Abelina's Journal

Just in case

abelina — Tue, 02 May 2017 01:30:51 GMT

I've imported my LJ entries and comments to Dreamwidth. They still exist here and all my fic remains public but I've made my personal entries private for now. I haven't had a chance to fully investigate these new LJ TOS but what I've heard about them has made me nervous. It's not a bad idea, anyway, to backup the content.

Call for Banners

abelina — Sat, 22 Oct 2016 16:07:14 GMT

People! Friends of mine! Remember seasonal_spuffy? Well, we're still active and prepping for round 21 and to start that off, we need banners! Below is the banner contest info but please note that the deadline had been extended to October 25 as (so far) we've only received three banners.

Go forth and be creative and don't forget to sign up to participate in the round - sign up here.

Originally posted by teragramm at Call for Banners

To start off our 21st round of seasonal_spuffy, we are again doing our traditional banner competition.

The theme this round is “Under the Influence” interpret that as you will, or not. It's up to you

Here are the rules for the competition:

- You can submit up to three banners
- Banners must be no bigger than 800x400 pixels
- No smaller than 750x300 pixels (anywhere in between is fine too.)
- Banners must be new and anonymous, so please do not post your banners elsewhere, until the results have been posted.
- The dead line is October 23rd, midnight (PST)
- Submit entries as a comment to this post - all comments will be screened.
- If you don't have a lj, you can email the banner to sspuffy@gmail.com
- When submitting a banner, give us both the image and url. (See example below)

Example:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/teragramm4/Seasonal%20spuffy%20banners/70093_original.jpg

After the winner is announced, the winner will be asked to "sign" their banner. The signed banner will be the one used as the header, so remember to leave room for your signature.

The poll with all the pretties will go up a day or so after the deadline.

Have fun and show us your fabulous work!!

Fall Right In - Chapter 43/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 00:32:26 GMT

Title: Fall Right In
All Chapters Here | AO3 | FFN |

Fall Right In
Chapter 43 - Come Down from Your Mountain and Stand Where We’ve Been

*~*

Conversation slipped into more casual territory as they finished breakfast, the finale to which was a story of a hunt gone wrong, told with enthusiasm by Thaniel and Orion. Well-practiced and embellished to hell, though the rest of the table played along, gasping at all the right places without being overly dramatic about it. Even Diana smirked at the punch line, looking up fully for the first time since breakfast began to watch Thaniel deliver it, to a round of laughter that wasn’t faked even though they’d probably heard some version of this exact story a hundred times before.

After that, the people started drifting away from the table. Beth stood, reaching for her plate to clear it but Orion waved her off and got to it himself instead. After a minute Diana set her book down on the table with a loud thump and got up to help, prompted by Sandrine, who, sleeping baby propped up on her shoulder, had gone to the stove to make tea.

Following a word in private with the Hodges’ and a kiss on the head for both Sandrine and the baby, Greg declared their tour of the grounds would be a working tour—that is, he’d show them around while he ran the perimeter, something he did a regularly during the day, and if not him, then one of a select handful of trusted others. He chattered on about the details of that, which Daryl only sort of half listened to as he stood in the hall outside their room while Beth retrieved her crossbow and refilled her quiver to replace the bolts she had to leave behind in Dane’s camp.

(continue reading on AO3 - too large for LJ. Grrrr)

to be continued in chapter 44 >>

Fall Right In - Chapter 42/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Tue, 30 Aug 2016 03:26:53 GMT

Fall Right In
Chapter 42 - We’re Raising Our White Flags and Holding Our Breath

*~*

The hallway outside room thirteen was wider and brighter than Daryl remembered from last night, when everything had blurry edges and the high, looming walls wanted to swallow him whole. When all he could do was just keep following Beth, focus on matching her footsteps so he didn’t stumble in that tricky light. With his vision blurred and his head spinning, it was the only thing he had to keep his mind off the pain, the tremor threatening to shake him apart at the seams until Beth could stitch him back together again.

But it was bright this morning. His vision had cleared and he could almost fully open his left eye with barely a pinch of pain. Light streamed into the big room at the far end, from the wrong direction to stretch down the hall but the way it glowed there, beckoning, was enough to take this high, narrow hallway and make it feel a bit like a trail through the woods. Like some little woodsy path, old growth trees rising up tall on either side of it, leading to a sunlit meadow there in the distance.

Welcoming or not, though, they were still amongst strangers, and that wasn’t something that could be undone by a bit of sunlight. Voices floated in from the nearer end of that long hall, past the final two rooms and through a similar wooden door. Seeing it, he remembered shuffling through something that could’ve been a kitchen, from the glimpses he caught of it at the edges of the lantern light. Which meant breakfast, and their hosts, waited just beyond that heavy wooden barrier.

Daryl stopped a couple of paces away, and turned back to Beth. “You good, Greene?”

Beth let her shoulder fall against the wall, arms once again wrapped around her middle, and eyed the door with something of an unreadable storm churning in her eyes. She nodded without taking her eyes off it. “Yeah. Gotta be, right?”

It was about the best answer he could hope for, as much as he hated seeing that grimness in her and hated it even more that he couldn’t fix it. There was nothing to be done about it, not now, not until she could fight through it herself, so he returned her nod and tipped his chin toward the door. “Right. C’mon.”

They stepped inside and stopped there, just far enough in to let the door swing shut behind them. Daryl hadn’t known what to expect, heading out of the relative safety of the room to join these strangers. Certainly not a scene like something straight outta Mayberry, or one of them country women’s magazine’s Ma used to torture herself dreaming over between bottles of Blue Nun.

Ivory coloured walls plastered like cake icing, exposed beam ceiling just low enough to be cozy but high enough not to close in. Endless cupboards and mismatched cabinets, counter space, a mixture of dark stained wood and that scuffed paint, pale green and off-white, the same two colours old things were always done in. Knickknacks and hanging plants, cross-stitch circles, children’s art, and old photographs in mismatched frames. Pots and pans suspended from the ceiling on a giant metal frame and layers of patterned aprons dangling from a bare wood coat rack. A rocking chair, sat over in the corner with a pair of Siamese cats curled up in it, next to a fireplace of whitewashed brick hosting a clutter of keepsakes atop the wood beam mantle.

And light. So much of it streaming in from the wall of windows in front of him, barely dampened by the gauzy curtains hanging over them, and for a few dizzying seconds after stepping into this kitchen, Daryl Dixon was a scrawny little kid again in clothes that were two sizes too small, wearing shoes that pinched, standing all lit up in a tiny patch of memories kept safe from the fire and ash raining down all around him.

He’d never had a grandmother, or at least, not one he could remember. Never much considered what it’d be like to have one, either, except for those few months after Merle was gone but before the fire, and all them other boys talked about theirs like grandmothers were something special and amazing; one more valuable thing they had and he didn’t. And that got him thinking about his, whoever she was. If she even existed in the first place. What she’d be like—sometimes little and fat, sometimes tall and bony, but always smiling, and she’d smell of brown sugar and black tea and cookies fresh out of the oven. Oatmeal with chocolate chips, there on the table with a tall glass of ice-cold lemonade whenever he came to visit, hot and sweaty from running since he didn’t have no bike to get there.

He hadn’t thought about her in years, this imaginary grandmother. That kind old woman who burnt up in that fire, right down to ashes beneath Mama’s bed, but he remembered her now. Remembered, because in his mind she always had a kitchen like this one.

A wave of nausea swept through him, but one breath, then two, and it faded away, taking with it the extra bit of tension he was unaware of until right then. Until it eased from across his shoulders, and Daryl didn’t know whether he should trust it or not, if that lingering unease was Beth’s nerves rubbing off on him, or was this sense of relief just a parlour trick brought on by some well-placed decor. Another trick of light and shadows, like the hallway before but on a much bigger scale. But grandmother or not, nerves or not, there was something inviting about this kitchen, in a way he never thought a kitchen could be even in the depths of his childhood imaginings.

Like stepping out of time, almost. Back before the turn. Back before kitchens had things like ranges or refrigerators in them, of which this one had neither. Just an ancient-looking iron cook stove, wood-burning from the smell of it, older even than the rest of the kitchen around it.

An old woman stood there, hunched over a steaming pot, humming as she stirred its contents with a whisk. Wisps of grey hair peeked out from her flowered kerchief and trailed down her back in a thick braid long enough to reach the ties of the bumblebee-patterned apron she wore. She was all mismatched layers of fabric bulk in a thick patchwork sweater and knit shawl, long green skirt with tiny pink flowers all over it that nearly skimmed the floor. Enough to make her look about as round as she was tall, even with the inch of heel on those sturdy brown boots, except Daryl suspected she was actually quite tiny under it all. He couldn’t drag his eyes away from those hands, the pale, spotted skin, almost translucent where it stretched over thick, twisted knuckles. If he hadn’t seen her with his own eyes, Daryl would have bet just about anything that there was nobody that old left alive in this world.

He watched her work, only vaguely aware of Beth coming to stand beside him, but when she clutched at his fingers and let out a little gasp, he glanced over to find her staring, not at the old woman, but at the space beside her.

Curly—Orion—stood there, his right eye every bit as black as Daryl’s left and both of Beth’s, tending to something sizzling in a skillet and looking more childlike despite the shiner than he had at all yesterday, in a White Sox t-shirt and plaid pajamas, chatting happily to his elder cooking partner. Beth’s nervous little smile shifted into a genuine one, small but warm. Shit. He hadn’t even noticed, he was so out of it, that Orion wasn’t there last night when they arrived, but he bet Beth had. Of course she had. Of course the boy’s absence weighed on her as much as all the rest.

Beth’s gasp, although quiet, alerted the others to their arrival. The din of conversation from the long wood slab table in the centre of the room died down as Greg Hunter got to his feet and crossed the room to greet them. Beth’s smile fell, not completely away but enough, and though she didn’t shrink back, her spine stiffened and she shifted to face Greg straight-on as he approached, her free hand tightening against her shirt where the strap of her crossbow would be, if she’d brought it.

She had her knife, and had lent Daryl her gun. These days nobody went unarmed even to breakfast. Greg wore his weapons this morning, both handgun and knife secured to his belt, and Daryl was willing to bet the other bodies gathered back there at the table were packing theirs, too. Beth wanted to bring her crossbow and she could’ve done it without anyone batting an eye about it. But if she didn’t bring it, she couldn’t use it, couldn’t repeat what happened at the farm even if things got bad, and in the end, she decided to leave it on the counter where she placed it last night.

Being without it now that she’d gotten used to carrying it didn’t help her nerves, though—and didn’t he understand that feeling. Daryl let go of her hand and slipped his fingers under the back of her shirt, let them graze across her skin before laying his palm flat, like maybe that could soothe the constant tremor underneath. Beth sighed and drew up just that much taller when Greg arrived, stopping in front of them a hair before what Daryl would’ve considered too close.

His gaze took them both in, sliding from Beth to Daryl and back again, and though he didn’t let it show, Daryl was certain he hadn’t missed Beth’s unease. “Daryl. Beth. You’re lookin’ rested this morning.”

Daryl wasn’t so sure about rested, with the two of them as battered as they were, as tired and as sore as he was now that the amnesia of sex had worn off, but Greg seemed the type to know when not to fuss over shit like that. He stuck out his hand, fighting through the clench in his belly to grasp Greg’s in greeting. “Somethin’ like that. Uh. Thanks.”

“Thank you,” Beth echoed a second later, with a nervous little smile and a quick nod of her head as she accepted Greg’s handshake, too.

Greg inclined his head to her, then released her hand to gesture toward the table and the faces waiting there. “C’mon and join us. You’re just in ti—”

An Orion-shaped blur of black and white streaked in behind Greg and ran full speed into Beth, rocking her backward as he wrapped her up in a fierce bear-hug. “Beth! You’re really here!”

Beth got her feet under her and even managed a little huffed laugh as she returned the boy’s hug for a few seconds before gently urging him back, hands on his shoulders so she could look at him. “Thanks to you. You found a way to help after all.”

Orion’s grin widened and so did Beth’s, and she looked so much like herself when her focus narrowed down to just Orion that Daryl’s chest ached the tiniest bit, for the loss of this easy brightness in her. But if she could find it at all, the Beth she wanted to be, she could find it for good. She just had to get there.

Orion bobbed his head, grinning, those thick spiral curls bouncing everywhere. “Uncle Greg promised, but I didn’t know. They made me go to bed.”

“Such hardship,” Greg said, dryly, breaking into Beth’s moment enough to throw a few cracks in the surface.

Beth stood back, her smile fading away as Orion twisted around to wrinkle his nose up at his uncle, a gesture which Greg returned for a few brief seconds before his expression sobered. “C’mon now, Orion, let them sit. You don’t want ‘em to starve after workin’ so hard to get them here, do you?”

Orion turned back to Beth, clasping his hands together in front of him. “Grannie makes the best biscuits and gravy. I hope you’re hungry!”

Beth managed a slightly tighter smile, and flicked her gaze up to catch his. “We are. Right, Daryl?”

Orion’s eyebrows lifted high on his forehand and he let out a little oh, like he had forgotten Daryl existed when in the presence of Beth Greene. He shifted to face Daryl, and the boyishness melted away until he stood there like a darker, smaller Greg Hunter, holding out his hand. “Orion David.”

The boy’s grip was solid, firm. Everything Daryl’d expect from someone as familiar with a bow as Orion was, regardless of his age. “Daryl Dixon.”

“I’m sorry I drew on you.” Orion let go of Daryl’s hand and scuffed his boots, one at a time, on the stone floor. “I thought you were one of Dane’s men, but I should’ve known.”

In hindsight, the whole thing was ridiculous. The two of them bagging the same goose at the same time and if those assholes hadn’t interrupted them, it might’ve been downright funny, once they sorted out who they were and who they weren’t. But what happened wasn’t on Curly and the he didn’t need to go around thinking it was, either.

Daryl waved the apology away. “Nah, we’re good, kid.”

Orion’s grin stretched wide, and with it came the return of that cheerful boy, a complete contrast to the fierce child from yesterday or even the formal little man from a minute ago.

“Come on, then. Let’s eat.”

Orion skipped back across the room to join the old woman. Drawn by the scents wafting over from the stove, mouth-watering in a way food rarely was these days, and the allure of something so fucking normal as biscuits and gravy for breakfast, Daryl followed. Beth, too, bravely moving toward the faces staring up at her from the far side of the table. When they settled on the bench, she reached for his leg, fingers digging in until he gave her his hand to hold. Looking at her, he could see it—eyes opened just a little too wide as she stared at the empty plate in front of her, jaw tense, short, shallow breaths coming quicker than they ought to—but only ‘cause he knew what to look for.

Ignoring the eyes on him, Daryl turned to her, leaned in until he could whisper in her ear. “All right?”

The shudder in her breath was subtle, but he heard it. Felt it through her shoulder where it rested against his, even as she nodded her head and hummed.

Gotta be.

Gotta be, but she wasn’t, and Daryl was sure he could almost hear her guts tying themselves into knots with all these people looking at her. He squeezed her hand tighter, stroked his thumb over the back of it. If ever there was a time for her to put her mind reading skills to work it was now, as he willed her to trust herself. She wasn’t going to fuck up. She could do it—talk to these people, be okay around them. The hard part was over. She got them out, got them here, all on her own without any help from his useless ass. Now they just needed to get through breakfast and figure out what came next.

Next, or the most immediate form of it, were the people themselves, the majority of them looking at him and Beth without trying to make it obvious that was what they were doing. Most, because the old woman, now seated at the head of the table, was staring. As Daryl turned to look at her straight on, she met his gaze with eyes far too bright for a person that old—almost violently blue, clear as glass and every bit as sharp as the brown eyes of the little boy who called her Grannie, despite the deep lines etched into her weather-worn face. Daryl knew when he was being studied and this woman’s scrutiny wriggled in the back of his skull. Not exactly unpleasant but not completely comfortable, either, like she was trying to look right inside his head to see what made him tick, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to look away.

From down the other end of the bench, Greg spoke. “My grandmother, Irene Hunter.”

The words broke through that chain holding him there, and Daryl finally turned from her, to look toward Greg beside him, but it was Orion, standing over at the stove, who spoke next.

“Grannie doesn’t say much.” Orion cast the woman—Mrs. Hunter, ‘cause he sure as hell wasn’t gonna call her Irene—a fond look as he placed a plate of steaming biscuits in the centre of the table next to a small crystal dish full of butter. “Well, not with words, anyway.”

From the head of the table came a wheezy laugh, just a short chuckle combined with a wide, toothless grin. Mrs. Hunter touched her fingertips to her lips and tossed the kiss toward Orion, who caught it and slapped it to his forehead with a little laugh of his own. When she turned her gaze to Daryl this time, the appraising glare had vanished, though not the sharpness, as she gave him a single, slow nod.

He liked her, this old woman. On principle he liked anyone who didn’t clog things up with unnecessary words but there was something else about her, this grandmother, not at all like the one he made up, but something he wanted to think of as good.

“Ma’am.” He returned her nod and imagined tipping his hat to her, if he had one. Like Rick mighta done with that sheriff’s hat of his.

The thought of Rick made his belly clench, and it kept on clenching even as the old woman turned her sights on Beth with something of the same appraisal, albeit gentler somehow.

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Hunter,” Beth said, and though he could hear that she meant the words, her voice was thin, like watered-down soda.

While Orion fussed at the stove with the rest of the food, Greg announced him and Beth to the people at the table in that formal way he had, as though everyone there didn’t already know who they were, and almost in unison they all dropped the act to directly face the newcomers in their midst.

Daryl recognized the two men seated across from him from the meeting last night, and he didn’t need to be told that Alec and Thaniel Hodges were father and son, going by the look of them. A likeness so absolute he could’ve been looking at photographs of the same man taken decades apart, right down to the tidy beards and close-cropped hair. The elder of them looked about Greg’s age, with curls of silver in his beard and a generous helping of it in his hair as well, while the younger was somewhere closer to Beth, both beard and hair solid black.

“Alec is my brother,” Greg added, sharing a look with the other man. “He and his children, Thaniel and Bex, are my family.”

Not by blood, or not likely so, but Daryl understood that more than he wanted to. Knew well how men who weren’t born brothers could still end up that way just as well as men who were could drift apart. That damn clench returned to his belly, digging deeper this time, sharp little claws poking weeping little holes into his guts. Reminding him why they were even there in the first place, why their journey had led them to cross paths with these people. Beneath the table, Beth tightened her grip on his hand. Maybe she was dealing with her own shit, but maybe she was listening to the words and thinking about them, too, the family they lost, blood and otherwise.

Of course she was. He squeezed back and leaned into her, pressed their shoulders together the littlest bit harder. Anchored himself to her touch as much as she was doing with him, and dragged his mind back to the words being spoken by their host, here and now.

Next to the men sat a girl with golden brown hair, curled into a long ponytail draped over her shoulder the same as Beth wore hers this morning. Not Alec’s daughter, as Daryl had assumed before he really looked at her, but Orion’s sister.

Greg inclined his head toward the girl. “My niece, Diana David.”

Daryl couldn’t see all of her face, as she was the only one paying them zero attention, focusing instead on something in her lap even when Greg mentioned her name, but the shape of her nose and lips and the slope of her forehead reminded him strongly of Orion. Somewhat older than him, though, and while she gave him and Beth a cursory wave, she seemed altogether uninterested in entertaining guests.

Didn’t bother him none, if she didn’t want to speak or even look up, but Orion hissed her name from down the other end of the table. She ignored it, just kept on reading, and so did Greg, choosing instead to turn toward the last person seated there at the far end of the table—the dark-haired woman from last night.

Daryl hadn’t seen her up close, hadn’t gotten a good look at her face, but the hair was right, and the slightness of her, short and slim even though the bathrobe she was wearing. No bathrobe this morning but there was a baby. Just a little thing, maybe a couple months old from what Daryl could see of it, the little hand curled against its mother’s chest, a hint of a teeny ear and a tuft of black hair past the blanket it was wrapped up in.

Something different crept into Greg’s otherwise neutral smile, a look similar to the one he wore when he spoke to Orion before, only more tender, somehow, like something Daryl wasn’t even meant to see. “My wife, Sandrine Hunter, and our son, Sébastien.”

Sandrine pulled the baby away from her tit, propped him up on her shoulder to pat his back. “My apologies for not properly greeting you both last night, but Monsieur Sébastien had other ideas, didn’t you, mon petit coeur?”

The baby grunted and burped, and Beth’s grip on Daryl’s hand tightened. He turned to find her staring wide-eyed at the curve of that small back and the gentle hand patting it, lingering there for a few hard seconds before wrenching her gaze away to focus on her plate. Then Orion arrived with the rest of the food—slices of apple, strips of fried meat, and then a pot of gravy—and he let the thought slip away as he took in the spread.

Gravy. Actual gravy, thick and creamy and rich with little chunks of meat in it, and his whole mouth ached just looking at it, never mind what the smell of it promised. Orion served Mrs. Hunter and then slid into his seat between Thaniel and Diana, and that seemed to be the cue to dig in. There was just enough food, not too much or too little. Might be fancier than most breakfasts he’d faced since the world ended—or ever, if he wanted to be that honest—but nothing here was wasted. By the time Greg dished up, the biscuit tray held only crumbs and his spoon scraped the bottom of the gravy pot.

Conversation erupted again once the eating started, an easy circuit between everyone aside from Mrs. Hunter and Diana, the former nodding and following along with the conversation despite not speaking, and the latter mostly pushing her food around her plate without really eating much of it, and ignoring, or appearing to ignore, what was happening around her. Daryl listened in while he ate, taking small bites and chewing slow ‘cause his jaw hurt, lost in some of the everyday details of managing this place. The concept of it wasn’t unfamiliar, though. How many mornings had he sat with the council, or just with Rick and Hershel or whoever, little bowl of breakfast in hand, going over what needed doing that day? The specifics were different but the rest of it was the same, right down to last night’s meeting. He knew a council when he saw one, knew how it looked to gather everyone together in the middle of the night when something came up worth meeting on.

There was comfort in that, and it didn’t need no deep thinking to wonder why. At the same time, it worried him that maybe he was too eager to cling to something he recognized when everything else around him had become just so different. Beth’s unease tugged hard at his spine, refusing to let him forget as she seemed to shrink there beside him. Disengaging a little more each second, eyes downcast as she ate her meal with little outward signs of enjoyment, though Orion hadn’t lied about his great-grandmother’s cooking.

Seeing her like this made his gut squirm. So torn up inside, unsure if she could even trust herself, let alone these people she barely knew. She wanted to believe in the goodness of them, he was sure of it, but she didn’t know if she should, or even could. Orion’s presence eased some of it, and he caught her glancing at the old woman with something tender gleaming behind her wary eyes. She wouldn’t even look at the baby, though, and he could guess at why. Another thing she buried and wasn’t ready to dig up, but it niggled at his insides, too.

“...Dane?”

Daryl’s attention snapped back to the conversation which had carried on around him, and Beth, too, straightened up to look down the table at Orion, whose question hung, for the moment, unanswered.

Greg and Alec shared a look, and it was Greg who spoke, setting down his fork and knife with a soft clink. “No. We haven’t seen or heard anything more from them, last night or so far this morning, as of last report.”

Orion nodded slowly, glanced down and licked the remnants of gravy off his fork. “So they didn’t follow.”

The three men and Sandrine all shook their heads, and while Orion didn’t exactly look relieved, he did look back up to face Thaniel as he spoke. “If they did, nobody made it as far as the watch line.”

“Seems your fire kept them close to home, at least for the night,” added Greg, leaning forward so he could see past Daryl to where Beth was sitting.

She cringed when all eyes turned to look at her, but didn’t crumple, and Daryl slipped his hand beneath the table to squeeze her thigh. I got you. It took her a second to respond, giving Greg that wide-eyed look with her fork and knife frozen in the middle of cutting off a chunk of biscuit. But she took a deep breath and looked with purpose at each of the faces looking at her, and when she finally spoke her voice was quiet, but didn’t waver.

“But they are comin’.”

It wasn’t a question, and Greg didn’t treat it like one. “Dane wants what Dane wants, and there isn’t much he won’t do to get it.”

In some sort of eerie unison, all sets of eyes seemed to meet in the middle, and even Diana glanced up from her book to join whatever mind-meld was happening here. Sandrine murmured something Daryl couldn’t quite hear, to which Greg responded with a quick nod, before he shifted on the bench to face him and Beth almost straight on.

“Might as well get into this now, since we’re on the subject.”

Daryl turned as much as his wounded flank would allow, a beat or two of warning thumping behind his ribs. Beside him, Beth did the same, fingers twitching against his thigh like she couldn’t tell whether she wanted to hold on or reach for her knife.

“The two of you’ve tumbled into the middle of somethin’ here, somethin’ you never asked to be a part of.” Greg glanced over at Orion, who was once again looking down at his plate instead of at his uncle. “Maybe things wouldn’t’ve gone down like they did, but you need to understand that they’d’ve gone down, whether you came along or not.”

Daryl chewed on that for a minute, Greg’s words seeming to absolve him and Beth of any part in what happened, even though they had played no small role in shaking things up. Beth’s breathing changed behind him and only then did he realize how rapid it had gotten, not panicked exactly but agitated, and his thigh stung where she released it from her tight grip. She had, after all, set fire to Dane’s camp and let a herd of walkers in, after badly injuring a member of Dane’s family. Before he could say anything in response to Greg’s statement, before Beth could, Greg started speaking again.

“That’s not on you.” Greg held Daryl’s eyes for a hard couple of seconds before they slid to catch Beth’s. “Either one of you. Dane’s actions are his own, but this conflict is my burden to bear.”

Across the table, Alec cleared his throat pointedly. “Ours.”

The rest of them repeated that, murmuring the word in an odd hive-mind sort of way Daryl wasn’t sure whether to be wary of or not.

“They want the lodge, don’t they?” Beth asked, her voice far less watery this time. “That’s what this is about.”

Greg inclined his head, as though to acknowledge her insight. “Yes and no. It’s more complicated than that, but this isn’t breakfast talk.”

Sandrine straightened up at the end of the table, clinking her fork against the edge of her plate with deliberate force. “Yes, let’s finish this lovely meal Grannie has made for us.”

The clatter of cutlery followed as the eating resumed, and shortly thereafter the voices picked up again. Casual chatter interspersed with the occasional tangent into topics of a more practical nature. Beth ate with a little more enthusiasm now after winning that small battle, speaking to Greg, successfully controlling whatever gut responses she was fighting in the presence of all these people. He could see the wheels turning there, behind her now smooth brow. Didn’t take a degree in rocket science to follow her thoughts, to the prison, to the Governor, and wonder just how prepared these people were, here, for when Dane came, once and for all, to take what he wanted.

“...Daryl?”

At the sound of his name, Daryl snapped out of his thoughts to a table full of people waiting for him to answer a question he didn’t hear. “Uh...”

Orion tipped his head over toward Sandrine. “Auntie San asked what brought you and Beth out this way.”

Sandrine, the baby now asleep in a well-padded wooden cradle beside her, inclined her head in the same sort of way Greg liked to. “From what I understand, Beth’s cabin is not terribly close to here.”

A jolt of unease lanced through his belly and settled in like a meal gone sour, before he remembered about Idiot One and Idiot Two and what they would’ve told these people about The Girl in the Cabin. Still, he wasn’t altogether certain why she would ask him and not Beth about it, unless maybe she noticed Beth’s discomfort with the baby and misread it as something else.

He gave his head a shake to clear away the rubble, then another in answer to the question. “It ain’t. We, uh, ran into some trouble on our way north, had to detour. Ended up following them tracks east of here.”

“Oh!” Orion, in his enthusiasm, dropped his fork and splattered gravy everywhere. “You waited out the storm at that old train depot, right? That’s how you found the lake.”

“Mmhm.”

But that answer wasn’t good enough, apparently, as the assembled sets of eyes all looked to him for more. When he turned his head to look over at Beth, she was waiting for him. If her face wasn’t so bruised he imagined the way her brow might arch at him in question. They hadn’t actually discussed how much to tell these people, if anything, about their own story. Too caught up in each other this morning, too completely out of it last night, but after a moment’s thought, Beth tipped her head to the side and gave a little nod. The truth, or a simplified version of it, at least. Greg had answered some of their questions, and more than that, he’d done nothing substantial enough to set off any real warning bells. Only fair they return the gesture.

Daryl finished chewing the piece of meat he had in his mouth—goose, like last night’s stew. “We’re lookin’ for our group, or what’s left of it.”

“My sister,” Beth added, “and anyone else who might’ve made it, after...”

She didn’t want to talk about that, and Daryl didn’t need to see her face to know it. Neither did he, really, but the jar was open, and something needed saying, so he pushed on, gave them the bare minimum of details, with Beth adding in here or there to round things out. Their place attacked, the group torn apart. Dead or scattered in all directions and him and Beth on their own for weeks without sight of another soul before the shit happened that sent them south. On that he didn’t elaborate at all, and he felt Beth’s gratitude in the press of her leg to his. The cabin and the hunt that saw him gone and Beth alone when Pam and Jake happened by, and the decision to go north again in search of familiar faces.

When the story was finished, Greg glanced briefly at Daryl before locking his eyes on Beth. “So you’ve been together awhile, then.”

Something about the way he said it prickled across the back of Daryl’s neck, but before he could tease out why, Beth’s knife scraped against her plate, sharp and sudden like nails on a chalkboard. She pulled her shoulder away from his and slid up straight, somehow looking twice as tall as she had just seconds ago as she looked from Greg to the Hodges men seated across from her, then back again.

“Almost from the start of all this. We’re family.”

After she finished speaking, Beth kept looking at Greg, her jaw still clenched, eyes narrowed and hard but not entirely unkind. Intense, though, in a way nobody ever expected Beth to be, and it raised the hairs on the back of his neck no matter that he wasn’t on the receiving end of it. Even the others at the table who weren’t leveled by her stare all dropped their gazes and looked away.

Good. Whatever Greg was trying to hint at with that fucking comment, he could take it and shove it up his ass. They were family, him and Beth, and whatever else they happened to be was none of these people’s damn business.

The tension ticked on a couple seconds more, before Greg blinked, forfeiting the staring contest he probably hadn’t realized he’d be entering into. Beth let some of the steel out of her spine, sinking back slowly into her seat, and Greg cleared his throat and glanced quickly around the table.

“Family’s the most important thing, in this world.”

The silence after was thicker, edging on awkward but Daryl tried his best to ignore it, leaning into the press of Beth’s shoulder to his again while he finished up his meal.

It was Sandrine who broke the tension, a few moments later, as she finished eating and reached into the cradle to lift the sleeping baby back into her arms. “Perhaps you would like a tour, once breakfast has finished?”

They were holding back on some things, Daryl knew that well enough. The press of Beth’s fingertips into his thigh told him she knew it, too. Neither one of them had lived this long by being stupid, by trusting things at face value without all the evidence to back it up. But whatever it was they weren’t saying, Daryl still felt his initial impression was true. Neither Greg Hunter nor his people intended to do them harm, no matter what other ideas they might have for them.

This tour might mean any number of things, most of which Daryl wasn’t willing to count on. The truth was, he didn’t feel up to travelling, not today, not as fast as they’d need to go to be far enough away from the area by nightfall, starting this long after sunrise. Wasn’t so sure he wanted to stay, either, when it came down to it, and Beth was even less certain, but the allure of that bed and that thick, heavy door, that warm little glow still burning in his belly, was more tempting than any night spent huddled under a tree. Enough that he almost let himself hope the offer of a tour meant they’d be allowed to stay on, if they chose to do so.

He looked at Beth at the same time as she looked up at him. That glint of steel still lingered in her eyes, and she nodded once.

Daryl turned back to Sandrine. “Yeah, all right.”

Might as well see what they were up against—if they were against anything at all.

*~*

Well this whole word is gone crazy
God’s gone a little lazy
We’re raising our white flags and holding our breath
Oh we’re trading our black hearts for angels instead
But no retreat and no surrendering
- Our Lady Peace

Irene Hunter is partially based on a woman I knew, who passed away several years ago—the great-grandmother of one of my daughter’s friends. Partly, because much of her is also of my own creation, but those piercing blue eyes came directly from my memory of dear departed Hope.

Also - feel free to ask me any questions about Hunter’s Lodge or any of the OCs. I have a ton of back story that’ll probably never actually make it into the fic and so if there’s something you want to know, please ask!

to be continued in chapter 43 >>

Fall Right In - Chapter 41/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 18:34:54 GMT

Fall Right In
Chapter 41 – We All Have Something that Digs at Us (At Least We Dig Each Other)

*~*

The change in Beth was immediate, as though that bubble of quiet, that invisible barrier which kept the rest of the world away from their bed cracked down the centre and shattered to pieces the moment she stepped out of it. Nothing had been able to touch her there, nothing she didn’t want to let in as she spoke what was in her heart and coaxed the words right out of his. Confident. Unafraid. Comfortable in her own skin and nothing else and unbridled in her pleasure and in his. In theirs, in giving that to each other, all of her thrown wide open even as she wrapped herself around his soul.

In that bed, she was everything she had made herself into; everything brave and strong and bold and alive, but more than that. When the world wanted to make her hard, Beth Greene was everything soft and warm and sweet and beautiful, too.

Still was, in the aftermath. Afterglow, now that he knew what the hell that meant, standing there at the foot of the bed, her cheeks holding onto their deep pink flush. Naked except for her little heart pendant on its worn-out string, and the half-dried mess of his come smeared all over her belly. Seeing that did something pleasant and twisty to his insides, and he didn’t quite get it but he wasn’t sure he needed to. Because it’s us and it’s okay. It was all okay, but Beth wasn’t, and the cloud of orgasmic bliss faded as his brain finally caught up with what his eyes were trying to tell him.

An unseen weight pressed down across her shoulders, rounding them, making a hunched old woman out of her young body. Not just slight anymore but small, as she curled her arms around her middle and stared at the bathroom, eyes so bright and blue in this light except now all hints of softness had vanished. Hard edges crept in, closed her off to the world from the inside out.

She wasn’t gone. It wasn’t like that. Didn’t think it would be even though he could feel how much she didn’t want to do this, coming off her in waves that poked into his ears and shivered like frigid gusts of wind down inside. Behind the edges, her eyes were still hers, but watchful. Wary in preparation and he should’ve known it would be more than just wanting to stay in bed in a sticky pile of slowly cooling flesh. More than just hoping for a few extra hours of sleep.

Even through his own pain and delirium last night, he saw how hard she had to work at it. The effort it took to face that room, those people, after all that happened to her. Relying on borrowed faith built of equal parts adrenaline and desperation and hoping to hell it might actually do shit for them this time. Now those walls went back up, brick by brick. That armour she kept hidden inside bled through to the surface until he could almost see the way the plates interlocked. Layered over one another, protective, hiding away all the soft pieces so nobody knew they were even there. She needed this part of her, sure she did, but—but.

The shiver in his ears dripped down as he watched her struggle in silence, like icicles melting in bitter little splashes, rippling the surface of the warmth lingering in his belly. Before he could go to her, though, Beth straightened up, not quite sloughing off the weight but standing taller under it, and lurched into motion, headed for the bathroom. Walking slow like she was just as sore as him, now that she was upright. The pressure in his own bladder urged him up, too, and he dragged his uncoordinated collection of bruised and aching body parts off the edge of the bed and pointed it in the direction of the open archway to await his turn. Stepped through it when he heard the toilet flush and rounded the corner into a sea of blue-green walls, vibrant like peacock feathers. Too goddamn cheerful a shade for him to handle right now as he stumbled past the giant tub and angled around to the right just as Beth pushed aside the wooden screen blocking the toilet from view.

When all that was done with he found her standing at the sink back out in the main room, staring into the mirror with a damp cloth in hand but she hadn’t even started washing. Gaze turned inward, her eyes barely flashed with recognition when his reflection joined hers, two purple faces side by side.

“Hey.”

She started when he set his hands at her hips. Not much, just enough that he felt it in his palms, through his fingers where he pressed them into her skin, without seeing her move. Then her clouded gaze cleared and she met his eyes in the mirror, and more than anything she just looked scared.

“Oh, Beth...”

As her name fell from his lips, she shut her eyes tight, breath tumbling out in a shuddery rush that shook all the way through his chest when she leaned back into him. Melted there, like she did before but there was a different quality to it now, not like wax but something thinner, something that might end up in a puddle on the floor if he chose to step away. He wouldn’t, even if he wanted to, but he didn’t, and instead wound his arms around her warm body and pulled her closer.

She turned her head to lay it against him, her warm cheek pressed to his collarbone, and Daryl tipped his face down into her hair. “Talk to me, girl.”

A little tremor rolled right through her body, up from her toes and out past her lips in the tiniest of whimpers. “I just wanna stay like this, Daryl. Right here with you.”

Oh, sweetheart. He knew the feeling, heady and thick, deepened by looking into that mirror at the two naked bodies folded together in it. Like peering through a window into somebody else’s life except it wasn’t. This was his life and he was living it and there was Beth, living hers right alongside him, with him, and he wasn’t ready to put that away, throw on their armour and face the world at large when the world they made, just him and her, was the only one he needed. When the glowing warmth inside him felt like sinking into an ocean full of bathwater and all the pain, all the other shit would dissolve into nothing if only they could close their eyes and drift away in it.

Almost did. Eyes closed, thoughts swirling back to the bliss of waking up with Beth in his arms, and only her little shiver drew him back out of it. He caught sight of their reflection again in that spotless glass, Daryl and Beth and who they were, not who they used to be. Beyond the bruises, the wounds, just them, nothing to hide and no way to hide it. No need. No reason. Don’t you think that’s beautiful? Beautiful and so fucking real it caught, thick and heavy, in his throat, and all he wanted to do right then was haul her back to bed and bask in it with her, a tangle of naked limbs and beating hearts and soft little sighs like a secret language only they could understand.

Not head out to breakfast with a bunch of strangers, even strangers who helped them, who they at least owed the courtesy, or whatever, of joining for a meal.

Beth had opened her eyes again, too, and her chest heaved with another deep breath as she turned her head and met his gaze in the mirror. “I know we have to.”

They did, at least as far as the fact that they couldn’t hide forever in a room that wasn’t, strictly speaking, theirs in any sense of the word, no matter what marks they might have left upon it. Besides that, there was too much going on here they didn’t know and couldn’t exactly let slide. What few pieces they got last night didn’t make up the full puzzle and eventually they had to talk to these people. Make a plan. Decide what to do next with whatever options they had.

“Yeah.” He pushed his face deeper into her hair, until the pressure throbbed through his skull. Until the scent of her, dirt, soap, sweat and sex and that indefinable other that was simply Beth, filled his head and smoothed out the jagged edges of the ache.

“You gonna be okay?”

He barely spoke the words aloud, murmured down into her scalp and muffled in her hair, but she heard him. Shuddered with it as her hands came up to squeeze his wrists where he held her. A little sigh, like maybe she was grateful not have to explain.

“I don’t know.” Her eyes fell shut again, and she gripped his wrists even tighter. “I wanna be. I should be, but…”

But. That word again, knocking them back like a wrench through the spokes. Yeah, she kicked last night’s ass in too many ways to count, but not without putting everything she had into it, and now she didn’t even have the rush of adrenaline to back her up. All she had was her, exhausted, sore, worn down to the bone, and Daryl didn’t need to read her mind to know she was afraid that wouldn’t be enough.

He wouldn’t tell her it’d be all right. She didn’t want platitudes or absolutes he had no hope of promising, but he could give her this. “I got you.”

That brought a little smile to her face and the tiniest bloom of colour back in her cheeks. “Yeah. You do.”

Her words tugged at his lips, a little smile he couldn’t help but make. He had said the same thing to her the day he finally understood what was happening inside him, the first hints of just how much she meant to him. Now, Daryl pressed a kiss to her hair, and let her words take him back to their time at the cabin, the memories like a golden haze settling over the two of them. Beth’s eyes drifted open again but instead of meeting his, her gaze swept over the picture they made in the mirror and he couldn’t help but follow her. Beth in his arms, so slight against the bulk of him, bruised and battered in a way that made his heart hurt, a dull throbbing ache with a sharper one poking in from underneath, but she didn’t look small anymore. A bright little lantern in the dark, the beating heart at the centre of everything, at the core of him and of them and all of this, she was the biggest goddamn thing in that entire room and he couldn’t look away.

A glimmer shone in her eyes, moistened now where they were so dry before. Luminous little cracks breaking through that wary shield as she gasped, softly, and pressed her fingertips into the backs of his hands.

“Oh my god, Daryl…” Her voice hitched as she caught his eyes at last, as she tilted her head to press against his cheek. “Look at us.”

He felt the ripples of her words deep inside him. There were times, lots of times he wondered at the ways Beth saw the world, wondered how in the hell she could look at something so stark and inevitably find even the tiniest thread of beauty in it. But this, fuck, in this they were the same.

Look at us.

He never wanted to stop looking. Not until he breathed his last breath.

It would be so easy to get lost in this. In that mirror. In watching the way his fingers moved, big and dark, across the softest skin low down on her belly. Easy and pleasant and dangerous, the two of them there without a stitch of clothing between them, still wearing the remnants of what they did in that bed. As he thought it he swept his thumb in an arc across her bellybutton, felt her quiver beneath his hand and saw how her eyes drooped just the tiniest bit, how her nipples hardened just from that barest little touch. She leaned her head back against his shoulder, curve of her mouth hinting at a contented smile, and yeah, he could get used to this. If he let himself think too much on it, he could imagine all sorts of ways they might make use of that mirror.

Reading his mind, maybe, or arriving at the same place on her own, Beth gave his wrists one final squeeze, then slipped out of his arms and reached out to turn on the tap. She glanced sidelong at him as she held her hand beneath the trickle of water, waiting for it to warm, a little wrinkle forming again above her brow. “You’ll talk to them, right? Greg and the others, if—if I can’t?”

He hummed at her, stroked his fingers up her back, right along her spine how she liked best. Leaving her behind, even here, wasn’t on his list of smart ideas, and a pulse of warning beat through his chest, a reminder of what happened every other time he left without her. But still. “You don’t gotta come, I could—”

“No.”

She turned her head now to look at him mostly straight on, and though her face hadn’t let go of its worried edges, its deep furrow in her purpled brow, he could see that she meant it.

“No, I do. I won’t—I don’t think I—” Her eyes flicked down and away as she took a deep breath. “I’m okay. But I’m not?”

There was a question there, left hanging as she returned to the task at hand, warming her discarded cloth beneath that slowly streaming water and wetting one down for him, too. He waited, drawing his fingertips between those two little dimples at the base of her spine while she nibbled at her lip and lathered both cloths with a little of that gritty soap.

He felt her shiver through his fingers just before she started speaking, still working the suds into the peacock-coloured squares. “You know how it is, when you did somethin’ wrong and you have to fess up to it? The part where you’re already caught and just waitin’ to hear about it.”

Not exactly the same, but he remembered, all right. Standing there a few feet away from her cell, out of sight while he worked up the courage to do what he had to. Staring at that little patch of light, like a welcome sign spilling out from the doorway except it wasn’t him she was waiting for. Wasn’t that kind of visit she was expecting that night. Knowing he had to go, had to tell her, that it had to be him no matter how many times Maggie tried to let him off the hook. Yeah, he knew what she meant. Felt the ghost of it prickling across his scalp and sitting like a ball of lead in his stomach, heavy and cold, a toxin inside just waiting to leech out and bring her down, too.

He shuddered, and tried to push the memory aside, stuff it back where it belonged but it lingered anyway, no matter that the Beth-in-his-head told him to put it away. “Mmhm.”

“This is kinda like that.” She nodded at the cloths, and with a little glance, passed him one. “Like dread, maybe? Chewin’ at me inside and it hurts.”

That last came out in a shaky little whisper, which melted into a little sigh when he stepped up behind her again, palm sliding around to rest low on her belly. “You scared?”

Without looking up at him, she nodded, a rapid bobbing of her head as she focused on the balled-up cloth clutched in her fist. “What if I do mess up? What if I was wrong about bringin’ us here?”

Wasn’t like she didn’t have a point, wondering that, no matter what else was at work making her worry. It didn’t seem like these people meant them harm.

But.

He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “You heard him answer, same as me. The questions.”

This time when Beth nodded, it was slower, thoughtful. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

He’d have made the same choice she did, faced with the same damn scenario. Told her so, though she huffed and stared down at the sink, like she didn’t believe it or maybe didn’t want to give herself the credit.

“Quit that.” He tickled her belly with his fingertips until she twitched, until a smile tried its best to replace the tight line of her mouth. “Soundin’ like me.”

That made her glance up, finally, the smile winning out halfway, even though it hadn’t done a thing to take away that aura of unease. “This is so stupid. I used to be good at talkin’ to people.”

“Still are.” He slid out from behind to stand next to her at the sink. “Just ain't met much of anyone lately worth talkin’ to.”

The smile bloomed full, this time. Subdued from her normal one, but real, and she tipped her head over to lay it against his shoulder, meeting his eyes in the mirror. “Well. I guess maybe you have a point.”

“Ain’t stupid, either. You know that.” He held her eyes until she nodded, then covered her cloth-filled hand with his. “C’mon. Get washed up.”

“Yeah.” Another short nod, and then she glanced up at him again as she unfurled her washcloth to scrub at her fingers. “We gotta know. What this place is. Who these people are.”

“Yeah, and what they want from us.”

She didn’t respond to that, but she didn’t have to. The little edge to her gaze just before she refocused on her hands told him she knew exactly what he meant. They both heard Greg pass off his hospitality as gratitude for helping the boy and a favour to the child himself, but Daryl wasn’t counting on that and neither would Beth. Nobody wanted nothing anymore, and there was still the matter of Dane and his bunch of assholes hanging over them, and what part he and Beth might have to play in this scrap now that they had stumbled headlong into the middle of it.

And that meant actually joining Greg and his people for breakfast, no matter what he’d rather be doing, or how much the prospect of being around people was freaking Beth out.

So they washed, side by side there at the sink. Despite the anxiety prodding at her, rounding her shoulders, clenching so tight through her jaw her teeth must ache, Beth made no secret of wanting to watch him. Her gaze trailed over his naked body like the gentlest brushes of fingers, light, tickly, tingling down inside like warm bubbles, from the moment he touched the cloth to his chest. Leftover heat stirred inside him, not urgent, not insistent, just the right sort of pleasant that he didn’t ever want it to stop.

He gave into it, let it roll through him how she meant it to and tried to give it right back. To match her boldness with his own and admire her tits, the way they jiggled just so, the shape of her arms and how the muscles flexed, the dip of her waist and the little curve her belly made that he had, until now, never really got to see but which always felt so good beneath his palm. He watched her, and he stood tall and let her watch him, too, let her see him how he saw her, how she wanted to see him, not even turning away to wash the cock hanging soft and spent down in front of him. And Beth spread her legs and scrubbed between them, first those dark blond curls, then the pink flesh beneath without turning away either. Without taking her eyes off him.

It was weird, doing that. Doing that with her but he could and he did, he was. They were, and everything about this morning spun his head around like he was stuck on a carnival ride going a little too fast but he wouldn’t change it now for anything.

They finished up at the same time. Daryl set his cloth by the sink and Beth slid up in front of him, pressed her palms to his chest where the bruising wasn’t too bad and it was so easy just to slide his hands down her back, feel the way her skin erupted in goosebumps in the wake of his touch. Curl his fingers into those two little dimples and pull her to him. He shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be tempting either one of them especially with how the feel of her bare body against his was already filling his belly with a slow rise of heat, like the tide coming in. But he couldn’t get past the head rush of being purposely naked with her—naked like this—and he wasn’t hard but he could be. Thought he could get there from just the play of Beth’s fingers through the sparse hairs on his chest, just from holding her there, so warm and so perfect, pressed to him like this. She gazed up at him with the same glint in her eyes she had while staring into the mirror before, the warmth of her breath tickling his chin, and before he realized what he was doing he backed her up against counter.

She let out a small oof and the vision hit him at the same time as his hips pressed hers back against the rounded edge, exploding into his thoughts like a rocket, of lifting her up onto it and getting cozy between her spread thighs and fuck, this could be a problem. He groaned, long and loud, and so did Beth, her hands lying still now against his chest as she dropped her forehead onto his shoulder.

“Oh lord,” she whispered, summing it up exactly, but making no attempts to move away. “I guess we better get dressed, huh?”

Her hair smelled so good, when he pressed his nose into it. All of her smelled so fucking good. “Probably safer if we did.”

And yet, he wasn’t moving, stuck there with his face in her hair and his fingertips gliding up and down her back. Neither was she, except to push her face up into his neck, to poke at his quickening pulse with the point of her nose and let her breath wash over him, hot and damp and not at all helpful for what they needed to be doing.

“Beth.”

“I know.”

Her lips dragged against his Adam’s apple as she spoke, and a little moan slipped out right after and shivered down into his chest. Made his heart beat that much quicker as she carried on down his throat, leaving a trail of fluttery wet kisses into the hollow there. He swallowed hard and she swept her nose along the line of his collarbone, then tipped back to look at him.

Her tongue darted out to wet her bottom lip and her eyes focused on his doing the exact same thing. “My face still hurts, but...”

But.

But he’d been wanting to kiss her from the moment he understood she was really there in that little stone room, that she wasn’t just another Beth-shaped figment of his imagination come to shield him from whatever fresh hell he was about to endure. That the real Beth had come for him instead, come to take him away from that place and fuck, his head hurt. The whole left side of his face throbbed whenever he breathed, raw and angry, and the way hers looked he knew it had to be the same.

That didn’t stop him from bringing a hand up to cradle her cheek, or from brushing his thumb just beneath the badly stitched wound, gliding along the border between freshly flushed skin and the splotchy purple-red bruise. Beth turned her face into his palm, curled her fingers into his chest and sighed so softly, the littlest of noises, warm like a shot of whisky trickling down through his body. This was a bad idea. A phenomenally bad fucking idea for an overflowing handful of very good reasons—but.

Beth leaned up a little on her toes, pushing her belly into his as their lips met. As they drew each other in, kissed slow and deep right then and there, still naked, still needing to be somewhere else entirely but he ignored all of that. Ignored the battle axe imbedded in his forehead, ignored the tug of stitches in his side and the spasm of warning in his back and drank her down, the feel of her, the taste of her on his tongue as he licked into her mouth until she let out that little noise that would forever taste of ripe peaches and the smell of old hay.

Kissed her until she moaned from somewhere deep in her belly, and the hands at his chest looped up around his neck and he stumbled, lurching forward, off-balance, head pounding, cock stirring to life against her still-damp bush. And this was a bad fucking idea right from the start but he would never in a million years get tired of kissing Beth Greene.

They wrenched apart, two naked chests heaving for breath. Beth gazed up at him, glassy eyes only barely clearing as she shook her head and shuddered hard, and when they finally came, her words tumbled out in a breathless rush. “Clothes. Now.”

Yes, yes that was smart, and they should’ve done that a long time ago but still, he didn’t want to let her go. Didn’t want to stop this time even though they had to and that new bold thing swelled up in his chest, beating fast and loud in addition to the thundering of his heart. Something which rasped past his throat in a voice he didn’t recognize.

“This ain’t finished.”

And she shivered, like the gentlest of ripples on a glassy pond, still staring up at him with those wide, wide eyes ringed with the smallest hints of blue. Her own voice raspy, like she hadn’t spoken a single word in years.

“That a promise, Mr. Dixon?”

Oh, it was. It so fucking was and he had no idea how he managed to pull away from her, with a groan like tearing fabric. Her little laugh, that breathy sweet one he wanted to find a million ways to bring out of her, followed him while he found his discarded boxers and pulled them on, and stayed there in his chest afterward, glowing warm as he found the pile of borrowed clothes and stuffed his body into them.

He watched Beth as she dressed in pair of worn blue jeans a little darker than her own and a faded yellow blouse the colour of butter, and fixed her hair into a low ponytail which draped over her shoulder in loose curls. He’d never tire of watching her, either. The way she moved, the way she breathed when she knew he was looking but pretended not to. It felt so good to want her like this, an indescribable good burning deep inside, set apart from the obvious other kind of good, and so what if it wasn’t the time to give in to the temptation of her. He could still carry this with him. This warmth. This longing that didn’t hurt as much anymore, knowing none of it was quite so out of reach.

Might even make breakfast-with-friends mostly sort of tolerable.

His new shirt was too tight across his shoulders like most shirts were, and he hated these jeans already, though he could grudgingly admit that they at least sort of fit, but only because none of his other shit was in any state to be wearing, ‘sides his boots, which he laced up by bracing each foot against the chair so he didn’t pull too hard on his stitches. When he straightened back up, Beth slipped in out of nowhere, arms wrapping tight around his middle—though mindful of the wound—to pull him into a hug.

He tightened his arms across her shoulders and she pushed her face into his chest, enough to muffle her words but not drown them out completely.

“Thanks, Daryl. You helped. You always help.”

Oh, my girl. Words he’d never thought before but now that he had, he liked how they tasted, and he dropped is face once more into her hair and breathed deep. Breathed her in.

“We got this. Together, a’right?”

“Together.”

Beth pulled back, not out of his arms but enough to meet his eyes. She swallowed hard and jerked her head toward the door in a stiff nod. “I’m ready.”

*~*

To be continued in chapter 42 >>

Fall Right In - Chapters 35 - 40/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 19:48:18 GMT

Title: Fall Right In
Author: Abelina/Abby/Abelinajt
Fandom/Pairing: The Walking Dead - Beth Greene/Daryl Dixon (Bethyl)
Setting: Season 4, Alone-divergence.
Rating: E/NC17
Summary: If Beth hadn’t interrupted him when she did, calling him back with the melody of her voice, he might’ve done something dumb like opening the door for a doomed dog and maybe dooming them both while he was at it. Beth and Daryl escape the funeral home together. An Alone-divergence Bethyl story.
All Chapters Here

I don't know if anyone besides slaymesoftly was reading this fic, but just in case - I have been lax about posting the chapters here due to LJ's length restriction and my recent inability to write short chapters. So for now, just in case anyone else out there was reading it, I'm putting this post up to link to the chapters not yet posted here. I do plan to post them all here eventually, in the interests of having it up to date everywhere, but for now, this'll do. Feel free to subscribe on AO3 or FFN - this fic is available at both.

Chapter 35 - Stop the Clocks and Turn the World Around (let your love lay me down)

Chapter 36 - Some Kind of Innocence is Measured out in Years (Part 1)

Chapter 37 - Some Kind of Innocence is Measured out in Years (Part 2)

Chapter 38 - If I Hadn't Assembled Myself I'd Have Fallen Apart by Now

Chapter 39 - Fire and the Embers Bright Will Guide You Through the Night

Chapter 40 - While She Flies Beside Me on Many Broken Wings

to be continued in Chapter 41 >>

Seasonal Spuffy

abelina — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 21:38:57 GMT

SIGNAL BOOST!

Seasonal Spuffy time again! There are plenty of spots still available to sign up for the upcoming round - head on over here.

See the banner contest here.

Fall Right In - Chapter 34/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 21:44:25 GMT

Fall Right In
Chapter 34 – And I’d Walk Through Hell and High Water

*~*

Daryl spent a good couple of minutes staring at the face of that rolling door after Beth hauled the latch into place, waiting for the hot, spiky thing in his chest to fade away. It lingered though, as he pictured her hunched over, all pale and shaky as she picked her way back to the office in the same state as she came out of it. Holding that cloth to her head to keep it from exploding, doing a piss poor job of hiding the fact that each step made her wanna puke. Seeing her like this had his guts squirming like a pair of scrapping weasels, and leaving her that way had them biting him raw, no matter how secure the building or how capable the woman hiding in it.

She was right, though. They needed something fresh to eat, something more than the rationed meals of the past couple of days, and if they were gonna stick around now that the storm was done, even just overnight, they oughtta know what might be lingering in their backyard before it had the chance to bite them in the ass.

Of all the fucking days to wake up with a headache, though. Goddamn it. Not Beth’s fault, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. She sure as hell weren’t jumping for joy about it, either.

He sighed, and tore his gaze away from the wall of rusted metal. Best get this done, and get back to her. The view from outside the door, up here on the elevated deck which ran the length of the front of the building, was about what he expected. As he took a couple of deep breaths, trying to shake the squirm in his gut, the sour taste in his mouth, Daryl stared down the stretch of empty single track running parallel to the building, north-sound through fairly dense woods to either side. Not much else around, aside the fluttering of the birds in the trees nearby, and the racket of a couple of crows in the distance. He and Beth had come from the southwest before reaching the tracks, through alternating patches of woods and farmland and he expected much of the same here, beyond the corridor of trees.

The rain made a muddy mess of everything, falling as long and as hard as it had, and the ground at the bottom of the steps, at the south end of the platform, looked like chocolate pudding covered in leaves. He hated to even think it. To put ideas like that out for the universe to fuck with, but the moment he considered how deep his boots would sink into that thick mud, he heard Beth’s voice in his head, telling the story of those two idiots who stumbled upon her at the cabin while he was gone.

Stop.

There wasn’t a point in thinking like that. Making up stuff to worry about when he already had plenty. Beth would be fine. He was only gonna make a quick sweep. An hour, two at most, and nobody was getting inside the building unless she opened the door. But he jumped down from the decking anyway, right onto the tracks. Bypassing the mud altogether and trying to ignore the way the impact on his knees echoed the ache in his chest as he cast one last look at those high brick walls before heading south down the tracks.

He didn’t want to leave her there. Plain and simple, the thought of heading somewhere Beth wasn’t topped his list of bad ideas. History proved his point well enough without him tempting fate, and out here where she wasn’t was the last place he wanted to be—and yet.

With a shake of his head to clear the pressure building there, Daryl pulled his gaze back outward, back to what was in front of him right this minute. Breathed deep, filled his lungs with the scent of the woods rising up around him, fragrant after the rain, the cool tint of autumn like an afterthought with each inhale. No, he didn’t want to be out here without her, but out here, at least, he could breathe.

It wasn’t as bad, anymore. Now that closed-in places meant far different things than they used to, and Beth being there with him actually made it better. But he’d never lose the gnawing restlessness that came from being trapped inside, just the same as the outdoors would never fail to knock the teeth off that feeling within seconds of stepping out in it. This wasn’t a new song and there wasn’t a part of him that didn’t know its rhythm. The open sky and the silent woods. The hidden life in the earth beneath his feet and the vibrancy of the sun after days of dark. The layers peeled back, like slabs of concrete sliding out of his lungs one by one. Taking away what held him down, what stole his breath, until what remained was, if not easy, at least it felt as though it belonged.

In the shade created by the walls of trees to either side, the cool air licked at his neck and chilled his fingers. It was a fresh cool, though, rather than cold. Damp, but lacking the bite carried by the wind. The moment he ducked into the trees to the west of the tracks, immersing himself in all that damp green, Daryl sucked in a deep, involuntary breath. Earthy, rich, full with the scent of rotten leaves. Everything wet and fragrant in the way it only could be after a storm.

Beth would love this. Would probably have something real delightful to say about it, too. The kind of something only she would think of but it’d be the most fitting thing he ever heard. He could picture her, walking ahead of him as those pearls of Beth-wisdom fell from her lips, leading the way with that set to her shoulders back where it belonged, now that she was having her own sort of sunrise after a storm. That little sway to her hips, too, which he fucking loved and she knew it, so she’d be swaying extra ‘cause she could, ‘cause she knew he’d be looking, making too much damn noise but he wouldn’t care. Too busy watching her shut her eyes and tip her face up toward the sky, breathing deep, drawing that fresh forest air into her lungs, too, just the same as him.

Daryl gave his head another shake as he picked his way through the underbrush. It shouldn’t’ve surprised him that even in the woods, his head would be full of her.

The scent of evergreens and decomposing leaves lay heavy in the air as Daryl pulled in another deep breath. The good kind of decay, without even a hint of the other. No doubt Beth would pick up on that, too, if she were out here with him. The lack of walker stench when some days it seemed they’d never get away from it, but she wouldn’t talk about that. No, she’d be talking instead about the way the beads of water still clinging to the leaves shone like bits of glitter, or something, wherever the sun managed to sneak its beams in through the trees. Then she’d give that wild blueberry bush a shake and watch the droplets fall like tiny rainbows, and turn to him, grinning, all her teeth showing, ‘cause it was pretty and she wanted to make sure he saw it. Daryl shook his head again, fighting a smile at the same time as he fought off the urge to scold himself for thinking about shit like that. But it was an old urge, and not even his to begin with. An urge best forgotten, like a lot of things.

As he passed by the blueberry bush he did give it a shake, watching the droplets as he pictured Beth doing. If her head weren’t hurting too bad when he got back, maybe he’d tell her about it. For now though, time to get this damn sweep done so he could go back to her. He picked the few blueberries clinging to the bush, survivors of the storm, beckoned the Beth-in-his-head to follow him for a while instead of tempting him astray with thoughts of pretty things, and carried on walking through the woods.

The landscape was a mess of fallen branches, downed trees, scattered needles, and leaves of all colours torn prematurely from their limbs, but the underbrush was sparse enough not to hinder his movements. He planned to make a clockwise loop that’d bring him back to the railway building and at this rate, he’d make that in decent time. When he found the little path, bisecting his own westward trajectory, Daryl paused to examine the narrow strip of well-packed dirt. The plant life grew in close beside it, looked to be overgrowing it in places, but whatever tracks might’ve been on it before the storm were long gone now and he couldn’t see anything fresh, in neither the damp dirt nor the plants alongside. This close to the tracks he suspected it might’ve been human-made, but that didn’t mean people were still using it now.

Not exactly what he hoped to find, so near to their hideout, but at least it hadn’t seen any traffic today. After a good couple of minutes staring along the corridor of it, looking for any signs he might’ve missed, Daryl turned to follow it north, keeping to the side to avoid laying any tracks of his own. He popped the few blueberries he picked into his mouth, the tartness of them exploding on his tongue. If he could find some more bushes he’d pick some for Beth. She might not want them right now, with the headache making her sick to her stomach, but she liked blueberries, and she’d probably appreciate them later when she felt better.

Something Merle once said about women and headaches tried to prod its way into Daryl’s thoughts, poking at his head like an obnoxious child or a buzzing insect. He shoved it down, the ghost of that wheezy laughter with it, but not soon enough to keep away the memories of Beth’s body pressed to his, hips rolling, grinding into him as he rutted against her. Without realizing it, he had brought his fingers to his nose. He couldn’t smell her anymore, not really, but just like the memories, the scent of her would never leave his brain, no matter that he felt like a dirty fucking creep even thinking it.

Hadn’t stopped him from doing it, though. Wasn’t stopping him now, either, breathing deep, desperate for even a lingering trace of her on the fingers he’d plunged inside her. Once coated with the evidence of what he’d done to her, the scent of her cunt, her come left behind. If that made him some kinda pervert, there wasn’t a thing he could do about it now, and this new bold thing glowing in his chest pushed back against the idea that he even ought to try.

No. No. He’d been over this so many times he knew it verbatim. Beth wanted this, from the top of her messy blond head to the curve of that perfect ass grinding back on his cock. She sniffed those damn fingers herself, for fuck’s sake. If he wanted to, he could, ‘cause she said it. It wasn’t wrong. Nothing about this was wrong and he had to quit letting those thoughts nibble at him. Had to get it through his thick skull one of these days that Beth Greene knew what she wanted and what she wanted was him.
In all the times he thought about touching her he had no idea, no fucking clue it’d be like that. That Beth would be like that. So fucking wet. Christ, he never knew a woman could even get that wet and it blew his mind how in the world he’d managed to get her there. How he made her come not once but twice when he barely knew what to do. Just touch me, Daryl. Remembering it, hearing her rasping voice inside his head made his heart pound, warmed his belly with tiny swirls of heat. He wanted to spend the next century learning how to make her come even harder, and he could.

He could, because she wanted him to. Because she wanted them and this and all that went along with it. Not just sex, but everything. And maybe he didn’t have much to offer her, but there wasn’t a doubt in his heart that all he had was hers to take.

The path split off into two forks, and Daryl jolted back out of his head when he reached the junction. One carried on parallel to the tracks while the other angled toward them, and he followed this angled path. It reached the tracks, resumed on the other side, but instead of turning back toward the railway building it arced outward, more or less in the same kind of loop he’d planned on making himself. Only made sense to follow it, keep an eye out for any signs of people or animals, though he’d yet to see any. That in itself was a reassurance, since there was no further doubt in his head that these trails were man-made. But they weren’t no nature trails—even new, they’d have always been narrow. More likely paths made by hunters before the end of the world.

If people hunted these woods, it wasn’t likely they were too close to a town or a major road, which meant less likelihood of both walkers and people. And where there were hunters once, there’d also be game, so they might get lucky that way, too. Might, because he hadn’t seen much in the way of four-legged traffic, either, aside from the chatter of squirrels high up in their trees and he was so fucking sick of eating squirrel.

The better part of an hour had passed by the time the path he was following reached the bank of a creek, something of similar size and depth as the one from the cabin. It resumed alongside the water on the opposite bank, but rather than crossing, Daryl opted to follow the creek southward while keeping to this side of it. Though he kept an eye on the far bank, he saw nothing of note there or anywhere else, until he began catching glimpses of water through the screen of tree trunks up ahead. The closer he got to it, the larger the expanse of glittering blue became, and his suspicions were confirmed when he reached the end of the creek as it spilled into a long narrow lake.

The far end of it disappeared around a curve in the distance, and where the creek entered in seemed to be the top curve of horn, like the shape of a crescent moon arcing out to his right into a crescent-shaped grassy field, the bottom third of which was actually under water. Not a true marsh, but marsh-like. A good place to find river otters or water fowl. Ducks, or—a distant honking sound drew his eyes away from the grassy shoreline—geese, like the flock of them angling their way across the otherwise glassy water.

As he picked his way through the tall grasses of the field, Daryl spotted definite signs of animal traffic, and he set a few snares as he went. The path he’d followed to the creek had turned to follow along the shore of the lake leading away from him, but there didn’t appear to be any sort of human-made paths at all on this side. Not through the field or into the trees bordering it, and it was almost enough, by the time he reached the pointy end of the ‘horn’, to convince him of their safety.

The woods resumed here, or rather, the crescent shape of the field reached its natural end right where the lake curved, too, and a creek about a quarter of the size of the one spilling in now flowed out and led off through the trees. No signs of a path here, either, either this side of the creek or the other. No signs of nothing but the vague promise of fresh food, but before any of that was gonna happen, he had to get back to Beth.

The area between the lake and the railway building held nothing but undisturbed forest, aside from the expected storm damage. Daryl suspected that the lake and the field were of more or less equal longitude and the trek back confirmed it. He approached the tall brick structure from the long back side and spent a couple of minutes watching, still concealed in the woods, before stepping out. Everything was as he’d left it. No tracks through the mud, no footprints trampling the overgrown grass that might’ve once been a yard of sorts, before nature crowded in. He hopped up onto the platform from the grass on the north side and peered in through the bathroom window, placed just high enough on the wall that he had to stand on his toes to see anything. The office lay along the north wall, facing the woods instead of the tracks, so he couldn’t see into it from here. Just the black stain on the bare concrete floor from their pallet fire. Couldn’t hear nothing, either, as he dropped back down and stood beneath the window, listening, but he didn’t expect to. If Beth was awake, she’d keep quiet until he gave her the signal, and if she was still asleep...

Daryl paused, hands halfway to his mouth. If she was still asleep, maybe he ought to just let her rest, instead of waking her up. Now that he had an idea of what was out there, and what wasn’t, might be worth heading back toward the lake. Try his hand at crossbow goose hunting. It’d give her more than a mere hour and a half of time to sleep her headache away and as long as he left her a message, she wouldn’t worry later, if she woke up and he wasn’t back.

So he made the whistle, but quietly. Just loud enough that she’d hear it for sure if she was already awake. Repeated it once, just for good measure, but the minutes passed and she didn’t stir, and that settled the decision for him. He’d let her sleep, and do his best to catch her a nice fat goose to eat.

He kept an old bolt in his pack, one of the few left over from what he’d had on him when he fled the prison. The shaft was broken, but the broadhead was good enough that he hadn’t wanted to throw it away. He took it out now and snapped the shaft in two at the break, then wedged the fletched end of it through the cracked open bathroom window. Didn’t show from the outside, but Beth would see the green vanes on it the minute she stepped out of the office, would know he’d been back and left again and that he wasn’t gone, just out. The other half he jammed into the wooden post at the south end of the platform by the stairs, high up so she—and anyone else—would have to be looking up to find it, pointed in the direction he was going to go.

That ought to ease her mind, Daryl figured, as he once again left the brick building in the distance, following the same self-made path he’d created on his way in from the lake. She might even like to try following him, if she woke up feeling good, and he could picture the little grin she’d have on her face, stepping out into the grassy field after she successfully tracked him to it. He left her a few signs to follow; low-lying knife marks in the trunks of trees, bushes bent the wrong way, boot prints pressed into tiny patches of damp dirt where no footprint ought to be.

By the time he reached the lake, the sun was high enough in the sky to beat down on his shoulders, and he settled himself amongst the tall grass at the edge of the woods, near the out flowing creek, with a clear view down the lake, and of the flock of geese swimming in it. Big Canada geese with their distinctive white chins, and good eating, too, roasted over a fire. The trick was gonna be shooting one close enough to shore that he wouldn’t get too wet retrieving it, without bringing down the wrath of the rest of the flock. Best bet would be getting one right up on the shore, since the grasses would hide him enough not to spook them, and he could wait to retrieve his kill until the other geese had moved on. That, or catch two, and his stomach rumbled at the thought of that, reminding him that he’d yet to eat today.

Nothing to do now but wait, though. He had some venison strips with him, but he held off on digging one out. The promise of fresh goose might make the hunger pangs a little worse, but it wasn’t like he wasn’t used to going hungry.

With waiting, came thinking. Thoughts mostly unbidden but he’d been expecting that. Without the focus needed for scouting his head wandered on its own and naturally settled on Beth. On him and Beth, on what happened yesterday morning. His sight was clear as he watched the geese, but that place in the back of his head spun softly with the memories, an echo of the way it crashed over him the first time around.

They still hadn’t talked about this, not in so many words. Not in a way that acknowledged this coming together of theirs, though he didn’t doubt its existence. They were, him and Beth, this big unlabelled thing that was undeniably a thing for two. But he had so much in his head he wanted to be able to tell her. Things in his brain that wanted out just so they could curl up warm inside Beth’s heart. So she’d know. Except—that was the thing. The thing that made no sense and perfect sense all at once, because she did know. She knew it in the way he knew it, looking at her, seeing all the shit locked inside his head shining back at him in her eyes like the damn romance novel that they were. Even if they couldn’t see the shape of the words, they knew the rhythm, ‘cause this wasn’t his song or hers, it was theirs, no matter that they hadn’t written all the words yet.

And it had burrowed in to stay, beating there in his heart alongside the pulse of the woods. Right where it ought to be.

It was easy, not talking. Not struggling to make sense of feelings that couldn’t ever be rendered into the right words, ‘cause he suspected they didn’t exist. Being with Beth was easy, too, in a way he’d never have believed in a million years if he wasn’t immersed in it, no matter that he had no fucking clue how to do this. How to be part of a—a twosome—like this. Beth made it easy. She joined him in the quiet spaces instead of trying to break through them. Pulled him out of his head when he needed it but let him linger there, too, somehow knowing the difference. Pushed when he needed pushing, and stepped back with him when he needed that, too, and he didn’t know what sort of magical creature that made her, except that he knew he was the luckiest damn man left on this godforsaken planet, to have her at his side.

It’d taken a while, but the geese were finally making their way to the shore, the excited honking of the youths announcing their impending arrival. Making use of his screen of grass, Daryl lifted his crossbow and waited for the big goose in front to take those first few steps onto semi-dry land.
He took the shot, and as he followed it through he thought his eyes had gone funny, or something, the sun so bright it was making him see things. But no—he lowered the crossbow, and that was definitely an arrow sticking out of his goddamn goose, landing there a split second before his bolt. Two green-fletched shafts stuck out of the same big gander and there wasn’t time to load the crossbow again before the sound of splashing water came from the creek beside him. Daryl turned, knife in hand, heart hammering in his chest, to find himself staring at the business end of a loaded compound bow.

His eyes shifted down the arrow shaft, to the person wielding the weapon, and if he wasn’t absolutely certain that any hint of movement right now would earn him an arrow between the eyes, he’d have given his head a shake.

A pair of sharp dark eyes narrowed at him from beneath an unruly mop of deep brown curls, and the fingers of the boy holding Daryl at arrow-point flexed pointedly on the bow’s grip. “You’ve got a lot of nerve hunting my lake, asshole.”

Kid was all of maybe twelve, with that short but lanky frame and the youthful voice, face smoother than Beth’s without even a shadow of a beard, but he wielded that bow like he knew what he was doing—and he did, considering he’d bullseyed the goose. The stance, too, and his grip, the way he drew back and held without the faintest hint of a tremble. Kid knew his way around that weapon, all right, and had the skill as well as the bravado to use it.

Daryl held out his free hand and slowly lowered his knife until he could slip it into its sheath. “Didn’t see no signs.”

The boy snorted and rolled his eyes, but kept his aim steady. “Are you that dumb? No, wait—of course you are. You tell Dane—”

“Hang on,” Daryl said, just keeping from flinching as his interruption had the boy flexing his fingers on the grip again, like he was just waiting for an excuse to loose his arrow. “I ain’t who you think, kid.”

“Right. And I’m Santa Claus.” The boy’s expression hardened suddenly into something well beyond his years, that youthful face turning to steel right before Daryl’s eyes as the kid shifted his stance ever so slightly.

Just enough that Daryl felt the threat of that arrow looming now, too fucking close. “Hey—”

Another slight shift, and the broadhead at the end of the arrow caught the sunlight in a way that felt far from accidental. “You get the hell out of here, and tell Dane he isn’t getting any of our geese.”

Daryl met the clever gaze starting hard at him from behind the bow’s risers, tried to figure out how to make his face look honest, or whatever the hell it’d take to make the kid believe that he had nothing to do with this Dane he kept talking about. “Look, kid—”

“No, you look, asshole—”

From somewhere very close behind came the sound of snapping twigs, jolting Daryl’s focus away from the current threat to whatever else lingered there in the woods. The boy’s once narrowed eyes widened as Daryl met them again, then that baby-smooth brow furrowed and the kid’s gaze shot down to the crossbow lying at Daryl’s feet.

“Since when...”

That hardened look fell and Daryl caught a flash of something like real fear for a split second before the mask dropped down again, and the child whirled around at the exact moment the four men burst into the clearing. Greasy haired and filthy, stinking like none of them had seen a bar of soap since the dead started walking, and armed. There was no time to reach for his crossbow. No time to do anything but breathe and stand still and try to figure out what the hell was going on as he stared now down the barrel of an ancient Winchester that’d still take his face off at point blank range.

“Shit,” the boy whispered, bow still raised even though he, too, had two guns pointed at him.

Whoever these assholes were, the kid wasn’t with them, and it didn’t take more than a glance to understand that even without the standoff. Kid was clean—a little rumpled, the way a boy out hunting oughtta be—well fed, dressed for bagging geese rather than just wearing most of what he owned. And if Daryl thought he’d looked tough before, that had nothing on the hard set to the kid’s face now as he held his ground against two grown men.

“Well, well,” said the rifleman. Tall and skinny, aside from the paunch around his middle, and bald; the oldest of them by a good three decades, scars and lines crisscrossing his face like a roadmap beneath the scraggly grey beard. “Li’l bulldog’s givin’ ever’one trouble these days, ain’t he?”

Before Daryl could work out any sort of answer, the kid spoke through a jaw clenched tight, words shooting out of him like bullets. “Screw you, Victor.”

Shit, kid. That was a sure way of getting a bullet for lunch, if Daryl ever saw one, but the guy—Victor—only huffed, and offered a humourless smile.

The younger man standing just behind Victor, the one holding a handgun on Daryl, let his aim fall just slightly as he smirked and cocked his head, pale green eyes meeting Daryl’s like they were sharing some inside joke. “Y’all might wanna consider keepin’ a better handle on that pup.”

Beside him, the boy snorted, and Daryl spared him glance. Arrow still pointed at the other two men, he’d turned his head to level the speaker with a glare that could’ve cut stone. Scary fucking child. “I can handle myself.”

The two men holding guns on the boy let out quiet derisive chuckles, and green-eyes’ face split into a grin, showing a missing tooth right up front and a mouthful of others stained with rot. “And how’s that workin’ out, ya li’l shit?”

“Lyle.” Victor’s tone brooked no arguments, and if Daryl had any doubts about him being the leader of this little gun party, they’d have ended there, as Lyle, and presumably the other two, now stood stock still and stone-faced, once again holding his gun like the threat it was meant to be.

Victor’s gaze settled back on Daryl, and something in those moss-coloured eyes made his guts squirm. “Looks like y’all picked the wrong day to walk the dog, friend. Pity for you. Fortunate for us.”

“But I don’t even know—”

“Kid.”

Daryl still hadn’t worked out exactly what they were dealing with, but whoever these men were, they weren’t any kind of friends, and they weren’t messing around. Whatever was gonna happen was gonna happen, and Daryl could see no advantage to letting them in on the fact that he was just as much a stranger to this boy as he was to them. When he heard the boy gasp softly, then shut up, he nearly breathed a sigh of relief. Nearly, because they were still in a world of shit, but at least the kid was smart.

And if these assholes thought he came from the same place as the boy, they wouldn’t be going off looking around for Beth.

“Whatcha want?” Daryl asked, stalling, hoping he could see a way out of this but nothing at all presented itself.

Four armed men against him, with neither his bow nor his handgun in reach, and one spitfire of a boy. The kid could easily take one of them out with that arrow, but not without getting himself killed in the process, and he knew it for all he kept his bow aimed at the head of the closest man to him. No option here. Nothing to be done but see how this played out.

The crow’s feet at the corners of Victor’s eyes deepened very slightly as he scanned Daryl slowly head to toe. “Y’all know what we want, friend. What Dane wants, an’ you an’ the li’l bulldog’re gonna help us get it.”

The boy growled. “Uncle Greg won’t give you shit.”

Victor’s lips tightened into another humourless smile. “Oh, I think he will. Whatchu think, friend?”

“I think y’all don’t know Greg as well as you think you do,” Daryl replied, grateful for the name drop so he could maybe play along until they could find a way out of this.

That earned a chuckle, and a flash of true mirth in the otherwise hollow eyes. “Well. As fun as this is, it’s time to go.”

Before Daryl could ask where, Victor stepped forward, pressing the rifle to Daryl’s sternum until he had no choice but to back up. Lyle darted forward to snag the crossbow and relieve him of both his knife and pack. Another jab with the Winchester and Daryl sunk his teeth into his lip and stood still as Lyle’s greasy hands wrenched Daryl’s wrists together behind his back and tied them with something like coated wire. He kept an eye on the boy as this was going down, watched him lower his weapon, finally conceding defeat. Despite the stormy look on his face he allowed one of his two gunmen to take the bow from him, along with the quiver of arrows over his shoulder and the hunting knife strapped to his belt.

Once the kid’s hands were tied, too, the men marched the two of them back through the woods alongside the creek, heedless of the noise they were making. All four of them stomped through the brush like wild hogs, Victor and the two gunmen behind, Lyle leading the way. Five minutes on they crossed the creek, Daryl prodded on by the barrel of the Winchester, where a path appeared. Newer and wider than the others he’d crossed that day. With a grunt and a glare aimed Victor’s way, the boy was pushed up to walk beside Daryl.

Sorry, the kid mouthed, gaze darting quickly toward Lyle’s dirty back. Not good.

Daryl had that much figured out, but the raw worry etched now into the boy’s face sealed the deal. Whatever he’d fallen into here, he’d best start thinking of a way to get out of it before there wasn’t one—and his options were already limited.

From behind them, back toward the lake, came a sound that sent a chill up Daryl’s spine worse than that from any of the guns at his back. His pulse leapt up into his throat and his stomach dropped so fast he mighta left it behind him on the trail, for all it even mattered.

The melodic tee-weet of a very specific bird.

Recognition of the call for what it was flared in the boy’s sharp eyes. “That's a—”

“Tanager, yeah,” Daryl said. “You should know that by now, kid.”

The call came again, and those brown eyes widened just a bit more, flicking briefly back toward Victor before seeking Daryl’s again. “Right, a tanager. I knew that.”

Daryl breathed out. This might just work. “You know what a mourning dove sounds like?”

He nodded, curls bobbing up and down as he did—looking, in that moment, like nothing more than the child he should’ve been. “Yessir, they’re all over these woods.”

“Show me then.”

Daryl held his breath, waiting. The boy made the call, two intonations of the dove’s deep ewoooh, going so far as to angle his head so it would carry better behind them.

“How was that?” he asked, blinking slowly. “Did I get it right?”

Just right. Daryl tore his gaze from the child’s tender face, and sunk his teeth into that almost-healed place on the inside of his lip. Tried, and failed, not to think about how Beth’s face would look when she heard the call they had practiced, but hoped never to have to use.

Keep away.

*~*

And I’d walk through hell and high water
Wash away with the tide
I can lose a damn war all by myself
If you were on the other side
So, in the morning when the rooster crows
Pack your bags and get ready to go
If you’re walkin’ through hell and high water
Please don’t do it alone

Please note: I don’t do rape stories, so please don’t worry about that happening here. This is gonna be something else entirely.

To be continued in chapter 35>>

Fall Right In - Chapter 33/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 22:59:24 GMT

All Chapters Here

Fall Right In
Chapter 33 – It’s a Mess, It’s a Start, It’s a Flawed Work of Art

*~*

When she woke later, Beth was alone beneath the blanket. Not quite cold, but not nearly as warm as she was when she fell asleep, and when a gust of wind rattled the windows she pulled the blanket’s edges tighter to keep out the chill. A little pulse of panic fluttered in her chest, a couple of frantic beats before it faded to just a lingering heaviness in the background. Breathe, Beth. Daryl hadn’t gone far; she could hear his blowing breaths and some quiet scraping sounds coming from close by.

But he had gone.

Stop it. It probably meant nothing. It would be well into morning by now and just because she had fallen back asleep didn’t mean he had.

Be rational, Beth. Of course he hadn’t slept.

She rolled over, blinking her eyes open now to meet the stained drop ceiling panels above her, wincing at the pull of the muscles in her shoulders and back, the pressure in her bladder, and the stickiness between her legs, cooled instantly by the chilly air as they fell open. After a brief pause, the scraping sounds continued and Beth listened to them awhile, trying to talk herself out of this silliness before her brain started into one of those downward loops she couldn’t easily escape. It was fine. They were fine and there was no good reason to assume Daryl thought otherwise. He was still here, for Pete’s sake; if he was trying to run from this he’d be somewhere she wasn’t, not hovering close enough that she’d hear him when she woke.

No, if she could hear him he wanted her to. Wanted her to know he was there without having to wonder about it.

When she turned her head toward the door, she saw Daryl sitting on the pallet by the charcoal remnants of their fire pit, just outside the office, the familiar sight of leather and wings at his back, shoulders pulled in with whatever he was doing that made those scraping sounds. That little pang fluttered again, just when she almost had herself talked out of it. Jesus, Beth, of course he’d get dressed if their clothes were dry enough, especially since he left her with their only blanket. She had nothing to worry about, and even if he did feel a little unsure about what happened, so what? They’d gotten pretty good at figuring stuff out together and this would be no different.

She repeated all of that over again in her head, reassuring herself as she got up on slightly shaky legs and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. Daryl stopped making those sounds, no doubt having heard her rustling behind him, and fumbled with whatever was in his hands a moment without turning around.

As she approached him silently on sock-covered feet, he kept his back to her. It was just a flash, just tail end of a thought. A remnant of a different life and a much younger Beth, which urged her to wait until he acknowledged her. To hold off from joining him there on the pallet until he looked up or said something instead of just staring at the wall of brick in the distance. But even back then, Beth wasn’t the girl who sat around and waited, and this? Not a school girl crush, as she’d long understood. Nothing so trivial as that at all, and Beth and Daryl—not some cutesy teenage romance playing out behind the scenes of a football movie. Pushing aside the irrational flutter of nerves in her chest, Beth stepped around the end of the pallet, and dropped down to sit beside him.

Daryl didn’t turn his head, but the moment she settled into place he lifted his arm to tuck it around her, and Beth let out the breath she was holding. Of course, there wasn’t anything to worry about. She curled into him, turning her body just enough to lay her head in that perfect hollow between his chest and his shoulder, and Daryl’s arm tightened even further, like he wanted to pull her right inside him. If she could, she’d burrow right in behind his ribs, make a little nest there next to his heart. Bathe in its warmth and its rhythm until she couldn’t tell where he ended and she began. Only fair, since she was pretty sure he’d climbed inside her a long time ago and she wasn’t meaning with his fingers. A lazy sort of smile pulled at her lips when Daryl tipped his head over, pressed his cheek to her forehead and let out a deep, sighing breath. He lifted his hand to tug at the hanging ends of her ponytail before sliding it up her back over the folds of the blanket.

“Hey, Daryl,” she said, tracing one of the buttons on his vest.

Daryl stroked down the back of her neck, a light brush of fingers that left behind a delicate tingle skittering over her skin. “Hey, Beth.”

The soft rumble of his voice settled right down into her bones, and his fingers kept moving at her neck. A slow slide up into her hair and back down, and Beth let out a little sigh of her own as the resulting shiver trickled over her shoulders and up through her scalp. Beth pushed her face into his chest and breathed deep, filling her head with the scent of leather. Of the man beneath; sweat and dirt overlaying a fainter hint of something deeply musky. Something that had maybe existed before but was more, now. Richer. Daryl always smelled good to her, no matter where on the spectrum he fell between soapy clean and absolutely filthy, and though they’d barely done anything yet, she knew. That was the scent of them, there on his skin, and she wanted to bury her face in his chest and not come out for days.

It hit her then, rolling in like a full-body flush, only on the inside. A tingle in her belly, a flutter in her chest, a breath of laughter on her lips. The lazy smile pulled into a grin she couldn’t suppress as she thought about this morning. How he’d touched her so carefully, as though he wanted to memorize every inch of her. And even though he’d tried to tell her he didn’t know how, she’d never forget that moment when his tentative touches became deliberate, when he chuckled into her neck and thrust his cock against her ass and there’d been nothing tentative about that. Nothing to suggest he didn’t know exactly what he was doing because he did, and he did because he wanted to. Even if he’d never touched anyone like that before—and maybe he had, maybe he hadn’t, that didn’t matter—Daryl wanted to make her feel good and made damn sure he figured out how to do exactly that.

Beth sighed again, tried to burrow deeper into Daryl’s body. Into the rasp of his stubble as he rubbed his cheek up and down her forehead, the touch of his fingers at her neck, and the others just now reaching over to stoke across her brow. The fingers on her face were the same two fingers he slid inside her just a few hours ago. Daryl had to be every bit as aware of that as she was, as he brushed them down her nose and across her cheek. The scent of soap lay heavy on them. She could tell he had washed his hands but it wasn’t enough to rid them entirely of her, of the scent of her body’s pleasure still clinging to the very fingers which brought it to her. Another shiver came over her, starting at the base of her spine and rolling out in waves, and Daryl made a little sound in the back of his throat and tightened his fingers into her hair, where it had come loose from her ponytail.

She meant to whisper his name, but what came out was little more than a soft whimper that had him curling his fingertips into her scalp and pressing his cheek more firmly against her forehead. At once her throat thickened as a pressure built up inside her chest, quickening her heart, pricking behind her squeezed-shut eyelids. Oh, god, Daryl. She never knew she could feel so much, so many things for one man and now she didn’t know if she would ever understand just how deep this went. How thoroughly entwined her soul had become with his in so little time.

She knew how they ended up here because she’d lived it, they had lived it, but in that moment it struck her just how huge this was. When she left out all the steps, all that happened between the prison and now, when she tried to imagine the two of them as they were, now, only on the farm, during those months on the road, or even at the prison before it fell, it just didn’t fit.

But they weren’t any of those places and times. She wasn’t that Beth and he wasn’t that Daryl, not entirely. They had become something more and they’d done it together, walked that path side by side, step by step, and that path led them here. This morning was just one more brick, one more step along their journey. It wasn’t smooth. Wasn’t perfect. But it was, it was real, because they were. Because they wanted to be. Whatever happened from here, whatever steps they took, it was all part of this just like all the steps which came before, and she was ready for them. No matter when or where or how, or what they had to work through to get there.

Despite the persistent ache of emotions too complex to name, that smile pulled again, big and wide, plumping her cheek against Daryl’s chest. He answered it with a deep, rumbling hum, and traced her grinning lips slowly with those two fingers. A sharp breath burst out of her and she shuddered so hard she knew he felt it. His hum scaled up toward more of a chuckle, something warm and weighty with just the right edge to it to fire off a burst of heat low in her belly. It slid down between her legs, shivered through her labia, all the while Daryl’s fingers kept moving, gliding slowly back and forth. Beth couldn’t hold the smile and a moan tumbled out through her parted lips amidst now heavy breaths.

Daryl turned his face just enough to press an open-mouthed kiss to her forehead, and the rush of breath washed warm and heavy across her scalp. Oh, he maybe didn’t have the words for her, but he was right where she was with this. With all of this. He liked what he did to her every bit as much as she did, and he wanted her to know it. On his next pass, Beth caught one of his fingers in her teeth, pushed at it with her tongue and it was Daryl’s turn to moan and whisper near-silent words into her scalp. She imagined what he might have done if she’d licked these fingers clean after she came around them, and wished she had thought of that this morning.

Next time. The thought shivered right through her body and over into his.

When she released his finger, the wind gusted outside and the patter of rain on the roof doubled in its intensity. Beth cracked her eyes open to peer up at the high windows just visible beyond the edge of the loft, and the rivers of rainwater pouring down them. Remembered how it had sounded on the roof of the cabin before that storm blew away and brought Daryl back with it.

“Maybe all this rain can wash away the rest of the gloom.”

She didn’t have to say what she meant. Daryl knew well what lingered in her head, still, even with the elation of this morning pressing in at the forefront.

Daryl chuckled softly, and slid the hand in her hair down to rest between her shoulder blades where the blanket had fallen down, fingertips drawing little circles above the warm weight of his palm. His other hand moved to cradle her cheek. “Naw. You’re doin’ that all on your own.”

His words saw the return of her smile, full and uncontrollable. “I’m tryin’.”

Daryl swept his thumb across her cheek, and pressed in with the one at her back. “C’mere.”

She needed no more encouragement than that to sit up, to turn so she could seat herself in his lap with the blanket falling down to pool around her waist. Beth hooked her arms around his neck, ignoring the blanket, ignoring everything but Daryl and the look on his face as he settled his hands at her hips.

“You’re fightin’ it,” he said to her, meeting her eyes, his own holding more warmth than any scratchy old blanket ever could.

Beth couldn’t help the little shudder rippling through her as one of Daryl’s hands moved up and down her back, fingers stroking along her spine under her shirt. “You’re helpin’, Daryl.”

A beat passed, in which Daryl just stared, the corner of his lip fighting to stay neutral and the tips of his ears growing pinker by the second. The shade matched the flush of heat she felt rising up from her belly into her cheeks, as she relived, in flashes of colour and sound and scent and a fluttery jolt of heat through her belly, exactly what kind of help he thought she’d meant.

“Not that,” she whispered, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth to keep the smile from splitting her cheeks, fighting the urge to duck her head. “Well. Not only that.”

Daryl let out a little huff of breath, his own bashful little smile winning out, pulling at his lips as his gaze dropped away a moment before he flicked his eyes back up to catch hers. Though his cheeks had gone as pink as his ears, his gaze was steady. Steady and warm and just so blue, even in the shadows beneath the loft. A look which stoked the coals already blazing away inside her, set her skin alight with thousands of tiny fingers dancing across her body, and dissolved away any lingering worries about what the so-called morning after might look like.

She ought to be laughing at herself, for calling it that, but in the same way things looked a little different after their first kiss at the ledge, after yesterday afternoon and now this morning, something new existed in the shared spaces between them. A knowledge of each other they hadn’t had before, not entirely anyway, and awareness of that buzzed warm in the air around their heads. She held Daryl’s gaze, that look shining back at her from his hooded blue eyes. She wanted to live in that look, in the warm, fluttery space it created, at the same time as she wanted to gather it up and hold it to her chest and keep it there forever.

They moved together, Daryl bringing his palm up to cradle her cheek at the exact moment as she did the same to him. His breath whispered out through his parted lips but he didn’t look away from her, even as he tilted his face toward the warmth of her hand. Even though she longed to hear his thoughts, to hear the words she knew he had for her locked away inside his head, this was enough. Being here with him, knowing he was here with her, too—feeling it, in the way he looked at her. The tender way he touched her, thumb sweeping gently across the warmest part of her cheek—it was enough.

It was pretty much everything.

She leaned down to kiss him, catching his little sigh on her tongue as their lips met. They knew this, now. Where before he’d gotten by on passion alone, Daryl’s lips moved with hers in something she would, in her more poetic moments, like to call dancing. He’d laugh at her, maybe. Or maybe he’d smirk and snort and sweep her up with the same flourish as he swept his lips in time with hers, and twirl her across the concrete floor. In her dizzy head they already were dancing, two warm bodies wound together, so tied up in each other where one ended up the other would follow. Beth clutched at his shoulders and tilted her head, deepening the kiss, inviting him to carry her away wherever he’d like to take her.

He once kissed her as though his life depended on it and she felt the tendrils of that now, in the way he held on, in the little groans rumbling up from the back of his throat. The tremble was there, shaking delicately through the arm wound round her back, the fingers buried in her hair, but so muted she only felt it because she knew to look for it. But there was something else there, too. Something new. Something a little wild. A little bolder than he’d allowed before. A warm palm sliding down to cup her ass, fingers pressing in, urging her closer. Closing the little bit of distance between them until there wasn’t any left. He was hard. She knew he would be but she hadn’t presumed but—oh, Daryl—he swept his tongue across her bottom lip and pushed his hips up into hers and just like that, all traces of tentative flew out the window, and their twirling little dance soared up into the sky.

She would never get enough of kissing him. Never. Never not crave of the feel of him beneath her like this even after she finally got him inside her. His chest, heaving with shuddery breaths, those groans in the back of his throat rolling out into full-bodied rumbles she felt everywhere they touched. His cock, hard for her, pressed into her through these little shorts, and she was wet for him all over again—always so wet for him—and oh, this felt good, rocking down on him as his tongue delved into her waiting mouth, stroking along hers, drawing out all sorts of sounds she couldn’t control. God, what else would he do with that tongue if she asked him? What else could she—

Another hard grind against him jarred her out of the moment, as her bladder gave a warning ping. She squeezed her thighs around his hips and stilled herself, breaking from the kiss to drop her forehead down onto his shoulder, the both of them panting hard.

“Christ,” he whispered, tightening his fingers in her hair a moment before withdrawing them altogether, cupping the back of her head.

“Just Beth, thanks,” she breathed, smiling when his breathless laughter shook through his shoulders.

When their breathing evened, Beth pulled back. Daryl’s hand resettled at her waist and he looked up at her with the tiniest of smiles tugging at his lips. She swept the fringe of hair out of his eyes, gazing up at her half-opened, traced her fingertips across his brow and smiled when he had to fight to keep his eyelids from fluttering all the way shut.

“Should take those stitches out,” she whispered, drawing a circle around the healed wound above his left eye, revealed now with his hair pushed aside.

“Huh.” Daryl chuckled, not much more than a little puff of breath. “Forgot about that.”

Beth let her gaze slip from his to wander around the space between the rough brick walls. “There’s enough light by the stairs.”

“It can wait,” he said, pressing his thumb to her cheekbone until she met his eyes again. He nodded with his chin toward the pallet where her now-dry clothing hung. “Why don’tcha get dressed. Eat somethin’.”

She was hungry, and as much as she wanted to just stay here in his lap for the next few centuries, she really did have to pee.

“Okay.” Beth unwrapped from the blanket and stood up, rubbing her palms down her arms to keep away the goose bumps. Yeah, getting dressed and being warm would also be a good thing. “Did you eat yet?”

“Nah.” The smile that had been threatening now cracked, big enough to show a hint of teeth. “Waitin’ on your lazy ass to wake up.”

Beth knew she was blushing, reminded again of exactly why she’d fallen back asleep, and of the way he grabbed at her ass just a few minutes before. The heat of it glowed in her cheeks, but that was okay. She wanted him to see it. “You don’t fool me, Daryl Dixon,” she said, watching as his grin grew wider, bringing more of his teeth into view. “You like my lazy ass just fine.”

She didn’t wait to see his response, but her heart fluttered happily when she heard his amused little snort as she darted away.

*~*

After a trip to the bathroom, Beth cleaned up with the rainwater and rag Daryl left out for her, scrubbed her red shorts with the bar of soap and then traded them for her clean panties. Once she finished dressing, she rejoined him at the pallet and they shared a meagre breakfast of canned pineapple and a strip each of smoked venison. Daryl’s stitches came out next, more or less easily although they’d definitely been in a few days too long. Beth hoped the storm might have blown over by now, but it raged on as hard as ever outside. Stuck here another day, at least, so they made the most of the open, empty floor space and practiced fighting.

The more they practiced, the better she felt about it. She knew she was strong—in some ways, she’d always known that working on the farm made her more capable than some of her friends when it came to the physical stuff. But she looked at this like a resource, or a tool, just as essential to her as her knife or her crossbow. Not just being strong but knowing how to use that strength, that was where it counted, just like having a crossbow meant little if you couldn’t aim.

But it was good keeping active, too, keeping moving. Even though they’d established that both of them were good with the way things between them were unfolding, she didn’t think she ought to just spend the entire day staring into Daryl’s eyes. They did enough of that already as they fought, gazes meeting all over the place. She threw the sparks she got from that into working that much harder. Her muscles still ached from yesterday and she made plenty of new ones today, but it was a good ache. An ache that meant something, and she threw herself into it with the type of determination that made Daryl’s eyes shimmer whenever she landed a good blow or broke free of a tough hold.

She got her knee up into his hip, a solid hit meant to mimic a blow to his groin without actually doing that, and ducked away from his grabbing hands to take off for the safety wall. He wasn’t far behind her, despite the yelp he’d let out when she made contact, but Beth reached the wall without him having gained much distance, and slammed into it at full-speed with her hands up to brace for impact. Daryl didn’t bother slowing down and his palms smacked into the brick on either side of her head as his chest collided with her back.

Beth hit the wall with a little oof of breath, and Daryl leaned forward until his lips hovered by her ear, his breath tickling the shell of it before trickling down inside to make her shiver. “Caught ya.”

“Still counts,” she said, craning her neck around to try to see him, though all she got was a blur of skin and hair.

“Yeah?” He pressed her forward a little more to pin her against the brick, and closed his hands tight around her wrists. “You sure about that?”

While her heart pounded away from more than just exertion, Beth flexed her wrists, knowing he’d feel the contraction in them as she tested his hold. Breathed slow and deep against the wall of chest at her back while her belly fluttered in anticipation. “Maybe—maybe you did catch me.”

As she said it, she pushed against the wall of brick in front of her, pressing her sweaty back into Daryl’s even sweatier chest. He probably only meant to challenge her, to give her another scenario, playing off the fact that safe didn’t ever count as safe, but when she spoke his breath hitched and a low rumble rose up behind her. This game had no rules, because the world didn’t have any, either, and if he could change things up on her, she could do the same to him.

“Girl,” he said, in a voice full of gravel. He squeezed her wrists tighter and a coil of heat curled in her belly. “You ain’t gonna get away doin’ that.”

Beth craned her neck around a little more, still blinking slow, the corner of her mouth turned up just a bit as she finally got a glimpse of his lips at the exact moment his tongue swept out to wet the bottom one. “Maybe I don’t want to.”

She really didn’t, and as that heat quickly spread outward, she wondered why she hadn’t tried this earlier.

Daryl groaned lowly and pushed back against her pushing, just enough that he could probably feel the strain shaking her arms as she tried to resist. He tilted his head to rasp the scruff on his cheek against hers. “That ain’t how the game works.”

Her little laugh was so, so soft and so involuntary, as she tilted her hips to pushed her ass into the cradle of his hips and the erection just beginning to strain against his jeans. “It’s not a game,” she whispered.

He shuddered at her back, and Beth picked that moment to shove against the wall as hard as she could, slamming into Daryl’s chest. The motion had him rocking backward on his heels, unsteady enough that he had to take a step back to balance. Beth broke free of his wrists, but instead of running, she used the moment of surprise to turn and plant her back against the wall, a smirk just as uncontrollable as her giggle stretching across her face because she won. But the flush burning in her cheeks didn’t lie, either. She might’ve been playing it up for him but she had no intentions of running away, and when he closed the gap between them again she didn’t try to escape.

She flattened her arms back against the wall instead, hands open on either side of her head, inviting him to pen her in once more. He covered her hands with his, fingers sliding into the spaces between, hovering there with barely an inch between them.

As he leaned in, Beth’s heart pounded in her throat. The tip of his nose brushed along the bridge of hers and then he hovered there, so close he was just a Daryl-shaped blur whose breath fluttered warm across her face. When his lips met hers there was no hesitation, just warm wet mouths and eager tongues sweeping deep. The kind of kiss that curled her toes inside her boots for all it was lazy, slow, unhurried as he pressed her back into the brick. Daryl’s fingers tightened, laced themselves with hers there against the wall beside her head, and she swept her thumbs over his at the same time as she swept her tongue along the underside of his tongue. The same way he did to her and it made him groan low in his throat and push his erection into her belly.

“What am I gonna do with you?” he said, leaning his forehead against hers as he broke away to breathe, voice an awed sort of whisper she had never heard before.

A breath of laughter rose up and out of her chest and she tightened her grip on his fingers. Really, he should know by now the answer to that question.

“Daryl,” she said, arching her back until he moaned. “Whatever you want.”

*~*

Beth had never done this much kissing, ever. Never had the time—in either life—to just spend hours at it. After the wall they tried to keep up with the fighting, but soon found themselves right back where they left off and after a few instances of that they called it a day. Her sore muscles dissolved under the sweeps of Daryl’s tongue and they broke apart long enough to light a fire and have a couple of bites to eat before Daryl all but hauled her into his lap and crashed his lips to hers all over again.

That same sense of something new in him persisted, like he had broken free of a part of what held him back. She could almost feel the shackles crumbling to dust beneath them as they kissed and kissed and kissed. The tremble in his arms, when she felt it, never stayed long, and instead of stopping if she went too far he just held her back or grabbed her hips to keep her still and kept right on kissing. Long into the night they stayed by the fire, only ever separating far enough to shift off of a leg gone to pins and needles or rest their foreheads together to breathe, until Daryl pulled away from her tingling lips and whispered, in a more gravelly voice than she’d ever heard, that they oughtta get some sleep.

And maybe it was strange, after literally spending hours making out like teenagers beside the slowly dying fire, that they should simply curl up together beneath the blanket as they had every other night, with the intention of actually sleeping. The press of his palm to her belly, the little sweeps of his fingers, they stirred her up inside as they always had, but that was okay. It was enough, just feeling it, knowing he wanted her to feel it. Daryl seemed to be on the same page as he settled in behind her, erection nestled against her but without any of the urgency of this morning. Beth sank back into the warmth of his body as he breathed slow and deep into her neck. Felt his want for her and delighted in it as they drifted off to sleep.

*~*

Pain erupted in her chest, burning and heavy, pressing in to steal her breath as she jolted upright. Panic reached for her with little grabby fingers, gouging at her with nails like claws, but she forced herself up onto her knees and pushed her hands into her belly, nearly falling forward when the air rushed out of her chest like a deflating balloon, a spasm tearing through her lungs as she fought the urge to suck it all right back in.

Slow. Slow. Breathe slow.

She eased a breath in, holding her hands tight to her stomach to keep from inhaling too fast, Daryl’s words in her head guiding her. Reminding her to hold the air in for a count of three before letting it out just as slowly. Slow. Slow. Slow. Another breath, this one a bit easier, lessening the burn just a bit as she exhaled. The voice in her head was was joined by the real thing, Daryl murmuring in her ear as one of his hands came to rest over both of hers. She leaned back into him, let the measured rise and fall of his chest guide her breathing until she no longer had to force it.

They stayed like that for awhile, Beth relaxing back into Daryl’s body, letting him hold her up as she kept her focus on her breathing. Only when Daryl moved to lie down again and pulled her with him did she notice the lack of wind outside, and the subdued tapping of the rain on the roof. Finally, the storm was ebbing, and about time, too. As Beth curled up against Daryl’s chest beneath the blanket, on her side facing him instead of lying back to front, she thought about how that was kind of fitting. Her own storms were dying down at the same time, and a rush of relief coursed through her at last, tugging a hint of a smile onto her face, making her want to grab hold of it and float up into the atmosphere to dance amongst the parting clouds.

A shiver rolled across her shoulders, too, and Daryl tipped his head to press his face into her hair. “Y’all right?”

“Yeah,” she whispered, curling into him and that rumbling whisper just a little more. “I really think I’m gonna be. I did it.” The smile broke out in earnest now, just as wide and uncontrollable as ever. “It—oh, god, it still sucked—but I did it again.”

His soft hum sank down inside her, just as warm as the brush of his fingers at her back. “What’d you mean, before? About bein’ tricked?”

He didn’t need to elaborate any more than that, and Beth squeezed her eyes shut. As quickly as it appeared, her smile fell away, chased off by the familiar cold prickle crawling up the back of her neck. Before the shiver had time to form, Daryl’s hand settled there, sliding up from her lower back to ease away the prickle beneath his touch. Beth knew why he was asking, even if the idea of giving voice to any part of her dreams still skittered like a swarm of ants across her shoulders. But she knew she should; not talking about this had only made it worse. No, she couldn’t continue stuffing it down, not after what happened.

Daryl brushed his fingertips up along her neck, pressed a kiss to the top of her head through her hair. “Gonna tell me?”

Beth took in another deep breath, deep enough to feel the edges of the burn from her awakening creeping in. The time had long passed for a new path. Her morning ritual, being thankful for the good things she had, that was one of the bricks. Not keeping the dreams stuffed down, not being afraid to talk about them—that was another.
She swallowed down the lump in her throat, and tucked her face deeper into his chest. “It’s a different dream every time,” she said, plucking at one of the buttons on his shirt. “Like, the setting, the little details, who’s all there, except—”

She paused as the contents of her stomach gave a startling little roll and the prickle in her neck flared anew even with the soothing presence of Daryl’s hand. As she took a couple more deep breaths to settle herself, Daryl gave a gentle squeeze.

“Go on,” he said, voice low, thumb moving now in a slow track up and down.

Her breath shuddered out, beyond her control, but she pressed on with her answer. “Except you’re always there, and you always die.” Beneath her head, Daryl hummed softly but didn’t comment, and Beth willed away the squirming eels in her belly so she could get through this, have it out there at last and be done with it. “Sometimes—sometimes I kill him before he can do it, but he tricks me, and it’s not Gorman, it’s you. It’s me killin’ you.”

He didn’t answer. Mostly, she assumed, because he wanted to let her talk, but he couldn’t hide the way his body stiffened in the wake of her admission. Even his thumb, that comforting up and down at the back of her neck, faltered in its rhythm for the span of a heartbeat before picking up again. Despite that, though, he was still there. Still that beacon she needed to keep her from diving too deep into the flashes, the images, the sound of that oily voice forever locked inside her head. His touch at her neck, the warmth of him against her body, the beating of his heart, all of him an anchor that kept her from drifting away.

“That’s what I changed,” she said, pressing on because she knew she needed to. “I killed him like I always do, and he tried. He tried, he looked like you. But I—” Damn it. The lump rose up in her throat faster than she could hold it back, and she had to suck in a shaky breath before she could carry on. “I told myself it wasn’t gonna go that way, and I remembered. In the dream, I remembered, so I took of the mask and it was Gorman instead.”

A long few seconds of silence ensued, before Daryl let out a long breath. “Beth.”

She wasn’t ready to look at him, but she couldn’t fight the urge to pull back, the draw of his eyes like magnets to hers. Even in the dark, she could see how they shimmered, full of all the things he couldn’t say. Beth swallowed hard and stared right back, hoping he’d see in her eyes the answers to everything blazing in his. “I’m not gonna let you die again, Daryl. I’m not gonna let him win.”

Once the words were out, something new settled into her chest. Something light yet massive all at once. Something warm. It still wasn’t gone, that weight she was carrying inside, far heavier than she even knew considering how much lighter she felt just for having talked about it. But she could see it again—feel it, like fingertips brushing when reaching for a hand to hold or a gentle touch of noses while waiting on lips. She remembered how it was, those final days at the cabin with Daryl, the two of them together and happy and alive. Just thinking about it now let a bit more of that lightness in to fill up the heavy spaces inside her chest. She could have that again. She would, because there was absolutely nothing stopping her from reaching out and taking it.

She nuzzled back into Daryl’s chest, and with a deep breath and he tipped his face into her hair again. Beth sighed as his breath warmed her scalp and slipped her hand beneath her cheek to lie over his heart. Even though she couldn’t feel its beat through the layers of cloth, she knew the rhythm because hers held the same one. There was so much she had to be thankful for. So many good things even in a world that always tried to take, and she was done letting some dead man get the better of her.

Daryl’s fingers, those fingers, swept across her cheek and along the underside of her jaw. “Hmm?”

Had she said that out loud? Daryl was always saying things he didn’t notice when he had a lot of thoughts in his head, like some of them were just too much to contain. Acting on the assumption that she had spoken, Beth carried on with the thought. “I’m done with just existing, you know?”

He hummed again, fingers now following along the line of her brow.

Beth waited until the little shiver passed before she spoke again. “Like I was tellin’ you that first night here—I’m glad I’m alive. I wanna be, and I want both of us to feel like we’re livin’ instead of just survivin’.”

“Mmhm.”

They lay there awhile, neither of them speaking, the only sound their synced-up breathing and the rustle of fabric as Daryl slowly stroked his fingers along her spine. Beth reached up to scratch at the scruff along his jaw, smiling at the little rumbling sound he made in response.

“What about next time?” he asked, when she stopped scratching to rest her palm back on his chest. “Whatcha gonna change?”

That was a good question. She should probably leave it as it was, keep insisting that Gorman wasn’t gonna trick her, and just hope it would work again. It was probably too soon to attempt to force Gorman away from her dreams altogether, so she’d have to settle for making sure it was his face she punched those gaping holes in, until she had enough dreams behind her to know that change was permanent.

Although—

The idea took root, slowly, growing up from a tiny seed of a thought into something like a vine, little tendrils unfurling and reaching into places she hadn’t thought to go. She pulled back just enough to look up at Daryl, found him waiting on her with an interested lift to his brow. “Since we’ve been workin’ on my fightin’, that’s been tricklin’ into my dreams, too. Like, I’m actually hittin’ Gorman most of the time now instead of shootin’ him. I wonder...”

She paused, considering. Imagining a scenario in which she didn’t have to kill Gorman at all. Yes, yes, she knew, she understood, in reality there wasn’t another way out of the situation he put her in. Gorman’s death was his own damn fault, but why did it have to be the same in her dreams? Why couldn’t she do with the Gorman in her dreams what she practiced with Daryl while awake? Hit him, hurt him, but grab hold of Daryl and get away before Gorman forced her to do anything else. The thought of that raced up her spine, a shiver that was hot and cold and soft and prickly all at once. ‘Cause that’s what the worst of this was, knowing she had no choice when she ended his life. Gorman had taken that from her just as forcefully as he would’ve taken everything else, and what kind of choice was that?

But maybe she had a different one now. Because—oh, oh because—this was her head. Beth’s, not Gorman’s. Time to take control of what was hers. Beth could just see him in her mind, the real Gorman overlaid by the rotting, slimy one, the literal stuff of nightmares, standing in a shaft of moonlight, smirking at her with that disgusting, oozing grin. Taunting her with that oily voice—sweet birdie, sweet birdie—except she wasn’t afraid anymore. She knew what he didn’t. Beth Greene wasn’t just some weak little girl, wasn’t some prize to be won, some debt to be paid, and any minute now she was gonna wipe that awful smile off his horrible face. She wasn’t going to let him win. She wasn’t even going to let him get to the finish line.

For the first time since it happened, the thought of Gorman, the image of him in her head, didn’t prickle at her neck like the heavy, scratching thing it had become. No, something bubbled in her chest instead, something warm and weightless, something which quickened her pulse and near stole her breath as she explained this to Daryl. And she watched his eyes brighten as the words tumbled from her mouth, fell over each other in the rush to get out, to be spoken, to become something that could never be undone. Daryl didn’t say much, just hummed and nodded but she knew. She could see the glimmer in his eyes even in the dark and knew he was proud of her. Knew that somewhere in his head right now he was calling her strong, and she was. Strong enough to fight Gorman all on her own, on her own terms, and win.

When she finished speaking, Daryl once again hummed at her. A pleased sort of sound which rumbled through his chest beneath her chin. Beth snuggled back in, closed her eyes, and sent out another silent thank-you to whatever or whoever set this building in their path. They’d so desperately needed this breather. A place to stop and recharge. She’d never have been able to take this step forward with the dreams—or the ones with Daryl, either—had she stayed stuck in that dreary mental loop without reprieve.

Soon, Daryl was asleep again, trading his gentle touch at her neck for soft snores beneath her head. Beth burrowed into him, listened to the steady thump of his heart. Went through her ritual to offset the lingering unease from the dream, that heavy little ball of lead hiding beneath the thrill of having changed another one for the better. Of adding an exciting new facet to her plan, too. They still weren’t good, after all, but changing them was. An exceptionally good thing, and it was only going to get better.

*~*

An ache pulsed behind Beth’s eyes when she awoke again later, after a couple of hours’ worth of strange dreams, like a disjointed slideshow full of odd imagery, with the same vivid detail but lacking the cohesion she was used to from her nightmares. Brightness flooded the room, brighter even than the days before the storm, and even through her shut-tight eyelids it hurt. Beth pushed her face deeper into Daryl’s chest, wincing when that slight movement made her head throb harder. Of course, the first day in what felt like ages when the sun came out, she’d wake up with a headache.

Daryl woke a moment or two later and Beth tightened her grip around his waist, hoping to keep him from moving too suddenly and jostling her unhappy head. Ever observant, even half-asleep, Daryl froze on the verge of stretching, murmured something thickly before sweeping his palm down her back.

“’S wrong?”

“Ugh. Headache.” She couldn’t quite keep all of the whine out of her voice and hated the way it made her sound, but, well, ouch.

“Mm.” Daryl’s fingers moved carefully up the back of her neck, trailed gently over her scalp. “Bad?”

“Pretty bad,” she whispered, as her head gave another hard throb. “I get ‘em like this sometimes, when I’m thinkin’ lots, or worryin’ too much.”

Daryl huffed. “Which you have been.”

“Don’t suppose you got any Excedrin hiding anywhere?” she asked, trying for cheerful and regretting it instantly when speaking prompted a wave of nausea to accompany the fists pounding inside her cranium, like a dozen walkers trying to break through her forehead.

Daryl’s soft snort made her smile, though, despite the discomfort. “Got some water and a rag.”

“That—mmm—that’d be nice. Thank you.”

Daryl carefully extracted himself from their tangle of limbs, taking extra care not to jostle her even though even the smallest movement hurt. When he returned she propped herself up long enough to drain the half can of water, not stopping even with the jackhammer trying to pierce through her skull or when every mouthful of water roiled in her gut. Keeping her eyes shut tight—even that hurt, stretching her skin even tighter across her already tight forehead—Beth eased back down, using Daryl’s thigh as a pillow. He pressed the damp cloth to her forehead, covering her eyes with it as well and darkening the room enough to let her ease back on the tension. His fingers combed carefully over the crown of her head, slowly as though he was taking care not to catch them in her hair, and that was just glorious enough to elicit a small hum of contentment despite the ongoing pain. That went on for awhile, and Beth relaxed enough that the pain wasn’t evident unless she moved.

Outside, filtering in through the cracked open window above, songbirds chirped and tweeted their morning tunes. It’d been so long since she’d heard them—even longer since she had appreciated them—so she listened to them now, imagining their little feathered bodies hopping from branch to branch, or flitting down to the ground in search of something tasty for breakfast. She’d forgotten, with the weather, that it was still relatively early autumn, by their best guess, and she was pleased now to hear that not all of the birds had migrated away. It was a shame they had to let this morning go to waste.

“Daryl?”

The stroke of his fingers paused. “Mm?”

“Sorry we gotta waste the day now,” she said, keeping her voice at a whisper so she didn’t disturb the calm.

“Don’t matter,” he answered, voice equally quiet as he started stroking her hair again. “Just another day.”

She sighed. “Still. You should go out, at least, see what’s around. Maybe hunt something.”

“...Beth.”

“No, you should,” she said, reaching out blindly for his other hand, which rested atop his thigh. “Doesn’t feel right, not knowing what’s out there now that the storm’s over.”

Maybe it was a little unfair of her, appealing to his sensibilities like that, but she knew she had a point and so did Daryl. There hadn’t been a need to scout the area during the storm, since the weather would have kept away all but the most determined of threats. Now, though...

Daryl let out a grunt, one that suggested he knew she was right but didn’t like it. “You’re gonna have to lock me out. Ain’t leavin’ you here like this with the door open.”

“I can take care of myself, remember?” she said, though her attempt at humour fell flat and Daryl just grunted again.

“Can’t even open your eyes, woman,” he said, nonetheless easing out from under her.

Beth curled up on the carpet, trading the warmth of Daryl’s thigh as her pillow for his vest, the leather balled up and gathered into the crook of her elbow. He puttered around, probably making a bit more noise than he needed to. She knew he wasn’t thrilled with this, and while she didn’t much like the idea of separating again, it had to be done, and it wasn’t as though he would be going very far. She would feel a lot safer about staying here, knowing there wasn’t a camp full of cannibals or something waiting in their backyard.

A grunt from the doorway drew her thoughts back outward. “You ready?”

Beth blinked her eyes open beneath the cover of the cloth. “Yeah.”

It took more effort than she let on to get up, and of course the throbbing started up again tenfold the moment she pushed herself onto her knees, and her stomach clenched as she got to her feet. She kept the cloth over her eyes, though, shielding the worst of the light as she followed Daryl out toward the rolling door, watching his heels through squinted lids so she knew where to step, pausing when he did in front of the still-closed door.

“I’ll give you the all-clear whistle when I’m back,” he said, following up a moment later with the tee-weet sound of the whistle in question.

Beth tried not to flinch at the way the shrillness of it bounced around inside her head, but Daryl clearly noticed anyway, as he sighed and flexed his fingers against his leg.

“Get some sleep, girl,” he said, after a moment, reaching out to cup her cheek with a gentle palm. “Won’t be long.”

*~*

To be continued in chapter 34>>

Fall Right In - Chapter 32/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Sun, 24 Jan 2016 00:29:18 GMT

Fall Right In
Chapter 32 – You Light the Spark in My Bonfire Heart

*~*

Daryl’s breath on her neck was the first thing Beth noticed when she slipped into consciousness. He was still asleep, going by the way his chest moved against her back, his breathing deep and steady. Every warm exhale trickled down along her spine like the brush of his fingers, and Beth kept as still as she could to keep from waking him. It wasn’t even light out yet, anyway, and the storm was still going strong.

Wind pounded against the sides of the building in great big gusts, pelting the unmoving brick with bullets made of frigid rain. Branches snapped and trunks creaked with ominous persistence, and the windows overhead rattled so hard it was a wonder none of them had tumbled loose to shatter on the concrete floor below. The rain hadn’t quit, either, had barely slowed down in the day and a half since the storm began. It drummed on the roof in an unending rhythm, poured over the high windows, rushed down the brick to spill out from ancient, overloaded gutters in noisy waterfalls. No doubt all that water was making rivers out of streams, out there beyond their temporary harbour, rising high enough to burst over banks, flood the low places, and render everything else a muddy, treacherous mess.

Thank God for this building and its non-leaky roof. If they hadn’t found it when they did, she and Daryl might—no. Good things. She had to think about the good things, not the what-ifs. The building and its roof, that could be the first one of the day. This building was a good thing and she was grateful for its existence. For its shelter. For having a blanket and room with carpet in it, no matter how thin. Those were two more good things, but she had better do this right. Start at the beginning so she didn’t miss any of the steps.

Beth closed her eyes, putting away the dim outline of the dingy brick walls and cold concrete beyond the open office door, and inhaled as deeply as she could. Felt the rush of air in, the expansion of her lungs as they grew to fill her chest. Held the breath in, a slow count of three, just long enough for the faintest burn to creep in at the edges before she let the air back out just as slowly as she breathed in. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe, and remember.

She was alive. She was alive and she wanted to be, and that was a good thing. She had sixteen years’ worth of love and fond memories that nobody, and nothing, not even the end of the world, could ever take away from her. She had Daddy’s eyes and Mama’s voice and Shawn’s right hook. She had hope that Maggie made it out and maybe some of the others, too. She had two good legs and a pair of strong arms and she could use them to do just about anything. She was strong. She survived. She made it. She was going to keep on doing all of those things because she had a plan and her plan worked.

She had Daryl. They had each other. They weren’t alone after the loss of their home and in the midst of this storm they were warm and dry and about as safe as they could hope to be.

Good things. All good things. As long as she remembered them, the bad stuff couldn’t drag her down.

Ritual done, Beth tucked in the loose edges of the blanket, curled back against the warm wall of Daryl’s chest, trying to be gentle so she didn’t wake him, only now registering the firmness at her butt for what it was. Daryl mumbled something in his sleep and pushed his erection against her, his hand on her belly pressing in as he did. Beneath his palm pulsed a little burst of warmth, quickly spreading down between her legs.

That—that was a pretty good thing, too, even though the rest of yesterday passed mostly in silence. Since—a flush of heat climbed under her ribs, all the way up into her cheeks, just thinking about it—since she made herself come, pressed up against Daryl’s back while he did the same. Daryl had been quiet, but much in the way he was in the days after the ledge. Quiet, but not distant, and it was easy to give him that space. To be honest she was grateful for it, too. She hadn’t planned any of it, had only wanted to hold him like he held her, help him feel just as safe and cherished as he made her feel. Hadn’t ever thought he would react so intensely to her touch and sweep her right along with him.

They both needed the chance to breathe and think about things, afterward. She sure as heck never touched herself with somebody like that before and she was certain Daryl hadn’t either. So it was good, the quiet, even if they never drifted far from each other’s orbit.

But despite all that, he still pulled her into his arms last night and fell asleep curled up with her. He didn’t regret what happened. Hesitation or not, he wasn’t pulling away from her. He was careful, though, just to hold her. Hand on her belly, sure, big and warm. The same comforting weight he always was, only without the little sweeps of his fingers, or any of the things that would stir her up. Beth understood; he wasn’t ready for anything else.

Whatever held him back, it mattered, and that mattered to her.

So she kept still, now, kept her eyes shut and resisted the urge to grind back into him even as he made those sleepy little thrusts against her. Even though she could feel the echo of each one of them pulsing through her belly and down to her clit. Lord, she felt it everywhere, throbbing in her labia, beating inside until her muscles itched and whispered softly for something to squeeze. Almost like she could feel the blood rushing south with each fluttery beat, settling into her slick flesh with a deep, heavy heat. A thrumming pressure demanding release. Was this what it felt like for a man? She never thought about it like that before, comparing her slick and swollen to Daryl’s swollen and hard, but, well, it wasn’t as though those two things weren’t meant to be complementary. Just thinking about all the ways in which they could be prompted a flurry of involuntary clenching and a fresh surge of wetness. That itch inside was getting stronger with every heartbeat and she wasn’t just warm anymore.

She didn’t want to make things worse, when he woke up, by assuming he wanted to be doing this. Hopefully when he did wake, he’d at least not be embarrassed by what his body wanted to do in its sleep. But she couldn’t help what it did to her, feeling him there, pressing against her like that. His unconscious motions, guided by some sort of instinct, had the length of him, hard—god, so hard and thick and hot, hotter than the heat of the man himself—nestled along the crack of her butt. His shorts were old and thin and even though her red ones weren’t, she felt every inch of him. She took a deep breath which shuddered out and Daryl mumbled again, something inaudible, and curled his fingers against her belly, almost as though he was dreaming. He’d never done this before in all the times they had slept like this, so maybe he was.

Maybe—and she wouldn’t have let herself suppose, if yesterday hadn’t happened—maybe he was even dreaming about her.

As if on cue, Daryl nuzzled his face into the back of her neck and murmured her name, ramping up that pleasant trickle down her spine into something that rushed, zinged along her nerves and pulled another shaking breath from her lungs. They couldn’t expand deep enough anymore to let her breathe normally and she really, really needed Daryl to wake up now and either stop altogether or carry on consciously. Correction—she wanted him to wake up, even if nothing was gonna happen, just so she could be awake with him. Anything else would be nice—so nice, oh lord, would it ever—but awake with Daryl, cuddled up beneath a blanket was one of her favourite things ever.

She drew her knees up higher, clenched her thighs together a little, felt the slickness there between them. If she were to slide her hand into her shorts right now her fingers would come out completely coated. Beth huffed a quiet chuckle. If she were to slide her fingers into her shorts right now she wasn’t likely to want to bring them back out. She could do that, but no, not with Daryl still asleep, even though—oh, god—just the thought of touching herself while he lay behind her only made her throb harder.

If she did do it, though, she’d go slowly. Tease herself and make it last instead of just going for it right away. Cup herself in her palm, first, marvel at the heat emanating from her body. Feel the beads of moisture literally coating her curls. Pinch her folds together until her clit pulsed inside, then get her fingers good and slick with the wetness she squished out and then just touch. Touch herself like she hadn’t ever done it before, like this needy place nestled between her thighs was something brand new. Something to learn, to explore. As though she was thirteen all over again except she didn’t have to struggle to remember what Maggie told her. Didn’t need that little bottle of lube to help things along because she was making more than enough on her own.

With a slippery fingertip she would glide along the insides of her labia, the warm flesh so plump, so swollen she wouldn’t even need to hold herself apart. A light touch; a little tickle of pressure just firm enough to make her hum. To make her breath flow out from somewhere very deep. Back and forth, that same slow, slick glide, feeling the contrast between the fleshy outer lips and the rippled inner ones. So thin and sensitive when she rubbed them between her fingers. Yeah, a little tug, a little roll, and the tiniest little waves of bliss. She would take a minute to indulge in that because it would feel so good.

When she moved on, she’d be even wetter. Her breathing would deepen and the throb between her legs would spread, until she felt that need to be touched almost everywhere. Oh, there were so many places her other hand could explore but not yet. No, she would curl her fingers against her hip, hold off until she couldn’t stand it, until that needy itch screamed out all over her body and she had to.

The clench of her vaginal muscles would pull her mind back into focus, remind her of what she was doing, now, not what she could be doing later. Beth would sink her teeth into her bottom lip to keep a little groan inside when her fingers reached the swirled flesh of her opening. With a touch even lighter, as gentle as a little breath of air, she would circle it, feel the way the muscles moved beneath against that tease of pleasure, how they would flutter and contract, begging her to come inside. But no, she would keep circling, keep teasing, feel it as a deep pulse in her belly, a warmth spreading through her like a flood. Warmth that was a flood, a fresh slick of it pouring out to meet her questing fingers. Come inside. Inside. Inside where she was so slick and so warm and so, so ready to engulf those fingers in silky heat. To draw them in deep, where that delicious itch lived, clamp so tightly around them as they pressed into it and made her moan, made her tremble all over.

But her fingers would move on, and those muscles would flutter in protest and she would almost give in, almost slide a finger inside as far as she could go. Only the throb of her clit would speak louder, and so she would deny one need to focus on another. Glide those fingers now to that swollen nub of flesh standing out so full at the apex of her labia. She’d be careful, though. Careful to keep her touch gentle so she wouldn’t cry out the moment she made contact. Make slow strokes with wet fingers on the hood of flesh around the top of it, the folds beneath. By now her breathing would grow kind of ragged in anticipation. In anticipation and need, as her clit throbbed and demanded to be touched, while the ache in her vagina pulsed doubly strong, begging for its share of the attention.

She’d be circling closer now, moving with a bit more pressure, just barely grazing that bundle of nerves. Already she would feel the tremble begin in her toes, a tremble which curled them around an icy-hot wave slowly climbing up her body. Yes. Like that, just a little harder now, the pads of her fingers dragging slickly around her swollen clit. Slow circles. Steady. Just enough pressure to burst into tiny shards of pleasure. Oh, lord, she needed something inside her, too. Something to strike her just right while she worked at her clit, something to squeeze around, something like—

A groan from behind her tugged Beth’s mind away from the fantasy. Pulled her up just enough notice the erection still pressing rhythmically against her ass, as well as her hand between her legs, cupping herself through the damp red fabric of her little shorts. She stopped the circles she was making with the heel of her hand and tried to keep her breathing even. Tried, and failed, and Daryl murmured something again and then went rigid at her back, his breathing shifting in an instant from deep and steady to loud and ragged.

“Hey,” Beth said, and pulled her hand out from between her thighs to lay it over top of his.

He shuddered hard against her back, but didn’t speak. Just lay there like a log—a log with his cock still nestled in the crack of her ass—his breath hitting her neck in hard little explosions.

Even if he decided he didn’t want to, she needed him to know that he could. That it was all right to want it because she wanted it, too. “You can, Daryl,” she whispered, surprised at the hoarseness of her voice.

He curled his fingertips a little deeper into her belly and pressed his forehead against the back of her neck. “Fuck, Beth,” he said, voice little more than a shaky whisper.

“You can.” Beth traced her fingers over his knuckles, stroked over his thumb with hers, pushed back with her hips just the tiniest bit and smiled when she felt a hint of pressure returned. “If you want to, you can.”

He shuddered again and breathed her name, but stayed still. For a minute, or several minutes, several minutes which spanned hours, Daryl remained unmoving, like a statue at her back aside from the uneven breathing. Both of them that way, two warm bodies with thundering hearts hovering in some sort of static-charged limbo where every jagged breath crackled with the rustle of fabric.

The sound of Daryl swallowing was loud in her ear, and against her belly his fingers flexed and extended, over and over like a cat’s kneading paw. Finally, he let out a sound like a strangled whine, and pushed in with his hand at the same time as he tilted his hips toward her, as though he meant to pin her there in the middle.

And Beth couldn’t keep from pushing back, a little more firmly than the last time, enough to feel the press of his cock. “Please, Daryl. I just wanna feel you.”

He shuddered, like a wave rippling at her back, his breath once again spilling hot and heavy on her neck as he lifted his head. A low groan followed, one that rumbled up from his belly. One that seemed to shake the ground beneath them as his hips jerked against her butt. Beth pressed down on his palm, pushed in hard, and the next move he made was slower, more like the little thrusts he made in his sleep, only deeper. More deliberate. Where before they pulsed like an echo in her belly, the motions of his hips, the press of his cock against her now flared like lightning, bursting out from her sacrum right through to her clit, to the slick, throbbing flesh between her legs.

“Oh, Daryl,” she whispered, not surprised to feel another shudder tear through him as she started grinding back into him, circling her hips to match his slow rhythm of rolling thrusts against her.

His lips dragged across the nape of her neck. Dry, scratchy, a wet breath of air escaping between them. “Beth. You’re killin’ me, girl.”

“Killin’ you?” A bleat of laughter tumbled out of her open mouth. “You know how long I waited for you to wake up?”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” he whispered, between now-wet kisses dropped down the back of her neck.

They fell into silence, aside the little moans Beth couldn’t contain and Daryl’s hard breaths as he slowly rutted against her ass. His kisses became words. Words she couldn’t hear as he mouthed them into her neck while he shuddered and sighed and groaned behind her. His fingers on her belly now moved in slow arcs, sweeping low with the barest brush of pressure, setting the muscles quivering beneath, rippling out from behind her bellybutton and spreading like that of a stone tossed into a pond. Beth’s breath caught in her chest, held there until it almost burned before tumbling back out in a high pitched whimper.

Because, if he wasn’t sure before, after yesterday afternoon he knew without a doubt what this meant. Yeah, his touch was nice, just the feel of him on her skin no matter what the circumstances. It didn’t have to mean that but right now it did, and with her second whimper his thrusts behind her grew bolder. His silent words into her neck were again punctuated with sloppy kisses, trails of saliva left behind turned cool by the heat of his breath. She couldn’t hear the words, could only feel them like a buzz down her spine. A shiver across her scalp, tingling and warm. As warm as her belly beneath the fingers which touched her as she had touched him.

Beth bit into her lip and half-stifled a little moan. Imagined them rolling over. It wouldn’t matter who was on top, not really, so long as she could feel the thickness of his cock between her legs, between her spread labia so he could know how wet she was for him. So he could feel her muscles clench inside as she rolled along his length, dragging her clit against the hardness of him. Or they could stay like this and she could take his hand, push it into her shorts. Get his fingers on her like she imagined doing to herself. In her, so much thicker and longer than her own fingers, and oh, that would feel so amazing.

Slow, Beth. Slow.

No getting ahead of herself and ruining what was happening now by thinking about what could happen later, maybe. Maybe. Beth’s moan escaped this time before she could suppress it, and Daryl let out a matching one behind her as his fingers dipped lower. As though he’d read her mind maybe, sliding his shaky fingers just above the elastic waistband of her shorts. Tracing that line of sensitive skin back and forth until she was the one who trembled with the beat of her heart pounding in her ears.

Like maybe he was only waiting for her to ask him.

Beth took a deep breath and wrapped her hand around his wrist, breathing so hard she almost couldn’t force the words out. “Do...do you want to?”

Please.

Daryl’s fingers came to a shaking halt mid-pass and his breath fell across her neck in a shuddery rush. “God, yes.”

Beth had to take in a couple of deep breaths before she moved, before she could find the strength to lift her leg and drape it back over his. Shifting like that let Daryl’s cock, not really contained much by his loose boxers, push further between her spread cheeks when he thrust against her again. Oh, god, he was so close, and he stopped moving but he didn’t pull back, didn’t try to retreat even though every muscle in his body tensed.

Beth tightened her hold on his wrist, fingernails just digging into the sensitive inner skin. “Daryl.”

A deep breath left him, and he nudged at the elastic. Plucked at it. Tucked his fingertips just beneath the edge and stroked along the skin there, mouth open, lips pressed to her neck as his breath washed hot and ragged over her already warm skin. That tension turned into a tremble, right from his knees where they pushed at hers and up into his chest, and he groaned so deeply she felt it rumbling through her back. His teeth scraped against her neck, fingers still grazing, and Beth let out the tiniest of whimpers which prompted yet another groan out of Daryl.

“Beth,” he breathed, lips sliding wetly at the back of her neck, fingers hovering at that border as though he were afraid to cross it. “I don’t...”

“Just—” Her breath heaved in her chest, and shuddered out in a shaky rush. There wasn’t any way he could do this wrong, there just was not. “Just touch me, Daryl. Please.”

At her neck the whispered words continued, washing over her skin in little wisps of breath and trembling slides of his lips. Some sort of silent plea he was desperate for her to hear, and something tightened in her chest in response.

Oh, Daryl. Daryl, don’t be afraid. It’s just me. Just me and you.

He shuddered behind her, lips finally falling still, lying hot and open at the nape of her neck. Maybe he heard her answer the same way she heard his fears. What this was—oh, she knew. She knew, but the world wasn’t ready yet for that word and she shoved it back down before it could escape. She couldn’t blame Daryl for being scared about this. About all of this. It scared her too, the sheer depths of what lay between them. Not just the physical acts, what they’d done, what they were going to do, but all of it. Everything beating in her heart for this man, everything she felt echoed back at her from his. It was good, what they had, where they were going. Imperfect and beautiful and just so good; the best good thing on her list of good things. But also huge. Enormous. Earth-shattering even if it was only their little corner of it shattered.

Beth brushed her fingers across his knuckles, slowly back and forth until he shuddered behind her. “You can, Daryl. I want you to.”

Daryl bit down on the back of her neck, hard enough to make her gasp, and pushed his hand into her shorts.

Yesterday afternoon he watched as she scrubbed her panties clean with their bar of soap and some rainwater and hung them up to dry by her jeans. So he knew she was bare beneath these stolen boxer briefs but he still let out a strangled sound in the back of his throat when his fingertips brushed the edge of her curls. With a murmured word she couldn’t hear, teeth grazing her neck, breathing every bit as hard as she was as, Daryl cupped her in his big warm palm and stayed there, not moving. As though he just wanted to hold her, feel the heat of her, exactly how she’d wanted to do it herself. Palm warm, long fingers just pressing in the tiniest amount. He wasn’t even really doing anything yet and her heart was already pounding, a pulse that beat through every inch of her body. But he was going to. He wanted to. He had his hand down her shorts and he was going to touch her.

Anticipation of that buzzed in her ears, every nerve ending from her scalp to her toes on high alert. Waiting for the show to start and she felt like she was barely holding on long before the first tentative dip of his finger down into her folds.

“Ohhh.”

Daryl’s teeth scraped at her neck again, his moan almost pained as he parted her, fingers gliding between her slick, swollen lips. So, so lightly, god, just a breath of a touch that sparked off all those waiting nerves and fluttered hard in her belly. Beth heard herself whimper his name, in a voice she barely recognized as her own, and nuzzled her face down into the strong bicep tucked beneath her head.

Another pass, this time a bit more. Not quite enough but there was something so delightful about it, about Daryl’s thick fingers just whispering over her like butterfly wings, following every dip and curve and contour until Beth couldn’t tell which of them was trembling harder. She fought to keep her breathing even, but each increasingly sure stroke of his fingers made that more and more impossible and she stopped trying. Just let her chest heave and her breath tumble out in whatever broken rush it could manage. This was exactly how she’d pictured, before, in her head, only it was Daryl slicking up his fingers, following the paths laid out by her body to tickle her opening and moan softly when her muscles clenched, begging him to come inside. Fingers just the right combination of rough and wet to keep those sparks firing, bursting in her belly as they skirted around her clit, just shy of actually touching it. It didn’t take long for her ragged breaths to turn into other sounds; little whimpers on almost every exhale, broken by low raspy moans that started in her toes, and short, sharp cries that made Daryl curse under his breath.

He bit at her neck, a pinch of teeth into the taut cord of muscle that pulsed all the way down to her clit and fell out of her mouth as a wobbly ohhh. Daryl groaned as he released her, as he licked across the place where his teeth dug in and swept his fingers down again to tease at her opening.

“Daryl,” she whispered, unable to stop the flutter of her muscles beneath his tickling fingers, or the tilt of her hips seeking more friction. More—more something. “I need—I need—”

Daryl growled into her neck, scraping his teeth where her skin still stung and rolled his hips behind her. A slow, hard grind and an even harder press of his cock between her spread cheeks. It jolted through her belly, a flutter of heat and a zing of pleasure, and Beth couldn’t remember anymore what she was going to say.

“Oh, god,” she moaned, and rolled her hips with him. Pushing back against his cock one way and toward his fingers the other.

A sound almost like a chuckle, this time. Whispered into her neck along with that scrape of his teeth. He truly was teasing now, tickling so very lightly at the hollow along the underside of her clit. Not exploring anymore, but deliberately touching her in the very place that made her moan the loudest. Swooping down to get his fingers even slicker and staring all over again, never quite where she wanted him but it felt so good. So good in the worst possible way because she was going to bite a chunk out of his arm if he kept teasing her this way. She needed him on her clit. Needed him inside. Fingers, cock, whatever and she wasn’t at all certain she didn’t say that out loud, the way Daryl’s groan burst out like gunfire in her ears.

Another dip down to coat his fingers and Beth held her breath, waiting, waiting for the teasing to start up again but instead his finger swept across her clit. Too hard, too sudden, too direct and she cried out, an abrupt shout that bounced off the ceiling as her hips jerked back. Daryl pulled his fingers away and she fumbled to grab hold of his wrist before he pulled back altogether.

“Okay—it’s okay, it’s okay,” she whispered, releasing his wrist to draw her trembling finger in slow, firm circles around one of his knuckles, pushing just a bit harder around the top side. “Like that.”

He exhaled sharply, then swept his finger down into her folds again, humming into her skin when he found her even wetter than before. His first circle was tentative but the next one—oh, the next one was perfect. Just the right speed, just the right increase of pressure around the top to make her back arch, her muscles clench.

“Y-yeah.” Beth clutched again at his wrist. “Oh, god. Oh god, Daryl.”

He didn’t answer, but she knew he wouldn’t. Knew that he couldn’t find the words for her right now or else he’d already be saying them. It didn’t matter. She didn’t need words when she had the rumbling in his chest, the curses whispered under his breath and the flutter of it at her neck. The rocking of his hips, the press of his cock, the turn of his fingers exactly how she needed them. He was there. He was right where he wanted to be, here with her even if he couldn’t speak. Touching her. Driving her closer and closer to the edge with each perfect drag of his finger on her throbbing clit.

Desperate to hold onto him, to touch him somehow, Beth flung her arm up behind her, finding the curve of his neck, and she tugged at his hair until he growled and thrust hard against her ass. She kept pulling as the coil in her belly wound tighter and tighter with each circle of his fingers. She was so close. So close and it wasn’t going to take long. A tremor rolled through her shoulders, clenched in her belly where the spikes of pleasure lanced through like little electric shocks. Curling in her toes. Stuttering out of her lungs as a gravelly sound that scraped its way past her throat.

“Daryl!” she cried, tangling her fingers into his hair. “Daryl—”

Every muscle in her body clenched. Tightened. Pulled to the point of breaking and then shattered into millions of pieces. And she was coming, coming hard, to the sound of her own broken cries and Daryl’s ragged Beth–Beth–Beth in her ear.

Beth was still shaking when Daryl pushed his fingers inside her, his groan loud enough she could hear him over the buzzing in her ears when her contracting muscles sucked tight around those two thick digits and pulled them deep. He curled them in and back and pushed in deeper, the heel of his hand striking her still-singing clit, fingertips pressing so close to where she needed him that all it took was a tilt of her hips to get him to the right place.

Her back arched again like the arms of a crossbow on contact, and around the rising whine in her chest she managed to speak. Tightened her grip on his hair with one hand, reached out again for his wrist with the other, closing her fingers around it and digging in hard. “There—oh god, Daryl—right there!”

A huff of breath rushed across her neck, followed by a graze of teeth and a quiet moan as he withdrew, fighting the tension of her clenching muscles, pulling partway out and pushing back into her with an obscenely wet squelch. Striking that spot all over again, now that he knew where it was, the jolt of it shooting right through to her spine, down to her toes, coiling tight in her belly. Again, and again, until she was rocking against his hand while he thrust his fingers in. So hard. Harder. As hard as she could push against him at this angle, and her greedy, clenching muscles fluttered and caught the last little waves of her orgasm, rose up and toppled her right back over the edge.

When she floated back down, she sagged, weightless, breathless, sightless because her eyelids had been replaced with sacks of wet wool and she couldn’t hope to open them. Collapsed back against Daryl’s body, shuddered with the ripples of a little aftershock as he withdrew his fingers, but felt a hint of a smile tugging at her lips when he left his trembling hand resting there on her thigh like he wasn’t quite ready to not be touching her. He was still hard behind her, still panting in her ear. When she could move she’d take care of that for him if he wanted her to. For now she lay in his arms like a pile of spaghetti and tried to remember how to speak.

“Daryl,” she whispered, once the words came. There weren’t any words better than that in her head, anyway. Not right now. Maybe not ever. “Oh, Daryl.”

His breath had been shaking against her the whole time, but there was something else in it now as it warmed her neck. Something thick and heavy that made her eyes water, made her heart flutter in her chest and she didn’t know why, but before she could think too hard on it he was pushing at her hip, urging her to turn over.

Though her bones still felt like jelly, Beth forced her arms and legs to do as she asked and rolled to face him. “What—”

“C’mere,” he breathed, as he gathered her close, one big hand cradling the crown of her head and the other sliding up under her shirt to lay warm and sticky across her back.

She let herself be gathered. Draped one floppy arm around his waist and snuggled close. His erection pressed into her belly, solid and hot, and Daryl moaned softly when she arched gently against him. “Daryl?”

Pressing his face down into her hair, he sighed, mouth open and breath warm on her scalp. That same heavy weight to it as before, tugging even harder at her fluttering heart. “Just—just stay.”

Oh, Daryl. He had to be screaming for release right about now. No way he could be that hard for that long and not need to come, and lord, she wanted to get him there. Hold him in her palm, feel the weight of his cock and the smoothness of the skin, sweep her thumb through the bead of moisture at the head and watch him twitch, then wrap her fingers around him and stroke him until he trembled. Until he whimpered and moaned the same as she had. She’d watch him explode all over her hand and sag down to the floor with bones made of rubber and then he could gather her close. Then they could drift away together, sticky and sweaty and panting in sweet exhaustion. She wanted to do that for him so badly—but only if he was ready for it to happen, and every shuddery breath into her hair told her that he wasn’t.

That was the only part of this that really mattered. Not what she wanted. Not the little pang of disappointment in her belly or the little clench in her chest when she thought of all the reasons why he thought he had to hold back. The only thing that mattered was Daryl. Just Daryl, and if he needed to hold her right now then she would let herself be held. Be whatever it was he needed.

“Okay,” she whispered, pushing at his chest with her face, pressing a kiss into his skin through the thin white cotton. “Okay.”

Daryl’s fingers curled in at her back, against her scalp. “Beth.”

She brushed her thumb back and forth over his cotton-covered back. Listened to the pounding of his heart and the depth of his breathing in her ear. Sleep tugged at the edges of her mind, and she let it tug. Drifted, warm and weightless, with Daryl’s arms wrapped so tightly around her.

“‘S okay, Daryl,” she murmured, letting out a slow, deep breath. “I got you.”

I’m not goin’ anywhere.

*~*

Days like these lead to
Nights like this lead to
Love like ours
You light the spark in my bonfire heart
People like us—we don’t
Need that much, just some-
One that starts
Starts the spark in our bonfire hearts
- James Blunt

to be continued in chapter 33 >>

Fall Right In - Chapter 31/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 22:22:02 GMT

Fall Right In
Chapter 31 – I’m Lookin’ for Me, You’re Lookin’ for You

*~*

Daryl awoke to a flash of lightning through the small window, illuminating the little space for an instant before throwing everything into almost complete blackness. Just outside the office door, the remnants of their fire glowed faintly orange, but otherwise cast no light at all beyond the coals. He wasn’t certain what woke him, whether it was the rumble of thunder or the lightning itself, or the rain pounding on the roof at least twice as hard as it was when he fell asleep. Nothing felt amiss. His usual internal alarm remained silent, but he kept still and listened all the same.

In front of him, Beth murmured something in her sleep, and—for the moment satisfied that their shelter had not been disturbed—Daryl settled back in with her, pressing his nose into nape of her warm neck to breathe in the scent of her, sweat and smoke and rain. He had missed holding her, falling asleep with her, even if the floor beneath them wasn’t at all forgiving.

Beth mumbled again, and her legs, bare and bent in line with his, stretched out slowly, the backs of her knees pushing into the fronts of his. She so rarely moved in her sleep except for when she dreamed and Daryl held his breath, waiting, hoping that this was just her waking up and not the stirrings of a nightmare. She’d been so certain, before they lay down for the night, that she was going to change the dreams, and after not sleeping more than half an hour at a time for days she fucking deserved a good night’s rest. Daryl pressed his palm a little more firmly into her belly, hoping she would pick the third option and just stay peacefully sleeping.

But she didn’t move again after the initial stretch, nor did she wake, and Daryl tried to let go of the tension in his own body to keep it from transferring into her. He wouldn’t sleep again, especially after sleeping right through last night, but there was no reason yet to get up. More reason to stay, since he couldn’t leave the blanket without waking her or letting in the cold. That, and lying here with Beth topped the list as the best thing he could possibly be doing right now. So he breathed deep and felt the even deeper rise and fall of her back to his chest as she slept on through the storm raging outside. He listened to it as he lay there with her, warm, not entirely comfortable but not particularly concerned about it, either, so long as she slept.

And she did, for a while, the rhythm of her breathing lulling him not quite to sleep, but somewhere warm and floaty where each exhale washed over him like little waves lapping at some distant shore. He drifted there for a time, aware of Beth’s warm body nestled against his but the chill of the floor, the unforgiving surface beneath them faded away. A little space made of just Beth and Daryl, weightless, safe, just far enough outside of the world that it couldn’t quite touch them.

Awareness of the rustling trickled in slowly, and at first he thought of it like footsteps in the sand, like the waves in his head had transported them to some actual beach. Beth murmured something and he thought, it’s okay, go back to sleep, but the crunching of sand only got louder, and the wind gusted, whining through the trees, quiet at first but soon ramping up like a kettle building steam, hooking onto his eardrums to pull him up with it.

Daryl sucked in a breath like he’d burst out of the water for real, jolting awake as a crash of thunder sounded overhead and in his arms, Beth let out another loud whimper—not the wind at all—and pulled her knees almost up to her chest. Not the crunch of sand, but the rasp of Beth’s legs against the canvas as they shot back down, heels knocking hard into his shins.

“No. No,” she mumbled, at the tail end of another drawn-out whine. “Not Daryl. No. No...”

Shit.

“Beth,” he said, struggling to get his tongue to work. He pushed against her stomach as she whimpered again and launched into another volley of Nos, each one more frantic than the last. “Beth. Beth, c’mon. Beth. Beth!”

With a gasp, she jerked awake, launching forward and out of his arms, landing flat against the dingy carpet. He couldn’t see but he could hear her breathing, rapid and shuddering, and his pounding heart sank down into his stomach as he reached for her, settling there like a block of concrete as she curled into his chest. A tremor rolled beneath his hands, just a fine little wave that ramped up while her breathing shifted from plain shuddery to those silent, wracking sobs and something else, too. Something whispered, over and over, too muffled, too mixed up in her tears to understand. All he could do was tug her close beneath their blanket, drag the pad of his thumb along her spine, try to soothe her with the usual litany of words.

And silently curse at the world for never letting her get any fucking rest.

First night she finally slept, first fucking night she got that glimmer of hope back in her eyes and now this. Right back where she started, her tears soaking into his shirt and her whole small body shaking, suffering the aftermath of the terror living inside her head.

Daryl pushed his face into her hair and tried to will away the pricking thing burning behind his eyes. “Beth. Beth. So fuckin’ sorry, girl.”

Still muffled into his chest, Beth’s mumbling got a little louder, until she pulled back just far enough that he could hear her saying his name. She took in another shuddery breath, which left her in a long huff of air and ended in something like a gasp of surprise. “Daryl. Daryl, it worked.”

“Oh.” His own release of breath matched hers, a sound part air, part laugh, as the pulse in his stomach once again rose up where it ought to be. If she meant what he thought she meant... “Beth?”

He felt the twisting of her arms as she swiped the tears from her face, and a second later she wriggled up until they were lying face to face. It was too dark to see her, even the coals from the fire behind her didn’t cast enough light, but in his mind he knew what he would find there if he could. Those big eyes, still red, still glistening, but wide open and bright, too, that spark blazing in them beneath the tears, hot enough to burn right through them.

Beth touched her palm to his face, thumb sweeping a slow arc across his cheekbones, her touch light as a feather but buzzing with the weight of what she was about to say. “It was still bad, but I-I did it, Daryl. I said. I said he wasn’t gonna trick me this time and he didn’t. It worked.”

A million thoughts swirled around his head, bouncing off each other like bumper cars on fast forward, but the main one, the important one, was an echo of her words. It worked. He would ask her later to explain what she meant about being tricked, to tell him more about the dream itself. For now he let the questions go and focused on the burst of relief, the trickle of something kind of like joy blooming in his chest.

Pulling her close, Daryl smoothed his hand up and down her back and murmured into her ear. “Good, Beth. That’s good.”

Her next breath definitely held a note of laughter to it, puffing warm on his neck. “Now if I can get them to stop...”

“Don’t get ahead a yourself.” He dropped a kiss down at her temple and glided all his fingers across her back, smiling into her skin when she sighed in that warm little way.

“It worked,” she whispered into his neck. “It worked. It worked...”

It worked. Wasn’t perfect, wasn’t any sort of quick fix, but it worked, in more ways than one. He held onto her, listening to her whisper those same two words over and over. Soothing herself, now, as the trembling settled and her breathing slowed, evened, lost the gasp and hitch of crying. And that was where it counted, if she could come back to herself that quick ‘cause of one little thing—whether it was the change itself or just the fact that she now knew she could. She could and she did and maybe the dreams weren’t gone, but she already found a way to make them less devastating.

Oh, this woman. This strong fucking woman.

Beth trailed her fingers back and forth along the neck of his undershirt, barely brushing his skin but leaving behind a tingling trail in her wake. “I am strong.”

There he was, speaking out loud what he only meant to think in his head, but he couldn’t regret it when she repeated it in that voice. Whispered, sure, but the words had a backbone of steel like the woman herself, and feeling that conviction from her revived that flutter of wings in his chest. Their sweeping beats drove a pulse of warmth right through him, from his pounding heart, through his belly, right down to his toes.

“You are,” he said, lips brushing against her still damp cheek. “An’ anyone tells you different’s a fuckin’ liar.”

Beth, nosing gently at his Adam’s Apple, chuckled in a way that only deepened the warmth inside him. “Even me?”

“‘Specially you,” he said, fingers flexing at the small of her back.

She giggled again, just as softly. Her gliding fingers travelled up his chest, drawing a little pattern of circles up over his collarbone and along the ridge of his shoulder until she reached his neck. As she slid her hand into his hair she traded her prodding nose for the light scrape of teeth over his quickening pulse. He tried to fight the resulting shudder, but lost, and flattened his palm at her back as it rippled through him.

Before it settled, Beth scratched her nails down the back of his scalp and nibbled down his throat, little nips of her teeth and swipes of her tongue until she reached the place where his clavicles met. The point of her tongue swirled around the little hollow there before she bit down on the bone, drawing a moan out of him he didn’t expect and couldn’t’ve stopped if he tried.

“Jesus, Beth,” he said, almost out of reflex by now except he meant it.

Fresh off a nightmare, he wasn’t sure she should be taking this where she seemed to be heading, but no matter what logic his brain tried to force, his body had other ideas. Before he could think better of it, he pressed in at the small of her back and pulled her flush against him, pushing his half-hard cock into her warm, soft belly.

“Mmm, Daryl.” Beth arched against him as she followed the line of his collarbone up toward his shoulder with that same agonizing mix of tongue and teeth.

Just that little movement fired off a round of those frissons in his belly, bursting out like a starburst of fireworks inside. She wasn’t gonna make this easy on him but when did she ever? He groaned, felt it building in his gut long before it rumbled out of his lips, and Beth laughed against his chest, a rich, gravelly sort of sound that shot straight to his cock.

“Tell me to stop,” she whispered, voice just as raspy as her laugh, arching again as he literally hardened against her belly. “But not ‘cause of where you think my head’s at right now.”

All he could say in response was her name, the rest of his words stolen away by the gathering heat, the weight of the blood surging into his cock, overriding the little spike of fear poking at his nerves. He felt her smile against his neck, and with her nose she marked a path up toward his ear. Her breath tickled down inside, starting a shudder rippling out from the base of his skull where her fingernails scratched tiny circles, to the tips of his own fingers pressed warm against her back.

The glide of her tongue along the shell of his ear kept the shivers rolling up his neck beneath her fingers, while her breath teased his eardrum in maddening little huffs which only deepened them. Fuck, she felt good, too fucking good, and before that spike could dig any deeper he gave in and pushed against her belly again, pressed his cock into that perfect cradle of soft and warm and firm, building just enough friction to rumble another moan through his chest. Beth moaned, too, a breathy little ohhh that floated down into his ear, right before she dipped her head and bit down hard on the cord of muscle in his neck.

He shuddered hard. “Fuck, Beth.”

Her giggle kept that gravelly tone to it, buzzing against his skin as she nibbled down from beneath his ear to the join of his shoulder. She paused there, though, nosing at him again like a little piglet rooting in the dirt only a thousand times more adorable, and he wanted to laugh, too, wanted the light little flutter building in his chest to bubble out of him the way it bubbled out of her. But it stuck there and all he could do was draw circles at her back and breathe out a heavy sigh as she once more arched her body against his.

He could roll her over. She would let him. Turn her onto her back and cover her small body with his, rock down into her through those goddamn red shorts. Get rid of the shorts altogether and sink right inside, bare and warm and hard and wet and so, so good.

And there it was—the tremble in his arms he couldn’t stop, even as the beads of pleasure burst in his belly. That spike of fear, or something, whatever this was hiding deep in his gut and now rising to the surface, a cold little island amidst all the coiling heat. Enough to pull him out. To rattle around the inside of his chest like a pinball pinging off every doubt he ever had. Beth smoothed her palm down along his arm, her lips pressed to the fluttering pulse in his throat. He didn’t want to stop but he didn’t know how not to, didn’t know how to push beyond this, and he let out a shaking breath and silently begged her not to let go.

He didn’t think he said anything out loud, but she stayed anyway, the lean length of her warm body still up against his, her delicate thumb tracing along a vein in his arm from the bend of his elbow to where it disappeared beneath the muscle. His whole body sagged into a pile of trembling flesh and bones made of rubber, except for that part of him still achingly hard and cradled against the warmth of Beth’s belly.

“It’s okay, Daryl,” she murmured, the vibration of her words against his chest louder than the sound of them in his ears. “It’s okay.”

She was too good for him, this woman, but he knew by now that what he thought about that didn’t matter. Only mattered that she wanted to be. He slid his shaky palm up her back to cup the back of her head, buried his fingers down into the loosened strands of her hair. Pressed the side of his face to the side of hers and tried to tell her without words every single thing screaming inside his head that wanted saying. All the thoughts and shit poking at his brain, demanding he let them out, make them real, clogging up in some giant bottleneck on their way to his tongue.

But Beth didn’t need words, not these ones, and he was always forgetting that. He remembered it now as she dragged her nose along his collar bone, as light as a soft breath. His pulse kicked up into that rapid pounding all over again in anticipation of the words he knew were coming. Words that would undoubtedly be exactly the ones he needed to hear.

“I’m not sure about a lotta things, Daryl, but I’m sure about you,” she whispered. “And it’s you and me no matter what, all right?”

No matter what. That settled down inside him like the blanket tucked around his shoulders. Like a soothing whisper to the fussing baby that was his fucked up head. Swallowing down the lump which instantly thickened his throat, Daryl nodded against her face, feeling the slide of her smooth skin against his rough cheek. Beth and Daryl against the world. He thought it. Maybe even managed to mumble something like it, the way Beth’s smile bloomed wide against his skin.

She breathed in deep and placed the gentlest of kisses against the curve of his clavicle. “Let’s just stay like this awhile, okay?”

He could do that. He wanted that, and he whispered his answer as he tucked her face back into his chest. Beth sighed softly and burrowed in a bit, turning her head just enough that she could still breathe, fingers still tracing back and forth along that same vein in his arm.

They lay together in silence for a long while, listening to the sounds of the storm outside which showed no signs of letting up. It had to be closer to morning than not but the sky remained as dark as ever.

Beth’s legs rasped against the canvas as she bent them out behind her. “I think we should stay here ‘til the storm blows over.”

“Mmm.” He drew his hand back, curled his fingers around the little braid in her ponytail. “As long as it does.”

Beth hummed into his chest, and with a swish she straightened out her legs again. “We could use some more clothes. Coats at least.”

He hummed at her, having thought the same thing before while he undressed her, when everything she wore was everything she owned and almost all of it was drenched. The chances of finding something to fit him weren’t always great, but for someone Beth’s size, they might have a shot.

“Think you’re up for a run?”

Her knees bumped into his before she pulled them back again. “Think so.”

“Good.” He gave her ponytail a little tug, and she tapped at his sock-covered foot with her sock-covered toes. “You’re plannin’ it.”

A forceful puff of breath hit him in the chest, and Beth mumbled something he couldn’t quite hear. He tugged on her ponytail again and pushed at her knees with his until she laughed and whispered, “I should’ve known you’d make me.”

Before he could chime in again, though, Beth poked him in the sternum with her nose and sighed. “All right. Just promise you’ll keep me from doin’ somethin’ dumb.”

“Long as you promise the same thing.” As though she hadn’t already done that a million times since the day they fled the prison.

With a nudge of her knee and a bob of her head, Beth answered, “Deal.”

She said nothing else for a few minutes, just kept up with the moving of her legs. Bending and stretching, sometimes bumping his. Wiggling just enough that he wondered if he shouldn’t tell her to get up and take a piss, or something, if she couldn’t keep still, just to see how she’d retaliate.

She rocked forward a bit, shoved him gently using her whole upper body. “Wanna practice fightin’ dirty?”

His snort burst out of him without him even meaning to, and Beth butted her head in the centre of his chest.

“I mean it,” she said, once more flexing and then extending her legs against the canvas. “Big empty space, storm so loud nothin’s gonna hear us. C’mon, Daryl. We haven’t got to since the barn and my legs are gonna take off without me if I don’t do somethin’.”

He knew what she really wanted to do, or at least had some general idea. If they weren’t gonna be sleeping—or doing other things—might as well do something, like she said, and practicing her fighting wasn’t a bad idea, anyway.

She was up and out of the blankets before he’d finished grunting yes at her, a squeal of delight echoing back to him as she left the office, the beam of her flashlight sweeping across the floor. The chilly air assaulted him when he got up to follow her, like walking into a giant cooler, attacking his arms and his legs and other places where the ghost of her body heat lingered.

They banked the fire. Passed over their still wet boots and left the damp clothes where they were to dry. In the glowing light from the renewed fire, Beth shone like a beacon, or something. All long legs and wild hair and a grin on her face he couldn’t help but echo. He stood there a moment just looking at her, let his gaze take her in under the relative safety of the dark.

The fire didn’t throw much heat, but what it lacked they made up for in exertion as they practiced. After Beth’s initial move—a football tackle turned bear hug—she got right down to it with the same seriousness as before. They started slow, with Beth first recalling the best places to hit, then practicing a few slow-motion blows in response to whatever hold he came up with. Like before, though much quicker this time, his holds got harder and her hits had more of her weight behind them, and they passed a good couple hours that way before switching things up a little to make use of the wide open space.

It was Beth’s idea to combine this sparring, or whatever it was, with something like their original game. Now she had to fight her way out and run for it, and it was good, working with her. Doing something other than the endless walking. Beyond their cold but dry shelter the storm raged on as angrily as ever, while inside he faced the fierce determination of Beth Greene, and her sharp little elbow jamming hard into his solar plexus.

It didn’t knock the wind out of him but it sure as hell hurt, and he couldn’t have held onto her if he tried. While he unfolded his abdomen, Beth shouted her victory and darted away, stopping about half way between him and the wall, no doubt ready to gloat.

Yep. There she stood, hands on her hips, grin on her face, the smug little bastard that she was. “That fuckin’ hurt.”

Beth laughed, ‘cause she knew what he really thought of it, her and her enthusiasm for something that could very well save her life one day.

“C’mon,” she said, swiping the hair back from her forehead. “Let’s go again.”

“You ain’t made it to safety yet, girl,” Daryl said, following the path of her hands.

He hadn’t thought Beth’s hair could get any wilder, but he was somewhat pleased to be wrong about that. She looked like that backwoods woman he teased her about being before, with the squirrels. A ponytail still existed in there somewhere but her braid swung free of it and the bits of hair that escaped alongside it stuck to the sweat on her neck and her forehead or stood out at all angles like she’d jammed her finger in a light socket.

“You can stop lookin’ at it,” Beth grumbled, though he could see her grin from here, stretched wide and bright on her flushed face. She shoved the mess back again with both hands and took a couple of side steps, starting her slow circle in one direction while he did the same the opposite way. “Yours ain’t much better, you know.”

She was probably right but he was willing to bet his wasn’t near as delightful to her as hers was to him, and fuck if he knew why, but like many things with Beth, he’d given up on trying to understand it. Just go with it. Made life a lot easier when he didn’t question these things.

Beth took another step, which Daryl matched. Halfway through her next one he came at her, intending to grab her by the shoulders. Instead of letting him grab her, Beth slid back a few paces then ducked out of reach, darting around quickly to get behind him. Before he could turn she got her elbow into his kidney, enough of her weight behind it that he felt the blow. Had she meant to hurt him she could have, not enough to take him out but enough to delay him. As it was she had a good couple of paces on him by the time he took after her.

She could usually outrun him if she had a head start and this time was no exception. He was still a couple of paces out when she smacked her hand on the wall over the discoloured brick marking the agreed upon ‘safe spot’.

She turned to lean against it, breathing hard, tipping her head back with her eyes closed. “I should’ve gone around the other way. Got here quicker.”

He hummed his agreement, though he had no real criticism for her. She had taken to critiquing herself, thinking about what she could do better and he let her run with it. There’d always be something that coulda been done different and he cared more that she took this as seriously as she did.

“Thanks,” she said now, pushing off the wall and rolling her shoulders. “I’m gonna feel that later but it was good, doin’ something besides walkin’.”

“Mmhm.” Daryl joined her over by the wall, rubbing at his abdomen where her elbow had likely left a bruise. “You hungry?”

Beth shook her head and looked up at the windows overhead, rain pouring down them in sheets broken only by the splatter of drops. Beyond that, the shadows of trees danced in the wind, which blew howling through them and rattled at the glass and made him shiver, just thinking about being out there in it.

“Nah, let’s eat later. I’m tired. Doesn’t look like this is gonna blow over any time soon.” She looked back at him, then tipped her head in the direction of their ‘camp’. “Might as well stay warm and get some rest while we can.”

Beth headed for the bathroom, calling back something about taming the hair beast, while he went to check if the rainwater they boiled in some of their empty aluminum cans was cool enough to drink yet.

“Oh my god!” Beth called out from the bathroom.

Daryl smirked, knowing she’d got a look at herself in the mirror. “And you thought mine was bad.”

“This is like, Medusa meets Edward Scissor Hands!” She grunted and, judging by the rattle of porcelain, slumped down onto the toilet. “Think there’s a hair salon nearby?”

Daryl lowered himself to the pallet in front of the fire, glancing over toward the bathroom as he took a big sip of still-warm water. He could just see the tips of her sock-covered toes through the doorway. “Yeah, it’s called Daryl’s knife.”

“Oh har-har,” she said, though she let out a real bleat of laughter right after which didn’t quite hide the trickle of liquid into the toilet bowl. “Be careful. I hear Beth’s Sneaky Trims likes to catch you while you’re asleep.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but the words suck inside, muted by the sheer weirdness of having this conversation—any kind of conversation—while she was taking a piss. Beth, mistaking his silence for something else, maybe, laughed again, the sound of it echoing around the little room, carried straight to his waiting ears on a gust of wind. The porcelain clinked again, a lid shut, and a couple seconds later Beth appeared in the doorway, ponytail restored but not in any sorta way he’d call tidy.

“I mean it,” she said, as she stepped across the floor between the bathroom and the fire. “One of these days you’re gonna wake up without your hair hangin’ in your eyes and we’ll never know what happened.”

She stepped up in front of him, a tower of long, lean legs from where he was sitting, and Daryl craned his neck back to look up at her, looking down at him. “You’re good, Greene, but you ain’t that good.”

“We’ll see,” she said, draining the can of water he passed up to her.

He set it back down for her when she passed it back, and watched as a smile stretched across her face. She reached out to push his sweaty hair out of his eyes, and Daryl couldn’t keep them from drifting shut as she carried on with the motion to drag her fingernails across his scalp. Lightly at first, harder once he started making those completely involuntary rumbling sounds she liked so much. Both hands got involved after a bit, and about then he brought his own up, fingers finding the soft little hollows at the backs of her knees. Her rhythm faltered just a bit, with the first circles he made there, caring less about the sweat clinging to her than the feel of the smooth skin beneath it.

“Mmmm.” Beth made her own rumbly noise, the kind he had no clue how she could possibly make, with her girl-type voice and that narrow little chest, but mysterious or not it curled in his belly in a way that was far from unpleasant.

That went on for a little while, until a particularly forceful gust of wind whipped in through the window. Beth gasped and shuddered and dropped down to a crouch between his bent knees, almost curling into a little ball to avoid the rush of freezing air. The damage was done, though, and he watched a field of goosebumps rise up to cover her bare arms.

“I think it’s blanket time,” she said, glancing back at him, arms pulled tight around her body, but some sort of warm glint still shining in her eyes. “C’mon.”

He wasn’t certain what made his pulse quicken, as he followed her into the office. Wasn’t just the prospect of lying down with her again, holding her close, but he couldn’t put a name to the feeling. It fluttered and bloomed when Beth lifted the blanket and told him to lie down first, and settled in to pulse warm and steady in the centre of his chest when she laid down over him and crawled in with him. Instead of curling up against his chest as she usually did, though, Beth stretched herself out behind him, nuzzling her face into the space between his shoulder blades and snaking an arm around his waist.

His words, when he found them, rolled out amongst a road’s worth of gravel. “Whatcha doin’ back there?”

Beth swept her nose back and forth from the edge of one scapula to the other, lighting up the skin between. “You always get to be the big spoon.”

Brains were strange things, ‘cause his first thought was how ridiculous it was, him doing anything that required him to think of of himself as a spoon. Took longer than it ought to have to clue in to Beth’s hand moving, leaving the place where it rested just below his ribs and sliding down to where his undershirt rode up, exposing a little strip of skin. A strip of skin which her fingers danced along, little tapping motions first, in time to the rhythm of the rain on the roof, and gliding ones next. Wispy little brushes of fingertips, tickly like feathers, warm like the first mouthful of hot coffee. His belly twitched beneath her touch and at his back, Beth let out a breath, a breezy giggle, and slipped her hand right up under his shirt.

“Beth,” he whispered, curling his fingertips into the ratty fabric at his hip as Beth flattened her palm over his belly.

She swept her thumb in a slow arc along the curve of his bellybutton, back and forth, the touch so light he barely felt it yet his skin tingled in its wake. “This okay?”

He knew this. Knew it so well it pulsed like an ache at the base of his lungs as he fought to take a deep breath in. His palm to her smooth belly. His thumb sweeping, stirring, drawing out a little sigh, a gasp of breath, a quiver of muscle like a fine breeze rippling on a glassy pond. Now her palm, her touch, pulling those same things out of him. The shudder started at the base of his spine, rolling outward along every nerve and gathering like a little electric cloud beneath Beth’s warm palm.

“Daryl?” A small voice. A whisper. A little press of fingertips into the muscle beneath. “This okay?”

“Yeah—” He cleared his throat of the rubble gathered there, found the right nerve endings to make his hand move. To cover hers like she would cover his and press down hard until he felt the weight of it in his lungs. “Yeah, Beth.”

“I like touchin’ you,” she whispered, and Daryl felt her smiling against his spine when that made him shudder, too.

I like you touchin’ me.

What came out wasn’t much more than a hum, but Beth knew. She knew him. He lifted his hand from hers, bushed his thumb across her knuckles. Beth pressed a kiss between his shoulder blades and he set his palm back down at his hip. Tried to relax even as the little sweeps and circles she made with her fingers fired off like tiny rockets beneath his skin.

Wasn’t a new thing, Beth touching him, but this brought him right back to that first time, in that lumpy old bed that was still better than any he’d ever had before. When not even a herd and a storm and a pair of idiots more trouble than their worth could tear them apart. When he held onto her like she was holding him now and she made him promise. Made her own promise in turn, with that first press of her back to his chest, the weight of her palm atop his hand.

I’m here. I got you. Not lettin’ you go.

Not new, no, but it fluttered in his chest just the same. Sunk down inside with every stroke she made. Her touches grew bolder, fingertips tracing across the rise and fall of the muscles beneath them. Following that barely-there path of hair from his belly button down and back again when she could to no further. It felt like a scene from another life, remembering the only other time they lay like this. Him, still wary of her touch, his body responding to it in ways he didn’t understand and Beth, asleep at his back none the wiser.

At his back now, Beth breathed into his shirt, open-mouthed and heavy, the cotton moist between her parted lips, the scar beneath that throbbing almost to the point of pain. Not the sort of pain which caused it; something different. An ache that pulsed. Pounded. Laced at its edges with something sweet, like cocoa so hot it burnt his lips but he couldn’t keep from taking another scalding mouthful. Beth’s fingers kept moving, kept touching. Scratching now, a light scrape of nails like she did on his scalp just above the elastic of his shorts. Far from unaware, the way she giggled softly at the groan she dragged out of him, and pressed her nails in that much harder.

He groaned again, low and long, like a rumble of thunder beneath the noise of the storm. Just let it roll on out ‘cause it wanted to, because it felt fucking good. Everything did, from the glowing embers in his belly to the steady flow of heated blood into his cock. Swelling heavier, fuller, with every swipe of Beth’s fingers, every scratch of her nails on sensitive skin. Every fucking sound she made at his back. He still didn’t understand how it was only Beth, only ever her, but he no longer wondered why.

“You’re so warm, Daryl,” Beth whispered, and for a moment she flattened her palm and pressed in. Deep, like he did to her. “Burnin’ my hand.”

Her tone held this note of awe, something achingly familiar, something he felt inside whenever he touched her and hearing it now stole another few pints of blood from his head, threw the whole room into the gentlest of spins. A good dizzy, the sort that tingled down along his neck, his spine, tickled every nerve. Pounded through his cock and stuttered at the back of his ribcage and she knew it. She knew it. Knew exactly what she was doing to him and he never wanted it to stop.

He’d been doing this to her. That thought floated up to join his spinning head in the stratosphere. When he touched her just like she was touching him, he did this to her. He’d known it. On some level he had but not—Christ—not like this, and he wondered at her powers of restraint.

He wouldn’t stop her, if she asked. If she tried. If she shoved his hand lower, urged him to slide his fingers beneath the band of those little red shorts and stroke her clit like he stroked her belly. Tease those sounds out of her, like the ones she tried not to let him hear, the night she ran off to take care of herself. Or maybe it’d be different, having his fingers on her. Inside her. Plunging into her needy cunt while she cried out his name in the darkness.

Oh, God, Beth.

He thrust against the blanket and Beth— fuck—Beth rolled her hips right along with him, pushing at his ass like she had something there to push with. He couldn’t make the words come. Words that wanted. Words that begged. Begged her, as she dragged her fingertips along the line of skin just above his shorts, to dive down beneath and touch him where he needed it the most. Wrap those strong little fingers around his cock and stroke him ‘til he fell apart. But she wouldn’t. Not unless he said. Unless he asked.

He groaned, so loud it echoed off the brick, scraped like broken glass in his throat. Someone shuddered. Her or him it didn’t matter, but it rolled through the both of them as they rocked together on the canvas. Before he could even think to stop he palmed at his aching cock through his shorts. Thrust into the cup of his hand and shuddered again as the pleasure zipped through him—and froze when he realized what he had done.

Beth’s fingers pressed deep, her breath a flutter like wispy little wings over damp cotton. “Go on,” she said, rolling up against his ass then pulling back away, lifting her hand to nudge at his wrist. “Go on, Daryl. It’s okay.”

He pushed again into his trembling hand, a shudder rocking him so hard every muscle ached in its wake. “Fuck, Beth.”

Beth’s moan vibrated along his spine. “Yeah,” she breathed, resuming those slow, torturous circles so low on his belly. “Like that.”

He didn’t know how she could make her voice do that raspy little whisper, how she built it so it flowed down inside him like a mouthful of moonshine. How that sound out of Beth’s mouth could feel like fingers of silk on his aching cock, telling him to do it, to touch himself while she curled up at his back and—oh.

Fucking oh.

She whimpered, this time. Quiet. Breathy. The rhythm of her fingers at his belly faltered but the graze of her knuckles against his ass became steady. Steady and solid as her breathing turned ragged, and Daryl tugged hard at his cloth-covered cock as another groan ripped past his throat.

“Daryl...”

It was all he needed, that word. His name on her breath like it was his fingers moving against her clit, his touch making her tremble and sigh and moan so, so softly into his back. He fumbled with his shorts, shoved them down, wrapped his shaking fingers around his cock. So hard, so heavy, and that little bit of pressure, that hint of friction as he squeezed, zinged out from his spine in little rippling waves that coaxed out a moan loud enough to drown out hers.

His breath stuttered out with the first slow stroke down, and he moaned again, low this time, gritty and drawn out, rising up from his belly amidst the gathering heat. Something in it made Beth press her fingers in deep, little points of contact firing, arcing off the starbursts flaring inside him. She knew. Felt the difference, somehow, from the way he was touching before. Imagining it, maybe, the way his fist tightened, how he twisted his grip as he pushed up over the dark head of his rigid cock. How it made him twitch and buck his hips into the blanket, breath sharp and short, before he gathered that bead of moisture to slick of his foreskin on the way back down.

“Beth,” he groaned, stroking a bit harder this time. A bit faster.

“Oh, God,” she whispered at his back. “Oh my god.”

God had nothing to do with this, unless God’s name was Beth Greene. Beth Greene and her little fingers still dancing across his belly like some marionette with half the strings broken. So close. She was so close she could just bat his hand away, take over. Wrap those elegant fingers around his dark flesh and do it herself.

Strokes gaining rhythm, now. Gaining force. Knuckles wet, foreskin gliding like velvet, and it had never been like this. Never. He sunk his teeth into his bottom lip, digging into that raw place, the pain of it like an electric shock down his spine. “Beth.”

Another whimper. Something that might’ve been his name as she arched against his ass, pinning her wrist between their bodies. Fuck, he could hear her, the wet sound of her fingers as she plunged them inside, as she fucked her cunt like he was fucking his hand. Every nerve in his body came alight, blazing, burning for the woman spilling her moans between his shoulder blades. Throaty little ohhhs in time to the press of her hips against her trapped hand, rolling right along with him as he thrust into his.

He was gonna combust. They were, him and Beth, gonna burn up together right here on the floor.

She trembled hard against his back. Scraped her teeth along the edge of one shoulder blade, the force of her breath hitting him like the gusts of wind rattling the windows. “Don’t. Don’t stop,” she said, still with that rasp, that whisper. “Don’t you dare stop, Daryl. Daryl. You—ohhh—you’re gonna come. You’re gonna—”

The rest of her words got swept away, lost to a groan so deep she must have dredged it up from beneath the floor. Even now. Even right fucking now she could still string the right chain of words together to rock him off his axis. Take him out at the knees no matter that he wasn’t even standing.

“Fuck.” The word was a growl, an explosion of sound he couldn’t control. Beth laughed, husky and deep and so fucking hot, and all he could do was breathe out her name with each hard exhale.

You, too, Beth. You, too. You’re gonna come, too. Beth. Beth. Oh, god, Beth.

A different sound burst out of her, a moan that began as little more than a low whine at the back of her throat, now swelling out into the air, ringing in his ears as it bounced off the brick. She stiffened at his back, her knees coming up to push at his. “Daryl—Daryl—ohhh, oh fuck. Daryl—”

She arched against him one last time, fingernails digging hard into his belly, a ragged moan tearing out of her like something bursting out of her chest as she shuddered against his back. Shuddered and trembled and fucking sobbed his name in that same ragged, tearing way and—and—one last tug, a groan like a jet engine, deafening, rattling, and he was coming, too. So fucking hard. Spilling hot and slick all over his hand and her hand, his belly, the blanket, the canvas beneath them.

The aftermath was a dizzy, floating blur. Sticky hands and trembling legs. Hard, shaky breaths and whispered names. Two sweat-soaked bodies collapsing together, and Beth’s soft laughter, curling warm into the air around them.

*~*

Thunder rumbled in the distance, with a flash of lightning on the horizon ahead. It rippled in the water beneath the little boat, a little rocking echo but they were safe, here. Safe from the world beyond these weathered planks. Daryl didn’t have to turn to feel her there, behind him, her gaze on his back like a soothing balm. He could hear her voice inside his head, whispering. Words of reassurance, warm like bathwater. Like a slept-in bed. Like a place he never wanted to leave.

She wouldn’t make him, either. Wouldn’t try. He knew it as well as he knew the rest of it. That she was there at the prow, luminous. Brighter than the sun breaking over the mountains. Than the forks of lightning trying in vain to dull her shine.

She was waiting for him when he turned at last, as he knew she would be, wings folded around her hips like shimmering silk. Skin shining silver-white in the twilight of dawn, darkening to pink at the tips of her breasts, small perfect peaks standing proud on her smooth, pale chest. His own skin didn’t shine; he lacked that light inside, that light like hers. All he had to bear was the blue cast of twilight, but as he stepped toward her, her light struck him. Hit him in the centre of his chest, glowing and bright, chasing away the blue to light up the dark corners, the shadows, the cracks running deep.

Beth.

She spread open her wings, and he stepped inside.

*~*

I’m lookin’ for me
You’re lookin’ for you
We’re lookin’ at each other and we don’t know what to do

to be continued in chapter 32>>

Fall Right In - Chapter 30/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Sun, 27 Dec 2015 19:39:50 GMT

Fall Right In
Chapter 30 – When the Day is Long and the Night is Coming Down on You
*~*

Daryl slammed the door shut again with a resonant clang while Beth stood guard, covering his back. The big rusted latch groaned in protest when he pulled at it, but with a grunt he got it moving, too, and swung it closed to lock them inside. Beth still had her crossbow up when he turned, her gaze moving across the space at eye level while he cast a glance up and around. High windows all along the building’s long sides meant it wasn’t much darker in than out. Dark, but not too dark to see as they quickly set out to clear the building.

Place was empty, except for the stacks of old pallets piled beneath the low ceiling of the small loft space above. Tucked in behind those, in the corner formed beneath the loft, three doors opened to what probably used to be an office, plus a janitor’s closet and a tiny washroom. Daryl headed there along the wide hallway between the back wall and the loft’s hanging edge. The coverage provided by the stairs and the loft was about as ideal as he could hope for, and they could bed down in the office where the floor had carpet, low pile industrial crap but better than bare concrete. Nodding to himself, Daryl cast a quick glance over the space in the fading light, then shrugged off his canvas bag and crossbow, tied the rabbit up to an eye bolt in the ceiling, and turned to make sure Beth had followed him. Whatever spark of a thought was in his brain got whisked away like leaves in the wind the moment he set his eyes on her.

“Beth,” he said, taking in her pallor, her almost violent shivering. “You gotta get out of that wet shit.”

Somewhere amongst the shivering, Beth nodded her head at him, and set her crossbow down on top of the stack of pallets next to his. She kept her eyes on them while working the straps of her pack off her shoulders. “Th-think w-we can m-make a f-fire?”

“Yeah.” Daryl swept his gaze over the stacks. Plenty of them, stacked up good and probably mostly dry, seeing as how the roof wasn’t leaking, and they could crack open the little window in that washroom for ventilation. “Good thinkin’. Now c’mon. Get ‘em off.”

“I-I’m tryin’,” she said, now free of her pack and fumbling at the buttons of her grey sweater with trembling fingers, a hint of a smile tugging at her lips.

If it was a smile, it faded quickly. She got the buttons undone but when she tried to take the sweater off, her arms got caught in the sleeves. Tugging at them only got her more stuck, with her shoulders rolled back so she couldn’t even reach one hand with the other. Daryl didn’t think about what he was doing when he closed the space between them and pulled her arms, one at a time, out of their wet wool prisons. Didn’t think about it at all when the sweater landed on the cement behind her with a wet plop and he moved on to the buttons of her flannel. Only when he pushed the sleeves down her arms, and his fingertips slid over her clammy skin, did it occur to him, and by then his hands were kind of shaking, too.

Daryl flicked his eyes up to her face, unsurprised to find her big blue eyes waiting for him, wide open and steady despite how fucking tired he knew she was. They caught his, hooking in like two harpoons so he had no hope of being able to look away, and his heart was pounding and his hands still shook, even as they kept moving, sliding down her arms until the flannel joined her sweater in a pile on the floor.

She still had the yellow polo, the collar wet but most of it dry enough, and Daryl wasn’t certain if the pressure in his gut was disappointment or relief or some impossible combination of the two. Beth kept her gaze locked to his as he rubbed his palms over her upper arms, warming her skin and the muscles beneath, flexed tight from shivering. He knew what was coming next, what he was gonna do for her because she couldn’t right now, and his heart was already racing but now it ramped up even further. It didn’t mean anything, not like that, no matter what he maybe thought he wanted, but he couldn’t stop the warmth gathering in his belly, a hot pooling of blood threatening to rush south.

Beth reached up to set her trembling hands on his biceps, her grip strong despite the chill and the exhaustion. “‘S o-okay, D-Daryl.”

Leave it to Beth to know exactly what was going on inside his head. Her voice billowed into the air and settled across his shoulders like a warm little cloud. He swallowed hard and tore his eyes away, tried his best to push those other thoughts to the background as he dropped to his knees in front of her, barely noticing the chill of the concrete. Beth carded a shaky hand through his wet hair, her other coming to rest at his shoulder. Daryl’s breath shuddered out as he first removed her gun holster, then opened the two little buckles holding her brown leather belt closed and lifted it away from her body, knife and multi-tool with it. Even with her jeans hanging a bit loose without the belt, it took him two tries to push the button through the hole, knuckles grazing her belly as he did. And it wasn’t any sort of new place to be touching her but she sucked in a sudden sharp breath, muscles of her abdomen quivering beneath his hand.

He shouldn’t have looked up at her, should not have dared to meet her eyes while he lowered her zipper. The sound of the teeth releasing echoed loud in the emptiness of the building, almost as loud as the rush of his pulse in his ears. He stared up at her, at her eyes so wide, so blue even in this dim light. It made him dizzy, the world around him spinning softly on its axis, just enough that he might have fallen to his knees if he wasn’t already there. But he was and he had a job to do and he curled his fingers into her belt loops, fighting to keep his breathing from growing ragged. Fighting to keep away those thoughts in his head, those visions, of this very thing in a different context entirely but he couldn’t keep them away.

He kept looking at Beth, though, his eyes locked on hers, that tether stretched taut between them. It hummed in the air around them, pulsed down inside to swirl warm and deep in his belly. Beth stared back at him, fingers still twirling shakily through his hair while he fought with the jeans. The wet denim proved uncooperative, his fingers replaced with eight fumbling thumbs, and he had work at it to finally get them moving. She was still wearing those red shorts, the ones that hugged her ass like no men’s underwear were ever meant to, and they pulled dangerously low when he finally got her jeans down past her hips, exposing much of her belly to his greedy eyes. Pale skin and muscle beneath that his fingers itched to touch.

Daryl swallowed hard, the sound of it so loud he was sure she heard it. Knew she had, when she swallowed, too and brushed her thumb across his forehead. He felt the blaze of it reaching down to his frozen toes, his fumbling fingers, rising up his neck until his eyes had to be burning with it. His want for her, his—god, all of it, everything he felt for her, hammering inside his body as loud as the rain hammered on the roof.

Beth turned her hand to cradle the side of his head in her palm, fingertips curling gently against his scalp, and both their breath tumbled out shaky and rushed. It wasn’t quite cold enough but he imagined them mingling, two little puffs of air meeting in the middle and swirling together into something bigger than either could be on their own. Daryl wanted to abandon her jeans and glide his thumb along the edge of those shorts, tease that perfect, smooth line of pale skin, hear her soft giggle overhead when it tickled.

With reluctance he kept going, trying not to make this into something it wasn’t except he couldn’t shake the thought that it was. That it wasn’t just a bad case of the shivers that landed him here, on his knees in front Beth Greene, sliding her jeans down past her strong, toned thighs.

His fingers dipped into the backs of her knees, pulling a little sigh out of her she didn’t even try to hold in, and he gave into the urge to do it again. Fingertips retraced the contours, the soft concavity flaring out into the firmer curves of her calves. The sound Beth made in response had a bit more weight to it, though still mostly breath, and her eyes held steady to his as he touched her there again, barely brushing this time and feeling a shiver roll through her that had nothing to do with being cold.

But she was cold, and he reined his own selfish desires in and carried on. When he could pull no further, when the wet denim pooled around her ankles, Daryl had to pull his gaze away from Beth to work at getting her boots off her. He felt her eyes on him as he tossed the boots away and went for her socks, heavy with that force still flowing between them even though he couldn’t see her face. The puddle of jeans tried their best to devour her ankles before he could get her free of them, and her feet were white and wrinkled underneath. He looked up at her as he lifted one foot up to rub it between his palms, remembering when it was Beth kneeling down by his feet, rubbing the warmth back into them. The little smile that bloomed on her face as he switched one for the other told him she was remembering that, too.

Being out of the wet clothes was a good thing, but not as good as it woulda been if she had something else to change into. She’d had on everything she owned and almost all of it was drenched. They ought to think about making a run, finding her a jacket, at least, instead of that useless little sweater. He left her for a moment to get the dry socks from his bag, helped her into them, then stood up again, thinking to rub her arms for a moment before he got to building a fire.

But Beth pushed him back, fingertips prodding at his sternum. “Y-you t-too,” she said, with a lift of her chin. “Y-you’re just a-as wet as m-me.”

Of course he was, and of course she was right. He wasn’t surprised when she looked prepared to watch him, as she rubbed her own arms and hopped around on the spot trying to generate her own heat. Watch him she did, and the tremble in his fingers had nothing to do with the cold, not even anything to do with Beth dancing around with those long legs all but bare.

Daryl pulled off his vest and tossed it on top of his bag, then started on the buttons of the denim jacket. This wouldn’t be the first time he and Beth stripped down to the bare minimum, but things had changed since then, and he couldn’t force his pulse to slow back down to normal, even with the cold air and the chill from all that brick and concrete prodding at his skin with every layer he pulled off. Had they stayed at the cabin, chances were they’d have long past this point, locked safely away together each night behind those big heavy doors with nothing stopping them. Nothing except him, but Beth Greene was a woman he’d learned not to underestimate.

His boxers were damp, but wearable, when he struggled out of his soaking wet jeans. Undershirt, too, once he finally got out of all his shirts, and a bit of extra tension wicked away from Daryl’s shoulders with the knowledge that he wouldn’t have to take it off. That he could have a bit more time to figure out how to go about telling her, to find the words for this amongst the jumble in his head. The weight may have lifted from his shoulders but a different one sunk down into his gut, with knowing he would have to. Somehow, he would have to tell her what he couldn’t even tell his own brother, ‘til he found out for himself.

“D-Daryl...”

Dragging himself out of his head, Daryl looked back up at Beth, who despite her continued hopping was shivering even harder now than she had been. No longer wet but just cold, ‘cause he’d taken too long worrying about his own stupid shit when he should have been getting the fire going.

“C’mon,” he said, holding out his hand for her. “Gotta get you warm.”

Didn’t take long to tear the pallets apart with both of them working at it. Like before, when the focus needed to use her crossbow allowed her to push aside her exhaustion, the act of breaking down the pallets and stacking them up to burn drove away the worst of her shivering. Beth found an old packing blanket hidden amongst the stacks and once the fire was blazing, more deconstructed pallet pieces piled nearby to keep it going, she laid out their canvas atop the pallet she dragged over to sit on and curled up in it. Daryl got the rabbit cooking and then propped another pallet up against the wall for drying their wet things.

“Get under here,” Beth said, when he finally got her jeans right side out and hung up next to his.

Beth lifted the edges of the blanket and he slipped in behind her, leaned back against the wall with his knees drawn up. Beth mimicked his pose, her back to his chest, her body between his knees, and together they folded the blanket up tight around them. It was thin and scratchy and smelled vaguely mouldy, but it was dry, and with the fire in front of them and Beth’s back to his chest, the chill from the rain and the cold quickly seeped out of his body.

Beth wasn’t shivering anymore, either, and her legs and arms were cool against his, but not enough to worry him. She’d been quiet and that didn’t change now, but her thumbs moved in gentle circles over his knuckles and something about her felt more settled tonight than she had been in days.

Daryl ducked inside the blanket to hook his chin over her shoulder, and in response Beth tipped her head to rest it against his. “You okay, Beth? I mean really?”

“No, I’m not,” she said, without hesitation, fingertips pressing into the backs of his hands. “But I’ve been thinking about how I can change that.”

Daryl waited a minute to see if she would continue on her own, and when she didn’t he tightened his arms around her. “You wanna talk about it?”

Beth gave a little nod, and pulled her hands away from his to fumble with something beneath the blanket. A moment later she pulled her left arm out. She held it up, turning so her inner wrist faced him and only then, when he saw the scar, did he realize she had taken off the collection of bracelets she usually wore over it.

“The day I did this, I thought—I really believed I wanted out,” she said, sounding more herself, despite the subject matter, than she had in days. “And for a long time I thought that made me weak, wanting out and tryin’ to do something about it. I know everyone else thinks that way.”

That hung in the air a moment, a sharp little blade that swung down to catch him in the gut.

I sure as hell never cut my wrists looking for attention!

Like always, though, she read his mind. With the hand still tucked inside the blanket, Beth found one of his and squeezed. Didn’t make it right, what he yelled at her. None of what he did that day up until he broke down in her arms would ever be right, but she’d be the first to say they were past all that. It mattered, it happened, and maybe in some twisted kinda way it needed to happen. But it could stay there, stay where it was, and have no place in who he was now.

“I know what people think,” she repeated, pulling him away from the past and back to her words, and beneath the blanket she turned her hand to lace their fingers together. “But it wasn’t about weakness at all. It was about me being strong enough to want to live, and I did want to. I do. I knew it the moment the blood started flowin’, there was this feelin’ in my chest...”

A heavy gust of wind surged against the building, hard enough to rattle the high windows and send a rush of air in through the office window. It stirred the flames of their fire, throwing up a cloud of sparks and ash. Beth breathed with it, the pull of air into her lungs as deep as the wind raging outside, and though Daryl couldn’t see her face he imagined how she would look right now. Those big eyes shining with emotion, with everything she felt then and everything she felt now as she remembered that day. A determined set to her jaw, the same determination she showed in everything she did, whether she knew it or not. This couldn’t be easy for her, talking about this, but if she was talking about it she had a good reason.

“Go on,” he whispered, pulling her tighter to him to offset the chill in the air as another surge of wind rose up around them.

“It was screamin’ at me,” Beth said, voice dropping to a raspy whisper that was somehow louder than her normal way of speaking, louder than the weather or the crackle of flames. She patted her chest over top of the blankets and took in another impossibly deep breath before continuing. “This thing burnin’ in my lungs, a poundin’ in my head and my heart and, like, this need. This longing that came on so strong it made me dizzy, but it made me understand, too.”

She twisted in his arms, just a bit, just enough to force him to pull his head away from her shoulder. Their gazes met and he was right about the way she looked. Whatever the thing was, back then, burning in her lungs, sure as shit burned now in her eyes, and seeing it there stirred up those wings in his chest.

“I didn’t want to die, I wanted to live.” Beth swallowed hard and pulled her other hand free of the blanket to trace a steady finger back and forth along the silvery scar. “Nobody really got it, besides Andrea, but—but I think I had to cut my wrist to believe it. To believe it here.”

She pressed both hands over her heart, and the weight of what she was saying hung there in the air, too. Heavy, pressing in from all sides, something once hidden now refusing to be ignored. Like she never said the words out loud before and maybe she hadn’t. He’d done his best to keep away from that house after the shit went down at the barn, but he wasn’t oblivious. He heard the screams, Beth and Maggie without a shred of understanding there on either side, at least about that. After the farm, he never heard it come up again and maybe she never had told anyone. Maybe she never thought anyone would understand and yet here she was, telling him, and he didn’t know what to make of that, beyond the spark of surprise. Surprise and honour, or something very like it, that she felt she could trust him with this, something she obviously held so close to her heart.

While his thoughts ran amuck, Beth’s fiery gaze lost its focus, and she stared into the past and whispered, “The pain doesn’t go away. You just make room for it.”

His skin prickled, a chill that rose the hairs on his neck and his arms and wiggled down inside to tug at his guts into tiny little knots. Before he could speak, or try to, her gaze sharpened again, catching once more on his.

“This, the whole thing with the nightmares a-and everything, it’s kind of like that. I’ve been just letting it wear me down, thinkin’ it was gonna keep at it until there wasn’t anythin’ left of me. What happened with those men, the—the flashback—it scared me so bad, Daryl.”

Sensing she wasn’t done, Daryl just nodded at her to continue. She flashed him a small smile, just a quick one, and wriggled around a little more, folding herself into some sort of Beth pretzel so she could lean against his bent leg, facing him, all but the bottom third of her legs still wrapped in the blanket.

“It still scares me, what happened,” Beth said, gaze dropping down now, voice a regular sort of whisper instead of that impassioned one. “It scares me that it could happen again. But it got me thinkin’.”

Unable to stop himself, Daryl lifted his hand up to trail his fingers down the side of her face. “Whatcha thinkin’, girl?”

She flicked her eyes back up, tongue darting out to wet her chapped bottom lip. Daryl repeated the path of his fingers and watched her fight to keep looking at him, instead of letting her eyes flutter closed like they wanted to. At the end of the line he dropped his hand down to curl at the back of her neck, thumb just grazing along her jaw, and Beth let out a little sigh, the one that always trickled right down inside him to curl warm in his belly.

Beth’s lips pulled into a little smile, and she again held up her scarred wrist for him to see. “I didn’t survive this—” she rubbed her thumb along the length of her scar “—just to let some ghost get the better of me. I’m gonna fight it, Daryl. I-I know you said, but I think I had to—I’m choosin’ to fight it, now. I want to fight it. I believe that I can.”

That was the Beth he knew, worn down to the point of exhaustion, barely warm enough not to shiver, but so, so strong. Strong and beautiful and determined, everything he knew she was, and continued to prove over and over. He was so fucking proud of her and he couldn’t fathom a day when he wouldn’t be, when he’d set eyes on this woman and not feel the rush of pride coursing through his veins. His heart pounded with it, warming every last inch of his being with a heat far richer than any fire could ever do, and stoking that other flame, the one that always burned for her in the deepest part of him. It sparked and flared like the fire beside them. His girl was gonna make it. She didn’t need no redneck asshole worrying about fixing her problems when all along, she was gonna take them on herself.

Of course, all he could say, despite everything in his head, was some whispered thing that mighta been her name, as he curled his fingers into her now-warm neck and hoped somehow, she could understand what it meant. Like maybe she could see inside his heart like she could see inside his head sometimes and understand, better than he ever could, this thing inside of him that was entirely hers.

Beth closed her hand around his wrist and squeezed, thumb moving in a slow arc over the sensitive skin there, starting a shiver in his nerves that whispered all the way down inside him.

“This scar, it’s always gonna be a part of me,” she said, blinking slowly at him, that same blaze still burning in the depths of her eyes. “But it isn’t all of me. It doesn’t define who I am. Gorman’s just a different kind of scar.”

Jagged lines of mangled skin stung with an echo of the strap which cleaved them, sharp for an instant and then fading to a throbbing ache, but not before stealing every last bit of air from his lungs. He struggled to breathe in against the weight which crashed down onto the centre of his chest, like he’d had the wind knocked out of him only he hadn’t moved. She couldn’t know what she just said. Couldn’t possibly know. Inside his chest his heart pounded, beat against his ribcage like a freight train screaming down the tracks, rising up to fill his skull and drown out the rain, the rattle of the wind, the words Beth was speaking but he couldn’t hear. He could only see her lips moving as his fingers, his toes, the long-dead tissue on his wreck of a back, his gut and his lungs and his cock picked up the rhythm and pounded in sync to a heart that never before beat as hard as it did now for Beth fucking Greene.

Something inside him cracked, broke apart into tiny shards of glass that blew away in the wind, a dark roiling blackness that engulfed him until she was all he could see. Beth, backlit with a dancing orange glow off the fire, her wild, golden hair arcing around her like a flaming halo, but even in the darkness she was bright. So fucking bright that he had no choice. He took her face in his hands and kissed her hard.

Sound rushed back in, whooshing like the wind, and the pounding in his ears sunk back into his chest. The storm still raged out there somewhere but it was Beth he heard, her little moan into his mouth, the huff of her breath, hot on his face, and the creaking of the pallet beneath her as she moved. Strong little hands grabbed hold of his shirt to both push him back and close the space between them to almost nothing. Another groan bled into the air and he couldn’t tell whose it was, but he tasted it on his lips, thick like toffee and warm like flame, and he glided his tongue along the underside of hers and felt the shudder roll through her body and into his.

The pallet creaked again with the weight of Beth sliding into his lap, her strong, bare thighs bracketing his. But the smoothness of them, slide of skin on skin, jarred him to reality, to Beth’s reality like a slap in the face, a kick to the gut threatening to knock the wind out of him all over again. He broke away from her, his breath ragged, grimy hands still pressed to her pale cheeks. He released her as though she was gonna burn his palms if he held on another second, and tried to speak, tried to get his tongue to form the apology he intended but all that came out was a twisted mess of non-words and he mentally kicked his inability to ever fucking speak.

Beth uncurled her hands from the front of his shirt and pressed her own grimy palms to his cheeks, forcing him to look at her just as he tried to look away. “Daryl.”

He swallowed around the lump of concrete in his throat and forced himself to look at her, at her big eyes gazing calmly at him in the dark. “I’m sorry—Beth, fuck, I’m sorry.”

She swiped her thumbs across his cheeks, through the wetness there he hadn't even noticed until right then. “Anytime, Daryl, okay? I said it and I meant it.”

He sucked in a breath, hating how it shuddered, even as her words reached him. She had said that. She said it and she meant it because Beth Greene didn’t say things just to say them. He knew that. He trusted her to know what she wanted, but still...

“You don’t gotta worry about that, either,” Beth continued, her words and the tender look in her eyes reaching inside him to cradle his stuttering heart. “When you want to, I want to.”

Finally, he drew an easy breath into his lungs. “Yeah?”

She snorted softly as a flush of red crept into her pale cheeks. “I always want to.”

“I—” Daryl tried to clear his throat but that concrete only thickened, hardening there into an immoveable lump. The desire to put into words what this was, him and her, flared hot in his gut. He wanted to yell it from the roof, shout into the wind until his voice was hoarse, if he could somehow find the words.

He couldn’t, not tonight, but then Beth slid her hands into his hair and pulled him in for another kiss, this one as soft as the previous one was hard, and he knew he didn’t have to try. Not right now. The tremble in her lips matched his own as they slid against one another with the lightest of pressure, like their first kiss back at the ledge. Something sweetly tentative about it even as she tilted her head to deepen the kiss just a little. The salt of tears mingled in with the taste of her on his tongue and he didn’t know whose they were but it didn’t matter anyway.

Beth’s teeth pressed into his bottom lip as they broke apart, catching and holding a moment before she released him. Her eyes were shining but his were, too, and his heart beat with something apart from the spike of fear in his chest or the stir of arousal in his belly.

“Are you okay, Daryl?” Beth asked, reaching again to wipe the wetness from his cheeks.

He let out a little choked chuckle, because no, he wasn’t okay and never had been, and in the void left behind when that piece of him broke away earlier lived just enough awareness to let him see that without the all other shit pressing in to muddle it all up. But he also was, in a way he never expected to be, and it must’ve been that showing on his face, making Beth’s smile stretch wide enough to crinkle in the corners of her eyes as she gazed at him.

Daryl settled his hands at her hips and finally found the words to answer her. “Sweetheart, I’m a fuckin’ mess.”

Her giggle rippled through the air, a warm little sound which made his heart pound that much harder. She draped her arms around his shoulders and tipped her head until her forehead touched his. “That makes two of us.”

Daryl curled his fingers into her through the thin little shorts, pushed aside everything in his head that wasn’t about her. “You’re gonna be okay.”

“I am.” Beth nodded against his forehead before she pulled back again to look at him. “I’m goin’ to change the dreams.”

“You’re gonna— what?”

She giggled again, softly, and the pressure of her arms at his shoulders deepened just the slightest as she adjusted her position on his lap. “The nightmares aren’t gonna stop, just ‘cause I want them to, you know.”

“Yeah,” he rasped, distracted by the heat of her bare thighs against his, of just how close they were, and how few layers actually separated them.

He was already hard, couldn’t help but be when he was with her like this, but he felt it now, that ache for her, spurred by the heat of her body even though she left the slightest breath of space between her and him.

He curled his fingers into her again, into the bit of softness at her hips, fighting the itch to pull her closer, to press his erection between her legs without their jeans in the way. Really feel her, the heat of her, the plump flesh of her cunt teasing him through those red shorts. Wouldn’t have to talk her into rocking against him, into grinding down on him, seeking that fiction he knew she wanted. Taking it, with the wet of her soaking through those damn shorts, those little whimpers she made ramping up until they bounced off the brick walls, filled up the empty space with their echoes as she got herself off. God, she would, too. She’d want to. She’d do it and bring him with her and Christ, he was dizzy.

Dizzy and nauseous and in his lap, Beth shuddered and dropped her forehead down again to meet his. Only when she whimpered did he realize how hard he was holding onto her. How much his fingers shook against her back. He could do it. Could pull her against him, rut into her the way his hips and his cock ached to do. She’d flash him a wide-eyed look first before the lids dropped down and the blue of them clouded with the same heat singing through his veins. The sounds she made would deepen until she’d moan long and loud, like she did in the woods except she wouldn’t try to hide it.

That’s it girl, he’d whisper to her, pushing against her back to bring them together harder. Gonna make you scream...

The giggle that flitted out of her mouth, a gravelly sound he hadn’t heard from her since he gave her a backrub, sent him crashing back out of his head. His guts twisted around like a bed of snakes at the thought that he mighta said any part of that out loud, that Beth might’ve heard it, that she’d want it, that he’d have to figure out how to pull that shit out of his head and make it real.

But Beth just giggled again, this time a little more breathy, a little less like the sounds he imagined her making in his wandering brain. “You tryin’ to distract me?”

Daryl cleared his throat. Willed the roiling in his gut to stay there and not steal away his words as well as his wits.

“Tryin’ not to,” he admitted, drawing his trembling fingers along the band of her shorts, teasing the skin there because no matter what his nerves were telling him, not touching her was worse than maybe touching her too much. He took in a breath, surprised to find it more or less steady. “You’re tellin’ me somethin’ important, remember?”

“Oh,” she said, drawing out the word as though she hadn’t. “Right. Nightmares.”

“Nightmares.” He gave her a little nod, gliding his thumb up her spine that way she liked. Absolutely not thinking about the softness of her skin beneath his fingers or about how much more of it he had yet to touch. “Gonna change ‘em?”

“Gonna try,” she said, voice dropping to a whisper as the motion of his thumb drew out a little shiver.

Daryl swallowed hard as burst of heat chased away the unpleasantness in his gut, settled in like a shot of top shelf whiskey, and decided to stay. “You got to. Try.”

She pulled at the ends of his hair, fingertips grazing the back of his neck in a way that made him shiver, too. “Before I go to sleep, I’m going to tell my brain what’s going to happen and what’s not going to happen. I don’t know if it’ll work, but, well...”

He couldn’t fault her on her logic, even if he had no clue whether that would help even if she could change the dreams. But it was better than doing nothing, better than just letting the dreams run her ragged, and knowing Beth, she might just manage it. If anyone could, his bet was on her. “Place to start, right?”

“Right.” She yawned so deep he swore he heard her jaw crack, then dropped forward to cross her arms down his back and rest her forehead on his shoulder. “I’m so tired, Daryl.”

“‘Cause you ain’t hardly slept in days, woman,” he said, and wrapped his arms around her back the same sort of way as she did. Glad, despite the ongoing ache, that he hadn’t acted on any of his baser instincts. “You got a plan, now, though. You’re gonna sleep tonight.”

She hummed into his shoulder. “You gonna sleep with me?”

The storm chose that very moment to rattle the building with a particularly forceful gust of wind, and lightning flashed in through the windows overhead. Beth pulled her head up from his shoulder to blink down at him, eyes wide, a little giggle on her lips.

“I mean...”

The giggle took over, and he could feel his ears flaming, burning as hot as the flush spreading across her cheeks. He knew what she meant. Of course he did, but where his mind was at in regards to Beth it didn’t take long for his thoughts to leap out of bounds and damn it if her head hadn’t gone exactly where his did. He couldn’t quite look at her, which was ridiculous, considering, and she must’ve known that too, because her hands were back on his cheeks again, forcing him to face her. Beth, with her little smile that tugged at his belly until the warmth there bubbled up, sparkly like champagne or some shit.

Keeping up with the things this woman made him feel was liable to give him an aneurysm, but he let her draw him out, let himself look. Met those bright, tired eyes that never wanted to let him look away.

Beth.

He never wanted anyone before like he wanted her, but he didn’t wanna fuck her on the floor of some old railway building. Didn’t want to fuck her at all. Well, he did, but not just that. Not just that at all and there were words for what he wanted to do with Beth, words that didn’t exist in his vocabulary. Words he couldn’t even say inside his head. He knew how to fuck, not really all that well, but he didn’t know anything about this. Didn’t know if he could give that to her, make it good for her the way she deserved even if he managed to break out of these shackles and let this go where it wanted to go. Let Beth take the reins as she seemed eager to do and somehow find the strength not to stop her.

The inevitability of that beat with a fresh ache through his still-hard cock and shook in his fingers, jittery and restless. He was a walking contradiction but if she knew it, Beth didn’t let on. She touched their foreheads together once more and smoothed her arms down his back and whispered to him like she might soothe a startled horse. The quiet lilt of her voice sunk in and pulled out the fears that had him chewing on his lip again without him knowing, not until he stopped. All that remained was Beth, the comforting weight of her astride his thighs, the warmth of her in his arms and the sound of her name beating in his chest.

“Go on and lie down,” he said to her, after just holding on for a few quiet minutes. From the fire, the sound of grease sizzling against flaming wood signalled that their slow-cooking rabbit was probably done. “I’ll get the rabbit. Secure the place up a bit, all right?”

“Okay, Daryl.”

With one final glide of her fingers through his hair, nails raking his scalp in a way that left his whole head tingling, Beth slid out of his lap and rose from the pallet, taking the blanket with her. Daryl took down the rabbit to cool and made his final circuit, moving mostly on autopilot through the empty building. The heat faded away, arousal settling down to a strong simmer in the background, and Beth’s words worked their way to the forefront of his mind.

Just when he thought he knew the depths of her strength, she went and knocked his knees out from him all over again. Maybe she was right. Maybe—and all he had were maybes, he didn’t know—but maybe she really had needed to get this far down in order to build herself up again. He didn’t like it, but then, there wasn’t anything about seeing Beth hurting that he would ever manage to enjoy. But if he set that aside, pulled out the threads of truth, he saw where she was coming from. He saw how the inspiration she needed could be found in the lowest places imaginable.

More than that, though, there was a little flame of his own burning in his chest. Beyond the one that always burned for Beth. Hope, he thought, or something kinda like it.

Wouldn’t kill you to have a little faith.

If anyone could change the outcome of her dreams, it would be Beth. Beth, who stared death in the face and decided to live. She would stand up to Gorman, too, Gorman and his ghost, and she would win.

Beth Greene was the strongest woman—the strongest person—he knew. And he hoped she was starting to see that, too.

*~*

All I can do is love you to pieces
Give you a shoulder to cry when you need it
When the day is long
And the night is coming down on you
All I can do

Expanded trigger warning notes here. Some extra thoughts on this topic you might find interesting even if you aren't triggered by it.

Daryl & Sexuality meta here.
Random note: Wool is actually a really good material for keeping warm even when wet. However. Beth’s sweater is short and has a deep v neck on it, which basically means everything underneath it gets completely soaked, too.

To be continued in chapter 31>>

Fall Right In - Chapter 29/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 01:04:30 GMT

Fall Right In
Chapter 29 – The Lengths that I Will Go To, The Distance in Your Eyes

*~*

Daryl awoke with a jolt, barely registering the kink in his neck or the numbness of his arm, bent for hours beneath him as a makeshift pillow. The forest around him was quiet, still in the throes of night, barely enough light filtering in to make out the shapes of the trees and the brush filling in the spaces between them. Only when he jumped to his feet did he truly notice the arm, now tingling with pins and needles as the blood rushed back in, but he ignored it as he whirled around. Beth. Where was Beth? Before the panic could dig its sharp fingers too deep into his gut, his gaze landed on the woman in question, the blonde of her hair standing out amongst all the dim grey-green.

Beth tipped her head back to look up at him, from where she sat with her back against the trunk of a nearby tree, her crossbow leaned up against her shins in easy reach.

“Shit.” Heart still thudding in his chest, Daryl dragged a hand—the one that wasn’t prickling like mad—across his bleary eyes, and sunk down to sit against the tree next to her. “You coulda woke me.”

Beth shrugged, a half-hearted lift of her shoulders, and let her gaze drift away from his to where her fingers pulled at that tear in the knee of her jeans, wider now after days of abuse. “You looked like you needed it.”

Her voice was at once both heavy and as insubstantial as smoke, a low, flat tone that sounded as though it weighed down her tongue just to speak, yet so small and quiet and not Beth that it almost seemed as though she never uttered a thing. Daryl flexed his tingling fingers, trying to work the blood into them faster, focusing on that for a moment to keep from snapping at her. Yeah, he’d needed it. Of course he needed it. What he didn’t need was Beth taking first watch and letting him sleep right through. What she didn’t need was an earful about it, though, and he sucked his lip in between his teeth to keep that from happening.

Wasn’t her fault she wasn’t sleeping.

Before he drew blood, Beth leaned over to pass him one of the squirrels left over from last night’s supper. He took it from her, their fingers brushing with the exchange. Beth’s thumb swept over the back of his hand and he looked up at her, meeting her eyes through the dim light. Her exhaustion, the hurt simmering there, wasn’t enough to prevent his chest from fluttering as he held her gaze, feeling that familiar pull between them that kept him anchored to her by some invisible tether.

Then she broke away, with an abruptness that was almost physical, leaving an uneasy weight between his lungs that dampened that fluttering feeling almost as quick as it built up. Daryl watched as she brought the little carcass to her mouth with trembling hands and nibbled at the meat from its ribcage, trying to ignore the ache pulsing behind his eyes that he couldn’t pass off this morning as coming from a lack of sleep.

When she continued to pretend he wasn’t watching her, Daryl gave up the surveillance and took a bite out of his own cold, fire-charred squirrel. “Quiet night?” he asked, glancing at her over the squirrel’s backbone.

Again, Beth offered that half-hearted shrug, and answered him without looking up from her meal. “Didn’t hear anything that came close.”

It wasn’t what he meant, and she knew it, but after the afternoon in that clearing, by the little rain-swollen creek, Beth had resisted his attempts at getting her to talk about it. Granted, he was sure his attempts weren’t all that convincing to begin with and under different circumstances he’d be laughing at himself. Daryl Dixon trying to get someone to talk to him when he usually preferred if everyone would just shut the hell up—but this was Beth, and all bets were off when it came to her, and what he would and wouldn’t do.

Maybe he should push her more, or something, or be more direct with what he said. His mouth had that unfortunate habit of not letting him say the things his brain let him think but he could try. Or it could be she just needed time to work it out on her own, but he didn’t fucking know, and it only made his head throb harder trying to figure it out. Not like he didn’t have all day to think on it anyway, since dawn had yet to break and they were already halfway through breakfast.

They’d make the most of the light today, at least, though a good amount of distance now stretched between him and Beth and his best guess at the margins of the men’s territory. Each day blended into the next, trudging through the woods, past other farms and overgrown fields, across bridges and streams, small rural roads of dirt, gravel, or cracked pavement, but he counted this as the fifth morning since the incident, or whatever he was supposed to call it. Should be about right to start heading northward again. North-northwest, ideally, at the first likely road they found today. Would be good to get his bearings, too, which he couldn’t do until they ventured close enough to a town with a name attached to it.

He ran out of squirrel before he ran out of thoughts, left with a handful of tiny bones and a head full of more than just plans for their day. Beth was still picking away at hers, and though she glanced at him when he got up to start packing up camp, she didn’t comment. A minute or so later she joined him, and a few more after that they were gone, one more camp left behind.

Somehow, Beth kept up as they walked, despite barely sleeping for the past few nights—not at all last night—those strong legs of hers carrying her on with some sort of dogged determination she pulled from some hidden reserve. That didn’t surprise him about Beth, that she’d push herself like this, but she couldn’t keep it up indefinitely. She wasn’t making it easy for him to try and change that, either, pulling stunts like taking first watch and not waking him, not even giving her body the chance to rest—even if she couldn’t get further than dozing in his arms. Doing that was better than not trying at all, than not giving her brain a chance to rest, either, to come down from the stress of being on and not have to worry about analyzing every little noise in the dark. But no, she’d gone and played the role of the sleep deprived martyr and wasn’t keen on letting go of it, neither.

A twig snapped underfoot, and Daryl cursed his inattention, tearing his eyes way from Beth and her hunched shoulders to focus on what the hell he was doing. To force away the burst of prickling heat flaring in his chest, anger that wasn’t gonna get him anywhere except to the starting gate of an argument he didn’t wanna have. It wasn’t even Beth he was mad at to begin with, and too fucking bad her bullet hadn’t gotten that bastard somewhere other than his arrogant fucking head. Then he could go back to that damned funeral home and hunt down Gorman’s walker and kill him all over again. Or better yet, Beth could do it, and maybe then she’d finally get him out of her brain.

He was still imagining Beth going to town on a walker version of Gorman when he picked up the faint groans and rustling brush of actual walkers, somewhere ahead of them. The first of what would likely be many today, just like the days before, a reminder that they had left the deeper woods behind to encroach on areas of denser population. They were manageable, so far, mostly appearing in small groups of no more than four or five at a time, but more frequently than they were used to. Daryl did what he could to leave a wide berth around the little pockets of former population scattered throughout the countryside, but they couldn’t avoid them all.

Daryl drew his crossbow and Beth drew hers and they walked on, ears turned to listen to the walkers’ approach. The smell reached them before the walkers did, the usual rot which he barely noticed anymore unless there were a lot of them, only laced with something worse, something that clogged up in his throat and threatened to choke him with its foulness. Out of the corner of his eye, Daryl saw Beth wrinkle up her nose at the stench, and then her eyes widened as the three walkers shuffled into view.

The one in the centre, the closest one, couldn’t have been dead more than a few weeks at most but the other two were burnt black. Two man-shaped pieces of charcoal and rotten meat that were, impossibly, still walking, dropping little crispy chunks off their lurching bodies as they went. All three were quickly put down with two bolts from Daryl and one from Beth, hers lodging precisely between the cloudy eyes of the fresh one, while the burnt ones almost disintegrated the moment his bolts hit home.

Daryl picked his two bolts up off the ground, and got his boot against the head of the fresh one to wrench Beth’s free of its still solid cranium. “Good shot, Greene.”

Beth smiled in response, a barely-there tug at the corners of her mouth, but the smile faded when she reached for the bolt and both their gazes drifted to her shaking hand. The tremor stopped when she tightened her fingers around the shaft, but Daryl didn’t miss the flash of a scowl on her face as she turned away from him and fought to stuff the bolt into the dirty bolt slot in her quiver. She cocked the bow again with a little grunt, a little more effort than she normally needed to exert these days, all with her back to him like that would prevent him from seeing. Yeah, maybe she still had enough energy to focus when she had to shoot, to keep her hand steady, but she wasn’t gonna be able to maintain that either and she fucking knew it, considering the way she eyed him quickly as she shouldered her crossbow and charged on ahead before he could call her on it.

He tried to stamp down on that feeling again, that spike of heat stabbing him in the chest, rising up over his scalp like a stampede of sharp little feet. No point now in making it worse and he scraped his teeth over the raw inside of his lip hard enough to draw blood. Beth wouldn’t get mad if it were him being a dumbass instead of her and he wasn’t gonna either, but something cold and solid lurched in his stomach, watching her wear herself thin like this.

This wasn’t Beth, this small little thing, walking along with her shoulders hunched, her arms wrapped around her middle like she was trying to curl right into herself. This woman who, somewhere along the way, filled up his world with her smiles and her songs, her questions and stories, and that ability to see the beauty of things in ways he never could. He only noticed how thoroughly she did so once she stopped doing it and now instead she just looked so small. Insubstantial in a way Beth Greene was never meant to be.

And the quiet, that was louder than Beth ever was but in all the wrong ways. This wasn’t the type of quiet he was used to with her, the type that settled around the two of them like a big old quilt, warm and familiar, where either one might speak, but didn’t necessarily need to. Where it was enough just to be, the two of them together in the same shared space. Wasn’t that other sort of quiet, either, the one he’d talked his way into through the gloom just to keep her from drowning in it. This was a quiet he didn’t know, and whatever words he thought to say dried up and turned to dust before he could say them.

This quiet didn’t welcome the intrusion.
Just as the sky lightened with the arrival of the sun—though he couldn’t see it through the trees—Daryl and Beth broke out of the woods at the side of a road. It was a gravel one, fairly wide and riddled with both potholes and patches of random greenery. A well-used road, once upon a time, given the wear on it, but there were no fresh tracks, no scatter of road dust, or tell-tale flattening of weeds to indicate anyone was still using it now.

Beth came up to stand beside him, brushing her knuckles over the back of his before securing her arms around her middle again. It wasn’t much, considering, but—maybe, maybe that meant she was trying. That her unusual quietness wasn’t only another symptom of the exhaustion flashing on her like a neon sign, that maybe something productive was happening behind those dull grey eyes after all instead of just more mental destruction.

“Whatcha think?” he asked. He might have reverted to leading them again in the aftermath of the incident, but nothing had changed. They were still in this together.

Beth shrugged and leaned over to rest her cheek against his upper arm without saying a word, body hunched so far over he was staring down at the top of her head when he looked at her. She turned her face to press her nose into his denim sleeve, and he couldn’t see the expression there, but he had a vision of her squeezing her eyes shut, clenching her jaw and drawing her lips into a tight line to keep the emotions inside. His gut lurched all over again, and he couldn’t just let it go. Not this time.

Beth didn’t resist when he pulled her around, slung one arm across her shoulder, and tugged her close with his other hand, fingers hooked through the loop of her knife sheath. With a deep sigh, and the tiniest of sounds barely leaking past her throat, Beth buried her face in his chest, slid her arms around his waist, and held on. She wasn’t crying—nothing so tangible as that—but Daryl could somehow feel the ache in her heart as it beat against his chest.

“You gotta tell me,” he murmured into her hair, curling his fingers into the knit of her sweater. “Gotta tell me if it’s gettin’ bad, Beth.”

Beth leaned back to peer up at him, dark circles ringing her wilted-looking eyes. “I will,” she said, in that same oddly flat tone, but at least this time she answered him. “It’s not that, Daryl. I’m just—just thinking.”

Some of the weight in his gut eased off in the wake of her words. Maybe that’s all it was. Maybe she really was working shit out in her head and needed the space in which to do it.

“All right.” He slid his fingers up the back of her neck, watching her close but her gaze didn’t falter this time. “Promise, though.”

That drew the tiniest of smiles and a little nod, and Beth leaned up on her tiptoes to press a kiss into his cheek. “I promise,” she said, lips rasping against the scruff on his face.

Daryl wanted to hold onto her until he warmed the sad right out of her, so when she didn’t pull out of his arms right away, he slid the hand at her neck around to cradle her cheek and tugged her hips a little closer.

Her eyes drifted shut, pale lashes fluttering a little as he stroked her cheek. “Please kiss me, Daryl. If you still want to?”

An invisible fist squeezed his heart so hard Daryl swore it stopped beating altogether before stuttering back to life with one aching beat after another. He leaned down and kissed her, pressed his chapped lips to her trembling ones, until with an almost inaudible sigh Beth parted her lips and he deepened the kiss. He tried to tell her with every glide of his lips against hers what he couldn’t hope to say with words.

There was wetness under his thumb when he pulled back, just far enough to rest his forehead against hers. They hadn’t done this for days, not since the incident, and he’d assumed she was too upset to want to, but no, she’d thought—oh, Beth. Beth. A whisper of her name was only thing he could say as he stroked her cheek and she turned into his touch.

“Daryl...” she said, voice pitched high, something almost desperate in the way she said his name. “I thought—”

“Don’t.” Daryl let go of her belt to slide his hand around beneath her pack, under the edge of her shirt so she could feel his fingers on her skin. He felt her trembling and pressed harder. “It ain’t—you—you don’t gotta think that, Beth. Don’t think that.”

Beth’s only response was a wobbly little hum, and she tucked her head beneath his chin, tipping her face up to press her lips against the pulse in his throat. He held her there for a while, fingers drawing lines on her forehead, willing her to know, to somehow understand in that way she had, everything he was feeling inside. She needed to know it, to feel it, to hear it except the ability to tell her just didn’t exist in his head.

How was a man supposed to put into words what it meant to go his entire life without knowing what it was like to fall—to feel this way about someone, until her? How could he tell Beth that without her, he would never have had the chance? That he never would’ve even known it was something he wanted, ‘til he wanted it with her, until—God, until he had it with her.

His breath caught in his throat as that washed over him, rising up like a wave from his pounding heart, rushing in with enough force to clear away the whispers of voices at the edges of his mind that might try to tell him different. He still didn’t have the right words, not for something like this, so he gave her the only ones he could find. “You and me against the world, a’right?”

She would know that it wasn’t just some stupid thing they’d gotten into the habit of saying. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t everything. Those six words couldn’t begin to explain that glowing, fluttery thing living in his chest and making his heart pound like a bass drum, but they were the only ones he had.

Beth huffed a breath against his neck, and it wasn’t quite a laugh, but it sounded close. A good sound, he was sure, as a bit of warmth seeped into his chest when he heard it.

Her arms pulled tighter around his waist as she leaned back to look up at him again, her eyes wide, blue and glittering with something more than the nothing he had seen in them for days.

“Thank you for takin’ care of me,” she whispered.

Even with Beth, he had to fight the urge to duck his head. Look away and brush her off. Ain’t nothin’. But it wasn’t nothing, not to her, no matter how much it made his insides squirm to think of it like that. He didn’t deserve any part of this except—Stop it, Dixon.

Didn’t matter, ‘cause Beth believed it and he wasn’t interested in doubting her even when she wasn’t at her best. And the truth of it was—even though Beth could take care of herself—he was always gonna want to take care of her anyway. Take care of her just like she took care of him.

Don’t you think that’s beautiful?

Instead of answering, Daryl hummed at her, the only sort of sound he trusted himself to make. A smile bloomed on Beth’s face just before she tucked her head back against his chest, inside of which those fluttery wings beat like mad. They stood there together at the side of the road for a long while, both of them holding on, long enough for the sky to brighten noticeably by the time they moved to stand side by side. As though she couldn’t help it, now that she was out of his arms Beth again wrapped her own tight around her middle as she stood staring up the road ahead. He wanted to pull her back against his chest, replace her tired arms with his own, but with her pack and crossbow he had to make do with holding her hand. He prised one arm away from her middle twined her fingers with his.

“Whatcha think?” he asked again, squeezing her hand after she squeezed first. He wasn’t certain they were ready to face whatever might be waiting for them if they chose to follow it, but he had to know what she thought.

Her shoulders lifted in that familiar shrug, but before they could drop back into place she was already shaking her head. “I think we should keep going.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

This time, Beth took the first steps, crossing the road for the trees on the opposite side. Head down, again, though, and shoulders still hunched. Even if her worries about him had gone away, she still had a ton of shit weighing her down. Daryl followed behind her, watching, wishing suddenly that they’d never left the cabin.

They could’ve stayed. Spent the winter there and set out in the spring. Or maybe not set out at all. Maybe once they saw the end of winter they would just decide to stay and make a home of it, the two of them together in their own world. He would have done that with her even before he understood how he felt about her. Before he knew she felt the same about him. It’d be domestic as shit but he’d dive head first into every fucking minute of it if it meant she never had to feel like this.
He snorted, causing Beth to look over her shoulder at him with a question arcing across her brow.

“Nothin’,” he said, waving her off, but as she turned back around he knew that, no matter where they ended up, sooner or later Beth would’ve had to go through this anyway.

And who the fuck was he kidding, trying to pretend he didn’t just want that, independent of all the other shit. Him and Beth and their little cabin that was more like home than any other place he’d ever lived.

Right now he’d still be curled up with her, warm in their bed, not wandering cold through the woods at dawn. Exhausted, hurting, heartbroken in a way he didn’t know how to fix. It was tempting, so fucking tempting just to screw it, turn around, abandon the idea of ever finding the others and take her back. Light a fire in the stove, bathe the entire cozy space in woodsy warmth, and when they could no longer see their breath in the air, he would pull every last piece of wet, dirty clothing off her body and hold her close beneath the quilt, fingers stroking her belly just the way she liked. The shaking would stop and she’d fall into a sleep so sound she wouldn’t dream and she’d wake up warm and smiling, and then—

Before he could force his mind onto something else, the flashes came. Images, saturated with colour, moving through his head like a slideshow on double speed. Lips and tongues and so much warm, naked skin. Teeth scraping down sweaty necks. Tanned fingers against pale curves. Hot, wet mouths and other places that were hotter and wetter, and the sounds, Christ, the sounds. Soft sighs and raspy groans. His name on her breath and her name on his.

Daryl shuddered, trying to shake those thoughts right out of his head, but once the film started rolling it wasn’t easy to turn off. He shouldn’t even be thinking like this right now. Shouldn’t even be thinking like this at all except he’d gone and reverted back into the horny teenager he never was. He hadn’t been able to stop since the barn, since kissing Beth was never just kissing, except when it was. Like today, when what she needed from him had nothing at all to do with sex and that screamed at him in a voice that was far louder than the ones in his head. And one look at Beth was enough to quiet things down even more, if not make them shut up altogether.
Still, his want for her throbbed warm and heavy, an ache in his belly that never went away and a shard of panic in his lungs whenever he thought too long on it. But it was getting harder and harder not to think about being with her like that and he wanted to. Fuck, he wanted that, wanted her, and if this was what it was like for everyone else, all the time, all this shit clanging around in their heads without reprieve, then the world was more fucked up than he even realized. And Beth, well—no, this wasn’t the time and the cabin, and all he imagined them doing there, wasn’t an option.

They couldn’t go back. They made their choice to leave and he knew Beth wasn’t ready to give up on the others, not until they had the chance to really look for them. Even hurting, even exhausted, Beth wouldn’t want him giving up either. Convincing her to turn back now would make this entire journey and everything they went through completely meaningless. It would be like kicking her when she was down, dragging her back, telling her that what she wanted was never worth the effort after all.

He couldn’t do that to her, and even more than that, even if part of him wanted to hide away from the world with Beth forever, he couldn’t stand knowing he didn’t do whatever it took to find the others. If they were still out there—Carol, Michonne, Glenn, Maggie— then he had to know. Had to find them. They could’ve made it just the same as him and Beth, that’s what convinced him on this the night they decided to look for them and that’s what would keep him going forward now.

That, and Beth, who never for a minute thought otherwise.

Daryl settled his thoughts as he caught up to Beth, walking alongside her where he could and dropping behind when he couldn’t. She kept her footsteps nearly silent as she navigated through the trees, and he’d be more impressed if she wasn’t barely holding her head high enough to see where she was going. She still spotted the rabbit, though, spotted it and bagged the thing with a clean head-shot before he even noticed it, since he was too busy focusing on her, yet again, and he needed to quit that. She wasn’t gonna disappear and she wasn’t gonna get lost if he took his eyes off her. At least they’d have something fresh to eat today, if she didn’t spoil it the way her hands shook as she knelt down to gut the rabbit. She had the same thought, though, and without a word passed the cottontail over to Daryl when he stooped down beside her, and leaned into his side while he made quick work of the guts.

They saw no active signs of people as the day wore on, despite the abundance of once-tended fields and well-travelled roads. Just former people, groups of walkers in threes and fours, some of them they dealt with and others they snuck past without drawing attention to themselves. Late that morning they edged close enough to a town to spot a gas station, burnt out and abandoned, its hand-painted sign leaning precariously on a blackened pole cracked down the middle, but somehow still holding together. That road was paved, centre line still visible, and they hurried across it without stopping to look. It wasn’t until midday, when they found the train tracks that he met Beth’s eyes and they shared a nod. Tracks led northwest, where he’d hoped to head, and without a word they turned to follow them, walking alongside them but inside the trees.

The clear weather had held through the previous days, hours of blue skies and warm sun followed by chilly nights beneath a gradually waning moon. The ground was nearly dry, now, on the fifth full day of good weather, but a couple of hours after they found the tracks, the clouds began rolling in, gradually dimming the orange autumn light back toward that pale, lifeless grey. By late afternoon, the wind had kicked up, blowing at their backs with enough strength to whip Beth’s hair around even when she tucked it down beneath her collar, while overhead the clouds darkened to an ominous steel blue.

The wind creaked through the trunks, whistled high in the branches, and rushed down along the line of the tracks like a wind tunnel. Beth huddled even more into herself, already so worn down that the wind just made it worse. They kept to the trees’ edge but that couldn’t prevent it from licking cold at their necks, their cheeks and ears and fingers, clutched into fists inside their sleeves.

A pair of walkers ambled along the tracks, one of them burnt like the two from that morning. It was only ‘cause the walkers were downwind that Daryl couldn’t smell it, that choking odor of burnt, rotten flesh. Two bolts ended their walking for good, and Daryl dashed quickly up onto the tracks to retrieve them before retreating to the cover of the trees.

“It’s gonna rain hard,” Beth said, the first words she had spoken since that morning at the road. “It’s like it was, when you went hunting.”

He was already zoned out in the relative safety of that oak tree when that storm rolled in and he’d missed the lead up, but he suspected Beth was right. Even the days of dreary rain preceding this stretch of dry weather hadn’t come on like this. No, a proper storm was brewing and they were gonna need to find something more than just trees for shelter.

“Maybe there’s a boxcar or somethin’,” he said, peering down the long line of empty track. “Keep walkin’.”

He still had no idea where they were. These tracks might just as easily lead into a small town as they could lead to miles and miles of desolation without cover in sight. Getting caught in the storm wasn’t high on his list of things to do today and Daryl pushed on a bit faster, conscious of Beth, lagging now despite trying her damnedest not to. Ten minutes on, they had yet to come across any sort of shelter and the first drops were already falling, escalating within a few paces until the rain fell hard and fast in giant, frigid globs. The wind kicked up, too, paying no heed to the supposed cover of the trees, whipping low-hanging branches into their faces, making whirlwinds out of fallen leaves, and tearing the garbage bags from their heads the moment they tried to put them on. Twenty minutes in the sky grew so dark Daryl could barely see ten feet in front of him.

They had no choice but to climb up onto the tracks, trading the treacherous branches and zero visibility for no cover at all and not having to worry about catching their feet on unseen hazards. Afraid of leaving her behind, Daryl grabbed Beth’s hand and locked their fingers together, trying to run fast enough for the both of them. The wind drove the rain down on their heads and necks like stinging needles and puddles gathered amongst the ties, splashing them up to their knees with water and mud with every pounding step. Beth’s fingers were icicles in his and he was soaked right through, jeans wet and heavy and restricting his mobility but he ran on. Ran as fast as he could, almost dragging Beth along with him.

Walkers wobbled down the tracks toward them, impeded by the wind, decayed limbs and ragged clothing flailing around like one of those annoying inflatable things favoured by used car lots trying to draw new business. Crossbows were useless in this kind of wind so they knifed their way through them, boots sliding in the mud, on the slippery old wood now coated in filth, as they, too, fought the wind. The last couple they left behind to toss around like grotesque pinwheels in their futile attempts to follow. Beth shouted something as they ran, but the wind tore her words away and she didn’t try again, just held onto his fingers which were now going numb along with his toes and his face.

They both stumbled. Fell in the mud and struggled back up. Ran for minutes. Ran for hours. Ran forever, until the storm swallowed the whole world in a raging temper tantrum of falling branches and torrential rain and a sky so black it looked like night. And Beth shouted again but this time he heard her, somehow, over the roar of the wind and the drumming of the rain.

“There!”

Daryl followed the path of her shaking fingers and spotted the outline of the building, barely visible in the darkness ahead.

They ran for it, feet pounding through the puddles on the tracks before scrambling up the wide metal steps of the long brick structure. The overhanging roof, covering the deck spanning the length of the building’s front, offered no reprieve from the rain, not in wind like this. Daryl banged on the big metal door and nothing banged back, but Beth had her crossbow in arms anyway, somehow finding enough strength to keep her hold steady as he moved to push it open. It wasn’t locked, and though it groaned in protest, the heavy door rolled back along its rusted rails just far enough to let them in.

*~*

to be continued in chapter 30 >>

Fall Right In - Chapter 28/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Sat, 28 Nov 2015 20:27:34 GMT

Fall Right In
Chapter 28 – ‘Cause I Will Carry You ‘Til You Carry On

*~*

In hindsight, he should’ve taken point. The two days Beth spent fighting with her own head should have clued him into the fact that she maybe wasn’t focused enough, wasn’t herself enough to be making the calls. She was so naturally good at this but—but he should have seen it. Should have seen it and talked to her and told her why he was concerned and Beth would’ve agreed. Wasn’t about not trusting her, was about keeping the both of them safe and that was something Beth would understand. Beth and Daryl against the world and all that and sometimes one of them needed to give the other one a shove in the right direction—just like she did with the walkers after he pulled her out of that pit.

The signs were there, but he wasn’t reading them. Not in time to stop her, to ask her to hang back amongst the trees while he checked out the yard instead, spotted the danger before she leapt headfirst into it. Shown her the tire tracks across the wet lawn, the boot-trampled grass amidst the mud, the splatters of it on the bumper of that goddamned truck that drew her in like a magpie to a shiny thing. Then they’d have been long gone from here before anyone knew they were ever there.

In hindsight—which didn’t do them a speck of good now.

There was no time to run. The first four men were almost on them by the time he got Beth’s attention and the fifth had the rifle. No choice but to try and talk their way out of this without nobody getting hurt. Beth froze when she finally saw them, her hand still resting on the hood of that old truck. Daryl tightened his grip on her wrist, hoping to pull her away from the truck entirely, but then she gasped and tore her arm free.

Beth swung her crossbow off her shoulder and into her arms so fast he had no time to stop her.

He should have fucking taken point.

The men skidded to a halt in a loose arc around him and Beth, the closest one lifting his empty hands in deference to the crossbow pointed at his head. He was armed; they all were, with handguns in holsters and an array of blades strapped to belts. Fighters, all of them, or at least, these were men used to doing what they needed to in order to stay alive. The three younger men—two brothers, maybe, with the same reddish hair and lanky build, and a heavier-set guy a bit older than them, skin as dark as theirs was pale—stood ready to draw, but the leader kept his hands raised and away from the Glock at his hip. Leader in more than one sense, as he made a little noise in the back of his throat which had the others curling their reaching fingers into fists held to their sides.

Their lack of action didn’t do a thing to calm the swell of terror rising in Daryl’s chest, pounding on the inside of his ribs like a caged dog trying to break free. He had to defuse this now, while he had a chance. Before—just, before.

“Beth.”

The word burst out harsher than he meant it to, but Beth didn’t hear him. Her breath came in shallow little puffs, chest barely moving with it, and she held her crossbow so tight her arms shook—the tiniest of tremors betraying her panic, but Daryl couldn’t be certain the others would see it. Or if they did, that they’d understand. Wherever Beth was right now, she wasn’t here. He had a good idea where she’d gone and why, and that meant she wasn’t seeing what was really in front of her. Wasn’t seeing any of this for what it was—danger, and restraint that wouldn’t mean nothing if she didn’t lower her damn crossbow.

The leader, a man somewhat older than Rick, with close-cropped, once-dark hair now over halfway toward grey, kept his sharp brown eyes locked on Beth. “Stand down, miss, and let’s talk about this like civilized people.”

Beth didn’t move, and Daryl swallowed hard. This was bad. So fucking bad. “Beth. C’mon.”

The guy with the rifle, a some years-younger version of the guy in charge, stopped a ways back from the rest of them, and when Beth didn’t follow the order she was given, he lifted his weapon. From where the rifleman stood, he had Beth in his sights and a clean line to a headshot.

Daryl slid his gaze back to the leader, heart thundering in his chest. “Beth. Beth.”

One of the others in the back snorted. “Bet she don’t even know how to use that.”

Daryl was too terrified to be outraged on Beth’s behalf, ‘cause of course she fuckin’ knew how to use her crossbow. Through the stab of panic lancing through his head, though, came the thought that maybe if they thought that, it could buy him a bit of time to get her out of this.

The leader made another sound in his throat, and whichever man spoke mumbled something under his breath. “She knows,” he said, eyes sweeping over Beth’s hold on her weapon. “You best get this under control.”

Daryl knew an order when he heard one, no matter that the guy hadn’t taken his eyes off Beth. Keeping his hands where the men could see them, Daryl closed the gap between him and Beth, slowly coming to stand beside her where she’d be able to see him before he tried touching her. Her finger rested on the trigger of her crossbow and the wrong nudge, the right touch at the wrong moment might well set her off and then—no. No. He wasn’t gonna think about what would happen if she took out this group’s leader with a crossbow bolt to the head at point blank range.

“Beth,” he said again, keeping his voice low, aware of the three out of five pairs of eyes on him, hard and hot like he had a target painted on his forehead.
Beth was still taking those shallow little breaths, not hyperventilating but damn close to it, and didn’t even blink when he spoke. She stared at the man, standing there with his arms raised, eyes open wider than he had ever seen them, but vacant. Even side-on he could see it. She might be looking but she wasn’t seeing what was in front of her. What she was seeing had her pale and sweaty, and breathing so erratically Daryl wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t just pass out and solve the problem that way. But he couldn’t take the chance that she wouldn’t pull that trigger first.

Repeating her name again, as low as he could without his voice breaking, Daryl slipped his hand beneath the back of her shirts to drag his thumb up her spine, just barely brushing her skin, hoping to hell she wasn’t exaggerating when she told him what it meant to her when he did that.

Makes it so you’re more real than whatever’s in my head.

“Beth, c’mon,” he whispered, repeating the motion, turning his face to speak in her ear while sparing a glance toward the man still standing with his arms raised. “Come back, girl.”

Maybe he was imagining it, but maybe not, the flash of curiosity in the guy’s otherwise neutral stare. There, and gone, but Daryl couldn’t worry about that right now. He repeated Beth’s name and pressed his thumb a little harder into her skin, and finally. Finally, she let out a little gasp, and in its wake a shiver rippled along her spine before rolling through the rest of her body. Beth sucked in a deep breath, which shuddered out of her in spurts, and took half a step back, blinking like she’d just woken up to find the light too bright.

“Wha—”

“Lower your crossbow,” Daryl murmured, curling his other hand around her forearm now that she was aware of him. “S’all right, Beth.”

Still blinking, she lowered the bow without questioning why. Daryl pushed her behind him, but not before catching a glimpse of her too-wide eyes and deeply furrowed brow. It was a punch to the gut, how she reacted, but he pushed that down to deal with later, and focused on the more immediate threat.

The leader’s dark eyes shifted now to meet his, a hard-edged glint to them instead of the more neutral one he’d shown to Beth. Like he realized what was happening but knew Daryl had no such excuse. The hands he that had been raised in the face of the crossbow now settled carefully at his hips, ready, should reason strike, to brandish whichever weapon he chose.

“We don’t mean no trouble,” Daryl said, holding his own hands out in front of him, despite the itch in his fingers to reach for his Stryker or his knife, maybe even Beth’s gun.

Without breaking eye contact, the leader tilted his head, as though to peer around Daryl at the small, trembling woman huddled against his back. “I think that might’ve been something to consider before attempting to steal my truck, don’t you?”

“She—” Daryl stopped, cleared his throat to get rid of some of the hoarseness and used those few seconds to rethink his words. Nothing he said in Beth’s defense was gonna sound like anything less than an excuse and it was none of this man’s damn business anyway. “We made a mistake.”

The leader tilted his head back upright, facing Daryl again straight on, one eyebrow lifting high on his forehead. “That all you have to say?”

Fuck. Beth would know how to get out of this. Any other day and she’d know just the right thing, and he wasn’t good at this, talking, getting out of a situation that wanted words instead of action as the solution to the problem. What would Beth say? What would Rick say, or Hershel? Daryl dredged the recesses of his brain for the right combination of letters but the net came up empty, and he gaped at the man in front of him like a catfish on mute.

The man waited another moment before bobbing his head slowly, lips pursed as though in thought. “The way I see it, it’s like this,” he said, dropping the thoughtful look to once again meet Daryl’s eyes with that hard stare that had Daryl fighting not to look away. “I know you aren’t stupid, either one of you. I’d appreciate it if you’d show me the same courtesy.”

As he spoke, the man’s voice remained even, each word spoken slowly, carefully, as though the guy was, in fact, speaking to somebody of lower intelligence. The hot shard of anger in Daryl’s gut was overshadowed, though, by the way the voice made the back of his neck prickle like mad. Beneath the calm exterior of this man speaking with a gentleman’s voice, was a guy Daryl didn’t wanna be messing with.

“So tell me,” he said, brushing the gun’s magazine with his thumb. “What part of hopping my fence, touching my property, and threatening to shoot me in my home, was the mistake?”

That was what it came down to. Wasn’t the trespass so much as the threat the guy took issue with and Daryl couldn’t blame him. No matter that it now put them on opposite sides of something Beth didn’t intend for them start. Looking at it from this other man’s side of the fence—some stranger holding a weapon to his face, in his backyard. His home. Wasn’t no tank, no army of gathered soldiers mislead into fighting someone else’s battle, but a threat was a threat. A crossbow was every bit as deadly, given the chance.

Daryl opened his mouth, hoping maybe the right words would just sort of fall out. He couldn’t counter the guy’s point because he did have one. Him and Beth were in the wrong here, no arguing that, no changing what happened no matter how sorry he was that it went down like this.

Huh. Maybe it wasn’t so complicated after all.

“We fucked up,” Daryl said, trying, for now, to put aside how hard Beth was shaking as she clung to his back. “We’re sorry. Me and her, we don’t want no trouble.”

The leader of the group took this all in with that same hard expression which never wavered. Once Daryl finished speaking, he cocked his head slightly, again as though he were looking at Beth except his gaze never strayed from Daryl’s face.

“So you say.”

“You let us leave and we’re gone,” Daryl said, spreading his hands even wider apart, like that was gonna show that he meant it. “Ain’t gonna bother y’all again.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

Daryl tried to hold in the grunt of frustration, of fear, for what was going, in front of him and in Beth’s head. He had no reason to expect this guy to believe anything he said. Hell, Daryl wouldn’t believe himself, were their positions reversed. From behind him, Beth let out a little noise. Muffled into his leather but loud enough to carry to the men’s ears, and this time the leader’s gaze did stray.

A flash, again, of something other than the tough defender in the other man’s dark eyes. Daryl was running out of options and he hated doing this. Hated throwing his and Beth’s business out there for anyone else to see—but he had no choice.

“Just let me get her out of here,” he said, swallowing hard as Beth whimpered again, clearly fighting just to stay upright in the aftermath of the waking nightmare which landed them here. “She—you ain’t stupid, man. You saw.”

Seconds passed, the beating of his heart like the ticking of a clock as he stared back at this leader of men who was only trying to protect his home. His family. That’s all Daryl wanted, too. If this guy could see that, maybe. Maybe they’d make it out of this alive.

Felt like hours before the leader hummed, long and low from deep in his throat. Daryl’s pulse whooshed in his ears and he watched as the other man lifted his hand in signal. Beth shuddered against his back and Daryl’s gut lurched. They were gonna die and he couldn’t even turn around to hold her.

But the rifleman lowered his weapon, and the three men in the back slid their hands down to cross at the wrists over their belt buckles. The leader leveled Daryl with that same hard stare and tipped his chin toward the fence.

“Go,” he said, with an abrupt nod. “And remember that I’m not in the business of giving second chances.”

One chance was enough, though, and Daryl returned the nod before turning around, every instinct screaming at him not to put his back to them but he had no choice here, either. Go. Go now, or else they weren’t gonna go at all. He didn’t even look at Beth as he threw his arm around her waist and rushed her to the fence, but despite the almost convulsive shaking she moved on her own, those long legs of hers keeping up with his strides.

Over the fence. Into the woods. Running, heedless of the brush and the branches snapping him in the face. Go.

The crack of the rifle shooting off a round in the air rang out behind them.

Go, it said, and don’t come back.

*~*

We gotta go, Beth.

They hadn’t run like this since the prison. Since the walkers that wouldn’t stop coming in the chaotic aftermath of the destruction of their home. The scattering of their family. Time sped by in a blur of green, the sting of branches, the crunching of the ground beneath their feet. Couldn’t run and keep quiet, couldn’t have both. Daryl didn’t notice the burn anymore. Barely felt his legs beyond knowing they were there beneath him, two automated limbs propelling him on. The fire in his lungs smoldered away in the background but all Daryl cared about was Beth, and getting her far, far away from that farm and those men—both the ones in the barnyard and the one in her head.

Beth stumbled, the toe of her boot catching on a leaf-covered root. She fell forward, landing hard and sliding in the muck. Daryl skidded to a stop and reached for her, getting his hands under her arms to pull her up—but she slumped down, not unconscious but dead weight just the same.

“Beth,” he said, pulling more. “Beth. Come on. We gotta go.”

He’d have carried her. A serious piggyback. Over his shoulder. To a goddamn white trash brunch. Whatever he fucking needed to do, if it came to that—but it didn’t. Her eyes locked on his and he swore he could see them clearing. The clouds shattered and something surged there in the blue beneath, and Beth grit her teeth and got to her feet and she ran. The little blonde blur at his side, strength and hope and light despite the dark cloud swirling just above her head.
They ran. Ran until the tiny shard of daylight faded into a deep blue twilight. Ran until they couldn’t run no more and fell down, exhausted, not in a sunlit field this time but in the mud and shadows beneath a cluster of tall trees. There was water—half a bottle each, stale and warm and barely enough to soothe his dry throat. After that, nothing for a few stolen minutes but ragged breathing and the growing awareness, like the tide washing in, of every single ache in his body. Which meant it was time to go, before they couldn’t go at all.

The blue deepened to black, but stars lit up the cloudless sky and the moon rose, full or nearly so, arcing high until its light cut through the trees, shining down like bright silver blades and scattering a field of glitter on the forest floor around them. Just like another night, in another forest. Another moon, full or nearly so, the clearest mark of the passage of time they had these days. Another month, gone. A month which carried the weight of years and he felt every one of them with each step he took.

With barely a sound, and without any words at all, they picked their way through the trees, each careful footstep connecting the dots from one patch of moonlight to the next. They walked until the black faded back to blue, until the sun rose again, and kept on going.

His head ached. Eyes burned. Legs moved like two gnarled tree trunks, thick and heavy, beyond his control. A fist twisted in his gut whenever he looked at Beth, at her wide eyes rimmed inside with red, dark circles below on her pale, blank face as she trudged along beside him. Beneath the fist, hunger gnawed at his stomach but he ignored its bite. They had the venison. Some shit in cans. They’d probably gone far enough by now to stop and rest but that twisting fist urged him on. Just a little further, put a little more distance between them and the farm. They pushed on. Heading east, for now, avoiding the town, the territory run by those men. Cutting down on the chances of a second confrontation that’d probably see the both of them dead.

Time moved strangely. He saw its passage in the journey of the sun but he didn’t feel the hours. Just kept walking until he took one last step and could not take another. Was as good a place to stop, as any, on the bank of a small stream still swollen from the recent rain. Not much more than a shallow ditch, winding haphazardly amongst the trees, raging faster than he imagined it normally might. A bit of a clearing stretched out on both sides of it, the trees set back a ways from the soft edges of the bank. The sun beat down from directly above them, and he felt the heat of it now on his face and neck. In the sweat beading on his forehead and slicking his skin beneath the layers of clothing. As warm as the previous days were cold, enough that the leaves were nearly dry when his knees gave out and he collapsed down on them.

Sometime later, Daryl blinked his eyes open, lying on his back now on the cool ground, staring up at a bright, blurred field of blue edged with colourful, gently swaying leaves. A soft, echoing sort of hum filled his ears, and he focused on that, on the almost distant sound of it even though he was pretty sure it was coming from inside his head. Sunk into it, for a while, until the snapping of twigs jolted him awake in time to turn his head and watch as Beth buried her knife into the skull of the lone walker that had stumbled upon them.

Daryl’s first attempt to get up had every joint and muscle in his body groaning in protest, and he let out one of his own into the air, while across the clearing Beth shoved the corpse off her blade and let it fall to the ground. Without looking at him, though she had to have heard him, Beth dropped down to sit at the edge of the creek facing away from him, the bloody knife still clutched in her hand. With another groan of protest, Daryl pushed himself up on his hands and cast a look around the little clearing, noting the string of alarms rigged up around the space, and the little fire pit standing ready to light over by the largest of the trees, beneath which their canvas lay out, waiting.

A few pebbles of guilt settled in his stomach, for checking out before seeing to their safety, but after all that happened yesterday, the fact that Beth had taken care of it felt like it mattered a whole lot more.

Even still, she wasn’t at all her usual self yet, despite doing what needed doing and watching over his pathetic ass while she was at it. She sat there by the edge of the creek, staring out ahead like he wasn’t even there—or maybe, like she wasn’t here with him. When he slid into place beside her all she did was dig the toes of her boots deeper into the soft, dark earth and kept staring blankly out ahead of her. Even her eyes looked dull. Cloudy grey instead of their normal blue, despite the brightness of the afternoon.

Daryl drew his knees up and draped his arms across them, and just sat with her for a minute, only vaguely aware of the scrape of his teeth on the inside of his lip, the little bite of pain from that old scar he’d opened up yesterday. He needed to say something, get her talking or at least looking at him, something, but he didn’t know the right words.

It hadn’t worked, back at the barnyard, just opening his mouth and hoping something might fall out, so of course he tried it again. Clearing his throat a bit, cause it was dry as fuck in there, he parted his lips and the words did come, lackluster maybe and probably not what he should’ve said, but words all the same.

“Should clean that.”

Beth dug the tip of her still-bloody blade into the dirt between them, twisting it back and forth, rising up little ridges of dark, damp earth around the deepening hole. But she didn’t answer him, didn’t even look at what she was doing.

“Hey.” Daryl leaned in just enough for his shoulder to touch hers. “Beth.”

Beth’s throat bobbed as she swallowed hard, and she pulled her body away from him, but not before he felt the way she shivered.

“Beth—”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she said, in a quiet voice every bit as flat as her expression, which nonetheless cut into him like her blade burrowing down into the dirt.

“You don’t—”

Beth lifted the blade from the ground and stabbed it back down into the dirt with a soft shtick. “Then stop askin’ me to.”

Daryl flexed his thumbs, stretched them back out, fighting the urge to bring one of them to his mouth to chew on it. Worked instead at that same spot inside his lip until a hint of copper bloomed on his tongue. She wasn’t making this easy, but he didn’t blame her. Couldn’t blame her, knowing the reasons—but he couldn’t give up on her, either.

“Beth,” he said again, trying to stay calm. Trying to be what she needed even if he had no idea what that was.

“What, Daryl?” She turned to him, finally, a spark flaring in her bloodshot eyes.

That was something. Something more than the nothing she’d shown so far. While he tried to think of what to say to her, Beth wrenched her knife from the ground and threw it down into the leaves on the other side of her.

“Just say it,” she said, her jaw clenched tight around the words, eyes shining now where they’d been dry before. “Stop bein’ nice and tell me how bad I screwed up.”

Oh, sweetheart. No. No.

“Beth—”

She lunged at him, in a way, launching her body forward until she was pushed right up against his knees, her face inches from his. “Say it.”

Her voice was all hard edges between deep, rapid breaths. She wanted him to get mad at her. Yell in her face, tear her down, confirm what she thought she knew. The bullshit her brain was telling her was true.

“Yeah, all right, you fucked up,” he said, taking the bait. Letting her have what she wanted even if it was only for a moment.

She had, there weren’t no denying that—but that wasn’t all on her. They both fucked up; Beth by charging into that barnyard without reading the signs, and him for not seeing the potential for it until it was too late. But the rest of it, no. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—lay blame for that on Beth’s shoulders.

Daryl lifted his hand to brush a strand of hair off her forehead. “Ain’t that simple and you know it.”

Beth wrenched her body away, but not before Daryl caught a glimpse of her shaking lip and the tears welling up in her already bloodshot eyes. She wrapped her arms around her knees and drew them to her chest, pushed her face down into them while her fingers pulled violently at the frayed edges of a new tear in her jeans.

Daryl didn’t need to take no damn psychology class to understand what happened to her in the barnyard, or why. He’d fucking lived it. Her demons weren’t his, but the recipe was the same. Many years stretched between now and the last time something jarred the lid right off that box in his head and voices grew loud enough to drag him back. But it wasn’t something a man just forgot, even though he tried his best to. A prickle of cold swept down his neck, just thinking about it now, settling heavy in his gut, and he clenched his hands into fists to keep them from shaking, fought to ignore how loud his pulse thudded in his ears with what he was about to say.

“I know a flashback when I see one, Beth.”

She stopped pulling at the tear, and drew her arms tighter around her legs. He was taking a chance, touching her when she was upset, when she was hurting in a way she never had before, but this was still Beth. Still him and Beth, and he didn’t think that had changed. Didn’t think it could, not like this. She went rigid for a split second when he set his hand down at her lower back, but the stiffness melted out of her faster than it set in, and she sucked in a big, shuddering breath and leaned into his touch.

What Beth was dealing with wasn’t—it was different, from what he knew—but that didn’t mean it wasn’t just as real. No happy childhood could cancel out what she was going through right now. Hershel Greene’s love for his youngest daughter couldn’t lessen the blow of having to do what she did, of the life—no matter how vile—she had to take, just to keep her own.

Daryl didn’t know if getting her talking was a good thing, if there was a way to do this or a way to not. But talking about it couldn’t be any worse than burying it. Than stuffing it own into her own box in her head, not gone, just lying in wait for the right moment to slither out and grab her by the ankles when she wasn’t looking.

He had to try. He couldn’t just sit back and let this mess her up for good.

By the time his thumb grazed along the skin of her spine, Beth was shaking and sobbing softly into her knees. Daryl let out a deep breath and tried to keep his voice low and calm when he spoke to her. “You weren’t in that barnyard at all, were you?”

A little whimper floated out of her, and Beth shook her head, face still buried in the peaks of her knees. “It was so real.” Even muffled in denim, her voice was small and tremulous. “H-he was right there.”

Daryl kept up the motions of his thumb, a slow up and down along her spine while Beth kept speaking.

“It was happenin’ all over again.” She sniffled hard, and turned her head, peeking one teary eye out at him from beneath a tumble of blonde hair. “It was, and then you—you woke me up, a-and...”

Without finishing—probably without being able to, Beth pushed her face back into her knees, shoulders shaking. She let out one high pitched little whine but fell silent, sobbing so hard she wasn’t even making a sound.

Oh, girl. Woman was fucking terrified. Of course she was, with how her mind had tricked her and what she almost did because of it—something she’d never have done on her own. That was the part she always stressed, whenever she brought up what happened that night. How Gorman left her with no other choice, and she was right. He’d taken that from her. He did that to her, just as tangibly as if he’d done something physically. Trauma was trauma, that’s what that documentary thing said. What caused it didn’t matter, just that it had and it was tearing Beth apart. That needed to stop—needed to stop fucking yesterday.
Daryl pressed his thumb a little harder against her spine, already reaching for her with his other hand when she twisted around.

“Daryl...”

“C’mere.”

She fell against him when he gathered her up, pulled her into his arms like she was made of straw. Boneless, curling into the smallest little ball of Beth he’d ever seen, trembling so hard he felt it in his marrow. Heard it, in the chatter of her teeth, in the shaky whimpers she couldn’t hold back even though she tried to bury them by pushing her face into his chest. He whispered to her, her name, the things he always said after she had a nightmare. Drew those little circles on her back right over her skin, cradled her head to his chest and slid his thumb through the tears coating her cheek. Probably wasn’t what she needed but Daryl didn’t know what else to do except this. Except hold her and touch her for as long as she wanted and speak enough words to maybe drive away whatever other voices might be lurking in her head.

It took a long while for her shaking to settle and her tears to dry. Enough time that the sun dipped low behind the trees, leaving the clearing cool and shaded in the late autumn afternoon. He moved them back beneath the trees, to light a fire, gather their shit together and make sure he and Beth had water and some smoked venison to take the edge off their thirst and the hunger gnawing at their bellies. She watched him, knees drawn up to her chest, chin resting on top, chewing the hard-smoked meat slowly while tracking him with her eyes around the clearing as he got everything done. When he finally joined her beneath the tree, Beth leaned back into his chest before he even got fully settled behind her, turning her head so her face tucked up under his chin, her breath tickling his neck with every exhale.

Daryl pulled her close, one arm around her middle and the other cradling her head to his shoulder. Beth sighed deeply and set her hand on top of his where it rested at her waist, her delicate fingers only partially covering his thick ones. For a long time, she stayed quiet, but she stayed there with him instead of falling back inside her head, and she nosed at his neck whenever he brushed his fingers across her cheek. Her thumb glided back and forth over his, and just like they had that night at the ledge, Daryl moved his thumb over hers, too. Made his skin tingle, all the way up to his shoulders, and the way Beth sighed into his neck, he thought maybe it was the same for her, too.

“Daryl?”

“Mmm?” he said, still touching her face, light passes tracing along the lines of her jaw, her nose, her cheekbone.

“Those—those men,” she said, voice quiet and wavering. “They weren’t bad people, were they.”

It wasn’t a question, not with the way she said it, and the statement sat uneasy in Daryl’s chest. He wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear. If she wanted him to lie to her and tell her that they were, that it wasn’t her drawing her crossbow on them that escalated the rest of the encounter, but rather their own violent intentions. Because they weren’t bad men, least not as far as Daryl could see. Tough, ‘cause they had to be. Survivors, trying to make it just like everyone else. But they weren’t cruel. Weren’t the sort of people to jump straight into violence without due cause. Simply getting the chance to talk Beth down proved that well enough, and being allowed to leave without a pair of bullets in their backs.

“No.” No matter what she wished the answer was, she deserved to hear the truth. “Don’t think they were.”

He felt the slide of her head against his shoulder, nodding that she heard him. That she understood. “Why did—” She took in a deep breath, and held it in a moment before going on. “What happened—to me—was that because of the nightmares? Or because of Gorman?”

Daryl hummed at her, lowly. He weren’t no expert in this. For a long time he hadn’t known there were words for this, didn’t even know it was a thing that happened to other people, until he saw it on some shitty cable documentary. Daryl swallowed down the queasiness rising in his belly, remembering the night he watched it, sitting in the dark in some filthy motel room. Remembered, too, other times, other dark rooms, waking up suffocating in piles of piss-covered blankets or cowering in corners he never remembered hiding in. Merle’s eyes and that weird glimmer in them, silent, watching. Less of a dick for a while but he never said. Nobody ever said. Nobody spoke. Nobody gave him the words until he gave them to himself and he still didn’t trust it no matter that he should.
Grow a fuckin’ pair, Darylina. The sweet baby brother, barely man enough as it was, after some fucking heart-to-heart chat like the weak-ass pussy they always knew him for. Not even man enough to stand up to his own soft head, and—no. No.

Shaking his head to shake Merle off, to shake all of it off, Daryl curled his fingers into Beth’s ponytail, and leaned over to press his cheek to her forehead.
“Both,” he told her, thinking on what he remembered, and how he could best put that into words for her. “Think the nightmare’s a big part of it, the way that last one was gettin’ to you.”

As if remembering herself, Beth shook with a sudden tremor. “I guess was slippin’ back there all day, in little bits, ‘til you started tellin’ stories.”

The beat of warmth, knowing his stories actually helped, couldn’t quite overcome the sourness squirming inside. “And when the men came at you...”

She nodded again, a subtle rustle of hair against leather. “That’s what made me—made me flashback.”

Daryl didn’t miss the wobble in her voice, and sure enough, when he brushed his thumb over her cheek, he met a fresh trickle of tears. “Ain’t your fault, Beth.”

A low whine escaped past her lips, and Beth pushed her face right into his neck until he could feel his own pulse beating against her lips. “I just—I just hate feelin’ helpless.”

Her words brought him back to that morning in the cabin, the day she found her crossbow. The day she asked him to show her how to survive in a world that was always gonna try to stop her.

I hate feelin’ so helpless.

I want you to teach me how not to be.

Can you teach me to fight back?

This world wasn’t made for people like Beth, but she never accepted that as her reality. She made it, made herself into a survivor along the way, and she did it without letting it take away who she was, deep down. A good woman, the best he knew. Someone who saw the beauty of the stars, who remembered that walkers were people and wouldn’t let him forget, who somehow looked at him and saw a man worthy of her heart. Daryl couldn’t shut off the part of himself that worried about her, but he knew Beth could fight to keep surviving. Beth would, and he would fight at her side ‘til he couldn’t fight no more.

But he didn’t know how to help her fight this.

What he wanted was to just fix it. Make it stop, make it like none of it ever happened. Take all of the hurt away from her ‘til her heart felt light again. But he couldn’t, and he knew it, and the knowledge of it only made that fist squeeze tighter. “Wish I could climb inside your head and cut that bastard outta there.”

She didn’t laugh. Daryl wasn’t sure she even could, right now. But his words made her huff a little into his neck. “I wish you could, too.”

Daryl wasn’t sure what else to say, so he said nothing, just held onto her and let his gaze roam slowly around the clearing. Beth’s breath washed hot over his neck, and he would enjoy the way it buzzed along his nerves if he wasn’t well aware of how much she was hurting.

“How do I stop it?” she asked, after a long while of just breathing. “How do I make sure it doesn’t happen again?”

He wished he had an answer for her. Some sort of wisdom he possessed that, once bestowed upon her, would give her what she needed to do just that. Make it stop. But all he had was a great big nothing. “I dunno, Beth.”

He felt her nodding into his neck, but she said nothing else. There weren’t any words, so he just held her. Tried to ward off the worst of her trembling with the warmth of his body, though it sneaked through anyway. So many thoughts whirled through his head, some of them too dangerous to focus on for long, but he was too exhausted, too brain dead to settle on any one of them and maybe that was a blessing in disguise. And Beth, shit, she hadn’t slept at all, now that he thought about it.

Daryl tilted his head until he could just barely brush her cheek with his lips. “You should sleep.”

Beth’s breath fluttered out through her nose, warm and shaky against his skin. “I don’t think I can.”

“I got you,” he said, pulling back to cup her cheek in his palm, stroking slowly with his thumb, how she liked. “Sleep.”

She didn’t answer for a while, fingertips drawing slow circles on his thigh and the back of his hand. When she did speak, she used the softest of voices to whisper his name. “Daryl?”

“Mmm?”

“Can you—your hand—”

He was used to touching her, by now. Used to the fact that she welcomed it. Wanted it. That it brought her comfort and made her feel good when he did. But this was the first time she had asked outright, and something about that made him shudder as he slipped the hand from her waist beneath her shirts to stretch out, big and warm on her too-cool skin. Beth took a deep breath in and it sighed softly on the way out, and she pushed her face even deeper into his neck. He felt the quiver rippling beneath her skin as he brushed his fingertips over her in little circles, heard the sound she made in the back of her throat that seemed reserved for this particular kind of touch.

Beth’s shaking eventually settled again, and she did fall asleep after a while, snoring quietly in his arms. The only thing that kept him from drifting off, too, was the fear that she would have another nightmare and that he wouldn’t be able to wake her in time.

To say he didn’t want this for her was an understatement. Bad as it was, watching it happen, seeing it dragging on her, tearing her down bit by bit, it couldn’t compare to how she was feeling inside. The helplessness—that he understood. Knowing your own head was against you, screaming at you ‘cause it was your own damn fault. You got what you deserved. ‘Cause you were weak, ‘cause you weren’t worth the failed effort at trying to make a man out of you, and none of it was nobody’s doing but yours.

Daryl swallowed hard, riding out a wave of nausea that hit heavy and fast but faded just as quick. He tightened his hold on Beth a bit, hoping not to wake her. This wasn’t Beth’s doing, any more than—Fuck. He swallowed again, tasting bile this time, and slammed his eyes shut, breathing deep to keep the contents of his stomach where they oughtta be.

Beth. Beth. This was just about Beth and it wasn’t her fault, what was done to her. That was what he had to make sure she knew. Whatever it took.

Except knowing that, and feeling it, weren’t the same thing at all.

*~*

Because you know that life ain’t over yet
I'm here for you so don’t forget
You can count on me
‘Cause I will carry you ‘til you carry on

Also - yes, Daryl is being deliberately vague here about what he thinks is going on with Beth. Some of that is uncertainty in his own knowledge, some of that is self-preservation.

To be continued in chapter 29 >>

Fall Right In - Chapter 27/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Mon, 02 Nov 2015 02:30:52 GMT

Fall Right In
Chapter 27 – Still the Rain Kept Pourin’, Fallin’ on My Ears

*~*

For the rest of the night they sat together in the rain and the wind, listening as the thunder got further and further away, breathing in sync until the sky began to lighten, from thick black to muddy grey to a drab autumnal monochrome that promised no relief. With no reason to linger in camp, they climbed out from under their tree at the first hints of morning, and without a word resumed their journey through the woods.

The weather matched Beth’s mood, the dreariness in her heart she couldn’t shake outside of that secret space she and Daryl made beneath their tree. Beth tried to put the dream away, let the details go until they were hazy enough that she couldn’t remember exactly how it went. She was good at that usually, had been since the nightmares started. It was bad enough, waking near hysterics without also remembering the specifics of the terrors which left her that way, and there was a reason Daryl never asked her to talk about them.

But she couldn’t get rid of this one, not fully, and her mind kept flashing through a series of disturbing images. Now and then, she couldn’t quite breathe, as if the air around her had grown too thick to pull into her lungs, and she’d taste something foul on her tongue. Then that twist of panic would hit her, like a jolt of lightning to her chest, sharp and sudden and painful enough to make her stumble. A meat hook in her gut giving a hard, twisting tug that turned her stomach and threatened to eject the bit of rabbit she choked down for breakfast. A shiver down the back of her neck like thousands of insects crawling over her with tiny, pinching feet, causing her to shudder and wince and sweep her hands over her skin to make sure they weren’t really there. These vivid dreams had become her new normal but she never knew she was dreaming in the middle of one. Never knew the terror of not being able to wake up, until now, and maybe that’s what made it linger.

Not that the reasons why mattered when all she cared about was making it go away.

The rain persisted, shifting through the spectrum from a fine drizzle to giant fat globs to something like a fire hose pouring down on them from above. Beth fashioned makeshift hoods out of black plastic garbage bags to keep the worst of it off their heads. Deep in the trees, it wasn’t so bad, but whenever they edged toward one of the farms, the cover overhead grew thin.

Each successive property was closer to its neighbours, and the parcels of land grew smaller. Some of them weren’t even farms so much as country homesteads. And still no vehicles. No anything. All those farms, all those homes, just empty.

Beth stared at the latest one, a newish building fashioned after an old plantation house, tall and square with big white columns and a wrap-around veranda. There was a dog house, too, a miniature replica of the big house, columns and all, and nearby a decorative little two-horse barn, painted in a red so bright it stood out harshly against the stormy grey. There was some pasture here and a riding ring beside the barn, and outside the manicured lawn on which the house sat, the property was mostly just land, dotted with trees and wild grass, unused for anything besides living on—when someone had lived here, at least. Like all the rest, the yard was tidy aside from the marks left upon it by nature, and no vehicle sat anywhere in sight.

The shiver started at the back of her neck and rippled down along her spine. If she hadn’t been holding her crossbow, Beth would’ve wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the chill it left behind.

Daryl slid his hand beneath her garbage bag hood to cup the back of her neck, instantly suffusing her with a bit of his warmth, and he brushed his thumb up toward her ear. “All right?”

Beth shivered again, the chill slinking in even beneath Daryl’s warm palm. “I don’t know,” she answered, rolling her shoulders in effort to shake away the unease skittering across them, that same goddamned swarm of ants. “I mean, I guess so, but…”

She sighed, not sure how to put into voice what exactly she was feeling. The nightmare still hanging over her, clinging there at her back like that scratchy dark cloak she imagined it to be, made it impossible to tell whether something else might be pinging her Spidey Senses. Assuming she had any, that is. She remembered having the impression of something not quite right yesterday with all of this, and thought Daryl had, too. But was that what was bugging her now, or just the remnants of her nightmare?

Beside her, Daryl hummed, a sound just loud enough to be heard above the patter of rain on the plastic covering her head. “Ain’t lettin’ up at all, is it?”

“What, the rain?” Beth turned her head to look at him, only to be met with an expression that said really, Greene? In reminder of what he actually meant, another shiver rolled over her shoulders. “Oh. No. No, it’s not.”

Daryl’s gaze flicked toward the farmhouse quickly, then settled back onto her. “C’mon. Ain’t nothin’ here.”

The rest of the day brought more of the same. Gloomy grey skies, ceaseless rain, abandoned homes, and not much else. By late afternoon, on top of the dream still plaguing her without any signs of letting up, each step she took dragged and her head ached from lack of sleep. Daryl didn’t show it—he never did—but he hadn’t slept at all and he must be feeling the effects of that, too. The rain was so heavy it wasn’t even really worth leaving the cover of the trees for more fruitless searching, and just like yesterday, Beth couldn’t convince herself that she wanted to spend the night in one of the farms.

Maybe she was overreacting, but one of the things Daryl always said was to trust her gut. Well, her gut was telling her to stay the hell away from tidy abandoned places right now and she was going to listen to it, even on the very good chance that this was all still dream aftermath at work. With a glance at Daryl to confirm he was okay to go along with that, Beth led them deeper into the woods in search of something that might serve as shelter for the rest of the day and the night beyond.

As they crossed over what looked to Beth like just a little ditch cutting perpendicular to their path, Daryl reached out to tug at her sweater. “This way.”

Since he clearly knew something she didn’t, Beth nodded and let him take the lead. They’d been navigating mostly flat ground since climbing down from that ridge the day before the barn. What she thought was a little ditch grew wider and deeper as they followed it, and she realized it was actually the start of a small ravine, the bottom of it mostly full of brushy plants, still green this early in autumn and sagging with the weight of the rainwater beading on them. Not very far along, when the furrow was just wider across than the spread of Beth’s arms, and just a bit taller than Daryl, a big evergreen tree was lying across the top. Most of its needles still clung to the branches, and the dirt and plants beneath where the trunk lay looked recently disturbed. Probably a casualty of either Daryl’s storm or the one that followed a couple days later.

Daryl rigged up their canvas beneath the tree branches, to make another barrier between them and the rain, while Beth used her knife to clear away the brush before gathering the driest bits of debris she could find to try to get a fire lit. It was smoky and small but eventually it caught. She and Daryl huddled close beneath their makeshift shelter, changed out their damp socks for dry ones, warmed their hands over the small blaze, and shared that package of not completely stale rice crackers for supper.

“I don’t know if I want to keep looking for a vehicle here,” Beth said, when the fire was dying and there wasn’t much else to do besides snuggle into Daryl’s side as she had the night before.

He had already tucked his arm around her, and now brought his other hand up to touch her cheek. “Still feelin’ off about it?”

On cue, the back of her neck prickled. She was going to have to start giving them names, the insects skittering over her skin, if they were gonna stick around like this. “Yeah, maybe. Or just off.”

The rain pelted down above them, a staccato on the canopy overhead, with occasional drops making it down as far as their canvas. Daryl’s thumb moved gently over her cheek and Beth shut her eyes and rested her head on his chest and let his touch drive away some of the prickling.

He made a good distraction most of the time, Daryl did, but it was better when they could talk. When they could touch, and already the weight of unease across her shoulders was lightening, as though Daryl could somehow stand guard, act as a buffer between her and her own brain. “You remember, before the cabin, when you told me a story?”

“The one about the dog? Yeah.” Daryl paused the motions of his thumb, and Beth cracked her eyes open, just barely able to see him looking down at her. “You after another one?”

Beth closed her eyes again and snuggled in. “Only if you want to.”

A rumble of laughter rolled through Daryl’s chest beneath her head. “Still ain’t no storyteller.”

“You don’t have to,” Beth said, slipping her hand beneath his vest so she could better feel the heat of his chest on her palm. “We could play a game instead.”

“Uh huh,” Daryl said, sounding less than thrilled about that idea, though she knew he would be. “‘Cause that worked so well the last time.”

Toying with one of the buttons on his denim jacket, Beth hummed quietly. “I could tell you a story.”

“Could.” Daryl continued moving his thumb over her face, that same light touch he seemed to know she liked. “I get to pick the topic?”

The shiver that came this time wasn’t at all cold, and Beth sneaked her fingers inside Daryl’s jacket. “Yeah, okay. Or…”

His breath hitched a little, and then again as she found the seam in his shirt and slipped her fingers past that, too. “Or?”

“Well.” All his layers lined up, and she wiggled her fingers all the way down to his undershirt. He was so warm, this close to his skin, and Beth drew little circles with her fingertips. “You could kiss me.”

He didn’t answer right away, and Beth had a flash of worry that maybe she was pushing him again where he didn’t want to be pushed. She did want to. Kissing Daryl wasn’t just about the distraction it would bring, but she didn’t want him saying yes if that was his only reason for doing it. In her unease, Beth hadn’t thought much about it, but she remembered now, all right, everything she was thinking about last night. Except for maybe the first time, when they almost moved as one, Beth had pushed him into it each time, and here she was, doing it again.

Then Daryl hummed, that low rumbling one that made a little burst of heat fire off in her belly, and dragged his thumb across her bottom lip. Before Beth could move, he curled his fingers beneath her chin, applying just a bit of pressure to urge her to tip her face up. She did, opening her eyes at the same time and finding his there waiting for her. Daryl could do many things, but lying with his eyes wasn’t one of them. Even in the drab light, they blazed, and maybe she was pushing, but maybe that wasn’t always a bad thing.

“Only if you want to,” she whispered, pulling her hand out of his shirt so she could hook it around his neck.

He groaned and dug his fingers in at her waist, mouth dropping open a second before he spoke. “Beth.”

God, that man didn’t even know the power he had when he said her name like that—a word built of breath and gravel and not just a little bit of need. Her heart was already racing with anticipation and it pounded now, because yes, he did want this. He did want her, and feeling that again stirred the boldness back into her veins where the doubt had lingered before.

Beth shifted again, using her arm around his neck to pull herself up onto her knees beside him, never breaking eye contact as she moved until they were face to face.

“That mean yes?” she asked, reaching up to drag her fingernails across his scalp.

Daryl’s eyes drooped shut and he leaned his head into the touch of her fingers. “Yes.”

He was making those sounds again, that rumbling almost-purr, and Beth scratched a little harder. Belatedly, Daryl remembered he had hands, too, and the nearer one settled at the small of her back while he used the other to hook a finger through her belt loop, where her hip rested up against his thigh.

Maybe it was unfair of her. Probably it was, but some part of her wanted to hear him say it. “Yes, what?”

Daryl dragged his eyes open, stared at her, mouth slack and his expression one she couldn’t read. A beat passed, then two, and he swallowed hard. “Beth.”

A weight dropped in her stomach and she wished she’d never asked. Sliding her hand around to cradle the back of his head, Beth leaned in and pressed her forehead to his, mindful of the wound above his brow. “It’s okay, I’m sorry, you don’t have to—”

“Beth,” he said again, this time with a bit more volume, and he slid one hand up along her spine to cradle the back of her head, too. “Been wanting to kiss you all fuckin’ day.”

Oh, his voice. That gravelly rumble zipped through her like last night’s lightning, setting her nerves ablaze with the same sort of spark as his eyes did whenever he looked at her. Already she was warm inside but his words left her awash with heat, and it was all she could do not to smash their faces together right the hell now. All day. He’d been thinking about kissing her all day and she was too distracted to notice, and Beth didn’t want to wait any longer but she needed to tell him just one more thing first.

“You can kiss me anytime you want, Daryl,” Beth said, her own words half lost to the heaviness of her breathing. “Anytime.”

Daryl swept his thumb up the side of her neck. “Yeah? Just come up and kiss you?”

The thought of that, of Daryl tugging on her arm and reeling her in for a kiss sent another burst of heat through her, down low into her belly. “Yeah. Just do that. I want you to.”

“Mmmm.” Daryl’s hand flattened out across her back and he pushed, just a bit, urging her to move a little closer. “How ‘bout now?”
“Now’s good,” she said, and tilted her head to meet him.

Daryl’s lips slid against hers, slow and unhurried, like maybe now that this wasn’t as brand new anymore, he wanted to explore. There was a boldness to him that hadn’t been there before, though he hadn’t lacked in passion. It was subtle, but as Beth glided her tongue along his lower lip, Daryl refused to be budged. The flutters in her belly deepened, became the swooping wings of birds as she fell back into his rhythm. He groaned into her mouth and curled his fingers into her ponytail and kissed her, slow and deep.

When they broke apart she wasn’t starving for breath, but she was breathing hard anyway. She touched her forehead to his and his own deep breaths puffed over her face. She was gonna kiss him again, but first she pushed up on her knees and swung one leg across his where they stretched out in front, so she could sit in his lap just like before. Daryl didn’t stop her, just followed her with his eyes as she settled in place, leaving enough space between them to keep things from escalating faster than maybe he would like.

Still, his eyes blazed with heat as they stared up at her, and Beth scratched her nails across his scalp again, felt his rumbled response beneath her palm on his chest.

“Thought I was supposed to be distracting you.” As he spoke, he slipped his fingers beneath the edge of her shirt, stroked along her skin just above her jeans.

That made her shiver, and one corner of his mouth twitched. “Mmm. You are. Never said I wasn’t gonna try, too.”

Her response drew a warm chuckle out of him and the twitchy lip shifted into a smirk. He gave her ponytail a little tug and continued that glide of his fingers, his touch tingling up along her spine. Beth dragged hers across his scalp again and Daryl groaned, low and rumbling, as she hoped he would. When their lips met this time neither one of them held back.

They knew better than to get carried away like this, out here in the open with darkness coming on quick, but the moment their lips touched, it was like the barn all over again. Gone were the rain and the wind and in their place, the rumble of thunder from deep in Daryl’s chest. Her little moan into his mouth was answered immediately with one of his, and he pushed past her lips with his tongue and Beth quit thinking about anything but Daryl. He saturated her senses, muting everything else around her and that was dangerous. It was so dangerous out here in the woods but she didn’t care as long as he didn’t stop. As long as he kept tugging like that on her ponytail and sliding his tongue just like that, stroking the underside of hers in a way that made her whimper without meaning to every single time.

God, he was so hot. His mouth, his skin where they touched, his neck beneath her hand and his palm, now splayed out flat against her back beneath her shirts. Heat pulsed deep in her belly, between her legs, bursting out like rivers of lava in her veins until her fingers trembled and she couldn’t take a steady breath if she tried. She slid closer, couldn’t keep from closing a bit of that space she’d tried to give him, but he didn’t stop that, either. Maybe if she didn’t move, if she kept still, maybe he’d let her feel him, just like he did before.

Just thinking about it had her vaginal muscles fluttering, and she clenched them tight, already so wet for him and it was ridiculous, how quickly he got her there without even trying. She slid closer still, moving slow, giving him time to stop her if she tread too far toward discomfort, but all he did was dig his fingernails into her back. When she felt him at last, when she angled her hips to press herself against the erection already straining at his jeans, a shudder rushed through him and he whined, low and long at the back of his throat. But he didn’t stop kissing her, no matter that his body trembled on with that impossible combination of restraint and barely caged need she felt in him before. That alone doubled the heat already blazing in her belly.

He was so hard, and maybe this was a bad idea because now that she had him there, now that pressing against him like this had the seam of her jeans pushing right where she needed it, she wanted to move. But she promised, she promised herself and even though she hadn’t said, she promised him. He wasn’t stopping her yet and she didn’t wanna mess it up again by pushing too far, no matter how good it would feel. That wasn’t helping at all, thinking about friction when her body was screaming for it. When that familiar empty ache pulsed deep and urgent inside her. Beth whimpered again and locked her legs as tight as she could around his hips to hold herself still. Her fingers trembled with it where they pressed into his shoulder and raked through his hair.

Daryl tugged hard at her ponytail and rumbled deep in his chest, as only Daryl could. His palm at her back flattened out. Flattened and pushed and pressed her down on him, and his seam and her seam together struck her clit just right. Oh, Lord, just right, and the resulting moan rolled up from her belly and into Daryl’s mouth. She clutched at him, trembling now just as hard as he was, trembling and holding back because he needed her to. But she couldn’t shake the thought that maybe he needed her to help him break through that dam instead and let the flood carry them away together. And it was as maddening as it was thrilling as it was the best thing ever—the reality of him and her and where they were, where they were going, what he made her feel in her heart and her head and her body. The weight of it crashed over her, a sensation so palpable she felt it down to her bones. In her belly. Felt it inside, where she ached for him.

Lord, she needed to move. They didn’t have to go farther than this, than jeans on jeans. This was enough. Just like this, him and her and it was enough, and oh—oh hell.

Beth tightened her grip around his neck and rocked against his election, breaking away from his mouth to let out an explosive breath, to clamp her teeth down on her lip before the sound pulling at her chest could escape into the world. Daryl’s lips found her neck, teeth scraping, tongue lapping at her skin as he clutched at her belt and tugged hard. A sound like the whine of a steam engine poured out of his throat, barely muffled into her skin, and Beth ground down on him again, so hard he shuddered and groaned and lifted his hips up to meet hers. Curled his hand around the back of her head and crashed their lips together again. Another shudder rocked him, and it rolled right into her, from the impact of his cock, his jeans and hers shooting sparks from her clit right up her spine, to the shudder itself, shaking right through to her fingertips.

Yes. Oh, god, yes.

Daryl’s hands gripped her hips, stopping her, a low, pained moan on his lips as he broke away. He stared up at her, breath ragged, his brow so furrowed it cast shadows over his abnormally wide-open eyes. He looked turned on and terrified and confused as hell, and the swoop of wings in her belly sunk like a dozen lead weights.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” Beth stroked her thumbs over his cheeks and his eyes fell shut, and she hadn’t meant to do it. Hadn’t wanted this to happen again but she did it anyway, demanded more from him than he wanted to give. “Daryl, I’m—”

He kissed her again. Hard. Urgent, his tongue gliding in deep, sweeping strokes as he held her hips still. Thrusting into her mouth and biting at her lips and she poured herself into the kiss. Into that wall of Daryl all around her, into that hunger burning through him and into her.

She was gasping this time, when she pulled away to breathe, the light around them noticeably dimmer. The rain pattered on above and Beth dropped her forehead down onto Daryl’s shoulder. “We should stop.”

He tucked his face into her neck and swept his thumb across her back, inciting one final shiver, which trembled through his body as well. “Yeah.”

They stayed that way for a while, holding on while their breathing settled. Beth curled her fingers into the long hair at the back of his head and Daryl traced patterns on her back with his fingertips. He was still hard between them but made no move to pull her away. Made no move to hide how much she was affecting him.

Beth sighed deeply, and Daryl answered her with a shuddery little breath, washing over her like a warm breeze at her neck. “Daryl?”
“Yeah?”

She needed to know. Needed him to know, before it could eat away at her any more than it already was. “You’ll tell me, right, if I do somethin’ you don’t like?”

His breath shuddered out again and he didn’t answer for a moment. A moment, which drew out, silent and weighted between them, while his fingers continued drawing shapes into her skin. Beth heard him swallow, and then his palm flattened over her back again. Pressed in gently, not pulling her to him, but holding her there, right where she was.

“Y’ain’t done nothin’, Beth,” he said, in that low, gritty voice, lips brushing her skin as he spoke. “Don’t think you could.”

A gentler swoop of wings took flight in her belly, and Beth curled her fingers into his hair. Okay. Okay. Quit thinkin’ so much, Greene. Figure it out together, as she told herself before. Like they were already doing and had been all along.

“All right.” Beth pressed her lips to his shoulder before pulling back to see his face. “You should sleep. You didn’t get any last night.”

Daryl was smiling, something a little wider than his usual one, but in a soft sort of way. An almost dreamy way, given how he was gazing up at her with slightly drooping eyes and that little grin. “You sure?”

“Yeah. I’m good.” She returned his smile, wondering if she had the same look on her face as he did. She felt like she did, her head still floaty, belly still fluttery, cheeks warm despite the chill in the air. Before shifting off him, Beth gave his scalp one final scratch, the flutter in her belly deepening a bit at his expected groaning response. “I don’t mind takin’ first watch tonight.”

As she settled beside him, he turned to look at her, and her dreamy smile bloomed into something else, something a little giddy. Something reflected on Daryl’s face, too, though he was trying to contain it. He bumped his shoulder into hers with a little snort, because yeah, they were kinda ridiculous. A good kind, though, even if sometimes it felt like neither one of them had a clue how to do this. Beth laid her head on his arm, letting out the little giggle that wanted to bubble free, and slid her hand into his to twine their fingers together.

After a minute, he gave her hand a squeeze. “I’m, uh…” Daryl cleared his throat, and Beth looked up to see him staring out at the world beyond their little shelter. “I’m gonna take a piss. Uh, unless you gotta?”

Daryl’s focus shifted back onto her, and her pulse fluttered in her chest as their eyes met and held. “Nah,” she said, squeezing his hand in return before pulling away. “You go on.”

A moment passed where the air between them thickened and her gaze anchored tight to his. Then he gave a quick nod and tore himself away, and the shock of the separation rolled across her shoulders like a rippling wave. Beth watched after him as he ducked out from under the shelter and climbed up the bank, followed the path of his legs and that distinctive stride until he disappeared amongst the drizzle and the trees. She could feel it there, the nightmare, that awful dark cloak hovering at her back. Poking its chilled fingers at the base of her skull, looking for a way in. But blocked, for now, by the buzz of excitement still roaring in her veins. She could work with that, Beth thought, as she arranged her pack and reached for her crossbow.

With her heart still pounding away in her chest, and that blaze of arousal still burning in her belly, Beth settled back against the steep wall of roots and dirt and shrubs to await Daryl’s return.

She had a feeling he was going to be awhile.

*~*

The rain failed to let up through the night, and morning brought more of the same dreary landscape as the day before. With it, that familiar weight pressing in at the back of her head, returned to her in full force though she hadn’t dreamt. Had actually slept well when her watch ended, curled up warm beneath the canvas with Daryl for a pillow. Still, waking up to this again, the wet, grey weather and that nagging sense of wrongness seeping down from the base of her skull to spread across her shoulders, felt a little bit like a scene out of that movie she only half remembered watching as a child—the one with Bill Murray and that lady who used to do commercials for Cover Girl. The days were becoming more or less copies of each other, and Beth was ready for something to give, even just a little.

The wall of grey dulled even the brightest of the early autumn leaves, where normally they’d warm up the woods with their jaunty reds and oranges and yellows. Instead, all that grey pressed in thick around them as they trudged on through the morning. Despite Beth’s misgivings, they had agreed to keep checking the farms, at least as far as whichever rural hole-in-the-wall town these places led up to. Beth tried to shake the heavy feeling in her head but it pressed in just like the weather, a pervasive mist seeping into every tiny crack in her armour.

She hadn’t thought much about those days, the ones right after she killed Gorman, but something about this one recalled them to her now. The details weren’t clear, the scenes in her head choppy and abrupt, like a movie where the cuts made no sense. Parts of it gaped empty, a black hole, a void in her memory she knew she would never recover. Maybe it was all this grey, filling up all the spaces in between, reminding her of the fog in her head that hadn’t cleared until her breakdown at the creek. Except then the fog had been her refuge, the place she retreated to hide from what she had done. This one was more like purgatory.

It wasn’t what she did that plagued her now. Not in that way at least. She had thought not long ago that she was starting to forgive herself, and she didn’t think that was untrue. But part of her must’ve kept on feeling guilty, feeling sad. Some piece of her soul still punishing itself for being forced to take a human life, even though the life she took was the same one who forced her into it. How else could she explain the nightmares? Even if they weren’t coming nightly anymore, they were getting worse, despite what Daryl said. This one sticking with her dredged up lost images from others, or at least, it felt that way, with the flashes in her head like a gruesome slideshow. Of Daryl, a thousand ways dead, and of Gorman, always wearing that terrible grin upon his rotting face. Of her family, just as dead, foreheads ripped open and bleeding, ragged holes from a never-ending supply of bullets.

She smelled rot, yet no walkers lurked nearby. Tasted blood but there were no wounds. Felt the kick of a gun yet she did not fire. Heard Gorman’s oily voice whispering to her, sweet birdie, sweet birdie, but there was nobody there except Daryl.

He tried. He did. Just as he had before when she broke out of the fog and he was doing what he could to keep her from going back there. That wasn’t happening now. The hitch of her breath and the tug of panic in her belly weren’t going to tug her down to where she couldn’t return. But Daryl’s efforts at conversation fell flat and Beth couldn’t pick them up, no matter how hard she tried to grasp hold. Her brain moved slow, half-frozen by the chill in the air, just like the fingers she kept tucked into fists inside her sweater.

Keep singin’, sweet birdie...

The shiver tore through her strong enough to make her knees wobble, and she stumbled over a root hidden beneath a pile of slick leaves. Daryl shot his hand shot out to steady her, encircling her wrist even as she regained her balance on her own. He swept his thumb over the soft skin of her inner wrist, lying down a little swath of warmth, but the shiver left behind a cool sting through the rest of her, cold like metal on a frozen winter’s day.

Beth tried to keep from looking at him, ‘cause she knew the moment she did he would see everything, but Daryl’s stare drew her eyes anyway, like a compass pointing north. Wasn’t the same, couldn’t be with the cloak of gloom she was wearing, but the spark caught anyway, the tiniest of flames blooming in the depths of her belly.

Daryl gripped her other wrist, fingers closing down over the bracelets she kept there, and pulled until she stood facing him. His lips jiggled as he chewed at them inside. “C’mere.”

He pulled her in and she went unresisting, pushing her face into his leather, curling her fingers into it as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, resting them atop her pack. She breathed deep, the scent of leather and wet leaves filling her head. Maybe it would drive some of the other stuff out while making itself at home.

“Gotta shake this, Greene,” Daryl said, speaking into her hair. “Lettin’ it get to you again.”

He was worried about her. To be honest, it worried Beth, too, and her concern for herself and his concern for her only added to the weight swelling in the back of her head. “I’m tryin’, Daryl.”

His lips pressed into her hair. “Kick its ass, girl. You’re little but you’re tough, remember?”

Beth huffed a bit of a laugh into his chest and snuggled closer, just long enough to breathe him in one more time before pulling out of his embrace. His expression hadn’t changed when she met his eyes again, except now he traded his thumb for his lip. “Thanks, Daryl. For helpin’.”

He nodded quickly, still looking at her past his hand, half covering the bottom of his face as he mumbled something she couldn’t quite catch.

“What, Daryl?”

“Don’t like it,” he said, tearing his gaze away to look out ahead, into the grey nothing in front of them. He pulled his thumb from his mouth and shook his head, the motion casting off some of the water drops beaded on his plastic bag hood. “Bastard’s still got his hands on you.”

So simply put, yet so true. True in a way she hadn’t considered before. The Gorman in her head had a different intent than the Gorman she left behind to rot in the grass, but she hadn’t been free of him since it happened, not fully. Beth wrapped her own arms around her stomach to ward away the chill brought on by his words. “I don’t like it, either.”

She didn’t want to dwell on it—no matter that it wanted to dwell on her—so she tossed her chin toward at the gray haze between the slightly less grey trees, and together they moved on.

A couple of minutes passed in silence, before Daryl spoke. “You still owe me a story, Greene.”

Beth remembered a time when Daryl wouldn’t have bothered. Maybe he hadn’t had any luck so far, trying to distract her, trying to find a way to pull that heavy cloak from her shoulders, but he wanted to, and she appreciated that. Just knowing that chased away a bit of the chill clinging to her skin.

She had nothing to talk about, though, that wouldn’t just deepen the gloom. Sure, she could tell him stories about the farm or from the prison, ones he hadn’t heard already. About her family, the one she was born into and the one she made when the world went to hell. People she loved who she would never see again, ‘cause most of them were dead and the ones who maybe weren’t might as well be, for all the odds stacked against them finding each other again.

Fighting another shiver, Beth glanced over at the man walking at her side. The last man standing. “I don’t much feel like tellin’ stories.”

Rather than push, Daryl just nodded, worrying his lip so hard she had to look away, if only to keep from feeling even worse. What was wrong with her? This wasn’t who Beth Greene was, this miserable creature cowering inside her own head, not even a little bit. This goddamned rain needed to get lost, and take with it these effing dreams. It was bad enough when she was only tormenting herself, and now she was dragging Daryl down, too.

She almost jumped when he started speaking. She recognized the tone, that fluid one, which smoothed the edges off his words and allowed them to flow out like a stream instead of landing abruptly with their ends chopped off, like little rockslides. Daryl Dixon might not be much of a storyteller, but he was still going to try.

“I was maybe six or seven, don’t remember exactly, but that don’t matter. I know it was December, ‘cause the neighbour lady had this awful homemade Christmas wreath thing on her door and she only ever had it up around then. Fuckin’ bells on it woke me up, real early when the door slammed.” Daryl paused long enough to glance at her, to make sure she was listening, and carried on once he saw that she was. “I looked out the window, see some asshole takin’ off on her like usual, but then I saw it snowed. It was so early, the trees and shit were still all covered in it and nobody’d got to messin’ with it yet…”

He spoke and she listened, walking with him through the dreary woods as he told her about how he had gone outside just to wander in the snow. For those few brief minutes, Beth had a picture in her head of this tiny Daryl in his plaid pajamas, enthralled with the magic of an overnight snowfall just like any other small boy. The story didn’t end, though, so much as he just stopped talking about it. A few breaths followed, a couple of mostly silent footsteps, and he began all over again with another little half story. It took a few of these for Beth to understand, and when she got it, her heart constricted inside her chest, an ache which beat for this man at her side as he paused yet again to tease another little tale from a past full of unpleasant memories, all so she didn’t have to drown in hers.

It was that thought which stuck with her, slipping into her head to smother some of the other things lurking there. More than the stories themselves. This beautiful man had so little of his past worth remembering and yet he pulled what he could from the rubble just to make her feel better. It wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do for him, if the situation was reversed, but that was the point. She’d needed this, this reminder that no matter what, they were in this together.

“Hey.” He reached out for her hand, hooked a couple of his fingers around a couple of hers, and tugged a bit. “C’mere.”

There was nothing concrete telling her what he wanted, and yet her heart kicked up its pace as he tugged gently again on her fingers. She turned to him, already leaning up for the kiss as his other hand settled on her cheek. She curled her fingers against his vest as their lips met, falling into an easy rhythm, as though they’d been doing this for years. He broke away after only a few moments, but it was enough, and she smiled—maybe the first one all day that she hadn’t had to force.

Just come up and kiss you?

“Yeah, just like that,” Beth said, leaning her head on his chest again. “Just ‘cause you want to.”

His only response was a contented hum she felt buzzing beneath her cheek, but that was enough for her, too.

He kept talking as they moved along, mostly the same sort of stories, either cut off before the ending or scattered with obvious holes throughout. This was probably the most talking she had ever heard Daryl do, and as the afternoon wore on, more gravel tumbled into his voice until he was almost hoarse. It wasn’t easy for him, the talking or the content of it, and sometimes she’d hear the strain in his tone or see it etched across his brow or in the tightness of his jaw as he picked his words with care. Like navigating a mental minefield full of things he’d rather not unearth. But he kept up, because she needed it, and his voice, his stories, and the pictures they painted in her mind gradually covered over most of the other things. They were still there, but the blanket of his words helped her tuck them away, allowed her to them hide for a while, and she was grateful for his help with what she hadn’t been able to do on her own.

After a while, the rain lessened from an open downpour to a light drizzle. It finally broke mid afternoon, the clouds above splitting apart to allow the sun to poke through, trickling down in broken beams to brighten the spaces beneath the canopy of trees. To chase away the clinging grey fog with splashes of red and orange, brown and green, and to fill the dull silence with the chirp and chatter of birds.

Daryl finished yet another abridged story as they came out of the trees at the end of a field full of tall, brown grass, mist rising above the stalks. More patches of blue littered the sky overhead and the sun shone down in streaky beams, something she’d have snapped a photo of once upon a time when photographs were a thing. Actually, it looked a lot like those inspirational posters she used to see pretty much everywhere, like the one at church in the pastor’s office and in the counsellor’s waiting room at school. Ubiquitous images of the sun bursting out above an impossibly fluffy cloud, brightening the world below—a reminder that things might get dark sometimes, but eventually the sun would always shine.

Another thing she would have to remember, at times like these when the dreams weighed her down. Beth took a deep breath, drawing the moist air into her lungs, no longer chilling but refreshing, now that the grey was fading as fast as the sun could burn it away.

Through the rising mist, a building of some sort appeared at the other end of the field. Past that, the area was still difficult to make out, but there were signs of a homestead. Buildings, at any rate, worth checking out. Beth kept her eyes on the structures as she and Daryl approached, following the fence line at the edge of the trees. A glint of metal flashed from the nearest one, but she couldn’t see exactly what might be reflecting the light.

Beth hadn’t dared to hope, but as they neared the building and she saw the two cars parked inside the open-fronted shed, excitement pulsed in Beth’s chest. Finally, after days of searching, they had something to show for it.

Both vehicles were older—80s models, Daryl said. A white Corolla and a light blue Taurus, both with unlocked doors. Beth stood by the corner of the shed, keeping watch while Daryl searched unsuccessfully for the keys to either one, before attempting to hotwire first the Taurus, then the Corolla. He couldn’t make that work, either, but the whys of that became clear when he popped the hoods and found empty spaces where the batteries should be.

Daryl stared long and hard at the two cars before backing out of the shed and shifting his gaze to her. “Whatcha make of this?”

There was an obvious answer, which she supplied despite the fact that she knew he knew it. “Somebody took them. But you can’t tell how long ago, right?”

Daryl shook his head, and Beth leaned her head away from the wall of the shed, peering into the hazy space beyond the fence. She could make out the outlines of a number of buildings, one of which was definitely an old barn, an array of outbuildings and sheds and pens surrounding it. Beyond that, the house—a typical huge old farmhouse of the type she knew intimately well. Past those, there might have been another field, partially hidden by an overgrown hedgerow of ornamental trees.

“Let’s check out the yard?” she said, making it a question.

Daryl nodded. “Lead the way.”

They climbed back over the fence to follow it onward, once again walking just inside the line of trees, as was their habit. Daryl hung back when they reached the centre point of the yard, halfway between the house and the barn, while Beth crept forward to take a look, crouching down to use the fence post and the tall grass for cover.

The house was about as old, about as large, and painted the same farmhouse white as the Greene family home. That vague resemblance, even with its different shape and the boarded-up windows on the lower level, was enough to thicken her throat a bit as she looked at it. A pair of rubber boots sat abandoned by the back door, just like the ones Daddy had, though his always sat out front when the weather started getting rainy in the fall. The yard amidst the outbuildings—numerous small sheds and two large ones similar to the one in that field—and the barn was more or less a muddy mess after all this rain. The old farmer would have been glad of those boots on many a rainy autumn morning as he made his way down to the barn, a structure so old Beth couldn’t see even a remnant of what colour it used to be.

Her gaze shifted from the barn to the lean-to attached at its side nearest the fence, and that’s when she saw it.

She would know a bumper like that anywhere.

Hot summer days speeding down gravel roads, dust billowing up behind them and her hair blowing in the wind. Shawn blasting Iron Maiden over the cassette player or Beth singing along to Daddy’s old favourites, all scratch and static from the am radio. WKNG—Your home for the legends of country music! They had all learned to drive on that old Ford pickup, though by the time she had her license it wasn’t street legal anymore, but she had already been driving it around the farm for years. She remembered her excitement, thirteen years old and helping Daddy move the year’s first cut of hay, when she hopped into the driver’s seat for the very first time and Daddy showed her how to coax it into gear without stalling. Daddy had sold it for scrap and replaced it with another old truck that ran better just before the turn happened, but she had so many wonderful memories of that original truck and now there was this one right here in front of her. It was even the same colour, from what she could see of it, that much-loved two-tone red and white.

She needed that truck. It was going to be the thing to carry her away from these stupid endless days trudging through this stupid rainy forest. That truck would carry her and Daryl back to their family. There’d be no radio, but maybe she could still sing, and she could have the window down, let her hair fly free as they sped along these abandoned roads, if the weather cooperated. She might even let Daryl drive sometimes, and choked back a laugh at the thought of him playing the role of her scowling shotgun. That truck—it had to be that truck. It was just what she needed to brighten up this day, a good thing, a good memory, amongst the badness of these nightmares. Of Gorman, and his figurative hands still tugging at her mind.

Shaking off the shiver skating across her shoulders, Beth hopped the fence, not bothering to see if Daryl would follow. She knew he had her back, and sure enough, she had only taken a few steps across the muddy grass before she heard the sound of his jeans sliding over the wooden fence. He rasped her name and she smiled at the hoarseness in his voice from an afternoon of non-stop talking when he wasn’t used to it.

With any luck, the truck would still have its battery, unlike the two cars out back in that field, and gas in its tank that wasn’t too stale. Keys would be nice, but if Daryl could hotwire it and teach her how to do it, they could make that work, too.

“Beth!” Daryl hissed again, as she slipped past one small shed and headed straight for the lean-to.

Close up, the truck was so much like Daddy’s, Beth almost couldn’t breathe looking at it, but she reached out to set her trembling hand on the hood and its familiar red paint, bold against her pale skin. Daryl grabbed her wrist and tugged, almost growling her name this time. It was that which made her look up, startled out of her memories by the urgency in his tone. That prickle of insects rushed in full force and before she could turn toward him, something flashed in the periphery of her vision, flickered, like objects blocking out the sun.

Not objects, but men. Four stern-faced strangers emerging from the surrounding buildings, heading right for them—and a fifth one charging across the muddy yard from the house, rifle in hand, rubber boots on his feet.

Something sank in her gut, cold and leaden.

What had she done?

*~*
Heard the singers playin’, how we cheered for more
The crowd had rushed together, tryin’ to keep warm
Still the rain kept pourin’, fallin’on my ears
And I wonder, still I wonder, who’ll stop the rain?
-Creedence Clearwater Revival

The movie referenced is Groundhog Day, and the ‘lady who used to do commercials for Cover Girl’ is Andie MacDowell.

To be continued in chapter 28>>

Hours (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon) - Complete (One-Shot)

abelina — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 21:45:02 GMT

Part Two of the Ticking Clocks series. Read the first part, Seconds, prior to reading this.

Summary: He’s sure he’s dreaming. Same as it always is, in the hours since she’s been gone. The morning after their reunion on the porch. A follow-up to Seconds. Rated M for mild sexual content.

Spoilers for Season 5+ of the Walking Dead.

Hours
*~*

He’s sure he’s dreaming. Same as it always is, in the hours since she’s been gone. Hours that stretch on into larger blocks of time he can’t even consider. He has been here before, those rare times he’s given in and slept in this bed. She ain’t ever far from his mind but she’s closest at night. Closer, when he relaxes enough to fall into the sort of deep sleep that lets her in. When everything’s quiet in the wee hours of morning before he wakes, before reality crashes in to fill his days with an emptiness that tastes of gunpowder and ashes—that’s when he feels her the most.

Even asleep, he knows the danger in this, in indulging the fantasy because it’s only going to make the truth sting that much more when he wakes. Make it burn that much deeper. But he digs into it anyway, presses his face into the back of her warm neck. Pulls her body closer, feels the steady beat of her heart beneath his palm, and wonders if it would have been like this. If they would have fit like this, two pieces of a puzzle here in the place where reality don’t reach, if they only had the time to find out. She feels so fucking good he can’t bear to open his eyes and face the truth that awaits him.

She makes a little noise. Soft like water lapping at the banks of a stream, and he wants to fall into it and never come up for air. He presses closer, breathes deep, a scent of—

She smells terrible. Dirt and decay and layers of sweat. Blood and pinesap and something vaguely skunk-like. The unmistakable reek of unwashed human he knows all too well. His next breath shakes on the way in, and it’s still there, it hasn’t gone away, that stink that permeates everything now that he’s aware of it.

Daryl doesn’t pretend to know much. These days it seems what he does know dwindles down by the hour, the more time he spends away. Spends lingering in the depths of his own head where he can almost remember the shape of her smile. The sound of her voice. But he knows this. Knows it better than he wants to know it.

When he dreams of Beth, she smells of grape jelly and peanut butter. Candle wax and a hint of matches. Moonshine and smoke. If music, if pianos and the lilt of her voice had a scent she’d smell like that, too, something like fresh linen and the woods after a summer rainstorm.

But she never smells like this.

He knows what he remembers. The part of the dream that happened before this, where she came to him in the middle of the night, like a little ghost flitting onto the porch and deciding to stay. Her words, her story of survival, he remembers that, too, and it’s both painfully real and too fucking unlikely but—but that smell, Christ, that smell is real. It’s god-fucking-awful but he can’t stop breathing it in, pressing his whole face into the back of a grimy neck that can’t possibly exist on the same plane as he.

He’s gonna open his eyes and she’ll be gone. She’ll be just as dead as she was when he fell asleep, she won’t have come back to him after all, and this is just the newest level of low his brain has struck. Serves him right for giving in, for lying down in comfort when Beth Greene ain’t ever gonna rest in peace.

Another little moan, a mumbled word, and then, “Daryl?”

Her voice is sleepy and thick and not at all the sweet lyric he’s expecting. The way even her words sound of song when they ring around his brain. He holds her tighter, squeezing his eyes shut until they hurt, until his whole face distorts with it.

She’s moving. Turning over. Wriggling around the way the ghost never does. Not the fluid motions of the ethereal woman in his head, but the uncoordinated flopping of something—somebody—with elbows that land in stomachs and knees that come dangerously close to where he’s hard and aching in his jeans.

Her breath is as bad as the rest of her, but he breathes that in, too. Lets it wash over his face like it were the sweetest of breezes, a meadow full of wildflowers in all shades of yellow, fragrant on a summer’s night. But he can’t—he won’t—open his eyes.

The moment he does, she’ll be gone.

“Daryl.”

Less sleepy this time, more insistent. More Beth, and he doesn’t know how much more of this he can take.

Fingertips on his face, marking a path along the bridge of his nose, across his brow. Swiping over his cheekbones and down along his jaw. Sharp little nails, scratching divinely through the scruff on his chin. His little ghost don’t play fair and before he can stop himself, he flattens his palm at her lower back and presses his erection into her stomach and shudders when her breathy little whimper floats through the sliver of space between him.

His eyes pop open, he doesn’t mean to let them, but— but—

“Beth.”

She’s still there.

Hair in tangles. Angry pink scars across her forehead and cheek. So much dirt on her face she’s at least three shades darker than she ought to be. And the stench of her, Christ. She’s a fucking mess, but she’s—she’s—

He can’t say it, not even in his head. Can only gaze at her through the haze of tears as it sinks in, trickling slow like molasses.

This ain’t no dream, and Beth—Beth is here. She’s here, still touching his face, her blue eyes so wide as she gazes back at him.

“You feel awake to me,” she says, just like she did last night on the porch, and that’s all it takes.

He buries his face into her neck and cries like a fucking baby, cries like he cried that day—that day he ain’t ever gonna forget no matter that she’s back—but she’s back, she’s here, and he doesn’t care that he’s crying. Doesn’t care that he’s soaking both of them and the pillow and everything else with a flood of tears. The only thing that matters is Beth and her arms holding him to her, her fingers stroking slow, slow, slow through his hair. Her sweet voice, singing softly, something like a lullaby as he weeps.

Feels like hours before he can breathe without sobbing, and his head aches, his throat aches, everything aches but it’s the sweetest ache he ever knew. When he pulls his face from her stinky, sweaty neck, her thumbs come up to swipe the remnants of the tears away, and he sees the tracks of hers making furrows in the dirt on her face.

“I’m sorr—”

She presses her fingertips to his lips to silence his apology, shaking her head as she does so. “No, Daryl. No.”

So he doesn’t say it, not again, though every cell in his body feels it. Sorry, for breaking down like this. Sorry, for everything he did and everything he didn’t do. For all she went through and everything still to come. He already knew she was strong and her death never changed that knowledge in his heart, but the kinda strength it took getting here, to come back from the dead, back to herself, back to him, all the way from Georgia on her own—that, he don’t have the words for it. He can’t even see where it ends, the strength she carries inside, and never will.

For a long time they lie together in this little bed, the bed that’s technically his, the one given to her to use in his absence. The one they spent the night in together like they were always meant to all along. The bed that’s shifted from mine to hers to ours in his head. There’s just enough space between them on the pillow to see her clearly, her one blue eye open wide while the other’s half-squished into the foam beneath her. Her fingers touch his face and his touch hers and he never wants to leave this little nest of pillows and sheets.

She really does stink, though.

Only when she giggles does he realize he says that out loud, but after a split second in which his heart constricts like it’s being squeezed in somebody’s fist, he sees she ain’t mad and he laughs, too. The sound is bizarre from his lips, rusty and unused, but he feels it like a helium balloon in his chest. A weight lifting a bit at a time from shoulders more burdened than he cares to notice.

“I’m sure it’s terrible,” she says, wrinkling her nose up as her eyes drift to the dirt caked beneath her fingernails, ground into every wrinkle and pore in her skin.

“Got a shower,” he says, wondering why nobody thought to avail her of it yesterday. “Hot water ‘n everything.”

He doesn’t imagine the way her eyes brighten at that, but he’s sure he is imagining things seconds later when she slides her hand into his and says, “Come with me?”

But no, he isn’t. Not then, as she says the words, a splash of pink barely visible through the dirt on her cheeks. Not after, when he’s nodding at her, yes, he’ll go with her. The house is still and it’s barely light outside as he and Beth leave their room to head for the upstairs bathroom. He notes with some degree of pride how little noise she makes. She might not be a ghost, not anymore, but she’s as silent as one as they ascend the stairs and tread down the hallway, past the closed doors where the rest of the household sleeps.

They don’t bother with the lights in the bathroom. There’s enough, even this early in the day, coming through the window to brighten the space so they can see. Daryl shuts the door behind them and a beat passes, a breath of air that catches in his chest, a pulse of anticipation, and then Beth’s shedding her clothes, one stiff, filthy layer at a time. If it bothers her, the thought of undressing in front of him, she doesn’t show it, and before she’s halfway done Daryl starts to pull his own layers, off, too, allowing them to fall to the floor in a pile with hers.

He doesn’t know whether she’s aware of the scars already or if this will be her introduction to them, but for the first time in his life their presence at his back ceases to matter. Well, it matters, it does, and he knows Beth would say so. But Beth matters more, and maybe not all of her scars are as visible, but he knows they run deep. They’re both marked now, and he can’t be ashamed. You got out. So did she. His shirts come off as easy as the rest of it and then it’s just him and her and a foot and a half of space between them.

Beneath the clothing she’s just as dirty, bruised and scraped all over. Beth was always slight but she’s skinny now, every rib visible, hipbones jutting out like sharp-edged scoops. But there’s muscle, there, too, in her arms, her shoulders, her legs. Strength. She’s lean but she ain’t wasting away no matter that she fought her way here from Atlanta. Woman’s a fucking survivor in more ways he can count. It’s difficult to pull his gaze from her but he does, brushing past her to turn the water on. He twists the knob as hot as it’ll go and already the steam starts to rise around them. In all his time here, he’s never come close to using his allotment of hot water so he figures he can be greedy, even just this once.

He takes her hand to guide her in, and after a couple of seconds, she steps beneath the spray. It’s hot, but not scalding, and he feels it in little speckles on his chest as he stands behind her while she lets the water course over her, eyes shut, face tipped up into the stream of it. He watches her, sees the bliss on her face, sees the way the furrow of her brow finally smoothes out and his heart beats a little faster behind his ribs at the sight of her.

When she steps backward, he’s not expecting it, but the length her body fits once again like a puzzle piece against his and before he can think he drops his face into her shoulder, wraps his arms around her middle. She’s trembling, just a little, but she lays her arms over top of his and presses in hard, goes unresisting when he steps the both of them forward beneath the spray of water. They stand like this for a long time. Hours could pass and he wouldn’t tire of holding her, of the water-warmed heat of her, of the slick slide of her back against his chest as she takes deep, steady breaths. He’s hard and he knows she feels it. He ain’t trying to hide it, even if he thought he could, but there’s nothing urgent in it. It’s there, it’s hers, and that’s all it’s gotta be.

The water won’t last forever, even though he plans on using the entire household’s ration for today. He unwinds one arm from around her middle and reaches for the bottles stacked in a row on the little shelf built into the shower wall. None of them face outward so he must turn them all until he finds the one he wants, and it’s some sorta floral scented thing he thinks Carl uses ‘cause that girl likes it or whatever, but he figures it’ll suit Beth well enough. He never washed nobody’s hair before except for his own, but then he never took a shower with a woman before either and he’s doing that well enough.

Beth knows what he’s up to and she doesn’t bother attempting to untangle the band from her hair, just pulls until it snaps and lets it fall to the floor of the shower. Amidst the sticks and dirt and blood and sap and debris are a single tiny braid and about a million tangles. She’ll probably need to cut it or maybe he’ll spent a couple of hours untangling it for her, so she don’t have to, working each of them free so her hair can fall smooth and golden down her back. As it does in his dreams, though he wouldn’t trade one for the other. He’s already decided he’s gonna, if she wants him to, no matter how long it takes to do it.

The shampoo is purple and thick and shimmery as he squirts it into his palm. Beth tips her head back and lets out a low sound in her throat as he starts working it into her hair. It takes a bit to get down to her scalp, through all the tangles and crap she’s got caught there. And he wants to scratch like he’s sure she needs, sure she wants, but he can’t, not until—his fingers find the place, the little pucker where her hair don’t grow, a soft little pit in the firmness of her skull. Exit, his brain provides. Where the bullet came out but Beth stayed in, and he both loves that scar and wants to bury it, fill it in, cover it over until it ceases to exist.

Beth does exist, though, and after a moment of letting him touch, she gently nudges his fingers with the top of her head. He does what he wanted to do all along, scratches his nails into her scalp while working the fragrant suds in, and that little noise Beth makes rises up above the patter of the water against the tub. Starts as a low rumbling he’s not certain how she could possibly be making, and something flutters in his belly in response. It rises, a crescendo that breaks as she moans long and loud and he imagines other ways he might coax her into making these noises, but like the erection trapped between them, the daydreams make no attempt to take hold. He lets them roll on in the background while he tends to Beth.

Beneath them, the water swirls dark, muddy, as it sinks into the drain. The suds have gone from shimmery purple to looking like dark chocolate mousse. He checks that her eyes are shut tight and guides her head beneath the spray to rinse, then starts again. A new handful, fresh suds, same honest sounds of enjoyment from Beth as he uses his fingers to help her get clean. She whimpers as he rubs the suds into the back of her head and he can feel the tightness in her neck, the roll of knotted muscles all the way up the base of her skull. Adds that to the list of things he’ll do for her later, if she wants. The way she sighs as he slides his thumbs up the back of her neck suggests that she will.

The rest of her hair hangs down her back in a dark blonde clump still clinging to the shape of her ponytail. His fingers catch as he works the shampoo in and no matter how careful he tries to be he knows it pulls, knows it hurts with every little grunt she makes. But she reaches back, glides her thumb in little circles on the outside of his thigh and he keeps on trying to be gentle and she keeps on being strong.

It takes a four more repetitions before the suds stay white, before he’s scrubbed and rubbed and worked out all the dirt that’s gonna go. Her scalp shines pink and clean through where her hair parts in a jagged line at the top of her head and he’s just starting to eye up that bar of soap when Beth reaches for another bottle from the shelf. Says conditioner on it and he knows the women use it, don’t know what for, but he figures it out good and quick when he’s got the stuff worked in and the strands of hair glide between his fingers instead of always catching and pulling.

Beth pushes the two of them back out of the spray, leans her slippery head against his shoulder and tips up until he can see her eyes, hovering half open as she gazes at him.

“Gotta let it sit,” she says, in a soft little voice that almost sounds sleepy. “Lemme wash yours?”

Wasn’t expecting that, but at the same time, feels as though she was always gonna ask. “All right, Beth.”

She doesn’t pick the flowery one. Reaches instead for a dark coloured bottle and pulls gently out of his arms. Turns, takes him by the shoulders and guides him beneath the water. He tips his head back, gets his hair good and wet for her. Hears the click of the bottle opening and a vaguely spicy scent wafts up to him on the steam, then Beth’s arms form brackets on either side of his head as her fingers work the shampoo into his hair.

He groans, like she did, tips his head forward so she can reach better. She’s close, though, close enough that no matter how she stands his erection brushes against her belly. He feels it and sees it as he cracks his eyes open, looks down at the lack of space between them, lack of clothing, the two pairs of naked feet standing together amongst the suds.

Her nails are like magic on his scalp, and much like she did, he doesn’t hold back the sounds that want out in response as she washes his hair. It’s the other things, too, making him moan. The side of her belly on his cock, the points of her nipples on his chest whenever she leans closer. He’d be lying if he tried to say he wasn’t thinking about all of that, and it still ain’t urgent but it sure as hell feels good, having her here. So much of her touching so much of him, and warmth like the steam curls in his belly.

When she finishes with him, Beth rinses her hair and he helps her do it, noting again how that conditioner stuff helped with the tangles. And that’s good, real good, but what’s better is the little smile Beth wears as he combs his fingers through her hair.

The bar of soap on the shelf behind her draws his eyes again. A lot of the dirt came off her from all the hair washing but she’s far from clean, and he’s preparing to place the bar into her hands, when Beth reaches for it instead and slips it into his.

He’s a little lightheaded as she looks at him with those wide open eyes and whispers, “Please, Daryl?”

She could do it herself, but this ain’t about that. She can take care of herself but maybe she don’t always have to. Maybe she wants to know that, wants to feel it, that she can have this, too, if she needs it. He ain’t ever done this, either, but when the first swipe of his soapy thumbs through the dirt on her face makes her little smile stretch wider, he knows that don’t matter. He cleans the dirt from her face, watching as the smile slides from wide into blissful, sighing with her when she tosses her head back so his fingers can scrub away the sweat and grime from her neck. Her skin shines clean and pink, when he’s done, and Beth turns around, once again fitting herself against him back to front. Daryl tucks his face into her hair, into her freshly cleaned neck, so he can wash the rest of her.

Despite the grit, the scratches, the scars he’s sure weren’t there before, Beth’s skin is amazingly smooth and warm beneath his palms. He slides them down her arms, over the taut muscles gathered there. The strength of her hums into his skin, and he wonders, if it had been him, left behind—left for dead—would he have made it? Would he be standing here now?

His fingers glide between hers, slick, soapy digits moving together to clean away the dirt, and Beth lets out a little giggle. Soft, barely any weight to it at all, but the sound echoes in the confines of the shower, is picked up by the steam and amplified, ‘til his ears are full of it. That little sound of delight, laced with something else altogether which rushes another surge of blood south to his cock. Now he’s hard as fuck and kind of dizzy but it’s okay. It’s good, and he suspects she ain’t so immune to this either, as she giggles softly again and turns her head to lay it against his shoulder.

When her hands are clean, he retraces his motions back up her arm, swirling through the suds to rinse her clean, until he reaches her shoulders. Beth breathes deep as he traces her collarbones, first with the soap, then again with his fingers. Starts letting it out in shuddering little puffs as he slides his hands down to cover her breasts, the little swells of them fitting perfectly in his palms. Her nipples pull even tighter beneath his touch, and she whispers his name and arches her back.

“Beth,” he answers, tucking his face into her shoulder again as he touches her, taking the invitation as he knows she intends, flicks his thumbs gently over the hardened points and fights the urge to press his cock against her ass even though she’s doing a good job of pushing herself back into him.

Still ain’t about that, no matter how he’s touching her. How she wants him to touch her. She whimpers a little, though, when he moves on, and there’s a trembling in her belly beneath his hands as he washes her there, too, circling lower and lower until his fingertips graze the border of her curls. He only realizes he’s closed his eyes when they pop open, and he can’t even hear the shower anymore, just Beth’s deep breaths. Daryl stares down at his hands and where they sit, sees the way her chest rises and falls, watches as she slides her legs apart and pushes his hand between them.

Even with the soap, he can feel how wet she is. As wet as he is hard and it hits him now, finally, the need for her that’s been hovering just beyond the curtain. He wants to press her up against the wall of the shower and slide into her from behind, into that slick heat coating his fingers, but he doesn’t, ‘cause he might want her with a level of desperation he’s never felt before but he hasn’t quite lost all of his self-control. Beth’s little sigh holds a note of laughter to it, like she knows what he’s thinking, but it’s enough to pull him back from that edge just a little. He’s meant to be washing her, and he does, soapy fingers mixing with the wetness of her as he slides them around. Beth makes little gasping sounds as he washes, as he touches and explores her with gentle fingertips, and she’s already trembling long before his thumb glides over her clit.

“Ohhh,” she says, the sound mostly breath.

Daryl pulls his face from her shoulder, slides the point of his nose up along her neck until his lips hover just behind her ear. “Tell me what you want, Beth.”

The way she whimpers makes him think she wants a lotta things, but she turns her head so her face tucks up into his neck and says, “Just for a minute? Feels so good, Daryl.”

They’re dealing with a limited amount of time, and already the water’s noticeably cooler than when they started. Beth knows that, even though she asks, and he’s not going to waste time by denying her.

This ain’t something he’s practiced at, but he suspects he doesn’t need to be. Beth arches her back, pushes herself into his touch, and gasps again when he repeats the same gliding pass of his thumb across the swollen nub of her clit. He makes a circle and she moans softly into his neck and they both shiver.

“Like that?” he asks.

“Harder,” she whispers, sliding her hand over top of his and pushing down, making herself shudder in the process. “Not gonna break me.”

He does push against her ass, this time, the gravel in her voice taking him by surprise. Can’t help it, but through his rapid spiral into light-headedness he knows she doesn’t mind. Knows the desperation he feels isn’t at all one-sided, and he makes another circle, harder like she showed him. Beth whimpers and reaches back to grip his thigh, nails digging in a little bit more with each pass he makes. She’s unbelievably wet and so fucking hot, he had no idea—and he’s done this before, technically, done things, but this feels like the first fucking time.

First time that matters, even if all he does for the rest of his life is touch her like this. Draw out of her those little sighs. A different type of music but it strikes up an orchestra in his chest, a soundtrack he’s never gonna tire of hearing, of feeling. Beth’s breath washes over his neck and he feels it more tangibly than the steam, than the water around them. It isn’t long before she lets out a moan so deep he feels it rising up from her belly beneath his palm, long before it swells out into the air around them. And then she’s biting at his neck, teeth sinking in as her body gives a hard shudder and doesn’t stop. Though it’s muffled into his neck, the song she sings as she comes is the sweetest sound he’s ever heard.

When her body stops shaking, Beth collapses back against him, melting further into his arms. Daryl presses a kiss into her hair, tightens his arms around her as she breathes out his name, just holds her for a long time beneath the slowly cooling water.

It’s some time before Beth speaks. First whispering his name again, then nudging at his neck with the point of her nose. “C’mon,” she says.

He finishes washing her, front and back, getting to his knees on the floor of the shower to scrub the dirt from her feet as she leans back against the wall, a sleepy grin stretched across her face. He’s not surprised when she wants to wash him, too, even though her fingers shake and he can see she’s exhausted. He stops her, though Christ, he doesn’t want to, when those same shaky fingers close around his cock.

“Later,” he says to her, because yeah, he wants that. Wants it if she does. But she’s fading; he can see it, in the wilt of her shoulders, the tremble in her legs, the droop of her eyes.

Woman needs a nap a hell of a lot more than he needs to get off, and she nods her understanding at him. After a couple of slow strokes which nonetheless leave him shaking and breathless, she releases him and they rinse away the remnants of soap just as the last of the warmth bleeds out of the water.

They’ve been in there awhile, but it’s still early. Sun’s up in earnest now, though, and the bathroom is bright, the white of it near glowing. Beth glows, too, freshly scrubbed skin still pink, and she’s exhausted and beautiful and after they both brush their teeth, he wraps her up in the fluffiest towel he can find, scoops her into his arms, and carries her back to bed.

Beth lays her head on his chest and sighs sleepily. Doesn’t occur to him until he’s halfway down the stairs that he’s still naked. That he hasn’t even bothered with a towel and he prays to whatever deity might be listening that nobody else in the house is awake. But he reaches their room undetected. Shuts the door on the world for a second time, sets Beth down on top of the quilt, on the clean side, and leaves her there just long enough to pull a spare blanket from the closet. She has already dropped the towel to the floor by the time he returns, and he drapes the blanket over her and slides under it, too, gathering her to his chest even as she wiggles back against him.

“Sleep,” he says to her, pressing his face into her neck and breathing her in again, clean and soapy and Beth. “Sleep.”

And she does.

*~*

Fall Right In - Chapter 26/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 02:47:19 GMT

Fall Right In
Chapter 26 – I Won't Last Long in This World so Wrong

*~*

Beth hoped the warmth of Daryl’s body and the comfort of resting her head on his chest might lull her to sleep, but the night wore on and so did she. The Daryl part aside, sitting beneath a tree wasn’t the most comfortable way to try to get some sleep, even with the canvas spread beneath them to keep out some of the ground’s chill. Pretending to sleep under those same conditions wasn’t the easiest task she’d ever undertaken, and though she tried to be subtle about shifting her weight to relieve an ache here or a tingling numbness there, she wasn’t for a minute fooled into thinking Daryl didn’t know. Mostly, he let her pretend, with only the occasional press of his fingers into her side giving him away, and she was grateful for his tendency to do that.

She might be able to get there for real if she could lie down without letting in the chill, but the night wasn’t going to allow that, either, so she opted for warmth over comfort, since she couldn’t have both. Her thoughts refused to stop their endless circling, round and round in her head despite her attempts to lead them away from her worries about Daryl. About pushing him too hard, too soon or just plain doing it wrong.

She kept picturing his face as she slurped at that peach, kept thinking about what that might’ve looked like from his point of view. God, could she have been any more blatant? Here, Daryl, watch me enjoy the juices from this sweet Georgia peach. Want some? Her stomach squirmed now just thinking about it, since he was so obviously dealing with things she didn’t fully understand. What did that make her, teasing him like that? He hadn’t been able to keep his thoughts from showing on his face while she did, though. He wanted to respond, that much was clear, but she was afraid she had made him uncomfortable when that’s not at all what she meant to do.

Beth wasn’t going to cry, she was not. She was also probably lying because her throat ached in that way it did when the wrong word or the wrong thought could easily tip her over the edge. Now she was both lying and being stupid, because Daryl would tell her to stop if he didn’t like something she tried to do, and he wouldn’t look at her like he wanted to lick away every last drop of juice from her body if her teasing didn’t appeal to him, even a little. Peach Life Savers, he said, and not by accident.

But it was late and she was just a silly tired little farm girl who didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know how to be, if being herself made Daryl uncomfortable. She grunted, pretend sleep be damned. It wasn’t like that. Daryl wasn’t uncomfortable, not in the way she feared, he just needed time. But she couldn’t coax her brain into thinking about something else and endless time passed with the same worries rolling through her head, the same ridiculous back and forth between what if and of course he doesn’t until a headache throbbed behind her eyes.

She wasn’t gonna be good for anything at all tomorrow if she kept this up. Beth shifted again, turning even further into the warmth of Daryl’s body. Breathed deep until the scent of him filled her head and tried to take comfort in the way his fingers tightened again at her waist.

The river nearby rippled faintly, just audible above the sound of Daryl’s breathing beneath her. Beth focused on that for a while, one last attempt to trick her worried brain into distraction. She pictured in her head how the water might flow over the stones, all softly blurred like one of those long exposure photographs Mama used to take sometimes, those rare precious times when she would leave her work at home behind and go exploring with Beth. The water would shine like diamonds when the sun got high enough to touch down on its rippled surface. She could see it clearly, the way the colours danced, the speckles of light brought alive by the motion of the water. Daryl’s eyes shone so blue in light like that, even though he would squint as he always did, as though the power in his gaze was just too much to contain.

Beth could picture that, too, his brilliant irises glittering with the colours reflected off the water, once she swept the hair away from his face, that is. That was nice, the thought of the two of them standing there amidst all that glittering light, tonight’s clouds all but gone. They would kneel down together over the sparkling stream and cup their hands in it to drink of its cool, fresh water, gazes catching as they did. Admiring the view in more ways than one, as blue met blue and struck up that skittering of fireflies dancing over their skin, for all it was morning and the only things moving in it were the rippling river and the songbirds, flitting about in the trees above to grace them with their sweet morning serenade.

It was probably because she was still listening, even as her thoughts finally wandered, that she heard it, a faint rustling of brush in the near distance. It was too big to be a rabbit or a squirrel, and too controlled to be a walker or some other hungry beast. No, whatever it was moved quietly, like something—or someone—trying not to make noise but not quite succeeding at it. Beth waited, listening. The rustling persisted. A little shake followed by silence followed by that same subtle noise, and that definitely wasn’t the wind, either. She pressed her fingertips into Daryl’s side and he hummed at her, a sound that meant yes, he was hearing it, too.

He left her by the tree and crept off into the night to investigate. Beth reached for her crossbow and held it firm in her grip. Told herself she wasn’t worried and ignored the trembling in her fingers. She couldn’t see Daryl. Couldn’t even hear him. Just the faint rustling in the near distance that meant something wasn’t right.

Beth waited. She waited and waited, but nothing happened. Whatever it was out there kept moving amongst the brush without getting any closer, but of Daryl, there were no signs. Worry squirmed in her belly, slimy and cold like a pit of eels. What was he waiting for? Where did he go, where could he be, in darkness like this?

She couldn’t stand it any longer, and pushed up from her spot beneath the tree, still holding her crossbow. This had bad idea written all over it but she couldn’t leave Daryl out there alone, with whatever was waiting for them. Two of us. Together. Beth and Daryl against the world and all the things that went bump in the night.

Through the pitch black of this clouded night, Beth picked her way amongst the trees, navigating by memory. Careful steps in darkness as thick as ink using the trees to guide her. She couldn’t hear the river anymore, or the rustling either, not over the sound of her own heart pounding in her ears. This wasn’t right. Daryl wouldn’t just leave her like this, would he?

Would he?

Static pricked at her skin, rushed over her shoulders the further she walked from camp, and the air around her grew thick, too, thicker than the night. Thick as smoke yet nothing burned, thick like sap without the taste of pine. She touched her hand to the next invisible tree and the contact jolted through her palm, like the shock from a metal doorway only strong enough that she felt the ache of it in her teeth, cold like winter, sharp like metal.

Up above, a blinding flash of lightning cleaved the sky in two, and she tasted it on her tongue, sharpness like ozone and the barest hints of rot. Thunder rumbled overhead, so loud, so forceful it vibrated down into her bones, shaking into her marrow until her whole body quivered. The squirming in her belly grew unbearable, the eels turned electric, her insides gone raw from the force of them, from the jolts of the current stirred up by their wriggling.

A second bolt of lightning stuck, a blinding flash illuminating the night, the forest, and everything in it with a light brighter than the sun could ever hope to be, and gone as quick as it came. What it revealed burned into her retinas, a ghostly white figure imprinted on the blackness in front of her, flickering in and out but never dimming completely.

Here, birdie, birdie, said the ghost’s voice, a sound which spread through the smoky air like an oil slick, coating her face, her shoulders, her whole world in a thick layer of sickly-sweet filth.

The thunder rumbled again and the ground beneath her shook. Beth tried to run, to get away from that spectre in the dark. She couldn’t force her legs to move fast enough through the foul, oily air and every step she took shot through her nerves like the lightning overhead, the pain so intense she cried out with it and choked on the sap, the smoke, the static-charged ink closing in.

Gorman appeared before her, body crackling with electricity, lit up from the inside with a blue-white glow, which hummed coldly in the air and tickled the static still clinging to her shoulders. It shone on the ring of trees surrounding them, deepening the shadows beyond it where thunder still rumbled with every arcing circuit that leapt from his body.

She called for Daryl, but her voice wasn’t right. Muffled. Distant. Distorted, as though she was shouting under the water. Gorman’s face near split in two with the width of his manic smile, the edges cracked and dripping with blood that oozed and shimmered like quicksilver. He laughed, a crackling thing that arced out into the trees, little fingers of lightning striking them black, then setting them ablaze with blue-white flames.

The world spun and Beth spun with it, around and away from the monster in front of her but then he was there, where he wasn’t before, and there again, when she whirled back the other way. Everywhere she tried to go, there he was, with that sickening smile, that stink of ozone and rot. Beth’s feet sunk into ground, the dirt turned to oily mud, and the eels in her belly gnawed at her with teeth like jumper cables, shocking her with every bite until her whole body ached from the assault.

Please. Please let me go. I need to find Daryl, I need—

The ghost’s oily voice echoed, bouncing in her ears from every direction at once. Keep singin’, sweet birdie…

Beth screamed. Screamed and screamed until her throat burned but the only sound she made was that of water flowing over rocks. The Gorman behind her grabbed her and held on. Sparks shot out of his fingers, blue-white little hotspots sinking into her blackening skin, melting her, surging like fire through her veins. Everything hurt, and her legs buckled beneath her as the fire stole what was left of her strength. The Gorman in front of her laughed, that same impossible thing of silver ooze and lightning, and Beth couldn’t move. Could only dangle in that other Gorman’s grip, unable to break away from the flames licking at her bones. From the monster closing in from all sides.

Another bolt of lightning struck overhead. The thunder rumbled in before the light even faded, and Daryl slipped inside the glowing ring of trees.

Daryl, she said, but the word refused to coalesce outside of her mind. She couldn’t even lift her head to see him, to tell him without words so she tried again. Clenched her jaw despite the pain to make the words come forth. Daryl, help me. Please help me. Daryl...

But Beth couldn’t make a sound. She could barely see him from the water in her eyes, and he looked away, down to the ground, to her dangling feet coated in black, oily filth. Voices floated in, distorted again, echoing and distant but wriggling down inside her ears like dozens of maggots writhing in her head.

You owe me, Redneck...me, Redneck

Girl like that?...like that? Never really wanted her anyway...wanted her anyway.

Hear that, sweet birdie?...birdie?...birdie? How you gonna get outta this now?...outta this now?

Little girl?...little girl?...little girl?...little girl?

No. No. No, no, no, no, NO! She was a blur of knees and elbows and heels and teeth, teeth like the eels, snapping and tearing and tugging at the rancid flesh holding her hostage. Everything hurt but the pain was strength, and she shoved the heel of her hand up into Gorman’s stubby little nose and sunk wrist deep into soft, rotten bone, right through to the gore inside.

Blood flooded down like rain. Hot and red, coppery on her tongue, splat - splat - splat on the leaves, the dirt, the trees. Speckles of red on her grey sweater, bleeding into the wool until no other colour remained. The body fell away to land at her feet, the impact of it rocking the earth with a force greater than lighting, louder than thunder.

It settled there amongst the leaves and stared blankly up at her wearing Daryl’s face.

The world spun around in a blood red haze and Beth dropped to her knees beside him. Took Daryl by the shoulders and shook him as hard as she could. Called for him, screamed his name through the blood in her lungs and still no sound came out.

Wake up, Daryl! Daryl! Come on, just wake up. Daryl! DARYL!

The thunder rumbled, muted now behind the coating of blood splashed across the sky. Beth’s pulse beat in her ears as she knelt there in the circle of trees next to Daryl’s body. Nothing moved. No sounds reached her except for the thunder and the thump of her own heart inside her chest. Daryl lay motionless, staring up at her with dull blue eyes, the fist-sized hole in his forehead oozing with blood and smoke and a shimmer of lightning.

The back of her neck prickled with an itch that started small and spread out like a swarm of ants on her skin. This—this wasn’t right. The body, that wasn’t supposed to be Daryl.

Gorman.

The prickling intensified, no longer ants but long-legged spiders dancing on her spine. Gorman was dead. She killed him, but not with a fist. With a bullet, and not deep in some forest surrounded by trees, either, but on the grassy grounds of what used to be a funeral home. This wasn’t right, but what—what—?

“Daryl,” she said, the word coming clear for the first time since she stood up from the tree and stole off into the night to find him. “Daryl, wake up. Wake me up. Daryl? Daryl?”

Too late. Too late. The tide of blood poured into her open mouth, flooded her throat and stole her words. Stole Daryl’s body, too, and floated it out to sea as she sunk into the red depths below, reaching for something, for anything to keep her afloat. Fingers of panic clawed inside her chest, digging between her ribs, frantic in their need to get out.

I’m dreaming. This is a dream. I need to—I need to wake up. Daryl. Daryl, wake me up. Oh, God. Please. Please, Daryl. Daryl, wake me up, please! Daryl! Daryl! DARYL!

Pain erupted in her chest. A sharp, twisting pain then a hot pressure then a deeper burning ache like ice scraping at the insides of her lungs and finally—

“Beth!”

Her eyes flew open and air rushed into her chest and she coughed and fell down onto her back in the leaves, head spinning, stomach roiling like a tidal wave. Cold water splashed down onto her face and lightning flashed through the canopy of trees above. The tidal wave broke and Beth wrenched her shaking body over as the contents of her stomach exploded out as violently as the thunder crashing overhead.

Thunder. Oh, God, she was still dreaming, still deep in the nightmare and it wasn’t going to let her go. Oh, god, please no. Please, Daryl.
All around her a loomed a wall of dark and wet and thunder like gunfire in her ears. Her stomach rolled again and she coughed and gagged and retched but nothing came up, and she curled into a ball on the muddy ground as the shivering took hold. Any minute now he was gonna come back, going to trick her into killing Daryl all over again, and again, and again until she died in her sleep and turned and killed him for real, tearing out his throat right there beneath their tree and devouring him up until there was nothing left.

No, no, no, no, oh please, no.

“Shit, Beth. Beth!”

Daryl’s voice rose above the thunder, and in the midst of the chill radiating out from the marrow of her bones, his hand pressed hot on her back, branding the shape of his strong fingers into her clammy skin. The warmth of him, the scratch of his work-roughened fingers, was an anchor. A lifeboat, and she clung to it and let him pull her back and she heard, finally, the rush of the water, the whistling of the wind through the trees, the heaviness of Daryl’s breathing as he hovered over her shaking body.

Awake. I’m awake. Daryl, I’m awake, please. Please.

Before she could move he was lifting her from the ground, and she turned in his arms, reaching for him, burrowing in. Her chest and belly burned with that desperate need to crawl inside him, where the warmth of him and the life of him could stop the shaking and drive out the cold—so, so cold. Where the pounding of his heart would beat away the flashes in her head of Gorman, glowing blue-white in the inky black of a starless night, the ache of the words the real Daryl would never say, and the blood, so much bright red blood. She couldn’t keep doing this, wasn’t strong enough to stop the dreams from clamping their rotting teeth into her brain, tearing her apart piece by piece and leaving behind a sickness she couldn’t shake.

“Beth.” Daryl’s voice rumbled in her ear, soft and firm, again pulling her up just enough to hear him, to feel him, solid and warm beneath her, against her, around her, arms wound tight and holding her close. “C’mon, girl, come on back.”

“I—Daryl.”

She barely got the words out before her throat closed shut and the tears burst out, hot enough to sting as they poured over her cheeks. Daryl’s hold on her tightened and Beth pressed her face deep into his neck, pushed into the strong, steady beat of his pulse until she felt it on her lips. He was alive. Alive and warm and not letting her go, and she repeated that mantra in her head. Daryl spoke along with her in a low voice that cut right through the pounding in her ears, past the choked whine of her sobs not quite muffled in his neck.

“I got you, Beth. I got you. Ain’t lettin’ go.” His big warm hand came up to cradle her cheek, thumb sliding back and forth to the rhythm of his words, while the other tucked beneath her shirt to lay over her belly. “I got you. I got you. Hold on to me, Beth. I got you. Oh, girl, I got you.”

Beth let go of her own silent words to focus on Daryl’s, and the soothing rasp of his voice as he spoke to her, repeating the same things over and over again. I got you. Hold on to me. Ain’t lettin’ you go. The heat of his hands as they touched her skin sunk a bit more of his warmth into her with each gentle pass of his thumbs, each curl of his fingers. The shaking eased a little at a time, though her head and throat and chest throbbed both hot and cold all at once. Sounds shifted, settled, sharpened or dulled and returned to the places they belonged. Her pulse no longer roared in her ears and she could hear the storm now, still raging around them. Rain falling hard—though the tree they huddled beneath kept most of it off them—the creak and groan of the trees and the rustling of their leaves in the wind, and the thunder, rolling in close on the heels of the lightning flashing high overhead.

She didn’t want to move out of Daryl’s hold but she knew she couldn’t stay like this, not out here, not all night. All she wanted was to was curl up with him in their cabin bed, nothing between them but a few thin layers of cloth or maybe even less than that, wrapped up in his arms and safe from what plagued her. But she couldn’t have that, just more of the stupid hard ground on this stupid cold night, and with a heaviness in her chest she started to pull away.

Daryl’s arms pulled tighter, just enough to stall her retreat. “Don’t gotta go, Beth. You’re still shakin’.”

She was, a little, from even the tiny effort of moving, and him saying so was all she needed to fall back against his chest, arms and legs with all the strength of a rag doll. “Can’t stay like this.”

Daryl hummed, just audible over the sound of the rain. “Get in front a me, then.”

The thought of doing that, of resting back against Daryl’s body, his arms around her to hold her close was so tempting, so near to what she really wanted that her belly pulsed warm just imagining it. Sitting up with her like that meant Daryl wasn’t going to lie down, and Beth bit her lip as she thought about what that meant. “You’re not gonna get any sleep, though.”

“Don’t matter,” he mumbled, leaning over to rest his cheek against her forehead.

Beth sighed. Of course he would say that. “Daryl, it does.”

“Ain’t up for debate,” he answered, voice gravelly and low.

“But—”

“Beth.” The volume of his voice hadn’t changed, but there was a firmness in it that made her swallow down her protest.

Beth couldn’t see Daryl’s face in the dark, so she didn’t have proof, but as he shifted his head away from her, she felt his eyes on her and knew what she’d see in them if she could. Not the look of warm honey and butterflies in her belly, but something else, something that, even in theory, lifted all the hairs on the back of her neck with the intensity of it.

“Okay, Daryl.” It made her shiver to think about it, but Daryl squeezed her just a little tighter before he let her go.

Between the two of them, they got resettled, Daryl pulling his body more upright against the tree and arranging his legs to let her sit between them. He wound his arms around her and tugged until she settled back against his chest. It wasn’t a bed, but almost as warm as one, surrounded by him like this. A cocoon of Daryl, there beneath the tree, and their actual lack of safety didn’t matter. She always felt safe when he held her, no matter where they were, and Beth let her head fall back against his shoulder, turned her face to tuck into his neck. Barely a breath passed before he leaned his head over against hers.

She wasn’t going to sleep, even with the pinching ache of exhaustion pressing behind her eyes. That familiar heaviness gathered at the base of her skull, a cool, prickly reminder of what lurked in her subconscious, lying in wait for her to slip back inside her head where the dreams could take over. So she kept her face tucked into Daryl’s neck and fitted back against his body as though she was made to be there, just the sort of sleepy thought she couldn’t help thinking as she rested there with him. Her breathing gradually fell into sync with his, and she focused on that instead of the storm. He needed sleep, and Beth didn’t much like being the thing that kept him from it, but she was grateful that he understood why she wouldn’t want to be alone with her thoughts right now. Even if she was willing to be, for his sake.

Sometime later, Daryl slipped his hand under the edge of her shirts to let it lie again on her stomach. His fingers were cool, but he laid down a path of warmth as he glided his thumb back and forth in that little arcing sweep he always used. It seeped inside to stir the butterflies in her belly into a gentle flutter and pulled out of her that sigh he liked.

“Keep doin’ that,” Beth whispered. “Feels nice.”

Daryl’s chest rumbled with a sound too low to hear, and he turned his face until she felt the brush of his lips against her hair. “Couldn’t wake you,” he said, in a smaller voice than she had ever heard him use. “Wasn’t even sure you were breathin’.”

His words prickled cold down her neck, and that dark weight pressed a little harder at the back of her head. She remembered the pain, the burning in her chest when she finally pulled out of the dream. Did that mean she really wasn’t breathing, if even Daryl couldn’t tell?

Beth pressed her hand to her sternum, pushed in against the ghost of that hypoxic ache. In her panic, she thought that the nightmares were finally going to kill her for real, but that was just panic, wasn’t it? She must have been breathing. No way even the worst sort of nightmares could make her stop.

Right?

It was an idea about as absurd as dead people walking the earth trying to eat the living.

Daryl’s thumb still moved across her skin, but he brought the other one up now to swipe at her cheeks and the tears sliding over them that she hadn’t noticed until now.

Beth’s next breath came in shaky, laced with a hint of that icy burn she remembered feeling then. “I-I knew I was dreamin’ but I couldn’t get out of it. I kept callin’ for you and—and I think they’re gettin’ worse, Daryl.”

“Mm.” He brushed his fingers down the side of her face, then followed his own path back up toward her forehead. “They’ll get better, Beth. They got to.”

The weight in her head swelled larger, dark and heavy with sharp little fingers. “That what you think?”

Daryl snorted softly, fingertips now following the curve of her ear. “Sweetheart, that’s what I know.”

Sweetheart. The first time he said it, Beth realized right away he hadn’t meant to. He wasn’t delirious still, but he wasn’t fully recovered, either, from his ordeal with the herd and the storm, and probably didn’t even realize he’d said it. She might have thought otherwise had he not had a history with that word, though until then its only target had been Judith. Judith. Thinking about her, even in passing, deepened the ache already pressing in her chest. Beth’s heart would always mourn for that sweet baby girl, but right now, that warm honey feeling swept in and covered over the sharp edges of her grief. ‘Cause he meant it this time, calling her that, thinking of that word and bringing it to voice for her ears alone. It didn’t matter if he never said it again because he said it now.

Beth sighed and nudged at his neck with her nose, smiled into his skin when he pressed his palm to her cheek so his fingers could stroke her hair.

“And you got me, right?” she asked, and maybe she was baiting him, just a little, but he was already on the line anyway.

His answer was immediate, accompanied by the fingertips of both hands pressing into her where they lay. “Yeah, I got you. You know I got you.”

Beth reached up to lay her palm on his cheek, too, thumb moving in a little arc across his face, where his skin lay smooth just above the scruff of his beard. “And you ain’t lettin’ me go.”

Daryl pressed his palm into her belly, pushing in deep and hard in the way that he knew she liked, and he pressed, too, with the other hand at her cheek, cradling her head tight to his shoulder. “Promise.”

“I promise, too,” Beth said. She pressed her lips to his throat and nuzzled in deeper, riding out his little shudder as it rolled right through his body and into hers.

These were words already spoken, once, in a place they made together, a pocket universe that existed only between the two of them. Until now, Beth thought it was the cabin, itself existing a little bit out of time, that let them find it, but that wasn’t true at all. It was never the cabin, never the safety of its four walls and a roof that allowed them to find their little space, because they were in it now, she and Daryl, out in the middle of the woods but hidden inside that same little bubble of existence. A place where all that mattered was Beth and Daryl and all that lay between them. Where even the biggest truths settled in like old friends. Like leather vests and warm blankets. Like moonshine bonfires and soft, lilting lullabies.

All they needed to get here was each other.

Though the night was cold, Daryl was warm, so wonderfully warm, and being here with him, with him, kept that warm honey feeling from fading away. The nightmare still lingered, a weight at the back of her head, a dark little beast with sharp fingers and a thick, scratchy cloak falling down across her shoulders, but it couldn’t quite get to her, not in the way she suspected it wanted to, not in this place. Not when she could rest here in Daryl’s arms, secure in the truth that no matter what, he had her back. He had her, and he had her.

Beth was safe. She was warm. She was right where she wanted to be.

*~*

End Notes: I have had dreams where I knew I was dreaming and wanted to wake up, but couldn’t. More than once I’ve had the terrifying sensation of being locked inside my own head, screaming my husband’s name and begging him to wake me up because I can't get there. Confirmed by husband that I am not actually making any noise at all during these episodes, nor am I moving around in any way that would get his attention. I will eventually wake up, and fortunately this happens infrequently (I haven’t had one for a few years now but by saying that I’m probably going to ugh) because it is not fun, folks. Not fun at all. I don’t know what that is exactly, but this is the best explanation I’ve found. This isn’t necessarily Beth’s issue, because she had to be doing something for Daryl to try to wake her. But I drew some inspiration for her dream from this real life experience.

To be continued in chapter 27 >>

Fall Right In - Chapter 25/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Tue, 06 Oct 2015 17:47:41 GMT

Fall Right In

Chapter 25 – I Will Share Your Road

*~*

Daryl kissed like a man starved. No finesse, just hunger. Passion so raw and desperate the rest didn’t matter. Something inside her reached for it with eager arms. Pulled it in, wrapped up in it until she couldn’t tell where her own need for it ended and where his began. Nobody had ever kissed her like this, as though his life, his every breath depended on it. He was starved, for her, for them and all that lay between them. For the fire just beginning to blaze now that they’d finally ignited those smouldering embers.

That same fierce longing surged up along her spine, burst out like lightning through every nerve in her body and she shook with the force of it. Daryl shook, too, tremors like waves through his arms, his thighs, every part of him that touched her, and in her mind she pictured a dam across a raging river, its concrete face shot through with cracks, bits of it tumbling loose, just barely holding up under the pressure from within.

Beth never knew a need like this before. Not just the kissing. Not even just for what she felt brushing against her belly whenever he couldn’t stop himself from pressing into her. And he was trying, trying to stop but he couldn’t, not entirely, and oh, she ached for that, too, a delicious wet ache that had her clenching her vaginal walls around nothing, last night's dream still vivid in her memory. A pulse of head burst in her belly as images from the dream became something else altogether.

A vision, of following Daryl up the ladder into the hayloft. Of them tearing off each other’s clothes before she pushed him onto his back in a pile of hay and sunk down on his cock. The look he’d have on his face as he stretched her, filled her up. The sound of his moans, the breathless way he’d whisper her name as she rode him, until they collapsed, sweaty and spent in each other’s arms. Or maybe right here, up against the post, her jeans dangling from one leg as he pounded into her, slamming her back against the wood until she saw stars and cried out his name, Daryl muffling his own groans into her neck while he shuddered deep and hard inside her. She’d have splinters in her ass but they’d be worth it, and she clenched again, tight enough to feel a ghost of the pleasure she craved, and whimpered into his mouth just thinking about it.

There’d been another thought, a moment ago, but she lost the trail of it amidst the images, the fantasies. Whatever it was flitted away like an elusive rabbit, and maybe she’d catch it, but—but there was Daryl. God, so much Daryl. He was everywhere, a giant wall of arms and chest and hot, peach-scented breath, surrounding her like the ramparts of a castle. Nothing could touch her here, nothing and nobody except him. Her belly quivered, melted, under the slide of his lips on hers, the scratch of his beard, that thing he did with his tongue that made her toes curl and pulled sounds out of her she didn’t recognize. Her pulse raced, pounding in her ears, surging hot through her veins, blazing in her chest, burning everywhere—burning for him. Every inch of where her body and his touched tingled with heat, with energy, with the thrum of barely dammed passion he poured out of himself and into her.

Deep groans as only he could make rumbled through his chest and the tremors of them rippled into hers, a vibration in her ribcage like an earthquake. A jackhammer. A stampede of horses. She tasted them on her lips, a buzz of heat and peaches and oh, god, Daryl. She tried to arch against him but he only pressed harder, his hands at her hips holding her back against the post. Holding him back from her but she felt him there anyway, that brush of his erection as he pushed against his own arms, so hard against the softness of her belly. He shook with it, the effort of holding back from what he clearly wanted to do. A needy whine leaked out past her throat, trickled thick and obvious between them, and she clenched empty around that ache, that desire, to know the press of his cock against her stomach, to someday find out how good he’d feel inside.

Daryl broke away, leaving her lips heavy and tingling as he dove for her neck. Beth tossed her head back, hitting the post with a thud that hurt but she didn’t care, because Daryl dragged his tongue up from her collar bone, through the still-sticky path of peach juice and sweat. Scraped his teeth where her pulse pounded and drew a moan out of her so loud it echoed around the empty barn.

He stalled, shuddered, lips still pressed into her skin, chest heaving against hers, fingers digging hard into her hips. “Fuck,” he breathed. “Beth...”

He trembled hard against her but stood frozen, like he didn’t know quite what to do with himself. Beth slid one hand up to cradle the back of his head, pressed into his hip with the fingers of the other.

“It’s okay,” she said, because it was. Because even if she didn’t completely understand what was going on in his head, he needed to know that. “You wanna stop?”

He chuckled, a heated, rumbling thing that shot straight to her clit, and it seemed to unfreeze him. His fingers flexed at her hips and he dragged the point of his nose along the same path his tongue had followed just moments ago. “No. Yes. God, woman...”

“C’mon.” Though her pulse was still racing and the thought of not carrying on with this had her trembling already in withdrawal, Beth nudged at Daryl’s knee with her own and pushed them both away from the post. Whatever the root of his indecision, right now they needed a bit of space. “Let’s get some water.”

The pail of water they drew from the well sat over by the coals of the fire Daryl built, a faint glow now that they no longer needed it for sterilizing bolts. Beth thought he might drown himself with how deeply he drank, until he passed her the little cup after knocking back his third one. The first sip became a gulp as the cool water soothed her parched throat, and she drank two more before giving it back, excess water dripping down her chin and neck like the peach juice before it. They passed the cup between them a few more times with shaking fingers before finally sating that particular thirst, though Beth’s heart still pounded, her body still hummed, with the other. Daryl tucked the cup back into his pack, and then just stood there, shoulders slumped, chewing on his lip as he stared ahead in an absent sort of way toward the ring of candles in the centre of the barn.

Lost in thought, again.

“Hey.” Not wanting to give those darker places a chance to reach him, Beth brushed her knuckles across the back of his. She didn’t think he’d go back to where he went before, but still...

The touch drew a little smile, just a hint of it at the left side of his mouth, and he turned his hand to twine their fingers together. A rush of relief washed over her, lifting a weight from her shoulders, and her heart fluttered as he looked toward her, still smiling.

“Hey, Beth,” he said, in a quiet voice, warm and rich like candlelight.

A delirious giggle, small and tinkling like the song of a little bird, trickled up and out of her before she could hold it in. The matching grin stretched wide and the back of her neck tingled as a swirl of light-headedness washed over her, just potent enough that the walls of the barn wobbled around her. With flaming cheeks, Beth planted her forehead into Daryl’s chest, still giggling and she didn’t know why. Except she did, because this was Daryl—Daryl and Beth and they were kissing now, and it wasn’t so warm in here but heat licked at her skin anyway, wicking up from the arousal still pulsing deep in her belly.

Why couldn’t she stop giggling? Her shoulders shook with it and she couldn’t keep it in, didn’t understand why. It wasn’t funny, not like that. Daryl’s arms wrapped around her and he pulled her in, his chest rumbling beneath her with his own brand of laughter. And he was warm and sweaty and hard and Daryl, and her lungs swelled up inside with that memory of the ledge, the broken porridge bowl and everything she dreamed that she and Daryl could be. Everything they were gonna be. Lord, everything they already were, and the giggle wasn’t a giggle anymore. She didn’t know what it was except she couldn’t keep it in, either, and it whimpered out past her lips into Daryl’s chest, tugging tight a little knot of terror in her gut at the sheer depth of her feelings for this beautiful man.

She wasn’t crying. She didn’t know what she was doing other than turning into a complete wreck, but Daryl pulled her closer and she burrowed in. Sighed and trembled at the brush of his fingertips across the skin at the small of her back. Murmured his name into his chest in a shaky little voice when his other hand slid into her hair from beneath her ponytail. She felt the press of his lips, his nose, his whole face into the top of her head.

“You okay?” His words rumbled through her skull, down into her chest where the trembling began and settled in like a coat of paint over a cracked wall. Turning the tables to take care of her, now that she was the one in the midst of some sort of emotional spiral beyond her control.

The sound she made in response was something like laughter, something like a sneeze, and she pushed her face even deeper into his chest. “I don’t know,” she said, hating the way it made her sound, whiny and young and stupid. But she didn’t know, because she’d never felt like this before about anyone and for some inexplicable reason, that not-so-little truth picked now to present itself.

This may have been building up for a long time, but it was only last night’s sunset, last night’s twinkle of stars which held vigil to her agonizing over whether or not Daryl felt the same. A day, just a single day. Less than, because only this morning they kissed for the first time and a trio of kisses—no, not just kisses but time spent kissing—littered the hours between then and now. God, no wonder.

It wasn’t just a crush. This wasn’t just biology. This wasn’t anything short of everything and Beth was giggling again now, bubbly laughter spilling into Daryl’s chest because as strange as this was, as huge as this was, it was also so right.

“I’m a mess,” she whispered, slipping her arms beneath Daryl’s to wrap around his back, pull herself closer with her palms pressed to his wings.

Daryl huffed into her hair. “Makes two of us.”

Two of us.

Something about the way he said the words swept a blanket of relief across her shoulders, calming the still-prickling nerves, at last soothing the tremble that hadn’t quite gone away. She didn’t need to explain because Daryl understood. Daryl was standing right here with her—two of us—and they’d be okay. They would. Beth and Daryl against the world and everything else in it, and that meant this, too, navigating the way after taking that first giant leap off the ledge this morning.

Beth didn’t try to temper her smile when she pulled her face out of his chest, grateful that she didn’t when it only widened his. She moved back, but only far enough to see him clearly in the flickering candlelight, and the hand that had cradled the back of her head skimmed down over her shoulder until it joined the other at her back, fingertips curling into the strip of skin at the top of her jeans.

His eyes blazed, even in the shadows, a look in them that was as familiar as it was thrilling, driving out the remnants of whatever that was before. Beth’s pulse quickened all over again, heart fluttering like a rabbit’s behind her ribs. It wasn’t anything new, the same internal riot stirred up by Daryl looking at her that way, but it was different now. They hadn’t put it into words and Beth didn’t know when they would, but it was out there and they both knew it. She could still taste it—taste him—on her tongue.

As much as she wanted to give in to the urge to lean up and kiss him again and see where it took them this time, the little tremble in his fingers held her back. The quivering at the corners of his mouth despite the genuineness of his smile. On the heels of her own moment of being completely overwhelmed by the magnitude of this, it was enough to give her pause. Maybe they needed a distraction to let the heat fade a bit, clear their heads and get some rest after a long day.

“Anything else interesting in your loot bag?”

Daryl let out a long breath, dragging his gaze from her to glance over toward the middle of the barn, where their two cloth bags and the pile of peaches lay abandoned.

“Nah. Just junk.” He cleared his throat and looked back at her, not smiling now but his eyes still glittered brightly, even in the dim light. “Gettin’ late, though.”

Beth nodded. All she had left in hers were random things they couldn’t spare the room for anyway. “All right.”

Not the distraction she thought of, at first, but it would do, gathering up their stuff, packing the things to take with them and throwing what they wouldn’t into one of the cloth bags. The other Daryl stuffed into his pack for another day’s use, another house waiting to be looted. Though Beth wished she could take all the candles, they were too heavy, too bulky, so she grabbed one of a medium size to take along, blowing it out and pouring the hot wax into the dirt before she tucked it away. Another she picked to carry up into the loft with them, at least until they got settled, and a third she left where it stood after blowing out the others, burning for Daryl in the middle of the dirt floor as she made her way toward the ladder.

While Daryl checked the barn door, Beth climbed up into the hayloft above. Earlier she brought up the bedding she grabbed from the house while Daryl gathered firewood, knowing they would spend the night up here. Before the turn, many of her neighbours who farmed used modern equipment and baled their hay in those large round bales, all wrapped up in white plastic like giant marshmallows in the fields before being stored away. Haylofts like this got repurposed for storage or just left empty. Beth thanked whoever might be listening for this particular farm and its simple square bales like the kind they’d used at home, stored up in the hayloft away from the moisture of the dirt floor below.

She sniffed a few of them and couldn’t smell any mould, then cut the baling twine with the blade on her new multi-tool and spread three bales’ worth of hay out into a corner of the loft. It was no cabin bed, but with the blankets laid out over the hay it would be so much nicer than sleeping on the ground or atop the plank floor. She was about to crawl into the makeshift bed when she heard the hiss of steam from below, as Daryl doused the remnants of his fire. And it was silly, Beth knew it, but the thought of him climbing up here and sliding into bed beside her kicked her pulse into overdrive yet again.

As though they hadn’t spent weeks already sharing a bed, the latter of them wearing far less clothing than this, but the vision she had earlier still hovered there in her mind. Still burned in her belly no matter how much she tried to suppress it.

By the time Daryl made it up the ladder, Beth had her pack and crossbow arranged beside her as she lay on her back beneath the blanket, fingers locked together across her stomach to keep them from fidgeting. Daryl’s lip twitched as he set eyes on her, a moment or two after his head appeared through the hole in the floor. He pulled up the ladder and then strode over and Beth’s heart pounded harder.

Beth looked at him, eyes travelling up the lean length of his legs to the erection pushing at the front of his jeans, on past the slim hips and narrow waist leading up to shoulders broader than any man had the right to possess. Too-long hair framed his face as he gazed down at her, features in shadow though she felt him looking, as always his gaze sparking like a campfire on her skin.

“Guess I’m takin’ first watch?” he said, voice full of gravel, though they both knew he always did.

Beth heard the smile in his words despite the gruffness, and it brought one to her face in response, but it didn’t settle the squirming in her belly. Before she could think about it, the words fell out of her mouth in a rapid-fire whisper. “Lay with me awhile? Until I fall asleep?”

The tremor began in his toes, or at least it looked that way from down here. Daryl made a little sound in the back of his throat but even then he nodded quickly. As he set down his own belongings, Beth’s heart pounded harder in her chest, enough that she was certain Daryl would see it jumping beneath her skin if he were to look. It happened every time they fell into bed together, but this time there was no question. No waiting and wondering. Beth turned onto her side and Daryl settled in behind her, his breath shaky and warm on her neck as he tucked his face in and slipped his palm beneath her shirts to splay out, big and warm on her bare belly. Beth wiggled to close the space and Daryl pulled her back against the wall of his chest.

Fingertips resumed their familiar arcing touch across her skin, feather-light and just shy of tickling. With her jeans on he couldn’t lay his palm as low as usual, but still plenty low, considering, still more than enough to draw out those same shivers, same sighing breaths, same burst of heat as he always did when he touched her like this. Except he must know now, without a doubt, what it did to her. What he did to her and what he was doing to her now. She hadn’t been shy when she sat in his lap before and rocked against the erection straining between them, or about wanting to feel him pressed into her belly, though he’d held back. Lying here with her now he had his hips angled away as he always did, just enough that she couldn’t feel what she knew was still there. What she saw with her eyes as he stood above her.

He did want her, in the same millions of ways she wanted him. She didn’t question that, not anymore, especially not with the way he kissed her—practically made love to her with his mouth. So much had happened in such a short amount of time and it was too soon to go any further. Bodies might be aching for it but her heart needed her to wait and she suspected his did, too. Taking a bit of time to settle and figure things out together before that happened was the smart thing to do, the mature thing to do. Stopping down there at the stall wasn’t what she wanted, but she was glad they had. Daryl meant too much to her—and she was pretty sure she meant too much to him—to rush into it.

Something else nagged at her, though, something she felt maybe she could piece together if she thought on it for a while. She was too tired now, too confused by her weird moment earlier, and too hyper-aware of Daryl’s body wrapped around her to be clear-headed enough to sort through it tonight. It wasn’t just the way Daryl held back physically that had her wondering, but something else, something she sensed ran a whole lot deeper than trying to keep a few inches between them.

Beth drew little circles on the back of Daryl’s hand with her fingers, while his stroked her belly with that feather-light touch. He whispered her name into her neck, barely audible enough to hear, and afterward his mouth continued to move against her skin, forming silent words with every motion. Beth couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, could only feel it, the slide of his lips, the scratch of his beard, and the heat of his breath, but it seemed, somehow, that he was trying to give her answers to her questions when didn’t even know them himself.

Answers would come, and Beth tried to breathe deep and forget about the questions for tonight. He was here. They both were. Everything else could wait.

“Goodnight, Daryl,” she whispered, heart pounding away as it always did to the tune of his name.

And she thought she could hear, as he bid her goodnight in turn, the steady pounding of his. Could feel it, the shape of the words beating strong and steady at her back.

Beth – Beth – Beth.

Daryl – Daryl – Daryl.

*~*

Despite the whirling thoughts in her head, it didn’t take long for Beth to fall asleep. Daryl woke her a few hours later, just as her subconscious began to tread toward what likely would have become a nightmare, but well before it could get its hooks in her. The little swirl of darkness dissipated with the first stroke of Daryl’s fingers across her forehead, and Beth lay there with her head in his lap—having migrated, at some point in her sleep, to using him as a pillow instead of the actual one she snagged from the house—and indulged in his touch for a long moment before pushing herself up and out of the blankets to take over watch so Daryl could grab a few hours of sleep, too.

He didn’t bother with the pretence of using the pillow. When she sat up he slipped down under the blanket and laid his head on her thighs, turned half way onto his stomach so he could curl his arm around her waist and snuggle right in. At least, in this, he felt confident to act, and Beth couldn’t stop smiling as she combed her fingers through his hair and he rumbled contentedly. Barn cat turned lap cat, soon snoring softly beneath the glide of her fingers.

Beth kept combing her fingers through his hair long after he fell asleep, thinking on everything that happened between them today. It really had been a whirlwind of emotions on both their parts, but for Daryl most of all. She might not be privy to his darker thoughts but she could piece it together well enough to at least have an idea of what might have plagued him. But he pulled himself out of it, put it away as best he could, came back to the barn instead of drowning in the past and that was good. And he could do this, relax and sleep, lay his head in her lap and trust her to keep them both safe. No matter what happened today.

That was something, and not something small. Beth held onto that as she replayed the day in her mind, from the kiss at the ledge at sunrise to this moment here, when Daryl burrowed his face into her jeans and mumbled something in his sleep. The man had so many layers to him she’d never figure them all out.

When he woke on his own just before dawn, like the rooster he was, Daryl turned over on his back and Beth touched his face with gentle sweeps of her fingertips like he had done for her. His eyes stayed closed and a sleepy smile pulled at his lips, tugging wider around a groan when she raked her nails across his scalp. Once again he rumbled out something to the effect of don’t stop and pushed his head deeper into her touch.

They did need to get moving, though, and while Beth wanted to lean down and kiss him good morning, she decided against it. Gave the scruff on his chin a good long scratch instead before the two of them gathered up their gear and set out for the day. They breakfasted on peaches as they left the farm behind, picking their way through the woods in the grainy grey of pre-dawn.

Walking today was much the same as the past two, though Daryl spent most of it at her side instead of trailing behind. He hadn’t changed his mind about her leading the way. That job remained hers, and he deferred to her decisions as they went along, but Beth would rather have him doing so from beside her, anyway. He kept quiet this morning, talking very little, mostly his usual soundtrack of low hums and soft grunts. But he wasn’t distant, and showed that with frequent brushes of his knuckles on hers, sometimes a palm at the small of her back or the stroke of his fingers on her neck or wherever he could find a bare strip of skin. Wasn’t shy about looking at her, either, and Beth felt his gaze like the skitter of fireflies on her skin more often than she didn’t. They didn’t have much time to get caught in those long lingering looks, mostly because they didn’t stop walking except to survey the places they came across. But whenever they made eye contact, shared that tiniest of smiles between them, it only deepened the warmth of the ember burning away in her belly for the man at her side.

This was familiar territory by now, the way things were between them. A crackle of energy that only needed the connection of blue on blue to ignite no matter how great the physical distance. Still unnamed, but acknowledged now for what it was, for what they were to each other. Beth wasn’t sure she could put it all into words just yet, and they would have to try at some point, but she wasn’t ready to do that and neither was Daryl.

Beth didn’t know how she knew this, but that knowledge went beyond merely taking into account Daryl’s tendency toward saying few words. It did tie into the other thing, the shade of something else she didn’t quite have a word for. It wasn’t reluctance. It wasn’t resistance. The closest thing she could come to was hesitation—and even that wasn’t quite right, but it helped, having a word she could use to think about this. Daryl, or some part of Daryl, remained hesitant about them in a way she hadn’t noticed before, since they’d taken that first leap off the ledge, although Beth felt he didn’t want to be.

The day had dawned cool and stayed that way, overcast with low hanging clouds and just enough of a breeze to keep away the heat even into the afternoon. Beth’s right side ached from the bruises she couldn’t see but knew she got from falling into that hole yesterday, but it wasn’t enough to slow her down. The soreness in her muscles from working with Daryl eased as she moved, and what didn’t stretch away served as a reminder of the importance of knowing how to defend herself against somebody stronger.

Yesterday’s farm was the first of many, the outlier in a swatch of farmland nestled between the woods and the road. Eventually the woods on the other side began to give way to fields and structures, too, at least from what they could see. They didn’t stop to search these places, not while they still had a long day’s travel ahead of them, just saw what they could from the edge of the woods or up in a tree, and moved on each time they didn’t find a vehicle. Beth wished she had brought along her crossbow’s scope after all, even if just for its usefulness in seeing things from a distance.

“Nothin’?” said Daryl, unnecessarily, as she climbed back down the tree, hanging off the lowest branch before dropping down the final few feet to the ground. He caught her, sort of, hands just skirting her waist as she landed.

Also unnecessary, but she didn’t mind, and the little brush of his fingertips even through her layers of clothing set off a little flutter in her belly. “Nah. Not even a tractor this time.”

Daryl hummed, but didn’t say anything. Yet another farm in a long line of them without a single vehicle parked outside. Beth never gave much thought to placing bets, to what it meant to consider the odds of something, but had anyone asked she’d have said the odds of finding at least one vehicle amongst all these abandoned places, even a beat-up old truck, were pretty good. Daryl caught her eye as this thought wriggled into her head and she read his meaning as clearly as if he’d spoken it aloud. He didn’t like how this felt, and neither did she, and a prickly little shiver rolled across her shoulders.

She sighed and glanced around, taking in the grey sky and the wind whipping the tops of the trees. The sun wasn’t visible, but she could mostly make out its position in the sky where the clouds glowed a bit brighter. If the spacing of the farms remained the same they could at least reach the next one before they’d have to stop to make camp and find some food.

“Let’s go,” she said, stepping back into the woods. Daryl gave an almost imperceptible nod and moved to follow, pressing his hand to the small of her back a moment before letting it drop to his side.

That unpleasant prickle didn’t entirely go away even with the pleasant shiver brought on by Daryl’s touch, and for that reason Beth led them deeper into the trees, further from the fields than they’d been for most of the day. If Daryl noticed he didn’t say anything, but she didn’t expect him to.

“I don’t understand,” Beth said, once she felt they’d put enough distance between themselves and the fields. “Not even one car?”

Beside her, Daryl shrugged, not committing to it either way. He didn’t know the answers either, obviously, but he must have already formed his own theories. For the most part the farms just looked abandoned. Like the place they spent the night, none of them showed much in the way of damage, just neglect. Long since vacated and left untouched, or mostly so, thereafter. They hadn’t gone into any of the other houses but Beth remembered the picture frames, sitting empty above the mantle, in the one they had. The kitchen cleaned, dishes put away, shelves cleared of food aside from one or two items forgotten.

The farmyard, empty. Animals gone. Everything left tidy, put back in its place at the end of the world.

Somewhere out there, Beth’s childhood home stood ruins, destroyed by the herd which chased them out. There hadn’t been time to grab photographs, to take anything but the clothes on her back. They left the house as it was—dishes in the sink, clothes on the line, food in the pantry, memories on the mantle. Fled with the horses still in their stalls and the yard in the disarray of everyday use.

“Maybe—maybe all the neighbours got together, got out together,” Beth said, after a moment. “Before it got really bad, maybe they all just got in their cars and left in a group. Safety in numbers, right?”

Daryl gave a quick nod, a soft grunt. Maybe, that grunt said. Whatever else he was thinking, Beth wasn’t quite sure she wanted to know. If it mattered, he would say something. Until then Beth just kept walking and hoped the niggling sense of something not-quite-right would pass.

When she led them back toward the edge of the trees a while later, about the time she thought it would take to reach the next farm, they came out of the woods at the far end of what looked to have been cow pasture, once upon a time. The farmyard stood back the direction they had come from, too far to bother backtracking without good reason, but a leafy copse of trees blocked their view of the yard. Aside the splashes of blue and white of the house’s siding visible between the wind-blown branches and gold-tinged leaves, they couldn’t see a thing.

Beth let out a huff of breath and glanced over at Daryl, standing at her shoulder. “Guess I’m climbin’ again.”

His lip twitched a little, but before she could even think to ask what, he was sliding his crossbow off his shoulder. He handed it to her and dropped his bag at her feet, turned and headed for the nearest tree with big enough branches.

He wasn’t a climber like she was, didn’t scurry up the tree like it was second nature, but he had the strength and the agility to get him up where he needed to be. Even if he looked a bit like a housecat, perched up there waiting for the fireman to come with their ladder truck to rescue him. Beth wasn’t really worried, though, and after a few minutes of looking, Daryl picked his way down, hanging the way she tended to do from the final branch before dropping to land with barely a sound on the leaf-strewn grown below.

“Nah,” he said, tossing his head in the direction of the buildings.

Beth gazed out that way for a moment, not really looking. Daryl took a step closer and hooked a couple of fingers around a couple of hers, not quite holding her hand, but it was enough to remind her he was there. Always there, and waiting on her to make the next move—probably, she thought, in more ways than one.

It hadn’t gotten any warmer, but the idea of traipsing into the yard even just to clear the barn made that prickle across her shoulders push in a little deeper. She didn’t understand why, but she didn’t think she needed to. As much she wanted shelter for the night, her instincts—if that’s what this was—urged her to turn away from the buildings and head deeper into the woods. Beth looked back at Daryl, unsurprised to find him already waiting to catch her eyes, but instead of telling him, she just nodded, a sense of certainty washing over her that he already knew what she was going to say.

He turned his hand to fully catch hers and together they headed back amongst the trees.

*~*

Snares weren’t something they had practiced yet, even though Daryl used them pretty much exclusively for their rabbits at the cabin until the end, when Beth wanted crossbow practice. After leaving that last farmyard behind, they walked until they reached a good camping spot near the bank of that same meandering river, and before Beth could start setting up camp, Daryl claimed it was time to learn. He still owed her a rabbit, after all, so they might as well.

“If I set the snares, doesn’t that mean I’m the one catching the rabbit?” she asked, poking her tongue out the corner of her mouth when he pretended to glare at her.

“You wanna learn it or not?” he asked, grumbling, but Beth knew better.

Maybe at one time he defaulted to that tone of voice, but these days he had to work at it. All it took was her bumping her shoulder into his to knock the put-on scowl off his face and replace it with Daryl’s own brand of smile. Subtle, just that little lift, higher on the left than the right, but no less genuine because of it.

“A’right, you,” he said, bumping her shoulder in return, a sparkle in his eyes even in the flat light of a cloudy evening. “C’mon.”

Tying the snares wasn’t difficult, once she practiced it a couple of times. Finding places to set them up wasn’t either, in a way, because she’d already been learning to hunt, to see the signs and know how to read them. She set hers where she thought she might have some success, two places where some sort of small creature left signs of its passage through the underbrush. Daryl set his own and they left them for the time being to make camp. Daryl went to check them sometime later and came back with two small cottontails—one from one of her snares, he said, and one from one of his—enough to share one for supper and save the other for breakfast.

As darkness fell, the temperature dropped, a colder night than they’d had in some time. They couldn’t risk a fire, not one large enough to throw the kind of heat they needed, so when Daryl took his place beneath his chosen tree to take watch, Beth settled down close beside him. Barely a breath passed before he lifted his arm so she could scoot in closer and tucked it around her once she settled. His fingers curled in at her waist, pressing into the layers of fabric until she felt the weight of his fingertips on her skin.

Beth turned into him a little more and laid her head in that perfect indent at the join between his chest and shoulder. Because she thought she could, she snaked her arm across his stomach, slipping it beneath his vest, and curled her fingertips in like he did with his. Beth’s heart pounded, spreading a heat as only Daryl could inspire through her chilled body, and a little tremor rolled through her.

He noticed the shiver, and pulled his arm tighter. “Cold?”

“A little.” She closed her eyes and smiled as Daryl breathed deep beneath her cheek. “Think summer’s over for good?”

“Dunno,” he answered, after a bit. “Been wrong before.”

“I wonder what day it is. What month it is, even.” She snorted as she realized how far away the concept of time-keeping really was. “I’m not even sure what year it is.”

That drew a little chuckle out of Daryl, too, and he swept his chin across the top of her head. “Don’t matter no more.”

“Just another thing left behind when the world ended,” Beth said, thinking on that for a bit.

She did know, to be honest, but it wasn’t immediate. She had to actually think about it to bring the right combination of numbers to mind, and they tasted foreign. Wrong. Birthdays and holidays and ringing in the new year couldn’t really factor in when every day was spent making sure you lived to see the next. Survival by the day, sometimes by the minute. Beth didn’t even remember now when she stopped keeping track, but after a time even the early days on the farm had begun to blend together.

Once Mama got bit, and Shawn, well, even then it hadn’t seemed important.

Daryl let out a little ah, drawing her out of her own head as he shifted, searching for something in his pack on the ground beside him with the arm not tucked around her.

Beth lifted her head off his chest to watch. “What’re you—oh!”

Daryl pulled out the roll of Life Savers he found yesterday, holding it so she could reach to peel open the foil at the end.

“What colour’s your favourite?” she asked, pulling the red candy ring out and holding it between her fingers.

She wasn’t surprised when Daryl offered a mumbled I dunno and punctuated it with a shrug, but she wasn’t having that.

“C’mon,” she said, tipping her face up to meet his eyes. “You gotta have one.”

His lip twitched, just a bit. “They ain’t got no peach one, so...” The twitching lip shifted into that subtle smile and he tipped his chin toward the candy. “You pick.”

Beth let the flush of warmth wash over her in the wake of his words, and she curled the red ring into her hand to reach into the roll for the next one in line. Keeping her eyes locked on Daryl’s, she pulled it out and watched as his gaze shifted to her fingers and the Life Saver she held in them.

“Here,” she said, lifting the candy up to touch it to his lips. “I think maybe you’d like the green one.”

Daryl took the green ring between his teeth but before she could pull away, his lips closed down over her fingers, dragging warm and moist on her skin. Beth shivered against him, stamped down on the giggle trying to bubble its way out of her chest by shoving the red Life Saver into her mouth instead. The burst of artificial cherry flavour made her salivary glands ache with effort as she swirled the candy around her mouth.

It wasn’t peaches, definitely could not compare with fresh peaches from the tree, but this could be the last cherry Life Saver she ever ate and she was gonna enjoy it. “Mmm.”

Daryl’s candy clacked against his teeth. “Mmhm.”

If they were smart they would save these. Ration them, make them last by having just one each after supper every night until they were gone. But sometimes it wasn’t worth withholding something when there was nothing to lose from a bit of indulgence.

Beth had a pineapple one next and Daryl got orange. He took it from her fingers the same way he took the green, and silence fell around them, aside from the clacking of candies against their teeth, the rustle of foil and paper when Beth pulled the next round out of the roll. Each time when hers was down a skinny, sharp-edged little ring, Daryl crunched the rest of his with his teeth. He waited for her to finish, then they would start all over again, until the last one dissolved into a lemon-flavored memory on her tongue.

“You should sleep,” he said, after a long while of sitting together in silence. The darkness was absolute, now, here beneath the trees without moon or stars to shed any light.

“I will.” Beth tightened her arm around his middle, pushed her face a little deeper into his chest. “Warmer like this.”

“Mmm.” Daryl brushed his thumb over her cheek, cool where her face felt flushed, then traced a line from her ear to her chin. “You are. Warm.”

She was, even though the timbre of his voice made her shiver. “Yeah?”

Daryl tightened his arm around her waist, drew her even closer. His thumb skirted just beneath her bottom lip without quite touching it, then followed the shape again as the first pass pulled her lips into a smile. “Yeah.”

She couldn’t see him in the dark, but that didn’t matter. When she lifted her head from his chest, she knew just where to find him, where to brush her nose so that it glided along the underside of his. Daryl’s breath washed over her face, hot and shaky, sweet from the candy, and before he could turn his trembling palm to cradle her cheek, Beth leaned up that last little bit to capture his mouth.

They couldn’t get carried away, not out here, even though the familiar stirrings of heat in her belly tried to urge her to reconsider. But she could kiss him. She could have this, and as she pressed her palm to the cool leather over top his pounding heart, she knew it was okay. Already their lips knew one another and they glided in sync, heads tipping at just the right moment to deepen the kiss that little bit further. Daryl moaned into her mouth and a tremble rolled through him, just beneath the surface like the rumbling of an earthquake, a shifting of the earth from where it used to be, and Beth was once again reminded of that fractured dam across a river.

He held back now for the same reason as she—because they had to. Because giving in to the urge to straddle his lap and just go with it was not an option. But that other thing lingered there, too, undefined, even as the kiss wound down instead of up. When they broke apart, the trembling in Daryl’s body hadn’t stopped. Beth snuggled in and he pulled her close, buried his face into her hair and just breathed. She didn’t know if she was helping him or not, with whatever might be on his mind right now, but he didn’t seem inclined to let her go.

His trembling eased, after a time. Beth stayed curled up with him, head once again resting on his chest. Palm over his heart, which gradually slowed down to its usual steady beat. Beneath her head, his chest moved smoothly with deep, even breaths. High above the leaves of the trees rustled in the wind, though it didn’t penetrate down into their camp below. No insects tonight, just the nearby ripple of the slow-moving river and the sounds of their breathing. It was cold, but not unmanageably so, not with Daryl’s body heat and his arm, big and solid, wrapped tightly around her.

Daryl kept watch and Beth tried to sleep, but the questions she put aside last night still played heavily on her mind. A different Beth, a younger Beth, the Beth she used to be instead of the Beth she was, might worry that she was the cause. That Daryl hesitated because his feelings for her were something he didn’t want, something he was ashamed to feel. That he didn’t actually want her at all and held back because of that.

But she wasn’t that Beth and she knew better. More importantly, she knew Daryl.

No, it was something else. A set of dots she couldn’t quite connect in her head. Beth sighed into Daryl’s chest and buried her face in deeper. She didn’t get it. They both wanted this. Beth knew that Daryl knew where she stood because he stood there with her, and she’d been pretty clear—she thought—that the physical aspect of all this was something she wanted just as much as the rest of it. So he couldn’t be worried about her, concerned he was somehow pressuring her into something she wasn’t ready for because that wasn’t the case at all. So if it wasn’t that, then what?

Use your head, Greene. C’mon, now.

Oh.

Oh, of course. Of course.

Daryl was older than her, but that wasn’t something she thought of most days. He was Daryl, and Daryl meant a great many things to her but he wasn’t a number. She didn’t know how old he was and didn’t care. The years stretching between them weren’t important, not when they stood side by side. Beth didn’t like to assume and prided herself on her attention to not doing so. Preferred to form opinions based on fact, on what she learned instead of what she was supposed to think, but she had done that here, she saw now. Some part of her subconscious looked at older and assumed a great many things that maybe—more than maybe—weren’t true.

Two nights ago she mused on the Daryl she remembered from the farm and from the prison versus Daryl as he was now—the Daryl at her side. Thought about what they had together and how that wasn’t something she had seen from him before. She had thought it a million times lying in his arms in bed at the cabin, how special it was that he would hold her close when he held everyone else away.

Beth knew about the scars, and how they came to be there. Knew where he came from, who he’d been and who he hadn’t. Read between the lines and figured out that the only good people he ever knew were the ones he met at the end of the world.

Whatever he’d known before, it wasn’t good. Wasn’t healthy. At best uncomfortable and at worst, well, scars like that don’t just happen by accident. The voices in his head, the marks cleaved into his skin, the way he was—that was done to him, and he would never be free of that.

He wasn’t worried about her, about how she would handle where they were going. He was worried about himself.

Maybe that was simplifying things. It probably was, but Beth held onto that little glimmer of understanding because it just made so much sense. A great many lines had been crossed between the two of them, in their time alone together. She already knew that. Already saw how this was different. But she missed, somehow, what was staring her in the face all along.

Daryl had never done this before, embarked on a journey of the heart with another living soul like the one he was travelling now, with her.

Oh, Daryl.

A lump thickened in her throat and her next breath caught in her chest and stuck there, pulling back against the need to exhale with a cool, sharp-edged ache. Because she could never truly understand just how bad it was for him, even though she wanted to. Because this beautiful man had gone most of his life without knowing a touch that didn’t hurt. A voice that didn’t wound. Another heart that beat, even for a time, in tune with his own.

Until now.

She wasn’t immune to feeling overwhelmed. Her moment last night, her double-talking doubts of the night before, proved that well enough. And even though she’d had a Jimmy and a Zach and everything that went along with that, neither one of them were Daryl. She wasn’t comparing ‘cause there was no comparison to be made. That little knot in her belly hadn’t gone away, pulled taught against the impossible depths of her feelings for him that grew stronger by the day.

If that’s how it was for him, too—and she was sure, now, so sure that it was—then no wonder.

He was trying. He was trying so hard. Some of it came easy now, like this, cuddling with her beneath this tree, lying with her at night. All the little touches, the looks, the trust he placed in her—but it took a long time getting here. He wanted this every bit as much as she did despite the demons of his past whispering god-knows-what into his mind. Every tremor in his body, every hitch in his breath, every moment when he held himself back even though he looked at her like he wanted to fall right into her and never come out, all of it signs of the war he waged within his own head.

Beth didn’t know how to help him or even if she could. All she could do was try, try like Daryl was trying, and hope that would be enough. Two of us, she remembered, navigating the way side by side.

He was worth it. They were worth it.

Beth and Daryl against the world—and everything else in it.

*~*

So when your hope’s on fire
But you know your desire
Don’t hold a glass over the flame
Don’t let your heart grow cold
I will call you by name
I will share your road
- Mumford & Sons

to be continued in chapter 26 >>

Fall Right In - Chapter 24/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Sun, 27 Sep 2015 18:39:26 GMT

Fall Right In
Chapter 24 – Twistin’ Like a Flame in a Slow Dance, Baby

*~*

Though she had wanted rabbit, Beth declared their feast of peaches, fresh and ripe from the orchard trees, an acceptable substitute. A small mountain of them lay on the floor between the two of them, alongside a growing number of pits, and they were so damn delicious Daryl decided he’d risk getting the shits just to keep eating them. Weren’t every day they had access to fresh fruit, after all, least of all perfectly ripe peaches right off the tree.

On their search of the house—looting, as Beth joked—they each filled up a cloth shopping bag full of whatever caught their eyes as being potentially useful. Now they sat facing each other in the centre of her circle of tea lights, eating peaches and sorting through the spoils of scavenging.

“Rice crackers,” said Beth, pulling the package out and placing it down beside the peaches. “All sealed and everythin’. Might not even be completely stale.”

Sorting this shit provided a bit of a distraction from the lingering heaviness in his head, though Beth drove most of it away before and did a little more each time she smiled at him from across the circle. They had the time, shut up here inside the barn, and figured they might as well make a game of showing off their prizes. Suited Daryl just fine. Too early to sleep, and besides, he liked the way Beth’s eyes widened in anticipation whenever it was his turn to show her what he found.

He reached into his bag and sure enough, Beth’s whole face lit up like this was fucking Christmas morning or something. The prize this time was a ratty Ziploc bag full of double-A batteries, which he set down in the not-food pile. “Maybe some of ‘em ain’t dead.”

Beth’s eyes got impossibly bigger and she squeaked out a high-pitched oh before plunging her hand into the depths of her bag, searching around a moment and producing a little flashlight. “Ta-da!”

“Think you win that round,” he said, cracking a little smile at her enthusiasm, at the little pulse of joy it stirred up in him, seeing it.

“It’s your turn.” Beth reached for the batteries like she was gonna start testing them. “What else you got?”

But Daryl shook his head and set the bag aside. “Gotta show me again, first.”

Beth placed the batteries and flashlight on the dirt next to her and rubbed her palms together. “Which one?”

“Show me all-clear.”

Beth slid her palms together again, then carefully arranged her hands the way he showed her. Taking a breath, she brought her clasped hands to her face and blew into them, but the sound was wrong and she paused to breathe a minute before trying again. On her second attempt, the whistle of her breath through her hands and the correct motion of her fingers made the tee-weet sound he taught her. A sound similar to the call of a tanager, a bird common enough to use for these bird call signals.

He nodded at her, rumbling a bit under his breath. “Again.”

Beth repeated the call, this time getting it right on the first try. She picked it up quick, like she did most things he taught her. The half hour they spent working on this earlier stuck with her.

“That was good, right?” Beth asked, her hands now clasped in her lap as she looked at him expectantly, all wide-eyed and toothy-grinned.

Rather than answering—‘cause he couldn’t very well turn into a simpering idiot every time she did something right, at least not on the outside—Daryl brought his hands to his mouth and echoed the bird call back to her, so she could hear how they were the same.

Beth smiled in that way she did when she was pleased with herself and she caught his eyes when he dropped his hands back into his lap. He couldn’t help but smile back at her, though his stayed little where hers grew wide. Daryl knew, logically, that he wasn’t supposed to worry any more about what happened today. Beth had moved past it, said what needed saying and pulled his head out of the ground while she was at it, too. Making it up to her wasn’t about beating himself to a figurative pulp, it meant not doing it again, but he wouldn’t know if he’d learned his lesson until the next time he was tested. For now, though, he had this. Was her idea, having a way of communicating without words, and it was a damn good one. Least he could do was work on it with her.

Beth repeated the call once more, getting it right a third time, her smile still pleased when she lowered her hands. She clasped them together in her lap again and tossed her chin toward his bag. “Okay, now show me what you have.”

Daryl reached in blind, closed his fingers around the first thing they touched, one of the many random boxes of shit he picked up. This particular one revealed itself as the tampons found tucked away in a closet in the bedroom downstairs. Figured he best grab them for Beth since he wasn’t sure when she might need them. Didn’t think she had yet—unless she was sneakier than he thought—and he hadn’t seen any at the cabin. “Uh. Here.”

He tossed her the box, which she caught without effort. As she studied the writing on it, an odd expression passed over her face, just a flash of something that was gone too soon for him to even hope to decipher it. Wasn’t sure he should even be looking at her while she was holding tampons, with the way some of the other women used to make a covert mission out of acquiring these, like the fact they bled was some sort of top secret classified information. But Beth didn’t seem to think anything of it when she tipped her head up to meet his eyes a moment later, box still in hand.

“Maybe we shoulda saved the thread and used one of these for your forehead,” she said, making what could only be described as an inserting motion with her fingers.

He thought he was gonna choke on his tongue, but Beth only laughed as she thanked him and set the box down beside her pack, then reached into her shopping bag again.

“Daddy had one of these,” she said, pulling out a thin leather object about the length of her palm. “Shawn, too. I think it’s a pretty good one.”

She passed him the thing, which was actually a little belt-loop sheath, stamped on the outside with leatherman in gold letters, snapped closed over the multi-tool hidden inside. Daryl had one of these once, an old one he took on trade for some game he caught but didn’t need, and even beat up and missing a couple of parts it was a damn useful little thing. Pliers and blades, wire cutter, screw drivers, all kinds of things that came in handy when he least expected it. This one looked brand new, shiny silver, super sharp little blades, twenty-one tools altogether when he opened it up and counted them. A decent tool, too good to be left behind at the end of the world but a damn lucky find on Beth’s part.

“Where’d you find this?”

“It was all wrapped up, like a gift,” Beth said, with a small shrug. “Hidden in the back of a drawer in that little sewing room. I almost didn’t open it.”

That explained it being forgotten in the rush to leave. He slipped the tool into its sheath and passed it back to her. “Good thing you did. Here, put it on your belt.”

Her fingers closed around it, but she kept her hand hovering in midair. “You don’t want it?”

Daryl shook his head. “You found it, it’s yours.”

Beth gave a little nod, then got up on her knees to unbuckle her belt and slip it through the leather sheath, attaching it at her left hip, opposite her knife. When she sat back down she looked across the circle at him, hands clasped in her lap.

“I wanna show you another one,” she said, wiggling her fingers. “You pick.”

He wasn’t going to ask her, not until later, but her taking the initiative didn’t surprise him one bit. “Come-now-help,” he said. “Show me that one.”

She was just as careful now, in arranging her hands, as she was with the first bird call. Instead of one breath she took several, fingers moving in a scaled down version of how they would do when she blew through them. When she did attempt the call, the urgent pip-pip-pip like the shout of a startled swallow whistled out, loud and insistent and perfect.

He knew he did a terrible job of keeping the look of pride off his face, considering the way Beth’s cheeks flushed and she smiled, not in that proud-of-herself way, something a bit gentler than that. Less put-on and more like something she couldn’t help making. Since he was caught anyway, Daryl did nod at her this time before repeating the call back to her as he had done with the first.

When he lowered his hands, Beth was still looking at him across the circle. Her smile stayed gentle, and though it wasn’t the half-mast look of before, there was something still a bit dreamy, and more than a little warm, in her eyes as they gazed at him. That fluttering in his chest rose up in answer to her as he met that gaze and held it between them. He hoped she would never stop looking at him like that, like nobody ever had before.

After a long time, Beth’s smile shifted just a touch, and she dropped her gaze for a second to reach for another peach from the pile. Wiped it down with one of the hand towels she grabbed from the bathroom, and, catching his eye again, took a big bite of the ripe fruit.

Juice dribbled down her chin, and Daryl’s eyes followed the path of the glistening liquid as it trickled down her neck. She was doing that on purpose, ‘cause she eyed him over the curve of the peach before taking another bite and didn’t bother wiping it clean, just let second stream of juice join the first. A braver man might take care of that for her, and Daryl could see how that would go in his mind. Her head tossed back, eyes shut, a little delighted hum vibrating through her neck as he lapped at the stickiness, the combined taste of peach and Beth like ambrosia on his tongue. Like the sweetest nectar he ever knew, and he’d close his lips over the place where her pulse beat, fast as a bird’s, just beneath her smooth skin…

He didn’t move, but his own heartbeat quickened just thinking about it, and the warmth inside him that was all her doing, the warmth he didn’t suspect would ever really disappear, deepened, pulsed thick and shimmering through his veins.

“Uh—” He cleared his throat, cursing his inability to act and cursing her all-too-knowing smirk. Woman was a fucking tease but he couldn’t say he didn’t like it, no matter that he couldn’t work up the courage to do something about it.

Beth lowered her peach, still only partially eaten, and used it to gesture to his lap. “Whatcha got in there?”

Whatcha got in—Oh. She meant the shopping bag, all but forgotten there in the space between his crossed legs. Face flaming, Daryl grumbled something even he didn’t understand and averted his gaze to search through the bag, fully aware of Beth giggling at him from her side of the circle.

He dug through the crap he collected, most of it likely to get left behind anyway, but then his fingers closed around the little roll of Life Savers at the very bottom. Whoever used the office had a secret sweet tooth—the bottom drawer in the desk was full of empty wrappers and a single roll of these.

“Ooooh.” Beth, still nibbling at her peach, eyed the candy with interest. “You gonna share, or are they yours because you found them?”

Daryl tossed the little roll in his hand and considered how he wanted to answer that. Beth kept her eyes on him as she took dainty little bites of that goddamned peach, like she was some delicate lady at teatime or some shit. Beth Greene was a lotta things, but she weren’t no teatime lady, that’s for damn sure, no matter that she could probably act the part.

“I’ll share,” he said, after a minute of watching her take those tidy little bites, noting the peach juice still staining her face and neck, dribbling down her wrist. “So long as you’re good.”

Beth gave that little giggle again, the soft one, the one that tickled his insides and only deepened that warmth. She lifted the peach up to her mouth again and fucking slurped at the juices beading out of it. While his face did god-knows-what in response to that, Beth just flicked her eyes toward the candy in his hand and then back up to meet his.

“Daryl,” she said, eyebrows raised above those big doe-eyes, expression completely serious. “I’m always good.”

His chest gave a fluttery lurch, and what was already trending toward hard got a little harder. He groaned, and she laughed again, and before he knew it she had crawled across the circle and hovered there in front of him, the hand with the peach in it raised up between them.

“And I can share, too,” she said, before lifting the peach right up to his lips.

He had no choice—or well, he did, but there wasn’t gonna be another one made—and took the bite she offered, sinking his teeth into the juicy yellow flesh while his own skin prickled with heat, eyes locked on hers over the fuzzy curve of the fruit between them. This woman was going to be the absolute death of him.

She left him with the peach, though, sinking back across the circle with a little smile on her face, just when he thought he was going to burst into flames under that stare of hers. Like she knew—and she probably did—that he had no fucking clue how to handle any of this. But it was mercy, not pity, which pulled her back. He sensed that in the look she gave him, kind and warm and yeah, heated the same way he burned inside, but he didn’t feel mocked. Belittled ‘cause she clearly had more experience with this kind of thing than he did. He just felt warm—and turned the hell on, but pleasantly so, with those bursts of energy lighting up in his belly and spreading out along his nerves.

It felt good and that wasn’t something he’d ever had much of before her. She made him feel all sorts of things, Beth did, but above all he felt good, even if it terrified him. Even if he didn’t know how to react sometimes when she did things like this. But she wasn’t teasing to make him uncomfortable, not in that sort of sense. Whatever reaction he managed was something she wanted, and it felt fucking good, knowing that. Knowing it and feeling it and believing that if he ever got up to doing even half the things she made him think about doing, Beth would be right there waiting for him.

He finished his half of the peach, and she passed him the towel to wipe off with. The urge was there to suck his fingers clean, to follow the trickle of juice with his tongue where it ran down his wrist. And maybe he longed to see the look in her eyes if he did it, wanted to know how it might make her breath grow heavier, colour her cheeks an even deeper pink in the candlelight, but he still couldn’t bring himself to do that, either, and relegated the fantasy to the depths of his brain where the rest of them lived, now that he let himself consider them at all.

Beth let her gaze fall from his and reached for her shopping bag again. Out of it she pulled a clear plastic carton thing full of ribbon, little coils of it in different sizes and varying shades of purple and pink and sparkly. Setting the carton on her lap, she slipped out a length of a very sparkly one and twirled it around her finger, the glitter in it picking up the orange glow from the candles around them.

“I thought these might look nice in your hair, you know, when I braid it for you,” she said.

Daryl eyed the sparkling thing in her hand. “Don’t think sparkly’s my colour.”

Beth snorted and grinned very wide. “But, Daryl, you won’t know until you’ve tried.”

He was about to tell her what he thought of that idea when she darted over and got a handful of his hair before he even knew she was gonna move. She evaded his attempts to grab her around the waist by slipping behind him, dropping the ribbon in the process. The thing fluttered down into his lap as he whirled around to try to catch her, but Beth scrambled to her feet.

“Come on, Daryl,” she said, circling around behind him, just outside the ring of candles. He craned his neck to watch her, taking in the growing width of the grin on her face. “You’ll look real pretty, I promise.”

“You tryin’ to aggravate me, girl?” he asked, knowing she’d see through the gruffness.

She did, and her smile grew even wider. “Yep. Gonna do something about that, Mr. Dixon?”

Any doubts he ever had about whether she knew what she was doing when she called him that were long gone, vanished amidst nibbled thumbs and ripe, juicy peaches, fingers in his hair that still smelled like her and a pair of kisses that went on forever. She knew, all right, and he couldn’t see what his own face was doing but he sure as hell saw hers, those wide eyes, that smirk, the suggestion of colour splashed across her cheeks. As her path brought her around to face him, Daryl set his bag to the side and got to his feet, not taking his eyes off her. In the midst of all that, Beth shifted her balance, loosened her stance.

Getting ready to run.

They hadn’t practiced this in a few days, and they wouldn’t always have an empty barn to work with. He owed it to her, anyway.

“Safe in here,” Beth said, reading his mind yet again.

“You sure about that?” he asked, and charged.

She managed to make it almost half way around the floor before he caught her, pulling her back against his chest with his arms tight around her middle, locking hers to her sides. Beth struggled and pulled and stomped her foot down on the toe of his boot, not too lightly either, but he held on this time. They made a game of it before but he was all too aware of how he let her down today, and the resurgence of this game of theirs cemented it further in his head.

Just like he couldn’t lock her in a barn and deal with the fallout later, he knew first hand that even standing just feet away didn’t mean he could get her out of a tight spot. If she hadn’t had that gun, hadn’t fought through the fear with enough clarity to do what she did, who knows what might have happened to her. He couldn’t protect her from the Gormans of the world, not like that. She said it herself, back at the cabin.

I’d have to like, hurt you, hurt you, wouldn’t I, if I wanted to get away for real?

Fun as it might be chasing her around, it wasn’t doing her any favours. Wasn’t helping her know what to do to protect herself.

Not too much longer and Beth got the hint and stopped struggling. She sagged back against him, breathing hard, the rise and fall of her chest straining against the bands of his arms. Daryl loosened his hold and as she had the last time they did this, Beth leaned her head back against his shoulder and tipped her face into his neck so her breath poured hot over his throat. And then he wasn’t so much holding onto her anymore as he was just holding her, his big arms around her small middle, hers coming to rest on top.

Despite the spread of warmth in his chest and the erection that he was pretty sure she could feel against her ass, Daryl pressed on to the point of this. “You get in a scrap for real, it ain’t gonna be wiggling or stompin’ on toes gets you out of it. Gotta fight fuckin’ dirty.”

“Okay,” Beth said, voice still a little breathless. She straightened up and turned to face him, still in the circle of his arms and standing so, so close with her palms to his chest. “Show me?”

His gaze slipped from her wide-open eyes, past the flush of her cheeks, still sticky with peach juice, to her lips, parted a bit with the weight of her breathing. Each breath out swirled right into his brain, fogging up his head until the world felt like it was titling to the side. God, he wanted to just pull her in, slide a hand from her back up into her hair and kiss her ‘til her knees got weak, ‘til they fell together to the dirt and kept on kissing. She wouldn’t push him away, he knew that now, standing here with her in the semi-dark of the barn, the flat of her stomach pushed up against his, hands at her back itching to pull her even closer.

But she asked him to show her, and maybe he wanted to kiss her, maybe he wanted a lot more than that, but wanting and doing something about it were two different things. Stepping away from her was like tearing off a layer of skin, but with a little space between them the fog lifted just enough for him to grab a sliver of focus. Beth took a couple of steadying breaths and bobbed her head, like she were trying to clear hers, too.

He weren’t no self-defence teacher. Never learned martial arts or nothing like that. Daryl could fight ‘cause he had to, growing up as he did, and later on trailing around after Merle and his ‘associates’ and all the shit that went along with it. What worked for him maybe wouldn’t work for Beth, she’d have to use her own body however it made sense to her to use it, but he could tell her what he knew from living it. Figure it out with her how that looked for her.

As he explained that to her, Beth was nodding. “Shawn showed me how to throw a punch, once. Thought I should know how to hit since I was so little. He said I should throw my weight into it, that no matter how small I was, if I threw my weight into it I could make it hurt.” She giggled a little, eyes tipping up toward the ceiling as she remembered back. “Had me practice on a side of pork until he thought I had it right, then made me hit him. I gave him a black eye and I cried.”

Daryl had to smile at the picture that scenario planted in his head, tiny little Beth Greene walloping her big brother so hard it brought her to tears. That was just so Beth, and even though he didn’t think punching was what they needed to work on, he couldn’t stop his little bark of laughter.

“If you’re far enough away to throw a punch, might as well just run for it,” Daryl said, after a minute, and this, too, had her nodding her head in agreement. “Your brother had a point, though. You’re small but you ain’t weak. You’re gonna hit, hit with all you got.”

“Throw my weight into it.” Beth bobbed her head again. “And fight dirty.”

“That’s right.” Daryl took a half step toward her again, just close enough to set his hands on her shoulders. “Can’t be afraid to hurt ‘em, Beth. Whatever you can do to them, they’re gonna do worse if you don’t.”

“Like walkers,” Beth said, still nodding. “I don’t kill a walker, it’s gonna kill me. Somebody’s got me, if I don’t hurt them enough to get away, they’re gonna hurt me more. That make sense?”

Daryl tightened his grip on her shoulders just a little. “No, that’s good, Beth. Like walkers. Like Gorman.”

She swallowed at the mention of that name, but nodded. “And if I don’t have a gun or a knife?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? Daryl wasn’t totally sure how to go about answering it. “Guess it depends on what’s goin’ on. What you can hit. How much movement you got.”

Beth’s gaze drifted off somewhere up and into the distance, thinking. After a moment, her eyes flicked back to catch his. “I think maybe it might be too much, tryin’ to think up every scenario, don’t you? Like, isn’t it better to know that kicking you in the balls is gonna hurt, no matter how I manage it?”

That’s it, Daryl thought. That made sense. Beth had already shown herself to have a clear head under pressure, the wherewithal to act where others might freeze up. She didn’t need everything spelled out for her, not if she already had the tools at her disposal.

“Right,” he said, hands dropping from her shoulders. “Nose, eyes, neck, solar plexus, groin, knees, ankles.” He gestured to each point in turn. “Hand-to-hand, those are what’s gonna hurt the most. What you’re gonna do the most damage to. And you gotta mean it, Beth. Make your first hit count.”

“So…” Beth slipped her wrist into his hand, and bent her arm up like she was trying to pull away. “Like this, I have a good shot at your knee.” She mimicked a kick, the sort she’d used with success many times on walkers, meant to strike the joint from the side, forcing it to bend in a way it didn’t naturally bend. “And if you’ve got me too close for that—” She stepped in closer, until her captured arm was pinned between them. “I can hit you in the nose.”

Daryl, still holding her trapped wrist, reached out for the other. “Like this,” he said, guiding her until the heel of her hand pushed up beneath his nose. “You hit me like this, all your weight behind it, hurts like a motherfucker. Probably breaks my nose.”

“And you let me go. Hopefully.” Beth practiced that again in slow motion, first leaning back like she was fighting his hold on her before throwing her body around and forward to make her strike. “And say if you catch my arm before I can hit you or you already have both, I’m close enough now to give you a knee to the junk.”

She mimicked this, too, not just bringing up her knee but swinging through her hips to show that she was throwing her weight into it.

Daryl flinched back out of reflex, even though she stopped well before she made contact. “You do that, girl, and you better get me hard enough that it ain’t you I’m reachin’ for.”

Wasn’t until Beth let out a little giggle, grinning and looking down at her feet, did Daryl realize how he said that and just what it implied. His whole face went hot, and he let go of her wrists and tore his gaze from hers. Maybe now might be a good time for the barn floor to open up and swallow him. Of course it didn’t, and yeah, all right, that particular cat was out of the bag as far as her knowing she had that kind of effect on him. If she had got her knee up she’d have found out he was still half-hard from earlier. Even thinking about it now diverted a bit more of his blood that way, knowing she felt him before, and remembering how she rocked against him while they kissed. So she knew, she knew and she didn’t so much mind, but saying it out loud, even by accident, was too much for his nerves. Just too much, period.

Beth cleared her throat, softly, and before he could stop himself he was already looking up at her, at the flush colouring her neck and her cheeks, visible even in this muted light. Something flashed across her face and vanished just as quickly, but in the wake of it she tilted her head and looked at him. For the first time—because throughout all of this, Beth always seemed so confident—Daryl wondered whether this whole thing between them, him and her and the precipice they were falling over, was just as massive, just as terrifying to her as it was to him.

“Come on,” she said, after a long minute of the two of them just staring. “Let’s keep going.”

Taking a deep breath, willing his blood to flow properly no matter that he was soon going to lose that battle completely, Daryl nodded and took hold of her wrists again, trying and failing to keep his fingers from trembling.

They spent a long time working through different ways she could hit and get out of various holds, ways he was confident would work for her, using her elbows, her knees, the heel of her hand and even her fists, in some instances. She figured out how to launch herself into a head-butt, even against someone as tall as him when he had her from behind, but that only worked when he was holding her around the hips or by her wrists behind her back. They practiced with choke holds, how to get out of them and how to keep from getting strangled if she couldn’t, ‘cause that’s something he did know.

Sweat now coated both their brows and stained their shirts, and Beth’s face looked about as flushed as his felt. As the time wore on they both brought a little more into it, his holds tighter, more difficult to break, her blows a little stronger, her motions a little faster even though she wasn’t trying to hurt him. It was physical work and they were both feeling it, and he knew they’d both be sore tomorrow.

He had her hands pinned behind her back this time, and when she made to get her knee up he got his into her belly instead.

Beth grunted and tried again to lift her knee, but he leaned into her, over her a bit more, bending her spine enough that she couldn’t without falling over. “Bastard.”

“C’mon,” he said, gritting his teeth as she pushed back, resisting the not-too-gentle pressure he was putting on her. “How you gonna get out of this, Greene?”

Beth tugged, trying to free her hands, but he had them pinned good against her back and if she tugged any harder, she was liable to topple over. “I’m. Trying,” she growled, tugging again.

Daryl tightened his grip on her wrists just a little more, and goaded her again. “You ain’t getting away this time, little girl.”

Beth stopped tugging and went still. She clenched her jaw as she started up at him, narrowing her blazing eyes until the look in them sent a chill across his scalp. “I am not a little girl.”

She surged forward, lunging so hard he barely kept hold of her wrists, and sunk her teeth into his neck.

Instead of pain, though, what rocketed through him was a jolt of heat, straight from his neck to his cock, and the sound ripping out of him in response burned his throat from the force of it. Beth tugged at the mouthful of flesh and muscle, biting down enough that he felt the sting of it, ‘cause she was going for the jugular, wasn’t she, except he didn’t wanna play that game anymore. His heart pounded and his blood rushed south, and Daryl whirled them around, letting go her wrists to grab her by the hips. Before he knew it he had her backed up against a post between two of the stalls.

When her back hit she let him go, but instead of pulling away she got an arm around his neck and leaned in, swept her tongue over the sting left behind by her teeth and bit him again, scraping instead of biting down hard. He shuddered, the tremor starting in his shoulders and spreading out everywhere, and Beth nibbled down toward his collar bone with that same scraping bite and he thought he might burst into flames.

“Jesus, Beth,” he whispered, a familiar refrain except refraining was the last thing he wanted to do—last thing he wanted her to do, as he stood there all but frozen while she drove him crazy.

“Daryl,” she breathed, the buzz of her voice vibrating right into his skin, right into his bones. She hooked her fingers through is belt loop and tugged him closer as she nibbled up under his ear, toward the hinge of his jaw.

When he groaned, she pulled back to look at him, her eyes wide in her flushed face, tongue sweeping down over her spit-shined lower lip. Both of them breathing hard. Daryl watched her throat move as she swallowed, heard the sound it made loud as the hammer of a gun in his ears. This time when she lunged, it was his lips she caught, hauling him down to her with the arm around his neck even as he pressed her back into the post.

Not for the first time, Daryl thought this woman was built of pure fire. Sunshine. Lava, burning molten in his veins, smouldering with heat unlike anything he’d ever known until he burst into flames. Spontaneous combustion right there on the dirt floor of some old barn. Not a blaze of glory, a blaze of Greene.

If he was gonna die by fire, well, might as well be hers.

*~*

Wound up, can't sleep, can't do anything right, little honey
Oh, since I set my eyes on you
I tell you the truth
T-t-t-t-twistin' like a flame in a slow dance, baby
You're driving me crazy

The birds referenced here are the Western Tanager (Dynamicsymmetry had those flitting about all over I’ll Be Yours for a Song, and I like the way the word ‘tanager’ tastes, if that makes sense, so I had to use it), and the American Tree Swallow. The internet tells me that both of these birds are common to Georgia, and as noted above, the word-based representations of their calls are just my best guesses at trying to take what I heard online and make it into letters that could be read.

This is the multi-tool that Beth found. They really are useful, and since it never seems to be a problem for the people in TWD to find useful things, Beth found this ;)

to be continued in chapter 25 >>

Fall Right In - Chapter 23b/? (The Walking Dead - Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 16:04:13 GMT

This is Part 2 of 2. Read PART ONE first.

Fall Right In
Chapter 23 - You're a Bonfire and I'm Gathered Round You Part 2/2
(Part 1/2)

*~*

Daryl tried to hold onto that feeling, that warmth in his belly that was all Beth’s doing, as they left the little bathroom behind to search the house. He filled a cloth shopping bag with whatever he could get his hands on, working one end of the house while Beth worked the other, and focused on that feeling. On the woman who inspired it and so many other things in this body, his blackened old heart so completely unused to feeling anything like this at all. What Beth was becoming to him—hell, what she already was—had to be protected. Held tight within the very depths of him because he knew there’d never be another soul in the world like her, for him.

That warmth stayed, all right, a blazing furnace burning there in his belly. The pleasant ache of wanting her that never went away from the moment he first understood it for what it was. But even Beth couldn’t keep out the other things, the darker things, weighty, sitting heavy in the back of his brain. Slinking down to press at his shoulders, compress his spine. Try as he might to shake it, to hold it back from where he knew this was going, it only sunk deeper, grew heavier, as they looted the house.

It clung to him while they made their first deposit of stuff in the barn. Lingered, dark and dirty, while they washed up in the horse tough with water from the well, and collected enough to last the night. Drove in like splinters in his fingers when he gathered firewood from the corner of the workshop that doubled as a woodshed. Throbbed, a pain between his shoulder blades, as they raided the orchard and came away with armfuls of ripe, fragrant peaches. By the time Daryl pulled shut the barn door, daylight fading rapidly around them and no time left for snaring rabbits, he had become an old man, hunched, crouching, doubled over by the weight on his back no matter that he walked as straight as ever.

Nothing special, about the barn. Rows of stalls lining the long sides. Ladder at one end to a hayloft above. It had a dirt floor, the centre of it worn smooth by years of both two and four legged traffic, mostly free of the straw covering the rest of it. He left her there, standing in the middle of the ring of candles she dragged down from the house and laid out so perfectly, grunting his no to her offer of a peach as he turned away from her.

Beth’s gaze followed him, an itch at the back of his neck, scratching little holes into the dark thing writhing there as he strode toward the corner and crouched down by the first of the horse stalls, swept away the covering of brittle old straw. The dirt below was just as hard as that in the centre, not quite as smooth but still compressed by years of use, marked here and there with the faint impression of horseshoes. To break the surface he had to use his knife, and he gouged, he stabbed, he thrust his blade into the dirt an inch at a time, let the jolt of that rattle through his arms, just to have somewhere to dig.

Beth had a garden trowel from the cabin packed with them somewhere, but he didn’t bother. Didn’t wanna bother her. Once broken, he tore into the ground with his fingers. Dirt packed under his nails like concrete as he deepened the hole, ground itself into every line, every crack, every pore. God, he was so stupid, to think he could ever do this without fucking it all up. To think he could hope to reach even a whisper of the good that Beth was. That warmth she gave him so fully, so freely, sat heavy in his belly.

He couldn’t even make it a full day without letting her down.

That day at the creek, when her ankle still hurt and she’d only just found her crossbow, he shouted at her then in a moment of panic. A moment, like today, when she proved without a shred of doubt she could take care of herself—take care of both of them—but something in him hadn’t wanted to give her the chance. The chance to show she wasn’t helpless.

“You made me feel like you thought I was,” she had said to him in the wake of his outburst, hurt and honest just like today. “I just can’t take feeling like that, not from you.”

Not from you.

But he did it again. The same fucking thing. All these thoughts about her strength, her confidence, her ability to handle just about anything, all this admiration for the survivor she made of herself, and he couldn’t even let himself trust her enough to show it.

Ya worthless sack a shit. Fuckin’ waste of a man. Shoulda made your mama swallow you down…

After calling him out in the bathroom, Beth hadn’t said another word about it. No, she just gifted him with the warmth of her forgiveness, her gentle understanding. Even now he couldn’t cast it out, tainted as it was with the knowledge that he hadn’t earned it, not even an ounce of her grace. Maybe Beth wasn’t mad but she should be.

He let her down. Tried to lead the both of them into even deeper shit because of it, and she should be fucking pissed.

A shiver rolled across his shoulders. The fire pit was deep enough, wide enough, finally. Sweat beaded his forehead, slid stinging over the cut which throbbed beneath the weight of everything else, and dropped into the dirt in microscopic mud puddles. He dug the air vent, and after that lighting the fire at the bottom was easy. Well seasoned wood from the shed, paper torn from some glitzy ladies’ magazine crumpled up as tinder. When the blaze roared, far larger than what they could risk outdoors, Daryl covered the opening with a toaster oven rack and set the stock pot from the kitchen, full of well water, on top.

Even watched pots boiled, eventually. Left long enough over a flame and anything would. Daryl stared into the water, at the tiny bubbles rising slowly to the top. He didn’t know how he was supposed to do this, how to be the kind of man Beth deserved to have at her side instead of just the one she got stuck with.

The first bubbles broke the surface, bringing with them the weight of the steam coiling out of the pot. Daryl dumped their bolts, rinsed of walker gore but not at all clean, into the now-boiling water and leaned back against the door of the stall behind him, arms draped over his bent knees, to watch it roil around the gathered shafts.

Beth didn’t see it that way, like they were stuck. He knew it, he did, and he felt anything but stuck with her, but it didn’t make a lick of sense. God knows what she even saw, when she took his measure and found something worthy when he’d only ever been wanting. She must’ve known something he didn’t, tapped into some otherworldly knowledge because he couldn’t find it, whatever she saw that made her think he could be good for her. Could be man enough for the woman she was.

Ain’t ever gonna make a man outta you. Why don’tcha just grow a pair a tits, boy, then ya’d at least be good for somethin’…

He couldn’t be both things, couldn’t reconcile what he knew with what she did but trying to deny her only twisted his guts tighter. Beth knew her own mind. Her own heart. If he was her choice—and he was, he was, because they could have carried on forever without any of this, closer, maybe, but not like they were now—then she must believe he could do it.

But how?

He let her down. And he almost lost her.

It would’ve been bad, and he shouldn’t do this, dwell on the what-ifs, shouldn’t even be heading down that crumbling road but like a landslide he couldn’t stop. Two seconds later and Beth would’ve had a horde of walkers raining down on top of her, tumbling into that pit. She was tough, Beth Greene, and so, so strong, but two seconds later and Beth would be dead. Eaten alive still dangling from that rope or lying here on the floor of the barn, fever pouring out of her in rivers of sweat and blood, begging him to put her down before she turned.

Not until he heard the crack, felt the sting of splinters in his fingers, did Daryl realize he’d all but shattered a piece of kindling.

Get yerself a pair a balls and man up. Fuckin’ bitch deserved what she got and so’ll you, boy, you don’t quit cryin’ about it like some pussy ass li’l girl…

No. No. A million times no. Daryl gripped the shards of wood tighter, trying to force away the voice, the flashes of smoke, and the bitter taste of ashes, but it stuck there, like the burn of a cigarette on tender flesh, like the bite of a belt into already flayed skin. That slippery, emphysemic drawl settled across his scalp, a bed of rusted nails hammered into his skull one by one until his whole head erupted in pain.

“Daryl.”

Appearing from nowhere at his side, Beth curled her hands around his, and he stopped breathing. Stopped doing anything but watch as she peeled his fingers away from the wood one at a time, until he dropped the remnants of the kindling onto the dirt floor.

He felt her stare but he couldn’t look at her. Tried to force the lump in his throat back down to his gut where it belonged, but he couldn’t do that, either. Couldn’t do anything but be the worthless redneck asshole he always was ‘cause he could never be anything else.

“Daryl, stop.”

Beth’s hands tightened on his, imbedding the tiny splinters of wood even deeper. But the sting of it sharpened his focus, drew him out and up finally to meet her hard gaze. He’d been wrong before; the blaze of anger in her eyes, the clench of it in her jaw, slammed into him, like falling face first into a brick wall. The lump in his throat tightened. Constricted. He tasted bile. He tasted blood where his teeth clamped down on his tongue as he waited for whatever she had to unleash on him.

He deserved it.

“Look at me.” She released his hands and reached for his face, pressing her palms to his cheeks, holding firm to make sure he didn’t look away. Her breath tumbled out in a barely contained stutter and when she spoke again she did so through clenched teeth. “You’re gonna listen to me, Daryl Dixon, and you’re gonna listen good, understand?”

Not trusting his voice, Daryl nodded as best he could with her hands where they were, tried to hold that flaming gaze of hers no matter that it burned into him. Because it burned into him.

“I’m remindin’ you,” she said, in that hard-edged voice. “Whatever, whoever, is in your head right now—put it away. You got out, remember? Don’t go back. You gotta stay who you are.”

She was—she—oh. Oh. Christ, this woman.

He meant to snort, meant to make some sort of sound of derision to cover up everything else that wanted to burst out of him, but with the understanding of what fuelled Beth’s anger, all that fell from his lips was a wobbling sigh. His voice, when he pulled the words up past that goddamn lump in his throat, the burn in his chest, rasped out in hardly more than a whisper. “Yeah? And who’s that?”

Her anger crumbled. Shattered. Fell away from her body like shards of a broken mirror. It left behind shining eyes holding back tears and a tremble in her jaw she couldn’t keep in. “You’re a good man, Daryl Dixon. Maybe you don’t believe it, but don’t you dare tell me I’m wrong.”

That stricture in his throat tightened further and something shattered in him, too. An explosion, a blunderbuss of emotional wreckage like shattered mirror glass tearing through the walls of his chest. He felt deflated. Small, his face still caught there in her hands, though her hold had softened and her palms now cradled his cheeks instead of penning him in. Wasn’t the first time he wondered if she didn’t know him better than he knew himself, in some ways. A lotta ways. The two sides of this warred in his head, the part of him that knew he was no good and the part of him that believed in her.

You’re good to me, Daryl.

Christ, just this morning he thought he could be, if only she showed him how. Why—why couldn’t he get there again? He wanted to. Wanted to give Beth everything he had and everything he didn’t, but she had to show him. He couldn’t—couldn’t do it without her.

And whatcha think she’s doin’ now, asshole?

His head was too much a mess to sort this out. He couldn’t shake that voice, those memories. A small crack in the surface where so much lay buried, hidden. Locked away and just waiting to escape, to fuck him up when he let down his guard. He wished—God, he wished he could let it all fall outta his head and tumble down into the fire blazing beneath the pot of boiling water.

But then there was Beth, a little sliver of sunshine, a little bolt of lightning tearing through the shadows. Beth, who believed he was better than the shadows, better than the past which haunted him. Beth, who proved to him a thousand times over that good still existed in this world, this amazing woman who wanted him like he wanted her, not just with this physical need but a deeper ache, a deeper longing, something he didn’t know himself capable of until he felt it with her. No matter that they hadn’t talked, hadn’t put the words out into the universe. He knew it was true.

And so does she, you jackass. Fuckin’ believe her.

Light from the fire flickered against one side of Beth’s face, throwing the other half into shadow but he could still see, still feel, the tiniest of smiles as it tugged at her lips. “Just because you did something I don’t like, doesn’t mean I don’t like you.” Beth glided her thumbs slowly over his cheeks. “Stop beating yourself up about it, okay?”

“I just—” He shuddered so hard his teeth rattled and his joints ached. “Beth. Dunno if I know how.”

The little whimper she made sliced into his chest, squeezed his bruised heart until he thought it was gonna burst. He should be past this bullshit, thought he was for a long, long time, but no, no he wasn’t, and Beth— oh, God, Beth—Beth was hurting because of it. Because of some wretched old ghost trying to drag him back down to places he’d left behind a long time ago. He had to remember how to stop listening, how to put it away, before it destroyed them both.

“Yeah, you do.” Beth pulled one of her hands from his face, wiped at her tears with the back of it.

She was on her knees beside him, body half leaned over the rise of his leg and the arm slung over it so she could reach his face. Now she pushed his arm away, pressed down until the angle of his bent knees flattened out a bit and slipped right on into his lap. Daryl’s chest rose quick with a heavy breath as she settled, her legs pressing in on either side of his hips, pulling her body even closer to his than she had this morning at the ledge.

God, was that only this morning? Felt like forever ago.

Didn’t notice ‘til he was doing it, his palms sliding along the length of her legs, from the bend of her knees to the subtle flare of her hips. He looked up at her and Beth’s eyes flickered to catch his, all the anger gone from them. What shone there now burned him in a different way.

“You do know how,” she whispered, draping one arm over his shoulder and bringing the other hand up to slowly trace her fingers across his brow. “You burnt it down, remember? We burned it down, you and me.”

He remembered. He’d never forget, no matter how much moonshine had roared in his veins. Him and Beth standing there, rebellious, stupid, more alive than they’d been since the prison fell, facing the blazing wreckage of so much more than just their shelter for the night. Beth, herself lit like a flame from the inside out, moonshine and that fiery spirit, middle finger raised high in the night.

Shit like he had buried never went away, not by burning down no moonshine shack like a couple of drunken fools. But it helped. Letting down the walls, letting Beth in. Setting fire to that place and watching it burn to ashes. That night he found solace, for the first time in his life, in another’s awareness of where he came from.

He hummed, a little rumble he knew she heard. Christ, she was close enough she probably felt it. “I remember.”

“They’re just ghosts,” she said, pushing his hair away from his face. “I’m not gonna let them haunt you.”

He couldn’t answer her, the lump in his throat and the fluttering in his chest taking over his ability to do anything but stare up at her and wonder how in the world he ended up here, with her. With her. Didn’t matter that she couldn’t make the past go away, couldn’t just reach inside and turn the voices off, because she wanted to. Saw through his bullshit like he knew she could all along, saw him, and instead of turning away she just pulled him in closer.

Moved closer, too, using her arm around his shoulders to shrink the space between them to almost nothing, until the warmth of her body seeped into his, driving away the chill he hadn’t known he was wearing until that moment.

Her little smile widened as she watched his thoughts flicker across his face. “Do we gotta have another fire? ‘Cause we should probably wait ‘til morning this time before we torch the barn.”

It still hurt. That swirling dark still tried to push back against the lightness that was Beth, but the little bark of laughter burst out anyway and he felt the genuineness of it. “Beth.”

“You can’t let it get bad like this, okay?” she said, smiling still despite the seriousness of her words. “And you aren’t gonna drive me away by bein’ moody, so you best stop tryin’ to.”

“I—” Fuck. Woman really did see through his own bullshit better than he did. He sighed and let his head drop back until it made a soft thunk against the wood of the stall door. “I’m a fuckin’ idiot.”

“Daryl, you’re not.” She combed her fingers through his hair, scratching her nails across his scalp in that way she did that always left his whole head tingling and warm. He rumbled at her and her smile shifted from sweet to smirking, and she bit her lip as though she were trying to contain it. “Well, maybe a little...”

This time the laugh came easy, and the smile lingered even after it stopped. A little grin which only made hers get wider. “Quit makin’ me laugh, girl.”

Beth giggled and dragged her fingers across his scalp again. “Ooh, I guess that ain’t good for your reputation as an asshole, laughin’. I won’t tell. It’ll be our little secret.”

He didn’t answer her, just let the little smile stay where it wanted as he looked up at her face. Her big, kind eyes, and the timeless wisdom she carried in them. He was an idiot, thinking he didn’t deserve her. Didn’t matter what he thought or what some long-dead worthless piece of shit thought. All that mattered was what Beth thought.

After a long few minutes of running her fingers through his hair, Beth drew her hand back to trace the margins of the wound on his forehead. “Still hurt?”

It did, some. More a dull ache than anything, nothing he couldn’t handle. “Naw.”

“Other things hurtin’ worse?” she said, speaking like she was only guessing when they both knew she wasn’t.

“Mm.”

Her fingers trailed down his nose, then across his cheek. “You know, after my nightmares, what you do with your thumb?”

It was an easy move, to slide his hand up from her hip and under the edge of her shirt, to drag his thumb along her spine in the way she meant.

Beth’s eyes drifted shut and a shiver rolled across her shoulders and down through her back. “Mmm, yeah, just like that,” she said, in a breathy little voice. “It helps when you do that. Makes it so you’re more real than whatever’s in my head.”

“Yeah?” He knew it helped, without her saying so, but something about her reasons why settled warm in his chest, and he didn’t stop, just kept drawing his thumb up and down, feeling the bumps of her vertebrae, the amazing smoothness of her warm skin.

She shivered again and let out a little groan, and when her eyes popped back open they didn’t open all the way, instead hanging there at a dreamy sort of half-mast that propelled the warmth in his chest much further south.

“There somethin’ like that I can do for you?” she asked, still whispering, moving her own thumb across his brow again. “When what’s in your head’s more real than it should be?”

However she touched him, didn’t matter if it were fingers in his hair, her knuckles across his or her fingers twining theirs together. Her fingers on his face, her nose tucked up into his neck, her arms around his back and her hands on his wings. Or just like this, here in his lap on the floor of the barn. He never knew a touch like hers and never knew he’d want to, but oh, did he want it.

Touch me, he thought, as she shivered beneath the stroke of his thumb and moaned softly. God, just touch me.

“Maybe you can find something,” he said to her, voice gone raspy like he hadn’t spoken in years.

Beth’s thumb brushed through the hair above his lip, then passed over the scruff along his jaw. “It’s okay, me touchin’ you?”

Jesus, Beth. “Y-yeah,” he said, voice breaking with the force of the shiver that shot through him. “It’s okay, Beth.”

She nodded a little, and her breath flitted warm over his face. “I like it when you touch me, too.”

The heat that had been steadily moving downward now coiled in his belly, shooting him through with those delightful little frissons he’d only ever felt with her. He could feel himself getting hard, the warmth and the weight of the blood gradually thickening his cock, and knew it was only a matter of time before Beth felt him, too, sitting like she was. The newness of all this, that complete lack of control over his body in responding to someone the way he responded to Beth, wasn’t quite enough anymore to win out over the desire to keep her there, let her feel it. Let her feel him.

As though she was reading his mind, Beth shifted her hips a touch, just enough to press his growing erection between them. He saw the way her breath hitched, felt it against his belly, but she didn’t say or do anything else, just kept on tracing the contours of his face.

“You can tell me,” she whispered, and it took him a good couple of seconds to drag his thoughts back to what they were talking about before. “You know you can, right? If you ever want to or need to, you can tell me anything.”

Even through two layers of denim, the heat of her was immense. Not fair of her to have such a serious conversation at a moment like this but maybe he needed it, that bodily distraction, to keep the demons at bay long enough to hear her words for what they were. She did mean it, as only Beth could, and if he ever found the strength to let go he’d find it with her.

In the end, it always came back to Beth.

He couldn’t speak. Could only shut his eyes and nod and know she understood.

Beth brushed her fingers down his neck, over the ends of his collarbones, dipped down along his sternum as far as she could reach. When she spoke, Daryl felt the breath of her words more than he heard them, warm on his face and smelling of peaches. “Only thing that made it out of those ashes was you,” she whispered. “You and me.”

He didn’t even try to stop the shudder that rolled through him, almost violent in its intensity. Beth’s fingers moved back up, over his Adam’s apple to his chin, to the loose seam of his mouth. He opened his eyes and found hers waiting for him, pupils wider than the dark of the barn could account for, and when he nipped at her fingers with his lips she giggled so softly, a sound which trickled down through his belly and pulled that coiled heat even tighter.

She leaned down to touch her forehead gently to his. “Daryl.”

“Beth.” He flattened his hands at the small of her back, not so daring yet as to pull her to him, but it was enough to keep her there, where she was. As if he thought she would go anywhere else.

Beth tucked both hands into his hair and rocked her hips against him, a little tease of friction, and he shuddered hard just as she stilled, though he felt the tremble in her back, in her legs, and wondered at her restraint. But then she dipped her head down and caught his lips with hers, swallowing his thoughts, swallowing his groan and sending out one of her own for him to swallow in return.

Their first kiss started slow and this one did too, but there was nothing hesitant in it this time. They fell right in to hot, wet, slides of her lips on his, his on hers. To Beth tilting her head, deepening the kiss, her fingers curling into his hair as he curled his against her back. The stroke of her tongue seeking entrance, granted, welcomed, his own joining in.

Two kisses in and he was already an addict. Would never have enough. What remained of the shroud across his shoulders tore away, ripped to shreds, burnt up to nothing. Couldn’t stand a chance against Beth fucking Greene. Against the heat of her breath, the huffing sounds as she breathed raggedly through her nose, the little noise she made in the depths of her throat when he tickled the underside of her tongue with the point of his.

The tremble of her body beneath his hands intensified, and as though she couldn’t stand it any longer, Beth whimpered into his mouth and rolled her hips, rocking down against him so hard he sunk his teeth into her bottom lip as the shock of it jolted through him. He scrambled to grab hold of her to keep her from doing it again, even though—oh, fuck—it felt good, but it was too much. Too much, and Beth pulled back just enough at the desperate tug of his hands, angling her hips away as she tore her lip free of his teeth and caught his mouth again.

She trembled and whimpered and the kiss deepened even further than he ever thought a kiss could go, and Daryl held on, himself a shaking, whimpering mess, lost in her like he’d never been lost in another person before. When they broke away to breathe, sometime later, Beth again dropped her forehead onto his, fingers still tangled in his hair as she whispered his name.

“You taste like peaches,” he whispered up at her, surprising both of them with what rasped out of his mouth.

Beth giggled, that same soft little one from before, and he laughed along with her. “Got plenty more over there,” she said, pulling back to look at him, breathing hard, all flushed and smiling and fucking beautiful. “If you think you’d wanna taste like peaches, too.”

“Yeah,” he said, drawing his tongue across his bottom lip, smiling when Beth’s eyes followed its path. “Yeah, okay.”

He wasn’t ready for her to move, wasn’t ready for the heat of her to go away, wasn’t near ready to stop kissing her. But maybe it was time. For now, it was time.

Beth wasn’t going anywhere, not if she had anything to say about it, and neither was he.

*~*

You’re a mountain that I’d like to climb
Not to conquer, but to share in the view
You’re a bonfire and I'm gathered ‘round you
Set this old black heart inertia aflame
- Incubus

to be continued in chapter 24 >>

Fall Right In - Chapter 23a/? (The Walking Dead - Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 15:54:37 GMT

Fall Right In
Chapter 23 – You’re a Bonfire and I’m Gathered ‘Round You Part 1/2
(Part 2/2 here)

*~*

“Beth,” he said, voice grave and calm despite the panic rising in his belly. “Need that rope now. We got company.”

From the pit below, Beth groaned. “Shit.”

The sounds of rummaging got louder, and Daryl glanced down just quick enough to see her pulling the rope out of her pack before turning his focus back to the approaching walkers. The leaders were edging toward the border between the cultivated grass and this rougher stuff, moving with purpose, their hungry growls growing more intense by the second. They’d spotted him now. Smelled them both, likely.

“Beth...”

“I got—” She coughed, then sucked in a slightly wheezy breath. “Got it. How—”

“Like that harness you made. Get it under your arms,” he said, with another quick glance down. The walkers were moving quick now, closing the gap faster than that lumbering run should’ve allowed. “Toss me the end. Hurry, Beth.”

He had enough time to take out the closest one with a shot from his crossbow before Beth got the rope up to him and he threw the bow back over his shoulder. There was nothing to brace on, nothing near enough use for leverage, so he tied the rope around his hips and hoped to hell this worked.

“C’mon, Beth!” he called, not bothering to lower his voice. They were already coming and yelling or not yelling wasn’t gonna make no difference. “Get your feet up on the walls. Gonna pull you up.”

Beth grunted from below and gave the rope a sharp tug. “Go!”

The rope went taut, digging into him through his jeans, the weight at the end threatening to draw him down, but he dug his toes into the dead grass, into the crumbly dirt beneath it. Pulled against the bite of the rope, moving forward one heavy step at a time while behind him, the growls of the dead grew closer.

He couldn’t afford to look back. “Beth! Climb, girl, come on!”

Beth tugged hard on her end of the rope, near growling as she called up to him. “Almost!”

Daryl surged on, sinking his teeth into his lip when the rope jerked tighter. Amidst the walkers’ agitated growls, Beth let out a loud grunt of exertion, cracking toward the end into something more resembling a scream. Then the rope went slack, throwing him forward without warning, sending him face first into the ground. Before the pain could register he flipped over, dragged his body out of the rope, Beth a yellow blur in the foreground. Had to get up, had to get to her before they did. Get her into that barn, get that thick door between her and them and make damn sure she was okay.

“Beth!”

She’d gotten up as far as her knees, crossbow raised, rope still tied around her waist. Her bolt ripped through the skull of the closest walker and imbedded into the one behind it. Daryl reached her just as the pair of them fell, the leader crumpling sideways into the path of another still scrambling on. Both of them tumbled into the hole in the ground, landing with a pair of wet thumps, and Beth reached for him as he reached for her and between the two of them they got her up and free of the rope. With no time to reload, Beth swung her crossbow at the next rotting body trying grab at her, knocking it off balance before kicking it snarling toward the opening.

Daryl knifed another through the forehead and shoved it into the pair behind it, then grabbed Beth by the arm and hauled her back away from the edge. “C’mon!”

He tugged her toward the barn but Beth pulled free of his hold, shaking her head. “This way!” she shouted, shouldering her crossbow and tearing off across the yard before he could get a word in.

Running, not for the barn behind them, but straight into next wave of walkers waiting for them in the lush green grass.

Fuck. “Beth!”

But she was already gone, running headlong into trouble. All Daryl could do was run after her, catching up as she skirted a tight circle—too fucking tight—around the advancing horde, limping just enough that he noticed on that same ankle, but hardly slowed for it as she raced across the yard, angling toward the house. Only thing louder than his heart in his ears as he ran after her were the excited groans of the walkers, changing course to follow them, about to box them the fuck in between the house and safety, and what the hell was she thinking. It was only ‘cause he hadn’t caught her yet that he wasn’t hauling her crazy ass back to the barn.

Two walkers lumbered up close and Beth, her knife already clutched in her hand, took one of ‘em down with a well-aimed strike through the eye. The other grabbed at her, fingers like claws catching hold of her sleeve but she wrenched away and Daryl kicked out its knees, knocking it down. Before he could move, Beth slammed her boot onto its skull, flattening it with a sickening squelch of rotten bone and liquefying brains, and took off again. Daryl groaned and kept running, swiping his arm across his forehead as the sweat dripped into his eyes.

“Beth!”

Her ponytail whipped around as she spared him a quick glance over her shoulder. “The tree, Daryl!”

The tree. The big old oak standing up against the house. The house, with its wrap-around covered porch, three hundred and sixty degrees of high ground, second floor windows, and at least five ways out.

Well, shit.

Beth reached the tree seconds before he did, jumping up to catch the lowest branch. Daryl got his hands on her hips and shoved her onto it, climbing after her as she scampered up the branches like some sorta long legged monkey. A walker grabbed at his boots but he kicked its hands away and followed. Beth landed on the porch roof just as he reached the branch leading to it, had her crossbow off her shoulder and reloaded by the time he hit the shingles beside her. The straggling walkers were already gathering at the base of the tree and not much further out, the rest of them were closing in fast.

Beth got off her first shot as Daryl swung his crossbow off his shoulder and cocked it, swiped at the sweat dripping into his eyes again. He loaded a bolt took aim at one of the ones growling up from below, bolt striking the ugly asshole straight through the forehead.

“You okay?” Beth called, from somewhere just behind him. Her bolt sailed past his ear, out into the yard to take down one of the outliers.

He didn’t turn to look at her, just cocked his crossbow with a grunt and sighted on his next target. “Peachy. Keep shootin’!”

One by one, he and Beth thinned the group, emptying their quivers of bolts until less than ten of them remained. In his pack were the bolts they’d made at the cabin, the ones they tried to keep for hunting but there weren’t no other choice now, and Beth was already tugging at the pack to get them.

Four, five, half a dozen more, and the wheezy snarls of the dead fell silent. He waited, listening. Felt Beth hovering at his back doing the same thing. Distant growls came from the hole across the yard but nothing else made any noise aside from his and Beth’s heavy breaths and the rustle of oak leaves high up in the tree. Daryl slumped back against the wall of the house, heart still pounding, legs gone rubbery now that the threat was done and they’d made it out mostly unscathed.

Mostly. She’d taken a pretty hard fall and Daryl knew how adrenaline could mask an injury. Beth sunk down beside him just as he turned toward her, eyes raking her form for anything amiss. “You sure you ain’t hurt?”

Beth shook her head. “I’m alright, but—”

“Your ankle—”

“Daryl.” Just his name, in that firm, don’t-mess-with-Beth-Greene tone of voice. She leaned up on her knees and reached around behind her to pull his red rag out of her back pocket. “Daryl, it’s fine. I’m fine. You’re the one who’s bleedin’.”

“I—what—?” Just before she pressed the rag to his forehead, he caught a glimpse of his arm, a mess of blood instead of the sweat he thought he’d been wiping at. A stinging pain erupted in his forehead, somewhere above his left eye, and his mind flashed with the memory of landing face first in the grass. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” she said, with a little laugh, letting go of the rag once he got a hand on it. “Like a stuck pig.”

Daryl peered out at Beth where she leaned against the side of the house wearing this adorable little smirk, all sweaty and flushed, hair an even bigger mess than usual. God, she was gorgeous like this, and he’d forgotten it with everything that had happened since but he remembered it now, Beth standing there in the moonlight, a pile of walkers on the ground around her. Holding her own and proud of herself for it, and he’d wanted to hug her even then. Wanted to do a lot more than that now but he settled for laughing with her as she giggled softly at him, at the bloody mess he must be with this forehead wound, no matter how minor.

“You’re fucking insane, woman, you know that, right?” he said, as the laughter filled his chest with warm relief.

“Maybe,” she said, with a shrug, her smile fading just a little. “Don’t think your plan was any better, though.”

Something about that coiled tight in his gut, pressed cool against the warmth from a minute ago, but before he could think too hard about why, Beth pulled out her knife and slid across the roof toward the window.

“Let’s go inside and get you fixed up.”

A little wood shim stuck out from the window, just enough to notice it from close up, and it left a gap just big enough for Beth to get her slender fingers in and push the unlatched window open. He’d imagined the farm girl climbing out of it before and now he followed after Beth climbing in.

Beth stood for a moment in the middle of the room, with its slanted walls following the lines of the rafters, looking around at the delicate white furniture and all manner of girly things strewn about the small space. He’d never seen her bedroom on the farm, never much thought about it ‘til now, but it would’ve been like this, he imagined. Soft. White. Feminine in this same simple way. She’d been that farm girl, once. Still was in some ways, and those were the parts of her he hoped she never lost hold of. But the picture she made now, the woman he knew her to be didn’t quite fit the image in his head, stood out stark against the backdrop of her past, and he didn’t know whether he ought to be sad about that or proud of her for it.

Beth didn’t speak, once she finished looking around, just caught Daryl’s eyes before she moved on to the narrow hallway leading to the second bedroom, and the steep staircase down to the main floor below. The farmhouse only had one bathroom, and that’s where she led him after they descended the creaking staircase. The little frosted window faced the sun, this time of day, lighting the room in a muted orange glow.

“Musta hit it on a rock, or somethin’,” Daryl said, watching Beth out of one eye as she wetted a ratty old towel with water from her bottle.

“I’ll stitch it if I gotta,” she said, nodding toward the toilet to indicate he should sit. He dropped his pack and crossbow to the floor and did as he was bid. “Kay, lemme see.”

A fresh warm trickle oozed toward his eyebrow when he peeled the rag away, and he shut his eyes as Beth swiped the towel over the area, more gentle than she needed to be, her other hand holding the back of his head as she worked, fingers curled into his hair. After a minute of that, she set the towel down and prodded at the wound, humming a bit under her breath.

“I gonna live, or what, doc?” he asked, reaching blindly for where he thought he might find her knee and closing his fingers around it when he did.

“It’s small but it’s deep,” she said, wiping again with her towel. “Bleedin’ pretty good, too. Don’t think it’ll stop easy on its own.”

He swept his thumb along the contour of her knee, smiling when she sighed a little above him. “Best get it done, ‘fore we lose all the light.”

Beth pressed the towel to his face again and Daryl held it there. He kept his eyes shut as she set down her crossbow and moved to rummage through her pack for the first aid supplies she’d found in the cabin. He didn’t remember ever seeing her stitch someone up before, but she must’ve, helping Hershel with the injured after every scrape they’d gotten into, and helping Dr. S, too. Didn’t doubt she could handle it now, whether she’d done it before or not. He didn’t much care about scars, anyway. Not this kind.

The snick of her lighter, another cabin find, drew his focus out of his head and back to the present, and he peeked out at her from beneath the towel, watching as she passed the curved needle through the flame.

Her eyes drifted to catch his once she closed the lighter. “You ready?”

“I been stitched up by sketchier hands than yours, Greene,” he said, no word of a lie.

Beth threaded the needle without trouble, black sewing thread on a suture needle but that didn’t matter. It’d do the trick. Daryl shut his eyes as she poured the last of her water over his forehead, rinsing out the wound as best she could, though the amount of bleeding it had done likely left it pretty clean. After one last swipe with the towel, Beth got to work. Didn’t hurt much; she was quick with her needle, no hesitation just practiced stitching on a wound already numbed by swelling and time. He barely noticed the prick of the needle or the tug of the thread, and just like that, it was done.

Beth sighed loudly, and Daryl opened his eyes as she wiped her bloody fingers on the red-stained towel. Something about the way she was looking at him tightened that coil of nerves in his gut again. In this light her eyes weren’t their usual bright blue, instead more of a grey as she studied him, her lips curled oddly into not a smile, not a frown, but something all its own and he wasn’t sure what it meant, just that the sight of it there made his heartbeat stutter in his chest.

She stared at him for a long minute, the grey cast to her eyes like little storm clouds blocking out the summer sky. That minute stretched on forever to the tune of his pulse rushing in his ears, until she leaned her back against the wall and slid down until they were face to face.

“If we’d gone to the barn, like you were tryin’ to, we’d be stuck inside right now with no light, no water, and a small herd of walkers tryin’ to get in.” She spoke in an even voice, her tone soft, but her words firm. “I get it, Daryl. I’m not mad, but you hear what I’m sayin’, right?”

He understood, all right, like a landslide of rocks sinking into the pool of his gut. His first thought, his only fucking thought, was to shove her back behind that solid barn door. Get her safe, no matter the consequences, while Beth looked for a way out, a solution, and made a plan that not only got them out of danger but gave them the advantage they needed to eliminate the threat. He should’ve seen it, but he didn’t, because his gut shouted at him to protect her and he listened.

That was the last thing Beth needed from him, as she just let him know in that kind-hearted way of hers. Should’ve torn a strip off him like he deserved. She was just so good, too good for this bullshit world, too fucking good for someone as broken as him, and she needed him at her back, at her side, fighting with her, not for her.

Daryl knew that, he did, but he’d lost his head in the moment and gave the reins to the rising panic. That was the kinda shit that got people killed, and he’d fallen right into it. He shoulda known better. Should’ve been better than that. The fist in his gut squeezed tighter, twisting his insides into knots, and he couldn’t look at her anymore.

His hands, covered in his own blood, clenched into fists in his lap, and Daryl stared down at them, forehead throbbing now where she’d stitched him back together.

One way or another it seemed Beth was always picking up the pieces of him. After the prison, after the herd, after every single trip down the wrong path in his head. And she was there now, too, right there in front of him instead of back by the wall, reaching out to take his face in her hands. Didn’t even need to coax him into looking up at her. Beth Greene was a magnet and he was as drawn to her in shame as he was every other waking moment.

Maybe it was a trick of the light, or maybe just his imagination, turning her eyes to grey before. They were blue again, her usual blue, bright and wide open, though a little wrinkle dimpled her brow above them. When she smiled, though, that subtle little one that did strange things to his insides, the fist in his belly loosened its hold just enough. Just enough that he could smile back at her. Just enough to let that fluttering of wings rise up in his chest, the flutter that was Beth’s, competing with his heart for which beat the loudest.

The little furrow in Beth’s brow smoothed out. “C’mere, you.”

She drew him to her, sliding one hand around to cradle the back of his head as he tucked his face into her neck. He wrapped his arms around her back and breathed her in, sweat and dirt and dried grass, warm and soft and alive and hell, that was close. Too fucking close, and he couldn’t shake the vision of her lying there motionless at the bottom of that hole, the walkers closing in on her. Reading his mind again, probably, Beth’s arm around his shoulders tightened, and she curled her fingers against his scalp as a little shudder rolled through her chest.

They stayed that way long enough for the throbbing in his forehead to bloom into a full-on ache, pulsing out from the wound with increasing intensity. Beth pulled away, easing slowly back, still in the circle of his arms and just far enough away for him to see her clearly.

“Beth and Daryl, remember?” Beth said, swiping her thumbs across his cheeks.

The grin that lifted his lips came easily on the heels of her words, which curled warm and rich in his belly. “Might need you to keep reminding me.”

“Oh, I plan on it.” Beth’s smile widened, just a touch, and he swore he saw a hint of pink creeping into her cheeks to match the warmth in his as she got to her feet. “Now c’mon. Help me loot this place.”

to be continued in chapter 23 part 2/2 >>

Fall Right In - Chapter 22/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Sat, 12 Sep 2015 21:20:53 GMT

Fall Right In
Chapter 22 – If I Had the Time, I’d Stop the World and Make You Mine

*~*

An uneventful morning—well, aside from the part of it that he couldn’t stop thinking about—led into another hot, humid afternoon. After the river bank, a bit of that weight he’d been carrying slipped away, and he and Beth slid right back into that easy, quiet way of theirs as they trekked on through the woods. All that lay between them, that wasn’t going away, no matter what his demons might tell him, no matter that it made no fucking sense that they were standing here at all. It didn’t happen overnight and it wasn’t gonna make sense overnight, either.

The more he thought on it, the more right it felt, leaving words out of this for the time being. Was more than good enough to just feel it and know she was feeling it, too. He let it wash over him, warm with a different kind of weight to it that didn’t smother, didn’t sit heavy on his shoulders or drag at his brain, but wrapped him up like a hug from Beth, and it was possible he was treading into sappy territory with that, but whatever.

They didn’t stop to eat, just sipped from their water bottles to keep hydrated, nibbled on a strip each of smoked venison, and helped themselves to whatever edibles they found along the way. Beth was getting better at identifying what to eat and what to avoid, though she always asked him first unless it was something she knew from before. The berries she paused to examine now weren’t edible, and she didn’t even touch them before leaving them be.

“I gotta pee,” she said, gaze drifting away from the berries to look off in the direction they were heading. “And I think I hear water up ahead a bit. Did that river make another loop around this way?”

He was inclined, right about now, to think of anything she did or said as magnificent—and when had he ever even used that word before—but the shred of rationality he had left agreed that the proximity of the river was particularly well noticed. “Mmhm.”

“Kay.” Still facing away, she nodded. “We’ll make it a one-stop shop, then. I can hold it.”

They reached the river in less than ten minutes, and Beth ducked off their path to do her thing. He kept his back to her, trusting her to stay close enough to get his attention without having to shout, since she was left particularly vulnerable whenever she had to take a piss. Last thing they needed was her getting caught with her pants literally around her ankles and him too far away to help. She went farther today than she usually did, though, going by the count of her footsteps, the distant trickle of her stream of urine, which he tried not to listen to but heard anyway. Daryl shifted his balance from foot to foot, awaiting the sound of her return, fighting the urge to turn around the longer she was away. He couldn’t hear her at all now, though he didn’t always hear much, and he clenched his hands into fists to keep from tapping them on his legs. Don’t turn. Don’t turn. Being able to see her might make him feel better, but Beth deserved that sliver of privacy, the best they could manage given the circumstances.

“You done pissin’?” he called, not turning around in case she wasn’t finished or—or whatever.

A flurry of rustling followed, and then a quiet sigh from Beth. “Yeah, all clear. Just lost supper, though.”

Letting out a breath of relief, he turned in time to watch her shoulder her crossbow and stride back through the underbrush. As she came up beside him, Beth explained about the rabbit she spotted, which she had hoped to catch for supper before he sent it running when he called out to her. She shrugged it off with a small smile of understanding.

“It’s too bad there wasn’t a way we could let each other know what’s up without usin’ words,” she said, shoulders falling back into place.

Daryl hummed at her as she stepped past him to the river and knelt down to rinse her hands. There was a way, but the moment he thought of it he wondered whether it was wise to suggest it. She had a point, though, a damn good one, and despite the trouble she’d had—still had, most nights—after everything that went down with Gorman, Beth weren’t no delicate statue. She could handle it.

He tore his thumb from his mouth as he crouched down beside her and hummed again, just loud enough to catch her attention. She turned her eyes toward him, eyebrows up in silent question. “You remember, at the funeral home, them bird calls?”

A visible shiver rolled across her shoulders, but she nodded, looking back down at her hands, trembling as she held them above the river, little droplets shaking off them and making little ripples in the water’s surface. “Yeah.” She paused and took a couple of deep breaths, curled her fingers in toward her palms so the tremor stopped. “You think we can make something like that for us?”

“Mmhm.” He glided his fingers down the back of her neck, the only part of her spine he could reach with her pack in the way. He wasn’t sure it would help her, but she liked that when she woke from her nightmares so maybe she’d like it now. Her eyes fluttered shut and she breathed out deep and steady as he made a couple of passes over her sweat-slicked skin.

When she shivered again, he was pretty sure it had little to do with thoughts of Gorman, and he felt a burst of heat rising in his cheeks to match the color rising in hers. Beth groaned softly, so quiet he barely heard it, and half turned to smile at him, her pupils wide as she opened her eyes. “Okay.”

Sunlight glinting off the water caught in the blue of her irises, brightening them up from their usual blue, changing them into something almost sparkly. Caught, for a moment, by the way she looked, all Daryl could do was stare, hand falling away from her neck to land on his knee.

Beth reached out and covered it with hers, blinking slowly. “What do we do?”

Drawn back out of his head by the contact, Daryl turned his hand to twine their fingers together. “Gotta decide what we wanna say an’ what bird voice we wanna say it in.”

“Maybe just two things?” Beth squeezed his hand, nodding as she spoke. “Somethin’ that means ‘all clear’ and another for ‘come-now-help’?”

“And ‘keep away’,” he said, tightening his grip even further as an imaginary fist tightened in his gut. “In case one of us runs into trouble.”

Beth didn’t need him to add any more to that, surely filling in the blanks herself on why that might be necessary. She nodded once more and held his gaze, eyes wide and serious. “Three things, then. All-clear, come-now-help, and keep-away.”

“Mmm.” Daryl brushed the back of her thumb with his and waited for the little grin to tug at her lips before he continued. “Figure it out when we stop tonight.”

“All right,” she said, the grin pulling a little more. “But you gotta find us some supper first. And I’ve got a craving for rabbit now, so…”

Her teasing rippled warmly through his chest and he chuckled, watching as her grin widened even more until all her teeth were showing. “Oh, I’ll get you your rabbit, woman, and it’ll be better than some skittish piss-break cottontail, too. Just you wait.”

This was one of those times when his own ridiculousness astounded him, but it made her laugh, so he didn’t much care. He’d stand on his head and sing the opening number for Cabaret or some musical shit if it kept her smiling like that. The last of the haunted look faded from her eyes and she leaned her head over onto his shoulder, letting out a soft sigh when he pressed his face into the top of her head. Not quite a kiss. Not quite not, either.

Fuckin’ coward.

She stayed there for a minute before straightening up and letting go of his hand to help herself to a drink of river water. They both had their fill, then topped up their bottles before standing. Daryl figured they must be getting close to the first of those fields, if he judged the distance correctly. Maybe within the hour if they kept moving. Beth didn’t say, and he wouldn’t volunteer anything unless she asked, but she didn’t linger long at the stream. As soon as they were on their feet she was already leading them on.

Daryl followed, admiring the set of her shoulders, the confident way she walked. Made her look tall for all she wasn’t truly tall at all. He could barely remember how it was before, that blip in time when instead of confidence she wore a cloak of doubt across those shoulders, weighing her down. Before even that, though, there’d been glimmers of this woman, eager to learn, to show that she wasn’t just some dead girl. Well, she never was and she weren’t gonna be, neither, and he’d never get enough of watching her this way.

Branches snapped from somewhere to the left of them. Far enough away that the threat wasn’t immediate and Daryl flicked his eyes toward Beth, to see if she had noticed. Not yet, but—another distant snap and Beth stopped walking, her focus now drawn toward the disturbance.

Walkers? she mouthed, as he stepped up bedside her.

He nodded, and waited. It took her a second to understand his lack of action, but once she did she gave a quick nod and turned an ear toward the approaching clatter. Still listening, she held up her hand, alternating between showing him two and three fingers. He nodded again when she flicked her gaze up to him. Beth listened another couple of seconds before drawing her crossbow, decision made. Daryl drew his and they each ducked behind a large enough tree to wait.

Two walkers lumbered into view half a minute later, and Beth, from behind her tree, pointed to herself and then indicated the right-sided walker. Was a good assumption that she would take the right and he the left, considering that’s the way they were standing, but he liked that she had the forethought to designate targets. No point, after all, in both of them shooting the same one.

Beth loosed her bolt a split second before his, the offset of the strings making a sound like a heartbeat as the bolts sailed toward their targets. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d usually notice except he was so focused on Beth right now, and as dumb as the thought felt on the surface there was something so fitting about him and Beth and heartbeats and crossbows.

Beth lowered her bow after following the shot through and set about cocking it again, hooking on the rope-cocker and pulling up in a practiced, fluid motion until the string clicked into place. Daryl delayed cocking his own crossbow to watch, her arms mostly in plain view since she’d stripped down to just her polo in the heat of the afternoon. All the practice in the weeks since she found the crossbow had toned her already strong arms that little bit more and she could probably get the bow cocked without the rope now if she had to. Be a strain, drawing more than she weighed, but he was sure she could do it, so sure he almost suggested she try cocking his, just to see, but Beth had already reloaded, turned a circle to check for more walkers, and was halfway to retrieving the used bolts before he thought to even move.

The smirk she wore as she trotted back toward him, both bolts in her hand, told him she had noticed.

“Now who’s distracted?” she said, her tone matching her smirk as she wiped the blood from the bolts in a patch of moss.

When she straightened up, Daryl reached out to tug at the hem of her sleeves, then let his hands slide down over the supple curves of her biceps. The muscles flexed beneath his touch, in an automatic way at first, but when he squeezed a bit, she contracted them tighter on purpose.

“Those arms of yours get any stronger and we’re gonna have to tear the sleeves off of that shirt,” he said, arcing his thumbs across the still-flexed muscles and smiling at the hint of pink spreading over her pale cheeks. “Start callin’ you Big Guns Greene.”

Beth laughed as her blush deepened, and swept her gaze over his arms in an obvious sort of way before she met his eyes again, wearing a smirking half smile. “Well, if I’m gonna start dressin’ like you, maybe you should start wearin’ your hair like mine.”

She reached up to twirl her finger into his hair, dislodging his hand in the process. “Little braid maybe, right about here.”

He snorted, gave her arm a final squeeze before releasing her. “All right, all right.”

Beth just grinned and gave his head a quick scratch—too quick, hell, she could do that all day—then stepped away to look out at their surroundings again. “We should be getting close to the field, right?”

“Think so.”

Without saying anything more, Beth nodded and resumed walking, once again showing that ability of hers to switch gears. Rather than just following behind her this time, though, Daryl stepped up to walk beside her. Beth glanced up at him as she slipped her hand into his, and they continued on that way, hand-in-hand for a little while, until the heat turned their palms slick with sweat. He stayed beside her when they let go, enjoying the little game of sneaking glances at her while trying not to let her notice. He failed miserably, every time, ‘cause it seemed whenever he wanted to look at her, she wanted to look at him, too, and they’d catch eyes and smile and she would laugh and they’d brush knuckles or tickle the other’s palm. His insides pulsed with a warmth that was as bright as the pink splashed across her cheeks, thick like honey, fluttery like her eyelashes, and they were both absolute idiots, but there weren’t anyone else he’d rather be an idiot with than Beth.

They reached the edge of the first field a little less than an hour later, by his estimate, stopping just inside the tree line to try to get a look at the area. The field was overgrown with tall grasses and weeds and the remnants of some sort of grain, limiting their view. Beth dropped her pack and crossbow at Daryl’s feet and scanned the woods’ edge, then scampered up a likely looking tree faster than he thought possible. He never seen her climb a tree before, but she sure must’ve done some climbing in her day. With those arms he’d been admiring, she climbed high enough in no time to see clear out over the field. After several minutes of silent surveillance, Beth climbed back down, jumping the last few feet to land in front of him. After reaching for her stuff, she looped her arm through his and led him back to the edge of the overgrown field.

“Four fields,” she said, lifting her arm up to draw a map in the air as she continued speaking. “This one here and two more after it all in a row, and a smaller one kind of alongside the top of the third field, looks like maybe it goes on past it a ways. There’s a barn at the end and a yard beside it with more buildings and then the house behind that. Woods to the right side all the way along, but the left is pretty close to the road where that side field lies.”

Daryl gave a quick nod, picturing the layout in his head as she described it. “The plan?”

Beth spent a few minutes staring out across the field, and let out an audible breath. “I think we should stick to the woods to the right until we get up close to that barn. Then we can check for signs of people, and maybe check out the buildings if it looks okay?”

When she finished, he looked at her where she stood beside him, gazing out over the field with her lips drawn tight and her fingers in a tangle in front of her. “Whatcha worryin’ about?”

She let her breath out between pursed lips, still looking out toward the distance. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to go messin’ about the buildings now, this late in the day, or if we should just camp in the woods tonight and go in tomorrow. But then if we do that, and there’s, like, a bunch of walkers lingerin’ around, it would be worth knowin’ about that before they hear or smell us in dark. But how do we know unless we go in now, and then we’re back to plan A and I’m still not sure that’s the wisest move, either.”

That was good, her considering the possibilities like that, and he was nodding even as she sighed and turned to face him.

“What do you think?” she asked, voice dropping down to a whisper. “I-I know you want me to lead, but—”

“Hey.” Daryl tapped the toe of her boot with the toe of his. “Askin’ my opinion ain’t wrong.”

A little grin flitted onto her face. “Ain’t got Beth and Daryl against the world without the Daryl part, right?”

His words, but somehow her saying them made his already warm insides get warmer. He matched her grin with one of his own, and she leaned over against him until their shoulders met. They’d been saying that, them against the world, for a long while now, and he liked the way it sounded. Beth and Daryl. Against the world or otherwise.

Before he could think too hard on that, ‘cause he promised her he wouldn’t, and they had a job to do, Daryl cast a quick glance across the field, even though he couldn’t see much. Beth was waiting to meet his eyes when he glanced down at her there at his shoulder. “My vote’s for plan A. Scout out what we can first from the woods, ‘fore we go in.”

She nodded once, her expression shifting back into one of focus. “All right. Then we can decide whether to go in or get the hell outta there.”

Neither he nor Beth saw any overt signs of human activity in the woods alongside the fields, aside a few pre-turn remnants. Except for the usual forest sounds, everything was quiet as they approached the barn, the faded old red of it showing in bits and pieces through the trees, more of it visible the closer they came to the woods’ edge. Bordering the yard was a simple barbed wire and post fence running right up to the edge of the woods. Beth crouched down behind the screen of tall, weedy grass growing along the fence line and Daryl dropped down behind her beneath the overhanging branches.

He could see well enough over her shoulder. A barn, quite a bit smaller than the one from the Greene farm and a good few decades newer, stood about twenty feet from the tree line, separated by a swath of patchy, weedy grass that didn’t look like it ever grew well. Neither the barn, nor any of the three smaller buildings visible beyond it, showed any signs of damage, at least from this side-on view. The yard, between the structures and pens plopped at random in it, was as overgrown as he’d expect after a couple years’ neglect. Nothing much suggested, from back here at least, that anyone was still hanging around.

Beth moved back from the fence to join him in his little pocket beneath the trees. “Looks like they’d’ve had chickens and pigs. Maybe goats. That thing that looks like a miniature barn could be a goat house. Horses, probably. Maybe a couple cows but I don’t think they raised beef, just milk cows.”

This was the sort of thing he couldn’t’ve known, but of course she would. And he was certain she was well aware that none of that mattered to the task at hand, but it was so like her to see the story behind something, like she had with the walker couple back at the cabin. It maybe didn’t matter in a practical sense, what came before, but it mattered to her and that—that mattered to him.

He hummed, to let her know he was listening, turned his head to watch her instead of the farmyard, as she pointed out the corner of the house in the distance, behind the back of the barn to the right, and what looked like maybe an orchard beyond that. Their hiding place stood within the late afternoon shade thrown by the barn, but in the brighter light outside the cover of the woods Beth’s eyes shone a particularly brilliant blue as they swept across the scenery. Little wisps of hair stood out, those bits always determined to escape her ponytail no matter how many times a day she tried to contain them. Unable to stop himself, Daryl trailed a finger through the worst of them, curling golden just above her ear, and Beth turned her head toward him, the softest hint of a smile playing at her lips.

“C’mon,” she said, tipping her head to the right, her ponytail sliding off her shoulder as she did. “Let’s look at the house.”

The farmhouse stood in the middle of what would have been some quality lawn, once upon a time, deep green and lush, the kind a man was tempted to run through barefoot. Farther away from the fence, roughly at the centre point between it and the road, the house, like the barn, remained in good repair. Less than twenty years old if he were to guess, though the orchard beside it, tidy rows on rows of mature peach trees, the scent of their fruit heavy in the air, was old enough to suggest there’d been an older house sometime before. Of that, he couldn’t see no remnants, at least not from this vantage point.

The house faced the road, which was visible now straight ahead at the end of a long gravel driveway. Wasn’t a big house, about twice the size of his and Beth’s cabin on the main floor with an attic-like second floor above it. A covered porch wrapped around the whole of it and a big old oak tree grew right out front. Probably had a tire swing and branches just waiting for the farmer’s teenage daughter to climb out an upstairs window, off to whatever mischief rebellious farm girls got up to. Wood siding was stained a bright yellow, probably had matching flowers in them white window boxes once upon a time. Looked like it coulda been something out of a postcard when it was new, but now it was just another empty house at the end of the world.

None of the windows were boarded up, and aside a broken railing at the near corner of the porch, the place looked pristine, just neglected. Abandoned as it stood. Grass growing tall and undisturbed at least to the back steps which faced them, flower beds overgrown with weeds, white paint peeling from open shutters, and a couple years’ worth of oak leaves scattered about everywhere, gathered in the corners where the wind tossed them in but couldn’t reach to blow them away.

Beside him, Beth smiled fondly as she eyed the house, but if the place tugged at any memories, she didn’t let on. Daryl let his eyes linger on her in profile, all of her splashed gold with the sun out here away from the barn’s shadow. Her gaze roamed over the yard in front of them and for a long time she just looked, unmoving except for her fingers slowly stroking the little braid in her hair. When she did turn, she wore that same soft smile he couldn’t help but return.

“What do you think?”

Don’t you think that’s beautiful?

Daryl shook the thought away, but didn’t turn from her. “Looks all right from here.”

“Should we go in?” she asked, but by the sharp edges to her gaze, he knew she was already anticipating his reply.

“Your call, Beth.”

She studied his face, those sharp eyes flicking over his features as though she were searching for answers, for an insight into what he was thinking. Truth of it was, there was no right answer, just a choice. If he were calling the shots he’d have gone for it, but this was Beth’s journey, and he might be standing at her side through it but he wasn’t gonna take it from her.

Beth took in a breath and held it a beat before letting it out, and with it the tension across her shoulders. Only the slight downturn of her mouth betrayed her uncertainty, but when she spoke, none of it showed in her voice. “We go in. Approach the house from the orchard side, out of view of those big windows...”

She detailed her plan, which she must have been working on even as she examined the yard. He had done the same, and noted with a beat of pride that she picked the same angle of approach as he. Times past he mighta strode right up to the door, front or back, knocked for walkers without really considering finding people. Like Beth, though, he couldn’t let what happened at the funeral home count for nothing. He wasn’t gonna waltz into another trap, not if he could help it.

The abandoned feel of the place didn’t change up close, and a peek around the front showed the same long, undisturbed grass as out back. Doors were unlocked and when Beth knocked, nothing knocked back. They cleared the house quick, both the main floor and the two small bedrooms upstairs.

“Looks like they left before it got bad,” Beth said, waving her arm toward the mantle above the fireplace, full of picture frames but all of them empty. “I wonder if they made it.”

He rolled his shoulders, not having an answer but sensing she wasn’t really after one. With the house clear, and possibly useful items filed away in their heads to examine later, Beth shut the door behind them and led him on to phase two.

The barn and the other three buildings in the fenced off yard—a chicken coup, pig sty, and that goat house—were similarly empty of bodies, living or dead, and just as abandoned. Same went for the workshop which sat halfway between the house and the barn, but right up against the edge of that side field, which up close looked more like an overgrown garden. Beth wondered whether the family had taken their animals or just let them go before they fled. Except for a single pile of what might’ve been chicken bones, and horse shit so ancient it didn’t even stink, no physical signs of the animals remained.

Once the buildings were clear, they explored the yard a bit more freely. Whatever vehicles might have once parked here were gone, taken by the farmers when they left or long since nabbed by someone else. Much of the contents of the workshop seemed undisturbed, though the whole inside was a clusterfuck of tools and scraps and junky shit they didn’t have time to sort through.

No gasoline, though, especially disappointing when Beth discovered the ATV with the key still in it and its tank completely empty. Their only other option was the ancient tractor, and even he couldn’t keep a straight face long enough to suggest using it.

“Well,” she said, patting the rusted side of the old John Deere. “At least we got shelter tonight, and there’s probably somethin’ we can use in the house. I think I wanna stay in the barn, though.”

Sounded good to him. Closer to the woods if they needed to make a quick getaway, a ladder they could pull up after them into the loft above, no way for anyone to see them once they secured themselves inside.

Beth led them back over to the house, skirting alongside the shed and angling over toward the centre of the yard through the knee-high grass. Even if they couldn’t take them along, she thought there might at least be some blankets they could use for the night. She just finished suggesting that when she spun around with a little gasp, face lit up like she just remembered something good.

“Peaches, Daryl! Remember the can—”

A loud crack rang out, cutting off Beth’s words, echoing around so loud he started to duck out of instinct. Gunshot, his brain shouted, as he frantically searched the yard for the source of the shot, but a second crack followed, and Beth screamed.

A blur of yellow and she was gone, before he could move, before he could even think about catching her. Down, falling, landing with a distant thud and what the hell—?

Daryl dropped to the ground at the edge of the gaping hole, dark and deep where moments ago there’d been nothing but tall, dead grass. Beth lay at the bottom, curled in a ball in a pile of rotten wood and brown grass and big clots of dirt.

No, no. Don’t let her be—

“Beth! Fuck, Beth! Tell me you ain’t hurt.”

A pained little groan floated up from below, and his heart gave a giant thump and started beating again, abusing the insides of his ribs with the force of its pounding. Slowly, she uncurled, dug herself out of the debris and pushed herself up. She shook her head but didn’t look up, gasping like she’d had the wind knocked out of her. But she was up, conscious and moving and shit, his heart was pounding so hard he was bordering on lightheaded.

Stop.

Work on getting Beth out, then worry about his own hide. They had the rope they’d used to hang the doe in her pack, enough length for him to haul her out. Looking down now, while she worked at breathing, he saw the cracked old concrete block walls around the pit she’d fallen into. Part of the original house, probably some forgotten cellar with the way it was covered over without having been filled in. She could brace her feet on the wall and climb while he pulled, soon as she caught her breath.

“Talk to me, girl.”

“I-I’m okay. Just—winded,” she said, words a bit clipped. “Lemme get—the rope.”

While she rearranged her gear to search for the rope, Daryl looked up from the hole, checking the light, breathing slow to get his heart to stop racing. Beth was fine, just had to get her outta there. They had more than enough time to search the house before the sun went down, and plenty of time after that before it got dark. Provided she wasn’t telling stories about not being hurt, they could pick some peaches and then set some snares up in the woods beside the barn, catch her that rabbit she wanted.

A flash of motion drew his eyes from the sun’s position in the sky over toward the house, ahead and to their right. The house, its yellow paint turned golden in the evening light. The big old oak tree, waving lazy in the breeze, tire swing swaying back and forth. And the walkers, a dozen of them staggering through the yard, a dozen more still weaving through the orchard trees, heading right for them.

“Beth,” he said, voice grave and calm despite the panic rising in his belly. “Need that rope now. We got company.”

*~*

If I had a gun, I'd shoot a hole into the sun
And love would burn this city down for you
If I had the time, I'd stop the world and make you mine
And every day would stay the same with you
- Noel Gallagher

To be continued in chapter 23 >>

Baby Girl Gonna Be Tough (Five Times and the One - Part 2 - TWD)

abelina — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 18:54:45 GMT

Title: Baby Girl Gonna Be Tough - Part 2 of Five Times Beth and Daryl Weren't Virtual Strangers Before the Prison Fell (and the One Time They Still Weren't)
Author: Abelina/Abby/Abelinajt
Fandom/Pairing/Characters: The Walking Dead - Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon (friendship/pre-Bethyl), Judith Grimes
Setting: Seasons 3.
Rating: T/PG13
Summary: The baby won't sleep, but Beth doesn't mind. She's happy to be the one who gets to watch over her on her first night in this world.
Notes: Takes place at the end of Slay the World (the same say as Judith’s birth) before the final scenes that happen the next day. Carol at this point is missing and presumed dead, and both T-Dog and Lori have just died. Also—I know newborns actually tend to spend much of their first day sleeping, after the whole ordeal of being born and all, but the child about to be known as Judith Grimes has other ideas.

Five Times Beth and Daryl Weren’t Virtual Strangers Before the Prison Fell
(and the One Time They Still Weren’t)

2 - Baby Girl Gonna Be Tough

*~*

Lori’s baby girl might just have been the most precious thing Beth had ever seen. She’d been around babies before, of course, many times, though not any quite as new as this little bundle, wrapped up snug in a soft grey blanket made out of an old sweat shirt. But none of those babies from before came into the world as it was now. None of them had to go about surviving their first hours in a prison where the dead moaned outside the fences and their mamas died so they could live.

So she was precious, this tiny girl without a name. Well, okay, without a proper one. Li’l Asskicker was a good nickname, Beth had to admit. Secretly, at least.

Beth tried once more to lay her down, but the moment the tiny girl left the warmth of Beth’s arms, she started fussing again. Resolved to a mostly sleepless night, Beth lifted the baby back into her arms and the fussing stopped. Her big dark eyes looked up at Beth and her mouth formed a little ‘o’, and Beth couldn’t help but smile.

“At least you’re a happy awake baby,” she said, brushing her finger over the baby’s squishy little nose. “Should we take a walk? Would you like that?”

Beth tucked the blanket in snugly around the little girl and rose from her bunk. If she had to be awake, she at least didn’t have to stay in her cell. Wearing just her socks so that her boots didn’t echo on the concrete and wake anyone, Beth gently jiggled the baby and walked quietly around the cellblock.

Beth had always wanted to be a mother, since she was a little girl herself. That wasn’t such a possibility anymore with the way things were now, but Beth was okay with that. Sacrifices had to be made and dreams had to change, and now all she wanted was a place where her family—those who were blood and those who were not—could live a decent life with some semblance of safety. Of normalcy. Asking for more felt greedy, and that was something Beth tried very hard not to be.

But this girl, this tiny little child not even a full day old, no, she wasn’t Beth’s, and Beth wouldn’t dishonour Lori’s memory by pretending otherwise. But Beth could love this baby like she was her own. Was pretty sure she already did. If Lori couldn’t be here to love her daughter, maybe she could rest easy knowing she had left this sweet girl behind with people who could.

Beth could. She thought of that old saying, it takes a village, and that was never more true than it was now. A night without sleep wasn’t going to hurt Beth, but it might hurt Daddy, this early in his recovery. And even though Maggie’s arms were the first this baby knew, it was Beth’s into which Daddy had trusted this tiny child. These arms which had plucked many an infant from their weary parents for the span of an evening, now responsible for the care of their group’s newest, most vulnerable member. Beth couldn’t go on runs and she would never be strong the way Maggie was, could never protect the group the way Maggie did. But these arms would protect this baby and keep her from ever knowing a night without comfort. Without love.

As Beth came around the front of the stairs, she saw a little glow coming from the perch above. Daryl never seemed to sleep much, and she wasn’t surprised to find him awake even in the middle of the night, especially a night like this one. They might have gained a new life amongst them, with the arrival of this small girl, but they had lost three good people. Beth thought about seeing if Daryl wanted some company, but decided not to bother him and continued on her circuit around the block, looking down and smiling at baby girl staring back up at her.

Beth wondered if her eyes would be blue like Rick’s once they cleared, or brown like Lori’s, or—no, she wouldn’t spare another thought for the rumours she wasn’t supposed to know about. This was Rick’s daughter. Rick and Lori’s precious girl, all squishy and new and already beautiful.

“Aren’tcha, sweetheart?” she said, stoking the baby’s cheek. “And I know you’re there, Daryl.”

She had heard the shifting of the mattress above, a few moments ago, about the time she would have wandered into his view. And even though he somehow managed to sneak down the stairs without making a sound, Beth knew when she turned she would find him standing there. He was dressed like it was the middle of the day, except for his lack of boots, standing two stairs up from the bottom, looking rather impressed—if she said so herself—at having been caught.

Daryl nodded his head to toward the baby. “She keepin’ you up?”

“Little miss isn’t ready for her first day to be over yet,” Beth said, walking back toward the stairs as Daryl descended the final two. “But it’s okay. We’re havin’ a nice stroll, aren’t we, baby girl?”

She glanced down at the baby, who blinked slowly up at her, squishing her little mouth up around a grunty baby noise. When Beth looked back, she knew she hadn’t missed the hint of a smile on Daryl’s face, even if he tried to hide it before she saw.

Features now schooled into something more neutrally Daryl, he came up beside her to peer down at the little face peeking out of the swaddling blanket. “Oh she’s wide awake, ain’t she?”

“Sure is.” Beth shifted her arms, tilting the baby up a little so Daryl could see her better. “Least she’s happy, so long as I’m holdin’ her.”

This time he couldn’t quite hide the smile as he reached out to touch the baby’s cheek. She turned toward the finger, as babies did, in the process shifting her soft focus onto Daryl, and now that was a definite smile on his usually grim face. “You keepin’ Auntie Beth awake, Li’l Asskicker, hmm? Two a you up kickin’ asses all night?”

Beth had to giggle, trying to smother it behind her lip to keep from making too much noise. “That’s right, it’s an asskickin’ party. You wanna join us, Uncle Daryl?”

Daryl rolled his shoulders a bit, not exactly a shrug, but close. “Ain’t got nothin’ better to do.”

It took Beth a second to realize he had answered her question seriously. She thought , for a split second, about suggesting sleep as something better to do, but held her tongue. Chances were, whatever kept Daryl up so late wasn’t something he could control as easily as that.

“Bring ‘er up if you want,” he said, glancing toward his perch.

That wasn’t the sort of invitation she expected out of Daryl, but then, it wasn’t every night she was up entertaining a very unsleepy baby, either. Of the few of them left, fewer of them slept up there and if they were gonna be awake they might as well do so with a bit of candlelight and less chance of waking the others. She followed Daryl up and picked a spot against the wall, far enough from his sleeping space so as to not invade it, and slid down the smooth concrete to sit on the floor.

Beth drew her knees up and laid the baby on her legs, little swaddled bottom and feet warm on her stomach, both of Beth’s hands holding her safely in place. Baby girl blinked up in that slow way of hers, that unhurried new baby way, those big eyes slowly finding Beth’s face amidst the big wide blur that was the world. No fussing, not even a grunt, just that slow little blink and subtle pursing of her wrinkly lips.

“Look at her, lookin’ at you,” Daryl said, not a little bit of awe apparent in his tone.

When she looked up, Daryl was standing over them, eyes on the baby and his face so completely unguarded it took Beth by surprise. She barely kept in the little gasp, seeing that wonder there that made him look almost boyish. Imagine that, Daryl Dixon turned completely to mush by this one tiny human. Not for the first time, either. Beth would never forget the sight of him cradling this baby in his arms, smiling, feeding her that first bottle, rocking her back and forth and calling her sweetheart, like loving on babies was something he did every day. Like loving on a baby was something he did ever.

She didn’t say any of that, though. Instead, she turned back to the baby, smiling down at that little face. “She seems to like lookin’. Just wish it was Lori she was lookin’ at.”

Daryl slid down the wall, taking a seat beside her, close enough that he could still see the baby. A bit closer than he normally might, but it didn’t bother Beth. She had him figured out. It wasn’t Beth he’d invited up so much as it was the baby, and that was in itself kind of nice, getting to see a bit of this side of Daryl he usually kept hidden.

“Yeah,” Daryl said, and it took Beth a moment to remember what she had said before.

She nodded slowly, never taking her eyes off the little girl but aware that Daryl’s had now shifted onto her. “It’s sad, to think of her growin’ up without her mama.”

Daryl grunted softly. “Baby girl gonna be tough, though, all these aunties ‘n uncles lookin’ out for her.”

“And her big brother,” Beth said, smiling as she remembered her own. “Every little girl should have a big brother.”

“Her dad, too,” Daryl added, voice gone oddly flat. “Maybe.”

Daryl’s gaze was still on her when Beth looked over at him. His eyes, even in this dim light, stormed with everything his voice had not. Of course he was worried about Rick; they all were.

“She will,” Beth said, knowing in her heart that Rick would be there for his daughter, once he came back from wherever it was he had gone. “It’s just gonna take some time.”

She didn’t blame Rick. Couldn’t. Beth knew all too well how easy it was to slip into a dark place after losing someone. But she hoped for the baby’s sake, and for Carl’s—for all their sakes, truly—that Rick wasn’t lost to them for good. If someone like her could make it back from that dark place, surely someone like Rick could, too.

The conversation stalled, throwing the two of them into a weird sort of silence that might’ve trickled into awkward territory if the baby hadn’t picked that moment to start fussing. Her face scrunched up and turned a little redder, and the little grunting noises she’d been making all night were starting to sound a bit more like whimpers. Beth slipped the baby close again, off her knees and into her arms, but the fussing didn’t quit, even when she stood and jiggled her, like before. Tiny arms and legs wriggled inside the swaddling.

“She all right?”

Daryl’s voice was probably a little more serious than the situation called for, and Beth couldn’t help but smile at his concern, glancing over at him as he stood, too. “Probably gettin’ hungry. Could maybe use a change, too.”

Daryl was nodding, eyes drifting down toward the common area below. “Whatcha need?”

Earlier that day, Daryl had gone on a run just to get this baby the formula she needed to survive, and though his voice didn’t carry the same intensity as it had then, those few short hours ago, Beth could hear the sincerity there still. He wanted to help. Wanted to make sure this baby had what she needed, no matter that she wasn’t his, no matter that he’d already had to risk his life in order to do it.

Beth tried to swallow the lump growing in her throat as she turned to face Daryl, standing there at the head of the stairs. “Hold her for me. I’ll go get it.”

Like he had when he took her from Carl, those hours ago, Daryl slipped the baby into his arms from hers without hesitation. Beth heard him whispering to her, words she couldn’t hear in the softest little voice as she hurried down to get the diapers and formula.

On her way back up, Beth paused at the top of the stairs, watching Daryl’s back as he rocked side to side, still talking to that tiny girl, all sorts of nonsense about kicking asses and how to shoot a crossbow and letting Auntie Beth get some sleep. There was so much she just didn’t know about Daryl, so much of himself he kept hidden away, probably with good reason at least in his mind. His past remained a mystery, though it was clear to her that he hadn’t led an easy life. That he doubted very much he could ever lead a good one, despite how his devotion to the group belied that. Watching him now with that baby was just as magical as it was before. She would never ask him. She would never say. But this wasn’t the first baby he’d ever held, ever tried to soothe, and nobody would ever convince her otherwise.

He handed the infant back to Beth without a word to have her diaper changed—and it was both wet and soiled, which Beth knew was a good thing, as it meant she’d gotten enough to eat today. Daddy would be happy to hear it when he awoke. Beth could feel Daryl’s eyes watching her as she worked, cleaning the baby’s soft skin, securing the new diaper onto her tiny body before redressing her and wrapping her back up the way Daddy had shown her.

Beth lifted her up once she was finished, and turned to Daryl, meeting his eyes the moment she stood. “You wanna feed her?”

His already uncharacteristically soft gaze softened even more, though he was chewing on the inside of his lip the way he did sometimes, and he didn’t answer. Knowing he wasn’t going to, even though he clearly wanted to say yes, Beth stepped up close until her knuckles brushed against his vest, holding the baby to his chest. Daryl let out a little sigh and took the baby from her again with that same, easy motion, settled her into those strong arms as though that’s what they were meant for.

Beth handed him the formula, and baby girl stared up at Daryl as he fed her the bottle, that same big-eyed soft focus and slow blink, the only sound that of her sucking, strong and hungry, swallowing audibly, breathing in little huffs through her squishy nose. Beth’s gaze flickered between the two of them, the tiny baby staring up at Daryl’s face, and Daryl staring back down at her, lips turned up in a smile he probably didn’t realize he was making. That lump swelled up again in her throat, at the picture the two of them made. This brand new baby and this hardened man, and her eyes threatened to tear up at the simple beauty of it.

“Thank you,” she said, keeping her voice low to hide the way it thickened. “For goin’ on that run today.”

“Ain’t nothin’,” Daryl mumbled, gaze catching briefly on hers before settling again on the baby.

“No.”

Beth’s voice came out louder than she meant it to, and this time Daryl didn’t look away when he met her eyes. “It’s not nothin’, Daryl. We lost too many people today, but this little girl’s gonna make it because of you. That’s somethin’, so thank you.”

Daryl didn’t respond, but Beth didn’t expect him to. She said what she needed to say and she knew he heard her, hoped he tucked it away inside and remembered it. He wasn’t the sort of man used to accepting praise or gratitude, but that didn’t matter. He earned it and she was gonna damn well let him know. He stared back at her for a long time, those sharp blue eyes piercing right through her, almost, but Beth wasn’t going to look away. Not until the baby gave a little grunt and burped, all on her own, did they part, two sets of eyes simultaneously drifting to settle on the small bundle in Daryl’s arms.

“Looks like she’s done,” Daryl murmured, slowly rocking his way back over to where Beth stood.

She took the baby from him without protest, settled her into her arms. A trickle of formula gathered at the corner of her mouth and her eyes were already halfway shut, tiny body lying still now, all wrapped up tight and warm in her swaddling blanket. Looked like she was going to maybe sleep after all.

Beth was temped to stay up here with Daryl, even with the baby drifting off. Keep him company since her night’s sleep was already shot, anyway, and he didn’t look to be settling down anytime soon. He probably wouldn’t mind. Might even like gazing down at the baby a bit longer. Maybe he secretly preferred not being left alone with whatever kept him awake at night. In the end, though, she decided against it.

Maybe someday, she could get Daryl to open up a little. Find out a little more about this man, who underneath was so much different, so much more complex than he appeared on the surface. But that someday wasn’t today, so Beth held out the now-sleeping baby for him to see and whispered, “Say goodnight, Uncle Daryl.”

Daryl brushed his palm gently over the baby’s fuzzy scalp. “Night, Li’l Asskicker.”

She was halfway down the stairs when Daryl called out to her. He was backlit where he stood, at the top looking down, so Beth couldn’t make out the expression on his face, just the shape of him there. Broad shouldered, strong, like a statue standing guard over everything below. “Yeah, Daryl?”

“It’s—nothin’, never mind,” he said, retreating back a few steps into the light. “Get some sleep, a’right?”

Though she wondered what he was about to say, Beth let it go and just smiled up at him. “I will. You too. Goodnight, Daryl.”

From the top of the stairs, Daryl nodded once. “Night, Beth.”

Beth didn’t turn around as she descended the steps and headed for her cell, but she knew Daryl’s eyes followed her the whole time. She could still see the glow from his perch as she settled into her bunk, the warm, sleeping baby tucked securely in the crook of her arm. She had lost her mother, and for that reason alone, Beth’s heart would always break a little for this tiny girl. But she had her village, a ready-made family of both choice and blood—aunties and uncles, a grandpa, a father, a strong-hearted big brother.

Her saviour in leather, up there on his perch, even now watching over her.

Baby girl was gonna be tough, alright, but more than that—baby girl was gonna be loved.

*~*

Fall Right In - Chapter 21/? (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon)

abelina — Sat, 15 Aug 2015 22:46:52 GMT

Fall Right In
Chapter 21 – Dance with the Devil Inside of Me

*~*

She tasted like squirrel. Of all the thoughts that could’ve been in his head while he was kissing Beth Greene, the first of them was the taste of squirrel on her lips, her tongue, her breath as it puffed outta her mouth and into his. Any other thoughts he mighta had crumbled to dust, leaving only the heat of her mouth, the wet slide of her lips, and the way she sighed, soft and feminine but with an edge to it, an edge that sliced down inside him and stirred up that fluttering in his chest so violently he thought he might explode with it. This couldn’t be happening, he must be dreaming, musta died in his sleep because never in a million years—except he was wide awake and kissing Beth and nothing ever felt as real as this.

Beth slipped onto his lap sometime after pausing to breathe and them surging together again like oxygen didn’t matter. Her legs pressed in on the outsides of his thighs and the hand that was at her waist now lay flat across her back, fingertips sliding beneath soft flannel to graze even softer skin. He had a handful of hair he didn’t remember reaching for and one of Beth’s hands tugging at his. If she got any closer she’d feel just how bad he was burning for her. Feel it again and Daryl wasn’t all that sure he’d wanna stop it this time.

And oh, she was fire, this woman, a blaze unto herself. Magic. He never kissed like this in his life, never thought he knew how. Never thought he wanted to try until Beth Greene wandered in, unzipped his sternum and made a home for herself in the chambers of his heart. It beat for her, with her, into her beneath the weight of her palm, the press of her fingers.

Beth’s teeth sunk into his bottom lip again and he groaned as she tugged, a sound unlike anything he ever remembered making before. She released him to press their foreheads together, sitting there on his legs like the little ball of flame she was. His brain failed to grasp the task of finding words, with his lungs on fire, his heart pounding so hard he could taste it in his throat. He clutched at her instead, with the hand at her back and the other in her hair, and her breath shuddered out, hot as it washed over his face.

“Daryl,” she whispered, between deep, ragged breaths. “Daryl.”

“Fuck, Beth.”

He felt the rumble of her laughter, silently shaking through her body into his, and she pulled back, the weight of her resting atop his thighs. Daryl dragged his eyes open, blinking against the blinding orange of the sun pouring in from the east. How did he miss the sunrise? Then his gaze focused, sharpened, landed on Beth.

Beth, lit up like a candle, the whole one side of her bathed in that intense orange light, making a shining, burnished gold halo of her hair. Of her, like some sorta statue, but alive. God, so alive, all flushed up to her forehead and down her neck, lips red and glossy, glistening in that fiery light as brightly as the thin ring of blue left in her eyes.

“Beth.”

He needed to speak, to say something, but even her name caught in his throat now and wouldn’t budge. Needed to tell her—tell her something, anything. Couldn’t just kiss her like that and say nothing, but what did he say, what could he say, and his words vanished into the vortex of his thick head, his useless, short-circuit of a brain. You ain’t worth shit. Ain’t nothin’ good about you. He was going to fuck it all up if he couldn’t speak and if he could it would be all wrong anyway, ‘cause he didn’t know, and Beth. Beth.

Oh, God, Beth.

“Daryl.”

Both her palms pressed against his cheeks, and he only realized he had looked away when she dragged his face up to look at her.

“Daryl,” she said again, voice so soft yet it hooked right in to the back of his skull and pulled tight, until he couldn’t fall away from her again if he tried.

Her eyes hooked in, too, the blue intensity of them boring right into his. She wasn’t gonna let him shrink away. God, she knew he was trying, not because he wanted to but because his stupid ass head didn’t know what the fuck to do with this. But she wasn’t letting him go. Was gonna keep him right there with her.

Girl like that ain’t interested in no worthless redneck. Whatcha got to offer her anyway? Nothin’ she wants, ya sorry excuse for a—

“Daryl.”

His name again, and this time, finally, the word tossed the voices out of his head, thawed his frozen limbs, relit the flame in his belly burning so hot for her. He curled his fingers in her hair and into the skin of her back and watched her face as her parted lips formed a smile. What else was there to do but haul her in and taste that smile and let it spill over into him. Beth giggled against his lips and he swallowed it down until it filled his chest with its lightness, and he wanted to laugh, too, but he wanted to kiss her even more than that. So he let it linger, let the feeling build up as the kiss deepened, until he thought he might float away with Beth in his arms and her tongue in his mouth and he was a goddamn kiss-drunk fool but there were far, far worse things to be.

The sun was even higher when they dragged apart again, after an amount of time that passed in seconds and hours and days all at once. He was shaking again, a rolling tremble starting at the core of him and spreading out in little waves that only deepened when he looked at her. Beth’s eyes were opened so wide, wider than he thought he had ever seen them, and it was too much, everything simmering there. Too much to take when his own head was still trying to catch up, when a plague of voices, gone silent for a time now hovered again in the periphery, just waiting to inflict their particular brand of torment. Sensing that, maybe, ‘cause she could probably read him like a flashing billboard about now, Beth leaned forward and let her forehead rest against his again, both her hands sliding down to lay on his chest.

Daryl stroked her cheek with his thumb, let his fingers curl into her hair, into her scalp beneath, and Beth leaned into his palm with a little sigh. It trickled right through his nerves, covering over the buzzing edges of them and he let out a sigh of his own in the soothing aftermath.

Oh, he could get used to this.

After a long time of sitting there, motionless aside from their synced up breathing, Beth pressed her fingertips into his chest and brushed her nose across the tip of his. “We gotta go, Daryl.”

Sun was up. They’d lost some travel time, and he should care, he should, but the part of him that bothered with that sort of thing had taken a hike with the first glide of her tongue on his lips. Same time, though, she was right. They should go, now, use the day for travel like they must, no matter how much he ached to just stay right here and spend another hour or two getting lost in kissing her.

“Yeah,” he said, dragging the word up and out, reluctant and raspy. “Got a lotta ground to cover.”

She slipped away, sliding off him to stand over him a moment, casting him dark in the shadow of her legs before she stepped away. He watched her back as he stood, adjusted himself in his jeans while she was busy with her pack and crossbow. He’d gone to sleep hard, woken hard, no surprise kissing her made him harder still and he wondered that he had enough blood left in his brain to even think. In truth, both his spinning head and his aching cock were full of the same thing. Heart too, still pounding beneath his ribs like a heavy metal backbeat even though Beth was half way across the clearing.

No way and no desire to be away from her, but he knew he needed to pull back from these desperate edges he kept climbing toward, least while they travelled. Daryl took a moment to look out over the lightening landscape below them, to breathe and remind himself that the world was more than just Beth even if she was the most important goddamned thing in it.

His head spun, just a little harder, in the wake of that thought, but before he could let it rock him too hard, before the voices in his head could interject, Beth’s knuckles brushed the back of his hand. It pulled him back down, that little slide of skin on skin as she came to stand beside him, like last night but in reverse, and this time he was the one to turn his hand and twine their fingers together. She squeezed tight and he felt it in his chest, too, like her fingers, maybe all of her, wrapped around his heart.

Beth wore the tiniest of smiles when he looked down at her, but the sort of thing that lit up her whole face despite the subtlety of it. He let his shoulder bump into hers and her smile widened, and Daryl couldn’t keep the same stupid grin from sliding onto his face, too.

Yeah. A damn romance novel, all right. Fuck.

Beth lifted her arm to point out toward the first of a series of gaps in the otherwise solid expanse of trees. “Think we can make that clearing today?” she asked, the wobble in her voice suggesting she was still just as stirred up inside as he was no matter how calm she looked on the outside.

Daryl had spent a relatively brief time yesterday considering that very thing, making for what looked like it might be farmland there at the edges of the road. They’d lost some time—not that he was willing to give it back—but they could, the two of them, cover that kind of distance in a day, if nothing happened to slow their progress.

To Beth, though, he gave a quick nod. “Mmhm. Whatcha thinkin’?”

Her smile changed, just a bit, and she squared her shoulders, standing a little taller even while still half leaning on him. She’d never say, but he knew what it meant to her, him asking her to lead them, deferring to her decision making as he was right now. Could see it in her eyes, that confidence, that spark of pride in herself. He’d do what he could to keep it there.

Beth took a deep breath and cast her gaze out into the distance again before sweeping back to catch his eyes. “I think it’s a farm.” She brought her arm up again to trace in the air the suggestion of fences and fields there in the distance. “Even if we don’t find any food or a workin’ vehicle, it might mean shelter for the night at least.”

There were other points to consider, since nothing these days was simple or easy or certain, but she was probably already thinking about some of that anyway. Most of this was about trusting her to get there on her own, to get used to thinking this way, relying on her own knowledge and trusting her own instincts. Like she done when she set out to find him, after the storm, and later with their daily hunting trips, he knew of no better way for her to hone her skills than to dive head first into it, to be the one making the calls for both of them. She was smart, Beth, and she was good. Not perfect, but just the right kinda naturally observant that she took to it fast and learned even faster, lapping up every drop of knowledge he had to give her, figuring a lotta shit out on her own, putting all of it to use like she’d been doing it her whole life.

“All right,” he said to her, glancing down at her again while she was still looking out over the terrain below. “Lead the way.”

He attempted, at first, to focus on the journey. To put his mind to descending the hillside once the sharp ridge gave way to a gentler slope, settle into the woods as he had done all his life, and leave the ledge and everything that happened there behind. Awareness of his surroundings wasn’t something Daryl could turn off, ingrained as it was in the fibre that made him, but his mind wasn’t on the woods, not the way it should be. They’d barely reached the bottom before he gave up any pretence of not letting his focus shift onto Beth Greene. Not, as he might’ve once tried to tell himself, just ‘cause she was leading the way.

Some ways it was a good thing, walking behind her. Following, able to watch her without her knowing it, admiring the lean grace of her, the purposeful sway of her hips and the curve of her ass in those tight as hell jeans. Taking in the strength of that lithe little frame that a person might miss if they didn’t know it was there. Hell, replaying every second of kissing her without having to worry about what his face was doing. No risk of spilling open and bleeding out everything there in front of her when he walked in her shadow.

Two days.

Two days since it hit him, since he came to understand what it meant to feel this way. To feel this way about Beth. Two days, but it might as well have been a lifetime with how deep the truth burned into him. How solid it stood alongside every single thing he knew. Not a new thing, after all, just a new understanding of something that had been coming on for a long time. Made it easier, the unwavering nature of it, to accept it. To let himself feel it, the ripples of it coursing pleasant through is veins. To be able to look at Beth and know that it was her, out of all the people in the world, before and after it went to hell, who caught his heart. Who dug her delicate fingers down into the depths of his fucking soul.

He couldn’t say why she would even want that blackened old thing, withered and rusted. Anemic. Atrophied from lack of use. Barely able to beat from being buried so long beneath the demons of his past and the ones of his own making. But it was hers all the same, whether she knew it or not; now that he’d given it away it wasn’t his to take back.

She said once that he was good to her. Once not so long ago yet it felt like years had passed since that morning in the cabin. He felt it then and felt it even more deeply now, the desperate, aching need to be the good she thought him capable of. Never be good enough, but maybe. Maybe if she—if she showed him how, he could be. He could be that for her.

That girl’d just as soon drive her knife through your thick head as a fuckin’ walker. ‘Bout as good to her dead as ya are alive, ya piece a shit…

Wasn’t true. On some level he knew that. On a lot of them, maybe, ‘cause for once in his life he wanted to argue with the voices rather than just letting them tear into him. As hard as it was to shake off the mental commentary, he’d gotten used to thinking without it somewhere along the way, before the demons of his past started poking holes in the box he’d buried them in. Now that familiar lead weight in the back of his head battled with the fluttering warmth in his chest that was all Beth’s doing, pulling him in opposing directions, stretching him apart inch by inch.

Beth, though. He swore she glowed, even outside the bits of sunlight starting to filter in through the tree cover. Walked on like her feet were made of clouds or something, light as air, breezy though he had no clue what that even meant. And every time she glanced over her shoulder to look at him, her eyes bright and her smile soft, his heart squeezed in his chest and the warmth in his belly deepened. He didn’t know how she did it but she made it look effortless, just existing as she always had despite the flurry of changes, and he wanted to reach out and borrow some of that for himself. Soothe his head and figure out how he was supposed to do this now that he knew how she tasted.

Daryl couldn’t go back to pretending any part of this was platonic and he didn’t think Beth could either. Wasn’t just about kissing her. Wasn’t about how he burned for her all the time, how she got him so hard without ever laying a hand on him. Wasn’t about Beth’s dream that was not a nightmare, how she’d called out his name before he woke her, or what she got up to in the woods after when she fled his arms in desperation.

Ya know she ain’t after your heart, ya pussy. Ain’t gonna want the rest of it either once she knows how useless it is. Dick’s limper than a dead catfish. Hell, catfish prolly knows what to do with a woman better than you do, Darylina.

Pain burst in his palms where he’d dug in his broken, bitten nails. No. Merle—Merle’s fucking ghost—was wrong.

He wanted her. Was a slow-starter of a revelation and he should’ve figured that out sooner, but it ain’t like he’d ever wanted anyone before—as Merle never tired of reminding him—not like this. Not ever like this. Even now he burned for her, a heat like a volcano boiling in his belly just waiting to erupt, and he wasn’t hard but it wouldn’t take much to get him there. And Beth, Christ. No maybes about what her desires were, not after last night.

But it wasn’t just physical, this thing between them. Not even by half, though he couldn’t really separate it out like that. There was overlap. Mixing. Emotional and physical and everything else all tossed into a blender on high. Daryl couldn’t trust his brain to tell him the truth, not with something so important as Beth Greene, not when old demons took particular pleasure in fucking with his head like this. But he could trust Beth.

He only needed reason to look for it, reason to want to see what was right there in front of him. To see her.

Reason hit him two days ago, when he finally got it through his idiot brain what it meant to feel this way. Sitting with Beth on the steps and lying wrapped up with her in bed, traveling through the day yesterday and looking back over the past weeks while he held her at the ledge—he saw. He knew. It was all there in her eyes whenever she looked at him. Shit, it was there in everything she did and every word she said.

I still have you, Daryl.

Didn’t make no sense, him and Beth, but he suspected this sorta thing never did.

The real Merle would’ve taunted him for it and never let up, this shit about feelings, damn romance novels and beating hearts. Merle’d never had a shortage of women in his life but Daryl knew his brother had never felt like this. ‘Cause if Merle had he’d’a known how good it was, falling for someone like Daryl had fallen for Beth and feeling all of it shining back at him from her big blue eyes. Warmth and fluttering and this thrilling sort of energy, zipping through him all the time, even with the quicksand he was stuck in right now. Daryl never knew he could be as caught up in another person as much as he was with Beth. Beth and her smile, her voice when she sang, her small hand in his, the fire in her eyes, and the strength in her heart. He just hoped she knew that it was both of them feeling this way. That she wasn’t alone in any part of it.

There was something there to reach for. He couldn’t quite make out the shape of it but it was there in the distance, and that’s where his certainty ended. Their lives were already one complicated knot, the two of them woven together out of necessity, somewhat, but he had enough brains, if not the experience, to know that a lot of that weaving happened because they wanted it to. A morning’s worth of kisses, as incredible as it was, was only one shining thread amongst many. They were standing on the cusp of something massive, only Daryl had no clue how to get there or where to start.

What was so easy before, actions taken on instinct, in the midst of emotions too powerful to control, now impossible when considered with intent. It felt like he toppled off the high of this morning’s kiss and landed at the bottom on the wrong side of a wall. He could see her. Could touch her if he reached for her. Knew where he wanted to be but he couldn’t coordinate his arms and his legs to get him there.

Daryl ploughed into Beth’s back, almost knocking her forward but she planted her feet and he caught her by the arms. So lost in his head, he hadn’t seen her stop, and he was about to question her on it when he saw the water. A meandering section of a small river swung out into their path, the same one Daryl had noticed from the ledge last night. Though the trees grew thick right up along its banks, he’d seen enough of these to recognize the pattern of the water woven into the canopy from above. Beth, clearly, hadn’t expected it.

As he moved to stand mostly beside her, Beth pressed her shoulder back into his and craned her neck around to look at him. “You know this was here?”

She gently tapped her fingers against the back of his hand, a little one-two-three-four count, repeating until it occurred to him what she wanted. He caught her fingers and held them, pulse racing a bit at the contact. And it was stupid but he couldn’t help it, with that or the little weight of breathlessness in his chest when he leaned close to her ear. “Mmhm. You’re slippin’, Greene. Shoulda picked that out last night.”

Daryl almost didn’t recognize his own voice. Hadn’t planned on saying any of those things, they just sorta rolled out, all full of grit.

Beth shivered in response and pressed her shoulder back a bit more, tipping her face up until her eyes found his and held. “Mmm. Must’ve been distracted.”

That mighta been an understatement, if he ever heard one. Weren’t just her, though, distracted last night. Distracted right now. Weren’t just her at all.

Beth lingered there with him a few minutes before giving his hand a firm squeeze and stepping away to kneel down at the water’s edge. In the swift current she rinsed her hands, then splashed some of the chilly water on her face. Daryl got down beside her to do the same, cupped some into his hands and drank. When he lowered his hands, she was looking at him, waiting for their eyes to catch and the moment they did, she flashed him a small smile that set his heart fluttering like mad.

Then she flicked her hands, speckling his face with a little shower of cold river water. He gasped and she started laughing, getting in another shot before she was up and running away from his potential retaliation. All he could do, though, was watch the motion of her legs and ass as she ran, gaze up the grin on her face when she spun around to look for him, a faint pink tinge to her cheeks. He got to his feet as she trotted back, still giggling, not really breathless from the short sprint but breathing hard anyway. Lightness filled his chest, like laughter except it just stuck there and held instead of busting out, and he was sure with the way she grinned at him that all of that must be showing on his face.

He shook his head at himself, at how ridiculous he was being and how much he didn’t care. Oh, this woman.

“Daryl,” she said, her tone teasing as she stepped up in front of him. “You were supposed to try to get me, too.”

The laugh did rumble out now, just a bit, and he couldn’t resist reaching out to tuck an errant curl of hair behind her ear. “Maybe I’m just waitin’ til you don’t expect it.”

Again, these words, coming out of some previously hidden corner of his brain, a part devoted to making Beth Greene blush, given the way her already pink cheeks darkened. She curled her shoulders forward, lowering her head with her lip caught between her teeth. As quick as she did she looked back up at him, still flushed but grinning now, and she reached out to plant her finger square in the center of his chest.

“Oh, you’re on, Mr. Dixon.”

He didn’t think he could feel any warmer inside, but the heat rose anyway with the rasp of her voice and that goddamned Mr. Dixon. Beth’s grin hadn’t quit and he wanted to kiss it right off her face. Wanted to reach out and slide his hand into her hair and pull her in, taste the hint of squirrel on her tongue, feel the bite of her teeth in his lip and maybe try a nibble of hers. He held back, uncertain if he should. If he could. If this was something they did now that they’d done it once or if there was a procedure, a set of rules to follow and him, the clueless jerk who didn’t know.

What, I gotta fuckin’ show you what to do, baby brother? Christ, man, I sent her to ya on a goddamn platter…

That shard of memory spread a vein of ice through the warmth in his belly, stopped him from moving, and he wanted to say something but he choked on the words before they could even form, forced them down while his brain battled itself. But Beth just smiled, sweet and warm as she stepped forward to hug him, her arms sliding around and beneath his pack so her palms lay open over his wings. She nuzzled into his neck, the tip of her nose just grazing his raging pulse, and he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and just held on, already second guessing his second guessing. Trying to shove Merle back out of his head and keep Beth in it, Beth and the ledge and all of this...

“Daryl,” she whispered, pressing her nose in just a little bit. “I can hear you thinkin’.”

He sighed, the sound rattling out of him like one of their camp alarms. “You got no idea, girl.”

The breath of her answering laugh washed over his throat, warm, tickly. “I know it’s, like, your natural state to worry, Daryl. But don’t, okay?”

It shouldn’t surprise him anymore how well she could read him. Walking ahead of him for hours and she knew. She always fucking knew. He shifted his hand to cradle her cheek, thumb stroking across the warmest part of it as she pressed her face even deeper into his neck. “Beth.”

“Just don’t worry,” she said, lips moving against his skin.

Maybe they weren’t ready to talk about things yet. They hadn’t, not really at all. Still weren’t except they kinda were, in a way. He let her words, few as they were, seep inside him. Let them repeat on a loop in his head as Beth slipped out of his arms and gifted him with one of those soft but luminescent smiles. Told himself to listen to her, ‘cause if she told him not to worry, she meant it, and when she grabbed his face in her hands and leaned in to brush her lips across his he thought he just might manage it.

She didn’t linger. Didn’t deepen the kiss at all, just stroked his cheeks with her thumbs and smiled again as she stepped away. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her as they continued walking, first skirting the curve of the river before resuming their northward course. Couldn’t stop reaching for her whenever they stopped, that brush of knuckles she seemed to like, the press of his hand low on her back where maybe he might draw his fingertips across a strip of bare skin. Same as before, same as it had been except now that a morning of kissing lay between them it wasn’t the same at all. Christ, there was so much to think about he could barely keep track of all of it. Lines of thoughts like roads on a map, crossing and joining up, all leading back to that centre point, that gold star, that destination that was Beth.

He never did this before, been in anyway involved with a woman outside of half-hour windows—Merle’s goddamn platters and times he was just too out of it to say no. He endured those moments but never wanted them in the first place and would just as soon forget they even happened. That wasn’t Beth, none of that. Beth was a creature unto herself and she meant the fucking world to him—would, still, even if she wasn’t the only one in it anymore—and the only thing more frightening than that was the thought of getting this wrong and hurting her. Ain’t like he had any stunning examples of this sorta thing to go by, never in his old life and not in this one, either, unless he counted Glenn and Maggie—and they were not Glenn and Maggie.

Beth looked back over her shoulder at him as she walked, just long enough that he caught the flash of her soft smile before she faced forward again.

Naw, they weren’t Glenn and Maggie. Weren’t anyone else but them, but they were something, him and Beth. They were definitely something, all on their own, without even trying.

Maybe—maybe this was one of those things that just needed to happen. Maybe that’s what Beth meant when she told him not to worry.

So he watched her. He reached for her. He thought he might drive himself clear round the bend with how completely insane he felt, trying to figure out his head. But he knew his heart, that broken, blackened old thing beating steadily back to life to the tune of her name, picking up the rhythm of her strides as she led them through the woods.

He’d follow her anywhere. Was pretty sure wherever she took them, it was right where he’d wanna be.

*~*

Dance with the devil inside of me
I'm longing for a second chance
And taste what seems to remind me
of all my skulls and skeletons

Linking again to my meta on Daryl’s sexuality, for those who haven’t read it or might want to, or maybe want to read it again.
The tl;dr here is Daryl is demisexual (though I don’t believe that’s a word he knows), meaning he doesn’t feel sexual attraction until he’s formed an emotional bond as he has here with Beth. He’s had sex before, mostly due to Merle’s meddling/pressure, but it’s not something he ever particularly enjoyed or wanted.

to be continued in chapter 22 >>

Seconds (The Walking Dead, Beth Greene & Daryl Dixon) - Complete, One-shot

abelina — Mon, 03 Aug 2015 20:01:11 GMT

Based on a prompt by lollypop2414 on tumblr: Just a little Bethyl prompt for guessing your hubby's name yesterday (you talked me into it, lol): Beth can't sleep the first night after arriving alive and mostly well at Alexandria, much to the shock of everyone. She steps outside for some fresh air and finds Daryl sitting on Rick's front porch where they finally have some alone time to talk and he returns her knife to her.

Spoilers for Season 5 of the Walking Dead.

Part One of the Ticking Clocks series.

Seconds
*~*

It doesn’t matter much, in the end, how she came to be not dead, just that she isn’t. She isn’t and she found them and she’s here. They’ll want to hear the story someday, probably long before she’s ready to tell it all, to be honest. But Beth isn’t going to let the fear of that hover too close tonight.

No, tonight is for happiness and she’s not gonna let her own problems ruin that.

At least not while everyone’s watching.

The moment she excuses herself to settle to bed, in an unfamiliar, unused room over at Rick’s—since he apparently has a spare one and Beth refuses to put anyone at Maggie’s out of theirs—Beth feels the shift in her mood. Nothing drastic, but the happiness—and she does feel it, how could she not, coming back to these people who mean so much to her—the happiness that’s been with her all evening slips beneath a sort of thin blanket. It’s somehow subdued, though she still feels it, just less.

There are things one just doesn’t bounce back from, after all, in coming back from the dead. She thinks she might sleep away that feeling, or at least sleep through it, that little-bit-offness she hopes is just her and nothing more sinister at work. It isn’t as easy to trust these days, though, and something about Alexandria seems too good to be true.

A headache lingers, but that isn’t new. Not anymore at least. It isn’t a particularly bad one, tonight, considering the big day she’s had. She’ll probably sleep through that, too, if she can just get there. The bed’s comfortable. A little softer than she’s used to these days but not unlike the one she spent a good thirteen of her first sixteen years sleeping in. She has to smile at that, how preferences change, how she would probably now fall asleep more easily on the cool, packed floor of the forest than she would in a proper bed.

Beth turns over onto her side, ears picking up the trying-to-be-quiet sounds of the last of the residents of Rick’s house settling in for the night. Rick himself, she thinks, by the pattern of the footsteps.

Everything falls quiet shortly thereafter. The night exchanges the occasional sounds from outside, of strangers—Alexandrians—making their way home to bed, for a thick sort of silence. Not like the silence of the woods at night, or the silence of other, more closed-in spaces. A weird, laden silence that’s at once foreign yet oddly familiar.

It takes her far longer than it should to recognize the buzz of electricity, the hum of the refrigerator two rooms away.
She isn’t going to sleep tonight.

Moving with care, putting all she knows about keeping silent to good use, Beth creeps out of the little bedroom and steps down the hall. Away from the stairs, away from the others in the house who she hopes are indulging in pleasant dreams about now. The front door doesn’t even creak as she pulls it open—another oddly normal thing that’s no longer normal at all—but the deck boards groan softly as she steps out onto them.

He hears her coming, probably would even without the whims of wood announcing her arrival. Beth knows, right then, that the spare bed isn’t spare at all, just that the person it belongs to never uses it.

Daryl doesn’t speak as she pads barefoot across the deck to where he sits, at the darkened end of the porch, his back to the railing. Doesn’t speak, but his gaze follows her from the moment she steps outside until she slips into place beside him, squeezing into the spot between his body and the corner of the railing.

She could sit anywhere. She knows that. But she also knows second chances aren’t something to waste and she isn’t gonna pretend. Not where Daryl’s concerned.

“Hey,” he says, simply, but Beth isn’t fooled.

There’s a lot more than just hey lying there.

He was out when she arrived. Some job he has that keeps him away days at a time. He wasn’t expected until tomorrow, and yet somehow he found his way back tonight. The very same day as she. Somebody must’ve met him, coming in, told him about her return.

Rick, she thinks. It would’ve been Rick and she’s grateful that he thought to do so.

“Hi, Daryl.”

Daryl’s trembling. She feels it rippling into her where their legs and shoulders touch. He’s trembling and he’s looking at her and she swears he’s crying.

Or maybe it’s her.

Maybe it’s both of them.

Beth lays her head on his shoulder, and a hard shudder tears through Daryl’s body. So violent she thinks the decking might crumble beneath it, but she stays put, rides through it with him, feels the weight of his head come to rest against hers and then it’s her turn to start shaking.

And it’s all there, rushing to the surface, everything she’s kept hidden inside in case she never found them. In case she never found him.

Daryl turns his face into her hair and she feels his breath on her scalp, warm and shaky. “Didn’t believe it,” he says, voice a soft murmur, more a vibration through her skin than actual sound.

Beth turns her body, curls into him, lays her head on his chest where she hears his heart beating. Strong, steady, faster than it ought to, but she gets it. Hers is pounding, too. “It’s okay.”

“You—” He starts to speak, but his words die out in a strangled sound, and he presses his face to the top of her head and breathes her name. “Beth.”

“I’m here, Daryl,” she says, because she needs to hear it as much as he does. “I’m here.”

They spend a long time after that just holding each other, the sound of their breathing breaking through the unsettling quiet of the safe zone at night. Daryl’s fingers pluck at the side of her shirt, or they lie still at her waist for a time before he needs to move them again. He draws circles. He squeezes. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands and it’s a little detail about him she almost forgot, and it hits her hard. A heavy fist to the sternum. A growing lump in her throat.

He hears the little sound she makes, even though she tries to hide it. Cradles her cheek with his other hand, thumb swiping over it, over the long-healed scar where fresh tears gather. “How?”

She wasn’t ready to tell the others and doesn’t know when she’ll ever be. But for Daryl the words come. Slow. Hesitant. Sometimes she needs to stop and breathe, or to bury her face in the warmth of his chest a moment until she’s able to speak again. But she gets them out, every last one, and through it all he just holds on. A rock. An anchor, keeping her from drifting away through the worst of it. Wiping her tears while his own drip down unchecked into her hair.

He doesn’t say much, when she finishes, just glides his thumb so, so lightly across the scar on her forehead, presses his lips to her hair. It’s not a kiss, not really, but from Daryl it means as much as one. As much and more. Beth isn’t sure how her heart became so certain about Daryl, even though they never had the chance to finish that conversation he started a lifetime ago at that funeral home. But she was sure, through those endless days at Grady. Through the time after, even when she wasn’t even sure of herself. And she knows it now, that it’s her and Daryl. That she’s back and he’s holding onto her as tightly as she’s holding onto him and neither one of them are going to let go.

“Still think—” He pauses, clears his throat of the gravel gathered there. “Still think I’m dreamin’. Gonna wake up any second and you’re still—still gone.”

She looks up at him, for the first time since she curled into his side hours ago. The light’s dim, but it’s enough, the ambient glow off the streetlights, to see him. To lock her eyes on his. He takes in a sharp breath and his fingers curl into her side and into her hair.

“You feel awake to me,” she says.

Another soft shudder rolls through him. “Beth.”

“Missed you.”

She doesn’t mean to say it, though it’s the truth, and when she does something changes in Daryl’s face. It softens, somehow, and something tugs at his lips. It’s not quite a smile, but it feels like one, and he takes a shaky breath and says, “Oh, girl. Every fucking second.”

He slips his fingers from her hair to reach for something lying beside him, and when he brings it into view, it’s Beth’s turn to take a shaky breath. “Is that—”

“Yours,” he says, holding her knife out to her, pressing it into her palm when she hesitates to take it. “Yours.”

Somehow, she doesn’t think he means just the knife.

She holds it. Feels the weight of it in her hand, the weight of Daryl having carried it with him all this time and everything surges up inside her again. Before she can try to stop it, she’s crying, shaking, losing it there on the porch and all she can do is curl into the solid wall of Daryl’s body and silently beg him to hold on.

He doesn’t let go, even when she runs out of tears, when the sobs become whimpers that turn into deep, steady breaths. As he stands he lifts her into his arms, carrying her the way he did, that day when her ankle hurt and she was moving too slow. The way he did—and she’s sure, she doesn’t know, nobody’s told her, but she’s so sure—after the hallway and Dawn. Beth loops her arms around his neck, rests her head on his chest, closes her eyes as he carries her to bed.

She doesn’t have to ask. He sets her down on the cool sheet, tosses off his boots, and climbs in with her, settling in behind her like it’s something they’ve always done. Beth melts back into his body as he curls around her, buries his face in her neck. She hasn’t showered, she knows she must stink of the dirt and sweat and filth that comes from being on the road. But he breathes deep anyway, murmurs words into her skin she long imagined, but never hoped to hear, and she knows she was wrong.

She will sleep tonight. She’ll sleep better than she has in years.

Daryl, she thinks, might just manage that, too.

*~*