time to change it up.

He's not very big on PDA. It's not that he doesn't enjoy it, or that he hates it, he just has a lot of other things on his mind when you're out in public.

He has a smile that's meant only for you. It took a while for you to notice the subtle nuances of it, but it became pretty clear even before you were together.

After being on the road for so long, it's hard for him to sleep alone. Even if you're just in the same room as him, it calms him greatly. Neither of you realized how much he looked to you for comfort in that unforgiving time until those moments bled into the safety of Alexandria.

He's a gift giver, it's one of his big love languages. Physical touch is nice, so is quality time, but that's not always something you can give each other. To make up for it, he's constantly giving you small trinkets he's found. He commissions works from other settlements just for you. (Small crafts/arts that he's sure you'll love.)

Wallets aren't necessary, or important, anymore. But he carries a nice leather one when he's away for long periods of time. There's no money in it, only pictures of you and his kids.

Despite how he cares for his Colt Python and keeps it immaculate, he isn't surprised when you return it to him after borrowing it with the smallest of carvings on the side of the barrel. It's very 1980s high school romance with the way your initial and his are surrounded by an almost perfect heart. You never notice, but at some point, he carefully scratched it a little deeper so it wouldn't fade away with time and use.

Inside or outside of the walls, he tries to keep you within arms reach. Even the slightest hint of trouble and he's got his hand wrapped around your arm and pulling you behind him. It's become instinct for you to turn and press your back to his in those moments, a silent understanding that both of you would die for the other.

He never really asks you to marry him. It's more of a declaration of love that he is determined to keep forever. Despite the end of the world, he's determined to find you the perfect ring and he doesn't have it when he spills his heart out to you. Instead, he offers you the wedding band on his own finger. He knows that the idea of giving you a ring from his previous marriage is taboo, and it certainly won't fit you, but you accept it with glee. You wear it on a chain around your neck, right next to a small charm of the letter R.

He naturally prefers you to care for Judith and Carl over anyone else. It's not that he doesn't trust the rest of the group, but more that he considers you to be their mother in every way except biological.

After a particularly rough day, the only thing he wants to do is wrap his arms around your waist and bury his face in your neck. It doesn't matter what soap you're currently using, he can still smell you underneath it and that's all it takes to calm his shaky nerves.

If you're into tattoos, you ask him if he would ever consider getting one with you. He's hesitant, of course. It's not that he doesn't want to share something so permanent with you, it's just not something he ever saw himself doing. Eventually, he'll agree to something small and hidden. Names are off limits, even in the end of the world, so you settle on something personal, but not obvious.

You get a small outline of his pistol on your ribcage. He gets a small outline of hand holding on his chest. The freckle on your hand is matched perfectly to the small hand of his tattoo.

NSFW:

He's not a particularly rough lover. The world is hard and brutal enough, the last thing he wants to do is add to the discomfort of it all. But if you ask him to get a little rougher in the bedroom, he'll oblige you. The first time (and the second, third, fourth...), he's constantly checking in with you to make sure that he's not hurting you.

Even after months or years together, he still looks at you like you're the most wonderous, precious thing in the world when you're slotted together. He just can't believe that after everything he's done, who he had to become, you still choose to be with him.

He is incredibly careful about avoiding pregnancy. Even if he's lost in the moment, even if your legs are locked around his waist, he never cums inside of you. He can't bare the thought of bringing another life into this world.

Until he can, of course. And he makes sure to turn that into a full conversation of pros and cons beforehand. He absolutely wants to have children with you, he needs to see you become a mother to a child of your own and he wants to be the one to give that to you.

When you finally decide to start trying, it's the softest and most gut wrenchingly sweet love making you have ever experienced in your life.

"Our baby needs to be made of nothing but love. Only love. Our love."

He surprises you the first time he pulls you into his lap when you're outside the safety of your home. You're outside the walls, just the two of you. It was so surprising that the sound you make at his sudden moves actually scares him.

Despite how afraid he is to be too rough with you, he is still incredibly passionate. Love bites are a given, but they're always hidden underneath the fabric of your shirts. You give him the same curtesy with your own marks; love bites and scratches alike.

He doesn't get jealous easily, but when he does, it's clear in the way he sets his jaw. It's also clear in the way he drives you into the mattress later that night, his pace slow and bruising.

"Who was that?" "I'm not really sure, Rick. He just introduced himself today." "That explains why he was so eager to try and hang on you." "Are you jealous?" "Of that guy? Pfft." "You're jealous." "... Maybe a little."

No one is really surprised when you show up the next morning with a love bite just barely peaking over the collar of your shirt. You had tried to wear a shirt that covered it, knowing that Rick likes to keep your private life private, but he was quick to ask you to change your shirt.

The fall of the prison was painful to watch, even though you weren’t part of their community, even though you weren’t the one that laid waste to the bare bones of an attempt at new civilization. 

They had tried to take you in time after time; Daryl, mostly. You were so hellbent on remaining self sufficient that the idea of permanently joining a group had made you sick. No matter how many times you had politely declined, or even forcefully, he never gave up. Your camp hadn’t been far and you had moved it often, avoiding the walkers, as the prison group had called them. You had no name for them, never needed to. They were just the dead and you were the living and you were determined to keep it that way.

You had only spoken to Rick once, just after he had started fully taking on his farming duties. Daryl hadn’t mentioned you to him during his psychotic break, worried that he would do something brash with the knowledge. Rick had been angry at first, so angry, but understood once an explanation was given.

“What’s your name?” He asked, so soft and distant that it didn’t match the way his face hardened just by looking at you. Your offered named seemed to stir something in him. You quietly wondered if he had known someone with the same name, before, but you didn’t have a chance to question it. “How many walkers ‘ave ya killed?” His voice was harder now, more guarded. Fair.

“I don’t know,” you answered honestly. You didn’t keep track, you weren’t sure if anyone ever did.

“How many people ‘ave you killed?” It sounded like the question pained him. Whether that was because of the question itself, because of the faces that flashed in his own mind, or because he was concerned about your answer… you’d never know.

“Two,” you breathed in response, the word caught somewhere deep in your chest, but he had heard it.

“Why?” He had that same pained expression and you were desperate to decode it. Who had hurt him? What had happened that hurt him so deeply? 

“They tried to kill me,” you spoke with more conviction, but the breathy touch to your words didn’t go unnoticed. Whether he took that as pain or dishonesty was entirely up to him. 

“Daryl said ya won’t join us.” It wasn’t a question. The statement itself seemed confused and it matched the look on his face as he looked between you and your small camp, back to the tall chainlink fences of the prison in the distance. “Why?”

You inhaled sharply at the bluntness of his question, your mind reeling as it tried to filter through all the reasons to give him the most direct and honest response. “I’m not ready.” 

Your answer seemed to strike some form of understanding in him as he looked back at you, eyebrows furrowed. He took the time to take you in, blue eyes gracelessly observing the way your hair lay messily over your shoulders, partially in your eyes. He took in the dirt and blood stains on your face, like he was trying to see underneath them. Those blue eyes continued downwards as he took in your surprisingly well maintained clothing and boots, the knife that slung from your hip and the holster where your gun would go. He looked by your feet were your discarded gun lay, exactly where he had asked you to place it upon his approach.

“If ya change your mind, ya know were to find us,” he nodded over his shoulder towards the looming prison fences. All you could do was nod in response. It felt good, to have his acceptance, even if you didn’t necessarily want it. “Even if ya just want to visit.” He smiled for the first time, the corners of his lips turning up into a gesture that you realized felt foreign to him by the way he quickly wiped it away.

“Thank you, Rick,” you spoke softly with a small, foreign smile of your own.

You never did visit the prison, though you had considered it time and time again. Daryl would check on you every few days, making sure you were alive and fed. It was appreciated, but unnecessary. You had gotten along just fine in the past year on your own, but it was still nice to have someone genuinely care about your wellbeing.

As you watched the prison smolder and burn, you felt an ache for something that wasn’t even yours. You regretted every time you turned back into the woods instead of heading up to the prison gates to take Rick up on his offer. As the walls collapsed and burned, you realized that despite it never being your home, you had lost one all the same. You had lost a family you never truly had and part of you cried out in wonder on who was alive, if any of them were. 

You raced back to your small camp, packing the few things you owned into your bag and slinging it onto your shoulder before you ran back towards the prison. There was a flurry of movement happening in this direction and that, but not a single moving body was living. Where was Daryl? Where was Rick? Your heart sank as you remembered some information Daryl had told you once on one of his visits.

“Rick might seem like a hothead, a hardass, but…” He had trailed off, looking at you through the flames of the low campfire. “He ain’t like that, not really.”

You only nodded a bit, using a long stick to poke at the logs in the bottom of the pit. Daryl knew you didn’t speak much, unless entirely necessarily, but he seemed to believe that this information was important for you to know. “He’s got a son, a daughter.” Your eyes flicked from the flames to him, watching the shadows dance across the expanse of his features. “His boy, he ain’t more than twelve. An’ his daughter… She’s barely got her eyes open.” Your hand stilled the stick in the fire, dread washing over you. Despite the darkness, Daryl seemed to recognize it.

“He lost his wife during the birth and it.. I’unno, it scrambled somethin’ in his brain, I guess,” the shrug he gave wasn’t that of nonchalance, but to convey he truly had no idea what was going on in Rick’s mind.

“That’s awful,” you whispered, hissing quietly as the branch caught fire and it quickly crawled towards your hand. You were quick to drop it into the fire, watching as the flame fully engulfed it. 

Now, as you stood staring at the decimated building, you couldn’t help but feel that same sense of dread all over again, if only worse. An infant was in that building. A helpless, tiny, little baby. Your hands shook as you weighed your options. Do you rush in and try to find someone, anyone, or pick a direction and hope that somewhere along the way you run into a familiar, if not friendly, face?

You counted the heads of the walkers and once you hit somewhere north of fifty, you knew you were better off just hoping that you found someone, anyone, from the prison. There was no point in weighing your options past that, you simply looked for the largest clearing in the trees and ran towards it. Someone had to have used this opening, this path, at some point. 

Once in the treeline, you finally looked down at the dirt and instantly made out a set of fresh tracks. One large pair of what appeared to be cowboy boots that obviously belonged to someone who was very injured, and another that belonged to a much smaller pair of boots. In the same instance, you felt your heart race and drop into your stomach. You may not have spoken to Rick past that first meeting, but you had certainly seen him.

He was out in the fields again and your camp was just inside the treeline. As long as you remained relatively silent and kept a sturdy tripwire around your camp, the walkers would walk right past you and straight towards the fence. The people within were always louder and easier to see than she was and they had that right, they had the security to do so.

You wondered silently if he could see you from where you leaned against a large tree, your knife peeling the bark off of a willow branch to make another canteen. Your last one had been squished to near uselessness in your last encounter with the dead. Besides, working quietly with your hands had always given you a silent reprieve from the way they seemed to always shake; like you were always on edge.

He looked up from the fields, placing whatever tool he was using off to the side, and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. Maybe it was your eyes on him, maybe it was luck, but he turned to look directly at you and you couldn’t help but flush with embarrassment, the feeling of being caught settling distinctly in your stomach. He was too far away to notice, you had decided, despite the way he seemed to look at you for far longer than necessary. 

Then, suddenly, he was lifting his hand in a wave. It looked almost comical, the way he raised his hand so far above his head like he was determined to make sure you saw it. Instinctually, you wanted to give him a low bow of your head in return, but the distance between you would have made that near impossible to see. Instead, you placed your knife and the willow branch in one hand and raised your now free one to return the gesture.

The smile that split his face in response was so wide, so genuine, that it took you several minutes to get your breathing under control.