Disclaimer: I don't own The Walking Dead. Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: Spoilers for 6x12 – This is a story that features Carol/Tobin and his directly based off of their scenes and kiss from the episode. Set during the scene and meant to reference to what could have happened after it faded to black. – Based on the premise that Tobin has a low-key superpower, extreme empathy. Empathy itself is a defined as the experience of understanding another person's condition from their perspective. But in Tobin's case he feels people's emotions, sensing strong emotions and sometimes being affected by them.
Warnings: adult content, adult language, 6x13 spoilers, mild references to off screen sexual content, nudity, mild sexuality.
Heroogony
Chapter Two
What Carol felt like?
What she was inside?
Honestly it was hard to describe.
He'd never felt it's like before and figured he probably never would again.
And that went for both the good and the bad.
But if he had to put a marker on it - put it all into words - he'd have to say it reminded him of a line from a poem he'd read once. "I had found unmysterious flesh.Not the mind's avid substance – still. Passionate beyond the will." He wasn't sure why, but he couldn't deny it didn't fit. At least on the surface.
Because she was passionate, even as she was teetering towards self-destruction. Everything about her was gritty, real and self-damning when you looked under the surface. When you could sense things like he could. Beautiful in a baser, humanistic sort of way and completely unapologetic when it came to obligations of that very nature. Of being human. Of being passionate. Open. Loving. Flawed.
Hell, when it came to what she'd been through, he was sure he didn't know the half of it.
But maybe for this, he didn't have to.
Because the rest happened naturally.
Like breathing.
She moved first. Tipping her head just so, enough that when he leaned in, it was like clockwork. Moving in for a kiss neither of them had really being expecting before breaking away softly and resting there together as they both took stock. Wrangling past histories, old lovers and where this whole thing left them now in less time than it took for her eyes to flutter open again.
But frankly, he'd already made his peace with it. Feeling more alive than he had in over a year as everything she was holding back threatened to give way behind those battered little shields of hers. More sure than ever that this was exactly what she needed – what they both needed – as fractured little puzzle pieces of feeling filtered through the growing haze of arousal.
He took everything she had to give and swallowed his way through it. Giving her something to lean against. Emotionally. Mentally. Physically. All of it. He could be exactly what she needed, simply because that was who he was at the core. Someone that understood solace and different types of bravery. Someone that could feel what she was feeling and nudge a little of his own brand of strength back into the heart of her. Someone that needed just like she needed and had all the reason in the world to want to share that with her.
This didn't have to be anything - mean anything.
They could just be.
Like this.
Here and now.
It could be enough.
A start.
She was a maelstrom of self-loathing and good intentions drenched in red.
A citizen of decay festering under a slow burning fire that'd settled deep in the roots of her.
And he just wanted to be water.
"It's not tomorrow yet."
He followed her inside like it was the easiest thing in the world.
Buoyed by the tidal wave – want, need, desire, all of it - she left unknowingly in her wake.
She looked back at him coyly when she reached the stairs. Expression part shit-eating, part challenging in that way he couldn't help but love right from the start. Something that clearly said "you coming?" without her having to say so much as a word.
He smiled right back as he locked the door behind him.
She was so strong.
Miles stronger than he'd ever be, if he was being honest with himself.
But also wounded.
Ripped thin and perishable in a way he didn't quite know how to mend.
All he knew at the end of it though, was that her face deserved that smile.
Deserved every smile.
He caught her there, halfway up the stairs. Making sure she could see him coming as he wrapped his arms around her, enveloping her easily. Kissing raspy and stubble-gentle into the freckled-porcelain of her neck as she let go of a breathless sound. Inhaling deep, half high on the simple pleasure of it as she shivered receptively underneath him.
He'd missed this.
God, had he missed this.
It wasn't until he had her there, fingers flirting with the curve of her that he was able to get a handle on her. Understanding what he'd only ever really suspected before all this. That someone – something - had left an unstable continent of black tar smudges on her beautiful soul. And while it was starting to fade around the edges, helped along all slow like by another, it was clear they weren't ready to be what she needed. Not yet.
He already had half a mind as to who that person was. It wasn't exactly rocket science after all. Hell, he'd felt them reaching for each other since they'd arrived. Even when they were yards apart and Daryl didn't do much other than co-exist, all rough and quiet in her space, they were always helping each other cycle through everything.
He'd be a fool if he didn't admit that Carol and Daryl didn't have the ring of someday to them.
It felt right, in fact.
Like a foregone conclusion if they let it.
And while it was probably a strange feeling to have as he scooped her up and kissed her slow right there on the stairs, for some reason it didn't make him feel sore at all. Because he knew better than most that no one could really help what they felt. And honestly, for right now her attention was on him and him alone and he couldn't deny that wasn't a hell of a feeling.
When he woke up that morning he didn't need anything extra to know she was gone.
Her side of the bed was sweat-cold and vacant as he reeled his hopeful arm back under the covers with a soft sigh. Stretching out sideways across the too short mattress as he eased a kink out of his back. Only half listening to the low moan of the front gates easing open and the rattle of half a dozen different engines start up. Picking up the faint whispers of nervousness, uncertainty and dread as Rick, Carol and the rest of the group headed out. And while they were too far away for him to figure out what emotion was attached to who, he got enough to figure the general consensus.
No one wanted to do this.
No one wanted to kill.
But they would.
They would because they had to.
He stuffed his hand under his pillow as his cock twitched, sated and nude under the sheets as he let his thoughts reel back. Savoring the backwash from the night before. Decidedly self-satisfied. Remembering how heady it had been to see his wide palms spread across her lithe little hips. To watch her shake apart – surprised – against the calloused pad of his thumb. Feeling like he was a millimeter from breaking her clear apart in every way that mattered until she'd pushed him down into the sheets and slung her legs over his. The silver in her hair highlighted by the moonrise through the window as her head tipped back and he bit off a curse when she finally took him straight. The both of them more than done with teasin'.
Because god knows, it'd been a while.
He hummed tunelessly through the quick of the moment as his bare toes rubbed together, self-soothing and backed up by the crick-crack of flexing joints as he yawned into the growing dawn. Feeling a hundred times better than he had in ages as he flopped over. Curling onto his side and smiling into her pillow as the barely-there smell of her proved more than satisfying.
Because the thing was, she'd left smiling.
He could tell.
It lingered in the air like a subtle perfume, tangling lazily between the dust motes. Rippling over him like a second skin as the echoes of last night's pleasure sounded off clear as day as the sheets rustled and the cadence of that last soft sigh when she'd peaked sunk deep and safe into the lock box he kept in the back of his mind. The same one he came back to on the bad days. Reminding himself of all the good things that had existed before – that existed now. Important things. Important people. And at the end of the day he figured that little box of memories was richer for her presence.
The feelings she'd left behind for him were refreshing and warm despite all those parts of herself she still kept hidden. The ones she didn't know he could sense. The ones he could feel right along with her. Even the darker ones. The ones that made him twitch inside his skin whenever his mind grazed across them. Only ever skimming the surface until the urge to recoil became overwhelming.
Still, he couldn't help but reach out for more.
It was her after all.
And honestly, while things were far from perfect, knowing she'd left with a smile on her face because of him?
Well, wasn't that just a hell of a way to start the day?
A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – This story is now complete.
Reference:
- The line "I had found unmysterious flesh.Not the mind's avid substance – still. Passionate beyond the will," is from the "The Alchemist" by Louise Bogan, 1923.