Notes: Nikki decided to be a whole new level of creep tonight, and in response to her weirdness I wrote this. Blame her for giving me the idea by being so whiney about the lack of chocolate in her life and how annoyed she is by life right now.

Disclaimer: I don't own Castle.

Alexis never felt like this. Not ever. She never had this seething anger. She never had this desire to stab things repeatedly. No, not things. People. Person, more specifically. Normally, she loved her Dad. Normally, she could handle whatever insanity he threw her way. Normally, she could tune out his manic behavior. Normally, his insanity did not make her so clinically murderous. Of course none of that explained why she was seriously considering shoving him down an open elevator shaft. Maybe the stairs would be easier? She could get him on the balcony too. She had options. Too many really.

Martha saw it coming from miles away. She'd made herself so completely scarce from the loft it was like she was a ghost. A friendly ghost who dropped off bricks of dark chocolate, only organic of course, and the most delicious chamomile tea Alexis had ever tasted. It was bordering on obnoxious. The only person who could've talked her down from this ledge was in hiding. While the fairy like delivery of chocolate and tea was helpful, it didn't exactly move her up very far on the list. It put her about three notches above her father.

He absolutely had to go. Then Paige. Paige had been blowing her phone up all day long. Is there a word for when you kill your best friend? Doubtful. After Paige she was going to fly to California and end Ashley. End him. His long, sorrowful, mopey, and dopey e-mails, texts, and voicemails were driving her right on over the edge. Maybe she could drive him over the edge of a cliff. Leap from the car at the last minute, and save her own skin. The spot between Ashley and her grandmother was filled by Jules. Good old Jules. The whore-faced friend. Just because Alexis didn't necessarily want Mr. Squirrel-Equivalent-IQ did not mean it was okay for her so called friend to take him home that night and bang him senseless. That was just wrong.

Maybe Kate would let her borrow her gun. She'd understand, wouldn't she? She did spend day after day after day with her dad. She could sympathize with these feelings. She was about ten seconds from chucking something large at his head. He won't stop humming that awful song, and it had been grating on her nerves for the better part of her afternoon. She slammed the AP Lit book shut. It was thick, but not one of the heaviest books she had. Her other options were AP Statistics and her AP Lit reading, Of War and Peace. Big, heavy, thick, it would do. But it wasn't until her eyes landed on the coffee table that she found the perfect weapon. It was her Dad's copy of Poor Fellow My Country by Xavier Herbert. She was sure she'd heard her father mention that the novel had close to one million words.

Her father had, of course, ignored the slamming book. He'd paid no attention to the cold look in her eyes. He'd failed to notice her slipping from her stool at the country and walking, no, stalking to the living room. She grabbed the book, tested its weight in her hands. Heavy enough to do some damage, but certainly not kill him. It would get him to shut up though. She hauled the book back to the kitchen and stood at one end of the island. He continued to chatter away. Oblivious, as usual.

"Dad."

Castle spun to face her and she left him almost no reaction time before she launched the book at his head. Unfortunately, she completely misjudged the amount of force she would need to maintain the height and it sailed towards his chest at an alarming rate. It caught him, he caught it, and it knocked him back against the counter, breathless.

"Next time, I won't miss. Shut. Up," she growled, grabbing her travel mug of tea and the rest of her chocolate brick. "Are we clear?"

The man nodded mutely and dropped the heavy book onto the counter. In a feat of speed she didn't know he was capable of he donned his coat and shoes and was gone. In the span of time it took for her to blink he had vacated the apartment, probably seeking refuge at his not-quite-girlfriend's apartment. Traitor. She should warn Kate, but that would probably just get him sent home sooner. No, she was going to enjoy her nice quiet apartment, her bittersweet chocolate, and her nice quiet apartment. It bore repeating.

She sighed as she climbed the stairs to her room. "Fuck, now I'm horny."

"Castle? What are you doing here?" Kate asked as she tugged self consciously at her t-shirt, willing it to be less threadbare.

"I think she tried to kill me." He pushed past her and went to grab a bottle of wine from the rack in her kitchen. "She just... I barely had time to react," he mumbled, corking the bottle and pouring them both overly full glasses of the robust red.

It was then that she noticed how pale he was. He wasn't smiling, and that spark that was normally in his eye was gone.

"You raise them, and then suddenly they're attempting patricide!" He took a large drink from his goblet and turned to face her. "You have to hide me."

"Why did she try and kill you? What were you doing?"

"What was I? What was I doing?" he sputtered, gesticulating wildly and causing the wine to dangerously swirl in the glass. "I was making dinner. That's all I was doing. She was studying and I was cooking, and then WHAM! She's throwing a novel at me. I think she was aiming for my head!"

"Were you doing that humming thing you do?"

"I don't hum!" he defended, weakly.

"You hum all the time when you're in the break room messing with that espresso machine."

"So, I might've been humming, so what?"

"How long have you been raising a teenage girl?" she asked, pushing him aside so she could get to the stove that held her rapidly cooling dinner.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means," she started, stopping to pull an extra plate out, "that Aunt Flo is in town, or on her way."

"Who?"

Kate paused and quirked her eyebrow at him. "You are an enigma. You live with two women, and you've yet to pick up on the signs of PMS? It's that time of the month, Castle." She shoved a plate at him and grabbed a couple of forks from the drawer behind her. "With all the crap she's had these last couple of weeks, it's easy to see why she tried to kill you."

He placed their wine glasses on the table and then carried his plate over. "Does that mean you'll hide me?"

"You're staying on the couch. I still sleep with my gun, and I will use it on you if you so much as breathe on my door."

"I'll be good! I'll be good!" he promised, dropping into his seat and pushing her chair out with his foot. "You won't even know I'm here."

"I highly doubt that you can be that quiet," she teased sliding a fork towards him after she'd taken her own seat. "I appreciate the sentiment though."

"Kate?" he asked, after ten minutes of eating filled silence.

"Hmm," she hummed her response from around the lip of her wine glass.

"I never pegged you for the kind of girl to wear a polka-dotted bra." He also wasn't expecting a wine shower, but her spit-take nailed him.

"Perv," she scolded, leaving the table to go put on a sweatshirt.