Author's note: I was as surprised as you were when I saw who the missed call was from. That's the truth. I also mentally shouted NOOOOO at the idea of Kyra being back in touch, particularly now. Emotionally, she's a genuine threat.
That's the peculiar thing about writing. The words appear, and if they feel true, you have to go with them. I subscribe to Stephen King's theory that stories are "found objects", merely uncovered, cleaned, polished, and shared by the author.
They existed already… somewhere.
The morning dawned bright and cold. A rime of frost coated the lower edges of the windows, and the apartment's central heating hummed and clanked as the metal radiators expanded. The sound woke Beckett with a start, twenty minutes earlier than her finely-tuned body clock usually roused her.
"Ugh," she said, burrowing deeper into her duvet. She was drifting slowly back to sleep when she remembered the events of the night before, and she groaned, becoming fully awake in moments.
The clock on her night table said 06:47, but she sighed and threw back the covers anyway. It would be useless to try to get any more sleep, and she could use the time to work out what she was going to say.
She lifted her robe from the foot of the bed and pulled it on, then headed for the shower.
Castle was back at the bar, just for one more game of pool before finally calling it a night. He had a difficult shot in front of him, and the whole place was silent.
He was at the head of the table, and Ryan and Jenny stood along the left side, with Lanie and Esposito along the right. At the far end, standing side by side, were Beckett and Kyra.
His shot was for the win, but he was unsure who he was playing against. There were two blacks, somehow. One almost covered the right corner pocket, and the other was about two-thirds of the way towards the far end, closer to the middle. He knew that by angling the white, he had either a fairly good straight-shot on the right, or a more risky attempt to clip the other black and send it towards the left corner pocket.
Beckett's hand rested on the wooden surround of the table, near the left side. Kyra's lay near the right. He had to choose.
Instead of the twin dartboards that were in the actual bar, this time there was an elongated murder board, littered with photographs. Sorenson. Gina. Demming. Meredith. Josh. Kyra. Beckett. Montgomery was there too, and Gates. Ryan and Esposito, Lanie and Jenny. Even his mother and Alexis.
There were crime scene photos of the loft, and Beckett's apartment, and the beach house in the Hamptons. The Old Haunt was there too, and an interrogation room at the precinct. There were even sets of cover art from the Nikki Heat series, but with Beckett instead of a silhouette.
He drew back his cue, and froze.
Left or right pocket?
Straight shot for a quick and unremarkable win, or a tougher shot with no guarantees even if it connected?
Esposito whispered to him. "Hey, Castle, are we interrupting something?" and Ryan burst out laughing. No-one else at the table seemed to notice.
He felt a drop of sweat run down his back, and he inhaled deeply, drawing the cue back a little farther.
He looked up towards the two women at the other end of the table, and he blinked several times. Beckett was looking at him with the same anxious half-smile she'd given him a few times recently, and she lifted her arm and opened her hand to reveal her iPhone. She seemed to be silently imploring him to understand something, but he was confused about how a phone could help him land the shot.
His eyes flicked to Kyra, but she was out of focus; just a shape. He could see her eyes clearly for a moment, and then her mouth, and then part of her hair, but she always seemed to be mostly obscured by smoke.
He became aware that there were two women standing at his end of the table, too – his mother on his right, and Alexis to his left.
Alexis put her hand on his forearm, stopping the movement of the cue, and she gave him a meaningful look before directing her attention to the other end of the table.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked, and he was shocked at the indignation in her tone. "You know he hates this game!"
Beckett looked down at the surface of the table, ashamed, but she held the phone up slightly higher as if it was an answer.
"I don't understand," Castle said, and Beckett raised an eyebrow at him then threw the phone halfway down the table. He looked at it lying against the baize, and suddenly the screen lit up, and it was his own face that was shown in the caller ID.
The banner across the screen said CASTLE, and the ringtone seemed to fill the entire bar–
He wakened with a start, sitting up and abruptly twisting around at the same time, so that one leg fell from the side of the bed, his foot hitting the carpet with a bump.
His heart hammered in his chest, and it took a couple of seconds before he identified the sound of his alarm clock, and reached over to silence it. It's green LED display read 08:00.
"This just keeps getting better," he muttered, his hands curling into fists on the edge of the bed.
His mouth tasted stale and dry from the alcohol, and his head ached. He felt exhaused even though he'd been asleep for hours, and for the first time in quite a while he truly felt his age.
He dragged himself out of bed and went into the bathroom, wincing when he caught sight of his reflection.
I look… used up, he thought. His eyes were slightly bloodshot, and he could see lines on his face that usually weren't noticeable. Stubble crept up his cheeks, and his shoulders were slumped. He reached up and switched off the light above the mirror, then sighed and trudged over to the shower.
He stripped off his tshirt and boxer shorts and stepped gratefully into the high-pressure stream of hot water, resting his forehead against the tiles and allowing the water to batter down on his back and neck. His thoughts drifted back to last night.
He had stood for several minutes staring at the missed call notification, too surprised and uneasy to really think. He hadn't even begun to wondered whether to call her back when his phone rang again, and this time he had answered.
"Hello?"
"Rick? It's… Kyra. From–"
"What's wrong?" he asked, instinctively, and there was silence on the line for a couple of seconds.
"Can't a girl just call an old friend?"
"Kyra…" he said, and he didn't like the weariness and suspicion in his tone, but he was too tired and drained to care.
"Maybe I should be the one asking what's wrong," she replied. "You don't sound like yourself."
You don't know me, he thought. You haven't known me in a long time.
"I haven't heard from you in… what, years? Again? And it's almost midnight on a Thursday. Is… uh… Greg OK?" He had to scramble for the name.
"Good memory," she said.
"Thanks. Can you answer the question?"
"My husband is fine, and thank you for asking." Her tone was light, but he knew he had hit the nail on the head.
"What's happened?" he asked, in a more gentle tone, and she sighed in that gaspy way she had.
"Can I… come over?" she asked.
You've got to be kidding me, he thought.
"That's not a good idea," he said, and he knew immediately what her next question would be.
"Oh," she said. "You're– I mean, of course you are. Is it that detective–"
"Jesus, Kyra, no," he said, and suddenly he just wanted to be in his bed asleep. "It's not. I'm not. She's not. There isn't anybody. It's still a bad idea, because you're married."
"Hey, if you think I was suggesting–"
"I'm tired. I've had a few drinks. And I'm having just about the worst few weeks I can remember, so can we please just get to the part where you tell me why you called me, out of the blue, at almost midnight, asking to come over? Because I would really like this day to be over."
"Well now I'm more worried about you," she said, and then sighed. "But… Greg and I… we're having some problems."
And there it is, he thought.
"And you wanted to add to those problems by coming to my place late at night?" he asked, and there was silence on the line. A mean-spirited part of him enjoyed scoring the point, but he also felt shame. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. Just… it's not a good idea."
"OK," she said quickly. "No, you're right. But I do want to see you. Can we meet, or something? Someplace neutral. Lunch? I just want to talk to you. Please."
A dozen scenarios ran through his head, but ultimately it all came down to a simple question: could he walk away when someone he cared about was asking for help? The answer to that question hadn't ever changed. He sighed.
"Alright," he said.
They had arranged to meet for lunch at 1PM. He groaned again, the sound lost in the steady white noise of the shower.
A double feature of women who broke my heart, he thought. This is going to be a hell of a day.
He reluctantly stepped out of the shower ten minutes later, dried off and threw on some casual clothes, then busied himself with making breakfast.
Author's note: (Yes, another one.) I've managed to depress the hell out of myself with Castle's predicament. That's the other peculiar thing about writing; you have to be inside a mood to write about it, and there's no practical difference between imagining an emotional state and actually feeling it.
It'll all work out in the end, because these two are meant to be together. For now, I'm going to get some sleep.