“Gotcha,” said Kate. Both boys had stood to give Alexis a hug, squeezing her tight.
“Tell you what, guys, I’ll take your buckets and get your water. Alexis has some news.”
As Kate grabbed the buckets and moved down the beach to the water, both boys clamored at their sister.
“What’s goin’ on Lexi?” Reece asked excitedly, as Jake asked, “Is Roman coming up?”
Alexis just laughed.
“No, Roman is still partying with his brother,” she grinned at the looks of disappointment the twins gave. “Maybe in the next couple of weeks.”
She sat next to the boys, drawing both into a hug.
“What would you guys say to having a baby in the family?”
“Mama can’t,” Reece frowned. “She was too sick.”
“She said we were gonna be the youngest anyway,” put in Jake.
“Hey, you know that wasn’t your fault, right?” Alexis replied. “Your mama and daddy and I never want you to think that. But, it’s not your mama. How would you like to be uncles?”
Reece and Jake looked at each other in confusion.
“We’re too young,” Jake said.
“Are you my brothers or what?” Alexis asked with a smile.
“Yes!” exclaimed Reece, “But uncles are older, Like Uncle Kevin and Uncle Javi.”
“What if I told you that Lily will be an aunt?”
More confusion.
“You’re going to have to just spit it out Alexis,” Kate laughed. She’d heard most of the conversation and was grateful Alexis had nipped the boys guilt in the bud. She’d thought they were past it, but maybe not. Something to discuss with her husband later.
“I’m gonna have a baby, guys,” Alexis told the twins. “And you are going to be uncles.”
“Will Leroy be an uncle too?” asked Jake.
Alexis bit back her laugh, not daring to look at Kate.
“Why not?” she answered. “The more the merrier!”
Reece turned to his brother.
“Let’s make a new sandcastle for our baby!”
“Yeah!”
“That sounds good,” Alexis grinned. “Want some help?”
“Yeah,” said Jake. “Since he’s in your tummy, it’s like he’s helping too!”
“You know, guys, this baby could be a she.”
“Whatever,” both boys said together as they began pushing at the sand.
“At least they’ll be happy with either,” Alexis thought as she began to dig with her brothers.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Fictober Day 2!
Prompt 25: “Do you know what time it is?”
Fandom: Castle
Characters: Lily Castle, Jake Castle, Kate
Rating: k+
Word count: 611
Other Notes: Mentions of partying and underage drinking
She has no trouble finding them. She follows the trail of pictures he’s been sending her as she crawled along in traffic she’d been determined not to get stuck in—not today, but the precinct, as usual, had different ideas. She hasn’t stopped at the house. She hasn’t stopped to change or to grab a much-needed cup of coffee, and she’s so glad she has no trouble finding them.
He’s lying, face up, on the first-base side of the pitcher’s mound in the middle of a pee wee baseball diamond. His legs are covered in sandy orange dust all the way to the hem of his cargo shorts.
Not far off—just a yard or two toward home plate from the pitcher’s mound—Lily has a lap full of dandelions. Her hands work slowly at two stems. Her total concentration on the task is obvious In the way she chews at corner of her lower lip.
The peaceful scene in the middle of the diamond does not extend to the base paths. Those are occupied by an enormous, shrieking dust cloud that seems like it must contain some kind of horde, but her ear readily picks out just the two voices—Jake mostly, and Reese every once in a while.
She has no trouble finding them. She’s relieved about that, but she takes a moment with her fingers curled in the chain link fronting one dugout to drink in the picture—the mix of quiet and chaos—the four of them make.
It’s Lily who spies her first, in the last breath before the beauty of it can overwhelm her to the point of tears.
“Mom,” she shouts. Her long-legged girl, who is too grown up most days to call her Mama any more, pushes to her feet, scattering knotted green stems and vibrant yellow flowers. Her sparkly pink sneakers pound over grass, over the third base line, over the pale orange, hard-packed dust in front of the dugout. She collides with Kate, enveloping the two of them in an orange cloud. “It’s still day time!”
“It is!” She tickles the underside of her daughter’s chin until they’re both squinting up, funny faced, at the sun still clinging to the western sky. “I didn’t miss it.”
“I ran a hundred miles, Mama!” Reese joins the huddle, tugging at her left hand. His dark hair is plastered to his forehead and his cheeks are cherry red with exertion.
“A hundred!” Kate lets her eyes go wide. “All around the bases?”
“The base paths!” Jake jumps with both feet on one side of the the chalk, then the other to emphasize his point. “I ran a hundred hundred miles, Mama.”
“That’s a thousand.” Lily looks down her nose at Jake, but he’s too busy walking the baseline like a tight rope to notice his big sister trying to boss him.
“How many is a thousand thousand, Lil?” Castle’s voice drifts toward them. He’s still lying, face up, on the first-base side of the pitcher’s mound, but he’s striking a dramatic pose now. He has a dusty arm flung across his forehead. “A thousand thousand is how many miles I have run on this, the longest of days.”
“A thousand thousand. How many do you think that is, Reese?” He lifts his arms pleadingly, and she hikes the dusty, sticky boy up on to her hip. She rests a hand on Lily’s shoulder and nudges her mound-ward—Castle-ward. Jake sees that they’re on the move and does an about face. He rushes, full tilt, to home plate and does a three-sixty spin before he makes a beeline for his father. “Castle!” she calls out a sharp warning. “Incoming!”
“Got it.” He sits bolt upright, all his feigned exhaustion shed, and manages some kind of twisting sideways maneuver that has him snatching Jake around the waist, rather than absorbing the full impact of their most rambunctious child’s body.
“Not a thousand thousand!” Jake hollers. He laughs as Castle sweeps an arm beneath his knees and turns him upside down with his head in the grass. “Daddy didn’t run a thousand thousand.”
“He couldn’t run a thousand thousand miles.” Lily stoops to gather up her scattered dandelion crowns in progress. She plumps down closer to her father and fills her lap again. “That’s hyperblee.”
“Hyperbole?” He makes a great show of being offended, a great show of hefting Jake upright and banding his arms around the squirming boy to keep him close for however brief a moment, as Kate eases her way to sit at his side with Reese still cuddled against her. “I wouldn’t have thought I could run a thousand thousand miles either. But then your mother tricked me.”
“Mama does tricks?” Jake tries to twist around to see if Castle has his tale-telling face on. Lily looks up from the work of twining stems together and even their sleepy-on-a-schedule Reese lifts his head from Kate’s shoulder.
“It’s news to me, Jake.” She shoots Castle a dirty look that he meets with something hot, lascivious, and utterly ridiculous all at once.
“What kind of trick?” Lily wants to know, and Reese tugs at Kate’s shirt and whispers in her ear half a dozen shy, confidential questions about rabbits and hats and ladies in big glitter-paint boxes.
“I still haven’t figured out what kind of trick it was, but she has a Lily and a Reese and a Jake to show for it.” He risks loosening his hold on Jake to bump Lily with his shoulder, to run light fingers down Reese’s back.
Jake knows an opportunity when he sees it. He breaks free and heads for first base. “That’s three tricks.”
The words trail behind him like a kite string that tugs Lily to her feet again. She chases after him. “It’s two tricks. I’m one trick and you and Reese are one trick.”
“One trick!” Reese says against the curve of Kate’s neck. He clings tight to her for a moment longer, then he’s off and running the wrong way from first base to home. It puts him on a collision course with his brother, his big sister, who—today, anyway—is not too big to play silly games with her babies, games with swirling, constantly fluctuating rules.
“So I’m a two-trick pony?” She scoots sideways toward him. The grass is wet in patches and there’s probably no hope for this pair of work pants, to say nothing of the light-colored summery blouse that’s picked up countless pale orange handprints.
“You are a many trick pony, Captain.” He flops on to his back and his head in her lap. He offers an ear up for the twist he knows is coming. “But tricking me into having not one, not two, but three athletic children was your greatest feat.”
On cue, Lily calls out some convoluted rule about sliding into each base. Kate makes a move, but he has her by the wrist. “It’s skidding,” he assures her as he tangles his fingers tight with her own. “Purely on their feet. No skin left behind.”
Kate twists to see, and sure enough, she sees the sun catching the pink sparkles of Lily’s shoes somewhere in the cloud of dust, then the rapid-fire blue-red flash of Reese’s Spider-Man sneakers, the Hulk green of Jake’s.
“Now that’s a neat trick.” She skims her fingers through the hair that’s grown long enough to brush the curve of his ear. “How’d you convince Danger Boy?” She asks as Jake, on cue, executes another of his signature three-sixty spins on top of second base to celebrate his perfect skid.
“Invoked your dad and exercised some artistic license,” he murmurs as he turns his head further into the soothing motion of her fingers. “Lily can cite Gramps, chapter and verse, on elbows and curveballs. I just extended the principle to ankles and big kid slides.”
“And for your next trick.” She laughs and plants a kiss on his forehead.
“Oh no.” He peers up at her, crossing his eyes to hear the music of her laughter again. “For your next trick, tell me again what the heck a double switch is. Jake won’t buy my Cold War spy analogies forever.”
“A double switch,” she says absently. Her eyes are on the three heads bent together, talking over one another, with Reese’s voice uncharacteristically on top as he lobbies for some new rule of his own. Castle tugs at the front of her shirt, as child-like as ever in his own demands for attention when he knows their happy little monsters are entertaining one another. “A double switch,” she repeats briskly. She holds her wrist out, then brings it close to her face as though he’s making an exaggerated study of her watch face. “I don’t think we have that kind of time.”
“Time?” He rises suddenly on his elbows to kiss her sweetly on the lips. He catches her chin in his fingertips. He guides her gaze toward right field where the kids have their hands planted in the grass and kick their legs upward into clumsy attempts at handstands as some new part of the game. “Solar-powered children.” He coaxes her head back and plants a kiss beneath her chin. Her breath catches as the sun, still clinging to the western sky, warms her face. “Longest day of the year,” he murmurs as his lips travel down her neck. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”
A/N: I know the solstice was yesterday, and I did start this then, but only just finished this now. For someone who hates the sun, I always feel drawn to stories about the longest day.
