Okay do well someone pointed out that I didn't hit the complete button and well that just meant that there just had to have one more chapter. So anyways this was something I did want to write and glad that I did. Let me know what you guys think... and this time this is the last chapter I'm sorry


"Mom… Dad…"

"Hmm…" Beckett looked up from the file she was working from to give her full attention to Daniel. The seventeen year old was wringing his hands together and shifting his weight from foot to foot. Two sure tells that he was nervous about whatever this conversation was going to be. He had grown in the last ten years even passing Castle by two inches and filled out from the scrawny boy to a leaner swimmer build. He still had the shaggy blonde hair. No amount of badgering could get the boy to change it over the years. She closed the file and nudged her husband to get his attention as well, "Serious talk."

"What… Oh." Castle put his tablet down. "Something wrong?"

"No." Daniel quickly replied shoving a hand through his over grown hair. "I just, well, I want to ask you something."

"Sit before you fall down." Beckett commanded.

"Right," The teenager dropped himself into it, "Tomorrow is our annual family dinner and, well, I wanted to bring someone."

Castle exchanged a quick glance with his wife before a smile broke out across his face, "A special someone?"

His cheeks started to redden giving away his answer. The response made his parent's beam brighter. "Well, umm…" He cleared the squeakiness from his voice, "As a matter of fact yes."

"We were starting to think that we were too embarrassing for you to let anyone meet us." Castle happily rambled while wrapping his arm around his wife's shoulder. "See I told you we weren't lame parents."

Beckett leaned her head against Castle's shoulder, "So, is it Graham? He's such a nice young boy."

"Yes, he's a…" Daniel stopped short when his brain finally processed everything. He blinked a few times at the adults sitting across from him smiling and happy as could be for him. They were happy because he was happy. It didn't matter who he liked or what sex. Why had he thought they would act any different than they did before? They accepted him in a heartbeat. Why had he spent the entire night before pacing in his bedroom trying to come up with an epic speech about how he likes guys over girls? After all, these two people had volunteered a long time ago to be his parents, give him a good home, and most importantly loved him like he was their own. Never once in the last ten years had they treated him any differently than Alexis, Brianna or Nate. They were patient with him when it came to adjusting to the life they offered after spending the first seven years of his life in fear and pain. Tears burned the back of his throat causing him to turn his face so they wouldn't see if any slipped past his guard. Was it possible to love them any more than he already did? "You… ugh…. You know I'm gay?"

"Yes." Castle simply answered. That was something that he and Beckett figured out a few years back and had been patiently waiting until Daniel approached them about it.

"And you're okay with it? With me?"

"Of course, honey," Beckett reached across the table to lay her hand over his, "We love you and accept you for who you are. We would never try to change you or ask you to be something you're not. If you do that then you don't truly love that person. If I have learned anything in my life, it is when you love a person, truly love a person, then you love everything about them. The good, bad, and the ugly. That's love."

"Do you…" Daniel's gaze bounced back between the adults. He didn't talk about his real parents very much because it was usually too painful to talk about. "Do you think my mom would have approved."

Beckett's heart tugged at the distressed she caught in the teenager's voice, "She loved you, so I know she would." After finding Grace Carter's body, they began to uncover what really happened the night that she died despite the fact both Grace and Jack were gone. Grace had started a plan to smuggle herself and Daniel out of the house and out of town. During the joint investigation that Beckett was a part of, she discovered a unique network of people whose sole purpose in life was to relocate battered women. It was an information network were only one person knew part of the whole chain. Sometimes that chain was made up of ten different links of people who only knew one part that the smuggled woman went. Beckett had made dozens of phone calls and it took three weeks to find the person that Grace contacted to make this all happen. She was informed that the night Grace died was the night she had planned to take Daniel and run leaving everything behind. Jack must have either caught wind or came home when he wasn't supposed to interrupt the plan.

"Hello!" Nate's cheerful voice came through the library and into the kitchen moments before the seventeen year old entered. His dark hair was ruffled and matted with sweat just like his shirt. He placed his basketball on the counter, ignoring his mom's disapproving look and joined the trio, "Looks like a serious family meeting. Do I need to apologize for something?"

"Why?" Castle raised a brow, "Did you do something?"

"So," Nate bumped shoulders with his brother to change the subject, "Did you tell them?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"You were right."

"Of course I am." Beaming, He hooked an arm around Daniel's neck and pulled him close. "You might have the smarts and maybe the good looks there Danny boy, but I am always right. I wouldn't trade that for the world."

"What does Bree have?" Daniel wondered.

"Mom's smarts."

"Hey now!" Castle grumbled.

"Sorry Dad." Both boys replied in unison.

Beckett grunted but was smiling from ear to ear. The two teenagers began ripping each other, laughing, and darted out of the kitchen taking the basketball with them only after she reminded Nate, loudly, to take it off the kitchen counter. Raising two teenage boys was an adventure to say the least.


So?