There he
went, sneaking out into the trees in the middle of the night, casting sneaky
glances over his shoulder and hoping nobody would notice.
Daryl Dixon
didn’t realize one thing: Beth Greene was on to him. She now hid amongst the trees,
watching him approach while he thought he was alone. She didn’t know where he was going on these middle-of-the-night trips, which was why she was following him now. He’d tried
to teach her everything he knew about stealth and tracking and she’d been a
damn good student. She used her skills now to track him. He didn’t hear her ease along behind him until he came to a dead
tree that had split open, probably from a lightning strike. It was burned and
had been that way for years.
He gave one
final glance around before digging into the tree. He brought out a fairly large
box that he sat on the ground and opened. He rooted around for a few moments
and Beth wondered what was in it.
She
sometimes worried that, after all they’d been through since losing the prison,
he would turn to drugs as a way to cope. She hoped to God he wasn’t coming out
in the middle of the night to get high. She waited, she listened, and finally
she heard a crunching sound. Frowning, she decided to move forward, not
bothering to mask the sound of her approach.
Daryl
whirled around, keeping one hand behind his back, and faced her with his mouth full of something that crunched. A
crumb fell from the corner of his mouth and bounced off his chin whiskers. They
remained there a few moments just staring at one another; Daryl in surprise, Beth in
confusion.
“Daryl, what
do you have there?”
He
swallowed, waited a moment, and then brought his other hand around. She wasn’t
sure what to think of what he held in his palm.
It was
cookies. Daryl had a handful of chocolate chip cookies.
“Cookies…”
Beth said, trying to grasp the significance of this discovery. She was angry
but she wasn’t sure why. Daryl wasn’t doing anything harmful to himself. He
wasn’t risking the group. He was just eating cookies.
He was
eating cookies that he wasn’t sharing with the others. He was eating cookies, a
sweet treat, that he was hogging all to himself.
“Want one?”
he asked, watching her face evolve from confusion, to surprise, to anger.
“You’ve been
holding out on the whole group? Did you think that maybe I’d have liked one?”
“I just
offered you one.”
“Yeah, after
I caught you!”
“Shhh!” he
said, and looked behind her to see if she’d attracted any unwanted attention.
“I can’t
believe you found cookies and didn’t offer to share--”
“Beth, shut
up! You’ll wake the whole camp!” he whispered, fiercely.
“Good. They
should know how you’re--”
Beth almost
choked when he shoved a cookie into her mouth. She chewed instinctively,
snapping it in half. She took the other half from her lips and looked at it. It
was loaded with chocolate chips. The cookie was a bit stale but it was still
delicious, especially when the chocolate warmed against her tongue and melted.
“Mmm…”
Daryl nodded
and popped another in his mouth.
“I got other
stuff,” he said, and nodded for her to join him.
“I’m hurt
you didn’t share this with me. I mean, we were out there for so long together,”
Beth said. “We got so close. Now you hardly even speak to me.”
That, Beth realized, was the real sore spot for her, not the cookies. He’d helped rescue her from her captors only to revert
to the way he’d been when they lived in the prison--acting like he didn’t know
she was alive.
“Sometimes
people need stuff just for themselves. Sometimes they don’t wanna share,” Daryl
said.
Beth thought
it over and then nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Daryl
watched while Beth examined the box. “Macaroons, Pecan Sandies…” She gasped and
held up a blue package. “Double Stuf Oreos!”
“Wish we had
milk,” Daryl lamented.
“That would
be great,” she agreed.
She put the
packages back and nibbled on another cookie. “You mad at
me?”
“No. Why’d
you think that?” he asked.
Beth
shrugged. “I just never get to talk to you. It’s like you don’t want to be
around me. Or worse, like you don’t want people to see you around me.”
“No,” was
all he said. She wished he’d elaborate but he didn’t. Instead, he gave a shy
smile and said, “I thought maybe…”
“What?” she
prompted.
“Maybe you
was mad at me.”
“What? Why?”
He shrugged. “I let you
get kidnapped.”
Beth felt as
though he’d kicked her in the stomach. “Of course not! You didn’t do that,
Daryl. It wasn’t your fault. I don’t blame you for what happened.”
She finished
her cookie and shook her head to refuse when Daryl offered another. She scooted closer to
him and took his hand in hers. He looked down at their entwined fingers. Her hand was so small in comparison to his. He could feel her bones under the skin. She felt delicate to him. He was afraid to squeeze back, afraid he'd break her. That was, after all, the story of his life. He broke anything good that came to him.
“You saved
me, you know. All that stuff you taught me about surviving came in handy. You
taught me how to fight.”
“You taught
me how to feel,” he whispered. He wasn’t quite able to meet her gaze. He tried
to pull away but Beth wouldn’t let him. Instead, Beth situated herself in his
lap. He looked toward the camp as though afraid they’d get caught. Or perhaps
he looked toward the camp because he was afraid to look into her eyes.
Beth wasn’t
going to give Daryl an out. She turned his face to hers and finally he looked
her in the eye.
“We’re good
for each other, then. Ain’t we?”
“Yeah,” Daryl
agreed. “We are.”
Beth pressed
her lips to his in a slow, sweet kiss. He tasted of chocolate chip cookies and he smelled of the
forest and fresh air and that musk that was uniquely his scent. He rested his
hands, big and warm and strong, against her hips and pulled her close until
there wasn’t an inch separating them. Beth pulled back, breathless, and lovingly stroked his
face.
“I want to
keep you all to myself,” she said. “I want all of you and I don’t wanna share.”
His lips
curved up in a smile. “You won’t have to,” he promised, and laid her down in the
soft grass, under the moon and the stars, and gave himself over to her completely.
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