title from nightwish. nothin ain't mine.

The first time you notice Rick's scar, you're too busy nipping your way down his body to even take stock of it. And then your mouth stumbles over the decline of his left hip, with a rough whitened place there that glides so easily under your tongue. Your interest is piqued for all of three seconds before he twists his hands in the loose mattress sheets and moans at your discontinued attention and. Well. Other things take priority.

It's only later after he's kissed you and mumbled "goodnight" in a shy, awed voice before heading back to his own cell and you're done grinning like a fool at the opposite wall that you remember, and wonder.

After that you try taking stock of others whenever you get the chance. Some of them you can guess the story behind. The gunshot wound below his heart, obviously. The three little pockmarks along one arm that look like mosquito bites, because lord knows the man's penchant for scratching sore spots until they bleed, until they're there forever. Skinny rakes down the front of his thighs, probably souvenirs from the claws of an overenthusiastic pet cat or dog.

There are others that just won't stop bothering you, though. Like the faint scratch hidden along his hairline, the deep indentation you can feel on his shinbone when you wrap your fingers around it. The scar resting between his shoulder blades that he doesn't seem to know is there.

You want to know about all of them. He's known about yours ever since the tough luck day on the Greene farm and Hershel taking your shirt off to get at the arrow wound. The old man hesitated and Shane just grumbled under his breath, but not once did Rick break his stride, asking if you felt feverish or in pain and what medicines you needed. Even now that you've engaged in this mutually exclusive admiration of each other he doesn't ask, but he doesn't step away either. Every sneer and drunken rage your father went into has been put in permanent ink on your back, and all he does is trace them with soft, full lips until every nerve ending in you is doused in want and his mouth finally descends lowerlowerlower.

"I know," he tells you, later when you're done unraveling each other. "I know and it's okay, because that was in the past and we have now to make up for it." His nose bumps yours and his breath tickles your skin, and when he kisses you this time it's drugged and gentle and makes your mind blur, your heart doing this crazy dive in the well of your ribcage.

Everything after that is different, desperate fucks morphing into achingly slow exploration, and you want to know his body as much as you know yours. You don't want to look into exactly why that is yet.

So tonight, when he smiles at you wearing nothing from the waist down, the only thing you can get out is "What's with all the scars?"

He pauses, blinks at you with his shirt slipping down his arms, and you're distracted by the swell of his biceps for a moment, only a moment. "What scars?" he asks, his face tightening with vague confusion before something clicks, and he laughs.

"Oh! You mean – what, all of them?"

You can't help but blush and roll your eyes, already tugging your shirt over your head, grumbling, "Forget it."

"Hey, no, Daryl." He sits beside you on the bunk, touches his fingers to your cheek. You wait a few moments before you meet his eyes, and your breath catches. It's like you haven't seen that color before.

His hand trails lower, and your throat dips as you swallow. "You really wanna know?" he asks. He looks like he's trying not to smile, and you scowl, bat his hand away. "I said forget it."

"Nah, now that you've brought it up, I'll tell you." There's a silly grin on his face that you can't help but return, just a little, because he hardly ever looks happy anymore. You bump your shoulder into his, say, "Well, get on with it."

You probably sound too curious and eager, because his mirth grows impossibly brighter. "You should probably know, before you expect too much, that pretty much all these things happened because I was an idiot, or a klutz, or both."

He gestures first to the dark keloids decorating his right knee. "The downhill biking incident that was doomed for the start. Poor old me limped all the way back home to a scolding instead of the comfort I deserved."

You can almost see him at eight, a hole torn through his jeans, dragging his mangled bike behind him. You want to tell him that it's a lovely thing to think about, but instead you run your fingertips around the raised edges there, grinning hard when he jerks away with a sharp "that tickles, goddamnit."

There's a scattering of tiny shallow scars on his shoulder from when he fell out of a tree, an inch-long deep cut from a rusty nail on his bed back at the academy which earned him a tetanus shot, and the odd concave on his shinbone, you finally find out, comes from the time he tried to dramatically break down a door and ended up hurting himself more than making a point. You try not to dwell on how half his recollections involve Shane, "and this was at Shane's house," "so Shane dared me to put the cigarette out on my arm," "and it turned out Shane had to drive me to the other side of town." His eyes grow strange and unreadable, and you think about fog settling over still water, covering everything from sight.

You can't help but touch your hand, then your lips, to each one, if only to make that look go away. By the time you've reached the ones on his thighs, the playfulness has subtly changed into something else, something that makes you graze your teeth over the sensitive scar tissue to make him whimper. "And what about this one?" you ask, surprising yourself by how chewed-up your voice already sounds. You tap the white knot on the jut of his iliac crest, lick over it and relish the clean, bland taste, how his stomach caves in with a sharp gasp.

"That's, um." He pushes up on his elbows to stare down the length of his body at you, and he looks like a mistake you'll repeat for the rest of your life. "That's from baseball, actually. Wiped out sliding to third in the parking lot after school. Needless to say, that was the end of my career."

He smiles that odd, cold smile that doesn't hang right on his mouth. "Shane wouldn't let me forget about it for weeks."

Sunken feeling in your chest, and you feel so guilty for bringing up all these old ghosts. You crawl over him and you fit just right together, carved and slotting into place. Your lips are inches from his as you tell him, "Forget it, man. Just forget it."

He breathes out, a rustle like tumbleweed. Then he's pulling you to him, kissing you as if it's the end of the world all over again, and when you break apart for air the words come like a waterfall, stammering and torn.

"I know I won't be her, or him, but goddamnit, Rick, I –"

And before you can even get through it his eyes flash and he's flipped you over, pinning you to the bed, saying low and certain in your ear, "You never have to say anything to me. You never have to do anything, just be here now."

Somehow, inexplicably, you're good enough, you exactly as you are, and maybe this is the first time in years that you really believe that can be true.