Treacherous:

Put your lips close to mine

As long as they don't touch;

Out of focus, eye to eye

Till the gravity's too much.

And I'll do anything you say,

If you say it with your hands;

And I'd be smart to walk away

But you're quicksand.

Of course they could go a day without any kind of physical contact. Its not like they spend all day in each other's arms… they aren't even dating for God's sake! This was bound to be an easy bet to win, an easy 50 bucks.

When Beckett got to work, Esposito and Ryan were already there and she knew from a text message she had received that Castle was on his way. They had been up late the night before, looking through their two victims' case files, trying to find the link they knew existed between them. During their extensive research, they had taken a food break during which, due to their prolonged period of concentration, they succeeded in acting like hormonal teenagers. Castle and Beckett had participated in innocent flirting over Thai food, Beckett reaching over the table to take some of the Pad Thai from his take-out box. He grabbed her hand to push her away but instead of letting her go, he held onto it and leant over until their faces were mere inches away.

"No, no, Detective. I don't share…" he whispered. All the air seemed to leave her as his breath washed over her face. Her eyes focused on his lips, unwillingly, but she did not seem to be able to look away. All too soon, he was pulling away and she was left on her side of the table, slightly bent onto it, mouth hanging open, eyes fixed.

After this incident and several others similar to it, Ryan and Esposito came up with The Bet. The terms of The Bet were that Castle and Beckett had to go one full day without touching. If they did touch, they were to each give the boys $50 and the same was valid if they did manage; they would each win $50. Without thinking too much of it, Beckett agreed, thinking it would be a good way to earn some easy money and prove to the boys that she was not "addicted" to Castle.

About half way through the day, she was rethinking her claim. When he had handed her her coffee upon arrival, she had longed for the brush of fingers she had gotten used to; when they had sat on the edge of her desk to look a the murder board, looking for any kind of a clue, they had not leant into each other, neither shoulders nor knees touching. All day, she had yearned for some kind of physical connection between them and, when she had slid her chair slightly closer to him to try and feel some of his warmth, she realized how dependant on him she was.

Around 6 o'clock, the two found themselves in the break room making coffee before getting back to work. The tension between them was surprising, neither of them having ever realized their need for the other on a daily basis. It was true that Castle had been away for several days in the past because of meetings or book tours, but the terms that had been set upon them here were different. He was there and they were together but they couldn't be together like they had gotten used to over the years. Now, they needed each other.

They found themselves edging closer and closer together as they talked about the case. Soon, they were by the coffee machine, almost facing each other, feet less than an inch apart, arms so close they could feel the static between their bodies. As Castle poured their coffee, Beckett followed his movements, committing every detail of him to memory. She followed his hand's movement as he handed her the cup and, as she reached for it, their fingers almost brush together. She looks up at him and finds his eyes on hers. As the handover takes place, the tension between them continues to build until they are mere inches away from each other, the coffee long forgotten, having been set on the counter.

Their feet were bumping (which doesn't count, the shoes are allowed to touch…); their chests were grazing mere millimetres away from each other in such a way that if one were to breathe particularly deeply, they would collide; their foreheads may as well have been touching; their lips were hovering closer than they ever had before, just waiting for something to push them together. Out of focus, eye to eye, and before long, they fell together, lips colliding fiercely, taken by the need, the longing, the gravity.

Before she could catch up with what was happening, his hands were on her back, at her neck, pulling her closer than possible, making up for the day's lack of contact, taking them to a whole new level. And she knew that she was his, body, mind and soul, anything his hands begged her to do, she would; anything his eyes asked of her, she would submit to.

Despite her foggy mind, she managed to realize for a fleeting moment that they were in the precinct's break room, relieving the tension that had built up between them for four long years. She put her hands to his chest and, with all the will power she managed to accumulate, pushed him away. Their bodies drifted apart from their feet to their shoulders but their lips stayed connected for longer. They could not seem to break away despite their best efforts, both quicksand to the other.

When, finally, they came apart flushed, they looked around themselves to find Ryan and Esposito standing at the door, rubbing their thumbs and forefingers together, huge grins on their faces (it was later determined that the smile was there entirely there because of the money they had won).

I can't decide if it's a choice

Getting swept away;

I hear the sound of my own voice,

Asking you to stay.

And all we are is skin and bone,

Trained to get along;

Forever going with the flow

But you're friction.

An hour later, both Castle and Beckett were looking at the clock every few seconds, wondering if it was all right to call it a night. Ryan had gone home to his new wife and Esposito could no longer be called useful (he had been playing Minesweeper on his computer for the past 20 minutes instead of doing his paperwork). The two of them had managed to stay away from each other since the incident in the break room but now they were tired, bored and impatient. It was time to leave.

At 7:04, Beckett scraped her seat back, getting up to put on her coat. Upon hearing the sound, both Castle and Esposito looked up at her and, understanding that they were both free to go, they too got up and got ready to leave. Castle and Beckett's eyes locked, both understanding that they needed to talk. They rushed to the elevator as Esposito went to get something he had forgotten in the viewing room. They found themselves alone in the elevator, shoulders bumping, hands curling together, making up for the day's lack of contact.

"So…" he initiated.

"My place, or yours?" she asked, succinctly.

"Yours."

So later that night, they found themselves sitting on her couch after having eaten takeout from Remy's. They each had a glass half full of wine set on the table in front of them and their bodies were angled together. She had her left foot tucked under her and her right arm lying on the back of the couch. His fingers were grazing over her forearm, writing stories all over it. They had been sitting in silence for quite some time now, neither knowing what to do with their new, progressed relationship. If they were both being perfectly honest, they would rather have skipped right past this awkward moment to get to the more… fun part.

But they couldn't.

"What are you thinking?" he asked her.

"Nothing…" she replied slowly, "I was wondering how things will be now. Everything will be so different." When she saw his worried face, she assured him. "Good different! Good different."

"Do you know how long I have been waiting for this? How long I have been dreaming of the moment we would finally get our acts together and just give in?" he smiled, remembering the past, thinking of the future. "When you showed up at the book launch party four years ago, you turned my life upside down and I just knew I couldn't let you get away. I was so bored with my life and you made it fun again. A few weeks after I started working with you, I was watching you interrogate a suspect and I saw a whole new side of you! And I think – and don't freak out about this because you must already know – I think that's when I fell in love with you."

He looked up at her face when he heard an intake of breath and saw her eyes transfixed on his, mouth slightly open in shock. He didn't note any (or much) panic in her eyes so he deemed it safe to keep going.

"From that moment, I knew I needed to stick around, whether it be to make you mine or just to be around you as much as I could. I would imagine a day when we would finally get together and we would finally dive into things together." As she recognized her own words from the previous year, she looked down, ashamed at her previous incapacity to notice him like she should have. "I imagined the day when we would get married, you would walk down the aisle with you father wearing a dress that would manage to stun me silent. I imagined the day you would give birth to our first child, a little girl with your eyes. I imagined the day when we would take a family holiday with our two children and Alexis – and Mother of course because I wouldn't have managed to get rid of her by then; we would take them to the beach somewhere and our son would take his first steps on the sand. I imagined the day when we would grow old together and watch our children grow up, our grandchildren be born. We would be old and grey, living together just outside of the city because we could never really leave it. We would live happily-ever-after-the-end."

As he finished, she took a breath. She couldn't decide if she was making the choice to get swept away or if it was just happening. For some reason, she wasn't afraid of his dreams. She could have imagined that she would have been terrified of a conversation like this one but she found herself playing out his version of their life together in her mind. She did, however, see one problem in his plan.

"I disagree." She stated bluntly. When he heard her words, he could have cried. He had just poured his heart out to her and she was just turning him down. Just like that. However, when he heard the rest of her statement, he started glowing with pride. "We will have two sons, not a daughter and then a son."

"We'll see about that." He rivalled with a grin on his face. She surprised him when she took his face in her hands and kissed him happily, finally letting herself fall. When they both needed air more than they needed the other, they stayed in each other's arms.

Too soon, he spoke up. "I should go…"

She heard the sound of her own voice, asking him to stay. "Don't go… if you can, if Alexis isn't waiting for you to get back, stay."

That was all either of them needed to fall together, lips searching, hands discovering… clothes flying as they made their way to the bedroom.

…

Later that night, they lay together in her bed, skin and bone. In that moment, that was all they were: skin and bone, trained to get along. To think that just 3 years ago, she wanted nothing more than to get rid of him. She had always followed the path she had laid out for herself, the flow she said she would fall into. She wanted to be the first female Chief Justice, so she went to Stanford Law; she wanted to avenge her mother's killer, she went into the Academy; she didn't want to be defined by her mother's death, she stopped looking for answers. But look at her now.

When Castle had appeared in her life out of the blue, he was her friction, sending her on paths she didn't necessarily want to follow, that she never even thought about following. He took her out of her comport zone. She reopened her mother's case, she co-founded a charity in Joanna Beckett's name, she opened herself up to love, she became a muse (she didn't get much of a choice when it came to that)…

And now, she loved the life he had created for her. She loved his teasing and testing of her boundaries. She loved the fact he didn't give up on her when she shut him out, time after time, year after year. She loved that he always knew when to make her smile, when to let her be, when to let her know that she was wrong, when she was going too far. She loved that he knew her so well. She loved that he was her best friend, her partner and now her… what? Her boyfriend? Her lover? No… still her partner, but now in every possible sense of the word. She just loved him.

Whoa… where did that come from?! Love? Surely not? But yes, she loved him; loved his smile, loved his laugh, loved his mind, loved his hands, loved everything about him. She loved him. Kate Houghton Beckett loved Richard Edgar Castle. It seemed so simple, so normal. And she was so proud of her realization that she had to do something about it.

She reached over to trace the features of his face. She started writing words across his forehead, his lips, his eyelids, down his neck, on his collarbone, down the centre of his chest, on his shoulder. Anywhere she could find, she traced the words I love you. Somewhere along the way, she felt his breathing speed up and his muscles tighten. When she looked up from where she was writing her novel, she saw that his eyes were open and looking right at her.

"You love me?" he whispered. That he had realized what she was tracing had surprised her but she answered without missing a beat.

"Of course I love you, you silly man. Don't you know?" Her eyes shone bright in the darkness of the night like headlights.

He knew the night would be sleepless.