Disclaimer: I do not own the Walking Dead.
Maggie was the first to notice. Sure, when they took over Terminus and Beth found her way there, Daryl and she had become good friends, but nobody else but Maggie noticed when they did it.
Beth prided herself in being fluent in sign language for many years. Throughout high school, she was president of the ASL Honors Society, surrounded herself with deaf friends, and interpreting was just one of many aspirations she had for her future. Until the apocalypse struck, that was.
"You like to talk so much you can't even limit it to your voice!" the older Greene would joke. Now, Maggie watched as her sister and the toughest, gruffest member of the group sent each other silent signals across the dinner table. Just slyly enough for others to think they were seeing things, or to not notice at all. Maggie, on the other hand, was cunning, and she did some digging for clues.
Clue Number One: The dictionary.
Daryl was the one to take her on a tour of Terminus. They hadn't gotten to say their proper hellos in front of everyone, and Beth was excited to see all of the stuff their new home had to offer.
"This is the library," he said, pointing to a room. He kept walking on, but stopped after about ten steps down the hall when he noticed she was no longer standing next to him. He turned around and saw she was nowhere to be found.
"Beth!?" he asked, running down the hall. He slowly backed up when he saw her inside the library, gawking at all of the books.
"Jesus, Beth, quit disappearin' on me," he said, walking in.
"Yeah, sorry," she whispered, but didn't seem sorry at all. That's when her eyes laid on their target.
"Oh my God, Daryl!" she squealed. It was an unpleasant sound.
"What is it?" he asked as she bolted to a very thick book, giving it a hug as if it could feel it. He walked over to her, looking at the cover. "ASL Dictionary".
"You do that?" he asked, waving his hands all over.
"I don't think anybody does that," she teased.
"You know what I mean, Greene," he said.
"Yes! Come on, sit. I'll teach you some. I might be a little rusty. They say when you don't do it for a while you forget," she said, guiding him to a love-seat in the middle of the room. They sat cross-legged across from each other, and she started to teach him some basics.
"This would be really useful huntin', you know. Wouldn't make any noise," he said. Her smile grew large.
"You're a genius," she said. He blushed. Not once in his life had he been called that.
Maggie tip-toed into his bedroom and saw the thick dictionary on his bed-side table. A few pages had been doggy-eared. She flipped to them covertly, humming the Mission Impossible theme to herself. All the safety from the walkers in addition to Glenn's bad influence had turned her into a complete dork. She looked over both shoulders about five times more than necessary before deeming the coast clear and read the flagged pages. "Deer, bow, bird, walk, slow, quiet," were all circled.
"Hmm," the Maggie said to herself. She carefully put the book down where she had picked it up and quietly walked out of the room.
Clue Number Two: Frequent, Random "Walks".
"Your sister would kill me if she knew I was takin' you out hunting," he grumbled.
"Like we haven't lived in the walker-infested woods together before?" she said.
"That was different. Didn't have no Maggie Greene breathin down my neck," he said.
"I don't know why my sister scares you so much," she teased.
"She don't scare me!"
"You're gonna scare away all the good kills if you keep shoutin. Hush," she said.
The two had claimed they were headed out on a walk, a normal walk, around the camp. They stashed spare weapons in the forest, and every day Beth would come home just a little earlier saying Daryl stayed behind to hunt. It was a well fabricated lie, even if people were starting to give them odd looks.
They found themselves tracking a boar, something larger than either of the expected. They tip-toed across the forest, Beth wielding her knife and Daryl, his crossbow. They started to sign to each other, and Daryl's limited knowledge was proving to grow more and more each day.
"You go over there, I'll corner it," he signed. She nodded, and did as she was told. Beth found a corner of the woods with trees so tight it'd be difficult and confusing for the boar to escape. She tossed a rock at one of the trees, and dodged away. The boar fell right into the trap, and Daryl hit it right between the eyes with his bow.
"Hell yes!" Beth shouted out loud, and put her hand up for Daryl to high-five. He gave her amused look, sighed, and returned the high-five.
"Alright, start heading back so I can bring it home," he said.
"Oh come on, I'm proud of it! I wanna tell everybody what we did!" she said, pleading.
"Maggie-," he started.
"I can deal with Maggie," she said. He nodded.
"Okay then you're helping me lift this thing," he grumbled. The two each took a side and carried it out back to Terminus.
"Hey, Glenn," Maggie said, watching as Daryl and Beth walked off the camp as they had done so many times lately.
"What?" he asked, sitting next to her.
"You notice they've been heading off a lot lately? Where do you think they're doing?"
"Well they did come in with that boar a little while ago. Maybe he's teaching her a few things," he said.
"Or maybe she's teaching him a few things…" Maggie whispered.
"What do you mean?" Glenn asked.
"Have you noticed that they… sign to each other?"
"They what?" he asked, shaking his head at her. She was forever confusing to him.
"Sign! Like with their hands! At first I didn't think it was anything to think about it, but they do!" she said, and even she started to hear how crazy she was.
"They… sign?" he asked slowly.
"Don't talk to me like I'm five, Glenn," she warned. He tried not to laugh.
"No, I'm not I'm not. Okay, they sign to each other. What are they talking about, then?"
"I don't know…" she said.
Clue Number Three: The Touching.
As the group sat around for breakfast, Beth found Daryl's eye and signed, "Library?" It was the one place they could practice freely, and frankly, talk without the eyes of the others. He nodded slightly.
After eating, the two got up to go to the library, and Beth felt his hand on the small of her back. It was a light touch, but something she hadn't felt since the funeral home. She tried not to smile at the touch- it was like being home again.
"Okay!" she said as they both fell onto the couch. "What do you wanna know?" she asked.
"Letters," he said. "In case I don't know how to say what I wanna say."
So they went. She taught him the easy ones: A, B, C. When they got to Q, however, he was having problems.
"Looks like G to me," he said with frustration. He wasn't used to not being good at this.
"Well it is like G! It's like K and P, ok? You've just gotta bend your wrist down," she said. She placed her hand on his, bending it down slightly for him, and let her hand linger there for a minute. They looked up from their hands and into each other's eyes. Beth waited for him to get awkward, waited for him to pull away or make an excuse to run off. She waited and waited, but it didn't happen. Instead, he moved his hand to fit hers, interlocked their fingers, and didn't break eye contact with her. They both thought back to the funeral home, how long ago it had been.
"Would you have stayed there forever with me?" Beth whispered.
"Meant what I said," he answered, and she smiled.
"Alright," she said, releasing his hand. "So R is like this…"
"Maggie! Did you see that!?" Glenn asked, pointing to Beth and Daryl. They seemed to be acting as normal as ever.
"No! What'd you see?" she asked, just as frantically. The two were using this whole situation to amuse themselves.
"When she handed him the plate, their fingers brushed each other's," he said, continuing to point.
"Alright well put your arm down, you're makin it obvious!" she said, forcing his arm back to his side. "And I've noticed they've been doing that lately! Lots of touching. It's like the girl can't go anywhere without his hand on her shoulder or something," she said.
The couple started intently at the two, observing their movements. Suddenly, Daryl announced he was gonna go hunt, and, before he left, he said something quickly, a three-part sign, but so fast Maggie and Glenn couldn't even begin to try to figure it out.
"Damn, if only we understood what they were saying," Glenn said. Maggie jumped up.
"Glenn, you smart man!" she said, kissing him. "All we gotta do is learn some!"
"And how are we going to do that? Doesn't Daryl keep that dictionary in his room?" he asked. "There's no way we could get to that. I mean, unless we snuck in his room, but that'd be crazy…" he trailed off.
"Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be just crazy?" she asked, giving him a mischievous look.
"Oh, no, no. You want to go in Daryl's room!? Without permission!?"
"I did once before!"
"Yeah for like five minutes! I'm not about to learn an entire language in Daryl's room! We're gonna get caught!" he argued.
"Come on, it's Daryl. He's like a big puppy," she said.
"A scary big puppy!"
"Glennnn," she said, giving him large eyes.
Just an hour later, Maggie was tapping her foot outside Daryl's door waiting for Glenn. When she finally saw him coming, she laughed out loud.
"Seriously!?" she asked. Glenn was wearing all black, a black beanie, black shirt, black pants, and black shoes.
"We're under cover!"
"Under- oh God, Glenn, get down!" she said and they both crouched to the floor. Beth and Daryl were laughing about something, walking in through the door to the library. They didn't shut the door all the way.
"New plan!" Maggie said.
"What!?"
"Come on!" she said, crawling over to the door of the library. Glenn crawled behind her, annoyed.
"Come on, Glenn, it's just Daryl's room, we won't get caught," he mocked in a high, feminine voice. "Got me crawling on the floor…"
"Shh!" she whispered, approaching the door, and opening it a tiny bit. Both of them eagerly listened through the crack.
"Do you hear anything?" Glenn mouthed to her. She shook her head. Her eyes dawned realization.
"They're signing in there!" she whispered. Glenn hit his forehead with his palm.
"This is useless," he mouthed. Maggie put her hand on his mouth, and held up her pointer finger on the other hand.
"One second," she mouthed, getting up from the floor and opening the door just a little wider. She peered into the room and saw Daryl and Beth sitting cross-legged in front of one another on the couch. Maggie craned for a glimpse of anything that could lead to knowing what was going on with them. Suddenly, she saw something she never thought she would. Beth pressed her forehead to Daryl's, and he reciprocated. Maggie's jaw dropped.
"What is it!?" Glenn whispered. Maggie fell back to the floor with him.
"Abort!" she whispered, and the two ran back to their room.
"What happened!?" he asked when Maggie closed the door.
"They did the forehead thing!"
"What forehead thing!?"
"Ya know," she said, demonstrating on him. Glenn jumped back, shocked.
"Notebook style!? Like with Ryan Goseling and Rachel McAdams and the foreheads pressed against each other with the rain and the drama and the bird thing!?" Glenn shouted.
"The fact you know so much about that movie…" Maggie said, laughing.
"Not the point! They did the Notebook thing!"
"They did the Notebook thing," she confirmed, surprisingly calm now.
"Well what do we do now!?" he asked. Maggie thought for a moment, then her eyes lit up.
"Come on," she said, tip-toeing out the door.
"Where are we going?" he asked, voice filled with confusion.
Maggie led him back to Daryl's room, crept inside, and looked up a very specific sign in the book. She nodded, put in down, and walked out.
"What did you look up?" Glenn asked her, but she didn't answer, instead suggesting they go see what the others were up to. She didn't bring it up again.
Just a couple days later, Daryl did the same thing he had done before. Said he was off to hunt, did the same sly three-part sign, and walked out.
"I wish I knew what they were saying," Glenn said quietly.
"It means 'I love you'," Maggie answered with the smallest smile on her face.
A/N: Please review! I wanna know what you think!