Chapter 55: breathing is the hardest thing to do

Friday is warm and increasingly so as the day goes on, dry but with a kind of motionless heaviness that could go one way or the other. By early afternoon the warmth turns to actual heat, like another one of those last fleeting tastes of summer, but even now there's an edge in the air, a reminder that fleeting is exactly what this is. Enjoy it, mortals, say the weather gods, but don't rely on it to be here tomorrow.

That's fine. Daryl only wants it for tonight.

During lunch, sitting in the shade with his back against one of the old gnarled trees near the house, he makes a call to the number on the ad for the Victorian-ish place. The person who picks up on the other end is indeed, by the sound of her voice, an elderly woman, and she does indeed have more room than she needs and could use some extra income and that is indeed why she's renting out the upstairs, so Merle was right about two out of three and Daryl's guessing that there probably is at least one cat somewhere in the mix.

But he's not going to ask. That would be weird. He wants to avoid too much weird. He can already feel himself falling into the trap of hoping this might work out - sight unseen, but he just has kind of a Feeling - and he doesn't want to fuck it up, at least not before it's unavoidable. Which it might very well be. Because he asks her if he can come by and see the place Saturday afternoon and the answer is yes, absolutely, and he mentions that he has a brother looking to rent with him, and that's when he realizes that he'll pretty much have to bring Merle.

Which he was going to. Of course he was. Merle came along to the other two places, why not this one? Why the hell shouldn't he? Why is this suddenly an issue?

That's a stupid question. He knows exactly why. And it's kind of awful, and there's nothing he can do, right in this moment, to change it.

Daryl thanks her and cuts the call, lowers the phone and looks vaguely out at the sun pooling in the grass around the house, insects buzzing lazily in its beams. He feels unsettled. There's a lot here that's still unsettling. Not all of it is stuff he can put a name to.

Nothing was going to be fixed all at once. He knew that. Doesn't mean it's not getting better.

But he's still unsettled all the rest of the afternoon, until Beth comes home and he has something else to focus on.

They're going to have a time gap between when she comes home and when they meet - a few blocks from the high school, and he elects to fill part of it by just staying a little later after dinner and doing some basic maintenance on Hershel's ancient tractor - it's running all right, nothing in imminent danger of breaking, but it could probably do with some cleaning here and there and some greasing in a few other places.

Lying on his back, neck aching a bit and his hands naturally covered in engine grease, it occurs to him again that they're doing something immensely stupid already, that this entire thing was stupid pretty much from the beginning - how long did it even take him to stop thinking of it as a mistake? - and that stupidity has been increasing by several orders of magnitude since they actually started fucking. And it doesn't matter that it wasn't such a huge step up from what they had been doing before, doesn't matter that to date they've only done that specific thing three times; for other people, he knows, that is kind of the clincher. That's what gets your head in the noose. For Hershel Greene - for anyone, really, - the much older drifter farmhand feeling up his teenage daughter is definitely bad, fingering her until she's wailing is very very bad, but the much older drifter farmhand fucking his teenage daughter in the front seat of the drifter farmhand's shitty pickup...

That would probably be a hanging offense.

And maybe he and Beth are doing something stupid, but he's not stupid enough to think that Hershel and Annette liking him is going to mean he gets anything even remotely resembling a pass.

No. He'll hang.

That he loves her more than he imagines anyone has ever loved anything... He really doesn't think offering that as a defense would go very well.

He sighs, lets his hands drop to the ground and just lies there for a few seconds, everything else slipping into the background. He hasn't been thinking about this directly. That no one should find out, the reasons why they shouldn't - yeah, sure, he knew all of that. Knew it perfectly well. But she almost died, and everything after that was its own particular kind of horrible-wonderful chaos, and it still is wonderful, so fucking wonderful he can't handle it...

But/and/now/so – somehow - there's so much more to lose.

Finished, hands rinsed under the pump and walking to the house in the early twilight to tell them he's heading out, he sees Beth just getting into the car with Shawn - who isn't going to the game but is instead meeting some friends elsewhere - cardigan hanging loose off her bare shoulder, and it comes to him all at once and with considerable force that once in another situation like this he could have offered her a lift and she could have taken it. They were still aware that it might look a little strange if it happened too often, but they didn't really worry, not really. There wasn't anything to worry about. They weren't doing anything.

There was such an ease in that, and even if he hadn't known what to do with it - and then later it started pulling out all his guts and cheerfully tying them in knots - it had settled into him and opened him up. Confused him, sure, and in fact it did worry him for a bunch of different reasons, but there was something about it that helped him breathe a little easier. When he was with her.

Outwardly - he hopes - nothing much has changed from those days. Everything still looks normal. Normal enough. Inside, of course, it's all different, every part of him, as specified, pulled out and shifted around, rewired and patched up - and it's been good. It's been good for him. She's so good for him.

But he hesitates for a fraction of a second, and catches her eye when she looks out the window as Shawn angles them down the drive, and what he's feeling...

He thinks he might see it in her face. Maybe.

They've lost something.

The light from the football field is bright enough to be seen what feels like halfway across town, and Daryl looks at it from where he's parked - shady side-street, almost an alley, no one around that he can see - listens to the dull roar coming to him along with those lights, and thinks once again about a world he was never part of and never particularly wanted to be.

It would have been nice to have something approaching a few bearable teenage years. It might have been nice to... Yeah, it might have been nice to finish high school. But this part was something in which he never took a lot of interest.

There's something about sports in the classic sense that he's not sure he's ever fully understood.

Beth is at the game simply to make sure she's seen there, that she can establish at least some element of presence if it happens to come up – and it shouldn't make any difference considering all the sneaking around they've already been doing, what they've done in the course of said sneaking around, but… It does. It doesn't feel good, and the un-goodness in it is something he's not certain he wants to unpack.

At least not right now.

It's early yet, but the moon is already lifting itself through the trees, traveling slow – continuing to wane, as moons do. Fading along with the warmth but still fat and golden, like it's harvesting itself. Reaping itself away.

These are slightly morbid thoughts. Yesterday he was blissfully happy. What the actual hell.

A huge roar from the stadium. Somewhere a dog begins to bark, deep and rough. Big dog. He hears a chainlink fence rattle. An answering bark further away, a few rounds of that, then quiet.

The crowd noise also dies down, and just as Daryl's checking his phone it buzzes.

halftime, be right there

He sits back and drums his fingers on the wheel, lips moving silently along with the faintly thuddy murmur of the radio.

promises of what I seemed to be
only watched the time go by

The song isn't even done before she's coming up beside the truck, slapping her hand lightly against it and pulling the door open, doing her usual springing hop in and onto the seat. She's grinning, breathing a little hard, and her hair is slightly tousled. He wonders if she's been running.

"Hi."

"Hey." He presses into her with a low humming sound when she leans in and curves her mouth against his, lips parted, and he feels himself sinking into her. But the tension is lingering in his core and naturally she can feel it - because she tenses as well, almost imperceptibly, and pulls back enough to look at him, cool hand against the side of his neck. Her face is half thrown into shadow, the lines of her features strange, the cut on her face standing out sharp and subtly flowing with the rise of her cheekbone.

"What?"

He shakes his head and shifts his gaze away from her before he can stop it, knowing he's already screwed. "Nothin'."

She arches a brow. Most of the time he loves how perceptive she is. Then there are times like these. Not many, not anymore, but apparently they're sticking around.

"Yeah, I think it's somethin'."

"I'll be fine." He really will try to be. He takes a breath and makes an effort to sound convincing, and he might manage it. He'll hope. One hand finds her thigh and rests there, squeezes, and she loosens just a bit and kisses him one more time before she sits back.

Still looking at him, though. He returns the look, keeping it even, summoning up a kind of centeredness and finding his own gravity. He's not going to get all defensive. He's not going to prickle. He's not going to fucking do that. Whatever this is, whatever the reason it hit him so suddenly and so hard, he has to deal with it, because she's here and there's this, her lips and their taste and the way the top of her thigh fits under his palm, and he can't fuck this up after everything they've been through, even if fuck this up just means fucking up an evening.

Because who knows how often you can afford to have this now.

Stop.

"You got towels?" she asks softly, and he nods. He bought some specifically for this. He spent a while picking them out, which was stupid because in the end he just went for plain and unpatterned - a soft blue close to what she seems to like to wear.

He really wants this to be good.

He's overthinking again. But fuck, somehow all at once the stakes feel way too high. From every angle. Calm down, for the love of God.

"Let's go, then," she says, just as soft, her hand covering his - so cool and smooth - and like she did, he loosens. A little.

It's not that he doubts that she wants to be here. He thinks he might be through with doubting that. What's gnawing at his gut and hissing softly like an annoyed rodent is something else entirely.

The lights from the football field seem to swell. He shudders the truck to life and turns them down another quiet street and away from that light, further into the moon-thrown shadows. Where - he can't stop circling this thought, round and round and closing in like water spiraling down a drain - it's safe.

But outside town, rolling through the dark, it feels better. It always does like this, maybe because this is foundational, the beginning of everything and back to the roots: the night, the radio, movement and her. Her elbow is resting on the edge of the window, her hand extended outward, but arcing no sine waves through the air, no rise and dip of her fingers. There's something about when she does that that he finds fascinating, almost hypnotizing, and now he can't stop noticing its absence, though he's not sure it means anything. Her head is tilted back, her neck bobbing when she swallows, and he thinks about skimming his fingertips down its graceful line, and everything is better still.

They pass the farm - the house an angular bulk against the sky, lights burning in the kitchen and parlor and one upstairs room - and as they do she lets out a slow breath, sounding almost relieved, and he studies her out of the corner of his eye.

Maybe she's nervous too. Maybe she perceives all the reasons they have to be just that.

She doesn't have to direct him. He remembers the way, couldn't forget it now, and anyway it's not difficult. He remembers the turnoff, the bumpier gravel road lighter gray in the moonlight and cutting across the empty fields, the rise and the little house further on to the right, lifted against the sky with its tiny lights winking like captured stars. He remembers the left fork, the gentle drop and dark seas of grass, the glitter of water in the distance, the old trees stooped and extending their branches over its glassy surface.

He's imagining this as much as he's seeing. He doesn't often remember his dreams, but he knows he's dreamed about this place. Way more than once.

They're still some distance away, rolling slowly over the rougher stretch of road, when he thinks about how she wanted him to touch her when they went exploring, casually and with no obvious purpose except to do so, and he takes his right hand off the wheel and reaches over, presses his fingers gently between her thighs and cups her in his palm. She stiffens just a little, glancing at him and curling the tip of her tongue to her top lip, and then she sighs and rolls her hips up, pushing against him.

He doesn't press harder. He simply lets his hand rest there as he reaches the bottom of the slope and pulls to a gradual halt, the pond laid out shimmering in front of them. He knows they aren't here only for this, but they're here for this all the same, and he gives her a gentle squeeze - and feels oddly possessive as he does so.

Possessing her isn't a concept that's ever asserted itself.

He's not sure what to make of it.

She sighs again and turns her face toward him. "Like that." The corner of her mouth creeps upward. "That's what I was talkin' about."

"Yeah. Think I get it."

"You get a lotta things. You always have." She reaches down and covers his hand with hers, holds him there for a moment as her eyes half close. Her breathing has slowed and her neck is still pulled into a curve so slight it's almost not there, but in that line is all the grace he saw before. It's always in her, that grace, hiding in her body like the songs in her bones and just waiting for the right time to emerge.

They've been in the water but he's never seen her dive. Not really. Maybe she'll let him see it now.

"I'm tryin'," he murmurs.

She nods, lifts his hand away from her and raises it, turns it, kisses his palm. It's feather-light and it tickles, tingles into his fingertips and flows warm up his arm. It's all right again, or as all right as it's going to be tonight, because she still has the power to do that. To make it so.

Even if he's starting to wonder just how far her uncanny powers extend.

"C'mon," she says softly, lips brushing the pads of his fingers. "I don't wanna waste any time."

He leans over to get the towels from behind the seat, and when he turns back she's out of the truck and bending to pull off her boots, leaving them where they are and walking barefoot and silent over the grass toward the water. For a moment he simply stands and watches her as she's thrown fully into the light of the moon - higher and paler and smaller now - once again a lithe little creature of silver and bone. Unreal. Not like in the ruins, not the same kind of rule-suspension, but this place is special too. Special for them, but it was special before they got here.

Too many people have come here, been here, left parts of themselves and taken other things away with them for it not to be.

He toes off his boots and leaves them beside hers and he follows.

Something happens between the truck and the water.

Both times they've been here it's been like something reached out of that refracted light and curled around him, tugged him toward itself. The first time angered and frightened him - made him angry because it made him frightened - and the second time it stripped him bare and stripped her too, in more senses of the word than he thinks he could identify. Now it takes him again as he draws up beside her, and it's like the water settles over and into him before he even touches it, his eyes full of reflected moonlight. Full of her, because of course she's drawn it down again. Collected it into her skin. She touches his hand and stops him a few yards from the nodding cattails, turns toward him - her back to the water - reaches up and lays her hands against his cheeks, and she's brilliant.

"I don't wanna waste any time," she says again, her voice low and serious, and he can sense a spark of playfulness dancing around the edge of this, but only the edge. He drops the towels, lifts his hands and closes them over her wrists, delicate bones under his fingers and her beaded wire bangles clicking and sounding oddly like crickets in the stillness.

"So don't."

A slow smile curves her lips, though the seriousness remains. "Okay."

She lets go and starts to tug the cardigan the rest of the way down her shoulder, but he stops her, fingers against hers. Like so many times, it's an impulse, a strong one, and now he sees no reason to not obey it.

"Can I-?"

She looks at him for a few seconds, eyes glittering like little pools of her own, difficult to read. Except that smile is lingering, as if she's gently amused by something.

Then she nods, and he draws her closer and slowly begins to undress her.

He's hardening as he does it, heat flickering bright in him almost as soon as he bares her shoulders, but it's nowhere near the center of his attention. What he wants right now isn't to fuck her but to see her, like he has before and also not, because they've never been here like this and they'll never have this moment again. The agitated paths in which his thoughts were beginning to move before have returned, but now they're only lurking outlines, a background that highlights the truth. That this is precious.

He can't ever forget.

He lets the cardigan fall and slips his fingers under the hem of her top and over the warm smoothness of her belly, and she pulls in something that isn't quite a gasp, her eyes fluttering closed. It's easy to lift the thin fabric over her ribs, hands gliding up her sides and over the small curves of her breasts, and she shivers, twitches and breathes a laugh, and he doesn't fight the smile that plucks at the corner of his mouth.

Tickling her in the grass, in the blankets, playing with her in the moonlight. Wild.

Here in this carved-off portion of time, he can't believe they won't always have that.

Her top follows the cardigan and she stands motionless in her jeans and bra, waiting for him, all quiet. But he takes the time she doesn't want to waste and gazes down at her, stroking a hand over her hair, over the silky weave of her braid.

Since he realized that this feeling was even a Thing he's been trying to find ways to tell her how beautiful she is, and he's been certain he'll always fail dismally - and what kind of hope did he ever have? When has he ever been able to articulate anything above the most basic necessary sentences? But he sees her like this and he wants to try so hard for her, wants to collect all the poetry he can find, every line of every song, select just the right words, stitch it all together in just the right order and present it to her. Finally get it out there where she can look at it, and he can point to it and say See? That's what I meant.

Except she doesn't need him to do that. She never has. She requires no grand gestures. He worried about his essential lack of romance; she doesn't want that anyway. Her expectations aren't extravagant.

Though he thinks, sometimes, that her standards are still pretty high. Which has implications.

But now he lets out a breath and smooths his hands up her arms and shoulders to her neck, her jaw, staring down at the milky oval of her face and the spun silver of her hair, and his fingers find the band holding it in place and tug gently, pulling it free and letting those gleaming strands flow.

"You're so fuckin' beautiful," he whispers, and she laughs and ducks her head - not embarrassment, he's pretty sure, but simple delight.

"This is where I gotta tell you to stop, right?"

He sighs. "Beth..."

"I'm teasin'." She touches his hands again, her fingertips drifting over his knuckles and rippling a shiver up his arms to nest beneath his ribs. "Don't stop."

He doesn't.

He's never taken her bra off, never like this - really never anyone's bra - and he's worried for a second or two that he might suddenly transform into a fumbling teenager, be clumsy when it seems important to not be, but his fingers find the hooks and undo them, slip the straps down her shoulders and send it to join the rest of her clothes. He cups her breasts, her nipples pressing into the creases of his palms, and she gasps softly and arches, her lips parted and her hands settling on his upper arms.

"Don't stop," she whispers again. "Daryl... Please don't stop."

He kisses her, fleeting but deep, his tongue curving alongside hers, and a quiet groan escapes her when he takes hold of her hips and kneels.

And this is suddenly very different.

He's thought about this. Only half in literal terms, and mostly about how he feels - overwhelmed by her, weakened and shaken, and back when he was spending a lot of time thinking of her as a goddess his imagination would occasionally frame things in weird, unclear terms of actual worship. But that doesn't feel right, now. That's not what this is.

He's not worshiping her, staring up as her fingers comb into his hair and push it back from his face. He wasn't clumsy with her bra and he's not clumsy with her button and her zipper, even if he's doing it all by touch, his attention lost in the thick fall of her hair and the half-shadowed lines of her face. Every part of this is very simple and this final part is the simplest, and he hooks his fingers under the waistband of her jeans and panties together and pulls them slowly down so she can step out of them, leaving him crouched in the grass with one hand on her knee, forehead against her lower belly.

Maybe this was always where he was headed.

"Daryl."

Just a breath, a slight hitch in it, because she knows what he's doing, knows it perfectly well as he closes the last of the distance and kisses the tight curls of her bush, and a shuddering sigh escapes her as he tucks his thumbs into her folds and spreads her enough to allow him to press his lips to her clit.

He leaves them there for a moment, feeling the hot little nub beneath them and her fingers curling in his hair, and if he needs some kind of permission, that'll do perfectly well. He smiles, nuzzles her, and her gasp fills his ears like wind as he bends his back and licks his way into her.

This is no longer something entirely new and intimidating for its newness, but the newness hasn't completely worn off, and a tremor hums through him as he tongues her slowly, spreading her wider as her legs part to accommodate him. There something about that, about how she's opening for him that reaches inside him and bursts, and he presses his face against her for a few seconds, almost burrowing into her warmth and her wetness with her pulse beating into his mouth, and she lets out a strained whimper and clutches at him.

And he pulls back and flicks hard at her clit and she jumps, giggles, tugs him in again.

"Jerk. Oh... Oh God."

Yeah, he can be.

It's like a dream drifting over him; there's no longer anything but her. Low, insistent need is coiling around the base of his spine but it can wait. Outside its tension there's no urgency in any of this, no reason to hurry. The whole world is flowing over and through him like the flow of her into his mouth, slick and sharp-sweet on his seeking tongue. There's no pattern to it and it doesn't feel like one is necessary; he's following wherever the soft curves of her cunt are directing him in slow laps and circles, and her moans are rising, tightening, sliding into a rhythm that he meets and matches.

"Daryl... Oh, that's so good, oh God... Don't stop, don't... stop. Right there, right there, don't..."

And he laughs, heat sluicing through him and covering all his jagged ends like a tide over broken pilings. It lifts him and carries and he wants to lift her too and send her flying - and he knows how. His tongue dances over and around her swollen clit in quick little swirls, and it's only a few more seconds before she sobs his name in a torrent of other unformed words and grips him, nails scratching along his scalp, her legs shaking and body rolling into him and her shudder blooming up from inside her and through her in waves beneath her skin, his hands.

He doesn't want to let go of her. So he doesn't. He knows he has to stop, knows it'll be too much, but he leaves off with a final rough swipe that has her whimpering, trembling in one more hard surge and then releasing, muscles going soft and lax.

Then the quiet descends, stretching out into the dark and around them like a cloak. He leans against her, licking her off his lips, lifting a hand to his face and gathering her juices from his cheeks and chin and carrying them to his tongue. She hasn't released him either, her fingers still tangled in his hair and her breath coming in quick little pants, things that could easily twist into laughter.

"God, Daryl."

He raises his head again, fingertips against his lips and that hot coil tight in his belly. Wanting to uncoil. Wanting to do that uncoiling inside her. "Come down here."

She shakes her head, and the hands in his hair are suddenly tugging at him. "You come up."

"Why?"

She changes the angle of her head just-so and the moon catches her in a new way, revealing her smile. That amusement is back and sparkling in her eyes, excitement joining it. Like she's had a wonderful idea. "'cause I wanna do you."

"You-" He freezes, mouth open, blinking at her as he processes all the possible meanings of that particular arrangement of words, and settling on the ones he's just about positive she's using. "Beth, I..."

Her thumb strokes down over his cheekbone, her head still tilted and her expression now faintly curious. No concern that he can see, but. "You don't want me to?"

He's not sure what he wants. He should be. It's insane to not be sure. But somehow this is a place he hasn't completely and directly ventured into, not even in his fantasies, not even the few times he's let himself get what he felt at the time was daring. Not even straddling her and watching her explore his cock, watching himself spill all over her hand and wrist, her breasts, watching her slide her fingers into it and lick them clean.

He really should have thought about this. Somehow he didn't. And for some reason, faced with it now, he's nervous.

"I don't have to," she says softly. "I don't... Daryl, we don't have to do anything."

You should only do it when you want to.

He hasn't moved. The world is creeping back in around the edges of his perception - the smell of the grass mingling with the smell of her cunt, the rustling of leaves and the low croak of a frog, and the glow of the moon directly above them, catching them in a beam, as if it's been searching for them. His knees are aching slightly - not unpleasantly - and so is his jaw. But she still dominates everything, her perfect curves and lines rising over him, her hands on him like she's delivering a blessing.

He let go of the goddess thing, but he sure does seem to keep circling back around to it.

That grabs his mouth, pulls it into his own crooked smile.

"Daryl?"

He understands. All at once he gets it - yes, he gets a lot of things. More and more of them all the time. This also circles around, makes a malevolent little hook in his brain and connects further back to every nasty thing he ever saw and heard about how the business of sex is transacted - just that: a business. A transaction.

And what he was taught then - from a certain degree of experience - was that this, what she wants... This is something people just don't really like to do. They do it, but they don't like it, and men in particular are ugly about it. They use it in ugly ways. He saw too much of that. Learned too well.

But he was lied to. It doesn't have to be that way. With her, like this, it's not.

It's nothing like that at all.

He reaches up and takes her hands in his, and he shoves all that bullshit away. "I want to." He swallows, pushes a bit further. Committing. All in. "I want you to."

"Good." Warm, pleased - but with a hint of breathlessness that he isn't sure has much to do with how recently she's come. She could be uncertain about this too. That's eminently possible.

Jesus.

Maybe that shouldn't make him feel better, but it does.

She tugs at him again, gentle. "Come up."

He gets to his feet with a groan, his knees lodging a sharper complaint, and when she touches his hand and her expression turns questioning again he gives her a faint, wry smile that he hopes is providing at least some cover for the flutter in his gut.

"Gettin' old, girl."

"Bullshit." She breathes it against his neck, tipping her head back to look up at him as her fingertips start to work beneath his shirt. But she pauses, her eyes searching his face, and he knows what she sees there because it's pulsing through him, and he doesn't think his skin can fully contain it.

This shouldn't be such a big deal. But she said it was a big deal for him to finally be inside her, and she didn't seem to feel the need to mount any kind of defense for it. It just was.

She won't make him defend this. She won't make him defend anything.

"Are you okay?"

His tongue touches the cut on his lip - almost healed. He nods. He is.

Somehow.

So she pushes up his shirt, fingers skimming over the plain of his stomach, lightly tracing his muscles, and they jump and he sighs, and suddenly he suspects it's not just about the infectious nature of the past, and it's not just about whatever residual shame he's feeling now. She's seen him, seen all of him, seen parts of him he's never shown anyone and explored them with her own body, learning him. Only not like this, revealing him inch by inch, and there's something about it that edges toward pain.

But she's showed him a different side of pain. Taught him. So he stands and he takes it, and she drops his shirt into the grass, leans forward with her hands against his ribs and lays a kiss over his heart.

He closes his eyes and whispers her name. She's soaked in the moon and he can't look at her.

"It's all right, Daryl." Her cheek against him, the ridge of her cut. Rubbing just a bit, like a little cat. Marking him. "It's okay." Another kiss; oh God, she's lower, the tip of her tongue running along the uneven landscape of his ribcage, and he clenches his fists and his teeth and almost whimpers.

He's so fucking hard, so hot. Burning. In flames for her.

Yes, it's okay.

Hands curled over his hipbones, she sinks to her knees.

And now he's afraid to look at her. Terrified. Maybe he won't be able to take it after all. Maybe his skeleton will collapse, dissolve, and he'll tumble into a boneless heap in her arms. He feels her working at his fly and his head droops and he moans, tries to say her name, hands still at his sides because he's not sure what he should be doing with them and he's only half aware of them anyway. The world has contracted again, irising closed around her stroking fingers and her mouth scattering kisses across the muscles low on his belly, nearer, and the whimper finally flies loose as she tugs everything down and his cock bobs free, pounding blood in the cooler air.

Rough fabric sliding down his thighs. Her mouth open against his hip, the smooth swipe of her tongue.

What do you feel?

She lays a hand on the knob of his ankle and helps him step out, and he's naked in front of her, over her, trembling. Because she might be the one on her knees, but he's spinning into the darkness behind his eyelids and there's nothing to hold him to anything except her.

And she is holding him. She curls a gentle hand around the base of his cock, and he forces his eyes open, stares down at her, struggles for oxygen with lungs clenched as tight as his fists.

She licks her lips, bends closer, grazes his glistening head against the corner of her mouth. Oh, Christ. "I want to," she breathes. "I wanna taste you." She pauses, moving her head slightly, and he sees a shining smear of precome against her cheek and his moan is weak and shivering. "I wanna make you feel good."

Oh God, you do, you do so much, you do every second, girl, you make me lose my fucking mind. But he can't say anything, can't do anything but jam his nails into his palms as she extends her tongue and licks - experimentally - at his slit.

And it all grinds to a halt. He can't. His breath and fists and hips stutter, jerk slightly, and his hands uncurl and grope for her head and still her. She looks up at him again, brow furrowed and lips parted. "What?"

"Not- Not like this." He drags in air and holds it, extracts everything he can from it, releases it in a ragged sigh. "Please... I just-"

I can't look down at you.

That's not where you belong.

For what seems like a long moment she does nothing, says nothing, and fear lances through him - that despite his best efforts he's gone and fucked this up, like his first time here, unable to open up to her the way she wants, not strong enough to be that raw. That defenseless.

Even if he wants to so badly he thinks it might split his head open.

But: "Alright." She kisses his hipbone again, takes his hand in hers and threads their fingers and pulls.

And he lets her lay him down.

The grass is so cool against his bare back and it gives under him as if it's receiving him. He watches as she crouches over him, pale and shadowy with her hair tumbling around her face, and she looks even wilder than before, something risen from the water to consume him – and he wants that, God, he does. She strokes a hand over his head, fingertips resting against his temple, and she lifts a leg and lowers herself onto him, straddling his hips, bracing herself on his chest. Like before, it's just like before, and he has to look up at her, can't look anywhere else, and this feels so right.

This, right here... This is where she belongs.

His hands find the top of her thighs, her hips, making a half circle and joining his thumbs in the center of her stomach, and again her muscles jump and tremble, her breath shaking into a soft laugh.

"Let me." She might be talking about anything. She could be; a yes from him would apply regardless. She can do anything. Anything she can think of, anything she wants.

She bends and relaxes, breasts soft mounds against his chest and her hands resting over the tops of his shoulders, and nestles, tucks her head under his chin. Without pausing to think he wraps his arms around her, fingers splayed over the bumps of her spine. He can feel the air rushing in and out of her through the back of her ribcage, and sense memory rushes in with it: mouth against hers, cold under him, forcing that same air into her lungs.

He shudders, and she doesn't ask why. Her lips graze his collarbone, and as they do and he takes a shallow breath she rolls her hips and suddenly that breath is a lot less shallow. Because he had almost forgotten his cock - trapped between his belly and hers - but she's reminding him, and she's reminding him why she's here.

She kisses his collarbone again, the base of his throat, and slips through his arms like water as she begins to work herself down his body.

There's no way she was going to do this fast. Because she's merciless when she has to be, and she knows him, and she kisses her way over his chest, drags her lips slowly down his side, scrapes him lightly with her teeth. He has scars here too and he doesn't have to see her to know that she's tracing them, mapping them with her mouth, and he's groping at her shoulders, one hand sliding up to the back of her neck, her head, his quiet moans tripping over themselves on their way out of his throat. Everything in him is wrenched; he knows someone who wasn't so fucked up would just be fucking enjoying this, but as she trails her tongue in a slow line down the center of his stomach it feels as if she's peeling his flesh from his bones.

He gave her his back, before, and that was so difficult, that was more than he would have believed himself capable of. This is...

He doesn't know what this is. But he should have expected that this place would hurt him again.

That she would.

Her weight leaves him and he feels her settling between his legs, nudging them wider. Somehow he finds the strength to push himself up on one elbow, staring down at her, fingers brushing the strands of her hair spilling across him, and she smiles and flips it over one shoulder.

Fuck, she's so close.

"I want to." Her whisper is low, rough, her eyes shining as she takes hold of his shaft. She looks simultaneously so innocent and so wise, nothing even vaguely naive about her, and very sure of herself. "Daryl... Please."

He ran out of options a while ago. He ran out of them when he decided to remove all but one.

He nods.

Her smile widens and she leans in and her breath is so warm, and her lips part, and she curls them around his cock.

This isn't his first time. This has been done to him - done to him, because like everything else it was essentially just something he tolerated - and it was fast and awkward and he didn't feel good about it after. Felt like he should apologize or something. But it wasn't his first time when he fucked her, either, except it was, and he's never felt anything like this. This soft, wet heat slowly taking him in, spreading out and up, shooting through his veins and dancing little flames along the branches of his nerves. He keeps himself up just long enough to see her head sinking down, her beautiful lips stretched around him, and then he falls into the grass with a thump and gazes up at the sky, nearly blind, the fading curve of the moon the only clear thing.

It's not even how it feels. It's that once again she's opening him up, taking all of him, wanting all of him, doing none of this out of any sense of obligation. And again she's exploring and that's part of it too: she shifts a little to find a more comfortable position, like she intends to stay for a while, and pulls back to lick the underside of his shaft, tracing the line of him, circumnavigating and returning to kiss his exposed head. When she laid herself under him in the clearing and played with him he could tell it was for her even more then him, and this is the same; she's not moving with any rhythm, not trying to meet any conception she might have of skill. She's just doing what she said she wanted: tasting him, feeling him, holding him in her mouth and weighing him on her tongue, ducking her head to lap at his balls, stroking all slick up and down and over him and seeing what'll make him arch and tremble and moan.

And everything is. Every fucking thing she does. He's not fully aware of the sounds he's making but he's aware enough to know that they're almost constant, low and ragged and breaking behind his teeth, partially formed versions of her name and other things that might be words and fall massively short of any coherent shape. His head is a sunstorm and his heart is a swollen bruise - and it does hurt, it still hurts so much, and part of him wants to plead with her to stop, because this is killing him and he doesn't know how much longer he can stand it.

It's not even about pleasure. Coming is barely a light on the horizon. It's about how she's breaking him with her hands and her mouth and her relentless, insistent determination to have what she wants.

What he needs.

She's... God, she's. She's. She.

"Beth." Tight hiss. He can't manage anything else. His head is rolling in the grass as thunder builds, hands tangled hopelessly in her hair, and he hates how he thinks he should warn her but he can't stop it. He can't stop any of it. He can't stop. He can't. "Beth, oh Jesus, I'm- Ah, fuck, fuck, I'm gonna come-"

He reaches for her, finds her hand with his, and she opens under him like a road and he stretches out his arms and flies.

Summer storms roll in quick and hard, assault the ground with rain, shatter the sky and move on as fast as they come.

Everything they leave behind is green.

Note: song is "Interstate Love Song" by Stone Temple Pilots