Chapter 2: The Heartbreak Six Pack

Alexis gets home from the precinct a few hours after her run-in with Kate. She's exhausted, already, from the anticipation of what she will find at the loft. She goes straight to the kitchen, places her shopping bag in the freezer. She's stocked up for the inevitable apocalypse. Phish Food, Chocolate Brownie, Mint Chocolate Chip - she's got six different pints of ice cream with her. Normally, scotch is the flavor that most often seems to go with Richard Castle's heartbreaks, but she's hoping she can steer him in a new direction this time. Alcohol will lead to things that can't be undone. He has to keep writing Nikki Heat. He's got to stick around and be her dad for a few more months. He can't do anything stupid.

The place is quiet. She hopes he's home. If he's ... not ... well then it's going to be much harder to manage the fallout.

Please, Dad. Please be home.

The study and his bedroom are both quiet though, and she even decides to go upstairs and check the rooms there. Nothing. She gives up looking for him, starts looking for evidence that he's been home today, or even better, evidence of where he may be. But there is nothing.

She's standing in the threshold of her bedroom, trying to decide how to approach finding him, when she hears the front door pound open and shut. Her Dad is home, making lots of noise as he moves around. He's mumbling, she thinks, or maybe he's talking to someone. Did he bring a girl home already?

"Where are you, oh meddling daughter of mine?" He yells. She can hear the attempted sternness in his voice, the tone that he takes when he's trying to be parental, as opposed to when he's just naturally parental. She turns and goes downstairs. He's standing in the middle of the loft, in the dead space between the living room and kitchen. At least he's alone.

"Here, Dad."

"There you are," he says angrily. But it's a fake sort of anger, and she can tell as he moves and as he looks at her that there's actually something else, underneath the erzatz anger, bubbling up out of him. Oh hell, she thinks to herself. He's already drunk.

"I hear that you took it upon yourself to talk to Detective Beckett? To corner her and try to sort out our love life?"

"I didn't corner her. Sit down, Dad. I'll make us dinner," she says, ducks into the kitchen. "And I'm sorry. I didn't really mean to. I know it's not my business, I just ... don't hate me, please?"

"You didn't mean to? Then I'm really scared to see what you can do when you do mean to," he says, coming around the island so that he's standing in front of her, the full measure of his height dwarfing her. She's never once been scared of her Dad, except when she thinks she's disappointed him. She's scared now.

"As for sorry, young lady, don't ever ever apologize..."

And then she's in his arms, a big bear hug, the best kind of hug, one of her Dad's hugs where he just envelops her and she feels his love like it's a big fuffly real true physical thing, a down comforter on a February morning thing.

"Dad?" she tries to ask, her voice muffled in his chest.

"Well, you were right, it's already posted," she hears someone say, off in the distance. Her father lets her go, and she drops an inch or two to stand on her own feet again. They both turn to see Kate Beckett walking into the kitchen holding Castle's iPad. Her Dad kisses her on her forehead. She can feel the smile on his lips, even as she looks at Beckett.

Kate hands her Dad the iPad. He looks at it and bursts out laughing.

"I wonder if I can get prints made of this tonight," he says as Kate turns to her and says, "Hi, Alexis."

Alexis is stunned by, well, by all of it: the smile on Kate's face, the hand the Detective has put on her shoulder, her very presence here in the loft. She wants to speak, but what is there to say? She's never really viscerally understood the word before, but now she finds herself standing there, dumbstruck.

"Here, Pumpkin," her Dad says, "you should see the havoc your little talk has caused. Scarred an entire bookstore of devoted fans, I should say."

She looks at the proffered iPad, recognizes the New York Post website on the browser. The featured picture takes her a second to understand.

It's her father at the signing, sitting at the table, surrounded by fans. But he's not signing anything in the picture because a woman, well, the woman is obviously Kate, isn't it? Kate has crawled into his lap, grabbed his face and is kissing him like she wants to crawl up and live inside him.

Alexis looks back and forth between the two of them. Her Dad is giddy - the bubbly-ness she thought was alcohol is actually something better. Stronger. Kate is more subdued, looks almost sheepish, but there's a bubbly-ness in her too.

"I'm sorry, Alexis," Kate says, "I went over there with a whole list of things I wanted to say, but when I saw him..."

"I think you got your point across well enough," her dad says.

"I'm still sorry. I wasn't thinking. A girl shouldn't have to.."

"Its fine," Alexis says, finally finding her voice, "it's ... it's really really good, actually."

Kate gives her a smile that looks very much like a thank you, and her father gives her a one armed hug and a kiss on her crown. Alexis, on an impulse, grabs Kate's arm, pulls her into her own one armed hug. It's a schmaltzy little moment that Alexis enjoys far more than ice cream.

"You realize any chance we had of being discreet has gone right out the window," Her Dad says to Kate as they all disengage.

"You're not a particularly subtle man, Castle," Kate says, leaning in and giving him a quick peck on the cheek. "I'm pretty sure we never had any chance of being discreet anyway."

"Well, for that, I'm not going to make dinner for my favorite girls... okay, I'm still going to make dinner for my girls, but I'm not going to be really polite when I serve you." It's only mildly funny, but Alexis laughs anyway. Her Dad, the big loving goofball that fills up the world and makes things better, that version of her Dad is back.

Alexis is surprised when Kate tugs her gently out of the room, takes her aside. She hears her father futzing in the kitchen, "oh, you got the heartbreak six pack... I love Phish Food..."

"Alexis, I am really sorry..."

"You don't have to apologize Detect..." Alexis says, trying to interrupt.

"Kate. Please. Call me Kate. And I do," she says, holding up her hand when Alexis goes to protest further, "No. I do. I've spent the last eleven months not saying things that need to be said, and I've got to stop that. And not just with him. He and I have spoken, but I feel like... I need to make you a promise too. I'm ...I'll protect him, Alexis. You were wrong, you both were, but it's my fault. I love him, and I haven't done a good enough job acting on that. But, I'll make sure that I take care of him, even if it's hard, even if it hurts, even if it scares me. You don't have to believe me, but I'm telling you so you'll hold me to it, okay?"

Alexis has no idea what to say, but before she can speak there is a lightness that comes over her, the weird energy of connection, of discovery, of finding there is someone else out there in the world that gets it. She's too overwhelmed to do anything but nod, smile, step into Kate and not so much hug as let herself be hugged. Because somehow Kate has gotten it, has reached out for her as well. Kate's hug is different from her father's, tentative where Dad is all consuming, but there are similarities. She feels the same sense of preciousness and protection. Feels, oddly, like she's home.

"Kate? Pumpkin?"

Alexis lets go of Kate, turns back to the kitchen. "Yeah, Dad?"

"I was going to make gnocchi until I realized I don't know what gnocchi is. I mean, it's little tasty pillows of something, I just don't know..."

"You're rambling, Castle," Kate says, but there is a laugh in it.

"...what the pillows are made of. Regular old pasta okay?"

"It's good, Dad."

He bounds back to pantry, and Alexis sits at the counter while Kate goes and helps with the food. Alexis watches them as they flutter back and forth, her Dad's bunny-rabbity energy bouncing off Kate's contained grace. They make a good pair, nicely in rhythm if not perfectly in sync. About halfway through preparations, her Dad seems to realize that Kate isn't asking him where things are, that she remembers from when she'd stayed there two years ago. He seems to find this an event worth celebrating, grabs Kate and kisses her. Kate blushes but kisses him back. Amidst all the preparations, Kate starts a conversation, and it's not really until half-way through dinner that Alexis realizes that Kate's had her talking about Columbia and college and her future for nearly an hour.

It's weird having one of her Dad's girlfriends care about her.

But she'll get used to it.