Chapter 21: a subtle kiss that no one sees

Merle doesn't do a whole lot of talking to him for the rest of the week. Daryl is perfectly fine with that. At the moment - at this series of moments - Daryl is content to be mostly left alone. He's thinking. Thinking more and more about that big scary future, though he's not sure most normal people would consider a few weeks a big scary anything. But for him it's novel. More than. It's yet another first, and he knows exactly who's to blame for it.

He continues doing odd jobs for Elmer. He pays the rent. He has a sock in which he's hiding cash, shoving it under the couch with cigarette butts and Cheetos wrappers. He doesn't trust Merle. He hasn't in a long time, but now he's noticing that he doesn't trust Merle. It doesn't exactly bother him, at least not more than anything else - if it was going to, it would have stopped a while ago - but he's conscious of so many more things in general. Shit he's done without thinking for... Hell, since he picked Merle up outside that fucking prison, but actually for even longer than that. Stuff he's probably been doing for most of his life.

He's not a piece of shit. He's really not. He's not exactly a good person, but Beth isn't crazy and Beth isn't stupid, and Beth is terrifyingly perceptive, and she likes him, so Beth must see something there worth liking. And he can go ahead and insist to himself that she's crazy and/or stupid and/or oblivious, or he can trust her and operate under the assumption that, contrary to the belief system within which he was raised, he is not actually a piece of shit.

This is like a loss of faith. This is like discovering that all those stories you were told as a kid about God and Jesus and angels and the Devil and Heaven and Hell are probably just stories and nothing more.

Except the stories with which he was raised were not good stories. Not hopeful stories. Not even scary stories you tell people to make them behave. These stories were screamed into him, beaten into him. Scarred into him. He wasn't good for anything. He wasn't worth anything. He was stupid. He was useless.

He was nobody. Nothing.

In his mind, Beth Greene looks right at him, right in his eyes - this beautiful little goddess who won't stop fucking with his life, and he doesn't want her to anymore - she looks at him and she says a single word.

Lies.

He almost can't believe it. But he wants to. He wants to at least entertain the possibility. His belief system is threatening to crumble and fall. So he's wondering what might rise in its place.

On Saturday morning - when he's supposed to be at the farm but not until later - he goes back to the coffee shop and he does order hot chocolate because fuck it, he's a goddamn adult and he can do what he wants, and he sits at that table by the window where he first sat with her and somehow with noticing he picked up the local paper, and he's looking through the rooms and apartments to rent. Not really focusing, but.

Looking.

He's going somewhere. Feels like it. It's frightening. But it's not bad. He's reminded of the first time he rode a motorcycle, that feeling of nothing at all between you and the sheer speed with which you were moving, this monster of metal and power roaring under you, all the stupid romantic shit people say about bikes actually sort of true, and he burned up a long empty stretch of road as the sun went down and it was crazy but he wanted to lift up his hands, open his arms, like he could fly.

He didn't. Obviously. But he never forgot how it felt, and now he feels like that again. His heart is pounding and his palms are sweaty, and he has to put the paper down and clench his fists until his hands stop shaking.

He's going somewhere.

And though he wants so badly to believe otherwise, though he hopes so much that he can make it all work, part of him is sure that even if Merle stays here, Merle might not be able to go there with him.

On Monday he shows up and Maggie is there, home for a week and a half. At first he's not sure what to make of her; in a lot of ways she's not much like Beth at all. There's a slightly sharper edge about her, a directness - not that Beth isn't direct, but Beth is direct in a way that's a little less pointed. She has an attitude. Not overtly, but it's there.

By Tuesday he's pretty sure he likes her okay. He's not certain what she thinks of him, but he also doesn't really care. She's not sticking around. He'll be as polite to her as he is to anyone, and he'll proceed as usual. What is he to her, anyway? He's just the hand Hershel has taken on for the season. As far as she knows, he's nothing more.

As far as anyone knows, he's nothing more. Hershel might appear to like him, and so might Annette - he's gotten as far as thinking about her on a first-name basis - and Shawn might think he's all right, but he knows he's basically nothing more to them, too. Maybe something vaguely like a friend, but they don't really know him, because he hasn't allowed them to do so. He doesn't want them to. Maybe he's not a piece of shit, not exactly, but he's not fool enough to think they'd be especially impressed with his biography.

He's nothing more, as far as anyone knows.

Except Beth.

Nothing much changes. Work on the silo concludes. It's good work; he's pleased that he's done something useful, something he can look at and see it used for something else. There are other things he can do, basic maintenance, and Hershel finds out that he's not a bad mechanic and puts him to work on some equipment. He keeps busy and he doesn't get bored.

And he thinks. About what comes next. About the big scary future.

He thinks a lot about Beth.

He thinks a lot about just being around her, about the parts of it he likes - which are almost all of them - the parts that are purely innocent and purely things friends do, about talking with her and her singing and about how smart and wonderfully strange she is, about how she doesn't seem to see the world like anyone else he's ever met. About how she makes him feel good just by being with him. Sure, he thinks about those things.

But he also thinks about her legs when she runs, the length and the strength of them, about her bare arms in the loose, light sleeveless tops she likes to wear. He thinks about flashes of skin at her waist, about her waist itself. About the line of her throat all the way down to the dip of her collarbones. About her hips, her breasts. The shorts and jeans she wears are tight and it's difficult - now, for him - to miss the full curve of her ass.

He thinks about these things in the shower, at night when he's alone, in the truck driving out there or driving back, and he doesn't try to push them away. Not anymore. He lets them happen, lets them come. He's never felt like this about anyone. Never thought like this about anyone. Never curled his hand around his cock and thought about being with someone like this. These still half-formed fantasies, these disorganized flashes of images and sound and touch and taste and smell, almost adolescent in how heady they are while still not exactly going anywhere.

His experience of sex has nothing to do with what's going on in his head right now. This is something completely new. Completely strange. He's groping his way through it. He's not sure where it's going to end. Sometimes he's amused and sometimes he's freaked out by the fact that she's helping him here too, helping him discover this part of himself, and she has no idea.

She doesn't have to know. She never will know.

He's very determined to make sure of that.

Then on Saturday everything falls apart.

He can tell something's wrong as soon as he gets out of the truck. It's not even that he sees anyone, at least not right away; it's a hot, still day, later in the afternoon than when he usually gets here, and there was already something sort of ominous about it - towering thunderheads gathering on the far western horizon - but he can feel it. Just an overwhelming sense of Wrongness, impossible to tell exactly what or where it's coming from but unmistakable.

He's heading up toward the house, fighting back his unease, when Maggie pushes open the screen door and comes out onto the porch, pushing her thick brown hair back from her forehead.

"Daryl." She starts down the steps toward him. She looks stressed. "You seen Beth?"

More than ominous. Deeply foreboding. His stomach drops a little. "No. Why?"

"Dammit." She stops, hands on her hips, and glances around in a way he recognizes as stemming from a deep sense of helplessness. His stomach drops a little more. "Because no one has. Not since last night. And she's not answerin' her phone."

"You ask her friends? That boyfriend?"

"Of course we did, those were like... the first people we checked with." Maggie sighs, lowers her head a few seconds and appears to be trying to calm down. "Might be nothin', I mean... But she just doesn't do this. Ever. She goes anywhere, someone always knows where. And she always answers her damn phone."

He's not panicking. He is not in any way panicking. He's going to be useless if he panics, and he can't be useless right now, because Maggie could be right, it might be nothing, but what if it's not nothing? What if it's everything?

He's leaping right into the worst possible scenario and he knows it, but he can't help it, because it never really occurred to him until this very moment that he might actually lose her. In any way.

Thunder rolls in the distance.

If something's happened to her he's going to find whoever is responsible and he's going to turn their head into pink paste, and that's not hyperbole. He'll do it. He hardly ever wants to hurt people, but he also knows perfectly well that he's capable of hurting people in some truly horrifying ways.

"Did somethin' happen? You think of any reason, anythin' might explain it?" Grasping at straws, but it's something.

"There's..." Maggie's mouth tightens. "I don't think it explains her bein' gone this long, or no one havin' any idea where she went, but her friend Chrissy said she and Jimmy had some kinda big fight yesterday, so..."

He was grasping; now he seizes. Because it's even more of a something, and suddenly he has a feeling about it. Maybe Beth doesn't know him all that well in terms of the details of his terribly interesting life story, and maybe there's a lot about Beth he still doesn't know and very much wants to, but he does know her. He knows how she is. Well enough to predict what she might do under certain circumstances.

"Any idea what about?"

Maggie shakes her head. "Just that she was mad. Seemed mad when she went to bed last night. She didn't talk a whole lot. But if it was just about bein' mad, you'd think she would've gone off with a friend or somethin', not-"

"Where's everyone else?"

"Shawn's in the woods near the swimmin' hole. Mama and Daddy went to town, checkin' some places."

He's already headed back to the truck. "I'll try the roads. Drive around. Just see if I see her."

"Not sure what good that's gonna do." Maggie sounds skeptical and he doesn't blame her. "But suit yourself."

He will. Because as he pulls around and heads back down the drive and turns left, away from the thunderheads and the sun dipping close to them and toward the remaining clear sky, he thinks he's pretty sure he knows exactly where she's gone.

A place no one else knows about. She's been careful to keep it that way. He's kept her secret. And she might turn her anger on him for this, but he's still keeping it now.

Maybe she'll understand.

It's much cooler in the deep shade of the woods, though the air remains still and it's even muggier. Mosquitoes and midges whine around his head when he gets out of the truck at the top of the steep slope, and he waves distractedly at them. The whole way out here he didn't bother calling, didn't bother texting; he doesn't expect her to answer even him, and if she's been out here as long as he suspects it's entirely possible her phone is dead anyway.

He's not worried anymore. Not really. But as he makes his way down the slope - boots sliding over mud gone dry and dusty and not totally holding together - concern is still tugging at him. Because if she's been out here this long - or at least been out of the house and away from people - he thinks mad probably doesn't exactly cover what she's feeling. There's probably more to it than that.

Mad and hurt, maybe. Mad and upset. To the point where she doesn't want to see anyone, not even him - and when did even get to be part of this? - and where she snuck away in a manner designed to keep anyone from following her.

God, he hopes she at least brought some snacks. Maybe he should have picked something up from the house. Except that would have been very, very weird. He almost certainly would have had to answer some questions. And Maggie, as he observed nearly as soon as he met her, is sharp.

And given that he's almost certain she's safe, keeping her secret feels, now, like the most important thing.

She trusted him. She trusted him with a deep part of herself. He can't imagine betraying that.

The slope evens out onto the wide lawn, the stones, gnats hovering in the patches of sun that break through the low branches. The creek is lower and a little louder as the water spills over and dodges around rocks glittering with flecks of mica. He hesitates at the base of the hill and listens for her, hears nothing but the water, considers calling. Decides not to. It's not that he wants to sneak up on her, but it is sort of that he doesn't want to give her a head start if she decides to run or hide, and maybe that's creepy and maybe it's not, and he's past caring. Because if she's upset, he wants to talk to her. If she tells him to fuck off, he will. But while he's almost certain she's okay, he needs to be completely certain.

He needs to see her.

He walks over the stone path, through the arched doorway and into the ruins.

He expected to find her at the marble bench. Instead she's right there in that large central room, sitting in a patch of sun, leaning against a wall with her knees drawn up against her chest - and he notes, with something a little like approval, that there's a half full bottle of water and the remains of a sandwich in the grass beside her, the latter now serving as an early dinner for a band of black ants. Her hair is tied back, but strands of it have come loose - more than usual - and are hanging in her eyes. She raises her head as soon as he sees her and he can tell she's been crying. Maybe not just now, but she was.

Jimmy might get the pink paste head treatment. A lot depends on what it turns out he's done.

She just looks at him a moment. He waits for her to say something. She doesn't. She just pushes her hair back from her face, tips her head back against the stones, and sighs.

"They send you out?"

"They don't know I'm here." He steps forward, hands in his pockets. He's very glad she wasn't crying when he found her. He's not sure what he would have done.

She actually almost smiles. Not really, but it's in the same county. Not quite the same town. "Thanks." She pauses. "But if I wanted you out here I would've called you."

"I'm here now, so too fuckin' bad." He drops into a crouch, looks her over. Except for being tired and clearly upset, she seems okay. "What happened? Maggie said you an' Jimmy were mixin' it up."

"I would've called you," she repeats, softer. But she's not telling him to leave, so he doesn't move. "I'm okay."

"Yeah, you been out here how long? I dunno 'bout that."

"I'm not a kid, Daryl." Not said with any annoyance. Any defensiveness. She's just informing him. In case he wasn't clear on that point. "I'm okay, and I would've come home. I can be by myself if I wanna be by myself. I don't have to explain that to anyone. Not even you."

"Alright." He supposes that's fair enough. Nothing to argue with there. She doesn't owe him a damn thing and she never has, and he's not about to start thinking that way now. But she also still hasn't actually told him to get out, so he sits down crosslegged on the grass across from her, arms resting on his knees.

"You wanna tell me what happened?" He pauses. He hasn't wanted to entertain this as a real possibility - not after jumping to the absolutely terrible conclusions he initially leaped for - but now he has to. "He hurt you?"

She shakes her head, her mouth twisting. "No, he... Not like that. Wasn't like that." She hesitates and looks away, hugging herself. She sighs again, appears to come to some kind of decision, and closes her eyes. "He cheated on me. Okay? That's all. That's all it was."

He blinks at her. Somehow he probably shouldn't be surprised, because that's sort of an expected asshole guy thing to do, but the idea of anyone being stupid enough to cheat on Beth fucking Greene is more than he can get his head around.

She looks back at him, brow arched. "What?"

He has no idea how to tell her what. That he can't fathom what was going through Jimmy's mind, because she's perfect, she's an absolute miracle, every part of her is remarkable and extraordinary and frankly unbelievable in every sense. That she's the most amazing thing he's ever seen. That she has quite literally changed his life. That he's pretty sure at this point that turning Jimmy's head into pink paste actually wouldn't be too dramatic a change in terms of the overall functionality of Jimmy's brain, if these are the kinds of life choices Jimmy makes.

He shrugs. Makes a little I'unno noise.

She huffs a laugh and looks away again. "Yeah, thanks. Thanks, that's real helpful."

"No, I mean..." Scrambling a bit. He can't say all that shit, he can't carve himself open and just lay it all out there raw and gross like the slippery tangle of his guts, but he really should say something. "He fuckin' cheated on you?" He keeps coming back to that. Coming back to it and staring at it. Poking it. Walking around it in circles and trying to incorporate it into his understanding of reality. "With who?"

He tries to think of an answer to that question that seems at all plausible and comes up completely empty.

"Who?" Now she looks a bit incredulous, and he wonders if he's made a serious misstep, but it's way too late to take it back. "The hell's it matter who?"

He shrugs again. This is really not going very well.

She pushes her hair back once more, and then kind of just lowers her head into her hand, forehead resting on the heel of her palm, and lets out a long breath. His gaze catches on her wrist. Leather cuff with the cross again today. "Just this girl. Girl across town. She goes to school with us, I don't even know her." She's quiet for a moment, not moving, and he lets her be. "He said it's been goin' on all summer."

"He told you?" This is getting weirder and weirder. "Just like... told you?"

She nods. Doesn't look up.

"Why?" At some point this might all start making sense, but so far it's not exactly headed in that direction. More questions just keep popping up and demanding to be answered and looking smug about the impossibility of doing so.

She laughs softly, drops her hand away, drops her whole body back against the stones until she's a little slumped. She's wearing one of those loose tops - light sky blue - and her gold heart flashes in the sun. He notices these things not with any particular desire. Just notices them, the way he always notices her when she moves a certain way or when the light catches her just right.

"He's gonna be goin' out with her when school starts up again. Like... Out. Not sneakin' around. So he was breakin' up with me."

And he's right back to the staring and poking and being totally unable to comprehend any of it.

As far as the staring goes he stares at her, and he can feel that his eyes are a bit wider than usual and he knows he must look shocked - though there's no possible way he can look even half as shocked as he feels - because she laughs again, clearly puzzled.

"Daryl... What? Don't I'unno me, what?"

He has to say something. He has to somehow compress the fullness of his disbelief and his incredulity and his scorn into something he can reasonably make into words. He has to, because he needs her to know that he feels these things. He needs her to understand. He needs that a lot.

Okay, he can try. He pulls in a breath and sits a little more upright.

"He's a fuckin' dumbass."

For a few seconds there's nothing. And then this time when she laughs it's softer and warmer and even the tiniest bit delighted. "Yeah. He is."

And everything lightens just a touch.

For a short while neither of them says anything. He can tell she's working through something and he doesn't want to push her, and as usual he's perfectly content to simply sit with her. The sun moves and the shadows lengthen, and that patch of sun slips a little further up the wall. It still touches her, still lights up her hair, and he looks at it and tries to be subtle about doing so. It's nothing inappropriate, he doesn't think. He's just focusing on it, because it shines. Focusing on it because he can't come to grips with why Jimmy would want to put himself in a position where he can't touch that hair. Run his hands through it. Tangle its strands around his fingers. Why he would ever want to stop doing that.

Why and how he is such an unbelievable dumbass.

"Thing is, I was kinda thinkin' about maybe takin' a break from him anyway," she says finally. Her eyes are half closed, both legs now stretched out in the grass with her ankles crossed. Those beat-up cowboy boots. He wonders if there's a story behind them, because she seems attached to them. "He's nice," she wrinkles her nose, "or he was, but I just..." She rolls a shoulder. "I dunno. Somethin' didn't feel right."

This is a new puzzling thing. He cocks his head slightly. "So how come you so upset?"

"I actually don't even know." He hears a very faint tremble in her voice and realizes with a sudden pang that she's crying again, or close to it, her face upturned and her eyes shining. "Isn't that stupid? I came down here early this morning and I just... I just walked around. I dunno. I couldn't stop thinkin' about it, about how it was over, but now I'm thinkin'... Maybe it wasn't even about that. Maybe it's all about something else."

"Got any idea what it's about?"

There's a long pause before she answers. She wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand and part of him is a little frantic. It's deep, instinctual. Seeing her cry, even if it's not a lot, he would suddenly do anything and everything to make it stop. To make whatever is hurting her go away. Even if it's a small thing. It doesn't matter. He never wants to see this girl cry.

But he has no idea what to do, and that's awful. He just sits there across from her, feeling vaguely useless. Like how he was always told he was. Not quite, but it's a reminder.

"I'm goin' back to school on Monday. Summer's over." She digs her right heel into the grass and pushes, staring up at the trees. The jagged towers of broken stone. "Senior year, and after this everythin's over. And I don't know what's comin' next. And I mean... I told you I wanted to think about it, I told you I wanted to figure it out on my own, but maybe it's hittin' me how I really don't know, and everyone else knows, or they think they do, and I just... Everythin's changin'. Everythin's endin'. I got no idea what comes after this. And I dunno how to tell anyone about it. Not so they get it."

She lowers her head and looks at him and rubs at her face with one hand, smiles weakly, and he almost can't deal with it. No, there's no almost; he can't deal. Not even close. There is no part of this he can handle.

And he wants to touch her. Not because of some kind of physical want for her but because he wants to make her feel better. He wants her to know that he's here.

So he doesn't second-guess it, or at least not much, because he's not a piece of shit and he's not going to ruin everything, and this is okay. He reaches out and just lays a hand on her knee, light, and she looks down at it and back up at him and her smile is a little less weak.

"See? I'm probably not makin' any sense."

He shakes his head. He gets it. He thinks so. He's not sure how to tell her that, and maybe he actually doesn't, because her world of light and love and Niceness is so far beyond anything he's ever known. So maybe he doesn't really understand where she's coming from. But he does know about being scared, and he knows about being scared of this huge roaring Unknown coming at you, and having no idea what to do about it. Having no idea how to prepare. The future is this ocean and it's rearing up, all wave-crests, and it's going to crush you.

He's never seen the ocean. She probably has. If he could find a way to get all of this into words and describe it to her, she would probably get that image. Maybe better than he would.

"You're makin' sense."

She nods slowly. Then she leans forward and covers his hand with hers, smooth and cool, and he manages to fight back a shiver. Manages to fight back a very unwelcome urge to pull away. He thinks about touching her all the time, and he's kissed her twice, and there have been little nudges and kicks - mostly on her part - and he's been able to deal with all of that, but there hasn't been anything like this. Not anything.

There's what he thinks about, which is distant and unreal and safe. And then there's this, and it's almost too much.

"Thanks."

He shrugs, feeling caught between awkward and genuinely pretty freaked out. He doesn't want to be. He wants her to touch him and for it to not be a big deal.

"No, I mean it. Maybe I should've called you. I dunno. Anyway. Glad you came out here." The corner of her mouth curves, a little wry. "It's a long walk back."

He shrugs again. He's glad he did, too. She's safe, she's all right, and yeah, he can't do anything about her being sad or scared - except maybe he did something just by being here, and that's a good thing.

That's a very good thing.

He gives her knee a quick squeeze, gets up and extends his hand down to her. She hesitates a second or two, then takes it, and he pulls her lightly to her feet.

Very lightly. A little harder than he meant to, or she tugged harder than she had to and gave herself a little more bounce. Because she's suddenly very close to him again, head tilted back to look up at him and her hands on his arms, and he can smell her. That clean soap smell. He can see the pale green flecks in her eyes and an almost imperceptible dusting of freckles on her nose. The gold flash of her tiny flower earrings.

He should push her away. He takes a breath, opens his mouth to say something - an apology, maybe, or we should get goin' - and that's when she curls a hand around the back of his neck and pulls him down.

It's all her this time. Her mouth against his, her lips pushing his a little further apart - she's not at all shy about this. She's not at all hesitant, not now. There's force in it, insistence, hunger; for a few seconds he's too stunned to do anything at all except be there and feel what she's doing to him.

Then he goes ahead and does what he's been thinking about. Dreaming about. Right then he doesn't pull away, doesn't seize up, because this is so simple; he reaches up and lays his hands against the corners of her jaw, thumbs against her cheeks, angling her so he can kiss her deeper. Low heat pulses through him as he tastes her, that taste now familiar from two memories and hours of fantasies, and he sighs against her. He's not going to feel guilty about this, and he's not going to be afraid of it, and he should, God, he should, because she's still half his age and he still shouldn't cross this line, but she feels so good.

But then he does pull back, just for a second - just enough to pull in a breath and catch a glimpse of her wide, bright eyes. Some remaining part of him still wants to resist, or feels like it ought to. Can't let go.

"Beth, I-"

"Shut up, Daryl," she whispers, and clenches a fist in the fold of his shirt and drags him down again.

He goes without any more of a fight. He was never going to put up much of one anyway. She presses closer to him and a quiet sound escapes her, and he realizes how they might fit together, how they do fit together right now, and she feels so fucking good.

She feels so fucking right.

He has no idea how much later it is when she finally lets him go.

He blinks, confused. The sun doesn't appear to have moved, but he could have sworn it was a long time. Hours. With her, with her mouth, he experiences time dilation. Everything around them moves at a different pace, and she does that thing she did in the rain, where she created a bubble of space in which they could be alone and protected from everything else.

She's a goddess. She has powers. She can manipulate the universe.

She smooths a hand over his shirt, looking up at him again, her eyes still big and bright. Her lips are wet, a little swollen now, and he realizes he made them that way and again has to fight back one of those shivers.

"We should go," she murmurs, and - numbly - he nods. Drops his hands and shifts back from her.

And neither of them seem to know what to do next.

The walk back to the truck is... He's not sure awkward is exactly the right word. It's weird. Speaking of lines, speaking of everything changing: The entire world looks different to him. The way the low light hits grass and trees and dirt, the little dancing specks of gnats, the speckled flash of mica. Water. The light itself. The way the air behaves. Colors. Birds calling into the oncoming evening. He thought that kiss in the rain was the dividing line; now he's not sure there's only one. He thinks he might have been really, really wrong about that. But he's so far out of his element now, to the extent that he ever had once. He's flailing around in the dark. He has no idea what the fuck he's doing.

She walks up beside him, close enough to touch him but not doing so, not quite looking at him, and he's pretty sure she's not too much clearer on what the fuck she's doing than he is.

It's entirely possible that this is all a horrible idea.

It's also entirely possible that this is a line he's crossing alone. That whatever happened, she left it back down there. That now they're back to being...

He doesn't think they can go back to being friends. He just doesn't think he can do that.

It's terrifying.

She gets in the truck in silence. They pull onto the dirt track in silence. Pass through the woods and out onto the main road in silence. The radio is on, softly, but it doesn't penetrate that fundamental quiet.

I feel like a newborn
kicking and screaming

could you take my picture
'cause I won't remember

"Stop."

He jerks his head toward her, startled. They're about a mile out from the farm, the thunderheads looming closer. Rumbles in the distance. The sun is now hard and red and strange.

"C'mon. Pull over." She touches his arm - that insistence again, but softer. She's going to have her way. There's nothing he can do about it.

He pulls over and cuts off the engine and looks at her. Waits.

She looks back, and for a moment she does nothing. Says nothing. She's managed to keep most of her hair back and out of her face, but there's a strand, loose, and he remembers the first night in the rain and the moon, that first desire to touch her, giving in after she gave him permission to do so.

That could have been a rehearsal for this, because suddenly she's leaning in again, cupping his face with her smooth, cool hand, and this time the kiss is more like that first night. Her lips still part against his, nudge at him, but it's gentle and he has no trouble giving in. His hand finds her bare arm, curves against her elbow, but that's all.

He's still not afraid. He just feels a need to be careful.

But apparently she didn't leave anything back down in the ruins.

She pulls back, licking her lips, and gives him a smile - small and secret. He already understands - understood some time ago - that this is something no one else can know about. She doesn't have to tell him. He can tell she knows that she doesn't. For a whole host of excellent reasons, this is something just for them and them alone.

"That wasn't 'cause of Jimmy," she says softly. She's still touching his face, her thumb moving. Almost stroking. "Alright? I just... I need you to know that. That had nothin' to do with Jimmy at all."

It's not until she says it that he realizes: He had sort of been thinking it was. Partially, anyway. That maybe it meant something to him, maybe it did to her too, but at the heart of it was that she was mad at Jimmy and scared about things and he was there. No resentment in it, no hurt feelings. It just seemed more reasonable to him than the idea that she might actually...

She might actually want to kiss him. Because she wants to kiss him. That simple.

He nods.

"Alright." That smile again, and now a little bigger. Sweet.

Happy.

He has no idea how to even begin to tell her what she's doing to him.

She leans in and kisses him one more time - hardly anything now. A quick brush of her lips and then gone. She sits back and lets out a slow breath, and he can see that she's gathering herself. Getting ready to emerge from whatever that was back there and reenter her bright nice world, where he can be a visitor but never ever a resident.

"Okay. Let's go."

Before he pulls back onto the road he reaches over, tucks that strand of hair behind her ear.

He figures she's given him permission to do that much.

As soon as he pulls up the drive and Maggie sees them, she hollers and everyone comes running. They're all talking at once, gesticulating, clearly relieved and angry in equal measures. Beth gives him a rueful glance, and he hopes she's used the ride back to come up with some plausible excuses. He's sure she has. She'll have a rough, irritating night ahead of her, but she'll be all right.

She's starting to open the door, but then she stops, leans back in, whispers something quick. Four words. They hit him in the chest, pound his sternum into broken shards and slam repeatedly into his heart and now he's sure: Whatever that was in the ruins? They both carried it back. Now they have it between them, cupped in their hands, and they need to figure out what to do with it. They need to figure out what comes next.

She could have left it down there. He knows she knows. She knows he knows. She was under no obligation to make what happened any more than it was. To let it be any more than it was. She chose to bring it with her. She chose to let it be more.

He is not in any way whatsoever prepared to be the responsible party here.

He manages to come up with an excuse for why he can't stay and gets the hell out of there. It's not hard; everyone is way too distracted with the business of yelling at and hugging Beth and demanding that she swear in about thirty separate ways to not do that again. He looks in the mirror as he pulls down the drive, watches them gathered around her, and though there's no way it should be possible, he swears he manages to meet the reflection of her eyes.

All the way home he's playing those words over and over in his head. What they mean. That dividing line. That series of lines. Borders, and each space beyond it a new country, and what the hell is at the end of all of this? One of those old maps that goes as far as anyone knew when it was made and then ends in a blank space full of wind and water and the suggestion of monsters.

Here there be dragons.

He's terrified and he absolutely fucking loves it. Those four words.

Meet me after church.

Note: song is "Take a Picture" by Filter.