Chapter 24: both our hearts have a secret only both of us know

After that they walk for a while.

Not anywhere in particular. They stay inside the bounds of the park. She doesn't talk and he doesn't make an attempt at talking - which he knows would probably go nowhere - and they don't touch, though his hand is next to hers, very close, and after a few minutes of walking like that he's filled with an overwhelming urge to take it in his, and it's yet another urge he's never had before and has no idea what to do with.

Not touching her is suddenly a miserable prospect. Which means he's probably in for some misery.

Might be worth it.

He watches her out of the corner of his eye. Not looking at her is something else that's apparently difficult - not that it wasn't pretty difficult before but it's worse now. Everything that was bad is worse now. He could be near her before and not want to grab her and drag her against him, and he wasn't so goddamn scared by the idea. Wasn't he supposed to be less afraid of this whole thing if he actually somehow started doing it? Wasn't that how this was supposed to go?

Except he's fucking kidding himself if he had any clear idea how it was supposed to go at all. Any expectations. He told himself not to have those.

He stares at her and he watches the sunlight play over her hair, every strand spun gold - like can even see every strand, so what the fuck is that about? He watches her braid bounce as she walks and he thinks about her making it, her fingers moving elegantly into an equally elegant pattern, a kind of care for her appearance that isn't vain at all and which is completely alien to him. He thinks about running his own fingers over it and feeling every curve. He watches the subtle changes to the line of her neck as she moves. He could touch her there - he barely has. He hasn't kissed her there. In his mind he has and in his mind she lets her head drop loosely back and she moans... and holy shit, maybe he can do that sometime - it's no longer outside the realm of possibility - and see if it's really like he imagined. Anything like it.

If it's exactly like the way he's imagined it he has no idea how he'll continue with his life as a functional human being.

That's overwrought and he knows it, but God, her neck. Her neck.

He hasn't even gotten as far as looking at the rest of her. Everything below the delicate line of her collarbones is a blur of unapproachability. He can fantasize about her when he's not with her, sure. This close to the real thing and his ability to handle it completely dries up and blows away. He's all raw. There's nothing between him and the sheer real potential of his hands on her.

He keeps telling himself to get it together and it keeps not happening.

Birds calling in the trees, occasionally strafing the path ahead of them. A kid laughing somewhere, another kid's happy screams. Once they pass an elderly woman walking the kind of fluffy little dog that Daryl always thinks about punting as far as he can even though he's never played football in his life. He likes dogs, he wouldn't actually do it, but they're just this totally puntable shape.

Anyway, she barely looks at them, nor does the dog, and Beth doesn't seem to be bothered by it, so he decides to also not be.

He wants to ask her just how secretive they have to be. Obviously her family can't find out, but what about here? Who else should they be worried about? She dragged him behind a tree to kiss him. What does that mean?

He can't ask her. He has no idea how to go about that.

Hey, how potentially bad is this? Is this life-at-school-is-weird-for-a-week-or-so bad, or is this I-get-shot-and-you-get-forced-to-become-a-nun bad?

Neither is great. It would be nice to avoid both.

Merle can't know. Merle just absolutely cannot know.

The path winds through the trees, past a couple of little flowerbeds it looks like no one has done anything with for a while. Bright red verbena, pink rose and purple aster. Yellow daisy-things. A little overgrown but the flowers don't care who looks after them, and the brilliance of the colors in the sun snags his attention for a few seconds.

He might not have noticed those before. Sure, maybe, but he sort of doubts it.

At last they come to a place where there's a little circle of side path off the main one heading into a stand of fragrant eucalyptus. She leads him down it, and only about twenty or so yards in, there's a bench, which she sits down on. It's not totally hidden from the path but it's at least sort of secluded, and he supposed it's probably good enough. Good enough for her, anyway.

Good enough to hide from... something. Someone. Unclear.

He sits down next to her without being asked, and she looks up at the light in the slender leaves. He's still trying to look at her unobtrusively and he's half certain it's not working very well.

But why shouldn't she know he's looking at her? What the fuck reason does he have now to try to play it cool? He is so painfully uncool. She's known him for the better part of a month now; she must be aware of that.

So he does look. He looks at her hair, her neck, but he also dives in and looks at the rest of her, the lines of her body beneath her loose, comfortable clothes, her legs below her skirt and the slightly lanky grace of them, her boots. She swings one leg and the heel scuffs against the gravel with a pleasant crunching noise.

He touches her hand. Just with the back of his. It's sort of accidental. Sort of.

Barely fifteen minutes ago his tongue was literally in her mouth, so why is it like he's touching her for the first time?

He doesn't hate it.

She looks at him so suddenly he almost jumps, and then she leans, pressing her bare arm against his, and he manages to not shiver. She's so warm, God, she is always so warm, like she's always in the sun. Always soaking it up and carrying it around inside her.

Those clear blue eyes grabbing his and holding on.

"I feel like I should say somethin'," she murmurs, and laughs so softly it's barely a breath. "I just..." Her gaze drops to the side, focusing on nothing in particular, and he can tell she's thinking. Thinking hard. Maybe she was thinking this entire time. "I know this is weird. Kinda weird, anyway."

She pauses again and he's terribly sure he should say something too. Anything. Words. Christ, he is so fucking bad at words, how is this ever going to be anything but a disaster?

Nothing. He just sits there and he stares at her. Then he looks down, because she's too much.

"I meant it," she continues. "It wasn't about Jimmy. I wanted to do that for a while. I wanted to do it since that time in the rain. Maybe before. I dunno. I just... I like you. I really like you. And I know it's weird, like I said, because you just got here and you're older and I'm really new at this, 'cause for a while it was just Jimmy, but I..." The rush halts and she's gazing at him again, and he sees it when he hazards a glance up and catches a glimpse of her from under the fringe of his hair. She's looking at him and she looks like she might be about to plead with him, and he realizes something startling, though he suspected it before.

She's just as nervous as he is. Or maybe not just as, but she's pretty nervous. She doesn't want to fuck this up. She's not confident of her ability to keep from doing just that.

She cares enough about whatever this is to care whether or not she fucks it up.

"I like you," she says again, quietly. "I wanna keep... I wanna keep doin' this. I wanna keep seein' you."

He realize does have to say something now. She's been doing all the talking, and this is important, and she still looks like that, like she needs something from him. Some reassurance. He can't believe that, somehow. She's always seemed like she had so much more of a handle on stuff than he ever has.

He wants to give her that. He wants to give her anything and everything she needs.

"Me too," he whispers, and then he goes ahead and does it, because doing things has always been easier for him than saying them. Touching in general still freaks him out, the thought of it, but touching her...

He takes her hand in his, and if she's warm her hand is nevertheless cool, and he holds it carefully. He doesn't want to take more here than she wants to give him. Her fingers feel so delicate. Liked her braid, so oddly elegant.

And she smiles then and threads her fingers through his, and something in his chest wrenches and melts and flows into his veins.

"It's not just about kissin' you," she says, and he can look at her. He can. He does, and it gets easier, and she's still wearing that smile, and that's when he's sure he wants to make it his sole mission in life to make sure Beth Greene keeps smiling like that.

Or he wouldn't mind. He probably can't actually do that. Probably.

"I liked that. I like it a lot." Another laugh, low and musical. "But it ain't just that. You make me feel good. It's easy to talk to you. You listen. People... Most of 'em don't. They might think they do, but." She shrugs and squeezes his hand. "So I wanna keep seein' you. I wanna... I said I wanted to be friends. I still want that. Just with the kissin' part thrown in." Her smile widens, almost into a playful little grin, and he just about leans in and kisses her again right then and there.

Just do that, girl. Just do that forever.

"Me too," he says again, still almost in a whisper, and he tries to put everything into those two words. Everything pulling and spinning and seething around in him. Everything he can't seem to put a name to. If he could show her... Maybe he'll figure something out.

Touching her doesn't feel like it would quite get the job done.

But he does. He reaches up with his other hand, lays his fingertips against the edge of her jaw, and she presses into the touch and it's perfect.

She likes it when he touches her.

That's completely mindblowing.

This isn't anything like his fantasies, because in those touching her is almost always easy. But he thinks he actually likes this better, and not just because it's the real thing. It all means more.

There are things she should know. In about a month he might get to all of them. "I never..." he starts, and hesitates, waffling a bit. "I never had this. Like this." He makes a waving gesture in the air between them and he's sure it's totally inadequate, but he can't think of the proper name for it. A name that fits. "Like what you're sayin'. Ever."

She gives him a quizzical little head-tilt. "You sayin' you never had a girlfriend?"

That doesn't feel right either, but he guesses it's good enough. He shakes his head.

"You... Wow." She laughs again. She sounds both surprised... and oddly pleased. It's not what he would have expected. He's well aware that it's weird for a guy pushing forty to not have had a girlfriend, but if somehow she could get a look at his life up until now - which he would suffer almost any ordeal to prevent - he's pretty sure she would understand why he hasn't.

Hasn't been much of a way or a reason or an inclination. He wouldn't have had anything to offer anyone anyway.

"How come?"

He shrugs.

She arches a brow. "Pretty sure you like girls."

He lets out a laugh that's really more of a grunt and looks away, doesn't say anything for a few seconds - but he has nothing to defend. Or he doesn't feel like he does. She doesn't make him feel like he does. Even if it's still making him feel weirder about everything.

"I like you," he says suddenly, because that's a lot closer to the heart of it. Sure, girls, whatever. His feelings there have actually never been all that intense. He's always been fairly certain that his preferences edge in that direction - thank Christ, because he would be in some serious fucking trouble if they didn't - but they haven't been especially strong ones. No one has stood out.

Not like her.

"Oh," she murmurs, and she squeezes his hand again, and he ducks his head. All at once he feels naked, like she's seeing more of him than he meant to show her.

"Not sayin' that's what I wanna be," she says after a moment or two of nothing but the rustle of leaves and the nearby chatter of a couple of battling squirrels. "If you don't want. We can just-"

"We gotta name it?"

It's solid, how he says it. Direct. He isn't even trying, but there's no trepidation in the question, nothing hesitant. He's asking, and the implication in that question is clear and meant: he would rather not name it. And not for the reasons people often have for avoiding the naming of things. It's not that he's hiding from it. It's not that he's trying to keep it from being a real thing with all the weight of existence a name confers.

He doesn't want to name it because right now it feels like it would defy any name either of them could give it.

Girlfriend sure as fuck doesn't work. And he thinks about himself being her boyfriend and for some reason it basically gives him mental hives.

Somehow, bizarrely, friend still feels like the closest thing. Even if it's not that close at all.

"I guess we don't," she says, voice and eyes soft. And she leans in and up and kisses him again, just the slightest graze of her lips on his, and his eyes slip shut.

If somehow they ever get as far as doing what he imagined doing with her in the ruins, he's pretty sure he's just going to burst into flames. Actual honest-to-God spontaneous combustion. The kind they have pictures of, where it's just a pile of ashes and a pair of shoes.

Except he wouldn't be wearing shoes.

So.

They sit together for a while. She doesn't let go of his hand. And toward the end of that while, she lays her head on his shoulder and he can smell her hair, the light floral scent of her shampoo, something he can't quite identify but which is, like everything else she wears, totally and indefinably her. Then they walk a little more until she says she should get going, she does have some stuff to pick up before school tomorrow, and she implies but doesn't say that she should do this on her own. So he nods, ready to let it go, but then he stops in the middle of the path and turns to her, and the question is out before he can stop it.

"How secret we gotta keep this?"

This. How fucking much is in that word?

She looks up at him for a few seconds, and her face is difficult to read. He's suddenly worried he's stepped across some other line he didn't know was there. But she appears to decide something, because she nods - so small it might have been only for herself - and she answers him.

"Daddy can't know. No one in my family can know. Probably better if my friends don't know. Probably better if... if people don't see us together too much. Might look weird. Might get 'em talkin'." Her expression turns serious. Nothing evasive there. Nothing ashamed. "You get why."

He does. Of course she wouldn't want people to know about this, because he's so-

But she keeps going, and once again - and probably she's just going to keep on doing this - she startles him.

"It's just that you're older. That's all. I mean... I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. I mean it." She takes his hand again and he stares down at it. "But they would worry. Daddy would worry. He likes you, he'd just... He wouldn't understand. He'd think you were..." She shrugs, and an expression of distaste slips across her face. "He might think you're makin' me do stuff, or you talked me into somethin', and..." Her face does something complicated that hurts him. There isn't any other way to put it. There's complexity, and there's pain, and he doesn't entirely dislike either of those things.

It's good to hurt the way she hurts him. He wants it to keep happening.

"I don't want him gettin' that idea," she says quietly. "I don't want him thinkin' that about you. And I don't want him chasin' you off." Flicker of a smile. Little flame. "I want you to stick around. At least a while."

He swallows. Somehow he hadn't fully articulated to himself that Hershel might think that. And yeah, it's distasteful. And not just because he really would rather not get shot.

He doesn't want Hershel to think that of him because he likes Hershel.

He likes that whole fucking family.

He wants to keep getting invited to dinner.

Fuck.

"Alright," he says, and they walk again.

They end up at the entrance to the park, and he's about to say goodbye to her when she tugs him back to that same spot behind the tree, and it's like everything he wasn't sure about disintegrates under the gentle pressure of her mouth. He sighs against her, one hand finds her hip and the other slips around the nape of her neck, and then he does it because he can, because he's sure she'll let him: he ducks his head slightly and presses his lips to her throat, just beneath her jaw, and it's soft and warm and thrumming with her pulse and Christ, she does moan.

Just a little. Hardly there. But she moans and he thinks again about bursting into flames.

He says goodbye to her and he watches her walk away, her hair bouncing, hips swaying just a bit, her skirt so light and drifting around her legs.

This defies naming because he doesn't even know what it is yet.

Because he doesn't know how far it'll go.