A/N: Picks up exactly where the last chapter left off.
As soon as the elevator doors shut on the Beckett-Castle family, Kevin felt a hand smack him in the back of the head. "Bro, what the hell was that?" Esposito asked.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Kevin avoided eye contact and tried to deny that anything out of the ordinary had happened.
"Ry, Alexis walked in here and you were like a little boy with a crush. I'm surprised you didn't start stuttering," Javier chastised him.
"I don't have a crush. I'm a grown man, okay," Kevin replied, ignoring the way his partner laughed at the proclamation. "I just hadn't seen her since Halloween, and I was caught off guard. That's all."
"That better be all it is, man. You haven't picked anyone up when we've gone out since then," Esposito stated, a hint of accusation creeping into his tone.
"All the hookups were just a response to the divorce. You know, part of the grieving process along with copious amounts of alcohol. I just decided my criteria needed to be more selective going forward than is she up for it and in my vicinity," the Irish detective jested.
Though intended as a joke, Javi recognized some level of honesty in his partner's statement. "Well, that's good then," he said, patting the smaller man on the back. "Does this mean we're getting uber positive, happy-go-lucky Ryan back? Because I've missed the guy who gets excited about love at first sight, and leprechauns, and UFOs and all that other crap."
"I'm getting there," Kevin promised with a smile.
"I'm glad to hear it," Esposito smiled back before arching an eyebrow. "And since it's really not Alexis making you all weird, then you're gonna be fine at Castle's Christmas party next week, right? I'm sure she'll be there."
Kevin managed to shrug and hold a straight face, despite the nerves he felt about spending the impending festivities in close proximity to her, Castle, and several detectives. "Yeah, no big deal," he brushed it off, thankful when his phone started ringing.
He answered the call from the morgue and put it on speaker, stopping his conversation with Esposito in its tracks. Their most recent victim had been found drowned in an inflatable kiddie pool full of gelatin and lube. Back at the lab, Perlmutter had managed to identify these substances as specifically strawberry Jell-o and KY warming jelly, and was calling to inform the detectives, but Kevin doubted this information was the break in the case they needed.
After the phone call, the partners got back to work reviewing all the statements and information they'd collected from the music video shoot where the body of the backup dancer had dropped earlier that day. Two hours later they decided to call it a night, knowing they'd be more productive looking at the case with fresh eyes in the morning. As Kevin sat in traffic, making his commute home, he reflected on the conversation he'd had with Esposito.
He wanted to believe what he'd been saying to Javier, but Kevin knew that his heart had skipped a beat when he'd noticed Alexis standing a few feet from his desk. In the weeks that had passed since their encounter, Kevin had done his best not to think about the young redheaded woman, and he had been successful outside of a few weaker moments. He couldn't help but hold onto the way she'd gazed at him with open admiration on her face during their night together.
After the divorce Kevin's self-esteem was the lowest it had been since he was a scrawny teenager with acne and braces. Seeing someone as beautiful and with as bright a future as Alexis, looking at him with reverence had made him feel special and worthwhile for the first time in too long.
While the actual separation with Jenny was still relatively recent, their marriage had been strained for a while. When Kevin had returned home after going back undercover with the Irish mob, Jenny hadn't been able to believe that he was really putting that part of his life behind him. She knew that he loved her and that he wanted to start a family, but she just didn't trust that he would make that family a priority over his job. She had loved him, but the more he tried to do the right thing for the city and the world, it felt like he was doing the wrong thing for her. They had decided to put their attempts at getting pregnant on pause, until they could get back on the same page, but that never happened. Instead, they had grown further and further apart, until neither of them could picture their perfect white picket fence dream with each other anymore. So, Jenny had left him.
Deep down his dreams hadn't changed though. He still wanted to come home every day to a wife he adored, and kids he would love more than anything. Kevin knew that actions hadn't properly shown just how important this was to him. If he ever really wanted to build a life with someone, he would need to be able to find more balance, instead of spending late nights at the precinct and rushing out to crime scenes at a moments notice. It was hard for him to give that up, when sometimes he felt like the work that he did was the only thing that could reassure him that the world would be safe enough to bring children into.
Ultimately, the choice was no longer an urgent one since he wasn't going to hold Jenny hostage in a relationship neither of them really wanted to be in any longer. Kevin never thought that he was the kind of person who would get a divorce. Growing up attending an Irish Catholic church every Sunday, it wasn't something he'd been raised to believe in. That was the main reason he had volunteered to work during Thanksgiving the month before. The last thing he was in the mood for was hearing his father lecture him over a turkey dinner about what a disappointment her was and his mother's snide comments about how Jenny was never good enough for her boy anyways, although at least she meant well. His older sister Gwen had been understanding, but with her happy marriage to husband Frank, and two beautiful, healthy kids, she served as the 'golden child' in their parents' eyes that he could never measure up to.
Kevin parked in his designated space and walked into the building he'd lived in for years. He trudged up the stairs to his apartment and let himself into the space, flicking on the light allowing him to see through the darkness of the evening. He walked straight to the fridge, bypassing the new furniture that filled his apartment, replacing what Jenny had taken with her when she moved out plus the remaining items he'd chosen to get rid of because of the memories they held. Kevin grabbed himself a bottle of Guinness, swiftly uncapping it and taking a large gulp.
He turned around, leaning his back against the stainless-steel appliance, and his gaze fell onto his wooden kitchen table. It was one of his new possessions from after the divorce, or at least new to him. Gwen had been redecorating and given him some of her cast offs. Because it was a recent acquisition, it didn't have any painful associations. The strongest memory Kevin had involving that table was of Alexis splayed across it, begging him to take her.
"Fuck it," Kevin said to his empty apartment, as the arousing memory hit him full force.
He kicked off his shoes, leaving them on the kitchen floor and began to trek across his apartment towards his bathroom, shedding his clothes as he went, and beer still in hand. When he reached his destination, he turned on the shower, letting the water warm up as he removed his last few articles of clothing. Kevin had decided to let himself enjoy his taboo memories of Alexis, just for the next few minutes. Being with her was the only time he had felt really good about himself in months, the shame had come afterwards, and right now he needed that feeling like he needed the air he breathed.
Kevin climbed into the shower and closed his eyes, letting the now warm spray wash over him, heating him from the outside while his memories of the way Alexis's body had moved against his and the breathy moans she had let out heated him from the inside. He reached out to pluck his bottle of beer off the rim of the shower tub and took a sip before setting it down again. The cool beverage and the near scalding water of the shower were the perfect combination to relax his tense muscles.
His hand, now without a drink, skimmed down his chest and abdomen before reaching down to grasp his stiffening shaft and started pumping it slowly. Kevin felt himself grow harder at the thought of how soft Alexis's porcelain skin had felt under his fingertips. His hand picked up speed as he thought of the sweet way she had tasted, like honey, coming apart against his tongue. He started to breathe heavily and used his other arm to brace himself against the shower wall as he brought himself close to the edge. He remembered her big, blue eyes staring up at him, the way she had tossed her head back and called out his name as she came. A burst of light flashed behind Kevin's eyes as that image sent him into his release, bliss rocking through his body. He rested his forehead against the white tiles of his shower, letting the warm water rain down over his back as he came down from the high of his orgasm.
As Kevin's breath came back to him, so did his sanity. This had been an irresponsible exercise in fantasy, letting himself think of his friend's daughter as he pleasured himself. He was supposed to be putting the memories of their indiscretion behind him, not using them as fodder for his imagination. Somehow Alexis had gotten past his best defenses and under his skin, and he needed to reign it in before Castle's Christmas Party unless he wanted people to start catching on.
A/N: Sorry for the short chapter. The next one will have more meat to it.
