Her smile lodges a complaint in Daryl's throat, and he takes a moment to smell the earth, feel the breeze, and forget about choking.
"Yeah," he says, "I'll kill 'em for Carol. That shit always makes her-..." He raises one hand, wiggling it a little. Shaky, he means, but saying it aloud feels like a betrayal. If Maggie's read his letters, she knows her boy died; there's no point in bringing up the tangled spectres of their shared pasts. Half the time, it feels written on their foreheads.
"Could try keeping 'em." They probably can't, she knows. They'd need more than a sty for a creature that fast and mean, let alone several. But Daryl knows hunting, and she knows farming; between the two of them, she has to believe they could keep a litter of hogs under control. If not this time, sometime. "Not long, just until they're a little bigger."
They'd still have to die eventually, of course, but they wouldn't bother Carol half so much when they did.
Daryl welcomes the end of his expertise. "You're the farmer," he says, with something like cheer.
Against his better judgement, he reaches over to pat her shoulder, and is delighted to discover the touch of skin to cloth sparks no fire in him. It's the same as it ever was-- he can notice things, appreciate them, but he's never driven to action the way his brother, his uncle was. He never loses control.
Maggie's already thinking it though as she rips off the end of the gauze and tucks it in against her palm. They'll drive them toward Alexandria, pen them up as best they can, and find a way to keep them for the long haul. It'll be worth it to try.
"Now that we got that boar?" she asks, with some warmth. After she takes a swig of the water, she puts it and the bandages away. "I'm great. All we gotta do is get all the hogs home, and we're in the clear."
Her relief is his. Maggie's capacity to bounce back is something he once thought was facile, disrespecting the weight of failure. Years gone, now, and he sees it for what it is, and how hard it must be to make yourself a monument to success.
He lets himself smile. "We'll get 'em all," he says. "C'mon." He offers her a hand up.
She takes it - with her good hand this time - and pulls herself up. For a moment, they're standing in each other's space again, sweaty and tired and close enough to breathe the same air.
"Yeah," she agrees, and goes to get her bow. "Got a lotta work ahead of us."
They don't stop moving until dark, and during the summer, that's one hell of a day. But by the end of things, the sow and her ill-fated children are all back at Alexandria. The mother's butchered, the entirety of Alexandria buzzing with excitement over the thought of meat tomorrow, and Maggie's put in a word with the right people to figure out a long-term solution for the piglets.
She's swallowing a yawn as they walk back to the house together. "Gimme a couple days before we go for another boar. I haven't run like that in - I don't know how long."
Daryl feels like he could sleep for a week, but something in his bones still buzzes with life or liveliness. The shape of Maggie's face, framed in the candlelight of his shitty room, the both of them having gone through the same thing-- it's like before, but better. Someone who could hold their own, she's his partner, if only for today. She saw who he really is out there, and kept the pace.
He lets Dog lick his face and doesn't think more on it.
"Won't be for a while," he says, eyes closed, head sinking in his pillow. "Hoard scared off most of the game. S'why the sow and your deer stuck out like a sore thumb."
He doesn't sound annoyed, though, far from it. A smile lingers on his face, and his voice is light.
She needs to go upstairs, say goodnight to Hershel and try to clean herself up before she collapses into bed. The kind of work they do doesn't actually ends, just pauses long enough for a little sleep before it starts all over again. But for the first time in a while, Maggie wants a few minutes in between.
So she sits at the edge of his bed, petting a very satisfied Dog, who's breaking every rule of life with Daryl and experiencing no comeuppance whatsoever. And eventually, after she's scritched the dog's ears enough, her hand falls somewhere in the vicinity of Daryl's, resting lightly next to it.
"Ended up being close to a hundred-fifty pounds," she tells him. "It won't last us forever, but we'll get by until something else sticks out."
"Explains why my back feels like shit," he murmurs, unable to keep smiling. A dangerous position, when Dog is trying to lick all the salt out of his beard. He can't find it within himself to care. "Should've let you carry it."
Never mind that he resolutely refused to entertain the suggestion just hours earlier. She had her hands full with the piglets.
"After all that running?" She snorts. "I'd've told them to skin you along with the boar."
It's still hard to believe they survived, frankly, and that they're here now. That Daryl's an old hand at nearly getting killed by feral hogs, for that matter. And yet they'd managed to get away without much more than a scratch between them.
Which reminds her - "You hear about another one, bring me with. I don't like the idea of you doing the whole thing on your own."
He shifts, a bit, and pretends to himself it's under Dog's weight; the beast has his huge paws on either side of Daryl's collarbones, like a sloppy strangle hold.
"I was doing it when I was Hershel's age," he says, and realizes almost immediately how nakedly true that is. He isn't ashamed, no, ashamed isn't the right word. Surprised? He's never spoken frankly of the sort of subsistence living he did before the end of things, for nearly forty straight years. Sure, he figures everybody knew, everybody realized eventually, from Daryl's lack of stories about his life before and his usefulness outside whatever walls they'd been penned into. But he's never just up and said it.
And now he has, and it feels... different. Not quite bad. Maybe he's just too tired to feel shitty about it.
"Hunting boar on your own? At eight?" Catching his food on his own? Of course he was. For reasons that were probably both terrible and unavoidable, she'd bet. Maggie's reminiscences around him tend to stick to the recent past, their shared past; she'd rather not leave him under the impression she might be expecting him to talk about a time he wants to keep to himself.
Her hand finds his, squeezing. "You're a good hunter, Daryl. Best I've ever met. If something kills you out there, it won't be on account of anything but bad luck."
"Sent me out to draw it back," he says with a shrug. When Merle had found out, he'd tried to fight his father, and Daryl doesn't remember much more about that night, maybe because he doesn't want to. He pets Dog instead, and refocuses his mind on warmth and closeness, something infinitely easier to do when tired.
It's something that takes no effort at all, with her hand in his. This is enough for him, he's sure. A moment, crystallized in memory, and he'll always have it. He squeezes back, letting the touch linger.
"Nah. I own the kills, so I own the screwups. Just how it is."
Of course they did. Maggie doesn't trust her tongue to answer with something that isn't dripping with venom, so she doesn't try. It radiates off her, though - anger on his behalf, this little boy thrown to worse than wolves, decades too late. It's a good thing everyone involved is probably dead.
Better they just talk about today's hunt.
"I get half credit," she says, trying to tame that out-of-place fury into teasing. His hand's hard in hers, rough with calluses, but gentle for all that. That's Daryl, the softness in him preserved in small, strange places. "But you did a hell of a job out there, you know."
Daryl concentrates on the feeling of her hand in his, mapping it to memory. He could curl up in this feeling, sleep well, and never wake. His smile, small and lop-sided, stays in place. Dog settles his head on Daryl's shoulder, and they both stare up at Maggie in the candle light.
"Nah," he says, "it was all you. Just set it up and dragged it back. Taking you on more hunts 'cause you're good at it."
Not because he needs the help, all out on his lonesome.
"I didn't fire a single shot," she points out, not to argue but to give credit where it's due. Daryl actually killed the thing, and he had the strength to bring his kill back without help. "But I'll come out with you when I have the time. Probably safer that way."
Not that he'll need her for deer or checking the trapline, but if there's another boar? She likes their chances better when it's both of them after it.
He's looking at her, his face tired and lined - but happy, all the same, happier than she remembers seeing him in a while - and for a moment, all she wants to do is lie down there beside him and Dog, and fall asleep with an arm around his chest. It's sudden, and it's bewildering in its intensity, and if she's going to look over that feeling and make some sense of it, she's going to have to do it someplace private.
She swallows.
"I better make sure Hershel didn't trash the place while we were gone," she tells him, and on instinct, she leans down to brush a kiss over Daryl's forehead. It's good night and good work and Jesus, I need to get back to my side of the house all in one. "Get some sleep."
She kisses him, and it's not anything intense, just something women have a habit of doing with him. Mostly Carol, when he's real fucked up, and for a moment Daryl wonders if she's noticed some hurt. He can't make sense of it, really, but he lets it happen, closing his eyes and letting it pass.
He'll keep that, too, because it was freely given.
"Tell the kid goodnight for me," he murmurs, already turning away, curling up on the bed around the dog taking up most of it. "And that it was your kill."
"Our kill," she corrects him, and her hand lingers at his shoulder for a moment. And then she goes to bed.
Hershel's already heard the news, and he's ecstatic. From the sound of it, he and Judith and RJ have been imagining how it went down all day, and maybe got into an argument over who actually killed the thing, the battle lines drawn unsurprisingly. "Tell Jude I said we both did," Maggie says, right before she kisses him good night, and Hershel's disappointment is palpable. Team Mom was clearly supposed to win.
She's up a long time, lying sleepless in her bed and listening to the house settle around her. Eventually, sleep overtakes her restless thoughts, and she's so tired she sleeps until late morning. Everyone brushes off her apologies, she throws herself back into rebuilding, and the world goes on. Her thoughts keep circling, but at least her hands are busy while they do.
After dinner, a few nights later - Judith and RJ having come over for the promise of Uncle Daryl's company and Aunt Maggie's cooking - Maggie makes a deal with the kids: they don't have to wash the dishes if they spend the dish-washing time reading something. It's pure bribery on her part, and it works, the three of them thundering up to Hershel's room, where she's not convinced they'll actually pull any books off the shelf, but at least they're guaranteed to stay away from anyplace a chore's happening.
"You wanna give me a hand?" she asks Daryl, as she gathers up the plates. "I wanted to talk to you about something."
Edited (finish your sentences, dove) 2022-11-17 17:59 (UTC)
Time moves on. It's comfortable enough, reminding him more than a little of the best days in the prison. There's more stability, maybe, but it's the same rhythm-- he's a known entity, given his own space, but never quite exhiled to solitude unless he chooses it. Sometimes he chooses it. Some days he disappears into the wilds, to think or hunt or forage, to set or check traps. He doesn't tell anyone at first-- not out of any sense of secrecy, he just forgets. But unlike in the prison, he absence is noted. Lydia worries for him, Hershel and Jude ask over his whereabouts, Carol tuts, and he thinks, maybe, that Maggie gives him a look.
He leaves a note next time, OUT HUNTING, and everybody gets over their goddamn selves.
Still, it's strange to be a presence notable enough to be missed. No one shrugs off his absence anymore; he's made a shape in their lives that, once gone, leaves a hole.
It keeps him up at night. He doesn't tell anyone, but he knows he can't leave, now. He left Leah, and burnt that right down. He can't keep leaving, but how can he stay?
Maggie's request for help is a welcome distraction, though he's not sure how much good he's going to do. He can wash dishes, but Carol thinks his idea of cleanliness is lacking, and he privately suspects Maggie is just too polite (or just doesn't care) to agree aloud. But he washes, he rinses, whatever he's directed to do. And he asks, because wanting to talk to you is always code for I need you to find or catch something.
"What d'you need?" He passes a clean dish to Maggie, notices his thumb has left a smeared print, and takes it back to clean again. This would have been excruciatingly embarrassing, a few years back.
Daryl comes and goes like a feral cat, and Maggie doesn't mind it, for the most part. It doesn't change much besides how many plates she sets out at dinner - and it likely makes his life a little easier, having some time away from the house. Hershel's not always noisy, but Maggie's still not convinced they won't eventually wear out their welcome. She keeps her attention on it, keeping an eye out for the point where Daryl's quiet turns bitter or frustrated, but it doesn't come.
Maybe she shouldn't be surprised. He's been good with kids from the first time he picked Judith up as a baby. But she is, all the same, if only because he's always been solitary by nature, too.
"Just to talk." She's used to We need to talk meaning Something's wrong. That it doesn't, for Daryl, is strangely charming.
It doesn't, however, make starting this conversation any easier. She takes a breath, trying to remember what she'd rehearsed in her head earlier in the day, about the time they've spent together lately and how it's changed things - but she can't. Shaking her head, she tells him, "I'm not gonna beat around the bush here, Daryl. I think that'd be an insult to both of us. The long and short of it is, I'm attracted to you. And I think you might feel the same way."
Just to talk is never just that. People don't need to set dates for chatting. He's figuring he said something that upset Hershel, or the dog crapped on something important, or they're moving out-- nothing he likes the thought of, but all survivable. And then she just... says it.
Things go white in his mind, like bleach on paint, all runny. Embarrassment flares up next, and he turns his head. Instinctively, he's looking for Hershel. What if the kid hears him? Their places reversed, he'd kill himself in his sleep.
Their places reversed, he'd have a dad worth killing over. And- and no, no, thank fuck, it's not like that. It'll never be like that. Staring at his hands, he goes over what Maggie actually said. Attracted-- hilarious, but fine-- not anything more.
She's Maggie. He has to remind himself that. This isn't a game meant to snare him, it's not even like verbal dancing with Leah, one wrong step and everything's screaming. Maggie is a flat plane of true intention; you know where you stand with her, and Daryl thinks she prides herself on that.
He takes a wheezing sigh, trying to remember to breathe. Is he red in the face? Feels like it. (Nut up, Little Brother.) He stares her in the eyes, and asks what he's pretty sure is the only question worth asking: "What d'you wanna do about it?"
"Talk to you," is her immediate answer, neither backing down nor looking away. Life's complicated enough without trying to kiss Daryl on the mouth without warning. "After that, we'll figure out the rest."
Anything she does, with anyone, needs some conversation attached to it - clarification, if nothing else, that whatever else happens, Hershel comes first - but that necessity multiplies with someone as skittish as the man standing next to her. Oh, he might be the ideal person to have at your side in an emergency, but ask him to talk about his feelings, and he looks like he might vomit and run off at the same time.
So she figures she'll go first, in hopes it'll save him some embarrassment. She goes back to scrubbing a spatula, trying to think of everything she'd meant to say to him. "If you aren't interested in doing anything about it, we won't. I'm not a lovelorn teenager - we can stay friends, if we need to. Nothing'll change. It's up to you."
Maybe that's a lot to put on him, but there's no point in laying out what she needs from him if his answer is thanks, but no thanks. And it still could be. All the desire in the world doesn't matter if the idea of exploring what's there between them sounds like more trouble than it's worth.
Daryl ducks his head in relief, realizes this is a coward's move, and looks up again. He keeps his eyes on her face, expression carefully blank, though he's sure that just makes him look pissed off. He's never been able to keep his face neutral, not totally. People always read something in it, even if it's not what he wants, not what he's actually hiding.
He hopes she doesn't think he's pissed-- she knows him too well for that, right? Then again, wasn't everything with Leah mostly screaming? Maybe she knows him too well.
And he's dithered too much. Now's the part where he's gotta say something, and all he can think is- "Good." That isn't- "I- shit."
A long breath. He puts his dishtowel down. His hands are damp, slightly soapy, and for some reason that just compounds what an idiot he feels like.
"Ain't got much, uh, practice with this." The idea that this needs to be stated is ridiculous-- it should be obvious to everyone who knows him, that love is a shell game as far as he's concerned, but he doesn't know what else to say. "Just want you happy."
There's a brief, cold moment when it sounds like he wants to leave it at that, friendship, and she resigns herself to the fact. It won't matter. They won't speak of it again, to each other or anyone else, and that'll be the end of things.
And then he speaks again, and she can breathe again. They're already nearly out of dishes; for the moment, she wipes her hands off on her jeans and turns a little to look up at him.
"I don't mind that." Frankly, she figured that out a long time ago - it's not hard to sniff out the fact that Daryl'd rather keep his own company than risk someone else making him regret what he did with his heart. It's the second bit that's a little more troublesome. "But I'm not going into anything if it's not what makes you happy, too."
One of the snags that comes with a relationship with Maggie Rhee: It does require wanting things. More than that, it requires acknowledging as much, out loud.
Which is a normal, even kind thing to say, and it forces Daryl to reorient himself a little. First physically-- he takes a step back, then to the side, grabs a kitchen chair and parks himself in it.
What makes him happy? He's never done the sort of things Glenn did for Maggie, and he's never gonna be able to. Happiness is not failing the fucking objective. More than that, though, between two people?
On their backs in the dirt, he watched an eclipse through Leah's fingers. Through a cemetery, he carried Beth on his shoulders. In a car, he had an entire argument about music with Michonne without ever saying a word aloud. In a deep wood, he gave Carol familiar flowers. In the darkness, he called Rick's name, and was answered back.
Daryl huffs a sigh, and sounds like nothing so much as an old dog. "You got any of that wine left?"
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"Yeah," he says, "I'll kill 'em for Carol. That shit always makes her-..." He raises one hand, wiggling it a little. Shaky, he means, but saying it aloud feels like a betrayal. If Maggie's read his letters, she knows her boy died; there's no point in bringing up the tangled spectres of their shared pasts. Half the time, it feels written on their foreheads.
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They'd still have to die eventually, of course, but they wouldn't bother Carol half so much when they did.
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Against his better judgement, he reaches over to pat her shoulder, and is delighted to discover the touch of skin to cloth sparks no fire in him. It's the same as it ever was-- he can notice things, appreciate them, but he's never driven to action the way his brother, his uncle was. He never loses control.
He exhales. "You doin' alright?"
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"Now that we got that boar?" she asks, with some warmth. After she takes a swig of the water, she puts it and the bandages away. "I'm great. All we gotta do is get all the hogs home, and we're in the clear."
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He lets himself smile. "We'll get 'em all," he says. "C'mon." He offers her a hand up.
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"Yeah," she agrees, and goes to get her bow. "Got a lotta work ahead of us."
They don't stop moving until dark, and during the summer, that's one hell of a day. But by the end of things, the sow and her ill-fated children are all back at Alexandria. The mother's butchered, the entirety of Alexandria buzzing with excitement over the thought of meat tomorrow, and Maggie's put in a word with the right people to figure out a long-term solution for the piglets.
She's swallowing a yawn as they walk back to the house together. "Gimme a couple days before we go for another boar. I haven't run like that in - I don't know how long."
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He lets Dog lick his face and doesn't think more on it.
"Won't be for a while," he says, eyes closed, head sinking in his pillow. "Hoard scared off most of the game. S'why the sow and your deer stuck out like a sore thumb."
He doesn't sound annoyed, though, far from it. A smile lingers on his face, and his voice is light.
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So she sits at the edge of his bed, petting a very satisfied Dog, who's breaking every rule of life with Daryl and experiencing no comeuppance whatsoever. And eventually, after she's scritched the dog's ears enough, her hand falls somewhere in the vicinity of Daryl's, resting lightly next to it.
"Ended up being close to a hundred-fifty pounds," she tells him. "It won't last us forever, but we'll get by until something else sticks out."
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Never mind that he resolutely refused to entertain the suggestion just hours earlier. She had her hands full with the piglets.
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It's still hard to believe they survived, frankly, and that they're here now. That Daryl's an old hand at nearly getting killed by feral hogs, for that matter. And yet they'd managed to get away without much more than a scratch between them.
Which reminds her - "You hear about another one, bring me with. I don't like the idea of you doing the whole thing on your own."
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"I was doing it when I was Hershel's age," he says, and realizes almost immediately how nakedly true that is. He isn't ashamed, no, ashamed isn't the right word. Surprised? He's never spoken frankly of the sort of subsistence living he did before the end of things, for nearly forty straight years. Sure, he figures everybody knew, everybody realized eventually, from Daryl's lack of stories about his life before and his usefulness outside whatever walls they'd been penned into. But he's never just up and said it.
And now he has, and it feels... different. Not quite bad. Maybe he's just too tired to feel shitty about it.
"If I get in trouble out there, I deserve it."
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Her hand finds his, squeezing. "You're a good hunter, Daryl. Best I've ever met. If something kills you out there, it won't be on account of anything but bad luck."
So don't get yourself killed over nothing.
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It's something that takes no effort at all, with her hand in his. This is enough for him, he's sure. A moment, crystallized in memory, and he'll always have it. He squeezes back, letting the touch linger.
"Nah. I own the kills, so I own the screwups. Just how it is."
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Better they just talk about today's hunt.
"I get half credit," she says, trying to tame that out-of-place fury into teasing. His hand's hard in hers, rough with calluses, but gentle for all that. That's Daryl, the softness in him preserved in small, strange places. "But you did a hell of a job out there, you know."
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"Nah," he says, "it was all you. Just set it up and dragged it back. Taking you on more hunts 'cause you're good at it."
Not because he needs the help, all out on his lonesome.
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Not that he'll need her for deer or checking the trapline, but if there's another boar? She likes their chances better when it's both of them after it.
He's looking at her, his face tired and lined - but happy, all the same, happier than she remembers seeing him in a while - and for a moment, all she wants to do is lie down there beside him and Dog, and fall asleep with an arm around his chest. It's sudden, and it's bewildering in its intensity, and if she's going to look over that feeling and make some sense of it, she's going to have to do it someplace private.
She swallows.
"I better make sure Hershel didn't trash the place while we were gone," she tells him, and on instinct, she leans down to brush a kiss over Daryl's forehead. It's good night and good work and Jesus, I need to get back to my side of the house all in one. "Get some sleep."
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He'll keep that, too, because it was freely given.
"Tell the kid goodnight for me," he murmurs, already turning away, curling up on the bed around the dog taking up most of it. "And that it was your kill."
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Hershel's already heard the news, and he's ecstatic. From the sound of it, he and Judith and RJ have been imagining how it went down all day, and maybe got into an argument over who actually killed the thing, the battle lines drawn unsurprisingly. "Tell Jude I said we both did," Maggie says, right before she kisses him good night, and Hershel's disappointment is palpable. Team Mom was clearly supposed to win.
She's up a long time, lying sleepless in her bed and listening to the house settle around her. Eventually, sleep overtakes her restless thoughts, and she's so tired she sleeps until late morning. Everyone brushes off her apologies, she throws herself back into rebuilding, and the world goes on. Her thoughts keep circling, but at least her hands are busy while they do.
After dinner, a few nights later - Judith and RJ having come over for the promise of Uncle Daryl's company and Aunt Maggie's cooking - Maggie makes a deal with the kids: they don't have to wash the dishes if they spend the dish-washing time reading something. It's pure bribery on her part, and it works, the three of them thundering up to Hershel's room, where she's not convinced they'll actually pull any books off the shelf, but at least they're guaranteed to stay away from anyplace a chore's happening.
"You wanna give me a hand?" she asks Daryl, as she gathers up the plates. "I wanted to talk to you about something."
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He leaves a note next time, OUT HUNTING, and everybody gets over their goddamn selves.
Still, it's strange to be a presence notable enough to be missed. No one shrugs off his absence anymore; he's made a shape in their lives that, once gone, leaves a hole.
It keeps him up at night. He doesn't tell anyone, but he knows he can't leave, now. He left Leah, and burnt that right down. He can't keep leaving, but how can he stay?
Maggie's request for help is a welcome distraction, though he's not sure how much good he's going to do. He can wash dishes, but Carol thinks his idea of cleanliness is lacking, and he privately suspects Maggie is just too polite (or just doesn't care) to agree aloud. But he washes, he rinses, whatever he's directed to do. And he asks, because wanting to talk to you is always code for I need you to find or catch something.
"What d'you need?" He passes a clean dish to Maggie, notices his thumb has left a smeared print, and takes it back to clean again. This would have been excruciatingly embarrassing, a few years back.
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Maybe she shouldn't be surprised. He's been good with kids from the first time he picked Judith up as a baby. But she is, all the same, if only because he's always been solitary by nature, too.
"Just to talk." She's used to We need to talk meaning Something's wrong. That it doesn't, for Daryl, is strangely charming.
It doesn't, however, make starting this conversation any easier. She takes a breath, trying to remember what she'd rehearsed in her head earlier in the day, about the time they've spent together lately and how it's changed things - but she can't. Shaking her head, she tells him, "I'm not gonna beat around the bush here, Daryl. I think that'd be an insult to both of us. The long and short of it is, I'm attracted to you. And I think you might feel the same way."
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Things go white in his mind, like bleach on paint, all runny. Embarrassment flares up next, and he turns his head. Instinctively, he's looking for Hershel. What if the kid hears him? Their places reversed, he'd kill himself in his sleep.
Their places reversed, he'd have a dad worth killing over. And- and no, no, thank fuck, it's not like that. It'll never be like that. Staring at his hands, he goes over what Maggie actually said. Attracted-- hilarious, but fine-- not anything more.
She's Maggie. He has to remind himself that. This isn't a game meant to snare him, it's not even like verbal dancing with Leah, one wrong step and everything's screaming. Maggie is a flat plane of true intention; you know where you stand with her, and Daryl thinks she prides herself on that.
He takes a wheezing sigh, trying to remember to breathe. Is he red in the face? Feels like it. (Nut up, Little Brother.) He stares her in the eyes, and asks what he's pretty sure is the only question worth asking: "What d'you wanna do about it?"
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Anything she does, with anyone, needs some conversation attached to it - clarification, if nothing else, that whatever else happens, Hershel comes first - but that necessity multiplies with someone as skittish as the man standing next to her. Oh, he might be the ideal person to have at your side in an emergency, but ask him to talk about his feelings, and he looks like he might vomit and run off at the same time.
So she figures she'll go first, in hopes it'll save him some embarrassment. She goes back to scrubbing a spatula, trying to think of everything she'd meant to say to him. "If you aren't interested in doing anything about it, we won't. I'm not a lovelorn teenager - we can stay friends, if we need to. Nothing'll change. It's up to you."
Maybe that's a lot to put on him, but there's no point in laying out what she needs from him if his answer is thanks, but no thanks. And it still could be. All the desire in the world doesn't matter if the idea of exploring what's there between them sounds like more trouble than it's worth.
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He hopes she doesn't think he's pissed-- she knows him too well for that, right? Then again, wasn't everything with Leah mostly screaming? Maybe she knows him too well.
And he's dithered too much. Now's the part where he's gotta say something, and all he can think is- "Good." That isn't- "I- shit."
A long breath. He puts his dishtowel down. His hands are damp, slightly soapy, and for some reason that just compounds what an idiot he feels like.
"Ain't got much, uh, practice with this." The idea that this needs to be stated is ridiculous-- it should be obvious to everyone who knows him, that love is a shell game as far as he's concerned, but he doesn't know what else to say. "Just want you happy."
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And then he speaks again, and she can breathe again. They're already nearly out of dishes; for the moment, she wipes her hands off on her jeans and turns a little to look up at him.
"I don't mind that." Frankly, she figured that out a long time ago - it's not hard to sniff out the fact that Daryl'd rather keep his own company than risk someone else making him regret what he did with his heart. It's the second bit that's a little more troublesome. "But I'm not going into anything if it's not what makes you happy, too."
One of the snags that comes with a relationship with Maggie Rhee: It does require wanting things. More than that, it requires acknowledging as much, out loud.
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What makes him happy? He's never done the sort of things Glenn did for Maggie, and he's never gonna be able to. Happiness is not failing the fucking objective. More than that, though, between two people?
On their backs in the dirt, he watched an eclipse through Leah's fingers. Through a cemetery, he carried Beth on his shoulders. In a car, he had an entire argument about music with Michonne without ever saying a word aloud. In a deep wood, he gave Carol familiar flowers. In the darkness, he called Rick's name, and was answered back.
Daryl huffs a sigh, and sounds like nothing so much as an old dog. "You got any of that wine left?"
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