(FIC) Going Somewhere
Title: “Going Somewhere”
Fandom: Castle
Characters/Pairings: Ryan/Esposito
Word count: 5,354
Rating: PG-13 for some language, weak gore, and (mild) slash
Spoiler alert: None
Occasion: Written for smilla840 for the ryanandesposito Secret Santa exchange.
Disclaimer: The boys don’t belong to me - I just borrowed them. And played with them a bit. And then put them back for others to play with. Thanks to theaquamarine for super-fast, confidence-building beta'ing =P ♥ ♥ ♥
Prompt: One of the boys gets shot.
Kevin Ryan didn’t remember anything.
Well, that wasn’t strictly accurate. He could remember the case, could remember the breakthrough in front of the whiteboard; he could remember the team, armed to the teeth, bursting into the killer’s apartment complex. He could remember looking over his shoulder to see Esposito right behind him, always behind him, always at his back. He could remember breaking down the door; he could remember shouting “NYPD, GET YOUR HANDS UP!”
After that, the next thing he could remember was the nauseating smell of disinfectant that permeated his hospital room.
He awoke, disoriented and alone, to find a mask over his face and his entire left half bandaged from the waist up, his arm held fast against his side. He looked around, waiting for someone to come bursting in and realize he was awake - wasn’t that what always happened in movies? But no one came.
He looked at the tiny rectangular window at the top of the wall. It had been mid-morning when they had gone into the building, but now the ambiance outside was inky black, matching the dimness of his room, in which the only light came from a table lamp directly beside his bed. Was it nighttime already? That meant that there had been twelve hours or so, maybe as many as sixteen, during which he had been unconscious.
He tried to sit up, but a searing burn in the left half of his chest checked his motion and he slumped back against the pillows again, struggling to think, to remember.
He had looked left, around the corner in the hallway, gun raised and ready. Blood pounded in his ears - it was the thrill of the chase at its finest. Beckett moved into the other room, Castle sneaking along behind her; his novice behavior would have set him apart even if the word WRITER emblazoned on his vest hadn’t.
“All clear,” Esposito had muttered, throwing in a few choice curse words. “We lost him.”
“Damn,” Beckett had murmured, holstering her weapon. “Castle, let’s head down to his office, wait for him there. Esposito, you and Ryan stay don’t but armed if wait remember remember remember…”
Her words trailed off into silence and the scene swirled, fading to black.
Ryan swore softly and threw his head back further onto the pillows, waiting for someone to come, waiting for someone to realize he was awake.
But still no one came.
He started counting his breaths to get a sense of the passage of time, but as he kept fading in and out of consciousness, it was difficult to keep a running count. He had only gotten to three hundred breaths when he noticed the pink tinge in the wan sunlight that was peeking through the window, signifying the rising of the sun and the dawning of another day.
It wasn’t until another two hundred breaths later that a nurse slipped in quietly, changing out the bags that hung above Ryan’s head. He cleared his throat and looked at her pointedly.
“Oh, Mr. Ryan,” she said soothingly. She was a mother; he could tell by her manner. “You’re awake, dear, that’s wonderful. I’ll go call Mr. Esposito; he’s been quite worried.” Ryan smiled, but it morphed to a frown as she started to walk away.
“Miss?” he called as loudly as he could, wincing from the prickles of pain in his chest. “Could you… well, would you mind telling me… what happened to me?”
She looked at him condolingly and shrugged. “You were shot. That’s really all I know.”
Shot?!
But… he was wearing his vest, wasn’t he? So how did he end up in the hospital?
It didn’t matter, he decided, as his head began to throb. Esposito would know. He would fill him in. And then they’d laugh about it, and everything would be okay again. It was this thought that lulled him into unconsciousness once more.
“Ryan… Kevin, please.” Cold, then warm, then wet.
“Kiss me, Javi.” A whirl of color and noise.
“I love you, Kevin.”
I love you too. But the words never came.
“Kevin… Kevin!”
“KEVIN!”
He was jolted awake by a hand on his shoulder, pushing him roughly to rouse him to consciousness.
“WHAT?!” he shouted back, wishing he could have gone back to his dream - he was anxious to get to the end of it, but unfortunately the real world had called him back before he had had the chance.
“Thank God!” He waited until Ryan had had a chance to sit up, and then, desperately but still being almost overly careful of Ryan’s shoulder, Esposito threw his arms around Ryan’s waist and hugged him as he never had before.
“Easy, man,” said Ryan consolingly, a little lost. He waited until Esposito sat down before adding, “It must have been pretty bad, to make you lose it like that.” For the first time since the shooting, he had the chance to examine Esposito’s face.
Yes, he decided. It had been bad.
There were lines where there never had been before, creases and wrinkles like somebody had dropped Esposito to the bottom of a full laundry hamper and forgotten to iron him out again. His eyes looked almost dead, though there was a small spark returning to them, and the whites were so bloodshot they were almost pink. Most of all, enormous dark circles had taken up residence beneath his lower lids. He was certain Esposito hadn’t looked that way before all this mess - had that day’s events really been enough to do all of that to him?
“You look terrible,” Ryan couldn’t help pointing out. “Dude, what happened to you?”
“How’re you feeling?” Esposito murmured. “Anything hurt?”
“My shoulder’s killing me,” Ryan admitted, “but don’t change the subject.”
“Alright, I’ll have a nurse bring some pain meds-“
“Dude!” said Ryan, affronted. “Could you, like, stop ignoring me for a sec?”
“What do you expect?” Esposito snapped, his dull eyes sparking momentarily. “You’ve been out for, what’s it been? Eight days now? And they said… man I thought you were-“ Esposito broke off, then finished with “never mind” and something about a getting a nursebefore walking to the door. But Ryan wasn’t paying attention.
Eight days.
EIGHT DAYS?! What, exactly, had happened to him?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Javier Esposito remembered everything.
He remembered Beckett walking away, remembered searching the apartment alone, with Ryan. He remembered the figure at the doorway of the supposedly-empty room, he remembered the gun blast, he remembered the blood spewing all over the carpet, all over the coffee table, all over the couch. He remembered forcing his brain to concentrate on first aid when all he really wanted to do was cry.
He remembered Ryan’s last request. His dying request.
I’m a kid with cancer, Javi. And I have a final wish.
He remembered, but he fought it. He fought the memories all the way down to his hand searching for the fluttering pulse in Ryan’s neck and not finding it. He even fought the memories of the paramedics arriving with a gurney, because that left him, alone and covered in Ryan’s blood, to imagine the worst.
And then there was the rest of it. Sitting in the hospital lobby, waiting, waiting, waiting. He hadn’t been able to explain to Beckett what had happened, hadn’t even been able to say Ryan’s name - he mumbled something about “shot” and “blood” and “doctors” before giving up and looking away. He himself hadn’t even been able to understand what he had said, but she seemed to get the gist, because she didn’t probe further, only taking the seat next to him silently. He could remember the doctor emerging from the O. R., his face ashen as he explained.
Alive, for now. That was good news, wasn’t it?
Unconscious. Well, that was to be expected.
Blood loss. Clearly. Most of it had ended up on Esposito’s khaki pants.
Possible anemic brain damage.
…what?
“I don’t know how long he was out,” the doctor had said. “We’ve done all we can for him; the question now is when he’ll wake up, or whether he ever will.”
Esposito’s throat had been lined with sandpaper as he fought to keep himself from… well, he wasn’t sure what he wanted - to cry, maybe, or to scream, but none of that would help anything.
“So…” He had swallowed hard. “Give me a best-case scenario.”
The doctor had sighed. “He could wake up tomorrow and be just fine. In that case, he’d be home by the weekend. Of course, he’d be out of action for a while,” he had amended, glancing at Beckett, who had nodded gravely, “but he’d be fine.”
Esposito’s voice had shaken so badly it was almost unrecognizable. “And the worst case?”
The doctor had looked at him then with a mixture of regret and pity. “He could be vegetative. It’s possible that enough was damaged that he’ll be on life support until someone decides to pull the plug.”
Beckett must have steered Esposito to a chair, because he didn’t remember sitting down, but it was a good thing she had because his knees would not have supported him much longer.
“Or it could be anywhere in between,” the doctor had continued, unfazed. “He could wake up in a week, or in a month, or in a year. And there’s no telling what he’ll remember, or how he’ll behave, when he does. It could be like nothing’s happened, or he could be a completely different person.”
Esposito remembered nodding, his hands shaking so badly that he had to fold them in his lap to stop Beckett from gripping them to keep them still. And then he remembered waiting and waiting, hoping for some good news, but none ever came. Eventually Beckett sent him home.
The captain had given him a few days off, to… what? Cope? He wasn’t grieving.
Yet.
And so began the days of pacing, frustrated and angry, from his bedroom to his kitchen to his couch and back. His phone was always on hand, waiting for the instant that he’d get the call that told him it was all okay, that Ryan was awake, that he remembered everything, that nothing had changed. But it didn’t come. The time slipped through his fingers, and with it went his chances of ever seeing Ryan again.
What bothered him the most was the last thing Ryan had said to him… what might have been Ryan’s last words. He had thought he had known everything about his partner. He had thought he had known where they stood. Clearly, he had been wrong.
If he had been wrong about Ryan… could he have been wrong about himself as well?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Esposito came back into the hospital room with two lattes and silently handed one to Ryan, who took it with a grateful nod.
“Am I allowed to have this?” said Ryan with a devilish smirk. Esposito shrugged, answering Ryan’s smile with a weakone of his own.
“They didn’t tell me you couldn’t.”
“And you’re not planning to ask.”
“Nope.”
Ryan laughed softly, sipping the coffee. “So,” he said briskly, “Mind telling me what actually happened?”
Esposito looked at him curiously. “You mean you don’t - you don’t remember?”
“Not really,” Ryan admitted, watching Esposito’s face flash between anxiety and concern.
“Anything?” Esposito asked tensely.
“I remember…” Ryan thought back, digging through his memory to find the tattered remnants of the events of a week previous. “I remember us going into Carpenter’s apartment, and not finding him…”
“Yeah?” Esposito prompted, leaning forward.
“And then Beckett… she left, right?” Ryan’s brow furrowed and he closed his eyes, trying to recreate the scene. “But that’s… that’s really about it. After that everything gets fuzzy. I don’t even remember…” He raised a hand to touch the bandages over his shoulder -
BANG.
He felt his heart explode.
He gasped, fingertips still touching the bandages lightly, his eyes glazing over as he struggled to maintain his grip on the memory.
“Ryan?” Esposito breathed, standing up to lean closer to him, but Ryan pushed him back with a gentle hand on his chest.
“Shhh,” he whispered, touching his bandages again, trying to stretch the flash of memory into something more lasting, something that would explain everything…
The ground rose up to meet him, hard and unforgiving against his spine as he dropped.
Yes! This was memory, this was… no one had told him about this, this was his own recollection taking over.
The world spun around him, swimming and diving and swirling past him…or was that all just in his head?
And then Esposito came running… and then the world went black.
“Damn,” he muttered.
“What?”
“I really did get shot.”
Esposito laughed, somewhat breathlessly. “No shit,” he murmured, leaning back in his chair.
They talked easily, Esposito awkward and nervous at first but relaxing as the time went by. Ryan couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something his partner wasn’t telling him about what had happened… but every time he broached the subject, the look on Esposito’s face quieted him again.
His shoulder had healed considerably in the time he had been out, and it only took a few more days for the doctors to release him, though he had strict orders from both the medical staff and the law enforcement officers not to return to work until at least a week afterward.
Esposito stopped by periodically to check on him, which warmed his heart immensely - as far as Esposito was concerned, it was just a friendly gesture, but to Ryan it meant so much more. Still, to maintain their friendship, he had never made a move, never said anything, and never planned to, but still it felt nice to know that the man for whom he cared so deeply did care about him in return, even if not in the same way.
“Ryan, stay with me!”
“…go to Disney Land…”
“Kevin!”
“…get a puppy.”
Things came back to him in flashes, but he still couldn’t form a clear idea of what had really happened, and the more Esposito came by to check on him, the more Ryan became convinced that something had definitely happened. The linchpin of the conclusion came five days into Ryan’s week-long mandatory bed rest, when he jokingly requested that Esposito rub his feet - and obediently his partner sunk into the other end of the couch, pulling Ryan’s feet into his lap, rubbing them with strong, certain strokes.
“Seriously?” asked Ryan skeptically, and Esposito looked up, frozen, deer-like.
“You asked me to,” he said defensively, and Ryan frowned.
“I know,” he said softly. “I just didn’t think you’d do it.”
“I thought…” Esposito bit his lip. “Is this…not okay?”
“It’s fine,” said Ryan quickly, watching Esposito relax and resume his rubbing. “I just feel like…” He looked down at his lap, fiddling with the edge of the blanket as he mulled over his words. “Javi, did I… did I say something to you?”
Esposito froze again. This was starting to get suspicious. “What do you mean?” he asked, masked tension in his voice.
“I just mean… I feel like maybe I’ve offended you somehow, and you’re just not telling me for whatever reason…”
Esposito’s shoulders relaxed. “No, you didn’t offend me.”
“But I did say something.”
“What makes you think-“
“I’m a detective,” Ryan said flatly. “I get paid to notice things.” He looked up and locked his eyes on Esposito’s, searching for a clue. “You get jumpy when I say I remember stuff, and… well, something’s different, you know? Like you’re walking on eggshells.”
Esposito considered him closely for a moment, and then said decisively, “You didn’t say anything.”
“Then you said something to me,” Ryan said immediately, grimly enjoying the familiar feeling of talking someone into a corner, the feeling he generally only got from interrogations. “Something you regret saying. And you’re hoping I don’t remember.”
“I didn’t-“
“You didn’t expect me to survive. You didn’t expect me to be here to call you on it later, so it was somehow okay to say it, whatever it was.”
“No, that’s not-,” Esposito began, but the confirmation flashed across Esposito’s eyes, and Ryan raised a hand to silence him.
“I don’t remember, okay?” he said softly. “So whenever you feel like being a man and telling me what it was you said, I’ll be all ears. But until then, stop treating me like a time bomb.”
Esposito cooked that night, and they ate amiably, but quietly. By the time Ryan went to bed that night, he was more emotionally exhausted than he had been all week.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
It came to him upon waking, all at once.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
BANG.
He felt his heart explode.
The ground rose up to meet him, hard and unforgiving against his spine as he dropped. The world spun around him, swimming and diving and swirling past him…or was that all just in his head? He tried to think, tried to kick his brain into action, but nothing happened.
Esposito came running - Ryan smiled. Esposito was always overreacting.
“Ryan,” he breathed. “Ryan, look at me.” It hadn’t been a command, just a request, and yet the urgency lacing Esposito’s voice was enough to demand action. Ryan turned his head to lock eyes with his partner, feeling himself being scooped into Esposito’s lap as he did so. A sharp pain shot up his neck and he grimaced.
“I don’t get it,” he murmured, shocked at the slur in his own voice. Esposito must have noticed it too - his eyes widened and his jaw trembled slightly, but he gritted his teeth and pretended not to have heard it. “What happ’n’d?”
“You got shot,” Esposito responded, his voice low and husky as he cradled Ryan’s shoulders with one hand and pressed a handkerchief to Ryan’s shoulder with the other. “You’re shot, man.”
“How’d that happen?” Ryan looked down, wondering what had happened to his vest - but no, there was the blue expanse of Kevlar, right where it should have been with no visible damage. The blood blossoming over his shirt was coming from a point just beyond the vest, just at the edge.
So not his heart - just his shoulder. That was good, right?
…right?
But the steady blanching of Esposito’s face as he worked, gently pulling off Ryan’s vest and bloodstained shirt and laying him on the carpet, had another story to tell.
One hand on Ryan’s chest, the other on his cellphone, Esposito made the familiar call. Officer down. Requesting medical assistance.
And then the details. Gunshot wound to the chest. Chest? He thought it was closer to his shoulder, but when he tried to look, the pain shot up his neck again and he decided that Esposito had a better visual vantage point anyway.
Massive blood loss. Probably tore his…what? “Subclavian”? Was that an artery or something?
It didn’t matter.
His face had gotten cold, and he could no longer feel his fingers. How much time had elapsed? He wished he could tell, but his watch hand was pinned between his side and Esposito’s knee. He deepened his breathing, fighting the burning in his shoulder as the expansion of his lungs jostled the torn flesh. He closed his eyes as much against the pain as in exhaustion.
“RYAN?!”
He was shaken back into consciousness again. Something cold was running down his forehead onto his nose - it was like a little insect made out of ice, scurrying along across his skin. Another insect hit his cheek, but this one was warm. It took it a few seconds to grow cold like the first.
“Ryan, stay with me!”
He looked up at Esposito, whose face was somewhat blurred. The room’s ambient light cast a halo around Esposito’s face, giving him a heavenly glow which made Ryan smile despite himself.
Another warm-then-cold thing hit his cheek and he frowned, looking up to identify the source - was the ceiling leaking? But his view was blocked by Esposito’s face. He moved his free hand, painfully slowly, to his face, ignoring the burning that radiated down his arm as he did so, and touched the now-cold thing on his cheek.
It was wet. Esposito sniffled, trying to hide the rest of them that threatened to spill from his eyes. The room twisted oddly again. His face went colder still. And then Ryan understood.
He gave a little sigh and looked up at Esposito, his free hand wiping the rivulets that had nearly dried on his partner’s cheeks. Esposito tried to pull back to do it himself, but Ryan tapped his face lightly to demand attention.
“Javi,” he murmured. Their eyes locked. There was a tense silence, and then -
“You know those kids with cancer?”
Esposito frowned, momentarily pausing in his first aid (via Ryan’s now-ruined shirt) to look down quizzically. “I have no idea what you’re-“
“Those kids that are dying from cancer, and so people grant their deepest wishes. To go to Disney Land, or to get a puppy, or whatever.”
“Yeah,” said Esposito slowly, shifting the shirt. The wound was bleeding less now, but this was not due to its having healed and but to the fact that Ryan now had so little blood to spare.
“I’m a kid with cancer, Javi. And I have a final wish.”
“Don’t you dare!” Esposito growled, fingers clenching in the fabric of the shirt. “You’re not gonna die, you’ve just gotta stay with-“
“Yes, Javi. I am. It’s my time. I hear the good Lord calling me.”
“Ryan-“
“Can’t you hear it too? Shh… listen.” He touched a finger to Esposito’s lips and closed his eyes peacefully. “Yeah… God’s calling me home.” Ryan opened his eyes and smiled weakly in response to Esposito’s horrified gape. “Don’t be sad for me. Just…”
He sighed, hesitating. Was it worth it? To shatter his own image in his partner’s eyes for the rest of Esposito’s (hopefully long and happy) life? To erase, in one moment of selfishness, the friendship they had shared? Would it even matter, later on, whether he had or hadn’t? What would be the harm in never asking?
But no. The time for reservations had passed. For the first time, it was time for the truth. But he wouldn’t give it without a safety net - he needed something that would guarantee that the leap of faith would pay off, one way or another.
“Promise me, Javi,” he murmured. “Promise me you’ll do what I ask of you.”
“Anything,” Esposito breathed, leaning down to press his forehead against Ryan’s.
“Even if you don’t want to.”
“Yeah.”
“No matter what it is?”
“Yeah.”
Ryan sighed again, shuddering this time as the cold pervaded his limbs. He moved his arm again, and was surprised, though not altogether pleased, to note the absence of the pain he had felt earlier. Wasn’t numbness one of the early signs of shock? And wasn’t shock what killed you? So he didn’t have much time left. He threaded his fingers through what was left of his partner’s hair and held his head exactly in place, with no room for either of them to move.
“Kiss me, Javi.”
There was a tense silence, broken only by their ragged breathing, and Ryan cringed. He’d taken the risk; now all that was left, for better or for worse, was to reap the consequences. He could feel the moisture from Esposito’s open-mouthed breathing against his lips and longed to close the distance himself, before Esposito had a chance to pull away, but somehow that didn’t seem right either. It had to be voluntary, or it would be meaningless. He groaned softly, shifting minutely on the carpet.
“You promised,” he reminded gently. “Do you really want to regret this later? Breaking a promise to me, while I’m on my deathbed?”
“You’re not-“
“Yeah, I am,” Ryan cut across him smoothly, opening somber eyes. “Yeah, I am, Javi - this is it for me, I know it. But I can’t die until I’ve kissed you, at least once. Please, Javi. Please.” He cringed at the note of begging in his voice, but found that he didn’t have the strength to amend it, or even to hide it. He felt his eyelids flutter closed as his strength faded, but he forced them open again, willing the blackness to wait, just a minute longer, just until-
He felt Esposito’s neck twist under his fingers, and not even the numbness soaking through his body could eclipse the soft burn of Esposito’s lips on his.
Seconds slipped into minutes, which morphed into hours, which blossomed into days and weeks and years and eons while their lips touched, pressing chastely together. At last Ryan’s head dropped to the side, a relaxed smile on his lips.
“Ryan?” Esposito whimpered. “Ryan… Kevin, please!” But Ryan didn’t have the strength to open his eyes, even to acknowledge his own name. He lay on the ground, breathing deeply, reliving every happy moment of his life.
“Kevin… I love you, Kevin.” There was desperation there, the desperation of a man with everything to lose and one last hope of salvation.
I love you too, Ryan fought to say. I’ve been meaning to tell you, but never had the strength. But the words never came. He was too tired, too ready to sink into the embrace of anyone who would hold him. He couldn’t have resisted being scooped into Esposito’s lap even if he had wanted to…although he would have liked to have stopped the tears that flowed steadily down Esposito’s face.
“Kevin? …Kevin!”
Don’t cry for me. I’m happy now, because I have you.
Dying really wasn’t so bad, he decided. He let the darkness wash over him, let death claim him as its own, still smiling at his own accomplishment.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The last day of Ryan’s forced sick leave found him sitting anxiously on the couch, watching the clock anxiously, waiting for Esposito’s lunch break, when he could undoubtedly expect a visit, and not just a visit, but the visit. The visit that would change everything.
What time is it? Three minutes after the last time you checked.
He managed to get most of the way through The Chamber of Secrets before he heard his door open. He paused the movie, and his TV was plastered with a still of the basilisk with a sword through its head. He cringed, reflecting that that image would be a poor backdrop for the conversation he intended to have, and turned the TV off completely.
He smelled the Chinese before he saw it, and sure enough, Esposito’s arms were loaded with two brown paper bags full of takeout. Ryan rushed to relieve him of one of them, setting it on the coffee table and waiting until Esposito had done the same before sitting down on the couch.
“Thanks,” he said softly, and Esposito flopped down next to him.
“No sweat,” Esposito returned, opening one of the bags and pulling out two boxes of white rice and a mountain of soy sauce packets. He had completely emptied the bag in front of him before he noticed that Ryan hadn’t touched the other bag.
“What’s up?” he asked, the old tension creeping back into his tone.
Ryan paused, considering the best way to broach the topic. He wrestled with the idea of leading Esposito there, but in the end, just shook his head, staring down at the carpet.
“I remember,” he murmured. “I remember everything.” If he hadn’t been listening for it, he would have missed the nearly silent oh that slipped out from between Esposito’s parted lips. There was a thick silence that seemed suspended between them that stretched for entirely too long before Esposito spoke.
“So you remember… what I-“
“Yeah,” Ryan sighed. “I remember what you said. And…” He looked up, trying desperately to hide the almost-painful anxiety he was feeling. “Did you mean it, Javi?” he asked softly.
Esposito seemed to take a long time to consider his answer. “No,” he said at last. “I didn’t.”
Ryan nodded, looking down again, smiling grimly.
“Not at the time. But I do now.”
“What?” breathed Ryan, trying to wrap his head around where the conversation was going.
“Almost losing you…” Esposito chuckled, but it was entirely mirthless. “It’s funny how stuff like that puts things into perspective. And then…” he sighed. “I said… well, I said what I said because it was the first thing that popped into my head. But it’s like cursing, you know? If you never curse, then it’ll never ‘slip out’. That was the same, I guess. If I had never thought it, at least on some level, it would never have come out. But I guess… I guess I just didn’t know-“
“Seriously?” Ryan murmured, looking up at him. “Just because I-well, I don’t mean to make things weird. And if you didn’t mean it, fine. You don’t have to try to appease me.”
“I’m not-“
“Just don’t lie to me.”
“You either!” Esposito gasped. “How long had you been wanting to… well, to do what we did?”
“You can’t even say it,” Ryan muttered, looking incredulously at him. “If you have the balls enough to do it, you have the balls enough to talk about it. We kissed, Javi. Why is that so difficult to say?”
“Because I hadn’t thought about you like that until we did.”
“And now?”
Esposito looked up at him with a determined fire in his eyes. “And now I can’t get it out of my head.” They looked at each other for a few seconds before Esposito lowered his eyes to the food on the table. “That wasn’t how our first kiss should have been.”
“Then fix it,” Ryan suggested under his breath. “Do it right.”
Silence again. Ugh. There are some boundaries that are only acceptable to cross, it would seem, when you’re dying. And then-
“Fine,” Esposito breathed. “I will.”
Ryan hardly had time to register the statement before Esposito had leaned over again, stopping just short of his lips, their breath dancing together before Ryan’s eyes fluttered closed and he crossed the distance between them.
The soft connection of their lips had simultaneously the passion of a new love and the comfort of an old one, and Esposito shivered as he moved his hands to gently cradle Ryan’s jaw. One of Ryan’s hands moved to the back of his neck and held him exactly in place. The touch brought flashbacks to the first time they had kissed, but the pain that the memories kindled inside him was smoothly extinguished by Ryan’s soft hum. They broke apart reluctantly, though never moving away.
“There,” Esposito breathed, resting his forehead against Ryan’s. “That should have been our first kiss.”
“The first of many, I hope?” said Ryan, his fingers tracing circles on the back of Esposito’s neck.
“As many as you want.”
“Is that what you want?”
Esposito looked at him candidly, an unfamiliar openness in his eyes. “You are what I want. Everything else is icing on the cake.”
Ryan smiled contentedly. “I guess dying wasn’t such a bad thing after all-“
“You ever do that again,” Esposito snapped, eyes full of scornful wrath, “you ever even think about it, and I will seriously never forgive you. I’ll dig you up and kill you again, if necessary. I don’t care; I’m not losing you again.”
“You’re right,” Ryan hummed with a smile. “Now that I have you, I’m not going anywhere.”