A/N: Thank you for reading!
The toe of her shoe grazes his shin, somehow slips behind his leg and climbs the back of his calf chasing goosebumps up his spine, just as he sips at his drink.
Castle swallows wrong, the wine spurting down his throat, catching his tonsils and flicking out into his lungs. Her touch alone is enough of a shock that he coughs, starts in surprise but add in the wine and he loses all ability to be suave, and dribbles from the corner of his mouth.
Smooth!
Beckett drops her head, fingers touching her own face as if countering his messy mistake. She covers her own mouth, hiding her expression.
Clearing her throat she reaches, lifting a napkin to her lips in a barely-there swipe, tossing the cloth in his direction, eyes alight with something. Some indefinable thing that paints her face with lightness, her smile wide when she looks at him.
"Manners, Castle," she scolds.
The cloth hits him in the face.
He's still snorting past the lungful of liquid and unable to place blame right in her lap where it belongs for her crafty underhand (and under table) attack.
Indignant in his embarrassment he flushes, and, just as he presses his mouth to the napkin that grazed her own, their eyes lock.
It's immediate, surprising, almost as bad as coughing past his last mouthful of that gorgeous new red wine, and yet more intense. An intimate flare of electricity bounces between them, charged and wanting, it finds a home in the way they stare. It finds a home in the way they always look at each other, in that back and forth eruption of unspoken emotion.
From the sultry fall of wavy hair by her ears, to the heavy sweep of lashes that do nothing to hide her expression, Castle can feel it crackle between them.
His mouth closes, the cough dying off to a deep, stuttered inhalation and his lips glance the silken cloth. There is imagined warmth in the material at his lips and he allows himself to believe it's the lingering remnants of her breath. The possibility of a kiss trapped there in a napkin.
One she threw his way.
It's too much with her right there, watching every movement, wetting her lips, waiting for his comeback.
He's got nothing.
The faint aroma of her perfume assails his senses, her foot slides, higher, and his eyes flutter closed.
If his hair doesn't stand on end it's only because his entire system is focused on two things. The first being the brush of her foot low over his achilles and the second not throwing himself across the table and kissing her breathless.
There is laughter and he opens his eyes, smiles through it as best he can, covers his day dreaming with a few deep breaths.
His daughter echoes Beckett's sentiment, mumbling about how embarrassingly juvenile her father's behavior at the table is. Castle doesn't comment, allows her dented heart to shield itself in whatever way it needs, choosing to poke his tongue out at her instead.
She doesn't laugh, his too adult for her own good daughter, but she does smile, keeps eating, joins in. It's enough to set his heart at ease.
Martha remains silent through some unknown grace of god, perhaps, again, it's the magic of the wine. He really should invest in a few more bottles of that stuff. Maybe a case or two given the way everyone is responding to it.
His mother doesn't speak, but the burn of her eyes on his skin is almost as intense as Beckett's. She reads him better than anyone.
A glance in her direction earns him a smile, a wide toothy grin of glee because he's being teased and taunted and he and Beckett are playing off of one another in the way that he's tried a thousand times to explain and never quite gotten right. You have to see it to believe it, believe in it, and now she has.
She gives him a look. A nod, a brief if theatrical flick of her eyes in Beckett's direction.
She approves!
His mom approves of the vibrant, kind and reserved, woman sitting at the table, poking at his own ability to laugh at himself. Something inside him comes to life at that, equally terrified and delighted by what it means.
His detective however stays silent. Thoroughly engrossed in her china patterns, idly swirly her cutlery through the noodles, chewing - though more on her lip than the food before her - and trailing one finger down the long stem of her wine glass.
She sighs.
And her foot's gone just as quickly as it came.
Castle narrows his eyes, tries to work out exactly what is afoot here (so to speak) and raises the food to his lips with a great deal of trepidation.
After-all snorting wine is ungentlemanly but choking on his food and dying before he gets to kiss her (again) would be downright tragic.
They proceed through the main course with laughter and remembrance.
"Chuck Norris?" Alexis eyes her father in disbelief. "Really?"
"What else was I supposed to call him?" Beckett laughs, but her eyes fall on him softly, "He just kept hitting the guy, and I had to re-wrap his hands because he kept fiddling with the bandages."
"He was going to shoot you." Castle defends, his voice a little tighter than it should be, he accidentally breaks the mood and could kick himself for it.
Beckett sighs, her smile falling away. Swallowing hard, fist to the very center of her chest, she taps the back of his hand with one finger before nudging it firmly towards his glass. She clinks the side of his with the side of her own and offers up a toast.
His mother and daughter avert their eyes, though her words are loud enough for them all to hear.
"To what we do;" she clinks his glass, "partner!"
The mood mellows a little as they eat. The duck is crispy and succulent and though he teases his mother for certain lacking fundamentals when it comes to cooking, in areas such as this she excels.
Castle's glad he gets to share it, share the enormity and the silly incidentals of his family with her.
Beckett shifts in her seat, rolls her shoulders and mutters something under her breath about backache and uncomfortable negotiating chairs.
He knows this day has taken a toll on her that perhaps even she hasn't fully grasped. Though the memory of the look she gave him, hands fisted in his shirt on the cold floor of the bank, belays that thought immediately.
They're both startlingly aware of what there is to be lost. What lies between them, untouched, untamed. Unspoken.
Her fingers flutter down her side and she moves as though there's an ache in her ribs, maybe the scar, maybe not. Her fingers clench and unfurl against her shirt and she shifts seeking relief.
Castle watches her move and slowly lose the stress and strain that has held her up, held her together for most of the evening. She wriggles, stamps her feet a little to get comfy, leaning into the elbows she throws out unapologetically onto the table.
She catches him staring, grins at him over the palm of her hand, fingers laced through the hair that falls across her cheek.
Caught up, more than a little confused, Castle smiles back.
Silence stretches as they share the food, dishes passing back and forth with ease.
"I really don't think you'll like it." Beckett teases, pulling a bowl towards herself, scooping out a second spoonful of the spicy vegetables before he's even had one. She pretends to keep it for herself, setting the dish just out of his reach.
"So, your plan is to eat it all so I don't have to suffer?"
She nods around a mouthful of something that makes her moan. Castle's suddenly grateful he splurged a little when it came to his cutlery. If he'd been frugal the force of his grip, enticed and multiplied by the sounds she makes, would have surely bent the knife in half.
They move through dinner at a leisurely pace that has him half convinced he imagined her touches, but every so often when he looks up her eyes are on him.
She'll smile and her expression will remain soft, tender even. It's almost the look she gave him in the bank, almost a declaration of intent in those wide eyes and silent smiles, only now less fraught. Less flooded with relief.
At those moments, when their eyes catch across his table, he can't bring himself to pretend he didn't feel her touch him. At those moments it takes everything in him not to reach out and claim her hand.
She watches him and he knows it. Follows the movement of his fork and spoon from dishes she has already sampled. She stares with curiosity, leans closer and tracks the movement of cutlery from his table to his lips and Castle resists all urges to comment.
Until he can't.
"Something you want, detective?" he ponders suggestively, thrusting yet another side dish in her direction so she's forced to grab for it.
Their fingers brush and Beckett startles out of her reverie.
She seeks out his eyes and finds the entire table watching her. A laugh accompanies the faint blush to her cheeks and it holds his attention longer than it should in front of his family.
She blinks, presses her lips together and sighs out her response. "Yes."
The third time she touches him there is no mistaking it at all.