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Title: First Taste of Love, Bittersweet (1/6)
Fandom: The Walking Dead (TV)
Pairing: Rick / Daryl
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3870 (25000 total)
Summary: “You have to promise to come back,” Rick says. He is not crying, he is not. Though no one could blame him if he was, because he knows ‘moving away’ means his bestest friend will be gone forever. “Pinky-promise!”
“Pinky promises are for babies,” Daryl sniffs. “We gotta seal the deal with somethin’ else.”
A/N: Written for the RWG February 2016 Challenge, with the theme of “Firsts”. Title from Deana Carter’s Strawberry Wine. I imagine Rick to be about five years old at the start of this fic, and Daryl around seven or eight. The lovely![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
legolastariel has also directed me to a graphic of how they might look at such an age, which can be seen here.
~
The words ‘first official day of summer vacation’ don’t mean much to Rick, considering he’s only been in and out of various kindergartens his parents wanted to try, and he won’t start first grade until fall. So every day to him is summer vacation.
His sister Robin doesn’t see it that way, of course.
“You,” Robin declares, as she stares down at Rick, “are too small to take anywhere.” She crosses her arms over her chest, and jerks a nod at the playground she’s walked him to. “You’re gonna have to stay here while I meet my friends.”
This is totally unfair, because Rick comes up to her elbow if he strains his neck really hard, and he’s pretty sure the rollerskating rink Robin’s ditching him for has skates in his size too.
“Mama said you’re supposed to watch me while you hang out with your friends,” says Rick. He wrinkles his nose at the thought though, because all Robin and her friends talk about when they come over is makeup and boys and who’s hot on TV. The thought of a whole afternoon with them, even if there are soda pops involved, makes something inside him cringe.
Yes, the playground here’s starting to look like the best alternative.
“Mom won’t know,” Robin says nastily, “and you’re not gonna tell her.” She smacks a fist into her palm with a meaty thwack, a clear sign of tell, and you’ll be sorry.
Rick blinks, undeterred. He knows what that fist-palm motion means, and it really just translates into a nasty pinch from under the dinner table, and he can withstand that if there’s a far greater reward to be had here. “What’ll you give me?” he says instead, standing his ground.
“Are you serious?” Robin says, her mouth dropping open. As if she can’t believe her little brother’s learned the art of extortion. When Rick simply stands there, blinking up at her with wide, blue eyes, she sighs, impatient, with a quick glance at her watch. “Okay,” she says, giving in. Huffs hard enough to shift the chestnut curls on her brow. “Okay. I’ll give you…”
She rifles through her pocket and pulls out a tube of old Lip Smacker that she keeps for the tasty strawberry smell, a tube of real lipstick she swiped from their mom, a piece of gum, and a couple slips of crumpled paper. “This.” Robin hands him a crumpled dollar bill, from her small stash of pocket money. “Here.”
Rick knows from experience that this is called hush money, but before he can barter his way through more of her goods—the strawberry Lip Smacker tube being his prime target—Robin waves, already backing out of the playground lot and onto the grassy school field.
“I’ll be back at dinnertime to pick you up,” she calls, before taking off through the gap in the wire fence. “So you better be here!”
With a sigh, Rick stares at the crumpled dollar bill in his hand, before tucking it into the pocket of his denim overalls. He’s not sure what he can do with it, since there aren’t any shops nearby and he’s not allowed to cross the street by himself yet. But there are a few things to do on the playground, so he decides he’ll make the most of that.
There’s no one fighting for the swings at the moment, so Rick struggles his way onto one—popping one of the buttons on his overalls with the effort, until one of the straps hangs down, a sad, flapping thing—and plants himself firmly on the seat. Tries to swing himself, but only manages to rock up a feeble arc, because his legs are too short to touch the ground and the bigger kids have kicked away all the gravel he can dig his toes into.
Rick looks around the playground for someone who might be able to help him, but the only kids around are shorter than him, and he’ll probably bowl them over if they give him a push, anyway. And the moms hanging around the fringes of the playground with their baby strollers? They aren’t going to leave their babies unattended to give him a push. So there’s really no one else.
Well—that’s not quite true.
There are a group of boys circling the bike racks, all seated on fancy, shiny road bikes. And they’re all older and taller than Rick—taller than his sister, even—though Rick’s not sure they’ll be able to hear him call over the ruckus they’re making. It sounds like they’re teasing someone, taunting, but Rick can’t make it out from so far away.
After a moment, they all laugh, a terrible, jeering sound, and ride away, along with any of Rick’s chances of getting a push on his swing. Except when the cloud of dust they’ve kicked up settles, Rick can just about make out the outline of a boy, left behind, unable to catch up to his friends because he doesn’t have a bike of his own.
Since Rick doesn’t have a bike either, and he’s half-moored on the swings anyway, the only option he has is to gape at the boy who’s been left in the cloud of his friends’ dust.
The boy scowls at him and stuffs his hands in his pockets, his jeans and ragged T-shirt far too big for his scrawny frame. “What’re you starin’ at, pipsqueak?” he hollers.
Rick would scuff his sneaker into the ground, kicking up dirt in a way that looked cool, if his legs were long enough to touch the ground. As it is, all he manages to do is scuff his sneakers against each other, the Velcro strips making a soft burrr noise.
“Can you give me a push?” Rick asks. He has to gather every ounce of his courage to keep his gaze steady and look the boy in the eye. “Please? Just one’s enough!” One will be more than enough to get Rick going, especially if he can keep the momentum from the first push going.
“What’s in it for me?” the boy says. He slinks closer, narrowing his eyes, suspicious.
Rick thinks for a moment, and reaches into his shoe, where he keeps all of his prized possessions, because his shoe is the last place Robin looks when she wants to take anything of his. “I got this bubblegum,” he says, holding it out. Like it’s some kind of peace offering. “You can have it.”
The boy shuffles closer, inspecting the bubblegum in Rick’s palm, its wrapper half-melted into the candy itself. He must decide it passes muster somehow, because he slaps his hand against Rick’s to shake on it. “Deal,” he declares solemnly, making the bubblegum disappear into his overgrown sleeve.
For a moment, Rick’s afraid that the boy will simply run off with his treasure and leave him stranded at the swings. But then the boy’s making sure Rick’s firmly planted on the swing, that he’s holding on tightly enough, and there’s a breathy are you ready, before Rick feels himself being lifted into the air.
“Yes!” Rick calls out. There’s a gentle push at his back, which is nice, because Robin usually shoves him so hard Rick falls out of the seat and onto the gravel, where he has to bite his lip and try not to cry. But this—this is different.
There’s another push, harder this time. Rick can feel himself building momentum with each arc of the swing along its frame, and it’s not long before he’s sailing through the air, letting out a whoop of joy, wild and free as the wind gusts through his hair, because he feels like he’s flying which is fantastic.
The boy stands to the side and watches Rick swing back and forth for a little while, and when Rick’s had enough of flying, he shakes his head when his new friend makes to come forward and give him another push.
“Let’s do somethin’ else,” Rick says, struggling to slow the swing down. His feet dangle uselessly in the air, and Rick is more than grateful when his friend catches the chains to slow his arc, and helps him off the swing. It’s far better than taking an ungraceful monkey leap off the swing and scraping his hands and knees when he lands.
“What do you wanna do?”
Rick cycles quickly through jump on the bridge, climb up the rope ladder, or some variation of play with the slides, before deciding that there’s something else he should say first. Something that’s far more important than what they’re going to do next. “My name’s Rick,” he says breathlessly as he stumbles away from the swing, his eyes bright. “What’s yours?”
He’d wanted to ask earlier, but his instincts told him that it was safer to make one exchange at a time. Bubblegum for a swing push. A name for a name. Careful negotiation with no fast movements, the same approach he’d had to take when convincing the skittish little hamster from kindergarten class to nuzzle into his hand. And since he’s really got a chance to look now, Rick takes in more details of his new friend, and what he sees surprises him.
His friend’s grey shirt looks old and faded, like it’s been washed a million times, and his jeans are torn in several places, loose white threads hanging from the knees and at the cuffs, where they look like they’ve been trimmed to fit; in fact, the only thing that seems to actually fit is the small black vest that sits across his shoulders, though even that hangs below his waist, like it was meant for someone older, someone bigger. But what surprises Rick is how none of that dims the brightness of his friend’s eyes, blue as the sky above them, or his hair, a burnt-caramel brown that turns a lovely butter-yellow when the sun strikes it just right. His lashes, cornsilk-fine against his cheeks.
There is no other word for it, Rick decides—his new friend is very, very pretty.
“What’s yours?” Rick asks again, when no answer is forthcoming. Reaches out to poke the boy in the belly, to bring him out of his self-induced trance.
The boy startles with a jolt and stares at Rick, like no one’s ever asked him before, or ever cared, and this time it’s him who scuffs a toe into the ground. “I’m Daryl,” he says finally.
Rick approaches slowly, and reaches his tiny hand into Daryl’s overgrown sleeve, until he’s found another hand inside, soft and surprisingly warm, and shakes it. “Nice to meet you!” he beams, something his parents have taught him to say, in preparation for first grade. Apparently these are niceties he’ll have to know if he wants to make it anywhere, his dad says.
Daryl nods, swallowing hard, like he still hasn’t gotten over his initial surprise. “Yeah,” he says. “Um. Same.”
Rick’s nods back and keeps on beaming, delighted at how Daryl doesn’t tower over him, or look down at him like his sister and so many others, since he’s only about a head taller than Rick
Yes, Rick decides. Daryl is just the right height. In fact, Daryl is just the right everything, because he listens when Rick talks, doesn’t call him a baby like Robin does, and Rick senses an odd sort of kindness to everything Daryl does, even if one can’t tell it at first glance.
Daryl’s the first one to break the silence between them in the end, though he doesn’t break their contact, like he’s not sure when it’s appropriate to let go after shaking hands. “So,” he says, “we gonna play another game now? Or just stare at each other all day?”
Rick’s face breaks into an even wider grin. “Come on,” he says, tugging Daryl along with him, as he points to the far end of the playground. “I’ll race you to the slides!”
~
They end up playing a few rounds of tag afterward, though Rick has to stop once, to inform Daryl crossly that taking off his shoe and beaning Rick with it from across the playground does not count, which earns him a rather sullen sorry. Then Daryl comes up with the idea of climbing their way across the playground without touching the ground once, and they make a game of it, pretending the gravel is a deep sea all around them, and the sea is full of piranhas.
It’s a new, exciting kind of fun, because Rick’s played Floor Is Lava with Robin and her friends, but he’s never played Sea is Piranha.
Rick’s toe dips into the treacherous sea at one point in time, when he misses a rung on the monkey bars and Daryl has to haul him back into the safety of their ‘ship’. “That didn’t count,” says Rick, his mouth curled into the tiniest pout. “I was only in the water for a second!”
But Daryl won’t have any of Rick’s excuses. “Tell that to the piranhas,” he says, trying to hide a grin and failing. “They’ve probably eaten half your leg by now.”
Before they know it, the hours have run down, and the sun’s starting to set, the sky overhead cast with clouds the deep purple of plums, rich and ripe and dark. Rick hazards a glance at the Mickey Mouse watch his parents gave him, the one with Mickey’s arms for minute and hour hands, and squints hard. Like if he only stares at it with one eye, then the other, then the time won’t be as late as it is.
“It’s almost dinnertime,” Rick announces, frowning, when no amount of squinting or different combinations of looking at his watch have an effect on the time.
“So?” Daryl says, lounging on top of the monkey bars, lazy. He’s found a way to swing himself up top and sit there like he’s lord of the mountain, though he doesn’t seem to mind sharing that lordship with Rick sometimes.
“So, my sister’s gonna be comin’ by to pick me up,” says Rick, with a great and heavy sigh. Because any moment now, Robin will be arriving to spoil their fun.
As if on cue, Robin’s shrill voice rings out from across the playground. “Rick!” she calls. “Time to go home!”
At Daryl’s questioning look, Rick nods. “That’s my sister,” he says, making a face.
“Gross,” Daryl says, nodding, like he knows the same misery. And before Rick can ask you got a sister too? Daryl wrinkles his nose. “I got a brother. Same thing.” He thinks for a moment. “Sorta.”
“Rick!” Robin’s voice is sharper this time, more panicked, and Rick knows she means business now. If he doesn’t appear, then she’s probably going to run home and tell their parents, and they’ll both be in a world of pain.
“Same time tomorrow?” Rick says, hopeful. He has more ideas of games they could play, and if he can borrow some of his dad’s old baseball gear, they can have a whole afternoon of fun.
“Can’t promise anythin’,” Daryl says, frowning. “But I’ll try.”
An I’ll try is good enough for Rick for now, and as he makes a kamikaze leap from the monkey bars, bounding off to meet with Robin, he waves back with a cheery, “See you tomorrow!”
Daryl waves back with a quieter bye, as he’s left sitting on the monkey bars by himself.
And even when Rick and Robin turn the corner and he can’t see Daryl anymore, Rick just keeps on waving, because he knows Daryl is still waving too.
~
The next day, after Robin drops Rick off at the playground to meet her friends at the mall, he finds Daryl already waiting for him at the swings.
“Daryl!” Rick calls, his small satchel of baseball gear bouncing behind him as he runs toward the swings. “Daryl!”
“Hey,” says Daryl. He lets the swing unwind from where he’s twisted the chains and spins in a loose circle, which of course Rick has to try too, because it looks so cool.
So once Daryl’s ensured that Rick’s safely planted on the swing seat, he takes hold of Rick and digs his feet into the gravel. Moves in a compact circle, the chains above creaking and groaning as they twist, coiling tighter and tighter as Daryl goes. And then he lets go.
“Faster!” Rick cries, delighted, spinning like a top as the swing unwinds. This isn’t flying, but it’s a new kind of thrill, the wind buzzing in his ears as the world blurs into a haze of color around him. “Faster!”
Except Rick ends up feeling rather dizzy and his stomach hurts after the swing’s finished rotating, so he has to lean against Daryl when he gets off, or risk throwing up his lunch in the bin nearby. They decide that swing-spinning will not be part of their daily activities right after eating.
“Ain’t much sense in throwin’ up a perfectly good lunch,” Daryl nods sagely. As if he’s imparting some wisdom of the ages.
“Urk,” Rick agrees, brow scrunched in pain, holding his belly with one hand and onto Daryl with the other, to steady himself.
Daryl suggests that they scratch some X’s and O’s into the sandbox nearby for a while. Play a few games of Tic Tac Toe while they wait for Rick to feel better, since the official plastic tiles are being used by toddlers, who paw mindlessly at the tiles, simply delighted to see them turn different colors on each side. There are red X’s, green O’s, and blue triangles, the last of which neither Rick nor Daryl can figure out the purpose of.
“They don’t even know how to play,” Rick says, with a great disdain that he’s picked up from Daryl, as they watch the toddler invasion before them. With the number of them swarming around today, it’s hard to make up and play the games they want to.
“Yeah, well, they’re babies,” Daryl shrugs, as if that explains everything. Despite his own contempt for the happily drooling toddlers stumbling around wrecking everything, he’s never called Rick a baby, which Rick is entirely too grateful for.
When Rick decides that he can stand up without falling down again, he breaks out the worn-out baseball gloves his dad lent him, to ‘play with Robin and her friends’. Daryl tosses the beat-up baseball Rick hands him in the air, and though it takes him a moment to get used to the idea of playing with one—like no one’s ever bothered to explain the concept of baseball or catch to him—they spend the afternoon playing catch until it’s almost too dark to see anymore.
“I know another good game,” Daryl says, when they’ve worn themselves out throwing the ball back and forth, pretending they’re famous major leaguers. He points at the slides they’d raced to the day before, and spent time running up and sliding back down on, as he ducks into the grass. By now, the toddler swarm has cleared out, leaving the playground a paradise entirely their own.
“We did the slides yesterday,” says Rick. He hunkers down next to Daryl, not sure why they’re whispering and hiding in the grass, but decides it must be part of the game Daryl’s dreamed up.
As it turns out, Daryl’s idea is to pretend they’re soldiers who’ve been captured as prisoners, and have to sneak out of an enemy camp. When they get to the base of the slides, one of the soldiers has to carry his wounded companion up the slide-mountain to safety, so they can make it back to their own camp.
“But you gotta be really good at climbing the slide, because it’s so slippery,” Daryl adds. “Like a mountain sherpa.”
Rick nods, making sure to memorize every detail of this mission. Being a secret-soldier-mountain-sherpa sounds hard, but he’s sure with Daryl there, they’ll be able to make it back to their camp in no time.
The first thing they discover, after slithering their way to the slides, is that Rick makes a terrible secret-soldier-mountain-sherpa.
He can’t really bear Daryl’s weight, and even with Daryl ‘helping’, his feet dangling just enough to hold himself up, Rick ends up making it only three steps up the slide before the two of them slide back down, Rick’s hands clawing at empty air and his sneakers scrabbling for purchase on the metal slide.
“You’re crap at this,” Daryl says, not mincing words as usual. He’s dusting off his jeans now, because this is the fifth time they’ve fallen down the slide. “I’ll be thinkin’ twice before I count on you to rescue me.”
Rick sucks his lower lip in between teeth, willing it not to tremble, because he’s not a soft jelly baby that cries all the time, despite what Robin says. It turns out that he doesn’t need to put up such a front for long, though, because Daryl just rolls his eyes and beckons Rick over. “Here, let me try.”
So Rick climbs onto Daryl’s back and winds his arms around Daryl’s neck, his legs curled tightly over Daryl’s waist. Very carefully lets himself go limp, like a dead weight.
Daryl nearly makes it to the top of the slide, before his shoe catches on one of the metal bolts on the side, and they end up tumbling to the base of the slide again, a tangle of arms and legs and giggles.
“You almost did it!” Rick says, his eyes shining, as he pats Daryl on the back. “If it hadn’t been for that bolt, we coulda been back at camp already!” He makes sure to glower at the cursed bolt, for Daryl’s sake, before beaming in Daryl’s direction again.
Daryl frowns. “Almost don’t count,” he says, his expression darkening, like he’s too used to a series of almosts and coulda beens in his life.
Before they can try again though, because Rick is so sure they can ‘make it back to camp’ on their slide-mountain, Robin comes calling again. She’s got some shopping bags slung low on one arm that Rick knows she’s going to make him carry, but he finds he doesn’t mind—it’s a small price to pay, after the day of fun he’s had.
“Same time tomorrow?” Rick asks, before he scrambles to meet Robin on the other side of the playground. He draws in a deep breath and holds it, watching Daryl, waiting.
Daryl hesitates this time, and though he doesn’t beam brightly back, the tiny half-smile he finally offers Rick is enough.
“Same time tomorrow,” Daryl nods firmly.
Rick lets all the air escape his lungs at once, a giant breath of relief. “Great!”
And as Rick waves his goodbyes and turns from the playground, he’s got a bounce in his step and a song in his heart, because he’s got stuff to look forward to, and things to dream up. The song is one he’d heard from the musical his sister’s class put on at last year’s showcase, and fragments of it return now, like those from a long-forgotten dream.
Tomorrow, tomorrow—you’re only a day away!
(tbc - Chapter 2)
End Notes:
- The song in Rick’s heart is Tomorrow from the musical Annie.
Fandom: The Walking Dead (TV)
Pairing: Rick / Daryl
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3870 (25000 total)
Summary: “You have to promise to come back,” Rick says. He is not crying, he is not. Though no one could blame him if he was, because he knows ‘moving away’ means his bestest friend will be gone forever. “Pinky-promise!”
“Pinky promises are for babies,” Daryl sniffs. “We gotta seal the deal with somethin’ else.”
A/N: Written for the RWG February 2016 Challenge, with the theme of “Firsts”. Title from Deana Carter’s Strawberry Wine. I imagine Rick to be about five years old at the start of this fic, and Daryl around seven or eight. The lovely
legolastariel has also directed me to a graphic of how they might look at such an age, which can be seen here.The words ‘first official day of summer vacation’ don’t mean much to Rick, considering he’s only been in and out of various kindergartens his parents wanted to try, and he won’t start first grade until fall. So every day to him is summer vacation.
His sister Robin doesn’t see it that way, of course.
“You,” Robin declares, as she stares down at Rick, “are too small to take anywhere.” She crosses her arms over her chest, and jerks a nod at the playground she’s walked him to. “You’re gonna have to stay here while I meet my friends.”
This is totally unfair, because Rick comes up to her elbow if he strains his neck really hard, and he’s pretty sure the rollerskating rink Robin’s ditching him for has skates in his size too.
“Mama said you’re supposed to watch me while you hang out with your friends,” says Rick. He wrinkles his nose at the thought though, because all Robin and her friends talk about when they come over is makeup and boys and who’s hot on TV. The thought of a whole afternoon with them, even if there are soda pops involved, makes something inside him cringe.
Yes, the playground here’s starting to look like the best alternative.
“Mom won’t know,” Robin says nastily, “and you’re not gonna tell her.” She smacks a fist into her palm with a meaty thwack, a clear sign of tell, and you’ll be sorry.
Rick blinks, undeterred. He knows what that fist-palm motion means, and it really just translates into a nasty pinch from under the dinner table, and he can withstand that if there’s a far greater reward to be had here. “What’ll you give me?” he says instead, standing his ground.
“Are you serious?” Robin says, her mouth dropping open. As if she can’t believe her little brother’s learned the art of extortion. When Rick simply stands there, blinking up at her with wide, blue eyes, she sighs, impatient, with a quick glance at her watch. “Okay,” she says, giving in. Huffs hard enough to shift the chestnut curls on her brow. “Okay. I’ll give you…”
She rifles through her pocket and pulls out a tube of old Lip Smacker that she keeps for the tasty strawberry smell, a tube of real lipstick she swiped from their mom, a piece of gum, and a couple slips of crumpled paper. “This.” Robin hands him a crumpled dollar bill, from her small stash of pocket money. “Here.”
Rick knows from experience that this is called hush money, but before he can barter his way through more of her goods—the strawberry Lip Smacker tube being his prime target—Robin waves, already backing out of the playground lot and onto the grassy school field.
“I’ll be back at dinnertime to pick you up,” she calls, before taking off through the gap in the wire fence. “So you better be here!”
With a sigh, Rick stares at the crumpled dollar bill in his hand, before tucking it into the pocket of his denim overalls. He’s not sure what he can do with it, since there aren’t any shops nearby and he’s not allowed to cross the street by himself yet. But there are a few things to do on the playground, so he decides he’ll make the most of that.
There’s no one fighting for the swings at the moment, so Rick struggles his way onto one—popping one of the buttons on his overalls with the effort, until one of the straps hangs down, a sad, flapping thing—and plants himself firmly on the seat. Tries to swing himself, but only manages to rock up a feeble arc, because his legs are too short to touch the ground and the bigger kids have kicked away all the gravel he can dig his toes into.
Rick looks around the playground for someone who might be able to help him, but the only kids around are shorter than him, and he’ll probably bowl them over if they give him a push, anyway. And the moms hanging around the fringes of the playground with their baby strollers? They aren’t going to leave their babies unattended to give him a push. So there’s really no one else.
Well—that’s not quite true.
There are a group of boys circling the bike racks, all seated on fancy, shiny road bikes. And they’re all older and taller than Rick—taller than his sister, even—though Rick’s not sure they’ll be able to hear him call over the ruckus they’re making. It sounds like they’re teasing someone, taunting, but Rick can’t make it out from so far away.
After a moment, they all laugh, a terrible, jeering sound, and ride away, along with any of Rick’s chances of getting a push on his swing. Except when the cloud of dust they’ve kicked up settles, Rick can just about make out the outline of a boy, left behind, unable to catch up to his friends because he doesn’t have a bike of his own.
Since Rick doesn’t have a bike either, and he’s half-moored on the swings anyway, the only option he has is to gape at the boy who’s been left in the cloud of his friends’ dust.
The boy scowls at him and stuffs his hands in his pockets, his jeans and ragged T-shirt far too big for his scrawny frame. “What’re you starin’ at, pipsqueak?” he hollers.
Rick would scuff his sneaker into the ground, kicking up dirt in a way that looked cool, if his legs were long enough to touch the ground. As it is, all he manages to do is scuff his sneakers against each other, the Velcro strips making a soft burrr noise.
“Can you give me a push?” Rick asks. He has to gather every ounce of his courage to keep his gaze steady and look the boy in the eye. “Please? Just one’s enough!” One will be more than enough to get Rick going, especially if he can keep the momentum from the first push going.
“What’s in it for me?” the boy says. He slinks closer, narrowing his eyes, suspicious.
Rick thinks for a moment, and reaches into his shoe, where he keeps all of his prized possessions, because his shoe is the last place Robin looks when she wants to take anything of his. “I got this bubblegum,” he says, holding it out. Like it’s some kind of peace offering. “You can have it.”
The boy shuffles closer, inspecting the bubblegum in Rick’s palm, its wrapper half-melted into the candy itself. He must decide it passes muster somehow, because he slaps his hand against Rick’s to shake on it. “Deal,” he declares solemnly, making the bubblegum disappear into his overgrown sleeve.
For a moment, Rick’s afraid that the boy will simply run off with his treasure and leave him stranded at the swings. But then the boy’s making sure Rick’s firmly planted on the swing, that he’s holding on tightly enough, and there’s a breathy are you ready, before Rick feels himself being lifted into the air.
“Yes!” Rick calls out. There’s a gentle push at his back, which is nice, because Robin usually shoves him so hard Rick falls out of the seat and onto the gravel, where he has to bite his lip and try not to cry. But this—this is different.
There’s another push, harder this time. Rick can feel himself building momentum with each arc of the swing along its frame, and it’s not long before he’s sailing through the air, letting out a whoop of joy, wild and free as the wind gusts through his hair, because he feels like he’s flying which is fantastic.
The boy stands to the side and watches Rick swing back and forth for a little while, and when Rick’s had enough of flying, he shakes his head when his new friend makes to come forward and give him another push.
“Let’s do somethin’ else,” Rick says, struggling to slow the swing down. His feet dangle uselessly in the air, and Rick is more than grateful when his friend catches the chains to slow his arc, and helps him off the swing. It’s far better than taking an ungraceful monkey leap off the swing and scraping his hands and knees when he lands.
“What do you wanna do?”
Rick cycles quickly through jump on the bridge, climb up the rope ladder, or some variation of play with the slides, before deciding that there’s something else he should say first. Something that’s far more important than what they’re going to do next. “My name’s Rick,” he says breathlessly as he stumbles away from the swing, his eyes bright. “What’s yours?”
He’d wanted to ask earlier, but his instincts told him that it was safer to make one exchange at a time. Bubblegum for a swing push. A name for a name. Careful negotiation with no fast movements, the same approach he’d had to take when convincing the skittish little hamster from kindergarten class to nuzzle into his hand. And since he’s really got a chance to look now, Rick takes in more details of his new friend, and what he sees surprises him.
His friend’s grey shirt looks old and faded, like it’s been washed a million times, and his jeans are torn in several places, loose white threads hanging from the knees and at the cuffs, where they look like they’ve been trimmed to fit; in fact, the only thing that seems to actually fit is the small black vest that sits across his shoulders, though even that hangs below his waist, like it was meant for someone older, someone bigger. But what surprises Rick is how none of that dims the brightness of his friend’s eyes, blue as the sky above them, or his hair, a burnt-caramel brown that turns a lovely butter-yellow when the sun strikes it just right. His lashes, cornsilk-fine against his cheeks.
There is no other word for it, Rick decides—his new friend is very, very pretty.
“What’s yours?” Rick asks again, when no answer is forthcoming. Reaches out to poke the boy in the belly, to bring him out of his self-induced trance.
The boy startles with a jolt and stares at Rick, like no one’s ever asked him before, or ever cared, and this time it’s him who scuffs a toe into the ground. “I’m Daryl,” he says finally.
Rick approaches slowly, and reaches his tiny hand into Daryl’s overgrown sleeve, until he’s found another hand inside, soft and surprisingly warm, and shakes it. “Nice to meet you!” he beams, something his parents have taught him to say, in preparation for first grade. Apparently these are niceties he’ll have to know if he wants to make it anywhere, his dad says.
Daryl nods, swallowing hard, like he still hasn’t gotten over his initial surprise. “Yeah,” he says. “Um. Same.”
Rick’s nods back and keeps on beaming, delighted at how Daryl doesn’t tower over him, or look down at him like his sister and so many others, since he’s only about a head taller than Rick
Yes, Rick decides. Daryl is just the right height. In fact, Daryl is just the right everything, because he listens when Rick talks, doesn’t call him a baby like Robin does, and Rick senses an odd sort of kindness to everything Daryl does, even if one can’t tell it at first glance.
Daryl’s the first one to break the silence between them in the end, though he doesn’t break their contact, like he’s not sure when it’s appropriate to let go after shaking hands. “So,” he says, “we gonna play another game now? Or just stare at each other all day?”
Rick’s face breaks into an even wider grin. “Come on,” he says, tugging Daryl along with him, as he points to the far end of the playground. “I’ll race you to the slides!”
They end up playing a few rounds of tag afterward, though Rick has to stop once, to inform Daryl crossly that taking off his shoe and beaning Rick with it from across the playground does not count, which earns him a rather sullen sorry. Then Daryl comes up with the idea of climbing their way across the playground without touching the ground once, and they make a game of it, pretending the gravel is a deep sea all around them, and the sea is full of piranhas.
It’s a new, exciting kind of fun, because Rick’s played Floor Is Lava with Robin and her friends, but he’s never played Sea is Piranha.
Rick’s toe dips into the treacherous sea at one point in time, when he misses a rung on the monkey bars and Daryl has to haul him back into the safety of their ‘ship’. “That didn’t count,” says Rick, his mouth curled into the tiniest pout. “I was only in the water for a second!”
But Daryl won’t have any of Rick’s excuses. “Tell that to the piranhas,” he says, trying to hide a grin and failing. “They’ve probably eaten half your leg by now.”
Before they know it, the hours have run down, and the sun’s starting to set, the sky overhead cast with clouds the deep purple of plums, rich and ripe and dark. Rick hazards a glance at the Mickey Mouse watch his parents gave him, the one with Mickey’s arms for minute and hour hands, and squints hard. Like if he only stares at it with one eye, then the other, then the time won’t be as late as it is.
“It’s almost dinnertime,” Rick announces, frowning, when no amount of squinting or different combinations of looking at his watch have an effect on the time.
“So?” Daryl says, lounging on top of the monkey bars, lazy. He’s found a way to swing himself up top and sit there like he’s lord of the mountain, though he doesn’t seem to mind sharing that lordship with Rick sometimes.
“So, my sister’s gonna be comin’ by to pick me up,” says Rick, with a great and heavy sigh. Because any moment now, Robin will be arriving to spoil their fun.
As if on cue, Robin’s shrill voice rings out from across the playground. “Rick!” she calls. “Time to go home!”
At Daryl’s questioning look, Rick nods. “That’s my sister,” he says, making a face.
“Gross,” Daryl says, nodding, like he knows the same misery. And before Rick can ask you got a sister too? Daryl wrinkles his nose. “I got a brother. Same thing.” He thinks for a moment. “Sorta.”
“Rick!” Robin’s voice is sharper this time, more panicked, and Rick knows she means business now. If he doesn’t appear, then she’s probably going to run home and tell their parents, and they’ll both be in a world of pain.
“Same time tomorrow?” Rick says, hopeful. He has more ideas of games they could play, and if he can borrow some of his dad’s old baseball gear, they can have a whole afternoon of fun.
“Can’t promise anythin’,” Daryl says, frowning. “But I’ll try.”
An I’ll try is good enough for Rick for now, and as he makes a kamikaze leap from the monkey bars, bounding off to meet with Robin, he waves back with a cheery, “See you tomorrow!”
Daryl waves back with a quieter bye, as he’s left sitting on the monkey bars by himself.
And even when Rick and Robin turn the corner and he can’t see Daryl anymore, Rick just keeps on waving, because he knows Daryl is still waving too.
The next day, after Robin drops Rick off at the playground to meet her friends at the mall, he finds Daryl already waiting for him at the swings.
“Daryl!” Rick calls, his small satchel of baseball gear bouncing behind him as he runs toward the swings. “Daryl!”
“Hey,” says Daryl. He lets the swing unwind from where he’s twisted the chains and spins in a loose circle, which of course Rick has to try too, because it looks so cool.
So once Daryl’s ensured that Rick’s safely planted on the swing seat, he takes hold of Rick and digs his feet into the gravel. Moves in a compact circle, the chains above creaking and groaning as they twist, coiling tighter and tighter as Daryl goes. And then he lets go.
“Faster!” Rick cries, delighted, spinning like a top as the swing unwinds. This isn’t flying, but it’s a new kind of thrill, the wind buzzing in his ears as the world blurs into a haze of color around him. “Faster!”
Except Rick ends up feeling rather dizzy and his stomach hurts after the swing’s finished rotating, so he has to lean against Daryl when he gets off, or risk throwing up his lunch in the bin nearby. They decide that swing-spinning will not be part of their daily activities right after eating.
“Ain’t much sense in throwin’ up a perfectly good lunch,” Daryl nods sagely. As if he’s imparting some wisdom of the ages.
“Urk,” Rick agrees, brow scrunched in pain, holding his belly with one hand and onto Daryl with the other, to steady himself.
Daryl suggests that they scratch some X’s and O’s into the sandbox nearby for a while. Play a few games of Tic Tac Toe while they wait for Rick to feel better, since the official plastic tiles are being used by toddlers, who paw mindlessly at the tiles, simply delighted to see them turn different colors on each side. There are red X’s, green O’s, and blue triangles, the last of which neither Rick nor Daryl can figure out the purpose of.
“They don’t even know how to play,” Rick says, with a great disdain that he’s picked up from Daryl, as they watch the toddler invasion before them. With the number of them swarming around today, it’s hard to make up and play the games they want to.
“Yeah, well, they’re babies,” Daryl shrugs, as if that explains everything. Despite his own contempt for the happily drooling toddlers stumbling around wrecking everything, he’s never called Rick a baby, which Rick is entirely too grateful for.
When Rick decides that he can stand up without falling down again, he breaks out the worn-out baseball gloves his dad lent him, to ‘play with Robin and her friends’. Daryl tosses the beat-up baseball Rick hands him in the air, and though it takes him a moment to get used to the idea of playing with one—like no one’s ever bothered to explain the concept of baseball or catch to him—they spend the afternoon playing catch until it’s almost too dark to see anymore.
“I know another good game,” Daryl says, when they’ve worn themselves out throwing the ball back and forth, pretending they’re famous major leaguers. He points at the slides they’d raced to the day before, and spent time running up and sliding back down on, as he ducks into the grass. By now, the toddler swarm has cleared out, leaving the playground a paradise entirely their own.
“We did the slides yesterday,” says Rick. He hunkers down next to Daryl, not sure why they’re whispering and hiding in the grass, but decides it must be part of the game Daryl’s dreamed up.
As it turns out, Daryl’s idea is to pretend they’re soldiers who’ve been captured as prisoners, and have to sneak out of an enemy camp. When they get to the base of the slides, one of the soldiers has to carry his wounded companion up the slide-mountain to safety, so they can make it back to their own camp.
“But you gotta be really good at climbing the slide, because it’s so slippery,” Daryl adds. “Like a mountain sherpa.”
Rick nods, making sure to memorize every detail of this mission. Being a secret-soldier-mountain-sherpa sounds hard, but he’s sure with Daryl there, they’ll be able to make it back to their camp in no time.
The first thing they discover, after slithering their way to the slides, is that Rick makes a terrible secret-soldier-mountain-sherpa.
He can’t really bear Daryl’s weight, and even with Daryl ‘helping’, his feet dangling just enough to hold himself up, Rick ends up making it only three steps up the slide before the two of them slide back down, Rick’s hands clawing at empty air and his sneakers scrabbling for purchase on the metal slide.
“You’re crap at this,” Daryl says, not mincing words as usual. He’s dusting off his jeans now, because this is the fifth time they’ve fallen down the slide. “I’ll be thinkin’ twice before I count on you to rescue me.”
Rick sucks his lower lip in between teeth, willing it not to tremble, because he’s not a soft jelly baby that cries all the time, despite what Robin says. It turns out that he doesn’t need to put up such a front for long, though, because Daryl just rolls his eyes and beckons Rick over. “Here, let me try.”
So Rick climbs onto Daryl’s back and winds his arms around Daryl’s neck, his legs curled tightly over Daryl’s waist. Very carefully lets himself go limp, like a dead weight.
Daryl nearly makes it to the top of the slide, before his shoe catches on one of the metal bolts on the side, and they end up tumbling to the base of the slide again, a tangle of arms and legs and giggles.
“You almost did it!” Rick says, his eyes shining, as he pats Daryl on the back. “If it hadn’t been for that bolt, we coulda been back at camp already!” He makes sure to glower at the cursed bolt, for Daryl’s sake, before beaming in Daryl’s direction again.
Daryl frowns. “Almost don’t count,” he says, his expression darkening, like he’s too used to a series of almosts and coulda beens in his life.
Before they can try again though, because Rick is so sure they can ‘make it back to camp’ on their slide-mountain, Robin comes calling again. She’s got some shopping bags slung low on one arm that Rick knows she’s going to make him carry, but he finds he doesn’t mind—it’s a small price to pay, after the day of fun he’s had.
“Same time tomorrow?” Rick asks, before he scrambles to meet Robin on the other side of the playground. He draws in a deep breath and holds it, watching Daryl, waiting.
Daryl hesitates this time, and though he doesn’t beam brightly back, the tiny half-smile he finally offers Rick is enough.
“Same time tomorrow,” Daryl nods firmly.
Rick lets all the air escape his lungs at once, a giant breath of relief. “Great!”
And as Rick waves his goodbyes and turns from the playground, he’s got a bounce in his step and a song in his heart, because he’s got stuff to look forward to, and things to dream up. The song is one he’d heard from the musical his sister’s class put on at last year’s showcase, and fragments of it return now, like those from a long-forgotten dream.
Tomorrow, tomorrow—you’re only a day away!
(tbc - Chapter 2)
End Notes:
- The song in Rick’s heart is Tomorrow from the musical Annie.
