The bed he's laying on smells like farm animal and shit. Dust had erupted when he'd collapsed onto it. He pages through a book that had been on the bureau in the last of the day's light, not really reading it at all. Just pretending to look at it. Just something to do that wasn't smoking the few cigs he'd found earlier. Beth is rummaging through the closet, opening boxes and looking at the clothes and linens. Occasionally pausing to read something then tossing it back.
This day has felt strange to him.
After the meeting the other night, Tyreese, Rick and Daryl had squinted over the maps he'd been collecting. A few places might've been worth looking at for a winter hole to hide in. At least, Ty had said, they used to have fences and gates.
Rick had asked Ty how he'd known these places and he'd deadpanned, The NFL, man, and for some reason it made Daryl laugh. Another person who would never have been caught dead around him Beforehand. A cop and his kids, couple of young god-fearin' farmer's daughters, a firefighter and her brother: a dude who played in the damn NFL. It's a big joke from god or the universe or whatever.
They'd spent a day searching the town they were in for supplies and decent vehicles and fuel. Some of the places were a ways away. He'd been pretty disappointed there hadn't been a bike to boost nearby. Some recon groups fell together naturally: Sasha, Tyreese and Bob going one way in one vehicle. Maggie, Glenn and Tara in an SUV. He'd been thinking about going alone in the small coupe they'd brought back with them, real quick like, in-n-out, but Carol had volunteered to join him. He hadn't even needed to worry over making that decision, Rick had flatly said, Why don't you stay here with us.
He may as well've said, No I don't trust you outta my sight, for as obvious as his tone was, and Carol got the message loud and clear. She wasn't pleased but didn't push either. Daryl had no interest in stepping into that hornet's nest right then, either; wasn't the time for it.
The strained pause after had left room for Beth to jump in, jiggling Judith on her hip, offering to go instead. All bright and cheery.
Daryl's first instinct was to argue, he couldn't even stop the frown it pulled his face into. Second instinct was to just deny her outright, make her stay back with Rick, Michonne, and the kids. He and Beth had messed around in the woods, hunting, tracking, a trap or two, dealing with straggler walkers, but nothing serious since they'd found her. She'd never done a real run, aside from running for their fuckin' lives.
Rick didn't put his two cents in either way this time, irritatingly. Instead he raised both eyebrows, leaving it up to Daryl. Carol was still there, and he caught Maggie peeking up from the back of the car she was loading. Daryl thought she might speak up, to tell Beth no herself. She didn't though. Just looked down, pretending not to eavesdrop.
It felt like they were all waiting with bated breath and barely-veiled curiosity. With the way Beth's face was- politely anticipating his disagreement, just a hint of rebellion around her eyes- he didn't really want to say yes or no. If they were alone, he'd fight with her. Maybe just to fight with her. But if they were alone, she'd be coming with him anyway. They took Carl on runs way younger than whatever age Beth is now; and, he thought, he's not teaching her for shits and giggles.
He chewed the inside of his bottom lip. He didn't want to give them much more to gossip about either. Their speculation was obvious enough, but most of 'em were too skittish of him to ask straight up.
He heard Beth's sweet memory-voice declaring, I can take care of myself.
Pretty soon I won't need you at all.
Beth looked very prepared and totally fine with the argument she obviously expects from him. Her eyebrows were up, head tilted, the side of her neck exposed, Judith's hand fisted in her ponytail Maybe a little confused that he hadn't said anything yet, but the hints of a smile were there. Amusement. Judith gurgled around her pacifier.
He'd let it happen with a grumbled, Fine, before touching Judith's head briefly and going back to preparations. The first time of plenty that day he'd be off-balance.
The goodbyes walked a tightrope now: knowing it could be the last time, stubbornly refusing to believe it was. They don't use the word goodbye or even bye. They say things like See you later, and Take care. When Maggie hugged Beth, she said, Y'all come back now, ya hear? with a light, breezy tone, but when her eyes met Daryl's, they said, Keep her safe, bring her back.
Still sharing her. It reminded him of the traincar. He wondered if that's just how it was now. She is theirs. He nodded, agreeing again to their back-and-forth promise.
Being on the road felt strange too: alone again, but without the sucking chest wound that was not knowing where their family was, what happened to them, if they'd ever see them again. They stopped often on their way out of town, siphoning what gas they could find into a beat up plastic gas can, and taking anything useful. They moved with familiarity, not needing much for words, talking with eyes and hands and- just knowing. Knowing where the other was gonna be, what they were probably thinking or going to do.
He had back what the others had now. Bonded by being the only ones left. Except Carol and Tyreese. They did not share looks. They avoided it.
That'd have to be figured out soon.
He glances away from the book and at her again. She crouches in the closet, pulling things out of a bag. Hard to believe still she is actually here, back. With them. This unsettled day makes it even more surreal. Even with her back to him right there, facing him, her blonde ponytail swaying with her movement, a little braid wound in it. Her butt resting on her boot heels. Humming a melody to herself. Still can't totally believe it, still not settled with it.
Back in the car earlier, she'd sang again. First time she'd done it since the funeral parlor. Or, first time he'd heard it, anyway.
They'd moved together like there'd been no apart really- the silence felt right, when they were killing walkers and scavenging. But in the small car, once they hopped on a US route for a long stretch, the silence pulled taut, unsaid words strung between them like an electric fence. Like it does when they're alone.
It made his thoughts grow louder.
He just hadn't thought so far ahead. The funeral home had been a bubble, a fairytale, a Hansel'n'Gretel trap; somewhere out of reality, a false dream. He'd for a moment- just them alone- thought of possibilities. There, he could swing her up into his arms, and she'd smile and laugh, and it was simple. He wasn't just the shitty Dixon boy as everyone else saw him; she wasn't the Beth Greene as everyone else expected her. As even he'd expected her to be.
He hadn't really thought about everything after success. When she was gone, he'd tried to keep the faith, but he couldn't let himself think about it in detail. Couldn't think about the future, couldn't flay his chest wide open with hopeful daydreams, nice play-pretend scenarios... and then find her dead anyway. Now, he didn't know. What to say, or do, or how to act. Who they were supposed to be.
Sure do miss the radio, She'd broken into his train of thoughts.
He didn't miss the radio as much as he'd missed her. He'd learned to live without the radio or music. He can almost hear Merle mocking, laughing without much humor, Oh Romeo! All moon-eyed over our little songbird!
The devil on his shoulder calls him a pussy in Merle's voice.
He asks instead, Why don't'cha sing?
She did. A lot of songs he doesn't know, some he heard her sing at the prison, some church songs. Doesn't matter what one, he feels it under his skin. It'd be nothing to put his hand on her thigh in the tiny car. If not for the clumps of walkers they passed by, dumb and hungry, he could almost imagine they were other people, in a different world. One where he could put his palm on her leg, squeeze it, while she tapped out a rhythm for her song.
The only time he interrupted her was when he recognized the song she starts, about shotgunning beers on the lawn and not wanting to be her boyfriend and that's a relief. Goosebumps rushed him quick, cold with dread.
Don't. He snapped. Then, Not that one.
He felt her look at him, gaze boring into his cheek, but he ignored it. Kept his eyes on the road and out his window, on his side mirror. Just a damned song, he told himself, but he still can't sit and listen to it like it doesn't fuck him up. It's just a song, and a sweet, vicious premonition. A modern folksy siren's song, that had lulled him that night. Then haunted him while she was gone.
She hadn't said anything, but did change to a different song.
Now, while laying in the house they'd stopped at, on some other guy's bed, hours distant from that car ride... just remembering what he can of the lyrics now is too much. It's too close to his barely scabbing wound. He's itchy and sore.
He decided on the fly to stop them at a small house, with a large empty chicken coop, two big sheds and the back field wasn't full of walkers. They still had a ways to go for the mansion and they shouldn't get there at nightfall. There'd been only one walker inside the house, in an upstairs room behind a closed door. They could hear it. They left it for last, and it turned out to be a teenaged boy a little older than Carl locked in his teenaged bedroom, posters of cars and chicks in bikinis all over the walls. The bookcase and wall shelves, curtains, the desktop, all stained and thrashed, books and kids sports trophies and car models scattered.
He let his arrow go from the doorway and it ripped through the boy's cheek- sloughing off a large chunk of his slipping, decayed face- but only knocking him back for a brief moment before hunger pushed him toward Daryl again. He dropped the bow and, before he'd been able to pull his own, Beth had shoved her knife in his hand. The knife they'd been sharing since the woods.
Shoulda kept your weapon, girl, he'd chastised her after putting him down, wiping the blade off on the walker's pant leg before he handed it back hilt-first.
I got others, she'd said, and he wondered where. Maybe in her boots. Nothin' behind us, anyway.
There's something about the way Beth stepped over the body without looking at it, opening the closet door just to be sure it's empty, that bugged him. She shrugged at him on her way back by and out the door. After she left the room, before he grabbed his bow, he yanked the blanket off the dead boy's bed and threw it over his body. He shut the door behind him.
He set up some sound alarms with what he could find around- all the cupboards and drawers in the place were left open, it'd been picked over before. He made a tripwire on the front porch out of fishing line from the shed. Parked the car by the back door, hidden from the driveway and road. Locked the front door and shoved some furniture in front of it. Closed all the curtains and blinds, checked all the window locks, not that they'd stop anyone or anything. He locked and blocked off the door to the basement, too, just to be safe. He tried to think of anything else he could do, that he didn't at the funeral home.
Don't get lax. Don't believe in Too Good To Be True. Have a planned escape route.
He should've learned that one from the prison.
Don't trust dogs, he'd added.
Beth had searched the place for stuff while he'd tightened it up for the few hours they'd be here. They'd ended up in the master bedroom, with a window that faced the driveway. No discussion about it, not much conversation at all, all day. Mostly stilted, necessary words, until now.
After he'd flopped down on the bed, he'd told her, We go out the back if we gotta scram. Right to the car, keys are in the console in case.
'Kay. Some a' these clothes might fit you, but they smell like barnyard.
Overalls ain't my thing. He'd found the farmer in the shed, face gone, shotgun gone, bib of the denim coveralls disgusting with dried parts of him. It was too cold for flies today, thankfully, and the body had been drying in the weather. He didn't bother to mention it.
A small noise of amusement, her tone more buoyant: I meant the flannels anyway.
They'd fallen silent again. He'd opened the book so he didn't just stare.
Now, she huffs from the closet, standing from her crouch and stretching her back.
"Nothin' good?" He asks, still peering down at the open book. In his periphery, she starts kicking stuff back behind the threshold.
"Not unless you want some a' the hidden porn," she mutters, back still to him.
He doesn't expect that word coming from her mouth, it's another off-step moment, kinda jolting. Made his eyes jump to her. Thankfully her back is still to him, while yanking a shirt off a hanger, then another. There were several crude ways Merle could've thought of to answer her and he would've reveled in doing it, even to Beth. Maybe especially because it was Beth, for the same urge that rises somewhere inside Daryl. If he was still empty-stomach-drunk with rotgut, even he'd say somethin' for shock. Just to see her reaction. See if her cheeks turned red or if her eyes would roll, if she'd get pissed off or ignore it altogether.
He says nothing. His mind's acting up enough as it is, churning between guilt and self-loathing and admiration and gratitude and self-flagellation, icy rage, shame and something edging uncomfortably close up on hunger, all together. A miserable ice cream in his skull. He didn't need cheap assistance. Especially since he doubts any of them girls would look a thing like Beth. He just doesn't say anything.
She closes the closet door and announces, "I did find somethin' though," leaving the room briefly.
When she comes back, she chirps, "Lookie what was still in the bathroom."
She waves a fifth back and forth, sloshing the amber around. The label is peeling.
"Hmm." He acknowledges. He remembers his mom's hiding spots: the empty cans behind the ratty, nasty towels in the bathroom cupboard. The broken magazine rack by her chair, behind the very out-of-date magazines he'd never seen her read. In the highest cabinet, behind an elderly bag of flour full of bugs and beetles.
"Hmm." She parrots his noise, mocking him with a smile. "Well, you want a drink? There're cups downstairs. Might as well see if I like whiskey better'n moonshine."
He discards the book on the bed next to him, pulling himself up on the headboard some while she chatters, bends a knee to lean a wrist on it.
"Hmm," he repeats. "Don't think it's wise we drink together again."
Neither of them were happy drunks really. He is edgy enough sober these days. Drinking, he'd just be an asshole, and she was a depressing arsonist fortune-teller. Even if they were in a safer situation, not alone, he wasn't sure liquor was gonna be a good idea.
He thinks of yanking her down the porch stairs, outside with a walker.
"Yeah, well," she interrupts his discomfiting memory, her tone less chipper than before, "at least you talked to me then."
After a thought, she adds, "Even if you're a dick."
He snorts out a breath, like a laugh, but not. He's good at being a dick, for sure. Better than he is at being a gentleman or communicative or anything else. "Talkin' to ya now."
She only gives him a look, like Give me a break, Dixon. She doesn't have to mention all the time since she's been back.
He doesn't say anything to it, cause he can't deny the accusation. He's been quieter his whole life, at least compared to Merle, but more since she was taken. With Beth gone, he'd been alone, worse than hiding in closets as a kid. Then, he'd known Merle was out there, and one day he'd be back to help, and to make things worse. No Merle now, no Rick, no Beth. No family. Last man standing, her curse on his head that night.
Still quiet now, too, when she's right in front of him, trying to pull him out of himself. The grief, or the stress, or the blame, shame, need, all of it stapling his mouth shut. She sets the bottle down on the short dresser across from the bed, where he'd gotten the book. She leans back against it, facing him. He watches her fidget with her fingers, a little deflated now compared to a few moments before. He nervously chews his sore inner cheek, feeling upended, again, uncertain. Uncomfortable. Didn't know what to say. Frustrates himself, too.
She shakes her head slightly, and rolls her eyes just a bit. She doesn't sound angry, but closer to bothered, or maybe a little sad. "Am I just another dead girl again?"
The words from his memories make him even more nervous, like there's a ghost in the corner, watching.
"No." He says, a thunderclap. He exhales a short, huffy sigh, trying to force out the deja vu sensation. "Don't start another fight, girl."
"I'm not startin' a fight." She did roll her eyes then, at him, in exasperation. A familiar look- god, a look he is so grateful to see again. He wants to smile at it, but he's so suddenly thankful he can barely breathe. So grateful she's here and alive to be annoyed with him. She warns, "I might, though."
In his head, he does thank the capital-G God for her. Whatever he did to be here.
"Why are you so..." She trails off, not finishing her question. He wonders what words she's trying out in her head. Distant? Frustrated? Angry? Cold? Irritating? Instead, she eventually just presses her lips together and doesn't end the sentence.
He's thrumming with the constant push and pull inside himself. Toward her, away from her, back and forth. He mumbles, "Got a lot on my mind."
"Are you mad I came? On this run?"
"No." And it's honest.
"I know you wanted to stop me."
"I ain't mad," Not with her, anyway. He's mad they aren't at the prison anymore. He's mad at this world. And he's nervous, so much it makes his elbows jumpy, his palms itchy, his stomach knot so hard he wasn't even hungry. He'd already failed the last time it was just the two of them.
Truth was, they all failed her by only letting her work the fences sometimes, and otherwise she was locked up in the prison with Carl or Judith or the other kids, playing mom and cooking with Carol. They shoulda been teaching her right along with Carl, at the least. It shouldn't have taken what it did to realize that, when it was almost too late. He can't think about if she'd been separated on her own. She almost was. He can't think about if Joe's group had grabbed her.
He wasn't mad, except at himself and sometimes the others- sometimes, even Hershel for how he'd sheltered her. Mad at The Governor. At himself, for not tracking the Governor down to the very end. Mad at everything. The infection, the government, the situation. With almost everyone on Earth, alive and dead. With whoever caused this.
That, on top of everything else in his head, and all the dead people, all their echoing words. Merle's cackle.
There's less pressure on him with Michonne or Maggie's survival skills and strength, but he'd rather Beth be here than anyone else, if he's honest. He'd rather she stayed back where it was safer, too. Both, at the same time. The tug of war inside him.
"Then what?" She presses.
He doesn't know what to say, and stalls by biting at the skin around his thumbnail, staring out the window. Even with their tenuous agreement- she would come to him, he would be there- spoken aloud and as good as shaken on; even with the invisible cords of their time alone tying them to each other, a truth that just is now; even though sometimes he can read something there on her face, something that feels like a mirror. Even so, he can't spit anything out. He can't even say it in his head.
He could lie- not really lie, adjacent to a lie- and blame it on needing a winter spot, the prospect of winter on the road again, nomadic again but this time with an infant that cried. Without a mother producing milk and comfort. He could blame it on Abraham's bitching, and the problems with Carol.
It's some of that. But it's mostly her. Missing her, even with her right here, just feet away. Or on the other side of a fire. Or up a flight of stairs or around a few trees. Even when she's making an effort to get back some... some level of ease like they'd had for a bit. He misses the moonshine shack. He even misses the fucking suckass camp. When they were the last people left in the world and he'd hardly acknowledged her.
It's all the shit he's holding back: the stupid stuff that wants to jump out of his mouth sometimes. It's his fucking eyes, following her where she goes, wandering places they shouldn't. It's his hands that were too often reaching out for her elbow or shoulder. To hold her hand or her cheek.
The conversation they'd never finished, hanging there, suspended, unended.
It's being acutely aware of himself now, in relation to her. It's knowing who her father was, knowing whose son he was. It's knowing what fuckin' year he was born in.
She makes a show of sighing, louder than needed. "Maybe a drink would do you good," she says archly, a spark of real attitude.
He huffs again, irate with himself. He shakes his head briefly, more at himself than her.
"What about another game?" She tries. "Truth or Shot... you know, instead of Truth or Dare."
"C'mon, Greene-"
"C'mon, Daryl," she interrupts, "We got all night, you just wanna sit in silence the whole time?"
Her tone is light, but there's a wry undercurrent, dry, that makes him think of old kindling wood ready to go up in flames. He relents some, only cause the silence has made everything more tense. And maybe as some kind of olive branch, an apology for his endless mood. Wasn't her fault he was fucked up in the head. Even worse than he'd been before. "One question, free an' clear. No shots."
"We won't get wild, Mister Dixon. I doubt you'd even ask a question I'd have'ta avoid. Why not play?"
She's probably right that he wouldn't ask them, but he was sure he could find some questions she'd want to get out of. If not him, the people still hanging around in his skull would. He wonders what it must be like, to just say whatever's in your head without concern, without wanting to hide the truth, to keep your soft spots safe even from your blood. He leaves it be and says, "Already know I like moonshine better."
Beth doesn't respond. She does her best to stay just how she was, her facial expression doesn't even flicker, but he does see her chest move with a slow, deep breath. Guilt pricks at his side, a small stitch under his ribs, at the way disappointment sinks her shoulders almost imperceptibly.
He can tell the difference, though. He suspects it has little to do with the game, really, or the whiskey. She's aiming for neutral and unmoved- on purpose- and it makes him feel close to how he felt when she was crying over leftover peach schnapps.
"Listen, Greene," he says, not totally sure why he's speaking when she hadn't actually argued. "We ain't takin' chances this time."
Maybe if they were still deep in the forest, alone, with no one waiting for them to return. No one even sure they were alive, and really, no one had been looking for them. But things were different now. And the fear, of course. Her bag dumped on the road. The tail lights he could never catch.
He took a breath too, to steady him and make sure his voice wasn't filled with his thoughts. "The booze'll come with us. Mebbe when we got a decent winter spot or somethin', when things're-" He's about to say safer but he isn't sure there was safety anywhere now. "I'll try your game another time, 'kay? Ya get one now. 'Nless I change my mind while you're poutin'."
"I'm not poutin'." She states, but she yields, too.
"Mhm." He hums.
Apparently agreeing with his offer, she demands, "You have to answer whatever I ask honest."
"I get the rules." He flicks his fingers at her from where they rest over his knee, sayin' On with it, girl.
For a minute or two, she stares at him, her head tilted, arms loosely crossed. Her ponytail falls over her shoulder, shining in the last of the day's sunlight. There's something about her there, assessing him with a slight squint to her eyes, her chin up some. Something he likes a lot, but he couldn't really put his finger on it. Makes him nervous, too. He feels it in his stomach. She finally decides to ask, "Is it that song you don't like, or is it really my singin'?"
He scoffs. "That's your question?"
She shrugs. "Thought I'd go easy on ya."
"You're tryin' to cheat." He lets the two-fer-one go though. It ain't really any easier than if she'd taken the opportunity to ask what's on his mind again, or what he meant in the funeral home. He considers asking her to toss the bottle over after all, despite what he's said. It takes effort to work out, "The song."
He thinks maybe he should say it's not that he don't like it. She doesn't ask further, but does follow up, "So you definitely don't hate when I sing."
Still sort of a question, a doubtful statement. Testing the words as they came out.
"No." He responds. "I definitely don't hate when ya sing." He repeats flatly, then adds on a shrug. "Thought you knew."
"I didn't know if you were just humorin' me, bein' nice."
"Cause I'm such a nice guy."
"You are,... when you wanna be."
He digs his thumbnail into his cuticle, tearing at the skin while thinking about the stupid shit he'd said, the times he ain't been so nice to her. He hadn't said he didn't like the singing, though. He'd liked it at the prison, everyone did. It felt normal, and good, and human. It was comforting. They all craved the Old Things, like radio, still, and she was a taste of that. A taste of civility. As an apology, and so maybe she'll stop thinking about it, he pushes out: "I was tryin' to hurt you."
"Yeah." Her smile is wispy, sheepish, small. "Some of it did. But I knew what you were tryin' to do."
"Hmm." He responds. "You knew that, but don't know that I don't mind your singin'?"
"Sometimes you're hard to read."
He scowls at her without real heat.
She more fully smiles. "Sometimes you're a kids book."
He scoffs again. "Pretty adult kids book, Greene."
She continues to smile at him, proud of herself, amused. Pleased with the banter.
He knew he weren't that easy to read, but if he spent too much thought on little Beth Greene observing him, assessing him, his stomach turns over like a fair ride. He wonders exactly how long she's been quietly observing all of 'em, an unobtrusive witness the whole time.
In the silence, still smiling, she looks down at her boot, her foot tipping back and forth, sole to the edge of the sole, then flat again. "So why don'tcha like that song?"
Sounds like she tries to make the question innocent, but it's a clear fishing expedition. He looks at her, her nervous foot, her still-crossed arms, until she glances back up and their eyes meet. He didn't slink away from it this time, willing her to just understand so he doesn't have to put it into real words. He's too much a pussy right now to admit it out loud, and it's fucking stupid, even in his head. He doesn't need Merle to tell him that. But it's just too much. It's just a fuckin' song, but it's too close, the lyrics were too obvious. Felt too much like she was singing it to him- and you will hurt me, or I'll disappear- and he knows that's fucking stupid too. It's all wound up in his brain with her being stolen right out from under him- because he told her to go to the road, when she didn't want to. Disappearing forever.
Almost forever. Just by pure luck.
She's still returning his look, the smile almost totally gone now, like before. The realization, the confirmation, as much as she was gonna get, sinking in. Making her face more serious. She may not understand the details, but the gravity was enough.
It starts to feel intimate as fuck: in someone's bedroom, staring at each other in a silence full of shit tearing him in different directions.
When it becomes too much even for him, he finally mutters, "Ya only get one." His voice is rough and he should have cleared it first.
He thinks she'll say something, but she doesn't at all, just keeps with the eye contact. She shifts her weight, and her expression shifts slightly. He can't read it. He wishes he could read her mind, then he's glad he can't.
Christ, he thinks, when something like cold chills makes him wanna shudder. Not apprehension this time, or not just that. Been with enough women, couple of girlfriends when he was younger, but none of it had been this. He'd never felt so submerged in nothing but the air around them, even when drunk and high and young and dumb and full'a come.
Like the deja vu. Like the ghost in the corner. The unbalanced, about-to-trip feeling.
He inhales through his nose, tries to keep it from being obvious how shaky and rattled it is- he is. He can nearly hear her swallow- sees it- and he's pretty sure then that she's feeling it too. Or something, at the very least. He tries to break the spell, suggesting, "Why don't'cha eat somethin' an' sleep. We'll move on when it's gettin' light."
She doesn't fight it. The whole conversation is the most he's said at one time since the dead house together.
He dreams that night about getting blasted with her in that rundown shithole that reminds him of home. Sitting on the porch, after their fight, in the dark, still sipping out mason jars, bellies filling up with nothin' but firewater. He dreams of her sayin', It'll kill you...
Here, she finishes, staring directly into him- seeing him for exactly who he is- with a little drunk, all-knowing smile, her fingers at her heart.
It fucks him up, her touch of her sweaty, dirt-covered chest, at the open buttons of that yellow polo she'd taken from the golf club hellhole. His stomach was still full of dread from her hooch-fueled declarations, a distressing, bleak oracle: I'll be gone one day. You'll be the last man standin'. And now- she holds his gaze, drawing his attention down to her hand, much as he fights not to give in and follow the movement.
He dreams of her eyes bright with the 'shine, the goldenrod-colored shirt, her frizzy mess of blonde hair; she's a small sun sitting in that ugly place from his past. He wants to put his fingers there, too, where hers are, just to touch the edge of the open collar. Wants to put his fingertips on the back of the buttons, feel her heart beating strong and alive. Her breathing inevitable and real against his knuckles. Her sweat-moist, summer-sticky skin.
Her eye contact, the way her fingers flex, the atmosphere so centered and hot, like an electric line. Like the way it feels under his skin when a thunderstorm is rolling in deep in August, humid and oppressive and almost crackling. An old familiar tingle went down his back, and into the pit of his gut, to his dick.
Something he hadn't felt for someone in a while. Unless you counted that confusing moment in her cell, when he'd told her about Zach, and her sweater had slipped, and he'd been caught off guard.
He's too drunk, for fuck's sure. He has to look away, into the woods. He smells smoke and dead things.
He jolts awake, heart pounding, disoriented, the bed jostling underneath him. He hates that, never knowing where he is when he wakes up anymore. Takes precious moments to recall. He remains frozen- still leaning against the headboard, where he'd planned to stay awake till dawn listening, just in case. He waits for a sound that might've woken him.
Everything is still and hushed. All he hears is Beth's breathing even and slow on the other side of the bed, her back to him; shoulder, waist, the curve of her hip covered with the dusty blanket. Her boots are still on under the covers. She's painfully close, painfully distant. She didn't move or make any sorta noise from his sudden movement. He lets the air out he'd been holding. Off-balance even lying down, off-fucking-kilter in sleep.
He adjusts himself in his jeans, the dream fresh. He lights a cigarette and lets the frustration fuel him, keeping him up till the dark lifts.
Author's note: I apologize for the length of wait on this. I waffled, and rewrote it way too many times. I still question whether I should have stuck more truly to the original style, and broke this into three chapters or separate scenes. But I liked the idea of rolling this all into Daryl ruminating in the room they wind up staying in for the night. The chapters will inevitably be longer than the original anyway, just in that they are, like, interacting again. No real idea yet where I'm taking it. I don't remember much of what comes after season 5, so I'm not able to pull on things like that too reliably, except for Alexandria, but I'm not into that for this yet anyway. Feel free to throw out ideas and suggestions, and feedback is incredibly welcome, as I'm in an echo chamber at the moment. But I'm very inspired. So, I hope you enjoy! Thanks for reading.