Title: Ice Box
Author: Dancing Star
Crossover: PSI Factor / Sue Thomas FBEye / Castle
Pairing: Connor/ Lindsay, Jack/ Sue, Rick/ Kate
Rating: 12
Category: AU, Romance, Humor
Contents: A snow storm almost ruins Christmas…
Notes: Something short and sweet...
Merry Christmas! And Have a nice winter, Everyone!
Ice Box
December 23rd, New York airport
"Good day, sir! Where do you want to travel?", a receptionist asked and took Jacks ticket.
"To the Caribbean," he replied, "I'm tired of the snow and want to see something else."
For several days it snowed constantly on the East Coast of the United States. 20 inches of new snow had fallen only yesterday and this morning the temperatures were minus 15 degree. Jack had no idea what to do with all the snow. Now he had decided to spend the Christmas holidays on the Bahamas with his family and the best part was that they would travel alone this year. Otherwise he and his friends had always spent Christmas together: they had dinner together, had gone to the Christmas Fair or had gone on vacation together. But this year he had dared to be the first to break with this tradition. No one was upset. They all had understood that he, Sue and the two children needed some time for themselves.
Apparently he was not the only one who wanted to escape the winter. All citizens of the City of New York, where Jack and his family were waiting for their connecting flight, seemed to prefer to spend Christmas in a different place. Jack only hoped it would stop snowing and that his house wouldn´t crack under the snow load or even disappeared.
"The machine will start two hours later. Please wait in the lounge area", with these words, Jack was put off by the lady on the check in desk and before he went to the waiting area with his family, they lined up in a queue. Many people wanted to get something to eat in the airport restaurant.
"I'm too fat for a bikini," Jack heard a familiar voice and he turned around. Kate stood behind him with Alexis and her smallest daughter Isabel.
"You're not fat. You look good, " Alexis said.
"Hi there!", he waved, "Where are you going?", Jack asked curiously.
"Right now we want to get lunch but we had planned to fly to Tuscany," Alexis said.
"Where the evita és dolce!", Jack said and laughed. He was surprised to see them there, but also glad they didn´t had to wait alone in the queue. Sue also was happy to see them.
"Unfortunately, our flight was delayed," lamented Alexis, "And before we go home, we eat a bite."
"Our flight was delayed for two hours," said Sue, "Hey, we want to eat together? We sure get a table for seven people."
"Eight!", Alexis corrected, "My dad is also here."
The queue was now shortened a bit. "Yes, we should get something to eat," Sue suggested, "We can drop off our bags even later." They took their bags and took the children to a restaurant in the departure hall B.
At the same time, another terminal
"Hi! Connor Doyle and family. We have booked four seats for the flight to Toronto at 12:30 p.m.", Connor said to the lady at the counter. She took a quick look at the computer.
"Is Brooke Doyle your wife or daughter?" ,she asked.
"My daughter."
"I need her passport, please. I need a copy of it."
"Sure," Connor began to rummage in his jacket pocket.
A colleague came to her. "That can wait, sir. All aircrafts are delayed due to the snow. Some flights are even canceled."
"When can we fly?", while he asked that, the reception lady and her colleague swapped places. "Tomorrow the weather will be mild, because in Canada there is a snow storm, too. I reserve four seats for you in the first plane to Canada and two rooms in a hotel where you can stay at the cost of the airline until departure... Alternatively, I can offer you a flight to Mexico."
"But we don´t live in Mexico, we live in Canada," he complained, but it was the best deal he could make in this terrible winter weather.
Connor nodded in agreement then went back to Lindsay and the children. Their winter holiday was over. Lindsay and the kids wanted to see New York City. Connor had given in and so they came here during the festive season. This snow storm now prevented their return flight to Toronto. What would Lindsay probably say?
She was waiting for him with the kids in the lounge area of the airport. Their young daughters stood at a window and found out they couldn´t see the aircrafts on the runway because of the snow.
"Do you have the tickets?", Lindsay asked, getting up.
"Unfortunately not. Our flight was canceled due to the weather. We can fly home the day after tomorrow at the latest."
With mixed feelings Lindsay sat back on the chair. Connor sat down beside her on one of her many bags. He put the red beauty case on the ground before him.
"Listen," he said, taking her hand, "I know how much you've been looking forward to your sister and her baby, but it won´t run away."
Lindsay's sister and her husband had welcomed their first baby two days ago. It was a boy. Lindsay´s mother had reported on the phone and invited her to come.
"We can go back to the hotel," Connor suggested.
"You mean, we drive to the hotel if you have found your rental car again," Lindsay corrected. They had parked the Mazda van half an hour ago on the car park for hired vehicles but all cars were covered with a thick blanket of snow there. Outside the building, a snow plow drove along the street.
"Well," Lindsay gave in and picked up their bags, "Let's go to the baggage claim and get the rest of our luggage... Brooke, Sabrina, come on. We want to return to the hotel."
"First we have lunch. Who's coming with me?", Connor had to ask this question and the two girls where happy. All were in favor. So they stood behind the last people of a queue, waiting outside the restaurant.
"...You won´t see that I am wearing a bikini! In the end, I get banned from Italy", a woman said who stood before them.
"You're right, you're fat", now Alexis tried reverse psychology, "You shouldn´t have eaten so much chocolate."
"This is all just your fathers fault...!"
"Hey," Rick Castle complained now and turned to his wife, "It´s my fault? We both wanted a baby, if I remember correctly... So it's only half my fault." He saw a smile on Kate's face flickered.
"My goodness, how lovely to see you here!", Lindsay called, who had overheard the conversation for a while. Lindsay laughed. "You look good," she hugged Kate and then Sue, "What are you all doing here?"
"We fly to the Bahamas. We are just passing through", Sue replied. The holiday was expensive and they had saved money for a long time, but they wanted to go to a place where they have never been before.
"And we wanted to traveled to Italy," Kate told, while she comforted her baby.
"We have to fly back home to Canada after we visited New York."
"Why didn´t you call us?", Rick asked now.
"We didn´t want to bother you after you got a baby recently and..."
"But you wouldn´t bothered us," Kate interrupted her, "You know that you are always very welcome." They knew each other for years and had spent Christmas together, but they always met at New Year's Eve. Last year they had spend Christmas and December 31rd at Sue´s and Jack´s place in Washington, DC. The year before they had visited Connor and Lindsay in Toronto. Three years ago, their meeting had been quite crazy: Connor was outpatient surgery and Lindsay had to get him out of the hospital on Christmas Day. Jack and Rick had accompanied her and Connor was still so dizzy from the anesthesia that he was talking about Hamburgers all the way home from hospital and he only stopped until they bought him a burger. Back home, Lindsay leaned Connor against the car and Rick and Jack watched, as he involuntarily slipped to the floor. Connor had slept the rest of the holidays.
"Kate, when does your flight to Italy leave?", Lindsay wanted to know.
"Never. The flight has been canceled." Immediately Kate, Alexis and Rick were sad. "Do we get at least a compensation from the tour operator?", Kate asked her husband
"And if we take the next flight to Amsterdam and there switch to another airline as planned?", Alexis wanted to know.
"In Amsterdam the weather is bad as well," Rick said.
"Don´t be sad", Sue tried to cheer them up, "We are all still waiting for our flights."
Thirty minutes later they were sitting in the restaurant.
"You seem to be in a very good mood," Lindsay said to Jack and he shrugged. "Why not? Our flight is only late ... ", Jack turned up the volume of his iPod and annoyed everybody who sat at the table.
"Jack, why don´t you turn up the volume of your iPod even more so people in London can hear you?", Connor said.
"Seriously?" ,Jack asked enthusiastically.
"What singer is this?", Connor wanted to know from him. An error, as it turned out it: "I randomly downloaded this from the Internet and..."
"We shouldn´t have give him the iPod." They also spent their birthdays together. Jack´s birthday was last November and this birthday gift was a mistake, as it turned out.
"If the climate wouldn´t have changed, we were in our planes now," Alexis said and flipped through the menu card.
"Don´t be so pessimistic," her dad said to her, "This is a harmless snowstorm."
"Mad, about you can´t sing Oh, sole mio all day?"
"She's right," Jack said, biting into a sandwich, "Eventually we on the northern hemisphere get the weather of Australia." One man squeezed past to Jack and gave him a shove. The sandwich would be slapped back to the plate.
"Did you like New York?", Sue asked Lindsay, who sat opposite her.
"Yes, very. But now we don´t come home and this time it's really urgent. My sister has her baby.
"You haven´t told us that you're aunt now! Congratulations! Is it a boy or girl?"
"A boy. His name is Rico."
"How does it feel being an aunt?", Sue asked.
"I would say it's more exciting when you get own children," Connor said and grabbed one of Lindsay´s sandwiches. She had planned to complain, but she didn´t.
"Hee, have a look. There is Javi!", Kate cried, gotup and waved. Javi had seen her. He came to them and grabbed a chair from a nearby table to sit with them.
"Hello, everyone," he said and took his scarf off, "Pretty cold today, huh?", Javier was here alone.
"Javi, these are our friends Lindsay and Connor and you already know Jack and Sue," Rick introduced them and the man nodded.
"Hi, nice to meet you..."
"Do you want to fly on vacation?", Kate asked.
"No, my parents are coming over. Actually, they should have landed five minutes ago but there are probably some delays."
"Then you can wait with us," Jack said and the rest of the group didn´t seem to mind.
Connor bit into the sandwich and at that moment the whole ketchup was on his shirt. "Oh, crap! Ketchup and a shirt don´t get along with each other... I'm going to change my clothes. Clothes is what we have enough of it." He got up and went with a Trolley to the restroom. When he returned, he was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt on which a lot of pineapple and kiwi fruit were printed. The shirt was a birthday gift from Peter and Connor put it on when he knew that no one would see him.
"Back there in the salad bar, there are melons. Does someone want a melon?", Kate asked, stretching to look to the salad bar. When no one replied, she got up and left to get some fruits.
"I've heard that Alexis gets a room on the campus in the next semester," Lindsay said and Rick nodded.
"Yes, it will be pretty quiet in the loft. But the campus is not from the world."
"I would also miss if there´s no one who suspects a corpse in every garbage can," Lindsay blinked then smiled.
"Normally it´s Dad who´s the more imaginative of us," Alexis said.
"Yes, but you make me seeing things differently," Rick told her, "I love you, Alexis."
"I love you too, Dad," Alexis hugged her father and Kate, who came back, was visibly touched.
Rick suddenly seemed to have noticed something unusual. Someone was missing.
"What about Levi?", he asked, "I thought Sue and her dog are inseparable..."
"They are," Jack agreed, looking anxiously at Sue. She nodded then.
"He has problems with his hip. He is now 11 years old. These are many years for a dog."
"Levi is therefore in a veterinary clinic. He gets a new hip…"
"I'm sorry," Lindsay said softly.
"It's okay," Sue knew her dog would be fine soon. She missed Levi, but the holiday was good for her. And when they were at home again, it wouldn´t take long until Levi came home from the animal clinic.
They continued eating when Lindsay suddenly got up and squeezed past them.
"Where are you going?", Connor asked anxiously.
"I'd better go and call my mom. I don´t want her to wait for us unnecessarily, "Lindsay said. She sought the nearest telephone. There were queues, too, but these weren´t as long as the queue front of the restaurant. She decided she would use mobile phone for the call.
She dialed the Canadian international number and then the phone number of the Donner family.
"Mom, here's Lindsay," she said when her mother had answered the call, "We´ll come back home tomorrow. The weather is so bad that the plane can´t start. We are completely snowed."
"It doesn´t look better here," her mother replied.
"I know that. We are looking forward to Canada, you can believe me."
"Can´t you take the train? That would indeed take longer, but..."
"Mom! The long-distance transport is completely still. We have to wait. I'm sorry. Please say Hello to my sister from all of us."
When Lindsay returned to the table, Sue flipped interested through a magazine that she had just bought at the airport kiosk. She looked at a page on which a young woman was depicted in a beautiful dress. Beside her stood a woman with shoulder-length brown hair in a white dress and she smiled as she was the goddess of fortune in person.
Sue looked at Lindsay, then again into the magazine. "Lindsay, isn´t this your sister?", She asked, showing them the photo. Sue knew Cathrine, but she hadn´t seen her for a long time.
"Yes, that is Cathrine."
"Wow," said Alexis, "It says she is a fashion designer... You look very similar. "Alexis didn´t knew Lindsay´s family from Canada personally but she saw the resemblance immediately.
Lindsay smiled. "Do you still remember the red dress that I got for my birthday two years ago?," Lindsay asked, "She has designed it for me."
"Oh God," Kate said and opened her eyes wide, "This is the dress that you borrowed me when..." When Rick had asked her to marry him, she wanted to say, but somehow she couldn´t. Kate had no expensive and chic evening dresses (although she could if she wanted) and so she had reacted desperately, when Rick had invited her nearly two years ago into this chic New York restaurant and she had nothing to wear. Lindsay had sent Kate the dress by courier and Kate summarily had to swear that she´d return the dress to her unharmed.
Jack was shoved next to Sue by a man again. This time, however, his coffee cup spilled over and coffee landed in Sue's magazine. "Jack!"
"Typical," said Lindsay and Jack wanted to complain to the man, but Rick's cell phone rang. "I have to find a telephone," he said.
"You have a phone in your hand," Connor reminded him.
"No, I need... I must lead a private conversation, "Rick said, standing up. "Not even at Christmas you can life in silence," he murmured as he walked away.
"What has he got?"
"Another reason why we travel to Italy is, that his publisher then can´t reach him", said Kate and Jack nodded. For the same reason he always left when he was on holidays.
"We've been together during the holidays, right?"., Connor asked, looking at them, "We were in New York City, Toronto ... Three years ago, we were spent the summer in Los Angeles We were in Miami... "
"No, you and me were in Miami," Lindsay reminded him.
"... We were in Australia ..."
"There, we were alone ..."
"We were in England," Jack recalled.
"No, honey, that was OUR holiday," Sue said, "It was our honeymoon."
"Why should we all travel by ourselves now? We would be missing something."
"Yeah, right. I already bought a charge of New Years bought rockets and firecrackers for us, because I was hoping you could spend the New Years evening back with us in Washington, "Jack said. Lindsay could imagine Jack's "charge" of rockets and firecrackers. He meant what he said, so it really had to be a big truck Arsenal.
Meanwhile, Rick lined up in a queue and it took twenty minutes before he finally was able to get a cell phone because his cell phone didn´t have enough battery reserves. When the man who had phoned before him was finished, he took a step forward and pushed a young blonde woman aside..
"Hey, that was my phone. I was here first", the woman told him. Rick turned briefly to look at her and shrugged.
"What should I tell my boss if he doesn´t get the survey results of the elections for mayor of New York?"
"That's not my problem," Rick replied, "I was here first."
"You probably don´t know who I am," she said, "Kendra Pollack for CNN!"
"And I'm Rick Castle, author, and I'm on my way to Italy. If you'll excuse me, I need to call my publisher before that."
"But what you dare," the woman said, looking admiringly at him again, "Say, there is also a Mrs. Castle?"
"Yes." Now Rick pointed to Kate, who was with Isabel on the way to the bathroom and when she saw him, she waved at him smiling.
"As I said, Miss, I have to call my publisher so would you please excuse me," he said and dialed the office number of his publisher.
"Hi, this is Rick Caslte..."
Rick hung up and noticed his friends were standing beside him. "Who was that?", Kate couldn´t resist the question.
"That was my publisher. The press can´t wait for the release of Frozen Heat and my publisher has ordered a further book of the Nikki Heat series..."
"This is great," Lindsay muttered, but Jack had another concern: "Oh, who's talking about this book? Who was the woman?"
"That was Kendra Pollack from CNN."
"I know who she is. That should be a rhetorical question."
Connor also came to them. "We know Kendra Pollack, isn´t it?", he now turned to Lindsay, "She has already reported about some weird cases ..."
"Yes," Alexis agreed, "I still remember the show in which she had to admit that the crop circles in Nebraska were fake. Kendra Pollack asserted at that time, the crop circles were real..."
"There, my mother finally comes," Javi cried, waved to his parents and disappeared into the crowd. "See you," he said to his friends, as he took his mothers luggage.
"All the passengers of flight 222, Air America to Nassau on the Bahamas please come to Terminal Three. Boarding starts in half an hour", a woman exclaimed via loudspeaker.
"If I'm honest, I don´t want to fly anymore," Sue said and Jack looked at her. "But I thought," he said, "You will be pleased to be on the Bahamas."
"So do I, believe me. There would be nothing better for me than taking a walk with you on the beach at sunset. But our family is here. Without them, there would be no Christmas. "
Jack nodded. "You're right. We stay."
"So, you´re going back to the hotel?" Lindsay asked her husband
"Frankly, we all should go home," Kate said, "The vacation in Italy isn´t important. It´s important that we are together."
"Fortunately, we have a travel insurance," Rick muttered, looking at all.
"Okay," Lindsay said, shrugging her shoulders, "As Connor says, my sister and the baby won´t run away... At least not yet. We go to the hotel."
"Fine, let´s go," Alexis muttered, "Maybe we can make it home until the Christmas special of The Simpsons... Or until the next Avatar. I haven´t watched this movie yet."
"Hey, it's nice to spend Christmas in New York," Rick informed them "I have an idea." He looked around. "Come to us: We´ll order some food and spend the evening in our loft. There is enough room for all guests... Or why don´t you spend the whole holiday with us?"
Kate was excited to see if it was true what her husband said. If she and Rick slept on the couch and the kids all together in one room, two rooms could be enough. Fortunately, Rick's mother was currently in the Hamptons and so they were able to share her room as a guest room.
Actually, they all had planned to spend Christmas separated now Rick invited them to his home.
"And we spent New Year at our place in Washington?", Jack added.
They agreed and together they marched to the exit door of the airport, past the oversized Christmas tree in the departure hall. Outside, a snow plow rushed down the street and Connor could see his rented Mazda van. However, it was still snowing and a cold wind was blowing around them. It was almost like an ice box..
"Look who's here!", Rick suddenly shouted and waved.
His mother Martha just shook out an umbrella as she reached the roof of the airport entrance. "I wanted to say goodbye to you," Martha said, "Somehow, I knew that none of you is already in the airplane."
"Grandma," Alexis hugged her grandmother.
"Nice to see you all again...", said Martha now.
"The winter has got us!", Jack tried to joke.
"Mother, I... I thought you were in the Hamptons. I have offered your room to our friends because we are snowed..."
"That's okay," Lindsay said, "We can go to the hotel."
"Oh, that is out of the question, my dear."
"But, Martha, we don´t want to block your room and..."
"No, that's really okay." Suddenly the lights in the building began to flicker and then it was dark. "What was that?", Jack asked and Alexis saw that the light in the airport building was completely turned off. The electronic door didn´t work and the street lights donated no more light. "This must be a power failure," Rick suggested.
"Lindsay, do you have a lighter?", Connor asked and through the darkness she looked at him.
"No, Connor," she said, "I finally wanted to enter a plane. Do you think they would let me enter if I had a lighter?"
"I admit, that makes sense," Connor agreed, adding: "I suggest we go to our carts before we freeze here yet." This idea was perfect.
And so they hurried to reach their cars, in which they then drove to Rick and Kate's loft, where they spent the Christmas holidays together.
Fin