Title: Imagine Me & You (I Do)
Author: clarahow // agentroxylancelots // charleybradburies (will be posted after challenge)
Fandom: Castle
Characters: Beckett (& Castle, sort of)
Pairing: Caskett
Length: 458w
Rating: T
Summary: He can't fix her.
Content Notes: Angst. It's all angst. Set during Kate's post-Montgomery hiatus from the 12th.
Author Notes: Written for Challenge #116: Refusal. Additionally fits challenges #96: Music and #73: Telephone.

She's like a teenager, waiting by the phone, but every time his calls come in, she can't pick up. She lets them go to voicemail, she declines, she turns her ringer off, she even lets her phone die. She's waiting for his voice, but she can't hear it. She's waiting for him, but she can't have him.

He thinks he loves her, but he thinks with his dick and his reckless heart - he doesn't know what he'd be getting himself into. He hasn't seen half the mess that she is - all broken pieces held together by wire and string and handcuffs and chewing gum.

He didn't know her, not really. And he couldn't know her, because as long as he didn’t, they both could hold onto that little shred of sunlight: that he thought he loved her, thought it enough to say it, enough to need to make sure she knew. As long as he loved who he thought she was - as Nikki, or as Beckett, or even as Kate - then she could imagine that he loved her. She could read those stupidly good books and imagine that he was the one trailing kisses down her back, not Rook down Nikki's.

But it was all imagination.

That was the idea, right? That's what Castle did: imagine things. Outlandish things, marvelous things, practically inconceivable things - it was his business to take them and straddle the lines of reality and impossibility. His world was made of impeccably executed homicides, car chases in stolen Ferraris, old school sci fi and mobster movies, turning tables with A-class actresses, vacations in the Hamptons, and his family...and her. Her and the precinct. And some not-so-impeccably-executed homicides. He was trying to hold onto her in the part of his life that was the littlest bit together - the part whose chaos was calculated, intentional, thrilling. But she didn’t belong there, no - her chaos wasn’t like that. Her chaos didn’t serve a purpose to a plot, or keep a self-respecting reader engaged, or let everything eventually fall into place. As much as Castle enjoyed playing Prince Captain Kirk Charming, he couldn’t fix that. Couldn’t fix her. Couldn’t put the pieces back together. No one could.

She drops her phone when Clarence Carter starts to croon - “you talk too much, you worry me to death…” - she really should change that - and it momentarily gets lost in her bedsheets. Indeed, she finds it displaying that stupid high-def photo of him sticking his tongue out in that stupid steampunk costume.

“Beckett, how do you know when you’re in love?”

“All the songs make sense.”

“Sorry, Castle,” she mumbles to herself, and declines the call. The song cuts off, and her room falls silent afterwards, save for her doleful sighing.