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Esposito loved New York. It was his city, his home turf, the world he’d grown up in and worked in his whole life. But on a morning like this, the sun barely risen and the January cold biting into every extremity, Esposito fucking hated New York. Ryan was briefing him as they walked down the block to the crime scene, but half of Espo’s mind was focused on just feeling his fingertips.
“Oh, and this is for you.” Suddenly Ryan was pushing a hot coffee cup into his hand.
“Did you just tell me about a bloody stabbing before giving me the hot coffee?”
“Just say thank you.”
Espo forced a grin as they neared the crime scene, but before he could sarcastically thank his partner, he turned to look at the body in front of him.
If his blood could run any colder, it would have. It may have been five years, but he’d recognize that face anywhere. And he’d recognize the stamp on his hand just as well.
Steeling his expression the best he could, Espo took a sip of his coffee. He hoped the warmth of the drink could dispel the icy dread flooding through him, but to no avail. Even though Ryan got his order perfect. “How far out is Beckett?”
“Five minutes. I think. She spent more of the conversation grumbling about having to call Castle. Why?” Ryan said, sticking his hands in his pockets.
“So we can get started. Can’t do anything until she gets here, right?” Because I need to talk to her. Because we know the vic. But Esposito couldn’t get the truthful words out, not here.
Ryan’s shivering took Espo’s attention for a moment. “Wait, Ryan, why didn’t you get yourself a coffee?”
“I did. I drank the whole thing on the way over.”
“You know you’ll have a stomach ache because of that.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Mhm.”
A clicking of heels sounded off behind the boys, a sound they’d come to know well.
“If you two are done bickering like a married couple I’d-” Beckett stopped short as her eyes dropped to the body laid out below her.
Ryan leaned forward around his partner to see Beckett’s face. “You okay?”
Beckett was still staring down at the body, frozen in place. “Ryan, check to see if uniforms have found anything yet.”
Ryan paused, glancing between his friends, but took the order and walked off.
Slowly, Beckett pulled Espo away from the M.E. team. “It’s him.”
“Yeah, Beckett, I can see that.” He really didn’t want to do this.
“Are you okay?”
He really didn’t want to do this. “Yeah, of course. It’s been five years.”
“Yeah, but-”
“Kate.”
“Okay, fine. But we need to tell Ryan everything we know about him. Especially because of where he was last night.”
Esposito didn’t respond. He knows Ryan needs to know about what happened five years ago, but that requires telling Ryan. Everything.
“BECKETT!” Castle’s arrival was never unnoticed.
Beckett took a deep breath and rolled her eyes. “I’ll take care of…that. You talk to your partner.”
As if on cue, Ryan was on his way back over from talking to the uniforms. “Hey, where’s Beckett going?”
“To brief Writer Boy. I need to talk to you.”
----
After a minute or two of walking, Esposito found a bench along the street. He sat, and gestured for Ryan to sit with him.
“You’re scaring me, man. Does this have to do with why Beckett froze?”
“Yeah. It does.” Espo inhaled sharply. Suddenly the cold doesn’t seem to be an issue at all, not with how hard his blood was pumping. “The victim’s name is Fletcher Grissom.”
“Oh, did they find a wallet?”
“No, not yet. But I knew him. We knew him. But I… knew him.” Javi tried to let the emphasis speak for itself, but he hadn’t given his partner enough to go on.
“So you guys were friends? Why didn’t you say anything?”
Espo sat for a moment, trying to figure out how to phrase this all. It had been years since he had even spoken about this. “It was the first case me and Beckett worked together. At first, I wasn’t even on the case, it was just Beckett and her partner at the time, some old guy she was running circles around. But a guy who worked at a... bar.. I was kind of a regular at was killed, and I was one of the last ones to see him alive. Then Beckett’s partner hurt his back and she found out I was a detective at the 54th, so I worked it with her. Once she realized I didn’t kill the guy, at least.”
“Damn. So how does our current victim tie into it? And why don’t you guys talk about this?”
“I’m getting there bro.”
“Right. Go ahead.”
“Fletcher was another regular at the bar, it was where we met. He was another witness in the case.”
“Okay…? So why don’t you guys talk about this?”
Javi leaned back, looking around. None of the uniforms or other people they knew were nearby. “Fletcher and I were regulars at Ty’s. In the Village. It’s the same bar he was at last night, based on the stamp on his hand.”
“Ty’s? Was the crowd.. different five years ago?
“No.”
“Ty’s is a gay bar.”
“Correct.”
Silence stewed between them, each passing second making Espo’s heart beat faster.
Ryan broke first. “So were you and Fletcher dating?”
For once, Espo couldn’t read his partner. Ryan’s face was flat, thinking, concentrated.
“Not in the real sense. We’d hang out, get drinks at the bar, go back to one of our places. We both knew something real wasn’t possible, not with me just getting started as a detective. We got into a fight during the investigation, he was mad I didn’t tell the cops we’d been involved even though it didn’t matter to the case, he was tired of not being able to date for real. Long story short we were over.”
“Okay, but why haven’t you guys told me any of this?”
“What?” Espo was pretty sure that question was wholly answered.
“Javi. Please don’t tell me you were scared to tell me you like guys.”
“Yeah. I was. I’m sorry Kev, I’m used to not knowing who to trust. I wasn’t even officially working with Beckett at the time, and I was still nervous about her knowing.”
“But it’s me. You’re my best friend Javi, and I’d like to think I’m yours. I’d never care about something like this, especially not something like this. Not when I-”
“Boys. We gotta go. Fletcher’s brother is on the way to the precinct to talk to us.” Beckett was standing a few feet from the bench. Likely trying to still give them privacy despite the urgency of a homicide investigation, the saint she was.
Ryan popped up, apparently all intention of finishing his sentence abandoned. “I’ll drive. Let’s go, Espo.”
----
“Okay, but if Fletcher and Esposito were… involved… why wasn’t that relevant to the investigation?” Castle was fiddling with something he found in the glove compartment, but Beckett was long past trying to stop his messing with her things.
“Because the vic back then was killed for something totally unrelated to the bar. We realized pretty early on that he had an affair with his sister’s husband, he killed him to keep his wife from finding out. But it blew up, and Fletcher and Esposito stopped speaking.”
“And now he’s dead.”
“And now he’s dead.”
----
Mark Grissom looked nothing like his younger brother, where Fletcher was thin and had curly blond hair, Mark was muscled and bald. And was intimidating the hell out of Esposito. Special forces be damned, this guy was massive. They’d never had any reason to meet back when Javi knew Fletcher, and suddenly he was very glad about that.
After explaining to Ryan and Esposito that he hadn’t spoken to Fletcher in about a week, Mark paused. “You know, this probably is because of his friends.”
“What friends?” Ryan quickly scribbled something in his notepad.
“At that bar. Tom’s, Tyler’s, or something. He was going less than he used to, but he was still talking about it.”
Esposito assumed he knew where this was going, and he was rapidly becoming even more uncomfortable. “Ty’s.”
“Yeah. He’d been going there for years, even had a few friends from there. Used to go on and on about them too. They made him think it was okay to be like that. Someone else probably killed him because of it.” Mark looked away. “I warned him. I’ve been warning him for years.”
Javi felt himself snap.
“Warn him? Fletch was the happiest he ever was surrounded by the people in that bar. That bar was where he was safe. He wasn’t safe with you, or at home.”
Mark quickly stood up. “What the hell do you think you’re talking about? You don’t know my brother, where do you get off defending him?”
Esposito jumped to his feet, sticking a finger at the larger man. “Well that was supposed to be your job, being his older brother. But obviously, you failed. In many ways.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Javi, back off. You need to cool down.” Esposito felt Ryan grab his elbow, but he shook his partner off.
“Oh my god, you’re Javi,” Mark said, a sarcastic laugh seeping into his tone. “You’re the one he used to never shut the fuck up about.” Mark shakes his head, laughing to himself. “Before you, we thought we had a chance of fixing him. But after you, Fletcher was a lost cause. He wallowed on and on about you until I finally knocked some sense into him.”
“What?”
“Yeah. And we are done here.” Mark made to leave, and Esposito made to follow, but this time Ryan intervened with more than an arm, holding his partner back until Mark was getting in the elevator.
“Javi. You need to cool off.”
“You don’t understand Ryan, the stuff he was saying, the stuff he was saying about Fletch-”
“I know, I know. But if you aggravated him further, he could have snapped us both like twigs. I know Fletcher was important to you, but you have to keep composed.”
“How can you say that? I know you’re straight and none of that bullshit even matters to you but-”
“Yeah, Javi, about that-”
The break room door swung open. “How did it go?” Beckett interrupted, with Castle in tow. But this time the interruption was likely for the better, because Javi was getting really close to taking a swing at someone.
“Mark was a homophobic douchebag.” Ryan said, catching his breath. “But I can’t imagine he’s the one who killed Fletcher, he’s known about his brother’s sexuality for years.”
“Could something have been a tipping point?”
“Not anything recently it seems. It looks like the only ‘tipping point’ in that sense would have been five years ago,” Esposito reported, hoping Beckett will get the point.
“Got it. I got the list of people at the bar last night from their management. I need you guys to start interviewing. And Espo, if you recognize any names-”
Javi nodded, already on his way to his desk. “Understood. We’re on it.”
Beckett waited a second at the door. She spared a glance out at the bullpen, where Esposito was scanning the files on his desk. She turned back to Ryan, her face softer. “How is he doing?”
“He nearly jumped down the brother’s throat. This case is really personal for him.”
Castle cleared his throat, which earned two glares from the detectives in the room. “Can you blame him? A romance five years ago stopped by only societal pressure that ultimately ends with a death? It’s like a tragic movie plot.”
“Yo! Guys! Come here!” Esposito shouted, waving the customer list at them. The rest of the team rushed over and crowded around the desk. Esposito was pointing to a name on the paper.
“Joseph Mantuch. Him and Fletcher were dating sometime last year, I ran into an old friend that told me they were together.”
Ryan picked up some of the papers on his own desk. “Phone records don’t look like he was in any kind of relationship, at least not from the last two weeks we have here.”
Beckett smiled, her usual grin when a lead presented itself. “Breakups can definitely be motive for murder.”
----
“I still don’t get why we can’t be the ones to interrogate him.” Esposito watched through the glass as Joseph Mantuch fidgeted in his chair, waiting.
“Because you were inches from jumping Fletcher’s brother, and he wasn’t even a suspect.”
Esposito went silent, and that was an answer enough. Ryan was right. There was a non-zero chance that Espo would have tried to kill this guy.
The interrogation room door swung open as Beckett swept into the room, Castle in step.
“Mr. Mantuch, do you know why you’re here?” Beckett sat across from Joseph, her presence taking over the room.
“No, I can’t say I do.”
“Were you at Ty’s Bar last night?”
Joseph straightened up. “I was, yeah.”
“Were you there with Fletcher Grissom?” “He was there too, yeah.” Joseph stopped, putting the pieces together. “Did something happen to Fletch?”
“He was killed last night. Stabbed, in an alley two blocks from Ty’s. We know you guys used to be in a relationship.”
“Oh god. Oh my god,” Joseph cried, his voice breaking. “I loved him. Fletcher was perfect. He was everything.” Tears welled up in his eyes, and Esposito turned away from the window. He felt a hand come up to his back, and slide up to his shoulder. Ryan, always there to help. Always.
The sounds of Beckett laying into Joseph still rattled through the room, but Espo wasn't listening. He didn’t know if Joseph killed Fletch, but he couldn’t hear him cry, not about this. No matter if it’s real or fake. All of a sudden, Ryan’s voice was quiet in his ear.
“It’s okay, Javi.” Ryan’s arm tightened around his partner, pulling them together. Javi felt his chest tighten, but he couldn’t think about that, not now. He pushed his “crush” on his partner down ages ago, but sometimes, like when Ryan presses them together from knee to shoulder when he’s already emotionally strung out, the feelings come back in a dizzying rush.
The sound of yelling crackled through the speakers.
“All you cops are the same! Homophobic assholes that don’t give a damn about hate crimes even when they are dropped on your doorstep!”
Castle interjected quickly. “Joseph, that’s not what this is. We are just asking if you think that anyone that was a regular at the bar could have done this.”
“No regulars would have ever hurt Fletch. They all loved him! It was the douchebags that would wait outside for us to come out!”
Esposito heaved in a breath. “It was always like that. When we were in that bar, it was like I was a prince just because I was with him. Fletcher never told any of them we weren’t out and proud, because when we were in that bar, we were happy.”
Ryan was quiet for a moment. “If you weren’t a cop, would you have stayed with him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know if I ever let myself consider it. I was happy to just keep what we had, no more, no less.” Under his breath to himself, Javi adds, “I guess I do that a lot.”
Beckett’s voice rang back through the room. “Alright. We are putting you with a sketch artist, and you’re going to get me sketches of as many of these guys as you can.”
“Fine.”
And with that, Beckett flew back out of the room, as forcefully and gracefully as she arrived.
----
Esposito had always admired Beckett’s murder boards. She was a visual thinker, writing notes and putting up photos and drawing connections while pacing back and forth, bouncing ideas off of himself and Ryan (and now also dismissing Castle’s outrageous theories).
But Esposito absolutely despised this one. Fletcher’s smiling face was looking down at him, every time bringing him back to what feels like years ago but what was really only this morning, looking at that dead body. Yet, here he was, staring at the board.
Staring it down, so intensely, in fact, that he didn’t hear Ryan approach him, and he jumped when his partner said hello.
“Jesus Christ. You’re like a cat.”
“Sorry man, but you were really focused. It’s getting late, Beckett and Castle have already left. You want to get out of here? Grab a beer?”
“Rain check. I think I’m gonna stay here and work on this some more. Maybe those sketches will match something in the system.”
Ryan’s look of pity revealed just how fast he saw through the excuse. “I know this case is important, but we need to talk.”
Fuck. This was exactly what Esposito feared when he realized he’d have to tell Ryan. His partner had seemed fine with this, he even seemed supportive. But something was off. Kevin was shifty, looking around to see if anyone was watching, but still adamant about wanting to talk. And the only thing that had changed since this morning was this case.
Honestly, Esposito had no energy left to talk about his sexuality with his best friend. “Sorry man. You’re not changing my mind.”
He looked hurt, but Espo couldn’t find it in him to care.
Ryan looked down at his watch, and then back at the board. “Fine. Then I’m staying to help. You aren’t doing this alone.”
“C’mon man, just quit it. If you have a problem with any of this, just tell me. Don’t play nice guy first.”
Ryan huffed out a frustrated breath. “A problem? Why the hell would I have a problem?”
Esposito glanced around, his own anxieties about being watched creeping up. Most of the day shift had left, but there were still a couple people milling about the precinct. If they were going to argue about this, it was not going to be here.
“We aren’t talking about this in the bullpen.”
“Like I said. Let’s grab a beer.”
“No. Conference room.” Before Ryan could retort, Esposito walked off into the conference room and twisted the blinds shut before leaning onto one of the chairs. His world was coming crashing down around him, and he wasn’t letting the precinct get a front row seat. Even if Ryan wasn’t a bigoted prick, there was something about today he had taken issue with. And considering this entire case has been one brutal memory resurfacing after the next, there were no good options.
Ryan finally followed into the room and shut the door behind him. “Javi. This isn’t what you’d think.”
“Then what the hell is it? Because you’ve been acting so nice all day, being there for me, but obviously there’s something you need to get off your chest, something that-”
“Javi-”
“No, Kev. I kept this from you for a reason. I don’t care how ‘open-minded’ you are, you clearly see me differently because of this.”
“Javi. Stop talking. Now.”
Esposito finally quieted.
“Have I said anything today to make you think that I’d have a problem with this?”
“No, but-”
“Exactly. Now, we’ve gotten interrupted a few times today, but I need you to know something.”
Suddenly, a shout and a clatter from the bullpen sounded through the door. Taking the out where he could, Esposito ignored Ryan’s groan from behind him and ran out the door to investigate.
“What the hell happened to my desk?” All of Esposito’s files, his computer, and his phone were scattered on his desk and the floor around it. A uniformed officer was jogging toward them.
The uniform looked apologetically at Esposito. “I’m sorry Detective. I was trying to walk your person of interest out, and he saw your nametag and bolted over here.” He leaned down and pulled Joseph Mantuch from between Javi and Kevin’s desks, where it appeared he was going through Esposito’s drawers.
“You’re Javier Esposito. You’re the one he talked about. He always said there was never a chance, but he never said you were a cop.”
“He talked about me? To you?”
“Yeah. About the ‘good old days’ at Ty’s, about how he used to be the king of that place. I was so fucking sick of it. And then he broke up with me! No one could ever be enough for him, no one but you.”
Oh god. “You killed him. You killed him for breaking up with you.”
“I loved him, but he never loved me. Who does that to a person? We dated for a year. A year of my life wasted on that man. And then at Ty’s he was flirting with another guy! He was going to do the same thing to him! If he couldn’t be with me, he shouldn’t have been with anyone.”
Javier was frozen on the spot, left watching as Ryan cuffed Joseph and the officer took him to holding.
A sympathetic hand fell on Esposito’s shoulder, snapping him back. “Javi, before you spiral out on this, he didn’t die because of you.”
“Ryan, he did. Because of how I treated him when we were…” Espo drifted off, trying to find the right label. “Because of how I treated him when we knew each other, he wasn’t able to move on. He started dating Joseph, Joseph snapped, it was all because of me.”
“No, no Javi, no. It was Joseph’s fault. He’s the one who killed him,” Ryan said softly, as if the whole prior exchange wasn’t loud enough for the whole precinct to hear.
“But he killed him because of me.” And all of a sudden, Javi was holding back tears.
The hand on his shoulder turned to a tugging, as Ryan pulled him back into the conference room and shut the door behind them.
“I’m not going to let you blame yourself for this. You didn’t make this happen.” Ryan was practically pleading with his partner to not feel the guilt for this.
“I never should have been getting involved with men, not as a cop. It was too much of a risk, I did too much damage. You don’t understand.”
“No, Javier, I think I understand this all a lot more than you think.”
“What?”
“I have been trying to tell you, all day in fact.” Ryan’s voice dropped to just above a whisper. “I’m bisexual. Before today I kinda assumed you’d be weirded out if you found out, and I haven’t dated any guys while we’ve been partners, so I never worried about it.”
Each second passed like an hour as the gears turned in Espo’s head. Kevin Ryan? Bisexual? It wasn’t possible. Esposito spent the first year of their partnership trying to stop himself from falling for Ryan, to keep himself from the “crush on a straight guy” stereotype. Sure, it royally failed, but there’s no way Ryan has been bisexual this entire time.
“There’s no way.” So the brain-to-mouth filter was down.
“I mean, there is a way. Considering I definitely like women, and definitely like men,” Ryan said, chuckling slightly. “
There’s no way I didn’t notice, I mean, you’re my best friend!”
“Okay, to be fair, I never knew you liked guys either.”
“We are both ridiculously stupid.” It was an understatement. Esposito felt like the biggest moron in the entire world, as a matter of fact. On top of every other emotion today had given him.
Ryan smiled softly to himself. “You know, this is going to sound stupid.” He tapped his fingers on the table, a nervous habit despite the smile on his face. “It was some headliner case, right before we became partners. But your picture was in the paper for something, and I mean, it was a really good picture. I saw it while I was on the phone with Stacey, and when we became partners, she made fun of me for weeks for being with the “Hot News Cop.”
Finally, a laugh broke out of Espo. “That’s why she laughed at me when I met her the first time. I just thought your sister thought I was really funny looking.” He paused, letting the story sink in. For a moment, Kevin Ryan found him attractive, even if it was before they met.
“Are you just telling me this to distract me from this case?”
“Maybe. But it worked for a second.” Ryan’s smile faltered, but the care on his face held. His eyes were boring into Esposito, it felt like he could see into his soul, increasingly so as Ryan started stepping closer.
“Yeah. It did.” Emboldened by Kevin’s confession, Javi decided to let one loose of his own. “I kinda had a similar thing, but right when we became partners. I got over it though, you know.” The distance between them was closing, and Javi started stepping closer.
The only sound in the room was the clock ticking on the wall, and the pounding in Javi’s ears as the eye contact drew longer and the space between them drew smaller.
“Yeah. I got over my thing too, of course.” Ryan still didn’t look away.
“Of course.” Less than a foot now, Espo could feel Ryan’s breath on his face.
Ryan smiled. “You can be happy, and be a cop. It’s okay to do both,” he whispered, his entire expression tender.
Rather than respond, Javi spared a glance to check the blinds were still shut, and leaned down to press a kiss to Kevin’s lips.
The sound of his heartbeat quickly overtook the ticking clock, each touch of Ryan’s hands moving from his hands to his waist to his back dwarfing the horrible feelings that had been torturing him all day. Finally, they pulled apart.
“I know. And I don’t think I’m going to forget it soon.”
“No you won’t, not if I have anything to say about it.” Kevin squeezed Javi’s hand. “As much as I’d love to keep kissing you, I really don’t think the precinct is the place for it. We also really need to call Beckett and tell her that our killer is sitting in holding. But we can do that on the way to finally getting a beer.”
“Of course, after you.” Javier turned and opened the door, and led the way out of the precinct. He paused for a moment in front of the murder board. Fletcher’s smiling face was still staring down at him, but it didn’t feel as piercing as it did less than an hour ago. The smile seemed genuine now. Fletcher and Javi’s time had really come and gone, many years before.
And now, as Ryan and Esposito made their way to the elevator, a new time was beginning.