Disclaimer: The wording is mine but the characters aren't

So we're starting to gear up to the undercover, therefore there will be case related information too.

Daniels= their suspect

Stevens = a friend or someone willing to rat Daniels out

OOOOOOOOO

He ignored that and turned to the cashier.

"Excuse me, can you add two doughnuts to the order? One sprinkled, pink if you have it, and one oatmeal or wheat germ. The healthiest one you have."

She let out a laugh.

He looked at her in askance but she just shook her head.

With an attitude he was more than enough for tonight.

OOOOOOOOO

31.

"Hmmm," she opened her phone with one hand while she sipped at her coffee. Still too hot to drink. "Just got a text from Ryan. They say they found something in Steven's financials."

"Really?" he hit the button for the fourth floor.

"Good work finding him, Castle."

He shrugged. "We still don't know if it'll lead to anything."

"Take the compliment, Castle. If Ryan said we found something, we did."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Smartass."

He gave her a cocky smile. "Just getting into character."

"I thought we decided we were going in as ourselves?"

"We are."

"So you're just channeling your inner jack ass?"

"Yes," he nodded. "Yes I am."

"Good." The back-light for their floor lit up. "Go show them who's boss."

A shit-eating grin broke out over his face before he made a small cough and got his expression under control. Seconds later his face was cold, arrogant and, she had to admit, a little sexy.

When the doors opened he didn't even hesitate but strode out ahead of her, his gait incorporating slightly more of a swagger than usual. His boot heels were loud on the beaten wood floors but his attitude screamed a whole lot louder.

"Hey there you guys are," Esposito looked like the cat that had a cream-coated canary.

"We were just trying to think of a way to lure the two of you out of the locker rooms." Ryan stood at his shoulder, playing with a file and a smirk.

Castle ignored them.

She took her cue from him and stalked past the two detectives as well. Up ahead Castle had slowed down as he got to her desk but completely bypassed his seat without a glance. Looks like he wasn't going to be going back to his own chair anytime soon, though that raised the question of where she was going to sit. Since he had ignored them, she got the full blast of Ryan and Esposito's expectant attention.

To taunt them, she deliberately didn't deny their unvoiced accusations.

Did they really think she and Castle had shut themselves in the locker rooms for almost an hour? Being a floor up, it was easy to take the elevator and bypass them on their quest for coffee, but she couldn't bring herself to believe that they hadn't gotten curious after ten minutes and come to snoop.

With their phones set to record and get proof for Lanie.

But apparently they had given them privacy. Go figure.

She kept her face even as she too continued on past, her only response to their unspoken comments and questions being to take a long draw from her coffee cup.

Castle, apparently getting used to being able to use both hands again, drew her chair out with one and absently tossed the bag of doughnuts at Ryan with the other.

"Bought you boys a present."

As he did yesterday, he settled himself into her chair. It hadn't taken her long into their partnership to admire that he sat tidily, if not quietly, beside her desk. He didn't seem to have the desire to spread himself beyond the boundaries of his seat inherent in most men. She supposed she had Martha to thank for that. But now his knees were at an angle, facing outwards, pushing against the sides of the chair. She couldn't sit in his lap like she had yesterday without falling.

"Your chair," he offered, patting his lap. His eyes were amused but his face was bland with the exception of a very Castle-like quirk of the eyebrow. A gauntlet if she ever saw one.

Showing her who's boss, huh?

Why was she stupid enough to say that? He just managed to bring out the playful in her. It had seemed right and natural at the time. Of course now she was regretting it. Or she could run with it.

"Trying to be polite?" she asked, swooping in close and dislodging her hair from behind her ears and screening their faces. He was doing pretty well, keeping his eyes focused on hers. She held his gaze, determined not to drop them to his lips.

"Not cute," she murmured in his ear, feeling the skin of his neck brush against her lips as they formed the words. She sat on his legs and then coolly kicked her legs over the side of her chair. She sat down sideways in his lap and looked at him.

He barely blinked as he rested one hand on her hip to support her there and the other on her knee.

"Damn straight."

She didn't move away from his hands but instead pushed him further by gently placing her index finger between her teeth. Her lips quirked up around her finger when she smirked at the way he allowed himself to be fixated. She figured he deserved that since his thumb had been rubbing back and forth along her hip incessantly since she sat down.

There was no way she was going to let herself fall off and had she not been determined to keep up their act, she would have told him where to put his hands. Namely to keep them to himself because there was a dangerous, sneaking familiarity in the feeling of his hands possessive on her hips. Even the little tremors in her stomach at this new level of contact couldn't detract from the suspicion this was how it was supposed to be.

She wasn't sure if they were approaching that line of theirs, or if they had blundered over it miles back and were still waiting for some sort of billboard.

She took it as an invitation to do a little exploring of her own.

"Hey!" Ryan's surprisingly whiny tone broke their attention. "Why do I get the pink one?"

Castle didn't even look up. "Because it matches your shirt today."

She let her laugh free and a shark-like grin broke over his face. "Did you boys have something you wanted to say?"

"Damn right I do," Esposito growled. "Dude! This isn't even a doughnut, it's a wheat germ bagel! You know I hate wheat germ."

He picked up her pen and tossed it at him. "Do I look like your personal nutritionist?"

Esposito drew himself up, shooting his partner a Did you see that? Son of a… look. Ryan just shook his head Bad idea man.

"So you said you found something?" she prompted, hopefully preventing an outburst. She didn't wait for a reply but let herself get distracted running her fingers over the stubble on Castle's face. It was still short, being only a day and a half worth's, but it wasn't soft. The friction made her fingertips tingle but there was something therapeutic about running her fingers lazily back and forth. Like stroking a very prickly cat.

"When we heard you talking about Stevens, we decided to run his financials again," Ryan volunteered, waving the file in one hand with his pink sprinkle doughnut over the thumb of his other.

Castle didn't look impressed but just listened silently, still watching her.

She enjoyed his attention but flickered her eyes to Ryan when he stopped. The poor guy looked pretty flustered. Beckett wondered if it was in response to being practically ignored or the way they had wrapped themselves around each other. She wasn't going to do anything about it though; this was Castle's game.

"And?" Castle barked, causing Ryan to flinch.

"Uh, we noticed almost weekly charges to his card for a motel in Queens." His gaze skittered to Esposito, who just nodded. "Made us curious what he was doing there so we contacted the owner."

Castle actually lifted his gaze and pinned him with an unfriendly stare. Ryan fidgeted, cutely desperate both to escape and for Castle's approval.

"The surveillance footage hasn't come in yet," he blurted out, "but we faxed through the headshots and the manager is pretty sure Stevens was there with our perp, Daniels', girlfriend. He said they've been regulars for about two months. He was pretty sure both she and Stevens were both there at the time of the murder."

"The whole time?"

"We're going to check the tapes to make sure," Esposito finally stepped in to save his partner. "We do know that if she was with Stevens, Daniels' alibi just fell apart."

Castle grunted. "Did you check other financials for the same times?"

They looked blank and she tightened her grip on his chin so that he looked down at her. He leaned forward and rubbed her nose with his briefly.

The soft caress almost had her eyes falling closed but she kept them open and focused on his own. Mentally she felt like letting off some party-poppers. Maybe not fireworks-they might be a little too much. But she did it. She balanced her job with this insane…whatever this was- with Castle. Maybe they could do this.

"If Daniels wasn't with his girlfriend, who was he with?"

"He was with our vic and a baseball bat," she said flatly, not breaking her attitude even though she still had an image of Lanie in a cheerleading outfit breaking out her pompoms prancing in her head..

"Not every week," he countered.

She pursed her lips thoughtfully.

"Look into it," she threw the words at her colleagues. "Card charges and regular withdrawals big enough to pay for a room at the same times. Looks like Daniel might have been getting a little something on the side."

"That's my girl," he growled playfully.

"Damn straight."