A little note before we start: I confess, this started as a post-ep for an episode that I didn't love ... a few things sort of didn't sit right with me, most importantly the 'what's your number' conversation. So I somewhat wrote this to make the comment on women and sex that I wished the episode had made. And no lie, there are feelings and such, but it's at least 40% literary pornography. So ordinarily I wouldn't post it here, because there's this policy about not posting explicit things, so I like to dilute the sex scenes with err, plot and stuff. BUT for whatever reason my mind made up a sequel post Dial M For Murder which picks up directly after this, so here, have chapter one. Enjoy or excuse the smut as you please. Next chapter to follow soon. (I hope tonight, but it might be tomorrow. le sigh my post-eps always seem to be a week late these days.)

chapter one: x plus one.

As it turns out, Ryan and Jenny's wedding is full of pleasant surprises.

For one, Beckett knows all the words to One Week by the Barenaked Ladies and several Will Smith songs.

For another... well.

.

.

After the bride and groom take their leave and Lanie and Esposito get far too close on the dance floor (so for Castle and Beckett, it's less dancing, more spectator sport), they retreat to the bar and then the edges of the room.

He's standing at her back, and they haven't been speaking, but it's not uncomfortable silence. Still, he breaks it. (Because he's Castle.)

"Back to an earlier conversation," he says, far closer to her ear than she expects or he should be, and that's a testament to the hour and the open bar. "If you wanted to tell me, anything, I'd want to know."

She sucks in a breath, can tell it's something he's been thinking on for a while, turns to look at him over her shoulder. "What?"

"Before, when you asked me if I'd want to know about all the people you'd slept with..."

"Seriously? You want my number?"

He shrugs. "Well. I meant more generally, but the principle applies. I want to know. You."

You don't know me. She bites her lip at the memory of those words, long ago now, and a lie when she said them, even less true now. "You do," she says.

"Not everything."

"I'm not telling you the number."

"This wasn't really about that. But now you've made me even morecurious."

"Too bad."

"Come on Beckett. You must have a reason not to tell. At least tell me that."

She rolls her eyes. "I don't know Castle."

"You know it wouldn't matter what it was." He runs his thumb along the inside of her wrist, comfort and shock at the same time, because she didn't know his hands were so close to touching her. And then the other is resting on her hip. She lets her eyes close for a brief second, savours the way her heart accelerates and she can sense the weight of him behind her.

"No." She smiles, twists to look at him over her shoulder. "I don't know. Really Castle, who counts? I think that's missing the point of sex entirely."

He blinks. She's really too close to be throwing around words like 'sex', and what he should do is press her for her opinion on what the pointof sex is, but instead he gapes a moment longer than is dignified, watches her glee at it, and manages to play Devil's advocate.

"Well, I mean, I take your point, but one could still ... estimate."

"That doesn't seem fair." Beckett is far too amused at his expense, and he can tell she's holding onto a retort that's going to have him guessing and guessing because when it comes to curiosity he's a cat with nine lives.

"Why not?"

"Well, what about all the times I've forgotten?"

"See, there you go again with the all. And what do you mean, forgotten?"

"Don't look at me like that. Castle, how long have you been having sex? Twenty, twenty five years? You're honestly telling me that you remember every single person you've ever slept with? Surely, some occasions have been less than memorable. And what counts as sex anyway? Because there's more than one way to do it, and which ones count and which ones don't? Mouths? Hands? And don't say count by orgasms, because those numbers don't necessarily correlate."

She watches his face change, increasingly in over his depth until she says orgasmsand then it's his mouth that's the big O. Beckett presses her lips together in her mirth and gives him a serves you right look.

All of her is sparking off him though; this kind of repartee has always been the easiest way for someone to insinuate themselves into her bed. Or a handy hard surface.

Her hands find his, tug him backwards until she's leaning against the wall, face in shadows, extending a heel out to find his shin. She smirks at him, eyes thick with lashes, hair in her face, framing the amused curl of her lips.

In the face of that look, which would be unmistakable if it was anyone but Beckett, anyone but this gloriously frustrating woman who he can never truly read because all his feelings get in the way, he recovers quickly enough. "So you're saying you don't have a number?"

"Everybody has one." Her eyes latch onto his and watch as he's distracted by her tongue wetting her lips. "I'm just saying." Her hand has somehow started wondering along his shirt to play with the end of his tie, pulling it out in between them, silk sliding through her fingers. "That I'm not going to waste a second of my life calculating mine."

"Let x be the number," he jokes, completely unsure, because now she's tugging at his tie and leaning into the wall and smiling her champagne smile. He goes though, and when they're forehead to forehead she sighs, eyes on his mouth, lips so close he can feel the hint of them.

"Relax Castle. I can hear you over-thinking it."

"Someone probably should," he whispers back, breath ghosting between them, nose resting against hers.

She closes her eyes and hums it. "Mmm, no, don't. It doesn't always have to mean everything."

"So the value of x is more than one."

She nods. "x is a good number."

"Sure."

"I mean, a healthy number."

"I'll believe it."

(Because anyone would be crazynot to want her, to get this close and not kiss her, but for some reason he doesn't. It's not just because he loves her too much to fuck it up, it's not just because the first move has always been hers. It's somewhere between enjoying the anticipation and fear.)

"Because I like sex Castle, I really really do."

Fuck. How did he start this? He wants to go back in time and take notes so he knows how to start it again.

"Beckett are you drunk?"

For some reason, the very real possibility is only just now occurring to him. At the bar earlier there were shooters with racy names and she was matching him two-for-one.

"Not enough. And I'm not looking for an excuse."

She breathes and he feels it and he doesn't wonder once why they're not already kissing. The things they don't do, hint at, have always seemed unimportant in the face of the thrill of expectation, of her conversation. He could talk to her for hours, wind her tighter, let her do the same.

He lets his palm flatten against the wall, leans into her.

"I want this," she says, a small but confident voice. "Don't you?"

Yes yes yes.

He swallows. "Not by halves."

Her eyes widen, fix on him, and she brings her hand up to trail her thumb along his cheek. "There's a ways to go between here and there."

Castle knows exactly what she means because they're at a wedding, and it would be impossible for the thought not to occur to him. But she's right - usually is - as much as he wants the ending, there's a story yet to unfold. And rushing to the epilogue isn't what he wants. He's written for long enough to know that the first draft is never the best one.

"I know that."

"But we have to start somewhere."

"And this is the place to start?"

"Well. We're picking up in the middle, in a way. Where else would we start?"

"Coffee? Dinner and a movie?"

She laughs, nods her head to run her nose over his, hooks her free hand around the waistband of his pants and pulls him closer. "I can't imagine sitting across a table from you and making small talk."

Her thumb flicks out and presses his shirt against his skin and it's the smallest of gestures, it has no right to distract him from his argument entirely, but it does. And she's running a stockinged foot along the back of his calf, slowly, and he realises his fingers span the curve of her waist. He maps it absently as she turns her head, edges her mouth towards his ear.

"It's the only thing I want to change," she says, suddenly feeling small at the unexpected truth that escapes her. She's been working on honesty, on letting herself want things, on appreciating the good in her life, and it's not entirely spontaneous; if she's honest, she's been thinking it over for weeks now, been thinking that this step is long overdue, that she's been letting something simple be complicated. But where she meant to fall back on innuendo, on something familiar, she's instead said something so unintentionally revealing that now she feels naked in the other sense, the way she doesn't want to.

He pulls back to see all of her, to watch the way she bites into her lip to spite it for running away from her. "Kate."

She nods, mute, sees it there in the light reflecting off his eyes, hope.

His hand runs along her side, pleasant tremors in its wake. "So, hypothetically, we sleep together... and then what?"

The shrug is small. Beckett presses her hips into his, bones on bones with belt in between them. "What else would change Castle?"

Because it's true. What else would they add? They already have trust, commitment, friendship, love.

"Why now?"

"Honestly?" she asks.

"The answer is always yes. I meant it. You want to tell me, I want to know."

"I'm wearing matching underwear."

He looks at her, like he's not sure if it's a joke, like he's not sure if there should be a better reason.

"It's gotta happen sometime," she whispers. That should be revelation enough to leave him reeling, but she continues before he really has a chance to process the magnitude of the shock. "And this seemed as good a time as any. This dress is difficult to get in and out of alone."

She frowns at him suddenly. "Why are you so unsure about me?"

That's not the problem. He can't believe that she doesn't understand. The problem is that he's too sure.

"That's not it at all." Everything he means is right there under his words.

She's sliding her fingers along his tie again, knuckles gracing his shirt, and all of this must be pretence because they still haven't moved apart, he's still pinning her exactly where she wants to be pinned. His hand has never left her body and it's getting braver, brushing towards the side of her breast. The free hand at her side catches it and tugs it up, over her dress, until he's palming her chest and staring at his hand and her hand and thinking that all the words don't matter, that even if he fucks it up beyond belief they'll always be this moment that she let him feel her up at Ryan and Jenny's wedding. (He still can't decide whether it's their Paris or their Waterloo.)

She gasps when he presses two layers of fabric between the pad of this thumb and her nipple.

"Castle." She groans it out, fists her hand around his tie and pulls him to her mouth and works her tongue against his until breathless doesn't even begin to cover it.

All of her is hot. She curls her heel against the wall, brings her knee up to brace his thigh, breathes, her chest rising and falling into his hand.

"If we don't," she says, "If it's not spontaneous, we'll just build it up and up and then the pressure will take the fun out of it."

He thinks back to her earlier, all hooded eyes and I really, really like sex.

And the memory of her mouth on his mouth is too recent for him to really believe anything could take the fun out of her.

"The circumstances might have already conspired against you there." He nods his head towards his shoulder and beyond it, to where the happy couple's guests are still dancing.

"After your experience with both, I'd have thought you knew the difference between a proposition and a proposal Castle."

"Oh, I'm not talking about me."

"I've also experienced both," she tells him. "And I'm well aware of the difference."

He waits for another layer to fall from the Beckett onion.

And it does.

"Will asked, when he got the promotion. Not with a ring or anything. But I'd have been crazy to say yes for more important reasons." She nudges his shin with her foot again. "More importantly, don't play Freud on me. Maybe I'm just a lonely thirty something at a wedding. The great Rick Castle's type, by the tabloids' estimation."

"Beckett. You know they'll print anything."

She quirks her brow. "Since we were talking numbers, you'll have a hard time convincing me you're in the single digits."

"Well, no. But." He pauses, exasperated by the need to explain it all away, to be someone worthy of her instead of ... him, the old him. It's someone he barely remembers being now. "The tales might be greatly exaggerated."

"I know. I always have. Well," she corrects, "Not always. But it didn't take long."

She smiles, and there's a victory in it and he presses, like they both know he will.

"What was my tell?"

"Really? Even on our second case together you were telling me about all the time you spent with your daughter in the park. It was Alexis. I don't doubt that you never wanted for female company, but." She shrugs. "I also don't doubt that Alexis always came first."

"Mostly." He steps back, finds her hands and holds them. "You really knew that, even back then?"

"I know it hasn't escaped your notice that I'm a detective." She smiles, really smiles, nostalgic and affectionate and for him. "Yeah, I knew."

"Did it make you want me?" He waggles his eyebrows at her and she rolls her eyes in return.

But then she fixes them on him, relishes the way the air moves out of her, how she turns the word off her tongue, low and seductive. "Maybe." She grips his hands, stands up off the wall and leans closer. "Show me what would've happened, that first case, if I'd said yes."

"And tomorrow?"

She wants to smirk, wants to say wait and see but she recognises the need for reassurance. After the year they've had, after how she's kept her distance, she feels she owes him that. "If tonight we start my way then tomorrow we can try yours. I seem to remember something about owing you a hundred coffees."

.

.

They're quiet when they leave the noise of the reception behind them. It's going on midnight, nearly Monday morning. She should be thinking about organising herself for the week ahead, about Craig Ferguson or a book, about sleep. Instead she allows herself a tiny thrill of ... anticipation as she zips her coat, shoves her hands in the pockets, lets him wind the scarf she brought with her around her neck.

She twists her arms to pull her hair free of it and meets his hands.

The other kisses (the two other kisses, not that he's counting now that he knows she's definitely not) have been heated, but this is quiet, a moment stolen, of warm before the cold of the street and of ...tomorrow. He can't help but think it. For a muse, she sometimes makes him a bit of a hack.

Beckett blinks at him and he realises he's staring, that she's pulled back and is standing straight, not leaning forward, on her heels, that her hands are in her pockets.

She still tastes of amaretto.

"Okay?" she asks, tilting her head slightly, curls sliding over her shoulder.

He nods, lets his shoulder bump against hers as they brave the chill in the street.

The air is brisk but not truly cold; it's been an unusually mild winter. She knows it's coincidence, knows that it's ridiculous to think that it's some cosmic metaphor but the truth is that this year she didn't feel like winter, because for the first time in a long time she feels like she's emerging from a long hibernation.

The person she once was is waking up, letting her do this, be measured in her recklessness but take the risk just the same.

What Royce wrote, in May, about risking our hearts being why we're alive, it might be true. But it might be just as true that sometimes it's not a risk. She's always been careful where she places her faith, doesn't believe in magic, the God of churches, fate. But she does believe in him. When she said it that day in February she didn't know how deep a truth it was.

It's been a fight to trust in that belief, but she's been holding her breath with the fact that she does for too long. She lets it out as they sit at opposite sides of the backseat of a cab, her fingers curled around leather that has seen many sins, her face upturned to the city, its lights and its endless energy.

He's watching her, she can tell, puzzling over her. One day she might give him the missing piece but not tonight.

She curls her fingers, and brings them to her mouth, elbow resting against the arm rest, and smiles at him. "I'm sure too."

He nods, barely but he smiles too and she wonders when that became something that reminds her so fiercely that she's alive.

It's six blocks to her apartment and she can feel the silence settling over them like a spell, turning them to stone. She needs to break it, needs the levity of before, of want, but she's not sure how, whether they can. Maybe he was right about baggage, that it'll have weight, if not because of the night then because of all the nights that have come before, the year, their growing history.

Now they are well and truly in limbo, more so than before. There has to be a step, forward or back. (She promised herself she would choose forward.)

She scoots across, curls her hand around his knee. The response on his face is reassurance enough. He tucks her beneath an arm and she rests her head on his shoulder and she thinks this version of limbo isnice, an inch, a baby step, a natural evolution from what they were before. And if this is all she's managed, more of her cards on the table and this new kind of intimacy, then that's okay. The others will follow.

She's sure of it.

.

.

In the elevator, her keys dangle from her hand like percussion when she kisses him. All the times she has wanted to but stopped herself are there in that confined space with her and it's all pressure, all a lack of need for words and a need for air. His hands find her hair like they've always belonged there and she wishes they were everywhere they're not.

.

.

Beckett finally manages to open her door. Sometimes it has a habit of sticking and tonight her fingers are impatient. He's running his hand along the seam of her dress and breathing on her neck but she hears him thinking. When they're on the other side of the door and she's locked it behind them, she leans against it.

He looks like he's on the verge of pacing and suddenly they've adopted the same positions they did that night in May, when they fought over her mother's murder, the way she had back then of losing herself in the past. The echo of that stand off hits her and suddenly she understands how, after everything that has been said, done, he can still be apprehensive.

"Castle."

He swallows but he turns towards her, waits for the order he knows is coming.

She's a ghost of the Kate Beckett he expects, gentle. "Come here."

Like he always has, even against his better judgement, he goes when she asks him to.

Her thumbs are suddenly smooth over his cheeks, and she's kissing him again but it's not demanding, heated yes, but ... languid. She's telling him there is time and he realises, for the first time, that he hasn't truly believed that this is a luxury they can afford since she was dying in the cemetery.

"The writer's mind is always turning." Her smile is familiar, all warmth and teasing. "Tell me how I switch gears."

"Mixing up your metaphors," he observes. "Beckett, I'm disappointed."

"Mmm, no you're not," she asserts, confident but thoughtful. "You're too distracted to be disappointed. It's throwing me off my game a little."

"You've never needed game."

"True. That's the difference between men and women. Men approach sex like they're going to war, it's all strategies and cons-"

"- and women don't have to."

"Men don't either." She lets her hands come down to his shoulders, thumbs along to his collar. "In truth all they really have to do is ask. But you know that."

"Well. You're a detective. It must not have escaped your notice that I enjoy a good conversation."

She hums, hooks her leg around his and feels the protest of her skirt. "You're still trying to figure out why."

"You're not just a lonely single thirty something at a wedding," he says. "For one, you're hardly thirty-something. For another, you'd never think of yourself that way. It's too... Garry Marshall."

"True." She leans all of her weight against the wall. "There are lots of reasons. Mostly." She's letting her fingers creep over his buttons, toying with the idea of undoing them. One falls open without her trying. "I didn't want to go home alone. But I would've, if it wasn't with you."

(She's not drunk enough for this much honesty, but now she's drunk on honesty itself, everything flooding out once the dam walls have broken. It's exhilarating in its own way.)

He's been floored over and over, and this is no exception. Beckett waits, patient. The first thought that occurs to him is that he doesn't know how far to push. The second is that it's safe to let her lead. Usually he pushes because it's the only way she gives. But that's less and less true. He has been noticing it of late. He reaches out, pushes some of the hair that has escaped the confines of her ear back into place.

"So it's about sex." Statement, not question, even though heisasking.

She answers with a question even though she's stating. "Hasn't it always been?"

That's true. "In part."

There's air between their lips and it's conducting.

"So." She's staring him down. "What else is there?"

"After the signing, when we talked. You said that you wouldn't be able to have the relationship you wanted until we solved your mother's case."

"The truth is we might never solve it," she says.

"Who are you and what have you done with Beckett?"

She shakes her head. "I'm right here. It's me. I'm just... tired of arbitrary deadlines."

"So?"

Her hands have fisted around his jacket and they're pulling him towards her. "So be x plus one."

Their hips bump when she kisses him, sighing against his mouth when his hands find her back, slide lower, hold her against him.

He mumbles it, lips still moving over hers. "Okay." She steals it from him, teeth catching his lower lip, tongue smoothing over where they have been. He says it again. "Okay."

.

.

There's a mirror above the table in her hall. She's standing in front of it, her hair pulled to one side, arms rearranged and searching for her zipper. They're staring at each other in the glass.

"Help me out of it." All demands. He finds few complaints.

The zip gives way with a purr and he watches the dress unfurl, reveal the angles of her shoulder blades, the curve of her back, the hard lines of her spine. Castle runs his palm over her skin, up, from the end of the zipper where the hint of black, sensible but sheer has him itching to see more of it, up, slowly. She watches him in the mirror, how he's looking at her when he touches her and it's an old want growing more demanding between her legs.

He pauses at the clasp of her bra but hesitates and moves up, further still, until his hands rest on her shoulders. His eyes are on hers again. She reaches up and pushes his hands away, slides the sleeves down her arms and lets the dress fall to the floor.

Then she's standing there, mostly undressed in her underwear and her heels. She kicks of the shoes, drops precious inches in height so his mouth is perfectly poised to tongue her naked shoulder.

His fingers seek the scar though and she knows he's bracing himself to look. Beckett reaches up and grips his fingers when he finds it, runs the pad of a finger over her uneven, healed flesh. She traps his hand there, against her chest.

"Most of the time, I don't notice it."

He maps its edges, staring at it in the mirror. "I thought it would be bigger," he confesses.

"So did I." She drops her hands to her sides, lets his go unguided. "I still can't really believe that they managed to repair so much damage and this is the only evidence of it."

"Not the only evidence." He's thinking, of course, of nightmares, hyper vigilance, all the ways the shooting still leaves its mark on their lives.

He hates the phrase their eyes lock but it fits this moment.

She considers her response. "Like everything else, it's fading," is what she finally decides on. "Even by September, it'd changed a lot."

"You're not wearing the ring," he observes as his fingers skim beneath the underwire of her bra.

"Or the watch." She nods. "It's zipped into a pocket of my clutch. Didn't match the outfit."

He bumps her up against the table and everything on it pitches forward then back. She reaches out to steady a vase and then she twists around to face him, slides up onto the refurbished wooden surface. It's raw wood where years of old paint have been sanded off; she's been meaning to get around to lacquering it for months. Her fingers find a groove in the grain and she lets her feet swing out to catch his, slip against the leg of his pants.

"What are you thinking?" she asks, when he steps closer and she can run her hands over his chest, tug free the knot of his tie.

He watches her hands as they work, practiced, thinks back to their earlier conversation about healthy numbers and wonders if she used to be awkward. He can't truly imagine it, and he suddenly wishes that he could have known her forever, have seen all the parts of her life that he's missed.

Castle doesn't tell her any of that, just runs his hands from his shoulders down to her arms, stilling them as her fingers dispense with the last of his buttons, her palm pressing flat against his stomach. It's cold; he steels himself to it.

"Nothing," he says, then jokes. "You're mostly naked Beckett. I'm not sure I'm capable of thought."

She pulls their lips together by the open edges of his shirt, smiling into it, amused, and kisses him while both pairs of hands wander. She's tasked hers with his belt, back catching at the wall, legs crossed around his body, keeping him where she wants him. One of his finds the curve of her neck, traces the lines he finds, touch feathering out from his thumb, pressed to the tip of her chin. The other is warm at her side, heavy against her hip.

"Liar," she breathes, eyes opening enough for her to glance up at him from beneath her lashes. Her mouth gets an appraising curl to it. "You're thinking."

"I-"

She gives him a wicked smile when she palms at the front of his trousers, well and truly done undoing his belt, toying with the idea of starting on his fly. And then he really does lose his train of thought, momentarily, feels his hips reflexively start towards hers and her hand and the wood.

He lets his fingers rest against her thigh, pinning her leg and her hip against the hard surface. Her lips curve as her eyes assess the situation between their bodies and then she sighs, lets her eyes flick closed, all eyelashes. "You were saying?"

And she's not playing fair so he won't either. "I was thinking about all the times you've done this before."

Her fingers skirt along silk inside his pants and then she's pressing her palm flat against him, enjoying the pull of air her touch inspires, him hard, pressing back into her hand.

"Yeah?" she says, all air. She looks up, meets his eyes, feels the heat of them wreak havoc through her. "Why?"

Oh. He sees it, how she absolutely is getting off on the idea of him thinking about that, and he leans forward to talk to her ear. "Because, that means you know what you like."

She kisses his cheek, an afterthought and pushes him backwards. "Take off your shoes."

He does, toe to heel, nudges them aside, but he doesn't back off, runs his hands up over her chest and around to unclasp her bra and keeps moving his mouth against her ear. "You like to tell people what you want." He states it, like fact, but maybe that's because she's nodding along as he talks, canting her hips so he can pull off her underwear.

"Not people Castle," she says, as she throws her bra in the general direction of her dress and he slides her underwear free, the requisite distance between them. He removes the rest of his clothes too and they both breathe at each other, naked and curious and it's a little strange, but not awkward. When he's standing between her knees again, she draws him closer, presses her heel into the back of his thigh and runs her hands up his chest. "You."

When she finishes the sentence, he's almost forgotten the start of it because she's fisting her hand around his erection, drawing him into her, and her teeth in her lip as she does, silencing gasps.

One of her thumbs is brushing the skin behind his ear, mouth inches from his and she says, wicked. "Do you want me to tell you what I like?"

He nods but then their mouths are pressed together, all tongues, and so she has to gasp it between kisses, all do this and do that and yes put your thumb there. (His fingers are curled around her hip and his thumb is still between her legs and she works her hips against it, meeting his, an equal partnership, like always.)

It might be seconds or it might be minutes - time seems irrelevant - but she's impatient for more of it, tells him that in his ear, hot, tongue licking out to taste his jaw. And then she's all erratic in her movements and there's not words so much as sounds. He sinks into her and waits, thumb pressing harder and it shouldn't work (it's not what she likes per se), but it does. She lets her head fall against the wall and her mouth open, all out of vocalising, and she breathes, mute.

When she can speak again she says, "Do that for me. I want to feel it."

And then she rocks her hips against his and says several things that he wishes weren't too dirty to put in his next novel, because as much as he wants it just for him, he wants to celebrate her and share her with the world and this version of her, this is ... overwhelming.

He collapses against her, kisses her shoulder and feels her arms come up to hold him there, hands stroking his neck, laughter soft in his ear. It makes her breasts move against his chest and he strokes his fingers along her hip and can't find a thing to say except, "Beckett."

"Normally I'd prefer Kate," she tells him, "But on you, I like Beckett."

"Mmm. Kate."

"Actually, on you, I like most things."

"Good to know."

"Don't make me regret I said it Castle."

(She doesn't actually regret anything.)

.

.

The dining table is close enough not to be a journey from the door. He's sitting in a chair and she's sitting on the table top and the obvious joke isn't lost on her, when he braces his hands on her thighs and bows his head between her legs, but the flat of his tongue distracts her from it.

He lets it rest there, breath tickling against her thigh, no movement, until she can hardly stand it. And then he sucks, light at first, but harder, until she jerks forward and pushes back on his shoulder.

When he pulls back to look at her, she's already smoothing her fingers through his hair. "Too much," she says, guides him back, lets her eyes slip closed as he teases her with the tip of his tongue. The half-embarrassed half-because it's so surreal laugh becomes a groan becomes a hum as it vibrates out of her. And she shakes forward but his hands push her back and that sends a thrill through her.

Castle moves his fingers against her thigh and she can sense his intention but she braces her weight on one hand and presses his flat against her. It's too soon after sex for thatto be comfortable, and it's not necessary at all because he's tonguing her with ever-increasing pressure and then, it's light again. Tease. But somehow she always knew that's how it would be.

(And in truth, she doesn't mind at all.)

He has the spot but he loses it and she groans out her frustration. "No, just a little bit, up, yes, there."

Her appreciation is audible.

Beckett's knuckles are curled around the edge of the table, white from the exertion, but she releases one, brings her hand to her chest to palm at her breast and when she looks down, he's watching her. It's disbelief at the reality of the moment and want that she sees there, a little bit animal, the adoration that she usually sees replaced with a look that is all sex, all on him because of her and that, thatis too much.

She swears a little, and he grins and she feelsit.

Everything tenses then relaxes, relief and pleasure and yes, yes, yes in waves.

She falls back on her wrists and then her elbows, table hard beneath her back and he props his chin up on her thigh, face a mess with her.

They eye each other.

"We're running out of hard surfaces," he says.

Which is a lie, she's counting in her head and she thinks there's the kitchen counter and the floor and any one of the four walls of her living room, but she laughs anyway at the joke.

"My shower wall is tiled," she replies, reaching up to push her damp hair from her forehead.

He holds out his hand and she grabs it, but doesn't trust her legs. When she sits up, her head spins a little, the last of alcohol and the lethargic flow of her blood as her heart catches its breath after racing.

Castle scoots the chair forward and she feels the sudden need to hug him, air catching the sheen covering her skin and raising goosebumps, palm stroking his hair, holding his turned head flat against her stomach.

His mouth is warm against her skin when he kisses it, and her body remembers it between her legs.

She's glad he doesn't spoil the moment with words though. The strength, the intensity of the connection is beyond them anyway and she thinks this is why numbers don't matter because really, whatever has come before, this is what matters now.

.

.

Her hair is wet against the pillow and smells like her shampoo, familiar and comforting but somehow different up close and fresh, stronger, more fruit. They both smell like her soap. She watches from beneath her eyelashes as he takes her hand, raises it to his lips, both of them all wonder at the moment.

"I want to say something," he says. "I feel like I should."

"What is there to say?" she asks, heart panicking a little at the thought because she's never been good at this part, at words to match intimacy.

"One day, a great deal I imagine," he says, dropping her fingers, running his along her shoulder.

"But not now," she surmises, from the hint in his tone.

Castle yawns. "No. Not now. It's enough, for now."

"Thank you," she whispers, quiet, closing her eyes, leaning forward so her nose touches his then retreating further, to the wet patch in her pillow.

"For what?"

Waiting. It's what she should say, it's what she wants to say. But she jokes instead, twists her limbs to flip the pillow over and smoothing it under her palms. She grins. "A more interesting lesson in basic algebra than I've ever had before."

"Does that imply what I think it means?"

She hums. "I don't know Castle. Make of it what you will."

His hand finds a place to rest over her hip. "You know, I enjoy this kind of math."

"Castle?"

"Yes?"

"Sleep."

He does, eventually.

.

.

When she wakes, there's light streaming through the curtains she forgot to draw properly and he's breathing against her neck, arm curled around her stomach, fingers resting against her skin beneath the oversized shirt she slept in.

There's no moment of disorientation. She knows exactly where they are and why he's here and she curls her toes against her sheet as she stretches out her legs, satisfied with the memory.

The hand against her stomach flexes and retreats to her hip and then he's awake, kissing her shoulder. "Much better when we haven't been drugged," he tells her.

She nods. "And without the cuffs."

"I don't know about that." He fits himself neatly around her back, lets his hand dip from the curve of her hip down along her thigh. "I've decided that I like being your plus one Beckett."

"Mmm." She burrows into the pillow, pushes off the covers, suddenly too warm with him crowding her. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you were just in it for the perks."

"But you do." Castle closes his eyes, pauses. "Know better."

He can tell she's smiling when she reaches down and links her fingers through his at her hip. "I do."

Beckett's not one for laying about though. She squeezes his hand then drops it, sits up. He watches as she untangles what she can of her hair with her fingers and smooths it down. When her toes are curling into the carpet, she stares at her feet and takes a deep breath and settles on the familiar instead of all the other words she knows she'll have to say, one day, soon.

"Coffee?"

"Sure."

At the doorframe, she looks at him over her shoulder. "One down, ninety nine to go."

He smirks. "But who's counting?"