The upper floor is free and clear, and unexpectedly clean.

He ransacks the place almost absentmindedly, but whoever lived there had cleared the place out, or some very neat scavengers have already been through, and there is nothing immediately useful.

He leaves the biggest bedroom but hesitates by the door. He walks back to the bed, checks over his shoulder almost guiltily, grabs a pillow from the bed and stuffs it into his backpack quickly. Returning to the main floor he is defiant, daring Glenn to say a word.

About what, Glenn isn't quite sure. "This floor is clear," is all he risks.

Daryl edges up to a window, careful to get a view of the street without making himself visible, scans the alleyway behind the house. It is blessedly walker-free aside from a few stragglers, probably chasing after Rick and Shane. A cursory check of the front window tells him it'd be best to take the back alley when they leave – the front streets feature a few too many walkers and what look like collapsed buildings, though it's hard to tell in the dark. It's going to be a while before they can leave.

They've got at least a half-hour wait ahead of them, and it's a long walk back to the cars after running hard in the wrong direction, and Daryl is dead tired. It's been a long, awful day. If he didn't know any better he'd think he was still hung over.

Glenn is sitting against a wall with his arms curled around himself, out of sight of the windows, with the doggy bag set by his side. The little nuisances are once again asleep, although how they manage it in such a confined setting and after such a stressful day is beyond Daryl.

"So. That was fun, huh?" Glenn tries, half-heartedly, to break the silence.

Daryl grins, "You're a weirdo, you know that?" He sets the crossbow on the floor in easy reach and then tosses himself onto the leather sofa. It gives just the right amount, still smells decadent and leathery, and he lets out a long, contented sigh, almost a moan. After a moment of blissful wriggling that Daryl would under no circumstances admit to, he dangles his head off the side of the sofa and twists to regard Glenn.

Upside down. So he's feeling a little bit buzzed and surreal right now. Fuck off.

There's something wrong with Glenn, obvious even from Daryl's atypical observation point. He screws up his eyes and stares intently at Glenn, even going so far as to turn back upright.

It's in the way he's sitting, hunched in on himself, tension standing out more than it should during this brief respite. Curled around his abdomen as if… "Aw, shit," he curses, sudden and loud. Glenn flinches, head shooting up to look for trouble, and the sudden movement makes him wince. This visual confirmation that they're both idiots only serves to irritate Daryl further.

"Forgot you're wounded. And why'd you keep quiet about it? Normally couldn't get you to shut your mouth for love or money," he grumbles, hauling himself upright. When he catches the half-hearted smirk, he adds, "And I ain't offering either. But why wreck a good thing now – keep your trap shut for a while, would'ja?"

"Just for you, asshole," Glenn manages. He's still panting and keyed-up from the recent flight from the walkers, and exhausted. The cut across his ribs is throbbing in time with his pulse, a steady searing burn along his abdomen. Running, every movement seeming to tear the gash open wider, every jolt seeming to wrench in new and inventively painful ways, had not been a wise move on his part. And now he's starting to feel faint and nauseous and the room is spinning a bit. "I, ah. I think I might've lost a bit of blood," he says, to Daryl's alarm.

He edges in closer, reaches in to bat the kid's hands out of the way and peel up his shirt to assess the damage. There's a fair bit of it. The gash, while it doesn't look to have damaged anything essential, is still bleeding sluggishly. Probably because Glenn's been running around with the damn thing. The whole area is covered in fresh, angry bruising. And while Glenn certainly isn't the dirtiest person in camp (though, Daryl himself is in the running at this point) there is enough grime on his skin and clothes to make infection a real possibility.

"Just what we fuckin' need," Daryl mutters to himself. "Why'nt you say anything, you goddamn idiot?" he says louder, for Glenn's benefit.

Glenn has to make a visible effort to focus, and Daryl viciously squashes down the gnawing feeling of wretched, useless concern and sympathy in his chest. It's useless, and it'd probably be unwelcome even if he did feel like expressing it. Which he does not. "Uh. We were a little busy. And I've nothing to clean it with now, Rick's got m'bag." The slurring concerns Daryl some, as does the haziness. Not good signs. How much fucking blood has the kid lost, he wonders desperately. And what is he supposed to do about it here, in a house that's already been picked over, with hardly anything useful on him, surrounded by geeks?

And, he thinks with a hot spike of irritation, fuck Rick for taking the bag with the supplies and medicine in it. He and Shane had seen that Glenn was injured too. This isn't just on Daryl. "Fuckin' clumsy chink, what'm I supposed to do about this?" It's when Glenn doesn't immediately clarify that he is 'Korean-alright-you-stupid-hick' that Daryl gets honestly scared.

He needs to clean the gash as best he can, get some antiseptic or something on it, wrap it, feed the kid and get some antibiotics in him for good measure. Needs to get both of them, and a sack-full of fuckin' puppies, through a geek-infested town back to safe haven, where he can rip Rick a new one for leaving him with the injured bastard and the useless dogs, Glenn for being so goddamn stupid (and earnest and goodhearted and, just, goddamn stupid), and Shane just for being Shane. Fucking assholes, the lot of them.

He thinks as long as he can stay angry, he can avoid getting afraid for the kid's sake. Fear will do good for exactly no one right now, and Daryl Dixon is a lot of things, but useless is not one of them.

He rummages in Shane's bag, hoping that there'll be at least some of what he needs – clean water, antiseptic, antibiotics from what he can't help but think of as 'Merle's Clap Stash'. No such luck, of course, nothing more useful than a bottle of water. Still, better than nothing. He crouches in front of the kid who is all but passing out. That won't do.

He takes both of Glenn's shoulders, gives him a solid shake until the kid is glaring at him. "Glenn. Glenn! Look here. Look right here. Recognize me?" He waits until he gets a nod and mumbled confirmation. "Good. So just remember, if you faint on me like a sweet little princess, I will never let you live that down. Got it?" Another nod, more mumbling. Goddamnit. "I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere now," he says, squeezing Glenn's shoulder again before standing.

Upstairs he yanks the nice, clean sheets from the bed, hauls the whole bundle back down and dumps it. He cuts it into a few long strips, stopping periodically to irritate Glenn into paying attention. He's cleaning his hands and really not looking forward to the next bit, with the actual touching. "Hey. Hey, princess. What'd I say about nodding off?"

"Fuck you, you redneck dickhead," Glenn glares. "M'not passing out, okay."

He shifts a little closer. "That's more like it, princess. Gotta clean out your stupid paper cut now. Gonna be okay?"

Glenn raises one arm and lifts his middle finger; Daryl snorts. He figures that's probably as good as a yes. "Walkers outside. So if you're a screamer, now's the time to share," he continues with a thoughtless double entendre. Too late to retract the words, and too late to stop himself imagining. He grits his teeth and does his level best to ignore the mental images, his own blushing, and the smirk Glenn is sure to be sporting.

"Hah," Glenn laughs, sounding pained but making an effort. "Wouldn't you like to know," he mutters. "Just do it, it's fine." He looks away, clenches his jaw and balls his fists.

Daryl pushes his shirt a little higher on his torso and starts cleaning, water and cut out pieces of bed sheet coming away grimy and bloodstained. He notes, absently, the way the muscles flutter and contract in Glenn's stomach, listens to Glenn's harsh breathing, the only sound in the room bar an occasional snuffle from the dog bag.

Cleaned, the cut looks much less alarming, though goddamn painful. It has mostly stopped bleeding in the interim, which is a relief except that without the immediate urgency of a gushing wound, Daryl is free to think of non-emergency things, while he is still crouched over Glenn, hands still full of smooth bare skin.

Cleaned, Glenn is starting to look quite tempting. Daryl is taking in the lines of his body and having some slight trouble looking away, when his hindbrain suggests pressing his nose to clean skin and inhaling deeply, followed up immediately by licking a long stripe up the lean torso. He swallows hard when it helpfully supplies a picture, too. Glenn tenses again, whimpers quietly, and Daryl clenches his jaw. "Almost done," he says, drifting the back of his knuckles along Glenn's side, thoughtlessly comforting, and looks up. Glenn has dropped his head back, neck stretched and hard with tension, fists clenched tightly at his sides, breathing quick and shallow. And Daryl, god help him, wants to make it all better. He swallows.

He wraps Glenn's midsection with strips of bed sheet, ties them off gentler than he would have been for Merle and definitely without the harsh finishing jerk that Merle would have finished with. "There ya go," he says, just barely resisting the idiotic urge to pat the wounded area in demonstration ("see, I fixed it!").

His nigh-constant discomfort with others is making itself known again as he remains there, kneeling before the kid with his shirt still hiked up high on his chest. Glenn says nothing, and the longer the silence stretches on the more sickly certain Daryl becomes that his interest is clear on his face, and that Glenn is disgusted.

He draws back, pulling defensive walls up around the soft, (weak) vulnerable feelings of care and yearning, feelings that would make him feel antsy and exposed at the best of times. He looks away and starts drawing back, but freezes at Glenn's hand on his arm.

"Thank you," he says, and Daryl looks back at him. Glenn's smile is arresting, enough that he doesn't notice Glenn moving until there is a hand on the side of his face, fingertips resting along his jaw. He watches Glenn lick his lips and feels a flush spread along the back of his neck and across his face.

He tries to pull his eyes back up to meet Glenn's, smiles uncertainly, "It, ah, it was nothing." Normally he would step back, look away, scrape his hand along the back of his neck to banish the heat lingering there. But Glenn's hand is still resting along the side of his face, warm and compelling. He leans in without thinking, bracing his arm on the wall above Glenn's head, drifting closer. Glenn smiles up at him and his other hand slides up Daryl's arm, drawing heat in its wake that spreads all over Daryl. Then Glenn tries to sit forward he and winces and Daryl, certain that he has done something wrong, backs right off, Glenn's hands falling from him. "Y'alright?"

"Fine. Fine, just pulled on my," he rests a hand over his bandaged side. Glenn looks away, suddenly uncertain himself.

Daryl decides maybe Glenn was making a mistake, while his thoughts were hazy from pain and exhaustion. He's probably relieved that he came to his senses when he did.

Daryl, who has no such excuse, suddenly regrets not acting when he had the chance. Then he feels ashamed and guilty at his urge to take advantage, and then humiliated and angry that he would have been no more than a mistake to Glenn, something to be ashamed of. It's all too much to deal with, and Daryl is too out of practice with his own emotions to be bothered with it.

He looks away before he speaks, voice tight. "Yeah. Right. Well, we," he checks the window, notes that not only is the street clear, but the sun is rising. "We should get going." He hoists his crossbow, really ready to just get fucking gone already.

"Okay." Glenn stands, gingerly, arm around his middle, and turns to the still-sleeping dogs, reaching out to lift the bag.

Daryl takes one look at Glenn and shakes his head. "Nah, that's not gonna work." Glenn glances at him warily and Daryl's chest clenches unpleasantly at the look, one ha hasn't seen from Glenn in weeks. He pushes Glenn aside and drapes the dog bag across his own shoulder, settling it and adjusting his hold on the crossbow to compensate. It's awkward, but with luck he won't be carrying it long.

"Oh. That's what you meant. Okay. Okay. Let's go," Glenn says, looking down.

Daryl furrows his brows, shoulders the door open. They're both of them hobbled, Glenn by injury and exhaustion, Daryl by the burden he's carrying. The walk back is walker-free, but the tension in the air turns it into one of the longer walks of Daryl's life. That tension is not helped when they get back to the cars to find Rick pacing furiously and Shane nowhere in sight. Daryl snorts in disgust, foreseeing yet more bullshit, and starts loading the closer car. Glenn, of course, is immediately concerned, starting toward Rick. "Rick? Where's Shane? Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, fine," Rick says, curt and distracted. "We had a disagreement, he's walking back. We'll probably catch him up as we go, he just left now. Why don't you head back with Daryl, I'll pick Shane up if we pass him by."

He frames it like a question, but that's an order if Daryl's ever heard one, and Glenn recognizes it, too, nodding and heading back towards Daryl. He's clearly uncomfortable, looking anywhere but at Daryl, and just as clearly in pain. If Rick's head wasn't stuffed so firmly up Shane's ass, he would see it plain as day.

Glenn is moving so slowly and hesitantly, pained and glancing back every few steps as though looking for rescue, that Daryl has the pups settled in the back seat, and is sitting behind the wheel by the time Glenn arrives at the passenger's side. Rick has, by this point, already driven off, no doubt in search of his precious butt-buddy. Considering how essential he and Glenn are, it's pretty ballsy, the way the rest of the camp sometimes clearly doesn't seem to give a shit. He hates them especially, lately, for not looking out for Glenn the way they should be. They have a goddamn duty, and they're failing fucking miserably.

Daryl, seething with badly contained anger, stomps on the gas as soon as Glenn has shut the door, slamming his unprepared passenger back into the seat.

The resultant quiet, pained gasp makes Daryl feel far more guilty than he is comfortable with, and this in turn gets him angrier. He speeds up, the shitty car finally giving a satisfying growl as he reaches highway speeds on a poorly-maintained country road. Just ahead, Rick is pulling over next to a figure on the side of the road, doubtless Shane. Daryl feels a sudden, dark urge to swerve just a little to the right, slam into them both. In his mind's eye he can see clearly the fiery wreck that he would create, hitting them at this speed.

It scares him a little, how briefly tempting it is, and he slows the hell down, breathing deep and slow. The urge is gone, vanishing as suddenly as it had occurred, and he shakes his head.

His head is in a mess all the time, lately.

The horror and stress of his everyday life, the uncertainty of their future, and his entangled mess of conflicting feelings for the other survivors, all banding together and fucking him up. He can't tell whether he's coming or going sometimes. Not a moment of privacy to just settle in and sort it all out, and the moment he is alone he wants, he needs, really, to be around people again. And that is a problem of its own, of course.

Ever since the end of the world, Daryl can't stand to be on his own. He can be alone, of course, and god does he need to be alone sometimes, but just the thought of being really on his own (abandoned) sets him on edge. The walkers, their twisted, broken mockery of humanity, make the physical reality, the physical presence of other people, deeply reassuring. It's a primal thing, a regression to hindbrain instincts. Others like you mean safety. The sound of people, the rightness of the way they move, the wholeness of their bodies, even the smell of them, the feel of whole, healthy flesh (on the rare occasions that he unwinds enough to be touched without snarling like a dog); it all reads safety, belonging, home. Being around people is like scratching an itch deep in his psyche.

There is something terrifying about the prospect of trying to live alone, with the world like this, never being sure that you were safe, never being able to sleep, knowing that if you were ever trapped or stranded, no one would come for you.

And fuck, who the hell is gonna come for him?

(worthless, waste of skin, ain't nobody ever going to care about you except me, little brother, one of these days they're gonna scrape you off their heels like you were dog shit)

No one. Why bother, for Daryl-fucking-Dixon? He still remembers the reactions at camp, their incredulity at the thought of precious Sheriff Rick risking his life bothering to go back for his brother after abandoning him on the rooftop, their scorn for Daryl, outright dismissal of Merle as someone worth saving. Merle wasn't worth any one of their lives, apparently, and why would they think any different about Daryl?

It hadn't been so bad before Merle had vanished. (ain't nobody ever going to care about you except me, little brother) For all his flaws, Daryl depended on Merle to be there for him, to watch out for Daryl and trust that Daryl would watch him in turn. He felt as secure in that relationship as he felt in anything else in the world. Not absolutely certain, but it was sure as hell better than nothing. And then Merle had up and vanished, maybe died, in exactly the way that Daryl is desperately afraid of – abandoned, left behind, discarded. Worthless. Scraped off someone's heel like so much dog shit.

He's half-afraid he's failed Merle, and half-afraid that he's next.

It's worst by far when he's trying to sleep. He used to share with his brother, tent, car, room, whatever; whenever they stopped to sleep, Daryl was with Merle. The first thing he saw when he woke was his brother, and the last thing before he went to sleep. It was a reassuring constant, as the world went mad around him. Now, though, he sleeps alone. And he hasn't slept through the night since Merle disappeared, waking at every little sound in the night, suspecting either walkers or foul play or abandonment.

It is a miserable, wretched way to live, and he can't keep it up.

"Daryl?" Glenn's voice is small and rasping.

"What?" he snarls.

"Where're you going?"

"The hell d'you mean?" Daryl frowns. Has Glenn managed to hit himself in the head, too? He's starting to wonder how Glenn gets dressed on his own, uninjured, never mind getting in and out of walker-heavy cities undetected.

"Uh, it's just that the turn was, uh, there," he jerks a thumb back along the road behind them. Daryl glowers at the steering wheel for leading him astray, and thinks wistfully about just kicking Glenn out and gunning it, driving off into the distance, somehow moving fast enough to leave all the turmoil in his head behind. And when he does, damnit, he is taking the dogs with him.