Summary: When transforming things into persons, a certain kind of truck is required: it needs to be at the bottom of a lake.
Paul used to think his life wasnât so different compared to what it was Before. He never stayed in one place longer than a couple of months, not since he was put into the system. After turning eighteen he was no longer passed around like an unwanted piece of trash â no, he then started doing it himself. He built walls thick and high enough to keep everyone out as he changed towns, changed jobs, changed men he slept with, until the world changed itself.
The world changed but he didnât. The rest of the people died searching for stability, died trying to find a place where they could be safe forever when forever had never been shorter.
Ironically enough, the reason why Paul was still alive and many others werenât, was because he didnât have anything to hold on to. When the walkers came and he had to leave his home, he didnât look back. There was no one he should have called, no one he wanted to take with him, no one he had to find amongst the rotting bodies, and there was certainly no need to put a knife through a brain of someone he loved.
Paul wanted to think it was a blessing. Not loving anyone made him strong as he drifted from settlement to another. It made him useful when he finally found a home at the Hilltop. He had no trouble risking his life for people and their need for stability. He had nothing to lose and that made him a great asset (as Gregory always told him), and it was fine â being a thing was better than being a person.
Things didnât get attached. They didnât require love nor did they love anyone back.
It all went downhill after the truck disappeared into the lake. When Paul thinks about it now, there was something really metaphorical in the incident. A truck full of things was destroyed, and at the same time Paul started slowly becoming a person. He didnât know it back then, and that was good, because otherwise he might have tried to drown himself with the truck.
Because thatâs when he met everyone. Rick. Maggie. Him.
Maggie was the first person he opened up to since, well, ever. Paul told her about the group home and the boyfriends, and he knew he was lying because calling them boyfriends was pretty far-fetched, but it didnât matter. Maggie smiled at him and she understood. She caused Paulâs walls to crack â just enough to let a string of light reach Paul, blinding him with care that people were ready to offer him.
It wasnât like people hadnât cared about him before. He knew many people at the Hilltop did. The last one had been Alex, and Paul had thought it would have been enough to sleep with him, to laugh at his jokes, to let him care before moving on â but just like everyone else, Alex had tried to make him a person, had asked him to care back, to love, and Paul couldnât, because he was a thing and things didnât love. They were used and passed on, and really, Alex deserved something much better and Paul had made sure to tell him that.
âDonât give me that âitâs not you, itâs meâ shit,â Alex had said. He had been angry and there had been tears in his eyes, and Paul had known he was supposed to feel something but he didnât. He never did.
Maggie changed that because the crack she made worked both ways. It didnât happen overnight, but it was still too fast, too unexpected, and then it was too late to take it back.
Daryl was the kind of person Paul would have never noticed Before. Hell, Paul would have probably straight up avoided a man like him. The first impression of him was foul â he was guarded and hostile and had a short temper. Paul had met guys like him, they were the ones who hooked up with men just to beat them up later â because they were brought up to hate themselves and the only way of handling it was to pass it on. It didnât take long for Paul to realize Daryl was nothing like that, but the first couple of days he pushed his buttons on purpose, just to prove a point that he was another case lost to internalized homophobia.
Soon, though, Paul witnessed many times, so many times, how good Daryl was. Underneath the tough shell, he was sweet, gentle, sensitive, even funny. He had a family who loved him unconditionally and he seemed to love them back more fiercely than Paul ever thought was possible.
If there was someone in the world who deserved all of that, it was Daryl.
Paul learned bits and pieces of Darylâs past and the rest he figured out himself. It was easy to recognize a victim of abuse â after all, Paul had spent most of his childhood surrounded with kids who were just like Daryl. It was obvious Daryl had never had help when he was a child and it made Paul even happier to know he had all the help now. He wasnât a lost case, no. No matter how many times he had been mistreated, he still remained kind, protecting people around him with his life, asking nothing in return.
It was so easy to like him it scared Paul. It wasnât just his heart of gold that got Paul â the longer Paul spent looking at him, the more he liked what he saw. It got to the point where every time he saw Daryl or talked with him, he felt a weird sting in his chest, and suddenly it was difficult to breathe. It was a feeling Paul had only read about in one of those ridiculous romantic novels he had been forced to read after he had finished the last decent book in the group homeâs crappy library.
He tried to deny it because that was the only sensible thing to do. Denying and definitely not acting on it was his plan and following it wasnât that difficult.
Daryl obviously wasnât interested.
Paul might as well been invisible to him because all he saw was his family and Paul wasnât included in them. The rest of Rickâs group slowly started making friends, especially at the Hilltop but also in the Kingdom. But not Daryl. He was very much like Paul had been before, walls high and impenetrable â with the exception that Daryl already had everything worth protecting inside those walls. There simply wasnât need for others.
Oh, how it hurt to know that.
It took Paul thirty-two years to finally feel unrequited love, and it was the worst feeling he had ever felt. It was worse than loneliness, because that was something he had accepted a long time ago â he simply didnât know there could be anything else. Knowing there was and maybe had always been made him feel⌠He couldnât even describe it. It was as if the life had finally decided to give him something to live for, but that something was behind a locked door and Paul knew where the key was â it just wasnât his.
It all changed again when Daryl was taken to the Sanctuary.
It was all a blur to Paul â when he found out Abraham was dead and Glenn too, and Daryl had been shot and no one knew if he was alive or not. Paul hid his dread under the empathy for Maggie, and it was convenient because there was no way he was going to tell anyone that the tears he held back were for Daryl.
Instead, he made a plan. Daryl deserved to live, he needed to live so that he could keep being loved and keep loving, even if Paul himself would never play a part in any of that. Maybe he was no longer a thing and maybe it was his last chance to be a person, but he just refused to make it about him.
He was going to get Daryl back.
