Beth took another sip of the vile amber liquid that swirled in her cup, looking over the rim at Daryo. She and Daryl had gotten pretty close in the weeks since Zach had been killed. Beth knew it had started with that hug and though he had not initiated it, he had returned it. Oh, not at first and she hadn't minded. She'd counted herself lucky that she was one of the few people that he allowed to touch him at all.
She'd noticed he'd even shied away from Carol's hands before. But not hers. Never hers. She had noticed it the first time when he had been complaining of a knotted muscle in his shoulder. She had gone to him then and her fingers had prodded the area and she had fully expected him to recoil or shy away from her touch but she heard his sharp intake of breath and she felt the way he sort of leaned into her. And he didn't push her away. Afterwards she had gone to bed still trembling as she remembered how his skin felt, memorized the way his breath rushed or had that been her imagination. Of course that was just the first time she noticed her touch didn't seem to bother him. At least not in the traditional sense of the word bother.
The first time had been in her cell the night Zach died. She had hugged him.
"I hate goodbyes."
"Me too."
Then his hand had gone to her elbow, just the faintest of touches but she had heard everything his actions didn't reveal. She heard the hitch in his breath. Heard the thrumming of his heart as it lay beating right against her ear, her head pressed to his chest. She wondered if he could hear hers in the echo of his beats, like somehow they were on opposite sides of a canyon, one that was closing more every day.
She lowered the glass from her lips and set it aside, glancing up at him. She ducked her eyes and moved her fingers up to her hair, pushing the errant strands behind her ear. She remembered another time when he had looked at her the way he was now. When she had pulled away from him, after that hug. When he had looked into her eyes that night, she thought that maybe he could see the truth. That she was the worst kind of person. Awful really. For thinking of Daryl in a moment that should have been just about Zach.
Thinking back now, it had never been about Zach and it made her sad at the same time it made her heart beat a little bit faster. Somehow that poor dear boy that had tried and failed to steal her heart, had been a catalyst for her and Daryl, for what they were now. Whatever it was. She felt guilty for thinking about Zach in that way, like it was a dishonor to his memory somehow. But she knew it wasn't. Knew if Zach were still here and he saw what was going on with her and Daryl, he'd politely step aside. Her and Zach were friends before they were anything else. It shouldn't have struck her that her and Daryl were friends first too, but it did. Oh it did. Friends before what. That was the real question.
She picked up her glass of liquid courage again and she was very aware of how his eyes followed her every movement.
Daryl didn't know what the hell he was doing down here with a girl half his age. Half exactly. She was 18 and just barely so. Barely legal, drawled the never far away voice of Merle, the proverbial devil's angel on his shoulder.
They were sitting in the library of the prison, a random Wednesday night after they'd just had spaghetti, something Hershel had declared not long after the last vestiges of the flu had been wiped out. He and Beth had been coming down here every night since that first one a few months back. They came down after lights out and just sat most of the time. They talked and he'd gotten to know a lot about Bethany Greene over their time down here. He figured she'd gotten to know more about him than she cared to in that time as well. But she didn't complain none. It was just her way. Drawing things out of him he didn't even know he was considering.
She wasn't even saying anything right now and she had him thinking things he'd never considered before, like how it would feel to run his fingers through her silky blonde hair. He'd let his hand glide over the back of her head a time or two but his touch never lingered long. He wouldn't let himself. But right now, he could almost imagine reaching across the couple feet between them on the sofa and pushing back those strays that always seemed to find their way to frame her angelic face. Angelic or some shit.
Yeah, he found himself amending his own thoughts so he didn't sound too girly, even to him. Never mind that Merle would roll over in his grave laughing his ass off if he knew half the things Daryl thought when he was thinking about sweet Beth Greene. Things like poems and hearts and picking her some daisies (her favorite) and bringing them to her cell. But men like him didn't bring flowers to girls like Beth Greene.
He thought of the Cherokee rose he brought Carol that time and he knew he was bullshitting himself. He was exactly the type of man to bring a girl like Beth Greene flowers and he was kicking himself right now that he never had.
He broke the silence first. "You ever tell people?" She looked at him, her bluer than sky eyes blinking back at him. "About coming down here? About us?" It wasn't what he was expecting himself to say but there it was, that unspoken thing. The us that wasn't them. Or some shit.
She smiled and shook her head lightly, a softness creeping into her gaze. "No." She glanced down quickly before her eyes darted back up and pinned him down. "Figured it was just for us." His heart beat loud and fast in his chest as she echoed him. Giving their relationship a class by itself, like it mattered. (or some shit)
He didn't know what to make of it so he did the only thing he ever did when he was uncertain (and let's face it he was not sure about anything where Beth Greene was concerned) and shrugged his shoulders. Ducked his head. Standard bullshit moves from your standard bullshitter. But she knew and he could feel her eyes still pinning him where he sat and he was forced by something he didn't understand quite yet (he'd later come to know it as the Greene superpower) to look back up at her. "What?" But he knew what. He saw the unspoken challenge in her eyes. She poured him another few inches of the whiskey they'd been drinking and he felt warmed by her gaze.
Warmed enough to say what he was thinking instead of the bullshit that usually poured in a steady stream from his redneck mouth. "Guess I like that it's just us. Down here." His face flushed but he didn't look away. Couldn't if he tried because the luminous smile that lit up her face at his words made him flush with pleasure that he'd put it there.
Beth had wanted him to say something, anything besides shrug his shoulders but she hadn't expected that. Such an honest admission. So maybe that's what made her do it. She leaned forward slightly and brushed her lips across his cheek. "It can be our secret."
Her breath warm on his neck and the sound of her voice rippling across his ear caused him to shiver involuntarily and he knew she felt it. Just as he felt it. Something in her words that whispered a different kind of promise. That they would share more secrets between them. More than they had bargained for and the thought of it had him thinking about those flowers again. And how maybe that would make her smile too. (Or some shit.)
All too soon she pulled away and he found himself rubbing his hand across his neck as he glanced about the small room, tucked away in the bowels of the prison but Beth had made the place cheery. Brightly colored pages from coloring books taped to the walls, some posters she had found hidden in the corner supply closet, some art deco crap from the sixties, before his time even but it still brightened up the place. There was a wide range of books that they'd worked their way through. Some had been there before the fall and some he'd brought back on runs. He wished he could bring her a whole city library full, but he brought in what he could. Unnoticed. Because he did just want it to be the two of them.
They had read just about everything imaginable in their time together. Sometimes he would read from a bike magazine. Or she would read him something from Reader's Digest. One of his favorites though was when they had read through "The Outsiders" together. That book had been one of his most cherished possessions when he was a kid though only his mother knew that. He'd never let his old man or Merle see that side of him.
"You always were the sweet one, baby brother."
He guessed he'd been able to identify with the characters in that book. Like he was somebody trying to fit in to a world where most people didn't understand what it was like to be an outsider. He figured the irony in that lay with since the turn, he'd found his fit. He'd found his lot in life with this group. He looked at Beth and wondered how they fit into the cosmic picture. The us that he didn't quite understand yet.
Beth picked up a book and dusted it off. It had been in the stack of stuff Daryl had brought back from his last run. "Sex Trivia for Dummies." The whiskey must have struck her stupid because she couldn't remember making a conscious decision to read the title aloud but the words stumbled out of her mouth before she knew she was thinking it.
Her eyes met Daryl's and she didn't know whether she was glutton for punishment or just plain stupid but she actually opened the book and perused the contents, very aware of how Daryl was watching her. "Greene." His voice was low, meant to be menacing but that's not what Beth heard. Beth heard the curiosity as much as the warning.
She looked up at him and couldn't help the grin that eased its way onto her face. "Keep an open mind Daryl. Ya never know what we might learn." She said it very tongue in cheek and he got it. His eyes narrowed at her.
She was a minx. A minx and she knew it. He knew it. He nearly held his breath and nearly suffocated to death waiting for her to utter her next words. Words that were not her own, but the authors. "The sperm of a mouse is longer than the sperm of an elephant." She giggled. Fucking giggled and he couldn't help it, the context was ridiculous and he laughed too.
"See? That wasn't so bad." She was right. If that's all there was to the book. Which he suspected, it wasn't. And oh, it wasn't.
He watched Beth's fingers turn page after page and he watched her face as she did. He saw the ones she skipped over and how her face flushed red and he had to wonder what was on those pages. What was it that flustered pretty little Beth Greene? What had her looking up at him now with that look on her face. A look that told him he was in trouble. It was only a matter of time.
"This one is funny too." She looked back down at the book and her free hand came up to brush the strays behind her ears again. His fingers itched to help her out but he was too riveted to what was coming from her mouth. "All mammals except for humans have a bone in their penis." She looked up at him and god help him with that mischievous fucking grin on her face as she barely contained her laughter.
"I get it, Greene. You ain't gotta spell it out for me." Daryl's own face turned red at her implication of the word 'boner'. Still he couldn't help his answering grin. Her amusement was contagious. (Or some shit.)
Beth couldn't help it, she was having fun and from the look on Daryl's face he was too. Maybe they were caught up in some whiskey soaked haze but she didn't care. She felt more alive than she had since they left the farm. More alive than maybe she ever had.
Her fingers rested on the next page and she debated on whether or not to read it to him but she was intrigued by the context. "Despite the fact that she had three husbands and several lovers it was a psychiatrist who first helped Marilyn Monroe, the foremost sex icon of the century, to achieve her first orgasm shortly before her death." There was something that was kind of poignantly sad about that. She looked up at Daryl and where before it was all lighthearted fun, the mood had turned sultry, serious, almost urgent.
"That's sad." Beth looked up at him.
Daryl wasn't sure what they were talking about now. Were they talking about Marilyn Monroe dying? Or that she had an orgasm at the hand (it was a bad pun he knew it) of her psychiatrist? Or was she trying to tell him something else?
He knew the answer. This was Beth Greene. Of course she had an ulterior motive for why she read him that.
He just hummed his noncommittal standard response and waited. She'd get to the crux of it. She always did.
"It's sad she was almost gone and never got to feel an orgasm. She finally got to because she was talking to someone about all the things that went on in her head." Beth got that. She got that more than anyone probably. She got that she had never had an orgasm either and damn if she wasn't thinking about someone needing to give her one. Someone like Daryl Dixon. She was shocked at her own thoughts at the same time she was surprised that it had taken her so long to figure it out. Where this was all going with him. Sometimes she thought it was funny they had ended up at a prison. Locked in where the dead roamed outside. They weren't prisoners in the usual sense but sometimes she wondered at the irony of it.
Daryl didn't say anything for a long minute and she knew he was thinking about what she said. "But she did." What was he even saying?
"Because of her therapy." She looked at him pointedly as she whispered the thoughts that were swirling in her head. Thoughts she should probably leave well enough where they lay but she couldn't help it. "This is my therapy." She looked up at him and sat the book down and waited. She'd put it out there. Daryl wasn't stupid. She knew he got that this was an invitation. Marilyn got an orgasm from her therapist.
Daryl got it. He got her message loud and clear, yet he should have pretended to be deaf and dumb and ignore it altogether. But Daryl Dixon had never claimed to be a smart man. He was just a man, drawn to an inexplicable force between him and Beth. Maybe that force was what drew him forward and had him closing those last few feet between them, had him doing what he'd only imagined moments ago. Fingers winding into her hair, his palms pressing against the sides of her head. He had a moment to take in the way the blues of her eyes had been completely choked out by her ever darkening pupils before his lips met hers, just after her tongue had darted out to wet her bottom lip.
He had an urge to suck her tongue into his mouth and like she was reading him, her mouth opened under his and he did just that, their tongues mingling together, hot breath mixed with all the words that they had left unspoken between them. Words put into tongues in mouths and fingers on skin, like her tiny fingertips coming to grip his shirt and he thought for one instant she was going to shove him onto the floor, which is what he probably deserved but he read her as well she did him. She was pulling him closer and closer until he was no longer certain who was moving. It was a flash of limbs and arching backs and she was straddling him on the sofa, her fingers tangling in the back of his too long hair, pulling gently, and her teeth nipping his bottom lip.
He tasted the alcohol on her breath and it was odd that was what sobered him and had him pulling away, but only his mouth. His hands were still fastened to her ass. He didn't remember them going there but now that he had a minute to focus on something other than Beth Greene's tongue down his throat he could appreciate the warm slight weight of her ass in the palms of his hand. He brought his fingers up to splay across her lower back, rested his forehead against hers. They were both breathing heavy but neither was pulling away and he wondered how they got here. And at the same time wondered how to it took them so long to arrive. (Or some shit.)
It was a long time before they disentangled themselves and they didn't give tomorrow a voice. Just stayed in the now of saying their reluctant goodnights in the dim of the library, and whispered promises of the next night and what it might bring. As he walked back to his cell alone, Daryl thought how he'd be going and looking for those daisies in the morning.
He brought her daisies every day for the next week. Three of them and Beth didn't have to wonder at what it meant. She knew and neither one of them had to say it. She looked at him now, reading to her from the Outsiders again and they both knew that reading had now become a ruse for them.
That what started with a sex trivia book and some whiskey had turned into something else entirely. Something they couldn't put a name to but maybe it was because they didn't have to. It was just part of the us that they were meant to be. (Or some shit.)
He finally could stand it no longer and put the book aside and she put her hand out and pulled him to his feet. She walked him over to the bookcases that he didn't notice until now, they'd been moved away from the wall slightly to accommodate a mattress Beth had clearly absconded from one of the nearby cells. She had brought in quilts, making it look even more inviting. She looked up at him nervously and he noticed the creep of color that went from her cheeks down her neck all the way to the swell of her breasts above the tiny tank top she had worn this evening. To torture him, he was certain of it.
In all the past seven days, his hands had never strayed from their resting place at her hip, splayed across her lower back or the back of her head. Only the one time had they strayed down to her ass but he had been caught up in the moment. But the mattress here, that was on purpose. Whatever they did from this point forward could not be blamed on hormones. Whatever they did from this point forward would be something they couldn't turn back from. Wouldn't be able to. If he was guessing right, they wouldn't want to.
He looked at her and nodded and she grinned at him before standing on her tiptoes and pressing her lips to his boldly, her tiny tongue, warm, certain, probing the seam of his lips and he lifted her up and turned her slightly against the wall, one hand sliding down protectively over her hip and it was like the next motions were fluid, predestined, as she lifted her leg slightly, pressing herself forward and fitting herself against him, his hand sliding under her thigh, lifting, seating her heat against his growing erection and he groaned into her mouth even as his other hand found the hem of her shirt and rucked it up, his fingers sliding over bare nipple as she arched her back into his hand and her hot breath gasped into his mouth. It was all a mess of tangled limbs and clashing teeth and sloppy kisses as he reached down between them and pulled the shirt from her, baring her breasts to him at long last. He wanted everything at once, his mouth on her nipples, her writhing beneath him, buried in her to the hilt and he had to force himself to stop, slow down. Knew it wasn't her first time but they'd talked some and knew she'd never had an orgasm before. It's why she'd been so struck by the revelation that had set them on this course.
After that it was slow as she reached between them and undid his pants and they slid to the floor, his belt buckle clanging on the floor echoing off the walls of the tiny library. He was glad it had a door that locked from the inside. It was one of the few places of the prison with such a notion from the past. It was what made it possible that they could strip each other leisurely and he could memorize the way her eyes looked as she took in his erection as it sprung free from his boxers. Could burn the image of her lithe form as he laid her back on the mattress and peeled the final layer between them, two tiny triangular scraps of material, held together by a thin string on each side of her slim hips. He held the scrap of material in his fingers for a moment before letting it drop to the floor with his pants and the rest of their discarded clothing, his eyes sliding over every delicious curve of her pale form, the hollow at her neck that begged to be kissed, the dip in her navel that he wanted to bury his nose in and finally the gathering moisture he saw at the soft triangle of curls at the top of her thighs that his tongue longed to taste.
As he crawled up over her body, he did just that, with a flick of his wrist he put one finger between her thighs and like he had pushed an invisible button her thighs parted leaving his eyes to feast upon her swollen wet lips and he wasted no time in darting his tongue out there, the thick muscle parting her folds, tasting, his mouth fastening over her clit completely as her legs came to wrap around his head, like her thighs were made to fit there (or some shit).
He sucked and tongue fucked her until it was no longer in his imagination that she was writhing beneath him. She was bucking under his tongue and she tasted like liquid fucking heaven as he thrust two fingers into her pussy, feeling her walls clench around him and he nearly passed out as she clamped her legs around him further and as he looked up at her it looked like he had licked her unconscious and maybe that wasn't a bad thing with the smile she had on her face. But then she was opening her eyes and looking at him and saying "Now I know how Marilyn felt."
With a primal growl he didn't know he possessed he was up over her body and with his fingers wound through her hair, her face cradled in his hands, her scent mingled between both of them and his breath hovering over her. "We ain't done yet Greene."
There it was again, unspoken promises between them and his lips were on hers, and this time she wrapped her legs around his hips pressing herself up against him and he was there, just outside her heat. He looked at her and he didn't have to ask her if she wanted this. It was there in her gaze, it was there in her breathy sigh. Her desire heated up between them until it mingled with his and he reached between them sliding himself along the slick of her and leaned his forehead against hers as he slid slowly, deliciously slowly into her and they both groaned out their pleasure as he filled her and she stretched to accommodate his girth, length until she began to rock up into him. "Please Daryl." Her voice was gruff, so unlike his songbird. His songbird. (Or some shit).
He didn't know anything else, only pleasure as she molded herself around him and he got lost in her heat and her sex and he was falling. And rising. And falling again. "I can't." His breathing was ragged.
"Come for me." Her voice was a rasp in his ear. But he couldn't. Not until he felt her coming around him. He drove himself into her and he heard the pants and the slap of their skin and the raw need and beauty and passion between them. It was more than just the sex. It was more than the pleasure of two people. It was their vitality. This thread between them. The thing that separated them from the dead that roamed outside their fences. This was being alive. And somehow deep within him just beyond the place where everything else resided, all the doubt, all the fear that he was not good enough, was lodged the thought. He could only find this with her. With Beth.
It was as he brought his fingers between where their bodies joined and he found that bundle of nerves that he whispered it to her. "We'll come together, baby girl." And that was all it took for her, and her hips, clenched into his side and her heels dug into his ass as he ground himself into her and cried out, his orgasm pulled from him, her pulsating around him as they spun out their pleasure. Together.
They collapsed to the bed with a weight and she tucked herself beside him, neither of them saying anything for a long time. Just soaking up the silence and the weight of the moment.
It surprised him that he broke the silence first. "We gonna tell anybody now?"
She braced herself on one arm and grinned at him. "What you want to tell people what we get up to down here in this dusty library?" She wiggled her eyebrows at him.
His answering chuckle struck her. She liked this side of Daryl Dixon. This time when he shrugged his shoulders at her she knew there was no hesitance behind it. It was playful but his words were sure.
"Maybe after we get used to the idea ourselves." It was a promise of things to come and she smiled.
She nodded at him and grinned. Whoever would have thought it? Her and Daryl Dixon. She didn't know what they were yet but it wasn't what Maggie and Glenn had. Not even what they'd been at the beginning which was just sex. Maggie had even said so at the time.
No this with Daryl was more. She suspected they were about to become a prisoner of whatever it was but it was a war she would gladly surrender. Some battles were made to be lost. She figured she'd just laid her heart out to Daryl Dixon and surrendered it to him. But somehow, she knew he had done the same. She would gladly be a prisoner of whatever this was between them. He'd definitely taken her captive. With his looks, his words and now with his body and what he made her feel. Yeah, she'd be his prisoner of war. Any day.
Hope you guys liked this, my tribute to Bethyl smut weekend. Please be kind, it's my first attempt at a prison fic. ;) Happy finale day and may the force (of Bethus) be with us!