"Hey Lanie, is Alexis still around here by any chance?"
They hear his voice from outside the room before he even steps through the door, but neither of the women is quick enough to register or react to his sudden appearance.
Is it fate? No, she doesn't believe in fate or destiny and all that other nonsense. He's the one who does. Castle just...he's got impeccable (or perhaps awful?) timing.
Or maybe his ears were burning just a bit? He does seem to have a sixth sense about certain things sometimes.
Either way, whatever the reason he chose to appear now of all times, when she was halfway to a blubbering, tearful mess, she's stunned beyond belief and finding herself incapable of movement. Of speech.
"Castle?" Lanie squeaks out, not fairing any better herself, which is saying something. "What are you—"
"I tried to call and tell her I'd pick her up but it went to voicemail, so I figured I'd just drop in and—Oh, sorry. Didn't realize you were working on someone."
He's only managed to take a couple steps inside and is still a fair distance away from the pair, but what's that he said? Working on someone?
"What?" Lanie starts, and then it hits her that Kate's face is currently obscured behind her body from his vantage point. She turns her head back around to Kate, who is lying still and looks positively terrified.
"Fresh case already, huh? What is it this time?"
"Castle, wait a second—" Lanie tries to warn him, but he's too damn curious and she's just not fast enough. His inquisitive nature gets the best of him and he steps forward and leans over to have a look.
Kate catches his eyes for a fraction of a second before she sees the color drain from his face, his skin taking on a ghostly, pale shade of white, his expression aghast.
Castle startles backward, knocking into another table before hitting his head on something clamped and dangling from overhead. He collides with it with enough force that the physical blow and sudden shock of seeing the woman he loved—oh, who is he kidding. He still loves her—on an autopsy table, it knocks him off his feet, down onto his knees.
"K-Kate," he stammers, a voice and expression so desolate that it tears the woman in question apart. "Kate."
She bolts upright and is down on the floor with him in a split second, all her previous thoughts of treading carefully with him and despairing over him completely forgotten.
"No, no, no. I'm fine. I'm okay."
He stares back at her with a set of eyes she'd only seen once before on him, ten months ago. Seeing those grief-stricken blue orbs again, there's zero hesitation in her body when the fingers of one hand instinctively clutch onto the lapel of his jacket while the other caresses down his cheek, coming to rest along his shoulder, thumb lightly grazing his jawline.
"Told you you were going to give someone a heart attack," Lanie says to Kate, earning her a quick scowl from the other woman.
"Kate," Castle breathes, the air coming in and out of him in ragged breaths and Kate immediately turns her attention back on him.
"Oh god, Castle. Please don't have a heart attack," she says shakily, feeling his carotid pulse hammering against the palm of her hand.
Whatever detachment and disinterest he'd shown her, whatever anger he'd been holding towards her in the past week and a half— it's gone now, cast into the wind. His mother was right. He really can't switch it off. He loves her, and she...
She was on the table. Flat out on the table. Like a corpse. And Lanie. Lanie was huddled over her, like she was doing her job.
"Kate. I thought—Oh god, Kate."
He grips at her upper arms, fingers curling behind to her shoulders and his stunned eyes finally manage to meet and focus in on hers for more than a glimmer of a second. He can almost feel himself on the verge of tears with wetness building up in his eyes.
When she feels him tug, she's already two steps ahead of him on closing her arms around him in an embrace.
"No, Castle. I'm fine. I'm safe," she says soothingly, boldly carding her fingers through his hair in reassurance and comfort. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. I just wasn't thinking."
Lanie can't help but think that she means much more than just about being on the autopsy table.
Castle's breathing slowly starts to come back under control, the puffs of warm, moist breath tickling along her neck and into her hair, but Kate startles when she feels something wet trace along her fingers as she threads them through his hair. She pulls back her hand to find a tint of red on her skin, liquid and warm.
"Oh god, you're bleeding."
"I am?"
"Wait, hold still. Let me see."
Lanie takes that as her cue to stop enjoying the show and slide off her chair to kneel down next to Castle as well. Kate's parting his hair around and points in the general direction she felt the blood at so that Lanie can check him over for injury.
"You really cracked your head into that lighthead hard, didn't you?" the ME observes upon further inspection of his scalp. It's a decent cut, probably just a superficial bleeder, but—
"Think he'll need stitches?" Kate asks, her fingers out of the way and yet still threaded through his hair just outside the injury site. Castle cringes at the thought but Lanie nods her head in agreement.
"I'd say so, unless he wants to gain a little bald spot on the back of his head there," she emphasises, tapping a finger lightly to his skull.
"Oh no, no, no. No bald spots for me. I happen to like my hair just fine the way it is, thank you." Castle winces, rubbing his hand up the back of his head. His adrenaline is starting to fade and the pain is finally catching up and registering with his brain. He's going to have one hell of a headache in a bit here.
His fingers bump into Kate's and they share a look, a look much like one they haven't shared in what was beginning to feel like ages. It gives her some hope. He's still in there. The man she knows and loves hasn't disappeared. He's just gone into hiding, for what reason she's still unsure of, but he's there.
With renewed resolve, she decides that just this once, she's going to take a chance and believe in fate, destiny, or whatever the hell Castle would call this opportunity he has unknowingly opened up to her.
She's bound and determined now to get him back.
"I'll take you."
"Take me?" he looks her over curiously. "Take me where?"
"To the emergency room."
"Emergency room? Wait, Lanie's a doctor. Can't she just—"
"You could have a concussion, Castle," Kate reasons, shooting a look across the top of his head and over to Lanie.
The ME can't hold back a smirk. 'atta girl, Kate. Seize the opportunity. They were back in business. She still had plenty of fight left in her, and Kate Beckett was taking back control of the playing field.
Now this was more like it.
Castle swings his head around to Lanie, who puts on a stern face for him.
"In my professional opinion, you're definitely going to need to get that head of yours examined, Castle."
There's a somewhat bitter and angry quip to the way she says it but he has no clue. It's not lost on Kate though, who smiles gratefully at her friend before turning her attention back to her mildly injured partner. He's looking none too pleased with the outlook of this treatment plan, but seems resigned to his fate nevertheless.
"I'm going to be stuck in there for hours," he moans, frowning, rubbing at his head again.
"I'll keep you company." Kate moves to stand and holds her hand out to him, bracing herself for the possibility that he might shrug her off, opt to go by himself. In which case, she'll have to fight him on it tooth and nail until he relents. She's prepared to do it if she has to. "Partners, right?"
He stares up at her for a few seconds and then a pleasant smile forms on her lips when he actually accepts her gesture, takes her hand in his. She helps him off the floor and onto his feet and immediately wraps her fingers around the crook of his elbow, as if to anchor him to her, not let him escape if he should try to.
He glances down at her fingers and back up to her face, but he can't get a read on her. She's not looking at him anymore. She's all business now, her eyes on Lanie.
"Lanie, do you have anything I can cover this with in the meantime?" she asks, motioning towards his still lightly bleeding wound with the index finger of her free hand.
"Yeah, just give me a sec."
Lanie steps away from them and decides to take her time browsing through her supplies. Sure enough, the awkward silence between the two on the other end of the room doesn't last but a moment of time. She expected it wouldn't.
"Is it really that bad?"
"Does it hurt?"
The questions come out simultaneously, causing the pair to chuckle in unison.
"I guess we're back in sync again, huh?" Kate comments with a lift of her lips, looking up at him to gauge his reaction. She's looking for a tell that he's schooling his features, hiding his true feelings from her, but she doesn't get one.
He can't hide his feelings right now any better than he could when he looked upon her in that evening gown the night before. The gown she left in with Detective Inspector Hunt that had him sending out a bitter tweet on Twitter about how he's a fan of Sherlock Holmes because the detective has a dislike for Scotland Yard.
His switch is faulty, maybe. Needs some tweaking, fixing.
The light smile on his face drops suddenly and he reminds himself that he's mad at her, that she lied to him, feels nothing for him. But then he can't help focusing back in on the way her fingers maintain their position on the inside of his elbow, the warmth of her flesh against his and the way her ring finger and pinky seem to have a subtle but unmistakable nervous twitch to them every few seconds.
And then he watches as she brings up her hand to brush aside some hair and look over his scalp again.
"Hurts?" she asks softly.
She's just being...what, exactly? Thoughtful? Kind? Because he's injured. It's just because he's injured. He can't let himself read into it anymore than that. Not when he knows what he knows. His heart can't take much more breakage.
"Still stings." His heart, his head...
"It's not so bad," she admits, tracing her finger along the outside of the wound, giving him an idea of it's size, "but better to be safe than sorry, right? Not ignore things, just in case."
"Yeah, I-I guess so."
What exactly are they talking about here? His head injury or...?
"Here you go, Castle," says Lanie, returning with a carefully trimmed strip of sterile gauze. "It's not bleeding so much now but keep it covered until you get there so nothing flies into it enroute. That's the last place you want New York dirt and grime getting into."
Kate slides her hand out of the way and Lanie sets the white square in place over his head wound. Castle brings his own hand up to hold it in place.
"Come on, partner. Let's get you fixed up, huh?" Kate says to him, tugging on his arm. He falls into step beside her, head spinning for two different reasons.
Kate turns her head back before exiting, mouthing a silent Thank you to Lanie, who motions with her hand to her ear Call me! as they step out of the room.