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When Ryan returns from searching the suspect's apartment, the station is silent. It's the strangest thing and Ryan would never have thought that utter stillness could be so very creepy. The weirdest thing, maybe the worst thing, is it's not abandoned. Abandoned would be eerie but would explain the silence. This, this is something else. Something he's never seen before. The apartment was abandoned, the door not even shut properly, nothing but tattered old books and burned down stubs of candles and faded, wilted roses; even the fridge left barren. His search didn't turn up anything, but the empty apartment felt like an admission of guilt anyway, gave him a bad feeling. Now Ryan thinks maybe his bad feeling was an understatement.
They're not dead. He doesn't know much, doesn't know what could have knocked out a whole building full of cops, but they're alive. The first person he sees, a uni cop sprawled in the foyer, she's warm and breathing the smooth, restful breaths of someone who's in a deep sleep. Ryan cringes as he raises his voice in that bizarrely still space, the sound feeling much too vast. "Hey! Cheng!" She twitches at his use of her name, the responsiveness a relief to him, but despite the lack of outward signs of harm, she doesn't wake. Ryan shakes her shoulder lightly, dares to break the silence once more. "Cheng, Captain Gates is here." It's what Javi says to him every time Ryan starts nodding off at his desk when he's been working too long, and Ryan has never seen it fail before.
Biting back panic, Ryan ventures deeper into the building. He sees more people similarly asleep, the same whether they're cops, informants, or suspects. Everyone is asleep. Ryan doesn't let himself run, even though he knows Javier is supposed to be in the building, Beckett and Castle too. Running won't help anyone. He tugs his vest up over his nose and mouth; Ryan doesn't exactly have a gas mask readily available if this was caused by something airborne, and the sweatervest is honestly probably more help psychologically than objectively, but he relaxes just a hair once he's breathing through it.
Ryan can hear every step he takes, can hear the air conditioning humming through the vents. But every other sound, even the sounds of the street outside that he would expect to hear with everything else hushed, is absent. Ryan has his gun pulled, even though his gut says he's the only one left in the building who's awake. On the chance he's wrong, Ryan doesn't want the sound of his gun leaving the holster to carry to anyone else when he hears them stir.
Never before has he resented the station, resented every door that he has to check to ensure he's not leaving someone behind him. It slows his progress and his pulse is racing, pushing him to find his partner, but he has to ignore it, stop and breathe until he knows he's not going to do anything rash.
The idea of taking the elevator is too unnerving; Ryan aims for the side stairs instead. As far as he knows, Javi was planning to bring in the suspect for questioning while Ryan went to search her apartment; if that was what he had been doing, Javier would be on the third floor. If things changed and nobody notified Ryan then he'll be wasting his time heading there, but first and foremost he has to find his partner and find out if he's okay. Ryan bypasses the door to the second floor and continues up the warm, concrete staircase until he reaches the third floor door.
He waits at the door for a long moment, forcing himself to strain to hear anything. There's nothing, just more silence. Ryan opens the door and pulls it shut behind him as quietly as he can, then waits for several more long beats of his heart until he's sure that the door didn't cause anyone else to stir.
Ryan creeps down the hallway, forcing himself to be even more still and even more cautious. The last thing he wants is to endanger his partner. Ryan passes holding cells, empty or still enough they might as well be. He passes familiar faces, slack with sleep. None of them are the four people he's looking for, so he keeps moving and ignores the soft whisking sound of the soles of his shoes on the hard floor, though the sound feels like it's growing louder, the longer it persists in being the only sound.
When he spots Castle's undeniable frame, leaning on Beckett's shoulder, Ryan once again has to remind himself not to run. Forces himself to take each step one at a time until he's near enough to touch them. Ryan's eyes swing over to the monitor Castle and Beckett had been watching. It's still and motionless and it takes longer than it should for Ryan to process what he's seeing because it's not what he expected, if he was expecting anything. The suspect isn't there, but the room isn't empty. Someone's slumped over the table, almost certainly Javi, though with his back to the camera Ryan's not ready to swear to it.
Biting his lip, Ryan grabs Beckett by the shoulder and gives a sharp shake. The movement knocks Castle from her other shoulder so he sags into her lap, but it doesn't wake either of them. "Castle! Deadline!" It doesn't make him do more than bury his face in Beckett's lap, so Ryan tries again. "Ex-wife!" All the sound really seems to do is bother Ryan; he still feels like he's violating something by breaking the hush that has filled the building. More important right now is that he doesn't have anyone to help him.
Ryan pulls the remote from Beckett's hand and sets it on a fast-paced rewind. He rewinds through the suspect leaving the room, rising from her chair, tugging something out from her jacket, rocking in her chair while Javi, clearly Javi now that he's not slumped there, rises up the way he does when he's frustrated with the person he's questioning. He keeps rewinding until the room is empty, then sets it to playback at the normal speed. The sound of the chair legs scraping is unsettling now, and even though he's expecting it, Ryan still finds himself startled by the recorded voices.
It's rare to see a suspect so cold. She doesn't seem concerned with what she's apparently done, doesn't confirm or deny anything. Now, with the audio, Ryan can hear her chanting as she rocks steadily back and forth. Javi's spooked, it doesn't show but Ryan knows it, knows it because he's spooked too. The shift to intimidating body language is all the more understandable, though Ryan knows it doesn't have results. She falls silent as she reaches into her jacket and now that it's not at an accelerated speed Ryan can see that it's a rose in full bloom. She sets it on the table and calmly tells Javier that it's for him. Even though he shouldn't, Javier reaches for the flower. Ryan watches as Javier grabs it by the stem and then drops down onto the table in the slouch he apparently maintains. Silent now, she leaves him there and walks out of the room. Ryan has no way of checking, but he'd guess that she leaves the building, leaves New York entirely if she's smart. And he suspects she's very, very smart.
Whatever happened, it clearly happened when Javier took hold of that flower. Ryan opens the door and goes into the interrogation room. He sets his gun down on the table and nudges Javier's arm until the hand, tightly fisted around the rose stem, is easy to reach. He peels back Javi's fingers, dried blood dark on his skin around the neat puncture holes created by the thorns. Careful not to touch the thorns himself, Ryan removes the flower from Javi's grasp entirely.
Nothing happens.
Ryan thinks maybe he shouldn't feel so betrayed by this. Nothing happens, Javier hardly stirs at all, and Ryan doesn't know what to do. He ignores the nun flashbacks and forces himself to translate the words the suspect had chanted. He's rusty, really rusty, but Ryan can do this. He mumbles declensions under his breath until the words click. It's ridiculous, it's the kind of idea Castle would suggest, but Ryan can't help thinking maybe. He has to try. Ryan tugs his vest back down, uncovering his face.
Gently, Ryan turns Javier's head so he can see his face too. Javi's eyes are shut and despite everything he looks so peaceful. Ryan's hand stays on his head, glides up to cradle his jaw. He crouches until he's at Javier's level and closes the space between them. "Come on, Javier," he murmurs before completing the act of closing the space between them, pressing his lips to Javier's.
It's strange, it's all too still and wrong and Ryan wants to undo the moment he decided to try this. Then Javier stirs, hums against his mouth and starts kissing back. Ryan wonders if this is just another sleep-induced reaction but when he leans back, there's sound again, Javier's arm moving to grab him by the vest. "Where do you think you're going?" Javier grumbles and Ryan jumps back.
"Nowhere!"
He gets reeled back in by the vest and Javier's eyes are open now, his mouth smiling. "Damn right, nowhere." Javi fits his mouth over Ryan's, tongue brushing against Ryan's lips before he pulls back again. "My hand hurts like a motherfucker, what happened?"
Ryan doesn't even know how to begin to explain, doesn't have any certainty about what happened either. "I don't- Uh- Maybe you should watch the video?" He looks at Javier's palm again. "Are you okay, though?"
"Fine. Ready to kick some ass and take names. Weren't we in the middle of a case? Weren't you-" Javier's string of questions is disrupted by the door opening. Beckett has her gun drawn, but Castle is smirking behind her.
"About time, Detective Ryan." He waggles his eyebrows at the pair of them and Ryan stands up again, looks away from Javier. "Now, was there a whammy? I feel like I've been whammied."
Eyes darting to Javi again, Ryan nods. "Definitely whammy," he confirms.
Javier gives him a smug look, smiles. "Well let's take care of this because I think I got plans tonight that have nothin' to do with being whammied." His expression turns questioning and Ryan nods minutely.
"That's great, guys," Beckett interrupts. "Now let's focus. We need to figure out where she went after she allegedly 'whammied' us."
Ryan sighs, lets his hand rest on Javi's shoulder for just a moment, then focuses again; he's got a date tonight that he's not about to raincheck.