Chapter 58: then like falling stars back down to sleep we'll go

So he takes the money by on Sunday.

It's not everything he has. It's by far the better part of it, though. There's enough for gas and food - and booze, because even now there's only so far he's willing to push the limits of Merle's willingness to cooperate - for the next week or so. That part of this is done and it'll work.

The rest of it... Well, like he said. They'll figure it out.

Rather than just performing the transaction at the door, Cathy invites him in and sits him down at the breakfast table in the kitchen - which is large, all dark wood cabinets, molding, the table itself - and after she takes the cash and scribbles him a receipt she gives him coffee, she lights up a cigarette and so does he, and it takes him about fifteen seconds to realize that she's not being hospitable so much as she is - lightly - interrogating him.

He dislikes it, but he doesn't resent her for it. He would probably interrogate himself too.

Where are they from? Atlanta - it's technically true in most important ways, and it's vague enough to obscure all the important details. Where are they living now? He tells her, and he makes no secret of the fact that he's interested in leaving as soon as possible, which she seems to appreciate. What does he do? No problem with telling her that either. She doesn't know the Greenes, but she's well aware that many of the surrounding farms make it a practice to take on a hand or two for the season.

What kind of second chance is this for them?

So now the question is whether truth is still the policy.

Daryl stares at his coffee and considers this for a long moment - as long as he thinks he can make it without actually becoming suspicious. So far, to the extent that he reasonably can, he's been honest with her, and it hasn't served him ill. And she already observed that he and Merle didn't exactly look respectable. But this is a bit more than that, and just because she doesn't seem like the type to clutch her pearls - doesn't seem like she has pearls to clutch - doesn't mean she'll take kindly to this.

Then again, she has his money.

"Merle was locked up," he says slowly. "We both been havin' a rough time. Tryin' to turn it around." He raises his head and gestures vaguely at the house around them. "This feels like... I dunno. I like it. It feels like it could be that. I dunno."

Fucking. Just. Words.

The corner of Cathy's mouth creeps upward. She's lined it in a very dark plum, and like the day before it's the kind of thing that could easily be overdone and yet isn't. "So you could've told me one of you was an ex-con before now."

Daryl looks levelly at her. "Really?"

"Yeah." Cathy laughs softly. "Yeah, okay. You're right." She curls her hands around her mug and studies him. "Could just throw your cash back at you, kick you out."

"You won't."

"Oh, no? How come?"

Daryl gives her the most minute smile. It's genuinely meant. "'cause you like my face."

Cathy regards him in impassive silence for a few seconds. Daryl's smile doesn't grow, doesn't shrink, stays exactly where and how it is.

Then Cathy laughs again, harder - hard, lower and rougher than her normal higher, quaverier register should allow for. And he's sure he's in. Short of a massive fuck-up, provided he can get the rest of the money by when she said, he's in.

They're in.

And he also suspects very strongly that the non-refundable deposit might actually be refundable. At least partially.

But it's not going to come to that.

"I dunno," she says after another moment or two of quiet, crushes her cigarette out in an ashtray shaped like a flat duck and lights up another. "I dunno if I wanna be responsible for your second chance, Daryl. I dunno if I want that kinda thing hangin' around my neck, if it all goes to hell." And she's saying it with a smile, with an almost flirtatious angle in the way she's holding her cigarette between her fingers - though he's not sure she's actually flirting - but there's an undertone of sincerity that he couldn't possibly miss.

She's not saying no. He already knew she wouldn't. But she's saying something.

He doesn't answer immediately. He swallows the last of his coffee - black, strong, dangerously hot, in other words perfect - and looks at his own cigarette, which is almost smoked down, little red coal close to his fingers. He hasn't spent a huge amount of time thinking about what exactly happens if this all goes to hell. He's thought about individual things collapsing and blowing up and burning down. He's thought about them in fleeting, vague terms, and two nights ago he made himself look one of them right in the cold specifics.

Made Beth look with him.

But the whole thing.

What even is the whole thing? Boiling this all down to its bones, to its barest components, what is this place? What is he asking of her?

"You ain't responsible for that," he murmurs finally, and stubs his cigarette out next to hers. "All we need's four walls and a roof."

He doesn't go straight home. He drives around. Nowhere in particular; around. It's mid-afternoon and cloudy and cool edging toward a genuine chill, a bit breezy - the warmth has abandoned them, that fleeting taste of summer fled and gone, and this is autumn, real autumn. The breeze is combing leaves off some of the trees, scattering them across streets and sidewalks in little rustling flips and cartwheels.

He's thinking about everything and nothing, his brain running in weird uneven warping circles. Mostly he's doing vague, bizarrely specific, and very slightly frantic math. How they're going to be moving into an empty place - the ad said unfurnished and Cathy confirmed that none of what they saw will be staying with the place when the current tenants vacate it - and they'll have to buy things, actual things, not the junk they have in the old place, half of which isn't even theirs and half of which they pulled out of the trash or places that might as well be. The sofa is theirs, but Daryl is damned to actual Hell if he's taking that lumpy piece of shit with them. The bed came with the place; so did the dresser. So did the recliner. A couple of the tables are theirs. The TV is theirs. Their very few dishes, towels. Sheets, such as they are.

Unless they manage to lay their hands on more than an extra thousand dollars by the twenty-second - or they get very lucky with someone's curbside leavings - they're going to be bedding down in the new place in sleeping bags. At best. At least for a little while.

They've done worse. Way worse.

They can make it work.

But the how is elusive. Merle said no loan; Daryl has been making a practice lately of ignoring what Merle says or just going around him entirely when it comes to decision-making, and he could do the same here, but Merle genuinely seemed like he wanted to take a crack at it, and while Daryl has his doubts there, God, he really does...

There's the whole thing about faith. And it's been almost two years since he had any real faith in his big brother, in which he once put every ounce he had.

He's been making a lot of leaps lately. Maybe it's time to make another one.

He'll at least give Merle a couple of days or so. Try to come up with something himself in the meantime, keep the idea of a loan on the backburner, a last resort. He can do that much and not completely fuck this whole thing up. Probably.

But after a little while, heading out to the edges of town where the houses are small and sparse and the roads transition from pavement to a mix of pavement and gravel, even that fades, and all he can focus on is the chill in the air, the gray light - no rain, just gray - and the radio's quiet drone.

up the stairs to the apartment
she is balled up on the couch
her mom and dad went down to Charlotte
they're not home to find us out
and we drive

And he's thinking about the ruins, the days with her in a kind of sunlight that managed to be gently, flowingly ecstatic, flooding into his veins and making them both shine. He's thinking about the clearing, about how clothes had felt like silly unnecessary things when the air was so welcoming and their hands and mouths needed so much free range and freedom to move. The swimming hole, the water and the grass and her, stripping her to her skin under the moon and being stripped to his bones. The ruins in the night, the stone towers and trees, the sound of water and the nightcalls of mockingbirds, and her heat under his body and over him, fucking her, making love with her, and every single time the whole world - which has never been particularly nice to him, never given any indication that it liked him all that much - was kind to them. It made warm, soft beds for them to lie down in and play.

He's pretty sure that's over. From here on out, with every turn, it'll only be colder.

Darker.

If they want beds to lie down in, beds to play in, they'll have to make those beds themselves.

Merle's out when he gets back around five. For Merle to be gone and not responding to texts or calls isn't at all unusual, but now Daryl finds himself actively wondering, actually almost worrying, and he doesn't like that and he doesn't like the reasons for it that he suspects are lurking in the background. He hangs around, doesn't do much of anything for a bit. He's not hiding the money under the sofa anymore - it seemed pretty ridiculous to keep doing that - and instead he's tucked it into a dusty Tupperware container in an otherwise mostly empty kitchen cabinet. He pulls it out and counts what's left, though he did that twice before he took the rest to Cathy. Two hundred dollars left over. More than they'll need to get them through the interval, so that means they're at least a little way closer to where they have to be. Assuming no disasters.

Which he maybe shouldn't assume.

He lies down on the sofa and watches the gray light darken and darken and tries to think. He doesn't get very far.

After a while he dozes.

Merle slaps him awake around what turns out to be seven. Daryl swats at him, growls, hits air. Merle is gone, going to the kitchen, creaking a cabinet open and returning with a jar of peanut butter and a plastic spoon. He sits down in the recliner, flips on the TV, and begins to eat the peanut butter, moodily.

Daryl stares blearily at him for a moment. He's not entirely awake, and while he wasn't entirely sleeping either, nothing feels quite real yet.

The Kardashians seem to be in the middle of some kind of major existential crisis. Everything is very high-pitched.

He swipes a hand over his eyes. "What's goin' on, man?"

Merle grunts.

Okay, sure.

"Took the money over." Daryl squeezes his eyes shut for a few seconds. He wishes it was darker and quieter. He has no reason whatsoever to feel hungover, but he sort of does. "You get any big ideas or anythin'?"

Merle grunts again and spoons peanut butter into his mouth, and just when Daryl is giving the conversation up for lost and lurching to his feet to take a piss and scrub some consciousness back into his face, he says, "Workin' on it."

"But you ain't gonna clue me in."

"I'll clue you in when there's somethin' to clue you in about, brother."

Daryl sighs. Fine. Whatever. He's too weirdly tired to pursue this anyway. He heads for the bathroom and when he comes back he makes Merle share the peanut butter.

Much later, Beth calls.

Daryl knows they shouldn't overdo this either, because while it's easier to cover up a suspicious-sounding phone call than being caught in the front seat of a pickup with your panties on the floor, it's still something that could screw this whole thing up unbelievably. But he wants to talk to her. Needs to. The whole weekend has been strange and kind of uncomfortable and stressful in ways he doesn't fully understand, and talking to Merle isn't exactly a balm for anyone's soul. And there's her voice so soft in his ear, so musical, and really she could say anything at all and he would just lie here with the TV on mute, blurry light flickering over his face, and listen.

But there's what happened on Friday night. She didn't call him the night before, so nothing has been said yet to pave over that crack in the road, and neither of them is foolish enough to think her promise - or claim or prophecy or whatever the hell it was - did that job. So she's a little quieter, a little more subdued - not sad and not upset, he can tell that, but turned inward. Thoughtful.

He wishes so much he could just be there. Lying curled up together in silence is perfection. Patches of silence on the phone are just sort of awkward, even if he can hear her breathing on the other end and imagine her, pretend she's beside him or he's there in her room, it's still light years away.

Wanting someone like this, wanting physical proximity in this kind of relentless way... He's aware that this is yet another thing that makes people in these situations do very stupid things.

About ten minutes in, talking about nothing in particular, he remembers that he hadn't said anything specifically about the house. About the apartment. Hadn't wanted to, not until something was at least semi-final, but now he supposes that's the case.

Mostly.

"Think maybe we got a place."

"Yeah?" She sounds more than pleased; she sounds eager, and for the first time he realizes that she might have been wanting this just as much as he has. Hoping for it, even if she never said much about it.

And then he remembers eating ice cream with her on the tailgate. How she brought it up.

So you're... You're stickin' around?

He used to think she manipulated the universe to keep him here. Somehow, in those earlier days, it never occurred to him that she did so because she badly wanted him to stay.

Girl.

"Yeah. Second floor of a house. Kinda weird place, but... 's nice, I guess."

No guessing. She would like it. He knows she would.

"Where?"

"West end of town. Magnolia Street."

"Oh, yeah." Now she definitely sounds pleased, and the warmth in her voice drifts to him like a breeze and strokes gently over him and he feels better about almost everything. "Yeah, that... Wow, that used to be a really nice neighborhood. Still is, actually."

"Houses kinda all fallin' apart."

"Yeah. I still think they're real pretty, but yeah. More and more of that kinda thing's been happenin' since people started moving outta town. Kids go to college and don't come back. Y'know."

"But you're stickin' around," he murmurs, and his smile is like the caress of her fingertip guiding the corner of his mouth upward.

"You are," she says, even softer. Then, "So when're you movin'?"

"Uh..." Uh. "Tuesday after next. There's some stuff we gotta get squared away."

"What kinda stuff?"

"Nothin' big. Just some shit on this end. Got some stuff to sign."

"Alright." Still brightly cheerful, as much as she can be with her voice pitched low to avoid being overheard, and that's when he realizes he just came dangerously close to lying to her. He's omitted things - Christ, a lot of things - and he's dodged her and thrown up smokescreens, and really this isn't all that different from those, and it's even pretty much in that category, but...

But it's closer than he'd like.

"You gotta let me come help."

"Ain't a lot to move." She saw where they live, even if only briefly. He's sure her imagination filled in the rest of the blanks.

"Well, I'm comin' anyway. I wanna see it."

"Alright." He closes his eyes and watches the dim shifting colors on the insides of his lids - deep greens and pale yellows, dark purples and blues. All-pervasive reds. "Not gonna keep you away."

"Better not even try."

"'cause you're the boss?"

"That's right." She sighs and it almost becomes a yawn, and he can hear the whisper of the sheets as she stretches. Tomorrow is Columbus Day and school is closed, but it's late - very. And he'll see her tomorrow regardless, so he's about to say goodnight, when he hears her sigh again - deeper, a slight edge at its end - and he knows with a hot little shiver that goodnight is the last thing she wants him to say.

"You're gonna get a bed?"

"Yeah."

"Real bed?" Another sigh, very quiet but very audible, and the whisper of the sheets again. "Your own room?"

His hand is sliding down his body, settling between his legs and just feeling himself. Feeling himself heating, hardening, pressing into his palm. "Mmhm."

"You gotta show me that too." Her breath catches. "Oh- Daryl."

He guides her, slow and easy; her fingers were already on her clit but he directs her, sends them into her cunt and has her fuck herself until he can hear that she's biting her lip and biting it hard, has her play with her nipples with light, teasing little skims and flicks of her fingertips. Has her do the things he would do, would give almost anything to do - has her draw those whimpers and moans out of herself, all desperately muffled, has her panting his name and hissing how much she wants to come.

How much she wants to come with him inside her.

He doesn't come until she does, and just after she does he slams himself against the wall of his own pleasure and shudders and releases so hot over his fist, and as he does he imagines it in her mouth, on her tongue, her doing with him what she's already done on her own and licking it off his hand.

And it's like another slow wave rolling over him.

The world is so much bigger than he ever imagined.

After, breathing slower and deeper, he's opening his mouth once more to start to say goodnight and once more something intervenes. This time himself.

"Sing somethin'?"

He's half expecting her to say no. He can tell she's tired. But she hums softly - happily - and he can hear what must be her turning over in bed. "What d'you want me to sing?"

"I don't care." Imagining her curled on her side, legs drawn up, and curling himself around her, stroking her hair, pulling her back against his chest. Smelling her, that scent he knows so well by now and loves so much - her shampoo, her warm, clean skin, her cunt.

Some people might separate one of these three things from the other, think of it as a different kind. But he can't imagine doing so. It's all her. Each thing only makes the others better.

"Okay," she breathes. And what she starts to sing is like a lullaby, slow and floating, and it closes over his head like a blanket and pulls him in like her arms, her voice erasing the distance between them. She's here. She's here with him. All he needs is her voice and she's here.

fold yourself against
me like a paper bird
tonight we'll fly awhile
just give me the word

and hold onto me
like I hold onto you
a steeple holds a bell
the night sky holds the moon

melting flakes of snow
will catch you when you fall
baby, that's not all

Everything's going to be all right.

Note: Songs are "Brick" by Ben Folds Five, and "Baby That's Not All" by Josh Ritter