"What's that one?" Daryl asks, gesturing at a lengthy thick character etched on Bonnie's thick forearm. The room, as always, is dim, but as they sit across from one another at the kitchen table, dismantling and cleaning weapons, the light the lanterns throw is enough for them to see by.

Bonnie glances at it, the sleeve tattoo, though she knows it well. "'Dyke'."

Daryl's brow lifts from his work on Simon's gun in a mix of amusement and doubt. He tugs at the scruff of his beard, then looks down again, like he isn't quite sure of where his eyes should be. Easily his trained hands resume the rote work on the semi automatic pistol. "What language is that?"

"Japanese."

"Yeh? You speak it?"

"My mother's family."

Scrubbing the bore, Daryl's brow rises, but never does he make the effort to lift his eyes. "It really say that?"

Rubbing her free hand back over her short strip of hair, Bonnie sort of smirks good naturedly. "Might as well." She looks at it again, clenching her fist and watching the text and the surrounding blossoms, birds, and waves strain and tighten in a multicolored flexing, remembering maybe as she does a life decimated, now only realized in the inedible colored ink shading her skin, "Close enough." Bonnie takes up again the handgun she's working on, taking care to oil the barrel locking lugs. "You've got some ink," she nods at him. "How many have you got?"

"Eh," Daryl estimates, brushing crud from the slide, "eight."

"Do any of them yourself?"

Daryl scoffs. "Can't draw f'r shit." In short quick puffs he blows grit out from behind the recesses and the extractor. "You do some'o yours?"

"One on my calf, and…" she oils the hinge pin, "I did the branch work in my chest piece." With a hooked finger she tugs lightly at the open collar of her shirt to expose a part of a pinup girl, at once rockabilly and Japanese, standing under a paper parasol and falling sakuras. Daryl gives it not much more than a glance; it's a fine piece, but it's a little unnerving for him to keep his eyes in a region so close to intimate as that, even as uncharged and banal as the moment is. "Designed these blossoms too," she points to her sleeve. "Nothing too technical—" she observes, peering down the barrel she holds, scouring the fouling "—could never really do the shading."

Daryl nods, scrubbing hard at the breech face. "You work with th' real equipment or prison style?"

"Done a little of both, actually. But, uh, it's called 'homespun' Dixon." She shakes her head, "Youth social worker; not about to elevate the mythic profile of prison life."

At this point Daryl glances up. "Don't got a clue what'chu mean by 'profile', but all that's long gone by now. Th' name of a thing don't matter."

"Yeah it does," she says surely. "You know it does." Quietly Daryl looks at her; blinking, he considers if he agrees: Does the naming of a thing matter? When she speaks again it's with a lighter air, a seamless redirection. "That little piece on your hand looks home done." Daryl figures this must always have been a skill of hers, working with the kinds of kids she always had — touching truth and then backing off, infusing every conversation and interaction with immediate camaraderie, unthreatening and unintrusive.

Daryl looks down at the small blurry star inked on the fold between his right thumb and index. ...Merle…

Never bothering with Daryl's reasoning, he'd given him shit for asking for something so small, so pussy as that tiny star, but in the end Merle'd spat, said, "Long as it ain't six pointed," then marked his kid brother with his first tattoo. That was the second night he was home from juvie, the second time. Maybe the third... A few months later he was gone again.

"Yo!" At the sound of Simon's shout traveling up the stairs, Daryl and Bonnie brace for action, reaching for weapons before he need call anything more. "Walkers! North side of town!"

Noisily their chairs push back, one topples over. They spring up and move with haste, taking up machetes, the crossbow, and rifles as they bolt. "Beth!" Daryl shouts in the direction of the bedroom, "Stay put!"

"It's rainin'," Beth whispers into Daryl's bare arm where it holds her tightly to him. The days have been dry. They have been cold, there have been winds and fog banks, but there has not been rain. Though at times the bitterness eats through their layers, this has not been the winter they were expecting, the rains have not come, and their town is drying out. They ration water more severely now, each day studying the clouds, their eyes fixed to the cold grey skies for signs of weather. Now, warm in bed, beneath blankets and comforters and wrapped tightly up with Daryl and his warm, radiating skin, Beth hears the welcome drops from the eaves and window trim just outside. A slow drip drop, but steady, and telling of more coming.

Pulling her bare leg a little further onto his, wrapping her in closer, holding her a bit snugger, Daryl waits, and listens. "'S not rain."

"It is," she says pressing her words into his chest where her head lays comfortably. "Don't you hear it?"

Daryl holds her, their bodies entwined, his hands strong against her back. "No. It's the fog. So heavy it's collecting. It's not rain. Listen—" he stops talking, stops breathing "— you hear it on the roof?" Beth listens, but she doesn't have to. She already knows he's not wrong. No rain, still. "It'll come," he kisses into her head. "It'll come." His hand reaches up and strokes her hair, longer now, but still nothing like it was. It will take months more to reach her shoulders. Beneath the covers Beth's feet find his, she presses them and rubs them. "Hey, Love," he breathes. She doesn't answer but kisses his chest, running her hand along his torso. Her knee climbs further over his legs. "Yeh," he mutters, "get that knee over here." Reaching down Daryl grasps right above her knee and takes hold her thigh, pulling it higher and nearer to him. Griping her to him Daryl nuzzles his scruffy face against her. "Mm."

Somewhere in the room, beyond their bed, Simon clears his throat. "Think I'll take up a watch — check the perimeter." Rising quickly Simon snags up his change of clothes, his coat and his boots and carries them out in his arms to the front room, discretely locking and closing the door behind him. "Y'all have a good morning."

Daryl's words speak directly into her soft hair. "Mistook us f'r Glenn n' Maggie."

For what seems like maybe the first time, hearing her sister's name does not pain Beth, instead it recalls to memory happier times, and Beth smiles into him, kissing his throat and underjaw through a slight giggle.

Daryl turns onto his side to face her. Softly he brushes the hair from her eyes. "Hey–" His voice is rough and low, sounding like slow rolling thunder. "How ya doin'?"

Beth stretches and smiles. "I'hm good." Her chapped lips press to his shoulder. "How're you?" Thirty-something walkers had roamed in off the highway in the early evening the night before. Their setup is meant to withstand a hoard of that size, and they might have just let them pass, but they didn't want to take any chances of the town permanently filling up with them, and their path had been leading them too close to the rain barrels, which however low could not afford to be knocked over. Daryl'd been thrown to the ground wrestling two biters at once. His back is out, and he pulled a muscle in his right shoulder, but he'll be all right. With some doing the five of them dispatched the lot of them, successfully prolonging the security of their private ghost town some time longer.

"I'm all good." Ignoring the morning noises beyond their door and the dark bruising no doubt emerging on his whole left side where he fell, he kisses her, gently, his quiet lips pulling on her bottom lip. Her clear river eyes and restless lashes mesmerize his attention, and his hands on her, Daryl takes her in. "Com'ere t' me." Beth unfolds into his undoing of her, relishing the sensation of his warm bearded mouth on her skin. Not often do they find time together for just they two, and slowly and easily they give way to it, limbs tangling and opening, hands grasping and carressing. Beth is soft and warm and alive beneath his touch, and she opens all parts of herself to him, yielding before he asks, giving before he takes. He is salt, and earth, and action in her mouth and she tastes him from chest to thigh, running her tongue and her fingertips down the length of his sturdy frame. Full of love and care and desire for her, Daryl takes her in his hands, turns her back on her side and tucks into her, bending where she bends, curving where she curves, his mouth taking in deep draws from the cool slope in her neck. There in his hold Beth breathes and luxuriates. The well known hands of the tracker trace her, slipping beneath the soft folds of her shirt, molding her swelling breasts, brushing over her swollen belly. His teeth take hold her exposed earlobe as one hand ventures further south, into the nether regions of her lower garments, attentive and generous. In the timing of their breaths and their silences, waistbands are loosened and dropped, and easily their bodies bend into each other, finding each other like coming home, like fate, like love. It's been some time and they've needed this, its ease, its livening, its fortifying. Beth grips his hand to her, clasps at his muscled leg where it holds her in place to him where she lies. The purity of their sensations pulse through them with wetted pleasure, aching for more, unable to get any nearer or closer. In silence her mouth turns to his and with unabated passion they meld and tangle. The rhythm they keep is slow, steady like a river, wanting like a well. Her breathy pants spill into the folds of her pillow, and his rough breaths, silent and brusque, warm her neck, her ears, her throat with thrilling urgency.

"Daryl—" her fingers lace tightly with his, gripping "—love me—"

"—I've got'ch'you—" His mouth claims hers, tighter he holds her, deftly he attends her, all but consuming her. Enwrapped in each other, pace quickens, force strengthens, immediacy compounds, until limbs and bodies buck and curl and extend and give. Together they Release— Breathe— Soften— Meld— while still outside water that is not rain drops from the windowsill outside.