Chapter 11: he tumbles on by luck or grace

At first he thinks Greene must have done this as a favor to his daughter, but when he thinks about that it's actually pretty weird for a whole number of reasons, and - as Greene takes him to the silo and together they survey the wear and tear, the places that need basic patching and then the places that need almost complete reconstruction, talk about how the next few days should go and formulate a plan of attack - after a bit it becomes clear that the man genuinely kind of likes him.

Which is also pretty weird. He's not sure what cause he's given Hershel Greene to do that.

It's almost six when Greene lets him go, but he doesn't feel like leaving. It's a warm afternoon in late summer, the sun lowering and turning everything a rich gold, and after he's sure he won't be literally chased away he wanders into the barn and finds Beth brushing one of the horses. The horse in question is a pretty chestnut mare with a white blaze, and he stands for a moment, admiring.

The horse. Admiring the horse.

He clears his throat, but she's already looking up and toward him, smiling faintly. She doesn't stop brushing.

Today the bracelets on her wrist are soft gold and green. They match the landscape outside. He looks at them, swallows, looks away.

"Hi."

He gives her a nod. He realizes he's glad she wasn't with them before. He would have had a hard time focusing, and it might have been noticeable. Then he remembers Greene had implied on the phone that Beth would be helping them, and what he feels can't exactly properly be called worry, but.

But.

"Got everythin' settled?"

At first he guesses she just means the job, but then he wonders about that, because he didn't go into the specifics of the issues with her, but he's sure she sensed there were more of them than just moving on. He nods again, but his eyes are slightly narrowed.

"So you're gonna be out here tomorrow, and then you can meet up with me at the coffee shop later." She pauses. "Shawn's gonna be there. Kinda wish he wouldn't."

"How come?"

She stops brushing and strokes a hand over the horse's glossy hide, rolls a shoulder. "I dunno. He just kinda... He hovers. He's overprotective. He's not even that much older, but it's like he thinks I'm gonna get kidnapped or somethin', like every moment. He doesn't even like Jimmy that much. It's weird."

Daryl doesn't perceive this as a problem. He'll tell himself that later on. He'll tell himself more than once. Because there's no reason for it to be a problem. Shawn has no reason to be concerned about this. He thinks about them alone together in the ruins, about the first night in the truck, but he didn't do anything. Didn't think about doing anything.

Except that thing with her hair.

In any case, she kissed him.

"Anyway, he likes hearin' me sing and he has this girl he's meetin' up with, so." She passes a hand over the mare's nose and murmurs something Daryl can't make out.

Without entirely meaning to, he moves closer. Close beside her. He reaches up and lays a hand against the mare's flank - feels the soft smoothness and the warmth, the rise and fall of her ribcage, the steady pump of her heart. And he thinks about Beth riding - because she does, of course she does - her hair flying, moving fast, graceful in that way he knows she is. He thinks about that, and he doesn't mean to do that either, but he thinks he might like to see that sometime.

He glances at her, and he's not totally surprised to see that she's looking at him. He takes a breath. He's not sure he should ask this question, but here he goes anyway.

He's been doing a lot of that in the last few days. Wondering about something, uncertain about it, and diving into it before he knows what's happening.

"Why you want me there?"

"'cause I like you," she says immediately, and smiles at him - wider. He stares back at her; maybe he shouldn't be shocked when she's blunt like this, not anymore, but he is. He really is. She's not afraid of saying that. She's not afraid of what she might hear back, and she's not afraid of freaking him out. And freaking him out...

He's actually not sure anyone has ever said that to him. Ever in his life.

But even if he has no idea how he feels about it, he's not exactly sprinting for the door.

"I like you," she continues, "and I thought you might kinda like it. You asked me to sing before. Seemed like you liked it then. I thought so, anyway."

Is this the first time either of them have made a direct reference to that night? To what happened? What they both did? How it felt, what she thought, at least this explicitly?

He thinks it might be so.

He shrugs. He's not going to argue with that. It would be a pretty stupid thing to argue with.

She looks at him for a few seconds longer, and it's the kind of gaze that makes him squirm. It pretty much is making him squirm. Which isn't so great. He's not sure he wants her to know she can do that to him. But that's probably a lost cause. Probably she already knows. He thinks this with a kind of resignation - but not with any particular unhappiness.

"So," she says, moving past him to put the brush away. "You can be there. And I think I can get you free coffee. So you'll owe me again." She flashes him yet another smile. "Don't say you didn't ask for it. Don't matter."

No, he supposes it doesn't. He turns to her, hands slipping into his pockets, and mostly against his will his own smile is pulling at the corner of his mouth. Just like he can't ever really make himself smile, he's never been all that good at keeping them back. They come. They mostly control him.

"You ever just let no be no? Like, at all?"

"You didn't say no. You said you'd come if you were here, I pretty much think that's a yes. Now you're gonna be here. Unless you turn Daddy down after all. That wouldn't be very polite, would it?" she adds thoughtfully, turning back to face him with her arms crossed over her chest. "Then again, you are a jerk."

Shit, he's smiling. He can't help it. He's smiling at her, and he's not even sure why it should be such a thing right now, except it is. It absolutely is. Smiling at her, it's sort of a big deal at the moment. Not least because she'll see it. She'll see it, and she'll draw some conclusions. He's not sure what conclusions she might draw, but something about the vague possibilities is vaguely worrying.

"Not a creep, though."

She tilts her head to one side. "Nope. Definitely not a creep."

Then there's silence. There's the soft whistle of a sudden gust of wind in the loft above, and the mare lets out a quiet sigh. He looks at her and she looks right back, and he notices her bracelets again. The little heart on the gold chain around her neck. Her braid. The tank top she's wearing - dark blue and loose, and the looseness and the way it hangs on her has the effect of making her look even smaller than she is. Smaller and more delicate, the neckline accentuating her collarbones, even though he knows that delicacy has to be a lie. She's a farmer's daughter. Farm this size, he's sure Greene has been putting her to work. In terms of physical strength she's probably a force to be reckoned with.

He's thinking about these things. And he realizes his gaze has been moving over her, and she must have seen it. And he thinks about someone walking in right now - Daddy walking in right now - and while this is of course perfectly innocent, he's wondering if the man might see it that way.

If he's going to work here, if she's going to be with him a good bit of the time, he's going to have to be careful. Some part of him knows this. Before, he was thinking this girl might get him into trouble, and she may well do so, but he would frankly like to avoid that kind of trouble.

He would like to avoid getting chased off the farm by an irate father brandishing a shotgun.

But the thing is that he likes her. He likes being around her. That's weird, and he's sure a lot of people might look at it and think it was totally about something else, that he wants something from her, but... He just likes her. He likes the way she makes him feel.

Like he's worth being around.

"Alright," he says quietly. "Alright. I'll be there."

This time her smile is tiny and warm. "Okay. Good." She nods over her shoulder at the barn door. "I gotta get back in, help Mama with dinner." She looks like she's actually about to go, and Daryl's getting ready to mumble some kind of faintly awkward goodbye and move to the door himself, when she stops and gives him a speculative look.

"You actually gotta go?"

Confusion. "Huh?"

"You got somewhere you gotta be?"

He starts to say something like My brother, something about Merle - and then he stops. Because you know what? Merle is a fucking adult. Merle is a grown-ass man. Merle has years on him. If he's not back for a while, Merle can fucking deal. And if he has to come up with an excuse, that will be the easiest thing in the entire universe. He has an entire list of them.

It's possible he's been accumulating some. General ones. Just in case.

But then he realizes he has no idea why she's asking, and that's something he should probably know. "I mean... No. I guess not. Why?"

"You should come have dinner."

No. Oh, no. Nonono. He's starting to formulate a protest, wondering why he wants to formulate a protest, scrambling internally, twice as confused as before, but she's already heading out the door with the confident strides of someone who has reached a decision about something and feels very good about it and doesn't intend to be budged.

"C'mon up to the house. Maybe you can help too."

He stares after her. She is giving him no choice. None. She's this tiny blond teenage girl just deciding things about what he'll do and where he'll be doing them, and she's giving him absolutely no say about it. Any of it. He wonders if it's even occurring to her to do so.

He wonders if he actually cares all that much.

So he follows her up toward the house.