Guess the Fic
Tourniquet - blueprintofyourpast
When In Alexandria - restesdelune
Not The End - semul
Voting ended onMar 5
Tourniquet by blueprintofyourpast
His voice sounds like sandpaper: grained and heavy as it slogs along miles of indomitable land. It became her shelter when her body couldn’t deal with regular meals in the beginning, when she would grip the toilet seat like a lifeline whilst coughing up thick threads of spit and curdled spew. She would barge from one torturous loop of helpless convulsion to the next, and – out of pity, instinct or affection – Rick would crouch down beside her and hold back her hair, he would press his forehead against her shoulder blade with a sigh and macerate her pain with palliative words of consolation.
Afterwards, they would find refuge in one of their beds and he would pull her in. He would slip his hand under her top to let his palm rest against her belly, urging her to start their nightly ritual of asking each other questions about their former lives: what they liked to do on Sunday mornings, which generic pop songs they secretly listened to on repeat for hours, and who they thought would have won the next presidential election if the world hadn’t ended.
She turns around to take him in. Him and his wild hair, his bloodshot eyes, his rumpled clothes, and his stalwart boots. Commiseration tears at her brows. Despite getting a good amount of five to six hours of sleep each night, he always looks tired these days.
It’s a strange altercation of saying Hello or Good morning or Sorry that I unintentionally wriggled out of your embrace again, but it’s what they agreed on when she slipped away for the first time and saw nothing but muddy spills, dying trees, and grey bodies lurching, stumbling and staggering around her, swaying from left to right and bumping against one another like some untrained members of a poorly choreographed marching band.
The sensation of his index and middle finger pressing into the crook of her arm shakes her out of it again and she goes stiff under his touch, both angered and appalled by her inability to stay in the present – and of course he misreads her reaction as a sign of spurning dismissal. He shrinks back and raises his hands in gentle placation as if he’s trying to comfort a wounded animal, as if he’s trying to reassure her that he’s not the enemy.
She takes a sip of her drink before she sets the mug on the counter. She holds her hand out towards him, waiting for him to get the message, and fortunately, he does: after a long, frightful moment of badly cached disappointment and uneasy confusion rushing across his rugged features, he gifts her with a soft smile and closes the space between them.
His body has become her shelter, too. It’s stable and solid against her, it keeps her from running away too far without forcing her into a corner. His hands settle at her waist and she hums lightly as his chest expands against her forehead. This is still new to her. It feels strange and familiar at the exact same time, and for some reason, it doesn’t really scare her.
At some point – probably after Beth’s funeral – they were delusional in their collective urge to find a place to live, they were chocked off by silent shock and dehydration, and they would carve out a miserable existence in the grim and unforgiving dells of the wilderness, but she didn’t need him to hold her then, even if a small part of her wanted him to.
Another part of her – a much bigger one – wanted to hold him as well because the sheer sight of him – rough, exhausted, and dysfunctionally leery – would wear down her will to keep going. He was bursting at the seams and she couldn’t bear to look at him sometimes, so it never happened. They never held each other. Not until about a month ago, when he found her kneeling in a puddle of shredded guts and chopped off limbs.
His lips move against her auricle and she leans back to meet his questioning gaze.
“You sure about that?” he asks with a tilt of his head.
Damn him. She slips her hands under his elbows and a sudden pang of jealousy starts to stab and saw at her breastbone. He’s scheduled for a supply run today. He’s going with Glenn and Tara and he didn’t ask her to join them. He didn’t ask her to do anything so far.
“I need toothpaste”, she says because it’s the first thing that crosses her mind.
“Spearmint and baking soda”, a conspirative smirk follows the grey-streaked trails of his slightly overgrown scruff; it tugs at his lips, glides along his cheeks, and dissolves into tiny crinkles around the corners of his eyes, and she breathes out a sigh.
His grin broadens. For the split of a second, he doesn’t look tired at all. He looks genuinely happy, like the prospect of doing something for her is enough to lift his spirits. And she’s happy for him, but she also wants to fucking scream at him, she wants to wrap herself around him, and she wants to tell him to stop caring so much because his constant need to be there for others almost destroyed him in the past.
Nonetheless, she’s willing to emulate his serene expression when his smile begins to falter and makes room for deep lines of worry – the exact same lines that clouded his face when he told her that he’s not ready to let her go beyond the walls, and she can tolerate his fears for now, she can tolerate the fears that beat through her own veins, too. They both know that they’ll have to talk about it again eventually, though. And it won’t be easy
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