Chapter Text
The hospital room was dark. The only light came from a flickering streetlamp muted through blinds and the colored lights from various medical equipment. It was just enough for Esposito to make out the lump that was his partner.
"It's not your fault," Beckett had said.
"I should have been better," Esposito had answered. "He trusted me. I don't know why, but he trusted me, and I let him get shot."
"Grazed," Beckett corrected. Grazed, but for the grace of God. "He trusted you, because you're his partner. And he's going to be fine."
Esposito had humored her until she went away, back outside to talk to Castle and the swarm of police. Visitors of all stripes -- from traffic cops to deskies to detectives -- had descended on the hospital when the news broke. It seemed while he and Beckett had been suspended, Ryan had been doing his best to hold down the fort -- working double, sometimes triple shifts, to make up for being absent two detectives and a writer. His dedication had earned him a lot of friends.
But when Beckett was gone, Esposito turned back to the lump. It might have been the height of irony, how things had gone down. If Ryan were awake, Esposito was sure he'd confirm or correct that statement, but it seemed ironic to Esposito.
He thought back to their last real fight. Esposito had been a few weeks into his 12-week suspension when Ryan had stopped by. He looked a little worse for wear. The long hours probably explained it, but at the time, Esposito had taken it for guilt at ratting out his and Beckett's trip off the reservation to find Cole Maddox. And that, Esposito hadn't been ready to forgive.
Not that it mattered.
"Don't you remember that day?" Ryan had yelled in response to some equally loud accusation Esposito had made. "Beckett told me to stay there and watch the monitors--"
"Which you couldn't even do."
"AND IF I HAD," Ryan continued over him, "Beckett would be splattered all over an alley right now! So, no, I don't regret it, and I'm not sorry!"
"But you didn't have to go to the captain, man," Esposito spat out. "There are a hundred things you could have done that weren't tattling like a fucking boy scout."
"Javi,"
"We trusted you," Esposito continued. "We trusted you, and you sold us out. No wonder Jenny left."
Any other day, Esposito might have regretted those words -- drudged up from a long ago conversation -- the second they began tumbling out of his mouth. But not that day. That day, in his rage, he meant every one of them, and he could still remember their sting. Ryan's eyes flashed shock before he looked away, closing them as he ran a hand through his hair, looking for words. Lips tight, he looked back up.
"I thought you were dead," he said quietly, his voice shaking slightly. "When we got to that building, and I saw you on the floor, for a second, I thought you were dead, and a little piece of me died, too. And when I realized that you weren't. That you were okay..." Ryan swallowed hard and clenched his fists before wiping stubbornly at his eyes. He exhaled a sound that was almost a chuckle. "I guess it doesn't matter now, does it?"
"Damn straight," Esposito had replied. "And if that's all you wanted to say, you can get the hell out."
Ryan set his jaw. His eyes hardened and his lips pursed tightly together. "Fine," he said as he backed away. "That's fine." He turned and walked out, with his head high, and it was the last Esposito saw or heard from him for the rest of his suspension.
Weeks later, when he went back to work, things were tense. He almost asked for reassignment, but he liked working with Beckett and Castle, and he wasn't completely stupid. He was just coming off disciplinary action and was in no place to be making requests. Which left a breakup of their team up to Ryan, and he didn't seem inclined to make that move. In fact, no matter how antagonistic Esposito became, it only seemed to make Ryan more professional. Even on those days when the man seemed wound on the tightest of strings and Esposito did his stubborn best to be intentionally hurtful, their casework didn't seem to suffer for whatever had been lost between them. Esposito was beginning to think this was just how the job was going to be.
And then this day had happened.
They were following a new lead in their case. Beckett had sent them to bring in the ex-girlfriend of a suspect at large. It was probably nothing -- the pair hadn't been seen together in a month and a half -- but they were running out of avenues to try. As they neared the apartment door, however, they heard a woman scream.
Drawing their weapons, they hurried down the hallway and entered the apartment, announcing themselves as they went. The ex came from a lot of money, and the place was huge. Ryan went to the left, Esposito to the right. When he entered a bedroom, he found a woman cowering on the floor.
"NYPD, let me see your hands!" he yelled, and she threw them immediately in the air as fearful cries erupted from her lips. Esposito scanned the room and saw curtains billowing from an open window. He was about to move toward them when the woman pointed her finger in the direction Esposito had come from.
"He went that way!"
Giving the room a last glance, making sure notto turn his back to danger, Esposito headed backward when he heard the shots. He whirled around as another rang out. He followed them. His military experiences kicked into high gear as his ears led his feet to a bathroom where a black-clad man stood in the doorway pointing his weapon at an unseen target.
Esposito fired three fast shots. The man fell to the ground, but not before firing a final round. His eyes and weapon locked on the suspect, Esposito made a beeline for him. He was dead. Esposito could tell that before he got there, but he kept on target until the weapon had been cleared and he could confirm what he knew to be true. And then he turned around.
Esposito had never had a heart attack. He'd never drowned. He didn't know what it felt like to have his heart stop beating in his chest and drop to his stomach as his lungs refused to draw air. But he imagined it had to feel something like this. Ryan, his partner, sat slumped between a sink and a toilet against a white tiled wall marred by a streak of crimson as blood poured freely from a head wound.
Esposito holstered his weapon, hurried to him in three steps that felt like forever and dropped to a knee. Bracing himself, he reached a hand to Ryan's head. The woman from the bedroom appeared in the doorway then, screaming her head off at the sight before her.
"Shut up, and call 911!" he yelled at her. Stunned silent, she nodded and ran for a phone, but Esposito could already hear sirens in the distance. He turned his attention back to Ryan. His fingers and palm slid over the hot blood as he traced his partner's temple and moved backward. A choked cry of relief escaped his lips as he found no gaping wounds, no bone and no brain matter -- just blood. Lots of blood.
He laid a hand against Ryan's chest to steady them both. His dark sweater was sticky and saturated, but it was the frayed fabric that drew his immediate attention as his finger caught in a hole.
Three shots.
Frantically, he pulled Ryan forward, felt behind him for exit wounds, but found nothing. He turned back to Ryan's clothes, tugging at his jacket, but not getting it loose. Pulling the collar of his sweater forward but not getting enough light to see anything beyond a red-stained shirt and tie. "Why so many goddamn layers?" Esposito thought to himself as he stuck his fingers in one of the sweater's bullet holes and pulled, tearing the fabric apart. Shoving the tie out of the way, Esposito popped a line of buttons as he ripped open Ryan's once crisp button-down shirt.
What he saw sent a wave of relief down his body. Two slugs lay flat against a white vest, stained pink. It wasn't a hefty piece of kevlar like the blue they all wore when heading into known danger. This piece of under armor did just enough to *usually* keep small rounds from piercing skin but did little against anything else. Its tight, constricting construction made it such that it typically was worn only by newbies who thought every day would end in gunplay and old dogs counting the days to retirement.
Ryan was neither, but Esposito didn't care as he laid a hand on the projectiles. Ryan groaned. Maybe mumbled words Esposito couldn't make out. He wasn't concious by any stretch of the imagination but something inside him was beginning to stir, and it busted Esposito back into action.
His attention returned to Ryan's head, applying pressure with one hand to the wound that barely missed being so much worse and using the other to stabilize him. He leaned forward, and it was almost like a hug. One of Ryan's hands rested against Esposito's leg, and he could feel fingers begin to curl around the fabric of his pants.
"Hang in there, bro." Esposito whispered. "It's going to be okay."
And now they were here. Here, where Esposito had been assured that Ryan would indeed be okay. But he couldn't assure himself that *they* would be. Because it occurred to him as Beckett left that there was another type of cop who regularly wore the hidden vests.
The ones who didn't trust their surroundings.
Maybe Esposito had been wrong, and Ryan really didn't trust him at all. The thought brought old memories forward, and Esposito couldn't help but dwell over all that had happened to them -- professionally and personally -- that had led them to this moment.
It started innocently enough.
Esposito couldn't believe it had been more than a year since that night. At the tail-end of a New York summer, Ryan's air had gone out. Maintenance had given him the run-around on when they'd be done, and Esposito had offered up a few hours respite at his reasonably cool apartment stocked with definitely cold beer for some classic Madden time.
Everything seemed normal at first. They were most of the way through the first six-pack, with Ryan playing to his usual degree of badness. When Esposito sacked his quarterback for the fourth time in as many plays, he decided to put in some second-stringers at the half. No sense letting his stars get hurt on a game his bench could win, after all. He had just begun his rotation when Ryan's phone bleeped the unmistakable sound of a text from Jenny.
Rolling his eyes, Esposito decided to take a little more time reviewing stats of his players -- one text from Jenny had been known to turn into a 20 minute conversation as Ryan moved his fingers across the touch screen faster than Esposito could even dream of dialing, much less texting. Which is why he was surprised when Ryan flicked open the message, scanned it and put his phone back to sleep before tossing it onto the coffee table without responding.
"That's it?" he asked.
"Huh?" Ryan popped his head up, eyebrows askew as if he had forgot Esposito was there.
"Usually you can't go 15 seconds without responding before she's calling you up all 'OMG, are you dead?!'" Esposito pointed out. "In the whole time you've known her, I've never seen just one text pass between you. What? She doesn't have 6,000 china patterns or wedding toppers she wants your opinion on?"
Their wedding was still a half year away, but within the first weeks of their engagement, Jenny had spent an hour bending both their ears on invitations. "Kevin, which ones say 'Us,' not just 'Me' or 'You?'" she asked Ryan. "Which would you be most likely to respond quickly to, Javier?" she asked Esposito and on and on and on. He was pretty sure that by the time they got married, she'd have their life planned out to the menus for their golden anniversary.
"Yeah, uh, that's not happening," Ryan said with a cough as he fiddled with his controller.
"What?"
"Hmm?" Ryan looked back up, letting the controller fall into his lap.
"What do you mean 'that's not happening'?"
"We're just, we're not getting married, is all," Ryan said, as if it were nothing.
"When did this happen?"
Ryan looked at him sideways and bit his lip sheepishly.
"A couple months ago."
"A couple -- Dude!"
"Look, there was a lot going on, with Beckett being shot and all that" Ryan said quickly, steamrolling over anything Esposito could say. "There just didn't seem like a good time and then so MUCH time had gone by, that..." His words trailed off and he sighed before looking back to the television. "You gonna fix your lineup, bro?" he asked.
"Yeah," Esposito mashed buttons randomly until he had fielded enough players for the kickoff -- he was actually pretty sure he had just put his own kicker in to receive, and it was confirmed when one of Ryan's tackles took him out at his own 20-yard-line with an injury on the play.
"That was really dumb," Ryan said as animated trainers made their way onto the field.
"Yeah." Tiny pixels had just loaded more tiny pixels onto a stretcher when Esposito paused the game and set his controller down. "What's going on?"
"With me and Jenny?"
"No, with you and the pope," Esposito fired back. "Of course with you and Jenny."
"Right." Ryan picked up his beer and took a swig before rolling the glass bottle back and forth in his hands. "She decided she didn't think she could trust me, and since marriages are based on trust..."
"Wait a sec. She couldn't trust YOU? You're a boy scout. I mean, weren't you LITERALLY a Boy Scout?"
"For awhile," Ryan answered. "Through middle school, actually, but then it started to get in the way of baseball, and-"
"Bro," Esposito interrupted, stopping that tangent in its tracks.
"Right," Ryan said, pulling his focus back together. "We were out -- looking at china patterns," he added with a tip of his bottle to Esposito, "when we ran into someone I dated in college. It, uh... It threw her off balance."
"What, you trick a little hottie into going out with you back then?"
"Yeah," Ryan said with the closest thing to a smile and laugh since he got there. It quickly faded away as his thoughts turned back to his fiancee. His apparently ex-fiancee. "Anyway, it just...it got under her skin, and she couldn't stop thinking about how we'd get married, have some kids and then I'd cheat on her and -- you know, I wouldn't do that, right? Javi, you know, I'd NEVER do that--"
"I know!" Esposito said in total agreement. "That's just, crazy. I mean, Capital C and all the other letters CRAZY. I just...damn." Esposito retreated to the kitchen, returning with two new bottles. If anything warranted cracking the second six-pack, it was the newly discovered dissolution of his best friend's engagement.
"Let me get this straight," he said as he handed Ryan one bottle and took a drink from his own. "You're out trying to decide between fancy plates or fancier plates when you meet some girl you took out 15 years ago and all of a sudden she thinks you're going to start running off with your legion of exes whenever things get tough? Did I mention how crazy that was? Because godDAMN."
Ryan laughed around a mouthful of beer over words that -- under normal circumstances -- shouoldn't have been funny at all, but on this day seemed to tickle him.
"I think she was more conerned that-" he stopped midsentence, as if he had already said far too much. Any amusement that had been on his face slid away. He winced slightly as he set his bottle down on the coffee table and picked up his phone, tapping the case with his fingertips in a nervous drumbeat that set Esposito on edge.
"What was she afraid of?"
"Nah," Ryan said, flipping the phone over in his hands. "It's nothing. Stupid. Just craziness, like you said."
"Hey, man-"
"You know," Ryan interrupted, staring it his phone's black screen before shoving it in his pocket "I should really get out of here-"
"Bro-"
"She was just picking up the last of her stuff," Ryan stood up, smoothed nonexistent wrinkles from his shirt and took a few stops as he talked."She said the maintenance guys were about done," he headed for the door. Esposito rose to follow him.
"Ryan,"
"I should get over there, because they probably turned everything on full-blast. Next thing you know I'll have an electric bill Castle couldn't even afford-"
"Kevin!" Esposito reached and grabbed his wrist before he could get to the door. "The hell's wrong with you?" Kevin's eyes turned sharply to where Esposito had grabbed him and then back up to his face. He could feel him tense under his grasp, but couldn't read the expression in his eyes.
Sometimes Ryan could move astonishingly fast.
Without warning, before Esposito even had time to think about it, his back was against the wall. Ryan broke free from his grasp, and with hands on either side of Esposito's face, he moved forward and pressed their lips together.
There was no tongue. There was no lip-tugging or caressing. It kind of reminded him of 8th-grade spin-the-bottle, where his turn landed for the third time on the girl who couldn't stand him -- and who he certainly didn't want to french -- so they just mashed their lips together for longer than normal and hoped nobody noticed.
This lasted two seconds, and it was in those two seconds that Esposito finally understood all the things Ryan hadn't been saying. His hottie ex in the china shop hadn't been a girl he used to date, but a guy, and that had been all together too much for Jenny to handle. She could plan a thousand things, from wedding details to children to how they'd deal with dead parents and what they'd do if she were in a car crash or he never made it home from work. But one thing she couldn't deal with was the thought -- however wrong -- that one day she wouldn't be enough for her husband.
Ryan came to his senses and broke the kiss, removing his hands from Esposito's face and backing quickly away. Esposito knew he was staring, wide-eyed and agape, but he couldn't help it. He couldn't do anything but watch as red flushed its way up Ryan's neck, around his ears and into his cheeks
"I'm sorry," Ryan said. "I'm sorry." He wiped his mouth, shoved his hands in his pockets, pulled them back out and crossed his arms across his chest, looking everywhere but at Esposito as blind panic and a desperate need for flight began to set in. "I'm sorry, Javi."
To this day, he didn't know what had come over himself. Maybe it was shock. Maybe it was the beer or that he hadn't had a date in six weeks, or the way Ryan said his name, but before he had time to really think about it -- before he could change his mind -- Esposito reached out and pulled Ryan into a hard kiss.
Ryan tensed, pushed back briefly -- more out of surprise than anything -- before relaxing in his arms. He parted his lips, allowing Javier access, and soon was kissing him back, their tongues tangling together like dancing flames.
Esposito turned, pinning Ryan roughly against the wall. His mouth moved to the soft, pale skin of Ryan's neck. With their bodies pressed firmly together and Ryan panting into his ear, he couldn't hold back a groan as his pants began to tighten. God, was he really hard? Was he really macking on a dude -- his work partner and best friend -- in his apartment and getting hard over it?
Ryan's hands moved down his back and stopped at his waist before sliding to the front, putting just enough space between them to work Esposito's fly open and rub the bulging cotton of his briefs. Fingers tugged at the elastic waistband before slipping beneath.
"Bro,"
Ryan kissed him and as he gave the briefs a tug, freeing his cock and wrapping long fingers around it. He began to stroke softly as his lips traveled down Esposito's neck, nipping and suckling at his collar bone.
It was more than he could stand. If he had only been half hard before, he was rock hard now. Frantically, he pawed at Ryan's belt, letting the strip of leather and metal clatter to the floor before undoing his pants and sliding them down. He manuevered Ryan to the hallway writing desk where he mostly let bills and magazine subscriptions stack up for months at a time. He leaned into Ryan, holding him in place, and opened a desk drawer. His fingers fluttered over sets of batteries, pens and pieces of scratch paper before reaching a small foil package and plastic bottle shoved in a back corner.
His roommate at the police academy had once told him that he hid condoms in every room of his apartment. "You never know where you'll be when things heat up, or how quick they can go cold while you're off looking for a rubber." It was a lesson Esposito had taken to heart.
Condom in place, he pulled at Ryan's boxers, tugging them to his knees, before lubing up. He leaned forward, parting Ryan's cheeks with the head of his cock, spreading the slick liquid gel. He didn't enter him, but Ryan drew a sharp breath that gave Javier a moment's pause. It wasn't that he had never done this before, but he'd never done it with another man. Second thoughts began to swirl in his brain before Ryan leaned backward, pressing the very tip of Javier's erection into him, and Javier thought no more as he pushed forward.
He had once dated a Latina girl who said his lovemaking was a mix of spicy and sweet. Like chiles and chocolate. He didn't really understand that -- not that it had stopped him from using the metaphor as a surprisingly successful pickup line -- but he was pretty sure this wasn't it.
If anything, this was rough and scalding -- like burnt coffee after a two-day bender -- as he thrust his hips forward, the tightness around his cock making his eyes swim and his breath stop. The desk swayed with his movements, and as Ryan reached down to stroke himself, Javier told himself it was for stability that he grabbed his wrist put it back on the edge, holding it tight in his grasp. Ryan groaned, the sound almost lost in the creak of the desk, and Javier didn't know if it was from his grip or his dick, but he was too close to care.
Beginning to lose his own balance, he let go of Ryan, his palm landing on the slick cover of the latest Sports Illustrated, and his fingers curling at the edges of an old utility bill. Beyond swaying -- beyond creaking -- the desk beneath them was beginning to slide in jerky thrusts that banged against the floor as Javier plunged deeper and faster.
And when he came, it was almost too much. His hand slipped, sending papers and periodicals careening to the floor. The desk lurched ahead, and Ryan thrust a leg out, bending slightly at the knee and taking his weight as Javier fell forward. If Ryan had been a little slower or a little weaker, things could have ended very badly for both them, but as it stood, the movement sent a shiver of pleasure through him as he finished with a loud sigh of release. He gave one last thrust of his hips before carefully pulling out and turning to lean against the wall, panting heavily as he waited for his world to return to some semblance of normal. Ryan, perhaps finding it easier, lowered himself all the way to the floor, resting his forehead against the edge of the desk.
Esposito glanced at him, briefly feeling like he should offer to help him to his feet. It seemed like a common courtesy after shoving your dick up someone's ass, after all. Those weren't the words that came out of his mouth.
"I'm gonna take a piss," he said as he pushed off of the wall and stumbled to the bathroom. As the door slammed, he turned on the light, wincing at the sudden brightness. He removed the condom and took care of business, all the while trying to figure out his next move. Did that really just happen? Did he really just fuck his best friend -- his best *male* friend -- over a desk in the middle of his apartment?
Briefly, he wanted to run. Slip out of the bathroom, out the door and down the street to the nearest bar where he could continue getting his drunk on until he forgot all about this day. Then he splashed some water on his face and remembered that he was a grown man and Ryan was his friend, not some bad decision after a night on the town.
Steeling himself, he dried off and stepped out.
At first he thought the apartment was empty. Maybe Ryan had had the same thoughts and left before there could be any awkwardness. Then he heard the unmistakable clnk of glass bottles in the recycling bin just before Ryan stepped out of the kitchen. His shirt was untucked -- Javier wasn't sure he'd ever seen Ryan even a little disheveled before -- but he was fully dressed again.
"Hey."
"Hey."
"Bathroom's yours, if you need it," Esposito said, pointing stupidly as if Ryan didn't know where it was and couldn't tell it was empty.
"Great, thanks." Ryan slipped silently by, letting the door click softly shut behind him.
Esposito took stock of the living room. Ryan had cleaned up their beer and pizza. The desk was pushed back the handful of inches it had migrated, and all the papers and magazines had been picked off the floor and neatly stacked atop it. If anything, it was even more organized than when Esposito got up that morning. He picked up a form for his gym membership. He'd been meaning to cancel it for weeks but hadn't been able to find the slip of paper.
The bathroom door opened, and Ryan stepped out -- cleaned up, without a hair out of place. Silence stretched between them as Esposito glanced over the items on his desk and Ryan fiddled with his phone before putting it in his pocket.
"We're okay, right?" Ryan finally asked. "That was just..."
"Just a thing."
"It happened."
"All that beer, probably."
"Heat, too. Messes with the head."
"Exactly."
"Yeah." Ryan glanced down at his shoes before looking back up. "So, I'm gonna go," he said. "Maintenance guys really were done, I wasn't just saying that."
"Sure." Ryan squeezed past him and was almost to the door when Esposito called after him. "Hey, Ryan!"
"Yeah?"
"Why didn't you say anything? About, you know..."
Ryan looked at his shoes and smiled briefly -- not a funny smile, just a knowing one, like he had been waiting for the question he didn't need Esposito to finish.
"I guess it didn't seem like it mattered," he said, looking back up. "I was with Jenny. And before that, I wasn't with anyone. Not seriously, and the people I did see were all women, so..."
"Yeah, but, dude."
"Look," Ryan said as he took a step closer. "You know I made detective pretty young, right?" Esposito nodded. "So, I was the young guy to begin with, then I was the new guy in narcotics and the new guy in homicide, and I know times are changing, but I wasn't ready to be the gay guy, too."
"But you're not," Esposito said. "The thing with Jenny...that was real, right?"
"Yeah," Ryan said with another slight smile that Esposito couldn't quite read. "But there aren't a lot of people I trust to make that distinction." He patted Esposito on the shoulder before turning away again, and Esposito couldn't help but feel a little pride at being counted among the few -- even if it was an admission that came accidentally after three years and two too many beers.
"We still on for Sunday Madden?" Esposito called after him, eager to get beyond that last, horrendous play on the field.
"Yeah," Ryan called back, with a fist in the air, only to lower it with a wince and turn around. "No," he said. "My sister's having a baby shower Sunday."
"Tess is having a baby?"
"No, Carrie."
Ah, the middle sister. Esposito had heard a lot over the years about Ryan's older sisters. There was Theresa, or Tess, older by five years, and Carrie, three years older and married to a Marine.
"I thought she had that baby already?"
"Two years ago," Ryan said. "This is a new one, try to keep up."
Esposito couldn't help but laugh.
"Anyway, all the men of the family are getting together to watch Tommy -- Baby One," Ryan added helpfully, "and I don't know, do some sort of manly whatever to counteract all the estrogen flying around the shower. Wanna come?"
"How far away is Boy's Night Out gonna be?"
"Back porch," Ryan answered sheepishly.
"Pass," Esposito said. "No offense."
"None taken," Ryan said with a laugh. "But we're cool, right?"
"Yeah, bro. We're cool."
And they were cool, by all outward appearances.
That Monday, they both showed up for work, indulged Castle in his latest wacky theory about a murder, and he pretended like he believed Ryan when Beckett noticed the fading yellow bruise on his left wrist that he said was from a flagrant foul during basketball with the brother-in-law.
In fact, if he tried really hard, he could almost convince himself that he believed it, too. And when he tried harder still, he could pretend like seeing the dark marks on pale skin weren't turning him on in entirely inappropriate ways.
But that was Monday.
By Wednesday, the bruises were gone, drunken sex was all but forgotten and life was back to normal at the 12th Precinct. Even when Ryan came clean to everyone else about Jenny's exit, things went about like anyone would expect. He was light on the timing and details, Esposito noted, but that was the extent of his own mental callback to that night.
It was all just normal. Two months later, he realized how wrong he had been.
They'd been working a hard case. Two dead, few clues, and nothing that could definitely link the crime to the only remotely viable suspect. They knew it, and more importantly the suspect knew it. He'd been hauled in twice for questioning, and on the third time, they were still no closer than they had been on the day they got called to the scene.
And then he taunted them. Not enough to pinch him for the crimes, but enough -- just enough -- for Esposito to know that he knew he was about to get away with murder, and it made Esposito's blood boil.
He lunged for the man, had him by his shirt before Castle stepped between them. He wasn't a cop, but he was a big guy, Castle. He was enough to separate them, but not enough to stop Esposito as he went back for more and Beckett shouted at him from across the room. She couldn't stop him, either.
And then there was Ryan. He grabbed Esposito from behind, pulled and spun until they were facing the other way. Esposito tried to turn back, but Ryan muscled him a few steps further. Castle was at his side again.
"Dude, what the hell?" he said as he grabbed Esposito's sleeve.
"I got this, Castle," Ryan said as they rounded a corner. There must have been something in the way he said it or a look in his eye that Esposito couldn't see, but Castle backed off, mumbling something as Ryan hauled him down the corridor and pushed them through the door of the men's locker room and flicked the lock.
"You need to calm down," Ryan said just this side of harshly.
"Calm down?" Esposito spat back. "Calm down, that guy practically admitted it!"
"Well, then it's a good thing 'practically' is all the jury needs to convict these days, isn't it?" Ryan said, not bothering to mask the sarcasm in his voice.
"Look, bro, I appreciate what you're trying to do here, but you need to get out of my way right now."
"Can't do that."
They stood in silence for a moment, staring each other down, both waiting for the other to blink. Esposito shook his head and went to push his way past. But once again he found that sometimes Ryan could move astonishingly fast.
They were about the same height, and Esposito had at least 15 pounds on Ryan, but Ryan was lean and wiry and well-trained. Perhaps if Esposito hadn't been so angry, he would have seen and avoided Ryan's counter, but as it was -- before he had taken so many as two steps -- Ryan had Esposito's arm pinned behind his back, sandwiched between the two of them, with another hand on his opposite shoulder as he pushed him through the room past rows of lockers and toilets, glancing left and right to make sure the place was empty until they reached the end of the rows of lockers.
Ryan took a sharp right, guiding him past more lockers until they reached a break, where there clearly was a plan to finish the row before money ran out, but instead left behind a bare patch of wall, deep enough to put them just out of sight from anybody who wasn't sitting on the wooden bench in front of them.
"You need to relax," Ryan whispered as he leaned in close. His breath tickled Esposito's neck as his hand traveled down his torso and settled at his hip. Esposito's eyes widened.
"Are you crazy?!" he whispered back
"I'm not the one who just tried to rip a suspect's face off." Ryan pressed his lips to Esposito's neck. His tongue traveled upward, caressing his earlobe as the hand on his hip slid over to cup him through his pants.
"We shouldn't be doing this here," Esposito said, but he couldn't stop his eyes from fluttering closed at the sensations.
"Says who?"
Esposito drew a deep breath. He swallowed hard, searching for an answer, but all he could focus on was Ryan's touch. The corners of his mouth turned up into a faint smile as Ryan peppered kisses down his jaw line.
Then a door opened, and Esposito's eyes snapped open. He pushed Ryan aside, flattening them both against the wall and listened. His whole body tensed as he remembered the door at the opposite end of the room, by the urinals. The one Ryan hadn't locked.
Esposito's eyes focused on a dark spot on the side of the locker next to him, where time and neglect had chipped away at the beige paint, but his ears were trained on the door. His heart pounded as footfalls crossed the linoleum. Were they coming his way? What if it was Castle? Esposito held his breath, waiting. The new occupant began to whistle, and Esposito let his breath out. It wasn't Castle, but Hansen. A new cop -- the happy-go-lucky sort with a love of movies whose tunes he was always whistling or humming. The realization should have set his mind at ease -- especially when a stall door slammed shut -- and it did a little bit, but not enough.
He felt Ryan shift next to him, but remained focused on everything but the tiny bit of locker room they occupied. He barely registered Ryan's hands at his hips. It wasn't until he felt a faint pressure on his groin that he turned away from the sounds he was hearing and looked down to find Ryan on his knees, face nuzzling against Esposito's crotch as his hand had been earlier.
"What are you doing?!" Esposito hissed, but Ryan just looked up at him with a playful smile and shrugged his shoulders before surrounding the bulge in Esposito's pants with his mouth.
A toilet flushed.
Esposito swatted at Ryan's head as the stall door opened. Ryan caught a finger in his mouth and Esposito stilled as wet warmth surrounded him. Ryan curled his tongue, his teeth lightly holding him below the second knuckle, and began to suck. Esposito closed his eyes, dimly aware of footsteps, running water and everpresent cursing that happened any time somebody spent 10 seconds waving their hands under the motion-sensor of the paper towel dispenser. As the machine finally whirred to life, Esposito took his free hand and undid the button of his jeans and loosed the zipper.
Ryan let his finger go and turned his attention to Esposito's stiffening cock. Once again, he surrounded the bulge with his mouth, letting his tongue course around, leaving a damp spot on Esposito's briefs before sliding his hands up and pulling him out of the cotton underwear.
He started at the base, his lips -- Esposito had never noticed how incredibly soft they were -- massaging with gentle, licking kisses all the way to his tip. He paused there for a moment, letting his hot breath wash over his head, sending a slight chill where his mouth had been, before circling it with his tongue and traveling down the other side of Esposito's length before passing the erection through his lips. It was just the head at first, which he lavished with his tongue, tickling, lapping and providing just enough suction to make Esposito squirm.
Ryan moved forward, taking more of him in. His head rubbed across the roof of Ryan's mouth, sliding over the ridges before meeting the softer tissue just ahead of his throat. As Ryan bobbed his head forward and back, Esposito's hand traveled under his shirt until his finger, still slick from Ryan's mouth, reached his nipple, tracing around it and gliding across with ease.
His mouth filled with saliva as he licked his lips, holding the lower one between his teeth as his chest heaved with deep, silent breaths. In that moment, his world began to slip away. Anger at the suspect he could barely remember. Fear of being caught. Anxiety over the man at his feet and what that might mean. It was all gone.
A familiar tightening settled in the pit of his stomach.
"I'm close," he whispered, but nothing changed -- if anything, Ryan ran his tongue even more sensuously around Esposito's cock. "I'm close," he said again through labored breaths, this time taking his hand from under his shirt and tapping the side of Ryan's head. "I'm...I'm gonna come."
Ryan grabbed his hand, still knocking absolutely rhythmlessly against his temple and placed it on his shoulder, Esposito's fingers curling slightly at the back of his neck. "Mm hmm," he mumbled around Esposito, and the vibration sent a shiver down his spine. Ryan leaned forward, taking all of Esposito in his mouth and wrapping his arms around him. Esposito's hand fell from Ryan's neck and clutched the back of his jacket as Ryan worked his mouth and throat.
Esposito bit his lip and buried his face in his sleeve to keep from crying out, but he couldn't stop his hips from thrusting as he came. Ryan moved with him, backing off just enough that his come hit the back of his tongue and was there when he went down again, pushing Esposito's cock through his own cream and back out again.
Esposito slumped against the wall as Ryan licked him clean before rising to his feet.
"Better?" he whispered. Esposito could smell himself on Ryan's breath, and while he found the thought unnerving, the moment of clarity that came with coming was enough to make him realize that Ryan was right. Losing his temper on a suspect would help no one. He nodded. "Good," Ryan said. He smiled as he walked away, lightly running his fingers over Esposito's sleeve, stopping at the end of the lockers and sparing just one look back before disappearing around the corner.
Esposito shook his head as he put himself back together. Past his blind rage, he really did feel better. But clarity can be a tricky thing, and it wasn't long before his mind wandered back to what had just happened. What if someone had walked in? Hell, someone HAD walked in -- and the thought of being caught like that was enough to make Esposito's stomach turn. He wasn't sure why it didn't seem to bother Ryan given the things he had said their first time together.
But he couldn't be too angry. It's hard to be mad when an orgasmic glow is still working its way through the bones, but a chill in his core kept reality in sharp focus. He smoothed his shirt once more, checking again to make sure everything seemed in place before stepping out from the lockers.
Ryan was at the sinks, his hands cupped under a running faucet. He brought water to his mouth and swished it around before spitting into the porcelain. He just turned the sink's knob when Esposito reached him, dropped a hand on his shoulder and brought him face-to-face. A few drops of water clung to his lips, sliding down his chin and threatening to leave a spots on his shirt or tie. Esposito shut his eyes to the image, turning his head slightly, and when he opened them again he looked Ryan firmly in the eye.
"Never here," he said firmly. It had felt good, Esposito couldn't deny that, but it was far, far too dangerous.
"Yeah, okay." Ryan nodded his head, as he ran the back of his hand across his mouth, brushed past Esposito and walked out the door. A moment later, Esposito followed.
That day had been a turning point. A tacit OK for more meetings. They weren't regular rendevous. Over the next six months they were together six, maybe seven, times. And they still dated. In the wake of Jenny's exit, Castle had opened his black book to Ryan and funneled any number of hot young things his way. And Esposito rarely had problems landing a date. They even doubled a few times early on, though Esposito started backing out of those plans once Mindy, his girl of the week, asked if he thought he and his partner would be interested in a threesome.
"I've got a good eye, and I see something there," she had said with a wink and a smirk. "Plus it'd just be really fucking hot."
Esposito hemmed and hawed, but as she pressed, he eventually said he'd test the waters on that one. She went home with him that night, and they had some mindblowing sex, but it ended between them a few weeks later, waters completely untested.
He just couldn't do it. Hooking up at the tail end of a drunken gathering or after a hard case where it helped to be with somebody else who understood was one thing. But arranging a threesome required thought and planning, and plans implied relationships, and Ryan was just his friend. His friend and his partner and if they sometimes fucked, that was okay, but that's where it had to stop.
And that worked. In fact, it worked really well. Until the wheels fell off of everything they knew.
Beckett was fixated on finding the man who had shot her -- and the man who had ordered it and the slaying of her mother years earlier -- and really who could blame her? Not Esposito, that was for damned sure.
It was a mess. A mess that began with dirty cops 20 years ago, so when they were close to zeroing in on Cole Maddox, the usual protocols weren't an option. Beckett knew that. Esposito knew that. Ryan refused to believe it. So they left him at the precinct that day, thinking he would have their backs from afar as they went just a little bit rogue.
But he didn't, and Maddox got away. And it worked out in the end, but not before there were suspensions and resignations and threats, and the world went all to hell. During that time, Esposito spent so much time angry at Ryan. So much time hating him, and wanting him to just go away.
Now all he wanted was for him to be okay.