For the Dead Travel Fast

—-xxx—-

He tore into the sausage and egg biscuit with zero finesse or table manners. She was laughing at him softly from the passenger seat—he'd insisted on spelling her—and picking apart her ham and egg bagel thing. "Don't laugh," he said, but it was through an overstuffed mouthful and wasn't legible and she hummed and smirked like he was cute.

Eh. Castle would take that.

He'd bought four sausage and egg biscuits, all for himself, but it wasn't like she hadn't gotten two of those ham bagels and one fat cinnamon roll to split. Plus large coffees and two large ice waters. He was drinking as much water as he was coffee, which he thought said something noteworthy about this vampirism thing.

He had never been good about drinking water. She was always pushing it at him, because Beckett, though terrible at nutritious meals, was a champ at getting her full eight glasses a day. "Slow down or you'll choke," she warned.

He moderately wolfed the half of the biscuit left, managed not to choke but only barely, and fumbled for his coffee cup. The hit of caffeine and burnt beans was exactly right—both painful and invigorating—and he felt better than he had in years.

"I guess it's the vampire side of things," he said, licking a crumb of biscuit from the webbing of his thumb. Eyes on the road. Seventeen plus hours to Great Salt Lake, thereabouts.

"What's that? Being so hungry? I think it's just having been without food for days."

"No, I mean, this feeling of… energy. I'd forgotten how good youth felt."

"Youth?" She paused in eating, the coffee pressed against her sternum, her spine to the door to look at him. She was beautiful—always had been to him—but the harshness of her early beauty had tempered with a softness that came from a vulnerability she so rarely displayed. It had an extra layer of breath-taking like that. "Castle?"

"I think the usual rebound time after a serious gunshot wound is a bit longer," he said carefully. "And while I don't want to put words in your mouth, I think you feel it too: drinking each other's blood is a massive hit to the system. Like Gatorade on steroids."

"I'm not sure how that tracks," she said, a twitch of her lips.

"If I could mainline oxygen," he went on. "Think of it—that's basically what vampirism is. A lichen mutualism which feeds on iron and shits out oxygen, and by extension, we get this fountain of youth type blood running in our veins. Plus the cell renewal and tissue repair stuff the algae does?"

"Hm."

"Not pretty, no. I'll work on the copy later. The point being: the mechanisms at play in VL really do give us so many benefits."

"That is why I wanted to be transitioned in the first place," she said. A bitter sigh. "But that didn't really pan out for me."

"Didn't it?" he pressed. "Look at you. You're one of the most competitive, driven, gorgeous forces of nature I've ever laid eyes on. You don't stop. You don't quit."

She shrugged uncomfortably. He knew she hated being under the microscope, but she'd shirked the vampire lineage for so long, and look where it had brought them. Or well, not brought them. Closing her eyes to what it was that they were now…

"Maybe you were transitioned too young to fully appreciate it," he said carefully. "I'm telling you: Old age is not ideal for the bones; the years add weight. Everything falls apart. You just can't do what you used to be able to do. One day, you push yourself up from the floor where you were playing with your daughter, and you realize, oh God, I might not be able to get up."

She smiled, reached a hand out to lay on his forearm. "Poor thing. You've managed well enough." A slow skim of her fingers to his wrist. "In bed."

He grunted; she really didn't understand even as she made him hard as a fifteen year old. "You never had that moment, that stark Before and After. For us mortals, turning thirty is stepping over the divide between youth and 'it's all downhill from here.' Thirty-four is when it hit me hardest: a load of bricks to the back. My neck hurts sitting at the laptop for too long. My thumbs have pre-arthritis. My knee. Damn, I'd done that trick a hundred times before that day on the slope with you."

She rubbed his arm consolingly, hiding a smile in her coffee cup.

Yeah, she had no idea. He wasn't just goofy or clumsy. "Thirty is a marked line, Kate. I would wake up from an all-nighter and it was like the sleep had done nothing for me. Used to be I could get four hours and be back at the races. But even a little sleeplessness is wading through a bog with everything out of joint. Like I ought to have done stretches for this herculean effort of sleep."

She laughed, but when she saw the grimace on his face she quieted. "Oh." She turned to look out the window, her words soft. "Lanie said something about that when she turned thirty. She said you'll see. Like it was some magical cut-off age. Mostly about staying out all night drinking like she used to."

"Did you do that with her?" He couldn't picture young, hungry, razor-thin Beckett doing that.

"No."

"Ha."

"Shut up."

"You don't shatter records at the Academy, then go on to have the distinction of youngest to make detective—all while drinking all night at the club."

She half-shrugged. "But the thing is… I could have. I was vampire by then; Royce transitioned me right after my rookie year."

"Which is what I'm getting at," he said gently. "You've never had that drop off. You don't know how good you've had it, being thirty but also a vampire—so it's really more like twenty."

"I've felt older these last few years," she said cautiously. He could see her frowning down at her coffee. "After I was shot… it took forever to feel right again." Her voice was quiet, too still. "Being a vampire didn't help; it made it worse. The light hurt, being outside was PTSD-inducing, my hands would shake, and then the emotional responsibility of—" She stopped abruptly, a harsh breath in.

"Of me," he said, nudging her with hand with his knuckles. "I get it. Especially now. Being a vampire in love. What a complex web we weave."

She colored faintly, cheeks and throat, and he turned back to the road, trying not to pressure her for more of her experiences. She needed to process the vampire in her as well as he did; she'd spent so long denying it that a lot of this was just as new for her.

"Well. Yes," she said slowly. "Being already so intimate with you—not like that Castle—"

"Did I say anything?"

"Your face says plenty."

"No," he chortled. "No, no. Don't mind me. Do continue, my dear detective."

She sucked in a breath. "You haven't… called me that in a while, you know."

"Well, technically, you're Captain Beckett, so—"

"Yes, but, it's kind of pet name," she said, pinking again even as she rolled her eyes at herself.

"It is," he confirmed softly.

She curved her hand over his, thumb brushing down his wrist bone. "You called me that, time to time, all that mirth in your eyes, and yes, it was intimate. You know it was."

"It was," he gave easily. "It is."

"Yes, and well, that was a responsibility, that meant something to me, but I'd been neglecting to mention this very big thing—"

"That you were a vampire."

She huffed. "Yes, that I was regretfully a vampire, but at the same time, vampire meant nothing to me, it held no place in my life, it didn't really start to make a difference until I was trying to get cleared for duty and the doctor giving me the physical said I was anemic. It kinda clicked—oh yeah—and I took some pills and things started to slowly come back."

"Dr Harris said you've been growing increasingly toxic for the last frew years."

Kate sighed. "Yes."

"And. That's been the length of time you haven't been feeling one hundred percent."

"Oh."

He nodded, eyes on the road, the pieces of the plot coming together for him. "Getting shot put you all out of balance, whatever meager peace treaty your VL had hammered out with your systems. You lost a lot of blood—"

"I lost a lot of blood," she husked. "Oh."

"Transfusions, I remember him saying a couple bags—I purposefully didn't let myself look up how much blood loss someone could survive because—"

"Oh Castle," she rasped.

His head bobbed; his throat momentarily closing up.

"So yes," she continued for him. "The lichen was struggling, my body was struggling. It took forever to feel good again, and I guess I kept feeding it what I could, but I didn't know enough." She laced her fingers with his over top of his hand. "I'm sorry for pretending I could maintain my ignorance and no one would get hurt. And that apology works on multiple levels."

He glanced at her quickly. "No." A shake of his head. "No more apologies for the past. We can dissect it, analyze it for motive, and learn to do better. But there is no need for the kind of guilt and sorrow I see in your eyes, Kate."

She let out a little breath, bent her head to his shoulder, leaning on his arm which he'd braced on the center console. She wasn't much for overt displays of affection, but when she chose to give it up, to let him be the one who held them up for a while, he was made all the stronger for it.

She leaned on him. That was some kind of magic.

—-xxx—-