Title: Borrowing Strength
Author: helsinkibaby
Fandom: Castle
Pairing: Lanie/Esposito
Rating: G
Length: 384 words
Content notes: Either set when they were an item or in a future where they're back together!
Author notes: More for the "gore" than the "ghost" and barely that...
Summary: Lanie's used to gore but there are some things that affect her.


Lanie Parrish closes her eyes, marshalling up her courage as she prepares to move back the cover, begin today's latest autopsy. It's not that she's squeamish, far from it - she wouldn't be doing this job if she were. She's seen the grisliest, goriest sights that one can imagine, seen crime scenes that could make the most hardened of detectives blush and she hasn't turned a hair. There's no reason she should be delaying this autopsy, except for the fact that there is.

Because this is no ordinary autopsy.

There is nothing ordinary about the violent death of a six year old girl.

It's that, more than any reaction to gore, that has Lanie delaying, has her taking deep breaths before she can face picking up her scalpel.

She's almost ready to begin when the morgue door opens slowly. She doesn't turn, doesn't have to, because there's a familiar scent of cologne, a familiar footfall behind her. A familiar pair of arms slips around her waist and she leans into his touch, closing her eyes.

"I know you hate the kids," Javier Esposito says quietly after a moment. "I thought you might need this."

A sound halfway between a laugh and a sob rises in her throat. He's right, of course; she needed this more than she knew, and she certainly would never have asked him to come here just to hold her and chase away her fears. She would have been too afraid that one moment of kindness would have undone her completely, washed away the walls she'd fought so hard to put up and she'd fall apart, never to put herself together again. She's still partly afraid that that's what's going to happen, but when he's holding her like this, it's easier somehow to believe that it won't. "Don't you dare make me cry, Javier Esposito," she threatens but there's no real force behind it.

She feels his smile against her neck. "Wouldn't dream of it, chica," he tells her. "Just wanted you to know I'm here for you."

She will not cry, she tells herself. She will not.

But she will turn to face him and slip her arms around his neck, burying her head in his chest, borrowing his strength to supplement her own.

It shouldn't help, but it does.