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

She doesn't want him to come to the precinct? She might as well just shoot him, or stab him in the heart, or drown him in bad gin. His fork has stopped mid-trajectory, and juice is dripping onto his lap from a piece of steak. "What? Why?"

"Oh, Castle," she says, putting her corn on her plate and reaching her hand across the table to caress his cheek. "You look like I just stole your puppy."

"It's a hell of a lot worse than grand theft canine, Beckett. You don't want me there?"

"Of course I want you there, you lunatic. Haven't you figured out by now that I want you everywhere? That's the problem, the wanting. We've known each other for two years, but everything totally changed last night."

"Because we had sex."

"Oh, it was a lot more than having sex."

"I know. I know it was."

"So now our life, or at least my life, is split in two in a very new way: before yesterday and after yesterday. It's going to take me a little while to—to everything. Not to cry when you look at me so sweetly, not to have to run to the ladies room because your hand is on my knee and I'm about to have an orgasm at my desk."

"You'd have an orgasm if I put my hand on your knee?" He looks both stunned and thrilled, and has no reaction at all when the piece of steak falls off his fork and lands on his thigh.

"Be serious."

"I am serious. I take your orgasms very seriously. So you could really come if I put my hand on your knee?"

"I might," she says, letting the tiniest smile raise the corner of her lip.

"Can we try it?"

"Here, yeah, but not at the precinct. Stay where you are, Castle. This is what I mean. At this point I can barely control myself around you, and if I interpret the evidence correctly, I'm pretty sure that the same is true for you."

"Yeah, why do you think I showed up at work this morning? Five minutes after you'd gone I already needed to see you."

"If it weren't so adorable I'd have throttled you. I was so unprepared, and the boys were right there and—. Geez, Castle."

"Good improv with the air-conditioning story. My mother would have been impressed."

"Thank you. And take your hand off my knee this instant, you perv."

"Can't help it, Kate. You're the one who drew the filthy picture."

"See? There you go again. Look, I'm not saying never come back to the Twelfth, I'm saying please stay away for one week. I think in that time I can learn to stop acting like a hormonal teenager, at least in the work place. Just the rest of this week. That's only four more days, okay?"

"I don't think your homicideless spell will last that long, do you? And you promised to call me when a dead body came your way."

"Which is why you, the master storyteller," she says, picking up her ear of corn and pointing it at him, "are going to come up with a very good, very credible explanation for your absence the rest of this week."

"So I can't even casually drop by and give you a cup of coffee?"

"You may not."

"Even if I bring a box of doughnuts for everyone, and you just happen to be there?"

"No." She looks teasingly at him. "You liked that welcome-back doughnut, didn't you? It really made you feel like a cop?"

"Yes," he says, with the best leer in his arsenal, "it did indeed make me feel like a cop. And I think you have ample proof of my being able to wield a nightstick."

"Oh, God, Castle." But she can't help laughing as she says it.

Together they clear off the table, load the dishwasher, and put away the leftovers. She wants to check her emails, so he strips down to his shorts, brushes his teeth, and gets into bed to wait for her. He hears her rattling around in the bathroom and is beginning to wonder what she's up to when she emerges, dressed in nothing but one of his tee shirts.

"You took off your make-up."

"Of course I did," she says, folding up her insanely long legs as she curls into his side.

"Thank you," he whispers into her ear.

"You're welcome," she whispers into his shoulder, and kisses his bicep. "Castle?"

"Mm hmm?"

"I'm so sleepy."

"Then go to sleep."

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry, Kate."

"I think you wore me out."

"Sorry."

"Don't be."

"Okay."

"'kay."

He feels her relax against him, melt into him. Her breathing evens out, and slows a little. He looks at her. The truth is that she wore him out, too, but he's so wired that he can't sleep. She's in his bed. His heart. His brain. His lungs. Everything, everywhere. He watches her for a very long time. Once in a while she moves a little, adjusts, rearranges, but she never loses contact with his skin. If he were standing rather than lying down, it would level him. He's so wrapped up in her—the dream of her, the reality of her—and what has happened so slowly and then so quickly that he can't sort anything out. Except that he's finally aware that he's been waiting for this without entirely knowing it. Hoping is one thing, fantasizing, but actually waiting? That's different, and yes, it's exactly what he's been doing. A song he's heard bubbles up in his brain, as if it had been written for this moment. Maybe it had.

I've waited a hundred years,
But I'd wait a million more for you.
Nothing prepared me for
What the privilege of being yours would do

If I had only felt the warmth within your touch,
If I had only seen how you smile when you blush,
Or how you curl your lip when you concentrate enough.
Well, I would have known
What I was living for all along.

She's right. He has to stay away from the precinct for a while; he needs to be professional, act professional, too. But she'll be leaving for work in a few hours and he has to have an excuse ready. He does a lot of good thinking in the tub, but he doesn't want to wake her, so he tiptoes out of the room and goes upstairs to the guest bath. While he's running the water he gets giddy remembering that she'd stood in there this morning, showering. It's as if she's here with him, even though she's really downstairs in an Egyptian cotton cocoon.

Just before his fingertips become deeply pruny, he settles on a story. It's good; it will work. He lets the water out of the tub and rinses off with the hand-held shower. When he slides into bed a few minutes later she's on her side, one hand fisted under her chin. The tee shirt has ridden up her rib cage, and he can see the outer curve of her right breast. He has to force himself not to wake her up.

When he wakes up he smells coffee. He gropes for his phone on the nightstand: 6:05? How is that possible? He tosses off the covers and trots to the kitchen, where Kate is standing at the counter with a mug.

"Morning, Castle. Want some coffee?"

"I want a hug and some coffee."

He gets both, and then she puts her mug in the sink. "I took a shower, but I have to go home for clean clothes."

"I'll drive you."

"Wearing that?" She nods at his boxers.

"It takes me less than a minute to put on jeans and a tee shirt."

"What about your hair?"

"It can wait 'til I get home."

"Wow, Castle, you'd do that for me? Go out without product in your hair?"

"I'd do anything for you, Kate."

"I appreciate that," she says, planting a kiss in the middle of his chest. "Does anything include a really good excuse for your not being in the precinct this week, since you announced your return only yesterday?"

"It does. I'll tell you in the car. And I'll wait for you to get dressed and then drive you to work." He was right: he reappears in a minute, dressed and carrying a pair of sneakers, and stops at the door to retrieve his car keys.

"I'll hold those," she says, grabbing them from his hand. "You tie your shoes."

When the elevator door opens to let them into the garage, she takes off ahead of him. "Hey!" he shouts.

"I'm driving," she says as she stands next to the Ferrari, clutching the keys. "I won that race, fair and square."

"Okay." When she slams on the brakes in front of her building, he estimates his heart rate is 200. "I'll stay down here," he says, Mr. Cool. The minute she walks into her lobby, he falls over on to the seat next to him. "Jesus, can she drive. I've never been so terrified." He hopes he can recover before she returns. Ah, there she is, pushing open the door. Does she have any idea what she looks like? Sex on feet, that's what. And the feet are inside shoes that make him light-headed, so high that they put every muscle, tendon, and sinew in her legs in high relief inside those pants that should be against the law in public. The same legs that were—

"Hey, Castle."

"Hey!"

"I'll get out three blocks before, okay? So no one sees me in your car."

"Uh huh."

"I'll tell the boys about your not coming in."

"Uh huh."

She's about to turn the key in the ignition but instead turns to him. "You all right, Castle?"

"Uh huh."

"You sure?"

"Uh huh. You look, you look really great. That's all. Just gonna miss you today."

"I'm gonna miss you, too." She leans over and kisses him. "But no more than one text an hour, right? We agreed."

"Uh huh." When she stops the car again his heart rate is probably 250.

She buys a coffee around the corner from the precinct, but still manages to get in just ahead of the boys. It's midmorning when Ryan says, "Where's Castle?"

"Oh, forgot to tell you. He called to tell me he won't be in the rest of the week."

"We scare him off already?" Espo asks, pleased with himself.

"More like Gina scared him. Apparently once they broke up again and she wasn't there to crack the whip, he wasn't as productive as he should have been and now he's behind schedule on his book." She picks up the coffee she'd made in the break room a few minutes earlier, takes a sip and a calming inhale. She has to be convincing. "Plus, she's making him go along on a book retreat in a camp in the Catskills so that he can—" she makes air quotes with her hands—" 'act as guide and mentor to young writers in whom Black Pawn is investing considerable resources'."

Espo cackles. "Camp? Castle is going camping? Like with mosquitoes and tents and latrines? Ain't gonna last a day."

"I don't think it's quite that primitive, but there is something that will drive him nuts."

"Yeah? What."

"No cell phones."

"A lot of those places have no service," Ryan says. "Too remote. Gonna be tough on him."

"It's worse than that," she says. "It's that Gina's forbidding them. Says they're too distracting. No electronic devices of any kind."

She's grateful that the phone rings then; even more grateful, though she's chagrined to admit it, that there's been a murder. She could really, really use the distraction. And she can tell Castle all about it over dinner.

Except there's not much to tell because the perp confesses on the spot. Not quite the spot, but almost—at the station, ten minutes after they haul him in. A little drug war fueled by a lot of macho swagger: one small-time strutting dealer bumping off another. She uses her four o'clock text to ask Castle to come to her place tonight; her five o'clock to say she'll be home by seven; her six o'clock to ask if he'd mind bringing Chinese food with him. They finish eating at eight; they're in bed five minutes later, but they don't go to sleep for a long time.

And so they manage to get through the week. They'd intended to go to the Hamptons for the weekend, but when a nor'easter comes barreling in and brings with it a forecast of three days of uninterrupted rain and wind, they decide to forego the beach. "This is a fantastic opportunity," he says. "We can stay home in bed for sixty hours."

"We can't stay in bed the whole time."

"Why not?"

"Because we should have some variety, Castle."

"Oh, I can you show you lots and lots of variety."

"Let's go out tonight."

"Are you asking me on a date, Beckett?"

"I am. To the movies."

"Can we sit in the back row and make out?"

"It's a first date, but okay."

"Can I try the thing with your knee? We'll be fully clothed."

"Maybe."

"So what movie are you taking me too, if I may be so bold?"

"I read in the paper that the Film Forum is showing a new print of The Quiet Man. I've only ever seen it on TV."

"You mean the John Ford Quiet Man? Shot in Ireland? John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara? I'm in."

They decide on the seven o'clock show. Partly because of the weather, the place is packed, so they have to sit in the next-to-last row rather than the last. And despite the fact that they're both very interested in the movie, they're somewhat more interested in each other, and when the lights come up they're still engaged in a deeply exploratory kiss.

"Castle?" says a surprised but familiar voice behind them. "Beckett?"

The guilty parties break apart, turn around, and find themselves looking into an alarmingly familiar pair of Irish eyes. "Ryan?"

TBC

A/N Thank you to reviewer mobazan27 for recommending the beautiful "Turning Page" (I hate the movie from which it comes, but love the song). It dates to 2011, but I've introduced it to this 2010 story: Castle probably knows a time-machine guy.