Chapter 81: you'll get the message by the time I'm through
Wednesday is the first real cold snap. It's been cold before, sure - breath-steam cold, cold enough to justify gloves and layers, cold enough to be uncomfortable until he moves around enough to heat his blood back up. But this is a goddamn snap, a whipcrack of plummeting temperature and it breaks open something in the world, and when he gets to the farm the next morning there's frost on the ground.
First frost. As a kid, there was always something about this that excited him. He never knew what it was and he still doesn't, but crunching over the grass toward the house and breathing in air that nearly slices his throat on the way down, he feels it again. Blood racing faster and higher than it needs to in order to regulate his temperature. It was never about what he thinks must excite a lot of kids - snow days, holidays, Christmas, because the first didn't mean much when school was optional at best and the latter two happened infrequently enough that they basically didn't happen at all. Instead - he now suspects, giving it some thought - it might have just been about a change. Something different. Something new. But familiar. Every year it came, and it was something he could settle into. Inasmuch as he ever settled into anything.
And there were times - not yet but he knows they'll come - when it was more than frost, when the night's freezing rain truly froze and encased trees and shrubs and fallen leaves in thin layers of ice, and when the sun touched them everything shone like glass.
A little boy wandering through a glass world. Knowing - in days he now appreciates as so much better than the ones that followed - that at some point Merle would drag himself out of bed and make it his business to break every inch of that blown glass world he could reach with his hand or a stick or their father's gun, and he would expect Daryl's assistance. But for a while - a very short while - it was his.
No one will break it now, and when it comes he'll be able to keep it for as long as the sun leaves it.
He wonders what Beth would think. What she has thought, all her life.
Very possibly not so different from him.
He's no longer certain they were ever so different as he once believed.
He's closing out the day by watering Nellie and Mira - Mira a lovely older bay mare and Nellie's best friend - and lulled in their soft conversational nickers, when he decides.
The wing barely itches anymore. Some, but the peeling is mostly done, and the skin is toughening and losing the sensitivity of its newness. It's still a little early - Abby would probably recommend waiting another week or two before finishing it up - but while he recognizes the wisdom of that and knows that if he did it at this point it would probably hurt like hell, he wants to anyway, and he wants it with an intensity that slightly surprises him and which he can't explain. It's not impatience, not exactly. It's something else.
Something like a clock in his head. A broken one, the smallest hand ticking the same second over and over. But it might fix itself. Might do so suddenly. It's not impossible.
It's time. He shouldn't wait. If it hurts bad, it won't hurt any worse than the worst that's been done to that skin.
Beth is in the barn when he brings the horses in, and she takes them both to give them a rubdown before dinner. He doesn't stick around, even though no one's about - Shawn is out in the fields and Hershel is taking a look at a new litter of pigs at a neighbor's farm - because there's no point in taking unnecessary risks now that they're no longer starving to death for each other, but he does look at her on his way out, and she looks back, gazes colliding in midair, and the air in the barn was cool but all at once it bursts into flames and scorches him from the inside out, instantly hardening, instantly shivering, needing her. Even if he doesn't, the way he did.
This will probably always happen.
Always.
Wow.
She graces him with the faintest little curve of a smile, and it warms him for the rest of the night - she's a shot of good whiskey making a home in his chest. Looking at her without looking at her, without anyone seeing - maybe even without her seeing - he's sure she knows. She knows what every glance means to him. She knows what it is, for him now, to be seen by her.
When she first saw his wing she said it was so beautiful. He can't wait to show her when it's finished.
He makes the call on the way home. He pulls over halfway back and gets out of the truck, walks a few yards off the road. He's in the middle of a stretch of land between a farm and a small cluster of older houses, and there's no human light except a few pinpricks on the horizon, and the skyglow of town. A single passing car. He has no reason for doing this except that he wants to. But long since abandoned by the heat he worked up during the day, it's now clear to him that he needs to get off his ass and get an actual winter coat.
Something for the closet. One of them, anyway.
Abby picks up on the third ring. As he expected, she's uncertain about tackling the second session this soon, but he can practically hear her shrug when she says Look, man, it's your hide. Bring something to bite on, maybe.
Over the scars, too. It hurt worse.
It should.
She has an open slot for the couple of hours it'll take. Nine-thirty on Friday night. He hangs up, puffs a breath of steam at the stars.
Almost done.
But no. He's not almost done. He's not anywhere near done. He's not sure done is an achievable state. Except in one specific case. But who knows how close he is to that, too, and it's not hard to think about.
Doesn't everything? And too soon?
And that's the point.
He's edging toward sleep, drifting in the dark, when Beth calls. He's still not fully conscious when he picks up. Doesn't need to be, not for her. He could answer her in his sleep.
She makes an apologetic little sound when he gives her a sleepy mutter that somewhat resembles hi. "Did I wake you up?"
"Yeah. Kinda." He rolls onto his back, watching headlights slide across the ceiling. "'s fine. Don't mind."
"Sorry anyway." She takes a breath and he hears the now-familiar rustle of her sheets. "I just wanted... I mean, I guess it could've waited, but... I'm supposed to sleep over Becca's on Friday night. Y'know? So."
So. He closes his eyes, smiles- then remembers and sighs. And he could cancel, it wouldn't be a big deal at all and more than worth it, but just as he's about to say Yeah, so, I'll be here, something tugs at the fuzzy edge of his thought process.
He's thinking too zero-sum. He's constraining his options, and he has no reason to do that. None. None at all, and in fact every reason to throw them wide fucking open.
He's smiling again, a little wider. "I got a thing at nine-thirty."
"Oh." Disappointment - not a lot, but yes. "Well, I can-"
"You wanna come?"
Very slight pause. Long enough to squeeze a thought into. "Yeah, I mean... Sure. What is it?"
Another about to say, this time an answer, but again that tug. All those surprises, since before they were together this way. All those gifts wrapped in time and carefully orchestrated revealing. He hadn't realized, then, how much he loved surprising her. How much he loved being surprised.
Surprise of that kind was such a sweetly new thing.
"Show you when we get there." His own pause, longer; he has more thoughts to pack into it. "You got a driver's license, right?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"'cause I might actually want you to drive back. Dependin'."
A soft laugh - puzzled, but mostly amused. "You designatin' me, Mr. Dixon?"
"Yep." Something about the thought of that is perfect in about a hundred different ways, and he can only identify half of them. "You can be my chaperone."
"You get drunk, I'm not puttin' your ass to bed." She's grinning now, and again the sheets rustle. "Even if it's a pretty nice ass."
He coughs his own abrupt laugh, but there's not as much shock as would once have rushed him, and if he's flushing he has a couple of mostly separate reasons for doing so. Hey, maybe it is. He wouldn't really know, but she's in a position to have an informed opinion. "Not gettin' drunk."
"No?" Puzzled again. He likes that.
"Nope. You'll see."
"Alright." She yawns, muffled a bit as she pulls the phone away from her face. "How long a drive are we talkin'?"
"Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty." Driving through the night with her. It's been a while. "Be here before nine."
"I can do that," she says softly. "Definitely."
"Good." Very good. Perfect. Why the hell didn't he ask her before? Why the hell didn't it occur to him that she might want to tag along on a trip to a seedy-esque hole-in-the-wall tattoo place? She's a nice girl, sure. But she's not a Good Girl. Fuck no. A place like this... She might enjoy it. Might enjoy it a lot. It might, in a bizarre way that actually isn't so bizarre at all, be right up her nice little alley.
And yes, he can take a second to enjoy an accidental double entendre. He can appreciate those with the best of them.
Merle would have appreciated it too. And that would have been okay.
"See you then," she whispers. There's a lot going on under that whisper. It sounds like a promise, and it also sounds like a secret - it is, of course it is, but it sounds like the kind of secret that can accumulate power. The kind of secret that has weight and can be thrown around, that can shift balances. That can make things happen.
"Yeah. You will." He scratches idly at his stomach - a scratch that becomes a stroke of his fingertips across his muscles, fleeting but more than enough to slip a pleasant shiver through his nerves. "I love you, Beth."
"I love you too." Even softer. A breath. He can imagine it's not finding its way to his ear through a phone and miles of night. He can imagine she's touching his jaw as she leans close, settles herself against his side. I love you.
Sweet dreams.
Thursday is warmer but not much, and thick clouds roll in and look more like snow than rain. Neither happens - if it actually did start snowing in any significant amounts, Daryl's fairly certain it would be some kind of record. But it's there, and if it's not exactly ominous, it does feel like it's looming, a little. It. The world. In general.
Looming isn't always a bad thing. It just means something very large is very close.
Nellie isn't doing well. Hershel examines her runny nose and her general listlessness and pronounces the culprit a cold, and doesn't seem worried, but Daryl is sent to the house to fetch a couple of apples for the purpose of administering some pills, and in the front hall on the way to the door Annette touches his arm and halts him.
"Are you having Thanksgiving anywhere, Daryl?"
He blinks at her, hands full of apples. He gets the question - or he gets the words and generally what they mean - but the sense of it is, for the moment, escaping him. "Uh..."
"Because," she continues brightly, handing him a basket and another apple, "I was thinking you might like to have it with us. If you're not going anywhere else."
He's not. He's pretty sure. He's not aware of any plans. Thanksgiving. Right, okay, that's a thing families do. Nice families. Normal. So never his. Ever.
Not really.
"I." He swallows and feels more awkward than he has in a while. "Yeah. I mean... No, I ain't goin' nowhere else. That'd be... Thanks. Thanks, I would."
He would.
"Good." She nods, a woman putting the final seal on a plan set and settled on, and moves toward the parlor, tossing him a glance over her shoulder. "Maggie's going to be bringing that boy she's been seeing, so we'll have a full house." Her smile quirks. "And you won't be the only one new. It'll be nice."
"Yeah," he murmurs again, turns back to the door.
Feeding Nellie her pills, he's still turning it over in his head. Thanksgiving. With the Greenes. Like he's normal. Like he's not a fucking tourist. Like he belongs.
He doesn't. At all. And part of him is completely positive that they know it. But they're apparently kind enough to shove that fact aside and pretend for him, and it's not pity and it's not condescension, and it's not a handout. It's not anything like that at all. It never has been.
When Beth reached out and pulled him into her bright, nice world, it wasn't because she felt sorry for him. It was because it's just what she does. She saw darkness. She shone.
She got that light from somewhere.
Yes, it'll be nice. Very. And if they can pretend he belongs, hell. So can he.
Coming up the front walk, he sees Carol on the porch. Odd, because it's full dark and just about freezing, but she's bundled up in a thick gray sweater, and when he gets near enough to make out her expression in the glow of the front windows - and the tumbler of whiskey in her hands - he knows that whatever's up, it's something good.
Or close to good. What he can make out on her face... He's not sure he'd be totally comfortable classifying it as happy.
She waves. He waves back. Then he pauses, and - responding to an invitation she didn't explicitly issue but which he knows is there - he approaches and climbs the first two steps, leaning a hand on the railing.
"Somethin' happen?"
She nods. "Yeah. Yeah, it did." She raises the glass to her lips, takes a hefty swallow. She's not a large woman, not at all, and slender, and he arches a brow. Grimacing - not very far from a smile - she lays a hand beneath her throat and closes her eyes against the burn. "I found a lawyer. We're starting. You know. Actually moving on it."
He smiles. It's still ultimately not his business, only it is, at least sort of, and what he's feeling is unquestionably a hard kind of relief. "Good. That's good."
"Yeah, it is. Come have a drink with me."
No convincing necessary. He does.
About halfway through the first round - first of three, as it turns out, because goddamn, this is something to celebrate and celebrate properly as far as he's concerned - something occurs to him and he turns in his place on the steps and looks up at her, tugs the freshly-lit cigarette from between his lips.
"Ain't Cathy comin' back soon?"
"Oh. Right, I meant to tell you." Carol leans forward slightly, cradling her glass in her hands. "She called today, says she's staying in Florida another week or two. She hooked up with an old college roommate and they're going... Snorkeling, scuba diving, I'm not sure which." She pauses, looking out at the night. "So I'll be here at least until then. But after... I'm going to Indiana. I'm going to be with Sophia. I shouldn't put it off anymore."
A silence - which he allows to remain. Something else is coming; he can feel it. Clouds gathering. Sure enough, her mouth tightens.
"I thought I was protecting her. Staying away. And I was, sure... But I was also scared. Of him. Of what's next. Of everything. Like you said. Living in the world." She turns her gaze back on him, and even through an obvious and well-established buzz it's sharp. She's there.
More of her than maybe he's ever seen.
"I'm not scared anymore, Daryl. Or... No, that's not right. I'm scared. I'm really scared. But that's not all I am."
He nods slowly, sliding the cigarette back in place and drawing in a deep breath. "So what are you?"
She's quiet again, and again he lets the quiet be. Until she smiles, and it's a wonderful smile and it's also pretty awful, and he wonders if Ed Peletier had or has any fucking idea who he actually married.
And he doubts it very much.
"I'm really, really fucking pissed off."
"Good," he says again, a low and deeply satisfied murmur. When he exhales a stream of smoke into the night, he imagines it finding its way to Ed's eyes.
Good.
Everything is.
He's leaning against the the truck when Beth walks out of a pool of blue shadow and into the gold-orange glow of the streetlight directly overhead. Skeletal branch-arms are interlaced between it and them, and weird shadows spiderweb across her face as she moves, the knit cap she's wearing pressing her hair down in a way that makes her look strange. Not like a stranger, but strange.
He pushes away from the driver's side door, drops the butt of his cigarette onto the pavement and crushes it out. "Alright, then."
She cocks her head, hefting the backpack higher on her shoulder. "Alright then?"
"Yep." He flashes her a smile that stops just short of a grin and pulls the door open, nodding around the side. "Get in. If I'm late she'll bitch about it."
Beth hesitates halfway around the front of the truck and turns, brow slightly furrowed. "She?"
"Toldja. You'll see when we get there." He climbs in, turns the key, and the engine complains to rattling life. He could have fixed it before now, and he's perfectly aware; he can afford to overhaul the whole damn thing. He could afford to buy something about five times better, though still not great.
And he hasn't. And he's not sure he intends to do so.
"You're bein' a jerk," she observes as she hops in - literally, the most adorable little hop he's seen except for all the other times she's done the exact same thing - and braces a boot on the dash as she buckles herself. "Just so you know."
"Yeah, I know." And he reaches over and slides a hand up her inner thigh as he takes them down the street toward another that'll carry them out of town and roughly north. "You love it."
She lets out a quiet squeak and grabs for his wrist - but she doesn't pull his hand away, not at all, and when he steps on the gas and cranks up the radio she crows laughter and rolls her window down and carves her hand through the chilly night and sings.
I only smile in the dark
my only comfort is the night gone black
I didn't accidentally tell you that
I'm only happy when it rains
Note: song is "Only Happy When it Rains" by Garbage.