So I appear to have worried some people/rustled some feathers? Guys. Shh. Don't worry. I did not do this to turn it into a riveting tale of Beth choosing between her family and Daryl. The smut will not stop. If you've read anything else of mine you'll know that before this story I never went more than two chapters without smut. I'm here to write the smut just as much as you're here to read it. Just. Trust me. I love angst but if you're worried about this becoming a story of them drifting, or becoming less about them and more about what her family thinks of them, don't be. The last twenty something chapters have been Beth being in his world. I just thought it was time to bring him more solidly into hers.
He did have to work that weekend. So did she. He'd had his doubts that she would actually keep up with this whole bar scene - he had a feeling it was something that wouldn't sit too well with her family, now that she was solidly back - but for now she was doing it and that gave him the opportunity to keep up with the routine they'd established before all of this, even if now it felt sort of like pretend. But he'd shown up to the bar early like he normally did, waiting on one of the picnic tables on the porch for her to meet him.
When she showed up there was something different. It was the clothes, he realized, as she waved and made her way over. He didn't recognize them. She'd had a couple jeans on rotation that he'd noticed, dresses he knew by the color and the way they fell on and around her, but this was a different shirt and different pants, and she'd traded out her cuff for some stacked bracelets. Right. Because she was home now. Maybe had a whole new closet of things he hadn't seen. Might have to get used to seeing her different.
He offered her a cigarette when she came up to where he was sitting, but she shook her head, not even speaking before she was bending over to him, one hand on his shoulder and the other in the hair behind his ear so she could kiss him hard enough to knock him back against the table. The cigarette fell from his fingers, her purse dropping to the ground as her knee came to bear her weight next to his leg. His hands skirted around her thigh, then the line of her boots against her calf, and if he'd been given a chance to forget about how they'd had to keep leaving things he remembered it now.
She was hungry for it.
So was he.
But then she was gone, pulling up straight enough to look down at him. "Hi."
He couldn't think of anything to say, everything suddenly wildly out of reach as just her hands brought his whole system to a standstill. He only nodded, flicking off the cigarette from the bench while she sat next to him.
"Got a few minutes before I need to be in there," she said, and he could sense her breath coming harder, too. It was the beginning of the night, so no one would be there for a while, and he was seriously considering pulling her back onto his lap so he could watch her get herself off like he had in the car. Something unbelievably fucking appealing about being that for her. He was happy just to be part of the process.
He settled instead for backing his knuckles up against the side of her knee, thumb stroking back and forth as he tried to think of what to say. She smelled different, too, a different wash. More vanilla than floral. He wondered what else had changed. "How's… you know."
"Home?" she asked, and he nodded. "It's… Different. But the same. Which makes it weirder." She paused, frowning a little. "That probably sounds stupid."
It didn't. "I get it."
The frown flipped gracefully back into a smile, wide enough that it fit her whole face, skin glowing with it, and he thought that maybe sometimes when she did this it was more for his benefit than hers. Not hiding anything. She didn't see the need.
"Where they think you are?"
Her shoulders slumped a few inches at the question. Still a bit awkward to address this. Not as intense, but undeniably there staring him in the face, and he felt that strand of pressing darkness that had made itself known to them both that night weave tighter. He wished he could not say anything, wished that he could let himself sit with her without going back to the why's and how's that had been fucking him up since the beginning, but he thought of her at home and all the varying walls of unreachable that she could pass through easily but that he'd have to scale and he couldn't not think about it. Couldn't find the off switch or even the room it was located in.
"Out," she said.
That sounded good. "Convincin'."
"I can be convincin'," she said, nudging against him. "If I wanna be."
"Sure," he said, and she turned enough that she could look at him.
"You think I don't know how to lie?" she asked him, practically winking.
He should've been surprised, because he knew her face pretty well by now and it most definitely didn't look capable of lying. But he wasn't. Of course she could lie. Youngest daughter, eyes as big as they were, and she'd told him some about the parties she'd been to and she'd taken him to that bar, so yeah. He could believe that she knew how to play with the truth. "What'd you tell 'em?"
She shrugged a little, innocent like she didn't even have to think about it. "I didn't really tell 'em anythin', actually. I just said I was goin' out and that I was workin' and I wouldn't be back til late." She smiled quietly like she was thinking of something else. "I used to hate bein' the youngest, you know. Maggie and Shawn got to do what they wanted and it felt like all Daddy would do was tell me no."
He didn't believe for a second that being told no had even made an impact if she wanted something. He'd been constructing, somewhere in the back of his head, whenever she laid more details into place for him, what it might've looked like for her. How she could've grown, what things had to happen to get her here so comfortably beside him. "Guessin' that didn't make much difference."
She laughed. "Sometimes. You were right at the beginning. Maggie was always the more rebellious one." She paused, stretching her legs out in front of them, heels skipping in thuds over the planks. "They didn't tell Mama I was workin' here," she admitted, looking up at the bar, the blue and red of the open sign mixing purple on her skin. "So that might be messy."
"What does she think, then?" he asked, kind of curious as to how she had made this play out for her.
She rolled her lips in between her teeth, finally looking almost guilty. "Pretty sure she thinks I'm workin' where Shawn used to."
"Sure that won't backfire," he said, only half kidding, but what the fuck did he know about any of this?
"We'll see. One thing at a time." She checked her phone for the time, leaning forward to get a glance through the window before switching back closer to him. "Bet you could help me think of somethin'," she said, knocking playfully into him again.
He let his arm fall behind her back. "Wouldn't be any good at it."
"You would," she corrected like there wasn't any room for arguing. "You've got poker face like crazy."
"Never really had to lie much," he said. "No one ever gave a fuck if I was goin' where I said I was."
She eyed him like she was looking for more, then reached over and squeezed his knee before standing up. He followed suit when she reached for him, letting her settle a grip onto his elbow, hooking her hand loosely around his arm as she lead them both back more hidden around the corner.
She turned to lean her forehead against his arm for a second, pressing in a kiss he couldn't feel. "I was thinkin'."
He was really coming to dread those words from her.
She took a deep breath before she started, speaking fast. "I met your brother. Sorta. I thought maybe-"
He interrupted her with a shake of his head, predicting the end of the sentence and not even wanting to hear it. "No." Fuck no.
She looked at him sternly, her fingers digging in a little. "You didn't even let me finish."
"Already know what you're gonna say." He wasn't doing this. That she was asking at all was pushing even her borders of possibilities.
"What, then?" she asked, not annoyed but she also wasn't dropping it. "What was I going to say?"
"Ain't meetin' your sister, girl." He wouldn't drop it either. He'd do a lot of things - had done a lot of things - would wait at the bar, would be her plus one wherever she deemed she wanted him, but he wasn't going there. She'd told him he could come with her but he wouldn't like this. "Or brother. Or anyone."
"You didn't even think about it," she said, hitting different notes of pleading.
Maybe he should've thought about it, should've predicted this as something she would want, but why would he? Why would she? "Don't have to."
She sighed. "Why are you so sure that-"
He cocked his head towards her pointedly enough that she stopped. She didn't need him to list the reasons. He didn't know why she would make him.
"Okay. I just -" She started then stopped, more apologetic but just as strong. "I feel like you don't think you can. But you could."
"Could what?" he asked, feeling her words building towards something possibly even more unmanageable.
She pursed her lips, fingers drumming along his arm. "They wouldn't hate you."
"I would."
He hadn't even meant it as anything more than a passing comment, but she looked at him sharply. "Don't say things like that."
He stared at her before shrugging. More often than not that was the only response he felt he could give her.
She sighed again, shoulders setting, her free hand reaching out to trace along the lines of brick. "You know I told you my family's big on church?"
He nodded, looking down at his feet, feeling like listening to her and looking at her at the same time was too much right now.
"Bein' nice to strangers is kind of a big part of that," she explained, nails skipping over the wall when she curled her fingers into it. "They wouldn't hate you. If I told 'em I'd invited someone to dinner and you showed up they wouldn't kick you out."
He almost laughed just at the idea of it. "Might if they knew what we were doin'."
"They don't, though." She still wasn't dropping it. They'd reached the other end of the porch, and she released his arm to lean over it, stepping up onto the bottom railing so she could get her face out to feel the breeze. "We've taken people in before. Remember a few years ago there was that storm?"
Storm was probably too generous a term. There had been rain, then sleet and hail, and then actual snow while the rain froze on the streets overnight sending the whole damn state into chaos. He and Merle had sat back inside, drinking beer and watching the news stories unravel of wholesome worried mothers clearing the grocery stores of milk and bread. Everything had been out of commission for a solid few days, and the ice had been bad enough that when he'd made the fool decision to try and ride somewhere his tires had skidded and he'd ended up flat on his ass in the frozen grass. She probably would've been… thirteen? Fourteen? Christ. "Yeah."
"We took some people in then when power went out since we had wood burnin' fireplaces," she explained. "Had 'em up in the barn and spare rooms. Different people comin' in and out for days. All sorts."
He didn't see what this had to do with him. "Ain't homeless. Don't need no charity."
"That's not what I'm sayin'," she said, growing a tinge more frustrated as she turned her back into the rail, crossing her arms, her perch leaving her above eye level. "I'm sayin' they wouldn't think badly of you for the reasons you think. Might could brush your hair, but…" She trailed off, lifting a shoulder and smiling gently.
Brush his hair. Sunday best. "Too old for this."
"You're not old," she said, tilting her head like she was examining him. "I dunno what you are."
"Old," he scoffed. So old, old standing here, old next to her, old hands she was pulling on with hers so she could get him close enough to balance against him with fingers on his shoulders.
"Just think about it. Maybe."
He really didn't even think he could. Not even with her looking at him like she was. "Maybe."
"Good," she said, closing those last few inches to peck the corner of his mouth before hopping down. "Then let's go."
The first part of the night was fine. Nothing too out of the ordinary. He was vaguely wondering if something had changed; there were a few guys here that he could recognize just due to the familiarity of being here so often, and one or two of them looked at him like they were annoyed he was here. One even picked up and left the bar to go sit at a table instead when he sat down. He might have to ask her about that later. But other than that it was normal.
Until. Because there always had to be an until. Until the car door slammed, until the phone rang. This time it happened just as Beth'd come over to check in on him after making her rounds, the door opening and bell clanging, and before he'd even had a chance to turn and see she was shaking her head at him to stop him, her eyes widening in surprise.
She tucked her hair behind her ear. "Don't do anythin' weird," she murmured, directed at him before she was moving away to walk out from behind the bar. He finally got to turn a little and see not one but two new arrivals, only half of whom he recognized, but that was enough to make him suddenly very aware that this whole night had taken a turn.
It was the sister, Maggie, he thought, and a boy that he didn't think he'd seen before, except maybe -
"Shawn?" Beth asked, coming up to him and not hesitating to throw her arms around his neck.
He picked her up in bear hug that lifted her to the toes of her feet, and the camaraderie was obvious. They were close. He didn't think he'd ever have been able to pick them as related based on looks alone, but he would've known just from this that it was her brother. Her legs kicked up as he shook her, long enough that they'd drawn the attention of everyone else so he didn't feel out of place taking his fill.
She looked happy. Like she had after that weekend she'd left, but even more now, her whole face pink and smiling and lifted and this. This was why. He hadn't understood and he still didn't really think he did or even could, but looking at her it was easy to see that she'd been missing something and also, now, that she'd found it.
It actually looked kind of nice, watching her get set back down. Nice enough that he felt warmth spreading just looking at her, starting in his stomach and spreading outwards in a shade that was distinctly her own.
Except for then his gaze shifted a little more over to find the sister had already sussed him out, eyes narrowing. Not angry. Maybe not even cold. But she recognized him enough to stare, eyes coming back to him as Beth spoke.
"What are you doin' here?" she was asking, and listening to her he couldn't tell at all that she was even the slightest bit concerned about having them all in the same place.
"Had to see you in action. Just hearin' didn't do it justice," Shawn said, looking around. He looked young, a little scrawny, baseball cap with the bill curled from what looked like years of being held, shoulders broad enough for him to be a little formidable if he grew into it.
There were so many things he was feeling here, enough that he had no idea how to single one out to act on, made worse by the fact that every one of them was covered in undeniable fight or flight. Fighting wasn't an option here, but could he actually go with flight? Just up and leave? But he also wanted to see this, to see more of this sister - Maggie, he was going to have to start using her name - that had asked him to bring Beth home, more of this brother that Beth had told him he reminded her of. Wanted to see how they reconciled Beth's presence here, or if it looked as weird to them as it had to him at the beginning.
So he'd stay. His leg started bouncing with the decision, and he wished he could pull out a cigarette, shroud himself in smoke so that Maggie wouldn't be able to throw anymore looks his way.
"Beth," called the other girl who was working, carrying out an armful of drinks to a table. "Could use some help."
"Yeah, yeah. Sorry," she said, looking back at the bar where a couple more people had sat down and then, a little more hurried, for a place she could set them up. "You guys just…"
But they ended up picking seats on their own, at the bar pretty much directly across from him. He couldn't tell if it was on purpose or not. He had no idea what to expect. None. He was, as he so often felt with her, completely out of his depth. All he could do was sit and wait, watching as best he could.
"So what're you doin' here?" Beth asked once she'd made her way back, pulling out a couple new cups as she half listened to the new orders coming in, and he could still hear that happiness but there was something else there, too. Skepticism, maybe.
"Told you," Maggie said, picking up her brother's straw and ripping at the paper. "Seein' is believin'."
"Yeah. But you've known I've been here," she said, looking back and forth between the two of them. "I mean, I'm happy, but… why now?"
"Just seemed time." Shawn this time. He was sure now that Beth had been right in her telling him that her sister hadn't spread along what she knew, because he didn't seem to be even faintly aware of his existence.
Beth popped her hip so she could put her hand on it, voice purposefully steely like she was testing him. "What'd you tell Mama?"
"The truth," Maggie answered. "We're visitin' you at work."
"Okay," Beth said slowly, and he could actually see it as she steadied herself, her shoulders straightening out and her neck lengthening as she pushed herself to her full height. "But I have to actually work. So if you're here to-"
"Not here to hassle you, Beth," Maggie interrupted, and Shawn nodded in agreement. But then she was looking past Beth, focusing on him for a sliver of a second before she was back to the conversation at hand. "Can't believe that you're actually still here, but..." she continued, and he didn't think he was imagining some double meaning there.
Five minutes in and he was already getting called out.
"Here to stay," Beth said, firmly enough that he thought she'd caught it, too.
He wasn't getting involved here. Stare down, at the bar surface, and yes, he could feasibly do this for the next hour or two, or maybe even for the rest of his goddamn life because he was not fucking moving. Solid wood under his fingers, oak or something or what the fuck did he even care? It could be laminate as long as it wasn't Maggie and wasn't Shawn and it wasn't Beth. Beer, bubbles, he could count those as they floated to the surface, could memorize this glass or his thumbprint outlined in the condensation, pretend he couldn't hear or see or had even noticed anything was out of place at all. All he could do was listen, and he did it intently, trying to hear over the music and odd muffled chatter.
"If that's what you want," she finally answered, and that sounded at least not so damning that he couldn't look at them anymore. So he sat up straighter, leaning with his elbows on the table so he could see around Beth's back to get a better look at this brother.
He seemed oblivious to whatever he had just been witness to, looking around the scene and sliding the beer Beth had given him back and forth between his palms. "Been a while since I've seen this place."
"When did you ever come here?" Beth asked, leaning over far enough that her shirt crept up over her jeans to bare the bottom knobs of her spine.
"Remember when Dad grounded me for that whole semester?" he answered, and Maggie started laughing.
"Oh, I remember this. That was here?" She hadn't gotten anything to drink, keeping her hands folded on the table, but she looked somewhat relaxed and happy now that she'd said her piece. His being here wasn't ruining everything for her, at least. She definitely had him outnumbered if nothing else.
"I thought that was 'cause you broke curfew?" Beth asked. He wished he could see her face. Her voice wasn't giving him nearly enough to work off of.
"Bit more to it than that," Maggie answered this time, smiling in a way that was familiar to him now. Genuine.
"Tell me!" Beth said, accompanying it with a little tap of her boot, covering Shawn's beer with her hand before he could take another drink. Yes. She was definitely the youngest.
"Buddies got me drunk in here for my birthday. Drunk enough that I convinced myself Mom and Dad wouldn't notice," he said, smiling at whatever expression Beth had given him.
"They did," Maggie added on needlessly. He could hear the southern in her more than he could in Beth, not delicate but strong.
"Wow," Beth said, trailing off, reaching around to pull her ponytail so it fell back in front of her shoulder. "I didn't… Didn't even guess."
She was upset. He could hear it, the flavor of her voice changed, and he looked up to try and assess the situation with more detail but looking at her back didn't give him much of anything to work with. This was weird. At some point this whole scene had shifted, and he was more outsider now than any of them were.
Beth moved to make another drink, and her face seemed to have smoothed over enough that it gave him a rest to breathe. What had she said that day in the car? Something about counting, patterns, but he couldn't remember the numbers she'd given him and holding his breath just made him feel a rush of light headedness.
Someone slid into the seat next to him, instantly irritating him and breaking what little concentration he'd managed to muster. Fucking why? Not like there wasn't a whole room full of places to sit the fuck down at that wouldn't interrupt him. He could see in the corner of his eye from her skirt that it was a woman, and he felt the panic that had been quietly simmering switch to a whole other level of survival, thinking that the sister had changed her mind and decided to make herself known to him. But a glance up told him she was where she had been at the other side of the bar, right next to the brother.
So who the fuck was this?
He didn't even bother to look to find out, too enthralled by trying both to listen to their conversation while simultaneously making himself as much part of the background as he could. For a few blissful seconds whoever it was didn't say anything and he thought he was going to be left alone, but then she swiveled her chair more in his direction, knee brushing momentarily against his leg.
"How's your drink?" she asked, her voice husky. A smoker.
His attention was still sealed elsewhere. Things seemed to be going alright. The brother was at least smiling now. "Shitty."
"What if I buy you a new one?"
He finally actually looked next to him to find her already closer than he was comfortable with, elbow resting on the bar and her face resting in her hand. Older than Beth, younger than him, but it wasn't like that was a hard mark to reach. Brunette instead of blonde, brown eyes instead of blue, but she was smiling at him and sitting too close and it might've been a while but he wasn't an idiot. He knew what she was doing.
So okay. This now, too. Why the fuck not.
He was out of practice, as if he had a lot to begin with. This had never been his thing. More when he was younger, because he'd spent years in a backwards trashy town full of backwards trashy people where the presence of religion made things looser rather than tighter and there hadn't been much else to do. But he'd grown out of that, and had learned how and when he could tell Merle and his buddies that he didn't feel like fucking some poor random girl just to prove he could. He shook his head. He'd seen Merle be a sleaze to plenty of girls. Didn't see a reason to jump straight to jackass. "I'm good."
"Good," she said, and instead of leaving she settled, shrugging off her jacket so it could fold off the back of her seat. Her nail beds looked alright, and there weren't any track marks that he could see, so that was something. That was always the type that went for him when he was with Merle. "That makes two of us."
"What're you doin'?" he asked, alarmed.
She smiled. "Sitting."
Now he was alarmed and annoyed. He didn't have time for this. "Why?"
"I'm waiting for a friend. The seat was open. I've seen you here before." She shrugged. "Those reasons good enough?"
He picked up his beer to let it slide out of his grip back to the table, trying to answer without actually having to say anything to her, but the clink of glass was loud enough to make Beth turn around along with both her siblings. Three pairs of eyes all on him.
She shot him a confused look before walking over to where he sat, looking at the woman next to him for a solid second before she'd slipped her attention back to him. "You need somethin'?"
Before he'd even had time to answer the brunette was pushing her now empty glass over to Beth before reaching into her wallet. "Just beer, please," she said, sliding a five over the table. "Whatever's on tap is fine."
He tried to shake his head as Beth looked at him, just the tiniest movement to give her some sort of signal that he was, literally, right now, dying, each cell individually lighting itself on fire inside of him, but he didn't think she could see.
"No problem," she said, taking the money and turning back around.
It was just in time for him to look past her to see Maggie leaning over and whispering something in Shawn's ear that made him smile. They at least seemed to be back to looking at Beth, who was moving a little more nervously with them watching. Also a little angrily, unless he was reading her wrong. There was a set to her shoulders, her jaw tight and her smile even tighter when she came back over to them to give his new bar buddy her drink.
She angled to him, wiping her hands off on her jeans. "You good?"
Definitely, at the least, she was tense, but also almost smiling like she thought something was funny. He'd love for her to fill him in on the joke. As far as he was concerned the whole thing was a goddamn mess. "Yeah. Great."
"Great. Let me know if you need anythin'," she said, smiling at him but then absolutely radiating at the woman next to him before walking back to her sister.
"Cheers," came the same husky voice, and before he could do anything she was clinking her glass against his. "What should we cheers to?"
"M'busy," he said, and he'd been nice until now but looking at Beth and her shoulder blades cutting through her shirt to make a cradle for the golden swish of her hair he allowed his voice to go flat and cold.
"Busy," she said, crossing her legs, and he looked at her in time to see something click for her as she followed his track of vision. "Did I step in something here?" she asked, looking from him to Beth in a way he didn't like at all. "That's… Interesting. Very interesting."
"Didn't step in shit," he said. Could he leave without drawing more attention to himself? Without saying anything to Beth? Without this woman following him? She didn't seem like she would be a problem, more just curiosity and giving him a hard time, but still. Unpredictable. He wasn't a fan of any of these odds.
"She's pretty," she went on as if he hadn't spoken, leaning closer like they were sharing a secret. "Kinda young, but…"
He didn't say anything. Caught between a rock and a hard place, except both were closing in and he had no way out but down. He could deal with one at a time, could've brushed off the rare girl needing someone to take her home, could've made himself disappear if it was just the bar with two extra Greenes, but both?
And Maggie. She was looking again. Definitely seeing something she didn't like. The last time he'd been here, maybe even in this fucking seat, she'd been looking at him like this and he'd been thinking not like that. Maybe that had turned out to be the biggest line of bullshit he could've come up with, but now it felt exactly the same. Not like that. This was not like that. He hadn't fucking asked her to sit down, hadn't asked them to come, and couldn't they see that if anyone was the victim here it was him?
He just needed some slack. From somewhere. Something had to give.
But now Beth was looking at him again, too. Not just looking at him, but looking at him, eyes flicking back and forth and something like a smile playing around her mouth before a seemingly pointed call for attention from Maggie made her turn her back to him. But even that didn't stop her looking back, over her shoulder, up and down at him instead of back and forth, and suddenly he thought he might be kind of getting what was going on here.
This had never fucking happened to him before in his entire fucking life.
"Interesting," Husky repeated, more slowly this time, looking at him slyly from the corner of her eye. "She's not happy."
No. She wasn't.
He didn't even have the vaguest clue on what the fuck he was supposed to do about it.
Ya know, I was writing this chapter and I was like, Hm. Which should I do first, the siblings or the jealous Beth? and then I thought… fuck it, why not both? Plus: Will finally get some smut payoff next chapter, and additionally I will be doing all that I can to get ISF updated by then, too. It will be great, trust me. Sorry for the cliffhanger (I'm not sorry ever).
p.s: Maggie is not a villain nor am I making her one. I have a younger and an older sister… I'm just keeping it real.
