Chapter 29: now my work is done, I feel I'm owed some joy
So once again: After that everything is exactly the same and everything is completely different.
He goes home and he sleeps well. Sleeps - doesn't get drunk, doesn't pass out, doesn't toss and turn and writhe around and be generally uncomfortable. He falls asleep and he sleeps through the night, and to the extent that he remembers his dreams at all, they're soft things. They wrap themselves around him like a blanket and he feels safe in them.
He can't actually recall feeling that way before. But he's no longer especially surprised by that. Everything now is new. Either he finds a way to get comfortable with that or he finds a way to get comfortable with constantly being smacked in the face by how constantly uncomfortable he is.
He wakes up, goes back to the farm. She's at school. He does - he doesn't question it, and yes, he does feel a tiny bit like a creep but he goes with it anyway - take a detour by the high school on the way out of town. Football practice is going on out on a field to the side. Of course he won't see her - she's inside, in class, and maybe falling asleep, and when he thinks about that he smiles. Small. It feels like the physical manifestation of everything they're hiding, all that strangeness and sweetness and even the fear.
These secrets don't feel so bad now. They don't feel so wrong. They just feel sort of necessary. She's good for him. He needs her. This is tricky. This is very problematic. But it's also just true, that she's good for him and he needs her, and he should probably stick with her if he can.
And she actually wants him too. She does. He might not be a hundred percent on that, but he's zoomed past fifty and it's increasing all the time.
He'll stick with her, and he'll try so hard to not fuck this up. He really will try.
Overcast day, gray and a little dour in the sky and the colors it casts over the world, but he's feeling good as he goes back to work on the harvester. Very good. He's feeling light, like something heavy has been lifted off him. Something he's been carrying around for years.
Maybe he's just a redneck asshole and has been one forever, but he's also strong, has had to become so. He's strong and he can bear up under a lot. But right now he feels like he doesn't have to. Not all the time. Because yeah, it's like a dream now, doesn't feel like it really happened, and part of him is still afraid - still freaking the fuck out, basically - but he laid his head against her breast and she held him, wept with him, and he was weak in her arms and it was all right. It really was.
He feels light and he's going to let himself float in it.
As the day wears on he finds himself thinking about places. Other places he can look at. Think about getting. What he and Merle could do with. A little more space, more light. Maybe his own goddamn bedroom. Merle would bitch and moan but he might actually end up liking it. Might do him some good.
The sock full of cash under the couch is getting more and more full all the time. He's saving whatever he can. He never saved anything before. Never had any reason to. He's thinking about the big scary future and it's not so scary anymore.
It's not so scary, because when he thinks about it she's in it. Right in the goddamn center.
She comes home and they all have dinner. Maybe it's something in the air but everyone seems to be in a good mood. Everyone's talking, laughing. He doesn't talk much, because he still hardly ever does, but he sits there next to her and he listens and he feels that lightness, and he thinks about how he can be here with this family and it doesn't feel so weird anymore. He still doesn't feel like he belongs, but it no longer makes him do quite as much internal squirming.
This isn't his world - he's just a tourist - but he's getting to know it pretty well. He's a frequent visitor. That's nice. It's a nice thing, that she gave him. A door she opened and helped him walk through.
Her hand finds his under the table, threads their fingers together and squeezes. He hides a smile. He can tell she's hiding one too.
A secret between them, in their clasped hands.
Before he leaves early that evening he finds her in the barn and he sort of loses his mind, but he doesn't try to fight it. Twilight is coming on and the barn is full of deepening shadows - and that's good, that's perfect, because he pushes her into one of them and takes her hips in his hands just like he did in the water, arches his mouth against hers, and she lets slip a little groan. It's deep, slow, and her hands comb into his hair - again like before - and she moves against him in a way that sends the coals smoldering in him into a brighter, hotter burn. She moves with a rhythm, pressing closer than she has. Rolling her hips in his hands. He runs the tip of his tongue over the points of her teeth and sighs.
He leaves her there, every nerve humming. Her teenage daring is contagious. He still feels like she has a couple of years on him.
They're finding their way through this together. Neither of them has any fucking idea what they're doing.
He's pretty sure they'll figure it out.
At home, much later and lying on his back in the dark, he does something he's never done before. He strokes himself, slow, until he's almost hurting with wanting to come, hot and throbbing in his hand - and he stops. Leaves himself there on the edge.
It does hurt. A little. It's certainly not comfortable. But it also feels so damn good. And this time his dreams aren't soft, warm things.
They burn.
Friday. Normal Friday, hot again. Rain on the way - not soon, but the weeks of the sharp autumn fronts have arrived, and it'll come. Beth returns home and Daryl is on the way to the barn when she catches his eye and waves.
He only gives her the smallest wave, the smallest smile, but he's sure she sees it.
All day he's been keeping that burn going. Not like the night before, not as intense - that would be a very bad idea for a number of reasons that should be obvious - but he thinks about her the whole time. Various ways, various contexts, and yes, he thinks about fucking her - of course he does - but he also thinks about not fucking her. Because the night by the swimming hole he lay side by side in the grass with her and held her hand and nothing more, and he honestly doesn't know when he last felt...
He felt like he was exactly where he needed to be. With exactly the right person. Doing exactly the right thing.
Occupying roughly the same space.
He wants her. He literally can't deal with how beautiful she is, with how she moves through the world like she rearranges everything around her - gently - to fit herself. But he just wants so much to be with her. Sitting next to her at dinner, holding her hand under the table. Feeling their secret and how they carry it between them.
He thinks about that. Lying with her in the grass in the sun, in the ruins, and feeling her against him. Running a hand through her hair, breathing her in.
For some reason he thinks about that more than anything else.
He's fixing a loose board on a pen in the barn when she comes in and sits on a bale of hay, legs crossed, leaning back on her hands, her hair tied back and pulled over one shoulder - she's wearing another peasant top, light purple, and her shoulders are bare - and smiling at him. He looks up at her and can't breathe for a few seconds. It twists at him. Won't let him go.
But it's still not like before. It's good.
The door is wide open. Shawn is in and out. But even if that wasn't the case, something is making him want to hold off. Hold back. The same thing that kept his hands off her by the water, even though he wanted it. Wanted it so bad. Was pretty sure she wanted it too. Even though it burned. It's not time.
This deserves some care. It matters.
He gives her a small smile, all his own, and goes back to work.
They talk. Not really about anything specific; he's interested in everything she has to say, about how school is going, about stupid dramatic shit with friends - not that he thinks it's stupid but that she clearly does, stuff she sort of feels like she's moved past in some ways and no longer has time or patience for - and mostly he just listens, but that's how it's always been and he's discovering that he's very comfortable with it. It feels natural.
It all feels natural.
And it hits him: maybe he wants to fuck her, maybe he's almost completely certain she wants to fuck him, maybe he looks at her and his hands itch with how much they want to be on her, maybe he tastes her with all the intensity of the deepest sense memory...
But they're friends. They still are.
Maybe that's actually the foundation of everything. They were friends to begin with. Of course that wouldn't go away.
"Saw Jimmy with that girl in the hall," she says after a few seconds of silence. She's watching him nail the last board in place. Watching his hands. He likes that she's watching. "Between English and Calculus. They were kissing."
He looks up at her, studies her. She doesn't sound upset, and she doesn't seem upset. She seems mostly okay. Maybe he detects a bit of residual discomfort, but he senses somehow that it's not coming from a place of any real hurt. Not anymore.
She was telling the truth about that. It was never about being hurt, not at the core.
"Y'alright?"
She nods. "It was..." Quiet for a moment, then she shrugs, one hand drifting up to fiddle with the gold chain around her neck, rolling it between her forefinger and thumb. An idle little motion that distracts him, makes him stop hammering. "He looked happy. And it was like... That's fine. He should do what he needs to do. It wasn't gonna work anyway. He wouldn't have been happy with me, just like I don't think I would've been happy with him."
She pauses again and tips her head to the side, her hair falling down over her shoulder, her upper arm. A shaft of sunlight breaks through above them and spills across her, and she's all warm gold. He looks at her and she looks back at him, and everything in him seizes up into the sweetest pain he's ever known.
"I'm happy now," she murmurs, and he has no idea what to do or say.
But he also doesn't feel like anything is required from him in either respect.
So - like before - he goes back to work.
She wants to go into town. She's meeting some friends. He offers to take her; one of them can bring her back. Something low in his stomach is fluttering as she climbs into the cab with him and they drive, chasing the last of the sun, the radio cranked up and her doing the dolphin arc thing with her hand again - hypnotic. He can barely keep his eyes on the road.
Halfway there he pulls over and they practically launch themselves at each other, leaning in so fast and so hard their teeth knock together and she laughs. And her laugh twists into a moan and then a sigh as he kisses her and really gets his fingers in her hair, just the way he wanted to all fucking day, and in fact he reaches back and tugs the band loose and lets it all spill free and wild over his hands, her bare shoulders.
She doesn't wait for him to make the move. She lets her head fall back and tugs him in, inviting him, and he drags his mouth down the column of her neck and feels the rapid thrum of her pulse under his lips. His tongue. He has no idea where the impulse comes from but once again it's there, and he closes his teeth - so carefully - on the skin at the base of her throat, and the sound she makes is rough and strained.
He wants so many things. He wants to drag her into his lap, pin her between his body and the steering wheel. He wants to slide his hands up under her shirt, over all that hot skin - because like always she's burning against him like a little coal. He wants to push one hand between her thighs and just hold it there, press with his fingers, grind down with the heel of his palm.
He doesn't. She doesn't. It's like the night under the stars; they kiss until they're both gasping, breathing so hard, and he thinks they're necking like two horny teenagers except then he realizes she literally is a horny teenager and it almost cracks him up.
And fuck, he feels like one. He's twice her age but he never really got this when he was hers. He never got to be a teenager like this. This is his first time too.
If she touched him now, got a hand on his cock, he thinks he would probably come in about ten seconds flat. Again, horny teenager, and when she leans in again and presses her lips just beneath his ear, her hot breath making him shudder all over, and asks him what's so funny, he has no idea how to explain.
He drops her off outside the coffee shop. He can't go inside with her and she doesn't have to tell him so. It would be weird.
This is a secret. Delightful.
She touches his hand before she hops out and shoots him a grin over her shoulder. He stares at her until she disappears inside.
He's very, very sure that he's never been happy like this in his life.
He isn't going to fuck this up. He is absolutely not going to fuck this up. Anything he has to do, to give, anything at all to keep from fucking this up, he will.
This is good for him.
He goes home. Merle wants to go out. Merle is suddenly flush with cash. Daryl doesn't ask where Merle got it from. He doesn't give a shit. Okay, fine, whatever; they can go out. He thinks he would probably be okay with just about anything. He's still floating.
He's also almost surprised he doesn't still have an obviously raging hard-on, but when he jumps into the shower to rinse off the day - Merle calling him Darylina through the door and asking him if he also needs to fix his makeup - that abruptly changes and when he comes like the impact of something huge and solid he has to bite his lip to keep from making a sound he knows will be extremely audible.
Not like either of them jerking off is some big secret they hide from each other, fuck no. But this is a secret.
This is his secret. It's just for him. Him and her. No part of it is for anyone else. When he thinks about her, when thinking about her does this to him, makes him feel so good, that's his alone. Merle has no claim on it, and that includes knowing anything about it.
It's not just that he deserves something nice.
He deserves something that's his.
At four in the morning, dozing on the couch with the TV on, muted infomercial with black and white images of despairing people having their lives completely ruined by their inferior food storage solutions, he thinks about the ruins again. Lying in the sunny grass with her, legs tangled. On his side, looking at her, working his gaze over every curve and every angle of every feature. Learning her by heart. Combing his hand through her hair, over and over and over.
They don't have to be children anymore, when these last days are over. This is better.
His eyes closed, the flickering light from the screen becoming sunlight dappling through gently shifting leaves, he mouths her name. Beth. Beth.
My girl.