A/N: Apologies for not getting this chapter out to you guys yesterday, I had a hectic work day. Thank you for all of the reviews and favourites though!

Kate never thought she'd be spending her lunch break discussing the quantities of corn syrup, food dye and water needed to make fake blood with Lanie, but that was what she was doing at midday on Thursday.

"If you want it to look realistic, you should tell Martha to add in some cocoa before she lets her guy flick it all up the walls," Lanie advised, briefly tearing her gaze away from her autopsy – an elderly man who she was pretty certain had only died from natural causes – to make sure Kate was paying attention. Although the detective had been in the morgue before and had seen her fair share of dead bodies, Lanie knew that watching her making the surgical incisions and peeling back layers of skin and muscle to get at a cadaver's vital organs could be too much for even the strongest of stomachs. At Kate's frown, she explained, "It gives it that dark, congealing and drying kind of colour and texture. Makes it thicker."

"Why do you even know that?"

"My cousin was even more into Halloween and costume parties than Castle is." Lanie rolled her eyes as memories of all the times she'd allowed Trisha to cover her in makeup to create horrifyingly realistic injuries and monsters flooded her mind. Going to Castle's relaxed parties dressed as a Zombie nurse with a speck or two of fake blood here and there was much more fun. "So how's it all coming together?"

Kate shrugged. "Pretty well." A week had gone by and in that time, the plan had solidified. "I picked up some binoculars for Alexis to give him on the way into work this morning. Michael, Brent and Emily have all agreed to help us out. Michael and Emily are already moving into the apartment."

"They're actually moving in?"

Nodding, Kate replied, "Something about needing to 'truly experience the space and living together' before they could act being in a relationship. I think perhaps Martha might have had something to do with it – method acting seems to be a common lesson of hers, according to Castle at least." There was pause and then Kate said thoughtfully, "It's been kind of fun organising this, you know. I can't wait until next week when Alexis gives him the binoculars. I don't know if I'll be able to keep a straight face over it all."

"Please," Lanie countered, "You act in interrogations all the time."

"It's not acting," Kate began to protest only to be silenced by a hard look from her best friend.

"Maybe they don't call it acting at the academy, Kate, but that's what it is."

Aside from a quiet harrumph, Kate kept her other comments to herself.

"I do have one question though," Lanie said after a moment's pause, still concentrating on her surgical incisions.

"Yeah?"

"How are you going to set up the party without Castle seeing?"

"Eh, I might need some help with that one," Kate admitted. Now that she thought about it, she would be unable to go over to the vacant apartment and set up banners because she would be too busy getting ready to 'go out for Castle's birthday dinner.' If Martha was going to be staying close by, perhaps she could pop in with some champagne and decorations if Castle was distracted for a while. It would be coordinating the arrivals of the guests that would be the hard part – even if really it was only a small group.

Suddenly Lanie was pulling off her gloves and staring at Kate with wide eyes, twining her fingers together and pleading, "Kate, let me take care of it for you!"

"-Lanie, I don-"

"-You know how good I am with parties, Kate!"

"Well, yeah. Just this is gonna be low-key and-"

"-I can do low-key," Lanie promised, eyes turning light and beseeching as she looked at her best friend with raised eyebrows.

Sighing, Kate rolled her eyes. "Okay-" She was choked off as Lanie clapped her hands together in excited glee and dashed across the two feet between them to pull Kate into a hug. "Remember. Low-key."

"I know, I know. Alexis, Martha, Javi, Ryan, a few other people – not Gates, I know. I can handle it," Lanie assured her.

The texts and emails didn't stop coming as Lanie inundated Beckett with ideas for colour themes and decorations, but surprisingly she appeared to have taken Kate's advice to heart. By the end of her shift, Lanie had already ordered a simple banner and settled on monochrome as a theme, sending Kate a text that merely read, "Wear black," and no matter how many questioning messages the detective sent in response, she couldn't quite get a full explanation.

Despite the mystery, she was glad to have one less thing on her busy plate. And as she stopped by Martha's acting studio on her way back to the loft, meeting Michael, Brent and Emily for the first time, Kate decided maybe it wasn't such a bad thing to share the load a little.

"Michael, Emily, if you're living at the apartment, would it be okay for me to give you the food and drink for the surprise party?" she asked once Martha had stopped stressing the importance of having every part of their performance scripted. "You can just keep it in the fridge, and then we don't have to worry about sneaking it in."

"S'all good," Michael replied, laidback and full of smiles as he looked quickly at his pretend girlfriend and nodded.

"We can pick up some things on our way there, I mean, on our way home, this evening." The petite strawberry blonde's lips twitched over her slip of the tongue, a light blush tinting her cheeks.

"Relax, Castle's not going to hear you speak, Emily-" Kate began, only for Martha to interrupt her.

"Nonsense. A performance is only perfect when all of its components are brought together. Richard is a writer, folks. He's the master of reading people. If you want to fool him, you've got to bring your A game to the table."

Leaving the dramatic instruction to the expert, Kate sent a reassuring smile Emily's way and figured she'd better be on her way before Castle began to wonder what was keeping her so long. He'd probably driven Alexis up the wall if she hadn't already left.

"Hey, Castle," Kate said as she entered the loft and spotted him immediately messing around a set of Chinese linking rings. "Good day?"

He grunted something, neither a yes nor a no, but still looked up and smiled briefly as she passed and pressed a kiss to his cheek on her way through to the bedroom.

"Lanie says hi," she called, stripping off her blazer and beginning to work on the buttons of her shirt.

"You have a fresh case?" he asked despairingly, rolling himself to the bedroom doorway.

Kate smiled and shook her head, tossing her balled up shirt into the open laundry basket. Unlike himself, Castle didn't even watch the ball of cotton's graceful arc down into the wicker bin but instead kept his gaze trained on her.

"Nope. Another slow paperwork day. I popped in to see her on my lunchbreak."

He nodded, but his disappointed expression was unmoved.

"Something the matter, Castle?"

He fiddled with the wheels on either side of his body, rocking his chair backwards and forwards before he muttered, "You could have come by to see me on your lunchbreak."

"Tomorrow," she promised, walking to him and situating herself in his lap with a leg on either side of his, her thighs squeezed up against the arm rests. Her arms folded around his neck as her lips brushed his. "I'll swing by tomorrow as long as I don't have a murder."

"'Kay."

"Now, what are our dinner plans?"

He shrugged.

Kate sighed. She really couldn't be bothered with cooking, even if it was just whipping up a simple carbonara dish so she looked at him hopefully and suggested, "Takeout? We haven't had Chinese from that place on Forsyth Street in ages."

A/N: Thanks for reading!