Work Text:
Beckett has a Christmas tree in her apartment. Every year on Thanksgiving she's meticulous about how she decorates it, just the right ornaments, just the right lights (one strand of blue and one strand of white), spaced apart on the tree in just the right way.
And every year nobody ever sees it.
But now there's Castle.
He stops by and comments on it, teases her about how much time she spent on it before he invites her to come help trim his (he definitely makes that sound as innuendo laden as possible and she definitely ignores him doing so). She declines even though she doesn't want to. She's just not sure how she would handle that kind of intimacy, because in spite of how annoying he is, she can recognize that they are becoming, or have become, friends. But being there for something that's certainly part of their customary Christmas traditions, that's family. She's just not sure she can do that yet.
(She remembers being a kid and having her dad hold her up to put the star on the tree, and even though it's been years, it almost feels like she's cheating on that memory if she creates new ones, no matter how much she knows it's time for that.)