Never before has she been willing to take pictures in the bedroom. Not even during her wild phase. Never… before now.

It was too risky. The risk of the boyfriend showing his friends back in college. The risk of her parents finding out. The risk of someone hurting her new career path. Later, the risk of them ending up online. The risk of a suspect seeing them. The risk of simply losing the phone and knowing that those pics were out there, somewhere.

But Rick snores. And drools. And he woke her up (again), right before dawn. She'd nudged and gently pushed him so many times, she'd given up and accepted that she wasn't getting back to sleep. It was annoying. But then it struck her (again), that she was in Richard Castle's bed, not as a conquest. Some days, it still felt completely bizarre. And at this hour of the morning, with the first golden rays of sunrise filtering through the crack between the curtains, sparkling in the trail of the slobber on his cheek, it was dumbfoundingly surreal.

So she quietly lifted her phone from the nightstand and clicked a photo of him - drool and messy hair and all - just to make herself smile. He grunted and rolled toward her. She clicked another and giggled.

One of Rick's eyes cracked open (how the quiet digital fake-click of the camera woke him, while her grumbling about his snoring and shoving his loud, sleeping face didn't, she'll never know), and he groaned, "Whatrrryou doowin'?"

She snapped another pic – with one of his eyes halfway open and him looking thoroughly confused – and laughed out loud.

His other eye opened. "Huh?"

Another digital fake click, and he finally woke up.

"You taking pictures of me sleepin'?"

"What? Me? Nooooo," Kate laughed. Her grin was wide and unguarded; the sunlight gilded her hair; and he was awestruck.

"Oh-ho-ho. Give me that!" Rick lunged for the phone in her hand (as well as one can lunge while lying down), which made her laugh more and roll away.

He smiled and pounced and went for the phone, grabbing and tickling, and laughing and wrestling; Kate gasped in her laughter, desperately trying to keep the phone out of his hands, but he knew all her most sensitive spots, and with the combination of his tickling fingers on her ribs and nibbling teeth at her neck, he won.

He didn't even look at the screen, just kept tickling and nibbling, holding the phone up snapping pics the whole time. His head covered the screen in half of them, he got one good shot of his own ear, but he caught one with her head thrown back laughing loudly, one with a full toothy grin and the shoulder of her shirt slipping down a little , one with her catching her breath while her hair fell wildly across her face.

He dipped his head and gently kissed her, lingering to feel her smile against his lips.

"Castle," she murmured, "give me my phone."

"Not a chance." Rick held it up and emailed the photos to himself to sort through later. Kate gave a token effort to try to stop him… but she was actually okay with him having those.

Sure, she was in a loose night shirt, wore no makeup, and had bed-head, but she was happy. If he kept those photos in his phone, then that was how he'd see her while he was away on book tours or if they were arguing – a reminder of how happy he makes her. The risk seemed to vanish in this small gift of herself to him.

(But, if those pics ever got out, she was definitely tweeting the ones of him drooling in his sleep.)

He set Kate's phone back on the nightstand and rolled back over her, kissed her still-smiling lips, and simply whispered, "Good morning."

She skimmed her fingertips up his neck and kissed him back. "Yeah. It is."

...

Days later, she finds herself still enchanted by complete contentment when she scrolls through those pics.

If anyone else had heard her in the precinct saying that they could use one of the bedroom pics for the murder board if the DVD curse killed him, they would have thought the Dynamic Duo had made some dirty photos. But they would have been wrong. These were far better.

XOX

Please review? I love reviews like I would love to see those pics! (Maybe, in his next photo shoot, Nathan could just lay down shirtless in bed and make goo-goo eyes at the camera and totally make us all swoon.)