April 2010
Drink tonight?
The text message was direct and to the point, and Kate took another sip of her drink as she considered. It wasn't that she didn't want to meet Lanie for a drink, but she was jet lagged, and she missed-
She inhaled, letting the rich aroma of the coffee fill her nostrils, the scent of the warm caffeine flooding her system and lending her some calm.
She didn't want to meet Lanie.
Not because she didn't want to see her friend, of course not. But the interrogation that was sure to follow wasn't something she was particularly looking forward to.
"Yo, Beckett-" Across the room, Esposito stood up, the pad of paper in his hand held aloft as he indicated to it; the understood sign for 'we've caught a case, let's hoof it'. "39th and Lex," he elaborated, and she nodded, glancing at the phone in her hand. The message from Lanie was all but forgotten as she warred with the instinct to flip through to Castle's number and call him to ask him to the scene.
Crap.
Being back at work, after that weekend?
This was torture.
And she didn't have her partner by her side to make it better. No one to bring her a coffee, and okay, yes, she'd figured out how to use the coffee machine. That didn't mean she liked using it. She scowled at the cup on her desk, its presence a sharp reminder of the fact this one was courtesy of Ryan.
See you at 8, she messaged back to Lanie, stabbing the words into the text before tucking the phone into her pocket and trailing Esposito toward the elevator.
"So… spill," Lanie directed her, and Beckett leaned back in her seat, taking a sip of her wine before answering her friend.
"Typical case, really," she started. "I mean - but wait, didn't Espo fill you in?"
Lanie's eyes narrowed. "Girl. Not what I was talking about, and you know it."
Kate laughed. "I went away for the weekend. I told you-"
"Yeah. Away. To a foreign romantic country, with Castle!"
Beckett shifted in her seat, taking another mouthful of her wine to buy herself some time before meeting her friend's eyes - oh, to hell with it - grinning. "Lanie," she said. "It was amazing."
Castle leaned back in his desk chair, the words on the page not holding his attention the way they should. Who would have thought, presented with the opportunity to write Bond, he'd be staring into space and picturing the way his muse had looked, sleep mussed the first morning they'd woken up together.
She'd been curled up around him when he'd woken, and he'd been afraid to move, afraid to wake her, ruin the moment.
But then she'd stirred, her long limbs strong against his, and at last she'd opened her eyes, a satisfied smile making its way onto her face as she'd professed, "it wasn't a dream."
"Not a dream," he'd assured her, and then she was moving, her hips rolling against his, and if he'd been awake before now he was really awake, and-
The apartment door slammed shut, and he threw his gaze at the clock in the corner of his screen. It was late. Really late, far past any curfew Alexis had self-imposed, either here or in New York.
He stood up with a sigh, stretching as he did so before making his way into the entrance hall just in time to come face to face with Alexis.
"What are you doing out so late?" he started, before cocking his head to the side and taking her in; her eyes were red and puffy and the look on her face was one of defiance.
"Emma," she retorted, venom in her voice, and he shook his head, clearing his thoughts as he tried to focus on his daughter, pulling her toward him and walking her into the kitchen with his arm around her shoulder.
"Start at the start," he told her after he sat her down at the counter, pulling milk from the fridge in preparation for his patented specialty hot chocolate. "What happened?"
"It's nothing," Alexis said, but she wiped at her eyes, new tears betraying her words. "It's just Emma and I had a fight and then her friend said I was just a stuck up American, and then I tried to Skype Paige but she was at dinner with her parents so she couldn't talk."
The words tumbled out and Castle sighed, running his hands through his hair before turning some of his attention back to the hot chocolate. If only Alexis was a kid again. At the time looking after a baby, then a toddler, then a child had seemed hard.
None of those things had anything on dealing with a teenager. He grimaced, just thinking about it. Alexis was the best possible teenager he could have, and even still, he was at a loss to know what to do to fix it. Comfort food wasn't really the long-term answer, no matter how many marshmallows he piled onto their hot drinks.
Wordlessly, he passed Alexis a mug, still unsure what to say.
"I just," Alexis took a sip of her drink and lowered her voice as she admitted. "I want to go home."
"Oh, sweetheart," he said, rounding the counter and pulling her into a hug. "Me too," he mumbled into her hair, and she drew back from him, her eyes narrowing.
"What about Bond?"
"I didn't say we're going back… yet," he protested. "Just that… I want to."
"Things went really well in Prague, huh?" Alexis asked, her eyes darting to the map on the wall; she'd adorned the Prague marker with a red-love heart when he'd told her he was spending the weekend with Beckett, and nothing he'd said had been able to convince her that it was an innocent trip away.
"Yeah," Castle confessed, slumping down on the seat next to his daughter as he got ready to bare his soul. "Really well. Perfect, even. Until the end…"
The cab ride to the airport had been silent and Beckett had stared out of the window as the streets rushed by, the classic Prague buildings replaced by Czech suburbia, cobblestoned streets still romantic but lacking the magic of the Old Town.
"You okay?" Castle had asked at last, and she'd whipped her head around, her hair falling around her face even as her eyes flashed, before softening.
"I'm okay," she'd said, but he'd heard the lie in her voice, and he offered her a half-smile, reaching across the backseat to take her hand.
"I'm coming back soon," he'd promised, and she'd nodded, a weak smile on her lips that didn't quite make its way to her eyes.
"Here," the driver had announced, and Castle had torn his eyes from her face, pushing a handful of bills at the man before getting out of the car and making his way to the other side to open Beckett's door.
"What you said," he'd started, as they walked into the airport, "about… things being the same between us. It's going to be okay? We'll go back to talking every day, you'll tell me about your cases each night, I'll keep on being your long-distance consultant?"
She'd nodded, swallowing before stopping mid-stride, and he was reminded for a second of their walk at Vyšehrad, the other Prague Castle, the way the grounds had been so silent, nothing like at Pražský Hrad. She'd stopped mid-stride to pull him into a kiss, causing him to fall silent with a touch of her lips to his, her mouth parting to grant him entrance.
But saying goodbye held none of the simplicity of that kiss; she had stopped in the middle of the airport, but otherwise this was different, her body language screaming her discomfort.
"And when we got to her gate she just… left. I mean, she said bye, and she - she kissed me -" Confessing that to his daughter was almost too much, and Alexis rolled her eyes.
"Dad, I know what happens when two people in love go away for a weekend."
"What- we- you-" He shook his head, trying to get a grip on his usually excellent vocabulary.
"I'm just saying," Alexis continued. "But really, haven't you spoken to her since then?"
"She messaged to say she was back, and that she was heading to bed, and today she messaged to say she was going out with Lanie for drinks after work." He threw a glance at the wall clock in the living room. "Which must be… now."
Castle stared at Alexis as he drummed his fingers on his thigh.
"What do you think they're saying about me?"
"And then I screwed it all up," Beckett confessed as she accepted the next glass of wine that Lanie pressed into her hand. "Everything was perfect, and then I had to go and freak out and, oh - he's never going to want to talk to me again!"
She buried her face in her free hand, letting a soft moan escape.
"Why am I so bad at this, Lanie? I couldn't tell him how I really felt before he left, and now he probably thinks I hate him because once we were in the cab it felt like our perfect weekend was over, so I panicked!"
She looked back up to see her friend watching her with amusement. "Kate Beckett," Lanie said. "You need to call that man, and you need to call him now."
"It's late there," Kate protested, but Lanie shook her head, pointing to where her cell phone lay on the table.
"Like that's ever stopped either of you before." Lanie laughed. "I'll tell you what - seeing you with those dark circles around your eyes these last few months, and knowing it's from your secret long distance romance instead of working hundreds of hours of overtime -"
Kate silenced Lanie with a glare, before snatching her cell phone up and turning away from Lanie as she dialed.
She could fix this.
A/N: all the thank yous to you guys who are reading, and also to J&K for their fixing! x