Original prompt: "what about a ficlet about the 4th of July or Bethyl with fireworks or explosions or burning passion".

(This one is not actually set IN the tiny apartment, but it's in that universe and is a continuation, sort of, of the last 'chapter' with the 'I've never had a sleepover' bit.)

Sometimes he think she has a list. If she does, he knows just where it is. In the little pink notebook she keeps with her all the time, scribbled down in her pretty, looping handwriting, with a header on top (underlined of course) that reads: Things Daryl Has Never Done.

Maybe it's just a list in her head, but then again it's Beth. She writes down lots of things, lyrics and diary entries and grocery lists, and decorates it all with doodles of hearts and ladybugs and little figures with no hands because she can't draw those right. So yeah, she probably has this list written down.

Whether she does or not, doesn't really matter. What matters is that he's pretty sure there's a list in some form and she's going through it piece by piece. There was I've never had homemade pancakes, I've never had frozen yogurt, I've never celebrated Christmas, I've never had a sleepover, and now…

I've never sat and watched the fireworks on the Fourth of July.

It wasn't that he'd never seen fireworks of course. The town he grew up in had some pitiful little show and if you climbed on top of the trailer you could almost see them in the distance, just above the tops of the trees.

But he stopped doing that after the year his Pa reached up and dragged him down, making him stumble and slide off the sloped edge and crash to the ground. He'd broken his arm and had to go to the hospital again and the next year it didn't seem worth it.

Once or twice he'd shot off a couple cheap ass fireworks, too, the kind you found in dusty packages in shitty convenience stores along the highway around this time of year. There was one time Merle had brought like five packs of them and got lit up on god knows what, tried to set them all off at once. He'd been running like a bat out of hell and his pants had fallen right down, making him fall flat on his face.

It was hard to enjoy cheap convenience store fireworks at all, let alone when all they did was light up Merle's saggy white ass.

Anyway, this was different. This was as different as every moment he'd shared with Beth had been different from the life he'd led before it. This was him and Beth, laying on a clean soft checkered blanket that she'd packed and brought with them; not to the big field where they set off the actual display but to the edge of her family's property where she claimed you could get just as good a view without any of the pesky people and screaming kids.

Not that he thought she minded the people or the kids, hell it was probably part of the experience for her (and he knew she loved kids, after all she worked at a daycare), but something like that would've taken the fun out of it for him and she knew that. Knew him better than most… better than anyone really. Sometimes he thought she knew him better than he knew himself.

So it was just the two of them laying side by side on that blanket in the middle of the field. He had his arms behind his head as he stared up at the sky waiting. Only it wasn't fireworks that filled his vision first, it was her. First a soft cloud of her blonde hair brushing across his cheek and then her big blue eyes, lit up in the same smile that curved across her pink lips and plumped the apples of her cheeks.

He didn't need to have seen fireworks to know she was the most gorgeous thing he'd ever seen.

Without hesitating his hand came up to cup her face and draw her down to him. Just as her body fit against his all tucked against his side and leaning half over him, he felt their lips slot together. Like two puzzle pieces clicking into place. Soft, warm… perfect.

He got so lost in kissing her that when the first firework crashed overhead he barely even flinched, didn't even move to pull away. The warmth he got from her lips and the heat that flashed through his veins was far better than anything in the sky above, at least in his opinion.

But she drew back enough to expose the sky above them and her soft laugh was breathy against his ear as she settled against him, pressing her cheek to his shoulder. "Just watch," she murmured with a kiss to his cheek before she glanced up at the sky above.

Two fireworks exploded in the sky, yellow and green flaring and expanding before arcing down towards the ground in a sparkling shimmer.

"So what do you think?" Beth asked softly, her fingers tracing shapes (hearts, he thought, it was almost always hearts) on his chest as they watched another three fireworks explode overhead, a sharp splash of red against the inky dark sky.

"Ain't bad," he replied after a moment, his voice gruff and low. "Ain't got nothin' on you though, girl."

"I still think they're beautiful," she whispered, and he tore his gaze away from the sky to look at her instead. The flashes of color washed across her skin and flared in her eyes, like flames in the depths of those big wide pools of brilliant blue. Sensing his gaze on her she smiled, though she kept her eyes on the sky as she added lowly, "You should keep watching, Daryl…"

"Why?" He reached down, covering his hand with hers as he studied the golden light that played across her pale skin, delineating the arch of her nose.

"So you'll know," Beth breathed back, finally pulling her eyes from the sky to look into his. "How I feel, every time you kiss me."

From anyone else he would have scoffed and just considered it cheesy as fuck. But she wasn't anyone else she was Beth, and on her even the cheesiest things came across as poetic.

Hell, maybe she inspired it in him, too. Maybe that was why he lifted his hand to graze the pads of his fingers across her cheek, chasing the reflected sparkle of light from above as he replied lowly, "Don't need to see that, to know how it feels."

"No?"

"Nah." He leaned in and his lips brushed hers, tasting the light of the latest firework to explode above them, washing both their bodies over in a golden light as he finished in a whisper against her warm lips, "Feel it every time I kiss you, baby girl."

"Oh…" He felt the curve of her smile against his lips, knew she was lighting up brighter than the damn fireworks in the sky above them as she curled her fingers into his shirt, drew him down over her and murmured in a breathy, husky voice, "Then let's make some more fireworks, Daryl."

(And after, when they went back to their little apartment and he caught her curled up on the bed with her little pink journal, he wondered if when she checked that item off her list, was she thinking about the lights in the sky or the ones in his eyes as he covered her body with his own and slid into her slow and firm until she exploded herself, brighter and more beautiful than any firework he'd ever seen.)