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blue_bells» Title: Downhill
» Fandom: Castle
» Warnings: None
» Pairing(s)/Characters: Ryan/Esposito, Castle/Beckett, Lanie
» Summary: At their end of financial year celebrations, Esposito makes the mistake of sitting in earshot of Lanie and it's all downhill from there.
» A/N: There was more to this I had planned to deliver by 1 July, but work subverted my plans. Lessons learned during this piece: do not write while sleep deprived without a beta lined up and ready to roar at the other end of the pipeline. Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ryanandesposito ficathon.
It was Lanie who first planted the idea in Esposito’s head.
Lanie had been on her third glass of sparkling white Castle bought for their end of financial year lunch, when Ryan had to pause the story of his latest Madden victory because his cell phone rang.
Ryan smiled when he read the caller ID.
He had glanced between Lanie and Esposito, gestured with his phone like it was an apology.
“I gotta take this.”
Of course, he wasn’t sorry at all.
Esposito smirked when Lanie rolled her eyes at Ryan’s pretence and just hummed knowingly against the rim of her glass. Ryan left an empty seat between them.
“Look at him,” Esposito snickered and reached for his beer.
Ryan’s shoulders hunched as he hovered in the doorway of the meeting room. As if he could hide the spread of his smile, murmuring to the person on the other end of that line, one hand shoved in his pants pocket.
“That must be one special lady,” Lanie said, smiling when Castle leaned over to refill her glass.
Esposito toasted his friend when Castle raised the bottle to him.
“She was a frame of perfect manners,” Castle volunteered and topped up his own glass.
Esposito snorted in agreement at the memory.
“She was a perfect something, all right,” Esposito mused to himself and smiled at the mental image of bright blond hair, blue eyes and all curves.
How the hell Ryan had the luck to catch someone like Jenny almost seemed unfair.
But Esposito had known his partner for some years now and Ryan wasn’t the sort of guy to stay out of the game for too long. He had never found quite the right girl and Esposito always thought the list of things Ryan had to overlook or compromise was too long for those relationships to last.
So, maybe Ryan was so quick to jump back in because none of those other women had ever been quite right. None of them had really won Ryan.
Not until Jenny.
Maybe it wasn’t luck after all. Ryan never gave up. He had to find her eventually.
“Are you jealous, Esposito?” Lanie teased and Esposito blamed his past two beers when he failed to counter with something smart.
Esposito stared at his bottle like it was incriminating him, felt his mouth pull into something like a shrug. He threw the rest of it back in one gulp and Lanie laughed.
“Why didn’t Ryan bring her to lunch? The Captain brought his wife and I have got to meet this woman.”
In his peripheral, Esposito saw Castle lean in over Lanie’s shoulder.
“Are you telling me that you still haven’t met the future Mrs Ryan?”
Lanie made a noise, like she couldn’t believe the offence of it either.
“Can you believe he didn’t bring her at least to meet me? Haven’t the rest o’ y’all met her?”
Lanie gestured to the full length of her gorgeous self and Castle made an approving noise. Or maybe it was just a sound of agreement.
“He wants to keep her for himself,” Esposito said, “I can’t blame him.”
It was at that point that Beckett finished whatever topic the Captain and his wife had engaged her in at the head of the table. Beckett peered around Castle’s spiky head, still smiling broadly and nodded at Esposito.
“Keep who for himself?” Beckett piped in.
She had craned around Castle to join their conversation, almost flush to his back. Her face settled into a familiar question when Castle turned around into her smile. And her personal space.
“I would be happy to keep you for myself. In fact, I insist.”
Beckett might have winked. Esposito wasn’t completely paying attention. Ryan was laughing into his cell phone, though as quietly as he could. As though sensing eyes on him, Ryan turned his back to the room and leaned his shoulder to the doorframe.
“You couldn’t handle me, Castle.”
Lanie had emptied her glass again.
“You know, sometimes I wish coroners worked in pairs: I could use a partner in the morgue.”
Esposito didn’t think the dead bodies were giving her that much trouble.
“For the company?”
“For the conversation. The flirtation,” Lanie didn’t even pause, “You see Castle and Beckett?”
She looked the two square in the face like they were portraits at a museum to consider, or a puzzle to decrypt. Castle blinked, looking bewildered, but Esposito just shook his head when the writer glanced at him for help. Beckett smiled in no small amusement and Esposito suspected she might have already heard what Lanie had to say.
“Just look at the way she glows. Like she’s had so much good attention she can’t keep anymore of it to herself?”
Beckett rolled her eyes; her knuckles lightly rapped the table when her hand fell from her chin.
“Please, you’re welcome to take him anytime you need attending to. Really. Anytime.”
When Esposito looked back from Ryan to his friends, Castle was refilling Lanie’s glass, excitement barely contained like a kid in a candy shop. There was probably some duty of care Esposito was failing to fulfil by letting Lanie exceed the standard recommended drinks per hour with Castle pouring.
Whatever.
She was a mature, consenting adult who would have just chewed him out if he tried. She would have cowed him in the same tone she was using for Castle, though she accepted his champagne and Esposito didn’t realise he had tuned out until Lanie darted a look at him and he caught his own name.
“… Even you and Ryan niggle each other and you all underestimate the benefit of having someone to bait and surprise you. Someone who cares enough to argue obscure fact or even the shade of your tie is exactly… someone who cares.”
Lanie wasn’t the one Esposito would have picked to brood when the liquor started flowing. Especially with the Captain in company, Esposito thought Lanie was conscious of that sort of thing. Then again, it wasn’t the first time they had all drunk together, either.
Beckett actually laughed, but her look was sympathetic.
“Lanie….”
She reached for her friend’s hand – the one that wasn’t holding the champagne glass – but Castle beat her to it, clasping hers within his two.
“I promise you that no matter how many of your dates turn sour, we will always be here to care for you. We don’t even need to include Kate, because I –“
“Kate,” Lanie said, flatly.
“Give the woman back her hand, Castle.”
Castle quickly obeyed, mouthing ‘call me’, and Esposito considered his beer bottle for a moment, feeling just a bit dazed.
“I don’t even remember what we were talking about,” he admitted.
Lanie sighed and set her glass on the table. Leaning an elbow on the table, she threaded fingers in her hair and regarded Esposito blearily.
“I envy you,” she sounded tired, “because you’ve got him.”
She was drunk. Esposito was drunk. Something in the way she said it twisted its meaning in Esposito’s head and he had to disagree.
These were his friends. No – they were his family. You didn’t talk that way about your family.
He reached for her neglected champagne glass and shook his head.
“I haven’t got him, Lanie.”
The champagne was sweet, a gross contrast to the smooth and bitter beer he’d emptied a minute before. Was that mixing drinks?
“Well, he’s got you.”
He thought he heard a smile in Lanie’s voice, but he was too alert to the fact Ryan had snapped his cell phone shut and was coming back to their table.
Ryan’s wooden chair scraped noisily on the linoleum as he resettled himself and leaned his elbows on the table. He beamed between his friends looking impossibly happier than when he’d first left and Esposito decided to seek out Castle’s champagne bottle.
“What are you guys talking about?”
Esposito shook his head and snagged Castle’s bottle by the neck, ignoring the man’s chirp of surprise.
“Really wish I knew, Bro.”
So, it was Lanie who first put the idea in his head.
That was about the time he started feeling sick, a thick, hot roll of anxiety in his stomach every time he thought about Lanie and Ryan.
Because Esposito didn’t want to be thinking about it. Didn’t even want to consider why Lanie would go there and… why she had to sound so darn serious at the time.
It had made him tense and wary through dessert, not putting up any contest when Ryan and Lanie invited themselves to what was left of his tiramisu. There was too much cream anyway.
Thanks to Lanie, Esposito couldn’t look Ryan straight in the eye for the rest of their lunch. As though if Ryan held his eye for too long, Ryan would see… something in his face.
Esposito didn’t let anyone top up Lanie’s glass after that.
By the time Esposito grabbed his jacket, a mere ten minutes and five glasses of water later, Lanie was gazing into the realm of sobriety. She didn’t look to happy about it, if Esposito had to judge by the accusing stare when he announced he was leaving.
He’d made no secret of stemming her alcohol supply. It was the least she deserved after ruining their awesome lunch.
“Would you mind sharing a cab with me? I’m house-sitting for a friend this week and I’m pretty sure I’m on your way.”
Esposito shrugged his jacket on. His keys jangled in his pocket.
He might have been annoyed with her, but he wasn’t a douche. This was still Lanie, after all, and Esposito liked Lanie. He liked her even better before he’d met the sour-faced, obviously post-break up side of Lanie.
Esposito liked Lanie. He just had to repeat that to himself a few times and the smile would feel less strained, more like the genuine feeling he felt they both needed.
“Sure.”
Esposito nodded at the rest of the table and the smile was less of a stretch after the warm wave of farewell that came back. The Captain’s comfortable grin might have had something to do with his beaming wife he had hooked arms with over their dessert.
Beckett tilted her head at him, her smile broad and easy. Castle winked at Esposito over his shoulder and the detective guessed his friend was hatching a new plan for his muse.
Esposito wished him luck.
He slapped Ryan’s shoulder as he passed, but stuttered on his response when Ryan’s hand covered his as he said his goodbye.
Lanie had stumbled into his shoulder, apologising with a sway in her step, and they left without Esposito finishing his reply.
They didn’t speak on their elevator ride to the ground floor. Esposito didn’t like their chances of negotiating the stairs with Lanie and the combination of her heels and alcohol level. After a moment’s hesitation, he took her arm when she wobbled and recovered her step on the linoleum. She wound her elbow around his like it was the most natural instinct and there was a twinge of guilt in Esposito’s gut.
He couldn’t be mad at her for something he confused in his own head.
Lanie yawned at the early afternoon traffic while Esposito flagged down a cab before helping her into the backseat. He heard Lanie give the driver her address as they pulled away from the curb and he watched the precinct disappear as they turned the corner.
They may have all been given the afternoon off when their leave was approved, but it felt something like betrayal to turn his back on the office while the sun was still up.
It was kind of awesome. And somehow, at the same time, not.
Because he’d left Kevin back there.
“I can tell you’re upset,” Lanie’s mouth was almost hidden by the curls of her thick hair with her head lolling against the rest.
She might as well have poured ice down his lungs. Esposito glanced at her and she raised a sleepy eyebrow at him, dark lips pursed.
“The garlic prawn slice.…” Esposito shrugged and looked straight ahead, caught the driver’s eye in the rear-view mirror. He focused on the pedestrians on the crossing instead. “Left room for improvement.”
“Uh-huh,” Lanie droned, sounding completely unconvinced. “Where’s your place?”
Esposito stretched a kink in his neck and gestured to the driver. “Take a right at the lights. Four blocks down.”
“It’s what I said about Ryan and Jenny, isn’t it?”
Esposito made a noise of vague interest under his breath, polite enough to let her know he was still listening. But he wasn’t going to give her any more fuel.
How did women always know?
“And what was that?”
“When I said I envied you because you had Ryan.”
He’d braced himself for it and he let the words wash over him like water beading off his skin.
His throat was dry. He hoped Lanie didn’t see him swallow, thinking he was nervous, guarded or….
He watched the driver of the car in front fuss over her hair as they waited in line for the light to turn green. And then he shrugged, because it was nothing.
“He’s my partner; he knows I’ve always got his back. In a second, Lanie, your partner is your only contingency against a perp who pulls a weapon. You’re lucky you don’t need a partner because you’ve only got to come in when the fun and mess is over.”
Lanie hummed under her breath. “I’m lucky.”
Esposito couldn’t tell if she was agreeing or it was just the alcohol parroting.
“We’re lucky. We’ve gotta keep you out of trouble somehow, right?”
Esposito grinned at her, but Lanie’s smile was lazy and suspicious.
“Javier Esposito, are you making a pass at your coroner?”
Esposito managed not to laugh. He snorted under his breath, unable to hold back that much after their driver chuckled and took a right turn.
“No, ma’am, just looking for the answer that gets me home in one piece.”
“Because you should at least buy me dinner first. Maybe not today though, I don’t think I could fit anything else in.”
Esposito stared at her and held his hands up in defence. Where was she getting this?
“I swear! I’m not trying to pick you up, Parish.”
“Parish? Javier, you stole my champagne, I think that gives me – no, us – it gives us the privilege of a first name basis after hours.”
Esposito sighed and sagged back into his seat.
“So, Javier,” Lanie motioned between her colleague and the driver as though the man (making no attempt to hide his amusement) was a conscripted witness, “Do you ever call Ryan by his first name?”
Esposito had no idea where Lanie was grasping with this, but he was already tired of it. The beer was making him tired. He needed more beer.
He spread his hands with a shrug and nodded.
“Kev’s my bro, we hang out. Sure.”
Lanie casually scanned him from head to toe and abruptly nodded at the driver in the rear view mirror.
“Yeah, this is me.”
Esposito leaned over to peer out the window as the cab pulled over to the curb. He’d been to Lanie’s once or twice before with the rest of the gang when she had invited them over for Friday drinks. That might have been almost six months ago, but he was still pretty sure her apartment building was the neighbour of the complex where Lanie had asked them to stop.
Esposito was a little worried for her judgment of distance, maybe her vision was playing up. He had concerns for her judgment in general today.
“Do you need me to walk you up?” He asked after she paid the driver and eased her way out.
Lanie leaned a hand on the doorframe and cocked that eyebrow at him again through the open window.
“Baby steps, Javier. Sleep on it.”
She gave a short wave, clutch in hand, but Esposito had the cab driver hang back until the door to her apartment building closed behind her.
Baby steps?
Did Lanie mean she’d intended to measure her steps to the door and apartment?
Or had she been rejecting Esposito’s offer to walk her to her apartment, still thinking Esposito was trying to pick her up?
… Or did the ‘baby steps’ comment have nothing to do with either of those two things?
Esposito pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes with a groan, thankful for the motion of the car pressing him back into the seat.
Hell. He was not going to think about this.
Of course, then his phone had to ring.
Esposito had a familiar sinking feeling as he pulled his cell phone out and looked at the caller ID.
Ryan’s bright blue eyes grinned back at him.
The phone trilled a third time.
“That’s a special friend you have, workmate or not, my friend,” the driver interrupted his stupefied state and nodded at him in the rear view mirror with a smile of encouragement.
“Yeah….”
The driver was talking about the beautiful woman they’d just left by the side of the road.
Esposito swiped his thumb across Ryan’s name and answered the call.
“Hey, bro.”
Esposito was cool. He was super cool. He was ultra cool and unaffected by Lanie and her bizarre ideas….
“Javi!”
Esposito could hear Ryan’s grin through the phone, just like the one he wore on his caller ID.
“I’m gonna send you this photo, okay, Castle tried to build a champagne mountain –“
Ryan sounded excited, his voice bubbling in that almost breathless way when he was on the edge of a laugh and almost couldn’t bear to steal another breath in case someone beat him to the punch of sharing the joke.
Must have been an awesome joke.
Esposito thought he could hear Castle and Beckett’s raised voices in the background.
Ryan’s giggle leaked through the phone. He was actually giggling.
Esposito couldn’t fight back the stupid, answering grin as he tried to decipher Ryan’s tale of Castle’s experiment that wreaked its chaos down on Beckett’s head through quiet giggles that degraded to strangled, helpless laughter the longer Ryan struggled.
Esposito eventually gave up.
“Pictures, Kevin. Pictures.”
Ryan’s laughter rang clearer this time, sounding further away as though Ryan had moved the cell phone away from his mouth.
“Hey, give me that phone!”
Esposito snickered, pinching the bridge of his nose as he recognised Beckett’s voice and imagined her reaching over Castle’s restraining arms while Ryan called for her to smile for the phone camera, well out of reach.
What was a champagne mountain, anyway?
Esposito slept for an alarming five hours when he finally got home.
It was only supposed to be an afternoon nap to sleep off the food coma and beer wearing down his muscles. Usually he was up and wandering to inspect his fridge left overs within an hour.
It had been a longer week than most.
The air of his apartment was cold. When Esposito blinked awake he was still too sleep-fogged to consider the sense of the temperature in June because there was someone in his bed.
Pale rays of the setting sun streaked through Esposito’s open windows, across the printed bed spread and over Ryan’s shoulder as he dozed on the pillow beside Esposito’s head.
Esposito blinked sleepily at his partner, feeling the hand under his shirt run up and down the skin of his back. Ryan’s eyes cracked open slowly and from their lazy track to Esposito’s face, Esposito guessed he had just woken up, too.
Ryan’s eyes stopped at Esposito’s mouth and the hand under his shirt paused, fingers brushing beneath the waistband of his boxers, inciting a full-body flush of heat.
The fog evaporated and Esposito tensed, breath caught. His chest felt tight. He searched Ryan’s face for a clue, heat curling in his gut. He could hazard a guess at Ryan’s intentions by the drift of the man’s fingers southwards and his slow, suggestive smile, but Esposito had no idea what Ryan was thinking.
It had been so many months since he’d had someone in his bed, but this was Ryan.
No, it was Kevin.
And he really needed to know what was going on before he started panicking.
“Hey,” Esposito swallowed and pulled the wandering hand around, pressed it to the sheets between them. He hoped Ryan couldn’t feel him shaking. Ryan’s palm and fingertips were wonderfully warm.
‘Not yet’ was the first thing that leaped to mind, but Esposito was completely distracted by the way Ryan groaned through a stretch that tented the covers when he drew his knees up, back bowed.
When Ryan collapsed back, boneless, bringing them almost nose-to-nose, Esposito just stared. He was torn between the opinion of this being the best accident ever (while some sensory memory suggested Ryan had always been here) and general terror, because, now that Ryan was finally here, warm and real, looking relaxed and happy, how was Esposito going to keep him there?
Ryan tilted his head on the pillow and finally looked Esposito in the eye. His face was like an open, happy, if sleep-glazed question: what?
“Hey,” Ryan hummed and slid their tangled fingers under the pillow.
“Hey, uh… Lanie?” Esposito grasped, at a loss for words.
Esposito squeezed Ryan’s hand when the man’s eyes began to slide closed again.
“Lanie,” Ryan echoed, lips barely moving and his eyes now shut.
Esposito didn’t know why, but it was suddenly – desperately – important Ryan didn’t fall asleep.
“Where’s Jenny?”
He blurted it without thinking and after a beat of quiet, he became aware of the high static drone that told him someone was watching the television in the lounge. He didn’t know why he didn’t notice it before, but then Kevin was smiling against the pillow, secret and quiet, like he was having a good dream.
“She’s here,” Ryan squeezed his hand back.
Esposito jerked awake, breathing hard. The sheets were stuck uncomfortably to his skin and his entire body was thrumming.
His bed was empty. Outside, it was dark and his apartment was uncomfortably warm. Quiet.
Esposito almost tripped in the sheets in his lunge to throw open a window.
The blare of New York night traffic, the smell of petrol and too many diners crushed together was like a refreshing slap from the real world where there was not a warm and handsy Kevin Ryan in his bed.
Esposito leaned with his back to the warm night breeze and wiped the back of one hand across his brow.
Thanks a lot, Lanie.
He wasn’t sure, but Esposito had a feeling he might have been in trouble.
The next day he hoped it didn’t show on his face.
Ryan brought their coffee to Esposito’s desk and didn’t raise an eyebrow when Esposito asks for a double shot of his espresso. Ryan was the same as ever, no lingering symptoms of his failure to drink Beckett under the table from the day before except a relaxed underside to his motions when he turned at the call of his name, slumped in the chair beside Esposito and didn’t sag with a groan.
Must have been something to do with a full night’s sleep, with the end of fiscal year’s rush behind them.
At least one of them slept well.
Esposito still couldn’t quite look his partner in the eye and he angrily, embarrassedly, hoped Ryan didn’t notice. Rubbing an eye with his knuckle, he glared at the new case file that kept blurring and not just because its manila folder was so worn it sighed in Esposito’s hand like tired flowers under the sun.
“And then she had me sitting up in bed for the next two hours showing me how to fertilise all these virtual crops on this farm – did you know the game company asks you to pay real money for some of that stuff?”
“Can’t imagine it, bro,” Esposito murmured under his breath, skimming the corner of the page.
He had less than a guess to what Ryan was talking about. It was just one of those times when Ryan needed an audience and after years of practice, Esposito had learned his cues.
“And people do it!”
Ryan shook his head, pushing his coffee cup and saucer across Esposito’s desk. Leaning an elbow, Ryan looked over his partner’s shoulder to join the effort of actually accomplishing something that day.
“Laptops get pretty uncomfortable in bed, burning in your lap….”
Esposito blinked into space, stupefied by something in that phrase, and he stared into Ryan’s face for the first time that day. Ryan looked like someone who realised he’d said something stupid without really understanding what and Esposito knew he was tired when he couldn’t be bothered to even tease Ryan about it.
That hot, tight knot was back in his chest.
Ryan shrugged with that small, familiar smile suggesting Esposito knew the joke and another vision of Ryan settled itself over Esposito’s eyes. Ryan on Esposito’s pillow with heavy eyes and a drowsy, indulgent smile.
His throaty, sleep-thick, “Hey.”
Esposito scowled at the drooping case file like it had insulted him and tossed it on the desk towards his partner.
“Make sense of this, I’m taking five.”
Ryan looked from the case file back to his partner as Esposito pushed back in his chair and rose to his feet. If Ryan was just a bit confused, Esposito didn’t check to find out.
“Yeah… sure.”
He didn’t have to look Ryan in the face to know that voice. He shrugged his jacket on quickly, intent on booking it the hell out of the bull pen before Ryan could –
“You all right?”
-- Ask a serious question.
Rather than respond to that, Esposito fixed his eye on the Captain rifling through the cabinet in his office, put on his best look of focused concentration. Ryan twisted around in his seat to see what had caught his partner’s eye, which was the perfect cue for Esposito to slap him on the shoulder and beat a quick retreat.
“Yeah, Bro, I’m going to check out a hunch.”
By the time Ryan had turned back, Esposito was already halfway across the bull pen.
“… All right,” Ryan’s aborted response reached his ears and Esposito squashed the pinch of guilt at the soft confusion in his partner’s voice.
Whatever.
Ryan never said ‘whatever’, he wanted to know how he could help you.
Esposito had never resented it until now.
It was cold in the morgue.
Esposito wondered if Lanie ever wanted to put a coat on, especially at times like the present, when she was elbow deep in somebody’s stone cold cadaver.
“Lanie.”
He’d meant it to sound so much warmer, something every colleague was entitled to first thing in the morning, especially one surrounded by the dead. Somehow, her name grated in his throat like a warning and it wasn’t lost on the coroner.
Lanie barely stopped to appraise Esposito and apparently found him wanting.
“Javier,” she countered in the same unimpressed note and poured the stomach contents into a metal bowl.
Oh, right. He’d forgotten about her new rule for first names. It was interesting, now that he thought about it. The team had called Lanie Parish by her given name for almost as long as they’d worked together.
“Yes, Javier?”
Lanie’s look was sharp and expectant, bloody gloved hands hovering above the bowl. She nodded impatiently for him to announce his purpose.
Esposito made a disconnected note that the man on the autopsy table bore a vague resemblance to one of his uncles. Maybe it was the beard.
“I just wanted to check in on you after yesterday. See how you’re bearing up,” Esposito excused.
Lanie made a noise, polite but probably unconvinced. She peered into the bowl and swirled its contents around in a cloudy, dark mess.
“That wasn’t my first work lunch, Javi.” She tipped the bowl for him to see and he frowned against the instinct to look away from another person’s ingestion first thing in the morning. “What do you think, blueberries? And couscous? That’s odd….”
Esposito purposefully tried not to look and shook his head to clear it.
“Lanie –“
“Fine.”
Lanie set the bowl on the work bench and propped a hand on her hip, careful of her bloody prints.
“I get off at six, if I’m lucky. I think I’ll feel like Korean barbecue, but if I’m starving we’ll need to choose something faster.”
Esposito stared at her, stunned. What were they just talking about? How did they get to that?
Lanie shook her head and Esposito realised she was just mirroring his motion. Lanie cocked an eyebrow, dark lips pursed and she looked impatient now.
“What, isn’t that what you wanted? That's not why you came to my lair without a case?”
“No….”
His reply was cautious, but he sort of wished he hadn’t replied so quickly. From the satisfied look on Lanie’s face, she hadn’t taken offence (thank God). She sighed, like Esposito had just set a mountain of paperwork or bodies in front of her and took off her gloves with a snap that echoed off the tiles.
“Okay.”
Throwing the soiled gloves into a bright disposal, Lanie’s hands settled on her hips and she steadied him with a look that made Esposito think she was addressing him now as a friend, not a colleague.
“What’s troubling you, Javier?”
Esposito preferred her when she was ‘Lanie the colleague’. She didn’t care about his problems then.
“Hey, it’s no problem, maybe it’s just –“
Lanie’s eyes crinkled with her soft smile. “I didn’t say anything about a problem.”
“Huh.”
She was fast.
“Look, you’ve got my ear if you want it, but there’s gotta be a reason you came to me and not your boys or Beckett upstairs,” Lanie said, hands spread in a shrug before folding across her stomach, “Is it one of them? Has Castle finally crossed the line and put in an application to be a deputy sheriff?”
Esposito snickered, despite himself.
“Come on, you know Castle: he’d go straight for sheriff, never mind the deputy.”
“Ain’t that right,” Lanie said, trying to suppress her own smile, “And how’s Beckett doing? I didn’t have a chance to really speak to her since yesterday, but I’m pretty sure if she’d made any embarrassing, ground-breaking, thigh-splitting progress with Castle, that girl would have freaked to me about it.”
The smile on her face abruptly froze, eyes brightening in alarm.
“Why, did something happen? Did she tell you before she told me?”
Esposito glanced to the side freezer drawers, head spinning. God, the machinations and pace of a woman’s mind….
“Uh, no. I don’t think anything’s happened. I mean, not that I’ve heard or seen.”
Lanie settled, obviously satisfied with that response and Esposito realised how close the two women actually were.
“So, it’s Ryan,” Lanie said.
He had no idea what Lanie saw on his face, but maybe he should have said something instead of letting his throat clamp and just scratching the back of his neck until the muscles loosened.
Her face was careful when he met her eye and without the buzz of alcohol and post-case high, or the safety of physical separation from the precinct, Esposito had a sinking feeling he knew why she lowered her voice.
“Did you sleep on it?”
He was already shaking his head.
“I don’t know who you’ve been talking to—“
“You know what I’m talking about,” Lanie said, lightly. Quietly. She reached for another pair of gloves subtly, as though afraid to alert any onlookers to their conversation or startling Esposito with any sharp or sudden movements. “You can talk here. I’ll listen.”
Esposito studied her as she slid on the new gloves, his jaw wound tight.
“Code of Conduct,” he said, eventually and she just gave him a bland look.
“I’m fairly confident we broke at least five codes of conduct alone with our lunch yesterday, alcohol on the premises, with the Captain leading the way. Don’t wave the C-O-C at me, Javi. Next excuse.”
Esposito fisted his hands inside the pockets of his jacket. He felt like he had heartburn. Or indigestion.
“You’re wrong,” he felt a bit better when his voice didn’t crack at the assertion.
It was a pity Lanie still looked more confident than he felt. She looked calm and patient in the confidence the belief gave her, but it had exactly the opposite effect on Esposito.
“Then I’m wrong…. ”
She shrugged lightly, more of an invitation than a brush off and she inclined her head, thick curls unmoving. Her dark eyes bored into him and Esposito vaguely thought he was going to be sick.
“… Am I wrong?”
The seconds hand of the large analogue clock over the door had a heavy resonance and Esposito was pretty sure his heart was racing ahead of it. He wasn’t even sure what time he’d come down to the morgue. Was he supposed to be in a meeting now?
Esposito looked out the observation window to the corridor, expecting to see someone sent to collect him. Expecting to find someone ready to discover this terrifying possibility about him.
Because… he didn’t know. It… well, because, it was Ryan.
Ryan, who was one of the genuinely nicest, best people Esposito had the privilege of knowing. Ryan who looked on the bright side of life with his wickedly wry sense of humour, a faithful disciple of Murphy. He always knew just the thing to say to lift his friends from their worst moods. That was a talent. It was Ryan, who had terrible taste in furniture, shamed his Irish heritage with his contrary lightweight constitution and preference for mocktails, which just made him a better target for Castle and Esposito’s jibes. They were talking about Kevin, who was one of Esposito’s best friends despite his seriously awful dress sense and choice in women… with one late exception.
Fuck.
“Jenny,” Esposito breathed and it felt like, fuck, like a guilty confession.
Lanie made a soft sound of agreement.
“You can’t do anything about that choice for Ryan. But do you remember when I said you had him? You’ve got to make up your mind, first.”
God, Esposito couldn’t think about this. It was only a unilateral headache waiting to happen.
“Yeah, you’re delirious and I’m not sure I get paid enough to cover the charge of your post-break advice,” Esposito finally said, not realising when he’d begun to pace the width of the morgue.
It was Kevin.
Kevin at his side on the couch, elbow in his ribs, trying to distract Esposito from his impending Madden victory.
Kevin snuggling in his bed, smiling like a sleepy, happy fool with his warm hand under Esposito’s shirt.
Hey.
Only one of these things was real.
And the only thing Esposito knew for certain was that he was definitely going to be sick.
Lanie’s voice was kind, but it may as well have been a punch in the gut.
“Well, if I’m wrong about you, then it stops there. But I’m not, am I?”
Esposito felt like she set him down on the guillotine.
Why did she have to say that?
Esposito growled, shaking his head, “Thanks for ruining my new year buzz.”
“If you want to continue this conversation, you know where I live,” Lanie’s soft sing-song followed him out the door, ringing in his ears on the elevator ride back up to the bull pen.
It was like some sick comedy at Esposito’s expense that Ryan was crossing the corridor in front of the elevator when the doors swung open to their floor.
Esposito’s shoulders stiffened, but Ryan had already seen him and about turned with a huge smile, case file still in hand.
“Hey, partner!” Ryan crowed, his arms outstretched in a mock embrace, “Where’ve you been all my life? You missed the briefing!”
“Shit.” Esposito stopped in shock, on the threshold of the lift and checked his watch. “Are you ser – Kev, man! Not today!”
Ryan’s laugh trailed off to a confused ‘huh’ at the unappreciated prank when Esposito grabbed the file from him and all but stalked off to the meeting room, shoving an elbow at the elevator doors when they tried to close on him.
Out of the corner of his eye, Esposito saw Castle strolling in Ryan’s direction, but he didn’t stop to consider it.
He was not going to think about this.
This was not going to affect his job.
It wasn’t.
» Fandom: Castle
» Warnings: None
» Pairing(s)/Characters: Ryan/Esposito, Castle/Beckett, Lanie
» Summary: At their end of financial year celebrations, Esposito makes the mistake of sitting in earshot of Lanie and it's all downhill from there.
» A/N: There was more to this I had planned to deliver by 1 July, but work subverted my plans. Lessons learned during this piece: do not write while sleep deprived without a beta lined up and ready to roar at the other end of the pipeline. Written for the
ryanandesposito ficathon.It was Lanie who first planted the idea in Esposito’s head.
Lanie had been on her third glass of sparkling white Castle bought for their end of financial year lunch, when Ryan had to pause the story of his latest Madden victory because his cell phone rang.
Ryan smiled when he read the caller ID.
He had glanced between Lanie and Esposito, gestured with his phone like it was an apology.
“I gotta take this.”
Of course, he wasn’t sorry at all.
Esposito smirked when Lanie rolled her eyes at Ryan’s pretence and just hummed knowingly against the rim of her glass. Ryan left an empty seat between them.
“Look at him,” Esposito snickered and reached for his beer.
Ryan’s shoulders hunched as he hovered in the doorway of the meeting room. As if he could hide the spread of his smile, murmuring to the person on the other end of that line, one hand shoved in his pants pocket.
“That must be one special lady,” Lanie said, smiling when Castle leaned over to refill her glass.
Esposito toasted his friend when Castle raised the bottle to him.
“She was a frame of perfect manners,” Castle volunteered and topped up his own glass.
Esposito snorted in agreement at the memory.
“She was a perfect something, all right,” Esposito mused to himself and smiled at the mental image of bright blond hair, blue eyes and all curves.
How the hell Ryan had the luck to catch someone like Jenny almost seemed unfair.
But Esposito had known his partner for some years now and Ryan wasn’t the sort of guy to stay out of the game for too long. He had never found quite the right girl and Esposito always thought the list of things Ryan had to overlook or compromise was too long for those relationships to last.
So, maybe Ryan was so quick to jump back in because none of those other women had ever been quite right. None of them had really won Ryan.
Not until Jenny.
Maybe it wasn’t luck after all. Ryan never gave up. He had to find her eventually.
“Are you jealous, Esposito?” Lanie teased and Esposito blamed his past two beers when he failed to counter with something smart.
Esposito stared at his bottle like it was incriminating him, felt his mouth pull into something like a shrug. He threw the rest of it back in one gulp and Lanie laughed.
“Why didn’t Ryan bring her to lunch? The Captain brought his wife and I have got to meet this woman.”
In his peripheral, Esposito saw Castle lean in over Lanie’s shoulder.
“Are you telling me that you still haven’t met the future Mrs Ryan?”
Lanie made a noise, like she couldn’t believe the offence of it either.
“Can you believe he didn’t bring her at least to meet me? Haven’t the rest o’ y’all met her?”
Lanie gestured to the full length of her gorgeous self and Castle made an approving noise. Or maybe it was just a sound of agreement.
“He wants to keep her for himself,” Esposito said, “I can’t blame him.”
It was at that point that Beckett finished whatever topic the Captain and his wife had engaged her in at the head of the table. Beckett peered around Castle’s spiky head, still smiling broadly and nodded at Esposito.
“Keep who for himself?” Beckett piped in.
She had craned around Castle to join their conversation, almost flush to his back. Her face settled into a familiar question when Castle turned around into her smile. And her personal space.
“I would be happy to keep you for myself. In fact, I insist.”
Beckett might have winked. Esposito wasn’t completely paying attention. Ryan was laughing into his cell phone, though as quietly as he could. As though sensing eyes on him, Ryan turned his back to the room and leaned his shoulder to the doorframe.
“You couldn’t handle me, Castle.”
Lanie had emptied her glass again.
“You know, sometimes I wish coroners worked in pairs: I could use a partner in the morgue.”
Esposito didn’t think the dead bodies were giving her that much trouble.
“For the company?”
“For the conversation. The flirtation,” Lanie didn’t even pause, “You see Castle and Beckett?”
She looked the two square in the face like they were portraits at a museum to consider, or a puzzle to decrypt. Castle blinked, looking bewildered, but Esposito just shook his head when the writer glanced at him for help. Beckett smiled in no small amusement and Esposito suspected she might have already heard what Lanie had to say.
“Just look at the way she glows. Like she’s had so much good attention she can’t keep anymore of it to herself?”
Beckett rolled her eyes; her knuckles lightly rapped the table when her hand fell from her chin.
“Please, you’re welcome to take him anytime you need attending to. Really. Anytime.”
When Esposito looked back from Ryan to his friends, Castle was refilling Lanie’s glass, excitement barely contained like a kid in a candy shop. There was probably some duty of care Esposito was failing to fulfil by letting Lanie exceed the standard recommended drinks per hour with Castle pouring.
Whatever.
She was a mature, consenting adult who would have just chewed him out if he tried. She would have cowed him in the same tone she was using for Castle, though she accepted his champagne and Esposito didn’t realise he had tuned out until Lanie darted a look at him and he caught his own name.
“… Even you and Ryan niggle each other and you all underestimate the benefit of having someone to bait and surprise you. Someone who cares enough to argue obscure fact or even the shade of your tie is exactly… someone who cares.”
Lanie wasn’t the one Esposito would have picked to brood when the liquor started flowing. Especially with the Captain in company, Esposito thought Lanie was conscious of that sort of thing. Then again, it wasn’t the first time they had all drunk together, either.
Beckett actually laughed, but her look was sympathetic.
“Lanie….”
She reached for her friend’s hand – the one that wasn’t holding the champagne glass – but Castle beat her to it, clasping hers within his two.
“I promise you that no matter how many of your dates turn sour, we will always be here to care for you. We don’t even need to include Kate, because I –“
“Kate,” Lanie said, flatly.
“Give the woman back her hand, Castle.”
Castle quickly obeyed, mouthing ‘call me’, and Esposito considered his beer bottle for a moment, feeling just a bit dazed.
“I don’t even remember what we were talking about,” he admitted.
Lanie sighed and set her glass on the table. Leaning an elbow on the table, she threaded fingers in her hair and regarded Esposito blearily.
“I envy you,” she sounded tired, “because you’ve got him.”
She was drunk. Esposito was drunk. Something in the way she said it twisted its meaning in Esposito’s head and he had to disagree.
These were his friends. No – they were his family. You didn’t talk that way about your family.
He reached for her neglected champagne glass and shook his head.
“I haven’t got him, Lanie.”
The champagne was sweet, a gross contrast to the smooth and bitter beer he’d emptied a minute before. Was that mixing drinks?
“Well, he’s got you.”
He thought he heard a smile in Lanie’s voice, but he was too alert to the fact Ryan had snapped his cell phone shut and was coming back to their table.
Ryan’s wooden chair scraped noisily on the linoleum as he resettled himself and leaned his elbows on the table. He beamed between his friends looking impossibly happier than when he’d first left and Esposito decided to seek out Castle’s champagne bottle.
“What are you guys talking about?”
Esposito shook his head and snagged Castle’s bottle by the neck, ignoring the man’s chirp of surprise.
“Really wish I knew, Bro.”
So, it was Lanie who first put the idea in his head.
That was about the time he started feeling sick, a thick, hot roll of anxiety in his stomach every time he thought about Lanie and Ryan.
Because Esposito didn’t want to be thinking about it. Didn’t even want to consider why Lanie would go there and… why she had to sound so darn serious at the time.
It had made him tense and wary through dessert, not putting up any contest when Ryan and Lanie invited themselves to what was left of his tiramisu. There was too much cream anyway.
Thanks to Lanie, Esposito couldn’t look Ryan straight in the eye for the rest of their lunch. As though if Ryan held his eye for too long, Ryan would see… something in his face.
Esposito didn’t let anyone top up Lanie’s glass after that.
By the time Esposito grabbed his jacket, a mere ten minutes and five glasses of water later, Lanie was gazing into the realm of sobriety. She didn’t look to happy about it, if Esposito had to judge by the accusing stare when he announced he was leaving.
He’d made no secret of stemming her alcohol supply. It was the least she deserved after ruining their awesome lunch.
“Would you mind sharing a cab with me? I’m house-sitting for a friend this week and I’m pretty sure I’m on your way.”
Esposito shrugged his jacket on. His keys jangled in his pocket.
He might have been annoyed with her, but he wasn’t a douche. This was still Lanie, after all, and Esposito liked Lanie. He liked her even better before he’d met the sour-faced, obviously post-break up side of Lanie.
Esposito liked Lanie. He just had to repeat that to himself a few times and the smile would feel less strained, more like the genuine feeling he felt they both needed.
“Sure.”
Esposito nodded at the rest of the table and the smile was less of a stretch after the warm wave of farewell that came back. The Captain’s comfortable grin might have had something to do with his beaming wife he had hooked arms with over their dessert.
Beckett tilted her head at him, her smile broad and easy. Castle winked at Esposito over his shoulder and the detective guessed his friend was hatching a new plan for his muse.
Esposito wished him luck.
He slapped Ryan’s shoulder as he passed, but stuttered on his response when Ryan’s hand covered his as he said his goodbye.
Lanie had stumbled into his shoulder, apologising with a sway in her step, and they left without Esposito finishing his reply.
They didn’t speak on their elevator ride to the ground floor. Esposito didn’t like their chances of negotiating the stairs with Lanie and the combination of her heels and alcohol level. After a moment’s hesitation, he took her arm when she wobbled and recovered her step on the linoleum. She wound her elbow around his like it was the most natural instinct and there was a twinge of guilt in Esposito’s gut.
He couldn’t be mad at her for something he confused in his own head.
Lanie yawned at the early afternoon traffic while Esposito flagged down a cab before helping her into the backseat. He heard Lanie give the driver her address as they pulled away from the curb and he watched the precinct disappear as they turned the corner.
They may have all been given the afternoon off when their leave was approved, but it felt something like betrayal to turn his back on the office while the sun was still up.
It was kind of awesome. And somehow, at the same time, not.
Because he’d left Kevin back there.
“I can tell you’re upset,” Lanie’s mouth was almost hidden by the curls of her thick hair with her head lolling against the rest.
She might as well have poured ice down his lungs. Esposito glanced at her and she raised a sleepy eyebrow at him, dark lips pursed.
“The garlic prawn slice.…” Esposito shrugged and looked straight ahead, caught the driver’s eye in the rear-view mirror. He focused on the pedestrians on the crossing instead. “Left room for improvement.”
“Uh-huh,” Lanie droned, sounding completely unconvinced. “Where’s your place?”
Esposito stretched a kink in his neck and gestured to the driver. “Take a right at the lights. Four blocks down.”
“It’s what I said about Ryan and Jenny, isn’t it?”
Esposito made a noise of vague interest under his breath, polite enough to let her know he was still listening. But he wasn’t going to give her any more fuel.
How did women always know?
“And what was that?”
“When I said I envied you because you had Ryan.”
He’d braced himself for it and he let the words wash over him like water beading off his skin.
His throat was dry. He hoped Lanie didn’t see him swallow, thinking he was nervous, guarded or….
He watched the driver of the car in front fuss over her hair as they waited in line for the light to turn green. And then he shrugged, because it was nothing.
“He’s my partner; he knows I’ve always got his back. In a second, Lanie, your partner is your only contingency against a perp who pulls a weapon. You’re lucky you don’t need a partner because you’ve only got to come in when the fun and mess is over.”
Lanie hummed under her breath. “I’m lucky.”
Esposito couldn’t tell if she was agreeing or it was just the alcohol parroting.
“We’re lucky. We’ve gotta keep you out of trouble somehow, right?”
Esposito grinned at her, but Lanie’s smile was lazy and suspicious.
“Javier Esposito, are you making a pass at your coroner?”
Esposito managed not to laugh. He snorted under his breath, unable to hold back that much after their driver chuckled and took a right turn.
“No, ma’am, just looking for the answer that gets me home in one piece.”
“Because you should at least buy me dinner first. Maybe not today though, I don’t think I could fit anything else in.”
Esposito stared at her and held his hands up in defence. Where was she getting this?
“I swear! I’m not trying to pick you up, Parish.”
“Parish? Javier, you stole my champagne, I think that gives me – no, us – it gives us the privilege of a first name basis after hours.”
Esposito sighed and sagged back into his seat.
“So, Javier,” Lanie motioned between her colleague and the driver as though the man (making no attempt to hide his amusement) was a conscripted witness, “Do you ever call Ryan by his first name?”
Esposito had no idea where Lanie was grasping with this, but he was already tired of it. The beer was making him tired. He needed more beer.
He spread his hands with a shrug and nodded.
“Kev’s my bro, we hang out. Sure.”
Lanie casually scanned him from head to toe and abruptly nodded at the driver in the rear view mirror.
“Yeah, this is me.”
Esposito leaned over to peer out the window as the cab pulled over to the curb. He’d been to Lanie’s once or twice before with the rest of the gang when she had invited them over for Friday drinks. That might have been almost six months ago, but he was still pretty sure her apartment building was the neighbour of the complex where Lanie had asked them to stop.
Esposito was a little worried for her judgment of distance, maybe her vision was playing up. He had concerns for her judgment in general today.
“Do you need me to walk you up?” He asked after she paid the driver and eased her way out.
Lanie leaned a hand on the doorframe and cocked that eyebrow at him again through the open window.
“Baby steps, Javier. Sleep on it.”
She gave a short wave, clutch in hand, but Esposito had the cab driver hang back until the door to her apartment building closed behind her.
Baby steps?
Did Lanie mean she’d intended to measure her steps to the door and apartment?
Or had she been rejecting Esposito’s offer to walk her to her apartment, still thinking Esposito was trying to pick her up?
… Or did the ‘baby steps’ comment have nothing to do with either of those two things?
Esposito pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes with a groan, thankful for the motion of the car pressing him back into the seat.
Hell. He was not going to think about this.
Of course, then his phone had to ring.
Esposito had a familiar sinking feeling as he pulled his cell phone out and looked at the caller ID.
Ryan’s bright blue eyes grinned back at him.
The phone trilled a third time.
“That’s a special friend you have, workmate or not, my friend,” the driver interrupted his stupefied state and nodded at him in the rear view mirror with a smile of encouragement.
“Yeah….”
The driver was talking about the beautiful woman they’d just left by the side of the road.
Esposito swiped his thumb across Ryan’s name and answered the call.
“Hey, bro.”
Esposito was cool. He was super cool. He was ultra cool and unaffected by Lanie and her bizarre ideas….
“Javi!”
Esposito could hear Ryan’s grin through the phone, just like the one he wore on his caller ID.
“I’m gonna send you this photo, okay, Castle tried to build a champagne mountain –“
Ryan sounded excited, his voice bubbling in that almost breathless way when he was on the edge of a laugh and almost couldn’t bear to steal another breath in case someone beat him to the punch of sharing the joke.
Must have been an awesome joke.
Esposito thought he could hear Castle and Beckett’s raised voices in the background.
Ryan’s giggle leaked through the phone. He was actually giggling.
Esposito couldn’t fight back the stupid, answering grin as he tried to decipher Ryan’s tale of Castle’s experiment that wreaked its chaos down on Beckett’s head through quiet giggles that degraded to strangled, helpless laughter the longer Ryan struggled.
Esposito eventually gave up.
“Pictures, Kevin. Pictures.”
Ryan’s laughter rang clearer this time, sounding further away as though Ryan had moved the cell phone away from his mouth.
“Hey, give me that phone!”
Esposito snickered, pinching the bridge of his nose as he recognised Beckett’s voice and imagined her reaching over Castle’s restraining arms while Ryan called for her to smile for the phone camera, well out of reach.
What was a champagne mountain, anyway?
Esposito slept for an alarming five hours when he finally got home.
It was only supposed to be an afternoon nap to sleep off the food coma and beer wearing down his muscles. Usually he was up and wandering to inspect his fridge left overs within an hour.
It had been a longer week than most.
The air of his apartment was cold. When Esposito blinked awake he was still too sleep-fogged to consider the sense of the temperature in June because there was someone in his bed.
Pale rays of the setting sun streaked through Esposito’s open windows, across the printed bed spread and over Ryan’s shoulder as he dozed on the pillow beside Esposito’s head.
Esposito blinked sleepily at his partner, feeling the hand under his shirt run up and down the skin of his back. Ryan’s eyes cracked open slowly and from their lazy track to Esposito’s face, Esposito guessed he had just woken up, too.
Ryan’s eyes stopped at Esposito’s mouth and the hand under his shirt paused, fingers brushing beneath the waistband of his boxers, inciting a full-body flush of heat.
The fog evaporated and Esposito tensed, breath caught. His chest felt tight. He searched Ryan’s face for a clue, heat curling in his gut. He could hazard a guess at Ryan’s intentions by the drift of the man’s fingers southwards and his slow, suggestive smile, but Esposito had no idea what Ryan was thinking.
It had been so many months since he’d had someone in his bed, but this was Ryan.
No, it was Kevin.
And he really needed to know what was going on before he started panicking.
“Hey,” Esposito swallowed and pulled the wandering hand around, pressed it to the sheets between them. He hoped Ryan couldn’t feel him shaking. Ryan’s palm and fingertips were wonderfully warm.
‘Not yet’ was the first thing that leaped to mind, but Esposito was completely distracted by the way Ryan groaned through a stretch that tented the covers when he drew his knees up, back bowed.
When Ryan collapsed back, boneless, bringing them almost nose-to-nose, Esposito just stared. He was torn between the opinion of this being the best accident ever (while some sensory memory suggested Ryan had always been here) and general terror, because, now that Ryan was finally here, warm and real, looking relaxed and happy, how was Esposito going to keep him there?
Ryan tilted his head on the pillow and finally looked Esposito in the eye. His face was like an open, happy, if sleep-glazed question: what?
“Hey,” Ryan hummed and slid their tangled fingers under the pillow.
“Hey, uh… Lanie?” Esposito grasped, at a loss for words.
Esposito squeezed Ryan’s hand when the man’s eyes began to slide closed again.
“Lanie,” Ryan echoed, lips barely moving and his eyes now shut.
Esposito didn’t know why, but it was suddenly – desperately – important Ryan didn’t fall asleep.
“Where’s Jenny?”
He blurted it without thinking and after a beat of quiet, he became aware of the high static drone that told him someone was watching the television in the lounge. He didn’t know why he didn’t notice it before, but then Kevin was smiling against the pillow, secret and quiet, like he was having a good dream.
“She’s here,” Ryan squeezed his hand back.
Esposito jerked awake, breathing hard. The sheets were stuck uncomfortably to his skin and his entire body was thrumming.
His bed was empty. Outside, it was dark and his apartment was uncomfortably warm. Quiet.
Esposito almost tripped in the sheets in his lunge to throw open a window.
The blare of New York night traffic, the smell of petrol and too many diners crushed together was like a refreshing slap from the real world where there was not a warm and handsy Kevin Ryan in his bed.
Esposito leaned with his back to the warm night breeze and wiped the back of one hand across his brow.
Thanks a lot, Lanie.
He wasn’t sure, but Esposito had a feeling he might have been in trouble.
The next day he hoped it didn’t show on his face.
Ryan brought their coffee to Esposito’s desk and didn’t raise an eyebrow when Esposito asks for a double shot of his espresso. Ryan was the same as ever, no lingering symptoms of his failure to drink Beckett under the table from the day before except a relaxed underside to his motions when he turned at the call of his name, slumped in the chair beside Esposito and didn’t sag with a groan.
Must have been something to do with a full night’s sleep, with the end of fiscal year’s rush behind them.
At least one of them slept well.
Esposito still couldn’t quite look his partner in the eye and he angrily, embarrassedly, hoped Ryan didn’t notice. Rubbing an eye with his knuckle, he glared at the new case file that kept blurring and not just because its manila folder was so worn it sighed in Esposito’s hand like tired flowers under the sun.
“And then she had me sitting up in bed for the next two hours showing me how to fertilise all these virtual crops on this farm – did you know the game company asks you to pay real money for some of that stuff?”
“Can’t imagine it, bro,” Esposito murmured under his breath, skimming the corner of the page.
He had less than a guess to what Ryan was talking about. It was just one of those times when Ryan needed an audience and after years of practice, Esposito had learned his cues.
“And people do it!”
Ryan shook his head, pushing his coffee cup and saucer across Esposito’s desk. Leaning an elbow, Ryan looked over his partner’s shoulder to join the effort of actually accomplishing something that day.
“Laptops get pretty uncomfortable in bed, burning in your lap….”
Esposito blinked into space, stupefied by something in that phrase, and he stared into Ryan’s face for the first time that day. Ryan looked like someone who realised he’d said something stupid without really understanding what and Esposito knew he was tired when he couldn’t be bothered to even tease Ryan about it.
That hot, tight knot was back in his chest.
Ryan shrugged with that small, familiar smile suggesting Esposito knew the joke and another vision of Ryan settled itself over Esposito’s eyes. Ryan on Esposito’s pillow with heavy eyes and a drowsy, indulgent smile.
His throaty, sleep-thick, “Hey.”
Esposito scowled at the drooping case file like it had insulted him and tossed it on the desk towards his partner.
“Make sense of this, I’m taking five.”
Ryan looked from the case file back to his partner as Esposito pushed back in his chair and rose to his feet. If Ryan was just a bit confused, Esposito didn’t check to find out.
“Yeah… sure.”
He didn’t have to look Ryan in the face to know that voice. He shrugged his jacket on quickly, intent on booking it the hell out of the bull pen before Ryan could –
“You all right?”
-- Ask a serious question.
Rather than respond to that, Esposito fixed his eye on the Captain rifling through the cabinet in his office, put on his best look of focused concentration. Ryan twisted around in his seat to see what had caught his partner’s eye, which was the perfect cue for Esposito to slap him on the shoulder and beat a quick retreat.
“Yeah, Bro, I’m going to check out a hunch.”
By the time Ryan had turned back, Esposito was already halfway across the bull pen.
“… All right,” Ryan’s aborted response reached his ears and Esposito squashed the pinch of guilt at the soft confusion in his partner’s voice.
Whatever.
Ryan never said ‘whatever’, he wanted to know how he could help you.
Esposito had never resented it until now.
It was cold in the morgue.
Esposito wondered if Lanie ever wanted to put a coat on, especially at times like the present, when she was elbow deep in somebody’s stone cold cadaver.
“Lanie.”
He’d meant it to sound so much warmer, something every colleague was entitled to first thing in the morning, especially one surrounded by the dead. Somehow, her name grated in his throat like a warning and it wasn’t lost on the coroner.
Lanie barely stopped to appraise Esposito and apparently found him wanting.
“Javier,” she countered in the same unimpressed note and poured the stomach contents into a metal bowl.
Oh, right. He’d forgotten about her new rule for first names. It was interesting, now that he thought about it. The team had called Lanie Parish by her given name for almost as long as they’d worked together.
“Yes, Javier?”
Lanie’s look was sharp and expectant, bloody gloved hands hovering above the bowl. She nodded impatiently for him to announce his purpose.
Esposito made a disconnected note that the man on the autopsy table bore a vague resemblance to one of his uncles. Maybe it was the beard.
“I just wanted to check in on you after yesterday. See how you’re bearing up,” Esposito excused.
Lanie made a noise, polite but probably unconvinced. She peered into the bowl and swirled its contents around in a cloudy, dark mess.
“That wasn’t my first work lunch, Javi.” She tipped the bowl for him to see and he frowned against the instinct to look away from another person’s ingestion first thing in the morning. “What do you think, blueberries? And couscous? That’s odd….”
Esposito purposefully tried not to look and shook his head to clear it.
“Lanie –“
“Fine.”
Lanie set the bowl on the work bench and propped a hand on her hip, careful of her bloody prints.
“I get off at six, if I’m lucky. I think I’ll feel like Korean barbecue, but if I’m starving we’ll need to choose something faster.”
Esposito stared at her, stunned. What were they just talking about? How did they get to that?
Lanie shook her head and Esposito realised she was just mirroring his motion. Lanie cocked an eyebrow, dark lips pursed and she looked impatient now.
“What, isn’t that what you wanted? That's not why you came to my lair without a case?”
“No….”
His reply was cautious, but he sort of wished he hadn’t replied so quickly. From the satisfied look on Lanie’s face, she hadn’t taken offence (thank God). She sighed, like Esposito had just set a mountain of paperwork or bodies in front of her and took off her gloves with a snap that echoed off the tiles.
“Okay.”
Throwing the soiled gloves into a bright disposal, Lanie’s hands settled on her hips and she steadied him with a look that made Esposito think she was addressing him now as a friend, not a colleague.
“What’s troubling you, Javier?”
Esposito preferred her when she was ‘Lanie the colleague’. She didn’t care about his problems then.
“Hey, it’s no problem, maybe it’s just –“
Lanie’s eyes crinkled with her soft smile. “I didn’t say anything about a problem.”
“Huh.”
She was fast.
“Look, you’ve got my ear if you want it, but there’s gotta be a reason you came to me and not your boys or Beckett upstairs,” Lanie said, hands spread in a shrug before folding across her stomach, “Is it one of them? Has Castle finally crossed the line and put in an application to be a deputy sheriff?”
Esposito snickered, despite himself.
“Come on, you know Castle: he’d go straight for sheriff, never mind the deputy.”
“Ain’t that right,” Lanie said, trying to suppress her own smile, “And how’s Beckett doing? I didn’t have a chance to really speak to her since yesterday, but I’m pretty sure if she’d made any embarrassing, ground-breaking, thigh-splitting progress with Castle, that girl would have freaked to me about it.”
The smile on her face abruptly froze, eyes brightening in alarm.
“Why, did something happen? Did she tell you before she told me?”
Esposito glanced to the side freezer drawers, head spinning. God, the machinations and pace of a woman’s mind….
“Uh, no. I don’t think anything’s happened. I mean, not that I’ve heard or seen.”
Lanie settled, obviously satisfied with that response and Esposito realised how close the two women actually were.
“So, it’s Ryan,” Lanie said.
He had no idea what Lanie saw on his face, but maybe he should have said something instead of letting his throat clamp and just scratching the back of his neck until the muscles loosened.
Her face was careful when he met her eye and without the buzz of alcohol and post-case high, or the safety of physical separation from the precinct, Esposito had a sinking feeling he knew why she lowered her voice.
“Did you sleep on it?”
He was already shaking his head.
“I don’t know who you’ve been talking to—“
“You know what I’m talking about,” Lanie said, lightly. Quietly. She reached for another pair of gloves subtly, as though afraid to alert any onlookers to their conversation or startling Esposito with any sharp or sudden movements. “You can talk here. I’ll listen.”
Esposito studied her as she slid on the new gloves, his jaw wound tight.
“Code of Conduct,” he said, eventually and she just gave him a bland look.
“I’m fairly confident we broke at least five codes of conduct alone with our lunch yesterday, alcohol on the premises, with the Captain leading the way. Don’t wave the C-O-C at me, Javi. Next excuse.”
Esposito fisted his hands inside the pockets of his jacket. He felt like he had heartburn. Or indigestion.
“You’re wrong,” he felt a bit better when his voice didn’t crack at the assertion.
It was a pity Lanie still looked more confident than he felt. She looked calm and patient in the confidence the belief gave her, but it had exactly the opposite effect on Esposito.
“Then I’m wrong…. ”
She shrugged lightly, more of an invitation than a brush off and she inclined her head, thick curls unmoving. Her dark eyes bored into him and Esposito vaguely thought he was going to be sick.
“… Am I wrong?”
The seconds hand of the large analogue clock over the door had a heavy resonance and Esposito was pretty sure his heart was racing ahead of it. He wasn’t even sure what time he’d come down to the morgue. Was he supposed to be in a meeting now?
Esposito looked out the observation window to the corridor, expecting to see someone sent to collect him. Expecting to find someone ready to discover this terrifying possibility about him.
Because… he didn’t know. It… well, because, it was Ryan.
Ryan, who was one of the genuinely nicest, best people Esposito had the privilege of knowing. Ryan who looked on the bright side of life with his wickedly wry sense of humour, a faithful disciple of Murphy. He always knew just the thing to say to lift his friends from their worst moods. That was a talent. It was Ryan, who had terrible taste in furniture, shamed his Irish heritage with his contrary lightweight constitution and preference for mocktails, which just made him a better target for Castle and Esposito’s jibes. They were talking about Kevin, who was one of Esposito’s best friends despite his seriously awful dress sense and choice in women… with one late exception.
Fuck.
“Jenny,” Esposito breathed and it felt like, fuck, like a guilty confession.
Lanie made a soft sound of agreement.
“You can’t do anything about that choice for Ryan. But do you remember when I said you had him? You’ve got to make up your mind, first.”
God, Esposito couldn’t think about this. It was only a unilateral headache waiting to happen.
“Yeah, you’re delirious and I’m not sure I get paid enough to cover the charge of your post-break advice,” Esposito finally said, not realising when he’d begun to pace the width of the morgue.
It was Kevin.
Kevin at his side on the couch, elbow in his ribs, trying to distract Esposito from his impending Madden victory.
Kevin snuggling in his bed, smiling like a sleepy, happy fool with his warm hand under Esposito’s shirt.
Hey.
Only one of these things was real.
And the only thing Esposito knew for certain was that he was definitely going to be sick.
Lanie’s voice was kind, but it may as well have been a punch in the gut.
“Well, if I’m wrong about you, then it stops there. But I’m not, am I?”
Esposito felt like she set him down on the guillotine.
Why did she have to say that?
Esposito growled, shaking his head, “Thanks for ruining my new year buzz.”
“If you want to continue this conversation, you know where I live,” Lanie’s soft sing-song followed him out the door, ringing in his ears on the elevator ride back up to the bull pen.
It was like some sick comedy at Esposito’s expense that Ryan was crossing the corridor in front of the elevator when the doors swung open to their floor.
Esposito’s shoulders stiffened, but Ryan had already seen him and about turned with a huge smile, case file still in hand.
“Hey, partner!” Ryan crowed, his arms outstretched in a mock embrace, “Where’ve you been all my life? You missed the briefing!”
“Shit.” Esposito stopped in shock, on the threshold of the lift and checked his watch. “Are you ser – Kev, man! Not today!”
Ryan’s laugh trailed off to a confused ‘huh’ at the unappreciated prank when Esposito grabbed the file from him and all but stalked off to the meeting room, shoving an elbow at the elevator doors when they tried to close on him.
Out of the corner of his eye, Esposito saw Castle strolling in Ryan’s direction, but he didn’t stop to consider it.
He was not going to think about this.
This was not going to affect his job.
It wasn’t.
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Date: 2010-07-04 01:40 am (UTC)