Chapter Text
***
Daryl feels weird the next morning.
After everything that had happened the day before, he’d been expecting to wake up with a myriad of regrets and fears – he usually does, whenever someone finds out anything about his past, even if he’d been the one to tell them. But that’s not what he’s experiencing at all.
Instead, he’s gripped with this odd sensation of satisfied, heavy exhaustion. It reminds him of mornings after he pushes himself too hard at the gym – his body feels wrung dry, but also sated and kind of hollow.
And when Rick asks, as soon as they’re both awake, how he’s doing, Daryl can only shrug, because he’s really not sure what to do with this. He’s not calm, exactly, but he’s also not nervous. He feels like doing something, he’s just not sure what.
To try to figure it out, and just because he wants to, he rolls over, pins Rick’s hips to the bed, pulls his boxers out of the way, and then swallows his lover’s cock in one go, without any foreplay or teasing. Rick shouts once at the unexpectedness of it, and then bites his palm to muffle himself as Daryl continues to work him with his mouth.
The hunter pulls off to lick his lips and grin wickedly at the older man before diving back in and delivering a fast, efficient blow job that has Rick shooting down his throat hard in less than five minutes.
“Fuck,” the older man pants, when he finally manages to catch his breath. “That was…”
“Yeah.” Daryl agrees, and then leans over to kiss his lover deeply, making sure that he can taste himself on Daryl’s tongue.
Rick groans and cants his hips towards him on instinct. Had he been a couple years younger, Daryl’s fairly confident that he would have gotten hard again just from that kiss.
After a few minutes of that – their tongues lazily exploring one another – Rick, being the considerate lover that he is, reaches down to palm at Daryl’s crotch. It doesn’t take him long to pull back with a deep frown.
Daryl flushes a little, when he realizes that he’s not hard. “Sorry,” he mutters, making to move away. “I don’t know…”
And he really doesn’t. He’s never had a problem getting it up for Rick before. Except that one time at Michonne’s gym when he’d been boiling over with rage and Rick had caught him in the locker room. He’s never been able to connect anger and arousal; his body having created a barrier between the two emotions many years ago.
But he’s not angry right now, so he truly doesn’t understand.
“Hey, it’s alright,” Rick is quick to soothe, tugging on his shoulder until Daryl settles back down on the bed next to him.
Rick, thankfully, doesn’t say anything else after that. Just lets them be together, silently, for a while. Eventually he starts rubbing at Daryl’s shoulders, using his thumbs to knead out some of the more stubborn knots that have formed there. Daryl relaxes into the touch fairly quickly, loving this man all over again for giving him exactly what he seems to need.
When Rick gets to a particularly tight coil of tension, lodged right under his shoulder blade, Daryl groans. He’ll deny to himself that he’d thought it, later, but in this moment, he swears that the release of tension he feels is even better than sex.
The whole process helps ease a lot of strain that he hadn’t even been aware he was holding onto, but it also intensifies the weird, content, boneless haze his body and mind seem stuck in.
The way he feels right now reminds him, vividly and specifically, of a drug that Merle had given him once a long time ago – he can’t remember the name of it anymore, or what it had been, but recalls letting it dissolve under his tongue, remembers that the effects had crept up on him so gradually that he hadn’t even realized it had taken hold until he’d been well under the influence. Whatever it had been had left him spaced out – still functional, but calmly buzzing – almost all day. And he’s really glad Merle had never gotten his hands on that particular drug again (or, if he had, had never shared it), because Daryl might have very well gone and gotten addicted to whatever that had been.
“What are you thinking about?” Rick asks suddenly, noticing – of course he’d noticed, he always seems to – the way Daryl had gotten lost in his memories.
Daryl thinks about not saying anything. He doesn’t ever lie to Rick, but sometimes he keeps certain thoughts to himself, if only to shield his lover. He decides – or this weird mesh of feelings decides for him – that he won’t today. “Doing drugs.”
Rick’s face immediately contorts into something deeply concerned and mildly afraid. Daryl shakes his head and smiles, finding it spectacularly easy to do so.
“Not doing drugs,” he amends. “Just feel off. Reminds me of somethin’ my brother gave me once.”
Rick doesn’t look any less apprehensive at Daryl’s explanation.
“Never mind,” he shakes his head, dismissing the topic entirely. It’s easy for Daryl to forget that Rick is innocent in some ways, compared to him. Like, he knows that his lover hasn’t ever done a drug stronger than pot in his life – he’d told Daryl as much once – and the younger man envies him that.
He stands then, moving away from the bed and stretching languidly, fully aware that Rick’s eyes are still on him. He doesn’t want his lover to worry about him, now. Doesn’t want this thing with Martinez to take up any more space between them than it has to.
“Hey,” he says suddenly, turning around. “You wanna go hunting?”
Rick blinks at him. “What?”
“Call off work.” Daryl says. Then, “Were you even planning on going to work today?”
“No,” Rick says, dragging the word out tentatively. “Were you?”
He realizes then that he’s supposed to, and glances at the clock on the nightstand automatically. He’s got about twenty minutes to get dressed and leave the house, if he were going to show up on time. The idea of it, though, of working on other people’s cars right now, seems utterly pointless to him.
“No,” he says, deciding then and there. “I’ll call Dale. Get dressed, Charger. I wanna show you something.”
In the end, Rick calls Dale for him while Daryl’s in the shower. Daryl doesn’t begrudge the potent domesticity of that, because it’s all the same in the end anyway.
Rick and Daryl barely talk while they get dressed, but Rick keeps watching him like he’s afraid some unknown other shoe is about to drop at any second. Daryl doesn’t know how to get him to believe that he’s fine, because he’s not even sure if he is.
The younger man wants to leave the house right away, but concedes to stay and have breakfast with the kids and Carol, before she drives them to school.
“Mom wants me to join a club or a sport,” Sophia tells Daryl, once they’re all sitting around the table together – a scene that’s become typical for the five of them, – her voice pitched just shy of a whine. It’s such a kid reaction, and probably something that she’s picked up from Carl, that it makes the mechanic grin. “But I don’t want to. And Carl doesn’t have to.”
Before he can respond, Rick’s son pipes up, “I’m going to be on the baseball team next year.”
Daryl feels it when Rick tenses next to him. “You are?”
Carl flushes slightly, and ducks his head. Daryl’s eyes are immediately on his lover, watching the way his expression shadows over. He fights it back quickly, though, and Daryl is proud of him for that. “Shane and I used to play all the time, when I’d stay with him,” Carl says, mostly to his stack of pancakes.
“He was varsity in high school.” Rick tells his son. Or maybe tells Daryl, as he’s sure Carl already knows.
“Yeah.” The boy says. “I mean, I don’t have to…Dr. Alice said I should, if I wanted to. And I want to.”
Rick nods a few times, working a genuine and encouraging smile onto his face. “Then you should, kiddo. We can practice if you want. Yard’s big enough.”
Daryl reaches over and squeezes Rick’s thigh, lending his support silently. Rick shoots him a grateful look, and seems to bounce back from the moment.
In the months since the Philip Blake incident, and due in large part to his therapy, Rick’s gotten much better at handling spontaneous mentions of his late wife and best friend. Daryl’s beginning to notice a pattern, though, that Lori seems easier for him to talk about, and hear other people talk about. There’s still this moment of pain every time, and probably always will be, but it fades so quickly that Daryl doesn’t even see it if he’s not paying attention. When Shane’s name comes up, though…it’s worse. Not devastatingly so, and it’s not anything that Rick can’t find his way around eventually, but Shane is a wound that will always be at least a little bit raw for the older man.
Daryl understands that. He hates that he can’t do anything about it, but he gets it. He keeps his hand on Rick’s thigh for the rest of the meal.
“Carl wants to play baseball,” Sophia finally diverts their collective attention away from the moment. “I don’t want to do anything.”
“Nothin’?” Daryl asks, after sharing a look with Carol.
“I like hunting with you.” Sophie says. “But there’s no hunting club at school.”
“How ‘bout karate, or somethin’?” He suggests. “You know your ma takes classes fer that.”
Sophie shakes her head immediately. “I don’t want to learn how to hurt people.”
Daryl wants to explain to her that martial arts isn’t about that; that it’s a control of violence and aggression, a way to temper and reign it in, and that the ultimate goal of most true fighting practices is to avoid a confrontation in the first place. He honestly thinks learning those skills would do the girl a world of good, but right before he opens his mouth to say as much, Rick taps his hand, where it’s still resting on his leg, and shakes his head when Daryl glances at him.
He doesn’t know if Rick is saying not here in front of everyone or she’s not ready yet, but either way, the hunter feels inclined to relent to him on this. “Okay.” He agrees instead, taking a deep breath. “I mean, ya ain’t gotta do nothin’ if ya don’t wanna, but it might be an alright idea, joinin’ up with something.”
“What did you do in school?” She asks challengingly.
I survived, is the first thought that comes to mind. He refrains from saying it, because she doesn’t deserve the pain that comes with hearing something like that. “Archery.” He decides after a beat, because it’s almost the truth.
“Like Hawkeye?”
Carol laughs out loud at that, and answers her daughter on Daryl’s behalf. “Exactly like Hawkeye.” She tells the girl with a wink.
“Cool,” the word comes in stereo from Carl and Sophia both.
Daryl just rolls his eyes. “I could help ya with that.” He offers. “Or, ya always like swimmin’ down at Ramset Lake. Sure they got a club for that, right?”
“I think they’d call it a team.” Rick corrects with a grin.
“Don’t get smart with me, Charger.” He says playfully, something he knows he’s said to Rick a few times before. At least once during sex – Daryl remembers it, because he remembers everything he does with Rick. And, even if he hadn’t, his lover’s deep and sudden flush would have been proof enough.
“Maybe,” Sophie taps her fork against her plate, looking reluctantly intrigued. “I’ll think about it.”
The rest of the morning carries on smoothly, and it’s not long before the kids and Carol are gone, and he and Rick are alone.
“So?” His lover quirks a curious eyebrow at him. “You said you wanted to show me something?”
“Funny thing, actually,” Daryl grins. “You ain’t never seen me with the bow yet, have ya?”
Rick just shakes his head.
“Haven’t taken it out in a while.” Daryl shares. He thinks about it for a moment, and for the life of him can’t figure out why that is. He loves his crossbow, has always taken to it more naturally than any sort of gun – which is saying a lot, because he’s damn good with firearms. “Wanna today. You good with that?”
“Of course.” Rick says immediately and sincerely. “Love watching you hunt. And, hell. I always did have a thing for Hawkeye.”
***
***
Daryl always holds himself with a certain amount of tension. It’s not something overtly noticeable, and Rick only picks up on it the way he does because he’s seen Daryl without it. His lover’s fluidity when he’s fighting, the ease and peace he radiates after they have sex, and out in the woods while he’s hunting and tracking – these are the times it’s obvious to Rick that Daryl feels most comfortable with himself.
Rick still remembers watching Daryl shoot a gun for the first time; handling the weapon with stunning ease. He recalls the envy that he’d felt – knowing that he’d never find that sort of fluidity with any gun, not even the Colt Python he’s been carrying since his first year on the force. But his jealousy had been muted by desire; because even then, back at the very beginning, watching Daryl like that had lit a fire in his belly.
He feels that same desire again right now, only tenfold and with an added layer of something softer, but more powerful, than pure sexual desire. He loves Daryl now, and watching him in his element like this is breathtaking.
His lover handles the crossbow like it’s a part of him. Rick had thought that about his guns, before, but that’s only because he hadn’t had anything to compare it to. The bow seems almost a literal part of Daryl, and as soon as Rick sees it in his hands, and then slung over his shoulder as if it weighs nothing at all (which is a damn illusion, because Rick had picked it up earlier, and its heavy as hell), he knows that this is the final piece of the puzzle he’d been missing. This is Daryl Dixon as he’s meant to exist in the world.
They don’t stay at the house. Rick wants to – wants the familiarity and comfort, the safety, of being close to their home – but Daryl insists on driving. They travel nearly an hour, before settling at a wooded camping area – mostly deserted early on a weekday morning like this – that his lover seems to know well.
Rick trails behind Daryl with a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder. He’s not much more than a caddy in this context; because while he can shoot a rifle just fine in a technical sense, he’s not a hunter. It’s not in his blood, in his bones, the way it is for Daryl. He can’t track for shit, either, and Daryl’s tried more than once to teach him that.
They walk for maybe a quarter of an hour in silence before Rick decides to say something. Daryl’s not actually tracking anything at the moment. Rick knows this, because while he may be downright horrible at the skill itself, he’s an ace at reading his lover’s body language.
“I’m worried about you, Daryl.” He starts, the quiet words seem amplified by the stillness of the nature surrounding them. “You’ve been off since we got home last night.”
“I’m fine.” The younger man responds, barely pausing long enough to process Rick’s words before he’s countering them.
“Are you?” Rick catches his arm; tugs until Daryl has to turn around. He’s not sure what he’s expecting to see – anger, pain, resentment – but none of it’s there. Daryl is, in every sense of the word, completely neutral.
“I’m fine.” He repeats, and then holds Rick’s gaze until the older man is forced to release him and let the moment carry on.
The first time Rick sees him shoot the crossbow, it feels like the tenth time; the fiftieth, the thousandth. It’s beyond the grace of well-worn practice, or the natural ease of being a marksman. It’s like a coil of Daryl’s DNA coming to life right before his eyes.
The detective doesn’t even see where the shot lands until they walk a decent distance to a tree branch that Daryl has to shake before the squirrel falls out. Arrow right through the skull. Rick looks on, openly enthralled, as his lover removes the arrow, cleans it, and places it back in the bunch. “I wouldn’t’ve even seen that.” He comments.
Daryl smirks a little, looking rightfully proud. And Rick feels elated – because, hell, at least that’s an emotion.
“I got a good eye.” He says, downplaying his skills as he always does.
“Who taught you?” Rick asks. He wants to know about this. Whether Daryl believes it or not, he wants to know everything.
“My brother, mostly.” Daryl responds easily while attaching the dead squirrel to some kind of chord he’d brought with him for apparently this very purpose. “Our uncle took us out a few times when I was real young, but by the time I could lift the thing Jess was strung out more often than not.”
Rick swallows thickly and nods a few times, though Daryl probably can’t even see it for the hair hanging over his eyes. “He was into meth?”
“Mmhm,” Daryl hums, seemingly unsurprised that Rick had guessed. “Got Merle into it, too. They used to cook together.”
Rick wonders if the place in Mississippi had been a rehab facility. The comment his lover had made earlier that morning about doing drugs had already had him thinking, and now he can’t help but consider the possibility that Daryl had succumbed to his family’s faults, as well.
“Is that why Breaking Bad is the only TV show you ever watch?”
Daryl actually snorts at that. Rick had only meant it half-jokingly, because he wants to know, but asking outright feels too dangerous in this moment.
“It gets more right than you’d think.” Is Daryl’s answer. A few seconds later he stops again, crouches slightly, aims the bow, and shoots. Rick’s barely aware of what’s happening before it’s done and there’s a dead rabbit fifty feet in front of them.
“So when you told Sophie you did archery in high school…?”
“Between the ‘shine, the drugs, and Merle’s court fees before our old man stopped bailin’ him out…” Daryl shrugs, letting the list end there, though Rick is sure it’s actually a lot longer. “wasn’t always a lot leftover for food. I figured out how to survive.”
Rick pictures the bleak type of reality Daryl had grown up in and almost wants to cry for him again. It’s not like the older man doesn’t have a frame of reference for this sort of thing – he’s seen his fair share of terrible circumstances, in his time on the force – but imagining Daryl living like that, picturing Daryl as a child living like that, is worse than any actual domestic hell he’s ever stepped foot in as an officer of the law.
“Y’know, when I moved to Atlanta,” Rick starts, watching Daryl as he secures the rabbit he’d just shot to the chord already holding the squirrel, “I didn’t think it’d be much different.”
“What’s that?” Daryl asks, and Rick smiles a little at his lover’s willingness to participate in this conversation, even if he’s still not making eye contact.
“The things I saw.” Rick explains, trailing a half-step behind his lover as he starts following another set of tracks. “I mean, I knew my job’d be different. Different title, different outfit, different protocol…but I figured the core of what I saw every day, what I fought against, would be basically the same. Catch bad guys, make the world a better place.”
“That ain’t the case?” And Daryl actually sounds a little worried then, like there’s something Rick’s going through that he hadn’t caught onto and should feel guilty about missing. The older man is quick to assure him.
“It is.” Rick admits. If there’s one thing he’s never questioned about his life, it’s what he’s chosen to do for a living. “I mean, bad guys are still bad guys, victims are still victims, and there’s still shades of gray that are complicated and awful sometimes, but…I…there’s something ‘bout the city that makes the people different, y’know?”
Daryl grunts, and Rick recognizes it as the one that means I’m on the same page, keep going.
“Maybe it’s all the space we had, out in the country.” Rick says, making the statement inclusive to both of them without even realizing. “Made it harder for people to hide who they were. Out here, in the city, people aren’t worse, but they’re louder. Everything’s brighter and more condensed. It should make it easier to find the bad guys, but it doesn’t. When I first got here, Morgan used to tell me all the time that I just needed to get used to the context, and I guess I have by now, but I’ll never stop seeing the differences.”
Daryl’s walking slower as he listens to Rick, and the detective feels suddenly on the spot, like his next words are going to be crucial.
“I think we all do that. Carry where we came from with us.”
“Your shrink get you thinkin’ ‘bout shit like that?” The hunter asks, and though he doesn’t sound irritated, his tone isn’t as neutral as it had been earlier.
Rick hums in response, waiting a beat before saying what he wants to say next, even though he knows it’s dangerous. “You ever think about it?” He swallows thickly, watching as his lover’s shoulders tense noticeably. “Talking to someone about –”
“No.” Daryl cuts him off before he finishes the thought, and Rick had been right: he seems to have stepped dead center on a landmine.
Of course, it’s too late now to back away. “It doesn’t make you weak,” he says, as gently as he possibly can, “or any less in control of your life. It might help –”
“The last psychiatrist I talked to nearly killed me,” Daryl snaps; immediately pausing to take a deep, albeit shaky, breath as Rick’s brain tries to process the words he’d just heard. He definitely is angry now, Daryl is; the detective recognizes that much immediately, and while he’s seen this side of his lover before, there’s something very different about it right now. Something brutally raw. “Last time… he fed me drugs I didn’t want, didn’t need, and kept me drooling and useless, locked in a room for days without food.”
Rick stops cold, heart stuttering in his chest. “Dare…”
“I get it ain’t always like that, ain’t supposed to be,” the younger man powers on. He stops walking when he senses Rick’s stillness, but won’t turn around. “I get that it was fucked up, alright? I get that. Know the difference ‘tween what they did to me and how it’s supposed to be. Wouldn’t be lettin’ you or your boy go see one every damn week if I thought for a second that’s how it was goin’. Sure as fuck wouldn’t of encouraged it. But me? I couldn’t do it again to save my life, Rick, and ya can’t ask me to, alright? You can’t…you can’t ask me…”
“I’m not,” Rick tells him. He’s never meant anything more in his whole damn life. “I’m not, I promise, I’m not.”
Daryl nods a few times, his breath catching slightly on his next exhale. Rick can’t stop himself from approaching his lover from behind, his arms wrapping around Daryl’s narrow hips without conscious thought. The younger man stays stiff in his hold.
“You’re okay.” Rick whispers, face half-buried in the crevice of his lover’s neck, not sure which of them he’s trying to convince more. “I love you and you’re okay now.”
Daryl makes a noise; Rick feels it reverberate through his chest but can’t tell if it’s a laugh or a sob or something in-between.
He hadn’t been expecting what Daryl had just told him, not in the slightest, but maybe he should have been. With everything he knows already about his lover, maybe Rick should have expected this level of trauma to be lurking in his past.
“You’re okay. Everything’s okay now.” He says it again because he has to, because it is and he can’t let either of them forget. Usually it’s on Daryl, to keep Rick’s world centered on its axis – his steady presence and comforting words, said every time he knows Rick’s about to fall apart without them, have kept the older man from tumbling over the edge more times than he can count. But right now, Daryl’s the one who needs that reminder, that strength.
They stay like that for a long time: Rick wrapped around his lover, pressed as tight as he can manage to Daryl’s back while the other man stays as rigid as concrete in his arms.
***
***
Eventually, he relaxes; Rick’s unyielding presence soothing him despite his body’s best efforts to disconnect from everything real.
For a wild second he thinks maybe he can take it back. Just kidding, he imagines saying. Rick wouldn’t buy that, of course, but the instinct to run away from this moment is as sharp as the pain he’d just shared.
“Was a long time ago.” He says. He knows he isn’t doing this right. He hadn’t started at the beginning, and the story probably won’t even make sense now, but Rick had pushed just an inch too far and Daryl had gone and given him the mile.
“It’s okay,” Rick says again, calmly, like the whole world isn’t falling apart at the seams.
“I don’t wanna talk about it.” Daryl’s distracted by the sound of his own voice – so choked and low that he hardly recognizes himself. “I don’t want to talk about it. Ever. I can’t…”
“Okay,” Rick soothes. “That’s okay. We can just keep hunting.”
Daryl pulls away from him then, sudden and rough. He hears it as Rick stumbles from the force of the movement. The hunter turns on him, eyes sharp and body coiled tight with anticipation, because for one fleeting moment he thinks that Rick is the threat. It takes him a second to remember that he’s not. That there aren’t threats like that in his life anymore. It’s funny, he thinks wildly, that sometimes he feels alone without them. Like an addict without a drug. A victim without an abuser. It’s better now. Of course it’s better and safer and right - all those things he’s worked so hard for and never thought he’d be allowed to have, back when he was younger. But it’s still a void. And sometimes, in moments he can’t control, he still feels hollow.
“Easy,” Rick’s voice is calm, but not the right kind of calm. It’s you don’t wanna pull that trigger, lemme tell you why fear and forced composure. “Easy now. You’re okay.”
Rick’s trying to talk him down, and Daryl doesn’t even understand why until his finger twitches and he realizes that his hand is on his crossbow.
He forces himself to exhale, long and hard. He moves his grip to the weapon’s strap and pulls it, slowly, up and over his shoulder. Then he walks it a few paces to the tree closest to them, rests it calm and careful against the base, and plops himself down right next to it, back against the trunk.
He breathes in deep, exhales shakily, and doesn’t look up again until he’s sure he’s got himself under control.
He won’t hurt Rick.
He’ll put a bullet in his own goddamn skull before he lets himself come anywhere close to hurting the man he loves.
Trying to calm down, forcing himself to, it used to make him angry. The way Paul would always encourage him to breathe just right to get his heart to stop thundering in his chest. And it still does; piss him off sometimes when he has to settle like that. Like the way Michonne will make him work the heavy bag if he comes in all riled up, to make sure the worst of his rage is tampered down before she lets him in the ring. Fuck people trying to control him like that.
But for Rick, he’ll do it all. He’ll do every goddamn thing he hates until the day he dies because he will not hurt this man. Not ever. Not even once. Not for anything.
Rick’s in front of him now. Daryl doesn’t remember him getting there, not really, just blinks back to himself and sees that his lover is sitting down right in front of him, crossed-legged with his knee just barely brushing Daryl’s shin.
“You hear me just now?” Rick asks, and Daryl shakes his head. Because when he tries to recall the last few minutes between them his memory is sluggish; he knows Rick had said something, but his mind hadn’t latched onto it well enough for a coherent playback. “I said we don’t have to talk about anything you don’t wanna talk about. Not until you’re ready. Not ever, even. You don’t owe me a story Daryl, and I’m not about to try and force one out of you. Especially not after what happened yesterday.”
Daryl nods and takes another few deep breaths. That’s an out if he’s ever heard one. Loud, clear, and earnest to boot. Rick’s not forcing anything, and never will.
That’s why he starts talking.
“You remember one time, a while back, I told ya that when I was younger, I was real good at hiding what I was?” Daryl doesn’t look up, but he sees Rick shift slightly, unsure and curious and scared in equal measure.
“Yeah.”
“Well I was.” He clears his throat. “I hid it from everybody.” He stops again, takes a deep breath, and tries to get ready even though he knows that nothing will ever prepare him for this. “‘Til one day I didn’t.”
“You came out?” Rick sounds doubtful, and a little confused.
Daryl snorts. “No. Hell, no. I fucked up. Me and Martinez did. Got caught.” He takes another breath. One-two-three in, hold, one-two-three-four-five out. “Paul…this guy I used to date, the one I lived with? He said once that maybe I wanted to. Subconsciously, or something. That the lying was too much and I just…let it happen.”
“You think that’s true?” Rick doesn’t comment on the mention of Paul, doesn’t ask anything about the past in regards to that relationship, and Daryl knows that’s because it just doesn’t matter. Not in this moment. Maybe not at all, ever.
“Who knows?” He huffs lightly and shrugs. “I was sixteen. Fucked up. Angry. Maybe I did want it to happen.”
“What happened, Daryl?” Rick asks softly.
The hunter takes another breath, long and slow just like he’s supposed to, and answers his lover’s question.
Summer, 1995
The five-and-a-half-hour drive from Georgia to Mississippi is the longest Daryl and his dad have spent together in years. Maybe in Daryl’s whole life. The sixteen-year-old starts thinking, somewhere around the two-hour mark, that nothing he’s about to experience could possibly be worse than this. This isolation with his father. He’ll be happy to get away from the old bastard, no matter where he’s about to wind up.
Later he’ll look back on that thought and laugh miserably at his naiveté, but for now nothing in the world can alter his vehemence.
He’s even a little relieved, as fucked up as that is. Sure, he’d pled with Abraham Ford to find Merle, to help him, to do the one thing that might save him from this. But now that the Georgia state line is firmly in their rearview mirror, Daryl starts to consider the possibility that he won’t really need to be saved. This place his father is sending him, Daryl knows it’ll be like a prison-shaped boot camp. But in the end, how hard is that really going to be for him?
He lives in the woods half the time anyway, and his father’s been taking the firm hand approach since his mom had burnt up in that fire. At least at this place, this camp or whatever the fuck he’s supposed to be calling it, Will Dixon won’t be there. Daryl’s interactions will be with strangers, and he’s always been pretty good at ignoring those.
Since Merle’s been gone for years and he hates his father more than anyone else in the world, Martinez is about the only thing Daryl’s going to miss about Georgia, anyway. But it’s not like the other boy is going to stick around. No, Daryl’s father had made Georgia an unsafe place for the both of them and as soon as Martinez is up and walking around again, Daryl’s sure that he’s going to take off.
Must be nice, he thinks jealously, to be old enough to up and leave without anyone being able to stop you.
Maybe he’s a little bitter because he’d thought he and Martinez could take off together – that Daryl would be able to run away once and for all. They could have gone to New York or Los Angeles; one of those places you always hear about on the news for passing all sorts of liberal laws. A place they could have been free to…well, a place they could have been free.
But Martinez had scoffed at the idea when Daryl had suggested it the night before.
“That’d be kidnappin’, Dixon,” he’d shaken his head and then winced. Daryl’s father had really done a number on him. “Best case scenario, I’m takin’ care of you somewhere ‘til you’re old enough to get a job, and we both know I ain’t gonna be able to swing that. I don’t even got a high school diploma to my name.”
Daryl had known he wasn’t wrong. Hell, the older boy’s resume reads more like a rap sheet, and it would be more of the same wherever they went, but that hadn’t been the point, not last night. “I could find work.” He’d insisted. “I could…”
“What?” Martinez had pressed when Daryl had trailed off. “Suck dick for profit? Maybe let all’a them repressed middle-aged suburban house-husbands fuck you for fifty bucks a pop in the back of their SUVs?”
Daryl had flushed hotly. “No.”
“No?” Martinez had pressed again. “Then what? What are you gonna do in a city to bring in enough cash for us to live on?”
“I’d get a fake ID.” Daryl had kept pushing, kept fighting for a future he knew he’d never get to have. “Get a job. A normal one. It could work.”
Martinez had leaned back against the pillows propped up behind him on the couch. “Fuck, kid, I never woulda taken you for a damn romantic.”
“Fuck you.” Daryl had spit bitterly. “I’ll leave on my own then. I don’t even need you. I can take off tonight and my dad-”
“Your old man’d have every statie and overpaid pig on your ass until the day you turned eighteen.” The older boy had snapped, eyes narrowing suddenly with a hardness that Daryl had seen a million times before, but never before directed at him. “And you’d be lucky if it was Ford or one’a his assholes that caught up to ya, too, ‘cause at least they’d bring you in alive. Your dad would kill you so fast you’d still look surprised the day they put you in the ground.”
“My dad wouldn’t kill me.” Daryl had said it, but he’s still not sure if he believes it. Martinez had scoffed. “He never killed Merle, an’ my brother was a whole-”
“Your brother isn’t a fag.”
Daryl had cringed, but hadn’t said anything about the language. It’s true enough, at least around these parts. “Don’t matter,” he’d grumbled instead.
“Matters a whole helluva lot.” Martinez had argued. “Men like your daddy take kindly to being made a fool of. Now you got us caught in the worst kinda predicament. All’s left to do now is man up and accept the consequences. ‘Cause if you bail on him, try’ta get out’a whatever he’s got lined up to save face…” the older boy had sighed deeply. “Daryl, if you embarrass him again, he will kill you. And not the devil himself could stop it happenin’.”
Martinez only ever calls him Daryl while they’re messing around, and to hear it out of context in that moment had thrown him more than he’d have thought it could. “Easy for you to say,” he’d bit his lip and started fiddling with the frayed end of one of Martinez’s bandages. “All you gotta do is leave town. You know what he’s gonna do to me?”
“Send you somewhere, I’d imagine. S’what my old man did to my sister when she got knocked up at fourteen. With this…” The older boy had smiled despondently. “Some pray-away-the-gay outfit in Texas or somethin’, right?”
“It’s a save-your-soul boot camp in Mississippi.” Daryl had chuckled a little, sadly and with a lot of irony. “The Saving Faith Rehabilitation Sanctuary, is what he called it. Funny thing is, it don’t feel much like I’m gettin’ saved.”
Present Day
“A conversion camp.” Rick breathes, and it’s not a question, but Daryl nods anyway. “Your father sent you to…” he stops suddenly, and Daryl looks up without meaning to, because there’s something in his lover’s voice that he can’t quite place.
Rick looks furious, and even though Daryl knows it’s not at him, but rather for the pain he’d suffered, the younger man can’t help but flinch.
He feels raw already, torn open and inside out, with all of the most vulnerable pieces of himself exposed to the unforgiving elements, and Rick’s anger, as protective and instinctive as it may be, hurts.
“Hey, I didn’t mean…” Rick makes a wounded noise deep in the back of his throat, and shuffles closer to Daryl, rearranging himself until he’s sitting next to him, his back against the trunk of the tree. He’s not touching him, doesn’t try for that, but he ducks his head in that way he does, searching for Daryl’s gaze. “I’m sorry. God, I’m so fucking sorry, Daryl. That that happened. That…” he takes a deep breath, slow and even, and the younger man recognizes that he’s trying to focus his emotions. He’s better at it than Daryl is. “How long were you there?”
Daryl doesn’t particularly want to answer that – or any question, really, related to this – but he knows that Rick is probably thinking that he’d been there for years, and doesn’t want the older man imagining his suffering any worse than it was, if only for his own sake.
“Nine months.”
It hadn’t been years, it hadn’t been nearly as long as it could have been, and Daryl had thought knowing that would make Rick calmer, make it easier. But his body goes stiff as soon as Daryl gives him the time frame, rigid in a way that, even with space between them, Daryl can feel.
He doesn’t think about what he does next, acting purely on the impulse to soothe his lover. He leans over,until his side is pressed up against Rick’s fully, which is enough to startle to the other man out of his rage-shock. Then he ducks his head down until his forehead is on Rick’s shoulder. It’s the most vulnerable position he could have put himself in without rearranging both their bodies entirely, and Rick reacts to it exactly how Daryl expected; his shoulders go slack, and he turns until he can wrap his arm around Daryl’s back.
It’s not an exact mirror image of how they’d been sitting the day before outside of the police station, but it’s close enough that Daryl feels it like déjà vu. It’s about both of them this time, though, not just Daryl. Because for as much as the hunter had needed the comfort, giving it – being asked for it – is the only thing keeping Rick grounded right now.
“I gotchya,” the detective is whispering to him, face pressed against the side of his head, words getting caught in the wisps of his hair. “I promise, it’s okay. You’re okay, we’re okay, I gotchya.”
“Ford tracked Merle down, eventually, and told him where I was at.” Daryl smiles a little, telling this part, even as he curls farther into Rick’s space, buries his head in the crook of his lover’s neck. “Merle ain’t a huge fan of hearin’ about where I like to stick my dick, but after everything our dad did to him, did to both of us, he just didn’t have it in him to hate me for that. Or maybe he just hated the old man more, I dunno. But he raised hell when he found out where he sent me. I know you hate Ford, and findin’ out what you did yesterday, I can’t blame you for that, but I need’ya to know that if it weren’t for him, I’d’a been in that place for years, Charger.”
The detective inhales sharply. “How did Merle get you out?” He asks. “You told me once you were in foster care, in Mississippi, so I’m assumin’ he didn’t just become your guardian?”
“No state agency in the country woulda considered my brother capable of takin’ care of a kid,” Daryl huffs, actually rather fond of this part of the story. “Nah, he showed up one night with a whole bunch of his biker buddies and fuckin’ raided the place. Tore it to pieces and lit it on fire ‘til there weren’t hardly nothin’ left. Bunch of us saw ‘em do it, helped, even; but when the cops showed up, no one could manage a decent description of Merle or his friends.”
“Memories can be fickle like that.” Rick says, tone lilting towards irony.
Daryl chuckles. “There were some locals that saw the raid as vandalism and whatever else, but most of ‘em didn’t try too hard to track Merle and his buddies down. My brother was outta the state before the sun came up, and I coulda gone with ‘em, I guess, but I wound up just stayin’. Spent a little over a year in foster care and then…well, I think you pretty much know the rest. Drifted for a long time, ‘til I eventually settled back down here.”
Rick doesn’t say anything for a long time; his arm stays tight around Daryl’s shoulders, like he’s trying to shield the younger man from threats long since dead, but the hunter doesn’t mind. It’s been a long time since he’s told even this much of that story, and now that he’s passed the initial self-made block of it, it almost feels like a relief, knowing that he won’t have to watch his tongue anymore. That this huge chunk of his life is no longer a mystery to the man he loves.
He hadn’t wanted to tell the story – hates telling it, more than anything – but if there’d been a way for Rick to just know, to somehow absorb the memories from him without Daryl ever having to open his mouth and find the words, he thinks he would have done it ages ago, because sitting here with Rick like this now, out in the woods with almost all of that weight lifted from his shoulders, Daryl feels relaxed. Relieved, in a bone deep kind of way that he can’t compare to anything else.
It occurs to him then that there is a way that Rick can know the rest of it, the details, without Daryl having to spell it out, bit by bit. He thinks, if it comes up, he’ll probably tell Rick about that here soon, because the older man is the type who likes having the specifics, feels more settled when there’s nothing left to guess at, and Daryl’s strong enough now to give that to him.
“That guy you lived with?” Rick starts, voice a cautious kind of causal, careful but trying to act like he’s not; obviously unsure yet of what he’s allowed to ask about this. “You met him there?”
Daryl hums. “Paul.” He nods, nuzzling a little more securely into the sweaty skin at the hollow of Rick’s throat. “He’d been there almost a year by the time I got there. He mighta been the only thing that kept me alive those first few weeks, Rick, if I’m bein’ honest, and for a long time after that, that’s what I thought love was. Don’t get me wrong, he was a good guy. Still is, far as I know, but bein’ that young, in a place that fucked up, it was…I can’t really…” he pauses to take a breath, trying to figure out what he wants to say. Rick rubs his cheek against the top of his head, comforting in an automatic and instinctive kind of way, and Daryl feels himself settle at the gesture, without any kind of force or focus on his part at all. “Let’s just say that it took meetin’ you to figure out why he called it quits after a while. ‘Cause he did, y’know? Said we’d both be settlin’, that it was friendship more than love by the end. He was right, but I didn’t really get that ‘til you came along.”
Rick exhales shakily, and Daryl imagines that the other man’s eyes might be wide, at hearing him say something like that so blunt and honest. Daryl doesn’t pull away to find out for sure, and a few seconds later Rick kisses the crown of his forehead, all tender and full of meaning, and the hunter figures that’s really all he needs to know.
“You…you said they locked you up.” Rick says next, and Daryl’s body goes tense without meaning to. He hums, though, letting Rick know he’ll hear out this question, at least, even if he can’t answer it. “Drugged you. Starved you. Was there…was there anything else?”
“There was a lot.” Daryl admits, memories assaulting him left right and center. “There was…they…shit, Rick.”
“It’s okay, you’re okay,” the older man croons. “You don’t gotta say anything else.”
“There was a lawsuit.” Daryl blurts.
“What?”
“After Merle and everyone destroyed the place, all of us…the kids, we had to go somewhere. There were a lot of us. Thirty, I think. Maybe more. Was a big mess; social workers and cops, even the feds showed up for a while and talked to us. Place was legal on paper, but what they were doin’…” Daryl explains in a rush, knowing that he’s mixing up some of the details, probably, but that whole part of his life had been such a blur, and not even time had sorted out his memories of what had gone on back then. “Some liberal do-gooder lawyer got it in his head that we should be compensated, y’know? For our pain and suffering and whatever else. Did it all pro-bono. Got us to talk about everything that happened and after a while, his firm took it to court. And they settled out, of course, but it left us all with a hefty chunk’a change.”
“Oh.” Rick sounds genuinely surprised.
“What?” Daryl snorts a little, amused, “You think I could afford that land we got on a mechanic’s salary?”
“I’ve honestly never thought about it.” Rick admits.
“Yeah, well…” he trails off. He hadn’t started this to explain to Rick where his money had come from. “The court papers, they got all the details in ‘em. Pictures, too. It’s some nasty shit, Charger. Guy who ran that place…I don’t think he even gave a shit about us bein’ gay, I really don’t. Think he just got off on the control and hurtin’ people, and found a way to do it that people were alright with. It’s not somethin’ I can talk about, really, but if you wanna know…if you wanna know what happened back then, the settlement stuff’s in a box in the garage.”
“Daryl,” Rick says slowly, and there’s so much in that one breath the hunter can’t even begin to wrap his head around it.
“Just not in front of me, okay?” Daryl closes his eyes even though he can’t see anything except his lover’s skin, anyway. “I can’t go through all that again, but I know you like knowin’, and it ain’t fair…ain’t fair I know your past, but I can’t give you all’a mine.”
He thinks about Lori’s letter, how Rick had handed it to him in that hospital room. He’d given Daryl everything that day, every ounce of his pain and insecurity, and Daryl wants to do the same, wants to trust Rick like Rick had trusted him.
“It’s not like that, Daryl,” Rick says, quick and steady like he believes it. “You don’t owe me your past.”
Daryl shrugs, as best he can. “I don’t mind you knowin’ it, Rick, just don’t wanna tell it, y’know?” He pauses for a moment, but keeps talking before the older man can interject again. “Either way, it’s there. Read ‘em or don’t, I won’t be mad, no matter which you choose.”
Rick doesn’t say anything else, just hums lightly and keeps his arm wrapped around Daryl’s shoulder, his legs drawn up and tucked close to the hunter’s body. Daryl absorbs the comfort easily, readily. He likes being close to Rick like this, even if it does feel a little bit like hiding. Like, as long as he’s here, in these woods with Rick, with only silence and nature surrounding them, Daryl will be safe from the things he’s already lived through. Free from his past. Normal.
His life has never been a song, but Rick’s love feels a lot like make-believe.
They stay like that until the sun is high in the sky, hot and bright, and Daryl knows without looking that it’s coming up on noon. He doesn’t want to leave this place; this safe little bubble he’s found where Rick knows but nothing has changed yet. Because Daryl knows it will change. It always does.
But it won’t, until they walk away from this moment.
He thinks Rick would probably stay here as long as Daryl asked it of him, which is why the hunter eventually breaks the silence. “Should get back.” He mutters, though makes no effort to move just yet.
Rick bends his neck until he can meet the other man in a kiss. It’s light and chaste and makes Daryl’s head feel floaty.
“This doesn’t change anything.” Rick says when he pulls back, as soft as the gentle breeze in the air around them. “I know you think it will, but I promise you it won’t. It doesn’t.”
Daryl swallows thickly. He doesn’t know whether or not he believes Rick, but it says something that the other man had read his mind like that – knows him like that.
Maybe, he thinks, – hopeful despite everything – that everything changing exists on a spectrum, and Rick is closer to right than he is. Maybe not much will be different after this.
Maybe the two of them together will be enough to tip the hand.