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His eyes keep straying to Judith, whose been stripped down to her diaper in the yard and given free range. She’s found a small mud puddle, and Daryl seems altogether unbothered by the mud oozing from between her fingers. The scene reminds him of his days Before, when he was younger and in a group home. His foster parents would have been upset with him if he’d stood by while his younger foster siblings made such a mess of themselves. Maybe that’s why he feels on edge, like he needs to say something to Daryl to stop her before she needs to be sprayed off with a hose before she’s fit to be washed in the bath. But Daryl already knows what she’s doing. Every couple minutes Judith looks for him and makes noise to grab his attention; Daryl smiles back at her, answers with something, calls her Lil Asskicker, and returns to the arrows he’s fletching.
Paul never expected Daryl to be so good with children. The thought never even crossed his mind until he’d seen Rick pass Judith off to Daryl a few weeks back. When it’d happened, Paul half expected Daryl to protest over holding the little girl, shifting her awkwardly in his strong arms while Judith reached for the comfort of her father’s touch. Instead, Daryl had taken her as easily as if she’d been his own, holding her against his chest as Judith wrapped her small arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder. Daryl’s ease with her had Paul wondering what Daryl’s life had been like Before ever since. Whether he had a family, a wife and kids.
Paul is as cautious about asking Daryl those kinds of questions as he is with anyone. Maybe even a little more. But the more he’s around Rick’s people, the more he’s come to know, in bits and pieces, who they were Before. Not so with Daryl. And ironically, it’s Daryl he wants to know the most about.
It’s a dumb crush. Homophobic rednecks have never been his type, and that’s how he’d pegged Daryl when they first met. Hot as hell, sure, but not anyone he wanted to get to know beyond that. At least until he started to get to know Daryl, to see him interact with his family. It was all downhill from there. And for a split second, when he would sometimes catch Daryl making eyes at Rick, he thought he might have a shot getting Daryl in bed. Judith has him rethinking that one though. Maybe he had those looks at Rick all wrong. Maybe it was all wishful thinking on his part.
Feeling an uncomfortable knot in his stomach, Paul looks up from the blade of grass he’s picking apart to Daryl. He tries to think of something to say; they’ve been sitting in silence for a solid twenty minutes, and Paul has never been one to abide silence for too long. He wishes he knew Daryl better, that they had something in common that preferably wasn’t about their mutual enemies, alive or undead. They didn’t really though, and Paul knows that if he starts talking, Daryl will give him that look—the one begging him to stop talking when there’s no reason to.
Just as he’s about pick up another blade of grass to keep his hands busy, he takes a quick glance at Judith. She’s smearing mud through her hair, a small smile on her face. Jesus turns back to Daryl, who hasn’t noticed what Judith is doing just yet.
“Daryl,” he says, motioning over to Judith.
Daryl looks in her direction and shrugs. “Kids are supposed t’ get dirty. She’ll clean.” And a little louder, “Ain’t that right, Asskicker?”
Judith squeals happily at the sound of her nickname, her small face scrunched up in a smile. She pounds the mud gleefully, bits flying up to cover her hands and cheeks.
“You really take this hands-off approach to parenting thing seriously,” Paul says, amused but shaking his head in disbelief.
“Don’t live in a world where ya can fuss about kids bein’ dirty anymore. No sense in pretendin’ otherwise. She’s happy, and there ain’t enough of that.”
“Did—“
Caught in a moment of easy conversation, Jesus hears himself slip up and stops himself, swallowing hard. He looks quickly at Daryl to gauge his reaction, to see if maybe—god willing—Daryl hadn’t heard him. Daryl’s just staring at him, his brow slightly pulled. Paul can’t look at him for very long.
“Sorry, I—“
“Nah, I didn’t.”
Paul meets his eyes, surprised that not only Daryl knew what he’d been asking, but also that he’d answered. He mulls it over before he takes the opportunity to continue.
“A wife?”
Daryl snorts and shakes his head at that.
“What?” Paul asks.
“Nothin’.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Nah.”
Feeling particularly brave, Paul presses further. “Boyfriend?”
Daryl lifts an eyebrow. Whether to warn him off this line of questioning or not, Paul can’t quite say. He thinks if Daryl were truly upset with him he’d probably be glaring by now and telling him to shut his mouth.
“Didn’t have no one for a while even before the world went to shit.”
It’s more than Paul ever expected to get out of Daryl. Sure, he and Daryl had had conversations, but never anything that strayed to the personal.
“I had a boyfriend,” Paul says, as if to express his gratitude by divulging some of his own history.
Daryl nods, taking the past tense of that statement for what it was, and says, “Figured.”
“You figured I was gay? Or that I had a boyfriend?”
“Knew you was gay. I figured you had a boyfriend. Too pretty not to.”
Paul feels the heat in his cheeks immediately and stares at his feet to try to hide it. Daryl had said it so nonchalantly. It caught him entirely off guard, his stomach fluttering.
“Daryl Dixon, did you just compliment me?”
Paul wants to ask if he meant to flirt, but knows Daryl at least well enough to know that that would spook him.
“Nah,” Daryl says, standing and taking a step toward Judith, “Just statin’ a fact.”