"Castle why are you-?"

"SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH." He made faces, several of them. All varying in their degree of both intensity and laughability. He mimed something, waggled his fingers and blew bubbles and she watched, perfectly content to let him act it out of his system.

Then she spoke.

"Castle, I am not shushing for a fish." Castle waved at her to quieten down. "A VERY BAD FISH!" She yelled hoping it would hear her with it's teenie tiny fish ears, if fish had ears.

Ugh, and now she was genuinely wondering if they did have ears or just auditory canals, or some ability to sense movement through water like fish radar. She glared at her own brain -if that was possible- berating herself for her weird train of thought, the Castle-esq mind leap into oblivion.

At the same time she told herself to shut up. Shut up right now, because one slip of the tongue, one murmured question that got Castle's imagination fired up and they would be up all night doing research.

And not the whipped cream, duct tape, blindfold good kind of research.

The dull laptop in the bed as he reads latin names and repeats inanities, kind of research. No thank you, just no.

"Kate, jeeze, don't antagonise him." Castle groaned and pulled her towards him, "And please please don't shoot him." He begged turning her and shhhing again as he walked her towards his office.

"Shoot it? I'm not going to shoot it, it's a fish." She was really starting to hate the word fish and she threw her hands in the air. "I'm also not going to read him his rights or put handcuffs on -"

"You wouldn't be able to find any, they would have to be really really small and..." He trailed off when he felt the burn of a Beckett glare simmering over his skin. "Never mind."

He shut up, smiled and waited for her to do the same. She didn't.

He held out his hand and waited, he sighed and flexed his fingers and waited some more and after a few seconds, that seemed like an eternity, she relented. Sliding her palm against his, her thumb claiming the little space over the soft warm skin of his wrist.

"Take me to the beast." She groaned, "And then to bed, I'm tired."

He could tell, she always got grouchy grumbly when she was tired, her words a little freer and more enlightening.

"I'm sorry." He huffed into her hair, his arm weaving around her shoulder until she was snugly attached to his side.

"Don't be." She shook her head, "It's my fault. I thought it would be..." Kate shook her head. "I bought the damn thing."

He grimaced, "Not...it was sweet."

"Eh." She grumbled into his shoulder.

"You never told me why a fish, Kate?" He whispered into her hair as they reached the door to his office.

Kate turned in his arms, her head falling to his chest again, resting there as she got comfortable. Her arms slipped through his until she was wrapped around him, as close as she could get.

"It was supposed to be symbolic." She said softly, mumbling into his chest, huffing out a laugh at how well that had turned out.

"Symbolic?" Castle pressed, wanting the story and the reassurance of her voice.

"This thing between us, it's alive and it's growing and moving and changing." She squeezed tight to his waist as she looked up at him. A deep breath forcing the words free as she gave them over to him. "It's adapting like it's a living breathing entity."

He stared back, stunned and awed by her words. By her.

"It's beautiful and natural and quiet." She smiled, pinched him gently. "It's loud and it's real and it flows, changing all the time. It makes us better and more than we were before." She rose up to meet his lips, her eyes wide as she spoke, "It has a great big beating heart and life all it's own. A future spread out before it." She sighed softly as her forehead met his, "And I want it, you, all of it, so much, Castle, so-"

But he kissed her before she could say another word, holding her face almost reverently in his hands. Letting his body give back what her words had given him.

Love.

Mad love.

Crazy intense love.

And a little glimpse of what was waiting for them somewhere down the track.