Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing with them.
Spoilers: None, just making shit up. More people should write for this ship, seriously. They were freaking adorable in issue 97.
...
Andrea felt something hit the back of her head.
Not hard; light. She turned around and looked down in time to see a small twig hit the ground. She looked up with a frown. Rick stood there, pretending nothing had happened.
"Idiot," she said, picking up a bunch of dead leaves and throwing them at him. They were so light they fell to the ground halfway to meet him.
He chuckled lightly. "Good job."
"Oh, hush."
She ignored him and continued walking. The forest was too quiet. Before this all happened that would've freaked her out. She'd been a Girl Scout for all of five days. The minute they forced her to go into that first camping trip she quit immediately. The forest had been so quiet, so eerie, so freaky... ugh.
But she cherished the silence now. When it was quiet like this it meant they could hear better, ward themselves off against danger. Silence gave them an advantage.
They reached their rendezvous point minutes later. Daryl wasn't there yet. She sighed in frustration for what the next few minutes would be like. "He's late."
Rick looked at his old watch. Like that made any difference. Like Daryl knew what time it was, anyway. "No, he's not," he told her, noticing her impatience. "We're too early."
Andrea sighed again, finding a bare tree stump and sitting on it. She crossed her legs and tried not to worry or think of the worst. But that was merely an excuse, a way for her to keep her mind busy and not think about the tension that sure enough, crept up on them again like clockwork. It made her foot begin to twitch and she looked down at the ground. This had been happening too often and it infuriated her. She hated feeling this thrown off, this... exposed, naked.
Rick leaned his shoulder against a tree, facing her. Unlike her, he felt calm. He studied her each time. This time, she had several guns strapped to her as well as his rifle. But she had her damn legs crossed like a proper lady, sitting there all dainty and charming.
It made Rick chuckle.
She looked up at him with a frown. "What?"
He shook his head, "nothing."
Fuck this, Andrea thought. Not this, here, again. Why did he always have to do this?
She looked down at her fingers, studying them like she'd never seen them before. A reason to look busy; like she wasn't thinking about what was happening at that moment. She could feel his eyes on her. She felt them on her too often as of late. Whether they were surrounded by people or alone like now... she didn't know when it started. For months and months he'd only been The Married Cop Who Was Also Their Dum Dum of a Leader.
Somewhere down the line it changed. Somewhere down the line they'd started flirting.
I'd been meaningless at first. Him teasing her about her putting guns to his face all the time. She'd tease him about his stupid uniform and that ridiculous hat. But really, she'd only done it out of retaliation. She couldn't have known it would grow into this. She couldn't have known it meant something.
She blamed herself, really. She did. She'd been too naive at first, and had participated because she thought he was just teasing, like Daryl teased her, like she teased Glenn.
But he hadn't been teasing her. It'd always been flirting from his side; she just didn't realize it until it was too late. And now it'd snowballed into something unbearably tense. This went beyond 'elephant in the room'. It was so intense the elephant couldn't stand it anymore and ran far, far away, leaving them to deal with it.
She still felt his eyes on her. She never knew what to do during those moments. She'd always prided herself on being one of the cool ones. Strong and put together. Collected. In fact, it was always her intimidating the opposite gender. It had never been like this with a guy. And she hated it, hated him for getting her like this and hated herself for allowing him.
"Where is he?" she finally said and it kinda broke the spell. He looked away from her and around the perimeter.
"You know Daryl," Rick told her.
It did nothing to alleviate everything that she was feeling, her worry for Daryl and this ridiculous thing between her and Rick.
She decided it would make things better if she just paced around.
But that meant movement. And movement meant attention. And attention meant he started to look at her again.
She could feel his eyes on her. She could always feel his eyes on her. It had been happening too often but it needed to end.
Andrea didn't know what took over her, but suddenly she approached him. He looked at her with a smirk on his face, and that stupid little smile made her feel even more angry and determined.
"Rick, this needs to stop, okay?" She spoke in half hushed tones, like anyone could hear them.
"What needs to stop?"
Andrea sighed in frustration. Her hand instinctively reached for one of her guns; she wanted to shoot him right there and then. "You know well enough."
She was a ball of frustration. He was a mess of desperation that showed up in the form of mock aloofness. "I do, don't I."
"Yes, you do," she said assertively and to hell with discretion. To hell with secrecy and modesty. She was nipping this right in the bud and to hell with insinuation. "All this flirting, the looks..."
He didn't say anything, just looked down at the ground and dropped all pretenses. In a way he was stunned that she was being so forward about it, but in a way he was not. This was Andrea, after all. She didn't skirt around the issues. She faced them straight on.
She looked at him and felt sorry, so sorry, for being such a bitch to him when he probably only just needed someone. But she needed this to end, for their protection, for Carl's protection, for all four of them, including her. Maybe that was it, and she tried to reach for that. "I'm sorry if you and Lori are having problems—"
He shook his head right away. "It's not about Lori—"
He muttered it so quietly that she didn't hear it. "—but this... I need it to end. Because it's going nowhere, so it's just annoying."
Rick finally looked up at her, took a deep breath and leaned back further into the tree. Feeling a deep, distant hurt at her choice of words. "Annoying?"
"Yes," she sighed. Annoying wasn't the word, really. But she was too taken aback by her own outburst and thoughts weren't making much sense. She started out strong and assertive and quickly shriveled into something small and soft as she continued and ended up nearly begging. "It throws me off and I can't have that, because it's nothing. You keep distracting me. I can't be distracted, not here."
He studied her for a second, eyes burning holes into her face. He didn't miss the way her hands were shaking and how she avoided eye contact. She was nervous and trying so hard to hide it. His voice grew softer and lower. "You think it's nothing?"
Andrea looked at him and when their eyes met there was electricity. Wasn't the first time she'd felt that. She wasn't stupid. She knew that she was as guilty as he. After all, even after she realized the teasing wasn't teasing but flirting, she didn't make it stop. She should've, and she always tried, but hell if she could.
She wasn't stupid nor was she a fool. She found herself staring at him as often as he stared at her. But it was different. He had too much going on, too much baggage. He had a family that she would never, in a million years, hurt for her own selfish needs.
After gaining her confidence, she stepped up. "Yeah, it's nothing." Blindly, she reached for his left hand and brought it up. She lifted his ring finger between their eyes and wobbled his wedding ring in her fingers. "This makes it nothing."
She dropped his hand before he could say anything and walked away to sit at the stump again. Legs crossed. He kept his hand down and looked at the golden, wedding band.
"Do you just forget it's there?" she told him softly, taking in that unreadable expression on his face when he looked at it. "Because that ring is all I see when I look at you."
He didn't say anything, just stood there digesting the words. They switched roles and she studied him for a while. That confident, boyish grin was all gone now, replaced with a harsh realization. In the beginning, it'd been fun. Hell, maybe it started as teasing on his part, too. Maybe in the beginning he saw her as a little sister that he liked to torment. Maybe he hadn't counted on it to grow into something.
He stood there turning the ring round and round with his thumb and she felt so miserable for him she wanted to walk up there and apologize and comfort him. But she couldn't do that. She knew she needed to stay away from him, far away from him, because this thing between them... it needed to be over.
Thankfully, Daryl crawled out of the bushes seconds later, the redneck carrying several dead animals on his back.
Andrea rose from her seat and walked up to him. "You're late."
Daryl frowned at her. "I ain't late."
"Yes you are," Andrea said as she continued walking.
Daryl followed her. Rick trailed behind, listening to their bickering. Daryl and Andrea were always bickering, but it was light, funny; like they were two five year olds tormenting each other for the sake of entertainment. Bickering was their way of telling each other, 'I love you.'
"Yeah, what time is it, then?" Daryl said to her, pushing her away with a shove.
She clicked her tongue in annoyance and pushed him back. "Quarter past kiss my ass, Daryl."
Normally Rick would've chuckled at the scene. Instead, he looked up at her and tried to still digest everything she'd said to him mere minutes before.
"Sup with her?" Daryl asked him, sensing this wasn't like all the times they'd teased each other. Andrea seemed legitimately annoyed and when Rick didn't reply, Daryl narrowed his eyes.
Rick and Andrea were good students. 'A' students. But nerds. 'A' students because they were learners, read a lot. Daryl was an 'A' student, too, but in a different way. He was the type of student that never studied for a test but then showed up and nailed it right away. And as he walked along Rick and Andrea he did that. Just showed up late and aced the test.
But he wouldn't boast about his grade. He feigned ignorance and followed them, and when they reached camp, for the first time since he joined the group, his eyes landed on Lori first. She sat right next to Carol, gossiping as usual, and when Rick greeted her she barely looked up and didn't really acknowledge her husband.
Daryl shrugged his mental shoulders and retrieved to his cove. He didn't give a shit about any of this but was secretly glad he knew more than all of them. Because no one else would keep their secrets. He would. He would take them to his grave.
...
Andrea thought she'd triumphed, because for days and days there was no flirting. There were no secret glances. None that she could feel, anyway. She began to breathe easier, feel better, more put together.
But for some reason quite the opposite happened to Rick. Happened to Rick and Lori.
They began to argue again. Sometimes Andrea lay in bed and heard them screaming. Lori, mostly, but every once in a while Rick yelled something back. It went on and on like this, first maybe once a week, then twice, then suddenly every night.
She began to feel guilty. For what, she didn't know but that feeling was there. She should've felt pride instead, because she made their little... thing, stop. But she didn't feel pride. She felt guilty because she soon realized that Rick was losing himself. Guilty because she realized that in a sick, twisted way, flirting with her kept their marriage together. Kept him together. Without her, Rick no longer had an anchor, and now he was drowning and she knew it wasn't her fault, but she felt guilty nonetheless.
A week later, Rick and Lori finally stopped screaming. Andrea breathed a sigh of relief. It kinda hurt, in a deep, hidden corner of her heart. But a corner so hidden she really didn't feel the pain of losing what they'd had. And it would be better this way. For Carl.
...
In the end it all happened because she was so stupid.
They were fighting against a new human threat. A nameless group of unknown numbers. Firing at them for God knows what reasons. She stood right by him as she always did, shooting back.
It was only happenstance.
Rick happened to shout something at them that she didn't catch. Too many bullets and too much noise. She looked at him for a second, only a second, to ask him what he'd said. It was only then that she noticed it. His left hand, pressed to the side of his pistol. His ring finger, bare.
It took her aback and it was the stupidest thing she could've done, to stop shooting and take one step back as she stared at him. It was stupidity on her part. Stupid, stupid, stupid Andrea who always felt before she thought.
"Rick?"
He looked at her for a second.
"Your—"
But she never got the chance to finish the sentence. At that very same moment that she opened her mouth a bullet flew across the fields with one sole purpose and it filled that purpose flawlessly. It pierced into her skin and reddened her chest in a mere blink and the second it happened it felt fated. Then everything went black.
TBC