Original Prompt: Maebe (on AO3) asked if I could "write Daryl with a cold" in tiny apartment verse. I did, but it turned into something a lot more emotional than I expected! The tone is a bit deeper than the last one, more deep and emotional than just the usual tiny apartment fluff, though it's a bit fluffy, too. I think it's a complement towards Secretly Sweet, the chapter of this ficlet series where Beth is the one who gets sick.

There was a certain image that Daryl had always projected to the outside world; perhaps it was intentional, or perhaps some people just saw what they wanted to see. Whatever the reason for the perceptions people had about him, they existed. Those being polite might call him the strong, silent type. Those who didn't care so much about being nice might call him taciturn, grumpy, grouchy, rough, or a number of other things.

It was true that in some ways he could be all those things, but he was so much more to those who knew him. Especially to Beth, who had seen so many other sides of him that few people had taken the time to get even a glimpse of. There was the good, sweet side of him, of course. He was, after all, the man who built her shelves at just the right width for their narrow window so she could have an indoor garden, the man who took care of her when she was sick, the man who made her a sandwich with his own hands, packed it in a paper bag, and brought it to her at work when she forgot to bring lunch, and the man who she could sometimes catch curled on the couch with their tiny black kitten curled under his chin, both of them fast asleep.

There was a sweetness in him, a goodness that radiated outwards, like fingers of sunlight shining through the chinks of a shuttered window. But there was more than just sunshine and sweetness glimpsed through those cracks. There were shadows, too. There was darkness. In the darkness of their bedroom at night, sated from their lovemaking or just tired from a long day, he would sometimes roll onto his side with his back facing her, and as her fingers traced lovingly and gently over the scars that permanently marred his broad back, he would talk to her about her past. She was never sure if her touch coaxed it out of him, or if it soothed him while he spoke, she just knew he needed her not to stop just as much as some part of him needed to get those words out.

On those nights his voice was lower and rougher. He would whisper, or murmur, but he would never get any louder; as if he thought that by speaking too loudly into the darkness, the shadows would turn into the very demons from his past that he had dared put words to. Those nights, he seemed older somehow. Skittish and wary and feral. Those nights, when she held him and comforted him as he trembled faintly in her arms, she felt the weight of everything he had gone through and how it had made him the man he was today. The man she loved.

She couldn't help but wonder, though, about the boy he'd once been. He had been a boy, though his childhood had been nothing like hers. He didn't have a single picture, let alone walls of framed photos and several neatly kept albums, and all the stories he told of his childhood tended to have some dark aspect to them. Even the happier ones about his mother, before she'd passed away, were tinged in melancholy and seemed almost sour, as if the overwhelming scent of the liquor his mother had loved so much clung even to the memory of her.

Beth wondered sometimes, not just about the boy he'd once been, but the boy he could have been. There were so many moments with her when he was happy and laughing and smiling in a way that people who only barely knew him might have been surprised by. But he was a man then. His happiness came, in part, from the man he already was, enjoying a life he never thought he'd have. He was never child-like in those moments, he never really gave her a glimpse of what he might have been like as a child.

Except when he was sick.

Those moments were rare, as it was. Despite the fact that he smoked (less than he had when they'd first met, granted, but still on occasion), Daryl was a pretty healthy man. Beth put it down to a strong immune system, staying in good shape, and a relatively germ-free workplace. Unfortunately, Beth couldn't say the same about her own workplace. Being around kids meant being around germs more than anyone would have liked, probably. And unfortunately it seemed that whenever Beth got sick, Daryl tended to follow suit at least half the time.

(Of course that didn't surprise her, considering how lovingly he took care of her, and how he never gave up on holding her and kissing even when she was coughing all over.)

When Daryl was sick, he got quieter, but it was in a different way. A needy way. He'd lay there in bed looking up at her, and his blue eyes would actually be plaintive in a way she almost never saw, and the urge to take care of him was impossible to resist.

So she did. She sat by him just as he always did her, and the wonder in his eyes at every little thing she did always made her heart ache. He seemed amazed every time she checked his temperature with the back of her hand, or made him chicken soup and sat there to help him drink it, or fluffed his pillows and changed the blankets. Her gentle touch was like magic to him; a magic he'd never felt before and could not learn to expect. And if those things amazed him, he practically lit up despite his illness when she took things even further. Like the time she wheeled in the small TV from the living room, wedging it carefully through the narrow bedroom door and fitting it in the small space at the foot of their small bed, so they could curl up together (him beneath the covers, and her lying on top of them beside him) and watch a movie.

That time, he was sick with the flu; not anything overly worrying, but the most sick she'd ever seen him. Sick enough that she'd sung him to sleep with the same soft lullabies her Mama had sung to her as a child, when she'd been sick. She held him close, stroking her fingers through his sweat-damp hair and crooning breathy lullabies to him until he fell asleep in her arms.

He was flushed with fever, but she had never seen him look more peaceful than he did in that moment, asleep and curled against her. Not just peaceful… innocent.

And when she pressed a kiss to his forehead, she felt for a moment like she wasn't just kissing Daryl; the man she loved and adored, the man she shared this little creaky bed and this tiny apartment with. She was kissing the innocent little boy still hidden away somewhere deep down inside of him. The boy who'd never had someone to take care of him, never had anyone to make him soup and check his temperature with the back of a hand, and sing him lullabies until he fell asleep, and hold him just to make sure he got the rest he needed.

Other people might see a taciturn, silent, grouch of a man, but she saw everything that lay beneath it. She saw the light glinting between the cracks, and the shadows that occasionally stretched heavy fingers over that happy glint. And she loved every single bit of him, every single part of who he was, and who he might have been; the little neglected boy and the strong, damaged, but wonderfully sweet man.

She loved him like he'd never been loved before, but like he'd always deserved to be.

And she would always take care of him, just as he took care of her.