Rule #1 of the 12th precinct's homicide division: Never, ever leave food on Beckett's desk, unless you are through with it.

I do NOT own Castle.

Lanie had just gotten back from lunch, and since she had some time left on her lunch break plus the fact that she couldn't bare to part with her double chocolate caramel sundae, she brought it back to work with her.

She had intended to eat it in her small office, and savor every last delicious drop of it, but Perlmutter dashed that dream when he shoved a file in her face the minute she walked into the morgue.

"Take this up to homicide, will you? Your friends seem to think they absolutely need it right now, don't they understand that I do have other bodies to tend to?" He continued on but Lanie had figured out long ago that when he went off on one of this many, many rants, it was just best to walk away. So she took the file, and her sundae, and headed up to pay her friends in the homicide division a visit.

By the time she stepped out of the elevator on the homicide floor, there was a decent sized dent in her sundae.

"Hey Lain! Mind giving us a hand here?" Esposito called from his position by the murder board as he and Ryan tried to fix one of the wheels that had fallen off, only they couldn't keep it steady and figure out how the wheel had come off at the same time.

"Sure." She said, going to place her ice cream down on her boyfriend's desk, only to see it covered in various files and papers. Turning slightly, she realized Ryan's was the same way so she walked over and put it on Beckett's desk before walking over to help the two detectives with the murder board.

Realizing that they were disturbing the other officers who were actually trying to get some work done, Lanie, Ryan, and Esposito moved the broken murder board into the break room so they wouldn't be in the way.

What Lanie didn't know is that you never, ever leave food on Beckett's desk, unless you are through with it.

A few minutes after they had moved into the break room, Beckett came from the Captain's office and sat down at her desk, not even thinking twice before pulling the ice cream closer to her and taking a bite of the delicious chocolate treat.

She was only able to take a few bites before Karpowski was calling her over to look at something Beckett had asked her to search for.

While Beckett was busy with Karpowski, Castle came back from having lunch with Alexis and seeing that Beckett was busy, he took a seat at her desk to wait for her. His eyes were instantly drawn to the ice cream, and since he didn't have time to have dessert earlier, he carefully pulled it towards him and took a bite.

Castle worked on eating the sundae for a few minutes before Beckett came back to her desk, promptly stealing the ice cream from him and started eating it again.

He let her have a few bites before stealing it back, and they continued sharing it until it was nearly gone.

There was one spoonful left and they were arguing over who would get it when Karpowski got their attention by saying their main suspect had been spotted at one of his regular haunts and the writer and detective duo hurried out of the precinct to catch the guy.

The doors of the elevator had just shut when Lanie came out of the break room, having finally helped the boys fix the murder board, only to find that there was nothing but a few drops of her sundae left.

"What the hell? Alright, which one of you idiots ate my ice cream?"

Esposito came up to her and saw the nearly empty bowl on Beckett's desk.

"Oh you left it on Beckett's desk?"

"Yeah? Because yours was too crowded, I didn't want it to accidentally drip on anything important."

"You shouldn't have done that. Castle brings food stuff in here all the time, and Beckett started doing it too, so they automatically assume that anything left on the desk is something one of them brought and they have no problem stealing each others food, so it will be gone in no time."

"They steal each others food, huh?"

"All the time."

"That's so adorable!" Lanie said, already planning to use her next lunch break to leave food on Beckett's desk and watch what happens.