After Beth figured out Thanksgiving was coming, she couldn't set aside the idea of doing something special. Shane isn't opposed to actually doing a supply run into a formerly populated area, as long as it's small, so when they finally leave the Everglades, they scope out the Keys. Shane keeps the Iris offshore, studying each area before deciding on one.
"Why this one?" Beth asks, eying the marina they're approaching.
"There are birds all around. They're actually a good indicator of a larger, mobile walker population, because they're sensitive to predators."
Beth eyes the seagulls on the beach, squabbling over some choice bit of food they've found washed up. "They're noisy, too, right?"
"Yeah, those are." Switching the engines on, Shane maneuvers the boat to an open slip at the marina's multiple docks. "It doesn't mean there aren't people around, because they can be smart enough not to set birds off, or walkers that just aren't free to roam down to the beach. So we need to be cautious."
The reminder of the high likelihood of unfriendlies makes Beth shiver, just a little. They've spent so much time in their own little bubble that she forgets that, more and more. Even her nightmares are subsiding, easing back to weekly instead of nightly. She doesn't think Shane is aware of how bad they were at first, since she didn't want to appear a burden then.
Now, she knows it's silly that he would abandon her for such a thing. He's been alone except for canines for so long that she sometimes thinks that she could do anything short of a murder spree without him taking offense. She's half convinced even that wouldn't sway him much.
Shane has them change from their boat wear into clothing like they wore before reaching the Iris: jeans, boots, long-sleeved shirts with the same moisture control as their boat wear. Even though late November in the Keys is still summer warm, she wears her denim jacket without complaint, while Shane has an old military BDU shirt on. The layers and tough fabrics make it near impossible for walker teeth to penetrate, leaving only their exposed skin at neck, face, and hands at risk.
Biscuit has his travel pack on. Initially, Beth thought it was something more to add carry space for Shane when scavenging. Now she knows that while he does occasionally let Biscuit pack lightweight items in the pockets, the pack acts much like their protective clothing. The rugged material protects a large portion of the stocky pit bull's body, makeshift body armor with added utility of pockets.
Guns and knives at ready, Shane leaves Muffin and the pups on the boat, with a baby gate keeping the pups in the cabin. The flimsy baby gate won't stop Muffin from knocking it down if she needs to exit, and the dogs aren't trapped if something happens to both of them. Neither of them want to risk the still learning puppies on an island they aren't certain is deserted.
"We gonna stock up on everything here?" Beth asks as Shane hooks a radio to her belt after testing it. The familiar unease of going into an uncleared area is curling in the depths of her stomach, but it lacks the fear it had when Shane first started training her.
"Might as well. We've got the room, and the islands have more limited resources. Not like we can't sail back, but…"
"Better safe than sorry."
Shane nods approvingly, smiling briefly as he steps onto the dock and offers her a hand. "Needs to be our permanent motto these days."
"I don't know much about these islands," Beth admits as they approach the marina's tiny office. It isn't anything fancy, just a building that seems to have served as an office and bait shop. The place probably served more fishermen than dedicated sailors, she thinks, based on what she's seen elsewhere.
"It's not isolated. You saw the wreck partly blocking the bridge going north, but the southern bridge was open, right?" She nods at Shane's commentary. "Population in the Keys total was maybe seventy thousand, but this isn't one of the really touristy ones. Population here was probably a few hundred, tops. Last time I ventured around the Keys, I didn't find any signs of survivors, but I didn't really look much."
"Walkers would push north, wouldn't they? Looking for food?"
"Majority, yeah. And if you consider that at least half the population died of the virus itself, half the rest were probably bitten, and a good chunk of the rest made some evacuation attempt, it gets even smaller."
He leaves unsaid that even fifty walkers would be more than they can handle encountering. She hopes for small, scattered ones - and no humans at all. It's a selfish hope about the people, because she knows Shane worries about them being on their own. The way he goes about stuffing her head full of knowledge tells her he's afraid of something happening to him that leaves her alone again.
To be honest, that's a feature of her nightmares, too. What if she hadn't found Shane at all? What if he sacrifices himself to save her? One is a puff of nightmare. The other is an actual reality she prays she doesn't have to face, and not just because being alone in this world terrifies her.
There was a show Beth liked to watch, back when TV was an option still. The two best friends on the show called each other their 'person', putting significance in that word that meant something more than friendship, as intense as family. She doesn't say it to him, but that's how she thinks of Shane now. He's her person.
They clear the marina office easily. There's not much for human consumption left, but Shane does bag up all the remaining fishing lures, line, and other necessities. Fishing gear is one thing they can never have too much of. They move on to a condominium complex, most of the units are rentals, but they still glean what might be useful that's been left behind.
One of the oceanside units has growling behind the door. Shane hovers at the window, listening intently. "Think it's just one."
"Can we just skip it?" They'd done that before, during their trip south to where they boarded the Iris. Shane firmly said there were too many homes without walkers to worry with tight spaces. Clearing buildings with known walkers was reserved for smaller commercial buildings that might supply their needs.
"Normally, I would say yes," he tells her, tapping at the window. The walker shoves aside the blinds, half ripping them off the window in its frenzy. It was once a man, a few inches taller than Shane, but gangly and thin without much muscle even before the virus took hold. "But in a place like this with so many rentals, supplies are more likely in a unit with a walker than not."
Beth nods. There's a town further down the island, along with a small resort and some sort of state park, based on information from the marina. But it's a long jog between where they are and that part of the island. "Need the practice anyway, right?"
Checking the knob, it's locked. She steps back with Biscuit as Shane applies his usual blunt force approach to lock picking: a crowbar. As soon as the walker stumbles outside, focusing on Shane talking to it, Beth slams it in the back while hooking a foot around its ankle. It tumbles down in a face plant that would be painful to a living human, and she lays its head open with her machete.
Dragging the body away from the door so it doesn't block their exit, Beth marvels at how easy she can move the weight, compared to when she first joins Shane. It makes her wonder if this was why Carol was so dedicated to those exercises that toned her from painfully thin to athletically muscled while they lived at the prison. She'll never have Shane's lift capacity, obviously, but at least she's not weak anymore.
She leads the way in clearing the three bedroom condo, and it turns out that Shane's right. Either the man was a full time resident, or he'd retreated to the Keys when the world ended. His pantry is a pretty good find, compared to the randomly missed cans of green beans or corn they found so far.
"Man was going to need a cardiologist with all this," Shane remarks as he adds the fifteenth can of Spam to the breakfast bar's surface. "I didn't know Spam came in this many flavors."
Beth giggles, because it's not the first time Shane's made a remark that makes her wonder just how much of a health nut the man was in his old life. "We've eaten Spam."
"Well, yeah, but it's the only meat product he has. Man didn't even stock up on Chunky soups." Now Shane's retrieving the canned meat product by the cardboard case, having pulled the loose cans out first. They have twelve cans each, so the total of eleven cases plus extras gives them nearly a hundred and fifty cans.
"Hey! I didn't know they had a turkey one!" Beth tugs a can out of the case closest to her, turning it over in her hands. She honestly expects it'll be some sort of fake, but the ingredients tell her otherwise.
"Won't be your mama's Thanksgiving bird by any means, but turkey's turkey, right?" Shane asks. "Bet we can sort something reasonably tasty out."
"Or just pretend it's the day after, and we're making leftovers into meals." Setting the can back in the box, she hugs him. "Thank you."
It would have been easier and safer to stick to what they can catch from the sea, but when she wanted something different, he just set out a plan to make the attempt. Shane returns the hug, one hand smoothing her hair as she rests her head against his shoulder. "You're welcome. We might want to find something to help lug this stuff back to the marina in."
Breaking into the maintenance storage for the complex gains them a dolly, allowing them to clear out the pantry. In addition to the Spam, there is a selection of vegetables, although the man seems to have had a love affair with baked beans, too. As they exit the condo, Beth eyes the body and drags it back inside. Other than her machete blow, there's no obvious signs of a bite, so he probably died of the heart attack his diet indicates, or maybe was infected when he retreated to the place.
Once they're back to the Iris, the puppies and Muffin are set free to romp and run with Biscuit, expending the energy the dogs always have when they get to dry land. Beth changes back into her boat clothes, padding bare foot back outside where Shane's already inventorying everything they gathered today.
"Think we could find a beach safe to swim on?" she asks. It's an activity she's been more interested in with their days holding steadily warm now. In the Everglades, it would have been stupid, but out here? It's a big temptation.
Shane raises his head, tilting it toward the brochures left inside on the galley table. "Think one of those said the state park has swimming areas. Not sure how well they'd hold up without park rangers maintaining them, but we can go look. Anchor the boat and take the dingy to shore."
That earns him another enthusiastic hug, and she smiles to herself that he doesn't shy away at all. Touch shy he might have been at first, it's not his natural inclination to avoid contact like it was for Daryl. His willingness soothes a lot of that feeling of the world being too big around them that Beth's felt since the prison fell.
The beach they find is typical of one adjacent to the reefs. Seaweed is making a significant incursion, but there's enough room for Beth to splash around. Even the nurse sharks don't dissuade her from venturing in. The docile sharks are a regular sight nowadays, and Shane's seen her petting them over the side of the Iris before.
She doesn't have the sense of immortality a teenager would have, or even the fading sense that college kids generally operated under in the old world. But she's also developing the ability to take each day as she can, not holding back from enjoying the world gone wrong around them. He envies her the ability, and lately, he even finds it's a bit contagious.
The green tankini she's wearing is fairly modest, a pretty little swimsuit that fits her nicely. He's glad she opted for that over the other options he knows she's tucked away in her cabin, because it meant she didn't end up needing assistance with sunscreen like she suggested she might.
"You gonna hover on shore all day?" Beth calls out from where she's floating on her back in the water. The dogs are in the shallows, none trusting the underwater denizens enough to follow Beth out. She may find the nurse sharks entertaining, but they don't in the least. "I know you don't melt in the water!"
Shane laughs, kicking off the canvas boat shoes that they both wore to shore. The dingy provides a fast way to retreat, and there's nothing living or dead anywhere nearby outside of the water. Shedding his shirt, he wades in himself, swimming past Beth. None of the water here is all that deep, part of the reason the park has the swimming area set up.
He really shouldn't be surprised that Beth has mischief in mind, although she waits until he's making his way back toward shore. She may be a petite slip of a woman, but the water is a great leveling field when she dunks him. Tussling makes her laugh, especially when he doesn't try to stop any of her attempts to submerge him. It's different in the water, her easy touch against the bare skin of his shoulders as she playfully shoves him under.
It's only the dogs getting upset that brings them back to shore. Swimming, the little pack understands. Horseplay in the water seems to imitate too much distress for their comfort. Beth plops on the scrubby little beach, giggling and reassuring all their collected mutts that their people didn't manage to get eaten by some monstrous water creature.
"I thought there would be more sand on ocean beaches," Beth says, studying the water. Her hair loses most of its golden tone when it's soaked with sea water.
"Not much, unless they truck it in. Effect of the reefs. It's like the islands up around Savannah. Those have muddy water around most, from the river outflow."
"You know Savannah?" she asks, rising from the pack of dogs to go lift her towel out of the bag she brought with her. Her hair resumes some of its blond brightness as she runs the towel over it.
"It's where Rick's family had their summer place," he replies. It's a memory that doesn't sting as much as it once would. "Learned to sail down there."
"Cool." Beth smiles brightly. "I only ever went once. Mama won a river cruise, summer before everything went bad. Maggie and Shawn didn't want to go, so it was just me, Mama, and Daddy for a whole week."
It's only been a few days, but now Beth talks about the past in a happier fashion, now that they aren't tiptoeing around the subject of their lost families. Small bits of babbled information, the same as she would share if they'd met five years ago. "Never tried one of those. Seemed a little tedious."
"It was!" Beth laughs and throws her towel at him. "I felt like the world's biggest third wheel. Figured out really quickly why Maggie and Shawn didn't want to tag along."
Shane snickers at her, scooping the towel off the ground and shaking it out before handing it back. He doesn't bother with a towel, pulling his shirt on over damp skin. "You done with swimming?"
"Yeah, for today. What about you?" Glancing over, she spots the shirt back in place. "Aww. You're pretty without the shirt, you know. Even back at the farm, the women would get all chirrupy about the way you kept forgetting how to work buttons."
Freezing, Shane stops tugging at the hem of his shirt. One part of him wants to pretend he didn't hear it, but locking things away sure hasn't helped either of them. "Didya ever think that might've been the point?"
Once it had been. He'd liked being the center of attention, and his physical form draws eyes his way. But more than a year on his own gave him a lot of time to get over the self-absorbed behaviors that nearly cost him his sanity on the farm. Nowadays, keeping in shape is a matter of safety, nothing more, nothing less. That's too dour to spoil Beth's day.
She saunters up, flicking her rolled towel over his head to rest around his neck. He allows it, not sure what she's doing, other than her eyes dance with pure mischief. "It's one of the good things I remember, you know. You scared me at first. The barn especially. You were so righteously angry."
Shane swallows hard. As much as he doesn't think there was any other way to get the message across to Hershel at the time, doing it in front of Beth, Sophia, and Carl? That was what should have tipped him off that he was well and truly on the wrong side of sanity. It also nearly got Beth killed, twice over.
If he turns his head, he can see the scarring on her wrist. She doesn't cover it anymore, not like she did at first. All he can manage is saying, "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." Her smile is so damn gentle and forgiving that it hurts to breathe. "You were right on that occasion, so when I got better, I paid attention."
"To my shirts?" Shane asks, arching a brow.
"Nah." Beth shakes her head. "To what you were saying, when they caught that boy. Randall. I didn't understand for a while, but eventually I learned." It's said softly, but with a hint of steel behind it. The mischief isn't there so much now, her blue eyes solemn. "I listen when you speak, and I learn."
Shane is still absorbing that when Beth uses the towel to eliminate the difference in their heights, tugging his head down just enough that her lips meet his. It's soft and sweet at first. Not innocent past the first few seconds where Shane doesn't react, but doesn't push her away. As wrong as he knows it is, when her tongue swipes across his bottom lip, seeking entrance, he allows it.
She tastes like salt water and the fizzy peach soda she found in one of the apartments today. The Japanese lettering had made her laugh and explain remembering the anime and Japanese culture obsessed girls she grew up with liking the odd little bottles with the marbles inside. It feels like an automatic response to drop his hands to her hips, feeling his palms slide just enough upward to contact the bare skin of her waist.
The last time he kissed a woman had been abrupt, just Andrea seeking to draw him to her side to go along with her plan to take him away with her. This is about as far from that experience as anything can become, and the part of him that Beth holds in the palm of her deceptively delicate little hand yearns to just let it keep going. But then…
Beth lets go of the towel in favor of cupping his face between her hands, one drifting to caress the left side of his neck. Phantom pain lances along his skin where Beth is touching, and it's better than ice water for the libido that Beth's kiss is awakening. He lets go of her hips to take her wrists instead. Pulling away is the hardest thing he's done since he stepped into the woods around the Greene farm and just kept walking.
"Beth. We cannot do this." It doesn't even sound like his voice, rough and gravelly. He keeps ahold of her wrists, even as disappointment spreads across her pretty face.
"I'm not a kid, Shane, if that's the problem."
Shane shakes his head. "It's not that." He can't resist one temptation, so he turns her hand in his and places a kiss right on top of the jagged scar on her wrist. It's not fucking fair, that her skin is marked like this, yet his neck is clear of anything to declare him exactly what he is. "What I am? You deserve better than that."
Letting her go, he steps backward, and she lets him. Part of him expects her to argue, but she doesn't. Instead, she picks up the towel from the ground and whistles for the dogs. He follows her to the dingy, getting them underway to return to the Iris.
Beth keeps rubbing her wrist and watching him under a tangled fall of blonde hair, and Shane pretends that he doesn't see it. She's a survivor, wearing the scar of her choice to keep surviving. That more than anything sends home the lesson to him that she deserves far more than a man who ought to wear three parallel scars on his neck.
A/N: Now... I'm not so cruel as to make you wait for the rest. I'm a bit in the zone for the story, so since it was running long, you'll get at least one more chapter, but possibly two, to resolve Shane's issues with his past and moving on. The next chapter(s) will come as the next ones in line. :)
The exact Key they're hanging out on, I leave unnamed since it wasn't all that important, but for general research and curiosity, check out Long Key.
I know I said the Bahamas next, but they took a detour. Oops.