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First Taste of Love, Bittersweet (3/6)
Title: First Taste of Love, Bittersweet (3/6)
Fandom: The Walking Dead (TV)
Pairing: Rick / Daryl
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2900 (26000 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.
~
A few days later, Rick’s request for double the hush money he’s been getting every day is met with a very spirited What the hell?
“Why do you even need more?” says Robin, hands on her hips, incredulous. “The candy store’s a long ways away.”
Rick doesn’t bother to answer that. Only replies with what Daryl’s coached him to say. “The stakes’ve gone up,” he declares. “So if you don’t want me to tell mama you’ve been leaving me alone on the playground every day, instead of just the one, you’ll…” He puts his own hands on his hips and tries to look intimidating, as he huffs, “You’ll have to pay up.”
Rick hadn’t wanted to steal more of people’s wishes to fund their little field trips, so he’d told Daryl in clear terms they needed an alternate choice of funding. Since they decided that Robin was, in essence, their bankroller—Daryl said he’d probably ‘get his ass beat’ if he asked his brother or dad for money—it seemed only reasonable to put the pressure on Robin.
Robin rolls her eyes now at the combination of their efforts, of Daryl’s words and Rick’s execution, and she says something to the effect of Rick being a greedy little shit, but in the end she peels two bills from her crumpled cash supply to give to Rick. It’s an exchange that happens at their own home first, of course, since Rick’s decided that payment in cash at the playground leads to more problems than it’s worth.
While the increase in income lets them go a little farther than the playground, they still make up their own games and adventures there for the most part. It’s only on the occasions when Joe and his friends dare to come back and circle the bike racks like hungry sharks that they decide to walk down to the complex of cozy shops and diners. Make a point of swinging by the community wading pool where they love to play Pirates, taking turns doing soft belly flops into the water after ‘walking the plank’ from the terraced steps of the pool.
And when they save up enough of Robin’s hush money, they head down to the Finer Diner to share a small ice cream parfait, like usual. The waitress, whose name they’ve learned is Donna, had given them a strange look the first time they paid in coins and crumpled bills, but by now she calls them her ‘little regulars’ and throws in golden-browned biscuits hot from the oven or candied fruit for them, when she can.
On one occasion, when Rick gets to the playground, Daryl intercepts him before he reaches the swings. “Rick,” Daryl calls, in a loud, not-quite whisper. He beckons Rick over to their secret corner of the playground. They have several, but this one is their hideout beneath the slides, boarded up by wooden slats on every side but one. “Rick.”
Rick hurries over, checking to see if anyone’s followed him to their hideout, before dropping his voice to a whisper. “What is it?” he asks, wondering what kind of covert operation they’ll pull off today.
“You gotta see this,” Daryl says, his voice hushed, the way it is when he’s excited about something. “Found somethin’ neat the other day.”
Rick doesn’t know what Daryl does when they part for the day, but when he’d asked once, if anyone came to pick Daryl up from the park, Daryl just shrugged, and said, “I find my own way home.” So Rick suspects that Daryl simply wanders, exploring the town and the surrounding area on his own, until it’s late enough that he can avoid the rest of his family. “What’d you find?” Rick asks, curious.
And while Daryl brings forth his treasures—a shiny, smooth pebble, perfectly white and round, a chipped orange marble with a streak of navy blue, both of which he gives to Rick—Rick can tell he’s working toward something big, because Daryl’s grinning from ear to ear, like the secret he can’t contain is threatening to spill out with every inch his smile grows.
“Is this—” Rick tries, motioning to the pocket where he’s safely stored Daryl’s gifts, before gulping back the Is this all. He doesn’t want Daryl to think he doesn’t appreciate what Daryl’s shared with him. That he somehow expects more. “Is this what you wanted to show me?” he says, finally.
“No,” says Daryl. And after a moment’s thought, like he’s deemed Rick trustworthy enough to share his secret find—had the first two gifts been a test before Daryl would reveal the biggest prize?—he stands from where he’s been kneeling in the gravel. “C’mon,” Daryl says. He takes Rick’s hand like he usually does, since it’s really become second nature by now, and tugs Rick after him, so he doesn’t have to struggle to catch up. “We got a ways to go yet, but I’ll show you now.”
They weave their way through narrow streets and gravel alleyways, before hiking up a gentle, tree-lined hill, and when they reach the top, Daryl stops. “There,” he says, nodding at a small strip mall, that’s probably only meant to serve the community it’s in. “Inside.”
He leads Rick inside the strip mall, the air thick with the aroma of roasted coffee beans and cinnamon rolls. Past a shop that sells kitchenware, another that specializes in gardening supplies. And in a lonely corner of the mall, right where Daryl’s pointing, like the thing he’s found is magic and wonder and miracles rolled into one, is a photo booth.
Rick blinks at the booth. It’s an ugly cigar brown, with a curtain that’s stained with blotches of god knows what, and along the top of the booth there’s a string of uneven block lettering, black, that says PASSPORT PHOTOS, 5 MIN.
It doesn’t look fun in the least.
But Daryl looks at it like he’s struck gold at the end of the rainbow, and Rick can’t find it in himself to burst his bubble.
“Thought maybe we could take some pictures,” says Daryl. “You know. To remember.” And Daryl doesn’t mention what it is he wants to remember, but Rick feels something hurt in his chest, at the thought that Daryl wants to remember him and them and what they have, because he has so little to call his own.
“Okay,” Rick agrees. He digs through his small pockets for some quarters, and goes to thumb them into the slot, before Daryl pulls his hand away, gentle.
“I got this,” Daryl says. “Ain’t right that we’re always usin’ your money.” He reaches into his jeans, and tugs out a few dollar bills that look too crisp to have been sitting in Daryl’s stash for days.
“Where’d you get those?” Rick asks, suspicious.
Daryl’s shoulders sag a little at the question, and he mumbles something that sounds like lifted ‘em from Merle when he was sleepin’.
“Don’t steal,” Rick frowns. This was why they’d stopped going to the fountain for what they needed.
“He was gonna buy junk with it anyway,” snaps Daryl. “Don’t see why I can’t—”
“I don’t care,” says Rick. “Don’t do it.” He crosses his arms over his chest and glares Daryl down. “If you do, you’ll get in trouble, and I…” Rick purses his lips. “I don’t want him to hurt you.” He’s seen the bruises on Daryl’s arms, black and blue and green, and he knows Daryl sure as heck didn’t punch himself.
Daryl, who’d been ready to be up in arms about Rick’s higher moral ground, lets his mouth drop open at Rick’s unexpected reasoning. “Okay,” he says, hands up in surrender. “Okay. I…I won’t.” He rolls his eyes at Rick, but there’s the tiniest twitch of a smile, too, one he can’t manage to hide.
In the end, Rick lets Daryl feed his money into the machine, since Daryl had gone to all this effort to show him the booth, and make sure it was an even exchange between them—and because Daryl would probably be in more trouble if he was caught trying to slip it back into Merle’s hoard. When that’s done, they hurry into the booth. Yank the curtain shut, and push the button to start the prompts, following the instructions to the letter, because Daryl doesn’t have enough for a second try.
“Okay, it’s gonna tell us when to smile. I think,” says Daryl. “Never tried one of these before.”
They crowd together on the edge of the tiny seat, giddy with excitement, because Rick’s never tried this before either. Since the booth’s promised them a strip of four photos, they end up taking two shots of them making silly faces at the camera, and two of them simply being themselves, and when the strip spits out of the slot outside, Daryl snatches it up and splits it down the middle.
“Here,” he says, handing Rick half the strip. In it there’s a photo each of them being utterly silly, tongues hanging out and eyes crossed, and them being, well, themselves. “This one’s yours.”
Rick slips it into the big pocket in the middle of his overalls for safekeeping, while Daryl shoves his into the pocket of his jeans.
“This is the best idea ever!” Rick beams, surprised at how much fun the photo booth’s turned out to be. He pats his pocket where the photo strip rests, snug, close to his heart. “Now I’ll never forget you!” He’ll have a memory of Daryl with him, always.
Daryl doesn’t promise the same, but he nods and gives Rick something close enough to a smile that’ll do.
They spend the rest of the afternoon back at the playground, photos tucked safely away as they pretend they’re veteran hunters lost in the jungle, having to take up vine-swinging—via the actual swings—to avoid predators on the ground.
By the time dinnertime rolls around, they look out for Robin to show up at the playground, calling for Rick at the top of her lungs. But as the hours grow later and Robin doesn’t show up, Rick can only assume she’d gone to the movies with her friends after the mall, and lost track of time. They wait on the steps of the school facing the playground, not daring to start a new game or adventure, because being interrupted in the middle of one is the worst.
Rick still remembers the time he and Daryl had been undercover spies, tracking the comings and goings of a mysterious messenger across ancient sand dunes, when Robin had crashed onto the scene, squawking Rick, Rick, like a parrot with laryngitis, and their ‘messenger’—a wild rabbit—had darted away into the night, rendering all their hours of undercover work useless.
It’s close to nine o’ clock when Daryl mutters something like screw this and stands up. “Where do you live?” he asks Rick.
Rick furrows a brow, thinking. “I think it’s over by where the fire hydrant is. Two blocks that way,” he says, pointing in the direction he’s talking about. There’s a turn in there somewhere, but he’s pretty sure he’ll recognize his house when he sees it. “Why?”
“I’m gonna walk you home,” says Daryl. “Your folks’ll be worried about you.”
Rick’s about to argue that maybe they should wait at the playground, in case Robin comes here first, but it’s already starting to get dark, and if they don’t set out soon, he and Daryl will be walking in total darkness. There are, of course, the wan, flickering streetlights that dot the sidewalk, but they light little more than the ground beneath them and can’t be counted on to keep the darkness away.
“Okay,” Rick says, trying to sound braver than he feels. “Let’s go.”
He slips his hand into Daryl’s open, waiting one, and they set out from the playground together. It takes them a little under ten minutes to make it all the way to Rick’s house, but they’re stuck sitting out on the front steps, because it’s dark inside and no one’s home yet.
And maybe swinging from jungle vines has tired them out more than they expected, because Rick decides to lay his head on Daryl’s shoulder, just for a minute, and close his eyes, while Daryl curls an arm around Rick, protective, as he leans against the banister, but they both end up falling fast asleep on the stairs.
It’s how Rick’s mom finds them when she comes home an hour later, having had to work late at the office. “Boys?” she says, tentatively.
Daryl’s the first to leap up at the sound, waking Rick in the process, and Rick flies into her arms with a cry of, “Mama!”
They’ve agreed on a story that’ll explain why Daryl’s waiting up with Rick: Rick had gotten separated from Robin at the mall, and Daryl had ‘found’ him, wandering on his own, and brought him back here. Their story will fall apart if anyone examines it too closely, but Rick’s mom seems far too relieved that Rick’s returned to really interrogate anyone.
In fact, after she’s thanked Daryl, and checked to see that Rick’s all right, she turns to Daryl and says, “Why don’t you come inside for some cookies?”
Rick’s mouth drops open, because cookies are a treat, usually for good behaviour. And if Daryl gets some, then so does Rick, by extension, so he gives Daryl the most hopeful, longing look he can—which means round, wet doe eyes and a lower lip that juts out just so.
Daryl casts a silent sorry in Rick’s direction, an apology made with knitted brow and a quick downward tilt of his lips, and shuffles his feet. Jams his hands in his pockets as he stares at the ground. “Thanks…ma’am,” he says, as if he’s sifting his memories for the right, most polite word. “But I gotta get on home.”
It leaves Rick and even his mom disappointed, as she frowns and says, “All right, but you make sure you come over again sometime.” She winks conspiratorially, before adding, “I’ll make you a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies, straight from the oven,” which makes Rick’s eyes grow rounder and wider than they already are.
Daryl nods before bounding down the steps, disappearing down the street and into the night.
“He seems nice,” says Rick’s mom, thoughtful, as they watch Daryl go.
“He is!” Rick agrees. He almost follows that up with Daryl is the nicest, bestest friend ever, but then he remembers that the nicest and bestest of friends aren’t made over the course of an afternoon, and the last thing he needs to do is raise suspicion.
Why is why, over breakfast the next morning, when his mom says Rick should invite his new friend over for dinner sometime, Rick responds with a resounding, “Yes!”, his excitement uncontainable, just rolling off him in waves.
Robin gives him a look over her glass of orange juice, but doesn’t say anything otherwise; Rick had assured her they’d covered for her when she lost track of time, and she hadn’t gotten much of a talking-to when she’d come home, so he knows she won’t give them any trouble.
Rick’s dad, however, stares at Rick from over the top of his newspaper. “Which new friend is this?” he asks suspiciously. He looks over at Rick’s mom, mouthing Thought he had trouble making friends in school.
“It’s Daryl!” Rick says happily, scooping up a forkful of scrambled eggs and stuffing it into his mouth.
His dad narrows his eyes, like he’s mentally sorting through all the Daryls he knows, before finding one who’s Rick’s age. “That Dixon kid?” he says finally. “Over in the run-down part of town?” He frowns at his wife. “Now wait just a minute here—”
“His name is Daryl,” Rick says, setting his fork down loudly. He’s tired of people pretending Daryl’s less than human, like he’s nothing more than that Dixon kid, because he knows Daryl, and Rick knows he’s much more than that. So he crosses his arms over his chest and glares daggers at his dad from over the kitchen table, daring him to say another word against Daryl.
Before this can escalate into a battle of wills, Rick’s mom slides an extra helping of bacon on to his dad’s plate, always soothing ruffled feathers and feelings in a way of her own. It doesn’t keep her from giving Rick’s dad a withering glance, though.
“Daryl,” she says, “brought Rick home when he got lost. While you were out with your buddies last night, and I had to work late. So you go on ahead and bring him over next time, honey,” she says to Rick, sweetly. “We’ll put some meat on his bones yet.”
Rick’s more than delighted, because this means that their friendship is now official and they won’t always have to meet in secret. And he can’t wait to tell Daryl the news, the next time he sees him.
Except there is no next time, because Daryl just doesn’t show up that day.
Rick keeps on waiting, the day after, and the day after that. But no matter how long Rick waits, even recruiting his sister into sitting vigil with him, Daryl keeps on not showing up.
And Rick has no idea why.
(tbc - Chapter 4)
Fandom: The Walking Dead (TV)
Pairing: Rick / Daryl
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2900 (26000 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.
A few days later, Rick’s request for double the hush money he’s been getting every day is met with a very spirited What the hell?
“Why do you even need more?” says Robin, hands on her hips, incredulous. “The candy store’s a long ways away.”
Rick doesn’t bother to answer that. Only replies with what Daryl’s coached him to say. “The stakes’ve gone up,” he declares. “So if you don’t want me to tell mama you’ve been leaving me alone on the playground every day, instead of just the one, you’ll…” He puts his own hands on his hips and tries to look intimidating, as he huffs, “You’ll have to pay up.”
Rick hadn’t wanted to steal more of people’s wishes to fund their little field trips, so he’d told Daryl in clear terms they needed an alternate choice of funding. Since they decided that Robin was, in essence, their bankroller—Daryl said he’d probably ‘get his ass beat’ if he asked his brother or dad for money—it seemed only reasonable to put the pressure on Robin.
Robin rolls her eyes now at the combination of their efforts, of Daryl’s words and Rick’s execution, and she says something to the effect of Rick being a greedy little shit, but in the end she peels two bills from her crumpled cash supply to give to Rick. It’s an exchange that happens at their own home first, of course, since Rick’s decided that payment in cash at the playground leads to more problems than it’s worth.
While the increase in income lets them go a little farther than the playground, they still make up their own games and adventures there for the most part. It’s only on the occasions when Joe and his friends dare to come back and circle the bike racks like hungry sharks that they decide to walk down to the complex of cozy shops and diners. Make a point of swinging by the community wading pool where they love to play Pirates, taking turns doing soft belly flops into the water after ‘walking the plank’ from the terraced steps of the pool.
And when they save up enough of Robin’s hush money, they head down to the Finer Diner to share a small ice cream parfait, like usual. The waitress, whose name they’ve learned is Donna, had given them a strange look the first time they paid in coins and crumpled bills, but by now she calls them her ‘little regulars’ and throws in golden-browned biscuits hot from the oven or candied fruit for them, when she can.
On one occasion, when Rick gets to the playground, Daryl intercepts him before he reaches the swings. “Rick,” Daryl calls, in a loud, not-quite whisper. He beckons Rick over to their secret corner of the playground. They have several, but this one is their hideout beneath the slides, boarded up by wooden slats on every side but one. “Rick.”
Rick hurries over, checking to see if anyone’s followed him to their hideout, before dropping his voice to a whisper. “What is it?” he asks, wondering what kind of covert operation they’ll pull off today.
“You gotta see this,” Daryl says, his voice hushed, the way it is when he’s excited about something. “Found somethin’ neat the other day.”
Rick doesn’t know what Daryl does when they part for the day, but when he’d asked once, if anyone came to pick Daryl up from the park, Daryl just shrugged, and said, “I find my own way home.” So Rick suspects that Daryl simply wanders, exploring the town and the surrounding area on his own, until it’s late enough that he can avoid the rest of his family. “What’d you find?” Rick asks, curious.
And while Daryl brings forth his treasures—a shiny, smooth pebble, perfectly white and round, a chipped orange marble with a streak of navy blue, both of which he gives to Rick—Rick can tell he’s working toward something big, because Daryl’s grinning from ear to ear, like the secret he can’t contain is threatening to spill out with every inch his smile grows.
“Is this—” Rick tries, motioning to the pocket where he’s safely stored Daryl’s gifts, before gulping back the Is this all. He doesn’t want Daryl to think he doesn’t appreciate what Daryl’s shared with him. That he somehow expects more. “Is this what you wanted to show me?” he says, finally.
“No,” says Daryl. And after a moment’s thought, like he’s deemed Rick trustworthy enough to share his secret find—had the first two gifts been a test before Daryl would reveal the biggest prize?—he stands from where he’s been kneeling in the gravel. “C’mon,” Daryl says. He takes Rick’s hand like he usually does, since it’s really become second nature by now, and tugs Rick after him, so he doesn’t have to struggle to catch up. “We got a ways to go yet, but I’ll show you now.”
They weave their way through narrow streets and gravel alleyways, before hiking up a gentle, tree-lined hill, and when they reach the top, Daryl stops. “There,” he says, nodding at a small strip mall, that’s probably only meant to serve the community it’s in. “Inside.”
He leads Rick inside the strip mall, the air thick with the aroma of roasted coffee beans and cinnamon rolls. Past a shop that sells kitchenware, another that specializes in gardening supplies. And in a lonely corner of the mall, right where Daryl’s pointing, like the thing he’s found is magic and wonder and miracles rolled into one, is a photo booth.
Rick blinks at the booth. It’s an ugly cigar brown, with a curtain that’s stained with blotches of god knows what, and along the top of the booth there’s a string of uneven block lettering, black, that says PASSPORT PHOTOS, 5 MIN.
It doesn’t look fun in the least.
But Daryl looks at it like he’s struck gold at the end of the rainbow, and Rick can’t find it in himself to burst his bubble.
“Thought maybe we could take some pictures,” says Daryl. “You know. To remember.” And Daryl doesn’t mention what it is he wants to remember, but Rick feels something hurt in his chest, at the thought that Daryl wants to remember him and them and what they have, because he has so little to call his own.
“Okay,” Rick agrees. He digs through his small pockets for some quarters, and goes to thumb them into the slot, before Daryl pulls his hand away, gentle.
“I got this,” Daryl says. “Ain’t right that we’re always usin’ your money.” He reaches into his jeans, and tugs out a few dollar bills that look too crisp to have been sitting in Daryl’s stash for days.
“Where’d you get those?” Rick asks, suspicious.
Daryl’s shoulders sag a little at the question, and he mumbles something that sounds like lifted ‘em from Merle when he was sleepin’.
“Don’t steal,” Rick frowns. This was why they’d stopped going to the fountain for what they needed.
“He was gonna buy junk with it anyway,” snaps Daryl. “Don’t see why I can’t—”
“I don’t care,” says Rick. “Don’t do it.” He crosses his arms over his chest and glares Daryl down. “If you do, you’ll get in trouble, and I…” Rick purses his lips. “I don’t want him to hurt you.” He’s seen the bruises on Daryl’s arms, black and blue and green, and he knows Daryl sure as heck didn’t punch himself.
Daryl, who’d been ready to be up in arms about Rick’s higher moral ground, lets his mouth drop open at Rick’s unexpected reasoning. “Okay,” he says, hands up in surrender. “Okay. I…I won’t.” He rolls his eyes at Rick, but there’s the tiniest twitch of a smile, too, one he can’t manage to hide.
In the end, Rick lets Daryl feed his money into the machine, since Daryl had gone to all this effort to show him the booth, and make sure it was an even exchange between them—and because Daryl would probably be in more trouble if he was caught trying to slip it back into Merle’s hoard. When that’s done, they hurry into the booth. Yank the curtain shut, and push the button to start the prompts, following the instructions to the letter, because Daryl doesn’t have enough for a second try.
“Okay, it’s gonna tell us when to smile. I think,” says Daryl. “Never tried one of these before.”
They crowd together on the edge of the tiny seat, giddy with excitement, because Rick’s never tried this before either. Since the booth’s promised them a strip of four photos, they end up taking two shots of them making silly faces at the camera, and two of them simply being themselves, and when the strip spits out of the slot outside, Daryl snatches it up and splits it down the middle.
“Here,” he says, handing Rick half the strip. In it there’s a photo each of them being utterly silly, tongues hanging out and eyes crossed, and them being, well, themselves. “This one’s yours.”
Rick slips it into the big pocket in the middle of his overalls for safekeeping, while Daryl shoves his into the pocket of his jeans.
“This is the best idea ever!” Rick beams, surprised at how much fun the photo booth’s turned out to be. He pats his pocket where the photo strip rests, snug, close to his heart. “Now I’ll never forget you!” He’ll have a memory of Daryl with him, always.
Daryl doesn’t promise the same, but he nods and gives Rick something close enough to a smile that’ll do.
They spend the rest of the afternoon back at the playground, photos tucked safely away as they pretend they’re veteran hunters lost in the jungle, having to take up vine-swinging—via the actual swings—to avoid predators on the ground.
By the time dinnertime rolls around, they look out for Robin to show up at the playground, calling for Rick at the top of her lungs. But as the hours grow later and Robin doesn’t show up, Rick can only assume she’d gone to the movies with her friends after the mall, and lost track of time. They wait on the steps of the school facing the playground, not daring to start a new game or adventure, because being interrupted in the middle of one is the worst.
Rick still remembers the time he and Daryl had been undercover spies, tracking the comings and goings of a mysterious messenger across ancient sand dunes, when Robin had crashed onto the scene, squawking Rick, Rick, like a parrot with laryngitis, and their ‘messenger’—a wild rabbit—had darted away into the night, rendering all their hours of undercover work useless.
It’s close to nine o’ clock when Daryl mutters something like screw this and stands up. “Where do you live?” he asks Rick.
Rick furrows a brow, thinking. “I think it’s over by where the fire hydrant is. Two blocks that way,” he says, pointing in the direction he’s talking about. There’s a turn in there somewhere, but he’s pretty sure he’ll recognize his house when he sees it. “Why?”
“I’m gonna walk you home,” says Daryl. “Your folks’ll be worried about you.”
Rick’s about to argue that maybe they should wait at the playground, in case Robin comes here first, but it’s already starting to get dark, and if they don’t set out soon, he and Daryl will be walking in total darkness. There are, of course, the wan, flickering streetlights that dot the sidewalk, but they light little more than the ground beneath them and can’t be counted on to keep the darkness away.
“Okay,” Rick says, trying to sound braver than he feels. “Let’s go.”
He slips his hand into Daryl’s open, waiting one, and they set out from the playground together. It takes them a little under ten minutes to make it all the way to Rick’s house, but they’re stuck sitting out on the front steps, because it’s dark inside and no one’s home yet.
And maybe swinging from jungle vines has tired them out more than they expected, because Rick decides to lay his head on Daryl’s shoulder, just for a minute, and close his eyes, while Daryl curls an arm around Rick, protective, as he leans against the banister, but they both end up falling fast asleep on the stairs.
It’s how Rick’s mom finds them when she comes home an hour later, having had to work late at the office. “Boys?” she says, tentatively.
Daryl’s the first to leap up at the sound, waking Rick in the process, and Rick flies into her arms with a cry of, “Mama!”
They’ve agreed on a story that’ll explain why Daryl’s waiting up with Rick: Rick had gotten separated from Robin at the mall, and Daryl had ‘found’ him, wandering on his own, and brought him back here. Their story will fall apart if anyone examines it too closely, but Rick’s mom seems far too relieved that Rick’s returned to really interrogate anyone.
In fact, after she’s thanked Daryl, and checked to see that Rick’s all right, she turns to Daryl and says, “Why don’t you come inside for some cookies?”
Rick’s mouth drops open, because cookies are a treat, usually for good behaviour. And if Daryl gets some, then so does Rick, by extension, so he gives Daryl the most hopeful, longing look he can—which means round, wet doe eyes and a lower lip that juts out just so.
Daryl casts a silent sorry in Rick’s direction, an apology made with knitted brow and a quick downward tilt of his lips, and shuffles his feet. Jams his hands in his pockets as he stares at the ground. “Thanks…ma’am,” he says, as if he’s sifting his memories for the right, most polite word. “But I gotta get on home.”
It leaves Rick and even his mom disappointed, as she frowns and says, “All right, but you make sure you come over again sometime.” She winks conspiratorially, before adding, “I’ll make you a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies, straight from the oven,” which makes Rick’s eyes grow rounder and wider than they already are.
Daryl nods before bounding down the steps, disappearing down the street and into the night.
“He seems nice,” says Rick’s mom, thoughtful, as they watch Daryl go.
“He is!” Rick agrees. He almost follows that up with Daryl is the nicest, bestest friend ever, but then he remembers that the nicest and bestest of friends aren’t made over the course of an afternoon, and the last thing he needs to do is raise suspicion.
Why is why, over breakfast the next morning, when his mom says Rick should invite his new friend over for dinner sometime, Rick responds with a resounding, “Yes!”, his excitement uncontainable, just rolling off him in waves.
Robin gives him a look over her glass of orange juice, but doesn’t say anything otherwise; Rick had assured her they’d covered for her when she lost track of time, and she hadn’t gotten much of a talking-to when she’d come home, so he knows she won’t give them any trouble.
Rick’s dad, however, stares at Rick from over the top of his newspaper. “Which new friend is this?” he asks suspiciously. He looks over at Rick’s mom, mouthing Thought he had trouble making friends in school.
“It’s Daryl!” Rick says happily, scooping up a forkful of scrambled eggs and stuffing it into his mouth.
His dad narrows his eyes, like he’s mentally sorting through all the Daryls he knows, before finding one who’s Rick’s age. “That Dixon kid?” he says finally. “Over in the run-down part of town?” He frowns at his wife. “Now wait just a minute here—”
“His name is Daryl,” Rick says, setting his fork down loudly. He’s tired of people pretending Daryl’s less than human, like he’s nothing more than that Dixon kid, because he knows Daryl, and Rick knows he’s much more than that. So he crosses his arms over his chest and glares daggers at his dad from over the kitchen table, daring him to say another word against Daryl.
Before this can escalate into a battle of wills, Rick’s mom slides an extra helping of bacon on to his dad’s plate, always soothing ruffled feathers and feelings in a way of her own. It doesn’t keep her from giving Rick’s dad a withering glance, though.
“Daryl,” she says, “brought Rick home when he got lost. While you were out with your buddies last night, and I had to work late. So you go on ahead and bring him over next time, honey,” she says to Rick, sweetly. “We’ll put some meat on his bones yet.”
Rick’s more than delighted, because this means that their friendship is now official and they won’t always have to meet in secret. And he can’t wait to tell Daryl the news, the next time he sees him.
Except there is no next time, because Daryl just doesn’t show up that day.
Rick keeps on waiting, the day after, and the day after that. But no matter how long Rick waits, even recruiting his sister into sitting vigil with him, Daryl keeps on not showing up.
And Rick has no idea why.
(tbc - Chapter 4)