Chapter 7

Beckett was going to kill Lanie, slowly, carefully and with relish. She would start with a semi-strangling with tinsel. Then she would choke her with ever-increasing sizes of baubles. And finally, she would stake her with the pointy end of a sharpened Christmas tree, and tie the angel to her hair to weigh her down.

And after that, she'd use Lanie's decapitated head to provide a Christmas wreath (of sorts) for Beckett's front door. That would ensure no tuneless carollers or charity collectors. If she were really lucky, it would even deter Castle. Though no doubt she wouldn't be that lucky. He'd be back to gloat any moment now. He'd never resist gloating at her need to take cookery classes even to be able to make a basic cupcake.

She went to a small, discreet coffee shop and purchased a double espresso, which she threw back in one scalding mouthful. Then she bought her normal, enormously oversized, three extra shots, double pump vanilla latte. Full sugar vanilla, and full fat milk. It would explain her short absence. She pasted on a game face, totally ignored the Christmas-tree cookies and tinsel-wrapped chocolates, and stalked back to the precinct and her desk with an aura which shrivelled plants and small animals into dust.

Castle was not there. That was a gigantic relief – for all of five seconds. Then she decided that he'd gone because he'd found out that she'd taken classes and was unimpressed that a thirty-year old woman couldn't make a cupcake, which was enormously depressing. She went back to contemplating Lanie's imminent demise, with ever more creative methods of torture and undetectable murder. It might not be friendly, but it did stop her eviscerating her colleagues.

Strangely, none of those colleagues had come anywhere close to her desk since she'd returned. Ryan, indeed, was e-mailing her questions and results, rather than catch her eye. Even for Ryan in rabbit mode, that was… pleasing. She buried her head in her paperwork, which became completed and bore her slashed signature at a rate that would have delighted Montgomery, if he weren't cowering in his office as far away from his top detective as he could reasonably get without actually climbing out of the window. He wasn't actually scared of her: he just didn't want to notice that there might be an issue. Beckett's work-rate might drop, and his stats didn't like that.

Time passed, lunchtime passed, and Castle didn't reappear. Beckett's irascible temper and black mood thickened, and her co-workers unsubtly avoided her desk, her eye, and her. Come shift end, she cleared up her desk and marched out. It was a full five minutes before a single other person dared to approach the elevator, just in case she hadn't actually left the building. Though since there were no fire alarms screeching, it was most likely that she'd gone.

Beckett had gone. She had gone home, where she was intending to stuff herself with enough chocolate ice-cream to re-ice Antarctica, and wash it down with enough vodka to stop her going and shooting Lanie. Or at least, if she tried shooting, she would miss. Not that she'd miss Lanie. Best friend, Beckett's ass.

She defiantly shovelled in ice-cream, and then found the remains of her chocolates in the fridge and started on them, taking full advantage of her cast-iron digestion. When she'd finished, she decided, she was going to remove every single Christmas decoration which she hadn't wanted anyway and dump them on Castle's doorstep.

She was one pint of ice-cream, four chocolates, two vodkas, and one coffee to the good when the door sounded. She didn't want to answer it. It was Castle, and she didn't want to see him. He'd only make fun of her, or gloat, and she didn't want either.

He kept knocking. Shortly, it was going to annoy the neighbours, which she tried not to do. She would have to open the door, because she'd back old Mrs Leibnitz's shih tzus against all comers up to and including grizzly bears, which meant that she, Beckett, hadn't a hope of surviving the irritated dogs.

She stalked to the door, with only a very minor wobble which had nothing at all to do with vodka on a relatively empty stomach, and flung it open with a planet-destroying glare.

"Go away."

"Shan't," Castle said childishly, and walked in, using his unchildlike size and strength to push past her. He was carrying two boxes, which he carefully set on the table, and then turned back to Beckett, who was returning to her vodka and chocolates and ignoring the unnecessary and unwanted presence of Castle.

"Nuh-uh," he said. "You don't get to do that. C'mere." He plucked her up and hugged her in, lifting her up to her bare tiptoes. "You're being silly." He plopped a kiss on the top of her head. "Snuggle in and stop ignoring me." Another kiss, in the hope that she'd look up. It didn't work, so he walked them to the couch, sat down with Beckett in his lap, and sneaked one of his chocolates. "You're still being silly," he said affectionately. "D'you really think I care if you took cooking classes? How do you think I learned to cook? I could hardly watch at my mother's knee. She can't boil water: it's why she only ever drinks my wine." There was a muffled snicker. "C'mon, come out. I heard you snigger. Stop sulking."

She didn't move. "Okay, I'll eat the chocolates." Beckett sat bolt upright, and Castle took the open opportunity to kiss her properly, muffling her indignant protests and preventing her moving the box by the simple expedient of caging her against his chest.

"There," he said, lifting off but keeping her safely cuddled in. "All better – at least, is Lanie still alive?"

Beckett growled horribly. "Yeah." The following growl sounded very much like but she doesn't deserve to be. Call herself my friend?

"Good. You don't get chocolate in prison, and being in a cell would be very limiting."

"Huh?"

"No conjugal visits. Very limiting."

"Conjugal visits? Did we get married and I didn't notice?"

"No, but would you like to?"

"What?"

"I can cook, and you can be the breadwinner. Sounds pretty good to me."

"What?"

"We're a perfect fit. Obviously we should get married right now." He hummed All I Want For Christmas (is you).

"You're insane."

"So you can keep my insanity in check." He kissed her again, because she was right there, with a face like a stranded codfish and a complete inability to articulate. Boggled Beckett was positively wonderful, and much more to the point, it was rapidly removing her quite unnecessary annoyance and upset. Why would he care if she took classes? "See, we should get married. I'll be a homemaker and you'll go out to work. Perfect."

She stared at him, still open-mouthed. "You're crazy. Totally crazy."

Castle, on a thoroughly mischievous roll, carried on. "Nope. I know we've only been dating for a couple of weeks, but we've been working together for nearly a year and I've written nearly the whole of a second book all about you, and you haven't shot me yet, so it's obviously fated."

Beckett sat there like a stunned sow. She couldn't think of a single word to say. (That's because you wouldn't object to being married. After a proper period, of course. Which isn't two weeks. Two months, maybe. She knotted the brainworm into a ring, soldered the ends together, and threw it in the trash. It rolled out, hoop style.)

"And of course, if you married me, I could make you chocolates all the time."

"You could do that anyway," she pointed out.

"And now you've stopped sulking. Good. I wanna kiss you." Her face turned up, still confused. "Then I want my cupcake. You said you'd kept me one. I missed out earlier."

Her face clouded.

"Hey, stop that. I just said. I took all sorts of cooking classes – otherwise I'd have died of starvation before I was twenty. I couldn't afford take-out every night: I had to learn. God knows, Mother can't cook." He shuddered. "Don't ever ask her to add salt to a soup." The appalling memory sped across his expression. "Anyway, I liked your cupcakes. I don't care if you had to go to a class to learn how."

"I hate cooking," Beckett muttered blackly.

"So let me do it. I enjoy it." He pouted at her. "You've never come for dinner no matter how often I've invited you. You won't even come out to Remy's more than once a month. It's not fair, you know."

"Your cupcake is on the counter," Beckett said, desperate to stop the insanity. Castle was boggling her beleaguered brain.

"Is it? I think she's right here."

"I am not a – mmmffffff."

Castle had kissed her, most unfairly stopping her telling him never, ever, to refer to her as 'cupcake'. Ugh. That was almost worse than Christmas tat.

"You taste just as good."

"Don't call me – mmmfffff."

"Definitely. It can be our pet name" –

"No!"

"But you've got to have a pet name," he drooped. "Otherwise it's not a real relationship."

"Like 'kitten'?"

"No. Definitely not. If you call me kitten I'll call you cupcake – in the precinct."

"If you do that I will shoot you!" Castle blinked at her. "No pet names. None." She glared fearsomely. "And no more Christmas bling. I've got a headache."

"Ah. Um. About that…" He reached for the second box, and handed her it.

Beckett scowled. "I don't like Christmas decorations."

Castle looked around, meaningfully.

"I don't. This is all your fault and I wish you wouldn't. All the sparkle gives me a headache."

"You'll like this one."

She was quite sure she wouldn't like it. And she definitely had a headache. (You still won't be saying 'not tonight, Josephine' to him. Even if all you do is snuggle.) Castle pressed the box into her unwilling hands.

"Open it." He gave her puppy dog eyes, which was simply unfair. If she'd wanted a puppy she'd have bought one, and anyway no-one should buy puppies at Christmas. "C'mon, open it."

Oh, for Pete's sake. Was he five? (That wasn't a five year old's kiss. You're sulking because he stopped. And I think cupcake suits you, as a nickname. Beckett baked the brainworm into a cupcake and made sure to burn it. The brainworm exited the charred contents of the cake case, unscathed.)

"Okay." She opened it, slowly and reluctantly – and gasped. It was a simple, small, and utterly beautiful glass star: silvery tracing on the fragile points. Castle didn't say anything, merely waited patiently while Beckett gaped, dumbfounded.

"It's beautiful," she finally whispered, and delicately traced the silvery filigree with the tip of a finger.

"I know you don't really like all the other decorations," he said, "but this one…well, it was different." She looked up into the sincere, clear blue gaze, her own eyes slightly liquid. "It…"

"Mm?"

"It had meaning," he rushed out. "Not just a pretty bauble with Santas on it."

"The Star which shone over Bethlehem." Her voice was very quiet. Castle slipped an arm around her, and held her close.

"Yes," he said, simply. She laid her head on his shoulder, and for a little while there was companionable silence: no teasing, or snark, or banter.

"I'll put it over the window," Beckett eventually said, "but not now." There was another peaceful pause. She could feel Castle's nose nuzzled into her hair, his arm around her, hers lying at rest on his knee.

The mood was broken when Castle's stomach growled.

"Didn't you have dinner?"

"No. Have you?"

Beckett blushed. Ice-cream, chocolate and vodka weren't really dinner. "No," she replied, and consciously didn't look at the open box of chocolates.

"Let's get some dinner, then." He regarded her slightly sidelong. "I guess it's takeout?"

"Yes."

"Or I could take you out. Like a date."

Beckett grinned. "But the chocolates and the cupcakes are here…" she enticed.

"True. I guess taking you away from the chocolates is a life-threatening experience?"

"Yep." She wriggled to get comfortable, and not incidentally to be within reach of the chocolates. "Thai?"

"Okay."

A little time later, the Thai take-out had been eaten and the dishes cleared. Beckett, without needing to think about it, was meditatively sampling a chocolate, cosily wrapped within Castle's arm. Castle was cheerfully munching a cupcake, while keeping a close eye on the second one to ensure that Beckett didn't eat it. He had plans for that cake, which did, to be fair, involve eating. Of a very particular style, of which Castle was fully aware Beckett would approve.

She did. Vocally and with enthusiasm. Castle equally approved of Beckett's creative use of chocolate, and spent some quality time experimenting in return. Much later, he sneaked home.

Castle bounced in with enough chocolates to feed New York, plopped them down, and had to skip back hurriedly to avoid the stampede of sugar-seeking cops. He watched delightedly as his chocolates disappeared into the ravenous maw of the Twelfth's share of New York's Finest, and accepted compliments with aplomb. To be sure, the compliments were cop-style.

"I guess I haven't been poisoned."

"I dunno about this green stuff. ME oughta check it out."

"CSU already on their way."

"It's pistachio, dumbass."

"Looks like poison."

"I'm waiting to see if anyone falls over dead first."

Castle merely grinned, and made sure he ate his fair share.

It wasn't until a good fifteen minutes after the last chocolate had been despatched that he realised one particular chocoholic was missing.

"Where's Beckett?" he asked. "It's not like her to miss out on sugary things."

"The ADA called, first thing. Some piece of evidence that they wanted to talk to her about."

"Oh. She's missed out on the chocolates…"

Castle trailed off. There were no chocolates left. Specifically, there was not a single chocolate left for Beckett, and while she'd disposed of around three tons of his chocolate at her own apartment, she was likely not going to be happy at having missed out on the precinct's chocolate. His lifespan suddenly felt as if it were about to be truncated. Even coffee wasn't going to save him.

In an effort to divert Beckett's certain irritation, he decorated her chair with some handy tinsel, and awaited his doom.

Doom didn't appear until almost lunchtime, and she was not happy.

"That dumbass ADA couldn't find his dumb ass with both hands," she growled. "That evidence was right there in front of his dumb nose." She glared around. Many cops found themselves extremely interested in the papers on their desks, and extremely uninterested in the ominous presence of infuriated Beckett. Christmas, if she noticed them, would be very rapidly and messily cancelled.

Beckett's glare landed on the empty boxes, still adding Christmas cheer to the bullpen. She stalked over to them, identified their empty state in one fell swoop and scowl, and stalked back to her desk.

"There is no chocolate." Ice formed on the bullpen. Hardened cops, some still with chocolate staining their lips, considered taking cover. "You didn't keep me any?"

A faint flicker of self-preservation stopped Castle saying you didn't keep me a cupcake yesterday: I had to wait till the evening. Instead, he said, "I didn't bring them, in case the rest of the bullpen ate them before you got a chance." Which, of course, meant exactly the same thing, but sounded so much better.

"Oh." She started for the break room, in search of coffee. The bullpen parted for her as the Red Sea for Moses, though Moses hadn't instilled the same dread in the waves. Castle trotted after her, mainly to ensure she didn't break the machine, saw her glare, and made the coffee himself. The coffee machine wasn't designed to cope with superheated steam.

"I could bring them round this evening," he said hopefully.

"Aren't there any left?" Beckett drooped.

Castle shook his head.

"I will kill that dumbass ADA. I'll extract his intestines and strangle him with them. I'll" – Castle stopped listening as Beckett described, not quite enough under her breath, in detail and with the relish that only a member of the Spanish Inquisition confronting a witch could produce, precisely how she would torture and kill the unlucky ADA. Castle's legs crossed so tightly they were basically braided. She was still inventing new torments when he slipped away. He didn't trust that she wouldn't use all of them on him if he didn't show up with chocolates that evening.

Beckett was so annoyed at the ADA that she barely noticed Castle's departure. Idiot prosecutors, and he'd deprived her of chocolate, which might have soothed her wrath. Coffee helped, but not enough. She marched back to her desk with yet more espresso, and only then realised both that Castle was absent and that her chair was tinselled. Neither pleased her. The tinsel was unceremoniously removed. Sadly, she couldn't remove her quite ridiculous wish that Castle had stayed. (You've got it bad. She couldn't even muster up enough game to shoot the brainworm. It fainted with the shock, and even acquired a look of concern when it woke up.)

She grumbled and groused and griped her way home, entered, looked at all the Castle-flavoured decorations and the star hanging in a window, and wondered how she'd got into this state.

(Dumbass, said the brainworm. Think. Chocolate would help that – or a drill to let light into your thick head.)

She didn't want to think. She wanted – oh, for goodness' sake. She wanted Castle. Worse, she wanted Castle there with or without chocolate. (You know what that means. See, even you aren't immune to magic.) She made herself coffee and waited. Surely he'd arrive soon?

He didn't.

Beckett had never waited up to try to see Santa in her life, since she didn't believe in him and never had, but she suddenly understood how those small deluded children might feel. The fact that she had waited less than three minutes since she had thought "soon" entirely escaped her. In the back of her mind, the brainworm (which did believe in Santa, as well as reincarnation and, most importantly, true love) sniggered quietly.

Thank you to all readers and reviewers. Very much appreciated.