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Title: Sui Generis
Fandoms: Castle
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Horror, Sci-fi, Romance.
Warnings: Possible squick, non-sexual content skirting dub-con
Reverse Warnings: Whatever certain scenes or warnings might lead one to believe, this fic contains neither mpreg nor naughty tentacles. I promise.
Details: Pre-slash, AU, genre!crack, angst, body horror, mood whiplash, insanity (not the characters', mine), starfish aliens, unbetad.
Characters/Pairings: Castle―pre-Javier Esposito/Kevin Ryan, Kevin/Jenny, Richard Castle.
Wordcount: 2,693
Summary: Javier confessed never expecting Kevin to believe him. Kevin didn't, but somehow, things still wound up spiraling frighteningly out of control...
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 5.5 - 6 - 7
Chapter 5.5
Javier didn't think he had ever felt such sharp terror as when he found Kevin collapsed on the men's room floor. He barely remembered his drunken fumbling only days before, though he was painfully well acquainted with the desires that had driven them. And he had been hoping—painfully, desperately hoping—that in the end nothing would come of it. That his misguided, hazily remembered actions had been just that—a vain and foolish attempt at...
Hell, even at the time he hadn't quite known what he was going for.
And he had spent that whole day after and the morning that followed obsessing over the possible consequences. But then, at work that day, Kevin had asked him—
His partner's concerns had seemed so impossibly shallow compared to the hell of fear and guilt that Javier had been putting himself through. Kevin hadn't looked well, but he had apparently been well enough to agonize about their imagined affair—and God, Javier hadn't even wanted to touch that. Not that he'd had the luxury, because in the wake of all his worry the question had left him feeling so foolish and angry that he had been forced to walk away.
But as that day and the one that followed it passed, he had watched with guilty eyes as his partner's condition began to deteriorate. Kevin had been so quiet that morning, like he wasn't even there, and when he disappeared from the bullpen for almost twenty minutes Javier had known right away that something was wrong.
And when he finally found his partner Javier had more than enough confirmation of that...though it had confirmed a few other things as well.
While struggling to help Kevin sit up, Javier had reached out to touch his partner's face. The skin had felt clammy, covered in a sheen of sick sweat, but just the light brush of his fingertips had been enough to feel it. To feel—
Oh Christ...what had he done?
"Shit."
---
He had been lucky enough to escape the initial ambush, though the wound it had torn into the meat of his thigh certainly hadn't made it easy. He had managed to get away from it, for a time. Clearly it had followed. It was slow, ungainly as it picked its way along the sand and rocks, but it had locked on to his scent like he was the only thing in the world. Dogged and apparently untiring, it had kept mindlessly after him all night. Now he was utterly exhausted, and completely out of room to run. Now he was trapped, and that thing was catching up with him...
There were no options left for him but to draw his sidearm and wait.
It had managed to disarm his assault rifle after his first burst of fire with a single quick lash of one of its limbs— A tail? An arm? He couldn't even begin to guess. It had been full dark when it appeared, cutting him off during his patrol, its black flesh nearly invisible against the darkness. Now, though, as it drew nearer, the faint blue light of dawn made it easier to see...
And he still didn't know what the hell he was looking at.
The flailing monstrosity was almost the size of a German Shepherd. Limbs too numerous for him to make any sense of assisted its progress as it slithered its way across the ground, each one lined with a double row of cruel-looking hooks. It was dark and fleshy and textured with irregular bumps—a few of them gleamed wetly, and might have been eyes. And though the wounds weren't bleeding—if the thing even bled—on its flank he could just make out the ragged dimples his bullets had left. Apart from those features it was almost shapeless—an acidic-smelling mass of undulating wrongness, advancing on him like something that had escaped out of a nightmare.
Steeling himself, Javier raised his gun—though given just how little his rifle had managed to phase the thing, it was nothing more than a hopeless show of bravado.
"Come on... Come on you motherf—"
It lunged.
---
Javier barely managed to get Kevin's legs under him long enough to get him out of the station. By the time they got home Kevin's pulse was racing wildly, but at the same time so weak he almost couldn't find it. Javier didn't know what to do. Kevin's entire body was trembling, and though his clothes were soaked with sweat his skin felt like ice. He figured at the very least he could get him out of those clothes, get him cleaned up.
It wasn't easy undressing his partner without touching his skin. In fact, it turned out to be impossible. And every touch was a reminder of the damage he'd done. It was weak, just the barest whisper of awareness, but after so many years of deafness it felt like a scream. It was so tempting to let his touches linger, to open himself up to that connection, to sink into it. He wanted to resist, and yet—
And yet Kevin's shaking had become a little less violent, and his heartbeat had slowed just a little. It was more steady, less frantic, and stronger than it had been only moments before.
Impossible, he thought to himself. Because no way could it possibly be that easy.
And yet...
---
He had been pretending to be a lot more out of it than he really was—though it would have been a lie bordering on the grotesque to say he had any sort of grip on himself.
He had no idea what he was supposed to do now. He didn't know who he was—he wasn't even sure what he was—and he sure as hell didn't know what he should do about it. He was torn between a feeling of duty—his team deserved the truth, Javier's family deserved the truth, and at the very least he should warn someone about the danger—and a conflicting feeling that didn't feel much different...
An instinct warning him not to lead a predator back to his hive.
He didn't know what to do, so for now he would do nothing. Just until he could get things straight inside his own head, at least. But the longer he played up his physical and mental trauma to the doctors, the more they talked about sending him home. He needed to figure it out soon, before he ran out of time...
Sleep never came easily any more, his mind was too confused and too troubled, but he often pretended to sleep anyway. At least the doctors would have one less thing to worry about.
And it was likely because of that habit that the two men that argued at his bedside thought he wouldn't hear them.
"—saw him when he came in, McGarrett," the first man said, his words hushed and rapid. "He was covered in blood, but there weren't any wounds. Cuts and scrapes, sure, but nothing to cause bleeding like that."
"Maybe it wasn't his blood," McGarrett said, his low, almost gravely voice speaking reasonably, "he doesn't remember what happened to him out there."
"We know what happened to him, man," the first argued harshly, voice raising enough that he recognized it as Walsh. "Those things that attacked us when we went looking for him? Those things weren't natural. And I know you've heard the same stories I have about those hills."
"Fairy tales," McGarrett argued, followed by a sigh. "Look, those things freaked me out, too, okay? But you're talking crazy. Do you really think one of those things could pretend like that? They were scary as hell, but they weren't that smart."
"Then why was he naked, McGarrett?" Walsh asked. "He didn't even have shoes on when he made it back to the village, for Christ's sake. Or his tags."
"Look, even say he is—which is nuts—but say he is. What would you want us do about it?"
Sleep did come the next night, though, and Javier woke up to the sound of a gunshot.
When he opened his eyes McGarrett stood in the doorway, his sidearm raised and eyes wide with an astonished horror—
And as he sat up he saw Walsh lying dead on the floor, gun in hand and a pool of his own blood spreading rapidly underneath him. Stunned, heart hammering, he could only stare. After a moment McGarrett pulled out of his daze, lowering his gun as he stepped toward the bed. His eyes and hands searched Javier closely.
"Javi, are you okay?"
And for the longest time Javier couldn't answer. Because the first thought that ran through his mind was a wrenching, panicked, guilty denial.
Not for me.
And the second thought—one that was more coherent, more reasoned but no less anguished—was that he couldn't confess now. He couldn't. He couldn't stand the thought of telling McGarrett that he'd just killed a member of his own team to protect the monster that had murdered another...
---
In the end, it hadn't been anywhere close to easy.
Proximity seemed to dull Kevin's pain, but only because it eased the stress on the thing that was slowly devouring him from the inside. There was nothing coherent coming from that connection—it was dead air, static—but whatever it was it was immature, still forming, and it couldn't function on its own. It had been struggling to make do, Javier could tell that much, trying to extract what it needed from Kevin's flesh, but those efforts had been killing his partner, and in the process it was hurting itself.
Javier could try to give it what it was looking for, the resources and attention it needed to survive. It would be risky, and not just risky for him—ultimately, he would be helping that thing to grow—but it might buy them some time. It might slow the destruction of his partner's body, and maybe he could figure something out.
Javier had been gone for less than two minutes getting water and food from the kitchen, but when he came back Kevin was already in pain.
"Hurts...Javi...please..."
His voice was a breathless whimper.
"I know, Kev," Javier said as slid back in beside him. Arranging their limbs together, he lifted his partner's head trying to get him to drink. "I'm sorry."
"I'm so sorry..."
---
Mrs. Esposito was crying. She was crying because her hijo had finally come home to her. She was crying because she was so overwhelmed with joy and relief that her son was safe and alive in her arms.
It was a lie.
Javier Esposito was dead, his remains abandoned in a desert miles away from New York City. He could picture it very clearly in his mind, what those bones probably look like having been left exposed to the mercy of sun and wind, sand, and scavenging vermin like the thing that had killed him. It was all he had been able to think about on the flight home. And he had known the thought would be in his mind when he was reunited with his family—with Javier's family.
And he had been right. He had been right, and yet...
And yet, as he held her shaking form in his arms, as his own tears fell from the pain of the secret harm he had done to her, there was still a part of him, savage and greedy, that was just as happy as she was that he was finally home.
"It's alright, Mama," he whispered as she kissed his cheek. "It's alright. I'm here."
---
"Easy, Kev. Easy. Shhh.
"Javi..."
"It's okay, Kev. It's going to be okay..."
It wasn't a lie. He hoped.
"It'll all be over soon."
For better or worse, that was the truth either way.
---
Oh God, what had he done...?
Javier stared vacantly at droplets chasing across the blank tile as the water fell across his shoulders and back, the wall a solid presence supporting him as he tried to anchor the frantic confusion of his thoughts.
He wished he could rewind the night before—rewind the past few days, back before he had been stupid enough to say anything to Kevin. What the hell had he even been thinking?
The problem was that he hadn't been thinking. He hadn't exactly been himself—whatever that was—ever since he had watched Kevin propose to Jenny in the middle of the bullpen. Even now, the memory lifted a wave of something he didn't have a name for. There was jealousy in it, surely, but also a sense of proprietary outrage that Javier didn't think was remotely human.
One would think that after nine years he might have known himself, for lack of a better phrase. Gained some kind of understanding of the way he functioned, even if his exact definition was a mystery. If he had asked himself only four years ago, he would have thought he had that...
But then, only four years ago, he hadn't yet met Kevin.
There had always been this need in him, this hunger for something unobtainable that burned beneath the surface of his skin. It was a need he had never been able to fulfill, and he had thought he understood why. And he had long resigned himself to the fact that those empty places inside him weren't something that any human being could properly fill.
When Javier first partnered with Kevin it had scared him just a little how easily they had fit. How quickly the other man had become not just important to him, but necessary. There had been something about him, something Javier couldn't name, but it was far more than just easy camaraderie—though they had certainly had that in spades.
No, if Javier tried to take it apart, he would have to say that he felt drawn to Kevin as if on some impossibly biological level, the other man's presence teasing those empty parts of him, almost as if he might fit—
Or be made to fit.
The first time the notion had come into his head, it had terrified him, because it wasn't an urge he had ever felt before. It wasn't something he had ever even thought might be possible. But once it was there, that idea had become impossible for him to forget...
The fantasies he began to have about Kevin quickly became some of the most bizarre he had ever experienced—and with his subconscious as unnervingly divided as it was, that was saying a whole hell of a lot. Many of them had begun with a confession, Javier baring the truth of what he was for his partner to see. In most, he was kind enough to himself that Kevin didn't turn away. Not until he made the offer, anyway.
And, when he was feeling very generous, sometimes—just sometimes—Kevin said yes...
The night before had played out that script like a sad parody, but at the time he had been too drunk for that to matter. And Javier had thrown himself at Kevin's response recklessly, hopelessly eager to finally have what he had wanted for so long...
For Kevin to be a part of him.
But his desires had never managed to supply him with any concrete idea of what form that connection might take, or what came after. His fantasies failed to anticipate risk, or the danger of loss. Now, those risks and dangers were all he could think about, and the possibility that he might lose Kevin was the most terrifying thing Javier had ever had to face. Now, his imagination was occupied with conjuring horrors that would make a Hollywood writer weep with joy...
Beneath the warm spray of water, Javier shuddered.
God...
He just had to hope that whatever he had done last night wouldn't take.
---
Something was happening, and Javier didn't understand it in the slightest. Something had changed, but couldn't put a finger on what it was. He lay still, trying to focus on the feeling, identify where it was coming from.
Finally, he narrowed in on his connection to the thing he had planted in his partner.
The communication there was weak, but for the first time it seemed like there was actual awareness behind it. Cautious, curious, it seemed to be testing the boundaries of itself, gently prodding at the connection as if trying to establish where it ended and Javier began. Carefully, guiltily, Javier opened himself up, closing the circuit so that his nerves meshed with his partner's—
Inviting it in.
And when its awareness touched his—lightly, briefly before it recoiled with confused terror—Javier sucked in a shocked gasp. And hope flooded him, hope he had all but given up on...
Because it had definitely felt like Kevin.
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 5.5 - 6 - 7
Fandoms: Castle
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Horror, Sci-fi, Romance.
Warnings: Possible squick, non-sexual content skirting dub-con
Reverse Warnings: Whatever certain scenes or warnings might lead one to believe, this fic contains neither mpreg nor naughty tentacles. I promise.
Details: Pre-slash, AU, genre!crack, angst, body horror, mood whiplash, insanity (not the characters', mine), starfish aliens, unbetad.
Characters/Pairings: Castle―pre-Javier Esposito/Kevin Ryan, Kevin/Jenny, Richard Castle.
Wordcount: 2,693
Summary: Javier confessed never expecting Kevin to believe him. Kevin didn't, but somehow, things still wound up spiraling frighteningly out of control...
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 5.5 - 6 - 7
Chapter 5.5
Javier didn't think he had ever felt such sharp terror as when he found Kevin collapsed on the men's room floor. He barely remembered his drunken fumbling only days before, though he was painfully well acquainted with the desires that had driven them. And he had been hoping—painfully, desperately hoping—that in the end nothing would come of it. That his misguided, hazily remembered actions had been just that—a vain and foolish attempt at...
Hell, even at the time he hadn't quite known what he was going for.
And he had spent that whole day after and the morning that followed obsessing over the possible consequences. But then, at work that day, Kevin had asked him—
His partner's concerns had seemed so impossibly shallow compared to the hell of fear and guilt that Javier had been putting himself through. Kevin hadn't looked well, but he had apparently been well enough to agonize about their imagined affair—and God, Javier hadn't even wanted to touch that. Not that he'd had the luxury, because in the wake of all his worry the question had left him feeling so foolish and angry that he had been forced to walk away.
But as that day and the one that followed it passed, he had watched with guilty eyes as his partner's condition began to deteriorate. Kevin had been so quiet that morning, like he wasn't even there, and when he disappeared from the bullpen for almost twenty minutes Javier had known right away that something was wrong.
And when he finally found his partner Javier had more than enough confirmation of that...though it had confirmed a few other things as well.
While struggling to help Kevin sit up, Javier had reached out to touch his partner's face. The skin had felt clammy, covered in a sheen of sick sweat, but just the light brush of his fingertips had been enough to feel it. To feel—
Oh Christ...what had he done?
"Shit."
---
He had been lucky enough to escape the initial ambush, though the wound it had torn into the meat of his thigh certainly hadn't made it easy. He had managed to get away from it, for a time. Clearly it had followed. It was slow, ungainly as it picked its way along the sand and rocks, but it had locked on to his scent like he was the only thing in the world. Dogged and apparently untiring, it had kept mindlessly after him all night. Now he was utterly exhausted, and completely out of room to run. Now he was trapped, and that thing was catching up with him...
There were no options left for him but to draw his sidearm and wait.
It had managed to disarm his assault rifle after his first burst of fire with a single quick lash of one of its limbs— A tail? An arm? He couldn't even begin to guess. It had been full dark when it appeared, cutting him off during his patrol, its black flesh nearly invisible against the darkness. Now, though, as it drew nearer, the faint blue light of dawn made it easier to see...
And he still didn't know what the hell he was looking at.
The flailing monstrosity was almost the size of a German Shepherd. Limbs too numerous for him to make any sense of assisted its progress as it slithered its way across the ground, each one lined with a double row of cruel-looking hooks. It was dark and fleshy and textured with irregular bumps—a few of them gleamed wetly, and might have been eyes. And though the wounds weren't bleeding—if the thing even bled—on its flank he could just make out the ragged dimples his bullets had left. Apart from those features it was almost shapeless—an acidic-smelling mass of undulating wrongness, advancing on him like something that had escaped out of a nightmare.
Steeling himself, Javier raised his gun—though given just how little his rifle had managed to phase the thing, it was nothing more than a hopeless show of bravado.
"Come on... Come on you motherf—"
It lunged.
---
Javier barely managed to get Kevin's legs under him long enough to get him out of the station. By the time they got home Kevin's pulse was racing wildly, but at the same time so weak he almost couldn't find it. Javier didn't know what to do. Kevin's entire body was trembling, and though his clothes were soaked with sweat his skin felt like ice. He figured at the very least he could get him out of those clothes, get him cleaned up.
It wasn't easy undressing his partner without touching his skin. In fact, it turned out to be impossible. And every touch was a reminder of the damage he'd done. It was weak, just the barest whisper of awareness, but after so many years of deafness it felt like a scream. It was so tempting to let his touches linger, to open himself up to that connection, to sink into it. He wanted to resist, and yet—
And yet Kevin's shaking had become a little less violent, and his heartbeat had slowed just a little. It was more steady, less frantic, and stronger than it had been only moments before.
Impossible, he thought to himself. Because no way could it possibly be that easy.
And yet...
---
He had been pretending to be a lot more out of it than he really was—though it would have been a lie bordering on the grotesque to say he had any sort of grip on himself.
He had no idea what he was supposed to do now. He didn't know who he was—he wasn't even sure what he was—and he sure as hell didn't know what he should do about it. He was torn between a feeling of duty—his team deserved the truth, Javier's family deserved the truth, and at the very least he should warn someone about the danger—and a conflicting feeling that didn't feel much different...
An instinct warning him not to lead a predator back to his hive.
He didn't know what to do, so for now he would do nothing. Just until he could get things straight inside his own head, at least. But the longer he played up his physical and mental trauma to the doctors, the more they talked about sending him home. He needed to figure it out soon, before he ran out of time...
Sleep never came easily any more, his mind was too confused and too troubled, but he often pretended to sleep anyway. At least the doctors would have one less thing to worry about.
And it was likely because of that habit that the two men that argued at his bedside thought he wouldn't hear them.
"—saw him when he came in, McGarrett," the first man said, his words hushed and rapid. "He was covered in blood, but there weren't any wounds. Cuts and scrapes, sure, but nothing to cause bleeding like that."
"Maybe it wasn't his blood," McGarrett said, his low, almost gravely voice speaking reasonably, "he doesn't remember what happened to him out there."
"We know what happened to him, man," the first argued harshly, voice raising enough that he recognized it as Walsh. "Those things that attacked us when we went looking for him? Those things weren't natural. And I know you've heard the same stories I have about those hills."
"Fairy tales," McGarrett argued, followed by a sigh. "Look, those things freaked me out, too, okay? But you're talking crazy. Do you really think one of those things could pretend like that? They were scary as hell, but they weren't that smart."
"Then why was he naked, McGarrett?" Walsh asked. "He didn't even have shoes on when he made it back to the village, for Christ's sake. Or his tags."
"Look, even say he is—which is nuts—but say he is. What would you want us do about it?"
Sleep did come the next night, though, and Javier woke up to the sound of a gunshot.
When he opened his eyes McGarrett stood in the doorway, his sidearm raised and eyes wide with an astonished horror—
And as he sat up he saw Walsh lying dead on the floor, gun in hand and a pool of his own blood spreading rapidly underneath him. Stunned, heart hammering, he could only stare. After a moment McGarrett pulled out of his daze, lowering his gun as he stepped toward the bed. His eyes and hands searched Javier closely.
"Javi, are you okay?"
And for the longest time Javier couldn't answer. Because the first thought that ran through his mind was a wrenching, panicked, guilty denial.
Not for me.
And the second thought—one that was more coherent, more reasoned but no less anguished—was that he couldn't confess now. He couldn't. He couldn't stand the thought of telling McGarrett that he'd just killed a member of his own team to protect the monster that had murdered another...
---
In the end, it hadn't been anywhere close to easy.
Proximity seemed to dull Kevin's pain, but only because it eased the stress on the thing that was slowly devouring him from the inside. There was nothing coherent coming from that connection—it was dead air, static—but whatever it was it was immature, still forming, and it couldn't function on its own. It had been struggling to make do, Javier could tell that much, trying to extract what it needed from Kevin's flesh, but those efforts had been killing his partner, and in the process it was hurting itself.
Javier could try to give it what it was looking for, the resources and attention it needed to survive. It would be risky, and not just risky for him—ultimately, he would be helping that thing to grow—but it might buy them some time. It might slow the destruction of his partner's body, and maybe he could figure something out.
Javier had been gone for less than two minutes getting water and food from the kitchen, but when he came back Kevin was already in pain.
"Hurts...Javi...please..."
His voice was a breathless whimper.
"I know, Kev," Javier said as slid back in beside him. Arranging their limbs together, he lifted his partner's head trying to get him to drink. "I'm sorry."
"I'm so sorry..."
---
Mrs. Esposito was crying. She was crying because her hijo had finally come home to her. She was crying because she was so overwhelmed with joy and relief that her son was safe and alive in her arms.
It was a lie.
Javier Esposito was dead, his remains abandoned in a desert miles away from New York City. He could picture it very clearly in his mind, what those bones probably look like having been left exposed to the mercy of sun and wind, sand, and scavenging vermin like the thing that had killed him. It was all he had been able to think about on the flight home. And he had known the thought would be in his mind when he was reunited with his family—with Javier's family.
And he had been right. He had been right, and yet...
And yet, as he held her shaking form in his arms, as his own tears fell from the pain of the secret harm he had done to her, there was still a part of him, savage and greedy, that was just as happy as she was that he was finally home.
"It's alright, Mama," he whispered as she kissed his cheek. "It's alright. I'm here."
---
"Easy, Kev. Easy. Shhh.
"Javi..."
"It's okay, Kev. It's going to be okay..."
It wasn't a lie. He hoped.
"It'll all be over soon."
For better or worse, that was the truth either way.
---
Oh God, what had he done...?
Javier stared vacantly at droplets chasing across the blank tile as the water fell across his shoulders and back, the wall a solid presence supporting him as he tried to anchor the frantic confusion of his thoughts.
He wished he could rewind the night before—rewind the past few days, back before he had been stupid enough to say anything to Kevin. What the hell had he even been thinking?
The problem was that he hadn't been thinking. He hadn't exactly been himself—whatever that was—ever since he had watched Kevin propose to Jenny in the middle of the bullpen. Even now, the memory lifted a wave of something he didn't have a name for. There was jealousy in it, surely, but also a sense of proprietary outrage that Javier didn't think was remotely human.
One would think that after nine years he might have known himself, for lack of a better phrase. Gained some kind of understanding of the way he functioned, even if his exact definition was a mystery. If he had asked himself only four years ago, he would have thought he had that...
But then, only four years ago, he hadn't yet met Kevin.
There had always been this need in him, this hunger for something unobtainable that burned beneath the surface of his skin. It was a need he had never been able to fulfill, and he had thought he understood why. And he had long resigned himself to the fact that those empty places inside him weren't something that any human being could properly fill.
When Javier first partnered with Kevin it had scared him just a little how easily they had fit. How quickly the other man had become not just important to him, but necessary. There had been something about him, something Javier couldn't name, but it was far more than just easy camaraderie—though they had certainly had that in spades.
No, if Javier tried to take it apart, he would have to say that he felt drawn to Kevin as if on some impossibly biological level, the other man's presence teasing those empty parts of him, almost as if he might fit—
Or be made to fit.
The first time the notion had come into his head, it had terrified him, because it wasn't an urge he had ever felt before. It wasn't something he had ever even thought might be possible. But once it was there, that idea had become impossible for him to forget...
The fantasies he began to have about Kevin quickly became some of the most bizarre he had ever experienced—and with his subconscious as unnervingly divided as it was, that was saying a whole hell of a lot. Many of them had begun with a confession, Javier baring the truth of what he was for his partner to see. In most, he was kind enough to himself that Kevin didn't turn away. Not until he made the offer, anyway.
And, when he was feeling very generous, sometimes—just sometimes—Kevin said yes...
The night before had played out that script like a sad parody, but at the time he had been too drunk for that to matter. And Javier had thrown himself at Kevin's response recklessly, hopelessly eager to finally have what he had wanted for so long...
For Kevin to be a part of him.
But his desires had never managed to supply him with any concrete idea of what form that connection might take, or what came after. His fantasies failed to anticipate risk, or the danger of loss. Now, those risks and dangers were all he could think about, and the possibility that he might lose Kevin was the most terrifying thing Javier had ever had to face. Now, his imagination was occupied with conjuring horrors that would make a Hollywood writer weep with joy...
Beneath the warm spray of water, Javier shuddered.
God...
He just had to hope that whatever he had done last night wouldn't take.
---
Something was happening, and Javier didn't understand it in the slightest. Something had changed, but couldn't put a finger on what it was. He lay still, trying to focus on the feeling, identify where it was coming from.
Finally, he narrowed in on his connection to the thing he had planted in his partner.
The communication there was weak, but for the first time it seemed like there was actual awareness behind it. Cautious, curious, it seemed to be testing the boundaries of itself, gently prodding at the connection as if trying to establish where it ended and Javier began. Carefully, guiltily, Javier opened himself up, closing the circuit so that his nerves meshed with his partner's—
Inviting it in.
And when its awareness touched his—lightly, briefly before it recoiled with confused terror—Javier sucked in a shocked gasp. And hope flooded him, hope he had all but given up on...
Because it had definitely felt like Kevin.
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 5.5 - 6 - 7
