i hope my grades don't suffer from this
please enjoy this chapter and drop me some words *thumbs up*
oOo
Diana let herself be led by Alice to their brother at a jogging pace, her heart palpitating and her tongue drying in her mouth. When they entered the farmhouse, the distinct sound of vomiting was loud and clear, and Diana knew precisely where to go.
Her legs almost gave out when she saw Felix lying on the same bed where Carl had been fighting for his life the past days. She knew his condition wasn't even half as life-threatening, but it still always made her nauseous to see her baby brother struggling and not being able to do anything about it.
He lied on his side, body contorted and bent at the middle, his head stuck in a bucket that Hershel held for him. When the gagging stopped, and he rested his head back on the pillow, his eyes caught hers in a feverish glaze. Diana's eyes stung, but she offered him a smile, knowing he needed strength.
She sat by his side while Alice chose the end of the bed, keeping a keen eye on their brother. Diana put a hand on the side of his clammy forehead, caressing down to his flushed cheek, confirming what she already knew. Before she could get a word of comfort out, Hershel broke through with accusations.
"You bring an infected child with you and say nothing?!" he whispered harshly, "Was he in contact with the other sick?"
"He's been bitten?" asked a voice from the doorway, finally making Diana aware of the crowded room. She recognized the voice as Andrea's shrill pitch, the one she went into when she was a bit of a bitch.
That was the opening of the dam as voices drowned each other with expressions of fear, blame, and anger. They moved like a tidal wave onto them, and Diana was tempted to cover her ears and shut her eyes. Instead, she steeled herself and stood, but it wasn't her voice that shut them up.
"My brother's sick and y'all are making fools of yourselves!" Alice shouted into the room, bringing silence with her words. "All of you, out! He doesn't need your shit."
They remained frozen in place until Hershel rephrased Alice's words, throwing Diana a glance which asked for an explanation. She nodded in agreement and gratitude. When the gunslinger band trickled out of the room, only the three Lobos, Hershel, and Rick remained.
"Mind if I stay?" Rick asked, hand on the doorknob. Diana allowed it with a curt nod, and he closed the door, shutting out the buzz of voices from outside the room.
"He hasn't been bitten," Diana started, sitting back down, throwing the blanket off Felix's still form; his body radiated warmth. "And you're not gonna do a body check like your pal suggested. I won't put him through that discomfort and humiliation for no fucking reason." She glanced at Rick with a curl of disdain to her lip. Rick looked down as if ashamed for words that weren't even his own.
Hershel sat on the chair in the corner with a heaved sigh. "Then what is wrong, Diana?"
"He- he was born like this," Diana said after a few seconds of contemplation. The confusion was clear in both men's furrowed brow. "He uhm… he's got a genetic condition, a mutation. Only eleven cases in the whole world at the time it was diagnosed. I mean, he was kind of a surprise baby, so my mom always said she knew he was special, but we never thought…"
"Just get to the point, you sentimental bish," Alice sighed. "They're waiting for facts, not tear-jerking stories."
Diana blushed and lowered her eyes. She cleared her throat and started from the beginning, "I guess it was discovered when he was a newborn when getting his first vaccine. He got a really high fever as a reaction, which puzzled the pediatricians. They took him for observations straight away and tried to lower the fever but… nothing they gave him worked. So they took a blood sample..." Diana paused to assess Rick and Hershel's focus; they hung onto her every word. She nodded and continued while pressing a cool hand to Felix's forehead. "All traces of the vaccine and everything else they'd given him had vanished, and he had a ridiculously high white blood cell count."
"How's that possible?" Hershel interrupted, a frown carving grooves in his forehead and around his eyes.
"Yeah, that was the one million Euro question at the time. They stopped administrating drugs, and the fever went down by itself, within the day. It was a huge strain on his tiny body, and he had to be monitored very strictly. They took another blood sample when he stabilized… and found his white blood cell count normalized and no antibodies in sight."
Rick looked from Diana to Hershel, seemingly lost and trying to comprehend the implications of her words. "I don't follow."
Hershel shook his head in confusion and rubbed his forehead.
"Yeah, it was a medical mystery back then…" Diana confessed, giving Rick a half-shrug. "He stayed in the hospital for the first two months of his life, and each time they tried to follow through with the vaccination program, his body reacted the same, no matter what they gave him or how small the dose. Then they uhm… experimented with different microorganisms, both bad and good."
Diana didn't remember much of that time, having only been six years old at the time. But the pain with which their mom and dad used to recall the event and her current medical knowledge made her picture everything vividly; every sterilized room and surgical mask and needle prickling her brother's skin and cable attached to his newborn body.
She shook her head and took a deep breath, resurfacing. "In conclusion, Felix has no adaptive immune system, that's the genetic defect; he produces no antibodies of his own. And to kinda like 'compensate' that, he has a very sensitive responsive immune system which reacts to pathogens with a fever and very high count of really destructive white blood cells. The way they explained it to our parents was that his body has great recognition of what is harmful and what is harmless. It kinda nips the bad stuff in the bud, so it doesn't even get to multiply."
"Pathogens don't make it far into the incubation period," Hershel summarized with a slow nod of understanding.
"Uh yeah, exactly."
"No reaction to harmless microorganisms and an aggressive reaction to pathogens? That's incredibly intuitive, I've never heard of such an immune response."
Rick put his balled fists on his hips, an air of bafflement still about him. "Why didn't you mention any of this to Jenner?"
"I didn't trust him." Diana shrugged simply. "We kinda learned to not mention his condition to people in medical and health-related fields. They get a little…" What was another word for bloodthirsty and scalpel-happy?
"Stupidly eager with their little theories and 'experimental trials'," Alice provided, annoyance lacing her words as she used air quotes.
"Yeah, that, thanks." Diana pointed. Her stomach grumbled at the same time, twisting on itself, protesting its emptiness. Shit, she still hadn't eaten anything. "Any other questions or are you done playing inquisitor?"
"You ever wanted to know more about his condition? What kind of complications could arise? The prognosis?" Hershel inquired, rubbing over his chin.
Felix starting gagging at that moment, and Diana's reflexes had her grabbing and holding the bucket next to his head right on time for him to roll over and vomit into it. He made miserable sobbing sounds as he retched, and Diana's heart tightened as she caressed his shorn curls.
"He had his regular check-ups, and we took him to the hospital with every fever. I mean, eventually, the doctors told my parents that he'd grow up fine and that they should reserve the hospital visits for critical temperatures." She put the bucket back on the floor and gave him a sip of the water that was on the nightstand. "He was more sheltered than other kids, that's for sure, and I think that's why he kinda developed a hypochondriacal fear of sickness. But I don't know of any severe complications, I mean there's not much to compare to, and the same goes for prognosis. So… yeah, that's about it."
Hershel nodded and hummed as he leaned back in his seat, taking the stethoscope earpieces from around his neck and folding the instrument in his hands.
"Rick?" Diana turned to him, catching him in a deep stare into the distance and breaking him out of it. "Questions? Last call, dude."
"I got nothing. Thank you for trusting us with this, Diana. I apologize on their behalf," he said, gesturing with his head towards the door.
"Don't apologize for other people's actions, it'll only cheapen your words if the other person isn't actually sorry," Diana said, annoyed with just how much Rick had sounded like his wife when she tried apologizing on Shane's behalf back at the Quarry.
Rick let out a huff of laughter at her words and scratched the spot between his eyebrows sheepishly. "I have to agree. I take it back, then."
Diana gave him a teasing smile. "Yeah, you do that."
"Ew, stop flirting with him." Alice mocked, curling her lip with a frown. Oh yeah, Diana still hadn't told her and Felix about her and Daryl's… thing. Eh, that could wait. And it was totally because there were more pressing issues at hand, not like 'cause she was unsure of how to broach the subject. Nah, not that.
Diana ignored her sister and felt her stomach clench once more, out of hunger and, more recently, anxiety. There was one more thing she had to lay down on the table before she could sit at the actual breakfast table. And that was to tell Rick about Sophia. Finally.
"There's something else I gotta talk to you about, Rick." She turned to Hershel. "I'd appreciate if you could join us. Maybe in your drawing room?"
oOo
Rick seemed confused at first, especially with Hershel's clear, easy comprehension of what was going on.
Once in the drawing room, Diana took her spot on the pretentious armchair, if only to give her the confidence she needed. When both men were seated on the sofa across from her, she began.
Diana talked about the walkers; Hershel's family and what he thought of their condition – and about Sophia, lost and now finally found. She explained how the girl came to be in the barn as per what Hershel had told her of Otis' activities and relayed to the two men her theory of the girl's time of resurrection.
Both Rick and Hershel remained calm all throughout her monologue, never interrupting her, which she appreciated immensely, but Rick's silence also concerned her. His head was lowered, and he leaned forward in his seat, hands clasped between his knees.
In the end, Diana assured him none of it was his fault. Sophia had been scared. Scared people tend to do things that might not entirely contribute to their wellbeing. That was all that happened. Bad judgment, not his negligence. There was no one to point fingers at.
To Hershel, she said that it would only do him right to think of her parting words from last time. Then she told the two men that she had a brother to care for and that they had a lot to discuss.
oOo
Before heading back to Felix's temporary room, Diana went to the kitchen and got some breakfast like she owned the place. She made herself scrambled eggs – real chicken eggs this time, none of that fake stuff like at the CDC – and ate them with stale crackers and a small pear off the Greene's wicker fruit basket. Her stomach still ached when she was done licking the cracker's crumbles off her fingers, but she knew it would have to do.
She heard Daryl's voice as soon as she opened the door and felt her insides melt and pool at her feet, this time with a side of guilt. How could she be so happy and giddy considering their circumstances? How could she be so selfish as to move on from grieving so soon? Well, she hadn't really moved on, but it felt like she was trying to distract herself by forcing herself into a relationship. But then again, it didn't really feel like she was forcing herself, she just genuinely felt even if a smidge happier by having Daryl at her side. And that happiness made her feel miserable on another level.
A storm of confusion reigned in her conscience, and she had to lock it in the back of her mind to focus on the matter at hand; Felix. She knew she was a volcano eruption waiting to happen, she just wanted to delay it as much as possible.
Diana closed the door behind her. Alice still kept to her perch at the foot of the bed, while Daryl had taken Hershel's precious spot on the chair in the corner. Their silence and their eyes followed her as she sat beside Felix and used the bed sheet to mop up the beads of sweat on his forehead and the tears clinging to his lashes. She helped him take a couple more sips of water from the glass with encouraging words.
"So?" Alice asked impatiently, "Did you tell 'em what I think you told them? How'd it go? Anyone throw hands?"
Diana gave a tired smile at that mental image. Rick vs. Hershel. That would be something. She gave Daryl a sidelong glance and raised her brow minimally at Alice, to which Alice responded with a small nod. "I just told him."
A weight lifted off Diana's shoulders, and she thanked the Universe for blessing her with her sister. Their dynamic had been on an emotional seesaw for the past few weeks, where it once had been more or less stable. And she missed her, how they used to be. How the three of them used to be.
Something had happened the night before, she was sure. That time Alice had taken at the RV to "think" had changed something in her attitude, and Diana couldn't be more grateful. She knew dealing with Alice's mood swings wasn't for everyone, but being smack dab in the middle of puberty during the apocalypse didn't help. And losing their parents on top of that, well…
"You can praise at my feet later," Alice sighed, feigning indifference, probably seeing the stars in Diana's eyes.
Diana looked at Felix's hand that she caressed on her lap, avoiding Daryl's gaze with renewed guilt. "I'm sorry I didn't say anything sooner. I mean, not that I was the one to say anything now, but still… I knew about it, and I was too… scared to tell you."
"Scared? Why?" She saw him lean forward from the corner of her eye and faced him. She now noticed the head bandage was gone; she assumed he had taken it off as to not appear weak or ill. His blue eyes were sincere. They flickered down to her hands, then Alice, then back to her, and Diana saw his fingers twitch.
He was too understanding for his own good. Diana would get it if he became upset at her from keeping that information from him, but she couldn't read that off him. There was something else negative there, a tenseness of his shoulders and jaw, but it wasn't aimed at her.
"Because this bish likes to play martyr and think people will blame her for the end of the world and all its shitty endeavors," Alice answered in her stead when she hesitated, standing from the bed to lean back against the window. Light streamed around her like a holy figure. "What'd I say?" she said to Daryl as if she had predicted it all along.
"But I shoulda told you straight away, 'cause you invested so much in her search, you know? But then you got hurt, and then… and then we…" Diana felt a warmth flood her chest. "And I didn't want to ruin that, and it only got more difficult… I'm really sorry." Her omission had also been out of some selfish need to not lose the progress she and Daryl had made.
"Oh my God." Alice groaned in frustration. "Wait, what didn't you wanna ruin?"
Daryl purposefully didn't keep on the subject. "I told you time and time again, never apologize for what you ain't done." This time he reached and rested a hand on top of hers, the way his thumb swept over her skin was a small comfort.
His words were almost a throwback to what she had told Rick not an hour ago. She'd never said she wasn't a hypocrite.
"So we good?" Hope was in her voice.
Daryl leaned back with a small knowing smile, which quickly turned into a frown as he jerked forward in his seat with obvious concern. "You're bleedin'."
Diana heard Alice's quick steps to her side, then felt the warmth trickling over her lips and down her chin, the metallic taste very familiar. She let go of Felix's hand to swipe the back of her hand under her nose.
Alice's 'oh, shit' sounded far away, accompanied by a steady ringing.
Diana looked down at her hands. Her pale hands?
The ringing slowly turned into a familiar thrum, but Diana was too much in a state of inner panic to take notice.
She brought her hands to her face, then her pin-straight bob of hair, then finally took in her surroundings. She sat with crisscrossed legs on the wooden floor of a small cabin room, daylight filtering through the boarded windows. It smelled of mold and dust, and not-Diana wrinkled her nose.
Her heart pounded unfamiliarly if that was even possible.
The fluctuating thrum drilled its way past her confusion, and she whipped her head to the side, the ends of her hair hitting her cheek; she knew that sound.
Next to her knee, a familiar golden glint. A staff? Not-Diana's pale, slender hand picked it off the ground. A spiral pattern ran down its length for a steady grip.
She examined it in her hands and flinched when a sharp golden blade extended out of one end, turning the staff into a spear.
The thrum the spear gave off felt very much like her bow's, but unfamiliar, as if on a different frequency.
It became louder, turning back into a tinnitus-like buzzing, and louder and louder until not-Diana had to drop the weapon to cover her ears. She closed her eyes shut, feeling overwhelmed with the noise she somehow also felt deep down to her core.
Then it stopped, and hands were on her. She flinched away at the sudden and unexpected feeling and swatted the hands away with a scream. Her eyes opened to the Greene farmhouse once more. The hands on her arms had been Daryl's, who had knelt down in front of her.
Both him and Alice gaped at her, almost expectantly. Diana blinked slowly, once and then twice, and heaved a sigh of relief with the third blink when she found herself still in the same place. Her tongue swept over her teeth, tasting the metallic tang of blood.
"Dude… what the fuck," Alice said with astonishment as she rose from her seat beside Diana. She started opening and closing drawers until she found a handkerchief which she handed to Daryl.
"Second that," was Daryl's response.
"Something really fucking weird just happened," Diana concluded, taking the handkerchief Daryl had dipped into the glass on the nightstand. "I don't- I don't know how to explain it… I was here, and then I wasn't, I was somewhere else."
Alice scoffed in faux-humor. "Yeah, while you were off astral-projecting, someone else was here."
Diana frowned. "Wait, what? What d'you mean someone was here?"
"I woulda thought you were fucking with us if not the voice."
"Yeah, oh my god that was creepy." Alice's shoulders shook with shudders.
"Just tell me!"
Daryl took the handkerchief from her clenched hands and dabbed the wet corner on her chin while cupping her jaw with his other hand. The soothing pressure of his palm and the care with which he wiped the drying blood calmed her nerves a bit. She focused on his touch and not the panic threatening to strangle her. She kept her eyes on his chest, trying to match her breathing pattern to his, even and deep.
Alice's silence at the display was worrying. Diana knew she wouldn't ask about it and would form her own assumptions, so she would have to tell her once Daryl was out of sight and earshot. She didn't want any misunderstandings.
Once Daryl leaned back, and his distraction was gone, Diana swallowed drily and asked again, "What happened here?"
"Uh, so like, you had a nosebleed out of nowhere," Alice began, "Then you just looked at your own hands and went like 'It worked' or something and started laughing like a crazy person."
"It wasn't your voice," Daryl added with a furrowed brow.
Alice continued, "Yeah, it was all… I don't know, man, the pitch was totally wrong. Then you? looked at us all weird, and told us to tell you exactly this…"
Diana gestured at Alice to hurry up. "What? What?"
"'It's me, it's Minerva.'"
oOo
Alice observed Diana's expression change from one of pure confusion to realization to existential confusion. She could relate.
She had known something hadn't been right as soon as Diana-but-not-really had looked at her and Daryl; her facial expressions had seemed foreign on her face. Like someone had pulled her sister's face on as a mask. It had made Alice's skin crawl, and she'd had the strongest impulse to slap her.
Then she'd started talking, and the voice hadn't been Diana's as well like a ventriloquist had been using her as a puppet. Repulsion had filled her veins, but Alice had stayed rooted.
She had said she couldn't believe it had worked – what had worked? Demonic possession? With the blood running down her mouth and staining her teeth red, it had certainly looked like it – and then she had turned to them and said that she didn't have long and they needed to tell Diana what Alice had just told her.
Alice's first thought had been dissociative identity disorder, but then she remembered everything that Diana had told her and Felix at the CDC, and everything Alice had read on her journal-thingy.
"It's the dream-chick," Alice thought out loud, catching both their attention. Felix moaned pitifully behind Diana, distracting them from her words.
Once Diana adjusted his pillow and whispered something to him with a caress to his cheek, she faced them again.
"Who's the dream-chick?" Daryl asked.
"You're gonna think I'm crazy…" Diana hesitated, fidgeting with her fingers on her lap.
Alice didn't miss Daryl's hand slipping into hers, stopping her nervous tick. Seeing them like that, him on his knees at her feet, their eyes glued to each other as he comforted her wordlessly, it made bile rise on Alice's throat.
Okay, not them specifically, rather any and all disgustingly sweet displays of affection were disgustingly nauseating to her.
Some time back, her cat-like curiosity had caused her to accidentally read some journal entries that featured Daryl.
…
She had seriously considered scooping her eyes out with a spoon.
"She's been having some weird-ass realistic dreams about this girl, who I guess is called Minerva?" Alice supplemented, seeing as Diana was taking so long. "It's that simple."
"Not really, it ain't. If these were damn dreams, how was that girl here, in your sister's body?"
"I was in hers, too," Diana said quietly, staring unblinkingly straight ahead at the blank wall.
Alice raised a brow. "Oh, worm?"
"Yeah, I- I mean, I blink and then I'm no longer black? I noticed straight away something ain't right there, you know?" Diana said with a hint of her old humor. "And my hair was different and everything just felt like I didn't belong. I was in this stinky abandoned place with wooden floors and walls, and the windows were boarded up. And she had a staff…" Her voice turned pensive.
"A staff?" Daryl questioned.
"Yeah… A golden staff, the same as my bow. Little bit different but kinda the same. And then it turned into a spear in my hands, like for real, it just grew a pointy end like I flipped a switch."
"That means there are more people like you out there. Wow." Alice crossed her arms in disappointment and near envy. "Is it like a lottery thing? Like a big cosmic lottery and you just happened to pull the lucky string?" Diana's baffled frown had Alice shrugging loosely. "Don't look at me, I dunno how the cosmic lottery works."
"Wait, I…" Daryl sat back on the chair. "I understand jack shit o' what's happenin' here." His accent became more pronounced as he confessed his confusion.
Diana took a deep breath and did a short recap of her unconscious adventures through the eyes of this so-called Minerva and how they had differed from regular dreams, how Minerva had known her name which meant that the dreams had been a mutual thing.
"I thought I was going insane at first… Who am I kidding, I still thought that until this- this astral projecting thing happened." Diana gestured at Alice in near hysterics. Daryl reached out to calm her, but she recoiled, standing and starting to pace at the foot of the bed. "But now she's really real, she's really real and she possessed me like I'm freaking Annabelle!"
Alice knew she had to help her sister, but she also knew that woman had been repressing some severe shit and needed to process all that. "To be fair, you also possessed her, so you're quitt."
"Not the time," Diana hissed. "I'm losing control over everything, and now over my damn self! I mean, is my body even my own if somebody else can just- just slip into it like a fucking sundress?!"
Daryl stood and joined Alice, wanting to help but seeming quite lost.
"I think it's hella tight," Alice commented. Maybe a different perspective would help Diana out of her downward spiral. "Look at it this way, you got the closest thing to a literal soulmate. Imagine the clickbait titles: 'Scientists hate her.'"
That gave Diana pause. "A soulmate?" Alice even ignored the little glance she threw Daryl for her own sake. Bleugh.
"Yeah, way I see it, you got some kinda link that allows you to connect like that. The common denominator is those weapons. I think they're behind it. Or whatever is behind the weapons is behind it. Get it?"
"Keep talking."
"That was it." Alice shrugged. "I'm not omniscient."
"This is killing me," Diana breathed as she slumped down on the foot of the bed avoiding Felix's feet. "I kinda… I don't know, accepted the bow 'cause it felt like I had happened to it and not it had happened to me. But what if- what if that's not it at all. And now I know with certainty there's another person like me, and we have a- a bond? Why? And why the two of us? Is it really just the two of us? What if there are more? Is it gonna become a freaking Skype group call in my head?!"
"Ain't no use tyin' your head in a knot right now." Daryl sat next to Diana and put an arm around her shoulder. Diana's face contorted like when she was about to cry, but the dam remained close. Alice sighed in relief, and Daryl continued, "We ain't got the answers you need, but we sure as hell are gonna help find 'em."
"How?"
Daryl shrugged. Well, at least he was honest. "This Minerva seemed to have some shit figured out."
"Maybe next time she comes through-"
"I don't want that," Diana interrupted her. "I don't think I want that."
"C'mon, Diana, you used to say you'd kill to have something cool like this happen to you, what happened to that bish?"
"It became real, Alice," her voice was raspy and grave. "And it's scary when it's real. I don't know the rhyme and reason, there's no instruction manual, no guidelines, no tutorial. I'm just letting things happen to me as they come, blindly. And I don't like that. I used to have a plan. Then the apocalypse shat all over that, and I thought to myself 'alright, I can still work with that', but this… this is different." Diana huffed a humorless breath of laughter. "Someone is pulling strings and playing with my life- with others' lives. I don't know if it's God who suddenly got bored with watching, or the Universe that decided to step in with some cosmic play. It's just- it's just not fair."
Alice sighed. "Nothing is ever fair. Bad things happen to good people for no reason, even neutral but admittedly super weird things happen to… let's say more-or-less-good people for no reason." She sat on Diana's other side as her sister's eyes followed, enough distance between them so she couldn't even feel her body warmth. "But… that's how it be sometimes."
That brought a weak smile to Diana's lips, which Alice returned. "It really is how it be sometimes."
oOo
It took some more convincing and support on both Alice's and Daryl's side respectively, to make Diana snap out of her psychosis and land her feet firmly back on planet Earth.
Alice could understand where she was coming from. She didn't know how she'd react if she were in the same situation, but she knew her sister. She knew what Diana needed.
It had taken her almost all of last night to dive deep into the dark waters of her mind. That's why she'd needed the peace and quiet of the RV. Not that it had been uninhabited, but she knew Carol, Andrea, and Dale wouldn't dare to bother her when her mood was apparent on her face.
In those waters, Alice confronted many things she would've preferred they remain uncovered.
She knew she had never even shown it or thought about it explicitly, but there was some tiny bit of her that blamed their parents' deaths on Diana's absence, for choosing not to stay. She suspected it was the remnants of anger at her choice that had planted those seeds. And last night, she had stuck her hand in the soil and ripped them straight out.
Diana had been right, as much as it hurt to admit. She needed their support, and Alice hadn't made it easy for her. It had only taken Alice's failure-but-not-really regarding Sophia for her to forgo what she'd told Diana at the CDC – that embarrassing confession of sisterly love that made her gag internally just from thinking of it.
They had made a promise of sorts at their parents' grave, about sticking together, being stronger together. Sure, in hindsight it sounded really cliché but who gave a fuck, it was the truth. The five of them had always held their own against every obstacle that had come their way. Now they were just three, but Alice dared to think that their family no longer consisted only of Lobos.
So, rationalizing her own feelings, Alice had put her priorities in order.
oOo
Diana's eyes fluttered open, staring up at the darkened ceiling. She couldn't seem to stay asleep. Fuck, she was exhausted, physically and mentally, but fear of more Minerva-related dreams kept her in a light sleep.
She threw the thin sheet off her body and sat up on the bed, her bare feet hitting the rug. Felix's quick breathing even in sleep signaled the fever hadn't lowered yet. Diana reached to touch his cheek with the back of her hand; still too hot.
Alice seemed to be deep in sleep on the boy's other side. At least that, since Alice was prone to insomnia.
Maybe a glass of water and some fresh air would help. Diana stood, made sure to open and close the door as silently as possible, and tiptoed to the kitchen. The floor still creaked under her feet, but she kept at it out of habit.
Water downed, Diana made for the front door; she'd sit on the porch in unison with the starlit darkness and the crickets until sleep overcame her.
Her feet stopped on the way, however, right in front of a room she'd been visiting all too often lately.
Her heart pounded, pummeling the sleep out of her system as she pondered whether or not to enter. She was taken back to the CDC, waking up next to Daryl, how nice it had felt to be held, well, once she'd known it was him, because she'd been down to murder before that.
Fuck it.
Diana turned the handle very slowly; she knew it was a squeaky one –, slipped inside and turned to the door to push it carefully closed.
"Diana?" the raspy voice dripped with sleep, and Diana almost slammed her forehead to the wooden door, panic and the pounding in her chest freezing her. "Sumthin' wrong?"
She turned to face him; he'd sat on the edge of the bed in anticipation, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, looking ready to pounce up and go to her. Diana shook her head, then continued to do so as her hand flew to the door handle. "I'm leaving, I'm sorry. I shouldn't-"
"No, stay, I-" Daryl whispered, jumping to his feet. "You can stay."
To diminish her embarrassment, Diana avoided his searching eyes as she walked past him and climbed onto the far end of the bed, slipping under the covers and curling into a little ball with the sheets up to her ears.
Daryl sat back down and turned to her, bathing him in the midnight light pouring from the window at Diana's back. He looked like an apparition from one of her pre-Minerva Daryl-centered dreams. It didn't help with the flame slowly growing and licking at her belly.
"Sumthin' the matter with Felix?" he asked, killing the fire, sobering her up.
She shook her head again, not trusting her voice.
"You… you wanna talk about it?" His eyes were downcast, focusing on his hand closest to her, closed to a fist. "Lotta shit happened today."
Diana took a deep breath and slipped her hand on top of his, opening his fist and pulling him toward her, urging him to lie down. "I just wanna be here, I can't sleep."
Daryl resisted her pull, standing up instead. Diana sat up at the same time, feeling the sting of rejection poke at her heart. "I'll sleep on the couch, you stay here."
"Hey, dum-dum," Diana called, rejection turning to frustration, stopping Daryl before he could open the door. He looked at her over his shoulder. "Get your ass over here, I wanna be here with you, not my shadow in an empty room."
"You sure?"
"Yes, I'm fucking sure. It's hella tight that you ask and all, but if I'm ever not sure, I will tell you, alright? So…" She gestured with her head for him to come to her, which Daryl obeyed without hesitation.
Diana pulled the sheets back in invitation, and he almost stumbled into it, missing the edge of the bed. Diana stifled laughter at his eagerness, and she could see his smile in the dark.
When they settled, they were both on their side, facing each other. "Doesn't this hurt your stitches?" Diana asked, a hand reaching for the spot on his abdomen where she knew the bandages were.
Daryl inhaled sharply and covered her hand with his. The room was dim, but the distance between them was small, and Diana could feel his minty breath on her skin and see his pupils widen even more. All traces of humor evaporated, replaced by something heavier.
"No," he whispered, and the throaty sound had her swallowing dry.
Maybe this hadn't been the best idea on her part. She trusted Daryl, but she didn't trust herself. Being a virgin with a hoe mentality + willingly climbing into bed with the object of her affections = torturous disaster.
Diana slipped her hand away and turned her back to Daryl, maybe without the visual distraction, she'd be able to calm down. "C'mon," she told him, voice shaky, "You be the big spoon first."
She heard the mattress squeak and the weight shifting. "First?" he said right next to her ear as warmth flooded her backside; he was close but not touching her.
Diana fought back a shudder and nodded. "I hug in my sleep," she admitted, slightly intimidated by the new sensations of a situation she'd never experienced before, well, in full consciousness anyway. That sounded wrong.
The anticipation was the worst and best of it. "Are you gonna hold me or what?" she whispered, wanting the clenching in her belly to be over.
Daryl's response came in the form of his arm wrapping around her middle and pulling her to him until his chest and her back were flush together. She felt his lips and stubbled chin graze the back of her neck. A gasp escaped her, and Diana felt the blood rush to her cheeks. He slipped an arm under her head to cushion her, and his other hand rested on her side, touching her skin from where her shirt had ridden up.
Her legs almost curled toward her chest out of reflex, but then she felt around behind her with a foot and found one of Daryl's bare legs. She hooked it with her ankle and brought it between her legs.
Daryl's hand pressed down on her side, his fingers digging deliciously into her ribs, and Diana wished he would slip it under her shirt. "What're you doin'?" his breath hit the back of her neck, and goosebumps covered her skin.
This wasn't better at all. But at least the urge to act on the temptation of kissing him was hindered.
In response, Diana took his hand and intertwined their fingers, hugging their tangled arms to her chest. "When you're the big spoon, you go big or go home, my man," she whispered, faking nonchalance as her heart raced in her chest and her lower abdomen burned with fire.
"Takin' notes." Daryl huffed in humor and tightened his arms around her.
so i made up a disease, it's okay, i got artistic license
pls don't call me out on my bullshit, i actually tried to make it as realistic as possible lmao
other than that, hey we now know dream-girl's name! my girl Minerva finally coming thru
she will appear in person in the future and i can't wait because she's a boss ass bitch and i love that girl
also more daryl and diana moments that made me melt as i was writing (is that conceited of me to say? idc)
