A/N: So many fictions! So little time! This has been a long time coming. Oh, and this was all stitched together by my Voodoo witch doctor- er- I mean Beta, Cranberrrry! Really it wouldn't exist without her so if you like it, go thank her, she's nice =) I still have the same beta she just decided to change her name.

Warning: lazy author, mild language, I probably rated this wrong but hey best be on the safe side!

Disclaimer: Not for profit just for sick little effers like me that get off on this fictiony stuff! I do not own the Walking Dead

The Walls.

Chapter three: A Chip.

Of course it would be Rick, the man had a knack for popping his little damn head up at the most inopportune times. I swear he could read minds. I think I growled something at him, but really I wasn't sure what. I couldn't listen to my own mouth with Rick standing there screwing up the universal flow. No one could mess a man's Zen up like Rick Grimes.

He seemed so confused that we were out here, alone together. As if he weren't the one to walk away from camp, all alone into the woods. I guess it was kind of odd how we always ended up just us two, like all the people of the group just sort of gravitated away when we got within arms reach of each other yet we managed to get so much closer to one another. Must be some freaky supernatural magnetism. That would be a laugh.

At first I had hated it, despised it even. I didn't know what to say to him without salivating on my feet and I was always paranoid that I'd somehow manage to accidentally grope him- not that I would be opposed to that, but there would be hell to pay. Rick made it easy for me to be around, talking to me instead of at me like everyone else. He talked just enough to fill the void between us, but not so much that I wanted to hit him.

All in all it was pleasant, I even found myself replying unconsciously. Maybe Merle had been wrong and I wasn't socially retarded after all.

My crush on Rick grew with all the old cop stories and companionable silences. Sometimes I'd see him sitting there just looking at me. At first I didn't like the looks, but they grew on me. He wasn't looking at my scars or my erratic mood swings, so that made it okay.

Then came the touching. He'd grip my arm when he laughed at something I said, not tightly or painfully, but more like a miniature hug. That had begun sometime around when I showed him how to skin squirrels without butchering the meat. I couldn't say that I minded the bloody handprints around my forearms.

When he would address the group it all happened as usual, all calming vibes and passion in his eyes, but recently he'd started inching closer to me. That was a single monumental change that only I seemed to notice. Once, eons ago, I was across the room from him. Now our arms brushed with every intake of breath. For the first time in my life I felt wanted.

He always kept me around. I became more intimate with him than his shadow. He even liked testing the barriers of how close. It was almost some sick game he played, "Will the damaged boy snap if I'm only an inch away?" I never did though. I liked the sudden attention. I felt spoiled and pampered. No one had ever spent the time to talk to me like Rick had. I became an individual.

There was a niggling bit of my brain that felt guilty for being Shane's replacement. Of course, then I remembered what a total dick the guy had been and any guilt disappeared.

I was always there just over Rick's shoulder. I did my best to stay within shouting distance of him if I could. Somewhere for whatever reason I had taken it upon myself to designate me as Rick Grimes, newly appointed dictator extraordinaire's body guard. Once I even flinched when Dale approached him too suddenly. I've since calmed down a bit.

I think I had developed feeling for Rick a long time ago. Maybe it was when we had to rescue that damned Chinaman, I really couldn't say. The conviction in his eyes just never left and that was utterly intoxicating to me. I needed him safe. I wanted him happy. I craved to satisfy him. I could handle the first, easy. The second and third were Lori's job and I was quickly learning the bitch was a massive slacker.

Sexual frustration could also be a vital explanation for Rick's horrible grumpiness. Besides, the woman was a skeleton, I couldn't see the appeal in sleeping with her anyways. I wouldn't be the best judge of that, playing for a different team and all.

But there Rick stood looking as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Why didn't I just give up? I must be a real sucker for a dominant male…

"Mind if I sit?" he said in that northern twang that used to get on my nerves. What a fucking asshole. He actually had the nerve to ask if he could sit by me? I wasn't anyone but the local white trash, what was his deal? What an idiot. Why the hell wouldn't he sit?

"Tch. Sit your ass down Grimes before I have to forcibly sit it for you." I am nothing if not a gentleman. Momma did tell me I should think before I spoke but I never did take those words to heart. However, forceful did work.

"Right." Rick scrambled to the edge of the wall not wanting to fall but also not wanting to have his ass forcefully attached to any sort of rock object. He shifted uncomfortably on the cold surface and hummed a world weary sigh. We had always had our silent drops in conversation but they had always been comfortable. This silence was going to be awkward, I could tell before it even started.

"A walk, huh?" He looked at me like I had asked him if he dressed in his dead mother's clothing and murdered young women instead of if he were taking a walk. Eventually he settled to a nod, not really meeting my eyes. "Would you maybe wanna get back to walking?" I was as much of an English professor as I was a gentleman. My words had this awful tendency to come out all twisted around one another and lacking in the sense making department.

"Oh." Rick glanced over with those unnatural blue eyes of his looking all the like I had shot his best hunting dog. He bunched his legs up under him and stood too quickly. For a second I was worried he would plunge into the dark water at my feet. He didn't look too sturdy.

He was already to the tree line before I decided to follow him. Not follow really, more of catching up to him. It didn't seem fair to leave the man walking by himself out in the cold like this. "Rick, wait." I slipped back into my habit of barking more than speaking. I hadn't intended on it sounding so harsh but it was so foreign in the silence of the autumn woods. It cut through the darkness and bounced off all the trees around us, effectively freezing us both in place. Rick finally meeting my eyes.

"I didn't mean to go by yourself." All was quiet for longer than I liked. He shifted in the sandy dirt and pursed his lips. That dark brow of his pinched with insecurity.

"Yeah?"

"Rick you shouldn't be out here all by yourself. It's really fucking stupid you know that? Are you even armed? I don't see your," I'd moved while talking to him, somehow completely out of my will I had made it within inches of him, my words floating in the dead silent space between us "Python." I heard my voice break on the last word when his enticing eyes broke through my tirade. Had I really gotten so close? Why did I always do stupid things like this?

I swallowed and cleared my throat, "Why are you out here by yourself anyhow? Don't you got a family and a nice warm tent to go back to? 'M sure your wife wouldn't want you out here in the dangerous forest like this. You might not come back alive."

I couldn't be held responsible for my diarrhea of the mouth. I was still pissed from earlier and just thinking about her in their tent with their son laying in their sleeping bag. Why did the only person I could connect with have to be part of a "they"? Stupid skinny bitch…

He shuffled around again and looked down pitifully. "Lori…." he cleared his throat much like I had. "I don't think Lori will want me in her tent for a while."

Had he really just said "her" tent? Not "my" tent or "our" tent but "her" tent. I was more than a little speechless but damned if I didn't feel like tap dancing. Best news I had gotten all day. I was complete prick for rejoicing over a failing marriage but this was a long time coming.

"I don't exactly know where I'm going to sleep tonight. Guess I just wandered out here…" I had never been one for reading a situation but it sounded like a cry for help to me. I chewed on my lip a little doing my best not to sound so enthusiastic.

"I still have Mer's old sleeping bag and there's plenty of room in my tent." I gritted my teeth waiting for the slow let down I was sure to receive. My worst nightmare next to being torn apart by walkers was for Rick to reject me. Needless to say my body tensed up for a harsh blow. I knew he would say no and politely decline and walk back to camp, go into his and Lori's tent and ask for forgiveness for whatever she were mad at. That was just the natural order of things there was no use in-

"Daryl, are you sure?" I cut my mental ramblings off and looked back to Rick who was beaming at me. "You would really do that for me?"

"Well yeah. Sure. I mean I washed Merle's sleeping bag out so it isn't so nasty, you don't have to worry about that…" What the hell was going on? Rick just kept looking at me with those rounded eyes and thanked me. He actually thanked me as if letting him sleep in my tent was a favor to him. Damn Grimes could really twist a situation.

And the universal magnetism took another lurching spin in a foreign direction.