AN: I was listening to One Republic's Stop and Stare, which is where the title of this story comes from, and I couldn't help myself...that scene at the end of the first episode...I just love it.

P.s. I don't own the One Republic song OR anything Castle related...I realized today that I've been forgetting to include disclaimers in my stories (oops!) so here you go, disclaimer for all my previous work: Castle is not mine...sadly.

She was something.

He had known it from the beginning.

Something new, something different, something special, something other...

Something other than all the things he was used to, all the women he was used to.

Maybe it was because their introduction had been in the form of a police badge shoved under his nose.

Maybe it was because she refused to succumb to his charm.

Maybe it was because he could tell that she wanted him anyway.

Maybe it was because she fought for her victims with a fierceness that sparked something inside of him that he hadn't known was there.

Maybe it was because she was so guarded- her walls are extremely well fortified- but he still managed to climb over them every once in a while.

Maybe it was because for every one time he managed to knock her off balance, she tripped him up three times more.

Maybe it was because she balanced him in a way that left him wondering why he had never before noticed how off balance he was.

Maybe it was because she made him want to write, if only to get every detail of her down onto paper- a place where she could not evade him. She left him with a voracious appetite to turn everything about her into words. Some of the things he wrote about her were never intended for a publisher; they were simply homages to the mess of exquisite contradictions that was her.

Maybe it was because he had never wanted to peel back anyone's layers as much as he did hers.

Maybe it was because he let her peel back his layers in return.

But whatever the reason was, he had known ever since the last night of their first case that their story was nowhere near finished.

She leaned up to his ear, fingers just barely brushing his chest, thighs pressing deliciously into his. Her lips, scant centimeters from his ear. Her cheek, close enough to his that he could feel the static crackle between their skin, sparking where the ends of her hair grazed his jaw. Her words-

"You have no idea..."

-they caressed his ear and ricocheted through his being, preceded by an icy flare of goosebumps and succeeded by a shiver of searing heat.

He looked back on that night now- those words- and acknowledged that she had been right.

He'd had no idea.

No idea that they could become what they were.

Together they were something he had never thought he could be, something...

They were more than he had ever expected when he'd strong-armed his way into her cases and her life via his friends in high places. So much more. And their story was still so far from done.

What extraordinary things could they become with the time that still stretched ahead of them?

AN: Ok so here it is...I'm thinking of doing another chapter, maybe Beckett's POV? Maybe a few more...maybe Ryan and Esposito's too...reviews- pretty please with a cherry on top! :)