Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Hop on,” Daryl instructed, lightly patting the passenger seat of his motorcycle.

Paul eyed the sleek majestic structure of steel with both awe and wariness. This beast had been the object of his silent admiration since the moment he first saw his roommate, clad in black leather and donning a pair of shades, riding it into the garage; but he had never actually touched it – that it was Daryl’s ‘lover’ was nothing sort of truth. Still, that hadn’t stopped him from fantasizing about sitting his ass on the passenger seat and wrapping his arms tightly around the rider’s firm middle as they raced along the endless highway into the blazing sunset. Okay, the sunset bit was a little cheesy, even for him. God knew how many times Paul Rovia had woken from a dream like that to the sad, disappointing reality that he had been harboring a heavy crush on his older roommate, Detective Daryl Dixon, since he moved in two months ago, and his feelings were probably unreciprocated because Daryl was likely as straight as a flagpole.

He had to be, right? One look at the guy and you can practically sense his machismo seeping out of his pores.

Growing impatient with Paul’s standing rooted in his spot while a dumbfounded look was painted on his face, Daryl patted the seat again, louder this time, to shake the art student out of whatever reverie he was having. “C’mon, we don’t have a whole day.”

“Err… Thank you, but I can take the bus,” Paul replied, internally groaning. While every cell in him was yelling ‘yes’, his rational mind was firmly stating ‘no’ and sadly, it was the one to have the final say about what could leave his mouth and could not. Don’t give yourself false hope, Rovia. You will only have many sleepless nights ahead.

“Bus stop’s ten-minute walk,” Daryl said, “five if yer runnin’. And ya were already half an hour late.”

Indeed today Paul had woken up half an hour later than usual – damned his late-night marathon of The Walking Dead and his broken alarm. He wished his hair was long enough to hide the flushed tips of his ears. Been thinking about growing it out for a while.

But wait, Daryl noticed!

A helmet was thrown at Paul and he deftly caught it.

“Unless ya wanna be late. Get on.”

Daryl put on his own helmet. Truth was Paul didn’t want to show up late at his favorite professor’s class and he could really, really use a ride. Especially when the rider happened to be Daryl.

Muttering a “thank you”, Paul put on the helmet, which was a little big for him but he would definitely not complain.

The seat, on the contrary, was a little small so he had no choice but to sit very close to Daryl, like body-touching close, which he would definitely not complain either.

The engine roared and in an almost careless move, Daryl stepped on the accelerator. The sudden movement had Paul let out an undignified yelp. Out of pure reflex, his arms wrapped around the detective’s torso, and he was holding onto Daryl so tightly it must be a bit uncomfortable. But Paul had spared it no thought; he was too busy being afraid that the next bump might send him flying to the side of the road.

Daryl was riding along the highway so naturally, he wasn’t going slow. Paul dared keep his hold on Daryl, emboldened by the fact that the cop hadn’t complained about having Paul’s chest pressing against his back. A giddy smile spread across his face. Maybe, just maybe, this is not false hope at all.

Little did he know, Daryl couldn’t contain a little smile either. Sure, he’d rather stuff his head in the sink than admitting the reason for his out-of-character move earlier was to have a certain roommate cling onto him for dear life.

End

Chapter Text

He was, to put it simple, an immortal man.

He was immortal not in the sense of going on for century after century without going old and dying – that was vampirism, and a vampire was the last thing he would use to draw an analogy. As a matter of fact, he similar to a mortal man in that he was born, he grew up and grew old, wrinkled and ailed, until he ultimately died. And then, the cycle repeated: his undying soul regained a newborn flesh and began anew. No matter how many lifetimes he’d gone through, his appearance, as well as his core personality, remained unchanging, and he was in full awareness of his past lives. That was what drew a clear distinction between his immortality and reincarnation, a notion proposed by many religions and faiths. He didn’t commit himself to any religions though – it was difficult to be preached and convinced about the greatness of the Almighty, about Heaven and Hell, about sins and the Judgment when an existence as abnormal as his was permitted. Still, godless as he was, and would remain to be, he believed in the omnipotent, all-knowing yet unseen force that governed everything – from the smallest grain of sand in the dessert to the constellations in the black velvet sky. He believed it had created what he was, and lodged him into this life for a reason as unfathomable as its being, but there was a reason alright, there had to be. Nothing happened without a reason and believing so had kept his sanity intact and kept him going. He refused to think that his existence was meant solely to exemplify a nature’s loophole.

He had gone through many lifetimes under many names, so many that he could never remember them all.

Some were more memorable than others.

In that life time he was christened Rob Cole and given an uncanny gift to ‘see’ death approaching a person. But he hadn’t realized he possessed such talent until he witnessed his mother succumb to the side sickness while being utterly helpless to do the smallest thing to help her. In hindsight, it was the exact moment that had outlined his destiny as Rob Cole – to become the one to try and hinder the cold, clammy hand of death brushing over a person’s eyes. But of course, he hadn’t had a slightest idea this lifetime’s purpose either until well later in his life; back then he was but a nine-year-old brat who had just lost his entire family in one day – his mum gone and his younger siblings taken away – and was desperately trying to find a new one in the vagabond barber.

It took the barber’s going blind for Rob Cole to see being a barber was simply never good enough to help the people in need of treatment; had it been, he wouldn’t have witnessed a plethora of deaths on his way across the country, and just about as many lives handicapped.

From the Jews he heard about Ibn Sina, the greatest healer the world had ever seen and his palaces residing amongst the ocean of golden sand, where he healed as well as passing the sacred art of healing onto his students. That was where he would go, Rob decided on the spot, with an unwavering resolution that surprised even himself, much less his aging barber. There was no way he could explain it to the old man, same as he couldn’t give a plausible explanation for his gift to see death approaching; he just knew it was embossed in his fate as Robert Cole and he had to fulfill it.

So, to the east he went. He landed on foreign land and was greeted with both hostility and hospitality. He arrived at Isfahan with nothing but the tattered and besmirched clothes on his sunburnt back and pleas ready on his chapped, cracked lips. He met the great Ibn Sina and got admitted to his madrassa in a favorable twist of fate. There he learned, he loved, and he lost. Tears were shed and wiped, heart broken and mended, wounds opened and sewn, and years later, he found his way home, to England.

His wise teacher, the great Ibn Sina, had once said that he was to live a long life so that he could save as many people as possible. Long did he live and many a life had he saved, but also as many he had failed. Death saddened him a great deal when it took someone from him – his next-door neighbor, his trusted friend, even his beautiful, devoted wife – but it no longer devastated him; Hakim Robert Cole had come to make peace with death and consider it an old friend.

There was one death that stayed with him till his own. There was a war going on, and his hospital, situated somewhere on the border, was filled with casualties. He did not discriminate between ally and foe and treated every man brought in with equal dedication. Some he had succeeded in snatching from Death’s hand whilst some he had not. The blank space behind his hospital quickly became a makeshift graveyard where unmarked graves kept sprouting up like mushrooms after a rain.

He couldn’t tell at first if the man that had just been carried in was an ally or enemy – his outfit was covered in blood, both his own and not. The only thing he was able to tell was the man was probably an archer, judging by how his hand was tightly clutching his bow even when it was already broken. Rob examined the man and as he did, a grim sense washed over him. With the excessive amount of blood he had lost and the fatal wound that ran from his left shoulder to his chest, almost splitting him in half, one should wonder how he was even breathing. Time stood completely still for a second, and the veil of reality dispersed so that Rob could glimpse into the truth of existence. It was his gift, no longer seen as a curse, telling him that death was near. He heaved a sign and took the dying man’s hand in his, trying to offer him as much comfort as he could.

When he looked into the man’s eyes, he felt a spark that shot through his entire body, making him shudder, his hairs standing on end. Centuries later he would have described it as a jolt of high-voltage electricity. It was brief but it was shocking, and he had never felt something like this before, not in this lifetime or previous others. His eyes were fixed on the dying man’s face, which, although distorted in agony, gave off a sense of peace. He felt the blood-slicked fingers weakly squeezing back. No words were exchanged as Rob held his gaze, staying absolutely still until the archer’s last breath died out.

Another unmarked mound in the graveyard. Rob buried his bow with him and visited him every day for the rest of his life.

He hadn’t known the archer’s name.

He had lived long enough to know a spark like that didn’t come once in a while; in fact it was so rare that one needed to go through several lifetimes before it happened. Therefore he decided to keep this little, precious trinket in his consciousness, where he had constructed as a chamber to store the experiences he wanted to take to his next life. For an immortal man, his mind capacity was not indefinite, and there was a limit to what his chamber could hold before it burst, blowing his mind to smithereens. There was no telling what would become of him if that happened, and he dreaded imagining the possibilities. Thus he had to choose carefully, and laid the rest of his memories down the dark, boundless basement beneath. And this spark, as well as the brief memory of the archer, definitely deserved a spot.

In this life he was named Paul Rovia, but all who knew him called him ‘Jesus’. He found that quite an irony because he was pretty sure he had met the real Savior in one of his lifetimes. Couldn’t remember the details though; two millennia was a long time. He had even lost count of his lifetimes.

This could be his last, he mused absent-mindedly on a slow, lazy and rare afternoon he had claimed for himself, because one day you woke up from your sweet dream and the apocalypse had stomped your doors.

The dead walked the earth like the living, hunting them, devouring them, adding them to the ever-growing army of dead. He had witnessed myriads of bizarrities over the centuries but never something like this. The people whom he had known, who had addressed him by the Jesus moniker, fell one by one before his eyes, rose and had to be put down by the edge of his knives. In this life, death was not an old friend but a constant threat, a scythe dangling above their heads, eager to strike.

This could be the end of the world, as well as the end of him. He was strangely peaceful about that; if this fallen-apart world was the one to greet him the next time he opened his newborn eyes, then he’d rather not be born at all.

Sometimes he entertained the thought about how it would be if he had Rob Cole’s medical skills integrated into this lifetime. Outdated by roughly a thousand years but still be useful due to the shortage of doctors. Nevertheless, even without the skills he could have had, he was still a valuable asset to the new community he had short of settled in. Short of because despite how much he tried, he didn’t feel belonged here. Not sure if he would ever. It was ironic to think about since Rob Cole, in spite of his stark differences in religion and practices, had fitted in with Jewish lifestyle during his years at Isfahan in a way Paul Rovia couldn’t with his community of similar beliefs – always feeing like an outsider hovering at the periphery. Still he managed his task well, venturing outside the gate, sometimes for days, endangering himself to scavenge for whatever supplies his people needed. He went on his own, partly because running without having to look after anyone was faster and partly because he saw himself as expendable. If he were lost out there, while his community would be one scout short, no-one would bear the baggage of grief.

At least he hoped so. Grief could be a crippling hindrance to survival, which should be anyone’s number-one priority in this crapsack world.

Whenever he thought about his inability to form a connection to anyone, he was reminded of the spark he had felt a millennium ago, happened only once. It had warmed his heart in those lonely nights where the ailing campfire had failed. It always astounded him how something that had lasted for only a briefest moment could withstand the mercilessness of time and still felt so fresh, so new, like a thousand years was only a couple of hours ago. Sometimes he thought he could feel the texture of the archer’s skin, callous and slicked with blood. It was a shame he had never gotten to know his name.

“… This is Daryl Dixon.”

He had already turned on his heels but when he heard that name, some mysterious force had him whip his body around to do a double take. Curious perhaps? His gaze landed on the quieter man of the pair, the one who was standing nearer to him with a gun trained at his face.

For the first time in a thousand years he had felt the spark again, running along his spine like electric current. He shivered despite his thick trench coat, gloves and boots.

Daryl Dixon was a perfect stranger to Paul Rovia, a man Paul had met only today. Yet he had seen this face on a man centuries ago, in an English hospital situated on the border. He had buried that same man under an unmarked grave that only he could discern from numerous others as he paid it a visit every day till the last day of his life.

What was originally a spark had become wildfire. It was consuming him and he had not felt so alive for so long.

Nothing happened without a reason, he believed.

Daryl Dixon. In this life his name was Daryl Dixon. He made sure to remember that name.

He spread his arms, flashing the pair – but mostly Daryl – his smile.

“Paul Rovia, but my friends used to call me Jesus. Your pick.”

End

Chapter Text

“So, tell me again,” Tara drawled, putting the cap on her marker once she had finished the Pride flag on her best friend’s cast, “how in the world did our little ninja fall off the stairs and break his leg?”

Paul let out a groan, rubbing a hand over his face. Tara seemed to take immense pleasure in making him recite the reason he had had his leg broken; he was one hundred percent certain by tomorrow all of his class and probably half the campus would have known of his embarrassing accident. Talk about the power of gossip. He wouldn’t live it down for months to come.

“It was bad luck, Tara, sheer bad luck,” Paul bleated. “Remember when we went to a Tarot parlor and the–”

“Tarot reader.”

“Tarot reader warned me of an imminent accident?”

“Yeah, you kind of laughed about it ‘cuz you didn’t believe it. You only came because I dragged you with me and you were pretty tipsy.”

“Guess I’m a believer now,” Paul said, clapping his hands in a mock prayer. “I got up late and was rushing down the stairs when I stepped on something I’d left there and forgotten to clean up – and tripped. Next thing I knew, my leg pained so much that I couldn’t move an inch. From what I’d gained from the first-aid sessions, I figured I might have broken my leg.”

“You were binge-watching that zombie show the night before, weren’t you? What’s so good about that series that everyone’s crazy about it anyway?”

“It’s good and I’ve tried to engage you in watching it with me a few times. Besides, I put half the blame on my alarm clock. Damned thing was broken and didn’t go off.”

Tara reached for the apple and the knife on the table and began peeling its skin with deftness. She got rid of the seeds and quartered the apple before handling Paul a piece, which he took with a “thanks”.

“I’m still pissed off, y’know,” Tara said with a mouthful of apple, making funny crunchy noises, “that you didn’t phone your best friend first when you got the accident. I’d have rushed to your apartment.”

“Sorry, Tara, I was in panic. I was really lucky I got my phone in my pocket and didn’t crush it when I fell. I dialed the top number of my emergency list and–”

“Your roommate called the ambulance and raced home,” Tara finished for him. “I’m shocked you put your roommate’s number first in your list and not mine.”

“He insisted. Said roommates should look out for each other.”

Tara raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “Wow! My ex roomie couldn’t have cared less if I’d died and started decomposing in my room so long as I didn’t get in her way.”

Paul wrinkled his nose. “Good thing you moved out.”

“Yeah,” Tara agreed. “Did the doctor say when you will be released?”

“He said I could go home now that I was checked and no other injuries were found. As a matter of fact my roommate is checking me out as we speak.”

“Can’t say I’m not jealous that you have such a nice roommate. Any indication on his sexuality?”

Tara finished the question with a wink.

“Well...” Paul hesitated, lowering his head to hide a hint of a smile threatening to spread across his lips. “Probably not straight, from what I’ve gathered.”

A sudden clap on his shoulder would have made him jump if his leg wasn’t broken already. Tara sounded as though she had just come across an epic epiphany. “I say you go for this heaven-sent dude. Your ‘hot cop’ is definitely hot but last time you said he was straight as a flagpole. Believe me, my friend, pursuing a straight person only ensues heartbreak. Been there, done that.”

Paul was just about to open his mouth when Tara continued, “Tell me, what does he look like? I know looks ain’t important in a relationship but it’s a plus if he happens to be hot right?”

“About that–”

Paul was cut short by the door to his room being opened. Daryl stepped in, pushing a wheelchair in front of him. His black leather jacket slung over his shoulder, he was only wearing his navy blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up his elbows.

“Yer good to go,” he informed, moving toward Paul’s bed. His narrow eyes landed on Tara. “Sorry, ya must be...”

“This is my best friend, Tara Chambler. Tara, this is Daryl Dixon, my roommate...”

He deliberately stressed “roommate” as a reminder. “He’s a detective.”

Tara stared at the cop with rounded eyes for several seconds as shocking realization began to dawn on her. Daryl looked a little confused under her direct stare. “Oh right,” she spoke at last, sounding timid by her rather rude behavior, “Nice to meet you, Detective Dixon.”

She held out her right hand.

“Just Daryl’s fine,” replied Daryl, shaking her hand. “Nice to meet ya.” He turned to Paul and started gathering a few things in the cabinet by his roommate’s bed, which weren’t many, and put them into a small satchel. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah. Can’t wait to get out of the hospital.”

Daryl nodded in silence. Once again Tara watched in awe as he bent down and scooped Paul in his arms as if the young man was a little boy. His muscles flexed under the dark fabric of his shirt and darn, Tara had to admit, she was being momentarily straight.

Carefully, he put Paul on the wheelchair and wheeled him out of the door. Tara followed the two of them to the parking lot.

Once Daryl was done settling Paul on the passenger’s seat, Tara turned to Daryl and said, “Well, I guess I must go now. Thank you so much for taking care of my best friend, Daryl. It’s a pleasure meeting you.”

“It’s no problem,” Daryl said, a bit awkward. Tara took that he was the strong, silent type who could be occasionally socially inept. She also knew that her best friend was a sucker for this type.

Suppressing a chuckle, she gave Paul a meaningful look as she waved her hand. “Get better soon, Jesus. Our class surely misses your ninja tricks.”

...

Not five minutes after they left the hospital in Daryl’s car, Paul’s phone buzzed. He giggled, knowing without glancing at the screen that it could only be Tara.

“THE HELL JESUS? U NEVER TOLD ME UR HOT COP N UR ROOMIE WERE ONE N THE SAME?” Her text, written all in capitals, read.

“Pretty sure ‘hell’ and ‘Jesus’ shouldnt be in the same sentence,” Paul texted back. His giggles got Daryl’s attention, who gave him a questioning look. “Just Tara’s text,” Paul explained.

He got Tara’s reply five seconds later.

“IM RECONSIDERING OUR FRIENDSHIP”

“Dont be. Never said they werent one person either. Wanna give u a surprise”

“U BETTER EXPLAIN NEXT TIME WE MEET!!!”

“Rite rite. But until then plz tell none of our friends”

“FINE”

“Thk u. luv u”

He put a smiley emoticon at the end of the text before sending. Then he put his phone in his pocket.

“Yer friend Tara seemed surprised to see me,” said Daryl once he saw Paul putting away his phone.

“Because you’re hot?”

“Didn’t look like that.”

Paul chuckled. “She just texted me. She didn’t know my crush and my roommate were the same person.”

“Ya didn’t tell her?”

The question came out more like a statement.

Paul shook his head, smiling. “I love Tara, she’s my BFF but she’s tightly weaved into the gossip web at our college. Guess that’s part of being in the department of journalism.”

“Ya don’t want yer friends to know about... us?”

His voice lowered at the last word. Knowing his boyfriend, Paul immediately picked up the sign. “No, it’s not that I’m embarrassed or anything,” he assured. “Quite the opposite actually.” He didn’t realized his own voice went lower as well. “It just... I want to be certain this... thing between us is real, you know, before I tell my friends.”

Daryl frowned. “It’s real.”

Then Paul’s hand was gently squeezed by a larger, callous hand. Daryl’s sharp eyes spoke of earnest when they were fixed on his face. Paul’s chest swelled with emotions and he would definitely kiss him senseless if Daryl wasn’t driving right now. He longed for the moment they got back to their shared apartment just so that he could be affirmed that this thing between them was very much real and happening.

Looking down at his cast, Paul groaned internally. His leg would get in the way and they would have to find a way to get around it.

“What will we have for dinner?” asked Paul, changing the subject.

“We can get pizzas an’ drinks at Glenn’s an’ we can eat while watching that zombie show yer so crazy about in the evening.”

Paul’s eyes lit up at his words like the sky in the fourth of July. He beamed brightly at Daryl, who responded with a tiny smile.

“I can ask for nothing more.”

End