A/N: i've decided to call this a one-shot fanfiction of my own fanfiction - i don't know or care if that's actually a thing. happens within the prevaricate universe; however, i don't think it's entirely necessary to read that story to appreciate certain parts of this one. daryl wants beth to see herself how he sees her, which involves her confronting some things with which she's not entirely comfortable. beth has some ideas of her own. may be ooc-ish, as i've got them both saying/doing some things for which they may not actually be ready in prevaricate.
i could also see this as being a dream sequence of beth's. we'll see how it plays out in the actual story.
i am i no way affiliated with AMC or the walking dead.
just another one of those things i had to get out of my system.
read, review, enjoy.
xx
the killer in me is the killer in you
Beth was awoken the next morning – the first morning in the Colony – by the repetitive knocking – no, pounding – at the door. Of their home. Or shelter. Whatever it was.
She blinked a few times, trying to clear the fog of sleep from her head and her vision. It took her a moment to remember where she was.
But then she felt Daryl's rough hands on her, using her body for leverage to struggle to his feet. And she remembered everything. That she told him what she'd been thinking about. That she'd revealed some part of what'd happened before she made her way back to him and the rest of their family. That she told him she loved him.
"Yeah, Jesus fuckin' Christ, I'm comin'," he grumbled. Beth smiled at the scowl on his face, at the way he shook his head a few times and ran a hand through his dirty, long hair before looking down at her.
He picked one of the blankets up off of the floor and tossed it at her. And she remembered then that she was still shirtless and pantless. She was comfortable, though, and she burrowed her head into the pillow, which she now realized smelled faintly like mildew and grease, and wrapped the blankets around her from head to feet.
A soft stream of light warmed the side of Beth's face as Daryl cracked the door open behind her.
"Daryl. Sorry for wakin' ya up." She heard the hushed voice of Eric.
"What is it?" Daryl asked. There was no indication of any concern in his voice, so Beth let her eyes drift shut.
The muffled sound of their voices must've lulled her back to sleep, because the next time she opened her eyes, Daryl's face was right in front of hers.
"Jesus," she said, jerking her head back slightly. "Ain't the way to wake someone up, Daryl."
He was crouched down and a good half of his upper face was obscured by his hair. But Beth thought she maybe saw him smirk, just a little.
"I'll try an' do better next time," he said, eyes lowering to the floor beneath them.
"What're ya doin'? Is everyone meetin' up out there?" She asked, pulling herself up into a sitting position. The blankets in which she'd been cocooned slid off of her shoulders and chest, bunching up in her lap.
"Soon," he replied, eyes lifting to her shoulders and her chest and her horrible excuse for a bra - which she should probably have felt embarrassed about but, really, she didn't give a shit - before quickly shifting to meet her own eyes, and he looked at her as if he'd been caught doing something wrong. And it made her want to strip naked and stand directly in front of him and tell him that she liked it. The way he looked at her. And that it was okay.
She yawned and stretched her arms over her head, waiting him out. He'd been all up in her face for something, she assumed. Maybe he wanted to talk about last night, about what she'd said – and there many things from which to choose on that front. But she wasn't going to pry it out of him.
He bit the insides of his cheeks, still staring at her, and she just stared right back. For several silent minutes.
And she was about to give in and say "what the fuck is it, Daryl?" when he tossed something lightly into her lap.
She looked down and saw a small plastic bottle half-filled with a blue-ish substance. No label, just a white twist-top. She picked it up, rolling the weight of it around in her hands.
"Eric brought it. Said it smells like flowers or some shit." She looked up and he was biting at the skin around his thumbnail, rubbing a finger along his scruffy jaw, now staring at the bottle in her hands.
"Thank you," she whispered as she unscrewed the cap and sniffed. And it did smell like flowers - or some shit.
"'S nothin'. Ain't from me."
Beth stood up then and was surprised that she wasn't immediately frozen, especially since she was only wearing undergarments. The sun was still somewhat warm during the days and the walls of the house provided some decent heat. And, if she was going to shower, now was the time. Because she wasn't sure what the rest of the day would bring. Where they'd be by the end of the night.
xxx
Beth was standing in the small bathroom, sifting through the cabinet under the sink, inside of which she'd eventually found some towels. Wasn't entirely sure that they were clean, but that didn't matter much.
Daryl had twitched a little and told her to "go 'head, take yours first," when she'd casually asked him to join her in the shower – for the body heat, of course. Mainly. And she wasn't sure from where her brazenness was coming, but she found that she almost liked the way it made him squirm, even after he'd touched and kissed most every part of her.
So she turned on the faucet and pulled the shower curtain – which was filled with holes and rips and cuts and wasn't exactly or securely fastened to the tension rod above – closed. Stripped off her bra and underwear and stepped over the side of the back of the tub, keeping her body out of the inconsistent streams of water rushing out of the rusted showerhead.
She took a deep breath and held it inside her lungs and the cavity of her chest and practically flung herself into the water.
And fuck. It was cold. But it was refreshing. Cleansing.
Once her body got used to the temperature, it was almost tolerable, really. So she let her head hang in the stream and watched the droplets cascade from the long and knotted strands of her hair like some kind of post-apocalyptic waterfall.
And as she stood there, her mind replayed the conversation she'd had with Daryl the previous night. And she must've got lost somewhere along the way between the fear and loathing and love of it all – because she suddenly felt hands around her waist and a solid wall of hot flesh against her back.
She didn't jump or swear this time. She sighed with contentment and flipped her head up and backwards, resting it against Daryl's chest.
And, yeah, they'd seen and touched and licked and sucked the most intimate, private parts of each other. But it somehow felt more real here. Maybe because of the light that was shining through the small window high above the top of the shower. Maybe because they weren't outside or in the woods, scrambling with desperation to touch and feel one another during the few moments that they could.
"You're losin' it," he murmured, head dipped down low and resting on her shoulder, voice muffled by the water and the skin of her neck, which he was nuzzling with his face.
"Snuck right up on ya. Maybe we need to practice some more."
And he truthfully may've had a point, but Beth was almost certain if it'd been anyone else – no matter how lost inside her own head she may've been – she'd have heard them. But not him. Not now, when she felt safe and almost clean, at least on the outside. And she loved him.
She hummed low in her throat as he brought one hand up to her head, gently tilting it to the side so he could press his lips to her neck. His other hand rested on her waist, skimming up and down from her rib cage to the bones of her pelvis in a slow but firm rhythm. And now she was finding herself puzzled by his own impudence – but she wasn't about to question it.
The hand he'd been using to tilt her head was now lathering the cold water and the blue-ish shampoo - or body wash or whatever the hell it was - into her hair and his fingers were getting caught in the knots as he tried to untangle them. And she didn't miss the extra time he seemed to spend scrubbing over – but, really, she knew he was feeling and assessing and noting – the depression made by the missing piece of skull and matter on the lower part of the back of her head.
And then he dropped his hand down further, lathering the skin of her stomach and circling around to her back and her legs with the sudsy mixture created by the soap and water.
He brought his hand up, then, and rested it lightly over her breast and it was a different sensation – it was new – and she gasped a little and felt her body go rigid as she gripped his thigh – slick and hard – behind her.
He stiffened but didn't move his hands or his lips away from her.
"Is this okay?" he asked softly. And she knew without a doubt that if she told him no, he wouldn't care. He'd stop immediately. He wouldn't ask why or be hurt or feel rejected.
But, after a few seconds, she nodded her assent and he sighed loudly – almost in relief – and began to graze the pad of his thumb lightly over her nipple. And that, too, made her gasp. And she shut her eyes and pushed her ass backwards in an instinctual way, up against where she felt him hardening behind her.
His breathing was becoming harsh against her neck, and the contrast of his warm exhales and the cold of the water and her skin made her shiver, only not in discomfort. Not at all.
She removed her hand from his thigh and covered his hand, which was now cupping her breast - lightly and hesitantly - like he didn't want to hurt her, which was ridiculous since she couldn't feel pain, anyway.
So she tightened her palm against the dorsum of his hand, forcing him to squeeze her tighter, which caused a strangled sound to escape her throat, which only served to encourage him.
She felt his teeth, now, sinking just barely into the flesh between her shoulder and her neck as he continued to – more roughly – palm her breasts. And she knew he wasn't biting in a malicious way, not in the way she'd been bitten by others. And, really, she almost wanted him to bite harder. Wanted him to have his own special mark on her body – one that she wanted, among all the others that she wished she could wash away.
And the thought of that – of being covered in him, marked by him – made her feel suddenly and helplessly frantic.
So she turned around quickly, hearing his light groan of protest as she did, and shoved her wet body up against his – and this, too, was new. His cock, hard and pressed down and in between them, was shoved against the curls of hair overlying her mound. And she couldn't fight the instinct to slide her hips upward and downward a time or two, to rub herself along the entire length of him - and it was more analogous to dry humping without clothes than actual sex - but it caused Daryl's mouth to fall open and a shudder to overtake his whole body before he grabbed her by the cheeks of her ass and pressed himself harder against her even as he hissed a curse at her.
And he was looking her in the eyes, and that was beautiful and all she ever needed, but god she wanted him to look at her body. At her soul. As ugly and scarred as it was, she wanted him to see her.
So she backed away from him suddenly, pressed her backside up against the opposite wall of the shower, leaving the streams of water raining down between them. So he had no choice but to see her.
And the water no longer felt cold to Beth, not with the way he looked at her, like he'd follow her straight to hell if she asked him to. Like he'd follow any part of her straight to hell.
"Beautiful," he whispered, and she wondered what he saw. His own face and body were distorted by the waterfall flowing between them, and even so, he was the beautiful one. She could delineate each sharp ridge of his muscles, and the reflection of the light against the slickness of his skin only made him more beautiful. Otherworldly, even.
He took a step forward, towards her, and stood halfway under the water.
"Ya know ya are, don't you?" he asked softly. And it was a strange question. One that she didn't have any semblance of an answer for. Because she couldn't think, not when the very sight of him was overtaking each of her senses.
She didn't say anything. So he took another step towards her, grabbed the bottle of the blue shampoo -or body wash or whatever it was - from the side of the tub. Squirted some into his hands and rubbed them together and then into his hair and quickly but thoroughly all over his body before rinsing himself as she watched, frozen against the wall of the shower. Frozen by the sight of a man showering and cleaning himself in front of her. And there were differences, she noticed. While she'd always lathered herself from scalp to strands, meticulously almost – at least before – he haphazardly rubbed it in various areas, in no particular pattern, and then flung his head forward and down into the stream of water for rinsing, whereas she would've stood with her back to the stream.
"C'mon," he said as he reached past her and turned off the faucet.
Daryl stepped out first, drying his hair – which was now clean but still in the total disarray that Beth loved – and then wrapping the towel around his lower body. He handed the other towel to Beth, and she dried herself while he watched, cock still hard and jutting out against the fabric of his towel.
And then, without any preamble, he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her in front of him, her back to his chest, in front of the dirty mirror. And he removed the towel that she'd wrapped around her body and tossed it on the floor. Lifted his hands up and gathered her hair into one thick, knotted bundle that he swept over one of her shoulders.
And then his eyes met hers in the mirror. It wasn't a huge mirror, but it was large enough to reflect her face and shoulders and chest and the top of her flat stomach. Large enough to reflect too many scars – some big, some small – to count.
And she hated mirrors. Since before. But even moreso since the dream she'd had, back when she and Daryl and Ben had been in the woods. Since she'd watched herself – the girl she used to be – cut and slice and stab herself until she became the girl she was now, all through the reflective glass of a shattered mirror of a shattered soul.
"Just fuckin' look at you," he said. So she did. And she saw a tangled mess of hair and skin that was far too pale – almost ashy or greyed, really – and big eyes that were still blue and still hers but had seen so much more than they were ever meant to. And scars. Mistakes. Pain. Fear. Broken but functional.
He brought a hand up the side of her waist to her shoulder and then to her face, and he traced the outline of her lips and her nose and her eyes with such delicacy she wasn't sure he was actually touching her at all. He dropped the hand down to her chest, slowly, swirling his fingers briefly over the scar above her left breast and then cupping her and the contrast between the size of his hand and the size of her and the rumble that she felt from his chest as it fused with the vertebral bodies of her spine caused a breathless moan to escape her mouth. Not because of her beauty, but because she was intoxicated with how he reacted to her, how she could make him feel and sound and look. How they looked together, like this.
He sucked in a breath then and trailed his hand down her torso to her center. She leaned her head back against his chest and pushed her hips forward, urging him. Pleading with him in silence, with her body.
And it wasn't like last time. Because last time had been rushed and urgent and quiet, because it had to be.
He let his fingers languidly comb through the curls that covered her and used the tip of one finger to trace her outer lips all the way down to her entrance and up toward and across her clit, which he lightly brushed over with each pass. And his hand was shaking. Or maybe it was just her.
And then he pushed a little further, drawing small circles around her entrance and inner lips with one finger, spreading the wetness that'd been accumulating there in a maddeningly slow pace. And she probably would've been writhing, but his other hand was gripping her hip, keeping her in place even as she whimpered and he sucked in breath after ragged breath. His head was moving, face turning into her neck and then pressing kisses onto her shoulder and then meeting her face, her eyes, in the glass in front of them.
"Please," she said, squeezing her eyes shut so she wouldn't have to look at herself begging him for this. Not that she felt embarrassed or ashamed; she just didn't want to look at herself in the first place, really.
And, without warning, he drove a finger upward and into her, as deep inside of her as he could. And Beth felt a slight ebbing of the ache that'd been building inside of her, until she realized he'd stopped moving completely, almost immediately.
His body and hand and finger were rigid and still, though he was trembling, and she felt a shiver of dread run up her spine thinking that maybe he'd heard something or someone was at the door or inside the house and they'd have to stop.
But then he leaned his head forward and trailed his nose up one side of her neck and put his mouth against her ear.
"Open your eyes," he murmured. And his voice was quiet and low and shaky but somewhere in his tone she heard conviction.
"Open 'em. Want you to watch."
She opened them then – because, at this point, she'd do whatever he said if it meant he'd keep going.
In the mirror she saw the sheen of sweat coating his forehead and her chest, despite the comfortable - if not chilly - temperature of the bathroom. And she saw the crimson shade of surging blood underneath the skin overlying her throat and her face. And she saw his eyes, staring right into hers. And the look in his eyes was indescribable. It was fire and ice and give and take and it spoke to her in ways that were impossible but seemed to say I love you. I'll stand by you forever. I'd kill anything that ever tried to hurt you. I want this. I want you. You have to know how much I want this. You have to see it. And it incited her insides like nothing else ever could.
"I could come just fuckin' lookin' at you, Beth, you know that?" he half-whispered, half-groaned, and she could see the muscles in his jaw working and clenching as he fought to keep his eyes on hers.
And then he started moving. Not just his fingers that were buried deep inside of her and his thumb that was circling her clit, but his voice and his hips and his other hand, which was everywhere – in between them, on his cock, on her ass, in her mouth, hesitantly pinching and twisting one of her nipples and then the other when he discovered that she liked it, that it made her moan and tremble in his arms.
And, god, she wanted to fuck him. Right now. So fucking badly. And though she'd never had that exact thought, it now kept repeating in her mind – how it'd feel, him inside of her. Where his fingers were. How it'd feel for him. And it wasn't like his fingers weren't enough, but she wanted him, more of him, in every single way she could have him. Inside her, outside her, over her, under her. She wanted to absorb him and sweat him out just so she could have some more of him.
"Don't," he almost-growled. "Don't fuckin' shut them." And she popped open her half-lidded eyes.
"Daryl-" she whined, "I want you to fuck me." And more than whining, she was begging again. Pleading. And she watched herself as she said it. And it was strange and ethereal and erotic, to watch those words formed by her mouth and to hear them be spoken by the voice that came from the scarred face of the girl that she knew, but just couldn't reconcile, was her. And she wasn't sure why she felt such a strong need to go in this direction, because what they were doing and what they'd been doing was more than anything she could've ever imagined. But the overwhelming need for him to take her, to give herself to him, was persistent now and burning her from the inside out.
"God fucking damn it, Beth," he swore, tightly shaking his head in response to her pleading, she guessed. But she wasn't thinking clearly, as he shoved his fingers into her harder and deeper. And she could see his gritted teeth and the wince shaping his eyes, which could only be caused by the all-consuming and burning pleasure that was laced and decorated and edged with some kind of pain that wasn't really pain because she, too, was feeling it, at that exact moment.
And she heard the towel he'd had wrapped around his waist hit the bathroom floor and felt the contradictory, fascinating textures of his dick sliding against her back and her hip and dipping into the crack of her ass.
And he moved even faster and she felt the heat spreading – saw it spreading – over her entire body and face, almost blending with the scars. And she saw his eyes drop down to where he was rubbing his cock all over her body and she pretended that it was inside of her instead of his fingers and she felt the beginnings of the waves start to rage like an angry, relentless tide against her pubic bone and her belly as he kept pumping in and out and circling and moaning and breathing his love and want, hot and thick, into her ear.
And he must've felt it, because he grabbed her by the hair with his other hand and jerked her head upright and - unrelentingly, unapologetically - held it in place.
"Watch," he hissed, and his voice sounded as though he were being strangled. "Watch your fuckin' face, Beth. Your fuckin' perfect face when you, ugh, god, when you let go. Want you to see it."
And he gripped harder still and she almost wished she could feel the pain.
And his thrusts against her ass and her back were becoming uneven and erratic. And the thought that he was so fucking turned on just by looking at her, by looking at her look at herself, is what sent her over the edge, powerfully and suddenly. And even as she pulsed - harder than she ever had - around his fingers, she watched. Forced her eyes to remain open. And she saw that the hue of her skin was like fire and blood and her mouth opened and hollowed out and then her teeth bit into her bottom lip, dragging so sharply against it that she swore that actual blood did start to eventually trickle down her chin.
Her hips were bucking so hard and so uncontrollably that she'd trapped his hand between her and the countertop that encased the sink and it made the pulses even harder and longer somehow, as she ground her hips into both the hard insistence of his thumb and the solidity of the ceramic of the counter.
And sometime during the frenzy, she looked at his face, and it was pained and hot and he was almost snarling, almost animalistic – and she was sure that he was trying to hold off, to avoid coming all over her and all over the floor and all over the bathroom, but she wanted it and needed it and so she worked an arm up and backwards and threaded her fingers into his still-damp hair, using it to pull his head down onto her shoulder. And without knowing it, she started shoving her ass back against him as he continued to thrust forward against her and, even after all of this, she was still the one begging.
"Bite," she said, voice pleading and breathless, and she'd had to practically gulp the air – thick and salty and sweet as it was – to inhale the breath she'd needed to get that one word out.
"Wha- fuck," he gritted out and then he sunk his teeth into her flesh – deeper, maybe into the muscle or the bone – of her shoulder and he kept thrusting until he finally lifted his head and threw it backward and she felt the hot, wet spurts of his release on her back and her ass and her legs.
Beth doubled her body over the counter and Daryl followed, resting his weight over hers for a few moments before he grabbed a cloth and wetted it and even added some of the flower-smelling shit to it and proceeded to clean her.
She caught her breath and splashed some water from the sink faucet over her face before straightening a bit. And he was there, standing behind her, eyes fixed on the spot where he'd bitten her in between her neck and her shoulder. A small pool of blood had formed there, and it made Beth smile.
"The fuck you tell me to do that for?" He asked, shaking his head. "Could'a fuckin' hurt you."
Before she could respond, he dipped his head down and closed his mouth over the wound, using his lips and his tongue to lap up the blood there. And it somehow felt more intimate than what they'd just done. And made the aftershocks in which she'd been reveling feel more like she was coming again.
And he might've been mad, but the loving way in which he'd cared for her spoke much more deeply and much louder than his words.
"I love you," she said, watching him in the mirror. And she wasn't quite sure why the need to tell him, to repeat those words she'd already said, had felt so strong and insistent inside of her.
He lifted his head up and she saw his tongue dart out to lick the rest of her blood from his lips.
He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her away from the mirror to face him. Not the reflection of him or her or them. Just him.
"I love you." She could tell that it took some effort, then, for him to keep his eyes on hers as he spoke. But she felt it – the fierce truth, the indisputable veracity – in those words that were so much more than words to him. And to her.
xxx