Advent

The creepy music swells and the certainty of a coming doomsday presses hard on his shoulders.

He did this. He let Tyson back out into the world and he tried, he really tried, but here it is again.

Kate growls and reaches past him to yank the flash drive out of Castle's laptop. She closes her hand around it in a fist, her face furious. "No."

"Kate," he groans.

"No," she insists. "I don't believe it."

"He's alive. Tyson is alive and he's-"

"Not here," she says. He can't tell whether she means Tyson himself isn't here - it was just a song on a flash drive - or if she means that she doesn't want that in her home.

He doesn't either.

"We are not doing this again this year," she scrapes out. "No more Tyson."

"But he-"

"Not this, please. Not this year, not for Thanksgiving - not for Christmas - our first holidays here. Castle, please."

His heart shivers and he ducks his head. "Okay. I - you're right."

"We'll figure this out; I promise you," she says softly. He finds her just in front of him now, her fist easing. "We have to do it right, without panicking, slowly. Not - not another rabbit hole."

It brings him up short, the need on her face, the need to be free. Isn't that what he tried so hard to do for her two years ago with the Advent Calendar? To set her free. He won't do that to her now, enslave her to another case with no end in sight.

"I'm sorry," he rasps. "We won't. Not now."

Her arms come around his waist and she tucks in close to him, her head under his chin. "Just not now."

But eventually, right, Kate? Eventually they will have to deal with Tyson.

"You know what I've realized?" she says suddenly.

Castle startles into awareness, jerking the mattress with his violent awakening. "Huh?"

"Our Advent Calendar has twenty-five days."

"So?" he mutters back, rubbing his hand down his face. It's too early for a conversation and they have everyone coming over for Thanksgiving dinner today; he needs sleep.

"So? So day twenty-five is Christmas Day exactly. So all the other calendars only have twenty-four days."

"Well that's stupid. There are twenty-five days," he says, brow knitting.

"But in a countdown, Castle, there should only be twenty-four," she huffs, poking her finger in his ribs. He grunts and turns onto his side to look at her, give her the attention she apparently thinks this deserves.

He tries to focus. "Okay, so. A countdown has - oh, I see. Right. Because counting down to the actual day means the day itself shouldn't be in the countdown. Huh."

"See? Where did you get this calendar?"

He turns and looks over his shoulder at the behemoth set up in their bedroom; Kate pulled it out early. "Someone made it. Street fair down in the Village. Lots of booths for Christmas."

"Well, now what are we supposed to do?"

"Fill up the days like we said," he laughs, shrugging at her. "Doesn't change the plan, Beckett."

She sighs. "But if you have odd numbers, then you'll have more than me and-"

"Drop it," he grumbles now. "Not a big deal. One more day?" He's panicking a little bit because if she changes things on him now - everything is ruined. She's got the even days and he's got the odd days, and it has to be like this. "It's not like we're doing anything big. It's just fun - a tradition to keep going for our family."

She sighs and he shifts to roll slowly on top of her, quirking an eyebrow and hoping to distract her. Kate hums and a hand lifts to the nape of his neck, strokes at his hair. Her eyes have gone dark, deep, and he grins.

She's distracted.

The day after Thanksgiving they sit down at their kitchen table with twenty-five colored paper squares. Alexis helped them cut the strips last week when they figured out what they wanted to do with the Advent calendar - when they decided to share it this year. It's like over-large confetti, and it's their plan.

They put words into their Advent Calendar this year, words for their family, moments for each day together. She has the even dates and Castle has the odd, and they spend nearly two hours writing down a purpose for every slip of paper, sharing their ideas and suggestions, laughing over memories of the past couple years.

They fold each square of paper and slide them inside the windows of the Advent Calendar, filling up the skyline of the apartment buildings with twenty-five blessings for the last of the year. Each note gives them a tradition for their own season, a way of claiming it together and blending their lives, a message of hope, instructions for the future.

The month of holiday tradition starts soon, and they're ready now.

December 1st: They decorate their home for Christmas: garland and lights, the tree and Alexis's handmade ornaments. Castle drags her out to raid the seasonal store in SoHo, picking out extravagantly-priced wreaths for every window, and LED candles to place in the windowsills.

She finds wooden blocks painted turquoise and red that spell out Merry Christmas and she can't help putting them in the basket as well. When Castle sees her getting into the spirit of things, his smile makes her heart flip. He reaches out and pushes her hair behind her ear, his thumb brushing her cheek, and she wants every day to be like this.

They cut out paper snowflakes and hang them from the ceiling of their bedroom. Kate vetoes coating them with glitter, saying she doesn't want to wake up with sparkles in her mouth. But that's okay because the snowflakes dip low enough to skim the top of his head, and he has to part curtains of paper with his hands when he heads into his office, making it like a child's winter wonderland. She looks thrilled whenever she steps into their room; she looks like Christmas is finally - for her - about family once more.

When she reaches out and touches a snowflake, he can envision her sitting at their kitchen table with a girl of their own, carefully cutting paper together, carrying on the tradition.

Today's instructions tell them to head out into the neighborhood. They walk through the houses of lights, hand in hand, the wonder and awe filling the dark spaces between them. The night isn't quiet - it's children and families and snarky comments about the electricity bill - and her feet are sweating in her wool socks and boots, but his fingers laced with hers feel right. It feels so very right.

Kate's note on December 6th tells Castle Pay off the mortgage and his joy as he writes the check for the last of their home makes her heart pound. Thank you for letting me he murmurs to her that night, his mouth against her skin. Thank you for letting me take care of us.

Their home is their own, bought and paid for, and she doesn't mind. She likes it.

She owns a home with Castle, and she cups his face and whispers her gratitude back to him. You always take care of us.

One evening they dress up to watch the Nikki Heat movie, inviting everyone to their home for the DVD premiere. A party filled with all the people in their lives who have made Nikki Heat possible - Lanie and Espo, the Ryans, even Captain Gates and her husband attend. Of course there are Martha and Jim, Alexis and her new boyfriend - the family who have stood with them in these last few complicated years.

The movie plays in the background, the living room and kitchen filled with their extended family, and they drink and laugh and eat too much, feel like the world is their own. It's a movie, but it's life as well, and they're working on their own wonderful story.

One morning Castle wakes her early (he has espresso and it smells fantastic, lures her out of bed before she realizes). They head out to her father's cabin, according to the day's gift, and make it into a holiday for him. A few presents, a fire in the hearth, Kate and her father making breakfast for dinner. Jim has a gift for Alexis that Kate didn't know anything about and the look on Castle's face makes everything in her vision shimmer, but she won't cry. Not today.

She takes her partner on a walk through the woods before it can rain that evening, and they watch the snow geese pushing through sheets of ice on the lake. They don't have speak, and she likes that about him - how he's found another way to say I love you by saying nothing at all.

Because they sit so very still - side by side on the massive star-watching rock, feeling the earth spinning under them - a doe and her two fawns come hesitantly through the trees, nosing into the ground. Kate lets out an icy breath, and the doe pricks its ears. The deer lift their heads and - in concert - leap away.

"Did you know," Castle begins in a quiet rumble, "that Santa's sleigh is pulled by all female reindeer?"

"Do what?" she laughs, startling a bird from the tree closest to their rock. It wings into the thick clouds and disappears.

"It's true. Male reindeer lose their antlers before December. Female reindeer retain theirs until the spring. So all those pictures of a fat white guy being dragged through the sky by Comet and Donder and Blitzen? They have antlers - so they're all female."

"Girl power," she grins. "Is that true?"

"Of course it's true."

Huh. "Dash away all," she murmurs, tilting her head back to glance at the murky sky.

No reindeer. But it makes sense that all the storybooks got it wrong. Very rarely is the full story told, she's discovered.

On December 15th, Kate pulls the yellow slip of paper from the window and laughs, waking him in the still-dark morning. Castle rolls over and looks at her, blinking slowly against the pillow, and then his leer stretches across his face as he remembers what he wrote - his suggestion.

She comes back to bed and makes it happen.

"Merry Christmas, baby," she murmurs.

Wow. Yeah. Merry Christmas.

When Kate meets Alexis outside the campus center, the girl looks excited. She digs into her bag and pulls out a package. "I thought we could try different shapes?" Triangles, squares, diamonds.

Kate laughs and takes the clear plastic package, shakes the cookie cutters inside. "That might be interesting. Diamonds?"

"You don't mind? I know they're your mom's cookies, and it's a family tradition, but see these? They've also got little gingerbread men, and with the filling, it'd be like their guts."

Kate presses her lips together and shakes her head. These Castles. "Alexis, don't worry. You did good. I think it's a great idea." She wraps an arm around Alexis's shoulder and pulls the girl into a hug. "You ready to make our Christmas cookies? Now with - what did you say? blood and guts? - now with added blood and guts."

It's working for them both, their Advent Calendar. It brings all the beautiful things of the holiday into their life together - peace and joy, hope and goodwill. They give out coins to the bell-ringing Santas again, this time including Alexis's new boyfriend, a good experience for Castle to glimpse the kid's heart. A few nights later they deliver meals to the shut-ins on the same route they had last year - finding new stories and the same familiar faces made joyful by their visit.

They are flourishing together, in ways Kate never expected and Castle could only dream of.

One night when the ice threatens the power lines and hangs heavy on the trees, Kate finally makes it home - hours late. She unbuttons her coat in the darkened foyer and hangs it in the closet, unzips her boots and carries them with her up the stairs.

She finds Castle asleep in his office, his face limned with icy light from the front windows. She brushes the hair off his forehead and kisses him there, leaves him to his slumber for a little while longer.

Ever since the Nieman case, ever since Castle thoughtlessly plugged a flash drive into his laptop and the song haunted their home, Kate's been working to get them past that crack in their foundation.

Her knee-jerk reaction was to deny it was Tyson at all, to close her eyes and ears to it, pretend it wasn't there. But she knows that it sits heavy on Castle's shoulders, a failure and a burden, a responsibility that she understands all to well. Last year Kate managed to reclaim for him that sense of home, and this year as they've opened each little window on the day, they've pushed out that fear from their lives and remade it into their own.

They're partners. They're in this together.

Kate goes through the door to the other side of the house, searching the rooms for Alexis's presence. His daughter has a tendency to stay in the loft with her grandmother, and it looks like she's there now - or back on campus - and so it's just Kate and Castle tonight.

She steps lightly down the back stairs and through the playroom that Castle has turned into a massive entertainment center. She picks up a blanket from the floor and folds it, hangs it over the back of his video game chair. She finds packages of empty popcorn and throws those away, shaking her head at him. She leaves the tv room and moves through to the more formal living room. She turns on the gas logs, thinking she'll bring him downstairs later tonight to curl up in front of the fire, and then she continues her house-check by stopping in the kitchen.

She pours a glass of wine and pushes a hand into her pants pocket, feels the flash drive warm to her touch. She takes a sip of wine and carries the glass into the front dining room to turn on the overhead light, watches the golden glow over the Advent Calendar.

It's taken her five weeks to collect every last scrap of available evidence on the Tyson case. She went to old storage rooms in the basements of some of New York's precincts, called her counterparts in New Jersey, even had to Skype with a Captain in Florida to beg for copies of the murders there. Captain Gates and Esposito and Ryan made cold calls and sent down requests to a hundred different places, begging for details, for video, for photos. Most of it won't stand up in court, but like Castle said - it all points to motive and method, gives them an idea of what to look for and how Tyson - or Nieman - might do it next time.

Because she believes Castle. The murders will continue. They're partners in this.

Kate thumbs the flash drive and sets her wine glass on the dining room table, studies the Advent Calendar. The twilight sky, the points of stars, the apartment skyline - it's beautiful and simple and a little overwhelming, just as it looked to her two years ago on her own dining room table, back before she ever believed they could do this.

Partners.

This is why she collected every scrap of evidence, scanned it, and put it on a flash drive for him. Because he did this for her - made her believe.

Kate reaches out and slides the edge of her fingernail into the casement, opens the window on day twenty-five. Merry Christmas, she thinks, transferring the flash drive into the little space.

But it won't fit.

Kate frowns. This is the same brand of flash drive he used to load her playlist, so it should fit. Maybe the paper square he folded has popped up and is blocking the way.

She swipes her finger through the space behind the window, jerking back in shock when she feels the skittering, hard curve of metal.

Her heart falters.

Kate leans down and looks inside the window, finds the the thing that has been filling up the twenty-fifth day.

It's a ring.

It's a huge, diamond ring.

Castle laughs and tugs her by the belt loop, pulling her away from the coffee-maker so he can get there first. "What's up with you? You're all jittery."

Kate slants him a look for beating her to the coffee, shrugs in a way that's entirely not helpful. "You know. Christmas Eve."

"Oh," he murmurs, concern flashing through him. "Does it - is it too much this year? We already had our big party; tonight is just Alexis and my mother. I promise we'll-"

"It's not too much," she whispers. Her kiss is light and delicate against his lips, thoroughly distracting. When she sinks back flat-footed, he realizes she's maneuvered him away from the coffee. "Now move. Me first. I need caffeine."

Castle laughs and braces himself on the counter, framing her hips so he can nudge his nose into the hair at her neck. She smells clean from the shower, the scent of soap and something musky, and he breathes another kiss below her ear.

She doesn't miss a beat, pours coffee into both their mugs, fixes his first despite her me first comment. She turns in his arms and presses the cup into his chest, pushes him back. He takes it with a smile, sipping slowly, and they share the morning quiet.

Christmas Eve. She'll go in to work for her shift and come home to him in time for dinner; they'll open presents like his family always does, but not all of them - concession to her family's traditions. Christmas Day... Christmas Day she'll open the calendar window and receive the biggest present of all. He can't wait.

He grins and leans forward, brushes a coffee-rich kiss to her mouth. She hums and sinks into it, a touch of her tongue to his, sharing flavors, and then she breaks away. "Advent?"

"Yeah," he grins. He's lost track of which traditions they haven't accomplished yet, what her slip of paper might say. Weeks ago when they wrote all of these down, he couldn't believe how hard it was to think of good things to write, and now he's pretty sure they've run through everything important.

Oh, well. He'll find out soon enough.

Kate follows him into the dining room, her warmth just at his back. He settles his coffee mug down on the table and notices a wine glass off to one side, half full. "What's this from? The party? I thought I got everything-"

"No, that's mine," she says, brushing past him and grabbing the glass by its stem. "Forgot it the other night."

He watches her a second, surprised she was so distracted, but she sets the wine glass on the mantle of the dining room's fireplace and nods towards the calendar. He turns back and pushes his finger into day twenty-four, flicks it open.

The paper is white. He didn't think any of those squares they cut were white. Wasn't the paper multi-colored?

Castle feels Kate's fingers close around his upper arm, her cheek against his shoulder, and he reaches forward to pull out the slip.

It's not a square. It's a jagged scrap of computer paper and when he opens it, all it says is yes.

"Ye-" Castle stumbles to a stop and jerks his head around to Kate. She lifts from his shoulder, and her lips are doing a poor job of smothering her smile, and her eyes are filled with dark pools of joy.

"Yes," she says. "Since you open your gifts on Christmas Eve - yes. That's your present."

"Yes," he breathes. She said yes.

"Can I have my ring now?" she murmurs, smiling wider. "It's beautiful, Rick. And I want to wear it."

His heart stutters back into rhythm and he cups her cheeks, brings her into him for a kiss. Her mug of coffee sloshes between them, the slip of paper with her answer pressed by his fingers into her neck, and she laughs against his lips.

"You sneaking through the days, Kate Beckett?"

"I was putting your gift into Christmas Day," she murmurs, another kiss at his cheekbone. "Wanted you to open it."

"My gift? You just gave me my gift," he says, smiling at her and stroking his thumb over her soft bottom lip. "Best gift of my life."

She melts into him, arms wrapping around his neck as she presses closer. He puts her coffee mug on the table behind them, moves to embrace her as well. She feels so good in his arms, strong and warm.

"I wrapped it up instead. You'll get it under the tree tomorrow, Rick."

"Mm," he murmurs. "Since we're switching traditions, then I suppose you can have your gift today."

"Oh, yes, please." She pushes back from him and heads straight for the Advent Calendar, opens the last day - totally breaking the rules, Beckett - and scoops out the ring. But she turns and hands it to him, their fingers brushing as he takes it.

"Other hand, Beckett," he murmurs.

She switches with a laugh, holding out her left hand, and he slides the diamond over her finger, leaning down to kiss her knuckle. He feels her other hand come to the back of his head, scratching through his scalp. Her kiss glances his eyebrow as he lifts his gaze to her and she smiles at him.

"And Happy New Year, Rick."

Happy and Blessed New Year!

Thank you all for every word, every response, every moment of compassion, and every smile. May 2014 bring you hope and peace.