#jaaryl

.-

Aaron wouldn’t understand, was the thing. Couldn’t. People who hadn’t lived in the wild, who didn’t have it singing through their veins, they didn’t get shit like Old Ones and Bargains and the things that were possible if you were willing to risk worse things than your soul dealing with Them. Daryl slipped out in the morning after Paul’s death and started tracking fresh Walkers. Found a trickle of them, then a herd, and by mid-afternoon he’d reached his kill count. Felt the caress of a twig nicking the back of his hand –– a deal struck, marked in blood –– and made his way home to Hilltop.

Aaron hadn’t said anything, but there’d been a glint of pain in his tired eyes when Daryl’d found him. A hesitation. And then he’d brought Daryl some food and wiped the blood and filth off him, and dragged him back to bed where they’d tried and failed to learn the shape of the world with just the two of them living in it.

.-

On the fifth day, Aaron parted his lips to talk about it. Said “I know you’re hurting, I get it, but––” And Daryl’d shaken his head, a little frantic, and caught Aaron in a too-rough kiss.

He wouldn’t understand, and Daryl couldn’t stand to hear him say the words on the edge of his tongue.

.-

Sixteen days, and Daryl didn’t make it home that night. The sea of dead around them felt endless sometimes, but even they had their limits. Every day he needed to venture further out to find them. Try new paths, weaving deeper into the wild. Every day he had to work harder to find fifty, then eighty, and by the time he’d hit a hundred he’d been scrabbling frantic, tossing himself too deep into danger, close to midnight.

He’d kept working straight through, fighting his way through the night and past dawn. Found his way back to Alexandria halfway through the next day in a daze of bloodied exhaustion.

“We need to talk about this,” Aaron’d told him, eyes stern and voice achingly soft. And Daryl’d nodded, grunted “in the mornin’” and passed out between that and the next breath. In the morning there’d been no words to begin to explain it and Daryl’d left a still-sleeping Aaron with a back soon scrawled on a strip of paper and a kiss cooling his brow.

.-

Twenty days, and She tripped Daryl with the subtle shift of a root as he dodged back from a Walker’s grasp. Twenty-six and She caught at the dead’s flesh with thorny fingers as a horde chased close on his tail. Her whims shifted with the weather, but as far as Daryl could tell he was paying his way by entertaining Her.

He did his best to give her a show.

Thirty-one days and he killed a mass of dead in an explosion. Felt like a hundred-fifty, easy, ‘til a rush of doubt set in and he spent the rest of the day killing another sixty in a panic and praying to whatever blessed damn Old One might be listening that there’d at least been forty in that first blast.

Midnight came and went, and She didn’t appear to tell him he’d failed his task. After that, though, Daryl killed them by ones.

.-

Two months and Daryl was spending more nights away than with Aaron, tracking herds and then hordes for miles. Picking them off slow where he could, counting kills under his breath like a mantra. And when he couldn’t get ‘em slow... hell.

Then he fought.

He collapsed onto Aaron’s couch (their couch, still didn’t feel like theirs) after eight nights gone. Nearly dozed off ‘til he felt a shadow standing over him.

“We need to talk about this.” Aaron’s tone was all stern this time, that soft understanding of the past weeks scorched out of him. Daryl thought about pretending to be asleep. His aching body begged him to.

He slitted his eyes open.

“I know you’re grieving,” Aaron said, and Daryl’s throat choked on a growl, denial tightening it to something painful. Grief was an aftermath. Grief was acceptance. Daryl hadn’t been grieving.

“I know this is what you do, how you process, but––”

“What I do?” rolled out, and it was clipped, aggressive. Exhausted. Daryl’s body was a wreck of bruises and strained muscle and every inch of it wanted to crawl against Aaron for comfort. But there was a chasm in their chests keeping them separated and Daryl hadn’t even noticed himself digging it.

Aaron didn’t flinch.

“Hide. Run.” He answered plainly. “Cut yourself off, like you did after Rick––”

“This ain’t that.” It wasn’t. Rick had been a hunt. This was a quest. This was different. Rick was blind hope, but this? There was a clear end in sight. Forty-two more days –– not two months, even –– and the whisper of the wind would hand Jesus back to them.

Aaron was riling, though. Tensed tight, his infinite patience worn to rags as he stalked in a step and hissed, “So what is it like, then? You looking to die? Looking to go out like he did?”

It hit like a blade sinking through. That notion. ‘Cause Jesus wasn’t. Wouldn’t be. Not unless Daryl fucked up here.

But... hell. To Aaron he was.

The thought stalled Daryl’s righteous rage in its tracks. To Aaron, he was. Daryl hadn’t been grieving all this time, couldn’t be, but Aaron had been. Alone.

Daryl pushed to his feet, ignoring the protests of his wrecked body. For the first time in weeks or longer, he took in the worn lines of Aaron’s face. How much older he looked now. Exhausted. And that’s how the gulf had gotten there. All these weeks Daryl’d spent chasing the lover they’d lost, he’d lost track of the one standing next to him.

“Hey...” His hand lifted to catch Aaron’s cheek, but Aaron wasn’t ready to be calmed. He catted out of the contact, caught Daryl’s shirt. Held him for an aching beat, then shoved back.

“Paul’s gone, Daryl. He was reckless and restless and went out looking for a fight and it got him killed.” The words were blades. They were wrong. But... they weren’t. Jesus’s soul had been born for the wild, same as Daryl’s. Maybe that was why She’d been willing to deal for him in the first place. But Aaron didn’t know that. And he was all balled up exhaustion and anger and still-bleeding wounds as he snapped: “I can’t deal with you doing that too.”

It was an ultimatum. A wall building. In or out, and Daryl could feel the pressure of it hitting him straight through the middle as he dug for some loophole, some door.

“Ain’t what this is,” he managed, and Aaron looked at him, every bit as wrecked as Daryl felt as he asked plainly: “Then what is it?”

But what could he say?

A second dragged past, then another, in frozen quiet, broken finally by Aaron’s tired sigh.

“I can’t do this again, Daryl. Eric, then Paul... we lose people in this world, I get that. But I can’t just wait around watching you chase it. So you either give up whatever the hell this is, whatever revenge mission you think you’re on out there... You either stay here and figure this out with me... grieve with me... or you go.”

A branch rustled the side of the building. Daryl’s lips parted and shut. Forty-two days left, and Aaron would understand.

Daryl went.

.-

Seventy-six days and Daryl was sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, wrapping gauze along his stitched arm. He’d been slow, stupid. Clumsy. Running on fumes. Tripped straight into the edge of a rusted car door and split his skin open.

He’d thought about going to Hilltop. Getting stitched up by Enid, safe and far from the still-bleeding wounds left behind here.

But Alexandria’d been closer. And gods knew he didn’t have time for damn detours.

A lanky shadow fell over him.

“Heard you were here.” The voice was soft. Soft enough Daryl almost forgot the last, brutal words he’d heard from it. When he looked up, Aaron’s eyes were carefully cold.

“Got cut,” Daryl said, like that was any kind of an answer. He watched those eyes shift to the wound, caught the flicker of something in them. Pain, frustration, aching want.

Or maybe that was Daryl, projecting.

“Still fighting, then,” Aaron said, and Daryl wondered when they’d become the kind of people who’d communicated in two and three words. Seventy-seven days ago, whispered through him like the slice of a blade, but he wasn’t sure that was right. The estrangement, the coldness, the endless gulf and the wall Aaron’d built to ward it... all that’d come after.

Daryl wondered for the first time, vague and distant, if this wasn’t the true price he was paying. Not a hundred a day to win Jesus back. Just one. Lover for a lover. Gain one back, but lose another along the way.

It had Their kind of sick humor in it.

And Daryl’d never thought of himself as someone deserving good things. Lived a lifetime of bloodied teeth and hope ground out under cruel, careless heels. He’d dealt with it all ‘cause he could. ‘Cause what the hell else could he do but take his losses and keep moving forward? But now, watching that worn, resigned look in Aaron’s eyes, feeling the gulf stretching seemingly endless between them... that didn’t feel like an acceptable loss anymore.

“He ain’t dead.” It fell out on a breath, barely a rasp of sound. But it was enough to break through Aaron’s apathy. He froze, his furrowed brows pinching deeper. Confusion bleeding past the cold. His lips pursed, a shape of a what rising and fading. And Daryl sighed, pressed his eyes shut, and spoke.

.-

Aaron couldn’t understand.

They were back in their house now. (His house... or was it?) Stood at opposite ends of a too-long couch, squared off. Daryl could see the panicked spin behind Aaron’s eyes the second he’d started explaining. Slow swirl of confusion speeding to something else. Concern. Doubt. He said “Daryl,” just that, and the careful pitch of that tone nearly broke him.

Daryl flinched.

“Don’t say it ain’t real.”

A careful pause. The coldness was gone like it’d never been there, but the thing in Aaron’s eyes now was so much worse.

“I... know you want it to be real.”

“Don’t.”

“Daryl, you just told me the wind whispered to you.”

“Ain’t the damn wind.” Aaron couldn’t understand. Daryl couldn’t explain it. How could a person explain the kind of shapes Old Things took, the subtle ways they let you glimpse them? Daryl’d had a sense of them his whole life, seen shadows and signs since he’d stepped into his first forest. Learned lessons on his mama’s lap back before he’d been old enough to have the rules of real and fantasy drilled into him. Daryl knew, deep in his bones, but there was no way of describing it.

Aaron’s eyes were the eyes of a rational man faced with the notion of a loved one’s madness. Worried. Heartbroken. Eyes of someone debating calling the loony bin on him, if there’d been a loony bin left to call.

“Month left,” Daryl tried, grit and a ragged plea laced through the words all at once. “Twenty-four days, that’s it. Then call me crazy.”

“I’m not calling you crazy,” Aaron said, soft. His eyes begged to differ. He took a step, then another, to close the gulf between them. His hand lifted to brush Daryl’s cheek. “I’m... Daryl. That’s two thousand, four hundred Walkers. That’s over two thousand risks you’re taking.”

Daryl’d never bothered doing the math. What the hell’d math ever done for him but try to stick him up, thinking on it. He pressed his eyes shut, leaned into the achingly sweet warmth of Aaron’s hand. Said, clear as he could manage: “S’one shot to get him back.”

Aaron didn’t answer, but when Daryl opened his eyes again he saw a sickly understanding in Aaron’s own. Lips parted, an argument rising and dying as Daryl watched, and then Aaron was leaning in to press his forehead to Daryl’s.

For the first time in seventy-six days, it felt like coming home. They lingered in the contact for a few seconds, savoring. And then, soft, comforting, Aaron kissed him.

“Your life’s worth something too,” Aaron murmured, and Daryl felt some fractured piece of his soul mending. A smile ghosted his lips. He pressed it into Aaron’s bushy jaw.

“Ain’t gonna get myself killed. Can’t finish savin’ his ass then.”

It was half a joke, reflexive brush-off of those heartfelt words, but he felt Aaron’s body unclench at them. Like he’d really been terrified, all this time, all these kills... really were just a suicide mission.

Daryl led Aaron to bed and kissed him soundly ‘til the last one of those notions left his head.

.-

In the dawn light, as Daryl dragged himself out of bed and dug around for his scattered boots, Aaron offered: “I could come with you.”

“Couldn’t,” Daryl answered, not glancing up from the knot in his lace. “S’my deal. My kills. You takin’ some’s just gonna make it harder.” He could feel an argument building, sleep-fogged but passionate, in the way Aaron shifted against the sheets. And Daryl half-wanted to let him. Wanted to be talked into it. Into the company, at least, or the sensible head on Aaron’s shoulders. Into having someone to watch his back when a herd caught his scent, or flash a grin at after a narrow escape.

God, the loneliness had seeped so deep inside him these past months. He just wanted something to lean on.

He set a hand on Aaron’s knee. Dragged it down his shin, soothing. “And you got Gracie to think of.”

That settled it. Daryl felt the fight go out of him, the tired sigh. Winning didn’t mean Aaron liked it. When Daryl looked over, he saw a helpless war fighting through him. Ache of an almost-plea in those eyes. Stay.

It wasn’t anything to do with Jesus. Aaron still couldn’t believe that, even if he was trying. He was too rational. Too solidly set in what the world was supposed to be like, not what it was. He was looking at Daryl, saw someone grieving. Saw someone sick in the head, probably. Was just trying to figure out what Daryl needed to keep him from snapping harder.

Your life’s worth something too, he’d said the night before.

Daryl let his boot drop, turned to lean over Aaron.

“Hey... You trust I ain’t gonna get myself killed, out there?”

There was a heavy pause. Aaron sighed.

“No one plans on getting themselves killed, Daryl.”

And there was truth in that. Painful, bitter, and too familiar on the back of both of their tongues. If planning to live meant any damn thing at all, the world’d be full right now and Daryl’d have no walking corpses to fill his deal with. Hell, Jesus would be here, wrapped up safe in this bed, and Daryl’d have no need to fill it.

His gaze softened. He leaned down, kissed Aaron. Raw and quiet against the brush of his lips, offered: “Trust I love you?”

Eight years, probably, of that being true, and Daryl’d never managed to utter it. Sure as hell never braved those words to Jesus, before he fell. Aaron stared up at him, eyes a watery gleam in the dawn light. He wet his lips, bobbed a nod.

“I trust that.”

“Good. Hold that, ‘til I come back and say it again.”