For the Dead Travel Fast

—-xxx—-

In the end, they were put in isolation.

"Well," Castle said nervously, "at least we can get to the other halls. It's not like we're locked in."

"We're not locked in, no," Kate answered. She was prowling their suite, the attached bathroom, the expansive master, the two secondary rooms which they wouldn't need (were those for children?), the sitting room, the kitchenette with the mini fridge and microwave and—thank God—coffee maker. "It seems convenient that we have no blood family."

"Isn't that kind of what Evil Twin Harris was saying?"

"And her sister here says the same?" Kate shot back.

He winced.

Kate left him standing by the bed to inspect the bathroom, needing to prowl. She was restless after their drive, she was looking for something to be wrong, seeing warnings in everything, pessimistic by nurture if not nature.

She ran her fingertip across the bowl of the sink, faintly impressed when it came away spotless. The bathroom smelled of lemon and oranges; the walk-in shower had been scrubbed so that even the grout was white. She stared at that spotless grout and realized not even their own shower at home was so clean, and home itself—

"What do you think happens next? The Taco Truck Kid said we wouldn't get to Great Salt Lake without, what, this path of Wahkara? But this looks like the end of the line to me. And the lake is how many hours north of us?"

Kate swallowed roughly. "Castle, I need a shower before we get into this."

She was shedding her grimy clothes even as she spoke, her eyes burning sharply with the urge to cry. She always cried when she was exhausted. Those first few months at her father's cabin after she'd been shot—vampire healing and all—she had wept at the least provocation.

Kate opened the hot water as wide as it would go, but it heated so quickly she was forced to dial it back, adding in the cold so that she wouldn't burn herself. She sank her head back on her neck and let the water sluice over her, running through her hair and soaking her body. Her every muscle was knotted and tense, her back and thighs were bands of aching iron, even her head throbbed with her pulse.

"Mind if I join you?"

The eddy of cooler air announced his presence, and for one brief moment, she wanted to shove him right back out. Yes, I mind, can't I have one damn second to myself?! But before she could clear her throat to try something diplomatic and neutral, Castle's arms wound around her and he was lifting her off her feet.

Her spine popped and shifted in the most pleasant way; Kate groaned and buried her face in his neck, inhaling the true scent of him: deeper than those pheromones that built and made her unhinged, a cleaner smell of skin oil and what she'd thought once was his soap, but they hadn't access to his usual products, so how did he smell so good? So much him?

She unthreaded her arms from between them and managed to encircle his neck and one shoulder, clinging more than she ought even as he set her back on her feet. "I'm so glad you didn't take no for answer," she sighed, her face entirely pressed to his jaw and cheek and part of his neck. "I needed that."

"I thought maybe," he murmured. "And I didn't hear a no in there." His voice barely rose above the pounding of the shower.

"Didn't you though?" she smiled.

"You know me. Eternal optimist."

"Not me," she sighed. "Very much the opposite right now."

"Yeah, but glass half full for a moment with me: We're not locked in. We've been fed. We have clean sheets and we're away from other vampires who might try to eat me. Or you, since apparently you smell like you're newly transitioned as well."

"We're so fucked," she muttered.

"No!" He gave a little laugh, his fingers working through her wet, tangled hair. "I'm saying the opposite. We're not at all. We're in a good defensible position, we have access to resources, and we can finally stop and rest."

"Maybe," she half admitted. "I still want to get you to a phone. I don't know what's going on back there, or what they think of us. And Alexis—"

"We can deal with New York later," he rejected. "We need to take care of us first, proper balance for you, get me through these next phases, and then we can work on reassembling our life."

She swallowed painfully but nodded. "Still. You should call Alexis again." Her fingers stroked at the damp hair of his nape, her eyes pressing closed again to combat the urge to cry. She was so tired. She hadn't slept in... too long.

"We'll work on that," he compromised. "We have your burner phone still. Walt said he would buy us whatever we needed."

"Walt doesn't have unlimited funds either."

"I know." He was so used to mitigating her catastrophizing; she would be ashamed of it if it weren't so necessary, his intervention in her doom spiral. "I know he doesn't, and we don't, but we do have enough for a cheap flip phone for all that."

"Okay." She wished he would keep talking. His voice soothed as much as his fingers, knuckling into the muscle holding up her spine.

"We should wash up, get some real rest. We can even go in shifts, if you think it's necessary."

"There's a lock on our side of the door," she rasped, shaking her head. "They won't get in easily, and if so, I'll wake."

"Yeah? Good, very good. Let's get you soaped up then," he murmured.

Oh, he was seducing her in the best ways, promises of comfort and security while she tried not to collapse. His arm banded at her hips and he reached past her for the paper-wrapped bar of soap on the ledge.

It smelled like honey and lemons; she helped him unwrap it and held it up to the water, blinking back tears.

His hands were tender as he lathered her in soap, paying special attention to the scraped elbows, careful of the healing wound just below her breast, his palm-width covering her rib cage and bringing her back against his chest to stabilize her swaying.

She followed his hands with her own, touching where he touched, or with him when their fingers tangled, and the slow steady cleaning did much to calm her mind and settle her body. His fingers between her legs wasn't a surprise, and she rolled her head back, breathing deeply as he brought her up.

"Castle," she murmured. Her hair was heavy with water. Her thighs heavy with arousal. He cupped a breast and circled her clit in exactly the way he knew would bring her to climax. He knew.

She orgasmed neatly, nothing amazing, just necessary, her knees dipping as it hit her, but she was able to stand up through it. Good and whole-bodied, and it nudged her away from anxiety, back to watchful, and finally into content.

She turned in his arms, caught his lips with her gratitude. His kiss was unhurried, chaste, until she caressed his hips and ass with her soapy fingers. He grunted her name as if to say it wasn't necessary, but she pushed him back against the tile and draped herself over a thigh to take hold of his cock. Because she knew he liked it, and because she might like it almost as much, she tucked her head against his shoulder and gave him her full weight, braced against the tile, as she slowly fisted his growing erection.

"Ah, Kate," he husked. His lips clung to her cheek, a hot breath which grew more labored the faster she went. "Kate."

But what did she need the warning for? She knew what she did to him just as he'd known exactly how to touch her, and when his orgasm hit, it was so good to ride it out with him, petting and soothing until he could catch his breath.

He stumbled getting out of the shower. His eyelids were heavy and his skin hot from more than the water. She dried him off and scrubbed his hair with a towel, nudged him toward the bed, to sleep naked since they didn't have many clean clothes and it was obvious he was heading into another phase—sex seemed to trigger them.

"Sleep with me," he mumbled.

"I will. One second," she promised, bending over him for a kiss. She turned back for the bathroom, combed her hair out with her fingers—unwashed as of yet, but that could come later, as well as brushing her teeth. She used the bathroom and washed her hands, pulled on one of Castle's remaining clean undershirts, and she crawled into bed beside him.

He was already unconscious, not merely asleep, and she curved her arm across his chest protectively. Laid her head on his shoulder to listen to his heartbeats.

Everything else would come later.

—-xxx—-