(FIC) Grief - 6/6
Title: “Grief”
Fandom: Castle
Characters/pairings: Ryan/Jenny, Ryan/Esposito, Beckett, Castle
Word count: 1,636 words this chapter; 5,541 words total
Spoilers: Minor spoilers through “Mistress” (2x16).
Occasion: Fill for a prompt at castlekink . Sorry it took so long =[[
Disclaimer: Some angsty stuff… far more than I had intended to put in, anyway. Despite it being for castlekink , there’s no actual kink in it. Oops.
Rating: PG-13 for language and alcohol consumption
Summary: The five stages of grief aren’t just for people who are dying.
( Denial ) ( Anger ) ( Bargaining ) ( Depression ) ( Acceptance ) ... ( DEATH )
Death.
Four years passed. Esposito never married, never even found a long-term love. He was too busy, he said. He claimed to need the salary and the letters of recommendation too much to spend his free time with someone else instead of at the station. He claimed that he had turned down other job offers before because he had made too many friends as part of Homicide, but now that Captain Montgomery was retiring, Beckett stood a chance to take over his job, which meant that Beckett’s job was up for grabs. He was determined, he said, to put in all the effort it took to claim it. He was moving up: slowly, but moving up all the same.
Ryan knew part of the real reason Esposito was working so hard; to him, nothing was as satisfying as finishing a job. He knew Esposito had been offered other positions, better positions, in Vice, Robbery, Organized Crime, the works, but Esposito had turned them all down because he loved putting killers behind bars, and the best way to do that was to stay in Homicide. Ryan could understand that; it was his reason for staying, too.
The part Ryan didn’t know was that Esposito also stayed because of him. Leaving Homicide would mean new partners for both of them, and Esposito had two problems with that. One, he would have gotten someone who wouldn’t make him laugh like Ryan did, who wouldn’t have Ryan’s brilliant smile or charming personality, wouldn’t know him like Ryan did, inside and out. Two, Ryan would have gotten someone new as well, someone Esposito didn’t know from Adam, someone Esposito couldn’t trust to keep Ryan safe. He didn’t trust his partner being in any hands save his own and Beckett’s. Throwing Ryan to the wolves and hoping for the best was simply not an option.
The wedding had been lovely, and Jenny had proved to be the perfect newlywed wife; beautiful, domestic, devoted, understanding. They had been fine for a while, but then a tropical storm had disrupted their paradise. Her biological clock was ticking, she said, and she wanted kids now. When they had dated, it had been one of the few things on which they disagreed: she wanted children, as many as they could have before she hit menopause; he wasn’t sure whether he wanted them at all, let alone an entire passel of them. They had gotten married anyway, but three years into their marriage, it started becoming a progressively larger issue.
“It’s not fair to the kids,” Ryan told Esposito over pizza. Monday night football commercials played in the background, the sound muted while they ate. “I mean, Jenny works part-time already, but with the way the economy’s been, she’s probably going to have to get a full-time job. We have bills to pay, you know?” He took a bite and chewed it meditatively before swallowing with a frown. “Add kids to the mix, and you’ve got a professional mom with way too much stress and no time for Junior and a cop dad who’s always at work anyway. I mean, even if I got a bigger paycheck, there’s no way I would be in a position to cut my hours; I’d have no time to spend with my own kids. That’s just not fair.”
“You’re right,” Esposito agreed softly, taking a long pull from his bottle before setting it back on the table. “Just because growing up with a dad who’s never home isn’t the end of the world doesn’t mean it’s an ideal solution.” Ryan smirked grimly at the reference to Esposito’s own past and nodded.
“That’s what I keep telling her, but she’s not having it. She’s just so determined to be a mom, you know?” He shrugged, rolling his eyes. “I blame hormones.”
“Women are crazy,” Esposito added, un-muting the TV as the commercials ended and the sports commentators came back on camera.
Ever since then, Ryan had been coming in to work with darker and darker circles under his eyes, sighing more and smiling less. Even though Esposito’s mad love for the guy had settled down over the years, it still hurt him to see Ryan so low. He avoided asking anything about it, knowing that Ryan would talk to him eventually, but he almost lost his control a few times, when Ryan would sit listlessly at his desk and stare into space, holding a cup of cold coffee.
“Trouble in paradise?” he finally asked after spotting Ryan taking the picture of Jenny and him on their honeymoon in Tahiti off his desk and slipping it quietly into a drawer. Ryan looked up, startled, and his cheeks colored slightly, as though he was embarrassed to have been caught. They sat in silence for a few moments, but then Ryan rolled his chair over to Esposito’s desk and pressed their shoulders together, speaking in a rushed whisper and pausing the flow of dialogue momentarily whenever anyone passed them.
They had fought, big-time, over the “kids or no kids” issue five weeks previous, and things at home had been going steadily downhill from there. As it turned out, having kids was a deal-breaker for her, and she had assumed that since he had been ambivalent before they got married that she would be able to sway him her way after she had his rock on her finger. In one of those rare “Ryan-Grows-A-Backbone” moments, he had put his foot down and told her point-blank that, as much as he loved the idea of having kids with her, it wasn’t right and that he couldn’t put a kid through that. She argued that plenty of kids had lived through exactly that situation and been fine, but Ryan’s gut still told him it wasn’t the right thing to do. Maybe in a few years, he told her, but not then.
Since that fight, she had magically discovered tons of things about him that had, she claimed, always annoyed her. He sometimes left the toilet seat up (so did thousands of other men, he told her, and anyway, he had been getting better about it); he hummed to himself, somewhat loudly, in the shower; he watched action movies when he should have been watching musicals with her; he never made the bed before leaving for work; he didn’t want a cat; he never called anymore (which wasn’t even true, he had argued hotly; he called at least once a day). She even found fault in his choice of houseplants. It had gotten to the point that she was threatening divorce, and nothing he seemed to say could sway her. He had even suggested couple’s counseling, but she was having none of it.
Esposito listened attentively and nodded as appropriate, letting Ryan get it all out of his system. When it looked like Ryan had come to the end of his story, Esposito looked at him, their eyes connecting as they reverted to the nonverbal language that they had developed over years of partnership.
“I’m sorry,” Esposito murmured softly after a minute or two.
“Not your fault,” Ryan returned.
“You should have come to me.”
“I didn’t want to infect your happy life with my little black raincloud.”
Esposito scoffed. “That’s my job, man: to share everything, even the shit.” Ryan smiled, but the expression was strained and didn’t quite reach his eyes. Esposito rested a hand on Ryan’s knee and squeezed it lightly. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked under his breath.
Ryan sighed heavily. “Actually, there is something.” Esposito perked up and knit his brows together inquiringly. “I have a ton of papers to go through tonight. I know it’s boring as hell, but I’d appreciate some help with them.”
“Papers?” Esposito asked softly.
“Divorce papers.” A strained silence stretched between them as Ryan resolutely contemplated Esposito’s desk calendar and Esposito felt frozen in his chair.
“Of course,” he said finally, moving his hand from Ryan’s knee to his shoulder and squeezing reassuringly. “Anything you need, bro.”
Ryan looked up at him with those blue eyes of his, those crystal-blue, color-the-sky-should-be blue eyes and smiled, really smiled, for the first time in over a month. “Thank you,” he said sincerely. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Fortunately,” Esposito replied, feeling the corners of his mouth tug upward, “that won’t ever be a problem, because you’ll always have me. I’m not going anywhere.”
Ryan opened his mouth as though to speak, but nothing came out. After a few seconds of intense eye contact, Ryan let out a muttered “oh, fuck it” and threw his arms around Esposito’s neck and shoulders, hugging him as though he were drowning.
Esposito hugged him back, holding him tight in an effort to absorb all of his pain and make everything right again. As he felt Ryan’s heart beating against his, he couldn’t help a sad smile. He breathed in his partner’s scent and sighed, resting his head on Ryan’s shoulder.
Okay, so maybe there might have still been something there, some feeling always on the edges, as though in his periphery. He wasn’t fool enough to let it grow again, envelop him like it did once, but he couldn’t deny that Ryan still meant a hell of a lot to him. His partner was hurting, and it was his job, his privilege, to be there for Ryan when he needed him the most. Maybe he would even be able to soothe Ryan’s pain by assuring him that he really was loved; in fact, that he had always been loved; that Esposito himself had loved him, and still did. Maybe he could finally confess, after all those years.
Or maybe not. Maybe he would settle for being exactly what Ryan needed at that moment - the world’s most solid friend.