I actually genuinely, really enjoyed the way that Under Fire played out and Esposito's involvement in it. I do love a good episode where Ryan and Espo get to shine, but I got curious about what would have happened if it'd been Ryan and Castle in there instead, and the idea stuck, so. Here this is.
Lyrics belong to The Head and the Heart's 'Cruel.'
everyone stares at the hole in the wall;
it's all in your head.
It's funny the way just a little detail-swap changes everything.
It's always Beckett and Castle, Esposito and Ryan paired off; the Twelfth Precinct Quartet that comes together, works a little binary fission to separate into twos, comes back as a whole to help solve a murder. But when they all pile back into the precinct after witnessing the charred remains of their vic, they change the order a little bit before going back out.
The precinct is a bustle of activity, half the fire department coming in and out for questioning as Ryan freaks out about the whole baby thing, checking and rechecking his phone. Castle and Beckett shoot each other an amused smile, but Espo makes the mistake of trying to step in, calm him down. "You just need to chill" is apparently not the advice Ryan is looking for, because the full-blown Kevin Ryan sass rears its ugly head.
"And you know this from your vast experience of having zero kids."
The place to antagonize Javier Esposito is not in a precinct full of detectives, and he twitches like he's going to go at Ryan before Beckett steps between them. "You're lucky you're just emotional, bro," Espo snaps as Kate throws a pleading look over her shoulder at Castle.
"Why don't I go with Ryan?" he offers.
Ryan is on high alert, bordering on being in full-blown pre-father-panic mode and Castle has some experience in that area, has the ability to reign him in. At least, that's what Castle murmurs under his breath to Kate while he leans over her desk to grab his coat, offering her an apologetic smile. She smirks at him. "I think Espo and I can manage without you for the day, Castle."
"First you won't commit to being my date for our wedding, and now you're insulting me. It's enough to give a man second thoughts." He pulls his arms into his coat, taking his time to gauge her reaction. They're secure in this, now, and he knows what he's in for; she swats at his arm.
"Can't bow out now, you're in this for life." He acknowledges that with a raise of his eyebrows, offers her his cheek for a kiss as she leans in.
"Call me if I'm missing anything exciting?"
"You just focus on keeping Ryan sane for the day, RHD."
He sighs. "We all have our burdens to bear."
There's not the eerie, foreboding sense of imminent danger that you always expect before something terrible happens. He just follows Ryan out of the precinct.
/
When Milo Pavlik informs Beckett and Esposito that there's a fire going in Brooklyn, there's this strange, heartbeat of a second where the whole room stills. The pounding, alarming thumping in Kate's ears she recognizes from only a handful of other times in her life, reserved for genuine, stomach-dropping dread. When she glances at Espo, his face is a open, surprised for just a blink until it hardens into determination.
They're out the door by the next heartbeat.
/
"If your guys are in there, I'm sorry; they're probably already gone."
The Chief is a a no-nonsense, hardened man. Years of fires, of losing both his men to the fire and the civilians they bring out of the wreckage later, have made it so he knows how to handle people trying to tell him how to do his job. Beckett's 'You need to get them out,' isn't a match for him, and she sees it, feels it, but what else is she supposed to do?
What else is there left to do?
When she turns to him, Espo rolls his shoulders impressively behind her, his face screwing up in that way it does before he goes crazy on someone. She knows it, because she recognizes the same in herself, the deep, clawing need to do anything, and the Chief is an easy target but he's doing all he can so she shoves on Espo, forces him back.
"There's nothing he can do, Javi." It's meant to be forceful, to come across as commanding the same way it does in the precinct, but it whispers out of her instead.
"Nothing he can do?" Espo bites back. "That's Ryan and Castle in there!"
"Don't you think I know that?" she hisses. There's a blurriness to her vision that means she's a heartbeat away from crying and damnit, she can still help. If there's one thing that Kate Beckett has learned as a detective, it's that things aren't done until they're done, and she will not cry over the possibility of losing Castle and Ryan until there's nothing she can do. "He is my fiancé."
That calms Espo a bit. He deflates almost comically, all of his bravado pouring out of him in one exhale. "We're gonna get them out," he says, and she sees the confidence he's trying to exude but the fact that she knows him well enough to see his confidence crumbling around the edges is really not helping.
"We're gonna do everything we can, Espo. I know your partner is in there, but so is mine."
/
Kate's running ragged, pacing back and forth in the flickering lights of the ambulance because nobody is doing anything and she has a half a mind to run in there herself like Espo's been caught trying to do twice already. Her phone trills in her pocket and she almost rips it out, fury blurring her vision.
"What?" she barks into the speaker.
There's some static, then, "Kate?"
Her heart stops. There's a second, an infinitesimal amount of time where she just breathes into the line, like if she just breathes hard enough he'll be fine and they'll all come out of this unscathed. But- "Rick?" she breathes. There's silence on the other end of the line and her heart plummets. "Castle? Is that you?"
"Kate?" The awful crackling on the other end of the line continues, the sound of flames licking the walls around Castle and Ryan and the fury in Kate flies out the window, making way for the kind of bone-numbing exhaustion that causes her to her lean against the hood of the nearest car, swallow back a dry heave. She wants to cry in relief. "We're in the building, the one Ryan and I visited, and we're trapped inside-"
"I-I know, Espo and I are outside, we've got the whole fire department here. Castle, we thought-" She takes a deep, steadying breath, pleading with her voice to just stay calm. "We thought you guys were dead." It disobeys, naturally, quivering a little at the end. "Castle, I thought you were dead."
He sighs on the other end, a deep release of carbon dioxide and half of her wants to tell him to stop being dumb, to preserve the oxygen they've got, not waste it on dramatics. "This is a little too... crispy for my tastes. I always envisioned a hero's death, myself. Taking a bullet, you know."
"Don't say that, Castle," she says, but she's chuckling a little as she says it, swiping at her eyes for just a second, just long enough to pull herself together.
Ryan's voice crackles onto the line instead. "We'll be fried soon if you don't send someone in, though."
/
Twenty or so minutes into the call, Kate and Espo stand side-by-side on one side of the makeshift table they've erected in the parking lot, tracing over the blueprints of the building again and again and even the Chief, standing on the other side of the paper, keeps looking for a way that points to some hidden sub-basement.
"Kate?" Castle's voice comes to life again, piping up not from behind her like he always does (like- God, like she wants) but from the phone she's rested next to the blueprints. The Chief looks down at the phone, back up to Beckett. She flicks the phone off of speaker, puts it to her ear.
She's frustrated and angry and hating fire a little bit, but she softens her voice. "Yeah?"
"Look, we're going to be cut off soon and Ryan needs to talk to Jenny, but, uh- I just. Needed to talk to you. For just a second."
The sense of impending doom that should have appeared this morning, before Ryan and Castle left, balls itself in her stomach. "I'm here."
Even over the roaring of the fire, his throat sounds a little closed when it comes back over the line. "I don't think I'm going to make it to our wedding."
Castle has the ability to knock Kate off her feet with his words, but she doesn't want to be knocked out this way, doesn't want to feel her failure like a sock to the gut. Castle's giving up. He never gives up. She's wandered away from Espo and the Chief but she needs to be somewhere that's not here, out in the open, so she rounds back to the opposing side of an ambulance, the side facing away from the fire, half-jogging in her haste. With the flames no longer visible, it almost feels like this isn't happening, like she's just having a private moment on the phone with her fiancé. But: "Castle, don't say that. We're gonna get you out."
He ignores her. "What was it you said to me? With the bomb? 'We've had a great run?' Six years is a great run, Kate. I wouldn't trade a second of it for the world."
His words curl around her throat, clog it up so she gasps around it. "Castle-" she sobs, but he's already there, voice thick with emotion.
"Well, I'd maybe change some things with Demming, for starters," and damn him, she's laughing through her tears. He gives her a second, and if she knows him at all (she does) she knows that he's taking a moment to revel in the sound of her laughter before he sobers, gets serious. "Tell my mother and Alexis that I love them. There are funds set up for Alexis to pay for her schooling straight through into med school, if that's what she wants, and funds set up so the three of you can live comfortably."
She opens her mouth to protest, determined to exert the kind of authority he always shrinks back at, to force him to stay put and stay alive, to feel like she's doing something to help, but all that comes out is a wail of "No..."
She's only seen him cry a handful of times in their partnership, but she can hear it through the line, hear the tears that she knows are sinking down his cheeks. "I'm so sorry. I was really looking forward to being your husband, Kate Beckett."
Kate crumples to the ground, her head resting against the unmovable wall of the ambulance. The effort of trying to stave off the sobs just makes everything worse, makes her whole body wrack with them like great big hiccups trying to escape. "Castle, please. We're going to get you out, you just need to hold on, okay? You and Ryan hold on, we'll find a way in... Please."
Another voice crackles over the line. "Beckett? Can you pass the phone to Jenny?"
Castle's gone. She closes her eyes and tips her head back, gives herself five seconds to compose herself, five Mississippis like Castle does to count down, before she stands up, walks around to the back of the ambulance, and hands the phone to Jenny.
She does not stay and watch her own pain reflected in Jenny's eyes, does not stay to have her conversation with Castle replayed in front of her with a different couple, a future she won't have. She stalks back to her side of the ambulance, crumples onto the ground, and cries until she can throw down the asshole who started the fire in the first place.
/
After, when they find a way in, when the firefighters disappear into the building with her heart, she gives herself a moment to take a deep breath. The tears on her cheeks have dried to just tracks down her face, a ghost of her own anguish, dried for just the split second when she could help for a bit and shove a gun in some arsonist's face.
The silence is heavy in the air, just the noise of the Chief talking into the radio slicing through it every few seconds. Espo, on Kate's right, is leaning forward, arms half-raised, shaking at his sides. The anticipation is palpable, but every time the radio is silent, every time the Chief gets no response, Kate's heartbeats go in double-time until they're running so quickly she can focus on nothing else.
And then...
And then, through the flames like the heroic action star she knows that Castle always wanted to be, the vision of Ryan and, a second later, Castle, appears.
She runs for him, pushing past the fireman who wasn't quick enough to get out of her way. "Oh, god," she sobs as she throws her arms around his shoulders and he's chuckling in her ear, smiling against the side of her face, incredibly, blissfully alive. Turning her face a little so she can breathe into his neck, they still. "I thought I lost you," she whispers, just a breath against his shoulder, and it's not the first time she's said it but she hopes to God that it will be the last. Her poor heart can't handle being constantly faced with Castle's imminent death, but if the payoff is this, him still safe and alive and now burned to a crisp, she'll figure out how to handle it.
"Not getting rid of me that easily," he murmurs back, and she knows that his intention was to come across as teasing but he just sounds exhausted and honest and, hovering under the surface, vulnerable.
She pulls back for a second to give Ryan a hug and to give Espo the chance to greet Castle and, probably more importantly, to comment on the fact that Castle's isn't impeccably dressed for once. His clothes are in a tattered mess around his body, hanging loosely where they shouldn't. Over Ryan's shoulder, Kate assesses the situation and sees that the shoulder of Castle's jacket is ripped, that there's a deep gash on his face, that his hands are trembling. There could be more blood, too, but it's dark out and there's so much soot on both Ryan and Castle that it's impossible to see anything at all, really, anything other than the fact that her boys are alright.
Espo leads Ryan off to see Jenny and Kate tosses a, "We'll be right there," over her shoulder as she turns back to her fiancé, leans into his embrace.
"That was some speech you gave there, hotshot."
He shrugs under her arms. "What can I say? Desperation makes a man poetic."
"Sounds like you'd been planning that one for a while."
"Well, you never know when you might go out in a blaze of glory." When she pulls back to give him the look, he cringes. "Too soon?"
The hand curled at his chest pats him, mostly affection with only a little retribution. "This one might go in our never-joke-about-it category."
"Shame. There are so many good fire-related jokes. It's an entire untapped sub-category of comedy, really."
"Well, maybe your fourth wife will let you tap into them, then."
"Nah, I think I'll just give up after the third."
They take a second to breathe each other in, and Kate tries, really tries, to still her heart, tries to get it to match the rhythm she's monitoring of Castle's, the steady thumpthump thumpthump thumpthump, but it's a bust and she's still right on the edge of a breakdown, hovering on the precipice of a black hole.
She pulls back a little, not out of Castle's arms but just back far enough to see his face. There's grief written on there, and exhaustion and the fear that makes his hands tremble on her hips and they're at a place now where she doesn't school her features for him, lets him see what she's feeling. It makes it better, makes everything better, to have this silent conversation with him. After a moment, she presses closer again. "Didn't even tell me you love me," she chides teasingly.
"Oof." Even with only the vision of his chin, she can tell he's wincing. "I guess I do need to work on my improv skills."
"And you call yourself a writer."
He growls in retaliation, pulls her into such a tight hug that it knocks the wind out of her a little. "I love you," he murmurs, and repeats it. "I love you, I love you, I love you..."
He says it until her heart stops racing, until she chokes on a sob and says, "God, Castle, I love you, too."
/
Later, they're at another hospital, just one door down from Ryan and the double room that Castle had insisted upon, slipping the nurse a number of bills that Kate doesn't even want to think about just so Ryan could be with his wife and newborn daughter. It's not as nice as the last hospital she got to watch him lie in; the room is a little smaller, a little stuffier, less open-windowed and more claustrophobic. Still, she's in the same position as she was last time, a hard-edged chair pulled right up to the side of her bed, her thumb smoothing out over the tired lines around his eyes.
He pulls off the oxygen mask. Again. She opens her mouth to chastise him but he's two steps ahead again, pushing past her words and straight to the point he apparently needs to make at the expense of his life. "We should set a date for the wedding. Right now."
"Castle, the whole point of the oxygen mask is to help you get to the wedding." He waves that off with a swing of his hand and she reaches up to run worried fingers through his hair, pushing it off of his forehead for probably the forty-seventh time since they got here.
"We've been putting it off for months. Life's too short, right?"
"Mmm," she hums in agreement. "Now the writer spews off clichés."
"YOLO?" he offers instead, and she cringes, mouth quirking up in a smile. His breathing is just a little laboured, bordering on sounding asthmatic but it's worrying enough as it is and she can't stop thinking about the fact that there's soot in his lungs. That he was trapped in a burning building. That she was very, very close to losing him today, to never discussing their wedding with him again, to never experiencing their wedding at all.
"If I agree to set a date, will you put the mask back on?"
His breathing must be bothering him, too, because he obeys promptly, pulling it up as far as he can until she reaches her hand out to pull the elastic up over the back of his skull. She lingers just an extra second, adjusting the mask minutely until it's perfect. By her standards. Probably. (She adjusts it one more time, just for good measure.)
He takes a deep, shuddering breath in, closes his eyes and relishes in being able to do it. It makes her heart clench a little bit.
"Let's do it soon. So there's less chance for you to try to get out of it again." Her teasing falls flat but his eyes smile back at her, amused by her efforts. "Why don't we aim for May?"
His eyebrows shoot up in surprise; there's a lot of planning to do, all the details he keeps avoiding and she keeps putting off in favour of solving a crime left that need to be sorted out in just a short amount of time, just five months. When she keeps her stare on him, just a touch of shyness, he acquiesces with a sharp nod of his head.
She wants to kiss him - wants to do a lot with him, actually, wants to reassure herself that he's there and alive and around for the long run - but the mask is there, so she settles for leaning out of her chair and pressing a kiss to his hair.
"I'm so sorry, Castle," she murmurs when she settles back down again. It's an echo from a different hotel room, a different near-death experience. "I shouldn't've sent you and Ryan into the building."
He rips the mask off his face again, and she groans in exasperation. "Hey," he murmurs, his voice soft. "You couldn't have known." But she's already shaking her head, already throwing away his response so the guilt sitting in her gut can come out to play. "Kate, sometimes freak accidents happen."
"You shouldn't have been there-"
"And sometimes the details go wrong. Better me than you or Espo, right?" She presses her lips together at that, very carefully projecting her opinion on that without the words she would never be able to bring herself to say and he reads her so well, well enough to shake his head at her and accept that she will not acquiesce that point. "Well, I'm here, anyway." His hand finds hers. "For the long haul."
"Can you be here and wearing an oxygen mask, please?"
As he moves to adjust it again, fixing it back up to his face, she sighs. "You're killing me with all this almost-dying stuff, you know." His hand hovers over his face for a second, like he's going to pull off the mask, so she sighs, adds, "I know, I know, almost dying is killing you, too, yeah, yeah," with a roll of her eyes. "I'm kinda looking forward to getting married to you though, so quit it, okay?"
She gets no response other than a small head bob as his eyes droop, his breathing slowly evening out. She'll go check on Ryan and little Sarah-Grace when he finally falls asleep, and then she'll curl up in the chair for a little (overnight) rest before they bring Castle home tomorrow, but for now, she's content to sit at his bedside and listen to his breathing, marvel at the fact that he's still here.
Kate Beckett does not like being on the outside, or being out of control, or watching things happen to her. She likes being Castle's partner, and she missed it while she was in D.C., likes being there right along with him when things go wrong, as they're wont to do.
And one little detail-switch blew up in her face.
(Pun fully intended, she mentally adds for Castle's benefit.)
i swear i'll come out of this.