Chapter 50: the way you're bathed in light

She fucks with time. She really does.

He knew that, but there are points where it slingshots back at him, forward at him, reminds him of how things have been and how they're likely to continue to be. It feels like hours later when he can focus again, but the moon is still directly overhead, so it can't have been more than a few minutes.

Then again, she can manipulate the universe.

At some point that he can't clearly remember she must have rolled off him, one of them must have removed the condom and gotten rid of it, and now she's lying tangled with him, curled boneless into his arms, and her breathing is simultaneously hard and slow, shuddering in and out of her lungs. Her skin is gleaming, shining; she's still glowing but differently. There might be no end to the ways in which she captures and holds and releases the light.

His hands are buried in her hair, damp strands wrapped around his fingers. She's cool in the light breeze, the air kept by the water and the stones. Her hands are drifting mindlessly over his skin, his side, his arm - no real object but apparently unable to remain still.

He has her.

A little while. Just a little. The moon slides further across the sky - maybe a finger's width. Finally she stirs and her lips move against the hollow between his collarbones. A whisper; pretty sure it's his name.

He kisses her brow. "Y'alright?"

She nods and he feels her lips tug into a smile. "Yeah. Really alright." She pulls back enough to look up at him, her eyes so big and bright. "I dunno if I feel any different."

"You thought you would?" But yeah, she must have thought that. Part of her, anyway. Because people are told that. You do this thing and afterward you're different in some fundamental and eternal way, like your very DNA has been rearranged. Like you aren't who you were and never will be again. But it wouldn't be like that. That doesn't make any sense. You don't change all at once that way.

This has been going on for some time now.

"Maybe." She sighs, a happy sound, and lowers her head. "You know they all say that. But I felt like this before."

"Like what?"

"Like I can do anythin'," she whispers. Once again, it sounds like she's telling him a secret. "Like anythin' could happen."

Sometimes she talks about pieces of herself and he hears and believes but on a deep level he just doesn't understand. But sometimes she talks and it's like she's putting words to things he couldn't quite reach. Like climbing the radio tower, like jumping, like maybe being able to fly. Like that day on the bike, as if he could out-ride everything.

So he has nothing to add. He just nods, and he knows she'll get it.

After another few moments she pulls away enough to lie flat on her back, one knee raised and her hands on her belly, once again all ivory and silver. He moves more fully onto his side and lifts his head, rests his cheek on his hand and cups her breast with the other. It's like in her room, staying with her until she fell asleep. He wants her, but mostly right now he wants to feel her breathing, feel the steady beat of her heart.

She covers his hand with hers. "Jimmy said he loved me once," she murmurs thoughtfully. "He... I don't wanna talk about him like he was this bad person, or he was stupid, or I didn't actually like him. I did. I do. He's a good guy. But I think he was sayin' it 'cause he thought it was somethin' I wanted to hear. Or he thought he meant it then, but he didn't, not really." She shifts her gaze from the moon to him, reaches up and touches his mouth. "Nothin' like how you said it."

"I mean it." Hushed. Once again this feels like a place where he can't talk full-voice, where it might be disrespectful to something. Sighs and moans and sobs and laughter, cries, wild sounds - those are all welcome here, and probably the louder the better. But he thinks he should tread carefully when it comes to words.

"I know." She smiles. "I do too."

"Did you say it back to him?"

She nods. "I didn't mean it. I wanted to. I wanted to be in love. I was hardly even seventeen, it was... after. Y'know? I wanted that. I felt like I didn't have a lot of time to do everythin'. I didn't die, but I still felt like... I could. Anytime. Maybe soon." She pauses and takes a breath, looks back up at the moon. "Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? I don't think I really got what that meant. It doesn't mean you have to be in some kinda hurry."

"What does it mean?" He watches her carefully. It's not that he doesn't know, or at least not that he has no idea; he does, or at least he has some idea of what it might mean for him. But this is her, and he needs to hear how she puts it into words. Her words.

"I think..." She's quiet a minute, thinking, her brow slightly furrowed. "It's what comes after. Precious. You don't have to hurry. You don't have to rush through stuff to get to the next thing. You don't have to live your whole life in a year. Or a month, or a week, or whatever. But you have to..."

Suddenly she turns a little, leans up, and kisses him, and it's long and slow and very, very deep.

"You have to pay attention," she whispers against his lips. "To everythin'."

She isn't exactly kissing him anymore, but she doesn't move. She stays with her mouth lightly against his, breathing him, letting him breathe her, and when his hand tightens on her breast hers tightens with it. He nuzzles her jaw as his thumb finds her nipple and circles it slowly, still with no real object directly in mind, but he smiles when it hardens.

Yes, he's paying very close attention.

"To you?"

She laughs softly and nuzzles back, pressing more firmly into his palm. "Especially to me."

He does for a while. Just as slow as he has been, almost aimless, stroking one nipple and then the other, drawing little designs around and over her with his fingertips, kissing her when her breathing quickens, deepens, slows again, when she sighs. It's just that, nothing much more, and while he can feel his body regrouping, feel heat starting to gather between his legs again, there's no urgency in it whatsoever. There are so many other things they can do with each other.

So he slides down her body enough to use his mouth on her, replacing his thumb with his tongue and his lips and his teeth, and he licks and sucks and bites gently at her until she's tightening her hands in his hair and gasping. And when he runs his fingers up and down her ribs her gasps turn to hiccuping giggles and she squirms, and that's how he discovers that she's ticklish.

Which he should really have known about before.

He rolls her under him and goes to work on her sides and stomach until she's squealing and shrieking and kicking clumsily at him, beating at his back and arms, and there's a desperate, helpless quality to her laughter that's completely infectious. Irresistible. He can't help it. It's his own laughter that gives her the upper hand - or really he just doesn't care if she gets it or not - and she twists herself free and scrambles over him, slams him down flat on his back and straddles him and sits there wearing only an adorably triumphant grin, and he pretends that he couldn't easily flip her under him again and make her pay.

He's hard now and nudging her ass, and she reaches behind her and gives him a slow stroke, mostly - it feels to him - because she can. And when she rolls a little, rubbing herself against him, it feels like it's for the same reason.

He glides his hands up her thighs to her hips and rests them there, light and easy. On top of him in the moonlight there's still an unreal quality to her, but whatever enchantment she spun earlier has dissolved a bit and left something softer and lazier in its place, and she looks less wild than she did.

And more, somehow. They're rolling naked in the grass, play-fighting, touching and kissing and biting - they're animals. They're remembering.

They both belong here.

She tugs her loose tangle of hair over one shoulder and - looking like something's occurred to her - she reaches between her legs, seeming to feel for something.

"What?"

"I just..." She lifts her hand and peers closely at her fingers. He can see them glistening wet, and a low, warm ache twists in him.

"Beth, what?"

"I don't think I bled any." She cocks her head and breathes a laugh. "Thought everyone does."

"You ain't everyone."

"It didn't even hurt." She continues as if she hasn't heard him, and now she sounds thoughtful. "I mean... Maybe a little, right at first. There was this sorta... burn. But it went away. Didn't really hurt at all." She lowers her hand and looks down at him, her face soft. "I always heard it was supposed to hurt."

We've been told a lot of things, he thinks. We've been told a lot of lies.

He reaches for her, takes her wrist, pulls her hand to his mouth and sucks slowly at her fingers. She closes her eyes and sighs his name, her fingertips against his eager tongue as he takes every bit of her taste that he can, and gradually she lowers herself until she's lying on his chest like before, her head tucked under his chin and his arms around her.

"Love you, girl," he murmurs, and it's so easy that he's not sure why it took him so long. No one had to teach him at all.

Unless it was her.

She lifts her head and cups his cheek, slides her fingers into his hair and combs it back from his face. "I love you, Daryl."

So he kisses her again, and that eats up quite a bit of time.

They're both breathless when they break apart and he rolls them gently onto their sides - and at that point they've basically come full circle. He wonders if they might cycle back around again, but then again maybe not, because it does seem like they're starting to move in a particular direction. She curls close to him again, but this time his cock is trapped between them and she arches her back and slings a leg over his, pressing in a slow wave. She's teasing him a little, sure, but at this point any teasing is going to be extremely mutual.

He lowers a hand to cup her ass, pulls her in harder. "So how many of those things did you steal?"

"Two." She has that wide-eyed look again, all innocence, virginal, gleefully dancing sparks behind it. "Didn't wanna risk more. I dunno how often he actually uses 'em, but... Y'know."

"Yeah." He smiles faintly and lets out a slightly harder breath; he's moving slowly but steadily against her, that low heat rising higher and hotter, and there's still no urgency but that doesn't mean there isn't need. He doesn't imagine there wouldn't be. Ever. "So we got... one more."

She's moving with him, just as slow and just as steady, her own breath beginning to get ragged around the edges. "Mhmm. Better make the most of it, Mr. Dixon."

But like she said they shouldn't be, he's still not in a hurry. He remembers what it was like before she knew, when this was something tiny and terrifying he was carrying around by himself, how there was something painfully wonderful about just wanting her, and then later, kissing her and grinding against her, practically feeling her soaking through her jeans, but neither of them came and there was something indescribable about tearing hand in hand up to the edge of that cliff, skidding to a halt, peering over, and backing carefully away.

It can be so nice to just burn.

So something like a signal passes between them and they ease off a little, stay tangled and rocking together but looser. Almost back to lazy, careless. And she laughs softly, closer to a low hum than anything else.

"You gonna make me wait again?"

"You got somewhere to be?"

He's kidding, it's obvious, but she leans back and gazes at him, and as she does her fingertips trail over the lower edge of one of his scars. He doesn't quite shudder, and he knows she meant to do it.

"There's nowhere else I wanna be, Daryl. Nowhere."

"Girl." It's low and rough, and when he kisses her this time it's almost as rough as his voice, and just like that there's a flash of desperation that dies away just as fast - or almost does. It's not completely gone.

Neither are her fingers.

"Can I touch them?"

He doesn't know what it does to him that she's still asking. Because it would be easy for her to not ask. Someone else might not, probably wouldn't. She's asked once before, it would make sense to assume it applies to pretty much all times and places. That once he's opened that door to her it's propped open.

But she doesn't assume. And he shouldn't either.

He doesn't ask her why. He doesn't need to know her reason. He nods. But as he does he takes her left wrist and holds it gently, and tugs at the leather cuff she's wearing by way of his own question.

She wasn't completely naked before.

She nods too, silent and pulling in a breath through her parted lips, and he unsnaps the cuff, lets it fall into his hand, sets it aside and turns the inside of her wrist to him.

Before when it was like this, he saw it in the starlight and the world was bright enough that he could make it out. And he's seen it since then. But this - like everything else - is indeed different, and he holds her so carefully, delicately, examining the thin pale line. He thought there was something beautiful about it before and he thinks that now - paler even than the rest of her in this light, etched over the darker lines of her veins. He looks at it, running straight across winding courses, and he thinks about a bridge over rivers.

Everything it means.

"I love it," he whispers, and he surprises himself with it but he doesn't worry. She won't be freaked out, won't be upset, won't be offended. If anyone in the entire world might understand, he thinks it would be her.

But a faint tremble runs through her, and when he looks up at her he has no idea how to articulate what he sees there. She's not about to cry. Like he believed she wouldn't be, she's not upset. It's something else. Something deeper. "Daryl..."

"I do," he says, and he does what he did then and lowers his head and kisses it, lips against the warm flutter of her pulse, the echo of the stronger rhythm of her heart, and she sighs.

This is something she gave him, and it's so obvious that he has no fucking idea why he didn't think about it in these exact terms before: that he can do this at all. That he would dare. It's her courage, her strength in being willing to let him, but she put him in a place where he can ask, and extraordinary doesn't even come close to getting at the heart of what it is.

Wanting to be with someone like this.

He would like, very much, for her to be the one place in his life right now in which he's never frightened. Never ashamed.

So he releases her and turns onto his stomach, because this is something else of his - one of the very, very few things - that he can give her.

She's just as gentle with him as she was the night by the swimming hole, barely touching him at all at first, ghosting her fingertips over him and tracing the lines, up and down and across in slow, smooth motions. She's like a luna moth flying over him. At first he's tense and tight under her hand, eyes shut and fists clenched and fingernails digging into his palms, but bit by bit he loosens, breathes deep, and she lies along his side - small and cool like moonlight herself - and strokes him until everything coiled up in him is uncoiled.

And it's actually nothing like last time. Not really at all. Tight, yes. But no real pain.

I always heard it was supposed to hurt.

Her soft little hand comes to rest between his shoulderblades and he feels her smile against his arm, small and deep. "You gonna freak out if I say I love them?"

His head was turned away from her, and he turns it back and looks at her. Her cheek is propped on one hand, her hair tumbling over her shoulder and the blanket, and that smile is still playing around her mouth. Her doe eyes, large and knowing. She's kind. He knew that from the beginning. There's a relentlessness to her, she's ruthless and unafraid of him, but more than anything else she's kind.

He swallows. It burns a little. His eyes, too. Not much.

"No."

"I love them, Daryl."

Stop.

But he doesn't want her to.

Another subtle warping of time, expansion and contraction. The moon doesn't move, not as far as he can tell, but eventually he turns back onto his side, pulls her into him, and he's still burning for her. Burning even hotter. He was soothed, tamed, but now he's awake and hungry again, and when she breathes his name, reaches between them and closes a hand around the base of his cock, he knows she is too.

I want you. Yes, yes. Always.

He takes her by the hips and pushes her gently down as he shifts on top of her, nudging her legs apart with his knee. He grazes her cunt with it and once again she's so wet for him, and she gasps and grips his shoulders, slides them down to his arms, stares up.

"Daryl..."

"What?"

"Like this." She almost laughs, shaky little breath, and hooks a leg over the back of his thigh. "I want you like this."

He ducks his head and nips at her jaw, and at that her laugh is a lot more than a breath. He grins, bites her again. He had been meaning to tease her some more, maybe use his mouth on her a second time and make her beg him, see how loud he can make her moan, but the way the words are trembling out of her... "What, other way wasn't good or somethin'?"

"It was good." Rolling arch of her body, and when she groans it's just a bit strained. He didn't imagine for a second that it wasn't. "God, it was... It was really good, Daryl. But I want... This, I want this." She swallows hard. "Please."

She doesn't have to beg. There's this thing where he wants to give her everything, take the whole world just so he can put it in her hands, and here, with returned mockingbirds trilling all around them and water echoing off the stones, he feels like that might be possible. Like everything is within reach.

They grope for the second condom at the same time and their fingers collide, and he laughs against her cheek as she hands it to him.

They didn't make it complicated before and they don't now. She angles herself up, gaze locked on his face, and she reaches between them and curls her hand around his shaft and guides him.

He sinks into her, it's like falling, and as a shuddering whimper slips out of him he manages to focus on her, on the tension seizing her features, her slightly bared teeth - almost a grimace, almost pain. Not quite. He doesn't think so. Her breath stutters and she hooks her nails into his back but she loosens almost immediately and smooths out, knees high against his hips. He feels her flex, feels her tighten briefly around him, and he squeezes his eyes shut because he can't really do anything else.

"Do I feel good?" Voice low, rough, still a little tense - but she sounds like she's close to smiling. "Daryl, I... You do. You feel so good... like this."

"Beth. Oh, God." He can't hold up his head, his muscles suddenly very unreliable, and it hangs between his shoulders, hair falling around his face, and it comes to him in one of those weird outside-moments how he might look to her - she had been so bright over him, drawn down the moon and captured it in herself, but he's sure he must be dark, all shadow, looming.

He doesn't hate that image. Not at all.

It feels right.

"That a yes?" She shifts under him, arches - encouraging, he thinks. If she needed to adjust to him it appears that she has.

"Yeah." She moved and now he does, withdrawing - almost pulling out of her entirely - and she sobs softly when he thrusts in. Not fast, not even especially hard, but deep. Deep into her, deep as he can go. He doesn't want to hurt her, he realizes - oh my God, no - but he does want her to feel it. Feel him. "You feel so fuckin' good, Beth."

The sound she makes is affirmation, though it's not a word, and her hands are tightening on him again, one of them sliding into his hair and tugging him down. He thought about this, he remembers it as he kisses her - thrusts his tongue into her mouth in sync with his cock in her cunt. In the barn. Lifting her, fucking her up against the wall, kissing her too, making her as happy as he could.

He has dreams and apparently in one form or another they come true.

Her head drops back against the blanket when he starts to speed up, going harder, hooking a hand under her knee and lifting her higher. Opening her up. It seems like she's not sure what to do with her hands anymore and she's clutching at anything, fingers woven into his hair, fingers clenched over a fold of the blanket, her mouth fallen open and her breath coming with sharp little whines.

"Daryl- Daryl, Jesus, go- harder, I want it harder, I want-" Trailing off into a moan and he obliges, panting, because of course she can take it, of course she's not going to break under him, and she wants it, and she's going to have what she wants. Beautiful girl, beautiful little wild thing, she caught him but he's taking her now.

He slides a hand under her, pressing against the small of her back, and lifts her, pulling her tight against him, nearly pounding into her and almost growling as he does. It's rough, but its own kind of sweet. Rough because he loves her, because he wants her that much, because he can control himself but it feels so fucking good to not have to for a while.

"Jesus Christ, Daryl. Oh." Rolling, trembling laugh as she wraps her legs around his waist. "I wanna feel you come, I want- Please... Please, I want it."

And maybe it makes no difference, maybe he shouldn't care, maybe it shouldn't do anything for him, but he imagines that, exactly in the way she says: no condom, just him inside her, coming in her, giving her that too, dripping sticky between her thighs, and he does care, he cares about every way in which he can fuck her, every way it might be possible, and he presses his bared teeth against the side of her throat and snarls, hauling her against him and stiffening and shaken by a deep quaking that rolls through him and leaves him far too soon.

But it's good. It's so good.

She's panting along with him as he slowly drifts down on top of her, and although everything is getting even fuzzier around the edges, after a few moments he has the presence of mind to pull out of her and peel off the condom, tie it off and toss it away into the grass.

He's not spoiling anything. They'll take care of it later. This is why they're here.

He pulls her close again and she's murmuring things, blurry as he feels - Love you, I love you, it's so good, Daryl, I love- But it's not as good for her as it could be and he slides his hand down her, over her ribs and belly, and she parts her legs as soon as his fingertips brush her clit. It's easy and it's also fast - he strokes her with fingers wet in her juices, rubs her in quick little circles, and it feels like seconds and probably is before she whimpers and shudders, fumbles at his wrist and clamps her legs tight around his hand.

Coming softer than before. But it might be time for everything to be soft now.

After, he dozes. In his arms, legs tangled with his, he's reasonably certain that she dozes too.

When he finally stirs the moon has slipped further down the sky, almost touching the top of one of the crumbled stone walls. The breeze has picked up but it's still a warm night, and more than anything it feels like a hand caressing its way across his skin. She's still almost limp against him, and she doesn't resist him or particularly help him when he rolls her over and arranges her so her back is to his chest. She moves a little when he drops a hand between her thighs, and she moves more when he starts to work his fingers feather-light over her clit, but though she's moaning quietly and rocking her hips he's not entirely sure that she's fully conscious. And when she comes this time it seems like a gentle wave, easy and smooth, and she sighs through it, if anything relaxing even more.

He dozes again, hand curved over her mound and fingertips resting against the slick folds of her lips. He might whisper it against the back of her neck - I love you.

He's not sure he can stop saying it now.

When he opens his eyes next the moon is almost lost in the trees, and he knows it's less than a couple of hours until dawn. They have to leave.

They always have to leave.

"Beth." At some point she turned toward him again, nestled against his chest, and he kisses her brow, strokes a hand through her hair and slips the strands between his fingers - waking her up as slow as he can. She murmurs and stirs, presses close, her arms tucked against her sides. Once again she feels so small.

"We gotta go." He kisses her again - her brow, her temple, and her eyes flutter open. "C'mon, Beth."

She blinks, rolls - really almost flops - away from him and stretches, yawning. Smiling up at the sky. The stars are brighter. Much brighter.

"I don't wanna."

He sits up, wincing a little as his back pops. "You're gonna get me shot."

"Yeah, I actually don't wanna get you shot." She stretches again, her entire body lifting in a graceful, sensual arch, and for a few seconds the urge to launch himself at her and make use of the couple of hours of remaining night they have is almost too much for him. But he can't fuck around. Not with this.

It's an indication of his state of mind that he finds the phrasing amusing.

They reluctantly find their clothes, reluctantly drag them on, reluctantly gather everything up. The world is sharper around the edges, he thinks as they pass through the door and across the grassy lawn toward the slope. They entered a different world and now they're leaving it. Tangent universe. Splitting off, maybe because of something they did.

He does believe they can return, though.

The mockingbirds are silent as they climb through the dark, as they get silently into the truck and the engine mutters to life, as he backs them onto the road out. The forest slowly falls away from them on the left and then on either side, and by the time they reach the main road the stars are brilliant, an hour or so to shine before first light erases them.

They don't speak until he pulls over beside the oak tree, and she just sits for a moment, her head tilted slightly back and her eyes closed. She doesn't seem fully aware of him. So he looks at her and he feels like he's been broken open, and he's felt like that enough times by now that it no longer hurts.

"I wanna see you on Sunday," she whispers, and he murmurs wordless agreement. He does too. He wants to see her every second. "I'll tell you when. Where."

"Alright."

She opens her eyes and turns to him, drifts to him like a spirit and kisses the breath slowly out of him. His hands find her hair, her face, her neck, and it's that tangent universe again, slipping into it for just a few scattered fragments of time. The place she made for them. Except now he thinks maybe they made it together.

They're not children anymore. But they also are. Even more than before, they are.

First and last girl. First and last man.

This might not be the story he thought it was.