Chapter 73: speeding through my veins until we hit the ground

He doesn't end up sleeping much.

He can't. He also doesn't want to. Some of it might simply be the weirdness of how it feels to sleep with someone else—to run into them turning over, gravitate toward them and end up pressed together, arms around them, settle face to face with legs tangled, settle closer face to face with everything tangled. The warmth, the sheer presence. Skin against his, never going anywhere. Never gone. Not a dream or a fantasy. Bluntly, shockingly real.

She does sleep, or if she doesn't she's faking remarkably well. But he stays awake, and—although he feels like it might be at least a little creepy to do this—he lies on his side and watches her, gaze moving over her, and marveling.

Something has changed in him, is changing, and he no longer feels like he needs her with the same all-consuming ferocity he felt before, but he's still in awe of her. She still seems so much like a miracle. So close to him and so relaxed, her features smooth, the tiniest smile pulling at her mouth—as if she's dreaming and the dreams are pleasant. Hair spilling over her neck and shoulder. Her left arm bent in front of her and her hand loosely curled, her wrist turned upward. He turned out the light a while ago but he can see her, and what he can't see his memory and imagination fill in just fine. Her scar there, thin, almost invisible, and he reaches out and traces it with his fingertip. She stirs and murmurs but nothing else.

She's not perfect. She's something better.

After a bit, he does sleep, and even if it's not for long, it's good. Because then he's awake again, tugging her against him, her back to his chest and their ribs expanding and contracting together as he matches her breathing with his own. He dozes and returns and she's partially on her back and facing toward him, her hand on the pillow beside her head. He doesn't intend to do anything now, nothing that might disturb her, but he slides his hand down her side and hip to her belly, and to her mound, resting there. Her warmth. Her softness.

And she does wake up, enough to cover his hand with hers. She whispers his name.

I love you, my girl.

He doesn't think he says it. Not aloud. But in his head is enough.

When he sleeps again she follows him into his dreams.

He's awake at dawn and he watches the light drift over and come into her, bringing her into full view. He strokes her hair but otherwise leaves her alone—only gazing at her, not fully awake himself, drawing in a slow breath when her eyelids start to flutter.

A short while after that she stretches, pulls her body into an arch, turns away from him and shifts backward with a quiet, happy hum deep in her throat. His hand settles on her hip, moves to her breast and palms her, and he holds her.

Not for much longer.

Time is running out.

But it's so amazing, waking up with her.

It's not that long after dawn—he wants more time and so does she, and they're both tired but it doesn't matter. He knows—and he hasn't said it yet but he senses she knows it too—that they can't do this very much. That they'll have to be even more careful than they have been. That they were getting stupid and reckless even when they told themselves and each other that they weren't—her making herself come in the barn, him fucking her out in the field, and all those stolen touches under the goddamn table. They can't do that anymore. They have to keep a distance, and the nature of that distance might have to change.

The thing is, now that they have this he actually feels like he can. It might not even be all that hard. He can bear it, if this place is here and if now and then he can be with her in it. In their bed. She always carved out a part of the universe for them to be in—a separate universe entirely, a tangent into which they slipped. She can do that; turns out he can too, in his way.

He made them a bed. And it's not perfect. It's better.

So bit by bit they wake up and she's on her side with her back to him, and she gasps when he starts to tease her and pet her and dance his fingers over her clit. She gasps harder when he presses a finger into her and fucks her slowly, gets her wet for him, whispers to her that he loves her and this is all he wants, this is everything, her in the light and with him and God, Beth, groping for the condoms and sliding into her—quivering—and fucking her as slow as his finger. As slow as last night. It's so much the same—and then it really is the same, because she pulls away and he's briefly worried, about to ask her if something is wrong, but she turns with a sleepy smile and pushes him back with her hands on his chest and climbs on top of him, lowers herself and buries him deep in her cunt.

And it's his dream. It's exactly his dream. She rests there for a few minutes, breathing, her head tipped back and her mouth open in a silent moan, and he smooths his hands up her thighs and trembles under her. She doesn't have to move. She doesn't have to do anything. It's enough simply to be inside her like this, and when she bends down and lays herself on his chest, her head tucked under his chin, he wraps his arms around her and rolls with her in a perfectly synced wave. Nothing fast, nothing hard; even when he's right on the edge and she's grinding herself against him and hissing in tight little breaths, it's not fast. It doesn't need to be. Like before, he comes in a loose, easy rush, sighing her name, and keeps going, fucks her over and through it and holds her tight until she stops shivering.

Even after that.

And again in the shower—hands, fingers, fumbling between each other and slipping, laughing and moaning and both together, trying to hold on and nearly falling when they shudder against each other, and it feels so good and it hurts to let her go.

But he has to.

Until next time.

He can drive her part of the way there. She doesn't know anyone who lives in this part of town, and no one who doesn't know either of them is going to think too hard about a girl getting out of a truck driven by a man who could frankly be her father.

It's because of that that he doesn't kiss her—or doesn't plan to. But as he's pulling over to let her out—by a dark, silent used bookstore and a gas station that won't be open for at least another two hours—she touches his arm and fixes him with serious eyes.

She bends closer, reaches over for his left hand, and he knows exactly what she's doing and his gut twists. Not hard, but. He actually forgot about it for a short time. Actually got away from it. He hardly thought about it in all the past seven days, and with her he was fairly distracted.

But she saw it. She probably saw it immediately. Saw it and wondered, and maybe took some guesses. Probably good ones. Probably she saw it and she was more than capable of drawing her own conclusions. He didn't cut himself, but a burn is a burn and a scar is a scar, and she already knows all his old ones.

She doesn't say anything. She closes her hand over his, and as she does he lifts it off the steering wheel and moves it nearer so she doesn't have to reach so far. So she can see better. Because he could hide this from her, or he could brush it off as nothing, or he could ignore her. But he can't do any of that. He's been in the house of light and he's had a lot of time to do a lot of thinking, and one of the things he's decided is that this shit—pretending he's something he's not—this is well and truly fucking done.

She looks at his hand, her thumb stroking over the scab—old now, it's healing quick—and he watches her look, cool morning light flowing over them both. She's not perturbed. She's not upset. She doesn't even appear surprised. And she wouldn't, if she saw it before, but he doesn't think she was surprised even then.

She knows him.

Finally she shifts her gaze up to his face, and he sees nothing in her eyes but deep and complete understanding. She doesn't know what it's like to have a brother like Merle and the hell he came from riding around on his back, and he doesn't know what it was like to be swallowed by her darkness and try to escape it that way, but they both have scars, and from the beginning that was all that ever really mattered.

So this is how you pray.

"You're alright," she says quietly. "You are."

He nods. Yes, he is. He's very, very all right.

She smiles, and the sun catches it and her eyes and hair, and like always she absorbs it, pulls it into herself and performs her own peculiar, effortless alchemy, radiates it out again in light like he's never seen before.

Girl.

She leans up and kisses his cheek, a fleeting brush of her lips. Completely chaste, completely innocent. "I'll see you," she whispers, hops out of the truck with her pack slung over her shoulder and heads off down the street toward the high school.

He watches her go. He can do that much. He's a guy in a truck parked in front of a gas station on a beautiful morning—in November, the first day of it—and he might be there for any number of reasons, none of them suspicious. He can watch her walk away, her hips swaying in her tight jeans and her shining ponytail bobbing. And anyway, a man can't be blamed for watching a pretty girl walk by.

He can do this. He'll see her again.

He'll make sure that happens.

It seems like the day only gets lovelier as he drives. It started bright and it gets brighter, and it hits him all at once that this is the first time he's been out in a week. It was beautiful in the house, it was everything he needed for that time, and it's not like he was starved for sunlight, but this is sunlight like a smack in the face and the air—when he rolls down the window, because he doesn't care how chilly it is—is so crisp and clean it hurts his throat. He has the radio on and he has the radio loud, and the reception is usually pretty scratchy but the reception is better today. Might be his imagination, but a lot of things could have been his imagination and really don't seem to be.

This place has been subject to a kind of deeply weird dream-logic since he wandered into it. If he wants to stay here for any length of time, he's going to have to get used to that.

there's something about you
that makes me fly
you're a heart attack, just the kind I like

He laughs. Creepily appropriate radio playlist always delivers.

If he was more inclined to worry he might be a little worried about this—about the farm, about the conversation he might have there, about how he might have to explain that in spite of supposedly having been sick for almost a week he looks healthier than he has in a fuck of a long time—but he isn't, and as it turns out he doesn't need to be. No one asks any awkward questions. Everyone merely appears satisfied that he's come back, and Annette throws a donut at him, and then it's back to work, more hay to be baled into the loft and a ton of other chores. They've frankly been backing up while he's been gone, though nothing too bad, and no one is` bothered by it.

Least of all him. By rights he should be exhausted but he's not. He can—to the extent that it's possible to do it without doing damage to the healing tattoo—throw his back into it.

The day goes fast—fast like it always does when he's found a good pace—and he doesn't do the counting thing the hour before Beth comes home. She simply comes home. She was always going to, and counting the time was never going to make it go any faster. She walks up the drive with that same hip-sway, the same ponytail-bounce, and she gives him a small flick of her hand, which he returns, leaning on the pitchfork and mopping his brow.

Because they also can't ignore each other. That would be perilously stupid too.

What they had before? That worked. That worked pretty well. They were getting a bit too close for comfort before it all tumbled over into something else, but initially there was nothing especially suspicious about it, and he's starting to piece together enough objectivity to see that. They've always been casually friendly, and if they suddenly stop being casually friendly someone is going to notice that and start wondering.

And that... He got it on the drive out, window down and radio up, the air slicing itself into his lungs, and it made him want to fucking sing. They were stupid. They were really fucking stupid. They made this so much harder on themselves than it had to be, and in particular he made it so much harder, which he has a unique talent for.

They don't have to stop being friendly. They can't be close friends, can't be the kinds of friends who spend a lot of time alone together, can't be the kinds of friends who have long intense conversations where anyone can see, but they can sure as shit be friendly.

They don't have to be miserable when they're not together. They don't have to walk through the desert on their knees. They don't have to starve themselves.

He watches her walk into the house and goes back to work like nothing happened. He loves her. He loves her so much. But he can live in the world, and he doesn't have to do that for her.

He can do it for his own damn self.

He doesn't go straight home.

He drives past the town and out onto the highway and onward, back out into where the lights of houses get fewer and further between and the darkness rises up on either side of the road, trees and fields, hills and lowlands. He didn't set out to do this with any real pointed intent, but part of him did intend it, and now that he's aware of it he doesn't want to fight it. He drives with the windows down—yet again—and the radio on, though it's not so loud. He's not feeling the same kind of giddy joy he was this morning, but he feels content. He feels steady. This isn't something he's doing for fun, nor is it something he's doing for the hell of it, but it's yet something else that doesn't have to be agony.

It just has to be done.

The song—coming scratchily in through the shitty speakers, which he realizes now he can replace—slides over him. It flows. It's soft, except when it's not, and it curls itself around him and tightens. Aches. He doesn't fight it. He doesn't want to. This is right.

and now we're grown up orphans
and never knew their names
we don't belong to no one
that's a shame
but you could hide beside me
maybe for a while
and I won't tell no one your name

He and Merle never had A Place, but they had A Type of Place—for lying in the truck bed, talking a lot of stupid shit, ragging on each other, getting slowly and profoundly drunk. It didn't begin with this town, and if events hadn't proceeded the way they did it might never have ended. There were things about it that he never liked and he still doesn't. But there was so much that he did. Really, in the end, there was a great deal that he liked. A great deal that in a completely different context might have been pretty good. Some of it was.

It still is. It's over, but it still is.

He has a six-pack. He hadn't been entirely sure why he bought it, but now he knows. He rumbles through the night until he sees the radio tower blinking red on the horizon, and he pulls off the road at the first stretch of scraggly unfenced meadow he comes to, bumps a little way in, parks and gets out.

And stands for a moment, boots in the patchy grass, breathing in the jagged scent of dry vegetation and gentle decay. It's the first night of November, and when he exhales he can see his breath. It's a new moon and there's only starlight now, but the stars are brilliant—scatters of broken diamonds—and he tilts his head back and stares up at them.

Autumn constellations, spinning on toward winter. He shoves his hands into his pockets and mouths their names.

Andromeda. Cassiopeia. Pieces. Aquarius. Pegasus. Soon Gemini and Taurus and Canis Major. Orion. The hunter with his bow. All their places and so many nights like this, staring up at those arrangements of impossibly distant light, and he never knew if Merle knew their names. Never asked. Maybe he likes to believe Merle knew them already. Or maybe he likes to believe Merle didn't, and that's something Daryl could have given him. Something they could have shared between them, like a secret.

Like a better secret than all the others they shared. And didn't share.

He lowers his head and goes to get the six-pack. He puts down the tailgate and sits there and drinks a beer—a single one—and lights up a cigarette and looks out across the stretch of rolling land toward the radio tower, the redly winking glow protruding from between his lips and the one out there. His wing is itching, and he thinks about when he wanted to climb the spindly metal legs. When, half mad with something he couldn't articulate, he wanted to jump. Not because he wanted to die but because he was so certain he wouldn't.

Hell, given how this place works, perhaps he wouldn't have done.

He finishes the beer, finishes the cigarette, drops the butt into the can and listens to it fizzle. He's crying, has been for a while, but it's okay. It hurts, but it's good.

"It's alright, bro," he whispers, and somewhere in the shadowy distance an owl calls, soft and low. "It's alright now."

It is.

He stands and bends, places the can carefully on the ground and leaves it. He puts the rest of the six-pack in the truck, gets in, pulls back onto the road and drives home.

Home. To his room and his bed and his sheets that smell like her. He wraps himself up in them and he's asleep in seconds.

It's the first night of November. He made it this far.

He doesn't know what kind of story this is anymore.

Note: Songs are "Mother We Just Can't Get Enough" by New Radicals and "Name" by the Goo Goo Dolls.