It's gonna be a bumpy ride.
"Beth, M'sorry," Daryl moans through the crack of her front door. "Please lemme in."
Beth squeezes her eyes closed and pinches the bridge of her nose. He's been going at it for nearly twenty minutes now and she's sure all her neighbours are popping their heads out to get a look at the drama that her life has become, but she couldn't care less. She feels so fucking shit and worst of all, the only person she wants to talk to is Daryl. When she has a shitty customer or gets another annoying text from an old friend, the first person she tells is Daryl. Either through the phone or in person, since she's with him nearly every hour of the day.
That's the problem of being best friends with your partner, the literal one downfall: there's no one to talk to when something bad happens in the relationship. The friendship is null and void, leaving her cold and empty since she climbed out of his car nearly three hours ago. Earlier in the evening she came back to her lonely apartment and sighed out into the void, not even flicking the lights on before she checked her phone. He didn't try to call, or text. Beth scrolled through her contacts, looking for someone, anyone who she could talk to, but there was no one.
Merle maybe, but he didn't have much capacity for meaningful conversations and she didn't want to force him to play favourites, even if he clearly was sticking up for her back at the club. Her thumb hovered over Daryl's name, wondering if she should have apologised, wondering if she had overreacted, but her pride stopped her and she locked the phone back up. Opening up the apartment was horrible. Her sheets smelt from weeks of not sleeping on them, the very air stale. She bared throwing the windows open for a half hour but its December and freezing cold out.
Even the cheer of the fire and the fresh wash of towels and sheets didn't make the place feel like home. Sure after an hour or so it was cheery and warm, smelling of fresh, clean washing but it didn't help, it didn't fill the ache in her chest, take the lump from her throat. Anything else and she could have forgiven it. She's not winning any feminist of the year awards at the thought but she knows it's true. Absolutely anything else bar being with another woman and she would have gotten over it. Not her dream. Anything but that. To sabotage her like that, to turn down the chance of a lifetime opportunity on her behalf… no.
Now here she is, fingers pressed to her throat, freshly showered and wondering if she should let her boyfriend in or ignore him and let him go, let him leave her life. Dramatic, yes, but if this is something she can't get over now, will she ever? Will it always be a festering thing inside? A resentment? Not to mention how he's going to react when she contacts the agent who tried to recruit her. Is that something she's going to have to defend? Is it just going to be an uphill battle from here? She can't live like that and she doesn't want to. She especially doesn't want to go into a career without support from her partner.
"Beth," Daryl pleads again, a little slurred and she rolls her eyes. "M'gonna go."
Her heart throbs in her mouth and she can't do it. She can't let him leave. It's stupid and pointless, the argument she knows is coming already having played out before her, but she rushes to the door and smacks the handle down. From the other side, Daryl turns back to look at her, having just started making his way down the hall.
Beth stares at him for a second, annoyed that's he's red eyed and clearly drunk, annoyed that he took three hours to turn up and annoyed that he did this in the first place. Her jaw feels tense and horrible when she jerks it towards the inside of her apartment, everything inside her recoiling at the hostile atmosphere she's pouring out in waves.
Daryl moves past her and she shuts the door behind him, folding her arms over her chest as she puts her back to the front door. "What'du want?"
He shrugs and this aggravates her too. "I swear to God, Daryl."
"M'sorry," he says again, picking at his fingers.
"That all? How many drinks that take you to come up with?"
"Beth…"
"No, Daryl. I don't know what you're tryin' to accomplish here but you ain't doin' a real good job."
He rolls his head on his shoulders and levels her with a look soberer than the previous one. "I was wrong, alrite? I know that. I's wrong, but I's fuckin' scared, Beth. Firs' it was just these guys. More guys than we usually have in, y'know? They was takin' pictures an' I thought it was 'cause they wanted you, 'cause they wanted to fuck you."
Beth nods. This she can understand. She'd be really fucking perplexed if a bunch of girls starting taking pictures of Daryl and suspicious too.
"So I got jealous. I bit you up an' marked you, not jus' 'cause'a that, but 'cause I like it. I like knowin' you're mine."
The way he says it makes her pussy clutch and she hates it. She hates what a slave her body is to him.
"Then the guy comes in, says he'd seen you online. It clicked then, that they were sharin' your music, your fuckin' amazin' talent, Beth. Amazin'."
She tries not to smile but she epically fails and Daryl steps closer, clearly encouraged by it. "I jus' wanna be with you. I don't wanna lose you, girl, best thing that's ever goddamn happened to me. You think I changed the sheets every two days? You think I come back to a clean house? You think I had little hand towels in the fuckin' bathroom? You came Beth an' you brought all this… all this damn life with you an' I was greedy, I sucked that shit dry."
God, why? Why does he have to make her feel like this?
"Thing is, girl, I don't wanna let you go, an' I know the minute the world sees you, you're gonna fly so damn high and leave me down here on the ground."
He collapses back at this, falling into the wall like the words have released him of a terrible weight. It makes her heart goddamn ache and she can't hold back, she rushes to him, falling into his chest and relishing his thick arms wrapping around her body.
"We don't even know if this is gonna go anywhere, Daryl. I could flop, this whole thing could. Five seconds of fame an' I'm back to workin' at the club."
He snorts, his face buried in her hair. "We both know that ain't true, girl. We both know."
She sighs deeply and tips her chin up to him. "I ain't makin' promises I can't keep. I'm goin' for this, I can't not an' it might not work out, but if it does? Daryl, can't we jus' enjoy what we got now?"
Beth bites her bottom lip to stop it wobbling, her throat clamping down so her words are thick and strangled, emotion clinging to her skin and beading in her eyes. Her boyfriend stares down at her and doesn't say a word. Still doesn't say a word when he takes her mouth in a scorching kiss, his big hands cradling her head.
He doesn't speak one damn word as he backs her up, then bends his knees and picks her up, her legs wrapping around his waist without breaking the kiss. They kiss all the way down the hall, when he lowers her on the bed, when he detaches their lips to strip her clothes and he doesn't speak any coherent words when he parts her thighs and slides into her.
She falls asleep without one reply to her question and when she opens them in the morning, Daryl's gone, leaving behind a card with an agent named Killian Peters. Nothing else, just the card and when she checks her phone, it's as empty as her bed.