Daryl sees how she is, how she's standing. She's not tense, just wary. So long as he doesn't spook her, she'll be fine. He takes his knife back up-- slowly, slowly-- and gets back to cutting off skin, fetlock, meat and bone.
"Nah," he says, and then, "not now. Reckon I'm gonna hunker down here for the winter. Gonna make jerky and dried sausage, stew, stretch it out longer."
He nods to the steaks over the fire. "But I didn't eat nothing yesterday, so..." A little celebration won't kill him, and he'd prefer to have it in company. "I can eat it first, if you don't trust it."
Oh he really knows what he's doing. And if this isn't a trick, this guy's some kind of bleeding heart too. Could be useful. At the very least she might be able to get something from him that'll tide her over a little while. Some food to see her good until she finds a settlement or something to leech off of for a little while. Groups are easier in that way, she's found.
"Yeah-- yeah, if that's okay." She says, finally coming in and taking a seat, letting herself soak up some of that heat.
Daryl hums his agreement, though he takes a moment before complying. He checks something inside the deer carcass, hums a little, and lets it go. The intestines should be fine for another minute, but he wants to get them out soon. After the girl settles down, that should be fine.
He wipes his hands on jeans that have seen better days, and pulls a blocky dowel knife out of his boot. He uses it to jab one of the steaks, taking a bite out of it while it's still skewered on the blade.
He frowns, slightly. "Shit," he says, "overcooked it."
"Better than undercooking it," Julie offers. She doesn't trust rare meat, not anymore. Some people told her it's fine, but thanks to the fucking nasty corpses everywhere, who knows what some of those animals have eaten? Might even be carrying. Better to cook the shit out of it than risk some kind of zombie tapeworm or some shit.
But that does mollify her, and Julie nods up at him to say thanks. She appreciates it.
Daryl nods, puts the food back on the makeshift grill. "All yours," he says. His private opinions on steak are just that: his, and for the moment, private. "Dig in. I gotta fix up the intestines, and-"
He frowns.
"Looks gross, I been told. You don't gotta watch."
Julie takes the food, wipes off her knife on her sleeve, and carefully cuts it into bitesize chunks that she can pick up and eat. It's as close as it gets to good manners in the current situation, and that habit hasn't left her just yet — at least not when there are other people around — her parents were fastidious about that kind of thing. A quietly happy and extremely involuntary sound slips out of her with the first mouthful, god she forgot how good real food is. Even if it's overcooked.
"People still get squeamish about that stuff?" She asks, genuinely curious. Not exactly watching, but she makes no move to look away either. Wants to keep this guy in her line of sight as much as possible.
A happy kid (young adult? Whatever. Everybody in this world looks too damn young or too damn old, malnutrition having eaten away at babyfat and full faces) makes Daryl happy. He's nearly whistling when he pulls the intestines out. He strings them up on a series of nails he banged into the far wall hours ago, and in lieu of an answer, begins the bloody business.
Holding the long bloody tube over a bucket, he begins with his thumbs to work the meat of the intestine out of the casing, until he's left with an empty organ that looks plenty, but not exactly, like a used rubber. The falling meat sloshes into a bucket, filling it up slowly, and from the care Daryl puts into it, this is clearly delicate work. It's also clearly something he's done a hundred times before.
"Not exactly what you get on the Home Cooking Network." It was the Food Network. (Daryl has never in his life had cable.)
Julie wrinkles her nose a little at the smell, but otherwise doesn't seem super bothered by the whole thing. There's so many smells happening right now anyway, what's one more. A sudden bit of recognition hits her when she looks up though. Sausage casings, of course!
"Food Network," she corrects without thinking and shrugs a shoulder, "my friends-- we used to cut school sometimes. Get high and watch it."
It hurts a bit to say out loud, like someone taking a chisel to the walls she's built over these last years — not enough to break, but enough that Julie notices it all the same — and she stills for a moment, the distant stare entirely genuine for a moment before she catches herself and goes back to eating. Regardless of her feelings, it's always useful, reminding the older folks not just that she's young, but that she was a kid when this started. That she was a child when the world fell apart around her. Even some of the most cold-hearted bastards she's met soften up when that comes up.
Daryl already seems a little soft to her, but more than that he's capable and he has a place to hole up for the worst of the winter. And she'll pull her weight, if he lets her stay.
Daryl keeps cleaning out the intestines, eventually beginning to stretch the casings inside-out to better dry them. He hooks them back up on the nails in the wall, checking each carefully for holes and tears. He talks idly while working; it feels good, in a nostalgic way, not to be utterly fucking alone while he does this. Carol used to chat with him while he showed her how to gut a deer, and Rick would shoot the shit if he was bored. Hell, Merle was a good enough companion back in the day, even if all he had to say was criticism.
"We watched Looney Tunes," Daryl says. "Or whatever we had on video." Which was either porn, action movies, or horror flicks where girls got their clothes ripped off. Daryl had found it pretty badass at the time, but he'd been seventeen in the mid-eighties. He can barely sit still for movies, now; it's been too long, and all of them seem so corny.
When it looks like the girl's gotten a fair fill of meat, he asks-- "this'll go faster with two people. And you ain't squeamish."
It's an offer. She doesn't have to. But at her age, Daryl was always wild to prove his worth.
She was content to just sit there and watch, but he makes the offer and part of her immediately puffs up with the need to show him that she can totally cut up an animal. Never mind that she's never done it before, how hard could it be? You just cut up some meat.
If he was planning to hurt her somehow, he would've tried by now, it's not been long but he seems like a straightforward guy. Not the type to play with his food. Not to say she's totally let her guard down, it could be some weird act, and she's hesitant as she comes over. But she does come over and frown at the carcass the same way someone might frown at a broken down car with no idea how to fix it.
"How do I...?" Julie gestures with her knife as she trails off. Never butchered anything more than a grocery store chicken in her life.
She reaches for the knife, which means she has other plans than he'd intended. He'd wanted her to watch the sausage fixings, but he remembers Andrea at the farm, always pitching a fit about women's work. It'd ended in him getting shot in the head; he'd like to think he's learned from that fucking lesson.
So he'll mind the bloody slurry filling those buckets, and she can cut jerky.
He pulls a haunch of deer onto the table, largely skinned, very bloody, and begins cutting it in thin strips. "Jerky. Cook it and salt it, it'll last a damn long time. But it's gotta be thin-- like this, see." He cuts another slice.
And then he hands her the knife, hilt toward her. If she wanted to stab him, now would be the time. To get trust, he's learned, you have to give it.
Cut it thin. She can do that. She stares at the blade for what feels like is definitely a weird amount of time before taking it with a decisive nod. He's been nothing but kind and welcoming so far, and it's not like she hasn't had her own knife out this whole time, but something about the gesture genuinely stuns her.
"... My name's Julie, by the way," she offers, as if in exchange. Staring at that hunk of meat on the table and trying to figure out where to start.
When she starts cutting, it is almost torturously slow, and she bites her lip in intense concentration. Rather go slow and get it right than go faster and fuck it up though.
And Daryl settles down next to the campfire and sets a bucket of blood grease and guts over the fire. It takes some reinforcement, more than coat hangers will do you, but he gets there, and begins to slowly stir. He watches her out of the corner of his eye, and she does well enough. Being hard on herself, by the looks of it.
"You cut it too thick," he says, "you can just cut it in half. Any piece you cut too small, toss it in here."
He gestures to the bucket and its contents. "Sausage fixings."
Too thick, trim it down. Too small, into the bucket. Part of Julie bristles instinctively, weirdly insulted by the idea that she might not instantly be amazing at this thing she's never done before, but Julie forces that down with a nod. Barely even looks at the bucket except to confirm where it is.
Mostly, at least initially, she was doing this just to prove she's useful enough to keep around, but now she's got a task and feels that need to prove more than a willingness to work. Like she has to be good at this or there'll be some kind of consequence.
When she does eventually slip up and slice a piece too small, Julie curses under her breath. It's not outwardly much, just a quiet "ah-- shit," under her breath as would be normal for any small mistake, but it's obvious by the force in the way she tosses the piece of meat in the bucket that she's pissed about it.
It's kind of sickening, recognizing yourself in others. Daryl remembers being smaller than this girl, Julie, and absolutely goddamn terrified of fucking a single thing up. His father would watch him with a hawk's eyes, beer in hand, waiting for a mistake. It took years for Daryl to realize a fuckup wasn't asking for it. Sometimes, decades later, he still forgets.
He turns his head away, not watching Julie and the knife. If she screws up, she can have the safety of Daryl's ignorance. It would have calmed him, at least.
Another thing, then, an idle distraction. The big man with the knife and the fire isn't even paying attention. He lights a cigarette. "You from 'round here?"
Her parents never once raised a hand to her, even when Julie was at her absolute worst and came home spitting venom, never once. But the perfectionism and self-denigration they instilled is pervasive, wrapped around every piece of herself. Tear a kid down, they'll be miserable for a day. Teach them to do it themself and they'll be fucking miserable, hearing your voice in the back of their head for the rest of their life.
In that way, not having Daryl watching doesn't make a huge difference, because it's not really him she's worried about disappointing. In another though, being the only witness does let her slow down just a little. Take a breath.
"No," she shakes her head, "Canada." Most Americans don't know shit about Canada beyond 'Toronto and Quebec are there' so she doesn't bother with any more specifics, in the same way she can tell this guy is Southern and if he said which state he was from it would mean shit all to her.
No, he doesn't know shit about Canada. The furthest north he's been is Virginia, and already the cold makes him wish he didn't have skin to prickle like this in frozen air. At least this girl knows how to deal with real cold, the cold that makes you think you're burning, the cold that puts you to sleep.
Can it get like that, up in Virginia? He doesn't want to know. He suspects he'll find out.
"Daryl," he says, over his shoulder. He's still hesitant to look straight at her work, unsure if he'd be able to hold back some critical comment that, honestly, doesn't completely matter. Still, blanking her out and staring at the wall's goddamn creepy, even he knows that.
It's the first she's looked at him since she started working, when Julie glances over at the question, and the sight of Daryl just facing the wall smoking a cigarette almost makes her laugh because of how strange it is. She appreciates the gesture, at least, even if the result has Daryl looking like a crazy person.
"Picked a bad time to run away from home," is the answer she settles on, a little wry in that 'I have to laugh or I'll go insane,' sort of way, because of course she would've rather been with her family when the world went to shit, spent plenty of time wondering if her parents survived, if they're still alive. If they think she's just dead on the mountain somewhere or what.
She frowns, shakes her head and shrugs. "Just... Kept moving after that. No plan or anything."
Daryl has never considered he doesn't look like a crazy person. White trash is known for their meth and their moonshine, not for their sterling personalities. He remembers the person he's been; he remembers the person he still is.
(If she were older, would he have tried to kill her? Seems reasonable.)
He can't comment on running away from home, because it'll open up a wound like a rotting carcass, maggots spilling out like marbles. He ran away from home a few times, too. Thing is, nobody ever noticed.
"Goin' south's smart," he says. "Winter's bad enough here. Gotta be worse up there."
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"Nah," he says, and then, "not now. Reckon I'm gonna hunker down here for the winter. Gonna make jerky and dried sausage, stew, stretch it out longer."
He nods to the steaks over the fire. "But I didn't eat nothing yesterday, so..." A little celebration won't kill him, and he'd prefer to have it in company. "I can eat it first, if you don't trust it."
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"Yeah-- yeah, if that's okay." She says, finally coming in and taking a seat, letting herself soak up some of that heat.
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He wipes his hands on jeans that have seen better days, and pulls a blocky dowel knife out of his boot. He uses it to jab one of the steaks, taking a bite out of it while it's still skewered on the blade.
He frowns, slightly. "Shit," he says, "overcooked it."
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But that does mollify her, and Julie nods up at him to say thanks. She appreciates it.
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He frowns.
"Looks gross, I been told. You don't gotta watch."
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"People still get squeamish about that stuff?" She asks, genuinely curious. Not exactly watching, but she makes no move to look away either. Wants to keep this guy in her line of sight as much as possible.
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Holding the long bloody tube over a bucket, he begins with his thumbs to work the meat of the intestine out of the casing, until he's left with an empty organ that looks plenty, but not exactly, like a used rubber. The falling meat sloshes into a bucket, filling it up slowly, and from the care Daryl puts into it, this is clearly delicate work. It's also clearly something he's done a hundred times before.
"Not exactly what you get on the Home Cooking Network." It was the Food Network. (Daryl has never in his life had cable.)
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"Food Network," she corrects without thinking and shrugs a shoulder, "my friends-- we used to cut school sometimes. Get high and watch it."
It hurts a bit to say out loud, like someone taking a chisel to the walls she's built over these last years — not enough to break, but enough that Julie notices it all the same — and she stills for a moment, the distant stare entirely genuine for a moment before she catches herself and goes back to eating. Regardless of her feelings, it's always useful, reminding the older folks not just that she's young, but that she was a kid when this started. That she was a child when the world fell apart around her. Even some of the most cold-hearted bastards she's met soften up when that comes up.
Daryl already seems a little soft to her, but more than that he's capable and he has a place to hole up for the worst of the winter. And she'll pull her weight, if he lets her stay.
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"We watched Looney Tunes," Daryl says. "Or whatever we had on video." Which was either porn, action movies, or horror flicks where girls got their clothes ripped off. Daryl had found it pretty badass at the time, but he'd been seventeen in the mid-eighties. He can barely sit still for movies, now; it's been too long, and all of them seem so corny.
When it looks like the girl's gotten a fair fill of meat, he asks-- "this'll go faster with two people. And you ain't squeamish."
It's an offer. She doesn't have to. But at her age, Daryl was always wild to prove his worth.
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If he was planning to hurt her somehow, he would've tried by now, it's not been long but he seems like a straightforward guy. Not the type to play with his food. Not to say she's totally let her guard down, it could be some weird act, and she's hesitant as she comes over. But she does come over and frown at the carcass the same way someone might frown at a broken down car with no idea how to fix it.
"How do I...?" Julie gestures with her knife as she trails off. Never butchered anything more than a grocery store chicken in her life.
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So he'll mind the bloody slurry filling those buckets, and she can cut jerky.
He pulls a haunch of deer onto the table, largely skinned, very bloody, and begins cutting it in thin strips. "Jerky. Cook it and salt it, it'll last a damn long time. But it's gotta be thin-- like this, see." He cuts another slice.
And then he hands her the knife, hilt toward her. If she wanted to stab him, now would be the time. To get trust, he's learned, you have to give it.
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"... My name's Julie, by the way," she offers, as if in exchange. Staring at that hunk of meat on the table and trying to figure out where to start.
When she starts cutting, it is almost torturously slow, and she bites her lip in intense concentration. Rather go slow and get it right than go faster and fuck it up though.
warning linked image is, uh, blood.
"You cut it too thick," he says, "you can just cut it in half. Any piece you cut too small, toss it in here."
He gestures to the bucket and its contents. "Sausage fixings."
delicious blood slurry
Mostly, at least initially, she was doing this just to prove she's useful enough to keep around, but now she's got a task and feels that need to prove more than a willingness to work. Like she has to be good at this or there'll be some kind of consequence.
When she does eventually slip up and slice a piece too small, Julie curses under her breath. It's not outwardly much, just a quiet "ah-- shit," under her breath as would be normal for any small mistake, but it's obvious by the force in the way she tosses the piece of meat in the bucket that she's pissed about it.
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He turns his head away, not watching Julie and the knife. If she screws up, she can have the safety of Daryl's ignorance. It would have calmed him, at least.
Another thing, then, an idle distraction. The big man with the knife and the fire isn't even paying attention. He lights a cigarette. "You from 'round here?"
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In that way, not having Daryl watching doesn't make a huge difference, because it's not really him she's worried about disappointing. In another though, being the only witness does let her slow down just a little. Take a breath.
"No," she shakes her head, "Canada." Most Americans don't know shit about Canada beyond 'Toronto and Quebec are there' so she doesn't bother with any more specifics, in the same way she can tell this guy is Southern and if he said which state he was from it would mean shit all to her.
"You never told me your name."
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Can it get like that, up in Virginia? He doesn't want to know. He suspects he'll find out.
"Daryl," he says, over his shoulder. He's still hesitant to look straight at her work, unsure if he'd be able to hold back some critical comment that, honestly, doesn't completely matter. Still, blanking her out and staring at the wall's goddamn creepy, even he knows that.
"How'd you get all the way down here?"
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"Picked a bad time to run away from home," is the answer she settles on, a little wry in that 'I have to laugh or I'll go insane,' sort of way, because of course she would've rather been with her family when the world went to shit, spent plenty of time wondering if her parents survived, if they're still alive. If they think she's just dead on the mountain somewhere or what.
She frowns, shakes her head and shrugs. "Just... Kept moving after that. No plan or anything."
army crawls back 2 u.
(If she were older, would he have tried to kill her? Seems reasonable.)
He can't comment on running away from home, because it'll open up a wound like a rotting carcass, maggots spilling out like marbles. He ran away from home a few times, too. Thing is, nobody ever noticed.
"Goin' south's smart," he says. "Winter's bad enough here. Gotta be worse up there."
Which makes him think- "You cold?"