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1427 · 26 days

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i love you (always forever) pt.1

Daryl Dixon x sister!OFC

Summary: In the winter of ‘95 Daddy died. Leaving Lady to finish up her senior year in high school, and Daryl to brood over when to sell the house. The summer of ‘96 is the first time Lady feels alive. Daryl wants to give her one last summer before she has to grow up for real.

He gave her anything she asked for that summer.

Setting: Doublewide on some lone property in the middle of the woods, Georgia. Summer 1996

Warnings: INCEST (like it's the whole thing), virgin!oc, drug use (a joint), underage drinking, TENSION, poorly written SMUT, masturbation (f), lite!somno, oral (m receiving), some leering (??); most of the smut will be in part two.

Word Count: 6.1k

A/n: INCEST I'll say it again. if it's not your thing, or can’t ever be your thing, DON’T READ IT.

I didn't write it. I simply lived it in my head and documented (I wrote it but it felt like I didn't have a choice).

Lady, Daryl calls her Lay, Bug

She calls him Bub, Bubba

// part 2 //

MDNI 18+

Wind chimes. Soft like the breeze. The heat of the Georgia in June. Daddy died this past winter, and Lady’d never had a summer feel so much like a hug. Finally able to really breathe again. Like a little kid. Magic around every corner. She swore sometimes, when she looked out the window in the dead of night, that she could see the faeries dancing out back in the woods. For a few years they'd gone, but this year they were back again.

Just her and Daryl (and the deer, and the squirrels, and the mice, and obviously the mosquitos, and sometimes the faeries); Like it shoulda always been. Like it always kinda was. After Merle left and all. Got older, moved out. Daryl stayed, though. Past his 18th birthday, and a few more after that. Didn’t wanna leave Lady all by herself with their old man. Couldn’t.

Now he couldn’t really leave her alone in the house, even though she’d turned 18 last fall. Doesn’t even cross his mind.

Lady’s finally done with school for good unless she decides she wants to go to college. First one in the whole damn family and no one but Daryl was there to see it. Daryl quit his job as soon as Daddy died. Even if Daddy didn't have a few dollars in his bank account he didn’t know about, Lady figures he would have anyway.

Daryl thought about selling the house but… not yet.

He knew he was putting a pause on his life for this summer with Lady, but his whole life had been on pause til now anyway. Knows that when it’s over, it’s all over. Her whole childhood, their whole upbringing. Their dad dyin’ was just the bow ontop to seal the deal. They’d both think of it as the end. For the rest of her life, Lay’ll know this is when she had to grow up for real. So Daryl wouldn’t sell the house until Lady had her last summer as a kid with nothin’ to worry about.

The heat was starting to get unbearable.

“Lay!” Daryl yells, standing above a bed she'd made up in the living room. Dad had always kept the one lone air conditioner in his room, in front of the tv, in front of the recliner, in front of the bed. Lady had the idea to hang sheets on the doors to the living room and make a bed on the floor big enough for both of them to sleep in. She forgot the pillows, though, and now she was nowhere to be found.

Daryl put down the tools he’d been using to fix the a/c to the window, pushing past the pink floral sheet between the living room and the hall toward the bedrooms, “Lay!” He quickly paces the double wide but she’s no where.

Left a towel on her bed though, so Daryl’s got a good guess where she went. Swimmin’.

It’s about a half miles walk, so it’s pretty far to just up and leave like that without saying anything, but Lady did it all the time. Like the creek was her own personal bathtub. Daryl’s not annoyed, not really. But he walks the half mile like he is anyway. Why couldn’t she just let him know? Because then he wouldn’t have to make sure this is where she went. And he wouldn’t have to bring her the towel she forgot.

Daryl walks down and sure enough Lady’s shoulder deep in the muddy creek water, her clothes and shoes all bundled up on the dirt a few feet in front of him. She’s faced away, and at first doesn’t hear him come up.

Lady tried to sneak away without being noticed to have a private moment. Like momma taught her. You’re allowed to touch yourself like that, but you can’t do it around other people. Momma said as long as you can be in private, it’s alright.

Lady didn’t mean to forget her towel, but she almost assumed Daryl would find her anyway. She’d been fast though, always was. Was easy with the hormones. 18 and learning all new kinds of feelings. Merle always called her a late bloomer. Not being interested in boys until recently. She thought about the boys at school, and their plush lips on the soft skin of her shoulder, the protection in their arm wrapped around her waist, the butterfly light kiss of their eyelashes on her stomach.

It didn’t take much for Lady to feel somethin’. Not in this heat, not with the breeze of freedom prickling every inch of her skin.

Daryl can’t tell what she’s doing. All he sees is her shoulders barely moving in the lake, her head above the water and facing away from him. “Lay!”

Daryl’s voice cascades through the air a few seconds after Lady, with a barely there mew, has her orgasm. Lady’s kisses with pleasure are soft, new, wanting. Like a light peck instead of a deep kiss. A soft mist instead of a thunderstorm. Lady only knew sweetness, even in her private moments.

She’s beaming from ear to ear as she turns around to face him, making sure to keep her body covered by the water, “Bubba, what? I’m just swimmin’.” She already knew he was ready to be annoyed with her by his tone.

“Yeah, uh-huh,” he nods, and smirks. Despite being annoyed he’s casual, “Thinkin’ maybe ya forgot som’n?” He throws the towel down ontop of her clothes and goes to stand behind a tree while she gets out of the water.

Lady was always doing this. And Daryl was always following her with whatever thing she’d forgotten, or didn’t know she was gonna need. Daryl was always there.

Full name Lady-Rae Cheryl Dixon. See momma wanted the name to rhyme with the boys but always said if she had a girl she was gonna name her Lady. Really liked that movie when she was a kid, didn’t matter it wasn’t a girls name. Didn’t matter to her what anyone thought. She thought it was sweet. And Lady was sweet. Could get away with probably anything if she wanted to, but she never even tried. Besides running around the woods naked, she didn’t find herself in much trouble. Sweet as honey.

Daryl wasn’t sure how that was gonna work out in the real world. If she would get eaten up, or if she’d outshine everyone around her. He didn’t like to think about it. She didn’t belong out there. Not yet. Right now she’s naked in the woods, covering herself up just to be polite; right where she’s meant to be. Who she’s supposed to be.

They make the walk back, Lady’s teeth chattering but she never complains. Barefoot like she grew the forest herself. She knew every inch. Daryl shuffled behind her, knowing the trail just as well, but letting her be the force she was. Skipping and stopping and stepping on her favorite parts as she went. He watched.

Her towel small, and frayed on the ends. See through in spots. He tries to look away. He knows he should. But he can’t manage to stop himself. the way her tiny ass bounced as she walked, it was too lewd for him to avert his eyes. Like maybe if it wasn’t jiggling so much he’d have been able to stare at his feet or off into the woods, or at her bare shoulder or something, anything, else.

But it was, just… her tight skin moving the fat of her ass back into place over and over, snapping against the sheer fabric of the towel, moving that too. Daryl keeps himself from leaning back to see more, to peak through and see the light between her legs. Wouldn’t do that. He’s not trying to sexualize her. What her ass is doing is right there in front of him? He tells himself it’s not his fault he’s looking. He’s seen her naked anyway, it’s not even a big deal.

Getting caught up in shit that doesn’t matter, that’s what Daryl was good at. Getting stuck up in his own head and hung up on looking just barely a little too long at his sister. Merle would say it was no big deal, Daryl just needed to relax. He was making it weird by thinkin’ about it.

He manages to look away, and to forget all about it.

💕

Lady always assumes Daryls looking. Why wouldn't he look? Didn't mean nothin’. Boys always looked, wasn't a big deal unless they made it one. Unless someone made private thoughts public, with a purpose. Who cares who's lookin’? Lady doesn't. Never did. Why would she? How could she?

With Daryl for a brother, Lady never even got the chance to know what a bad touch might be. Never even heard of it. Maybe that's why she was such a late bloomer. Never even knew what she had down there until last summer when she met a boy who had a truck and talked like her brothers and he touched her through her pants and she ignited.

Never saw the guy again.

Never wanted to. Never needed to. She was alive and on fire and everything around her burned brighter for it.

She was finding it hard to get comfortable in the bed she’d made. Still too hot even with the air conditioner on full blast. Daryl was about 3 feet away, a whole heap of comforter between them. “Get up” Lady’s voice a playful smirk.

Daryl had been trying to fall asleep but got stuck staring at the ceiling fan. Trying to watch a single blade in its rotation. He stands up like she’d asked and watches as Lady lays the comforter out on top of the rest of the blankets she’d piled up, “if we’re not gonna use it.” She explains.

Lady’s still got her light blue baby blanket that goes almost everywhere with her. Just as tattered and falling apart as the towel. Daryl never sleeps with a blanket anyway. Usually just passes out in his clothes, on his bed. Now he’d do the same thing here, in the living room. Hum of the a/c, chatter of the TV, the heat from Lady’s body - Daryl didn’t think he’d be able to fall asleep anyway.

Well maybe. He did have a joint stashed in with his cigarettes that he’d been saving for sometime this week. So when lady gets up to grab herself an ice cream cone from the fridge, Daryl yells, “Lay, grab ma pack’a smokes.”

Lady’s halfway to the living room but she turns back and grabs them from the kitchen counter for him. “You’re really gonna smoke in the fort?”

“Fort, huh?” He grunts then smiles at her as she tosses the pack at him.

“Yeah?” She looks around, elbowing the sheet hung behind her, “What else would you call it?”

“Th’ livin’ room.” He’s not looking at her when he answers. Eyes and fingers fixed on the pack, fidgeting with the hinged top for a bit before pulling the joint out and putting it in his mouth.

Lady stops complaining when she sees it’s not a cigarette, and takes her seat back down on the pallet. Laying on her stomach, up on her elbows, facing Daryl. Her ice cream cone had already started melting, her tongue now on a race with the liquid dripping down her hand.

Daryl just watches her struggle, until she finally gets a hold on it. “Y’good, there, Bug?”

“Shut up.” And she shoves him a little. She’s got strawberry icecream all over her cheeks and chin and Daryl wishes he took pictures because at this moment he needed one. He needed her to remember forever who she is right now.

“Y’wanna hit?” He asks her like he asks her every time he smokes a joint in front of her. Which is often. And every time she says no, because it’s always no. Never wanted to, never really saw the point. Things were beautiful enough. And it reminded her of Merle, and the bad things he got up to.

Her mind slowly has been changing about it, with Merle gone for so long now. And Daryl being so chill about it when he was about it. A lot of the kids in high school had been doing worse and Lady found herself wanting to say yes when Daryl asked her.

But when she does, Daryl doesn’t believe her, “No fuckin’ way, Bug. Yer buggin’.”

“Bubba, no I’m not. I been thinkin’ about it.”

“Oh, ya have? What’chya been thinkin’ ‘bout it?”

“Just that I kinda wanna try.” She sways on her elbows, licking at her ice cream, “I’m gonna eventually, right? Why not now?”

She’s trying to keep herself calm, but she was more relaxed than she’d usually be when she thought about sayin’ yes. Maybe that’s why she’d finally said it. She was finally able to. Lady thinks that means she must be ready, if she’s not afraid to say she wants to try it.

She remembers this moment for the rest of her life.

Makes her feel brave, like she’ll always know if she’s ready for some new scary experience or not. If she can ask, she’s ready.

He thinks about it for a second, but he doesn’t see where she’s wrong. She probably was gonna try it eventually, why not now? She was safe here, he knew it. She knew it. So he says, “Alrigh’, fine. But yer prolly gon’ jus’ get tired,” and passes the joint to her. Thinking she'd take a tiny hit, probably not even inhale, and wimp out.

Lady takes it delicately in her fingertips and brings it to her lips. She’d tried cigarettes before (and didn’t like them), so the motion wasn’t completely foreign. But everything about it felt new and different. It burned. She almost didn’t feel it until she exhaled. A cloud of smoke billowing out and surrounding the both of them.

Daryl laughs and mutters, “Shit, Bug,” while Lady’s face falls. That was way more than she thought was supposed to come out. Way more than her little lungs were expecting or could take. Her hand shoots out to Daryl for him to take her half eaten ice cream cone as she turns into a rabid dog.

A wild beast on all fours hacking up half her lung and Daryl’s laughing so hard he’s crying, taking the ice cream and the joint back from her as she seizes.

She’ll be okay. He knows she will. And she’ll sleep amazing and she’ll be safe like she always is. Somethin’ in the air felt different there now. With everyone else gone. Like nothing could touch them.

So even though Lady’s about to be as high as a girl could ever be, neither of them are worried it won’t be a good time.

Just them in their fort. Way too old to be playing little kid games and way too young to be playing house.

💕

Lady’s vision was fuzzy. Glittering and dancing and hazy, rainbow bursts of fizzy glowing sparkles.

Lady was secretly afraid she was on fire. She stared at the TV but wondered to herself if it was possible that her lungs were embers that were slowly consuming her chest cavity. She could breathe now, it had been nearly an hour since she hit that joint, but she was sure that she was literally burning alive from the inside out.

“Dar, do you think you can be burning inside your lungs? Like on fire? Is that how people spontaneously combust?”

Daryl’s eyebrows shoot up, she’d been quiet for a while and he had been pretty sure that she’d fallen asleep. He had to think about her question. If he wasn’t also stoned he probably would have been able to tell her the answer was obviously no. Instead he says, “Don’t think so.” Which doesn’t really make her feel better. “I ain’t ever hearda it.” That does. Daryl’s hearda everything.

Their voices are soft, the tv’s the only light in the room. Daryl looks over at Lady. Her bare legs disappearing under an old pair of pajama shorts, she’s definitely not on fire. Not the way she means.

“Think yer good, Bug.” He reassured her before asking, “Need som’thin’?”

Lady, sweet as ever, asks, “Tuck me in?”

Daryl rolls his eyes but sits up anyway. Crawling the two steps toward her. He takes what he can of the stretchy old fabric and wraps it around her body. It’s not big enough, it was never gonna be. Daryl cracks a smile, Lady’s been laughing at his attempt. He pushes his fingers with the fabric around her, she’s laying straight as an arrow, blanket stretched to its limit tight against her body.

Daryl isn’t paying attention to his fingers as they tuck the fabric under her thighs, or how tight it’s pulling against Lady’s breasts. Lady does. She took one look at him after she hit that joint and she hasn’t been able to sit right since.

It’s the air, it’s the heat. It’s the sun, maybe something in the water at the creek? Its the pot. It’s gotta be the pot. It’s somethin’ that Lady doesn’t understand. That sometimes just being in proximity is enough.

She felt brave. She wanted to skirt that line. The line itself moving, and blurry, and hard to make-out. She wanted to be touched. And she wanted Daryl to touch her. Not too much, just a little. Just enough to make her heart race. Just enough to kiss her sleep with something that felt like magic.

Her pulse is pounding in her ears and down her throat as she looks at him up above her. She feels her blood burn in her palms, slowly falling away from her sides as the tight fabric comes loose from around her.

Daryl’s lost in the same moment, just caught staring down at her, in a haze himself. Stuck in his head, romanticizing every moment of Lady’s last summer.

“Kiss goodnight?”

The words come from between them. Lady’s voice had spoken them but she’s certain it didn’t come from her mouth.

Doesn’t matter. They’re in the air and Lady and Daryl both pretend that she doesn’t mean it in any way other than what a sister might say to a brother.

Daryl leans down and just barely brushes his lips over hers. Soft and sweet, like he was leaning down and smelling a flower. It’s so brief, and it’s so feather light it almost wasn’t there. Lady and Daryl both pretend it wasn’t.

She closes her eyes and snuggles into her blanket, all bunched up in her arms. And Daryl moves back to his spot, trying not to think about what just happened. How it’s all different now. In two seconds everything was different.

She initiated something new and Daryl already knew he was gonna do what he always did with Lady. Whatever she wanted.

💕

The sun is just barely peaking through the windows when Lady opens her eyes. The tv still playing, she sits up and leans herself forward to turn it off. Turning around to observe Daryl. But she wasn’t expecting… this.

He must have gotten up in the middle of the night and ripped his clothes off because he’s just laying there in his boxers and his wife beater. Head leaning back off the pillow, arms laying on either side of his body. The part that catches Lady completely off guard was between his legs. Hard and trying to push its way out of his boxers. Lady can see a hint of pink between the fabric. The hole in the front tenting out around his bulge.

Lady tries not to look. Knows she shouldn’t. But it’s too lewd to look anywhere else. He moves briefly in his sleep, which only makes their situation worse. His erect member pushing its way completely out of the hole. Lady gawks, feeling something akin to a squeel in her throat. She’d never seen something so… she needed to touch it.

She shuffles closer to him, her knees padding on the layers of blankets underneath them. Her small hand moving out in front of her, she can’t look away.

Her fingertips meet the skin of his bare cock with something Lady is sure is electricity. It’s warmer than she’d imagined, and as she moves, her nails grazing on the skin as she lightly traces up and down, she realizes that his skin here is softer than she’d imagined too.

After a while, she can’t help herself, and wraps her fingers around him. Slowly working her hand up and down, her fingers just barely putting any pressure against him. She wants to squeeze it, to feel how hard it really is, she wants to roll it between both her hands and put it in her mouth and she wants to get to know it better than she knows any part of herself - but she doesn’t wanna wake Daryl up.

It wasn’t even her fingers that woke Daryl up. It was the pressure. Below his stomach, twisting deep inside and throbbing.

He keeps his eyes closed, tries to keep his breathing steady. Tries to get himself to speak up, say something, tell her to stop. At least let her know you're awake. But he can't move.

With his eyes closed he can feel every light touch of Lady’s hand. The way she pushes her palm down when she gets to the base and pulls it off as she gets to the tip, the way she's moving in soft semi-circles, but not while she's going up and down. She's exploring.

Daryl didn't want to stop her.

He's so hard it hurts. He almost winces when she grips him tighter. She was only moving herself in a different position, Daryl realizes, because he feels her other hand on his cock now too.

Lady holds him in one hand, bringing the other up she grazes her index and middle finger over the tip of his length. Gliding his pre-cum all over his head. Trying to see how far it would go, she's surprised it's as slick as it is. She wants to taste it.

Daryl feels her fingers leave him, and hears the slick pop of her tongue as she moves her fingers between her lips. He has to stop himself from rutting his hips up into her hand, stop himself from pushing her head down onto him to feel her wet mouth.

He doesn't have to make her do anything, though.

Daryl feels a soft veil of hair tickle his skin above the waistband of his boxers, and he realizes she's about to put her mouth on him. Her pretty pink lips were about to wrap around his cock head. Her tongue, that he'd watched lick up melting icecream only a few hours ago, was gonna be flat against the underneath of his dick. Lady. With all the sweetness inside of her, was about to suck him off.

Lady can't help herself, doesn't want to. Never learned how. She’s not quite sure how to start what she wants to do but decided to put her lips together and kiss right underneath the tip. She doesn't pull away. Parting her lips and flicking her tongue out from between her teeth to taste more of whatever was coming out of him.

She feels it twitch under her tongue, so she licks him again. Longer, this time, with more certainty. Moving her fingers out of the way, she licks him once all the way from the bottom to the top.

Daryl didn't think about what was gonna happen when he came. What he should do. It happens so fast that he doesn't have time to warn her. The first shot goes right on her face.

Daryl sits up in time for the second and third to be lost somewhere on the blankets or his boxers.

“Shit, Lady. M’so. M’fuckin’ sorry.”

“It's my fault.” She explains in a flat tone. She sits still while Daryl uses his shirt he was wearing last night to wipe off her face. He’s a mess. Red-eared and scared as a dog but Lady's smiling bigger than she has in her whole life.

She ignores his apology, his frantic attitude. She was serene. Like she always was. “When did you wake up?”

“I’unno.” Right at the beginning, really, but he can’t tell her that. Can’t tell himself that.

She ignores him, she didn't really care. “So that’s what happens then? When a guy…” she mouthes the word ‘comes’ in an exaggerated way, looking in Daryl’s eyes the whole time.

He lays back into the pillow, grabbing another one to pull over his face. He can’t believe she just asked him that. She can’t believe this just happened at she was being so casual about it.

Lady pulls the pillow out of his hands just as fast. “No, come on. Ya can’t just not tell me. Not now.”

Daryl puts his arm over his face, only his mouth and his nose peeking out behind the crook of his elbow. She had a point, “Whad’ya wanna know?”

“Everything. All of it.”

“Whad’ya wanna know righ’now.”

Lady tells herself that if she’s ready to know, she’ll be able to ask. “When I have an orgasm nothing comes out. But when guys do it, that’s what happens?”

She bites on her lip and looks down at him, his eyes and most of his face still hidden behind his arm, laying back on the bed. He’d stay like this and answer her questions. Wouldn’t be able to do it if he was looking at her, “uh-huh”. It's more of a grunt than a word.

Lady tries to figure out which question to ask next. She knows a lot of stuff. Boys like it when girls suck on it. Boys like it when girls let them put it inside them. Lady isn’t sure exactly how that works, but she knows what she has. And what they have, and she doesn’t need to ask where it would go.

“Did you like it?”

A long pause. A half sigh, a grunted response, “uh-huh.”

“Do you want me to do it again? Can I.. can I do it again?”

“Na’righ’ now.”

Those words hang there even after Lady gets up and Daryl gets up and they both go about their day. This promise of ‘maybe later’. Daryl has errands to run in town and Lady says she’s got laundry to do, but hes pretty sure she just likes staying at the house.

“Need somethin’, Lay? Goin’ ta town!” He shouts inside the house from out of it, he’d been outside most of the day, mowin’ the lawn, finally cleaning up the old trampoline. Trying to tell himself that even if he'd tried to stop her, she wouldn't have let him.

Lady appears in the doorway in a breath, “Where ya goin’ in town?”

“Store.” He leans against the wood frame lining the area around the steps and lights a smoke.

Lady leans back, swaying her body with both hands on either side of the door by the handles, “Hmmm, maybe we could get stuff for grillin’. And we’re out of ice cream.”

Daryl nods, taking a drag, his eyes squinting against the sun, “Somethin’ else?”

“More pot?” She squints back at him.

He breathes out an almost laugh against the cigarette between his lips, “Yeah, alrigh’. Tha’s it?”

“Wine coolers?”

Daryl actually laughs at that one, “What’re ya tryna prove, Bug?”

She stops swinging on the door, “Not provin’ nothin’. Daddy's dead. Let's live a little.”

💕

So Daryl gets some girly somethin’ - what he assumes are wine coolers. They're in the refrigerated case at the distributor, and there's strawberries and an island on the cardboard carrier. And the bottle’s shaped stupid. Daryl’s sure he's gotten the right thing, or at least something she'd probably like.

Daryl doesn't feel bad indulging her. Never did, and anyway he's surprised it's taken her this long to ask. As far as growin’ up in the sticks, Lady was a good girl. And so she wanted to smoke some pot and drink some wine coolers with her brother?

So what she had all the curious burning of an explorer on their first expedition with every new thing that she tried, and so what if that new thing was Daryl's body and how it reacted to hers?

Daryl doesn't feel bad indulging her. He reasons with himself his whole drive that it can't be that bad. Not if Lady wanted it. Lady never wanted anything bad ever. She never gossiped, or tattled, or cheated at board games. Lady never even tried to sneak sweets. She told Daryl once it was cuz she didn't want anyone else to get in trouble if someone noticed it was missin’. Nah, Daryl figures if Lady wants it, if she asks for it, it can't be somethin’ ugly.

💕

Daryl's on his third beer before he's able to say it, “Lay. Wha’ we did this mornin’ -“ he’s tried to figure out how he feels about it, he’s still not sure he’s making the right choice, but he needs to decide something before she decides for them. “Ya didn’t do nothin’ wrong but - can’t go tellin’ people we did that.”

Lady laughs, she’s on her second wine cooler of her whole life, and all of a sudden Daryl thinks she’s new to the planet earth. She was backwoods but she wasn’t that backwoods. She was, after all, a high school graduate. “You mean I can't tell Auntie Norma I made you…” She mouthes the word ‘come’ again in the same exaggerated way she had earlier before losing herself in a fit of giggles.

Lady and Daryl had folded up their temporary bed and shoved it in the corner. She was currently leaned back on the far edge of the coach, head thrown in laughter. Her shoulders shaking, her hands gripping the bottle between her thighs.

Daryl bites at his thumb, sitting in the armchair across the room from her, he was trying to be serious for a damn second and she was laughing at him. “Jus’ don’ really know whatya think yer doin’. If yer in your right mind ‘n all. An’ y’know we ain't supposed ta.”

He just needed to hear her say it, if she could say it - if she could ask for it, it couldn’t be bad.

“Wasn't thinkin’, Dar. Was just doin’.” She doesn’t really have an answer for him. She's in her right mind, she knows people aren't supposed to do that kind of stuff with their family. But nothin’ ever felt wrong between her and Daryl.

Daryl downs the rest of the beer he's holding in one gulp. He puts his finger in the hole at the top and spins it absentmindedly on his knee, “Jus’ need ya t’know what yer doin’.. it ain't somethin’ people usually do, Bug.”

Lady’s starting to get frustrated. She knew what he was getting at, but why'd he have to say it? “I know I'm not supposed to, Dar. It's like those times you and Merle let me watch scary movies when I was little and I had to tell Momma and Daddy we were watching lions on PBS instead.”

Daryl reaches down and grabs another beer from the case next to the armchair. He just shakes his head. She's gotta know it ain't that simple.

“Bubba, look at me.”

Daryl looks over, curious what she needed the eye contact for, “W’sup, Lay?”

“It’s just you and me out here and as far as I can tell we didn’t hurt anyone.“ She finishes the rest of her drink in one gulp just like he had, “The woods are good at keepin’ secrets, Bub. You know that.” And she smiles, looking down before looking directly at him.

If they didn't know before they both knew now. It wasn't just going to be that one thing that happened between them. The stagnant ‘maybe later' coming back and sitting on their shoulders, in their laps, in every empty space of the room.

‘Maybe’ turns to definitely. To obviously.

Daryl grunts, trying not to let a smile on the corners of his lips. He opens the bottle in his hand and takes a sip before bringing it back down to look at it. Pondering her words like they're written on the label. All he thought he'd needed to hear was that she knew it had to be a secret. That she knew she was committing a crime against god here with him. But now what?

Lady almost can't take it, the cicadas buzzing from outside are so loud it's infesting her brain. She’d been sitting there for an hour trying to figure out how to ask him if she could touch him again. And now that he's brought it up, she can't think of anything else but the way he tasted, the way his thing pulsated and twitched underneath of her tongue. She wants to make him cum again.

Daryl's drinking his beer, lost in thought, while Lady decides she should probably have another one too. She gets up and walks past him to the kitchen.

“Where ya goin’?” He half shouts behind him, a little worried he'd hurt her feelings. Read something wrong. Said something wrong.

Lady smiles to herself, Daryl worried all the time about everything and it always ended up being for nothing. “Just gettin’ another one. That okay with you, pop?” She teases.

She reappears from behind the sheet holding another wine cooler. As she takes her seat back on the couch Daryl leans forward, elbows on his thighs, taking another sip of his drink, “Might wanna slow down on those, Bug.” He's smiling into the bottle.

Lady sticks her tongue out at him, her eyebrows drawn down in mock anger, “What, afraid I'm gonna blow chunks instead of blow you?” She's been on the edge of it for so long it spills out of her mouth.

Daryl has no idea what the fuck to say to that but he laughs out loud. He genuinely guffaws. If it wasn't his little sister he'd be frozen in his fuckin’ chair. Churning a little at this realization - Cuz when she said it he wasn't uncomfortable. Wasn't afraid, or worried that he was gonna have to do something he might mess up.

“Nah.” He answers her before his mind takes off on a tangent about how it's his sister and the proposition of her sucking his cock should make him uncomfortable. But it didn't.

Cuz if she wants it, it can't be wrong.

“Just keep drinkin’, Lay. If ya blow chunks yer the one stuck cleanin’ it up though.”

“Let's smoke that pot.”

“No.”

“Aw, c’mon. Why not, bub?”

“Cross-faded.”

“What's that?”

“Pots different after y’drink. Jus’.. trus’me on this one.” He sips his beer, “‘nless yer really set on blowin’ chunks. Tha’s definitely a sure fire way.”

Lady shakes her head, taking her drink from between her thighs again and sipping it before putting it back.

She's gotta figure out how to ask soon or she was gonna drink herself to sleep.

Daryl can see her workin’ something out in her head, “S’goin’ on, Lay?.”

She’s staring at a spot on the ground and she doesn’t look up, “Thinkin’.”

“‘bout wha’?”

“Your cock in my mouth.”

Daryl chokes on the spit he was swallowing, “Christ.” He says as he coughs. He doesn't think he's ever heard her say that word. “Yer really serious, huh?” He asks again, this time because he truly can’t believe it. Why would she, the sweetest piece of Georgia pie, wanna put her pretty mouth on him? Even if he was her brother. Especially because he was her brother.

She smiles and looks down at her fingers around the top of her bottle. Blushing beet red and nodding her head so aggressively her hair moves.

He wants to let her but somethin’ about it doesn't feel right. Not because of who she was or who he was, or cuz it was wrong. “Shouldn't jus’ blow guys, Lay.”

“Whaddya mean?” She picks at the label on her drink, not looking up at him. Nervous and excited and hanging on his every word.

“People, uh - usually… do other stuff first.” He explains, not wanting to make her feel bad for what she'd already done, but wanting her to understand she can't just do that to other guys.

Lady laughs, a sigh of relief escaping her as she brings the brim up to take another swig. There's a million things sitting between her teeth and her lips just waiting to be said. Instead, she just asks, “Do you wanna watch a movie?”

💕

pt. 2

A/n: This is coming out a whole lot sweeter than I thought it was going to be and I know in the end it's going to break my little heart.

Anyway sorry, most of the smut will be in part 2 where I imagine going into detail about their first time (for a few different things) as well as how they are once they get more comfortable as they get deeper into the summer.

Broken up into two parts because I can't fathom proofreading these 6,000 words one more time.

(Next part will be up as fast as I can write it.)

#daryl dixon #daryl dixon fanfiction #daryl dixon smut #twd daryl #the walking dead daryl #daryl dixon imagine #daryl dixon x oc #daryl dixon x reader #daryl dixon x female reader #daryl fanfiction #daryl dixon twd #twd daryl dixon #daryl dixon x you #Spotify

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darylsfavoritegirl · 3 months

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Whoopps im liking this better than i thought

Summary: Daryl and Rick go on a run, they run into a pretty girl who is quite skilled in killing walkers but she is acting a bit suspicious👀 they decide to keep an eye on her. Again this takes place in the prison era.

Warnings: nothing really? a bit of phsyical pain involved cuz its twd

I initially tried to write this with first and third person narration which failed horribly so this is my first y/n fanfic ? feel free to correct my mistakes!! i'm new

"...And she ain't afraid to get violent with men 3 times her size."

Daryl and Rick were behind a large tree as they were watching out for walkers. Daryl narrowed his eyes slightly when he saw this girl fighting off walkers on the corner of his eyes.

"The hell she think' she's doin' ?" Daryl mumbled under his breath in a rush only for Rick to turn to his body towards him.

"What?" He asked before his eyes caught Y/n taking down three walkers.

Rick scanned the area only to see two more coming at her from behind. Daryl looked at Rick for a second and followed his gaze.

"Should we help her?" Rick asked cautiously, trying to calculate Daryl's reaction.

"Nah, she can handle 'em herself. Let's go."

Rick gazed at Daryl as he was walking into the woods. He decided to take one last glare at this alone mysterious girl when his eyes widened slightly at the scene that was going on infront of his eyes. He called for Daryl in a barely audible tone.

"Check this out." He said swinging his index and middle finger lightly at the girl. Daryl leered at her. She had a camera on her and she was documenting the area. She was taking pictures of the trees, the dead walkers, the stores. Anything.

"Well, ain't none of our dam' business." Daryl said with a slight irritation in his voice.

Rick glared at him from the corner of his eyes for a brief second before taking a deep breath.

"She is alone, quiet pretty and actin' all strange." Rick said with an undertone of mistrust.

"She took five or six walkers all by herself, without a trouble." He then added with fascinated eyes.

Daryl rolled his eyes moderately "Now what? Yea takin' interest in sum girl fightin' for 'er life?"

Daryl kept leering at Y/n as she walked into the pharmacy store right after cleaning her knife with a cloth she ripped from a dress that one of the walkers was wearing.

He scowled lightly as his frustration revealed itself in his voice "Great. She goin' into the store I was plannin' to go into." He grunted. He sighed audibly and looked at Rick over his shoulder before putting his crossbow in place on his hands. Rick kept sniggering and followed him. They were looking for survivors. They needed them, Daryl didn't love the idea. He thought Rick was trusting people easily but maybe he needed to do that... He entered the pharmacy, with the intention of studying this girl more.

. . . .

Y/n kneelt infront of the biggest drug shelf, trying her hardest to find antibiotics. They were useful for anything, though none was left. Y/n sighed before going through piled up medications on the floor when she heard someone walk in. Whoever that was, they were quite, almost too quite for her to not notice. She slowly got up, scanned the area for a brief moment. Thank god, she wasn't in the entrance, otherwise she would be caught in the open; like a prey awaiting for its predator.

Y/n knew the first thing she had to do was to control her breathing so she did. She hid behind a big metal desk, her backpack was near the door, the entrance where whoever that was there could see it easily. She didn't panick. She held her breath and got close to her backbag with cautious light movements. She dragged her bag to herself.

Y/n listened to area for a few seconds before slowly pulling her knife and pistol out of their cases. This was what she was scared of, dealing with somebody she doesn't know in the middle of the apocalpyse. She knew she had to stay calm. She inspected her ammo, incase she had to use it. She checked the magazine. Y/n had her pistol on one hand meanwhile she had her commando knife sitting on her left hand gently. She had a firm stance but before she could even take a second peek, y/n felt someone's presence.

"Come out."

Y/n studied the man's voice before she got up. The grunt, the thick southern accent one could hear even in two words. Y/n could already tell she had to deal with an aggressive one. She had a moment of debating with herself whether or not she should leave her weapons on the floor. "That's stupid." she notioned inside of her head. All these thoughts pondered her head within 5 seconds when the man, once again repeated it.

"Come on out. Now."

She lifted her head up. An arrow in a crossbow looking directly at her forehead and blue stern eyes behind it. Y/n immediatly got up and stepped back, weapons in her hand with a firm stance. A hasty moment of exchanging rigid gazes.

"I'm not looking for trouble." Y/n said with a humane tone. Ironic, she believed. A girl stating that she isn't looking for trouble with two lethal weapons in her hands.

The man stayed silent without breaking the intense eye contact. Y/n felt the need of giving assurance to him to not get killed. Anything could happen these days.

She sounded as if she was begging, abundance of tender in her voice "I just need some supplies and I'll be out of here before you know it."

Y/n leered deep into the man's eye as if she could see what was going on inside of his head. Daryl looked at y/n up and down, trying to conclude if she is any danger at all. He finally stopped frowning and loosened his grip on the crossbow.

"Go ahead." he mumbled.

Y/n also loosened her grip on her weapons. She felt her hands cramping because how long she had been holding the weapons. She moved aside, her eyes still following the man. Y/n got down, confused even scared because she had no idea what could happen any second. She forgot about the pills. She was scared for her life. Nonetheless, she grabbed a few medicine from the pile on the floor and tossed them into her bag. Y/n could see the man's reflection from the broken glass infront of her. He was not taking his eyes off of her, which freaked y/n out. She took a deep breath and slowly got up. The man was leaning against one of the desks in the pharmacy, he was looking rather calm but at alert. Y/n could see that. Her eyes formed some kind of apologetic manner as she examined the man for a brief moment. She didn't know why she did that. Maybe she felt he was no longer a threat to her. Daryl was quite indifferent. He was not also taking her eyes off of Y/n. She started walking towards the door when the ammo in her backpack started making noises because they got all messy in there when she tried to get a magazine out. She hoped he wouldn't mind it and stopped for a second, turned to this man and gently said

"I'm Y/n"

Y/n didn't know if she was supposed to wait for him to respond. She felt as if she owed this man the courtesy of saying her name at least. She decided to walk out when all of a sudden her thoughts were interrupted by another grunt. "Daryl." He said. It sounded apathetic as if he only said his name because Y/n said hers. Y/n gently smiled, if you can call that a smile. She made her way to the door. She was still sweating when another one of her pistols dropped from her bag and made a big thud, leaving her all panicked. She had a few guns in her backpack and this wasn't good to a stranger's eyes. She grabbed her ALFA combat and incompetently put it into her jacket pocket that she was wearing in the heat of Georgia. She didn't even look at Daryl.

Y/n didn't wanna take long because she knew it would get fucked up and it indeed did. Her action was interrupted by Daryl's hasty voice when her hand touched the door handle.

"Hold on." He said in a wary tone.

"Wha's tha' in yer bag?" his eyes roaming through her body and backpack as he came closer.

Y/n took a deep breath before turning to him. She knew it was time to actually be a bit belligerent. There was no way this could end in any virtuousness.

"You a damn cop now?" Y/n said with vexation in her eyes.

"First you come here and spy on me now you wanna check my backpack." the annoyance and electric in her voice growing stronger with each word.

Daryl stayed tranquil. He knew Y/n was a potential survivor Rick might wanna take in but he still needed to make sure everything. He came even closer. No one could blame Y/n for feeling under threat. Her survival instinct kicked in. She already calculated the strength of Daryl, there was no way she could overpower him. That's the thought that kept notioning inside of her head throughtout the 5 minutes she had to spend with him. But, Y/n thought, if she attacked him when he least expected it, maybe that would give her enough time to run as far as she could and make him lose track of her.

So she did, she kicked Daryl in the guts, leaving him only stumble a few steps back. Daryl huffed "Fuck." at the pain of being kicked in the stomach.That was all her power and Daryl didn't even fall. She didn't have time to bore her mind with that at the moment. Y/n grabbed the the door handle and pulled it with all her power and started running as fast as she could.

Y/n was panicking more than ever now. She knew she was a survivor, that was the reason she stayed alive in this wilderness where dead people were walking aimlessly, attempting to bite into anything that had life and flesh. The bag full of ammo and couple of guns were making harsh noises as it was also slowing her down.

Y/n was panting and practically dragging her feet to run along when she heard a gun fire. She instantly stopped. Perhaps it was another survival instinct, perhaps she believed the next upcoming bullet would go through her skull if she didn't stop. Her legs were trembling and her body was sweating like never before. She should've never worn that jacket in the heat of the summer but that was for precaution. She halted. The first thing she did before turning to him with her hands in the air was to catch up on breathing as if she forgot how to do that. It was a big area before one could get lost in the woods. She took long hasty breaths and slowly turned her body towards the spot where the gun was fired.

Y/n huffed swiftly under her breath "Fuck" She did not only see Daryl but another man next to him holding a colt python. Daryl was panting aswell but he quickly fixed his posture.

Were they spying on Y/n all along? Demented possibilities were lining up in her head one after another. Two of the men kept looking at her while her arms and hands started cramping because of how long she had been holding them up in the air.

"What do you want?" Y/n shouted. Her eyes scrutinizing both men, debating inside of her head if they would go any further.

A few geeks started coming out of the woods. She knew it was mindless of the other man to fire a gun, even far away from the city. She reached at for her knife the second she heard their infuriating growls but Daryl didn't let her. He gave y/n a spine-chilling glare as he walked past her and killed the geeks on the spot. The other man looked rather nonchalant, not keeping his eyes on neither one of them; just giving soft glares now and then. Y/n couldn't even dare to look back, see what Daryl was doing. She supposed he was taking his arrows out of geeks' heads, cleaning them with a piece of cloth. That's pretty much what everyone did.

Then y/n felt Daryl's unyielding grip on her forearm and her backpack. He was forcing her to walk ahead of him. She could feel his harsh breaths behind her ears and it only made her heart drop.

"Asshole." she whispered and sort of hoped he wouldn't hear it. He most likely did but did not pay any attention to it. Y/n felt more under threat as they were getting closer to the other man. She notioned this could not end in any good. It was time to take action now or never. Her brain felt like it could explode any minute.

"Let me go." she howled, trying to push Daryl but it only made him more antagonized. He felt as if she was only trying to provoke him at this point. He responded back with pushing y/n to the wall of the pharmacy store. Her back hit the wall swiftly and harshly making her whine in pain. The backpack was still on her and all that metal stinged her back because of how hard Daryl tossed her on the wall. It was like every single one of the curved metal was being carved into her back.

"Ahh." she cried out. Before y/n could even pull herself together, she once again felt his harsh grip on the backpack. She gave in at that point, seeing no reason in fighting back.

"Easy." y/n heard the other man saying slowly to Daryl, his eyes forming a stern look. Y/n looked at him, she wanted to speak; explain herself but she didn't know if it would make a difference at all. She bucked up, her back was still hurting but it was now or never. Y/n took a deep breath between the whimpers of pain and said

"I don't fire 'em." she exchanged glances between two men. Her voice sounded as if she was in rush. Her voice growing raspier because of thirst that was caused by running and apprehensiveness. Daryl looking more irritated with every word that was coming out of her mouth.

"Then wha's for carryin' a bag full o' guns, huh?" he uttered.

Y/n knew she had to be wary, if not she had no idea what would happen to her. She made out that she could put some sense into the other man if not into the redneck.

"I'm delivering them to a friend." a lie. She couldn't even look into directly their eyes but tried her best to do so.

Rick seemed rather suspicious "All alone?" he muttered. Y/n caught his leer.

"Goin' all this trouble to deliver few guns." Rick sounded as if he was asking a question but also reflecting the situation in his head.

" 'Few' guns worth more than gold nowadays." Y/n said emphasizing the word "few" with a subtle irritation in her voice.

"I don' know man." Daryl got closer to Rick. Every one of them were still eyeing eachother up and down. Rick didn't want to let her go for two reasons, first being cautious about the prison's perimeter if she was telling the truth. He thought she wasn't being honest but there was no harm in being wary. Second being, she would be good use in the prison if she was alone and soloing her way. He knew he needed to investigate into it when y/n interrupted his track of thought

"Can I go now?" she said, not too pretentious but also not too sloppy either. She kept eyeing them, not letting her guard down and trying to not irritate them even more.

"Y'all don't look like bandits or I- I- don't know, plunderers. Why not let me go?" She was gazing at both of them as if she could see their souls.

"Tha's cuz wer not." Daryl said in an obvious exasperated, raucous tone. Y/n couldn't help but smirk a little bit at his extreme, fragile reaction.

A brief fierce eye contacted formed between y/n and Daryl when Rick made a hand gesture infront of Daryl to indicate him that Y/n was no longer a threat that she could, perhaps, leave. Her gaze shifted back to Rick. Rick had a soft manner on his face, he slowly swinged his fingers at y/n, indicating she was free to go. Y/n sighed and rolled her eyes lightly as she got down and grabbed her backpack, she had a fierce look on her eyes when she took one last leer at Daryl and slowly started to walk away.

Rick gazed at Daryl watching Y/n walk away from the corner of his eyes. Daryl could feel his eyes on him so he turned to him with a slight maddening going through his body like electroshocks. Rick still had that pleasant bearing on his face which drew Daryl more irritated

"No more interested in takin' 'er into the prison?" He grunted as he grabbed his crossbow and slung it over his shoulder as he kept staring at Rick.

"I am." Rick said in a cool manner.

"I dun' kno' man. She 's trouble and ain't afraid to get violent wit' men three times her size." Daryl said still studying y/n in his mind.

"And that's a survivor right there." Rick sniggered as a subtle smirk appeared on Daryl's face.

FOOTNOTE

Ok yall can't believe this took me 2-ish days to write😭😭 i love writing these that's why i been skipping studying lmao and this one is a lot longer than the previous one. we get more daryl content (i hope you like the way i describe/write him im trying my best but again he is such a complicated character. writing rick is a lot easier.) i hope you like it!! i can write a sequel fanfic if you want me to!!! just let me know :)

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dreamingdixon · 1 year

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Eyes on me

Anon request: “can you do something like what happened to Maggie with the governor when her and Glenn were kidnapped? maybe the reader was in that situation, and Daryl finds out and is like comforting them?”

This fic contains sexual assault, and everything that comes afterwards. This could be potentially triggering, so please keep that in mind before continuing. My intention is not to trigger, upset or make anybody uncomfortable. I will post an edited version, that will have any graphic content (including the SA itself, and any mentions thereafter) removed, so this story can be enjoyed by those who do not want to read the full/graphic version, but still enjoy the hurt/comfort element of a soft Daryl <3 If anyone is in a situation where they have experienced anything along the lines of harassment/SA, my ask box is always open to be a listening ear and a friend. I wrote this story from a place of my own understanding and experience, and I found it comforting to write a different 'afterwards'.

17,349 words.

“I’m sorry about Merle.”

You’d kept your gaze trained on the bloodied denim on your thighs when the heavy door creaked open, managed to keep your eyes averted even when you heard footsteps against the harsh concrete. You’d told yourself you weren’t even going to so much as look at the man who’d dared to hold a knife to your throat and drag you from your friends.

But this was a different voice.

Snapping your head up, you quickly blink away the fog in your vision to reveal a man, his hands held up high, palms towards you. There’s a smile on his face that you immediately hate and you instinctively pull against the tape on your wrists as he edges himself closer to you.

“Sometimes he just doesn’t know when to stop. I’ll be having a word with him.”

There’s a rawness to your skin when you continue to move your hands, your mind begging for your small movements to be capable of breaking the layers of thick tape, desperate - pleading as he reaches the other end of the table. He doesn’t seem overly satisfied when he asks ‘May I?’, gesturing towards the chair and receives no answer, his only response a continued glare, but he sits regardless and places a towel on the metal in front of him.

“I hope he didn’t hurt you too much, that’s not the way we do things around here. Especially not to young women, survivors like yourself.”

The sickly sweet voice phrases itself like a question that makes your skin crawl as he sits so casually, one leg over the other, hands across his lap. He carries himself well, you think to yourself. Powerful, or he thinks he must be - power that he’s brutally taken, not earned - as he watches your face for any sort of reaction to his presence or words. He continues when he sees none. We don’t want to hurt anybody, we’re a community of good people. People, food, walls. Woodbury.

He gestures around the damp room, apologising for the ‘inhospitable accommodation’ one of his men brought you to. It seems like a storage room, bits of old furniture leaning against the bare walls and corrugated metal sheets, and there’s a faint bitterness to the air - cold from damp gathering on the roof and an unwelcome breeze from the outside world making its way inside, and you can’t ignore the goosebumps prickling against your exposed arms.

“I’m not staying.”

Your nose and cheek throb from your movements to speak, but your words come out firm and final exactly how you intended, no trace of the fear that’s slowly building up inside you. You have your own people, food, and walls. You have gates you’re carefully reinforcing against men like this, people who have done more for you since you joined them than others had your entire life prior to the fall, and there isn’t much food but it’s better than anything this man could ever offer you. You ignore the blood that trails down past your lip and the metallic taste on your tongue. His confident smiles only widens with your words, shrugging carelessly as if you hadn’t turned him down - like he was happy with your answer.

“You don’t have to. We can just take you back to your people, I’d escort you personally, make sure you get there safely, maybe strike a deal with your group for extra protection, share supplies, ammo.. What do you think, would your group be interested?”

You wonder how many people have fallen for his act. In the span of what you’re assuming to be a few hours, you’ve been forcefully taken, knocked out, your nose most likely broken in your struggle and you’ve been tied up, and this man has the audacity to offer a deal? You manage to swallow down the laugh that you’re desperate to vocalize, but a small smirk escapes onto your lips instead.

“I think my group will kill you on the spot when they find out about you. No fucking deal, asshole.”

Your brows furrow because he laughs at your words, deep lines forming between your eyebrows because he doesn’t seem phased. He’s acting like he didn’t expect this conversation to go any other way, like he’s about to shake your hand and send you on your way and you’re confused. Waking up in the situation you did, you’d expected a few threats and a gun to your head at the very least, but it doesn’t come, so you wait. Leaning forward, he watches you, studies you and he can tell you’re not acting - you’re tough. You’re sitting up straight, but he knows you’re uncomfortable by how you flex your shoulders occasionally against the pull of the awkward angle of your restraints. Like a racing horse with blinders, you haven’t taken your gaze away from his - not even once - like you’re not in the precarious situation you’re currently in. Your chest isn’t heaving with nerves like others who sat in the same chair just last week, and he admires you for it.

Bringing himself to his feet, he grabs the towel as he edges himself closer to you and your mind runs, pure anxiety tainting all of your thoughts and you’re ashamed of the wave of cold that suddenly courses through your veins and you shiver.

Stepping behind the chair, the hairs on your arms stand upright because you can’t see him anymore. White noise fills your head because he isn’t even walking, there’s no footsteps to be heard until you’re being suddenly dragged, a deafening scrape of metal as your chair is slowly turned 90 degrees and he gradually brings himself into your view again.

There’s fear now, he realizes, from removing himself from your line of vision. It gave you courage to have your eyes on the man in charge and taking that away for even just a moment gave that courage a shake - and he likes that, given him just a tiny bit more control. Your eyes are wider now, not narrowed like just moments ago. He could get off on that fact alone, so he crouches down in front of you to drink in the sight.

He’s looking at you like a child looks at the highest ticket prize at an arcade, full of want, a craving to be satisfied and unthinkingly your nose scrunches in disdain but oh my god that’s a mistake because you can feel your pulse in your nose and a dull twinge that shoots through you at the motion that has you sucking air through your teeth.

He whispers a ‘shhh’ that absolutely repulses you, and his eyes don’t leave yours as he slowly brings the towel in his grip up to your face and he lightly dabs at the skin above your lip, the white terry cloth coming back a deep crimson. It takes a second to realize he’s trying to clean you, and he’s doing it like it’s second nature but his other hand is resting on your thigh when he goes to repeat the motion for a second time, but this time you’re ready because he’s touching you and there’s rage bubbling inside of you because who the fuck is he to be responsible for your broken nose, then have the audacity to mop up the evidence?

Before the material reaches your lip, you muster the energy and ignore the strain on your muscles and you spit on him. It’s discoloured from the blood that made its way between your lips, and it’s revolting and it’s the least he deserves. How dare he touch you?

The man scoffs before taking the towel in his hand and erases any trace of you from his cheek, as he raises his eyebrow and suddenly the air seems heavier and the room just got darker because so did his eyes, and within a second he’s behind you again, but he’s not silent or at a distance - the material of his trousers are pressed against your restrained hands behind the cold bars of the chair and he’s got an arm wrapped around your neck. The pretend silkiness gone from his voice, replaced with a gravelly ‘I was right, you’re feisty’ and he’s applying just enough pressure with his forearm for you to not move, and you don’t.

You’re completely still as you look right ahead, you’ve stopped your fight against the tape because he’s everywhere behind you and if you’re completely still maybe you can ignore him, but you can smell his cologne and it’s so light and delicate but it’s overwhelming. Waiting for the inevitable blow that doesn’t come, he adjusts his grip as he lifts his forearm slightly, tilting your head upwards against the pressure and when your eyes angle towards the ceiling, he’s staring down at you, shaking his head, tutting his disapproval.

The towel's still in his grip, but he’s rougher this time as he brings it to your nose - tugging the scratchy material firmly against broken skin, replacing the gentle patting of the earlier attempt and it drags out a throaty whimper from your throat and he feels the vibrations against his arm as he repeats his actions two, three, four times. Eyes screwed shut, you feel his grip harden against your throat when you try to pull your head away but the pressure against your windpipe increases and you’re not going to black out so you do your best to hold still instead, groaning at the feel of rogue droplets of blood escaping down your throat from the angle, and the way your face absolutely throbs by the time he lets go.

Stepping back in front of you, he assesses his handiwork and tells you ‘see, that’s so much better’ before striding out of the room, a thunderous clang of the door ringing in your ears after he leaves.

Hours are spent rotating between a few tasks - wondering how you’re going to murder this man, planning your escape, counting the individual bits of furniture in the room and thinking about the group. It has cost so much to clear the prison, people have paid with their lives for the remainder to have somewhere safe to call home, you will not be the reason it falls by giving anybody the location. This entire situation solidifies what you already knew - you’d die for the rag-tag assortment of individuals and you’d call them family any day of the week. You think about how lucky you were to be taken in by them after crossing paths on a random dirt track months ago, and how they spread their scarce rations even thinner to take you in.

Family.

Struggling to find the strength to hold yourself up, you sit with your head limply resting against your chest, the occasional thin streak of crimson collecting on the neckline of your vest. Stiffness dominates every part of your body by the time the door swings open again, and you roll your eyes at the familiar man who isn’t smiling this time.

He approaches slowly, and by the time he’s next to you he’s offering you a plastic water bottle that you reluctantly ignore by sealing your lips and turning away. The bottle gets placed on the table, and he tells you to ‘suit yourself’ before grabbing your chin, tugging you to face him and he’s relieved to see the flow of blood has slowed despite the majority of your upper lip, chin and down to your chest decorated in cracked, dried crimson. He tells you you’re looking in bad shape, and he’d love to take you back to your people so I’ll ask again - where’s your camp?

The back and forth gets him nowhere, and the frustration becomes visible. His velvety voice becomes forceful and loud in his demands, fists hitting the table when he’s answered with another ‘fuck you’ and his jaw clenches hard.

“Okay. We’ll try something different.”

He slips the mask back into place, allowing the mellow tone returns to his words, but there’s still an edge to his voice. He’s worked up, but he sounds like he’s got a plan and you don’t like how he perches himself in front of you again, but you like it even less when his fingers toy with the bottom of your shirt.

“You wanna tell me before or after I cut this shirt off of you?”

Your blood runs cold at the question. You stare at him while your brain goes into overdrive, how can I get myself out of this? But without any hesitation, he brings the knife to the base of your shirt, holds the material taut with his other hand and drags the knife all the way up, catching the skin of your abdomen and your chest a few times on the journey. It cuts so easily, like scissors through wrapping paper and the bloodied material hangs limply by the straps until he easily nicks through the remaining fabric, and you feel completely helpless when he holds the destroyed shirt in his hands before tossing it in the direction of the door.

You’d known violence since the fall, but this was a different shade of cruelty - one that had your chest heaving and embarrassment showing itself with redness on your skin, and you had no control over the trembling that took over you within seconds and it only worsens when he returns to his favourite spot behind you, and you wait for the first cut against your skin but instead, he carefully slices some of the tape away, splitting the section binding you to the metal frame of the seat while maintaining the integrity of the layers around your wrists as he pulls you to your feet, shoulders lifting away from the frame painfully.

He’s staring at you like you're rare mixture of gold and silver and diamonds, like you’re there exclusively for him and he's not planning on sharing his riches with anybody, without a care in the world for the redness around your eyes or the tears that are threatening to spill over, or the fresh blood pooling around tender wrists where you’re furiously fighting with the tape that somehow feels even stronger now.

He ignores your whimpers, telling you ‘it doesn’t have to be like this, you’re in full control here, got it? How this plays out is up to you, don’t cry, shhh.’ as you try your best to stand tall, you’re not going down without a fight.

“This is how it’s going to happen, alright? I’m going to ask you questions - about where y’all are hiding out, about your group, and for every question you don’t answer, I’m going to take something else off of you until either I know everything I need to know, or there’s a nice pile of clothes over there. Ball’s in your court, sweetheart, cause I’ll do much worse than this to them when I find ‘em, and trust me, I will find ‘em.”

Fear and hatred consume your features, and he whispers a ‘don’t move’ when he steps closer to you and you step backwards, his hand delicately moving overgrown hair away from your eyes and tucking it behind your ear. Despite the light movement of his fingers, the touch feels like sandpaper and you silently promise to cut off each and every one of his fingers with the dullest knife you can find. Standing in front of you, he starts with his questions. “How many of you are there?” which seems harmless enough, but you already know you can’t win in this game so you remain silent and sob when he cuts through the wire of your bra, letting it fall to the floor.

You wonder how this man came to be as he eyes you up and down. You try to pretend you aren’t completely exposed by wondering if this place - Woodbury, he said - existed from the beginning, or if he had a role in setting it up. Nowhere’s safe anymore, and you swear the only decent people who are still alive are your people who you pray are currently out looking for you. Would Rick try to interrogate him first, like he did Randall at the farm? Would Daryl - the man with the thickest shell, who’d warmed up to you slowly - hesitate to kill him for you? Would Carol hold your hand when you tell her what happened? Would Beth think of you when she sang over the campfire?

Frustration hits you like a wave when the man's eyes linger over your chest, and you swear you’ve never hated anyone more in your entire life so you do the only thing you think to do in that moment, you bring your head backwards for momentum and you aim for his nose to return the favour, longing for the sound of a crunch that doesn’t fucking happen. He’s too quick, too practiced. Fast reflexes and learned instinct told him what you were about to do, so he swerves and you loose your footing, a stagger towards that leaves you barely on your feet.

Disappointment hits you like a tonne of bricks, the chance presented itself to you on a silver platter and you were too slow. You’ve barely found your balance before there’s a bruising grip around your biceps, warm fingers digging painfully into haggard muscles and chilled skin, and the hot breath against your neck telling you to ‘turn around, slowly.’ brings bile to your throat that you swallow down as you follow the instruction. He re-adjusts his grasp when your eyes meet, bringing his fingers to your chin instead, tracing the discolouration along your jaw.

“Nice try. What’s it gonna take until you spill, huh?”

He notices the tremor in your muscles, the involuntary vibrations beneath the palms of his fingers that have you shaking. He’s telling you again about how he doesn’t want to hurt you, and you’re so desperate to call him out on his lies but he’s got the upper hand and you know it, so the words die before they’ve even began to form.

He takes his time. It’s almost worse when he isn’t actually doing anything to you, it’s like the anticipation builds and builds until you’re breathing is short and fast because he’s playing mind games - and winning. You’d almost prefer if he’d just get it over with, whatever it is.

There’s so much fire behind your eyes despite your sore state, so he decides to up the stakes.

“Okay, time for round two. For every question you don’t answer, not only do you lose something you’re wearing, keep in mind you’ve not got a whole lot left, but somebody from your group dies. Simple as that. You’re at two so far, and I’ll give you the honour of deciding who.”

His hand trails from your jaw, fingers tracing the curve of your neck to your collarbone, across the flaky, dried blood on your chest before drawing an agonizingly slow line up and down your sternum but his eyes never leave yours - threatening.

“Might even give you a pretty dress for the show, since it looks like you won’t have anything left on you by then.”

There’s tears forming that you aggressively try to blink away, burning against your dry eyes. He’s asking you then, where’s your camp? Must be near by, right? How long d’you reckon it’ll take my soldiers to find, hmm? But his fingers are just below your navel, now, and you’re shuddering because you want to be anywhere but here.

He waits. Patient in his resolve. Whatever your people have, he wants it. He counts your accelerated breaths in his mind, still smiling and it widens sickeningly when your features warp into terror and panic as his index finger reaches the skin just below your breast, vaguely following the curve of the flesh but his eyes are still trained on yours and he just watches the way your nostrils flare and eyes widen because he did that. He’s proud to get a reaction out of you, but you still haven’t answered his question, so he brings his fingers just a tiny bit higher, that tiny bit closer to where he shouldn’t be anywhere near and he’s humming, a firm reminder to answer. A question in itself.

But the question remains unanswered, and his patience has run out.

“Get on your knees.”

There’s no time to react before his hand moves from your torso to your shoulder, pushing down while his other drags down firmly against your now bruised bicep. You buckle against the momentum, your arms still restrained leaving you off-balance and you’ve never felt like an easier target in your life. Your knees collide painfully with the concrete, and you wince against the jolts that burst up your thigh from the harsh collision.

Your thoughts run rampant. Is this your execution, or something else? Is he going to bring a knife out again and murder you, a sharp puncture to your skull to prevent the turn, or will he drag it out by holding it to your throat first? Would the group ever find you, hidden away in a storage room of a community they don’t even know existed?

Would Daryl be the one to find you, to bring you back to the prison and bury you, even if you’d turned? You imagine him sweating in the prison’s yard, a shovel gripped between bleeding, sore fingers while you lay there, covered by a sheet and the tears flow down your face like a running tap at the thought. When he’d promised to look after you, you’d vowed to do the same and you meant it, and he’d wrapped his arm over your shoulder at the way you’d said it - so full of sincerity and commitment. If you didn’t make it out of this room you wouldn’t be able to carry out your promise and that made your chest ache.

Your face is angled upwards forcefully, thumbs brushing away the salty tears streaming down your cheeks. He’s telling you it’s okay, shushing you quietly as he continues to drag the pads of his thumbs across your cheeks, the warmth from your tears and his movements smearing blood across your cheeks haphazardly. He smiles softly, telling you once more that it’s okay, that he’ll be gentle before his hands move to the back of your head - one gripping the nape of your neck, the other against your crown and he tugs you towards him.

You collide with the rough material of his trousers nose-first in a way that makes you howl with pain, it shoots into the back of your eyes and you’d swear you’d felt something shift that shouldn’t. He presses you against the crotch of his pants, forehead digging into the cold metal of his belt buckle and pulling against him gets you nowhere, only a firmer grip against the nape of your neck that you’d swear just yanked out strands of hair. He holds you still, ignoring your wailing and he moves his hips against you, smears of blood staining the fabric with evidence of his violence. The warmth of his body heat and the fact you can smell the metallic edge of your own blood and you’re going to vomit any second. The room is too cold and the denim too rough and you can feel the gathered-together tape digging into the oozing blood gathering around your wrists. You try to focus on anything else you can - the design etched into the material of his pants, the feeling of how you wiggle your toes, the pattern of your breathing, anything to give you an escape.

He moves you then, making you look to the side until your cheek is pressed into the fabric instead, and he simply holds you there, and that’s when you decide this will be easier if you close your eyes - if you can’t see what he’s doing, maybe it won’t exist. But it does, and suddenly he’s grabbing fistfuls of your hair, a rough grip that burns with so much intensity that it prickles down your neck and spine and he tugs you away from him. He speaks then - something about your eyes, but you’re completely unfocused until he repeats himself, emphasising his words with a harsh tug and when your eyes shoot open - he looks so proud of himself.

The sound of his zipper is the next thing you hear, a dull noise that seems to echo way too loud against the metallic walls, vibrating against your ears until you start counting backwards in your mind in a desperate attempt of distraction that doesn’t work.

When the door squeaks open suddenly, and you feel like you’re saved when the man talks about a breach, men with weapons and he needs to come immediately, panic written all over his features as he stumbles over his words with white knuckles over the barrel of his gun, but always keeping his eyes averted from your direction. The man holds you where you are while he listens, completely shameless when he grinds against you one last time before telling you I’ll be back, before tugging you backwards and pulling up the zipper of his pants.

You’re left with your knees against concrete, tears that won't go away and the heaviness in your chest feels like you can’t breathe because you can still feel the lingering grip against the base of your skull and the roughness of his trousers pressing against you, and when you can’t shake the sound of his breathing out of your mind you lean over and empty your stomach, retching from your hunched over position until there’s nothing left but stomach acid and it burns.

Time doesn’t exist anymore, there isn’t a single window in the entire room and you’ve truly lost your sense of timekeeping - has it been a few hours or an entire day, maybe more? The way the air is colder now makes you think it’s the milder evening air seeping in through the walls, fresh and bitter in contrast to the usual daytime Georgian dry heat that you suddenly crave against your skin. You curl in on yourself, back against the furthest wall from the door, the metal behind you only adding to the uncomfortable position but you swear if you don’t lean against something you’re going to keel over and die so you’ll take it, ignoring the discomfort of your wrists digging into your lower back.

If it’s night time, you wonder if Judith is asleep and if Glenn and Maggie got back safe, are they together now? Are you missed? Is Daryl using his tracking skills to bring you back home, like he promised you he would after you lost Sophia, when he vowed he’d never lose you?

You feel like you’re waiting for the inevitable, a reminder of sitting in the hospital waiting room for hours as a teenager after falling on your arm - you knew it was only broken, the result of an unsupervised houseparty, but what if they found something else on the x-ray and told you in 6 months you’d be dead? Your mother was adamant that wouldn’t happen, but what if? Turns out it was a hairline fracture, and you wouldn’t be dead in 6 months because of it, but your mother held your hand regardless, promising to take you out for dinner in exactly 6 months to celebrate - and so she did. But you’ve never forgotten the experience of sitting in the waiting area and how sterile everything was and how everything was so blue and bright made you vow to never need a hospital visit again. This felt the same, like waiting for the terrifying result of that xray that you were so sure was going to give you an expiration date - but it’s worse, there’s no exit or your mothers soft skin against your own, no nurses to make you laugh when they see your anxious eyes, there’s only the heavy metal door that wouldn’t budge when you tried to kick it, the scraps of fabric that you can’t wear anymore, the empty space and the occasional trickle of warmth down your chin.

You bring your knees up to your chest and cry, because it’s all you can do and you shake from the intensity of it all. You’ve never felt so useless, you’ve been so productive and exhausted and helped keep everybody safe for so long and now you’re here, playing a waiting game with a villain. Like a mouse caught in a trap with your own vomit a few feet away.

There’s a commotion outside that you try to ignore, scrunching your eyes closed and you wish you could cover your ears and pretend it doesn’t exist - so that’s what you try to do. Resting your forehead against your knees you just pretend. You’re not trapped and you’re not crying and you’ve definitely not just had him touch you like that, but then you hear gunshots and there’s only so much pretending you can do.

/////////////

It wasn’t supposed to turn into a bloodbath, but it was their fault.

A new woman - Michonne, was the only reason they had any lead about where you might be, and of course it was risky to go along with it, but this was you they were talking about, and it was a risk that was absolutely worth taking. Daryl would have gone alone if he needed to, because seeing Glenn and Maggie run through those doors without you had his heart in his throat, and when Maggie started speaking ‘I didn’t see who took ‘er, she was right behind us when we went inside, then there was a.. A yell, and by the time we came out there was a car drivin’ away.’ he already had his crossbow over his shoulder and a goal of getting you back.

On Rick’s command, Daryl slowly pulls the bolt securing the door, easing it carefully enough to avoid drawing the attention of whoever - or whatever - was potentially inside. The rusted metal rang when it rested on the other side and he placed his hand on the frame, ready to push with the signal. A last look around confirms they’re alone except the unfortunate outline of an man who’d raised his gun towards the wrong people, and when Rick gives a nod of his head, Daryl’s swift in his movements, opening the heavy door with one instantaneous push and he’s inside with a single stride, gusts of lingering smoke following the movement.

There’s a vague smell of damp to the room, mingled with something else - something bitter that hangs densely in the air until there’s a faint taste in the back of his throat. Rick follows the archer’s lead, a crossbow and gun darting around each corner of the room, and within a second they’ve both detected the few items of clothing - one by the door and as Daryl inches closer around the table, there’s a bra that comes into his view. Behind him, Rick makes his way towards the shirt, he’s about to get Daryl’s attention because he recognises it, it’s yours, you’re here somewhere but Daryl’s already next to you.

When your eyes meet Daryl’s, your chest fucking heaves and you cry from relief because he’s right here and he promised he always would be, that he’d find you and he did. His crossbow points at your chest for only half a second before it’s quickly dropped to hang loosely from the strap over his shoulder and he’s running towards you, calling over to Rick that he’s found you.

He’s kneeling next to you, face only inches from yours and you want to touch him but your shoulders ache in resistance and your wrists sting but you need to touch him to see if he’s real but you can’t and you’re hyperventilating, pulling harder, cutting deeper into already broken skin. Panic sets in and it’s so ridiculous because why are you crumbling now? Daryl’s softly calling your name and trying to meet your gaze but your ears are flooded by the resounding noise of your own pulse and your eyes are darting between the concrete floor, the open door and Rick who’s keeping his distance - he doesn’t want to add to your fear by towering over you so he turns towards the door, protective, guarding.

“Hey, hey, you’re alright. It’s alright, I got ya.”

The voice is grounding, it brings you back just enough to look at him and see him properly.

“There ya go, keep those eyes on me, okay?”

So that’s what you do, you keep your eyes on him and it helps. It doesn’t stop your heart racing or the cold sweat that’s forming against your temples, but you direct all of your focus to him because he told you to and it’s all you can do because it’s Daryl.

He’s trying to keep his features soft in feigned confidence and calm, praying some of it transfers to you because you’re shaking so much he can see it and your eyes are blown so wide that he wonders what happened to you? He’s never seen you like this before, he’s not sure how present you actually are, or the extent of the damage, but he can see that your nose isn’t in the best condition - there’s a deep gash across the bridge and there’s a bump where there wasn’t before. He’s determined to keep his eyes on yours so he relies on his peripheral vision to tell him the blood trails down, ending in a thickly caked mess down your chest. His gaze doesn’t follow the stream of crimson, instead, his eyes stay on yours as he tells you ‘I’m gonna give ya my vest, gonna put it right here until we get ya on your feet’ as he gently tucks the material in the space between your raised knees and your chest, and the chilled leather warms you in a way that’s entirely new.

“Good girl, there ya go. Lemme see what’s goin’ on with your hands.”

He inches to the side, so when you shuffle forwards slightly he can see the bloodied skin and the grey tape around you in thick layers. He’s only got his crossbow on him, so he tells you ‘I’m gonna get Rick over, alright? He’s got a knife, shh, yer fine, then we can cut ya free and get ya back.’ before calling the man over. Rick’s next to you both then, kneeling down and asking if you’re okay - Daryl nods on your behalf when you don’t seem to have the strength to.

“Look at me an’ only me, that’s it.”

He reminds you, soothes you while Rick slices through the mess on your wrists despite the fury that’s bubbling up inside the archers chest. You look terrified at the sensation - the back and forth of the blade and the pull against your irritated skin has you pale, oxygen trapped tightly in the confines of your lungs because you’re preparing yourself for pain until Daryl’s prompting you to ‘breathe’.

He’s on alert, ears perked against any footsteps, voices or gunshots he might hear. Usually he’d never have his back to the door, but Rick has his eyes towards the entrance and his crossbow is loaded and ready on his shoulder and right now you’re his priority.

“There ya go, feel better?”

You want to speak, but the simple ‘yes’ catches in your throat like a dry pill so you simply nod instead, slowly rolling your shoulders against the tightness of your muscles to bring your hands in front of you to confirm they’re actually still attached to you. The cold air nips at the broken skin but Daryl watches the cautious wiggle of your fingers and hears the quiet hum of relief that escapes you from the newly found freedom, and your downcast eyes miss the tiniest smile that lifts the corner of his lips and how Daryl’s expression softens just a little.

It’s taking a stupid amount of effort and self control to not throw you over his shoulder and just run miles and miles and miles away until you’re safe, until you’re somewhere he can run you a bath, hold you, - or not, whatever you wanted - make you a warm meal with some tea and maybe even hold your hand because he always wanted to, and he was so fucking scared that he’d lost the opportunity to ever intertwine his fingers with yours, to have you safely tucked against him. You’d only been gone a day but he ached with longing, and he still would until you were safe.

“C’mere, lets get ya up.”

He notices how your hand wraps around his vest that’s still gathered at your chest, tightly clutching a fistful of the black leather like a lifeline while your other hand positions itself against the floor in an attempt to pull yourself up, and Daryl stays low, mostly to avoid towering over you but also so he can give you a hand if you need.

If this were any other day, any other situation, he’d have unabashedly grabbed your hand to pull you to your feet but he’s afraid of crossing a new, unknown boundary and making everything worse. He knows your broken nose will heal quickly, a few weeks at most with Hershels knowledge, but this is a different sort of healing that he isn’t familiar with and he’s going to have to wait to hear you to know how to help.

He ignores the twinge that shoots through his chest when you ignore his outstretched hand.

Your body aches against every movement, like when you’d catch the flu as a child and stay in bed for days until you felt better, only to be left with fatigued, aching muscles from disuse. Wincing against the burn of everything, you see Daryl coyly offer his hand but you can’t take it - you already feel so humiliated. It feels like you’ve lost some of your dignity to have needed a rescue, to be sat in a corner so exposed, so you need to prove to yourself you’re capable of something, trying your best to subdue the want of Daryl’s hand in yours that dominates your mind.

Finding your balance on wobbly feet, you manoeuvre the leather over your shoulders as Daryl averts his gaze to the other side of the room. He listens until he’s heard the pop of the fasteners on his jacket before he turns his head back towards you, just as Rick announces ‘we’ve got company’, the urgency in his voice followed by a much louder pop, a deafening gunshot in retaliation to the ones suddenly don’t seem so far away.

Daryl’s crossbow is in his hands with remarkable speed and he’s telling you to ‘stay behind me, alright?’, and you glue yourself right behind him as he makes his way over towards Rick but all you can focus on is the jumble of deep voices that are approaching much too quickly. Rick reaches behind Daryl, handing you a loaded gun with a reassuring nod - it’s heavier than you remember, but it’s familiar in your grip. You silently pray you won’t need to aim or fire with the shakiness in control of your body.

Rick leads the way with Daryl closely behind, and you obey without question when the southern drawl directs you, telling you to stand in front of him when the gunfire seems to come from behind or when he urges you to watch out. There are multiple casualties but none of them are you or your two saviours, and you’re back at the car before you know it.

The drive back towards the prison is strange, the atmosphere thick with jumbled emotions and unspoken words. It’s entirely dark, now, only the black outline of the trees visible against the deep navy of the sky that’s void of any stars tonight - they’re hidden away, ashamed and remorseful of what they allowed to happen.

Rick’s desperate to apologise, to tell you how he wishes he’d never asked you to go on the run, or how he simply should have gone instead because this is a trauma he can’t take back - that you shouldn’t have had to go through, and that’s on him. He feels the responsibility and blame somewhere deep inside him, a failure as the leader of a group he’d sworn to protect. He grips the steering wheel harder.

You’re desperate to apologise for endangering the group, to scream because you’re so overwhelmed but you remain silent because you’re empty at the same time, there’s a medley of relief, anxiety and fear consuming your mind that it’s turned into a forcefully loud static, an unbearable cacophony painfully gnawing at the back of your eyes. You dig your nails into the palm of your hand for a shred of relief - it doesn’t work.

Daryl’s desperate to apologise, to whisper a quiet promise of revenge but he knows this isn’t the time, so he doesn’t. He feels entirely chagrined, furious that he didn’t get to you sooner, that he couldn’t prevent some prick from hurting you - no, thinking about you - anything without your permission. He tries his best to swallow his anger, to focus on the comfort of the fact you’re alive, that you’re right next to him because you asked him to be. It makes his jaw twitch but he does it.

There’s an empty space between you and Daryl and it hurts so much more than the throbbing in your nose or the ache in your hands, because that space has never existed until today - you’ve always sat shoulder to shoulder, crammed into the back of the car or lounging together in the RV laughing over some ridiculous story, but you’re not squeezed right against him or begging him to play UNO with you over the table in the RV - you’re both sat by the windows and the middle seat feels like the size of a football field and it’s devastating.

“Keep me company?” The shyness in your voice surprised him, like you’d expected him to say no, but Daryl would never deny you of anything let alone his company, so he grabbed a blanket from the trunk before joining you in the back, gently throwing the thick material over you.

It isn’t a long journey, but it’s an exhausting one and by the time you park up by the prison gates your adrenaline has completely worn off and you’re shuddering under the blanket, grasping the scratchy material for a shred of warmth and there’s a familiar uneasiness in your stomach that you do your best to temporarily swallow down. Daryl’s watching you from the corner of his eye, protective.

He jumps out first, opening your door for you while Rick marches ahead to ask Hershel to check up on you. You peel the blanket from your bloodied skin as you shuffle yourself out of the car onto wobbly legs as a result of pure exhaustion, you’re so drained from today’s events and you’re so pale - so Daryl acts on instincts, reaching behind you for the abandoned blanket on the back seat. You’re shaking as he brings himself in front of you, and you do your best to overlook the unreasonable fear that forms from his towering figure.

It’s Daryl - just Daryl. Your Daryl, the same man who specifically went into a Walmart on his last run to get you fluffy socks because you’d told him the Prison was chilly, followed by a story about how you didn’t spend a single night without fluffy socks before the fall because it was your thing. He’d stuffed his bag on the next run, he already knew the Walmart was wiped of medicine, camping gear and food, but the clothing section was almost entirely untouched and it was worth the detour because you were ‘chilly’.

The same Daryl that jokingly told you he’d build you a treehouse because ‘don’t you think it’s the best way to survive an apocalypse? Daryl, shut up, why are you laughing? They can’t climb but we can, it’s logical.’ and technically you weren’t wrong, and maybe one day he will.

He’s so ridiculously tender as he opens up the bundled blanket, gently placing the fabric over your shoulders to protect you from the breeze. It feels risky, but he’s rewarded with a small smile and a quiet ‘Thank you’ that sounds so meek but genuine and it almost floors him, and he pulls the blanket just a little more snug around your shoulders, motioning you inside to get you fixed up.

Maggie’s the first to see you, and she’s so relieved she basically runs to you, pulling you in for the tightest hug that squeezes the air from your lungs but you’re so happy to see her that you don’t mind. When she steps back she takes a moment, scanning you up and down and it dawns on her that nothing looks right - and within a moment she’s calling for Hershel, a kind hand on your lower back guiding you to the veterinarian’s cell.

Daryl doesn’t move until you glimpse at him over your shoulder, and he hates himself but he hesitates, do you want him to go with you? Would he be intruding if he joined, or do you need time to talk without him? His feet feel heavy because why is every decision suddenly so big, so critical?

Your hand reaches from under the cloak of the blanket, reaching for him with outstretched fingers. You’d only taken your eyes off Daryl for a moment in your approach to Hershel, and that moment was all it took for an unsettled feeling to rip its way through your chest and your vision to blur because you can’t be without him right now. You’re somewhere between a rock and a hard place - you want to be alone but suddenly he’s a lifeline, a lantern in the darkness of the abandoned prison that you’re being pulled towards like a moth to an open flame. Maggie’s hand on you feels comforting but you want more - and that’s exactly what Daryl is, he’s more.

Maggie watches the interaction with hopeful eyes as Daryl slowly paces over, knuckles white over the strap of his crossbow over his shoulder and his bottom lip tucked beneath his teeth, nervously wearing away the dry skin out of - habit or nerves?

There’s a part of him that doesn’t want to reach out and touch you, and he wonders if he should just follow to prove he understands your gesture because he’s been burning for your touch for so long and he doesn’t want this to be a gesture born from fear - anxiety of whatever trauma you’ve just endured, but if it’s what you want, he’ll give it to you tenfold. If it brings you even a modicum of comfort, he’d keep his fingers intertwined with yours until the second apocalypse rolled around. He’d like that, and he doesn’t realise that you’d like that, too.

Wiggling your fingers just slightly, you prompt him and when he slips his hand into yours, Maggie feels your exhale through the muscles of the small of your back as you head towards Hershel again. There’s a clamminess on both of your palms from a combination of stress and adrenaline, and it’s an awkward grip because your wrists and fingers ache and Daryl doesn’t want to hurt you, but it’s him and it’s you so that makes it perfect.

You’re both too tired, too weary to blush and tease each other like you normally would have, but it’s a different sort of intimacy that relaxes the muscles between your eyebrows and warms a tiny corner of your stomach against the continuous queasiness.

Your hands rests lazily against your thigh as Hershel assesses the damage, and you’re all too aware of the small audience that’s accumulated by the door of your cell. You can feel the tension, the way everyone’s barely holding back the questions on the tip of their tongue, what happened? Who? How? but nobody speaks, and neither do you. Daryl's thumb traces your knuckles with indistinguishable shapes, and it’s a welcomed distraction.

His hand doesn’t move from yours when Hershel points out how there’s some bruising forming under your eyes now, a clear sign of a break, he says. He tells you he could try to re-shape it, put the bone back into place - an offer you fervently decline. You’d seen far too many accident and emergency shows way back, and you simply couldn’t bring yourself to willingly let somebody crunch your nose, so you’re content with keeping the small bump.

Daryl watches you the entire time, monitoring your reactions and gauging your body language, squeezing your hand just a little tighter when you flinch against Hershel’s touches. He tries to ignore the waves of protectiveness that wash over him with every wince, but he hisses out a ‘careful with her’ when you visibly recoil against the prodding on the side of your nose - a comment that doesn’t bother Hershel because your eyes flick over from your lap to Daryl’s and he’d have to be senile to miss the way your lips twitch into the smallest smile at the comment. Maybe you find it funny, maybe you’re grateful to have somebody watching over you - either way, he’ll let this one slide.

“Whoever did this, they didn’t hold back, did they? But you’re tough. Looks like the jaw is just some superficial bruising, but it might be sore for a while.”

No, he didn’t hold back. Not at all - you can still feel the pull of your hair and the impact of his palm against your jaw when you didn’t follow his directions quickly enough.

He asks if there’s anywhere else, any other injuries. Despite the fact you’re fully aware of the pattern of cuts between your chest and abdomen, you say nothing because the sting isn’t bothering you enough - it’s the least of your worries. When the only response he receives is a blank stare, Hershel speaks to both Daryl and Maggie, asking ‘If one of you could help her clean up, I’m sure she’d appreciate it.’ and gesturing to some clean towels.

Focus seems to be a thing of the past as you simply sit and exist. Maggie comes into your line of vision but it doesn’t matter because you can’t feel anything. Daryl’s hand on yours, the mattress, the cold.. It’s all there but you’re unaffected, in an unfeeling bubble. Maybe you’re safe there, maybe you’re not. There’s no way of knowing anymore.

Going through the motions, you follow Maggie to the showers instead, because there’s vomit caked in your hair and you’d rather die than have someone else ‘clean’ you with a towel again, so you opt for the constant stream of water instead.

‘Stay?’ was all you’d managed to rasp out from your bruised throat, and Daryl followed immediately with a nod, sitting outside the shower door with Maggie as they waited.

Maggie sits with clean clothes - baggy, dark colours. No bra. Daryl dug out a clean pair of the socks you loved as if they would be a magic touch, like they would heal you immediately. Maybe he hoped they would.

“The water might open up those cuts on her chest, dependin’ on how deep they are. Might need you to help me convince her to get stitches.”

The fact that you even have cuts, even a single cut makes his blood boil. He doesn’t fully understand what Maggie’s asking though - there’s nothing he could do differently to her, or Hershel. Maggie would disagree, though. Everybody in the prison would disagree.

“She’s struggling, Daryl. I think she’s gonna be leanin’ on you after this. She’s strong, and we all know it - stronger than most of us. But this is a different kind of pain.”

She’s leaning in just a little closer to Daryl to emphasize her point. Maggie’s always hoped you two would find a deeper connection with each other, been waiting for it to happen. It was inevitable. She’s heartbroken with the circumstances and she doesn’t pray as much as she used to, but there’ll be quiet prayers uttered from her bunk tonight - prayers for healing and connection and love, despite the anger in her heart at God.

“What’re ya telling me for?”

You are strong and he knows it, he’s witnessed it daily ever since you met.

“She looks at you different, Daryl. She’s already wanting you around a whole lot more than she wants anyone else around, she must feel safe with you.”

Chewing at his lip, he wants that to be true. He wants to be safe for you, he always has, because you’re safe for him, and it’s not a feeling he was familiar with before meeting you - there was a pull that couldn’t be ignored, a pull that was even stronger now.

“How is she?”

Rick joins then, sitting opposite your two guards.

“She’s been better. Broken nose, but she doesn’t want Daddy to fix it. Bruised jaw.. Saw some bruises on her back. Her wrists are pretty raw, too. Might need stitches on a few of the cuts on her chest, but we’ll only be able to tell when she’s cleaned up.”

Rick only nods, grateful you’re able to stand up long enough to take a shower.

“More worried about her head. Mentally, I mean. I don’t know exactly what she went through, but I think we’ve all got a good idea based on what y’all saw. She’s gonna need time.”

She tells the men about ‘traumatic shock, and how it’s similar to PTSD but different. She was so zoned out Rick, she was just starin’ at the wall. Helped her out of her clothes ‘cause she just couldn’t, and I wouldn’t expect her to be alright after today either. There was a literal handprint on the back of her neck..”

Rick can only bring himself to nod, but the information makes his heart hurt. He makes eye contact with Daryl, where there seems to immediately be an understanding between the two men - The Governor, and anybody involved will pay a heavy price, tenfold what you’ve been forced to feel.

When the shower shuts off, Maggie heads back inside with the clean clothes, guiding you to your cell to inspect your now clean injuries.

////

The night drags and counting sheep does nothing to help. It’s been hours and the pattern of the springs of the bunk above are ingrained in your mind in an attempt to keep your thoughts on anything but him. You bounce between thoughts, memories, people and events but nothing’s powerful enough to keep the feeling of his hands or the whispering against his ear away. It’s exhausting but overstimulating.

The metal frame of the squeaky bed is too hostile and the rusty shade grey is far too similar to the cold Woodbury walls and it’s making you want to crawl out of your own skin, and the silence within the cell block is so awful you’d swear it’s giving you double vision. It’s all so cold and the stupid

mattress is suddenly the most uncomfortable thing in the entire world - frustration rips through you, quickly turning into anger as you twist yourself into a sitting position and the thin blanket tangles around your calf, it feels like a hand grabbing at you and oh my god, anger turns into panic and it consumes you like you’re on fire, a lit match to sensitive skin and everything inside you is gasoline.

You burn and writhe, sweating as you wrestle against yourself until you hit the concrete floor with a dull thud, your spine taking most of the impact, and the pressure around your calf only increases in your struggle but it doesn’t matter because you’re being grabbed, but it isn’t just your leg - there’s more now, large hands around your arms and you’re gasping for air but there isn’t any.

“Hey, hey! Eyes on me again, c’mon, look at me.”

Everything’s so foggy, there’s a voice somewhere in the darkness but it feels so distant, maybe the words aren’t even directed towards you. It’s familiar but barely, you want to give the voice your complete attention but you just can’t because your heart feels like it’s in your throat and you need the grip on your leg to go away, it feels like the man who forced you to your knees - a tight, malicious hold that wants to hurt you again, but even your kicking and thrashing doesn’t shake it off.

The hands around your arm are so mild in comparison, they aren’t dominating or restraining, they’re just there - a light hold around the tops of your arms, warm. The voice is there again, shushing you and you didn’t even realize you were screaming until you have to quieten your cries to hear it for yourself.

“Shh, you’re okay. It’s just me, just me an’ nobody else.”

The voice is a tether keeping you where you need to be. You’ve never heard a southern accent so soft yet so authoritative - it’s telling you again, eyes on me, and it takes all your strength to try.

Your dreary cell slowly comes into focus, blurry outlines of your bunk and the door forming hazy lines in your vision. It’s Daryl - you know that now. He’s the only person in the world to ever be so patient with you, always the first by your side. It’s like he can read your mind, he’s so tuned into you it’s ridiculous, like you’re both on the same wavelength, harmonious even on a bad day.

He watches your eyes slowly come into focus and he makes a point to breathe slowly, albeit somewhat dramatically, in the hopes you follow his lead - and you do. His hands slide down from your biceps to your forearms where they rest just above your wounded wrists, hovering slightly. He held your hand earlier because you wanted him to so he prays this is okay, that his calloused fingers don’t feel uncomfortable against your skin or that he isn’t crossing a line. He wants- no, needs you to feel him, to understand that his touch is, and always will be harmless. When he sees no fear in your eyes and feels you steady beneath him, he lets his hands fully rest around the curve of your forearm.

“It’s just you an’ me in here, ya understand?”

You respond with a nod between shaky breaths, but his raised eyebrows tell you it’s inadequate. He waits because he needs to hear you say it, needs to know that you can distinguish between the cloud of anxiety fogging your mind and reality.

Patient. He’s so patient as he sits cross-legged on the floor of your barely lit cell, giving you all the time in the world to come back to him. He feels your pulse calm beneath his grip, a slowing beat under cold but clammy skin, hears your breathing even out until it matches his. You’re looking at him in such a daze and you look so exhausted - dark circles and the bruising at your jaw a daunting contrast against your skin, he wants to brush it all away with his thumb until there’s nothing left except unblemished skin - to be the reason you don’t hurt anymore.

“Tell me ya understand. Need to hear it.”

His words are demands but he says them so softly, and the way he’s looking at you makes you feel so good, like you’re the only thing in the world that matters. The blue of his eyes is so him, so clear as he watches you behind unkempt waves and he acts as an achor, and all you can do is be still.

“I understand.”

The words sound so tired as they pry their way up the dryness of your throat, clawing their way up despite the tightness of your muscles. Daryl can see how much effort it takes to speak, and he nods in silent praise.

“Who’s here?”

He watches as you take a cautious look, a sweeping stare around the cell behind him. He gives your arms the tiniest squeeze in motivation. After inspecting every outline and every wall, you answer.

“Me and you. Nobody else, just us.”

You echo his words because he’s right. There’s nobody else here, despite Daryl’s presence being so overwhelming in the best way possible it is just the two of you, hidden away in the darkest corner.

“That’s right, ya wanna tell me what happened?”

“It was- fuck, it was around my leg and it just, it felt like-like him and I just, fuck.”

You slide your hands out of Daryl’s grip, bringing your hands to your hairline out of pure annoyance, clutching a fistful of hair as he shifts his gaze towards your outstretched legs where he understands immediately, nimble fingers unraveling the sheet around the bottom of your calf, letting it fall to the floor. Like it was so simple.

This is so fucking annoying, is this the life you’re sentenced to now? Crying over a sheet?

Weakness, is that what this is?

Conflicting emotions muddle together in a hazy barrier, separating fact from fiction.

Daryl’s looking at you so softly, eyebrows raised ever so slightly from his usual scowl and it changes his face entirely, and you wonder what you’ve done to deserve having his eyes on you so attentively, so caringly. He should be asleep, it’s the middle of the night, and he’s always the first one up every morning but you can’t bring yourself to send him away - not yet, anyway.

Guilt joins your already mixed emotions, because Daryl’s such a powerhouse, yet you’re here keeping the man who does so much awake for no good reason. Clutching tighter, you tug at the strands of hair still in your grasp until your scalp burns in a desperate attempt to distract yourself from the cesspit of the direction of your thoughts.

“I’m okay.”

Too quick. Too unbelievable. Try again.

Loosening your grip, your hands fall into your lap in a fidgety attempt to look sane. People who are genuinely okay don’t pull at their hair, and it’s difficult but you manage.

Inhale. Exhale.

“I’m fine, really. It just- it was too similiar to, y’know.”

“Nah, I don’t know. Ya wanna talk to me about it?”

He truly doesn’t know. He assumes, but a million different things could have happened while you were captive, and he doesn’t want to assume wrong. There’s no guessing game when it comes to trauma.

“Not tonight.”

He wants you to talk about what happened - he’s always been somebody to bottle everything up inside and suffer because of it. He’s hauled memories and scars for as long as he can remember and he’ll be damned if he lets you do the same. It’s too damaging, too corrosive to carry alone and he knows that better than anyone. ‘Not tonight’ is good enough for him because it’s not a ‘never’, it’s simply ‘later’, and if that’s what you want then he’ll take it - he’d take anything you gave him.

Forcing the corners of your lips into a smile, you want to show Daryl you’re okay enough to survive the night. Daryl sees right through it - it’s the most insincere smile he’s ever seen in his life, especially when your eyes tell a completely different story.

“Okay. Not tonight.”

Sitting back, he gives you some space to acclimatize, to breathe.

He asks if you want him to stay the night on top bunk, which you decline. You convince yourself you’d be awful company because at times you don’t even feel like you exist. Other times you just want to cry and pace around your cell, and you don’t want to disturb him more than you already have.

‘I’ll be just in that guard room out here, ya know the one. Just yell if ya need me, okay?’ He tells you, emphasizing with a ‘M’ serious, ya come get me if somethin’ don’t feel right.’ as he stands in the doorway, hesitant to leave you alone.

After convincing (lying to him) that you’ll be okay, you spend most of the night cleaning your weapons and pacing the confined space of the cell that’s completely miserable. Too dark, too lonely.

Daryl finds you before dawn. He’d watched you during the night as you dragged your thin mattress from the creaky bed, out into the walkway outside your door. He was moments away from coming over, to ask what you were doing before he saw you simply lay down with your back against the wall. You had to have a different view, a different environment before you lost you mind. Hauling the mattress was easy even if you did have a headache afterwards, but the open space just felt so much better - windows, even with the discoloured bars, they were a blessing with the dark treetops in the distance. It was just a little bit easier out here, so there you sat until dawn.

In the morning, Daryl heads out, but not before checking in on you. He checks your nose and your jaw with delicate prompting, telling you to get some sleep ‘for me, please?’ even though you both know you won’t.

While Daryl’s gone, you find yourself trying so hard to exist and it’s difficult. Everybody’s trying so hard to distract you, to interact with you and give you something else to think about - and you’re grateful, but it’s so obvious. Beth talks to you the most and it’s nice, there’s no pity or questions, she just talks like she always does and although your answers are lacklustre she doesn’t complain.

“Ya alright?”

His voice takes you by surprise. There’s packs of candy in his arms, and a small, pink, fleece blanket that he places on the table, which Beth grabs. She excuses herself, telling you she’s going to give the newborn that’s currently asleep in Carol’s arms the new blanket.

“Yeah, just a bit tired but I’m okay.”

You look tired. Truly tired, it physically hurts him to see the dark shadows creeping into your face, but he knows the bruising isn’t helping your overtired features. He tries to convince himself it’s the lighting or a bad angle - the shades of purple almost look black beneath and around your inner eye, and your jaw isn’t much better.

“Hm, did ya eat?”

“There’s stew over there, did you eat??”

So, no, you didn’t eat.

It’s not quite a feeling of nausea or needing to vomit, yet it’s something more than just a ‘lack of appetite’. You don’t have a logical explanation, and you don’t try to come up with one, either.

“I’ll get some later.”

Any other day, you’d both be first in line for any meals going, relishing in the game you’d managed to catch earlier in the day. There was always a satisfaction verging on pride when you’d bring anything back, which was almost every time you and Daryl went out together. The teamwork you both shared was striking, celebrated amongst the group.

“Promise?”

Pointing his nose into the air is all the confirmation you seem to be getting, but you take it.

“What is it, are you okay?”

He’s alternating between chewing on his bottom lip, and his thumb.

“Got somethin’ to show ya.”

There’s no eye contact with his words, in fact there’s the opposite - is he.. Nervous?

Twiddling with his crossbow and biting his lip, the ground must suddenly be very interesting because it’s all he’s looking at now.

“Really? What is it?”

“Wanna see ya eat somethin’ first.”

“I already.. Fine.”

You change your course when you see the raised eyebrow. Knowing fully well he knows you’re lying, you make your way over to grab a bowl of the still hot stew, sulking as you swallow it down.

He’s quiet as he leads you outside, pebbles crunching beneath you as you make your way through the humidity towards a lone guard tower. His nerves make you nervous as you walk up the stairs behind him, but you’re so curious.

“It aint a tree house, but I know ya ain’t been sleepin’, so, uh..”

The door is held open for you at the top of the stairs, expecting to see yet another drab, cold guard tower.

“Daryl.. Oh my God.”

Oh my God.

It’s a guard tower - but it’s not drab, and it certainly isn’t cold. It’s colourful and homely and a chill runs up your spine from the thought that went into this - into the transformation he’s created because it’s wonderful. You were in this one just a few weeks ago. Rick wanted somebody to join him to finish clearing the area and the guard tower itself, and he’d asked you ‘Saw one of them in full protective gear, and I want your good aim for the job’ so you did without hesitation. There were some guns, some ammo, you’d told the group. Forgetting to tell them you’d peeled the gun from a grey corpse, the barrel aiming towards his own jaw was simply an accident.

There was no trace of that incident, now. Anything worth taking was with the group in the main prison, and the walls were.. Fluffy. Cracked windows were now draped with thick blankets acting as curtains, the floor almost entirely covered with similar fabrics and pillows in every colour. It was an absolute eyesore and you loved it.

“You did this?”

Disbelief has your mouth agape. Appreciation has you walking around, fingers tracing everything you can touch. Even the scruffier blankets feel nice, but those are over the windows, cloaking you from the afternoon sun. Tip-toeing around, you lean down to admire the absolute pile of softness at your feet. There’s so many. Light blue and knitted. Multicolour patchwork that’s just a little bit itchy to touch. Pale yellow, crocheted with thick, silky yarn.

Daryl nods with a grunt, using the excuse of chewing the nail on his thumb.

“This is.. Amazing. So amazing. The cell just, doesn’t work for me right now. I miss sleeping so badly, my eyeballs hurt. This is really for me?”

This feels magical - nobody’s ever gone to so much effort for you. There are tall candles standing atop the control panel with a box of matches right beside them, ready for nightfall.

“Course, can’t have ya in that cell right now. I ain’t like it, either. Found a Hobby Lobby while I had the car today. Didn’t know what half the shit was in there.”

You make a mental promise to pay him back tenfold. He broke into a Hobby Lobby for the sake of a few hours sleep, all for you. You knew he was soft for you, but this? Images of him lugging armfulls of fabric into the back of the beaten up little car flood your mind and you can’t help but smile at him.

When you’re done admiring, you head back into the prison to keep busy. Carol and Beth are experimenting with some of the prison supplies for dinner, so you try to be productive until Hershel pulls you to the side, to check in. He asks how you’re feeling, how you’re holding down food, sleeping, pain on a scale of one to 10.. Hershel knows you’re lying with most of your answers - you’re stubborn, not wanting to draw any more attention to yourself and your situation, so he lets you go after reminding you he’s always available to talk to.

Daryl subtly observes how you play with your food, but still thankful you’ve managed some. Pushing re-hydrated mashed potato around your plate with heavy eyes and an orange glow from the fire, he’s trying to not stare but his efforts are in vain because he can’t help but shift his gaze to you, wanting to make sure T-Dog isn’t sitting too close, or that your wrists aren’t hurting too much even though he watches how you occasionally rub the tender skin.

While dinner gets cleared up, you make your way over to the archer who’s adjusting the string of his crossbow with a furrowed eyebrow.

“Busy?”

He finishes twiddling with a gruff ‘Nah’, standing to join you, crossbow in hand.

Good. You’ve wanted to slip away since the group gathered together. There’s so much love for every single individual sat around the log cabin fire Daryl built, but there were moments you were filled with exhaustion, craving peace and chunky knitted blankets instead. You adored when Beth sang, when Rick’s beautiful daughter cooed and the excitement that came with having an actual meal with friendships that were essentially family ties.

But not tonight.

Linking your fingers with his, Daryl doesn’t even consider protesting as you gently pull him behind you towards your little safe haven. As you walk, you miss the sympathetic smile from Maggie, and the one full of hope from Beth.

Once inside, Daryl tells you he can sit outside and guard, but you’re quick to remind him he can do that from the inside, too. There’s anxiety in your thoughts, nerves from wondering if those men will find you again. Find your camp, your people, Daryl. It occupies a dark, weary corner of your mind that you’re desperate to not think about for one night, you’re simply craving peace and rest. Daryl sits facing the door, quietly continuing his mission with his crossbow.

“You should lie down, too. Only one of us needs dark circles this bad, and I’m already claiming it.”

He scoffs, but oh how he loves hearing you tease. The playful edge in your voice sounds spent and dreary, but it’s still there and it sparks an entire new wave of thankfulness and admiration through his soul - feels it so deeply as he watches you gather a handful of fabric, clutching it by your chest like a child would a comforter.

He tells you he will, that he just needs to finish fixing this one part first. It’s a blatant lie - what he means is, he’s waiting to make sure you actually get some sleep. Actual rest. Not only do you deserve it, but you need it at this point. Your voice is barely above a whisper when you tell him ‘don’t take too long, okay?’ The room is so dark but you’re still so bright for him. He’s still not over the fact that somebody could willingly hurt you, someone so honest, so selfless - he can control his anger right now, mostly grateful you’re here in his company.

It takes a little while until you seem settled, when you toss and turn just a little bit less, only then does he close his eyes for just a moment, back still against the wall ready to defend against anyone who dares try to disturb you tonight.

Everything’s so bright tonight - the stars and the moon look like they’re trying to lure you in, desperate for attention against the pitch black of the night sky, and the air is muggy but it’s a welcomed distraction. Another failed attempt at sleeping finds you bundled out on the balcony with heavy eyelids and a million thoughts, but absolutely nothing you can focus on, nothing’s distinct enough or sharp enough to latch on to, so it’s easier to not try - looking at the sky is easy, and you don’t have to try, so it works.

You tried for hours. Sleep simply did not want to be your friend again tonight, and it was so frustrating. Every way you tried to lie was uncomfortable for no apparent reason, and when you felt a headache forming in your temple, you almost screamed into your pillow before remembering you had company. Daryl was slumped, a thick yellow blanket draped over his shoulders against the metallic chill against his back, despite the blistering heat that had the entire group in a chokehold every moment of the day.

“Can’t sleep?”

You’ve been so engrossed in the sight before you - the stars, the moon and just how captivating they are, that you don’t notice the footsteps of heavy boots against metal flooring behind you and you almost give yourself whiplash with the speed you turn to face the source. Daryl’s stood just a few metres away, back leaning against the frame of the open doorway with tousled hair, concern hidden behind a sympathetic expression and a question he couldn’t stifle.

“No chance, apparently. I could ask you the same question, though.”

Rubbing your eyes as you speak, you turn yourself back to the direction of the thick canopy of trees. You can feel the puffiness beneath your eyes, and the fragility of the delicate skin - a prominent display of just how exhausted you are, and you sharply inhale at the throbbing sensation that pulses beneath your fingers from the bruising.

Was it his fault that you couldn’t sleep? Was he too close to your personal space, too invading? He hesitates by the door, already fumbling over words that haven’t even formed yet, chewing down on his bottom lip as his gaze lingers on your dark silhouette.

“D’ya want me to go? If it helps ya sleep better, I can-”

As much as he wants to stay, if you need to be alone he’ll go - he’d find an excuse to be somewhat close, maybe he’d patrol the fences or collect some firewood, but not behind thick walls because he wouldn’t be able to see or hear you from inside and you might not know it yet but you’re his responsibility now. You’re fully capable and he knows it - so powerful and stubborn, passionate and perfect and Daryl's never had a single doubt in his mind about your ability to fight or overcome, and he isn’t about to start now because it’s you, and although you don’t need anybody to protect you, he still wants to. Right now you just need some time to heal and he’s consumed by the desire to help - to absolve you of the pain you’re going through because you deserve better. He would take your experiences and endure it tenfold if it gave you peace, he would kiss away the bruising around your eyes with the gentlest, most angelic brush of his lips if you let him because he only exists to make you feel better.

The words die in his throat the moment you turn back towards him, because there’s a trace of a smile on your lips as you tell him ‘No, I don’t want you anywhere but here.. only if that’s okay with you, though.’ and Daryl can hear the way you second guess yourself, the way the second half of your sentence drips with insecurity - don’t you know he longs to be by your side, aches to be yours, to get you through the turmoil you’re currently trying to dissect?

You watch as he makes his way closer until he’s next to you, crouching down until his eyes are level to yours and he shuffles himself until he’s sitting next to you, legs swinging over the edge of the balcony. There’s a warm breeze and you feel yourself relaxing into the warm gust of air, letting your head lull backwards and your eyes close for just a moment - the night sky and warmth used to be enough to pull you into a nights sleep, so why isn’t it anymore?

Your mind flashes with memories - you can feel them, hear the way your friends would laugh into plastic cups and the crackling embers of a fire, a blanket around your shoulders and the way your body would relax so deeply into the shape of your hammock that you could have slept for days. The breeze feels the same and despite your closed eyelids, you know you’re still sitting beneath the same flickering stars. You’re so deep in the memory and the calmness that corresponds to it that you might as well be back there - then it hits you that you’re not. There’s no overflowing party cups and no gossiping around the campfire, you lost your hammock long before the world fell and there’s an absence of burning ashes lingering in the air, and although you could swear you heard the repetition of jokes and laughter so distinctly that it must have been real - it isn’t.

But there’s a slight smell of smoke, and you know it’s real and you’re not losing your mind and it smells so much like your favourite evenings that you take a deep inhale, then another before slowly opening your eyes, letting the memory fade out as you focus on the stars for just a moment.

Your friends aren’t here anymore, but Daryl is.

Daryl watches you, wondering exactly where you went. He’s so content just observing you, admiring the rise and fall of your shoulders and the strands of hair that move ever so slightly in the Georgian breeze that he just can’t take his eyes away from your profile, doting on how you look beneath the silver of the night sky. He’s never seen anything so beautiful in his life, and when you open your eyes and turn towards him, it only solidifies what he already knew because the moonlight is reflecting in your eyes just right, and out of everything you could be looking at, you’re choosing to look at him, and when a light gust of air sweeps a cluster of hair into your face, he moves on instinct.

He’s slow as he raises his hand, and he expects your eyes to switch to his moving fingers, but your gaze remains on his as he inches closer.

You catch yourself, resisting the natural urge to simply push the rogue strands away, instead you find yourself yearning for the simple gesture - and when his rough fingertips brush over your cheek, you find yourself leaning into the friction, the way his calloused skin feels so effortless as he glides the hair from your face, tucking it gently behind your ear. There’s a pang of something that shoots into your chest so suddenly, but as daryl’s fingers delicately trail the shape of your ear, you realize what that feeling in your chest is - it’s not fear or dread, it’s affection, and it’s blooming so intensely it’s threatening to spill over through your eyes because you’re not scared, you’re something that you can’t quite give a name to, but it feels good.

Slowly, Daryl reminds himself. Every movement is steady and gentle, two fingertips trailing one after the other in tiny little shapes and squiggly lines just below your lobe, and he swells with pride as you quietly sigh, comfortable enough to close your eyes against his touch, so he continues - mapping the contours of your face from your hairline to the slight dip beneath your cheekbone, gently tracing the discoloration along your jawline. The touch is so soft, so barely there that it almost tickles and it’s incredible. You spend minutes just letting yourself be touched, focusing solely on being in control of your emotions and how this is special, how Daryl is special and how this is completely okay and he’s not hurting you and he never would.

The archer changes his movements then, using his hand to cup your jawline, hovering lightly over the bruising, and when you open your eyes and focus on him again, he repeats the motion on the other side until he’s holding your face gently between both of his large hands, angling himself in front of you.

“Let’s get ya back inside, alright?”

You’re so pliant and warm and soft for him, completely oblivious as you relax into his hands. He’s supporting your weight with his palms as he traces his thumbs across your cheeks, every fraction of a movement is brand new territory, and he’s concentrating hard to not scare you - he’s not going to move until you do, because he might be the one touching you, but you’re in control, he’s not going to make any decisions on your behalf, no matter how small. As far as Daryl’s concerned, this is your world - he just lives in it.

You want to stay just like this, because he’s tracing over your darkened bruises with so much tenderness, and the damaged skin is so sensitive - the combination feels magical. Your gaze drops, suddenly you can feel the lethargy rest heavily on your eyelids because since when were they so heavy?

“Think you’re ready for a good night’s sleep, c’mon, let’s get you tucked in.”

When you finally nod, he’s careful as he takes one hand away first, giving you a moment to adjust to the lack of support, with just one last brush of his thumb from below your eye to your cheek before he pulls away, bringing himself to his feet beside you. Your hands slip into his outstretched ones, supporting you as you steady yourself against the dull thud of the metal beneath you, and he leads you back into the mess of tangled sheets.

There’s a moment of ‘when do we let go?’ when you’re inside, neither of you entirely sure because you simply don’t want to. Thick pillows call your name, and you’re the first to lower yourself against a velvety throw blanket, and in succession, as if he’d been doing it his whole life, Daryl follows the gentle pull of your locked hands, but he’s oh so careful to subtly leave space between your thigh and his - he hasn’t been invited to touch anything but your hand, so he doesn’t.

The softness beneath you is so potent you can feel it through your clothing, and although it feels like the most inviting thing ever, your attention quickly shifts from the gentle back and forth of his thumb over the back of your hand to the gap he’s purposely left between you, and you’re heartbroken.

Insecurity surges through every neuron in your body with so much ferocity that you feel absolutely annihilated, paralysed - your entire chest constricts, tightening at the sudden awareness of how feeble you feel, how damaged. Pulling your hand from his, your thoughts race with such force - why is there so much space between you? What did you do wrong?

You swallow hard at the lump in your throat, and Daryl watches the smile fade from your lips, and your knees pull up to your chest. He waits only a moment before perching himself by your feet, eyes on your downcast ones.

“Hey, what’s goin’ on?”

How can he sound so concerned, so doting when you’re so.. Broken?

He’s calling your name so softly, voice just above a whisper but you squeeze your eyes shut in an attempt to block him out. Even just his voice feels like an assault on your senses, and the small percentage of you that wants to listen is overpowered by the crushing weight in your chest, the doubt in your mind.

He waits a moment - caution at the front of his mind. He doesn’t understand exactly what just happened, but he’s going to fix it because he can see the way your hands tremble ever so slightly as they cover your eyes, hear the way your breath catches in your throat and he hates it. For every fear-induced vibration of your fingers, he vows to cause an hour of pain - no, a day, for the man who did this. He’ll slice off a finger for every cry he causes. He starts a tally in his mind.

“You’re gonna get through this, ya know that, right?”

He receives a shaky exhale in response, so he carries on.

“You’re gonna get through this ‘cause it’s what ya do best. You survive.”

Patient is all he can be right now, and he does it well. Lets you calm down, to process whatever it is you’re feeling right now without intruding, and when you finally speak, he can’t disguise the flash of anger that forms in the pit of his stomach.

“He- The Governor, when I wouldn’t tell him where my camp was, he..”

Inhale. Exhale. Again.

You can’t bring yourself to look at the man in front of you when you raise your head, quickly dragging your sleeve across your damp cheeks. Shame builds in your throat - if you don’t tell him what happened right now, this very second, you swear you never will but you need Daryl to know. If anybody’s going to know, it’s him.

“That’s when he cut my shirt off, that’s how I got the cuts on my chest. He left.. When he came back he kept asking. I would never, ever tell anyone about the prison, please trust me. I never told him.”

Daryl knows, and he tells you this as you pat the skin under your eyes a little too harshly.

“He.. He forced me to my knees, Daryl. I had to-”

You don’t bother wiping the tears away anymore as they ferociously spill over. Chills and shivers make their way down your spine as you recall the event and you can only imagine the pity - or worse, disgust that must be all over Daryl’s face right now. But he doesn’t move, doesn’t shy away from your confession, instead he dips his head lower to get your attention. When your red eyes reluctantly meet his, you’re surprised by his features - the lack of repulsion or horror, you’re astonished because he seems to have shuffled just a little bit closer, not further away, and he nods - there’s more, and he knows.

“I didn’t think I- I thought he was going to.. Until you came. I knew you’d come, but I was so scared. I was terrified. I fought back, that’s how I got the bruise on my jaw. After that he just held a knife to my throat.. Told me to be extra careful.”

Almost on instinct, your hand delicately touches the front of your neck, where you’d felt the sharp blade dig into your skin just enough to keep you docile.

“And you’ve been.. Here, right next to me ever since, and I know it’s stupid but when you sat down, you felt so far away and I thought I’d done something wrong, or that I’m.. ”

Daryl watched and listened as you spoke, heard the panic creep into your speeding up voice, saw you wince from the torment that was so clearly playing in your mind. Every word you’d just spoken had bile rising in his throat, an acidic taste to be quickly swallowed down because this is your ‘not tonight’, this is when he sits and listens. This is your experience to talk about, your trauma to unpack. He already had a vague idea of what happened - an assumption of your ordeal - and actually hearing it were two very different things. He can’t even fathom that you’d think he was even capable of thinking about you badly, that you’re..

“Broken, disgusting.. Patheti-”

“Hey, that’s enough. C’mere.”

He reaches out to you with open arms, and you sob an absolutely gut wrenching sob because Daryl’s always felt like home, and despite the voice in your head telling you how unworthy you are of his support, he’d never deny you. Shuffling into him, he cocoons you with his arms without a moment of hesitation, pulling you against him just a little more because it’s what he’s always done - he’s nervous, ready to release his hold at the first sign of unease. Instead he feels you press yourself further against him, tucking your head beneath his chin.

“Ya aint none of those things. An’ I’ll tell ya that every day if I need to, alright? Ya ain’t never, and never gonna be broken or pathetic. Sure yer gonna feel that way sometimes, don’t mean it’s true, and ya ain’t disgusting for what someone else did to ya, that aint how it works.”

Soft spoken words tickle the crown of your head as you take in the little patches of heat where his body overlaps your own, and there’s a warmth blooming in your chest like a bouquet. These words are so special, even more so because they’re coming from him, in a little hideaway he built to keep you safe.

Hearing your thoughts out loud forced him to voice his own that had accumulated over the last few days. Daryl’s no stranger to trauma, he’s masked his own distress and memories with a need to be protective - support the group, hunt, track, find shelter. There’s almost a responsibility that’s bubbled to the surface to prevent the people around him feeling even just a snippet of what he’s felt over the years, and he does it willingly, out of a love that he himself doesn’t even understand - and it’s a feeling that’s always been more prominent with you. He couldn’t let another moment go by with you thinking that way about yourself - ‘you didn’t do this, the Governor did, an’ your worth don’t change ‘cause of a prick of a man’s actions.’ Daryl’s careful as he tells you this, hoping and praying he’s choosing his words correctly. He mumbles into your hair that he’s ‘sorry about not sittin’ right next to ya, I just thought maybe to just.. I dunno, we were already’ holdin’ hands and I didn’t wanna cross no line. ‘M sorry.’ and although the tears don’t stop, the excruciating weight on your chest lifts just slightly, faintly circling his palm against your back to calm you.

“Aint nothing you could’ve ever done to deserve any of this. Nobody here thinks any different of ya, and I’m gonna be right here until you’re okay again, we all will.”

You’ve been by his side since you stumbled across their camp by the quarry. You had your sister back then, like he had Merle. Suddenly neither of you had your siblings, your best friends to survive the world with, but somewhere down the line you found solace in each other. You clung to cigarette smoke as he did your unfamiliar softness and the group could only admire from a distance - an admiration that only grew stronger, as did your affinity towards each other.

There’s a pause to his words, and before you can wonder why, he places the most delicate kiss against your hair. His stubble itches your scalp, and your heart flutters at the tender press of his lips - another source of warmth that has you raising your head and bringing your eyes to meet his.

“Fuck, ‘m sorry. I didn-”

You idiot. You didn’t ask, she’s going to hate you and rightfully so. His mind floods with regret immediately, waves upon waves of quick scenarios running through his mind - will you never talk to him again? Walk away from him, never to return? His arms relax around you just slightly, ready for the inevitable moment where you pry yourself out of his grasp.. But it doesn’t happen? The inevitable doesn’t happen, and when your gaze meets his, he’s surprised.

“It’s okay.”

Delicate. Fragile. Powerful. Understanding. Pretty. Soft. Gentle. Strong. Warm. Kind. Forgiving. Patient. Loving. Accepting.

Daryl sees every single good thing there is about the world in your face. You’re telling him that it’s okay, with your tear-streaked rosy cheeks and sad smile. Loss after loss after tragedy and you’re still here smiling at him, tucked between his arms like it’s where you belong, and he’s astonished when you re-adjust yourself until you’re sat across his thighs, but astonished would be an understatement when you willingly lean your forehead against his lips - innocently pining for the feeling of him against your skin.

Giving you exactly what you want, you’re so momentarily content with the control that you have with his lips against you, exactly where you wanted him - exactly where he wanted to be. It’s pure and beautiful and he doesn’t hurt you when he places a hand on your lower back to support you, nor does he when his other hand cradles the nape of your neck. Not forcing, not grabbing you or keeping you still - but there to hold you, like his only purpose is to be a pillar supporting a temple of worship. The man who hurt you - his hands were softer, free of calluses but malicious, whereas daryl’s are rough and dry from hard work, but every single movement towards you has always been filled with grace.

The same hands that pressed over yours the first time you used his crossbow, and guided you until you got your first successful shot on a walker. He’d been proud of that moment, teasing about how ‘you’re a natural’.

The same hands you’d babied from fights - scratches and burns, wear and tear from being in a fallen world. ‘M fine, stop wastin’ shit on me’ he’d tell you, and you’d always ignore him as you dotted lotions on broken skin and wrapped him in gauze.

Those same scarred hands weren’t to be afraid of, you’d refuse to be timid of Daryl. He was capable of so much and you’d seen it. Watched him take on dozens of the dead, unafraid to take on the living with dangerous weapons to protect his people - to protect you. He was there for others to be fearful of, not you.

But even if you were afraid, were cautious he would understand. He would hide his hurt feelings because they weren’t the priority here, he would back up and apologize and leave you alone with a single word and you know this. He knows trauma, acknowledges the healing that comes afterwards even if he never got it - he’ll sure as hell make sure that you do.

There’s a long pause before either of you move, you both simply sit and breathe and soak in the closeness and admiration that’s growing tenfold every moment. Your hands ended up resting on his hips for the most part, with the occasional play of the buttons on his vest as he continued to lightly knead into the knots of stress in your neck, his lips never wandering far from your forehead.

“Tired?”

He mumbles into your hair when you yawn, tears prickling your eyes.

“I don’t think I’ve slept in days. Yes, I’m tired”

Prominent dark circles are an obvious answer to his question, but he just wanted to hear the lighthearted teasing in your voice he’s been hoping for - not that you’d ever disappoint him. Daryl’s willing to stay up until dawn if sleep wasn’t going to take you, but he’s thankful at the opportunity that you might actually get some sleep tonight. You both agree to lay down, and you ruefully peel yourself away from him.

There’s an echo that rings when heavy, ill-fitting boots are pried from threadbare socks before Daryl’s shuffling, rustling blankets along the way until he’s crouched by your muddy shoes. Gesturing to your laces, he waits until there’s an unashamed smile and a giggle before un-doing the tangles, pulling them off your feet despite quiet protests of ‘Oh my God, they must smell so bad, I’m so sorry’ before joining you back against the pillows.

There must be a specific blanket and pillows store he stripped bare for your comfort, and you’re nothing but thankful when you come back into contact with chilled fleece and fluff. Pressure’s been lifted from your mind, alleviated just enough that breathing actually feels possible for the first time in days, and Daryl’s laying on his side, watching and cherishing the peace he can see between your bruises.

You join him, then. Rolling onto your side until you’re face to face, suddenly shy beneath his gaze. He asks how your nose feels - and when you tell him ‘it’s not awful, but I’m sure it looks awful, Daryl don't look at it, jeez!’ he can’t help the smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth. Awful is the least it feels - he remembers the day he broke his as a teenager. The man who did that to him didn’t apologise either, but he’s certain he was less bruised than you and it was tender for months.

Jokingly, you hit his shoulder and his grin kills you. There are strands of hair across his forehead and his eyes are creasing ever so slightly and you’re so flooded with the sincerity of him that you feel tears forming in your eyes again. There’s no desire to cry and you’re not upset, and you try to blink them away before he notices but he does.

You’re cocooned in a homely comfort as he grabs an extra blanket, bringing it over and tucking it below your chin, whispering a ‘thank you’.

“Look at me for a sec. I aint him. Gonna keep ya safe, want ya to know that.”

Nothing above a mumble in volume, but thunderously loud in promise. Safety and refuge abundantly thick in his words and immediately you’re curling in against his him, dragging the blanket with you until once again, you’re wedged beneath his chin, chest to chest because you want to feel his words, physically feel the shields that are his arms and hands. You don’t have to wait more than a second for reciprocation - he’s immediately understood, adjusting himself until he’s got an arm over yours and a hand cradling the back of your head. You tell him that you know.

It’s just perfect.

Innocent intimacy that just feels so right, so natural. He holds you so close, like it's a necessity, and honestly it might actually be.

Careful, gentle touches from rugged fingertips lulled you to sleep that night, and many, many nights after.

Hours turn into days, days into weeks, weeks into months.

Healing was difficult, especially when the war broke out. People - good people lost their lives. Friends were lost, blood spilled and the prison fell and things were hard.

Almost nothing was consistent - not the company, meals or housing. The sun would rise and things would change, the sun would set and things were dangerous. Daryl was consistent, though. The tips of his fingers against your skin were consistent, as were his lips against your forehead, your cheek, and one day, the very corner of your own lips.

He watched as you gained your confidence again, how you’d zone out just a little bit less every week. It wasn’t consistent. There were good days, and there were days you’d wake from paralyzing nightmares but he was there, ready to pull you against him - what’s goin’ through that head of yours, huh? He’d whisper with a gentle nudge of his fingers below your chin.

His presence was healing you, you would tell him - and he would always correct you. ‘Nah, this is all you. It’s you doin’ the hard work, not me.’ and you would always disagree, even if he was right.

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starlightandfairies · 1 year

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Hey! Since requests are open may I request Daryl x reader where they separate after the governor attacks the prison but they reunite in Alexandria, or Daryl finds readers dead body being eaten?? You can choose which one <33

If your comfortable with it I would prefer reader with she/her pronouns, thank you <3

Description: The reader and Daryl are separated after the attack on the prison and are reunited back at Alexandria.

Warnings: fluff, swearing

*I'm so sorry for how long it has taken me. I might also do the other option as well*

Requests are open!

Key: Y/N = Your Name, POV = Point of view

Word Count: 883

The attack on the prison was brutal and heartbreaking, it had been a home and things had been going wrong for way too long. It was only bound that this was going to happen, groups were formed as they went separate ways in order to get away from the herds and the wreckage. Daryl had been separated with Beth, all the others had someone but Y/N. She was all by herself, it killed her and being alone did nothing good for her. She needs people and needs to have someone with her so she was hoping that she could find someone soon. Better yet, hoped that Daryl was alive and that they find each other again.

Y/N had a system, she walked throughout the day, barely any stops and sipped water all throughout her journey on foot, then would find a new body of water before it was dark and would hide in a car as the night went on. The first moment she saw another form of human life, she hide in the back, her gun firmly in her hand as she watched a man check the back of cars and then leave them. Not wanting to create a problem for herself, she stayed hidden and hoped that the man would look in the back of the car and even if he did that he was nice and would leave her alone.

Her heart jumped in her chest as the man ran into the car she was currently in, she placed a hand over her mouth as he closed the door hiding from a heard of walkers and holding something in his hands which appeared to be a number plate from a state that she couldn't make out. She placed the gun to his head, speaking quietly, not prepared to make any moves as she didn't want to kill anyone.

"Tell me your name, what you're doing and your morals, I'll put the gun down as soon as you tell me this and if I agree with your morals then we can both hide in here before they go. Okay?"

"My name is Aaron, It sounds really silly, I know but I'm collecting state number plates for my boyfriend, it's something that we do. You know, to pass the time and deal with this world. I won't hurt you, you look like you've been through a lot and I can take you to my community you can rest there, have some food and if you don't like it there you can leave." Y/n sat back, apologising to Aaron for holding a gun at him and agreed to go with him.

Y/n sat in a room, staring at the camera nervously as she answered the questions, it brought on emotions she didn't want to deal with. She was terrified of the fact that she did not have Daryl, that she didn't have her friends and begged that they were all okay and that she would see them again soon.

A couple of weeks passed, and Y/n had decided to stay for that time, going on runs in the hopes that she would see someone she knew and turned up empty-handed every time. Y/n had come out of her house after what had been a few days.

Aaron had been stopping by, giving her food, making sure she was still alive and still living amongst the others. The girl sat on the porch, reading a book, feeling happy and proud to touch something new, to read a book that she hadn't touched before and she felt at peace for a short while.

The girl glanced up, searching the area for a moment, freezing as she saw a familiar face. She threw the book to the side, stumbling as she raced over to the group, tripping over air and already had tears in her eyes.

"Daryl!" She shouted, panting as she ran as fast as she could to finish the distance between them both. Daryl stared at her, he couldn't believe that the girl running towards him was alive and she was safe. He dropped his crossbow to the ground, finishing the distance and picking her up in his arms. He whimpered lightly, Y/n cried in his arms and gripped at the iconic leather vest the man always wore.

Daryl slowly dropped to his knees, soaking into the ground with the girl in his arms and placed kisses on her forehead. Sobbing lightly as the girl was finally in his arms again and seemingly unharmed and in a place that seemed to be safe and with decent people.

"I was so scared, I thought you were gone." She whispered, smiling as he tightened his grip and held her off the ground.

"I've got you," Daryl whispered, feeling everything he has been feeling for the last little while come back to him and had a couple of tears well in his eyes as he held the girl in his arms. Daryl did not want to let her go, did not want to let her out of his sight. The girl he loved was alive, with him and he felt safer with her back with him.

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weretheones · 1 year

Text

All You Got | Masterlist

Series Summary: Daryl Dixon hadn’t known much beyond anger and loneliness his whole life, until he found family at the end of the world. Everything he grew to care about was ripped away the day the prison fell; so when he recognized you, an enforcer of his loss, hiding in that cabin, he almost pulled the trigger. But after you end up saving his life, he couldn’t find the indifference to leave you for dead, even if you’d been on the Governor’s side. (Mid-Late Season 4)

Paring: Eventual Daryl Dixon x Reader

AO3 Version

Status: Ongoing; new part every Friday

Part 1: All You Got

Part 2: One Bullet

Part 3: The Desperate Type

Part 4: I Know It Well

Part 5: Liar

Part 6: If You Must

Part 7: Burning Out

Part 8: Observant

Part 9: Bite My Tongue

Part 10: A Reminder

Part 11: New Trails

Part 12: What’s Left

Part 13: Strangers

Part 14: coming soon

and more...

A/N: wow. I am so excited for this ✨ slow burn enemies to reluctant allies to friends to... well, you'll just have to read it ;)

this is something I've been brainstorming for what feels like forever and im so happy to finally share it!!! I hope you all enjoy it as much as I have. a big thank you to my dear friends @normanplusdaryl and @theteasetwrites for listening to me rant and being my betas. love u both so so so much.

warnings will be chapter specific, although generally, this series will contain; swearing; violence; descriptions of injury/blood; character death; and other general TWD content.

as for the posting schedule-- I am going to try my best to be consistent with posting new parts every Friday, starting Feb 10th. HOWEVER, I am in my final semester of university, am working and interning, and try to have a social life too lol. there might be some weeks where i’m a day or two late, maybe even longer. feel free to send an ask to check on when later parts are coming, but please be patient & understanding <3

lastly, titles & number of parts are subject to change as I work through them.

thank u guys <3 mwah mwah mwah!

- madi

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d1xonss · 1 month

Note

Could you do a Daryl x reader where at first he doesn’t like her, and she tries to get to know why hes so mean to her? Maybe he yells at her and then some comfort after?

Pretty When I Cry

✧ Pairing : Daryl Dixon x Reader

✧ Era : Season 1

✧ Pronouns : she/her

✧ Genre : Angst/Fluff

✧ Word Count : 4k

AN ~ This is a very cute idea. I've been wanting to write something for season 1 Daryl because he's just such a cutie pie, but I didn't really have any good ideas. Though I think if he were to ever snap and "be mean" it would surely be in the beginning; his sassy era lol. But thank you for the request, hope you enjoy!

In an instant it seemed like, all of humanity was completely flipped upside down. You were on your way to work when the chaos all erupted, dead people coming back to life and the military taking matters into their own hands. Bombing places left and right even if that meant killing the ones who weren’t infected. The entire thing shook you more than you were ever willing to admit, after all, you were more fragile, soft and clearly not built for whatever the world was suddenly turning into.

But to your surprise, you made it out alive. Traumatized, sure, but alive.

You seemed to count your blessings every single day since then, thankful for every little thing that had happened to you since. Luck seemed to shine down upon you as you weren’t alone for long, finding a small group camped out in the high mountains merely days after everything went down. They all welcomed you with open arms, clearly taking a liking to your kindness and wanting as many people to come together as they could get. After all, it’s all that was left of the world. People you could rely on.

You grew to love the tight knit group, forming friendships with people you never would’ve guessed you’d meet in a million years. You also tried to keep yourself busy, wanting to be as useful as possible and provide what you could for the others. Not because you felt obligated to, but because you simply wanted to. Things like cooking, collecting berries and mushrooms, doing laundry, anything you could find to help contribute.

Something you seemed to be ashamed of however, was that you couldn’t really do any of the “heavy lifting.” You had never fired a gun in your life, that alone narrowed down the list. Not being able to stay on watch, not being able to hunt, and…not being able to take care of the dead things that sometimes wandered all the way up here. At first, the thought of you being weaker than the others never even crossed your mind. It was only brought to your attention when a certain man began to poke fun at you because of how small he saw you.

Merle Dixon was a grade A asshole to put it bluntly. Ever since he and his brother showed up to be a part of the group later on, he had made it his mission to annoy and harass you whenever he saw the opportunity. You couldn’t figure out why you were his main target, his main source of entertainment, but you could only guess it was because he always got under your skin in a way he was able to see. That, and he tended to make you cry. He even gave you a nickname because of it after a while, one that you absolutely hated. And he knew it too.

Although Merle was someone you couldn’t stand, his brother Daryl however was…different. He could still be snappy and hot headed just like the other one you supposed, but he had never acted that way towards you surprisingly. His main target was Shane, and honestly, who could blame him? There were many times where the man would take things too far and Daryl would put him in his place, unaware of the watchful wide eyes that watched the interaction. He never seemed to care, wanting to tell everyone how it was without a single ounce of regret. You sort of envied him for that small little thing.

You had never stood up to anyone in your life, always too scared of the outcome and you hated being yelled at more than anything in the world. So it was safe to say you avoided confrontation at all costs. Clearly, as you hadn’t found the strength to stand up to Merle since he got here. But though neither of the brothers particularly cared for you, you were still kind to them just like you were to everyone else. You didn’t miss how the others in the group would almost look down on them in a way you couldn’t understand, so you wanted to be the one who provided just that little bit of kindness. It really went a long way, or at least that’s what you believed.

Though you had to admit, it was a little difficult sometimes. There were moments where you just wanted to yell in frustration, curse at Merle for how he always treated you and how Daryl typically sat there and did nothing. But you always managed to cool off, reminding yourself that they most likely acted like this because of something from their past. Something they couldn’t control. Who were you to treat them differently because of that? It was hard to stay strong at times, but in the end, you always seemed to send them a small smile.

You currently busied yourself on just the outskirts of the camp past the trees, finding and picking a few berries to bring back seeing as the group was running a bit low. And every bit of food counted these days. Your gaze stayed down as you chose the ripest ones, placing them in the little woven basket you brought to gather as many as you could for the time being. Though upon your hunt for different kinds of plant based things you could eat, your eyes happened to catch a mere glimpse of something colorful a few feet away.

To your surprise, it was a small patch of wildflowers growing together, each a different beautiful color and only a reminder to you that the world wasn’t completely dead. There were still many beautiful aspects along the way, even though a bit of hope may be lost, it was little things like this that brought a smile to your face. So you decided to wrap it up, bring back the things you’d collected along with picking one of the small flowers, putting it behind your ear for now to take back and put in your tent with the rest of your things. You had the idea of pressing it into one of the pages of a journal you kept.

You then found yourself slowly trailing back towards the site, almost dreadfully as you could predict what was coming next. You could practically hear it in the back of your mind like it was burned into your memory. Merle’s phantom voice echoed in your mind, knowing he would most likely call out to you the moment he noticed your presence reenter the space. But again, you reminded yourself to just try and be kind. It was the one thing you were best at.

Slowly but surely you made it past the treeline, and only about eight seconds passed before you heard a loud wolf whistle from your left along with the same booming laugh. Like he amused himself or something.

“There she is!” he called from the space in his and Daryl’s separate camp away from the others, “It’s weeping willow.” he smiled widely in hopes to get a reaction out of you.

You sighed as you sent him a small smile, “Still not my name Merle.” you reminded as you just tried to walk past him.

But it wasn’t that easy. It was never that easy. He easily stepped in front of you to block your path, the smirk still plastered on his face. “Close enough.” he waved off, “Besides, I wanna see what you so kindly brought back for me.” he said before quickly snatching your basket out of your hands.

Your eyes slightly widened as you tried to grab it back, but he pulled it away faster. “Merle.” you huffed as you attempted to reach for it again, but he only moved it away quicker. Every move you made, he would make as well, purposefully keeping it from you as he started to walk backwards for you to follow.

Like dangling a damn carrot in front of your face.

Your frustration grew as you continued to follow and reach for it as he laughed, watching your attempts and fails. You could feel your cheeks beginning to heat up in embarrassment now, sensing Daryl’s eyes watching the interaction as he made a few bolts by the small fire they had set up. He sat there still, doing nothing as per usual as he watched the interaction unfold right in front of him.

“Merle, please. It’s for the group.” you tried as you reached for it again.

But he pulled it out of your reach as you stood face to face, “Well, I’m a part of that group ain’t I? I think I deserve this just as much as the next bastard. Unless of course you have a different opinion bout that…” he trailed off as his smirk grew.

You sighed, “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. It’s for everyone.” you clarified kindly.

The man only laughed at you, and you quickly began to feel the familiar lump forming in your throat, trying desperately to swallow it down and not let your emotions escape. It was obvious you were sensitive, but also having to fight the same fight over and over again, it got old quicker than you would admit. You could hardly stand these interactions anymore without at least tearing up a little at his teasing and taunting.

Finally after having enough, you reached out quickly and managed to snatch the basket back from him in one quick motion, placing it on your arm as your brows furrowed a little in frustration. Merle’s eyes widened a bit at the fast unexpected action, before he started smirking all over again once he caught the expression on your face.

“Oooh look at that. I almost got ya to snap.” he poked as he swayed a little clumsily on his feet, most likely a little drunk or high would be your best guess.

Sighing to yourself again to calm down, you shook your head as you knew of his only goal, “I’m not snapping.” you stated calmly.

Though he clearly didn’t believe you, wanting to push you even more. His eyes traveled away from your eyes as he grinned wickedly, pointing to your ear. “What’s this lil thing?” he asked. Your eyes widened a little, but before you could even react, he quickly snatched it away all while pulling your hair a little in the process.

Your hand reached again, “Merle, come on, please.” you spoke desperately as you moved to keep up with him, before your frame accidentally stepped a little too far to the left.

In a fit of embarrassment and clumsiness, your foot accidentally knocked over a bucket that was sitting a little too close to the fire. The only problem was, Daryl’s freshly made bolts were sitting in there, now being engulfed in the flames. Your eyes widened in horror as you quickly scrambled back, watching Daryl instantly stand to his feet in an attempt to save what wasn’t ruined. But it was too late.

“Son of a bitch!” he cursed loudly as he bent down to pick up the bucket.

One of your hands came up to your mouth as you couldn’t believe what you had just done, freezing in place as you now didn’t know what to do. You knew you were in deep shit already, but when Merle suddenly paused just as you did, you knew you were royally fucked as the two of you just watched Daryl stare down at the fire motionlessly.

Eventually you found your voice, stepping forward a little to reach out to him, “Oh my God, Daryl I’m so sorry-”

But your words clearly didn’t mean a thing. He slapped your hand harshly away from him as his head snapped up to look at you, a fire of his own growing in his eyes. “What the hell is wrong with ya?!” he screamed.

You instantly flinched back at his sharp tone, the lump once again forming in your throat as you desperately tried to keep yourself together, “It was an accident-”

“Do ya even know how long it took me ta make those?” he asked angrily, not even bothering to wait for an answer. “Nah…course ya don’t. Cause you don’t do anything around here! Always just sittin in yer own little fairytale, smilin without a goddamn care in the world, when in reality you just fuckin ruin everything!”

His words cut through you like a knife. But not one that was sharp. One that was dull, just sawing back and forth relentlessly and hurting you even more than you could’ve ever imagined. Your eyes quickly filled with tears, not even knowing what to say as he was clearly about to blow up even more with how angry he grew.

He scoffed once he saw how speechless you became, “Just get the hell outta here.” he spat harshly as he got up closer to your face, aggressively pointing off into the trees.

Tears began to pour down your cheeks at the last of his words, not even wasting another second as you dropped the basket from your arms before taking off in the other direction in a flash. Your chest heaved as you moved quickly through the trees, not being able to get alone fast enough so you could finally let everything out. You almost couldn’t believe the things that just happened, how everything got so messed up after you swore you were making progress with the two of them. But you weren’t. And perhaps you never would, that being something you would just have to accept.

Though finally after feeling like you walked quickly for miles, you came to the clearing of the large quarry, slumping down near the water before you began to sob all by yourself. You let everything out, every built up emotion poured out of you like a rush of water. You could’ve sworn you cried so much that you could fill a quarry of your own, knowing that those emotions were really the only thing you were good at. Crying could be an olympic sport, and you would win first everytime given the chance.

But that thought only got you thinking more, making you stew over Daryl’s words. Maybe he was right. Anyone could say that it was the heat of the moment, his anger, insults just spilling out of his mouth that were simply not true. But in a way, you knew how true they were. You had to admit that you did feel useless as you hugged your knees to your chest, covering your face as you sobbed even more. You didn’t have useful skills like some of the others, not being able to prove yourself as you truly were weak when it came to a world like this. All you ever wanted to do was be kind, provide for the people you cared about most. But your outlook got ruined in an instant, quickly replaced with a new one that you would surely think about forever.

It was funny, you thought. You once heard Merle’s faint voice playing in your mind repeatedly, but now…you only heard Daryl’s. His insults, his harshness, it was something you never would’ve guessed or expected from him. But now you knew that you had just ruined everything, when all you wanted was to help.

You didn’t know how much time you spent alone, crying off and on to yourself the more you allowed your mind to run, but you could only assume it was a fairly long time. The sun was beginning to set in the sky, the little bit of light that was left shone over the water in front of you, making it sparkle as your tears continued to blur the scenery. You sniffled as you wiped your cheeks over and over again, wanting to pull yourself together enough to be able to show your face again back at camp. But the embarrassment was still weighing heavily, almost a crushing pressure.

But then all your attention was pulled to a shuffling noise coming from behind you, causing you to whip your head around in a panic to see where it came from. Though the sight was more surprising than you could’ve ever prepared yourself for. Daryl slowly emerged from the trees with a hesitant look on his face, and your eyes widened as you quickly turned your head back in the opposite direction. You didn’t want to look at him. You couldn’t even bring yourself to understand why he had come out here. He had already done enough, he made his point crystal clear. You were just silently hoping he didn’t come out here to yell at you again.

Daryl on the other hand felt an immense amount of guilt. His chest tightened a little as he caught barely a glimpse of your red, puffy eyes and your tear stained cheeks, knowing he was the cause of it. He couldn’t describe how it made him feel, but all he knew was he was wishing he could take it all back if it meant not having to see you cry. His brother already caused you to break down enough, he didn’t want to be the cause of that too. And yet, he was.

The man slowly walked up to where you sat near the blue water, the rocks crunching beneath his boots louder and louder as he approached. Your heart was hammering in your chest as you just prayed he would go away, not wanting to interact with him after everything. But Daryl was stubborn, and he didn’t want you out here all night just because you were nervous to come back.

“Dinner’s almost ready.” he said a bit awkwardly, stopping just a few feet away from you. You heard him loud and clear, but you said nothing, not really in the mood to eat. Facing the group after they surely heard the scene that went down, it all sounded like a nightmare.

Daryl sighed heavily as you didn’t respond, you didn’t even look in his direction. Acting as if he wasn’t here at all. “Hey.” he called.

“...Why do you hate me?” you whispered, still not facing him as you spoke.

He almost questioned what you had said, but then it seemed to hit him all at once just how badly he had fucked up with all this. The one girl that showed him a kindness he had never seen, now thought he wanted nothing to do with her from the projected words he spat at her.

He let out a soft breath as he closed his eyes momentarily, stepping up a little closer, “I- I don’t…I don’t hate you.” he said quietly.

You didn’t react, so he managed to push himself a little further than what he was comfortable with. He moved to slowly sit down beside you, keeping some distance, yet he wanted you to know he was there. That he meant it. “I don’t hate you.” he said again.

“You act like it.” you were quick to say as you turned your head to look him in the eye, “I…I don’t even know what I did…” you said, your voice quiet and broken.

The man stared at you for a long moment, before slowly shaking his head, “Ya didn’t do nothin…it’s…it’s hard to explain. But I guess I never really understood…why yer so nice. Thought maybe ya just wanted somethin from me…I dunno.”

You shook your head a little in disbelief, “I’m nice because I care…that’s it.” you assured as you didn’t want him to think otherwise. But you supposed hearing his reasoning out loud made a little more sense, seeing as how you truly were the only one nice enough to show your kindness to the brothers. He was skeptical because no one had done that for them before, the thought nearly broke your heart.

A long moment of silence passed between the two of you, before you were the one to break it, “Listen…I’m so sorry about what happened. I didn’t mean to ruin what you worked so hard on, it was an accident.”

Though Daryl quickly shook his head, “Nah, don’t be. If anythin, I should be apologizin for what I said. I…I didn’t mean none of it…”

You stared at him with a soft expression, “But you were right…everything you said-”

“Everything I said was bullshit.” he said bluntly, looking at you with a seriousness in his eyes, “I say a lotta stupid shit I don’t mean when m’ angry, and this ain’t no different, ya hear me?”

“But it’s true.” you argued gently before looking back out into the water, “I don’t know how to help out…how to survive in a world like this. I always try to do what I can, but it’s never enough.”

Daryl paused as he saw the sadness behind your eyes, a sudden feeling overtaking him as he wanted to say or do something that would get you to smile again. “Hey, that ain’t true. Ya go out and scavenge, ya help cook the food that’s brought back…ya even helped stitch Glenn up when the dumbass hurt himself.”

His words caused a small laugh to escape your lips as you looked back over to him, “Well I knew he would somehow mess it up even more if he did it himself…I didn’t have a choice with that one.”

“Nah…ya did.” he said seriously, “Ya always have a choice, and I see ya puttin others before yerself all the time. That’s somethin ya should give yerself credit for.”

Your eyes softened the longer you looked at him, a small smile forming on your face just seeing how much he cared. Even if he wasn’t willing to admit it out loud just yet. “Thank you.” you said quietly.

Daryl felt his face grow a little hot as he ducked his head, clearing his throat a little awkwardly, “Yeah, no problem…” he muttered before it looked like he suddenly remembered something. “Oh, and uh…I brought ya this.” he said before revealing the hand that sat behind his back.

You looked down to see it was the same small flower that Merle took from you, sitting in the palm of his hand as he held it out to you. Your eyes widened a little as your small fingers delicately took it from his grasp. “You got it back?”

“Uh, no that one was all smushed by the end of…everythin. So I went and got ya a new one…hope that’s okay.” he explained a bit quietly.

Your smile grew as your eyes lit up at the simple kind gesture, one you would have never expected from him. “It’s perfectly okay…thank you.” you said sincerely, raising it up to place it behind your ear.

He nodded a bit awkwardly as he watched you for a moment, chewing the inside of his lip. “Alright, well come on.” he muttered as he stood back up to his feet, “Best be gettin back.” he spoke, hesitantly extending a hand out to help you up.

His actions surprised you a bit, but that didn’t stop you from taking his hand, letting him help you stand before the two of you slowly headed back through the woods. You half expected complete silence as you walked side by side with him, but he managed to keep a conversation with you as if he suddenly enjoyed your company. Though maybe he always did, he was just cautious as he didn’t always trust people as easily as you did. But you were growing more hopeful as he slowly came around, finding you had to be patient to see how much of a gentle person he really was.

From that day on, you and Daryl had slowly gotten more comfortable with each other. You wouldn’t really call it a friendship per se, but it was something the two of you very clearly cherished. But that wasn’t the only thing that seemed to change.

Merle’s attitude toward you seemed to have completely flipped from what you had grown accustomed to. He rarely ever spoke to you again after that day, and if he did it was always something short and simple, not an insult in sight. Though you were a little surprised, a part of you had a feeling who changed his mind about you.

~ Thanks for reading!

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