Chapter Text
I wanna grow somethin’ wild and unruly.
—dixie chicks
1. smokes
The tin cans started rattling some time before dawn, the walkers softly snarling and scratching.
Beth took a breath, stretching under the quilt. The sting of tobacco smoke hung in the moist air, and she buried her face in her pillow and mumbled, "How many’re there?"
Daryl's boots hit the floorboards with a creak. “You say somethin’?”
She peered at him with one eye as he neared the bed, a shadow against the blue light of dawn. "Said how many." Beth wrapped the quilt tighter, burrowing in, self-conscious in front of him for the first time in weeks.
“Dunno—three or four… Can take care’a—”
Beth shook her head and forced herself to sit, yawning and cracking her toes. She reached blindly for her Bowie knife on the night stand and slid into her cowgirl boots. Three to four walkers were too many to let wander around the house… and she wasn’t about to be some dead weight on Daryl’s back. “I’ll come.”
The bedroom window was open, and she shivered as they went quietly downstairs and out the back door. A heavy fog hung over the farm, and the world felt all muffled and still asleep.
Three walkers were milling at the porch steps like cows at a weakened fence, not quite motivated enough to force their way through the rope, but pushing on ‘cause they could and ‘cause it clinked and jangled appealingly when they did.
Daryl’s bow twanged.
Beth took out the smaller female with a kick to the back of her knees and a knife up under the base of her skull—pushing past the resistant crunch of cartilage and bone. She skipped aside as it slumped into the weeds and wiped off her knife on the ragged cotton of its shirt.
She didn’t realize until after, stifling a yawn and watching Daryl pull an arrow from a skull, boot braced against another dead woman’s neck, that she’d not been afraid. She’d just killed it, preoccupied far more by other things—
Have I lost my mind? Thinkin’ some crush is more worth my attention than killin’ walkers? Than bein’ afraid?
Daryl wasn’t afraid. Of walkers, anyway.
Beth frowned. What did he think about, if he wasn’t caught up in the terror of it—in the horror of human rot and hunger?
A wet, cold breeze stirred against her skin, and Beth buried her fingers into her armpits, bare arms prickling with goosebumps.
Daryl wiped off his hands and pulled a half-smoked cigarette from behind his ear and lit it. It shouldn’t’ve been intriguing, the way his cheeks hollowed, but it was.
Beth’s stomach knotted up nervously, and she babbled, “Where'd you find those, anyway?"
Daryl made some noise and gestured unhelpfully.
Beth rolled her eyes. “You find anythin’ else?”
“Din’t look.”
Hair blew into her mouth and she shouldered it away impatiently. Beth had slept something awful, up half the night watching him and then waking every time his hand moved against her. She felt anxious and cranky… and, now, she was cold. "That’s stupid. You’re just, jus’ givin' yourself lung cancer, y’know. An’ rottin’ out your teeth.”
"Well, ain’t you a ray’a sunshine.”
“Ain’t you a fool.”
Daryl snorted, sucking hard at the cigarette until the end burned a hot red. He tossed it onto a dead walker and ground out the embers with the heel of his boot. “I gotta piss. You comin'?”
Beth shrugged, shivering.
He watched her suspiciously a moment before shrugging out of his button-up and vest. "Here," he growled, hauling his crossbow onto his back and stalking off into the foggy yard, belt buckle coming undone with a clank. “C’mon.”
His shirt smelled of cigarettes atop the usual Daryl smells of sweat and leather and pine sap and blood. Beth glared sulkily and followed after him. It had rained sometime in the night, and water seeped through her jeans where the wet grass and weeds hit her mid-thigh.
Beth found a spot near some blackberry briars and squatted to pee, fiddling with the sheath of her Bowie knife as she propped it on her knee. Her eyes flickered over to where Daryl stood some yards away, back to her and hip cocked, pissing against a fence post. Her fingertips idly stroked the tooled leather as she traced the shape of his bare arms with her eyes.
Catching herself, Beth quickly looked at her toes, nervously plucking at a few little daisies nestled against the dirt.
She tucked one in her ponytail, fingers catching in the nested, oily tangles of her hair.
Wind rattled the tin cans and the chains of the swing as she returned to the pile of walkers, nudging one idly with her boot.
“Should we burn ‘em? If we’re gonna stay?”
“Nah—just haul ‘em off down the road a bit.” Daryl paused. “… You wanna stay?”
"I dunno," Beth admitted, filled up with remembering the stranger’s smug eyes and then the hole of what was left of one—shot through by Daryl the same way he’d just put down a walker. "It’s gettin’ colder, but… Those men you saw. Can they track us here, d'y'think?"
Daryl growled lowly, "They best pray they don'. Get a bullet or worse through their heads 'f they do."
Beth felt queasy and said nothing, wrapping herself tighter in his shirt.
"We're farther out than me an' Michonne ever got, though… Hey.” His fingers glanced stiffly along the leather covering her shoulder. “You… you still pissed at me, or somethin’?”
Some muscles in her chest twisted up and Beth glanced at him, shaking her head. Her heart flipped over itself a little, just looking at the unsure squint on his face and awkward tension in his shoulders. She whispered, “Jus’ slept bad.”
Daryl frowned, muscle in his jaw twitching.
Beth looked at her feet. "So, did you—you find anythin' in the barn last night?"
He looked away. "Uh… din' actually go look."
Beth couldn’t help but smile a little, at last—and couldn’t help teasing, “You didn’t, huh?”
"Was pissed," Daryl defended crankily. "Pissed at you, you'll recall."
"Oh, I recall."
Their eyes met and held. His narrowed, as if he was setting her in his sights—and like some stupid doe deer, she was unable to blink him away or move or glance off at the sound of crows or other birds waking. She could only stare back, pinned in place.
His eyes were blue, something she'd not known before—not really.
Beth blushed.
Daryl twitched backwards, and her eyes dropped. Distractedly, she eyed the old, browned smears and fox prints of blood on the peeled paint of the porch steps. Her cheeks felt like they were on fire.
"Gonna find you somethin’ warmer than my damn shirt," Daryl muttered, slipping quickly by her onto the porch, screened door squeaking on its hinges and thumping against the frame.
Some part of Beth was tugged in after him.
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A/N: Thanks so much, y'all, for the sweet comments to Lessons. x