65. Chapter 65

Castle waits until Kate and Ella are mostly gone from view, then he turns back to Dashiell, the boy nearly to his chest in the deep hole they've dug. The pit for the sand beasts. The sand beasts which will commence terrorizing the green army men at any moment, so long as Dash is happy with the depth of his pit.

"Okay, my man, now that Mommy can't overhear-"

"My party."

"Your party. What were you thinking?"

"The chainsaws were good, but I guess no chainsaws?" Dashiell lifts a hesitant face up to him, eyes squinting. Castle can't remember where the kid put his sunglasses.

"Yeah, I think chainsaws might be too much. For Ella at least. She acts tough, but I think it scared her."

"She had bad dreams."

"She tell you that?"

Dash nods, goes back to scraping out sand with both hands, being careful not to fling, like Castle has been reprimanding him all morning. Good boy.

"What else can we do, Daddy? If not chainsaws."

"Well, you don't *have* to have a Halloween birthday party. We've just always done it like that."

"But. . .well. . .what else would it be?" Dash pauses in his work, wipes at a trickle of sweat on his chest only to smear sand across his skin instead. "If not Halloween. It can't be Christmas."

Castle laughs and puts his feet into the pit with Dash. "Actually, kiddo, most people's birthdays aren't holidays. Unlike yours and Ella's."

"Oh. What do they do?"

"They have cake. And ice cream. Like you. And a theme."

"A theme. Like a book?" Dashiell looks incredibly reluctant to pursue this kind of party, a book party. Castle can barely keep from laughing again, imagining what horrors of literacy are going through the kid's head.

"Not. . .well, no. Not like a theme in a book. I mean, a theme for the party. Like cowboys. Or princess-"

"Ew. Not even Ella wants a princess party." Dash shudders, and Castle has to actually bite his lip and turn his head to hold it in.

"Right. Not princess."

"Not cowboy either, cause I did that already." Dashiell resumes scooping, puts the sand on Castle's thigh instead of on top of the pile he's made, tilts his head back to laugh at his father, a wide grin across his face, eyes crinkling just like Castle's. Kate always says the kid looks like him, but at this moment, he truly sees it.

Castle leaves the sand on his leg, wriggling his eyebrows at his son. "So what then?"

"I don't know. I like the scary stuff, but I like Ellery more."

Heart clenching, Castle grabs hold of Dash's shoulder, tugs the boy over to him for a big hug, maybe squeezing too tight, but he can't help it. Castle kisses his cheek, even though he knows Dash feels too old for this, and only consents to his mother's kisses under duress. "Good boy." He can feel the kid's confusion, and slight long-suffering, but he doesn't have the words to say what it means. "You're a wonderful brother, Dashiell."

The boy squirms away, giving Castle a strange look, then shrugging. "Sure, Daddy."

Castle laughs and musses Dash's hair, pushing it out of his eyes. "You are. It's good to think about your sister, but it's even better to love her more than your chainsaws."

Dashiell gives a bright laugh and ducks out from Castle's hand. "Course I do. Ella's better than chainsaws. Even if she always takes my spiderman. And my army men. And my-"

"Okay, all right, kiddo. So. If there's no chainsaws, if there's not even Halloween, what kind of party do you want?"

Dash bends over to scoop out more sand. He seems content to just keep digging, all day long, to never start the battle of army men versus sand beasts. He must like the exertion, the feel of the wet sand, the heavy work. After a moment where Castle can tell the kid is thinking, thinking hard, tongue sticking out, Dashiell sighs and shrugs his shoulders, climbing up out of the pit gracelessly.

He falls next to his father, sweaty and sandy and looking all enthusiastic little boy. "I know exactly."

"Okay. Lay it on me, Dash."

"I want a dinosaur party. With a dinosaur that will eat people up. Like in your stories." He opens two arms wide and then chomps them together, slapping his hands as he growls. "Nom. Nom."

Castle grunts, tries to smother his laughter. "Ah. Well. Dinosaurs aren't alive anymore."

"Oh."

"They're extinct."

"Yeah." Dash screws up his face, thinking on that one too.

"I could get you dinosaur decorations. And probably a dinosaur pinata. But. . .a dinosaur to eat people? That doesn't exist. Unfortunately. Because you're right, that would be very cool."

"No T-rexes."

"Yeah. No T-rexes. What do you really want at your party if you can't have T-rex?"

Dashiell frowns. "How about a party with just all mine people?"

The slip into baby talk makes Castle's chest expand, warm with memory; this is one of Dash's phrases. A Dashism, as Kate calls it. All mine people. He said it one Christmas when everyone was together; he'd just turned two and he had an arm hooked around Kate's neck as she was trying to take him upstairs to use the potty. Dash was afraid everyone would be gone when he got back, but Kate kept telling him everyone would be there, waiting for him.

When Dash came back down with a huge grin on his face, he threw up both hands and announced, "All mine people, I peed in the potty!" And of course, everyone made a fuss over him and he was spoiled rotten that day. But the Dashism has stuck - mostly because he and Kate say it all the time.

Castle pushes a hand through Dashiell's hair, remembering the two year old so proud of himself, and the baby he held for the first time in the hospital, all those moments in between then and now. "Well, except for Gram and Papa, all your people will be there."

Dash grins up at his father, looking relieved. "That's all I want. And some cake."

Of course.

"Actually, Daddy, a lot of cake."

When Alexis and Rafe wander back to the blankets, Castle and Dash have made a pit deeper than Dash is tall, and they've also been warned by two different beach employees of the condominiums that they'll have to fill it in before they leave. The second guy even pulled out a barricade - a bright orange cone - to put in front of the pit.

His daughter lifts her eyebrows and laughs at them. "Well, Dad, looks like you and Dash are getting into trouble?"

"A little bit. But it's all good now. Look, they gave us a cone." Which Dashiell has been using as a megaphone. Kate's gonna kill him if she finds out Dash has had his mouth pressed against the orange, plastic thing.

Dashiell grins too and jumps up and down in his pit, his eyes and hair peeking over the top as he waves at Allie and Rafe. "Look how deep it is. It swallows up whole armies!"

"It's a trap then?" Rafe asks, coming closer. Castle can see the interest on his face. Yeah, he's liking this guy more and more.

"It's a pitfall, Daddy says. A pit-fall. Isn't that cool? Cause it's a pit. And they fall in. Perfect word."

Castle still finds it completely delightful that his son loves words so very much. He often leans towards puns, much like his father, but he's got enough of his mother's intelligence behind his interest to make him have a fascination with anything that means more or less than it should. He's often seen Dashiell pitch a fit over a word that didn't mean what it was supposed to mean.

Like infinitesimal. Dash was quite upset that a word as cool sounding as that didn't mean the biggest number imaginable, but the exact opposite - the smallest amount before reaching zero. Dash said it wasn't fair. He has feelings about words, much like Kate does. Castle? Not so much feelings, but a large vocabulary and a strict command.

Which he likes to use on his kid. And his kid likes to hear. They play well together. Castle is pretty thrilled with his kids, honestly. How often does that happen to parents? And really, to have Alexis, and then Dash? And Ellery. . .the girl is so much like her mother that there's no way he'd *not* be enthralled. She never has to speak another word, and Ella would have him.

"Okay, so when the sand beasts get to the pit, why won't they just go around?" Rafe is asking, laying on his stomach, elbows propping him up to peer down into the hole, and Dash as well.

The boy looks concerned for a moment, then laughs. "Because sand beasts, even though they're way huger than my army men, they're still way tinier than my pit. And they're kinda dumb. They're beasts."

"So they won't see it as a pit? What will it look like to a sand beast?" Rafe fingers an army man set up on the far perimeter. In a kind of crumbling tower that Dash built.

Castle waits, watching the kid to see if he can think outside his own perspective, come up with a rationale for why sand beasts would be tricked.

"Well. . ." Dash says slowly, then wanders around in the sand pit for a moment, looking at it critically. "It's so huge. It. . .it. . ." Dash glances up at Castle for help, mouth parted in frustration.

"Come up here and get down on your stomach and see what it looks like from the sand beast's eyes," Rafe says, reaching a hand down to Dash.

Dashiell glances from Rafe's hand to his father; Castle nods. The boy scrambles up without any help, but he lies down next to Rafe at the edge of the pitfall, propping his chin in his hands like Rafe is doing. Little mirror.

"So now what does it look like?"

"A. . .dark space."

"Does it look like a hole?"

"Sorta."

"Imagine if you were even smaller. Because your sand beasts over there are about the size of my fist. So they have small eyes." Rafe makes a fist and holds it out in front of them, his crooked thumb moving up and down like a mouth. Dashiell laughs and grabs the fist, but Castle can tell he's looking still.

"It could look like a big lake. A dark place of water. Or even. . .well, if I slope the edge, then they won't even notice they're walking right down into it until it's too late. Like when Daddy takes me out in the ocean to the content bookshelf."

"The what?" Rafe asks, glancing up at Castle.

Rick laughs, grinning down at Dash. "Continental shelf, kiddo. That's what drops off so suddenly out there, where you can't reach. Where I can't reach either."

"You take him out that far?" Alexis asks from her beach towel, a look on her face that Castle labels. . .maternal. Damn. He's going to have grandkids in no time, isn't he? God, that makes him feel old. Not even Kate makes him feel old, but this. . .

"Dash is a good swimmer, and he obeys the rules. Right buddy?" Can't hurt to allay Alexis's worry, just a little, even if it does sound like she's questioning his parenting. She's not. She's just used to making decisions for teenagers who are struggling, runaways and drug addicts and miserable kids; she's been the one to mother them all, tough love them. So she tends to do this.

"So let me slope it, Rafe. You help me?" Dashiell slides back down into his pitfall, grinning as he turns to look at the marks his bottom made in the sand, how he's collapsed one side of it. "Just like that. Slopes. Cause the sand beasts will see a little hill, and not a huge, huge, HUGE pitfall."

Rafe sits up, moves around the pitfall, which is rather wide, Castle has to admit. The man dangles his feet in and starts scraping back sand from the edge.

"Might have to move the cone," Castle says with a laugh. "We're basically making it bigger."

Dash throws up both hands. "HUGER!"

"Yeah, buddy. To get a gradual slope, pretty much *way* huger."

Dash jumps up and down in his pit. "Daddy, this is the best ever." His sandy, wet arms come around Castle's legs, squeezing tight. "Can we push the girls in?"

Castle laughs. "No. Pitfalls are just for sand beasts."

But the thought was tempting, just for an instant.