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Daryl began to stir awake to the sound of grunts and labored breathing. His mind was still groggy from sleep and the task of opening his eyes and snapping back to consciousness was only deemed harder by the fact that he was exhausted. Then again, when was he not? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually been able to sleep and rest like God intended. Not even when they had found Alexandria. By then the soft, clean beds of the safe zone had become too foreign to him, his body long accustomed to laying down on hard surfaces, often wet and cold, like the forest’s ground or the prison’s concrete floor.
Daryl was taking too long to wake up and he knew it. Damn it, he should’ve been more alert. If it weren’t for the fact that walkers had become scarce after all this time, this could very well mean he would feel the inevitable and unforgiving teeth of the undead on his skin any moment now. The thought wasn’t enough to force himself to open his eyes. Those aren’t even the sounds walkers make, his mind provided.
The hunter growled and waved his hands around limply to chase away the annoying sounds disturbing his slumber. He was about to roll onto his side when all of a sudden he felt a heavy weight straddling him and starting to rub itself against him; that was enough to make him snap his eyes open. He saw a figure obscured by the sun behind it sitting on top of him and, in a quick reaction, Daryl bucked his hips with a yell, succeeding in throwing the figure off.
The sudden movement made the redneck lose his balance and tumble down the stairs of the back porch he didn’t remember falling asleep on. Daryl heard a high-pitched yelp as whatever-it-was hit the ground hard and he reached for his crossbow - always at arm's length from him - and turned around swiftly to aim.
His body almost relaxed, almost, when he saw Carl on the ground, slowly getting to his hands and knees. His long brown hair obscured most of his face, the sheriff’s hat was turned upside down next to him and his clothes were caked in dirt from the spot on the ground he had landed on.
“The hell are ye doin’?!” Daryl demanded loudly. He was painfully aware he was holding the kid, his best friend’s son, at gunpoint - sorta. If Rick were here, he would've already shut this shit down; he wouldn’t let Daryl aim at Carl, not even if he’d turned. But he still found himself reluctant to stand down; the way he'd woken up had stirred some haunting memories he’d rather keep buried.
The boy didn’t respond, he folded his legs beneath himself and sat on them, keeping his head bowed down. He didn’t even move to grab his damn hat, clenching his fists on his knees instead and leaning forward on his arms, shuddering. Daryl kept his distance, gripping his crossbow tighter, finger hovering at the trigger; he was pissed off, but mostly just confused and shaken up.
“Ey!” he called out again when Carl still wouldn’t acknowledge his presence. “I said, what the hell are ye’ doin’?”
Carl started muttering, quickly, shakily. “‘m sorry, I’m sorry, I-I-I’m s-s-”
Daryl could barely hear him, it was like the boy was talking to the ground. He took a step closer and spoke again. “You jackin’ off, man? Is that it?”
The teen moved his arms to hug himself and just kept apologizing, over and over, like he was not hearing him.
“The hell’s wrong with ye?” Daryl snarled with a frown. He scanned him out from where he was standing and didn’t see any visible trails that he’d been… going at it. Except, of course, for the sounds he’d been making earlier and the obvious frottage.
It made the older man sick and he dropped his bow, kicking the loose dirt beneath him in the kid's direction. “Yer disgusting,” he stated coldly. “Next time ye want to get off, go find a goddamn corpse! But do not ever come near me again.” The hunter spat on the ground and turned to leave.
Carl’s breath hitched and he sputtered at the movement. He wanted to call out to him and he opened his mouth to do so but nothing came out. He snapped his mouth shut and opened it again a couple of times, feeling like a walker as his teeth clattered loudly against each other. He lifted his head a little, just enough to see Daryl’s form walking away from him, and just as he was about to take the first step up the stairs, Carl snapped out of it and rasped out, “t’s not that.”
His own voice was unrecognizable to him.
It was barely above a whisper but Daryl seemed to catch it, as his head snapped to the side. “What’s tha’?” he asked.
Carl swallowed, wanting to speak again before the hunter could shrug him off and leave him out there alone. “I-I-It’s not that.” He repeated in what he hoped was a louder voice. He didn’t know what he would do if Daryl were to turn his back on him now. “I wasn’t… j-jerking off.”
Daryl chuckled humorlessly, obviously still not over the incident, and hung his head, letting his hair fall over his face. His hands came to rest on his hips. “Aw, no? What were ye moanin’ and grindin’ for then?”
The boy choked back a sob and shook his head. “I-It’s not what- what you th-think.” He felt weak, his whole body shaking uncontrollably and his breathing becoming ragged. Carl closed his eye, he had to calm down, this was not helping him and would certainly freak out Daryl more than he already was.
The hunter had not made any move to go back into the house, but he hadn’t checked up on the kid either. These past few years had been rough on the both of them. Since Rick’s death, the two survivors had slowly drifted apart instead of growing closer. Without the glue that had held them all together, it had just inevitably happened. Daryl, slowly but surely, went back to his old ways; his sour, detached attitude from the early days returning. He still looked out for his young companion, but nowadays it was more out of a sense of duty towards his fallen friend than actual concern for his son. Carl, for his part, had retreated into himself. As the threat of walkers and people in general receded, so did he. Turning more into a shell of his former self, the kid became almost mute. Like the hunter, he only spoke when strictly necessary and sometimes not even then.
“Then what is it?” Daryl spoke up. He had been tempted to not reply. He almost hadn’t. If he was honest with himself, it didn’t matter anymore; he was too tired to care.
Carl opened his mouth once more. He knew what he wanted to say, he just didn’t have the words to say it. But he also knew he was trying the hunter’s patience and soon he would run out of it. So Carl made an effort. “I…” he started before getting choked up. The boy took a deep breath and forced himself to look at the redneck. “Daryl, please,” he shuddered and sniffed, hands clenching once more at his sides. “I just n-need you.”
Silence fell between them as the hunter froze. Carl, in turn, held his breath as long as he could. His bloodshot eye was overflowing with tears, his jaw clenched so tight he felt it would pop off any second. He just couldn’t take it anymore. He counted the seconds and let out a gasp when it turned out to be too much to handle. Daryl didn’t move for a long time, he didn’t even turn to look at the shifter, and Carl gave in to hyperventilation. He collapsed on his side and closed his eye, curling in on himself one moment only to uncurl and twist his body around awkwardly the next.
The teen let out a tortured cry and Daryl was snapped out of his trance. He ran and fell to his knees in front of him. Carl’s body was spasming uncontrollably, patches of black and brown fur that the man recognized were from the boy’s animal form were emerging from beneath his skin but disappearing as quickly as they appeared.
Daryl shook his head, taken aback by the turn of events. “Are ye trying to hold it in?” he asked, gruffly. Even after all the years he’d known Rick and his son, he still wasn’t sure how the whole shifter thing worked. But with the way Carl was practically convulsing right now in front of him he came to the conclusion that it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not at all. “How long have ye been doin’ it for?”
Carl let out a broken sob, practically a whine. “I c-c-can’t. I… t-too much.” He wrapped his arms around his head and curled up into a tighter ball.
The older man was at a loss for words. He had no idea what could’ve triggered this. Too late had he become aware that something was wrong at all. He mentally swatted away the self-beating he felt coming in favor of helping the young shifter at his feet. There would be time for mental beatings later.
Daryl got to work. He pulled his knife from its side pocket on his pant leg and quickly tore through the boy’s flannel and gray shirt. Once his back and torso were exposed, he placed both hands on Carl’s body, left on his hip, right on his shoulder. The boy gasped at the contact and sobbed. Daryl shushed him softly, he rubbed his thumb on his back and felt the tension there. He started running his hands up and down the shifter’s back, trying to get him to relax, and occasionally feeling fur instead of skin. Carl seemed to find this soothing as his tightly shut eye softened and his breathing began to slow down.
Daryl noticed and spoke softly, “Man, ye gotta let go.”
Carl whimpered and shook his head the tiniest bit, but the man insisted. “Yer tired, stop fighting it, come on. Ye don’t hafta hold it in anymore.”
At first nothing happened. Daryl kept kneading the kid’s back patiently and soon enough, slowly but surely, Carl’s body stopped shaking and the hunter found himself petting the brown fur of a gray wolf. Although Carl’s wolf form was small and nowhere near the size of other actual wolves Daryl had seen, it was still shocking. The change never ceased to amaze him, no matter how many times he’d seen it.
The hunter noticed how Carl’s breathing had returned to normal during the shift and he smiled. He ruffled the fur on the wolf’s head and moved away to look into the animal’s bright blue eye. “Better?” he asked once they locked gazes. He didn’t expect an answer, knew he wouldn’t get one as long as the kid was on his animal form. Instead, he watched as Carl slowly rose to a sitting position, front legs still shaking slightly.
“What’s the matter, man?” Daryl asked distractedly as he, too, rose to his feet. He started wiping the dust off his pants before moving away from the wolf to retrieve his crossbow, discarded near the back porch stairs. He didn’t notice nor could’ve reacted fast enough as the eighty-something-pound animal suddenly pounced at him and flattened him against the ground.
In a fleeting moment of panic, the hunter’s eyes darted around in frantic search for his weapon and found it out of reach. Daryl cursed inside his mind, All this time outliving dead folk and crazy psychopaths to end up as a crazed shifter’s chow, and wrestled with the wolf as he struggled to turn around, preparing himself to knock the animal out and shoot it as soon as he got his hands on his bow.
He was expecting the pain that would come with the wolf’s fangs sinking into his flesh and tearing it away but was instead surprised that, even though it was indeed a struggle between man and beast, it wasn’t for the reason he thought. The wolf, Carl, as he suddenly recalled, was not trying to maul him; once Daryl stopped struggling he really noticed the shifter’s behavior and began to understand it. The animal was rubbing his body against him. Desperately, but not in that way, Carl had laid down next to Daryl and was currently moving his head up, down, and under the hunter’s calloused hands frantically, small whimpers escaping his snout every now and then.
It was in that moment that what was actually happening hit Daryl like a ton of bricks. He ran his hands all over the kid’s fur, scratching his head, his ears, beneath his chin and fluffing the soft fur of his neck. The human patted the wolf’s side and sank his fingers on the fur, curling them around, and quickly finding his belly to scratch it with both hands. He locked eyes with Carl and saw the tears welled up on his remaining one. Daryl’s own became misty and his vision blurred, he choked back a sob but couldn’t hold the rest of the tears as he gripped the wolf’s neck and back close to him.
Carl melted into Daryl’s touch instantly, he didn’t even find strength to wag his tail in relief. He whimpered and moved in distress when he heard the hunter start to cry next to him. In all the years they’d known each other, he’d never seen nor heard him display such emotion. Daryl held him with an iron grip as he continued his crying but Carl wriggled out of it and started licking the tears off the redneck’s face in an attempt to make him feel better. The kid’s heart ached with each sob that left the older man’s throat and he gave him space to sit up.
Daryl propped himself on his elbows and petted Carl’s head. He sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve, Carl whined softly and rubbed his head against the hunter’s chest and neck. Daryl laughed softly and rubbed his ear before sitting up and hugging the shifter. Burying his face on the animal’s fur, Carl heard him whisper softly.
I’m sorry.
Hours later, both kid and hunter slept soundly undisturbed. On the couch where they had collapsed earlier, Carl, back on human form and fully clothed again, curled up against Daryl, whose hand rested on top of the teen’s head.
Utterly spent, that night they didn’t keep watch; they didn’t stir, nor wake up.
It was their first night, after years, of truly peaceful sleep.
