Fatherhood
by Liss Webster
A/N: Written for the Awesome Ladies Ficathon.
There are so many disadvantages to being Rick Castle's daughter that it's hard to keep track, but Alexis isn't a quitter, and when she was 12 (and going through a rebellious stage, she'd thought, though it turned out Dad hadn't exactly picked up on it) she started a notebook on the subject.
1. Totally embarrassing. Which he was, no doubt about it. She could, even now, count on the fingers of one hand the number of times a friend had come over and she hadn't ended up blushing like a tomato.
2. A little bit of a slut. She doesn't really think about him like that way (ew), and she wouldn't use that word because it sorta feels anti-women, or anti-dad, or not right anyway, but she was 12 and, as previously referenced, being rebellious in expressing herself. Anyway, Dad and ladies. It's a whole thing, and when someone's famous it's kinda hard to avoid hearing about it.
3. More spoilt than Dudley Dursley. He buys pretty much anything he wants. Come on. Even when she was a kid she knew that never ended well.
4. He cannot keep his socks paired. Really. Who can't do that?
So, there's actually 56 of these (103 if you count sub-entries), and all of them are very good reasons why Rick Castle totally sucks at parenthood. Except, of course, he's actually a pretty good father, which is why Alexis has some doubts about her attempts at empirical science. Because she should have had another notebook dedicated to the advantages, and the first one would be this:
1. She's 15 and has the flu (definitely the flu, not a cold, she checked the symptoms on the internet very carefully), and she's feeling miserable, partly because of the flu itself and partly because Todd McClansky was supposed to be her lab partner today and he's epically cute, and Dad turns off his phone and makes her soup, then sprawls on the sofa with her, and when she says, Tell me a story, he says OK.
"What sort of story?"
"I want space cowboys," Alexis says, without any clear visualisation of what a space cowboy might be (she doesn't watch Star Wars until a year later when Ryan and Esposito find out she's never seen it and threaten to shop Dad to child services if he doesn't arrange a movie night immediately). Dad doesn't have such a problem, and he winds a story about spaceships that are home, and cowboys in distress, and the women who rescue them.
It's awesome. He's awesome. There could be a million and three reasons why he sucks at fatherhood, but Alexis will always know otherwise.