Angel (Daryl Dixion x Reader)

~82~

You weren't dreaming. If anything it was a deep sleep of blissful blackness that you'd sunk into. When you did finally wake it was still with a jolt. Mainly because it took you a solid few seconds to remember where you were. Slowly you sat up and looked around in the still dark trailer. Then the red glow of the clock by your bed catches your eyes. Five forty eight in the morning. Damn.. you slept in some. Your eyes snag on movement in the dark. Finding Rick laid back on the couch. Your twins left boot hanging off the couch and being cradled by a sprawled out Shane. Who was half off the blanket bed pallet and snoring like a trucker. Both of your brothers still very much unconscious and showing no sign of waking any time soon. Your eyes immediately glance to the floor by the bed, then to the chair at the end of the bed. Where the hell was Daryl at? Your eyes slide to the door outside. No way he stayed outside all fucking night, right? Movement sounds from outside and you sigh heavily as you haul yourself up. Lacing your boots up and sneaking across the floor like a ghost was easy. Opening that creaky ass trailer door? Not so much. You wince a bit before glancing back at your still unmoving brothers. Sighing in relief that they were still sleeping like death. Especially Rick considering he usually woke up when a mosquito hovers too close to his face. You closed the door behind yourself as quietly as humanly possible. Genuinely half expecting Daryl to be right against the door or at least still on the stairs, but he wasn't. Your eyes glance back up towards the barely illuminated plantation house. Scanning through the darkness barely lit up by sporadically placed dying camp fires. Finding nobody out aside from the two guards on the front gates wall. Even they were half slumped over with exhaustion from their night shift nearing its end.

The chilled night breeze shifts, and your head turns back to the end of the trailer. Smelling cigarette smoke thinly laced in the air. Able to actually smell Daryl's scent of pine musk and leather beneath the heavier scent of burning tobacco. So you followed that all to alluring scent, and there he was. Right between the five foot gap behind the trailer and wall. He was half sitting on, half leaning against a wooden crate resting against that huge wooden wall. His head was dropped almost in defeat, and his arms were half tightly crossed over his string chest. His dark curled hair draped over his face, almost hiding his left hand that was up over his tired eyes. A dying glow of a cigarette hanging between his right hands tightened fingers that almost makes the glowing bud press into his beautifully sculpted arm. You stalk up next to him, only for your brows to knit when you realize his breath was being held between shaken and short bursts. "..Daryl?" You ask softly in concern. He physically jumps, not having heard you at all amidst his break down, but he didn't move. He just sucks in another short breath, and shakes his head a bit. Unable to actually answer you, and part of you didn't know if you should leave him alone to pull himself together or not. But that other part of you, it screamed to go to him. To grab ahold of him and comfort him. You couldn't fight that instinctive urge not to be there for him. "Hey- Hey, what's wrong?" You ask softly as you close that three foot gap between you both with quick steps. He just shakes his head again, fighting a silenced sob as his hand fully covers his eyes and face. Unable to even look at you or he'd completely break down. "You wanna talk about it?" You gently try as your hands find themselves gently grabbing his biceps. Your warm skin finding his was chilled. Kissed by the cold evening air he'd been out in all night. Making the guilt for keeping his jacket all night hit you squarely in the gut. He try's to say no, but all that comes out is a soft whimper of a sound when he shakes his head no instead. You nod a bit, even though he can't see it. "Okay- That's okay. Ya ain't gotta talk, pretty boy. Not if ya don't wanna." You tell him in soft reassurance. The nickname slipping from your lips like an old habit seemed to double his pain. The cigarette between his fingers breaks in half when his grip tightens on his own arm, and drops to the ground by his boot. His body curls in on himself a bit, making him lean down, just to be a bit closer to you. Like the weight behind that name was too much for him to physically carry on his shoulders. As if it crushed him body and soul.