Chapter 31: every heart is a package tangled up in knots someone else tied

As it turns out, they both like teasing. They both like being teased.

Daryl knows what Merle would say - shit about blue balls, shit about Beth being a little cocktease, about that being pretty shameful behavior in fact, about Daryl getting himself a woman who's actually willing to put out and Christ, there are a considerable number of establishments in a thirty mile radius containing women who would be willing to do that for him, for free for fuck's sake. And this is all if Merle wouldn't give him endless amounts of shit for wanting to fuck a high school senior.

More than that. He still hasn't fully articulated it to himself, but he feels - very instinctively and very strongly - that there would be bigger problems. That something else might happen. That he's already in a somewhat dangerous position, and it isn't even himself he has to worry about.

If anything happens to her. If anything happens to her because of him.

But the week after the night in the field is delirious. That's really the only way to describe it. She said she wasn't ready and what he realized later is that he's just happy that she said something, happy that she told him - because he can trust her now, in a way he didn't expect. He can trust her to say no.

Because if anything happens to her because of him he honestly doesn't know what he'll do.

But this is amazing. He can't deal. He isn't trying to deal. Tuesday night she climbs down her trellis and meets him by the oak tree, rides with him, parks on a service road ten miles away and gets in the truck bed with him. He has blankets, and they don't smell like old cheeseburgers. They wrap themselves up in each other, and it's a muggy night and they're burning against each other, slick with sweat ten minutes in.

Ten minutes of kissing her. Almost all kissing. Kissing until her lips feel swollen against his, until his definitely do, sucking kisses at the juncture of her throat and shoulder and she laughs and asks him if he's crazy, because people could see in school tomorrow, see the marks he's leaving on her, and wonder how she got them.

But sure as hell she doesn't want him to stop.

He licks the sweat off her jaw, laps at the hollow between her collarbones, and she leans up and grazes her teeth over his adam's apple and he shivers and breathes fuck, Beth.

She might be a virgin, but she doesn't feel all that virginal. He grinds against her hip and she slides fingers into his beltloops and tugs him harder against her.

He wants her so bad, and the wanting actually feels like the best part. For now.

And when they wind down, slow and easy, and pull apart just a little, she curls against him again and he wraps his arms around her and the breeze cools their skin, even though he's still aching for her, the blood roaring through his veins.

I want you.

"I never had this," she says softly, staring up at the sky. "Never..."

"Never thought I would," he finishes. Even softer than her. He doesn't want to speak louder than this, even though there's no one around to hear them, like this moment is delicate and if he's not careful he might break something. He turns his head and presses his lips to her temple. It's not just that he has this at all. It's not just that it came out of nowhere and he feels like he's being continually smacked in the face by the sheer reality of it, and he never wants that to end.

It's that it feels so easy, since the night of what he's come - somewhat whimsically - to think of as their baptism. It feels like it's something he's always had, this thing he never even imagined he would. Holding her. Just the simple reality of his hands on her skin, tangled in her hair.

She turns a little, lifts her head and gives him a half smile. "Never?"

He looks up at her and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. He can't tell if she's teasing or not but he thinks it's entirely possible that she isn't. That she might find it strange that it wouldn't have been on his radar at all. "You think this is honestly somethin' guys like me... that we ever get? C'mon."

She leans her chin on his chest and studies him. "Guys like you?"

Suddenly it's a little awkward. He shrugs, best he can with her lying half on top of him. I'unno.

"You're a good man, Daryl Dixon," she murmurs, and before he can say anything she lifts her head and kisses him.

Kisses him for a while.

He's still breathing a little fast and a little rough when she lays her head down on his chest again, and it's not just that she's built that burn back up and it's a low throb between his legs. It's the words. Those fucking words. What is he supposed to do with those? No one has ever said that to him. No one has ever said anything vaguely like that. He's been called all kinds of things, told that any number of colorful descriptions apply to him, that he falls into any number of interesting categories, but no one has ever called him good.

"Thought you knew nothin' 'bout me," he whispers.

He feels her smile against his neck, her breath warm on his skin. "I know what I need to know."

He has to close his eyes against the sting.

Wednesday after dinner he corners her in the barn again but this time she's the one who backs him into the wall. He knows what a risk this is, how stupid this is, but he feels stupid. He's into being stupid. He's embracing stupid. She tastes like Annette's buttery biscuits and absolutely incredible fried chicken. He can still smell it in her hair. He grins - actually grins, Jesus Christ - and catches her earlobe between his teeth, breathes that he wants to eat her up. She shakes laughter against him, his arms curled around her.

He drives home with that low throb again, practically making him squirm in the seat. He never would have ever believed that it could feel so good to not fuck someone. Even if it's driving him crazy.

He likes this kind of crazy.

Merle is high when he gets home, high and flying, his pupils eating up his eyes. He looks jerkily up when Daryl comes in, asks him what the fuck he's smiling about. Sounds sort of irritated about it, like Daryl has some kind of audacity in feeling that good. Daryl ignores him and gets in the shower.

In his mind, wrapping her legs around his waist and fucking her up against that wall. Fucking her and kissing her at the same time, making it so good for her that she can't stop gasping his name, shuddering against him. God, that's all he wants. He doesn't even care how it happens in the end.

By Thursday he's positive: it's not even about fucking her. That would be great, but it's not even about that. He is completely obsessed with the idea of making Beth Greene come.

He wonders if anyone else has ever done that to her. For her. Given what she said... Yeah, probably not.

And he really believes she'll let him. Sooner or later.

Friday night they meet in the park, in the shadows - she's hooking up with some friends later and they're all going back out to the swimming hole, taking advantage of the last truly warm nights of the year, but he figures he can get her nice and wet beforehand, and he smiles at the thought of it before she even gets there. He pushes her against a tree, clumsy with how hungry he is, and she fumbles at him, at the waistband of his jeans, pushing her hands a little way up his shirt, fingers cool as they drift over his lower back.

He uses his knee again and barely manages to keep from using his hand, and she wriggles, squirms, clamps her thighs around him and lets out breathy little moans. For a few seconds he thinks he might actually satisfy that particular new obsession.

But in the end she backs off. Leans against him and trembles, panting, coming back down from what was perhaps indeed the edge. He strokes her hair, running his fingertips over the curves of her braid.

"You're so good," she whispers, her voice rough. Shaking at the edges, almost imperceptible but he does miss it. "You're so good, Daryl."

He almost wishes she wouldn't say things like that. Everything gets just a little more difficult to deal with when she does. And he wants to say something like that to her except good won't even begin to get the job done; he wants to tell her that she's the most amazing thing he's ever seen, better than he ever believed anything could be, that he can't believe she even exists, that she blows his mind apart in the best way every second he's with her - and she's not a goddess. She's not a goddess at all. She's a girl. She's a brilliant, strong, beautiful girl, and he's starting to understand that she's brave, too. So brave.

She's not just everything he wants. He looks at her and he sees something he wishes he could be.

He still thinks it might be too late. He can bask in this, soak in its warmth and its light, but in the end...

What's going to happen?

Where do these stories go?

Later, he takes the money Hershel gave him and, when Merle is in the bathroom and he knows for a fact - given Merle's announcement that he has to drop one mother of a deuce - that he'll have at least a few uninterrupted minutes, he pulls the sock out from under the couch and does what he does every time he's paid now and adds up the total.

With this week, he has over a thousand dollars saved. He should just shove it all back in and get it out of sight again as quick as he can, but for a moment he stays where he is, on his knees on the dirty rug, staring at the bills.

It's not like they haven't been flush before, but it always goes fast, gone like it was never there and leaving only hangovers and - in Merle's case - numerous instances where he's needed full courses of antibiotics. This isn't like that. This is his money. He earned it. He's not just going to piss it away.

It's time to start thinking very seriously about what he would like to do with it.

Later after that, watching Merle working up to cheating at pool, he decides to float the question. Casual like. To the extent that he can be casual about something like this.

"Been thinkin'."

Merle knocks back his shot of rye and calls for another one, shoots Daryl a look. "Yeah? After all these years, baby brother, I'm so proud I think I might just fall the fuck over."

Daryl ignores him. He's gotten pretty good at that. He's nursing a beer and he intends to stay on his feet and in his head. "Was thinkin', if we're gonna be here a little while longer... Might look at gettin' somethin' better'n we got now."

Another look, a little more incredulous, Merle's glass halfway to his mouth. "Better'n what? The fuck's wrong with that place?"

"Bro, it's a shithole, said it yourself like a hundred fuckin' times."

"Yeah, well. 's good enough. We had way worse. I don't see why we gotta go makin' shit complicated."

"Nothin' complicated about it," Daryl says with carefully modulated patience; Merle is good at picking up on when he's being patronized and that would be an excellent way to shut the conversation down hard and fast with possible consequences later on when Merle figures out exactly what manner of sadism he wants to employ. "Just get somethin' a little bigger. There's places. I could do with a bed, man, that couch is fuckin' up my back."

Not entirely a lie.

Merle slams down the shot glass and turns, eyes narrowed. "Sounds like you really have been givin' this some thought, huh."

Daryl shrugs.

Merle is quiet for a moment. Over by the pool tables someone has been caught hustling and his nose is in the process of being broken by an eight ball. A small circle of onlookers cheer. Daryl thinks about the woman in the bar, her desperate eyes. God, get me out of here.

He's so done with this.

If only he believed there was actually a way he could be.

"Alright," Merle says slowly. "You find somewhere rent's that low?"

"I'm gettin' paid more, you know that."

"Yeah, and I ain't seen a whole lotta evidence of that, brother."

Daryl's jaw tightens. He didn't expect this to go particularly well, but even so. But he's also sick to death of dancing around this. "Know what? You're right. I been givin' this some thought. We got the money. Let's do it, let's just..." He breaks off, screams of exasperation seething around the bottom of his lungs. "Don't you want somethin' better? If you could have it?"

"Seems like you do."

"Yeah." Daryl grits his teeth. He was ready to walk away, that night. He wasn't, not really, but... He was. "I do."

Merle leans in. He smells overpoweringly of terrible liquor but his eyes are sharp, keen, focused. "We're just leavin' anyway. Sooner'r later." He tilts his head. "Or is there somethin' I don't know?"

Daryl just looks at him. Looks at him for what feels like a long time. Before, this might have scared him. Before, a lot of things about Merle would have scared him. He's been scared of Merle and for Merle for years, scared so long it's become that same kind of bullshit background radiation, something else he hardly notices. Hardly did notice. But if he can't look at Beth without thinking about how it feels to run his hands over her skin, he can't look at Merle without thinking about how it feels to let someone weigh you down until you forget how to stand up straight.

"I'm gonna look," he says slowly. Firmly. He holds Merle's narrow-eyed gaze and doesn't waver. "I'm gonna look, and if I find somethin' good I'll let you know. And you can look too."

"Yeah," Merle says after another moment or two. Thing is, he doesn't look mean now. He doesn't look suspicious. He doesn't look angry. Daryl can't figure out what's going on with his expression. This - flat, almost mask-like - is something he's never seen before.

And yeah. That's scary.

"Yeah, alright." Merle turns away again, orders yet another shot. "You do that, little brother. You do that."

Saturday he doesn't see her. Sunday morning he walks by her church - he knows when to do that now - and there she is. He's walking - not standing - and trying to look like he's just on his way somewhere, and it's a good thing, too, because this time they all see him, and Annette waves and gives him a wide smile.

Annette really seems to have taken a shine to him, which weirds him out a little but which he also kind of likes. Sort of. Even if it's gotten a lot weirder on his end since he started to badly want to fuck her daughter.

Beth waves too, smaller, and gives him her own distant little smile. No white dress this time, and no peasant top. Yellow sundress, bright, and like the white one it stops just above her knee. The neckline is deeply scooped, and he thinks about running his fingers along its edge. Just over and over and over until she's breathing hard, until he can tell she wants him to take it off her. Even if she doesn't say so.

He keeps walking. He doesn't actually have anywhere to go but he'll figure something out.

Later that afternoon his phone buzzes.

tonight,12
come over

There's not a lot of detail in that.

But he can infer enough.