Please note the rating change to Mature! While this chapter isn't fully up there, it's definitely more adult in certain nsfw regards than previous chapters, and I decided it was finally time to make the switch. I hope you all enjoy this... the first half especially is brought to you by me listening to "Take Me to Church" way too many times on repeat.
When they had been out in the chapel of the church, the air felt been hushed and almost reverent. It had been a room of echoes and coldness and lingering remnants of once-holiness whispering around them. The same didn't apply, however, to the small room off to the back of it. Far from reverent or solemn in any way, this room felt so much… warmer. Although to be fair, Daryl thought that might have had something to do with Beth lying beneath him, her warm body arching faintly up against his own as her hands curled lightly at his back.
If there was reverence here, it was no longer in the air. Maybe it was in his touch instead, because certainly the glide of his hand up the curve of her hip was reverent in its own way. He might never have prayed in a church, but when his fingers grazed the line of skin exposed by the hem of her shirt, he felt like uttering the lord's name over and over again. He felt like worshipping her- all of her, or perhaps even just that single perfect inch of skin, soft and warm beneath the worn pads of his fingers.
This kiss felt different to him. They had kissed before, of course. They had kissed almost just like this, too, laying on the floor of the cabin, pressed close together and kissing until they were breathless. But this felt different, somehow. It felt more intimate, it felt as if it had more weight to it. He couldn't explain why, and that inability to find the right words wasn't just because kissing her made everything in his mind go fuzzy- though it did certainly scramble his thoughts and his senses until everything was a heated haze, a pulsing throbbing rhythm of Beth, Beth, Beth and nothing more, nothing but her and the taste of her and the warmth of her body beneath his own.
Daryl also couldn't explain the feeling because it was the sort of thing that words couldn't encompass. There was no way to get it across like that- in words, or syllables, or anything else that could be uttered out loud- because it was too big. It was too much. It- this, what he felt between them as he kissed her- was too deeply rooted within him, like a vine that had sunk down roots in his heart and curled tendrils up his ribs to spread through every inch of him with leaves that unfurled as if she were the sun. It just was.
So rather than try and place it, rather than try and name it or figure out what it was that made him feel the way he did… Daryl just felt it. He felt the heat of it, the strength of it, the important weight of it all around him. He felt her warmth, felt the curve of her hip beneath his hand and the gently slide of her tongue against his lower lip. He felt her. He felt them.
Beneath him, Beth's lips parted against his own and her tongue slipped briefly into his mouth. The touch of just the tip of her tongue to his own was electric, sending heat jolting through him right to his core and making him groan against her lips even as she deepened the kiss to tease her tongue against his more. Caught up in the moment his hand shifted instinctively, slipping up under her shirt to graze slowly over the flat of her stomach. He had a moment to just feel her, to relish her skin so soft and smooth against the rough palm of his hand, so warm, so perfect. He had just that moment before reality caught up to him and he froze in place.
It was there again for just a moment, that insidious voice worming at the back of his mind. These days it was often so much quieter but sometimes it still found it's way to the surface. It was a whisper of a voice that told him this was wrong, that he had no right to this. Beth was too good; an angel with a halo of sunlight who had no wings but could nonetheless make something within him flutter. She was soft, sweet, perfect, and he was…. well. He was not. He was a Dixon.
In fact he wasn't just any Dixon but Daryl Dixon, and the truth was he'd never done anything like this before. He'd never kissed a girl like he couldn't get enough of the taste of her, never lay pressed on top of her so the curves of her body fitted against his own, and he'd certainly never touched skin so soft that it was like porcelain; like those pretty glass things you saw in shops that a guy like him ain't never gone near because one wrong move of his big, brutish body would shatter them. She was like that. She was soft and gentle, and his big, rough hands were undeserving of her.
Those words of doubt whispered through his mind, but they were only given a moment to darken his thoughts. Before they could put down roots within him, Beth pulled back from their kiss to look up at him, and the smile that curved up her kiss-swollen lips brought with it a sweet sunshine that instantly banished almost every hint of that doubtful darkness. "Daryl," she whispered, arching faintly up beneath him to press her stomach more firmly against his hand. "It's okay. I want you to touch me."
There was a look in her eyes that was warm and welcoming, but with a hint of something else, too. Need. Need for him; for his hands, his touch, his acceptance of this- whatever it was, because it was as unnameable as it was indescribable- without doubt or hesitation. In her eyes he saw the kind of need that he thought might have brought a 'please' to her lips if he'd paused any longer. He didn't, not just because he had no desire to make her plead with him, but because he wanted it too. He wanted to touch her, and he wanted it even more now that she was there, smiling beneath him and telling him she wanted his hands on her skin. How could he tell her no? How could he even think to want to?
It was an impossibility.
So he didn't. Instead, he drew in a slow breath and then, with his eyes holding hers, he let his hand brush up over the flat of her stomach once more. His fingers teased over the dip of her navel and grazed up, the heft of his wrist and hand dragging her shirt up with his touch as he moved, so that he knew if he looked down he would see her stomach exposed in a perfect display of pale, soft, perfect flesh.
But he couldn't pull his gaze away from hers, and he didn't to. The depth of emotion in her big blue eyes was both too much and not enough at the same time. It very nearly overwhelmed him to see everything he was feeling reflecting in her gaze and yet at the same time, it was her eyes that anchored him, that held him here with her, that stopped the doubt from creeping in and forcing him to draw away.
It was a push/pull like everything was between them, like she herself seemed to manage to push him to new levels and yet guide him and anchor him and make him feel reassured all at the same time.
So as her breath hitched to the same rhythm of his own and her soft sigh made him groan low in his throat, he let his hand drift slowly up, bringing her shirt with it until the tips of his fingers grazed something new. Fabric, cupping the soft, warm curve of the underside of her breasts. At that first touch Daryl stilled again, giving a little shudder that was mirrored by her faint shiver beneath him as he realized where his hand was, howclose he was.
This time, he didn't let the doubt creep in. Didn't let it darken his eyes, let alone make him pull back. His hesitation wasn't out of worry that he shouldn't do this, but out of concern that she wanted him to. He needed to know that she wanted him to keep going, because touching her was only good if she wanted it as badly as he did.
He leaned down slowly, the question in his eyes as he hovered his lips a scant inch away from hers and waited, and her reply, when it came, was just as simple; with no hesitancy at all. She leaned up to meet his lips in a soft kiss, deepening it with a curve of her back that gently but purposefully pressed the underside of her breast against his waiting hand.
With an invitation like that, it was no wonder he found himself growling soft and low against her lips in response. As Beth's nose lightly nudged his and her lips parted to exhale a sigh against his mouth, Daryl let his hand brush slowly up. His fingers grazed across the worn fabric of her bra, until his hand shifted and he felt the curve of her breast press to the palm of his hand. He almost growled again; would have, except Beth chose that moment to arch up beneath him with a soft, breathy moan that sent a shudder right through him, flushed him with heat and made him acutely aware of the sudden tightness of his pants. Then, really, all he could do was close the gap between them again and press his lips to hers in another kiss.
At the kiss deepened, his hand cupped her pert little breast and gently squeezed. He was sure he could feel her pulse thrumming against the palm of his hand, but it was hard to tell when his own heartbeat was echoing in his ears and pulsing through every inch of him- including where he was once again straining at the fly of his pants. He was acutely aware of it, couldn't help but be despite his desire to focus solely on her. Even as he caressed her, allowed himself to feel her, so soft and perfect in his hand, Daryl shifted above her to try and keep his hips from pressing down into her.
But Beth wasn't having any of that. Or rather, she simply didn't seem to think they needed to keep apart, that they needed to keep any space between them; literally, or perhaps figuratively, too. Because as she reached up to brush her hand down his back and gently tugged his body closer to his, the nearness he felt wasn't just physical. There was that, of course, that closeness in the way he leaned down into her and felt her leg slot between his, felt her breast filling his hand as her hips pressed up so that his hard cock was pinned against her warm thigh. But there was also the nearness that he felt inside, the closeness to her, this woman with whom he felt no shame, no embarrassment, no doubt. Only rightness.
(If Merle had been here, even as a voice in his mind, he was sure his brother would have plenty to say. He'd always had plenty to say, about everything, but especially about his baby brother and his sexual proclivities- or rather, his lack there of. How many times had Merle questioned his manhood with crude remarks about how his dick was floppier than a dead fish and nothin' could get it up? Merle would sure as shit have something to say now, about Daryl lying here kissing a woman so sweet he'd have preferred her to any kinda candy, the curve of her breast pressed to his palm, his cock thick and hard in a way he'd never felt in his life, a way that made the blood pound in his ears and his head spin. But Merle wasn't here, and more importantly, his voice had no place here. Daryl was so consumed by the taste and feel of her, that there was no way in hell Merle's voice- or anyone's, for that matter- was getting into his head.)
Instead he got lost in Beth, stretched out beneath him. Every time he would gently caress and squeeze her breast she would arch up, and he wasn't sure what felt better- the sensation of her nipple tightening to press pertly against his palm, or the firmness of her hips against him where he was so impossibly hard, straining not only against his jeans now but against her, in a way he'd never experienced before this.
Daryl couldn't help but groan against her lips and loose a growl that rumbled through his chest. He was surrounded by her- the warmth of her against his body, the scent of her in the air, the taste of her on his tongue, the sound of her soft breathy moans filling his ears. And he was filled with her, too; his heart beat to the rhythm of Beth, Beth, Beth, sending it pulsing through his body where it thrummed in his palm right above the curve of her breast and echoed in the pulse points beneath his ears and throbbed, god did it throb, where his hard cock pressed to the fly of his pants.
"Beth," he whispered against her soft lips, breathless from their kisses but wanting nothing to do with pulling away from her.
"Daryl," she murmured back, reaching up to curl her fingers into his hair as she tipped her face forward against his own so their foreheads met. Her fingers curled through the dark tendrils of his hair, and her back curved for him again, curved up like the bow she had left propped against the nearby wall. As he looked down at her, Daryl let his hand slip away from one breast to trail across the valley between and cup the other. More sure now of the touch that would pull those breathy sounds from her lips, he caressed her, cupping and squeezing until he felt the telltale press of her pert nipple against his palm.
Despite the way he ached to kiss her, he couldn't seem to break his gaze from her face long enough to do so. Instead he watched, studying the pleasure and awe that washed across her face as he cupped the side of her breast and brushed his thumb across her sensitive nipple, teasing the pert bud through the thin fabric of her bra until her soft moan turned to a whine, low in her throat.
He wanted her. It hit him, though not suddenly. It wasn't a jolting, unexpected thought, but something than came upon him far more slowly. As if it had been dawning since his hand had first slid up under her shirt, or… no, it had been longer than that. As if it had been rising like the incoming tide since held her close out in the church, or since his lips had first pressed to her own in that sunlight barn… or perhaps even since that night in the candlelit funeral home when he'd looked into her eyes and found himself unable to say the words she'd asked to hear. You, you, you.
He wanted her. But he knew in that same moment that he also wasn't perhaps neither of them was, not just yet. But they were getting there, slowly but surely. If the tide was rising then perhaps they were both riding it in together, curled up in the same small boat, riding the wave of it side-by-side. Soon. Not now, but soon.
Beneath him, Beth's head turned and she brushed her lips across the line of his jaw, pulling him from his thoughts and summoning a low groan from deep within him. It rumbled in his chest and against hers where she was pressed against him, and to his surprise he heard Beth softly giggle in response.
It was incongruous and yet not, at the same time. It didn't break the mood but simply accented it, changing things, but not drastically. It was… it was like finding that the path had curved in a new direction, rather than finding that you'd unexpectedly come to a dead end.
With his hand still gently cupping her breast, he teased, "Somethin' funny?"
"No." She giggled. "Maybe?" Her nose grazed just beneath his jaw and a second later she kissed him there too, trailing her lips down over the hint of stubble beneath his chin. "I'm just happy, that's all. I'm just… so happy."
With one last gentle caress, Daryl slipped his hand down, following the dip of her waist as it trailed into the curve of her hip. He rolled onto his side and brought her with him, her leg still wedged between his own and their hips still nearly flush as they lay on their sides facing one another, and he said simply, "Yeah." As her fingers trailed off his chest, and he drank in the sight of her darkened eyes and her soft, swollen lips, that same feeling tugged faintly at the corners of his lips, and he let it spread into a smile as he added in a murmur, "Me too."
He didn't think he had ever been so happy in his long, messed up, miserable life. Until her.
They had slept close together before, with her face tucked against his shoulder or neck or even side-by-side so they woke sharing breaths between their parted lips. Once she had even woken up half on top of him, that night spent in the van during the rain storm where she'd stipped down from her rain-soaked clothing. But Beth didn't think they had ever woken up quite like this before.
As the warm air and the glint of the rising sun through the window drew her habitually out of sleep, Beth awoke to the warmth of Daryl's body behind her. Last night they had gone to sleep facing each other, laying on a blanket on the floor of the back room of the church. But somehow in the middle of the night she seemed to have rolled over, and Daryl had shifted close to accommodate the change. His chest was fitted to her back now, the bend of his knees was pressed into the curve of her own, and his arm was slung over her waist so that his hand could press almost possessively to the upper part of the flat of her stomach.
Feeling the weight of his hand there, Beth couldn't help but hazily remember where that same hand had been last night, slipping up under her shirt to cup and caress her breast with nothing but the thin fabric of her bra between them. Remembering it now had her humming, stretching a bit in place and pressing back against him in a way that made her suddenly acutely aware of something else about the way they were pressed together. Something so firmly noticeable that she was surprised it had taken her this long to register it. It wasn't the first time she'd felt it, after all. Last night, the sign of his arousal had been pressed against her thigh, but now it was against the curve of her butt that she felt him, hard and erect in his sleep and nudging against her.
A few weeks ago, she might have shied away in embarrassment, or gotten all flustered at the feeling of him pressed against her like that. A few weeks ago, the open acknowledgment of the desire he might feel for her- and that she in turn felt for him- would have been something they both pointedly ignored, no matter that on some level they knew they felt it. But not now. Now it only felt… natural. Well, it felt like plenty of other things too, things that had her a bit warm and flushed as she lay there with his hand splayed against her belly. But mostly it just felt perfectly natural, waking up lying here like this with him, his chest warm at her back and his breath ghosting against her hair and his cock, urgently- but unconsciously- pressed against her as he slept.
It had felt just as natural last night, too. To be lying under him with his lips parting against hers, arching her body up into his touch as his work-roughened hand slid up over her skin to gently cup her breast. As she lay there dozing in and out of sleep, Beth was dimly aware that a younger version of her- even one from just a month or so ago- would perhaps have found it impossible to wrap her mind around this; her, lying pressed back again Daryl with his arm wrapped snugly around her.
She was also aware that the her from a month or more ago could not possibly have imagined how everything she would go through might lead up to this. Because in truth, it wasn't simply a series of events. It wasn't just: this happened, and then this happened, and now Daryl and I are lying here together, entwined in a square of sunshine in the back room of a church. It was so much more than that, so impossible to grasp because it was so complex and yet every moment of it had seemed as completely natural as it did lying here right now
This moment, laying here with Daryl's breath stirring the tendrils of her hair and his hand meeting the rise and fall of her stomach and chest with her breaths… it was so simple a moment and yet at the same time built on a complicated and many-layered foundation. Which really, was a summary of them as a whole, if she thought about it. They were this moment, this patch of sunlight and this innocent natural embrace. But they were also a candlelit moment in a funeral home, entwined hands in front of a tombstone, strong arms carrying the other injured through the woods. They were arms wrapped around the other from behind at both a rundown shack and deep in the woods away from the edge of the train tracks. They were a soft kiss in a sunlit barn, fingers upraised against a roaring flame, two people at their brink screaming at each other and refusing to give up their ground, a pair curled together by a fire sharing a book.
They were a quiet and coddled young girl who had almost given up on life, and a lost, abandoned, abused boy who had never known affection or love, who had wandered until the world ended. They were a stronger, more confident woman, who had learned to fight and defend herself, and a man who had found his purpose after everything else had been destroyed, a man who had learned to hope and believe.
They were all those things at once, past and present, and together they were something else entirely. Something newer, something stronger, something natural and right and good. And all that they had been, all that they had become, it led to this little moment, to the two of them curled up like cats in a patch of sunshine together.
Beth wondered if she were romanticizing it all in her sleep-hazy mind. Surely she was thinking in a way tinged with the haze of dreams, her mind rambling in the way most people's seemed to when they were half-asleep, when the world seemed immense and thoughts were given free-reign to roam all of it without guidance. But despite the haziness of her mind, despite the way the thoughts in her head sounded sort of like the lyrics and poems she used to scribble in her journal, they were no less real. This was no less real.
This right here- the warmth of the sun on her side and Daryl's hand brushing just slightly up her belly as he stirred behind her- it was so very real, so simple, so perfect. But she didn't have too long to relish it alone. It was the soft hum by her ear that clued Beth in to the fact that he was waking up as well. She knew that as comfortable as she was right now and as little as she minded the feeling of him hard against the curve of her ass, Daryl might not feel the same way. He might worry that he was making her uncomfortable, or feel uncomfortable himself, and that was the last thing she wanted.
So as he began to wake up, Beth turned slowly in his arms to face him. The movement meant they were no longer pressed so snugly together, but with her thigh tucked between his and her face coming to rest against his warm chest through his shirt, the intimacy of the moment remained. Thankfully it didn't fade when he began to wake up further, making grumbly morning sounds that she had long since become accustomed to from him.
"Mornin'," she murmured into the crook of his neck as she felt his hand pause and then brush up her back. Drawing back, she met his gaze just in time to see his eyes flutter open, and the first glimpse of his slightly-hazy, dark blue eyes made her breath hitch in her throat.
Again, it wasn't that they hadn't woken up together before. They had, and several of those moments had felt very meaningful without a doubt, but this… this was without a doubt a new level of intimacy. Beth watched the shifting of Daryl's expression as he woke up; his eyes clearing, a brief furrow dipping into his brow and smoothing out as he gave a slight yawn. When his eyes fixed on her just scant inches from him, he reached out slowly and hesitantly, and there was a look on his face that made her wonder if he thought he was dreaming somehow. But then his fingers grazed her cheek to tuck back a stray curl of hair and she watched in awe and sleepy delight as that dreamy uncertainty cleared and a hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
She had always loved waking up on the farm with the sound of the roosters crowing and the scent of coffee and home-cooked breakfast filling the air as she snuggled up under the warm covers of her childhood bed. But as much as she had loved that, it didn't hold a candle to this.
"G'mornin'," Daryl finally murmured back, his voice even lower and rougher with sleep. As she looked at him, a faint smile on her own lips as she drank in the sight of him, she had to wonder if anyone had ever seen him like this. If anyone has been this close to him, close enough to see the dreamy haze fade from his eyes, close enough to feel his breath ghosting faintly over their skin, to hear his sleep-roughened voice so close to their ear. She didn't think so, and that only made the moment feel more important to her. Another simple moment placed on top of the complex layers of events and occurrences that had lead them right here.
Both of them seemed content to lay there a few minutes longer, her hands curled at his chest and his pressed to her back, until finally they reluctantly gave in to the knowledge of the rising sun outside their window. In the shift of her body she brushed her nose lightly against his and then with a sigh they moved seemingly as one, pulling apart to sit up on the floor and stretch almost in unison, their arms reaching up above their heads.
Even though they had separated, Beth was pleased to realize that the intimacy between them still remained. She felt it in the weight of his gaze lingering on her while she stretched, and in the brush of his arm against hers when he moved past her towards his back, and she felt it in the minutes that followed, as they fell so easily into their morning routines. Get up, clean up, check their surroundings, relieve themselves, come back in for breakfast… By now everything they did was habitual, a pattern formed over weeks of it being just the two of them. It was a routine they'd long since perfected, but now more than ever they seemed constantly aware of each other through every movement they made, in a way that wasn't purposeful or pointed, but casual and easy. As if he was a magnet for her gaze and her touch, and she the same for him.
Beth couldn't seem to stop looking at him, and smiling every time his eyes met hers. Even the thought that Maggie would have teased her for turning into some flustered, distracted teenager couldn't ruin the good mood that filled Beth that morning, and for that, she was even more grateful. Her heart still ached at the thought of her sister, but she was realizing that this connection she had with Daryl- this thing between them, whatever it might have been- was a balm that was slowly but surely helping her heal.
She couldn't help but wonder if she was doing the same for him, though she knew it wasn't the sort of thing she could- or would- ask him straight out. Daryl Dixon was a man of relatively few words, after all, and little of them tended to be spent on how he was feeling, of all things. So instead Beth simply watched him, as she had always been so good at watching him- not just looking, but seeing. Seeing the quiet ease with which he moved, and the lack of tension that had once filled his lean body. Seeing the way he sat down so casually beside her, passing the can of beans back and forth between them without a word, in a silence that was far from sullen or awkward . Seeing the way a little smile would briefly cross his lips when their hands touched, or the way he seemed so completely at ease sitting next to her with his thigh pressed to her own.
Beth saw the ways in which he had changed, subtly but surely, so that he no longer looked so burdened, or lonely, or pensive and unhappy. She saw how he had opened up and knew, deep down inside, that it was true. She had been just as much of a balm for him as he had been for her.
As she handed the can back to him and felt her own lips turn up in a smile at the light brush of his hand against her own, the knowledge of what they were for each other filtered through her mind along with the sleep-hazy thoughts this morning, and she couldn't help but connect the two of them together. They were something else entirely new now, something right and good, something stronger… and it was all because of each other. Because of what they were, both to one another and together.
And this- whatever it was that they were together, whatever it was that they shared now- it was just… good. Daryl was sitting across from her with a smile on his lips that matched the one on her own, and the warmth of the sun shining on them through the window couldn't quite compare to the warmth of his thigh lightly resting against hers, and though the day stretched out ahead of them she was content to just enjoy this moment with him… and they were just good.
This was a very intimate sort of chapter, more of a Bethyl-focused one than some others. The next chapter they'll be moving on a bit plot-wise, but I figured after the end of the last chapter, you guys deserved a little heat. I hope you enjoyed this, and please please please comment, it always makes my day! Thanks for reading!