Ooh. Looky what Santa left in my brain on Christmas Eve. Most unexpected. Ho ho ho.

He knows who it is before he even picks up his phone. Just something about the ring, maybe, or the way he's been thinking about her all day, which he's not supposed to do. Shouldn't do, really, in front of Alexis, who's trying to be her usual Christmas-elf self while deliberately not looking at her phone, willing Ashley to call even though they've broken up. He realises he's set a couple of bad precedents there. A real man proves his love by coming back no matter how many times she throws him out.

It's working for him. He thinks. He hopes. If Ashley loved his daughter half as much...

'Dad, are you going to answer that or what?'

Castle realises he's been staring at the picture of Beckett on his phone for the last four rings, instead of answering the damn thing and hearing her voice. It *is* a nice picture though, a new one to replace the one on his murder board, which he's not going to think about, no no no...

A flush of guilty heat rushes over his skin. Or maybe it's just her, Kate Beckett. Lately, she's been having all kinds of weird effects on him.

'Let me guess,' he says into the phone. 'Grandma got run over by some reindeer and you need me to come down and help you interrogate Santa to see if he was drunken sleigh-driving. Although my money's on Rudolph. That red nose has to be indicative of a tendency towards murderous road rage. Either that, or he's the one who's overfond of gin.'

There's a moment of stunned silence and then she laughs, that sharp peal of unrestrained mirth he never heard before the bank. Or rather, dinner after the bank.

'Only you, Castle,' she says, but there's a warmth to her voice that sends his heartrate into cardio workout territory. Or maybe it's the mental picture of that dinner he's still holding, Martha's grande dame comedienne rendition of their side of the bank robbery, making it all light and fun for Alexis' sake, but it's Kate he's watching, the bright colour in her cheeks, and her eyes sparkling, and her laughter raining down upon them like glittering Christmas tinsel. It's the growing hope that maybe one day this could just be them, that he won't need to get almost blown up every time he wants to hear that laugh, or smile into her eyes, or stroke her cheek as he wraps one of his scarves around her neck because she's insisted on going out to find her own cab home and baby it's cold outside. He hopes one day there will be no cab and he'll be taking things off instead of putting them on, but for the moment he's so grateful that she's alive and well and laughing in his ear, instead of crying and shaking - or worse, bleeding to death right in front of him - that he can't even begin to wish for more.

Or...okay, fine, maybe just a little. It has, after all, been one hell of rough year and a little peace would be a good thing for both of them. And for New York City, since peace for Beckett would also mean no murders to solve over the next five days, while she's on shift. 'It's the least I can do, since you're stuck at work all weekend.' And indeed it is the least. The most will be tomorrow, when he's ordered a feast for the whole precinct to be delivered at 4pm, and he'd like to see Captain Gates try to stop that from happening. Mind you, Christmas day, she probably won't even be in. Brass doesn't work the holidays, just the uniforms and a skeleton crew of detectives.

'Yes, well,' Beckett answers. 'We'll be thinking of you, sipping eggnog on your back deck in the Hamptons. With vengeance in our hearts.'

'Christmas comes but once a year. It's not my fault it only comes for cops every other year.'

She laughs again, softer this time. 'Speaking of, I need to go. I just wanted to say Merry Christmas before you head off.'

Kate Beckett. Is calling him. Just to say Merry Christmas. Castle isn't sure his face is big enough to contain the smile that's stretching over it.

'Merry Christmas to you too, Detective Beckett.'

There's a pause, oddly comfortable, both of them momentarily content just to know the other one is there. And then, Castle being Castle, he can't resist pushing just a little.

'Kate?'

'Still here.'

He takes a deep breath, sets his voice to casual. 'You know, a better road to vengeance might be coming out here next weekend and stealing what's left of the eggnog.'

'Next weekend? You really think there'll be anything left by then? I mean, that would be an awfully long trip to find the punchbowl empty.'

His heart pauses while he replays her words. Yes, she is saying what he thinks she said. 'I might be able to scrounge up a bottle of champagne for condolences.'

'Mmm. And how many would I be sharing said bottle with?'

'Just us. Alexis is a good sharer and I can distract my mother with a shaker of gin and a jar of olives.'

He looks up in time to see Alexis clamp her hand over her grandmother's mock-indignant protest. A twang of guilt rocks his conscience - for a moment there he really had forgotten them, forgotten that it'll be just them in the Hamptons because there was no party Alexis wanted to go to this year, and ordering her out of the city for a last-time family New Year before she goes off to college was basically her idea. It's a situation he never thought he'd be in, trying not to act like a fifteen-year-old with his first crush while his teenaged daughter has just broken up with her first love.

He feels guilty now. He shouldn't have asked Beckett up without asking Alexis first (his mother, on the other hand, will be hanging mistletoe over the front door). He thinks Alexis is slowly coming around to the idea that his thing with the cops is about so much more than the books, more than just a good excuse - although so far his only good excuse - to spend as much time as possible around Kate Beckett. But even if Gates succeeded in having him barred from the precinct, even if Beckett herself made him stop going to the 12th, he's not going to throw up his hands in defeat this time. He's not going to settle for someone else, he's not going to spend three months waiting for her to call. He's in this. They're in this, wall or no wall. He's pretty sure that Alexis knows that now. Accepts that, yes? He thought so after that dinner, as aware of his daughter watching him as he was of his mother watching Kate, and of Kate shyly sneaking glances at him while he was trying his best not to pant at her like a lovestruck pup. They haven't talked about it, he and Alexis, but the way she hugged the detective as she was leaving made it seem like Alexis was trying to tell them both that whatever happened was okay with her. Martha is probably already scoping out arrangements for the wedding (since he eloped with Meredith and Gina had insisted on handling everything herself lest they wind up with leopard-skinned napkins and a burlesque band). Not that they're going to need Martha's advice anytime soon, maybe never. Marriage hasn't exactly gone well for him in the past. He's in no rush on that front.

But he and Kate will be together, and soon. He saw her face when she came into that vault, heard the panic in her voice, watched it all smooth away as she knelt before him, become something else, something he was never sure she felt until that moment. And now that he is sure, he is not letting her go. He's Richard Castle, and he's never met a wall so well-built that he couldn't charm his way over, under, around or through it. But he has finally figured out that getting through Kate's wall is going to need finesse, not sledgehammers. And so he's mapping it out - height, circumference, depth. Testing each stone to see which ones are loose, which ones still firmly cemented. Working on a plan. The only thing he's not sure about yet is whether it would be better to try to find a way inside her world, or simply toss a knotted rope over the top and try to coax her into his.

He likes the second option better, except he shares his world with Alexis. And the truth is, it's not like there's always been a Beckett-sized hole in their family. There's never been an anyone-sized hole where he and Alexis are concerned, that's the problem, isn't it? They could expand their world to hold Martha when she moved in full-time, but that was because she'd always been flitting in and out. He's never tried to fit another person into their world, a new person, and maybe Gina's right, that this was why the two of them were never going to work. Maybe why it never worked with Meredith either, because really, once that unexpected creature wrapped her wrinkled little newborn fingers around his thumb, his heart just didn't have any room for anyone else in it.

Until Kate. It's amazing how easily his heart expands when she's with him. How strange it felt to be four that night, but stranger still, the night after, to be just three again.

'I don't know if that's such a good idea, Castle,' she's saying now, the pause on her end having been as long as the pause on his. Her voice softens, trying to take the pointy edges off her No. 'Maybe next year.'

'Next year you'll be working New Year's Eve.' He starts to move away from the counter, where his mother and daughter can hear every word of both sides of the conversation. If he's going to be overheard pleading, which he's not too proud to do, he'd rather they didn't hear Beckett finding every possible excuse to turn him down. But before he can get off his stool, Alexis reaches over and plucks the phone right out of his hand.

'Are you any good at Monopoly?' she says.

He can actually picture Beckett's face, the way her eyes go wide when she's surprised, but the rest of her features stay absolutely still.

'Um,' he hears her say. 'Kind of vicious, actually.'

'Good,' Alexis replies. 'Because Gram always loses all her money before we even get any houses built, and then Dad won't exchange any properties so we just go into stalemate collecting rent back and forth for about six hours, and we never get to really finish. So we need a fourth hand. Also, if you're there Dad can't buy any illegal fireworks and set his hair on fire again.'

'If I...' He hears that other laugh, not the bright peal and not the soft chuckle. It's the laugh that goes with that wide, shiny smile he sees so rarely, shy and pleased. A laugh that probably gives more angels wings than any amount of ringing bells. 'Well, if you're talking about beating your dad at his favourite game, how can I resist the chance?'

'Exactly. So we'll see you then. Seven pm.' Alexis clicks off and hands him back the phone with a look that says, see? what the hell was so difficult about that?

What indeed?

'And a little child shall lead them...' Martha says, lifting an ironic eyebrow.

Okay, so there's a door in the wall he never saw before. A door that's locked to him, but he's okay with that because...because...

Because his daughter has the key to Kate Beckett's heart?

It's so trite, and so silly, that it can't be anything else but true.

'You really are my Christmas elf,' he says, leaning forward to plant a kiss on the top of her red head.

'Okay, Dad? Not six years old, not wearing pointy earmuffs, not wearing a green felt smock,' Alexis huffs. 'And now that I've sorted out your love life, can we go?'

He laughs again, suddenly lighter, suddenly feeling the weight of so many things sliding off of him, falling away, about to be relegated to last year. A new year looms, shiny with possibilities, and right now, all of them look good.

And the same to all of you!