MaxTheWitness

Hi, I am also @MaxTheWitness on Ao3!

[maxthewitness]

☆Max's Masterlist☆

THE WALKING DEAD

☆ Oneshots:

The Wolf and The Buck (Carl Grimes & Negan)

Negan/Reader (Various Oneshots)

Tender Heart (Yandere Carl Grimes/Reader)

☆ Excerpts from Ao3:

Carl Grimes/Reader

Ron Anderson/Reader

☆ Tumblr Series:

In Their Shadows (Carl Grimes/Reader)

☆ Ramblings:

Carl/Clementine & Carl Grimes/Louis

[maxthewitness]

Negan's Letter (3) Is Finally Up

This is an excerpt from I'll Be Gone (Prologue) on Ao3

Fic Summary: When Alexandria falls it's believed that Rick, Michonne, and Judith have all died, so Negan takes Carl from the wreckage and raises him for five years. The deaths were too much for Carl to handle after everything, and his mental health starts to decline. Eventually Rick, Michonne, Judith, and RJ will all return.

(SPOILERS)

Carl walks past his bed and into the bathroom attached to his room, shutting and locking the door behind him. He stands in front of the mirror, hands braced on the sink as he looks himself in the eye.

His used to be baby blue irises, just like his father’s. His mother’s turned up nose. His father’s lips, the bottom one slightly larger than the top. His mother’s jaw. His father’s eyebrows. His silky, brown hair, just like his mother’s. –He’d never cut it again, after she wasn’t around to do it anymore.

He looks like a mosaic of the two people he’d been born to love the most, two people whose love had died long before they did, two people whose faces exist not in photographs or any known form aside from him. He is the only living proof they ever existed.

Carl reaches up and touches his eyebags, running his fingers down to his cheeks while pulling at them. The roundness from his father, and the blotchy blushing from his mother.

He moves closer to the mirror, realizing that it’s not just his eyes that have dulled beyond recognition. His complexion is pale. The only thing that prevents him from looking vaguely like another person entirely is…

He catches sight of the scissors sitting on the edge of the sink, impulsively snatching them up and starting to cut away at his hair.

He chops, and chops, watching the chunks fall, fluttering to the floor like feathers.

Midway through, his eye starts to water, each cut feeling like stabbing the memory of his parents, but he pushes through. He doesn’t stop until his hair doesn’t tickle his shoulders anymore.

When he looks in the mirror, he finds that his hair is terribly uneven. The side with his missing eye hangs lower, his bangs covering his empty socket, while the other side is cut short, closer to the typical boy haircuts his mother had forced him into getting before everything started. –But just so perfectly nothing like them at all. It looks like it’s been done with gardening shears.

He drops the scissors in the sink, finally able to breathe when he looks at himself, knowing he doesn’t look like either of them anymore.

Lori and Rick.

Not his parents.

“Lori and Rick,” he repeats to himself softly, voice child-like.

[maxthewitness]

[]Over The Counter[]

*Mention of Owen, who was the leader of the first group to attack Alexandria, The Wolves

Over 10k words of Dbf!Negan/Neighbor!Reader

You like to think of yourself as a pretty independent girl. I mean, you aren’t an adrenaline junkie or brazen enough to walk around alleyways in the middle of the night, but you know how to take care of yourself. If your parents were to leave you alone for a week's worth of vacation, you wouldn’t destroy the house or starve to death.

In fact, they have left you alone for that long before. That's why you find it so ridiculous that this time, despite you being older and even more responsible, finding your footing in adulthood, they left you under the care of your neighbor, Mr. Smith. –Er, Negan. He asked you to call him Negan not too long ago.

There's nothing wrong with him. In fact, he's a pretty funny guy. The day after he moved in next door, a few years ago, you found him in your family's backyard shooting the shit with your dad, feet up and a beer loosely dangling from the neck in his fingers. He looked like he'd always been there. Every room he walks into, he looks like he's never been more comfortable. Maybe because he carries such an uncanny sense of ease with him. Even neck deep in medical bills or when his car broke down, he always looked like he was in control.

You guess your dad noticed that too, because from that day onward, they've spoken pretty much daily, always getting into the kind of trouble you only thought was possible in movies.

Once, Negan dragged your dad to a new bar in town called The Sanctuary and started a massive bar fight by throwing a french fry between some random bar tender's breasts with her boyfriend sitting right across from her. He got a shiny black eye for his troubles, but he seemed more excited by the whole situation than anything else. The bar closed not too long after that, and has only ever been open on weekends since.

Did you mention that he's nice? He's super nice.

He's always teaching you things you didn't know and telling you stories from back in his day, trying to encourage you to go out and live a little, and when he's talking to your dad and catches you staring at them, he winks at you and his smile grows softer, more fond. –Your dad never seems to notice you, but he always does, and he always makes sure you feel seen.

You tap your nails on the counter, trying very hard not to look as pissed as you feel like you might.

“You didn't have to come over here, you know,” You say, trying to stop yourself from sounding nervous only for the words to come out sounding petulant.

Negan laughs breathily, eyes still focused on the plate in front of him as he cuts the second sandwich. “Somebody's gotta feed you, honey,” He says in that low, gravely voice you've found yourself thinking about late at night with your hands down your shorts.

And therein lies the problem.

He's supposed to come over here everyday to check up on you, but all you can think about is what it would feel like for him to wrap his big, rough hands around your hips and snap you in half.

You weren’t thinking like this the first time you saw him. When he was sweaty with grease smeared across his face from working on his bike. No. The problems started much later, at the last dinner party he attended before Lucille was placed into hospice.

His wife and your mother were both walking around the tiny space that was the kitchen, buzzing back and forth as they cooked and chatted, while your dad was washing dishes. You'd been eating a poptart bent over the counter, watching youtube on your phone with the sound muted. People kept pushing past you and it was getting annoying. There was absolutely no reason for all of you to have been in the room at the same time, some things could have waited. –And you said as much with an eyeroll, their typical angst filled daughter.

“Pardon me, sweetheart.” –The words that will haunt you forever.

Negan tried to slip past you, his back pressed to the fridge behind him as his body went flush against yours.

But then.

Then your mom had blocked off his exit in the direction he was going, turning on the blender so no pleas for sweet freedom could be heard. He tried to turn back, sweetly setting his hand on your lower back with apologies on his lips as Lucille blocked the other possible exit, rearranging the tray of food on the counter next to you.

Your stomach did a flip at that point and you'd stood up straight, but Negan grabbed your waist and tried to keep you still, stopping you from pushing into him anymore than you already were. It was unbearable. You couldn't help moving from how awkward you thought it was getting as the moment dragged on. You thought he was sighing in your ear, but his breath was stuttering and then you felt it.

Your face went flush and you whipped your head around but before you could see his reaction, your mother moved and he got away from you as fast as he could.

He stayed away from you for a while after that.

You'd worried you'd ruined everything. That somehow you'd done something absolutely awful and he'd never speak to you again, –all because of a crush you didn't know you had– but about two weeks later he finally tried reaching out. You were walking home from school and he was in his garage, underneath the car. He must've heard your footsteps because he slid out from underneath it and waved you over, pointing to a bench in the corner to sit while he stood above you with his arms crossed. You were nervous but you tried not to let it show. He didn't seem mad, but it was hard to tell. He looked tense.

Negan stared at you for a long moment before letting out a long sigh, uncrossing his arms, then apologizing, saying that it wasn't your fault and you shouldn't be feeling guilty for how he reacted. It was a complete accident. He was really sweet about the whole thing, never coming closer than you moved towards him, occasionally even stepping back to maintain an appropriate distance considering what happened. The tension in his shoulders wasn't anger. He was nervous.

…That was when you started to dream of him bending you over the counter.

Your crush grew into something tangled. You went from imagining different versions of that day, ones where he'd smash your face into the surface tugging at locks of your hair, to new and more risky scenarios.

And now he's here, cooking on that same counter, unmarried, all alone in a house with you that your parents won't be back in for days.

They didn't even ask him to cook for you, just check in once every few days. But now every day, around noon, he comes over and cooks you something more nutritious than you could by yourself. Pastas and stir fry, even the occasional baked good, where he'll have you do some task around the kitchen for him, and fling flour at your face when you get distracted by looking at your phone.

You tell yourself he's probably just lonely, but the truth is you like having him around and you wish that it was for you.

You stop tapping your nails, turning just in time to see the open bottle next to him fall on its side, contents rapidly spilling out onto the countertop.

“Shit,” He curses under his breath, quickly picking up the bottle he'd spilled. His thumb drips with the sweet sauce, quickly running down in the direction of his palm.

You jump straight into action, startled out of your thoughts. “I can grab–”

He brings the finger up to his mouth, tongue darting out to lick it up only to miss some and go back in for more, saliva soaked tongue swirling around it and audibly sucking until he pulls off with one last thorough stripe licked at the webbing between his thumb and pointer.

He looks at you then, making your heart skip a beat because he caught you watching him again.

“It's good,” He drawls. “You should try it.”

You have the thought process equivalent to a keyboard smash.

He's joking. He must be, but the glimmer in his eyes is anything but.

“Ah– Uhm, okay,” You take a few steps forward, nervous as you quickly take the chance he's giving you before you can chicken out of it, grabbing his sleeve to pull his arm closer and taking his thumb into your mouth.

His eyebrows go up, head tilting downward as he focuses solely on you.

Your tongue slides over the pad of his thumb, but you can't taste anything except his skin, lips meeting the wet saliva he'd left behind.

You aren't sure why your knee jerk reaction was to copy what he did, but because you can't taste anything you open your jaw wider and take the finger deeper, swallowing around it.

His hand stutters back, body still frozen.

The movement lets you finally catch sight of his other hand beside you, still holding the plate full of food he was trying to offer you when he'd told you to have a taste.

You pull off immediately, eyes going wide as the mortification hits you. The string of saliva connecting your lips to his hand breaks and drips down.

“I-I-I didn't, I was– It was an accident!” You flounder, cheeks hot with shame. “I didn't mean to! I thought that…! I don't know why I–! I'm so sorry, Mr. S– Er, Negan! I'm so sorry!”

Negan doesn’t react at all, face blank until he lets out a snort and starts laughing at you. He drops the plate onto the counter and doubles over, laughing so hard that he wheezes. His leather jacket squeaks from the tension the movement creates.

“Christ, you just– Pfft,” He can’t hold himself back from laughing for long enough to say anything, reaching up to wipe at his eyes like the situation was funny enough to bring him to tears.

You’re such an idiot. Of course he thinks it’s funny, you’re his best friend’s daughter. His neighbor.

You clench your fists at your sides, nails digging into your palms as you try to keep a straight face with the lump in your throat.

“You went right for it, huh?” He snickers.

He's never going to see you as anything more than a child in over your head, no matter how old you get. It’s not like you ever really thought you stood a chance, especially not when Lucille was around… but it still doesn’t feel particularly good to hear him laughing at the idea.

You've grown and changed. While he's been stagnant in his empty house, fixing the same rusty parts on his bike over and over again, going to the same bars to fight the same battles and drink himself to death, looking at the same photographs, reminiscing about a time that's long gone, you and everyone else in the world moved on from what was the tragedy to end all tragedies for him. You made something of yourself, while he rotted in his empty nest, the mother hen buried six feet under.

You hate it.

There are so many things to love about the man in front of you but he doesn’t seem to think he's worth the effort. He doesn't even see you as a candidate because he refuses to let his life move on from the day she pulled the plug on herself and died in that hospital bed.

You hiccup, covering your face with your hands and pressing the heels of your palms into your eyes.

The laughter stops in an instant, leather creaking as he straightens himself.

“Oh, sweetheart,” He croons, fingers brushing your exposed chin to wipe the saliva from it. He pulls at your wrists, trying to get you to show him your face again. “C’mon, I ain’t laughin’ at you.”

“Yes you are!” You shout, pushing his hands away to turn away from him and dry your eyes on your sleeve.

“No, I’m–” He laughs again, then clenches his teeth to prevent another from slipping out. “Damn.”

He did not mean to do that.

“I’m not laughin’ at you, honey. Seriously. Cross my heart and hope to die, kid,” He promises, drawing an X over his heart.

You glare at him. “I’m not a kid!”

He cocks a disbelieving eyebrow, leaning back on his heels and looking you up and down.

“You are compared to me.”

You roll your eyes. “Oh, like you're such a good metric.”

Negan narrows his eyes at you, frustration seeping into the way he looks at you.

“I'll call you an adult the day you can buy me a beer.”

“Whatever,” You scoff, sniffling.

He sighs and runs a hand through his dark, tousled hair, jaw clenched, restraining himself from saying something to you he doesn't actually mean.

“Look, it was an accident. You didn’t mean any harm in what you did. You thought, for some ungodly reason, that was what I was tellin’ you to do, so let’s forget the whole damn thing, ‘kay?” He requests as a truce, pushing the plate on the counter towards you with more force than necessary. “Your daddy would kill me if he knew what just happened.”

He grumbles to himself and brings the rest of the dishes over to the sink, turning it on and grabbing the sponge from the lip. He wets it, then douses it in soap and squeezes the life out of it.

It was an accident, he repeats to himself, ignoring the way his breathing picks up with anger. He's not angry.

He scrubs the surface of the first dish, then places it in the drying rack and moves onto the next one, on autopilot.

You sigh from behind him, blowing a few locks of hair away from your face, about to give up and live haunted by the embarrassment of what just transpired for the rest of your life, when you suddenly get an idea.

A terrible, terrible, absolutely fantastic idea. –One that you're going to act on, if only for science. I mean, with everything you've learned about Negan over the years, it would be a shame not to test the waters.

You must be insane.

You perk back up, puffing out your chest.

“And what if I tell him?”

His back tenses, shoulders squaring as he turns to look at you over his shoulder. His eyes have widened, face staying otherwise unchanged.

You smile and shrug your shoulders, feigning innocent disinterest, like you really couldn't care less about his reply.

“You little shit,” He says dangerously, unable to keep the pride out of his voice. “You wouldn't.”

“I might,” You grin evilly, shrugging one shoulder.

He sets the plate he's cleaning down in the sink, drying his hands on the dish towel and blindly tossing it on the counter behind him as he walks away.

He stops in front of you, cocking his head to the side curiously.

“What is it that you want from me, exactly?”

You play coy, shrugging as you turn around and take a bite out of the sandwich he made for you, pretending to savor every bite even when you feel like choking on it because holy fuck the way he's looking at you right now.

“I don't know…” You say, licking your lips and setting it back down.

His eyes are gleaming, and slowly, a devilish grin spreads across his features.

“You know, I'd always hoped you'd toughen up…” He admits, chuckling through his nose. “‘Never thought I'd be on the receiving end of your blackmail, though.”

You can't help laughing at that, trying to turn and hide your reaction.

Negan sees it, of course, standing right in front of you as close as he is. –He knows you wouldn't ask him for anything crazy, only halfway serious in your attempt to extort him, but he doesn’t want to discourage you from finally taking a more rebellious stand.

He leans in close, lip quirking when he sees how serious you suddenly get, your eyes transparently darting between his eyes and lips in a way he refuses to acknowledge. He nods towards your food.

“Eat. Then think about what exactly it is that you want.”

He puts emphasis on almost every word in the sentence, soft, half lidded eyes giving you a pointed look before he backs away, straightening his jacket and heading out the front door.

You collapse against the counter with your back to it, gripping the ledge for dear life as your heart pounds wildly.

…What do you want from him?

*

*

*

You're lying in bed that night, hair still wet from your bath, when your phone lights up on your bedside table.

Initially, you try to ignore it, turning over and hugging one of your pillows close as you go over the events of the day again, but your phone keeps going off.

You reach over and snatch it from the charger, squinting at the bright screen to see your classmate Owen's name with twenty four messages next to it.

Your eyes widen and you sit up in bed, body tensing.

There's nothing particularly wrong with Owen, he's just a little… eccentric.

The first day of your only class together he'd shown up with a large W on his forehead and proudly proclaimed that he was the Alpha Wolf, leader of the Wolves. When asked who they were, he responded with, “Who aren't we? What won't we do?” and refused to answer any other questions about it. He said those who needed to understand, would.

You planned to stay as far away from him as possible, but when the professor had you go around the room and introduce yourselves, he heard where you were from and immediately perked up, sharing that he was also from your hometown. You tried to play it cool and name something more specific to where you lived to distance yourself from him, but it turned out you'd only grown up three streets away from one another, leading him to take a special interest in you for the rest of the day.

After that, nobody wanted to be paired with either of you, and given how small the class was, there was no way around it. You spent the entire semester together.

He turned out to be pretty nice…

Well, to you and anyone else he decided was worthwhile anyway. He said you were one of the people who got it.

Whatever the hell that means.

You start to type your password into your phone when you hear a long honk from out front and you know, you just know it's got to be him.

You scramble over to your closet and throw a jacket on over your pajamas, rushing outside after making sure all the doors are locked, and there he is. Standing on the sidewalk leading up to your house with his high beams on, parked almost perpendicular to the curb, is Owen.

His hair is a mess, eyes wide like the textbook picture of mania, a smile on his lips.

“I thought you were coming,” He says, as if you could possibly have any idea what he's talking about.

You furrow your brows, looking around the dark neighborhood anxiously. “What?”

“The party,” He says, stepping closer. “You said you would come before break started, when Chris invited you.”

“O-Oh,” You stutter, backing up when you see him move closer. There's a part of your brain where alarm bells are blaring, telling you that this is a bad situation to be in, urging you to put your hands up or run, but you don't. You don't want to seem weird. “Uhm, yeah. I didn't have any way to get there, so I decided to stay home…”

He keeps unblinking eye contact with you, breathing heavily like he just ran a marathon.

“I'll take you,” He grins, grabbing your wrist to prevent you from getting any further away from him.

“N-No, I'm okay,” You refuse, twisting in his grasp. “I just– I feel like staying home tonight.”

He squeezes tighter.

“I can take you. I just said I could take you, so let's go.”

Your eyes go wide when he starts forcibly pulling you towards the car.

“Wait, Owen! I'm in my pajamas, I can't go to a party like this,” You say in a panic, trying to find an excuse to get away from him.

“You're not any worse dressed than I am. You'll be fine,” He dismisses.

You shake your head.

“I barely know Chris, I don't want to go, okay?” You try desperately, heart jumping to your throat when he grabs the center of the jacket and drags you, bare feet digging into the concrete until you're pretty sure your sock tears. “Owen, stop!”

You push back against him and he grips your jacket so tightly it tears, opening his car door. You kick it shut.

Tears spring to your eyes and you start to cry, sobbing as you struggle against him, losing your ground the longer you fight him. –You're both so distracted you don't see the neighboring house's porch lights come on, or Negan stepping out into the night armed with a baseball bat.

He looks around for a moment before he spots the source of the noise, your frightened cries spurring him into action.

“HEY!”

Owen doesn't let go of you or acknowledge him until Negan has rushed across your lawns the bat is literally pressed up against his chest, eerily wide eyes flicking over to Negan to cock his head, his entire body rigid with none of the appropriate fear he should be experiencing.

“What the fuck do you think you're doin’? She said she doesn’t want to go, so scram!” Negan yells, voice angrier than you've ever heard it.

Owen blinks, finally, then slowly shakes his head with a smile. “I'm going to take her–”

Negan gently moves you aside and grabs him by the shirt collar, slamming him up against the passenger side door with one hand.

“You're not taking her anywhere,” He growls, spitting in Owen's face as he speaks. “Get the fuck out of here before I call the cops. –And don't come back, or so help me god, I'll bust your head open.”

He whispers the last bit of his sentence, slamming him up against the car one more time before wrapping an arm around your shoulders and leading you towards his house.

Your entire body is shaking beneath his hand, tears still slipping down your cheeks.

He wants to go back there and strangle that boy.

“M-Mr. Smith, I'm so sorry,” You hiccup, pawing at your eyes to try and stop yourself from crying in front of him. “I'm sorry, I-I didn't mean to–”

“Shh,” He hushes you, rubbing your arm soothingly as you walk up the steps to his porch. “You're alright. I've got you, honey, you're gonna be okay.”

He glances back over to where you and Owen had been fighting to see the younger man getting into his car and turning all the lights off. He doesn’t leave right away, sitting in the driver's seat in front of your house in the dark.

Negan shuts his door and locks every single lock on it just to be sure, even the ones he hasn't bothered touching in years.

“You got your phone on you?” He asks after a few moments pass with the two of you standing by the front door.

You frown deeper as you realize the severity of what could have happened, shaking your head. Because no, you <i>hadn’t</i> grabbed your phone when you left. You'd left it on your bed when you heard him honking, not wanting Owen to wake the whole neighborhood.

“Oh, baby,” He sighs solemnly, voice catching. “C'mon, come– come sit on the couch, okay? ‘M gonna make a call.”

You follow him to the livingroom, sitting down in the corner of the couch and hugging one of the pillows to your chest. Negan reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his phone, scrolling through his contacts until he reaches a certain name, scowling at it. When he leaves the room you pull your legs up onto the couch, tucking them underneath you.

“Hey, Rick,” He grunts from the other room, sounding less than pleased. “Yeah-huh, bitch at me later, I'm gonna need a favor.”

His voice gets quieter, the floor creaking the further away from you he walks until he comes back into the room, steps slowing the closer he gets to you.

You lift your head from the arm of the couch where it had been resting while you waited for him to come back, eyes welling up with tears again.

“M– Negan, I'm so sorry I woke you up. I didn't know h-he was gonna do that,” You hiccup, unsure of how you could ever make this up to him. “He just showed up– I didn’t even–” You start to stand and he guides you back down, holding your face in his hands to thumb the tears away from your cheeks.

“I don't give a shit about the noise, okay? Think of what might have happened to you if I hadn't woken up,” He whispers, the hands framing your face squeezing to squish your cheeks. “That asshole is the one that's gonna be sorry.”

“But I…”

“You didn't do nothin’ wrong, sweetheart,” He reiterates. “I took care of it. He's not gonna bother you again.”

One of your hands finds its way up to his wrist, gently clasping it.

His hands on you are stabilizing, just firm enough to make sure you don't slip away from him without being painful without giving you a choice but to listen when he looks you in the eyes and tells you that there's nothing to be sorry for.

You can feel his heart racing almost as fast as yours from the adrenaline, features pulled tight. He looks… frightened.

There's no denying the way he's looking at you now, dark eyes sliding across your face like he's trying to memorize the condition you're in.

You swallow hard, your eyelids drooping.

“Negan…”

He doesn’t let you say anything else, leaning in to press his lips to yours, warm skin and stubble tickling you as he moves his hands down to your neck, massaging. He doesn't move or try to take things any further, just holds you close.

You tense at first, afraid to move and ruin whatever spurred him into crossing the line by reminding him of the situation, but eventually you can't help it. Your eyes flutter shut and you moan softly, relaxing into the kiss.

Negan pulls back at the noise, eyes wide behind his glasses, chest heaving.

You open your mouth with another worried apology on your tongue, but the second he presses his open mouth to yours, your mind goes blank aside from the taste of him and the feeling of his body on yours.

He licks into your mouth like he's starving, arms moving to wrap around your waist and lift, the cushion below you dipping as he braces a knee on the couch and pushes you back against the pillows, repositioning you how he wants.

You keen at the attention, arching into him and tangling your fingers in his hair, making a game of messing up the hair he usually has in a perfectly slicked back style.

He chuckles into your mouth, voice deep and muffled. He doesn't want to break the kiss but his desire to tease you back wins out and he pulls away, briefly, as almost immediately in response you lock your legs around his hips and pull him back, licking into his shiny wet lips. He groans at the way you rock your hips against him without even meaning to, the hands he'd been bracing around you finding their way underneath your shirt to press on the sensitive skin and feel it pull taught the harder he does.

He's been so good this far, resisting the urge to ruin you.

But you want this. You want him.

You let go of his hair, reaching down to pull your shirt off. It's halfway off, your lacy white bra almost fully visible when he breaks the kiss to stop you, his brow furrowed.

He looks at it, then up at your face, shutting his eyes tightly. His hands draw away from your body, head lowering.

“Fuck,” He punches the wall beside you, not looking at you as he pulls back again, pushing at your thighs in earnest to get you to disentangle with him.

You let him go, feeling confused as you pull your shirt back down over your flushed skin and sit up on your elbows, still panting from the way he took your breath away.

He shifts so that he's sitting on the couch beside you with his head in his hands, rubbing his eyes with his pointer and thumb.

“...Negan?” You test after a moment, and you're pretty sure he starts to turn his head towards you, but he doesn’t look up or respond.

Without another word he stands up and goes upstairs, slamming what you’re almost certain is his bedroom door.

You close your legs, wrapping your arms around yourself and looking at the couch pillows scattered on the floor, hugging the one from before close to your chest.

With him gone, the house feels far too quiet, every noise you hear reminding you of the fact that he's not here with you anymore. The clock by the front door ticks on the wall, the sound somehow managing to echo through the entire first floor. The noise of the second hand moving drills its way into your brain, settling somewhere in the middle. Any arousal left over from what almost happened evaporates.

At the first sign of daylight, you leave his house and go home by yourself.

*

*

*

Around lunch the next day you hear a knock on your door. You already know who it is before you look through the peephole, not surprised to see Negan standing outside in his usual attire, the faded leather of his jacket not gleaming in the light like it used to when he first got it. He looks a bit more frazzled than usual, hair unstyled, glasses missing from his face.

Without saying anything to the man on the other side, you turn your back on the door and go upstairs. You’d been planning on going to your room to put your hair up and get dressed, but when you actually get up there and reach for a hair tie, you catch sight of the lighter sitting on your dresser.

You sit down at your vanity, picking the windproof lighter up and flicking it on, watching the flame burn bright in your dim room.

Your legs push the chair back, rolling on the carpet and spinning you around until something reflecting the flame catches your attention. –A studded faux leather jacket you’d bought yourself back in high school for spirit week. The shiny faux leather is so fake that the black material is closer to latex, the zippers on the jacket pockets permanently stuck halfway open, or halfway closed, depending on what kind of day you’re having. Most of the studs on the sleeves have fallen off, leaving awkward clusters of them on your shoulders.

That’s what you get for $15 at a thrift store, though.

You close the lighter, cocking your head at it as an idea comes to mind.

You walk over to the closet and pull the jacket on over your shirt, walking back over to your vanity and opening every drawer until you find the black and grey makeup palette you’d bought years before, smearing black eyeshadow across your lids.

He continues knocking the entire time, waiting what most would think a polite amount of time before each set, but the longer he stands there the further apart each knock gets. Like sarcastic slow clapping.

You’re sure his patience is wearing thin, but your sleep deprived brain thinks that’s a fair trade for him leaving you on his couch all night after abandoning you mid-makeout without explaining what went wrong. –Even now, you still aren’t sure what happened.

Once you’ve tied your shoes, you head over to your bedroom window, sliding it open and climbing out onto the roof. Peering over the edge, you can see him, standing at the front door with his forehead resting on it, quietly saying something like he’s expecting you to be on the other side, listening. But you aren’t.

You continue scaling the roof towards the back of the house, cursing when your shoes slip. You’re honestly surprised you make it in one piece. You jump from the roof to a branch of the tree growing in your backyard, sliding down it and walking through the back gate.

There’s a specific bar calling your name, just waiting for trouble.

*

*

*

“WOO!” Regina sticks her tongue out after throwing back the shot, punching Simon in the gut at the booth they’re both crammed into. The man groans and curls in on himself before sliding out and stumbling towards the bathroom, presumably to puke his guts out.

He shoves past Mara, who’s holding a tray full of drinks and appetizers, lightly nodding her head to the music blasting throughout the bar, flashing red LED lights strobing like it’s a nightclub or a rave instead. A suspicious looking man slips a twenty into her apron and whispers something, heading to the kitchen.

Mara continues to the table she’s serving, passing a nervous looking Eugene, who after entering the bar immediately goes to the back and sits in the corner as if he’s avoiding someone. He tries to inconspicuously sip lemonade through a straw, failing, his eyes darting around the room like he’s waiting for someone to jump him.

Gavin emerges from the kitchen of the bar, pushing past most of the faceless crowd on his way towards the front entrance.

He passes by where you’re slouched over the bar with your hair down, palms tapping the counter for Dwight to bring you another glass of long island iced tea. Your cheek is pressed against the sealed off wood of the bar, crumbs of salt and pretzels stuck to your face along with a few stray locks of your own hair. It’s been hours since you left the house.

Dwight starts to slide you another glass when he looks up and sees the man that just came in through the front doors and grimaces, walking away from you with the glass still in his hand.

“Dwight, noooooooooo,” You whine, reaching for it while he ignores you. “Dwiiiiiight.”

You hear the man, –who you only have a name for because of his nametag– start to argue with whoever just walked in, begging them not to cause trouble. The conversation starts getting heated, the new patron asking a bunch of questions that the bartender hesitates to answer, worried about giving information away so easily without understanding the situation. The conversation comes to a halt, then all of a sudden you’re being yanked upright by a strong hand on the back of your collar.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Negan says, glaring daggers at you. His voice is too quiet to be heard over the music, but you can tell by the gravelly tone of it that he is not happy.

Negan is surprised when you actually flash him a smile in response, biting your lower lip and proudly showing him your forearms, which are completely covered in the names and numbers of men and women he's sure would be all too eager to leave with you, scrawled across your skin in thick black sharpie.

You lean in, cupping a hand around your mouth when you say, “They think I’m adult enough.”

He frowns, looking around the dim bar as if he could tell just from looking at someone if they had dared to write on you. His eyes return to you empty-handed however, leaving him to sigh through his nose.

“What are you thinking, coming here of all places? Dressed like this? –Like me?” He pulls on the lapels of your jacket, tone stern and disapproving, voice raising with every word.

You start to feel yourself sober at the genuine anger in his demeanor, his logic undeniable. Being sad and angry because he left you on the couch probably didn't justify you ignoring his calls and literally sneaking out of the house. He could have mistaken your absence for an emergency. Especially after what happened yesterday.

The thought of Owen, his intentions, and his attempts to force you into his car makes you shiver.

He's not pointlessly angry, you know he's not, it must be coming from a place of genuine worry. You wonder how long he stood at your front door before he left, how many places he searched before he came here.

“Negan,” You start to apologize, but he keeps talking.

“How can you expect me to treat you like an adult when this is how you act?” He questions, talking down to you like you're stupid, a cruel smile on his face the entire time. “Throwin’ tantrums and sneakin’ off, going to one of the most dangerous places you know, all because you didn't get your way. How am I supposed to take you seriously when you act like an angsty teenager?”

Your heart aches with rejection and embarrassment, your cheeks heating as you sheepishly look around at the other patrons, very few of which have started watching the interaction. A man laughs at you, elbowing one of his buddies and saying something you can't hear from where you're sitting.

You hiss through clenched teeth, hunching your shoulders as you try to push his hands away from your jacket. “Negan.”

“Don't Negan me. You fucked up. Now I'm takin’ you back home,” He swears, trying to force you off of the bar stool. You curl your legs around it and continue shoving his hands away, refusing to budge.

Dwight comes back over to where you’re sitting, sliding the iced tea you requested across the counter. The moment you see the opaque bronze liquid, one lemon on the edge of the glass and several sunken to the bottom of the drink. You stop fighting with the man in front of you, instead turning to happily sip at it through the straw, two hands wrapped around the glass like it’s precious.

“Didn’t I just say not to come back in my bar causing problems?” Dwight grumbles, eyes narrowed despite how weary he sounds faced with the man beside you.

“You owe me, Dwight. Don’t forget that,” Negan spits, turning towards the other man with a glare. “You wouldn’t even have this bar if I hadn’t done what I did.”

He glances back down at the glass in your hands and snatches it from you, swiping it off the counter and letting it shatter on the floor.

“Hey!” You gape.

Negan doesn’t acknowledge your protests, still focused on the bartender. “You’re not even suppos’ to be serving her.”

Dwight’s eyebrows go up, but he doesn’t seem shaken by the information, mustache twitching as he purses his lips.

“And I was supposed to know that? College students sneak in here all the time,” He sighs, picking up a towel and tossing it over the broken glass. “I try to stop them, but I can’t catch everyone.”

“Yeah, but she–!” Negan cuts himself off as his mind catches up to his mouth, taking a deep breath and pinching the bridge of his nose. “She’s different.”

Dwight stares at him for a moment longer, taking in how tense Negan has looked from the moment he walked in. –He wouldn't call him a friend, per say, but they’ve known one another long enough to tell when the other is being serious, and it was true that Negan helped him get the bar and win Sherry back. He may not be sure why you're so important to him, –he seriously doubts you're his daughter– but if it's what makes Negan get the hell out of his bar…

“Fine. She’s banned. Happy?” The blonde asks, rolling his eyes when you start whining about his decision. He snaps the card you'd shown him at the beginning of the night, then turns his attention to the group of people who just came in. “I have to work, please take this somewhere else.”

He walks away from the two of you, putting on a small customer service smile.

“Thanks a lot,” You pout, crossing your arms.

“You're welcome. Now come on–” He grunts, grabbing you by the upper arm and hauling your drunk slacken body off of the stool while you pout. “–let's get the hell outta’ here.”

A few people who'd been watching you argue start booing Negan.

“Hey, come on, man. Let the little lady stay,” one of them grunts, pushing at Negan's back. “You don't gotta be such a buzzkill, she's in good hands.”

Negan frowns in response, jaw clicking like he wants to punch him for putting his greasy hands on the last thing his wife had given to him before she passed, but he doesn’t. He takes another deep breath, the exhale coming out more like a shudder.

And he means to walk away, he really does.

But he's never been great at letting things go.

He turns and smashes the beer bottle sitting on the counter over the man's head, freezing once he realizes what he's done, still holding the neck of the beer bottle in one hand and your arm in the other.

Your jaw has dropped, eyes widening with a mixture of fear and amusement. “Negan!”

“Oh, fuck…” He breathes, watching the guy hold his injured head in his hands, blood from his scalp dripping onto the floor. He drops the broken bottle.

Suddenly the guy shifts upright, swiping a tray of nachos off of the nearest server's tray and chucking them in Negan's direction, who surprisingly for his age ducks out of the way in time, leading them to land in the middle of Simon and Regina's table. The table shakes, drinks sloshing in their mugs and shot glasses, food splattering on their clothes.

They both turn around to look at the man, who still has his arm outstretched from throwing them, wobbly on his feet from intoxication.

The entire bar goes quiet for a moment, everyone still.

The glasses stop clinking, the chatter stops, and the music cuts. All eyes are on the table with the bikers at it, and the guy Negan attacked at the bar. It's kind of scary how still everyone is.

You break the silent tension with a giggle and all hell breaks loose.

Regina picks up a plate of her own ruined food and throws it at the man, hitting several bystanders who immediately retaliate, a random woman sticking her hand into a stranger's fry basket and hucking an entire handful in her direction, everyone screaming as the chaos unfolds.

Someone who looks like a frat boy nudges his friends and then shouts, “FOOD FIGHT!” at the top of his lungs, throwing his hotdog towards the bar. It slides pretty far, leaving a trail of mustard in its wake.

Dwight turns back towards Negan when the chaos starts, his entire face redder than the LEDs could ever make it.

When people start passing between you two and the angry man, your entire world spins, Negan leading you towards the back alley exit. He slams the door open with his palms, the cool fresh air hitting your face relieving you as you keep sprinting down the street together. At some point during all the running and all the laughter you're letting out, Negan's frown disappears and his hand slides down to yours, your fingers lacing.

You don't stop until you've made it several streets away, stopping in the middle of one you don't recognize, the sky the deep blue it becomes in the evening just before it gets dark. There’s no one around but the two of you.

Negan lets go of your hand, leaning over to grip his knees as he pants between bouts of laughter, watching you drunkenly dance in the middle of the street.

You spread your arms out, taking wide steps that have you swaying uncertainly, but before you can fall each time you shift your other foot at the last second and catch yourself.

“...What is it with you?” He asks after a moment, eyes squinting with mirth.

Somehow, you're the only one who's been able to drag him out of the house. He feels like a giddy teenager again, nervously knocking on your front door and running from the cops like he used to when he and Lucille had first met.

Now, she had been truly insane.

When she decided to stick her nose into someone's business and kick up a fuss, it was go big or go home.

His question doesn't seem to have any malice behind it, the tone soft like he's left genuinely wondering. You stop mid-spin, smiling lopsidedly and brushing some of your loose hair behind your ear.

“I don't know what you mean, Negan,” You say coyly, taking an exaggerated step towards him.

He straightens his posture.

“You've got a screw loose,” He laughs, taking a single half step towards you before he can think better of it. “Doin’ what you did was stupid, honey. –I expect better from you.”

You step closer again, tapping your chin as if you're thinking. “Really? Things seemed to be going pretty well until you showed up and started a brawl.”

He takes another step too.

“Yeah, because lettin’ a bunch of strangers write on you in permanent marker is just dandy. Your parents won't question that at allll.”

Your head cocks when you snort, waving your hand dismissively.

“As if that's what you're worried about. You spent all day hunting me down,” You lock eyes with him, looking downright hungry. “That's not very neighborly.”

“I was put in charge of you,” He argues. “If anything, I've been taking love thy neighbor a little too seriously.”

You both stop when you're chest to chest, your head tipped up to look at him, the street lights coming on down the street and slowly making their way to the two of you, shining a spotlight on you both. He licks his lips, breath slowing. His eyes are soft, darting from your eyes to your cheeks and lips just like they had last night.

Last night.

Your chest fills with the same shame and anger you felt that led you here in the first place.

“You kissed me,” You accuse, stepping back and wrapping your arms around yourself. Your fast beating heart starts to ache. “Why did you kiss me? Why did you– leave?”

He opens his mouth, then closes it, lowering his head.

“Did you even like me?” You whine drunkenly, eyes starting to fill with tears. “Or were you just lonely, and I– I was there? I was… easy?”

Negan raises his head again, shaking it and reaching out to you, his arms open.

“No, honey, no. That ain't it,” He hushes, but you don't come any closer. “I do.”

You frown, wiping your eyes on your shoulder, smearing black eyeshadow across your cheek and shirt.

“You do what?”

He clenches his jaw and turns his head away, looking conflicted, caught, like he's put his hand in the forbidden cookie jar.

“I shouldn't… think about you that way, you know,” He whispers, one hand coming up to scratch his beard. “It's not right.”

“But you do?” You ask hopefully, coming closer.

This time he's the one that steps back, refusing to answer.

Your shoulders fall, teeth digging punishingly into your own bottom lip.

“Take me home.”

*

*

*

The next morning you wake up to the worst headache you've ever had, rolling out of bed with a groan and letting yourself hit the floor.

You wish you'd blacked out last night, because at least then you'd be spared the embarrassment of remembering the rejection.

You groan, arms stretching out towards the ceiling before coming down to smack yourself in the face.

As much as you'd like to laze around on the floor all morning, your head is killing you too much to even close your eyes. Plus, your phone is right there, waiting to be scrolled on and used to order a tub of ice cream to drown your sorrows in.

Standing up and walking into the bathroom, you open the medicine cabinet to take two pills out and drink a handful of sink water, startling when your phone buzzes next to you on the counter. Given your luck these past few days, you assume it can't be anything good before you turn on your lockscreen and see Negan's name.

“Oh, shit,” You gasp in a panic, unlocking your phone to stare at the notification, finger hesitating.

Part of your brain is screaming that you shouldn't click it that fast, because it's going to seem like you were waiting for him to text; while the other, more curious part of you is dying to know what's in the message. You don't want to keep him waiting.

You swipe down on the notification, still without clicking to see the first part of his text, your other hand blindly reaching for your toothbrush and toothpaste, knocking over everything else in the way.

Negan: We need to talk.

That cannot be good. When is someone saying that ever a good thing?

If it was something easy to talk about, the person would have just typed out what they needed to say and moved on, satisfied that the conversation took place at all, but no. This is something heavy that requires speaking face to face.

“Screw it,” You hiss, clicking on the text to see the rest.

Negan: We need to talk.

Negan: Come to my house at 6pm for dinner.

Negan: That's not a request. Be there.

Your heart plummets.

The memory of awkwardly avoiding him until he invited you into his garage when you were on your way home from school, the distance he kept between you, ever the gentleman. You don't want to go back to that. It really feels like something has changed in these past few days that he's been coming over to watch you while your parents are away.

You have your own jokes, your own dynamic, now even your own wild stories to tell.

You frown down at your phone, heartbroken and angry as you type the only response you have left.

You: Okay.

*

*

*

It's embarrassing how much time you put into choosing your outfit, knowing he's essentially inviting you over to reject you a second time while you're sober, especially because after you try on half the clothes in your closet you wind up wearing something that he's probably seen you in a million times. Nothing special. Nothing that will impress him or make him wish he was with you.

Because you know there's nothing you can do to change his mind.

When you ring the doorbell the door unlocks and cracks open, Negan rushing away the moment you have access to his home, not making eye contact or spending even a second to look at the plain outfit you're wearing.

“I gotta, uhm,” He calls throughout the house as he walks to the kitchen. “You know. Don't want to burn the house down or anything.”

You frown, reaching down to pull your shoelaces loose and kick them off by the door. The air smells like garlic, flour, and meat, a subtle hint of brown sugar tickling your nose the deeper you sniff.

When you look up from your shoes, your eyes widen.

Things in here… have changed since that night he stopped Owen. Some of the trinkets and paintings that were hung up on the walls are gone, the floral curtains that were covered in a layer of dust taken down and replaced with sheer white ones, dead plants that were on nearly every table in the living room and entry hallway suddenly missing. The further you walk in, the more you notice. –The carpet is freshly vacuumed, the light that failed to turn on the last time he flicked the switch's bulb has been replaced, the now extra set of keys that had been on the hook by the door are absent.

You turn back to look at where you put your shoes in the entryway, seeing that Lucille's favorite mauve purple flats are gone, probably tucked away in a box somewhere.

And that's it.

It's not very much. Someone who wasn't here as much as you have been wouldn’t notice at all, but the change is enough that it's freaking you out.

“...Negan?” You call into the house, hesitantly walking into the kitchen.

He's standing at the stove stirring a pot of homemade sauce, his brow scrunched with more tension than could be explained away as concentrating on the food. He doesn’t look up when you walk in, only narrowing his eyes further behind his glasses.

You gulp, eyes wandering the area around him, bouncing from the scratch made bread twists to the cubes of some kind of seasoned red meat sitting in a bowl near the sink.

“Negan,” You call again, trying to sound stern.

The man finally looks up, closing his eyes and sighing through his nose before beckoning you forward with his hand.

You close the distance with a few strides, crossing your arms as you stand before him trying to seem annoyed or unbothered by the strange situation. You still haven't decided which, and it shows in the way you restlessly fidget with the rest of your body.

Negan lifts the spoon out of the pot, wiping the back of it on the ledge so it doesn't drip down your clothes. He sets a hand on your shoulder, slowly letting it slide up to your neck, then your jaw and chin.

Your heart is racing but you refuse to budge, trying to stay neutral. Petulant, like he's been saying you are. You can't help the way you gulp when his thumb brushes the center of your throat, though, your eyes fluttering.

“Open,” He says, pushing on your chin, and you do.

He puts the spoon in your mouth, then condescendingly pushes your jaw closed around it with two pats.

You lick the underside of the spoon, starting to relax and savor the flavor spreading across your tongue. Which ‘coincidentally’ just so happens to be the exact moment he decides to start talking, while your mouth is otherwise occupied and your attention is directed at taking the spoon from his grasp.

“I wanted to apologize for the other night, and again for last night…” He begins softly, the side of his hip pressing against the counter as he leans on it. Without his jacket he looks smaller, his leather shield of indifference gone with the character he plays when he's wearing it. “We… No, I crossed a boundary I never should have. Aside from the fact that I've known you since you were a teenager, and that your parents trusted me to take care of you, you're far too young for me, honey.”

“Mm–!” You start to argue with the spoon in your mouth, forgetting that the piece of metal is even there, more focused on what he's saying.

“You might think you like me, but I can promise you that you wouldn't feel the same way a few years from now, when you see the kind of man I really am,” He continues in a rush, lowering his head as if ashamed. “I'm stuck. You know it, I know it. –The whole damn world knows that I can't move on, and to be honest? I don't want to. I'd be a weight on your ankles, sweetie. You'd go off and do all this cool shit with your friends, and then you'd wind up comin’ back here to me and see that I haven't moved an inch. You'd be bored out of your mind. Y'know why? Because you're young. Too young for someone like me.”

You yank the spoon from your mouth. “I'm not a–”

“You're a woman,” He confirms, finally admitting what he's been refusing to acknowledge all this time. “A gorgeous young woman with her whole life ahead of her, that I'm no good for. I can't move on. I just… I can't. –And I care about you too much to hold you back. These feelings aren't worth the resentment that'll grow between us.”

“That's bullshit!” You shout, slamming your fisy on the counter next to him. “I don't care if you can't move on! You're grieving, it's obviously going to take time! But would you seriously prefer I date somebody else?”

Negan seems startled by the question, brow furrowing as he remembers the boy that tried to force you into his car and all the names you'd had carelessly written across your arms while clearly too drunk to remember a stranger's face.

“I want you to be with someone your age… But no. I don't want you with anyone except me. I wish it could be me. –Those boys don't know how to treat a lady,” He spits, fists clenching on the counter.

“Then humor me for a second,” You plead, frowning up at him.

He nods, still tense.

“Just imagine how great it would be if at the next family dinner, we were together. Not hiding, or trying to pretend that this–” you reach up and tug at the chest of his shirt, “–feeling isn't there. Imagine not having to hide, Negan.”

He stares at you, eyes gleaming as he remembers looking at you from across the yard the week you’d gotten your acceptance letter, the way you’d looked back at him smiled genuinely for what felt like the first time that day, even being heartbroken knowing that it meant you were leaving the neighborhood behind. The summer that you’d gotten waterballoons and chucked them over the fence into his yard, chasing him halfway down the block with him. One of the last barbeques you’d had, where your father had relinquished the grill to him and let him cook. You’d been so tense all day, taking on more responsibilities than you could handle, so he flung barbeque sauce at you just to make you laugh which resulted in a playfight in the grass after he’d safely shut the grill cover and made sure your dad was distracted enough by his beer not to care if it was a little too close for comfort.

It would be nice, to not have to hide those moments. To just have them without the constant reminder that they could get taken from him at any time.

You set your hand over his on the counter, watching him frown with fear in his eyes, the same look he’d had on his face when he’d gotten the news that Lucille was sick.

He takes a deep breath and runs his free hand through his hair, messing it up the way you had the other night.

“...Okay,” He agrees slowly, feeling the pangs of apprehension hitting him slow as he watches a smile spread across your face. He can’t bring himself to match the expression right now, but he wants to smile back and reassure you that he’s here, trying. “It might… take me a while before we can do anything like we started to do the other night, but I’m willing to give this a shot.”

You nod your head in agreement, willing to give him whatever he needs to feel comfortable.

Negan leans down and kisses your cheek.

He isn’t sure how your parents are going to take this. Especially your dad. Negan had been the witness to many a rant from your father about the neighborhood boys hanging around your house too much. He can’t imagine how he’ll react when he finds out that the actual cause for concern was living next door, with access to their home pretty much daily at certain points in your lives. –Negan knows how it looks, but he has a feeling saying, it’s not what it looks like isn’t going to cut it.

But that’s a problem for another day.

Right now he’s just glad that you’re here, his, and happy together.

Negan pinches your side to make you laugh, both of your hands slipping away from the counter.

“Now go sit down, you little shit.”

You laugh all the way to the table, sticking your tongue out at him before pulling a chair out and sitting in it, smiling as you watch him start plating dinner.

___

I wanted to try the DBF thing :)

There's a small bonus scene on Ao3 and Wattpad

[maxthewitness]

☆Negan Smith/Reader☆

These are oneshots!

An Emotional Affair (Negan/Student!Reader)

Bloody Mess (Negan/Unwilling Wife!Reader)

Sleepy (Negan/Innocent!Reader)

Over The Counter (Dbf!Negan/Neighbor!Reader)

[maxthewitness]

More Carl x bambi pls?

In Their Shadows (13)

tw: canon typical violence, implied teen pregnancy, discussion of teen pregnancy, non-graphic mentions of SA, mentions of child loss, mentions of loss, being misgendered, vague-ish recounting of SA

Daryl gently shakes your shoulder, hovering close above your face with his hair dangling and dropping wet spots onto the sheets. One hits your cheek and you frown, trying to turn away and fall back asleep, but he shakes you again.

“C'mon, Bea. It's important,” He grumbles quietly.

You frown at that, yawning and deciding to blink yourself awake for his sake despite the barn being so dark you can hardly see what's a few feet in front of you.

Your body feels sluggish. The mattress is warm and gentle on the aches throughout your body. You don't want to move. There should be no reason to, with Hilltop –an early rising farming settlement– as quiet as it is. The only sound you can make sense of is the rain and his voice.

It feels safe.

You lean into his hand on your shoulder and start to drift again, lightly growling in protest, a pout on your lips when he lifts your head to keep you awake.

“Carol needs somethin’, so I'm goin’ out with her to get it, ‘kay?” The man says louder, brow furrowed tensely.

“Mhm,” You hum through another yawn, rubbing at your eyes.

“It’s…” He swallows. “It's gonna take a few hours, so Rick agreed to watch you.”

You nod, already slipping back into unconsciousness. “M'kay…”

Daryl sighs and bundles you up with blankets, hoping to keep you as dry and warm as possible throughout the process. You're already sick, he doesn't want you getting any worse. He slips his arms underneath your legs and back, hands curling around your limbs as he lifts you up.

Immediately he feels something in his chest pull looking down at your face. For a second he could have sworn he saw someone else in your place, her light blonde hair spilling out from her ponytail, a grin on her face, as he lugged her around suppressing a smile. Then again, he carried her, with his eyes locked on the hole going clean through her forehead, eyes lifeless and her pale skin, ice cold.

Daryl mindlessly presses a hand to your cheek to remind himself that you're still warm. Still alive.

He turns with you in his arms, just in time to see the lightning strike behind Carol where she’s holding the barn doors open. The sky lights up a glowing blue-ish grey, illuminating the whole room and shadowing out her face. –Her hair is wet too, from the time they spent retrieving all of the weapons they’re going to need for their excursion.

When Daryl gently moves past her with you in his arms, head covered by sheets, she steps aside and lowers her eyes.

She doesn’t follow him to Rick’s.

She hasn’t been able to look him in the eye and lie properly since they were back at the prison, when she killed then burned Karen and David to prevent the spread of the mysterious disease working its way through them. Not to say that she’d hold back either. The woman would probably wind up getting into an argument and splitting off from the group again if it came down to it.

This isn’t her business. She cut ties with everyone here a long time ago to stop the inevitable. Watching on, helpless as the people she loves drop like flies around her despite being stronger than she ever has been.

Or so she thought.

Because even knowing that, she’s still here fighting.

Rick is waiting on the porch when you both arrive, hand waving for the other man to walk faster and get inside the house. Daryl jogs up to it and he shuts the door behind him, breathing softly at the warmth the structure provides.

“It’s cold out there, huh?” Rick laughs softly, turning to walk to the halfway functional kitchen. “Want some coffee? I’d just made a pot when I saw you walkin’ up to the house. –It'd be good to get somethin’ warm in your belly ‘fore you go out there.”

Daryl swallows a lump in the back of his throat. “No.”

“Are you sure? We’ve got some instant oatmeal too, and it cooks… well, instantly, so–”

“I’ve got to go,” Daryl says weakly, shaking his head. “Where should I put ‘er?”

Rick stops midstep, turning to look at the other man with concern. “On the… couch is fine for now…”

Daryl walks over to the sofa and lays you down gently, pulling one of the pillows down so your neck isn’t at an awkward angle. The outer layer of sheets he wrapped you in are soaked, so he pulls them off and tosses them onto the floor in a pile, tucking you in with what’s left.

“Love you, Bea,” He hums quietly, kissing the top of your head and slowly pulling back from you. He turns to Rick. “We’ll catch up later, okay? I gotta go, man.”

“Yeah…” He starts to reply, but Daryl is already out the door before he can finish his sentence.

Rick turns towards the kitchen to grab himself a cup, but shakes his head and spins back around to follow the other man out the door.

“Daryl!” He calls from the porch, seeing him only a few houses away.

The man turns back to look at him, dark hair sticking to his forehead while water seeps into his clothes. He doesn't look in the mood to talk. He certainly can't want to be lectured with how exhausted he's been. Rick should just be glad he's sober today.

“Be careful.”

Daryl nods, eyes lowering as he turns his back and walks away slowly.

+

+

+

You shiver and pull the sheets closer to yourself with closed eyes, flexing against the stiff material you're laying on. –It's nothing like the squishy, worn out mattress in the barn. It doesn’t smell like Daryl either. It smells like wood and oil, old repurposed fabric, and the hands of the person who put it together.

Squinting, you sit up and pull the sheets with you, looking around the room until it comes back to you.

Rick is standing at the edge of the kitchen with his head cocked, mug in hand. You think you can remember him looking at you like this a few times before, wondering if you were actually awake this time or just confused about where you were again.

“Hungry?” He asks, brow furrowed.

You shake your head, signing, Stomach hurts.

“Hmm,” He hums in acknowledgement, frowning blankly at you as if deep in thought. He sets his mug down, eyes going to your stomach and staying there for a long time.

For a man that lives with two children that look exactly like his late wife, he does a good job of not looking haunted.

His face remains blank, but not unkind as he says, “...If you wanted to, Carl’s room is down the hall. You could wake him up.”

The look of pure disbelief and uncertainty you give him is more than enough to tell him that he’s made the right choice.

Rick can’t help huffing out a laugh, giving you a reassuring smile as he nods in the direction of Carl’s room.

You try not to seem too eager when you stand up from the couch and start padding down the hall to his room with the sheets you’d been wrapped in dragging behind you, shooting Rick nervous glances all the while like he’s going to revoke his permission. He doesn’t, just keeps smiling and nodding you on. Your steps get a bit faster once you’re out of his sight.

When you get to the door you knock softly, cracking it open when there's no answer.

Carl is still in bed, asleep, one arm tucked under his pillow.

You step closer.

His blankets only half cover his shirtless body, his lower half dressed in the same flannel pajama pants Rick was wearing. When you round the bed you notice that his breathing changes, what you can see of the arm underneath the pillow tensing just enough that someone who wasn’t looking at him that closely wouldn’t notice it. His face starts to scrunch up the longer you stand above him.

You don’t really feel like talking, but you don’t want to scare him.

“Carl,” You whisper, and he opens his eye, face relaxing.

“Bambi?” He says, voice raspy with sleep as he gets up on his elbows. “Are you okay, what’s goin’ on?”

You shrug, Everything's okay.

He seems to relax at that, leaning back against his pillows and patting the other side of the bed. “Come up here?”

You walk around to the other side of the bed and climb onto it, ditching your sheets on the floor to slip underneath his. It’s cold at first, this side of the bed not having been warmed with his body heat. You almost shiver, but move closer to him instead.

There’s still a decent gap between the two of you that neither dares to close, but your legs tangle together beneath the sheets.

He flips onto his side so that you’re both laying like that, facing one another, and takes one of your hands in his, lacing your fingers together.

When Rick walks past almost half an hour later, you’re both still laying like that, smiles on your sleeping faces.

+

+

+

An older man with silver hair leans up against the support beam underneath the awning they’re posted at, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his jacket and waving them in the younger man’s face with a hearty chuckle, watching his jaw drop.

“Are you kidding me?” The younger man whines. “I couldn’t find mine and you had a whole–”

Carol grabs him by the hair, yanking it back and pressing her blade into the soft skin of his neck, right above the jugular. The older man’s eyes widen and he takes a step forward, reaching for his gun only to stop when Daryl lifts it from the crate it was on and presses the very same weapon he was reaching for into his back.

“Raymond,” The young man says through clenched teeth, wincing when the word earns him a cut.

The older man holds his hands up and drops the cigarettes onto the pavement, trying to peer over his shoulder at Daryl.

“...What is it that you want?” He asks calmly, complying when Daryl pushes him forward a few steps to the edge of the shelter they’re under. “Just take it and let us go.”

Daryl doesn’t answer his question, instead circling him with the gun raised. “‘You Saviors?”

The older man shuts his eyes, grimacing. “Aye. –We were.”

“Get on your knees.”

The older man, Raymond, does as he’s told, but it takes Carol kicking the younger one in the back of the knee to get him to listen. He falls with a pathetic yelp, barely managing to catch himself with his hands before his face hits the concrete.

Daryl keeps circling the older man, looking down at him angrily.

“Did’ya know anythin’ about the little girl bein’ kept a few miles that way?” He asks, using his free hand to point. “Short hair. Knick in her ear. Ironed arm.”

The younger man’s eyes go wide and he looks at Raymond knowingly, mouth curled into a deep frown. Raymond looks back at him, then clenches his jaw shut, lowering his head.

After a moment, his brows furrow and he shakes his head to himself as if ashamed.

“We left!” The younger man whimpers, inching forward on his knees with wide eyes, voice filled with desperation. “We aren’t with them any more!”

Carol smacks the side of his head then yanks his hair back again, keeping his neck bared. “Keep movin’ like that and my hand might slip.”

Daryl’s feet start moving again, walking in circles around the man just like he had when he was in his cell, fingers scratching at the concrete walls in the hopes that something would change but every day he woke up and it was the same hell. The same song. He started wondering if he had ever really left. The torture became a kind of relief, the servitude the only time he got to see daylight.

He hates imagining what happened to you. Hates wondering what all you endured only to come out and somehow be able to pretend you were doing okay, thinking you could hide everything from him. He hates that it worked, and that he was about to let himself be forced to leave it alone and let them get away with it while you still suffer.

“But did you know? Would she know your face?” Daryl repeats louder, pointing the gun at the younger man.

The man yelps and leans away, trapped between the gun and Carol’s knife.

“He didn’t do nothin’ to the girl,” Raymond says slowly, like he isn’t sure of what he’s saying. “Like he said, we left them.”

Carol shakes her head as if disappointed, putting on the sweet mother hen voice she’s known for. “We’ve been watchin’ you for a few hours. –Saw your whole little group. We know there’s more of you, all Saviors. That doesn’t seem like leaving to me.”

“We did!” The younger man yanks against the grip she has on him, coincidentally avoiding the only question that matters in Daryl’s eyes. “I promise we left, just please let us go!”

The older man narrows his eyes, trying to get the other to stay quiet.

Daryl cocks his head at the non verbal communication, considering himself sort of an expert after you came into his life. He throws his arm out ahead of him, laughing joylessly. “He didn’t do nothin’ to her, huh? So who did? Is that guy with you people? –Comin’ near our home, where our kids live?!”

Raymond seems surprised. “That guy…?”

“It wasn’t–!” The younger man starts again, but this time Carol presses the blade into his throat.

He yelps again, starting a frantic string of calling the older man’s name and trying to pry the knife out of his neck with his hands, but it only makes the slit worse. Hot tears start slipping down his face as he chokes, looking at Raymond for help as he falls face-flat on the pavement, slowly dying.

Carol dusts off her hands and steps over him, coming closer to Daryl and the man, who is now glaring up at the two of them with a deep set frown.

“He was just a boy,” He rasps. “–You didn’t have to do that.”

He’s ignored.

“You knew what was happenin’ to her, didn’t you?” Daryl accuses, finally pressing the barrel of the gun to his head. “You let it happen.”

Raymond looks away. “Aye… Everyone knew.”

Daryl’s finger tightens on the trigger, mere millimeters away from ending the man’s life.

“Who was it?” He asks once more.

Raymond blinks as if thinking, then shakes his head.

“I couldn’t say,” The old man says, softly. “I wasn’t near her cell all that often. I just– heard things. Who it was and who it wasn’t, I couldn’t tell ya’ even if you lined all ‘em all up on their knees like this,” he says, nodding in the dead man’s direction.

The second he moves, Daryl’s finger presses down fully.

He surprises himself, flinching even though he’s used to the kickback of a gun.

Carol touches his shoulder, voice faint with the ringing in his ears, face splattered with the man’s blood.

“Come on, let’s get out of here before the rest of ‘em come back and find their buddies dead. –There’s another post not far from here I think.”

Daryl uses the back of his hand to smear the red on his cheek, eyes still wide on the sight of their corpses.

He doesn’t feel better.

He wanted an admission of guilt, or something. Anything to prove that he was actually protecting you by getting rid of them.

The men could have been lying.

But they also might not have been.

He doesn’t know anything more than what he knew when he left you this morning.

“Daryl,” Carol calls from a distance.

“I’m comin’.”

Daryl tucks the gun into the back of his pants and follows Carol away from the start of their carnage.

+

+

+

You keep fidgeting with your feet underneath the table, feeling guilty as you pick through your oatmeal with a fork.

Judith and Carl finished half an hour ago, you aren’t sure why you can’t seem to will yourself to eat it. You’re just so tired, even after sleeping the whole night, on their couch, and in Carl’s room, you still feel lethargic.

“Somethin’ wrong?” Rick asks, approaching from behind you.

You hadn't even realized, but at some point while looking down at the mushy oats in front of you, your head had started to drop as you drifted off at the table.

You shake your head, shoveling another forkful into your mouth as if to prove you're not insulting his cooking.

Rick doesn’t seem satisfied, still staring at you with his forehead creased.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure Daryl will be back soon,” He says, lowering his voice.

I know, you sign.

You aren’t worried about whether or not Daryl will come home. You know he will. He always does.

Rick hesitates, his hand raised above you near your back. It looks like he's testing your boundaries, waiting for you to react to show him where you draw the line for physical contact between you and anyone that's not Daryl.

You stare at it uncertainly, then look back at him.

He slowly lets the hand connect with your shoulder, squeezing it gently, then rubbing in small circles.

“I know this is a touchy subject, but…” He sighs, “If you're still hurtin’ by the time he gets home, I think you should go see Siddiq again.”

You drop your fork, swallowing hard.

Carl looks up at the sound, hands paused in the air where he’d been playing with Judith a few moments before, his eye darting between the two of you.

Rick angles his body away as if he hadn't been talking, hand slipping from where it had been trying to soothe you, looking every bit as guilty as he feels.

Carl frowns, dropping the colorful toy in his left hand and standing up, his gaze growing critical as he notices how nervous you're both acting. Your jaw is clamped shut, shoes nervously fidgeting under the table. His dad can't seem to make eye contact with him, let alone commit to looking at something in the room.

He narrows his gaze on Rick, scowling. Things have already been tense between the two of them since their last fight. It doesn’t help that the man continues to seemingly pick on the very subject of their last argument.

It fully looks like he's about to confront Rick for whatever just happened between the two of you, but luckily before anything can be said, Judith bounds across the living room and presses her face against the window, excitedly shrieking.

“Ray-bow! Look, daddy, it’s a ray-bow!” She announces, tapping the glass.

Her brother is momentarily distracted, turning his attention to her and the precarious way she's balanced on her toes on a dingy white wooden crate in front of the window. His scowl fades to concern and he walks over to the windowsill, setting his hands over her ribs to keep her steady.

“Daddy!” The toddler keeps insisting. “Daddy, did you see?”

“I saw,” Rick says without moving any closer, a small smile playing on his lips that you can tell isn’t just from the relief of her diffusing the situation. “It's very pretty. Thank you for telling me.”

“Mhm,” The toddler seems satisfied at his acknowledgement, pressing her nose up against the glass between her hands and oinking.

Carl huffs out a laugh, sitting down on the crate next to her to look outside, one hand still braced on her back.

“Seein’ all that mud, little piggy?” He asks in a sweet whisper meant just for her.

She oinks again, bouncing.

The sight stirs something in you that you’d forgotten was there, your chest aching.

It’s confusing, because you know logically that aside from the weight you feel you know the pain isn't physical. It's more like… longing.

Judith stops bouncing and whips her head around to face her brother. “Car, we have’ta go outside! Pleasepleaspleasepleaseplease?”

“It’s still raining, Judy,” He says softly, setting his hand up against the glass and watching it fog around his palm.

“But what if the ray-bow leaves before it stops?” The little girl asks in a pout, jutting her lower lip out. “I wanna go outside. We’ve been inside foreveeeer.”

Rick reaches around you and takes your dish away while you’re distracted with the siblings, planning to set it aside in case you want to come back to it later, his face set into a small frown like he's concentrating.

“It’s only been one night,” Carl laughs.

You push your chair out from the table, walking over to the window to stand behind the siblings.

Outside the sky is a light steel blue, grey clouds hung like puffs of smoke in the sky. The rain is still coming down, slower and lighter than before, but coming from the clouds, touching down somewhere in the distance, is a brightly colored rainbow.

You make a small noise of surprise, getting down on your knees on the other side of Judith to stare at it with wide eyes.

You haven't seen a rainbow in what feels like forever.

The contrast of the brightly colored refracting light to the darkness of the cell you'd been in all that time has your heart racing. You want to touch it. –You know it's impossible, but you wish you could find a way to carry it with you everywhere. No matter how much time passes, no matter how bad the world gets, they're still there. The light still refracts, even in slivers, and it always astonishes you.

When you turn to steal a glance at Carl, you find him already staring at you, his eye flicking between yours to memorize the look you had on your face when you were looking outside.

Your cheeks tinge pink and you squirm under the weight of his gaze, having trouble keeping eye contact.

He smiles, looking down at your lips, then back up at you, unconsciously leaning towards you over Judith’s head. His tongue darts out to wet his lower lip and before you realize it, you're leaning in too.

THUD.

Rick drops a pile or rain gear on the floor behind all three of you, pretending not to have seen the exchange while simultaneously interrupting it.

“Ta-da!”

You were starting to get too close for comfort, even if he is trying to stop interfering so much.

“Outside!” Judith shrieks, jumping down from the box and sliding across the floor on her knees to look through the different colorful jackets and the small pair of worn yellow rainboots, which she immediately starts tugging on. “C’mon, hurry up, Car! I wanna play! C’mon! Let's go outside!”

“I, uhm–” Carl hesitates, looking between you and his sister.

He’s obviously been put in an awkward place, having to choose between going outside with his sister, who he loves more than anything in the world and would do anything to make her happy, and staying with you.

You know you’ve kind of been taking more of his attention than you deserve. She’s probably not used to him leaving the house all the time, because even when the two of you were hanging out in Alexandria, he almost never went full days without checking on her.

I can go home, You suggest, looking up at Rick for permission as you sign.

The man’s smile falls and he recoils, but before he can object, Carl does.

“No.”

Rick’s brows raise and you both turn to look at his son.

“I-I mean, you’re obviously comin’ with us if you feel up to it,” Carl amends, cheeks flushing. He looks towards his sister for a distraction. “Judith is fine with it. –You like Bambi, don’t you, Judy?”

The little girl pauses where she’s tugging the smallest raincoat on, looking you up and down.

“I guess…” She says in a monotone, her expression void of any particular leaning. She narrows her eyes. “He’s kinda weird but he’s nice.”

Carl cringes at the way she refers to you despite trying to explain to her multiple times that they’d been wrong before, that you were only pretending, like when she plays dress up.

“Bambi is a girl,” He corrects softly, looking down at the floor.

She doesn’t look convinced, but returns to putting on her jacket, yanking at the sleeves from all directions as if that's going to help it go up her arm. The buttons take her the most time, her face twisted into a frown as she spends no less than five minutes on each clasp, refusing any help she's offered.

When she’s finally finished, she picks up the other two jackets and throws them at you and Carl.

You look at one another, trying not to laugh at the serious look on her face and how bossy she's being.

It reminds Rick of Carl when he was growing up, but especially after the start of everything after the world collapsed, when he seemed all too eager to point out how stupid everything and everyone else was.

You pull the coat on.

+

+

+

The rain has gotten too light to wash the blood from their clothes and the sweat from their skin, but their bodies are still chilled to the bone. The two posts nearest to the first they attacked are empty. With the sky as light as it is and how brightly the red on them stands out, –aside from how loud their steps have become, boots full of water sloshing every step– it's not likely they'll be able to get the jump on anymore Saviors.

They'll have to completely relearn the areas they're patrolling and learn where their new posts are once they find the bodies of the two men they successfully killed.

“We should go back,” Daryl grunts, looking down at all the deserted gear.

Carol nods. “We could.”

“But?”

“But there is a main street near here,” The woman shrugs, kicking a crate full of straw over. “‘Could be something decent there.”

Daryl scoffs, shaking his head fondly despite his disappointment with how the day turned out. “You want to go shoppin’?”

“Hey,” She smiles, holding her hands up with a half shrug. “You're the one that told everyone we went out lookin’ for somethin’ I needed.”

“Fine. But if we find any–”

Daryl cuts himself off as a walkie hidden under some of the gear in a crate crackles to life, going on in silence for a few beats before the voice on the other line comes through.

“We couldn’t find it.”

Carol looks at the man beside her, frowning as they both crowd the device and push everything else aside so that the speaker isn’t muffled.

“How many miles out did you go?” A second voice asks.

“About three. Got turned around and walked about two more in a different direction, but we didn’t see anything.”

“It can’t be far.”

Daryl feels something in his stomach twist. He reaches for the walkie, planning on pretending to be one of them in the hopes they won’t recognize his voice or realize that he isn’t one of them, but Carol catches his hand and shakes her head.

“You’ll spook them off,” She whispers over the men’s conversation.

“They’re talkin’ about her,” He whispers back, wincing with his eyes.

“You don’t know that,” Carol hisses. “What would you even say? You’d just be warnin’ them.”

“Alright, we’re headin’ back now. Let us know if you find anything out there.”

“Got it.”

The static vanishes, leaving the two of them in silence.

Carol is giving him a sympathetic look, her hand slowly releasing his arm as he relaxes once the men’s voices are gone.

“Daryl,” She starts.

“C’mon,” The man dismisses, face twisted into a frown. “Let’s go shoppin’ or whatever.”

He turns and starts to walk away, head hung low. Carol calmly follows him.

“I'm not preventing you from protecting her, I had to stop you before you did somethin’ stupid.”

“Uh-huh,” He scoffs.

Carol frowns, shoulder checking him when she catches up to start leading him in the right direction.

When they actually get to the street it’s full of abandoned stores and offices that look like they’d been raided pretty early on into everything, then probably again once The Saviors came along and took over the area. Hence why there’s so few mobile walkers left, most of the undead stuck sitting upright on benches or laying on the ground with knife wounds in their heads.

There’s nothing that particularly catches Carol’s eye at first aside from the gleaming broken glass littering the sidewalk and the way the moss has sprouted up the sides of each building like she remembers it doing to the trailer she and Ed had been in when they left Atlanta and found the group.

She sighs, rolling her eyes and turning to say something to Daryl when she sees that the man has stopped in front of a frilly looking store, something clearly meant to appeal to young girls. The sign is faded now, but looks like it was once brightly colored, half torn and scribbled over posters on the wall all showing young women smiling as they pose next to perfume bottles and shopping bags overflowing with clothing.

“Didn’t take you for the type,” Carol jokes, only to wind up recoiling when the man silently steps over the broken glass to walk into the store.

She steps in after him, bracing her hand on the bare window frame.

“Uh, Daryl?” She calls again, cocking her head when the man walks over to the closest empty shelf and swipes a finger across it, pilling the dust.

He looks up from his fingers, walking further into the store, eyeing the faded pink and yellow paint on the walls. He lowers his head, spotting something beneath empty shoeboxes, crouching down out of her view to get a better look at it.

Carol rounds the corner to see him holding a pair of jeans, the bottoms of the legs embroidered with flowers and swirling stems. –They’re years out of style, even for before the virus spread, but Daryl rubs the pads of his thumbs over the design like they’re treasure.

He looks up at her suddenly, face serious. “You think she’d like these?”

“What?” She replies, then it hits her why he walked in here the teenage girl still waiting for him at home who’s currently wearing borrowed clothes she doesn’t have a choice but to wear. “Oh… I’m not sure.”

He goes back to looking at the jeans, then folds them in half and tosses them over his forearm, continuing to explore the store in case he spots something else.

“I haven’t exactly been the best…” Daryl trails off and lets the sentence end there, not sure how to define your relationship with him. “I can’t stop thinkin’ ‘bout all the stuff I should’a been doin’ with her. Tea parties and playin’ ponies and crap…”

“She’s a little old for that,” Carol laughs, moving around the store not far behind.

“But if she wanted to, I would,” The man counters, brows furrowed as he throws his arm out in front of him. His frustration fades and he sighs, looking down at the floor again. “...I don’t really know what I’m suppos’ to do with her anyway. I already messed up.”

He crouches down and picks up a half torn shirt, throwing it down just as fast.

“You’re supposed to do what you’ve been doin’. It works,” Carol shrugs.

“And what’s that?” Daryl snaps.

The woman doesn’t budge, narrowing her eyes when the man turns to glare at her. “Making her feel safe and loved.”

His brows raise, face paling as he turns his attention back to his search. He picks up some more pants, a few shirts, and Carol's hand hits something interesting when she goes up to the register looking for anything that might be useful.

She picks up the small velvety box, holding it up in front of the rest of the store.

She pictures herself, walking across a store all too similar to this one, the shelves packed with different clothing and mannequins draped in outfits Ed would never have let her spend money on. By her side, small hand in hers, is a familiar little blonde girl, hair cropped to her shoulders. Customers rush past them and the bright white lights are giving her a headache, but Carol has all of her attention on her daughter, watching the girl bounce up and down as she waits for their turn.

Ahead in the line there’s another girl sitting in a stool, wincing as the teenage employee uses a gun to puncture her ears.

When she’s finished she looks like she wants to cry, that is, until the employee hands her a mirror and lets her see the jewels in them. She grins, jumping down and walking past them with her own mother.

Carol smiles bittersweetly at the box, lowering it and bringing herself back to the dim, lifeless store they’re in.

She walks back over to Daryl and waits for him to look up before tossing the box over, watching him check the contents with confusion. “Most girls have their ears pierced. She doesn’t, but you should see if she wants to. –We have a little antiseptic to spare.”

Daryl nods like he’s been assigned a mission, tucking the box into his back pocket. “I don’t know how she’ll feel ‘bout that, given the knick in her ear.”

He thinks back to the day you were both taken, the conversation you never finished having about the old scars on your back. He doesn’t know why the idea reminds him of it.

“It’s in the cartilage,” Carol scoffs, pointing to her own helix. “She can still get her lobes pierced.”

“Hm.”

Daryl looks down at the clothes in his arms before standing.

“Let’s get the hell outta here.”

+

+

+

Judith splashes in the puddles all around their new home, looking amused when the water ripples and even more amused when it gets her on her light blue jeans and gives her spots. She stops jumping from puddle to puddle when she sees the wide track of someone that definitely slipped in the mud, kicking along the shape to fling mud onto another trailer wall.

The two of you watch her from the porch, her brother having given up on stopping her some time ago when she got down on her knees to draw in the mud and make pies out of it, that same strange but comfortable space left between you that isn’t usually there.

It didn’t bother you at first. You watched as the residents of Hilltop walked by, their cups of coffee and bundles of lumber becoming lunches and dirty gloves as the evening rolled in.

But Carl keeps stealing glances at you. –Has been all day.

These ones are different than the loving ones he usually sends your way. Loaded. You can tell he’s trying to find a way to say something he doesn’t quite know how to say, getting more confident about speaking each time he doesn’t. He’s going to say something soon.

“Uhm,” He clears his throat, not to get your attention, but because his voice cracks. His legs are spread, one of them bouncing slightly, with his hands tightly clasped between them. “I… heard somethin’… about you, a little while ago…”

You shut your eyes, heart breaking.

It was inevitable. He was always going to find out, you just hoped you’d get to be the one to tell him. –Not like this, not in the middle of one of the calmest days you’ve had in months after finally starting to explore how you feel about one another.

You make a questioning noise, but it comes out wrong. It’s slow, like you know exactly what he’s talking about and are pretending not to.

“Siddiq was just talkin’, –uh, not to me– and he said…” You hear his chest rise and fall once, rapidly. “He said somethin’ about you having a… a pregnancy test under your bed?”

You try to keep the tears from coming as the lump in your throat worsens, fingers digging into your own skin punishingly.

You don’t deny the accusation, or turn to see the tension in him grow, misplaced guilt gnawing at every corner of his mind.

He hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it since he heard it.

“Did you…” He gulps. “–Have that because of me?”

You turn towards him, opening your eyes.

For a moment, you let the relief wash over you because he somehow still doesn’t know, but you know you can’t let it last. You have to tell him. You can’t let him think that he did this to you, especially knowing what happened to his mom.

You take a deep breath, shaking, savoring his scent for when you inevitably lose him because of this.

“No.”

Now that you’re looking at him too, he makes eye contact with you, holding it, his brows scrunching with remorse.

“Y-You don't have to lie to me, okay? I shouldn't have climbed into bed with you the night you got back. It was a stupid thing to do,” He continues, voice fraying at the edges with fear. “What we did was… ugly. I don't regret it for a second, but…” He whines, looking down at your stomach. “If I messed everythin’ up, you have to tell me. Please. You can't suffer because of my mistake.”

“Ca–” You choke on his name, trying not to cry.

The next breath you take fills your lungs with shame, chest brimming with it until you let it all spill out in a single sentence confession.

“They think I’m pregnant,” You hunch in on yourself, shutting your eyes again at how teary and high pitched your voice comes out. “–Because of when I was away.”

You hear him inhale sharply beside you.

“Oh…”

You sniffle.

The conversation stops.

Despite knowing this would happen, you tried not to picture how things between you would end. You wanted to live in the moments you had together. That doesn’t stop you from feeling disappointed by his reaction, though.

It cuts deep that he doesn’t even seem to care enough to be angry at you. He should be. He spent all that time helping train you and when it came down to it, you still couldn’t protect yourself. –And even before the two of you were this, you were friends. He should feel something, shouldn’t he?

You use the heel of your palm to swipe a few escaped tears away, trying to get a hold of yourself.

Judith gives a particularly loud squeal and you’re brought back to watching her play in the mud, the scene unfolding before you like a movie. Your body feels cold, but the pain in your chest has left you hollow and unfeeling to it. The little girl has a bucket now, which she didn’t have a few moments ago, and is attempting to make castles with it.

This is fine. You can accept this.

From the moment you got back, you knew you’d be nothing more than a burden on anyone that had the misfortune of getting close to you.

You see Carl shift in your periphery. You assume he’s going to stand up and walk away.

But he doesn’t.

Instead he slides closer to you on the steps, pretending to watch Judith as the distance between you closes and your thighs touch.

He sets his hand over yours, his fingers resting in the gaps between each of yours, waiting for you to flip your hand around.

You flick your eyes over to him briefly to find that he’s not looking at you, just waiting, as trusting and patient as he’s always been.

Your skepticism dies. You flip your hand over, sniffling dryly.

He laces your hands together, smiling bittersweetly while reassuringly squinting his eye.

The two of you return to looking blankly at his sister, watching her pull the bucket off of her first castle, the muddy blob falling apart the moment her hands are off of it. She frowns.

Then, after a moment, Carl starts speaking again, looking anywhere but directly at you.

“When we were on the road… just me, Michonne, and my dad… there were these guys,” His voice is soft and uncertain, heart pounding in his chest. He swallows again, because for some reason unbeknownst to him, his throat’s gone dry. “They called themselves The Claimers.”

You cock your head, remaining silent. Even if the story came seemingly out of nowhere, you can tell that whatever he’s telling you right now is serious.

Daryl spots you from across the way, already having dropped what he got for you off at the barn.

He looks down at your intertwined hands and feels his entire body tense, fists clenching as he prepares to storm over to the two of you and drag you home.

The closer he gets, though, the more his steps slow.

“They–” Carl laughs, but the sound isn’t genuine, it's really more of a hollow scoff, “–y’know, they claimed stuff… T-To be honest, I can't remember much else about them. When Daryl explained how he ended up with them to my dad I did my best to tune all of it out. It was too… fresh.”

Daryl comes to a stop, shoulders going slack as he realizes what story Carl is telling you. He’s ashamed to admit that until now, like most of their group, he’d forgotten all about what had happened to the boy that night. He’d been so focused on surviving he’d never checked on him after that to see if he was okay.

He wonders if anyone had.

It seems… unlikely.

The importance of what Daryl is witnessing hits him and it feels like his heart is being crushed in someone’s hands.

He slinks back into the shadows beside one of the trailers, watching the two of you from a distance, crossed arms heavy with guilt.

This isn’t for his ears. He doesn’t have the right to listen to a story he never asked to hear from the person who probably needed someone to.

“Anyway, one of the guys tried to–” Carl stops, dismissive tone cutting off with the shake of his head, “He just– He got on top of me and unbuckled his belt, and kept–” He falters again, letting out a laugh that seems more like a dry sob, sounding uncharacteristically panicked as he relives the events of that night, “I could feel him.”

Daryl’s stomach lurches.

You nod, understanding.

For him it was the belt, the pressure against his back. But for you it was the hands. Grabbing, tangling in the hair you wished hadn’t grown out, holding you down, sliding down your ribs and gripping all the skin you’d tried so hard to keep hidden before.

“My knife– it was right there, but I couldn't pull myself together for long enough to do anything. I– I was helpless and scared and I just wanted it all to end and–” He forces himself to stop, refusing to let the panic take over. A tear rolls down his face and he quickly swats it away with his free hand.

His eye darts to your intertwined hands and he squeezes, taking a deep breath.

You squeeze back.

“It still affects me,” He says, putting himself back on track to the point he was trying to make. “I still have nightmares sometimes, and I still can't… function properly. You– You saw. When I go to bed I still have to keep a knife under my pillow. –I hate it when other people wake me up, when they touch me it's like…being dragged out of that truck all over again.”

He takes a deep breath when he’s finished, letting it out slowly, still looking off into the distance with you.

“What I'm trying to say is that I get it, that's all.”

You scoot closer to him so that the entire left side of your body is pressed flush against him instead of just your leg.

You rest your head on his shoulder.

He rests his head on top of yours.

___

Fic Chapterlist

Ping list: @glennseyeball @svatleenadelvera @booksbymunat @yuinno @lyraea @wizzerreblogs @medievalcherry @showyourt33th @gamberettosstuff @sunseshimmer1166 @vanillabeanswirltwist @peggyvan @torifirefly @hyssoplampflickers @sf1216

[maxthewitness]

PLEASE more enid mention in “You’re the gasoline, I’m the match.” , will there be any?

Yes! Enid is actually supposed to be in the next chapter! 💚💚💚

[maxthewitness]

˙⋆✮SLEEPY˙⋆✮

Negan/Innocent!Reader

CW: Somnophilia, CNC, innocence/corruption k!nk, religious trauma (maybe?), oral f!receiving, use of the word "puppy", degredation, wet dreams, fingering

It's not uncommon for Negan to find himself in bed with you, one of your thighs thrown over his, when all of a sudden you’ll whine in your sleep and start humping his leg like a desperate little puppy in heat.

Isn't that just a little sad?

You have a perfectly good husband next to you, but you only ever seem interested in instigating anything sexual when you’re drooling into the crook of his arm. –And sure, he might put his hand on your lower back to help you get some more pressure, god knows you need the help with all that whimpering you do, your flushed face all scrunched up because your body is too heavy with sleep to actually get you off, but it’s not the same as if he were actually getting to help you finish.

The feeling of your sticky panties rubbing against him drives him crazy, but all he’s done so far is whisper sweet things in your ear and let you take what you need, your hips rolling against his thigh simply not enough without his help.

When you first got to The Sanctuary, before he made you his wife, with only a backpack full of cans and a stuffed bunny to your name– you’d been so repressed by whatever nutty religious community you’d come from originally, you could barely stand seeing him shirtless. You used to turn bright red and hide your face in your shirt.

Eventually you were able to work up to sleeping in the same bed as him, but you still seemed tense when it came to certain things, never asking for more than what he gave.

Well…

Except for nights like tonight, hand clutching the center of his shirt for dear life as you grind against his thigh in your sleep, huffing softly. Your body is languid, moans unbroken by the hand or pillow you insist on muffling yourself with otherwise.

You actually seem satisfied.

And sometimes he can tell you’ve woken up after you’ve finished, your body tensing up again, the hands on him cautiously getting more comfortable as if expecting him to punish you for it.

He never does, just lays there in the dark keeping up the pretense of uninterrupted sleep.

But you’ve been getting bolder, openly whining his name as you ride his thigh, fully awake, as if you think he won’t notice.

Only, earlier tonight there’d been a bump in the hall and he’d shifted underneath you. You’d held your breath and then pulled the covers over your head to hide, falling asleep a little while later without cumming.

He thinks it’s only fair he helps you out, seeing as he ruined your fun earlier.

You’re laying in a pile of pillows, stuffed rabbit clutched in your arms for safe keeping, hair fanned out around you. You look so pretty in the moonlight, the same gentle angel he rescued from that burning hell outside.

He parts your legs, hands sliding up and down them soothingly until he pushes your plush thighs apart to give you a kiss. You don’t stir. He kisses again, moving up towards your core.

Sure enough, he can see the dark spot that’s formed in the center of your panties, body aching for the help he knows you need. He gives you another kiss, this one above your waist, then reaches up and slowly pulls your panties down and off, tossing them onto the floor.

Negan likes the way you look, draped in nothing but one of his oversized black t-shirts.

He runs his hands up your legs again, hands stopping at your hips to hike your legs up slightly, letting the ends of them rest on either side of his lap.

He licks his lips, thinking of ruining you. He wants to bite and mark, he wants you to squish his face between your thighs as he ruthlessly laps at your folds.

The pads of his fingertips gently trace your folds, parting them, gathering your wetness before he leans forward and kisses your pussy directly, laughing under his breath when your body twitches and you sigh in your sleep.

He licks a stripe up you teasingly, feeling your hole clench around nothing, hips held back by his hands attempting to roll into his face. He presses you further against the mattress, punishingly nipping at your clit for not holding still.

You moan, face scrunching up as you finally stir, turning your head the other way and relaxing again.

Your arms stretch above your head, fingers twitching when he dives right back in, throwing one of your legs over his shoulder to get a better angle, tongue dipping inside of you and rubbing against your tight walls.

He feels you writhing in his hands, hips grinding against his face as he blatantly sucks and massages your hole with his tongue, lewd noises getting louder the wetter you get from him eating you out.

You moan louder when he starts circling your hole with a digit, your thighs twitch closer to his face, tensing.

Your eyes flutter open and look down at him with amazement, starting to sit up with confusion, still half-asleep. He pulls back, the lower half of his face shiny and wet.

“Relax,” He says, before going down on you again.

You fall back against the pillows, body shivering and arching as he pushes a finger inside of you, curling it to graze all the right places, lips and tongue still working your clit over to see how slick he can get you.

“Ah–! Mmph–!” You slap a hand over your mouth when he inserts a second finger and rubs against your g-spot torturingly slow.

Your hands tangle in the sheets, body coming undone embarrassingly fast now that you’re awake enough to realize what he’s doing, but no matter how much you whine and gasp he doesn’t stop his movements until your thighs are flush against his face, shaking as you uncontrollably arch into his tongue.

The stimulation turns painful as you melt back into the bedding, but he still doesn’t stop, drinking every last drop he was able to work out of you with such dirty sounds you’d never imagined hearing.

You start to ache and pull your leg away, but he puts a hand over it to keep it there, finally sitting up to look at you, fingers slowly dragging out.

“You soaked the sheets, darlin’,” He whispers, shifting up the bed to lay his head on your stomach. “Did’ya like that?”

You nod, face flushed.

“So next time you’re feelin’ a certain kind of way, are you gonna ask me for help? Or hump my leg like a damn puppy?”

You shrink, shoulders coming up to your ears, confirming that you fully believed he was sleeping through that every night. “Ask…”

“Good girl,” He says condescendingly, voice saccharine sweet.

---

Here's another little oneshot smut thingy

[maxthewitness]

There's A New Chapter.

This chapter is definitely not suitable for everyone, it has some pretty difficult topics in it and it's almost 16,000 words. I would recommend taking a break during it. THIS IS NOT THE LAST CHAPTER.

“Did you hear that?”

Carl stops midstep, his still red and puffy eye unfocusing somewhere over his shoulder as he tries to listen for what he'd thought he'd heard.

Ron gets into a defensive position without hesitation, knife held with the tip gleaming outward. “No, what?”

“Footsteps,” He replies, lowering his voice to a whisper. He puts a finger over his mouth to signal Ron to be quiet, then points to the trees next to them, motioning for him to hide.

Ron nods once and starts slowly walking in the direction of the trees, trying not to make any noise. He hadn't noticed before, but every time he moves the texture of his jacket makes a loud drag that the leaves blowing isn’t enough to cover. He straightens his arms, steps widening to compensate.

Carl follows soon after, his breathing deathly quiet.

He makes it look so easy.

Ron would like to say that it’s only because he’s spent so much time out here when he was younger, but even after his eye was shot out he picked everything right back up again in no time. It doesn’t make any sense.

He’s been trying to learn the same skills and even though it’s been double the time, he still hasn’t figured it out.

It would have been nice if Carl had continued to help him learn, but it seems like that’s not an option anymore.

Whatever. If he can do it, so can he.

“Do you still hear it?” Ron asks with a huff, ears not tuning to whatever noise the other teen is hearing. He glances over his shoulder to see Carl’s eye has gone wide, his own involuntarily mirror his reaction.

“It's gettin’ closer.”

The blonde clamps his mouth shut, walking faster.

His steps grow less precise as he goes, the soles of his tan leather boots suctioning to the mud and making it significantly harder to be careful. Every soft step runs the risk of stepping on something noisy, but every hard, intentional step nearly gets him stuck.

“Do you still–?” The question fizzles out as he loses his balance and is forced to catch himself with his other leg, boot crushing a dry branch. It cracks loudly in the silence of the woods and he freezes like a deer in headlights.

Instantly, he's tackled.

Carl drags him to the ground and brings him to a downward slope in the trail they're walking, pressing a hand over the blonde’s mouth. “Hold your breath.”

---

You're The Gasoline, I'm The Match on Ao3

[maxthewitness]

There's a new chapter...

Ron can't seem to hold back the gleeful snort that bubbles out of him during the silence, caused by him trying to stifle his laughter. He clears his throat afterward, animatedly turning back around in his seat to face him. It looks like he can barely contain himself.

“I know it was you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Carl boredly flicks his eye over to him for a quick glance before returning his gaze to the road.

“What?” He asks. Ron’s smile grows, canines glinting in the dim light. He tries again, “What are you talkin’ about?”

“Oh, Carl,” The blonde tuts, shaking his head with condescension. “Carl. Carl. Carl…”

He's not in the mood for these games.

It might seem like Ron is charming or funny at times, but when he's faced with a serious situation that leaves the people he feels below on equal ground as him, he never misses the opportunity to say something cruelly timed. He watched him do that to you time and time again, but you always made excuses for it just like you do for everything he does.

“Jesus christ, Ron. What?” He spits back in a growl, feeling himself getting wound up again. Yelling at him once for something unrelated wasn’t enough. He wants to tear into him. “Get to the point.”

---

You're The Gasoline, I'm The Match on Ao3

[maxthewitness]

♡ Tender Heart ♡

Yandere Carl Oneshot

7:00am

You wake up and stretch your arms above your head. Your shirt rides up because of the alterations made last week. You seem confused about it, but you don't seem to realize what's wrong with your shirt when you look in the mirror.

7:16am

You eat breakfast. Two peaches. Sliced. You don't seem to enjoy it.

7:45am

You leave the house and walk down the street to the farm. You spend approximately twenty minutes trying to harvest what little crops have sprouted. You smile and cheer when you see the tomatoes have gotten plump.

8:05am

Benjamin approaches you and pats you on the back. You look at it and step away, but his hand doesn't leave. He strokes your arm. You blush and look away shyly.

Everyone keeps saying that you're really coming into yourself, but what right do they have to look at you?

Carl cracks his knuckles with the pen between his fingers, head cocking at the sight before him.

He wonders if you'd react like that if it was him touching your arm…

He doesn’t want to hurt you. He'd be good to you, certainly better than the rest of the boys here. They don't know you like he does. They can't predict what you'll do next, or know what you're thinking. They probably only want to see your body. They wouldn't love you the way he does. No one can. You're his.

You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his. You're his.

8:56pm

Benjamin is alone. He will be for the next few hours. Dinner is a community activity, and with Ezekiel around, the pageantry keeps everyone locked in their seats until the very end. He is tired from moving the bags of animal feed.

“Oh, Carl? What are you–”

He lifts the salt lick before he realizes what he's doing, bashing Benjamin in the head with it once. It doesn't do the trick. Blood drips down his forehead and he stumbles back, fingers reaching up to touch the wound he'd made.

“Carl–?” He looks into the eerie blue eyes staring back at him and grimaces, stumbling backward. “What the hell is wrong with you?! Stay away from me!”

Carl goes in for the second strike, crying out in pain when the other boy twists his wrist and shoves him into the shelf full of supplies behind him, items falling from the shelf onto the hay covered floor.

It gives him an idea.

He grabs the other boy's shirt and yanks him under the shelf, his other hand braced on the rod holding the shelf up, stepping back and pulling the heavy structure down.

The crunch is deadening. Blood oozes out from under the shelf like it would from a broken icepack, the twitching foot sticking out from the other side of the shelf slowing to a stop. Carl steps on it for good measure, waiting until he hears the ear splitting sound of a skull fracture and is certain Benjamin won't turn.

How had he managed to live life this boring up ‘till now?

Carl picks up the salt lick on the way out and holds it out to one of the horses, watching the beautiful creature lap up the blood with reverence. He wonders what it tastes like. What kind of tangy metallic taste could drive both man and animal so mad they can't help but seek it out after their first taste.

Is humanity what gives someone their flavor? Would he taste different? Bitter and violent without the sweetness of you?

He's the salt and flour, the ingredients no one would even think to touch if it weren't for the sweetness of the sugar he is added to.

He pets the horse gently and drops the clean salt lick into its stall, kicking the hay around him with his foot so that the print of his mismatched boots is unidentifiable.

Everything is perfect until he walks home.

*

*

*

“Carl Grimes?” You say from behind him, laughing afterward. “That is you, isn't it?”

Shit. He wasn't supposed to run into you. Is his hair straight? Is there any blood on him from earlier? He doesn’t want to make a bad impression.

Or worse, frighten you.

He turns around to face you, lowering his head so that his hair comes to the front and shadows his face.

If anything, he could always lie and say his socket cracked from the dry heat and started to bleed, but he doesn’t want to do that. He doesn't want to lie to you.

“I haven't seen you around in like, forever…” You smile at him, stepping closer and bending over slightly to see him better. “You know everyone is eating dinner right now, right?”

Carl nods dumbly, feeling his cheeks starting to heat up.

“Uhm… I was wondering,” You tuck your hair behind your ears in that cute way you always do when you're nervous. You used to have hairclips to take care of that problem for you, but there's only so much those flimsy pieces of colorful metal can take before they snap. He thinks he likes it better this way anyhow, almost wishes he'd realized how cute it would be to watch you play with your hair. “Would you… uhm…”

You look down at the ground, shrugging nervously.

He looks down there too.

“You're always so shy with me,” You say softly. “I might start to think you don't like me all that much…”

Carl snaps his head up in an instant. “No, I do.”

“Really?” You sound relieved by the confession despite it not having gone according to his plan.

“Yeah…” He whispers, looking down at the ground again. “I'm sorry if I made you think otherwise. You're… really great. I just don't want to mess things up.”

“Me neither,” You say sweetly.

Carl finally dares to look as close to your body as he's willing to with your eyes on him, raking his eyes over your shoes. The toes of them are cleaned, completely, like you've purposely taken a cloth to them and washed them before smearing dirt across the front to make them look dirty.

He furrows his brow and keeps on that path, seeing your scraped knee and noticing the blood on the hem of your sleeve and the inside of your wrist where the shadow of your clothes would cover it from a normal observer. Nobody really looks at each other that hard, that's why they can never recall the details of a passerby's face… but Carl does look.

He raises his eye to yours again.

“You're bleedin’,” He says, testing the waters.

You don't seem all that surprised, feigning innocence as you look directly at your arm without checking anywhere else first.

“Oh, am I?” You say with false worry. “I must've scraped myself working earlier.”

You didn't. He was there. He was watching that whole time and he never let you out of his sight long enough for you to get hurt. It would have had to have happened when he stopped shadowing and left you with the other girls at dinner, but the blood on you is dry. The wound wouldn't have closed that fast.

The pliers are missing from your toolbelt.

“I killed Benjamin,” He confesses, feeling his heart race with excitement at the idea of you jamming the tool into someone's body, twisting and pulling at their nerves with him in mind.

Your eyes widen a fraction and your face drops before going bright red, eyes glazing over with want.

“You shouldn't go around confessing your crimes, Carl,” You say lovingly, pressing the heel of your palm to your mouth to hide how red your face is getting.

“Crimes? Plural?” He clarifies, licking his lips.

You nod.

“You're so fuckin’ perfect,” He moans, rushing forward to press his lips to yours. The mask falls and he tangles his fingers in your hair, pulling you as close as he can without crushing you entirely.

You whine and grip either side of his face, licking the blood from his cheek.

“I'm never gonna let you go,” He says between ragged breaths. “You're mine now.”

“Funny you think you had a choice,” You hiss back, biting down on his tongue when you move back in and working it between your teeth. “I would have made sure I was the only option.”

He waits patiently for you to release him from your bite and then kisses you feverishly. “How many?”

“Five,” You say bluntly, eyes shyly drifting away from his. “...So far.”

Carl pulls back to take in the sight of you, pushing your hair behind your ears himself for the first time.

[maxthewitness]

New Chapter :(

It looks like Ron is trying really hard to think of Sam 😭^

“Car?” A sweet voice calls from his doorway, throat still sore from sickness.

The boy snaps his head up instantly, zipping the backpack so she can't see what's inside.

The toddler takes a few steps forward, rubbing her big brown eyes tiredly.

“Car, where go?” She asks through a yawn.

He holds his arms open, letting her waddle into them and throw her arms around his neck in a cuddle. She nuzzles into the side of his throat and he feels himself start to relax and regret trying to leave even if it is to rescue part of his family.

“I'm gonna get Phia and bring her home,” He explains gently.

The toddler cocks her head. “Oh… Where she go?”

He wants to laugh at how sweet she is, but he can't. His heart is breaking and she's tearing it apart with her chubby little baby fingers.

“We don't know,” He sniffs. “So I have to find her.”

The toddler nods, looking thoughtful.

“And daddy too?”

Carl winces, looking away from her hopeful eyes. “Yes. And daddy too.”

The teen picks up his backpack, taking a deep breath as he pulls her hands from his neck and puts it on his shoulders, heading towards the bedroom door.

Judith grabs his sleeve, face more serious than he thought was possible for a kid that still giggles at peek-a-boo if she's in the right mood.

“You'll be back?” She questions, fist locked with inhuman baby strength.

Carl's eye widens, because really, he doesn't know. He hopes he will be, but he doesn’t want to make a promise he can't keep.

“I'm strong,” He offers instead, pulling away. The girl follows him out to the hallway, watching him go. “Take care of Michonne, okay? She loves you.”

---

You're The Gasoline, I'm The Match on Ao3

[maxthewitness]

In Their Shadows (12)

tw: implied teen pregnancy, non-graphic mentions of past SA, zero romantic miscommunication, self blame, mentioned wounds + eye socket, substance abuse, panic attacks, slight regression, violence, mentions of child death.

The next morning when Daryl wakes up all he can hear is the sound of you retching between pained whines, objects clattering as you move around as quietly as you can despite your sickness to prevent waking him.

He sits up with an apology on his tongue for upsetting you yesterday, he was just trying to protect you, but before he can say a single word you’re glaring at him with teary eyes and slamming the barn doors shut behind you.

Is it strange that all he could think when he saw your face was that it was too hot outside for the long sleeve shirt you were wearing? –That you could overheat, especially since he didn’t see a canteen of water anywhere on you? He was planning to wake up early and get you something special to make you feel better, but you let him oversleep just to avoid him.

Daryl sighs and holds his head in his hands.

He really hopes he didn’t just destroy what little vulnerability you’ve been offering him. He needs to know what happened to you for his own sanity. Not knowing just how badly you’d been hurt is killing him. He wants to help, but every time he’s tried it’s been a horrible misstep.

You wipe your mouth on the back of your hand, cringing at the taste of acid clinging to your tongue.

“Ew,” You complain under your breath, slowing the pace you’re walking at once you realize that Daryl isn’t going to follow you.

Whatever, it’s not like you wanted him to. You’d rather wander Hilltop alone a hundred times over than be chained to Daryl for the rest of your life… Or more accurately, the other way around.

You sniffle, wiping your eyes on your sleeve.

That’s all you’ve ever been to him since the day he met you, a burden.

He took you in to correct the mistake he made in capturing you in one of his nets, and the rest, well… you suppose maybe he learned to like you eventually, but all of it seemed to have meant a lot more to you than it did him. He saddled himself with teaching you how to survive out of a sense of duty to his fellow man and you couldn't even repay that kindness with honesty.

Now that he knows what a disgusting creature you’ve become, if you were anything else before, he knows you aren’t worthy of being a part of this group anymore.

Some part of you knows that’s not true, but you bury it deep.

There’s too much trying to claw its way out of you already, the long gone phantoms of hands on your body carving into your skin, sharp heat splitting you open as your back scrapes against the concrete of a cell, eyes unable to adjust to the darkness swarming you. Sometimes you wondered if there was something over your eyes, or if it was your own inability to adjust to the pitch black.

Your fists clench at your sides, shaking, your brow furrowed in frustration at how dizzy you’re starting to feel from even abstract thoughts about the room. –Not even the one where you were supposed to be getting tortured.

Why are you so weak all of a sudden?

It was one thing for other people to infantilize you and treat you like you were helpless despite all the ways you proved yourself, but now you’re doing it to yourself.

You’re afraid of your own mind when there could very well be a real threat inside you still.

“Bambi!”

You try not to turn your head at the sound of Carl’s voice breaking through the thick atmosphere you’ve blanketed around yourself, but your body moves on its own to watch his familiar figure jog down the path towards you with a smile on his face.

He looks so genuinely happy to see you –you, of all people– that it makes your chest ache.

You barely think about it before turning away and running off.

You hear his steps stop behind you for a split second before they resume at a faster pace, his boots crunching on the gravel.

“Bambi?” He calls again, catching up with you with ease. You used to be faster than this. Faster than him. He bends his upper body so that he’s ahead of you with his face in front of yours, smile quickly fading when he sees the serious look on your face. “What’s the matter?”

You try not to look at him, instead turning your back and darting away faster this time until your lungs feel like they’re about to burst with every stride.

Carl follows.

As Hilltop flies by in your peripheral, the pain in your chest gets bad enough that you’re letting out pathetic whimpers every few breaths, teeth clenched.

“Did I do somethin’ wrong?” He shouts from behind you with an anxious edge. The more you run from him, the more stricken he looks, the more you want to get as far away from him as possible before you taint him. “–If I did somethin’, please tell me!”

He doesn’t even sound like he’s out of breath, it’s not fair. It’s not fair.

Your legs get less coordinated, physically unable to keep the speed you’d been going at. You let out a frustrated scream, ignoring the weary looks you get from other people as you slow down and slip between a few buildings to avoid a majority of the residents wandering around.

Carl turns to the side and slips in after you.

“Was it what I said yesterday? I didn’t mean for it to…” He bites his tongue, eye searching the ground as he walks a few feet behind you trying to figure out what went wrong. “I’m sorry, Bambi. I just– I didn’t mean to–” He chokes back a soft sound and you stop in your tracks. “I’m sorry.”

You turn to face him, seeing the way he grips and twists his own skin trying to hold himself back, the pain giving him something other than the worry to focus on.

He might not be crying, but he looks genuinely destroyed by what you’d been doing, like this was the inevitable conclusion to what had been going on between the two of you and he knows it’s time to let go now.

You understand that.

It always feels like the good things in this world are moments away from oblivion.

You step forward and take his face into your hands to caress the apples of his cheeks, the tip of your left thumb teasing the edge of his scar where it's poking out from beneath the bandages. His upper lip twitches uncertainly and he leans into the touch, staring back as your gaze darts between his hidden socket and his untouched eye.

Carl puts his hand over yours where it rests on him.

“It wasn't me?” He sniffs dryly.

You shake your head, feeling your resolve to escape him waver.

“Then why are you running from me?”

Because when he finds out everything that happened when you were away –and he will find out– things between you will end, and you’ll both be devastated. You don’t want to lose him. You don’t want him to hate you or treat you any differently than he already is.

“I’m… gross…” You admit in a whine, eyes shining with unshed tears. “I don’t deserve someone like you in my life.”

His brow raises slightly but he tries to cover the reaction.

“You’re always so nice to me and I don’t know why… I know I don’t deserve it. I’m a terrible person, I lied to everyone and now I–” You cut yourself off with a frustrated eye roll, lowering your head to stare down at your boots as your tears fall onto them, washing away some of the grime.

“Oh, Bambi,” Carl lets go of your hand and pulls you into his arms, resting his head atop your messy curls.

You sniffle, pawing at your eyes to try and stop the tears from coming.

“You're not gross and you're not a terrible person,” He says after a moment, giving you a particularly tight squeeze to help soothe you. “What happened?”

You shake your head, hugging back and letting the tears drip onto his flannel with a suppressed wail.

For a split second Carl thinks he catches something familiar in the way your body trembles against him, hands clawing for purchase on the only thing you’ve deemed safe in what feels like thousands of miles of empty sea trying to pull you under. He lets you collapse against him, leaning against the side of one of the trailers for support as he holds you.

He doesn’t want to ask. He really doesn’t.

“Did somebody… make you upset?” He asks after a moment, swallowing hard.

You nod against his shoulder.

“Are you–” He blinks hard enough to see stars, grip on you tightening. “Did they hurt you?”

You shake your head, taking a deep breath to try and settle yourself.

At least there’s that, right? You aren’t being hurt anymore. You should be grateful, not disappointed that things are changing.

Carl lets out a shaking exhale, pushing your shoulders back so that he can look into your eyes as he wipes the tears away. –You’re not usually this sensitive, so he was more than a little shocked when you broke down the way you did.

“What can I do to make you feel better?” He asks, relieved to see that the question makes you smile, even if it is downwards from embarrassment.

Kisses?, you sign, adding an audible, “Hm?” to indicate that it's a question.

He leans in and presses his lips to your cheek a few times, hat slipping upward. You grab it and pull it back onto his head, the tips of your noses touching when he pulls back from your cheek to see what you’re doing.

You avert your eyes, not moving to stop the contact even though you know it’s a bad idea.

“You’re allowed to have good things y’know,” He says softly, almost sounding remorseful. “I don’t know why you think so much of me… I’m not all that special. You’re goin’ to wind up disappointed.”

“Never,” You say with complete certainty.

He hums, prying the fingers of one of your hands from his shirt to take it in his, slowly kissing his way up from your knuckles to the part of your arm covered in the flowering burns from the iron. He pauses at the bend of your elbow to push the half sleeves you’re wearing up to gain access to the worst of it, but you pull it back.

“I want to see your face,” You breathe. “It’s not fair that I can’t see you.”

Carl just stares at you.

“...Your voice sounds better,” He deflects weakly.

“Please?” You beg.

Slowly he reaches up and sticks his thumb underneath the bandage over his eye, taking a deep breath and holding it as he takes his hat off and pulls the gauze over his head to expose the empty socket. He sets his hat on the stack of crates behind him, taking longer than he needs to set it down with his hair in front of his face.

“There,” He cautions defensively, losing the usual confidence the bandage gives him. “It’s off now, so… there.”

You smile with eye contact, meaning every second of it.

“I don’t understand why you want to look at… it,” He gulps. “I don’t even like to.”

“‘Cause it’s your face, and I love you,” You confess without thinking too much about the gravity of the words you’re using. They seem right. Even without this new development in the way you treat each other, you would still describe the way you feel about him with the word love.

You’ve grown as a part of the same family of survivors, gotten closer than most people will ever be.

His eye goes wide at your choice of words, cheeks going pink.

“I want to kiss you,” He warns as he leans in, which you think is odd considering you’ve done it so many times now. You close your eyes and lean up, but he doesn’t make contact yet. “Is that okay?”

You open your eyes, tipping your head to the side as you press your lips to his.

Carl laughs into the kiss at how annoyed you’d looked, but he had to be sure you were okay with him doing something like this given how shaken you’d been.

He pulls back from the kiss and peppers the side of your face and jaw with sweet, markless pecks. “You’re so pretty, Bambi.”

You blush, looking away with embarrassment.

“Aw, don’t be like that,” He teases, moving to your neck and collar. “It’s not fair that I can’t see you,” He repeats, voice teasing.

You groan, glaring at him with suspicion when he pauses over your pulse point.

“I remember after they found you, when you started to heal up, my dad and the rest of us would talk about different ways to make you smile ‘cause it was so cute when you did,” Carl laughs, gently nosing your neck. “You kept people’s morale up. You still do.”

You bite your lip nervously, feeling like you're doing something very wrong despite not doing anything at all.

“Nobody hates you, Bambi. People don’t care that you lied, and if they do they can suck it,” He pauses after kissing the round of your shoulder, making eye contact. “You proved yourself to this group enough that it shouldn’t matter. They know who you are, and you don’t owe them anythin’ more than that.”

He sounds so angry on your behalf. –Like it genuinely doesn’t bother him that you weren’t honest.

Huh.

You smile awkwardly, blinking at the warm feeling spreading through your stomach like butterflies covered in sticky sweet syrup, wings fluttering.

“You act fragile now, but I remember windin’ up on my ass in the dirt ‘nough times when we sparred to know that's not true,” He banters, poking you in the side until you laugh. “There you are, with that pretty voice.”

“Carl,” You whine, bracing yourself on his shoulders.

He leans back in and presses his lips to yours, hands soothingly stroking your sides.

Even if it means that he’s teasing you, he seems to have gotten over the shame that initially comes with exposing his whole face.

Carl licks into your mouth, drinking up every soft sigh you make in response. Your grip on his shoulders moves until you’re clutching the material of his outer shirt, tugging him closer to you with the benefit of knowing that at any moment you can tug at it and he’ll break the kiss.

He moves his hands from your sides to around your waist, forcing you onto your tiptoes closer to him. –You can feel his heart beating fast in his chest beneath your hand as you slide them from their place near the sides of his collar to his chest.

The only thing that pulls you from the rhythm of the kiss is the abrupt start of some off-key music nearby, sparking the realization that you’re long out of breath.

It’s a nice song, soft, but kind of creepy as it echoes in the shadowed space you’re in between trailers.

Turning back towards one another, you both start laughing softly.

You grip the fabric of his shirt, leaning against his chest again and snuggling into the warmth, his head resting on yours as he sways the both of you to the music.

+

+

+

The man’s adams apple bobs as he gulps down the tinted liquid, the alcohol gurgling as it sloshes around in the bottle and floods his throat.

“Brother, take it easy,” Rick warns.

Daryl’s fingers slip because of the condensation on the bottle, but it doesn’t deter him. He flips Rick off, wincing as he shuts his eyes to gulp down the rest without taking a breath.

When his lips finally come off of the bottle, he gasps for air, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “How am I suppos’ t’ take it easy when that kid’s out there thinkin’ I’m tryna separate ‘er from ‘er bes’ friend?”

“You’re not,” Rick points out.

“But tha‘s what she thinks,” He slurs bitterly. “I bet they’re together right now. Sneakin’ around doin’ god knows what.”

“Well–” The other man wrenches what he hopes is a spare bolt out of the car, squinting uncertainly at it before tossing it onto the ground. “It's sorta like Romeo and Juliet, the more you try to keep ‘em apart, the more desperate they get. Doin’ what we were was only gonna make ‘em restless… They’d start takin’ risks.”

“But we can’t jus’ let them…” Daryl scowls at the idea, shaking his head to clear it of the horrifying scenarios he’s been picturing for you at every wrong turn. “You didn't see ‘em together, man. The way she looks at him. It's…” He winces.

The other man furrows his brow.

“Mm. I might not have seen it, but I know what you mean,” Rick sighs, shaking his head slowly. “When I tried talkin’ to Carl about some changes I decided needed to happen, he started puffin’ out his chest–”

“Little shit,” Daryl interrupts, snorting.

“–Puffin' out his chest, tellin’ me he wasn't gonna listen even if it meant bein’ punished. Said that tellin’ him to be gentle with her was condescendin’,” Rick scoffs. “He didn't care to hear my reasonin’, didn't listen when I tried to tell him there was more goin’ on than he knows about.”

Daryl growls lowly. “That’s exactly why ‘m worried… That boy don’t know what he’s doin’. He’s gonna hurt her.”

It wouldn’t even be on purpose.

“Tellin’ him no only made him want to be closer to her… I think they think we're against them,” The man finishes, brow furrowed in thought. “But I agree. Without any kind of interference from us, this will go badly.”

“What're we gonna do about it then?”

“I don't know yet…” The other man says softly. “Keepin’ them from bein’ alone for too long sounds like a good step to make sure she doesn't get ‘triggered’ or whatever you want to call it. –I don't want her freakin’ out, and I don't want Carl makin’ it worse by doin’ the wrong thing if she does. Poor kid.”

Daryl sniffs dryly, looking down at the bottles sitting on the stack of cinder blocks to the right of the car they’re supposed to be working on together, most empty, but a lucky few still full.

Rick barely took a sip of his still open beer next to him, but Daryl worked his way through three beers, a jar of moonshine, and some hard liquor he found that was too impure to be used for medical purposes.

He feels guilty for drinking this much when he’s supposed to be responsible, he never would have done this before he found that test in your bedding, but now he can’t seem to stop. The pit in his stomach is never ending and always hungry for all the things that could get him killed.

“I actually needed to talk to you about somethin’...” Rick says, setting the tools down and turning around to face the other man properly. He looks uneasy. “I know this ain’t the best time, but all things considered, I think you deserve a heads up.”

“Okay?” Daryl grunts.

“I, uh…” The other man stops with an exhale, clearing his throat. “It's no cause for concern, alright? It's bein’ handled…”

Daryl doesn't like the sound of that, doesn't like that whatever it is he's trying to say has him stalling.

“Spit it out.”

“Some… Saviors were spotted nearby, searchin’ for somethin’,” Rick admits, spitting the other group's name like it's poison.

Daryl feels his stomach plummet a hundred feet underground, the alcohol and the sun beating down on the back of his neck leaving him feeling dizzy on his feet. He tries to say something, he thinks, but he just winds up staring at the other man with wide eyes, his breathing sharp.

He can hear his heart beating in his ears.

“We don’t know what they were lookin’ for, ‘kay?” Rick continues, seeing that the other is stunned to silence. “Could ‘a been anythin’, doesn’t have to be Hilltop, or…” the two of you, he doesn’t say. “Anything important... could be nothin’ at all. –They were a few miles out, nowhere near here, and they weren’t in vehicles. They went back to wherever they came from,” He tries to reassure.

Daryl blinks a few times, trying to swallow the sudden wave of nausea that's hit him.

The smell of the cell he was in invades his nostrils, the ever-present scent of urine and blood in the air clinging to his skin.

He can't go back a third time.

“Rick, if they were out lookin’ for somethin’ and they didn’t fuckin’ find it, they’ll be back!” Daryl shouts angrily, starting to pace in small circles. “Fuck. Fuck! How long have you known about this?!”

“This mornin’, the scouts saw ‘em last night,” Rick says softly, reaching out to try and comfort him, completely expecting it when his hand gets shrugged off.

“The kids’ve been goin’ outside the gates, man!” Daryl shouts in a panic, rubbing his hands over his face.

“Not far. They’ve practically been in the front yard, always with other people around,” The other man says with confidence. “Nothin’ happened to them.”

“It COULD have!” Daryl shouts, stopping to glare. “You don't know how close they've come, how many times they've searched for us! For her!”

He can already picture the look in those big doe eyes of yours when you realize you've been caught again, that you'll never really escape them because Daryl can't protect you. He couldn't even protect himself.

“They might not even be lookin’ for you!” Rick shouts back exasperatedly.

“And what if she had seen them? Huh?! What if she hears about it today? –How is she suppos’ t…” Daryl stops mid rant, swiping at his eyes. “God…”

Rick's shoulders drop when he hears the man sniffle. “...Daryl?”

“...She's not gettin’ better, man,” Daryl mutters under his breath in response, voice weak. “She wet the fuckin’ bed yesterday… like a baby…”

Rick inhales sharply, rubbing at his upper lip with his thumb resting on his cheek to hide the reaction he has to that information.

“If she gets worse… if she….” Daryl shakes his head. “If she winds up feelin’ like…”

Beth.

“You won't let it get to that point, Daryl,” Rick says wearily, looking away at the mention of the Greene sister. “You take good care of Bambi. She's never shown any signs of wantin’ to hurt herself like that.”

“But what if she does wind up feelin’ that way, ‘n I'm not there…?” The man asks with a voice crack. “When she… I… I mocked her for it. –That was one of the last conversations she had, and I was mockin’ her for slittin’ her wrists at the start.”

Rick doesn’t know how to respond to that information. He feels the usual disgust and discomfort he would at the topic, but with years of experience both in the old world and the new, that information doesn't make him nearly uncomfortable as it should. He only feels the ache of the girl's absence, the warmth of her voice at the prison echoing through the halls.

She was a bright girl and the world snuffed her out like it was nothing.

“You loved her,” Rick laments softly. “Just like we all did.”

“I…” Daryl starts to deny it, push the memories of her down like he always does, but instead he swallows hard and nods once. “Yeah. I did.”

And it wasn't enough to keep her alive. It never is.

The two men stare at the ground for a while, the only sound aside from their breathing the rustling of trees blowing in the wind, the sky a dreary color.

+

+

+

“So… this is where we’ve been stayin’,” Carl says nervously, leaning his back up against the door to shut it behind you.

His room is small. Bare, unlike the one he’d had in Alexandria. Even the walls themselves look weak, thinly insulated by a layer of what looks like white painted particle board. Against the center of one of those walls, there’s a bed with a rust colored metal frame and mismatched sheets that hang loosely on it, a comforter curled up near the pillows like he’d been sitting there earlier. The only fixture aside from the bed is a wooden desk in the corner of the room with a few comics –nowhere near his full collection– sitting on it. He must have lost them in the attack.

Maybe that’s why most of his things are anxiously and haphazardly stuffed into a backpack at the foot of the bed.

“It’s nice,” You try to console.

There’s a gentle breeze coming in through the cracked window, sheer white curtains swaying gently in the wind.

The moment you look at it, he walks over to it and opens it wider for you.

“It’s hot, but, uhm…” He pauses, watching as you walk over and sit on the edge of his bed, legs dangling off the end of it until your foot touches something raised and you look down to see one of Judith’s toys half tucked underneath it. You smile at it and pull your legs up to sit criss-cross. “Uhm… With the window, it– Y’know what? Let me just grab that.”

He comes over and bends down in front of you, picking the rainbow caterpillar up and tossing it onto the desk.

When he turns back towards you, you grab his wrist with one hand and lace your fingers with his using the other.

“You seem nervous.”

“I am,” He says with a gulp. “This isn’t like before. This isn’t my room. Maggie doesn’t even know if this is where we’ll stay. –I think she thinks we’re just waitin’ for things to cool off so we can go rebuild in Alexandria and I…” He sits down on the bed next to you, posture slumping as he looks away. “The idea of goin’ back there makes me nervous.”

You frown, remembering how easily the Saviors got inside during the attack, all the smoke and walkers clouding your vision, the fire seemingly never ending.

“Me too.”

“I almost died. You and Daryl got taken. Judith is still havin’ nightmares…” Carl reaches up and pulls his hat off again, setting it on top of his backpack. “None of this feels real.”

He flops down onto his back, staring up at the ceiling with a searching gaze.

You turn towards him and lie on your side, shuffling closer until you’re tucked underneath his arm, staring up with him.

“I like it here,” Carl admits. “They have more people, more food, more everythin’... This is the kind of life I picture for Judith,” He pauses, sighing. “But I don’t think my dad wants to stay. I'm pretty sure he wants to go back and try to reclaim whatever’s left of Alexandria, divide and conquer so that we stand a better chance if one of the settlements gets attacked again.”

It's the smart thing to do, especially given that everyone from Alexandria would have to hide when the Saviors come here for collections. –AND they'll already be on the look out for all of you, hoping to capture one of the people Negan put a bounty on.

“I like it here too,” You curl closer to him, wrapping your arm around his torso with tears in your eyes.

You get to be kids here. You get to make flower crowns and eat cookies without working your hands bloody for it, without worrying that everything will fall apart in the moments you spend idle.

“Whatever happens… I hope we stick together,” Carl laughs somberly. “I’m sick of losin’ people and gettin’ split up. I don't– I don’t want to lose you. I was so scared when you–” His voice cracks.

You squeeze him tighter. You don’t ever want to let go.

He rolls over so that you’re facing one another lying on your sides.

Your fingers dig into his back, clutching the fabric of his outer shirt. He does the same to you, clinging with one of his hands braced on your nape, both of your faces buried in each other’s necks.

You hear two thuds as he kicks off his boots, legs curling and tangling with yours.

Carl never imagined getting to hold you like this, getting to hear your voice again, after you were gone. He knows that you’re a fighter. He knows that you’re strong. Knows that you’d break your own fingers scraping by to get freedom, live out a thousand life sentences, make the impossible happen…

He ghosts a hand over the burns on your arm.

…But he was too scared to think about the hope he had for longer than a second.

He didn’t expect to see that smile, or that face, ever again, didn’t think you’d come home even if you did survive. He pictured the day Daryl would return home after losing you to the woods, or never having seen you at all in the Savior’s compound, unable to track you down and all the more jaded for it with a pitt in his stomach.

You like to run. You’re good at it. And more than once you’ve outrun your would-be hunters. You wouldn’t leave a trail.

But you didn’t run. You came home.

Despite everything that happened and all the reasons you had to run, you came home.

The two of you jump when the door handle rattles like someone’s trying to get inside, Carl’s hand instantly on the holster strapped to his leg until a small knock follows the attempt.

“Carl?” Michonne calls from the other side, sounding hesitant.

The teen pulls back from you slowly, never fully letting go of you as he sits up and helps you do the same.

“Uh–” He clears his throat, trying to shake the raw emotion from his voice. “Yes?”

“Is Bambi in there, by any chance?” She asks slowly.

Carl furrows his brow skeptically, glancing at you in his periphery with a gulp.

“We’re just hangin’ out… talkin’ and stuff…” He says, somewhat sheepishly.

“...”

“...”

“...Carl, I know you two are close, but your dad said not to have the door closed anymore,” She reminds, clearly apprehensive to enforce the rule. “Just… crack it, alright?”

What?

You look at Carl for an explanation and find him frowning back at you with a frustrated, sorry look in his eye. He shakes his head and looks away, leaping from the bed and walking over to throw the door open so the woman can see what’s not going on inside the room.

Her eyes do a once over, refusing to linger on anything for longer than a second aside from the bed you’re sitting on.

You swallow uncomfortably, pulling your knees up to your chest.

“Michonne…” Carl pleads, but the woman doesn’t react.

Instead she thanks him softly for opening the door, turning her attention to you and nodding in awkward greeting.

You hesitantly give her an equally uncomfortable wave.

You’ve been in Carl’s room hundreds of times, slept in his bed, disappeared with him for hours on end outside the walls back when you lived in Alexandria and nobody ever questioned it, but suddenly they don’t trust you enough to be alone with him?

“This is so dumb. I’ve killed people, but I can’t have my door closed anymore when Bambi is here, just because she’s a girl?” Carl huffs, crossing his arms over his chest at her. “I already told him I’m not followin’ any of those stupid rules.”

“I kn–” Michonne’s brow twitches at the end of his second sentence.

Not meaningfully, not on purpose, but it is a tell. She stops because she doesn’t understand what he’s saying. Because she knows, and he doesn’t.

Her eyes flick to yours and by whatever haunted look you’ve had on your face since you caught the small movement, now she knows that you know she knows.

For a moment it feels as if you’re sharing one brain, both on the same sinking ship, eyes locked but unable to do anything to help the other.

But then she blinks and turns back to Carl with confusion, the understanding gone.

“I get why my dad is tryin’ to keep us apart, but you too?” He sighs, turning around and walking back over to the bed to sit back down next to you. “It isn't right to punish us when we didn't do anythin’ wrong.”

She parts her lips, head cocked.

You slowly shake your head. Don’t.

Please, not yet.

She closes it again, scanning the empty wall to reorganize her thoughts, then tries again.

Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Please, don’t do it. Don’t say anything, you plead silently, eyes getting wider every second she hesitates on what to say next.

Michonne finally catches your gaze again and manages to find her voice.

“It’s… supposed to rain later,” She says softly, eyes downcast at the floor with guilt. She wanted to tell him for the sake of loyalty, but she also doesn't want to be the one to break his heart like that. “Make sure you shut the window.”

She pulls the door up, leaving it as minimally cracked as possible.

Carl flops back onto the bed, rubbing his hands down his face with a frustrated laugh. –But your heart is still pounding too fast in your chest from the fear of him almost finding out through someone else to be relieved.

You choke in a gasp, finally starting to breathe again.

Your vision is bleary with tears, body shivering like you’ve been dunked in freezing cold water.

Carl looks over at you, seeing the stiff way you’re sitting, hands tightly gripping the flesh just above your knees. “Bambi…?”

“I should–” You’re cut off by a wheeze. “Go. –I should go.”

You don’t move a muscle.

Carl sits back up again, confusion written all over his face as he sets a hand on your back like he’s about to try and pull you into one of those compression hugs.

“Don’t,” You snap at him with wide eyes, finally regaining enough control of yourself to lean away from the touch.

This is why Daryl doesn’t want you near him. You’re going to mess him up.

He pulls his hand back, nodding slowly. “Okay.”

You sit hunched over on the corner of his bed like that for a while, curled up small and angry, every shift he makes having you glance at him with weary eyes.

He's not going to hurt you. Nobody here is, you know that, it's just difficult to hold onto that thought right now.

Pretty much all of your energy right now is being put into focusing on not reacting the way you would have when you first arrived. When Carl’s hand reached into your space you'd wanted to bite him, hard, and you hadn't even really thought about it. –You actually started to, but you'd ground your teeth instead, trying not to flee or hide like your body ached for.

Now enough time has passed for you to realize how embarrassing the whole thing was, flinching away from him and almost snapping at him like a dog, curled into this ridiculous defensive position as if you’re not in his room.

Carl’s not looking at you, thank goodness. –Hasn’t been for a while.

He probably thinks you’re crazy.

“Sorry,” You whisper.

“It's okay,” He whispers back, slowly turning towards you again. Once he's fully facing you, he looks between your eyes, searching. “Today seemed… hard, for you…”

You shrug, sniffling dryly.

It was hard.

“Is everythin’ okay?” He asks, voice practically begging for answers despite him trying to tamp it down.

You start to shrug but he holds up a hand to interrupt the movement.

“Be honest. Don't just say what you think other people want to hear,” He frowns. “You’ve been… off, and I…” He stops, shifting closer and looking up at you with his full attention, gaze soft and understanding. “We haven’t really talked about when you were gone.”

You push your hair back, dragging your fingers through it and pulling when you feel your eyes start to water again. You bury your face in your knees, shutting them as tightly as you can to stop yourself from crying.

You can't.

You won't do it to him.

Carl lowers his eye, turning away.

+

+

+

“If you had to leave you should have come and got me!” Daryl whisper shouts at the woman, throwing an arm out towards the door.

“Maggie needed help. She's pregnant, Daryl, what was I supposed to do?” Carol scoffs, offended by the suggestion that she was somehow in the wrong for leaving you alone when she was picking up his slack after panicked and ran out on you. “Nobody even knew where you were. I would have wound up leavin’ her anyway, tryin’ to look for you!”

Daryl hears you shift in your sleep up in the loft, letting out a small whine.

“Shh!” He hisses. “Talk quieter!”

“You know, I don't think you even really blame me for this. You feel guilty, so you're tryin’ to shift some of the blame onto someone else,” She says, poking him in the chest. “And if that ain't some petty, childish, bullshit I don't know what is. –You need to get over whatever the hell is goin’ on with you lately. Fast. There are more pressin’ issues.”

“This ain't petty! I'm tryin’ to protect her!”

“And abandon her at every turn, might I add,” The woman points out. “You were takin’ care of her just fine before, but now you're all fucked up over it.”

Daryl scowls, looking away. “It's different now! I don't know how to handle this, what to say to a kid that was–”

“So help me god, if you say that word again, Daryl,” The woman seethes. “We all know what happened, there's no need to keep sayin’ that word over and over just for shock value. –I know the severity of what happened to that girl, I know how twisted up she is inside right now, but she's not a victim. She's a survivor. Bambi has to move on with her life without lettin’ what happened cage her and stop her from doin’ what she has to, to survive. She has to learn to live with it.”

Daryl’s lower lip quivers and he turns it up into a snarl, aggressive posture deflating.

“I don't know what to do,” The man says like a broken record, swaying on his feet. “I know it ain't rational, but now everythin’ seems like a threat to her. I feel like I failed… like I wasn't lookin’ out for her enough.”

Carol cocks her head empathetically, making a noise of understanding.

“You might have run away when she was captured,” The man laments. “But I let us get separated that day.”

Carol's eyes glaze with nostalgia, remembering the feeling of Sophia's fingers slipping from hers, the last time she would ever touch her daughter.

“You can’t blame yourself for that.”

Daryl shakes his head, forcing his eyes shut. “Yes, I can. –I do.”

“It was an accident, Daryl. You'd given her your bow.”

“She was still learnin’ how to use it,” Daryl says regretfully, remembering the image of you crouched in the bushes with the weapon in your hands, struggling to keep it steady. “I don’t know why I…”

He can remember seeing you from across the steady stream of walkers, your face twisted with panic as you tried to cross after he ran off ahead of you. You were panting, hesitating. Clearly struggling with the additional weight. The gap he’d found closed, but he didn’t stop to wait for you. Why didn’t he stop?

“I should never have left her side. –Probably shouldn’t have even run into the fight in the first place,” The man scoffs bitterly, trying to imagine how that day would have played out had he stayed away from it. “A lot of good that did.”

“There was a bounty on your head, Daryl. You thought she'd be okay if you'd gotten caught,” Carol argues. “You thought she was safe.”

“Safe?” He laughs. “I ran off ahead of her like it didn't even matter. I didn't tell her where I was goin’, where to meet me when things brushed over–!”

“You put together an entire safehouse to make sure she had somewhere to wait for you!”

“That’s just basic survival crap!” The man denies, voice raising the more he thinks of you. “You’re not listenin’ to me, you don’t understand!”

“You’re the one that’s not takin’ the time to think things through right now, gettin’ all emotional and lettin’ it blind you!” Carol shouts back, pointing an accusing finger at him like a naughty dog. “You know her! You know how to take care of her! You’re just bein’ intentionally dense because you don’t want to feel like a failure for not noticing!”

The man gets chest to chest with her, breathing heavily through his nose. “I am a failure.”

Carol’s eyes widen at the venom in his voice and she takes a step back, shaking her head.

“You don’t have to be,” She says blankly, eyes fierce. “At least your child is still here to fail.”

Daryl’s snarky reply dies in his throat, air hissing out of his lungs as he mimics her and takes a step back to diffuse the situation.

They both go silent.

“I…” He starts to apologize, then stops, knowing that their situations are entirely different, willing them to be. He swallows hard, feeling like he’s eaten something jagged. “She’s not my child.”

Carol stares into his eyes tiredly, regretting having come here in the first place. She should have left the group and lived out the rest of her days alone like she had planned, where there was no one to lose and nothing to fight for but another day.

She opens her mouth.

“MAMA!”

The cry is so loud it genuinely startles the two of them, both snapping their heads in the direction of the loft. Carol is still trying to reconcile the loud voice with yours in the crying that follows the shout, but Daryl shoots off like a bullet. He drops the canteen in his hand and clambors up the ladder as quickly as possible. “Bambi?” He shouts up towards the loft, scrambling and nearly tripping when he makes it to the top of the ladder. “Bambi! Kid?”

He steps onto the platform and disappears from Carol’s sight quietly, so she follows him up, finding the man frozen about three yards from the haybed. His hands are up, reaching and pulling back hesitantly in the air, unsure of what to do because you’re sobbing more frantically than he's ever seen. –You’re grasping at your blankets like they’re the only thing keeping you tethered right now, rocking slowly.

Carol expects him to reassure you.

She’s seen him do it before, handling the regular mood swings and anxiety you’ve had in the past with ease. It only took a conversation, maybe a hug or a playfight, and he’d have you regulated again.

So why is he just standing there?

She stops at his side, looking between the two of you incredulously. “...Daryl? What are you doing?”

“I– I don't know, I…” The man sputters, shaking his head. His hands go palm up towards you in a placating offer. “I don't know what to…”

“She had a nightmare,” The woman concludes easily, motioning to you.

“I can see that,” Daryl huffs sarcastically, rolling his eyes at how simple she makes the situation sound. “Thanks for the help.”

Just as you start moving across the bed to get to one of his open hands, he drops them without looking at you or realizing that you reached out at all. Your posture falls. You curl away from him, shrinking with your hands locked over your head.

Carol tips her head to the side slowly, narrowing her eyes at him.

“Hold her.”

“What?” His eyes widen, “No, I– I can't do that,” He quickly refuses, taking a weary half step back.

“Why not?” She presses. “You used to do it all the time, and it kept her calm, didn’t it?”

Daryl looks contemplative, making a fruitless attempt at sorting through everything everyone has been saying about you. It seemed much simpler when it was just the two of you involved, but he already failed you once on top of not realizing what you were hiding. He proved he wasn’t good enough to take care of you.

If he were to forget everything that’s happened, –as wildly irresponsible as that sounds– Carol would be right.

“No,” He says softly, already opening up to the idea despite himself.

The refusal burns you deeply.

“Go away!” You shout through the tears, pulling the blankets over your head to hide.

“She just wants to be held,” The woman says like it's obvious, putting her hand on his shoulder and urging him forward.

The man stumbles a few steps at the push, continuing to walk by himself until he’s come around to the side of the bed you’re closer to.

“I ain't her dad,” He tries weakly, looking over his shoulder at her to give her a pleading look.

Carol smiles tersely.

“I know. Do it anyway.”

The crying only seems to get louder the longer he stands there not doing anything.

Daryl winces at the wails, his chest aching. “She’s not my biggest fan right now, I don’t think I oughta be–”

“Daryl, she’s a teenager. It’s going to seem like she hates you sometimes, but she doesn’t,” Carol deadpans, not having any more of his excuses. “She’s frustrated with the world and she’s got no place to direct it. –That girl loves you.”

The man takes a deep breath and steps forward, pushing the blanket back so it falls from your head and you can see one another. You look devastated, and so damn tired. He hesitantly opens his arms. “Ey, bud–” He tries, shocked when you immediately kick the blankets aside and dart into his arms, wrapping yourself around his neck and your legs around his torso to cling to him.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” You wail into his shoulder.

His eyes go wide when he finds himself immediately clinging back, arms snaking around you to cradle the back of your head with his hands.

“I gotcha,” He says breathlessly, wind knocked out of him by the whole thing.

“I don't–” You hiccup, using the heel of your hand to swipe at your tears. “I don't want to fight anymore. I don't want you to hate me. I'm sorry.”

The words seem to shake him out of whatever stupor he'd been in, gaze sharpening.

“We're not fightin’, Bumble-Bea,” Daryl says firmly, turning so that your cheeks are pressed together as he starts bouncing you gently. “‘S okay. I'm right here. I don't hate you.”

“You should. I mess everything up for you… You'd be so much happier if I weren't here,” You sob, coughing.

“No. I wouldn't,” He bristles, patting your back. “I love you, kid. So much. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else right now.”

You cling to him harder when he finally says the words you've been craving, burying your face in his neck and inhaling the scent of his sweat mixed with motor oil. “I love you too…”

He kisses your cheek repeatedly, ignoring the knowing look Carol gives him when he starts pacing with you in his arms.

Nothing softens a man faster than holding his own child.

“Please– Please don’t leave,” You plead. “I don’t know why I’m like this now, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be. –I can still help, I can be strong, I swear.”

Daryl feels his eyes starting to water.

“I know, buddy. You’re gonna be okay,” He sniffs. “None of this was meant to happen. There ain’t nothin’ wrong with you.”

You lift your head, fear in your eyes. “But…?”

There are enough ‘what if’s to spend the whole night talking about them.

Daryl pushes your head back down, anger bubbling in his chest. “We’ll handle it.”

He’ll take care of you.

+

+

+

When your eyes have finally shut and Daryl is sure you've fallen back asleep for the night, he lays you down in his bed, brushing your hair out of your face.

“Night, Bea,” He mutters, kissing your forehead.

Daryl stays to watch when you smile in your sleep, humming contentedly and pulling the blankets closer to your chest, curling up. He smiles, closing his eyes on the moment to memorize every second of it.

His smile fades and he turns, motioning for Carol to follow him into the darkness outside the barn.

The night is quiet, and for once, the constantly moving and lively commune of Hilltop is still. There are lights on in the distance, but they're few and far between. The only thing that truly catches Daryl’s eyes are the pitch black shadows playing tricks on him, dancing and reaching towards him but never pouncing.

“Let's do it,” He finally agrees, swallowing the bitter taste the words leave in his mouth.

He's put a lot of thought into it, and this is the only way he can be sure you're safe right now.

The woman arches a brow. “Let's do… what?”

“Go out there. Hunt ‘em,” He specifies, looking determined. “I'm assumin’ you already heard about those assholes gettin’ spotted nearby? Lurking.”

Carol nods grimly, crossing her arms over her chest.

“So we kill them like you wanted, keep ‘em away from here so she never has to see their sorry asses again,” He growls, clenched fists shaking at his sides. “The ones that got close tested their luck, they're fair game now. Rick can't talk me out of this. Not after tonight.”

She wants to feel relieved by his choice, but the woman knows it’s the sign of a much larger rot. The group is losing trust in itself. And really, it's not sustainable. One way or another, you'll wind up running into the Saviors again and you'll need to be prepared for it. Sheltering you is only going to make it that much worse when it happens.

“Tomorrow, before dawn. We'll get out there and ambush anyone we find while it's still dark. –They won’t notice a few soldiers missin’ as long as we don’t leave witnesses,” Carol explains, fingers idly tapping on her arm as she speaks.

“Good,” Daryl breathes, feeling satisfied. “...I’m gonna start takin’ day shifts in the garage since it’s closer to the gate. –Get a better view of what’s happenin’ while it’s still goin’ on.”

“That's a good idea. It could make things cleaner for us,” She hums. “Especially if you learn the scouts’ schedule so we don't cross paths with them.”

“Clean.” Daryl repeats tonelessly, savoring the syllables of the word to try and understand it.

“Yes, Daryl, clean,” Carol warns. “This is about efficiency, not revenge.”

“I know,” He seethes, looking bloodthirsty. “That doesn't make it any easier or mean that I don't still want to draw it out, make ‘em hurt for what they've done. –To all of us.”

He looks down at his hands, imagining them around someone's neck, squeezing and watching their eyes bulge until their neck snaps with a satisfying crunch.

He closes his fists, taking a deep breath and slowly letting it out.

“I'll see ya’ tomorrow.”

---

Fic Chapterlist

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[maxthewitness]

This Breaks My Heart (New Chapter) :(

The leaves part with the push of small red hands, one of the fingertips emerging from the darkness of the underbrush wrapped in a bandaid.

His dragon is hanging at his side, motionless aside from rhythmically bobbing back and forth as he walks, dead shiny black eyes watching him wander.

He’s humming something softly as he goes, gnawing on his chapped lower lip.

Some might take him for a fool, wandering through tangled vines on the outskirts without a weapon or a clue of how to get help when nobody knows where he is. –But most people don’t understand what it’s like to have to fade into the shadows hoping no one looks in your direction for too long.

Most people haven’t had to watch their mother get dragged across the kitchen floor by her hair or see their brother’s pupils blown wide, body shrunken and tense as the monster that lives in their home opens its snout and drips sweet poison into his ear.

Suddenly the dragon is flying through the air, shiny blue and green wings lifting with the wind.

It can see Sam from where it is, the boy’s arms raised above his head from launching it so that it gets tangled in the branches of the tree in front of him. The world spins for the toy, leaves falling as it finally lands on its side, Sam gripping the bark of the tree without bothering to pick the one that fell into his hair as he climbs.

The toy can do nothing but watch when Sam’s foot slips.

It doesn’t matter how badly Sam wants to believe his toys will protect him. They’re inanimate. They do not feel. They perceive. They judge.

The boy manages to catch himself and wraps an arm around a tree branch, reaching with the toe of his shoe to try and bear hug it for support.

His foot slips again and the bark slides off, falling to the ground with a soft rustle.

Sam, for whatever reason, decides he needs to climb higher.

He uses the knots in the tree as a path, surpassing the height of his dragon and continuing up the tall trunk until he’s gone up about five of himself and can see the roofs of the houses in Alexandria, sitting on a thick branch to watch the sun rise.

He kicks his legs out, looking down at the stuffed toy with his head cocked.

“Pete, the magic dragon,” His mother had called it.

He renamed it Lenny after watching his brother’s face get smashed into the TV set for the third time.

Sam leans back, letting his view shift and his hands slip from the bark holding his steady until he’s looking at the world from upside down, his locked legs resting above him the only thing keeping him from falling.

He sees you walking down the street with your hood pulled over your face, looking for something around the neighborhood.

If it’s Carl or Ron, you won’t find them. –They snuck out together hours ago with their run bags.

Sam stretches his hands out, reaching for an apple.

His leg slips forward, pants crying at the grind of wood.

Just a little further.

He reaches out again, scooting forward until his fingers touch the plump red fruit.

He pulls and it comes free.

You walk behind a house and crouch down, sobbing into your hands and hitting the back of your head against the wall.

Sam chews the flesh of the apple, turning his gaze towards the rest of the street.

Tara is running from Judith, the toddler bouncing as she tries her hardest to catch the woman before getting distracted by a green plastic cap on the ground and starts to play with it instead.

The woman puts her hands on her hips.

Sam drops the apple core, tossing it far off in the grass and watching it roll.

A rabbit hops out of the brush and sniffs at it, nose and whiskers twitching curiously.

This is his opportunity!

Sam tries to sit himself up as fast as he can, reaching for a thin branch above him.

It snaps.

---

You're The Gasoline, I'm The Match on Ao3

[maxthewitness]

New Chapter!

You retreated up the stairs in a panic.

He slammed the basement door in front of your face, maneuvering you by the shoulders to look at him.

“It wasn't what it looked like,” He panted, grip tightening until it left a row of finger shaped bruises on your skin. “I told you not to go down there, Noa. –What happens when you disobey us? Hm? Come on, I know you know.”

You'd sobbed, pressing your chin to your chest.

“Just push her,” Your mother had ordered from the kitchen.

“We can't do that. People will start getting suspicious,” Your father snarled over his shoulder, turning back to you and pressing you against the wall. “You won't tell anybody what you saw… will you, Noa?”

You'd rapidly shaken your head no.

“How can you be sure she's not going to? That woman down the street is always checking on her.”

“I won't,” You choked out, hands shaking with fear. “I promise I won't.”

---

You're The Gasoline, I'm The Match on Ao3

[maxthewitness]

Redefined Relationship

(Carl Grimes/Reader smut from last chapter)

The words taste bitter in your mouth, but Rosita laughs.

“Go on, kid,” She shoos, waving her hand.

“See ya’,” You wave over your shoulder, hopping down the steps two at a time.

You eat the protein bar as you walk, pieces of what's supposed to be a soft cake replacement crumbling off like drywall. It's disgusting, but it's the thought that counts.

You crumple the wrapper and stick it into your back pocket, surprised to see that Carl is nowhere in sight. The farm doesn't even look like it's been tended to today. –Maybe Aaron caught something or had another job he needed to do and that's why Rosita ended up with two empty shifts.

When you turn around you see that the shed doors are ajar. Carl must've gone inside already.

You step closer, raising both arms defensively as you push the door open enough to give you a decent amount of light in the room. It's silent, save for your own footsteps as you venture deeper, eyes moving over anything that's not moving. Including a large tarp covering most of the floor and a shelf you know is in the corner from when you'd come in here working with Aaron.

“Carl?” You call quietly, swallowing hard.

The doors slam behind you and you whip around, quickly grabbing the nearest tool off the wall and gripping it as you wind up your arm.

Carl smiles and you drop the tool, glaring.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” You hiss as he pushes a slab of wood into the handles and walks past you towards the tarp. “I almost–” You stop when you pull the tarp back and see the makeshift bed he's made out of pillows and sheets, complete with dandelions thrown across it in lieu of rose petals, and a few candles in jars, unlit.

You look down at your feet and realize there's a trail of the brightly colored weeds.

“Ta-da…” He says awkwardly, hands raised placatingly because of the way you'd initially reacted. He reaches into a picnic basket sitting on the shelf and pulls out matches, sending quick glances to a thin glossy book that you assume is a comic. “Uh, I made dinner. –Well… sandwiches.”

The voice in your head is squealing and kicking its feet, insisting this must be a date. Why else would he go through all the trouble of prettying the place up and romancing you beforehand when, you believe his exact words for this situation were, ‘bend you over in the toolshed’.

Your cheeks are burning. “What is this?”

“Hm?” He looks up at you after lighting one of the candles and pushing the jar back so that it's not in such a precarious position. “Oh, it's… I was just thinkin’ about our deal and our friendship and I thought this might be better than just…” He looks away, flustered. “Goin’ at it.”

You step forward, looking at the book he keeps referencing when looking at the set up. “What's that, then?”

“Porn,” He answers without a moment’s hesitation, sighing. “On my last run I found it with Ron and I thought it could shed some light on certain things.”

“Shed some light,” You snort, waving your pointer around the room. “So you've been… what? Studying it? You said you'd grown up around girls.”

“I did,” He lights another candle, hesitating to answer the question. “I prefer to think of it as research. I'd never heard of half the stuff in there. It's… weird, but it's interestin’ to see what people used to do before.”

His gaze softens.

“There was a whole culture we never got to be a part of. –Trends, ‘nd rituals, ‘nd references, ‘nd fashion we'll never understand, and when the people who do die. That'll be it,” He puts the match between his fingers out with a flick of his wrist. “No one is keepin’ track of our history.”

“Oh,” Is all you can think to answer with, because you weren't really expecting him to say anything close to that. You were just going to tease him for stashing dirty magazines.

But he was thinking about the future of humanity. How when the time comes to run and hide, the people will burn books to stay warm instead of reading them to learn to light fires with wood.

You're losing huge chunks of history every day because the books aren't being properly cared for and the computers don't have power anymore. You're forgetting, but humanity will continue to make the same mistakes, have the same power struggles regardless.

“That’s… kind of beautiful,” You offer meekly. “I wasn't expecting that at all.”

Carl nods with a shrug, grunting.

He must sense that the atmosphere shifted because he clears his throat and tries to shift to a lighter topic.

“A few of them give good tips.”

You step closer again, rubbing your arms. “Like what?”

“Like ‘make sure the atmosphere is comfortable’ and your partner isn't at risk of tetanus,” He says sarcastically. You gulp when he calls you his partner, stomach fluttering. “The tips were just negotiation stuff… experimentin’ with things you think they'll like without pushin’... What things feel good and what pace works for movin’ things forward,” He frowns, looking contemplative as he talks through his nerves. “Definitely not anythin’ I’d want to try other than the stuff in this one.”

Moving things forward. Like dating.

“Oh, yeah? Well what exactly is that one?” You try to peek behind him at it, but he steps in front of it, dodging the question.

“You know, I was readin’ through these and I feel like they should add consent as one of their tips. I think it has potential to be sexy enough to get on the list, especially if it's phrased right,” He walks back over to the magazine and flips a page back, underlining some text with his finger. “If they did add it, then they wouldn't have to add negotiation or experimentation to the list because both partners would just openly discuss their tastes, right? –Not that it matters, everyone who made and distributed this magazine is probably dead right now, but still.”

God, he's so fucking nerdy.

You want to walk right over there and shove your tongue in his mouth, but you know how that goes and you don't want to ruin this moment. He set all this up for you, to woo you or whatever. It's sweet.

“You're lookin’ at me like that again,” He says bashfully, turning to glare at you over his shoulder.

You bite your lip at him, not bothering to hide what you're thinking right now. “You're awfully talkative today, Carl… I haven't heard you talk this much since you were rambling on about Enid.”

He sucks a sharp breath in through parted lips, jaw wide open as if whatever he was about to say had been wiped from memory.

You walk closer and throw your arms around his neck, giving him a pointed look before peeking at the page the magazine is open to.

Between all the gossip columns is an article titled How to Surprise Your Partner With a Romantic Atmosphere, with pictures of different romantic settings. Most are of beds, yes, but there are two pictures of what looks like dinner dates.

Stop getting your hopes up, he's going to crush you!

You cock a brow. “So this is the “porn” you were talking about?”

“Huh?” He’s still looking at you, confused until he realizes you pulled one over on him. “Oh…”

“Carl,” You say, grabbing his jaw to turn him back to face you, so you can lean your forehead against his. “Hi.”

He frowns, trying not to nervously smile. This seems important. “Hey.”

“I really want to kiss you…” You admit, leaning closer to his lips by the second, eyes going half lidded.

He lets you get close enough that all it would take is a small twitch to finally get your lips on his, his breathing coming fast through his nose until he parts his lips like he's going to say something and hooks his hands around your waist, leveraging the position to knock you off your feet and dangle over the pillows below. He keeps the gap between you as small as you made it, letting out a sigh that turns to laughter.

For a moment, the warm exhale on your face reminded you of Ron ghosting smoke into your mouth, but the other boy never would have done this for you. No, this is Carl.

You smile, which quickly turns to laughter as you kick out one of your legs and let the weight of your lower body rest on the other, throwing your arms up. “Wee!”

Carl cocks his head and lowers you down enough he can drop you.

“You’re an idiot.”

“But I’m youuuur idiot?” You ask without really thinking about it.

His eye widens a sliver but he quickly regains his composure, face neutral. He huffs. “Yeah… You’re my idiot.”

My. You're his. You giggle, turning your head away from him and sinking deeper into the pillows. You'll never be together, you know that, but it's kind of fun to imagine. It's easy to get caught up in the fantasy of life with him.

He pounces on you while you're distracted, gently caging you with his arms like he’d done this morning.

“Was, uh, earlier okay?” His eye darts away and then back again. “I just… felt like that was somethin’ you’d been wantin’ me to do, so I…” He shrugs.

There’s no way in hell you’re ever going to admit the kinds of things you think about him sometimes. It’s embarrassing. –Plus, he doesn’t need the ego boost of having you admit you like him being able to take control of you when he wants. You like the struggle.

That probably says something terrible about your state of mind, but it feels too good to care about when there are bigger fish to fry. So what if you’re a little nuts?

“I think… I like it,” He says, swallowing thickly. “I don’t like restraining myself. –It feels good when you stop fightin’ me on everythin’ all the time and we finally agree.”

You roll your eyes. “I don’t fight you on everything.”

He gives you a pointed look.

“You calm down a lot once you’ve given me your trust and don’t have to be in control anymore,” He grabs your face and repositions it so that you’re facing him, tucking your hair behind your ears and thumbing your cheeks. “I don’t know how I feel about that part. –I don’t like the idea of bein’ responsible for what happens to another person, but I like knowin’ that you’ll listen…” He shakes his head, thinking about this morning. “Is that bad? It sounds bad when I say it.”

Your gaze lingers on his face while he speaks, intently listening to what he has to say so you can articulate a proper response. It wouldn’t be fair of you to say nothing of value twice when he opened up about what he was thinking.

“I don’t think so,” You say softly, voice lighter despite it being more honest than it usually is. There isn’t a hint of humor or deflection in your tone. “You might like the idea of being in control, that’s common. Everything always seems to be a constant power struggle,” Your voice grows resentful, “But I’m the freak that wants you to tell me where I belong.”

Carl frowns at that, his brows furrowing as the look in his eye grows sentimental. “Then we match.”

Everyone can grow tired of power the same way they can grow tired of submission. The cycle leaves you constantly desperate for the other position.

“Carl?” You whimper, reaching out to grab the collar of his shirt. “I don’t want to think anymore.”

He’s dropping to sit on his knees and working your shorts off before you know it, lips and tongue working over the skin of your navel. You feel your shorts being pulled down to your knees, but you don’t think about it for long because the next thing you know he’s sucking at your skin with such force you’re sure he’s trying to tear the meat from your bones.

You clutch tightly at anything in the vicinity, eventually leading you to grip at the collar of his shirt. “Carl,” You cry needily.

He returns to you with one last pop as he releases the bruising skin from his jaw, leaning into your reaching hands. You pull him close and begin planting kisses on his neck and jaw –everywhere but his lips, anywhere that he’ll let you– with pure desperation.

He tosses your shorts aside along with your underwear, panting as he makes quick work of his own jeans and slipping his boxers off.

His cock is already painfully hard because of this morning, weeping for attention and eventually twitching with interest when he palms himself and strokes a few times.

He whines prettily, his eye fluttering shut. It must feel good.

As if reading your jealous little mind, he uses his other hand to knead your inner thighs as he repositions your legs the way he wants.

“You don’t have to think,” He pants affectionately. “You don’t have to think anymore, all you have to do is trust me.”

You nod eagerly, canting your hips up towards him. “I do.”

Your voice catches and you feel more tears like the ones from this morning start spilling down your face. –It feels messy in a completely different way than you’re used to and you’re not sure you like it. You’ve been waiting forever for this and it’s been torture. All you want is him. All you need right now is him. He’s the one making the decisions now, and for once all your anxieties melt away.

There is nothing to think about. You’re not sure there ever was.

He presses into you, throwing his head back and hissing through clenched teeth as your warmth envelops him. “You feel amazing.” The stretch is a lot harder to take than it was this morning, but your body is more than happy to accommodate it if he’ll just keep you full.

He stops, reaching down to pull at your clit.

You moan in appreciation and he twists the nub between his fingers, fingers deeply massaging the area with interest.

“And you’re so, so, pretty,” He says, using the same thumb he’d just used to touch you to gather saliva from your tongue and smear it down your chin.

It’s humiliating. It hurts your pride, but judging by the flush spreading to the rest of you from your cheeks, it undeniably gets results.

He pulls out and thrusts back into you for the first time when you aren’t expecting it, punching out a moan as a jolt of pleasure spreading through your body. Finally, finally, finally, finally, is all you can think as he thrusts again and your hips push up to meet his.

The rhythm he sets is hungry, but it’s nowhere near as desperate as it could be. As it needs to be.

Eventually it’s not enough anymore. You both need more. Your bodies are on fire and you want to feel the burn.

You help him switch positions so that you’re in his lap facing him, your fingers and his working your clit in tandem between frantic touches as you ride him with shaking legs. You’re going to be sore for days, but you don’t care. You want more.

His eye goes half-lidded, mouth opening and closing with incoherent sounds you understand are supposed to be words. A warning of sorts.

You moan into the skin of his neck as his thrusts start to get more sporadic, losing the pace he set as he gets closer to the edge. He grips your hips, his entire body jolting as he buries himself inside you and cums.

It feels hot, like the warm release he gave you is being milked by your cunt. The more the sensation spreads the more you feel yourself clenching around him, the wet slapping of flesh on flesh growing more prominent as it leaks.

“Good,” He moans as you keep going, tangling his fingers in your hair. The stimulation is starting to feel painful, but he never wants to stop. He could spend days like this. “Good, good, good, keep goin’, get what you need,” He says dumbly, his mind a blank slate.

You feel yourself clenching around him, muscles tensing and spasming as you finally finish, his thrusts not failing to meet yours until you’ve collapsed onto his shoulder with a small cry, shaking your head.

You wrap your arms around his neck, subtly cuddling into his sweaty skin as you try to catch your breath.

He pets your hair, looking down at the mess you’ve made together where you’re still connected. “Forgot the condom…” He pants, dazed.

“Fuck the condom,” You breathe out, legs wrapping tighter around him. “It’s too late anyway.”

He leans back with you, sighing as his back hits the pillows and you lay against his chest. You’re both well aware that you should disconnect and make some effort to clean up, but neither of you makes a move to do so. It just doesn’t feel that important right now.

“I feel like ‘m gonna fall asleep,” You sigh, hating how heavy your eyes feel. You don’t want to fall asleep right now. You want to keep cuddling with him and talking, drinking up every crumb of affection and personality he’s willing to give to someone as unimportant as you.

His eye is already shut, arm coming up to drape around your waist. “So do it.”

“I can’t,” You groan with frustration. “I promised Rosita I’d take the next shift because whoever was supposed to have it dipped out on her.”

He sighs, raking a hand through his hair to fruitlessly try and fix how messy it is.

A walkie-talkie sitting on the shelf crackles to life and Carl rolls his eye before the person on the other end can say anything.

“Carl,” Rick drawls. “Come home right now… I need to talk to you.”

The static clicks off and the two of you sit up, the moment ruined.

“He gave you a walkie?” You groan, glaring at the device.

Of course he did. Why not give his teenager even more responsibility? At this point, he might as well hand leadership over to Carl and see how things go. Negan likes him more anyway.

“Yeah. –But only for today, ‘said it was “important”,” He sighs, picking it up and pressing down on the button. “I’m comin’, be there in a sec.”

You pull at some of the sheets underneath you, wrapping yourself up in them. “I hate being responsible.”

“I think we discussed that already,” Carl says with one of the largest smiles you’ve gotten from him.

He pulls on his jeans and boxers, bending over as he works his belt to–

You jolt when he kisses you on the cheek, his mouth just barely catching on the corner of yours.

“I’ll see you later, okay? –Eat up.”

You’re stunned to silence, heart going a million miles an hour in your chest.

This game of he loves me, he loves me not it starting to get sickening. Half the time all you can think about is how heartbroken and alone you’ll be when all of this is over and he and Enid reunite.

This is their love story, not yours.

They’re the ones separated by a war and so in love that she isn’t threatened by him seeking warmth in the company of other people in the meantime because she knows when the time comes, his heart is home with her. You know it too. He’d do anything to protect her. Anything to build a future where she’s safe and happy, where she doesn’t have to be afraid of dictators or rotting husks coming after her. He’d give his life if he had to.

You sniff, wiping your tears on your sleeve and trying to hide it with a smile despite being alone.

Little Noa. Always second choice. Always all alone.

You laugh quietly to yourself.

“Noa-body wants me,” You snicker, standing up and pulling your clothes back on.

You blow out the candles one by one and stare at yourself in the reflection of a rusty saw on the wall, cocking your head. You look a mess, and not in the subtle sexy way Carl did. You look like a grieving widow with puffy red eyes and messed up hair like a crazed maniac.

You’re tempted to compare yourself to Enid again, think about how pretty she was when she cried. It was always subtle. Quiet. –But you don’t because this isn’t the time for that. You’re trying to be better and define yourself in other ways, but it’s hard when even a few months ago people would stand you side by side and tell you all the ways you could be more like her. Before that, it was your sister, which always made you angry because she was younger than you. You were supposed to be setting an example for her. Protecting her.

Maybe you shared the same blood as her, had similar features that never got a chance to develop on her face–

You flick the saw and it clatters to the floor.

–But you were never alike.

You step over it and push the doors open, breaking out into the sunlight.

---

You're The Gasoline, I'm The Match on Ao3

[maxthewitness]

In Their Shadows (11)

tw: Merle (in all his Merle-ness), use of the F-slur, implied homophobia, codependency as a coping mechanism, body dysmorphia, implied teen pregnancy, mentions of gender dysmorphia, self-blame, SPOILER: coming out (Carl).

We've got our first shadow!

Daryl didn't realize how late it'd gotten while he was… away.

He can hear a chorus of crickets chirping and see all the stars twinkling in the sky, the way you only used to see them if you'd gone outside the city before. –Now you're right near a major highway and can see them clear as day. No more light pollution. The wonders of the world going to shit, eh?

He stumbles over his own feet, turning around and around while staring up at the bright lights fading in and out of his visions like lighthouses in fog, feet twisting around until he catches himself and stops moving all at once. He feels his stomach lurch as he remembers you, so small when he first found you, clutching your stuffed animals close to your chest while you slept.

Now all he can think of is you being hurt and confused, so scared to let him find out about the possibility of life growing inside of you that you denied yourself proper medical care.

What about when you were locked up? –What had pushed you so far that you committed the massacre you left behind when you both escaped? Did they all… Were they all a part of it? He hadn’t thought of that before… He’d just assumed it’d been once, but what if it wasn’t?

What if…

What if.

Daryl swallows back a string of curse words at the thoughts swarming him, eyes glossy.

He stops outside the barn, trying to quietly push the door open when he realizes that all the lights are still on.

He squints and pushes further, the brightness pouring out to assault his drunken senses.

“Bambi?” He calls, keeping his voice low in case you were just afraid to sleep in the dark. He knows he's having a tough time in the pitch black after being in that cell.

A few seconds pass before you peer over the railing at him from the loft wide awake, your blankets clutched in front of you oddly.

The longer he looks at you, the more of yourself you seem to try and hide with it.

He feels himself sober immediately, posture straightening as he shuts the door behind him. “Bea, what's the matter? –Where's Carol?”

You lower your head. “Away.”

She'd made dinner and some cookies at Maggie's house with your help, and then she'd brought you back here and left you to your own devices. You’re old enough to be left alone. It makes sense. You don’t blame her for what happened.

“Why are you still up?” He asks again, taking a step towards the ladder to make his way up to you, until you rapidly shake your head at him. You don’t want him to see. He stops, looking down at the blanket again. “Is somethin’ wrong? Are you hurt? Sick?”

You bite your lip and shake your head at him, stepping back slightly to obscure yourself from view.

“Show me,” Daryl pleas, voice soft and afraid. “Please just show me, I can't keep… I need to know that you're okay.”

You flush harder with shame, slowly lowering the blanket to show him the dark stain spread down your sweatpants.

It takes him a moment to realize what happened, especially since you've never, ever, in all the time that he's known you, had this particular problem.

“You wet the bed.” He says, more of a bewildered statement than an accusation. “What– Why did you wet the bed?”

You shrink, lower lip quivering with frustration as you avert your eyes.

“Alone,” You say on the verge of tears, nodding towards the deconstructed haybed, several sullied stacks pushed aside. “...Afraid.”

Right. This would have been your first night sleeping alone since you've been back. He didn't plan on this being the first time you got left alone, –he assumed Carol would watch you– but then again she did only say that she was taking you back and feeding you, not that she was babysitting. He got lucky that first night when Carl decided to stand guard over you.

The man sighs, running a hand from the base of the back of his neck to the crown of his head.

“Fuck. Just… come down here, leave the blankets…” He says, motioning for you to come to him. You hesitate, but he watches as you drop the blankets and guiltily approach him like a puppy waiting for a scolding, head and shoulders clamped up against your neck. He points to the door. “Get yourself cleaned up.”

You take a half step, then turn back to him with wet eyes, signing, Mad at me?

Daryl doesn't answer initially, instead closing the distance between you by giving you a long kiss on the forehead. “Mm-mm. I ain't mad at you.”

He should have been here.

“Go,” He urges. “And come back quick, alright? If you ain't back in… twenty minutes, I'm comin’ to look for you.”

You nod, sniffling sadly as you leave to clean yourself up.

In the meantime Daryl tosses the blankets into a pile with some dirty tarps that had already been in the barn when you were both directed to it, noting to himself that when the people on laundry duty come around he'll need to tell them to take them. Then he pushes the dirty haystacks aside like you'd been trying to do, and replaces them with fresh ones. Well, relatively fresh.

This entire situation is bizarre. He never imagined he'd one day have to deal with the things he has been before you both got captured.

The door opens and shuts, your guilty face peering up at him from the first floor while you wring your hands out.

“Yer’ just gonna have to sleep with me tonight,” Daryl decides after a moment, shaking his head. “I'm not lettin’ my– you sleep on bare hay like an animal. –That ain't right.”

At the mention of getting to sleep with him again, you instantly perk up and make a noise of appreciation, smiling weakly at him.

He clumsily comes down the ladder, still somewhat drunk despite coming to his senses when he realized you were having trouble, swearing all the way down when his feet slip on the rungs or he misses the first time he reaches with his hands. He flops down on his bed, patting his chest for you to come join him.

You jump onto the bed next to him, quickly crawling over and sinking into his shoulder, arm around his torso to pull him closer. He tosses his blanket over you and you press your face into his warm, clammy skin.

Then he feels you move, rubbing your eyes.

“You smell funny,” You whisper, laying your head back down and looking up at him like he hung those same stars he'd just been admiring on his way home.

“Maybe I did somethin’ funny,” He whispers back, fingers tangling themselves in your hair as he scratches your scalp to try and put you to sleep.

You shake your head, eyes drooping. “You looked sad.”

Daryl hates how intuitive you are. He likes being able to tell how you feel with a single look or with the tone of your voice, but when you do it back to him he worries that it's another sign he shouldn't have you. Kids aren't supposed to be responsible for how the adults in their life feel. He should be the one looking out for, and taking care of you.

“I was,” He admits slowly, staring up at the ceiling. “But now I'm okay, ‘cause I'm here with you.”

A smile spreads across your face, chubby cheeks getting fuller.

“I love you, D,” You say with one last sigh as your entire body goes slack.

He holds onto you a little tighter.

+

+

+

Daryl’s eyes open to a different ceiling. One made of scratched up, rusty metal and flat rounded screws, a piece of black duct tape in the corner next to the top of the window to prevent the rain from leaking in at night.

He sits up, frowning.

Daryl isn't sure how he got here, but he also isn't sure where else he would be. This is the last trailer he and Merle robbed and squatted in before… something happened. –He doesn't know what.

There's pictures of the older couple that actually owns the trailer, although their faces are obscured he remembers that they're a white couple, both with hair so grey and silver it’s almost gone white. The woman had these funky purple and orange designer glasses that looked like they could cut someone, and the man had pins on his lapel from different things he’d been involved with. Daryl remembers staring at that picture a lot with a heavy feeling in his stomach he now knows is guilt.

He tips the photograph face-down and walks around the trailer, looking for any reminders of what he's supposed to be doing.

He finds more sentimental items that mean nothing to him personally, like a clay pot their grandchild probably made and some memorabilia hung on the walls like trophies. –Anything worthwhile, he and Merle pawned during their first day here, including a silver plated urn.

A dog barks and he hears someone laugh outside, the sound sweet and innocent. He knows that laugh.

He shoves open the trailer door and squints as he's blinded by sunlight, eyes just barely adjusting in time to see a stray dog from the area munching on a hotdog that someone tossed down for him.

There's a picnic table to his left, two figures sitting at it with the sun and trees behind them, gentle breeze making the leaves rustle.

“You gotta work on that pokerface, baby,” Merle says raspily, tone teasing in nature. “They'll eat that cute little ass alive in a real game down at the casino.”

Again, that familiar laughter.

“What are ya’ even supposed to be, anyway? –Fag,” He taunts, laying down his winning hand.

The other person blows a raspberry at him and Merle shakes his head, muttering a few apologies.

“Alright, alright. You shuffle this time, baby doll.”

The kid hums and obliges, eagerly pulling the cards closer to themself and messily trying to shuffle the deck. –Daryl can see their face now, the sun abating to let him see their features between rays. They're bouncing excitedly in their seat, picking off small pieces of some kind of grilled meat to gnaw on. He knows they're important to him in some way, but he can't for the life of him recall how.

Daryl squints at those wide doe eyes and tries to remember.

“Well, look who it is,” Merle suddenly taunts, arms spanned out in a mocking gesture. “Sleepin’ beauty finally decided to join us.”

The kid snorts and taps the cards on the table to line them up evenly.

Daryl scoffs with annoyance, momentarily distracted from the other person. “You could'a woken me up.”

Merle blinks, blue eyes boring into his brother's.

“Mmm… Nah,” The man shrugs, smiling in a soft way that Merle hasn't seen since they were kids. “I was havin’ the time of my life over here, gettin’ to know this little shit and repeatedly kickin’ her ass. –She owes me big time, by the way. Any cigs she finds are mine.”

“Whatever.”

Daryl tries to turn and face her directly, but Merle man-handles him back to looking at him with a hand on the shoulder.

“Now, I like this kid, Daryl,” He says in a warning, pointing a finger at him threateningly. “I like her a whole lot. She's good company. Real sweet. –Trust me, I've been watchin’, and I've seen a whole lot ‘a sweeties less sweet than this one. Less cute too.”

The kid finishes shuffling and sets the deck on the table between them, letting Merle deal. Which is probably why he's been winning this whole time. He's never been good at poker.

He tries to shrug Merle off. “So?”

“So don't fuck it up,” Merle growls, slamming his free fist on the table. The kid looks up, startled, and he backtracks. “Sorry, baby doll. Tryin’a tell my idiot brother not to screw up the one good thing he's got.”

Daryl frowns, brow furrowed. “Me? –The hell you mean by that?”

“I mean, get off your sorry, lazy ass and take care of your kid, deadbeat,” Merle snaps again, picking up his hand of cards and lowering his voice to something disgustingly sweet. “Now where were we, sweetheart?”

“What the hell are you talkin’ about? I ain't got a–” Except he does.

Merle side-eyes him knowingly. “You take good care ‘a her, now.”

+

+

+

Daryl’s eyes shoot open and he grasps anything he can reach, his heart settling when he realizes you're still peacefully asleep in his arms, safe and sound. No blatant theft or Merle probably corrupting you in sight.

The ceiling is as it always was, unsanded wooden beams stretching up into the air. He turns onto his side and drags you closer, pressing a kiss to your forehead.

You're safe. He's safe. This is Hilltop. This isn't a cage. This isn't a closet. Or a trailer. This is Hilltop.

He lifts the corner of his shirt and drags his hand across a freshly healed wound spanning from his hip to his stomach, the raised skin pink and silvery.

This is Hilltop. He lived.

“Mmh,” You groan from beside him, face scrunched up from the confusion of being smothered against him. “Whyyyyy?”

“‘M sorry,” He mutters, sitting up slowly and taking you with him. “I didn't mean to wake you up.”

You stretch out your limbs and drag yourself out of his lap, standing up to sign at him at the same time as you speak. “Hungry, Daryl. Can we go?”

The action drags a smile out of him. He's missed your voice. As quiet as it was before, he liked how loud you'd get when it was only him around. Slowly, you're getting more of yourself back and stringing together longer and longer sentences. Healing.

“Yeah, we can go,” He agrees, cracking his knuckles and trailing after you when the news has you bouncing on one foot as you tug on your boots and yank the door open. “Bambi, don't run off.”

You ignore his warning and keep sprinting far ahead of him, stopping every now and again until he catches up only to flee the next second before he can get close enough to grab you. Eventually his frustration ebbs and makes way for reluctant enjoyment of the game you're playing.

The next time you stop he sprints, nearly grabbing you until you realize what's happening and take off again, squealing.

You're swift, faster than him usually, but today you're not fast enough. He catches you from behind and bear hugs you, securing your arms to your sides as he picks you up and makes vaguely monstrous noises, pressing his face to your neck. You squeal louder, giggling and kicking your legs to try and get free until he lowers you and ruffles your hair, grinning.

That's much better.

You cough between pants, taking your place at Daryl’s side as you try to catch your breath. You've barely run at all, not nearly as much as you have to in the wilderness or in a fight, but you're winded.

It must be because you're still recovering. The first days you were back, you were probably running on adrenaline and now that you've gotten some restless sleep, it's catching up to you.

Still, it was worth it to make Daryl smile.

You haven't seen him really happy since he found the test, and you honestly don't know when he will be again. Most of the time it feels like things can never go back to the way they were.

“I ain't got a clue where they're eatin’,” Daryl grunts when you make it to the empty firepit, turning around to see if there's anyone he recognizes in the hustle of people rushing to their morning duties. “Guess they didn't think to let us know.”

“Mm,” You grunt in agreement, following him when he starts in the direction of where Rick has been staying, close to Maggie.

He hip checks you a few times during the walk, albeit gentler than he would've before he knew you weren't a boy. –Today feels better than yesterday without the threat of the doctor's office visit hanging over you though, so you decide to chalk it up to him being worried about hurting you while your arm is all messed up and going through the healing process.

Daryl stops outside of the trailer Rick is staying in, a few away from Maggie's while the people of Hilltop work on building more permanent structures, and knocks a few times.

Before he can try again, you both turn at the sound of boots crunching on gravel.

“Bambi!” Carl beams, jogging up from wherever he'd been, his clothes drenched and the sleeves of his flannel rolled up to his elbows. When he gets closer you see that there's soot smeared across his flushed cheeks, the wetness on him from sweating. “You look like you're feelin’ a bit better, was Siddiq able to help?”

You nod, smiling and trying to step towards him when Daryl’s arm shoots out and stops you from leaving his side.

You look over at him with confusion, smile dimming.

He can't even say it's because of the appointment this time. There's definitely something going on here… You don't like that two of the most important people in your life aren't getting along.

Since you both haven't made any moves to get closer, Carl keeps walking until he's right in front of you and Daryl, eye flicking back and forth between you cautiously.

You reach out to tug at his shirt with the arm Daryl isn't holding back. “Wet?”

“Oh!” Carl flushes, looking down at where his armpits have soaked through his shirt. “I-I was at the blacksmith's booth. He was showin’ me how he makes his blades…” He lowers his head, smiling thoughtfully. “It was pretty cool.”

You make a sword motion with your hand, swinging out at him like you're in a duel. He swings back a few times, then staggers, hand to his forehead as he dramatically lets you stab him in the heart with your imaginary blade.

“I can't bear to fight you, Bambi,” He gasps, pressing a hand to the spot where you'd swung at him.

You give him a mischievous smile and twist the blade, pressing deeper.

“So cruel,” He whines, huffing and staring at you with those half-lidded baby blues. “I'd hate to be at the other end of you with a real sword.”

You're overcome with the sudden urge to jump him and sink your teeth into his shoulder, not enough to break skin but hard enough that it leaves a mark. You want to be close to him again, tame that weird fluttering feeling you get in your stomach when he's in your line of sight.

Something on your face must give you away though, because before you know it, Daryl moves his hand up your arm to get a better grasp and pushes you behind him so that you're nearly out of one another’s view.

“Mmm!” You whine in complaint, glaring at the back of his shoulder.

“We were lookin’ for Rick,” Daryl says to interrupt the playful conversation you had going, souring the mood with an obvious scowl on his face. “Any idea where he is?”

“He's…” Carl frowns slowly as he processes the way Daryl’s been acting towards him recently, posture gaining that calculating edge that's kept him alive this long. “In the junkyard. –Waiting for you, actually.”

You hate that you can hear the hurt and confusion in his voice at being treated like a delinquent by someone that's practically his uncle. He even stepped up when everyone thought Rick was losing it to help care for Judith.

“Fuck,” Daryl straightens, casting his gaze in the vague direction the maze of cars had been in as if he could see it through all the buildings and structures between here and there. “I forgot all about that… we were tryna’...” He shakes his head, flicking his hair out of his face. “Shit. –C'mon, Bea.”

He starts to drag you off with him and you hang your head with a disappointed frown, starting to walk with him again.

But Carl stands in his path, fists loosely balled up at his sides in his iconic sheriff pose.

“Wait,” He says resolutely. “Wouldn't it be better if I took Bambi to get somethin’ to eat while you worked?”

Daryl’s scowl gets deeper, feet turning to try and maneuver around the teen. “I appreciate the offer, but nauh.”

Carl steps back in front of him, the glint in his eye imploring.

“It could take hours, and she still hasn't gotten a chance to see half the cool stuff here. It's a way bigger community than Alexandria,” He points out. “She has to get to know her way ‘round here without you.”

You're confused what Carl’s trying to get at when his gaze flicks to yours, eye exaggeratedly closing for a shorter time than necessary to blink. He winked. He winked at you just now, but why?

Is he… trying to rescue you?

You whip your head towards Daryl, lips pulling into a wide smile you try your hardest to stifle as you wait for his verdict. The man's grip on you falters, then tightens, only to falter again as he stares into your eyes, fighting himself.

He lets go.

“Hah… Okay, fine,” He reluctantly agrees, roughly but fondly pinching your cheek before turning to Carl with a stern look. “Don't you go gettin’ into trouble, and don't do nothin’ stupid, okay? She's… sick. Be gentle.”

You shy away at the mention, but Carl only smiles again, nodding in agreement to all of the loose rules Daryl’s set.

He was never particularly good at that, but it's impossible for someone to predict all the sneaky things kids will do when they're left to their own devices. Especially teenagers.

Before Daryl can even go, Carl turns back to you excitedly. “Have you ever been to a fair?”

Sort of. Nothing particularly big like you're sure they had in Atlanta, even in a place as small as King County, but there are a few hazy celebrations in your memory of people sharing food and dancing together where you're from. “Festivals,” You nod.

Daryl watches the two of you from afar as he slowly tears himself away from you and starts making his way to the junkyard in earnest.

“Well, Hilltop is kind of like a small, permanent festival,” Carl eagerly explains, finally succeeding in taking your hand in his and intertwining your fingers now that Daryl isn't here to intervene. “The Kingdom is even better. It's got huge set pieces that make it look like it's straight from a children's book, a big market, fresh fruit and hot grilled meat. Their beef skewers are the best. –And I know you had to have heard about Shiva, Ezekiel's tiger.”

You nod eagerly. Carol had just been telling you more about her last night, how even at night the beautiful beast sleeps purring at Ezekiel's side, guarding him from the floor or the end of the bed with her body curled like a proper cat.

“I wish I could take you,” Carl says longingly, coming down from his ramble with a laugh. “But it's too far to walk and I think Daryl might just kill me if we hitched a ride and I ran off with you.”

Suddenly, that's all you can think of. Running away together, sleeping at each other's side every night, and carving out your own quiet place in this world. It's not practical. You'd never leave Daryl behind, but the way he says it sounds so romantic. Not like when you were alone on the road before they found you.

“Mm-mm,” You blush, giving his hand a squeeze. “I wouldn't let him.”

He squeezes back and leans over to kiss your cheek at the same time you try to kiss his, leading to a very awkward and poorly aimed but sweet peck on the lips that has you both blushing furiously.

You turn away from one another when the kiss is over, flustered even though you're linked at the hands.

It feels… different, in public.

Privately, it's just the two of you feeling what you feel and working around each other like a well oiled machine, but with the added knowledge that people are observing you and the loving touches you offer one another it suddenly feels risque.

It occurs to you that it might actually be a risk. Siddiq had asked you who you'd been with since you've been back and you refused to tell him to protect Carl, but now here you are kissing him in broad daylight where Siddiq could easily round the corner and catch you. You can't let that happen.

You dare to look back at him, tugging his hand forward to get him moving.

He smiles and starts running towards the market, leading you behind him by the hand. Your boots hit the pavement and uneven ground with loud thumps as the trailers and houses become tents and booths constructed from the scraps left over. Right now there's only about two rows of them, both of which you can see the end of from where you're standing, but there's also a few larger buildings from before the fall with their doors open.

“W–” You stop running, bending your upper body so that you can put your hands on your knees and cough.

Carl stops as soon as you slow down, turning to face you and rubbing your shoulder when he sees the trouble you seem to be having catching your breath. “Bambi?”

You shake your head to brush off his concern, reaching into your pocket and popping one of Siddiq's candies hoping it'll at least help your voice if nothing else.

“Where to?” You ask, signing, Slow, please.

He nods, looking serious as he scans the street. “The first thing I wanna do is get you some fresh food. –Somethin’ not too rough on your stomach.”

Nothing hearty. Nothing greasy. Nothing heavy.

At least that's what Lori always told him when he was little and home sick. –She'd make him homemade chicken soup and rub his back while he ate it, loosely humming songs he could never hope to put a name to.

“‘M not that sick…” You complain, pouting that he'd taken what Daryl said to heart.

He embarrassed you in front of Carl, and now the boy's going to keep treating you like you're breakable.

His gaze softens as he looks at you again, understanding.

“The first time I ate here I threw it all up afterwards,” He admits sadly, giving a half shrug like the situation was inevitable. “I wasn't even sick like you are. I just wasn't used to how rich the food was after starvin’ for so long…”

Your lips part, but you aren't sure what to say in response to that, so you lift your interlocked hands and nuzzle your cheek into the back of his.

He smiles softly, head cocking. “I trust you, Bambi, but I don't want to be the reason you get worse, that's all.”

At the new angle he's put his head at, he catches sight of a cart covered in roasted vegetables and skewered fruits made to look like animals, a dragon made of red and green apple slices with skin for the scales catching his eye.

“There!” He points. “That stuff is good quality and if you ask, they'll even drizzle different sauces on it.”

Sauces on… fruit?

The image that comes to mind immediately is someone drenching an assortment of fruits in ranch dressing, and it is not appealing. You stick your tongue out, walking with Carl to the cart.

The man handing the fruit out keeps positioning the skewers to make them look more appealing, while the woman next to him chops up a kiwi and some bananas to make a few bears with ear and stomach details. She ends up with more banana than she needs, so she ends up making one of the bears a polar bear.

“Miss my paper,” You whisper quietly to yourself, looking down at your free hand and remembering the way it felt to carefully fold each animal with your fingers.

The rest of your animals probably burned with Alexandria, you think sadly, mouth turning into a pout.

A kid runs up to the man and excitedly demands the dragon Carl had his eye on, pleading for extra sauce as the man drowns it in caramel. That makes more sense. Carl pretends not to be disappointed, but you see the look in his eye.

Another day, you sign, better dragon to slay.

To your surprise, he actually seems to understand a majority of your sentence.

“Another day,” He echoes, using the sign for animal. “Stronger animals for your kingdom.”

Suddenly you feel something slip into your free hand and see that the woman has given you the banana polar bear, along with a mango kangaroo, and a strawberry dinosaur.

“You are so cute,” She giggles, a big smile on her face as she baby-talks you. “I remember when you first came here with your dad and Rick, I thought to myself– that looks exactly like my baby brother,” She grimaces. “Well, not literally. That'd be weird. But the shy awkward silent thing is just like him! You're such a cute little guy!”

You open your mouth to respond before closing it and bashfully looking at the ground with a flat smile, sighing through your nose.

Your mind is torn between focusing on the fact she thought Daryl was your dad, and the fact she mistook you for a boy, both of which make you extremely uncomfortable right now for different reasons.

Daryl doesn't want to be your dad…

Does he?

He acts like your dad. He cares for you like a dad would. He teaches you like a dad. You love him like he's your dad and worry every time you're separated. You even have your own house (kind of) where you live together, and last night you got to sleep in his bed with him after a nightmare.

You blush, shaking the thought from your head as you bite the polar bear's head off, only to realize that Carl’s been intently staring at you.

Your brows unfurrow and you stop chewing, swallowing with a gulp.

“Hm?”

“Nothin’,” He says quickly, averting his gaze. “There's a lot more I want to show you.”

He tries to pull you away from the stand, but you stay firmly planted, pointing at the man who's actually handing out the fruit sticks.

Pay? Trade?

“Oh, no,” Carl laughs, the awkward tension from before gone as he points at all the other people running up to get sticks and walking away. “You don't have to give them anythin’ for what you get here. It works like that for most places, especially if their product is labor based like fruit. As long as you do your part in the community, everythin’ is free.”

Huh… Weird. You unplant your feet and let him lead you to the next cart, one where an older woman is selling blankets and home made pastries.

It looks like a square donut covered in something white, but the woman tells you that it's a beignet, something famous where she came from before.

She tells you a story about a famous man playing jazz right outside her window, confetti constantly all over the street and beaded necklaces getting thrown up into the flower pots on her balcony. –Says Hilltop is nowhere near as big and bright as her hometown.

You beg Carl to let you try one despite his worries about you getting sick and eventually he gives in, feeding you the pastry by hand. Apparently she's told him this story several times before and always makes him take a bag full of the sweet treat, which she does again. One for each of you.

That leads Carl to make another stop, into one of the storefronts where he pushes you forward and tells the man working that you need a bag. He shows you several, including a ridiculously bright orange one with pink accents and a flower decal, which would instantly get you killed in the woods despite how cute it is.

You settle on a camo backpack with black straps, the logo half ripped off and a few wonky stars drawn in places with a black marker. It's definitely used, but it's tougher than the other options he showed you.

Carl gives you another look, staring, but he recovers faster this time and loads the pastries into your backpack, leading you forward.

As soon as you're outside the shop, the sound of metal on metal can be heard down the road.

A few people abandon their stalls and walk down to crowd around the large tarped permanent structure with smoke billowing out from under it. It stands out from the rest of the places around Hilltop, with its blackened medieval structure and leather tarps, clearly built for durability instead of aesthetic. You'd think the building was for food if the smell of ash didn't rise so powerfully.

“Blacksmith?” You question, tentatively stepping closer with wide eyes.

“Yeah, uh–” He puts his hand in yours again, tugging. You hadn't even realized you'd let go of him. “I don't think we should go there today. –The blacksmith made some new swords and people have been sparrin’ off and on. It could be dangerous…”

That sounds amazing. You have to see it. You want to try it.

“One peek?” You plead, watching the crowd gasp in awe.

He can tell by the mischievous glint in your eye that you plan on pushing him for more the second he gives in and lets you go over there.

“Bambi, I don't think that's a good idea,” Carl repeats more firmly. “You’re coughin’ already, it's only goin’ to get worse if you inhale smoke.”

“But…” You trail off, feeling discouraged by the tension in Carl’s posture.

You used to spar all the time, get into good natured fights that left your knuckles and noses bleeding. It was fulfilling. He fought with the skill of someone trained by a cop, and you fought with the cunning of someone used to ripping their way out of restraints. At the end of the day you'd pushed each other past your limits and learned how to defend yourself better.

“I don't wanna see you get hurt,” Carl says, urging you away from the crowd and back towards the rows of market.

You frown, sighing as you unplant your feet to continue letting him lead you around. “Okay.”

He only has your best interests at heart, it's not his fault everyone's treating you this way.

“I promise we'll come ‘n see him together. –Another day when it's less busy and the coals aren't goin’,” He comforts.

“Mm,” You hum noncomittally.

The two of you wind up exploring a majority of the market Hilltop has to offer. You excitedly follow Carl to every booth he leads you past, trying to map it all out in your head despite the overload of colorful visual information and sound you're receiving.

You try to convince him to dance with you when you come across a man playing the violin in a group of drunken people taking a break, but he flushes and refuses, promising again that the two of you will dance when he’s sure you’re feeling well enough to.

Eventually the sky begins tinting orange and Carl leads you to a neighborhood, collapsing into sitting down against a cinderblock holding up a trailer, sighing contentedly.

“So… how was your first real tour of Hilltop?” He asks with a grin as you shove a vegetable skewer into your mouth, licking your fingers in a way that reminds him so much of Daryl he does a double take.

“Awesome,” You smile, licking your lips. “I need to do it like a hundred more times, I feel like I'm already forgetting where we started.”

“Good, because I want to take you there a hundred more times,” He laughs, then slowly the smile on his face turns into a contemplative frown.

“Carl?”

He takes your other hand in his so that he's holding both of them, squeezing and rubbing with a serious look on his face.

Is this it? Does he know? Did he figure it out, or worse are you showing somehow?

“I have a question,” He says softly, voice honest. “And don't take this the wrong way. I don't care what the answer is, I want you to know that. It's you I care about.”

You swallow hard, chest aching with sadness.

You'd barely gotten the chance to be with him the way you'd wanted to be and now it's all over. He'll never trust you again, hell, he might not even talk to you. He probably hates your guts and only pretended to want to hang out with you today to give you closure because he's kind like that.

“Are you a boy?” He asks abruptly, pulling you from your thoughts.

You raise your eyes to his, face scrunching up with confusion as you look between him and pointedly at your chest, which he's seen bare.

“No… I mean,” He pauses, making a soft scoff because he can't think of the right words. “Are you a boy?” He accentuates by pointing at your chest and shifting the aim to your face.

“Mm? Mm-mm,” You shake your head, puzzled by the question.

“Well… are you a girl?” He asks next.

You think about this one longer, frowning with frustration at the memories of looking at yourself in the mirror and wondering why you were so inadequate. Nothing like the women you wished to be like, chest flat, shoulders too broad yet too soft to be a man's. You wished you could be seen like a girl, wished to be worthy of delicate items you held like glass, worried your existence would tarnish them. The way Enid and Judith and all the other girls stared at you like an outsider despite knowing yourself that you were disguised.

You lower your head. “I just don't think it should matter…”

You'll never understand why people fixate on your gender so much.

“It makes me mad,” You say slowly, a frown on your face. “I do my best and it's never good enough because people expect worse now. They treat me different.”

And you're constantly afraid.

Your shield has been taken. –And as soon as it was, the worst thing that could have happened did.

Before Daryl found you, you'd been hiding yourself for a long time because you knew what happened to girls that got caught. You knew what sick and twisted things they'd do, especially to the ones that were alone like you were. Yet the time that you finally faced this reality, you'd been surrounded by a group you were a part of, chest bound and hair cut short.

It was all for nothing. You punished and pushed yourself to the brink just to be taken advantage of anyway because you were weak.

Carl nods slowly, taking the information in. “Okay… I think I get it.”

He doesn’t. Because he doesn't know. Because you've been lying to him.

“You say you don't care about the answer, but clearly it means something or you wouldn't have asked,” You whisper, feeling tears well up in your eyes.

He never used to pay you any attention. You wouldn't be here like this if he hadn't found out that you were a girl.

You try to pull your hands out of his and he bites his lower lip, squirming where he sits as he holds them tighter.

“Bambi,” He coos.

You turn your head away.

“Please?” He asks. “Just listen?”

You nod. You can do that. Listen to him and give him a chance to explain what he's thinking, even if you don't want to hear it.

“I… never… like, suspected that you weren't a guy or anythin’…” He gulps with a shaky voice, cheeks dusting a light pink. “But even before I knew, I… I liked you a lot–” He chokes out, grip tightening on you anxiously. “I liked spendin’ time with you, and laughin’ at stupid jokes, and havin’ you in my room...”

You smile softly. “‘Liked you too.”

He shakes his head, tongue darting out to wet his lower lip. “Bambi, I…”

He takes another deep breath.

“I thought you were cute… and amazin’. There was nothin’ you couldn't do if you set your mind to it. Every second of your voice I got to hear –every laugh or sigh I managed to get out of you– played on loop in my head every time I tried to go to sleep…” He pauses, looking very much like he wants to cry. “I-I tried to forget about it, but I couldn't. I didn't care if you were a guy, I liked you. –It's never mattered to me what you are, as long as it's you.”

By the end of his explanation he's lightly panting through his mouth, teary eye pleading for you to be okay with this, to not judge him.

Me too, you sign, leaning in and giving him another kiss on the lips.

He moans in relief and appreciation, grabbing the back of your neck to gently hold you in the position until you decide to pull away or deepen the kiss.

You pull away, staring into his eye and the bandage covering his empty socket.

You want to yank the gauze right off his face and press kisses all along the seam of his scar, stare into the depths of the beautiful crater keeping him alive.

“You're beautiful,” You tell him, because it's true and he doesn't hear it enough.

He lets out a disbelieving laugh that comes out more of a huff than anything else, looking away from you for a moment.

“So are you,” He sighs, rubbing his hand along your jaw and down to the base of your neck. “Every version. No matter what.”

You look down at your feet guiltily, thinking about how he's going to react when he finds out about what happened and still might be happening to you right now. –You're not stupid enough to think a boy his age will want to stick around in the apocalypse if you find out that you're… pregnant.

You remember hearing people laugh about teen boys from your town running out on their pregnant girlfriends, never to be seen again. You were just a little kid back then. You couldn't really grasp what they were talking about.

“You know you can tell me anythin’... Don't you?” Carl whispers, hand starting to massage your neck with a steady squeeze and release, mimicking the tight full body squeezes that soothe you.

You nod half-heartedly.

“Bambi…?” He coos again, leaning back in so close your noses are almost touching.

You lower your head, cheeks flushing as you stare up at him through your lashes.

He starts to grin, voice turning sing-songy. “Bambi, come on. Tell me what's wrong.”

You shake your head, lips turning up into a slight smile at the sight of his.

He starts to laugh when a duffle bag drops down into the dirt between you, jagged metal pieces clanging together loudly as it hits the ground and you jump away from noise.

“Hah,” Daryl pants, grin pulled tight on his lips as he glances between you. “I finished early ‘n decided I'd come hang out with ya’.”

“Oh, you don't have to–” Carl is cut short when the man plops down between you, putting his arms around both of your shoulders to keep you firmly separated. “Uh… Okay.”

Daryl stares Carl down, tongue tucked into his cheek.

“So what're we doin’, ah?” He asks, clearly wanting Carl to explain what the two of you are doing and why you were so close together. The more lost Carl looks, the harder Daryl’s glare seems to get.

“Talking…” You answer quietly.

Daryl turns his attention to you next, patting you on the back so hard with false enthusiasm you have to move your foot to keep your balance.

“About what?”

You cringe, looking away from his prying gaze uncomfortably.

A few moments pass in awkward silence, your hands fidgeting in your lap and Carl’s in his, before the pressure is just too much to withstand anymore.

Carl stands and your heart sinks.

“Bambi, I think I'm gonna go,” He grumbles, but then instead of standing up and backing off like he'd done yesterday, he leans over Daryl to wrap his arms around you in a hug, snuggling into your neck with a concealed peck before he pulls away. “I'll see you tomorrow,” He smiles, waving as he walks off.

You pull your lips into your mouth, trying and failing to hide the grin on your face as you wave back.

Daryl scowls, grumbling as he watches him go.

“Don't let that boy do anythin’ you don't want him to,” He warns. “Grabbin’ you like that is just askin’ to get punched.”

“I like him,” You say softly, staring after him with so much adoration it’s scary.

Daryl gulps.

“I’m bein’ serious. Don’t let him do anythin’ to you, Bea,” He repeats, voice wavering. “Friends are great, but… that doesn’t mean you owe ‘em anythin’. I-I know it can be confusin’ when you, you know, start feelin’ a certain kind of way as you get older, but–”

You cringe so hard it physically hurts, audibly sucking a breath in through clenched teeth.

“I’m just sayin’ I don’t want the two of you makin’ a mistake,” He finishes awkwardly by regurgitating Rick's words to him, turning his head away from you.

You think about letting the conversation end there, busying yourself with relacing your boots despite the knots they were in being perfectly fine, but you decide to test the waters. You want to know what he thinks as someone who –sort of– knows what happened to you.

“...What if I like him as more than a friend?” You ask slowly, heart pounding fiercely in your chest.

“You can’t,” He says quickly.

You raise your head to look at him with confusion, feeling something inside you start to crack. “I… can’t?”

You're looking to Daryl for advice in one of the most delicate situations of your life, and looking at those big, wet eyes he doesn't know what to say. –Saying the wrong thing here is not an option, but picking the right thing is like stepping into a minefield of ways to misinterpret it. It could change the rest of your life and the way you see yourself.

“You shouldn’t,” He amends, looking panicked. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, Carl’s a good kid but you’re–”

Not, your brain supplies when he fails you.

You feel your heart shatter into a million pieces as you watch him stumble over a few more words he can’t get out, unable to find a nice way to break it to you. –You’re damaged, that’s all. He doesn’t have to tell you.

You tried so hard to be good, but you just can't. You're always going to fail Daryl, and Carl, and everyone else you love.

Your entire body is shaking where you sit next to him, knees against your chest and fingers slowly flexing against your calves in a way that looks angry.

“Bea,” Daryl says, trying to reach for you.

You smack his hand away, snatching up your bag and running off as fast as you can.

---

Fic Chapterlist

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[maxthewitness]

I discovered your fics a couple days ago and I am LITERALLY obsessed! I already read eerything you've written and i am very hungry for some more carl smut!!

Fresh Carl smut from today up on Ao3!

(More things for tumblr after I finish You're The Gasoline, I'm The Match– but I'll probably post the smut from this latest chapter after people have had a chance to read it)

Tyyyyyysm 💚💚💚