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Title: Evidence to the Contrary
Fandom: Castle
Rating: R
Genre: Horror, Romance, Angst
Characters/Pairing: Javier Esposito/Kevin Ryan, Richard Castle, Kate Beckett, Roy Montgomery.
Warnings: Slash, adult content, genre!crack (mild horror), themes touching on mental illness and consent issues, unbetad.
Word Count: 2,168
Summary: "Ah, Kev, I expect this crap from Castle, like when he got bit by our 'vampire'," Esposito favored him with full air quotes, "Or when he was convinced he got cursed by a mummy, but c'mon, you're smarter than that."
Disclaimer: Written for this prompt on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
castlekink.
Chapter One
As mornings after went, this one fell into the not-so-great range. Naturally it wasn't the first time he had ever woken up to a pounding head and a sick film of nausea clinging to the back of his throat, but all that trouble without the consolation of having earned it through enjoyable means was definitely a drag. Concussions were never fun, but with the added element of his partner's soft swearing and frantic scramble to retrieve his clothes as he scuttled and thumped about the apartment, Javier Esposito briefly contemplated willing himself to die.
"Shit, shit...ah, hell..."
His eyes still squeezed shut, the breathless, frantic litany cut in harshly through his misery. As much as he wanted to ask Kevin to please have his panic attack in silence, his stomach rebelled against the effort that would take with a violent flip. By the time he'd managed to wrestle his eyes open against the light stabbing in from the window, Kevin had already made his way out of the apartment. A shuttered glance at the clock told him it was hours still before he even had to decide whether to go into work today. Muffling a pitiful groan against the pillow his mind shut off, determined to handle it all a little later.
Hours later Javier sat at his kitchen table feeling marginally more human, though was still miles from handling anything on his stomach. Scrubbing his hands roughly over his face, he filed uncertainly through his recollection of the night before. He had to wonder how he'd even managed, in his condition. In the end, he chalked it up to painkillers coloring his judgments with a faint tone "who gives a crap". And, perhaps, strength born of desperation, the knowledge that the opportunity in front of him probably wouldn't come again.
Judging by his partner's swift retreat, that assessment looked about right. It wasn't unexpected, but damned disappointing nonetheless. Jamming his thumbs roughly into his eye sockets, Javier snorted, though there was very little funny about just how badly he had fucked things up. It was a mistake he never could have made before. They'd worked together for years, and though they were about as different as two men in their line of work could be he had a pretty strong sense of the guy. He used to know the man, understand how he thought, what made him tick...
Over the past two months, though, Kevin had changed and Javier had been thrown completely off track.
Javier had been the first to notice the changes, naturally. Back when they were small things that for the most part went unnoticed by everyone else. It hadn't occurred to him then to bring any attention to them. To do so would have brought unwanted attention on himself. A guy might notice that his partner had started putting three creams in his coffee instead of drinking it black, or that he'd ordered his last two burgers sans the extra onions he nearly always asked for. But the observation that Kevin had stopped wearing his usual cologne was definitely suspect. In any case, the 12th was swamped that week, and so Javier had finally shoved these details into his mental "Ryan" file and tried to forget them.
Only, the changes didn't stop there. Kevin became easily agitated, and increasingly short tempered. There was a tension building in the man's posture that at times had Javier almost reluctant to occupy their usual close quarters with one another. Roughly two and a half weeks into it saw Kevin's snappish warning to "back the fuck off" finally driving Javier to keep his distance. It was about then that he thought things started to catch Beckett's attention. She'd drawn Javier aside discreetly when neither his partner nor Castle were around, but he could only answer her questions with his own confusion.
Three weeks in, Javier was in the hall when he overheard Kevin on the phone, and at first he thought he might finally have his answer.
"Alright. I promise. I promise I won't come home until you're done just—" His partner's voice had held a calm, strained tone that audibly trembled with what it held back. "Just...get your stuff out and...go."
His breath had stalled tight in his chest as he watched Kevin's back retreat into the locker room. Thinking that maybe this might be the time to confront his partner, Javier had followed. He came around a row of lockers just in time to see Kevin laying into a garbage can. Savage kicks dashed it against the wall as it spilled it's guts out onto the floor, the assault didn't stop until long after the plastic had caved in. Javier had watched as Kevin took a step back, dragging shaking hands through his hair.
His expression, reflected in a nearby mirror, was so lost, frustrated and frightened, that Javier had sucked in a stunned gasp.
Kevin's body tensed up immediately. The expression was gone very quickly, and as he watched Javier saw him tilt his head, as though listening, turning slightly toward him. Though Kevin never turned to face him entirely, he was certain the man knew someone was watching. Javier had backed out of the locker room very quickly after that. It was only in the hallway outside, his heart beating rapidly against his ribs that he realized that, for a moment, he had been afraid. Afraid of Kevin. Afraid of a man who, until now, he had never doubted he could trust with his life. The realization settled sickly in his stomach. With it was an itching feeling of apprehension in the back of his mind, one that, inexplicably, told him that he was running out of time.
It was only a few days later, however, that Kevin's behavior took another shocking swerve. The peculiar aggression seemed to abandon him very suddenly, replaced by a flinching, contrite anxiety. For the better part of two days Javier struggled to even get his partner to look him in the eye, and even then the eye-contact was broken quickly. Many around the station were relieved by the shift, but while Javier welcomed a change from something more destructive, he quietly disagreed that this nervous, constrained Ryan was any kind of improvement. Because there was the same odd, wild quality in his partner's eyes that he'd seen at the height of his rage, and it didn't belong there.
After a short period of adjustment things seemed to return mostly to normal, though Javier could sometimes feel it bubbling under the surface. Though his partner eventually shucked the nervousness, and the blistering anger had yet to return, it was plain—to Javier, at least—that whatever it was, Kevin was keeping it on a very short chain. He dreaded it and what it might mean for their partnership, but Javier was at a loss as to what to do about it. He just knew that, whatever weird shit was up with Kevin, Javier had his back. That much wasn't going to change.
Still, when that chain finally decided to snap, he was woefully underprepared. That a bad case would be what finally did it wasn't, perhaps, that surprising, but the manner in which Kevin's careful control undid itself had definitely caught Javier off guard.
They'd trailed a suspect to a vacant office building. The company that had gone under when the slimeball in question had abused his brother's trust and computer access, siphoning over a million from their finances before his brother caught on and was killed for his trouble. A handful of uniforms were covering the parking lot and the exits. Beckett had taken Castle down one end of the corridor, while he and Kevin had taken the other. It was past one in the morning, and the power had been shut off when the business took a dive. Dim streetlight filtered in through the windows as the two of them had traveled close to the wall. Javier had been about to open the door to an office to check it when he felt Kevin's hand on his chest, stopping him cold. In the darkness he couldn't make out his partner's expression, but he could see that his head was tilted slightly. A flash of cold coursed over his skin, raising goosebumps as he watched, Kevin's posture reminding him of the episode in the locker room almost a month before.
He had only a moment to register his partner's pale hand flash, pointing down the hall, before Kevin was gone. Biting down on a swear, Javier chased after. He swung around a corner following his partner's shadow. Javier remembered catching up about to ask Kevin what he was thinking running off like that when his partner's head snapped up suddenly. After that, things got a little choppy. Being hit by a perp in the back of the head with a monster Mag-Lite will do that. The next thing he could pin down was watching Beckett and a bewildered Castle trying to drag Kevin away from their suspect. In the dark, he couldn't see the the man well. Prodding the memory simply brought the image of spilled trash and buckled plastic.
As worryingly out of character as it was, though, it hadn't been the breaking point.
Later, sitting in the ambulance being assaulted with a flashlight for the second time that night, still punchy from what the EMT was calling a mild concussion, Javier had let his mouth run a bit. She had blue eyes that were nice, and he said so, which she had laughed off. That had made him comment on her smile, which she hadn't. Tucking a strand of light brown over her ear she had asked if there was anyone at home to take care of him. Just in case. And Kevin was there, telling the paramedic he'd take care of it. He didn't see Kevin's expression when he spoke to her, but Javier wasn't at all sure the apprehensive spark in her eyes was a trick of the painted lights.
He let himself be bundled up in the car and driven home. The drive was fairly silent, glimpses he got of his partner in the passing glow of the streetlights giving him little clue as to what was going on in the other man's head. His own head had been pounding too hard to try and puzzle it out just then, anyway. Up in his apartment, he'd unearthed a few Vicodin left over from his troubles during that miserable steampunk case. In hindsight, taking them had been kind of dumb, but hindsight also told him it was far from the dumbest thing he would do that night.
Opening the bathroom door he'd almost run straight into his partner.
After the past few weeks it was almost startling to have him so close. He had found himself thinking, not for the first time, of how much he missed it. Their eyes met briefly. Javier saw concern on his partner's face, which made sense. For a brief moment, he thought there was a touch of fear, which really didn't. It faded and Javier wasn't sure exactly what to call the one that replaced it. His partner's head turned subtly in one of those not-Kevin gestures that made the hair stand up on his arms. Kevin leaned in, crowding him completely and suddenly. Javier froze, brain fitfully trying to filter the information of fingers tugging his collar, warm breath tickling the flesh behind his ear and come out with an explanation that made any kind of sense.
In his mind there was only one reasonable response.
Closing the few inches that remained, Javier laid his lips gently against Kevin's neck, eliciting a soft, deep noise that was impossible to interpret as protest. He was encouraged when he felt Kevin lean into it and not away. Moving his exploration upward he teased Kevin's ear with his teeth. Things exploded from there as Kevin got involved, sucking Javier's mouth against his in a fierce assault. As the cramped quarters of the hallway quickly became more annoyance than attraction, Javier had managed to slip underneath Kevin's arms where they supported his weight against the wall. Answering Kevin's disappointed noise with a finger hooked through his tie, Javier lead him to the bedroom.
The ensuing race for skin on skin had been almost perfect, one of the few moments in the past months that had felt right.
Then the morning had come. Kevin had woken up and decided to run, uttering a string of horrified, guilty curses like he'd just run over someone's cat and leaving Javier with a sick pain in his gut that had nothing to do with his head. Alone in an empty apartment, Javier had only two thoughts on his mind. The first was that by letting what had happened that night happen he'd broken something that couldn't be fixed.
The second was that the purpling love-bite his partner had left on his shoulder was going to need some attention.
Chapter Two
Fandom: Castle
Rating: R
Genre: Horror, Romance, Angst
Characters/Pairing: Javier Esposito/Kevin Ryan, Richard Castle, Kate Beckett, Roy Montgomery.
Warnings: Slash, adult content, genre!crack (mild horror), themes touching on mental illness and consent issues, unbetad.
Word Count: 2,168
Summary: "Ah, Kev, I expect this crap from Castle, like when he got bit by our 'vampire'," Esposito favored him with full air quotes, "Or when he was convinced he got cursed by a mummy, but c'mon, you're smarter than that."
Disclaimer: Written for this prompt on
castlekink.Chapter One
As mornings after went, this one fell into the not-so-great range. Naturally it wasn't the first time he had ever woken up to a pounding head and a sick film of nausea clinging to the back of his throat, but all that trouble without the consolation of having earned it through enjoyable means was definitely a drag. Concussions were never fun, but with the added element of his partner's soft swearing and frantic scramble to retrieve his clothes as he scuttled and thumped about the apartment, Javier Esposito briefly contemplated willing himself to die.
"Shit, shit...ah, hell..."
His eyes still squeezed shut, the breathless, frantic litany cut in harshly through his misery. As much as he wanted to ask Kevin to please have his panic attack in silence, his stomach rebelled against the effort that would take with a violent flip. By the time he'd managed to wrestle his eyes open against the light stabbing in from the window, Kevin had already made his way out of the apartment. A shuttered glance at the clock told him it was hours still before he even had to decide whether to go into work today. Muffling a pitiful groan against the pillow his mind shut off, determined to handle it all a little later.
Hours later Javier sat at his kitchen table feeling marginally more human, though was still miles from handling anything on his stomach. Scrubbing his hands roughly over his face, he filed uncertainly through his recollection of the night before. He had to wonder how he'd even managed, in his condition. In the end, he chalked it up to painkillers coloring his judgments with a faint tone "who gives a crap". And, perhaps, strength born of desperation, the knowledge that the opportunity in front of him probably wouldn't come again.
Judging by his partner's swift retreat, that assessment looked about right. It wasn't unexpected, but damned disappointing nonetheless. Jamming his thumbs roughly into his eye sockets, Javier snorted, though there was very little funny about just how badly he had fucked things up. It was a mistake he never could have made before. They'd worked together for years, and though they were about as different as two men in their line of work could be he had a pretty strong sense of the guy. He used to know the man, understand how he thought, what made him tick...
Over the past two months, though, Kevin had changed and Javier had been thrown completely off track.
Javier had been the first to notice the changes, naturally. Back when they were small things that for the most part went unnoticed by everyone else. It hadn't occurred to him then to bring any attention to them. To do so would have brought unwanted attention on himself. A guy might notice that his partner had started putting three creams in his coffee instead of drinking it black, or that he'd ordered his last two burgers sans the extra onions he nearly always asked for. But the observation that Kevin had stopped wearing his usual cologne was definitely suspect. In any case, the 12th was swamped that week, and so Javier had finally shoved these details into his mental "Ryan" file and tried to forget them.
Only, the changes didn't stop there. Kevin became easily agitated, and increasingly short tempered. There was a tension building in the man's posture that at times had Javier almost reluctant to occupy their usual close quarters with one another. Roughly two and a half weeks into it saw Kevin's snappish warning to "back the fuck off" finally driving Javier to keep his distance. It was about then that he thought things started to catch Beckett's attention. She'd drawn Javier aside discreetly when neither his partner nor Castle were around, but he could only answer her questions with his own confusion.
Three weeks in, Javier was in the hall when he overheard Kevin on the phone, and at first he thought he might finally have his answer.
"Alright. I promise. I promise I won't come home until you're done just—" His partner's voice had held a calm, strained tone that audibly trembled with what it held back. "Just...get your stuff out and...go."
His breath had stalled tight in his chest as he watched Kevin's back retreat into the locker room. Thinking that maybe this might be the time to confront his partner, Javier had followed. He came around a row of lockers just in time to see Kevin laying into a garbage can. Savage kicks dashed it against the wall as it spilled it's guts out onto the floor, the assault didn't stop until long after the plastic had caved in. Javier had watched as Kevin took a step back, dragging shaking hands through his hair.
His expression, reflected in a nearby mirror, was so lost, frustrated and frightened, that Javier had sucked in a stunned gasp.
Kevin's body tensed up immediately. The expression was gone very quickly, and as he watched Javier saw him tilt his head, as though listening, turning slightly toward him. Though Kevin never turned to face him entirely, he was certain the man knew someone was watching. Javier had backed out of the locker room very quickly after that. It was only in the hallway outside, his heart beating rapidly against his ribs that he realized that, for a moment, he had been afraid. Afraid of Kevin. Afraid of a man who, until now, he had never doubted he could trust with his life. The realization settled sickly in his stomach. With it was an itching feeling of apprehension in the back of his mind, one that, inexplicably, told him that he was running out of time.
It was only a few days later, however, that Kevin's behavior took another shocking swerve. The peculiar aggression seemed to abandon him very suddenly, replaced by a flinching, contrite anxiety. For the better part of two days Javier struggled to even get his partner to look him in the eye, and even then the eye-contact was broken quickly. Many around the station were relieved by the shift, but while Javier welcomed a change from something more destructive, he quietly disagreed that this nervous, constrained Ryan was any kind of improvement. Because there was the same odd, wild quality in his partner's eyes that he'd seen at the height of his rage, and it didn't belong there.
After a short period of adjustment things seemed to return mostly to normal, though Javier could sometimes feel it bubbling under the surface. Though his partner eventually shucked the nervousness, and the blistering anger had yet to return, it was plain—to Javier, at least—that whatever it was, Kevin was keeping it on a very short chain. He dreaded it and what it might mean for their partnership, but Javier was at a loss as to what to do about it. He just knew that, whatever weird shit was up with Kevin, Javier had his back. That much wasn't going to change.
Still, when that chain finally decided to snap, he was woefully underprepared. That a bad case would be what finally did it wasn't, perhaps, that surprising, but the manner in which Kevin's careful control undid itself had definitely caught Javier off guard.
They'd trailed a suspect to a vacant office building. The company that had gone under when the slimeball in question had abused his brother's trust and computer access, siphoning over a million from their finances before his brother caught on and was killed for his trouble. A handful of uniforms were covering the parking lot and the exits. Beckett had taken Castle down one end of the corridor, while he and Kevin had taken the other. It was past one in the morning, and the power had been shut off when the business took a dive. Dim streetlight filtered in through the windows as the two of them had traveled close to the wall. Javier had been about to open the door to an office to check it when he felt Kevin's hand on his chest, stopping him cold. In the darkness he couldn't make out his partner's expression, but he could see that his head was tilted slightly. A flash of cold coursed over his skin, raising goosebumps as he watched, Kevin's posture reminding him of the episode in the locker room almost a month before.
He had only a moment to register his partner's pale hand flash, pointing down the hall, before Kevin was gone. Biting down on a swear, Javier chased after. He swung around a corner following his partner's shadow. Javier remembered catching up about to ask Kevin what he was thinking running off like that when his partner's head snapped up suddenly. After that, things got a little choppy. Being hit by a perp in the back of the head with a monster Mag-Lite will do that. The next thing he could pin down was watching Beckett and a bewildered Castle trying to drag Kevin away from their suspect. In the dark, he couldn't see the the man well. Prodding the memory simply brought the image of spilled trash and buckled plastic.
As worryingly out of character as it was, though, it hadn't been the breaking point.
Later, sitting in the ambulance being assaulted with a flashlight for the second time that night, still punchy from what the EMT was calling a mild concussion, Javier had let his mouth run a bit. She had blue eyes that were nice, and he said so, which she had laughed off. That had made him comment on her smile, which she hadn't. Tucking a strand of light brown over her ear she had asked if there was anyone at home to take care of him. Just in case. And Kevin was there, telling the paramedic he'd take care of it. He didn't see Kevin's expression when he spoke to her, but Javier wasn't at all sure the apprehensive spark in her eyes was a trick of the painted lights.
He let himself be bundled up in the car and driven home. The drive was fairly silent, glimpses he got of his partner in the passing glow of the streetlights giving him little clue as to what was going on in the other man's head. His own head had been pounding too hard to try and puzzle it out just then, anyway. Up in his apartment, he'd unearthed a few Vicodin left over from his troubles during that miserable steampunk case. In hindsight, taking them had been kind of dumb, but hindsight also told him it was far from the dumbest thing he would do that night.
Opening the bathroom door he'd almost run straight into his partner.
After the past few weeks it was almost startling to have him so close. He had found himself thinking, not for the first time, of how much he missed it. Their eyes met briefly. Javier saw concern on his partner's face, which made sense. For a brief moment, he thought there was a touch of fear, which really didn't. It faded and Javier wasn't sure exactly what to call the one that replaced it. His partner's head turned subtly in one of those not-Kevin gestures that made the hair stand up on his arms. Kevin leaned in, crowding him completely and suddenly. Javier froze, brain fitfully trying to filter the information of fingers tugging his collar, warm breath tickling the flesh behind his ear and come out with an explanation that made any kind of sense.
In his mind there was only one reasonable response.
Closing the few inches that remained, Javier laid his lips gently against Kevin's neck, eliciting a soft, deep noise that was impossible to interpret as protest. He was encouraged when he felt Kevin lean into it and not away. Moving his exploration upward he teased Kevin's ear with his teeth. Things exploded from there as Kevin got involved, sucking Javier's mouth against his in a fierce assault. As the cramped quarters of the hallway quickly became more annoyance than attraction, Javier had managed to slip underneath Kevin's arms where they supported his weight against the wall. Answering Kevin's disappointed noise with a finger hooked through his tie, Javier lead him to the bedroom.
The ensuing race for skin on skin had been almost perfect, one of the few moments in the past months that had felt right.
Then the morning had come. Kevin had woken up and decided to run, uttering a string of horrified, guilty curses like he'd just run over someone's cat and leaving Javier with a sick pain in his gut that had nothing to do with his head. Alone in an empty apartment, Javier had only two thoughts on his mind. The first was that by letting what had happened that night happen he'd broken something that couldn't be fixed.
The second was that the purpling love-bite his partner had left on his shoulder was going to need some attention.
Chapter Two
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: Wednesday, 8 June 2011 01:43 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: Tuesday, 13 September 2011 06:46 am (UTC)From:Off to the next chapter!!
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Date: Monday, 6 February 2012 05:47 pm (UTC)From:I was bitching about knowing what it's about.
I was being so sympathetic with both. Because, if I'm right, Ryan has reasons to freak out. And poor Javier is likely to be distraught.