Entry tags:

- deck five lounge, ^ log, kate beckett | castle, lucifer morningstar | lucifer

WHO: Kate Beckett and Lucifer Morningstar
WHEN: 2246.10.06. Somewhere around lunch.
WHERE: The Deck 5 Lounge
RATING: Low
STATUS: Complete
SUMMARY: Lucifer gives Beckett a guitar, Beckett tells him she’s trying to have a baby with Castle. Lucifer freaks out because kids are scary.

Strictly speaking, the Lounge was still closed for business for several more hours, but that wasn’t exactly enough to stop Kate. She knew well enough that Lucifer spent most of his time inside, regardless of it the place was open or not, and her security clearance was more than enough to get her through the coded doors with a mere raise of her id card to the panel hidden in the wall.

“I hope you’ve got food in here because I’m starving,” she said once the door had closed behind her, “If you don’t, you’re gonna have to abandon this sanctuary of yours and go with me to the mess hall.”

“I have cupcakes,” Lucifer announced cheerfully, glancing up at Kate. “And a replicator but I trust that less than the mess hall and I don’t trust the mess hall.”

It was a perk of being immortal that allowed him to eat for the pleasure of it rather than necessity, but that meant he rarely ate more than cupcakes these days.

“There might be something else stashed around here?”

“Cupcakes aren’t lunch, they’re a snack,” Kate replied with a sigh, taking a seat on one of the barstools. “This place really needs a food delivery service or something.” The prospect of getting through the rest of her shift on nothing but sugar wasn’t appealing, but it’d take most of her break to go to the Mess Hall, get food, and come back to eat it in the Lounge so she could talk to Lucifer without half the ship overhearing.

“That’s really all you have in here?” she asked, glancing at the array of cabinets behind the bar.

"Maybe we can order delivery," Lucifer mused. That would certainly help the lounge and might prolong the time before some of the regulars got annoyingly drunk. He hadn't really considered the idea before.

"So what do you want to eat?" he asked. "I mean, even if I can't figure out delivery, these come in handy…"

Before she knew it, there Lucifer was with his wings back on display. That wasn't getting old even if he still had no idea why they were back.

“It’s not a bad idea,” she said honestly, thinking of all the times when she hadn’t wanted to go to the mess hall for food but hadn’t really had much of an option if she hadn’t wanted to use the replicator.

No matter how often he talked about them, or how many times she had seen them, she still wasn’t used to it. Lucifer’s wings were without fail one of the most beautiful and impressive things she had ever laid eyes on and because of that, it took Kate a few moments to find her voice. “Oh, um…..” she said, pausing long enough to clear her throat. “A salad would be fine. If it’s got some slices of chicken in it, even better.”

"Right then," Lucifer agreed easily. "I'll be right back."

It was a sign of how strong his friendship with Kate was that he'd run an errand like this for her, as the devil was known for arguing about even the easiest of tasks if he felt them beneath him. But Beckett was a friend, and he got to show off his wings. Twice the incentive.

He was back in no time, with a salad and a variety of options when it came to dressing.

It wasn’t quite fair that he could be so fast, but she wasn’t complaining though Lucifer’s sudden reappearance very nearly made her drop the glass she’d managed to snag from the bar. “That took you maybe two minutes,” she said, only slightly annoyed at how impressed she sounded. Giving him a quick smile, Kate finished pouring her glass of water - she was still on duty, even if it was her break - and quickly moved out from behind the bar and back to her stool.

Opening up the container with her food inside, her smile only grew. “Yesssss,” she said, immediately reaching for the Italian dressing. “Best friend ever. Thank you!”

"It is a far better method of travel than the time I got stuck in the turbolift for four hours," Lucifer agreed. Thinking about that made him realize he'd not seen Caitlin or Frost or whatever she wanted to be called these days in a while.

"Right, well. You're here, and I'm not going to forget about this, this time," he mentioned, leaving her to eat her salad while he disappeared into the stockroom, returning with what was obviously a guitar case, his wings now hidden from sight.

"Hope it's decent," he added. "As it's not as if there were a lot to choose from."

Spinning around on the stool, Kate held her arms out for the case which she then gently placed up on the bar. She was careful in opening the latches holding it closed, and just as gently when lifting the lid to take a peek at the instrument waiting inside. “You mean you aren’t an expert in guitars?” Kate asked mostly as a joke, but also with a small ring of truth because Lucifer did have an exceptional knowledge about a lot of different things.

Lifting the guitar out of the case, she gave a brief nod of her head as an answer to his question, her fingers carefully running along the neck of the guitar and then over the belly, giving a slight pluck of the strings. “It’s more than decent, actually,” Kate replied, using her free arm to reach out and give him a slightly awkward one-armed hug. “I love it.”

"Oh, we're hugging now," Lucifer said, surprised at the gesture. But he couldn't help but smile as she found the gift acceptable. "I probably should have given it to you months ago, huh?"

Escaping the display of affection, he returned to the opposite side of the bar and poured himself a drink. "Better late than never, I suppose."

“More like half a hug, I think,” she said, still somewhat amused that after so many months of friendship he was still taken by surprise if she ever hugged him. It was rare, Lucifer wasn’t exactly into physical encounters unless it involved something far more intimate than a hug, but still it happened and he always seemed stunned after the fact. “But yeah, I figured I owed you one since this is quite a gift.”

And it was, which was just one of the reasons why she appreciated the fact that he’d bothered to get one for her.

Shrugging her shoulders at his question, Kate took her seat on the stool again, adjusting the guitar on her lap until it was a comfortable fit and she could easily strum the strings and move her fingers along the bridge to from various chords. Around the fifth one, the note came out sour, leaving her cringing and quickly readjusting her fingers. “Always get that one wrong. But the timing doesn’t matter much to me, really. I’ve been occupied with other things so I haven’t been thinking about presents or anything.”

"Oh?" Lucifer asked, raising a brow. "What sort of other things have you been occupying yourself with?"

For just a moment, Kate considered deflecting, almost always her natural reaction to anyone probing deeper into her life. But it was Lucifer and, aside from Castle, he probably knew the most about her than anyone else on the ship. “The future, what’s going on at home, that sort of stuff,” she replied, striking another chord on the guitar in her hands. “I mean, aside from Peggy, I’ve been here the longest. We’re going on 11 months and it doesn’t seem like I’ll be leaving, and I think I’ve pretty much accepted that but then the question becomes what do I do with the rest of my life here.”

Striking a few more chords, all of them rather mournful thanks to the minor key she had chosen, Kate placed the guitar back into the case and reached for her fork. “And, of course, if I start thinking about that, I start thinking about what I’d be doing if I were at home instead of here, the kind of choices I’d be making versus what I’m doing here. That sort of stuff.”

"And what kind of choices would that be?" Lucifer asked, his brow quirking back up. He had his suspicions, of course, but he was trying to wait it out and let Kate tell him, just in case he was wrong. He was pretty sure he'd had a conversation with her before that provided clues.

But still, he remained silent, waiting for her to tell him.

“Pretty much anything,” she replied, holding up one hand to cover her mouth as she swallowed her food. “I mean, my career is provided to me by Starfleet. Do I want to be stuck babysitting people who break the rules, doing security rounds and monitoring nearby ships for the rest of my life or do I want to do more than that? If I do, what is that and what exactly would I have to do to get there?”

The annoying part was that Kate partially knew the answer to that question, because she had spoken to Captain Kirk about it and his reply had all but assured that the option was off the table for her. To advance with Starfleet, she had to attend the Academy and to do that, Kate had to leave the ship. That in itself wasn’t so bad as it’d be temporary, leaving her friends would be hard but it wasn’t unthinkable, but it meant she also had to leave Castle and that, quite simply, was unimaginable.

Taking a drink from her glass, she pressed her lips together, trying to decide how much she wanted to unload on Lucifer. “Beyond that, are we always going to be tied to this ship? Is there any opportunity to settle anywhere else? Or are we always going to be here, going wherever the Enterprise goes with whatever crew she happens to be carrying at the time?”

Kate’s desire to be on an actual planet - Earth, to be specific - hadn’t lessened much at all since she had arrived, she had just taught herself to mostly avoid it. But she had lived her life in a vibrant, ever-changing city, done a good bit of traveling in addition to that so living confined to a ship, even with all the technological advances, would forever be directly at odds with everything that she had done before arriving in the future.

"You don't appreciate getting the chance to babysit me?" Lucifer asked, but he knew what she meant. Sure, he'd run a nightclub back on earth and enjoyed it, and it wasn't that he didn't enjoy managing the Lounge. But his new life upon the ship was limited.

"Boldly going," he corrected. "Where no devil has gone before. Do you think there's a television show about us now in some parallel universe?" Kate was asking serious questions, however, and his expression finally softened to match the tone of the conversation.

"I've wondered that myself," he said. "I mean, even though Los Angeles is certainly different, as someone who's been around and seen things change, I'd be fine to return there. This is all fun and games now, but I wouldn't mind not flying around endlessly for a bit. Or ever again."

“You don’t need as much babysitting as you think you do,” she replied, spearing a piece of chicken from her salad and waving it at him. “At least not on this ship. On Earth or some other planet, that’s up for debate, but it’s not like I could control you or keep you from doing whatever you wanted to do.”

Kate doubted anyone could. Maybe Chloe, but she wasn’t here for it to matter.

At his question she shrugged, chewing on her chicken piece until she finally swallowed. “Maybe. Maybe there’s already a tv show about us somewhere,” Kate said, “Most of the people here are fictional in my world anyway, why can’t I be a story in someone else’s?” It was weird to think about, even uncomfortable, but it also made sense in the weird sci-fi sort of way of most the television shows and movies that Castle loved so much.

Pausing to eat another forkful of her salad, and quickly swallowing it down, she nodded at him. “No, I get that. Castle and I have talked about it a lot, mostly because he’d be content to stay here and just float around whereas I’m far more inclined to keep my feet on the ground and stay there unless I’m going on vacation. I mean, all things considered, this isn’t a bad life. For some of the people here, it’s a damn great one, but this isn’t exactly what I planned when I took a promotion as Captain and agreed to step away from the field. I had far simpler plans than time travel and space exploration.”

Lucifer just barely stopped himself from saying that in the television version of their lives, the two of them were probably having an affair. To the point where he'd opened his mouth to speak but then closed it again.

Instead, he asked, "So what did you envision yourself doing back home, by now?"

She couldn’t read his mind, which was probably for the best given the train of Lucifer’s thought, but Kate understood body language enough to get that he was trying to keep himself from saying something he shouldn’t. Maybe in some random universe where there wasn’t a Richard Castle or a Chloe Decker, it would happen, but that was also some strange and unfathomable idea that she wouldn’t entertain very long, if at all.

She didn’t want a universe without Castle, and Kate didn’t really care if that made her a sap.

“The same thing, really,” she replied, spearing a piece of lettuce. “I took the job for a few different reasons, but one of them was because it was moderately safer. I wouldn’t be out in the field as much, though I’d never leave that type of work completely, and if I weren’t risking being shot at or attacked every day it seemed like a good time to start trying for a baby.” Kate shrugged again at that, dropping her fork onto a mostly finished plate. “I never talked to Castle about it – at least not then, but I had been thinking about it for a few months, pretty much ever since the promotion became a possibility. And knowing the two of us…..well, we’d probably have a kid by now.”

And if her suspicions about her last few memories were correct, if the bullets hadn’t killed her, they might have managed that part without actively trying.

"What is it about humans that you always want to make more humans? I mean, I get the sex part, obviously. But how do you look at all the terrible things in the world and decide yes, I want to inflict that misery upon my spawn?" Lucifer asked, genuine curiosity evident in his voice.

Then another thought occurred to him.

"You're not actually thinking about having kids here, are you?" he asked, slightly horrified at even the idea. Children were terrible enough but babies? He wasn't sure if he visibly shuddered or not.

“Because the spawn are what make the misery worth it,” Kate answered, slightly surprised at herself. She didn’t have kids, not yet at least, but she had been around enough people who did to see that it was one of the best things any of them had managed to do with their lives. “And, you know, maybe that kid will be the one that changes the world or helps to make it a better place. It’s all pretty maudlin.”

Picking up her fork, Kate took a final bite from her plate, something amused and a little devious sparking in her eyes as she chewed. “More than thinking about it,” she said once she had swallowed. “Though that has been going on nearly long enough for it to make a difference if it’s even possible.”

Who knew what time hopping did to reproductive organs? And then there was her age to contend with, she was pushing 36 and that made it all the more difficult. Even if she managed to get pregnant, the list of challenges in carrying one to term were long and terrifying, which was why she wouldn’t let herself dwell on it that much.

"Right," Lucifer said, eyeing her before backing away and turning toward the collection of bottles behind him. He selected one, grabbed a glass, and poured himself a drink. "I hope you're not really hoping to spawn the child that changes the world because that doesn't always go as planned."

He swallowed the contents of the glass in one go so he refilled it, before returning the bottle to its place. "You'd really want a baby in this place?" he asked. That was a terrible idea. Surely she saw that.

“I’d settle for one that turned out a decent human being,” Kate replied with a little smile. She wasn’t quite convinced she wouldn’t screw it up, but Castle had done this before and managed to raise one hell of a young woman in Alexis, so at least the odds were somewhat in their favor. “And don’t forget, Castle’s actually done this before. Alexis turned out just fine.”

The question he posed was really the trickiest one, and the one that Kate had agonized over for months. In her gut, the answer was no, she didn’t want to raise a child on a spaceship and introduce he or she to trees, sunshine, and grass through holodecks and the like. In a perfect world, she’d do things very, very differently. If she had a choice, she’d do it differently.

But she didn’t. Starfleet had made that much clear. They were meant to stay with the Enterprise, no matter where she went.

“Not if I had a choice,” she answered, holding up a hand to cut Lucifer off before he could tell her that she did indeed have one. “I know, I don’t have to have a child, but I’m choosing to. There are plenty of people in this universe that have raised children on other planets and space colonies and ships, lots of people don’t know anything any different. Is it how I want to raise a kid? No, but it’s not just about me and what I want. And besides that, I don’t believe that being afraid of something should stop me from going after a thing that I want.”

Nodding, Lucifer agreed with her in theory. "Oh I'm not questioning going after what you desire," he said. "Only what it is that you actually desire, which is apparently something that will cry too much and defecate on itself."

Finishing off the refill, he looked at Kate. "If it's a boy, you should name him Lucifer. If it's a girl, just don't give her a hooker name. And don't expect me to babysit…"

It was a stupid thing to smile at, but Kate did it anyway. “It’s not really that,” she told him, tapping her fingers lightly on the bar. “It’s…..getting to experience this new thing with Castle, seeing him with a kid that he and I made together, raising that kid and then putting this entire person out in the world. That’s as close to magic as mere mortals get, Lucifer. It’s our own version of supernatural events, even if it will cry a bit and need diaper changes for a few years.”

“But I’m not naming a kid Lucifer, that’s just asking for him to get bullied,” she said with a shake of her head, not that Kate really had any idea what she’d name a boy. Or even a girl, come to that.

"Bullied why? Half the people here don't even know who I am," he pointed out. "Therefore he'd just have a really brilliant name."

But he hadn't missed the way she'd talked about her potential spawn and the way her entire expression and demeanor had changed and lightened. So he sighed. "Right. Well, off you go then. Time to go procreate. It's obviously what you desire so you better get on that."

Lucifer had never wanted children, nor was he ever going to have any. But even his intense dislike of them couldn't stop him from secretly hoping Beckett and Castle would be successful. If only because Kate was his best friend on this ship and that was clearly something she wanted no matter that he couldn't fathom why.

"And you know, good luck. Have fun trying, at least," he added with an impish grin.

“No, half the people that are brought here don’t know who you are,” Kate corrected, “People that grew up on Earth know who you are, even if they don’t believe you are the actual devil.”

Rolling her eyes at him, Kate rose to her feet, quickly glancing at her watch to check the time. She had maybe ten minutes before her break was over, meaning she was back to patrolling the ship for threats that didn’t exist. “Think about it this way,” she told him, “My looks and Castle’s charm on a kid? That’s deadly. Even you wouldn’t be able to resist that.”

Though she knew he’d try anyway.

Reaching out to close the latches on the guitar case, Kate lifted it from the bar. “Oh, fun is never a problem. Bad sex is not a thing Castle and I do together,” she said, flashing him a smirk because she knew Lucifer usually preferred not to think about what she did in her own bedroom. “See you later?”

"That is deadly. This is why I'm terrified," Lucifer said, before lifting a brow as Kate mentioned fun wouldn't be an issue. "Well, I would certainly hope not, considering you married him and all…"

Smiling as she packed up the guitar, he added, "You'll have to stop by when you're not working and play sometime. Sooner, rather than later."

He waited until she would have been a safe distance from the Lounge and then poured himself another drink. A baby on the Enterprise? That was a bloody mental idea if ever he had heard one. And yet he had a feeling it wouldn't be long before it was a reality.