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

Oh, what she did was more than all right. Everything she did for the next however-long-it-was passed all right in the fast lane to perfect. More like beyond perfect. "May I ask you something personal, Kate?" he says afterwards, when she's curled against him, her head on his shoulder. "It's sexual."

"Considering that we're living together, and considering what we just did? I think you may."

Her breath against his skin is tantalizing. "You're so comfortable with your sexuality."

"So are you."

"True. Do you remember not long after we got together I wanted to do reverse cowgirl?"

"Yeah."

"And you—we—did."

"Yeah."

It feels as though she's tensing a little. "You said it felt fantastic."

"Yeah."

Huh. If all she's saying is "yeah," something's definitely bothering her. "Well, a few times since then I've tried to steer things that way and you've always taken another tack. What we did just now was a hell of a lot more adventurous, you know? So I'm just wondering if there was a problem with reverse cowgirl? If you're uncomfortable with something you'd say, wouldn't you?"

"It's stupid."

"Nothing you have to say is stupid. Especially about that."

"I could tell you loved it."

"So?"

"Okay, this isn't easy to say. It's—you know, in the past, I really liked it."

"In the past meaning with someone before me."

"Yeah."

"I do know that you had sex with guys before me, Beckett."

"Still."

"Go on."

"It did feel fantastic, Castle." She moves up so that she can look at him while she says this. "Best ever. Physically fantastic, but not emotionally."

He's puzzled. "Not emotionally? I'm not sure I know what you mean."

"For some reason in that position, even though I'm very flexible, I can't turn my head in a way that I'm able to see you, especially with you almost on your back. And no, I don't want to use a mirror. I really can't see your face at all, and I hate not being able to see at least some of your face when we're having sex. Especially your eyes."

Wow. "There must be other positions that are impossible—"

"Nope, that's the only one, because there's another reason, too. There's almost no body contact, aside from the obvious, and I want a lot of your skin on my skin." She pauses, takes a deep breath and asks tentatively, "Do you mind that I don't want to do reverse cowgirl, since you love it?"

"Are you kidding?" He kisses her neck, which is arched towards him. "Because you want to look at me? Because you want to have a lot of my skin on your skin? Why would I mind?"

She doesn't answer and he doesn't want to prod her, so he waits.

"I love sex, you know that. But until six months ago I didn't care all that much about eye contact, total body contact." She pauses again and moves a little higher on his chest. "But sex with you is unlike what I've experienced before. It's completely different. It's not just that it's fun and exciting and imaginative and passionate. It's that before you it was never truly intimate. I was afraid of it, of intimacy, and now I'm not. And I've never loved anyone the way I love you."

Now he's the one who's quiet, and she waits for him. "Kate," he whispers. "That is the greatest Christmas present I've ever gotten. Ever."

"Thank you," she whispers in return.

A few minutes later, when she thinks he he might be drifting off to sleep, she says, "Castle?"

"Mmhmm."

"Speaking of Christmas."

That's Pavlov's bell to him, and he's one hundred percent awake. "Yes?"

"I have to ask you a favor."

"Anything."

"You're not going to like it."

"I doubt that, but go ahead."

"Could we agree. Um, could be agree not to exchange presents? Just us, not your mother or Alexis or my father. I know that present-giving is one of your favorite things and you excel at it, you always get the perfect thing, but this is our first year. It's too stressful this first year. At least for me."

He hopes that she can't feel his heart crumpling beneath her. It's a wonder it's still beating. No presents? He can't give her any presents? He's already started buying them. All right. He'll put them away for another time. He can give her this. She's been a real trooper about everything else. He takes a moment to make sure he can speak in a properly light and accepting tone of voice. "Sure, we can do that. Absolutely. I understand. How about stockings though? Can I give you a stocking? I mean, can Santa?"

"Okay, but I'm writing him a letter to tell him that nothing in there can cost more than ten dollars."

"Geez, you drive a hard bargain."

"You drive pretty hard yourself." She laughs and slithers off him. "Good night, Castle."

"Hell of a good-night line, Beckett."

"I try."

On Sunday afternoon, all Thanksgiving leftovers having been consumed, he carries two cups coffee to the living room where she's reading on the sofa. "So," he says, rubbing his hands together after depositing the coffee on the table. "Time for me to get cracking. It's the twenty-fifth, exactly one month until Christmas. Wanna help with the lights?"

She looks up from her book. "What, put them up? Sure? I mean where? Around the door?"

"No, no. We have to choose the lights for this year. For all over."

"I'm guessing we can't just go get some?"

"Correct. We have to decide whether we want white ones or colored ones. Or a color scheme. Or several schemes. Blinking or not blinking? Old-fashioned or LED? Fairy lights? Twinkling? Bubbling? What sizes? How bright?"

"Don't you already have them?"

"Of course, but we might want something different. The world of Christmas lights is constantly evolving, you know. Things that were unimaginable a year ago could be available now."

"Too bad Darwin's not still alive," she says drily. "He'd be very interested in this aspect of evolution."

"Are you making a mockery of lights?"

"Certainly not."

"That's a relief. Darwin would be fascinated, Beckett. I bet even he couldn't have foreseen it, since he died only two years after the introduction of the long-life light bulb."

She's constantly surprised at the breadth of his knowledge, but this really is pretty astonishing. "How do you even know that?"

"Well, Thomas Edison got that patent in 1880 and Darwin died in 1882, so it's basic math." He shrugs. "Two years."

Not at all what she meant, but she'll leave it. This is one of those moments she'll tuck in her memory, and bring out to consider and to smile about. Tell their kids, "Listen to this. Daddy knows everything." Wait, what? No. Kids? "Um, sure. I'll help. We can look at what you have already and then make a list."

"I know what we have already. Everything's inventoried in my computer."

"Of course it is. But have you tested them to see if they all work?"

"Good point."

And so they go to his storage unit in the basement, bring up the boxes—many, many boxes, each with a label describing in minute detail what's inside—and plug in every single string of lights. After that they hit the stores. The enterprise takes six hours. "I need a drink," she says when she comes through the door and collapses onto the nearest chair.

"You don't want to start hanging them?" he asks, trying not to be disappointed.

"Maybe tomorrow night, after work?"

"That's fine. Tomorrow is fine."

Except he's always put up the lights the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Compromise, he tell himself. One day late won't be bad. They have dinner, finishing with a few Mayflower gingerbread cookies that he was ecstatic to have found in the fridge—ones he'd made on the spur of the moment an hour before the turkey had to go in the oven on Thursday. "Ooh, these remind me. I have to start thinking about Christmas cookie containers."

"We have about a hundred of those Glad storage thingies in one of the bottom cupboards."

"Oh, no. These are cookies that I make as presents. You can't give them in something like that. No, I have to decide what kind I want to use this year: bags, tins, or boxes."

She leans across the kitchen island until their noses are almost touching. "I don't know why you don't start working on Christmas on October first, Castle."

"Oh, I couldn't!" His hand has involuntarily covered his heart. "I need October to get ready for Hallowe'en."

"Right. Where was my brain?"

A few days later she gets out of bed and he doesn't stir. He'd been up late writing, and she doesn't want to wake him. She creeps out of their bedroom and goes upstairs to shower; since Alexis is living in the Columbia dorm, her bathroom is almost always empty. Later, when she's dressed for work and standing in the kitchen, drinking coffee and scanning the front page of The Times, she hears footsteps. It's Castle, looking half-asleep as he wanders in and points to the coffee pot.

"Could you just pour that directly into my mouth, please?"

"It'll burn your tongue."

"Don't care."

"I do. I love your tongue."

"Way to wake a guy up," he says, kissing her on the lips taking the mug from her hand. "Thank you," he adds after a healthy gulp.

He's wearing boxers that are covered in reindeer with candy-cane-striped umbrellas on their antlers. "I like your shorts," she says.

"Raining reindeer? Me, too. Probably in my top ten." He takes another gulp. "You know I'm not coming in today, right? Gotta finish that chapter."

"I do. That's fine. I'll see you tonight."

"If there's a body drop, you'll call me, won't you?"

"Sure. Especially if it's death by sharpened candy cane."

"Ooh, that would be good. Do you think anyone's ever done that?"

"Dunno, Castle. Maybe you could research it. Gotta run."

In the car to the precinct she realizes how foolish her suggestion had been. He's probably researching candy-cane murders right now. Off and on throughout the day, which is mercifully quiet, she thinks about his holiday boxers. She hasn't admitted it to him, but she looks forward every day to the parade of Christmas underwear. Maybe she could reciprocate, just a little? It's worth checking out. On the way home she stops in her favorite lingerie shop and finds a small section that a sign identifies as "seasonal attire." She homes in on a pair of white bikinis trimmed in red lace. If underwear could talk, she says to herself, they'd be screaming, "Buy me! Buy me!" The saleswoman wraps them in tissue paper and nestles them in a tiny bag. "Thank you," Kate says, wishing that it were already bedtime.

When Castle says he's too tired to cook, she suggests ordering in.

"How about trying the new little Australian place around the corner?"

"There's an Australian restaurant in the neighborhood? What's the menu like?"

"I have no idea. As long as it's not kangaroo or koala, I'm fine with it."

They go, happily eat salt-and-pepper squid, washed down with Australian beer, and walk home as fast as possible in sleet that had not been forecast. "I'm freezing," she says as she hangs up her wet coat. "Want to warm up in the tub with me?"

"Were Donner and Blitzen originally known as Dunder and Blixem?"

Another thing to tell their kids: "Daddy knows what Santa's reindeer names used to be." She bites her lip. "I take it that's a yes, Castle?"

"Yes. A definite yes. An invitation to bathe with you always merits a yes."

One deliciously scented bubble bath and a little bit of fooling around later, she dawdles so that when he's in bed she can make an entrance from the bathroom. "You all through in here?" she calls, knowing that he is but wanting to make sure that he looks her way.

"Yup. All done."

She turns off the light and sashays into their room, dressed in a tiny silk camisole and her new seasonally-appropriate bikinis. Written across the front in bright green script is the offer: HELP YOURSELF, SANTA.

"Thought I might get some Christmas underwear, too," she says, standing by her side of the bed, right hip jutting out. "Whatcha think, Santa?"

"Oh," he says, eyes dancing. "I thought I was full after all that shrimp, but I was wrong. Are you dessert?"

"I am. Help yourself."

TBC

A/N Thank you all for the lovely response to the first chapter. It's way too early for Christmas, but ….