Another giggle escapes her as he successfully pulls her around a tree wrapped in fairy lights.
"We won't if you keep quiet, woman."
Pressing her lips together, she tries to stifle them but she's giddy at his behaviour and eager hands.
"You can't jus' drag me off an' fuck me in the middle of my sisters weddin'!"
Daryl looks down at her, pulling her bodyagainst his and immediately slipping his hands up her dress, cupping her ass cheeks. "Not even a grope?"
She laughs, not even pretending to bat his hands away as she takes his jaw in her hand and kisses him.
Against his lips she mumbles, "y'best hurry before they cut the cake."
"Oh yeah, couldn't miss the damncake," he grumbles,his hands yanking her up onto the tips of her heels.
Squealing into his mouth, she giggles again and drops her hands to his belt buckle. "Stop foolin' around an' fuck me."
He growls and twists them, forcing her to bend over a long, low branch. She gasps as the mood dramatically changes, her cheeks heating as she realises through the foliage, she can see Rick and Michonne chatting at their table.They're so close. They could be caught any minute.
Her pussy throbs.
Daryl flips her dress up, pulling her panties to the side. Cool air brushes her burning cunt. She whines softly into her forearm, biting the flesh there. He buries his face in her shoulder, kissing and nipping her as his hands work at his belt, brushing her ass several times and heightening her excitement. Her heart thumps in her chest. His right-hand closes on her hip, and his left lines hiscock up.
When he's in position, he takes her other hip and guides her back onto him.Like this, her pussy spreads over his cock head, allowing him to spear her open slowly. Beth bites her lip and trembles, nails digging into the bark. His hips meet her ass and she blows out a trembling breath. She's full and deliciously stretched. Her lower stomach feels heavy, her hips achy. She keeps her face buried in her forearm, muffling her panting breaths.
Her hair slides forward and covers her a touch more, but also moves aside for Daryl's mouth.His prickly, intent lips and chin brushes the delicate skin of her throat in a way that's nearly more erotic than him being buried between her thighs. His fingers dig into the flesh of her hips, forcing a squeak out of her. He drags his hips back, brushing against every nerve of her front wall and Beth loses her breath, expelling it with his quick, shallow thrust back inside her soaked cunt.
Biting down into her lip with all her might, she fucks her hips back. Daryl growls low in his chest and continues to yank her hips back as he thrusts forward, splitting her pussy over and over. Her bottom lip pops free from the capture of her teeth and she moans, low and desperate. Her clit is pounding for attention and her hand falls between her legs, soothing her ache. At a point the tips of her fingers brush the skin of his hot, damp cock slamming into her, and her stomach sharpens dramatically, wetdepths clutching as he tries to pull free of her.
Beth's eyes fly open as something slithers over her left shoulder. She turns her head, finding Knox. He's looking very vibrant in her near dark room. Only one, weak shaft of sunlight has managed to pierce her curtains. She briefly wonders what time it is. Knox brushes against her cheek with his usual greeting, and Beth hovers her hand up for him to flick his tongue over her palm.
"Good mornin' to you too, though your timin' could use work," she grouses.
Even in this reality, her pussy is pulsing with its own heartbeat. Daryl was so thick inside her and her Other felt so achingly full. Knox slithers over her chest and Beth shudders, her skin overly sensitive. He slides onto her side table and down, showing off on the handles as he likes to do. She watches him all the way across the floor until he leaves the room.
She drops her head to her pillow and heaves a breath. Her body feels heavy and unsatisfied, her breasts more so. Her nipples are tight and sore as she remembers them against her dress, cut by the bark of the tree. Swallowing, she squeezes her breast and gasps. Her body is so tender. Her hand eagerly sides into her sleep shorts, where she's bare. Briefly her fingers play through her curls, but she rushes on, too eager.
Her fingertip immediately finds her clit, slipping in her juices. Beth gasps sharply and quickly moves her finger in rapid circles around it. She's unforgiving but wet enough to do so, and her spine arches with the dull heat growing steadily in her lower abdomen. Her legs shake, a tremor running through her knee and then a spasm. She lets loose a desperately relieved sound, her orgasm blowing through her fast and unforgiving.
She allows herself to stay tense a moment, feeling every harsh roll of it before she collapses back into liquidation.
Sighing, she drifts off again.
"What made you change your mind?"
Beth's heart is racing a mile a minute and the words somehow land tremor free. Her face feels tight and brittle, the desperation clawing at her skin.
Please love me. Please. Please, I love youso much.
When her eyes spring open, she immediately bursts into tears, curling up on her side and trying to suck in the agony. B comes running into her room the fastest she's ever seen him, yowling madly. She can't find it in her to be bewildered at his behaviour, the pain too crippling to put aside. She slides out of the bed unceremoniously and pretty dramatically, if she's being honest, but she can't seem to act rationally.
The grief and turmoil are ripping her open and she slides onto the floor, giving herself carpet burn. B is still yowling urgently, hitting higher notes as he turns in circles in front of her, as if looking for the thing that hurt her. Tears continue to pour down her face and sobs hurt her throat as they claw out. B gives another desperate yowl and then quickly bends down and rubs against her face, rubbing aggressively enough that she sneezes.
The sneeze halts the tears and she seems to be able to think a little more logically. She sneezes again and then spits out several hairs she feels lingering in her mouth, and on her lips.
"Jesus!"Puh. She sneezes again. "Ofcourse, I'm allergic to you. Why wouldn't I be?" She sniffles, drying her face with her jumper sleeves. "I'm renamin' you," she declares, seeking distraction from her shuddering. "Oh, don't pout."
He throws his head back, his version offuck off.
"I wanna call you Blue, an' now you have to let me 'cause I'm allergic to you. An'yes, it's for your eyes."
Blue's ears flatten in displeasure. Pouting. Again.
Beth rolls her eyes and tips her head back, sighing softly. She stares at the ceiling as she muses. "That was so short, barely anythin', but I felt so much."
She presses her hand to chest as she asks, "what am I gonna do, Blue? This reality hurts so much. I don't even wanna write it down."
Glancing for his reaction, she finds him walking to her bedside. Write it down. She sighs again and reaches in for her journal and pen.
"You're right," she concedes. "It'll fade if I don't hurry."
Though the lingering agony in her chest warns it may never fade.
Chapter 5
Notes:
Anddd it's out! Hope you enjoyed this lil thing, I certainly did!
Chapter Text
"God, you taste so good."
Beth can only grunt, lost in the heat of Daryl's mouth between her legs. She looks down and sees his head buried in her pussy, hitting her full force. She moans like a desperate, wild thing and grinds her face against him.
He stops and she nearly screams in frustration. "The kids are gonna be home soon. Best hurry."
"Well get back then!" She keens shamelessly, dragging him back to her clit, which he immediately sucks.
"Oh God," she calls, high and needy.
"My name. Say my name," he mumbles between laps of his tongue.
"Daryl! God, Daryl, baby..."
"Good girl." He slides his fingers inside her, stretching her with three until her back bends. "Such a good girl. Keep callin' for me an' ill let you cum all over me."
"Daryl!" She screams.
Her orgasm grips her tight and yanks her upwards, her spine bending to encompass it. Her nails dig into his head, yanking at his hair. The groans rising from between her legs make her shake.
"Daryl!"
"Daryl!"
Beth jerks awake saying his name out loud and startles further out of bed as a sharp crack sounds in her bedroom. Her eyes swivel to the foot of her bed, finding Blue. He yowls at her, high, urgent and keening before another crack sounds and he splits into nothingness. The particles of him scramble, suck back into themselves and then Daryl lays at the foot of her bed, panting, staring at her, still crouched as Blue was, and entirely nude.
He gives a part embarrassed, part smug smirk. "Y'worked out my name."
Beth's mouth flops open and then she conjures a fireball. It's draining to summon defensive Magick, so opposing to healing capabilities. A sweat breaks out on her forehead but she flexes her fingers and holds firm. Daryl has a matching one floating in his hand the instant she does.
"I'm yourFamiliar, you don't think I know what you're gonna conjure as you do?"
Tamping down her frustration, she closes her fist and extinguishes the fireball, just as he does.
"What the Hell have you done to my cat?"
Daryl rolls his eyes and laughs. "I've wanted to roll my eyes at y'so much. Swishin' my tail don't feel good 'nough."
"Stop it."
"I'm Blue, Beth. I told y'before, you gotta work somethin' out. You worked out my name."
"By total accident!" She cries indignantly. "I Shifted to-" He cocks his brow in intrigue and she immediately shuts up. "Never mind that! Why could Maggie only sense B?"
"My name's locked fro' me, the memory returned when y' said it aloud. She was sensin'Bound. As inThe Bound."
Beth stares in astonishment and it all clicks. The Bound. A Being created by an imbalance in the natural order. A Star-Crossed Lover. One of his Others always with his Soulmate, until one reality where they didn't make it. The natural order slips and a Bound is born from the chasm. A healing remedy to correct the lost reality.
Another chance.
They're fairly common actually, but not common enough that she ever thought she'd be one half of a Star-Crossed Lovers pair.
"It's that reality isn't it, the one I keep Shiftin' to? They didn't end up together... we didn't."
He nods, hunching down to hide his nude lap. "I know all of 'em. All our realities. Every one, we make it. I lost you in that one." Agony paints his face.
Beth takes pity, handing him a pillow since she can't take his memory. "It's not like you ain't seen me undressed."
He grunts as if he's offended as he covers his lap. "I always look away."
Not sure how to answer this, Beth continues on, theorising through her unanswered questions out loud. "So, you're a Bound, we're Star Crossed... but whynow? Why would the universe give me a Soulmate at nearly twenty-seven?"
"The realities timelines don't match up, Beth. Y'Other died hell of a lot of our years ago, when we's still being shaped by the Cosmos. It reshaped its closest reality: us. I's born a Bound, locked in a damn cat, your Familiar, in the time you needed me. An' you was born a Shiftin' Witch, a generation gap precisely, who'd know of her Other, an' the fall of natural order."
His eyes. She knows those blue, blue eyes.
"But..."
There's nothing else to say really and his eyes are strangling her throat, burrowing into hers.
"Need a minute?" He finally asks.
"Yes!" She squeaks, darting out of bed and ducking into the bathroom to hide.
She tips her head back against her bathroom door and screws her eyes shut. Fucking hell. What now? She misses her cat. God, heisher cat. She slumps to the floor, torn between warring loss and gain. She has a Soulmate. That's nice, right? They're Star-Crossed Lovers. That's also nice... right? It's not strange if a man just starts living with her because they already know each other intimately.
Her through Shifting and him through living with her in the form of a cat. Even by her standards, this may be weird. She wants to talk to Maggie. She was Head Witch at The Academy, always attentive to her studies. She'll know something... right? Beth groans to herself and puts her head in her hands, taking deep breaths. They just need to talk. That's all. It might be nice actually, to get an actual reply from him now.
Quicker.
She sucks in a breath. This is ridiculous. She's hiding in her bathroom and for what? It's Daryl. Also, Blue. But. She knows them, both of them. Now she just has to meld them. The sassy cat with the... hottest fuck she's ever had in her life. Okay, she's gone and weirded herself out. She jumps up before she spirals anymore and pulls her bathroom door open. Daryl's not sat waiting for her.
She tries not to be disappointed. He never explicitly said he would stay... oh God,will he stay?Beth hurries out her room and down the stairs. She finds him in the kitchen. He's dressed. Jeans, boots and a black t-shirt like he has an easily accessible wardrobe. He looks very much like his Other, with shoulder length hair, though his is much cleaner. Her eyes glance to his hands, which are preparing food and very clean.
No blood.
She shudders. "Where did you get clothes from?"
He continues chopping, not glancing away from his knife. "Reconfigured 'em."
Her lips twist, trying to soak up her jealousy. She's always wanted to learn that Magick. It's notoriously difficult to alter matter.
"With what?" She leans against the kitchen door jamb, trying to appear calm.
He briefly stops chopping to wave his hand towards the hall. "You got them old sheets in the cupboard."
A weird feeling twists through her stomach at his familiarity, both of her home and moving around her kitchen cooking. She knows logically it's because he's been living here, prowling around all over the place when she's reading and yowling to annoy her at that. Marrying the information with the man in front of her is a little trickier to keep a grasp of. She's also realising he talks with his body a lot.
She wonders if that's an adopted cat-ism. All her questions have dried up. Her reality feels ironically heavy. Instead, she just watches him, and he's aware she does, she can tell. He doesn't try to make a conversation. It reminds her of Blue, how he would sit and watch her, following her everywhere. So needy from so far away. She had a sense then that he would be whatever she needs.
"D-Daryl." She only stumbles a little on his name.
There's a flash of her bent spine and her knees clamping around his head. She swallows tightly, flushing. He looks at her and her stomach swoops.
"Are you... gonna stay?"
He stops what he's doing and leans over her kitchen counter. Her heart kicks up. His eyes are so fucking intense.
"I'm a Bound. In this reality an' the next, I'm bound toyou. To make you happy, f'you to be happy, I'll be whoever... whatever you need."
She thinks her heart stops. She trembles where she stands.
"What if I don't want you here?"
She has to ask it. There is a part of her that doesn't. She's struggling. She needs to know. His eyes darken and his jaw clenches. She has her answer.
Her eyes narrow. "Anythin' I need, my ass. S'long as you're here, right?"
She's not entirely apposed to him being around, if she has time, but to have no choice rankles her. Badly.
"S'not like I have a choice, Beth. I'll- i'll fall apart without you. You don't know what it's like. My goddamnsoulis wrapped in you. I been alive years, livin' without you, always knowing one day The Lock would come. That I'd forget my name an' alter into whatever my Soulmate was seekin', hunt for my lost piece, waitin' to be released. I've been...mindlessan' now I'm here and I can't. I can't justleave."
"So, is it even real?!" She screams, hurt. "Is it just some impulse threaded into your DNA, waitin' to be activated? I don't get t' choose an' you don't either?Screw that."
"Beth!" Daryl shouts as she turns away. "Don't walk away from me!" His voice booms throughout her kitchen, reaching down the hall for her. "Don't walk away from this."
She ignores him, flicking her wrist and throwing her front door open with a gust of wind that brings in half a yard of leaves. She's so mad she pinches and tears around her, determined to force portal Magick to work for once. It does and she steps through blindly, Daryl's face in her mind. When she steps out, she raises her fist to knock on Maggie's door, her intended destination.
Instead, she finds Daryl and drops her fist in surprise before she hits him upside the head. She frowns, glancing around and pressing her hand to a nearby wall. It goes straight through. Fuck. She didn't portal to Maggie. She wasn't thinking of Maggie when she stepped through. She was thinking of Daryl. She hasn't portaled at all. She's reality jumped. What goddamn reality has she gone and landed in now?
"I get it now."
Wait. That'shervoice.Beth's eyes widen and she looks past Daryl who was stealing her attention. He's stood with Rick. Usually when she Shifts, she's in her Others head, and she just knows things because it's her memory to explore in that moment. They Others have spoken about Rick before, and a mental image has come to her Other, which allows Beth to identify him now.
They're back with Rick? What happened? Has she missed them when she's been to those other realities? Has their realities time kept moving? She's so confused. She glances around. Carol. People she doesn't know. Her eyes slide over Daryl's face again. He looks beat down. Sad. Tired. Scared. So scared. Beth's eyes go to her Other, sighting the back of her.
As she does, her breath seizes in her chest and she's dragged forward, straight through bodies, by command of an unknown, silent wind.
She slams into her Other.
She buries the scissors into Dawn's shoulder, Daryl's presence at her back. She's close to being back in his embrace. Minutes away from telling him she loves him, that in this life they can't hold back. That they have to love each other in any and every moment they're gifted. There's a blast, a zing of hot pain through her head and that hot pain burns out, blazing a path through her body. Her mind is smashed to amillion pieces, her atoms spread through the stars.
Beth wakes up screaming, burning and falling. Literally. A tear opens beneath her and she slams into her mattress through the ceiling. Her springs screech and her voice cuts out, her chest heaving. The rip in reality closes above her and her room is silent for the briefest of moments before her bedroom door ricochets against her wall, and her eyes fly to Daryl's shadow falling over her bed.
She whimpers, tears steaming down her face and he hovers in the archway, his chest heaving as much as hers. She hasn't spoken to him since their fight. How long ago was that?
"Your Other...?"
"Gone," she chokes. "She's gone."
It hurts something awful. How can it not? Her Other is her, and she is her Other. She hopes she never has to experience an Others death again. Her Soul feels injured and gaping.
Beth takes in a deep, shaky breath and sits up. "How long was I gone?"
"Hours." He bites the world out like it pains him. "I guessed what you'd done. Seen the portal. Only Shifters can rip into other realities, y'know."
She nods. This doesn't seem important. "Have- have y'seen it too? The end of my Other... end of me?"
He only hums, creeping into her room and sitting on the edge of her bed. She's surprised that she feels a pang of loss for Blue, still here as he is. She misses talking to him, and his sass. Daryl doesn't have a similar personality to Blue, only mannerisms. She wonders if she was always reading him wrong, and that makes her sad too. Right now, she's swimming in loss.
"Beth... y'need some healin'... I can- I can help y'know."
She licks her dry lips, deliberating. Physical touch between Star Crossed Lovers, its healing Magick is unprecedented and still vastly researched, but it is fact. She nods and Daryl doesn't get off the bed and back on like she expects, but crawls on his hands and knees, as is forgetting for a moment he's not a cat anymore. Beth smiles and lifts up so he can sit back against the headboard and wrap her in his arms.
Immediately her heart starts racing, her pulse hammering in both her wrists and throat. After ten inhale and exhales though, her body begins to calm and the most relaxing sense of peace washes over her. She doesn't even tense when Daryl's lip brush over her forehead.
"S'new," he whispers, almost like he's telling her a secret. "But Iwasmade f'you, Beth. Choice don't matter, 'cause s'all I know. I can be whoever you need me to. I can change back into the damn cat f' you want. But I can't go. I ain't. You'll kill me."
Shuddering, she pulls away to look at him in the light her open bedroom door lets in. "You can turn back to Blue?"
"F'that's what you want. What you need. 'Til you're ready."
Beth swallows, her fingers flexing in his shirt where she absentmindedly rested them in their initial hug. She thinks about her Other, and how she wasted time. She thinks about how much she's missed Daryl every time she's woken from her Shifts. Right now, what she truly needs, is the man beside her. The man she's spent so much time with. Of course, that was his Other, and he won't be exactly the same but his Source is innately there. She can feel him.
"I need y'hear right now. As Daryl." She looks up at him, their chests pressed close. "Please."
His arms squeeze her and his head bends to brush his lips over her hairline again. "Okay, girl."
Sighing with relief, she buries her face in his chest. "It's nice to finally meet you, Daryl. Don't think I said that yet."
He rumbles a laugh that warms her whole chest. "S'nice to see you 'gain, Beth."