The first time that little red flag went up in Alexis' head, she was at the station with her dad, and Beckett was insisting on helping her get a soda out of the vending machine as if she was five. In Beckett's defense, she hadneeded help; that machine ate every dollar she inserted. "You just have to give it a good whack," Beckett said, but what she issued the machine was more like a full-body slam: she lunged one hip into the red Coca-Cola insignia with a crash, and Alexis' Spite rolled down the chute with a clunk.
"Thanks, Detective Beckett."
She'd given Alexis a raised eyebrow. "Call me Kate."
Red flag. Right there. Because her dad had certainly had his share of...girlfriends, lady friends-eww, whatever-and she'd heard this before, this 'call me insert-first-name-here' business. It was always followed closely by 'your father is very important to me and I'd like for us to be friends' and, upon occasion, 'I hope you'll consider me to be a second mother'. Not that life with Gina had been all bad, but given the choice, Alexis would have given that whole rollercoaster of an experience a pass.
So she probably glanced back at Beckett a bit too sharply at the suggestion as she snagged her soda, but what she saw in her expression was...nothing. No agenda. No over-the-top attempt to win her over, earnest or otherwise. Just this ultra cool person telling her to stop calling her 'detective' because, hello, it's weird.
And then they were back at her desk and Kate was telling her dad to get out of her chair and stop fiddling with her stuff and Alexis was watching the way her lip kind of curled into a smile even as she was reprimanding him like a child and that was when another, far more dangerous, flag went up. Thisone Alexis hadn't experienced since she was ten and her mom came back to the city to spend Alexis' birthday with her and her dad. The three of them had spent one completely perfect day at Coney Island, prompting over six months of her father fielding 'what if you and mom could get back together?' questions he had no good answers for. ("This is what we get for getting along?" she'd heard him ask Martha in the kitchen one night after bedtime.)
That had been a fairy tale, of course, which is why she tried to banish the thought now too. The problem was, as she stood in the middle of Kate's precinct sipping her Sprite, she couldn't quite squelch it, because, well…what if?
The second red flag was a doozy. Alexis came home from school to the sound of the shower running in her dad's bathroom; not an entirely uncommon occurrence given Castle's odd working hours and penchant for mid-afternoon Wii Sports tournaments. She fixed herself a sandwich in the kitchen and was padding down the hallway toward the study in her stocking feet when the master bedroom door burst open and there stood Beckett—Kate, she keeps forgetting—in nothing but her dad's favorite charcoal gray Egyptian terry towel, her service piece already cocked in her right hand.
Alexis could admit it: she screamed.
"Shit!" Beckett had yelled, then softer: "Shit, sorry!". The pistol dropped to her thigh while her left hand came up to her heart as Alexis echoed her sentiments exactly, her back pressed flat against the hallway wall, her curse an exhale. "You were so quiet...god, I'm so sorry, Alexis."
Both of them sucked in another sharp breath in unison, which made them both laugh..shakily. Which is when the 'big picture' part of this scenario finally swam into focus: Alexis blinked at the sight of Kate Beckett standing in her hallway in a towel, but when she opened her eyes, she was still there. "What are you doing in...oh god, I don't want to know, do I?"
"No, no! Not...no! Your father told me I could shower here, change, whatever I needed to..."
"Your apartment. The explosion...that's right. I knew that." Alexis took another breath. "I knew that."
Her heart rate was nearly back to normal. "Do you always shower with a gun?"
Kate laughed. "No!" Then frowned. "Well, usually. Sort of. I'm a little on edge these days."
Alexis did her best to mimic Kate's sobered expression. "I will try not to attack you with my turkey and Swiss."
And then they were laughing for real, and that feeling crept back into Alexis' gut, the 'what if' one that now also said, 'maybe', and 'it'd be nice'. It settled somewhere near her stomach where it fluttered like nerves, causing her to comment, "That's my dad's towel, you know. The guest ones are in the cupboard under the sink." (In the guest bathroom.)
Kate's face registered something between amusement and embarrassment, but chagrin was nowhere on the list. "Don't tell?"
Alexis laughed. "Never." She headed back toward the kitchen, and called over her shoulder, "It'd just go to his head."
Later, they'd all been able to joke about the incident around the dinner table (her grandmother had ordered in from Romano's for the occasion). Every time Kate asked her dad to pass the salad or salt he'd do so with exaggerated deliberateness and the warning, 'Don't shoot', and Martha wondered aloud whether they should look into having a metal detector installed should they decide to regularly invite house guests, but Alexis had to wonder how the subject had first been broached: 'By the way, I nearly shot your daughter wearing nothing but a towel today?' 'Sorry about the mess in your bathroom, I was distracted by holding a glock to Alexis?' However it had been confessed, Kate was still here, smiling around her glass of pinot gris, her father smiling back, and that was noteworthy: Castle had banished important people in his life for far lesser offenses when it came to his daughter...most recently, a real estate broker he'd been seeing somewhat seriously for six months after one off-hand comment on the quality of Alexis' book report.
Interesting that near-manslaughter didn't seem to make the books.
She liked who her father was when he was around Kate, how the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled into smile lines so readily, how amicable he became with Martha and even Alexis' mother and ex-step-mom (who even hasthose but her?), how his words flowed so easily across his computer screen. And she liked that this lingered long after he'd left the precinct or a day locked in his study. Don't get her wrong: Alexis loved her father and always had, but there'd been a sense of new purpose to his life, a direction to his coiled energy in the last two years that she hadn't noticed previously.
What she didn't like: the way Kate wreaked havoc on her dad's emotions (again, this was not limited to work hours). She hated the way his hands sometimes came up to rub trenches down his face after ending a call to her, how she could tell whether they'd disagreed that day by how many fingers of Scotch went into his first drink, and yes, she'd admit it: how he jumped at her every request.
Dinner together? Not if Beckett needed him. Planned walk in the park? Unless Beckett called. Weekend in the Hamptons? Murder wouldn't wait for Monday. And part of her got it...she really did. She was sixteen now, and she knew what it was to want to be in someone's presence, to need for them to be beside you, so Alexis usually let him off the hook when she had something planned, would hear the phone buzz, and then see the conflict cloud her dad's face. Because she'd see something else too: the genuine worry. The very real drive he felt to be at Beckett's side, backing her up. Alexis had never seen her dad play the white knight for anybody, except maybe her, and so she would acquiesce. She'd wave him out the door with a smile and a shrug and a 'we'll do it later…I was too busy tonight anyway', and she'd try very hard not to think about the fact that he was heading out to once again put his life in danger for a woman who may or may not love him back.
And she'd only sometimes be resentful.
The worst night of Alexis' life started out as a perfect autumn afternoon. She left school late, and still had to commute up to West 63rd to meet a friend to study for chemistry. By the time she headed back to the subway station at Columbus Circle, the park to her left was lowered in shadow. He sprang from seemingly out of nowhere just as she reached the stairs: a tall mass of black trench cloak pressing her up against the rail. She thinks the guy grinned as she felt the tip of a knife against her stomach, through her sweater. He took her backpack and wallet before she'd had time for a breath, let alone a scream, and she couldn't have done that anyhow; one of the guy's hands remained firmly over her mouth as the other wandered wherever it chose-just for a matter of seconds-before he was gone with her bag and she was sliding to the ground, all muscle tone exiting her legs.
The street cop who took her statement looked as nervous as she was terrified; maybe it was his first week on the job. She had the presence of mind to ask him to make a call, and even though she was all the way uptown by the park, Kate was somehow there in less than ten minutes. Alexis saw her making her way through the commuters and few lookie-loos; the gumball on the illegally parked car pulsing curbside. She had never seen anything but cool professionalism from Kate, maybe a dash of arrogance, certainly genuine concern when the situation warranted it, but the look on her face now as she sought out Alexis could only be described as…fear. She sat down next to her on the filthy ground by the stairs, grabbed both her hands in hers, and her jaw was oddly clenched as she asked, "Are you alright? Did he hurt you? Did he touch you?"
If this was red flag number four, it was cast in a fairly rosy glow from Alexis' vantage point. She suddenly realized she was going to cry. They sat together as Kate gave orders to the cop, who was then dismissed to file his paperwork while Kate drove Alexis home. On the ride there, she watched the Manhattan streets creep by in the dark. "It makes you feel...small," she said.
She registered Kate's nod in the shadow of the glass. "You can change that though." She looked at her then. "I can teach you to defend yourself so that next time-not that there will be a next time-the bastard goes flying right down the stairs and into the path of the downtown direct."
Alexis smiled, then bit her lip. They were getting closer to home. "Do you think we can keep this...thing...between us?"
There was no hesitation. "Not a chance." Kate glanced sideways in the direction of the passenger seat. "I'm sorry."
"He's going to freak out."
"I imagine he'll have hired a hit man before morning."
The smile gave way to a rough laugh. Then: "Oh god, he probably knows one."
"Or three. But he'll be wasting his cash, because we'll get this guy the legal way within a day or two, Alexis."
She was surprised. "I thought muggings like this were usually never solved."
Kate seemed to hedge. "I may or may not have flagged the case as high priority." She paused again, then shrugged as though this was nothing, when to Alexis, it was really everything: "And called in a favor to the 61st' s best armed robbery detective."
Again, surprise. "Oh."
"He owes me. Don't ask."
She'd never seen anyone shot before. It was oddly anticlimactic: a far away pop, and then Kate fell where she stood. It must have been the same for everyone, because initially, only Alexis' father moved. Of course, he moved fast enough for half of dozen of them.
And then it was only chaos.
It wasn't until later, sitting in the ER waiting room, that the pieces of the event finally fit into one clear picture: the shot, the falling, her dad, the words she had heard from his lips where she stood somewhere behind him.
And even though they had been true for so long, their articulation changed everything. For the time being, her dad's priorities just flat out shifted: he was Kate's and that was all. Day and night, hour by hour, he was there, no matter about school or work or even the need for food. Martha brought take-out to the hospital and set it before him, and at home, Alexis just ate whatever was on-hand. Day after day, he remained in place, rooted. Focused. It reminded her of what they'd been studying in anatomy; the way the body simply cut off blood flow to the extremities when the core was in peril. Suddenly, Alexis was an arm or a leg, forgotten in the heart of things.
She prided herself on being an adult through it all, supporting her dad, taking care of herself. The days it was touch and go, she was right there with him, shoulder to shoulder, missing school, missing everything. After a while, time blurred; was it morning, night? Should she be sleepy? Alert? Hungry? Hospital rooms could turn you upside down like a wave crashing over your head, tumbling you around in worry and fatigue until you no longer knew which way was up. Only after Kate had weathered the worst of it and was transferred to a recovery room did Alexis allow herself to think, Get better, so we can all get on with things.
When she did, and ithey/i did, she felt guilty for thinking it, especially when her father and Kate's dance of will-they-or-won't-they just picked up right where it had left off.
Alexis called home from her college dorm room a few days before the Christmas break. Her dad was in his usual state of pre-holiday kid-in-a-candy-store excitement. This year, he was telling her, he had skating at Rockefeller planned, and the tree lighting ceremony, and great seats at the Nutcracker. She had to remind him that she'd only been gone three months, which didn't qualify her as a tourist.
She confirmed her flight information, then he shifted gears. "I wanted to ask you how you'd feel if Kate was here, too."
"Of course she'll be there. Murder rates rise during the holiday season, you know. Or is that just suicides?"
There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line. "I don't mean here in the city...I mean here at the apartment."
Oh. Suddenly, the fact that her dad had called her Kate, not Beckett, registered in a new, significant way. He only called her Kate when...oh.No need for the flag; he was spelling it out to her in plain English.
She felt a thrill of something she identified as happiness...for her dad, for Kate, even for herself, and she was glad to know this was her immediate reaction. But some lingering teen-ness within her made her say, "But I thought we were going to have our laser tag tournament."
"Honey. We still can." She could practically hear the frown in his voice.
She smiled despite her own rotten herself. "She'll kick our asses, dad!"
His laugh sounded good in her ear. "We'll tie one hand behind her back. Then she'll only beat us soundly."
There was that happiness again. It was contagious. "We'll have to create amateur and pro divisions, and make her play against Ryan and Esposito. Let them duke it out."
"No way. They'd break things. Probably my new Bose entertainment system."
Fair enough. "So when did this happen?"
"Well I was over at that jackhole Koonz' place for a cocktail party, and he had one, so I got the specs from-"
"Dad."
His voice softened as he dropped the pretense. "About a month ago."
She couldn't decide if she wanted details, or not. She settled for the bare facts as they pertained to her. "And she's living there?"
"Yeah. Mostly." He paused. She could hear his smile again. "All the time, really. She just won't admit it."
"I'm glad, Dad." And she was. And long after they had ended their call and she had finished packing, she stillwas. Because this wasn't like the other times, the other women…not even like her mother, or Gina. Not even close. And then there was the fact that Kate was far younger than her mother, younger even than Gina. It felt weird when Alexis thought about it in this way, so she tried not to, but it also meant Kate could be something very different to her than yet another step-someone.
She wasn't sure what yet, but she guessed she'd find out.