Disclaimer: The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

The powdered sugar is going up his nose and it tickles, but he's already voted this the greatest doughnut in history. The pinnacle in the Pantheon of Doughnuts. A doughnut built for two: you start on opposite sides and meet in the sweet, sweet middle. Your lips and your teeth and your tongues, all arriving at once. His and hers, hers and his.

Until he has to sneeze. There's no way he's sneezing when they're like this, when her perfect mouth is on his for the first time, even better—softer, warmer, more sensual—than he'd imagined in the hundreds (yes, hundreds) of dreams he's had about her.

And so he lets go, just lets go of the doughnut and thus of her, and flings himself to one side in what he hopes is the vicinity of the sink. He's trying to cover his nose with one hand while half-blindly reaching for a dishtowel with the other. It works: the cloth, applied to his face just in time, not only muffles his explosive ah-choo! but traps the sugar-dusted mist that his nose expels. He feels as if he's dislocated his neck, but it was worth it.

When he finishes cleaning off his face and washing his hands he turns back to Beckett, who's standing just where she had been, holding the half-eaten doughnut. The instant her eyes meet his, she loses it, laughing so hard that she collapses against the counter. "Bless you," she says, and laughs all over again.

"Way to kill the mood, Beckett," he says primly.

"Oh, you did that all on your own, Castle." She straightens up and takes a bite of the doughnut. "You want the rest of this?"

"Definitely. Especially if you feed it to me."

She walks—stalks, maybe—back to him. "Open wide."

God almighty, she said it again. Twice in three minutes or whatever it's been. He has no concept of time at present. He opens wide, and has just enough neural firing in reserve to be able to capture her wrist. He holds, all at once, her look, her finger, and the doughnut—the last two in his mouth. It's impossible to chew, so he just sucks, hard, and swirls his tongue around and around her finger. When he thinks he might be approaching the choking point on the doughnut, he pulls her hand away without releasing it, and swallows. "Hell of a doughnut," he says.

And then she stuns him by leaning forward and kissing him so erotically, profoundly, completely—a kiss that is simultaneously filthy and sweetly tender—that when she stops he almost passes out.

"I had to get that out of my system," she says, and beams.

His chest is heaving; many parts of him are on high alert. Eventually he regains his power of speech, which had temporarily relocated to an inaccessible part of his brain. "What? Oh. I was really, really hoping that meant that you want me in your system, not out of it."

"I do, Castle," she insists while retreating to her stool, placing a physical and emotional barrier between them. "My whole system, bloodstream, everything. But I need to talk to you first. Just wanted a kiss to remember you by while I do that."

"Won't I be right there?" He looks befuddled. "You can see me. So you don't need to remember me."

She, however, looks very serious. "Oh, but I do." She briefly disappears from view while she picks something up from the floor. The duffle bag again; she drops it to her lap. "I was hoping we could get in the big-deal pool that you told me about for an entire week. I brought a suit."

A suit? He's going to see her in A BATHING SUIT? On the very same day that she swam into view—good one, Rick, he tells himself—in her motorcycle gear? A bathing suit is the only garment that could possibly equal that. Wait, what if hers is one of those long-legged ones that Olympics swimmers wear? That cover up so much skin? She couldn't be that cruel, could she? She's wildly competitive, though. Maybe she wants to race him.

"Castle?"

"Huh?"

"You all right? You look as if you've been hit by a meteor or something."

"No. Fine, I'm fine." Except for the talking part. Why do they have to talk? She's always telling him he talks too much, and now she wants him to talk? When he definitely wants not to? At all. Still, there's the prospect of the bathing suit. That could make up for a lot.

"Is there a place where I could change?"

"Sure. Yes." He's trying not to stare, or fantasize too much. Yes, she could change right here. Here would be the perfect place. She needn't bother with the suit, whatever it is. They could skinny dip. "Uh, the guest room, would that be all right? I can show you to the guest room. Do you need a towel? I can get you a towel Or you could take one from the guest bath. It's attached. The bathroom I mean, not the towel. The towel isn't attached to anything. Except maybe the bar, it's hanging over a bar."

"That sounds fine. But I'm sure you have towels made of unborn organic cotton in there and I can use some old beach towel. You have any of those?"

"Yes. Not old, but beach. I'll get you one."

He walks her upstairs to the guest room—correction, suite, which is practically as big as her apartment. "Thanks. I'll meet you at the pool, okay?"

"You can find it?"

"Yes, Castle, I'm pretty sure I can. There's a compass in my phone if I get lost."

"Okay. See you." See a lot of you, a whole lot of you, please God.

She's got him flustered, and he's so adorable. Like a little boy. And sexy, incredibly, overwhelmingly sexy. The two should be mutually exclusive, but they're not. Not in him. And who's she kidding? She's every bit as flustered as he is; she's just better at covering it up. Years of being a cop have helped her with that. She takes off her boots, then peels off her leather pants—and she's so hot in them that peel is what she has to do—and drapes them over the back of a chair. Next, her tee shirt, bra, and panties, which she folds and places on the seat of the chair. She takes the suit from her bag, holds it up to give it a once over, and puts it on. Is it all right? What does it say, exactly? Does it matter? What matters is what she'll say, exactly.

The edge of the bed is luring her. She's feeling a little unsteady. Unsteady because she's really falling for him. No, fallen. She's already fallen in a way she never has before and never will again. She's trying to calm down before she goes to the pool, prepare herself for what needs to be said. She starts to hum. Humming has always helped her, ever since she was a preschooler on the playground with older, bigger kids who were a little scary. She's so proud of her independence, and she should be. Self-sufficiency is great and admirable; still, it doesn't mean it's terrible to lean on someone. That's a good thing, to let someone in. Let him in. A great thing. Wow. That does it. Humming leads to singing, soft singing.

Ready to fly, but before I take
Another step
Would you catch me if I fall for you?
'cause I'm falling,
I'm falling, I'm falling.

She stops, her hand pressing down wide over her heart. She can let herself go. She can.

I'm so used to standing.
So used to being on my own.

Any minute now she'll be ready. Right? This is right, isn't it?

It feels like I'm losing control.
I'll take another step
If you catch me when I fall for you.

Time to go. If she knows Castle, and she does, he'll have been conjuring hideous scenes while she's been up here, wondering why she's taken so long. She electrocuted herself when she turned on the bathroom light. She had an allergic to the doughnut, fainted, hit her head and is unconscious. She's changed her mind. She's left.

Nope. None of the above. She's right here. She runs down the stairs, two at a time, and makes her way to the pool, intentionally letting the door slam so he'll know she's on her way. After all, he needs a moment to prepare, too.

He sees her coming down the path. Oh, Botticelli, he thinks; you died too soon. If you'd just hung on another 500 years, 501, you'd have thrown out your painting of Venus and started all over again. Beckett on the half shell. Holy shit. That's no Olympic long-legged asexual suit, it's a microscopic bikini. Very few little spandexes had to gave up their lives for that bathing suit. He'd gladly give up his, if this were the last thing he'd be permitted to see on Earth.

"Hi, Castle."

"That's the smallest suit I've ever seen." Not what he'd had in mind to say to her, but he's sort of out of his mind. Very much out, very, very much.

"Is that a complaint?"

"No. Oh, no no no no."

"Don't you have a smaller bathing suit than that?"

Than what? He doesn't know what he's wearing. It could be chaps and a sheepskin vest, or a tuxedo. Maybe his pajamas. He has no memory of it, so he looks down. Oh, right trunks. With porpoises on them. "Yeah," he says looking up again, "but only to swim laps."

"That's what I'm gonna do. Swim laps, before we talk."

Well, thank God. Maybe he'll come up with something more polysyllabic if they hit the water first. "Want me to do laps?"

"With me? Yes. But I want you to change into a smaller bathing suit first."

"You do?"

"Seems fair, don't you think?"

"Okay. Back in a minute."

But he's not back in a minute. It takes a lot more than a minute, waaaaaaay more than a minute, for him to bring himself under control. He cannot appear in his fire-engine red Speedos with a hard-on like this. He runs through several remedies in his playbook before one works. Fire ants. He shudders. He's good to go in the water now.

When he gets outside Beckett has her back to him. It's getting towards sunset, and she's looking out at the ocean, her long shadow stretching out across the terrace. God, she has a beautiful back. And backside. Better not to look. Better to swim laps. "Hey, Beckett!" he calls from the other side of the pool. "Are we racing, or what?"

She spins around when she hears his voice. Are we racing? Racing? What's racing is her heart. Can he see it? It must be visible even from where he's standing. Her heart is about to explode through her bikini. Not unlike the way he might be exploding out of those Speedos. Sweet Jesus, does he have any idea? Of course he has. All men do. But he wouldn't be bragging, he'd be telling the truth. The God's honest truth. "Oh, yeah, we're racing."

"For what?"

"What?"

"What are we racing for, Beckett? There has to be a prize."

The prize is you, you idiot, she does not say. "I win, I get to drive your Ferrari."

"I win, I get to ride your motorcycle. Sitting behind you. Holding on to you."

"You're on, buster. Ten laps?"

He sniffs. "Baby stuff. Twenty." He points to the diving board. "We'll start at that end."

"Fine," she says, sauntering towards it, then slipping into the water. "And Castle? Be careful jumping in. You might lose that suit."

"Plenty holding it up, Beckett."

That deserves a reaction, but she's afraid of what she'll say or worse, do, so she's quiet, and squeezes her eyes shut. "Ready? On a count of three, go."

They're both fine and powerful swimmers. He's easily in the lead at first, but she has greater endurance, and by lap fifteen she's caught up to him. They're side by side, stroke for stroke. After eighteen she pulls in front; when she makes the turn at nineteen she realizes that she's half a length ahead of him. Shit. She wants him to win. Wants to have him pressing hard and sweaty against her back, his hands locked around her waist, and the motorcycle roaring against her thighs. But if she lets him win now, it'll be obvious. So she swims as fast as she can to the finish.

She's a little out of breath, but he's worse. They're both hanging on to the tiled edge, pressing their foreheads against it. "Great job," he wheezes. "Let me know when you want the car."

"Will do."

"You gonna take a victory lap, Kate?"

He called her Kate. He never calls her Kate. "Not a chance. Besides. I have to talk to you." She inhales as deeply as she can, and finds the courage to look him in the eye. "I really have to talk to you, Rick."

TBC

A/N I took some license with the song in this chapter, too—Leela James's "Fall for You"—since it was released in 2014, but it seemed perfect for the situation. Thank you, mobazan27, for putting me on to it.