[fic] we're drivin' cadillacs in our dreams
Title: we're drivin' cadillacs in our dreams
Author: badboy_fangirl
Fandom: The Walking Dead
Characters/Pairings: Daryl POV; Daryl/Beth; with an appearance by Carol.
Word Count: ~2500
Rating/Warnings: NC-17 / Spoilers through 5x02, with speculation for upcoming episodes.
Summary: So, this is basically PWP. For reals. [Well, there is a little plot, because I'm me. And Daryl is Daryl. And Beth is BETH!]
Author's notes: I just can't stop. I keep trying to, but it won't listen, my muse. I wish I could quit you, Bethyl. Title lifted from Lorde's "Royals."
Her white panties are his undoing.
He first sees them after they've cleared the hospital, and they're miles up the road. Carol's driving, and he and Beth are in the backseat. She gestures towards the backpack that lies on the floorboard at his feet.
"My bag," she says, her voice soft, cracking. "I got water in there. Can you hand it to me?"
He doesn't know why he does it; he gets that she means, hand her the bag, but for some reason, he unzips it and grabs the water bottle out instead. The bottle just happens to be sitting on a pair of white panties.
He only sees them for half a second, but it's enough time for lace edging and a tiny bow dead center to get lodged in his brain.
"Thanks," she says, a wobbly smile on her lips as her fingers wrap around his on the bottle.
"You bet," he replies. He hasn't had a cigarette in ages, but his tone is all husked up the way it is when he's been smoking.
Carol's eyes meet his in the rear-view mirror, and she smiles a little bit.
With Beth's cool fingers and Carol's warm eyes, he suddenly feels overwhelmed with emotion. He looks away and jerks his hand back, which makes the bottle drop into Beth's lap. She laughs nervously, and he just can't help it.
Those white panties are all he can see.
They find the others back at the church, frantic, wondering where the hell they've been. But then Maggie sees her sister and this inhuman screeching starts, and Daryl finds himself muttering, "Women," under his breath.
Someone harrumphs in his ear. "Like you weren't makin' a whole lotta noise when you first saw her again," Carol chides and Daryl side-eyes her.
He likes this better, when he's the one who doesn't wanna talk. Feels normal.
"Whatever," he mumbles.
She bumps her shoulder against his and it's almost like it was.
(Never can be quite, not without Hershel.)
They pack everyone into the short bus, and Beth asks to sit by him. He motions for her to put her bag down at their feet, and his eyes stay on the bag for way too long, like he'll suddenly have x-ray vision.
Those damn white panties. He's really never been a fetish guy, honestly. If anyone asked him what he likes, he'd have shrugged his shoulders and mumbled an I don't know and that would have been the truth.
(Not that Beth would take that for an answer.)
(Not that Beth would ever ask that question.)
She leans her head on his shoulder as they get on the road. Abraham's yelling things out as they drive, like a fucking tour guide. It's bumpy and noisy, but she's quiet and still beside him.
He turns his head, presses his lips to her forehead. "Missed ya when y'was gone."
She glances up, her hair tickling his cheek. "Told ya," she says, and there it is, just that little bit of sauciness.
(The white panties are ironic, see. Beth should have black panties. Red panties, even. But she's got white panties. And Daryl wants to pull them off her with his teeth.)
In Alexandria, there isn't much more talking. Seems whatever Beth's been through, she's like Carol. Doesn't want to discuss it. Daryl thinks it's kinda shitty because the both of them have always made him talk more than he was comfortable with, but he doesn't seem to have the same power over them.
Although, Carol's started saying volumes with the way she looks at him, and then how her eyes move to Beth and back again. She lifts her eyebrows in question and he looks away, pretending he doesn't know the answer.
Beth just starts holding his hand, never asking him if he minds.
(For the record, he doesn't.)
She comes to his tent one night. The look on her face isn't new, but she's never given it to him in private, and it makes him uneasy.
Like, his-jeans-are-too-snug-suddenly uneasy.
She chews on her bottom lip and shifts from foot to foot. He can feel the words flying outta his mouth, but he bites down hard, hurting himself as his teeth pierce his tongue. He wants to know what panties she's wearing.
While he stifles a cuss word and swallows blood, Beth requests the strangest thing of him that he can imagine. "Will you come with me to the showers?"
In Alexandria, they got running water. But it's only in this one spot, and they're communal showers. It's up to folks to kinda curtain off the area when they go down there, and so there were usually packs of people all around. There was a sign-up sheet so people didn't have to stand around all day, but still. It wasn't the best organized situation ever thought up.
"Huh?" he asks.
"All the girls went earlier, without me. You're the only one I'd feel comfortable goin' down there with. I mean, how many times did y'guard for me on the road? I know you're trustworthy."
Then she fucking winks at him, and Daryl hears Merle's voice in his head. Well, knock me over with a feather.
His brother was such an ass, but god, was he funny. And he comes back on Daryl at the oddest moments.
You know, when he thinks maybe a girl who's been fueling his dreams for months now is propositioning him.
He follows her down to the showers. She's got a towel and her backpack over one shoulder and her hips are swaying gently. He gives up not staring at her ass. He wonders if the panties she's wearing are white, or if the ones she's got in her bag are. By now, she's got to have more choices.
Lord knows, that's the last thing he needs to consider.
The closer they get the hotter the back of his neck feels, and he's grateful that his hair is still shaggy, covering it and his ears. He's done a lot of stupid things in his life, but this has got to be in the top five.
"See?" Beth says brightly. "We hit it just right, nobody's down here."
The cuss words he swallows then feel like broken glass going down his throat.
She hands him her bag and then slings her towel over the wall of the shower. All told, it's a box about five feet square with a hose hanging down. There are two, side-by-side, but Daryl doesn't need to shower, so he just turns so his back is to Beth as she walks inside one of them.
The walls come up about six feet or so. Meaning, they're just barely taller than Daryl, which when he's down here with a bunch of guys, it never occurred to him one way or another, but it wouldn't be that hard to see in, if you wanted to.
(If he wanted to.)
And then he can literally hear her taking her clothes off, and it's just game over, the end. He's not ever gonna be a fast mover, but the truth is, ever since he found Beth again, he kinda thought it would come to this.
(Maybe in all that hope Beth taught him, she gave him a whole new vision of what life could be. And besides, she ain't got much of a poker face, herself.)
"Daryl?" she asks.
The water comes on, and the only sounds left in the world are the splashes of it hitting her bare skin and slapping down on the wood slat floor.
"Hmmmm?" he all but strangles out.
"I got soap in my bag. I forgot to get it out, can you...?"
He unzips it like it's a bomb. Real slow, but with no ability to diffuse it.
There is, in fact, a a brand new bar of soap in the bag. On top of her panties. The panties.
He turns around, and leans up on his tip-toes. "Gonna catch?" he calls.
"No!" she shouts in a horrified voice. One little dainty hand pops up and he slides the soap into her palm. "I don't want it to land on the gross floor. Ewww."
"Ain't your feet on the gross floor?" he asks, using every bit of self-control to lower himself back down to his normal flat-footedness. Just make stupid conversation, boy, that's real smart, says Phantom!Merle.
"I got my flip-flops on. You know, shower shoes," she explains, and Daryl finds himself nodding along.
He has no idea how this happened.
He turns around again, so his back is to the wall.
(It's a futile attempt, but he should get some credit nonetheless.)
Fifteen minutes later, they're walking back up the path, to his tent. He doesn't say much. Never really did before, not much has changed that way. But when they get to the place where she hesitates, because maybe she ought to go to her tent, 'stead of his, he just wraps a hand around her elbow to steer her right.
She smiles so bright, Daryl has to look away to avoid some really embarrassing words leaving his mouth.
When they get to his tent, he ducks in first, glad it's tidy inside. Not like the shit-hole apartment he once shared with Merle that he'd been too humiliated to bring a girl into.
(That he never brought a girl to.)
(Because there was no Beth back then.)
He gestures for her to set her bag down and then invites her to hang her towel over a line he tied up on one side of the tent. "Ain't much, but it dries out pretty good."
Her eyes go wide, then soft, then they crinkle at the edges. Whole lotta something going on in her head there, and his stomach feels tight as she tucks the towel down over the string. Then she turns shyly towards him.
Only her face is shy, her body ain't shy because he realizes then she didn't put a bra on, and the soft shirt she's wearing clings in all the right places. He can see the hard peaks of her nipples, and the answering response in his body, that's been simmering now for nearly a half hour, comes into sudden, undeniable life.
There isn't a first kiss. There is a first body tackle, and some giggling, and then an elbow in his stomach as they go down on the ground. There's his "Ow!" when he lands on a rock that somehow edged under his smoothed out tent-pitchin' spot and then there's Beth's "Oooof!" when he rolls on top of her to get off the rock.
Then he's above her and she's looking up at him, and it's all blue eyes and puffy breaths on his chin, and then they're kissing. And it's weird and perfect, and fast and slow, and everything all at once.
Beth's hands come around his back, smoothing gently up, scooping his shirt out of the way, and it's the most natural thing in the world to be half-naked in front of her, because she's right. They've already done this plenty.
Well, not this.
Her mouth opens on a gasp as he rubs himself against her. It feels both so wrong and so right at the same time that Daryl's crowded thoughts keep canceling each other out. The one that says she's too young, she's too pure, she's too Beth can't compete with how sweet she smells, and tastes, and feels, or the way she whispers his name and then says on a breathless moan, "I been wantin' this, you, so bad. So bad."
Everything is just so good and Daryl's done not doing what he feels, because he feels too goddamn much for that now.
He lifts his head and presses his palm to her face, cradling her chin, tipping her gaze up to his own. "We shouldn't..." He shakes his head.
"Not that, no," she agrees, understanding him. "But other stuff, yeah?" she asks, sliding her hand down between them, cupping her fingers over the hard bulge at his crotch.
Daryl guesses his eyes falling shut and the tortured groan that leaps from his throat is answer enough for her. She pulls his pants open ridiculously fast, and he tries not to think about her being real good at handling cocks.
He wouldn't know the difference anyway, but her hand is cool as it surrounds him and he surges in her palm. She whimpers, and all he knows is he's gotta have his hands on her in the same place. "Wait, wait..." he cautions, moving back just enough to give himself room to tug her pants down. She loses her grip on him, and he mourns the loss, but only momentarily.
Because when he sees that little ribbon tied up nice and neat, he bows his head, resting it against her lower belly. Whispering his lips over the lace that covers the thatch of curls that protects her most private part, he pauses, inhaling deeply, not just for the scent of her arousal, but for a calming breath.
She's trembling beneath him, which oddly adds to his sense of serenity in a moment when his heart thunders in his chest, when all this is more than he ever could have imagined. Her hand touches the back of his head gently and she says his name again, this time with uncertainty. He presses his lips to her panties, and promises himself there will be other times when using his teeth to uncover her will be appropriate. And he'll strip her naked from head to toe, and put his mouth everywhere.
But for now, he pushes himself back up so that their faces are level, so their eyes can meet, and he can reassure her. Propping himself up on one arm, he slides the fingers of his free hand inside her panties, and she lifts herself up to greet him. His middle finger thrusts home almost with no effort on his part. She gasps again, a combined whimper moan assaults his ears, and then her hand wraps around him again. He strokes his finger into her, and she moves her fist down his length at the same speed. When he adds a second finger, she tightens her grip, and slants her hips more towards him, an unconscious offering that makes him delirious with need.
He tries to think back, to that day when he had no idea what she was made of, of how she could shape-shift the world into something he'd never noticed before, of how it was when what they're doing right here couldn't mean more than any other act he'd ever committed.
But then she's crying out his name as his fingers curl up into her, and she's bringing him with her when her hand shapes itself to the head of his cock so perfectly that there is nothing but Beth. She fills his world, space, time.
She's everything all at once, and the best of him, and the most that life has to offer.
She's alive.
And, maybe for the first time ever, so is he.
Author: badboy_fangirl
Fandom: The Walking Dead
Characters/Pairings: Daryl POV; Daryl/Beth; with an appearance by Carol.
Word Count: ~2500
Rating/Warnings: NC-17 / Spoilers through 5x02, with speculation for upcoming episodes.
Summary: So, this is basically PWP. For reals. [Well, there is a little plot, because I'm me. And Daryl is Daryl. And Beth is BETH!]
Author's notes: I just can't stop. I keep trying to, but it won't listen, my muse. I wish I could quit you, Bethyl. Title lifted from Lorde's "Royals."
Her white panties are his undoing.
He first sees them after they've cleared the hospital, and they're miles up the road. Carol's driving, and he and Beth are in the backseat. She gestures towards the backpack that lies on the floorboard at his feet.
"My bag," she says, her voice soft, cracking. "I got water in there. Can you hand it to me?"
He doesn't know why he does it; he gets that she means, hand her the bag, but for some reason, he unzips it and grabs the water bottle out instead. The bottle just happens to be sitting on a pair of white panties.
He only sees them for half a second, but it's enough time for lace edging and a tiny bow dead center to get lodged in his brain.
"Thanks," she says, a wobbly smile on her lips as her fingers wrap around his on the bottle.
"You bet," he replies. He hasn't had a cigarette in ages, but his tone is all husked up the way it is when he's been smoking.
Carol's eyes meet his in the rear-view mirror, and she smiles a little bit.
With Beth's cool fingers and Carol's warm eyes, he suddenly feels overwhelmed with emotion. He looks away and jerks his hand back, which makes the bottle drop into Beth's lap. She laughs nervously, and he just can't help it.
Those white panties are all he can see.
They find the others back at the church, frantic, wondering where the hell they've been. But then Maggie sees her sister and this inhuman screeching starts, and Daryl finds himself muttering, "Women," under his breath.
Someone harrumphs in his ear. "Like you weren't makin' a whole lotta noise when you first saw her again," Carol chides and Daryl side-eyes her.
He likes this better, when he's the one who doesn't wanna talk. Feels normal.
"Whatever," he mumbles.
She bumps her shoulder against his and it's almost like it was.
(Never can be quite, not without Hershel.)
They pack everyone into the short bus, and Beth asks to sit by him. He motions for her to put her bag down at their feet, and his eyes stay on the bag for way too long, like he'll suddenly have x-ray vision.
Those damn white panties. He's really never been a fetish guy, honestly. If anyone asked him what he likes, he'd have shrugged his shoulders and mumbled an I don't know and that would have been the truth.
(Not that Beth would take that for an answer.)
(Not that Beth would ever ask that question.)
She leans her head on his shoulder as they get on the road. Abraham's yelling things out as they drive, like a fucking tour guide. It's bumpy and noisy, but she's quiet and still beside him.
He turns his head, presses his lips to her forehead. "Missed ya when y'was gone."
She glances up, her hair tickling his cheek. "Told ya," she says, and there it is, just that little bit of sauciness.
(The white panties are ironic, see. Beth should have black panties. Red panties, even. But she's got white panties. And Daryl wants to pull them off her with his teeth.)
In Alexandria, there isn't much more talking. Seems whatever Beth's been through, she's like Carol. Doesn't want to discuss it. Daryl thinks it's kinda shitty because the both of them have always made him talk more than he was comfortable with, but he doesn't seem to have the same power over them.
Although, Carol's started saying volumes with the way she looks at him, and then how her eyes move to Beth and back again. She lifts her eyebrows in question and he looks away, pretending he doesn't know the answer.
Beth just starts holding his hand, never asking him if he minds.
(For the record, he doesn't.)
She comes to his tent one night. The look on her face isn't new, but she's never given it to him in private, and it makes him uneasy.
Like, his-jeans-are-too-snug-suddenly uneasy.
She chews on her bottom lip and shifts from foot to foot. He can feel the words flying outta his mouth, but he bites down hard, hurting himself as his teeth pierce his tongue. He wants to know what panties she's wearing.
While he stifles a cuss word and swallows blood, Beth requests the strangest thing of him that he can imagine. "Will you come with me to the showers?"
In Alexandria, they got running water. But it's only in this one spot, and they're communal showers. It's up to folks to kinda curtain off the area when they go down there, and so there were usually packs of people all around. There was a sign-up sheet so people didn't have to stand around all day, but still. It wasn't the best organized situation ever thought up.
"Huh?" he asks.
"All the girls went earlier, without me. You're the only one I'd feel comfortable goin' down there with. I mean, how many times did y'guard for me on the road? I know you're trustworthy."
Then she fucking winks at him, and Daryl hears Merle's voice in his head. Well, knock me over with a feather.
His brother was such an ass, but god, was he funny. And he comes back on Daryl at the oddest moments.
You know, when he thinks maybe a girl who's been fueling his dreams for months now is propositioning him.
He follows her down to the showers. She's got a towel and her backpack over one shoulder and her hips are swaying gently. He gives up not staring at her ass. He wonders if the panties she's wearing are white, or if the ones she's got in her bag are. By now, she's got to have more choices.
Lord knows, that's the last thing he needs to consider.
The closer they get the hotter the back of his neck feels, and he's grateful that his hair is still shaggy, covering it and his ears. He's done a lot of stupid things in his life, but this has got to be in the top five.
"See?" Beth says brightly. "We hit it just right, nobody's down here."
The cuss words he swallows then feel like broken glass going down his throat.
She hands him her bag and then slings her towel over the wall of the shower. All told, it's a box about five feet square with a hose hanging down. There are two, side-by-side, but Daryl doesn't need to shower, so he just turns so his back is to Beth as she walks inside one of them.
The walls come up about six feet or so. Meaning, they're just barely taller than Daryl, which when he's down here with a bunch of guys, it never occurred to him one way or another, but it wouldn't be that hard to see in, if you wanted to.
(If he wanted to.)
And then he can literally hear her taking her clothes off, and it's just game over, the end. He's not ever gonna be a fast mover, but the truth is, ever since he found Beth again, he kinda thought it would come to this.
(Maybe in all that hope Beth taught him, she gave him a whole new vision of what life could be. And besides, she ain't got much of a poker face, herself.)
"Daryl?" she asks.
The water comes on, and the only sounds left in the world are the splashes of it hitting her bare skin and slapping down on the wood slat floor.
"Hmmmm?" he all but strangles out.
"I got soap in my bag. I forgot to get it out, can you...?"
He unzips it like it's a bomb. Real slow, but with no ability to diffuse it.
There is, in fact, a a brand new bar of soap in the bag. On top of her panties. The panties.
He turns around, and leans up on his tip-toes. "Gonna catch?" he calls.
"No!" she shouts in a horrified voice. One little dainty hand pops up and he slides the soap into her palm. "I don't want it to land on the gross floor. Ewww."
"Ain't your feet on the gross floor?" he asks, using every bit of self-control to lower himself back down to his normal flat-footedness. Just make stupid conversation, boy, that's real smart, says Phantom!Merle.
"I got my flip-flops on. You know, shower shoes," she explains, and Daryl finds himself nodding along.
He has no idea how this happened.
He turns around again, so his back is to the wall.
(It's a futile attempt, but he should get some credit nonetheless.)
Fifteen minutes later, they're walking back up the path, to his tent. He doesn't say much. Never really did before, not much has changed that way. But when they get to the place where she hesitates, because maybe she ought to go to her tent, 'stead of his, he just wraps a hand around her elbow to steer her right.
She smiles so bright, Daryl has to look away to avoid some really embarrassing words leaving his mouth.
When they get to his tent, he ducks in first, glad it's tidy inside. Not like the shit-hole apartment he once shared with Merle that he'd been too humiliated to bring a girl into.
(That he never brought a girl to.)
(Because there was no Beth back then.)
He gestures for her to set her bag down and then invites her to hang her towel over a line he tied up on one side of the tent. "Ain't much, but it dries out pretty good."
Her eyes go wide, then soft, then they crinkle at the edges. Whole lotta something going on in her head there, and his stomach feels tight as she tucks the towel down over the string. Then she turns shyly towards him.
Only her face is shy, her body ain't shy because he realizes then she didn't put a bra on, and the soft shirt she's wearing clings in all the right places. He can see the hard peaks of her nipples, and the answering response in his body, that's been simmering now for nearly a half hour, comes into sudden, undeniable life.
There isn't a first kiss. There is a first body tackle, and some giggling, and then an elbow in his stomach as they go down on the ground. There's his "Ow!" when he lands on a rock that somehow edged under his smoothed out tent-pitchin' spot and then there's Beth's "Oooof!" when he rolls on top of her to get off the rock.
Then he's above her and she's looking up at him, and it's all blue eyes and puffy breaths on his chin, and then they're kissing. And it's weird and perfect, and fast and slow, and everything all at once.
Beth's hands come around his back, smoothing gently up, scooping his shirt out of the way, and it's the most natural thing in the world to be half-naked in front of her, because she's right. They've already done this plenty.
Well, not this.
Her mouth opens on a gasp as he rubs himself against her. It feels both so wrong and so right at the same time that Daryl's crowded thoughts keep canceling each other out. The one that says she's too young, she's too pure, she's too Beth can't compete with how sweet she smells, and tastes, and feels, or the way she whispers his name and then says on a breathless moan, "I been wantin' this, you, so bad. So bad."
Everything is just so good and Daryl's done not doing what he feels, because he feels too goddamn much for that now.
He lifts his head and presses his palm to her face, cradling her chin, tipping her gaze up to his own. "We shouldn't..." He shakes his head.
"Not that, no," she agrees, understanding him. "But other stuff, yeah?" she asks, sliding her hand down between them, cupping her fingers over the hard bulge at his crotch.
Daryl guesses his eyes falling shut and the tortured groan that leaps from his throat is answer enough for her. She pulls his pants open ridiculously fast, and he tries not to think about her being real good at handling cocks.
He wouldn't know the difference anyway, but her hand is cool as it surrounds him and he surges in her palm. She whimpers, and all he knows is he's gotta have his hands on her in the same place. "Wait, wait..." he cautions, moving back just enough to give himself room to tug her pants down. She loses her grip on him, and he mourns the loss, but only momentarily.
Because when he sees that little ribbon tied up nice and neat, he bows his head, resting it against her lower belly. Whispering his lips over the lace that covers the thatch of curls that protects her most private part, he pauses, inhaling deeply, not just for the scent of her arousal, but for a calming breath.
She's trembling beneath him, which oddly adds to his sense of serenity in a moment when his heart thunders in his chest, when all this is more than he ever could have imagined. Her hand touches the back of his head gently and she says his name again, this time with uncertainty. He presses his lips to her panties, and promises himself there will be other times when using his teeth to uncover her will be appropriate. And he'll strip her naked from head to toe, and put his mouth everywhere.
But for now, he pushes himself back up so that their faces are level, so their eyes can meet, and he can reassure her. Propping himself up on one arm, he slides the fingers of his free hand inside her panties, and she lifts herself up to greet him. His middle finger thrusts home almost with no effort on his part. She gasps again, a combined whimper moan assaults his ears, and then her hand wraps around him again. He strokes his finger into her, and she moves her fist down his length at the same speed. When he adds a second finger, she tightens her grip, and slants her hips more towards him, an unconscious offering that makes him delirious with need.
He tries to think back, to that day when he had no idea what she was made of, of how she could shape-shift the world into something he'd never noticed before, of how it was when what they're doing right here couldn't mean more than any other act he'd ever committed.
But then she's crying out his name as his fingers curl up into her, and she's bringing him with her when her hand shapes itself to the head of his cock so perfectly that there is nothing but Beth. She fills his world, space, time.
She's everything all at once, and the best of him, and the most that life has to offer.
She's alive.
And, maybe for the first time ever, so is he.