If you've seen the latest episode, consider this AU. If you haven't, what are you doing with your life?

She wakes to the whisper of something skirting across her cheek, tickling her nose and rustling the hair that had fallen into her face overnight. She lets her eyes flutter open, no use keeping them closed in denial when she knows she won't get back to sleep. Light floods in and for a moment she glimpses the ghost of ascending lashes before they're gone and all she sees is – a nose?

She lets her eyes travel the expanse of skin, the curve of a cheekbone and dip of an eye socket, before she reaches out to stroke the arch of his eyebrow. She still feels his breath on her face, steady and warm against her skin. Her fingers move down, tracing the lines radiating from the corners of his left eye. She loves how they crinkle when he smiles, deepen when he laughs. Tripping over the half moon of his cheekbone, traveling the trenches of his laugh lines right to the bow of his lower lip – it's a pilgrimage she can finally make after too many lost chances.

She lightly scratches the line of his lips and it seems to tickle him. She watches as his nose crinkles, his lips squirm, and some indecipherable noise escapes his mouth. Her lips quirk, a smirk painting her face because the noises keep coming. So he talks in his sleep, then. That's new.

Then again, everything's new. Or it should be. This is only the third time and it hasn't even been a week and, really, it should all be so new but, the thing is, it isn't. She knows that he didn't learn to ride a bike until he was seventeen and he knows that she's self-conscious about her crooked tooth. He knows her heart, took good care of it long before she gave it to him, and she hopes she's doing the same for him.

She looks away from his face then, glances at the clock only to find that it's much later than she thought. Ah, well, apparently she slept in a bit. She thinks maybe she could cook them some breakfast, surprise him with fresh fruit and pancakes and oh bacon. But she has this intrinsic need to kiss him, for his lips to move under hers. She really wants to surprise him but, damn it, she really wants him too. Screw it, he can go back to sleep after.

She cranes her neck so she can reach his mouth, presses her lips to his. He doesn't move for a few seconds, caught in sleep, but then he lets out a contented sigh and he's tangling his hand in her hair and oh good morning to you.

"Mmmm," She pulls back, his morning breath fanning her face again but she doesn't mind at all, "morning."

"Kate." He's so boyish when he's just woken up, hair spiked up from sleep and eyes squinting at her in the light of his bedroom.

"Go back to sleep, Castle." This is when it's easiest, she's learned, to get him asleep again. As soon as he's alert, he's up for the day.

"Hmmm?" His mouth moves more but nothing comes out, his tongue flailing for words that he can't quite capture in his sleepy haze.

"Shh, go back to sleep. I'll wake you up later." She gives him one more kiss, quick and light, before his eyes are closed again and she swears she can hear snoring.

She can't help the unbidden smile, the one she knows is girlish and so completely love struck she could slap herself. Crawling out of bed – his bed – she surveys the room. Taking inventory of where he flung her clothes last night, her heart stuttering with a rush of primal desire when she sees her bra hanging off his lampshade, she pulls on the t-shirt he was wearing. The cotton has absorbed his scent, musky and earthy as it fills her up, and she almost nuzzles her nose into the fabric before she catches herself. She will absolutely not be that girl, not even when he isn't watching.

She glances back at the bed to make sure he really is asleep, finds his face mashed into the pillow and an arm flung over the spot probably still warm with her body heat. With the flick of a smile, she turns and makes her way to the bathroom. Or, at least that's what she assumes is behind the door in front of her. She sees a glimpse of white tile, smells the fresh scent of soap through the crack. Slipping through the door, she closes it behind her as her eyes roam the luxurious bathtub, the double sinks, the –

"Shit!"

He's beside her in a moment, both of them still on high alert after everything that happened with Bracken, but she can't even look at him, her gaze drawn to the figure in the corner of the room.

The frog-like eyes, mouth open in a grin, teeth disturbingly close to human. She chokes on a gasp, her brain ticking over on a loop, unable to process what she's seeing.

She manages to turn around, a forever thing, and then she's meeting Castle's eyes, her tongue a dead weight in her mouth.

"Castle, what is that?"

His face blossoms into that little-boy grin she loves so much, his hands coming up to cup her biceps and turn her around to look at the thing again.

"Jar Jar Binks. Of course."

"You have a life-size model of Jar Jar Binks in your bathroom?" She squints her eyes at it, trying to see the reason for its placement right next to the shower. She turns to him then, eyebrow raised in clear skepticism. His face falls just a little bit, seeming to doubt himself as the unyielding confidence drains from his eyes.

"Uh, well, yeah." He runs his hand through his hair, mussing it even more, and tries for a smile. She looks between him and, uh, Jar Jar, deciding that his attempt at a smile looks far too much like the plastic grin on the other side of the room.

"Huh." She walks up to the thing, cautious as if it's actually alive and going to jump at her. Running her fingers along the cool plastic, wrinkled and hard and the color of how Castle takes his coffee, she considers it. "He's certainly eye-catching."

His face lights up at that and her heart stutters at how very little it takes to make him beam at her, eyes bright and crinkled. She's trying, she really is. It's a little unnerving to walk into your boyfriend's bathroom and find a life-size Star Wars character staring back at you but she's making an effort because this is all part of what she fell so hard for. Sure, she can't resist sexy, all grown up Castle with the gruff voice and the power he has over her and oh the hands. But without the childishness, the laughter he coaxes from her and how his eyes light up at Saturday morning cartoons, she knows he wouldn't even be close to the same man. And this is the man she wants, weird bathroom decorations and all.

"I might scream when I walk into your bathroom for a while. It's gonna take a little getting used to." He wraps his arms around her waist then, pulling her into him and the circle he's trapped her in is so deliciously tight.

"Thank you." He's whispering into her hair, the words trailing down to her ear with his lips. She feels him exhale onto her scalp, breath rustling her hair and warming the shell of her ear. "For what?" Her fingertips trace a line from the soft, pliant flesh of his earlobe to his pulse, back and forth.

"For letting me be me." She rocks into him then, finds his lips with hers and gives him everything. She pours it all into him, returning some of the light he's filled her up with over the years. When she pulls away his lips are a deep pink, shiny and wet from her kiss.

"As long as he never makes his way into the bedroom, I think I'll survive." He smirks at her, leans back farther to get a better look at her face. She sees the teasing laughter in his eyes, knows something's coming so she waits him out. It doesn't take long.

"Not into that?" She leans in for another kiss, stops just as their lips touch and hovers there. Locking eyes with him, she darts her tongue out to flick at his upper lip before twisting out of his grip completely.

"Not even a little bit."

Working title was "lol it's Jar Jar" and was written with the Star Wars main theme in the background. This was an experience.