Work Text:
At the funeral home, while light is still shining through the windows, Beth says, “I want a tattoo.”
“You—you want a tattoo?” Daryl says, his eyes shooting to hers in something like surprise, but really, after the moonshine, some of the things they’re doing are just ticking off items on ‘Beth’s wish list of things to do,’ but… Daryl doesn’t mind it.
“Yeah, like—a stick n’ poke is what they’re called, right?”
“Yeah, and you want me to do it?”
“Uh-huh. You know how, right?”
“I—kinda.”
She smiles, sweet and bright and so beautifully Beth. “Great,” she says, then, “we could have matching ones, maybe?”
“What, like ‘D-plus-B’? We could carve that in a tree, if you want something lovey-dovey like—”
“’B-plus-D,’ Daryl, alphabetical,” she says. She’s still smiling, and Daryl can’t help but smile back. “So, then. Will you get a tattoo with me?”
Daryl scoffs, something closer to a chuckle than anything, then says, “Sure. Why the hell not?”
-----------------------------
He finds makeshift supplies around the funeral home, and it seems like they’ll do.
Beth decides that the tattoo should be on their right wrists, facing inwards so that they can read it easily themselves. She seems a bit nervous, but he wasn’t lying when he said that he kinda knew how to do this—he has done stick n’ poke tattoos before. Not all that often, no, but he has done them.
They’re sitting at the table—beside each other and shoulder to shoulder—and Beth’s got her right arm face-up and laying on the table.
Daryl starts on the ‘B,’ and Beth winces slightly, but after that, she’s cool as a cucumber. She watches without so much as a word, and she even has a smile on her face.
After he finishes the plus sign and starts on the ‘D,’ her smile just gets wider.
Daryl stays quiet while he works. Once he’s done, Beth looks at the finished product like he’s just given her gold.
She gets that mischievous look on her face, then takes her arm off the table. She pulls Daryl’s right arm to rest on the table, facing up.
“Your turn,” she says, and she plucks the makeshift tool they’re using out of his hand. She concentrates, sets her eyes on his wrist, and although Daryl is about to protest that maybe he should do it, she starts to put needle into skin.
She’s not a master at it, certainly, but it appears that she learned pretty well by just watching. The lines of the letters and the plus sign are rather clean, and while neither of their tattoos look ‘professional,’ they’re sentimental. And for Daryl, they’re Beth. That’s all that matters.
After she finishes and lays the tool in her hand aside, she beams at his tattoo like she’s proud of herself, and, well—Daryl’s proud of her, too.
Beth places her right arm face up onto the table, right beside his—comparing. The lines she made for his tattoo are just a bit sloppier than the lines he gave her, but not by a lot. Beth looks back and forth between their arms and their wrists, resting right beside each other, and Daryl’s face, and she’s beaming.
“B-plus-D,’” Daryl says with a laugh, and Beth shoves him lightly with her shoulder.
“It’s cute,” Beth says, and Daryl just nods. You’re cute, he thinks, but doesn’t say.
Beth takes her arm off of the table. She kisses him on the cheek from where she’s sitting beside him. When she pulls away and Daryl turns his head to look at her, she’s smiling, soft and sweet.
“Thank you, Daryl,” she says, quiet.
Daryl looks at her, swallows almost nervously, then says, “You’re welcome, Beth.”
She nods, and she’s still smiling. She gets up from her chair beside Daryl, then goes into the room with the open coffin—and the piano, Daryl remembers.
He stays seated at the table for a moment, looking at his tattoo.
B+D.
Daryl traces it lightly, even though it’s still sore and he’s really not supposed to, but he doesn’t care. He traces the ‘D,’ the plus sign, and then the ‘B.’ He stops tracing and lets his finger linger on the ‘B.’
Beth.
There’s still some daylight left, and Daryl has an idea.
He gets up from the table and walks into the room with the coffin and the piano, and Beth is sitting on the bench in front of the piano, but she isn’t playing—she’s just looking at the piano, her back to him.
Daryl stands at the archway, leaning against it. He watches her for a moment, just looking—studying, maybe—before he says, “Beth?”
She turns around quickly, a questioning look on her face. Daryl jerks his head vaguely towards the direction of the front door.
“Wanna go carve, um,” he starts, then gestures to the tattoo on his wrist with his left hand. “Wanna go carve these into a tree, out there?”
Beth smiles, soft and sweet and gorgeous. “I thought you said that was ‘lovey-dovey.’”
“It is. You comin’?”
“Of course I am,” she says. She nearly jumps up off of the bench, then takes his hand and leads him out and towards the front door.
Daryl’s gaze flicks around the outside of the funeral home as she pulls him forward, but he doesn’t contest her leading him. There are no walkers around, thankfully, from what he can see. There’s still light out, and the area is still clear.
She picks the tree. It’s right on the edge of where the woods begin, and the tree is close to where they came in when they first arrived here.
Beth uses her knife to carve the ‘D’ first, then carves the plus sign behind it. She hands her knife to Daryl, and he stares at it for a moment without taking it before she says, “I want you to carve the ‘B’—y’know, I carve the ‘D,’ you carve the ‘B’—”
“Pretty sentimental of you, girl.”
She tilts her head to the side and smiles. A piece of hair falls across her face, and Daryl would like to smooth it back, but he doesn’t. He’s not sure if he should.
“Well, I am pretty sentimental,” she says, shoving the knife a bit closer to him, trying to get him to take it. “Now carve a ‘B’ for me, will you?”
Daryl lets out a quiet sigh, nods, then takes the knife, and her hand brushes his as he does. Daryl knows that he shouldn’t like that as much as he does, but he can’t seem to stop it. He’s not sure that he wants to stop it, either.
Daryl carves the ‘B’ into the tree, right behind the plus sign. He goes to hand Beth her knife back, and she’s staring at the tree, lost in thought. Her look has turned almost somber.
After a moment, she looks at him, then at his outstretched hand trying to give her the knife back. She takes the knife and sheathes it on her hip, then traces the tree carving with her right hand.
“Thanks, Daryl,” she says, soft and quiet. “The tattoos are for us, but we left a mark on the world, here, you know? This tree and these initials will be here long after us. Long after we’re dead and gone.”
“As long as someone doesn’t cut it down.”
She looks at him with a scowl that she clearly doesn’t quite mean. “Yeah,” she says. “As long as someone doesn’t cut it down.”
“I don’t think anyone’ll cut it down, though.”
Beth tilts her head to the side. It’s adorable, like always, but Daryl doesn’t say it. “Why don’t you think so?”
Daryl shrugs. He looks at the tree, and at the carved initials they’ve left there. “I dunno. Just a feeling.”
“I hope your feeling is right, then,” she says. They both keep staring at the carving. It’s quiet, except for the birds in the trees and the breeze in the air.
“Well, we’ll always have these—for as long as we’re around. That’s something,” she says, holding her right arm up and looking at the tattoo on her wrist.
“Yeah,” Daryl says. He looks at her tattoo, and he thinks of the sentimentality behind this that he knows he shouldn’t let himself have, but he can’t help it. He knows he shouldn’t do this—that he shouldn’t get so close—but he wants to. God, he wants to.
Her hair is in her face again, he notices. It’s in her face and blocking her vision so, so often, and nearly every time he wants to tuck it behind her ear.
This time, he does. He does, and she tilts her head to look at him, his hand still lingering near her ear. Her face looks so soft, so sweet—so damn near innocent—and he takes his hand away and shifts his gaze to stare at the ground.
There’s pressure against his right shoulder, and when he looks over, it’s Beth, leaning against him. Her head is against his shoulder, nearly tucked into his neck, and her eyes are closed.
Daryl takes in a breath, then another, and he finally wraps his right arm around her, pulling her close. She leans into him, and her eyes are still closed.
He could get used to this, he realizes, far too suddenly and far too fast. He could get used to Beth, tucked in against his side. He could get used to initials carved in trees, little gestures of romance, and these small things that he’s almost never had. No, he could not only get used to it—he wants it. And goddamn, he has it, doesn’t he? He has it right here and right now, with Beth by his side and Beth on his wrist and Beth’s initial and his initial carved into this tree.
Daryl wants Beth tucked in against his side. He wants Beth’s initial and his initial—right there together—on his wrist and on every tree they decide to carve their initials into, and he wants Beth Greene walking and standing side by side with him for as long as they both have left.
He looks just past her head at the still tender skin on his right wrist.
B+D.
“You know,” Beth says, and Daryl looks at her face. Her eyes are still closed.
“I might be sentimental, but boy, I think you just might be more sentimental than me, Daryl Dixon.”
There’s a smile on her face, even with her eyes still closed, and Daryl can’t help but match it. He pulls her closer and closes his own eyes.
“Yeah. Yeah, I might be.”