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

For the first time in months she's hungry, really hungry. Eat-like-a-piggy hungry. But she doesn't want to get out of bed. For the first time ever her bed is occupied by the man of her dreams. He's been the man of her dreams, literally in her dreams, for longer than she'd been willing to acknowledge, but now he's here in the flesh. Oh, that flesh. He's sprawled out on his stomach, naked, so his delectable flesh is available. What could it hurt to sample it a little, especially since she's hungry? Except that hungry as she is for him, she needs fuel. She's got the strength for a little predatory, preparatory nibble, though, so she slides out from under the hand that's between her shoulder blades, and turns on to her side. He's still asleep, and she takes the hand and kisses the knuckles, then seals her mouth around his index finger and starts sucking and teasing with her tongue. When she adds teeth, his eyes open halfway.

"This," he says groggily, stretching his left leg until he can hook his heel around her calf, "is the best wake-up ever."

She releases his finger, and licks her lips. "You taste so good."

"I do, huh?"

"I could eat you up."

"You did. Around midnight, I think. I loved it."

"Shut up."

"Not what you said then."

If she had the strength, she'd swat him. "Food, Castle. I need food. And coffee."

"Okay, then, let's get up. And since you have food in your house we don't even have to get dressed. We can have breakfast in our casual attire."

"I dunno, Castle. I might have a black tie around here somewhere. Make things a little more formal."

"Ties, plural. I distinctly remember two ties, but they weren't black. I'm pretty sure they ended up on the floor."

"Mmmph." She rolls away from him and stands up, pausing for a moment by the edge of the bed to see if she's still capable of walking. When she's almost reached the kitchen a large, warm arm circles her waist.

"Gotcha."

"You do. You got me."

"Good. And now we'll both get coffee."

At that very moment she sees it, a paper cup with a plastic lid, sitting on the counter. Her hand shoots out to grab it and finds it faintly warm, so it's been here for a while, but not very long. She stares in not-quite-muted terror at the yellow Post-it note that perches jauntily on top. "Lanie. Holy hell."

Castle peers over her shoulder. "What's that?"

"Nothing. Old coffee. I'm throwing it away. We'll make a pot."

She's peeled off both the lid and the note and is trying to pour the tepid contents into her sink when he stops her. "Where did that come from?"

"What? Oh. Nowhere." She can't finish because he's using his hand, which is much larger and stronger than hers, to tip the cup upright.

"Not nowhere. This wasn't there last night."

"Of course it was."

"Of course it wasn't."

"You just didn't notice it."

"Oh, I noticed everything, Kate. E-ve-ry-thing. If you got those ties and blindfolded me I bet I could describe everything in this room."

Her shoulders droop. He's right. He does notice everything, and there's no point in trying to cover this up. "Fine," she says in resignation. "It was Lanie. She left it here for me this morning. Since we were asleep–God, I hope we were asleep–I didn't hear her knock and she must have used her key to get in."

"This morning?" His voice is as squeaky as a 13-year-old boy's.

"Yeah," she mumbles. "She's been coming by in the morning with coffee on her way to work."

His immediate thought is that that used to be his job, bringing her coffee every morning, only at work, not here. After all that they've been through, the progress that they've made, he wants to try to keep everything open, even if he's still concerned that she's frail. Though there was nothing frail about her when she–. He shakes his head; he's not going to forget that for a while, if ever. He puts his arm around her again, and pulls her close. "Last night you said that Lanie's been stopping by every evening. But she's been stopping by in the morning, too?" He feels her nod against his chest, and he drops his voice a little. "Is there a reason why she's been doing that?"

"I think you know, Castle."

"I guess I can guess." Maybe she's waiting for him to guess out loud, because she doesn't say a word. Or maybe, and far more likely, she wants him to change the subject. "I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to press." She's mute and unmoving for so long that he's afraid that he stepped over the line. And just as he's about to apologize again, she turns in his embrace to face him.

"That's good," she says solemnly, before her entire face opens into a grin. "Because after all the sex we had last night and this morning I don't think my body could take it if you pressed anything."

He can't help it: he laughs, and so does she. They laugh so hard that they have to hold on to each other to keep from falling over. When they finally stop he says, "I know there's a Post-it on there. Are you going to let me read it?"

She blushes a little and holds it up in front of him. "I think we're busted, Castle."

"I think you're right. Hey, she's not going to come back for a surprise visit, is she?"

"No."

"Good, then we can stay naked. I'm going to make us breakfast."

Halfway through their scrambled eggs they go back to bed, but not to eat breakfast. That's the danger, and the delight, of cooking while you're naked.

It's much later, when they're soaking in the tub together in the middle of the afternoon, that he dares to broach the subject. "Um, about Lanie."

Kate abruptly stops running her nails across his thighs. "What about her?"

"I saw her."

"What?" She moves so fast that some of the water sloshes onto the floor. "You saw her this morning?"

"No, no, no. I absolutely did not. You know when I was telling you last night about having lunch with the boys and them telling me you were on vacation? What I didn't say is that I also saw Lanie."

"Oh, that. I know you did."

"You do?"

"You didn't figure that out, Mister I Notice Everything? When I said I was sorry about being so skinny and that Lanie told me I looked awful, you said that she told you that you looked like a blowfish."

"I did? really? I didn't want you to know that I'd talked to her."

"Well, you let the cat out of the bag. The doctor out of the bag."

"I must have been suffering from sexheimer's when I confessed that to you. It's a very rare condition, temporary brain freeze brought on by mind-boggling sex. I've never had it before."

"You haven't, huh?"

"Never." He runs the soapy tip of his finger down her spine.

"I knew before you said it, anyway. She told me that she ran into you in Jumping Java and that she said you should call me."

"You know what I think?"

"What?"

"I think we owe Lanie a lot."

"She's always been pushing for us, Castle."

"Hey," he protests, splashing water at her. "I never needed a push."

"Maybe not. But I guess I did." She snakes her arm behind his head. "We should get out. Look at my fingers. I'm getting all pruny."

"Speaking of pruny, I'm starving. Let's go get dinner."

"Dinner? It's only three o'clock. No one's serving dinner yet."

He slides up the back of the tub, climbs out, grabs two towels, and offers her his hand. "C'mon. Dinnertime. We didn't have lunch and we never finished breakfast. And this time we really will get dressed. I know where we can get a sensational dinner."

"Right now?"

"Yup."

"Okay, but your clothes? You want to stop at your place and change?"

He'd shaken out his pants and shirts earlier and hung them across the back of the chair in her bedroom. "I hardly wore them, you know, before you tore them off me. Just a few wrinkles, and they don't matter to me if they don't matter to you."

She's standing next to her chest of drawers in a pale blue bra and tiny, lacy panties, and he's exercising more self-control than he's needed in years to keep his hands off her. "So I don't have to wear anything fancy?"

"Nope. Whatever you like. I like what you have on. Love it."

"I'm sure you do. But I'm going to add a little something." A little something being a blue-and-white-striped top, blue cropped pants, and sandals. "I'll be ready in a sec. Just have to put on my makeup."

"Don't," he says, stopping her by cupping her shoulder with his hand. "I love seeing you in your native state."

"But"–

"But what? You're beautiful the way you are. I promise that all the other diners and the entire wait staff will agree with me. And the owner, too." He tugs on her elbow. "Let's go."

Ten minutes later, when they're both buckled up in the front seat of his car and he's driving due east, she turns her head suspiciously towards him. "Where exactly is this fabled eating establishment, anyway, that we have to drive there?"

"You'll love it."

"Yeah, so you said. Where is it?"

"It's in the Hamptons. It's called my house, and we can stay there as long as we like. It's Saturday afternoon, so the traffic will be light and we can stop at the farm stand near me for whatever you like. I've got everything else you could want in the freezers."

"Freezers? Plural?"

"Yeah," he says, taking one hand off the wheel and slapping his belly. "The one that's half of the fridge and a separate one that I bought a month ago. I've been eating a lot this summer and I didn't want to keep making a lot of trips to restock. We'll be there in less than two hours."

When she wakes up the next morning, he's staring at her. "Morning," he says, and kisses her under her left eye. "I love that tiny mole."

"Morning."

"You have a week of vacation left, right?"

"Right."

"Stay."

"What?"

"Stay."

"Here?"

"Yes."

She thinks about the previous twelve hours: skinny dipping in the pool; a dinner of grilled chicken, fresh roasted corn, local tomatoes, and homemade peach ice cream; wading in the ocean in the moonlight, and making love in his bed with the windows wide open and the sea breeze blowing over them. That's all it takes: she rolls on top of him. "Yes. Yes. Yes."

That night they call Lanie. "Thanks for being Cupid," Kate says.

"Cupid? Last time I looked, honey, he was a chubby baby boy."

"Well, you're my personal Cupid, Lane, and you're definitely not a boy."

Castle takes the phone from her. "Don't listen to her. You're Aphrodite."

"That's more like it," the doctor says. When she arrives at the morgue the next morning there are two dozen peach roses in a vase on her desk, with a card attached. It's inscribed, "With love from your unsecret secret admirers."

For the next week, Castle checks in with Alexis every day, but that's it. He doesn't call anyone else. Kate uses her phone only once, to let the Captain know that she'll be returning to work on Monday. She follows that up by texting him a selfie–that does not include Castle–so that he can see how much healthier she looks than she had at the end of July.

They leave the property twice: to buy her a few clothes and a bathing suit ("totally unnecessary," he grumbles), and to get lobster rolls from a seafood shack near Montauk. That's it. They don't want or need to be anywhere else, or see anyone else.

"I wish I didn't have to go back," she says on Sunday evening, as they walk out of the house to his car.

"At least you're not going back alone."

"I know. Thanks for driving me to the city, Castle."

"I had to."

"No, you didn't."

"I had to because I'm going back to work tomorrow, too. With you. Told Montgomery I didn't have enough research after all." He's just closed the trunk and she looms up next to him.

"Cm'ere," she says roughly, grabbing him by the shirttail and kissing him so hard that he topples against the car. "Have you ever had sex in a Mercedes?"

"No."

"Good. Unlock the door."

It's so late by the time they get to Manhattan that he parks in front of her building and spends the night in her apartment rather than going home to Broome Street. He doesn't hear her alarm when it goes off, and she doesn't wake him. She showers quickly and dresses in the bathroom with the door closed. At 7:15 she leaves her key on her pillow next to him, silently blows him a kiss, and tiptoes out.

Espo and Ryan are genuinely happy to see her, if a little awkward in their greeting. They bring her up to speed on an open case that's stalled, and tell her that they're waiting on a warrant that may not come. Nothing has changed, except underneath. Underneath and inside, where everything matters, everything is different. For the first time in a very long time, she has something that she'd given up on finding. Happiness.

The three of them are standing idly at the murder board when the elevator door opens and Castle steps out, carrying four cups of coffee and a box of doughnuts. He hasn't had a doughnut since he walked through Beckett's door ten days ago, but he'll have one this morning. It's cop food, and he's an almost-cop again, in love with a cop who loves him. He's happier than he's ever been.

"Well, well," she says, with an expression of surprise that could fool anyone but him. "Look who the cat dragged in."

Castle raises an eyebrow, his counterpoint to her eye-roll. "Help yourselves, guys," he says, pointing to the coffee and doughnuts that he's set on her desk. "I think Beckett means, 'Look who the Kate dragged in.' I know she must have missed me, 'cause I see my chair's still here."

TBC

A/N Thank you to everyone who's reading. To all of you who are facing the terrifying storms in the Southeast or the horrific fires out West, you have all my hopes that you are strong and safe.