A/N: Just reuploading this one because I am mortified to have discovered I uploaded a copy of the draft, not the final edit! haha. My bad guys...

"I'm sorry," Kate said softly as Rick made his way back to the couch. "Do you want me to leave?"

"What?" He lowered himself back into his corner of the couch and wrapped his hand around her bicep, pulling her into his arms. "Why would I want you to leave?"

She curled up against his side, rested her head on his shoulder. "We literally just had a conversation today about me respecting your boundaries with her and-" She pushed herself upright: this was a conversation she wanted to have while looking him in the eye. "I didn't mean to push or anything, I just-"

"No," he cut her off. "I'm glad you asked her to join us."

He wrapped his arms around her and gave her entire body a very gentle squeeze. She lowered her head again, snuggled against his side.

"Are you okay?" she asked him.

Rick sighed and shook his head. No, he wasn't okay. But he didn't know what he could do. "She just wants to spend time with her mum."

"It's a good thing she has such a wonderful father who showers her in all the love and support a girl could ever need."

She had hoped her words would bring a smile to his face. They didn't.

"Doesn't feel like enough."

Kate remained silent for a moment. She knew first hand that no amount of fatherly love could ever replace quality mother-daughter time. But she also knew that it helped. And she knew that Rick, to some extent, knew that too. He knew what it was like to yearn for a relationship with an absent parent. While his situation was very different to his daughters - and Kate's was vastly different, too - they all knew that longing, knew how heavy that weight could be.

"Come on-" She gave his chest a gentle pat, then pulled herself from his arms and stood up. "Where's the popcorn?"

She held out her hand and Rick took it, rose to his feet and then led her to the kitchen.

She released his hand and moved to the pantry.

"Second shelf, to the right," he said when she opened the cupboard doors.

As she searched for the bag of kernels, Rick moved effortlessly around the kitchen pulling out all the essentials: a large pot, oil, butter and salt. He grabbed a handful of candy bars from his secret stash while he was at it.

They reconvened by the stove. As they worked together to prepare their late-night snack, Kate couldn't help but smile to herself. This domesticity felt so... natural. And, while she hadn't spent a great deal of time with teenagers and had no idea what to expect from Alexis joining them tonight, she wasn't an absolute wreck with nerves. Okay, maybe there were a few nerves but her mind wasn't screaming at her to run for the hills.

Alexis showing up may have been a slight hiccup in their weekend plans but it was also an opportunity, one that Kate was determined to seize. If she could survive the night - just one movie - she knew it would be another step (another large step) in the right direction. But if she wanted tonight to go well she needed to get Rick's mind off of his ex-wife and the hurt she had inflicted on their daughter. Rick's anger had settled, but it still radiated from him.

That was something that needed to be remedied.

Kate bumped her hip against his.

"We're gonna have fun," she assured him. "Alexis won't even think about anything else that happened tonight."

Rick smiled, grateful for the effort Kate was putting in to keeping spirits high. He wrapped his arm around her waist, leaned in close and pressed a kiss to the side of her head.

"This isn't your problem, you know? I understand if you wanted to bail-"

"Hey!" she interrupted. She turned her body, closed her arms around his waist and smiled. "I'm not going to let Meredith ruin my movie night. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Thank you." She let go of him and turned back to the bench. She grabbed two candy bars from the pile by the stove. "Now, what's going to help draw all your deep, dark secrets out of Alexis?" she asked in jest, holding the two options up for him to see. "Milky Way or Kit-Kat?"

"Don't you dare!" He moved quickly to snatch the bars from her hands, but she pulled them away and they slipped from his fingers.

She poked her tongue out, celebrating too soon. He moved again, this time successfully pulling the candy from her grasp.

"Ha!" he exclaimed victoriously.

"That's okay," she declared. "I don't need chocolate."

"My secrets are safe with her," he taunted. "She'll never crack."

"She gave up your favourite movie pretty quickly," she teased.

Rick frowned, lost himself, just for a second, in thought. "I may have to pull out the Monkey-Bunkey stories," he pondered.

"Monkey-Bunkey?" Kate repeated, curious and confused.

"Dad!"

Rick turned toward the sound of his daughter's distraught voice. "I didn't say anything!" he insisted, desperate to plead his innocence. But then his look of surprise turned into an evil grin. "Yet."

"Okay," Kate whined to Rick. "I won't pry. Your secrets are safe and so are hers," she declared.

Alexis walked down the last few steps. "I appreciate that."

"My curiosity is piqued, though. What on Earth is a Monkey-Bunkey?" She whispered the question to Rick and he shook his head, grimacing.

"Roadkill," was all he uttered before the sound of popping kernels distracted them both.

Alexis knew that this would be awkward for her father. For as long as she could remember, he had kept very strict rules when it came to the women he dated. She never met anyone until he knew that things were serious (which, they rarely ever were). And, even then, the eased very slowly into their time spent together.

She had only met Gina early on because she and Rick had had a working relationship for so long, his publisher was already practically family. In fact, it wasn't until they had both sat her down and explicitly told her that they were engaged that Alexis had even known there had been any change between the pair. In hindsight, the nights that Gina stayed in the loft with them should have been a give away, but her father had been sure to keep any sort of intimacy behind closed doors. Sure, as Alexis got older he began to relax a little bit but not much. So, the fact that she had even met Kate at this point was entirely new to the both of them.

As far as Alexis knew, they weren't even officially together. But that wasn't a thought she wanted to linger on; what her father did in his own time was none of her business, she didn't want it to be her business. Sure, she knew all about his reputation - the kids at school just loved to keep her updated on the many articles written about the apparent playboy author - but so long as she didn't see the alleged endless list of lovers, she could stay blissfully ignorant.

Coming home to find the young, attractive woman he had been spending an awful lot of time with lately on the couch in a kinda skimpy - albeit very cute - pyjama set did kinda ruin that blissful ignorance thing she had going on, though.

She considered not joining them. On the one hand, this was very obviously a date, right? Movies, cuddles on the couch, and she had noticed the candles had been pulled out of storage: no one could convince her that this wasn't meant to be a date. And she had interrupted it. Ruined it. She could easily call a friend and ask to sleep over. Maybe she should have just done that in the first place...

On the other hand, however, it had been incredibly sweet of Kate to ask her to join them. And while, of course she knew it was an obligatory invitation, she would never want Kate to think that she didn't want to get to know her a little better. And that's where this got a little more... complicated.

She didn't know Kate, didn't know how the woman would react to whatever decision she made right now.

If she left, would Kate be offended?

If she stayed, would Kate be annoyed?

The merging of these two parts of her father's life was an important event. She understood - too well - the ramifications of this not going well. Not that she had ever had a problem with anyone her father had ever introduced her to, but the what if was always in the back of her mind. She never wanted to be a point of contention within her father's relationships, never wanted to be the cause of things going south.

In the end, Alexis decided on the option that made her feel better. Selfishly, she just wanted her dad.

She slipped into her pyjamas - a comfy pair of cotton pants and an old t-shirt of a band she went to see a few years ago - and headed back downstairs.

"My secrets are safe with her." She heard her father's voice when she reached the top of the staircase. He held chocolate bars in his hands and was looking at Kate with a cat that caught the canary grin. "She'll never crack."

Kate looked just as smug. "She gave up your favourite movie pretty quickly."

Alexis couldn't quite hear the words that came from her father's lips but whatever they were, they had confused his friend.

"Monkey-Bunkey?" she had repeated.

The name was all the motivation Alexis needed to get downstairs, now!

"Dad!" she called out as she descended the stairs in record time.

He hadn't, had he? But the confusion on Kate's face assured her that - as her father had pleaded - he hadn't actually spilled any information about the childhood comfort toy that she just couldn't seem to part with.

"Do you mind putting the next movie on?" her father asked, a little distracted by the popping of corn kernels. "We'll get all this sorted and be there in a minute."

She nodded and moved to the living room.

Kate had come over first, carrying a large bowl of freshly popped popcorn in one hand and a half-dozen chocolate bars in the other. She dumped them on the coffee table, stretched out the fingers of her left hand - with a slight hiss and grimace - and then curled up in the far corner of the couch, opposite the teenager. Her father followed soon after, balancing three cans of fruit punch soda and a small bowl of shredded cheddar cheese. He placed the cans of drink beside the other goodies and then sat in the very middle of the couch.

Alexis couldn't help but smile to herself when she saw the carefully measured distance her father had kept between himself and Kate.

"May I ask what the cheese is for?" Kate asked.

Alexis leant forward and turned to Kate, looking around her father (who had done the exact same thing) to look at the guest in feigned shock-horror. "You've never had cheesy popcorn?"

Kate looked cautiously between Rick and Alexis, and shook her head.

"You have to try it!" Alexis insisted.

Rick leaned forward and grabbed the bowl of popcorn from the coffee table, sprinkled a small amount of cheese over it and then held it out for Kate to sample.

"You doubted the chocolate and potato chip muffins, too," Rick said, reminding Kate of their first coffee date, almost two months ago. Since then, he had convinced her to give them a try and - as he expected she would be - she had been pleasantly surprised by how not awful they were.

Kate sighed. "Fine."

She took a single piece of the popcorn: the first one she found with only a small shred of cheese sticking to the melted butter. She popped it into her mouth and chewed slowly. Then, with a smile, she covered her hand with her mouth and shook her head.

Both Rick and Alexis deflated.

"One day I will stop doubting you," Kate said with a soft chuckle.

"You like it?" Alexis asked, hopeful.

Kate nodded and enthusiastically said, "It's pretty good."

Rick looked at Alexis and smiled.

Kate remained tucked into her corner of the couch, her attention split between the movie she had been so eager to watch and the interactions between father and daughter as they watched a movie they were obviously very familiar with.

The movie was barely five minutes in before Rick tapped Alexis on the shoulder and - as if she could read his mind - she slipped onto the floor and sat between his legs. Without a single word he began to comb his fingers through the girl's long, strawberry blonde hair, separating the strands into smaller sections he could braid.

"Tie," he uttered just a few minutes later.

Alexis pulled an elastic band from her wrist and passed it over her shoulder to her father. He wrapped the band around the end of one French braid, then moved on to the next.

It was obvious that this was almost routine for them. Kate smiled at that thought, at the idea of Rick sitting with his daughter, absent-mindedly playing with her hair as they became absorbed in the fictional world on their screen. Images of the pair at all stages of life swirled in her mind: a cheerful toddler watching princess movies and playing tea party; the first time the girl would have had to take a day off school due to illness, cuddled up to her father's side as he rubbed his hand in soothing circles between her shoulders; to now... a smart, resilient teenager who didn't groan and grumble at the thought of spending time with her father because that's just how it's always been.

Rick had told her that this was always his favourite part of parenthood: just being there.

Seeing it first hand, she could understand why.

"You're gonna miss the best part," Rick said, turning his attention to Kate with a smug got ya! grin on his face.

With flushed cheeks, she turned her attention back to the TV screen just in time to see Elle Woods strut casually by her ex-boyfriend. She tried to stay focussed on the happenings on-screen but the father-daughter duo, transfixed on the scene unfolding before them, had captured her attention once more.

She couldn't help but smile at their perfectly timed (and overly-theatrical) "What? Like it's hard?"

Alexis smiled and shook her head. "Warner sucks," she complained of Elle's ex-boyfriend.

"Yeah," Rick agreed as he tied another elastic band around the second braid. Then he placed his hands on his daughter's shoulders and pulled her back slightly; she looked up at him. "Avoid the Warner's of the world," he lectured playfully - kind of.

The girl smiled. "I prefer to spend my time with the Ashley's," she said sweetly.

Rick groaned and turned to Kate. "The boyfriend who has her considering Stanford."

"It's a good school," Kate said cautiously, earning her a half-hearted glare from Rick.

Alexis, however, was grateful for the comment. She turned her entire body to face the adults on the couch.

"Thank you!" she exclaimed, pointedly.

And for a moment, Kate had thought perhaps she had touched on a too-sensitive-for-this-setting topic. But Rick smiled and she was reassured.

"Kate went to Stanford," Rick told his daughter.

The girl looked at her, wide eyed. "You did?"

"She was pre-law," Rick continued. "She could probably tell you a million horror stories about it, talk you out of going," he joked.

Alexis rolled her eyes and Kate had to bring her hand to her face to cover her smirk.

"I'm not getting myself dragged into this," she said definitively.

"That's probably a smart decision," Alexis agreed. Then the girl grabbed the ends of her braids, displaying them proudly. "Can I do yours?" she asked Kate.

Rick looked at her. His eyes conveyed a message: you don't have to.

Kate smiled at Alexis. "I'd love that."

"I'll go get some more hair ties."

As soon as she disappeared upstairs, Rick shifted closer to Kate and draped his arm over her shoulders.

"Has anyone told you that you are a remarkable woman?"

Kate hummed as she leaned against him. "Once or twice," she said jokingly. "But I'm always happy to hear it again."

Rick brushed a gentle, earnest kiss to her lips.

"Thank you," he whispered.

"For what?"

"She's having fun."

Kate smiled. "So am I," she assured him. And then she smiled. "I told you we would."