For the Dead Travel Fast
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He could tell it hurt a lot. Especially when she moved. He tried not to cause any startlement or sudden twitches, but every so often a flinch would make her whimper.
He finally got out of bed and slept on the couch. Not because he wanted to, exactly, but because he was sure his restless, fretful worrying over her wasn't helping. He laid there, listening in the darkness, not wanting her to need him, but also kind of wanting her to? He wasn't sure why. Come to her rescue, maybe, or offer his veins for her succor, or… something else Byronic. (Code for moronic, she'd told him once. Byronic heroes were usually limp idiots who couldn't get past their own bleak outlooks.)
The next morning, he made coffee at dawn (he hadn't slept) and slunk into the bedroom to wait on her. She was asleep though, and she looked wan—much like her hated Byronic heroes—and the covers had been thrown off and so had her shirt, sometime in the night.
The bandages had itched her like crazy yesterday, and so Harris had okayed removing them. The wounds all looked good, despite her twitching all night, though Castle tried not to stare too much. The stitches had been absorbed, though whatever remnants were still puckering her skin had made her want to tear open her own ribs last night, but he'd luckily forestalled that option several times.
She had refused the pain pills after day three saw her vomiting in the bathroom. She'd turned her head away when he'd brought them in, said she knew all too well what that would do. There'd been a long conversation about addictive personalities and what had happened at her dad's cabin when she'd gone that summer to recover from the shooting at the cemetery. He didn't think she was—she was so iron-willed—but he didn't insist.
"Are you creepy-stalking me?" she rasped, eyes still closed.
"I don't know that you can stalk your own wife."
"Oh yes. You can. I've seen the case files from the Sex Crimes department. Domestic violence is rampant."
He winced, and she slanted her eyes at him, curved her fingers in a come here motion, as if in apology. He stepped in close and sank to his knees so he wouldn't jostle the mattress, holding her coffee in both hands as her supplicant.
"One sec," she rasped.
"Long as you need."
"This sucks."
"You're alive. It doesn't suck. But it can, because. You know. We're vampires."
She snort-giggled and then immediately whimpered.
"Sorry, sorry," he whispered. "I made a joke. That was very mean of me."
"No, it's fine, it's good to be amused by something. Just—I used to be very adept at not laughing at your jokes; I need to channel that version of myself for a few more days."
"Yeah, maybe—wait, does that mean you found my jokes funny all along? But you just squashed—"
"You know I did," she sighed. And before he could recover from that bombshell of a revelation, she dragged herself partially upright and made gimme gimme hands at the coffee he held.
He gave, though he eased very carefully onto the mattress next to her, became her brace when she needed to sit up enough to swallow. A careful twining of his arm around her shoulders avoided the incision points with their itchy scarring, but it also meant he didn't accidentally squeeze her torso either.
The acid wash had sounded horrific, but it was really just heated chemo treatment sloshed around inside while on the table, and then suctioned out again—carefully, of course. And it was diluted much more than the chemo you put straight into the blood, Aurora Harris had assured him; acid wash was just the informal term for the Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy, HIPEC. The pain would all be from the rapid-healing of the incisions and the surgery itself rather than the fact of acid having been put inside her.
(It was not really acid. He had to get the disturbing vision of Two-Face out of his head. This wasn't a Batman cartoon. Even if they were vampires.)
"Okay," she said. A faint hum. "I need to get up and walk around."
"Do you though?"
"Yes."
He knew she was pushing herself because of the invisible and unknowable deadline of his last phase. She wanted to be there for the ceremony, not just because she was his Progenitor (a word they didn't like to use here, but he kinda liked it, very sci-fi), but because of the nature of the kiva tradition and the people here who had welcomed them as Children of Katoyis. It was an honor they both felt, and he knew she was determined to make it.
He helped her to her feet and slung his arm high at her ribs under her armpit, her coffee mug in his other hand because he didn't want to grab her too hard. She was more steady on her feet than he'd expected, and apparently more than she'd thought too. She let out a whistling breath and laid her cheek on his shoulder when they got to the door.
"Need a break?" he murmured.
"Yeah. But it's better than yesterday."
"Yeah? That's impressive." Four days since surgery and she was stronger walking beside him than he'd thought possible. "How do the surgical sites feel?"
"Damn itchy."
"Let's ask Tessa if there's something for that. She works on the recovery side—surely someone over there is suffering withdrawal symptoms like that."
"Mm, we can ask. Let me get to the kitchen and sit at the table first?"
"Oh. Yeah. Yes. Of course."
When she was stiff-backed in the chair, he did follow through and call in Tessa, but it was Michaela on duty for them, and she came quickly. "Hey guys, how do we feel this morning?" She crouched before Kate and gestured for her to lean back enough to inspect the wounds. All Kate wore was a sports bra and a pair of his new boxer shorts, and they could all see how angry and red the incision sites were.
"Feel irritated," Kate said. "Not me, I mean, the wounds do. The scars."
Michaela ran two fingers over one of the scars and Kate flinched. "Burning or itching?"
"Both."
"Hm. Let me call in some topical, but I'm going to have Aurora come check on you."
Kate met his eyes with that Aurora intimacy and he smirked back, wondering if there was something there. Michaela was a very lovely, statuesque native woman who was vampire through and through: she had the look of a creature of the night. Not that he'd ever tell her that.
"Be right back, Kate." Michaela went smoothly to her feet and out of their suite, and Castle sank down to the table beside his wife.
She leaned on his shoulder again. He reached up and petted her hair.
"Stop that," she sighed.
He smiled, messed with her a little more by dragging the backs of his fingers across her cheek bone. But she caught his hand and held him there a moment, her breathing slow and careful.
They sat in silence that way until Michaela returned with a topical cream, and then he shifted to make his wife some breakfast—and put some distance between them, not just because he was getting on her nerves, but also because nearness got him worked up, and worked up meant aroused, and too much arousal might send him into phase.
Phase Thirteen. The Phase to End All Phases. One Phase to Rule Them All. (It was actually more like his eighteenth phase, due to how fast he'd gone tearing through the transition, and Dr Harris had tried to count them all and it was something like that. Maybe twenty. But everyone called the last phase the thirteenth, and always had, and he was certain it had something to do with the superstitions surrounding the number thirteen. Or vice versa. Chicken and egg—)
"Hello? Mind if I come in?" It was Dr Harris, stepping inside their temporary home as Kate called out for her to enter. "Hello there, Rick, Kate. Michaela tells me you're having a reaction to the stitches?"
"I don't think they're in there anymore," Kate said. "But it itches and burns. I couldn't sleep last night."
"At all?" Castle asked, sighing.
"Maybe some," she amended.
"Let me check then," Dr Harris said and knelt beside Michaela on the kitchen floor.
There were a few murmured words, and Kate's soft replies, and Castle tried not to be too nosy but to keep scrambling the eggs on the little hot plate while he waited for the toast to cool (she didn't like hot toast; she liked it brittle and cold and he did not know her damage).
"Rick, do you mind?"
He scraped the eggs off onto a plate and turned, spatula in hand, as if he hadn't been trying to overhear. "Yes?"
"We're gonna need you to use your magic."
Kate looked slightly panicked when he met her eyes. "My magic, ladies?"
"Yes. There's a stitch that won't dissolve. For some reason, the scar produced a sac around it and it's causing Kate discomfort, possibly might be infected. So if you don't mind, use your bite to dig it out, and your kiss to seal it back."
"Holy shit."
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