Work Text:
Rick didn't like when people got secretive. Especially when they started getting secretive about what they were doing and where they were going. Maybe it's whatever remained of a cop in him, but upfront honesty got you farther than saying nothing at all.
Daryl was a repeat offender.
If you watched him closely, you could almost see him itching to get out of whatever base they were holed up in and back into the closest wooded area he could find. He was like a dog on too short of a chain, pacing circles in the front lawn until he was let free to roam.
The problem wasn't him not coming back. Somehow, no matter how long he disappeared, he always managed to be back before anyone had time to really notice he was gone. No, the problem was that Rick couldn't stand not knowing what he was up to. He trusted Daryl, more than he trusted anyone else in camp, but he'd trust him a hell of a lot more if he would stop sneaking off without saying anything.
So, he caught him one afternoon as he was slinging his crossbow over his shoulder and heading for the door of the cabin they were staying in.
"Got somewhere to be?" Rick asked, stepping up behind him.
Daryl raised an eyebrow. "You wanna eat tonight or not?"
"You're just hunting?"
"…Fuck else would I be doin'?"
Rick looked him over. It checked out, all his gear strung out on his belt and hunting knife in his hand. One thing was off, the pack of cigarettes in his back pocket, accompanied by a lighter Daryl slipped when he thought no one was looking.
"You said something about never hunting and smoking at the same time."
"Sure. Scent freaks out the critters."
"Right…so what's up with the cigarette box?"
"You're bein' real nosy lately."
Rick put his hands up. "I just wanna know where you're going."
"I don't know, ok? Just…havin' a smoke break."
Rick sucked his teeth in thought. Daryl tried to slip out the door, but Rick walked in front of him.
Daryl gave him a mean look. "Why're you bein' a dick?"
"Just let me go with you."
"What? No."
"Unless you can tell me where you're going, take me with you."
Daryl huffed. The annoyed little sound he rarely made at Rick these days. He shoved the lighter into Rick's chest and padded off upstairs, most likely to sulk.
Look, Rick knew he was kind of being, as Daryl put it, a dick. He just couldn't stand the thought of him out in the woods alone, not knowing fully where he was, and on top of that lying to Rick about it. So, next time he felt like wandering around alone, he'd have to give a warning.
——————————
Rick heard familiar footsteps on the dusty cabin floor. He was sitting by the window, staring out at empty fields for any sign of movement.
He turned and saw Daryl at the door. He looked back at Rick with a near guilty look, should his shameless face be capable of such a thing. He creaked the door open, still making dead eye contact, and stepped a foot outside.
"Goin' out," Daryl said, squinting at him expectantly.
"Where?"
"Uh. The woods."
"Where exactly in the woods? North? South? East-"
"Dunno."
Rick stood up and walked over to him, leaning on the wall beside him.
"Guess I'm coming with."
"Guess so."
"Are you gonna fight me about it?"
"Are you gonna keep bein' an ass or just c'mon?"
Rick put a sock in it and followed him out to the treeline. They walked in silence, a common thing for them. It wasn't because of the Walkers and their sound sensitivity, it was just that Daryl wasn't a man for small talk and didn't really leave room for arguing about much of anything.
Daryl stopped, grabbing Rick by the collar to make him stop too. A little unnecessary, but Rick wouldn't complain.
He watched Daryl's sharp, blue eyes trace something way off in the distance. He loaded an arrow silently, keeping his eyes pinned on whatever he was watching. He lined up his bow to his liking, squinting more and scrunching his nose. Rick watched his finger slip toward the trigger, stop, then squeeze.
The arrow shot out, and he heard the faint squeak of a bunny. Daryl nodded toward it, dragging Rick over.
Daryl made a face, scrunching up his nose and tilting his head to the side once they reached it.
"We can't eat that," Daryl sighed.
"Why not?"
"Look at the plant it's by. Poison hemlock."
"So? We'll skin it anyway."
"No, man. You don't fuck with hemlock. Shit'll kill you."
Rick squatted down to investigate the plant.
"How do you know?"
"What d'you mean? It's called poison hemlock, what else-"
"No, I mean how did you know that's what it was?"
Daryl didn't answer. He pulled Rick up and led him further into the woods in search of a new dinner plan. Rick didn't prod him, but he waited patiently for the explanation he was never given.
Daryl eventually cleared his throat. "It gets confused with wild carrots all the time. They have similar white petals, but the stalks are different. Hemlock has this spotty, purple stem and gets real tall, but before it starts really sproutin' it looks like what we saw back there."
Rick nodded thoughtfully. Daryl apparently felt compelled to continue.
"My dad used to dump me and Merle at our aunt's house. She had a huge garden. Grew her illegal shit in the back, but she had every flower she could get to grow in Georgia in her front gardens. She put me and Merle to work all the time. He hated it."
Rick tried to stop himself from asking dumb questions, he really did. However, Daryl was the closest thing to a friend the apocalypse could give him, and what fun is a friend if you don't piss them off a little sometimes?
"Did you have a favorite?"
"Favorite what?"
"Flower."
"Hell no."
Rick nodded, plotting.
"I like magnolia trees," Rick hummed. "My grandma had one in her backyard when I was a kid."
Daryl stared at the ground for a second. "If you put magnolia flowers in a bowl of water while they're bloomin' they make the whole room smell good."
"Learn that from your aunt?"
"No. Her house smelled like cat piss."
"Did she have cats?"
"No." He laughed at his own joke. "Yeah, asshole."
They walked further. Rick opened his mouth to say something, but Daryl shushed him. He shot his three arrows, and disappeared into the brush before returning with three rabbits and two bloody hands.
They walked back in silence, aside from when Daryl cleared his throat and muttered, "Trillium."
That was the thing about Daryl. He liked to raise his hackles, to act like he was something mean and dangerous. As soon as he remembered he was alone, usually alone with Rick, he'd slowly drop the act.
Later, Rick watched Daryl skin his pile of rabbits outside in the grass, blood up his forearms to the elbow. It was such a normal sight, him painted in scarlet. Rick tried to imagine a time when that blood was dirt and the tall, dead grass all around them was flowers in a faraway garden.
It was so easy to see it.
——————————
The cabin they were staying in proved itself to be unreliable, so they packed up at first dawn and set out down the road in search of a new place to hunker down for a while. They walked in the usual accidental formation, Michonne and Glenn up at the front, everyone else in the middle, and Rick near the back. Daryl wandered as he pleased, but usually stuck to the side near the trees or in the back by Rick.
Daryl looked particularly like he didn't want to be there. He'd never audibly complain, but Rick was well trained in his facial expressions. Furrowed brows and the faintest downturn of his lips always gave away his discomforts.
Daryl turned his head to the treeline once or twice. He looked back at Rick to see if he was watching, and started to try and slip away from the group.
Rick gave him a little tug back.
"Why're you doin' this?" Daryl hissed.
"Because I don't like when you sneak around."
"What, you don't trust me?"
"That's not what it's about."
Daryl huffed, putting his hands in his pockets. He looked over the group.
"Just come with me," he said.
"I can't leave the group."
"Tell Carol to watch the back. We'll be fast."
Rick rolled his eyes, but he asked Carol to take over for them. She looked confused, but saw Daryl's pleading face and relented. Daryl disappeared into the treeline as soon as Carol pulled out her gun. Rick rushed to follow.
He seemed to know where he was going, following a straight path and looking around for something. Things would probably go faster if he would just tell Rick what he was looking for, but he never did. He preferred dragging him around blindly.
Rick lost track of him for a minute among the thick trees. Daryl was also not a hand holder. He would never gently guide anyone along the path. If they were lucky, they got an occasional "c'mon" hand wave.
When he finally caught up to him, Daryl was kneeling by a bush.
"Never mind," Daryl mumbled.
"Why? What is it?"
"Nothing. Never mind."
He started to stand, but Rick was already leaning over him.
In the leaves, a skinny black cat looked up at the two of them with big, saucer eyes. It sniffed the air a before sitting up and butting it's face on Daryl's knee. He let it sniff his hand a few times before watching the friendly little thing rub up on his palm.
Rick always surprised Daryl when he got gentle like this. Not because Rick didn't think he was capable of it, but because he so rarely showed it willingly. He lifted the cat into his arms as its purrs filled the air.
Rick figured this was why Daryl was so intense about his time alone in the woods. It was where he let himself be without waiting for someone to give him shit. The thing he couldn't figure out was why Daryl trusted Rick with this part of himself.
He held the cat out to Rick, who scratched it between the ears.
"It's cute," Rick hummed.
"I don't know how its survived this long," Daryl said, turning the cat to face him. "This was somebody's pet."
"How can you tell?"
"You can't?"
Daryl put the cat back in its bush. He poured some of his drinking water into his palm and offered it to the cat, who lapped it up greedily. It got one last scratch between the ears before Daryl wiped his hand off and started the walk back to the road.
As they walked back, Rick wondered if Daryl knew something about feeling like he belonged to someone. Or maybe it was the opposite, maybe he always felt like a stray.
——————————
They'd gotten to a new house in the woods, and all promptly fallen asleep by one another on the floor, save for whatever poor bastard had to keep watch for the night.
Rick woke up the next morning to rustling beside him. He expected to find Carl struggling to keep warm, but instead he watched Daryl pad over and nudge him with his foot.
"What?" Rick whispered, glancing around the silent room full of sleeping bodies.
Daryl followed his eyes. "I was just gonna sneak out, but you're up, and you've got your dumb rule about following me around. So, c'mon. I wanna go."
Rick didn't bother with a "go where?" He just slipped away from his makeshift bed and followed Daryl out into the crisp morning air. Rick shivered a little, but Daryl seemed to like the cold wind attacking his bare arms.
Rick had noticed the little pond by the house, but he hadn't really thought anything of it. Daryl apparently did.
Rick watched him shamelessly strip down to his boxers and hop off the wooden dock into what he could assume was very cold water.
Rick chuckled. "This is what you woke me up for?"
"You were already awake, liar."
"Still, you made me get out from the blanket."
"You would've gotten onto me again if I didn't."
Rick smiled as Daryl splashed around in the water. He seemed contented after a while and came to lean his arms on the dock where Rick was sitting.
"Why a morning swim?" Rick asked.
Daryl shrugged. "I always do it when we're by the water. You're just usually asleep."
"Big fan of swimming?"
"Big fan of not smellin' like shit…and Dad used to drop me and Merle at the pond all the time as kids while he went off with his drinking pals or whatever. We'd stay there for hours, and we were too dumb to fish. So, we swam."
Rick looked at the scars on his back as he mentioned his dad. He looked back at Daryl's face, now holding a more gentle expression than it usually did.
He realized then that Daryl wasn't just following Rick's new rule by dragging him out that morning. He was baring a deep part of himself to Rick, a part from before the apocalypse and before Merle's death and before all the horrible things that happened to him. He was showing Rick the unimaginable parts of him that he did his best to bury, for fear of looking small.
Rick smiled at him and tousled Daryl's long hair, earning a splash from the water.
——————————
Rick's rule was really back firing on him right now.
Rain pounded down from the clouds and thunder clapped, echoing in the trees. He followed Daryl through the trees as they ran for any kind of cover, keeping an eye out for walkers and anything else that could kill them.
"I know you knew it was gonna rain, you asshole," Rick gritted, running behind him.
"Yeah, well if we didn't get lost we would've made it back in time."
"We wouldn't have gotten lost if you didn't-"
"Shuddup!"
Nothing makes a man feel dumber than fumbling round in the cold rain. Thank God, Daryl hunted down a little cabin.
Inside were two walkers, which Daryl took out alone. He closed and locked the doors before shaking himself off like a dog. Rick rolled his eyes at him and checked the rest of the house for threats.
They sat by the window, watching the rain and willing it to slow. It didn't listen, that disobedient rain
Rick sighed. "Do you always come this far out from camp?"
Daryl gave a noncommittal shrug and kept polishing his pocket knife. "Sometimes."
"Alone?"
Daryl huffed. "What's it matter? I know my way back. And if I don't, ain't nobody comin' to get me."
Rick furrowed his brow. That was the dumbest thing he'd ever heard, and he used to have to pull over drunk teenagers and ask them a million questions.
He leaned down to get in Daryl's face, tilting his head the way he always did when he was studying something.
"Don't," Daryl huffed. "Don't look at me like that."
Rick squinted. "Like what?"
'Like you-" Daryl cut himself off with a sigh.
Daryl was not a man that you rushed, so Rick sat and waited for him to finish his sentence.
"Like you're worried. Like you care."
Daryl may as well have taken that knife and dug it into Rick's chest. Where did he get the idea that he didn't care?
Rick put a strong hand on his shoulder. "I asked to come with you because I care. Not 'cause I think you need hand holding or checking up on. But 'cause it feels right to go with you. You deserve good things, good people."
Daryl huffed dryly and looked away. "Not sure I'd know what to do with them."
"You don't gotta. Just…let yourself have it."
Daryl looked at him, his eyes the same color as the storm outside. For a minute, Rick thought that he would huff and shuffle away from him, or even stand and leave entirely.
Instead, his sharp eyes softened from needles to pillows and he pressed their shoulders together until the storm passed. Daryl leaned his head on Rick's shoulder, letting the other man wrap an arm around his shoulders.
Rick figured he could do this with Daryl for the rest of their lives, so long as Daryl continued to bother telling him where he was going.