Rafe pushes a hand through his hair and studies the pitfall. Huh. He's taken to calling it that as well, hasn't he? He walked up with Allie thinking it was a huge hole, and probably dangerous, and now he's thinking it's a clever trap for sand beasts, forget about humans.
How exactly does Richard Castle do this? It's fascinating. There must be a recipe; everything has a recipe. Steps to take.
List the ingredients: sandy beach, plenty of time, warm sun. Willing participants. A boy under five (for a little while yet). Imagination. Suspension of disbelief. A combined perception that the boy's view of the world is best left intact, shimmering, naive, pure. The effort of an adult or two who will take on that world and help strengthen it.
How much of each, and how little. How long to let the pot boil, how much heat.
Rick Castle has called time, determined the pitfall is definitely perfect for the plight of the sand beasts, and here it is - a delicacy. A succulent new dish. A completed work. More than just a pitfall. Somehow also a symbol and monument to the best in childhood.
While simultaneously *creating* that very childhood.
Richard Castle may be known for his books, but Rafe is beginning to understand how he is also known for so much more (at least to his family and friends). Known for the world he builds around himself, and how he has pulled these women into it - his daughter, his mother, his wife (third wife, interestingly, so the first two. . .what? Were never invited into that world, apparently. And as an interesting tangent, why her? Why did Kate get invited in, but not the others? What are the ingredients for that recipe?)
Pulled in Rafe to this world as well, if he's honest. He just spent an hour expertly digging a hole in the sand. A hole. Which, even in his head, he has renamed a pitfall and filled it with ravenous sandbeast-eating creatures of the deep. Leviathans, he told Dash.
Rafe was entirely too proud of himself when he came up with that one and the kid latched on to it, repeating it over and over under his breath, delighted and amused and wondrous. Entirely too proud. Both of them. Even Rick Castle looked proud, which only fed Rafe's sense of ego.
He's still proud. Ha. He made a four year old like him, and in the process, his girlfriend's father like him as well.
And his girlfriend's father somehow reached out and claimed him. Rafe still can't understand how he did it with these limited ingredients, though the wonder of a child definitely has a potent effect on the concoction, he can't forget that. (But his family, his large family, has kids as well, cute kids, and this hasn't happened in the reverse. There are no worlds built there.)
Will he be able to do the same with his kids? Allie will; she envelops everyone in her bright vision, even as she realistically understands its. . .pitfalls.
Ah, he's sunk. He's gone to the dark side. His momma kept telling him to bring Allie home, bring Allie home, but he made the crucial mistake of not preparing either of them for that meeting, and his mother like Allie and Allie liked her, but there wasn't magic, here's the magic, and now-
Now, Rick Castle has made room for Rafe in their world. And he wants to stay here.
Dashiell tugs on Rafe's hand. "Come on. You said-"
"Yeah, of course. Let's ask." Rafe hoists the kid up, carefully swinging him over the lovingly created sloping sides, lets Dashiell climb out of the pitfall. Dash turns and watches Rafe anxiously as he attempts to do the same, without also ruining their work.
He makes it, ridiculously pleased with himself for not accidentally caving in a side, then follows Dashiell to where Rick and Allie are scanning the beach for sight of Kate and Ellery - the two went off on a seashell expedition.
Rick turns when Dashiell calls out; Rafe stands behind Dash feeling about as old as a four year old himself.
"Can Rafe take me in the ocean, Daddy?"
Rafe steps forward, nods when Rick shoots him an inquisitive glance.
"If that's okay with Rafe, my man."
"He said yes!" Dashiell shrieks, jumping up and spinning around to Rafe. "Let's go." Dashiell takes off at a mad sprint straight for the waves.
Rafe runs after him, catching him by the arm, the funny thrashing in his heart beginning to slow. The flag has been changed since they arrived earlier, and the waves are bigger, the current stronger, but Dashiell wanted to go in and get all the sand off.
And Rafe wants his girlfriend's little brother to keep liking him (and by extension, his girlfriend's father), so he offered to take him. From far behind him, he can hear Allie laughing. That can only be good, right?
Dashiell plunges in, so Rafe wades in after him, still holding on to his arm, his feet touching the bottom. "Not any further than this, Dash." The water is up to his chest and the waves are sucking at the sand under his feet; he finds himself constantly shifting to stay upright.
Dash is actually a pretty good swimmer - he's got a natural ability maybe, or just a really good teacher. Rafe remembers Allie telling him that her father taught her to swim in the Hamptons, so maybe he taught Dash as well. Yeah, now that he's spent a few hours with Dash and Richard Castle (he has got to stop thinking of the man as the Author Richard Castle), Rafe can see how their father would be a patient and clever teacher.
He thinks like a kid; he understands them. His son, yes, but probably any kid. Rafe has heard stories of epic lightsaber fights and laser tag games lasting all night long. He knew that Allie wasn't making them up, but before now he's had a hard time believing that any parent could be both so fun and also still a parent.
Castle seems to be doing that. Again, there has to be a recipe for it, a perfect blend of ingredients.
He just needs to figure them out. How does Rafe usually do that? Lots of taste-testing. He'll just keeping sampling, spend every moment with this family soaking it in, observing, theorizing, until he gets a chance to replicate it.
Oh, well. . .that's. . .when he has kids of his own, isn't it?
And that vision blows him away for a moment.
In the meantime, he can test out his ideas on Allie. She loves to talk about this stuff.
Allie's chest eases when she finally spots Kate in the distance.
"Dad. There," she says, pointing towards the profile of the woman, long lines, her beach wrap fluttering around her knees, stopped to wait on the little girl. "That's them."
She feels her father lose his tension in a wave, all of it draining out of him; his clutch on her arm is the only outward sigh of his relief. "Yeah. You're right."
They still stand at the shoreline, watching, neither able to quite release the at-attention sense they've had for the last ten minutes or so, not knowing where Kate and Ella were.
"She said she was going. I knew she was going on a walk," her father says, almost to himself.
"It's been an hour," Allie puts in, trying to be helpful.
"You and Rafe were gone for longer," he says back, shaking his head. "Kate's gonna kill me if she sees I was worried. And got you worried too."
But it's the same worry, Allie wants to say, explain, identify. They are the same. In the beginning was just the two of them, Alexis and her father, and they will always fall back together on the same old fears - abandonment and stale loneliness. Kate remade everything when she came - Alexis is Allie now, and her father is. . .
She feels the corner of her lips smirk. Castle. He's Castle. And with that comes everything the use of his last name implies - formality and protection and dependability. Alexis was fifteen years old before she finally saw something true spark in her father's eyes, something other than the way he loved her, something that engaged him in the real world (again, because he really had been engaged in the world at one point, Allie knows this too. But the money and fame overrode it.)
The spark? The way he loved Kate. Even if, back then, it wasn't what it is now. Alexis wonders if that's true for everyone who falls in love, or just for the type of people her father and Rafe are - because they spark the same way, are passionate in the same way.
"Quick, make like we're having a serious conversation," her father says, tugging her closer to him, wrapping his arm around her shoulders.
Allie laughs and squeezes back, draws the sleeve of her cover-up back onto her shoulder. "All right, Dad. What about?"
"Uh, shoot, anything. Come on. Kate seriously will not be pleased if she thinks I'm getting as paranoid as she is. You know how she is about that."
"Bringing you down with her," Allie remarks, nodding. Too many psychology courses; the ideas and the archetypes, the analyzing and the profiling come entirely without her bidding them. "Okay. All right. Oh. I know. Might be moving back to New York."
That completely diverts his attention; Allie smiles back at his happy and incredulous look. "Really?"
His hug grows tighter, more convincing, a kiss dropped to the top of her head like she's actually fifteen again. If he calls her pumpkin. . .
"Pumpkin, would you really move back?"
She rolls her eyes, but it sends a daughter's thrill through her chest, makes her cheeks warm. Allie knows she's a daddy's girl, knows she's got issues because she grew up, for the most part, motherless, knows that because of her father's early cavalier attitude towards life and rules that any man who takes a firm hand is infinitely more attractive (Rafe, jeez, Rafe), but knowing. . .knowing does her no good against the reality of her emotional make-up.
So maybe Rafe's sexual appeal increases when-
"Allie. The city. Hurry. Before Kate gets back."
Right, yes. She blushes, realizing that she was just thinking about Rafe in bed while being hugged by her father, and wow, a psychology degree does not excuse that.
"When I finish grad school. I've already applied at a few places. I had an interview last week-"
"You were in the city last week?" her father says, almost pouting.
Allie shakes her head. "No. I canceled. Last minute."
Her father frowns, rubs a hand down her shoulder. "Why, Alexis?"
"I know Mom said not to let a guy dictate what I do with my life, where it's going, she's always said that, she's right to say that, but I'm still hesitating."
"You mean Rafe."
Allie nods, glances down the beach to see her mom and Ella (her mom, her mother, Kate, the one who probably can make sense of this, rationally, but who might also warn her that rational isn't always the best way to go). The two are hand in hand now, Kate looking like she's in no hurry.
"Alexis, Kate - Mom is usually right. Sure. But you know how she and I approach things."
"Differently," Allie laughs, glancing back to her father. "I know. I'm taking that into consideration. Which is why I canceled the interview last week. Because I don't want to move away from Rafe. I want him with me, or me with him, however it works. I just don't know how to ask him to quit his job - he just got promoted to pastry chef, which is all he's wanted there - and then drag him to New York with me where it's so very difficult to break into the restaurant business."
"Don't you think it's just as difficult a market as Chicago? Don't you think Rafe is good enough to gamble on?"
Allie turns a shocked face to her father. "Of course I do. Dad." And then her father's grin filters in to her senses, she takes a breath. "A sure bet."
"Well, then. Problem solved. Ask him to move with you."
There's something underlying her father's confidence. Something more than his usual speech, soapbox, about how love is the grand adventure, how love deserves to be left its mystery and its romance, how love itself should be courted and wooed, how love is a risk and a gamble.
"What do you know?" Allie asks, narrowing her eyes at her father.
His eyes widen - she has him - and then he's pushing past her. "Hey, my girls. How was your walk?"
Darn. She nearly had him. She did have him; his confidence was too pronounced.
"Oh, Rick, look what we found," Kate is saying, sounding breathless, excited. Allie turns to look at her adopted mother, sees her kneeling next to Ellery, nudging the girl, two dark heads close together.
"What did you find?"
"Come on, cricket, show Daddy what we found. How many we found." Kate glances up, her eyes traveling to Alexis's father's face, her look like a touch. Rick drops to his knees beside Ellery and Kate.
Allie gets down beside them too, remembering how that felt, her father's blue eyes on her face, the thrill of showing off to daddy. Still powerful, after everything, still has a hold on her. So much that she envies Ellery, just a little, for having them both - Dad and Kate - both her parents attuned to her, waiting for a word.
Ella glances up at her daddy, back to her mother, then holds up her hand, a loose and sandy fist, her eyes so blue they're breathtaking.
She unfurls her fingers, peering down into her own hand, to reveal a sand dollar resting on her little palm.
"Oh, baby, look at that," Rick says, cupping her hand in both of his. His lips to her forehead in a kiss, and then he's sharing a look with Kate.
Allie gets a chance to meet her sister's eyes while their parents say nothing at all and everything at the same time.
"Ella-bean, look what you found," she murmurs, grinning at her little sister. Ellery's face beams wide, shoulders still hunched towards the sand dollar as if she can keep it safe and protected with the tilt of her little body. "It's so tiny. So pretty."
"Sand dollar," Ella says, drawing her father's attention again.
"It's amazing," Rick says, his thumbs stroking over Ella's wrist, his hands so large compared to Ellery's that it looks absurd and heartbreaking at the same time. "How many did you find?"
"Three," Ella says, grinning again. "Like me."
"Did you hear the birds inside?" her father says.
Allie rests her palms on her knees as she watches Ella cradle the thing with pride, the little eyes lifting to her daddy with surprise.
Kate hums and uses a finger to brush the hair back from Ellery's face. "Shake it near your ear, cricket. Gently."
Ella cups the sand dollar and brings it up to her ear, a little eyebrow arching as she carefully shakes her hand. She gasps and turns wild eyes to her mother. "Things inside!"
"Daddy calls them birds," Kate says, smiling gently. "Five little birds of peace, right, Daddy?"
Allie glances to her father, laughing at the pleased surprise on his face. He must think he's the only one who can tell stories.
"Yes, five birds of peace. Exactly right. Why don't you tell us the story, Mommy?"
Ella turns her head towards Kate, bringing the sand dollar back in front of her face, holding it now with two hands as if the addition of birds of peace make it that much more precious.
"They're doves," Kate starts, then shrugs with a sigh. "That's all I know."
"Daddy?" Ella says softly, lifting her eyes back to her father.
"I'll tell the story at bedtime. How about that?"
Allie smiles to herself, locks eyes with Kate who is grinning as well. So they both know, then, don't they?
A bedtime story? Yeah, her father doesn't know any more to the story either.
He's gonna have to make it up between then and now.
Rick reaches down and carefully gathers Ella to his chest, standing up with the girl in his arms. "I'll tell you and Dash both tonight. Okay? Something to look forward to." He turns back to Allie and Kate, points a finger at them. "Not a word from the peanut gallery."
Ella pats her father's cheek, still holding on to the sand dollar, but cupped now against her chest.
"Daddy, what's peanut gallery?"
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