Disclaimer: I don't own The Walking Dead. Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.

Authors Note #1: For onedayyoujustchange who asked for: "How about one where Tobin pursues Rick :)" – Naturally this is a Rick Grimes/Tobin story.

Disclaimer:adult language, canon appropriate violence, blood and gore, slow burn, mild sexual content, roughly follows canon season 5-6 events, au where Rick and Michonne don't hook up but instead- Tobin bags himself Rick Grimes with a lot of innocent low-key trying.

Eumoirous

Chapter Five

"He's fine, probably just got turned around out there when the walkers separated them. We'll go and find him," Michonne assured. Meeting him at the bottom of the porch as Spencer and Health ranged around in worried off-centre circles orbiting them. Sheathing her katana with a seamless flip as she pressed close – assuring.

He just nodded. Not trusting himself to speak. Tasting the grey-stale of worry lumped thick in the back of his throat as his hand ghosted down the side of his holster. Saying nothing when Glenn, Rosita and Daryl joined the four of them at the gate. No words required. Ducking into two different trucks as the idea of overkill flirted its way briefly to the forefront before being dismissed just as quickly.

Tobin was out there, counting on them.

Therefore overkill was just a phrase people used to excuse themselves from caring.

And that wasn't him.

Not anymore.

Not when it came to Tobin, anyway.


"You got attached," Michonne observed later, once they were out on their own. Split up and trying to cover as much ground as possible.

"This is our home, isn't it," he answered, eyes to the ground as they followed the trampled line of a recently made trail through the long grass. Feeling her a bit more insistently at his back than he figured she should have been, given the circumstances. "I'm trying, that's what we're doing here - in this place - isn't it?"

"No, I mean you've gotten attached to him. Why?" she returned, bending down to examine a broken off fern. Cut off and drooping like something had clipped it. Could have been an animal. Could have been something else. But at this point it was all they had to go on. Her focus split enough that he knew she wouldn't let it drop without a satisfactory answer.

"Why does anyone do anythang'?" he replied, returning her smile in miniature as they came up to a road.

"Because we do, we just do," she hummed, scanning the trash-littered blacktop for any sign Tobin had been this way as a row of dumpy, squat little homes wavered through the heat haze half a mile away. It seemed like as good a direction to head as any for the time being.

Tobin would have headed towards familiar ground.

Somewhere he felt safe.

"It's a good look on you, you know," she observed, walking confidently beside him. Glancing at him sideways in the same way Lori used to whenever she figured he wasn't telling her the whole truth about something silly. It was a playful look. Light. "Seeing you happy."

Happy?

Was that what it was?

Was that what he felt when Tobin was around?

Honestly he didn't know.

He didn't exactly have a frame of reference to work off of when it came to-

"I think he's been a good influence on you," Michonne added teasingly. Surprisingly decisive sounding for the caliber of smile on her face as they passed a shed with a creaking door. Circling around an overgrown spit of land where the dull ivory of animal bones glinted through the sun-bleached carcasses of at least half a dozen shapes hiding in the long grass.

"He's not like us," he said bluntly. Feeling like he had to remind them both as the silence started to weigh. Doing something strange to the low hum of insects and the wisp of the wind through the long grass growing wild on either side of the road. And still, there was nothing. The longer they went without a sign, the less likely Tobin was-

"He doesn't have to be," Michonne returned. Fast on the uptake like she knew as she curved her stride into his for half a fraction. Sharing the same space – companionable and close – before branching off again. "There's no rule that says we all have to be the same. That we all have to be at the same level. Even out here."

He stopped, one hand clenched in the worn leather of his belt as he turned to face her. Squinting through the afternoon glare as the sun beat down mercilessly. Humid and heavy in his lungs as more than a few familiar emotions prickled.

"Yeah, but it helps, doesn't it?"

Her smile was strained this time around, but no less genuine.


They kept looking until two quick blasts of a car horn - their pre-arranged signal if anyone found something - startled the birds out of the trees.

By the time they got there, the others were already ringed around Daryl. Crouching beside a downed walker. There was a broken-off piece of metal embedded in its skull. Like someone had taken a metal shingle to it and sliced sideways like it was a Frisbee. A picture that was completed by a trail of red that staggered off down the road. And a single boot tread visible in the half-dried blood - angling due east.

"He's improvising," Daryl grunted, easing the sliver of metal out of the skull a couple inches before letting the corpse drop with clear disgust. "Must be out of ammo."

"That's good though, right? That means he's still fighting," Glenn interjected, one hand resting on his holster. Hopeful despite the flat set of his expression as the others milled around. One eye on the ground and the other on their surroundings. Watchful.

"This though-" Daryl added, pointing at the trail of blood. "-is fresh. That ain't walker blood."

He sank down on his haunches. Something cold and bitter-still making tracks in his chest as a flicker-flash of a possible present tense turned the near future into something hard to swallow. Part of him wanted it to be tangible. But the other part, the one that'd watched more than a few people die. Knew that anything could happen out here. Especially if you weren't used to surviving the same as they were.

Tobin knew how to handle himself.

More or less.

But he wasn't them.

He didn't have that experience, what if-

He forced himself into grimness. Thin lipped and without words. Not trusting himself to say something he might regret as Spencer and Health shifted in self-crimination on the other side of the circle. Awkward and guilty like it was their fault even though it'd been the herd that'd separated them.

He knew the odds.

He knew the chances.

He knew that every passing second the man wasn't within eyeshot mean't-

"He's fine," Michonne assured again. Firm just like the hand that ghosted across the hollow of his shoulder as he eased himself back up. Knees crick-cracking a negative as his free hand curled into a fist at his side. Pushing past the lot of them without a word as he headed off in the direction the blood was angling.


They found him wide-eyed and rank with speckled gore just before nightfall. At the very end of at least a half-dozen trail of walkers, holed up in the upper rung loft of an abandoned power plant. The place had been decommissioned before the end of things by the look of it. Covered with rust, graffiti and climbing vines. But clearly Tobin had headed straight for it. Reminding him of something he'd said in one of their late night conversations. Something about what he used to do for work before all this.

He'd eased open the door with his heart in his throat. Knowing somehow that either way this went, it was the end of the line. Pushing firm at the creaking metal as the bodies of the walkers, fresh and still bleeding forced him to dig his shoulder into it. Wincing at the sound as Daryl's crossbow firmed into the dip of his shoulder, ready to fire.

"Tobin?"

There was a moment of quiet. Stuttered and over-strong like not even the darkness could believe it, before the shadows above their heads shifted. Eyes adjusting slowly as he rediscovered him in that tired, wordless exhale that drifted down from the rafters. Staring at them with eyes that didn't look quite real in the glint of Rosita's flashlight.

Then, for the first time since Tobin had gone missing, everything started moving again.

He had his hands on him faster than he would have ever believed possible.

There was no hesitating.

No nothing.

Just hands like claws trying to curve inwards as he tipped up the man's chin and searched him over for bite marks. Heart in his throat the entire damn time as the man's lashes fluttered, letting him.

Handsome in that same tired way he had as Tobin shook his hand in silent answer when he got to the bandage fastened double around the inside of his palm. Unwrapping it with angry reverence and examining the deep slice until Tobin gestured towards the shard of sheet metal he'd been using as a blade.

"My knife got stuck, I had to improvise," he explained quietly.

He barely registered the warmth of the others ringed around them. How they nodded and smiled and clasped their hands on his wide shoulders before moving away again. The two of them were the only constants in each other's orbit and he wouldn't have had it any other way. For him, all there was – all that mattered - was that Tobin was alright.

His hands stilled, remembering themselves belatedly when they threatened to ghost as far as the man's Adams apple. Smudging the spackled red as the muscles in Tobin's throat trembled. It was almost offensively intimate. Yet it took everything he had to pull back in fractions. Far enough away to be border-line as he, Daryl and Spencer eased him down from the metal slates. Body stiff after a couple hours of sitting up in the eves. Out of range of anything that might sneak up on him when he had an injured hand and no bullets left in his gun.

"You alright?" he asked, voice like a stranger as it came out hoarse, soft like pillow-talk around the edges. Cushioning it in a way he knew Tobin didn't really need, but found himself wanting to give him anyway as haunted blue eyes caught on his and held him there.

"I am now," Tobin rasped back. Accepting Health's bottle of water gratefully despite never once looking away. Grounding them to the moment in a way he didn't quite know how to handle. But hell if he wanted to give it up. Not when he had the feeling it could be the type of thing that could set down roots and weather almost anythang'.

He'd lived off the honest buoyancy of that warm relief for days afterwards.


A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – There will be one more chapter, stay tuned.