Who: Richard Castle and Kate Beckett When: Backdated August 10 Where: #2204 Potts Tower Rating: Low Summary: Picking baby names
“Castle, you ready for this?” Kate asked, tucking a stray curl back behind her ear, eyes roaming down her phone screen to briefly scan the twenty names she’d spent weeks collecting.
There was a tiny, somewhat-bell pepper sized (she had done a lot of reading, and the comparisons of the baby’s size to fruit and other small food items was both weird and oddly helpful) human growing in there, still small enough that no one really seemed to have noticed the slight curving of her stomach that she had spent many a morning examining in the mirror.
The name game had begun the day they found out, batting suggestions back and forth in conversations that varied in volume from whispers to regular tones depending on the company nearby and if they had been made aware of the news. And, in all of that, they’d failed to truly come close to agreeing on any names, or at least names that they both liked more than in passing.
So she’d suggested the lists, ten names for a boy and ten for a girl, all in the hope that one of them would suggest a name the other loved or, miraculously, they would manage to have one on both lists.
Though Kate kind of doubted that, she was expecting names for superheroes and Star Trek characters - had even playfully suggested Castle make a fantasy list before they’d started working on these.
Pulling a bottle of water from the fridge, she paused to look at the note pinned with a Batman insignia magnet, one meant to serve as a reminder of her upcoming appointment with the doctor - one where they’d finally know the gender and if the tiny human she was going to manage to bring into the world would be entering with any defects or issues due to a myriad of factors, the largest being Kate’s age.
She didn’t feel old, but it appeared that her steady trek towards 35 made a dozen different things very dangerous when it came to having a baby.
Coming up with a list of baby names sans superhero and fantasy names was hard work. In his spare time, or really it was when he didn’t feel like working on his next book, Rick managed to get a list of ten names for a boy and a girl. He might have creatively snuck a Luke and Leia sounding names to his list as well, even if he had already suggested Luke and Leia as names for twins. There was still hope.
He grabbed his list of baby names from his desk and sat on the couch. “Ready,” he answered. “I think you will be presently surprised at the list I have put together.” Rick was sure that they would find a name on either list that they mutually liked. If not? Well, they still had several months to decide.
Backtracking, Kate snagged a second bottle, her eyes giving an exasperated roll while she moved across to the couch and her waiting husband. “I don’t know if surprised is the word I’d use,” she said with a chuckle, resting the unopened bottle on the side table for him just before she tilted her head down, lips lightly sweeping over his in an upside down peck that was almost over before it had started.
“I’m pretty sure I could guess half the names on your fantasy list without even trying,” Kate added, nose wrinkling up at him as she took a seat, long legs curling underneath her body, “Like Sansa and Arya, or Han and Legolas.”
“Amazed? Shocked? Indifferent? Annoyed?” Rick asked jokingly. He was pretty sure he could keep rattling off expressions and never guess the correct one. But that could be for another time. He’d rather discuss baby names and pick the perfect name for little Castle.
“Ah, but Legolas isn’t on the list. Now Aragorn and Samwise, yes. I honestly don’t see what’s wrong with Sansa and Arya. Just think Arya would be a perfect name. Couple it with a middle name of say Hermione and then Arya Hermione Castle will be an amazingly awesome kid.” However, both names were not on this list, but if he could, he would try to sneak them in as middle names. “Yes, I think I’ve decided. Arya Hermione Castle for a girl.” Rick started chuckling as he watched Kate’s expression. “So how do you want to do this? Exchange our lists or read them off for ourselves?”
“Hermione Castle?” Kate asked, simultaneously wrinkling her nose and shaking her head at him, even as she tried not to laugh. They both knew she was never going to go for it, but Castle got so excited about the characters that he loved that she had indulged him with a list and therefore a few months of insane combinations of fantasy and sci-fi characters. “Give the kid a complex.”
“Hmmm,” she considered the suggestion for a moment, stretching her legs out into a more comfortable position, “It’d be fun to torture you with giving them to you one at a time, but lists might be better. Less suspenseful, but far more efficient. Boys or girls first?”
“Yeah, but she’d have a great role model in her namesake. And no one will make fun of her.” Unlike with Legolas. That kid was bound to be teased at school. Although, if they ended up raising their kid here, they’d be perfectly fine because there were all kinds of different characters here with crazy names.
Rick nodded his head, glad that she wasn’t going to torture him. “How about girls, since we’re already talking about girl names. I mean, as I throw out girl names that I’ve already decided on,” he teased. His girl and boy names were on one sheet of paper and as he talked, he ripped the paper so that girls were on one and boys were on another. “Here are the girl names I came up with.”
Kate had taken to keeping a list on her phone, deleting adding as the mood struck her, so while Castle passed over a sheet of paper, she handed him her phone with ten names typed neatly on her ‘Notes’ app, Avery listed at the very top as both the first name she’d written down and her favorite of them all.
Castle’s list seemed like it had gone much like her own, with lines through various names with different types of pens as he had changed his mind, but the list was a great one, full of names that Kate had either considered or never thought of but actually loved. Hayden, Ava, Leah, Zoe, Peyton, Kara, Nora, Morgan, Jordyn, and Avery - her favorite - stuck right there in the middle of it all.
The smile she wanted to trap came out anyway, teeth cutting into her bottom lip as she waited for Castle to take a look at her own names, to draw the same conclusion.
Rick took the phone from her and immediately noted that she had also included Avery, as well as Ava and Jordan with a different spelling. She also had Charlotte, Regan, Addison, Rileigh, Arden, Sutton, and Delaney. Other than the names they both had, Rick thought the rest of the names on her list were good too. This was probably going to be harder than he thought.
“I really like the other names you came up with that I didn’t. So I guess it’ll come down to the few names we both picked.” He took another look at her phone. “I do really like the name Avery. It’s number one on your list.”
“It doesn’t have too - I don’t want….” Kate let the rest of her words go, halting on telling him that they weren’t limited to the first ten names they had both liked, instead she listened to the rest of his sentence, processing what it meant for a moment before she darted into the space between them to kiss Castle full on the mouth, “That’s because its my favorite one.”
The kiss was a little unexpected at first, which he of course returned. When she said that Avery was her favorite one, the kiss made more sense to him, whether that was her intention or not. “Avery it is, if we have a girl. Avery Castle.” Rick smiled and leaned over to kiss Kate this time. “For boys names, I quite like Jackson. Jackson Castle has a nice ring to it.”
Avery. It was hard to believe it had been that easy, picking a name for a little girl that could already be curled up in her stomach and waiting to meet the world. But it was tangible in a way that she loved, having a name to potentially put to a tiny little face, a budding little personality.
“Jackson?” she chuckled, playfully biting at his bottom lip when Castle leaned over to kiss her. “Are you gonna call him Jack?” Kate asked, one hand dropping to rest in his hair, fingers slowly working through the strands, “But I like it, too. And your dad…..” she held off on finishing the sentence, deciding that Castle could choose if he wanted to bring up his father and the alias the man had chosen when they had first met. There weren’t many subjects Kate approached carefully with her husband, but Jackson Hunt turned Anderson Cross turned who the hell even knew - that was definitely one of them.
“Most likely. I like the name, and have liked it long before I knew about my dad.” Rick did not have the memories of his actual run-ins with his father, only the memories of what happened on the show. It had been a while since those episodes, and Rick was still unsure how he felt about the whole thing. It was nice to know that his dad did exist and knew about him, but at the same time Rick wished he didn’t know. If they had a boy and named him Jackson, it wasn’t going to make him think about his dad at all. “It’s fine. It really is. Naming our son Jackson won’t make me think of my dad and we don’t have to bring it up.”
“I just want you to be sure,” Kate said, resting her forehead against his, “I like the name, its actually on my list,” she smiled, cupping his jaw in her left hand, “But I know things with your dad are…..awkward, and I don’t want you to feel that you owe him something. Even if you don’t remember it, I do, and babe, you don’t owe your father anything.”
She followed up the words with a small kiss, those same fingers sliding across his cheek and into his hair, “You are an amazing dad, and such a good guy, and this kid? Luckiest kid in the world to have you.”
“I know,” Rick responded while their foreheads touched. “I’m sure.” He was certain of that. Nothing would make him change his mind about Jackson. Now, if there were a sudden surge of boys named Jackson, he might change his mind because he didn’t want his kid having to share a name with several classmates. “No, I don’t owe him anything.”
Rick nodded his head in agreement. “This kid is really lucky, not just for me but for you too. How many kids get to say that their mom is a kickass detective? And hopefully grow up here where superheroes are real! That’d be the best luck of all. I can’t wait to spend time with this kid.”
“Castle, lots of people are detectives. It’s not that special,” Kate chuckled, “Most people wouldn’t want the job anyway.”
But she grinned anyway, rolling her eyes lightly at his superheroes exclamation. He’d be ninety and still singing the praises of the Green Lantern, she was sure. “So Jackson and Avery? Kate questioned, “Big names for a very tiny person, and that’s even without a middle one.”
“Yes, lots of people are detectives, but they aren’t kickass detectives.” Rick emphasized. He felt that the kickass part was what really made her a special detective, as it was certainly part of her muse.
“Yep, big names. Should we discuss middle names or save that for another time?” Rick grinned, he was really excited about all of this. They had names picked out and the mythical offspring was definitely no longer mythical. “I need to find a new nickname for our offspring, since the offspring is no longer mythical.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she replied, biting back a grin at his insistence that she was kickass and, therefore, special. While it was flattering to have Castle be so complimentary of her, she honestly didn’t understand why he had been so drawn to her in the beginning, though she was certainly grateful for it. “If you’ve got any suggestions, I’m happy to hear them.”
And then she rolled her eyes, head dropping to rest against the curve of his neck, “Castle, why don’t you just use ‘baby’, call him what he is?”
With the ‘he’ pronoun popping out of her mouth, Kate’s head popped right back up, eyes wide. Apparently she had decided what she felt their unknown gender was, without really making a conscious effort to do so.
Rick grinned when she asked about suggestions. “Well, I quite like Han or Luke for a boy. Leia for a girl,” he teased. He really didn’t have any in mind at that time, so he just decided to start naming off names from the fantasy list that he had.
“But baby is so boring and generic,” Rick said. Then he noticed that she had said he and he his grin widened to a smile. “Are you hoping for a little boy, Kate?” He wanted a little boy, as he already had a girl, so hearing Kate say he made him happy even if they ended up with a girl.
“Oh geez, I take it back,” she laughed, clapping her hand over his mouth with a broad grin, “Avery Leia, Jackson Han? You’ll give the kid a complex and get them beaten up.”
But she deflated a little bit with his teasing, slumping so that her body was half draped against his shoulders and chest, “I guess so,” Kate admitted softly, brushing back a few random strands of hair that had fallen into her face, “Mostly I just want a healthy kid, but a boy….” she shrugged, peering up at him with her bottom lip caught between her teeth, “You need a boy and, really, it gives us some equal footing? Because you’ve done this before and I...I mean I’ve never been around babies that much so if its a boy we are kind of learning some of this together.”
Rick laughed. “Yeah, you are probably right. Those middle names would never work with those first names and I will not be responsible for letting our kid get beat up. Of course, I’ll make sure that our kid knows how to not get beat up.”
He nodded his head as he draped an arm around her shoulders. “Kate, we are going to have a healthy baby boy or girl. And you bring up a good point. I don’t know anything about raising little boys until maybe about preschool or elementary age because I remember what I was like at that time. Plus I haven’t taken care of a baby in like twenty years. So we’re going to have a fun adventure when this little one comes.”
“I hope so,” she replied, snuggling herself between the cushions of the couch and Castle, “But I just….I worry sometimes, with my age and the heart surgery and all of that. It’d be so easy for something to go wrong.” Irrational fears, maybe, but still things that lingered at the back of her mind.
He ran a hand through her hair. “I understand. I worry too, but I am optimistic that everything will turn out great.”
Kate couldn’t help it, the smile was automatic as she reached for his hand, tangling their fingers together to rest on the small curve of her stomach. With loose clothing it was still a little difficult to tell that she was pregnant, the bump still relatively small but to herself, to Castle, there were definite changes. Lest of all that she’d finally thrown in the towel and given up her beloved skinny jeans for more comfortable pants.
“I know, babe,” she said, using her other hand to cup his cheek before she kissed him, “And I appreciate that so much.”
Rick smiled when she moved his hand with hers to the baby bump. Their baby was growing in there and he was still feeling as elated as he did when they first found out on Father’s Day. Rick kissed her back. “I love you, Kate and either Avery or Jackson in there.”
“I love you, too,” Kate replied, mouth brushing against his cheek, “And so does your kid,” she added, dropping her head down to rest against his shoulder with a pleased little sigh, comfortably wedged in the space between Castle and the couch, warm and content.
“Read us a story, Castle.”
Rick was happy to grant her request and as she already looked comfortable, he was glad that he happened to have a couple of books within reach so he didn’t have to make her move. The first book he grabbed happened to be a special one to him. “‘To the extraordinary KB and all my friends at the 12th.’” Rick started.
Of course he picked Heat Wave, but she couldn’t even begin to care. Nikki and Rook were them set to fiction, a far more accurate representation of the banter, feelings and attraction than Kate probably would have expected. And she re-read them often, re-lived whatever had been happening in their lives for better or worse in between the pages, and, honestly, fell a little bit harder for the guy who had crafted a love letter to her long before either of them had been ready for that type of commitment.
As Castle started to read, she closed her eyes, nose pressed against the skin of his neck, one arm draped loosely across his waist and just listened.