For the Dead Travel Fast

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She hadn't stayed with the brochures long. They spitballed a few ideas about health and nutrition, but soon she was digging out the medical records she'd made photocopies of, and she was buried in notes.

He couldn't blame her for it. She was trying to ascertain what phase he was likely to suffer through next and what kind of context they needed to survive. Since he definitely didn't want to hurt her, nor did he want to wreck the car, he was going to make her drive next shift, once he found a place to stop for gas.

He hoped there was a phone. And some kind of dinner. His stomach was starting to growl—though he didn't think he was blood thirsty. Harris had said the electrolytes-enhanced sports drinks were fine, but not to load up on iron supplements.

He was seriously considering how to find some waterfowl when Kate stirred in the passenger seat. "Hey, listen to this." She held up a sheaf of papers. "This is from Harris's medical notes: patient suffers from—okay, this is indecipherable, suffers from X—during P9, that's phase 9, which causes the discoloration at the nails and the muscle spasms."

He waited, but she said nothing. "Uh, yeah?"

"That was me, what happened with Royce. I remember my lips being blue, my fingers and toes, and I'd by lying on the floor, unable to move, barely able to breathe because of the muscle spasms."

"So she's seen something like it before."

"Yeah." Kate shook her head; he saw her rub her forehead. "Did I make a huge mistake in running from her? No. No, we had to get out of there."

"Too late for that," he warned.

"No, I know. I'm second-guessing myself as I read all this because it's just so much, Castle. Anything could be next. And if this phase 9 is where you're at—"

"No, because she told me I was in seven when we got there. Right? Because it was so violent. And then I went through how many in that hospital room? At least three."

"So eleven or twelve?" She flipped pages. "I don't know why I had nine in my head. I keep fixating on all the bad."

"My transition hasn't been like yours. We've already established that. We also have a couple of basic guidelines that you didn't know about before: the garlic-heavy diet will induce phase, plus it has the added benefit of weakening my fungal properties so when you drink from me—"

"I'm not hurting you," she said.

He couldn't tell if she was finishing his statement or denying it. "My wrist is bandaged with that garlic treatment," he reminder her. "I fully intend for you to drink from me before the phase starts, or right at the beginning, like last time. You drink from me, and I won't be strong enough to hurt you."

She was silent.

"Beckett. Don't. You promised."

He could feel her struggling in the seat next to him.

"Kate," he said. Made his voice firm, no nonsense. "This is not negotiable. If you thought I'd leave competent medical care and soft restraints—"

She twisted in the seat, a rough noise in her throat.

"You thought you'd convince me to change my mind on that?"

"It was an idea, just an idea—"

"It's not happening."

"No, okay, but—"

"You will drink from me. There is nothing at all you can say to change my mind—"

"It's—"

"It doesn't hurt. Damn Mike fucking Royce and all his—"

"Castle!"

He sucked in a violent breath, twisted his hands on the wheel.

"Castle," she said softly. "Very hot, this protective-aggressive stuff, but also unacceptable. You know that, right? Not acceptable. It's in the past, he's dead, it's done. My trauma now is something I have to work through. And the second you start swearing at me, I shut down."

"It's the phase," he growled.

She sat up straight, hit the dashboard light to plunge them in darkness. Immediately, his shoulders dropped, a soothing sensation in the dark.

She touched his arm. "How's... the control?"

"In control," he said tersely. Swallowed roughly to focus on the road, not her touch.

"Okay. Good, that's good. What do you need from me?"

"To not talk about fucking Royce."

She chuckled softly in the darkness and he felt her hand run over his arm. His whole chest expanded, the tension uncoiling.

"That's good," he husked. "Keep doing that."

"Mm, so possessive in phase, huh?" Her fingers curved at his neck and stroked the hair at his nape. Like a damn drug, her touch. "Need me to take over driving?"

"Okay for now," he breathed. Blinked. "You smell good."

"Mm, so do you," she whispered.

His hips bucked. "I gotta stop this car."

"We're not having sex in the car, Rick."

"Maybe, okay, no, but you could drink from me before it starts getting... you know hard core phase." Hard.

"We're not having sex in this car," she insisted.

"No, the letting though." He scowled to concentrate past her touch. "I'm serious about that. Yes, it's sexy as hell, all this going on between us, but I'm not joking around about that. You need to drink from me."

"Castle, it doesn't feel safe." She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. "I don't know how I'm supposed to stop myself."

"You see that? Sign for an Esso, old filling station."

"I didn't see it," she said. A beat. "Rick. Please. How am I supposed to stop?"

"I have an idea for that."

"Castle, swapping theory is one thing, but when it comes to drinking from you, I'm not leaving that up to guesswork."

"Yeah, but…" He glanced at her, hands gripping the wheel. "Just talking about it is getting me worked up. And you know how that ends. You working me up in a motor vehicle."

She chuckled. "I told you to keep your eyes on the road."

"And I told you I can't keep my eyes open when—"

"I didn't think you were that close!"

"And you're supposed to be an officer of the law."

She snorted. "At least it was just your golf cart."

"Wrecked," he said mournfully.

She touched his elbow on the center console. "For a good cause." Her fingers traced the flex of his muscle. "You more in control now?"

"Better," he admitted. "There's the gas station, you see it?"

"No."

"You don't? It's—oh, no. It's closed."

"Oh, that? Castle, that's a derelict. Way out here in the middle of nowhere, dark. Are we even still in Illinois?"

"We're close to the Iowa state line. No, look, there's a light in the back. Security lamp, but it's attached to the building, I think."

"But it's not open."

"We don't need open, we just need a light." He pulled into the abandoned gas station, one of those former full-service stations where the retro pumps were squat red machines with whose faces showed the dial meter.

"Castle, these things aren't pumping gas. If anything, some local sets up shop on the weekends and pumps water to con people who are fleeing the city."

"Like you said: middle of nowhere. Beggars can't be choosers."

"If you pump water into this gorgeous Porsche—"

"I'm not putting anything into the tank," he said, nosing the vehicle forward and around to the back. The gravel pinged off the undercarriage. "There's electricity, and I have the adaptor and cord in the back."

"Shut the front door!" She sat up straight and peered through the windshield. "There's an outlet."

"A lot of these old filling stations have electrical outlets running along the cinder block walls."

"Research?" she asked.

"Ah, you could call it that," he chuckled, parking the car parallel and as close to the wall as possible. And out of the security lamp's glow. "I was a thirteen year old boy once, Beckett. All I'm saying."

She snorted. "No idea what that means but I get the sense I don't want to know. Wait, stop." She gripped his arm as he unlocked the door. "Let me, Rick. As little of your spore out there as possible."

"You're armed," he stated, frowning.

"Yes."

"Stay where I can see you in the side mirror."

"I will," she murmured, leaned in and softly kissed him. When she broke from his mouth, he realized he'd made a fist in the hair at her nape and he was holding her down against him. "Rick." Her voice a warning.

"Yeah." He let her go, his chest tightening. "I'm in control."

She gave him an eyebrow. "Where in the back?"

"Under the seat, in a black bag with the Porsche logo."

She patted his shoulder and crawled over the console. He was both relieved and jacked, his blood pounding in his head and his mouth watering even as he was so pleased to see how agile and strong she was again.

She got out on his side, back door, shut it quickly. The car rocked with the force of her effort. He reached down and popped the EV lever for the outlet panel. She pulled the power cord from the bag, uncoiling it and recoiling it around her forearm as she pried open the socket. He hated that they'd run the battery down so far, as the lithium ion battery did better being recharged with only one-fifth of its power having been used. It could last for twenty-two years on this one battery if they'd stuck to the one-fifth rule.

No one's fault. A one-off use wasn't going to ruin the car. (He was running electric-hybrid vehicle stats in his head to help keep himself calm, in control. He hadn't realized just how close he was.)

She had the cord plugged into the body of the car and he touched the digital panel to call up the Battery Management System and monitor the progress. He saw her in the side view mirror as she crouched before the wall outlet, and then how she looked at the end of the power cord to choose which adaptor end. When she plugged it into the wall, fitting it snugly, she glanced his way.

He checked the On-board Charger displayed on the BMS, and it was green. He gave her a thumb's up and she opened the back door again and crawled inside.

He turned in his seat. "You got it. It's charging."

She pushed the hair back from her face, studied him. "You okay?"

"It's there," he admitted. "It's a knot in my chest. Like something's wrong."

"I can see it in your eyes," she husked.

"Yeah?"

"They're nearly white. No blue."

He blinked. "Wow."

"Kinda hot. Also scary." She leaned in between the seats and gently sniffed at his neck. "You smell really damn good."

He chuckled, but his skin was taut.

"You're in control?" she asked.

"For now," he admitted. He pulled back, looked at her. She seemed to be balanced on the edge of consent. "Crawl up here. I told you I had an idea?"

She hesitated. Rocked forward, back. Cursed and crawled over the console even as he pulled her into his lap. "Whoa," she gasped. "Wow. You are hard."

"Thanks. I'd say it's all you, babe, but some of it is the vampire in me."

She giggled as he pushed the seat back with the electric control—too damn slow—and she wriggled her ass into his groin as he tried to adjust them. He snarled her name and she laughed again, but it was breathless, aroused.

"Keep still or I'll maul you."

"Promises, promises," she rasped.

He moaned, forehead falling to the back of her head, trying like hell not to lose his control. She subsided, though she lifted her arm and caught the back of his skull, turned her lips to brush his nose.

He wound his arm around her torso and touched his mouth to hers, forced himself to go lightly, lightly. She pressed herself back with a sigh at the corner of his mouth, warm and damp, and then her teeth scraped his bottom lip.

"Don't," he rasped. "I won't be able to control myself."

"Your own blood?" she murmured. Her tongue traced his bottom lip in tease.

"I don't know." He felt the whimper in his chest and ruthlessly suppressed it, instead shifting his hand to her inside thigh and returning her tease.

Kate gasped, arching into his fingers.

"That's it," he husked. He palmed her breast beneath the scrub top and she grunted, her arm dropping to trap his hand against her groin. "Tell me what you want, Kate."

"Everything," she groaned. Bowed forward over his teasing fingers. "Want—you."

He removed his hand from her breast and twisted his wrist to show the bandage. "This?"

"I…"

He pressed his fingers between her legs and she moaned. His lips touched her neck where her pulse throbbed, a heady arousal burning in his chest. "Quickly. Before I do."

"Rick," she breathed.

"What did I say," he growled.

She fumbled at the surgical tape which held the bandage against his skin. "Rick," she said, voice rising in warning. In want.

He rubbed her through the scrub pants.

"Fuck," she gasped, slamming herself back into him. He grunted in a sudden shock of pain, a kind of ache, and realized her nails had pierced his forearm. He was bleeding.

She dipped her head and caught the welling blood.

"Beckett," he snapped.

She lifted her lips to the bandage, made a rough noise at the scent of garlic in the gauze.

He tore at the bandage himself, ripped the tape off, exposing the open wound she'd made just a handful of hours ago. Something strong in him was taking over, something in him knew how this went, how he wanted it to go, and he banded his arm tightly at her ribs and brought his wrist up to her mouth.

Kate gasped, her head jerking back at the first touch of his fingers between her legs.

"We're both wet," he growled.

"Oh God." Her next curse was smothered by his wrist pressing to her mouth, and then the long lathe of her tongue as she battled him back. That tongue, her lips. It was as good as her head in his lap, that feeling of warm wetness, and he bucked his hips sharply as she drank from him.

There was the fire, as before, the intensity of that pain which made his knees weak. But he'd known it was coming and his body was clamoring for it anyway, and he gripped her cheekbones in his fingers and squeezed. Kate moaned, opening her mouth wider even as his elbow dug into her sternum. Possessive, holding her back against his chest, as she lapped and suckled at his wrist.

His hips ground into her backside.

Kate always had been the best sex of his life.

Please, she begged against his blood. Her tongue pressed inward, she latched on, and the pain sharpened, sent an arrow down to his groin.

He returned the favor with his fingers, pressing up inside her.

Kate jerked, began to writhe against his hand. Her fierce sucking at his wrist slacked off just enough for him to get a handle on her again, his grip on her jaw strong enough that he could pry her off him if he had to. Maybe.

The fire licked through his veins, pleasure-pain. The drain from him also soothed the raggedness, the clamoring, and he was swimming in lust. Heavy and yet weightless. Moving his fingers inside her.

She moaned his name with her mouth filled with his blood. His mouth caressed her ear, her neck. His teeth grazed that throbbing pulse with such longing. "You're so wet and swollen for me," he rasped.

"Please," she gasped, arching against his hands.

"A little more," he encouraged. Dragged his open wrist against her lips. She licked, lapped, made that low sex-growl in her throat that always fucked him up. It was a hit to his system, an immediate sucker punch that both laid him low and sent him spiraling, dizzy.

His vision began to spot. He laid his head back against the seat, heat spilling between them. Remembered where he was, what he was supposed to be doing, her shiver of How do I stop?

He went slowly between her legs and pushed inside her as deeply as the angle would allow—her hips bucked and jerked as if burned.

"Rick!"

"Come for me," he murmured, his eyes heavy-lidded. Drained. This was the necessary balance. His life for hers. Hers for his. "Need you to come now."

Her hips pushed into his hand, even as her tongue worked him over. He was battling hard to stay focused, stay in the game, his fingers seemed disconnected and unhelpful, fumbling. Couldn't find her.

He rubbed against something just right and she cried out, stiffening in his embrace. He did it again, again, the pinpoint of his awareness focused between her legs.

She screamed. Her orgasm was brutal, a wild thing set loose; he felt clawed to shreds by the time she slumped sideways and lay panting against his neck, but it was already too far gone for him.

He was not entirely without strength when he bent his head to her pulse and bared his teeth.

—-xxx—-