"Lanie I need your help"
"Castle? What is it? Is something wrong with Beckett?" Lanie asked worriedly into the phone, standing up from her desk.
"No, nothing's wrong, she's at work. It's just, I want to surprise her with something but I need to get her out of the loft for the day to do it…"
"Oh, and you want me to distract our girl so you can set up your surprise?" the ME asked, settling back down again, smiling to herself, thinking once more how lucky Kate Beckett was to have someone like Richard Castle in her life.
"Exactly. So, do you think you can do it?"
"Yeah, leave it to me Writer-boy. We need to throw you're girl a baby shower anyways. Will that give you enough time to set up whatever it is you have planned?"
"Yes, Lanie, that would be great! You're wonderful, thank you!"
"Yeah, yeah tell me something that I don't already know she sasses" at the phone as it flashes the ended call as she pulls it away from her ear.
"Oh my goodness Lanie. This is too much! We could have just had the shower at the loft and you wouldn't have had to go to this much trouble." Beckett exclaimed, looking around her friend's apartment two weeks later, eyeing the table full of food and the decorations scattered over nearly every available surface.
"Nonsense girl, you know your man has better toys for the boys to play with at the loft. They're less likely to get into trouble if they're all together there than somewhere else anyways." Lanie waved off the detective's concern as she finished the final touches to her apartment.
At Lanie's urging, Kate took a seat at the front of a semi-circle of seats set up in the ME's living room to rest as the doorbell rang and the first of the ladies attending the baby shower began to arrive.
As the women ate, talked, and played games the men were all converged across town in the Castle loft.
"Castle, man, how the hell do you put this thing together?" Esposito asked looking at the pieces of crib scattered in a circle around him.
The writer gave him a helpless shrug as he rolled more paint onto the wall. There was a reason he had assigned the duty of assembling the crib to Ryan and Esposito after-all.
The nursery was coming together nicely, despite the pause that the crib was causing them. The last coat of paint was just going up on the walls and then they could bring in the rest of the furniture. Luckily, most of that was already assembled, or mostly assembled.
They continued working as the day wore on, oblivious to the fun that the women were having in the apartment on the other side of town, wrapping Kate in toilet paper to measure the size of her stomach and cooing over the tiny baby socks and onesies as she pulled them out of gift bags.
Having finally admitted defeat on the crib, Castle called in a company to assemble it for him, marveling over how easy it seemed to go together and wondering why the three of them couldn't do it before. Maybe they were just looking at the directions upside down? Yeah, that must have been it.
They were just maneuvering the changing table through the doorway when he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket.
"Hey, watch it!" Ryan yelled as he nearly had the table dropped on him when the writer suddenly reached for his phone instead of supporting his half.
"Sorry, sorry" Castle mumbled, unlocking his phone.
"The women are on their way" he informed the detectives, looking around the room to ensure that they would be finished in time before Kate arrived.
Comforted that they had time to put finishing touches on the nursery, he picked up his end of the changing table once more and helped Ryan place it against the wall.
Loaded down with gift bags, Kate was happy but exhausted. She'd had a great day with all the women but it had also been a long day and she was ready to just relax on the couch with Castle for the rest of the evening before crawling into bed for a good night's sleep.
"Honey I'm home" she called out as she unlocked the door and entered the loft, Lanie and Jenny right behind her, also loaded down with bags.
All three men stood just inside the entryway, staring at the front door as if waiting for them.
"Honey? I like it." Castle says, a glint in his eye as she steps forward to take some of the bags from her hands and meets her lips with his own for a kiss.
"What are you up to?" she asks, looking past him to 'her boys' with narrowed eyes, sensing that something is amiss.
"Who us?" Ryan asks innocently.
"Yeah Beckett, why would you think that we'd be up to something?" Esposito backs up his partner, both men now stepping forward to greet their own significant others, moving out of the line of fire of their boss.
The gifts now left in a pile in the entryway, Kate takes a cursory glance around the loft but doesn't notice anything out of place.
Finally, Castle holds out his hand to her.
She gives him a curious look, but takes his hand and allows him to lead her up the stairs.
Everyone else falls back a little, a detail that isn't lost on the detective. They all know what's going on here.
Castle's hand tightens around hers imperceptibly as they continue down the hallway.
"Rick?" she asks as she realizes that they are stopping outside the closed doorway to the guest room, soon to be the baby's nursery.
"Surprise?" He offers with a shrug and a shy smile as he reaches out with his free hand to turn the doorknob and open the door, revealing the now completed nursery.
"Oh Castle." She breathes, stepping forward into the room. "It's perfect."
Kate stands there, speechless after that, just taking in the room.
The walls are painted a soft blue with white trim and a matching white wooden slatted crib in the middle of the back wall. Along the left side of the room was the changing table, with the dark wooden dresser set beside it. The other side of the room held a short bookshelf with Kate's baby books and a selection of books the couple had picked up on a shopping trip months before hand.
"Oh" Kate exclaimed as she saw the rocking chair placed in the far corner of the room between the bookshelf and the crib. "Castle how did you-" she began, as she took a tentative step forwards, running her hand reverently over the well-worn wood of the rocking chair the had been in her own nursery when she was a baby. Her mother had sat in this chair with her countless times, and now she would be able to share it with her own children.
She turned towards him, meeting his him in a passionate kiss, pouring all the feelings out that she couldn't put into words.
"Castle, I love you" she breathed against his lips, pressing quick kisses against them.
"I love you too" he replied, grinning and pulling crushing her against him.
The couple turned and realized that they were alone. At some point, their friends must have quietly left them alone. As they looked to each other once more, a silent agreement was made that they'd better make the best of the quiet time that they had left. Afterall, they had a baby due in just over a month.