Title: Stalking the Darkness
Summary: He just needs to know that his brother is there.
Notes: One shot. This isn't supposed to be creepy... I think it might come off that way though.
It was a strange thing, to be able to recognize someone from their breathing.
But he'd spent enough of his life by his brothers side to recognise it anywhere. As kids, sharing a room, a lull through Daryl's teenage years where Merle was away with one thing or another and then surprisingly in the apocalypse, they'd share a tent. A tent big enough that the two had plenty of space to call their own, but still, he could hear Daryl. Knew it was him.
And since meeting up with Daryl again this was the first time he'd been able to really listen for it. The first time Daryl had allowed himself to rest and relax.
So this place, this prison... this cell where Daryl felt safe, more than when it'd been the two of them out in the wild, he felt content here, with these people. Not with Merle. Merle wasn't enough any more. He needed more.
He hadn't been at peace with the two of them. He hadn't been able to settle, to rest. He'd forced Merle to follow him, to do what he wanted, and that never happened. Merle always reigned. Merle always lead. Damn, was like it wasn't even his brother any more.
So in this cell, a cell with two beds, Merle had taken the bottom bunk. Too old to lay claim to the top bunk like he would have don kid, telling Daryl he was the baby and had to sleep on the bottom bunk. Sometimes, when Daryl was old enough, he'd climb up top once Merle had drifted off and he'd wake up in the morning to see Daryl in bed with him.
He let him when he was little, but when he got a bit older, Merle beat it out of him. Too big to do shit like that.
His brother wouldn't be a fucking pussy.
In the darkness, Merle could make Daryl's sleeping form across from him. Dumb bastard was sleeping on the floor. Didn't wanna sleep on the top bunk.
Merle really had beat that outta him.
Merle swung his legs off of the bed and placed them on the floor. It was cold beneath him, even with the socks covering his feet still. He picked up the flash light from the floor and he quietly walked over to Daryl, knelt over his sleeping form. Daryl was sleeping on his side, one arm underneath a blanket he was using as a pillow, the other resting against his side, and Merle gently rolled the sleeping man onto his back. Daryl didn't stir and Merle stared down at him in the darkness, unable to make him out clearly. It could have been anyone really, it was just a vague outline and Merle wondered where the moon was on this night. But he didn't switch the flash light on. He placed it down by his brother.
His hand was resting gently on Daryl's chest, he could feel the rise and fall of it gently beneath his hand and it was soothing.
He ran his hand Daryl's chest slightly until he felt the top of Daryl's shirt and then he felt around for the buttons. He quickly undid the top three, and his hand delved onto Daryl's bare flesh, felt for the marks that made his brother. He barely noticed the hitch of Daryl's breath, the quickening of his breathing, didn't notice that Daryl had woke because all he concentrated on was knowing that this man laying here beside him really was his brother. Because damn, it looked like him in the light but he didn't really act like Daryl any more, and here in the dark, maybe he could find out the truth. And he felt it.
One of the familiar lines of raised skin, scarred and ragged and never to heal and disappear. But that was Daryl. He knew those scars as well as Daryl did.
And something made Merle reach for the flash light then and flick it on, and he pointed it just to the right of Daryl's body, so that the light didn't shine in his eyes.
And Daryl raised his hand against the light anyway. And when their eyes met Merle saw the fear and confusion in Daryl's face. He wasn't sure what Merle was doing and his closeness, his touch still frightened him. Still unnerved him even as this new man that paraded around in front of him. And Merle could see the tears in his brothers eyes, unshed, but they were there.
He was still afraid of him.
Merle lowered the flash light but didn't turn it off, placing it on the floor, casting strange shadows across the room. Merle reached back across to Daryl shirt and pulled it closed, hiding the scars away again.
He remembered the first time their Daddy had beaten Daryl badly. The cuts he tended too for Daryl, how he helped him hide them afterwards. His own shame at letting it happen. Those weren't just Daryl's scars, they were Merle's too. So it was in his interest to keep them hidden too.
They were blood. When one of them bleed, the other did too.
"Ain't gonna spill any more blood, lil' bro. We done our share," Merle said, his hand on Daryl's chest again. Feeling him breath, feeling his heartbeat. And then he moved his hand and the warmth he felt from Daryl was gone. He flicked off the light, plunging them back into darkness.
He lay down on the bottom bunk again and closed his eyes.
And he waited to hear Daryl's breathing change again, knowing his brother was back asleep.
But it never came.