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When she turns back around, he's looking at her. At least she thinks he is. Affection swells within her like a wave, crests and rushes through her very nerve endings and fills her with lightness where once everything was heavy. It plucks at her heartstrings and softens the determined line of her mouth until a tiny smile tugs at her lips, and before she realizes what she’s doing, her fingers are tenderly carding through his hair, pushing it back from his face so she can better read those beautiful eyes of his. “There,” she tells him. “Now I can see your…”
Daryl steals the rest of her words, her very breath, from her mouth. He’s missed her, so goddamn much. Shit ain’t never gonna settle, not in this world, and he’s so tired of regrets, tired of denying himself something that’s good. Her gentle touch? Made that last tenuous thread of control within him snap and his fingers fan over the nape of her neck, his thumbs hold her there, still as his lips move over hers, clumsy and without grace, messy and without aim until she pulls away from him, laughter pealing from her mouth.
“Daryl,” she sputters. “What was…we shouldn’t be…” Little aftershocks make her insides quake, a heady mixture of adrenalin and astonishment clouds her mind, and still her fingers comb through his hair. When her laughter finally fades, though, she realizes he has taken her reaction to heart and his bravery is making a swift retreat. “I don’t mean…it’s just…”
“S’alright,” he shrugs and tries to duck his head. He carefully withdraws his hands and lets them fall to his sides. “Thought…know what? Don’t matter what I thought.”
Her other hand comes up to cup his face, her fingers slipping into his hair, and her smile returns, burns bright. “You idiot.”
He wants to be offended, feels a tiny spark of indignation down deep, but he don’t, knows he can’t. Not when she’s looking at him like that, with her blue eyes all soft and her freckles disappearing beneath a pretty pink flush. He feels his own cheeks heat when she leans down, presses her forehead to his own. Her lashes flutter damply against his skin when his hands find her waist and hold on, and he mutters out a familiar refrain. “Stahp.” Her nose slides against his in response, and it makes him shiver all the way down to his fuckin’ toes.
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Ain’t gonna make ya.” She just steps in closer then, right between his parted legs, and he groans when he feels that smile paint his own mouth. They melt into another kiss, one a lot slower, a little less desperate, and everything and everybody else, for a little while, just fades away.
It’s a lot, this plan. To make it work, they’re going to have to walk directly into the fire. But that’s the thing about her and Daryl. They were forged from flames, broken down and remade into steel. They’re not ashes. They never will be again.