"Hey! I was gonna eat that!" Daryl cried out in protest as Beth pulled the still wiggling worm from his fingers with her nose crinkled in disgust. They knelt next to each other on the damp forest floor, the recent rainfall bringing several worms up to the surface. Daryl had been excited when he spotted a particularly fat worm and he'd just been about to feast on it when Beth took it from him.
"We don't need to eat worms anymore Daryl." She said patiently, reminding him as she so often did that they were safe now. Or at least those of them that had survived to see the town behind Alexandria's walls were.
Being safe, being well fed was not a feeling that Daryl had ever been accustomed to in his entire life. He was used to running and scavenging, used to falling asleep with his stomach cramping and pleading for a 'more' that never existed. He was having a hard time adjusting to the life of relative ease in Alexandria which was part of the reason why he so often went hunting.
Of course another large part of it was the blonde girl kneeling beside him. He could never ask for a better partner than Beth Greene. She always had his back and she had almost as good an eye for tracking as he did, which was of course how she had found them again even after they had left what he had thought to be her corpse behind in Atlanta.
"I like the taste." he finally admitted, his eyes not leaving Beth's even as his fingers moved carefully through the dirt for the worm she had abandoned by their feet. Her eyes narrowed as she caught sight of his movements but before she could reach out and stop him Daryl tipped his head back and dropped the worm into his mouth.
It wriggled against his tongue for a moment before he bit down on it, grinning to himself as Beth looked at him with her face twisted up in disgust.
"That's sick." she finally said with a shake of her head as Daryl swallowed loudly and made a show of licking his lips as she groaned.
"C'mere Greene." he joked, reaching forward to grab her arm and stop her as she moved to rise to her feet. Beth let him pull her to him with a sound of disgruntlement that he thought was only partially feigned. As he bent to kiss her she turned her face away quickly, causing him to get a mouthful of her blonde hair and make his own noise of protest.
"No way Mr. Dixon." He pulled away to watch Beth's blue eyes sparkle as she teased him. "Just because you like the taste of worms doesn't mean that I do."
"Nah." Daryl agreed, bending closer to press his nose against hers. "But you like me."
That time when he bent to kiss her she didn't pull away.