You know how I believe I said that I was through with Christmas related fics? Well... I kinda forgot about this one. But seriously, this chapter and the next chapter of this story should really be the last of the Christmas related stuff.

Many thanks to Christy for talking to me and keeping me from giving up and watching more X-files episodes instead of writing!

I do NOT own Castle.

An hour later, Alexis came out of Beckett's apartment and walked the short distance back to her own apartment to inform the two adults, that were still rearranging boxes, that dinner was ready.

Castle and Beckett followed Alexis into Beckett's apartment to see that Alexis had already set the dinning room table, where Martha was already waiting.

"I hope you don't mind that I used your stuff for dinner, I didn't think that you and dad would have gotten the plates and silverware unpacked in time." Alexis said over her shoulder as she walked into the kitchen to pull fresh rolls out of the oven.

Beckett took in Alexis carrying the rolls to the table, Castle taking a place at the table, and Martha enjoying her wine, knowing that she should at least be a little annoyed that they had taken over her personal space, but she wasn't.

But, that didn't mean she was extremely happy with it either. More like a feeling of resignation, like when she looked up that day, so long ago, to see Castle standing in the doorway after the Captain had told her he would be shadowing her.

With an inaudible sigh, Beckett told Alexis that it was fine, then they all sat down to enjoy a wonderful, but loud, dinner. The Castle's were definitely not the type of family that ate their dinner silently, and instead spent it talking about anything and everything.

It had been a long time since Beckett had eaten dinner with others, excluding the times that her, Lanie, and the guys would go out together after a case sometimes. This was different. This was more homey, more intimate.

Not exactly a bad feeling.

They had all made small talk while they ate, and everything was peaceful, until, being the ever observant writer that he is, Castle realized something was horribly wrong with her apartment.

"Beckett?" The concern in his voice caused her to still the hand that was about to place a spoonful of mashed potato in her mouth, and turned to him.

"What?"

"Please tell me that you are hiding a Christmas tree in your bedroom? Because I don't see one around here."

His concern was over her Christmas tree? She should have known.

"You don't see one, because I don't have one."

There were gasps of surprise, and a little bit of horror, from both the Castles, but she expected an overly dramatic reaction like that, and just resumed eating.

"How can you not have a Christmas tree, Detective Beckett?" Beckett was spared from having to answer Alexis' question by Martha answering for her.

"Dear, you act like it's a crime or something. I would be perfectly fine without a tree, if you two didn't insist on it every year. I'm sure Detective Beckett feels the same way."

"Thank you, Martha."

Castle grimaced then looked at her. "But you do own a tree don't you? I can't see you ever going out for a real tree, but you must at least have a fake one? You just didn't put it up, right?"

"Well... I don't know how to break this to you, but no. Pass me the butter, please?" He handed her the butter and sat with a slightly dumbfounded look on his face as she buttered her last roll.

It only took a few seconds before he jumped out of his chair and after a shared look with his daughter, they headed to their new apartment.

"This must be corrected!"

The door to Beckett's apartment shut behind them, leaving Beckett and Martha alone at the dinner table.

"Should I be worried?" Beckett asked the older woman, who gave her a sympathetic look in return.

"Most definitely. And I'm afraid it's my fault."

"How so?"

"Richard never really had a normal Christmas until well into his teen years, we were always on the road with a show or some such thing. Of course he had presents like every other child, it's just that he thought Santa left presents in mommy's dressing room, instead of under a tree, for the longest time. Then after he had Alexis, he started taking Christmas tradition very seriously, so that she would have the Christmases he didn't get as a child. You'll be lucky if he doesn't drag an eight foot live tree in here."

Beckett blanched at the last part, easily imagining him doing something like that, though the logical side of her brain knew that he wouldn't be able to find a tree on Christmas Eve.

By the time the two of them came back to her apartment, the food was cleared away and the dishes were already loaded into the dishwasher.

Beckett looked up from her place in the dinning room where she was wiping down the table, when Castle came in dragging a very large box, followed by Alexis who was carrying a few smaller boxes.

"Oh dear." Was Martha's reaction when she recognized the boxes, confirming the suspicions that Beckett had about it's contents.

"Castle, no."

"But, Beckett..."

"I am not putting up a tree. It's Christmas Eve, it would only be up for a few days. It's not worth the effort."

He seemed to think about it for a minute. "Then think of it this way, you are just letting us use a little bit of space in your spacious living room to put up our tree because there are too many boxes that are unpacked in our new place. If we put it up over there, we would have to first unpack the boxes and make space for it, then end up staying up really late to decorate it. Please?"

"Please, Detective Beckett?" Just in case her father's pleading couldn't do the trick, Alexis jumped in, pulling the puppy eyes on the unsuspecting detective.

"Ugh, fine. But I am not having any part of this. You are on your own, I have laundry to do."

Beckett turned her back on the two Castles, who 'fed the birds' as soon as her back was turned, and headed into the small laundry room that was located near the back of the kitchen to start on the ever growing loads of laundry that she had been neglecting for a while.

True to her word, she let them do the decorating, that is until she noticed the star on top was crooked. She pointed it out to Castle who tried to fix it, only to make it lean the other way so she took matters into her own hands.

After the star was finally straight on the fake six-foot tree, she backed away from the tree and continued her laundry.

When she next came out of the laundry room, all three of them were standing by the tree, discussing something. Naturally, she was curious and went over to see that all the ornament boxes had been emptied, but the tree was still pretty bare.

"We must be missing a box or two. They should have been in the same place as this stuff was though."

"Gee dad, what are we going to do? We can't just leave it like this, it's really bare."

"I don't know pumpkin, too bad we don't have someone else who had more ornaments we could use."

"Yup, too bad. We could really use them."

Beckett watched the two with a raised eyebrow, wondering if they knew just how obviously poorly scripted that was. With a shake of her head, she accused them of purposely leaving out some of their ornaments, and walked over to the hall closet while they tried to convince her it wasn't on purpose.

Ignoring Martha's knowing look, Beckett pulled out a medium sized box and sat it in front of the tree.

"There, I'm sure that will be plenty to fill up the rest of the tree."

Just like most things lately, she had intended to let them put up the ornaments themselves, but they kept her by the tree, telling them the stories behind each home-made or specially-made ornament until they were all on the tree. She had been so involved with each story and each ornament, that she hadn't even realized what she had done until Castle smugly pointed it out.

It was getting late, so the three of them headed back to their own apartment and Beckett was finally alone in her apartment.

Once they were gone, she headed into her bathroom to take a long soak with the book she was trying to read earlier, finally finishing it an hour later.

When she got out and got dressed in her standard night clothes, she walked back out into the living room and just stared at the brightly lit Christmas tree, admiring it.

Deciding that while it was there, it might as well be put to use, she gathered up all the presents that were currently residing under her bed, and placed them under the tree.

It had been a good few years since she had put up a Christmas tree in her apartment, and though she didn't want to admit it, it was kinda nice. Truth be told, she had actually been considering putting one up this year, but the old fake tree that she used to always use had been damaged too much when her old apartment blew up. She was just going to buy a new one, but she had been so busy with work this past month that she had completely forgotten about it. Thankfully the ornaments hadn't been damaged as they had been in the bedroom closet.

As she unplugged the lights on the tree for the night, Beckett thought that maybe it wouldn't be so bad living next door to Richard Castle after all.

Little did she know that she would be retracting that statement in just a few hours, when Castle woke her up at five in the morning, for no reason other than it being Christmas day.

I had fun writing this one, mostly Castle's reaction to the fact that she didn't have a Christmas tree. I think there was someone wondering about their apartments in a review last chapter and I think I probably said I would explain it in this chapter but, that didn't really happen so I'll try to clear up some things here.

They are on the fourth floor of the apartment building, which is kind of old and small compared to other buildings in the city. There are only two apartments on each floor of the building. As for their individual apartments. Castle's is pretty much similar to the old one, just a few differences. And Beckett's is the same design, only hers has only one bedroom and there are no rooms upstairs but there are stairs that lead up to an upper level that is over the living room that she uses for an office area. (So you can tell this is different than the one we now have pictures of) If you think it's strange that on the same floor there is an apartment with three bedrooms, and then the next apartment only has one bedroom, it's not really that strange. My family used to manage apartments and they were similar to that.