Chapter Ten

Daryl Dixon was shit at waking up in strange places. It had taken him weeks of practice before he'd finally awoken in Shane's bed without that familiar bout of panic. And during those few weeks, Daryl had shoved Shane away from him, fallen awkwardly to the floor, and hyperventilated briefly against the wall more times than he cared to admit.

When he was young, he'd always wake up in his half-broken bed, or with Merle beside him. Sometimes it was both. But as long as Merle was there too, it didn't bother Daryl much if he came to out in the middle of the woods, or in some random guy's basement, or on a yacht. He'd run the gambit, but if Merle was in sight when Daryl opened his eyes, then he knew things were fine.

The first time Daryl had woken up without either of his stipulations met was the night after his mom had burned. The night commemorating his first beating. He never told Shane that part.

But really, Daryl couldn't control the way his body tensed to steel and heart took off like lightening when he woke up in a bed much too comfortable to be his own, head pressed against a pillow that was warm, and moving, and snoring slightly.

"Go back to sleep," came the immediate, displeased and sleepy grumble from the pillow beside him. Daryl breathed out a sigh of relief.

Shane. Just Shane.

"Can't," Daryl murmured back, having to work harder than usual to pull himself up off the bed.

Shane cracked an eye open, "You hurtin'?"

Daryl grunted noncommittally, shrugging a shoulder and trying to appear blasé about it. "Ain't you?"

"'Course," Shane said seriously, finally sitting up himself. "Y'alright?"

There was a tense silence, during which Daryl could plainly feel Shane's eyes on the side of his face, before he quickly mumbled, "Will be."

TWDTWDTWDTWD

The social worker's visit was a dreary affair. She was a bustling woman with curls cranked to maximum volume, an ill-fitting blazer, and a briefcase that kept bursting open and spilling her files across the floor.

Her voice was a hum; a string of mismatched words that Daryl couldn't focus on. He didn't want to, mostly.

"In order to become Mr. Dixon's temporary guardians, you'll need permission of his primary guardian, and of the state—"

"He ain't gonna do that," Daryl interrupted, speaking up for the first time since she'd arrived. The adults in the room looked at him in surprise. "My dad ain't gonna give permission," Daryl clarified. "Ain't there some way around it?"

"And we don't want to be temporary guardians," Mrs. Grimes added, taking Daryl by surprise, "Daryl can stay with us as long as he wants to."

"Unless you can provide evidence that your father is unfit as a guardian, then he still has some say in the process—"

"He's a criminal. Ain't that enough?"

"Unfortunately, no. As your father, he has power of attorney for you, and can decide himself who gets custody of you while he is in prison. So long as he chooses a competent adult, these types of rulings usually aren't questioned. Really, the only situation in which a judge might overturn it is if the un-incarcerated parent files a motion…but in your case…"

"So what do I gotta do?" Daryl sighed, getting frustrated. He really didn't want to recap this again. Your mama's dead and your dad's in prison. You're basically an orphan.

"You would either have to convince him to sign over custody to the Grimes', or prove that your father is unfit as a parent. Though I should warn you that if you do the latter, he'll likely lose custody of you permanently. It's difficult to contest these types of things from inside."

"You got a camera?" Daryl asked. The woman eyed him in confusion, and Daryl felt Shane shift closer to him on the couch. The Grimes shot him a look of shock and solemn understanding. "Why, yes, but—"

"If he hurt me, s'been hurtin' me, is that enough proof for you? You people will leave me be?"

The woman stared at him blankly for a moment. And that moment felt enormous, elongated and wide and bursting at its seams. Because even though a handful of people knew what his father had been doing to him all these years, Daryl had never said it aloud. Not once.

He hurts me. All he does is hurt me. Don't let him do it again.

"I—" the woman went speechless, for the first time since she'd arrived. "Yes. If you can prove it, then he'll lose custody. I'll make sure of it."

"Why don't we give Daryl some privacy?" Mrs. Grimes offered, apparently just for her son and husband's sakes. They clambered slowly into the kitchen while Daryl unbuttoned his shirt, and Shane helped him to peel back the gauze.

Daryl stood up, holding the woman's fixated gaze. "This is what he did to me before he got himself arrested last night."

He turned around slowly, keeping his eyes on Shane and only Shane while he felt the woman rise from her own seat, and move towards him. He was expecting the gasp, he really was. But the noise still made him grimace, face going red in some mixture of humiliation, anger, and determination.

"I—" she murmured again, at a loss for words. She seemed to want to say a lot of things. Probably tell Daryl how sorry she was that he'd gone through this, make promises that it would never happen again. To his relief, she instead only murmured, "Let me get my camera."

After that, her examination only spanned a few minutes. He trembled the entire time, hands fisted at his sides. Fleetingly, he hoped the pictures wouldn't come out too blurry. But the worry of that didn't much help with his shaking, only deepened his blush to a mellow burgundy.

Daryl had only ever allowed two people to see his back in its full, horrific glory. The second had been Shane, mostly out of necessity. The first was an ER doctor when Daryl was ten. I fell down a cliff, Daryl had told her, scratched up my back real bad on the fall, couldn't reach it myself. It had been such an obvious lie, he thought. And the woman hadn't seemed the least bit convinced. But at the end of the night, she'd sent him right back home to daddy, escorted by two police officers. It's state law, she'd told him, I'm sorry.

He couldn't remember if he'd replied to her out loud, or in his own mind, but Daryl certainly remembered the words.

Me too.

When it was over, Shane was quick to usher him into the bathroom, change his bandages and get him somewhere isolated and quiet. He didn't say anything once they were alone, just waited for Daryl to show him what he needed. But he didn't need much, in the end. Just a curt nod and a pat on the shoulder before heading back out to face the world.

Later that night, Sheriff Grimes pulled him aside, after dinner.

"What you did today, that was incredibly brave," he told him, "And I don't want you to ever think otherwise."

He'd shrugged it off, and headed back towards the bedroom he and Shane were to share for the second night in a row. And Daryl was more than grateful that neither of Rick's parents had seemed to question that. Though he had overheard Rick's mother ask Rick about it, before heading up to bed.

Rick had mumbled out something along the lines of, "They're friends. Good friends."

And that had been the end of it.

TWDTWDTWDTWD

The first night without Shane had been the hardest. He'd headed back to his own house, under the command of his mother, and left Daryl alone with the Grimes family for the first time.

He'd been hiding out in what was now his room, when Mrs. Grimes popped her head in the door.

"Dinner in five," she said, giving him an expectant smile.

Daryl put down the book he was reading to look at her. "I'm fine," he replied cautiously.

She frowned at him. "Daryl, you must be hungry. You didn't take the lunch I packed you today, and you hardly ate breakfast."

He worried at his lower lip. "I could get a job," was his abrupt offer, and Mrs. Grimes' frown turned from worry to plain confusion.

"Why would you do that?"

"To help pay for the food, an' everything—"

"Daryl," she cut him off, but with an understanding sort of smile, and a sad look in her eyes. "You're not a tenant here. You don't need to pay rent or pay for food. This is your home too, and I don't want you to feel bad about taking whatever food you want, however much you want, whenever you want. Understand?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good. Now let's go eat."

TWDTWDTWDTWD

Eventually, Daryl's body got used to having three square meals a day. The way Rick's mother fussed over him still made him uncomfortable, but not worrying about when he'd eat next was a welcome change.

The day after Shane left was a Saturday, and Sheriff Grimes drove with Daryl over to his old house to pick up whatever he wanted to keep, and help him sort out the rest. They'd taken Daryl's truck, at the younger boy's insistence. He knew Rick's dad didn't really understand why, but you couldn't just roll around his side of town in a cop's cruiser. They wouldn't be safe.

Once inside, Daryl tried to be as quick as possible. He hated the look in the man's eyes as he surveyed the danger zone that was Daryl's childhood home. But luckily, there wasn't all that much for Daryl to collect. He shoved some clothing into a trash bag, and grabbed his bow and spare bolts.

Daryl held the bow possessively when he returned to the living room. He wanted to be out of there already; the house was an embarrassment. Empty whiskey bottles and beer cans littered the floor, along with faded copies of skin magazines and cigarette butts that never made it to the ridiculous bikini bucket that his father had used as an ashtray. The only furniture was a broken down armchair and a TV on the floor opposite it. There were clear jars surrounding the chair, all half-filled with what the Sheriff surmised to be spit. Finally, he looked up at Daryl.

"Is it alright if I bring this?" Daryl asked him hesitantly.

The Sheriff cocked an eyebrow, "You know how to use it?"

"Yessir."

"For hunting, I assume."

"Mmhmm."

"You do that for sport?"

Daryl paused a beat. "S'food."

Rick's dad nodded mostly to himself. "Alright. You promise not to use it in the house, in the neighborhood for that matter, and you can take it. I trust you. Just make sure you don't keep it loaded."

And that was probably the first time he'd seen Daryl smile.

TWDTWDTWDTWD

Shane was over every other night, but on the nights he wasn't, Daryl kept to himself. He'd chat with Rick briefly at the breakfast and dinner table- mostly one-worded answers: the Dixon special- but generally just hid out in his room. It wasn't his family, and he didn't want to intrude.

Rick only stood for a week of this before knocking obnoxiously loud on Daryl's closed door just after dinner that night.

"Yeah?" from inside.

Rick swung the door open. "Come play Mario Kart with me."

Daryl gave him a skeptical look. "Never played before."

"That's okay, I'll teach ya. But it's more fun with some else, so c'mon."

Fucking stubborn Grimes men.

"Yeah, okay."

They walked out to the living room, where Rick's parents were sitting up against each other on the couch, both reading. Daryl and Rick plopped down on the floor in front of the TV, and Rick rather excitedly showed him the basics.

An hour passed by before either of them knew it.

"Yer cheatin'!" Daryl accused.

"To hell I am, you just suck at this!" Rick replied with a laugh.

"It's my first time!"

"Yeah, well it shows."

"Yeah, well screw you Grimes. Gonna eat your words."

"Aw, you're all talk."

"Quit runnin' me off the damn road!"

"I wouldn't have to if you'd quit bein' a baby 'bout it."

"Call me a baby one more time, see what happens," Daryl spat, but he couldn't hide his grin.

"Oh, and now he's pouting too. You're a sore loser, anyone ever tell you that?"

"Well pushin' buttons ain't much of a game. Oughta see how you'd do on a real road."

"No one's racing any cars," Mrs. Grimes interjected.

"Aw c'mon mom," Rick griped, "My reputation's on the line."

"Listen to your mother," Sheriff Grimes announced distractedly, eyes never leaving his book.

"You heard the lady," Daryl mocked, shooting Rick a triumphant smile.

"Jerk."

"Dick."

"Boys!" both Grimes' voices echoed.

After that, Daryl didn't hide out in his room anymore. After dinner, he'd hang around in the living room with the rest of the family, playing video games or watching TV, or sometimes just reading. There was something comfortable about it, albeit foreign, and Daryl fell into the routine quickly.

TWDTWDTWDTWD

Shane noticed the change faster than anyone.

It was a slow process. Incremental, over the few weeks Daryl had lived with the Grimes. But each time Shane saw him, the truth became more and more obvious.

Shane wasn't the only one who could make Daryl smile, anymore.

And even though he was happy for Daryl, and he really was, he never expected that realization to sting quite so much.

Rick and Daryl had inside jokes now. They'd chuckle conspiratorially, even when Shane was present, and tease each other over incidents he hadn't been present to witness. Rick spent just as much time with Daryl as Shane did now, and even when Shane came over, it wasn't quite the same. His visits weren't just about him and Rick anymore; and he and Daryl were never quite alone.

If Shane really put any thought to it, the honest source of his frustration was probably his perpetually blue balls. Ever since that first, desperate time, Daryl hadn't let Shane get much further than kissing. And even then, he'd only let the older boy touch him with the door practically barricaded, and their clothes firmly on.

Daryl didn't feel comfortable leaving the Grimes' house overnight yet. He'd been offered a home, and he figured it was plain insulting to neglect it for his dick's sake. And Shane didn't hold that against him, but the wait was becoming maddening.

They'd had the conversation more than a dozen times.

"C'mon, Daryl. I want you."

"Shane, stop. Can't do this here."

"Then come to my place."

"I…can't. Ya know I cant."

Rick and Daryl broke into another round of laughter, referencing some movie they'd watched the night before, and Shane finally snapped. He stood abruptly from the table, chair legs screeching against the tiled floor.

"Goin' to bed," he ground out, already out of the room.

And he'd only paced the length of Daryl's bedroom twice before the archer himself appeared at the door.

"Y'alright?" he asked, almost shyly, and in the softer version of his voice that nearly always made Shane's aggression melt away.

Not this time, though. "M'fine," he spat.

Daryl stepped the rest of the way into the room, closing the door behind him. "Yeah? 'Cuz ya don't look it."

"S'that right? Well why dontcha go chat with your buddy Rick about it?" Shane growled, immediately embarrassed by just how juvenile he sounded.

Daryl huffed incredulously. "S'that what this is about?"

"Dunno what you're talking about," Shane replied stubbornly.

"Need to hear me say it ? 'Cuz I will," Daryl said firmly. He waited for Shane's eyes to meet his. "S'like you said in the beginning, I ain't lookin' at every guy that passes my way. Just you. So quit bein' a dick."

Shane sighed, scrubbing a hand over the back of his head. "I know I'm being nuts. I know it."

"You are. And you know as well as I do that Rick's straight as a board."

"Coulda said the same thing 'bout you a few months back," Shane said with a small grin.

"And ya best keep on sayin' it if ya know what's good for ya," Daryl said lowly, with an exasperated smirk.

Shane approached him slowly, resolutely, walking Daryl backwards until he was pressed up against the closed door.

"Shane…"

He slotted his knee between Daryl's slightly parted legs, and ran a hand down the younger boy's torso, making him shiver.

"Now I don't believe for a second y'ain't needin' this as much as I am." He provided the slightest amount of pressure against the boy's growing bulge, and Daryl groaned lowly.

"We can't—"

Shane cut him off with his mouth, consuming him with tongue and lips, going deeper and wetter until neither of them could breathe properly anymore. All the while, he snaked a hand between them to pop open Daryl's faded jeans. With a flick of his wrist, he had Daryl's straining cock in hand. It only took a few strokes to get the younger boy panting.

"Fuck, Shane, fuck…" he whispered.

Shane shushed him close to his ear, "Gotta be quiet, Daryl. Think you can do that for me?"

He twisted his palm just so, and Daryl moaned against his mouth. Shane was grateful in that moment for Sheriff Grimes' obsession with the Longhorns. If not for the game blaring in the next room, they'd certainly have been fond out by now.

"S'been a long time for both of us, hasn't it?" Shane crooned, "But look how bad you're needin' this, man. Look how wet you are for me."

He bit down on the column of Daryl's neck, sped the pace of his fist, and Daryl cried out sharply before being silenced by Shane's mouth again.

"Do I need to gag you?" Shane teased when he pulled away, "No, not a gag. Not now, at least. You just need to come, don't you Daryl? You want me to make you come?"

"Yes," Daryl gasped, surprised that he could even put that coherent of a thought together when his world was spiraling as it was. "Yes, Shane. Please."

"So good for me, Daryl," Shane murmured as he sunk to his knees, and pulled Daryl's jeans down with him. "You're mine, aren't you? No one else gets to see you like this. No one else gets to have you."

A slick finger circled at Daryl's entrance, and his legs shook precariously. Shane pressed open-mouth kisses up and down Daryl's straining cock. "Say it, Daryl."

"No one else, fuck, no one- I'm yours, Shane- I can't- oh fuck, please," came the string words groaned all at once. But it was enough, because then Shane's fingers were crooked inside of him, and his mouth was dragging up and down Daryl's rigid length, memorizing the feel of him.

And since Daryl had been denying himself this for weeks now, it took embarrassingly little to set him over the edge.

"Shit, oh shit Shane, don't stop," he moaned. Daryl was close, so close, and he just needed—

Shane's tongue swirled around the crown, dipping into the slit.

"Oh god," Daryl groaned, hips pushing forwards into Shane's mouth, and boring down against his talented fingers. "Just like that. Just like that, Shane, yes."

Suddenly, it crested. Daryl cocked his hips and pumped forward, moaning Shane's name deep and soft before pleasure took hold of his muscles, careening him off that cliff of want and into Shane's knowing hands.

Daryl didn't go falling the floor, but that was only by Shane's doing. And it was just a half-second more before Shane was on his feet again, whipping his aching cock out of its tight, denim confines, and wrapping Daryl's hand around him.

Shane pressed his hand over Daryl's, forcing them to stroke together.

"Fuck, Daryl," Shane groaned, rutting into the tight grip.

And when Daryl had finally gotten his words back, he whispered, "Yeah, Shane. C'mon. Give it to me."

Shane's head fell to his shoulder in a gesture of uncharacteristic submission, and allowed Daryl to work him unguided. Both his hands fisted in Daryl's shirt.

"I know how bad you need it," Daryl told him, and Shane bit down on his lip hard. "Lemme see you come, Shane. Lemme see you come for me."

And with that, Shane shouted his release into the crook of Daryl's neck, mumbling curses in the aftermath and letting Daryl take charge of keeping him standing.

"Just 'cuz shit's changed, don't mean we've gotta," Daryl said softly.

If Shane could have gasped in a full breath, he would have wholeheartedly agreed.