A/N: This is something I've been working on for a bit now and I'm glad to finally have it out there! It will be a two-shot. Any and all feedback is always appreciated.
Hopefully you enjoy it! :)
Being on the road is nice. Being the one behind the wheel is nicer, since Beth is always so used to be the passenger. When she was little, she'd press her forehead to the window and count out the white dashes along the pavement. She'd always lose track by thirty or so, having to start again over and over. Whenever roadkill caught her attention, she'd squeeze her eyes shut and count to ten. And by the time she opened them, she was able to start counting once more. One dash, two dash, three dash.
Now she can't afford to focus her attention on little white dashes and unfortunate squirrels and rabbits. Her eyes stay trained on the long, sometimes winding, strip of road in front of her. Like counting white dashes, the process is infinite. She doesn't have a destination planned, there's no point in keeping track of her progress because she doesn't know where she will end up. It sticks in the back of her mind, that she should probably figure out where she is going, but this isn't really about ending up anywhere. It's just about moving towards something, anything... Taking those steps all by herself.
Leaving home was difficult. She barely made it a few miles from the farm when tears bleared her eyes and she was oh so close to turning around. Maggie hadn't been home when she left and her dad was peacefully asleep just down the hall from her room. She left each of them a note, his on the kitchen table and Maggie's propped against her pillow, and she knew that they would let Jimmy know as soon as they could. So there was no worry. Well, she knew there would be worry and anger and fear. She knows that. But something convinced her to leave that night and she couldn't afford to question herself already. So she had packed a small bag and collected up the money she had saved over the past couple of years and she was gone.
Motels are expensive so she's stopped making pitstops at them every single night, opting for loading herself up with coffee and taking cat naps in her car when she can. She's spent and when she sees herself in a diner bathroom mirror, nearing 72 hours without a proper night's sleep, she knows she looks like a wreck. The swipes of purple under her puffy eyes and her matted, slicked back hair make her seem much older than her nineteen years. If it hadn't been for the winking cowgirl poster plastered on the bathroom wall stating 'Don't Mess With Texas!', she wouldn't have even been sure of where she was. That was just how life had been the past few weeks.
She washes her face the best she can in the rinky-dink sink, swiping on chapstick and attempting to tame her hair into a low ponytail. It's not much, but it's enough to keep the waitress from eyeing her strangely when she orders a coffee and asks for a refill only a few minutes later. It's just her in the diner, along with a man a few stools down. His hair is shaggy and messy and it looks like he hasn't properly showered in a few days either, so she feels less self-conscious. She realizes the people here are probably used to folks coming in all dingy and sleep-deprived; truckers and road trippers and drifters and bikers. Runaways. That's the category Beth supposes she falls into, the runaways.
On her third cup, she looks back over at the man down the counter, noting the faded angel wings stitched onto the back of his vest. The corners of her lips quirk up, mentally taping the label 'biker' to him.
"There a motel near by?" he asks the waitress behind the counter. She rattles off a set of directions and he leaves without another word. Beth was planning on spending another night in her car but the thought of a hot shower and a pillow was too tempting to pass up. So with a soft-spoken 'thank you' and a more than generous tip, she recites the directions to the motel in her head.
It's past one in the morning once she's out of the shower and while the room smells a bit like stale air and the bedspread is a little itchy, she doesn't know why she can't will herself to sleep. The room is without a TV which is fine because she doesn't even know what she would find to watch anyway, but the silence is killing her. Getting away was supposed to be good for her, that's what she had promised herself, but it was nights like this where the loneliness really sunk in and ate at her insides.
She takes a second shower, hoping the warmth of the water will lull her body into sleep mode and when it doesn't work, she figures getting out of the room is her best bet.
Hair still damp, she takes a drive down the road, careful to not go too far so that she doesn't get lost. There's a liquor store about a half mile down and what the hell, she hasn't let herself slip to that place yet. The cashier doesn't ask for an ID when she pays for a bottle of whiskey, which she finds odd, but takes it as a sign that this is what she should be doing.
The stuff burns her throat and nostrils and eyes but she takes dainty sips that slowly turn into gulps in the driver's seat of her car, flickering light of the motel sign illuminating the dash a soft baby blue. The booze makes her antsy so she stumbles on up and wow, climbing the stairs to the second level of rooms is like climbing Mount Everest, but she manages to do it with one had clutching the sloshing bottle and the other wrapped firmly around the railing. She tries to remember her room number, 221 or 212, something with 2s, 222, and she imagines herself as a little girl in a tutu made of screen from the back porch door of her family's farm. She giggles and leans agains the metal railing, sliding down to sit on the ground.
'Y'okay?" The voice startles her and the bottle slips from her hand, clattering on the metal floor of the walkaway. The cap is halfway screwed on, so nothing leaks out, much to her relief. Once she sets the bottle back up, she turns her eyes to the man towering above her. His hair hangs in his face so she can't make out much besides the gruff of facial hair and two squinted eyes. His clothes are a bit rumpled and he awkwardly shifts back and forth on his feet, like he's afraid she's gonna pop up and knock him out. She giggles lightly at the thought.
"Yeah, I'm just great." He bites down on his lip, like he wants to saying something, but continues on walking past her. She watches him with a slow roll and loll of her head and he's nearly rounding the corner when she recognizes the angel wings on his back. "Hey... hey!" she calls out, voice crackling a bit as she moves to her knees and pulls herself up to her feet, not that gracefully. "Did ya want a drink?"
He stops at the question, turning halfway and staring back at her. She holds the bottle up and rattles it about, brown liquid sloshing inside. Beth knows it's probably not the smartest idea, asking some random guy with a surly expression and pretty unwelcoming body language to drink with her, but she's desperate for company. And he was the first to speak to her anyway.
If she were sober, she'd probably be surprised if he accepted her offer, but in her current state, she's confident. She pushes the bottle into his hand once he's in arm's reach and watches as he takes a nice, long swig. The muscles in his arms tense and flex and she can feel the heat spreading up the side of her neck, back behind her ears. She clears her throat when he hands the bottle back but she doesn't drink.
"Saw you at the diner." He bobs his head once, leaning back against the light pink stucco wall. "Heard about the motel."
"Y'follow me?" he questions, reaching out again for the bottle she has protectively tucked under her arm. She holds it back out to him and it almost slips out of her grasp, but his hand is on hers before it can fall.
"No... Well, I guess, yeah. But not 'cause of you. Just needed a place to stay. I'm not dumb enough to follow some biker guy around." At that, he cracks a small grin and it hits her that beneath the greasy hair and grimy clothes, he is pretty darn attractive.
"What makes you think I'm a biker?"
"I'unno. The leather vest, your... demeanor. You just look like one. Ya aren't?" He pushes himself off the wall as he takes another drink and she's too inebriated to move out of the way when she thinks he's going to invade her space. But instead he just leans over the rail next to her and nods down at the parking lot. Tilting her head, she follows his gaze to a motorcycle parked just down below. "I knew it!" His eyes twinkle a bit, but maybe it was just the crappy exterior lights playing tricks on her.
"What's a girl like you doin' out here by yourself?" She scoffs a bit at his wording, her mind drifting back to home and her family and Jimmy and everything else that she had considered her life. Sweet little Bethy.
"Wanted to get away, so that I wasn't just 'a girl like me'," she retorts. Her stomach starts to twist and she's not sure if it's the whiskey or the fact that she's finally putting into words everything she had been feeling over the past few weeks. The stranger doesn't look at her but she stares at him and she feels like she can read his face. She expects to be judged, for people to roll their eyes at her. She had things so good, she knows that, but that wasn't everything. And maybe this biker guy didn't know anything about her life, but she still felt the need to defend herself.
"Mm." He sets the bottle down on the ground and reaches into his pocket, pulling out a pack of smokes, lighting one up and taking a long drag.
"I don't expect you to feel bad for me, I don't expect anyone to feel bad for me. I don't feel bad for myself. That's not what this is all about."
The man quirks an eyebrow at her but doesn't offer a reply, just a drag from his cigarette. He holds it out to her in offering and while out of instinct, she starts shaking her head, she stops herself and reaches out for it, hesitantly. The inhale hits her hard and she coughs, expectedly, but he unexpectedly doesn't laugh or smile at her sputtering. He's just all intense eyes and it's as if he's trying to burn holes right through her with them.
"I... it's like everyone thinks they know everything about me. I've been stuffed into one box my entire life, there's not a lot expected of me. I'm the baby of my family, everybody expects me to just be so... good. God, this is sounding really stupid, I guess it is stupid." Beth has to laugh at herself, eyes suddenly brimming with tears that she wills herself to hold back. The man plucks the quickly burning cigarette from her fingers and taps off the ashes, a swirl of oranges slowly falling through the grated balcony floor. Her stomach seems to mimic their motion.
"Naw, I get it."
"You get it?" she asks incredulously, before realizing how rude it may have sounded. He picks up on the tone too by the expression etched onto his face, but simply takes one last pull before stubbing the cigarette out and carefully tucking it back into the pack. He shrugs.
"I'm the baby, too. 'cept everyone expected me to be bad. I was bad. Am still, I guess."
She shuffles her feet a bit, knocking her foot into the whiskey bottle. Bending over, she slowly unscrews the cap and takes another sip. It doesn't really burn much this time. "That really something you wanna say when you're alone with a random girl at some seedy motel, sharing a cigarette?"
"Wasn't exactly sharin', considerin' you couldn't handle it. You've been the one sharin' all kinds of stuff." Beth cracks a grin at that and it feels almost foreign, so much so that she grows self-conscious of her teeth and lips, biting back the smile and turning her gaze down. Her eyes travel to a man beneath them, watching through the iron grates as he fills up an ice bucket, scoop by scoop. She shivers, rolling her neck off to the side. A tap to her shoulder causes her to look up, the biker with his hand outstretched, holding out his angel wing vest to her.
Normally, Beth would've politely refused, but wasn't her journey all about doing something new, something different?
With a half smile, she slides the vest on, the heavy stench of smoke and leather and sweat filling her nostrils. It doesn't warm her all that much but there's something comforting about it. She lets her eyes fall shut for just a moment.
And when she opens them, she's curled up on her side, the vest still pulled snug around her body. She recognizes the motel decor but it's not her room, the furniture is mirrored. Her heart thuds loudly in her chest and she sits up, far too quickly, causing the throb in her head to hit her like a ton of bricks. There's a taste in her mouth that makes her stomach turn; she manages to stand with wobbly legs, her limbs somehow feeling like Jell-O yet weighed down by rocks.
She remembers last night, at least most of it. She remembers the biker (but not his name; if she ever even learned his name) and the whiskey and if she wasn't feeling so awful, she'd probably feel beyond embarrassed, but there is only so much she can shoulder in the moment. Her hand makes an awful cup as she splashes water from the bathroom sink on her face and into her mouth, remedying her sandpaper tongue. She hears the motel door open and she freezes.
Looking up in the mirror, she remembers the vest and hastily shrugs it off. She wishes she could remember every detail of last night, all the words she let slip out of her lips and every stupid action she took. She doesn't believe anything happened, mainly because she knows the awkward feeling from sleeping in her bra and jeans and the crumpled appearance of her clothing confirms that.
Hesitantly, she flips off the bathroom light and steps back into the main room. He's there, awkwardly standing near the doorway, hands in his pockets. Beth waits for him to speak, to ask her to leave or say good morning or anything, but he doesn't. His eyes are fixed on her, briefly drifting to the faded green carpet, but always wandering back to her gaze. The man makes a weird sound in the back of his throat and she realizes she's wringing his vest in her hands.
Blushing furiously, she makes the first move, stepping forward and holding out the vest like a used tissue. He takes it from her and subconsciously wrings the leather a bit, mimicking her. She smiles to herself, pushing her hair back off her face.
"Um, I don't really... remember everything from last night." The biker stills his hands and stares straight at her. She can't read his expression. "But thanks for letting me stay here."
"Y'couldn't find your key. Didn't know what room you were in." If her face could get any hotter, it does.
"Oh. Must've left it in my car or something. Look, I'm so sorry, I'm super embarrassed." His face doesn't break and she doesn't know what to make of the situation. She's about to walk right past him, hop in her car, and take off again to wherever, but before she can take a step, he speaks up, shrugging back on his vest.
"Ya hungry?"
"Not that I really have anything to be ashamed of at this point, but I can't seem to remember your name."
There was a gas station just past the liquor store and Beth was never so glad to walk anywhere in her life. The fresh air was quite rejuvenating and the short trip loosened up her muscles and bones. She still had her ID and some cash tucked in her back pocket, so she figured the least she could do was buy the guy a cup of old coffee and split a pack of powdered donuts with him. Even if she didn't know his name.
"Daryl." He wasn't making eye contact again, instead just sloshing and swirling his coffee around his cup. She realizes he hadn't even taken a taste.
"Well, thanks again, Daryl. I'm Beth." There's a ghost of a grin she thinks she sees on his mouth but he covers it by sucking white powder off his fingertips. "I'm guessing you remembered, unlike me."
"Naw. Never told me your name."
"You let a drunk nameless girl crash in your room." She almost adds onto that, but there shouldn't be a need to commend someone for being a decent person, even if she's relieved to find that he may actually be one. It's reassuring.
Daryl shrugs and she wants to prod because damn, he doesn't seem to reveal much. But she leaves it be, sipping from her own styrofoam cup and burning the tip of her tongue. She pulls back jarringly, hair falling into her eyes and she can smell leather and sweat and something else. The hot shower at the motel sounds like heaven about now.
"Your name didn't matter, couldn't just let you sleep outside like that by yourself." Beth smiles at him, a real genuine one this time and when he doesn't reciprocate, she holds up the donut package to him and offers him the last one. He inhales it and she bites back a laugh as a puff of sugary powder dusts the black of his vest.
She cups her coffee in both hands as they make their way back to the motel and as much as she wants to shower and get back on the road, the thought of parting ways is a little bit sad. Daryl quietly waits as she digs through her car to find her purse and room key (212 it was) and she ignores the look a young couple throws their way when he walks her to her door. She unlocks it and stalls in the doorframe, turning the handle over and over.
"Where are you headin' after this?" she inquires, knowing full well that they're strangers and he has no reason to tell her, but she's curious. And what's the worst that could come from asking? No answer? 'Nowhere'? 'Mind your own damn business'? Daryl shrugs.
"Don't know. Anywhere."
"Me too."
There aren't any goodbyes but she thanks him once more and he shrugs again; she finds the physical response suits him pretty well. Beth takes her long, hot shower and smells her generically clean hair, repacking her dirty clothes in the only small bag she has with her. The room is much too quiet so she doesn't stay long; she's back in her car and ready to head off when the low fuel light on her dashboard angrily flares up at her.
She stops at the gas station once more and the attendant doesn't regard her in any way that reveals he remembers her from just a few hours earlier. The cash she had hit the road with is beginning to run sparse and there's a moment of terror that takes her over as the rumble of a motorcycle fills her ears. When she peeks over at the noise, it's Daryl, and somehow she knew it was him before she even looked. He doesn't seem to notice her at first and she doesn't want to seem weird or creepy or say something dumb like, 'hey, fancy meeting you here', so she keeps her eyes trained on counting the same three bills in her hands over and over.
Finally she looks up to go pay and he's staring at her, openly. She can't read his expression, what she can see of it through his shaggy hair, but that is nothing new. Beth swallows the urge to go over to him and instead makes her way inside, handing over two bills to the attendant. Thoughtlessly, she grabs a pack of gum too and presses her tongue to the roof of her mouth, tender from the hot coffee this morning.
When she steps back outside, Daryl's missing but his bike remains. It's not like she means to, but she wanders over to the thing anyway and admires it from a few feet away. It's clean and pristine, quite the contrast to Daryl himself, she muses. The thought of riding it though, wind whipping against her face and rumble of the engine beneath her, it must be like flying.
"Y'ever ridden one?" His voice jolts her and she automatically takes a few steps back from the motorcycle, clutching the pack of gum in her hands. He's not smiling but there's a certain glint in his eye that tugs at the corners of her lips.
"No, never." Daryl pulls out a cigarette and lights it, and she's about to advise him not to while they're standing so close to the gas pumps, but he sidles onto the bike and nods his head off to the side. Beth stands there awkwardly for a long moment. Is she supposed to get on? She doesn't know him, she doesn't know where he'd take her. He seems to sense her hesitance, shrugging and talking around his cigarette.
"Just a quick ride."
Glancing over her shoulder, she doesn't know what she's hoping to see. The attendant doesn't even notice them, he never did, and that's okay, it's probably for the best. Excitement bubbles in the pit of her stomach as she lets herself give in, gently laying her hand on his shoulder to steady herself as she hops on. Her arms go to snake around his midsection and it all seems very intimate, enough to make her face heat up, and she's thankful he can't really see her right now.
"Hold on."
And she does. And it's wondrous. Her arms squeeze tight around him and her cheek presses against the sticky leather of his vest. She laughs but the sound is drowned out and her eyes drift to the stretch of road below them, counting white dashes. One dash, two dash, three dash.
The ride is much too short and she deflates like a balloon when the gas station comes into view. She's tempted to tell him to keep going, don't stop, but her better judgement wins out. He pulls up beside her car and the sight of it makes her stomach sink; her arms slowly unravel from him and she slides on off, a little wobbly legged like a newborn calf. The gum pack she's holding is smushed and soft from her tight grip.
There's another awkward stare exchanged between the two and Beth knows she should go. She knows it's probably just loneliness eating away at her and that's why she doesn't want to leave the gas station or Daryl or Somewhere, Texas. His companionship was unexpected but exhilarating. But she knows the truth of the matter, that he's a stranger and her being out on the road was about more than some mysterious yet strangely kind man on a motorcycle. Beth thinks of what Maggie's face would look like when she tells her this story and she almost laughs, but it's cut off by an overwhelming poignancy, the thought of her sister.
"Stay safe," is all she tells him before climbing into her car and pulling out onto the empty road. Her eyes linger on the rearview mirror until Daryl is but a speck, the gas station is just a smudge.
Beth thinks on her sister for a long time as the scenery blurs alongside her. Her car takes her east and she wishes her hair still smelled like leather and sweat.