Chapter Thirty Four: Companionable
Companionable: (of a situation) relaxed and pleasant because shared with friends or friendly people.
Day 71
Daisy could feel Glenn's burning gaze bore deep into the side of her head, she rolled her eyes and shot him a quick side glance. Her intrusion into his and Maggie's usual supply run into town was not welcome to say the least. Ahead, Daisy could see two walkers standing on the side of the road, their heads bowed together as if in some deep conversation. She took a moment to comprehend the normality of seeing such gory sights, then banished the thought and focused on driving. Without traffic, driving—and parking—was significantly easier. No more reverse parallel parking was a benefit Daisy could get behind.
"I just don't see what could be so important that you had to come yourself," Glenn sighed, likely lamenting his lost chance to score with Maggie.
Daisy felt no sympathy for him, "Get your head out of Maggie's ass, Glenn." She snorted at the visual, then crinkled her nose as it stuck in her brain. Daisy continued as he began to protest, "Someone trusted me to keep their secret. Do you think I want to be here?"
Glancing towards him once more, she saw that Glenn seemed to not believe her.
"Don't talk about Maggie's ass. Or think of it."
Daisy snorted again, a wide smile spread across her face, "Glenn, out of the two of us, I don't think it's me who's guilty of that."
"Oh, real mature," He berated her. Daisy thought to herself that Glenn was once again describing a crime that he himself was guiltier of.
"How is it going with Maggie, by the way?" Daisy asked with genuine curiosity—without reality television, she had to get the little drama that she seemed to require somewhere.
With a long sigh, Glenn answered, "She's being mean." Daisy looked to see that he was pouting, and a curl of amusement rose within her.
"Mean?" She lengthened the word with a questioning lilt, smiling to herself.
"Yeah, one minute we're having really great sex, the next she's completely ignoring me. It's like..." He trailed off.
"It's like...?"
Glenn rearranged himself to face Daisy head-on, she turned her head for a moment with narrowed eyes, he pursed his lips and looked down, then caught her gaze, "Are you...experiencing your time at the moment."
A simultaneous feeling of amusement, confusion and rage overtook Daisy as she tried to focus on not crashing on a road with no other cars, "What in the actual fuck do you mean by my 'time'?"
Glenn backed away as much as he could when seated beside her in a car, then stuttered his way through his answer, "Uh, I just thought—"
"You just thought...? What?" Daisy cut him off.
He sighed and his voice lowered as if to deter any eavesdroppers, "All the women in the camp have been acting...strangely, so I thought maybe your cycles have...synched up, or whatever." Perhaps he has forgotten we're alone in a car, Daisy mused to herself while shooting Glenn an incredulous glare. He stuttered to defend himself, "Hey! I know that can happen! It's not an insane theory..."
"Okay," Daisy said firmly, hands gripping tightly to the steering wheel as they began to enter the city limits of Senoia, trying to prepare herself for the counter argument she felt indebted to all women to make, "Firstly, we've been on the farm for, like, two days, you crazy person, it takes forever for women to synch up, if they even do synch up. Secondly, you can't just invalidate a woman's emotions by saying they're a result of menses. Thirdly, did you ever think that maybe she's waiting for you to make a move, get to know her a little besides biblically? Lastly, don't ever talk about menstrual cycles again, just...leave it alone. Especially if you can't even say the name."
Daisy huffed an annoyed breath as she pulled up in front of the pharmacy and pulled up the hand brake. She leant forward and rested her chin on her arms where they were crossed on the steering wheel, she looked at Glenn who seemed both dejected and scared of her. Daisy smiled amusedly, "You're pretty hopeless, Glenn. You know that?"
He just looked back silently, the glint in his eyes looking like a hint of protest, but he said nothing. Daisy grinned back and flung an arm out to pat him amiably on the shoulder. Nudging the door open, Daisy slid out and scanned the surroundings, she heard Glen mumble something about how Dale was right behind her. She belatedly spotted three walkers milling around on the sidewalk a few dozen feet away and grimaced at her lack of awareness.
"There's three over there," she called quietly over to Glenn, looking back to see him nod as he shoved his door closed, she followed suit. Edging her knife from its position inadvisably hanging by her thigh from the belt loop of her jeans, Daisy gestured vaguely between Glenn and the rightmost walker.
"Uh, what?" Glenn asked with a confusion that Daisy fully understood.]
With a self-deprecating smirk, Daisy replied, "You get that one on the right, lead it into the street, and I'll get the one on the left."
"Won't they be fine...just, go past 'em. Leave 'em be?" He asked hopefully.
"No," Daisy contradicted him firmly, "Better safe than sorry." Shaking her head at his nonchalance concerning their safety—not minding her own lapse of awareness just a minute earlier. She began to walk towards the gathering of walkers, seeing Glenn to the same and wandering in an arc to the right. Feeling as though something was missing as the walkers began to take notice of their perceived dinner walking towards them, Daisy crouched slightly and raised her knife in front of her, poised to strike out at any sudden movements.
The walker she had picked as her target, a decidedly overweight older gentleman with a hanging beer belly and a generically plaid button-down, meandered in her direction to meet her halfway. Mentally praising the walker's cooperation in its own death, Daisy slashed her knife through the air and embedded it in the eye socket of the walker, its hot, putrid breath exhaling over her face as it stopped its languid movements and dropped to the ground. Her nose wrinkled from the smell and her eyes began to water, she looked up to see Glenn smoothly dispatching his walker with his knife and the third and final walker shuffling towards him on one functional leg.
As Glenn struck out at the last walker, Daisy decided that her knife was able to retire for the moment, so she swiped the blade over the walker's plaid shirt on either side to clean the dark red and black blood from it. Mentally picturing another lecture from Merle on how Daisy was seemingly incapable of proper knife-cleaning-practices, she scrubbed at it a little more firmly, removing the last sliver of decaying brain matter with a satisfied smile.
"All clean?" Glenn asked from where he had suddenly sidled up beside her, one eyebrow raised judgementally towards her.
"I don't appreciate the sass, Glenn. We'll see whose knife is cleaner and more efficient in the long run," she grumbled to herself, leaving the downed walkers and following the chuckling Glenn back towards the car, detouring to enter the pharmacy she had parked in front of.
"Hey, so, uh," Glenn started as the bell above the door twinkled as it was hit by its frame, Daisy's attention was drawn by the light sound and she cringed, Glenn cringing along with her, at their lack of foresight. Peeking into the store, around the row of shelves immediately in front of her, she searched the store for any sign of stirring, and listened for any echoing of moans from walkers drawn by the accidental sound.
"All good," Daisy decided.
Glenn sighed in relief that the bell had not signalled their imminent deaths, and smoothly shut the door behind them, being careful not to hit the bell again. He calmed himself and resumed his thought, "So, what you need is in the pharmacy?" He questioned, raising his brow questioningly.
Daisy stared at him with a deadpan, "Yes."
At her tilting her head towards the counter near the back of the store, Glenn took the hint and shuffled past her, leaving her to gather whatever supplies she had been mysteriously contracted to obtain. Studying the cardboard signs hanging off of the topmost shelves, she passed the aisles containing 'natural remedies' and 'allergy and hayfever medicine', landing warily in the aisle containing contraceptives. Dazedly wondering what Lori might give her in return for her valiant deed, Daisy examined the different emergency contraceptives, finally deciding on a friendly-looking, light blue box.
"Oh my god, are you pregnant?" Daisy tried really hard to be surprised as her eyes rolled to see Glenn standing by the condoms, a large box in his hand. His eyes were wide and his face was pale, before Daisy could explain he began to stutter, "Oh my god, oh my god. Who even...?" He trailed off, studying her up and down, "Did you Daryl...?" He raised one eyebrow and a smile began to spread across her face.
Daisy furrowed her brow and huffed a disbelieving laugh, "What, me and Daryl?" She vaguely waved the box in her hands, "In what world would we—?"
"I mean...he seems the likely...candidate." Daisy stared silently at him for a moment, not following his thought process at all. "You two hang out...you seem to be the only person other than Merle he tolerates..."
Daisy snorted, "Tolerates? Oh, how sexy...and we hang out? You mean, we skin tiny animals together."
Glenn twisted his mouth, "Well, I don't watch you two all the time. I don't know what you two...crazy kids get up to in your spare time..." He trailed off suggestively.
Daisy barked a surprised laugh at his audacity, shaking her head and waving the pill box again, "They're not for me."
"Oh."
"Yeah, 'oh'." Daisy smiled companionably at him, "Got your hopes up about Maggie again?" Glenn startled, looking confused. Daisy pointed wordlessly towards the massive box of condoms in his hand. He looked down and his eyes widened, in a flash the box was thrown off to the side, bouncing off the shelf opposite them and falling lamely to the ground with a quiet thud. Both Daisy and Glenn stared at the box, then Daisy scoffed in amusement and slipped the box of pills into her pocket, journeying past Glenn towards the back of the store to gather more supplies.
As she began to pilfer through the shelves, she glanced back to see that the box had mysteriously disappeared and Glenn was pilfering his own set of shelves, a pink blush spreading across his cheeks. She could see the outline of a moderately sized box inside his pack where the condom box had been shoved in haphazardly. Daisy shook her head and smiled at the bottle of cough medicine in her hand, wondering how the ridiculousness of life managed to survive the end of the world.
After their packs had been filled to the brim with supplies, they congregated at the front of the shop, each informing the other of their bounty. As Glenn was admitting to his stashing of a hefty supply of prophylactics, Daisy's gaze drifted to look out of the wide glass windows to survey the street outside.
With a strangled gasp, Daisy's hand shot out to the side to tug Glenn down into a crouch along with her as she realised that there was a group of at least two dozen walkers meandering in the street near them, a good percentage of them stalling between them and the truck.
"Hey, wh—" Glenn pouted and began to protest her rough handling of him, but he cut himself off with widened eyes as he followed Daisy's gaze to the frankly alarming mass of man-eating monsters outside. One of the walkers stuttered to a stop and turned its head to examine them through the window, then leant against it and mouthed at the glass, teeth clicking against it. Its rancid breath fogged the glass and black blood flicked against the barrier between them and it with its every exhale. A few tense moments of panicked silence passed them by, then Glenn continued pragmatically, "Well, we are fucked...just...really, completely fucked."