The night of their family fiesta, a week after they learned of the upcoming new Esposito, everyone got their head spun when it was announced that Meredeth was having twins. Castle should have guessed it that Esposito was sitting on something from the way he was acting so extra happy and nervous about his wife having another baby. And yet they'd gotten the drop on all of them with Esposito making his toast to the mother of his three babies, which Castle had to give him credit for; it was a very clever way to reveal news of two babies, or los gemelos as Lili had said.

Now, dealing with the clean-up between the meal and dessert, Meredeth had come over and was wanting to help with the dishes. Castle would eat snow-cones in hell before he'd let her lift a finger. Meredeth, of course, could always be counted on to be self-flagellating about being a good guest.

'Rick, I really want to stay and help with the clean-up but I need to lie down for a few minutes, do you mind-'

'Not at all, Mere, take Alexis' room upstairs. You know the way.'

'I'm going to go with her for a little bit.' Esposito wiped his mouth on his napkin, saw that Tessi was perfectly content in the company of Dell and Rosie as they were drawing and colouring on the floor in the living room so he had no qualms about following his bride upstairs.

Beckett watched them go as she divided up leftovers for the guests to take home, sighed. 'Oh so happy for those two, and I hope that she isn't too scared.'

'Scared?' Ryan asked, munching a carrot as he helped with the clean-up. 'What do you mean?'

'Multiples have an inherent higher risk of miscarriage and complications during pregnancy than a single baby because there's so much less room inside the woman's uterus,' Honey-Milk explained.

'It's why a lot of women have their activity restricted when they have twins or triplets percolating,' Cam added.

'Meredeth's strong but knowing there's a twenty-percent chance of her losing the babies before their born has to have scared her shitless.'

'Huh.' Ryan looked up the stairs, thought of his partner and how he'd do anything for Meredeth to keep her and Tessi and their babies safe. 'We should do something for them, you know? She does so much for us, it's who she is. Maybe get her a cleaning service or a mother's helper to give her a hand around the house.'

'I don't know.' Lanie, having heard the end of the conversation, walked up with the last of the unused cutlery from the dining table. 'Pregnant women are very touchy about who is in their space, you know? She'd have a much better time of it if it was someone she knew, like a friend.'

'Hmmm.' Honey-Milk sipped her soft-daiquiri, adopting a pensive look on her face. 'I wonder...'

'I know that look.' Beckett grinned. 'That's the look you got when you decided what to do last year for your husband on Valentine's Day. What are you cooking up?'

'We could make a buddy system for her. Between Beckett, Lanie and myself, we're all on mat-leave and our babies are older than Duncan which gives us a little more mobility. We can set-up a schedule, like one of us goes to the grocery store with her, one of us will give the house a weekly dust-and-vacuuming, another can help her do some light cooking so they have an easier time with meals.'

'We need a calendar,' Beckett decided, and saw Castle go into his office, drag out his Smart-board. 'Richard, what-?'

'Meredeth and I have this same calendar app,' he explained, tapping the board and pulling up a large fill-in-yourself calendar program. 'We can make the schedule on here, then save it and let her download into her iPhone who's coming on what days, and we can customize icons for what activity is happening too.'

An hour later, everyone was crowded around the Smart-board as they worked through the month of April setting up dates for different people to help Meredeth and Esposito.

'Okay, let's try and get this week sorted out,' Castle said, gesturing to a blank space on the calendar. 'Lanie are you good for house-hold chores on this Tuesday?'

'No, we can't take that week at all, Dave's taking a week's vacation so we can go to Anaheim to visit my dad. He hasn't seen Violet and Carey since Christmas and Dave's parents are going to Italy anyways for Easter,' Lanie pointed out.

'Well, the Monday and Friday are pretty much family times anyways, so we'll be seeing them plenty to begin with,' Cam offered.

'I've already got tickets to the Yankees-Sox pre-season opener on the fifth, six of them,' Castle said, 'and I'm away anyways, plus Alexis will be home the night of the third after her exams are finished, so Kate, RJ and Lex can go with them.'

'And then I can take that as an on-call day in case Mere needs anything during the day,' Beckett agreed, then glanced up, saw Esposito had retrieved Meredeth from her nap in Alexis' room.

'What is all this?' Meredeth asked, walking over. She still looked a little tired but far more refreshed thanks to her power nap.

'Here, Mere, have a seat.' Castle pulled up one of the very comfortable kitchen chairs for the mother to be. 'And watch.'

'We're creating a buddy-system calendar,' Honey-Milk said. 'Twin pregnancies are definitely higher risk and because you're growing two people instead of just one, your energy's going to be way more limited so we need to create a calendar of dates and helper-monkeys. Plus, having us around is going to help take your mind off worrying about them. Number two cause of complications after malnutrition is stress so as they say, many hands make light work.'

Beckett sat beside her friend, and wasn't surprised to find that Meredeth gave her hand a squeeze in gratitude at the obvious hard work and genuine love that was propelling this little project forward. She raised her hand like a schoolgirl when Honey-Milk noted down the date of Meredeth's next appointment with Harvey. 'Oh, I'm free, I'll take that one.'

Honey-Milk stood back, studied the board much as her husband would have studied a murder-board at work. 'Okay, so starting tomorrow, we are working through a rotation of dates and spending time together. You get a day for you and your day with your man, but after that, we are not letting you go anywhere without a buddy.'

'I'm pregnant, not incapacitated,' Meredeth started, then shrank back in her chair when she felt all of her friends' eyes bore holes in her skin.

'Mere, you are having twins which means you are automatically in the high-risk pregnancy category, you are going to be on bedrest at times and you will need all the help you can get,' Lanie told her. 'It doesn't mean you're weak or incapable, it just means you need a helping hand and since all of us are on maternity leave until at least the last week of July, we are going to be there for you and Esposito.'

'Yeah, you took great care of us, helping with the food and the supportive shoulders, even if we just needed someone to listen while we bitched because our hormones were making us crazy and our hubbies were at work,' Beckett added. 'Let us do this for you now.'

Castle watched her as he helped Honey-Milk run the software on the Smart-board, and felt his heart fill to the brim with love when he watched her put her arm around her friend and pull her close. They had so much in common that it was no wonder Beckett had become so close to her since Esposito had first brought Meredeth around. He wondered how long it would take Meredeth to ask Beckett to be godmother to the twins.

R&R&Enjoy.