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Title: Fools Rush In
Series: Quis Custodiet
Fandom: Castle, Supernatural (no canon knowledge necessary).
Genre: Angst, Supernatural, Pre-slash
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Cliffhanger.
Details: Slash, genre!crack, crossover, AU, blasphemy, spoilers.
Characters/Pairings: Castle―pre-Kevin Ryan/Javier Esposito, mentions of Kevin/Jenny and Javier/Lanie. Kate Beckett, Richard Castle. Supernatural―Bobby Singer, Claire Novak, Amelia Novak, mentions of others.
Wordcount: 1,717
Summary: When Javier Esposito went missing and the body of an unidentified woman was found in his apartment, Detective Kevin Ryan refused to believe the worst of his partner. Now, with the case threatening to go cold, he has embarked on his own investigation, determined to uncover the truth.
Notes: Early season 4 for Castle, and AU for season 6 of Supernatural, so spoilers up to there. Part of the "Quis Custodiet" AU crossover 'verse. Takes place a couple months after "'Aloha' Doesn't Mean 'Goodbye'" (SupernaturalxHawaii Five-0), but stands alone. In fact, I think this story is much better if read first.
Written for the July Ficathon on
ryanandesposito.
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Epilogue
Chapter Two
When he got off the plane in Chicago there were six voice-mails waiting in his inbox. Two had been from Kate, the first asking where he was, the second asking what the hell he was thinking. He thought she might have tracked his purchases and seen the ticket on his statement. He wondered if they'd discovered the missing files yet―Beckett had to know him well enough that she would check. One was from Castle. The writer sounded worried, confirming both Beckett's anger and her concern, though he had also told Kevin to call if there was any way for him to help.
The other three were from Jenny.
Thinking back, Kevin could remember the early days of their relationship where they were constantly calling each other―joined at the ear, as Javier used to joke. She always wanted him to call, to know how he was doing, to hear about the most inane details of his day. Back then, he couldn't say that he'd minded. He missed those days, though at the same time he didn't. Lately it was hard enough for him to handle conversation with her face to face. Her concern and her frustration.
Her pity.
Lately, Kevin kept his phone turned off more often than he didn't, and so her first message hadn't sounded all that worried, though still not without its concern. The second message, just a couple hours later was a little more urgent. By the third―just minutes, actually, before he had disembarked―that concern was starting to edge over into anger. She had called Beckett by that point, asking after him, and clearly been told some of whatever Kate had learned. The message was long, though her voice was high with outrage and worry―and possibly tears―all making her a little hard to understand.
He answered back with a text, telling her that he was alright, that she shouldn't worry. That he was just tying up a loose end that the investigators on Javier's case hadn't looked into, and that he'd be home as soon as he was finished. He knew that was a shitty, cowardly way to handle it, but he knew that if he called her that conversation would stretch out. It would go places he didn't want it to go―couldn't afford for it to go, not yet.
He switched his phone back off, determined to worry about it later.
Amelia Novak had taken her daughter out of Pontiac and relocated to Chicago almost two years after her husband's disappearance. Though it hadn't been remarked upon in the case file, Kevin thought that detail was odd.
It didn't make sense for the woman to uproot her family while her husband was still missing―not if she believed there was a chance he was still alive. Kevin knew there was something he wasn't seeing. During the flight, Kevin had conceived of several possibilities. That Mrs. Novak was still in contact with her husband, able to pass word to him where she and her daughter could be found. That Mrs. Novak didn't want her husband to find her. That she had been threatened by whoever was responsible for the disappearance and hadn't felt safe in Pontiac. Any theory he looked at, Kevin was certain that Mrs. Novak had information―possibly crucial information―regarding her husband's disappearance the authorities lacked.
Information that, if it held even the slightest connection to Javier's case, Kevin needed to know.
Getting her to talk to him hadn't been easy. Amelia Novak seemed unusually wary of him from the moment she answered her door. Kevin had expected resistance, but what he hadn't anticipated was outright fear—not just suspicion, but a carefully guarded, vigilant terror. She did an admirable job of hiding it, trying to appear both cooperative and hospitable, but Kevin couldn't fail to notice how she seemed braced for some kind of threat even as he drank the water she had offered him.
And he wouldn't have thought she could have grown more tense, but as he shared the details of his partner's disappearance, it seemed her anxieties only wound themselves tighter.
Under most circumstances, Kevin would never have shared this information with anyone outside of the investigation. And, of course, the investigation wasn't even his. But the circumstances weren't normal at all. Yet while he was breaking rules that could easily have gotten him suspended—at best—Kevin found it increasingly difficult to care. And it was possible that the woman picked up on some of his desperation, as she soon dismissed her daughter so they could talk in private.
Amelia Novak finally confided in him about her husband's religious delusions. About mysterious voices and angels, and his belief that he'd been chosen for some purpose. While some of this was known—James Novak had briefly sought help just prior to his disappearance—as she spoke, Kevin couldn't help but recall the burns that had scarred the floor of Javier's apartment.
Amelia's accounts all seemed fairly straight forward, but Kevin had the distinct impression she was holding something back. He made a note of it, prepared to return again later, but as Kevin left her home a voice stopped him in his tracks.
"You need to look for Castiel."
Turning around, Kevin found Amelia's daughter, Claire. Though she was perhaps as old as fourteen, she looked him over with a gaze that was sharply intent, and seemed strangely at odds with her age. Disarmed by it, it took Kevin a moment to process her words. She seemed very certain.
"Who's Castiel?"
"Castiel's the one who took my father away from us," she told him, her voice sad but also possessing a faint tone of bitter anger. It was vaguely alarming. "Maybe he took your friend, too."
Dry-mouthed at the thought of a lead, Kevin's mind raced with possibilities. Yet, though he wanted desperately to pounce on the detail, he forced him to think about it rationally.
"Your mother never mentioned him," Kevin said cautiously, because for all his desperation, questioning to a minor behind her mother's back was a line he was still hesitant to cross.
"There are things my mom tries not to think about. She hopes she'll forget," Claire said, and there was a chilling look in her eyes, strange and dark, as she concluded. "But they aren't things I'll ever be able to forget."
Kevin wasn't sure just how that answered his concern on the subject, only that it did, and while he felt something about the situation still wasn't right, he tried to push that awareness from his mind.
"Claire..." Kevin asked slowly, wetting his lips, "Can you tell me how to find Castiel?"
And Claire's lips moved in an odd, faint smile that failed to meet her eyes.
"You pray," she answered him.
"Pray?" Kevin asked, confused, a buzz of unease rising in his mind.
"He's an angel," Claire said, simply, "he can hear it when you pray."
Though she inflected the word with resentment the way Kevin had heard some people spit the word cop.
And remembering Amelia's words about her husband's delusions, Kevin suddenly doubted that Claire was a reliable source of information. But...he was desperate. Rather than questioning her statement, he tried another tact.
"Claire," he asked, "is there any other way for me to find Castiel?"
Claire's mouth pursed, as if she saw through his question, but just as he had chosen not to challenging what she had said, she seemed to choose not to call him on it.
"He has these two friends who helped us, once." Claire said reluctantly, after a long silence. "I think they gave my mom their number."
And Kevin felt some of the creeping unease itching in the back of his mind begin to retreat.
Kevin gave Claire his card, and she promised to call him back with the number as soon as she could find it. He couldn't help but hearing that as, she would call when she could search without her mother's notice. And his conscience twinged faintly at the thought of her going behind her mother's back for him...but those pangs faded quickly.
This was for Javier.
Kevin called Castle from the hotel phone while he was waiting. The circumstances surrounding his partner's disappearance had begun to take on a definite occult vibe, and suddenly the writer was the best source Kevin had at his disposal. Kevin asked him to find anything he could on the name "Castiel", whether it came from whatever tarot-readers and scholars he talked to for his novels, or was connected to some of the weirder crimes the writer found so fascinating.
While Castle was more than happy to lend what help he could, in the end he turned up little. According to lore, "Castiel" was the name of the angel of Thursdays—an amusingly trivial sounding title, which Kevin could tell the writer wanted to joke about, though the seriousness of the conversation meant that he wouldn't.
Sensing Kevin's disappointment, Castle had promised he would keep looking.
After he hung up the phone, Kevin sat on the edge of the bed, his face buried in his hands. Frustration was a brutal pressure squeezing his chest. Ever since Javier had gone missing, Kevin had struggled helplessly against the feeling that if he just started looking on his own he would find...something. That he simply needed to be given that chance. Kate had tried to help him—she had lived with that feeling herself ever since her mother's murder, and knew it like an old friend. Yet for all her understanding, he hadn't managed quell that feeling. And now...
Now he had gone looking. Now he had his lead—even if it was so strange he didn't know what he really had.
Lying back on the bed, Kevin stared at the ceiling. He let his mind drift with the few details he had, hoping against hope to form some connection. He thought about angels and religious paranoia. Painfully, he thought about the past cases of cult-based crimes he had heard of, and imagined Javier winding up in the midst of something like that. And he thought about Castiel, and Claire's Novak's words returned to him.
He can hear it when you pray.
He closed his eyes with a snort. Right now, the only thing Kevin felt was worth praying for was that Claire would give him that number soon, and that it would finally yield the lead which would bring him to his partner.
Still, Kevin thought with bitter amusement, he would let himself believe Javier had been kidnapped by angels long before he could believe him guilty of murder.
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Epilogue
Series: Quis Custodiet
Fandom: Castle, Supernatural (no canon knowledge necessary).
Genre: Angst, Supernatural, Pre-slash
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Cliffhanger.
Details: Slash, genre!crack, crossover, AU, blasphemy, spoilers.
Characters/Pairings: Castle―pre-Kevin Ryan/Javier Esposito, mentions of Kevin/Jenny and Javier/Lanie. Kate Beckett, Richard Castle. Supernatural―Bobby Singer, Claire Novak, Amelia Novak, mentions of others.
Wordcount: 1,717
Summary: When Javier Esposito went missing and the body of an unidentified woman was found in his apartment, Detective Kevin Ryan refused to believe the worst of his partner. Now, with the case threatening to go cold, he has embarked on his own investigation, determined to uncover the truth.
Notes: Early season 4 for Castle, and AU for season 6 of Supernatural, so spoilers up to there. Part of the "Quis Custodiet" AU crossover 'verse. Takes place a couple months after "'Aloha' Doesn't Mean 'Goodbye'" (SupernaturalxHawaii Five-0), but stands alone. In fact, I think this story is much better if read first.
Written for the July Ficathon on
ryanandesposito.Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Epilogue
Chapter Two
When he got off the plane in Chicago there were six voice-mails waiting in his inbox. Two had been from Kate, the first asking where he was, the second asking what the hell he was thinking. He thought she might have tracked his purchases and seen the ticket on his statement. He wondered if they'd discovered the missing files yet―Beckett had to know him well enough that she would check. One was from Castle. The writer sounded worried, confirming both Beckett's anger and her concern, though he had also told Kevin to call if there was any way for him to help.
The other three were from Jenny.
Thinking back, Kevin could remember the early days of their relationship where they were constantly calling each other―joined at the ear, as Javier used to joke. She always wanted him to call, to know how he was doing, to hear about the most inane details of his day. Back then, he couldn't say that he'd minded. He missed those days, though at the same time he didn't. Lately it was hard enough for him to handle conversation with her face to face. Her concern and her frustration.
Her pity.
Lately, Kevin kept his phone turned off more often than he didn't, and so her first message hadn't sounded all that worried, though still not without its concern. The second message, just a couple hours later was a little more urgent. By the third―just minutes, actually, before he had disembarked―that concern was starting to edge over into anger. She had called Beckett by that point, asking after him, and clearly been told some of whatever Kate had learned. The message was long, though her voice was high with outrage and worry―and possibly tears―all making her a little hard to understand.
He answered back with a text, telling her that he was alright, that she shouldn't worry. That he was just tying up a loose end that the investigators on Javier's case hadn't looked into, and that he'd be home as soon as he was finished. He knew that was a shitty, cowardly way to handle it, but he knew that if he called her that conversation would stretch out. It would go places he didn't want it to go―couldn't afford for it to go, not yet.
He switched his phone back off, determined to worry about it later.
Amelia Novak had taken her daughter out of Pontiac and relocated to Chicago almost two years after her husband's disappearance. Though it hadn't been remarked upon in the case file, Kevin thought that detail was odd.
It didn't make sense for the woman to uproot her family while her husband was still missing―not if she believed there was a chance he was still alive. Kevin knew there was something he wasn't seeing. During the flight, Kevin had conceived of several possibilities. That Mrs. Novak was still in contact with her husband, able to pass word to him where she and her daughter could be found. That Mrs. Novak didn't want her husband to find her. That she had been threatened by whoever was responsible for the disappearance and hadn't felt safe in Pontiac. Any theory he looked at, Kevin was certain that Mrs. Novak had information―possibly crucial information―regarding her husband's disappearance the authorities lacked.
Information that, if it held even the slightest connection to Javier's case, Kevin needed to know.
Getting her to talk to him hadn't been easy. Amelia Novak seemed unusually wary of him from the moment she answered her door. Kevin had expected resistance, but what he hadn't anticipated was outright fear—not just suspicion, but a carefully guarded, vigilant terror. She did an admirable job of hiding it, trying to appear both cooperative and hospitable, but Kevin couldn't fail to notice how she seemed braced for some kind of threat even as he drank the water she had offered him.
And he wouldn't have thought she could have grown more tense, but as he shared the details of his partner's disappearance, it seemed her anxieties only wound themselves tighter.
Under most circumstances, Kevin would never have shared this information with anyone outside of the investigation. And, of course, the investigation wasn't even his. But the circumstances weren't normal at all. Yet while he was breaking rules that could easily have gotten him suspended—at best—Kevin found it increasingly difficult to care. And it was possible that the woman picked up on some of his desperation, as she soon dismissed her daughter so they could talk in private.
Amelia Novak finally confided in him about her husband's religious delusions. About mysterious voices and angels, and his belief that he'd been chosen for some purpose. While some of this was known—James Novak had briefly sought help just prior to his disappearance—as she spoke, Kevin couldn't help but recall the burns that had scarred the floor of Javier's apartment.
Amelia's accounts all seemed fairly straight forward, but Kevin had the distinct impression she was holding something back. He made a note of it, prepared to return again later, but as Kevin left her home a voice stopped him in his tracks.
"You need to look for Castiel."
Turning around, Kevin found Amelia's daughter, Claire. Though she was perhaps as old as fourteen, she looked him over with a gaze that was sharply intent, and seemed strangely at odds with her age. Disarmed by it, it took Kevin a moment to process her words. She seemed very certain.
"Who's Castiel?"
"Castiel's the one who took my father away from us," she told him, her voice sad but also possessing a faint tone of bitter anger. It was vaguely alarming. "Maybe he took your friend, too."
Dry-mouthed at the thought of a lead, Kevin's mind raced with possibilities. Yet, though he wanted desperately to pounce on the detail, he forced him to think about it rationally.
"Your mother never mentioned him," Kevin said cautiously, because for all his desperation, questioning to a minor behind her mother's back was a line he was still hesitant to cross.
"There are things my mom tries not to think about. She hopes she'll forget," Claire said, and there was a chilling look in her eyes, strange and dark, as she concluded. "But they aren't things I'll ever be able to forget."
Kevin wasn't sure just how that answered his concern on the subject, only that it did, and while he felt something about the situation still wasn't right, he tried to push that awareness from his mind.
"Claire..." Kevin asked slowly, wetting his lips, "Can you tell me how to find Castiel?"
And Claire's lips moved in an odd, faint smile that failed to meet her eyes.
"You pray," she answered him.
"Pray?" Kevin asked, confused, a buzz of unease rising in his mind.
"He's an angel," Claire said, simply, "he can hear it when you pray."
Though she inflected the word with resentment the way Kevin had heard some people spit the word cop.
And remembering Amelia's words about her husband's delusions, Kevin suddenly doubted that Claire was a reliable source of information. But...he was desperate. Rather than questioning her statement, he tried another tact.
"Claire," he asked, "is there any other way for me to find Castiel?"
Claire's mouth pursed, as if she saw through his question, but just as he had chosen not to challenging what she had said, she seemed to choose not to call him on it.
"He has these two friends who helped us, once." Claire said reluctantly, after a long silence. "I think they gave my mom their number."
And Kevin felt some of the creeping unease itching in the back of his mind begin to retreat.
Kevin gave Claire his card, and she promised to call him back with the number as soon as she could find it. He couldn't help but hearing that as, she would call when she could search without her mother's notice. And his conscience twinged faintly at the thought of her going behind her mother's back for him...but those pangs faded quickly.
This was for Javier.
Kevin called Castle from the hotel phone while he was waiting. The circumstances surrounding his partner's disappearance had begun to take on a definite occult vibe, and suddenly the writer was the best source Kevin had at his disposal. Kevin asked him to find anything he could on the name "Castiel", whether it came from whatever tarot-readers and scholars he talked to for his novels, or was connected to some of the weirder crimes the writer found so fascinating.
While Castle was more than happy to lend what help he could, in the end he turned up little. According to lore, "Castiel" was the name of the angel of Thursdays—an amusingly trivial sounding title, which Kevin could tell the writer wanted to joke about, though the seriousness of the conversation meant that he wouldn't.
Sensing Kevin's disappointment, Castle had promised he would keep looking.
After he hung up the phone, Kevin sat on the edge of the bed, his face buried in his hands. Frustration was a brutal pressure squeezing his chest. Ever since Javier had gone missing, Kevin had struggled helplessly against the feeling that if he just started looking on his own he would find...something. That he simply needed to be given that chance. Kate had tried to help him—she had lived with that feeling herself ever since her mother's murder, and knew it like an old friend. Yet for all her understanding, he hadn't managed quell that feeling. And now...
Now he had gone looking. Now he had his lead—even if it was so strange he didn't know what he really had.
Lying back on the bed, Kevin stared at the ceiling. He let his mind drift with the few details he had, hoping against hope to form some connection. He thought about angels and religious paranoia. Painfully, he thought about the past cases of cult-based crimes he had heard of, and imagined Javier winding up in the midst of something like that. And he thought about Castiel, and Claire's Novak's words returned to him.
He can hear it when you pray.
He closed his eyes with a snort. Right now, the only thing Kevin felt was worth praying for was that Claire would give him that number soon, and that it would finally yield the lead which would bring him to his partner.
Still, Kevin thought with bitter amusement, he would let himself believe Javier had been kidnapped by angels long before he could believe him guilty of murder.
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Epilogue
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Sunday, 8 July 2012 08:45 am (UTC)From:I'm having a hard time finding a minute to read, but it has the cool side effect of maning the story last.
I can't help drawing a paralell between Kevin and John, as they both have no clue what they're stepping into... I hope it ends better for the Roach. :/
no subject
Date: Sunday, 8 July 2012 08:48 am (UTC)From:But yeah, I see what you mean. They each had this huge thing happen in their lives, but there was no one there to give them the answers right away. They had to go looking for them.
no subject
Date: Sunday, 8 July 2012 05:07 pm (UTC)From:Btw, that just made me ponder something I'd never thought of before. There is a world of difference between, say Kevin and John, who had to confront the knowledhe pretty much like you would a double upercut to the face and the stomach, and someone who's built themselves with and around it like Sam and Dean have.
I can't decide which is the least unhealthy. (because there isn't "healthier" in this case)
no subject
Date: Sunday, 8 July 2012 05:22 pm (UTC)From:Winchesters are all on the ugly side of the scale of consequences for both methods. And we've had "good" examples of both. Jo was our "good" example of a second generation hunter, growing up around it, and Bobby was sort of a best-case scenario as far hunters brought into it through tragedy are concerned.
Then, of course, there's the third category, i.e. Jimmy. Because if having your wife murdered by a demon is like getting a punch in the face, what happened to him is like the supernatural equivalent of being run over by a bus.