A/N: Castle Fanfic Monday contribution. There will be 3 parts.

"Good morning, Detective." Richard Castle approached his lovely partner with a cup of coffee and a smile. He passed her cup over with a tip of his head and a dramatic sweeping arm gesture, as though he'd just presented a gift to a member of the royal family. Then he stepped back and beamed at her.

Kate Beckett took the take-away cup with a suspiciously raised eyebrow. She was all too familiar with her partner's flair for drama, but this seemed over the top for even him—particularly before nine a.m. "You're…awfully chipper this morning. Any particular reason for that?"

Castle merely shrugged. Honestly, there was no reason out of the ordinary. He simply woke up that day feeling so energized he almost would not have needed the coffee, except for force of habit. Yes, the air was a bit nippy; it was January after all, but the sun was shining and no rain or snow was forecasted in the near future. He simply got out of bed, pulled on one of his favorite blue dress shirts, and happily discovered a text message with an address from his favorite crime solving partner. That day, he decided, was going to be a very good day; he could just feel it.

"Okay…well in that case I'm almost afraid to tell you about our latest vic."

The writer's shoulders dropped. "Why? Is it going to bum me out? Did he die in a gruesome way? Wait, no, that wouldn't bum me out. Did he die in an awesome way? But that wouldn't bum me out either."

Kate fought to keep an amused smile from forming on her face. "Are you going to keep guessing or will you let me tell you?"

"Sorry. Please tell me about our vic."

"He was stabbed in the neck with a kitchen knife."

Castle's brow wrinkled. That was as basic and uninteresting a manner of death as he could come up with. Thus, he was confused as to why the detective would have made her earlier comment. "Okay…"

"And," she added with a pause for dramatic effect, "he was a hoarder."

Castle entire expression lifted. In fact, Kate thought that if it was possible, his body would have levitated off the ground. That was why she hesitated to tell him; she knew it would only make his excitement grow.

"A hoarder? Really? A real hoarder?"

She let out a light chuckle. "Come see for yourself."

They walked into the apartment building together and took the stairs to the second floor apartment. Castle took them two at a time leaving Kate to nearly jog to keep up with him. She gestured towards an open door to their left and the writer paused at the entryway to gasp dramatically. His expression of pure delight was not unlike that of a child who discovered a tree stuffed with presents on the morning of December twenty-fifth. Similarly, the apartment was stuffed…but Kate very much doubted anyone would consider the items within "presents."

"Oh my god!" The writer proclaimed. He clasped both hands around his coffee mug and looked back towards his partner. "It's better than I imagined it would be."

Kate rolled her eyes. Leaving him to his giddiness, she returned to the living area of the apartment, where the victim's body was sprawled out in among tightly packed furniture and boxes filled with god only knew what. Conveniently, his body landed in the only part of the apartment with any visible floor space. This, she supposed, was because it happened to be the area between the couch and the television; all surrounding space was taken up with junk.

"COD exsanguination?" Kate asked the ME crouching down beside the body.

Lanie nodded. "Appears to be; I can confirm once he's back at the morgue."

Kate nodded towards the bloodied knife in a plastic bag resting atop the nearby coffee table. "Safe to assume that's the murder weapon?"

"Again, most likely, but I'll confirm for you."

"Thanks Lanie. I'll-" Kate stopped abruptly when she heard a thud and a distant curse coming from the distinct voice of her partner. Groaning inwardly she yelled out, "Castle!"

"Sorry! Sorry! I tried not to knock anything over but jeez it's just so tight back here!"

Kate and the ME exchanged eye rolls before she followed the sound of his voice. Due to the limited space, Kate had to follow the path leading back to the apartment entrance and then take a secondary path leading away from the kitchen area and living room. "Castle? Where are you?"

"I—ah, crap—I think I'm in a bedroom?"

A few steps later Kate found a door open barely more than a few inches. She poked her head inside and spotted the top of the writer's head almost completely hidden behind a stack of boxes. She stepped forward into the doorway, but found her shoulders constricted by the limited space. Turning her body sideways, she wondered how Castle's large frame had even fit into this room.

Grunting as she shoved her way in past a large grandfather clock covered in years' worth of filth and grime she asked, "What are you doing?"

"Just looking around. There's so much weird shit in here!"

Spotting a box full of what appeared to be ratty looking Barbie dolls, Kate grimaced. "I can only imagine."

"Shit—Beckett I found a box filled with clown masks. How messed up is that?!"

Kate sidled her way around another pile of junk before she found her partner in the back of the trash-filled room looking into a box. From her vantage point she could indeed see a distributing clown mask and shuddered involuntarily. "Have you found anything useful? Like-"

"A written confession from the killer? Nope." He smiled over at her. "And I doubt we will either. I mean, really, how could you find anything in this mess? Poor CSU…"

Kate let out a mirthless laugh. "Tell me about it—I already heard the lead tech cursing when I got here." She watched as he turned to a new pile of boxes and began to rummage. "Do you even want to see the body?"

"No," he said, not looking at her. "This is way more interesting."

"Suit yourself. I'm going to go see if we can get an ID for this guy."

Castle heard the footsteps of his partner disappear into the distance, but he took little notice; he was too enthralled with the latest box of junk he was rummaging through. A hoarder's apartment! How exciting!

Being that he considered his ability to waste hours on end almost a second career, Castle was no stranger to trash TV and he considered shows chronicling the lives of hoarders to be highly entertaining. While he certainly possessed more than his fair share of knick-knacks and mementoes, Castle still could not conceptualize keeping every newspaper that had been printed over the prior forty years. Sure, he had clutter, and Alexis's toys and things sprawled everywhere in the apartment never bothered him, but even he had his limits.

What Castle found most fascinating about this hoarder's apartment was how random the items seemed to be. He had yet to find piles of newspapers and magazines, but instead the boxes were filled with an amalgamation of objects, much of which were broken. It was almost as though the man had dumpster-dived for most of his treasures. Then again, the writer mused, maybe he had.

Opening yet another box, Castle discovered a broken tennis racket atop what appeared to be rusted, tarnished cooking equipment. He found two pots, a tea kettle, and what he initially thought was a gravy boat, but upon further examination, he wasn't so sure. The tarnished metal object had the general shape of a gravy boat with a handle on one end and a spout at the other, but it also had a lid that seemed to be tightly affixed to what would have been the top opening to a gravy boat.

Humming to himself, he flipped the object over to see if anything was written on the bottom, but nothing was. Turning it to view the other side, he thought he saw something inscribed, but it was difficult to tell with the tarnished metal. Castle pulled his sleeve down over his hand and began to rub the side of the object in an attempt to remove the stains.

No more than three seconds after he began to rub, the object began to rattle in his hands. Confused, Castle stared down at it, the wrinkling in his brow intensifying. What the hell was going on?

Suddenly, a plumb of smoke erupted from the spout end of the object and an ethereal figure appeared beside him in the room. Castle dropped the lamp. "What the…"

The smoke began to take shape into a human shaped form: a head, shoulders, and a long thin body. The figure, which appeared to be male, had a goatee, a puffy shirt, and pants one might expect to see in a play meant to be set in the Middle East. Oddly, he appeared entirely in black and white; even the skin on his face was a grayish tone.

"Wha-what…are you?" Castle asked, taking a step back from the figure.

The figure focused his dark gray eyes on the writer. "I now serve you, Master of the Lamp."

The voice filled the room as though it echoed through a cavern. Castle looked around, half expecting to see speakers affixed to the walls. Surely, this was some kind of joke. But then, he looked down at the object that had fallen by his feet and it hit him. Not a gravy boat—a lamp! A lamp like Aladdin's!

"Genie! Are you a genie!?" He asked, doing a little hop of excitement.

"I have been called many things over my many years," the figure replied.

"Oh awesome!" He proclaimed. A genie! He knew it was going to be a great day! "So do I get three wishes?"

"By the law of the lamp, I am required to provide my Master with three of his desires, but there are rules to the-"

"Yeah, yeah I know." Castle waved his hand casually. Of course he was intimately familiar with the rules of magic and related lore! "Can't kill anyone, can't bring anyone back from the dead—I know I know. Hmmm…" He brought his finger up to tap against his chin as he considered the options for the first of his wish trifecta.

"Castle!" The voice of his partner momentarily distracted him. "Are you ready to go?"

"In a minute!"

Now, he thought, what to wish for. Money? But he already had that. Fame? He had some of that too. A unique artifact was always an option. Or—oh! Where Jimmy Hoffa was buried. But, maybe not. Maybe-

"Castle!"

"I'm coming!"

And then, there was Beckett. Oh, she would have a field day if she realized he had discovered a genie. Naturally, she wouldn't believe him, because that was her way. She'd need physical proof if she-

"Castle—c'mon! You have thirty seconds or I'm leaving you here."

He grumbled in the direction of the doorway and then he turned back to the genie. The perfect wish popped into his mind, so he decided to try it out. "My first wish is that for one day I want to know exactly what Beckett is thinking and she has to answer everything I ask her with one hundred percent honesty." Then, as the words left his mouth he realized how they sounded and cringed. "Wait that's one wish right?"

The genie nodded and then the smoke dissipated into the room and he was gone.

"Castle!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming." He grumbled before turning to leave the room, the lamp lying forgotten on the floor. He rounded the corner of boxes and found himself nearly trapped by the door. Damn, how had he gotten in this room anyway?

When Castle emerged into the main hallway of the apartment building, he found his partner waiting with her arms folded over one of her many attractive coats. One of her most common expressions was etched across her face; it displayed approximately eighty percent annoyance and twenty percent amusement. "Let me see your hands."

"What? Why?" He asked, holding them up, palms out.

She glanced down at him and then shrugged before turning towards the stairs. "Since you didn't come when I asked I figured you found something so interesting you just couldn't tear yourself away and I was worried you'd brought it along as a souvenir."

He gave the back of her head an annoyed look. "Kate, you know I know better than that."

She hummed and glanced back over her shoulder when they reached the bottom floor. "So what was it?"

"What was what?"

"The interesting thing that grabbed your attention?"

"Oh." Castle stopped walking for a moment as he considered his response. He knew exactly what would happen if he told his partner that he found a genie's lamp. She would laugh at him and then ask him what he really found. Even if she did believe him, he wasn't quite ready to reveal what he'd found yet; he needed to see if his wish worked first. "Nothing, really, just something silly. Hey, I, ah, forgot to ask you." This was it—the moment of truth. "What do you think of my new shirt?"

He reply was instant and without hesitation. "It's nice; it really brings out the blue in your eyes…" Kate's voice dropped off as she paused just outside the apartment building. Her cheeks immediately felt hot. Why the hell had she said that? She'd meant to stop at, "it's nice," but somehow her brain had continued without her permission.

Kate glanced back at her partner and saw he was wearing a smirk, which made her cheeks feel even more aflame. Clearing her throat, she dipped her chin and walked hurriedly towards the car. "C'mon; let's go."

Castle jogged after her, barely able to contain his glee. Okay, so her telling him that his shirt brought out the blue in his eyes was hardly the most revealing thing she could have said; however, as it was a very un-Beckett thing to say, he felt as though his wish had come true, but he wasn't done testing it yet. "Where are we going?"

"ID came back on the vic. Henry Matheson. He does medical billing at a health clinic not too far from here; we're going to interview his employer."

Once the writer had joined the detective in her car, he posed his next question. "So I saw on the news this morning there was a story done on inter-office romances and whether or not they're a good idea. What do you think?"

"I…I think that entirely depends on the situation."

Castle pressed his lips together. Her response was too vague to tell if it was a forced truth or not, so he needed to press further. "So you're saying it would depend on the people? Or their positions—such as a superior and his or her subordinate?"

"Both. I think every situation is unique."

The writer drummed his fingers against the car's doorframe as he considered his next question. He wanted to ask whether or not she thought a relationship between partners would work, but perhaps that was not the wisest decision. If she truthfully answered no, he would be quite upset, so perhaps it was best not to tempt fate too much—at least not this early in the wish. He needed to let the situation unfold more naturally.

Conveniently, as the next intersection he was presented with a new opportunity. Within the cluster of New Yorkers crossing the street was a woman with a very full figure. She wore a skin tight white sweater with leopard print leggings on the bottom only the leggings were not complete leggings—the side of the leggings appeared to be laced with black leather. Unfortunately, the lacing was not superficial as the woman's skin could be clearly seen in among the laces crossing. Simply put: Castle was horrified such an item of clothing was even made let alone being worn. Thus, he turned to his partner with a mildly devious expression.

Kate was not one to outwardly comment on anyone's appearance. Though they'd passed more than their fair share of wildly dressed individuals, he was generally the commenter; Kate merely chuckled or gave him an annoyed look. In fact, in the duration of their partnership, he'd only known her to comment on someone's attire once. The prior summer when they had been canvassing for witnesses they ran into a man wearing a shirt clearly displaying a completely vulgar, curse-word laden expression. Kate had comment that such a shirt should not be made and sold in stores thus implying her distaste, though not saying it outright. As the pants on the woman crossing the street were clearly inappropriate not to mention entirely unflattering, Castle thought he'd take a shot.

"Hey Beckett—look at that."

She clicked her tongue in response. "I saw it; someone should tell that woman to never wear those pants again—I-I'm sorry; I don't know why I said that." She glanced over at him nervously before gripping the steering wheel a bit tighter.

Bingo! Castle thought. Kate Beckett definitely would not have said that unless she no longer had control of the opinions exiting her mouth. So, the Genie was the real deal. Smiling, he leaned his head against the headrest and said, "Don't worry; I was thinking the same thing."

Richard Castle exited the break room of the twelfth precinct with two mugs of coffee in hand. As he approached the desk of his partner, he did so in a form not unlike a cheetah stalking a gazelle. Truthfully, he could not have been more pleased with himself. While at the doctor's office waiting to speak with the vic's boss, he had been "casually" reading a women's magazine and managed to get the detective to confess her favorite facial feature was his eyes. Naturally, she looked horrified at the admission, but he was thrilled. Now that he'd annoyed her completely, it was time for phase two.

"Beckett."

Despite the fact that he'd just placed a steaming cup of coffee in front of her, she did not look up from her computer screen when she growled out her response. "What?"

Though he may have normally taken offense at her less-than-pleasant tone, Castle merely fought a grin. He was annoying the hell out of her and could not have been prouder about it. "Are you mad?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I can't stop telling you what I really think today." Startled by her own confession for the fourth time that day, Kate jolted in her seat and nervously reached out for her coffee mug. Before she could bring it to her lips, her partner practically chortled.

"I know; isn't it great?"

Kate turned her eyes slowly to the side; her head followed a second later. When her gaze landed on the face of her coworker, her gut clenched. Son of a bitch. He'd done something; she knew it. He had that guilty-as-sin-but-trying-to-hide-it look on his face. She put the cup down so violently on the desk that the coffee sloshed around and a few droplets landed just beside her computer keyboard. "What did you do?"

The writer leaned back in his seat and smiled at her with the innocence of a Valentine's Day cherub. "Me?"

"Yes you."

"Wha—how do you know I did something?" he challenged, one eyebrow raised.

"Because you-you-you've got that god awful smirk on your face and you always get it when you pulled something Castle-y."

Castle laughed at his partner's forced honesty. That time she was so annoyed that she did not even look embarrassed upset at her confession. Though it amused him at first, the more he thought about it, he became slightly annoyed as well—at himself. "Interesting; I thought I had a better poker face than that." And he probably did—when he was playing poker. With Kate, he'd long given up hiding how he truly felt. He knew it was written all over his face any time he looked at her.

"Castle!"

His amusement returned at her growl. Very slowly and casually, he set his coffee mug down on the edge of her desk. He then laced his hands together and leaned his elbow against the chair arm so he could lean in a bit closer to her. Being careful not to get too close and let the dragon's breath escaping her lips singe him, he began softly, "Let me get this straight: your theory is that you have to tell me the truth—no matter what—and somehow I am responsible for this?"

"Yes, but I know that sounds insane; it can't be possible."

He fought a laugh by pressing his lips tightly together. A few hours earlier, he more than likely would have agreed with her; he would not have believed that he was capable of forcing her to tell the truth. Then, he met a genie and things became a little more interesting. He knew it was dangerous, but he could not resist prodding her just a little further. "So…I could ask you anything right now and you'd have to tell me the truth."

"Yes." The word escaped her lips and she leaned back, attempting to hedge. "I-I-I mean, I-" but she was unable to force out what she really wanted to say: there was no way in hell she was going to answer his questions; she was done with this charade.

"Beckett, have you ever…"

Oh god, oh god. "Castle." Naturally, he paid no attention to her warning.

"…had a sex dream…"

Shit! Oh god! If he finished that question and she was forced to answer… "CASTLE!"

"…about Gates?"

Just as a positive answer was about to spill out her lips she choked and a difference response came out instead. "No! No of course not. That's...disturbing." And a relief! If he had said another name instead of the captain's…

Endlessly pleased with himself for making his partner sweat, Castle posed his next query. "Who do you like better: Ryan or Espo?"

"Espo."

"Who do you like better: Espo or Me?"

"You—damn it Castle!" She slammed both her palms down flat on the desk. This was getting ridiculous. He was asking questions so quickly she could hardly process them, but somehow her brain could and was answering without her knowledge. God, she was losing her mind. "Stop asking me questions!"

An amused chuckle escaped his lips. "Beckett, can you lie to me?" He already knew the answer, of course, but he wanted to make sure she knew it as well.

"No. Ugh! Castle what did you do?!"

With a pleased smile, he leaned back in his seat again. "Trust me, detective; you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Kate pushed herself up from her seat and began to pace the area around her desk. She skimmed her fingertips over her brow and shook her head. How was hit possible? It wasn't possible—not at all. Rationally, she knew that. Yet…somehow… "How did you do this? How? Truth serum? That works right? That's a thing."

He tried to fight his smirk, but there was no use. "Your proposition is that I slipped you truth serum? Interesting. How would I have done this?"

"I-I don't…" She stammered but her voice trailed off when she gripped the back of her chair with her hands and her gaze fell on her desk and the forgotten coffee mug. Coffee! Oh god—how could he have done something so nefarious to something so sacred!? "Castle did you spike my coffee with truth serum?"

He laughed at her pure horror. "No I didn't - I swear I didn't!"

She threw her hands out to the side. "Then what the hell is going on?!"

Knowing he could torture her no longer, Castle stood from his seat and stepped up beside her so he could speak as quietly as possible. Nearly whispering in her ear he explained, "A genie granted me three wishes."

Had she possessed the power of telekinesis, her stare would have sent a sharp dagger directly into his throat. "Try again."

"I swear Beckett; it's true! My wish was that you couldn't lie to me today and apparently it came true."

Her eyes narrowed. "Why would you wish that?"

Shrugging, he stepped back. "Just trying to get inside your head detective."

Kate's jaw dropped. She didn't buy his genie theory for one second. Truth serum still seemed more likely. No matter the method, it appeared he was at least being somewhat truthful when it came to his confession that somehow, some way she was unable to lie to him or keep any of her internal thoughts to herself. As that realization settled over her, fury boiled in her veins. "Castle! This is a terrible violation of my privacy! How could you do this!?"

Maintaining his casual exterior, he folded his arms over his chest. "Do you regularly lie to me?"

"I-n-not regularly," she stammered out, fighting a continuous battle with her brain so she did not reveal anything further. She didn't lie to him, really. Well, little white lies now and then, but who didn't do that? She did not even count those as lies. If she was guilty of anything, it would have been withholding truths from him—and she did not even do that too often. Except for that one major thing…

"But you have lied to me."

"As I'm sure you've lied to me." She countered, referring, if nothing else, to the same white lies she was guilty of.

Thinking specifically of the hidden Johanna Beckett murder board in his apartment, he nodded his head. "That's fair. So I'll do you the same courtesy. No matter what you ask me today, I won't lie."

Grumbling, she asked, "How did you get me to tell the truth?"

"I told you: a genie."

"CASTLE!"

"What? It was really a genie!" He couldn't blame her for thinking he was lying. Were the positions reversed he too would have been skeptical. Okay…he would have believed her sooner than she was believing him, but he would have been skeptical initially.

"Where the hell did you get a genie?"

"It was in that hoarder's apartment."

"There was a genie in the hoarder's apartment?" she asked in an even tone lacking any color.

"Yes—well, technically the genie's lamp."

"Show me."

"What?"

"You heard me," she said, plucking her coat off the back of her chair. "Show me."

"Okay so it was right around here…" Twenty minutes later Castle led his very irritated partner through the tight maze of boxes in the hoarder's apartment. Unsurprisingly, CSU had made little progress in removing the boxes in the prior few hours; the bedroom in which Castle found the lamp was completely untouched. When he rounded the next corner of boxes, he spotted it on the floor where it had been dropped. "Ah!"

Kate watched as her partner bent over and then held up his newest prized possession. Her eyes flicked from the lamp, to the writer's face, and then back. It looked like an ordinary piece of junk to her. "So where's the genie?"

Castle merely smiled and rubbed the lamp as he had before. Not a few seconds later the ethereal figure reformed and Castle gestured with an open palm. "Ta da!"

Kate blinked at him. "Ta da what?"

He pointed. "The genie."

"Where?"

"There."

"Castle!"

His brow wrinkled. "Wait, can't you see the genie?"

"I can only be seen by my master." The lamp-dweller informed him.

Castle sighed and threw down his hands. "Oh crap...he says only I can see him!"

Now genuinely concerned for her partner's wellbeing, Kate stepped up in front of him and placed her left hand flat against his forehead to feel if his temperature was elevated. Castle making up wild stories was to be expected, but carrying a farce through this far… "Castle, are you okay? I mean, does your head hurt? Maybe you need a CAT scan…"

He gave her a perturbed look. "I'm not crazy."

"You're seeing things that aren't there…"

"He is there! You're standing like three inches from him. Besides how else do you explain not being able to lie?"

She opened her mouth to respond but no sound came out initially. Well, that seemed like progress. "Maybe the truth serum is wearing off…"

He gave her a challenging expression. "How old were you when you lost your virginity?"

"Sixteen—DAMN IT." She cursed when the answer exited her lips before she could stop it. Then, noting the writer's pleased smile she felt a new onslaught of horror. She poised herself to yell at him but then found herself completely embarrassed by what she had already confessed—not to mention all the questions her partner would surely pepper her with that afternoon now that his super power had been confirmed. God, what a mess. "I…need some air."

As Castle watched his partner sidle out of the row of boxes, he realized she was not angry with him anymore, but looked quite upset. Shit. He was all about ribbing her in the name of good fun, but he never actually wanted to upset her. He was an idiot. Of course Kate, queen of her own lead-lined walls of emotional security, would hate being completely vulnerable to him. He definitely needed to make it up to her; he needed to apologize, but first…

Looking over at the genie, he smiled. "I think know what I want for my second wish."