This wasn't based on a prompt, actually, it just came to me this evening and I wrote it out in one go, which is rare and exciting for me these days. Enjoy!

The first thing out of Beth's lips as she came through their apartment door with a jingle of keys and a rustle of paper was a bright and excited exclamation of, "Glenn gave us his old Wii system!"

The second thing she said, issued before he could speak up in reply, and punctuated by a knowing look in his direction was, "And before you ask, itis going to cost me." With a dramatic sigh, Beth nudged the door shut with her hip, lifting her free hand to lock the door as the other curled around the handles of a large paper bag she must have brought with her from her sister's place on her visit today.

As she hooked her keys on the little shelf Daryl had made and hung by the door, Beth glanced over her shoulder at him and explained, "I have to teach Glenn to cook. Apparently he's starting to worry all the eating out they do isn't good for them, and Maggie can't cook for beans- she burns everything, always has. Mama used to unhook the smoke detector every time Maggie would ask for lessons, because the beeping drove the dog up a wall. So anyway, Glenn wants to learn, and I'm going to teach him! Which should be a nice mix of fun and torture... thus, the bribe."

Though she grinned as she jiggled the bag at him, Daryl knew what she was really saying. He knew that Glenn had offered her the game system for free but Beth, knowing how Daryl could get about anything that had even a whiff of charity, had suggested some sort of trade or barter instead. She'd anticipated his reaction, and come up with a way to ease it, and understanding that didn't make him mad at her at all. In fact, as he sat there on their small couch with Scrap purring in his lap and peered up at her through his long fringe of hair, all Daryl felt was the same warmth and love that always seemed to well up in his chest when she did something like this- hell, when she was just near him at all.

He felt a hint of guilt still, at accepting something for 'free', but he couldn't say no to her when she was making him feel like that. Didn't want to, really. Even if he had, she was already kneeling on the floor pulling out the system, and as the empty paper bag toppled over, Scrap was bounding out of his lap and running across the floor towards it on his oversized kitten paws. As the little scrap of black fur vanished into the back with a mewl and a rustle of paper, Beth looked up at him with a grin and giggled, "Two presents in one!"

Two presents in one, and two sweet happy faces he didn't have it in him to say no to even if he'd wanted to.

So in the end he was right there on the floor with her, helping to unravel the cords and figuring out how to plug them into their TV, which thankfully was new(ish) enough that they could hook the system up at all.

"Let's play something!" Beth exclaimed twenty minutes later as they stood successfully in front of the television, the faint sound of the Wii music accented by the continued rustling of paper as Scrap played in his new bag fort. (As far as Daryl could tell, this involved running around in circles inside the bag, and occasionally poking his tail out before darting it back inside.) "Hmmm… we don't have a lot of room though… I dunno if we can play bowling. What do you think?"

She lifted the controller that was looped around her hand, backing up and mimicking the rolling of a bowling ball. He was amused enough to crack a smirk; it wasn't what he'd expected. When he thought of video games, he pictured people sitting on the edges of couches, clutching controllers in their hands. Like that one time he and Merle had stayed with a dude who had an old playstation, and would spend hours and hours sitting on the sagging couch in his musty living room, cracking beer after beer and playing racing games on controllers so grimy the buttons didn't work half the damn time.

But this was nothing like that, and not just because the whole room smelled, as always, like sunshine, growing plants, and a hint of Beth's shampoo. It was also a brighter, if smaller space without a hint of dust or must; but the biggest difference was Beth, standing there in front of him with a happy smile on her lips as she rocked forward onto her toes and back again to her heels. She was so damn happy, she brightened up the room all on her own, no sun or lamps needed. Her gaze lingered for a moment and then she glanced at the menu on the screen and her eyes lit up, "Oh! Daryl there's Wii Archery!"

Despite how unsure he was about playing with this system at all- he was sure he'd make a fool of himself, though of course he was willing to do that a hundred times over for Beth- Daryl couldn't help but feel his interest rise at her words. He turned to study first the screen, and then her. "They got an archery game? How's that even work?"

"I'll show you!"

It only took a minute or so to get it going and then he was watching as she held the Wii remote in one hand and the other thing- the thing she called a 'nunchuk' in the other, squeezing it and drawing it back. "See? You hold this up like it's the grip of the bow, and then draw the nunchuk back like it's the arrow and the bowstring, and then when you have it lined up…. you release!"

His gaze lifted just in time to see the electronic arrow fly on the screen and whizz right past the target she'd been aiming for. "Except I'm horribleat this," Beth exhaled with a sigh and a groan. "I always have been, even when I used to play it with Glenn and Mags." With a hint of a pout, she added, "I thought I might be better because you've been teaching me your crossbow, but I guess it's not the same…"

Lured by instinct (though the little pout of her full lower lip was also pretty tempting) Daryl stepped up behind her. "Here," he murmured, coming up behind her until one hand smoothed casually across her waist. "Think the problem is you're movin' your hand when y' release an' it's sending it wide."

Sure, he'd never played this game before, but he'd been hunting since he could walk, practically, and he knew the basics better than he knew himself, it sometimes seemed. He'd seen the way her hand had jerked when she released, and it wasn't hard to visualize what would have happened if she'd been holding a real bow instead. The basic principle was the same, wasn't it?

Daryl's left hand stayed on her waist, but his right hand came up as she drew back the nunchuk again towards her ear. "There y' go, nice an' slow and get the aim right. But remember what I taught you to do, out when we were practicin'?" This close, his nose was filled with the scent of her, practically enough to make his head spin if he hadn't been so focused on helping her. He could tell, though, that the sensation of his lips murmuring so close to her ear was affecting her too. Daryl had long since learned how sensitive Beth's ears could be, just as he'd learned to read the shifting in her body, and the way she tensed and shifted when he was distracting her. "What are you supposed t' do before you release th' bolt?"

"I…" She paused, drawing in a deep breath that hitched faintly before she released it. "I breathe in, and fire on the exhale, in between heartbeats.

"Right. Just like that." The hand that had rested on her hip brushed around to the flat of her belly and then up, skating over the fabric of her shirt until it came to rest just over her heart. As his lips lingered by her ear, he tapped out the rhythm of her heart against her chest: Tap tap. Tap tap. Tap tap. Tap tap. "Breathe in… breathe out… breathe in… breathe out and…

Tap tap, and then with his fingers curled around her wrist to hold it steady, Beth released the button and let her 'arrow' fly, right into the center of the game target.

"I did it!" As the game erupted in celebratory music, she spun around with a whirl, and before he could even grin at her, Beth's arms were around his shoulders and her lips were on his. When she was doing that, frankly it just seemed instinctive to wrap his arms around her waist and lift her up into his arms.

Everything after that was a bit of a blur, as it always was when she was in his arms. He was at least aware that at some point, they ended up on the floor, both of them shifting together in the tiny amount of free space in their living room. It was all tangled limbs and roaming hands and laughter mixed with kisses, until finally he rolled over so that she was beneath him and he was free to kiss her breathless.

He was aware, as well, that Scrap wasn't very pleased by their antics, judging by the way the kitten mewed in protest when Beth very nearly rolled over onto his bag. The unexpected rustling of his bag fort sent him running, leaping out of the paper bag in a blur of black fur and jumping up onto the arm of the couch, where he attempted to clean himself as if that had been his plan all along.

And Daryl also knew, as Beth stretched out beneath him with her cheeks flushed and giggles spilling from her lips, that maybe accepting the game system from Glenn (and Maggie) wasn't such a hardship after all.

After all, he didn't have to teach Glenn to cook. He just had to play games with Beth Greene, and let her kiss him breathless every time she proved herself just as skilled at video games as she seemed to be at everything else.

Yeah, that was definitely not a hardship at all.