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

"Castle, I understand. I do. I know that you really, really, really want to know, but I don't," Beckett says as they're getting ready to leave for their appointment.

"I can keep a secret," he says, pouting while he puts on his shoes.

"You'd try, of course you would," she says, running a hand down his arm. "But somehow, somewhere, sometime, you'd be bound to slip up. Then I would have to shoot you, and the baby would be fatherless."

"Don't shoot, Mom! Please don't shoot!"

Castle stands up behind her, brings his arms around her and nuzzles her neck. This should do the trick. "I bet I can get you to change your mind," he says, resorting to his best bedroom voice.

"I'm sure you can," she says sultrily, turning around in his embrace so that they're standing nose-to-nose. "If you change diapers twenty-four/seven for the first year, and if you actually go through labor instead of me, I'll change my mind. How's that, hot stuff?"

He sighs dramatically. "Okay, Beckett. I know when I'm beat. You ready?"

"Yup," she says. "And cheer up, we'll get to know a lot of other things."

"Not the same," he says grumpily, opening the front door and ushering her out.

Half an hour later, they're sitting in the doctor's office waiting room and twenty minutes after that, Beckett has finished her exam.

"You can come in now," the nurse tells Castle, who follows her to the room where his wife is lying on a table.

"Good morning, Rick," Doctor Fisher says. "You ready to see your baby?"

"I am, but Kate isn't."

"Not true, Castle. I'm completely ready. I just don't want to see everything."

"By not everything, she means nether regions, Lotte," Castle says. "She doesn't want to know the baby's gender."

"And I gather you do?" The doctor smiles at him. "Well, this is not a democracy, so if Kate doesn't want to know I'm afraid you can't either. It's her body and her call. I'm just going to step out for a minute and then the tech and I will be back for the sonogram."

"What about me? I don't know the difference between boys and girls yet, so I don't know what I am. Can't the doctor even tell me?"

"Thanks, Lotte," Beckett says.

Castle decides to mount one last offense in his battle of the sexes. Genders. "Don't you want to stop calling the baby 'it,' Beckett?"

She looks up at him from the table. "You know, Castle, if we were Swedish we wouldn't have to worry about that. The Swedes have a new word, a gender-neutral pronoun. It's hen, instead of han for he or hon for she. Why don't we just referring to the baby as 'hen'?"

"Well, in English, which is the only language I speak, 'hen' definitely sounds like a girl to me. Maybe we can just stick to 'it'."

There's a knock on the door and the doctor and technician come in. "We're all set. Dory will make sure that the baby is in a position which doesn't reveal any, um, nether regions before she lets you see the screen, okay? And Kate, you know the drill. I'll put some gel on you first and then we can start."

"Whoa! Not that stuff again! It's freezing. Maybe if I swim the other direction I can get away from it."

"You can go ahead and look," the tech says. "The baby's legs are obscuring—"

"The important bits," Castle finishes.

The soon-to-be mother turns to the screen. "Wow! Look how big the baby is! So much bigger than the last time."

"Yes, the baby's about ten inches long and about eleven ounces," the doctor says. "The size of an artichoke, or a banana."

"I hope that's better than a kumquat, but I've never heard of an artichoke. It sounds funny. It doesn't mean I'm going to choke, does it?"

Castle is looking closely at the screen, willing the baby to move. "Is that eyelashes? Does the baby have eyelashes?"

"It does," the doctor says.

"I hope it gets your eyelashes, Beckett."

She smiles. She can't say much right now, just thinking about her little artichoke-banana. But later, on the way home, Beckett unbuttons her coat. "The weather's getting warm now that it's the middle of April." She takes Castle's hand. "Everyone's going to know I'm pregnant now. Can't hide under big sweaters or coats."

"You don't mind, do you?"

"I thought I would, but I don't." She's quiet for a bit. "I really want it to be a surprise, Castle. I don't want to know if it's a boy or a girl until it gets here. Ordinarily I hate surprises, but for this I am making a really happy exception. You don't really mind not knowing, do you?"

"I'll live with the suspense," he says, chuckling and swinging their arms. "Besides, it adds another level to the pool."

"The pool?"

"Oh, you know there has to be a pool. At the precinct. There's a pool for everything. Espo, Ryan and I once bet on which candy would be the first one to run out in the vending machine. I bet there's at least a grand in this one already. Date, weight, height, and now gender. Four things instead of three. Should really up the ante, having to bet boy or girl."

"For the next twenty weeks, Castle, it's just our hen."

"Or rooster."

That gets him a slap on the wrist.

"So am I a hen or a rooster? I guess I'm just a little chicken right now. But I'm not chicken, I'm really brave. Get it? I love jokes!"

TBC

A/N I can't say it enough: thank you all for your support.