HAPPY BIRTHDAY ChristyLoisGilmore17! I know its not technically your birthday yet but this is for you!

I...Had a totally different idea for what I wanted to write for your birthday but as I was sitting, thinking of how to start it off, I got blindsided by this idea and since its birthday themed, it seemed to fit better so I hope you like it! Even though its... Sort of random...

I do NOT own Castle!

Four boxes, varying in size and fresh from her father's garage, sat in random places in Detective Kate Beckett's kitchen as she took the contents out of each one and gave them a thorough washing before placing them on the counter. It took a good hour to get every pan clean and now she took a step back and looked at the mess her kitchen had become. Pans and various other baking tools littered the counter space and even some were set on the floor because there just wasn't enough room in the tiny kitchen that came with her new apartment.

Beckett loved her new apartment except for the kitchen. It was fine for everyday things, especially considering that she really didn't use it much, but for what she had planned, it was way too small.

Sighing to herself, she went back through each of the tools and moved anything that she wouldn't need into the living room. Once that was done there was a little bit more space and she felt that she might actually be able to get something done now.

She mixed up a massive amount of vanilla cake batter and proceeded to fill two big pans and slide them into her oven to bake. Kate turned around to put the now empty bowl into the skin when her elbow caught the edge of a bag of flour and sent it tumbling to the floor where it erupted into an explosion of white powder.

With a groan, she started cleaning up the mess she had made all the while wondering why she was going to so much trouble in the first place. It was all Lanie's fault. All because of a stupid promise she made with her ten years ago. Kate had promised Lanie a birthday cake when they were roommates in college but before she could fulfill that promise, her mother was murdered and Kate couldn't stand to bake anything as it reminded her too strongly of when she would make cakes and other goodies with her mother. Lanie never mentioned it again but, Kate still remembered that promise and she vowed that she would fulfill that promise as soon as she could stand to start baking again.

So now here she was, struggling to make a fantastic cake in her tiny kitchen with less than twenty-four hours before Lanie's party.

Kate finally got all the flour cleaned up and it was time to take those cakes out of the oven but as she was moving them to a cooling rack, she knocked over a bottle of vanilla causing it to spill all over the countertop.

Ugh! I can't do this in such a little space!

She vigorously scrubbed the vanilla off the counter and suddenly a picture of Castle's large spacious kitchen flashed in her mind and it gave her a great idea.

Alexis Castle was spread out on the living room couch, mindlessly surfing the internet since she had already finished all her homework and her dad was at a meeting for his book. She was just about to run out of her favorite websites when the shrill ring of the phone cut through the silence.

Reaching behind her, she quickly picked the phone up off the table and answered it.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Alexis?" She was able to quickly recognize the voice on the other end.

"Detective Beckett? Are you calling for my dad? Because he isn't here right now, he's out at some meeting for his book."

"Uh, sort of. I got myself in over my head and kind of need his help with something." There was laughter in her voice but Alexis couldn't help but think the worse.

"You aren't in any danger or anything are you? Are you hurt?"

There was a definite chuckle in her voice when she replied this time. "No, Alexis, I'm fine. It's really stupid but… I was hoping I could borrow your kitchen for a little while? I know it sounds really weird but mine is too small."

Alexis let out a sigh of relief but she was very curious about Kate's strange request.

"Too small? What are you trying to do? Feed an army?"

"Not exactly. I'm making a birthday cake for Lanie but my plan for the cake involves more counter space than I have."

"I would have never pictured you as the cake baking type, Detective Beckett. But, I'm sure my dad wouldn't mind you borrowing the kitchen."

They agreed that Kate would pack up the things she would need and then head over so when they hung up, Alexis went downstairs to warn the doorman on duty that Kate would probably be bringing a few things, so that he could help her up to their apartment.

About twenty minutes later there was a knock at the door and Alexis rushed to answer it. She swung the door open to reveal the doorman carrying a stack of boxes along with Detective Beckett who was standing behind him with her own, smaller, stack of boxes.

"Are you moving in or making a cake?" She couldn't resist asking as she showed them where to put the boxes in the kitchen.

"And now you see why I didn't have room in my kitchen. This is not going to be a simple cake."

After the doorman left, the two girls set about clearing off the countertops and unpacking the various tools and pans. There were things that Alexis had never seen before and some that she had only seen when they used them on tv shows.

"Is all this stuff necessary? I mean, do you even know how to use half this stuff?"

Kate pulled the last pan out of a box and looked over at Alexis.

"Yes it is necessary and yes I know how to use it. My mom loved to bake in her spare time and we used to spend her days off baking various things in the kitchen before I went off to college."

Alexis accepted that answer before she eyed all the pans scattered around the kitchen. "So, this birthday cake… Exactly how big is it going to be?"

Kate looked up from where she was mixing a bowl of batter with a grin.

"Big enough. I have to make up for ten years after all. So, do you want to help or do you have something else you need to do?"

"Can I? What if I mess something up though?" Alexis was eager to help because while Castle could cook anything you could think of, his abilities to bake something left a lot to be desired and usually ended up in an inedible disaster.

"Don't worry, there are lots of little things that you could help with that are simple but would be a great help if you could do them."

And so they set to work on making one very interesting cake. Once they had enough cakes baked and cooled, Kate set about carving and shaping several of the cakes into one large cake in a shape she knew Lanie would get a kick out of. With an anatomy text book in hand, Alexis set to work on making some littler cakes that would go inside the bigger cake once they were finished.

Hours later, Richard Castle walked into his apartment to hear music coming from the kitchen. Not seeing anyone in the living room, he decided to go find out what he assumed was his daughter was doing.

"Whoa!"

The two females in the kitchen both jumped when Castle let out a startled exclamation upon entering the kitchen. Or rather, what was his kitchen at one time. There were now pans, mixers, and other tools on almost every available surface and it looked as if someone had dropped a flour bomb right in the middle of his kitchen because the floor and lower cabinets were covered in it. Not to mention the amount of flour and various other ingredients the two girls had gotten on themselves.

"Hey Castle, how did your meeting go?" After being startled, Kate calmly went back to rolling out the piece of fondant she was working on.

"Um… It went good… Care to explain why my kitchen looks like a chef's war zone?"

Alexis filled him in on the details of why they were doing this and Castle looked absolutely ecstatic when they explained what the cake would look like when they were finished.

"That is so cool!"

Eventually, because he wouldn't stop whining, Kate let him help by rolling out some of the fondant and helping Alexis cover some of the smaller cake parts that she had made. Covering cake with fondant is a long process and since they had so many pieces to do, not to mention that they started in the late afternoon anyway, it was very late when they finally finished the cake. Well, not exactly finished but, as much as they could do for now. The final touches would have to be done tomorrow.

They stored the cake pieces in the refrigerator and then Alexis went upstairs to take a shower while Kate and Castle stayed downstairs to clean up the kitchen. For as much mess as they had made, it really didn't take too long to clean it up.

Once they were done with the kitchen, it didn't take much convincing to get Kate to agree to stay the night there since it was extremely late and since Martha was off with Chet, they had an extra bedroom. Kate borrowed one of Castle's clean shirts and after saying goodnight, she went upstairs to find that Alexis had left some extra towels out so that she could take a shower too.

After she was nice and clean and no longer smelled like a bakery, Kate slipped into bed and dreamt about Lanie's party the next day.

The next morning Kate was awakened by a loud crash that sounded way to close to her for comfort. Instincts kicked in and she jumped up and reached under her pillow where her gun was kept before realizing that her gun would not be there because she was not at home. She was at Castle's.

A groan drew her attention to the floor where she found Castle sprawled out on the floor with a knocked over chair by his feet.

"Castle? What are you doing?"

He looked up at her with a sheepish grin. "Er well, I was going to sneak in here and grab your clothes so I could wash them before you got up so you would have something clean to wear but, I ended up tripping over a chair while looking for them."

"Thank you but, I have an extra set of clothes that I keep in my car. If you want to be helpful you can go get them out of the car for me though. My keys are on the table in the living room."

He pulled himself up off the floor and when he was standing he looked down at her with a grin on his face.

"I don't know… I kind of like seeing you wearing my clothes."

She immediately pulled the covers up around her and made a show of picking up a pillow to throw at him. "Castle!"

"Alright, Alright. I'm going."

After he brought her her clothes, Kate got dressed and then headed downstairs to find that Castle was almost finished with breakfast. The Castle clan didn't exactly let her choose to eat with them or not, and before she knew it she was seated at the counter with a big plate of bacon and eggs in front of her.

When breakfast was over, Kate headed to the precinct to get a couple hours of paper work done before helping the guys get the break room ready for the party. Once the break room was transformed to her liking, she went back to Castle's to finish putting together the cake.

Castle opened the door for her and they immediately got to work on finishing the cake. Before they started she asked where Alexis was but he said that she was on the phone with one of her friends and would come down to help them in a little bit.

Castle placed the other pieces of cake inside of the bigger cake exactly how they were supposed to go and when he looked up he noticed that Kate was mixing up something very interesting.

"Is that supposed to be what I think it's supposed to be?" He asked with as much eagerness as a kid asking to go to a candy store.

"Yes, Castle. It is."

About ten minutes later Alexis came downstairs to find both Kate and Castle working in the kitchen silently. Kate was applying something to the cake and Castle was chopping something. Very curious as to what he could be chopping since there was nothing on the cake to chop, Alexis started walking to his side of the counter just as he yelled out in pain and dropped the knife he was holding.

Alexis rushed over to see if he was okay and was horrified at what she saw. Castle was holding his hand tight to his chest and on the chopping board there was blood everywhere.

"Dad!" Blood was running down his hand where he was clutching and she rushed over and tried to pull his hand to her so she could see what he had done to make himself bleed so much.

"Alexis." Kate was trying to get her attention but she was solely focused on her dad.

"Alexis… Alexis!" She finally turned around to see Kate holding up a bloody spatula and she just blinked in confusion until she took in the mixing bowl of blood next to her.

"Dad…" She ground out in irritation as he started laughing.

"It was too priceless! How could I not do something like that? It looks so real…And tastes good too." She huffed at him and turned around to watch Kate stir up some more of the "blood" concoction then decided to check on the cake to make sure Castle had put everything in its proper place.

Lanie just knew that Kate was up to something, she just didn't know what yet. There was just a little something off with her since yesterday but she couldn't figure out what it was. They were doing the same thing they did every year. They would have a small party with her friends from the precinct in the morning before she was dragged off to a big family party that she was forced to attend every year, even though it was horribly boring.

Not knowing what to expect, Lanie cautiously entered the break room and almost jumped out of her skin when everyone jumped out with those horrible horn and popper things even though she was expecting it.

Everyone started singing "Happy Birthday" to her and as she watched them, she caught sight of Castle who was grinning like a mad man.

She waited until they stopped singing then spoke up. "Castle! Stop grinning like that you're creeping me out over here." That only caused him to grin wider and announce that he was hungry so it was time for cake. Everyone else looked towards Lanie to see if she agreed or not and when she did, Castle cheered and ran out the door, which earned a very confused look from her but then Kate started talking and her attention turned to her.

"A long time ago I made a promise to you and though you have probably forgotten about it, I haven't. I promised to bake you a cake all those years ago and I think its way passed time to follow through on that."

Lanie just looked at her in shock. Of course she remembered it but there was no way in hell she was going to ask that of her when she knew it reminded her so much of her mother.

The door to the break room opened and Castle pushed in a cart that was covered with a white sheet.

"Girl… You didn't have to do this you know."

Kate just grinned at her and motioned for her to get closer to the cart.

"I wanted too. And since it is ten years late, I thought it should be extra special."

Extra special? Oh dear god what has she done?

Kate nodded and Castle gleefully ripped off the sheet revealing the cake. All was silent for a moment as Lanie stared at the cake in shock but the silence was shattered as Ryan, Esposito, and even the Captain started laughing their heads off.

On the cart was a cake shaped like a human, it looked to be about three feet long with deathly pale skin and X's drawn for its eyes in a cartoonish way to say that it was a corpse. In fact it sort of resembled the man from that "Operation" game.

"This has got to be the weirdest birthday cake ever." It wasn't said with malice though, in fact, Lanie was extremely amused that Kate would think to make her a corpse cake for her birthday.

From behind her she heard Esposito comment. "You got that right." And from her right she heard Castle speak up too. "Just wait 'till you cut it open!"

Everyone crowded around the corpse cake and Kate handed Lanie a brand new scalpel.

"You have got to be kidding me."

"Nope. Go ahead." Lanie shook her head with a smile on her face and went to cut the piece that was closest to her which happened to be an arm. Before the blade could even touch the fondant, both Kate and Castle reached out to stop her.

"No. Do it just like you would an autopsy, though with a little less force." Incredulously she looked to Kate for confirmation and got a smirk in return.

Pushing Esposito out of the way so that she could have better access to the torso of the cake, she quickly put the blade to the fondant and made the first part of the Y incision. Ryan gasped from his position right next to her as what looked like blood started coming out of the incision. Not even bothering to look up at Kate, because she had a pretty good idea of what she had done, she finished the Y incision and pulled back the flaps of skin/fondant to reveal the corpse cake's insides. And by insides she meant his heart, stomach, and all the other organs that were in the human body, sitting in a nice pool of "blood".

"You sure went all out didn't you?"

Kate suddenly had a plate in one hand and a glove on the other.

"Of course. Now, which organ do you want, Birthday girl?"

Hours later Lanie would walk into her other birthday party late, sporting "blood" stained hands and clothes and she had to spend plenty of time explaining that the blood was just a sugar concoction, and that she had gotten it all over her when they found out that the "organs" were filled with the stuff and Esposito had managed to make his squirt all over Ryan who in turn squirted Beckett and it went on from there. It was definitely a pain to clean up the break room but it was so worth it.

She was slightly afraid of what Kate would come up with next year though.

AN: Okay, that was so very random but so much fun to write and as long as Christy likes in then we are good! I've watched to many cake making shows... I wish I was friends with someone who was a ME so that I could attempt to make them a "corpse cake" haha!