This is post-Always but based on a dream I had PRE-Always after last weeks episode and the promos. It is a short little one-shot that I thought was too good not to share. I do not own CASTLE and it all belongs to ABC and AM and all those wonderful people who know just how to play upon our little shipper heart strings. Now, here is my little one shot. Please read and review! It keeps me writing. This pure, mindless fluff! Enjoy...I am sure I will write some deeper, more emotional and touchy feely pieces later.

He contemplated the sizzling smorelet with the intensity of a terrier hunting a rodent. Would she like it? Probably not, knowing Beckett. And boy did he ...know...Beckett. In the biblical sense. In the lips upon lips, skin upon skin, breath upon breath sense. He sighed and a dreamy, haze-like expression passed over his handsome face before he heard a familiar and sleep worn voice from behind him.

"Morning, stud." He could hear the smile curled in her tone and could picture exactly how the corners of her eyes would crinkle with its radiance. He felt her small but wiry arms snake around him from behind before she pressed herself into his back. Something small and warm shifted in the pit of his stomach and it felt a lot like joy. It felt like joy and disbelief and love.

"Whatever you are cooking smells awful." His back vibrated with her words and he turned gently to face her, grabbing her and pulling her into him. She looked positively radiant in his scruffy blue bathrobe, even if it was two sizes too big for her svelte frame.

"It is NOT awful, it is a smorelet."

She raised her eyebrows at him in an oh-so-familiar Beckett-like fashion, but this time he noticed a glimmer that had previously been too shy to reveal itself.

He reached behind himself and turned off the oven.

"And I. Am going to make you. Try it."

Her eyebrows rose higher and the playful glint grew brighter. "How?" She rubbed her hands up and down his sides, still reveling in the new level of closeness she shared to him. She didn't know if the thrill of touching him whenever and wherever she wanted would ever wear off.

He leaned in close to her and raised an eyebrow of his own. "Do you forget so easily? I have many many ways."

She snaked her arms around his neck and pressed her nose to his, her lips inches away from his own, "Try me, Mr. Castle."

"My pleasure, Ms. Beckett."

Just as he was about to pull her in for a tender kiss, a familiar pair of footsteps rounded the corner accompanied by an equally familiar voice.

"Dad, who stayed the night last night?" notes of glee and mischief fluttered around Alexis' tone. "I found this in the hallway."

To his surprise Kate let out a low laugh and leaned in to whisper to him. "Oh God Castle, I hope it is only my jacket."

A leather jacket held by a slender hand appeared around the corner before all of Castle's mischievous red-haired daughter followed into view.

Kate collapsed into him, "Thank God." A cat ate the canary smile wound its way across her face.

"Dad! Kate! I...you...x-box? Really Dad?" Her blue eyes had lit up and an exuberant smile burst onto her face.

"Hi, Alexis." Castle was surprised by Kate's sudden bashfulness. "Congratulations on your graduation, I heard your speech was excellent." She turned her gaze to Castle. "I'd better get dressed now." And then, in a lower voice, "You stay here."

And just like that, her shyness disappeared. She grabbed Castle and engaged him in a searing hot kiss.

"That... is to hold you over until later."

With that, she sashayed back to Castle's room to go change.

"Dad, what can I say, you've really grown up! I bet she was much more preferable company than your x-box and t.v."

"Alexis...I..." in a flash he took the pan off of the oven, "Smorelet?"