For the Dead Travel Fast

—-xxx—-

Rick Castle woke in a wet dream, halfway in a climax—in fact, it was his gasp of her name that woke him.

He stared at the ceiling, blinking fast as the dream boiled down to nothing. Air. Ashes, faintly, like that time, drunk in the Hamptons after his first divorce, he'd left the balcony door open and the fire going in the bedroom and he'd fallen asleep and a bird had somehow gotten inside. He'd woken to the taste and acrid scent of singed animal and foul human.

The sharp taste at the back of his throat now made the dream surreal, disjointed, almost like memory.

It had been such a vivid dream, his mouth on her…

And yup, there it was, morning wood. So the dream, as real as it had been, had not resulted in anything helpful. At least he didn't have to change his sheets, a particular walk of shame he did not relish, not since Kate had left him.

No. Was that right? He couldn't... it was difficult to make connections. Had that been a dream, or had that been last night? The taste in his mouth was confusing. The throbbing in his skull was less so, but still there was an alarm bell ringing.

Kate hadn't left him; she'd never do that.

Had she done that?

Castle shifted, tried to roll onto his side, and felt his ankles yanked back. Restraints? Just what had they gotten up to yesterday? For such dreams, for him to still be lashed to the footboard, for his balls to be so blue—

A wave of dizziness struck him, and yet he was already lying down.

He didn't recognize the bed, the room, the sheets. (Ug, the thread count was inferior). This was not their bedroom.

Had she left him? And he'd gotten drunk like that night in the Hamptons.

His eyes burned in their sockets; he squeezed them shut tightly and turned his head, smelled the ripe stench of his own sweat. And death.

Burning, feverish death.

"Kate," he rasped. Where was—had she left him?

"Hey, you're awake, hey." The words soft, fuzzy as if she were only now coming awake, but despite that, her hand came lightly, coolly to his chest, eased him down to his back again. "You're still hot." Her fingers dappled at his chest and he flinched.

"Still hot?" he tried, even though the joke fell very flat and very dead. "Is that why I'm still trussed to your bed?" Confusion speckled his senses, he swallowed painfully in the dryness of his throat. This was the worst hangover. Why did he not even recognize the bed? He couldn't remember why she'd left him either, but maybe he would never understand why even if she told him.

She had not come home with him. She had held him off with that tightness around her eyes and the pressed lips of her no.

He hated being separated from her. Hated that she came to him when she wanted sex, like scratching an itch. Like a guilty pleasure. And he gave way because he thought it could convince her to stay.

He was depressed. No wonder he'd had too much to drink. Most days, desperate for a way to win her back, he could keep it at bay.

Why had she left him? It's not you; it's me. Bullshit. But he was so damn tired of it.

With his eyes closed, he wondered if there was a graceful way out of her bed. Out of the ankle cuffs. Out of this endless tragic loop. "Damn. What did you let me drink?" he rasped.

She sobbed, a grief so strangled it whipped his head around. He saw her cover her face with her hands, how the tears dripped from between her fingers.

He was astonished by the tears. "Beckett?" He didn't want to want her so badly, but he also couldn't let her be miserable. "Was it vodka shots? Whatever I said or did on vodka, don't hold it against me." Still she was pressing her knuckles into her eyes. He reached across his chest and clasped her wrist. "Kate. It's just that... a lot of yesterday is a blank for me. If I hurt you, I'm sorry."

She shook her head, dropped her hands, and the look in her eyes was bleak. He recoiled, but he didn't go far, fingers falling to her drawn up knee.

She croaked something like an apology and reached for his ankle restraints. Her felt her breasts pressing against him, the length of her svelte body, and he closed his eyes in blessed relief. Her body against him was—

Through the dark holes and gaps in his memory came the image of the kitchen ceiling, and the angel of Death grinning at him with blood-soaked teeth. He sucked in a harsh breath, eyes flaring open.

He sat up to say what the hell but a flash of afternoon light caught him full in the face.

Castle cried out.

"Shit," she gasped. Her body barreled into him, knocked him to his back. "Shit. I forgot to close the curtains. Oh shit, shit, shit." He felt the shake of the mattress but the intensity of the sharp jabs behind his eyes made him insensible. He was blinded, the agony whiting out all other senses, an animal keening in pain.

"Castle." She yanked him upright. She clambered over him, pulled his legs around, pushed his feet to the floor. "Get up," she said harshly. "Get up. You have to get up. Bathroom. We need to ice it—get up."

He pushed forward, crashed to his knees. She hauled him up, slinging him with his own momentum towards some dark blind space; his eyelids were sealed shut. He could hear the animal noises coming out of his mouth but he couldn't stop them, or control his own body. Everything was out of proportion, slanted wrong, the floor slipped away from him; she was hard and strong, carrying him over the threshold. He felt both too light and too heavy, and he didn't know where he was.

She slapped something sharp cold to his eyes and he gasped. Clutched at the washcloth as it brought a shuddering relief, but only for a moment. It was heated with his own body's inflammation in moments.

She shoved him down—the lid of a toilet—he hunched over the washcloth, digging at his eyes with the rough textured cloth. Scraping to get it out.

"No. Stop. Castle. Here's another, it's cooler. Use this." She yanked the heated one away from him, swapped it out. "I need to get ice. Can you do this? Listen to me, listen to my voice. I have to get ice from the machine down the hall. Castle."

"I—" He couldn't get his voice to work. (Why had she left him?) His body was a fucking desert. She slapped another washcloth into his hands. (How could she walk away, after everything?) He dug the washcloth into his face.

"Do not scratch at your eyes, you will lose your sight."

He stiffened, hands in claws at his face. "Won't." It was barely a word, a whisper.

"Stay." She was gone the next moment, but his eyes burned. He fumbled forward, one hand pressing the cooling washcloth against his face, the other reaching out for the still running water.

He could stick his whole head under the faucet. He shifted forward—

Crashed face-first off the toilet, hard tile floor. His legs were absolute wrecks, his body groaning with dry bones. Brittle. Everything. He had no control, his body was… not his own.

A door flung open. Slammed hard on the bounce back.

"Castle!" She was there, wedging her body under his and pushing him upright.

He was unable to push himself upright off her. "Damn embarrassing. Can't, can't make my legs work."

"You're still in phase," he thought she said. "Here, ice. I have some ice. I need to run the ice along your eyelids, Rick, okay? Helps it absorb."

Absorb? His brain was a jumble—in the black behind his eyelids, he saw the face of the Angel of Death, blood-soaked mouth, and it was her face. He flinched.

"Put your hands down. Shh, I know, I remember how it hurts."

Remember how—

He hissed at the first touch of the ice cube but immediately slumped back, his head hitting some kind of closet door, linen closet, his body collapsing as relief hit him. "Need—" he mumbled, the relief so very great he was dizzy again, dry-mouthed, desperate for a drink. "Shouldn't've had that last vodka shot. But if my mother is to be trusted, a little hair of the dog would help this brutal hangover." His eyes burned, even now, but the ice was a lovely cool balm. "Whiskey, maybe, this time."

"It's not alcohol that's given you a hangover," she whispered tightly. "Hush, Rick. Just lie back and let the ice melt into your eyes."

"Melt into my eyes?" he laughed.

But damn if it didn't feel so very good, each ice cube running gently over his eyelids and along the seam, almost like he could feel it melting down and pooling back behind the eyeball where the optic nerve, on fire, began to hiss and steam.

It was so good, so cool. "Sun blinded me. Guess I'm dehydrated." But it didn't make sense, and everything he said made less. Why had she left?

"It's my fault," she sighed. "I forgot the room faced the west. The room I rented when we were—when I was stupid, and left you to think—it faced the opposite." He couldn't grasp the threads of her statements, but bitterness, her regret, was a dark stone dropped inside his guts. She feathered his hair back from his forehead; he could feel her leaning in so close. "When it's dark, we'll go somewhere, just us, but for now we both need to rest."

He felt a rather ominous pause in whatever was sitting so heavy between them, and despite his blindness, his hands were unerring when they found her hips. Pale cool skin, and his thumbs brushed along her ribs and then—

Surgical tape. A bandage sticky to the touch.

"Shot," he mumbled. "We were shot. Not shots. We were shot, you were shot." Had he been shot in the head? "Beckett."

"It's okay, for now, it's okay."

Why was his brain so determined not to work? He'd been dehydrated once on a trip in LA, trying to fit in with Meredith's friends, hiking to the Hollywood sign and back. He'd been so badly sick that Meredith had dropped him at the emergency room doors and he'd been unable to find his way inside while she parked. "Disoriented. Dizzy even prone. Eyes are… this is severe dehydration. Did I lose too much blood? Why aren't we in a hospital? How bad is this?"

He caught the edge of the tape, remembering blood, dreaming blood—so much blood.

"Kate," he panicked. "Ka—"

"I promise you, Rick, I promise. I love you."

"You said that right before we got shot," he croaked. A terror of darkness gripped him; he could not right himself. He couldn't see, or know, or make this right.

She touched her mouth to his eyelid; he shuddered.

"You should be able to open your eyes," she whispered. "I turned off all the lights, the curtains are drawn tight, and—and you need to drink something. Drink so you understand."

He felt her thumbs rub away the last of the ice-melt, as if tears, and he tried slowly to peel his lids from his parched eyeballs.

Gritty. Sandpaper as he tried to look at her. He squinted, thought maybe, for a moment, he really was blind.

But then her body in the darkness, pale and white, and her throat, the lovely column of her throat, and when he could finally meet her eyes, she was trying to smile. She still held his face in her hands, thumbs at the corners of his eyes, her face radiant with the weird glow of artificial night inside the little bathroom.

It hurt to blink. "You ran out for ice... naked?"

She gave a soft puff of laughter. "You were in distress. I was stupid to forget the curtains." One hand left his face; a strange movement against her stomach. He looked—

She peeled the tape back and lifted the bandage away. "You need to drink," she murmured.

His eyes were fixed on the wound, the puckered mouth of ruined flesh.

"Drink, Rick," she breathed, and pulled him down to her.

The exotic-flower, musk-and-sex scent filled his lungs, hitting him in the groin, the chest, the head, and he was dipping his mouth to her breast—

To just below her breast, the puckered mouth, thirsty—

She moaned when his lips came to the half-healed wound. She tasted like animal and fire, like sex in the dark. His own groan rumbled through his chest and vibrated them. Desire burned hot and white; it was less painful if he just closed his eyes, felt his way. Brushes of his lips, glancing kisses, but the need grew more urgent.

His hands gripped, clutched; he bore her back to the tile floor and suckled from her flesh.

Kate whimpered. Her fingers touched his ear. In her, he tasted heaven and hell together, drank it down, sweet and bitter, salt and ash—

"Garlic," she rasped, that husky voice of sex. He was throbbing; he wanted nothing more than to lap her up. "That's it, oh. Yes. That's—very good, Rick. Your mouth on me. Your—ah!—your tongue, just your tongue!"

He sheathed his teeth and curved his tongue against the ridges of her wound, a little wet mouth open for him, weeping for him, so beautiful, her sex—

her gunshot wound

Castle flinched back. Crashed, jarringly, into reality. Panting. Terrified. Raw pain behind his eyes.

(She left him but here she was, offered up, sacrificial.)

"Shh," she murmured. Her fingers ran through his hair and tugged, fingers pressing into the back of his neck, tugged again. She pulled him down, inexorably, lovingly, to the place where she too was raw.

Just the nearness of her flesh, the ripeness, and he wanted—it. "Kate," he growled.

He wanted her.

"You need to drink."

He took the blood on his tongue and it was rapture.

—-xxx—-