For the Dead Travel Fast
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Kate pressed her fingers into the wound, watched the blood well up with a detached sense of wonder. How the blood pooled, rippled with her fingers' intrusion, how the dark red ran.
Red. Ran.
Dark red. Ran.
So much blood welled up and spilled—
"What are you doing?"
She startled and her fingers fell away, smearing against her ribs and hip, a path of near-violence. "Castle," she breathed.
"Did you open it back up?" he snapped. Already striding towards her, hands pinning her hips, and his mouth lapping at her stomach. She gasped, erotic flame burning beneath her skin, his tongue against the wound.
She fell back against the bathroom sink, planting her hand to the counter, her knees buckling. "God," she moaned.
He suckled at her blood and she felt the flesh knitting together, sealed into a seam by the force of his mouth on her, his insistence that she be made whole. When he raised his head from her stomach, her blood-dripped fingers were caught in his hair, her body trembling on the edge of orgasm, healed.
"What would you do that for?" he growled. His lips were jeweled with her blood, black gems in the light. He licked and it disappeared. "Why are you digging into your own skin?"
She shook her head, tears springing to her eyes. "No. No, I didn't—"
"Beckett," he snarled.
"I didn't," she whispered. "It just… happened."
He still held her hips pinned in his grip, and his fingers were tight. "I don't want to see you bruised and battered again," he warned her. "I won't let you do that yourself, I don't care what you call it, or how many damn cases you run after, ghosts you chase. You will not damage yourself as my wife—"
"It wasn't self harm!" She pushed on his chest, but he was rock hard with anger (grief) and though he'd stepped over the line, she didn't quite blame him. "I didn't do it to myself. I felt the blood under my shirt, the wetness, and I came in here to look. And I saw it."
He blinked, straightened.
She bit her lip, realized her hands were shaking.
"It split open," he rasped. "You didn't…"
Not this time. "I didn't."
He stared at her. She felt the terror rising, the sense that she really knew nothing about this, she wasn't prepared, they weren't prepared—
"We'll call Dr Harris." He glanced down, checking her stomach. "It seems to have… stayed together this time."
"For now." She touched the place—it was the one she had kept open for him to drink from, the gunshot wound he had closed up in his first phasing.
"It's fine," he said. "It will be fine. It will be something they know about, something simple. Too much garlic in the milkshake."
She nodded.
He grabbed her by the hand, tugging her out of the bathroom. She followed, mute, while he picked up the phone and called the nurse. It was Tessa, she could tell by the way he talked with her, though she couldn't have said what the words were, what any of it meant. She was trapped in her own fear.
This was it. It had been too easy. Too wonderful. Her whole life had been put in the balance when her mother had been murdered, and she had known, she had known and had gladly paid the cost. The price. Herself.
Vampirism couldn't save her.
Only now, because of him, the love of him, she wanted very badly not to die for her mother's justice.
Castle turned to look at her, slowly replacing the phone, the look on his face decidedly neutral.
She opened her mouth to ask what.
But the door opened just that fast, and in came a whole team, Dr Harris half-dressed and flying towards her, two EMTs, Tessa, and the other nurse, Michaela, and she knew.
It was time to pay.
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