Chapter 7

The season of open air festivals closed as soon as September rolled in. They kept marching on, through Eastern Europe, a quick stop in Turkey then back again on the main land for the last month on the road. The busses were perpetually running, the crew was always restlessly moving equipment in and out and the weariness was starting to catch up with the bands.

The wet summer heat of Europe quickly left more room for the chill of northern latitudes as they moved up to Scandinavia, through Germany and Netherlands. In Spain, Italy and the Balkan region they woke up and were already covered in sweat, whereas when they approached the Northern Sea they had to add layer after layer of clothing in order to feel fine. And fortunately for the two singers involved, the air conditioning was less and less needed, sparing their throats a lot of time spent inside impossibly dry environments that sometimes made their voice raspy and strained, mostly after an uninterrupted streak of three or four concerts.

And they were homesick. The initial enthusiasm had slowly faded away and the longing for home and the loved ones started to seep into all of them, tech crew included. Castle spent more time Skyping with Alexis, Kate called home more often, Jeff spent most of his spare time going through the pictures of his son that his wife had sent, and Jay mumbled nonsensical bullshit about bacterial cultures in his sleep. Even Damian, famous for his love for continuous touring, was starting to get a bit fidgety and missing his bed and his bathroom.

One night, after the concerts and the customary showers, as they chilled out waiting for the equipment to be packed, Damian had mentioned how he missed his large shower and his beloved shower gel that wasn't available in Europe, all hell broke loose. Because if there was a commodity that was easily overlooked while organizing events like a world tour, it was the bathroom. The tourbuses had pretty decent toilets, nothing amazing but they worked fine. But they had to rely in the showers offered by the venues and the concert halls, and most of the time they sucked. Warm water finished pretty quickly, they weren't exactly stark clean… small and cramped shower stalls without even a proper cover abounded. The rare nights they had spent in hotel rooms they had basked in the fact that most of them had bathtubs and they had all shamelessly exploited that feature for hours. Most of all Castle and Beckett, though mainly for other reasons.

To make it short, they wanted to go back home. And Beckett and Jay also wanted to go back to work.

Yet, the last gig they did in London had a bittersweet aftertaste in the end, when they did the curtain call all together for the last time. It felt as if something had broken. That night, they would leave straight for Heathrow in a taxi, dressed properly for their flight. They'd hand their passports to a clerk and wait for their plane to lift and go back to the United States after what felt like an eternity and they'd go back to their lives.

Kate had still one week of leave, to get some rest and get used to the frenetic life of New York after so much time spent pretty much doing anything but being frenetic, but she slightly feared the moment she would set foot in the precinct for the first time after months. She had kept tabs with Esposito and Ryan, doing a weekly roundup on Skype. Sometimes Montgomery and other cops would join them, pausing their work for a moment to see how their colleague was doing in the world of rock stars. Yet, she was afraid she wasn't cut out to do it anymore.

She had fallen in love with the life on the road. She had already realized that she loved doing concerts in the previews ten years, since their first small gig in a bar near college, ever since she had tasted that thrill of being on stage. But life on the road was something more. Going from one place to another, seeing new people every day, literally feeding off the energy the crowds at her feet released as they jumped in time with the drums… she had found out that she craved it. If their first few concerts were ridden by tension and stage fear, after a couple of weeks they got so used to it they were happy to go on stage and rock the hell out of their instruments.

Going back to her job felt… boring.

She was lost in her thoughts while waiting for their heavily delayed flight, sipping a bland coffee that tasted like rinse water as she sat on one of the benches in the waiting area after they had checked in. "I can hear you thinking," murmured Castle, flipping through the pages of a magazine he had bought at a newsstand opened all night at the airport.

She sighed. "Castle, would you please stopping use that phrase? It doesn't make sense!"

"I can actually hear you mumbling as you think. So it makes sense. What's up?"

He was sitting behind her, so she leaned her head back and rested it against his broad shoulder. "Is it weird that I don't want to go back?"

"You mean you don't want to go back to New York or you don't want to go back to your life?"

She sighed. "A bit of both."

"OK then, totally normal. The only thing that stopped me from asking our then-manager to organize another tour was Alexis. She couldn't live on a tourbus with eight other men, definitely not the right environment for a child."

"Right. It just feels… I don't know. Do you think I'll ever be able to go back to normality?"

He chuckled. "Yes, we all do it. Look at your cousin, he's been talking non-stop about going back to work for a week. Damn, that guy loves his job!"

"Yeah…" she replied with a smile. "He's a bit of a genius in his field, and he's really driven about it."

"But from what you've told me you're just as driven in your job. And you should know that the city needs you. They need all the good detectives they can get, really."

"What a way to impress a woman. Nice one really. God I'm so ready to lay down on my back and not on that god-awful bunk."

"My back will be surely happy about it," he commented. "Mine wasn't bad though."

"Good for you. But I really need to go back to my bed. That mattress was too thin and too rigid, really, not good for anything, not just my back."

In that moment, the speaker finally called their flight and they proceeded to the designated gate. The flight home was nice and uneventful, they managed to get some sleep and when they finally landed at La Guardia they found a small welcome back committee waiting for them after the security checks.

"It's so good to see you Katie…" whispered her mother in Kate's ear when she hugged her daughter tightly. "I hope the flight was nice."

"I slept through most of it Mom, but it was nice. Except for the delay."

"Good. And for the rest? Everything alright?"

She nodded. "Yes Mom, I'm fine. I just need to crash on my bed and sleep the week off."

The look her parents exchanged didn't mean anything good. "Ehm, about that… there's a bit of a problem with that. Your building is going through some heavy renovation and fumigation because of termites and a bunch of other insects that practically ate the foundations and it's not habitable at the moment."

"And you've known for how long?"

Johanna shrugged. "Two hours. We went there to open the windows and let some fresh air in but they didn't even let us in. They said they'd be finished in a couple of days, maybe three at least for the fumigation. The rest of the renovations can be done even with the tenants in their homes."

"Wow, just perfect. Where will I stay then?"

Her father was about to talk when Castle arrived. "You can stay at my place."

They all turned towards him. By the look on their faces they didn't look exactly happy. "What?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "We have space. And I seriously doubt my daughter or my mother will have anything to say if you stay for a couple of days."

"Castle, I don't want to intrude…" But she did. She knew her parents would love to have her back home with them, even if only for a couple of days, but she had grown accustomed to her independence and she didn't want to go home with them. For dinner or lunch, it was just fine. Two, maybe three days would kill her.

"You won't intrude at all. Don't worry, Alexis is at school for most of the day, Mother has her own acting school. We've got room."

"Mr. Castle, we really appreciate your help," said Jim.

"No problem. Why don't you two come for dinner… let's say tomorrow, so we have some time to settle down and at least start with the laundry?"

"We would be honored, Mr. Castle. We look forward to hear what you have to say about the tour. We've read interesting stuff about you and we'd really like to know you better, since you're dating our daughter."

"MOM?!" snapped Beckett, practically jumping at her mother's words. Castle jolted himself, but managed to keep a semblance of control.

"Oh Katie please, I can recognize love when I see it. And I already told you all those months ago, when you played here in New York. He's good for you. Anyway, here are the keys, the landlord will call you when they are done. See you tomorrow?"

Castle nodded, as Kate accepted the keys. "Yes. Eight sounds good?"

On the cab ride towards his loft, Beckett sat in the corner, slightly embarrassed. "I can't believe my mom said that…"

"Relax Beckett, everything's fine. She just likes to poke you, like my mom does. We might be adults but in the end we're still children in their eyes."

"Yeah OK but really was that necessary? Damn Jay will mock me forever."

He groaned. "At least you have a boyfriend. What does he have? Bacteria and viruses?"

She smiled. "Yeah, and it seems he's happier with them than with any girlfriends he ever had. He's just made that way, he can't help it. The microscopic world is his one true love."

The rest of the ride was spent silently, holding hands and just enjoying the silence as they sped towards their city and back to normality. The moment they entered his loft, they finally felt like they had both gone back to their standard life. Changed, because that tour had changed them both, there was no denying that, and yet everything was back to normal.

"I'm home!" he shouted as he closed the door behind him.

Not ten seconds later, Alexis jumped off the stairs and straight into him, wrapping her arms around his neck and hugging her father, screaming with joy.

"God I missed you dad!"

"I missed you too Pumpkin, more than you can imagine. It's so good to see you. Where's Grams?"

"I'm here Richard," Martha's voice came from the corridor that led to her room. "It's good to see you back in one piece. Oh, and who's this nice young lady?"

Only then, Alexis noticed Kate as she stood beside the door, holding the handle of her suitcase. The detective awkwardly stood back as she felt she was intruding in the family reunion taking place in front of her.

"Kate, what are you doing here?" asked the teenager.

"My building is being fumigated and your dad was kind enough to offer me a bed and a roof."

The girl let go of her father and she leapt in the cop's arms, clearly happy to see her. "Welcome back to you too. Grams, this is Detective Kate Beckett, the frontwoman of the band Dad's toured with."

"Ah, the famous Kate! It's so good to meet you, finally. Come inside, you two must be terribly tired. We'll show you the house."

The loft was just gorgeous. Delightfully furnished with great use of natural light to avoid the use of artificial one. She loved the living room, it looked so normal but it also showed Castle's personality and taste. The simplicity hit her. He practically swam in millions and his house was a compendium of the concept of keeping things simple. Like his bedroom, neatly set up so everything was at reach, with his walk-in wardrobe and the private bathroom and direct access to the study.

And that room was a gem. Not only it was set up so he could write in peace, but he had a small soundproof cabin where he could record vocal lines. It was a miniaturized recording studio in his home, though not enough to allow a full band to record, but it was more than enough for him. With the rest of the band living in LA, it would have been tough to take a plane and find a studio to rent only to record the vocal lines of only a song, and definitely impractical. In there, he could do it by himself, maybe do more takes, and then they'd decide together which one to use after a demo was mixed.

The dream of every singer.

After the tour, they went their separate ways and spent some time in the shower, scrubbing down the grime of the trip from their body. They emerged around an hour later, Castle dressed in a plain black t-shirt and sweats and Beckett in yoga pants and tattered The Gallows shirt.

"Nice to know you're a fan," he whispered, hugging her. She smelled like cherries, he loved that.

"I never hid that from you."

"Nice to see you show it. Come on, Mother just told me dinner is ready. I hope you're hungry."

"... And then Jay wakes up, totally hungover, in the wrong tourbus, grabs Jim by his shoulders… and you know how big Jim is and most of all how long his beard is… and says, 'Damn KBex you look great!' Then passes out again."

Alexis and Martha burst into laughter at her father's tale of Jay's first night in Europe, after their concert in Portugal. "Oh dear Richard, you seem to make everything funny, even poor guys' mishappens."

"Well, this one was funny indeed. But seriously, this was really a funny tour. We had lots and lots of fun."

"Yeah, except for Gina being a total bitch," said Kate.

"Oh don't worry about her, Katherine," replied Martha. "Gina may look like a rabid dog ready to bite, but she's only a very determined woman that works in a field generally left to men. Tell me, was it hard for you, as a band, to find a record label?" The detective nodded. "Do you think it would have been easier if you had been a man?" Another nod. "See, top managers like her are usually men. She's always under close inspections by her bosses, if her bands fail, it's all her fault. If they do well, it's their merit. She works hard and wants things to go right for everyone, that's why she's a bit bitchy."

Later that night, the Castle family and Beckett were all cuddled in the living room with hot cocoa and a movie on TV. A new one, finally, after they had gone through the DVDs they had brought from home over and over again during the long hours on the road.

By the middle of said movie, Castle noticed Kate had fallen asleep. Smiling, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and gently pulled her, so she could rest against him. He had missed the physical contact between them, he had to admit it. And he didn't exactly care if his mother and daughter were in the same room and hadn't been informed of their updated relationship status.

When the closing titles rolled in, Alexis moved to take it out the DVD player and noticed Kate fast asleep against her father.

"Oh, Dad, we forgot to set up the guest room, I'll take care of it."

Before he could reply, Martha interjected the conversation. "I don't think they're gonna need the guest room dear," she casually dropped as she herself headed towards her own bedroom.

The teen's brow furrowed. "What does that mean? Oh wait a sec… you two didn't…"

Castle could only react with a sheepish smile on his face and a tiny nod.

Alexis shook her head. "I should have known… girls with guitars, right?"

Chapter word count: 2827 Total Word Count: 18423