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First Taste of Love, Bittersweet (5/6)
Title: First Taste of Love, Bittersweet (5/6)
Fandom: The Walking Dead (TV)
Pairing: Rick / Daryl
Rating: PG-13
Words: 4040 (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.
~
True enough, Daryl doesn’t show up at the playground the next day, or any day after. Rick spends a while moping at the swings and digging holes in the sandbox, pretending Daryl’s right there with him, talking to Daryl like he’s only a shout away, but it’s just not the same.
When, at the end of the week, his sister takes him aside to share her great and terrible secret, which is just an excuse for her to brag—her first kiss, in front of the soda fountain at Bill’s Burgers!—Rick just giggles in her face.
“You’re so slow,” he says, delighted to turn the words she’s said to him so often around on her. “I had mine ages ago.”
Robin might be twice his age, but since her age was in the double digits, Robin often told him this meant she had quadruple the amount of experience Rick did, not just double. So of course, this doesn’t sit well with Robin, because god forbid the thought that Rick’s beaten her in anything.
“Who was it?” she says, following him to and fro for the rest of the day, like an annoying mosquito that’s just out of swatting range. “Who who who? Was it that bratty girl with the pigtails in your class?”
“No,” Rick says simply. It’s his answer to all of Robin’s questions that follow, because they’re all in the same vein, and because he knows not giving her the answer will annoy the living daylights out of her. This time it’s Rick who’s keeping a secret safe, the one who’s got the upper hand.
Around dinnertime, after Robin’s guessed her way through the entire lineup of bratty girls in Rick’s kindergarten classes—the one with the gap in her front teeth? the one with the bottlecap glasses?—Rick finally curls his lip and says no, and eww, because it wasn’t any of them, and he can’t imagine wanting to kiss them, either.
“Well, who was it, then?” Robin asks, hands on her hips, because it kills her to not know things, as Rick’s found out.
Rick can’t help the goofy grin that spreads across his face, shining a mile wide for this reveal. “It was my bestest friend ever!” he announces, proud. He feels something twist in his chest at the memory all the same, because Daryl should really hurry up and come back so they can share more kisses like that.
Robin wrinkles her nose at the news. “I thought you only had like, one friend,” she says. “That Dixon kid.”
And just as Rick’s about to hiss His name is Daryl, like an angry goose protecting her babies, Robin says, oh, very softly. “Oh, Rick,” she says again, when Rick just blinks at her, his wide, blue gaze every kind of confused.
Rick’s starting to feel scared now, because he doesn’t understand that soft, sympathetic look in her eyes. Had he done something wrong? Was Daryl not supposed to kiss him? Or was Rick in the wrong, for kissing him back?
For liking it?
He flinches when Robin draws closer, but all she does is take his small hands in hers, and squeeze, warm, with a smile. “I’m happy for you,” she says finally. She doesn’t go so far as a hug, but Rick knows her well enough to know that this is as good as one.
It’s one of the few instances he can remember her actually being nice.
He doesn’t realize what that means until much, much later.
~
For his sixth birthday, Rick wishes with all his might that Daryl will appear, so they can play again and explore farther out, because Rick got a scooter this year. And he’ll let Daryl ride with him, so he won’t have to watch Daryl chase after the not-friends on their bikes, who won’t wait up for him.
The moment Rick’s opened his other gifts and the cake and party favors have been doled out, Rick excuses himself and paddles as fast as he can on his new scooter to the playground, to check if his wish came true. There are a few of Daryl’s old acquaintances—if that’s what they could be called—on their bikes, but as usual, they ride away, laughing and talking, and ignoring Rick like they’ve taken to doing, after Daryl gave them a dose of their own medicine. Taught them a lesson, all the way, of their own.
There’s no sign of Daryl.
Rick checks the playground for a few days after, in case the birthday fairy or whoever it is that grants birthday wishes is backlogged with too many wishes to grant his right away.
A few days turns into a week, and a week turns into months.
In the end, Rick decides the birthday fairy must be on extended vacation for the rest of the summer, because his wish never comes true.
~
For his seventh birthday, Rick makes another wish for Daryl to show up at the playground, because this time, Rick got a kite and a model plane, and he’s pretty sure Daryl’s never had those things before and he just wants to share them with Daryl so bad.
He doesn’t even wait for the birthday songs, or gifts, or the cake to be cut, just hightails it to the playground right after he’s blown out the candles, because maybe he was late last year. Maybe he’d made Daryl wait too long. Rick makes it down two blocks and cuts a sharp left, gravel crunching loose beneath his sneakers as he crosses into the sacred playpark. Checks under their plastic dome. The benches. Their secret hideout beneath the slide.
Rick even checks under the low-lying wooden bridge where Daryl liked to pretend he was the Troll Under the Bridge and Rick would be all the Billy Goats Gruff, trip-trapping over the bridge in search of greener pastures.
Daryl’s not in any of those places, which is all kinds of disappointing, because Rick thought for sure Daryl would be hiding as the Troll, just to jump out and surprise him like he used to. Rick decides that maybe he just didn’t wish hard enough, and resolves to do better next time.
But next time is another whole year away, so Rick gets the idea to save up all his Christmas wishes that year. Stops just short of sending a letter to Santa with a demand to give Daryl back, because he doesn’t know where to post his handwritten note. He gives his wishlist to his parents instead, which only has the one item, because he’ll forego all his Christmas presents if it means getting Daryl back.
When his mom unfurls his list and reads it, she bites her lip and breathes oh, her voice wobbly in the way that Rick can tell she’s trying not to cry. She’s guessed by now that he and Daryl hadn’t just spent one afternoon together, though she’s assured Rick that his secret’s safe with her. But Rick knows that look she’s got now, that crumpled expression of hurt that mirrors his own. He knows exactly what it means.
“Oh, honey,” she says, when tears slip out of Rick’s own eyes, against his will. She lets Rick crawl into her lap, as she rocks him and tells him Santa knows you’ve been a good boy and there’s only so much Santa can do, but they all boil down to the same thing:
Daryl is not coming back this year.
~
For his eighth birthday, Rick gets a telescope from his parents, which he’s pretty sure is more useful than the model plane. Maybe his presents hadn’t been interesting enough last year for Daryl to bother coming back, so with this thought in mind, he wishes for Daryl to come back, to come back to Rick, because I have an awesome telescope now, and we can haul it out and look at the stars together.
Daryl seems like he’d know his constellations, and Rick’s sure if he asked, Daryl would teach him about each and every one.
Rick shuts his eyes tight, and keeps repeating his wish in his mind, holding his breath as he does so, thinking Daryl Daryl Daryl before blowing out the candles so hard that Robin complains he probably got baby spit all over it.
Except Daryl doesn’t magically phase into being at Rick’s house. He’s nowhere to be found on the playground, either, when Rick checks, his heart in his throat after he’s torn down the sidewalk.
When a search of every single one of their secret hideouts turns up nothing, Rick kicks at loose dirt and gravel, sending a spray of it at the swings. “Come back, Daryl!” he yells into the air, hearing it echo around the compound of the playground. “You promised you would! You have to come back!”
The outburst only earns him a look from some very unimpressed pigeons, perched high on the frame of the swings. Rick kicks the swings too, for good measure, scattering the pigeons. Wonders if rage will bring Daryl back—anger, fire-red and hot—as he kicks up more dirt and gravel, spraying it outside the wooden confines of the playground.
He finds he can’t keep up the tantrum for long, though.
And Daryl still doesn’t come back.
~
For his ninth birthday, Rick wishes for a video game that’s all the rage that year—some kind of first-person shooter that you can play cooperatively with other people. After all, his wishes for Daryl have gone unanswered, so he might as well put them toward something useful.
Rick gets his wish; in the last he gift he unwraps, there’s a copy of the newest Game of the Year edition of Stryker: The Resistance.
He gets bored of it in an hour.
He decides he should’ve wished for Daryl, instead.
~
For his tenth birthday, Rick gets a brand new bike, and something in his chest feels like breaking when he finds his birthday gift from his parents, because he remembers that if Daryl were here, Rick would give him a ride on it. Hell, he’d probably even let Daryl ride it. Daryl had always looked longingly at the bikes the older kids had, and told Rick that someday, I’ll have the biggest, baddest bike there ever was. And at Rick’s wide-eyed, very serious, Will you let me ride it too? Daryl had only snorted and said hell yeah, like there was no question about who’d have this privilege when he got it.
So all Rick wants to do is share this gift with Daryl, just like he has all his other birthday presents. Just wishes Daryl was here, because Rick has so much to tell him, and show him, and Daryl isn’t here.
But when it’s time to blow out the candles on his cake, as per tradition, Rick wishes for Daryl for what he tells himself is the last damn time. Because Daryl’s probably forgotten him by now, probably making new friends and chasing after girls to trade spit sandwiches with them instead. He wishes with all his might, thinking it’s okay if it didn’t come true all the other years, just let this year be the one, before heaving a hopeful breath at the candles, like he has every year. Hightails it to the playground, this time on his bike, his shiny new bike that Daryl has to, just has to come back for.
Daryl’s not at the playground, or the bike racks, or hiding inside the dome, like he had been the last time Rick saw him.
Daryl’s not anywhere, in fact.
Rick kicks at the dome where they’d shared their first kiss, their last words, sending sand and gravel skittering loose over the scratched plastic, worn from a billion kids crawling and climbing all over it. It’s not rage he’s feeling anymore, not anger he naïvely hopes will bring his friend back, but frustration, pure and simple.
That’s the last time I’ll make stupid baby wishes that don’t come true, Rick vows. His hands ball into fists he watches sand slide down along the dome, like muddy rain, the sight of his all hopes sinking deep into the ground.
The last.
~
It’s beginning to feel like Daryl never existed with every year that passes, and sometimes Rick has to wonder if he’d imagined that summer, imagined a whole friend into being.
But then Rick remembers the hesitant press of lips to his, the taste of chocolate and almonds and a sweetness he’s tasted nowhere else, and he knows he didn’t. And despite his bitter vow that he didn’t believe in stupid baby wishes anymore, Rick still wishes on every birthday candle, shooting star and Thanksgiving turkey wishbone, as if he can will Daryl back into existence, with the sheer number of wishes he’s made.
Of course, none of them work, no matter how hard Rick hopes, no matter how much he believes, and by the time he’s fifteen he gives it all up as a bad job, and just hopes Daryl is happy, wherever he is now.
Remember our deal, Rick had begged that day. Remember.
I’ll never forget, Daryl had said.
Except he clearly has, because no one lets a whole decade go by without making some kind of reappearance, and Rick decides he’s better off moving on with his own life. He’s heard first loves never work out anyway, so he’s not alone in that respect.
“Look, all you need to do to forget Daryl is find a new love,” Robin tells him one night, as she’s teasing her hair in the mirror for a date. She’s straightened most of her hair out now, because she despises the telltale Grimes curls, but keeps her bangs wild and unruly because they make her ‘stand out’. “Seriously, try it sometime. Besides,” she adds, voice softer, the way Robin speaks when she’s trying to be kind, “I doubt he’s pinin’ for you the same way you are for him.”
The thought of that being true hurts, and there’s an indignant I do not pine building at the back of Rick’s throat, but they’ll both know he’s lying if he says it. “I’m not lookin’ to forget him,” Rick settles on, in the end. Just to be clear.
He gets an eyeroll and a huff of annoyance for his honesty. “Suit yourself,” Robin sighs, like she’s done with the matter, even if Rick knows he can count on her to lend a willing ear, the next time his hopes for Daryl’s return don’t pan out. Most times, anyway.
Sometimes.
All right, maybe once in a blue moon.
Ultimately, though, Rick decides there must be something to her words, because Robin’s no longer with the boy of the infamous first soda fountain kiss, and in fact, has a new boyfriend every month—if not every week—and she doesn’t seem to be faring any worse for it.
So Rick tests the waters of the high school dating pool and goes out with Lori, top of their class, with pretty brown eyes and long hair that falls to her waist.
It doesn’t last long at all, because she’s all easy laughs and smiles, too fragile where Rick expects strength, curves where Rick’s grown too used to imagined edges.
He tries going out with his friend Shane after that, which is closer to what Rick’s wanted, even if it’s not quite. Except that ends up being more staying in than going out, because Shane doesn’t want people to know about them, even if it’s just clumsy kisses and fumbling touches.
So it’s the ultimate cosmic joke when, after the two of them have dumped Rick, one after another, Lori and Shane go out with each other.
Inevitably, that’s when Rick returns to his if Daryl were here thoughts. If Daryl were here, he and Rick would be thick as thieves, hanging out after class or riding around town on their bikes. If Daryl were here, he’d make high school better than the hell hole it’s been so far, with its backstabbing friends, irritating teachers, and a legion of loudmouthed jocks that figured the school was theirs, including the possessions of everyone in it.
And if Daryl were here, well, hell—he’d heal that hurt in Rick’s chest in a heartbeat.
Because Daryl makes everything better. He’s like hot cocoa on a chilly day, or a heated blanket when you’ve got a cold. But it doesn’t take long before Rick remembers that Daryl is very decidedly not here, and he has to carry on like he always does.
Rick’s old enough now not to bother with little baby wishes that never come true, and he’s decided to pick up his old man’s tried and true work ethic: if you want it, work for it. So when his next birthday rolls around, he makes a silly, frivolous wish for a Ford Mustang, before setting out to find himself a job to start saving up for one.
It’s only after he’s mooned after the Mustang in the showroom for what must be the millionth time, that something finally clicks in Rick’s mind.
If you want it, work for it.
Hard work, instead of wishes. If Rick had wanted Daryl that badly, then he should’ve asked around, found out where he’d gone. As Rick thinks back, he wonders how he hadn’t thought of this in so long, to just look for Daryl himself. Maybe he hadn’t had the resources as a kid, but surely he could’ve asked someone, an adult who might’ve known.
Except he hasn’t the faintest clue how to start. Ends up cursing himself for never asking for Daryl’s last name, because who thinks of that when the summer days are long and you’re having the time of your life? He hadn’t even known about last names back then, just squiggled a giant backwards ‘G’ in front of his name when his parents told him to, thinking it was a silent letter, like the ‘K’ in knee or something.
But then he remembers Daryl picking at their parfait with a spoon, and saying Ain’t no one ever cared about a Dixon. Everyone around him calling Daryl that Dixon kid. Rick had wondered, back then, if maybe a Dixon was some mythical beast or rare species of animal that could take human form, like a dragon or unicorn. One that no one particularly cared about or bothered with, because they didn’t have any special powers, or their blood didn’t hold magical properties.
But Daryl had always just been Daryl to Rick, whether he was a Dixon, a dragon, or a unicorn.
Rick’s father only straightens his morning newspaper with a sharp snap when Rick asks him about Daryl. “No one knows where the Dixons went, son,” he says. “It’s like they’ve fallen off the face of the earth.” He peers over the top of the paper at Rick. “You’re better off forgettin’ about them. And your friend.”
Rick makes sure to ask around town too, just in case his father’s lying to him, but the responses are mostly the same: no one knows where the Dixons ran off to—likely to escape the law—or they’ve never even heard of them.
After a week of furtive inquiries made into Daryl’s whereabouts, to pretty much all the townspeople, Rick decides that maybe some things aren’t meant to be.
No matter how hard you work.
~
It’s weeks past Rick’s twenty-fifth birthday when something extraordinary happens.
He hasn’t wished on birthday candles in the last decade, hasn’t saved up Christmas prayers for Santa, because he’s long past those vestiges of his childhood. But all the same, Rick can’t deny feeling like something’s shifted back into place when he stumbles upon it—just a small thing, a little thing, that somehow means so much.
Rick’s just finished with a midday grocery run, when, on the way back to his new flat, he finds a mess of detour signs and sandbags piled up in the road.
“Road’s blocked,” one of the workers calls out. “Water main burst an hour ago.” He jerks a nod at the detour signs, a series of shoddy orange road markers with arrows that tell Rick where to go.
Rick nods a thanks for the heads-up, and sets out in the direction the signs point to.
As it turns out, the signs take him past the old town square, a place he hasn’t visited in years since they built the new road for easy shopping and restaurant access. Some of the shops dotting the landscape of the square have grown bigger, others smaller, and others have disappeared completely. The bakery, for one, where Rick used to stop with his mother for butter pecan tarts and chocolate-dipped shortbread, has annexed the shop next to it, adding on a miniature coffee bar. Meanwhile, the pet food store’s gone under, replaced by a dimly-lit laundromat, with a bulb that seems to short out every ten seconds. A few of the old gift shops still remain, but instead of tie-dye T-shirts and suncatchers, they sell smaller knickknacks, like fridge magnets and shot glasses.
In the middle of the square, though, is the old fountain where he and Daryl had once fished for coins, so they could afford an ice cream parfait—a king’s feast when they were as small as they were.
The fountain’s been repaired at least a dozen times, from the looks of it, a mosaic of patchwork from each time it’s been fixed, and they’ve even added a ring of glowing lights around the base of it, making it look rather tacky. But the sight of the fountain brings back a wave of nostalgia, nevertheless.
It’s a wave so strong it leaves Rick longing for the old days, when things were much simpler. When Rick didn’t have to bend and scrape and bow to others, endure calls of hey, rookie, and make coffee and doughnut runs until the older cops decided he wasn’t much fun to tease anymore, and newer, fresher rookies took his place on the totem pole.
At the same time, it reminds him of just why he went into law enforcement, because it’s always been at the back of Rick’s mind, that if he could’ve done something—for Daryl’s mother, for Daryl—maybe Daryl’s house wouldn’t have burnt down. Maybe Daryl wouldn’t have had to move away. His friend’s long gone now, but at least this way, Rick knows he won’t have to sit helplessly by for all the Daryls that come after, only able to offer melted chocolates and hugs.
Rick makes his way closer, feeling the cool spray of fountain water, a light mist against his face, and lets himself remember. The way he’d felt with the sun beating down on his back, holding Daryl’s legs down, so neither of them would fall into the bowl of the fountain. Laughter, mischief-bright, the cry of gulls along the fountain’s edge, pecking, and—
Those are people’s wishes, young man! a voice shrills.
Rick’s startled from the memory, and even if it’s been years since their raid on the fountain, he’s still sorry for the wishes he’d stolen back then. Wonders if it’s appropriate to make one of his own now, even if he doesn’t believe in such things anymore. After all, he’d tried birthday wishes, shooting star wishes, wishbone wishes, and Christmas wishes.
He’d tried hard work.
And none of those had worked either.
It can’t hurt, Rick decides.
He flips a quarter into the gently bubbling water, for his own wish, watching it strike the surface with a splash and following its descent through the water. Thinks for a moment, before shifting his grocery bags onto one arm and rummaging through his pocket for another quarter.
Daryl’s probably forgotten his own part of the deal by now, but this—this is in case Daryl needs a little luck on his side too. To get back to Rick, wherever he is.
So Rick draws in the deepest breath, of courage, of hope, and of faith. And as he flicks the second quarter into the fountain, listening for the splash that declares his request’s been received, he closes his eyes and believes.
(tbc - Chapter 6)
Fandom: The Walking Dead (TV)
Pairing: Rick / Daryl
Rating: PG-13
Words: 4040 (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.
True enough, Daryl doesn’t show up at the playground the next day, or any day after. Rick spends a while moping at the swings and digging holes in the sandbox, pretending Daryl’s right there with him, talking to Daryl like he’s only a shout away, but it’s just not the same.
When, at the end of the week, his sister takes him aside to share her great and terrible secret, which is just an excuse for her to brag—her first kiss, in front of the soda fountain at Bill’s Burgers!—Rick just giggles in her face.
“You’re so slow,” he says, delighted to turn the words she’s said to him so often around on her. “I had mine ages ago.”
Robin might be twice his age, but since her age was in the double digits, Robin often told him this meant she had quadruple the amount of experience Rick did, not just double. So of course, this doesn’t sit well with Robin, because god forbid the thought that Rick’s beaten her in anything.
“Who was it?” she says, following him to and fro for the rest of the day, like an annoying mosquito that’s just out of swatting range. “Who who who? Was it that bratty girl with the pigtails in your class?”
“No,” Rick says simply. It’s his answer to all of Robin’s questions that follow, because they’re all in the same vein, and because he knows not giving her the answer will annoy the living daylights out of her. This time it’s Rick who’s keeping a secret safe, the one who’s got the upper hand.
Around dinnertime, after Robin’s guessed her way through the entire lineup of bratty girls in Rick’s kindergarten classes—the one with the gap in her front teeth? the one with the bottlecap glasses?—Rick finally curls his lip and says no, and eww, because it wasn’t any of them, and he can’t imagine wanting to kiss them, either.
“Well, who was it, then?” Robin asks, hands on her hips, because it kills her to not know things, as Rick’s found out.
Rick can’t help the goofy grin that spreads across his face, shining a mile wide for this reveal. “It was my bestest friend ever!” he announces, proud. He feels something twist in his chest at the memory all the same, because Daryl should really hurry up and come back so they can share more kisses like that.
Robin wrinkles her nose at the news. “I thought you only had like, one friend,” she says. “That Dixon kid.”
And just as Rick’s about to hiss His name is Daryl, like an angry goose protecting her babies, Robin says, oh, very softly. “Oh, Rick,” she says again, when Rick just blinks at her, his wide, blue gaze every kind of confused.
Rick’s starting to feel scared now, because he doesn’t understand that soft, sympathetic look in her eyes. Had he done something wrong? Was Daryl not supposed to kiss him? Or was Rick in the wrong, for kissing him back?
For liking it?
He flinches when Robin draws closer, but all she does is take his small hands in hers, and squeeze, warm, with a smile. “I’m happy for you,” she says finally. She doesn’t go so far as a hug, but Rick knows her well enough to know that this is as good as one.
It’s one of the few instances he can remember her actually being nice.
He doesn’t realize what that means until much, much later.
For his sixth birthday, Rick wishes with all his might that Daryl will appear, so they can play again and explore farther out, because Rick got a scooter this year. And he’ll let Daryl ride with him, so he won’t have to watch Daryl chase after the not-friends on their bikes, who won’t wait up for him.
The moment Rick’s opened his other gifts and the cake and party favors have been doled out, Rick excuses himself and paddles as fast as he can on his new scooter to the playground, to check if his wish came true. There are a few of Daryl’s old acquaintances—if that’s what they could be called—on their bikes, but as usual, they ride away, laughing and talking, and ignoring Rick like they’ve taken to doing, after Daryl gave them a dose of their own medicine. Taught them a lesson, all the way, of their own.
There’s no sign of Daryl.
Rick checks the playground for a few days after, in case the birthday fairy or whoever it is that grants birthday wishes is backlogged with too many wishes to grant his right away.
A few days turns into a week, and a week turns into months.
In the end, Rick decides the birthday fairy must be on extended vacation for the rest of the summer, because his wish never comes true.
For his seventh birthday, Rick makes another wish for Daryl to show up at the playground, because this time, Rick got a kite and a model plane, and he’s pretty sure Daryl’s never had those things before and he just wants to share them with Daryl so bad.
He doesn’t even wait for the birthday songs, or gifts, or the cake to be cut, just hightails it to the playground right after he’s blown out the candles, because maybe he was late last year. Maybe he’d made Daryl wait too long. Rick makes it down two blocks and cuts a sharp left, gravel crunching loose beneath his sneakers as he crosses into the sacred playpark. Checks under their plastic dome. The benches. Their secret hideout beneath the slide.
Rick even checks under the low-lying wooden bridge where Daryl liked to pretend he was the Troll Under the Bridge and Rick would be all the Billy Goats Gruff, trip-trapping over the bridge in search of greener pastures.
Daryl’s not in any of those places, which is all kinds of disappointing, because Rick thought for sure Daryl would be hiding as the Troll, just to jump out and surprise him like he used to. Rick decides that maybe he just didn’t wish hard enough, and resolves to do better next time.
But next time is another whole year away, so Rick gets the idea to save up all his Christmas wishes that year. Stops just short of sending a letter to Santa with a demand to give Daryl back, because he doesn’t know where to post his handwritten note. He gives his wishlist to his parents instead, which only has the one item, because he’ll forego all his Christmas presents if it means getting Daryl back.
When his mom unfurls his list and reads it, she bites her lip and breathes oh, her voice wobbly in the way that Rick can tell she’s trying not to cry. She’s guessed by now that he and Daryl hadn’t just spent one afternoon together, though she’s assured Rick that his secret’s safe with her. But Rick knows that look she’s got now, that crumpled expression of hurt that mirrors his own. He knows exactly what it means.
“Oh, honey,” she says, when tears slip out of Rick’s own eyes, against his will. She lets Rick crawl into her lap, as she rocks him and tells him Santa knows you’ve been a good boy and there’s only so much Santa can do, but they all boil down to the same thing:
Daryl is not coming back this year.
For his eighth birthday, Rick gets a telescope from his parents, which he’s pretty sure is more useful than the model plane. Maybe his presents hadn’t been interesting enough last year for Daryl to bother coming back, so with this thought in mind, he wishes for Daryl to come back, to come back to Rick, because I have an awesome telescope now, and we can haul it out and look at the stars together.
Daryl seems like he’d know his constellations, and Rick’s sure if he asked, Daryl would teach him about each and every one.
Rick shuts his eyes tight, and keeps repeating his wish in his mind, holding his breath as he does so, thinking Daryl Daryl Daryl before blowing out the candles so hard that Robin complains he probably got baby spit all over it.
Except Daryl doesn’t magically phase into being at Rick’s house. He’s nowhere to be found on the playground, either, when Rick checks, his heart in his throat after he’s torn down the sidewalk.
When a search of every single one of their secret hideouts turns up nothing, Rick kicks at loose dirt and gravel, sending a spray of it at the swings. “Come back, Daryl!” he yells into the air, hearing it echo around the compound of the playground. “You promised you would! You have to come back!”
The outburst only earns him a look from some very unimpressed pigeons, perched high on the frame of the swings. Rick kicks the swings too, for good measure, scattering the pigeons. Wonders if rage will bring Daryl back—anger, fire-red and hot—as he kicks up more dirt and gravel, spraying it outside the wooden confines of the playground.
He finds he can’t keep up the tantrum for long, though.
And Daryl still doesn’t come back.
For his ninth birthday, Rick wishes for a video game that’s all the rage that year—some kind of first-person shooter that you can play cooperatively with other people. After all, his wishes for Daryl have gone unanswered, so he might as well put them toward something useful.
Rick gets his wish; in the last he gift he unwraps, there’s a copy of the newest Game of the Year edition of Stryker: The Resistance.
He gets bored of it in an hour.
He decides he should’ve wished for Daryl, instead.
For his tenth birthday, Rick gets a brand new bike, and something in his chest feels like breaking when he finds his birthday gift from his parents, because he remembers that if Daryl were here, Rick would give him a ride on it. Hell, he’d probably even let Daryl ride it. Daryl had always looked longingly at the bikes the older kids had, and told Rick that someday, I’ll have the biggest, baddest bike there ever was. And at Rick’s wide-eyed, very serious, Will you let me ride it too? Daryl had only snorted and said hell yeah, like there was no question about who’d have this privilege when he got it.
So all Rick wants to do is share this gift with Daryl, just like he has all his other birthday presents. Just wishes Daryl was here, because Rick has so much to tell him, and show him, and Daryl isn’t here.
But when it’s time to blow out the candles on his cake, as per tradition, Rick wishes for Daryl for what he tells himself is the last damn time. Because Daryl’s probably forgotten him by now, probably making new friends and chasing after girls to trade spit sandwiches with them instead. He wishes with all his might, thinking it’s okay if it didn’t come true all the other years, just let this year be the one, before heaving a hopeful breath at the candles, like he has every year. Hightails it to the playground, this time on his bike, his shiny new bike that Daryl has to, just has to come back for.
Daryl’s not at the playground, or the bike racks, or hiding inside the dome, like he had been the last time Rick saw him.
Daryl’s not anywhere, in fact.
Rick kicks at the dome where they’d shared their first kiss, their last words, sending sand and gravel skittering loose over the scratched plastic, worn from a billion kids crawling and climbing all over it. It’s not rage he’s feeling anymore, not anger he naïvely hopes will bring his friend back, but frustration, pure and simple.
That’s the last time I’ll make stupid baby wishes that don’t come true, Rick vows. His hands ball into fists he watches sand slide down along the dome, like muddy rain, the sight of his all hopes sinking deep into the ground.
The last.
It’s beginning to feel like Daryl never existed with every year that passes, and sometimes Rick has to wonder if he’d imagined that summer, imagined a whole friend into being.
But then Rick remembers the hesitant press of lips to his, the taste of chocolate and almonds and a sweetness he’s tasted nowhere else, and he knows he didn’t. And despite his bitter vow that he didn’t believe in stupid baby wishes anymore, Rick still wishes on every birthday candle, shooting star and Thanksgiving turkey wishbone, as if he can will Daryl back into existence, with the sheer number of wishes he’s made.
Of course, none of them work, no matter how hard Rick hopes, no matter how much he believes, and by the time he’s fifteen he gives it all up as a bad job, and just hopes Daryl is happy, wherever he is now.
Remember our deal, Rick had begged that day. Remember.
I’ll never forget, Daryl had said.
Except he clearly has, because no one lets a whole decade go by without making some kind of reappearance, and Rick decides he’s better off moving on with his own life. He’s heard first loves never work out anyway, so he’s not alone in that respect.
“Look, all you need to do to forget Daryl is find a new love,” Robin tells him one night, as she’s teasing her hair in the mirror for a date. She’s straightened most of her hair out now, because she despises the telltale Grimes curls, but keeps her bangs wild and unruly because they make her ‘stand out’. “Seriously, try it sometime. Besides,” she adds, voice softer, the way Robin speaks when she’s trying to be kind, “I doubt he’s pinin’ for you the same way you are for him.”
The thought of that being true hurts, and there’s an indignant I do not pine building at the back of Rick’s throat, but they’ll both know he’s lying if he says it. “I’m not lookin’ to forget him,” Rick settles on, in the end. Just to be clear.
He gets an eyeroll and a huff of annoyance for his honesty. “Suit yourself,” Robin sighs, like she’s done with the matter, even if Rick knows he can count on her to lend a willing ear, the next time his hopes for Daryl’s return don’t pan out. Most times, anyway.
Sometimes.
All right, maybe once in a blue moon.
Ultimately, though, Rick decides there must be something to her words, because Robin’s no longer with the boy of the infamous first soda fountain kiss, and in fact, has a new boyfriend every month—if not every week—and she doesn’t seem to be faring any worse for it.
So Rick tests the waters of the high school dating pool and goes out with Lori, top of their class, with pretty brown eyes and long hair that falls to her waist.
It doesn’t last long at all, because she’s all easy laughs and smiles, too fragile where Rick expects strength, curves where Rick’s grown too used to imagined edges.
He tries going out with his friend Shane after that, which is closer to what Rick’s wanted, even if it’s not quite. Except that ends up being more staying in than going out, because Shane doesn’t want people to know about them, even if it’s just clumsy kisses and fumbling touches.
So it’s the ultimate cosmic joke when, after the two of them have dumped Rick, one after another, Lori and Shane go out with each other.
Inevitably, that’s when Rick returns to his if Daryl were here thoughts. If Daryl were here, he and Rick would be thick as thieves, hanging out after class or riding around town on their bikes. If Daryl were here, he’d make high school better than the hell hole it’s been so far, with its backstabbing friends, irritating teachers, and a legion of loudmouthed jocks that figured the school was theirs, including the possessions of everyone in it.
And if Daryl were here, well, hell—he’d heal that hurt in Rick’s chest in a heartbeat.
Because Daryl makes everything better. He’s like hot cocoa on a chilly day, or a heated blanket when you’ve got a cold. But it doesn’t take long before Rick remembers that Daryl is very decidedly not here, and he has to carry on like he always does.
Rick’s old enough now not to bother with little baby wishes that never come true, and he’s decided to pick up his old man’s tried and true work ethic: if you want it, work for it. So when his next birthday rolls around, he makes a silly, frivolous wish for a Ford Mustang, before setting out to find himself a job to start saving up for one.
It’s only after he’s mooned after the Mustang in the showroom for what must be the millionth time, that something finally clicks in Rick’s mind.
If you want it, work for it.
Hard work, instead of wishes. If Rick had wanted Daryl that badly, then he should’ve asked around, found out where he’d gone. As Rick thinks back, he wonders how he hadn’t thought of this in so long, to just look for Daryl himself. Maybe he hadn’t had the resources as a kid, but surely he could’ve asked someone, an adult who might’ve known.
Except he hasn’t the faintest clue how to start. Ends up cursing himself for never asking for Daryl’s last name, because who thinks of that when the summer days are long and you’re having the time of your life? He hadn’t even known about last names back then, just squiggled a giant backwards ‘G’ in front of his name when his parents told him to, thinking it was a silent letter, like the ‘K’ in knee or something.
But then he remembers Daryl picking at their parfait with a spoon, and saying Ain’t no one ever cared about a Dixon. Everyone around him calling Daryl that Dixon kid. Rick had wondered, back then, if maybe a Dixon was some mythical beast or rare species of animal that could take human form, like a dragon or unicorn. One that no one particularly cared about or bothered with, because they didn’t have any special powers, or their blood didn’t hold magical properties.
But Daryl had always just been Daryl to Rick, whether he was a Dixon, a dragon, or a unicorn.
Rick’s father only straightens his morning newspaper with a sharp snap when Rick asks him about Daryl. “No one knows where the Dixons went, son,” he says. “It’s like they’ve fallen off the face of the earth.” He peers over the top of the paper at Rick. “You’re better off forgettin’ about them. And your friend.”
Rick makes sure to ask around town too, just in case his father’s lying to him, but the responses are mostly the same: no one knows where the Dixons ran off to—likely to escape the law—or they’ve never even heard of them.
After a week of furtive inquiries made into Daryl’s whereabouts, to pretty much all the townspeople, Rick decides that maybe some things aren’t meant to be.
No matter how hard you work.
It’s weeks past Rick’s twenty-fifth birthday when something extraordinary happens.
He hasn’t wished on birthday candles in the last decade, hasn’t saved up Christmas prayers for Santa, because he’s long past those vestiges of his childhood. But all the same, Rick can’t deny feeling like something’s shifted back into place when he stumbles upon it—just a small thing, a little thing, that somehow means so much.
Rick’s just finished with a midday grocery run, when, on the way back to his new flat, he finds a mess of detour signs and sandbags piled up in the road.
“Road’s blocked,” one of the workers calls out. “Water main burst an hour ago.” He jerks a nod at the detour signs, a series of shoddy orange road markers with arrows that tell Rick where to go.
Rick nods a thanks for the heads-up, and sets out in the direction the signs point to.
As it turns out, the signs take him past the old town square, a place he hasn’t visited in years since they built the new road for easy shopping and restaurant access. Some of the shops dotting the landscape of the square have grown bigger, others smaller, and others have disappeared completely. The bakery, for one, where Rick used to stop with his mother for butter pecan tarts and chocolate-dipped shortbread, has annexed the shop next to it, adding on a miniature coffee bar. Meanwhile, the pet food store’s gone under, replaced by a dimly-lit laundromat, with a bulb that seems to short out every ten seconds. A few of the old gift shops still remain, but instead of tie-dye T-shirts and suncatchers, they sell smaller knickknacks, like fridge magnets and shot glasses.
In the middle of the square, though, is the old fountain where he and Daryl had once fished for coins, so they could afford an ice cream parfait—a king’s feast when they were as small as they were.
The fountain’s been repaired at least a dozen times, from the looks of it, a mosaic of patchwork from each time it’s been fixed, and they’ve even added a ring of glowing lights around the base of it, making it look rather tacky. But the sight of the fountain brings back a wave of nostalgia, nevertheless.
It’s a wave so strong it leaves Rick longing for the old days, when things were much simpler. When Rick didn’t have to bend and scrape and bow to others, endure calls of hey, rookie, and make coffee and doughnut runs until the older cops decided he wasn’t much fun to tease anymore, and newer, fresher rookies took his place on the totem pole.
At the same time, it reminds him of just why he went into law enforcement, because it’s always been at the back of Rick’s mind, that if he could’ve done something—for Daryl’s mother, for Daryl—maybe Daryl’s house wouldn’t have burnt down. Maybe Daryl wouldn’t have had to move away. His friend’s long gone now, but at least this way, Rick knows he won’t have to sit helplessly by for all the Daryls that come after, only able to offer melted chocolates and hugs.
Rick makes his way closer, feeling the cool spray of fountain water, a light mist against his face, and lets himself remember. The way he’d felt with the sun beating down on his back, holding Daryl’s legs down, so neither of them would fall into the bowl of the fountain. Laughter, mischief-bright, the cry of gulls along the fountain’s edge, pecking, and—
Those are people’s wishes, young man! a voice shrills.
Rick’s startled from the memory, and even if it’s been years since their raid on the fountain, he’s still sorry for the wishes he’d stolen back then. Wonders if it’s appropriate to make one of his own now, even if he doesn’t believe in such things anymore. After all, he’d tried birthday wishes, shooting star wishes, wishbone wishes, and Christmas wishes.
He’d tried hard work.
And none of those had worked either.
It can’t hurt, Rick decides.
He flips a quarter into the gently bubbling water, for his own wish, watching it strike the surface with a splash and following its descent through the water. Thinks for a moment, before shifting his grocery bags onto one arm and rummaging through his pocket for another quarter.
Daryl’s probably forgotten his own part of the deal by now, but this—this is in case Daryl needs a little luck on his side too. To get back to Rick, wherever he is.
So Rick draws in the deepest breath, of courage, of hope, and of faith. And as he flicks the second quarter into the fountain, listening for the splash that declares his request’s been received, he closes his eyes and believes.
(tbc - Chapter 6)