I've got school starting and a Far Cry 4 bit in the works and The Fall of Castle Battlehorn in mid-production and a Mars: War Logs piece too but wooo, screw all that, I'm just gonna drop everything and make a bit of Bethyl because I can't prioritize.
So here you go, anonymous person who posted this prompt on tumblr that starts off as, "Picture this - everyone is buckling down for the night,..." and bethylforever.
His face looks like a hung deer, eyes bagged and face drawn in the firelight. Creases like a walker, all curved and tired and on the brink of falling out. Girl is alive while half the group is dead and the other half is waiting for the sleep to arrive, and Rick was the only one not trying. The baby girl's in his lap and he's stroking, makes a coo if he can kick one out. Why not? She's alive, something which wasn't a courted idea a handful of days ago. He'd walked the tracks a wife and a girl less and at the end one came back and in a world that preferred the dead to come back dead the fact he's leaning against a couch in a dinky house in the middle of a forest with a cannibal on one side and the cure on the other and his little girl squirming in his lap was a miracle. Bonda fide, praise the Lord.
But the fact of the matter is Rick is tired and Judith is not. With his boy dead on the couch and himself too much of himself to make a fuss he tries his best, but the pair of eyes across the small fire can see the endgame, can see it in the face. His neck leans back and Ass Kicker's soft whine is going to grow, he knows, as sure as the sun'll rise tomorrow and it's gonna crown with Rick limp and the baby wailing and the cannibal bastard's awake along with all the rest.
So Daryl inclines his head. He's on the other side leaning against the wall and the movement catches Rick's eye and the time between them conveys the message clear. To everyone's satisfaction, Rick doesn't try what Rick does best, and he instead nods in gratitude and shifts. Daryl to the best of his leather-coated ability quietly stands up and steps over the fire, and Rick's got Ass Kicker offered like a lamb to the god's altar, and she's two seconds from a wail, and with quick and yet expert grace Daryl cradles the head and body and arcs the girl away, brings her up to the leather and starts the rocking to cut the cry short. There's another nod and a trace of a grin, maybe the beginnings of a thank you but Daryl prefers a sign of trust, a sign of I-Know-You-Got-This, and the head lolls back, touching the curled leg of Carl, and the eyes are closed and Daryl is all alone with Ass Kicker. He might not mind, he thinks.
And then it's a game of mousetraps, of straining against jean and leather and boot to miss the fingers and the legs and the heads and the feet as he dances and awkward ballet with the baby across the room, to a corner hidden by a table. He's not out of sight, as all it'd take is a twist from Michonne or a crane from the handlebar to see him knees up and the baby wrapped in leather arms, but he's far enough. The fire reaches far and casts enough to give them both a little light. He glances around. Alone indeed. And there were no windows and a single door and plenty of space and cans hung but Daryl can't think about going, can't leave. Not with a cannibal inside and a hundred outside. So he checks okay and looks down to Ass Kicker, who was doing marginally better in his arms but wasn't going to stay like that forever.
Yet for all the times he has held her, he was drawing blanks on the proper protocol. Usually someone was always there to whisk her away when the going got tough, mothering her back to a gurgling girl before handing her back. Maggie or sometimes Michonne and recently the other two he couldn't name right now, but most of the time it was always...
"What're you fussin' about?" he muttered, shifting his arms. Her curls abruptly relaxed and her eyes focused on him. "Huh? World gave you too much of an ass beating today?"
She blinks.
He likes talking to her, he decides, likes it because he could curdle the moon with his mouth and she'd look at him doe-eyed the whole time. Didn't see that anymore in this world. Not enough people to...
Damn. He needs to quit thinking. But before he can do that the past pulls something up for him, a solution, yes, the only one such thoughts could bring up, but it hurt. Hurt to think about, and hurt to sing about. Hurt in general, but he knew it was what he had to do, because someone else used it a long time ago and what he wanted to remember said it was Ass Kicker's favorite.
"You 're my sunshine," he croons, but it's more mumbling. Real low, real quiet, barley distinguishable from a hum, and not very musical. But he's progressing through each line and with every word Ass Kicker's face softens, her arms still. She looks at him, then at the ceiling, and her eyes stay there but he knows her ears are pointed like sticks.
"My lov'ly sunshine," and no amount of mumbling will turn the thinking off.
"You make me happy," damn. Damn it all. His third eye is wandering into the past and it's a past he doesn't like and hates himself for it.
"When skies 'n grey," not like in the sense of how much nostalgia hurt. Oh damn it all to hell. She was so right he wanted to strangle the fortune teller out of her.
"You'll...never know dear," the words are slow and less word and more deep throat. Suddenly those blue eyes drifting off are looking a lot like probably-dead ones and oh, hot damn.
"How much I l've you," he looks away. Pulls his legs up, and Ass Kicker's asleep and her arms touch his cheeks. This world liked the dead coming back dead, and miracles came in the accidental jack the dealer forgot to pull out.
His head is moving everywhere but where it wants to stay at. The last line comes like a late bullet and there are cracks in the words as he strings them out, and even if Ass Kicker was awake and more verbose in the English language she'd have no idea what the crossbow-man said. As it comes slow and hard he finally lays his chin on her head and looks out past the wall, and it stays like that for awhile, long past the second he slips out. His neck will hurt tomorrow, but the reckless never care. He hasn't dreamt in a long time, and in the second-long darkness before the dawn the regret and guilt and the blonde hair in the sun blinks out of existence and it's just him alone in the dark and sometimes Daryl likes it that way.
He thinks Beth would've disapproved.
"Pl'se don't take my sunshine away."