there should be stars (19/X)
Title: there should be stars (19/X)
Characters/Pairings: Castle/Beckett
Summary: Four years can make a world of difference. AU.
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Up to Season Four finale.
Alexis is on the couch, her homework spread out around her and the Poe anthology in her lap. Beckett’s in the armchair, legs thrown over the side, head cushioned on the back as she takes a nap. Not really asleep, though; her eyes are closed and if she let herself, she could drop into sleep. She’s wearing a pair of too-large sweatpants, the hems rolled up to bare her feet, and the sleeves of her shirt pulled down over the heels of her hands. Castle’s been trying out Halloween costumes for the last hour.
It’s almost as if their time apart was a strange dream. Except for the fact that she is not living with them. He has dropped some hints, especially since about half of her clothing has made it into his bureau and closet and she spends a lot of her nights there in his bed next to him. But she’s not ready to throw herself into this so whole-heartedly. It’s safer; one foot out of the door just in case things start to crumble around them again.
“What about this one?” he asks, sweeping out the tails of the black jacket.
She opens her eyes just enough to see him in the doorway of the office. “What are you?”
“Edgar Allan Poe,” Castle sighs, shoulder slumping as he wanders over to the armchair.
When he starts to sit, Beckett struggles to sit up, pushing at him with her feet. “Castle, stop!” she gasps even as he scoops her up, turning to sit in the chair with her in his lap. Her knees press into his waist, hands wrapped around his neck to keep herself balanced. She leans over to touch her lips to his ear. “Your daughter is right there,” she murmurs as his hands slide down her back to her ass.
He groans, nipping at her earlobe. She jerks forward, breath ruffling his hair. “Then let’s go somewhere where she isn’t.”
“You know I can hear you guys, right?” asks Alexis, not looking up from the book.
Beckett ducks her head, trying to hide the blush creeping up to her cheeks.
But Castle is already pushing up to his feet so that she has to wrap her legs around him. “Well then, we’re going to go have se -”
She claps a hand over his mouth. “Castle…”
Alexis is wrinkling her nose, looking a little sick. “I don’t need to know everything you do,” she mutters.
As soon as he kicks the door closed behind them, Beckett drops to her feet and slaps his chest. “Are you trying to scar her?”
He’s walking her backwards until she sits on the bed. “She’s seen much worse. Remember when she walked in on us in the kitchen?” he says, shedding the long black coat, working on the buttons of the white button-down.
Her head falls onto his stomach. “Why’d you remind me?” she grumbles.
Castle pulls her shirt off, unhooking her bra. “Because of what happened after you ran back to the bedroom.” His fingers skate over her breasts. “Because, if I recall, that was the night I had you begging for mercy.” He pushes her onto her back, mouth tracing over her chest, teasing at her nipple. “Literally begging.” When she arches up, his hand on her stomach anchors her to the mattress. “Shall we repeat the performance?”
“Please,” she moans, her hands twisting into his hair.
“Skipping right to the begging. Good.” The vibrations of his words tickle their way over her skin.
Matching the vibration of her phone in the pocket of the sweatpants.
“Goddamn it, Beckett,” he mutters, nose pressing into her stomach. “Do Ryan and Esposito know when we’re going to have sex and have some sort of game they play to see how many times they can interrupt us?”
She shoves him off of her, digging in her sweatpants for the cell phone. “They’re kind of always going to win that contest. You’re always trying to have sex with me.” Beckett places a finger over his mouth when she answers the phone. “What’s up, Ryan?”
He’s distracting, hands tugging at the waistband of her sweatpants.
She swats at him, biting on her lip when his fingers rub oh so lightly over her clit. The whimper is stuck in her throat because she’s on the phone with Ryan and she is not going to fucking moan into the mouthpiece. “What’s the address?” she bites out.
Ryan rambles off the location of the cemetery again. She doesn’t hear the entire thing because Castle takes that moment to twist two of his fingers inside her and she can’t hold back the ragged sob of “oh fuck, Castle.”
“Am I interrupting something?” Ryan asks soundly faintly disgusted.
Beckett reaches down and grabs Castle’s wrist, stilling him with a glare. “No, Ryan. We’ll meet you there,” she chokes. She barely gets the phone hung up, letting it slide from her fingertips onto the ground. “Castle, I’m gonna kill you.”
He’s fighting off the pressed black pants, fingers moving inside her. “Yeah?” he says, grinning as he pulls off her sweatpants.
“Yeah,” she says, scooting back on the bed in a half-hearted attempt to get away from him. “Stop. We don’t have time to -”
“Challenge accepted,” he replies, crawling up her body and withdrawing his fingers, wiping the sticky moisture on the inside of her thigh. He doesn’t waste time, hitching her leg up and sliding into her in a single stroke.
His palm keeps her hips against the mattress as he thrusts into her, building her up so quickly that when the orgasm hits her, it’s a surprise. He just barely has time to put his hand over her mouth, cutting off the scream before it can draw Alexis’s attention, muffling his own groan into her shoulder.
She’s gasping into his mouth, his forehead resting on hers. “Castle, that was…”
He ducks his head down enough to place quick, wet kisses against her open lips. “Magical? Otherworldly?”
“Really?” she sighs, brushing her hands over his hair with shaking fingers. “You’re relating sex to Halloween?”
Castle grins, stealing another long kiss before getting off of the bed. “Both of those fit, though. And we’re going to a cemetery, if I heard poor Ryan correctly, so it’s even better.” He’s grabbing the discarded pants and shirt, shrugging them back on. She’s just laying there, waiting for her heart to stop racing, for her fingertips to stop tingling. “Come on, Beckett! Crime scene! Up and at ‘em!”
She rolls to her feet, stretching. “You are far too excited about murder,” she mutters, digging through the drawers of the bureau for a pair of jeans and a shirt.
“Halloween,” he reiterates. “A murder in a cemetery two days before Halloween.”
“Just… Just don’t wear your costume to the scene,” she sighs, ruffling a hand through her hair on the way to the bathroom with the clothes. She can hear him whine from the other room.
She can’t look at Ryan in the eye. He kept stuttering over case details as he runs through the information he and Esposito found on their canvass. Worse, there’s no way she can take back what he heard over the phone, no way to erase her breathy moan from his brain.
But they push all of the embarrassment aside when they go to find Morgan Lockerby. The coffin in the center of the dark room is creepy but then the would-be vampire drops from the ceiling onto Castle and the coffin is the least creepy thing in the room.
Ryan and Esposito get Lockerby off of Castle as the writer scrambles to his feet away from the man.
“He bit me!” Castle squeals, hand clapped over his neck as the boys block the burning sunlight from Lockerby’s face. “Beckett, he bit me!”
She holsters her gun, handing over handcuffs to Esposito as Ryan hauls Lockerby off the ground. “You’ll be fine. He’s not a vampire.”
The entire ride back to the precinct, Lockerby in the back of Ryan and Esposito’s car because Castle wants nothing to do with that man, has him babbling about shooting him if he starts to turn to spare innocent lives and making Beckett promise to take care of Alexis.
Still, she calls Lanie once they’re back and she comes by to check on Lockerby.
“He’s got porphyria. Some people call it the vampire disease. Its symptoms includes extreme photosensitivity,” she explains. “The skin blisters when it’s exposed to the sun. Victims are prone to hallucinations, paranoia.”
“Well that explains his psych diagnosis,” says Beckett.
Castle is staring beyond them to the man huddled in the holding cell. “Exactly how contagious is it?”
“It’s a genetic disease,” Lanie says, watching Castle deflate with a sigh. “Besides, I put enough antibiotics on that bite to kill a small animal. Now if we’re done here, I’ve got to head back to the slab and see a man about a corpse.”
“Thank you, Dr. Parrish. Castle was totally freaked out,” Beckett calls after her friend. Ryan and Esposito follow after Lanie, heading for the elevator up to their floor.
He turns to Beckett, leaning against the wall. “You want to bite me, you buy me dinner.”
Beckett smirks, stepping into his space so that his back presses against the brick. “Yeah?” she whispers. He swallows hard. “Good to know.”
And then she moves past him into Holding, feeling his fingers try to grab for her jacket as she goes by. Lockerby is huddled on the ground in the cell, babbling to himself.
“Morlock? Do you know someone named Crow?” she asks softly, crouching down to his level.
“Heartless bitch!” he spits at her, cradling his arms against his chest, curling into a tighter ball of dark clothing. “Spots all over.”
She keeps trying to get through to the man, asking about being in the cemetery with Crow, about the wooden stake with his fingerprints on it. But he’s saying something that sounds like it is in a foreign language before “I should have buried you then, wicked boy” before he’s back to the strange tongue.
Beckett shakes her head, getting up. Castle hasn’t moved from outside of Holding, eyes glued on the figure in the cell.
“I don’t want to tell the public defender how to do his job,” Castle says on the way to the elevator, reaching out to press the button before she can get there. “But I’m gonna say that the insanity plea might be appropriate.”
She shrugs. “Maybe the state psychiatrist can make sense out of Morlock’s rantings before they take him away.” She touches two fingers to his jaw, turning his head to the side. “Let me see your vampire bite.”
“It’s not a vampire b -” he starts to protest before he sees her grin. “Very funny. Won’t be laughing when I bite you and you turn too.”
The lab has a report on her desk when they get off of the elevator letting her know that the smudges on the stake were India ink.
“You know,” he says, leaning his forearm on her desk, “that India ink is water resistant so it won’t smudge when you color over it. It’s used by letterers in comic books. If Crow was the illustrator…”
“Then Crow’s friend Damon was the letterer. But what would the ink be doing on the stake? Hey guys!” she calls over to Ryan and Esposito. “Where are you on the friend?”
Ryan’s on the phone but he spreads his hands as Esposito says that they’re working on it.
“You know what,” she says, logging off her computer. “Call it a night. We’ll pick it up tomorrow morning first thing.”
The boys have phones down in the cradles and their jackets over their arms before she finishes the sentence. Castle is nearly down the hall before she can grab the sleeve of his jacket.
“Not you. We’re going to my place for dinner tonight.”
She stops the car outside of Remy’s.
“Thought we were going to your place,” he says, glancing over at her, confusion written all over his face.
But she just pockets her keys, unbuckles the seatbelt, and leans a hand on the center console to press a hot kiss to his open mouth. “Come on, Castle.” She slides from the seat, stuffing her hands in the pockets of her jacket until he comes up next to her and pulls her hand out, twining their fingers together.
The girl at the front podium finds them a booth, handing them menus, and taking drink orders before disappearing into the back to grab their waiter for their meal orders.
She already knows what she’s going to order - she gets the same thing every time she comes to Remy’s - but she knows Castle likes to try a new thing every single time. So she spends the time watching him over the laminated back of the menu, grinning as his eyes dart around for something that catches his interest this time.
He jumps when she runs her bare toes under the hem of his pant leg. His eyes narrow but she just wiggles her toes at his ankle before withdrawing her foot. “You’re a minx,” he murmurs.
“But you love me,” she replies, surprised at just how easily the words trip off her tongue. Her body tenses for a moment, waiting for his reaction.
His eyes soften as he smiles. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
And doesn’t that make her want to throw her entire plan to the wind. But instead, they order their food from the young man who brings them their drinks.
She’s tracing senseless patterns on the tabletop when his hand cover hers.
“Do you have your costume for the party tomorrow night?” he asks.
“What makes you think I’m going to your party?” she teases, turning her hand over and tickling at his palm. Castle’s smile falters until she grins. “Kidding, Castle. I’m going. But I’m not telling you my costume.”
“Is it slutty? Oh please God, tell me it’s slutty,” he prays.
Beckett leans her elbows on the table, her cheek pressed to his as she whispers, “Guess you’ll just have to show up to find out.”
Then the waiter shows up again with their food and she sits back into the booth, already picking up a fry from the plate as he stares at her.
Dinner passes with him guessing at costumes and her ignoring him. He does play briefly with the case, throwing out some crazy theories that she shoots down while eating her cheeseburger, barbeque sauce dripping down her fingers. His burger with who knows what is falling apart in his hands and she hides the laugh behind her wrist as he tries to keep it together. He tosses French fry at her.
She takes the check before the waiter can put it on the table. “I got it,” she tells Castle, swatting at his hand when he grabs for it. She digs into her wallet for the cash, tucking it into the little pocket of the blinder before getting up. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
And she drives to her place, pulling into the space reserved for her apartment. On the ride up in the elevator, she has his hand in hers, bouncing on the toes of her feet. As soon as she’s got the door of her apartment closed behind them, she gives him a shove toward the bedroom, chasing him with her lips.
“Beckett, what’re you…”
She pushes him onto the bed, straddling his hips. Her lips coast over his jaw, down along the muscles of his neck before working his shirt off. She scrapes her teeth across the skin of his chest, nipping at him and feeling the groan vibrate under her mouth.
“Bought you dinner, Castle,” she says, looking up at him through her lashes. “Do the detective work yourself.”
He works fast, nudging her back so that she’s sitting low on his thighs, fighting her jacket and shirt off. “You gonna get me out of my clothes for this biting?” he mutters.
“Patience,” she says, pulling his lower lip between her teeth, a smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth. But she does swing off his lap, kicking her shoes off before wiggling her pants off. “Get yours off. Now.”
He’s sitting there dumbly, staring at her until she unbuckles his belt. It jolts him into action, pushing the pants down so that they fall next to hers. She’s back over him, knees at his hips as she alternates soft kisses of her mouth along his abs and sharp bites that have him bucking up against her, making her gasp into his warm skin.
His hand tangles in her hair, dragging her up for a kiss. “All of this over a comment?” he asks roughly.
“Did you mean it?”
“God, yes,” he groans as she nips at his chin. When she smirks at him, all hooded eyes and just the tease of her tongue against the spot she just bit, he presses his head back into her pillows. “Be gentle.”
Characters/Pairings: Castle/Beckett
Summary: Four years can make a world of difference. AU.
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Up to Season Four finale.
Alexis is on the couch, her homework spread out around her and the Poe anthology in her lap. Beckett’s in the armchair, legs thrown over the side, head cushioned on the back as she takes a nap. Not really asleep, though; her eyes are closed and if she let herself, she could drop into sleep. She’s wearing a pair of too-large sweatpants, the hems rolled up to bare her feet, and the sleeves of her shirt pulled down over the heels of her hands. Castle’s been trying out Halloween costumes for the last hour.
It’s almost as if their time apart was a strange dream. Except for the fact that she is not living with them. He has dropped some hints, especially since about half of her clothing has made it into his bureau and closet and she spends a lot of her nights there in his bed next to him. But she’s not ready to throw herself into this so whole-heartedly. It’s safer; one foot out of the door just in case things start to crumble around them again.
“What about this one?” he asks, sweeping out the tails of the black jacket.
She opens her eyes just enough to see him in the doorway of the office. “What are you?”
“Edgar Allan Poe,” Castle sighs, shoulder slumping as he wanders over to the armchair.
When he starts to sit, Beckett struggles to sit up, pushing at him with her feet. “Castle, stop!” she gasps even as he scoops her up, turning to sit in the chair with her in his lap. Her knees press into his waist, hands wrapped around his neck to keep herself balanced. She leans over to touch her lips to his ear. “Your daughter is right there,” she murmurs as his hands slide down her back to her ass.
He groans, nipping at her earlobe. She jerks forward, breath ruffling his hair. “Then let’s go somewhere where she isn’t.”
“You know I can hear you guys, right?” asks Alexis, not looking up from the book.
Beckett ducks her head, trying to hide the blush creeping up to her cheeks.
But Castle is already pushing up to his feet so that she has to wrap her legs around him. “Well then, we’re going to go have se -”
She claps a hand over his mouth. “Castle…”
Alexis is wrinkling her nose, looking a little sick. “I don’t need to know everything you do,” she mutters.
As soon as he kicks the door closed behind them, Beckett drops to her feet and slaps his chest. “Are you trying to scar her?”
He’s walking her backwards until she sits on the bed. “She’s seen much worse. Remember when she walked in on us in the kitchen?” he says, shedding the long black coat, working on the buttons of the white button-down.
Her head falls onto his stomach. “Why’d you remind me?” she grumbles.
Castle pulls her shirt off, unhooking her bra. “Because of what happened after you ran back to the bedroom.” His fingers skate over her breasts. “Because, if I recall, that was the night I had you begging for mercy.” He pushes her onto her back, mouth tracing over her chest, teasing at her nipple. “Literally begging.” When she arches up, his hand on her stomach anchors her to the mattress. “Shall we repeat the performance?”
“Please,” she moans, her hands twisting into his hair.
“Skipping right to the begging. Good.” The vibrations of his words tickle their way over her skin.
Matching the vibration of her phone in the pocket of the sweatpants.
“Goddamn it, Beckett,” he mutters, nose pressing into her stomach. “Do Ryan and Esposito know when we’re going to have sex and have some sort of game they play to see how many times they can interrupt us?”
She shoves him off of her, digging in her sweatpants for the cell phone. “They’re kind of always going to win that contest. You’re always trying to have sex with me.” Beckett places a finger over his mouth when she answers the phone. “What’s up, Ryan?”
He’s distracting, hands tugging at the waistband of her sweatpants.
She swats at him, biting on her lip when his fingers rub oh so lightly over her clit. The whimper is stuck in her throat because she’s on the phone with Ryan and she is not going to fucking moan into the mouthpiece. “What’s the address?” she bites out.
Ryan rambles off the location of the cemetery again. She doesn’t hear the entire thing because Castle takes that moment to twist two of his fingers inside her and she can’t hold back the ragged sob of “oh fuck, Castle.”
“Am I interrupting something?” Ryan asks soundly faintly disgusted.
Beckett reaches down and grabs Castle’s wrist, stilling him with a glare. “No, Ryan. We’ll meet you there,” she chokes. She barely gets the phone hung up, letting it slide from her fingertips onto the ground. “Castle, I’m gonna kill you.”
He’s fighting off the pressed black pants, fingers moving inside her. “Yeah?” he says, grinning as he pulls off her sweatpants.
“Yeah,” she says, scooting back on the bed in a half-hearted attempt to get away from him. “Stop. We don’t have time to -”
“Challenge accepted,” he replies, crawling up her body and withdrawing his fingers, wiping the sticky moisture on the inside of her thigh. He doesn’t waste time, hitching her leg up and sliding into her in a single stroke.
His palm keeps her hips against the mattress as he thrusts into her, building her up so quickly that when the orgasm hits her, it’s a surprise. He just barely has time to put his hand over her mouth, cutting off the scream before it can draw Alexis’s attention, muffling his own groan into her shoulder.
She’s gasping into his mouth, his forehead resting on hers. “Castle, that was…”
He ducks his head down enough to place quick, wet kisses against her open lips. “Magical? Otherworldly?”
“Really?” she sighs, brushing her hands over his hair with shaking fingers. “You’re relating sex to Halloween?”
Castle grins, stealing another long kiss before getting off of the bed. “Both of those fit, though. And we’re going to a cemetery, if I heard poor Ryan correctly, so it’s even better.” He’s grabbing the discarded pants and shirt, shrugging them back on. She’s just laying there, waiting for her heart to stop racing, for her fingertips to stop tingling. “Come on, Beckett! Crime scene! Up and at ‘em!”
She rolls to her feet, stretching. “You are far too excited about murder,” she mutters, digging through the drawers of the bureau for a pair of jeans and a shirt.
“Halloween,” he reiterates. “A murder in a cemetery two days before Halloween.”
“Just… Just don’t wear your costume to the scene,” she sighs, ruffling a hand through her hair on the way to the bathroom with the clothes. She can hear him whine from the other room.
She can’t look at Ryan in the eye. He kept stuttering over case details as he runs through the information he and Esposito found on their canvass. Worse, there’s no way she can take back what he heard over the phone, no way to erase her breathy moan from his brain.
But they push all of the embarrassment aside when they go to find Morgan Lockerby. The coffin in the center of the dark room is creepy but then the would-be vampire drops from the ceiling onto Castle and the coffin is the least creepy thing in the room.
Ryan and Esposito get Lockerby off of Castle as the writer scrambles to his feet away from the man.
“He bit me!” Castle squeals, hand clapped over his neck as the boys block the burning sunlight from Lockerby’s face. “Beckett, he bit me!”
She holsters her gun, handing over handcuffs to Esposito as Ryan hauls Lockerby off the ground. “You’ll be fine. He’s not a vampire.”
The entire ride back to the precinct, Lockerby in the back of Ryan and Esposito’s car because Castle wants nothing to do with that man, has him babbling about shooting him if he starts to turn to spare innocent lives and making Beckett promise to take care of Alexis.
Still, she calls Lanie once they’re back and she comes by to check on Lockerby.
“He’s got porphyria. Some people call it the vampire disease. Its symptoms includes extreme photosensitivity,” she explains. “The skin blisters when it’s exposed to the sun. Victims are prone to hallucinations, paranoia.”
“Well that explains his psych diagnosis,” says Beckett.
Castle is staring beyond them to the man huddled in the holding cell. “Exactly how contagious is it?”
“It’s a genetic disease,” Lanie says, watching Castle deflate with a sigh. “Besides, I put enough antibiotics on that bite to kill a small animal. Now if we’re done here, I’ve got to head back to the slab and see a man about a corpse.”
“Thank you, Dr. Parrish. Castle was totally freaked out,” Beckett calls after her friend. Ryan and Esposito follow after Lanie, heading for the elevator up to their floor.
He turns to Beckett, leaning against the wall. “You want to bite me, you buy me dinner.”
Beckett smirks, stepping into his space so that his back presses against the brick. “Yeah?” she whispers. He swallows hard. “Good to know.”
And then she moves past him into Holding, feeling his fingers try to grab for her jacket as she goes by. Lockerby is huddled on the ground in the cell, babbling to himself.
“Morlock? Do you know someone named Crow?” she asks softly, crouching down to his level.
“Heartless bitch!” he spits at her, cradling his arms against his chest, curling into a tighter ball of dark clothing. “Spots all over.”
She keeps trying to get through to the man, asking about being in the cemetery with Crow, about the wooden stake with his fingerprints on it. But he’s saying something that sounds like it is in a foreign language before “I should have buried you then, wicked boy” before he’s back to the strange tongue.
Beckett shakes her head, getting up. Castle hasn’t moved from outside of Holding, eyes glued on the figure in the cell.
“I don’t want to tell the public defender how to do his job,” Castle says on the way to the elevator, reaching out to press the button before she can get there. “But I’m gonna say that the insanity plea might be appropriate.”
She shrugs. “Maybe the state psychiatrist can make sense out of Morlock’s rantings before they take him away.” She touches two fingers to his jaw, turning his head to the side. “Let me see your vampire bite.”
“It’s not a vampire b -” he starts to protest before he sees her grin. “Very funny. Won’t be laughing when I bite you and you turn too.”
The lab has a report on her desk when they get off of the elevator letting her know that the smudges on the stake were India ink.
“You know,” he says, leaning his forearm on her desk, “that India ink is water resistant so it won’t smudge when you color over it. It’s used by letterers in comic books. If Crow was the illustrator…”
“Then Crow’s friend Damon was the letterer. But what would the ink be doing on the stake? Hey guys!” she calls over to Ryan and Esposito. “Where are you on the friend?”
Ryan’s on the phone but he spreads his hands as Esposito says that they’re working on it.
“You know what,” she says, logging off her computer. “Call it a night. We’ll pick it up tomorrow morning first thing.”
The boys have phones down in the cradles and their jackets over their arms before she finishes the sentence. Castle is nearly down the hall before she can grab the sleeve of his jacket.
“Not you. We’re going to my place for dinner tonight.”
She stops the car outside of Remy’s.
“Thought we were going to your place,” he says, glancing over at her, confusion written all over his face.
But she just pockets her keys, unbuckles the seatbelt, and leans a hand on the center console to press a hot kiss to his open mouth. “Come on, Castle.” She slides from the seat, stuffing her hands in the pockets of her jacket until he comes up next to her and pulls her hand out, twining their fingers together.
The girl at the front podium finds them a booth, handing them menus, and taking drink orders before disappearing into the back to grab their waiter for their meal orders.
She already knows what she’s going to order - she gets the same thing every time she comes to Remy’s - but she knows Castle likes to try a new thing every single time. So she spends the time watching him over the laminated back of the menu, grinning as his eyes dart around for something that catches his interest this time.
He jumps when she runs her bare toes under the hem of his pant leg. His eyes narrow but she just wiggles her toes at his ankle before withdrawing her foot. “You’re a minx,” he murmurs.
“But you love me,” she replies, surprised at just how easily the words trip off her tongue. Her body tenses for a moment, waiting for his reaction.
His eyes soften as he smiles. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
And doesn’t that make her want to throw her entire plan to the wind. But instead, they order their food from the young man who brings them their drinks.
She’s tracing senseless patterns on the tabletop when his hand cover hers.
“Do you have your costume for the party tomorrow night?” he asks.
“What makes you think I’m going to your party?” she teases, turning her hand over and tickling at his palm. Castle’s smile falters until she grins. “Kidding, Castle. I’m going. But I’m not telling you my costume.”
“Is it slutty? Oh please God, tell me it’s slutty,” he prays.
Beckett leans her elbows on the table, her cheek pressed to his as she whispers, “Guess you’ll just have to show up to find out.”
Then the waiter shows up again with their food and she sits back into the booth, already picking up a fry from the plate as he stares at her.
Dinner passes with him guessing at costumes and her ignoring him. He does play briefly with the case, throwing out some crazy theories that she shoots down while eating her cheeseburger, barbeque sauce dripping down her fingers. His burger with who knows what is falling apart in his hands and she hides the laugh behind her wrist as he tries to keep it together. He tosses French fry at her.
She takes the check before the waiter can put it on the table. “I got it,” she tells Castle, swatting at his hand when he grabs for it. She digs into her wallet for the cash, tucking it into the little pocket of the blinder before getting up. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
And she drives to her place, pulling into the space reserved for her apartment. On the ride up in the elevator, she has his hand in hers, bouncing on the toes of her feet. As soon as she’s got the door of her apartment closed behind them, she gives him a shove toward the bedroom, chasing him with her lips.
“Beckett, what’re you…”
She pushes him onto the bed, straddling his hips. Her lips coast over his jaw, down along the muscles of his neck before working his shirt off. She scrapes her teeth across the skin of his chest, nipping at him and feeling the groan vibrate under her mouth.
“Bought you dinner, Castle,” she says, looking up at him through her lashes. “Do the detective work yourself.”
He works fast, nudging her back so that she’s sitting low on his thighs, fighting her jacket and shirt off. “You gonna get me out of my clothes for this biting?” he mutters.
“Patience,” she says, pulling his lower lip between her teeth, a smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth. But she does swing off his lap, kicking her shoes off before wiggling her pants off. “Get yours off. Now.”
He’s sitting there dumbly, staring at her until she unbuckles his belt. It jolts him into action, pushing the pants down so that they fall next to hers. She’s back over him, knees at his hips as she alternates soft kisses of her mouth along his abs and sharp bites that have him bucking up against her, making her gasp into his warm skin.
His hand tangles in her hair, dragging her up for a kiss. “All of this over a comment?” he asks roughly.
“Did you mean it?”
“God, yes,” he groans as she nips at his chin. When she smirks at him, all hooded eyes and just the tease of her tongue against the spot she just bit, he presses his head back into her pillows. “Be gentle.”