For the Dead Travel Fast
—-xxx—-
"Are we really doing this?" she rasped.
"Fuck yes we are." He knew she was offended by his curse, but he was furious; he'd been this close to losing her. Again. Again. "We're not gambling on your life, Kate."
"We're gambling alright," she said. "Both our lives."
He had taken the keys from her when Deputy Dave had told them they needed to go. He had seen (and smelled) enough of her blood to last him a lifetime (though by the weird twitchy looks Dave had given them, he'd had the intriguing notion that the situation was often the nominal plot in vampire porn; there had been some vibes, a comment about being cliche).
He drove now towards Illinois, an exit about an hour outside Chicago, certain they could make it before she lost too much blood.
Because they had to.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" she asked. She was listless and pale in the backseat, but she'd insisted on sitting upright; she said it compressed the wound, kept her awake. Deputy Dave the Peacemaker Vampire hadn't said no, so Castle had let it go. "Rick? How do we know we can trust this… this random doctor?"
"Because Dave didn't kill us," he said cheerfully. "He could have. He had good reason. He thought I'd turned on you, mauled you, was feeding—"
"Drinking," she murmured.
"Feeding," he countered. "Because tearing you open with my teeth isn't about drinking, is it? It's more about ravaging, feasting."
She gave a ragged exhale that he took to be a version of rolling her eyes.
"Look, am I or am I not Writer Man?" he said, forcing cheer into his voice. "I'm telling you. If I were to turn on my maker, it'd be feeding."
"Or if you did it like I asked, it would only be drinking." Mulish stubbornness in that weak voice just didn't carry the same heft.
He checked the milage to Chicago. Too damn far. "You don't know what any of the real terms are, do you? Royce said some stuff, sure, but you should've seen the way he looked at me when I said you were my Progenitor. Big no-no." He paused, his worry getting the best of him. "Hey, are you sucking on that liver pop?"
She made a face that he caught when he checked the rear view. "Water fowl," she muttered.
"He said also venison works! We can try that next."
"Castle," she whined.
He sobered fast, wished she'd just— "You didn't even know about water fowl popsicles," he said. "You didn't know about Peacemakers. You didn't know that narcan for vampires even exists—"
"I get it, Castle." She was rolling her eyes; he could hear it. "You and Deputy Dave, thick as thieves."
"Did you see how appalled he was by Royce's treatment of you? I like Dave. He's a good one. You can tell."
"Castle," she said softly. He heard the tremor in her voice and gripped the steering wheel.
"No, Kate," he said. "No."
"Yes. Because this is a bad idea. We don't know what we're up against, and I'm not—" She paused, didn't speak the dreaded pronouncement about her own condition. He was grateful for that. "Rick. You had the same experience at that gas station I did. When the woman attacked us. You know how bad that was, but you haven't even seen the worst."
He had to tread carefully. Because there was no way he could give up on this doctor—there was no way he was giving up on his wife. Their life together. She'd saved him, and sure it was through some dubious means, but it had to have been for something. It had to mean something.
"I… know what a diseased vampire can do, yes. I also know that you've been traumatized by the man who transitioned you." He took a deep breath. "He hurt you, Kate, and that hurt is going to influence the way you think about this. About the possibility there could be good vampires out there, and you just happened to be transitioned by a monster."
There was silence from the backseat. When he risked a glance over his shoulder, she was chalk white and catching her tears with the tips of her fingers.
She left pink streaks.
That gutted him out.
He turned back around, to drive, to give her privacy, to cry a little himself. He was quiet about it, swallowing the grief as quickly as it rose, because Royce was dead and he had to keep his wife alive.
"Kate," he called softly.
He heard her shudder, felt her attention drawn back to him.
"Kate, I choose to believe that the world is a better place than maybe your job or past trauma tells us. I have to believe. Because if it's just pain and suffering and grief, then what did you save me for?"
She was silent for a heartbeat too long. "I don't know, Rick. Is this what I saved you for?"
He did not like the sound of that. He reached back and found her knee, squeezed blindly. "You saved me for life, Kate. For this life together. And we are going to get that life, with our teenagers who beg us to transition them, just as soon as I stop smelling like the greatest thing since sliced bread."
"He said you smell like sex," she murmured. Her hand came to rest on top of his. "You do, you know. You smell like if I just get close enough, a little taste, I'll have the best orgasm of my life."
There was a moment where he was so wildly turned on that he was almost blind to the road.
But then he managed to leash it.
He pshawed theatrically and let go of her knee (just in case), both hands on the wheel. "Then you're fine," he said. "You've already had the best orgasms of your life. You get that on the regular when you're in my bed."
"Your bed?" She laughed, then groaned. "Don't. Laughing hurts."
"I wasn't joking."
She laughed harder, gasping now as the pain caught her.
He was kind of glad for the pain. It kept him from pulling the car off on the side of the road and promising her anything if she'd just let him drink. Let him drink and he could fix everything, the pleasure would blot out all the pain.
"Castle," she said, more of a gasp. "Castle. You better be sucking on your own liver pop up there."
He chuckled and fished it out of the empty gatorade bottle, stuck the liver pop in his mouth. "You're right," he said around the cold shock of bliss. "Damn, you're right. Feels much better."
She was silent, and he knew the same thing that troubled him, troubled her.
Could they really survive that open wound long enough?
—-xxx—-