For the Dead Travel Fast

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She must have drifted off to sleep because she woke to his violent thrashing. She clung to him—his heart was the thrum of an engine trying to restart—with clammy sweat clinging to them both.

"It's okay, it's okay," she told him. He looked wild, eyes open and wide, a feral snarl on his lips. She pushed up and leaned in over him and he made a snap at her with his teeth—but something in her voice recalled him, and he dropped to the pillow, staring. She smoothed her fingers down his jaw. "You were shot," she said lamely, cupping the side of his face. "You were shot so you have to stay down, you need to stay down."

Unexpectedly, his eyes fixed on her face. Mouth moved, but he still did not have breath to speak. A franticness filled his eyes (could he tell he wasn't breathing?) and as she shifted upright, she realized he could see her blood, perhaps even sense it now.

Kate leaned in over him, risked unknotting the restraints at his wrists. Stupid, but he was her husband, and she couldn't fathom, with the way his eyes watched her desperately, that he'd turn on her. The moment she managed to work the loop knot out and free him, he was wrapping both arms around her, trembling. She tried to soothe him, his name on her lips, her fingers at the back of his neck, but he was bearing her down to the bed. She felt his fists in her shirt, his body's heavy coldness, and she hated it.

Shouldn't be. A dead man didn't mutely plead with his eyes. A dead man couldn't. And this, his arms around her, a rigidity in it that he seemed to be fighting through jus to hold her—

He was dead. He had to be dead.

And so very cold.

A body she loved should never feel this cold.

And then, in that very instant of terrible grief, came the spark of flame.

He was cold, and then just under her fingers, at the nape of his neck where his spine connected to his brain stem, she felt the lightning strike.

Heat spread through him fast then, like an uncontrolled fire, heat licking through his body and melting him down like candle wax. She could feel his body reforming, the places she'd loved to clutch now waxy and disappearing as the next phase burned through his resources. A metabolism so high and running so fast, that his stores of fat were reshaping under her palms.

Castle was shaking, pouring sweat, struggling against her so helplessly it twisted her heart.

"It's okay, it's supposed to happen. It happens just like this." She hoped. She believed. It had to.

He was shaking violently now, wracked with febrile seizures, his eyes rolling back, whatever consciousness occluded by the phase. She gripped the back of his neck and tried to avoid inhaling too deeply (the scent of him was pure pheromone and lust, and she couldn't do that to him right now; he deserved better). She clung to him to keep him from damaging himself, even as she snaked a hand under his pillow to grope for the book.

The Little Black Book of Death, a talisman against all that could go wrong.

She found the little notebook, clung to it and to him, pressing her lips to his cheek. The burn of his skin was already moving from soaked with sweat to dry and brittle, and it scared her. How fast it went. How quickly he was phasing. And still, still he was not breathing.

"Please, Castle," she whispered. Her nose felt sunburned by the heat of his skin; her cheek raw with the rusty-blade scrape of his five o'clock shadow. "You have to breathe now. You get to breathe now. It will all come back if you can just—"

The groan rumbled first in his chest, clattering, loud. She bit back a sob and loosened her grip on him, give his lungs room to remember how to expand and contract. She cupped his face, her palm stinging with the heat of him.

The groan became a keening. She shivered, terrorized by the sound of him, but now it came, now his lungs collapsed and he exhaled: the foul stench of death, the by-product waste of the transition claiming his body for its own. Long, low exhale that seemed to sink him into the mattress as if for good.

"Castle," she croaked.

He gasped.

Tears streaked down her cheeks, her own gasp in relief at hearing his.

Castle sucked in a breath like a man drowning, and she felt his heart buck sharply in his chest. "That's it, that's it, Castle. You can do it. Just keep breathing." She rubbed her palm against his chest, around and around, the gaping open shirt brushing her knuckles. "Keep breathing for me. I know it feels like broken glass, but you can do this—"

"Kate," he groaned. Maybe. Maybe it was her name, maybe it was just the last of terror and death choked out of him.

She bent over to kiss the hideous gaping scar at his chest, the two discolored stains from her bite. "You're gonna be okay, you got shot but you're gonna be fine. You're going to be better than fine." And that wasn't even a lie; she had a feeling he was going to love this, he was going to delight in this. So long as he transitioned through each phase.

The fever dragged him into unconsciousness, heavy—but not, this time, not deadweight.

For too long, she stayed just as she was, this narrow room at the dead end of Broome Street, luxuriating in the erratic but thrashing beat of his heart and the heat that suffused them both.

But then she untangled herself, careful of his-still tied ankles, especially careful of his shoulder and chest, his head and neck, these vital places that she could not jostle. She crawled out of the bed and stripped the white shirt off her head, discarding it in the trash, and then the jeans as well.

She wanted to burn the damn clothes.

Instead she limped to the bathroom and ran warmish water in the basin, soaked a wash cloth, tried not to think about what happened next. What was coming.

She slowly wiped the crusted blood from her neck, from the slope of one breast, skirting the bandaged gunshot wound. The other two were these permeable and painful welts now, ugly in their puffy indignation, burning with the knitting of nerve endings. She tried to arrange the bra of her band away from those places, but it all hurt. The blood was everywhere. The still-unhealed wound with the bandage looked like something had rotted, suppurating.

The fresh blood also made her vision tunnel, and she knew she had to do something. Caleb Brown was not enough for what she'd done. And what she would have to do.

Beckett limped back into the room, dug through the duffel bag until she found the pills. Iron supplements, 65 mg, slow-release gummies. She gnawed on five of them before she thought she could keep going, back to the bathroom, clean up.

Blood on her face; had she gone out in the city with blood on her face? She needed to clean herself up, she needed to pay attention for what came next. She might be in shock, might be operating under a cloud of grief, unable to process.

The wound burned. It would burn until the garlic came off, but she couldn't yet. She needed it. Her hands were shaking again, but her heart rate was steady, and her vision no longer wavered. The iron pills were sustaining her; she couldn't remember if she'd taken any all week. She would have told him it was anemia, if he had asked.

He had never asked.

He'd have a lot of questions now.

Back in the room, she hobbled to his side, sank to the bed, laid her hand lightly on his forehead. "Thank God," she breathed. He was sweat-soaked again, and damp to the touch, hot, burning hot, but the fever had something to burn. The dryness of earlier, before his heart had fully restarted or his breathing—this was a good sign. A very good sign, even as she blotted his throat and neck with the sheet.

All along, she felt the throb of her bandaged wound for him, a bell sounding his name, calling to him to wake and—

No. She crushed that thought and focused on now. This phase.

Beckett pushed aside the edges of his shirt, inspected the bandages, the dressing. When she peeled back the tape, the wound was that between-stage mess, mangled, not yet right. She touched the very edge of the wound and felt the heat, knew that it was on its way. Carefully, she re-taped the wound, pressing the tape to his skin, the damp heat causing it to stick poorly.

She found the scissors in the first aid supplies and cut off the rest of his dress shirt, rolling him side to side to remove it. She left his ankles tied because what came after could be much more violent, but she redressed the wound with care, just in case.

Now her hands were shaking again. There were a thousand things she needed to do, things clamoring for her attention, that required doing, that she had to do if they were going to get out of this, if they were going to survive.

But first this, this had to be done. The wound.

The first letting.

It had to be her and nothing else, no one else.

It had to be her, and now, before the fever burned him down to nothing, before the violence took over and not even she could reach him.

Kate shed the bra, the ache of new scars causing her movements to be constricted, her chest to tighten. She slid into bed in only her panties, laid close but not on him, her toes pushed to his calf, careful, watchful. The wound was exposed on this side, bleeding through the bandage, damp; she could smell it herself and her stomach turned. The smell was ripe, the scent was a calling.

Now, with his breath coming in and out again, now he could scent her too.

It didn't take long.

He woke. Semi-delusional, as she expected, as it had been for her, and likely in tremendous pain. His eyes were that leached pale grey, but they latched onto her face with a neediness that enflamed. Beside her in the bed, sweat-soaked, groaning, he rolled into her, grasping her breast just above the wound.

"I got you," she husked, chewing on her bottom lip. He was hot, the fever burning through him, using up resources. She couldn't let it burn him dry. Already, she could see the line of his jaw as she cradled his face, the flattened nature of his gaze, here but not here. "I got you. Just like this." She reached between them, peeled the bandage back, the wound gaping, the blood trickling because of the work of the garlic.

His mouth came to her breast and sucked at her flesh, her nipple; she arched, moaning, grasped him by the ears. Lust boiled with need.

She directed his mouth to the wound below her breast, cried out when he sank his teeth into it.

(He shuddered at the taste of garlic.)

"No, no," she gasped, tearing him away from her wound. "No, Rick, no teeth. Use your tongue."

He fell back on her with a wet noise, a happy noise, his obedience without question (oh God, she was so relieved) and her body reacted. Blooming lust, the heat of his mouth, his body heavy on top of hers. He pinned her to the mattress, his mouth working softly now, the same work he did between her legs, with love and not a little bit of amusement.

Even half-delusional and torn apart with the pain of phase, he was amused by this. French-kissing the wound.

"That's it," she croaked. Her breath caught in her throat at the feeling of him drinking from her. Electric. Sensual. She thrummed with energy as the garlic was washed out by his mouth, his tongue, and she softened her touch on him, ran her hands down his bare back, shivering.

It felt so good, the climax rushing for her, his body on top of hers, and she forgot for a moment, what it was, what he drank from her. She forgot and it nearly came apart in her hands.

And then the crashing dizziness, the weak throb of her heart, and she remembered. Fisted her hands in his hair and dragged his mouth away from her blood.

He whined, flashed his teeth like a dog.

"You have to stop, have to stop," she mumbled. He was straining at her leash, desperate for more; she was lust-dizzy, blood-lust. She tried to come around, tried to muster some kind of non-consent. "Castle!"

He pulled up, lips glistening. His eyes were leached of color, so grey the dark pupil was like a hole. But she found awareness in them that scared her. Awareness and pain.

He glanced down her body, his hand came to her wound.

She gasped. It was tender, still raw, open.

He gave a violent noise, his fingers cupping her—as if it was the wound between her legs, as if he were cradling her sex.

She nodded, even though he couldn't possibly comprehend. She eased her grip, allowed him to bow his head over her. He did not return to the wound; her heart pounded in her throat as he laid a kiss between her breasts at the scar there. Tears spilled over her cheeks, warring with the urgent desire to have his mouth again. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, but this was the only way."

The hit of her blood had finally taken, and Castle's eyelids drooped. She felt it the moment before it happened, the shift from thirst to slaked, the tension leaving his muscles.

He collapsed on top of her, his body phasing again, tumbling straight down into the dark eye of the transition.

She reached up and curled her fingers around the Little Black Book.

With her other hand, she re-taped the bandage—and the minced garlic—to the wound.

—-xxx—-