The last time Kevin had been this nervous about going in to work, was the day after he'd shot someone for the first time. Back then his fears stemmed from the life-or-death decisions that were integral to his line of work, but he'd long since grown accustomed to that part of the job. Today, his nerves weren't quite so professionally motivated.
Instead of relaxing, like he'd intended to use his day off for, Kevin had spent the day before oscillating between working himself into a panic and trying to talk himself down. By the time he was riding the elevator in the 12th precinct up to homicide, Kevin was sure that his coworkers would be able to take one look at him and know. He felt like it was written on his forehead that he had slept with Castle's daughter. More than once. And God help him, he'd liked it.
His eyes scanned the faces of everyone in the bullpen, needing to reassure himself that no one was paying him more consideration that usual. Kevin walked up to his desk across from the one his partner was already seated at. Before he could sink into his chair, he noticed the way Esposito's eyes were boring into him with laser-focus. Javier gestured his head towards the break room and walked into the other room before Kevin could say a word.
Panic washed over him as Kevin followed his partner to the break room. He knew. He had to know. There was no other reason Esposito would be looking at him like that. If he was so obvious that he couldn't make it a minute in a room full of detectives without being found out, then he had no hope when Castle and Beckett showed up. He closed the door behind him, ensuring them privacy in the otherwise empty room. Javier whirled around, the minute he heard the latch click, pinning Kevin with a questioning look, one eyebrow raised.
"So…Alexis?" the larger detective asked.
"Oh God. How do you know?" A horrifying thought occurred to Kevin. "Did you know it was her the whole time?"
"No way, man! I wouldn't have just sat there and watched you walk out with her if I had," Esposito insisted. "It was pretty obvious though when I caught her doing the walk of shame wearing your clothes. That was a big surprise."
"And how exactly did you run into her that morning?" trying to deflect the conversation off himself.
"Oh no. You don't get to turn this around on me. So, I spent the night with her roommate. That's nothing compared to your little scandal," Esposito replied, waving his hand around Kevin's face. "Speaking of which, what exactly happened, Ry?"
Kevin sunk into one of the break room chairs and rested his head in his hands. "By the time I realized it was her…well I'm sure you can fill in the rest."
"How is that even possible?" Javier asked incredulously.
"We sort of went at it on my kitchen table before the masks even came off," he admitted bashfully, looking at the floor, unwilling to meet his partner's eyes.
"That would do it," Esposito said, nodding. "She didn't get home until the next morning though, so what happened after you recognized each other?"
"We both freaked out," Kevin recounted, "but then after that we had sex again."
He grimaced as he said it aloud, embarrassed to admit that he had knowingly slept with their friend's daughter, but he needed to get it off his chest. Javier already knew most of what happened. There was no reason to hold the rest back, and he really needed his best friend's advice on what to do next.
"Bro, Castle can never know about this. The guy's got friends in high places. He could get you fired. Or killed."
"Which is why I need you to help run interference. I have no idea how I'm going to be normal in front of Castle when I can't stop remembering…things," Kevin trailed off, not willing to share too many details with his partner.
"Well stop remembering things! You've got to get it together, bro. Obviously nothing can come of this so just put it behind you," Esposito ordered. "Wait, she knows you've got to shut it down, right? You can't be leaving any loose ends unless you want this to bite you in the ass."
"There's no way she's going to tell her dad. You've seen how overprotective he gets," argued Kevin. "And Alexis was pretty clear she was just looking for a one-night stand."
Javier picked up on a tinge of disappointment in his friend's voice. "You don't seem too happy about that."
"No, no. It's definitely a good thing. It was a mistake, and it shouldn't happen again," he declared. "It's just that it was really good. If she were anyone else, I'd want to see her again."
"Don't even go there, man. No point in torturing yourself," as Esposito spoke, Kevin noticed his eyes looking at something behind him, through the window in the bullpen. "You need to pull it together quick, because it's go time."
Kevin turned to see Castle and Beckett stepping off the elevator. He tried to call up his old instincts from when he worked undercover in narcotics. Anything to put on a successful façade of nonchalance while he was panicking on the inside. Fortunately, the couple was all smiles as the boys walked out of the break room to greet them.
"Good morning, boys!" Castle said with even more enthusiasm than typical from the whimsical writer.
He seemed downright giddy this morning, and Kevin intended to take advantage of his preoccupied state to cover his own atypical behavior. "What's got you so excited this morning?" he asked the novelist.
"We just got a call. There's a body at the circus," Castle all but shouted with uncontained glee, looking like a kid on Christmas morning. "We've got a circus murder. My money's on the bearded lady."
"No way. I'll bet you the lion did it. Any person is a fool if they think they can tame one of those," Esposito said with a shudder. "Let what happened with Siegfried & Roy be a lesson to us all."
Ignoring the reference to the catastrophic Vegas act, Kevin snarked at his partner, "Yes, I'm sure they called in homicide detectives for a lion attack."
Beckett rolled her eyes at all three of the boys' antics. "Fascinating guesses, but let's go take a look at the crime scene and get some real answers," the female detective said, a hint of a smile on her face.
The team got into the cars and made their way quickly to the scene. They followed the officers already on scene to a small dressing room, way off to the side of any performance spaces. When they arrived, Lanie was already there running her initial assessment on the body. Before Kevin could catch a glimpse of the victim, he heard Castle's laugh ring out. "Now that is a sad clown," the mystery writer joked.
Kevin stepped around him to see the permanently stilled body slumped in a seat in front of the vanity, dressed in full clown regalia, white makeup, red nose, and rainbow wig included. A small bullet hole marked the right temple of the corpse and blood splatter misted over the mirror.
"Victim is a forty-six-year-old male. Name is Steven Peters according to the ID in his wallet. Time of death is between three and four in the morning, but I can narrow that down when I get him back to the lab. All signs point to cause of death being a gunshot wound to the head. Small caliber, .22 millimeter if I had to guess. Initially it looked like a suicide," Lanie began her report to the group of detectives. "But here's the weird part. Uniforms can't find the gun that killed him on the scene. The one that was in his hand," she holds up an evidence bag with a weapon inside, "only shoots water."
"That doesn't make any sense!" Castle exclaimed. "Why would someone go through the trouble of staging this like a suicide, only to ruin the cover story with a squirt gun?"
"That is weird. Ryan, Esposito, you head back to the precinct and pull up records and financials on our vic. Castle and I are going to talk to the manager who found him this morning," Beckett set the plan for the team, and they set to work.
It had been a long day but somehow Kevin had made it through without royally screwing up his work environment. While they'd been running down leads on their dead clown it had been easy to compartmentalize and keep his focus on the case. On his drive home however, thoughts of Alexis had begun to creep back in.
As he walked down the hallway, he took notice of something small and colorful in front of the door to his apartment. Getting closer Kevin recognized it as an orange and green striped gift bag, spilling over with sparkly teal tissue paper. He had no idea who would leave a present on his doorstep but brought the bag in with him regardless. Curious he reached inside only to find the t-shirt and sweatpants he had leant to Alexis, neatly folded and clearly freshly laundered based on the faint aroma of lavender wafting off them. A small slip of paper with another handwritten note from her fluttered out, and he picked it up from where it landed on the floor.
Thanks for the loan. I'll see you around, Kevin.
-Alexis
Alexis would be oddly considerate for a one-night stand he thought, returning his clothes and promptly at that. For some reason he found it adorable, the trouble she'd gone through and the dramatic flair with how she'd packaged them. Kevin walked into the bedroom, smiling to himself, and stripped out of the three-piece suit he'd worn that day. He pulled on the newly returned clothes, telling himself it was just because they were in his hand and not because they smelled like her detergent. Putting this behind him wasn't going to be as easy as he had hoped.
