Rick is walking down the block with supplies and weapons over his shoulder, when he sees Daryl coming out of Glenn and Maggie's house. Daryl begins to walk towards him as while lighting up a joint.
The two men meeting in the middle of the street, "So all of our people got a filtration kit", Rick asks. "Yep, I told them to hold on to it in case there ever caught outside the block in the woods." Daryl responds.
Rick looks down at Daryl's hand then at his glossy eyes, with an amusing grin he asks, "Are you all right? I mean I can only guess when the last time you had any of that?"
Daryl looks at his own hand with the spliff then he waves his other hand in presentation and says, "We are in the hills of the south. I may not know as much a botanist but, I know my herb when I see it." Rick laughs a little and says "Fair enough."
Daryl offers the joint to Rick but he declines and says, "Did you give a set of bump keys to Carl?" He takes another puff and replies, "Yep, and I told him not to use it anywhere else but our house. Do you want Chonne' to have a set too?" Rick chuckles a bit, "Not yet, I wanna make sure she's not planning to kill the guy next door".
Rick stops laughing and looks back over his shoulder at Daryl's and Michonne's place, then he turns back around to Daryl. By the look on his face Daryl knows that he really doesn't want to go back to the house with Jane because he wants to keep an eye on Michonne.
"Rick, you know there's plenty of room for you and the kids to stay up there. In fact, it might be a good idea that you stay with her when I'm out huntin'" Daryl tells him. Rick goes silent as he looks down the block at his place with Jane, "Naw, not yet anyway. I gotta go deal with her", he says while nodding his head down the block.
In an attempt to relieve Rick of stress and worry Daryl nudges Rick on the arm with his elbow and looks him in the eye and reassures him with, "Hey, I care about Michonne too, she's like the kin, I won't let nothin' happen to her." Rick looks at him and gives him an affirming nod and walks down the block.
Rosita comes out of her house huffs angrily and stands on her front porch after arguing with Abraham over the use of some of the supplies they retrieved from Daryl's.
Daryl hears the frustrated huff and shines his flashlight in Rosita's direction. She holds her hand right above her eyes due to the brightness and yells, "Yea, Daryl it's me, can you tone down the light a little?"
Daryl walks over to her using his flashlight as a guide. As he gets closer to Rosita she smells the aroma of his spliff. She mocks the woman from the movie, "Friday" and eagerly asks, "Whatcha' smokin' on?"
Daryl immediately cracks up because he's familiar with saying. He stands in front of her and says, "Puff puff give, I keeps the rotation going darlin'.", and pass her the spliff. He watches Rosita as she takes a long drag, the longest he's ever seen a woman take before. When she passes it back to him, he looks at the tiny roach in his hand then at her. He jokingly says, "Damn, girl! I only got one more in pocket and I was gonna light that one up once Glenn came out."
Rosita blows what little smoke that's left in her lungs out, "What do you mean, when Glenn comes out? Where ya'll going?" she asks him indignantly. "We're gonna break down a couple of those plants to make some more room in the basement." He tells her.
Daryl senses that she wants to get away from Abraham for a minute so he asks, "You wanna give us a hand?" He sees a cheerful smile pop up on her face. She signals her head yes and the two start walking away from the house.
After a while Glenn walks out of his house and turns on his flashlight as he walks over to Rosita and Daryl. Glenn watches as they chat and giggle. "Alright let's go, I can see I have a lot of catching up to do." He laughs.
Daryl lights up the spliff in his pocket and the three of them begin walking over to his house. Abe looks out of the bedroom window and watches as Daryl and Glenn's flashlight slowly fade away up the block in to the night. Abe starts to worry that Rosita is telling them about their argument from a few minutes earlier.
They finally reach the front door; Daryl opens the screen door then turns the knob of the front door only to realize that it's locked. He turns to Rosita who still giggling quietly from the joke Glenn told seconds earlier. He says, "Hold this flashlight while I get the key." Daryl hands her the flashlight while Glenn keeps an eye out for any potential threats that maybe creeping around the area.
Daryl finally finds the correct key to the front door and just as he is about to insert the key Michonne looks through the two small pane windows in the front door. She sees Daryl, Rosita and Glenn trying to get in, so she unlocks the front door. Right away she smells the weed smoke coming off the clothing of all three. She starts to smile and snickers, "The three of you are a mess. Get in here before some roaming herd of walkers hear the three of you giggling."
The three stumble in to the living room while she closes and locks the door. Daryl looks around the living room and asks, "What happened to the motion lights?"
Michonne walks to the center of the living room looking at the three of them dubiously. She leans in a little then squints her eyes to get a closer look at the three of their faces. Glenn and Rosita's eyes are glossy and bloodshot red, she looks over at Daryl and says, "I located the circuit breaker and turned off any visible lights from the outside that would attract walkers." Michonne leans back in and looks at Daryl's eyes then laughs, "Man, you guys are really tore up!"
All three start laughing at her comment, She tells them in a parental tone, "Alright, why don't you go in to the dining room and I will heat up something before the cravings kick in."
Michonne goes down to the basement and grabs a few cans of glory greens, 3 cans of tactical bacon in a can and 4 cups of brown rice. Once she comes back upstairs in to the kitchen she puts everything down on to the mid-sized kitchen island then goes in to the dining room to check on the three pot-heads.
She walks through the kitchen into the dinning and notices that Daryl has placed one Brooklyn LED lantern on the mahogany finished dining room table and another one on top of the armoire the corner. She walks over to the table and picks up a bottle of Stolichnaya then notices an unopened pack of cards on the table. Michonne glance at everyone and says with a laugh, "I know that ya'll aren't about to try and play cards are you?"
Rosita comes back with, "Oh, yes the hell we are!"
"But not before we take a couple of shots of Stoli's first", Daryl says while reaching in to the china cabinet for shot glasses.
Daryl places four shot glasses on the table. Michonne looks over at Daryl and Glenn, "I know you don't expect me to do that?"
Glenn giggles, "Why not?"
"Because I don't have enough weight on me to sustain straight alcohol, didn't you hear about what I did during the surgery on my leg last month?" She says.
"You know that was completely different this ain't even close to 151%. You know that." Daryl says discrediting her excuse. "Besides, I think that everybody here could use a couple of hours of r & r, I mean...I would like to have some good memories where I had a laugh or two instead of what most of my memories have been so far…ya' feel me?" He reasons.
Although three out of the four survivors in the dining room were half-baked, everyone knew what Daryl was saying or better yet…they could feel what he was saying.
Michonne picks up one of the shot glasses and it has, "Life's a bitch!" written on it. While gazing at the shot glass, the words remind her of the hip hop album "illmatic",
"Life's a bitch and then you die
That's why we get high
Cause you never know when you're gonna go"
Once everyone has a full shot glass Glenn looks over at Daryl, who has already lit up an extremely large spliff and says, "Shouldn't we say something before we take the shot?"
Everyone goes silent momentarily because no one has the words that would express everything that all of them have been through the past few years. Until Rosita sees what's on the shot glasses then she says, "How about life's a bitch?" They all look at each in solemn silence because there was no phrase equivalent to describe life as they know it to be so far.
After all four survivors take shots of Stoli's for each fallen comrade since escaping Terminus; Michonne goes back in to the kitchen to cook the rice. She reaches for the one of the gallon jugs of water that's been filled from the rain when she looks over at the kitchen sink with interest. She thinks, "What are the chances that he had running water, better still running hot water?"
She walks over to the faucet and turns it on and to her amazement there's running water. She turns the water on an off in complete disbelief that there's running water. Hoping to capitalize on her good fortune she turns the knob for the hot water. She places her hand underneath the water; minute later extremely warm water begins to come out of the faucet.
Daryl gets up from the dining room table leaving Rosita and Glenn talking to one another. He walks in to the kitchen where Michonne is short of giddy over the fact that the house has running hot water. "Damn, he has running water too?" He says with amazement. "That's right; Tero must have had batteries wired to any and everything that needs power including the hot water tank in the basement.
Daryl leans back a bit to see if Rosita and Glenn can hear them, then he looks back at Michonne and says, "Shhh, we don't want everyone to know that we have hot water just yet. The minute we do we may have a riot on our hands."
She looks at him and elbows him in the gut and says, "Did you forget people are gonna take turns during the day watching Judith here." Michonne laughs quietly and starts filling the rice pot with water.
Daryl picks his train of thought back up and says, "Chonne', you said that if we weren't on watch tonight you would take a toke or two so…" Michonne finishes filling the pot up half way then places it on the one of the four burners and pours the rice in the pot.
She pauses at the stove momentarily and considers the fact that Rick will be gone for the evening, the mere thought of her having to be alone for the night after what took place the night before at the truck stop made her feel angry. And it wasn't because Rick wouldn't be there when she went to sleep; what annoyed her most was that she was actually missing him. And if she was missing him when he's only seconds away the thought of him dying was more than she could stand.
So she decides to do the "Maybe" that she told Daryl earlier. "O.k., but just one or two I told you it makes me too paranoid." Daryl gives her a wicked smile then heads down to basement to the grow room.
By the time the rice starts to boil, all four are sitting at the dining room table playing spades. Everyone's pretty wasted; Glenn passes the joint to Michonne while Rosita shuffles the deck.
Rosita looks over at Michonne, "We are in the hole about 500, you ready?" Rosita asks her in a serious tone.
Michonne takes a two hits (of what can only be described as a blunt in rolling papers) then passes it over to Daryl. She looks over at Rosita then laughs, "I'm…so blunted right now."
Rosita tries to hold in her laughter at Michonne's statement but she can't. She bursts in to a loud roar and loses control of deck. The cards fly all over the dining room. Everyone at the table falls on the floor laughing uncontrollably.
After everyone helps to pick up the cards, they sit back down. "O.k., o.k...", Michonne tries to get serious and adds, "…o.k., I'm ready. Wait! I forgot to check on the rice." So she jumps up and runs back in to the kitchen. Once she leaves, The three of them start to laugh again, then Daryl adds in a whispers, "She gets a little paranoid."
A little while later Michonne passes out plates of rice with Glory greens and bacon. Every scent of this "real food" only adds to their high and inebriated state.
The four soldiers sit down at the dining room table completely aware that they're good and stoned but they are in the company of their brothers and sisters in struggle and they've been lucky enough to have a decent meal for once.
In times of war it's said that foot soldiers have to enjoy what they can and where they can. Sitting at a table drinking, laughing, smoking, playing spades and eating is a pleasant and valuable diversion even if it's only meant to last for the night.