Chapter 30: man is only half himself, the other half is a bright thing

The next day is Saturday, and he gets a text in the afternoon telling him that she'll be there in the evening. She'll be doing the open mic night. He should come. It should be safe enough.

Since he was a jerk and left early last time.

And she adds something else. She's being a little less careful with this now, but since Wednesday at the swimming hole he's feeling more confident about the whole thing, and maybe she is too. Either way, she says he should take her home after.

There's a lot unsaid there. A lot implied. A fuck of a lot.

So all right.

He's expecting to have to fight Merle off about it, but Merle is actually fairly genial. Says he has his own thing. It's fine, he ran into a few guys, they're going to a honky-tonk they know about not too far out of town. Daryl wants to be a fuckin' loser and not come? That's his business. Merle's not his babysitter anyway.

So yeah. Again. All right.

He fucks around until just before eight and then heads over - walks and takes his time. She said she would be going on at eight, but he figures it might look better if he just wanders in, like he's not expecting to see anyone in particular.

Though the barista he talked to that first Saturday night... He's been in there a few times since, and he's getting the distinct impression that she not only knows his face by this point but has picked up on a few other things.

He's not going to be fazed by a goddamn barista. Not right now.

Anyway, she honestly seems nice. She's always given him his coffee on just the right side of scalding, which is perfect. He likes her.

He steps inside and it's like stepping back in time.

Those people, the light, the sound of the place, everyone around that little raised platform, people leaning close around tables, people toward the back of the room alternately sprawling and packed together on sofas, a few couples almost in each other's laps. The smell of coffee beans and pastries and chocolate somehow intensified by the volume of people. And this many people, there should be a lot of noise, but there isn't. They're all quiet, except for a few kids whispering and giggling on the sofas, and as he stands there in the doorway and stares at the stage he hears someone shushing them irritably.

She's up there. Not wearing the same dress, not with her hair the same way - this time she's just in jeans, a knit top all light blue, hair back and her wrist circled with beaded wire. And looking at it for a moment - it out of everything else - he feels like he and she are sharing secrets of more than one kind.

This girl has seen him, yeah. Sure. But she's also let him see her.

Maybe no one else has seen her the way she's let him see her.

He moves a little more toward the back and tries to install himself somewhere out of the way, finding any patch of lower light he can melt into. He's only sparing the minimum amount of attention necessary for it. Everything else is on her, her gently strumming fingers, her eyes closed and her head tilted just the slightest bit upward as she sings. It's soft, a little melancholy. Sweet to match her voice.

now my apartment lies awake at night
it tosses every time she sighs
tries to take it easy on her eyes
but I can feel it giving up the fight
my whole building's on its last floors
her heart's not in it anymore

When she's done with that one he goes ahead and orders coffee. He supposes he should. Of course it's his barista, and the look she gives him when she hands over the cup with his change feels Significant. And then she flicks her eyes toward Beth, and he's reasonably certain. Maybe she doesn't know any particulars. Probably not. And well, whatever. What the hell is she going to do? He already decided against worrying too much about this.

He doesn't have the attention to spare. Beth is singing again.

She does four songs. He thinks. They bleed into each other, and it's not that he's not paying attention but rather that he's paying so much attention that all the bigger stuff blurs into a background mass while all the fine details blow up into razor sharpness. The light off the pale pink polish on her fingernails. The beads at her wrist. The muscles and tendons working at her throat. That gentle sway of her hips as she keeps the rhythm. The way she seems to find notes effortlessly, her voice never strained or unsure, always so pure. So clear. The way the corners of her mouth curl a little when she sings, like she's always smiling. Like she's so happy to be doing it at all.

Which of course she is.

It's not like before. It's not agony. It's not destroying him inside. That job was already well done before he even walked in here.

No sign of Shawn or Shawn's friend with the bobbed hair. No sign, actually, of anyone else he remembers ever seeing with her. She leaves the stage as people applaud - again, that solid applause that first made him sure she wasn't just a regular attraction but a popular one - and she catches his eye, nods toward the door, and he gets it.

With a warm little shiver, he gets it.

He leaves and heads across the street and down toward the store and the parking lot and the truck.

He doesn't have to wait more than ten minutes. He's leaning against the driver's side door, smoking, when she walks up to him with her guitar case. He watches her move, watches how she carries the case with total ease, no indication that it's too heavy for her - because it's not. There's real power in those arms, and he knows it so well by now, but he admires it anyway.

He can't imagine not admiring everything about her.

She looks up at him, and even in the dingy glow of the streetlights he can see that she's flushed and happy, her eyes shining.

"Wanna go?"

She simply nods and moves past him and around to the passenger's side, pulling open the door and pushing the case in, following it. He turns and watches her, bemused, as she shoves it out of the way as best she can, just for the briefest of moments forgetting that she's being watched. Pushing a few strands of hair out of her face. The fragment of a smile flickering across her mouth - a little smile, just for herself.

He watches her a few seconds longer, feeling everything in him clench and release and clench again, tight and warm. Muscles he didn't know he had.

He's strengthening them. Working them out.

He drops the butt of the cigarette onto the pavement and grinds it out with his heel, climbs into the cab, coughs and shudders the engine to life, and pulls out into the night.

Of course he doesn't take her home.

They don't come to any spoken agreement. They head out of town and take the road that leads to the farm, but they pass it without slowing, lights flying past in the dark. She leans back in the seat and pulls off her boots and her socks on what appears to be a whim, puts her bare feet up on the dash and sings softly along to the radio.

show me where to look
tell me what will I find
oh, heaven let your light shine down

Not to the ruins. Not to the swimming hole. He's not totally sure where he's going. He's following both an impulse and an instinct, something coming to him wild and hot and more than a little reckless on the wind that ripples over them both. This girl next to him, all open and burning, and all this darkness all around them, and above them all those stars.

When he was small, nights like this would make him want to just run and run and run.

He drives until they're in deep dark, the lights of the town faded into nothing behind them and the skyglow of anywhere else not yet intense enough to block any significant number of stars. They come to a huge field, open grass bordered by lines of trees, and he pulls over and she tugs her boots back on and hops out, taking the guitar with her. There's a blanket in the cab and he briefly considers it, but it smells musty and a little too much like old cheeseburgers and he elects to leave it behind.

There's a two-thirds empty jar of moonshine. He does bring that. Special occasion and all.

Even though he might be drinking it alone.

They hop the ancient wood beam fence - him first and she hands the guitar to him, then vaults lightly over. They walk softly over the grass, and when the breeze stirs the tips of the blades they look like tiny silver waves in the starlight.

He's excited, that same flutter in his middle - he never knew before how literally butterflies in the stomach can apply. It's the same low-burning desire for her, but it's also just being with her in the night, the cool air, all secret. No one else knows they're out here. There's a kind of power in that, like what he imagines literally being invisible might feel like.

They walk until the road disappears and stop on a flat stretch of ground. She bends and sets down the case, then straightens up, curls a hand around his nape, pushes up on her toes and kisses him, quick and light. He can feel her smile, her mouth so warm, and it shivers into him.

She sits down in the grass, crosslegged, and starts to unsnap the clasps that hold the case closed. He watches her for a few seconds, bemused, then sits down opposite her. She lifts out the guitar and it bumps against the side of the case as she does, and a tuneful little sound drifts out of its sound hole and into the dark.

She eyes the jar as she settles it on her lap. "That's moonshine, right?"

His eyebrows lift. This is a touch surprising. "How you know that?"

"I'm not a total kid, Daryl." She pauses, seems to consider something. "If I come home smellin' like that, you're not gonna see me again until I graduate."

He shrugs. He's not going to push. But it feels appropriate. "Suit yourself, girl. More for me."

"Uh huh." She gazes at him a moment longer, her face all unreadable shadows, then reaches out a hand. "Gimme."

He cocks his head. "Seriously?" But somehow he's not surprised about that much. He hasn't thought of himself as a bad influence, but it makes sense that he might be. Guy twice her age, drifter, shitty background, generally disreputable - it's part of that old goddamn story. But he no longer feels like he's ruining anything. It feels like how he came out of the water with her. Less pure. But not any less good. This feels like what should happen.

"Yeah."

So he hands her the jar.

He watches her closely as she unscrews the lid, looks at it a bit dubiously, then tips it back. At first nothing, but then she makes a little choking noise and splutters a bit, her face all screwed up.

"That's the most disgusting thing I ever tasted."

He shrugs and holds out his hand for it. But she shakes her head and tips it back again, takes a second swallow, and this time there's still a low grunt as she feels the burn but she smiles at him.

"Second round's better."

"Yeah, take it easy. You ain't got no tolerance." He leans in and tugs it out of her hand. "And I'd kinda like to keep seein' you."

For a few seconds she just keeps looking at him, that smile playing around her mouth, then gives the guitar a gentle strum. They're in the wide open, nothing but night all around them, but somehow it echoes anyway, like they're in a big but enclosed space. Good acoustics.

Like a church, maybe.

He sits back, leans on his hands and looks up. She looks up with him, still strumming - no song in particular. Just a low series of chords, almost cohesive without ever really becoming so. They're pretty and he likes how he can't pin them down.

So many fucking stars. He's no stranger to this view, but like everything else it's hitting him in a way it didn't before.

"You know about stars?"

He glances at her. Her attention is still focused upward, and her throat is exposed. He thinks about leaning in and touching her, trailing his fingers down to her collarbone. Feeling the rise and fall of her muscles as she swallows. Kissing her there again, feeling how she arches into it. Listening to her sigh.

Heat rolls through him, low and pleasant, by now entirely familiar.

"What about 'em?"

She doesn't answer at first, her fingers still working music out of the strings. Then: "Like how old they are. When someone first explained it, how it takes thousands and thousands of years for their light to get to us, I thought they were pullin' my leg. Then I found out it was true." She jerks her chin upward. "Some of them aren't even there anymore. Gone. But we see 'em anyway."

"Yeah," he says softly. God, he wants to touch her even more. Everything she's saying is stoking the coals, drawing that need higher. "I know about that."

"Time ain't always the same everywhere," she whispers. "Ain't always the same shape." She glances down at him. "First time I was in Atlanta at night... I was real little but I remember. Lookin' up. The stars were gone. It was like someone turned off the sky."

"Never had that problem growin' up."

"Yeah?"

He nods. And as he does he realizes he's not afraid to talk about this. Not prickling, not feeling himself backing off and reinforcing all his walls. He doesn't need to. When they were helping with dinner in the kitchen that first time and she said she never judged him, that was absolutely right.

He's safe with her.

That completely blows his mind.

"Wasn't nothin' out there. I mean... People was livin' there, but no cities. No big towns. Not around where I grew up. Fuck all, pretty much."

"You like that or not?"

He shrugs. "It was just how it was like."

She looks at him for a long, long moment, all silent. With her head angled how it is, he can't tell if she's smiling. Once he would have felt some anxiety about that. But it's gone. It's not like that anymore. He senses thoughtfulness from her. Meditation. He's perfectly content to sit and let that ancient starlight flow all over him and let her meditate.

"I still hardly know anythin' about you, Daryl Dixon."

Now just the thinnest thread of fear. Barely there but he feels it, and it's unwelcome. "Ain't much to know."

"I don't think that's true."

"Whaddaya want me to tell you?"

She shakes her head slowly. "I dunno. Just... You can just talk to me. You don't have to be afraid or anythin'."

He gives her a faint, teasing smile. It feels good, so good, to smile like that. "I ain't afraid'a nothin'."

"I don't think that's true either." Another moment of silence, of her looking at him and him letting her look, almost shivering under the pressure of that gaze, and then she lays the guitar aside and reaches for him.

He goes to her.

He pushes her down with his hands on her shoulders, with his body, and she goes without even the slightest hint of resistance, and when he kisses her it's the easiest thing in the world. She opens up under him; he feels it happen and knows it's not just her lips parting, and that's so easy too - because she's already so open. She always is. Never closed off the way he's been. And she helped him do the same, flooded into him and expanded all his cracks.

She slides her hands into his hair and tugs, pulls until tiny little stings spark through his scalp, and he shudders. Moans softly. Closes his teeth on her lower lip and bites down and again he's so careful with her, but he can feel how he might be rougher. How he wants her that bad. And without meaning to, without even noticing at first, he gets a knee between her legs and he's pressing against her hip, and he's so hard she has to feel it.

She does. He knows because she pulls back, panting and staring up at him with her doe eyes wide. "Daryl."

"What?" That thread of fear again. Like he's done something wrong - wouldn't she tell him? He wants to believe she would, needs to believe it, because the alternative is too awful to contemplate.

She shakes her head again. "Nothin'." And she tugs him back down, tongue slipping into his mouth, and it's like she's trying to tangle it with his. He groans and the fear is gone, and he runs his hands down her sides and frames her hips, pushing her down harder, almost pinning her.

If he actually drank this in, everything it is and everything it means, he might stop functioning. Might just not be able to do anything. His brain, his entire body short-circuited. As it is he's so hot, something on fire between them and spreading, his cock and his gut and all the way up to his chest, tightening his throat. Never before, never like this, and he rocks against her as he drags his lips down her jaw, looking for friction, pressing his knee in harder, and when she rolls her hips up to meet that pressure he gasps and breathes her name.

Just knowing he can make her body do that. Make her feel good. God, it's all the power he could ever want.

"Daryl, I-" He scrapes his teeth against her collarbone and this time the noise that escapes her is almost a little frantic, rough, close to a whine. "Oh, God, Daryl..." And then it occurs to him that he might fuck her right here, here in this field under the stars, strip with her and lay himself between her legs, spread and lift her thighs, thrust hard into her, and that might be good. That might be very good. Because she's rocking against him in a steady rhythm, meeting his own, wriggling down against his knee, and every breath out of her is shaky and shallow and there's so much fucking need in every single one.

But then her fingers tug in his hair, more sharply than before, and he senses something wrong when she stiffens. Jerks himself up and back with everything in his chest trying to crowd into his throat.

"Beth?"

She bites her lip. The starlight is touching her face, making it all so clear, and there's need but there's also anxiety. A lot of it.

And he can't. He can't be a jerk and he can't be a creep. He stops moving, shifts himself a little away without completely letting go of her.

"I just... I've never done this. Ever."

He stares at her, briefly uncomprehending. But she's. Regardless of how some of his fantasies have gone, she's eighteen. She had a boyfriend. It sounded like she had one for a while, the same one. But she never actually. She never.

She has no reason to lie to him about this, and a dim instinct tells him that she in fact has a great many reasons to not do so.

"You're sayin'..." He pushes himself up, braces himself there, though he's still not totally rolling off her. "Sex. You never."

She shakes her head. "Not... Well." No color in this light, just shadows and silver, but he can still tell that she's blushing furiously. "Not really anythin'."

Another brief period of staring. A deeper part of him knows that he shouldn't actually be so astonished by this, that it's probably not all that uncommon, but he's still having trouble. And he's probably making her feel even weirder, and he feels bad about that, but he also can't help it.

"Why not?"

"I wanted to wait," she says simply - a slight quaver in her voice. Sounding a little helpless.

"Till you got married or somethin'?" Because he really does want to understand. Understanding feels important.

She rolls her shoulder with a mild amount of difficulty, and he thinks he really should get off her, so he finally does - he rolls to the side and raises himself up on one elbow, still staring at her. She also turns on her side, facing him, and if he's still staring she still looks pretty helpless. Still blushing.

"Maybe. I dunno. I just wanted to wait. Till it felt... good. Till it felt right."

Everything in him sinks. So maybe he has fucked up. Maybe he went ahead and did it again, because he wants something too much and he went too fast, pushed too hard, possibly misread some signals. He thinks there's also a good chance he didn't, but the idea that he did...

"It don't feel right, now?"

"It's not you. Daryl... Daryl, it's not." She hesitates, then lifts a hand and touches his face, runs a fingertip down his cheekbone, and he could pull away but instead he leans into the touch.

He's helpless too.

"So what is it?" he murmurs, and the words feel gentle in his mouth, tone soft in his ears. He hopes it really does sound like that. Not fucking things up. Not hurting her, not causing any upset. Just trying to process.

"I'm just not ready."

So soft. Soft as him. He hears it and he can't imagine not obeying that, though it's not phrased as a command. It still is. A gentle one but a command all the same. Back off.

For now.

He closes his hand over hers, curls his fingers around it, holds on, nods.

But he needs her to understand too. He does.

"I want you."

She smiles then, smiles and leans close and tips her forehead against his, and he knows it's okay and everything in him settles again. This isn't bad. He isn't bad.

"I want you, too."

Jesus God.

And all at once he gets what that means. What that means they could do. What he could do with her.

What he could be with her.

It nearly makes him tremble. Shake. That's... Maybe it shouldn't, but it feels like a lot of responsibility. If he does. If she wants that. If she really does - and once more, could be he should feel like such a creep for this, but he does anyway and can't even begin to help it - the idea of being her first, of being inside her like that... It sends a pulse of heat straight into his cock so hard and so hot that he has to fight back a moan.

"Alright." He smiles, slightest curve of his mouth, and it feels good again. Like everything else, it feels right. It feels like what should happen. She's so beautiful like this, flushed and wide-eyed and still panting a little, warmth flowing off her like water. He lays a hand on her hip and her eyes flutter half closed.

Just a hand, and it does this to her.

"I want you," she whispers again, and she combs her hand through his hair. He makes a quiet sound, low and rough, and closes his eyes.

He has no idea how to show her how much he needs her. Not just wants; needs. To be with her like this. Be with her at all. No fucking idea how he could do that.

Except maybe.

He actually dozes. When he opens his eyes again he's on his back and she's curled up against his side, head pillowed on his shoulder and her hand resting on the center of his chest, rising and falling as he breathes. He looks at it, watches, and feels her. Feels how she fits with him. His arm is pinned under her and it's completely asleep, but he couldn't care less.

But the moon is rising. It's late. Extremely late. He has to get her home. She stirs and he stirs her more, and eventually she sits up, rubbing at her eyes and yawning, and it's absolutely the most adorable thing he thinks he's ever seen.

He takes her face in his hands and kisses her, slow.

She kisses him again when he lets her off a little way up the road from the farm. It's between hard and soft and it's very deep, and he sinks into it and pulls her down with him, hand tangled in her hair, snarling it up even worse than it already is. She's going to have a hell of a time brushing it out. He wonders if, when she does, she'll think about him.

About this.

"G'night," she whispers, smiling against his mouth. She doesn't smell like moonshine. At least hardly at all.

But she tastes like it.

She climbs out and starts walking. He watches her for a moment or two and then drives into the dark, thinking about old stars, old stories, about how this has a quality of inevitability that really should scare him, or at least he imagines it should, but it doesn't. She said she didn't think it was true that he isn't afraid of anything, and it's not...

Except right now it sort of is. Almost.

Later, on the edge of falling asleep, the slow aftershocks of his orgasm still rolling gently through him, he thinks that it might be dangerous, that lack of fear. But for now he drives along with the windows down and the taste of moonshine still on his lips, literal moonshine falling on him, and the radio is off but he gives in to that impulse - old now - and under his breath he sings a little of one of the songs she sang at the coffee shop.

He never thought he could sing, not really, but he also never exactly tried, and it doesn't sound all that bad to him.

And it feels right. Feels like what should happen.

ring the bells that still can ring
forget your perfect offering
there is a crack in everything
that's how the light gets in

Note: songs are "The Bad Actress" by Josh Ritter and "Anthem" by Leonard Cohen