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Wild Things (The Moonshine Poet) - The Walking Dead - Beth Greene/Daryl Dixon - 2/3
Title: Wild Things (The Moonshine Poet)
Author: Abelina/Abby/Abelinajt
Fandom/Pairing: The Walking Dead – Beth Greene/Daryl Dixon (Bethyl)
Rating/Warnings: M/E for sexual content and language.
Summary: The night they burned the shack to the ground, Daryl Dixon has a revelation. Now they’re running through the night together like a pair of wild things, and when Beth Greene takes his hand, he realizes he never wants to let go. He wasn’t sure where they were goin’, but for the first time since the prison fell, he felt like they were moving forward, heading for something instead of just tryin’ to survive. And that, he knew, was entirely because of Beth Greene. An alternate timeline following the events of Still.
Notes: This was written as a very long one-shot, clearly too long for LJ so I've broken into three pieces for posting, but it's meant to be read as one long fic, not concise individual chapters.
All Parts Here
The next few weeks were some of the hottest he’d ever experienced, the height of the Georgian summer punishing them with cloudless skies and endless, stifling heat. Beth declared that the two of them looked like a couple of filthy drowned dogs, dripping with sweat from the horrible humidity, grimy from travelling and walkers and the rabbits they’d skinned last night for supper. So when they came across the river and the waterfall with the wide, deep pool below it, Daryl didn’t even attempt to dissuade Beth’s enthusiasm.
“Let’s go swimming!”
Despite the heat, her smile bloomed bright and energetic, and Daryl dropped the bag off his shoulders without hesitation. Only when Beth started peeling off her clothes did he freeze, sure his eyes musta been bulging right outta his head at the reveal of her back as she pulled off the dirty yellow shirt, at the long line of her legs as she struggled out of her jeans. And fuck, the way she looked over her shoulder, standin’ there in just a dingy old bra and panties, cheeks pink like she were bein’ bashful, but with a challenge burning in her blue eyes that dispelled the notion of bashfulness completely. He stood there gaping at her like a catfish but she only laughed, not the sort of laughter where she was laughin’ at him, but the kind that wriggled right down inside him like a shot of moonshine, stirring the coals until he burned with a heat that had nothing to do with the sun.
Beth jumped into the pool below and called up to him to join her, and he was out of his clothes faster than he would’ve thought possible, leaping into the water in just his shorts without caring at all. The shock of the cold water almost took away his hard-on, but the moment Beth swam up beside him to moan out how good the water felt, he didn’t notice the cold anymore and neither did the rest of him.
She swam in circles around him, floating on her back with her breasts peaking out of the water, distracting him with her hard nipples poking through the fabric and with flashes of her bellybutton. She dove beneath the water, the curve of her ass and the pink of her skin through the wet, once-white panties the last thing he saw before she disappeared. Or she floated up in front of him, water droplets clinging to her eyelashes and her nose and her smiling lips, and he tread water and watched her teasing him and let her laughter keep him afloat.
They used the fine sand at the edge of the pool to scour away the grime and sweat from their skin and their hair, then Beth climbed up the rocks to get their things from the ledge above and brought them down below where they’d be more secure. Daryl couldn’t leave the water just yet, not with the way his body reacted to the sight of her wearing nearly nothing, and stood there in the deep with just his head above the water, waiting for her to dress. Except she dropped her clothes in a heap by the water and walked back toward him, stepping in at the shallow side of the pool, looking pink and clean and lovely in the glaring afternoon sun.
This time, she floated right up and draped her arms over his shoulders, and he couldn’t help but respond by gripping her waist beneath the water. He tried to hold her away from his body, but she was having none of that, and pulled herself in until she had to feel him there, hard for her and her alone. And though she bit her lip as she looked him in the eye, she weren’t surprised and she weren’t scared, and when he moved to kiss away the water drops from her eyelashes she giggled softly and let him do it.
“I’ve never kissed anyone in the water,” she whispered, when their foreheads met and all he could see of her was the blur of her face and flashes of cornflower blue.
Daryl dipped his tongue into the water, drawing a few drops into his mouth while Beth breathed out a shuddery breath. And he caught the end of it with his lips, touching down softly on hers, sighing into her mouth at the absolute heat of her. She caught his bottom lip in her teeth, nipping softly, playfully, drawing out a moan from him that made her shiver all over. And he slid his tongue along the line of hers, no invitation necessary to deepen the kiss, because she was already right there with him, breathing his breath and wrapping her legs around his hips until the heat of her engulfed him, just two thin layers between them that felt like too much and not enough at the same time.
But his tongue was in her mouth, and hers stroked along his, and when she rolled her hips against him, he decided on too much and groaned into her mouth as the sensation washed over him. She was gonna burn him right up, she was, and he was gonna enjoy every last minute of it.
They hadn’t seen a walker all day, and took the chance on scrubbing their clothes in the water and letting them dry in the evening heat by hanging them from the lower branches of the birch trees at the water’s edge, while they sat in their underwear and caught fish for their supper. And though they hadn’t talked about what happened, about the unknowable amount of time they’d spent kissing in the water before the moment came where they had to decide whether to cross that line, or let it lie, the little looks passing between them now, heated yet tender, left no question in his mind that Beth Greene felt the same burn in her soul as he felt in his. He’d wanted to, wanted to bury himself deep inside her, into the heat of her he could feel blazing into him despite the cold water and layers of cloth, but the flash of uncertainty in her eyes was all he’d needed to stop.
It wasn’t because she didn’t want him back. He knew she did, she just wasn’t ready. But she wasn’t frightened, either. Not of him and not of this, whatever this was that went so far beyond physical he couldn’t even tell where it started, he only knew it didn’t end. She pressed her back to his chest, leaning into him as they sat together in front of the little fire, eating fish, talking some, making a game of seeing which of them could make the other one shiver harder by brushing fingertips over warm, naked skin.
He didn’t know intimacy, never knew a touch like Beth’s, and it should’ve scared him but he’d come to learn that nothing about Beth Greene frightened him, except maybe how fully and irrevocably he’d fallen for her since the night of the fire. Since the night she’d burned away his demons and made a reluctant poet out of what was left behind.
When the sun set and their clothes were dry, they put on their layers again only because they’d already tempted fate too long. But tonight instead of curling up at his side, like she usually did, Beth settled right in against his chest, her legs drawn up together with her body between his knees. She propped her arms up on her knees and he trailed his fingers over her skin, back and forth from fingertip to elbows, long after she erupted all over in goose bumps.
For a long time they sat still, listening to the sounds of night, the fall of the water and the leap of fish, the noises of insects and the faint rustle of the leaves in the breeze that finally came once night fell. Then Beth started singing, a song he didn’t know, but it poured out of her and swirled up around him and it didn’t matter what it was, because when Beth sang it was beautiful.
And though they hadn’t spoken a word aloud in hours, these ones came to him and he couldn’t stop. “I never heard a nicer sound than when you start singin’.”
Beth laughed softly, a sound he arguably enjoyed better but he wasn’t gonna say so. She reached back to bury her fingers in his hair, scratching her fingernails along his scalp as she did and drawing out a sound from him he didn’t even recognize, and giggled again before saying, “Drink, Dixon.”
He had no water, no moonshine, so he buried his nose in her hair and drank her in instead. And it was Beth’s turn to moan, then, and Daryl decided it didn’t matter what sound she made, he adored them all.
Daryl didn’t know the rules to this, but after a day or two he decided that rules didn’t matter. Beth didn’t need ‘em, neither did he. After the river the touches between them became freer, and he felt like he could be greedy, could stroke her arm without any purpose besides havin’ the desire to, since Beth not only welcomed his touches but did what she could to elicit them. They had yet to kiss again, hadn’t got to where it was something they did, like Glenn and Maggie all casual and, well, perfunctory, if the word meant what he thought it did. So he was glad of that, because while he longed to feel her lips on his again, to have her wrap around him like she had, the anticipation felt almost as heady as the moment itself and he was looking forward to when it billowed over.
He tasted gunpowder and knew they were gonna explode.
Their walker-free streak ended with a ravenous herd that snuck upon them early in the morning. Beth was on watch and he was asleep beside her with his head in her lap when she shook him awake violently. They’d barely had time to grab their shit before they were running through the woods, tryin’ to escape before the loose circle of the dead could close them in.
In the end they had to stop and fight, standing back to back because walkers lumbered in from all sides, both of them using knives because the fight was too close for his bow. He didn’t know how many he’d taken down before the one got hold of him, and for one horrible second he knew this was it, he was gonna get bit and that was the end of him, but Beth got a handful of its hair and hauled it off him before the teeth could bite down and thrust her knife right on through to its rotten brain. And they might’ve been standing in a forest full of stinking dead bodies, but right then the only thing in the world was her, Beth, covered in gore and sweat, his moonshine goddess savin’ his life once again.
She was in his arms before he could blink, and all he knew was the heat of her breath, the slide of her lips and the clacking of teeth on teeth, the scrape of teeth on lips and the tipping of the world as he fell on his back and took her down with him. Then it was needy groans when his hands found her breasts, rolling hips over rigid flesh when he pinched her nipples in his fingers, her hands in his hair as they burned together on the forest floor.
That time, they’d talked about it. Beth had grinned and blushed, even darker than the flush that still coloured her cheeks, and said, “If you’re gonna kiss me like that every time we’re gonna have to set up alarms.”
And the statement was both thrilling and sobering, because she was right—they’d fallen to the ground amongst the corpses without even caring to check what else might’ve been lurking in the woods, and that alone was enough to make him wonder at the wisdom of going forward with this.
But then he’d taken another look at her, kiss-swollen lips, a flush of red that coloured her from forehead to chest, and he knew that not going forward wasn’t an option. They would just have to be a little more careful, from now on.
After the walker attack, they’d walked all day and straight on through the night, their path guided by the moon which hung full and bright in the cloudless sky, stopping for a short rest at daybreak before they kept walking through the heat of the next day.
“I never…” Beth drew out the last syllable of the word as she tipped her eyes up toward the sky, thinking. “I never rode on a train.”
Daryl took a sip from his water bottle. “Jumped one, once, when I was fourteen.”
It was his turn now, but he was more than a little distracted by Beth and the way she almost skipped when she walked, the way her jeans hugged her just so, the way her hand fit into his like it belonged there—which it did, and he’d think it were all too damn cute to be his cuppa tea, except he’d be lying if he tried.
‘Cause he suddenly got it, just now, when she wrinkled her nose up and said, “God, we stink. Think we could find a place to swim?”
It sounded innocent, the question spoken in her sweet little voice, the voice that could sing like an angel—but also moan like the devil, and it was the latter he saw peeking out through her eyes when she glanced sidelong at him and asked about swimming.
And amidst the physical reaction—because that was easy and frequent and impossible to hide these days—was the other sort, the swelling of heat inside that happened no matter what his body was doing, whether she was awake or asleep, whether she was by his side or across the a clearing setting up camp. It was the part he’d been struggling to figure out since this whole mess started, and once the answer fell into his brain he coulda laughed, if he hadn’t been such a blind fool.
Daryl Dixon was completely, unequivocally, madly in love with Beth Greene.
He must’ve been making a face, because Beth cocked her head to one side with her question-face on, and asked, “What is it?”
But it wasn’t time, not yet. Besides—he was certain she could feel it, because the other half of his revelation was that he could feel it from her, too. So he just shook his head and smiled at her, the expression coming so naturally these days it didn’t even feel foreign any more.
“Ain’t nothin’,” he said, bumping her with his hip. “Let’s find us a swimmin’ hole.”
Daryl wasn’t surprised when Beth didn’t stop with her shirt and jeans, and instead reached around her back to unclasp her worn old bra, dropping it on the pile before bending, stepping out of her panties and leaving them there on the shore as she strode naked into the water. He watched her, as he was meant to do, given the exaggerated sway of her hips that drew his eyes to the soft curves of her ass before they disappeared into the water. She turned, then, breasts in full view, perky and perfect and already familiar to his hands, if not his eyes. And she said nothing, just issued the challenge with her eyes and he knew he wasn’t gonna back down, even with her watchin’ his every move.
Because the thing of it was, he didn’t have anything to hide. Oh, she maybe hadn’t seen what was beneath his shorts, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to her and he wasn’t ashamed, anyway. His most private parts she already knew—his crappy childhood, the scars of his father’s hands upon his back, his hopeless heart and bottomless guilt—and as far as he was concerned, he’d stripped naked in front of her long before he stepped out of his shorts and joined her in the water.
Still, there was no denying the way her eyes widened at the sight of him, cock standing full and hard out in front of him as he walked toward her. But Beth Greene wasn’t afraid, if she had been they’d never have got here, and her arms wound around his shoulders and her legs around his hips without hesitation.
“I’ve never had sex,” Beth whispered, even as he felt the slick wetness of her beneath the water.
And maybe Daryl had, but never like this, never with someone like Beth, and he was pretty certain she understood that, so he said, “I never wanted anyone as much as I want you.”
Beth let her head fall forward until their foreheads met and their breath mingled in the middle. Daryl shifted her a little, just enough so he could glide the head of his cock along her slit by tilting his hips, teasing a little moan from her lips, bringing on a shudder that started in her toes and rolled up through her shoulders and out in a shaking breath.
And when the shudder stopped, Beth sucked in another breath and started moving, too, sliding more of her along more of him. “Me either.”
He wasn’t going to do this in the water, not her first time, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do anything. The way Beth moaned and the heaviness of her breathing whenever his cock passed over her clit told him there was plenty they could do here and now.
“It never—oh—never felt this good when I did it my—myself.”
Beth’s voice was equal parts husky and equal parts breath, and if that alone wasn’t enough to make him wanna come already like a fucking teenager, the thought of her touching herself could’ve almost done it.
But he had a tad more self control than that, and trusting her to hold herself up, he took his cock in hand so he could concentrate on her clit, circling his head over the swollen nub and moaning right along with her.
Her whole body trembled now, and even under water she was soaking wet and just so warm. “Oooh, Daryl…”
It didn’t take long before Beth’s fingers dug into his shoulders and her body drew tight like a bow string, and when she let go, she didn’t scream, like he knew she wouldn’t—no, she let out a series of long, gasping sighs while she shuddered around him, and it was a fuckin’ miracle that he hadn’t gone over with her, she felt so good falling apart like that.
When she relaxed, boneless in his arms, Daryl carried her out of the water and back to the shore, settling her sideways on his lap, not caring that he hadn’t come because he didn’t matter, it was always only Beth. She recovered quickly, though, and looked up at him with her eyes narrowed and wrapped her fingers around his cock and squeezed.
“I never made someone come before,” she said, moving her hand slowly, sliding his foreskin up and down like she’d done this a million times, despite her declaration.
And Daryl couldn’t stop the groan she caused, stroking him like that. “Better get my drink before you make yourself a liar. Fuck, Beth…”
She giggled, she fucking giggled, drawing her hand up and over his head and back down, stroking him like a pro even though he knew otherwise, turning so she straddled his lap, one hand braced on his shoulders, forehead touching his, her thighs a cradle he wanted desperately to fall into. And she maybe couldn’t draw his bow, but what she was very good at was drawing moans outta him unlike anything he ever thought he’d make, and it felt so fucking good that he came with a groan loud enough to wake the dead, spilling all over himself and her and the dirt beneath them.
When he could see again, he watched Beth playing connect the dots with the semen on her belly, and wondered at a universe that would bring someone like him together with someone like her.
The next couple of days were spent travelling and avoiding an increasingly alarming number of walkers. Daryl began to wonder whether they shouldn’t rethink their trajectory, since the moment they started north again the walkers just kept coming. He’d been pondering this when they found the train tracks, lost in his thoughts so he hadn’t seen it time.
Beth gave a little sob, turning and falling into his arms before he knew what happened. And they sunk to the ground in the centre of the tracks, Beth crying so hard she could barely get a word out when he asked her what was wrong.
But then she said, “Maggie,” and he finally saw the words, scrawled in walker blood—a message for Glenn, but not a message for Beth.
I know you look at me and see another dead girl.
Beth hadn’t given up on her sister. She hadn’t given up on any of them. But they’d given up on her—just another dead girl. But they were wrong, all of them. So wrong. Because there wasn’t anyone more alive in this entire world than Beth fucking Greene, and to hell with anyone who thought otherwise.
They decided to follow the tracks, in the end, unsure about this Terminus place, but despite the heartache accompanying it, they just couldn’t leave behind their first real sign of their family’s survival. Beth didn’t say much over the next couple of days. Daryl could tell she was thinking, mulling stuff over in her head, and he gave her the space even though she stuck close to his side.
When she did talk, a couple of nights later, they were holed up in an old boxcar, the side doors closed to the walkers but the roof open to the sky. She tipped her head onto his shoulder, burrowing in when he slipped his arm around her.
“I’m gonna prove her wrong,” Beth said. “And then I’m gonna forgive her.”
He might’ve said she was being too generous. Might’ve said Maggie didn’t deserve Beth’s forgiveness. But he’d had the same time to think it through as she did, and he’d known even before she spoke that this is what she would do. Maggie was her sister, and a damn sight better sibling to Beth than Merle’d ever been to him. And he’d taken Merle back, time and time again despite everything. Difference was, he was pretty sure Maggie would have the good sense to feel ashamed, to feel guilty, for giving up on Beth and he supposed that made her worth some of Beth’s heartache in the first place.
“She’s already wrong,” Daryl said, after a moment, dropping a kiss into her hair. “She just don’t know it yet.”
The bounce was back in Beth’s step after that, once she’d settled things in her heart enough to carry on. The bounce, and the mischief, as he discovered when they were trying to hunt the next day, when she kept forgetting how to hold the bow and he kept having to correct her. Only when she wiggled her ass against his crotch did he catch on to her plan, and at that point he basically forgot about hunting.
He slid his fingers over her belly, beneath her shirt, and she shivered with the touch. Beth reached back, slid her fingers up his neck and into his hair, the motion baring her neck to him on the opposite side. He fastened his lips over the pulse point beating there, tasted the salt and spice of her skin in wet little kisses trailing up to her ear. She moaned and arched her back, pressing her ass into his erection when he took the lobe into his mouth and swirled his tongue along its contours.
She ground back against him again and moaned his name, before turning in his arms and slamming her mouth against his, her kiss hungry, demanding, and she went willingly when he walked her toward a tree. When her back hit the trunk she let out a little oof into his mouth, but instead of breaking the kiss she just bit his lip and hauled him back in.
Oh, this girl was fire, and he was rock hard already even before he lifted her up so she could wrap her legs around his waist, before he felt the heat of her through her jeans as he pressed his erection into her. And she breathed his name into his mouth and slid her hands into his hair, raking his scalp with her fingers in that way that always made him groan.
He broke away to breathe, pressing his forehead to hers. “I never been inside you,” he said, pressing her hard into the tree.
“No,” she whispered, raking his scalp again. She glided the point of her tongue along his bottom lip, breath pouring out of her in deep gusts like warm wind. “But you’re gonna be, Daryl Dixon.”
“You some kinda prophet, now?” he teased, mimicking the stroke of her tongue with his on her lip.
“Yes,” she said, shifting her head, smiling against his lips. “And it’s gonna feel so fucking good.”
Her use of that word sent a jolt of desire through him, ridiculous because he was so fired up already. But he wasn’t gonna fuck her up against a tree—at least, not the first time—so he set her down on her feet and pressed in close, dropping kisses all over her face like some sort of love-struck fool.
“Let’s find somewhere to go,” he said, feeling her shiver in his arms. “‘Cause I never fought off a walker while having sex, and I ain’t about to try.”
They found the little cabin not long after, and it was either their biggest stroke of luck or else it meant they were completely fucked and not in a good way, but the look in Beth’s eyes when she spotted it told him it really didn’t matter which. Nobody was in it, living or dead, and hadn’t been for some time considering the dust that billowed up when he shoved the door open. But it had a lock, had walls and a roof, and it had a bed, and Daryl wasn’t gonna waste time wondering at the workings of the universe.
The fire had cooled in the time between kissing at the tree and finding the cabin, but it hadn’t gone out. And it coulda been awkward, starting something now when it wasn’t in the heat of the moment, but it didn’t happen that way at all. Beth just sat down on the bed and he joined her there, and between soft, wet kisses they got each other out of their clothes until both of them were naked.
Beth lay back on the bed and Daryl followed, sliding his fingers from her waist to her hip, through the wetness on her inner thigh. She gasped softly when he parted her, rough fingers gentle on her sensitive flesh. And he wasn’t practiced at this, didn’t know what he was doing but Beth made it easy, Beth and her slick heat, so wet she coated his fingers. She moaned and sighed and he followed her sounds like a beacon to learn what she liked, until she was panting quick and tensing up, teetering on the cusp, and all it took to send her over the edge was him sliding a finger inside her. Her muscles fluttered around him, clenching his finger so tightly while she breathed out those long, gaspy sighs.
When she came down, he made gentle, almost feather-light passes with his thumb over her clit and withdrew his finger slowly before pushing it back in.
“Oh-oh-oh,” she breathed, reaching out to grab his arm, fingers digging in. “Oh, Daryl…”
The way she groaned his name shoulda been illegal, and he had to grind his cock into the bed just to relieve some of the pressure. She kept groaning as he teased her with his finger and thumb, kept saying his name like she wanted to devour him up and he wanted her to try it, too. Then her second orgasm rolled through her before he knew it, like a tropical storm that knocked the world on its side, never quite the same again.
When her body relaxed, Beth pushed his hand away and pulled him down to her, pressing his cheek to her breast, fingers stroking along the scars on his back.
“I never felt so loved,” she whispered, and her words settled over him like a blanket, like some place he never wanted to leave.
And he couldn’t help the hitch in his breath or the prick of tears in his eyes, but he didn’t care, because this was Beth, and every part of him, the good and the bad, was hers to know, to feel, to bear witness to at the end of the world. “Me neither.”
Then Beth crawled out from beneath him, pressed on his shoulders so he turned on his back and she slid one leg over his until she hovered above him, hair glowing like that fiery halo in the light of the old oil lamp. His angel, his goddess, his wild warrior woman. She reached between them to grip his cock, stroking it although he was still so hard she didn’t need to, then she drew his head through the slickness of her labia until he arched up beneath her. She took him in, sliding down his length slowly, but with confidence she shouldn’t have had—yet it didn’t surprise him one bit.
Her eyes fluttered shut and her mouth fell open when he thrust up into her, filling the last little bit of her full of him. But then she opened them again to look down at his face, and what he saw shining back at him through her glistening eyes was the purest, most beautiful thing he’d ever witnessed. He gripped her hips as she started to move, helping guide her into a rolling rhythm above while he met her from below. And they weren’t perfect, weren’t always in sync, but she was liquid fire around him and every time he bottomed out she cried a soft little noise that sounded like music and maybe, maybe it was.
He felt it building, the tension in his belly, and he knew better but that wasn’t gonna change things. Not this time and maybe not ever, and he wasn’t thinking straight, not really, because he was gonna come and she was gonna go with him, so he reached between them where their bodies joined, circled her clit with his fingers until her body drew taut. When she came around him he was hopeless to stop, and he thrust up once more into her quivering body, coming inside her and shouting her name until his voice broke and he couldn’t make another sound, and Beth collapsed on him, sweaty and spent and beautiful.
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Author: Abelina/Abby/Abelinajt
Fandom/Pairing: The Walking Dead – Beth Greene/Daryl Dixon (Bethyl)
Rating/Warnings: M/E for sexual content and language.
Summary: The night they burned the shack to the ground, Daryl Dixon has a revelation. Now they’re running through the night together like a pair of wild things, and when Beth Greene takes his hand, he realizes he never wants to let go. He wasn’t sure where they were goin’, but for the first time since the prison fell, he felt like they were moving forward, heading for something instead of just tryin’ to survive. And that, he knew, was entirely because of Beth Greene. An alternate timeline following the events of Still.
Notes: This was written as a very long one-shot, clearly too long for LJ so I've broken into three pieces for posting, but it's meant to be read as one long fic, not concise individual chapters.
All Parts Here
The next few weeks were some of the hottest he’d ever experienced, the height of the Georgian summer punishing them with cloudless skies and endless, stifling heat. Beth declared that the two of them looked like a couple of filthy drowned dogs, dripping with sweat from the horrible humidity, grimy from travelling and walkers and the rabbits they’d skinned last night for supper. So when they came across the river and the waterfall with the wide, deep pool below it, Daryl didn’t even attempt to dissuade Beth’s enthusiasm.
“Let’s go swimming!”
Despite the heat, her smile bloomed bright and energetic, and Daryl dropped the bag off his shoulders without hesitation. Only when Beth started peeling off her clothes did he freeze, sure his eyes musta been bulging right outta his head at the reveal of her back as she pulled off the dirty yellow shirt, at the long line of her legs as she struggled out of her jeans. And fuck, the way she looked over her shoulder, standin’ there in just a dingy old bra and panties, cheeks pink like she were bein’ bashful, but with a challenge burning in her blue eyes that dispelled the notion of bashfulness completely. He stood there gaping at her like a catfish but she only laughed, not the sort of laughter where she was laughin’ at him, but the kind that wriggled right down inside him like a shot of moonshine, stirring the coals until he burned with a heat that had nothing to do with the sun.
Beth jumped into the pool below and called up to him to join her, and he was out of his clothes faster than he would’ve thought possible, leaping into the water in just his shorts without caring at all. The shock of the cold water almost took away his hard-on, but the moment Beth swam up beside him to moan out how good the water felt, he didn’t notice the cold anymore and neither did the rest of him.
She swam in circles around him, floating on her back with her breasts peaking out of the water, distracting him with her hard nipples poking through the fabric and with flashes of her bellybutton. She dove beneath the water, the curve of her ass and the pink of her skin through the wet, once-white panties the last thing he saw before she disappeared. Or she floated up in front of him, water droplets clinging to her eyelashes and her nose and her smiling lips, and he tread water and watched her teasing him and let her laughter keep him afloat.
They used the fine sand at the edge of the pool to scour away the grime and sweat from their skin and their hair, then Beth climbed up the rocks to get their things from the ledge above and brought them down below where they’d be more secure. Daryl couldn’t leave the water just yet, not with the way his body reacted to the sight of her wearing nearly nothing, and stood there in the deep with just his head above the water, waiting for her to dress. Except she dropped her clothes in a heap by the water and walked back toward him, stepping in at the shallow side of the pool, looking pink and clean and lovely in the glaring afternoon sun.
This time, she floated right up and draped her arms over his shoulders, and he couldn’t help but respond by gripping her waist beneath the water. He tried to hold her away from his body, but she was having none of that, and pulled herself in until she had to feel him there, hard for her and her alone. And though she bit her lip as she looked him in the eye, she weren’t surprised and she weren’t scared, and when he moved to kiss away the water drops from her eyelashes she giggled softly and let him do it.
“I’ve never kissed anyone in the water,” she whispered, when their foreheads met and all he could see of her was the blur of her face and flashes of cornflower blue.
Daryl dipped his tongue into the water, drawing a few drops into his mouth while Beth breathed out a shuddery breath. And he caught the end of it with his lips, touching down softly on hers, sighing into her mouth at the absolute heat of her. She caught his bottom lip in her teeth, nipping softly, playfully, drawing out a moan from him that made her shiver all over. And he slid his tongue along the line of hers, no invitation necessary to deepen the kiss, because she was already right there with him, breathing his breath and wrapping her legs around his hips until the heat of her engulfed him, just two thin layers between them that felt like too much and not enough at the same time.
But his tongue was in her mouth, and hers stroked along his, and when she rolled her hips against him, he decided on too much and groaned into her mouth as the sensation washed over him. She was gonna burn him right up, she was, and he was gonna enjoy every last minute of it.
*~*
They hadn’t seen a walker all day, and took the chance on scrubbing their clothes in the water and letting them dry in the evening heat by hanging them from the lower branches of the birch trees at the water’s edge, while they sat in their underwear and caught fish for their supper. And though they hadn’t talked about what happened, about the unknowable amount of time they’d spent kissing in the water before the moment came where they had to decide whether to cross that line, or let it lie, the little looks passing between them now, heated yet tender, left no question in his mind that Beth Greene felt the same burn in her soul as he felt in his. He’d wanted to, wanted to bury himself deep inside her, into the heat of her he could feel blazing into him despite the cold water and layers of cloth, but the flash of uncertainty in her eyes was all he’d needed to stop.
It wasn’t because she didn’t want him back. He knew she did, she just wasn’t ready. But she wasn’t frightened, either. Not of him and not of this, whatever this was that went so far beyond physical he couldn’t even tell where it started, he only knew it didn’t end. She pressed her back to his chest, leaning into him as they sat together in front of the little fire, eating fish, talking some, making a game of seeing which of them could make the other one shiver harder by brushing fingertips over warm, naked skin.
He didn’t know intimacy, never knew a touch like Beth’s, and it should’ve scared him but he’d come to learn that nothing about Beth Greene frightened him, except maybe how fully and irrevocably he’d fallen for her since the night of the fire. Since the night she’d burned away his demons and made a reluctant poet out of what was left behind.
When the sun set and their clothes were dry, they put on their layers again only because they’d already tempted fate too long. But tonight instead of curling up at his side, like she usually did, Beth settled right in against his chest, her legs drawn up together with her body between his knees. She propped her arms up on her knees and he trailed his fingers over her skin, back and forth from fingertip to elbows, long after she erupted all over in goose bumps.
For a long time they sat still, listening to the sounds of night, the fall of the water and the leap of fish, the noises of insects and the faint rustle of the leaves in the breeze that finally came once night fell. Then Beth started singing, a song he didn’t know, but it poured out of her and swirled up around him and it didn’t matter what it was, because when Beth sang it was beautiful.
And though they hadn’t spoken a word aloud in hours, these ones came to him and he couldn’t stop. “I never heard a nicer sound than when you start singin’.”
Beth laughed softly, a sound he arguably enjoyed better but he wasn’t gonna say so. She reached back to bury her fingers in his hair, scratching her fingernails along his scalp as she did and drawing out a sound from him he didn’t even recognize, and giggled again before saying, “Drink, Dixon.”
He had no water, no moonshine, so he buried his nose in her hair and drank her in instead. And it was Beth’s turn to moan, then, and Daryl decided it didn’t matter what sound she made, he adored them all.
*~*
Daryl didn’t know the rules to this, but after a day or two he decided that rules didn’t matter. Beth didn’t need ‘em, neither did he. After the river the touches between them became freer, and he felt like he could be greedy, could stroke her arm without any purpose besides havin’ the desire to, since Beth not only welcomed his touches but did what she could to elicit them. They had yet to kiss again, hadn’t got to where it was something they did, like Glenn and Maggie all casual and, well, perfunctory, if the word meant what he thought it did. So he was glad of that, because while he longed to feel her lips on his again, to have her wrap around him like she had, the anticipation felt almost as heady as the moment itself and he was looking forward to when it billowed over.
He tasted gunpowder and knew they were gonna explode.
Their walker-free streak ended with a ravenous herd that snuck upon them early in the morning. Beth was on watch and he was asleep beside her with his head in her lap when she shook him awake violently. They’d barely had time to grab their shit before they were running through the woods, tryin’ to escape before the loose circle of the dead could close them in.
In the end they had to stop and fight, standing back to back because walkers lumbered in from all sides, both of them using knives because the fight was too close for his bow. He didn’t know how many he’d taken down before the one got hold of him, and for one horrible second he knew this was it, he was gonna get bit and that was the end of him, but Beth got a handful of its hair and hauled it off him before the teeth could bite down and thrust her knife right on through to its rotten brain. And they might’ve been standing in a forest full of stinking dead bodies, but right then the only thing in the world was her, Beth, covered in gore and sweat, his moonshine goddess savin’ his life once again.
She was in his arms before he could blink, and all he knew was the heat of her breath, the slide of her lips and the clacking of teeth on teeth, the scrape of teeth on lips and the tipping of the world as he fell on his back and took her down with him. Then it was needy groans when his hands found her breasts, rolling hips over rigid flesh when he pinched her nipples in his fingers, her hands in his hair as they burned together on the forest floor.
*~*
That time, they’d talked about it. Beth had grinned and blushed, even darker than the flush that still coloured her cheeks, and said, “If you’re gonna kiss me like that every time we’re gonna have to set up alarms.”
And the statement was both thrilling and sobering, because she was right—they’d fallen to the ground amongst the corpses without even caring to check what else might’ve been lurking in the woods, and that alone was enough to make him wonder at the wisdom of going forward with this.
But then he’d taken another look at her, kiss-swollen lips, a flush of red that coloured her from forehead to chest, and he knew that not going forward wasn’t an option. They would just have to be a little more careful, from now on.
*~*
After the walker attack, they’d walked all day and straight on through the night, their path guided by the moon which hung full and bright in the cloudless sky, stopping for a short rest at daybreak before they kept walking through the heat of the next day.
“I never…” Beth drew out the last syllable of the word as she tipped her eyes up toward the sky, thinking. “I never rode on a train.”
Daryl took a sip from his water bottle. “Jumped one, once, when I was fourteen.”
It was his turn now, but he was more than a little distracted by Beth and the way she almost skipped when she walked, the way her jeans hugged her just so, the way her hand fit into his like it belonged there—which it did, and he’d think it were all too damn cute to be his cuppa tea, except he’d be lying if he tried.
‘Cause he suddenly got it, just now, when she wrinkled her nose up and said, “God, we stink. Think we could find a place to swim?”
It sounded innocent, the question spoken in her sweet little voice, the voice that could sing like an angel—but also moan like the devil, and it was the latter he saw peeking out through her eyes when she glanced sidelong at him and asked about swimming.
And amidst the physical reaction—because that was easy and frequent and impossible to hide these days—was the other sort, the swelling of heat inside that happened no matter what his body was doing, whether she was awake or asleep, whether she was by his side or across the a clearing setting up camp. It was the part he’d been struggling to figure out since this whole mess started, and once the answer fell into his brain he coulda laughed, if he hadn’t been such a blind fool.
Daryl Dixon was completely, unequivocally, madly in love with Beth Greene.
He must’ve been making a face, because Beth cocked her head to one side with her question-face on, and asked, “What is it?”
But it wasn’t time, not yet. Besides—he was certain she could feel it, because the other half of his revelation was that he could feel it from her, too. So he just shook his head and smiled at her, the expression coming so naturally these days it didn’t even feel foreign any more.
“Ain’t nothin’,” he said, bumping her with his hip. “Let’s find us a swimmin’ hole.”
*~*
Daryl wasn’t surprised when Beth didn’t stop with her shirt and jeans, and instead reached around her back to unclasp her worn old bra, dropping it on the pile before bending, stepping out of her panties and leaving them there on the shore as she strode naked into the water. He watched her, as he was meant to do, given the exaggerated sway of her hips that drew his eyes to the soft curves of her ass before they disappeared into the water. She turned, then, breasts in full view, perky and perfect and already familiar to his hands, if not his eyes. And she said nothing, just issued the challenge with her eyes and he knew he wasn’t gonna back down, even with her watchin’ his every move.
Because the thing of it was, he didn’t have anything to hide. Oh, she maybe hadn’t seen what was beneath his shorts, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to her and he wasn’t ashamed, anyway. His most private parts she already knew—his crappy childhood, the scars of his father’s hands upon his back, his hopeless heart and bottomless guilt—and as far as he was concerned, he’d stripped naked in front of her long before he stepped out of his shorts and joined her in the water.
Still, there was no denying the way her eyes widened at the sight of him, cock standing full and hard out in front of him as he walked toward her. But Beth Greene wasn’t afraid, if she had been they’d never have got here, and her arms wound around his shoulders and her legs around his hips without hesitation.
“I’ve never had sex,” Beth whispered, even as he felt the slick wetness of her beneath the water.
And maybe Daryl had, but never like this, never with someone like Beth, and he was pretty certain she understood that, so he said, “I never wanted anyone as much as I want you.”
Beth let her head fall forward until their foreheads met and their breath mingled in the middle. Daryl shifted her a little, just enough so he could glide the head of his cock along her slit by tilting his hips, teasing a little moan from her lips, bringing on a shudder that started in her toes and rolled up through her shoulders and out in a shaking breath.
And when the shudder stopped, Beth sucked in another breath and started moving, too, sliding more of her along more of him. “Me either.”
He wasn’t going to do this in the water, not her first time, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do anything. The way Beth moaned and the heaviness of her breathing whenever his cock passed over her clit told him there was plenty they could do here and now.
“It never—oh—never felt this good when I did it my—myself.”
Beth’s voice was equal parts husky and equal parts breath, and if that alone wasn’t enough to make him wanna come already like a fucking teenager, the thought of her touching herself could’ve almost done it.
But he had a tad more self control than that, and trusting her to hold herself up, he took his cock in hand so he could concentrate on her clit, circling his head over the swollen nub and moaning right along with her.
Her whole body trembled now, and even under water she was soaking wet and just so warm. “Oooh, Daryl…”
It didn’t take long before Beth’s fingers dug into his shoulders and her body drew tight like a bow string, and when she let go, she didn’t scream, like he knew she wouldn’t—no, she let out a series of long, gasping sighs while she shuddered around him, and it was a fuckin’ miracle that he hadn’t gone over with her, she felt so good falling apart like that.
When she relaxed, boneless in his arms, Daryl carried her out of the water and back to the shore, settling her sideways on his lap, not caring that he hadn’t come because he didn’t matter, it was always only Beth. She recovered quickly, though, and looked up at him with her eyes narrowed and wrapped her fingers around his cock and squeezed.
“I never made someone come before,” she said, moving her hand slowly, sliding his foreskin up and down like she’d done this a million times, despite her declaration.
And Daryl couldn’t stop the groan she caused, stroking him like that. “Better get my drink before you make yourself a liar. Fuck, Beth…”
She giggled, she fucking giggled, drawing her hand up and over his head and back down, stroking him like a pro even though he knew otherwise, turning so she straddled his lap, one hand braced on his shoulders, forehead touching his, her thighs a cradle he wanted desperately to fall into. And she maybe couldn’t draw his bow, but what she was very good at was drawing moans outta him unlike anything he ever thought he’d make, and it felt so fucking good that he came with a groan loud enough to wake the dead, spilling all over himself and her and the dirt beneath them.
When he could see again, he watched Beth playing connect the dots with the semen on her belly, and wondered at a universe that would bring someone like him together with someone like her.
*~*
The next couple of days were spent travelling and avoiding an increasingly alarming number of walkers. Daryl began to wonder whether they shouldn’t rethink their trajectory, since the moment they started north again the walkers just kept coming. He’d been pondering this when they found the train tracks, lost in his thoughts so he hadn’t seen it time.
Beth gave a little sob, turning and falling into his arms before he knew what happened. And they sunk to the ground in the centre of the tracks, Beth crying so hard she could barely get a word out when he asked her what was wrong.
But then she said, “Maggie,” and he finally saw the words, scrawled in walker blood—a message for Glenn, but not a message for Beth.
I know you look at me and see another dead girl.
Beth hadn’t given up on her sister. She hadn’t given up on any of them. But they’d given up on her—just another dead girl. But they were wrong, all of them. So wrong. Because there wasn’t anyone more alive in this entire world than Beth fucking Greene, and to hell with anyone who thought otherwise.
*~*
They decided to follow the tracks, in the end, unsure about this Terminus place, but despite the heartache accompanying it, they just couldn’t leave behind their first real sign of their family’s survival. Beth didn’t say much over the next couple of days. Daryl could tell she was thinking, mulling stuff over in her head, and he gave her the space even though she stuck close to his side.
When she did talk, a couple of nights later, they were holed up in an old boxcar, the side doors closed to the walkers but the roof open to the sky. She tipped her head onto his shoulder, burrowing in when he slipped his arm around her.
“I’m gonna prove her wrong,” Beth said. “And then I’m gonna forgive her.”
He might’ve said she was being too generous. Might’ve said Maggie didn’t deserve Beth’s forgiveness. But he’d had the same time to think it through as she did, and he’d known even before she spoke that this is what she would do. Maggie was her sister, and a damn sight better sibling to Beth than Merle’d ever been to him. And he’d taken Merle back, time and time again despite everything. Difference was, he was pretty sure Maggie would have the good sense to feel ashamed, to feel guilty, for giving up on Beth and he supposed that made her worth some of Beth’s heartache in the first place.
“She’s already wrong,” Daryl said, after a moment, dropping a kiss into her hair. “She just don’t know it yet.”
*~*
The bounce was back in Beth’s step after that, once she’d settled things in her heart enough to carry on. The bounce, and the mischief, as he discovered when they were trying to hunt the next day, when she kept forgetting how to hold the bow and he kept having to correct her. Only when she wiggled her ass against his crotch did he catch on to her plan, and at that point he basically forgot about hunting.
He slid his fingers over her belly, beneath her shirt, and she shivered with the touch. Beth reached back, slid her fingers up his neck and into his hair, the motion baring her neck to him on the opposite side. He fastened his lips over the pulse point beating there, tasted the salt and spice of her skin in wet little kisses trailing up to her ear. She moaned and arched her back, pressing her ass into his erection when he took the lobe into his mouth and swirled his tongue along its contours.
She ground back against him again and moaned his name, before turning in his arms and slamming her mouth against his, her kiss hungry, demanding, and she went willingly when he walked her toward a tree. When her back hit the trunk she let out a little oof into his mouth, but instead of breaking the kiss she just bit his lip and hauled him back in.
Oh, this girl was fire, and he was rock hard already even before he lifted her up so she could wrap her legs around his waist, before he felt the heat of her through her jeans as he pressed his erection into her. And she breathed his name into his mouth and slid her hands into his hair, raking his scalp with her fingers in that way that always made him groan.
He broke away to breathe, pressing his forehead to hers. “I never been inside you,” he said, pressing her hard into the tree.
“No,” she whispered, raking his scalp again. She glided the point of her tongue along his bottom lip, breath pouring out of her in deep gusts like warm wind. “But you’re gonna be, Daryl Dixon.”
“You some kinda prophet, now?” he teased, mimicking the stroke of her tongue with his on her lip.
“Yes,” she said, shifting her head, smiling against his lips. “And it’s gonna feel so fucking good.”
Her use of that word sent a jolt of desire through him, ridiculous because he was so fired up already. But he wasn’t gonna fuck her up against a tree—at least, not the first time—so he set her down on her feet and pressed in close, dropping kisses all over her face like some sort of love-struck fool.
“Let’s find somewhere to go,” he said, feeling her shiver in his arms. “‘Cause I never fought off a walker while having sex, and I ain’t about to try.”
*~*
They found the little cabin not long after, and it was either their biggest stroke of luck or else it meant they were completely fucked and not in a good way, but the look in Beth’s eyes when she spotted it told him it really didn’t matter which. Nobody was in it, living or dead, and hadn’t been for some time considering the dust that billowed up when he shoved the door open. But it had a lock, had walls and a roof, and it had a bed, and Daryl wasn’t gonna waste time wondering at the workings of the universe.
The fire had cooled in the time between kissing at the tree and finding the cabin, but it hadn’t gone out. And it coulda been awkward, starting something now when it wasn’t in the heat of the moment, but it didn’t happen that way at all. Beth just sat down on the bed and he joined her there, and between soft, wet kisses they got each other out of their clothes until both of them were naked.
Beth lay back on the bed and Daryl followed, sliding his fingers from her waist to her hip, through the wetness on her inner thigh. She gasped softly when he parted her, rough fingers gentle on her sensitive flesh. And he wasn’t practiced at this, didn’t know what he was doing but Beth made it easy, Beth and her slick heat, so wet she coated his fingers. She moaned and sighed and he followed her sounds like a beacon to learn what she liked, until she was panting quick and tensing up, teetering on the cusp, and all it took to send her over the edge was him sliding a finger inside her. Her muscles fluttered around him, clenching his finger so tightly while she breathed out those long, gaspy sighs.
When she came down, he made gentle, almost feather-light passes with his thumb over her clit and withdrew his finger slowly before pushing it back in.
“Oh-oh-oh,” she breathed, reaching out to grab his arm, fingers digging in. “Oh, Daryl…”
The way she groaned his name shoulda been illegal, and he had to grind his cock into the bed just to relieve some of the pressure. She kept groaning as he teased her with his finger and thumb, kept saying his name like she wanted to devour him up and he wanted her to try it, too. Then her second orgasm rolled through her before he knew it, like a tropical storm that knocked the world on its side, never quite the same again.
When her body relaxed, Beth pushed his hand away and pulled him down to her, pressing his cheek to her breast, fingers stroking along the scars on his back.
“I never felt so loved,” she whispered, and her words settled over him like a blanket, like some place he never wanted to leave.
And he couldn’t help the hitch in his breath or the prick of tears in his eyes, but he didn’t care, because this was Beth, and every part of him, the good and the bad, was hers to know, to feel, to bear witness to at the end of the world. “Me neither.”
Then Beth crawled out from beneath him, pressed on his shoulders so he turned on his back and she slid one leg over his until she hovered above him, hair glowing like that fiery halo in the light of the old oil lamp. His angel, his goddess, his wild warrior woman. She reached between them to grip his cock, stroking it although he was still so hard she didn’t need to, then she drew his head through the slickness of her labia until he arched up beneath her. She took him in, sliding down his length slowly, but with confidence she shouldn’t have had—yet it didn’t surprise him one bit.
Her eyes fluttered shut and her mouth fell open when he thrust up into her, filling the last little bit of her full of him. But then she opened them again to look down at his face, and what he saw shining back at him through her glistening eyes was the purest, most beautiful thing he’d ever witnessed. He gripped her hips as she started to move, helping guide her into a rolling rhythm above while he met her from below. And they weren’t perfect, weren’t always in sync, but she was liquid fire around him and every time he bottomed out she cried a soft little noise that sounded like music and maybe, maybe it was.
He felt it building, the tension in his belly, and he knew better but that wasn’t gonna change things. Not this time and maybe not ever, and he wasn’t thinking straight, not really, because he was gonna come and she was gonna go with him, so he reached between them where their bodies joined, circled her clit with his fingers until her body drew taut. When she came around him he was hopeless to stop, and he thrust up once more into her quivering body, coming inside her and shouting her name until his voice broke and he couldn’t make another sound, and Beth collapsed on him, sweaty and spent and beautiful.
*~*
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