For Jennifer, who gave me ideas when I asked for them

"Stop it," Esposito hissed across the table.

Beckett shot a look of "What the hell?" at him and he rolled his eyes. Esposito rolled his eyes. "What's gotten into you?"

"You guys just-" he stopped to gesture between her and Castle. "Just need to stop."

Beckett cut her eyes over to her partner but he only shrugged; he was as clueless as she was. "You're gonna have to give me more than that. We're going through financials, same as you."

"No, not the same as me!" he said emphatically and a little too loud. The detective lowered his voice and added, "I'm not also engaging in lovesick looks and 'accidental touches' and probably footsie or some other nonsense." He shuddered and dropped his eyes back to the pages before him.

Beckett looked at Castle again and this time his shrug was one of agreement. He bounced his leg to prove his point and only then was she aware that her shoeless foot was wrapped around his ankle. She carefully withdrew it and slid it back into the heel sitting on the floor.

"Sorry, Espo," she muttered, getting back to the task at hand. Resolving herself to curb the touching. Well, trying to resolve herself to curb the touching.

She lasted another hour and it was all Castle's fault that her resolve broke.

They were out of coffee again and he got up with the empty mugs, wrapping the fingers of one hand around both handles. As he walked past her, he took advantage of the fact that she had worn her hair up that day and brushed the fingers of his unoccupied hand across the back of her neck. The touch was light and teasing. And hot as hell. She glanced over her shoulder as he left the room but he wasn't even looking back. The bastard.

She could still feel it; phantom fingertips trailing across her skin, energy vibrating down her extremities. She breathed deep through her nose but her body betrayed her on the exhale, her breath stuttering.

Esposito lifted his eyes to her and pulled the pen out of his mouth. "You okay?"

"Yeah." Damn it, her voice was a little too low and rough. She cleared her throat, started again. "Yeah, just maybe need a break. Stretch my legs a little." Weakest excuse ever. "Be right back."

"'Kay." He had to have seen right through her but he marked something on the page in his hand, put the pen back in his mouth and flipped the paper over, already ignoring her.

Kate stood on slightly shaky legs and managed to walk out of the room. The bullpen was fairly empty; theirs was the only open case and most everyone had left for the day. Those that were still there were engrossed in computer screens or files and so she didn't even make a pretense of where she was headed, just strode straight to the break room.

Castle was steaming milk in a shiny pitcher when she entered. "You can't do that." Her voice was hushed but forceful. He continued his task at hand but a smirk twisted at his lips. He spun the handle to stop the steam, grabbed a towel to wipe the milk from the wand.

"Do what?" His attempt at innocence was marred by the smirk that he couldn't wipe off his face. And by the fact that she intimately knows how innocent he is not.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Seriously? That's your play?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." He poured the espresso in their mugs, layered in the milk. Kept smirking.

"We're gonna traumatize Javi if you can't keep your damn hands off me."

He handed her her mug. "First of all, it was your wandering foot that started this and second," he paused to sip at his drink, "no."

"No?"

"No." He set his mug down and then invaded her space, placed his hands on the counter on either side of her, boxing her in. He leaned forward, his lips dangerously close to hers. "I will make no such promise to keep my damn hands off you."

Kate's own hands tightened around the mug; she was grateful it was there as a buffer. Without it, she would have broken all of her rules about precinct protocol. Her tongue flicked out to wet her lips and she swallowed to attempt the same for her suddenly dry throat. She ought to have some kind of retort right now, right? Isn't that usually how this goes? She wasn't interested in using her lips to form words though.

She had just opened her mouth to say something, anything when an exasperated voice cut in. "Are you guys kidding me?" They turned their heads in unison to find Ryan standing at the break room door. Castle stood and retrieved his coffee, took a step back.

"Hey, what'd you find?" Beckett asked the younger detective, hoping her voice sounded light.

"Really? We're just gonna ignore that?"

She glanced at Castle, he nodded at her then at Ryan before adding, "Yeah, that sounds like a good plan."

He shook his head at the pair of them. "Nope, not this time. Come on." He stepped aside from the doorway and swept his arm out, clearly intending for them to precede him from the room.

"You're serious." Beckett didn't ask. She could see it all over his face that he meant business. Whatever this business was.

"Yep. Javi and I have been talking about it and it's time that we talk to you, too. Let's go."

Beckett had half a mind to refuse but curiosity won out and she walked out of the break room, Castle trailing behind her. It was like being ushered to the principal's office. They all trooped into the conference room and Ryan shut the doors behind them.

"Guess who I found canoodling in the break room?" Ryan asked his partner.

"You should have seen them earlier," Esposito tossed back. "Footsie and everything."

"I would care to point out that canoodle means actually engaging in kissing and that's not what…" Castle trailed off as the two men fixed him with withering looks.

"That's what this is about?! The flirting?" Beckett flopped down in a chair after her outburst and somehow managed to only slosh a little of the coffee out of her mug.

"Oh ho ho, my friend, what you call flirting, we see as disturbing." Ryan's face animated with his words, something Beckett would have found funny except for the fact that he was talking about them.

"Bro, take it down a notch," Esposito warned. Ryan sobered a bit.

"Just, have a seat," he said to Castle as he pulled out a chair for himself. Castle took the seat he'd been in earlier but scooted his chair a little further away. Out of footsie distance, one might call it.

"Okay, first of all, I need to mention that we're all happy for you. We've all had front row seats to this and it's nice that you figured it out and you have each other." Beckett blushed (Ryan was pretty sure that was the first time that he'd ever seen his boss do that) and ducked her head, biting her bottom lip in a futile attempt to hide a smile. Castle was suppressing a grin, his closed lips stretched across his face but there was nothing to be done about the sparkling in his eyes. They sneaked a look at each other and the smiles broke free. Castle held a hand out to her, palm up, and she laid hers over his easily, fingers tangling.

"Aaaaaand there's where we have our problem," Ryan continued. They looked up to find him pointing a finger at their joined hands. Beckett immediately withdrew her hand from her partner's and pointedly placed both of hers in her own lap.

"Is it really that big of a problem?" she asked.

"That it happens isn't a problem at all but, time and a place, ya know? And here at work? Neither the time nor the place." Ryan let that sink in for a second. "Think we can curb that a little bit? Because seriously, it's like watching your parents hit on each other." The guys both mimed a gag and Castle and Beckett couldn't help but chuckle at them.

"It won't be easy or fun," Castle was cut off as Beckett lightly backhanded him on the bicep then continued with a grin, "but sure, we can work on that."

"Okay, good." Ryan took a deep breath before moving on to the other topic at hand. "So, we acknowledge that you might not have noticed all the touching, right?" He waited for both of them to nod before continuing. "There's something else you haven't noticed either."

Simultaneously, Castle and Beckett furrowed their brows and tilted their heads to the right a bit. (Seriously, how did they do that?) "What else is there?" Castle asked.

"Well, there's, uh…" Ryan realized that he had lost the head of steam that he'd built up at the beginning of this conversation and found the rest of it hard to-

"Us." Esposito stepped in to save his partner. Ryan shot him a nod of thanks. "Your friends. Remember?"

"Yeah, I know who you are." The annoyance was evident in Beckett's voice.

"You sure?" Esposito shot back. "Because you don't seem to want to hang out with us anymore." He turned to Castle, "When was the last time you had us over to play Halo?"

The writer looked off in the distance, clearly trying to come up with the answer.

Esposito continued on, "Or when was the last time that we all went out to the Old Haunt for a drink? That's not what happens anymore. It's the end of the day or the end of a case and you guys call out a 'see you tomorrow' across the bullpen and just leave. We kinda feel…left out."

The atmosphere in the room became decidedly awkward at the confession. And as much as Beckett wanted to, she couldn't come up with an argument to refute the claim. The boys were right; she and Castle had kind of just wrapped themselves up in their own little bubble. They'd mostly come out of it for work, it didn't get in the way of solving cases(though that had always been so much a part of the connection anyway, it wasn't a surprise that it was easy to incorporate) but their personal lives outside of each other? Had been decidedly lacking.

Beckett looked over at her partner and found him inspecting his shoes rather furiously. He had apparently come to the same conclusion. She reached out to touch him on the arm (just to get his attention) and he lifted remorseful eyes at her. "They're right," she said softly.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Guys, I'm sorry." Ryan and Esposito just shrugged him off but he pushed on. "No, I'm serious. I'm sure that most people around here think that she's the only reason that I've hung around here for so long, but you're right, you're my friends, too. And I'm sorry."

"Me, too," Beckett interjected. "I never meant to shut anyone out, we just got caught up and…I'm just sorry."

"Hey, don't worry about it," Ryan consoled them. "Like I said, we're happy for you. We'd just like to still be included in your lives every now and then."

"We can do that," Castle assured him, glanced at Beckett for confirmation but she was already nodding her assent.

"This weekend?" she asked. "Friday or Saturday night, depending on how the case goes, we all go out for drinks."

"You're on," Esposito answered, Ryan nodding agreement as well. "But, uh, there's one other person that you need to talk to," he hedged, looking straight at Beckett.

She caught on. "Lanie," she murmured, mostly to herself.

"Yep," he confirmed. "And she's probably not gonna be as nice as us."

"Thanks for that warning." Kate breathed deep and exhaled, lightening a bit. "So, After School Special over, can we get back to this case?"

"Sure, but you're not gonna like what I found," Ryan began before filling her in on the canvas he'd returned from.