Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Bethy, are you sure you’re gonna be all right?”

Beth sighs and wonders for the millionth time when her family is going to realize that she’s an adult. A responsible adult! Twenty-two years old. With a stable side job and everything. Just because she continues living at home and helps out with the farm—in between giving piano lessons and helping to run the children’s choir—that doesn’t mean she’s still a little girl.

Of course, to her daddy she always will be that little girl. In one way, it’s sweet. In another way, it’s incredibly stifling.

“Yes, Daddy, I will be fine,” she says kindly, choosing to focus on the sweetness of it. There’s no point in picking a fight right before he leaves for his conference, especially not over something they’ve discussed plenty of times, and besides, he means well. “I know how to take care of the farm. And besides, you’ve got more than enough hands coming in to cover for you. You sure you’ll be okay in the big, bad city?”

Hershel laughs and rests a hand on top of her head, not quite tousling her hair. She got a lot of things from her dad, but height wasn’t one of them—that all went to Maggie, unfortunately. “I’ll be okay, Beth,” he says, then presses a kiss to the top of her head. “Let’s agree not to worry about each other too much, okay?”

“That works for me. It’ll only be a week, anyway.” She winks. “Even you can only get into so much trouble in just a week.”

He laughs again and hugs her one final time, stepping back to look at the house again. The barn’s only several feet away, and she can hear the chickens clucking as they peck at the feed she just gave them. “Ask Daryl if you need anything,” he tells her. “I trust him more than I trust the others, he’s been here longer. And he’s more than proven himself.”

She thinks back to when Daryl first started working at the farm. Quiet, unassuming, and so shy he’d almost seemed standoffish. He’d been a tough one to crack. They’d had to milk a lot of cows and feed a lot of horses together before he’d finally started speaking to her without that stilted, formal tone he adopted only around the Greenes. Even now, he still slips into it sometimes, and he’s never gotten rid of it entirely when her father’s around.

Hershel had hired Daryl despite the reputation that the Dixons have in the area, citing how everyone deserves a second chance, and how Daryl had never committed any wrongs himself. In fact, Daryl’s been the family caretaker, if anything; he cared for mean old Will Dixon, the town drunk, after the man’s body had given out on him, and until he had eventually passed away. Daryl still takes care of his older brother whenever the man’s out of jail or rehab, though he doesn’t advertise that to much of anybody, and Merle Dixon doesn’t often stick around town for too long, being more of a drifter. Although he’s not around too much, and she’s never been introduced to the man, Beth has heard Daryl mention Merle a couple of times, with an unmistakably familial mix of fondness and irritation.

Daryl’s a good man, for how he treats his family and for how he treats people he barely knows, and Beth wonders if anyone’s ever told him that before. He probably wouldn’t let anybody get close enough to say it, she thinks.

Still, despite the fact that Daryl is considered the “good” Dixon around here, he usually keeps to himself, always unfailingly polite around Hershel. Always aware of the “debt” he thinks he owes the Greenes for taking a chance on him, Beth suspects.

“I will,” she tells her dad, “and me and Daryl will be fine. I promise. Drive safe, okay?”

“I will, Beth,” he echoes her.

Daryl slips out of the barn just as her dad climbs into the loaded-up truck, which he’ll drive the few hours it takes him to get to Atlanta for the farmers’ conference. “Sir,” he says in a low voice, a pail of milk in hand, and Beth wonders if he heard them talking about him before. “Have a safe trip.”

“Thank you, Daryl,” Hershel says. “Take good care of her, you hear?”

“I will.”

“Y’all better be talking about the farm and not me,” she tells them both, laughing a little. “I don’t need taking care of, Daddy. I take care of myself, remember? You just be safe and have a good time.”

With an acquiescing nod and a wave, Hershel drives off, and Beth and Daryl stand there watching as he disappears down the long dirt road. Eventually, all she can see is the dust that the truck has left behind, and she takes a deep breath before letting it out, turning to Daryl, and smiling. “What’s first on our agenda?” she asks.

Daryl shrugs a shoulder. “Some of the horses need brushin’ down.”

“Then that’s where we’ll start,” she claps her hands together, ignoring the bright burst of loneliness that springs up unexpectedly in her chest. Ever since Shawn and Momma died, and Maggie moved away with her new husband, Glenn, it’s just been Beth and her dad. Even with the other hands around, including Daryl, she’s gotten used to always having her dad around. They’ve been separated a few times overnight before, but this will probably be the longest period of time that they’ve spent without each other.

Still, she reminds herself, it’s no good lingering on the bad feelings and feeling sorry for yourself. She’d much rather get to work and focus on the things that she needs to be doing.

Meanwhile, Daryl is already brushing down one of the mares. He seems adrift in his own world, like he usually is, keeping his thoughts to himself.

Not wanting to annoy him, Beth tries to do the same, even though she likes to make conversation with the farmhands when she can. After a moment, though, she begins to lose herself in her task, brushing down one of their horses until her coat is smooth and gleaming.

Daryl clears his throat. “What is that?”

“Hm?” she asks distractedly.

“You were humming,” he says.

“Oh. I didn’t realize.”

Daryl shrugs, and she’s been around him frequently enough to recognize the gesture as his way of saying “don’t worry about it.” But he keeps standing there expectantly.

She realizes, abruptly, that he’s still waiting for an answer, and racks her brain for whatever song it is that she’s had in her head without realizing it. “It’s, um, ‘Mr. Tambourine Man.’ You know, the Bob Dylan song?”

Daryl lifts a brow. “Didn’t think you were old enough to know Bob Dylan.”

Beth snorts and puts down the brush, pulling out her phone from her back pocket. “It’s not like he never made the switch from vinyl. I can play anything of his you want,” she says, pressing a button. “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” fills the stables, Dylan’s rough croon echoing up to the rafters.

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last…

Daryl smiles a bit when the song comes in, and it’s one of the most external reactions she’s ever witnessed from him, so she keeps it playing. She likes the song, anyway, so she might as well let it keep going. For some reason, neither of them immediately pick their brushes back up. They just stand there, staring at each other, listening to the music play.

Look out, the saints are coming through

And it’s all over now, Baby—

Daryl’s own phone chirps in his pocket—it’s actually a flip phone, and Beth finds it adorable that he still owns one of those—and he withdraws it with a frown, as if he can’t think of anyone who would call him. The number must be unknown, from the way he stares at it for a second, but he picks up, barking, “Yeah?” into the phone.

Beth turns off the music so he can hear the caller better. Feeling awkward, she picks up her brush and goes back to the horse she was brushing, trying to distract herself.

Whoever is on the line talks for a few minutes. Beth can’t hear, but she can see how Daryl’s brow furrows, betraying that he’s upset. He lifts his free hand to gnaw at a thumbnail, nervously chewing at it while the other person keeps talking. Finally, they must stop, because Daryl gives her a look that’s as helpless as she’s ever seen from him and says into the phone, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m coming. Don’t—” his breath catches and his eyes narrow, mildly exasperated. “Don’t do anything dumb. I’ll be there in time.”

He hangs up and rubs at his forehead wearily, catching her eye almost unwillingly.

Beth looks at him, more than a little confused. “Do you need to go somewhere?”

He half-groans and tucks his phone away. “S’my brother,” he explains shortly. “He’s in trouble. I, uh—I gotta go help him out.”

She’s heard enough about Merle Dixon to know that he has some experience with trouble. “Trouble with the law?” she asks.

Back when they’d first met, if she’d asked such a question, Daryl would have lit up like a flare and asked her if she always made such assumptions about people just because of what their daddies were like. Now, his shoulders drop just a little and he nods. “He’s at some county jail just outside of Vegas. Needs me to drive there and help him pay bail.”

“Vegas?” her mind races, converting the distance in hours. She types the driving distance into her phone and it pulls up a result: 28 hours. She shows him her screen with disbelief. “That’ll take days.”

He shrugs. “The bail hearing ain’t for three days. S’a weekend.”

“Still,” she says. “You’re just gonna drive that by yourself?”

Daryl gives her a hard, indecipherable look. “Look, I know I told your dad I’d come by every day while he was gone, but—”

“I’m not worried about that,” she interrupts. “But that would take three days of constant driving. Daryl, you can’t do that. You’d exhaust yourself.”

He softens a little when she exposes her concern, but he stays looking firm. “Can’t afford a plane ticket. Just gonna have to drive it,” he says, shrugging again. “I’ve done worse.”

Beth seriously doubts that, but she doesn’t say so. Twenty-eight hours of driving, even spread over three days, is a lot, and it’s too much for one person. “Can’t Merle just… not pay bail?”

Picking up his brush and taking hers from her extended hand, Daryl hangs them up where they’re supposed to be. He checks on the horses, making sure they have enough water accessible in their stables. “He could,” he agrees, “but he’d be stuck in jail until the trial. Could take days, or weeks. Even months, if that county’s got a lot of cases.”

“What did he even do?” she asks.

Daryl sighs. “The usual.” At her quizzical look, he says, “Alcohol. Drugs. Probably a fair bit of gambling that he couldn’t pay for afterward. He’s done it all before.”

“Will his bail be high, then?” she presses.

“Probably.”

“Can you pay—”

“I’ll figure it out,” he cuts her off, a little sensitively.

Beth gives him a steady look, considering the options. Decision made, she folds her arms and stands her ground. “I’m going with you.”

For a moment, he just stares at her, before he barks out a laugh that doesn’t sound very joyful. “Like hell you are.”

“I am!” she retorts, but then her demeanor softens as her tone turns pleading. “Daryl, please, I wanna go. I’ve never been farther west than Columbus!”

Daryl scoffs and walks off, heading out to leave the barn.

Beth follows, determined. “And I can help! I can take turns driving when you get tired. I’ve got my license, y’know, I just don’t drive a lot. And I have money saved up—”

“You are not paying my brother’s bail,” Daryl says harshly, spinning on his heel and stopping in his tracks at the edge of the barn entrance. “Ain’t no way in hell I’m fucking letting you do that!”

Beth blinks as she’s forced to a standstill as well—she doesn’t think she’s ever heard him curse before, he’s always so careful with his words around the Greenes—then recovers. “For gas, then, and snacks,” she says brightly. “There’s no way I’m going without snacks, anyway.”

“You’re not going, period,” he says roughly.

“Why not?” she challenges. “You need help driving, and I’d love to see as far as Nevada. Please, Daryl.”

“‘Why not’?” he repeats. “Your dad would kill me if I dragged his daughter on a cross-country road trip, is why not.”

“I don’t see why he has to know,” she says mildly. “We can get there, pay Merle’s bail, and be back in a week, and that’s how long he’ll be gone for that conference anyway.”

Daryl rolls his eyes and turns away. “And the farm?” he asks, gesturing to the doorway of the barn only a few steps away.

“There’s plenty of hands here to take care of it. We swear them to secrecy, let them handle everything, and be back within the week,” she says reasonably.

“He’d find out,” he mutters.

“Maybe. But we’d already be back by then,” she grins, eyes sparkling. “And I don’t mind getting into a little trouble for a good cause.”

Daryl gives her an unnerved look. “You’re a lot more like your sister than he thinks, aren’t you?”

Beth bounces on the balls of her feet, sensing weakness on his part. “Does that mean I get to go?!”

He groans and turns away, throwing his arm over his face to cover his eyes. “I’m gonna regret this.”

Beth resists the urge to throw her arms around his neck and hug him—she’s never so much as touched Daryl before, and that might not go over too well. He can be a little on edge most of the time, after all. “Great!” she exclaims, diverting her energy into making sure the barn door shuts  behind them as they step out. “In that case, I’ll go and pack. You make sure the other hands know what’s going on? Without details, of course.”

He nods once, already turning away. “Don’t take too long.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she shoots back, jogging to the house.

Once there, she goes up the stairs to her room, then stands in her doorway as the last few minutes catch up to her. She’s getting out of here, going on a real road trip… and with Daryl, of all people. Quiet, surly, genuine Daryl Dixon, who never says anything he doesn’t mean—who rarely says anything at all, for that matter. She’s going to be stuck in a car with a man that’s not her father for several days, if not an entire week, and… and…

Beth sits down on the bed, hard. She’s going to be in a car with a man that’s not her father for maybe a whole week.

A man who, if she’s not lying to herself, she’s spent plenty of time looking at when he wasn’t paying attention. She can’t really blame herself… he’s got nice arms, after all, and a nice face, if you aren’t too busy listening to whatever comes out of his sour mouth. Daryl’s got a temper on him, she knows—she’s heard him scolding the farm hands when they screw up with one of the animals. But even when he gets exasperated with her—like he did just now, in the barn—he never scolds her, just fusses and makes snide comments. Probably because he still thinks of her as that skinny sixteen-year-old who cried for her mother and brother almost every day when he first started working here, six years ago.

She makes a face. She’d rather he didn’t think of her that way. She’d rather he, much like her father and sister, would get with the program and realize that she’s an adult already. And maybe, she thinks, this road trip is the perfect opportunity to make that happen. Show him that she’s mature and can handle herself.

Not wanting to waste any more time, she packs. It’s only a few days of riding in the car, so she throws tank tops and a few pairs of comfortable shorts into a backpack, along with a few sets of pajamas, panties and bras, and socks. Her toothbrush and hairbrush, and some makeup, get tossed in as well. She switches out her boots—the ones she wears in the barn, that are old and it doesn’t matter if they get super dirty—with some tennis shoes. She also throws in one nice sundress and pair of sandals, in case she actually needs to be present in front of the judge at the courthouse, when Merle’s bail is set.

After tossing in a couple of books, her phone charger, and her earbuds, she can’t think of anything else she needs. She texts and quickly cancels the one piano lesson she’d scheduled for this week—some weeks are less busy than others—and, remembering, takes the money she’s saved from those lessons and stuffs it in her wallet. Most of her piano money is in her bank account, true, but she has almost $600 saved, since she hasn’t been to the bank in weeks to deposit it. It might come in useful for motel rooms or gasoline, even if Daryl made a show of saying he wouldn’t accept her money.

She stops downstairs to grab her umbrella and her recyclable water bottle, grabbing a few portable snacks from the pantry, and by then it’s been twenty minutes. She doesn’t really think Daryl would leave her… but it’s certainly possible, so she hurries out the door to their long gravel driveway.

He’s waiting there—he hasn’t left her yet, thank goodness, or all that packing would’ve been for nothing—standing, arms folded, as he talks to one of the farmhands. Beth thinks his name might be Sam. He hasn’t been working at the Greene farm for too long, but he’s nice and a hard worker, and there are worse people that Daryl could leave in charge.

Daryl finishes whatever he was telling Sam right as she walks up, and she smiles up at both of them, backpack and purse slung over her shoulder. “We gettin’ out of here or what?” she asks him.

He gives her an unreadable look and sighs. “Guess we are,” he tells both her and Sam, and turns toward his truck. “S’a two seater. You’ll have to sit up front with me.”

“Well, yeah,” she says, finding that obvious. She would’ve sat up front even if he’d had a four-door. It’s not as if she expected to be chauffeured around all week. “I know.”

He jerks his head at the truck. “S’unlocked. Ready?”

“Ready,” she says cheerfully, waving her goodbye to Sam and hopping in the truck. It’s a little bit messy—Daryl clearly hadn’t been expecting any passengers—with a little trash and dirt in the floorboards, but she sets her backpack down on the floor and gets comfortable. Otherwise, the truck looks like it’s in good condition, and she knows Daryl takes care of his things well enough that this truck will get them to Nevada. After all, he’s always working at that crossbow thing of his.

After a moment, Daryl climbs into the driver’s seat and turns the key in the ignition. Mildly cool air starts blowing out of the vents toward them. His most recent radio station starts playing old rock music, which is exactly what she would have expected him to listen to, and Beth smiles, because Daryl listening to Jimi Hendrix just sounds right.

“What?” Daryl bites out at her smile, but he doesn’t sound angry. He starts rolling out of the driveway.

“Nothing,” she says happily.

He grunts, again sounding less angry and more like he’s resigned to his fate. “Gonna have to stop by my place and grab some stuff.”

“Okay,” she says simply. She’s already sure Daryl will have her wait in the car. That’s fine. Everyone’s got secrets, and he’s a more private guy than most. She wouldn’t show him her bedroom if he asked; he doesn’t have to let her see inside his house.

Within minutes, they’re at the trailer park, which is a small area. That makes sense, considering that this is a small town. The Dixon trailer is by the edge of the woods, parked where it has been ever since it had to be replaced, long before Beth was born. 

Her daddy told her about it once—more so that she wouldn’t go around putting her foot in her mouth than because he really wanted her to know the ugly history of it all, she thinks. But she knows the basic facts: when Daryl was a kid, and Will Dixon was already a mean old drunk, Mrs. Dixon had fallen asleep with a cigarette and burned the place down. Daryl had been at school, Beth guesses.

She can kind of relate, although she’d never bring it up to Daryl to tell him so. She’d been at school when Momma and Shawn got in their accident. That call to the principal’s office was the worst, in retrospect, because when she got called up, she’d had no idea what happened. She’d whistled her way down the hall, wondering what she was getting out early for, until she saw her dad standing in the front office, his hat twisted in his hands and the expression on his face purely devastating. It was like the bottom dropped out of her world in one stark second.

She wonders if Daryl remembers his mother’s death in a similar way. But again, she’d never ask. And he’d never say.

He does end up leaving her to wait as he goes inside for some clothes and toiletries, but he’s back in the car, his duffel bag loaded in the closed-off truck bed, within a few minutes. They’re rolling toward the highway before she finds the courage to speak.

“I don’t suppose you like playing I Spy?”

A smile doesn’t crack his mouth, but she gets the sense that it’s a near thing. “Are you gonna pester me all the way to Vegas?” he asks, without any heat in his words.

Beth folds her arms over her chest. “Maybe. I know plenty of driving games. Or…” she trails off suggestively.

He groans. “Or what?”

“Or you could let me have control of the music,” she grins brightly. “I promise I won’t abuse my newfound powers too badly.”

Daryl side-eyes her as they get on the interstate, and suddenly they’re properly on their way, with no turning back now. “Fine,” he says, handing her the plug-in for her phone. “But none of that new country crap. No Taylor Swift, either. It’s Cash or nothin’.”

Beth can agree to that. She plugs in her phone, pulls up her oldies playlist, and lets CCR play, watching as Daryl almost smiles at the music choice. She pulls her book out and flips it open, but pauses to smile over at him before she starts reading. “This is gonna be the best trip ever,” she proclaims.

*

The tire blows just outside of Tennessee.

Beth is driving when it happens—of course it’s her and not Daryl, she thinks bitterly, and resists the urge to curse at the universe—and she screeches like a banshee, waking Daryl from the light dozing he’d been doing against the passenger window. “Get off the road!” he tells her gruffly, still not shouting even though she’s in a panic. Daryl never shouts, even when he’s mad.

“Okay, okay!” she eases out of their lane, throwing the truck into park. Her heart is thudding in her chest and her mouth is dry. “I don’t know what happened, I promise, I—”

“Ain’t your fault,” he says, swinging open his door and hopping out. “Tire was on its way out, anyway. Lemme grab the spare.”

That’s how they spend part of their evening, with Beth sitting on the ground and calming herself down as Daryl replaces his tire. By the time he’s done, her stomach is grumbling, as is his; they didn’t exactly grab lunch, too busy packing and getting on the road. But it’s been almost seven hours of solid driving, the two of them switching their time behind the wheel with only one bathroom break at a rest stop, and they’re both hungry and tired now.

“We’ll need to find a motel soon for the night,” he says, leaning back with a sigh. “Keep your eyes peeled for the next few exits, I’ll drive.”

“I can keep driving,” she protests. He’d only relinquished the wheel an hour and a half ago, and she’s incredibly aware that part of the reason he even agreed to let her come along was to have a driving buddy to share the wheel.

He waves her off. “Wanna make sure the tire’s okay. You’ll take the first shift tomorrow. All right?”

She nods reluctantly and climbs back into the passenger seat. The truck starts off slowly, with Daryl making sure the spare’s on good, and then they’re passing the next couple of exits. She points to one with a motel sign and a food sign. “Stop there?”

He grunts. “Good a place as any.”

The motel is kind of seedy, but the woman manning the desk accepts Daryl’s credit card and leads them to a room with a double bed, a grubby tub, and a snowy TV. Beth flips the TV to a weather channel, getting an idea of what it will be like when they drive tomorrow, and watches Daryl comb through a list of nearby diners that the front desk woman had given them.

He gives up after a minute. “Wanna order pizza?”

She smiles up at him from her tiny twin bed. “You don’t like the gross kind, do you?”

He shakes his head and, at her nod, calls up a local place and orders two pepperoni pizzas. He tells her they’ll save the leftovers for the road, and gives the pizzeria his card number over the phone.

Beth takes a minute to wonder exactly how much Daryl is going to have to pay for this trip, when all is said and done. They already stopped for gas once today, and they’re already perilously low again: they’ll have to stop first thing in the morning before they leave. Plus, he doesn’t even know how much Merle’s bail will be once they actually get to Vegas.

“Why was your brother in Vegas?” she asks, flopping back on the bed.

Daryl’s putting his phone up to charge on the nightstand. He pauses and gives her an odd look. “Dunno. Guess it’s got all the stuff he likes.”

“Booze, cards, and women?” she jokes.

He nods humorlessly.

“Oh.”

“He,” Daryl struggles for a minute to say something. He looks away when he finally says it. “He can be a lot like our dad. Sometimes.”

That’s… a lot. She’s heard stories about Will Dixon, and none of them were good. Daryl never talks about him—nor does he mention Merle much either, she realizes. She looks over at him, not liking what he sees in his stiff body language. He looks uncomfortable telling her this. He looks uncomfortable sharing a room with her. She practically forced herself on this trip, she thinks guiltily. Maybe he’d really rather that she had stayed on the farm.

While Beth is still processing all of this, Daryl quietly claims the shower and disappears into the tiny, mildew-y bathroom. She hears the water start up, the pipes making a horrible clanging noise, and hopes that he’ll stay in there until the quiet tension in the room dissipates. Until she can force herself to act normally again with this knowledge of Daryl and his family that she’d never had before.

She crosses her arms behind her head and waits for the pizza guy to show up.

*

The night passes quietly, and they both go to sleep without talking much more. She thought it would be weird to share a motel room with a man who isn’t her father, but it isn’t too bad. Daryl’s quiet in the morning when he gets up, and he calls her name from across the room rather than shake her to make sure she’s awake. When she gets up, he’s already almost ready to go, and she quickly packs up what little she’d unpacked last night.

At the truck, she balances the pizza box carefully on the dashboard, hoping it won’t slip and slide every time they turn. She cranks the truck and sets up her music, while Daryl lets the motel desk know they’ve checked out and grabs a map from the lobby in case they get lost. Tom Petty is just starting to drift through the speakers as Daryl climbs in the passenger seat.

They pass the first few minutes of the drive mostly in silence, until Beth’s phone rings from the cup holder and she jumps out of her skin.

Luckily, she manages to pick up the phone with one hand and steer with the other, taking the turn to get them onto the interstate without too much trouble. Inside, though, she can feel herself panicking. Only two people ever bother to call her: Maggie or Daddy. Neither option is good. She can lie to Daddy, but she’ll feel horrible about it. She’s never been able to lie to Maggie. The woman has a supernatural sixth sense about it.

She accepts the call without consciously reading the screen, since knowing which of them it is beforehand will only make her even more nervous, and presses the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Hey, Beth!” She hears Glenn’s voice call happily through the phone. “Listen, Maggie’s at the bar right now getting us more drinks, but she wanted to call and check on you. How’s the farm doing?”

Glenn and Maggie are taking their honeymoon near a beach. Maggie had shown her the hotel, some place with an outdoor bar near the pool. It’s barely nine in the morning, but she guesses that it’s normal for newly married couples to be getting boozy this early in the day. And Glenn definitely sounds a bit tipsy, if not edging into drunk.

“Oh,” she says, relieved. Daryl is giving her a confused look from the passenger seat. “Oh, it’s all fine, Glenn. How’s the beach?”

She has no qualms about lying to Glenn.

“It’s great!” he enthuses. “Hang on, your sister’s on her way back over, she’ll wanna say hello—”

“Shoot, Glenn, I’d love to, but, uh,” her mind races for an excuse, “one of the cows is going into labor. I’ll talk to y’all later. Bye!”

She ends the call and glances over at Daryl, who seems to be laughing at her. He’s not actually laughing, but his eyes are sparkling and he looks like he might almost smile at her. “Shut it,” she says, without any heat to her words.

“A cow going into labor,” he repeats with disbelief. “That was your plan?”

“I didn’t have a plan, because I didn’t expect the call,” she hisses, but she’s grinning now at the concept of Daryl laughing at her. At him laughing, in general. It feels good to see him happy. To know that she made him that way… even if it was because she was being ridiculous.

He starts to say something else, but that’s the exact moment when the car starts sputtering and slowing down. “What the—?” he starts, glancing around, then swears.

Beth pulls over hastily, then follows his gaze to the tank meter display in front of her. Which is pointing squarely at “E.”

“Oh, hell,” he says. “We never—”

“—got gas,” she finishes, trying not to swear herself. She’d reminded herself and everything while they got ready in silence this morning. But… “Glenn called, and I just got on the interstate without even thinking about it,” she says, trying not to sound like she’s excusing herself, because she’s just trying to explain. “I totally forgot. I’m sorry, Daryl.”

He shoves some of his hair back out of his face and sighs. “Not your fault,” he says. “I forgot, too.”

“What do we do?”

He glances around. “Still closest to the exit we were at,” he mumbles, mostly to himself. “I can walk there and back real quick, get some gas from the nearest station. You’ll stay with the truck.”

“But,” she says, not sure what to put at the end of her sentence. It’s the most straightforward plan, and they need gasoline sooner rather than later. “But” what? I don’t want us to split up? I don’t want to be here by myself? Even if it’s been a little awkward since last night, I’d rather stay with you?

Daryl gives her a steady look, patiently waiting for her to continue. She has no justified excuse, but he doesn’t know that.

“Never mind,” she finishes, giving him a halfhearted smile. “Hurry, though, okay?”

He nods and gets out of the truck, grabbing his gas can out of the truck bed.

She watches him walk back the way they came, studying him in the rearview mirror until he becomes a silhouette in the distance, and then when he disappears over the hill behind them entirely. From then on, it’s a waiting game. As the minutes pass, she lets her music continue to play from her phone, feeling more and more annoyed with herself. Daryl had taken on some of the blame, too, but the fact of the matter is that she was the one driving the car, and she should’ve remembered it instead of getting all nervous over a phone call. She suddenly realizes that she didn’t even offer to pay for the gas, which she had meant to do, and groans, burying her face in her hands.

Her phone buzzes and she glances at it. A text from Maggie. None of the cows are pregnant?! Which one’s going into labor??

Fuck. Beth sighs and types. Lying didn’t work—she’s never been a great liar—so boldfaced honesty will have to do. Kinda hoped u and Glenn were too drunk to remember that.

It’s not even 10, I’m not drunk, Maggie texts back instantly. But I’m offended, I think. What’s going on??

She glances back in the rearview mirror. No sign of Daryl yet; he’s probably still busy talking to the gas station attendant, if he’s even reached the station yet. It wasn’t too far, she remembers; it was right before the turn onto the interstate, which she took out of muscle memory when she accepted Glenn’s call.

Just needed to get off the phone quick, she texts back vaguely. Please don’t ask.

Maggie takes a moment to text back, but when she does, Beth can practically hear her knowing, big sister tone. Boy trouble?

Of a sort, she decides. It’s not really a lie. Yeah.

Maggie sends her a laughing-crying emoji. Just make sure one’s not in the house when Daddy gets back home.

“Won’t have to worry about that,” Beth mutters. “Just gotta make sure I’m in the house by the time Daddy gets back.”

That’s another thing. This is a delay they didn’t need. Today’s already gonna be longer than yesterday, since they’re hoping to cover as many states as possible. That’s why they waited until after the eight o’clock traffic to stop, but didn’t wait too long afterward. They’ll probably be on the road for a good ten hours today, at least. Longer, now, because of her screwup.

I will, she texts back, feeling bad for lying. But she definitely does not want to get into the details of her current situation with a half-tipsy Maggie this early in the day. She’d rather make sure that they get back on the road as soon as possible.

Still, once it becomes clear that Maggie isn’t going to immediately message her back, there’s little for her to do but wait. She’s scrolling through her phone for something to do when she catches movement out of the corner of her eye and finds Daryl approaching in the rearview mirror. She climbs out of the truck and watches him, sweating slightly from the hike, load up the truck with the gas canister. “Are we good to go?” she asks.

He nods, huffing a little and not wanting to speak.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, fiddling with her ponytail anxiously. “I wish I’d remembered to stop.”

He shrugs, which is a simple action, but the sentiment behind it seems clear to her: I don’t blame you. I should have remembered too. Let’s not worry about it anymore. He gestures toward the truck, and they get back in.

Once they’re properly on the interstate, Daryl cracks open a bottle of water he’d gotten at the motel vending machine earlier this morning and downs half of it in one go. “It’s fuckin’ hot,” he says, when he catches her staring.

She hastily turns her eyes back to the road and doesn’t think about how he had looked, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed the water in heavy gulps. “It is,” she agrees, her voice sounding a little strained to her ears.

She’d be lying if she said she didn’t find Daryl attractive. She has eyes, after all. When he first showed up to help out on the farm, she’d been sixteen and grieving, but it didn’t take long afterward for her to really see him. He may not be classically handsome, but he has gentle hands and strong arms and—if you catch him at the right time, in the right light—a kind face. Those piercing eyes and that shaggy haircut, which kind of works for him, don’t hurt, either. So she’d mooned over him for a couple of months when she was sixteen.

It was obvious that he never felt the same. He hardly ever interacted with her at first, outside of when they happened to be doing the same chores at the same time. When he did, it was clear that he saw her as basically just a kid. After a while, she’d felt the feelings simmer in the background. She dated some: Jimmy, Zach, a few others. They’d been sweet, and comfortable, and she’d moved on from her little crush.

She glances away nervously when he takes another sip. Maybe she hasn’t. Moved on, that is. Maybe it just sat in the background for six years, without her realizing it, and now she’s alone in a car with him for the next several days.

“Want some?” she hears him ask.

She turns to find him offering her the mostly-empty water bottle. The one he’s just had his mouth on. And it shouldn’t make her stammer and blush, it really shouldn’t, but she finds herself tongue-tied and red in the face anyway. “I’m okay,” she chokes out, turning back to the road. “Thanks, though.”

If Daryl notices her odd behavior, he doesn’t say. He just turns up the music. When it gets to a song he likes, he even whistles a little.

Meanwhile, Beth sits there, face burning, and tries to get through Tennessee as quickly as possible without breaking any traffic laws.

*

That night, the motel is just as seedy, but Beth and Daryl are so tired they don’t care. They pulled off a good twelve hours straight of driving, and it’s nearly midnight by the time they eat at a local diner and get themselves settled in their separate twin beds. He turns off the lamp, she rolls onto her side, and for a moment, it’s unsettlingly quiet

“Goodnight,” Beth voices uncertainly into the dark. Last night was so awkward. She doesn’t want that to be a trend.

“Hm,” Daryl grumbles. Then, softly, “Goodnight.”

Relieved, she smiles into her pillow and tries to sleep.

*

Daryl thinks they might get close to Vegas that night, if they drive hard and at a steady speed. “Probably just have to book a motel as soon as we get there, but at least we’ll be there in time for his bail hearing tomorrow,” he mumbles, more to himself than to Beth.

But she hears anyway. “That’s great!” she says. They’ve been on the road for a couple of hours already, and that kind of news keeps her from lagging. “We’ll just have to put the pedal to the metal.”

Naturally, that’s when there’s a huge traffic jam on the interstate. They’ve been stuck at others, mostly from the 5 o’clock rush yesterday and the day before, but those had cleared up quickly, and this one seems determined to last. After twenty minutes, they still haven’t budged.

“It’s eleven in the morning,” she finds herself saying with exasperation. “What on earth could have happened?”

Daryl peers up to where they can just barely see blue flashing lights in front of the rows of cars. “Drunk driver,” he says grimly.

“You think? So early?” She cranes her neck, but she still can’t see anything. “Might just be someone who lost control.”

He shrugs.

She should know better than to push, but something about the pensive look on his face draws her in and makes her unbearably curious. “Did you dad—?” she starts to ask, then cuts herself off, realizing abruptly just how horribly inappropriate that is of her to ask.

Daryl gives her a dark look from the driver’s seat, but stops when he sees the guilty expression on her face. His shoulders tense, and now he just seems uncomfortable. “Sometimes,” he mutters.

She hadn’t been expecting an answer, and she feels even worse for asking when he so clearly doesn’t enjoy sharing about it. “Mine, too,” she volunteers, trying to make up for making him unhappy. “Before I was born, I mean. But he almost relapsed after Momma and Shawn. Maggie had to drag him out of a bar and drive him home.”

He cringes so hard that his shoulders draw in tight at his back. “I know,” he says quietly. “Your dad told me before he hired me. Said I deserved to know, so I could decide for myself if I wanted to work for him.”

“Because of your dad?”

He nods.

Beth feels a surge of pride for her dad rise up in her chest. He never likes to talk about his struggle with alcoholism. For him to have confided in Daryl, to make sure he was comfortable working for the Greenes despite his rough past and their skeletons in the closet, must have been hard. But he did it, for Daryl.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have asked. I guess I just feel like… well, I’ve known you for six years and I feel like I barely know anything about you. Nothing that I’ve heard from you, anyway.”

He glances at her, looking almost amused. “You want my life story?”

Beth smiles, taking the joke. “If you want,” she agrees. “I’d be glad to hear it.”

He looks thoughtful for a moment, then drums his fingers against the steering wheel in a nervous flex. “Well, I guess,” he mutters out of the corner of his mouth. “What do ya wanna know?”

She blinks at him in surprise. “You really wanna tell me?”

He gives her a wordless glance, as if to say, “yeah, so you’d better ask before I change my mind.”

She beams, suddenly trying to remember all of the questions she’s had in her mind about Daryl over the years. “Um, okay, did you always wanna be a farmhand? What other jobs have you done? What do you like to do with your free time—?”

“Whoa, hey,” Daryl lifts his hands in surrender, the edge of his mouth upturned in a half-smile. “Can only answer one question at a time, girl.”

The traffic doesn’t budge for another half hour, but in that time, she learns a lot about Daryl Dixon. She learns that he spends his time tinkering with cars and machines. That one day, he’d like to own a motorcycle. That he hunts and tracks, and he’s good with crossbow of his (he doesn’t say it as such, that would be too close to bragging for Daryl, but he mentions that he’s used it for years, so she extrapolates). That he’d never worked as a farmhand before coming to help out at the Greene farm.

And by the time the cars in front of them start to move, she feels like she knows him a lot better.

“I’m glad we’re doing this,” she says suddenly, as he starts to drive forward, going slow in case they have to stop again. “I’m glad we’re friends, Daryl.”

She feels like they are friends now. She may not know every bit of his past, but she knows a lot about his present and future. And that feels good enough.

“Yeah,” Daryl says quietly. “Friends.”

Beth smiles and reaches for a slice of day-old pizza on the dashboard. “Want some?” she asks around a mouthful of cold cheese and pepperoni. “It’s good driving food.”

He nods and accepts the piece she gives him. “S’your turn,” he says. “To tell me about you. Did ya always wanna teach piano and run the children’s choir?”

Swallowing her food, Beth turns to him with a smile and starts to tell him about herself.

*

That night, a storm comes in as they try to find a motel just outside of Vegas. Daryl slowly becomes more and more frustrated the longer it takes. He’s at the wheel again, so Beth runs into the motels and checks for empty rooms while he waits in the truck just outside.

“There’s some sort of conference,” she reports after the third completely booked motel they’ve tried. “Almost everything’s been snatched up.”

He grunts and gnaws at his thumbnail, a nervous habit. “We’ll try one more,” he says. “If they’re full, there’s a rest stop a few exits back… we can take shifts sleeping in the truck.”

That sounds supremely awful to Beth, but he’s just as tired and eager for a bed as she is and he isn’t griping, so she doesn’t complain. At the fourth motel they stop at, she can already see lines of cars parked outside the rooms, so she decides to put on some extra charm and hope for the best.

Unfortunately, the fifty-something woman at the desk isn’t charmed. “No doubles,” she says, without looking up from her computer, when Beth asks.

Beth shifts anxiously from foot to foot. She’s exhausted from hours of driving, and she knows Daryl is too. The idea of it sounds incredibly awkward, but… “Any singles?” she asks, feeling the heaviness of the words in her mouth.

The woman glances up. “Yeah, I got one left. A cancellation. You want it?”

A man walks into the lobby, drenched from the downpour and clearly also seeking a room, and Beth makes a snap decision. “Yes, please,” she says, reaching for the cash in her wallet. “I’ll take it.”

She runs back out to the car, key in hand, and grins triumphantly at Daryl. “Last one,” she says, showing off the key and shoving her damp ponytail out of her face. She directs him toward the room, and he pulls into the spot.

“You didn’t have to pay,” he grumbles, carrying their bags to the door. The rain is coming down steadily now, and they hurry to get to the awning over the entrance.

“Yes, I did,” Beth says, fumbling to get the key in the lock. “You’ve paid for everything so far—”

“We’re only on this trip because of me—”

“—and another guy was about to take this room if I didn’t pay right then,” she finishes smugly. “Aren’t you glad I paid now?”

She swings the door open, to reveal a tiny room with one very tiny bed.

“Um,” Daryl says flatly in response to her question, and Beth abruptly realizes that she never mentioned that the room she’d gotten was a single.

For a moment, her brain shorts out, and she’s tempted to turn red, and offer excuses, and suggest that she sleep on the floor. But in the end, tiredness wins out, and she knows that this is still better than sleeping in shifts at a rest area. “It’s all they had left,” she retorts, in response to the complaint he didn’t voice. “We’ll survive.”

They step inside, Daryl stubbornly refusing to reply, and she examines the room. It’s just like the other cheap motels they’ve stayed at—slightly grimy carpet, a TV from the 90s, and a lamp that looks like it’s one wrong look away from bursting into flame—aside from the main difference: one bed, instead of two.

He drops the bags beside the bed and digs through his duffel for his sleep clothes and a toothbrush. “Ya mind if I shower first?” he asks. “I’ll be quick.”

She nods, and he ducks into the bathroom. She hears the rickety pipes start up, and she carefully turns down the sheets on just one side of the bed. She pulls out her own pajamas, just sleep shorts and a too-large tank top, and lays them on the bed and waits for him to get out.

He only takes a few minutes, true to his word, and she takes her own turn once he’s out in the room, clad in his plaid pajama bottoms and an extra large gray t-shirt that hangs off his body. The shower is cool and the water pressure weak, and she makes quick work of rinsing off the rainwater and washing her hair with shitty motel shampoo. Once she’s done, she braids her hair and puts on her pajamas, then exits.

Daryl is already settled on the bed, flipping through TV channels and lying unnaturally still, as if he might spook her by moving. She copies him, moving slowly and deliberately as she crawls onto the other side of the bed. It’s like some ridiculous dance where neither of them can make any sudden movements, and she wants to laugh at the intricate awkwardness of it all, and yet she can’t stop herself from feeling the discomfort.

For a moment, they just lie there, watching the TV in silence. She gets under the covers, and he stays on top of them. They’d eaten dinner hours earlier, just something from a drive-through, and she’s grateful that her stomach doesn’t rumble next to him.

“So,” Daryl breaks the awkward silence. The movie plays on in the background, but it’s some grainy black-and-white movie that neither of them are really watching. “Did ya mean it, that you’ve never been drunk?”

Beth flushes despite herself. It’s something she’d told him during their “tell me about yourself” exchange this morning. He’d smirked and made fun of her a bit at the time, and she’d taken it good-naturedly. She didn’t realize he was going to keep bringing it up.

“I’ve been tipsy,” she says, feeling like the clarification is incredibly important, even though Daryl’s lifted brow says otherwise. “I just never… I dunno. Just never happened.”

She hadn’t exactly been big on the party scene, in high school or afterwards, after all. For her twenty-first birthday, she went to the diner with her dad and Maggie and ordered a strawberry milkshake, like she always did. For her twenty-second, she splurged and bought herself a new guitar. Shots of liquor weren’t exactly involved with either celebration.

“That ain’t right,” Daryl says. “Girl your age oughta know what good moonshine tastes like.”

“Won’t that make you go blind?”

He groans and cups a hand over his eyes. “Next you’ll be tellin’ me your first drink was an appletini or some bullshit.”

Beth is silent.

He lifts his head, dread etched in his features. “It wasn’t—”

“It was peach schnapps,” she says before he can finish. She’d snuck some from the stash Maggie had brought home from college, hidden where Maggie thought for certain that nobody would find it. But Maggie hid it in the same place she’d hid her private candy stash when they were kids—all too easy to find. Beth had taken a swig, grimaced, taken a few more, and decided that was enough of that.

Daryl is the one grimacing now. “‘Least it coulda been worse,” he says with a hint of despair, like he can’t really believe his own words. He stands up from the bed and bends over his duffel bag, rifling through its contents with his back to her so she can’t see what he’s digging for. “But we’re gonna change all that.”

“You tellin’ me you got a jar of moonshine in that bag, Mr. Dixon?” Beth says, half-teasing and half-full of trepidation. She thinks she could manage drinking it, if she has to, but she sincerely hopes that Daryl knows how to get puke out of a motel room carpet… just in case.

He chuckles, low in his throat, and pulls out a dark bottle, the label covered by his hand. “Nah. But somethin’ just as good, not quite as much like paint thinner as moonshine. Never tried whiskey?”

Beth shakes her head, and he grins a little, the look unexpected and almost boyish on his face.

“Merle told me growing up that this’d put hair on my chest,” he mutters, not making eye contact, but still with a little smile at the corner of his mouth. “More like strip th’enamel off your teeth.”

Beth scoffs out a laugh and wonders if Merle’s still okay. Daryl hasn’t been able to speak to him since that initial phone call, but hopefully the man’s doing all right. From what Daryl’s said, this isn’t his first time in a jail cell. But a trial could take weeks or months, and it would be better for him to be bailed out before then.

“Go on,” Daryl says, and she realizes that he’s opened the bottle, poured a bit into the cap, and extended it to her. “See how it treats ya.”

She sits up against her pillow and takes the cap, a bit nervous. Still, before she can change her mind, she tosses it down the hatch, swallowing and shaking her head once the taste kicks in. “Oh my god, that’s awful,” she sputters out, coughing. She hands the cap back to him and presses a hand to her chest. “It’s like if a cigarette became a drink.”

Daryl smiles at her, and she realizes suddenly that, throughout their three days of driving, he’s never once smoked in the truck with her. She wonders if he quit, or if he’s just being considerate of her.

“Ain’t too bad once you’ve gotten the first shot over with,” Daryl says, then pours himself a capful and swallows the shot down. He clears his throat, but otherwise doesn’t react to the taste, and he sits on the edge of the bed, still holding the bottle.

Unconsciously, Beth finds herself reaching for it. There’s some strange kind of bravery taking over her hands and her voice, and she finds that she wants to impress him, even if he’d never tease her for not wanting to drink it. “Guess I’d better try a second one, then,” she says, and takes a drink straight from the bottle, holding the neck of it carefully in her hand.

Daryl watches, swallowing at the same time as her. “Any better?” he asks hoarsely. His eyes are unreadable, and he licks at his lips, getting rid of the last of the whiskey lingering there.

Out of nowhere, Beth can feel that desire—what she’d first experienced six years ago, and thought long gone until recently—like heat in her bones, warming her up better than the liquor ever could. She licks at her lips, cringing a little at the taste. “Nope,” she says honestly, then takes another sip anyway.

He reaches for the bottle, and she lets him take it back. “Don’t wanna have too much at once,” he says. “We ate hours ago. Don’t want ya getting too drunk too fast. Or drunk at all, if ya don’t want to.”

“Right,” Beth murmurs, watching as he takes another long sip of the whiskey. “We wouldn’t want that.”

He sets the bottle down carefully on the nightstand by the bed, glancing over at her. With him facing her now, with his back to the dim lamplight, she can barely make out his features: long, crooked nose, thin mouth. His eyes are blue, she knows, but they look dark and shadowy now without any light facing them, like they’re all pupils. His hair covers some of his face, and his expression isn’t discernible. She can’t tell how he’s looking at her.

But she knows how she wants him to be looking at her. She wants him to look at her the way she looks at him. And maybe it’s stupid, maybe it’s the whiskey and the long hours of driving making her think so… but she thinks that, just maybe, he is.

But it isn’t the whiskey—nothing kicks in this fast, and she’s barely had more than a shot—that makes her want this. It isn’t the whiskey that makes her sit up and lean toward him.

It isn’t the whiskey that makes her cup his face in her hands and bring his lips down to hers.

For a long, silent moment, they kiss. It’s a chaste kiss, just his dry lips against hers, and he goes perfectly still and doesn’t make any movements. She worries she’s made a mistake. She worries she’s assumed feelings of his that just aren’t there.

Then, his mouth opens up to her, and he surges against her, one hand gripping her upper arm firmly. He doesn’t squeeze, doesn’t hurt, but he does draw her in closer, so fast that their noses bump against each other and she nearly breaks off to apologize. He doesn’t give her time, tilting his head the slightest bit to adjust, so that it’s more comfortable. He inhales sharply with want, then moves his mouth, kissing her fiercely.

And, good God, Daryl Dixon can kiss.

She twists in his grip, pulling her hand away from his face and reaching for his t-shirt. She tugs at it impatiently, and when he breaks away from her to see what she wants, she immediately strikes up the chant. “Please, please, Daryl, I want—”

“You want?” he breathes against her lips. His eyes are half-open, and she’s so close to him that now she can see that they’re mostly pupils, blown wide with want. With need. And her eyes, she’s sure, look just the same.

“Yes,” she whispers, and he kisses her again.

Somehow, in the kiss, she loses her tank top with his help, and she kicks off the motel blankets so she can lose her shorts, too. Daryl strips off his pajama pants, climbing over her in a smooth motion and pressing her down into the bed as he kisses her lips, down her throat, and even at one of her bared breasts. She arches her back into the touch, then stubbornly tugs at his shirt again, wanting to get them both down to just their underwear.

That makes him stop kissing her, lying unnaturally still against her body. “Are you sure?” he says, his head laid out against her chest. One of his hands stops where it’s been playing idly with her nipple. “That you wanna see?”

This, she senses, is a different question from the you want? of earlier. That had established consent. But, that you wanna see?, about him taking off his shirt…

A cold sweat breaks over her. There’s only so many reasons for him to be self-conscious about that. Will Dixon hadn’t been a good man, and she doesn’t know what she’s about to see. She doesn’t know if she wants to see, really. But…

“Yes,” she says quietly. If she’s going to want a man, if she’s going to have him, then she’s going to have all of him. That includes the bad parts.

Slowly, he sits up, giving her a heavy look she can’t read. He pulls his shirt off over his head and tosses it to the side, then averts his eyes. He’s letting her have the chance to examine him, but he won’t watch her take it all in.

She can’t see anything unusual on his chest, but at the tops of his shoulders, if she looks hard, she can see the edges of marks. Old, faded marks, rope-like. Like the scars that are on her daddy’s back. Her heart thuds in her chest, desire mixing with dread mixing with sympathy.

“Come here,” she says softly, and his eyes dart to her, unsure. Beth reaches up and pulls him down on top of her, not breaking eye contact as she does. He comes down willingly, if tentatively, and the look in his eyes is nothing short of reverent as he lowers himself and buries his face in her throat.

He kisses her neck, then, and she drapes her arms over him, running her hands along his shoulders and back. He shudders at the touch, and she can feel the scars: raised off the skin, in long firm lines, made old by age. Will Dixon’s been dead a long time. But his legacy—dark, and ugly, and painful—is still here.

His legacy is Daryl, too, Beth decides. Whether the man would’ve liked it or not, he put something damned good into the world. “Don’t stop touching me,” she murmurs into the shell of Daryl’s ear.

Daryl groans and presses another open-mouthed kiss to her throat, his hands coming up and cupping her breasts. They’re small and she knows it. But with the way he looks at her when he leans down to kiss and suck at them, she feels like they’re exactly what he’d imagined.

A rush of warmth goes through her. Oh, she likes thinking that he’s imagined her. Maybe he has. Maybe he’s thought of her just like how she’s thought of him. “I’ve wanted you,” she says roughly into his hair, running her hands up and down his back as he draws one nipple into his mouth and sucks. “I think I’ve wanted you since the first time I saw you on the farm.”

“Beth,” he groans.

“I know I was just a kid back then,” she says. “But I’m not anymore. I know what I want. And I’ve wanted you for years.”

He lets out another helpless sound, full of desire, and reaches for the hem of her panties. “D’you—?” he starts to ask, sounding uncertain. “D’you want—?”

“Yes,” she hisses out with desperation, reaching down. She shucks off her panties, throwing them carelessly across the room, then glances down at him. “Your turn.”

Almost shyly, he pulls down his boxers, giving her a hesitant look that she associates with skittish colts. But eventually, they’re lying next to each other, completely naked, and she takes a second to take him in, smiling. “Do you—?” she starts to ask, not even knowing what comes at the end of her question.

“I don’t have anything,” he rushes out, then glances away, his ears turning pink. It’s sweet; normally she can’t read him at all, but right now everything about his body language gives him away. His nervousness, his hesitation about his scars, his eagerness to please.

She runs her fingers through his still-damp hair and smiles. “That’s okay. We can do other stuff,” she murmurs, then crawls down the bed, pressing kisses to his chest, his hips, his thighs as she goes.

When she takes him into her mouth, he groans and clenches his hands in the bedsheets. She has little experience—just a few past boyfriends—but she knows enough to make it enjoyable for him. He returns the favor after a few moments, licking and kissing her hard until she’s crying out into the pillow and gasping for air. When he crawls back up the bed, desire still in his eyes, he kisses her passionately, the taste of each other mixing in their mouths.

They’re clinging to each other, still exchanging quiet kisses, when the roaring sound dies down in her ears and Beth realizes she can still hear the pitter-patter of rain outside their room. It’s strange, to be reminded of where they are and when they are. They’ve only been in this room for an hour, not the eternity that it’s felt like. They’ve only been on the road together for three days, not the endless amount of time that it feels like in her head. Pitfalls aside, it’s been wonderful, and she doesn’t want it to end.

“You’re a good man, Daryl Dixon,” she whispers into his ear, and he shudders a little all over and clutches her tighter.

After a few moments, he murmurs wordlessly into her hair and reaches absently for the remote, turning the TV off and throwing his leg over hers. “G’night,” he says, voice made thick with sleep, and she can hear his breathing go rhythmic and even.

She’s lying there wishing—for this trip to never end, for him to kiss her awake in the morning because he wants her just as badly as she wants him, for this to have meant something—for a long time, before she even realizes what he’s said. “Goodnight,” she whispers.

But he’s already asleep.

*

When she wakes in the morning, Daryl is sitting at the edge of the bed, his back to her, tying his shoes.

A rush of emotions burst inside her in quick succession: joy, comfort, hope, hesitance, fear, uncertainty. “Good morning,” she says, her voice scratchy with sleep.

He doesn’t flinch, and she wonders if he knew she was awake. “Mornin’,” he says without looking back, then stands from the bed. He’s wearing a dress shirt and slacks, probably the fanciest clothes he owns, and they’re a little wrinkled still from sitting in a duffel bag for days. His hair’s been combed, and he looks… nice.

His lips, Beth notices, are still the tiniest bit swollen.

She sits up tentatively, taking care to keep her chest covered by the comforter. She hadn’t been so unsure the night before, but something about the daylight streaming through the curtains makes her feel differently. That, and the way Daryl won’t look her in the eye.

“Daryl—” she begins.

“We gotta get to the courthouse,” he interrupts, zipping his duffel shut. “The meeting’s in an hour.”

Beth swallows hard. “Right,” she says, crawling out of bed. She’s forced to leave the comforter behind, and she can feel how studiously he avoids looking at her naked body. Somehow, that’s worse than if he’d watched her. She digs through her bag and finds the sundress and sandals she’d packed for this day, and she wishes she’d picked something a little more solemn. She doesn’t feel like walking around in sunshine yellow today.

But she dresses, and unties her messy braid and combs it out so that it’s wavy around her shoulders, and puts on a little mascara and lip gloss. When she emerges from the bathroom area, Daryl looks at her, obviously without meaning to, and glances away immediately. She knows what he sees. She didn’t pack concealer, and one hickey stands out proudly at the hollow of her throat. She plans to use her hair to cover it as much as possible, but there’s only so much she can do about it.

They pack and leave the motel in silence.

The ride to the courthouse is uncomfortable, and she plugs in her phone to play her music without asking, hoping that it will relieve the tension. Her playlist is on shuffle, and Bob Dylan comes on. It’s the same song she’d played in the barn just three days ago—though it feels like ages ago, now—and the lyrics, horribly appropriate, make her want to curl up in the seat and scream.

Your lover who just walked out the door

Has taken all his blankets from the floor

The carpet, too, is moving under you

And it’s all over now, Baby Blue…

She thinks about demanding to know what the hell his problem is. Does he not want her? He can just say so. Was it just the whiskey affecting him, and he never found her attractive at all? It would hurt to hear it, but he could say it. She thinks about posing these hypotheticals at him, thinks about yelling at him and forcing him to fucking look at her.

But fear keeps her quiet, so she doesn’t, and he keeps his eyes trained on the horizon as he drives.

The courthouse is small and clearly an old building, but it must get a lot of foot traffic if they’re right outside of Vegas, she thinks. She follows wordlessly behind as Daryl gets them inside—they go through a metal detector, but neither of them have anything on them except their wallets—and then as he gets directions to Merle’s courtroom.

When they go inside, she identifies his brother immediately. It’s not that they really look alike—Merle is clearly much older, with his graying hair and the lines on his face—but it’s more in his stance, the way he holds his jaw just like Daryl does. It also helps that he’s in the defendant’s pew.

They’re midway through the bail hearing for Merle’s public intoxication charge, and she and Daryl take a seat in one of the back rows. She listens as the defense, who was obviously assigned to Merle by the court, rambles his way through an argument that Merle should be released on his own recognizance. The argument sounds weak, like it’s something the man came up with in half an hour when he was handed the file. It ignores that Merle has had repeat offenses and that he could be a flight risk. Even though she’s technically on Merle’s side, Beth thinks it’s not very convincing.

The judge must agree. She sets a court date for next month. She passes down a judgment that, taking into account his prior offenses, bail will be held at $5,000.

When the ruling is announced, Beth sees how Daryl’s hand flexes on his knee, like he’s resisting the urge to chew at his thumbnail. She wants to lay her hand over his and offer some comfort. She doesn’t.

When the hearing is over, guards are preparing to escort Merle back to lockup. Daryl goes up to his brother, talking to him in low tones, while Beth hangs back, watching without trying to appear like she’s being nosy. At one point, Merle looks back at her, says something to Daryl, and laughs.

Daryl flushes pink, but doesn’t say anything as the guards guide Merle out of the courtroom. He rejoins Beth, and they go to the clerk’s office to pay.

“Do you have five thousand dollars?” she asks abruptly, as they’re walking down the hallway. It interrupts the silence, and she realizes that they haven’t spoken since the motel room.

He glances at her, his fists tight at his sides. “Yeah.”

She wonders how much that cuts into his savings. “Will you…” she starts, then stops.

His voice is clipped when he speaks again. “I can afford to get us home.”

Beth reaches for her wallet in the pocket of her dress. “I just… I brought my—”

“No,” he interrupts harshly, then abruptly seems to soften, as if reminding himself that she only wants to help. “...thanks. But no.”

She drops it, because she doesn’t want to push it too far, and stands there and pretends not to be paying too much attention as Daryl deals with the clerk. He signs paperwork and hands over a crazy stack of cash and then his card, and they’re sitting at a bench, waiting for Merle to be led out, when a question occurs to her.

“Earlier,” she says, fiddling with her hands in her lap. “When you were talking to your brother. He looked at me and, uh, said something to you and laughed. What did he say? I was just wondering.”

Daryl gives her an unreadable look, then chews on his lip. “He was making fun of me,” he mutters finally.

“Why?” she presses.

“Because,” he says, “he could see the bruise on your neck.”

Her hand flies up to cover it, self-consciously, and she chokes out an uncomfortable laugh. “Jeez,” she says. “He doesn’t have much tact, huh?”

“Merle never has.”

When the officer escorts Merle out and uncuffs him, he’s already repeating the terms of Merle’s bail. He can’t leave the area, he can’t hold any weapons, and he must participate in biweekly drug and alcohol testing, conducted at the local station.

“Yeah, yeah,” Merle says unflappably, then grins when he sees Daryl. “Look at my baby brother, coming all the way to Vegas to help me out! And,” his eyes dart to Beth, and his grin widens, “he brought his side piece.”

Daryl’s fists tighten at his sides. “Don’t call her that,” he mutters, then starts to walk away. Beth follows behind, unsure of whether she should speak and potentially egg Merle on, and watches the two brothers as they make their way to the courthouse exit.

Merle is obviously the oldest, from the way he bosses Daryl around, and she wonders if he’s used to Daryl bailing him out, literally and figuratively. He doesn’t even say thank you. He seems unbothered by the whole situation.

For his part, Daryl already looks sick of his brother, and she recalls now how exasperated he’d been over the phone when he’d gotten the call that jumpstarted this whole trip. Maybe there’s a reason why they don’t stick together for too long. Maybe Daryl had wanted to put down roots in their town, get a decent job and make a life for himself, and Merle hadn’t.

“You ever been to Vegas, girly?” Merle asks, looking back at her as they step out into the fresh air. He stretches his arms out and sighs with contentment. “We oughta go. Bet I could teach you poker better than my brother could. I’d make it more fun, too.” He winks.

“Enough,” Daryl says in a low voice, sounding like he’s this close to losing his temper, then reaches over and takes Beth’s hand. She’s so shocked that she lets him. “We’re going. Stay out of trouble, Merle. Go to your trial, or you owe me five thousand dollars. I mean it.”

“Sure,” Merle shrugs, still indifferent. “Don’t I always pay you back, little brother?”

Daryl doesn’t reply, and their dynamic seems so uncommunicative and tense, built on things unsaid, that Beth suddenly thinks: No wonder Daryl didn’t talk to her about last night. He probably doesn’t know how.

She’s angry now on his behalf, a little. That anger makes her step forward, her hand still clasped in Daryl’s, and say forcefully to Merle, “You should thank him. He drove twenty-eight hours to be here. He paid out of his own savings for gas, and motels, and your bail money. The least you could do is say thank you to him for sacrificing a week of his life to come save you.”

Merle’s eyes rove over her, with that same examining quality that Daryl’s eyes have, and he gives her an unaffected, easy smile. “Sure looks like he managed to have his fun during the trip,” he remarks.

She steadfastly refuses to blush, or look away, or cover the bruise on her throat again. Some part of her senses that, to Merle, that would be like admitting defeat.

After a moment of their eyes being locked, Merle gives in. He sighs and blinks, then turns to Daryl. “All right, all right: thank you, princess, for sacrificing a week of your life to come and save me,” he says, exaggerating the quotes from Beth and making them sound far more dramatic. “Promise I’ll go to my trial and be a real fuckin’ Boy Scout from now on.”

Daryl’s eyes are impenetrable, but Beth notices that he’s looking down at her, not at Merle. Had he not expected to be defended?

“Goodbye, Merle,” he says, holding out his free hand. He and Merle clasp arms, not quite a handshake and less than a hug, but it seems to clear the air between them. Merle’s strolling down the street, hands in his pockets and whistling a jaunty tune, before Beth realizes that, this whole time, Daryl never let go of her hand.

The walk to the truck is quiet, and she has to let go of him to get to the passenger seat. They sit in the truck for a moment, not speaking, before he turns the key and pulls out of the parking lot. The song that had been playing most recently ends, and she hears the familiar plucked strings of Joni Mitchell.

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling

Traveling, traveling, traveling

Looking for something, what can it be?

Oh, I hate you some, I hate you some

I love you some

Oh, I love you when I forget about me…

Beth looks over at Daryl, how he keeps one hand on the steering wheel almost lazily. His eyes are trained on the road, almost too intensely, like he doesn’t want to risk accidentally looking in her direction. One of his hands rests near the gear shift, too casual to be intentional, and Beth makes a snap decision.

She reaches over and takes his hand in hers again.

Daryl’s entire body stiffens with tension as she lifts his hand in hers, then presses a slow, innocent kiss to the palm of it. His hand is warm and callused, and it’s rough against her lips. She wants to kiss it over and over again. “I think,” she says, “we need to talk.”

He looks over at her uneasily.

“I want you,” she says, the words coming more easily than she expected, “and I think you want me, too. And I think you don’t know what to do with that.”

He swallows, hard.

“That’s okay,” she tells him. “I don’t really know what to do with it, either. But I do know that I don’t want to spend the next three days in silence, not sure of what to say to each other. Not when we could be kissing.”

He watches her press another kiss, this one open-mouthed, to his palm. Without warning, the tension in his entire body just... dissolves. His gaze shifts to something entirely different, like he’s made a decision, and it’s suddenly so warm and intimate and loving that it almost startles her. “Okay,” he says, his voice a rasp, and he curls his fingers around hers. “Let’s talk.”

*

Three days later, Hershel makes it home about four hours after they do. When he enters the kitchen, his suitcase in hand and with a smile on his face, he stops abruptly once he sees Daryl and Beth. Sitting together at the kitchen table. Holding hands.

Daryl’s never even sat at the kitchen table before. He barely comes into the house for a glass of water without being persuaded to do so. Hershel looks like has to actively work to not let his mouth drop open.

Beth smiles sweetly at him. “Daddy,” she says. “How’d your conference go?”

He relaxes into the conversation, clearly letting her get to the news in her own time, and sets his bag down. “It went fine, Bethy,” he tells her. “I learned a lot of really interesting things that I think could help the farm. And how has your week been?”

She looks over at Daryl, who’s uncharacteristically smiling, and beams. “Oh, it went a little off track,” she replies, “but I think it worked out for the best.”

*

Maggie makes a lot of fun of her through text. Did you think you wouldn’t get caught?

Rolling her eyes at her phone, Beth curls closer into Daryl’s side in her bed. Hershel had scolded them, and that had been rough, but he was mad because they left the farm without telling him, not because they’re together.

When Daryl had seemed to believe it was the latter, Hershel stopped his ranting and solemnly put his hand on Daryl’s shoulder. He said, “Son, I couldn’t ask for a better man for my daughter. Even if you are a matched pair of lying fools,” then continued fussing for the better part of half an hour.

But afterward, he was fine. He even asked Daryl to stay for dinner—probably so he could give Daryl the new-boyfriend grilling session, but she thinks Daryl can handle it. Her dad’s always been that type: he’s angry in quick spurts, then it’s over with and all is forgiven. Maggie is the same way.

Daryl hooks his chin over her shoulder, squinting at the tiny text. “How the hell do you read that?” he asks.

“I don’t want to right now,” she tells him honestly, turning in his arms so she’s pressed all along his front. She leans forward and kisses him, running her fingers through his hair as he moans against her mouth.

Music plays softly from her record machine on her desk as he tugs her impossibly closer to him. Beth takes a breath and pauses to absorb the moment.

The man she’s in love with is kissing her. The man who said, two days into their return trip as they crossed the border into Tennessee, that he loves her too. Life is so different from what it was a week ago. Life is so perfect.

On her phone, unsent, is the reply she typed up to Maggie. It was worth it.