Red ~ TWD (Daryl Dixon)

This Too Shall Pass

The one thing walkers could be counted on to do without fail was fuck up everyone's plans. Daryl and I had made our exit from The Sanctuary, but unfortunately due to the destroyed bridge, the very people we'd been trying to escape followed right behind us. After a metric shit-ton of haggling, and even more fighting, all the communities finally agreed to work together to repair the bridge since it was in everyone's best interest.

So instead of living with the former Saviors in the former Sanctuary we were living in a yurt, in the woods, with damn near everybody, including the former Saviors. It wasn't lost on me that my current living situation which includes roughing it with my in-laws in a lean-to a stone's throw away was preferable to what I left. That was saying something because it took into consideration Merle and Francine having no qualms about getting freaky under their lean-to, repeatedly. Gross.

We'd been working to repair the link between the communities for just over a month. Rick liked to pontificate that we were building more than a bridge, we were building a future, getting back a piece of ourselves from before all this.

It kind of made me miss the days when he stuttered awkwardly and sweated profusely when addressing more than five people.

His heart was in the right place. He was attempting to keep the bloodshed to a minimum while trying to make construction work sexy, but the simple truth was, it wasn't. The one and only thing we could all agree on while suffering through the DIY project from hell was Daryl's alluring sexiness. There was something about a sleeveless redneck swinging a hammer from sunup to sundown that got my engine going, and I wasn't the only one drooling over the arm porn.

"Ya plannin' on doin' somethin' today?"

I blinked, coming back to what had become our bleak reality. "You planning on wearing that long sleeved shirt all day?" Aaron snorted, watching our exchange with an amused expression. "You're fucking with the mojo again. You know that, right?"

"The mojo?" Aaron repeated with a frown.

"Ask Katniss about the mojo." My husband waved me off, grabbing another piece of wood and dragging it forward. "When our smokin' hot redneck foreman wears sleeves shit hits the fan."

"Yur crazy Red."

"She's got a point," Merle interjected, wiping the sweat from his brow, "Although I like to think of myself as the group's smokin' hot redneck foreman."

"I literally threw up in my mouth," I deadpanned. Francine's cheeks got red and she legitimately giggled which only urged her husband on. "Will you stop trying to flex. You're embarrassing yourself."

Merle shot me the finger, and I returned the gesture lovingly.

"Anybody but me plannin' on doin' shit today?" Daryl barked.

Not only did wearing sleeves fuck with the mojo, but it made Daryl grumpy. Grumpy Daryl was a handful.

"I still don't understand why I was assigned to the construction crew," I mused, flipping a hammer in the air while I leaned against the newly rebuilt railing. "We're blowing shit up to redirect a herd. I should always be in charge of stuff like that."

"Of blowing shit up?" Aaron phrased it like a question, but it was joke and not a very good one.

"Yes, I should be in charge of blowing shit up. I'm the one with the resume." I looked around the group for support, but everyone kept their head down. "OK, riddle me this Batman, out of everybody who has blown the most shit up?"

"Oh that's definitely you Firecracker." I smiled smugly, nodding my head in agreement, but my brother-in-law wasn't done. "Course ya also blown yur own ass sky high a time or two so..."