(FIC) It Sounds Cliché
Title: “It Sounds Cliché”
Fandom: Castle
Characters/Pairings: Ryan/Esposito, Lanie/Esposito, some Ryan/Jenny
Word count: 1,756
Rating: NC-17 for sex and language, including taking the Lord’s name in vain on multiple occasions. Oh dear.
Spoiler alert: Hope you’re caught up with the ComicCon panels. If so you’ll see the spoilers when they pop up, though you’ll already know what’s coming next season. If not, well… it’ll just look like speculation ;)
Occasion: Response to depressing news from ComicCon.
Disclaimer: If it looks like something Castle-related, it isn’t mine. Unbeta’ed, so…apologies.
They sat in silence, each man trying to focus on his work and pretending not to notice the quiet tension that had descended between them. The click click click of fingers on keys and the muffled scratching of Beckett’s pen across her page were the only sounds in the nearly-empty bullpen. As the clock struck nine-thirty, Beckett cleared her throat, picked her coat off her chair back, and shut down her computer, striding past them with an offhand “goodnight, boys” on her way to the elevator.
It took a few minutes after Beckett left for Esposito to realize that his typing was now the only sound in the room. He paused, letting the silence grow thick around him before he shattered it.
“Ryan?” he murmured. He didn’t expect an answer, but it still hurt a little that he didn’t get one. “Are we just going to ignore the gigantic elephant in the room?”
There was a few seconds’ pause before Ryan tersely replied, “What elephant?”
Esposito sighed and swiveled his chair, laying a hand on Ryan’s shoulder. Ryan shrugged it off immediately, as though the contact had burned him, and turned as well, facing Esposito with square shoulders and a set jaw. His face was eerily mild, nearly expressionless, and the little emotion that was present there could be classified as a carefully-constructed apathy.
They sat in silence again, looking at one another. It forcibly reminded Esposito of a duel, a shootout, only it wasn’t high noon, it was nine-thirty; they weren’t in the Old West, they were in lower Manhattan; and they weren’t “Sheriff and Outlaw”, they were friends.
Supposedly.
But as he sat opposite Ryan and fell prey to the coldest stare those usually-sparkling blue eyes had ever given, it seemed as though the world had suddenly flipped upside down. He felt like one of the killers they stuck in the box and questioned until they got answers. He wasn’t sitting with his friend Kevin anymore; he was with Detective Ryan, who was bound and determined not only to make him confess to whatever it was that he did wrong but also to make him feel guilty about the whole thing. The problem was that he didn’t quite know why Ryan was being like this. He had tried asking about it, tried defending himself, tried getting angry, and, when all of those failed, tried silence. Ryan, he knew from experience, always had to talk about things that were bothering him, but this time Ryan sat stone-faced and silent, and Esposito could tell he was holding it all inside for God-only-knows what reason.
“So,” Ryan said at last, barely above a whisper. “You and Lanie.”
“Yeah,” Esposito muttered back, not quite meeting Ryan’s eye as realization crashed down upon him. “Lanie and me.”
The previous night:
“Ahhh… Javi…”
“Shh, we’re gonna get caught.”
“Oh, God, Javi, right there-mmmfhgmf!“
Shifting, rustling, kissing, panting. The rhythmic slap of skin on skin.
“AH! OH, FUCK, JAVIER!”
“Shhhh…ahhh… oh, fuck yes…”
Muttered streams of cursing. A stutter in the rhythm. Harsh, labored breathing. Then, silence.
He had slipped over to Esposito’s bedroom door to figure out why it had taken their host so long to change his Coke-stained shirt. He had also noticed that Lanie had disappeared and had wondered where she had gone. Listening through the door, he discovered the answer to both questions.
“Everything okay, honey?” A blonde at his side looked at him concernedly, her eyes searching his for the source of the distress he knew was plastered across his face. He shook his head, carefully rearranging his features into a soft smile.
“Fine, Jenny,” he replied, “we just shouldn’t be expecting Esposito for a while.”
But Esposito emerged far sooner than Ryan had thought he would. His clothes were ruffled, as though he had dressed in high-speed winds, and he sported a dopey grin that made Ryan sick. He could even smell Lanie’s perfume clinging to Esposito’s skin, mixed with the scents of sweat and semen. Even an idiot child would have known precisely what had happened, Ryan thought bitterly, especially when Lanie emerged barely ten seconds after he did, tugging self-consciously at her skirt.
Esposito flopped down on the couch, trapping Ryan between Jenny, Ryan’s girlfriend of one month, and himself.
“What’s up?” Esposito asked casually, though he didn’t quite manage to hide the huskiness in his voice.
“Apparently nothing’s ‘up’ anymore,” Ryan said curtly, looking pointedly at Esposito’s lap. “Apparently you took care of your ‘up’ problem quite nicely.”
Esposito frowned. “What’s wrong with you, man?” he asked in an undertone, looking across Ryan to gauge Jenny’s level of involvement in the conversation. She was staring resolutely at the television, but the purse of her lips told Esposito that, at best, she knew enough to be concerned, and at worst, she knew absolutely everything.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Ryan practically spat. “I’m just a little tired. I think I’m gonna head home…spend some time in bed.” He raised an eyebrow suggestively at Jenny, who blushed with something of a confused expression on her face. Her confusion was nothing to Esposito’s, who watched his best friend and best friend’s girlfriend walk out of his party. If the other guests present noticed the early departure, they remained blissfully quiet on the subject. Lanie caught his eye, silently asking what Ryan’s deal was, but Esposito only shook his head.
= = = = =
“So how long have the two of you been…” Ryan struggled with the words, his calm exterior beginning to crack. “I would say ‘fuck buddies’, but the minute I pull that out, you’ll start telling me you’re in love with her.”
“I am in love with her,” Esposito said, making Ryan roll his eyes. “And we’re not ‘fuck buddies’; we’re dating.”
“How long’s that been happening?”
“Why do you care?”
“I’m your God-damned best friend, aren’t I? So why the hell didn’t I know about it?” Ryan leaned forward in his chair, bracing his hands on the armrests as though preparing to get up and leave, though he remained in his seat.
“For the same reason,” Esposito breathed dangerously, “that I didn’t know about your ‘Jenny’ for three freaking weeks.”
“What the hell?!” Ryan shouted, finally standing and storming three steps away before turning on his heel and coming back. “So you’re, what, punishing me? Is that how this goes?”
“Punishing you?” Esposito repeated, standing as well. “What the fuck?! I get a girlfriend, and somehow that’s me punishing you?!”
“You didn’t look twice at Lanie until I got with Jenny. Now all of a sudden you’re in love with her? What, is this a ‘taste of my own medicine’? I get a girl, so you have to get one too? You’re, what, trying to get back at me?” Ryan laughed, the sound marred by a slightly hysterical note.
“Why is it always about you?” Esposito shot back, not bothering to keep his volume down anymore. “Why can’t you just be happy for me and get over yourself?”
“Because you’re an arrogant asshole who never thinks of anyone but himself!”
“WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM?!”
“MY PROBLEM?! WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?!”
“WHY DOES IT MATTER TO YOU WHO I DATE?!”
“BECAUSE YOU’RE TOO STUPID AND SELFISH TO SEE THAT I LOVE YO-“
The air whooshed out of Ryan’s lungs and he stood, stunned, staring at Esposito, who felt his feet rooted to the floor. After their shouting match, the silence of the precinct was oddly surreal.
“You… what?” Esposito asked, his voice hushed almost to a whisper. “You’re…you…”
“Fuck,” Ryan muttered, only closing the space between them long enough to grab his coat before trudging toward the elevator, seeking the relief of escape.
“Ryan-“
“Fuck you,” Ryan muttered back, the heat in his voice replaced by misery.
“RYAN-“
“NO!” he shouted, turning to look at his partner, who was walking purposefully after him, swiftly closing the distance. “No, I don’t want to deal with you. I just want… I just…” Esposito was so close that Ryan could feel his partner’s breath against his cheek. “Just leave me alone,” he muttered.
His shoulder blades pressed against the elevator door and Esposito pinned him there, with one arm on either side of Ryan’s shoulders. He leaned forward so that his forehead touched Ryan’s, closing his eyes serenely.
“For the record,” he breathed, the air gathering moistly on Ryan’s lips, “I’m not in love with her.”
“Fabulous,” Ryan murmured back, rolling his eyes.
“Seriously,” Esposito persisted. “I was never really into her. The whole time I was with her, I had someone else on my mind.”
Ryan snorted, bristling from the closeness of his partner’s chest. “This is the cliché moment when you tell me that all along, you were really after me, but you didn’t know how I felt so you were hurt when I started dating Jenny because-“
But exactly why Esposito might have been hurt by Jenny’s sudden appearance, Ryan never got the chance to say. Moist lips ghosted across his and he whimpered as Esposito captured his bottom lip tenderly, dragging his tongue across the skin and shutting down Ryan’s conscious thought. Esposito pushed their bodies together, forcing Ryan to gasp and taking the opportunity to slip his tongue between reddened lips.
It was not the way either of them kissed their girlfriends; it was rough, it was hungry, and it was exactly what had been missing in their lives. Somewhere between the slide of tongues and the heated friction below their belts, all sense of the world around them vanished, and when Esposito pulled back, Ryan found himself not only panting for breath but also somewhat disoriented.
“Well, if you insist on having your moment,” Esposito murmured huskily against Ryan’s lips, pushing against him until their bodies were flush together, from foreheads to leather shoes. “I know it sounds cliché, but all along I’ve really been after you, but I didn’t know how you felt, so I was kinda hurt when you started dating Jen-“
“Oh, shut up,” Ryan said, kissing him again.
That night, both Jenny and Lanie sat alone on their couches, wondering why their boyfriends had dumped them so suddenly. Jenny also had the privilege of wondering why Esposito had been the one to answer Ryan’s phone when she called that night, and then, amid panting and various muffled strings of cursing, hang up on her.
For the boys, though, there was no wondering. All was finally right with the world.