Chapter Text
Rick woke up, back killing him, and the start of a headache forming, right behind his eyes.
He moves a bit as he wakes up properly, remembering the events of last night when he recognises the feeling of sleeping against a tree. That would explain the sore back. Pinching the bridge of his nose with his index finger and thumb, he groans.
Well, he sort of got what he wanted, right?
And he wasn’t dead yet, so Daryl must be around here somewhere.
He opens his eyes, blinking a few times against the light. Sunrise, he realises. How long had he slept? When his eyes adjust, and his vision is clearer, he sees something he was half expecting.
Daryl is sitting only a few feet away from him, cleaning his crossbow, or at least as well as he can. He doesn’t look at Rick, but his movements become a little slower, more hesitant, as Rick watches him.
“You been keeping watch all night?” Rick asks. Regardless, it wouldn’t have been all night, it was already dark by the time he and Daryl had gotten to this place, but Rick wasn’t the biggest fan of the idea that Daryl has had a panic attack, breakdown, share what was probably his most guarded secret, and then proceed to keep watch.
Daryl shrugs, which is as good as a yes.
Rick doesn’t even really remember falling asleep. He remembers staring at the stars, after it was apparent that Daryl wasn’t going to talk anymore, and he remembers thinking to himself that they should go back to where everyone else was, but he doubted that Daryl would want to do that.
And then after that there isn’t really anything.
“Michonne came by, couple hours ago.” Daryl says, but doesn’t offer anything else, and he’s still refusing to even look in Rick’s direction. He’s not cleaning anything anymore, just trying to keep his hands busy, fiddling with his crossbow.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” Rick asks, softly. Daryl’s hands still momentarily, and Rick senses he’s made a mistake. Too softly, it would seem. Noted.
Daryl shrugs again, swallowing. “Need the sleep.”
“So do you.” Rick fires back before he can stop himself. It was pointless, this back and forth, it was a game they’d played countless times before, and somehow Rick always, always, lost.
Rick sighs at the silence he gets in response. Dragging his legs up, and resting his arms on his knees, he looks around. “Why didn’t Michonne wake me up, should have all gone back with her, to the others.”
Daryl briefly looks toward Rick, before going back to fiddling with his crossbow. He shrugs, and Rick can see the start of a smirk appear on the archer’s face.
“She said you need the sleep.”
Rick leans his head back until it’s resting against the tree. How did he always lose at this. Seriously.
“So what? You’ve just been waiting for me to wake up?” Rick asks, staring at the trees above.
Daryl hums something similar to a yes. They were still dancing around the main topic that they should be talking about. Rick takes a deep breath.
“You know we still need to talk about it.” Rick says, trying to keep his voice soft, but not too soft.
When he doesn’t get a reply, he moves his head back down, so he can look at Daryl. The archer is watching him, though it’s more of a looking-through-him than a seeing-him.
“Need to talk about all of it.” He nods towards Daryl.
The archer looks away suddenly and gets to his feet. Picking up his crossbow, he mutters, “Not all of it.”
It’s oh so cautious, and incredibly defensive, and it’s so, completely, Daryl. It’s exactly how Rick should have expected him to respond.
Rick feels like he could have avoided that. God, was he actually just shit at this?
“Come on, you said you wanted to get back, didn’t you?” Daryl calls behind him as he starts walking away. His voice is still defensive, and with the way that Daryl has been avoiding looking at Rick, he feels like he’s losing this particular game before he’s even started playing it.
Fine, Rick thinks as he stands up, if Daryl wanted to be like that, then that was just fine.
But Rick refused to let Daryl not look after himself, and he refused to let Daryl run and hide after finally letting Rick in. Especially with this. They’ve had an unspoken bond since the farm, and Rick wasn’t letting Daryl try and hide when everything was finally starting to click into place. When everything was starting to finally make sense.
He follows after Daryl, both of them walking in silence, until just before they reach the others.
Rick glances towards Daryl, who looked so lost in his own head, that Rick almost wanted to turn back the way they’d come, drag Daryl with him, talk about everything, and finally figure this out.
But he can’t do that, so he settles for something else.
“You’re right. Not all of it. But we do need to talk, and there’s a lot to talk about.”
He continues walking, not looking back at the archer, and catching Michonne’s gaze as he reaches the group. Not everyone was here, so he assumes the others have gone searching for food and water. Smart.
He was glad that they were looking after the group while he was looking after Daryl.
Nobody seems particularly worried about his and Daryl’s departure from last night, so he also assumes that Michonne has either filled them in, or they just had enough trust to not question their whereabouts.
He first goes to Carl, who’s sitting, holding Judith. The little girl has a smile on her face, fingers in her mouth.
“Sorry I disappeared.” Rick says, crouching down to talk to them better.
“It’s alright, I knew you were okay.” Carl says, adjusting his hat. “Is Daryl alright?” He asks, and he’s either far more perceptive than Rick gives him credit for, or he’s awfully good at the guessing game. Maybe a bit of both.
Rick smiles tightly, gently trailing the knuckle of his index finger along Judith’s cheek, as the baby turns to stare up at him happily. “He’s okay.”
“It hurt him a lot, losing Beth. I mean it hurt all of us but, you know.” Carl trails off with certainty.
Rick runs his tongue along his bottom lip, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Yeah. It did.”
He gently presses a kiss to Judith’s head, and his hand lingers on Carl’s shoulder as he stands up. Carl looks up at him, needing to tip his head back more than normal, with his hat on. He gives his son a small smile, before making his way toward Michonne.
“Hey, you.” Michonne speaks up, light, teasing smile on her face.
“Hey yourself.” Rick says, reaching her. He thinks about reiterating the whole ‘You should have woken me up.’ thing, but he knows it’s not going to get him anywhere further than the last time. He always loses those arguments.
“Thanks.” He says instead, hoping it conveys everything he wants it to. After all, Rick isn’t quite sure exactly how long Michonne had stuck around after finding them, and while he’s sure that Daryl wouldn’t have mentioned much about last night, he still doesn’t know what Daryl did mention to her.
Michonne nods in an ‘of course.’ way. “Maggie, Glenn, couple others left earlier. Looking for anything we can use.”
Rick looks around at the others while she talks, making a mental note of who was still here.
“They shouldn’t be long, we just thought we’d do another sweep of the area until you two came back.”
Rick turns back to her. “About that.” He starts, not quite sure what he wants to say, to somehow explain this without actually explaining it.
Michonne grins. “It’s fine.”
“That’s not-” Rick says, fumbling. “We’re not.”
“I didn’t say you were.” Michonne says, far too calm.
Rick sighs, how did he always lose with this. “He’s just.” He’s back to staring at Michonne, not knowing what to say.
“We’re not fucking.” Is what comes out of his mouth, and he instantly wants to throw himself off a cliff. He literally could not have worded that worse.
From behind him, he hears a strangled noise, and turns his head to find Tara sitting on the ground, coughing into her hand.
He points to her. “Don’t repeat that.”
As she gets her breath back, she looks up at him and Michonne, one eye closed against the sunlight.
“Should I be telling people that you are fuck-”
“Don’t say anything. Nothing’s happening.” He holds eye contact with Tara in a way that only parents can pull of, and she raises her hands in a mock surrender.
“You know, the more you’re trying to convince me that nothing happened, the less I’m believing you.” Michonne says with a little laugh, prompting Rick to look back towards her.
“It was just a rough night is all. You know how it can get, ‘specially with him.” Even thinking about the possibility of sex, in the same context as anything that happened last night, makes Rick feel uneasy. “Not that he’d want me telling you that.”
They must hear the truthfulness in his voice because Michonne tilts her head sympathetically. He hears Tara move around, as she stands up.
“Well, if he ever feels comfortable enough to let the rest of us in, then I’m here for him, at least.” Tara says, rubbing gravel off of her jeans. “And even though you’re not fu-”
“Tara.” Rick warns, again, only in the way a parent was capable of.
“Right. Just letting you know that if you ever were, then that would be fine too, you know?”
Rick reaches out and squeezes her shoulder in thanks. Not that he was planning on sharing, but he certainly wasn’t a stranger to that sort of thing.
He glances around, watching as Abraham reties his shoelaces, and Tara goes to help Noah stand up. Eventually his eyes find Daryl, who’s sitting with his arms resting on top of his bent legs, next to Carol.
They’re having a quiet conversation, though they’re too far away for Rick to hear any of it, and he hasn’t figured out how to lip read Daryl’s mumbling yet. Before he can make another stupid decision, he hears a rustling noise, and soft voices. He looks to his left, to the other side of the road, and watches as Maggie appears first.
As the others follow out after her, Rick speaks up, addressing everyone.
“We’re gonna start moving again, everyone alright with that?” He gets a few nods of agreement, and other people taking it as their cue to stand up, in response.
So they start walking again. Tonight, or maybe tomorrow night, or maybe just whenever he’s sure that Daryl won’t push him away, that’s when he’ll ask to talk about it all.
And until then, he will compile a list of everything that he knows, and everything that he thinks he knows, and he will think about every time he has noticed something un-Daryl like. He will think of every instance in the list of ‘odd things Daryl does’ and he will try to fill in the blanks himself.
This wasn’t a game he was willing to lose.