The bed in the other room smells like barnyard and chicken shit. Dust erupted around him when he collapsed on it. Beth's back is to him while she rummages through the closet. She'd already gone through the rest of the place, searching for scores, while he tried to lock it down as much as he could. He made and hung sound alarms and tripwires. Moved furniture to block the front and basement doors, and the bigger windows in the livingroom. He double-checked everything is locked but the back door, where he parked the car.
Anything he could think of, but he still feels like he's forgetting something.
He can't settle his nerves. Their last time alone in a house together didn't end so well.
When Beth pulls a box open and kneels down, her butt on the heels of her cowboy boots, he has to find something else to do. He picks up the book on the nightstand– a tractor repair manual he assumes for the one in the barn– so he doesn't keep checking her out. Something besides smoking the few cigs he's got.
She snoops and hums quietly for a while. He turns the pages in the last of the day's sunlight, even when it's too dim to see the small print.
She stands and sighs, pulling the lonely flannel button-down off the hanger, making the rest rattle. She kicks the boxes and papers back behind the threshold.
He clears his throat, and asks, "Nothin' good?"
"Not really." She mutters, shoving the shirt into her bag, "Unless ya want some of the hidden porn."
That word jolts his eyes to her, but her back's still to him. It jolts his body, too, in a way he doesn't wanna acknowledge. It's dumb, but if he was still empty-stomach-drunk on rotgut, he'd say something smart, just to see her reaction. See if her cheeks turn red, or if she'd roll her eyes or call him a perv.
Porn's the last thing he needs to think about. Definitely can't be talking to her about it.
He doesn't respond.
She continues, thankfully, "The shirt might fit you."
He grunts in response.
She shuts the closet and chirps, "I did find somethin' though."
Her footsteps are quick out the door, and she's smiling mischievously when she returns, swinging a half-empty fifth back and forth. The brown liquor swishes. "Look what was under the bathroom sink, behind some old cleanin' stuff."
The label is peeling and old, but it looks like Wild Turkey, he thinks. Cheap shit.
"Hmm," he mumbles a response. He remembers his mom's hiding spots. The empty cans behind the mold-stained towels in the bathroom cupboard. The broken magazine rack by her chair, the dates on the magazines older than he was. Wine bottles under the overflowing sink. Maybe this whiskey was a long-forgotten, just-in-case stash. Somehow the previous looters had missed it.
"Hmm," Beth parrots his noise, her smile still easy. "We could see if I like whiskey or moonshine better."
He tosses the manual on the bed and pulls himself up against the headboard, leaning a wrist on his bent knee. Dirt from his boot smears the dusty bedspread. He can't help the bit of a smirk when he says, "Doubt it's wise we get drunk together again."
Neither of 'em were happy drunks. He's edgy enough stone cold sober. He'd be an asshole. And she'd start telling the fuckin' future or set something else on fire.
"Yeah well," she teases, "at least you talked to me then."
After a thought, she adds, "Even if you were a dick."
He snorts out a breath, almost a laugh. "Well, I'm talkin' to you now."
She gives him a look like, Give me a break, Dixon. She sets the bottle down on the bureau across from the bed with a soft clink. She doesn't have to bring up all the time since she's been back. He knows.
She asks, "You mad I came? On this run with you?"
"Nah."
Beth leans against the bureau, facing him, "I know you wanted to stop me. I could tell."
"I ain't mad," he reassures. He is mad, though, just not with her. Not cause she wanted to come with him.
He's mad about a lot of other shit. That they ain't at the prison still, set up for the cold weather, prepared. That the Governor ruined that for nothin'. Mad they didn't hunt that piece of shit down like Michonne wanted. Still fuckin' pissed at Merle, too, for not being here.
Still angry with Gabriel. And Joe's group. How easily they coulda been the ones to grab Beth instead, and that woulda been on him. Or the Terminus freaks, fuck. He doesn't even know if she knew about them.
He's real mad at himself for failing her, in too many ways, and he's goddamn worried. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows he'll fail her again. There's no way around it. Harder to ignore when they're alone again.
The real truth is, they all failed her a long time ago. She was always treated like a kid, locked up in the fences and walls of the prison, playin' mom to a baby that wasn't even hers. They all shoulda prepared her better, taught her more. In this, he's even mad at Maggie and Hershel.
He's livid still and he's uneasy, knotting up tighter as the road slides by, the more time passes, the further away they get.
But he'd still rather have her here. Even if it's a shit idea.
"Then what?" She presses.
He could say something else– there are plenty of excuses. The weather, another winter on the road, and it almost broke their group last time. Abraham's attitude and that whole can of worms. Whatever was going on with Carol. Judith's needs and no mama to produce milk and comfort. The weight of keeping everyone together and safe and fed. But it's only some of that– they are excuses. What it is… he can't even admit to himself. He mumbles evasively, "Just gotta lot on my mind."
The long hush after his answer, the way the smile slowly leaves her face, ties another knot in his gut.
She asks quietly, "You seein' a dead girl again? When you look at me?"
"No." He's louder than he means to be, a sudden thunderclap in the quiet, but the question takes him off guard. The deja vu of it. It makes his body rush with adrenaline, ready for that argument again. Or a new one. He tries to shrug it off. "Don't start a fight, girl."
"I'm not startin' a fight," she denied, but she is starting to get frustrated. Her exasperation is familiar and for some reason, reassuring. Comforting. Like it's proof she's really alive still, really here, in front of him. She crosses her arms and warns, "I might, though. You've been…"
Distant? Cold? An asshole? He wonders what words she's trying out in her head.
Her lips press into a line like she doesn't wanna say any of the things she thought. She finally finishes flatly, "You've kinda been ignorin' me."
He nearly laughs, sour with the irony of it. He wishes he was ignoring her. He's been trying. He notices her too much, and that's the problem. He's trying to keep his eyes from tracking her everywhere, wandering places they shouldn't go. Trying to stop his hands from reaching for her too often. Trying to stop his tongue from spitting out shit he shouldn't even be thinking.
He's too aware of himself, too. Knowing who her father was and whose son he was. What the others must be thinking. Knowing what damn year he was born.
He knows the score. None of this should even be a problem.
He's trying to be the man Rick thought he was. Trying to be the man Beth told him to be.
He huffs out his own frustrated breath, looking away from her, out the window. To the empty road.
"Maybe a drink would do you good," She says a little archly. He doesn't turn back, his hand jittering with his growing discomfort, his feet ready to get up and leave. There's nowhere to go, though. She continues, "What about another game? We could play Truth or Dare… or Truth or Drink, if you're feelin' brave."
"No drinkin'," he declares shortly, growling more than he intends, "and no games," cause the last thing he needs is a replay of that Never Have I Ever game.
"Scared of a dare, Mr. Dixon? Or the questions I'd ask?"
"Ain't scared a' nothin'," He echoes that dumb fight, too, not even meaning to. "But we ain't takin' dumb chances this time."
This time, they aren't the only people left, no one waiting on 'em. No one even looking then.
It's different now.
She gives in with a nod and a lackluster smile that doesn't last, her shoulders dropping a bit. Enough for him to notice. It makes him feel worse.
"So…" She asks, "We gonna just sit in silence all night?"
Her tone is still light enough, but there's a dry undercurrent that makes him think of old kindling wood ready to go up. She's bound to lose patience with him sooner or later. Likely sooner.
He sighs again, irate with her, but more with himself. "Listen, maybe when we find a place that's–" he almost says safe but it feels like a lie. "-when we got a place for the winter, maybe we play your game then."
He adds, "That booze is comin' with us."
"Sure," she agrees. "Maybe." She doesn't sound sure.
She sounds resigned. He wonders if she thinks they'll probably die before that happens. She turns away from him entirely, grabbing up the pack Daryl had left on the floor earlier, swinging it onto the dresser and opening it. She takes out the cans he'd tossed in for their dinner.
He thinks of Beth stepping over the dead boy's body in the next room.
She makes sure the cap on the whiskey is tight before she shoves it into the pack where the beets and potatoes were.
He thinks of her gone.
"One question." His voice startles her, she glances back over her shoulder. "Ya get one now. No whiskey, no bullshit. Unless you're too busy poutin'."
"I'm not pouting," She argues with no conviction, but she leaves the cans to face him again. She takes her time, resting her butt back against the dusty bureau. "You'll answer honest? Whatever I ask?"
"That's the rule, ain't it? C'mon." He flicks his fingers at her, a Get on with it.
She doesn't take too long, but long enough to make him crawl inside some, to rethink this stupid, childish idea. Her head-tilted assessment makes him wanna take a shot anyway. Then she asks, "Is it that song you don't like, or my singin'?"
"That's your question?" He asks, eyebrows up with skepticism.
She crosses her arms again and shrugs awkwardly. "Thought I'd go easy on you."
The silence strains between them, filling the room wall-to-wall. Her uncertainty makes her look young again. Like the sixteen year old he'd met. He grunts his own disapproval, but he rolls his shoulder in a shrug, too, and says, "I like your singin' fine, Greene."
She thinks about it for a moment, before questioning, "You're not just bein' nice?"
He scoffs that off. "Cause I'm such a nice guy?"
"You are," She argues, "…When you wanna be."
She's silent after that, watching her own boots toeing the floorboards, but he can see enough of her face, he catches the vague smile there. He can't stop himself from going for the cigarettes. He gets up and slides open the window he'd been looking out.
Easier to say it when he's moving, and not facing her.
"Before. At the moonshine shack," he grits out, mumbling around the butt while he lights it, "I was tryin' to hurt you. Aimin' for weak spots. It's how we– it's what we do. …Where I'm from."
"Yeah… I know." When he looks back at her, her smile is sheepish. She admits, "Some of it did."
"Yeah." He puffs out a long plume of smoke towards the window. "Sorry."
She shrugs at him again, brushing it all off. "I knew what you were tryin' to do.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah…" She says like duh. "You're tryin' to push me away."
He looks away again, back out the window, cause something about the way she says it makes him think she's talking about now, too. "You know that, huh, but can't tell I don't mind your singin'?"
She hums an agreeable, affirmative sound. "Sometimes you're hard to read.
"Sometimes," she draws the word out and glances up briefly to flash a quick, teasing smile when their eyes meet, "you're a kids' book."
He scoffs even louder this time. "Helluva lotta adult content in that kids' book, girl."
She just smiles at him. It's more than he coulda asked for, at the end of the world. For just a moment, they feel like they did before. She looks back to her feet before asking, "So it's the song?"
He watches the edge of the woods for movement, and smokes, and ignores the question.
"Why don't you like it?" She fishes again, trying to sneak more questions past him.
He throws her an annoyed glance, and he regrets it. She's watching him, and their eyes catch again. He wants to be frustrated, and he is, but chills run over his skin, under his clothes. There's no smile on her face now, just a small furrow between her brows. He doesn't know why it feels like the pressure changed in the room. It grows.
It's become intimate as fuck, this shared eye contact in some other man's bedroom.
He pulls himself from her open, thoughtful gaze. He flicks his ash onto the sill.
"I said one," he tells the windowpane, disguising a sharp inhale with another drag.
He can hear her dry throat swallow behind him. The back of his neck prickles.
When she still says nothing, he suggests, "Why don'tcha eat somethin' and sleep. We'll move when the it's gettin' light."
She doesn't fight it. The whole conversation is the most he's said at one time since she got back.