Disclaimer: I own nothing.
1.
Sometimes the timbre of his voice makes her body shiver all over. She knows that it's completely inappropriate when it happens. He'll be talking about the food he was able to bring in on his last scouting trip and he'll hit a tone, that low quiet tone, and all of a sudden she's no longer thinking about walkers and food and shelter. Instead, she's thinking about fingers in her hair, pulling tightly, teeth scraping against her neck. She's thinking about the way he could say her name, Beth, so low and slow, drawling it out with a rasp in his throat. She's thinking about how the shape of his mouth would fit against her body as he whispers words like, yes more, and you taste so good, and I want you.
But that's not what it's like when he comes to her at night.
.
The first time they are together, he doesn't say anything. They hadn't seen each other all day. She was out with Rick and Maggie and they came back to camp looking like usual - spattered blood dry on their shirts and missing a few rounds of bullets, left in the brains of the dead. He runs over to the three of them, speaking only to Rick, asking what happened on their run into town and if there was anything he could do. All the while sneaking glances at her in between words, so quickly you could miss it, until the others leave and it is just the two of them, her pulse racing as he says nothing - but also makes no effort to leave. She is so attuned to him that she sees everything. Every glance. Every time his hand reaches out as if to touch her.
Later that night he grabbed her wrist and said gruffly, "You're careful out there?"
It's a question and a statement – loaded with something hidden that neither of them had yet to acknowledge – and it finally proved too much for her to ignore. She turned to face him and leaned in close to ask, "What's it to you, Daryl Dixon, how I am?"
.
After that, it happens all in a rush. He does the thing they had been dancing around since at least the funeral home – maybe even the old redneck house, ignited with moonshine, flames rising, and that feeling she got in that moment. The one that said she was right where she was supposed to be.
He kisses her. It's hard and sloppy, done in such a rapid movement that one minute she is standing there glaring at him and the next his mouth is on hers, a press of lips together, mismatched for a brief moment until the surprise wears off both of them. They ease into the sensation of their lips clinging together as his hands wrap around her head, thumbs stroking her cheeks.
He doesn't say a word as he backs her into a corner of their camp, out of view with a makeshift tent. He continues his silence as he quickly sheds all of his clothes - and hers - into a pile. She moans his name when his fingers find her, play her, make her come apart. But in the end he's quiet as he speeds towards his own release, on his back, eyes closed and thrusting - up up up into her until she moans his name again.
They don't talk about it later.
.
It continues like that for a while. Sneaking away while the others are asleep, or when they're on dinner duty and she's stirring a pot of beans, or flipping Daryl's catch of the day over the fire. He'll slide behind her, arms wrapping around her waist as he nips at her neck whispering, "Five minutes?"
Five turns into ten - or fifteen - as she turns around in his arms and their lips slide together. Electric sparks run through her body as she runs her hands over his arms, feeling the muscles twitch and flex where she touches. His breath hitches when she goes under his vest and pushes it off.
He still doesn't say a word. The first time, she thought it was just because they were too close to another tent, but she comes to realize that it's just how he is. He doesn't say a word as he pulls down her shorts, over her boots, and drags his tongue across the skin of her inner thigh. He releases a breath, but still doesn't speak as his arms pin her hers above her head and her legs wrap around his waist.
He especially doesn't say a word when she's got him backed up against a tree and her lips are around him and he's got one hand wrapped around her hair and the other fisted above his head, pushing against the tree for leverage.
.
Sometimes she thinks that she hears him whisper her name, a short exhalation of breath, barely perceptible. She convinces herself it's there on the days that he doesn't come to her, when she's wondering what it is they're doing. When she spends her afternoons thinking about the way that his hands feel on her body, callouses against smooth skin. And the way that they grip her waist as his tongue and his teeth torture her, pulling and tugging at her nipples, just enough so she feels that hint of pain, the one that she never thought she would enjoy as much as she does.
She tries to give him space.
.
She overhears him talking with Rick one day. It's hot as hell, Georgia summer in full force and the two of them are working out the water rations for the week, given the rough haul the past two weeks - finding a large estate, hoping for a new shelter for the sun, and a battle that left them all weary and exhausted.
"You seem more relaxed these days," Rick is saying to Daryl, and she doesn't want to intrude but she's so curious about Daryl's mind - what he's thinking, what he's feeling, where he goes sometimes when he's sitting off to the side of camp and staring into the woods as if the trees have turned into walkers, too.
She watches as Daryl lifts a shoulder in response, and shifting his eyes towards Rick says, "Yeah."
"Well whatever it is, keep doing it. I need you."
This time there's a hint if smile on his face, just a twitch of his upper lip that could almost be a snarl but Beth knows better.
"I plan to," he says.
And that's enough for her, so she walks away, quietly stepping and avoiding twigs, knowing he'd hate it if he knew she overheard them talking. She doesn't need what Maggie has, ring sparkling in her finger in the sunlight, or sometimes lying nestled between her breasts on a chain that Glenn found for her in the last town they passed through. She doesn't need the conversations about pretend wedding plans or dresses and champagne. She just needs to know that she is not alone with this wanting that she feels – a constant ache to be with him.
2.
Daryl has never been with a woman that needed him to say anything during sex before, and always preferred it that way. Even though Beth is somehow different from all of his previous experiences, he doesn't see the point in bringing commentary along to the party. He just wants to feel – and feel and feel. Until everything falls away and the only thing in his mind is that briefest, fleeting moment where his heart is racing and he is sweating and sated. Where there are no expectations on what he should be, or should do, or should say for at least five minutes.
Usually the women were gone much sooner than five minutes. Then he'd meet back up with his buddies – or Merle – and they wouldn't have to talk either. Just a nod and a thumbs up and they would rev the engines of their bikes and hit the road to the next town.
.
He notices that Beth likes to share. She likes to moan his name, all breathy and quiet. She's most vocal when she's about to come, body fluttering and clenching around him – his fingers or his dick – or against him mouth. She starts off making small noises, just a moan or a catch in her breath. Soon it turns into full words and sentences. She likes to tell him what she likes, when she needs more. With his lips at the curve of her breast, tracing a pattern down to the hollow in between before sliding the cups of her bra down and tugging at her nipples. She'll moan his name, then oh, God and harder.
He complies, always. It's impossible to deny her anything, especially when he's on his back and she rotates her hips – just so – until she's panting faster, and right there when he grabs her hips and presses until she says, you feel so good.
.
He likes it a little too much, he decides, the feeling that took hold in the pit of his stomach as he was yelling at her, all rage and fury. The feeling when she just latched onto his back, hugging him with her whole body arms and torso and face pressed into him.
He knows that he loved Merle in the way that you do your brother – in blood and in arms. It is a love that is easy to define when it's the only one you have.
He has no idea what he feels for Beth. Only that it's something he likes to ignore – has to ignore – because he has no idea what to do with it.
.
One day, he breaks. He can't hold it in any longer, that pressure that builds around his heart when she is near. They haven't even started yet, but he knows that it's about to. Nobody is really around the camp, and those who are there aren't paying attention to either of them. Beth is cleaning her gun and sneaking glances at him. Her eyes flicker, up and down, as if she's taking in his image and memorizing it. He realizes, in that moment, that it's not just about bodies and pleasure between them anymore. He realizes that she sees something in him, something worthy and interesting that keeps her coming back for more.
He says her name, quietly, a whisper that she still somehow hears, Beth. Floating across the space between them. Making her eyes snap with heat. He keeps saying it that time, as they sneak away, and he slowly takes off every piece of her clothing.
Beth.
He pulls her shirt up to find bare underneath. He brushes his thumbs against her, flesh puckering and rising as she arches her back into his hands.
Beth.
He slides her jeans off her legs and hooks his finger into her panties, gliding along her slick opening before pulling those off as well and pressing his mouth to her.
Beth.
He pulls her hair out of its braid and threads his fingers through the strands, golden in the sunlight.
Beth.
.
The next time he finds it easier to say other things, like oh God that thing with your tongue when he's on his back and she's traveling down his body until he groans her name, panting it out when he comes into her mouth. Her eyes on him, watching and smiling as she releases him and curls her body into his, lying on top of his chest head to heart, so she can listen to the sound of how deeply she wrecks him.
Or he'll say your skin is like sugar, when his mouth is on her shoulder and she's on her back with knees bent and his hips are pumping and her hands are in his hair.
.
He loves the way she smiles after tells her that her skin feels like silk – after they find a stream and soap and take their first bath in months. She pulled him aside and pushed him in the water, clothes still on. Laughing as they peeled each item off the other and he slides his fingers inside her, thumb circling and circling until she bites his shoulder, body shuddering.
.
He begins to share secrets with her as they are lying in his makeshift tent. Lying face to face, as Beth leans in to whisper to him that she thinks Maggie is on to them. All he can do is laugh because they have been so obvious that Maggie would have to be blind not to know.
And when Beth asks him what's so funny, it's so easy to just tell her.