a/n: so sorry guys, i've having some formatting issues. if you notice anything looks off, I apologize - feel free to let me know! xo ~ C
Chapter 8: shatter
Just as quickly as Zach enters the room, Beth and Daryl are standing, hands at their sides and eyes widened. Beth doesn't miss the way Daryl subtly angles his body as Zach stalks across the room toward them. It takes her a few moments to process that, as well as Zach's abrupt entrance, and find her voice.
"Wow, Zach – I could expect something like that out of the mouth of my sister, but really? His name is Daryl," Beth snaps, taking a few firm steps forward toward her fiancée.
"What's it matter? I know about him," Zach sneers, and his words are a bit slurred. He cuts his eyes to Daryl's. "Yeah, that's right. I know, man – all of it, 'bout you. 'Bout your brother. Now what I want to know is what you're doing in my fiancée's apartment, sitting on her damn couch, all cozied up?"
Beth senses the rigidity in Daryl's stance beside her, and it pisses her off. Immensely. Irrationally. It sends her back to her own past, almost seeing herself from above as the target of so much misguided rage colored in morbid curiosity.
"That's a good question for me, actually," she grits out, "and I can also give you an answer if you care to listen, not that you deserve one with how you're behaving." After a beat of silence, and the satisfaction of the mild slack she notes in Zach's jaw at her words, she continues. "We were out earlier. Daryl gave me a ride home, and I forgot my phone charger in his truck. He brought it back. I, apparently the only one left in this family with any common decency, invited him in – "
"Out? What do you mean out? Out with him? You failed to mention that earlier, Beth, and I don't even know if I want to know why, of all people, you'd go out – or anywhere – with him, but humor me. Do you feel sorry for this guy? Is he like a project or something? Please, I'd love to hear all about your day," Zach says, wobbling his way to the oversized corner chair and plopping onto it loudly, smug look firmly in place. Beth has never seen him look so ugly, so vindictive, or so cruel.
It causes a quick rise of pure acid and bile in the back of her throat and the stinging behind her eyes has returned. Is this seriously the same man who held her hand when she grieved her ailing mother? Who supported her, even when she made mistakes while trying to piece her life back together?
"We went to The Cellar. I wasn't aware that I needed your permission or blessing to go to a damn bar," she says simply, with a saccharine tone there in her voice, planting her hands on her hips but maintaining her distance across the room. "And here's some humor for you: It was my idea."
Something in her tone sets Zach off, because he's suddenly standing, across the room, and his face is mere inches from her own, all in the blink of an eye.
"Bad idea," he says, voice low, shoving his face even closer to hers. She isn't sure exactly which part of what she'd just divulged had been a bad idea in his inebriated mind. "What the fuck is wrong with you, Beth? He's a criminal, just like his brother. Just like his whole goddamned family. Do you even know –"
Beth presses somehow closer to him, anger spiking hotly in her veins. She won't – can't – allow his condescension and cruelty toward Daryl to continue. Not here or now or ever. "Yes, I'm well aware of Daryl's past – in fact, that's what we were just talkin' about. What he was talking about. Because it belongs to him, not you. Not Maggie. Again, not that it's any of your business what we were talking about. He's my friend, Zach. I can go to the bar with any friend I want. I can talk to any of my friends when I want. Can't I? Or is that something else that will change if I marry you?"
Suddenly, Zach reaches out, as fast as a viper, and grips the crook of Beth's arm. "When you marry me," he seethes, "you won't be goin' anywhere without tellin' me where, and with whom, and if you think I'm gonna be okay with you going to a fuckin' bar with a man you don't even know? If you think a criminal is gonna be allowed in our house? You're outta your damn mind."
"Let go of me," Beth says, attempting to wrench her arm away from his grasp. Her struggles only served to tighten his hold. "Now, Zach. Let go! You're hurting me!"
In a flash, Daryl is there, shoving against Zach's chest, hard - resulting in his release of Beth's arm. He still hasn't spoken, and Beth thinks briefly that he must have nerves of literal steel to not respond to the horrible things Zach has said.
Zach laughs – he actually laughs – even though he's stumbling backward from the force exerted onto him by Daryl. Beth takes deliberate steps to place distance between Zach and herself. Daryl is standing firm, rigid, strong – and she swears she can hear his breathing, heavy and thick, with underlying anger, and emotions she can't even begin to understand in this moment.
"What are you gonna do? You gonna kill me, you fuckin' prick?" Zach asks, lips turned up in a cruel, mocking smile as he stares up at Daryl. "Looks like the apple don't fall far from the fucked up tree after all."
"Ain't a murderer," Daryl says, voice rough yet so, so quiet that Beth isn't certain he says it. She has no doubt that he's speaking when he continues: "And I sure as fuck ain't an abusive little punk ass like you seem to be."
Zach surges forward then, an angry scowl overtaking his boyish features, and shoves both of his hands – his delicate, manicured, and slightly unsteady hands, probably from the alcohol he's surely been consuming – directly into Daryl's chest. Daryl barely moves despite the force.
"The fuck did you just call me, junkie?" Zach asks, rearing his fist backward, staring at Daryl with such rage it feels palpable.
His fist never lands what Beth suspects was its likely target, instead ramming straight into Daryl's hard, flattened, rough palm, and he then quickly twists Zach's arm behind his back. Zach cries out in surprise – and likely discomfort – winding himself so that his back is against Daryl's front. And they're both breathing heavily.
Beth doesn't react, and maybe that's a problem, one she puts away for later analysis, but she's stricken – frozen, enamored – by the way Daryl moves, by the finesse and grace he somehow possesses beneath his rough, restless surface.
He's probably half a head taller than her fiancée, but he flexes his neck so that his mouth is close to Zach's ear. "I'm callin' you what you are, don't ya think? Don't fuckin' touch her." Zach starts to angle his head toward Beth but Daryl's other hand grasps him beneath the chin, turning him away. "Don't even look at her right now." Daryl's voice is low and pure danger; not a threat, but an unspoken promise. "It's me you got a problem with, not her. Don't take it out on her, you pussy."
Zach wobbles, attempting to free himself from Daryl's grasp, but it's fruitless. Daryl's eyes cut to Beth's, which are unwavering, taking in the sight before her.
"Beth, call a cab, or Uber, or somethin', he needs to get outta here," Daryl says, voice more akin to that of the man she's come to trust even more in just the matter of these several, absurd moments.
She nods, eyes still wide, heart thumping wildly in her chest.
She picks up her phone to dial, instead inadvertently answering an incoming call she hadn't noticed. Maggie, of course.
"Bethy? Glenn and I – we're headin' up to your apartment right now," Her sister says, breathless. "I think Zach may be – "
"Yeah. He's here," Beth responds flatly, keeping her eyes on the two men standing entangled in her living room. "I assume that has something to do with your earlier conversation with him. He's drunk and acting insane, so thanks for that."
She ends the call without any semblance of a goodbye and dials the local cab company, the one that she knows – for reasons she doesn't want to think about, not now – will transport drunk, angry, lost people just about anywhere in the continental US so long as the price is right.
Xxx
Beth feels like she's about to crack – or snap, or explode, or whatever words one desires to use to describe the precipice of combustion upon which she's standing, on the very tips of her toes – as tries to anchor herself to the present, glancing around her small apartment. Her small, full apartment.
Zach is sulking for the most part, aside from intermittently yelling obscenities in Daryl's general direction. Daryl's solid beside her, seated close to her on the couch. Like he knows she's about to self-destruct. She somehow knows it's because he's been in this headspace – this lack thereof – before, probably just as, if not more, often as she been.
Maggie and Glenn are standing awkwardly, shifting their weight and their attention from Beth, to Daryl, to Zach. Each word of calm, of consolation, of reassurance that she hears directed at Zach from her sister seems to only serve to further ignite whatever it is brewing inside of her.
"So, you guys went to The Cellar?" Glenn asks, looking mostly at the beige carpet beneath his feet as he shuffles nervously. Beth almost laughs at the casual tone in her brother-in-law's voice.
"Yes," Beth answers without hesitation. "Once again, detective. That's where we were earlier tonight."
"Why?" Maggie asks suddenly, spinning around from Zach to Beth, transforming instantly from a voice – a beacon – of calm and reason to one radiating betrayal.
"Why does it matter?" Beth retorts, her muscles tensing where she sits. "Why does that, of all the – all the fuckery happening right now, matter?"
"I thought you'd stopped going there," Maggie responds, recoiling slightly from Beth's harsh tone and curse. "I thought – "
"Well, ya thought wrong," Beth says, simply and unapologetically. "I go there sometimes, okay? It's no secret to my fiancée. It's truly no one's business. I'm not doing anything reckless or illegal. Sometimes I go by myself. Sometimes I go with a friend." She shrugs, unwilling to allow herself to feel the shame and guilt that once upon a time she'd have let consume her.
"You shouldn't," Maggie says, taking a step across the room, moving closer to her younger sister. She crouches then, positioning herself below Beth's eye level, and it makes Beth want to smack her. It makes her feel like a child. Like they all think that she's still just a child, lost and confused, walking dead in the fog of grief.
"Beth swallows and then lowers her eyes to her sister's. "I don't care what you think I should or shouldn't do, Maggie."
"Have you – are you drinking? With mom's history – hell, with daddy's history, Beth, I just don't think it's safe for you –"
"Oh, really?" Beth cuts her off, simultaneously standing with a force that knocks her older sister onto her ass. "You don't think it's safe. Why? You think I'm a ragin' alcoholic like our parents? That it?"
Maggie is silent, and she doesn't move, only stares up at her sister, mouth
"Take a look in the mirror, Mags. Take a look at the guy across the room, the one you'd apparently do anything for me to marry, 'fore you go accusing me of anything. The two of you drink more than the rest of us in this room combined, by my calculations. Not that I'm judging – that's your job, after all, if I recall."
"Beth, just – " Glenn starts, reaching a tentative arm out toward Beth, which she swats away without much force.
"No, Glenn," she says, cutting him off. "I'm not finished. Because alcoholism, and the genetic predisposition half of us in this room share, isn't really why you're all here, so let's stop actin' like it is. Me goin' to a damn bar isn't why you're all so concerned. Right? So let's just stop the fake shit. You have a problem with him," she half-turns, looking at Daryl, feeling a deep ache in her gut as she sees his throat bob with the force of his swallow upon realizing and understanding the reference. She needs him to know he isn't alone. Not in this. "A problem with us. With our friendship."
The room falls silent under the weight of her words, under the weight of the truth.
She looks around the room and what finally does it – makes her lose her grip on whatever type of reality, if one can consider this situation reality – is that not a single person, aside from Daryl, has the courage to meet her eyes.
So she grabs the nearest object within reach – a stupid cheap lamp from some shit retail store that Zach or Maggie had convinced her would bring the whole room together when she moved into this apartment – and grips it hard, yanking the plug out of the wall, and throws it with all the force she can muster against the wall. It shatters into countless shards of glass, a kaleidoscope of neutral, at the exact moment she swears her heart and her head and her soul do.
"Get the fuck out," she says, and her voice is void of any discernible emotion. "Now. Zach's cab should be arriving at any moment."
"Bethy, no, we aren't gonna leave you, not –"
"Get. Out. Or I will tear this fucking place apart," Beth says, voice cold but even. "I swear to God, I will."
"Okay, okay, stay calm, sis," Glenn says, holding up his hands in surrender.
"Glenn! We aren't gonna -" Maggie starts, flinging her arms wildly.
"Mags, stop. It's enough now. Zach, come on. We'll wait with you." Glenn says, placing a hand on his wife's shoulder.
Zach is shockingly quiet, and doesn't move from his spot in the corner chair.
"Zach," Glenn says, a bit louder.
"You want me to leave?" Zach asks, and the question is clearly directed toward Beth, who is standing, so still, facing the wall and the shattered pieces of the lamp.
Several tense minutes pass before she answers.
"Yes, Zach. I want you to leave."