Chapter 7: Chapter 7
A/N - Thanks SO much for the great response to the last chapter. I am very excited for this story now and I loved writing this chapter. I hope it helps a little with the January Blues.
"Wait here," Daryl said firmly, as Beth slid gracefully out of his arms. As they arrived back at the front door to the funeral home.
Beth wanted to object, but she wasn't sure if she had the energy. So, instead she did as he said, and remained just inside the entrance to the old house. Her arms wrapped around herself, with only the small black cat for company.
Shivering slightly, Beth let out a small sigh of relief as Daryl came back in to sight a few seconds later. Looking visibly weary and limping slightly, he nodded in her direction. Indicating all was okay for them to bunker down in the empty house for the night again.
Beth couldn't help but feel a little guilty, looking at Daryl. He was injured. How badly, she still wasn't sure. But it had to have been made worse, by carrying her the last mile or so back.
Plus, she was very aware that it was in part due to her stupidity, that they had both nearly been killed or worse by the dangerous crew of men they had somehow managed to defeat in the woods.
Shuffling forwards, fully satisfied there was no-one lurking anywhere inside, Daryl shit the front door and led Beth across the hallway.
Slowly, without saying a word to each other they made their way up the stairs together.
Beth wasn't quite sure who had initiated it, but within seconds their fingers had found themselves laced together. Both still in shock at what had happened, climbing each step as if it was a steep mountain. Taking comfort from the fact that they still had each other.
Their unspoken bond, meaning they could communicate just fine without words. Both knowing, the only thing they needed at that point, was to get cleaned up and rest. They were filthy, bleeding and exhausted.
Making their way back over to the same bedroom they had slept so peacefully in the night before. They sank down on to the bed at the same time, allowing themselves to breathe out silently with relief.
They had made it back to safety.
They were alive, and most importantly they were still together.
Carefully, Daryl set his cross bow down, taking off his jacket, watching as Beth slid out of her damp coat too, leaving her dressed only in her skimpy sleeveless t-shirt. Her pale arms shuddering, as she bent down to remove her boots.
Daryl went to lean over too, crying out slightly from the pain in his side, looking purposefully away from Beth so she couldn't see his expression.
Beth was up and on her feet in seconds, darting out the room. Returning quickly with a bowl of water.
Before fumbling in her backpack for a suture kit, some dressings, cotton wool, pure alcohol, a bottle of amoxicillin and some strong, kick-ass pain killers, she had stuffed in to there the day before.
Daryl didn't say anything, as she moved towards him, placing her cold hands on his dirty shirt, pulling it up and over his head, causing him to wince some more with the sharp sting.
Her eyes moved downwards, towards the bloodied wound on his side. He had played it down, but it was a mess. She would need to clean it, before she could take a good look to see what the damage was, how deep the blade had gone in.
"I'm sorry, I need to just.." Beth said, shaking a little, holding up the alcohol. Her big blue eyes moving up to meet his own blue eyes straight on. He jerked his head.
Beth could tell from his body language, he wasn't exactly comfortable with her doing this.
"Just do what you need to," he mumbled gruffly.
"Arghh.." he cried out in pain, as she proceeded to pour the neat alcohol on to his wound.
"Sorry, my dad taught me this was the only way," Beth explained, biting her lower lip in concentration, brushing her hair away from her eyes staring deeply in front of her, desperately trying to remember what her father had told her to do back at the prison when dealing with any kind of trauma or knife wound.
Silently, Beth wished more than anything that her dad was here with her right now. Realizing, how she missed him more than ever. He would know exactly what to do, and he would be able to make everything okay, he always did.
But, he wasn't there, and Beth knew she had to pull herself together.
Hershel Green might not be there in person, but he was there in spirit, through his youngest daughter. There was a reason he had trained Beth some basic first aid back at the prison. He must have known there was a good chance she would need it one day, one day when he couldn't be around, she thought as she tried to focus. Daryl was depending on her now.
He was aware of what needed to be done too. He knew enough, to know that a knife wound didn't need to be nasty to kill you. If it wasn't cleaned properly an infection could spread.
Silently he watched as Beth gently examined and cleaned the deep gash on his side, while he sat shirtless perched on the edge of the bed. Feeling her delicate fingers on his exposed flesh, he breathed in, allowing himself to take in her sweet scent as she moved slightly closer to him.
"Don't look too deep, probably need a few stitches though, sorry," she said, her hands trembling still, as she set to work, sewing up the bloodied knife wound, as best she could, with neat but uneven stitches.
Daryl looked to the side of the room away from her, screwing his palms in to tight fists, as she carefully continued to stitch together his wounded side.
Finishing off, she neatly cut the end of the thread, before carefully placing a large dressing over it. Taking extra care to make sure it was in the exact right position, before pressing the edges down firmly. Looking up to see his deep expressive blue eyes starting straight at her again, displaying a subtle vulnerability she hadn't seen in him before.
"Done," Beth said nervously.
She knew it wasn't perfect, but she had done the best job she could.
She handed him the antibiotics, and the pain killers. "You need to take these," she said.
"Thanks," Daryl mumbled, still looking at her, as he unscrewed the lids on the bottles and popped the pills in to his mouth.
Focusing properly now, he noticed her left cheek was still stained with blood from where she had been struck.
"Here," he said, gently placing his index finger on the side of her face drawing it towards him so he could take a better look.
"It's nothing," Beth muttered shyly.
She'd tried to clean it up quickly in the bathroom, when she had been getting the water for Daryl's injury, not wanting to make a big deal of it when he had been hurt much worse. But she realized from the way he was looking at her that she hadn't done a very good job, she must look a state.
"Come here," he said in a soft voice, sweeping a loose strand of her blonde hair away from her eye, reaching for some cotton wool to wipe the remaining marks of blood away from her face.
The wound was nasty; it would bruise and more than likely leave a scar, he thought still examining it.
"What?" Beth asked a little anxiously suddenly feeling self conscious with the way he was looking at her, probably thinking how badly she had been disfigured.
"Nothing," Daryl muttered, his fingers still touching her face.
Not wanting to tell her what he was really thinking, that it wouldn't matter to him how many battle wounds she earned defending herself now, she would always be one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.
Beth suddenly felt her face burning up, her eyes filling with tears, she didn't cry anymore she told herself, desperately trying to hold them back.
She was trying to be so brave, so strong. But there was just something about the way Daryl was touching her face that brought it all back. The sheer terror she had felt earlier at the hands of the claimed crew, how helpless and vulnerable she had been.
She could honestly say she had never been so scared in her entire life, and she had faced some terrifying situations since the start of the virus outbreak.
But the prospect of getting bit by a walker, or facing one of the governors bullets, was nothing compared to what she had known would have happened to her at the hands of that disgusting group of lowlife men.
Beth was still a virgin, but she was pretty sure she wouldn't have been after the claimed crew had finished with her. Losing her virginity was always something Beth had thought would be a big deal. Unlike some of her friends and her sister too, Beth had always had her heart set on it being special and waiting until marriage.
After the outbreak however, when it had become apparent that that kind of fairytale would be more and more unlikely, Beth had just settled for waiting for the 'right guy', someone that she at least loved and felt committed to.
Zach had pressurised her a little back at the prison to go all the way, but something had always held her back a little, never thinking it was quite the right time.
Ironically it had been the day he had been killed that she had decided she did want to sleep with him and finally lose her virginity. She had been waiting excitedly on her bunk for him to come back so she could tell him.
Only Zach never came back. Instead when Beth had looked up, sensing a presence in the doorway to her room, it had been Daryl that was stood there and not her boyfriend. It had been Daryl's arms she had fallen in to, trying to process yet another loss, as a deep relief washed over her that Daryl was still there. She still had him.
Ironically too, it was Daryl she was with now.
This time, it really was just the two of them, everyone else was gone.
There was something about being here with him now, that was starting to make her feel it was okay to cry, that she didn't have to be so strong all the time, and she felt a single tear slowly slide down her cheek.
He reached over, gently brushing the escaped tear away from her face with his thumb, looking deep in to her eyes.
"S'okay," he said gently. "You're safe now," he added, as if he could read her mind.
Beth nodded at hearing his kind words, and they seemed to open the floodgates to even more pent up tears. The shock of what had happened earlier, hitting her full on as they rolled down her pink cheeks.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
The last thing she wanted him to think, was that she was weak, a problem again. Crying in a world there was no place for crying.
Glancing back at the man that had saved her yet again, Beth suddenly felt full of emotion. She hadn't known him well back at the prison; she had admired him and crushed on him a little, more recently.
But she had never really got to know him. She had never noticed how deep his eyes were back then either, how they could express so profoundly what he couldn't say in words. They were kind, with a subtle softness to them that he tried to keep hidden most of the time, but they were also full of pain and sadness a lot of the time. He hadn't had an easy life.
He had always been so guarded, and could sometimes come across as cold, angry even. But Beth knew the truth about him, now more than ever. He was a good man, a great man, one of the best she had ever met. He displayed qualities that were so rare these days.
Daryl looked back at the young girl in front of him. She had had to endure so much hardship, so many losses in her short lifetime and he wished he could take the pain away from her.
He put his hand up to slowly rub her arm, a little awkwardly at first, before he found his rhythm. Comforting crying women was still a little alien to him.
"Best to let it all out," he said, his voice low, comforting in his own way, the best way he could.
Rubbing her moist eyes with her knuckles, Beth inched a little closer to him on the bed. And again she thought back to how vulnerable she had been just hours earlier, how sick and utterly repulsed she had felt when that animal's hands had been under her shirt, pawing at her bare skin.
She had been so close to losing everything to him. Losing the one thing she had been clinging on to the most in this world of darkness, she was now surrounded by.
Beth wasn't stupid, she knew bad things, terrible things even, were happening all around them. But she had been sheltered from it somewhat back at her father's farm and then under Rick's protection. But now, she knew she was more exposed. Daryl had once said it was only the bad people left. Beth would never buy in to that fully, but she was beginning to think more and more that he was right.
Daryl had been there for her today, but Beth knew there was a chance that he wouldn't always be able to protect her from the bad people. He had killed the predators in the 'claimed' crew, but with the world they way it was, Beth was more than aware that one day she could fall in to the hands of another group like that. And if she did, Beth didn't want them to be able to take from her, the one thing she had waited so long to give.
...
Daryl slowly slid his hand down Beth's arm from where he had been using it to comfort her seconds before, resting it on the bottom of her thigh at the top of her knee.
He opened his mouth to say something, before thinking better of it. There were a few things he wanted to say to the young blonde. They had both nearly lost their lives earlier that day, due in part to her naivety and he couldn't let that happen again. But he could see that now wasn't the time, she was clearly still visibly shaken and they both needed rest.
"I – I, don't know what I would have done without you," Beth whispered, biting her lip, glancing down at his lap.
As much as he knew he should move away at this point, Daryl stayed where he was sat next to her on the bed, the urge to comfort and protect her still very much alive. The run in with the claimed crew earlier had just reinforced his need to look out for her. She was so young and sweet and full of brightness, those assholes had nearly taken that away from her, from both of them and he would never allow that to happen again. She was his light, his reason to live now.
On many levels Beth seemed like his equal, but he had to remind himself she was just a girl still, not even out of her teens. He knew there was a very good chance she was still a virgin too, which would have been unheard of back where he came from. But Beth was pure and innocent, the type of girl that should be loved and treated with respect, that deserved a decent man. He knew that. He'd always known that.
"Main thing is you're okay," he mumbled, tilting his head and looking away from her, trying to ignore the way he knew she was looking at him.
Blinking a couple of times, mentally kicking himself, he glanced back in her direction, letting his gaze drop to her cleavage for a second before he turned away again.
Beth breathed in, taking a real comfort from the sensation of Daryl's hand on her knee. It felt so right, so natural. And in that moment she longed for him to touch her some more. Electricity shooting around her body, filling her with sexual awareness, she might never have actually had sex, but that didn't mean she hadn't thought about it, a lot. What it would feel like to be that close to someone. And suddenly something clicked.
Beth had always thought her first time would be special, Maggie had teased her, but she had dreamed of romantic music, satin sheets and rose petals. But the world was different now, everything had changed. None of that mattered anymore.
If she'd been nursing a slight crush on Daryl since the prison, she knew it had moved on to something a lot deeper now.
She loved him.
Beth felt certain of that, and she wanted to give herself to him, she wanted her first time to be with him. She needed it to be him.
He was her world now, a million miles away from the scum they had encountered earlier. She wanted to prove to him she wasn't a little girl anymore, that she could take her place in the new world.
She gulped, her breath speeding up, her heart beating loudly in her chest. Gently she moved her hand to rest by his side, her right leg moving to wrap around his slightly, as she shifted to face him.
Daryl frowned a little, his eyes half closed as he stared at her, "Beth," he said, his voice low, husky, almost kind of silent but just loud enough for her to hear.
Beth didn't say anything she just moved her hand up to grasp the back of his neck, feeling the ends of his hair tickling her skin as she pulled him closer to her. She knew she wanted to cross a line, one she was certain she wouldn't regret.
"Beth, Plea…" He started, unable to do anything to stop her as she moved herself even closer towards him.
Beth looked deep in to his dark blue eyes again, they were watching her every move. "Make love to me," she whispered boldly, blushing slightly, trembling.
He didn't move, unable to speak, hardly able to believe what she was saying.
They were both trembling now. Daryl wasn't sure if she really meant it. Whether, she was just getting carried away with the moment, or if it was what she really wanted.
"You don't have to, not now.." he said intensely, with a stare that could melt her heart.
But Beth knew nothing could stop her from wanting him now.
"Daryl, please, I want it to be you," she pleaded, pressing her forehead to his.
She wasn't sure where she had found the courage from, but nothing had felt so right to her.
Slowly, he lifted his hand up to lightly rest on the side of her chin, moving his head back so he could look at her, his thumb gently caressing her cheek. Her skin was so soft, so smooth. He knew what he wanted, but he also knew there was a line he couldn't see, but could damn well feel. If he crossed it there would be no going back…
a/n - Thanks for reading! Please review :)