With any other man in her life, Lori would have expected that first kiss to change the fundamentals of their relationship somehow. It always had before, although if she's truly honest, she doesn't actually have much experience in that area.

The one boyfriend before Rick barely qualifies for the title, just a few months or so around senior prom, and she's still convinced he only asked her to get his teammates off his back about going stag to the big event of the school year. Like her, his entire focus had been on his ticket out of the backwater town they'd grown up in. Hers had been an academic one, ironically thanks in part to her year in juvie; his was a football scholarship, like most boys in their county high school.

With Rick, she'd met him at a New Year's Eve party freshman year at college, and by Valentine's Day, she had that positive pregnancy test that changed absolutely everything about where her life was intended to go. She had been so poorly equipped to be a wife and mother at nineteen that looking back, she can't help but mourn for the girl who smothered under the expectations she faced. The catty bitch she became isn't something she wants to think about these days.

Shane… no part of her can truly slander the man anymore, now that she's had time and distance to reconcile what happened between them. He never liked the picture-perfect housewife persona much back when it was a viable behavior for her, so perhaps in time, if Rick hadn't had his Lazarus moment, she might have emerged from her false self completely.

But Daryl, damn. Him asking to kiss her on her birthday was so completely unexpected that she hasn't dared talk about where they were going from there. They have the same routines they had before and still sleep in the same bed. He still has conversations with her unborn daughter, and he still touches Lori with a gentleness that is completely at odds with the rough-hewn personality he likes to present to the world even now.

Now he's added shy kisses to their routine in the two weeks since the first kiss, never in public, always in private, but there's no sense of being ashamed of her. It's more that she thinks he can't manage public displays of affection, even those that don't involve him. Lori's caught him many times avoiding looking when a couple exchanges even a sweetly platonic kiss in public.

"You okay?"

The drawled words are punctuated with concern. Lori looks up from the book she's been supposedly reading to see that Daryl's in the doorway of the tiny bathroom, toothbrush in hand as if he got halfway through cleaning his teeth before he just had to ask about her mood.

"Yeah, I'm fine." She closes the book, though, and puts it on the stack. The RV is cozy despite the winter chill outside, especially the nest of blankets he's built up for her. "Need to pee though. She thinks she needs to tap dance on my bladder."

That's the gift of the third trimester, where she supposes she should be glad that the RV's size means the bathroom is just a few steps away all the time. That the baby can still kick her bladder worries Lori more and more each day. Carl had been a breech baby, and all Dr. Stevens' reassurances that it's perfectly normal for a baby to still be head up at nearly thirty-three weeks don't remove that fear. It's after thirty-six that they need to worry, and the doctor will try to turn the baby at that point.

If the baby doesn't turn, can Lori survive a c-section in that tiny operating room they've built here? She has nightmares about that idea, but Dr. Stevens counsels her that c-sectioning breech deliveries is a product of a single flawed medical study and inexperienced doctors, like Lori's obstetrician, who was only three years into practice when he delivered Carl.

It doesn't help as much as the woman would like it to; nightmares about a breech birth also happen regularly. Then again, most of her dreams about the birth itself are nightmares, which doesn't help her sleep cycles.

Daryl steps back from the bathroom, toothbrush back in his mouth as he watches her ease out of the bed. He doesn't comment though, going to use the little kitchenette's sink to finish up and give her a bit of privacy.

"She's been keeping you up a lot," he ventures once she's settled back in bed and he's dropped his toothbrush off in the bathroom. Settling on the bed next to her, he eases under the covers.

"Got her days and nights backward." She catches his half-smile when she snuggles into his side.

"Thought they were supposed to be born before they did that." Daryl's fingertips ghost along her belly, finding where the skin is rippling beneath her nightshirt. His calloused palm against the stretched smooth skin of her stomach makes her breath catch. "Guess she doesn't have any way of knowing right now, though."

No, her daughter doesn't, and Lori honestly can't imagine how Daryl isn't irritated since her own insomnia certainly can't be helping the baby's activity. His only reaction has been to sleep so that Lori has the side of the bed closest to the bathroom. No argument, no fuss, just him taking a different side of the bed.

"What are we?" Maybe it's the fact that it's New Year's Eve, the old year fading into the new, but the question's been building in the back of her mind all day.

Daryl's head jerks up at the unexpected question from Lori, and she does her best to give him a reassuring smile. It fails because his eyes narrow in that assessing way of his. She almost expects him to move his hand away from where it's being rocked against the baby's near rhythmic movements, but he doesn't.

His gaze goes to the chain around her neck, though, reminding her that her engagement and wedding band are next to the locket, where she once carried Rick's wedding band. She'd put her rings there after the first positive pregnancy test, because even if she found Rick again, she couldn't imagine a scenario where the new start to their marriage survives her giving birth to another man's child. The longer she's been away from her old life, the more she understands it never would have anyway, not even for Carl's sake.

Remembering Shane's conflict with her seeming widowhood, Lori isn't sure how Daryl would see her still having a living husband out there. He cares for her, she knows, and aside from the lack of initiating anything sexual, all of his unspoken affection is romantic in nature.

"There are no divorce courts anymore," she says softly. "We're never going to have paperwork that says I'm not an adulteress for being with you. I'm okay with that. Are you?"

Truly she is, because she will never be hung up on what everyone thinks of her again. She and Rick and Carl would have been so much happier if she'd been braver sooner in life.

Daryl scoffs, the sound less derisive than it would have been months ago. "Ain't ever been worried much about paperwork. M'daddy sure as hell didn't think it meant anything special."

"So what are we?" Lori repeats. As much as she doesn't want to end whatever this is, leaving it completely undefined is terrifying the more she thinks about it.

"Too damned old to be called a boyfriend," Daryl mumbles, not meeting her eyes. "It's enough that I love you, ain't it?"

Those three words make her swallow hard. He hasn't stopped the gentle caress against her belly, but she can tell his hand is trembling. Her answer is what will make or break them as anything more than friends, she knows.

"I love you, too," she tells him, her smile widening when he looks up with the beginnings of a smile curving his lips. She has loved him for a while, and it's hard to define where it crossed the line between loving her friend and being in love with the man who trusts her to lead where he will follow, instead of the other way around. "And yes, that's more than enough."

Daryl doesn't resist when Lori reaches up to grip his shoulders and tug him in close. Leisurely kisses as they lay curled together are only interrupted by smiles. She wonders sometimes if this almost adolescent approach to intimacy between them is filling in a gap in experience for him the way it is for her. His hands go under clothing as they kiss, but the cautious massage is never sexual.

In fact, it takes her a minute to realize he's slowly but surely finding all the problem spots in her back and hips. The dexterity she admires when watching him work with his hands in more mundane activities translates well to his burgeoning masseuse career. When he coaxes an outright purr out of her, she's surprised to hear him actually laugh.

"You sound like Mittens."

Lori buries her face in his shoulder, giggling softly. "Keep it up, and I might do more than purr."

His hands still for a minute but then pick back up the massage. "Wasn't doing it to get you to have sex with me."

"I didn't mean it that way, Daryl." She presses a kiss against the underside of his jaw. "We don't have to have sex."

Although she's led a fairly sheltered life in some ways as an adult, she knows not everyone is wired to see sex as essential to their daily life. In the entire time she's known Daryl, he's never indicated any sort of sexual interest in anyone. There's plenty of interest in him from the unattached women in the river camp, but he's either naturally or deliberately oblivious.

Even now, as her body wakens from pregnancy aches to low-key arousal, Lori feels no particular need to push the boundaries. She can't deny the unspoken fear in the back of her mind that sex never works out for her, although the sarcastic self long smothered snarks that at least she won't get pregnant the first time she sleeps with Daryl if they do it now.

"But you would like to." His voice is low and gravelly, and he doesn't sound enthralled by the prospect. She knows what it sounds like when a man is intrigued, and he isn't.

Lori debates her answer. Right now? Not especially. This pregnancy hasn't had the heavy rush of amorous hormones she remembers in the second and third trimester of her first. It would be nice, but not bone-achingly necessary. But eventually, that's likely to change. One day, her body isn't going to be wrapped up in growing a baby - or in a few months, feeding one - so she needs to consider that.

"I find you attractive." He makes a disgruntled sound when she says that, and she wriggles to where she can see him. The wary look on his face makes her sigh as she cups his face between her hands and strokes his cheekbones with her thumbs. "I do."

Daryl doesn't argue, but the wary look in his eyes tells her he wants to.

"Why would you think I wouldn't? Your scars?"

"Wouldn't be the first one to think they're too ugly to stand. Ain't like Merle, where he made like they were something to be admired."

Considering how careful Daryl is to keep his back covered, even with her, she supposes she understands. His brother wore his scars like armor, refusing to be cowed by flawed skin. Thinking over their dynamic in the quarry camp, plus how distraught Daryl was to think Merle dead and his continued search until weather made it risky, she doesn't really think Merle wanted admiration.

The older Dixon had decided not to feel any shame where their father's abuse was concerned. Lori wishes he'd passed it on to Daryl somehow.

"Can we try something?" she asks, thinking of how his willingness to gently rub his thumb across her c-section scar makes it feel like a badge of honor and not a failure to give birth without surgical intervention.

Like most things, he nods, and it makes her heart ache that he trusts her so much he doesn't even ask what she wants them to try. She sits up and motions for him to follow. Sleeping is one of the times he foregoes his layers, wearing only an olive green tank top. When she reaches for the hem, he stiffens, but when she says his name softly, he sighs and lets her tug it over his head.

"Lay on your belly, please."

Lori knows what she's asking Daryl to do, and even a month ago, she's not sure he could manage. When he stretches out, she can see the tension in his well-muscled frame. Laying a hand between his shoulder blades, she bites her lip to avoid making a distressed noise when he flinches as if she'd slapped him. Sitting cross-legged next to him, she draws her palm slowly across his back, as gentle and tenderly as he touches her pregnant belly.

How long it takes for the tension to leave his body, she doesn't know. It's just one hand, but she's mapped out the contours of his back from the waistband of the sweatpants he wears as pajamas to the nape of his neck more times than she can count. At first, she thinks maybe he's falling asleep, but then she catches sight of a tear trickling down the bridge of his nose.

"Daryl? Are you okay?" She hasn't concentrated on the ridged flesh any more closely than the smooth stretches of skin, but she knows this is asking the near impossible for him.

"Yeah." He gets the syllable out, but it's barely audible.

"Do you want me to stop?"

A shiver passes through his body. "No. Please don't."

Lori keeps up the soothing movement, but now, she traces the scars with her fingertips. Each one is something for her to memorize, even as she also takes note of the tattooed demons. They aren't his only ink, but she'll ask about them another time.

Tonight, she just revels in the intimacy he's allowing her, lying under her touch and allowing himself to fall asleep, shirtless, back exposed. She hadn't doubted it when he said he loved her, not for a moment, but this? It's proof in a way that she'll never be able to explain to anyone.

No one's ever relied on Lori like this, trusted her this much. Daryl won't believe it, not until time and devotion prove it, but she can live with that. Being in love with him is worth it.