Author's Note: This is a sequel to my story, Just a Temporary Thing. It will make a lot more sense if you read that first. Thanks for your patience with the delay at getting this story started. RL is very, very busy (I worked more than 90hrs this week alone).

Apologies for the brevity of this chapter. It's more of a bridging prologue-y type thing between the two stories, but I'll try and get the next chapter up by early next week.

Richard Castle was fidgety. Of course, if you asked anyone who knew him, they would tell you that this was practically his natural state. Especially if you asked a certain green-eyed homicide detective. But on this day he had good reason to be so restless that he couldn't sit still in his first class seat; he was going to see his girls.

(And probably he was quite lucky he was still 30,000 feet above and 100 miles from JFK. If Beckett heard him thinking of her as 'his girl' he'd get the ear-pinching from hell.)

It had been seven weeks since he had seen the detective, or his daughter. The book tour had dragged on, until every face in the queue for the signings looked the same, until he grew so sick of reading the same passage from Heat Wave he was tempted to flip to page 105, just to see the reaction he got.

He'd missed his daughter like crazy. It was the longest they had ever been apart since the moment his entire world had changed when he held his tiny, screaming infant daughter in the delivery room and had known nothing else could ever be this perfect, this amazing. But at least he could call Alexis anytime and speak to her, even if she did get a little exasperated at the interruption to her 'college' life.

Until the day Alexis had said, "Just call her, dad," and he had to pretend to have no idea who she was taking about.

Her. Kate Beckett.

He'd been hesitant to call his muse at first, unsure of the response he'd get. He thought of her a million times a day. He would see an interesting article in the paper, or a fan dressed as Nikki, or get a text from his daughter and turn to share it with the woman at his side.

Only there was no woman at his side.

Or, when there was, it was Gina. Eww.

His hand itched every time he saw a phone. He wanted to call her, hear her voice, her laugh. But he wasn't sure of his reception, so he waited. He started wishing he had a dog, or fish, or even a pet rock just so he could have an excuse to call her and make sure everything was ok. Why hadn't he brought a cat before he left home? It was totally reasonable to call your loft-sitter to check on your cat, wasn't it?

Finally, he called under the pretence of checking on how the house plants were doing.

He was desperate, ok?

Things had been a bit awkward on the phone, and he wondered if it was because she didn't want him to call. Defeated, he had hung up and vowed not to disturb her for the rest of the summer.

And then she called back.

Sure it was because some mail had arrived for him marked 'urgent'. (Mail! He could have smacked himself. Why hadn't he thought of that? That was a fantastic loft-sitter-phone-call excuse.) But then they'd talked, and she apologised for being short with him the other day, but she was stressed over this case…

They'd talked for an hour, building theory around the case, talking about the boys and Lanie, the precinct, the weather, the crazy fans, everything. Then the next day she'd texted him to let him know their theory had panned out and they'd caught the killer. So he'd had to call her that night to get the rest of the details. Which is when she'd told him about their newest case…

By the time Alexis' summer program was over and Beckett had picked her up, Rick and Beckett were talking every day. He was worrying about getting RSI in his thumbs from spending so much time texting. For the past week her messages had been about the things she and Alexis had got up to. The feeling he got from knowing that Beckett was talking care of his daughter (even if she was sixteen going on sixty and didn't really need taking care of), that Alexis loved to spend time with the detective who was rapidly becoming one of the most important women in his life, was indescribable.

And he was stuck on the other side of the country, signing books.

So Richard Castle was fidgety. Could you blame him?

Katherine Beckett was not fidgety. She was not anxious or restless. She was in no way excited. So she was tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. She just liked the song on the radio. Well, ok the jingle on this ad, then.

She was certainly in no way impatient for any of the events of today. She just happened to be driving with Alexis to JFK to pick up Castle. Yeah, the car service could have done that, but Alexis was missing her dad, and Kate had the day off, so she was just doing them a favour.

In wasn't like she'd missed him.

Except that if she was being honest, she really, really had. They'd spoken every day since she called him about that bogus 'urgent' letter, but it wasn't enough. It was just that she was used to him. Used to waking up in his house and seeing him at breakfast and driving in together and seeing his face over her desk, and across from her at crime scenes, and above two venti Starbuck's cups. The first day after he and Alexis were gone she automatically made pasta for four (she often made extra even though Martha was never there for meals, so there was some left in the fridge when Alexis got home from school the next day or for the teenager to eat if she and Castle got caught up in a case and were late home), and then had to have it for dinner every night that week to use it up. Straight after the explosion at her apartment, when she'd moved in temporarily to the loft she'd thought that staying with the Castles would be suffocating. Now she had trouble imaging her life without them.

She'd have to start soon, though. Over the summer she'd looked at some apartments and found some decent one bedroom places that she could afford with a little economy on her day to day expenses. Living at the loft hadn't been perfect; sometimes after a hard day she needed time alone, and when she was stressed out over a case she had a tendency to lose patience with Castle when he pulled a little too hard on her ponytails. But most of the time living with the Castles had felt like something out of somebody else's life. She didn't think she'd felt this happy since her mother died.

Castle had been quiet for a long time on the phone the other night when she had told him that she'd put in applications for two apartments. But she hadn't heard anything back from them yet, so she wasn't going to let that ruin her day.

Alexis was so excited she was almost bouncing up and down in her seat. Sitting in the car with an impatient Castle beside her made everything feel right again.

"You excited about something, Lex?" she teased.

"Yup," replied the teenager, still fidgeting impatiently, a wide grin on her face. She turned to face Kate. "Don't tell me you're not," she said with an eye roll. The Beckett Eye Roll, if Kate wasn't mistaken. The detective felt so proud she forgot to be embarrassed about what Alexis was insinuating.

This past week with just her and Alexis at home had been great. The longer summer days meant they were able to go for jogs around the Park when Kate got home from work. They'd watched Love Actually with pints of Phish Food in their pyjamas on the couch and bemoaned all men in the world when the boy Alexis had met on the college program didn't call. This morning they'd had brunch at Kate's favourite French bakery, and spoke only en français the entire time so Alexis could get in some practice. She was talking about maybe doing an exchange program, and Kate was surprised at the tightness in her chest at the thought of the younger girl going away for such an extended period.

All in all, they had a great week together. Kate suddenly understood why Martha was always popping back to pic something up, why she had never been able to move out of the loft completely. Kate knew that even after she moved out of the Castle residence she was still going to be around a lot. She might get to see Castle every day at work, but she wondered how she was expected to go days at a time without seeing Little Castle.

But that was a problem for another day. Today, her little family was becoming whole again.

Kate smiled as she pulled into the car park at JFK. It was time to get her partner back.