Title: A Night for Scary Stories
Word Count: 2279
Universe: Canon Addition/Divergence
Rating: General
Brief Summary: Stuck in a house surrounded by fog, Beth wheedles a scary story out of Daryl.
Notes: Set somewhere between "Still" and "Alone." For the Bethyl Holidays Fest 2023: Halloween. The prompts were "fog" and "urban legends."

The fog was thick tonight. At first it had just crept along the forest floor, covering her ankles and feet like a thick but weightless blanket. But as the sun set and the temperature shifted, the fog began to swell. It rose to Beth's knees, and then her waist. Soon the entire forest was covered in it. She could barely see a few feet in front of her; the fog as thick as the smoke that had risen from the moonshine shack that night they;d burned it down. It muffled everything around them. The animals fell silent, the trees ceased rustling; what few sounds reached her sounded as if they came down a long tunnel.

She could navigate only by following the two white wings on Daryl's back as if he were a guiding angel, bringing her through the woods to safety.

Safety, in this instance, was a tiny run-down hunting cabin with a door that barely stayed shut, and several small holes in the roof. Still, she tried to make the best of it, as she always did. "At least we can make a fire," she said brightly, pointing to the tiny black stove tucked in one corner, its pipe going up and out a roughly cut hole in the fall. "Can't we? No one will be able to see the smoke or the light in the fog…"

Daryl merely grunted and held up the string of cans they carried around with them, which she was pretty sure was Daryl-speak for 'I guess' followed by 'I'm gonna go check things outside.' Things had been better between them since the moonshine shack. Settled. Calmer. Even almost… dare she say pleasant sometimes. Sure, he still rarely spoke outside of grunts and nods, but he'd said at least a few sentences to her today and none of them were negative. And she'd noticed a deepened sense of protectiveness and care in him; though she had a feeling he might flee if she ever pointed it out. At the very least he'd vehemently deny it.

As he set up the cans outside, Beth found some firewood stacked outside the back of the shack and brought it in, along with some kindling and tinder. The metal cot in the corner had rusted and crumbled in half, but the thin mattress on top of it wasn't awful, and she'd found a folded flannel blanket underneath that was usable, once she'd shaken it out. By the time Daryl came back in, she had a nice little fire going in the stove, which thankfully seemed to be in good enough shape that she didn't have to worry about the whole thing burning down. She had laid the little twin mattress on the floor in front of the stove and covered it with the flannel blanket as well. She sat on the end of it now, watching him as he took it all in and then gave another little grunt.

"Come sit down and warm up," Beth suggested with just a hint of shyness. Her fingers toyed with the bracelets around her wrist as a way to distract herself. She'd thought to pull out her journal and make a little summary of the day, but she knew if she did that they'd sink into silence. Not that she minded that sometimes; these days it was a companionable silence, almost comforting in a way. But something about tonight, about the way the fog surrounded the shack and pressed in close to every gap in the wood and smothered the tiny window at the back, made her want to fill the room with sound, as if she could keep the eeriness at bay simply by talking.

Daryl might not have been the best partner for talking, but he only hesitated a moment before he closed the distance between them. He slung his crossbow off his shoulder and set it on the ground as he sprawled on the other end of the mattress; legs stretched towards the fire and palms resting on the ground behind him.

The firelight flickered across his face, illuminating the dark hair that hung in his eyes and giving a warm glow to his normally stern features. She was reminded for a moment of the way he'd looked the night they'd burned the moonshine shack down. The way the fire had reflected in his eyes, giving them a bright fiery glow. The glow of life, of possibilities, of change.

(He looked almost handsome in the firelight. No, he did look handsome. But that was the sort of thought she couldn't linger on, because he was Daryl and she was Beth and perhaps it was better to think of safer things.)

Beth cleared her throat. "You know what this is the sort of night for?" He looked at her, eyebrow raised, but said nothing. "The kind of night you tell scary stories, or something. Ghost stories or urban legends." Daryl didn't say anything, but he didn't turn away either. She took that as an invitation. "You must have some sort of story like that, right? You spent a lot of time hunting… have you ever seen something in the woods? Like a cryptid or something?"

That put a furrow in his brow. "A cryptid?"

"Yeah, like an animal that exists in urban legends, but there hasn't been scientific proof of. Like the Loch Ness monster, or chupacabras, or a sasquatch."

He snorted, she thought in amusement. "A sasquatch?"

"Yeah, you know. Like Bigfoot!" Beth grinned; he wasn't shutting her down, which in Daryl-speak meant he was at least mildly interested. She was getting a lot better at interpreting Daryl's silences and grunts.

Or maybe she wasn't, because his only response to that was to grunt and turn away. They sat in silence for a few moments and Beth felt her stomach twist; not from the canned food they'd had for dinner, but from something else. Something emotional in nature. Not embarrassment but maybe… longing? Loneliness? She couldn't quite put her finger on it.

And then he spoke again. His gaze stayed on the fire beyond the open stove grate, and his words were stilted, but they were there. "Ain't never seen nothin' like that. But Merle, he swore he saw bigfoot once."

"Really?" Beth drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them as she turned towards him, eyes wide with curiosity.

"Accordin' to him, anyway." Daryl went quiet for a moment, drawing up his own knees and shifting to rest his arms across them so that his hands dangled between them. "He were out huntin' with a friend, I think. Said I was too young t' go, but most of th' time he said that just t' be mean. Anyway, him an' his friend they split up. Merle was on the trail of a buck, or so he said. But it were gettin' dark, and he'd lost the trail. A fog had set in, a lot like this I reckon."

Beth could picture it in her mind. Creeping through the dark woods on a night like this; the moon invisible, the fog pressing in all around you, almost nothing to be seen or heard. She gave a little shiver and Daryl turned towards her, having seen it from the corner of his eyes. "You cold, girl?"

"No." She hesitated. "Maybe a little, but I think I was just… picturing it too well, is all. Keep telling the story, please Daryl?"

"Alright." He turned back toward the fire, his voice low and gruff, almost mesmerizing to her in the dimly lit shack. "He decided t' head back towards th' stand where his friend had been stayin', where they'd planned t' spend th' night. But he kept getting' this weird feelin', he said. Like somethin' was with him in the woods, keepin' pace, just out of sight. He heard this noise, a low grunting noise, said it weren't like any noise he'd heard before. An' sometimes he'd hear a rustling or the snap of a twig, but he couldn't tell how far away it was, 'cuz of the fog."

This time the chill went right down her spine and Beth shivered again, far more noticeably. She hugged her knees tighter to her chest, but it didn't help. Daryl looked over at her, pinning her with his dark blue eyes and a single arch of her eyebrow. "C'mere, girl. Sit closer t' me an' the fire. Can't have you shiverin' to death over there."

She hesitated a moment, and only for his sake. Personal space was a luxury she was used to forgoing these days, but she always did her best to give Daryl it whenever she could. She had noticed a long time ago that he often liked to keep his distance, didn't like to be touched or to feel like everyone was closing in on him. But he had asked; demanded, really. And she had no desire to argue with him on this particular point.

So she shifted closer until they were sitting side-by-side, so close that her hips and shoulder brushed against his. He reached around her, and her breath caught—for a second, she'd thought he was going to put his arm around her, but no. That was a silly thought. Instead, he reached for the end of the blanket, freed now that she wasn't sitting on it, and brought it up and around her back. She gave him a faint smile in thanks.

"Better?"

"Yes," she admitted softly, glad that the glow of the fire hid the flush on her cheeks as she pulled the blanket up and around her shoulders.

"Good. S'where was I?"

"Merle heard noises around him, in the woods."

"Right." He pulled his arm back, but not all the way. The palm of it rested on the wooden floor just behind her, creating a closeness between them that made her suddenly yearn to curl a little bit more into him and—no. She bit her lip and forced herself to focus on his words instead. "He got almost back to th' tree stand when it happened. He saw a shape in th' fog. Dark and big; bigger'n a man, he said. It was comin' towards him, making that low groanin' noise, reachin' out towards him…"
Beth gasped and reached out without thinking to grip Darl's arm. "And then what? Did it get him?"

He turned towards her, glancing at her hand on his arm and then up to her face. But there was a smile on his lips; the faintest hint of one, anyway. He didn't seem annoyed, at least, so she let her hand linger for a moment as she took in the sight of that little smirk.

"Well, that's where th' story differs. If you ask Merle, he says he shouted at it an' shot his gun off into the air, an' the beast or thing, whatever it was, ran off into th' woods. He says he never saw it again, but he's sure he scared it off for good. Said it had seen a Dixon, turned tail an' run, the way it should be."

"But?" Beth leaned in as Daryl arched an eyebrow at her again. "You said the story differed, so…"

"Ah yeah." His smirk widened. "Well, after he told me that story, I asked his friend about it, th' next time he came 'round."

"What did he say?" Beth's eyes were bright with curiosity, her heart thumping away in her chest. "Did he see it?"

"Not exactly. He did have a ringside view, though." He hesitated a moment and she realized he was drawing it out, increasing the tension. Just as she was about to chide him to finish, he drawled, "See, turned out, it wasn't bigfoot at all. It was his friend. He'd fallen asleep waiting for the deer, covered in one of them leaf-blankets hunters use sometimes t' hide. Woke up in the fog and the darkness and got confused. Started groaning a bit because he was tired. He says he stood up to stretch and suddenly Merle was there right in front of him."

Beth gasped. "Wait… oh gosh, did Merle shoot at him?"

"Merle made that bit up, accordin' to his friend." Daryl shook his head. "Nah, he didn't shoot. Apparently he screamed like a little kid an' pissed his pants. His friend started laughin' an' Merle realized it was him, an' he got so damn mad he almost punched him. Said if he told anyone, he'd kill 'em. But he couldn't resist tellin' me. I'm glad, 'cause it was a great story, I'll give him that."

"Daryl!"

"Well it was!" Daryl snorted. "I thought about that story for years, every time Merle was a dick to me."

She couldn't deny it was amusing, but still she playfully chided him, "You were supposed to tell a scary story though!"

"I did, didn't I?" Daryl smiled at her, a quick flash of a grin that made her insides flush with warmth. "Can't think of anythin' scarier than Merle, piss stain runnin' down his pants, screaming and yellin' in the middle of the foggy woods threatenin' to murder you…"

They both laughed at that. Beth couldn't help it. She'd wanted a scary story but somehow, this was better. Not just because it made her laugh, but because it was a tiny bit of Daryl, a story she imagined he hadn't shared with anyone before.
And that, along with the warmth that had taken up residence within her now, pushed back the quiet loneliness of the enveloping fog more than anything else could.