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First Taste of Love, Bittersweet (4/6)
Title: First Taste of Love, Bittersweet (4/6)
Fandom: The Walking Dead (TV)
Pairing: Rick / Daryl
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2950 (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.
~
“You probably ticked him off with what a baby you are,” Robin says after three days, when she’s grown tired of waiting for Daryl with Rick, and marches off to meet her friends.
Technically, the word she uses is pissed. And Rick’s old enough to know that it’s a bad word, but as bad as it is, he decides that if Daryl was annoyed with what a baby he was, he wouldn’t have bothered to spend half the summer with Rick anyway. So surely that couldn’t be it.
But there’s no one to ask about it, worried as Rick is, and even if he overhears his parents from his hidey hole at the top of the stairs, whispering things like terrible fire and burned to a crisp in her bed, they won’t elaborate on the whispers when Rick asks them. The only thing odd thing he can remember is the sirens that’d been screaming down the street a few nights before, though Rick hadn’t thought much of it at the time. Decided that it must’ve been another robber the cops were chasing after, and stuffed a pillow to his ear to drown out the sound, before falling asleep.
It’s after a whole week’s gone by that Rick finally finds Daryl again, hiding in the plastic dome in the park, and his heart does a little dance of elation in his chest, because he knew if he waited long enough, Daryl would come. But all that happiness floats away when he crawls in after Daryl, and finds him huddled against the side of the dome, his head cradled in his arms, knees pulled tight to his chest.
“What’s wrong?” Rick asks. He raises his voice a little in case Daryl can’t hear him, because he’s sitting like he’s shutting out the whole world. Sidles up against Daryl and sits down, until they’re pressed together at shoulders and hips, sharing warmth, something Rick’s found works wonders when either of them is feeling sad. “Daryl?” he tries again, bumping their knees together lightly.
Daryl hisses a frantic shh, before whispering, “I’m hidin’ from my brother.” He pauses, before adding, “And waitin’ for you.”
Rick decides that Daryl’s brother can’t be the reason Daryl looks as sad as this, so he sits in silence with him for a while, before deciding that maybe chocolate will cheer him up. Reaches for the half bar that’s melted in his pocket, straining until he’s worked it out of his overalls.
“Here,” says Rick, nudging the chocolate into Daryl’s hand. It’s his last bit of chocolate until his mom buys more, but this is a noble and worthy sacrifice for so true a friend. “This’ll make you feel better.”
It does not.
But it does make Daryl more willing to talk to him, instead of burying his face into his knees, like he’s some giant caterpillar curling in on himself.
“It hurts,” Daryl sniffles finally, when he’s made his way through several bites of chocolate.
“What does?” Rick asks, his eyes wide.
And when Daryl points to his heart, without any further elaboration on what’s caused him to hurt so, Rick nods and gives him a one-armed hug that’s really just an awkward tangle of his arm around Daryl’s shoulders and his head on Daryl’s knee. Then an idea strikes him, and he rummages through his small satchel, determined. Pulls out the band-aids he’s taken to carrying, because Daryl seems to attract injuries and hurts somehow, some when he’s not even with Rick that he won’t talk about.
With a flourish, Rick unwraps two of them, and presses the band-aids to Daryl’s shirt, where his heart should be, forming a squiggly little ‘X’.
“There,” Rick says, patting them on, gentle, so they can heal the hurt in Daryl’s heart. “All better.”
Daryl just looks at him, his eyes wet in a way that means it is not all better. “They don’t work that way,” Daryl sniffles, but he gives Rick a wobbly half-smile, that lets Rick know he appreciates the gesture all the same. “Thanks though.”
“There must be somethin’ I can do to help,” Rick says, feeling all kinds of helpless, because Daryl’s clearly in pain, but he doesn’t know what else he can do.
“Ain’t nothin’ you can do,” Daryl says shaking his head, like it’s something all the chocolates and hugs and band-aids in the world can’t fix. And with the biggest, shakiest sigh Rick’s ever heard him heave, he says, “I gotta move away.”
Rick just stares, because he’s seen his sister’s friends ‘move away’, seen them exchange tearful goodbyes and promises to write, after which they never do. But it’s never happened to Rick, and for it to happen now is just not fair. Daryl’s supposed to come to his house, so they can pig out on cookies that Rick’s mom bakes and play videogames. He’s supposed to sleep over and build pillow forts and blanket tents and stay up late to tell ghost stories with Rick. And when school starts again, they’re supposed to eat lunch together and have awesome adventures after class ends, even if they’re not in the same grade.
Daryl is not supposed to be moving away.
“But why?” Rick asks, in a way he’ll realize later is utterly tactless. “Why are you movin’ away?”
Daryl doesn’t seem to mind the question, though. “My house burned down,” he says. “With my ma in it.” When Rick just gapes at him, his mouth open in a tiny o of disbelief, Daryl says, “Don’t you get it? My ma’s dead. And I stood there and watched it happen.”
“What—” Rick manages, before swallowing back the word happened, because it’s deeply personal, what Daryl’s telling him, and Rick refuses to cause Daryl more pain just to satisfy his curiosity.
But then Daryl’s talking again, like what’s happened is such a heavy burden that he has to tell someone. “Day after I walked you home, my pa started beatin’ on my ma real bad,” he says. “Ain’t like he never done it any other day, but this time it was bad. Over money or somethin’. And Merle, he wasn’t there to stop it. Went out with his friends, first thing in the mornin’,” Daryl adds, bitter.
Rick nods solemnly, as he settles next to Daryl again. He knows the pain of unreliable siblings.
“Anyway, my ma don’t like it when I get between her and pa when they fight. So it was after, when…” Here, Daryl pauses, his voice small, like he’s weighed down with all the guilt of having to hide, unable to protect his mom. “After, when my pa left, I stayed to keep an eye on her, you know? Make sure she was still breathin’. That she was all right. Only, I didn’t have nothin’ to eat all day, ‘cause she wasn’t in any condition to cook. And Merle ate all our damn snacks.”
So far, Rick’s already dour impression of Merle is dimming by the minute. He scowls, a Daryl-worthy expression that almost surprises a smile from Daryl, a barely-there twitch that fades as Daryl continues his story.
“We had some funny-tastin’ cereal left in the pantry,” Daryl says, “but it was better than nothin’. So I ran to the corner store to get some milk. Thought I’d read some of the comics in the stands. And my ma was drinkin’ before I left, figured she was all right if she could do that. Heard sirens outside later, but I didn’t think nothin’ of it, just wanted to finish the comic I was readin’. Only, when I got back…” Daryl drops his voice to a whisper. “Saw a crowd gathered—people from the neighbourhood, firefighters, all over the place. Saw smoke and flames too. I remember thinkin’ where’s the fire? Turned it out it was my house the fire was at. And my ma, she musta been smokin’ in bed, ‘cause she was burnt down to nothin’.”
With stunning clarity, Rick remembers the awful, blaring sirens of a few nights past. The whispers of terrible fire and burnt to a crisp in her own bed. And he finally makes the connection between those things and why Daryl hasn’t shown up; it’s nothing Rick’s done, nothing he did wrong to make Daryl hate him; it was simply a matter of Daryl’s whole life falling apart.
“I couldn’t—I couldn’t even do anythin’,” Daryl says, his voice wet in a way Rick’s never heard before. He leans into Rick, like Rick’s his only source of support, and Rick takes his weight willingly, hoping he’s strong enough to be the rock Daryl needs. “To save her.”
Even Rick knows it’s not right to ask for more details now, so he just curls what he can of his small arm around Daryl’s waist tighter, and tucks himself into Daryl’s space. Hoping that Daryl can draw some kind of strength and comfort from their nearness. “I’m sorry,” Rick says finally.
“Me too,” says Daryl, his voice far too small and sad against Rick’s ear. After a long moment, when his soft, hiccupping breaths have faded, he sighs. “Bein’ sorry don’t mean we magically get somewhere to live, though.” He sniffles again, and there’s the longest pause, like the words he means to say next are the hardest. “Rick…” he starts. “My pa says we gotta go somewhere far away.”
Rick’s heart plummets clear through his stomach and onto the ground, at this confirmation that Daryl’s really leaving. He’s starting to realize now, that Daryl didn’t come here to reward Rick for waiting for him every day.
Daryl had come to say goodbye.
“You’ll come back though, won’t you?” Rick asks, his eyes wide, as he scrambles in front of Daryl to meet his gaze. Rick is not crying, he is not. His eyeballs, as Daryl would say, were just sweating. Really hard. Though he’s pretty sure no one can blame him, because Rick knows what ‘moving away’ means, and it means his bestest friend will be gone forever.
“I don’t know,” says Daryl. He buries his face in his knees and arms again, and Rick hears something that sounds suspiciously like a sob. Maybe Daryl’s eyeballs were sweating too.
“You have to promise you’ll come back,” Rick demands, his own lower lip trembling. “Pinky-promise!” He jabs his pinky into Daryl’s cheek and pokes him with it until Daryl looks up.
Daryl’s eyes are red-rimmed, but Rick’s glad that he’s managed to surprise just the tiniest smile from him. “Pinky-promises are for babies,” he says, eyeing Rick’s extended pinky with mock disdain.
Rick puffs out his chest. “I’m not a baby,” he declares, his hands on his hips. In fact, if he stands on his tippy-toes, he almost comes up to Daryl’s chin instead of his shoulder, so that must count for something.
“Then we gotta seal the deal with somethin’ else,” Daryl says seriously.
Rick’s eyes go very wide, as he sifts through his collection of memories of what people do when they’re making the most serious of promises. If pinky-promises were for babies, then surely the cross your heart and hope to die version of it was for babies too. He takes a deep breath. Go big or go home, his dad always said.
“I saw on TV that sometimes people cut their hands, then shake them,” says Rick. He furrows his brow, not sure if he likes the idea of cutting his hand, but throws the idea out there anyway. “Or they drink each other’s blood.” It might’ve just been red juice in those cups he saw, Rick’s not really sure.
Daryl’s lip curls. “Gross, I don’t want your blood all over me.” He points at his scabby knees, where the seams of his jeans are torn and crusted with dried blood. “Got enough of my own.” It’s now that Rick spots the barely-healed gash on Daryl’s shoulder that he knows Daryl didn’t get from playing with Rick, but decides it’s better to keep quiet for now.
Rick’s lower lip juts out too, as he thinks even harder, and comes up with nothing. “What do we do, then?”
Daryl thinks for a moment. “I saw this thing on TV once—they called it swak’ing, I think. They use it for important letters and stuff.”
“What does that mean?” asks Rick. His brow crumples, confused. He’s never heard of this swak’ing thing before. He turns the letters over in his mind. Swak? S.W.A.K.?
Daryl shrugs. “I don’t know. But it sounded cool.”
“What do you do for it?” Rick says, eager.
Daryl reaches out slowly, and cups Rick’s cheeks in his hands. Brings their mouths together, gentle, for a touch that’s light and breathy and warm. Their noses bump against each other, awkward, but then Daryl tilts his head just so, and Rick does too, and suddenly it’s perfect, the way their mouths slot together, warm and wet, tasting of the cheer-up chocolate Rick had shared with him, a heady mixture of milk sweetness, almond bitterness, and Daryl that’s just the right amount of delicious.
Rick blinks, surprised, because this is far better than cutting his own hand, and if this is what it takes to bring Daryl back to him, he’ll do it gladly, and he throws himself into it, returning the touch of mouths, clumsy, but no less earnest and sweet. And they’re not trading blood, but wet of another kind, so this has to count, right?
When Daryl finally pulls away with a breathless little sigh, Rick has to take a moment of his own to breathe. His head’s still spinning from all the swak’ing they’ve done, and his lips are still tingling from where Daryl’s mouth touched his, but it’s a good kind of dizzy, a new kind of tingly, that he doesn’t mind at all. From what he’s seen at school, he should wipe his mouth and say gross, but Daryl’s a boy, so Rick can’t catch cooties from him. Therefore, the tingling at his lips can’t be cooties.
And the tingling in his heart? Rick doesn’t know, but he hopes that’s not cooties either.
“We’ve sealed our pact with a spit sandwich now,” Daryl says solemnly, his eyes dark, as if they’ve just performed the most sacred of rituals.
Rick nods, dazed, all thoughts of cooties forgotten. A spit sandwich. He’ll have to remember that. He supposes that makes sense, since they had traded spit somehow, and he’s not sure how Daryl came up with the word sandwich for it—maybe it’s because it was like they were trying to eat each other’s mouths?—but Daryl’s older and knows more than him, so it must be right.
It sounds a lot cooler than swak’ing, anyway. And so much cooler than plain old kissing.
Besides, Rick’s seen his parents do this too, and adults make very serious promises all the time, so this makes sense to him. He’s about to tell Daryl that for a dark and sacred ritual, it was surprisingly enjoyable, and that they should trade another one just to be sure—Rick would gladly trade all the spit sandwiches he had to, to make Daryl stay—when a sharp holler cuts across the field.
“Daryl!” The voice is all grit and roughness, making Rick shrink back against Daryl. “If you’re here, get your ass on home!”
“That’s my brother, Merle,” Daryl mumbles. He’d flinched at the sound, and Rick had clutched at him all the tighter, like if he held on as tight as he could, Merle wouldn’t take Daryl from him.
“Daryl, we gotta go!” The voice draws nearer, but neither Rick nor Daryl move an inch, holding their breath like if they do, Merle won’t hear them. Holding onto one another, the two of them folded into a tiny ball of arms and legs, like maybe this way, Merle won’t see them. “If you don’t come out right now, we’ll leave your sorry ass here!”
Rick’s face brightens at that. Can you do that? he asks, raising his eyebrows, with a dopey, hopeful grin.
But Daryl only shakes his head, and when Merle kicks the dome they’re huddling inside, shaking their iron fortress like it’s no more than a cheap, plastic plaything, Daryl sucks in a brave breath and stands up.
“I gotta go, Rick,” he says, dusting off his torn jeans. “I gotta go.” And to anyone else, Daryl might look like he doesn’t care, that this is just another goodbye for him, like any other in his life, but Rick knows the tremble of his lip, the wetness of his eyes from tears Daryl won’t let roll down his face, so Rick shows emotion enough for the both of them.
“Same time tomorrow?” Rick asks, hopeful, as one tear, then another escapes and rolls down his cheek.
“I can’t, Rick,” says Daryl.
And Rick cries, “No!”, just about ready to let Daryl drag him out of the dome, still clutching onto him, but then Daryl’s saying stop and you can’t let Merle can’t see you, don’t know what he’ll do, like Rick’s been the only bright spot in his life and he’ll be damned if Merle takes that away from him too.
“Remember our deal,” Rick says, catching Daryl’s wrist, for one last, desperate touch before he goes. “Remember.”
Daryl brings his palm up to meet Rick’s, and squeezes, hard, like letting go—of Rick, of all the memories they’ve made—is the last thing he wants to do. “I’ll never forget,” he says.
And when Rick is all alone again, in the dome that’s too big for just one, he vows that he’ll never forget, either.
(tbc - Chapter 5)
End Notes:
- S.W.A.K.: “sealed with a kiss”
- The term ‘spit sandwich’ was made up for the purposes of this fic; whether or not it is an actual phrase for kissing remains unknown. At present, it does not seem to be in common usage on Urbandictionary.com, and as such, can be considered a Rickyl’ism—a phrase that exists solely between Rick and Daryl.
Fandom: The Walking Dead (TV)
Pairing: Rick / Daryl
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2950 (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.
“You probably ticked him off with what a baby you are,” Robin says after three days, when she’s grown tired of waiting for Daryl with Rick, and marches off to meet her friends.
Technically, the word she uses is pissed. And Rick’s old enough to know that it’s a bad word, but as bad as it is, he decides that if Daryl was annoyed with what a baby he was, he wouldn’t have bothered to spend half the summer with Rick anyway. So surely that couldn’t be it.
But there’s no one to ask about it, worried as Rick is, and even if he overhears his parents from his hidey hole at the top of the stairs, whispering things like terrible fire and burned to a crisp in her bed, they won’t elaborate on the whispers when Rick asks them. The only thing odd thing he can remember is the sirens that’d been screaming down the street a few nights before, though Rick hadn’t thought much of it at the time. Decided that it must’ve been another robber the cops were chasing after, and stuffed a pillow to his ear to drown out the sound, before falling asleep.
It’s after a whole week’s gone by that Rick finally finds Daryl again, hiding in the plastic dome in the park, and his heart does a little dance of elation in his chest, because he knew if he waited long enough, Daryl would come. But all that happiness floats away when he crawls in after Daryl, and finds him huddled against the side of the dome, his head cradled in his arms, knees pulled tight to his chest.
“What’s wrong?” Rick asks. He raises his voice a little in case Daryl can’t hear him, because he’s sitting like he’s shutting out the whole world. Sidles up against Daryl and sits down, until they’re pressed together at shoulders and hips, sharing warmth, something Rick’s found works wonders when either of them is feeling sad. “Daryl?” he tries again, bumping their knees together lightly.
Daryl hisses a frantic shh, before whispering, “I’m hidin’ from my brother.” He pauses, before adding, “And waitin’ for you.”
Rick decides that Daryl’s brother can’t be the reason Daryl looks as sad as this, so he sits in silence with him for a while, before deciding that maybe chocolate will cheer him up. Reaches for the half bar that’s melted in his pocket, straining until he’s worked it out of his overalls.
“Here,” says Rick, nudging the chocolate into Daryl’s hand. It’s his last bit of chocolate until his mom buys more, but this is a noble and worthy sacrifice for so true a friend. “This’ll make you feel better.”
It does not.
But it does make Daryl more willing to talk to him, instead of burying his face into his knees, like he’s some giant caterpillar curling in on himself.
“It hurts,” Daryl sniffles finally, when he’s made his way through several bites of chocolate.
“What does?” Rick asks, his eyes wide.
And when Daryl points to his heart, without any further elaboration on what’s caused him to hurt so, Rick nods and gives him a one-armed hug that’s really just an awkward tangle of his arm around Daryl’s shoulders and his head on Daryl’s knee. Then an idea strikes him, and he rummages through his small satchel, determined. Pulls out the band-aids he’s taken to carrying, because Daryl seems to attract injuries and hurts somehow, some when he’s not even with Rick that he won’t talk about.
With a flourish, Rick unwraps two of them, and presses the band-aids to Daryl’s shirt, where his heart should be, forming a squiggly little ‘X’.
“There,” Rick says, patting them on, gentle, so they can heal the hurt in Daryl’s heart. “All better.”
Daryl just looks at him, his eyes wet in a way that means it is not all better. “They don’t work that way,” Daryl sniffles, but he gives Rick a wobbly half-smile, that lets Rick know he appreciates the gesture all the same. “Thanks though.”
“There must be somethin’ I can do to help,” Rick says, feeling all kinds of helpless, because Daryl’s clearly in pain, but he doesn’t know what else he can do.
“Ain’t nothin’ you can do,” Daryl says shaking his head, like it’s something all the chocolates and hugs and band-aids in the world can’t fix. And with the biggest, shakiest sigh Rick’s ever heard him heave, he says, “I gotta move away.”
Rick just stares, because he’s seen his sister’s friends ‘move away’, seen them exchange tearful goodbyes and promises to write, after which they never do. But it’s never happened to Rick, and for it to happen now is just not fair. Daryl’s supposed to come to his house, so they can pig out on cookies that Rick’s mom bakes and play videogames. He’s supposed to sleep over and build pillow forts and blanket tents and stay up late to tell ghost stories with Rick. And when school starts again, they’re supposed to eat lunch together and have awesome adventures after class ends, even if they’re not in the same grade.
Daryl is not supposed to be moving away.
“But why?” Rick asks, in a way he’ll realize later is utterly tactless. “Why are you movin’ away?”
Daryl doesn’t seem to mind the question, though. “My house burned down,” he says. “With my ma in it.” When Rick just gapes at him, his mouth open in a tiny o of disbelief, Daryl says, “Don’t you get it? My ma’s dead. And I stood there and watched it happen.”
“What—” Rick manages, before swallowing back the word happened, because it’s deeply personal, what Daryl’s telling him, and Rick refuses to cause Daryl more pain just to satisfy his curiosity.
But then Daryl’s talking again, like what’s happened is such a heavy burden that he has to tell someone. “Day after I walked you home, my pa started beatin’ on my ma real bad,” he says. “Ain’t like he never done it any other day, but this time it was bad. Over money or somethin’. And Merle, he wasn’t there to stop it. Went out with his friends, first thing in the mornin’,” Daryl adds, bitter.
Rick nods solemnly, as he settles next to Daryl again. He knows the pain of unreliable siblings.
“Anyway, my ma don’t like it when I get between her and pa when they fight. So it was after, when…” Here, Daryl pauses, his voice small, like he’s weighed down with all the guilt of having to hide, unable to protect his mom. “After, when my pa left, I stayed to keep an eye on her, you know? Make sure she was still breathin’. That she was all right. Only, I didn’t have nothin’ to eat all day, ‘cause she wasn’t in any condition to cook. And Merle ate all our damn snacks.”
So far, Rick’s already dour impression of Merle is dimming by the minute. He scowls, a Daryl-worthy expression that almost surprises a smile from Daryl, a barely-there twitch that fades as Daryl continues his story.
“We had some funny-tastin’ cereal left in the pantry,” Daryl says, “but it was better than nothin’. So I ran to the corner store to get some milk. Thought I’d read some of the comics in the stands. And my ma was drinkin’ before I left, figured she was all right if she could do that. Heard sirens outside later, but I didn’t think nothin’ of it, just wanted to finish the comic I was readin’. Only, when I got back…” Daryl drops his voice to a whisper. “Saw a crowd gathered—people from the neighbourhood, firefighters, all over the place. Saw smoke and flames too. I remember thinkin’ where’s the fire? Turned it out it was my house the fire was at. And my ma, she musta been smokin’ in bed, ‘cause she was burnt down to nothin’.”
With stunning clarity, Rick remembers the awful, blaring sirens of a few nights past. The whispers of terrible fire and burnt to a crisp in her own bed. And he finally makes the connection between those things and why Daryl hasn’t shown up; it’s nothing Rick’s done, nothing he did wrong to make Daryl hate him; it was simply a matter of Daryl’s whole life falling apart.
“I couldn’t—I couldn’t even do anythin’,” Daryl says, his voice wet in a way Rick’s never heard before. He leans into Rick, like Rick’s his only source of support, and Rick takes his weight willingly, hoping he’s strong enough to be the rock Daryl needs. “To save her.”
Even Rick knows it’s not right to ask for more details now, so he just curls what he can of his small arm around Daryl’s waist tighter, and tucks himself into Daryl’s space. Hoping that Daryl can draw some kind of strength and comfort from their nearness. “I’m sorry,” Rick says finally.
“Me too,” says Daryl, his voice far too small and sad against Rick’s ear. After a long moment, when his soft, hiccupping breaths have faded, he sighs. “Bein’ sorry don’t mean we magically get somewhere to live, though.” He sniffles again, and there’s the longest pause, like the words he means to say next are the hardest. “Rick…” he starts. “My pa says we gotta go somewhere far away.”
Rick’s heart plummets clear through his stomach and onto the ground, at this confirmation that Daryl’s really leaving. He’s starting to realize now, that Daryl didn’t come here to reward Rick for waiting for him every day.
Daryl had come to say goodbye.
“You’ll come back though, won’t you?” Rick asks, his eyes wide, as he scrambles in front of Daryl to meet his gaze. Rick is not crying, he is not. His eyeballs, as Daryl would say, were just sweating. Really hard. Though he’s pretty sure no one can blame him, because Rick knows what ‘moving away’ means, and it means his bestest friend will be gone forever.
“I don’t know,” says Daryl. He buries his face in his knees and arms again, and Rick hears something that sounds suspiciously like a sob. Maybe Daryl’s eyeballs were sweating too.
“You have to promise you’ll come back,” Rick demands, his own lower lip trembling. “Pinky-promise!” He jabs his pinky into Daryl’s cheek and pokes him with it until Daryl looks up.
Daryl’s eyes are red-rimmed, but Rick’s glad that he’s managed to surprise just the tiniest smile from him. “Pinky-promises are for babies,” he says, eyeing Rick’s extended pinky with mock disdain.
Rick puffs out his chest. “I’m not a baby,” he declares, his hands on his hips. In fact, if he stands on his tippy-toes, he almost comes up to Daryl’s chin instead of his shoulder, so that must count for something.
“Then we gotta seal the deal with somethin’ else,” Daryl says seriously.
Rick’s eyes go very wide, as he sifts through his collection of memories of what people do when they’re making the most serious of promises. If pinky-promises were for babies, then surely the cross your heart and hope to die version of it was for babies too. He takes a deep breath. Go big or go home, his dad always said.
“I saw on TV that sometimes people cut their hands, then shake them,” says Rick. He furrows his brow, not sure if he likes the idea of cutting his hand, but throws the idea out there anyway. “Or they drink each other’s blood.” It might’ve just been red juice in those cups he saw, Rick’s not really sure.
Daryl’s lip curls. “Gross, I don’t want your blood all over me.” He points at his scabby knees, where the seams of his jeans are torn and crusted with dried blood. “Got enough of my own.” It’s now that Rick spots the barely-healed gash on Daryl’s shoulder that he knows Daryl didn’t get from playing with Rick, but decides it’s better to keep quiet for now.
Rick’s lower lip juts out too, as he thinks even harder, and comes up with nothing. “What do we do, then?”
Daryl thinks for a moment. “I saw this thing on TV once—they called it swak’ing, I think. They use it for important letters and stuff.”
“What does that mean?” asks Rick. His brow crumples, confused. He’s never heard of this swak’ing thing before. He turns the letters over in his mind. Swak? S.W.A.K.?
Daryl shrugs. “I don’t know. But it sounded cool.”
“What do you do for it?” Rick says, eager.
Daryl reaches out slowly, and cups Rick’s cheeks in his hands. Brings their mouths together, gentle, for a touch that’s light and breathy and warm. Their noses bump against each other, awkward, but then Daryl tilts his head just so, and Rick does too, and suddenly it’s perfect, the way their mouths slot together, warm and wet, tasting of the cheer-up chocolate Rick had shared with him, a heady mixture of milk sweetness, almond bitterness, and Daryl that’s just the right amount of delicious.
Rick blinks, surprised, because this is far better than cutting his own hand, and if this is what it takes to bring Daryl back to him, he’ll do it gladly, and he throws himself into it, returning the touch of mouths, clumsy, but no less earnest and sweet. And they’re not trading blood, but wet of another kind, so this has to count, right?
When Daryl finally pulls away with a breathless little sigh, Rick has to take a moment of his own to breathe. His head’s still spinning from all the swak’ing they’ve done, and his lips are still tingling from where Daryl’s mouth touched his, but it’s a good kind of dizzy, a new kind of tingly, that he doesn’t mind at all. From what he’s seen at school, he should wipe his mouth and say gross, but Daryl’s a boy, so Rick can’t catch cooties from him. Therefore, the tingling at his lips can’t be cooties.
And the tingling in his heart? Rick doesn’t know, but he hopes that’s not cooties either.
“We’ve sealed our pact with a spit sandwich now,” Daryl says solemnly, his eyes dark, as if they’ve just performed the most sacred of rituals.
Rick nods, dazed, all thoughts of cooties forgotten. A spit sandwich. He’ll have to remember that. He supposes that makes sense, since they had traded spit somehow, and he’s not sure how Daryl came up with the word sandwich for it—maybe it’s because it was like they were trying to eat each other’s mouths?—but Daryl’s older and knows more than him, so it must be right.
It sounds a lot cooler than swak’ing, anyway. And so much cooler than plain old kissing.
Besides, Rick’s seen his parents do this too, and adults make very serious promises all the time, so this makes sense to him. He’s about to tell Daryl that for a dark and sacred ritual, it was surprisingly enjoyable, and that they should trade another one just to be sure—Rick would gladly trade all the spit sandwiches he had to, to make Daryl stay—when a sharp holler cuts across the field.
“Daryl!” The voice is all grit and roughness, making Rick shrink back against Daryl. “If you’re here, get your ass on home!”
“That’s my brother, Merle,” Daryl mumbles. He’d flinched at the sound, and Rick had clutched at him all the tighter, like if he held on as tight as he could, Merle wouldn’t take Daryl from him.
“Daryl, we gotta go!” The voice draws nearer, but neither Rick nor Daryl move an inch, holding their breath like if they do, Merle won’t hear them. Holding onto one another, the two of them folded into a tiny ball of arms and legs, like maybe this way, Merle won’t see them. “If you don’t come out right now, we’ll leave your sorry ass here!”
Rick’s face brightens at that. Can you do that? he asks, raising his eyebrows, with a dopey, hopeful grin.
But Daryl only shakes his head, and when Merle kicks the dome they’re huddling inside, shaking their iron fortress like it’s no more than a cheap, plastic plaything, Daryl sucks in a brave breath and stands up.
“I gotta go, Rick,” he says, dusting off his torn jeans. “I gotta go.” And to anyone else, Daryl might look like he doesn’t care, that this is just another goodbye for him, like any other in his life, but Rick knows the tremble of his lip, the wetness of his eyes from tears Daryl won’t let roll down his face, so Rick shows emotion enough for the both of them.
“Same time tomorrow?” Rick asks, hopeful, as one tear, then another escapes and rolls down his cheek.
“I can’t, Rick,” says Daryl.
And Rick cries, “No!”, just about ready to let Daryl drag him out of the dome, still clutching onto him, but then Daryl’s saying stop and you can’t let Merle can’t see you, don’t know what he’ll do, like Rick’s been the only bright spot in his life and he’ll be damned if Merle takes that away from him too.
“Remember our deal,” Rick says, catching Daryl’s wrist, for one last, desperate touch before he goes. “Remember.”
Daryl brings his palm up to meet Rick’s, and squeezes, hard, like letting go—of Rick, of all the memories they’ve made—is the last thing he wants to do. “I’ll never forget,” he says.
And when Rick is all alone again, in the dome that’s too big for just one, he vows that he’ll never forget, either.
(tbc - Chapter 5)
End Notes:
- S.W.A.K.: “sealed with a kiss”
- The term ‘spit sandwich’ was made up for the purposes of this fic; whether or not it is an actual phrase for kissing remains unknown. At present, it does not seem to be in common usage on Urbandictionary.com, and as such, can be considered a Rickyl’ism—a phrase that exists solely between Rick and Daryl.