Orbiting

The sound of the door creaking open jolted Rick from his sleep. He sat up, rubbing a hand over his face before glancing at the figure in the doorway. He met his son's gaze and nodded once. Carl retreated back through the door without a word, leaving it cracked open. Rick sighed heavily, watching as flecks of dust swirled in the beam that bled in through the opened door. The light was a grey color of an early winter morning, the dust dancing like snowflakes as they settled to the ground. The house was relatively warm, sturdy concrete walls kept the tiny bungalow insulated to some degree, of which Rick was particularly thankful for right now.

He turned his head to look at the figure lying next to him in the bed; the purple quilt that bedded down Daryl's side had been kicked off at some point in the last two hours since Rick had fallen asleep. Daryl was curled into a ball in the center of the mattress, shivering violently. Rick reached out a hand and pressed it to the other man's cheek, feeling heat beneath the prickle of his scruff.

No change.

Rick sighed again, flipping his sheet off of him and swung his legs off the bed, slipping his feet into his boots, which had been haphazardly toed off by the end of the bed. He walked around to Daryl's side. In the darkness of the early morning Rick couldn't quite make out his features but he knew that his sleep was restless. Nonetheless, he picked up the quilt and draped it around the other man, tucking it close to him in hopes that it may stay in place this time. He gently stroked the back of Daryl's head once before walking across the wooden floor and exiting the bedroom.

He slunk quietly down the little hallway with its two doors, one to the bathroom and another to a closet, emerging into the kitchen and living room combination that made up the front of the house. This part was much brighter, a glow of early morning light made everything have a strange bluish tinge, a sleepy color. He went towards the couch where he knew he would find his daughter.

She was sleeping curled on her side much the way Daryl had been, but her face was smooth of emotion. He leaned over the back of the dusty, old cloth couch and brushed her auburn curls away from her soft face. Judith stirred slightly but didn't wake, so he kissed her cheek gently before straightening up and heading out the front door. It opened with much less noise than the bedroom's door had. Carl was sitting on the porch steps, peeling white paint off of the wood railing. When he heard his father he stood, unfolding his gangly teenage body and picking up the rifle he'd laid near him.

"You ready?" Rick asked softly. His voice was preceded by transparent clouds of steam. He had shoved his hands in his pockets as he stepped into the crisp morning air.

Carl nodded; his long nose, so much like Rick's own, was red from the cold.

"Be safe." Rick reminded him, even though he knew he'd see the flash behind Carl's cobalt eyes.

To his credit, Carl just see-sawed his jaw for a second, his face was all sharp angles at his current age of seventeen, giving away any sort of emotion that he attempted to hide. "I will." His voice was calm as it drifted on the morning air.

"I mean it."

"I know." Carl shifted from one foot to the other but held his father's steady gaze for a few moments.

"Be back before dark." Rick clapped him on the bicep, letting his hand linger for a moment, giving his boy a gentle squeeze.

Carl quirked his lip up before stepping away, shouldering his rifle as he jogged down the stairs.

"And Carl?" Rick raised his voice so that Carl could catch it above the sound of frost crunching under his feet.

Carl stopped and cocked his head, waiting for more instructions.

"I love you."

Carl turned his head then and smiled at his father. "Love you too."

Rick stood on the porch despite the cold and watched as his son disappeared into the woods, a knot of worry tied itself on top of all the other ones in his gut as he felt Carl move farther and farther away from him, and he knew it would not release itself until Carl returned safely at dusk. Rick finally made his way back inside, checking on a still sleeping Judith before heading back to the bedroom. He toed the door open, attempting to be quiet but failing miserably as the hinges squeaked in protest. His sneaking was unneeded though because Daryl was sitting up against the headboard. His head rose as he heard Rick come in. Fever bright eyes met Rick's.

"You're supposed to be resting." Rick admonished as he sat on the bed and pulled off his boots. He crawled up to the headboard, turning to rest his shoulders against the back of it, one of his arms brushing against Daryl's.

"Did he leave?" Daryl asked, seemingly unconcerned by the fact he was apparently supposed to be asleep.

Rick nodded and sighed shakily. Daryl bumped their shoulders together; Rick could feel the heat of his skin through both of their t-shirts, so instead of being comforted by the gesture his stomach churned.

"He'll be a'righ'." Daryl said, though the weakness of his voice did nothing to stir ease within Rick. His eyes started to drop close, and Rick was able to gently maneuver him back into a more lateral position. Daryl turned and curled up again, his face pressed against Rick's side. Rick could feel the heat from his forehead through his jeans on his thigh. He dropped a hand into Daryl's sweaty hair, tangling his fingers in the slick tresses. Daryl hummed drowsily. "He's a tough sumofabitch, just like his dad."

"Just like his Pa." Rick whispered to himself, since Daryl was already starting the snuffling snore that came with his runny nose. Rick rested his head back against the wall behind him and let his eyes jump around the room in the pale light that was steadily growing stronger, as the sun's position changed in the sky. There was a drawing on the wall that Judith had done, her little four year old hands tracing an image of himself, Carl, Daryl, and her. It was such a cliché picture that Rick couldn't help but write "My Family" at the top before helping her pin it into the drywall of the little back bedroom.

Since this was the only room in the house, accessible only by the hallway, Rick had decided it would be Judith and Carl's room. They slept every night in the big bed together; Judith snuggled close to her brother, tangled up in each other like puppies. Carl had complained at first, but it had died off after the first few nights when Judith slept peacefully through the darkness, knowing her big brother was there to look out for her.

His daughter and son had been unceremoniously moved to the couches in the living room when Daryl had come back two nights ago from a hunt, soaking wet without a single catch. Rick remembered being relieved to see Daryl stumbling into the house, since it was well past dark and although it wasn't unusual for Daryl to stay out for two or three days at a time, he normally told Rick if he thought that would be the case. Rick's relief was short lived when he turned up their gas lamp to see Daryl dripping onto the floor in the yellow light of the room; his hair had pieces of ice clinging to it.

"What the hell happened to you?" He had harshly whispered conscious of his sleeping children a few yards away.

"Fell through the goddamn ice tryin' ta' get my rabbit." Daryl had attempted to growl but it came out as shuddering breaths, as if his lungs refused to take in air.

Rick had deflated immediately, his brain going into survival mode. "Take your clothes off." He'd demanded, turning to grab the quilt off the back of the couch.

"Ain't the time, Rick." Daryl'd smirked slightly as he started to peel his shirt off, already having dropped his vest to the ground with a water-logged thunk. He'd stripped in a shadowed corner of the room while Rick tossed a change of clothes at him from his backpack. Daryl had managed to slink into his clothes by the time Rick came towards him, draping the purple quilt over his shoulders and directing him to a chair by the kitchen table.

"Wait here." Rick had said, bending down to look Daryl in the eye, his hand clasped around the back of his neck, fingers wound into the frozen wisps of hair.

Daryl nodded, his eyes already beginning to drift closed with uncharacteristic exhaustion.

Rick padded back to the bedroom quickly and quietly, his socks finding little purchase on the hardwood floor. He opened the door. The creak alerted his son who lifted his head in vague confusion, dropping it back to the pillow when he saw his father's silhouette illuminated by the warm light travelling down the hallway. Rick walked around to his side of the bed, sitting on the edge and putting a hand on Carl's bony shoulder. Carl turned over, untangling himself from Judith who was curled safely into his side.

"Is Daryl back?" He asked quietly, his blue eyes blinking up to meet his father's, squinting in the low light.

Rick nodded. "Yeah, but he fell through some ice and I think I need to move him into here tonight. You alright with that?"

Carl moved his head to look at his sister, still peacefully sleeping. He sat up, his father getting off the bed as he did so. Carl maneuvered Judith into his arms gently before standing up, Judith's arm's wrapped around his neck in that half-conscious state so common with young children. Rick brushed a hand over her hair, kissing the back of her head before squeezing his son's shoulder.

"Send him back, would you?"

Carl nodded and then left. Rick listened to the muffled noises of Carl putting Judith on the couch and then the murmur of his voice delivering Rick's message. Daryl's soft tread was heard not long after making his way to the back bedroom. He appeared in the doorway, his shadow a long lump of blankets before he edged around the door and shut it behind him.

"K—k—kids went down a'righ'." He chattered, trying his best to keep from shivering.

Rick crossed the room towards him, finding the outline of his bicep and latching on to it through the pad of the blanket. He drew him down onto the bed, crawling in next to him and pulling a sheet over them both. Rick wrapped an arm around Daryl's torso, pushing his nose into the dip where his spine met his neck, breathing his warmth onto the chill of Daryl's flesh. He could feel every muscle in Daryl tensed against the shivering that he was attempting to control, although it was in vain for his body convulsed violently in sporadic intervals. Rick nuzzled his neck again before leaning his cheek against Daryl's cold head, pressing his lips close to Daryl's chilled ear.

"Relax. You're home." He'd whispered.

Like a rope whose tension had been cut, Daryl melted into him, each piece of his body fitting exactly against Rick's like water.

"No."

Rick was snapped back to the present by the harshly uttered word. Daryl was shivering violently beside him, muttering the word over and over again in time with his tremors. Rick shook Daryl's shoulders, gently and then more harshly, until his eyes snapped open and he began to sit up. His blue eyes were unfocused and cloudy as he looked around the room. He drew his legs up as if he was planning on springing out of bed. Rick put a firm hand on his knee. Daryl's head whipped around to him, brow furrowed as he jerked away from him.

"I gotta get goin' huntin'. Been too long."

"Daryl, Carl's already left. You need to rest." His long fingers searched for Daryl's bicep, pulling him back towards the bed with a firm grip.

"Can't rest. Work ta' do." Daryl's eyes locked on Rick but there was little behind them but steely, fever-driven determination.

Rick turned so that he could push his hands against Daryl's shoulders. "Daryl, this is the fever talking. Just lay down."

"Git off me!" Daryl snarled, the words were harsh and loud, echoing around the stillness of the house.

"Do you wanna bring every walker in a two mile radius down on us?" Rick regained his position from where Daryl's movements had thrown him. Daryl's legs were off the side of the bed, and Rick wrapped his arms around his front from behind, leaning back to pull Daryl towards him.

Daryl growled low, his chest rumbling beneath Rick's forearms. "Git the hell off me!" His voice came out desperate, cracking slightly and Rick had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself from releasing the man whose flesh was burning his skin where they touched, back to chest.

"Just lay down. Let me take care of you." Rick snarled, equally as frustrated, his heart thudding in his chest. This fever must be bad if Daryl was this surly, it had been a long time since Daryl had fought his touch.

"I don' need ya', Merle!" Daryl's voice cracked again, hard this time, as if a piece of ice was caught in his throat.

Rick froze; his jaw hung slightly open as his brain attempted to sort through the static and find something to say. Just as suddenly as the fit had come upon him it vanished and he turned to liquid in Rick's arms.

They sat there for a moment, Daryl resting against Rick's chest and thighs, before Rick dropped his head and kissed Daryl's hair; his scalp was so hot Rick imagined his lips might sear themselves right to him. In any other circumstance he might even enjoy that thought, but now it just worried him. They had no antibiotics.

They had nothing.

Rick used all his strength, back straining and aching as he pulled Daryl back onto the bed, turning him and tucking him in as if he was a ragdoll. Daryl hummed and snuffled a few times but made no other indication of being conscious. Rick began to crawl over him after he finished tucking the quilt tightly around his sides, when a burning hand reached out and grabbed his wrist. He stopped; his body midway over Daryl. He swayed for a moment, attempting to regain balance and looked down to meet the man's eyes. It was the first time in the last twenty-four hours that he could see some semblance of clarity. They held gazes for a moment before Daryl blinked and his hand slid from Rick's skin, dropping onto his stomach.

Rick sighed and positioned himself leaning back against the headboard again, eyeing the bottle of water that he'd brought in with him that he'd barely been able to coax Daryl to drink. He was lost in his own despairing thoughts when the door creaked, his eyes flickering towards the noise. Judith stood, unsure, in the doorframe; her hair mussed from sleep, her brown eyes wide and watery.

"Daddy?" she asked her voice soft and quiet. Her glance fell to Daryl, who must've looked like a lump of blankets to the little girl.

"C'mere, baby." Rick opened his arms to his daughter and she walked, hesitatingly further into the room, her eyes focused on the lump-which-is-Daryl as she made her way to Rick's side of the bed. He put his hands under her armpits and scooped her up, setting her down on the bed where she snuggled up onto his lap, her head resting just under his chin, her face turned towards Daryl's prone form on the bed.

"Can I touch him?" She whispered, almost reverently. Carl had explained Daryl's sickness to her the day before, when they had told her that he wasn't feeling well. It had been in that moment that Rick realized how lucky they'd been to not have experienced something like this for long enough that Judith had no memory.

"Gently Judy, he needs his sleep." Rick conceded.

Judith reached her tiny hand out and lays it just above his ear, stroking the brown hair once, like he was a small animal. She retreated almost immediately, curling further into her father, who wrapped his arms around her. The prospect of sickness must be terrifying to one so young, who knows only the harshness of their world, who knows nothing of medicine or remedies.

"Is Papa gonna be 'kay?" Judith pulled away from her father so that she can look at him, eye to eye. Her face was grave and serious, and though her brown eyes shimmer with unshed tears, she did not cry.

Rick thought for a long moment how to answer; if this had been back in the before he'd probably just nod and say everything would be fine. Yet, he didn't know that, and there was no point in sheltering Judith from these facts, she'd seen so many die in her young life, and she would probably see many more. This was not a world for sheltering the young. After a long moment, Rick turned the corner of his lips up into a sad smile, his thumb stroking against his daughter's still baby soft cheek. "I don't know. Your papa is strong, and he's fighting as hard as he can to come out of this."

It was all he could offer her. Judith scrutinized him for a moment more before blinking once and allowing herself to rest back against her father's chest. Rick put his nose into his daughter's hair, using her familiar scent to ground him against the panic he can feel moving up his throat like lava. He realized in this moment that during the eight-or-something years that he had known Daryl not once has the man had so much as a cold.

The thought that something simple as a fever could take Daryl from him seizes him with the kind of fear that makes you incapable of moving, of feeling, of thinking. Rick had never been as afraid for Daryl's life as he is now; not in Atlanta, not on the farm, not at the Prison, Terminus, and everywhere else after. Never feared after a close call. Never doubted Daryl when he would leave him for hunts. It was something that had always been attractive to Rick, drawing him to Daryl like a magnet. Daryl was safe. Daryl was steady. Daryl was fearless.

Daryl was invulnerable.

How stupid was he to think that? In this world no one was safe. Every day, even now, was one that he may not make it, that Daryl might not make it, that Judith or Carl might not make it. Yet, to him Daryl was constant; he was a never changing, never moving, force…and Rick orbited him like the Earth did the sun.

Judith stirred in his lap, breaking him from the distraught valleys of his mind, of which she was completely unaware. He watched as she scooted down his legs. She wiggled off the side of the bed, dropping onto her feet and looking up at him with a smile. She tiptoed quietly around the bed so that she was standing, peeking over the edge of the mattress, staring at Daryl. She observed him quietly for a moment before picking up his hand, which had come free of the blanket and was lying stretched out in front of him.

Rick's heart jumped to his throat at the image of his daughter holding the sick man's hand and he forced himself to swallow it back down into his chest where it belongs. Judith carefully picked up the appendage, using both hands to hold what must be a heavy weight to her little arms. She gently kissed his knuckles before dropping his hand unceremoniously back to the mattress. "Get better, Papa." She whispered before flitting around the other side of the bed again, beaming up at her father. "Can I go play, Daddy?"

"Yes, baby. Stay in the living room, and come back here if we have an unwelcomed visitors." Rick instructed, watching his daughter nod seriously at him before skipping off. He listened to her tiny footsteps as they head down the hall before they stopped. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, reaching out a hand to bury it into Daryl's thick, damp hair. "You heard your daughter," he muttered. "Get better, you bastard."

It isn't long before he drifts off into a sleep.

Days pass before the fever breaks and Daryl slowly begins to recover. There are long hours of Rick forcing Daryl to stay in bed, ending when Rick threatens to break his crossbow in two if Daryl doesn't stay in the goddamn room. They both know it's an empty threat, but Daryl relents; finally. He drinks his water and eats his soup with only minimal backtalk, and Rick wouldn't admit it to anyone but he enjoys taking care of the man who took care of him for so many years.

Rick is thinking this exact thought, sitting out on the front porch railing, his arm hooked around a post and his hands shoved in his jacket pockets, when he hears the screen door slam and the creak of wood as someone exits the house. He knows immediately by the light but long strides of the person heading towards him that it's Daryl. He sighs through his nose but decides that five days was enough of a win for him and that there was no way he was keeping Daryl in the house any longer.

Daryl slinks up to where he is sitting on the railing and leans his forearms on the chipped wood. "Ya' should prob'ly git down from there," he says, looking out into the woods beyond the house. "These beams won't hold ya' for shit."

Rick shrugs one shoulder nonchalantly and Daryl shakes his head. They sit in companionable silence for a long while, watching the sun color the sky with oranges and purples as it rises above the tree tops.

"It'll be spring soon," Daryl says, his eyes turned skyward.

Rick nods his head a little in acknowledgement, but doesn't speak, waiting on whatever it is Daryl really has to say.

Daryl shifts from one foot to the other before dropping his head down between his arms. He rolls his shoulders once before lifting his head again, sighing into the crisp morning. Rick watches their clouds of breath mingle for a moment before it disperses into the air.

"Thank ya'," Daryl mutters, it's quiet but firm and Rick knows how much it takes for him to pull those words from within him. "For takin' care of me."

Rick smiles, putting his hand on the back of Daryl's strong neck and squeezing slightly. Daryl turns his face and squints up at Rick, his eyes clear as they were on the day Rick first met him back outside Atlanta. "Just returning the favor…" Rick says nonchalantly.

For all those times you saved me. Rick thinks, but he doesn't say anything else. Instead he smiles brightly at Daryl, who turns the corner of his lips up before turning away from Rick to look back out beyond their measly front yard.

He nods slightly, though, and that's all Rick needs.