They had left the precinct two minutes earlier and were already stuck in a major northbound traffic jam on Broadway. Beckett drummed her fingers on the wheel, slowly growing impatient. She longed for her Harley Soft Tail to bypass the morning rush hour. For the first time in a long while she wished she could be a little more like Nikki Heat. She looked over to Castle and found him playing with his iPhone. She wondered what he would do all day if he didn't have his gadgets.

Another 10 minutes later they had turned into West 96th Street and onto Amsterdam, hoping to avoid traffic, but unfortunately still stuck. Esposito and Ryan were three blocks ahead of them and Lanie had already called in from the scene. Beckett debated whether she should talk to Castle. She was still mad at him but she was so bored that she would probably fall asleep in the next minutes if nothing happened. She longed for the coffee she had left in the break room machine, disregarded and forgotten.

"What are you doing over there, Castle?" she asked and tried to sound casual. "Tweeting the deep fried Twinkie?" Ugh. She hadn't intended to go there, it was really not her business, but now she couldn't take it back. Thankfully he didn't pick her up on it.

"Nah, Meredith's in Europe anyway, hitting it off with some Italian producer. I was just playing Ninja Ropes. Wanna try?" he offered, his smile as bright as always.

"I'm driving" she answered, glad that he hadn't made some kind of innuendo.

"We could always swap, you know?" he proposed, his eyes wide in anticipation when she glanced over. "If you'd let me drive, you could try out my new apps!"

Beckett rolled her eyes, but couldn't quite suppress a grin. "In your dreams, Castle."

He looked at her in a way that made her blush and turn to her side mirror. His voice was a playful low growl when he spoke. "In my dreams neither of us is driving. Although we are in a car sometimes."

Beckett's face was now as red as a tomato. She should have just let him play with his stupid phone, she mused. To bridge the silence between them she turned her radio on, only to have it play 'The Only Exception' by Paramore.

…I've always lived like this
Keeping a comfortable distance
And up until now I had sworn to myself
That I'm content with loneliness
Cause none of it was ever worth the risk
But you are the only exception
You are the only exception…

As the words filled the air in her Crown Vic, she kept her eyes fixed to the road until she couldn't take it anymore. She waited another half minute before she switched the station, only to end up listening to Rihanna's 'Kisses don't lie'. She shut the music off completely and let silence fall over them again.

"Oh why, Miss Beckett, I guess this shall mean that my lady can't bear to be reminded of our sweet embrace" Castle teased and she thoroughly checked her side mirror again. "You don't have to hide it, it's all over your face."

"Well, who would like to be reminded of the lowest point of their live?" she returned, slightly surprised that her brain hadn't stopped working.

"If that was your lowest point, detective, I can promise that there are …lower… points yet to come" he answered huskily, making sure she understood exactly what he meant. Her heart thumped loud in her chest and her throat turned dry. He was making her crazy and there was no way out. They were stuck in her car, a good 10 minutes from their crime scene, driving north on Amsterdam at a crawling speed. If he was going to keep this up, she was going to self-combust any minute. And he hadn't even touched her.

"Spontaneous self-combustion."

"What?" asked Beckett incredulously.

"Spontaneous human combustion, or self-combustion, whatever you wanna call it." Lanie repeated from her position low on the ground, crouched over the victim, completely covered by a white cloth. Whoever it had been, there wasn't much left. The tarmac around the white cloth was black with ashes and burnt things – a lot of trash, clothes, what must have been a bike…

"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Never heard of that, Beckett? People going up in flames for no apparent reason?" Esposito answered on Lanie's behalf, which Castle noted absently. He'd also noted the way Esposito sometimes looked at Lanie and he wondered if Beckett had noticed it, too. If she had, she was probably going to have a nice 'Don't-you-dare-hurt-her' talk with him. And with Lanie. They were all so close to each other, like family. They would protect each other.

"So basically you're saying you don't know what caused this?" Beckett said and pulled Castle out of his daydreams.

"Not yet, anyway" said Lanie "But Castle, don't even get started on your alien theories. I'm gonna find a reasonable explanation and if I don't I'm gonna make one up. Don't want you going bananas over someone beaming you up or injecting weird things, again. Next time you have a mark on your neck it better be a hickey." Castle tried to look insulted. Beckett ignored Lanie's remark and her own thoughts about hickeys and stayed in detective mode.

"TOD?"

"Please, Kate, although I like to think I'm Superwoman sometimes, I'm not. We don't even have cause, how are we gonna have time of death? As soon as I get him or her to the morgue, I'll be able to tell you more. Usual processes like checking the lividity don't work much when you're a fire victim." Lanie motioned over to where Ryan was standing. "Parking officer who found her will probably be able to give you an approx time window, though. But that's your job, detective." She smirked and Castle observed Esposito, who looked at Lanie as if to say 'To me you are Superwoman, querida'.

"So I guess I won't even ask if we got an ID." Beckett said, either oblivious to the eye sex right in front of her, or not letting on. She turned to Esposito and raised an eyebrow, signaling him to brief her on the information he'd collected so far. "Parking officer found our vic at 8:45, he's still in shock. Ryan's getting his statement right now."

"Any witnesses?"
He glimpsed at his note pad. "Not so far, but uniforms are canvassing the neighborhood."
"All right. I'll talk to First On Scene, but I guess there's not much we can do here. Wrap it up and get back to the precinct."
"K, boss" said Esposito and turned to walk over to his partner.

Beckett turned around for Castle and found him a couple feet away, kneeling in front of what she suspected to be some kind of evidence or burnt trash. "What have you got, Castle?" she asked and walked over.

"Found something" he answered and the grin in his voice promised no good. When she moved around him, she saw that he was pointing at a burnt piece of hot pink lace. At least he's crime scene trained enough not to touch it, she mused.

"I'd guess it's a thong." Castle grinned and then his face turned inquisitive. "Do you wear thongs, Beckett?" She shot him an indignant stare and signaled over to one of the CSU guys to bag the piece of lace.

"Do you want to know what I think?" Castle jumped up and they walked along the parking spots towards the street where a uni jotted something down in her notebook.

"No, I don't. But that's not going to stop you, is it?"
"I think our Mr. Crisp was hot for a girl with a pink thong."
Beckett rolled her eyes. "Really, Castle? Usually you're better than this. What has gotten into you today that you're so out of form?" she asked and already regretted it before he spoke a word.

"I think it's your hair. Ever since you've let it grow it keeps distracting me" he said, honestly, and it took all of her willpower not to slip out of detective mode and into…whatever mode he put her in when he talked like that. Beckett stopped her mind from wandering as fast as she'd initiated it. Castle also seemed to have changed moods as he said "But it would be such a cool story, don't you think? This stalker guy is hot for a girl but she doesn't want him so out of passion and longing he spontaneously goes up in flames."

Beckett thought about her own passion and longing and how she'd been about to go up in flames just a couple of minutes ago. And back was the wandering. She had to stop this somehow, because if Castle were to find out what his presence did to her…only god knows what he'd do.

"I could use it in my next Nikki Heat, you know, it'd make a good plot, stalker and all … I'd call it 'Burning Heat'."

"Burning Heat? Really, Castle? And a stalker? You already wrote about a stalker in your last book. You're starting to repeat yourself." Beckett looked into his eyes and decided that two could play this game. "Is your research not profitable anymore?" she said and moved closer to him, purposely biting her lips. "Am I not inspiring enough?" She watched his eyes wander to her lips and darken. "You could stalk a stalker for a change. Or someone more appropriate, maybe. Like a garbage truck driver."

"But I really prefer stalking you" he whispered, his face dangerously close. "Besides, I don't actually follow you around for research."

And with that he turned and left her standing at the exit of the parking lot, the purpose of her walking there forgotten, her mind on pink lacy thongs, self-combustion and other things related to 'Heat'.

Note: Before you start asking, I don't actually know what I'm talking about when I use all these street names and stuff. It's just google maps, wikipedia and 'Naked Heat'. I don't intend to focus that much on the case, but I needed it anyway to lay the ground work of my story. If something bugs you, please tell me!

Oh and it's funny because this chapter is a lot like one of the 'Towers that Crumble' chapters here on , but I swear I wrote this before I read Father Vengeance's fan fic. :) And BTW, his story's way better than mine.^^

Leave a comment, please? Don't make me beg for it. You know you get cyber cookies if you review, right?

*Lina*