Disclaimer: The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

"Have fun, Beckett," Castle says, helping his wife wife on with her coat and giving her a quick kiss at the front door. "Do you have earplugs with you?"

She looks blankly at him. "Earplugs?"

"You'll need them when you tell Lanie. She's going to scream so loud it'll wake the dead. A fitting metaphor for a medical examiner, if I do say so."

Beckett snorts and returns his kiss. "Bye, Castle."

She's on her way to meet Lanie for dinner, and tell her about the baby. She had wanted to wait until she was through her first trimester, but Lanie, unlike the clueless Esposito and the only-one-step-above-clueless Ryan, clearly suspects that Beckett is hiding something. For the last couple of weeks, she has felt Lanie's antennae quivering, displacing the air around them every time they look at a corpse or stand side by side in a lab. Lanie has been pressing her about getting together after work, too, so tonight's the night.

Beckett gets to the restaurant a little early, and thanks the maître d' for having reserved a table in a corner that's not too close to other diners. She's in her seat, nibbling on a breadstick, when Lanie arrives.

"You ordered us drinks already?" Lanie says after she sits down.

"Yup. Hope you don't mind."

"Prosecco, huh? Who'd mind that? We don't usually start with that, but it's nice." She raises her glass and clinks it against Beckett's.

"Mine actually just looks like Prosecco," Beckett says, after taking a sip. She puts her glass back down. "It's ginger ale."

Lanie is quiet for a moment as her wide eyes go wider. "Kate? You have something you want to tell me?"

"No alcohol for me for the next twenty-eight weeks or so."

"Because?"

Beckett braces herself. "Because I'm pregnant."

Castle was right. Lanie, who has all but leapt across the table to hug her friend, is shrieking. "Kate, Kate, Kate, Kate, Kate!"

"Wow, that woke me up. Why is Lanie screaming so loud?"

"I knew it! I knew it!" Lanie says, catching her breath now that she's back on the other side of the table. "You know how?"

"Is it because I'm 'glowing'?" Beckett asks, forming quotation marks with her hands. "The way you said I was when Castle and I first got together?"

"Nope." Lanie lowers her gaze from her friend's eyes to her chest, and points a perfectly manicured fingernail. "It's the girls. I could tell. Oh, yeah, those girls are definitely bigger, Kate."

"What girls? Who are you talking about? Are there girls at the next table? Because it sounds like a couple of guys over there to me."

"Yeah," Kate says, a little embarrassed but a little proud. "Castle really loves that particular aspect of my pregnancy."

"Oh, I bet he does. It always cracks me up when you tell him to stop looking at my girls."

"Lanie has girls? I thought she didn't have any kids. It's hard to know what's going on when you can't see out. There should be a window in here. I'd be a lot less confused."

"He keeps telling me they're going to get even bigger. And you should see his expression every time he says it."

They clink glasses again and burst out laughing.

"So, Kate, everything's okay? You're feeling okay?"

"Yup, everything's great." She pats her stomach "Couldn't keep much down at first, but that's over, thank God."

"What's your due date?"

"Gonna be a long, hot summer. August thirty-first."

"Thanks, Mom! I finally know when I'm getting out of here. Could you get me a calendar?"

TBC

A/N Enormous thanks for all the reviews, follows and favorites, each one of which spurs me on. A tip of the hat to guest reviewer LivK for saying that she liked the "insider dialogue." I'm still chuckling over that.