Disclaimer: I do not own these characters-if I did I would have my own house in the Hamptons (you can find writing I do get paid for on Amazon, beginning with Wearing the Cape). The Long Holiday is strictly cannon to the point where it launches from the ending of Episode 2/24, A Deadly Game. After that it's strictly AU and (with obvious bits stolen from future episodes) the sole product of this author's fevered imagination. This is my first fanfic, and reviews are most welcome.
"'Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves.'" Tim declaimed.
Alexis chortled. "Yeah…no. I don't think quoting Pit the Younger is going to convince our resident adviser to let us sneak beer into the dorms."
The rest of their group laughed. Tim tried to look affronted, but after years of watching her dad play the offended dignity card Alexis knew a clown playing to the crowd when she saw one. Julie, her new roommate, laughed with the rest but looked relieved that nobody else stood up for Tim's gambit. Alexis wasn't the most sociable girl, but the tiny brunette beside her had been homeschooled; where the Princeton summer program would just be a longer stay away from home for Alexis, to Julie it had to be overwhelming.
Alexis leaned over. "Want to turn in?"
"Really? Can we?"
Julie looked around. Nobody else in their little group seemed inclined to leave the student lounge. Maybe later, when they'd gotten over the thrill of being on campus, gotten to know everybody, but not on the first night.
"Sure." Alexis shrugged. "I promised my dad I'd call tonight anyway, and I don't want to leave it too late—he…might be busy."
Or he might still be worried. He'd spent half the drive to Princeton trying to subtly give her the Boy Talk. Again. Her joke, Well, it looks like I'm not the only one getting lucky this summer! had been a big mistake—the quick Kidding! Kidding! hadn't helped. She just knew that only the fact her dad had known she wouldn't accept it had kept him from turning around and dragging her off to the Hamptons where he could watch her for the rest of the summer. And probably the rest of her life.
But he'd dropped her off, with a hug and a kiss and a "Miss you already." She'd sighed in relief, and not just for her, either; he'd invited a special someone to their beach house for Memorial Day Weekend—someone he wouldn't name. Alexis had known who it had to be and she'd hidden her urge to squeal and do a happy-dance with her ill-timed joke.
Inappropriate humor: apparently it was the Castle family way.
Alexis really didn't want to give her dad another chance to lecture her, but the last thing she wanted was for him to be too worried to be good company; calling and introducing him to her nice, female, roommate would help a lot.
"C'mon," she whispered. "Tim will tell jokes, everyone will laugh, and I'll miss my chance because nobody wants to be the first to leave. I'd rather talk to Dad."
Julie looked at Alexis like she thought her dad kept odd hours, but the excuse was good with her and Alexis swallowed a laugh at the uncool relief her new roommate tried to hide. They said goodnight to everyone and left the lounge.
They'd gotten lucky—or unlucky depending—and gotten assigned a room right across from the RA's. Definitely lucky; there wouldn't be any stealth-parties in their room, which meant they got to choose to join the fun or not as the mood struck. Julie flopped back on her bed while Alexis fished out her phone and hit '1,' dropping onto her own bed as it rang.
One…two…three…four… Maybe he was already "busy." Ugh. Don't think about parental romance. It's good, it's with—
"Alexis?" The voice on the phone wasn't Dad's, and it wasn't Kate's.
"Hi, Lexy! Rick's upstairs looking for a book. How's Princeton?"
Alexis almost dropped the phone. She stared at it, finally managed to stammer.
"Gina?"
What. The. Heck?
Kate stared at the neatly folded stacks of clothing covering her bed, blew a stray lock of hair out of her face. So, what now? She'd done a laundry day, paid all her bills, even thrown away all the old and moldy Chinese takeaway in her fridge, and she still had to get through Sunday.
Displacement activity. She knew the shrink-term, she'd heard it enough going through the department-mandated therapy Captain Montgomery had insisted on when her obsessive off-book work on her mother's cold case had spun out of control and almost wrecked her health and her career. Five more minutes put everything away, and she blinked at the bare room. The walls were naked even of art.
She still hadn't found a new place, just this week-to-week rental with no room for her stuff even if it had survived the fire.
She could resume her apartment-hunt. That would be a productive use of the rest of the weekend. Except the pages of listings had all been marked up by Castle, with little red notes in the margins dissecting what the attractive descriptions really meant. She'd actually planned to check out the few that he'd circled (without telling him, of course), but now she'd be hearing his imagined opinion in her ears if she did.
Call Lanie? Go out? Not a chance; her BF could read her like a book. One of Castle's books. After Castle had walked out with Gina and a casual "See you in the fall" thrown over his shoulder, Kate had managed to straighten her face for the gang—not that it had done any good. Montgomery. Espo. Ryan. Lanie. They'd all seen, and they'd accepted her excuses and let her get away before she embarrassed herself any more, but Lanie would want to make sure she was All Right.
And she wasn't.
"Damn it!" Kate blinked and breathed hard until the prickling behind her eyes went away again. She'd be okay. She would. She'd been here before—most recently when she'd watched Dick Coonan die on the 12th Precinct's dirty floor and the sudden, breathtaking hope of learning who'd ordered her mother killed died with him.
Except that hadn't felt this bad. Because like she'd told Castle, she'd find the sons of bitches responsible someday. This time… She closed her eyes tight, seeing last night again. Seeing him leave. This time didn't leave somedays, just a might-have-been that made her want to cry every time she came back to it.
And she had nobody to blame for this one but herself. She laughed at the empty apartment.
The great Detective Beckett. Nikki freaking Heat! So dumb she hadn't even seen—hadn't let herself see—how Castle had felt. She'd thought his scramble to get back in her good graces last fall after digging into her mother's case had been about losing contact with his "muse". Even after his beautiful apology to her when he'd thought he'd lost—she'd brushed it off as her man-boy of a partner being a grownup for once. But he'd dedicated the book to her. He'd dropped one hundred grand on a chance to help her find justice for her mom. Hell, he'd run into a burning apartment to get her!
Even more stupidly, she'd ignored all her own signs. Castle's first True Love had told Kate He's all yours, and she'd brushed it off. Agent Shaw, an FBI goddamn profiler, had seen it. Even Maddi, who she hadn't seen in years, had known. I get it—you're hot for Castle. You want to make little Castle Babies.
And even then, even then she'd done such a good job of ignoring what was right in front of her that when Castle had sat down by her desk and told her that the weird spy-game they'd been trying to unwind would be his last case—it had felt like she'd missed a move sparring and someone had kicked her in the stomach. Espo's brutally honest What did you expect? later by the murder board had dropped her gasping to the mat again.
What had she expected? What had she been thinking?
But it wasn't fair, it really wasn't. Once she'd let herself see what was in front of her she'd moved fast. Poor Demming had asked if it was something he'd done; he'd really deserved more than the "You're great, but—" speech, but she hadn't lied and she was pretty sure he'd understood what she'd been trying to say. You're great, but you're not Castle and I just figured out I need Castle.
Yeah she'd moved fast. But not fast enough. One day. One freaking day, and Castle had gone from accepting her clumsy blow-off to making up with his beautiful and glamorous ex-wife. Because why shouldn't he? He'd given her every chance and she'd gone and started seeing another guy right under his nose. Then rubbed his nose in it by going from I'm too busy Castle to making alternate plans with Demming.
She blinked some more, looked at her dad's watch. It wasn't too late to go out and get a new apartment-listing magazine. Not that you ever got a good deal from one of those; you had to know somebody in this town—
Her phone rang.
Who? She reached for it, stopped. If it was Lanie, she'd have to answer. If it was Castle… She was an idiot, of course it wasn't be Castle, but it might be the precinct—a body-drop and an end to her useless, wallowing, Weekend from Hell. She swiped the screen, almost dropped it.
Castle.
It rang until it went to voicemail while she stared at it. Then it rang again.
She answered it the third time.
"Castle?" Her voice wasn't strong, but it didn't shake. She could do this. She could.
"Beckett! Is Alexis there?"
"Alexis? Castle—"
"She's not at Princeton! She left a note on her bed saying she was going home, they found it when they checked her room but she's not answering her cell and Edwardo hasn't seen her! He checked the Loft!"
"Castle, are you sure?" Kate closed her eyes, shook her head. Alexis? Never, not in a million years, could she imagine Castle's amazing, thoughtful, level-headed girl pulling something like this. Her breath caught.
No, she couldn't imagine Alexis doing this. But to not get home…
"Beckett—"
"We'll find her Castle. I'm going in. She has her own credit card, right? We'll—"
Somebody knocked on her door. Loudly. "Hold on a second, Castle. Someone's…" She checked the chain, looked through the peephole. This time she dropped the phone.
"Beckett? Beckett!"
Kate ignored him to struggle with the chain, throw open the door. Alexis stood outside in the hall.
"No. Dad. I'm okay! Dad. Dad! Don't. Don't come home."
Alexis paced back and forth in Kate's tiny living room. Kate leaned against a counter and watched.
"I'm fine. Really. I'm Sorry. No." Alexis threw Kate a look, breathed. "I'll come out there. No. Really. Kate can bring me."
Kate choked, brought her hands up but Alexis had turned away, listening to her father. A few more one-word answers and she turned back, wide-eyed, and handed Kate her phone.
"Dad—Dad wants to talk to you."
She took it. "Castle?"
"Beckett? Does she…does Alexis look alright?"
Kate looked up, really looked, scanning Castle's daughter with a cop's eyes. His beautiful red-headed girl looked…scared? Determined? Something she couldn't name, but, and Kate closed her eyes and thanked God, Alexis didn't look hurt—not outwardly and not in her eyes. Her freckles stood out in her pale face, but she wasn't looking at Kate with a victim's shocked stare.
Kate let out a breath, knowing she'd caught Castle's nightmare there—every parent's nightmare—but that whatever the hell was going on, that hadn't happened.
"She looks fine, Castle. Really. Scared of what her father's going to do maybe, but that's all."
"Okay. Okay."
Kate listened to him breathe on the other end of the phone. God, what he had to be feeling. She couldn't imagine.
"Beckett? Could you—I know it's a lot to ask, but could you bring her out here? I don't know what's going on, but…"
"Sure, Castle. We'll leave tonight. Everything's…" She looked at Alexis. "Everything's fine. We'll be on the road in five minutes."
"Right. Wait. Beckett, you and Demming…"
Shit. She closed her eyes, sighed. "We canceled the weekend. Bye Castle."
"…Thanks Beckett. Bye."
Kate hung up and looked at the little screen. Like it would tell why she'd just agreed to... When she didn't say anything, Alexis cleared her throat.
"Detective Beckett? Kate? I'm really sorry. I was going to go straight home, but the trip took longer than I thought, and— I lost my nerve."
The poor kid sounded miserable, but Kate's ears, trained detective's ears that had heard hundreds of evasions and denials, told her Alexis was... Not exactly lying, but…misdirecting? Which still made no sense. Not from Alexis.
"Do we need to stop at the Loft?" Now that she wasn't focused on Alexis or the phone, she spotted the new student backpack the girl had dropped by the door.
"No." Alexis shook her head. "I left everything but my personal stuff at Princeton, and there's clothes at the beach house. Kate?"
"Give me a minute, Alexis. I told your dad we're on our way."
Because if she started asking questions, or second-guessing her own sanity, they'd be here all night.
The Long Island Expressway ran faster than Kate would have expected, but it was Saturday evening; most holiday weekenders had passed this way last night, with Castle and Gina. Alexis wasn't a nervous chain-of-thought babbler like Castle, and Kate couldn't figure out where to start interrogating. Everything started with What were you thinking? But those were a father's questions, and Alexis had closed up. Kate knew the signs of someone ready to take the Fifth, and they drove in silence.
It wasn't her business, she told herself. Castle would find out what had happened; she had other things to worry about than the safe and unharmed girl beside her. Like how fast she could drop her off and turn around.
Alexis gave directions when they left the expressway. For a while Kate wondered if they were driving all the way to Montauk, but at last they turned onto a narrow beach road, dark except for the driveway lamps of widely spaced properties. Kate drove carefully, and Alexis pointed out a driveway gate lit by an old-fashioned carriage lamp. The winding drive opened out in front of…
"This is your beach house?"
The girl actually laughed.
"I know, right? Dad says he went a little crazy when the money first started pouring in. I was seven or eight when I figured out that not everyone has a mansion for a getaway home."
"Uhuh." It was a mansion. A small one, maybe, but Kate would bet she couldn't see it all in the dark. More carriage lamps lit the front, but the two-story place's edges were lost in shadow. Then she didn't have time to think about it—the front door opened and Castle was there; he had to have been waiting right inside, seen her lights or heard the sound of tires on gravel.
Kate pulled to a stop, set the parking brake. Alexis unbuckled but didn't move, and she felt a stab of sympathy for the girl.
"Think you're grounded forever?"
That broke the spell. Alexis took a deep breath and her chin came up. She got out and Kate opened her own door, climbing out more slowly; she wasn't sixteen and they'd driven straight through. Castle bounded off the porch, and despite the fact that just seeing him there in the light made her breath catch in her throat, Kate had to smile. The man might be madder than words, but he had his priorities straight; he wrapped Alexis in a hug so tight that the girl probably couldn't breathe.
They stood there for a long moment, then Castle kissed the top of his daughter's head, raising his eyes to look at Kate.
"Thanks for bringing her, Beckett."
Thus endeth the beginning, and I hope you like it. On a personal note, the blame for The Long Holiday lies with my long-time disgruntlement with the way the series writers handled the dance of denial Castle and Beckett engage in from the end of Season Two to the end of Season Four. Yes, they were afraid of the Moonlighting Curse, but they still strung things out too long. This little story is obviously a way of addressing that.