![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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: 3,437
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 Two
Somehow Javier mustered the strength and dignity he needed to face work that day. Though he was late by almost a half hour. Judging by the lack of comment from even Beckett, he must have looked crap. In the bullpen Castle slapped him on the back and he couldn't help but wince. Beside the lingering pain throbbing in his skull here was a deep ache in his muscles and his joints that he didn't like to think had roots in the previous night's activities, good or bad. As intense as they had been, he couldn't be getting that old. Normally he'd prefer to downplay it, but Kevin's careful effort not to notice had him feeling a little vindictive.
"Still a little tender from last night," he explained to Castle, louder than necessary, feeling a bit of spiteful satisfaction at the tension in Kevin's shoulders.
Kevin's head sank low at his desk. He appeared to be working on the paperwork in front of him. Javier knew better. As tempting as it was to leave Kevin to stew and squirm, Javier had the feeling it would only add fuel to an already volatile fire. And, at the very least, he thought he'd earned the right to come right out and ask just what the fuck was going on.
Badly distracted for reasons blatantly obvious to only the two of them, a frustrated Beckett had finally sent Kevin off to the file room. Javier waited a few long moments before excusing himself as well and, taking Kate's exasperated wave as unneeded permission, followed. The trap he set wasn't a particularly good one judging from the sudden hesitation of Kevin's steps in the hall, but Javier didn't allow him the chance to retreat.
"We need to talk," He informed his partner as he ushered Kevin into the nearby restroom. Having already made sure the room was empty he quickly secured the lock behind them. "Now."
The expression of surprise on Kevin's face might almost have been comical if not for the defensive tautness in the man's shoulders, a trapped-animal vibe so strong that Javier almost reconsidered. In planning the confrontation, he hadn't quite decided just what he would say, but with the desperate light of panic in those blue eyes threatening to destroy his resolve, Javier found it all pouring out at once.
"Kevin. What the hell is up with you?" He grated out by way of opening. "You've been acting like a total basket case. You've been acting all paranoid, and bitchy as hell. I'd probably blame it your break up with Jenny if it hadn't started before that. Don't even think nobody's noticed. Though if I hadn't, last night would have been pretty hard to miss. I mean...what the actual fuck, Kev?!"
So that approach had its disadvantages in regards to tactfulness. Kevin's expression was stricken—he probably could not have looked more so if Javier had actually slapped him in the face. Javier felt like a heel, but did his best not to let it show beneath the anger and frustration he felt. Watching Kevin's face as the other man floundered with almost physical agony to provide him with an answer made that feat unbelievably difficult.
"I didn't— I mean I'm not..." His stumbling trailed off, forehead writing itself into that language of wrinkles that Javier could almost read as he weighed words in his head. He leaned in uncertainly, voice lowered to a cautious whisper despite their being completely alone. "I'm not gay."
Javier couldn't help but grit his teeth. Somewhere in the course of their partnership he'd come to trust Kevin with his life. He wasn't exactly out in as many words, but once they had reached that level of trust it wasn't something he'd tried especially hard to hide from the man. Risky, but it had been good—scratch that, it had been damned good to have someone he didn't have to hide from, if only to recount a bad date or three in full detail. It was a gamble that Kevin had never given him cause to regret, but in their current context Kevin's painful, embarrassed denial was working his last nerve.
"Despite last night's wealth of evidence to the contrary?" His tone was harsher than he normally would have liked, harsher than he'd even expected upon opening his mouth, but hell. He felt he had more than enough justification to be annoyed.
Kevin's face twisted in an anguished expression which Javier thought he should in no way find any satisfaction in. Though any alleged positive feelings justly evaporate when Kevin finally finds his tongue to reply.
"Last night was a mistake."
Okay. Fuck annoyed.
"No. Na-ah," Javier argued, poking a sharp finger into his partner's chest that made him flinch. "You want to try and use the rebound card, Kev, you go right ahead. But freaking out because you tried a little dick? Do not even try to pull that shit with me."
And maybe it was the physical assault that did it, feeble as it was, because finally—freaking finally—Kevin seemed ready to pull himself out of the defensive headspace he'd been living in for the past month or so. The shove Kevin aimed at his chest knocked him back a few steps, the distance closed between them before Javier could even react. And this close, with Kevin in his face, Javier imagined he could see it, that whatever-it-was he didn't have a name for. He could see it and the trembling effort it took his partner to keep it in check.
"Damn it, Javi, I mean I wasn't in control."
Kevin's voice was uneven, halting as he formed the sentence, naked distress slicing past Javier's anger life a knife. The phrasing alone set an alarm blazing in his head that for several moments drowned out all thought. Because he couldn't have— He didn't think he could handle the possibility that he had taken advantage of his partner while the other man was drunk. But no, he decided, once he got his brain to turn over properly. No. He knew what Kevin was like when he was drunk. This was something else...
Had there been signs he'd missed? Besides, like, everything. He didn't like even entertaining what entered his head at that moment as a possibility. It was so out of character for him—but then, so was everything lately. He had to ask.
"Hey," he was so careful as he set his hand on Kevin's shoulder, waiting for the wary glance that followed the motion to return to his eyes before he spoke, "you doing drugs, Kev?"
"What? No, I..."
Kevin trailed off, eyes focusing on the wall behind him. Frustration and indecision warred across his features, too swiftly for Javier to make sense of them before all the energy just bled out of him. He took a step back, eyes seeming to measure the span between them almost deliberately, his hand cutting a loose, mute gesture as he grasped visibly for the words, silent for several moments before he spoke.
"You... You remember when I got bit by that dog working a case a couple months ago?"
It was so apparently off-topic that Javier almost laughed. Caught off guard, his response was light.
"I remember you being so freaked out when we couldn't find the dog you half convinced yourself you'd caught rabies..." Then his brain caught up with the rest of their conversation. Flashes of Kevin's bizarre behavior had the teasing smirk on his face disappearing sharply.
"Bro, it's not rabies, is it?"
Kevin's startled snort of laughter managed to loosen some of the worry that had been wadding itself up beneath his ribs. As he watched, Kevin's let out a slow, sick breath, lips pulled in an expression that was half nervous, rueful smile, half grimace.
"Uh, no..." He muttered to himself, quietly enough that he couldn't have expected Javier to hear. "Definitely not rabies..."
He lapsed into silence again, running a hand over the back of his neck. His fingers tangled themselves briefly in the short hairs at the back of his skull, giving a sharp tug before they fell away. After another odd, shifting, awkward pause Kevin let out a breath, taking a step in to speak.
"I, ah..." He swallowed, smoothing a voice that sounded weak and on the edge of cracking. Javier could feel Kevin's scrutiny as the other man watched his face with an alarming intensity, as if cataloging his reactions by the nanosecond. As he spoke his own expression was flinching and hesitant, as if he were imparting the single most embarrassing detail of his life. "Javi...I think I got bit by a werewolf."
Javier would try forgive himself later for laughing, but he honest to God thought Kevin was joking.
Which seemed massively inappropriate to the occasion, sure, but any other explanation was patently ridiculous. Except for the part where Kevin wasn't laughing. Except for the red embarrassed heat staining his face, and the taut line of his shoulders. Except for the eyes that were boring holes in the floor that now refused to look back at him. All of those things together made it painfully obvious that Kevin obviously didn't think what he'd just said was at all funny. The sudden shift toward that realization made Javier's stomach drop.
Javier swiped a hand over his mouth as he floundered for a response.
"Ah, Kev, I expect this crap from Castle, like when he got bit by our 'vampire'," Javier favored him with full air quotes. "Or when he was convinced he got cursed by a mummy. C'mon, you're smarter than that."
Javier decided squarely then and there that the writer could not be allowed unsupervised around his partner. Because, honestly, Kevin was taking a page from Castle's book, and it was one of the early ones with the voodoo and Wiccans out for revenge. Rick was an okay guy and all, but he and Kevin both had fertile imaginations and were almost the same kind of high-strung. If Kevin was ready to add two and two together and come up with werewolves, then he was already dangerously close to the kind of crazy that couldn't be fixed.
"This is different, Javier," Kevin said, softly, plainly trying to keep his voice steady. "I mean...I know. Okay? I know how crazy it sounds, but this is real."
Oh, well as long as he knew. Javier thought, struggling to handle the sheer surreality of their conversation.
"You got bit by a dog, Kevin," he managed slowly, striving for calm and reasonable, but falling a few octaves short of the mark. "There are no wolves in Manhattan."
"W—"
"Not even werewolves," He exclaimed, with perhaps more force to his voice than was strictly necessary, lifting a finger and stopping Kevin's argument in it's tracks. "Just a homeless dust head who let his dog chew on his victims. That's it."
"We never got a good look at that dog, Javi. Hell, we friggin' looked. It was just gone."
"The shot scared it off, bro."
Kevin's snort sent Javier's mood diving back toward the annoyance he'd been feeling not fifteen minutes ago before his life got weird-as-shit, because they were honest to God still arguing this.
"Yeah, leaving it's owner dead and naked in the middle of Central Park," Kevin's tone held an edge of skeptical sarcasm that was impossible to miss. "Don't pretend that wasn't weird. Beckett was aiming for the dog...that thing was on me. She would never have taken the shot if it wasn't clear. "
He lifted his hand toward Javier's shoulder but he let it drop inches away from contact.
"Javi it was a full moon and..." His voice was small and vulnerable. "And Kate just doesn't miss like that."
And God damn it, Javier would have given anything for a decent rebuttal for that last part, because Beckett hadn't wanted to let that detail go, either.
"Are you sure it's not just rabies?" He didn't even try to keep the resignation out of his voice. By now he was beginning to realize that the only way to progress in this conversation was if he accepted Kevin's self-diagnosis—not as fact, because that just wasn't sane, but as one that the man sincerely believed.
Kevin offered a faint smile, shadowed by a very similar resignation. He seemed tired.
"C'mon, bro, you think I wouldn't consider that before this—this other thing? Trust me, I looked it up. And 'just rabies' would still mean I was dying. Turns out once your symptomatic it's over pretty quickly. This has been going on for two months, Javi. If it was rabies I'd probably be dead by now, or in a coma with my brain turning to mush."
Kevin sighed, stepping back to hitch his hip against a sink, his hands spread open in front of him.
"Hell, I didn't want to think it, either, bro. It sounds nuts. It is nuts. From the inside, though, it's so not nuts because I've felt myself... Changing."
Kevin paused for a moment, dragging both hands through his hair as he strung his thoughts together.
"I mean, I've changed. I'm different. You know, Jenny knows, the whole friggin' precinct knows. Only you don't, not really."
"Then try and help me out, Kev," Javier said, mirroring Kevin's lean against the wall beside the door. "Help me understand this."
Kevin gave a slight nod, releasing a breath so slow he could have been holding it for years.
"It was just little things at first. I mean, stuff I'd notice then dismiss as nothing. Like it was all in my head, or just side-effects of the tetanus shot the ER doc gave me to shut me up. Things started to seem too loud, or bright. Food didn't taste right, and I started noticing smells I shouldn't have been able to notice. And it wasn't really anything to start with, but it kept getting worse. By the end of the first week, it was a little like having a hangover twenty-four seven. Like everything's just in my face all the time. And I haven't meant to be an asshole, but emotionally it's like I've got no buffer anymore. I'm starting to get used to it, though. That much I'm getting used to..."
Kevin's eyes studied the tile beneath his feet, but Javier still saw that lost, terrified look from last month creep back in. He forced his hands into his pockets to hide how they'd balled into fists to match the tightness in his chest.
"But the other things I don't even know how to put into words. I feel...wrong in my own head, and my own skin. I'm never not me, but sometimes my thoughts aren't— Aren't entirely human. And I just don't know how to deal with that."
As he listened to Kevin spill everything out to him as desperately as a drowning man needed air, Javier felt more helpless than he could remember feeling in his life. There was no stopping that flood of wrongness, and no looking away. It was like a train wreck happening in front of him, his best friend deconstructing his own sanity with a momentum that was headed toward disaster.
"And you really haven't seen the worst bits. It's easier when I'm at work, 'cause the station's hectic and just flooded as hell, but if I'm working my mind's not on what's happening to me. I can hang onto being how I used to be if I focus, but sometimes I— Sometimes it's just too much, and I can't. And I had no idea what it was, not for almost that whole first month, but I knew it meant...something. That something was going to happen. Like I could feel where it was leading, even if I didn't know in my head. And Jenny..."
He paused for a breath that shook painfully, continuing with a broken agony in his voice.
"Putting up with my temper was bad enough, but when I told her that, when I told her the other parts too... She tried to be there for me, she did, but she was afraid. Of me. I mean— I never thought I could hurt her, I wouldn't have been around her if I thought that, Javi, you know that, but— You said it yourself, bro. I've been acting..." A gesture as he grasped for an adequate word dropped to his side abruptly with a laugh that was more than a little hysterical. "Like a lunatic."
Kevin pressed knuckles against his eyes, having reached the point of fighting tears.
"So she was scared. She tried not to show it, but honestly that just made it worse, because I knew better. Because fear does have a smell, believe it or not. And it wasn't her fault, but it was like I couldn't even be around her without being reminded of how wrong I am inside. And I couldn't escape that, but it wasn't fair for her to live like that if she didn't have to. And we both thought it was for the best, but still, once she was gone I just wanted to—"
Kevin looked him in the eye for the first time throughout his confession, wetting his lips as they stretched into a fragile, self-conscious smile.
"Well, you were there."
"It wasn't long after Jenny left that I knew...when. When that thing, whatever it was, would happen. And once I realized when it was I knew what it was, and believe me, I thought I'd lost my friggin' mind. And I thought about taking myself somewhere for help, I really did, but I didn't have time, because it ..." He swallowed thickly, pushing down his horror with a shudder. "It happened. It wasn't like in the movies. There are parts of it I don't remember, and the bits that I do are too confusing to even...I can't— I don't want to talk about it. But it happened, Javi. In two more days it's happening again, and I don't know what I'm going to do."
Those words, Kevin's wrenching, earnest, expression of naked terror, raised the hair on his arms. Because the man was utterly convinced that everything that had happened could be blamed on an imaginary animal living in his head. Javier knew that if he didn't do something he was going to lose his partner, his best friend. That could not happen. The thought raised something desperate and possessive inside him. Nothing and no one was taking Kevin from him without a fight.
He didn't even remember taking a step forward. His hands gripped Kevin's shoulders, just this side of too tightly, and Kevin was looking at him warily, hopefully. Looking into his partner's eyes, somehow, Javier found the words he needed.
"I'll tell you what's going to happen, Kev. I'm going to be there, that night, and I'm going to prove to you that what you think is happening is not happening." He gave Kevin's shoulders a soft squeeze, lighting his grip. "Then you and me are going to find out what really is going on."
Kevin's eyes closed lightly and he gave a soft sigh."You'd rather just believe I'm going crazy?"
His voice didn't sound accusing or surprised. Just tired. There was a list to his posture, so much of his tension gone that he seemed almost limp. Javier gave him a light shake, bringing Kevin's attention back to him.
"You've always been a little crazy, bro." He said, trying to keep his voice light, and offering his partner a smile that he was miles away from feeling. "And I don't like to think it, but werewolves do not exist. Just got to see you through the full moon so we can prove that. Then, if we have to, we can get you help."
Kevin searched his face for a few moments, finally giving a small nod.
"Okay." He agreed finally, the word hardly a whisper.
Javier had expected more resistance to the offer. He decided to take its absence as a good sign. If Kevin could be reasoned with that much, then perhaps there was still a chance this could work out alright. In some mindlessly optimistic part of his brain he still half-hoped that the whole thing was just the weirdest heterosexual freak-out ever...
As they returned to work, each doing their level best to pretend their lives hadn't been knocked violently off-axis, Javier thanked God with more sincerity than he had for anything in a long time that he'd never mentioned the bite mark.
Chapter Three
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: 3,437
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 Two
Somehow Javier mustered the strength and dignity he needed to face work that day. Though he was late by almost a half hour. Judging by the lack of comment from even Beckett, he must have looked crap. In the bullpen Castle slapped him on the back and he couldn't help but wince. Beside the lingering pain throbbing in his skull here was a deep ache in his muscles and his joints that he didn't like to think had roots in the previous night's activities, good or bad. As intense as they had been, he couldn't be getting that old. Normally he'd prefer to downplay it, but Kevin's careful effort not to notice had him feeling a little vindictive.
"Still a little tender from last night," he explained to Castle, louder than necessary, feeling a bit of spiteful satisfaction at the tension in Kevin's shoulders.
Kevin's head sank low at his desk. He appeared to be working on the paperwork in front of him. Javier knew better. As tempting as it was to leave Kevin to stew and squirm, Javier had the feeling it would only add fuel to an already volatile fire. And, at the very least, he thought he'd earned the right to come right out and ask just what the fuck was going on.
Badly distracted for reasons blatantly obvious to only the two of them, a frustrated Beckett had finally sent Kevin off to the file room. Javier waited a few long moments before excusing himself as well and, taking Kate's exasperated wave as unneeded permission, followed. The trap he set wasn't a particularly good one judging from the sudden hesitation of Kevin's steps in the hall, but Javier didn't allow him the chance to retreat.
"We need to talk," He informed his partner as he ushered Kevin into the nearby restroom. Having already made sure the room was empty he quickly secured the lock behind them. "Now."
The expression of surprise on Kevin's face might almost have been comical if not for the defensive tautness in the man's shoulders, a trapped-animal vibe so strong that Javier almost reconsidered. In planning the confrontation, he hadn't quite decided just what he would say, but with the desperate light of panic in those blue eyes threatening to destroy his resolve, Javier found it all pouring out at once.
"Kevin. What the hell is up with you?" He grated out by way of opening. "You've been acting like a total basket case. You've been acting all paranoid, and bitchy as hell. I'd probably blame it your break up with Jenny if it hadn't started before that. Don't even think nobody's noticed. Though if I hadn't, last night would have been pretty hard to miss. I mean...what the actual fuck, Kev?!"
So that approach had its disadvantages in regards to tactfulness. Kevin's expression was stricken—he probably could not have looked more so if Javier had actually slapped him in the face. Javier felt like a heel, but did his best not to let it show beneath the anger and frustration he felt. Watching Kevin's face as the other man floundered with almost physical agony to provide him with an answer made that feat unbelievably difficult.
"I didn't— I mean I'm not..." His stumbling trailed off, forehead writing itself into that language of wrinkles that Javier could almost read as he weighed words in his head. He leaned in uncertainly, voice lowered to a cautious whisper despite their being completely alone. "I'm not gay."
Javier couldn't help but grit his teeth. Somewhere in the course of their partnership he'd come to trust Kevin with his life. He wasn't exactly out in as many words, but once they had reached that level of trust it wasn't something he'd tried especially hard to hide from the man. Risky, but it had been good—scratch that, it had been damned good to have someone he didn't have to hide from, if only to recount a bad date or three in full detail. It was a gamble that Kevin had never given him cause to regret, but in their current context Kevin's painful, embarrassed denial was working his last nerve.
"Despite last night's wealth of evidence to the contrary?" His tone was harsher than he normally would have liked, harsher than he'd even expected upon opening his mouth, but hell. He felt he had more than enough justification to be annoyed.
Kevin's face twisted in an anguished expression which Javier thought he should in no way find any satisfaction in. Though any alleged positive feelings justly evaporate when Kevin finally finds his tongue to reply.
"Last night was a mistake."
Okay. Fuck annoyed.
"No. Na-ah," Javier argued, poking a sharp finger into his partner's chest that made him flinch. "You want to try and use the rebound card, Kev, you go right ahead. But freaking out because you tried a little dick? Do not even try to pull that shit with me."
And maybe it was the physical assault that did it, feeble as it was, because finally—freaking finally—Kevin seemed ready to pull himself out of the defensive headspace he'd been living in for the past month or so. The shove Kevin aimed at his chest knocked him back a few steps, the distance closed between them before Javier could even react. And this close, with Kevin in his face, Javier imagined he could see it, that whatever-it-was he didn't have a name for. He could see it and the trembling effort it took his partner to keep it in check.
"Damn it, Javi, I mean I wasn't in control."
Kevin's voice was uneven, halting as he formed the sentence, naked distress slicing past Javier's anger life a knife. The phrasing alone set an alarm blazing in his head that for several moments drowned out all thought. Because he couldn't have— He didn't think he could handle the possibility that he had taken advantage of his partner while the other man was drunk. But no, he decided, once he got his brain to turn over properly. No. He knew what Kevin was like when he was drunk. This was something else...
Had there been signs he'd missed? Besides, like, everything. He didn't like even entertaining what entered his head at that moment as a possibility. It was so out of character for him—but then, so was everything lately. He had to ask.
"Hey," he was so careful as he set his hand on Kevin's shoulder, waiting for the wary glance that followed the motion to return to his eyes before he spoke, "you doing drugs, Kev?"
"What? No, I..."
Kevin trailed off, eyes focusing on the wall behind him. Frustration and indecision warred across his features, too swiftly for Javier to make sense of them before all the energy just bled out of him. He took a step back, eyes seeming to measure the span between them almost deliberately, his hand cutting a loose, mute gesture as he grasped visibly for the words, silent for several moments before he spoke.
"You... You remember when I got bit by that dog working a case a couple months ago?"
It was so apparently off-topic that Javier almost laughed. Caught off guard, his response was light.
"I remember you being so freaked out when we couldn't find the dog you half convinced yourself you'd caught rabies..." Then his brain caught up with the rest of their conversation. Flashes of Kevin's bizarre behavior had the teasing smirk on his face disappearing sharply.
"Bro, it's not rabies, is it?"
Kevin's startled snort of laughter managed to loosen some of the worry that had been wadding itself up beneath his ribs. As he watched, Kevin's let out a slow, sick breath, lips pulled in an expression that was half nervous, rueful smile, half grimace.
"Uh, no..." He muttered to himself, quietly enough that he couldn't have expected Javier to hear. "Definitely not rabies..."
He lapsed into silence again, running a hand over the back of his neck. His fingers tangled themselves briefly in the short hairs at the back of his skull, giving a sharp tug before they fell away. After another odd, shifting, awkward pause Kevin let out a breath, taking a step in to speak.
"I, ah..." He swallowed, smoothing a voice that sounded weak and on the edge of cracking. Javier could feel Kevin's scrutiny as the other man watched his face with an alarming intensity, as if cataloging his reactions by the nanosecond. As he spoke his own expression was flinching and hesitant, as if he were imparting the single most embarrassing detail of his life. "Javi...I think I got bit by a werewolf."
Javier would try forgive himself later for laughing, but he honest to God thought Kevin was joking.
Which seemed massively inappropriate to the occasion, sure, but any other explanation was patently ridiculous. Except for the part where Kevin wasn't laughing. Except for the red embarrassed heat staining his face, and the taut line of his shoulders. Except for the eyes that were boring holes in the floor that now refused to look back at him. All of those things together made it painfully obvious that Kevin obviously didn't think what he'd just said was at all funny. The sudden shift toward that realization made Javier's stomach drop.
Javier swiped a hand over his mouth as he floundered for a response.
"Ah, Kev, I expect this crap from Castle, like when he got bit by our 'vampire'," Javier favored him with full air quotes. "Or when he was convinced he got cursed by a mummy. C'mon, you're smarter than that."
Javier decided squarely then and there that the writer could not be allowed unsupervised around his partner. Because, honestly, Kevin was taking a page from Castle's book, and it was one of the early ones with the voodoo and Wiccans out for revenge. Rick was an okay guy and all, but he and Kevin both had fertile imaginations and were almost the same kind of high-strung. If Kevin was ready to add two and two together and come up with werewolves, then he was already dangerously close to the kind of crazy that couldn't be fixed.
"This is different, Javier," Kevin said, softly, plainly trying to keep his voice steady. "I mean...I know. Okay? I know how crazy it sounds, but this is real."
Oh, well as long as he knew. Javier thought, struggling to handle the sheer surreality of their conversation.
"You got bit by a dog, Kevin," he managed slowly, striving for calm and reasonable, but falling a few octaves short of the mark. "There are no wolves in Manhattan."
"W—"
"Not even werewolves," He exclaimed, with perhaps more force to his voice than was strictly necessary, lifting a finger and stopping Kevin's argument in it's tracks. "Just a homeless dust head who let his dog chew on his victims. That's it."
"We never got a good look at that dog, Javi. Hell, we friggin' looked. It was just gone."
"The shot scared it off, bro."
Kevin's snort sent Javier's mood diving back toward the annoyance he'd been feeling not fifteen minutes ago before his life got weird-as-shit, because they were honest to God still arguing this.
"Yeah, leaving it's owner dead and naked in the middle of Central Park," Kevin's tone held an edge of skeptical sarcasm that was impossible to miss. "Don't pretend that wasn't weird. Beckett was aiming for the dog...that thing was on me. She would never have taken the shot if it wasn't clear. "
He lifted his hand toward Javier's shoulder but he let it drop inches away from contact.
"Javi it was a full moon and..." His voice was small and vulnerable. "And Kate just doesn't miss like that."
And God damn it, Javier would have given anything for a decent rebuttal for that last part, because Beckett hadn't wanted to let that detail go, either.
"Are you sure it's not just rabies?" He didn't even try to keep the resignation out of his voice. By now he was beginning to realize that the only way to progress in this conversation was if he accepted Kevin's self-diagnosis—not as fact, because that just wasn't sane, but as one that the man sincerely believed.
Kevin offered a faint smile, shadowed by a very similar resignation. He seemed tired.
"C'mon, bro, you think I wouldn't consider that before this—this other thing? Trust me, I looked it up. And 'just rabies' would still mean I was dying. Turns out once your symptomatic it's over pretty quickly. This has been going on for two months, Javi. If it was rabies I'd probably be dead by now, or in a coma with my brain turning to mush."
Kevin sighed, stepping back to hitch his hip against a sink, his hands spread open in front of him.
"Hell, I didn't want to think it, either, bro. It sounds nuts. It is nuts. From the inside, though, it's so not nuts because I've felt myself... Changing."
Kevin paused for a moment, dragging both hands through his hair as he strung his thoughts together.
"I mean, I've changed. I'm different. You know, Jenny knows, the whole friggin' precinct knows. Only you don't, not really."
"Then try and help me out, Kev," Javier said, mirroring Kevin's lean against the wall beside the door. "Help me understand this."
Kevin gave a slight nod, releasing a breath so slow he could have been holding it for years.
"It was just little things at first. I mean, stuff I'd notice then dismiss as nothing. Like it was all in my head, or just side-effects of the tetanus shot the ER doc gave me to shut me up. Things started to seem too loud, or bright. Food didn't taste right, and I started noticing smells I shouldn't have been able to notice. And it wasn't really anything to start with, but it kept getting worse. By the end of the first week, it was a little like having a hangover twenty-four seven. Like everything's just in my face all the time. And I haven't meant to be an asshole, but emotionally it's like I've got no buffer anymore. I'm starting to get used to it, though. That much I'm getting used to..."
Kevin's eyes studied the tile beneath his feet, but Javier still saw that lost, terrified look from last month creep back in. He forced his hands into his pockets to hide how they'd balled into fists to match the tightness in his chest.
"But the other things I don't even know how to put into words. I feel...wrong in my own head, and my own skin. I'm never not me, but sometimes my thoughts aren't— Aren't entirely human. And I just don't know how to deal with that."
As he listened to Kevin spill everything out to him as desperately as a drowning man needed air, Javier felt more helpless than he could remember feeling in his life. There was no stopping that flood of wrongness, and no looking away. It was like a train wreck happening in front of him, his best friend deconstructing his own sanity with a momentum that was headed toward disaster.
"And you really haven't seen the worst bits. It's easier when I'm at work, 'cause the station's hectic and just flooded as hell, but if I'm working my mind's not on what's happening to me. I can hang onto being how I used to be if I focus, but sometimes I— Sometimes it's just too much, and I can't. And I had no idea what it was, not for almost that whole first month, but I knew it meant...something. That something was going to happen. Like I could feel where it was leading, even if I didn't know in my head. And Jenny..."
He paused for a breath that shook painfully, continuing with a broken agony in his voice.
"Putting up with my temper was bad enough, but when I told her that, when I told her the other parts too... She tried to be there for me, she did, but she was afraid. Of me. I mean— I never thought I could hurt her, I wouldn't have been around her if I thought that, Javi, you know that, but— You said it yourself, bro. I've been acting..." A gesture as he grasped for an adequate word dropped to his side abruptly with a laugh that was more than a little hysterical. "Like a lunatic."
Kevin pressed knuckles against his eyes, having reached the point of fighting tears.
"So she was scared. She tried not to show it, but honestly that just made it worse, because I knew better. Because fear does have a smell, believe it or not. And it wasn't her fault, but it was like I couldn't even be around her without being reminded of how wrong I am inside. And I couldn't escape that, but it wasn't fair for her to live like that if she didn't have to. And we both thought it was for the best, but still, once she was gone I just wanted to—"
Kevin looked him in the eye for the first time throughout his confession, wetting his lips as they stretched into a fragile, self-conscious smile.
"Well, you were there."
"It wasn't long after Jenny left that I knew...when. When that thing, whatever it was, would happen. And once I realized when it was I knew what it was, and believe me, I thought I'd lost my friggin' mind. And I thought about taking myself somewhere for help, I really did, but I didn't have time, because it ..." He swallowed thickly, pushing down his horror with a shudder. "It happened. It wasn't like in the movies. There are parts of it I don't remember, and the bits that I do are too confusing to even...I can't— I don't want to talk about it. But it happened, Javi. In two more days it's happening again, and I don't know what I'm going to do."
Those words, Kevin's wrenching, earnest, expression of naked terror, raised the hair on his arms. Because the man was utterly convinced that everything that had happened could be blamed on an imaginary animal living in his head. Javier knew that if he didn't do something he was going to lose his partner, his best friend. That could not happen. The thought raised something desperate and possessive inside him. Nothing and no one was taking Kevin from him without a fight.
He didn't even remember taking a step forward. His hands gripped Kevin's shoulders, just this side of too tightly, and Kevin was looking at him warily, hopefully. Looking into his partner's eyes, somehow, Javier found the words he needed.
"I'll tell you what's going to happen, Kev. I'm going to be there, that night, and I'm going to prove to you that what you think is happening is not happening." He gave Kevin's shoulders a soft squeeze, lighting his grip. "Then you and me are going to find out what really is going on."
Kevin's eyes closed lightly and he gave a soft sigh."You'd rather just believe I'm going crazy?"
His voice didn't sound accusing or surprised. Just tired. There was a list to his posture, so much of his tension gone that he seemed almost limp. Javier gave him a light shake, bringing Kevin's attention back to him.
"You've always been a little crazy, bro." He said, trying to keep his voice light, and offering his partner a smile that he was miles away from feeling. "And I don't like to think it, but werewolves do not exist. Just got to see you through the full moon so we can prove that. Then, if we have to, we can get you help."
Kevin searched his face for a few moments, finally giving a small nod.
"Okay." He agreed finally, the word hardly a whisper.
Javier had expected more resistance to the offer. He decided to take its absence as a good sign. If Kevin could be reasoned with that much, then perhaps there was still a chance this could work out alright. In some mindlessly optimistic part of his brain he still half-hoped that the whole thing was just the weirdest heterosexual freak-out ever...
As they returned to work, each doing their level best to pretend their lives hadn't been knocked violently off-axis, Javier thanked God with more sincerity than he had for anything in a long time that he'd never mentioned the bite mark.
Chapter Three
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Date: Saturday, 4 June 2011 11:15 am (UTC)From: