Jinx || Daryl Dixon || The Walking Dead Fanfic

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DARYL

His eyes flew open as he felt Jinx flinch beside him, she whimpered, but didn't actually speak. He looked over at her and realised she was still asleep, another nightmare. He wrapped his arms around her, whispering her name until eventually her eyes opened and a couple of seconds later settled on his face, her breathing starting to return to normal. She buried her face in his shoulder and whispered an apology for waking him up.

He didn't mind, he wanted to be able to help her and if the only way he could do that was to wake her from her nightmares he was more than happy to do that. It was almost morning, the grey light that filtered through the prison windows told him that everyone else would be waking up soon and he'd have woken as soon as there were any signs of movement outside of their cell anyway.

He ran a hand through her hair, she'd taken it down at some point during the night and he gently tried to loosen some of the tangles. He felt her relax against him as he did so, he closed his eyes, but only for a second, it felt good to have her here with him and he smiled a little as he remembered she had agreed to stop running off the night before. He looked down towards her, she was wearing a long-sleeved black shirt of his and it made her look even smaller than usual. It was already getting warm and one of them had obviously kicked the blanket off in their sleep as it laid in a crumpled heap at the end of the bed.

He reached out one hand and placed it on her bare leg as she lifted her head from his chest and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips. She leant back a little and traced the tattoo on his chest with one finger. The last time she'd been back she'd laughingly mocked him for keeping his jeans on when he slept, telling him she couldn't understand how he could be comfortable and joked that between them they were one fully dressed person in their sleep.

He slid his hand up her body to touch her cheek, the scar there had healed and turned white against her now tanned skin. Fully awake now, she pulled his hand back down to her waist, pressing herself closer to him and kissing him more firmly, he was more than happy to comply and slipped his hand under her shirt.

Before they could go any further though, Shadow slipped around the sheet that acted as a door into the cell and howled at them, he groaned dropping his hand and glaring at the small cat. Jinx immediately sat up and turned around, looking at the little cat as if she could understand what it was telling her. "Something's wrong." she told him, and he wasn't sure why they were trusting a cat, but in his gut he felt it too.

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JINX

She rushed to pull her jeans and boots on as Shadow stood halfway in and out of the door to their cell, mewing plaintively. She'd never heard the little cat make the noise she had, and her gut told her something was wrong and she was glad Daryl seemed to believe her instead of thinking she was mad for listening to a cat.

As she made it to the top of the stairs she heard the ringing of Rick's alarm clock and saw him carrying Judith over to Carl's cell to wake him up. She frowned as the feline ran ahead and disappeared out of the door. Everything looked fine, she looked up behind her at Daryl and he shrugged, rubbing the last of the sleep from his eyes.

Rick reappeared and looked up at them with a knowing smirk and raised his eyebrows slightly before handing the baby over to Beth, Jinx frowned, confused and then realised she was still wearing Daryl's shirt. They'd done so well over the last few months of keeping whatever their relationship was mostly secret from everyone else. Even Carol, who was probably the closest to the two of them assumed they slept in separate bunks, when, in reality, the cat was the only one who used the top bunk.

She rolled her eyes and put her hand to her head in the universal signal for stupid and disappeared back to the cell, quickly changing into one of her own tops as Daryl continued downstairs. Since nothing had seemed out of place, she paused in the cell to brush her hair and twist it back up into a bun on the top of her head.