I read and rewrote the next two chapters so many times that they stopped making sense (and that may very well be how this reads) so... yeah.

Have them anyway :D

Chapter 72 – Love shack

The heavy half-light of the gibbous moon and a star-laden sky spilled over Tahlia's wakefulness as she lay in bed thinking about Daryl. Or, more specifically, wondering if she'd inadvertently upset him, because it had been at least a couple of hours and there was still no sign of him. It wasn't uncommon for him to take some time alone when he needed to process but it also wasn't like him to just bail on her so abruptly… though he had been acting kind of off for the past couple of weeks. Rubbing her hands over her face, Tahlia puffed out a sigh.

She just had to hope that whatever was going on with him would all come out in the wash sometime soon.

She was curled up on her side when Daryl padded softly into the room, and without pause he slid straight in behind her, fitting himself against her, breath and skin and limbs intertwined. She was about to ask how he was doing, check in with him, but there was something about the tightness of his grip and the hard press of his body that stilled the questions on her tongue.

Then slowly he began to move.

His fingers splayed wider on her side, his thigh hitched hotly over hers, his mouth branded her neck.

Then she started to move, too.

Unhurried, they slid against one another in a desperate crescendo until they were damp and breathless and sated, chests heaving, fingers laced on tangled sheets.

Not a word was uttered until long after breath and hearts and nerve endings had calmed, then Tahlia said quietly, "I'm sorry about earlier. If I said something to upset you."

"Ya didn't." replied Daryl distractedly, grazing his teeth along her collarbone.

"Oh. I just thought maybe you took off because I-"

"Naw." he interrupted blandly. "Had somethin' to do. Told ya that."

Tahlia waited, but no further explanation was offered, so, ignoring the small knot that tightened in her belly, she gently swirled her fingertips across Daryl's back.

"So… you're really ok after today?"

"Yeah." Daryl murmured against her cheek. "Coz you ain't dead."

She smiled at that, then he lifted himself up onto one elbow and carefully smoothed her hair away from her forehead, his expression humourless now.

"Was scared, though. Real scared."

Tahlia huffed out a long breath and squeezed her eyes shut under her knitted brow for a moment before gazing back up at him.

"Yeah." she admitted softly. "Me too."

Daryl nodded. "I know."

"I might make light of situations, but it doesn't mean that I'm not-"

"I know." he insisted gently. "You can layer up with jokes all ya like, but whatever's really going on in here -" He dragged his thumb slowly down her breastbone. "I feel it too. Think after all this time I don't know ya inside out?"

The truth of that was slightly confronting and the only response Tahlia could manage was a little strangled whine, which made Daryl's eyes crinkle in amusement.

"Coz I do. And it goes the other way too."

"I thought it did," Tahlia's voice was barely more than a whisper. "But I know there's been something on your mind lately and I… well, I just want you to be able to talk to me about anything."

Biting the inside of his cheek in contemplation, Daryl paused for a long moment before responding, choosing his words carefully.

"Been thinkin' 'bout what you keep sayin' and I know you're right – we don't know how long any of us got left, so better to live for the days we do have 'stead of worryin' too much 'bout what's 'round the corner. And as much as I wanna lock you up, I know we're always gonna fight for ours, no question, we ain't never gonna hide away, and I ain't never gonna ask you to. Don't mean I'm gonna stop worryin' 'bout ya." he added with a pointed look. "But maybe we could take a minute away from all this sometimes. Just me and you."

Tahlia raised her eyebrows in question.

"Y'know, just go to the woods or somethin'. 'Specially when we've had a day like today."

A warm smile spreading across her face, Tahlia nodded. "I'd like that. Tomorrow then?"

"Tomorrow." replied Daryl decisively.

"Check it out! I'm doing it! Yesss! I'm nearly ready for four!"

"Y'ain't barely handlin' three."

"Look! I am so! I'm… shit." Tahlia muttered the curse as she dropped one of the small pinecones (for the hundredth time) and quickly swooped down to pick it up before launching it back into the air.

"Yeah," chuckled Daryl. "'Shit' sounds about right."

Eager to head out into the woods as planned, early that morning they'd first gone for a blast on the motorbike, then Daryl had doubled back and spun up a path through the trees for a short way before finding a place to conceal the bike. After that, they'd just wandered about, teasing each other and messing around, which had led to this – Daryl attempting to teach Tahlia how to juggle.

She swore as she dropped one again. "How do you make it look so easy?"

"Easy when ya get the hang of it." Daryl assured her, then he made a face. "Why ya tossin' 'em so high? They ain't fuckin' grenades. S'posed to just keep 'em – damn! That one near took my eye out!"

Tahlia was laughing too hard to carry on, so she lobbed the cones at him, which he caught and promptly fired back at her.

"Ugh!" she threw her hands in the air theatrically. "So, what does this mean? My dreams of circus performing are hopeless?!"

"All I know is…" Daryl fished his marker out of his back pocket and popped the lid with his teeth as he grabbed her arm and quickly drew on her bare shoulder. "Is that… no matter whether you can juggle or not, you're still a damn clown."

Tahlia burst into a fresh round of giggles as she looked down to see the head of Krusty the Clown now grinning out at her from her shoulder, then as she caught her breath, she arched a brow.

"Hmm, so… not hopeless then?"

"You're hopeless." Daryl retorted affectionately with a crooked smile. "C'mon. Ain't done no huntin' yet."

"Food can wait! You need to keep teaching me essential life skills!"

Daryl slung an arm around her shoulders and held his marker out in front with his other hand. "Right then. Next up, pen spinnin'."

Gazing up at the slipping sun through the trees, Tahlia sighed. "Guess we should probably think about heading back soon, although I really don't want to. This has been so nice. Feel like it's exactly what we both needed."

Daryl hummed in agreement.

Out here together, they dipped so easily back into the weightlessness reminiscent of the prison days, and Daryl could just feel his soul settling into the comfy spot in his chest, warm and content. Moments like this with her felt so good, so right - as pretty fucking close to perfect as things could get. And though he was already sure, this just helped to cement it.

"Alright." Daryl nudged his head. "C'mon, this way."

Although Tahlia paid very little attention to her surroundings when she was with Daryl because he was basically a walking satnav, the further they walked, the more certain she became that they were not heading back to the bike.

About to say something, she looked up then stopped in her tracks as she spotted a dark shape further on up ahead.

"Shit, Daryl!" She grabbed his arm, stopping him too. "Is that…? There's a cabin up there!"

"Huh." Squinting through the trees, he then turned to her and shrugged. "Let's check it out."

"Hold on." warned Tahlia. "We have no idea who or what we might find in there."

"Looks empty."

Tahlia shot him a withering look. "Even you can't tell that from this distance."

"Let's get a little closer, then."

"Daryl! Slow down!"

But he was already weaving silently through the thick of the trees, and Tahlia was helpless but to follow. When he finally stopped, the tree cover was only a few trunks deep, and beyond that in a clearing stood a weathered pine cabin.

"Someone's security conscious." muttered Tahlia as she closed her hand around the knife at her hip, her skin prickling and her senses shifting into high alert.

A few feet beyond the tree line, large, sharp wooden spikes angling out of the ground had been spaced out around the property to impale approaching walkers (reminiscent of the ones they had used back at the prison gates); beyond that, a rough tangle of barbed wire fixed to heavy posts had been strung up as a second line of defense; and finally, inside that, a chest-high, rustic-looking fence of sticks lashed together formed the innermost boundary of the cabin grounds. Set in the middle of a decent sized overgrown grass and garden area, the cabin itself looked weary – a couple of the windowpanes had been broken and repatched with cardboard; there were holes in the porch where some of the decking had rotted away; and where the porch steps once would have been, there was just a gaping hole.

Peering out from behind a tree, Daryl nudged his head. "Whaddaya think?"

"What do you mean?"

"Empty, right?"

"Impossible to tell. The door is shut." retorted Tahlia, then she frowned at Daryl who was leaning casually against the trunk, crossbow still slung across his back. "Even if it's empty now, it looks like someone has been here recently." She stepped up next to him. "Look. Those window patchings must be fresh – they're completely intact and the tape isn't peeling. And see? Up on the porch roof there's a weird little plywood section that looks kind of new."

"Uh-huh."

"Ok…" Tahlia dropped her gaze to the grass in front of the porch. "That grass has been trampled and… there, so has that section of bush. Looks like the scrub has been cleared a little over that way as an access track."

Daryl hid a proud smile as he shot a sideways glance at her. Maybe she had paid some attention to his lessons.

"Yeah? Anythin' else?"

Tahlia's eyes were still on the far right of the clearing as she moved further forward. "Oh, yeah there's drag marks over-" She froze as her foot caught on something and a tinny clang sounded to the left. "Shit… tripwire." she breathed, staring down at the thin metal wire over her boot, then glanced around nervously. "We should go."

Daryl just folded his arms, a smug look on his face. "Can't believe ya didn't see that."

"How was I supposed to see that?!" she hissed, her eyes fixed on the door, half-expecting someone to come bursting out, guns blazing. "It was pretty well hidden. Someone's obviously trying to protect this place."

"Someone certainly is." agreed Daryl, then he moved out from behind the tree and started towards the cabin. "C'mon."

Tahlia's eyes widened. "Are you crazy?!"

He threw a smirk over his shoulder. "Follow me. And don't trip no more wires or I'll have to reset 'em."

"You'll have to…?" spluttered Tahlia in confusion. "What do you mean?"

But he was already slipping between two spikes and heading for a makeshift gate in the barbed wire, so Tahlia quickly followed, carefully shadowing his footsteps.

"Wait here." Daryl instructed as they reached the porch, then he disappeared around the side of the cabin to do a perimeter check. Arriving back, he placed a foot on the side beam of the missing steps and easily leapt up onto the porch, then inspected something on the door.

"Just checkin' that no one's been in." he told her before pushing the door open and peering inside.

Satisfied that nothing was amiss, Daryl then extended a hand to Tahlia and pulled her up onto the porch next to him, grinning at the bewilderment on her face.

"So…" he began, smile fading, suddenly awash with nerves, "Do ya remember way back when we were at that olive place? And ya said somethin' like… ya wouldn't mind bein' whisked away to a lil love shack somewhere?"

Tahlia nodded, her eyes still wide. "Ye-ess…?"

"Well," he tugged her inside and swept a hand around at the cabin. "Love shack. Your words, obviously." he quickly added. "Not mine."

They were standing in a small open-plan living area where a moth-eaten sofa slouched in front of the rusty wood burner in the corner; a rickety table and chairs stood under the front window; scratched pots and pans hung against the rough wood of the back wall, below which lay a built-in wooden bench and shelving unit containing a few chipped dishes and various kitchen utensils.

Slowly taking it all in, Tahlia turned back to Daryl. "Are you…? Is this…? What?!"

Daryl grinned at her incoherence. "It's ours. Well, as much as anythin' can belong to someone these days. Came across this place on one of my first trips out. Weren't no tracks or nothin' round it, seemed like no one'd been here for a long time. I cleared it, then checked back again couple days later. Still nothin'. So, started fixin' it up thinkin' that it could be like a… a place for us to get away to sometimes."

Tahlia had only just managed to close her mouth. "So… this is what you've been doing? This is why you've been gone so much?"

"Yep." Daryl nodded, because that was mostly the truth. "Just wanted to patch it up a little, get it secured 'fore I brought y'up here. Aaron's been helpin' me. In between all the mappin' stuff, that is – we really have been doin' that too."

"Oh my God. This is amazing!" enthused Tahlia, pressing a hand to her cheek. "You are amazing!"

A hot flush of pride streaked through Daryl, and he gave a small shrug. "Well, still got a lotta work to do, but it's liveable."

Tahlia gazed at the ragged curtains hanging limply over the foggy, patched windows; the well-worn surfaces; the general shabbiness of the place. She beamed at Daryl, her eyes glistening. "It's perfect."

Catching her hand, he led her through a doorway by the bench into the only adjoining room. Here, a handmade desk and chair sat against one wall and a large bed took pride of place in the middle of the room.

"Bedroom." he stated the obvious. "Bed stuff's all clean. Brought it up from Alexandria. Ya wouldn'ta wanted to see the state of the sheets I found in here." Then he walked over to the window and pointed outside. "Outhouse just there. And there's a storage shed. Had some tools and wood and stuff in it which was good coz the closest you can get a vehicle is a twenty minute walk away. Anythin' we needed from Alexandria we had to carry up here. Least it means…" He trailed off because Tahlia's attention had drifted from him to the wall above the desk, and she was staring, wide and watery-eyed.

Painted there was the picture that Daryl had drawn on her at the olive grove – a boy stretching one arm high to hold onto the ankle of a girl that was floating off the ground, her fingers clutching the strings of a bunch of balloons that were drifting into the clouds, tiny fairies all around her.

"That's my favourite thing you've ever drawn." she murmured in astonishment, leaning over the desk so that she could get close enough to run her fingers reverently over the paint as if tracing the lines of the memory itself.

"Yeah." said Daryl quietly. "Me and you."

"Me and you." she echoed fondly. Then in one movement she whirled around, jumped on the bed and launched herself at him making him grunt and stumble as she flung her arms around him and buried her face in his neck, her voice high-pitched and muffled as she rambled something unintelligible.

"Nope. Ain't gettin' a single word." chuckled Daryl as he gently pushed her back. "Aw, Tahly, don't cry."

"They're happy tears, I swear!" she sniffed, wiping at her eyes. "It's just you and doing stuff like this and being all incredible and thoughtful and remembering all the little things and…"

Pressing his fingers to her lips, Daryl hushed her. "Ain't nothin', Tahly. Not really. Anyway, what the hell else would I be doin' with my time if I didn't have you to think about? C'mon, snot face. Got one more thing to show ya."

Laughing, she smacked him with one hand and ran the other under her nose and let him guide her back out onto the porch. Down the far end, a ladder was fixed to the side railing, leading up to the roof, and Daryl instructed her to climb.

The cabin itself had a pitched roof, but the roof over the porch was flat, and once they were up there, Daryl directed Tahlia to the square of reinforced plywood that she had spotted from the woods. Standing together on the platform, he pointed out at the treetops.

"That's east. Ain't gonna see much of a sunrise coz of the trees but might get a little of it up here, so I built this platform case we wanna come up here sometimes. Maybe you could even do yoga. Long as ya don't lose your balance." he added, peering over the side.

Tahlia beamed, a big, full-bodied glow that lit up her every cell as she gripped his arm tight.

"And," continued Daryl, "Safety too. Like if we need to get away from walkers or somethin'." He glanced down at her, then frowned. "Don't chuck yourself at me 'gain otherwise we both gonna end up topplin' off this damn roof."

She settled for tucking an arm around his waist and giving him a squeeze.

"Thank you!" she said, her voice bouncing with happy sincerity. "Thank you for all of it, this is the greatest surprise I've ever had! I can't believe you did all this, and I can't believe you managed to keep it quiet!"

"Ain't done that much, not yet." said Daryl, tugging her to sit down next to him as he lit a cigarette. "Securin' it was the main thing. Thought we could just slowly work on the rest together. But it was damn hard keepin' it from ya. 'Specially when you're convinced that I been screwin' 'round." He punctuated that with a hard elbow to her side.

"With Aaron." added Tahlia with a wry smile.

Daryl laughed and shook his head. "With Aaron."

Then Tahlia sat up a little straighter. "Did Eric know about this?"

"Naw. Not at first. Aaron said Eric'd tell ya first chance he got. Then you two got that little theory in your heads and Aaron had to tell him everythin' to calm him down. He's been near burstin' since then. Told me I had to hurry up and get y'up here or he'd do it himself."

"I thought he'd been a bit off for the past couple of days. He actually ran away from me when I saw him in the street yesterday morning."

Daryl snorted at that, then took the cigarette from her and smoked quietly for a moment, the tranquility of the woods set to the sepia tones of the late afternoon settling in around them.

He was ready now.

First, he sucked in a big lungful of smoke then let it seep slowly from his lips, his voice following right behind. "There's uh, there's somethin' else. I been thinkin'… thinkin' that…" Pausing, he ran his tongue over his bottom lip as he started to jig his leg nervously.

"What's up?" asked Tahlia, looking at him expectantly.

Daryl looked right back at her, his mouth drying, his palms sweating. He knew what he wanted to say better than he knew his own name - he'd rehearsed this a thousand times. And none of that made this any easier. But he was going to get it out, one way or another.

He took a deep breath, and then a walker stumbled out of the woods and immediately impaled itself on one of the stakes, a bloody clump of its insides sticking to the point of the stake for a few seconds before glooping to the ground with a squelchy thud.

"Ugh. Gross." remarked Tahlia, wrinkling her nose.

Daryl gritted his teeth in dark irritation as he watched the walker flail and rasp - nothing quite like a reanimated corpse to ruin the moment. He heaved a weighty sigh.

"Gonna go deal with that."

"Yeah, don't want any more drawn to the noise." agreed Tahlia, then she put a hand on his arm. "Wait, what did you want to tell me?"

Biting his lip, Daryl shrugged. "Just thinkin'… we could stay up here for a couple nights. Already told Rick we might, so, y'know, if ya want to, we can."

"Yes! Let's stay." Then Tahlia cocked her head to one side a gave him a cheeky grin. "Hold on… is this a mini-break?"

"You and goddamn mini-breaks!" growled Daryl, but he couldn't keep the smile off his face and certainly couldn't help throwing his arm around her shoulders and pressing a kiss to her temple.

As he followed her back across the roof and down the ladder, he was painfully aware of his chest churning with nervous energy and the press of words unsaid, and he knew that if he didn't let it all out soon, then he'd be the one bursting.