Author's Note: I do not own the Walking Dead. This is a one shot where Daryl will probably not keep his pants zipped, but I ramble a ton so it takes forever... sorry, but not really, because their love deserves time to develop. Enjoy & thank you so much for favoriting, following, or reviewing! \(^.^\)
The air hugged them, and the lingering feel of closeness kept them warm. And it was serene, and the air smelled like comfort and safety and the sweeter things that used to last. The background was quiet and agreeably night, the only tell-tale sign being the sliver of moonlight glaring through an eighth of the right windowsill. It was a familiar gesture, an internalized similarity of which they both unknowingly saw and relaxed. Their company was an inanimate crowd, and the moon pet their shoulders; pure, unhostile air innocently blanketed their bodies, and the surrounding silence of a haven rang. The sound of nothing. Her gentle, overworked, reminiscing fingers recalled the forgotten sounds of scattered CDs in the truck's backseat and level five piano books with scales and octaves. In candlelight, she sang with a voice as smooth as a buttered whisper, corresponding with the piano like right foot, left foot. That song, the very impression of singing was a lost cause, fallen down the drain with the battle for necessity. A fight between oblivion and working feet, she defined the contrast between mechanics and human life with her ringing lungs. She was living, thriving without blood on her hands, without running from a knife at her throat. And as he lay absorbing the back of her swaying, calm figure, he saw a girl that lifted the rogue breeze. He found the naissance that people called good.
Beth set her lungs free for an hour- hymns, radio hits, written originals, improvised rhymes all rolled off her tongue as sharp as she could remember. With each glimpse at the pearly white notes and ash-black flats, her loose hair grazed her dry cheek, sensitive to the slightest touch. It was such a small thing to indulge in, but the ability to feel so secure that she could bow her head, allowing her hair to compromise her vision was a luxury. She felt the soreness in her lungs, she felt the most youthful of fatigues. Numbness, numbness poured down her throat like a thick milk, and the lyrics left her. Her fingers dropped from the grand piano, already marked with smudges from her endless songs. Satisfaction: heart beating to the tempo of her last melody, palms clammy with music, and the following eyes of him behind her.
Beth anticipated his going to sleep much earlier, and she expected to arouse him early in the morning. But she kept count of his breaths- fifty exhales from the time she stopped playing. And strange enough, with the pause she had taken, his breaths had quickened; they had become more punctuated and pointed while still ripening, huffing on an unsteady beat.
Daryl rested on his back, hands behind his head for mock support, cautiously concentrated on the ambiguous movements of Beth's back, piano bench up. His eyes followed the tip of her vertebrae, protruding from the collar of her shirt, as it controlled the total range of movement in her back. He never blinked as he memorized the pattern her head made as she glanced down at the keys, as she blossomed into upwards liberation, belting out a lyric in her tender way. Her careful, selfless fixation on the melodies was a sight, and he was overwhelmed by his inability to close his eyes.
There lived no noise. Beth stared down at her intertwined hands, mercurial in the idea of what's next because her life had been halted too juvenile. Daryl still observed her as though she was a fire, and he was watching the smoke, waiting to be consumed or to extinguish it or to let it follow him as he ran. There was the general aroma of waiting. Ticking time and seconds and months and years and concepts that had already become ejected. But waiting relentlessly bonded with the atoms of oxygen they breathed. Waiting. Daryl readjusted on his sides, propped his hands on either direction of himself, sat up straight. He slid his mane out of his face, opened his hushed lips to say something, rethought, closed his mouth. With the brief clasp of tongue to teeth, Beth heard his indecisiveness. The waiting became unnerving. Beth caressed her neck, pretending to sooth the swollen tenderness in her lungs. Her lungs were on fire, and she felt each throb against her skin, each throb as if it were a push to make her do something.
The sight of her restlessness was tangible.
"Beth," Daryl spoke lightly, his voice naturally gruff and rough like sand paper, a tidal wave crashing in the sound frequencies. His voice pulled like gravity, nudging Beth like an audible shove. Daryl could not decide whether to follow with a suggestion of sleep or a comment of neutrality on the night. Maybe he could just leave it like that- her name, a syllable. Simple. Meaningless. An unlocked door in a country of broken down doors.
Beth's head peaked over the prominent bone of her shoulder, to her left, her hand still wavering along the ridges of her lungs, scratching delicately at the dirt-infested pores on her skin. She seemed to be avoiding Daryl's voice, searching for a response in the opposite direction. Subconsciously arising from her seat, her toes just balanced on the floor beneath her. Fifty breaths she counted all over again, each more rapid than the last. Each more organic, each deeper, each more sensual as she noticed the rashness of his tone diminish.
On two feet, Beth dragged her worn feet to the left and blew out every candle. Every singular candle she breathed on in one elongated sigh. She went at her leisure, sensing the unspoken interest of Daryl's stare. Each ounce of light was plucked away like flower petals as Beth transferred her steps to her right, nearing the coffin Daryl made into a makeshift bed. Still eighteen and innocent, she weaved her route to him sheepishly, memorizing the design of the floor. Their eyes became masked with the scene of a movie that demands to be rewound and watched, watched, watched over and over until their faces envelope inside themselves. As Beth found her place at the wooden encasing of the coffin, her shoulders anxiously tensed, and she gripped the mahogany with her fingernails, fragments of wood digging into her nailbeds. Slowly, Daryl's subtracted eyes surrounded her glance, him being entirely uncertain in this occasion, and his expression unmoving.
"Lay down," Beth said simply, as she demanded her nails deeper into the coffin, her cheeks unknowingly rosy in the dark. Daryl returned to his sleep-like posture, blinked his eyes, and let out a gasp of relief as his muscles released and exhaustion attacked his body. He then realized he could not sleep before because he did not want to compromise the safety of Beth as she splendored in her security. He was threatened by the idea of her soft palms being ripped from his reach.
Beth disputed within her own mind, wondering where she was going with this. Her shoulders rose up to her ears, and her stomach churned. Nerve endings pierced like static and a million songs played through her head. They exchanged a look, and she could see the preparation in Daryl's face- nervous yet hostile, ready to defend his personality with a violent comment.
"No, don't do that to me," Beth responded, understanding his face. "No acting all mighty, like you haveta' know everything. No being afraid in that way of yours. I'm afraid," she relaxed on that last sentence, allowing its depth to sink into Daryl's heartstrings. And with that ice cold moment of hesitation, before a glacier sprouted between them, Beth climbed into the makeshift bed besides him.
He shuffled to the farthest corner of the coffin and laid his arm out to serve as a pillow for Beth's head. As Beth leaned over herself to slip off her shoes, he followed her lead, and she nestled her feet, nipped at by the cold air, between Daryl's legs. They shaped to each other like clay, molding to the curves and contractions of each other's bones and muscles. They lingered and silently recalled every bruise and scar and bloodshed they had experienced, breathing air on one another's skin like an anecdote, caressing one another's visible hardships like addictive poison.
"I'm not afraid," Daryl whispered near Beth's face, in one swift phrase. "I'm not afraid at all," he continued, "and that's why I ain't going to lose you anytime soon." A glance. A minute. Nonexistent time. Waiting. "I'm watching you… every second," he muttered in his raspy voice, almost authoritatively. His sentence floated in the air, awkward and ominous. Daryl knew his intentions were screaming though the blurriness of his words, but not even he could translate the mess of emotions in his clogged head. Daryl cleared his throat, near discomfort trying to admit to his admiration for Beth.
"I ain't scared of you," Beth smiled softly, her cheeks curled into themselves like the indents on a snail's shell. She dug her feet deeper under Daryl's hold, knee-down encompassed by his legs, wrapped in each other like stacks of books. Submerging himself in her wandering eyes, Daryl trailed one free finger down her velvet cheeks, to the fuzz of her upper lip, over the inescapable thickness of her bottom lip. Beth, despite her claims, shuddered in curious nervousness under the spell of his touch, watching his every movement carefully, entirely captivated. As his finger tenderly grazed the terrain of her neck, Daryl, uncharacteristically absorbed in the moment, grasped Beth's cheek and nudged her lips to his like the two chords of a piano playing together for the first time. A mixture of DNA and oxygen and war and distress and newfound admiration and becoming enamored and smoke between lips, fire in mouths, and a tragic storm in the cathartic bones of their lungs erupted. The idea of exclamation and history and future and stupid pasts raging through their brains, the silence of the background and the indivisible fear from the multitudes of hope and the waiting, the waiting, the waiting, the very existence of survival acting as the forces between their lips.
Their bodies yanked at each other, sinking into the crevices of their elbows and hips and the skin under their chins. Beth linked her fingers under his vest intently as if clinging to her own life, caressing the outline of his upper arms, the strength that literally carried her. Repeatedly, their gasping mouths separated and reconnected like hungry beasts, unfortunate and lacking, greedy for an ounce, an unhelpful calorie. Beth's fingers continually gripped the exterior of the raggedy fabric, pulling, begging for him to be warmer on her torso and touching the whole of her body. She wanted their legs intertwined until they disappeared from sight, their waists pressed together like floorboards, his hands cradling her neck, their lips, their lips, still uniting so fluidly. Melting at the feel of his warm skin, Beth made a route down the path of Daryl's back, sliding his vest off with ease. She separated from the poisonous lock of his lips and put a steady palm to each hole and fault in his torn tee. Silently, she gazed at the disaster he wore, each tear being a story, a near-death experience. Beth knew it was dumb and infantile of her, but in a moment where everything felt near perfection, the sight of reality crushed her. Because she knew.
Despite how much she could hope, Daryl and she would never remain this way forever. There would be more fighting, more dying, more hatred and loathing and unfairness in their world. In that moment, Daryl and she were just a speck of lucky chance, flaming and burning with careless fate, while the other minorities that were living shook and cradled themselves to sleep.
Her head fell slack against his chest, rising with each elevation of his beating heart.
"Beth," Daryl surrendered to a soft, rich voice, crowded with comfort and understanding. The underlying texture of his naturally rough tone still vibrated with each syllable like a purr. It was a luxurious nonsense, and Beth wished to reach out and hold his voice, keep it in her pocket.
"We don't have time," Beth whispered, inhaling as she said it, as if she could not believe her own words. "We're here, and we're now, but we need more time." She lifted her searching eyes to Daryl's. His face was thinking, his cheekbones readjusting and his nose twitching slightly to the right, contemplating the actualities of Beth's statement.
"Beth, we have all the time in the world," Daryl knew it was a stretch, and he knew that in their circumstances time was a precious, evil thing, ruthless in stripping away little nonsenses like kisses and memorizing the shape of each other's hands. But time was forgotten in Daryl's mind, and as he vowed not to lie to the fragile, blonde girl in his arms, he clasped onto the idea of being human with her. In the past, even now, he knew that the openness and clarity of all his self-loathing and opinions was limited, but he trusted that in her perceptive ways, Beth understood him with ease and simplicity. All of his discretions, his exoskeleton of rage and detachment appeared irreversible, and in a way, it was, it was who he was. But Beth could trace a lightless word down his lungs and weave it through his heart, mending his bitterness, testing his trust in her.
Her often kind face scrunched up in protest, preparing to argue. Daryl encompassed her glazed cheeks with both of his strong hands, the veins dancing with his exhales. He kissed her once, brief and luring, humanizing the taste within their kisses.
"And with all that time we have," Daryl began, his voice swamped with passion, his words floating in the air as Beth waited expectantly for his conclusion, a moment's hesitation raising the temperature to one hundred degrees, "words cannot describe what I'm gonna do to you."