Comment with your character, preferences, preferred role, and any information you'd like to include.
Your character has either been injured/sick and had to be taken in (possibly against their will) or has been the one to help somebody like the former. Through the mending process, the two characters in a thread have fallen in love - or at least grown closer and more affectionate.
[Happy to have her as the caretaker/healer or as the one healing, or mutual hurt/comfort, which is always A+! OTA, canon, cross canon, assumed CR, etc.]
on a run, just the two of them, in what must be fucking march (as if anyone knows the date anymore) for how goddamn wet out it is out here in georgia, how they get stuck in the muck and mire after the storm hits lightning-fast after a perfectly clear day and then as they try to get the car out, paul in the driver's seat with daryl behind it, the shitty but comfortable sedan they always use, pushing to try and get the tires to slurp their way out of the mud, it just up and dies.
it's a little yakety sax after that, all things considered, trying to get the damned thing to run again, and for a while they just sit in the car uselessly waiting for the rain to stop even though they both know it won't.
there's no panic, though; there're no walkers in the vicinity, they're on a road even if it's real rural and pure sludge right now, and they're even almost at the place they'd been heading to for a sweep. it's out in the sticks-of-the-sticks and probably hasn't been looted completely yet, or at least there might be something left; they both know better than to get their hopes up.
anyway the decision is eventually made to try and hoof it the rest of the way to the farmhouse, then deal with everything else once it starts to try and dry out. there's not much else to do, anyway, other than sit in the car.
and it's fine, for most of the walk. trudge. whatever you want to call it. it's fine, and paul's light on his feet even in the mud until he isn't. until he sinks right in up to mid-calf and gets fucking stuck, and he has a particular movie screenshot that i won't name staring at him from the inside of his brain as he evens his breathing, clicks his tongue to signal a stop, then shifts.
tries to lift his foot. gets no headway. flexes gloved fingers a little, takes a breath, and leans forward to try and press his hand into the mud and pull up on the toe of his boot to break the seal around it so he can drag his foot out without trying to yank it like an idiot and falling over.
there's a crack while he's bent over, and the downswing of the branch that just broke above them is way too quick to be stopped before it smacks paul in the back: it's not heavy enough to do much more than knock the wind out of him, thankfully; his spine and ribs are fine.
however, it is heavy enough to bowl him right over forward, hand and foot still stuck in the muck and paul doesn't hear the second crack, but he does feel it, as he starts to try and use his hand with the non-broken wrist (the one that wasn't trapped in the mud with a goddamn work boot when he went ass over teakettle) to get himself standing again. there's something wrong with his ankle too, which is much more horrifying to him personally, but it doesn't seem broken.
it's not like daryl's been waiting around doing nothing during this of course, but paul's voice is only barely not reedy anyway when he speaks. ]
It got my wrist good, I can't get it out on my own. I'd say leave the boot, but I don't think I can get my foot out of the boot right now either.
[ he almost makes a preemptive joke about being a horrible patient, but he isn't in the mood. ]
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