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The walkers didn’t smell like the proper human dead. It wasn’t a roadkill smell, exactly, but it wasn’t funeral home, either. It didn’t remind Rick of when his father died, and he was a little young for that, and the smell of human body had stuck with him for a long time, something just not right lingering under that powdery funeral home smell.
No, walker smell was different, nastier, and not just because they were rotting godawful things. It was the association. Like when you were at the doctor, smelled rubbing alcohol, and got itchy because you were anticipating that needle. Once your brain got the hang of walker smell correlating with pain and running, that tearing feeling in your lungs, it carried that association.
The rest of them stank too, but that was different. It was almost the opposite kind of association. They all got companionable with a little human stink. After a while, sweat didn’t really smell like anything, and it was soap that started to become foreign.
Walker smell, human smell, grave dirt smell, digging a hole to shit in in the woods smell, blood smell, well you’d think he would have smelled it all by now.
Daryl Dixon was a whole other smell altogether.
Rick had been jammed into the backseat of the truck with him for at least an hour now, with barely room enough to breathe let alone be selective about what you were breathing, and he was trying to isolate all the different things Daryl smelled like, because conversation sure as hell wasn’t happening.
Daryl smelled like Georgia dirt. It was different from Virginia dirt. Less fishy. Rick didn’t know how the hell Daryl managed to smell like Georgia still, maybe he’d stuffed some dirt in his pockets and taken it with him for sentimental reasons, or maybe it just clung in his unwashed clothes. There was that oil he used on his crossbow, which smelled like cinnamon if cinnamon was on fire in a bunch of trash. Wood smoke— but then they both smelled like that.
And not a little bit like soap. Not at all.
He was running out of things to think about that weren’t Daryl’s elbows jamming into his back.
“You think maybe you could move your arms out of the way?”
“No.”
Rick wriggled a little, in the half inch room he had to move. Elbows. “How is that even comfortable?” He demanded.
“It ain't.”
Daryl didn’t say what neither of them had to say, which was that there was no way to make this situation comfortable.
It was a dumbass situation. Rick was almost embarrassed to think about it, would rather tell the group about cuddling up with Daryl than admitting to the string of events that had landed him there. It was only just winter, cold as hell, and they’d thought why not, they were a bunch of badasses, they would go on one last run to find a bunch of useless shit they didn’t need. Rick had had Christmas in mind. Michonne had said something once about scented candles, and he had vivid mental images of presents wrapped in actual wrapping paper and a stocking for Judith that wasn’t just a patched up sock.
“Maybe find some more blankets,” was what he had suggested to Daryl. “Some fuel.”
Daryl wasn’t stupid. He knew what Rick had in mind. Good thing Daryl had a sentimental streak in him too.
They were two men on a mission to get Judith a Christmas stocking.
Trust two men on a mission from Georgia to be blinded by sentiment, miss the chunk of black ice, go off the road, truck through the woods, find a warehouse, find the walkers holed up in that warehouse, do a Benny Hill worthy sprint across a frozen river praying to God it didn’t break under their feet, nearly break his ass slipping and falling on it, find a truck full of welding equipment, fail to start the damn thing, and wedge themselves in and slam the doors shut just in time to miss the shambling hoard.
When you ended up in a truck in a strange part of the countryside, with no map or bearings at all, rapidly losing daylight, and seeing what daylight was left being swallowed by ominous clouds, you could figure you were going to be in that truck for a while.
A long while.
The one plus was that they didn’t have to have the Conversation about body heat, because they were wedged in tight like two sardines.
The cons were literally everything else.
Daryl, who hated confined spaces like a cat hated water, had his arms crossed over his chest like a Dracula. It was the only thing he could do to put up a barrier between them.
“You know,” said Rick. “We never did have the ‘big spoon, little spoon’ discussion.”
Daryl’s glare was boring a hole in the back of his head. He could feel it sizzle.
“I’m just saying. We should talk about it.”
“Ain’t nothing to talk about.”
“Might be stuck in here a while. You really wanna spend all that time in silence?”
Daryl’s silence was his answer.
If Rick had been in a charitable mood, he would have let Daryl be, but he wasn’t feeling too charitable after that fall on the ice. He was growing less charitable with every moment those elbows jabbed him in his already sore back.
“I’m a damn good spoon, you just ask Michonne. Big or little. You’re squandering some good fortune here. Real missed opportunity.”
“I’m good.”
“Y’know, it’s awful cold in here for you to be so frosty.”
“Shut up,” said Daryl, very loudly.
There was a knocking sound, probably just a branch dipping under the weight of snow to tap on the roof of the car, but they both went very still. They listened for the telltale shuffling of walker feet, for nails scraping on the car door. The only sound was their soft and careful breathing. They waited several long minutes.
“Does my hair smell nice?” Rick whispered into the silence.
Daryl grumbled something murderous under his breath.
“I started using Michonne’s shampoo to see if she would notice. So far nothing, but you know what. My hair has never been softer.”
“I’m gonna shoot you and dump your body outside for the walkers.”
“Speaking of shooting—that’d better be your gun digging into my back.”
“What’s it gonna take for you to shut up?” Daryl demanded.
“Get your elbows out of my spine, to start.”
Daryl was silent a long, disgruntled moment, then he pulled his arms out from between them. There really wasn’t anywhere else for them to go but on either side of Rick. They fell into the classic spoon position, and then they fell into awkward silence.
Daryl was stiff as a corpse. Rick, who hadn’t expected to win that round, tried to decide if this was really better than the previous layout. He felt a little guilty. Daryl had his reasons for being prickly; he probably would have been uncomfortable even if it were Carol in Rick’s place. He tried to ease the mood a little.
“That bashed up storefront we passed—could still have something in it. Could double back in the morning.”
“Mm.” Daryl grunted.
“You been thinking about what you’re gonna get Carol for Christmas?”
Daryl gave up a long suffering sigh, which came out all hot at the base of Rick’s neck. Toasty. Uncomfortable.
“Knitting needles.”
Rick, who hadn’t expected Daryl to have an answer, laughed. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Daryl shifted and felt a little less rigid, like the mention of Carol was permission to be comfortable. “If she don’t knit, she can use ‘em on a walker.”
“I don’t think she does,” said Rick. “All this time, you would’ve thought we’d see her at it.” But he thought again. “She is full of surprises, though.”
“Yeah.”
Rick pressed on. He knew the second silence returned, so too would the palpable awkwardness. “If she doesn’t want ‘em I’ll take ‘em.”
Daryl snorted. Another burst of hot air on Rick’s neck.
“I’m serious. Could use another hobby. Keep me sane through the winter. Maybe knit you some socks, keep you in clean clothes.”
“You got a problem with my clothes?”
“Not the clothes, no—just the skunk smell in ‘em.”
“That washed out.”
“Bull—shit. You gonna lie to my face—to the back of my head? This close I can smell what you had for breakfast, can sure as hell smell skunk.”
“You wanna smell somethin’?” demanded Daryl. He struggled against the lack of space to free one arm, and Rick realized in the nick of time that Daryl meant to shove his armpit in his face.
“Jesus christ,” he said, and scrambled for air like a drowning man. The two of them scuffled as much as two men could scuffle in a one-man space in the backseat of a truck. Rick got a good bump to the nose that cleared out his sinuses. He wasn’t sure if it was his arm or Daryl’s that had done it.
There was a skull-sounding thunk, and Daryl swore.
“Mother—fucker.”
He went still with a low groan, and Rick stopped scuffling at him. It was too dark by now to make out what was going on. “You okay?”
“Hit my damn head.”
“You bleeding?”
“Hell if I know.” Daryl’s voice had gone beyond grumpy and was in the territory of sullen. But Rick couldn’t resist.
“Want me to kiss it better?”
They were all twisted up. Rick expected an elbow, or at least another ‘Fuck you’, but instead, he got Daryl’s head, turning and thumping down to rest on his chest.
It took Rick a heartbeat to realize that it hadn’t been an accident and that Daryl meant to stay there.
There was an immediate lump in Rick’s throat. He barely knew where they were in relation to each other, but he knew that any remote solicitation of physical contact with Daryl Dixon was sacred, and he pulled out an arm scraped to hell on welding equipment and put it around him. He rested his face in Daryl’s hair. He could smell Georgia.
He didn’t know what the hell to say. You could always read ’trauma’ plain as day on Daryl, when he let the scowl slip, but the details were always lacking. Not that they mattered. There was nothing to fight back against now. They were just memories, remembered only in these slips of vulnerability.
They all had memories.
Daryl kept his face pressed into Rick’s chest, and Rick thought he might just fall asleep there, until he heard a mumble.
“What’s that?”
Daryl lifted his head long enough to get in one last jab: “You stink, too.”
—
Daryl stayed facedown on his chest the whole night, so he missed it when the sun came up and out from behind a tree to stab through the truck’s back window.
Rick did not miss it. It got him right in the eye.
Forgetting the antics of the previous day, he tried to roll over as if he were still in bed back at Alexandria.
Daryl’s dead weight meant that was not an option.
Rick was sore all over. His nose felt like it was growing a black eye, his arms were all banged up from tussling around in the dark, and he still had the imprints of Daryl’s elbows in his back. The floor of an ancient truck had not made for a comfortable mattress. He felt like an aging son of a bitch.
But at least he was warm.
He dug a hand up in Daryl’s hair, half affectionate, half feeling for crusted blood from a head wound. Daryl grunted into his chest. “We get eaten?” he mumbled. Rick understood him only by virtue of years together. Daryl’s voice was so deep and half asleep, it was just barely language.
“Nope,” said Rick. “Still gotta go Christmas shopping.”
“Le’s just chop down a tree and call it,” grunted Daryl. “Carol doesn’t even knit.”
“Yeah, but I’m gonna. Get up. I want those knitting needles.”
They carefully extricated themselves from each other and then the truck. They immediately ransacked it as they hadn’t had the chance to do the day before, found little of value, and started hefting their things to get back on the road. Daryl marched up an incline to peer out over the horizon looking for landmarks. He pointed. “Looks like we went parallel the river. Should be able to backtrack, find the road easy. That busted up shop had cars out back. Maybe hitch a ride.”
Rick hiked up the hill to stand next to him, squinting. The sunlight glinted off the ice and made it hard to look at.
“Damn I miss Georgia,” muttered Daryl.
Rick squinted over at him. Daryl didn’t look vulnerable, but he didn’t look sunken back into his shell. He was too focused on his objective to remember to be hard. Feeling charitable, Rick reached over to pull Daryl’s head over, and pressed his lips to his dirty hair. Sometimes he thought he missed Georgia, too, but he figured he had a piece of it right here.
He released Daryl, who withdrew slowly, and gave him a look somewhere between embarrassed and confused. Rick only shrugged at him.
“Said I would kiss it better.”