Chapter 51: heard your voice in between the lines
Daryl has never in his life beamed.
Not once. It's never happened. Granted you don't remember the years when you're still new to the world, when you're learning how to have a memory at all, and then there's a lot he doesn't remember after that for a lot of reasons, but he knows he wasn't smiling much at all then anyway. There wasn't a lot to smile about. Even a little.
There never has been, actually. Not real smiling. Not the kind he means.
So he's never beamed. He knows this. And he isn't going to now, wouldn't even be sure he possesses the requisite muscles, but...
Driving home with the sun rising behind him, long shadows in front, brilliantly pink and gold sky. Deeper gold across the fields he passes, and purple in the green of grass and trees. Starlings swooping and wheeling overhead, crying sharply into the morning like they're heckling the light. He couldn't go home in the dark. It just wasn't an option.
He needs to be awake for this.
It's not like he's beaming and it's not like the world is remade. But he's never smiled like this before, and something has happened. Not to the world, unless it has. Is the world, on some level, aware of what happened last night? Is that massively inflated self-importance? He never felt like he was important before. Maybe that's why; maybe he has no control yet, he's so unused to it. He doesn't know how to handle it, being significant. Maybe he's overdoing it.
Like it matters.
It cooled in the hour between moonset and dawn, and with the windows down it's almost chilly, The starlings are everywhere, absolutely everywhere, and five miles outside town - cutting through a sparser stretch of patchy trees, not thick or numerous enough to be called woods, meadow still visible beyond - he abruptly recalls what a flock of starlings is actually called.
A murmuration.
It's not their voices that murmur. The calls of starlings are shrill rapid-fire twirrs, nothing soft or subtle about them. But all their wings at once, hundreds of wings in simultaneous flight... those blur together. They murmur.
He doesn't need to know what about. The business of starlings is their own.
He had her. He did.
He drives through silent Saturday morning streets, parks, moves with an unusual lack of squeaking up the rusty side-stairs, sinks onto the couch and finds an hour or so of unconsciousness in which there are no dreams.
He already had his dreams for the night. He's more than satisfied.
He wakes up all at once. None of the slow drifting from before, from with her - the easing into and out of half-sleep. He's awake and he's ready to go, even if he's not sure yet what he's going to or for. Doesn't matter; it takes him only five minutes or so to figure it out.
He just about kicks Merle awake. He can't scrounge up a single fuck to give about Merle's cranky protests. He throws clothes at Merle, suggests coffee, suggests that he has some things for Merle to look at and offer his opinion on.
Merle notes that he told Daryl to find a place. Daryl explains patiently that they're both going to be living there and he's not going to be solely responsible for this decision, because he's not going to be solely responsible for carrying the load of all the bitching Merle is going to do when he invariably finds a whole bunch of things wrong with it. If Merle is in this with him, Merle is really fucking in it with him.
By the time he's done talking he's not so patient anymore. But his good mood is absolutely invulnerable. He sits on the steps in the sun with a paper cup of uncomfortably hot coffee held between his palms and he thinks about Beth Greene's many blessings on him.
Her softness and her sighs, the taste of her, the way her hips roll when he's inside her, her hair falling all around her shoulders when her body arches, how she lies naked on her back in the moonlight and dispenses wisdom like a goddamn oracle. How she draws down the light, how she holds it. Keeps it. Shines it at will, according to her kindness.
All of these things confer protection. He's sure of it. She's a girl and as such she's powerful.
He closes his eyes into the warmth and the light. Beams of it, the whole world stretching itself into a smile. Like something else out of a stupid movie, fucking cute little foxes and birds and squirrels dancing around and singing about how great everything is, but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel it. A rippling through him, low and constant.
Things are getting better. The good days are happening again.
He shows Merle the places he's already looked at, all two of them. They haven't improved since he saw them. One of them was actually taken but there's an identical unit in the same building. Merle ignores the looks his still noticeable nose earns, pokes around and mutters, but the muttering isn't entirely ill-humored. Daryl finds himself doing what he wasn't last time - doing it in both places - and moving more slowly through them, imagining furniture, light, somewhere they might live. He's never set up a place like this before and he knows it would still probably look kind of like shit, kind of trashy, especially given how things will probably go if Merle is involved - which, hey, Daryl insisted on, so not much room to complain there - but he wants to try.
This is completely new. He had a place while Merle was inside - couple of places - but he didn't care about them. They were places to sleep and keep his stuff, which was all junk. Nothing important. Really the only thing he cared about was the crossbow.
Except no. One more thing. Several things. He stands by one of the two small windows in the cramped space that passes for the living room in the second apartment, and he thinks about it. About them. Hasn't in a long time. Wasn't much point. He purposefully forgets things when they serve no purpose except to hurt him. Or he tries.
On the windowsill in both of those shitty little places he lived in, he kept a tiny collection. Tiny items picked up in pawn shops and thrift stores. A couple found in the street, dropped by someone careless or fallen out of the trash. A couple of trinkets of faceted plastic covered with some kind of iridescent veneer. A few pebbles of polished purple glass like you put in the bottom of fish tanks. A couple of pieces of quartz. A long, flat, thin sheet of mica, flaking and brittle, its edges translucent.
A crystal wolf with eyes stained blue. That, he bought. He was never sure why.
He threw them away when Merle got out. He didn't want to get shit for them, which he knew he would.
He sold the wolf. It bought a carton of Morleys.
Both of these places have sills. They're on all the windows. Narrow but sills nonetheless. He could keep things there. Catch the light with them. He doesn't think he cares about Merle giving him shit for it. Not anymore.
He's not totally sure Merle even would. Not much, anyway.
On the low front steps of the second place he sinks down and pulls out his cigarettes, lights one, offers the pack to Merle. "Whaddaya think?"
Merle takes and lights his own, inhales deeply and blows a long stream of smoke, hands the pack back to him, doesn't say anything for a moment or two. Daryl waits in silence and is happy to do so; this much time between question and answer indicates that Merle is giving the business some genuine consideration. It would have been easy to blow the whole thing off immediately if Merle were so inclined. It would be typical.
"I dunno," he says finally, and rubs a hand over his graying hair. "This all there is?"
Daryl shrugs. "Ain't looked in a bit." The question... He has no idea what to do with that question. It's making his insides jump. Making him edge once more toward something dangerously like hope. He's already way too close to that, pretty much camped on that lawn, but he's getting closer and closer to its interior. Wants to.
He should be able to hope for something.
"Maybe look again, then."
Daryl studies him. Merle's expression, his affect - inscrutable. "You don't like these?"
"I dunno. Just don't think we gotta jump into this."
That's... Once again Daryl's at a loss. More than before. There are a number of ways to interpret this, and the only one that makes any sense in terms of how things have historically gone is that Merle is purposefully - or maybe not exactly on purpose - dragging his feet.
It doesn't feel like it, though. So everything continues to be very confusing.
"Alright," Daryl says slowly. He doesn't get this, but he didn't before. Okay. And he thinks Beth might tell him that he doesn't have to get it. That sitting here on cool, bumpy concrete with his big brother and watching early afternoon traffic roll by, lazy Saturday, a couple of girls pedaling past on ten-speeds, someone mowing a lawn somewhere close by... It's enough. Don't second-guess. Question, don't be a fool, but don't question too much. Accept that sometimes things are just good, and there doesn't need to be a reason.
One of the girls skids and almost falls, the one behind her laughs, and the one who skidded calls whirls and her just about every impolite name Daryl imagines she can think of, but they're both still laughing. He almost smiles.
"I didn't hate 'em," Merle says softly after another few minutes. "They were alright."
Alright.
"Yeah." Daryl watches ash fall to the ground, rough gray on rough gray. "They were."
behind Target on rt 1, 4:30
go shopping before :)
And then of course, thinking about it later, there's also a room of his own - and a bed.
This part, he knew. Of course he did; it was one of the first reasons why he started considering this whole thing in any serious way. Just the idea of a space actually for real to himself seemed like fabulous luxury. Unimaginable. Yet he was doing the imagining. And he was doing it a tiny bit in this direction anyway by the time it started seeming vaguely plausible, but the relentless fact of Merle's existence stopped that line of thinking very effectively. Stopped even the fantasy of it, though it probably shouldn't have.
But here it is again. Because Merle seems to have, after his fashion, accepted it. Accepted Beth. Accepted that Daryl intends to destroy his life over her. So now he can think about it. Leaning over this scuffed up pool table in one of the circuit of varyingly terrible bars Merle has identified within a reasonable distance, lining up what he thinks is a pretty good shot, part of his mind can drift off through the blare of the jukebox and the wall of yells and raucous laughter, through the haze of stale smoke and stale beer and bottom shelf liquor, drift free of everything and into the night, under the waning moon, and slip sideways into that tangent universe he and Beth made between them. Not the ruins but a place he could build within that universe, that space: a bed, an actual fucking bed, nothing fancy but a mattress, something soft, sheets to wrap her up in, covers to pull over them both.
A place where they can play.
Play hide-and-seek, where he can tickle her again, make her laugh that hard, where she can pin him like she did, where they can roll over each other and he can hold her, she can hold him, and he can make her sigh and moan and sob his name. They can sink into each other. Lose themselves.
And he can make her smile. That alone.
They don't need a bed. He's not even sure that's where he and she really belong. They belong to the grass and the trees, the sun and moonlight and the birds, water, the sky. It might be ridiculous, it might be something any sane person would laugh at, but he's not sane, doesn't want to be, and they're wild, the two of them, fucking slow and hard under the moon.
But a bed would be nice. A bed and her, and time.
8 ball, corner pocket. Two hundred dollars. By the wall, Merle looks up from an intense conversation with a man who looks like a possum and grins. Daryl almost grins back.
He wasn't cheating. It wasn't a hustle.
He's just good.
It's three in the morning when they get in, and it's three-ten when his phone vibrates.
And naturally it's her.
Merle is too drunk to really be aware of him, staggering off to take a piss and headed for bed after. Daryl sits down on the couch and puts the phone to his ear, mildly surprised through the buzz he has going.
"Hi."
He smiles, faint, and rakes a hand through his hair. "Ain't it past your bedtime?"
"I couldn't sleep." She's talking very softly - of course - and he can hear her smile too. "Wanted to see if you could help."
"You just figured I'd be up?"
"Figured you wouldn't care either way." She goes quiet and he can hear her breathing, hear her exhale. He imagines her curled up under her own sheets, maybe in the camisole she was wearing when he last came to her - it had been cool, smooth. Silky.
It would be nice to touch it again.
"You there, girl?"
"Yeah." She's smiling a little wider. "I like when you call me that."
Talking to her on the phone - actually talking - is still weird. But good. Pleasant. Her voice in his ear like this, intimate in a different way than if she was lying beside him. He leans back and toes off his boots. One of them flies across the room and thuds off the doorframe, and from the bedroom Merle drunkenly mutter-yells something.
Daryl ignores him. "Why?"
"I dunno. Just do." She pauses again, and when she speaks next she sounds slightly hesitant. "I... Look, you know I don't care that you're older. I don't even feel like it most of the time. You're just... You're you."
He's not worried about the direction in which this seems to be going, but it's puzzling. Tugging at him. "Yeah..."
"But sometimes I think I do. A little." She laughs - hardly more than a rippling breath. He closes his eyes and he can almost see her blushing. Her cheeks would be so warm to the touch. Against his fingers. His lips. "I think I like it sometimes. It's not a big deal or anythin', I don't wanna make you feel weird, I just... I dunno. I dunno, I'm sorry."
"Don't." That word might want some expanding. "I mean... Don't say you're sorry. 's fine." He's not sure what he's feeling, not sure exactly what he wants to say, and all he can think about is how in the kitchen she told him he didn't act his age. How long he spent, in the back of his mind, trying to work out exactly what that meant.
"Doesn't freak you out?"
"No." Because it doesn't.
"Okay, good. 'cause I don't want you to stop." He hears her shifting, hears what could be the rustle of her covers. "It's not just that it makes me think of that. You call me that... Somethin' about how you say the word. I can't... I dunno how to explain." She sounds almost dreamy now - not sleepy, exactly.
She sounded that way talking to him in the ruins. Unhurried. Bemused by the world.
"You don't gotta explain."
No idea how to tell her he's been calling her that in his head since the beginning. Been using that word like an invocation. Like something as powerful as she is.
"I don't, do I?" she murmurs. "Not with you."
He starts to shake his head, then realizes she can't see him and stops, amused by himself. "Not if you don't wanna."
"Sometimes it's nice anyway. To try. Like I told you before, I like just talkin' to you."
"I like listenin' to you talk."
"Yeah?" Now she sounds thoughtful, faintly speculative, like something's just occurred to her. "Y'know, I..." She takes a soft breath. "I was... thinkin' about last night a lot today."
This seems like a bit of a subject change, but he's fine with it, especially given the subject. His eyes drift open but they're unfocused, moving absently across the water stains in the drop ceiling, that messy brownish-white atlas of some world or other. "Me too."
"I was... I didn't wanna leave," she says - whispers. "I wanted to stay with you. Didn't even matter what we did, it was just... It was all so good." Her voice roughens on the last word - almost imperceptible but he knows her voice and he know it's there, and a slow pulse of warmth rolls down his spine.
"Yeah, it was."
"I wanted you to fuck me again, Daryl."
She's said it before now. She was telling him, begging him, to fuck her, fuck her harder, hissing it and moaning it, gasping it as she rode him and worked her fingers so fast over her clit. So it shouldn't hit him this hard through a phone. But it does. That breathy little voice in his ear, saying that, and the pulse of warmth becomes a jolt of heat straight to his cock.
"Girl..."
"Yeah, see?" She sounds delighted. She also still sounds rough, rougher than she did. "It's how you say it. I did, I've been thinkin' about it all day." She pauses, sighs, and he thinks he's beginning to get an inkling of what's really going on here, and it is not a subject change, and the heat isn't at all dying back. "I'm thinkin' about it right now."
"Now, see, you got me thinkin' 'bout it too." He's smiling again, small as the heat dies back to a decidedly pleasant throb, and that buzz is making all of this way easier than it would probably be otherwise. He's not self-conscious. He's not worrying about saying something wrong. He's not worried about anything.
He's happy to be doing this at all. Happy with an edge.
"Want me to tell you?"
"Tell me what?" But he's teasing. Teasing with that gentle flutter low in his belly. This is something else he's never done, if he's right about where she's headed. Merle's done it but Merle's fucking paid for it, and he imagines that the difference is at least sort of significant.
"Exactly what I'm thinkin' about."
"Yeah." Then - obeying an impulse - before she can say anything else, "What're you wearin'?"
"Oh, I'm..." Soft giggle. "Just a t-shirt. Pajamas."
"Take 'em off."
"Daryl." She doesn't quite laugh this time. It actually sounds closer to a breathless moan, and he wonders if her free hand has been idle since she started talking along these lines.
Wonders how wet she is.
"You gonna do it for me?" Not that he thinks she won't, not that he worries she wouldn't say no if she didn't want to, but she doesn't answer immediately, and he's about to prompt her when he hears more rustling and the quiet huff of her breath.
"I did it."
"Alright. Tell me." He closes his eyes again and imagines her, still curled under the covers but now all smooth skin and wiry strength and perfect little curves. Naked for him. Because he told her to.
This isn't how he expected his evening to go. As a point of fact he expected to be passed about about fifteen minutes prior. This is much better than unconsciousness. He reaches between his legs - almost absently - and cups himself, feeling himself, rigid and already close to aching. For her.
"I was thinkin' about your mouth," she whispers. Not every syllable is clearly articulated, and he gets the vague sense that she's still the slightest bit shy, fighting some awkwardness, even if she spearheaded this particular thing. "About... your tongue. It felt so good, what you were doin', you..."
"What was I doin'?"
"You were lickin' me." Definitely shy. But there's heat there. A lot of heat. Her voice is even rougher, shaky at the edges, and maybe there isn't much shyness left at all. "How you were doin' it everywhere, everything, like you couldn't get enough. When you had your lips on my- my nipples. How you were... with my clit."
How she says the word, he wonders when she last said it aloud to someone, if she ever has, and the heat isn't a jolt but a hard wave, and he bites back a groan. And he's sure she can hear it anyway.
"When you were lickin' my clit. God, Daryl, your tongue." No more shyness. Or if it's there it's buried under the thick breathlessness that's come into her, and the last word comes in a moan. "You made me come so hard."
"Tell me what else. Tell me what you wanted. If we stayed." His hand is moving, squeezing, giving himself pressure in a slow rhythm, but he's already hard enough to be very irritated by the concept of jeans, and he thinks he'll probably fix that soon.
Merle won't stir for hours.
"I told you." She laughs, moans, laughs again, and he's sure she's not doing nothing with that hand, and that's what gets his zipper down. "I wanted you to fuck me."
"Fuck you how?"
"I liked bein' on top of you. I liked watchin' you." She sighs and he hears the sheets rustle again. "The way you were lookin' at me."
"You were so fuckin' beautiful."
He hears her breath catch and he stops for a second or two, halfway past his fly.
"Daryl..."
"You were." His hand slides in and he grazes himself with his fingertips, teasing, letting out a trembling breath. "Are you wet?"
"Yeah."
"How much?"
"I'm..." He can hear her shuddering, only in her voice but that's all he needs. "Really wet. Just as wet as you made me."
"You just check now, or you been touchin' yourself this whole time?"
"This... This whole time." Maybe it starts as a giggle but it ends all moan, deep and low. "Pretty much. Are you?"
He shifts on the couch enough to get a better grip, enough to work himself free and heavy and burning in his hand, and gives himself a long, slow stroke from base to head. "What d'you think?"
"Oh, God." There's a rhythmic quality to her breathing now, panting. Quiet, though. Quiet as she can. "I wish I could, I wish I could touch you. I loved... I loved touchin' you, I loved watchin' you come. All over my fingers, I love it."
Fuck. He closes his hand tighter around his shaft and presses into the grip, thinks about her laid out under him and her eager hands and her exploring fingers and her wide, fascinated eyes. "Thought you wanted me to fuck you, girl."
"Can't I have everythin'?" A real giggle, unexpectedly loud, and it sends a hot shiver rolling through him. "I want you in my hand, I want you inside... God, Daryl, I just want your cock, I... It felt so good." She swallows, moans again, and now she sounds utterly desperate. "You were so hot, felt so big in me. Felt like you were fillin' me up... over and over, oh God, I want you to fuck me hard."
He can't go slow. It's literally not possible. Gradual, easy buildup is a joke. His hand is stroking firm, steady, speeding up, the rhythm pulsing through him and into his lungs, and he's sure she can hear it, what he's sure she's imagining... "Christ, Beth."
"Yeah, Daryl, I... It feels good, Oh... oh, Jesus, tell me- Tomorrow, I want you to fuck me so hard tomorrow, please say it, say you're gonna-"
He doesn't want to be this close, not so soon. Yet here he is, his cock in his hand and her gasping voice in his ear and the image of her in his head, hand between her spread legs with her fingers shining and wet, sticky with herself, circling her clit, plunging into her cunt and giving herself what he's not there to give her. Her tangled waves of hair surrounding her flushed face, parted lips, her breasts, those perfect little nipples aching for his tongue.
He'll say anything she wants. Anything at all.
"Shit, girl, you come for me right now and I will."
"You too." There's no distinction anymore between her words and loose whimpers. He can only just understand her. "I want you to come too, you come with me, please..."
It's not going to be a problem. Nothing he's going to have to work for. He clenches his jaw and everything gathers in him, hot and tight and pounding, impossibly compressed, and the words flow from a part of him barely even awake yet. "I'm gonna fuck you, Beth. I'm gonna fuck you 'til you scream."
Through the earpiece comes a high, strangled sound, almost like she's in pain, and just as it fades and muffles everything in him wrenches and snaps upward and his teeth close on his lip as he comes with a hard whine and lightning in the center of his head, rolling flashes and pleasure that stabs and releases him.
He doesn't notice that he's dropped the phone until about - by his very rough estimation - the better part of a minute after he does. He fumbles for it, gets it back to his ear. He doesn't have to ask Beth if she's there. She's laughing, quiet and happy.
"Gonna hold you to that." She sighs deeply. "Jesus, Daryl."
He has no idea what to say. He feels a little like someone kicked him in the face. In the nicest possible way someone can kick you in the face. The words... Words always come easier with her, but they've never been that easy. Just not so much right at the moment.
He wipes his hand on his jeans. He needs to wash them pretty badly anyway. "Beth..."
"That was okay, right? Daryl?" Softer - not exactly concerned. But it sounds like she's checking something, and it takes him a few seconds to realize that she's checking on him. Making sure.
Making sure he's all right.
"Yeah. It was." Okay. Christ, he doesn't have a word for what it was. She makes his life so fucking strange. "Beth, I." He swallows, tries to focus. Really only one thing applies here for certain. "I love you."
"Oh," she whispers, and she sounds almost awed. They said it, before, but it was in that tangent universe, and while they've brought pieces of it back with them, and while it's not closed off to them even now...
Saying it. Hearing it.
"I love you," she says, still in that same whisper. "Oh my God..."
"What?"
"It's just. Sayin' it. Hearin' it."
Yes.
"I know."
"I don't even care whether or not you fuck me," she murmurs. "I don't care what we do. I just wanna see you."
"You're gonna." It's taking everything he has to keep from getting in the truck and driving out there to wait in the parking lot. He smiles. "But I am goin' shoppin'."
"Oh. Good." She releases another one of those lazily happy scraps of laughter. "I mean. You did say."
"Yeah. I did." He sighs and looks around the room as if seeing it for the first time since coming in: the beer cans on the rickety table by the TV, more on the rug near the sofa, dirty dishes, pitted fake wood paneling, other assorted bits of junk, some actually trash and some not, and the dim, sallow light the single lamp is tossing over everything...
He's going to do a lot better. Not just for her.
"Think you can sleep now?"
"Yeah. I think I can." She makes a low mmm sound and he can see her rolling over, stretching. Like she did on the blankets in the moonlight, her whole body pulling into a graceful arch. "Thanks. I'm glad you were up."
"Glad you were too."
Pause. Then, in perfect, uncanny unison:
"I wish I was there."
"I wish you were here."
Silence. Then laughter, also in unison, soft and slightly embarrassed.
"Yeah."
"Alright." She sighs again. "I love you, Daryl."
"Love you too, girl."
He doesn't feel weird about calling her that. If anything he just wants to say it more. Call her that all the time. The whole package, which feels so perfect in his mouth, on his tongue.
Love you, girl.
Sweet dreams.