a/n: For Cartographical who gave me the context for this post-Limey fic I have been wanting to write for a few weeks and then harassed me until I wrote it. I HOPE YOU LIKE IT!.

The second he sits down at the chair beside her desk she can smell it on him, cheap perfume and blonde hair. Her. Beckett clenches her jaw tightly.

"What, Castle?" she says shortly, not even glancing up from her paperwork. They don't have a case and she really wasn't expecting him.

"Wake up on the wrong side of someone else's bed this morning?" he asks, making her jerk her hand to a stop mid word and cut her eyes to his face. He looks rough, like he hasn't slept.

Like her.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He shrugs noncommittally, taps a thumb against his own thigh. "I heard you went out with Scotland Yard last night for a drink," he says, voice laced with something tight.

She doesn't flinch away from his accusatory tone. "Yeah well, I seem to remember you had better places to be."

"Did you sleep with him?"

Beckett blanches, glances around to see if anyone has heard him, drops her pen and levels him with wide eyes. "Are you drunk?" He seems a little unhinged, now that she's really looking at him, but she's got a hot twist of anger spinning in her stomach at his nerve, so she balls her fists and waits for his response.

"Did you?"

She stands abruptly, pushing her chair with the backs of her thighs until it's out of her way, and then she's wrapping her fingers around his arm and tugging him up out of his chair. "We need to talk, right now."

He doesn't resist her, follows her willingly as she keeps her grip on his arm firm. They go around the break room, through a hallway that is seldom used and straight through the door marked 'SUPPLY CLOSET'. She all but tosses him inside, eyes predatory as she slams the door behind them.

"What is your problem?" she spits out, advancing on him until his shoulders are pressed against the wall and she's as close as she can get without touching him. Her heart is pounding wildly, all of her pent up feelings over his sudden change in behavior skipping to the surface, spinning down the veins in her arms, living in the advantage she's got over him now. He's backed into the corner and she's ready to unleash.

"What is my problem?" he whispers out incredulously, and she knows this is going to be bad, knows why she dragged him to the closest relatively private place in the precinct because neither of them has had a very firm grasp on self control lately.

"You parade that flight attendant around at crime scenes, the precinct and then you come in here asking me if I slept with Colin?"

"Colin," he mocks her, and then she's raising her hands and shoving at his shoulders, shocking him with her sudden physicality.

"You are a jackass," she hisses, blood boiling. The second the word is out of her mouth he pushes off the wall and advances on her, making her trip backward until she feels the solid press of the door behind her.

"You don't get to call me that," he grounds out, trying to keep his voice steady. It frankly kind of terrifies her, hearing him come this unhinged, but she's too angry to back off.

"Why not? It's true."

"You pretend that you didn't hear me tell you I loved you for seven months and I'm the jackass?"

She gasps at his admission, what? spilling from her lips.

"Oh come on, I think we're past this. I said it, you don't feel the same way so you pretended not too. Don't want to embarrass poor Castle, just let him keep following you around like a puppy for a while longer like an idiot."

She wants to stop him, wants to explain because clearly something has happened and she doesn't know how he found out, but the words stick in her throat and he must take them for confirmation, for truth.

"It's okay, I don't want you anymore anyway." It's a whispered admission, harsh and sharp like a bullet cutting through her all over again, every fear she's ever had looking her in the face and she just wants to lash out.

"If you don't want me then why don't you leave?"

"Maybe it's not about you anymore, maybe I like helping people."

She laughs at him. They both know why he's stuck around this long, both know his words for the lie they are. "Go find another cop to shadow then. Maybe your blonde will help you write a gripping mystery about the intricacies of flight attending."

"Then you'd be free to fuck the Brit at your leisure and come back to work and lose yourself again, right?"

She clenches her jaw. "Yeah maybe I would." It's a lie. She didn't even sleep with Colin, but she's not about to tell Castle that.

Castle moves closer and Beckett climbs up the back of the wall on her tiptoes to avoid touching him. "Was he good?" he whispers, eyes dipping down to look at her lips. "Did you let him touch you everywhere?" She swallows thickly, he's never spoken to her like this. "Did you let him touch you here?" his hand crosses the inch of space between them, palm flattening against her side right over where her largest scar lives, the one where they pried open her chest.

She gasps loudly at the touch, both unexpected and intimate and coming from him. No one else has touched her scar, no one who wasn't a medical professional, and his fingers on it feel like fire, like they're splitting her open again. She's furious though, furious that he can make her feel this way when she's so pissed and Colin, god she couldn't even stomach thinking about kissing him goodnight. Castle has ruined her.

"So what if I did," she finally says, voice too breathy to retain all of its anger, betraying what he's doing to her.

"It's not his to touch," Castle growls out, and then his palm is finding its way under her shirt and over her bare, marked skin and she gasps out loud, arching forward on instinct alone.

"And it's yours?" Her voice is a raspy whisper now, with his hands on her and her fury still pounding through her blood. She's burning.

"Ours." He stops, thumbs her scar like he owns it, presses closer to her still. "You died in front of me." He leans his face close to hers, almost glances across her lips but then his mouth is parked right next to her ear. "I can't stand the thought of anyone else touching you." She holds her breath as his hand raises higher, palms her left breast completely, squeezes through the cotton of her bra as she tries not to make a sound. She's angry and hurt and turned on and she doesn't know which direction to go with him so close to her. As his hand grabs at her, he shifts his hips suddenly, and she finds herself groaning loudly as the evidence of just how much he does still want her presses into her stomach.

"Castle," she gasps, sliding her left hand up the arm that's under her shirt, grabbing him around his bicep. He grinds his pelvis into her hips, taking from her with a groan into her hair at his name on her lips. This is wrong, so so wrong, to be doing this with all of the baggage between them, with the blondes and I love you's and scars and bullets and everything that matters but it's been too long without any kind of release between them and she finds herself unable to do anything but fight back this way, rise to his challenge, speak to him with her hands and her hips and her mouth if that's all she is able to give.

She buries her nose in the collar of his shirt as he opens his mouth against her neck, biting her where her hair covers, not being gentle. Her nose scrunches as she catches a whiff of that perfume again, it makes her want to vomit. "You smell like her," she grits out, jerking her face away from him. He holds her against the door with his hips, not allowing her to move away.

"Why do you care?" he breathes, pushing her bra up under her shirt so he can press his thumb against her nipple. She gasps again and it's not even fair to have this conversation with his hands on her naked skin, so she arches her hips against his in retaliation, watching his pupils dilate.

"Because she's not me." It's more than she intends to give away, but it has the desired effect.

"No one else is you." He captures her lips suddenly then, bruising in force, as he presses her head against the door, taking taking taking as she gives back, tongue fighting with his for control. Her fingers tangle in his shirt buttons as she tries to tug it off, she wants it away from her.

"Take this off," she commands, pulling at the flannel pattern but then he's gripping her wrist and pressing it against the door behind her.

"No."

She growls and sinks her teeth into his shoulder, through the shirt and through the smell of her, trying to leave a mark.

"Fuck Beckett," he swears at her, releasing her wrist to fist his hand into her hair and pull her mouth off of him.

"You're not hers."

She watches him watch her, both of them panting as she rolls her tongue around in her own mouth to get the taste of flannel off, and then he's widening his stance in front of her, letting the hand inside her shirt slide down to play with the button of her jeans.

"Am I yours?" He slides down her zipper and slips his hand inside of her pants before she can answer, splaying his wide palm across the entire front of her underwear. She can see the moment he feels how completely he has her, watches as he tries to reconcile his rationalization of why she's kept quiet all these months with how completely wet she is for him.

Her eyes slide shut as he moves his palm up, replaces it with two firm fingers, up and down, up and down, and then under the elastic, on her bare skin. He comes back up with it then, his fingers sticky with her, holds them in front of her face until she opens her eyes. Beckett's heart is pounding against her ribcage, eyes locked on his fingers, and then she's reaching out for them, wrapping her small hand around his large one, guiding him forward until he's close enough for her to take them into her mouth, swirling her tongue around them until she's erased any and all evidence of her reaction to him. He watches her without blinking until she's done, until she bites down on the sensitive pads on his skin, making him hiss and slide his hand free of her. His wet fingers trail against her cheek as he swipes a thumb across her bottom lip and presses his mouth to hers, searching out the taste she licked so thoroughly from his hand.

She can feel him groan when he finds it there, feels him grind forward again against her, and then he's roughly grabbing her by the sides and turning her around so her cheek is pressing against the unforgiving concrete of the wall just beside the door. Her hands are locked in his behind her back, the position screaming you're under arrest, and she wants to struggle, fight against this submission, but his nose is in her hair again, and no matter how angry either of them are, she trusts him.

"Castle, what are you doing?" she breathes against the wall, cheek cold and voice dark.

"I don't know, I don't know," he rasps against her neck, face in her hair. He releases her hands but she doesn't turn around, instead using one to brace herself against the wall and the other to reach behind for his hip, pull him into her. This is easier when she's not looking at him. "I want to make you forget him," he breathes into her ear as he presses his hips into her backside of his own volition now, jerky and uncontrolled.

"Only if I can make you forget her." It's a deal struck then, a loophole, an excuse to get frantic in this supply closet, because then he's reaching between her legs to shove her jeans down and she's clawing weakly at the wall because they're really doing this.

He spins her around again once she kicks a leg out of her pants, and she's glad for it because if she's going to be making him forget, she wants him to remember her face. Her thigh is draped over his hip in a second, her underwear pushed to the side and then his fingers are everywhere, on her, inside of her, slippery hot friction and she never wants him to stop. His pants unzip with a loud halting sound, she's going too fast but nothing is fast enough and then he's in her hand, hard and thick and then oh he's pushing inside of her and she doesn't know how she's supposed to keep herself together.

Their panting breaths mingle as their lips only barely touch, it's too quick, too uncoordinated to kiss without knocking teeth so they just breathe, moan, pant, gasp, live in each other's exhalations, spiraling higher and higher until he suddenly moves away from her, slides out from between her legs and she's gasping out his name trying to get him back to her because she doesn't know why he stopped, but then he's pressing the entire slippery hard length of himself against her clit and rubbing and she knocks her head back against the wall at the sensation. They don't have a condom but he's not about to stop and thank god he has more sense than her right now because it's not even something she was thinking about. Her mind is a flurry of yes yes yes and mine mine mine as she feels him tensing against her sharply, but she's not quite there yet, just needs a second more…

"Wait Castle," she gasps, arching her hips up sharply into his, twisting them into tight little circles against him, but he's moving the wrong way and so she shoves her own hand between her legs, her two middle fingers finding the perfect spot and rubbing furiously, eyes watching him as he watches her, watching him as his hand copies her path on his own body, closes her eyes as she suddenly breaks apart, and then he's swatting away her fingers and putting himself back against her, finishing her off and then she can feel him hot and sticky against her stomach as he lets out a sob of release against her neck, mouth sucking hard enough to leave a mark.

They both drape around each other against the wall as they come down, hips refusing to still for more time than is probably necessary, but it feels too good, and god she doesn't know how they're going to come back from this. When he finally does step back, he hands her a roll of paper towels that materialize from who knows where (convenience of a supply closet, she guesses) and then turns around to let her clean herself up. It's so quiet in the tiny room, their previous anger dissipating thickly, a kind of heavy satisfaction left in its wake. Satisfaction and confusion.

She's done dressing first because he's taking his time or he wants her to leave so he can collect himself, she's not sure which, but she can't bring herself to just go. So instead she takes one tentative step forward, lays an open palm on his shoulder, lets her index finger slide across the spot where he'll have an angry bite mark, she's sure.

"I didn't let him touch me," she whispers, a gift. I'm yours, if you'll have me.

She doesn't wait for his reply, just opens the door quickly and backs her way into the hallway, smoothing her hair down as she does.

She'll wait for him, now.