last updated: june 28th, 2026 ○ dividers made by: @cafekitsune
The Walking Dead
Daryl Dixon
Daryl "secretly" having feelings for you would include...
Daryl finding out his gf!reader used to be famous
Your first time with Daryl
Gray
you find gray hair on Daryl's head
Lazy morning
you ask Daryl light questions to know him better
fluff:
Strangers
you were a fresh new college student, Hershel's middle daughter, who helped welcoming a new group to your farm at the apocalypse, the rest is history.
Slow dance
you enjoy the light times with your best friend after arriving in Alexandria.
Love Language
Daryl's not good with words or showing he cares, so if you say you want something, he gets if for you.
fluff (with a hint of angst):
Somewhere I belong
you and Daryl met as kids, but parted ways also still young, right at the peak of a confusing but deep teenage romance, becoming the subject of eachother's late night thoughts about what life could've been. Until you meet again in the most unlikely circumstances.
smut:
Wet dreams
you get stuck on a store with your ex, letting out repressed wishes.
Come undone
Daryl sees you in revealing clothes for the first time in when the heat of the summer comes, you catch him trying to hide his arousal.
angst:
Wrath
you and Daryl disagree on how to deal with Negan after Rick makes him a prisoner, leading to Daryl saying hurtful things to you.
I write exclusively for Daryl Dixon! Requests must (preferably) specify the gender you want and please avoid focusing on something that's about physical characteristics so the story is fitting for more people too!🫶🏼
fluff:
Crush
Daryl overhears you speak to your sister about having a crush on him.
Company
A stranger saves you from a walker, you stick to him from there on.
Unexpected company
Spencer's been bugging you since you first arrived to Alexandria, not knowing you'd been secretly seeing Daryl, he's surprised by the man, shirtless, opening the door of your house when he knocks.
fluff (with a hint of angst):
Out of the woods
you got bit, but somehow you survived the impossible, and Daryl takes it as a gift to enjoy his new chance with you.
Holding what's left
you are pregnant during the Savior era, and Daryl is overprotective of you and his unborn child.
Not for a second
Daryl's reckless acting gets you caught by the Saviors after the tragic loss of your friends on the line up, you ache for the day you'll be reunited.
Back to you (soon-to-be series)
You got pregnant in your early twenties, dating Daryl didn't work for you, but you coparanted shoving confused feelings away, then the world ended and forced you to be apart for two long years until you met again, with a wide new world of chances.
Back before dawn
Daryl's been gone on a run, when you wake up from a terrible nightmare you realize he's back and there to comfort you.
smut:
Slow dancing in the dark (part 2 for slow dance)
when Daryl finally caves in to his desire over his insecurities.
Worth remembering - Daryl Dixon
Daryl forgot your birthday, so he has to find a way to make it up to you somehow.
MCU
*I'll separate this masterlists as soon as I can!
🌷fluff | 🍂 angst | 🌪 smut
Druig (Eternals)
headcanon: how would he act around you before confessing his feelings? 🌷
Kiss And Makeup 🌷🍂
You're an eternal who has the power to see the future, and couldn't figure out well why the harsh comments of your fellow eternal, Druig, got to you so badly, untill your powers showed it to you.
Under The Moon Light (college!au)🌷
Under The Moon Light (part 2) 🌪️
About falling in love with the new Irish boy.
Empty Cups (college!au) 🌪️
On a party to celebrate the ending of the semester you finally get the guts you didn’t have the whole year to talk to the popular boy out of campus.
My Little Versailles 🌷🍂
After the events in Tenochitilan (the eternals growing apart), you decide to stand by Druig on his decisions, although it hurt you deep to leave your family, and things didn't work out exactly how you planned.
Apocalypse 🌷🍂
You share a good life with your partner, Druig, but Sersi brings you news that shake the peaceful feeling you've felt for so long.
It Takes Two 🌷
Where the game night with your lover, Druig, leaded Kingo to assume the worst over a misheard conversation.
tasm! Peter Parker 🕷️
headcanon: dating Peter would include... 🌷
what happens after the storm? 🌷🍂🎯
Peter has trouble with starting new relationships after what happened with Gwen, although the you do have something going on between you two, you promised him you’d wait until he put his head in place and made a decision. But what happens when he takes too long to decide?
Stitches n' Patches - Series🌷🍂🎯
Coming home from a party on a certain night, you find Spiderman extremely wounded inside a dumpster at your street. Seeing someone needing your help you don't think twice before bringing him home and patching him up. You built trust. It becomes a regular thing, and you get to know better and fall for the guy behind the mask.
Tongue Tied - One Shot🌷
mcu! Peter Parker 🕸️
headcanon: dating Peter would include...🌷
tenant - series (hiatus)
After losing everything, Peter Parker goes after a fresh start in his new apartment; what he wasn't counting on was meeting his special, sweet neighbour who would take a place in his heart sooner than he imagined.
right where you left me 🍂🎯
right where you left me (part 2) 🍂
Peter and you had amazing 5 years relationship, and counting, everything was going well, until he didn't feel the same anymore
Tony Stark (Iron Man)
family subjects 🌷🍂
After the excruciating damage that Thanos caused to the world, Tony, your brother, and his wife, bring you news that shine a light of hope inside of you.
Requested: "Could you write some sibling fluff for Tony Stark where the reader is his younger sister (by like 15 years) so Tony basically raised her and it’s basically Tony and Pepper telling her she’s gonna be an aunt?"
Matthew Murdock (Daredevil)
headcanon: dating Matt would include... 🌷🌪️
stray (christmas drabble) 🌷
fireflies (drabble)🌷🎯
with every guitar string scar on my hand (drabble)🌷
be my eyes 🌷
You're a part of the Nelson And Murdock firm and finally invite your friends slash coworkers to your place to celebrate a win on a case, Foggy keeps telling you how beautiful your place is and Matt gets down he couldn't see it, so you lead him to a described tour – or at least you try.
where's my love 🍂🎯
part 02🌷🍂
You turn to dust in the blip, under Matt's watch, now he won't rest until he finds out what happened.
out of the woods🌷
Matt fails to keep his lone wolf pose when a new vigilante starts acting upon the crimes in his city.
double (couple) life 🌷🍂
what happens when two words collide? Matt & f!reader are happily married during daylight, rival vigilantes at night. (requested)
summary: Daryl has never given you a second thought, so when you go on a run together for the first time, he's expressly impressed with your skills, and maybe a little turned on
Daryl has always seen you as fragile, not in a cruel way exactly, he'd only known you within the prison walls once they welcomed new people in. He'd always taken you for a delicate, helpless girl. He honestly didn't see how you made it that far, based purely of his first impressions and how you ported yourself on the community, eyes too soft for the world outside.
You kept your distance from the fences, made your tasks focused exclusively on helping Hershel with crops or other people with inventory. You didn't mind spending most of your mornings in the courtyard garden with dirt beneath your nails that were once neatly painted with a thoughtfull design, but you never vontunteered on runs, made it your thing to be within the limits of that property at all times.
Your lack of movement bothered him for some reason. How you never stood near the arsenal tables when people cleaned guns, and every time he'd catch sight of you, you'd be slithering between the rows of crops carrying a bucket against your hip, sunlight warming your skin and humming a good old song like the whole ugly world hadn’t rotted itself to pieces.
Then the sickness spread through the cell block like wildfire.
One day Glenn was coughing into his sleeve, sweating through his shirt while Maggie fussed over him, then Sasha got sick, then two more, then suddenly Hershel was running himself ragged trying to keep everyone alive while Rick scrambled for antibiotics they didn’t have enough people to retrieve, because half the group was either sick or refusing to leave the prison in case things got worse, and tensions sat thick in the air for days, heavy and ugly and exhausting.
Daryl was checking bolts at one of the tables when Rick approached him with that look already on his face, the one that meant he was about to suggest something Daryl wouldn’t like.
"She's riding with you."
Daryl barely looked up. “Who?"
Rick nodded over his shoulder.
You stood near the fence with Carol, arms crossed tightly over yourself against the cold morning air, the morning sun shining against your skin. Irritating. Immediately, his jaw tightened. "Ain't happening."
“She volunteered.”
“She ain’t been outside those fences once. What happens when we get back with one more casualty and someone less to take care of things?"
“She said she can handle herself."
Daryl finally looked at Rick fully then, irritation crawling sharp beneath his skin. “And ya just believed that?”
Rick’s mouth twitched slightly, tired more than amused. “We don’t exactly have options right now.”
"She's going on the car. Carol rides with me."
Daryl looked back toward you again, watching you shoot Tyreese another one of your stupid smiles. Your movements were calm, steady, not nervous enough for someone about to leave the prison after months inside.
Still, he scoffed under his breath. Great, now we carry dead weight.
He did as he said, childishly refusing to ride with you. He expected you to start panicking the second things got serious. Daryl was previously annoyed as he expected hesitation, fear, freezing up at the wrong moment and forcing him to step in before you got yourself killed, because he couldn't have it on him.
The pharmacy had already been picked half-clean by previous scavengers, shelves overturned and glass shattered beneath their boots while dust drifted through weak sunlight spilling from broken windows overhead, Daryl motioned for everyone to spread out while he checked the back storage rooms, crossbow loose in his grip.
Daryl lost his track of you, who had disappeared somewhere down the next aisle without a word. Ten minutes passed quietly, then came the growl, Daryl spun toward the sound, a walker stumbled from between collapsed shelves directly behind one of the others, jaw snapping open, rotten hands reaching‐ thunk.
The rotten body collapsed to the ground immediately, a bolt protruded clean through its skull. Daryl just stared.
The shot had come from halfway across the store. Slowly, his eyes tracked upward. You stood balanced on a fallen rack with another bolt already notched into your crossbow, poker face, breath steady. Daryl genuinely thought maybe he’d imagined it because he had never, not once, seen you carrying that thing around the prison.
“What the hell?" he muttered before he could stop himself.
You blinked down at him. “What?”
"Since when ya know how to use that thing?" You only shrugged in response, like it was obvious, and he is stupid for asking.
Daryl stared another second too long before scoffing quietly and turning away again, but something uncomfortable shifted beneath his ribs, something hot and strange and sharp enough to irritate him immediately. Suddenly, all those months replayed differently in his head.
He reflected on the way you never looked scared, only purposefully distant. On the way you moved quickly and how your eyes constantly tracked exits. He'd mistaken your distance for weakness, but it hit him like a bolt when he realized, you didn't want to get too close. Close was dangerous.
Another walked bursted from the stockroom a few minutes later and before Daryl could lift his weapon you stepped forward smoothly, knife flashing once beneath flickering fluorescent light before the corpse even hit the floor properly, efficient and clean, enough that Tyreese let out a low whistle.
“Well damn.”
Daryl couldn’t stop watching you, you shifted completely under his eyes. It was like outside the perimeter of the prison you were a different person entirely. Seeing how lifeless your gaze looked when you moved there, he started to understand why you wanted to keep your distance.
You were afraid, yes. But it was of how far you'd go to survive.
Outside, things got worse.
A small herd wandered through the parking lot before they reached the truck, forcing everyone to move quickly between abandoned vehicles while the sound of groaning echoed off storefronts around them, Daryl automatically moved closer to your side, ready to intervene the second you slipped up.
Except you never did.
You moved like this was your second nature, retrieving bolts with quick practiced movements, conserving energy instead of wasting it, and every time Daryl thought he understood you, another contradiction surfaced.
At one point he caught you kneeling beside a dead deer near the edge of the woods, fingers pressing briefly against the carcass before quietly muttering, “Too stiff. Been dead for a while.” Daryl stopped walking.
“You hunt?”
“I used to." Jesus Christ.
He wondered what else you had to uncover. Then came the shot that finally lodged itself under Daryl’s skin for good.
You and Daryl were further from the vehicle, as Carol carried it with supplies, she missed a walker almost sneaking in behind her, and before anyone else could think to react. You fire hit a bolt straight through the walker’s eye socket.
You smiled a little, embarrassed more than proud when you picked up you had audience.
“Shit," he whispered, grinning openly now "that was hot as hell."
The last part was something nearly above a whisper, but still, it was enough for you to hear. Something ugly twisted in Daryl’s stomach instantly, the words echoed louder than it should’ve, slipping his tongue by mistake. Even he was surprised.
You ducked your head slightly at the compliment, cheeks warming just enough for him to notice, though that moment kept a silent agreement you'd not acknowledge you'd heard it. Daryl hated the strange irritation that flared through him.
“Lucky shot.” he muttered sharply, shrugging and slinging his crossbow over his shoulder harder than necessary, something insisting to bug on his chest and make his heart hammer on his ears.
♡ "back to you" taglist: @leslierabbit @t0xicsl33p @moss4brainss @saintloverie @firefirefeline @babycheech @dixonangel @gglittergoddess @tuesday469 @lavandine @bbning @clussyposts @kiki-reedus
Daryl waited for you.
He waited in the trailer for two whole months, stubbornly clinging to routines that no longer made sense. He kept the porch light on every night even after the power failed. He checked every car that managed to pass the road with the irrational hope that somehow, against all reason, you'd be behind the wheel with Benjamin in the backseat. He kept expecting the sound of your voice, kept thinking he'd hear you fussing over him. But nobody came.
Merle, of course, had no patience for hope, or a tragic love story, specially not one that involved you.
By the first week, he had already grown tired of watching his baby brother sit on the porch every evening like some faithful dog waiting for its owner.
"Boy, she ain't comin'."
Daryl barely glanced up from the knife he was sharpening. "Quit it."
"I'm serious."
"Didn't ask."
Merle snorted.
"Didn't ask? What are you? Thirteen?"
Daryl's jaw tightened. "Shut up."
"Nah, you gon' listen." He sat down heavily beside him, cracking open a beer. "You waitin' on a woman that ain't even thinkin' 'bout you no more."
Daryl's eyes narrowed.
"Don't."
"I'm just sayin'."
"Don't."
"World ended, baby brother. Rich folks got themselves bunkers and private compounds. Hell, if she made it, she probably snuck herself into some fancy-ass shelter with enough food to feed the next generation and a bunch of rich people drinkin' wine and bitchin' 'bout the apocalypse."
"Shut the hell up."
Merle raised his hands dramatically.
"What? You know I'm right."
"Nah, I know yer an asshole."
Merle scoffed. "Boy, I been tellin' you since day one. She was slummin' it with ya."
Daryl stood immediately. "Watch yer mouth."
"Or what?"
"Or I'm gonna forget you're ma brother."
Merle simply laughed.
"You think I don't remember? Every damn night after work you'd disappear with some rich brat you met on the side of the road. Thought you'd gone stupid."
"She ain't no brat."
"Oh, come on. You really thought y'all had a future?"
Daryl didn't look mad, he looked sad. Even his family replicated what your parents tried to glue to your heads. You didn't belong together.
Merle noticed, and for some miracle, his expression softened slightly.
"Ain't sayin' she didn't love ya" he admitted quietly. "Girl gave ya Ben, didn't she? That's somethin'."
Daryl's eyes dropped.
"Yeah."
"But if it weren't for that boy, she'd've left years ago." And there it was again.
"Look, I'm just sayin'... maybe if she made it, she had to make choices that didn't envolve you."
Daryl swallowed. He knew there was some sense to Merle's line if thought. You were stupid rich, but still, he never heard from you about a plan B bunker casually there to be lived in, he figured that's something he'd know at some point, still, he wondered. But ever stopped looking. Not even when Merle called him a fool, or after the trailer was overrun and they were forced to leave.
When he joined Rick's group, he never mentioned you, not once. He felt like explaining it out loud made your absence real, and that made him stupidly vulnerable. So nobody knew. Nobody knew he had someone, maybe thinking if him too. Nobody knew he had a boy, old enough to be in high school, if fate had been kind.
Nobody knew that every time Carl laughed, Daryl's chest tightened with memories of a little boy who used to sit on his shoulders and tug on his ears.
When Sophia disappeared, Daryl made it a personal quest, he had to find that girl. Every time he faced Carol's despair from losing her only child, he'd think if you, what if you'd been though something like that and he wasn't there for you?. And the thought made him shiver.
No one knew his real reasons behind it. He was pure if heart enough to be this invested if he didn't have kids too, but all that crossed his mind was you and Benjamin, and how he had to cling to hope that if he could find this little girl, then maybe he could find you too.
He'd considered, many times, to open up about his past to Carol. When he saw her mourning someone that she wasn't sure was really gone, he saw himself on her, he wanted to approach and say he understood the feeling better than anyone could. But before he could wonder more about tearing down his walls, the barn happened, and the girl appeared. Lifeless, her body only moving by command of that devious infection. And Daryl build his walls right back up.
He recalled feeling physically sick, not only because Sophia was gone, but because a terrible thought had wrapped itself around his heart and squeezed hard. What if that was what waited for him? What if after years of searching he found you or Ben like that? Would he even survive it? For the first time since the world had ended, he was afraid of hope itself. Because hope implied answers, and answers had the power to destroy him.
The weeks that followed only taught him that monsters had always worn human faces long before the dead began walking. They had built more than a shelter, but a home, at the prison, and before he could stop to breathe, once again the world crumbled beneath his feet, and he felt stupid for ever hoping again. After the governor's attack, he got separated from everyone, stranded with Beth Greene.
Daryl found himself in the strange company of someone too young and too stubborn to accept his usual grunts as conversation. Beth had a gift for prying into people's souls while smiling sweetly enough that refusing her felt almost cruel. What began with innocent questions eventually became more personal, until one evening she casually asked whether he'd ever been married. Daryl had answered with the first thing that came to mind. "Sorta."
The answer immediately fascinated her. She laughed, insisting that "sort of married" wasn't an actual category, and spent the next ten minutes pestering him with increasingly ridiculous theories. By the time he surrendered, he'd found himself smiling. And then, quietly, with the fire crackling between them and the stars spread overhead, he told her everything. About you. About the rich girl with the broken-down car who had changed his life. About Benjamin. About the breakup neither of you had wanted. About loving each other anyway. Beth listened with tears shining in her eyes and the kind of hopeless romantic expression only she could wear without embarrassment. "You've been in love with her for fifteen years?" she'd asked in disbelief.
Daryl had looked away immediately, embarrassed. "Closer to sixteen now, ain't never let go." Beth had laughed softly and shaken her head.
"Oh, Daryl, that's the saddest and sweetest thing I've ever heard." He'd scoffed, muttering that she was crazy, but she simply smiled and asked the question he'd spent years avoiding.
"Do you think they made it?"
The answer had come before he could stop it. "Have to." His voice had broken around the words. "Don't know how not to."
And as if the world kept pulling distasteful jokes with him. He lost Beth too. After that, Daryl it felt like a piece of your memory had gone with her, because for the first time since the world shifted completely, someone else had known about you. Someone else had known learned your name, and Ben's. She had known about the life he'd lost, about the love he carried around like an old wound, and somehow she'd made him feel less alone with it.
So when he carried her lifeless body out of that hospital and heard Maggie's screams echoing around him, something inside him broke all over again. Sitting outside afterward, his face buried in his hands, tears streaming freely while the others grieved around him, Daryl found himself thinking of you as he always did in moments of unbearable pain. And despite the pain, despite the losses, the growing certainty that the world was cruel beyond reason, one stubborn, irrational part of Daryl Dixon refused to let go.
They spent more time wandering than he could count, after going though extreme hunger, they were forced to eat dog and found some kind of shelter. That's when they found out they were being chased by a man who allegedly wanted to help, Daryl was already too scarred to trust that easy, but something that came out of that man's mouth broke his brain entirely.
The man was tied to the pillar, explaing his mission and the story of his community, when he mentioned a name. Deanna.
"What's that you said just now?" Daryl grunted, his heart beating rapidly to his ears.
"Uh-um that we're all assigned functions by our leader, she uh-"
"Yeah, I got that part, what's her name?" Daryl cut him impatiently
"Deanna."
"And the place is called?"
"Alexandria."
Daryl's breath broke rhythm, he turned to Rick and said in a whisper "We gotta check this place."
"Why?"
"It's- uh... It's a long story."
"Might be an important one to make it worth putting ourselves on risk for." Rick impatiently added.
"Trust me in this." Daryl pleated. "Please."
Rick reluctantly agreed. He trusted Daryl's instincts, afterall. He turned to the tied down man on the pillar and cut the cord, his pupils staring straight into the stranger's.
♡ "back to you" taglist: @leslierabbit @t0xicsl33p @moss4brainss @saintloverie @firefirefeline @babycheech @dixonangel @gglittergoddess @tuesday469 @lavandine @bbning @clussysposts
You kept your relationship heartfelt over the years. Neither of you had ever mastered the art of indifference. You asked about his life because you genuinely wanted to know how he was sleeping, whether his shoulder was still bothering him, whether he had finally fixed that leak in the trailer roof he'd been complaining about since Benjamin turned six. And Daryl, for all his awkwardness, never forgot to ask how your job were going, whether you'd finally gotten that promotion, whether your mother was still driving you crazy in that special way only mothers could. There was never any bitterness between the two of you, only the quiet ache of two people who had loved each other too deeply to allow resentment to survive the separation.
People often remarked on how unusually well you coparanted. Your friends admired it. Therapists applauded it. Other divorced couples in your circle envied it. Nobody ever seemed to realize that kindness had never been difficult for the two of you. The difficult part had been learning how to love each other less, and neither of you had ever really succeeded.
Daryl never missed a birthday, never missed Christmas, never missed a single baseball game, a school recital or one of Ben's painfully awkward middle-school performances where half the audience spent more time filming than watching. Somewhere between fishing trips and teaching him how to ride a bike, between helping with science projects and attending parent-teacher conferences, Daryl had become the sort of father men twice as wealthy and twice as educated often failed to be. And you had watched all of it with a pride you never quite knew what to do with.
Benjamin inherited his father's eyes and your smile. At thirteen, he had already grown tall enough to tower over you when he remembered to stand straight, though he slouched with the same unconscious stubbornness Daryl had carried. Watching them together sometimes felt surreal. There were moments when your son laughed exactly like his father, or furrowed his brow in concentration while tying a fishing hook, and you would have to blink away tears because life was cruel enough to separate you from the man you loved, yet kind enough to leave pieces of him scattered all over your child.
Every year without fail, by the end of Ben's birthday parties, you followed the same ritual. Friends and relatives would leave, Benjamin would disappear upstairs to unwrap and play with his gifts. You and Daryl would find yourselves sitting together with the remains of cake and half-empty beer bottles, catching up in that comfortable, familiar way that had somehow survived everything life had thrown at you.
Eventually, after enough alcohol had softened the sharper edges of caution, one of you would ask.
"So..." you'd say, pretending not to care. "Are you seeing anybody?"
And Daryl would always huff softly into his bottle.
"Nah."
Then, after a beat "You?"
And the answer was always the same. "No." Of course it was no. You tried to date once or twice, so did he. But nobody lasted or stuck, no once fited like he did.
Neither of you commented on the absurdity of it. You simply let the conversation move on, discussing work, Benjamin, or whatever movie he'd recently forced the two of you to sit through. Yet somewhere deep down, you kept expecting things to change. Surely one day Daryl would meet somebody. Surely one day you'd wake up and discover that all those years of loving him had finally faded into something manageable. But it never did.
And perhaps that should have told you something. Benjamin's thirteenth birthday had ended like every birthday before it. His friends had gone home. The house had quieted.
There was something weirdly comforting in the routine of cleaning together. It felt like playing house. Daryl washed while you dried. You moved around each other with the ease of people who had spent years sharing kitchens and bathrooms and sleepless nights. Every now and then your hands brushed, and neither of you seemed particularly eager to pull away.
While you kept drying dishes, Daryl had taken another trash bag to gather the paper plates with excessive frosting left. Somewhere in between that task, he simply stopped to watch you, you felt his gaze burn to your back and turned to look, his eyes softened immediately when he realized you'd caught him, his ears adorably turning pink.
And instead of looking away, he smiled. In that moment, you didn't see your ex boyfriend, or your son's father. It was the smile of the twenty-year-old mechanic who had stopped his motorcycle beside your broken-down car because you'd looked miserable.
And, perhaps because alcohol had loosened the restraints adulthood had taught you so well, perhaps because Benjamin was fully grown, your parents were old and life suddenly felt too short, or perhaps simply because you were tired of pretending, you found yourself smiling back in a way you hadn't in years.
Neither if you intended it, it was the lie you'd told yourselves. But none of you mattered when the distance between you grew shorter every second that passed, until you were getting pinned to the balcony with Daryl's tongue slipping into your mouth, getting betrayed by your own desire when a small moan escaped your mouth.
"You wanna go upstairs?" you whispered to his ear, you were already a mess. Daryl only stared at you, quietly asking "Are you sure?" before he captured you wanted this as much as he did, then nodded.
He carried you bride-style up to your room, making you giggle childishly, feeling like the honeymoon you'd never had. He locked the door of your room, crawling on top of you, and stopped for a second to glare at your face before he captured your lips again.
Daryl cherished your body in a way he never had before, he was always the type to worship you during sex, but this one was nothing like the times before, it was teeming with pulled back desires, years of yearning and the fact that he was knowing your figure all over again, after nearly a decade only dreaming to touch you like that again.
His hands were rougher now, calloused by the hard nature of his job, but every touch seemed stupidly gentle at the same time. You let him do whatever his mind came up with, sharing the moment until the black sky outside started to fade into different shades of orange. When you finally woke up, unsure of when you went to sleep, Daryl was still there.
You got up carefully not to wake him, and made breakfast for the three of you. When Benjamin came down the stairs, you and Daryl were having breakfast together, giggling like teenagers, and he avoided asking questions as to why was his dad there so early – and wearing the same clothes he had yesterday – contented by his presence, he simply stated a "Good morning, dad!" and you smiled at the scene, feeling a piercing pain to your heart you didn't allow yourself to have that for so long.
"Ben, do you have your bags packed, honey?" you asked as he stuffed a spoonfull on pancake to his mouth, and the boy only nodded.
"Bags?" Daryl asked confused
"Yeah, we're enjoying his summer vacation to take a little trip to my aunt Deanna's place in Virginia, Benjamin had never met this part of my family yet, my folks thought it was about time."
"Mhm" he nodded, trying to hide the disappointment, part from being set aside on a family plan, part from the fact you still listened to your parents.
"I'm sorry, I was going to tell you yesterday but- we uh- got distracted." you blush a little, remembering what exactly got you distracted from conversation. "You're welcome to come with us, though. If you want" you added. "My parents aren't going."
"I'm stuffed at the shop." he seemed genuinely upset.
"I figured. We won't be long tho, maybe just a week or two and then we'll be right back."
You sent Ben to pick up his bags as you packed your own. On his way out, Daryl stole a kiss from you, leaving you flushed as he whispered something along the lines of "I'll be waiting for you."
And that was the last conversation you remembered having with Daryl. When the world caved and you couldn't leave Alexandria safely with a 13 year old to care for, you settled right there for the next two years, raising your child and mourning once again what your relationship could've been, but this time fearing you would actually never have a chance in love again.
You had a bitter feeling in your gut that what you've had was it. That when you finally had to balls to do what you wanted, to give you and Daryl the chance you deserved, the world itself wouldn't let it happen. You felt guilty at times, that your ex crossed your mind far more than your own parents did. But then again, you were grateful for the life they gave you, but no money in the world lived up to how much Daryl made you feel loved, in ways your family never did.
So much that you'd spend your nights awake wondering if he was alive. If he was looking for you. If he assumed you were dead and moved on. You had nightmares constantly, your brain betraying you with gut wrenching scenes of his end, dying while he waited for you to get back.
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You kept your relationship heartfelt over the years. Neither of you had ever mastered the art of indifference. You asked about his life because you genuinely wanted to know how he was sleeping, whether his shoulder was still bothering him, whether he had finally fixed that leak in the trailer roof he'd been complaining about since Benjamin turned six. And Daryl, for all his awkwardness, never forgot to ask how your job were going, whether you'd finally gotten that promotion, whether your mother was still driving you crazy in that special way only mothers could. There was never any bitterness between the two of you, only the quiet ache of two people who had loved each other too deeply to allow resentment to survive the separation.
People often remarked on how unusually well you coparanted. Your friends admired it. Therapists applauded it. Other divorced couples in your circle envied it. Nobody ever seemed to realize that kindness had never been difficult for the two of you. The difficult part had been learning how to love each other less, and neither of you had ever really succeeded.
Daryl never missed a birthday, never missed Christmas, never missed a single baseball game, a school recital or one of Ben's painfully awkward middle-school performances where half the audience spent more time filming than watching. Somewhere between fishing trips and teaching him how to ride a bike, between helping with science projects and attending parent-teacher conferences, Daryl had become the sort of father men twice as wealthy and twice as educated often failed to be. And you had watched all of it with a pride you never quite knew what to do with.
Benjamin inherited his father's eyes and your smile. At thirteen, he had already grown tall enough to tower over you when he remembered to stand straight, though he slouched with the same unconscious stubbornness Daryl had carried. Watching them together sometimes felt surreal. There were moments when your son laughed exactly like his father, or furrowed his brow in concentration while tying a fishing hook, and you would have to blink away tears because life was cruel enough to separate you from the man you loved, yet kind enough to leave pieces of him scattered all over your child.
Every year without fail, by the end of Ben's birthday parties, you followed the same ritual. Friends and relatives would leave, Benjamin would disappear upstairs to unwrap and play with his gifts. You and Daryl would find yourselves sitting together with the remains of cake and half-empty beer bottles, catching up in that comfortable, familiar way that had somehow survived everything life had thrown at you.
Eventually, after enough alcohol had softened the sharper edges of caution, one of you would ask.
"So..." you'd say, pretending not to care. "Are you seeing anybody?"
And Daryl would always huff softly into his bottle.
"Nah."
Then, after a beat "You?"
And the answer was always the same. "No." Of course it was no. You tried to date once or twice, so did he. But nobody lasted or stuck, no once fited like he did.
Neither of you commented on the absurdity of it. You simply let the conversation move on, discussing work, Benjamin, or whatever movie he'd recently forced the two of you to sit through. Yet somewhere deep down, you kept expecting things to change. Surely one day Daryl would meet somebody. Surely one day you'd wake up and discover that all those years of loving him had finally faded into something manageable. But it never did.
And perhaps that should have told you something. Benjamin's thirteenth birthday had ended like every birthday before it. His friends had gone home. The house had quieted.
There was something weirdly comforting in the routine of cleaning together. It felt like playing house. Daryl washed while you dried. You moved around each other with the ease of people who had spent years sharing kitchens and bathrooms and sleepless nights. Every now and then your hands brushed, and neither of you seemed particularly eager to pull away.
While you kept drying dishes, Daryl had taken another trash bag to gather the paper plates with excessive frosting left. Somewhere in between that task, he simply stopped to watch you, you felt his gaze burn to your back and turned to look, his eyes softened immediately when he realized you'd caught him, his ears adorably turning pink.
And instead of looking away, he smiled. In that moment, you didn't see your ex boyfriend, or your son's father. It was the smile of the twenty-year-old mechanic who had stopped his motorcycle beside your broken-down car because you'd looked miserable.
And, perhaps because alcohol had loosened the restraints adulthood had taught you so well, perhaps because Benjamin was fully grown, your parents were old and life suddenly felt too short, or perhaps simply because you were tired of pretending, you found yourself smiling back in a way you hadn't in years.
Neither if you intended it, it was the lie you'd told yourselves. But none of you mattered when the distance between you grew shorter every second that passed, until you were getting pinned to the balcony with Daryl's tongue slipping into your mouth, getting betrayed by your own desire when a small moan escaped your mouth.
"You wanna go upstairs?" you whispered to his ear, you were already a mess. Daryl only stared at you, quietly asking "Are you sure?" before he captured you wanted this as much as he did, then nodded.
He carried you bride-style up to your room, making you giggle childishly, feeling like the honeymoon you'd never had. He locked the door of your room, crawling on top of you, and stopped for a second to glare at your face before he captured your lips again.
Daryl cherished your body in a way he never had before, he was always the type to worship you during sex, but this one was nothing like the times before, it was teeming with pulled back desires, years of yearning and the fact that he was knowing your figure all over again, after nearly a decade only dreaming to touch you like that again.
His hands were rougher now, calloused by the hard nature of his job, but every touch seemed stupidly gentle at the same time. You let him do whatever his mind came up with, sharing the moment until the black sky outside started to fade into different shades of orange. When you finally woke up, unsure of when you went to sleep, Daryl was still there.
You got up carefully not to wake him, and made breakfast for the three of you. When Benjamin came down the stairs, you and Daryl were having breakfast together, giggling like teenagers, and he avoided asking questions as to why was his dad there so early – and wearing the same clothes he had yesterday – contented by his presence, he simply stated a "Good morning, dad!" and you smiled at the scene, feeling a piercing pain to your heart you didn't allow yourself to have that for so long.
"Ben, do you have your bags packed, honey?" you asked as he stuffed a spoonfull on pancake to his mouth, and the boy only nodded.
"Bags?" Daryl asked confused
"Yeah, we're enjoying his summer vacation to take a little trip to my aunt Deanna's place in Virginia, Benjamin had never met this part of my family yet, my folks thought it was about time."
"Mhm" he nodded, trying to hide the disappointment, part from being set aside on a family plan, part from the fact you still listened to your parents.
"I'm sorry, I was going to tell you yesterday but- we uh- got distracted." you blush a little, remembering what exactly got you distracted from conversation. "You're welcome to come with us, though. If you want" you added. "My parents aren't going."
"I'm stuffed at the shop." he seemed genuinely upset.
"I figured. We won't be long tho, maybe just a week or two and then we'll be right back."
You sent Ben to pick up his bags as you packed your own. On his way out, Daryl stole a kiss from you, leaving you flushed as he whispered something along the lines of "I'll be waiting for you."
And that was the last conversation you remembered having with Daryl. When the world caved and you couldn't leave Alexandria safely with a 13 year old to care for, you settled right there for the next two years, raising your child and mourning once again what your relationship could've been, but this time fearing you would actually never have a chance in love again.
You had a bitter feeling in your gut that what you've had was it. That when you finally had to balls to do what you wanted, to give you and Daryl the chance you deserved, the world itself wouldn't let it happen. You felt guilty at times, that your ex crossed your mind far more than your own parents did. But then again, you were grateful for the life they gave you, but no money in the world lived up to how much Daryl made you feel loved, in ways your family never did.
So much that you'd spend your nights awake wondering if he was alive. If he was looking for you. If he assumed you were dead and moved on. You had nightmares constantly, your brain betraying you with gut wrenching scenes of his end, dying while he waited for you to get back.
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Your relationship with the cute mechanic boy had lasted far longer than either of you had expected after that night you picked up your car. What had started with whiskey and nervous smiles had somehow blossomed into something else entirely that made the two of you feel impossibly young. You went out constantly. Daryl took you on long rides on his bike with no destination in mind, simply because you loved wrapping your arms around him and he secretly loved hearing your laughter over the wind.
You loved so many things about eachother it felt like the kind of romance people wrote songs about, full of stolen afternoons, cheap diners, and kisses exchanged beneath gas station lights. Not to mention how you felt constantly on fire, which also let to beyond great sex whenever or wherever Daryl could get his hands on you, you felt alive in a way you never had before, as though all the carefully planned little pieces of your life had finally given way to something messier and infinitely more beautiful.
Which was perhaps why reality felt so cruel when it finally arrived.
You sat on the cold bathroom floor of your childhood home, blankly staring at the two pink lines very clearly displayed in front of you, thinking it had to be a mistake, even if it was the third test that had shown you the same result. Denial. First stage of grief.
You were grieving the rest of your youth, your freedom, so many things all at once. Grieving a future you hadn't even lost yet, but one that suddenly felt doomed by those two bright lines. You felt stupid. Reckless. You fucked up.
The test trembled between your white-knuckled fingers as you stared so hard as if you looked long enough, the lines would disappear. The house around you had gone silent in that eerie upper-class way expensive homes often did, where every room was too large and too polished to feel lived in.
Daryl stood awkwardly in the doorway, dirt on his boots and oil beneath his fingernails from the afternoon working in, looking painfully out of place beneath the warm yellow chandelier light spilling down the hallway. He had been twenty-one years old and already carried himself like someone much older, shoulders permanently braced for impact, hands roughened by work, eyes too guarded for a man that young, but the second you looked up at him with tears threatening to spill over, he hovered over you protectively.
"S’okay,” he murmured, pulling your head gently against his chest, unsure of what else he could possibly say. “We’ll figure it out.”
Despite everything people assumed about Daryl Dixon, despite the cigarettes and the silence and the rough edges that made strangers dismiss him before he even spoke, his first instinct had always been loyalty. “Ain’t runnin’ from it.” And you knew him well enough to know he meant it.
The worst night came over dinner, when you decided you wouldn't scape telling your parents.
The dining room had always felt more like a museum exhibit than a place where families gathered. The crystal glasses sparkled beneath the light, silverware had been arranged with military precision, and your mother had insisted on using the good china as though appearances could somehow soften the conversation you knew was coming.
Daryl showed up in a white button-down shirt you'd bought him. He looked uncomfortable from the moment he stepped through the door, tugging absentmindedly at the sleeves and clearly wishing he could disappear into the floorboards. You had squeezed his hand beneath the table when he sat beside you, and though he hadn't said anything, his fingers intertwined yours immediately.
Your mother barely touched her food.
Your father, on the other hand, seemed to have rehearsed every word.
"So," he began, carefully setting down his wine glass, "have the two of you given any thought to what exactly comes next?"
You frowned. "Dad–"
"No, sweetheart, I'm asking a reasonable question. Your finals have deadlines. Your entire life had a clean trajectory."
"Our lives still do." you replied quietly. Your father sighed heavily.
"You were supposed to travel. You were supposed to get internships abroad. You had opportunities most people would kill for." His eyes drifted toward Daryl. "And now?"
The room went silent.
Daryl lowered his gaze to his untouched plate.
"Harold..." your mother whispered softly.
"No, Mary, she deserves honesty." He turned back to you. "Do you know how much money we spent making sure you had every advantage? Private schools. Piano lessons. Ballet. Tutors. Summer programs. Years of preparation."
You sat quietly, you knew that.
"And for what?" he asked quietly, disappointment proving far crueler than anger. "To throw it all away?"
Your mother quietly dabbed at her eyes with a napkin.
"Please don't do this."
"I am doing this because I love her." His gaze moved toward Daryl again.
"We tried to warn you about your little forbidden adventure, but life had it's own way of sobering people up."
You felt Daryl's hand tense around yours.
"Sir–"
You father interrupted him sharply. "Tell me honestly, son. What exactly are you offering her? Because I fail to see how changing oil and repairing engines compensates for everything my daughter's giving up."
"Dad!" you snapped.
But Daryl simply sat there. He sat through every word with his jaw clenched so tightly you thought his teeth might crack from the pressure. He never defended himself, raised his voice or begged. He simply endured it because you were pregnant, exhausted, and scared, and somewhere in that silence he had decided your comfort mattered more than his pride.
"Darling," he continued, softening his voice. "You'll have all our support raising this child. But–" he glanced at your boyfriend again, sharpening his tone once more. "don't you think, for a second that I'm being conniving of this." he pointed between you.
The months that followed were ugly in ways neither of you had expected. Not because of the baby, but because the world around you made it painfully clear how little faith it had in the possibility of people like you surviving together.
Benjamin was born during a thunderstorm after nine painful hours of labor. It felt like the weather itself mimicked your screams with thunder shaking the hospital windows. Even against your parents’ wishes, Daryl stayed beside you the entire time.
The gentle nurse who spoke to you afterward admitted she had never seen a man more terrified in her life than when he heard you screaming in pain.
Once the baby was finally placed against your chest, Daryl felt his entire world change. He muttered something under his breath while staring down at the tiny screaming infant wrapped in blue blankets, looking stunned in the purest sense of the word. Your son had his eyes.
For a while, the two of you tried. God, you tried harder than most people ever knew. Daryl picked up extra work wherever he could find it, often coming home with grease on his hands and exhaustion dragging beneath his eyes so heavily it aged him years overnight, while you balanced college classes with motherhood and constant battles against your parents’ disappointment.
You were exhausted all the time, surviving on burnt coffee, interrupted sleep, and a stubborn love that refused to die even when life gave it every reason to.
But eventually the pressure became unbearable.
Your parents escalated from disapproval to ultimatums, threatening to cut you off completely — tuition, housing, every safety net you and your son had left.
You and Daryl had your final fight the night your son turned three, screaming at each other in the apartment kitchen while the little boy slept in the next room. You knew in that moment that you would remember the look in his eyes for the rest of your life, the exact moment Daryl realized you were drowning beneath expectations you could no longer carry.
“Ya think I wanna be the reason your whole damn life falls apart?” he snapped, voice raw with frustration and heartbreak tangled together. “Think I don’t see what this is doin’ to you?”
“It’s not you." you cried back immediately.
“But I’m in your way."
“Daryl.”
“Yer family’ll never see me as one of ‘em, and they already said they’ll cut you out if ya stay with me.” He cupped your cheeks, taking a deep breath before continuing, calmer now. “I don’t want Ben to have a life like mine.”
"He won't, he has you. You're nothing like your dad."
"He deserves better than me."
The sentence shattered something inside you.
"No." you whispered fiercely. "Daryl, don't you dare." He only smiled sadly.
"He got opportunities here." the last words barely rose above a whisper.
"He got schools. College. A house. Stability."
"And you!"
His face crumpled.
"And I love him enough not to gamble with his future."
You let out the most heartbreaking sob he had ever heard. Because loving someone wasn't always enough to survive the machinery of the world crushing down around you.
And because, as you looked at the man you loved with all your heart, you realized with unbearable clarity that neither of you was trying to leave. You were trying to save each other.
Daryl pressed his forehead against yours and finally let the tears fall. "I love you." he whispered shakily. "So much."
You broke completely.
"I know."
"No." his voice cracked. "Need ya to know that. Need ya to know I ain't stoppin' because I don't love you."
"I know."
"Ain't ever gonna stop."
You separated officially a month later. There were nonstop tears, shaking hands, and promises to stay kind to each other for your son’s sake, and somehow, against all odds, you managed it. You became good coparents. Great ones, even. Better friends than lovers by the end of it, as you liked to lie to yourself.
Daryl stayed involved no matter how far life dragged him, showing up for birthdays with awkwardly wrapped gifts and scraped knuckles, teaching your son how to fish before he learned long division, how to track deer prints through mud, how to throw a punch without breaking his wrist, how to survive disappointment quietly.
Benjamin adored his dad with that fierce, uncomplicated love children reserved for fathers who made them feel safe, and Daryl loved the boy with a devotion so profound it terrified him. The same one he loved you, and forced himself to shove back for a greater good.
Can’t help but read the first two paragraphs over and over… so beautiful it just speaks to me 😭 I’d love to experience dating like that where it just feels like you’re the only 2 people in the world 🥲🤍
c/w: daryl dixon (season 5); mentions of walkers and mild peril; past character death referenced (Merle); emotional vulnerability, tears, and soft angst with a comforting ending.
Daryl had never understood that whole flower thing.
To him, weeds were weeds. They grew, they died, they covered the ground or told you if the soil was any good. That was it. He knew a few by survival instinct—which ones bore fruit, which were poisonous, and which could handle the winter. But never, in all the years of his life, before or after the dead started walking, had he stopped to think about what a flower could mean.
You changed that. Not all at once, but slowly, the way daylight changes, so gradually he didn't even notice when he started paying attention.
Because you had this thing. This way about you. Whenever you passed through some trail and spotted a flower—any flower, even the scrappiest one, with wilted petals and a crooked stem—your eyes would transform. They'd catch a different kind of light, a brightness Daryl didn't see in anyone else in that gray, broken world. You'd stop, crouch down, and for a few seconds you'd forget the danger, forget the walkers, and forget the hunger and the fear. You'd just stay there, admiring it, like that fragile little thing was the most important thing of all.
And he'd watch. Not the flower. But you.
At first, he thought it was silly. Then he started finding it curious. Then, without realizing it, he began waiting for those moments. He'd end up looking for flowers along the path just to see if you'd notice. And when you did, when your eyes lit up and your mouth curved into that smile, his chest would warm. It was a weird thing, something he couldn't name. A good kind of ache. A tightness that hurt and comforted at the same time. He didn't understand it. But he didn't want it to stop either.
He remembered one afternoon especially. A while back now. They were camped by a creek, the whole group exhausted after days of walking. You'd found wild tulips growing between the rocks, near the water. You knelt in the damp earth and stayed there, your hands hovering over the petals without touching them, afraid of hurting them. You started talking. You said tulips stood for true love and renewal because they were the first to push through the soil after winter. You explained that each color meant something different—red for passion, yellow for joy, and white for forgiveness.
Daryl was leaning against a tree, arms crossed, pretending he was just resting. But he remembered every word. The way your hands drew shapes in the air. The laugh you let out when you realized you were talking too much. Your eyes shone so bright it almost hurt to look. He stored it all away in some quiet place inside himself, a place he didn't even know existed before you showed up.
Time passed. Things changed. Alexandria came along, bringing walls and some safety. But what didn't change was what Daryl felt. It only got bigger and deeper. He still didn't name it. Maybe he didn't know how. Maybe he was afraid to.
Until one day the idea came. Small, almost silly. He was on a supply run, passed through a clearing full of wildflowers, and thought of you. Imagined your eyes lighting up. Imagined your smile. His chest warmed. And the idea took root.
He was going to find you a field of flowers.
It wasn't easy. He spent weeks on it. On his runs, he started straying from the usual routes, paying attention to something he'd never paid attention to before. He learned to read the land with different eyes—not just for danger, but for beauty. Once he found a small field, but it was full of purple flowers he didn't recognize and didn't know if they were any good. Another time he found a patch of daisies near a road, but it was too close to the walls, too easy. You deserved something special. Something he'd really searched for.
He almost died twice. The first time, a herd passed too close, and he had to hide in a sewer pipe for hours, the smell of death soaking into his clothes. The second time, a walker came out of nowhere while he was checking a trail and nearly sank its teeth into his arm. Daryl handled it with his knife, quick, but his heart raced in a way it didn't race anymore.
One night he slept out in the open. He'd gone too far, the sun dropped, and he had to wedge himself into the branch of a tree, his back aching against the bark, his crossbow in his lap. He didn't close his eyes. He listened to the groans below, but his mind was on you. What you'd say if you saw that field. Your eyes. Your smile.
And then, on an afternoon of fierce sun, he found it.
The field opened up before him like something alive. Wild daisies as far as he could see. The wind made waves, and the yellow swayed like the ground was breathing. The smell was sweet and fresh, a light perfume. Daryl had never smelled before. He stopped. His crossbow lowered. His eyes swept over the vastness of color, and for a long time he just stood there, in silence. He thought of you. Of your voice talking about tulips. Of the light in your eyes.
His chest ached. But it was a good ache.
He walked slowly through the field, the flowers brushing against his boots. He crouched down. His calloused hands, used to the crossbow, the knife, and hard and rough things, touched the stems with a care no one would ever believe he had. He picked them one by one. He chose the prettiest ones, the ones with the most open petals, the deepest yellows. Some were so pale they looked almost white at the center; others were golden and vibrant, like they'd swallowed the sun.
He gathered them into a bunch. He tied the stems with a piece of old twine he carried in his pocket. His hands worked slowly, thick fingers making a clumsy but firm knot. When he finished, he held up the bouquet and looked at it. It was crooked. The flowers weren't perfectly lined up. But they were alive. They were beautiful. He hoped you'd think so too.
And then came the problem. How to carry them back?
The backpack was impossible—the petals would get crushed, the stems would snap, and he'd arrive in Alexandria with a handful of yellow dust. Carrying them in his hands was the only option. But the image flashed through his mind like a mocking ghost: Daryl Dixon, the tracker, the lone wolf, the guy everyone looked at with a mix of respect and caution, crossing miles of deserted road with a bouquet of fluffy flowers in his hand. He almost snorted out loud.
But then he thought of you. Of the look on your face when you saw them. Of the brightness that would spark in your eyes. And the pride, that old thing he carried like a second skin, shrank. Became small. Ridiculous.
He held the flowers in his left hand and started walking.
The way back was long. The sun burned the back of his neck, and sweat ran down his spine, sticking his shirt to his body. He kept his right hand free, ready for the crossbow, his eyes sharp for any movement. But his left hand stayed steady on the stems, his fingers forming a protective shell around the twine.
Every now and then, he looked at the daisies. He watched a petal come loose and float to the ground. He stopped. Looked at it lying in the dusty earth. He pressed his lips together. Adjusted the flowers with even more care and kept going.
Another petal fell. Then another. He felt a tightness in his chest, a foolish, childish fear that the flowers would wilt before he got there. That you'd never see how beautiful they were. That all that effort would be for nothing.
If Merle were still alive, he'd laugh. He'd laugh until his soul left his body. He'd say Daryl had gone soft, a sap, a lovestruck idiot. But Merle wasn't there anymore. You were. And that was all he thought about as the hours passed and the road stretched on and the sun sank slowly toward the horizon.
When the walls of Alexandria appeared, Daryl's heart kicked. It wasn't the fear of walkers. It wasn't the adrenaline of the hunt. It was something else — a new kind of anxiety, a nervousness that rose up his throat and left his mouth dry and his hands sweating. He looked at the flowers one last time before going in. Some petals were crumpled. One daisy had lost more than half its yellow. But the bouquet was still beautiful. He wanted so badly for you to like it. He wanted so badly to see that brightness.
The gate groaned, and he stepped inside.
Alexandria was quiet, that warm space between afternoon and evening. A few people were walking down the main street—Eugene waved from a distance, and Rosita passed by carrying a box and said something he didn't register. Daryl didn't answer anyone. His eyes were already sweeping the place, searching.
His left hand squeezed the stems harder than he meant to. Then he saw you.
You were sitting on the steps of the house. The house you shared—well, the house you split, each with your own room, each with your own space, but the same door, the same porch, and the same comfortable silence at the end of the day. You had a book in your lap, but you weren't reading. Your gaze was far away, lost in the clouds drifting slowly across the orange sky of dusk.
The light hit your face in a way that softened everything. Your hair was half loose, messed up by the afternoon wind. You were nibbling your lower lip, distracted, thinking about something he didn't know—maybe nothing. Maybe everything.
Daryl stopped. A few yards away, he stopped and just looked.
There was a peace in your expression that he couldn't find anywhere else. People were always tense, always armed, always on alert. But you, in that moment, were at peace. It was a simple, quiet beauty. And it hurt. It hurt in his chest in a good way, a way he'd never felt before you.
He started walking again. His boots made noise against the old asphalt. The sound brought you back. You blinked, came out of your daydream, and your face turned toward him.
First, your eyes swept over his body. It was a gesture you always made, automatic, instinctive. You checked his shoulders, arms, torso, and legs. He looked for blood, tears in his clothes, and any sign that something had gone wrong. Your eyes were quick and efficient. And when you saw he was whole—dirty, tired, but whole—your shoulders relaxed. An almost invisible sigh escaped your lips.
But then your eyes dropped and stopped on the flowers.
Daryl saw the moment. He saw every detail. It was like watching a door open in slow motion. First, your eyebrows lifted, just a little, a millimeter, barely anything. Then your lips parted. Your hands, which had been resting absently on the book, went still. Frozen. The world seemed suspended for a second—the wind stopped, the distant sounds of Alexandria vanished, and everything faded.
"Daryl…?" Your voice came out as a thread. It wasn't really a question. It was more like you were testing reality, checking if your eyes were lying. His name left your lips, carrying an emotion; you didn't even try to hide the surprise, disbelief, or something deeper that vibrated between the lines.
He didn't answer.
His throat was dry. Words always fled from him in the important moments. He just stopped in front of you. Close. So close he could see the tiny golden flecks in your eyes, things he'd never noticed before, or maybe he'd always noticed and just never admitted it. His hair hung over his face, dirty from the road, but he didn't push it away. Instead, he raised his left hand and held the bouquet out to you.
His eyes, always so hard, always so closed off, were different now. Open. Vulnerable. There was nervousness there, an almost childish fear of rejection. There was an expectation. A flicker of hope. But there was also a tenderness he'd never let anyone see. Because no one had ever gotten close enough. Only you.
He didn't know how to make speeches. He didn't know how to declare anything. He didn't know how to turn what he felt into pretty words. But he could do this. He could give you the flowers and wait. Wait for you to understand. For you to read between the lines of the gesture, everything he couldn't say.
Three seconds passed. Maybe four. An eternity. And then your hands moved.
It was slow. So slow. Like you were afraid to touch the flowers and find out they weren't really there—that it was a dream, something that would dissolve at the slightest contact. Your hands rose, hesitant, and settled over his.
The touch was electric.
Your fingers met his over the green stems—yours, soft, with short nails and warm skin; his, rough, calloused, covered in small white scars. They were completely different hands, but they fit together right there as if that was the only place they were ever meant to be. Daryl felt a jolt run up his arm, a warmth that spread fast and settled right in the middle of his chest.
You took the bouquet with both hands and pulled it close to your body. You pressed it against your chest like you were holding something precious, something that could break. Something sacred.
Your eyes dropped to the flowers. And what he saw on your face made the air disappear.
You ran the tips of your fingers over the petals. One by one. With a delicacy that was almost a prayer. You felt the texture, the remaining freshness, the small imperfections. Some daisies were bruised from the journey—crumpled petals, one stem slightly bent—but you didn't seem to mind. Your eyes traveled over the different shades of yellow with a quiet reverence, and your mouth curved slowly, very slowly, into a small, incredulous smile.
And then you lifted your eyes to him. And they were full of water.
It wasn't sadness. It was an emotion so big it overflowed. Your eyes shone, and the tears gathered in the corners, trembling, not yet falling. Your lashes grew heavy. You opened your mouth to speak, but your voice came out choked, almost a whisper.
"You brought me flowers." It wasn't a question. It was a realization. But there was so much wonder in your voice, so much gratitude, so many unspoken things, that it sounded like you didn't quite believe it yourself. Like no one had ever done a gesture like this for you. Like it was the first time.
Daryl looked away. He always did when something moved him too much. He scratched the back of his neck—that old tic, that shield—and looked at the ground. At his own boots. At the fallen petal between you. At anything but your tear-filled eyes.
"They're daisies." His voice came out low, almost a mutter. "Don't know what they mean. You're the one who knows that stuff."
You let out a wet laugh. It was a beautiful sound, half broken, half sweet. You lifted one hand to your face and wiped away a tear that had escaped. Then you looked at the flowers again, and the smile grew.
"Daisies mean purity, loyalty, and patient love." Your voice still trembled, but now it had a different warmth. A sweetness. "They're simple flowers, but they say a lot. Whoever gives daisies is saying they'll stay."
c/w: daryl dixon (season 5); mentions of walkers and mild peril; past character death referenced (Merle); emotional vulnerability, tears, and soft angst with a comforting ending.
Daryl had never understood that whole flower thing.
To him, weeds were weeds. They grew, they died, they covered the ground or told you if the soil was any good. That was it. He knew a few by survival instinct—which ones bore fruit, which were poisonous, and which could handle the winter. But never, in all the years of his life, before or after the dead started walking, had he stopped to think about what a flower could mean.
You changed that. Not all at once, but slowly, the way daylight changes, so gradually he didn't even notice when he started paying attention.
Because you had this thing. This way about you. Whenever you passed through some trail and spotted a flower—any flower, even the scrappiest one, with wilted petals and a crooked stem—your eyes would transform. They'd catch a different kind of light, a brightness Daryl didn't see in anyone else in that gray, broken world. You'd stop, crouch down, and for a few seconds you'd forget the danger, forget the walkers, and forget the hunger and the fear. You'd just stay there, admiring it, like that fragile little thing was the most important thing of all.
And he'd watch. Not the flower. But you.
At first, he thought it was silly. Then he started finding it curious. Then, without realizing it, he began waiting for those moments. He'd end up looking for flowers along the path just to see if you'd notice. And when you did, when your eyes lit up and your mouth curved into that smile, his chest would warm. It was a weird thing, something he couldn't name. A good kind of ache. A tightness that hurt and comforted at the same time. He didn't understand it. But he didn't want it to stop either.
He remembered one afternoon especially. A while back now. They were camped by a creek, the whole group exhausted after days of walking. You'd found wild tulips growing between the rocks, near the water. You knelt in the damp earth and stayed there, your hands hovering over the petals without touching them, afraid of hurting them. You started talking. You said tulips stood for true love and renewal because they were the first to push through the soil after winter. You explained that each color meant something different—red for passion, yellow for joy, and white for forgiveness.
Daryl was leaning against a tree, arms crossed, pretending he was just resting. But he remembered every word. The way your hands drew shapes in the air. The laugh you let out when you realized you were talking too much. Your eyes shone so bright it almost hurt to look. He stored it all away in some quiet place inside himself, a place he didn't even know existed before you showed up.
Time passed. Things changed. Alexandria came along, bringing walls and some safety. But what didn't change was what Daryl felt. It only got bigger and deeper. He still didn't name it. Maybe he didn't know how. Maybe he was afraid to.
Until one day the idea came. Small, almost silly. He was on a supply run, passed through a clearing full of wildflowers, and thought of you. Imagined your eyes lighting up. Imagined your smile. His chest warmed. And the idea took root.
He was going to find you a field of flowers.
It wasn't easy. He spent weeks on it. On his runs, he started straying from the usual routes, paying attention to something he'd never paid attention to before. He learned to read the land with different eyes—not just for danger, but for beauty. Once he found a small field, but it was full of purple flowers he didn't recognize and didn't know if they were any good. Another time he found a patch of daisies near a road, but it was too close to the walls, too easy. You deserved something special. Something he'd really searched for.
He almost died twice. The first time, a herd passed too close, and he had to hide in a sewer pipe for hours, the smell of death soaking into his clothes. The second time, a walker came out of nowhere while he was checking a trail and nearly sank its teeth into his arm. Daryl handled it with his knife, quick, but his heart raced in a way it didn't race anymore.
One night he slept out in the open. He'd gone too far, the sun dropped, and he had to wedge himself into the branch of a tree, his back aching against the bark, his crossbow in his lap. He didn't close his eyes. He listened to the groans below, but his mind was on you. What you'd say if you saw that field. Your eyes. Your smile.
And then, on an afternoon of fierce sun, he found it.
The field opened up before him like something alive. Wild daisies as far as he could see. The wind made waves, and the yellow swayed like the ground was breathing. The smell was sweet and fresh, a light perfume. Daryl had never smelled before. He stopped. His crossbow lowered. His eyes swept over the vastness of color, and for a long time he just stood there, in silence. He thought of you. Of your voice talking about tulips. Of the light in your eyes.
His chest ached. But it was a good ache.
He walked slowly through the field, the flowers brushing against his boots. He crouched down. His calloused hands, used to the crossbow, the knife, and hard and rough things, touched the stems with a care no one would ever believe he had. He picked them one by one. He chose the prettiest ones, the ones with the most open petals, the deepest yellows. Some were so pale they looked almost white at the center; others were golden and vibrant, like they'd swallowed the sun.
He gathered them into a bunch. He tied the stems with a piece of old twine he carried in his pocket. His hands worked slowly, thick fingers making a clumsy but firm knot. When he finished, he held up the bouquet and looked at it. It was crooked. The flowers weren't perfectly lined up. But they were alive. They were beautiful. He hoped you'd think so too.
And then came the problem. How to carry them back?
The backpack was impossible—the petals would get crushed, the stems would snap, and he'd arrive in Alexandria with a handful of yellow dust. Carrying them in his hands was the only option. But the image flashed through his mind like a mocking ghost: Daryl Dixon, the tracker, the lone wolf, the guy everyone looked at with a mix of respect and caution, crossing miles of deserted road with a bouquet of fluffy flowers in his hand. He almost snorted out loud.
But then he thought of you. Of the look on your face when you saw them. Of the brightness that would spark in your eyes. And the pride, that old thing he carried like a second skin, shrank. Became small. Ridiculous.
He held the flowers in his left hand and started walking.
The way back was long. The sun burned the back of his neck, and sweat ran down his spine, sticking his shirt to his body. He kept his right hand free, ready for the crossbow, his eyes sharp for any movement. But his left hand stayed steady on the stems, his fingers forming a protective shell around the twine.
Every now and then, he looked at the daisies. He watched a petal come loose and float to the ground. He stopped. Looked at it lying in the dusty earth. He pressed his lips together. Adjusted the flowers with even more care and kept going.
Another petal fell. Then another. He felt a tightness in his chest, a foolish, childish fear that the flowers would wilt before he got there. That you'd never see how beautiful they were. That all that effort would be for nothing.
If Merle were still alive, he'd laugh. He'd laugh until his soul left his body. He'd say Daryl had gone soft, a sap, a lovestruck idiot. But Merle wasn't there anymore. You were. And that was all he thought about as the hours passed and the road stretched on and the sun sank slowly toward the horizon.
When the walls of Alexandria appeared, Daryl's heart kicked. It wasn't the fear of walkers. It wasn't the adrenaline of the hunt. It was something else — a new kind of anxiety, a nervousness that rose up his throat and left his mouth dry and his hands sweating. He looked at the flowers one last time before going in. Some petals were crumpled. One daisy had lost more than half its yellow. But the bouquet was still beautiful. He wanted so badly for you to like it. He wanted so badly to see that brightness.
The gate groaned, and he stepped inside.
Alexandria was quiet, that warm space between afternoon and evening. A few people were walking down the main street—Eugene waved from a distance, and Rosita passed by carrying a box and said something he didn't register. Daryl didn't answer anyone. His eyes were already sweeping the place, searching.
His left hand squeezed the stems harder than he meant to. Then he saw you.
You were sitting on the steps of the house. The house you shared—well, the house you split, each with your own room, each with your own space, but the same door, the same porch, and the same comfortable silence at the end of the day. You had a book in your lap, but you weren't reading. Your gaze was far away, lost in the clouds drifting slowly across the orange sky of dusk.
The light hit your face in a way that softened everything. Your hair was half loose, messed up by the afternoon wind. You were nibbling your lower lip, distracted, thinking about something he didn't know—maybe nothing. Maybe everything.
Daryl stopped. A few yards away, he stopped and just looked.
There was a peace in your expression that he couldn't find anywhere else. People were always tense, always armed, always on alert. But you, in that moment, were at peace. It was a simple, quiet beauty. And it hurt. It hurt in his chest in a good way, a way he'd never felt before you.
He started walking again. His boots made noise against the old asphalt. The sound brought you back. You blinked, came out of your daydream, and your face turned toward him.
First, your eyes swept over his body. It was a gesture you always made, automatic, instinctive. You checked his shoulders, arms, torso, and legs. He looked for blood, tears in his clothes, and any sign that something had gone wrong. Your eyes were quick and efficient. And when you saw he was whole—dirty, tired, but whole—your shoulders relaxed. An almost invisible sigh escaped your lips.
But then your eyes dropped and stopped on the flowers.
Daryl saw the moment. He saw every detail. It was like watching a door open in slow motion. First, your eyebrows lifted, just a little, a millimeter, barely anything. Then your lips parted. Your hands, which had been resting absently on the book, went still. Frozen. The world seemed suspended for a second—the wind stopped, the distant sounds of Alexandria vanished, and everything faded.
"Daryl…?" Your voice came out as a thread. It wasn't really a question. It was more like you were testing reality, checking if your eyes were lying. His name left your lips, carrying an emotion; you didn't even try to hide the surprise, disbelief, or something deeper that vibrated between the lines.
He didn't answer.
His throat was dry. Words always fled from him in the important moments. He just stopped in front of you. Close. So close he could see the tiny golden flecks in your eyes, things he'd never noticed before, or maybe he'd always noticed and just never admitted it. His hair hung over his face, dirty from the road, but he didn't push it away. Instead, he raised his left hand and held the bouquet out to you.
His eyes, always so hard, always so closed off, were different now. Open. Vulnerable. There was nervousness there, an almost childish fear of rejection. There was an expectation. A flicker of hope. But there was also a tenderness he'd never let anyone see. Because no one had ever gotten close enough. Only you.
He didn't know how to make speeches. He didn't know how to declare anything. He didn't know how to turn what he felt into pretty words. But he could do this. He could give you the flowers and wait. Wait for you to understand. For you to read between the lines of the gesture, everything he couldn't say.
Three seconds passed. Maybe four. An eternity. And then your hands moved.
It was slow. So slow. Like you were afraid to touch the flowers and find out they weren't really there—that it was a dream, something that would dissolve at the slightest contact. Your hands rose, hesitant, and settled over his.
The touch was electric.
Your fingers met his over the green stems—yours, soft, with short nails and warm skin; his, rough, calloused, covered in small white scars. They were completely different hands, but they fit together right there as if that was the only place they were ever meant to be. Daryl felt a jolt run up his arm, a warmth that spread fast and settled right in the middle of his chest.
You took the bouquet with both hands and pulled it close to your body. You pressed it against your chest like you were holding something precious, something that could break. Something sacred.
Your eyes dropped to the flowers. And what he saw on your face made the air disappear.
You ran the tips of your fingers over the petals. One by one. With a delicacy that was almost a prayer. You felt the texture, the remaining freshness, the small imperfections. Some daisies were bruised from the journey—crumpled petals, one stem slightly bent—but you didn't seem to mind. Your eyes traveled over the different shades of yellow with a quiet reverence, and your mouth curved slowly, very slowly, into a small, incredulous smile.
And then you lifted your eyes to him. And they were full of water.
It wasn't sadness. It was an emotion so big it overflowed. Your eyes shone, and the tears gathered in the corners, trembling, not yet falling. Your lashes grew heavy. You opened your mouth to speak, but your voice came out choked, almost a whisper.
"You brought me flowers." It wasn't a question. It was a realization. But there was so much wonder in your voice, so much gratitude, so many unspoken things, that it sounded like you didn't quite believe it yourself. Like no one had ever done a gesture like this for you. Like it was the first time.
Daryl looked away. He always did when something moved him too much. He scratched the back of his neck—that old tic, that shield—and looked at the ground. At his own boots. At the fallen petal between you. At anything but your tear-filled eyes.
"They're daisies." His voice came out low, almost a mutter. "Don't know what they mean. You're the one who knows that stuff."
You let out a wet laugh. It was a beautiful sound, half broken, half sweet. You lifted one hand to your face and wiped away a tear that had escaped. Then you looked at the flowers again, and the smile grew.
"Daisies mean purity, loyalty, and patient love." Your voice still trembled, but now it had a different warmth. A sweetness. "They're simple flowers, but they say a lot. Whoever gives daisies is saying they'll stay."
♡ "back to you" taglist: @leslierabbit @t0xicsl33p @moss4brainss @saintloverie @firefirefeline @babycheech @dixonangel @gglittergoddess @tuesday469 @lavandine @bbning @clussysposts
Your relationship with the cute mechanic boy had lasted far longer than either of you had expected after that night you picked up your car. What had started with whiskey and nervous smiles had somehow blossomed into something else entirely that made the two of you feel impossibly young. You went out constantly. Daryl took you on long rides on his bike with no destination in mind, simply because you loved wrapping your arms around him and he secretly loved hearing your laughter over the wind.
You loved so many things about eachother it felt like the kind of romance people wrote songs about, full of stolen afternoons, cheap diners, and kisses exchanged beneath gas station lights. Not to mention how you felt constantly on fire, which also let to beyond great sex whenever or wherever Daryl could get his hands on you, you felt alive in a way you never had before, as though all the carefully planned little pieces of your life had finally given way to something messier and infinitely more beautiful.
Which was perhaps why reality felt so cruel when it finally arrived.
You sat on the cold bathroom floor of your childhood home, blankly staring at the two pink lines very clearly displayed in front of you, thinking it had to be a mistake, even if it was the third test that had shown you the same result. Denial. First stage of grief.
You were grieving the rest of your youth, your freedom, so many things all at once. Grieving a future you hadn't even lost yet, but one that suddenly felt doomed by those two bright lines. You felt stupid. Reckless. You fucked up.
The test trembled between your white-knuckled fingers as you stared so hard as if you looked long enough, the lines would disappear. The house around you had gone silent in that eerie upper-class way expensive homes often did, where every room was too large and too polished to feel lived in.
Daryl stood awkwardly in the doorway, dirt on his boots and oil beneath his fingernails from the afternoon working in, looking painfully out of place beneath the warm yellow chandelier light spilling down the hallway. He had been twenty-one years old and already carried himself like someone much older, shoulders permanently braced for impact, hands roughened by work, eyes too guarded for a man that young, but the second you looked up at him with tears threatening to spill over, he hovered over you protectively.
"S’okay,” he murmured, pulling your head gently against his chest, unsure of what else he could possibly say. “We’ll figure it out.”
Despite everything people assumed about Daryl Dixon, despite the cigarettes and the silence and the rough edges that made strangers dismiss him before he even spoke, his first instinct had always been loyalty. “Ain’t runnin’ from it.” And you knew him well enough to know he meant it.
The worst night came over dinner, when you decided you wouldn't scape telling your parents.
The dining room had always felt more like a museum exhibit than a place where families gathered. The crystal glasses sparkled beneath the light, silverware had been arranged with military precision, and your mother had insisted on using the good china as though appearances could somehow soften the conversation you knew was coming.
Daryl showed up in a white button-down shirt you'd bought him. He looked uncomfortable from the moment he stepped through the door, tugging absentmindedly at the sleeves and clearly wishing he could disappear into the floorboards. You had squeezed his hand beneath the table when he sat beside you, and though he hadn't said anything, his fingers intertwined yours immediately.
Your mother barely touched her food.
Your father, on the other hand, seemed to have rehearsed every word.
"So," he began, carefully setting down his wine glass, "have the two of you given any thought to what exactly comes next?"
You frowned. "Dad–"
"No, sweetheart, I'm asking a reasonable question. Your finals have deadlines. Your entire life had a clean trajectory."
"Our lives still do." you replied quietly. Your father sighed heavily.
"You were supposed to travel. You were supposed to get internships abroad. You had opportunities most people would kill for." His eyes drifted toward Daryl. "And now?"
The room went silent.
Daryl lowered his gaze to his untouched plate.
"Harold..." your mother whispered softly.
"No, Mary, she deserves honesty." He turned back to you. "Do you know how much money we spent making sure you had every advantage? Private schools. Piano lessons. Ballet. Tutors. Summer programs. Years of preparation."
You sat quietly, you knew that.
"And for what?" he asked quietly, disappointment proving far crueler than anger. "To throw it all away?"
Your mother quietly dabbed at her eyes with a napkin.
"Please don't do this."
"I am doing this because I love her." His gaze moved toward Daryl again.
"We tried to warn you about your little forbidden adventure, but life had it's own way of sobering people up."
You felt Daryl's hand tense around yours.
"Sir–"
You father interrupted him sharply. "Tell me honestly, son. What exactly are you offering her? Because I fail to see how changing oil and repairing engines compensates for everything my daughter's giving up."
"Dad!" you snapped.
But Daryl simply sat there. He sat through every word with his jaw clenched so tightly you thought his teeth might crack from the pressure. He never defended himself, raised his voice or begged. He simply endured it because you were pregnant, exhausted, and scared, and somewhere in that silence he had decided your comfort mattered more than his pride.
"Darling," he continued, softening his voice. "You'll have all our support raising this child. But–" he glanced at your boyfriend again, sharpening his tone once more. "don't you think, for a second that I'm being conniving of this." he pointed between you.
The months that followed were ugly in ways neither of you had expected. Not because of the baby, but because the world around you made it painfully clear how little faith it had in the possibility of people like you surviving together.
Benjamin was born during a thunderstorm after nine painful hours of labor. It felt like the weather itself mimicked your screams with thunder shaking the hospital windows. Even against your parents’ wishes, Daryl stayed beside you the entire time.
The gentle nurse who spoke to you afterward admitted she had never seen a man more terrified in her life than when he heard you screaming in pain.
Once the baby was finally placed against your chest, Daryl felt his entire world change. He muttered something under his breath while staring down at the tiny screaming infant wrapped in blue blankets, looking stunned in the purest sense of the word. Your son had his eyes.
For a while, the two of you tried. God, you tried harder than most people ever knew. Daryl picked up extra work wherever he could find it, often coming home with grease on his hands and exhaustion dragging beneath his eyes so heavily it aged him years overnight, while you balanced college classes with motherhood and constant battles against your parents’ disappointment.
You were exhausted all the time, surviving on burnt coffee, interrupted sleep, and a stubborn love that refused to die even when life gave it every reason to.
But eventually the pressure became unbearable.
Your parents escalated from disapproval to ultimatums, threatening to cut you off completely — tuition, housing, every safety net you and your son had left.
You and Daryl had your final fight the night your son turned three, screaming at each other in the apartment kitchen while the little boy slept in the next room. You knew in that moment that you would remember the look in his eyes for the rest of your life, the exact moment Daryl realized you were drowning beneath expectations you could no longer carry.
“Ya think I wanna be the reason your whole damn life falls apart?” he snapped, voice raw with frustration and heartbreak tangled together. “Think I don’t see what this is doin’ to you?”
“It’s not you." you cried back immediately.
“But I’m in your way."
“Daryl.”
“Yer family’ll never see me as one of ‘em, and they already said they’ll cut you out if ya stay with me.” He cupped your cheeks, taking a deep breath before continuing, calmer now. “I don’t want Ben to have a life like mine.”
"He won't, he has you. You're nothing like your dad."
"He deserves better than me."
The sentence shattered something inside you.
"No." you whispered fiercely. "Daryl, don't you dare." He only smiled sadly.
"He got opportunities here." the last words barely rose above a whisper.
"He got schools. College. A house. Stability."
"And you!"
His face crumpled.
"And I love him enough not to gamble with his future."
You let out the most heartbreaking sob he had ever heard. Because loving someone wasn't always enough to survive the machinery of the world crushing down around you.
And because, as you looked at the man you loved with all your heart, you realized with unbearable clarity that neither of you was trying to leave. You were trying to save each other.
Daryl pressed his forehead against yours and finally let the tears fall. "I love you." he whispered shakily. "So much."
You broke completely.
"I know."
"No." his voice cracked. "Need ya to know that. Need ya to know I ain't stoppin' because I don't love you."
"I know."
"Ain't ever gonna stop."
You separated officially a month later. There were nonstop tears, shaking hands, and promises to stay kind to each other for your son’s sake, and somehow, against all odds, you managed it. You became good coparents. Great ones, even. Better friends than lovers by the end of it, as you liked to lie to yourself.
Daryl stayed involved no matter how far life dragged him, showing up for birthdays with awkwardly wrapped gifts and scraped knuckles, teaching your son how to fish before he learned long division, how to track deer prints through mud, how to throw a punch without breaking his wrist, how to survive disappointment quietly.
Benjamin adored his dad with that fierce, uncomplicated love children reserved for fathers who made them feel safe, and Daryl loved the boy with a devotion so profound it terrified him. The same one he loved you, and forced himself to shove back for a greater good.
pairing: uptown girl! reader vs pre-apocalypse! Daryl
Chapter One - Encounter
By all accounts, your day should have gone perfectly. Nothing about it had suggested otherwise when you'd left home that morning. You'd spent the morning attending to meetings on your dad's company, that he insisted you to be a part of everything even when you hadn't even finished college yet. The weather had been beautiful and your car –a sleek black Mercedes your father maintained was more reliable than most marriages– performed with the sort of effortless grace one expected from something whose monthly payment rivaled many people's rent.
You were dressed neatly, cream slacks and a silk blouse, every detail carefully considered, every strand of hair obediently in place. It wasn't vanity, exactly. You had simply grown up in a world where appearances mattered, where composure was treated as both virtue and armor, and where being caught unprepared felt like a moral failing. Which was precisely why standing on the shoulder of an isolated Georgia highway in four-inch heels while smoke rose rather alarmingly from beneath your hood felt less like a normal inconvenience and more like a personal humiliation.
"Awesome." you grunted, shoving the door with much more strength than necessary when you got out out of the car to look call out for help, and the cherry on top of your day was put right there. On the top left of your phone you read 'no signal'. "Fucking great."
After fifteen frustrating minutes spent pretending to understand anything you were looking at, you had finally accepted the uncomfortable truth that your expertise with automobiles began and ended with knowing which button started them. You had stared helplessly into the engine compartment, hoping that if you looked concerned enough, mechanical knowledge might somehow manifest itself through sheer determination.
Unfortunately, cars appeared unimpressed by wishful thinking, and the Georgia heat had begun slowly dismantling all the effort you'd put into your appearance that morning. By the time you heard the low rumble of a motorcycle approaching in the distance, you had already composed three separate speeches in your head regarding the unfairness of the universe.
The motorcycle slowed as it approached your stranded vehicle before eventually pulling a few feet ahead of you. You braced yourself for either an overeager man who would mistake basic politeness for encouragement, or a well-meaning retiree determined to explain your own car to you while addressing you exclusively as sweetheart.
You weren't ready to face the rider who removed his helmet, revealing slightly overgrown dark hair and eyes so startlingly blue that they nearly distracted you from the fact that he was, quite frankly, unfairly handsome, not like the men you were used to, there was nothing polished about him. His clothes were worn, his boots scuffed, and the leather vest hanging over a faded shirt suggested a man far more interested in practicality than fashion, yet the overall effect was annoyingly attractive in a way the carefully groomed men who attended your father's charity dinners couldn't dream to be. He looked first at the smoke escaping from your engine, then at you, then at your shoes, and though the corner of his mouth twitched faintly, his expression remained overall unreadable.
"You break down?" he asked.
You glanced pointedly at the engine.
"Nah, I like to stand beside highways in expensive shoes and contemplate my terrible decisions."
To your surprise, amusement softened his features, and the small smile that appeared transformed his entire face in a way that felt almost unfair.
"Weird pick for a hobbie."
There wasn't a trace of mockery in his voice, only quiet humor, and immediately you felt a twinge of guilt for your sarcasm. "Sorry," you sighed, brushing a strand of hair from your face. "It's been a day."
He simply grunted, then, without fanfare or unnecessary questions, he stepped forward and peered beneath the hood. You watched him for several moments before raising an eyebrow.
"Shouldn't you ask before touching things?"
"If ya want I'll just take off and leave ya where you are." He grunted.
"Sorry, do your thing."
"Mhm."
After another few moments spent muttering incomprehensible mechanical phrases beneath his breath, he straightened and wiped his hands against a rag he seemed to have produced from nowhere. "Radiator's shot. You ain't drivin' this."
You stared blankly.
"Wonderful. That means absolutely nothing to me."
"Means no driving. Car bad." he repeated as if speaking to a toddler.
"Ah," you nodded solemnly. "now you're speaking my language."
To your immense satisfaction, a small grin showed. Brief and quiet, gone almost before it arrived, but unmistakably there. And suddenly you found yourself absurdly pleased with the idea that you'd managed to make this handsome stranger smile.
"I got a shop in town," he offered after a moment. "Can have it towed there. Fix it up."
You blinked. "You own a repair shop?"
"Mhm."
"Ya stop to rescue strange women on the side of the road often?"
His shoulders lifted in a shrug. "You looked miserable." The simplicity of the answer caught you entirely off guard, you were expecting something along the lines of "Only the pretty ones" – you got that often. But there was something deeply refreshing about a man whose motivations appeared to begin and end with simple kindness rather than the expectation of reward. You glanced down at your ruined afternoon, your ridiculous shoes, and the expensive car currently attempting to expire, and despite everything, you smiled.
"Well," you said softly, "I appreciate your concern for miserable women, uh–" you stopped, realizing you hadn't asked for his name.
And for the first time since he'd stopped, the stranger smiled fully, the expression warm and so stupidly beautiful.
"Daryl."
You smiled back.
"Daryl" you repeated, already suspecting that your busted radiator might end up being the luckiest disaster of your life. You presented yourself too, motioning your hands to shake his. His hands were calloused and permanently stained from keeping them on engines so often, and yet the contact of his skin to yours so slightly made you shiver.
The tow truck took about an hour to arrive, by the time it did, you'd be lying to yourself if you said you didn't feel a sting of disappointment from having to say goodbye to the redneck you'd practically just met.
During the waiting time, he sat with you on the sideway, mostly just listening to you, at least at first, then gradually revealing small details of himself. You found out he had a brother, and that overall, your lives were very different. As your car was getting towed, you handed him a small paper with your number written in tidy handwriting to which he took in suspicion.
"What's this?"
"My number?..." you answered, unsure, and suddenly embarrassed. "I don't suppose your shop operates entirely on telepathy? So you call me when it's done." you nervously added.
"Oh–" understanding dawned across his features. "right, yeah, I'll call." he lifted the small piece of paper and awkwardly scratched his neck, and to your immense delight, the tips of his ears turned pink. Suddenly that intimidating, broad-shouldered biker looked shy. The sight was so endearing you nearly smiled yourself silly.
"I hope so."
Neither of you knew then that the repair would only take three days. That you'd spend those three days thinking about a man you'd known for less than two hours, and by the third day, you had become thoroughly annoyed with yourself.
It was absurd, really. You found yourself wondering ridiculous things while sitting through meetings and answering e-mails. Had he always been so quiet, or had you simply done enough talking for both of you? Did he smile like that often? Was he thinking about you too?Most embarrassingly of all, after you picked up his call letting you know that your car was ready, you caught yourself changing outfits twice before reminding yourself, quite sternly, that you were only picking up your car. Nothing more.
The bell above the door jingled softly as you stepped in, and immediately you were struck by how perfectly the place matched its owner. It wasn't polished or modern, and it certainly lacked the sleek professionalism your father would have preferred, but it felt lived in. Tools hung neatly on pegboards, old photographs occupied the walls, and somewhere in the background, classic rock played softly enough that it blended with the hum of the ceiling fan.
When your eyes found him you automatically smiled. Daryl was bent over the hood of a truck, sleeves rolled up, grease smudged across his forearms, entirely absorbed in whatever he was doing. You doubted he had even heard the bell. Which meant you had several uninterrupted seconds to appreciate the view.
"Daryl." you greeted nervously.
He looked up, then smiled.
Not the polite little smile he'd given you on the side of the road. Not the amused smirk that seemed to appear whenever you said something ridiculous, this one happened before he could stop it, and the sight of it softened something inside you immediately.
"Hey."
"Hello to you too." you couldn't help but to smile back.
He wiped his hands on a rag, though the effort seemed largely symbolic considering the amount of grease currently decorating him. "Car's ready."
"I had hoped so! Otherwise this would've been a very expensive social call."
That earned a quiet snort.
"Thought I would understand if you called just to see me." you half-joked, his ears turning pink again.
"Ya very convinced for someone I found basically abbandoned on the side of the road." this time, you were the one who laughed.
As Daryl disappeared into the office to retrieve your paperwork, you found yourself wondering whether he seemed disappointed, the thought appeared out of nowhere and settled itself squarely in your chest. Because suddenly it occurred to you that this was it.
You'd pay him, drive away, and if it depended on life's odds only, you'd most likely never see him again. The idea left a strange heaviness in your stomach.
Daryl returned with the keys in one hand and several forms in the other. He explained what had been wrong with the car, and you nodded along with all the enthusiasm of someone pretending to understand a foreign language.
"So she's healthy again?" you asked.
"Mhm."
"And she won't explode?"
His mouth twitched. "Shouldn't."
"Excellent. I've always hated surprises."
He smiled again.
God.
The full transaction lasted less than five minutes, still, neither of you moved, a strange reluctance hung in the air.
Daryl shifted awkwardly, and you adjusted your purse strap.
"Well–"
"I uh–"
You overlapped eachother. You both smiled awkwardly.
"Ya can go first." he motioned for you to say. The poor man looked genuinely uncomfortable, as though he wanted to say something and had absolutely no idea how, perhaps that was what gave you the courage.
"Can I ask you something?"
His eyebrows rose slightly.
"Mhm."
"You don't... happen to drink whiskey, do you?"
The question seemed to catch him entirely off guard.
"Huh?"
"As a thank-you," you clarified quickly. "For rescuing miserable women stranded on highways and saving their outrageously expensive cars." Immediately, he shook his head.
"You ain't gotta do that."
"I know."
"Really."
"I know."
"So don't."
You smiled.
"Daryl."
"Mhm?"
"I'm asking because I want to."
If he was a cartoon, his head would've shaped into a question mark, because men like Daryl Dixon didn't spend much time being pursued.
The tips of his ears burned hot again, and to your immense delight, he looked down. He was adorable.
"Just a drink?" he asked quietly.
You smiled.
"Just a drink."
It turned out that "just a drink" became one too many.
And then dinner.
Because once Daryl relaxed enough to stop worrying about saying the wrong thing, you discovered that beneath the shyness and quiet grunts lived a man with a dry sense of humor and a kindness so effortless that it almost hurt. He listened when you spoke. Really listened. He remembered things you mentioned in passing. He laughed softly at your jokes, even the terrible ones, and whenever you caught him looking at you, there was always that same expression in his eyes.
Like he couldn't quite believe you were real. By the time the bartender announced last call, neither of you had noticed the hours passing.
Outside, the air had cooled considerably, and the streetlights cast soft pools of gold onto the sidewalk.
"Thanks." Daryl murmured as the two of you lingered beside his bike.
You blinked.
"For what?"
He shrugged.
"Tonight."
It was palpable neither of you were eager to say goodbye. You stood there smiling like idiots, no one willing to leave first.
"You know," you said softly, "for a man who can rebuild an engine, you're surprisingly bad at this."
His brow furrowed.
"Bad at what?"
"Taking signs."
And with it came the most endearing blush you'd ever witnessed. "Never said I was good at it."
"No?"
"No."
You stepped closer.
"So what exactly are you waiting for?" he swallowed dry. Then, with all the caution of a man handling something precious, Daryl reached up and brushed a strand of hair behind your ear.
His fingers trembled slightly, and your hands traveled one to his arm and the other to the nape of his neck, pulling him in to close the distance you couldn't wait for him to do so anymore.
His lips were warm, a little dry, tasting faintly of beer and whiskey. One hand settled lightly against your waist, hesitant enough that it made your chest ache, and you found yourself smiling against his mouth because somehow, impossibly, the intimidating mechanic with the beautiful eyes seemed far more nervous than you were.
When you finally pulled away, Daryl looked slightly dazed. His cheeks were red and eyes impossibly soft.
"You got any idea what you're doin' to me?"
You smiled innocently.
"No."
His laugh was soft and helpless.
"Imma need more of this." and he leaned to kiss you again, for the second of so many times you'd loose count on that night.
"back to you" taglist: @leslierabbit @t0xicsl33p @taliapotter @moss4brainss @saintloverie @little-mops-booknook @firefirefeline @babycheech @dixonangel
original one-shot | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5
summary: your car breaks down on the middle of the road. a very attractive biker stops to help
as many of you asked for, here's "back to you" as a series! I'll post everything in a chronological order every 2/3 days!
"back to you" taglist: @leslierabbit @t0xicsl33p @taliapotter @moss4brainss @saintloverie @little-mops-booknook @firefirefeline @babycheech @dixonangel | dividers by: @chrisssiren
By all accounts, your day should have gone perfectly. Nothing about it had suggested otherwise when you'd left home that morning. You'd spent the morning attending to meetings on your dad's company, that he insisted you to be a part of everything even when you hadn't even finished college yet. The weather had been beautiful and your car –a sleek black Mercedes your father maintained was more reliable than most marriages– performed with the sort of effortless grace one expected from something whose monthly payment rivaled many people's rent.
You were dressed neatly, cream slacks and a silk blouse, every detail carefully considered, every strand of hair obediently in place. It wasn't vanity, exactly. You had simply grown up in a world where appearances mattered, where composure was treated as both virtue and armor, and where being caught unprepared felt like a moral failing. Which was precisely why standing on the shoulder of an isolated Georgia highway in four-inch heels while smoke rose rather alarmingly from beneath your hood felt less like a normal inconvenience and more like a personal humiliation.
"Awesome." you grunted, shoving the door with much more strength than necessary when you got out out of the car to look call out for help, and the cherry on top of your day was put right there. On the top left of your phone you read 'no signal'. "Fucking great."
After fifteen frustrating minutes spent pretending to understand anything you were looking at, you had finally accepted the uncomfortable truth that your expertise with automobiles began and ended with knowing which button started them. You had stared helplessly into the engine compartment, hoping that if you looked concerned enough, mechanical knowledge might somehow manifest itself through sheer determination.
Unfortunately, cars appeared unimpressed by wishful thinking, and the Georgia heat had begun slowly dismantling all the effort you'd put into your appearance that morning. By the time you heard the low rumble of a motorcycle approaching in the distance, you had already composed three separate speeches in your head regarding the unfairness of the universe.
The motorcycle slowed as it approached your stranded vehicle before eventually pulling a few feet ahead of you. You braced yourself for either an overeager man who would mistake basic politeness for encouragement, or a well-meaning retiree determined to explain your own car to you while addressing you exclusively as sweetheart.
You weren't ready to face the rider who removed his helmet, revealing slightly overgrown dark hair and eyes so startlingly blue that they nearly distracted you from the fact that he was, quite frankly, unfairly handsome, not like the men you were used to, there was nothing polished about him. His clothes were worn, his boots scuffed, and the leather vest hanging over a faded shirt suggested a man far more interested in practicality than fashion, yet the overall effect was annoyingly attractive in a way the carefully groomed men who attended your father's charity dinners couldn't dream to be. He looked first at the smoke escaping from your engine, then at you, then at your shoes, and though the corner of his mouth twitched faintly, his expression remained overall unreadable.
"You break down?" he asked.
You glanced pointedly at the engine.
"Nah, I like to stand beside highways in expensive shoes and contemplate my terrible decisions."
To your surprise, amusement softened his features, and the small smile that appeared transformed his entire face in a way that felt almost unfair.
"Weird pick for a hobbie."
There wasn't a trace of mockery in his voice, only quiet humor, and immediately you felt a twinge of guilt for your sarcasm. "Sorry," you sighed, brushing a strand of hair from your face. "It's been a day."
He simply grunted, then, without fanfare or unnecessary questions, he stepped forward and peered beneath the hood. You watched him for several moments before raising an eyebrow.
"Shouldn't you ask before touching things?"
"If ya want I'll just take off and leave ya where you are." He grunted.
"Sorry, do your thing."
"Mhm."
After another few moments spent muttering incomprehensible mechanical phrases beneath his breath, he straightened and wiped his hands against a rag he seemed to have produced from nowhere. "Radiator's shot. You ain't drivin' this."
You stared blankly.
"Wonderful. That means absolutely nothing to me."
"Means no driving. Car bad." he repeated as if speaking to a toddler.
"Ah," you nodded solemnly. "now you're speaking my language."
To your immense satisfaction, a small grin showed. Brief and quiet, gone almost before it arrived, but unmistakably there. And suddenly you found yourself absurdly pleased with the idea that you'd managed to make this handsome stranger smile.
"I got a shop in town," he offered after a moment. "Can have it towed there. Fix it up."
You blinked. "You own a repair shop?"
"Mhm."
"Ya stop to rescue strange women on the side of the road often?"
His shoulders lifted in a shrug. "You looked miserable." The simplicity of the answer caught you entirely off guard, you were expecting something along the lines of "Only the pretty ones" – you got that often. But there was something deeply refreshing about a man whose motivations appeared to begin and end with simple kindness rather than the expectation of reward. You glanced down at your ruined afternoon, your ridiculous shoes, and the expensive car currently attempting to expire, and despite everything, you smiled.
"Well," you said softly, "I appreciate your concern for miserable women, uh–" you stopped, realizing you hadn't asked for his name.
And for the first time since he'd stopped, the stranger smiled fully, the expression warm and so stupidly beautiful.
"Daryl."
You smiled back.
"Daryl" you repeated, already suspecting that your busted radiator might end up being the luckiest disaster of your life. You presented yourself too, motioning your hands to shake his. His hands were calloused and permanently stained from keeping them on engines so often, and yet the contact of his skin to yours so slightly made you shiver.
The tow truck took about an hour to arrive, by the time it did, you'd be lying to yourself if you said you didn't feel a sting of disappointment from having to say goodbye to the redneck you'd practically just met.
During the waiting time, he sat with you on the sideway, mostly just listening to you, at least at first, then gradually revealing small details of himself. You found out he had a brother, and that overall, your lives were very different. As your car was getting towed, you handed him a small paper with your number written in tidy handwriting to which he took in suspicion.
"What's this?"
"My number?..." you answered, unsure, and suddenly embarrassed. "I don't suppose your shop operates entirely on telepathy? So you call me when it's done." you nervously added.
"Oh–" understanding dawned across his features. "right, yeah, I'll call." he lifted the small piece of paper and awkwardly scratched his neck, and to your immense delight, the tips of his ears turned pink. Suddenly that intimidating, broad-shouldered biker looked shy. The sight was so endearing you nearly smiled yourself silly.
"I hope so."
Neither of you knew then that the repair would only take three days. That you'd spend those three days thinking about a man you'd known for less than two hours, and by the third day, you had become thoroughly annoyed with yourself.
It was absurd, really. You found yourself wondering ridiculous things while sitting through meetings and answering e-mails. Had he always been so quiet, or had you simply done enough talking for both of you? Did he smile like that often? Was he thinking about you too? Most embarrassingly of all, after you picked up his call letting you know that your car was ready, you caught yourself changing outfits twice before reminding yourself, quite sternly, that you were only picking up your car. Nothing more.
The bell above the door jingled softly as you stepped in, and immediately you were struck by how perfectly the place matched its owner. It wasn't polished or modern, and it certainly lacked the sleek professionalism your father would have preferred, but it felt lived in. Tools hung neatly on pegboards, old photographs occupied the walls, and somewhere in the background, classic rock played softly enough that it blended with the hum of the ceiling fan.
When your eyes found him you automatically smiled. Daryl was bent over the hood of a truck, sleeves rolled up, grease smudged across his forearms, entirely absorbed in whatever he was doing. You doubted he had even heard the bell. Which meant you had several uninterrupted seconds to appreciate the view.
"Daryl." you greeted nervously.
He looked up, then smiled.
Not the polite little smile he'd given you on the side of the road. Not the amused smirk that seemed to appear whenever you said something ridiculous, this one happened before he could stop it, and the sight of it softened something inside you immediately.
"Hey."
"Hello to you too." you couldn't help but to smile back.
He wiped his hands on a rag, though the effort seemed largely symbolic considering the amount of grease currently decorating him. "Car's ready."
"I had hoped so! Otherwise this would've been a very expensive social call."
That earned a quiet snort.
"Thought I would understand if you called just to see me." you half-joked, his ears turning pink again.
"Ya very convinced for someone I found basically abbandoned on the side of the road." this time, you were the one who laughed.
As Daryl disappeared into the office to retrieve your paperwork, you found yourself wondering whether he seemed disappointed, the thought appeared out of nowhere and settled itself squarely in your chest. Because suddenly it occurred to you that this was it.
You'd pay him, drive away, and if it depended on life's odds only, you'd most likely never see him again. The idea left a strange heaviness in your stomach.
Daryl returned with the keys in one hand and several forms in the other. He explained what had been wrong with the car, and you nodded along with all the enthusiasm of someone pretending to understand a foreign language.
"So she's healthy again?" you asked.
"Mhm."
"And she won't explode?"
His mouth twitched. "Shouldn't."
"Excellent. I've always hated surprises."
He smiled again.
God.
The full transaction lasted less than five minutes, still, neither of you moved, a strange reluctance hung in the air.
Daryl shifted awkwardly, and you adjusted your purse strap.
"Well–"
"I uh–"
You overlapped eachother. You both smiled awkwardly.
"Ya can go first." he motioned for you to say. The poor man looked genuinely uncomfortable, as though he wanted to say something and had absolutely no idea how, perhaps that was what gave you the courage.
"Can I ask you something?"
His eyebrows rose slightly.
"Mhm."
"You don't... happen to drink whiskey, do you?"
The question seemed to catch him entirely off guard.
"Huh?"
"As a thank-you," you clarified quickly. "For rescuing miserable women stranded on highways and saving their outrageously expensive cars." Immediately, he shook his head.
"You ain't gotta do that."
"I know."
"Really."
"I know."
"So don't."
You smiled.
"Daryl."
"Mhm?"
"I'm asking because I want to."
If he was a cartoon, his head would've shaped into a question mark, because men like Daryl Dixon didn't spend much time being pursued.
The tips of his ears burned hot again, and to your immense delight, he looked down. He was adorable.
"Just a drink?" he asked quietly.
You smiled.
"Just a drink."
It turned out that "just a drink" became one too many.
And then dinner.
Because once Daryl relaxed enough to stop worrying about saying the wrong thing, you discovered that beneath the shyness and quiet grunts lived a man with a dry sense of humor and a kindness so effortless that it almost hurt. He listened when you spoke. Really listened. He remembered things you mentioned in passing. He laughed softly at your jokes, even the terrible ones, and whenever you caught him looking at you, there was always that same expression in his eyes.
Like he couldn't quite believe you were real. By the time the bartender announced last call, neither of you had noticed the hours passing.
Outside, the air had cooled considerably, and the streetlights cast soft pools of gold onto the sidewalk.
"Thanks." Daryl murmured as the two of you lingered beside his bike.
You blinked.
"For what?"
He shrugged.
"Tonight."
It was palpable neither of you were eager to say goodbye. You stood there smiling like idiots, no one willing to leave first.
"You know," you said softly, "for a man who can rebuild an engine, you're surprisingly bad at this."
His brow furrowed.
"Bad at what?"
"Taking signs."
And with it came the most endearing blush you'd ever witnessed. "Never said I was good at it."
"No?"
"No."
You stepped closer.
"So what exactly are you waiting for?" he swallowed dry. Then, with all the caution of a man handling something precious, Daryl reached up and brushed a strand of hair behind your ear.
His fingers trembled slightly, and your hands traveled one to his arm and the other to the nape of his neck, pulling him in to close the distance you couldn't wait for him to do so anymore.
His lips were warm, a little dry, tasting faintly of beer and whiskey. One hand settled lightly against your waist, hesitant enough that it made your chest ache, and you found yourself smiling against his mouth because somehow, impossibly, the intimidating mechanic with the beautiful eyes seemed far more nervous than you were.
When you finally pulled away, Daryl looked slightly dazed. His cheeks were red and eyes impossibly soft.
"You got any idea what you're doin' to me?"
You smiled innocently.
"No."
His laugh was soft and helpless.
"Imma need more of this." and he leaned to kiss you again, for the second of so many times you'd loose count on that night.
I was wondering if you would want to write about this: Daryl has been gone from Alexandria for a few weeks, maybe on a supply run. So reader (F) has to sleep alone and has been missing him badly, and one night it’s storming and thundering outside + she gets a horrible nightmare so she wakes up terrified only to realise that Daryl is back sooner than expected!! So he holds her and comforts her, and they CUDDLEEE and fall back asleep with reader feeling safe and warm in his arms once more. Maybe it could be a follow up to “Not for a second” too, so the nightmare could be about her time at the sanctuary, but wtv works best!!!
If this is too dry please feel free to change it up or not write about it 🥹🤍🤍🤍 i love everything you write
Back before dawn - Daryl Dixon
pairing: daryl dixon × reader (I made no descriptions that match any specific gender)
a/n: how it's always a pleasure to write your requests, I hope you enjoy!♥︎
word count: 1.2k
daryl dixon taglist: @taliapotter @bedshrooms @little-mops-booknook | dividers by @chrisssiren
The storm had settled over Alexandria hours ago, turning what should have been an ordinary night into something restless and uneasy. Rain lashed against the windows in relentless waves, driven sideways by the wind, while thunder rolled across the sky often enough to keep sleep just out of reach. You lay awake listening to it, staring into the darkness of the bedroom and trying not to look at the cold and empty side of the bed.
It had been three weeks since Daryl left.
Not the longest he had ever been gone, or that you've been apart, but long enough for his absence to become woven into the fabric of your days. You felt it in the mornings when you reached for a second mug before remembering there was nobody to pour coffee for. You felt it in the evenings when conversations ended and there was no familiar figure leaning in the doorway waiting for you. Most of all, you felt it at night, when the world grew quiet and there was nothing to distract you from the cold stretch of mattress beside you.
You missed him with an intensity that still managed to surprise you.
Without him there, the house felt larger than it should have, and the monsters you dialed with silently hovered over you worse in these nights alone.
It always began the same way.
You saw the same cold, dirty walls, they felt like closing in on you on that claustrophobic cubicle you spent long hours in back at the Sanctuary. Negan's voice echoed on the back, you felt it approach you, you felt like the walls had finally closed in enough they'd inevitably crush you, then, the scenario changed.
You ran through dim corridors that seemed to stretch endlessly ahead, your footsteps echoing against concrete walls. Every door you reached slammed shut before you could touch it. Every turn led nowhere. The air felt too thin to breathe.
You called for help. No one answered. The voice came closer and closer.
A violent crack of thunder tore through the darkness.
Your eyes flew open.
For a moment you couldn't move. The nightmare clung to you stubbornly, refusing to loosen its grip even as reality returned. Your heart pounded painfully against your ribs, and every breath felt shallow. You felt your body damp from sweat, not because it was hot, the rainstill hammered against the windows, lightnings lashed beyond the curtains, illuminating the room in brief, bright bursts before plunging everything back into shadow.
You pressed a hand against your chest and tried to slow your breathing.
It was over. You were safe. You knew that.
Instinctively, you rolled toward the other side of the bed, seeking comfort where you had found none for weeks. Your hand brushed against warmth.
You froze.
Slowly, almost afraid of what you might discover, you lifted your head from the pillow.
Lightning flashed again. The shape beside you became unmistakable.
Broad shoulders. Dark hair falling over a familiar face. One arm thrown carelessly across the blanket, and for several seconds you could do nothing but stare.
You had imagined this moment so many times over the last three weeks that part of you genuinely wondered whether you were still asleep. Whether your mind had conjured him out of loneliness and exhaustion.
Then he shifted slightly beneath the blankets.
And you knew.
"Daryl."
His name escaped as little more than a whisper, his eyes opened immediately.
The reaction was so characteristically him that it nearly made you laugh. Three weeks away hadn't changed the fact that he still slept lightly enough to wake at the slightest sound.
For a brief second confusion crossed his features. Then he saw your expression, tears you hadn't even realized were there.
Every trace of sleep vanished from his face.
"Hey."
The single word nearly undid you.
You crossed the distance between you without thinking, and Daryl caught you effortlessly as you all but collapsed against him. Strong arms wrapped around you, pulling you close with urgency. The familiar scent of leather, soap, and rain clung to him, and for the first time since waking, you felt something inside your chest begin to loosen.
One hand slid into your hair while the other settled firmly against your back.
"Same as always?"
You shook your head against his shoulder.
His grip tightened. You didn't have to explain yourself. Daryl knew.
He had witnessed enough of them over the years to recognize the aftermath immediately. The trembling hands. The lingering panic. The way you always sought him out before you were fully awake.
For a moment neither of you spoke. The storm continued raging outside, but it seemed distant now, reduced to little more than background noise beneath the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
"You got back early." you murmured eventually.
A soft huff of amusement stirred beneath your cheek.
"Couple hours ago. Didn't wanna wake you." You stared at him.
"Daryl."
"What?"
"You got home after three weeks and didn't wake me up?"
His mouth twitched faintly, he looked at you with innocent eyes.
"You looked comfortable."
The ridiculousness of the statement might have annoyed you if your chest wasn't already overflowing with affection. Leave it to Daryl Dixon to cross half the state, return home unexpectedly, and decide that interrupting your sleep would somehow be more inconsiderate than allowing you to spend hours unaware he was back home.
A laugh escaped you. You reached up and brushed your fingers through his hair, his eyes softened immediately.
"You okay now?" he asked.
"I'm getting there."
Without a word, he shifted lower against the mattress and opened his arm, silently inviting you closer, and you didn't gladly.
The moment you settled against his chest, Daryl wrapped himself around you completely. One arm curved securely around your waist while the other rested across your shoulders, drawing you close enough that every breath he took moved through both of you.
Outside, thunder rolled across the sky once more, but it no longer made your pulse jump. The nightmare had retreated completely now, stripped of its power by warmth and familiarity and the man holding you as though he had missed you just as desperately.
Perhaps he had.
You felt his lips brush lightly against your hair.
A quiet confession from a man who had never been particularly good with words.
You smiled and tucked yourself closer.
Within minutes your eyes began to grow heavy again.
This time, when sleep came, it carried none of the darkness that had haunted you before. The last thing you felt was Daryl's hand resting securely against your back and the steady rhythm of his breathing beneath your ear.
And for the first time in weeks, the world felt right again.
