At risk of being cheesy, this is a very special double ch dedicated to my booboo tayababy. You will know exactly why.

'I hope being a good card player isn't a requisite for passing the adoption test.'

Watkins looked around nervously, saw only the guys from work in relaxation mode; they were down a body as Adam had been called home by Lindsay when Zane began showing signs of chicken pox after visiting the hospital daycare. Now left with only four other men, Watkins imagined that if she were straight, her husband would have an absolute shit fit about her hanging with an all-male posse for beer and poker. Or ginger beer in her case, she thought as she looked to Shane who was sitting at the table without cards as he fed Petra her bottle.

'Relax, Detective,' he chuckled, 'this table is for the cool kids only because we care about each other. If it were based on skill, it would only be me, Rick, Gil, and Cam, and that would get boring really quickly.'

'Cam is my brother-in-law, and he is just lethal at cards, so be thankful he ain't here tonight.' Esposito snagged a chip from the bowl, grinning as he crunched. 'And as far as the luck of the Irish, this poor bastard-' he clapped Ryan's shoulder '-could only win a pot if his wife was knocked up.'

'Which explains my almost eight-year losing streak,' Shane chuckled. 'Although I have to say the night you two found out about Alexis and me was pretty entertaining.'

'Why what happened?'

'Well-'

'Oh wait a minute, please let me leave the room for this part,' Castle interrupted him playfully. 'My daughter may be grown-up and married with a baby but there are some things a father doesn't need to hear. Ever.'

'Did you walk in on them naked?' Watkins asked with genuine curiosity; the complete lack of irony in the question had the rest of the table laughing uproariously. 'What did I do?'

'That's a different story to go with that question,' Shane explained, patting Petra's little bottom. 'That's more to do with this little babe's conception story. The night he's talking about was a poker night.'

'And poke-her night,' muttered Esposito, shaking his head.

'It's been eight years, man,' Ryan pointed out. 'He hasn't changed his story once.'

'I feel like I'm in a live episode of a TV show, completely unrehearsed.' Watkins flicked a glance at her cards, tossed in a few chips. 'I'm in. What about the eight-year-old-story?'

'So we went to meet Shane for cards,' Ryan began, ignoring Esposito's snort of derision, 'and unbeknownst to us at the time, Alexis was the new lady in Shane's life. Castle knew already but the rest of us didn't. So we went to Shane's place and Alexis answered the door fully dressed with wet hair.'

'Let me guess, Shane came walking out in his undies?'

'Worse,' Castle laughed, then beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen, ostensibly to place the night's pizza order.

'I came out of the bathroom wearing a towel, which left these two-' Shane dropped his voice, pointing at the Ry-Sposito monster '-assuming I'd just finished banging her in the shower.'

'I didn't think that,' Ryan added hastily.

'No, you figured they'd just finished up and didn't want it to be so obvious they'd just finished rolling around in his bed,' Esposito.

'Which was true, but what they didn't count on was the fact I was completely in love with Alexis even then,' Shane finished off. 'So it wasn't either of us looking for a quick shag, it was-'

'That thing you can't explain,' Esposito added, unclenching for the first time since the subject came up. 'Like I felt when I first met Meredeth. Everyone knows how much we liked each other straight away. Sometimes you know sooner than that.'

'What is your problem, dude?' Returning to the table, Castle gave the cop a weird look. 'You're usually the first one to give any of us shit about our private lives, what gives?'

'Let's just say that one of my kids has been asking a lot of questions lately about one of yours.'

'Oh-oh.' Watkins let out a little giggle. 'Young love?'

'My oldest daughter isn't even ten and she is asking about anniversary gifts,' Esposito groaned. 'She's been Dell's Tessi since before she was born.'

'Speaking of the unborn...' Shane stood up to burp Petra; she always did better when she was elevated to burp. 'How exactly did you get knocked up?'

'You mean did I get drunk one night and meet a stranger when I was mad at Brie?' Watkins laughed, thoroughly amused with the squeamishness of these big strapping men. 'No, no, it was her guy Marcus from the hotel.'

'The who-now?' Esposito felt his mind go a little fuzzy; Watkins reminded him in many ways of Lili which brought out the protective-yet-paranoid big bro in him.

'Yeah, the hotel where she did a co-op at culinary school. Her and Marcus were assigned to that kitchen together, him on the hot-line and her in pastry. They stayed on at the hotel after graduating and he would always make her food when she worked long hours, let her vent about me or her family or whatever, even let her have a few nights at his place when she'd gotten too liquored up at a post-shift party. He always said he'd do anything for her, and when she said that we wanted to have a baby, he didn't hesitate to be a sperm donor.'

'That's really sweet,' Ryan told her with a warm smile, tossing his cards into the middle of the table. 'But, uh... you're married, so it was like-'

'The turkey baster method? Yeah, pretty much.'

'Where's the fun in that?' Castle queried; Shane, who had walked away with Petra to clean up the baby spit-up she'd launched all over his shoulder, came back over to give them all righteous shit.

'Jesus you are all so juvenile,' Shane scoffed. 'She went through artificial insemination with a trusted friend. What's the big fucking deal?'

'We wanna know how much of a dick to be about the guy, so we need all the info,' Ryan replied without a moment's hesitation. 'If he was some random who took advantage, that's one thing, but if there are feelings involved that makes it a whole new set of reasons to be a dick to him.'

'Why does anyone have to be a dick to him?' Castle pointed out, taking Petra off Shane's hands so he could play his round at the table. 'What if he is just a great, regular guy that Brie cares about?'

'Thank you,' Watkins felt a strong rush of relief; she hadn't wanted to go into the topic of Marcus' level of involvement, given how much of an outsider his relationship made her feel to her best girl. It was hard enough to see how intimate Brie was with him with her own eyes, she didn't need her busy brain thinking up worse shit when they weren't around each other. Morning sickness was enough on its own, she didn't need to have another panic attack about Marcus. 'Besides, if you really wanna know what it means to be a dick, you should hear what happened when Sascha's bestie started dating a carpenter from my brother's new movie.'

'Sascha as in Sascha Russell, the girl you guys saved from Kali Wenthram?' Shane clarified.

'Yeah, my brother Joel is best-boys with Sascha's man Tommy, this is their fourth film together, and another friend of theirs, Christopher started seeing her best friend Emily and Sascha flipped the fuck out.'

'I didn't know girls could get that jealous,' Esposito commented, which earned him looks from the other men. 'What?'

'Are you forgetting a little triangle called you, Mere and Valencia?' Ryan asked him in disbelief.

'That different. Val was a crazy-bitch whore of an ex. Watkins is talking to us about two of her friends who are besties, which is neither friends nor family, it's a special category until itself.'

'You must have some very smart women in your life,' Watkins commented, clamping down on the urge to vomit.

'I have two daughters in middle school so yeah, I understand female politics. I wanna hear what happened.'

'In a nutshell, Sascha got mega pissed at Emily when she found out Emily spent the night with Christopher on the first real date, even though they'd been flirting a while before that. Sascha actually told her friend she wasn't a movie-set booty-call slut, she thought she was above something like that.'

'Whoa, that's definitely flipping the fuck out,' Esposito agreed. 'How did Emily take that one?'

'She was a little upset, mostly because she and Sascha have a history of Sascha thinking the worst and Emily always reminding her that she always tells her the truth no matter how hard it is for her to hear. It went down a little easier when Emily explained Christopher isn't a booty call, they are in a real relationship, and the fact the last boyfriend Emily had was before Sascha and Tommy got together two years ago. But y'know Sascha has abandonment issues from her mom dying and her stepmom leaving her father inside of five years, add a dash of five months of pregnancy hormones, the ordeal last October-'

'And you've got a witch's brew,' Ryan agreed. 'They still came out the other side of that?'

'Are you crazy? They're Emmy-Boo and Sascha-Lala, they're like peanut butter and jelly, one without the other just doesn't work so well. They do fine on their own but better together.' Watkins felt her eyes well up a little. 'I'm sorry, I'm babbling and it's embarrassing.'

'Really, because I thought this was called the getting-to-know-you off-the-job talk,' Shane asked teasingly.

'Besides,' Ryan pointed out, 'we asked you. We are sharers in our little band of law-makers, we spend so much time together we get to see all the warts and scars. The trick is, well, it's like your Booboo and Lola.'

'Boo and Lala,' Watkins corrected him.

'Right, the trick is finding a friend who you can lose your shit on and they still say love you too because they know you best,' Esposito finished off. 'That is something very special and guess what, kiddo.'

'What?'

'Now you've got a whole army of us.'

Esposito raised his beer, and the others followed suit. 'To family. No matter how we find it.'

They all clinked glasses, turned up their cards and groaned when the curse rang true once more - first-trimester Watkins raked in the chips of the first round.

By the time Shane arrived home with the snoozing Petra in her carrier, he felt exhausted and invigorated all at once. He gently tucked the baby into her crib, adjusted the volume on her monitor - he knew Alexis turned it up louder when she was home alone in case she fell asleep. Once one redhead was tucked in, he went to his room to find the other one and wasn't surprised when he found Alexis awake. That she was wearing only the bedsheets and a smile to welcome him home made his heartbeat thicken in delighted anticipation.

'Little miss is down for the count,' he told her, stripping off his pullover before reaching for his belt buckle.

'How was your night?' Alexis asked him sweetly, sitting up so the sheet fell away.

'It was so much fun,' he told her excitedly. 'Watkins is nervous about the baby, or mainly nervous about people looking at her sideways and going how does a lesbian get pregnant?'

'A night with the guys would mos-def help. Did you get lucky?'

Down to his boxers, Shane crawled onto the bed to kiss his wife, keeping the chuckle to himself as he thought how Alexis had zinged Ryan and Esposito eight years prior with that same one liner. 'I think I'm just about to.'