Title: The One – Chapter Five
Author: Floss Aus
Pairing: Rick C & Kate B
Summary: Investigating a reality romance show murder has Castle and Beckett realising that secret romances are fun but also dangerous to those around them.
Spoilers: Set in post Always world.
Disclaimer: ABC and Andrew Marlowe own them, Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic inhabit them and I'm just borrowing them.
A/N: Ok, I wrote two entire chapters and then just as I was about to post, HATED them. After deleting them, I went back and rewrote so apologies for the long delay. We're in Alexis' head for this one. I've also been stalking the amazing series Dead to the World from Lueska with an amazingly dark and angsty post Always twist. It's an awesome story and the writing is SO good – go read it now!

It all made sense now. Of course it was Detective Beckett, that her Dad was seeing. Alexis had, after all known for some time that he had feelings for her. He would never admit to it and he tried, time and again to hide it from her. But Alexis Castle knows many things about her father and one of them is that he can't really mask his feelings that well, least of all from her.

Alexis remembered becoming aware of it all, the summer when he temporarily started dating Gina again. She didn't really have a problem with Gina but as she watched him in the Hamptons, frolicking with her, plastering his face with a happy time expression, she felt it. She felt it was forced, she could see the cracks, the moments when his face would fall, staring absently into the distance, thoughts drifting away. The one or two occasions she was around that someone mentioned that 'pretty girl cop' she would see her father physically bristle. It was subtle, it was so slight that she didn't really pay much attention to it, but it caught her interest.

That following year, even though he'd returned to shadowing Detective Beckett, she could see it. Recognising his growing attachment that went beyond any writing muse and she watched him fight it. She watched them banter and then bicker, and then she would see the moments that got him down, the moments in the shadows before he realised that she was standing at his office door. Maybe it was because of her own growth, maybe because she was becoming an adult herself, she could recognise it, she saw the hurt he was carrying.

There was no greater moment of realisation though than watching him stare for hours down a long white corridor with blood covering his hands while Detective Beckett fought for her life on the operating table. As she stood with him at the sink and washed away the dried blood, the water a sickly colour and saw his face blank with despair, she knew this was no infatuation, it was so much more.

Sitting here, in Detective Beckett's apartment, as the woman in question answered the door, her father sure to be on the other side, Alexis had to wonder: did she feel the same way? Because although she knew without a doubt that her father was in love with Kate Beckett, Alexis really wondered how Kate felt about him?

She watched them work together for years, seen the growing commaraderie but Kate Beckett was a tough woman to read. She was professional, proficient and precise. She was beyond kind to Alexis, but she felt a wall between them, an unspoken distance that Alexis just couldn't figure out.

So to see her father fall so hard for this woman, on one hand, excited Alexis more than it should. On the other hand though, when he fell, he fell hard and she knew that just because her Dad was tall and strong on the outside, didn't mean he wasn't sensitive and just as easily broken on the inside.

They both walked back towards her, their eyes darting between each other and to her, Detective Beckett especially, trying to gauge a reaction of some kind. Her father, let Kate walk in front of him and Alexis noticed a guiding hand placed on her back. Funny, Detective Beckett never seemed like a woman who needed to be led but then she realized, it wasn't about the leading, it was about the touch.

"Before you say anything," Alexis began, as both the adults before her sat on the couch, side by side, "I want to explain myself."

Her father couldn't, despite his best attempts, hide his smile of pride. She knew how much he valued her honesty with him and how much her words only hours ago would have hurt him. She also knew, the writer in him, loved her using her words instead of stormy out of rooms like the teenager she sometimes still behaved like.

"I'm sorry for what I said to you Dad, I was angry and I guess, confused." She wanted him to know that first, before anything else was discussed.

"Thank you for saying so," he replied, nodding her along.

"I…I thought you were seeing someone else; someone less important." She saw Detective Beckett flinch in slight shock at her valuation. "I'm not angry that it's you Detective Beckett, I promise I'm not some nightmare daughter you have to worry about."

"It's Kate," she interrupted gently. A small pause and then she continued, "and Alexis you have every right to be angry. But I asked your father to keep this low key, it wasn't exactly his choice to hide it from anyone, especially you."

Alexis said nothing for a moment, just shrugged her shoulders with acceptance and understanding. She wanted to ask more, wanted to know how it worked but she couldn't, this was her Father's personal space and she couldn't demand it from him.

"Alexis, I want you to know that I love your Dad," Kate said, while sliding her fingers into Rick's hands. He stared at her in shock and his daughter wanted to giggle at her father's bug eyed expression. "What? I think it's important that she know how I feel." Kate answered his look indignantly.

"It is, of course, but wow, just putting it out there, like that. I'm impressed," he teased.

"Just because I don't worship at your sometimes over inflated ego altar like the many fan girls, doesn't mean I don't love you." She teased back, nudging him gently.

"I prefer to think of them as fan-women," he chuckled.

"Well, they certainly don't dress like women," Kate hit back, all the while the smile creeping further up her face.

And Alexis knew, in that moment, with such a small exchange that it was a partnership, an equal terms. So strange that a simple exchange would do that, lay a relationship bare like it was now before her but she could see in Kate's playful nudge, see in her Dad's tender hand hold, see in the shared smirks that this was more. In that moment she forgave them for the secrecy, forgave for them for hiding because if it got them here then her stinging pride for an hour was more than worth it.