A/N: Don't own (although I'd love to have my very own Norman Reedus :D) don't sue!
Lyrics are from 'Rain' by Patty Griffin
Rain
Chapter Four
It's hard to listen to a hard, hard heart
Beatin' close to mine
Poundin' up against the stone and steel
Walls that I won't climb
Sometimes a hurt is so deep, deep, deep
You think that you're gonna drown
Sometimes all I can do is weep, weep, weep
With all this rain fallin' down
Strange, how hard it rains now
Rows and rows of big dark clouds
When I'm holding on underneath this shroud
Rain
It's hard to know when to give up the fight
Some things you want will just never be right
It's never rained like it has tonight before
Now, I don't wanna beg you, baby
For something maybe you could never give
I'm not lookin' for the rest of your life
I just want another chance to live
Strange, how hard it rains now
Rows and rows of big dark clouds
When I'm holdin' on underneath this shroud
Rain
Cassidy, Daryl and Lochie appeared to be the only people unaffected by a killer of a hangover the next day. Andrea was even nastier than usual, T-Dog was grunting rather than talking and Glenn was curled up in the foetal position on the porch. Maggie had fallen asleep on the porch swing. Cassidy handed her a glass of water. Glenn groaned piteously and curled up into a tighter ball, whimpering.
"I'm dying." He moaned.
"It's called a hangover, don't panic." Cassidy explained in some amusement.
Daryl emerged through the door behind her, his crossbow slung over his back. He eyed Glenn without a glimmer of pity.
"Here." Cassidy placed a glass of water on the wooden boards besides him and dropped an Alka Seltzer into it.
It fizzed up noisily and Glenn cracked open an eye.
"Why did you make me drink so much?" He muttered morosely, levering himself into a sort of sitting position.
"You barely drank anything." Cassidy reminded him. "A walker could drink you under the table."
Glenn muttered mutinously but he was too busy trying to keep the Alka Seltzer down to start an argument.
"It wasn't very clever to drink that much." Rick observed as he joined them in the early morning air.
It was still very early and he was only in a white vest and his uniform trousers.
"He didn't drink that much." Cassidy protested. "We drank twice as much and not even a headache."
Glenn muttered something between gulps of the fizzy water, shooting her a very dark reproachful look.
"Relaxing once in a while won't kill you, Sheriff."
Rick didn't answer but his dark eyes remained on Cassidy until Lori appeared behind him with a black look on her face. She'd declined their invitation to join them after checking on Carl the night before and had stomped off to bed almost immediately.
"What's going on?" She demanded.
"Glenn's dying." Cassidy said helpfully.
Lori shot Glenn's once-again-still form a searching look.
"He's hungover." Rick reassured her.
Lori glared at Cassidy and then dragged Rick back inside the house. Cassidy yawned and stretched. It had been a while since she'd been drinking, she might not have been suffering but she could definitely feel the effects and the brisk early morning air was a welcome break to the unpleasant heat. She figured a little stroll around the farm might do her some good, rinse away the cobwebs. She hadn't gone far when she realised that Daryl was behind her.
"You know stalking is still illegal."
"She really doesn't like you, Red."
Cassidy glanced at him, his blue eyes were fixed firmly on the trees to their right.
"Oh."
"She thinks you got your eye on her husband's-"
"Good." Cassidy interrupted, quite enjoying the cool dewy grass beneath her bare feet.
"Have you?" Daryl asked.
She stopped and looked at him in surprise.
"No." She shrugged, her eyes trailing over his shoulder to look back at the house. "But if she thinks I do, she might treat him a bit better."
He looked sort of amused. Cassidy was nonplussed. Not that she'd mind giving Rick one every now and again but he was so blinded by his horrible wife that it wasn't really worth the trouble it would cause. Unfortunately.
"You want her to treat him better." Daryl repeated slowly as if he were mulling the words over as he spoke them.
"Well it isn't detrimental to my happiness or anything… but the woman should be grateful for what she's got." He was still studying her with a strange look on his face. "What?" She snapped.
No matter how confident and self-assured she'd become in her twenty-four years, one of those indecipherable strange looks on Daryl Dixon's face shattered all of her carefully constructed walls and managed to make her feel like a baffled teenager again.
"You use all them big pointless words when you're on the defensive."
She gaped at him. Literally. She was pretty sure her mouth was hanging open and everything.
"What were you, a psychologist in another life?"
He snorted with laughter. He was reading her, he could actually figure her out. This gruff, slightly unpleasant, generally grumpy, sort of attractive, very sexy in a rough way, redneck was closer to figuring her out than her own parents had been. The dynamics between them had shifted, Cassidy was standing as if struck by lightening and Daryl wasn't even looking at her. He was focused entirely on the area around them.
As she'd concluded earlier, the heavy liquor on an almost empty stomach after months of abstinence had had a very odd effect on her, which was the only explanation she could come up with for what she did next. She put one hand on his shoulder, the other cupped his chin and tilted his face towards hers. On her bare feet she had to lean up on her tiptoes to brush her lips against his. She'd meant to startle him, to throw him off and re-assert the manageable flirty tension between them. Unfortunately, he turned out to be an amazing kisser and she hadn't surprised him nearly as much as she'd wanted to.
With his lightening reflexes his hands went to her elbows to steady her against him although she seemed to be perfectly balanced on her toes. She felt his shoulder flex beneath her clenched hand, his stubble rough against her soft cheek, the hard planes of his chest pressed against hers. As it turned out a mouth used mainly for cussing and scowling was surprisingly excellent at this sort of thing. She could taste the old liquor from last night, sweet against her tongue. In the end neither of them had to break the kiss because a rustling in the trees made them break apart automatically. Daryl reached for his crossbow. A squirrel darted back up the tree it had emerged from.
She moved away from him. He didn't look the slightest bit disconcerted about what had happened, although his blue eyes were heavily-lidded and blisteringly bright, his cheeks were red and his breathing was a little hitched.
She looked at him, seriously considering continuing what they'd started. They were still standing there looking at each other when Shane and Rick emerged from the early morning shadows, looking as if they were right in the middle of a nasty argument. Cassidy took a step back.
"Lover's tiff?" She called out to them.
Shane glared at her but Rick looked pleased at the interruption and made a beeline straight for them.
"What's up, Sheriff?"
He shook his head.
"Nothing." He turned to Daryl. If he noticed his burning cheeks and the feverish glint in his eye he didn't comment. "You ready?"
Cassidy looked at them questioningly. Shane had marched off without a further word to any of them. Neither of them explained but from the general gist of the conversation she gathered they were about to go looking for Sophia again.
"You in?" Daryl suddenly threw at her, without actually looking at her.
"I… uh-" Cassidy hadn't actually joined the others looking for the girl yet. Lochie had. Rick was looking at her intently and Daryl was peering out of the corner of his eye. All of the reasons she had for not tramping through the walker infested woods looking for a girl who'd already been missing for way longer than the usual life-expectancy nowadays, fled from her mind and she shrugged. "Sure."
"Christ I hate the woods." Cassidy cursed under her breath, slapping at a mosquito on her bare arm.
They'd been crawling all over the woods for hours now and the atmosphere was unpleasantly heavy beneath the trees. While they provided shade from the punishing glare of the sun, they also trapped the heat beneath the leafy canopy overhead. Of course that had some advantages too, she mused as Daryl circled in front of her. His shirt was plastered to his broad back, practically see through with sweat and his bare arms were glistening. She was so deep in contemplation about all the wonderful things a ragged pair of jeans could do for the male form, that she almost didn't see the snake in time. Jerking her foot to the side at the last moment, she gave a strangled cry and half-tumbled sideways against a tree.
Daryl whirled, crossbow held ready, his blue eyes darting. It took him a moment to realise what had happened. Cassidy was clinging to a tree as if her life depended on it, staring wide-eyed at something in the grass. He moved towards her.
"Watch the snake." She said slightly breathlessly.
He couldn't see a thing. She pointed at a spot in the grass somewhere to his right.
"It's probably just a little thing, not even poisonous." He said helpfully.
"It's a snake." She repeated, slightly hysterically. "With teeth. Fangs. A mouth full of needly things."
Finally catching sight of the harmless reptile quite happily sunbathing in a patch of sunlight and apparently not the least bit interested in either of them, Daryl bent down and picked it up. She made a noise that was half a wail and half a nauseous grunt.
"You can gut a walker with nothing but ya keys and you're scared of this little fella?" He taunted quite gleefully.
"It's a phobia." She snapped. "An unconscious reaction. An irrational fear."
He waved the snake at her. It stuck its tongue out quite passively, seemingly enjoying being wrapped around Daryl's hands.
"Look at the big terrifying beastie. You're lucky I was here to save you."
"Don't fucking patronize me, redneck."
"Nah, I'm sure anyone would have given such a big girly shriek when they saw this guy."
"I am a girl."
"Guess this makes me your hero, don't it?"
"Keep on, Dixon, and I'll ram that snake right up your-"
"What the hell's going on?" Shane demanded, appearing on the little path looking thunderous.
"What's all the racket?" Glenn said from behind him in a hushed whisper, which was slightly redundant considering Cassidy and Daryl had been howling at each other loudly enough to wake the dead. Literally.
"Red here doesn't like snakes." Daryl jeered, gesturing with the snake again.
"If you wave that thing at me again, I swear to fucking God-"
"Now now, girly. Don't say somethin' you'll regret."
"Oh I guarantee you I won't regret it. In fact I'd take great pleasure in the prospect."
"Weren't sayin' that this morning, Red."
"Go fuck yourself."
"That's no way for a lady to be talkin'… and that definitely wasn't your attitude this morning."
"Fuck off. Do I look like a lady to you?"
"You look like a little gal who nearly wet herself at the sight of one tiny little slitherer."
"I don't think you want to bring up the subject of tiny little wriggly things. Do you, Mr Dixon?"
"EXCUSE ME!" Rick thundered in as loud a whisper as he dared to use.
The two of them turned matching furious looks on him. Rick looked entirely too amused at the situation and some of Cassidy's anger flickered into embarrassment. She really didn't know why he had this effect on her. She could feel heat pooling in every inch of her body, whether from anger or passion or just plain desire, she couldn't tell. They were all staring at them; pale and dirty and exhausted after spending the best part of the day combing the woods, half of them on a hangover.
"Look, it's getting dark and we're all tired. Maybe we should head back." Rick suggested calmly.
Daryl finally deposited the snake back into the grass and it disappeared into the undergrowth. Cassidy looked distinctly queasy and her green eyes were fixed on its progress until it vanished. He'd seen her faced by walkers where she'd been ghostly pale with fear but now she was literally trembling. She looked as if she might throw up at any moment. It made her seem more vulnerable, more human, somehow, to know that she was still afraid of little things even after everything that had happened.
"I'm going up to the highway." He grunted as they started to leave, all guiltily grateful for the respite.
Cassidy paused and glanced at him over her shoulder. For a moment he wondered if she was going to come with him. She had that impenetrable look in her dark eyes and her pretty little mouth was pursed. She looked like some sort of wood nymph. Her golden-red hair was loose and wild around her shoulders, strewn with fallen leaves, her heart-shaped face was streaked with dirt and her bare skin was dappled by the shadows of the leaves overhead. The vest she'd been wearing was filthy and she'd tied it into a knot under her ribcage, exposing dark ink tattooed down her side. She shifted her gaze away and the image shattered. She turned away from him and followed after the others.
"I need a haircut." Lochie announced, staring at her reflection in the mirror critically.
"Sure. I'll just call the salon, shall I?"
"You've got your knickers in a twist today." Lochie twisted her hair into a thick rope and piled it up on top of her head. "What happened with Mr Redneck last night?"
"Nothing." Cassidy snapped, scrubbing at the saddle in her lap slightly harder than was necessary. "I came back to the house with you remember."
"Uh huh." Lochie clearly wasn't convinced. She let her hair drop and shook it out over her shoulders again.
Cassidy didn't reply. She'd never been one for girly talk, but in the middle of an apocalypse it seemed obscene to complain about men problems. After they'd returned from the woods she'd visited Carl, who was closeted with his mother so, to occupy her rather traitorous one-track mind, she'd set about cleaning all the tack for the horses. It was exhausting work and her fingers were raw from scrubbing but the afternoon had passed relatively quickly. Unfortunately the task hadn't distracted her from her brooding thoughts at all.
Lochie had arrived a few minutes earlier and had thrown herself down into the hay at her feet. Cassidy did not do heart-to-hearts. She'd seen a shrink once in her life when she was ten years old. Her parents had insisted on it after everything that had happened. She'd done what her parents had asked and poured everything out; her fears and her nightmares, her dark thoughts and her boiling hatred, all of the dark nasty recesses of her young mind had been explored and in the end it had done nothing. The thoughts had still been there and her family had become fractured anyway. When something bothered her, she kept it inside, tucked safely into a corner.
"What?" She realised Lochie had been staring at her as she worked at the saddle.
"You are a baffling little enigma." Lochie sighed, returning the mirror to its place on the tackroom wall. "You're a hypocrite."
Cassidy blinked in surprise. The saddle was gleaming on her lap but she felt no satisfaction. As if a shiny saddle was any use nowadays.
"You're all 'take what you want' and 'we're in an apocalypse, we've no time for dithering' and 'that Andrea chick is a moron, getting laid is about the only fun we can still have'… and then when it comes down to it you're too scared to-"
"I am not scared." Cassidy interrupted the diatribe.
"Whatever." Lochie announced haughtily. "The fact remains that you're too stubborn to take your own advice and nail that sexy slab of hunk while you've still got the chance."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes you do. You two glare at each other so hard it's amazing you don't just burn each other up. It's disgusting." She finished grumpily. "Is he why you stay?"
The saddle on her lap slid off and landed with a dull thud on the wooden floor, scattering soap suds everywhere. Cassidy gaped at Lochie.
"What?"
"Well." Lochie shrugged. "You don't usually hang around anywhere this long. Especially not around this many people. You don't like people."
Cassidy couldn't argue with that. She hadn't actually thought about it that way. She wasn't exactly comfortable here, that was true. Too many people. Too many people all up in each other's business. And it still gave her the creeps. There was something so sinister about the place. Bleh.
"Lochie. We have a bed and a shower. For free. We're not being strong-armed into granting sexual favours to overweight tubs of lard with bad B.O. like the last place."
"If I recall correctly, the first time the topic was mentioned you broke said tub of lard's kneecaps and left him there in a pool of his own rancid urine." Lochie pointed out. "Then stole all his weapons and his Humvee."
"Be that as it may." Cassidy continued sternly. "There's little point in running out on a good thing while we've got it. And no. It's got nothing at all to do with Daryl Dixon."
Lochie rolled her eyes. Cassidy stared her down defiantly. She really didn't want to think about Daryl Dixon or whatever effect he may or may not be having on her choice of location right now.
"If you say so. Where is he anyway?"
"At the highway." Cassidy said immediately, without thinking.
She met Lochie's triumphant gaze with a vicious glare.
"Uh huh." Lochie got to her feet. "Well I'm going to see what I can do about all this." She waved a hank of hair at Cassidy. "Why don't you go and find him… and have sex for me while you're at it." She called over her shoulder. "Lord knows, it's been a while."
Chachi94 – thanks here's the next chapter for you
Leerun – thanks very much :) I don't actually know what Mary Sue means but okay thanks lol. Oh yes it most definitely was, extra points for you!
gurl3677 – thanks glad you liked it
SaraLostInes – the hair is supposed to be that sort of gold that's too red to be blonde but too blonde to be red if you get me. Most definitely, Jayne is my favourite Firefly character he rocks :D Thanks very much :)