Daryl was used to the sight of blood.
He'd grown up more wildling than man, and the Deep South of Georgia welcomed him like a lover whenever he stepped off the beaten path and into her dark heart. He'd killed, gutted and skinned more animals than he could count, had stitched up his own wounds and spilled his own blood in immeasurable amounts.
But this…
This was entirely different.
His hands shook as he knelt at Rick's side, dirty fingers ripping through fabric to clear a path for his eyes to see the entry wound of the bullet. Rick was still breathing, but barely, his eyes had closed moments before. Right after Daryl had lifted his own weapon and planted one right in the shooter's throat.
"Stupid," he growled to himself, sitting back on his heels and running his hands through his long hair. He didn't care that Rick's blood was smearing across his skin – the metallic, salty scent of it reminded him that Rick was alive. He was still alive, still breathing. If he was bleeding that meant his heart was still beating. "Stupid, son of a bitch, don't you go on me."
There wasn't anything he could really do. If he waited too long, cops would show up, alerted by the shooting. He had to move Rick – Rick would be pissed if he woke up in a hospital bed, or in a jail cell. His anger would come over Georgia like a reckoning if he woke up and Daryl wasn't there, keeping his bed warm and his gun clean and his compass fixed.
His hands still shook but his shoulders were strong, hauling Rick's dead weight up and onto his back and dragging him out of the house. Rick's breathing was shallow, his face pale and skin clammy with sweat, but he was still breathing.
"Don't die," Daryl whispered. "Ain't no one allowed to kill you but me, you get that?"
Rick didn't respond. Daryl worried the inside of his lip, stepped out of the house to make sure no one could see them, and turned to disappear into the wooded area that fringed the neighborhood's backyard.
Daryl got them back to their safe house within the hour. He had been very careful to drive the speed limit and drove a new vehicle: one that wouldn't have been registered as stolen yet. And he'd pulled Rick's shirt off and given the man his jacket instead so that the blood wasn't such an obvious stain, and wore his old bike gloves to hide the red that had seeped into his fingerprints, etched a place under his fingernails.
He bit at his thumb the whole drive home, achingly sad at the fact that Rick wasn't awake to reprimand him for it. When he'd come off the highway onto the long dirt trail that led to their shelter for the time being, he'd floored it, listening to the engine rev with a reluctant whine.
Damn it, didn't the dumb thing know just what precious cargo it was carrying? How much every second counted?
Their place was little more than a shack, long abandoned by whoever used to own it, but it had good sight lines and a clear shot from all the windows and the door, and was far enough away from the bustle and noise of civilization that unless the dicks were driving a fucking Prius, no one stood a chance of sneaking up on them.
Daryl clambered out of the car and rushed inside, throwing the door open and shoving the weapons and old takeout bags off of the large wooden table that dominated the center of the room so that he would have a space to lay Rick out on. Then, he went back and hauled the unconscious man inside, placing him with utmost gentleness onto the table.
Rick's eyes were moving back and forth behind his eyelids, his breathing was slow but steady.
"Rick," Daryl whispered, petting a hand through the man's sweaty hair. He sucked in a sharp breath, and left one more time to hide the car behind the shack and make sure there were no tell-tale headlights of someone following, before he closed the door, propped a chair up under the handle so that it couldn't be opened easily, and dragged his crossbow and Rick's gun belt to the corner of the room.
He had to get to work. Rick would be pissed at how panicked he had allowed himself to become, but now, in the relative safety of their hideout, Daryl found himself calming down, recalling now what he had to do. There were bags of blood for each of them, stashed in a cooler for exact scenarios like this. Rick was a paranoid person, but a practical one. He hadn't grown up wild like Daryl had, but it was something he'd been born with – a deep-seated distrust and frenzied determination that drew people like Daryl and made sure all possibilities were accounted for.
Rick was the sun, lurking along the horizon of Daryl's existence like an eternal dawn. One day Daryl knew Rick would either break free and light up the sky, or he'd sink below the Earth and disappear forever. Such was the life they led. Rick was the kind of man who urged other men to war, with a voice that could make mountains bow and could make the ragged ocean waves cower in submission. He had the eyes of a wildcat, sharp and steady, a tiger's growl that rendered his prey immobile.
"Rick," Daryl said again, once he'd hooked up one of Rick's blood bags and started the slow drip into his arm. Daryl had never been a junkie like his brother, but he had track marks all the same, as did Rick. Daryl rubbed his thumb over a recent bruise from a bloodletting and tried to swallow around the lump in his throat. Rick didn't move, didn't respond. Daryl lifted his other hand to stroke down the side of his face. "Remember, Rick – I'm the only one s'allowed to kill you. You remember that?"
It had been a secret, soft promise between them. Men like Daryl, men like Rick; they lived fast and quiet and slipped between cities like coyotes in a sheep pen. But Rick had promised.
"Only one gets to kill you is me, sweetheart. Remember that."
Daryl remembered that night, how he'd bent and spread for Rick, melted before him like molten iron and allowed himself to be poured and molded into whatever shape Rick desired. Daryl had grown up hunting, of course, but he'd never found his favorite prey until Rick had stepped into his life, guided him like a shepherd controls his dog, like a boulder diverts a trickling steam.
When he was sure the blood was going into Rick's body correctly, he set about stitching the wound. The bullet had come clean out the other side, which was good because Daryl knew his hands weren't steady enough to go digging, so he got one of his old fishing hooks and tied a line through it, threading it through each wound until it was sewn shut.
It was ugly, but Rick was beautiful. He always would be.
Satisfied that Rick wasn't going to bleed out, Daryl hauled out the duffle bag of bandages and antiseptic Rick also demanded they keep in stock, and cleaned and wrapped the wound as best he could. He knew he was probably doing things a little out of order, but he didn't give a fuck. As long as Rick survived, Daryl would take any kind of anger the man had over his scar or his pain.
Rick never hurt him.
He could. Oh, he could, and Daryl might even let him.
But he never did.
Daryl knew what he was. He was a shadow man, and danger and darkness followed him like a scent he could never wash off and never hide. But Rick was light – he was hydrogen bombs and solar flares and the deathly hot center of a volcano. If Rick were to disappear, the sky would break and weep for the loss of its sun, and Daryl would fade into the darkness from whence he came. It wouldn't be something as dramatic as suicide, but Daryl knew he would die if Rick did.
"Your call, baby," he said quietly, leaning down to cup Rick's face, brush their noses together, let his lips drag against Rick's open mouth. Where you go, I'll follow.
As it had always been.
Daryl kept watch all night, his crossbow always close by. Like Hell was he going to let a no-good sonovabitch get the drop on them again, not like they had at the house.
Fucking stupid. The guy wasn't supposed to be there. It was Daryl's job to make sure the house was secure, and he'd fucked it up. God, Rick was going to be furious when he woke up.
But he hadn't known! He hadn't known that the family that lived there had a friend staying the night. He didn't know that said friend was a light sleeper and crashing on the couch. By the time Rick had had his fun, they'd been about to leave. They could have just left.
Daryl rubbed a dirty hand across his face, scowling at the flecks of blood itching at his skin. Rick's blood. He checked the bag, replaced it with another. Rick's pulse was feather-light but it was there, and the bandages weren't leaking. He'd done a good job sewing the bullet wounds closed, even if it would turn into an ugly knot of scar tissue.
Rick didn't have scars. Rick was flawless, new and crisp as dew-touched grass in the morning. He was untouched by mortal sin even though he wallowed in it day in and day out. He was a God, deigning to touch Earth, to give Daryl a taste of what paradise could be like with a strong, wild thing at his side.
But now Daryl had marked him. Rick didn't like marks, and Daryl knew he really wasn't worthy of leaving them on the man, but now Rick bore a mark from his time with Daryl. Even when the inevitable happened at Rick slipped away from him under the cloak of some night he was too bright to belong to, he would have that wound and know that Daryl was in his flesh, somewhere, burrowed into his bones and DNA. Daryl would be able to come for him in the night, in the crack of a bone that still held remnants of a drug long-abandoned.
Rick always came for Daryl. No matter what. Now he'd never be able to leave.
"I love you," Daryl said, rubbing his thumb across Rick's brow. He should clean Rick up, wipe his face, put him in clean clothes, but the thought of moving Rick now was one he couldn't stomach. If it jostled his wound or broke his stitches and he got hurt because of it, Daryl couldn't survive.
He ate from their rations – enough for him and enough that he could chew it and open Rick's mouth, work it in with his tongue and pet Rick's throat until he swallowed. Taking care of Rick was something that was second nature to him – since they'd met; Rick was Daryl's entire world, his existence. Without Rick by his side Daryl would crumble into dust, wander until his bones wore down to sand and he became one with the Earth again.
Maybe then he would find Rick on another horizon.
Rick slept for two days and three nights. Daryl fed him, kept the blood pumping into his system, cleaned his face and bandages every hour like clockwork, and kept watch. He fell asleep fitfully, little bursts of minutes that felt like betrayals and made his headache worse by the second.
Eventually, though, Rick stirred with a grunt. It was a soft sound but had Daryl shooting to wakefulness in a second, going over to Rick's side to cradle the back of his head gently and help him sit up.
"Easy, Rick," he coaxed, his fingers threading through soft, sweat-damp curls. He rubbed his thumb underneath Rick's ear, his other hand pressed mindfully against Rick's bandages, careful not to get them peeling or tugging on his stitches.
Rick grimaced, his hand flattening over Daryl's on his side, and gritted his teeth.
"You were shot," Daryl said, his voice still so soft like he was trying to talk a jungle cat down from killing him. Rick's eyes opened, blinked once, twice, sharp and blue as a cloudless summer sky and God, he's so beautiful Daryl wanted to fall to his knees at that moment.
Only caution kept his legs steady, unwilling to do anything to jar Rick's movements. He watched Rick's eyes take in the scene, watched as Rick raised a hand to his mouth to wipe his lips of the taste of what Daryl had managed to feed him.
Then, Rick turned his head. They were so close that their noses brushed when he did so, and just like that first time – just like every time after – Daryl lost himself in those eyes. They were the eyes of a man standing on a bridge over the freeway, the eyes of the first man to see the Earth from space; equal parts wondering and bleak and vicious and kind.
Daryl licked his lips, ground his molars together, and bowed to the grip of Rick's hand on the back of his head, pulling him in. Rick's fingers held him tightly, fingers catching on the knots in his hair. Rick would have to cut it again soon.
He loved when Rick cut his hair. There was a very specific, careful kind of ownership in that – the fact that Rick took pride in what he owned enough to keep it looking a certain way. The feeling of Rick's sharp knife and clever fingers skating along his neck, flirting with the line between intentional danger and mastery.
That thought, combined with the look in Rick's eyes, sent a shiver through him as their lips met. It was a soft thing, but an insistent kiss, like Rick had fought through the armies of Hell to lay claim on Daryl's mouth. Maybe he had. Who knew what men like them would see when they were clinging by the fingertips to the land of the living.
Daryl let out a shaky breath against Rick's mouth, his thighs digging into the edge of the table as he pressed himself closer and Rick pulled him in, until Daryl's hands braced him up on either side of Rick's hips, until both of Rick's hands were in Daryl's hair and clinging to the back of his neck.
Rick pulled away, finally, his eyes overtaken by black, and rested their foreheads together. Daryl bit back a whine, knowing the sound made him appear as a beaten stray, desperate for its master's touch – but that was what he was. That was what Rick made him. Rick was a God of the Georgia wild and Daryl his consort, his loyal worshipper.
They stared at each other for a long time. Rick had a power, a voice, that could make the dead rise up and follow him, but his silences made Daryl want to slide to his knees and run his hands along Rick's body, worship him in the carnal way he'd always been taught was wrong before Rick saved him from his feral self.
So he went to his knees again, watching with an open mouth and wide eyes as Rick swung his legs around and parted them just enough to make room for Daryl between them. Daryl stretched his body upwards to try and keep their foreheads together, only parting and settling back on his heels when Rick loosened his grip in Daryl's hair and let him sink down into his adoration. Daryl's hands ran up Rick's thighs, fingertips running along the edge of his bandages.
Rick's mouth twitched upwards, but he didn't flinch. Rick never flinched. He never backed down.
"Thought you were gonna leave me," Daryl whispered, and even his voice was too loud, too bracing against the church that their hideout had become. The cement floor, artfully dripped with Rick's blood, made his knees ache, and he was exhausted from lack of sleep and hungry to the point where his gut clenched in the same kind of aching sadness that the thought of leaving Rick caused.
Even still, he would do whatever Rick asked of him now. Because he was still alive, and if he was still alive then it meant he was willing to fight to keep Daryl by his side, standing one step behind him on his right, as it always should be.
Rick smiled, then – cool and blessed as a winter wind, and ran his knuckles along Daryl's cheekbone, one finger tracing the line around his eye and pushing his hair back from his face. "Not ever gonna leave you, sweetheart," he said, his voice raspy from disuse.
Daryl gasped, his fingers tightening on Rick's thighs again as he leaned up onto his knees, sitting forward so that he could accept the gentle kiss Rick laid to his forehead. He'd seen with his own eyes the kind of cruelty and sadism Rick was capable of, but Rick treated Daryl with so much gentleness that, had he not seen it, he wouldn't have believed the tales. Even the wildness in Rick's eyes only hinted at the things the man was capable of.
"I killed him," he growled into Rick's chest. "The bastard who shot you. Put a bolt right in his neck."
Rick chuckled, and even though the action must have hurt, he showed no sign of feeling the pain. But Rick liked pain. It made him joyful, his smile like the first pink touches of sunrise on the horizon.
"Of course you did," he replied, his lips brushing Daryl's hair. One of his hands cupped the back of Daryl's neck again, the pressure soothing and steadying, the weight of a collar on an animal desperately needing to belong to somebody. "Made 'im die slow, didn't you?"
Daryl nodded, warm pride flowing down his spine at the approval in Rick's voice. After all these years, Daryl could tell Rick's mood just from the way he said Daryl's name, in the rhythm his fingers tapped out on the steering wheel. He knew what it was when Rick cocked his head at a certain angle, stepped left between two houses with his eyes narrowed and his fingers twitching by his sides. He knew Rick bored, giddy, ruthless, tired. He knew this man.
"He hurt you," Daryl murmured into Rick's neck, pushing up on the balls of his feet until he could reach, nosing along the flexing tendon and insides fluttering with the feel of Rick's pulse, fast and steady and alive, under his lips. "Wasn't gonna let the bastard live after that."
Rick laughed again, fisting his hand in Daryl's hair to pull him back, and shoved himself to his feet. The IV tube fell out, blood smearing through the hair on his arm, but neither of them paid it any mind. Rick turned them; his mouth guiding the tilt of Daryl's head, his fingers pushing against Daryl's shoulders, his hips spinning Daryl's around until the backs of Daryl's legs hit the table. He stumbled, righted himself against Rick's body and let out a pitiful moan when Rick licked at his lower lip, tender and sore from Daryl worrying at it for almost three solid days.
Rick hummed, his eyes the same blue as the bottom of a clear lake, dark and dangerous with how they could lie to a swimmer who tried to dive in. Those kinds of lakes are miles deep but look like puddles and pull the wayward in until they drown. Daryl would drown, over and over, because only Rick is allowed to do that. Only Rick has the power to hold his head under. He would give his last breath for the man.
Rick looked him up and down, the look of a man in a whorehouse or a wildcat stalking its prey. Finally he let Daryl go, his fingertips dragging across the dark circles under Daryl's eyes, catching the slight, exhausted shake of his arms. "You been sleepin'?" he asked, frowning when Daryl shook his head. "Ate?"
Daryl shrugged one shoulder. "A little," he replied. "You were more important."
It was an unspoken rule. As long as Rick survived, the world would keep spinning. Daryl couldn't imagine that existence would want to go on if Rick were to die. The world would mourn the loss of one of its last true wonders. Daryl couldn't go on if Rick was gone: the world may as well burn with him.
Rick frowned again. He always did when Daryl ignored his own needs. Like he was as important as Rick was. "Come with me," he said, holding out his hand and Daryl took it and allowed Rick to lead him over to where they stored their dried and canned food. Rick grabbed two bags of jerky off one of the shelves, at a height where he wouldn't have to bend, and snagged a can of peaches as well – Daryl's favorite. They always took some from the houses they searched if they had the time and the space for them.
Daryl smiled, taking the can, overwhelmed at Rick's kindness and the gentle, loving brush of Rick's fingers over his. They went back to the table and sat down on it, Rick absently gnawing on his bag of jerky while Daryl cut open the can of peaches with his knife and gingerly skewered each slippery slice with the same weapon.
"I'm not done with that neighborhood," Rick said after a while. His eyes were gleaming, almost silver in the fading moonlight. The colors of the sky were just about to change.
Daryl nodded. He knew. That house they hit was the first one, but there were at least half a dozen like it in that cul-de-sac alone. People who had done wrong, people who deserved to die. Rick knew. Rick was a prophet, a horseman in the first cavalry wave. They were fighting a war against sin and corruption.
Rick had dreams about these people. Whoever he dreamed about had to die. Daryl knew, one day, he'd be in Rick's dream and Rick would aim that pretty Sheriff's pistol at him and he would die. But he also knew that there were only two bullets left in that gun. A romantic part of him believed Rick when he said that the last bullet was for him, that when Daryl left this world Rick wouldn't be far behind, but he never paid much mind to that because that still meant that there would one day be a world in which Rick didn't exist, and Daryl didn't like to think about that.
They were wanderers, their names whispered between lovers at night for fear of doing wrong, their faces plastered on TV stations and in newspapers, and their reputation spreading far and wide. They were dangerous, murderers, serial killers, evil.
He shrugged one shoulder, digging out the last peach and tilting the can up to drink the heavy syrup.
Rick caught his chin when he was done; turning him with such severity that Daryl almost fell off the table. Rick had that wild look in him again, the same energy that must have formed the first men out of mud and dust, the part of humankind that ran on instinct and kill or be killed.
Daryl dipped his shoulders, lowered his eyes, and whimpered when Rick kissed him, meat and sweet fruit balancing on their tongues.
When Rick pulled back, his chest heaved, his teeth showing behind his parted lips. "God, I love you," he said, with the same rough certainty as tectonic plates sliding together, the same inevitable collision as a crashing plane.
Daryl's soul leapt, between their skins and filling the air with enough joy he was sure all of Heaven could see it. "I love you, too," he replied, his answer the quiet breeze in an icy cave, stirring whatever great beast slumbered within.
Rick smiled. "Then come on, sweetheart," he said, pushing himself upright on legs that could survive the Earth crumbling down around them, straitening shoulders that bore the entire sky. "Let's go hunt."