"Castle," Beckett ground out through clenched teeth, running her fingers through her hair. The movement did little to detangle the steady build up of icy-slush currently residing on the top of her head. This was the stupidest idea ever. Foolish man. Love him she might, but he was going to be the death of her at this rate. The much too premature death of her. Like within the next twenty minutes. Hyperthermia was fairly instantaneous, right? Granted, she of all people probably had the most experience with which to answer that question… In a sense this was feeling very similar to being trapped in a freezer with Castle. Except, she'd wanted to kill him less the last time. This, this was entirely self-inflicted. If they didn't die out here she was going to punish him. Severely. And not in the way he enjoyed.

Naturally, she kept all this bitterness to herself, trudging begrudgingly in the massive indentations of Castle's shoes in the snow as she followed him through the park.

"Seriously, Castle. Do we really have to do this today? It's so many degrees below freezing it isn't even funny. Do you like me with a nose on my face? Because it's about to drop off?" Okay, so maybe she wasn't exactly doing a stellar job of keeping the bitterness to herself. It was really, really cold. At her words, Castle pivoted, coming to a halt – clearly catching her by surprise as she barrelled stubbornly into the wide planes of his chest.

"Oomphf," he muttered before righting himself, "yes, my dear we have to do this now. Esposito challenged me, us. We need to defend our honour, Beckett. You know for a tough as nails detective, you really are whinging a lot!" She levelled him with a deathly glare in response.

"Castle, we could be at home," she opted not the add the rest of her thought – something along the lines or doing anything other than this like extracting teeth with pliers. She wasn't in a grumpy mood per se, it was just that slowly turning into a human popsicle had a less than optimistic effect on her demeanour. She couldn't see anyone in their right mind taking to it with too much enthusiasm – like her ridiculous boyfriend was apparently doing. Fool. Fool, fool, fool. See? Clearly not grumpy.

As if the universe was reading her mind and setting out to torture her, the hard ball of snow collided with her back, sending a shiver down her spine. Perfect. Castle whirled her around, placing himself before her as a human shield. Beckett bit back the you're a little too late, honey, on the tip of her tongue, settling for an eye roll that went unseen by the man currently mashing a ball of snow together in his gloved hands. He cast a glance at her, locking eyes momentarily, the fervour of childlike excitement painted clearly in his expression. She sighed. Okay, for Castle she could suppress her attitude momentarily, dominate the boys in an all out battle for – what was it Castle had said, oh right – honour and get home to her damn bath.

She tugged Castle backwards to small slope, dropping to her knees behind it, she set about building an arsenal of tightly wound snowballs. He beamed at her, pressing a slopping kiss to her – potentially frostbite ridden – cheek, before rising up and tossing a snowball lopsidedly at the back of Ryan's head. It narrowly missed, Ryan turning with a smug grin.

"You better have hoped Beckett threw that because bro you totally throw like a girl!" he hollered, Esposito reaching out to feed the birds in support of the statement. Castle growled.

"You saying there's something wrong with throwing like a girl?" Beckett hissed, launching a ball of snow precisely at Ryan's now startled face.

"Oooh, you asked for that," Castle crooned, fixing Beckett with a cheek-splitting grin. Esposito patted his partner on the shoulder.

"Totally did ask for that, bro," he smirked. Ryan pouted momentarily before sending spirals of snow tumbling in Beckett and Castle's direction. They dove for cover, crashing haphazardly, a mixture of tangled limbs beneath the relative safety of the slope. Beckett bit back the urge to giggle. She was still mad about this whole potential hypothermia thing, no way was she going to let Castle onto the fact she was starting to enjoy herself just a little bit. Let him sweat – definitely not literally in this weather…

"We need a tactic," she reasoned, drawing her bottom lip between her teeth to chew on gently as she pulled herself from the snow and up onto her haunches. "Divide and conquer?" Castle shook his head fiercely in her direction –

"We're most effective as a team, Beckett. How about conquer and divide?"

"Sure. If you tell me what the hell that means," she shrugged, reaching out a hand to tug him from the snow. She ignored the flush of warmth that spread through her at the truthful tenor to his words – they really did work best as a team, partners. Blasted warming, heartfelt words, they were ruining her righteous anger. How utterly unfortunate.

"We need to go at them hard. Prepare an incomprehensionable amount of pre-balled snow and bombard them. They'll make a run for it, probably scurry off in different directions and that's when we really get them. We'll go after them one at a time and totally dominate. Conquer and divide," he finished with a smug, self satisfied grin. Beckett rolled her eyes, but conceded –

"Fine. We'll give it a shot."

"Oh no, Beckett, more than a shot. We will give it our all!" he declared gleefully, already carefully stockpiling snowballs from the ground surrounding them. It was nice to see that Castle had more than enough enthusiasm for the both of them – especially considering that she was less than willing to contribute at that particular moment.

Nonetheless, she threw herself into the pursuit of gathering snow by the handful. Castle yanked the beanie from his head and gestured at her to build their snowball collection within it. They developed a sizable stockpile quickly and gathering it up they plunged into the battle zone.

Turned out Castle's plan to stick together worked rather effectively in Beckett's favour. She stayed behind the line of his body, only darting out to toss the odd retaliatory snowball as they crept forward. Castle, on the other hand, took the barrage of snow that rained down as Ryan and Esposito intercepted their approach.

Beckett had a hard time keeping the smug grin off her face as another flurry of snow connected with Castle's shoulder and missed her completely. Her honour was definitely intact. That much was indisputably clear from the afternoon's proceedings. Beckett snickered at the thought that if they had been playing paintball Castle would resemble a rainbow by now. It greatly helped to assuage the fact that she was put herself at risk of being severely frostbitten with every passing second…

Esposito cursed as Beckett flung a snowball that connected rather solidly with his face. Whoops. Castle apparently saw it as the break they needed. As Esposito clutched at his face, trying to diminish the sting of the combination of cold and impact, Castle assaulted him with a mountain of snow. Ryan attempted to defend his partner, stopping short of jumping in the line of fire. Esposito couldn't take the deluge, backing away behind a line of trees muttering. Castle refocussed his attention on Ryan. Beckett read the fear in their friend's face as she joined her boyfriend in pelting him with snow.

Determination blazed across Ryan's countenance before flashing away as he realised he was outnumbered and unprepared. He threw up his arms in surrender, rushing to Esposito's defensive position to regroup. Beckett spun Castle to face her with a grin.

"Your honour is intact," she murmured, before pulling him in for a tender kiss. Castle shrieked and pulled away.

"Beckett, your lips are freezing!" he pressed his gloved fingertips to the place Beckett's mouth had just met his own, eyes wide with shock. "C'mon, I've got to get you home, warm you up."

Beckett fought to internalise the raging barrage of I told you I was freezing to death out here's that raced through her mind, instead settling for the one thing she knew Castle was guaranteed to listen to –

"I've got some ideas about how you could warm me up, Castle," she teased, biting her bottom lip suggestively, her tone rich and sultry. His answering grin was enough to begin to thaw her from the inside out.

AN: Disclaimer: I've never experienced a snowball fight. Australia, people, Australia! (Where it's currently 37 degrees Celsius at 6pm…) I've seen snow literally all of twice in my entire life. So, if there are any glaring inaccuracies in that regard, I humbly apologise and I will endeavour to have a snowball fight in the future – you know, to improve my writing ;)