Chapter 74: I've flown a long way, honey

They have to be careful.

But there are things they can do. There are times when she can disappear for a while and no one will wonder too much. Beth calls him early Saturday morning and asks him to meet her at the oak tree.

Everything feels a little different now. But there's something about this that feels both profoundly different and so familiar that it's almost like she's done the time-fucking-with thing and slung him back with a single conversation. Not the words, not the content of what she says. It's something else. It pulses in the periphery of his vision like the beat of his blood, but it's not unpleasant.

He has breakfast - dry cereal, he's running low on food and will need to fix that - and doesn't rush. Right now he's trying to keep from rushing wherever and whenever he can. It's just as bright as the day before and he sits on the floor, back against the wall by the door, facing the bed and spooning Cinnamon Toast Crunch into his mouth. He barely tastes it. It's not that it tastes bad, or that he doesn't want to. He's just thinking.

The oak tree has been the launch site for a particular number of missions to a particular assortment of places. They could go to any one of those places today, but he knows exactly where she wants to go, and he thinks he can intuit at least the basic outlines of why.

The time they've come into, it feels like they're touching certain bases, keeping certain things open, closing other things down. Closing them up for the winter. Maybe for good. Winter is a broad concept and it can be applied broadly. It's not here yet but it's sure as shit coming, and coming soon. She'll be finishing up her classes before too long - over a month still but he knows it'll go fast. She'll be home for the holidays. She'll be all bundled up in a warm coat, a scarf, her nose and cheeks red with cold. She'll be smiling, and her eyes will be full of oncoming Christmas.

He was afraid of December. Then he wasn't. Then he was again. Now he's not, and this lack of fear... To him it feels final. He doesn't know what specifically is coming now, and he doesn't know what it's going to mean for them, but he does know that if something bad comes, it won't be winter's doing.

Time is time.

He gets up, slings the bowl in the sink and goes to get dressed. He has to get out of here now.

She'll be waiting for him.

She is, and it doesn't seem like she's been waiting long. It's almost noon, sun high and direct and shining away some of the chill in the air, and he notes with odd intensity that she isn't trailing a shadow when she comes toward him dressed in jeans and a thick pink sweater, the pack once again on her back and a bright smile on her face. The presence of the pack is indicative and he's wondering about it, and wondering if he should ask, when she climbs in and leans close, cups his cheek with her soft hand and kisses him.

Not for more than a moment. This particular highway isn't especially well-traveled, but they are still visible here.

She sits back, unshouldering the pack and setting it down on the floor between her feet. She tosses her ponytail over her other shoulder - little sparkling band holding her braid in place, winking in the sun - and buckles herself in. "Ready?"

"Kinda gotta know what I'm ready for."

She favors him with a sidelong smile, and the mischief in the lift of her lips is teasing but very gently. A healthy part of it isn't teasing at all. There's a healthy part of it that he has no idea how to read.

She settles her hand on his thigh and squeezes, and as her fingers dig into the muscle on its inside he twitches and shoots her a look. She's still smiling, positively beatific with her halo of gold and her wide, guileless eyes, and she strokes down toward his knee.

And it's not really about sex. Not entirely. He can feel that, feel the faint heat slipping into him at her touch, and he wants her like he always wants her, immediately and hard, and speaking of hard he's already on the way there...

But there's something else. Something he doesn't recall being there before. Not in this way.

They were always friends. Even from the beginning when he had no idea what the fuck to make of her, they were friends. Maybe - he thought - not what he really wanted, wanted so much the absence of it was like acid chewing away at his spine, but still friends. Someone to talk to. Someone he liked being with. Someone he started caring about. Someone who genuinely seemed to care about him. Friends, and she told him once that was all she wanted them to be, and he knows now that even if nothing had happened and that was all they are now...

He told himself that was okay. He told himself at the rainbow dinosaur ice cream stand that they still had it. But he wasn't sure. He didn't really believe.

He does. It's all right now. It's better.

"You know where we're goin'," she murmurs, and he nods and puts the truck in gear.

Of course he does.

In his bed with her, her warm mouth and his hands on her skin and sliding into her, it somehow felt like the first time all over again. That day when she directed him here - the sky brilliant and the air hot and the leaves thick and mind-blowingly green and everything blasting itself into its last surge of life before the fall took it away - it feels like another life. Could be it was; the idea makes a certain amount of sense. Which means this is yet another first time, something new and all their own, and as he drives them down the road toward the turnoff and the last of the fire in the leaves flickers defiantly against the breeze, he feels that same fluttering in his core.

Her next to him, so bright and sweet, and something ahead of them - something he later came to allow himself to think of as an adventure.

She could have waited on this. It's true that it is a tiny bit of a risk, because every time they meet is a risk now, and it won't start getting truly cold for at least another couple of weeks. But she decided on this weekend, today, and he knows why. It's all around them, spreading out in front and closing behind, blazing and glorious.

It's the fire in the trees. And all it needs is one good day of wind to blow it out until next year.

She rolls down the window - or starts to. She stops partway and glances at him, brow arched, hint of a question on her face. Because yeah, with the wind of their speed it is kind of cold.

He shrugs.

So she rolls it down the rest of the way and sits back, grinning, hair flying loose and dancing around her face in whipping strands, and she extends her hand out the window and makes those dolphin arcs, up and down, dip and rise. So pretty he has to make himself focus on the road, because he doesn't know what kind of story this is but them both dying pancaked up against a tree doesn't appeal to him as an ending.

But he knows what she's doing. He knows what this is. It is an ending. Of a sort.

He knows her. She strikes him as the kind of girl who might like to mark occasions.

He pulls them off and down the gravel track, bumping and rattling like the first time and like every time, because no road like this ever gets smoother. The field off to the right was always gold but now the gold is paler and scruffier, dryer, and soon it might turn brown along with everything else. The light dappled through the trees the first time and it does now, not green but yellow and red, orange, violent combinations of all three. Birds scatter through the trees, crying, occasionally strafing the windshield - warblers and sparrows, slate-coated juncos. This is the last bloom of true color, he understands, the last flare before the dark overtakes everything, and she wants to see it and see it with him, and she wants to do it in the place where she began to teach him to love the world.

He can deal with that. That's not a problem.

She turns toward him as he bears to the left and swings them away from the drying gold and into the deeper shade, and she's grinning - but there's something bittersweet about it. He knew they lost something and she did too, even if they never said it aloud to each other. They didn't lose as much as he thought they did - or they appear to have found something new - but there are things the summer gave them that the fall took away, and they won't get them back.

He should fix his attention on the way ahead - it's now at that point where it can't fairly be called a road, even a service one - but he's not going fast and he spares a few seconds and risks their lives to reach over and tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. It's useless - she has a lot of loose strands and it would take him a while to tuck them all - but that's not the point.

All these firsts all coming back to them, briefly, flocking around them like wild geese.

She touches his hand and he returns it to the wheel.

He parks where he always does - always does, he can say that now, to himself if no one else - and they get out and she shoulders the pack, holds out her hand. He takes it, threads their fingers, and together they slide down the slope and onto the wide stretch of ancient lawn - the thick, cool grass, the sound of the water dancing around the rocks, the sun on the arch. The towers of brick and stone.

In front of the arch she stops for a moment and simply stands, her head tilted back and face lifted to the sun. She's smiling, eyes closed, and he realizes that right now, in this moment, he might as well not even be here. She wants to be here with him, that's why she called him, and he knows she wants it just as intensely as she did when she first brought him here. But this is her place. Still. He was with her all those times, kissed her here, fucked her in the grass, loved her the best he knew how and learned so many new ways of doing just that, but he's still here only because she wants him here. He's here because she permits it.

So she'll stand in the sun of an early afternoon in early November - that sun warm even now, though it has to fight harder to get the job done - and she'll say hello to this place. Her place. And he isn't part of that.

And he doesn't have to be.

He waits, watching her, and she lowers her head and turns, blinking a little.

"Y'alright?"

She is. She nods, comes to him and circles her arms around his waist, leans her head against his chest. His arms are around her at almost the same instant - angling somewhat awkwardly over the pack - and he lays his cheek against the crown of her head and feels her hair all sun-warmed, feels her breathe.

And that's all. And it's like that for a long moment.

"Think this is the last day like this we're gonna get," she murmurs, and he knows she's not just talking about the leaves, or the sun, or any one thing around them. He feels it. It's running deep in everything, like a current far beneath the surface. Finality. Termination. Not ominous, not something to be afraid of, but inevitable. He couldn't stop the fall, he can't stop the winter. He can't stop whatever comes after. If his life is precious, so is every single day of it.

These are our last days as children.

Those days were over a long time ago.

She brought a picnic.

He's deeply bemused. He leans back against the nearest crumbling wall and watches as she kneels on the grass in the big interior space and lays out the old blanket she brought, sandwiches, apples he's sure were picked from a tree not far from the house, cans of soda, little tupperware things of peach cobbler. Napkins. Forks. Everything.

He understands picnics in an intellectual sense. He gets picnics on a theoretical level. Practical experience is something else. And he doesn't think just eating whatever outside counts as a picnic. No, you need the whole blanket deal. He's pretty sure that's a rule.

She doesn't appear to mind that he's not helping - seems in fact to have a specific idea about how this should all be handled - and when she has everything arranged to her satisfaction she turns, smiles, beckons him.

He pushes off the wall and goes to her, settles down on the blanket opposite her, accepts a sandwich. Firsts and all.

He gives her a look as he unwraps it from its plastic. "Peanut butter and jelly?"

"You don't like peanut butter and jelly?" She's already taken a sizable bite and the words are heavily distorted. Takes him a couple seconds of mental playback to get them.

"Like it just fine, I just didn't know you were ten years old."

She swallows and kicks at him. "You think there's some kinda age cutoff for PB&J, Mr. Dixon? Not sure you're one to talk. Also," she adds, licking some peanut butter off her thumb and kicking him again, "that's kinda creepy. Considering."

It is. But he's not bothered. And the sandwich is perfect, impressively; the ratio of jelly to peanut butter needs to be carefully balanced and he doesn't think it's a skill most people possess.

"You made these?"

She laughs softly, going to work on the apple. "Well, Mama might've thought it was kinda strange, makin' two."

This is true. And again, he's not bothered. Once the idea would have twisted him all up for a bunch of reasons. Now he gets it, takes it in stride, lets it go. This is just how things are.

They don't talk much. It's like it's always been: there's no need to. It's enough to be with her, be close to her - not pressed up against her, not lying in a tangle with her, but across from her, one leg against hers, eating sandwiches. Like riding with her. Like coffee. Like shelling peas. Like sitting with her here, sitting with her on the marble bench, smoking. Looking at the water.

Occupying roughly the same space.

"You ever been on a picnic?"

He's finishing up the cobbler, lost in a vague meditation on the length of her thigh and the perfect, subtle curves that flow down to her calf, and he blinks up at her, not exactly startled. "No. I guess... Not really."

"Never?"

"You think my family did a whole lotta picnics, Greene?"

She shrugs, tipping back the can to down the last of her soda. "I dunno. You've been surprisin' me some lately."

He cocks his head. Shadows are starting to move over them and it's getting chillier, but something warm is trickling through him like summer rain. He knows it. He's felt it in her. He didn't expect any of this; neither did she, for all her powers of perception and all her belief in the fundamental goodness of the world. This might be something neither of them could have predicted.

"How've I been surprisin' you?"

"You know." She laughs again, just as soft, and leans back on her hands, legs stretching and toes of her boots tipped together. She looks so young. She looks how he feels, right now. "C'mon, you totally know."

"Yeah." He puts down the tupperware and lays his hand over her knee. Squeezes. Just to touch her. He doesn't need any other reason. "I mean, I think so. But I wanna hear."

She's silent for a long moment, looking at him, and he waits. Not impatient. He recognizes that look, and he recognizes the way she's studying him. Thinking. Taking her time. She's better than him when it comes to words, endlessly better, but that doesn't mean she doesn't choose hers carefully. Not when it matters.

And it does matter.

"You came back," she says finally, quietly. Solemn, as if she's hit upon a deep truth in the world. Something almost magical. And why not? They're here. None of the rules seem to fully apply in this weird fucking town, in her circle of influence, but here more than anywhere. The center and perhaps the source of her power. "You... You were almost out there too long. Weren't you?" She leans forward again, lays her hand over his. Takes it, turns it, threads his fingers with hers. "You got to the edge and you came back. I don't mean..." She shakes her head, comes near to laughing and steps away again. "I don't mean I didn't think you could. I don't mean I didn't... You're strong. I knew that. You wouldn't be here if you weren't strong. But you... came back."

She simply gazes at him for another long moment, then adds - so quiet he really has to listen for it, pay attention - "You're not like you were."

No. He's not.

Yet he feels more intensely himself than he thinks he ever has.

"How was I?"

"It's like you were... a kid." She looks down at their hands, at his, and strokes her thumb across its back. Across his burn. "Now you're a man."

And he has no idea what to say to that. So he says nothing.

He's not sure how long they sit there, hand in hand. The shadows keep lengthening - it can't be later than three but the evenings are coming on fast now. He can tell, in a distant way, that the chill in the air is sharpening still more. But somehow it's not touching him. Doesn't seem to be touching her. The branches over them stir and the shadows twitch and dance, and then a sharp gust blows through them, whistles past the towers, and a shower of whispering crimson-gold tumbles down onto and around them. Onto her face, her lap, in her hair; she releases him and giggles and swipes at the leaves, knocks them off her head and shoulders, brushes them off him.

Fewer leaves. More light.

She pushes herself up and reaches down to him. "C'mon."

He doesn't have to question. She's never led him wrong before. He takes her hand and gets to his feet, and lets her lead him through the far doorway and onto the wider stretch of grass beyond.

The leaf-falls have been heavier here - the trees all around are thicker - and the grass is carpeted with them. Some of them are fresh and bright, but a lot of them are browning, spotty, on their way back to dirt. Once someone would have raked them, cleared them away, but he likes this. This whole place is built on a particular kind of decay, a particular kind of entropy. Order would ruin it. It should look like no one touches it.

Like how he tried to leave it untouched for her. He tried. Even though she never asked him to.

She's still holding his hand as they walk together over the grass, and he's not sure what makes him do it but it seems like as good a time and place as any. Not even that it's some big confession. He doesn't think it was some kind of sin and he doesn't expect her to think it was one either. But it seems wrong to not have told her. Even if he wasn't trying to keep it from her.

Which he wasn't.

"I came here," he says, voice low, just above the rustle of their feet through the leaves. "When you were... Y'know. After you came to the place the first time."

He's better. Maybe he's a man. But he can't say it. It's not fear, not really. It's just too much horror for the words he has to fit. What she saw. What he did to her. What could have happened. He can't.

But he trusts her to know what he means, and when he glances at her she meets his eyes and nods. "That night? In the storm?"

He nods. "I didn't... I didn't know what to do, I was drunk, I was fuckin' stupid. It was stupid." No viciousness in it. Once he would have been cruel to himself over it. He would have burned himself inside, over and over, or devised some other kind of mental torture. He used to be very good at it.

He had good teachers. And he's always been a fast learner. Quick to retain.

"Why?"

She's still looking at him and somewhat to his surprise he finds he can look back at her, and it's not even difficult. She's not demanding anything - of course she's not. She never would, not like this. She's not upset. She wouldn't be that either. She's curious, and maybe a little concerned - after the fact. She just wants to understand.

That was all she wanted that night in her room. After. When he told her. When he told her everything.

"I dunno," he says, and he means it. Some kind of reasoning was at work, prompting him, but reasoning isn't necessarily rational at all. He barely even remembers the drive out here. "I think... Thought I wasn't ever gonna see you again. Thought I... Maybe I freaked you out too much. Or somethin'." He gives her a tiny, rueful smile. Honest. She knows. "I was a fuckin' asshole, Beth."

"Yeah." She squeezes his hand. "You were."

No excuses. She wouldn't try to make any for him - yet another thing she wouldn't do. If he's not a kid, she's not going to insult him by treating him like one.

"So I drove out here," he continues. They're coming back to the treeline and the path, shade closing around them, and he can feel it now - secrets. All around them. Not like inside the mill itself. This place is older and stranger, and full of memories. "Got shitfaced, completely fuckin' wasted, and I came out here and fuckin'... I don't even know. Yelled at shit. Threw a fuckin' tantrum." This last in a mutter - what he feels isn't the sick kind of self-loathing he would have felt before, but he still doesn't think very much of it. What he did. How he behaved. It was stupid. It was childish.

Like a child, he didn't really know any better.

"Got soaked, got cold, guess at some point I sobered up, drove home." Found you. Found you and almost lost you, my girl. "But it was... Whole place felt... strange."

"It does that." She lifts her head as the branches pass above them - the branches passing, not them - and another gust sends another shower of whispering sunlight onto them. "At night."

Yes, he knows.

"And again."

That first time. First time with her, first time without her. Which... Maybe that was somehow the beginning. That wild, half despairing prayer to a fucking fountain. Hadn't even known why he wanted it so much. Knew only that he found something nice, something that made him feel good, and God, he didn't want to have to let it go.

Soft. "When?"

"Night after you brought me out here. Showed me. I wanted..." He doesn't know what he wanted. He didn't know then, and he doesn't know now. Oh, sure, he knows what he wanted later. That much has become abundantly and repeatedly and very, very pleasantly clear. But then, that night, desperate and knotted up inside and frightened and just... wanting. Wanting so badly. Wanting beyond the words for what's wanted.

Wanting badly enough to believe a prayer to a winged wolf god might actually work.

He looks a little way to the right, watches the water come into clearer view. Sparkling and full of fallen leaves, a dancing flow of reflected, refracted color. "I thought I was never gonna see you again," he murmurs.

Not like the storm.

The deer path is running nearly parallel to the bank now, and just ahead through narrow trunks he can see it: pale flashes of old marble. He takes a breath, and he realizes this is the first time since that first day that he's seen it in the sunlight.

"And I wanted to see you again. I wanted to never stop seein' you."

Because really that's what it comes down to.

She doesn't say anything as she leads him to the bench - the softly glittering marble, that wolf's head over the basin, those wings, and the new ink in his skin twinges when he sees it. She doesn't assure him of anything, doesn't say you never will. Maybe she would have once, he thinks, watching the shift of the light over her hair - or maybe not. Either way they're past that now. Again: She won't treat him like a child.

She won't try to feed him promises she knows neither of them can keep.

Standing in the center of the semicircle, she turns to him and lays her hands on his chest - like she did the night she came to him - and stares up at him with her doe eyes. Doe's eyes, soft. But sharp, beneath. Not easily startled or frightened. Not quick to run.

"I'm glad it was here for you. I'm... I'm glad."

It's not what he expected, but it's not a complete surprise. Generous girl, in addition to her kindness. He settles his hands on her waist, palms fitting into that subtle curve, and she tugs him down by his shirt and kisses him for a while, slow, her tongue working gradually into his mouth and inviting him into hers. She's sweet, sweet as she's ever been, and maybe it's where they are - this locus of something, this focal point - or maybe it's just her. Just what she is, moaning softly against him and pressing forward, angling her head to deepen everything when his fingers find her hair.

And then she's pushing him backward toward the bench and he's going easily, not resisting even in play, because this is her place. She takes what she wants here. He brought a condom, thought they might need it, but with no expectations whatsoever. He just wants to kiss her like this, feel her burning against him as the last of the fall showers down all around them.

The backs of his knees hit the bench and he half sinks, half drops onto it, spreading his legs so she can fit herself between them, standing over him now and tilting his face up to her with teasing little tugs of his hair, nipping at his lips when he does as she's directing him. She's smiling and as usual it's intensely infectious, and he matches the curve of her mouth before he thinks about doing so. Warmth there too. Warmth everywhere, even if the wind is taking on an edge when it hisses through the trees.

Her mouth on his cheek, his jaw, gentle scrape of her teeth. Swipe of her tongue. He gasps, whispers her name. "Beth, I want... Like that, please…" Like before, he doesn't even know exactly what it is that he wants. Except yes, like this. Her mouth, Jesus, her mouth.

She braces her hands against his thighs and sinks to her knees on the soft, mossy ground.

He stares down at her. At the swimming hole, when she knelt like this, it was too much. Freaked him out. He couldn't take it, couldn't deal. He couldn't look down at her. But in the clearing he straddled her and allowed her to make him come, spattered her breasts with gleaming drops of it, looked down at her then and at her parted lips and yes, he wanted it.

He's looking down at her now, settling herself between his legs and running her hands up the insides of his thighs, staring back up at him. Licking her lips, making them shine. Fuller. Plump. Deeper pink than usual, part of the excited flush making its way across her cheeks to her ears, lighting her up like a forest fire. Eager. One hand closes over him, curves up his length - already so hard - rubs him with the heel of her palm, and as his hands frame the sides of her head his eyes almost drag themselves closed.

But he won't. It's not too much now. He can see her.

Look at me.

"I want it." Stroking him through his jeans, her fingers already toying with his fly. "Daryl... I want to do it. I want you in my mouth. Can I?"

Asking. Perfectly willing, he can tell, to accept a no.

It's redundant to keep going over this, but I love you will never in a hundred million years be enough.

"Fuck, yeah," he breathes, pushes those loose strands of hair back from her face. Her cheeks are just as warm as they look. "You can. You absolutely can."

She grins, sudden and delighted, and opens him up like she's done it a hundred times.

Swift. No fumbling to speak of. She has his button open and zipper down in what feels like fractions of a second, reaching in and finding him, curling her nimble fingers around his shaft and drawing him out. She gives him a single unhurried stroke, gazing back up at him, and it's all he can do to keep his hands light against the sides of her head. Her hand is incredible, tight and smooth as it moves over him, her lips, fuck, her tongue flicking out between them, but somehow her head is just as good, the silkiness of her hair and how it feels to hold her like this, almost taking control but not quite. Moving, petting her, rolling his hips up the smallest bit. Encouraging her. Because he can do this. He can have this. She wants to give it to him. There's nothing wrong with it. And if she wants to be on her knees...

She's so beautiful like this. She's so beautiful he just doesn't even know.

Her wide eyes are pinning him down as she extends her tongue and delicately licks at the glistening head - and his eyes finally do close. Only for a few seconds as a rough groan escapes him, and twists and cuts itself off when she lowers and takes him in.

Slow, just like everything else. Bit by bit, tongue lapping at him, and he watches her as her stretched, shining lips slide down his shaft, his breath held in a fist, somehow keeping himself from pushing deeper into her slick heat. Her cheeks hollow slightly as she sucks at him and pulls back and slides down again, and he can't help it: his hands tighten and press, just a little, just barely more than encouraging her.

She moans and the vibration shivers into him, all through him, and he drops his head back finally and stares up at the trees, wanting so much to see her but no longer completely in control of himself, hips twitching under her and breath stuttering through his chest as she wraps her fingers around the base of his cock and moves faster.

The branches seem so low, bending over them. Covering them. She pops him free of her mouth and kisses the head, flicks her tongue across it - dances, quick and light - and he whines her name and the world slips into blurred gilt. This is a sacred place, he knew it when he saw it when he saw it - and there's nothing profane about this. Nothing whatsoever. He wanted to worship her, and he has, and now he can let her do the same to him, let her scatter light wet kisses over every inch of him, ducking her head to lick at his balls, back up to run her tongue up the underside of his shaft. He forces himself to look at her again and she tears the breath out of him: lips gleaming and swollen, spit shining on her cheeks and chin, bobbing her head and making soft little mm-mm-mm sounds that might just be for his benefit - but he really doesn't think so.

She loves this. She does.

"Beth." Strained whisper. It's all he can manage. "Shit, Beth, that's... You're so fuckin' good, girl, your mouth, Jesus, just look at you. Look at that." As if she could, but he's stunned by her, working to process. His hands are still cupping her head and he shifts them further back, still mostly encouraging, entirely gentle - but yes, pushing now. Pushing her down. Not taking her, not using her, but she's so good, she's so amazing, and he wants her to know. How much he wants her. How he's nearly out of control and she did it to him.

Her. Just her. No one else before this. And, he's sure, no one else ever again.

"You're gonna make me come. You want that? Oh my God, Beth, you're gonna... I'm- Fuck."

Not warning her. She doesn't need to be warned. Because this is exactly what she wants and he's promising her, what he'll give her, giving it, arching his back and sobbing and clamping his hands around her head as he bucks against her and spills hot into her mouth, down her throat.

And he sees it when she pulls back. Just a glimpse, and he's released everything, but her mouth is still open and he sees his own come on her tongue, and it ripples a last hard wave through him, shoving him against the marble and yanking his eyes closed.

Her head resting against the inside of his thigh. He strokes her hair, mindless, breathing. There's the sun and the breeze, dappled warmth across his closed eyelids. Still completely untouched by the chill.

This place is hers. So if there is a goddess here it's her, something old and wild and dancing on the cusp of the light.

And if she wants to bless him he'll be blessed.