For the Dead Travel Fast
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Castle woke, groggy and disoriented, soaked in sweat.
His mouth was a wasteland, the place behind his sternum a desert. His eyes hurt too badly to open them, but he was aware of pressure on his head and pressure at his legs, and the fact that he was on the floor.
Why was he on—oh God, he'd been shot. He'd been shot and Kate—
"I'm here. You're okay."
He was lurching upright and half insensate before he recognized her, slumped against the glass wall near him, but when he tried to reach for her, he was hauled backwards and tripped, tangled in a velcro restraint.
To the post of the hospital bed.
"I'm tied up?" he rasped. Confusion made his voice shake, but when he looked at her-this time he really saw. She was wan, a face so bleached of color she scared him, and her head tilted back against the wall gave a half-hearted reflection in the glass. She had an arm wrapped at her midsection, as if to hold herself in.
She swallowed. It looked painful. Her eyes were burning on his, though, and her hand was around his bicep. "Agreed to these terms."
"Terms?" He struggled to get an elbow under him, noted the thin egg-crate material that had been placed under him as a makeshift pallet with a sheet over it. He had sweat large dark stains into the bedsheet too. "What is going on? That crazy doctor do this?" When he leveraged into a sitting position, he was swamped with dizziness and had to sink into himself, at the length of his tether. It put his back to her, and more distance between them, as his ankles were velcroed together and then that restraint was wrapped around the post that bolted the bed to the floor.
That did not look like a normal hospital room bed any longer. In fact, the glass walls, the negative pressure room, the subtle drains in the middle of the room, the equipment bolted down—it was beginning to look more and more horror show than hospital.
"She wouldn't let me in here without tying you up," Kate said.
He twisted around to look at her.
Kate couldn't sit up straight. "Unconscious, or... not yourself. She thought." A flinch went across her face.
"This isn't good," he rasped. "This is looking very bad."
She blinked.
"This is... is she even sane? I trusted her. Deputy Dave said we could trust her. Was that a mistake? Because—"
"I think she's trying to help," Kate mumbled. "Think she's into the research more than the people though." Her lashes were so thick they were dark slashes on her cheeks.
Dark slashes like wounds.
Her head rolled back. Her body went slack.
Was she breathing? "Kate," he hissed. No response. "Kate. Hey. Come on. Beckett." He leaned forward over his trussed ankles and scrabbled at the velcro, tearing at it. Stupidly more complicated than it should be, and he contorted to face her, still working at the straps. "Beckett. Hey. Look at me. Open your eyes. Kate. Detective."
She stirred, ever so faintly, and he finally tore free of the restraints and went scrambling to her, crouched over her body slumped against the wall. When he touched her, she roused, lashes unthreading.
"Hey," he whispered, choked up. "You with me?"
"Tired," she said, eyelids drooping.
"Please don't."
Her eyes shot open.
"Hey, good, that's good, better." He carefully eased down beside her, wedging himself into the corner where the clear glass met the opaque wall. "Just stay with me. How's the wound?" When he gathered her into his arms, she slumped into his chest, far more loose and pliable than was right. He jostled her head just a little and she whimpered. "Kate, need you to stay awake. Did the doctor get the bullet out?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, good, that's good." He pressed his hand to her ear and lips to her forehead. Inhaled deeply the scent of her.
And it wasn't right. Her scent was off. He didn't know how he knew it, but he did. It wasn't as bad as when the deranged bitch had jumped them at the gas station, but it wasn't right either.
Why hadn't the damn doctor figured out what was wrong with her?
He had to settle down. He felt the indignation well up like rage, and he wasn't usually a rageful person. He was pretty sure that was why he'd been restrained with velcro while in phase, and he didn't want the doc to be right about him.
He combed the hair back from her face. Just to touch her, to keep her awake. Maybe she needed rest and he was being selfish but something wasn't right.
Her eyes fluttered open again, but it took a heartbeat for her to focus on him. "Hey," he smiled. Relief did a giddy dance in his throat. "The doctor got the bullet out. She say anything else?"
"Not healing right," Kate said. He saw the struggle in her eyes as she tried to come under her own power again. "Said something is weird about us."
"Always is, right? You're extraordinary," he whispered, touched his lips to her forehead. "And I'm fairly special, if I do say so myself."
She clutched a fist in his shirt, whispered his name.
He cupped her face. "Did she say what she might do to help you heal?" This thumb bumped over her cheekbone; her lips moved but nothing seemed to come out. "Kate. Hey. Can I see it? What did she say she'd do to help?"
"Yeah, can see it," she breathed. Her body shifted against his, lying more fully on him, and she plucked at the ties of the hospital gown. "Here. Can't get this."
He braced her with his arms at her ribs and worked on the bottom tie, fingers fat and fumbling as he struggled not to panic. It was a near thing, that deep-seated fear she wasn't going to make it, that he had made one too many poor choices, that this time it would be the end of them.
"Least we're not freezing," she mumbled.
"What." His fingers finally got the knot undone, peeled back the wrap of the hospital gown. "I could do with some AC in here, gotta tell you."
She laid her hand over his, not in a movement to stop him, but evidently to ride the work of his hands in revealing the wound. She took in a slow shallow breath. "Meant, least it's not a frozen boxcar. But feels the same, 'cept you're warm."
"I see, yeah." The boxcar. Five lifetimes ago. Were they on their ninth life? "I'm sweating like a pig at a barbecue festival."
She snorted, her nose against his jaw, tickling his neck.
He grinned, felt some measure of relief at her intact humor. The complicated wrap gown finally parted, he peeled back the tape just below her breast, and revealed an open wound. "Oh. Kate."
"Is it bad?"
"It's..." The entrance wound was far too large—he could see where the scalpel had been wielded, the separate layers of flesh that had not come back together—he could track the tunneling the bullet had done through her, and that was just the part of the wound he could see. Laid back against him, her chest had flattened, but the rise of the wound, just under what had been the cup of her bra—
"Stop staring at my boobs, Castle."
He grunted, turned his nose down into her hair. "She cut the bra right off, I guess, and your shirt. How do you feel?"
"Tired," she admitted. She took another shallow breath, but he felt the fill of her lungs against his chest. Breathing was good.
He ran two fingers lightly under the wound, where it wept. "Did she say what—"
"She's trying to find a compatible blood bag," Kate said. "I think. Something about the proteins on my red blood cells. I was having trouble tracking."
"Well, that... would be me, right? I'm compatible."
"Are you?"
"I mean. If you, if we—I don't know how this works, but I'm assuming you drank from me and God knows I have from you, a few times now, and I don't know but it makes sense—the research I've done for the books, there was this time that Derrick Storm had to—"
"Oh, yeah, I remember. Something about antibodies—"
"Antigens. And it matters for the ABO stuff, and the Rh factor, that's the positive or negative, that's really important, the ABO plus-minus. And well, if we've swapped spit, so to speak—"
"Blood. We've swapped blood."
"Yeah." He winced. Began recovering the wound again. Smoothed the tape down. "Um. About that."
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
He paused. Fingers just at her ribs.
She curved her hand over his. "It's all my fault. I should have told you. Should have already had this conversation before—any of this—any of anything ever happened—there's so much I should have said to you—"
"Oh, that. No."
"That? No?"
"Hey, I get it. I'm a vampire doesn't play well. That would not be a secret you admit to people. You say that to me too soon, and I think there's something kooky, missing, in your head, right? I'd be gone. But you say that to me when we start dating, I'd be very concerned and want to commit you rather than commit to you."
She snorted. But her fingers trembled over his.
He laid his hand flat to her stomach. "Although, we didn't date, did we? We jumped into bed first, didn't have those conversations. Maybe that would have come up in the medical history portion of the relationship, but again, we jumped into bed. We were severely irresponsible. Don't attempt at home, all those warnings, but we knew each other and so we did jump into bed—"
"Only forget STDs, I turned out to carry a pretty big disease after all. And never told you."
"Did she say it was a disease? I thought she said something about—"
"It's a lichen. Whatever that means."
"A... lichen? Like those mossy things that grow on trees?" Of all the things he'd learned in the last couple days, this was the hardest to fathom.
She growled. "I have a fungus in my blood and then I sank my teeth into you and with my lichen-enhanced strength, tore a hole in your chest to make you fungus-spore-receptive whatever."
"Spores?" Something prickled in the back of his mind.
"She said that. Something like that. I don't know. It's been hard to concentrate... until just about... now."
She sat up, looked at him.
He lifted an eyebrow. Had to admit, five minutes ago he wouldn't have thought she could sit up.
Kate slowly pressed a hand below her breast, her fingers tunneling beneath the poorly-wrapped hospital gown. "Until now actually."
"Until now," he echoed. "Spores, she said something about that when she closed me in here."
"You were in phase," Kate added. He could see her mind working, those gears turning. It was damned gorgeous seeing her at work, always had been. "She said you and I shouldn't be this... I was out of balance, the lichen wasn't tuned right."
"Spores," he reminded her. "I breathe out spores? I secrete spores? In my sweat."
She laid her other hand over his chest, stared at her own hand a moment.
They had the same thought at the same time. "Get this off," she husked.
"Skin to skin," he yelped. "So you can breathe it in." Their eyes clashed, held.
"Yes," she nodded. "You're what helps me. Closer you get, better I feel."
He pulled back, tore the t-shirt off over his head. He could smell her now, though the wrongness of it was slowly fading. He tugged on her arm and she laid her cheek to his bare shoulder. He could feel her hum against his sternum. It was the same noise she made in bed when he first started touching her, the same satisfied noise she made when his fingers pressed between her legs. He wondered if it felt like that, he wondered about all the other feelings he'd had, her flesh against his tongue, the taste of her wound, the silky sex of her blood. "You should drink from me."
"Wait. What?" Kate reared back. "No."
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