AN: Ehehehehe... You guys have probably been wondering if I was ever going to update weren't you? Sorry, sorry. I really did plan to have this out sooner but this little thing called 'real life' got in the way. That, and my inability to focus on writing without getting distracted.

This chapter is dedicated my very own mindreader, ChristyLoisGilmore17, because with out her, this chapter would have taken even longer to plan out.

Also, to all the wonderful reviews I got, Thank you!

I do NOT own Castle!


During the two trips that it took to carry all of Alexis' bags up the stairs to her apartment, Kate was starting to wonder if all of it would fit in her apartment. But, then she remembered that she hadn't actually unpacked all of her stuff from her old apartment yet, so there ended up being plenty of room.

Kate asked which bags held Alexis' clothes in them, then picked up one of them and instructed Alexis to do the same with the other bag, before making her way into her bedroom. Kate sat down the bag she was carrying on her bed, then walked over to her closet, pushing her stuff off to one side.

"You can hang up some of your clothes in here, but I guess the rest that won't fit in there will have to stay the bag until we figure out something else."

Alexis nodded then moved over to the closet as well, noticing that Kate didn't seem to have too many clothes in the closet.

"I kind of figured you would have more clothes than this. Did you lose some of them in the explosion?"

Kate nodded before walking over to a really tall box that was in one corner of the room. She pulled on a flap to reveal that there was a bar inside so that clothes could be hung up inside the box.

"The explosion made me go through my clothes and get rid of some that I don't wear anymore because I didn't want to have to dry clean all of them. When I moved the rest of the stuff to here, the moving company gave me this box so I could hang up some clothes instead of having to fold them away. These are the ones I don't wear much so I figured I would just leave them in the box for now."

Kate pulled a bunch of hangers out of a nearby box and handed them over to Alexis while instructing her to put anything that needs to be washed into the hamper in the bathroom. Seeing that Alexis would be occupied for a while, Kate headed back into the living room to order some food for them, since they were too busy talking and singing on the drive back to stop and get something to eat.

Once that was done, Kate headed back to the bedroom to help Alexis get things put away. A comment about Alexis' great fashion sense sparked another pleasant conversation and before they knew it, the pizza had arrived.

Both of them were pretty tired after their 'daring' escape, so they decided against watching a movie while they ate, and instead agreed to watch an "Ace of Cakes" episode that Kate had saved on her DVR. There was just something so amazing about watching people build spectacular things out of cake.

Once the pepperoni pizza was finished off, a favorite for both the girls, the topic of sleeping arrangements was brought up.

"I would offer to sleep on the couch but I know that you would be completely against the idea, and I can't let you sleep on the couch, because this old thing is barely made for sitting on, let alone sleeping on. So, at least for now, I was thinking maybe we could do the opposite ends thing."

Alexis agreed enthusiastically. "Sure, my friends and I do that all the time when we sleep over at each other's houses."

It probably wouldn't be a permanent solution to the sleeping arrangements, but it would have to do for now since Kate didn't have an extra bedroom. The two went about their normal night time routines and they were just about to take up their assigned places on the bed, when Alexis went over to one of her other bags and brought out a pillow and what may have been, at one time many many years ago, a stuffed animal.

"What the hell is that thing?" Kate asked from her place by the headboard on the left side of the bed. Alexis moved over to the bed and placed her pillow at the foot of the bed on the right side before sliding under the covers and holding up the 'stuffed animal' for Kate to see it in all its gruesome glory.

"This? This is Monkey Bunky and, he is not a thing." Realization dawned on Kate's face as she suddenly remembered Castle mentioning that Alexis had a stuffed monkey that she had had since she was little. That meant, that that thing was a monkey at one time?

Kate looked at the gruesome looking thing warily before speaking up. "Right… Just, make sure he stays on your side of the bed. I don't want to roll over and the middle of the night and find it staring at me." She gave a little shudder at the thought, which pulled a laugh out of Alexis.

After that, they both laid down and Kate turned off the light. It was only a few minutes later that she could hear soft snores coming from the foot of the bed, so she rolled over and let the soft sound lull her to sleep.


A shrill noise brought Kate out of her slumber. She tried to lift up her arm to reach her phone, that was on her nightstand, but found that it was trapped under something. That something turned out to be Alexis' foot. Sometime in the night, Kate had turned over and reached her arms toward the side where Alexis' feet were. She carefully slid her arm out from under her legs then gratefully reached over, grabbing the phone and answering it, effectively cutting off the annoying noise.

"Beckett." She snapped her usual greeting, but it came out sounding groggy since she was still half asleep. Esposito gave her an address, which she wrote down on a notepad she kept by her bed, then hung up on him.

Kate carefully slid out of bed but stopped when Alexis' sleepy voice broke through the silence.

"Kate?"

Kate glanced at the clock and saw it was just barely five in the morning. "It's okay, I have a case but there is no need for you to get up so just go back to sleep. I'll come back later on in the morning, okay?"

Alexis nodded then curled back up with Monkey Bunky and drifted off to sleep again while Kate quietly went around the room, gathering up her clothes for the day.


Let's see, since I am on call, if we don't bring in a suspect in the next few hours I should be able to make it back home before breakfast. Though, I better stop at the store first and get some edible ingredients to make breakfast with.

Kate pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind as she approached the crime scene. Despite the fact that the crime scene felt empty without Castle hanging around, touching things that he shouldn't, she couldn't help the small smile on her face as she made a mental list of what she should get at the store. It felt nice knowing that she had someone depending on her, and waiting for her at home.

It was that same smile that had Epsosito and Ryan looking at her with strange expressions on their faces as she approached them.

"What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

Deep down she knew that this was probably the first time she had really smiled since Castle left, and that's why they were staring at her. She walked passed them and headed over to Lanie who was crouching down by a young woman in her twenties who had been stabbed in the back.

"What've we got?"

Lanie read off the information that she had been able to find out, then told her that she would have more info when she got the body back to the morgue.

Kate stood up from where she too had been crouching by the body, and sent Ryan and Esposito off to round up some witnesses. When she turned back around, she saw Lanie staring at her with one eyebrow raised.

"What?" Kate held her hands up defensively; she wasn't smiling this time so that couldn't be what Lanie was silently asking about.

"Really? That's how you wanna do this? Don't play dumb with me, girl! You've been either pissed off at the world or sulking these last few days, but suddenly you are back to normal? Something happened, so spill it."

"It's nothing, really." Lanie looked like she had a smart reply to that, but Kate cut her off with a question. "Hey, when you were a teenager, what did you do all summer long?"

Thoroughly confused, Lanie responded as she stood up and motioned for the guys to bag the body and take it to the 'morgue mobile'. "I usually got hauled off to some distant relative's house for the summer. So I didn't usually have much choice about what to do. Why the sudden interest in my teen years?"

"What if your parents decided to let you stay home while they went off to a relative's house? What would you have done then?" By now Lanie was sliding into the front seat of the 'morgue mobile' while Kate leaned on the door.

"Hmm, I think that did happen once. I spent a lot of time at my friend's houses, but it was so boring with nothing to do. What is this about?"

Seeing that the body was secure in the back and they were ready to take it back to the morgue, Kate stepped away from the door, completely ignoring Lanie's question and watched as the van drove away before getting into her own car and heading back to the station.


At the station, Kate met back up with Ryan and Esposito who told her that they couldn't find any witnesses around the scene of the crime, but they found a security camera on a nearby store that might have caught something on the tape. Only, they were having a hard time tracking down the owner.

She told them to keep trying to find the owner, and to show the victim's picture to stores around the area and maybe someone could identify her. After sending them on their way, she headed to her desk to start filling out the necessary paperwork for the case.

When she was finally done with the paperwork, and two cups of coffee, it was a little after seven so she told the guys to let her know if they found anything, then headed out of the precinct. Fully aware of the very confused looks she was getting from Ryan and Esposito since they couldn't even remember a time when she left the precinct willingly when it was still daylight out.


It was the smell of bacon cooking that woke Alexis up later that morning. She got out of bed and made her way to the bathroom to brush her teeth before she let the smell lead her to the kitchen where she saw Kate standing over the stove with a pan full of eggs in one hand and a spatula in the other.

"Morning, Kate."

Kate visibly jumped at the sound, obviously used to being alone, and Alexis was quick to apologize for scaring her.

"It's alright, that's just going to take some getting used to."

As Kate served both of them, Alexis asked about her new case but when they started eating, they decided to change the subject to something less gory, lest they lose their appetites.

"So now that you don't have the summer program to keep you busy, what do you plan to do this summer?" Alexis chewed a piece of bacon thoughtfully for a moment before replying.

"You know, I haven't really thought of that. Usually, Dad has some off the wall adventure thing planned for the summer but seeing as he is being held hostage in the Hamptons with Gina, that's not likely to happen this year."

"Held hostage?"

"Gina is… A nice person, I guess. But she is very controlling. Especially when it comes to my Dad's books. I've called him a few times but every time I do, Gina answers and says he is too busy. I asked her to tell him that I was staying with you, but I doubt she actually told him that. Probably thinks it would distract him from writing."

They were both silent for a minute, then Kate asked what was on her mind. "If she is so controlling, why did he ask her to go with him?"

"Probably because he knew that she would actually make him work on his book. He has really been slacking off on writing lately, so he probably thinks the only way he will get anything done is with her nagging him all the time."

"I guess so… Anyway, I'll have to go back to work here in a little bit, what will you do while I am gone?" Kate asked as she got up to put the dishes in the sink.

"Well, I will probably wash some of my clothes then just relax for a while. I got practically no sleep while I was staying in those dorms because even at night, all the other students wanted to do was party. And let's just say that the walls in that place are definitely not sound proof."

Kate laughed a bit at the last part, then pointed out that her apartment, as small as it was, was one of the few apartments that had a washer and dryer in the apartment itself, so that she didn't have to go down to a laundry mat. The machines themselves were old but they had served her well so far, and it was a lot easier doing her laundry in the privacy of her own apartment so that she didn't get strange looks when she had to scrub unknown substances out of her clothes. After all, crime scenes weren't usually the cleanest places in the world.

Once she showed Alexis how to work the machines, and where the detergent and things were, she got ready to head back to the precinct, but had one more question for Alexis before she left.

"I've been thinking, since I am usually gone most of the day on cases, it would probably be a good idea for you to volunteer somewhere. And, if you wanted, I could probably pull some strings to let you volunteer down at the precinct. Not on the field of course, but probably more things like you did when you helped out before. Then again, that might be even more boring than staying home all day, so it's up to you whether you want to do it or not."

Alexis thought for a moment, then decided that she would rather be helping out at least a little bit, than sitting around doing nothing all day.

"Sure, why not?"


AN: Alexis' stuffed animal is called Monkey Bunky isn't it? I think it is... But, then as I was writing I started to think maybe I had that wrong.

Anyway, not quite as happy with this chapter as I was the others, not sure why thought. What did you guys think of it?

Oh, and to anyone who doesn't understand the 'opposite ends' thing, thats something girls tend to do when they sleep over at another girls house who doesn't have an extra bed. One sleeps with their head near the head of the bed and the other sleeps with their head near the foot of the bed. This prevents the possibility of waking up in each others personal space

and the awkward moments when you realize you are invading the other's personal space.

Reviews are like yummy little shot glasses filled with pure caffeine, they help me focus! (and make me one very happy writer.)