Castle and The Originals

Chapter 28

Rick leaned against the doorframe trying to catch his breath. He was breathless; she left him that way every time.

He took a moment to survey what had been, just six days prior, their neat and tidy bedroom. It was a far cry from the sanctuary it normally was. Similarly, Kate was a far cry from the control freak wife of just six days ago, as well. She had taken her grounding seriously; her feet had only touched the floor long enough to use the restroom and take the occasional shower. Everything else; eating, getting dressed, combing her hair had all been done from the bed. Of course she didn't just lay around and sleep the days away, as Rick had hoped. In fact he could, by the looks of the room, chronicle the week by the collateral damage left in its wake.

Day one was all about reading. He saw all three Nikki Heat novels that she'd tossed on the nearby recliner one-by-one after tearing through them at a speed-reader's pace. Mingled with those were three or four children's books that her young friend had sent over from the little boutique around the corner. She went through those in no time as well.

Kate decided day two needed to be 'more productive', her words not his. Rick was perfectly content to lay next to her and listen to her read for another twelve hours. However, she'd given him marching orders to dig out every one of her CD's from the room upstairs that would soon become a nursery and bring them down to her. She spent the day burning them all to his laptop. 'They're just wasting space we don't have.' She'd said. Now they were wasting space all over the floor; a rainbow of colors as well as sounds; Kate it seems has a vast array of musical tastes. Rick spent the evening transferring the music to her iPad. The whole day had been spent side-by-side comparing notes as to where they were in their prospective lives when some of her favorite songs were on the charts. It got a little weird when Seal's Kiss from a Rose turned out to be the song playing during a then fifteen year old Kate's first dance, while simultaneously being the song Rick sang to a toddler-sized Alexis whenever she would cry for a mother that would never return.

Much to Rick's surprise, day three had started out on a pretty clutter free path. Kate had decided that they needed to get started on some serious shopping for baby gear. They spent hours researching various cribs, changing tables, strollers, car seats and high chairs. But when morning turned into later afternoon and she still hadn't decided on the exact set of nursery furniture, she insisted they print out all four of the final choices so she could marinate on them. He had no idea that marinating involved taping the printouts up as if their room where a murder board and the cribs the only suspects. Yet there they were; two taped to the headboard and one to the lampshade. Choices number four, having been finally eliminated as a suspect, was now wadded up somewhere under the California King; the result of a poorly aimed rim shot off the small trashcan on his side of the bed.

Then came day four, it had been the start of a new food issue for Kate. Rick was accustomed to her ginormous appetite, in fact it had only increased since becoming bed-bound. However, she was no longer able to eat three large meals with snacks in between. The babies were beginning to take up more and more space in her abdomen and her stomach had become the first victim. Rick tried to convince her that he really didn't mind fixing six or seven smaller meals throughout the day, but Kate insisted that he stick to the normal three squares, just that he make them a little smaller than the normal feasts he had been preparing for her. She said she just needed more snacks to tide her over in between. He glanced at the nightstand now covered with said snacks; Cheetos, celery sticks, grapes, cookies, beef jerky, M&M's Gummi Bears, trail mix and pistachios. The bed was so full of crumbs that he was pretty sure he had exfoliated every inch of exposed skin when he crawled into bed the previous evening. And that was only after he peeled back all the blankets piled on his side.

Kate had laid awake the fourth night completely overheated, from what he wasn't sure. She said something about having two times the blood volume of a Non-pregnant woman circulating through her veins. He didn't hear the whole explanation. He was too busy trying to avoid crushing all the plastic music cases on his way to the thermostat. It was now so cold in the loft that condensation had formed on the windows and Rick had to dress like an Eskimo during the day and burrow like a hibernating bear under a cave of blankets at night.