Notes: Remember Dial M For Murder? I wouldn't blame you if you don't, it was what? Three weeks ago now? So this might possibly be the latest post-ep ever. However unfortunately I have this annoying real life and there was this fic-a-thon that made me annoying productive at things other than things I am already writing and this actually took me longer than I thought it would, since I basically knew exactly how it was going to go as soon as I saw the episode. It's a series of deleted scenes, but I've quote the dialogue that happens between each one so you should be able to piece it around the episode fairly easily (by the description of Beckett's outfits as she takes them off if nothing else...)

I don't entirely like it, because I think it's only cohesive as a narrative(/not awkwardly paced) if you fit it really closely into the show, but I wasn't sure how else to write it to smooth over the edges. Also I've felt a bit writer's block-y lately and I always hate it when things feel forced and do you know how hard it is to write phone sex when you have houseguests? You probably don't. Anyway. I hope you enjoy it even if I don't, so much.

PS No comments about the longest elevator ride in history. I know. Shh. I was raised in Grey's Anatomy fandom.

chapter three: one of two (or probability 101 – beating the odds)

After the first day working Laura Cambridge's murder he shadows her out the door at seven thirty. They share glances as they wait for the elevator and her eyes smile at him when her lips don't. Their tell is that they're too quiet, probably, but there's no one there to see it.

(It's been a week, and mercifully Ryan and Esposito are still somehow blissfully ignorant. Then again, they don't really act differently. And he hasn't been at the precinct much because their last case was open-shut. Still, she expected it to be as obvious to her male colleagues as it was to Lanie, who has a sixth sense for these things. The ME had barely pulled back the sheet before crowing about damn time at her in the morgue.)

When the doors open, the elevator is empty, save for them, and when they close again he crowds her. She twists around against the wall, bumps a button for another floor accidentally, but Beckett doesn't notice and Castle doesn't mind because it's a moment alone, and it's not that it's better but it is still exciting when those are stolen.

The pads of her fingers have found the nape of his neck and trace skin, smooth down hair. She leans forward, stops inches from his lips. And then she's letting a small groan of pleasure escape into his mouth and it rumbles against his tongue.

He always closes his eyes when they kiss; he wonders if she's watching him.

"What was that for?" he says, leaning back against the wall, fingers moving over her badge at her hip and thumb pressing up under her shirt to find skin. "Not that there needs to be a reason."

She shrugs, steps back out of his reach as the doors open on the third floor and close again. "I just wanted to," is her answer and she gives him a small, conspiratorial smile.

"Does this mean you'll be coming over later?"

"Not tonight." Her hand trails through her hair and he's jealous of it. She gives him a look. "Don't look so sad Castle. Gotta give you a chance to miss me."

"Oh, I'll miss you."

The way he says it has her missing certain parts of him already.

"Not like that."

"I'd miss you in the other ways too Beckett." He reaches out, curls his arm around her farthest shoulder and draws her into his side, leaning into her where their sleeves are perfectly aligned.

"It's ten hours, tops." Her voice is sarcastic but she rests her head against his shoulder and closes her eyes, briefly. By her estimation they have about ten seconds before the doors open into the lobby and the spell is well and truly broken.

It's not that it's a secret, exactly, but she's never taken kindly to idle gossip and besides, there's too little to tell, professionalism aside – which it never really is, with her. He doesn't mind so much, even though he makes a show of it, all Beckett, you're ashamed of me, I knew it, cue eye between them are shifting, slowly giving way, but he doesn't want them to change completely.

They start from the cases, the intellectual challenge of solving murders, a working partnership. It's a familiar and personal brand of intimacy, something that is all them and losing that is ... unthinkable. So it's almost entirely business as usual at the precinct, at what they both consider work now.

And secretly, they both like it that way.

"What can I say?" Castle nudges her side. "I'm needy."

She laughs and nudges him back and as they step out of the elevator she gives him a look that's all lashes and want. "Oh, I can help you with those needs."

"I know you can."

In the street she smiles and tosses it to him over her shoulder. "Call me, before you go to sleep."

He smirks after her, eyes tracking the movement of her hips.

Mr. Castle. Do you remember me?

I called you before. About Detective Beckett's safety.

I remember.

Once again, Mr. Castle, it seems like we need to talk.

After the conversation with the mystery friend of Montgomery's, he's feeling far too serious for the look she gave him outside the precinct and he fights the desire that borders on need, the urge to travel across town to her door, to ask her for more than she's willing to give.

He sits with the lights off in his office but the room is illuminated by the murder board that's covered in facts he's long ago committed to memory. His mind is turning it over and over and over again. And it won't rest until he can see her, even if it's only in their old way, the smell of her hair during the dance in the door way, almost touches, significant looks. The thing is, this new thing they do, it's sex – and it's good, it's affectionate sex, emotional connection – but for all that it's intimate, it's not intimacy. She still doesn't let him close outside of that context, not beyond the occasional hug or the times that, out of the blue, she decides she wants to kiss him.

Most days, most nights, that's okay. He's always taken her lead and it's more than he expects and he wouldn't trade it for the alternative. But some days he just wants to find solace in her, be with her, and then it's not quite enough. It's not that he won't wait for her – he will and without resentment – it's just that sometimes it takes something of him to do it, not pieces but a slow erosion.

It's counter to instinct. The thought of losing her makes him want to cling to her. So while normally, her teasing about needs would evoke the smell of her on his fingers, the taste of her in both their mouths, that desperate feeling he gets when she's hot and wet and loud against him, tonight he just wants the feel of her shoulder, to nose into the hollow above her collarbone, to feel the hard and soft of her.

He just wants her to be alive, because sometimes it still hits him that she wasn't, very nearly, that there's no reason that she should be, not with the odds being what they were. It's easy to say, in hindsight, that the probability of survival equals one, but there are other numbers. She is one of two: in ten to survive her cardiac injury, in a thousand to survive flat-lining in an ambulance and of them, his partner, friend, outlier. Now the doctors just agree with what he thought all along, that she is extraordinary.

The glow of the screen is eerie, but it's familiar to him. And some nights it isn't lonely, it's filled with the people he creates on computer screens and pages. But some nights it's silent and it stares him down and even though he's hours from sleep he decides her voice is better than none of her.

(Anything to break up the quiet.)

She answers her phone with "I'm touching myself for you."

Immediately, it's something he wants and doesn't want, in a paradox that probably reveals too much about his psyche. The screwed up parts of him are better hidden with murkier origins than hers; that was something that happened to her. He thinks he was probably born with his, the fascination with tragedy, the need to skirt edges. He's not sure that what motivates this desire is entirely healthy.

And he's even less convinced that his response is about more than avoiding her suspicion, hiding a deception he's worried she won't forgive.

"Beckett." It's after a pause, and he sounds distracted, sad. For a moment she feels vulnerable, like maybe she's found some place to go that he won't follow, but at least he doesn't insult her by asking what she means.

She feigns impatience though. (Insecurity has never flattered her.) "Come on Castle, keep up."

"Have you ever known me not to?"

"First time for everything."

"Apparently. So, detective, what exactly are you touching?"

"I'm rubbing the two fingers that were inside me when you called against my clit."

She states it, like she's telling him what she knows on the way to a crime scene, and somehow that's better than a bedroom voice because it's all Beckett. And that evokes a very strong image of her doing exactly what she says she's doing.

Castle leans back in his chair, exhales, feels himself getting hard at her half-gasp over the line. "How does it feel Beckett?"

"Good Castle." The first half of her sentence is all her feigning irritation at him, as though he's asked an obvious question, but she groans out the rest. "So good."

"Stop." He closes his eyes to her face where it sits on his makeshift case board, linked to other crimes by little tiny lines, the web cast by a conspiracy that's caught them all. "I want you to last."

She'd scoff if he wasn't right; just the thought of what it's doing to him is enough to have her on edge. Between her thighs, flesh twitches and wants but she does stop. "Are you enjoying this Castle?"

The smirk carries through the phone.

He breathes and focuses on the present and lust that's crescendoing with his pulse, tamps down all his concerns and the need for comfort. Sex is an old place to hide, old as the sin itself. He never has with her though. It's a lesser betrayal, one he feels resting on top of all the others.

"Do you want to tell me how to get myself off?"

Despite the whelming tirade pitching inside him, her voice cuts through it, silences his inner monologue for moment enough to draw a groan. It's genuine and spontaneous and a surprise to them both.

"Yes," he says, low and thick in his throat like the words would linger if he swallowed them. "Is that what you want?"

"Castle, I want to make you hard," she answers, honest. "I want you to listen to me and picture me and want to touch yourself because of me."

"At least the first part of that mission is well and truly accomplished Beckett." He shifts.

"What should I do?" she hums. "Tell me how you'd touch me if you were here."

That causes a longing to grow in his chest. If they were together. She likes to feel wanted. And he does want her, so he doesn't tell her that if they were together, sex wouldn't be the first thing on his mind.

Sometimes they need different things. Usually they find some way to meet in the middle.

"I'd lay between your legs."

"You do like to see what you're doing," she comments, observationally.

"I like to see what it does to you. And you like being watched."

She groans. "I do."

"Tell me what it's doing to you."

"It's making me so impatient for you to touch me."

"Then use two fingers." His eyes are still closed. "Push them inside of you, curl them so you feel it. In and out Beckett. You like that. But just that. Don't touch anywhere else yet."

"Okay." She breathes out just how much she likes it.

"Don't rock against your hand. That's cheating."

"How did you know I was doing that?"

"Because you always do that if you're close."

"I want you to be close too Castle," she says in a low voice, "I want to hear you."

He draws a breath, says what he thinks which is, "Anything for you."

His shirt comes over his head awkwardly around the phone, but it's necessary.

At the quiet she says, "Oh god. You are enjoying this as much as I am."

"Did you think that I wouldn't?" he responds, finding a rhythm, groaning back at her when she moans.

"What next?" she says, "Tell me what to do next."

"Put your fingers in your mouth."

She sucks on them loud enough for him to hear it.

"That's what you taste like Beckett." It's suddenly all he can think of, how she tastes and feels against his tongue and the way her knees sometimes come up to trap him where she wants him as she comes into his mouth. His next words are an effort. "I love the way you taste."

"Mmm." She pants and pulls her fingers from her mouth with a soft smack of lips. "Me too." And then she gets something predatory about her, the way she does when she knows she's saying something dirty and enjoying it, "I like it when you come in my mouth."

Fuck. "Beckett?"

"Yes?"

"Turn over onto your stomach and touch yourself."

She makes a sound that approximates a whimper as she does, and he says, "I like the way you sound when you come."

(It's an instruction and they both know it.)

Her pillow swallows some of her choicer curses, but he hears her moan, oh and yes and his name, and imagines her hips working her into her hand, knees half raising her off the mattress, the naked curve of her back and her hair splayed out along her spine and mouth wet against her sheets. In that moment, he forgets all that plagues him, the distance he doesn't want between them, and he shifts until his cell is caught between his shoulder and his ear, lets his orgasm shadow hers like he does, making a mess of the shirt in his lap.

She laughs in his ear. "So what do you think? Should I give up my day job?"

He's still finding enough air, but when he does speak he hears breath stall at the verge of a sentence when he says, "I wish you were here" and she doesn't know how answer for a moment.

But then she sighs and he feels her letting go of it, so he knows it's more than just something to be said. "Me too." Then, wryly: "Except that you'd cling to me like a vice and keep me awake all night."

"If it's my methods you object to, I'm sure I could think of other ways to keep you up all night."

"Your methods aren't the problem." She's quiet and a little bit contrite, and it makes him think that she's heard a lot more than he's plainly said. "It's the lost sleep when we've got an open case."

At the thought he yawns and she echoes and then laughs quietly. "See? Sleep Castle, I'll see you in the morning."

Morning means a murder, coffee and convoluted theories, and something he knows but she doesn't. She'll be out of reach all day. It's a relief and it's not.

"Bright and early," he agrees.

She smirks, teases him for being less fond of mornings than she is, adds, "Well, bright anyway."

"And bearing beverages of good will."

"Good." He hears her stretch out. It's in the way she half-yawns into the mouthpiece, the reflexive give of her mouth in the wake of the give of her muscles. "Now, unless you're looking for some other kind of release." (She's grinning, probably at her ceiling.) "What was it you called it? Therapy?"

It's unintentionally too close to the mark, because in many ways, all he wants is to unburden himself, to tell her everything he knows. They do their best work using each other as sounding boards. Looking into her mother's case and all that surrounds it isn't the same alone.

She finishes the sentence, interrupts his thoughts, "Then I'd say we're done."

"At least until morning," he confirms. "If your goal was to prove that phone sex operators have nothing on you then you were more than successful."

"What exactly do you know about phone sex operators Castle?" she says, playful.

"I know a thing it's not worth paying four ninety nine a minute for something you've given me for years for free."

"Years?"

"Good conversation Beckett, witty repartee."

"Ah."

"Speaking of conversation-" There's a worrying pause, her teeth in her lip, and then: "You know you can talk to me."

"Beckett."

"I was thinking, today, about what Sarah Marx said, about it not being about the sex, that it's often about someone to talk to and I just thought…" she pauses, "That's sad Castle. That so many men-"

"- and women-"

"People, are that lonely." She sighs. "And that sexually unfulfilled."

"You're judging."

"It must be about indulging fantasies that you can't in your real relationships."

"Probably."

"I don't want you to feel like that." She says it like she's trying not to say it quietly, like she'd say something she wanted to hide, because it's not, not anymore, not from him. And she's been working on acknowledging that, at saying the things she impulsively thinks of as secrets when her conscious mind disagrees with her instinct.

(More and more with him, she finds she doesn't get that sick feeling that she normally does when she reveals something that makes her vulnerable, like her stomach is flipping at an imaginary loss of gravity as she falls. She thinks it's because he never really sees her as vulnerable. If anything, it hurts a little bit how much he sees her as impervious, a case he's never going to crack.)

"I'm well aware that you are happy to indulge my fantasies." It's always best to fall back on the familiar when she tests their new boundaries. He reminds her with humour that the foundation is solid and she treads less lightly, and it's been working so far. He reassures her in a lower voice after it draws a laugh of her. "And I know I can talk to you."

(It's mostly true.)

"Good," she says and then yawns. "I have to go before I fall asleep. I'll see you and my coffee in six hours."

"Too soon Beckett." He groans at the thought.

"Goodnight," she says decisively and hangs up first (she always does).

He's left to clean up by the light of the screen, the images of her and her mother and Montgomery and all their dead villains staring right at him.

They are ghosts that haunt his sleep.

The next morning, Castle watches her work unnoticed for a moment that extends as he takes in all the familiar lines of her. It's weighing on him today, not just guilt, but fear. The way that he loves her gets a desperation to it that he doesn't like because it makes him remember her words in Brooklyn: I don't want to need you, that's not love.

The coffee in his hands is warm as his heart in his chest echoes, protests, says it is, it is, it is. But he knows she's right. It's not love. It's just that fear of losing her: to her mother's murder, to the secret he's keeping, to a bullet. It's hard of course, to completely untangle one feeling from the other, but at least he knows what motivates him. And it's still pure, if a little disturbed.

She wasn't the only one to suffer through the summer. He's seen her panic, seen the way it physically grips her and it's familiar to him. It's different of course, because he doesn't think his is pathological, but still it's there. Particularly in the middle of the night when he wakes up alone from dreams he can't remember. Those nights seem darker than others, and the absence of light has weight. As he watches shadows pass over the ceiling, forming shapes of things that aren't really there, it settles heavy in his chest, hollows it out, suffocates him.

So he has to do this, has to protect her. Just for a little bit longer, he promises himself, the time isn't right to tell her.

He's well aware that he's making excuses, but the situation really does feel impossible.

This will destroy Weldon, you know.

Yeah, I know.

And when he's gone the first thing she'll do is get rid of Castle.

I know.

Alexis is drawing up lists when he sulks through the door. There are neatly stacked piles of business cards, the careers page from the Times and her laptop open beside her. She's looking between all of them and taking notes in a chart that looks like she's planning the Battle of Hastings. Then again, a job in this market might be a harder ask.

He slumps beside her and puts an arm around her.

She objects, loudly, but leans into his shoulder. "Dad."

"Shh," he says. "You're fixing me."

"Hard day?"

He nods. "Something like that."

Alexis pulls back and studies him. "You're home early, looking dejected and you haven't even asked about the damage caused by King Lear." She nudges his side. "This has something to do with Beckett."

"Stop being too wise for your own good," he chides. "She sent me home. We don't agree on the best approach to this case, that's all."

Alexis gives him a look, like she knows that it's not all, that there's more at play than he's letting on, but she doesn't press. "She's sent you home before dad and it never lasts more than a night."

He tries to remember if that's true. It probably is, except for the summer after he first started shadowing her. But that was more than warranted. Now he wishes he'd never gone behind her back to get that file, had never started all of this in motion.

"In fact, you're both hopeless at arguing. It's like you can't stay away from each other."

He wishes that were true, but two summers and countless nights between cases and more recently, sexual encounters, beg to differ.

Alexis is on the other side of the counter now, pulling things from the fridge. When she turns back to him, she sports a teasing grin. "Help me make dinner and I'll tell you about Paige's dad seeing if he can get me an internship at his firm."

He makes a face at her. "But you haven't said anything mature beyond your years and unintentionally relevant to my problem which helps me solve it yet."

"It's her job dad, not just something she does for fun. You have to follow her lead there." She pushes a chopping board and two tomatoes across the counter. "Chop. But you know that. So what's this really about?"

"I just…" He pauses. "She said I couldn't be objective. And she's right. I can't be objective if it means destroying a good man's career, if it might mean the end of our partnership. I can't lose her."

"Dad." She takes pity on him, sets down her knife and says, "You can't let a murderer walk free because of what it might do to you and Beckett. Besides, if you never set foot in that precinct again you wouldn't lose her, not in the way you're really afraid of. But you might, if you ask her to choose between you and her job."

He sighs, because she's right.

"Enough about me, Paige's dad, internship. Tell me all about it."

She launches into an excited spiel about law firms and college applications.

He's written more than twenty novels and his work has been inspired at times, but Alexis is easily the best thing he's ever done.

You think I don't know what's at stake here? Do you think I actually want to do this?

Then don't do it.

I don't have a choice.

When she leaves him at the top of the steps of city hall, she's thinking too many things at once to do anything useful at the precinct. She tries anyway, files for a warrant for Weldon's coat and studies the murder board waiting on the judge. She runs over everything they have again, calls Lanie to ask for more, sends Ryan and Esposito to interview the sister and the super and the publisher and the college friend for a second time, re-checks names against alibis against statements.

The warrant comes through. CSU runs the coat and gives her a preliminary answer, says they'll have something solid in the morning.

Ryan and Esposito leave her at seven, still checking all her facts.

Gates leaves at eight, tells her to go home but she barely looks up.

By nine-thirty, she's read everything again, and then again, and she's sure she's not missing anything. She chews her lip in front of the murder board, feeling her heart racing with the burden of all the caffeine she's consumed, and she realises it's nearly ten, she hasn't eaten, and she's thinking herself in circles.

Beckett flips the lights off as she leaves.

The cold of the street is almost a relief after the warmth of the 12th. She feels her head clear as she walks with her hands in her pockets, so she keeps walking, and walking, and walking. It's twelve blocks in the opposite direction to her apartment, but she still hasn't decided whether she'll actually go up when she arrives in front of his building.

The night doorman recognises her though, lets her in, effectively deciding for her, and she pulls off her gloves and scarf in the elevator. She winds the scarf around and around her hands, twists it nervously between her fingers and shoves it into the pocket of her coat.

It's much too late to expect niceties when she knocks on his door. Besides, she's not in the mood to be polite, not when he's making her feel like the villain of the piece for doing her job, not when Gates might have him gone if the mayor is guilty. She's angry; rationally at the situation and irrationally at him for not understanding without her having to spell it out for him.

(Because he should know that their partnership is something she values, doesn't want to lose, wouldn't throw away. He should know that she loves him back. It's all over both of them whenever they're together and usually he's so good at reading her.)

"Kate." He runs a hand over his face. "What-"

Her fingers press into his mouth. "Don't say anything."

He can't, so the point is moot.

"I just-" she walks him backwards, into the apartment, and the door swings shut behind her.

The sentence is hanging when she kisses him and it's frantic, all need, and one of her heels is digging into his calf as she searches for more of his hips. He digs his fingers into where her knee is bent and runs them up over her thigh until she shivers at the contact, pulls at his lip with her teeth and groans.

It's a stumble towards his bedroom, and she shucks off his shirt and loses her coat and suit jacket along the way. She tugs off her vest in the doorway and his hands are immediately spanning her waist, fingers slipping against her shirt, mouth edging from her jaw to her collar. Her fingers fist in his hair, tug, urge his mouth to a different, better spot at her neck.

When she loses her shoes and drops in height he has to bend to suck at it. Her back arches to keep his lower half pressed to hers. He's hard against her stomach and she moans at it, at the physical fact that he wants her, at his mouth and his hands which have edged lower, beneath the waistband of her pants, and are holding her against him.

She gasps and her hands falter as they reach for her service piece when he shifts until his leg is trapped between her thighs and she rocks into it, instinctive and sinful and good. So good. She thinks she says so against his ear.

Pushing him back is the last thing she wants, but she does it, breath coming fast and hard and looking like she's shocked by it, that they're capable of this, how hard and fast and stark it is.

Finally, her hands co-operate, pull out the weapon. She moves across the room and sets it and her badge down on the dresser, knowing he's watching, liking that he's watching. This is what's at the heart of this argument after all: her job, their partnership.

He sits on the bed, looks pained for a moment in the face of her smirk. It fades to a frown. She bites into her lip.

"Kate."

"No." Her stockings slip against the carpet creating friction that tickles at the soles of her feet as she walks over to stand between his knees, leans down to take his hands, twists their fingers together. "Castle, don't."

She bends to kiss him, braces one of her hands t on his shoulder and freeing one of his. He thumbs her hair from her face. The furious intensity fades into something else, something quieter, and, as his mouth moves against hers painfully slowly, she doesn't feel angry or helpless or frustrated anymore. She just feels sad.

The hand at his shoulder pushes him from her and he shifts back on the bed, pulls her with him, until they're laying face to face. He finds her face again with his fingers, brushes them along her cheek, and she wants to cry.

She's always been in the habit of using sex to distract herself from more difficult feelings though, and instead, she uses both hands to undo his pants, works one inside his boxers until she finds skin. He hisses into her mouth when she closes her fist around him, runs it up and down the length of his erection. The sound is swallowed by the kiss, and she lets it warm her.

His fingers glance hers as she unbuttons her own pants. He wedges his palm against her underwear, fingers curling against where they're wet then rubbing up, so the pads of them press damp fabric against her clit.

They both groan.

Beckett kisses him, all hot mouth and dirty tongue and then breathes it against his cheek. "Help me take off your pants."

He does, a tandem effort with both their unengaged hands, and hers come off too, easier and more practiced. When she's kicked them off, she moves her hand to his shoulder, sits up and urges him to follow. His mouth is distracted by her hip though, tongue flicking over and around and toying with the idea of between her legs, hand still working against her, unimpeded by clothing.

When he looks up, she shakes her head.

He goes where she implores him to with light touches of her palm.

Castle is sitting against the headboard when she moves over him, knees cradling his hips, and he brings his hands up to her waist against, falls forward so his head rests against her stomach while she reaches between them, uses her hand to hold him steady, draw him into her.

When she sinks down, they're eye to eye. Her lips part in a near-silent gasp but it doesn't reach her eyes, and he sees, that she does know what's at stake, that she's conflicted, all the things she doesn't want to lose.

She moves against him, rocks back and forward as she slides up and down, and her head bows as her fingers come up to unbutton her shirt. It obscures her face with her hair. He waits, lifts his hips to meet hers and curls his hands against her thighs, but when she pulls the shirt from her shoulders and unclasps her bra after it, he lets his fingers wander. They trail up her side, stopping to thumb against her breasts and then along the curve of her chin, and finally, he pushes her curls behind her ears like he wanted to from the start.

"Look at me," he says.

Her head shakes. "Not yet."

He watches her face change, all concentration, and she busies her hands, one between her legs and one at her chest, pinching hard at her nipple, her teeth work into her lip and she drives down rougher against him.

He drops his hands from her face to hold her hips, to still her.

"Castle," she groans, frustrated, but it's not the sex she's complaining about. He rolls his hips back so he's only barely inside her and holds there, and it's maddening and she feels her body tensing in response to it and she stills her hand so she doesn't come then and there. The sex is as good as it always is, but it's intense, emotional, and she doesn't want that. She wants to forget. She doesn't want to think, over and over, in time with their bodies, that it might be the end. (Because she's cop, she has to be, and if he can't let her do her job then it has to be over.)

"Not like that." His hands span the curve of her back as he pushes up into her, unhurried and deliberate, and gravity relaxes her against him, so it's not gentle, it's just not frenzied. With his palms flat against the bones of her shoulder, he hugs her against him, sits forward into her to shift their position, so her face falls into his shoulder and he presses up against sensitive flesh with each slow slam of hips.

It's criminal, she thinks, that they can be so good at this.

He kisses her temple.

She bites at the skin she finds and fights tears when his fingers move to rub against her, in tempo with the grind of their bones and she half sobs her orgasm into his shoulder, clawing into his biceps, feeling it wrack through her body with a force that surprises her.

(Because usually when she's so far inside her own head she finds it hard to let go so completely.)

Her thighs shake and she trembles around him and he thrusts once more, so harsh that it's violent, almost painful, sends her forehead knocking into his wall when he comes inside her.

They're damp from exertion, and he tastes her shoulder, strokes down her back and whispers her name into her skin as he breathes.

It's apology and prayer and exclamation.

She wants to be relieved, wants to feel the calm lull that usually overtakes her after sex, but even though her body hums, sated, she only feels exhausted, unsure, miserable.

"What are you thinking?" he asks her, shifting so he's no longer inside her and sex makes a mess between their bodies.

"Nothing," she says, even though they both know she's lying.

Really, she's thinking that she wants to ask him to tell her that he loves her, that he still will if she puts his friend in jail and Gates kicks him out of the precinct. She knows he does, he will, but he hasn't said it again since she was dying in the cemetery and there are times when her doubts are louder than what she knows.

So she won't ask in case he won't tell, or because it reveals too much of her and she already feels that the bones of her are showing through. Besides, she's been holding onto that secret with good intentions for too long to let it out this way, now, when they are so far from their best.

He sighs. "Kate."

Beckett. She wants to say it, wants to correct him, but it sounds too harsh even in her head.

"I have to go," she says instead.

He holds her tighter against his chest for the briefest moment, but lets her go before she can think about struggling free.

He doesn't look at her while she dresses – underwear, pants, shirt, no bra – and retrieves her gun from the dresser. Instead he stares at the ceiling, covers his face with his hand and listens as she scoops up the rest of her things, hops into her shoes and walks out. Somehow the fact that he's not looking makes it worse.

When she closes his front door behind her, she slumps against it, draws her coat around her and folds her arms around her rescued clothing. One of her gloves is missing. And she regrets coming at all, because somehow this feels worse than the simple disagreement of daylight hours. It feels like an argument over much bigger things.

As she steps into the freezing air of the street, they're both wishing that he'd asked her to stay.

I can't apologize for doing my job, Castle.

And I would never ask you to.

Castle can see how much the abrupt end to their investigation is wearing at her as she takes down the murder board. It all goes in a box, which will be assigned a number and filed away in a warehouse somewhere, filled with similar cases that have come to dead ends. Normally, he'd bring her coffee, crack a joke, try to move the stubborn line of her frown as she puzzles over all the pieces one last time. Tonight that's not enough, won't be for either of them, and he knows it, but he has a social engagement with Mayor Weldon and he doesn't have time to needle her until she agrees to talk to him, to go home with him, to fix what it feels like they've broken.

(They've made silent headway. He saw the moment she forgave him. And he never felt like he had to forgive her. But it might not have fixed things entirely.)

He comes up beside her and curls his hand around her wrist, stilling the movement of the whiteboard eraser.

"Hey Castle," she murmurs, without turning her head.

His thumb works up under her sleeve, brushes along the skin and tendons of her wrist. That earns him a look that's verging on a glare. He shrugs in apology but it's unwarranted, because she softens almost immediately, gives him a tiny rueful smile that says she wants more than this limited contact too.

"I'm sorry," he says, sees her starting to feel overwhelmed and adds, "About the case."

"Without you, I would've been here tonight anyway." She steps back, sits on her desk and sighs. "Good thinking, getting Sarah to listen to the mayor's staff."

"Yeah well." He rests his weight beside her and she is aware of the proximity between their shoulders, close but not touching. "I couldn't sleep last night. I had a lot of time to think."

"Not here Castle."

"I know."

She nudges her elbow into his. "Later?"

"I can't tonight." Beckett doesn't press for an explanation but he feels like he should give her one anyway. "The mayor felt the need for a few celebratory libations."

"I don't blame him."

"And I don't blame you."

Her head turns, and she studies him before she nods. "I don't blame you either."

"And I know you said not here, but … here is the point, isn't it?" he says. "This – doing this with you – I don't ever want to lose that." (It's an unintentionally telling way of phrasing it, but he means every word.) "But you were right," he continues before she responds. "It was hard for me to objective on this one."

"I didn't want to do it anymore than you did Castle." She stretches her legs out a little and stares at her shoes. "Because I don't want to lose this either. You should know that."

"I do. But it was your job. And you did it like you always do, better than anyone."

"It's just that this time, it wasn't enough." Beckett rocks back on the heel of her palms and stands, plucks the last remaining bits and pieces from the board and places them into the box that's waiting in his hands. "Win some lose some I guess."

As she chews on her lip, he places the lid on the box, looks up, meets her eyes. "No victories Kate," he says. "Only battles."

Montgomery's words shock her. It's not something they talk about – the loss was too great – but she finds this small way of remembering him is a welcome kind of pain, the kind she feels they owe him. It's lessening with time. She nods, takes the box from his hands and holds it against her chest.

Then, in a reaction he's not expecting, she smiles, half-laughs. "Gates said the same thing, in her way. That it's a long game."

"So what's our next move?"

She keeps smiling. "Are we still talking about the case?"

"What else would we be talking about?" He's not quite feigning ignorance, there's just another, different question underneath the rhetorical one.

"You and me." She looks around quickly, sees they're alone, reaches forward to thumb at his collar as she steps back.

"That's up to you," he says as her hand falls back to her side. "You know that."

"Then, tomorrow?" she asks.

He hears the question mark as audible hope and nods.

They exchange 'nights and she promises to call him if there's a body and later, even if there's not.

Trust me when I say it's not your concern.

It is if it involves Beckett or her mother's murder.

That night, he lays awake and catches a hint of her on his sheets. His mind is still processing facts, meetings with shadowy men and her neat script on the murder board and the tangled web he's weaving in his office.

A well placed pawn.

Perhaps he's stretching the metaphor, but he can't help having trouble picturing Kate Beckett as a pawn. And a king isn't powerful, important but vulnerable, in need of defending. The most powerful piece is always the queen.

Across town, she's still thinking about Laura Cambridge, about all their leads, about how the problem with cases like this, strings pulled by unknown puppeteers, is that she's always one step behind and They (the amorphous, seemingly omnipotent they) are always too many moves ahead.

It reminds her of her mother's murder.

She knows that like that case, she has to put Laura Cambridge to rest, and tomorrow she will, but in the dark, there's a louder part of her that says this is what you do. She fights for the women who die as collateral damage, in the face of leads that disappear into dust, of powerful men leaving bodies in their wake. The futility and frustration of it makes her ache.

Play it piece by piece.

They both dream of chess.