A/N: Don't have much time to write these days. But the cover photo (also on Twitter) looked too much like Beckett not to use for something short and festive.

Just A Hunch

He returns around midnight, nagged by a thought that won't leave him. It's case related and pretty minor, skimpy really, in the grand scheme of murder and things. But it won't leave him. And maybe it's just an excuse to be here after hours, after dark: when the day squad is home, tucked up in bed, and the nightshift is out on the streets answering another call. Except they're not…not all tucked up in bed, and somehow he just knows he'll find her here, burning the midnight oil, hours after her shift has officially ended.

Some days he finds himself wondering, as he shrugs into his coat at the end of the day, just how many hours she's spent here after punching-out time. How many extra hours and how many holidays in all the years since she became a detective? His chest gets tight and his stomach aches when he thinks of her - too driven to leave, too lonely at home - more comfortable here at the precinct, with the worn floorboards, the old furniture and crappy coffee, a bar of Hershey's chocolate from the vending machine for dinner.

He exits the elevator and heads for the bullpen. The air is heavy with dusty dry heat and silence, the light insufficient to read by beyond the lunar pools cast by random desk lamps. A solitary cop, three rows over, gives him a nod. He stuffs his hands into his pockets and raises his eyebrows. This signal and his presence alone is enough to warrant the pointed jerk of the man's head towards the break room. He is that transparent, apparently. That he has come looking for her and not brimming with theories or inculpatory evidence is clear even at a distance. He wonders what else these people see. Trained cops and detectives, all with a ringside seat to his mapless journey into the lost world that is Kate Beckett.

When he reaches the break room, the sight of her forces him to a sudden stop. Stretched out on the couch, one arm akimbo, her features slack; she slumbers. Her clothes remain crisp even after a sixteen-hour shift. Pants with pressed pleats and a fine wool sweater that hugs her every curve. He watches her. The rise and fall of her chest as she breathes, the pale ivory of her throat, so soft and vulnerable, how perilously her arm dangles, close to falling and yet never does. She is bewitching.

A phone rings at an unoccupied desk somewhere behind him and he holds his breath. The trill continues unabated and he considers answering the phone himself just to stop the sound, to let sleeping beauty slumber on. A cough and a curse word, the scrape of a chair loud enough to arouse the dead, and her eyelashes flicker. He is caught in the doorway, captured in the blink of an eye when she stirs.

"C—Castle?" she mumbles, slowly coming to. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, self-conscious, and then feels for the hem of her sweater, fussing over her appearance before she's even fully awake.

He wonders what to take from this. He decides to infer that she's attracted to him on some level, that she might detest him at times, but she still feels the need to impress him or to capture the attention of his roving eye when the mood takes her. This deduction pleases him beyond measure, pleases him more than any insight he might be able to bring to their case. Pleases him enough to tender an apology for a crime he hasn't even committed.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to wake you."

She sits up, wiggling backwards to rest against the arm of the sofa. "You didn't," she smiles, slightly bashful. "Not unless you've mastered the mimicry of a ringing telephone."

Castle breaks into a grin. "Uh, yeah. No." He shakes his head. "Can't claim that particular skill. Yet."

"Yet, huh? So it's on your bucket list?" She grins back at him, still warm and soft with sleep.

"I'll tell you what is on my bucket list. Getting you home before the dawn breaks over the city. Beckett, you need to rest."

"I am rested," she protests, stretching suddenly. The stretch is expansive, lasts longer than he expects and reveals more than she means to, if her pink cheeks and the strip of skin exposed at her waist is anything to go by. She quickly covers up, but Castle stares and grins, deliberately allowing his gaze to linger at the top of her pants to let her know that he saw; before she covered herself up, he saw.

"Rest in your own bed," he explains, returning to his point. "The break room couch…it's not the same thing. I mean, have you seen how disgusting Espo gets? Sitting on that thing eating a sandwich?"

"Eww." She frowns and her nose wrinkles, and his heart feels fuller and warmer.

"Can I buy you breakfast? See you home?"

"Castle, what are you really doing here at this hour?" She consults her watch and her eyes widen.

"I had a hunch."

She looks up; face suddenly keen with naked interest. "About the case?"

"No. I had a hunch about you."

Kate shakes her head, scolding. "You had a hunch? About me? What kind of hunch?"

"That you'd still be here. And I was right."

"And you came all this way…"

He nods. "To see you home safe."

"On New Years? Weren't the streets crazy?"

Castle shrugs. "Not if you pretend."

"Pretend what? What are we pretending?"

"That we're the only people left alive."

Kate balks at this. The idea is enough to snap her fully awake. She swings her legs down off the couch and plants her feet on the floor. "Do...do you pretend a lot?"

He shrugs again. "I write fiction. Kind of in the job description."

Kate allows herself the barest smile at this, since he isn't leering, isn't getting all "What would you do if we were the last two people on earth, Beckett?" with her.

"Besides, sometimes it comes in handy."

"Example?" Kate requests, leaning forward to slip on her shoes.

"Like...like..." He flounders for a second. "Like when you're mad at me and I just pretend that's not the case."

"Or when I tell you to stay in the car and you just..." She throws one hand wide.

"Exactly!" Castle replies, full of enthusiasm that she gets it.

"I see."

"So...you ready to hit the streets?"

"With all those drunken revellers?"

Castle nods and steps forward to offer her his hand. She takes it, and then he offers her his other hand, easing her up off the couch until they're standing almost toe-to-toe in the center of the break room. The warm, dusty air sizzles with tension. Kate bites her lip, eyes locked with his until she can take it no more and she looks away. Her lashes flicker when she spies the verdant, berry-laden ball of mistletoe suspended a few inches above their heads.

Castle's eyes slide upward, following her gaze. "You knew about that?" she chides, jutting out her chin, as if this has been his plan all along.

His answering smile is almost feral. "Been there over a week, Beckett. Hard not to notice."

"Ah, you and Espo," she grins, tapping the side of her nose. "Thought as much."

Castle remains straight-faced. "Oh, I never kiss and tell," he says sincerely. That earns him a chuckle that has his eyes crinkling at the sides, his face warm and alive with gratitude for whatever this moment is between them right now.

"You should go home. Be with your family," Kate tells him, sobering.

They're still holding hands she only realizes when he squeezes her fingers in his. "I'm where I'm needed right now. Let me see you home, Kate?"

She swallows hard and he watches her throat bob. She looks almost nervous. When she lets go of his right hand, he feels crestfallen, as if something is closing up and backing away. But when she suddenly stretches up on tiptoe and braces her hand against his lapel, he's the one swallowing hard. His nostrils fill with the spicy, citrusy scent she wears, when she leans in close and presses a gentle kiss to the side of his mouth.

He looks astonished when she drops back down onto her heels, patting his chest a couple of times, as if kissing her partner is just setting the world to rights. "Seemed rude not to," she explains, with a wink.

"Right," Castle nods, still stunned.

"Did you bring more than one of these?" she asks, easing a "New Year's" party hat out of his breast pocket and popping it on her head. The angle is off-kilter, jaunty. She looks adorable.

"I did come prepared," he admits, sticking his hand into his pants' pocket.

"Of course you did," Kate grins, breaking into laughter when he dons a pair of sparkly glasses bearing the year 2010. They make him look as crazy as she feels.

"If you're going to go undercover, you need a good disguise," he informs her, sagely. "A great detective taught me that."

"I see. And what exactly are we going undercover as?"

"New Yorkers," he grins, wiggling his eyebrows Groucho Marx-style.

"Shouldn't be too hard."

"But you have to promise to smile, Beckett," he warns, taking her hand and leading her out of the break room towards her desk.

"Don't push your luck," she teases, bumping against his shoulder to make her point.

He helps her into her coat and watches while she turns off her computer and gathers her belongings. She waves to the solitary cop in the corner and then they're heading for the elevator. Silence surrounds them, broken only by the whirr of plant machinery in the shaft above their heads.

That the party is in full flow is evident even from the front door of the precinct. Kate pauses to look at her partner, and then she shrugs her shoulders, reaches for his hand and they begin to descend the stairs. "Happy New Year, Castle," she yells over the din of tooters, firecrackers, screams and whistles.

"Happy New Year, Kate," he agrees, tightening his grip on her hand as they plunge into the fray. "I think it's going to be a good one."

A/N: Happy New Year, Everyone! Wishing all readers and writers a peaceful, productive, positive 2016. xoxox