For the Dead Travel Fast
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She drove.
It was dark and the sky ombréd from navy to a green-yellow at the edges, so that when she looked in the rear view mirror, she could tell now that dawn was approaching. It suffused the car with graduated shadows, her hands a yellow-black, Castle a sleeping husk of grey-green, the leather interior pockets of textured blue.
She kept a constant scan on the western horizon, searching for another out-of-the-way town with a similar not-yet-abandoned filling station, something which would hide them but not draw attention to their hiding. However, she saw nothing that would work. They would need to eat, stock up on bottled water, get gas so that the battery didn't run down (he had told her this will shorten its life) and call Alexis to pass on a carefully worded message about their whereabouts.
She didn't like the flimsy nature of their plan, because it inherently suggested weakness in their future as well. But remaining in that underground lab with Dr Harris had been a nonstarter. She'd been so careful to keep her own existence unknown to the Horde, and after discovering the sickening truth about her therapist, she'd spent a decade pretending vampirism had nothing to do with her.
Well, now it had doubly to do with her, and she owed it to Castle to know as much as possible. Knowledge was power. Power was security. They had precious little of that.
She glanced at him as the car crested a rise. She saw faint traces of sweat on his shirt at the armpits and collar, but she didn't know definitively what it meant. Fever was an indication of phase, Harris's notes had said, but there was no way of knowing what phase, what it might be doing to him, or what he might need. Or even if she would need to defend herself from him at some inopportune moment, vulnerable because she would not hurt him to save herself.
The final phase could last, she had read, anywhere from four hours to three months. The longest recorded had been 93 days, which Dr Harris herself had not witnessed but had reported as hearsay from an older member of the Horde. Kate had transitioned in a matter of days, almost a week, holed up in her father's cabin with Royce on patrol outside, carving a rut from lake to cabin, checking on her long enough to drain her—and with it came the withering pain—before slinking back outside to leave her curled up on the living room floor.
(She remembered his hand at the back of her head, holding water to her mouth, the way it had tasted metallic and dank, as if stagnant; the taste hadn't left her mouth for weeks after. She remembered the burn through her limbs and around her heart, like she was dying all the time, and the scream of terror trapped in her throat as he'd drunk from her. Desperate for something she didn't have it in her to give.)
Dr Harris had been certain Royce had merely done it wrong, messed it up, that he'd arrested the process and then couldn't kickstart it to finish her transition successfully. She'd been arrested in her development, and tearing into Castle's heart had likely saved her life, forced her VL to start over again.
Castle, so far, wasn't having that same problem. In fact, Castle's taste in her mouth settled some restless she hadn't quite realized had always been there. Castle's taste in her mouth was both comforting and tantalizing, just like the best and most expensive wine: it drugged her even as it revved her up.
Mike Royce had never found that in her blood. She remembered that last time, as she'd debated whether or not it was fair of her to fight him off (she'd 'asked for it' after all), Royce had turned his head and spat. Swiped the back of his hand at his mouth, disgusted.
(The tremble through her body even today, the sense of excruciating disappointment, how she had let him down, how much she had looked up to him and thought he could save her, thought he had all the answers. That vampirism was the way to be stronger, better, smarter—to solve her mother's case, defeat her killer.)
For three months after, Royce had driven her to the indigent clinic in the Bowery to get her tested for STDs. Blood disorders. Get tested, Beckett. She wondered what he had thought those results would find, what the lab technician might have seen. Had Royce had an insider at the clinic who would funnel him information? Maybe one of them had been a vampire and knew what antigens were vampire-related. Whatever it was, she'd never turned into what he'd been looking for, because it wasn't long after that he had transferred out of her House and then out of New York entirely.
Kate pressed a hand against her cheek but tears didn't manifest. The urge to cry was a brief spasm in her throat and then gone. She had shed her tears in LA, grieved for what Royce had been to her, what he'd done to her, and what she hadn't been able to provide for him.
She looked again to Castle and counted herself more than lucky she had him, that he found all of this thrilling and good fodder for novels, that he was the kind of man who loved first and asked questions later. If having kids was still in the cards for them, she held no reservations about their parentage.
Maybe he'd been right to leave their options open with Dr Harris. Should there be complications, they'd need a doctor.
No, stop. Don't go looking for trouble.
Too many what ifs, too many conditionals. All these iterations she couldn't map out clearly. Those unknowns were why she struggled to feel confident in this endeavor. There were too many moving parts right now, not the least of which was their physical journey through the next eighteen hours of travel towards Great Salt Lake, where, by some miracle of sulfur and algae, the ripe and willing sensuality of her husband in phase might be masked and dampened and rendered neutral.
She couldn't imagine it. Not when she sat stewing in it, the car so filled with sex she was uncomfortably shifting in the seat. Her arousal was notched and poised, ready, for a thing she was unwilling to do (drink from him) but which seemed to be necessary for both of their survivals (drink from him).
No.
"What time's it?" Croaked from his lips. She glanced at him and reached out, squeezing his forearm for that connection. He grunted and shifted in the seat. "How long have I been out?"
"A couple hours. It's close to five." She realized her voice was pitched low, as if she might accidentally wake the vampire. She cleared her throat and spoke normally. "We officially crossed into Iowa an hour ago. I haven't seen a gas station that would work, but I thought it might be better to hit one up during rush hour."
He was silent a moment. "They have rush hour around here?"
She chuckled. "Remains to be seen."
"We'll call Alexis," he mumbled.
"Yes," she answered. "That's my top priority. Then food and water, gas."
"Top priority," he sighed. "Why I love you."
Okay, so maybe most of this trip would be her crying through her unprocessed emotions. She found his hand and he laced their fingers. "How do you feel?" she asked gently.
"Hot. Eyes hurt. Chest hurts. Mouth tastes bad. Want to lie down."
She sucked in a breath. "You want to lie down, you should do that, Rick. I don't know what's next for you, and it might be that your instincts for this are the best guidance we have."
"Yeah, might do that." He didn't move; his hand was warm and loose around hers. "Be good to put an obstacle between us too, I think."
"You wouldn't hurt me," she said.
"You don't know that. Mike hurt you, repeatedly."
"He did," she said. She took a deep breath. "But. I believe in us."
There was a long silence from Castle, only the white noise of their tires on the highway between them. Castle shifted and she heard the seat belt slide back and hit the door. "Don't let me hurt you. If you're wrong, and there's something uncontrollable about the phase—I mean, even drinking from you, Kate. That can hurt you if it's too much. Don't let it get that far."
"You can have a little from me," she said. "I need you to understand that if I'm drinking from you, you're drinking from me. It goes both ways."
He made a disbelieving noise. "You hear us? My brain just caught up, I think, and my mind is blown. All over again. Drinking from you. You drank my blood. It was orgasmic." His chuckle died. "But wow. A vampire. We're vampires."
She offered the twilight a weak smile. "Yeah, it's… not something I lived with easily either. Mostly didn't."
"You're very good at keeping secrets."
"Even from myself."
He chuckled. She heard the rasp in his voice, the dryness. He needed water, fluids. If he did need to drink, she would rather it be her than anything else. In fact, she had a stab of irrational anger at the idea of him not drinking from her, and maybe that was her own instinct, her claiming of him.
"Have any of those medical records suggested that vampires have to drink from human blood? Or that it becomes an uncontrollable thing—I mean when not in phase—everyday vampire life, whoops can't control my bite."
"Not so far, but these records deal mostly with phases of transition. I wasn't looking at everyday vampire life."
"Mm." He began moving towards the center console, gathering himself up for the climb. "Still, will I need you to handcuff me to the bed each night? Otherwise I'll go rampaging through the city?"
"I haven't had that experience."
"You are a bit deformed though, Beckett."
She huffed, slapping at his ass as he tumbled into the back. She laughed as he grumbled and shoved the duffle bag around, got himself situated. "Maybe it's that, but Dave, the peacemaker? He didn't go nuts on us."
"Right, but I kinda thought he had some sorta… haha, pace-maker installed. For the peacemaker. Get it?"
"You're not as cute as you think are, Castle."
"Not cute, handsome."
"Ruggedly so." She smirked in the rear view mirror and their eyes met; his pale white-blue and crinkled at the corners with laugh lines.
"Whatever it is, we'll figure it out," she said. "If I need to handcuff you to the headboard, that will be no hardship, let me assure you."
He laughed in return, unscrewing a bottle of Powerade he'd found somewhere back there.
She realized, quite suddenly, that she believed it. Whatever happened, they'd figure it out.
Alone, she was a wreck. With him—they could handle anything.
—-xxx—-