Good evening lovely readers! So nice to hear from you few still reading (it's absolutely what motivates updates)! :) So… feeling pretty unsure about this chapter, both in tone/content and placement/timing. Pieces of it are from an old segment I wrote a long time ago, and when I thought about piecing it back into this storyline I was going to try to have it ready for a Feb 14 post (maybe letting myself off the hook a little). That, clearly, did not work out. So now I have this chapter for which I cannot decide if it belongs in this story at all, or maybe just at this moment. :/ [M]
Daryl starts and wakes suddenly. His body jolts and his eyes flash around the room, then down at Beth, then follow her gaze back to the door. Everything appears as it should – they're still there, in the bed in the second floor room in the farmhouse. By the sound of it there's no horde of walkers storming the stairs, no group breaking in, but still he reaches out to take up his weapon, only to find it not in reach. His hand drops. Stupid. When he'd carried Beth in to bed he'd left the bow lying on the worn rag rug in the outer room. Careless. Thoughtless. He'd been too wrapped up in her, and's too unused to carrying a crossbow. Quickly he bends and reaches for his abandoned trousers and his hunting knife still belted to them when there's a light pounding on the outer door to the hallway.
"Jus' me," Tom calls from outside. The tension in Daryl's muscles lessens, but still he pulls his knife and sets it in easy grasp on the bedside table aside Beth's crumpled pile of shirts. "Goin' down tuh see what's what," the eighteen-year-old states. "Stay put."
Daryl squints toward the window; it's light out, but the sun's not fully up. It'd be smart to get up, get moving and get back to camp. He should be checking on things at least, alongside Tom, but then Beth touches him. She's watching him, from drowsy thoughtful river-deep eyes. Looking back at her, for what might be the first time - studying her through his own creased soft eyes - he grants himself a pass, and Daryl stays in bed, with her, for at least a little while longer.
The sounds of Tom's steps down the stairs and through the first floor rooms reach up to them through the old plank flooring. Daryl's stomach's gnawing at him already, and he's thinking she too must be hungry; he didn't see her eat much the day before, especially given the distance they traveled. There's food, but none left in the room, and though his stomach growls some — quietly, just enough to remind his body it needs fuel — it's not so loud that it expects to be heeded. He ignores it, choosing her and this bed over food, at least for the present. They can eat while they walk, and they're well trained to bear through hunger pangs. He'll forget it in another moment or two.
Daryl pulls back some from her, letting his eyes adjust, making a little space between, though their legs are entangled still beneath the covers. Though day has broken Beth makes no move to lift her head from the pillow, she just looks at him. Slowly her dimples form the shape of a small smile on her face as she greets him with a faint kiss on his nearby forearm. Life looks like this, he thinks. Like a pretty girl in the morning light safe and happily tucked into a warm bed, smiling at him, her bony knee pressed somewhere against him in their linen tangle. Something tightly embedded in Daryl's chest swells and beats as he looks at her, his hands wanting badly to reach her.
"Morning." Her long lashes flutter, and somewhere in the room there's the faintest scent of honeysuckle. She looks refreshed after the night's rest, not so worn down and not so pale. The sunshine streaming through the east-facing windows warms the room – if only cerebrally – and sparks something in him. An invigoration he could not have predicted the night before as they mourned the absence of their lost companions courses through him and thoughts of clear fields of tall spring grass bending supplely in the breeze, and buzzing honey bees and full white clouds drifting drowsily through blue skies alive with morning songs of sparrows, wrens, and robins come to mind from out of the blackness.
"Mornin'," Daryl clears his throat and rasps. His attention stays on her. The night before – their long hours of searches, their words, their news, their time together in this bed – linger dreamily in his head, and then their eyes meet, as they sometimes do, in that way when they look at one another and it is known there's been a wordless change that's happened between them. From across a downy pillow they recognize another milestone's been crossed, and this morning, like all the mornings that will follow, is not like the ones before. They are resolved. Together. This child will be a good thing. There will be no differing perspective to take.
Daryl reaches out for her arm and pulls it to him; her soft eyes stay on him, sparkling almost as she delights in the simple study of the shadows of his brow, the lines in face, and the scruff of his beard. She says nothing but he feels the sensation of her five small toes running lightly up the length of his calf. Looking at her, motionless, without so much as a steady blink, Daryl stretches open his silent mouth and chomps down lightly on the limp bend of her wrist. Peering up at her from beneath his crooked brow, with a slow teasingly hungry smile he gnaws momentarily on her flesh, then releases her, letting her hand drop down to the pillow. Daryl yawns largely, breathes in deeply, and resigns himself to the day's work. Stretching first, he pushes himself upright and sniffs, and scratches his beard, "Better get movin'."
There's a clanging, or banging, somewhere within the house, a metallic sounding maybe, in the pipes. They both stiffen and spring to rise when from below there's the call, "s me–" in the tone of Tom's Missouri twang. The likely grin he's sporting is audible on their ears as his instruction to "Stand down" travels up to them. Thereafter follows further sounds, hollow with distant clunkings and clangings.
So spurred by Tom's industry, Daryl rises, stepping easily into his ripped and tattered shorts and trousers. Barefooted, and single handedly fastening his belt, he bends and reaches to lift his shirt from the dust-disturbed floor. Beth, who's been awake longer, makes no move at all. Instead her blue eyes follow him, watching as his muscles shift lightly beneath the tattoos and the scars on his back as he takes up and pulls on his ragged clothes.
"Beth?" he asks, noticing her stillness. "Y'al'right?"
He's stopped dressing and he studies her, not sure how soon she'll be feeling sick, or if it'll even happen. They hardly eat as it is, God knows she can't afford to be getting sick to her stomach. But Beth nods her head, with the faintest hint of a smile; she is all right. She isn't sick, but still she does not rise from the bed. Her eyes stay on him, and her fingers crawl out across the quilt and sheets toward him. She asks him, biting down lightly on her lower lip, "The house still secure?"
Daryl glances at her — with Tom downstairs (and making all that racket) they would no doubt know already if it weren't. His torn shirt still unbuttoned, Daryl, with frayed pants legs underfoot, crosses to the window and with a quick swipe of his index finger tucks back the curtain and studies the road below. He spots walkers, but they're roamers, and few; he trusts they'll keep. No sign of the living. No sign the street is any different than how they left it late last night. Daryl lets the sun-yellowed lace drop from his hand, and turns back to Beth.
With a glance in her direction Daryl picks idly at a loose button on his shirt front and moves toward the antique chest of drawers to raid for clothes before finishing dressing, but, seeing the light on her, his eyes stop, and catch, and he keeps his eyes on her. Still she hasn't moved. Still she's only wrapped in a white flannel sheet. There's another sort of noise with the pipes in the walls but Daryl's attention remains on her — wrapped ethereally in sun-bleached white cotton. She couldn't be more darling, more desirable than she is, laid out in this bed, lit by the morning light as she is, sweetly smiling up at him the way she is. Daryl shakes his head and tugs at the scruff on his chin; he's proving unable to get this day started. Movement is living — staying put is death, but a long morning in bed with her...
Beth, who has not moved at all, choosing instead to sit and wait until he no longer could not come to her, smiles at him, sanguinely. "Hi." She's quiet and soft, and the antithesis of everything beyond the four walls of this room.
His blue eyes flick on her. "Hey," he rasps heavily, so low, nearly inaudible.
A pair of feet tread quickly up the wood stairs then there's a quick slap on the closed anterior door. "Hey, yo. No time for a bath – got garden'n tuh do – but there's runnin' water, should be somewhat warmish in a coup'le minutes. If y'all 're interested." He adds as he mounts the third story stairs, "I'm eatin' the canned carrots. So say g'bye t' those."
The footsteps continue to the third floor and Daryl looks away from the door and back towards Beth. Her eyes are nearly glittering. With a small gesture he accepts the hand she extends to him, and crawls back into bed, and to her. Rolling onto his back Daryl's iunbuttoned shirt falls open as Beth presses herself to him, letting him feel her weight gentle upon him, her skin on his. Holding his face to hers she kisses him, his neck, his jaw, his ears, his eyelids. Again there is the fluttering voltage of electricity and spontaneity and life betwixt them. Like so many times before her teeth and lips take hold of his earlobe, as her hands wrap around his, allowing him only fractionally to put them on her where he would like.
When his tongue finds hers, and he's kissing her like he means it, Beth Greene rises from him and allows the sheet she's wrapped in to drop lightly from her shoulders, falling and cascading about her slender thighs and hips. With this before him, though his thoughts and pulse race and erupt, Daryl pulls himself from his fevered train of thought, paces himself, and takes her in: Beautiful as ever. Strong. Tanner, in places, for sure. Happy. She looks happy, and at ease, and – all but for the sheet tumbled atop her lap – utterly exposed for his perusal. She looks down at him with a smile. Beth loves that boyish blink he gets, that look like he's not sure he should be looking. That expression never lasts – it's replaced by so many other expressions: savage desire, absolute domineering self-assuredness, total animal abandon, earnest sobering love, and wicked roguish pleasure, but when he wears this face for her — the one that sometimes still traces across his face after all their time spent solely with each other, the one that says maybe she still isn't his, or shouldn't be, or betrays the boyish part of him somewhere inside, beneath the brawn and the bravado — she loves it. She gives every part of herself to that part of him — the fractured part that needs her most, and takes all the rest of him for her own pleasure.
Beth grips his hands in hers as she sits atop him, watching him watching her, and one by one, never breaking her eyes from his, she kisses his knuckles and the pads of each of ten fingertips. Her growing hair is matted and bent in the back from where she'd slept on it, but in this light it frames her face better than any halo could, almost like her long locks were never cut off but only tied back, and Daryl waits, as she takes her time with him. Over muscles and hair, and bruises and cuts, tattoos and scars, her lips and fingertips journey his chest. When her mouth lifts from him she moves his ready hands to her breasts and holds them to her, breathing in under the feel of his touch. Daryl bites down on the tip of his tongue, silences himself and plays at her game.
Her frame is slight, as are her breasts — her most notable curve is the slope of her waist — but he wouldn't wish her body any way than as it is. It is so Beth — quiet, and soft, and privately alluring. He's at the point now he can hardly think of how he'd managed never having especially noticed her before. She's a knockout, and he'd never seen it, never looked. Now his hands slip down to her hips so that he might admire the view she presents and take hold of what little meat her body carries. Daryl grips her hips, her thighs, her ass, her back. He'd hold on to her all day if he could. He's grinning at her, slow and steady and quiet. He's pleased with the setting he finds himself in, and he grins at her like it's some kind of kept secret that he likes her. In answer Beth leans down over him, and, holding her face just above his, allows her lips just barely to brush over his. So infrequently do they have the time, the space, the security to take things slowly, she will not give it up without first luxuriating in it now, and with the house secured, Tom on watch (or at least some distance removed), and the day still early, he's right along with her for the ride.
As she unfastens his belt and the waist of his pants, though he would rather take her in the moment, or at the very least her lips, or to growl at her to stop teasing, Daryl shifts on his back, repositions her atop him, guiding her by her hips, and grants her free reign to set any pace that suits her. First with her teeth, then her own luscious mouth, she tugs at his bottom lip, but she does not kiss him. Her restraint provokes its intended insatiate effect: Daryl twitches fractionally, alive with sensations and desires, but he does not act, he remains pliant and hers. When she does rise, and is once again sitting straight up astride him, and he's looking into those guileful, adoring large eyes of hers, his mind unwittingly drifts from fucking to fatherhood. She's pregnant, carrying their small – currently indescribably small – child, her body forever changed by his. It's daunting. It seems near inconceivable her slight body can manage such a feat, but he touches her and trusts she will. 'Trust' is not strong enough when it comes to this. He needs to know she can do this – believe that this baby will not be the ending of her. He does know it. He—
"Hey," she smiles at him, pulling him back into the world with her. "Com'ere," she says softly, and pulls him up at the waist towards her. "Put your mouth on me," her voice whispers warmly and bubbly into his ear; his eyes flash — no longer a boy, no longer a spouse harnessed with responsibility, he is a man, in bed with the woman he desires most in the world — and with no further prompting necessary the hunter obliges, and takes her impertinent breast into his ready lips. Daryl lifts his girl up into his arms while she holds his head dearly close to her beating heart.
In short time Daryl lifts Beth from the bed, kisses her and touches her. The hardened tattooed archer turns her in his hands and toward the bed. Beth's girlish giggle trills in his ears and before it fades he kicks her bare foot away from her other and she laughs again as she stumbles unexpectedly forward and into a spread stance against the bed. Behind her Daryl takes her, holding on to her by waist and by breast, and traces his calloused hand up the side of her torso and down again. Cupping her, and lightly spanking her still pert ass, building the anticipation for what's to come next, Daryl nuzzles the scruff of his face against the bend in her neck. Beneath his hand he feels her heart beating, ever faster, as her breathing hastens and quickens. She stretches her head back to him, letting his body captivate hers.
Capable of restraint no longer, his breathing heavy with anticipation in sync with her own, Daryl pulls her back by the crook of his arm where it wraps about her, his other hand pressing firmly down on her at the small of her back, pressing her into the mounds of harried bedding, admiring the angles of her body the position presents. In short order he grasps tightly at her around her hips, pressing her flat abdomen down on to him while still he pulls back on her where his hand holds to her collarbone. And there and like this, wrapped about her, holding her close, he takes her fully, simultaneously commanding and surrendering to their enterprise. She's on her toes, barely able to stand without his support as he buries himself within her, over and over again, incessantly, pushing her into a primal rhythm with him. In his strong embrace she encourages him, gripping his hands to her, reaching behind her and pulling at his tangled mangy hair, searching blindly for his lips, hot and hungry and hers. She's afraid she'll cry out the sensations are so overpowering, but she can hardly breathe much less speak or form sounds. Her short quickness of breath, her intoxicating panting and the buoyant movements of her body drive him on and he holds her closer, relinquishes her collarbone in favor of her breasts and steady attention to the space between her legs, rubbing her, taking care of her, making love to her as they draw ever closer to climax — and then— the release, the quick and sudden surrender and capitulation, and he presses himself in even deeper, holding himself firm while she comes, and tenses and shivers and relaxes; exhausting himself in turn, Daryl holds her as she collapses limply into his arms, and presses his hot flushed face to her breathless body.
Sweaty, heated and breathing heavily he scoops her up with a single bend and lifts her again onto the bed. Laying her face down on the bedding, he crawls on top of her, paying no notice to the mess. He lies heavy atop her, feeling his heart pace slow, allowing his breathing to fall in time with hers. Both sweaty and sticky, their skin melds comfortably with one another's as he lies there, his legs on either side of hers. "Beeeth," he breathes heavily into her ear, and nuzzles his face closer to hers. If he could only hold her like this forever — safe and covered from the world, his to love, his to protect —but he cannot. They must rise, they must move forward, they must return to battle outside before the outside world wars itself to their feet inside this house.
In time, when his body regains awareness of the full weight of his mass, he rolls off her onto his back and listens, as she curls into his chest, holding him close, to the rust screeching rumbling of water pipes filling and running. Above their heads somewhere rushes the unmistakable sound of running water. A shower. Listening dreamily, Beth runs her fingers through his hair, and kisses messily the undercleft of his jaw line. They're paralyzed in bliss. Utterly. In this moment the thought of forsaking this bed and this euphoric embrace is unthinkable. But quicker than she would have thought she's reaching for some scrap of fabric to clean herself with and rising to look for any build of walkers below in the yard.
Peering through the curtains while behind her in the room her lover wipes at his brow and refastens his waistband, Beth keenly scans the street below and the town and roads beyond. The house stands clear — no walkers, no unidentified vehicles. Clear. Overhead the shower still runs.
Returning from the window, still undressed save for the clean pair of undies she's pulled from the chest of drawers and shimmied into as she walks, Beth crosses to the bed, kisses Daryl softly below his navel, then, knife in hand, exits into the anterior sitting room and from there into the hall. "Greene—" Daryl calls after her to remind his sprite-like companion that maybe clothes would be advisable when potentially confronting walkers, or the living – not to mention there's already another person in the house – and that he would have gone himself had she given him just a second more.
Beth walks on, knife at the ready, descending the stairs quietly and makes the rounds on the house – she checks the doors, the windows, and checks all four sides of the house. Nothing is breached. In the kitchen Beth spies the basement door open and tiptoes down the unfinished wood planked steps. The heat and sound of the furnace strike her immediately, and Beth moves closer to the glowing boiler. She's concerned when she thinks what Tom has done in lighting it, worrying there will be a trail of smoke emitting somewhere, calling unnecessary attention to the house, but sees then he's left the flue shut. Ill-advised if they had any intention of staying long in the house, but they'll soon be gone and on the road and heading back to their wooded camp, so what matter if the old rooms fill with smoke? Beth opens the hinged iron door and tosses several more logs into the crackling fire. The quarter-split logs are damp, as is the basement, but they do catch, and the smell is homey, and old but familiar.
Beth re-climbs the steps, does one final check, counting seven walkers in total, one very far off. Seven is not a threat. They can dispatch seven easily when they emerge. Still, upon re-climbing the stairs and reentering the sitting room she takes up the crossbow, carrying it with her in hand in case Daryl judge it best to take any of them out from within the house before they leave.
With pants and shirts on, Daryl's ransacking the room's drawers for what they might need or make use of. There's no TV for a remote to pull batteries from, but he has clothes, for both him and for Beth, matches, a 9V battery from the smoke detector, and—
He stops when he sees her: Bare bodied and armed with a knife and a crossbow. In the moment as he looks at her, studying her with his quite keen eyes, Daryl has no thoughts of the future or supplies or shelter on his mind; for the time, each and every thought is consumed by one image, that of Beth, in the nude, still flushed from their exploits, carrying his loaded crossbow.
"Stop," he commands. She does stop, but because she thought he'd heard something she had missed. Alert, she turns her head, first right and then left, but she hears nothing, save for the water shutting off upstairs; all is as it was. She catches Daryl's eyes for some clue to what she's missed, but it's that sexy dumb conspiratorial grin of his that she finds. And then she understands just why the order came to stop.
Through the strainings of a demure smile she instructs her companion to "Shut up." Saying so, Beth moves to rest the heavy weapon against the dresser.
"No." His weighty voice directs again firmly, "Stop." For the moment, because she isn't tired and doesn't feel ill and she hasn't had to kill a walker for some time and she's enjoyed her time with him in this old room, Beth momentarily does indulge him and does stop, even half popping one hip to the side, and he looks at her, through narrowed dancing eyes. "Damn," he exhales. "Goddamn."
"Quiet," she shakes her head and straightens her stance, unable to take on the compliment full-faced.
"You kiddin'?" he challenges with a chuckle, like she hasn't got a clue about what he's seeing. The archer takes a step forward, "Nobody looks this good." There may come a day when he no longer has her, but this is not that day. Daryl Dixon's eyes are wholly full of her.
"My arms will get tired," she points out dryly.
Daryl nods his head as he approaches slowly; "Mm,hm…" he answers in corroboration.
"'An' eventu'ly it'll get cold."
"Mm,hm," once again he feigns agreement, his eyes never leaving her figure.
"And—" she starts another protestation, but needs a moment before continuing as his hands are on her and he's kneeling down before her and she must catch her breath "—eventually I'll get tired."
Holding her, stretching his warm rough hands around her, Daryl kisses her torso. Once, and then twice, and then a third time, slowly and methodically; Beth's footing falters. Reaching and taking the weapon from her, setting it against the tall bureau beside them, without ever removing his lips from her skin, running his hands from her hips down and up again from her thighs to her calves, the lengths of her legs, Daryl teases her for her plight, "That's a sad tale," and spanks her with a single smack. With her hands clutching fondly to his mess of long hair he kisses her once more, where their child is surely growing, then without warning rises, and easily slings her over his shoulder and carries her to the bathroom. Beth laughs, but does not protest, and thinks, as he delivers her into the shower with decently warmish running water, that life, can still be good, and pleasure and laughter still possible to be found.
Okay, so there we go - on the smut factor for this chpt: Guilty as charged. (Is that a #sorry or a #sorrynotsorry?)