Looking and Seeing: Daryl.

Zombie apocalypse or not, Daryl Dixon's still a red-blooded man. When faced with a semi-naked woman, of course he's going to look. Just a short one, post 2.03. Not seen 2.04 yet ...

Disclaimer: I own nothing. This is my first fic for this fandom, hope you enjoy! I'll probably do a companion piece for Andrea, too.

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Just five minutes. That was all she had wanted, she said: five minutes to splash some cool water on her face. They had passed a small, shallow, clear brook while searching for Sophia, and as they headed back to the RV, she had asked that they stop so she could splash her face. Just for five minutes. He couldn't blame her. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt clean. So they had stopped and she had ventured towards the water while Daryl scoped out the area, just to be safe.

Just for five minutes

That had been ten minutes ago and Daryl's beginning to get a little antsy. It isn't a good idea to stop for too long and they really need to get back. They aren't far from the RV, just far away enough from the highway to be obscured from prying eyes yet close enough to holler for help if needed.

He can hear the gentle splash of water as she washed her face. It didn't take ten minutes to wash your face; Daryl could wash his whole body in less time than that.

"Come on, Andrea!" He calls out to her, threading his way through the grasses and branches that clustered on one side of the water, rounding the corner to get her, his feet making noisy sploshes in the water.

"Just a minute!" She calls back.

He stops dead when he sees her, his breath catching on his throat.

Daryl Dixon was no angel. He knows what women look like beneath their clothes, whether they be the almost cartoonish centrefolds from his and Merle's extensive magazine stash or the long-gone flesh and blood women from his hometown. He has looked at plenty of women. Just not in a while. Well ... that isn't accurate, either. Of course he looks at women – he's surrounded by them, you can't be attracted to women and not look at them. But Carol isn't his type, Lori's messed-up drama with Shane and Rick is enough to give him a headache (just because he didn't say anything didn't mean he didn't know), and Andrea ... he's looked at Andrea plenty of times. He just hadn't seen her before.

He almost feels bad, staring at her when she's semi-naked and completely and utterly oblivious to him. Between Lori and Dale she probably feels like everyone is watching her, waiting for her to snap. But that wasn't what it was, wasn't what drew him. Usually she's very deliberate when she moves, when she talks. She's controlled. She has to be: like everyone else, one wrong move could be her last. But now ... in the solitude of a Georgia brook in the early summer morning ... she's shed all that. She's completely unconscious, almost honest in her movements. He thought they had all learned better than that: now is not a good time to become oblivious to your surroundings. But there she was, splashing her body with cool, clear water like she hadn't a care in the world, humming to herself.

Its not lost on him that she's removed her bra and shirt, too: they're discarded on the grass just next to her, just out of reach of the water. She's got her back to him, no doubt sure that he's off moving in the grasses, checking for walkers. She probably thinks that he'll holler as he comes back (which he has), that he won't just barge into her one moment of privacy and stare at her when she's semi-naked. Maybe she thinks that them surviving a zombie apocalypse together has instilled some kind of gentlemanlike decency in him.

In his own defence, he didn't barge in (he did call), and he can't actually see anything, not really, just the ridge of her spine and the way her shoulder blades move and the way the droplets of water catch on her bare flesh and ripple under the early morning light and the top of a tattoo at her left hip. Okay, so maybe he can see more than he's admitting. But in a way, that makes it better, makes it more enticing. His imagination can work overtime on the rest, which it does as his eyes trail up her lush creamy skin, the long, graceful slope of her neck as she tilts her head to the left, tendrils of blonde hair spilling out of her topknot , dampened by sweat or water or whatever.

Sweat. He licks his lips. He wonders what she tastes like. Desire hits him with all the tact and grace of a sledgehammer. God, she's pretty. Not pretty like she is usually, when she's pretty in a bitchy, maudlin, 'I-had-to-kill-my-zombie-sister' way. Now, with her armour off and her pain visible in the slump of her shoulders and her desire to be clean, he feels like he's seeing her properly, for the first time. And she's pretty.

"Daryl?" She calls again, reaching for her bra. She's probably wondering where he's gotten to.

Her bra's simple and plain white but Daryl can see some kind of trim on it, something fancy. It looks expensive. He doesn't know all that much about women's underwear but he does know enough to know that the women he knew didn't wear underwear like that. She slips the bra on with practiced, unconscious ease, fastening the snaps at the front before moving it around and sliding it up her body, putting her arms through the straps, humming a tune.

"I'm here!" He calls out, the pair of them startled and turning around at the sudden, stumbling, splashing movement behind him. He turns quickly, cursing himself for becoming so caught up in Andrea's movements.

It's a walker, only ten feet from him. From the looks of its bloodstained uniform it's a former soldier. Now it's a nightmarish husk, dragging one ruined leg behind him, half of it's face chewed off. Daryl takes one, two, three quick steps back, into the water which came to mid-calf.

"Stay back!" He calls to Andrea, but she's already moving, her gun in her hand, her t-shirt still abandoned on the grass by the water's edge.

He finishes off the walker with a smooth, practiced motion, a crossbow bolt right through what remains of the walker's forehead. It crumbles to the ground immediately, twitching as its final death comes. They should probably move. Lone walkers make him antsy. Usually where one walks, the others follow and they don't want to be caught in another herd like they were a few weeks ago.

"You okay?" Andrea asks, at his side now. She lowers the gun and tucks it into the waistband of her jeans. If she's remotely embarrassed about standing next to him in her bra and jeans then she doesn't show it.

"I'm fine." He says, trying not to let his eyes drift to her creamy chest. Free from the baggy t-shirt she had been wearing, her breasts were bigger than he had initially thought. The clear water clung in droplets to her skin. "We should probably go back now." He says.

They walk the rest of the way in silence, but when they get back to the RV his eyes dart to the slope of her neck, still beaded with sweat. She smells like the forest and he wonders again what she tastes like.

###

They're at the farmhouse now, a seeming haven of clean sheets and electricity and fresh water. And Carl, recovering from a gunshot would while his parents exchange angry, terse words on the front porch and Shane watches everyone with a blank, closed-off expression that wasn't quite there before. Glenn and the daughter – Daryl thinks her name is Maggie - are making eyes at each other across the dining table and hoping that no-one will notice. It's almost normal. Almost, but not quite. Upstairs, he can hear Andrea moving around. They haven't really spoken since their early morning search but since then have taken to spending time together, apart from the others. He's overheard Lori teasing Andrea about it.

"So what?" Andrea had challenged when asked, the two women sat on the front porch while Rick gave more blood for Carl. "So what if we enjoy each other's company a little?"

"Andrea, you know I didn't mean anything." Lori reasoned, trying to backpedal.

"He's just ... I don't have to talk when I'm with him." Andrea said defensively. "He's lost Merle, I lost Am- we've both lost someone." She finished. "He doesn't want to talk about it, or ask me how I'm doing, or check that I don't want to kill myself. So its easier. And he's actually good company, if you'd give him half a chance."

"Well ... okay, then." Lori said.

Lori's upon him then, her face white and tight and he guesses that her talk with Rick isn't going so well. There's an oldness there, like they're fighting about something that came before all this.

She's got a towel clutched in her hand. "Herschel wanted me to give this to you." She said. "I think Andrea's done in the shower."

The bathroom door is closed but unlocked and he pushes it open quite without thinking, and Andrea's standing right there in front of him, wet hair dripping down her bare, clean flesh, her fingers reaching for her own towel. If she's remotely pissed at the sight of him standing there, staring at her then she doesn't show it. He sighs. He's going to have words with Lori for this.

"Sorry." He mutters, back pedalling out of the bathroom.

She's faster, her hand closing the door behind him before he can protest. She smells like a clean smell, like fruit or fresh laundry, her cheeks flushed from the shower and he just can't stop looking.

"Its okay." She says quietly, her blue eyes boring into his. The mist and fog from the shower swirls around them, filling the room almost as quickly as the desire he's feeling.

He knows he should leave; he knows that. He should turn around, open the door, walk right out of it and they shouldn't talk about this again.

Daryl Dixon has never been on to do what he's meant to do. Which is why he doesn't move except to help Andrea take off his clothes when her hands slowly peel away his t-shirt and reach for the fly and zipper on his jeans, and again when she takes his hand and tugs him into the shower with her.

Some time later, they come downstairs - separately, of course - their skin still pink and wrinkled from the shower. Andrea's hair has curled as it dried and his is stuck up at peculiar angles. Lori gives them a knowing look over the rim of her coffee cup, but stays silent. No-one else has even noticed that they've been gone. As he pours himself some coffee, Daryl reflects on the three bits of knowledge he's learned in the last thirty minutes.

Firstly, he was right about her underwear: its not super-expensive but it is the high-end Victoria's Secret stuff. He checked the label as he picked up off of the floor.

Secondly, her bra size is 36C, a whole cup bigger than he realised.

Thirdly, her sweat tastes salty and sweet, all at the same time.

FIN.