Standing behind her where she lies, Daryl lifts one foot then the other, tugging off her mud and blood-encrusted boots, letting them drop, one by one, heavy onto the pine board floor. Next, he pulls off her socks, worn, and sweaty and stained with her own blood from blisters. He lets these drop too. Daryl takes her feet in his hands, long and narrow and thin, thrashed with blisters and swollen from the chronic abuses of the road. He rubs, with the ends of his thumbs and the balls of his hands, hard, and steady, and slow. He runs his knuckles down the undersides of her arches in repetition and rubs each aching toe individually. Beth exhales in great pleasure and sinks deeper into the bed. Daryl grabs a bottle of water from his nearby pack, and with a corner of the bedsheet he dabs at and washes the open sores in her raw skin. The recently acquired wool socks she'd bartered with him really were high stakes — thick, absorbent, air wicking; they could make a big difference in a life lived as they now live.
Daryl's calloused hands move up her legs, reaching up through the ends of her jeans, massaging her calves, though he can hardly get at them the fabric of her pants is so tight. Resting one knee in the space between her semi-parted legs, Daryl leans over her weary body and reaches in beneath her, undoing her jeans without hardly disturbing her. Wordlessly he takes hold of her waistband at either hip and tugs the jeans and her underpants down her hips and travel-tried limbs, shimmying them off and dropping them on the floor beside her boots and her socks. Beth's bare skin tingles at being so exposed to the air, becoming alive with anticipation and keenly aware of every touch and every new sensation.
Her muscles, which have been building and strengthening these months on the road, throb from overuse now that they're finally permitted to stretch out and relax. Daryl takes them in his hands, letting her toes rest and press against his chest as he rubs first one calf and then the other, massaging until the knots break down and her limbs go limp in his grasp. She would say something, roll over, return the favor — something, but it feels too good to even stir to make a sound. And so Beth lies there, not caring that her backside is entirely exposed to him, not caring that this by far is the longest extended length of time he's seen her in such a state of undress. She's so worn out, and so pleasurably indisposed, she can't be bothered to care. And more than that, he is the person she trusts implicitly with her body, with her heart, with her life. By this point, she has little use for modesty and no reason to demure. It's Daryl. Her Daryl.
He might have at one time seen her as just another dead girl who just had yet to die, but if he ever had, it's not so now. Beth is what he's got. Beth is all that he's got. And to him, she is very much alive, and resilient, and brave. There is nothing in him for her to shy away from. What's more, any shame they might have individually felt about their bodies — the proportions of hers, or the scars etched so deeply in his — are irrelevant; this world, and much more the indelible bond between them, has made them moot. Their bodies keep them alive, and in them, breathing and being, they are beautiful. There is no reason at all to wish them any other way. That huge bruise on the back of her upper thigh — where his hands are working up to, moving slowly and with stealth over the sensitive spot at the back of her knees, running up her inner legs, kneading and massaging with his palms and his thumbs — is evidence that when knocked down she stood up again. The thin ropey scars on her wrist signify the same. The marks on his back shaped him as he is. Daryl Dixon: Bluntly honest, fiercely loyal, guarded as hell, deeply empathetic, fearless, and good. There's nothing else to see in them. If she any longer had the time and mind frame to think of these things, she might have wished herself fuller curves or smoother skin, but this is the body she's surviving in, what other body could he possibly want?
Daryl moves from her thighs, trailing round the sides of her hips, up to the small of her back where his fingers entangle in the fabric of her garments as he lays his lips softly in the dip just above her tailbone. With impressive efficacy he pulls up on her shirts, tugging them up off her, under her chest, over her shoulders and head, pulling her arms through each in turn, helping her to remain as motionless as she chooses. Her shirts too fall to the ground. Daryl's other leg, that had been straddling the bed to the floor, now lifts to the mattress, landing his knee beside her, just below her right breast. He starts in on her neck. Rubbing, pressing, pinching, rolling. Unexpectedly Beth lets out a muffled groan, "Uuuuuhhhh." His hands are hurting her, pinching her muscles till they burn, but through the pain the release feels so good. He carries on, incorporating her shoulders and her sides. His hands work down the length of her back where she is bruised and scratched, and also lightly scarred, but untouched when in comparison. With a pop of his thumb he undoes the hooks in her bra and lets the straps fall limply to either side of her. Lightly he touches his weathered hand to her soft skin, feeling on her the place where if her hand lay on his she would not know but feel the life from which he still sometimes feels he is fleeing.
Daryl pushes back the locks of blonde hair muffling her lovely face from his. With her wisps of curls now displaced, he can just ] see one bright eye and the corner of a smile. Daryl kisses her shoulder-blade, and rubs down the muscles in the length of each arm from shoulder to fingertip, taking extra care with her hands, rubbing each frontways and back, from base to finger end. Then again his hands find their way to her back. Rubbing out the kinks and the stress, Daryl pushes out from her spine on the balls of his hands, pressing down and up on her ribcage, cracking her back in two places. And when his hands move once more they run down the length of her sides, running beneath her, and cupping her breasts where they rest pillowed in the bedding. The stirring Beth's been feeling builds, and that dull sense of wanting intensifies by the sense of his thick knee so very close between her open thighs.
Beth edges towards him by a fraction. She has not learned this sort of patience yet, there is no place for it in the woods. To be embraced so openly by him — every bit of her from toes to ears — is exquisite, and though this was not what she'd meant at all when she'd asked him for a good day, certainly he's delivered. Then his touch vanishes. And just when she starts to think that he has finished, releasing a deeply satisfied sigh as she sinks yet even deeper into the longed-for and hoped-for and dreamt-of bed, Beth's ears catch the unmistakable sound of a belt coming unbuckled and a zipper coming unzipped. Next to follow are the sounds of clothing falling to the floor with the dull thud that would be a leather vest and layers of shirts dropping to the floor.
Though she cannot see him from where she lies, Beth can see the picture he must make — strong and lean and scarred, filthy, focussed and beautiful. Motionless excepting her limbs, Beth flutters her legs in blind anticipation, running her toes up and down until she can feel him behind her. Although undone, and fallen below his hips, he is still in his torn and ragged pants. His hands find her again, inching up the inner path of her claves and gamine thighs. His lips and tongue kiss her, moving without pattern across her soft skin that tastes of sweat and distinctly of Beth. Beth wonders if Daryl's capacity to be gentle and attentive ever surprises him (it is not what one would easily expect from him). She guesses it might, though it hasn't her since she first saw him take Judith in his arms. There are other sides to Daryl of course. The side that at times made her fear him, and at others nearly hate him, but she'd long known this is part of him too. The part that can feel, and love, and take on another person completely. Even before Judith was born, back to the group's early loss of that little girl. Carol's daughter. Sophia. A part of him that might have been all of him had his early life gone differently.
And even if a person hadn't been there in those moments as she had been, to see the devastation of loss, of utter helplessness masked behind strength, to see the deep wealth of empathy and love allowed out only when holding a newborn motherless infant, it is always there in his eyes when he isn't filled with rage, ferocity, or retaliatory malice. She is not the only one to see it, they all had, even the newcomers. That is how Daryl Dixon came from being the outsider camped out on his own on by the site of the farm's original homestead, to the point man of the prison group and member of the council, universally respected and widely loved. She had seen then how he'd carried the position uneasily, and knows more now how truly ambivalent about it he must have been. And she just loves him. She does. Utterly. Fearlessly.
Wanting to be closer, wanting him still nearer, Beth lifts her head and starts to turn herself over on her elbows to face him, but Daryl leans in over her, and his hands slip into hers, stretching them out before her while pressing wet kisses on her ear and neck. "Shhhh." The long firm fingers of Daryl's right hand entwine with all ten of hers, freeing his left to slide down beneath her and lift her slightly by her narrow waist. She feels him now so close to her, the heat from his body radiating through hers… Beth breathes, and she waits, helplessly anticipating… When? When? When?
And then—
Together, both he and she breathe in their delayed pleasure "Vhhhhhhh—!" then release in unison "Uuuuhhhhh..." as their bodies adjust. Daryl lies himself completely atop her, covering her from the world, holding her so intimately close, loving her entirely. The sensation of his body working in and against hers leaves Beth lost, and she does, in these fervent overpowering minutes with him, detach from everything — the loss, the fear, the hunger, the exhaustion, the helplessness, the hopelessness, the dreary monotony, the isolation, the devastation — it all temporarily dissipates until there is euphorically nothing but him and her in the world of this bed. Nothing is missing, nothing is lost of forsaken, no one is broken or weak, and together they—
Beth shudders and her breath stops short as her body novelly intensely constricts and contracts in confounding delight and satisfaction, but at the height of his own passion Daryl pulls himself away from her and the product of their activities ends up cupped in his calloused hand.
When she can catch her breath and focus, limp and sweaty where she lies, Beth twists herself around to look at him, "So, that was…?" It wasn't the first time he'd withdrawn from her so, but she's still without much of a frame of reference for most of this, and in regards to conversing about it even more so. But it now not being so very new, and also less hurried for it being the first time in a true bed, and so too the first time indoors, truly out of range of walkers, Beth's head is a little clearer for it and she's hazarded now to broach the subject she hadn't had the wherewithal to address from the beginning.
"Restraint," he mumbles, kissing the soft inside of her raised thigh. "Also goes by," he kisses her flushed breast, "caution."
She understands. "Hm." She's more than aware they haven't exactly practiced 'caution' consistently up to this point. Not in that regard.