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Chapter Text

Daryl sees the flash of red hair before the woman sees him, so his bow is already at his shoulder before she looks over. 

The redhead squeaks and raises her hands, palms out. There are weapons on her belt but she doesn’t reach for them. “I’m innocent, I swear.” 

Daryl blinks. There’s a rustle of leaves next to him, and then the unmistakable creak as the hammer of an old pistol is pulled. “Put the bow down,” a man says to Daryl’s left. 

“He’s a good shot,” Redhead says. “And definitely not innocent.”

Daryl slowly lowers his bow to the ground, lays it down gently and with regret. The idea of losing it sits sick in his stomach. “Thank you,” Gunslinger says. He lowers his gun, but doesn’t holster it. “Are you alone?” 

Daryl should lie, but he says, “Yeah.” 

A silent moment, the only sound a mockingbird in the distance, and then Gunslinger says with the solemnity of ritual, “How many walkers have you killed?” 

“You gonna let me go? Else you’re going to get an arrow in your eyeball.” 

Gunslinger raises an eyebrow. “Look, dude, we’ve got a nice setup and you look like you’re halfway starved. Go if you want, or answer the question and we’ll take you home for a hot meal. How many walkers have you killed?”

“Enough,” Daryl says. He’s more than half starved — it’s been at least a week of nothing much to eat. He wasn’t raised to trust strangers, but he was raised to take advantage of other people’s kindness. 

“How many people have you killed?” 

Daryl manages not to flinch. There’s not a moment of the day he manages to forget the number. “Twelve.” 

“Why?” 

“Didn’t have a choice.” 

Gunslinger stares into his eyes like he’s looking for something, then holsters his gun and holds out his hand. “I’m Dean. Red over there is Charlie. Nice to meet you.” 

Daryl hardly remembers what a handshake is, but eventually he reaches out and gives Dean’s hand a quick shake. “Daryl.”

It’s been hours of trudging since Daryl last had to slip past a lone zack, but the three living are silent on the walk to Dean’s camp to be safe. Daryl gets his bow back, but Dean and Charlie make him walk ahead of them so there’s no “funny business.” Before Charlie, Daryl hadn’t ever heard someone say that in real life. 

After forty-five minutes, they meet a gravel road and walk side-by-side with rocks crunching under their feet. Around a bend, and suddenly a metal fence rises in front of Daryl, double his height, spikes curved outward on the top. He stops, staring up. 

“He said it was a nice setup,” Charlie says, grinning at Daryl. 

“Jesus,” Daryl says. “How much land?” 

“About fifteen acres inside the fence, but we’re expanding. We’re running out of room for the animals.” 

“Animals,” Daryl repeats blankly. 

They start walking again, in tandem. “Yup,” Charlie says, grinning. “Cows, chickens, horses. We tried goats, but…”

“They turn,” Dean says. “Walking dead goats.” 

That’s the kind of thing Daryl will pretend he doesn’t know. Some animals go zack. Christ. 

Charlie waves her arms as they approach a lookout station. “Tara! We’ve got a new friend!” 

A dark-haired woman pokes her head over the railing. “Hey.” 

Daryl raises his hand in a half-wave. A quarter mile later, there’s another guard tower and a huge gate. An older man is in this lookout and he presses a button that starts the gate rolling open. Daryl wonders what kind of world these people are living in where they have an electric gate. 

“That’s Dale,” Charlie says as they walk into what looks like a farm and RV park hybrid. 

There are so many and it makes Daryl’s heart stop. People. A lot of them. Giving him curious looks as Dean leads him and Charlie up the long driveway to a sprawling white farmhouse. Next to the porch, a girl around Daryl’s age is rinsing blood off her arms, all the way to the elbow. 

The girl looks up, and her eyes widen. “A mysterious stranger,” she says. She glances down at her hands and then back to Daryl. “This is from a steer, don’t worry. I’m Beth.” 

“Daryl.” 

Charlie asks Beth, “Do we have an empty for him?” 

“We haven’t moved the new ones in yet,” Beth says, then glances over at Daryl. “You can share with me tonight. But if you touch me, I’ll cut off your dick.”

Daryl narrows his eyes, but Dean claps him on the shoulder before he can respond. “Sounds like Beth’s going to show you around so if you’ll excuse me, I better track down Cas before he sends out a search party.” 

“I think he’s in the library,” Beth says. 

“Of course he is,” Dean replies with a fond eye-roll. He and Charlie toss sloppy salutes at both Daryl and Beth and then head around the side of the house. Then it’s just Daryl and Beth staring at each other, the hose in Beth’s hand splashing water over her boots and the cuffs of her jeans. 

Beth jerks her eyes away and goes back to rinsing her arms. “You want a shower or food first?” 

“You have running water,” Daryl says. 

“We have a lot of things I never thought I’d see again.” 

“Shower first.” 

Beth’s skin is still tinted red, but she turns off the hose and drapes it over the spigot. In the sunlight, her eyes are the color of some exotic ocean Daryl has only seen in pictures. “Welcome to Casa de Winchester,” she says as she hops up the porch and pulls open the front door. 

The house is insane, a relic from long before Before, the original hardwood floors scuffed from generations of workboots. “It’s not hot water,” Beth says as Daryl follows her up a staircase to the second floor, and then to the end of a long hallway. “But it’s better than nothing.”

The second door from the end is open to a bathroom covered in cow wallpaper. Daryl grimaces and Beth says, “Yeah, it’s awful. Be gentle with the septic system, use my soap. Fresh razors under the sink.” 

Daryl locks the bathroom door and stands staring at himself in the mirror. It’s not a nice image. His hair is matted ugly, beard patchy and scraggly. He looks like he’s aged a decade in the year since he last saw any other living people. 

He feels a hundred pounds lighter scrubbed and shaved neat when he looks into the room next door. Beth is sitting on a bed with forest green sheets. There are paintings on the walls and Daryl lets himself stare at them too long, though he’s not entirely sure what he’s looking at. 

“Heard there was grub,” Daryl makes himself say. 

“Downstairs.” 

The hodgepodge meal Beth puts together deserves at least two Michelin stars. The bread has that overly grainy texture of homemade and Daryl never was particularly fond of peaches, but this feels like the best meal he’s ever had.

They’re silent for a few minutes, and then Beth says, “I’m sorry about putting off moving the RVs over here. We haven’t had any new people in a long time.”

“You just hand out RVs around here?” 

“There’s not a shortage.”

Daryl sucks peach juice off his thumb. “I’m not staying.”

Beth nods, like that’s not an insane thing to say. “You’ll stay for the night. Get a good night’s sleep at least.”

“Dean’s your…?” Old man? Apocalypse husband? Fearless leader?  

“He’s my best friend. Brother, I guess, but not by blood,” Beth says. “We met up after my family died.” 

“Oh.” Belated, Daryl follows up with, “Sorry.” 

“We’ve all lost people.” 

Daryl wipes his hands on his grungy jeans, figuring another layer of grime won’t hurt. In the pasture on the far side of the back yard, a trio of horses trot towards the fence. Two bays and a sorrel.  

“Do you want to rest or do you want me to show you around?” 

Daryl realizes he’s taking longer than he should to respond to anything Beth says, and it’s scary as hell to realize that he’s forgot how to do something as simple as a conversation. “Might as well get a lay of the land,” he says finally. 

Beth stands and they head towards a big red barn that could’ve used a fresh coat of paint a decade ago. “We call this barn the library, but it’s really more a workshop. Carpentry, welding, whatever.”

Beth pulls open the door for Daryl. He glances around, taking in the work benches, tools, materials, partially-completed projects. 

And Dean, pushed up against a counter by a dark haired man that must be Cas, kissing him senseless. Daryl stares, at least until Beth follows him in and puts her hands on her hips, glaring at them. “Stop being gross. People work in here.”

The other guy pulls away, flushed and sheepish, but Dean just gives Beth, and then Daryl, a cheeky grin. “Sorry some of us are getting laid while others aren’t.” 

Beth rolls her eyes, then points to the ladder near the center of the barn. “Books are in the loft. Read what you want. Cas will make it worth your time if you find him new ones for him.” 

Daryl nods. “We should give ‘em their privacy.” 

Out of the barn and walking again, Beth gives him a sideways look and says, “I should’ve mentioned this place is full of queers.” 

“Takes all kinds, I guess.” 

Beth’s laugh is quiet and brief like a lone birdsong in woods full of the dead, and something in Daryl’s shoulders loosens to hear it. “We definitely do. Even strong and silent types wearing too much leather.” 

Daryl snorts, and he thinks that means he might remember how to laugh again for real someday. 

A bed. A real bed, not a tattered blanket inside a tattered tent, not a mattress on the floor of the dumpy apartment Daryl lived in before zack, but an intricately carved wood frame with a box spring and a mattress that feels like it was blessed by angels. 

Daryl just lays there, staring at the ceiling without thinking. His body rebels against the idea of comfort. 

“Dean’s obsessed with memory foam, but I like this one better,” Beth says. 

“Don’t think I want a bed to remember me.” 

“Should I be nervous that you’re in my bed now?”

Daryl is momentarily puzzled by the question. He and Beth stare at each other for a long moment, and then Daryl grunts, “No.” 

The bed makes up most of the room, so even with Daryl and Beth both on their backs staring upwards, there’s a gulf of warm sheet between them. “I think I like you,” Beth says quietly. “But I need you to know — if you do wrong by someone here, you won’t survive it.” Out of the corner of Daryl’s eye, he can see Beth turned to face him. “Dean’s story ain’t mine to tell, but he’s not someone you’d want to fuck with, even before the apocalypse. And there were laws then.” 

Daryl gives a short nod and steals a glance in Beth’s direction. “I guessed.” 

“I hope that didn’t scare you off because I do want you to stay a little longer.” 

It’s easier to talk in the dark, with just the glow of stars to make out the shape of each other. Daryl remembers this, late night confessions under a tent on a hunting trip with his best friend and the black eye after, halting whispers to his third girlfriend, who was sweet enough to pretend they were together all the way up until she met someone else, someone who could give her what she needs. 

“I’ve been alone for a long time,” Daryl says. 

“I was out there alone for a long time, too. My parents died not long after it happened, and then it was just me.” 

“As a kid? Christ.”

“Mmhm.” 

Daryl listens to the swinging buzz of crickets outside the open window for a long time. Long enough that he thinks Beth must be sleeping, but when he glances over, Beth’s sea glass eyes are watching him. 

“I don’t think I remember how to be around people,” Daryl says. 

“I’m patient,” Beth says. “I know what it’s like out there. And Cas made me read this book about PTSD and I figure, as fucked up as I am, you probably are too.” 

“Damn. You sure know how to compliment a man.” 

Beth laughs and reaches to lightly smack Daryl’s shoulder. “I wasn’t trying to compliment you. I was trying to connect to you through armchair diagnoses.” 

“That’s stupid as hell.” 

“I know,” Beth says. “So I guess we can agree I don’t know how to be around people either.” 

Daryl has always been an island, but Beth’s smile makes him feel a little less alone.

Chapter Text

One night turns into three, and since neither Daryl or Beth are complaining, moving new RVs on to the farm gets delayed because two people are out with the flu, so they both have to pick up a few extra guard shifts. 

Daryl is even given a walkie talkie by Dale, who seems to be the one who keeps inventory on the equipment. Everyone on the property is connected, and Dale tells Daryl to turn it on and say “I’m innocent” if he runs into any humans, and the button to click — twice — if he runs into zack. Daryl scoffs and marvels at the same time. 

On day five, a handful of people pile into an Jeep and head to the RV lot. “It’s crazy that no one else found this yet,” Jimmy says. 

“Maybe we’re just better scouts than anyone else,” Beth says, nose in the air. “And, we had to do a lot of work clearing the road. It was pretty hidden.”

As they pull into the drive, Daryl starts handing out keys that Beth grabbed from the office. “All the RVs are clear,” Charlie says, “but we ran into some walkers in the parking lot so be careful, guys.” 

Everyone nods in agreement and hops out, except Noah, who waits in the driver’s seat of the SUV in case they need to pile in for a quick escape. Daryl and Beth’s vehicles are near the end of the row and they walk together with tense vigilance to their surroundings, Daryl’s bow and Beth’s knife in hand. There’s nothing other than the soft thumps of their footsteps, except they turn the corner and there’s zack, three of ‘em, wandering in a slow shuffle. Until Daryl and Beth are in sight, and then they go into action quicker than they should, and there’s a moment where one of them has Beth cornered and Daryl has to shoot despite the one approaching him. 

Beth is out of breath but smiles as she pulls Daryl’s arrow out of the walker’s skull. “You’re an amazing shot.”

“We got a job to do,” Daryl grunts.  

The rest of the operation is smooth, and in the end, Daryl has a motorhome nicer than any of the shitty apartments and shacks he’s ever lived in. He feels like he’ll dirty anything he touches, taint it, so it takes awhile before he’ll even set down his bow and bag. He needs to put weapons within reach everywhere. He’s not going to get trapped and eaten like a chump in his own place. 

As the sun starts to go down, just about the time Daryl finishes mounting knives all over the walls, there’s a knock on the screen door. It’s Beth, smile bigger than Daryl has seen it, a big jar in her hand. “Time for a housewarming party,” she says. 

Daryl looks around, but there isn't anyone coming towards his place. “Who else?”

Beth blinks, twice, and then looks down. She’s never looked away from Daryl’s gaze before. “Well,” she says, quiet and even. “It was just me, but I can go get some other people if you want. I just thought — well, I managed to get this moonshine from Aaron and thought you might want to share.” 

“You got it because you flirt with him.” 

Beth looks up again, rolling her eyes. “He’s gay, doofus.” 

“Get in here.” 

Beth comes in, and she smells good, one of those things Daryl thought he would never experience again. He has a bizarre urge to nuzzle into her hair and find out what her shampoo smells like. Except he already knows, because he used it himself for a week. 

Beth grabs two glasses and splits the drink between them. “Warning,” Beth says. “This is not your daddy’s moonshine. It will knock you on your ass.” 

“Wanna bet?” Daryl says, raising an eyebrow. His daddy’s moonshine was hairs-on-your-chest good.  

They sit on the couch, clink their glasses together, and take their first sips. 

“Oh my god,” Beth says, her face going all scrunched and a shudder going through him. “That’s disgusting. Jesus.” 

“Seems ok to me,” Daryl says, taking a longer sip. Beth glares at him, then takes another gulp, her face scrunching and body shuddering just the same as the first time. 

Daryl snickers and Beth rolls her eyes. “Fuck you,” she says, without any heat. Daryl takes a bigger gulp. So does Beth. 

“It’s not,” Daryl says not much later, Beth swimming in front of him a little, “my daddy’s moonshine. This is.” Daryl blinks slowly, still looking at Beth. “Knocked on my ass.” 

Beth nods. She’s wearing a big, goofy smile, looking at Daryl like they might be friends. Like she might care about him. “My ass, too,” she says. “Knocked.”

Beth is close enough to Daryl on the couch that he can occasionally get a whiff of the clean scent of her, close enough to see the small scar just above her top lip. 

Beth reaches out and strokes her hand through Daryl’s hair. Daryl leans into it on instinct, nuzzling against her wrist. “See,” Beth says. Daryl’s not sure how sound can be blurry, but it is. “You’ve only had the wire mother this whole time.”

“What the hell?” Daryl says, or thinks he says, and then everything fades away for awhile. 

When things clear a bit, Daryl works out that he’s somehow in Beth’s arms, tucked up under her armpit, face pressed into the curve of her neck. Beth is rubbing his back and humming something under her breath. 

Daryl decides to pretend he’s out a little longer. He’ll apologize for whatever stupid shit he did to end up in this situation, but just — a couple more minutes. Beth is small but strong, tough and soft at the same time, and it’s hot as hell outside, but her warmth still feels good. 

In another life, Daryl may have wished for this. A woman full of fight, a woman who knows how to skin and clean a rabbit, a woman who doesn’t mind getting dirty. A woman whose smile makes Daryl feel like he won the lottery. 

But things are different now, so he doesn’t bother to hope. 

Daryl has never been great at making friends. His friends were really all Merle’s friends, who weren’t so much friends as meth heads looking for a fix. He wouldn’t even know where to start making a friend, so it’s a godless blessing that Beth decided for both of them. 

It’s nice to have someone to talk to again, and maybe nicer to have someone to be silent with. They play cards at Daryl’s place — always Daryl’s, because Dean puts his teeth on edge and a snarl in his throat — and volunteer to walk the perimeter together often. The first time Beth makes Daryl laugh, he’s so startled that he makes a stupid excuse and runs off. 

The grass outside the fence is mostly overgrown, except the dirt track worn down by all the perimeter checks, just wide enough for them to walk side by side with their shoulders bumping every few steps. The crickets are loud, the heat still stifling at dusk. Beth is quiet and brooding, but Daryl can’t think of something interesting to say. 

Beth stops short and whispers, “Shit.” 

Daryl’s bow is at his shoulder in an instant, eyes moving fast around them looking for movement. There isn’t any, and when he realizes what Beth’s looking at, his shoulders slump and the bow falls. “Motherfucker.” 

There are dents in the fence, made from the handful of large rocks dropped along the base. The fence was built across a hayfield, no rocks in sight, and some of the grass leading away is haphazardly trampled. “They’re getting smarter,” Beth says. 

Daryl wishes he had a cigarette. “Some of ‘em have always been smart,” he says, thinking about the time zack in a power suit had waited around a corner for him. 

“The first one Cas saw, it stopped to pick up its purse.” She grabs the radio off his belt and presses the transmit button. “Dean? You mind meeting us down at zone 12 for a minute?” 

Daryl rolls his eyes. “Go ahead, little Bethie, call daddy for permission to handle this.” 

Dean’s tinny voice says, “Be there in ten,” but Beth is just staring at Daryl. “Are you kidding me?” 

“Nah,” Daryl grunts. 

“Well,” Beth says, glacier cold. “I think my daddy and I can handle this. Go home.” 

Daryl gives a curt nod and turns away. Fuck them both. Daryl has had plenty of assholes on a power trip in his life and he doesn’t need some know-it-all pretty girl hanging around either. 

Fuck them and the horses they rode in on.

Chapter Text

The next night, Beth bangs on Daryl’s door, late enough that it startles Daryl awake. He stumbles from the bedroom, still fully dressed except his boots. 

Beth glares at him from the ground. Standing on the bottom step of the motorhome, Daryl towers over her. “You’re such a fucking asshole. You know Dean saved my life, right? You know he built this place basically from scratch? He’s the best kind of guy. The most big-hearted person I’ve ever met.” She pauses just long enough to take a breath. “What the fuck is your problem?” 

Daryl tried not to think about this because he’s afraid of what he might come up with. But now, his stomach burns with jealousy. Every time he sees Beth, it’s Dean this, Dean that. Dean’s the best kind of guy, and Daryl’s one of the bad kinds. “I…” 

“Let me in, asshole.” 

Daryl backs up and Beth follows him in, slamming the door behind him. “I’m the worst kind of guy,” Daryl says. 

“Yeah, well, maybe —” Beth says, continuing an argument that doesn’t exist, but she cuts herself off. “Wait, what?”

“If Dean’s the best kind of guy, then I’m the worst. So we’re never gonna get along, sorry to break it to you.”

“Have you always been this stupid?” 

Daryl blinks, then eventually nods. 

“Because you — you — you’re being a jackass because you think I like Dean better than you?!” 

“Dean saved your life. He’s the best kind of guy. You said it.” 

“If Dean didn’t like you, I would say the same thing about you to him.” 

Beth turns and sits on the couch. Daryl hesitates a long time before joining her. 

“And — I get jealous, too. You and Carol, and even you and Noah...”

Daryl didn’t realize he had multiple friends until this moment. “That ain’t normal, girl.” 

“Yeah.” Beth is quiet for a moment, and then says, “Look, I didn’t make it through high school so I don’t know how to handle this. But I’m kinda into you.”

“Oh,” Daryl says, looking away. And again, “Oh.” 

“But you’re also a huge asshole.” 

The words are boulders in his throat. I like you too. But I’m not what I’m supposed to be. 

Daryl was thirteen when Merle told some chick to welcome him to manhood. She giggled and pulled Daryl into the room he and Merle shared, two mattresses on the floor. He knew he was supposed to be excited, but he didn’t feel anything. He didn’t think she was ugly because he didn’t think anything about her looks at all. He kind of liked the kissing, but they didn’t get much further. 

She pressed her hand to his crotch, then sat up, glaring. “You some kind of queer or something?”

“No,” he said, but it didn’t matter, because he couldn’t make either his mind or body interested. The girl told Merle and all his friends, and for years, “queer” was the nicest thing anyone had to say about Daryl when the subject came up. 

He’s not gay, but he is fucked up, because he never got around to wanting girls to touch his dick at all. 

“Daryl? Where are you?” The volume is turned down so low on Daryl’s walkie that it’s barely more than a hushed whisper. He hasn’t seen zack all day, but he still double-checks his surroundings before putting the walkie to his mouth.

“Checkin’ traps in 7.”

Beth’s voice is tense. “There’s a group headed our way. You need to cut across to 5 and come in at that gate. Make it fast.” 

“On my way.” 

Daryl hates running, but he’s good at it and makes it back to the fence with only seeing a single walker. Beth lets him in the gate and they take an ATV over to the zone 7 guard tower. Several people are already up there and give Daryl and Beth terse nods. 

“The fuck are y’all waiting on?” Daryl says, scowling at the group of walkers shuffling their way. It’s not a herd, but there’s enough of them to be bad news. 

“I wanted you to see something first,” Beth says. She points towards the back of the group. “See that guy in the Harvard hoodie?” 

Daryl sees him, because he’s not acting like the others. He’s walking with a certain kind of purpose, not following the stream of zack all the others are caught up in. “He’s herding them,” Daryl says. 

“That’s what I thought.”

It’s a long, long shot, but Daryl takes it anyway. Straight through Harvard’s left eye. He goes down, and the others keep shuffling mindlessly. Beth snorts. “Guess it’s go-time then.” 

When the guns come out, a lot of the walkers turn towards the fence. They thump up against the metal uselessly as they go down, one by one. Daryl hardly even notices the gore anymore.

Protocol is that they wait 24 hours to clear the bodies, but Daryl and Beth go out to find the guy in the red sweatshirt. Daryl pulls his arrow out with a squelch and then they look over the body together. Young black guy, unbitten, just as dirty and decomposing as the rest of them. 

“Damn,” Daryl says. “Nothin’.”

Beth bites her lip, looking at the corpses all around them. “Something has to be different about this one.”

“What does it matter, even if we find out?” 

“True,” Beth says, giving Daryl a small smile. “I still don’t think they could breach our fence, but I’ve thought that before, in other places.” 

Places where Beth lost everything, Daryl knows. The kind of places you don’t come back from. “We have to set up some extra perimeter checks and put guards at every station.” 

Beth nods and they stand together, walking through the tall grass, pausing here and there to collect Daryl’s arrows. “And,” she says, “we have to keep being scared.”

Chapter Text

Daryl started being afraid right after he was born and it never stopped. He doesn’t know what anything else feels like, but Beth does. Beth grew up in the country, in a neat white farmhouse with a pony and a swimming pond, with a long list of people to send Christmas cards to every year.  

Daryl’s fear changed when zack swooped in, but he can’t pinpoint exactly how. This fear might even be better — zack isn’t a punishment for just him. The fear before was of punishment, and Beth’s never had to be afraid of that. 

Daryl has a hot splash of blood, the kind that comes from the living, across his chest, some of it dried on his jaw. When he and the rest of the scavenging group come in the gate, he veers to the left, stomping along the fence. 

“Hey!” Beth says, trotting after Daryl. “What are you doing?” 

“That was my fault,” Daryl says. “I killed that stupid kid.” 

“Daryl,” Beth says. Her voice is strained and breaks just a little. She and Jimmy were friends. “People die. That’s just what happens. What happened to him had nothing to do with you.” 

“I should’ve —” 

Beth grabs Daryl’s arm. Instead of shrugging her off, Daryl stops and looks at her. He wishes he wasn’t thinking about how nice her eyes are. 

Beth squeezes Daryl’s bicep and says, “There are always things we could’ve done differently, but we have no way to know if it would’ve mattered. You weren’t out there to babysit him. People die, Daryl.” 

Daryl pulls away and keeps walking. He wants to destroy something, especially himself. He wants Beth to stop following him, because she is so much better than Daryl could dream about deserving. “Fuck off.” 

“No.” 

Daryl doesn’t reply, just waits tensely for Beth’s next words of wisdom. But she doesn’t say anything, just walks along with him. Daryl has no idea where he’s even going — he just had to get away, escape other peoples’s gazes. Their blame, his guilt. 

“I’m sorry,” Daryl says, awkwardly. “For your loss.” 

Beth snorts. “That was the worst ‘sorry for your loss’ I’ve ever heard.” 

Daryl scowls and opens his mouth to say something clever and cutting, but when he looks over, Beth is smiling at him. Her eyes are pretty, but now Daryl notices that her mouth is, too. “Don’t punish yourself,” Beth says. “Please. It makes me mad.” 

Daryl looks down at his boots as he walks. There’s blood splashed across the toes. He thinks about the white markings one of the horses has, like he waded through white paint. He feels like he’s waded through a lake of blood. He had been right fucking there. If he had been paying more attention — if he had been just a second faster — Jimmy would still be alive, and Daryl wouldn’t be covered in blood. The jugular vein practically sprays when punctured, a sprinkler of type O+, and a walker had chomped right through Jimmy’s, right in front of Daryl, right before Daryl’s knife sunk into its skull, right before it was too late. 

The back of Beth’s hand bumps against Daryl’s. “Let’s go home and take a shower. And then hang out, just me and you. It’s been awhile.” 

Daryl keeps walking for a handful of steps. Beth’s right, and maybe that’s part of why Daryl feels so disconcerted lately. He’d been spoiled with her time, with her entire focus, but she has plenty of other friends. “Fine,” Daryl says. 

The shower is quick and freezing, but Daryl never complains about water, because there have been times where a lack of water put one of his feet in the grave. Beth’s hair is still wet when she knocks on the door, a swooping curl of it falling across her forehead, and her skin is still a little pink from scrubbing. She’s in a tank top and Daryl stares at the sheen of her collarbones a moment too long. 

“Hey,” Beth says, pushing her way in. She flashes Daryl a smile he wants to bottle up and carry in his pocket for cloudy days. 

“Hey yourself,” Daryl says back. For that one, brief moment, he’d forgotten about Jimmy. Forgotten about zack, too, just standing there stunned at the sight of a pretty girl. 

Not just a pretty girl. Beth. 

Daryl takes a couple steps backward so violently that he ends up colliding and falling into the couch. “Daryl?” Beth says. 

“It’s fine,” Daryl says, “but you need to go.” 

“Daryl Dixon,” Beth says, sitting next to him and crossing her arms. “You will not kick me out. What’s going on?” 

“I will pick you up and throw you.” 

“No, you won’t. You’re afraid to touch me.” 

Daryl startles like a spooked horse, then settles into a scowl. “That’s goddamn ridiculous, Beth Greene.” 

“Then hug me.” 

“What? No. Get out of here.” 

“Hug me first.” 

“Coercion isn’t consent.” Daryl must have picked that up from Charlie, but this seems as good a time as any to say it. 

“Hilarious.” Beth doesn’t move, and Daryl didn’t really expect any different. Her eyes are narrowed, daring. “I’ll wait.” 

Daryl isn’t afraid to touch her. He’s afraid of what happens when it’s back to a dim cage and a wire mother. He’s afraid of when she leaves, runs, dies — his whole life, Daryl has watched people spin and burn out, sometimes just their soul and not their body. Life doesn’t treat his kind well and after Merle, he swore he’d never get close to someone again. 

Despite all of that, Daryl reaches out and awkwardly slides an arm around Beth’s shoulders. She sighs into him and then she’s nestling against his shoulder, arms around his middle. Daryl wraps his other arm around her, holds her tight, pressing his face into the side of her ponytail. 

He was right to be afraid to touch her, because something is happening, something that makes one of his hands slide down to Beth’s hip. “Scared to touch me, and then getting handsy,” Beth says. She grabs Daryl’s hand before he can pull it away, holds it against her hip, covered by a threadbare shirt. “Kidding.” 

Beth lifts her head up to show Daryl her smile, and suddenly they’re very close. They were close before, but now they’re only whispers away from a kiss. It’s impossible to miss Beth’s glance down at Daryl’s mouth. 

Daryl doesn’t decide to kiss her, he just does it. Tentative and careful, sliding a hand into her hair when she doesn’t pull away. She kisses him back and Daryl thinks he’s going to vibrate into pieces, like a powerful singer breaking glass. He wants. Wants her the way a man is supposed to want a woman. 

He jerks away, staring as Beth’s eyes blink open, big and apprehensive. “Didn’t meet expectations?” she saks. 

“Uh.” Daryl licks his lips. He’s not sure why he expected to taste sweet. “No, it was — good. Real good.” 

“But?” 

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.” 

Beth has that determined look on her face that Daryl loves when she’s solving problems, but hates when it’s pointed at him. And then she crosses her arms, and he’s whipped enough to crumble. She has no idea the effect she has on him. 

“Look.” Daryl swallows, traces the ugly pattern on the uncomfortable couch. “The way other guys look at girls like you, I’m not like that. If there’s a god, he messed up.” 

“Some guys are gross. It’s good that you aren’t.” 

“That’s not what I meant,” Daryl says, running a hand over his face. “I never liked sex before. I tried, because Merle was always — whatever. It doesn’t work.” He gestures vaguely towards his crotch, cheeks flushing. 

“You can’t get erect?”

“Don’t say it like that,” Daryl mutters. 

“You hugged me, so I’ll meet my end of the deal and leave if you want. But I want to know— well, what does not being able to get a hard-on have to do with kissing?” 

“You’re not a blushing maiden. You know what happens after kissing.” 

“Daryl, you’re an idiot. What happens is whatever you want, or don’t want. Whatever we want. So if you can’t — there are a lot of sex books in the library, so I know plenty of other things we could do.”

Daryl flinches. “That’s not it. That’s not all.” Beth waits, and she has the patience of a redwood when she’s sunk her teeth into something. “Never wanted to in the first place. Never looked at someone and imagined taking her clothes off. Shit like that.” 

“Oh,” Beth says, brow furrowed. “That’s ok.” 

Daryl knows the look on her face, has seen it from plenty of women before, and he hates her a little for it. “I better hit the hay. You want an escort back to the house?” 

“I can handle it, thank you,” Beth says, her voice weirdly stiff. Daryl thinks about asking, but ends up letting her go. 

Good. Now she knows, now she can tell everyone else how fucked up Daryl is. Now he can forget whatever he thought he was feeling about her, because she knows, and he’s nothing worth wanting.

Chapter Text

Beth gets pissed when Daryl goes off the farm alone, but sometimes he can only clear his head once he’s in the trees, tracking a doe or wild hog. Sometimes even the ghosts in his head go quiet in the misty hush of dawn. 

He’s not doing anything practical this time, just wandering. He knows these woods by the back of his hand now, so he knows he wandered into zone 9 half a mile ago, and he knows he’s about to hit a creek that is hardly a trickle after two decades of drought. He knows that Beth is in the zone 9 guard tower. He’s successfully avoided her for days while desperately wishing just to get a glimpse of her big eyes, her smiling mouth. 

Somehow he veered off course, because he comes out of the trees a quarter mile from the 9 tower. “Daryl!” Beth yells when he’s close enough to hear. “It’s called asexual!” 

“What!” Daryl yells back, but she waits until he’s at the base of the tower before repeating. 

“What you are. It’s called asexual,” Beth says, grinning down at him. “That means you aren’t sexually attracted to people. It’s a thing.” 

“You think I want to hear this shit?” Daryl doesn’t even bother to glare up at her, just stomps away. He should’ve known seeing her wouldn’t be worth whatever she would say. 

“I will leave my fucking post if you don’t come back here! You can explain to everyone why walkers got in at zone 9 because I was chasing you instead of watching!”

Daryl stops. Turns. Walks a few steps back. Pauses again, then climbs the exterior ladder into the tower. Beth gives him a tight smile as he stands on the platform. “You know how Cas is gay, and that’s a thing?” Daryl nods. “And me ‘n’ Dean are bi, and we’re awesome.” Daryl opens his mouth, but she continues, “And Tara’s gay, and she’s cool, and Charlie too, and all of that stuff is real. It’s just what we’re like. Nothing right or wrong about it.”

Daryl says nothing, for some reason terrified of what he knows she’ll say next.

“So some people are asexual, which means they aren’t sexually attracted to anyone,” Beth says. “Like you. Nothing right or wrong about it, just how you are.” 

Daryl shakes his head, arms crossed over his chest. “No.”

“Why not?” 

Daryl struggles for an answer, other than it just can’t be right, because he thinks he knows what the tingle in his gut when he’s close to Beth means. He even woke up hard a few days before and jerked himself into a clumsy climax. He was sure he had been dreaming about her before he woke, but then everything started feeling wrong. 

Daryl looks out from the tower, focusing on a walker that was taken down earlier in the day. “Because. When I look at you, I.” 

After a beat, Beth says, “I know you know how to use words, Daryl. Give it to me straight like a man.” 

“I’ve looked at you and imagined — taking your clothes off.” 

Beth’s mouth turns into a soft O of surprise. “That’s not — um, what I expected you to say.” 

“So, see?” Daryl’s buddy zack out in the field is covered in tattoos. A million pricks of self-flagellation, an itch Daryl will never be able to scratch. “I’m only fucked up sometimes, which makes me even more fucked up.” 

“Will you talk to Charlie about this?” 

“Hell no. Have you lost your damn mind, girl?” 

“Don’t call me ‘girl,’” Beth says, a familiar teasing argument that rolls off her tongue like muscle memory. “She was literally a professor of sex stuff. Maybe knows something.” 

“I don’t need you trying to fix me. And you’re too damn pretty to be a nightingale.” 

“I’m not trying to fix you. I’m saying, maybe you don’t need fixed. Maybe you’re just how you’re supposed to be.” Beth’s smile turns sly. “And you think I’m pretty.” 

“You know you are. Don’t act like you don’t get enough attention.” 

Beth steps closer. Close enough it would be easy to touch her. “Do you remember that brief period where you didn’t think the worst of me all the time? I want that Daryl back.” 

Daryl blinks a few times, like stepping out of the spell of Beth’s eyes. He didn’t realize he thought the worst of her, but — maybe she’s right. Maybe he’s doing what he’s best at, which is to shove people to the side and march on alone. Some people are better at surviving than living, and Daryl’s got thirty-one years of just surviving under his belt. He doesn’t want to stop now. 

Daryl takes a deep breath. He doesn’t remember the last time he apologized for anything, which is probably fucked up, considering what an asshole he is most of the time. “I’m sorry.” 

Beth gives him a small, affectionate smile. “It’s ok, I get it. But I’m also over it.” 

“Heard,” Daryl says. He’ll be better this time. He can’t continue alone, not really, because at some point you don’t come back from the things you’ve done, at some point words leave you and your clothes are tattered and you eat raw and you run with zack. You become them, a madman wandering in no particular direction, eating anything that makes the mistake of crossing your path. Daryl doesn’t want to be just another wackjob in the apocalypse.

“And I’ll talk to Charlie,” Daryl says, though he’s not sure why. 

“Good.” 

Beth’s smile makes Daryl smile. He doesn’t know when that happened, when she started having that effect on him. “I should head in,” Daryl says after a long moment, to break the gossamer thing weaving between them. 

Beth nods, then steps close and stands up tall to leave a lingering kiss on Daryl’s cheek. “My shift is over in an hour.” 

“I’ll come up to the house.” 

“Good boy.”

Daryl mock scowls and says, “Don’t call me ‘boy.’” 

“Bye, boy.” 

Daryl continues with the mock annoyance, but before he heads down the inside ladder, he leaves a kiss on Beth’s cheek, too. 

Charlie knows it’s not a coincidence that her and Daryl are out milking the cows together. Daryl fucking hates cows and would never volunteer on his own, so he doesn’t even try to pretend when Charlie hands him a bucket and asks, “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” 

Still, Daryl doesn’t say anything until there’s a cow between them. “Beth said I should talk to you. You know what about?” 

“Not specifically,” Charlie says. “But I do know what ‘go talk to Charlie’ usually means.” 

“What’s that?”

“Usually someone’s questioning some aspect of their gender or sexuality. Does that sound right?”

“There’s not no damned questions,” Daryl says. Something about the clang of milk hitting a tin bucket sets his nerves on edge and the cow’s tail keeps hitting him the face and he is never volunteering for milking duty again, you should talk to Charlie or otherwise. 

“Oh! Maybe you want to learn D&D?” Charlie says, her voice brightening. “D&D is a tabletop RPG, but before we can talk about how the game is played, we need to talk about chess, because D&D really originated with war games invented in —” 

“I like Beth,” Daryl interrupts, mostly because he knows if Charlie gets started on this, he’ll never escape. 

“No shit, Sherlock. I can see your heart-eyes through Milkshake here.” 

Daryl cringes. “Do Cas and Dean know?” He hasn’t gotten any sort of talk about broken hearts and shotguns, so they must not.

Charlie is quiet for a few beats, strange for her, and then says, “I’m sorry for bursting your bubble here, but anyone who has seen you and Beth in the same room knows you’re grossly in love with her. So what’s the problem? Are you attracted to women?” 

Squeeze, release. Squeeze, release. Daryl doesn’t know how to answer, he doesn’t know the right words. “She said, asexual.” 

“Oh!” Charlie says, that bright voice again. “I didn’t know she was ace. How are you feeling about it?” 

The words are burrs coming out of his throat. “I wasn’t talking about her.” 

“You? Well, still, how are you feeling?” 

Daryl had steadfastly avoided thinking about it at all. It’s fucking stupid. With zack on the scene, none of this shit should matter ever again. It had always been the tiniest of silver linings to this whole thing, but now here he is, hands full of cow tit and talking to a lesbian about his sexual preferences. Great. 

“I never really got the point,” Daryl says. 

“I loved studying human sexuality, because there’s no end to it. As soon as we think we know everything, something new pops up. I always thought the rainbow was such a great symbol of the queer community because there are endless shades of color in a rainbow, just like there are endless versions of sexuality and gender identity. One of those versions is not being interested in sex at all, or only with certain people.” 

All the way to the end of the world, Charlie Bradbury will give lectures about human sexuality. Daryl likes that she’s not someone who lost herself in all the horror but is the same as she was before, just with a few extra weapons. 

“Really,” Charlie says after the silence is too long, “as long as you’re not hurting anyone, you’re good. And if you want to find a partner, I promise there’s someone out there who will love and accept you.” 

“Yeah,” Daryl scoffs, “let me get on match.com and find my perfect ‘partner.’” 

Charlie stands, done with the milking way before Daryl is, and looks at him over Milkshake’s back. “I think you can find a pretty good one up in that house. Spoiler: it’s not Dean, he’s a ho.” 

Instead of dignifying that with a response, Daryl says, “Get outta here. Clarabelle and me need some private time.”

Chapter Text

Daryl walks up to Tara with a question on his face, but before he can even get it out of his mouth, she says, “Beth’s down at the barn.” 

“Thanks,” Daryl says, humoring her with a fist bump on the way past. 

Beth is in Aster’s stall, as expected. Aster is pregnant and looks ready to pop at any moment, and Beth is the one in camp with horse experience. Daryl smiles without realizing it when he hears Beth singing softly: living on love, buying on time/without somebody nothing ain’t worth a dime/like an old-fashioned story book rhyme/living on love.

“Hey, darlin’,” Daryl says, looking over the chewed edges of the stall wall. 

Beth turns her head towards him. Her hair is down, which it never is, and something about the way it glows golden in the hay-hazy light makes Daryl ache. The brief moment where she gives him a shy smile makes him ache harder. 

“Hey yourself,” Beth says back, resuming brushing over the round barrel of Aster’s belly. 

Daryl lets himself into the stall and grabs another brush from the bucket, taking it to Aster’s other side. He wishes he knew how to touch Beth casually on the way by. 

“Talked to Charlie,” Daryl says as he smoothes down Aster’s red mane, the same color as Charlie’s hair. 

“Did y’all talk about anything interesting?” 

Daryl carefully picks through a tangle. “I ever tell you about my first girlfriend?” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Beth shake her head. “Her name was Misti, with an I. One of them redneck names that sends a girl straight to the strip club. Like ‘Candi.’”

Beth raises her eyebrows and Daryl says, “Fine. I was fourteen. And I’d tried sex before, but —”

“When you were fourteen?!” Beth says, shrill. 

“I didn’t go to church and get a fuckin’ purity ring, Beth. You gonna let me finish?” Beth pulls her fingers across her lips in the universal mouth zipped gesture. “Merle said she was sexy. Kept asking me when I was gonna get my dick wet.”

“Your asshole brother, right?” 

“I come from a family of assholes but yup, that’s the one.” Daryl and Beth are both brushing Aster’s rump, her tail flicking lazily between them. “She was just a girl, I guess, just like any other. I liked her earrings, but you can’t say shit like that without getting called a f—” Daryl cuts himself off, glancing at her. “You can’t say shit like that. Not with Merle. But Misti — she was persistent. And I.” Daryl looks down, studying the myriad of stains across the top of his boots. 

“And me and Misti,” he continues, “did stuff. Like that book you read, probably. And I said I’d never do it again, because it was…” 

“Daryl,” Beth says softly. “You were a kid. That’s not ok.” 

“Goddammit, I’m not trying to throw a pity party about my shitty childhood. What were you doing when you were fourteen anyway? Fightin’ zack with nothing but a butcher knife and some moxie.” 

After a moment, Beth concedes. “We grow up when we have to.”

“She dumped me pretty quick. And I tried again, later on, with other girls and even,” Daryl snorts, because it had been such a disastrous experience, “with a guy. Eventually I did give up. But not once — not once did I ever really want to, but then — not once, Beth, except you’re so goddamn beautiful and it makes me crazy.” 

Beth drops the brush and walks around Aster to envelop Daryl in a tight hug. He’s surprised, just like he always is by a kind touch, but he manages to wrap his arms around her. He doesn’t know how someone her size can cover him so completely. 

She pulls back just enough to raise her head to look up at him. Frizzy curls surround her face, courtesy of the morning humidity, and he smooths her hair without meaning to. “You’re so beautiful,” Daryl repeats, quiet. 

“Why’s it taking you so long to kiss me then?” 

Daryl huffs a laugh, then leans down. Kissing is good. Her arms around his waist, her small and sweet tongue against his, her hair tickling his face. Kissing is better when she wraps her arms around his neck instead and steps closer, closer, pressed together so he can feel the softness of her against the whole front of his body. It’s not an electric shock, but it does make him dizzy and tingling all over. He wants. 

“Daryl, you’re too scared to say it, so I will: we should be together. It’s just how it is.”

Daryl looks at her. All over her face, like he can imprint a photograph in his mind. Maybe it’s true that they should be together, but it’s also true that people die. That’s just what happens now, like everyone’s wearing a watch ticking down the minutes. Sooner or later, everyone’s survival rate drops to zero. 

“You’re right,” he says, past the razor blades in his chest. “That’s just how it is.” 

Cas said he’d be back around two but it’s just hit four and no one has seen him. Dean left the farm in the morning too, but came back just before four as expected. And immediately loses his mind when he finds out Cas hasn’t come back. 

“Hey, Dean,” Daryl says, holding him still by the straps of his backpack. “We gotta go about this the right way, ok? You runnin’ off like Zorro just means there’s another person we’re looking for.” 

Dean takes a deep breath. Lets it out slow. Gives Daryl a small, anxious smile. “Fine. You arrange the search party. But make it fast or I’m grabbing my mask.” 

There aren’t enough horses for everyone, but Dean and Daryl grab a pair and head out to their section of the search. They’re on the road Dean guesses Cas would take as he headed towards town. They don’t speak other than giving directions or murmuring for Cas into the walkie. 

“I married a moron,” Dean mutters as the road turns from gravel to asphalt. “A goddamn moron who goes off the farm alone, for some fucking books or something, to a walker-infested city —” 

“We’ve cleared a lot of it,” Daryl says. “If that makes you feel any better.” 

“You can’t clear anything that’s not contained,” Dean hisses. “They walk . That’s the whole point.” 

Four walkers are up ahead but they easily trot their horses around them. The horses they keep are good at this. Beth calls them bomb-proof, because if they can keep their shit together around zack, they can keep their shit together around a bomb. 

“We met in college,” Dean says out of nowhere. “We were both studying environmental engineering. Isn’t that insane? A lot of the shit at the farm wouldn’t have happened if not for that. But he’s so goddamn stubborn.” 

Daryl snorts and Dean shoots him a what? look. “Nothin’. Just the pot calling the kettle black.” 

Dean rolls his eyes, but the lines of his face are tense. They pass more walkers than Daryl wants to see this close to the farm, and Dean looks at each one’s face. He’s a little relieved each time, only to tense again when another one appears over a hill.

There’s a bridge, and then suddenly there’s a town, or what passes for one this far out. They pause here on the outskirts. Daryl scans the area and only sees a single zack milling in a convenience store parking lot. 

Wordlessly, jaw clenched, Dean steers them down one street and then another. Clip-clop is the noise horses make when wearing shoes, but barefoot it’s more like dull thumps as they trot past decrepit storefronts. 

“We — we got a situation over here,” Beth’s voice says, weirdly echoed between Daryl and Dean’s walkie talkies. Her voice is even, because she’s  bomb-proof just like the best horses. “Second and Mission. Fifteen, maybe twenty walkers. We’re stuck in the fucking truck.” 

Daryl’s brain goes static, and he can see it happen to Dean too, expression stuttering closed. Dean finds words first. “You guys ok?” he says, even as he’s turning his horse into a sharp left turn. “We’re a couple blocks away, be there in a jiffy.” 

“I took two steps out of the truck and they came out of nowhere,” Beth says. “We’re fine.” 

“Where’s everyone else at?” Daryl hollers into the walkie as his and Dean’s horses skip into a lope. 

“We’re fifteen minutes away,” Carol says. 

“On fifth street, on our way,” Charlie says. 

“Eight minutes, from the east. Over,” the new guy says. 

They leave the horses a block out and slip along the shadows under tattered vinyl awnings. Beth’s truck — an old fuchsia F150 — can’t be seen through the corpses, writhing like a single monster made of many limbs and many teeth. 

Dean points, off to the side of the mass of walkers. There’s a woman, dead but fresh, unbitten. Her hair is in a ponytail, blonde as a wheat field, and for a moment Daryl sees Beth’s face. Then he blinks and it’s a woman in her forties with heavy eyes, and she’s just standing there. Not walking towards the car. Just… watching. 

“Can you hit her?” Dean asks in a whisper. 

Daryl raises his bow and fires. Ponytail crumples. He looks back at the car, heart suddenly pounding. “I’m not waitin’. We can handle this. Then get back to looking for Cas.” 

Dean nods. They both unsheathe their knives and march into the grey. 

There’s something about ganking zack that feels right, maybe because dead people walking around is so wrong. Daryl doesn’t notice the the cold splats of gore that rain down on him as he stabs his knife into one dead skull after another. He doesn’t notice the grunts and clumsy fingers scrabbling for a hold on him. He doesn’t think anything except Beth. 

Dean is good at this, maybe even better than Daryl, and Daryl thinks back to the first night he was at this place and Beth said Dean’s story ain’t mine to tell, but... At the time, it felt like the kind of bluster you show to a newcomer, but now he wonders about the implication behind that but. 

As soon as they can, Beth and Noah are shoving open the doors, Noah handling the final walker just outside the truck. Beth grins at Daryl, like she wasn’t worried at all.. “Good job, sport,” she says. 

“Jesus, come the fuck on,” Tara says, panting as her and Charlie come to a walk outside the ring of flesh surrounding the car. “Remember when you told Dean not to go all Zorro? What happened to that?”

Instead of answering, Daryl clicks on his radio and says, “We got ‘em. Get back to the original plan.” 

“Guys, we need to start talking about the sunset situation,” Charlie says. “We still have time, but — it’s a long ride home.” 

Dean looks down, pinching the bridge of his nose. Before he can speak, Daryl says, “Y’all do whatever you want. I’m not leaving until I find Cas.” 

Dean gives him a tight smile, just north of a grimace. “Back to the original plan for now. We’ve got time.” 

The horses are still ground-tied where Daryl and Dean left them, and they head back to their original route, which leads them to a bookstore. Cas seems to be trying to rescue every book in the town, but Daryl figures he has a point about preserving history. Maybe someday there will be kids to learn it. 

There’s a circle in blue spray paint over the front door, and the entire glass store front is boarded up from the inside. No ship is unsinkable, and not many things are zack-proof, but most everyone at the farm already learned that the hard way. Daryl hopes that Cas didn’t learn that kind of lesson today, especially considering he didn’t bother to lock the door. There’s a soft chime that sounds when the door is opened, but Christ, any zack walking by could stumble against the door and then inside. 

The store is dark, the shadows of tall bookshelves looming in front of them until they start scanning with their flashlights. The store is small enough they clear it together quickly. Fighting zack in close quarters is trouble, so it’s the usual practice to clear claustrophobic areas in pairs. 

They turn a corner, and a ghost rises up, balance unsteady and knife rising — it takes a moment for Daryl to realize they’ve found their bounty and not another soulless shell of a human. 

“Oh god,” Dean breathes. “Are you ok? Jesus, you’re late, and you weren’t answering, and you’re — were you bit?” He reaches out and plucks at the still-wet blood on Cas’s t-shirt, his face blank. 

“Not bit, but did run into one,” Cas says quickly. “But I sprained or perhaps broke my ankle. I can’t walk.” 

“God, you idiot,” Dean says, throwing his arms around Cas’s shoulders and pulling him so tight and so fast that Cas hisses in pain. “Sorry, sorry. We have the horses and a car, so let’s get you out to the street.” 

“I have some things at the end of the row. Can you grab them?” 

Daryl tries to hide his eye roll but probably doesn’t succeed. Had to put out a whole fucking search party because this guy wanted some books and got himself hurt. 

He grabs the bag, and there’s only one book. The Complete Book of Foaling, and the rest of the bag is what looks like foaling supplies. “You get this for Aster?” Daryl says, rejoining them. 

“Hopefully she’s not the only one we’ll have, so it seemed like a good idea to have a resource,” Cas says. He flushes a little, and Daryl almost feels bad for being nasty to him, even if it was only in his head. 

Dean glances in the bag. “Dale told me you came out here for books. Just for books.” 

“Dale must have misunderstood,” Cas says. 

“Still, you’re an idiot, and I’m going to be pissed at you for a long time for this,” Dean says, but gives him a kiss to immediately prove himself a liar. 

Daryl gets on the walkie. He and Dean pretty much carry Cas out to the street once Noah and Beth pull up, and everyone heads home while Dean continues to alternate berating and kissing Cas. Daryl can see Beth in the rearview, and she makes a yuck face at him. 

Daryl covers a laugh with his hand, but if it had been Beth lost, he’d be kissing and yelling at her too.

Chapter Text

It happens mostly by accident, or at least certainly without purpose. 

Sleeping — honest to god snoring, dreaming sleep — is new to Daryl. It wasn’t something he’d ever done before, even before Before, and it took a long time to learn how to do it. And longer again after Beth started bedding with him most nights, but for a different reason. He would just lay there thinking about where he could touch, where he wanted to touch, if he wanted to touch. 

The sky is two shades lighter than night, the birds already singing. Daryl’s not sure what drew him from sleep, but it’s an easy awakening, slowly coming into himself. 

Him and Beth. His bed. The cardinal that likes Dale’s bird feeder chirping outside. Beth’s back to his chest, his arm draped over her, the tickle of her hair against his face, stomach warm and smooth under his hand where her tanktop rode up in the night. The curve of her ass against him. It all feels luxurious with how good it is. 

With everything hazy and soft, Daryl’s hand slides lower. His pinkie slips under the elastic waist of her underwear and he presses closer, not quite grinding into her, but almost. 

Beth makes a quiet, sleepy noise and grabs Daryl’s hand before he can pull away. “Whatever you want, honey,” Beth murmurs. 

Daryl doesn’t know what he wants. Never has, probably never will. Except Beth, soft and strong, here and his. She hums happily as Daryl touches her, careful and curious, and then turns in his arms to throw her leg over his hip and kiss him. 

Daryl opens for her the way he has pretty much since they met. Unlike all the previous times trying to force desire he didn’t know how to imitate, he feels it — the magic in her hands and mouth and touch, the way he starts to feel a little desperate for more. 

Afterwards, Beth drapes herself over Daryl’s chest, and he runs his fingers through her hair over and over, trying to comb out the tangles he made. The thought is so startling that he thinks she must hear his heart speeding up: I love you.

Daryl’s not sure he’s ever loved anyone before, not really, because “love” in the Dixon household came with a beating. He smiles a little but decides to hold on to this warm secret for a bit longer. 

Daryl comes around the corner of the house to find Beth and Dean sharing a swing on the back porch, shooting the shit about nothing in particular. Dean starts to get up, but Daryl waves him back down and sits on one of the other chairs. 

Daryl says, “I have an idea about the smart ones —” 

“No shop talk,” Beth interrupts. “Let me have some peace to enjoy the sunset for once.” 

The clouds are crisp-edged and highlighted pink, the sun golden. It’s beautiful, and they sit in companionable silence, watching it sink. 

His whole life, Daryl’s been on the run, a weapon in his hands. His whole life, he was taught that he’s a wolf, and everyone else is sheep. He remembers now that wolves are pack animals. That he doesn’t have to run alone. 

In the pasture beneath a lavender sky, the foal named Hope trots along the fenceline, head held high.