GASP
"You don't get to fuckin' talk about her like that, jackass."
With wide blue eyes, Beth finds herself to frustratingly be frozen to the ground; and despite the fact that the blonde actually really does want to open up her mouth and say something - both to defend herself and to tell Daryl to just leave this whole thing be, because it honestly didn't matter all that much - no coherent words seem to be ready to fall from her tongue.
It is as though Beth has completely forgotten how to speak, and despite the fact that she honestly cannot stand the idea of Daryl arguing with anyone from their camp, especially over her of all things; she kind of doesn't hate it as much as she thought that she would, and that might just be a slight issue.
By now, Daryl is standing in front of her in a way that mostly blocks her view of Abraham's face, but she can tell from the tone that he uses as he responds to Daryl that the man is angry, to say the least. There's been an ongoing battle for dominance recently - mostly between Abraham and Rick, but it sometimes involves Daryl, too - and despite the crappy way in which Abraham will happily speak to everyone else, he sure as hell doesn't like it when anyone speaks to him with the same sort of attitude.
"What's it to you?" Abraham bites out at Daryl, and Beth doesn't even bother to resist the urge to roll her eyes at the childish response.
The two men have attracted quite a crowd at this point - Rick and Carol, both of them looking a little bit bemused, Maggie and Glenn looking equally concerned, and Tara and Eugene looking a little surprised, to say the least - and everyone appears to be the exact same way as Beth: rooted to the damned spot.
It's as though everyone actually kind of wants something to happen between these two men; and god, that's sick. It's messed up and wrong and someone should stop it before it even begins, someone should try and help to calm them both down before they do and say something that they don't mean, something that they will no doubt regret. The whole thing is so petty - all he did was call her tiny tits, after all, and even though it's annoying and rude and slightly offensive, it's not as though he did anything worth killing him over - but she knows that Daryl will never see it that way.
Not when he sees her as his, anyway.
Out of everyone who is gathered there to watch the heated interaction between the two men, Beth knows that it is Rick who probably would have the best calming effect upon Daryl. She knows that all it would take would be for him to step in between them both and look at the bowman in the eyes and tell him to back off and cool down and god, Daryl would. He sure wouldn't be happy about it, and he would probably be pissed at Rick for making him feel as though he had to do that, but he would still do it all the same.
And yet Rick doesn't look as though he is prepared to do anything to stop these two from going at each other like a pair of wild dogs.
In a way, Beth understands the older man's reluctance to intervene; especially when she knows that Rick probably thinks that Abraham deserves it after all of the shit that he has given to everyone in their group over the last couple of weeks on their journey to D.C. But at the same time, it frustrates her, because now it means that the only thing left for her to do is to attempt to stop them both; and the only thing that she really has in mind is to take several steps forward so that she is directly behind Daryl and place one of her dainty hands on the tanned skin of his bicep, silently asking him to come with her, to leave this whole, stupid thing be.
So with a heavy sigh, Beth forces her stiff body to take the first step forwards towards Daryl, and her hand is just about to stretch outwards so that her skin can touch his once again today -
- and then Abraham opens his god-damned mouth again, and what he says causes her body to stiffen completely.
"You fuckin' her or somethin'?" the red-head says with a scoff, and suddenly Beth isn't prepared to stop Daryl from doing anything.
.
.
.
A long, drawn-out hiss escapes from Daryl's lips as Beth gently dabs away at the bloody, torn skin of his knuckles with a fresh and clean wash cloth; and the blonde pauses in her administrations to give him a moment to get used to what she imagines is a burning sting. For a moment or two, she patiently waits, and she only starts the process of washing him once again after he gives her a jerky and quick nod of his head.
Cleaning his wounds isn't something that Daryl considers to be essential, she can tell; but she knows as much as he does that any sort of infection in this new world that they live in can be life threatening, and so it's better for all of them to take extra precautions to ensure that they don't end up tempting fate or putting themselves at risk. It goes without saying that Daryl would more than likely pay little attention to detail when cleaning himself up - his bravado more than likely effecting him enough so that he would think that pouring some water over his hands would do the trick - and out of everyone in their group whom he would have allowed to tend to him in this manner, she knows that he would want her to be the one to do it the most.
So. She came.
It's been silent between them for a while now and they have barely spoken at all since Rick had to tear him away from Abraham. The quiet was all well and good whilst he watched her clean up his wounds, but now that she doesn't need to concentrate so hard on the task, the silence makes her feel a little bit uncomfortable.
So. She talks.
"You know that you shouldn't have done what you did to Abraham, right?" Beth finds herself saying as she squeezes the drenched cloth over the small bucket of water that sits neatly in her lap, and Daryl doesn't say anything - just shrugs his shoulders at her.
Even though his reaction really shouldn't amuse her, she can't help but smirk slightly as she wipes at his knuckles again, the dirt and the grime and the blood disappearing from them.
"An' I probably shouldn't be sayin' this to you - especially considerin' the fact that I don't even know whether or not he's still breathin' right now." (It's not an over-exaggeration of any kind, because she saw how hard Abraham hit his head against the ground when Daryl tackled him, and she saw the forceful blows that he delivered to his face not even seconds afterwards.) "But... Thank you."
Daryl continues to stare at her in silence, and so Beth chooses not to say anything more about it as she finishes up with the task of cleaning his hands. Once she is satisfied that they are as clean as she can possibly make them, Beth tosses the wet cloth that she had been using - the one that was white before it touched him, the one that is now mixed shades of brown and red - into the bucket and moves it from her lap to the floor of his tent.
So far, she is actually quite pleased with herself: her movements have been swift and natural throughout this whole time, almost as though she has done this dozens of times before; almost as though this isn't actually the first.
It's only when she reaches for the bandages that Daryl moves at all, and his hands - torn-up hands that have been still for such a long time now - grab at her wrist, stilling her completely. Beth allows her hand to go limp, her fingers no longer stretching out towards the white material, and her light blue eyes meet with his much darker ones. The blazing way in which he is looking at her is enough to take her breath away, and when he speaks - his voice rough and quiet and low - Beth finds that once again, she is frozen; no words able to roll off her tongue in response.
"Ain't gotta thank me for shit," Daryl says to her, shaking his head from side to side, and despite the fact that she can't move - because honestly, she couldn't even if she wanted to - Beth's heart is pounding hard and fast inside of her chest.
His hand is still wrapped around her dainty wrist, and he squeezes it slightly with his fingers, as if to remind her of that fact.
"You're mine, girl," Daryl practically growls as he looks her directly in the eyes, and Beth can't help but gasp at the ferocity and intensity of his words.
And hell, if she wasn't wet before, then she certainly is now.
.
.
.
"Where's your guard dog, Bethy?"
With a tired sigh escaping her lips, Beth glares over at her approaching sister. The look that she gives her is only half-hearted, really, but it's still a glare all the same; one that seems to make Maggie grin even brighter. Beth's brows furrow tightly together at the sight of her sister crossing her arms over her chest, and she comes to a standstill not that far away from where Beth is hunched over one of the large rocks by the creek, scrubbing at a pair of dirty jeans.
"Maggie," Beth says to her in a warning tone, her lips pursed once the sound has escaped them. Her sibling is evidently not at all phased by her snappy tone of voice, though, because she tilts her head backwards and lets out a little laugh as she sits herself down on a rock close by.
"What?" Maggie says to her, tone innocent and laughter still laced in her voice. "I'm not jokin'. I was bein' serious."
The brunette says it as though this makes any of it better at all, and Beth returns her attention towards the jeans with a huff. "Yeah, well, it's not funny," Beth retorts, scowling down at the clothes as she scrubs harder at them, concentrating on them as best that she can.
For a minute of two, Maggie is quiet as she watches her work; but the silence that hangs between them is strange, and Beth has a feeling that her sibling didn't come all the way down to the creek just to watch her scrub some clothes. After another few moments of silence, Beth can't help herself but to lift up her chin so that she is looking her sister straight in the eyes.
"How's Abraham?" Beth asks; and the question is genuine as it quickly falls from her tongue. Despite what was said between them and despite the older man's shitty way of treating everyone she loves, Beth still wouldn't wish any harm upon him.
From where she sits on the rock, Maggie just shrugs her shoulders, disinterest clear in her response. "He's alright, I suppose," Maggie says, not sounding very pleased about the topic of conversation. "I'm pretty sure that he's gonna live, so I guess that Daryl didn't get him too bad in the end."
It's quiet again between the two sisters as the weight of Maggie's response settles in Beth's mind, and the blonde returns her attention back towards the jeans in an attempt to shake the uncomfortable feeling in her gut. Once she is finished, Beth lets another sigh escape her lips as she stands upright, her spine cracking loudly in the process.
This time, it's Maggie who asks her a question, and her tone is soft and calm as she speaks to her.
"What did he say to you, anyway?"
God, that's an awkward question, and it's one that Beth was hoping that her sister wouldn't actually ask her. Blinking straight into Maggie's hazel eyes, the blonde supposes that there's no real way that she can avoid this now, and it's not as though she needs Maggie disturbing Daryl to ask him what had been said that caused him to react the way that he did.
"Who, Abraham?" Beth asks, her tone nonchalant as Maggie nods her head up and down. A little laugh escapes her lips as she brushes some of the wisps of light hair back from her face, and oh man, she feels so awkward.
"It's stupid," Beth explains, shaky laughter dancing around her voice from the nervousness that she is feeling.
She doesn't want to tell Maggie about what the man said about her because it's so damn embarrassing, and on top of that, Beth knows that her sister will probably react to the sound of it just as badly as Daryl did - if not worse. Maggie has always been over-protective of her, but after what happened at the farm and then after what happened to their daddy and then, to top it all off, what happened at Grady; her older sister has taken it upon herself to be her very own guardian.
In a way, Maggie nicknaming Daryl as her guard dog is pretty ironic, but Beth isn't going to go into much detail about that. Not now.
"He called me tiny tits."
Silence spreads out between them once again, and when Maggie finally speaks - well, more like shrieks, if she's being honest - Beth really wishes that she had not bothered to say anything at all about it.
"He called you what?"
.
.
.
By the time that Maggie had eventually cooled down - because the way she had been kicking up a fuss, it had seemed as though she was prepared to go and give Abraham a piece of her mind, whether he was bedridden with a possible head injury or not - and Beth has finally been able to make her way back to Daryl's tent, it's dark, so she can't really see anything.
As far as Beth had been aware, Daryl was supposed to be joining Rick on watch duty that evening; but as she zipped down the entryway to the tent, he quickly sat up from where he had been lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling of the tent. The sudden movement startled her, and Beth gasped as she smacked a hand over her chest, her heart hammering away quickly and her breath coming out in pants.
"Beth?" he says, voice laced with sleep as he stretches out in the darkness, the outline of his arms and broad shoulders barely visible.
He is quiet and his voice is hushed as he talks into the small space of the tent, and Beth lets out a breathy mm-hmm in confirmation of her presence as she calms herself down before she finishes off pulling the zip all the way to the bottom of the tent.
As she crawls her way over towards him, Beth doesn't hesitate to curl herself up into his arms. There had been a time - not even that long ago, just a few weeks or so now - when Daryl had been uncomfortable and uncertain around her, and all of his movements had reflected those emotions. Now, he is anything but cautious as his warm body circles around hers; and if anything, Beth thinks that he pulls her closer towards him as opposed to pushing her body away.
"Where've you been, girl?" he murmurs down her ear, and despite the long, hectic day that they have both endured; despite the fact that he almost beat a man to death this morning because of her, in defence of her, Beth cannot stop her body's natural response to shiver as his warm breath tickles her earlobe.
And God, it's wrong - it's so, so wrong; everything that happened earlier on with him and Abraham was messed up and stupid and wrong.
But it was hot, and she wants him. Badly.
Has wanted him all day.
Beth isn't stupid and neither is Daryl, and she knows that he feels the shudder that courses through her slender body. She knows that he more than likely also knows the effect that he's having upon her body everywhere else, and it's frustrating to know that he knows - 'cause it shouldn't be like this, shouldn't be this simple for him to be able to make her crumble in this manner - but he does. It's so obvious that he does, and it's torture, yes, but the loveliest kind.
Death by Daryl Dixon. It doesn't sound all that bad, really.
"Busy," Beth responds to him, tilting her chin up as she speaks so that her nose skims over the column of his throat and her lips dance over his Adam's apple.
This time, it's Daryl's turn to be teased by her.
He swallows - whether it's a conscious response to the feel of her soft lips on his skin or not, she's not quite sure - and then she presses herself against him further, placing one single feather light kiss against the tanned length of his throat.
Her name falls from his lips again, a breathy sound that she's still not quite used to hearing - especially when she knows that this voice, this noise is something only she gets to hear from him - and Beth wouldn't be able to bring herself to stop kissing him, not even if she really wanted to. All day, it has seemed as though her body has been begging her for rest, for sleep; but now that she's here, now that she's with him and he's making those sounds and he's squeezing her hips and she's kissing his throat -
Well, now her body is begging for something entirely different to sleep.
Being with him like this is never difficult, especially not in the darkness of their tent, especially not after the amount of precious time that they have lost together. She was locked in a hospital whilst he was locked in a train car, and now she just wants to remind him - remind herself - that they're both alive. They're both here, they're both breathing, they're both okay; and more than anything, they both have each other.
"Want you," she murmurs against his neck, and that's all it really takes to receive any sort of response from him.
Before she even blinks, he has rolled them over so that it's now her with her back to the ground, and a little gasp escapes her mouth as he spreads her legs together and hovers between them. Each of his large hands is placed on either side of her head, and although she can only see the faint outline of him in the pitch black of the middle of the night; Beth can feel his hot breath ghosting across her face, so she knows that he's close.
"What d'you want?" he asks her, leaning further down towards her so that he can nip at her earlobe. The sensitive skin of it is caught between his teeth and he pulls down on it, eliciting a long groan from her as he pushes himself against her.
He's growing harder by the second, and she can feel him through both of their jeans as he presses harder into the centre of her legs, which are still spread open. Moving purely on instinct, Beth hooks both of her legs around his waist; practically locking him in above her so that he can't move too far away, and Daryl chuckles in response before moving away from her earlobe.
The next thing that he nips is her bottom lip, and once his teeth are finished with it - biting harshly at the plump skin of it so that she can faintly taste her own blood on her tongue - Daryl sucks it into his mouth, much gentler this time. One of his hands moves down to slide underneath her plain tank top and he doesn't waste any time in groping at her braless chest, and she moans louder than before when he pinches one of her nipples between his forefinger and thumb.
As he works away at her, Beth can't help but buck her hips into his, desperately searching for some friction to help ease the burning ache that has settled between her thighs as he teases her. It's unfair of him, really, and she isn't quite sure how it got to this - especially not when their roles were reversed and she was doing so well in driving him crazy just a few minutes before.
"Please," she murmurs into his mouth, and he responds by kissing her harshly, the force of it bruising. Sometimes he's gentle and sometimes he's not, and apparently tonight he's feeling anything but.
"What do you want, girl?" he asks again, his voice more of a growl than anything; and it demonstrates his impatience.
She knows what he wants her to say, and although she's getting better at this, she still blushes into the darkness as she speaks directly into his ear.
"Want your cock, Daryl," she tells him, trying her best to ensure that she keeps her voice steady and strong. "Want you inside of me. Now."
Beth has never spoken to anyone like this before - never so filthy - but it's something that Daryl seems to really enjoy her doing, and she can't deny the fact that the words have an effect on her, too. All they are is words, but the way that he responds to them - his dick hardening even more in his jeans, his fingers squeezing tighter at her nipple - makes her feel so powerful, so wanted, and that alone is enough to have her literally dripping beneath the weight of him.
By now, her clit is literally throbbing against her soaking panties, and she grinds herself against both the seam of her jeans and his hardness in search of some sort of relief.
It's evident that Daryl understands what it is that Beth is trying to do as soon as he moves to assist her, responding to her actions by angling himself further against her and then grinding down onto her centre roughly. The pace that he sets for them both is quick, and Beth throws her head back against the floor of the tent as she gasps out into the open air, breaking their kiss so that she can get some air into her burning lungs.
It's impossible to tell how on earth he manages to get her jeans down her legs as quickly as he does, but the next thing that she knows she's lay with her legs resting on his shoulders, the denim that had been practically stuck to her legs all day discarded somewhere on the floor of the tent along with the cotton panties that she had been wearing.
"Damn, girl," he grunts as the pad of his thumb makes contact with her wet lips, and his voice is rough and husky and filled with lust; and Beth is sure that the sound of it alone could push her to orgasm if he wanted to torture her that way.
But he doesn't.
(Thank god).
It's not as though they don't have plenty of time for foreplay - after all, it isn't as though the two of them have anywhere to be or anything to do other than sleep - but it seems like Daryl is in a rush as he pulls down the zip of his fly and shimmies his own jeans so that they fall to just above where his knees are resting on the floor of the tent.
The angle that she's positioned at isn't quite ninety degrees, but the muscles in the back of her thighs still ache slightly because of it, but the second that the swollen and dripping head of his cock makes contact with her own soaked entrance, Beth forgets all about the stretching of her leg muscles and all that she can think about is the stretching of her pussy.
Yet another groan falls out of Daryl's mouth as he holds the bottom of his dick and rubs it up and down her lips several times, gathering the moisture that she has created over the head of him and nudging it against her clit in a way that has Beth trembling. Without dragging the moment out any longer, Daryl lines himself up at her entrance for a final time and then pushes himself inside of her with one quick thrust; the sound of his grunt and her gasp mixing together in the dark, sticky air between them both.
Absolutely no time at all is wasted between them tonight, and Daryl's large hands come to rest on Beth's ankles - wrapping around them so tightly that his grip is almost painful - and he begins to drill himself in and out of her, his thrusts fast and hard and constant. The ache of the stretching muscles in her thighs is most definitely forgotten now, and Beth is anything but quiet as she takes all that he can give to her, moaning and gasping and practically screeching out his name as he pounds himself into her.
The angle where their bodies meet is a little awkward, but it's enough for Daryl to be able to thrust himself as deep into her as he can possibly go, and every time that Beth's trembling legs almost fall from his shoulders, the hunter easily brushes them back up and puts them in place once again.
It isn't long before Beth feels the familiar sensation of an impending orgasm tingling inside of her, and her swollen clit is already twitching by the time that she moves one of her hands to it and begins to circle it in a motion that matches Daryl's thrusts.
It's risky being with him this way, and it's something that they both know and is something that they evidently don't care much about. Pregnancy is something that honest to god terrifies Beth, but at the same time, there is no better feeling than having this man inside of her with absolutely no barriers between them; and because of that, she thinks that one day, maybe the pleasure would be worth the risk.
Whether or not Daryl feels the same way about that isn't really for Beth to assume, or to say; but from the passionate and lustful expression on his face as he thrusts his bare cock into her over and over again, she would like to think that he agrees.
"Beth," he hisses through his teeth as he leans further over her, pushing her legs back further with his hands so that a sharp pain shoots through the back of her thighs. The blonde can't help but to loudly yelp as a result of the pain, but Daryl is too far gone to notice and continues to keep up the brutal pace that he has set inside of her.
The sore feeling of the backs of her legs pulling and stretching contrasts with the intense pleasure that Beth feels having him pounding into her, and mixing with the sensation of her fingers squeezing and circling over her throbbing clit, all of her senses are overwhelmed.
Daryl's face is much closer to hers now that he has pushed himself forward over her, but his face still isn't quite near enough to her for Beth to be able to kiss him - at least not easily, anyway. Whilst she desperately wants to meet his lips with hers, at the same time, Beth can't help but feel slightly relieved that she can't quite reach him; after all, the idea of having his tongue in her mouth amongst all these other sensations would more than likely cause her to pass out in an overwhelmed heap of sweat on the floor of his - of what she considers to be their - tent.
Something quickly changes - possibly the angle or the intensity of his thrusts, but she can't really be very sure - and it has Beth crying out louder than ever before. One of Daryl's hands drops from where it is wrapped around her ankle and covers her mouth in a way that is not at all gentle or soft, and the rough attitude that he carries about him as he wildly pounds into her this way is Beth's undoing. Her orgasm is intense and strong, and Beth's light blue eyes squeeze tightly shut as she rides it out, moaning and biting and panting into Daryl's large hand.
As her walls quiver around him and squeeze at his cock, Daryl seems to feel even more encouraged than before; and he quickly begins to thrust into her, chasing his own release to match hers.
With one final long thrust, he spills himself inside of her; and God, it's reckless, but it feels amazing to have his cock pulsing as he leaks his cum directly into her sopping pussy. The unfamiliar sensation of his thick release filling her up is almost enough to send Beth over the edge once more, and her legs continue to tremble as he finishes himself off, eventually collapsing on top of her in a sweaty heap.
For a while, the two of them just lie on the floor of the tent with her back to the ground and his head on her chest. Her heart rate eventually slows down, and Beth smiles into the darkness as one of her hands - the one that is still damp from the wetness of the juices that coated both her clit and her pussy - snakes up into his hair, running through the long strands of hair on his head.
As she closes her eyes, Beth briefly thinks to herself that it's about time that he got a haircut, but she'll entertain that idea in the morning. For now, she's content to just bask in the aftermath of their orgasms, a soft smile on her face as her eyes flutter shut; and despite the fact that both of them are without underwear and jeans, she still feels comfortable. Still feels safe.
Beth thinks to herself that she will probably always feel this way so long as she is with Daryl.