Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 47th cycle. Now cycle 48!

Cycle 48/Day 1000 special: So, yes, in this cycle, a milestone I had to do something special for.
In this cycle I'm passing my 1000th consecutive day of gleekathon! So for this, the cycle will feature:
* 21-day/chapter story for the Sunshine Girls series (This Little Light of Mine)
* 14-day/chapter story special for day 1000 (Let Me Tell You A Story)
* One-shot installments from 12 series + 2 non-series
* And for this cycle and this cycle alone (I swear), 7 'triple shift' days, with 3 chapters/stories going up in the day!

This is a double shift day. There will be one more upload today: This Little Light of Mine, chapter 18.

"That Lima Hospitality"
Glee/Castle Crossover - Brittany + Alexis, Castle, & Martha
Tag to "A Dish Best Served Cold"

(Day four of birthday week for the one and only, the fabulous, the exquisite, yes, mag721! :D)
(Okay it's not quite Boston Britt/Castle as we'd said, but this is okay, yes? ;))

After spending the day locked in constant worry, sitting on the couch waiting for calls from her father, Alexis was oddly energized as she'd packed her bags for herself and her grandmother to board a train to Lima. The crisis was over, the hostage situation at McKinley High had been resolved by her father and Detective Beckett and the rest of them, Brittany and the others were all safe… She would have been over there with them if her father hadn't made her stay in New York. She would have been there for her friend, even if she was just outside, waiting for her to be released. She understood why her father made her stay, but it didn't change how helpless she felt. Her father had sensed this, and now he had given her a chance to make up for it by telling her and Martha to come down and join him in Lima to visit Brittany.

She had spent most of the ride sleeping against her grandmother's shoulder. By the time they would reach Lima, the sun would have come up. She woke up and they were just pulling in to the station. She had expected her father sitting there waiting. She hadn't expected Brittany, not after the day she'd had; Alexis had figured they would be meeting up later on, but there she was, and when they got off the train, her grandmother had told her to just go ahead, so she ran up, greeted by a smiling Brittany, who hugged her.

"Under normal circumstances I'd make some comment about being ignored, but I'll let it slide," her father spoke up, and when she and Brittany let go, she moved on to hugging him.

"Thank you," she spoke at his ear and he smiled.

"Did you travel well, mother?" he turned to Martha.

"You deal with what you're given," she brushed it off. "Is one of those coffees for me?" she indicated the cups in the tray. His hand hovered over the cups, hesitating.

"Th… this one is," he handed it over after taking a whiff.

"Good boy," she breathed and drank. "You remembered."

"How are you doing?" Alexis asked Brittany as they walked out of the train station. "I can't believe you're here."

"Where else would I be?" she shrugged. "I wanted to show you our school and our choir room, but we can't go in right now," Brittany frowned.

"Don't worry about it," Alexis promised, just as Martha came in to finally give her greetings to the blonde, and so she turned to her father. "Is Detective Beckett still here?"

"No, she and the others headed back up earlier this morning, so it's just us. I'll keep mother entertained, you and Brittany go and have fun, just…"

"Don't do anything you wouldn't do?" she teased. He frowned. "Don't do anything you would do?"

"There you go," he pointed, and she smiled, hugging him before going toward Brittany. "Keep your phone on!" he called after her.

As she hadn't eaten since before they'd left New York, Brittany took Alexis over to Dee's Diner. As much as the blonde smiled, Alexis could easily notice a twitch here, a glance there… After what she'd been through not twenty-four hours before, she would be left a bit jumpy and spooked.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Alexis asked her. Brittany sat up. "It's okay if you're not." She paused. "Did you sleep?"

"A bunch of us spent the night at Santana's house," Brittany revealed. "I liked it, I didn't feel scared, so I could sleep. And I wanted to be there this morning when you got here," she nodded, and Alexis smiled.

"That's good then. What do you want to do today? If you'd prefer to stay inside, we can go back to your house…" Brittany shook her head. "It's okay…"

"I don't want to stay at home," she insisted. "I don't like walls today…" Alexis understood this perfectly, even without having been stuck in that room. When the waitress arrived with their plates, Alexis had a thought and stopped her.

"Can we get these to go? Sorry…" she smiled.

Soon the girls were sat on a park bench, with their breakfasts – pancakes for Brittany, waffles for Alexis – in Styrofoam containers on their knees. The blonde looked a bit more at ease, which gave Alexis some relief. Still there was left to be seen whether she would have this problem with 'walls' for very long.

"Your dad said he'd help us get a new piano since the old one got shot," Brittany told her as she tried to cut into her pancakes without breaking through her container.

"Yeah, he told me that," Alexis smiled.

"What do you think's going to happen next time we see each other?" Brittany asked all of a sudden.

"What do you mean?" Alexis asked.

"Last time was when we met, and there was the murder at Nationals. Now we were stuck in there with that guy again and now you're here… What if aliens invade…" she blinked, and Alexis wasn't sure if she believed it or if she was joking.

"Don't think there'll be aliens…"

"Circus people?" Brittany guessed next.

With breakfast done, they'd hung out around the park for a while. As odd as the blonde could be, Alexis liked talking to her, saw her as she was, someone inherently kind-hearted, and for the rest, you could either write her off as too 'out there' or embrace her for who she was – Alexis was of that second mind. Now with this whole hostage situation from the day before she had been thrown beyond herself, her perfectly self-calibrated logic was cracked. Alexis wouldn't be able to fix her, but she knew there were people there in her life to help her through it. As for today, Alexis saw her part in things as providing Brittany with a good and simple day with a friend.

So that was what they did, staying around the park, then walking around Lima so Brittany could at least point some things out. They didn't go near McKinley.

They were heading back to New York in early evening, meeting back at the hotel where her father had stayed the night before. They were to drive the car back. When the girls arrived, Slushies in hand, they found Martha ready to go, while Castle spoke to a couple who eventually walked off. "Friends of yours?" Alexis asked.

"Fans," he explained. "Ready to go?" Alexis nodded. "Listen now," he looked to Brittany. "If you ever need anything, you just call, okay?" She nodded with a smile and she hugged him goodbye before looking to Alexis.

"Thank you," she hugged her now.

"He's not coming back," Alexis spoke at her ear. "You're okay now."

"I know," Brittany replied, smiling when they pulled back.

"Come on," Castle called them up. "We'll drive you home."

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!