#HaruWrites

[haruhey]

Wish I Never Met You

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Word count: 4k

Fluff | Angst | Thank you @weretheones and @normanplusdaryl for betaing <3

You’re part of Daryl’s past, but you could also be his future.

or

A bad day leads the two of you to each other.

or

Whoever said it’s better to love and lose Never loved and lost you

Daryl barely made it through sophomore year.

In all honesty, he was impressed he even got to junior year. When Merle left at the tail end of spring, he - in all of his younger brother naïveté - thought he would come back before the semester ended, taking him from the dump they called a house and from that asshole they had the unfortunate pleasure of calling their old man.

But July came and went, then August, and by the time the new school year rolled around, Daryl stopped waiting for him - just shouldered his backpack and went to school because where the fuck else was he supposed to go?

He gave the whole school thing two weeks. It was enough time to mark off attendance - to lay low before he traded his backpack for his crossbow and started hunting for that weird butcher shop three blocks down to make some money - and he had intended on following it.

Intended, being the right word, because the plan went to shit the second Mr. American History started pairing people up for those dumb, mandatory, biweekly collaborative projects.

Intended, because it just had to be you he was paired with, didn't it? His stupid classroom crush he tried so hard to stop thinking about?

He remembers seeing you for the first time in some math class in sophomore year, and he’d, in his hormone-ruled, bored-out-of-his-mind teenage brain, spent the better half of the period just looking at you. He never worked up the courage to say anything about it to anyone, but you were the prettiest thing he’d seen in his 16 years on Earth, and he hated the way you made his hands all clammy.

Even years later, he looks back on the months he spent being your friend, and he still feels that crushingly familiar clench of his chest.

Maybe it wormed its way almost permanently into him those weeks he first sat next to you in American History. It was a compulory course and both you and he hated it. The teacher - Durand, but Daryl took to calling him Dickhead and Deranged just to see which would make you roll your eyes the hardest - was a notorious douchebag, round glasses over a nose that was entirely too big to stay on his face and three strands of gray hair that seemed to be holding onto his head by spite alone.

He never seemed to take Daryl seriously, even though Daryl knew more than double the amount of history you did. You could pick his brain for hours about the pirates and the Sumerians and the Cherokee and their legends, and he’d let you, despite the glare that marked over his face for anyone else.

In exchange, you let him pick your brain, too. Over the piece of apple pie the two of you would share on the rare occasion you’d both scraped together enough to figure it would be worth buying, he asked about your future. He tried picturing himself with you through it all despite knowing there was nothing for him outside of this shithole town, and he listened to you talk.

He could listen to you talk for hours.

You had big dreams, considering you came from the same place he did, but he had faith you could do it. He knew you could, and even looped his pinky with yours, your thumb pressed up against his while he promised to make it to graduation. He had to watch you toss your cap and flip the bird at 4 years of hell, didn’t he?

But then winter came, and with the Christmas break rounding the corner, Merle came back too, peeling into the dirt road in front of the Dixon dump and taking Daryl along with him. You remember coming back when the second semester started, the same room that had once been used for History now a Government class, and you had hoped to suffer through it together.

You made it through one school week until you’d started asking around.

Nobody got themselves involved with the Dixons - with their surly tempers and their permanent scowls, but you’d gotten into the habit of ignoring those words when you were with Daryl - so when no answers turned up, you weren’t really surprised.

You figured he must have finally gotten his out from his old man.

It was only at graduation that you’d found out what happened to him, overhearing one of the principals talking about how both of Will Dixon’s sons had run away from home and how he’d drunkenly bragged about finally beating sense into them, and, though you knew it was selfish, as the ceremony ticked on, you still hoped Daryl would come back in time to watch your cap toss.

He never did.

When he finally did come back to Georgia, it was a little over a full year later. The old lady that ran the diner the two of you hung around after school had told him that you got a scholarship offer in May - some bigshot school out west - and that you’d packed your bags and left in August.

You weren’t set to come back until the year ended in April, and he wasn’t planning on staying.

He wasn’t planning on making staying anywhere a habit, and, in the blink of an eye, twenty years passed.

A second blink and the world fell.

Everything changed so quickly that it truly did feel like an instant as minuscule as a blink - the dinosaurs had the meteor, and life before them had the ice age - and he couldn’t help but wonder if this was just a breath before a new age flooded in.

It seems like everything he thought about was about the future. Some of it he would have considered trivial before - when the next meal would come, when the next time he’s going to fill his canteen is and where the next source of freshwater is - but, in this blip of time, he hesitates to call it that.

Sometimes, when he went out on his bike or shouldered his crossbow and slipped his knives into his holsters, he thought about how Li’l Asskicker and Carl would grow up - how they would never really get to be kids in the same way Rick probably wanted them to be - and almost nothing he did felt trivial anymore.

It scared him, he guesses - how much he cared about those kids and how much everyone else did, too.

He wished someone cared about him like that when he was younger.

It was good, though, this pressure. Daryl was never really one to half-ass anything in the first place, but with the intake of Woodbury and the Council’s decision to start bringing people in, there was a new drive to care. It rippled through the prison, and he liked it, being a part of something bigger than himself.

He felt like someone new.

Someone that mattered - that did good - instead of being some asshole with a bigger asshole for a brother.

At least, he did until he saw you.

Two weeks after taking in the people of Woodbury - with one week spent out recruiting and another spent in the infirmary because they’d met some less than friendly people who definitely did not fit the recruitment criteria - he saw you from around the corner, an all too familiar face helping Carol with meal prep in the courtyard.

He didn’t eat lunch that day, and to say he avoided you was an understatement.

There was something about you that brought back feelings he would have rather left in the past. You reminded him of when he was a teenager, stuck in his shitty hometown with his piece of shit old man and no way out. But at the same time, you reminded him of those nights spent down at the creek, skipping stones and staring at the stars, that comforting lack of second-guessing because he knew he was, for the first time in his life, in the company of someone who actually wanted to spend time with him.

You reminded him of that diner with the warm apple pie, and he never could forget the first time his heart ever beat against his ribs like it was too big for his chest.

But, most of all, you reminded him of first love and his broken promise - of a future he could never have had.

Daryl hated it, being confronted with his past like that.

So yeah, maybe he did revert back to his old ways of hiding and just trying not to think about his problems, and yeah, maybe he did take one too many runs back to back so he wouldn’t have to keep fighting the urge to look for you despite simultaneously being scared shitless at the thought of talking to you, but it was successful in staying away from you, and that’s all he cared about.

Or, well, he thought it was.

Because, though it’s been nearly two decades since you’d thought about high school - with it long since becoming college, and college into adulthood - it’s crossed your mind more than you’d liked to admit lately. It’s an odd feeling, an ill-fitting nostalgia creeping through the holes of your blanket-covered cell bars, but it was oddly comforting. You never thought you’d ever think of that place as comforting, but maybe it wasn’t high school that you found yourself chasing in the dead of night.

It was him.

Daryl never really knew how popular he was - here, and back then, when those minutes before and after gym class divulged into shushed remarks about his looks and half-serious confessions of crushes muttered to the secrecy of the changeroom’s four walls - but you did. You were always on the other side of it, silent in your agreement.

Woodbury - or, well, ex-Woodbury - was no different.

He’s a far cry from that scrawny little kid you split your lunch with all those years ago, but there's still the linger of boyish handsomeness to him that made your cheeks heat when you thought about him too long. There was no mistaking him for anyone else, but that subdued, ultraviolet warmth you’d grown familiar with was gone from his eyes.

He’s not seventeen anymore, flipping his uncut hair from his face as he taught you how to skip stones and catch fireflies, but you wanted to talk to him all the same. There’s not much left from the old world - let alone much that you could have considered good, or wanted to remember - but he’s one of the few things you’d cared enough about to keep safe from the pulling tide that faded your memories.

He made that shitty town more bearable, even if it was for those few months. Gritting your teeth and enduring had become tiring until he’d grimaced at that first History Inquiry project and made you laugh with the annoyed upturn of his lip. 

You’d planned on thanking him at graduation, but he’d left months before then. 

You’d planned on a lot of things to be frank, but there’s no reason to linger in the past when now is a shell of what then was.

There’s even less of a reason when now feels heavier than then ever was.

Today would have marked ten days without incident, a first foray into the monumental double digits until the sun had set behind the return of the run crew’s RV and Beth was forced to flip the number back to zero.

It’s been four hours since they came back - a quarter of the group gone from the unfriendlies they’d met, another dealing with the aftermaths of the encounter and one more made up from those the crew’s recruited - and it’s the first time in those four hours that you’ve left the dingy wing of the infirmary.

You didn’t hate it in there. Far from it, actually, with Hershel and the others being half-decent company and seeing the work you did benefiting people, but the infirmary, especially on days when the crews rounded back, meant the stinging smell of blood and death lingered no matter how much you scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. It stuck to every crevice on your body, and it permeated. Guilted you for not trying hard enough and not knowing enough.

On days like this, everywhere you went seemed too small and too unforgiving, and you’re not sure if you can stand tossing and turning in your bunk. The night sky is a friendlier sight than your ceiling, and the view from the abandoned watchtower is a hell of a lot better than the tiny, barred-up window at the corner of your cell.

If you’re lucky enough, maybe sleep will steal you for a couple of hours before the sun comes up. At least enough to make it through the next day.

You have faith it will - you can already feel the first wave of exhaustion pull at your bones.

Taking a breath, you press your hands into your pockets after pushing the door to the Prison open and slipping out. Autumn is beginning to seep through the cracks of summer and the nights are starting to get colder, but your jacket should be enough until you climb up and find sanctuary in the sleeping bag you’d left there three days ago.

It doesn’t take long to reach the door - if you jig the knob to the right before twisting and skip the third step from the top, the trek upwards is close to silent - but when you open it, the creak yields, at first, an expletive before the annoyed voice tears through the quiet.

“I already told ya I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout-”

The volume of him makes you take a step back, the sound of a man making your body lock up for just a second before you recognize the mess of hair atop his head and the wings stitched on the back of his vest, and you make quick work getting to him, crossing the platform in a single stride.

“Daryl?”

And he’s quick to realize the person speaking to him isn’t Carol like he’d thought. Though he really really really hopes it’s not you, the familiarity of your voice leaves little room for speculation, even before he turns his head and - for the first time in a long time - really, really looks at you.

“Oh.”

His heart beats in his ears and locks his throat before he can muster up anything else to say, and for a second, you wonder if you should introduce yourself to him. 

“Sorry, I, uh, wasn’t expectin’ no one to be here.”

But the knowing upturn of his eyebrows - his apology, and the way he scoots himself over to make room for you the same way he did in those library reading nooks - tells you you don’t need to, and your shoes slide against the concrete as you drop down to a sit.

He remembers you, too, the sweat of his hands too obvious with the fact, even though he wishes he didn’t.

He wishes there wasn’t a familiarity in the way you sidle your body against his, swinging your legs underneath the railing and over the balcony, and he wishes he couldn’t feel the heat coming off of you.

He wishes it didn’t wrap him up like the warm rays of sun, and he fights down a smile at the fact that you always were so bright. He wishes he didn’t remember you like that - glossed over in a blinding, yellow hue.

Daryl wishes he never remembered you like sunshine - he wishes he didn’t still.

Picking up the glass next to him - just to occupy himself and bide the time until his nervousness hopefully washes away into general apathy - he takes a sip before setting it down and taking a pull of the cigarette in his other hand.

The smoke is slow to fill his lungs, but he welcomes it anyways, holding it there as the nicotine-drawn buzz settles in his brain, and then he breathes it out, angling his head up and away from you.

You never liked it, the Malboros he’d swiped from his old man that he’d keep tucked in the smallest pocket of his worn-down backpack, but you’d told him one night, not unlike the one you’re both trying to find solace in right now, that you were scared of what his father might do if he found out.

Then you slipped in the obviousness of his health, just to break the tension of vulnerability, but it hit Daryl like a truck, the fact that he’d never had someone think about him like that before - like they actually cared.

“Heard your brain cells can rot if you do that.”

He raises an eyebrow at you only to be met with a small smile playing at your lips and the slightest bit of a sparkle in your eye, and the taste still lingering on his tongue reminds him of what he’s been doing. The glass is half full with the room-temperature whiskey he’d tried to make himself feel better with after stitching up his own wounds, and there’s ash from his smoking gathered beside one of the railing's poles, and despite the knowing you’re probably right, he sighs, waving your concern away.

“Ain’t worried. Don’t got a lotta them anyways.”

The cigarette between his fingers is lit still, and he takes another drag before the grayed end of it crumbles to the floor, fighting the upward tug of his cheeks at the sound of your amused huff and your quick response.

“That’s why you gotta take care of the ones you still have, Daryl.”

Scoffing, he tilts the edge of the glass towards you, holding it out for you until you take it from him, and he tries not to think about how the tips of his fingers burn when they brush up against yours. It’s not as sweet, the innocence of a teenage crush long since faded into the dull pang of expired love and loss, but it rushes through him all the same.

He would have offered you a cigarette, too, but you’ve never been one to pick up habits that bad.

A comfortable silence falls over the two of you then, the sky offering a serenity the two of you are less than strangers to, and you wince from the liquor when you finally take a sip. It’s nothing like the moonshine he’d smuggled from his dad’s stash - it went down a hell of a lot smoother than you remember that shit going - but your tolerance has taken a nosedive since weekends unwinding and inter-departmental parties had ended.

Besides, the only places you could get alcohol back in Woodbury were way above your paygrade.

Placing the cup back onto the concrete, you steal a glance at Daryl, spending just a second studying the curve of his nose and the jut of his cheekbone. He’s more handsome than he’s ever been, and you can feel the heat rush up your neck before you blink away the thought.

Get a hold of yourself.

But you can’t, not when he’s so close, and you’re not sure if it’s wholly unselfish, what makes you drop your eyes down from his face, but you do, and you realize why he was so on edge when he heard the door open.

He’s fidgeting. Ever since he put out his cigarette, he’s restless and can’t quite figure out what to do with his hands in the same way he was when you’d asked him why he never wanted to go home back in the school library, and it sends you back, too, a familiar pit growing in your stomach. It’s like he’s that kid again, scared of telling you - or, well, people - things that hurt because his stupid brother and dad drilled into him that he’s less of a man for even feeling hurt in the first place, and it’s equal parts infuriating and concerning.

You can tell that the gears are turning in your head as you try to piece him together; a run crew came back just today, and you haven't seen him in a little while. It doesn’t take a genius to make the connection - especially with everyone’s propensity to talk about how Daryl brought them in - and though you might regret it, you decide to pry.

Not pry, just ask.

Conversation used to flow so easily between the two of you. Were you naïve to hope it would again?

“Bad day?”

It’s small, your voice, teetering in the air with its uncertainty, but Daryl doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, he glances down at the space between you, wrapping his fingers around the highball before meeting your gaze, and he bites the inside of his cheek, weighing the option of telling you or not.

“Jus’ tired is all.”

And though he hesitates those first few words, your eyes are so kind - so genuinely caring - that he can’t stop himself from saying more.

That was what he was scared of.

Why hasn’t he let you go? 

“Sick’a fuckin’ losin’ people.”

The frustration when he speaks is palpable, and you’re not sure if it’s bravery or stupidity that makes you move - maybe it’s both, culminating in your own desire that someone would finally see through your crippling bravado and offer you a hug or something - but your hand snakes out to grab his before you even think, shaking it slightly in the strength of your squeeze.

Then he freezes, and for a second, you think you must have overstepped - that he’s going to push you away and yell at you and leave - but he doesn’t. He just takes a breath, the heft of it rising his shoulders then dropping it as he squeezes your hand back harder, a silent thank you in the press of his fingers against yours.

But still, he lets go, afraid the warmth in his chest might make him do something he regrets, and you chew at the dried skin of your lip, thinking about the right thing to say.

Fuck, you could never navigate things like this - it got better as you got older, sure, but words always seemed to fall short when it came to you and him - and when you finally settle on something, half of you wonders if it was just because you thought it better than nothing.

“I feel you.”

Because what else are you supposed to say? That it’s going to be alright and that he shouldn’t blame himself because it's so blatant he is? It’s thin ice you’re walking on, the fear of sounding patronizing drowning out the spark of hope you want to light him with, because you remember the man he was. He’s never had anyone fighting in his corner, and you’re not callow enough to think he thinks of you as something - someone - different.

But he does. He does think of you as someone different, and he wants to say more, but he doesn't know where he stands with you, or with himself. If he says what he’s thinking - that he feels like it is his fault and that he’s not sure if he could ever stop feeling like that. That he’s scared shitless and like it’s some big joke that people actually look up to him for things - wouldn’t that make it feel too real?

So he doesn’t. He just tips the lip of the glass against his and takes another sip to make sure his mouth is occupied, staring down at the bottom ridge of it until you speak again, and he’s helpless to do anything but look at you.

“At least it’s beautiful out tonight.”

He’s sent back to twenty years ago then - the scrawny redneck you’d somehow deemed good enough to be your friend forcing his old habits back to the him of the present - and he can’t help the squeaked little noise of a response. Words have always been hard for him, too. They’re hard for him to think of and even harder for him to form, and it’s made worse by the fact it’s almost like he’s back at 16, convinced that you’re too pretty to talk to.

“Yeah.”

And though you hear his hum of agreement, he never looks away from you, admiring the curve of your familiar smile and the rise of your cheekbones.

The lurch of his heart comes back then - the same beat against his ribs that he hated all those decades ago - and it’s stark then, the realization you’ve never really left him.

“Ain’t never seen nothin’ like it.”

Pressing his lip to the edge of the glass once more, he welcomes the burn of whiskey when you smile at the moonlit horizon, and he watches as you lean your chin against your arms.

You’re beautiful - more beautiful than all the colours in the star-speckled sky - and he could stare for hours.

[daryldixonluv]

just beta read the reunion fic that @haruhey finished writing... when i tell you that this one is good, i mean that this one is GOOD. i think you'll all really enjoy it :]

small sneak peak that i like >:)

[lightheadedmask]

Sneak Peek 😉 ✨

The girl in the yellow dress. That’s what Dean called her. He had only ever seen her in his dreams, comforting him, whispering sweet nothings in his ears, and he didn’t understand how he could yearn for someone that his mind had probably created in an attempt to help him experience a little bit of relief. It made no sense. His life was that of a hunter, filled with pain, anguish, blood, and wounds that never seemed to fully heal before he had another. He had accepted that a long time ago. And yet, here he was, looking forward to crawling into bed once more. If he could chase the thought of her in his dreams, then that was enough, right?

It was only after seeing her for the fifth night in a row that Dean started to realize that maybe she was more than someone that only lived in his head.

And he finally asked a question he’d been avoiding, “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

She smiled, hand going to cup the side of his face. “Y/N,” she hummed.

[ichoriism]

   – jin steps into the cute bakery kyungmin told him about last night. his nose is invaded by the sweet smell of sweet treats just being out of the oven paired with fresh bread and cinnamon. one minute in here and he can tell the owner is experienced in his business contrary to what his brother had said. jin allows himself to snigger a bit, all too knowing that kyungmin was just bad-mouthing this place as an attempt to support jin’s business. ❛ ah, it must have been hard for him. they even have these chocolate cupcakes he likes so much, ❜ he muses out loud as he crouches down to take a good look of the desserts displayed. 

with jonghyun ( @haruwrites​​ )

[bvtterfliies]

     ( based on this. ) ☾ ˚⊹ *・゚countless nights were spent like this, the two tangled up in each other. callie knew that it was wrong, that she should quit whatever the two were doing, but she was too head over heels with them. there was so many factors that told her to leave them, to end it once and for all, but callie couldn’t do it. sure, they were dating her best friend, but wasn’t callie with them first ? she saw the good, the bad and the ugly with them so how was it fair that her best friend got the best ? she would never quite figure that out. “ tell me you can stay here all day, ” she whispered, her head upon their chest. ( @haruwrites​ )

[brucelees-a]

@haruwrites​ liked this for a short starter !

"oh, you had a bit too much to drink last night, so i put you to bed before you got into trouble.”

[pencilmoon-a2]

♥　♡　♥ ・・・・ “  after  a  certain hour,  byeol  is  uninterested  in  social  interaction. so  when  a  knock  comes  to  her  door  when  she’s  well  into  a  bag  of  nutter  butters and  the  fourth episode  of  unsolved mysteries  on  netflix, she’s  tempted  to  simply  the  visitor  who  dares  to  impede  on  the  witch’s alone  time.  but  then  she  hears  the  click  of  the  door  unlocking  and  she  throws her  head  back  on  the  couch.  the neighbor.  the  one  she’d  passed a  key  along  to  with  a  kind  ‘  just  come  by  if  you  need  anything ‘ earlier  in  the  week.  she’s  placed  enough wards  and  proective spells  on  her  place  to  keep  her  and  her  belongings  safe,  so  the  idea  of  having  them  pop  in  of  their  own  accord doesn’t  bother  her.  it’s  more  the  ‘coming in  after  12  at  night’ bit  that  gets  to  her, “ I  feel  like  I  said  12pm  was  the  cut  off  for  that  offer. “  she  calls  out,  pressing pause  on  the  remote  and shuffles on slippered feet  meet  them  in  the  foyer, “  what’s  up  ??  “

〈 @haruwrites​ | feat. soo byeol. plot [ x ] (9th bullet) !! 〉

[haruhey]

Girl’s Talk

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Word count: 8k

Fluff | Smut | Filth February Prompt 2

Daryl overhears a conversation he definitely shouldn’t have, but he acts on it anyways.

or

The tip of my tongue is sweet Whenever I say your name Typical conversations, the smallest feelings I keep talking about them About you

Girl’s talk Girl’s talk  Girl’s talk Girl’s talk about you

“It’s not my fault!”

Daryl’s steps freeze at the sound coming from your makeshift office, your voice slightly muted by the wooden door pulled shut but still seeping through the little space which separates it from the floor.

‘It’s not my fault’?

“But it is, you idiot!”

Raising an eyebrow, he adjusts the crossbow slung over his shoulder, leaning his ear closer and trying to make out the muffled voice responding back to you. It’s wrong, he knows it is - privacy and all that shit - but, God, he wants to know everything about you.

“He gives you ‘fuck me’ eyes all the time! Ask literally anyone around here, dude. He wants to rail you.”

What?

Now that catches his attention, an undeserving flash of jealousy crashing through his body as a lump forms in his throat. His grip tightens on the strap digging into skin as he swallows it down, the thought of you with someone else making him hot with anger even though he knows you’re not his. That gnaw of privacy returns, but he wants to know who has been obvious enough that anyone can see it, and why the fuck he hasn’t noticed.

“No he doesn’t, Rosita.”

He doesn’t blame whoever ‘he’ is - after all, it would be hypocritical of Daryl to, considering he’s been pining after you for damn near a year with little to no progress to show for all the heartache he’s been through - but Jesus, if ‘he’ ends up confessing before he does, you might take ‘him’ up on the offer. You might take ‘him’ up on the offer and all Daryl will be left with would be a broken heart and many, many more cold and lonely nights.

Fuck, who is ‘he’?

“It does look like he wants to rail you.”

Another flash of anger and- wait. Is that-

“Carol-“

It is.

“No, he doesn’t. He just- his eyes are just expressive, and they’re like- they just look like that, okay?”

He promises to himself to pry Carol for answers despite the weighted drop of dread in his stomach. She knows who ‘he’ is, but chooses not to say anything when she catches him staring at you when he knows you’re not looking? God, if she’s not telling him whoever ‘he’ is, she must think he’s not enough competition to even know about ‘him’ in the first place. Did she just let him steep in his wishful thinking as a consolation prize for the fact it’ll always be a fantasy?

“You give him ‘fuck me’ eyes, too, y’know. Daryl’s smart, but he’s an idiot when it comes to you. Trust me.”

Wait.

He’s ‘he’?

“Maggie-“

Holy shit.

“Don’t ‘Maggie’ me. We all know he’d try an’ punch the ground if you fell.”

Daryl reds then, a heat of blush crawling up his chest at the realization of how fucking obvious he’s been and how, yeah, maybe he would actually try and punch the ground if you fell. He’s not moving anymore - just spun away from the door, stuck from his own shock to the floor - but when your voice muffles through the wood next, he turns towards it like a sailor to a damn siren song.

“Remind me why you’re all here again?”

He hears an onslaught of answers then; ‘you’re too hot to be pining after someone. Especially someone who looks like they would jump on you the second they can’, ‘Daryl looks at you like you’re everything, and I’ve never seen him look at anyone quite like that’, ‘Daryl told me he likes you’- thanks, Carol - and his eyes widen at the way the casualness of their words, as if they’ve been said to you a million times before.

Wait… you’re pining after ‘him’? The ‘him’ who happens to actually be him?

Jesus fucking Christ.

“It was- I- look, guys, besties, ladies, it- it doesn’t matter that I have a tiny, little crush on him.”

Now comes a cacophony of scoffs, your groan cutting through them before you speak again, and Daryl thinks something must be wrong with his circulation because his pulse is beating in his ears so hard that he leans almost comically close to the door in order to hear you over it.

But no, there’s nothing wrong with his circulation. If anything, it’s working perfectly well because the rush of blood that accompanies the realization is the only rational result of knowing about your tiny crush.

Your tiny crush.

Your tiny crush on him.

“Okay, fine, yeah, sure, maybe it’s not tiny. Maybe I’ve been in love with him for, like, months now and maybe it’s not going away, but what about it? It’s not like he thinks of me the same way, okay? Just because I want to kiss him and, like, cuddle him and, yeah, maybe get him to rail me doesn’t mean he wants to, okay?“

You.. you think he doesn’t think of you that way? You want to kiss him and cuddle with him and you want him to- you want him to-

Swallowing, Daryl wipes at his red-soaked face, his jeans starting a little too tight at the images rushing through his head like a flood. You want him to-

You want him to-

“We literally just told you he fully wants to rail you, too!”

Yeah, they’re pretty damn right about that.

He pulls from the door then, his brain clouded over in thoughts so debilitating that he thinks if he stays there too long - if he hears more than he already has - he might push all critical thinking to the side and burst through the door with everyone still in there. His hands are sweaty with want as he shifts the placement of his crossbow, and he wipes his palms on his jeans, desperately searching for anything to tie his senses back to reality.

Shit, what the fuck was he even here for?

Does it even matter anymore?

He comes to the conclusion that, no it doesn’t, rather quickly, and he massages his temples as he strides out of the hallway, quick steps covering the distance between your room and the infirmary’s entrance before the realization of his eavesdropping really, really, dawns on him.

You - intelligent, funny, caring, stupidly pretty and perfect and out of his league you - have a crush on him, and when the haze of lust finally clears from his brain, despite being much too old for things like that, his ego swells to the size of Texas and he can feel his heart doing a goddamn victory dance.

Daryl spots Denise in the corner of his eye, her hands a mess of chalk dust and she’s in a hoodie that’s Tara’s. They’ve been together a lot - he’s pretty sure he caught them kissing behind the medicine shelves just a few days ago - and they seem pretty fucking happy, too.

He’s envious of them. Envious of Aaron and Eric with how many times Aaron’s told him he ‘can’t wait to get home to Eric’, and he’s certainly no stranger to the ugly green feeling that rears its head when he thinks of Glenn and Maggie.

God, he wants that. He wants that with you. He’s wanted it with you since the cement walls of the prison, and now that he knows you feel the same, why does he have to wait?

Exactly!, he screams at himself. Why does he have to wait?

No more fucking waiting.

He glances at the window just next to one of the exam tables, and though it’s just late afternoon, Daryl crosses the distance to get to Denise, a determination in his eye that could burn down his path. He’s never been one to push his luck - that’s probably why he’d locked his lips and buried his feelings for you for all those months - but he stands tall in front of her and takes the chance.

“Got a quick question for ya.”

Denise’s eyes flick up from the sheet of paper in her hands and she raises her eyebrows as she notices the puff of his chest, the surety of his gaze making his face look meaner than it usually is.

“You can take her off her shift after your check up, if you want. I’ll just get Rosita to cover it.”

And he’s surprised for a second - half because he’d just remembered that, yeah, there was a reason to come here in the first place, and half because she’d guessed his intentions before he’d even gotten his words out. Though, maybe he shouldn’t be surprised, because if today had taught him anything, it’s that he’s just that fucking oblivious to the fact he’s just that fucking obvious.

No, he’s going to change that.

By the end of today, Daryl will be able to call himself yours, or he’ll spin the Earth around himself for another chance.

Nodding, he turns towards your office and suppresses his giddiness as calls your name, long strides taking him to you so quickly he thinks he might be sprinting, and his heart is speeding up as he formulates a plan.

He needs this to be perfect.

Like you, perfect.

The second he gets to the door, it creaks open - hinges much too old for this house that he hasn’t gotten around to oiling yet, though he’d promised a week ago to do it - and he’s almost trampled by the familiar faces you’re forcing out, each one sharing a knowing glance as they pass him in the hallway.

Carol even gives him a thumbs up, and he wonders if she knows what’s running through his mind. It damn well wouldn’t be the first time.

“Hey, Daryl. Sorry about all that.”

Running his hand through his hair, he sets his crossbow down on your desk as you make your way to the bed, patting it in a much too familiar signal for him to sit.

This is good.

You don’t suspect a thing, and that’s good.

Step one is a success.

“Nah, ‘s fine, don’t worry ‘bout it.”

He eases a chuckle into his voice and waits for you to turn around, watching you close one of the drawers with those lollipops the little ones like, and when you do, you face him with a smile spread so wide across your lips, and it’s like his whole brain goes blank.

You look at him expectantly, a second passing before he remembers his fucking pulled lower back muscle from nearly two weeks ago, and his hands snap to his vest, pulling it off and setting it next to his crossbow. In his defense, it doesn’t even feel like anything’s happened anymore, so it’s not his fault that he’d forgotten about it for the past few days.

Clearing his throat, he shakes his bangs from his face and makes his way to the tiny twin bed he’s seen you passed out sleep-drunk in so many times before. He’s much too busy dwelling over that moment of embarrassment to realize that his shirt is riding up and his belt doesn’t really do shit to keep his pants above the waistband of his boxers, but you notice, and you swallow down the lump in your throat.

No, you have to stay professional. Even if he has the audacity to look like that.

“Tell me if this hurts, okay?“

Your hands are on him in a second, pressing against his once overstrained muscles, and he wonders if anything could ever hurt when you’re touching him.

“You having fun out there with Aaron?”

Letting out a silent groan, he shrugs - or, whatever the equivalent of him turning his head in the other direction against the mattress and looking at you through the overhang of his locks is.

“Nah, ain’t nothin’ really goin’ on out there no more. Don’t really take Aaron much either. Jus’ ridin’ alone. Hopin’ a deer or somethin’ worth grabbin’ passes me.”

You hum in response, satisfied at the state of his muscles and the feeling of them underneath your hands. It’s not necessary, these massages, but you’re pretty sure you read somewhere that it helps the healing, and even if you were lying to yourself, he doesn’t seem to mind, and you sure as hell don’t.

“Then come get me next time, Daryl. I would love to go ‘ridin’’.”

Those words shouldn’t light something in him - shouldn’t conjure up those fantasies of your body that he’s only ever explored alone by himself - because you’re doing that shitty imitation of his voice that usually makes a chuckle want to worm out of his throat, but it does and it makes him burn.

He takes an eyeful of you when you stand and turn towards the medicine cupboards, and he gorges himself on the sight of your thighs as they poke out through your cloth shorts. The leg holes on them are cut so damn big he swears he can see your underwear from where he’s laying, and a rush of saliva forces its way into his mouth, wet hot heat licking through him at his desire to bury his face up against you.

You want him to take you for a ride?

Daryl could do that. He’s got a couple ideas right now about riding that he wouldn’t mind acting out.

“We’re also running low on some antibiotics,”

Turning, he kicks off the bed, letting the mattress squeak and only half listening to you as he tries to hype himself up enough to actually go through with his plan. He’s gotta do this - act now and follow your dreams, or whatever the other bullshit was that he heard when he used to be in school - and he will, but he just needs a second to fucking man up.

“So when you go out with Rick in a few days,”

He takes a step then, fueled on by your wood-muffled confession that’s currently devouring his mess of a brain, and then he takes another and another, not stopping his methodical steps until you’re barely a foot from him.

“Could you keep an eye out for these…“

You spin on your heel then, hands full and halfway outstretched in order to give the pill bottles to him until they hit his chest, the sudden block of him knocking them out of your grip. They fall to the ground with a rattle, and your voice drains from your throat when you look up at him, the looming figure of his broad shoulders stretching out to steal your vision from everything but him, his face lent down just the slightest.

You should want to cower - Daryl’s so fucking big he could box you in and keep you sandwiched between the wooden cabinets and his body with little effort - but you like it. Especially the way he’s looking at you.

“Dar- Daryl, what’re you-“

And he’s so close to you, too. So close that you’re pretty sure he can hear each shaky breath you take, and when your hands go to grip at the ledge for the balance he’s knocked from you, he grabs them instead, warm, work-calloused hands wrapped around your wrist to bring them to his chest and over his heart.

“Ya feel that?”

He leans impossibly closer, taking another step forward until one of his legs is between yours, and your head swims from the thought that he really has sandwiched you in front of him. His heart pounds underneath your palm and it quickens with each passing moment, a limbo of apprehension hanging for a second longer before he bites the bullet, whispering the words to you as if forcing them out is the only way he’ll be able to say the words he’s saying.

“This, it- it beats for you.”

The second he says it, he cringes and drops your wrist - turns his face to the side and shuts his eyes as his face scrunches inwards - but despite it, a sickeningly saccharine feeling wells up in your chest.

“God- shit- sorry, I-“

This is the last time he’ll listen to any of Glenn’s suggestions. Romantic? More like fucking stupid.

Sighing, he turns around, leaving you to stare at his back even more confused at the sudden drop of tension, and you wipe your sweaty hands on your shorts, your knees needing a moment to solidify from the near jelly they’d become at his closeness.

“What was- what're you doing? This isn’t funny.”

You watch as he runs his fingers through his hair, and faces you again, a look of utter embarrassment mixed with disappointment settling in his eyes after he hears you.

“It- it ain’t supposed to be.”

And he sounds so genuine in his response - you know he doesn’t lie to you - but there’s no way he means what he’s saying. Not when he’s so quick to apologize for his confession.

“Daryl, if this is a joke…“

He can’t be serious.

But he is.

If there was one thing in the world that he would ever be serious about, it would be this. He just needs to stop thinking. What’s so hard about this, anyway? He knows you like him, and he knows damn well he likes you, too.

Swallowing, he holds your curious look, eyebrows furrowing with a newly settled determination, and the courage he needs to man the fuck up flares to fruition when he replays your words again.

“I heard ya.”

You bite at your lip then, a singular ‘what?’ falling from them no later, and a rush of something primal works through Daryl’s body at the way it looks so inviting for his own teeth to replace.

“I heard ya. Talkin’ with Rosita n’ Maggie an’ Carol.”

The ice-cold waterfall of your realization makes you freeze, and another stutter of ‘wh- what?’ breaks from your throat.

“I heard ya. Heard everythin’.”

He takes a step then, and your mind is telling you to back up and retreat from this embarrassment, but your body wants nothing more than to stay still. It burns for him, lonely nights and months of pining holding your feet down like an anvil.

“I know ya have a crush on me. That ya wanna kiss me.”

Staring down at the ground, your fists ball up at your sides as you hear him move, and he just keeps coming, pacing with wide strides.

“That ya wanna cuddle.”

Daryl’s voice is low, gravelly, sounding too fucking good for your poor brain to take - and you close your eyes, crushing your eyelids together to brace for when you eventually overheat and crash.

“That… ya want me to…”

Fuck, you know what you said. He doesn’t need to actually finish his sentence for either of you to understand what he means.

He grabs your chin then, two thick fingers and his thumb tilting your head up to him like he was holding a cigarette, and just this proximity makes him think you could overtake him. You could be his new addiction, and he’d be perfectly fine with that.

“Daryl, I-“

The second you open your eyes, his face surges forward, and you close them again, preparing for the messy press of his lips, but it never comes. Instead, he grabs both your hands in his, running his thumb along your knuckles before he overtakes your stutter.

“I wanna give ya all’a that. An’ more, if ya let me.”

His words whisper along your lips, and you nearly crumble with each syllable. He presses up against you in this bubble of intensity, and you think you might be going crazy, but you think he can hear your pulse thrum through your skin.

“So can I kiss ya?”

Nodding, your impatience drives you forward, and in a second, your lips touch his, clumsily bumping noses in your fervour before the kiss gets firmer. He drinks down the sensation like an aged liquor, and his grunt surprises the both of you, as well as the push of his leg between the two of yours.

There are no words being said when he brings your hands to rest at his waist, and he grabs yours, absentminded fingers playing with the laces of your shorts before sliding underneath the hem of your tucked-in shirt. He doesn’t mean to make pictures of him undoing your pants spark in your mind, but he just needs to touch you in whatever form that would be, and, quite honestly, he doesn’t exactly mind that you’re pushing back with so much need as well.

You’d imagined your first kiss with him to be gentle, maybe even a little desperate, but this, this lust devouring both of your brains is so loud that neither of you care about the adrenaline so high in your veins.

“Let’s get outta here.”

Only when you both pull away to breathe does he speak, and only then do you even realize you’re in your office and that the cupboard might make an indent into your skull with how long you’ve been resting your head against it.

“Daryl, I- I can’t. I need to be here for a few more hours. But if I didn’t, I would go with you. I- there’s a lot of things I want to do with you.“

He knows what you want. You’ve been pulling his hips against yours by the leather of his belt, and though he’s made no indication that he knows, he does nothing to stop you.

“You can go. Come with me, I mean. I, uh, I asked Denise. She said it was fine. That- that Rosita’ll cover your shift.”

He mumbles as he presses himself back down, just against your chin. Just until he feels you smile from the tickle of his stubble and he flames alight with the affection steeped intimacy.

“You planned this? Wanna take me home that bad?”

Giggling, you thread your fingers through the mess of his uncut hair, and you catch the way he blushes red despite the fact you’re happy about his… proactivity? He wants you like you want him, and you kiss him again, feather-light to the corner of his lips.

“I ain’t gon’ lie to ya. It’s, uh, it's been- I’ve been thinkin’ ‘bout it since the prison.”

A boyish smile works its way onto Daryl’s face, and you slip from his hold, ducking down and around him when he dips his face down to yours again, crouching down and pulling open a drawer before grabbing a string of condoms and stuffing it into your pockets. It doesn’t take much time for him to turn around and see what you’re doing, but before he reaches you, you’re back on your feet.

“Then c’mon. Take me home.”

He speeds up his steps at your words, and he grabs your hand, pressing a kiss to your knuckles before slinging his crossbow over his shoulder as he cuts his path to the door.

“Ya sure ‘bout this? Hundred percent?“

Just before he crosses the threshold into the hallway, he looks back at you, almost blinding with how radiant you are, and you squeeze his hand, a grin so wide it makes his heart want to explode.

“Let’s get outta here, Daryl.”

That’s all he needs.

Months of loving you in silence makes him delirious with anticipation, and he has half the mind to throw you across his shoulder and carry you back to his house, but he settles for quick strides of his long legs, his hand held firmly in yours.

He doesn’t care that everyone can see. No, maybe he wants them to see, but that doesn’t matter as he occupies himself with how perfect and soft your fingers feel in his. Neither you nor him notice the fact that Rosita and Carol have hung back, or that the former notices the holographic gold peeking out from the pockets of your shorts and slaps the latter’s shoulder with an excitement that could rival yours, because the only thing on his mind is you, the same way he’s on yours.

Your body is practiced to the way he moves - the runs you’ve been on with him and the countless times sneaking around with him makes his steps a familiar rhythm - and you match him until you both get to his house.

Even before Daryl manages to control his nerve-shaking hands and open the door, there’s a tension so thick in the air that it’s threatening to suffocate either of you in it, and when you finally manage to get some privacy as the door finally closes the two of you in, both his hands are on your body. There’s no escape from him as he presses your back against his closed door. Not that you want one. God, you don’t want an escape from him.

“Tell me to stop. Tell me ya think we’re movin’ too fast. Tell me to stop an’ I will.”

No.

Shaking your head, you look back up at him, threading your fingers through his hair and pushing his bangs from his face as he leans on his arm to your right. He’s so handsome like this - looking at you so reverently - and it makes you choke on your own words, stuttered through a consuming wave of pure affection.

“I want you, Daryl. I don’t- don’t you think we’ve waited long enough?”

He lets every damn syllable sounding from your voice sink into his brain, and Jesus Christ can you do things to him. You make him feel in a way he’s never felt before, and he could fucking cry at the way your eyes round in a plead.

“Thought everyone was goin’ fuckin’ crazy thinkin’ you wanted me, too.”

Leaning up, you press a kiss to him, so intoxicating you make him want to chase your lips like a lush, but he pulls away in order to put his crossbow somewhere. He loves it - cherishes it - but right now, it’s just a fucking nuisance.

“I want you. You’re- you’re everything I want.”

Does your voice have to sound so good?

It all happens in such a flurry of need - you’ve both kicked off your shoes, you’ve wrapped your fingers around his wrist and he’s wrapped his around yours, he’s whispered a confession about how long he’s waited to hear you say that, you’ve beamed and kissed him and touched him - and when he finally opens the door to the basement, you’re giggling at how he almost trips the two of you over trying to keep his lips on your neck as you descend the stairs.

“You’re so cute, Daryl. Has anyone ever told you that?”

He has his chest pressed up against your back, arms linked across your waist and at the front of your stomach before you spin around to face him, and he holds you gently by the small of your back, drawing random shapes against the fabric of your shirt.

“I ain’t cute.”

But he can’t deny the pleasant feeling wading through him, nor can he hide the fact the corner of lip pulls upwards just the slightest.

“You are.”

Heated hands grab at you, and he kisses you into his bedroom, your fingers restless at his shirt buttons. Quickly, so damn quickly, each rush of adrenaline driving the both of you towards each other, he finally gets to his mattress, and he crashes down to a sit, bringing your knees to either side of him and pulling you into a straddle as the poor springs threaten to buckle underneath him for a second.

“Still think I’m cute?”

You nod, shakily since your brain is too preoccupied with telling you not to squeal at the sudden movement, but you fail, your thighs closing on either side of his body. Your hips move in a jolt, unintentionally rubbing against him for just a second before his big hands coax more movement out of you by the careful kneading of your ass, and you do it again and again, spurred on by the warmth of his overheated skin as you unbutton his shirt.

“D-Daryl-“

His large hands return to you just after he chucks his shirt in the other direction, and he swears when he feels your thighs start to quiver around him, your pelvis bucking in a desperate rhythm he’s more than happy to be a part of. He’s firm, pressing up against you through his jeans, and you can feel him, especially when he lifts his hips up against yours in reaction and pulls an intoxicating little whine from you.

“Tha’s it. Tha’s it. Feel good, huh?”

You can’t remember what you were going to say - thoughts wiped clean from your head with each roll of him - and you’ve bitten your lip so hard it flashes white indents when your mouth drops open slightly to feed your lungs’ burn for oxygen. Daryl watches each movement of yours in admiration, fascinated and wholly captivated at the fact he can render you into this with a precarious flex of his thigh and the rough of his jeans against your cloth shorts, and his ego grows tenfold.

“Feels good, then?”

He grinds you down on him as you nod, encouragement dripping from his chapped lips that have no right being as soft as they are, and with each movement of him - with each devastating push and pull of his hands, a pressure growing in the base of your stomach that you want to take over your body and you want to dissolve into - you breathe out his name, two simple syllables making him throb under the confines of that stupid zipper keeping him packed down tight.

You’re beautiful, he praises, and your body burns and burns with his words, the gravelly twang setting deep in your body and making heat flush up your face.

“D- Daryl, I think I’m-“

He knows how close you are - he’s close too, a damp mess in his boxers that probably mirrors your own underwear despite the chaffing from the thick layer of denim that covers him from you - and he hitches you over his thigh instead, digging his fingers into the give of flesh and groaning into your ear afterwards.

He’s obsessed, the feeling of your body in his hands, and when you moan out his name, leaning forward and pressing his head into your neck, his heart races from his chest and he wants to put it in your hands. He’s being overwhelmed in the best way - he breathes you in, letting you settle in his lungs while you make those pretty little noises next to his ear that almost make him unravel from them alone - and when you press your chest up to his, dragging yourself along the length of his muscular thigh and whine, the rope of tension tightens and tightens.

“God, you’re fuckin’- fuckin’ beautiful like this.”

You’ve learned rather quickly that, for a man who speaks in grunts and glares, Daryl’s rather talkative when you’re in a selfish search for your own pleasure, and damn it if it doesn’t catapult you to the snap in the base of your stomach. But there are too many layers of clothing separating you from him. It’s muted those sensations - made them plateau to a dull ache - and you think you might cry as you slow down.

“Daryl, I can’t- it’s- it’s not enough.”

He hears the way your voice breaks - watches you tilt your head down as if you’d expected him to scold you like those days back at the Greene farm, when his mouth ran angry more often than not, and he had a heart filled with too much emotion to understand what to do with it - and he lifts his hand until it’s below your chin, gently tilting you to look at him.

“Hey, hey, ‘s okay. If ya don’t wanna do this, then don’t.”

And Daryl’s so fucking tender, big puppy eyes staring up at you like you’d hung the stars into the sky, and your hips stop, instead leaning your face forward until your forehead rests against his. A small smile spreads across your cheeks at the clumsy little knock of his nose against yours, and you press a quick kiss to the corner of his lips.

“No- no. I want to do this. I just- it’s not enough.”

Nodding, he lets you pull your face away before reaching down and taking the knot keeping your shorts up along your waist between his fingers. He raises an eyebrow at you, watching you for any signs of hesitation or discomfort, but when he sees none - when you bite your lip and nod for him - he undoes it, watching you get up and slip your hands underneath the hem.

He’s a little obvious with how excited he is to see you slide them off, but it only feeds your own excitement. It’s endearing, this broad-shoulder hulking man crumbling for you, and when you finally step out of your shorts, your underwear has such a wet spot it could be embarrassing had your mind not been so preoccupied by a desire to please him in any way you can.

“I want this, Daryl. As long as you still want this.”

With each step you take, his throat closes up more and more, and when you grab his hand, placing it against the bottom of your shirt, he pulls it off of you, your eyes brimming with so much warmth he truly thinks this might be heaven on Earth.

“Then would it, uh, would it be alright if… if we, uh, try somethin’ else?”

When your shirt joins your shorts just a few feet away, you nod, stripping your bra from yourself as well before breathing forward a ‘yes’ that makes him want to claw at his jeans. Though, when your hands reach for his belt, he grabs your wrist, stopping you in place, his grip unmoving and firm. Only when your eyes flick up to meet his does he run his thumb across your skin, and you swear you see the corner of his mouth quirk upwards.

“Sit on my face.”

His words are so abrupt that it takes a second for you to register them, and when you do, a giggle bubbles up from your throat, stuttering a ‘what?’ before kneeling between his legs on the mattress. You expect him to join you - to hear that grumbling chuckle before he lays you on your back and pull the leather off - but when he doesn’t and starts slowly moving the two of you up towards his headboard, you realize he’s serious and a pang of arousal shoots through you.

“Daryl, I- I’ve-“

It’s silly, the way you lower your voice to almost a whisper before speaking again, and if you didn’t look so fucking good with each of your movements - all beautiful body and beautiful face - he might have laughed. Just the tiniest bit.

“What if I kill you?”

Oh, no, that makes him chuckle - the sound blossoming through his chest - and he brings your knuckles to his lips, pressing kisses against the skin before looking up at you through his bangs. God, you’re so fucking pretty it hurts.

“Ain’t the worst way to go.”

There’s a boyish smile on his face as he speaks, but you’re still looking at him with those sloped eyebrows that scream concern, and evidently, joking was not the best way to handle this situation.

“Just- I jus’- I wanna taste ya. An’- an’ I’ve been thinkin’ ‘bout this. A lot. Too much.”

He lets go of your hands at that, letting one of his rest at the crook of your neck and the other on the outside of one thigh, and his thumb caresses at your jawbone before he opens his mouth again.

“Wanna do this so fuckin’ bad, but- but ya don’t gotta if ya don’t wanna. There ain’t a lotta things I won’t do with ya. Or- or for ya.”

Daryl’s expression turns bashful at his confession, but he elates when he feels you nod against his palm, spreading your hand over his before pressing a kiss to it. He’s god damn buzzing with excitement when your movements become more sure, leading him up the bed before his back hits the headboard.

“You’ll tell me if it’s too much, right?”

He nods then - maybe does it too quickly, honestly - but he can’t bring himself to care as he feels you press him down against his mattress. His cock is throbbing at the surety of your actions, and he’s in a haze of mind-numbing lust until you’re straddled over his lower stomach, fully naked now if the slick heat of you there means anything.

“How will- how will you let me know? ‘Cause you won’t exactly be able to talk.”

Your thighs rest flush on either side of him and his hands gravitate to them before you can even finish your first sentence. Daryl’s tongue darts out when he sees that patch of wet curls sat below the rise of his ribcage, and, yeah, this is heaven on fucking Earth.

“I’ll tap out right like this. Scout’s honour.”

He taps on the outside of your thighs once, then twice before he spreads his palm across your ass and lifts you towards him. The bed squeaks as you shuffle closer and closer, and he swallows down the rush of saliva racing up his throat, half in anticipation and half in how fucking good you look. He’d stare forever if he could.

“You were never a boy scout.”

Scoffing insincerely, he watches in awe as you rise to a kneel, and his fingers spread you open, nearly groaning himself at the way you moan when he brushes against your entrance. There’s a sneaking suspicion in him that, even if it gets too much for him, maybe he never would tap out. Maybe he’d spend eternity between your thighs and overwhelm himself with you. He’s certainly not opposed to it now that you’re so close.

“Jus’ take what ya need, y’understand? I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

You might still be a little too sensitive from just moments ago, but you push through the slight shake in your thigh as you near his face. Daryl doesn’t seem to be on your side, though, because his tongue darts out between his lips and he stares at all of you - like he wants to fucking devour you, a 12 course meal after months of starvation.

“Dar- Daryl, don’t look at me like that.”

Heat blankets you from neck up and you grip the edge of his headboard to get yourself out of your head, patting yourself on the back for making it just below his chin.

Stop overthinking this. Just stop.

“You’re soakin’. Worked up, ain’t ya? Jesus, you’re so pretty it hurts.”

You wish you could hate him. You wish you could hate the tiny, miniscule lilt of amusement in his voice, but then he drags his pointer and middle fingerpads against your entrance, gathering the evidence of his observation with palms still spread against you, and there’s no way to hate his stupidly handsome upturned lips.

“Shut up.”

His grin only grows at your words, and when one of his eyebrows rises, you’ve played enough children’s games with him to know what he’s going to say.

“Make me.”

And you do.

Sinking down on him, you tighten your hold against his headboard and nearly keel forward when he tightens his hold against you, pulling you down further until you’re sure you must be suffocating him. But when you go to lift off him, he grunts into you, keeping you in place so he can flatten his tongue against you and encouraging you to grind.

It’s a little awkward at first - the bed is squeaking with the uneven rock of your weight-bearing knees and there’s no fucking way he thinks you look good from that angle - but his stubble rubs against you just right, and when he grabs your hand, letting you thread your fingers through his hair so you can angle him and take your pleasure from him, your forehead thumps against the drywall, the thud of it reverberating with your moan.

Your abdomen flexes as you rut into him, your eyes falling closed though his stay open to watch. He’d gone too many nights thinking about this - the sounds you would make, what you would like and how you would like it - and when he moves you just the slightest bit upwards, his nose drags against you and his tongue presses in, lighting your nerves on fire and rubbing against something fucking devasting, you think you might have cried out his name loud enough for the houses across the street to hear.

Or, at the very least, his neighbour, whose name escapes you because the only name you can think of is Daryl, Daryl, Daryl.

His eyebrows are furrowed beneath you, deadset in determination and concentration as his fingers dig into your inner thighs, palms resting at the tops of them to keep you from moving up too much and letting any of you escape him. He’s making as much of a ruckus as you are - less, considering he has you muffling him - but when you moan, he moans, the sound reverberating through you and making the cycle repeat itself.

He’s a quick learner; it didn’t take a genius to know he's observant, or that he’s damn good with his hands, but what you didn’t know was how easily he could pull your noises until your throat felt raw. You’re not sure if the person you’re hearing is even you, but then again, who else would Daryl even let do this to him?

“Daryl- Daryl, oh my god.”

Nor does it take a genius to know how close you are, a precarious lean over a cliff’s edge. Just a breeze could knock you down

He pulls you away then - just a bit, kissing the inside of your thighs after obscenely licking his lips and swallowing - and his words are less coherent sentences than they are half-formed, love-drunk mumblings, but they’re just as sure in his intent.

“C’mon, give it to me. Be a good girl ‘n give it to me. So fuckin’ pretty like this, ya got no idea. Ain’t got no right lookin’ like this.”

His praises are all you need to succumb, another flick of his tongue and grind of your hips making you spasm as he holds you, your legs pressing against him and sandwiching his ears as the tension in your stomach rises and snaps. You didn’t know you could feel like this - that someone could make you feel like this - and you coat him, running down his cheek and his tongue and his stubble as he tries to catch as much of you as he can.

You clench around nothing as he mouths at you, eager and sloppy with his movements, and your hand in his hair keeps him in place. You feel like you might float away from Earth if you weren’t holding onto him, and even as you start to slow down, bangs fallen into your face and sweat stuck to your forehead, he keeps you rocking against him. It’s wholly selfish, he knows it is and he would confess that if you wanted him to, but he wants to see you do it again. He wants to see it so fucking bad.

“Daryl- I- it’s too- it’s too much.”

He lets go of his grip then, pressing kisses down your thigh as you rise up off him, but as he watches you clench, his spit and your own arousal a slick mess against you, his biceps flex to keep you in place again. The dig of his nails makes you mewl, and when your hand unthreads from his hair and goes to grab one of his, he links his fingers with yours, holding you against your own thigh.

“Jus’- jus’ let me look for a second. Jus’ a little longer.”

And when he sounds like that, who are you to say no? Your whole being’s belonged to him for months now.

So you let him stare - even bring your other hand down from the headboard to clear his stray strands from his eyes so he can see you better.

“Was that what you thought it would be like?”

Humming, he kisses your legs once more before letting you go, wiping at his stubble with the back of his hand before sitting up against the headboard. You’re to the side of him, perched on those pretty knees that were around his head just minutes ago, and for a second, he’s stuck replaying, half-lidded cerulean staring back at you.

“Was more’n I could’a thought. Was fuckin’- you were- you were so fuckin’ hot.”

He feels like such an idiot when he says those words, reduced to a hormone riddled teenager because he can - shit - he’s pretty sure he can still taste you, and he brings the back of his hand to his forehead, closing his eyes and pulling breaths from the air. He needs a second to process and pick up the pieces of his lust-crumbled brain, and even though he tries, it slips from his grasp like sand.

You shuffle towards him then, your weight leant on your arms to give him a quick kiss, disarming in its charm, the heat of your fingers beneath his chin still lingering even after you’ve moved. His lips stay puckered for a second longer, and when he feels you grab at his belt, an interested raise of his brows accompany the opening flutter of his eyes.

He watches enamoured as you unclink the buckle, a spectator in your erotic display as you slide the leather from their loops and unzip his too fucking tight jeans, and he audibly groans when you pull them off him, the sway of your chest making too many late night thoughts lurch forward.

“Think you can keep goin’?”

Smiling, you bite the inside of your cheek to keep from making an audible noise when you finally pull his boxers from him. He’s red - so red and angry, jutting against Daryl’s stomach as if screaming at you to look - and just the sight of his cock is enough to have you reaching out to palm at him.

“Yes. Yes. I can keep going. I wanna do everything with you.”

He nearly melts into a puddle from your voice - raw from calling out his name and the haze of desire from feeling him leak viscous against your palm - and in a fluid motion, he has your back pressed against the mattress, only the squeak of it even making you realize he’s moved you. Well, that and the fact he’s propped himself up on both elbows and has your body beneath his.

“Then let’s keep goin’.”

Daryl sinks down then, and when you feel him smile against the skin of your neck, you wonder if, after you’re both sated and heaving breaths to fill your lungs from the exertion, you’ll ever want to be anywhere else but his bed.

Either way, you won’t hear a complaint from him.

»»———— ⊱

comment to be on my taglist! (some of these tags don’t work and i don’t know why???)

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[pcrscphone]

so in all fairness.. it was dumb. he was dumb. minnie knew this and well he definitely had a tendency to let his body run off with an idea before his mind caught up to that-- and that was where the drinking and anything else that came with it came from. he was angry though, and upset. maybe more upset but the drink brought out the anger and the pain and he had definitely no doubt embarrassed himself probably in the process, but waking up the next morning he couldn’t seem to think that far ahead yet. the issue of how much of a mess he was wasn’t catching up yet when he felt like he’d been ran over by a train then throw off a cliff. or that’s what his head was telling him as he groaned loudly, half rolling out the bed and not taking much notice of anything expect the smell of food hitting him now as he padded out brokenly. he couldn’t tell if it smelled good or made him want to throw up yet, though the more important question really should be about.. how there was the smell of food and-- oh.

minnie’s eyes widen a little as he takes in the sight of a stranger-- no. not a stranger. he definitely recognises them from the bar and oh that’s sending gears turning in his head. was he the type to have a one night stand after finding out his boyfriend was cheating? was he like that? maybe he had to reevaluate himself.. or just think about the fact he’s openly staring at the other now in silence because he’s a fucking idiot that doesn’t know how his mouth works apparently. 

muse: ryu minnie  plot: this for: @haruwrites

[wewritethings]

RULES

FOR SHIPS:

• If you ask for a ship, focus more on your personality traits and interests rather than your looks!

• Feel free to send in lengthy descriptions!

• If you anonymously ask for a ship and it is lengthy or requires multiple asks, please add an emoji, nickname, etc. so that we can identify which ask belongs to whom. It will also be easier to identify which ship is yours later on!

• All ships will be tagged under #ship

• Please don’t be upset if we pair you with someone you dislike, this is simply our opinion!

FOR REQUESTS:

• We will NOT write anything involving bestiality, pedophilia, or incest.

• We will however be writing smut!

• All requests/non-requests will be tagged #writings and requests specifically will be under #requests

FOR HEADCANNONS:

• Same rules for requests apply to headcannons

• All headcannons will be tagged #headcannon

OVERALL:

Hello and welcome! We are fairly new to writing so please be patient. We accept constructive criticism and can’t wait to write for you. Feel free to ask anything or even just chat. Anything written by Rose will be under #rosewrites while anything by Haru will be under #haruwrites

- Haru and Rose

[ichoriism]

–   proud and all too direct when it came to confrontations and making himself heard, kyungmin was often feared and labeled simply as a ‘ bitch ’. it’s not that he didn’t care for other people’s feelings, it's just that after years of seeing his brothers being mistreated worse than bags of garbage, he took it upon himself to stand up for all of them. the habit had stuck –and it also helped he liked to make rude people regret their attitude when they crossed ways, it was a petty satisfaction he liked indulging it. so when tall, dark, and handsome stepped into his little boutique in hongdae, kyungmin didn’t make a fool of himself like his personal did. he rolled his eyes at them and pointed for the girls to go behind the counter. ❛ good afternoon, ❜ he greeted, shooting him a smile no different from others. ❛ can i help you look for anything in particular or would you rather just look around? ❜

with jinhwan ( @haruwrites​ )

[brucelees-a]

* – —  riley  &  vannes    ♡     a starter for @haruwrites​​

“um, okay, s-so about that thing i just blurted out...” riley stammers awkwardly, silently wishing the ground would just swallow him whole. even after all the dumb things he has done in his life, he actually can’t believe he is stupid enough to moan out ‘i love you’ whilst cumming inside of his friend. the worst part of all is that he truly means what he said, but judging by the look on the other’s face, that feeling isn’t mutual. he can’t blame him, because their little arrangement is supposed to be purely sexual, a way for riley to explore his sexuality and for vannes to get off without any strings attached. after his messy break up with his previous boyfriend, riley felt like this was exactly what he needed in his life, just some casual fun and no complicated feelings, but of course riley couldn’t just keep that promise to himself. “i guess i do feel that way about you, yeah,” he mumbles, avoiding eye-contact with the other. “i’m sorry for messing this up...” 

[haruhey]

The Day Will Come When You Won't Be

Enemies With Benefits masterlist

Word count: 5k

Chapter warnings: descriptions of everything that happens at the Negan lineup. If you can stomach that, everything else should be no problem.

The Saviors seize a hostage.

You should have never gotten on the truck.

But what could you have done, really?

“Got a new group out there givin’ us trouble, and I’m in the mood to settle some shit. Wanna come?”

He stood lent against your doorframe just 4 hours ago, the Virginian sun still streaming in from the tiny crack of wall you called a window, and he had that grin twisting his features. You’d been through enough of those looks to understand that, when it morphs his face, he’s not asking, and your skin had risen into those insistent, memory-laden goosebumps that come like Pavlovian instinct, forcing you to leave the scratchy linen of your sheets and pad across the frigid cement of your room.

In 10 minutes flat, you were dressed and loading into the seat you’re in now, and 5 minutes later you were peeling out of that hell-hole, a nonchalant humming coming from the man next to you as he taps his thumbs on the steering wheel, one half of some long forgotten rhythm muffled slightly by the leather of his glove. 

You keep your eyes on the flashes of trees as you ride on gravel roads. You don’t want to look at him. Or at the mirror, where you would see Arat and the bat resting next to her. You’re not sure if you can, souvenirs of its violence painting the metal wire. Knowing what will be happening once each checkpoint reports back, you’re not sure you could even handle the look of any of them.

It’s been months since you’d been forced into those 4 suffocating walls you’d refused to call home, and though you’ve lost a lot of yourself, your fear of Negan lingered no matter how much you’d wanted it to evaporate and disappear like the parts of you before it. It’s been months since he held that goddamn bat against you, but it doesn’t matter. That fear ignites at the worst times, knotting up your stomach.

You loathe it, but you’re powerless against it.

Maybe you hate that fact more.

There seems to always be an ever-present smirk on his face whenever it comes to ‘settling shit’, the promise of making a show of his unwavering power dangling in front of him and ramping up his excitement with each passing moment. You can’t remember how many times you’ve sat in this seat - the last group was a while ago, you think, the place with the huge house at the top of that hill - but as Negan’s hum changes into a whistle, that stupid overwhelming fear shoots through you, taking over your body for a second and banging your knees against the door when you flinch away from him.

The knock reverberates through the truck, the enclosed space doing you no favours when you take a sharp inhale at the pain, but the whistling stops, the crush of asphalt and the squeak of his leather jacket taking over as he turns to look at you. 

“Oh, c’mon. Loosen up, princess. It’s not like this is your first time.”

You bite the inside of your lip to keep from responding to his poorly hidden double entendre and that stupid nickname which has wormed into his vocabulary. It was a joke - at least it was when it was a throwaway comment from Sherry after she had one too many sips of cheap vodka - but Negan seems especially inept when it comes to how close he thinks he is to you. He had pinpointed it and insisted upon it being some playful replacement of your actual name, and every fucking time he said it, you feel your blood start to simmer.

But you know what happens when you upset him.

He makes a show of it in front of the furnace, and you remember the pain which tears through you, but in private - a handful of Saviors for insurance and away from prying eyes, in front of his own stovetop and his squeaky cupboards and his hidden drawers - that’s what terrifies you. 

Actually, no. What scares you is the fact he can do all that and then act like it never happened.

He’d greet you in the morning like he was greeting an old friend, and just go on with his day.

“Keep your eyes on the road, Negan.”

Arat scoff does little to hide her smile - neither does he, an upwards curl of his lips before he turns away to do just that - and you let out a breath, shifting in your seat in an attempt to regain your bearings. It’s like walking on eggshells, each time you talk to him.

He’s volatile.

One day he’d brush it off with a laugh, but some days he would pin you into place with a look, and you’d go to bed with one more bandage than you’d had the night before. But he’s mellowed out since you’d first met him; either old age is taking its toll or he’s become comfortable in the status quo he’d hammered in with swings of Lucille and burnt faces by the iron.

“Well, shit, who pissed in your cereal this morning?”

You let the question linger, and Negan peels into the gravel-faced clearing before you can let silence fully steal the space between the three of you. He slams the brakes as he turns into his spot, and it sends your body forward. You barely have time to lift your hands to brace for the stop, but you manage enough, your forearms pressing against the dashboard.

“Whoops,”

He pulls the keys from the ignition then, pulling a laugh from his chest before you hear a click from between the two of you, and he gets out, resting his arms against the top edge of the truck before leaning in with a wide smirk.

“Guess you should’a worn your seatbelt.”

Asshole.

You’re not sure at what point your abrasion had distorted in his head into banter, but, frankly, it pisses you off. It pisses you off because he couldn’t be more obvious with the fact he doesn’t think of you as a threat. As far as he’s concerned, you’re some angry chihuahua he’s ultimately got control over. Angry as all hell, but harmless at the end of the day. The more you think about it, the more it pisses you off, and though your mouth opens in the beginning of a retort, Simon’s static voice breaks through before you can form anything further. 

The group reached checkpoint C first.

“Pass me that, won’t you?” 

Grabbing the walkie-talkie from the cupholder, you chuck it at him without another thought, turning to open your side’s door as it hits his chest with a thump, and he even laughs at that, not missing a beat before the push-to-talk is engaged and his voice rumbles into the microphone. 

They reach a second checkpoint not much longer, the chained-up rotted soon after that, and radio silence follows after they reach the wall of burning trees. It must have freaked them out - it was Simon, after all, whose voice was the first and last they’d heard. They would have had to have known something was coming at this point, even if his presence at the flames was purely by chance. 

Sooner or later, they were gonna get sloppy. They were gonna get nervous - get desperate, and slip up - and they have no fucking clue what’s in store for them.

As the sun inches under the horizon, you sip nervously from your water bottle, the carabiner attached to its lid tinking against metal as your hand shakes. The Saviors had started getting into position just after sunset - an order that was barked by Negan echoed by Laura when she’d decided they were moving out a little too slow - but you’re stuck in place, your heart pounding in your chest and a lump in your throat that you can’t get down no matter how hard you try.

You’re leant behind a car, Arat sat in the driver's seat as she absentmindedly toys with the safety on her pistol, and you’re thankful for the Virginian night. It hides the shaky breaths visible from the chill after an unfamiliar RV pulls into the clearing, and it hides the flash of panic that crosses your face when Simon pulls out someone you can’t quite make out in the dark.

It’s starting.

You don’t know how many people are in the group. You’re sure Negan has told you - that big mouth of his never quite shuts up between the orders he gives you and the monologues he considers ‘conversation’ - but you never listen.

It can’t just be him, though, you’re sure of it. One man can’t have caused him to go all on the offensive like this.

Negan’s sat in that red-lined RV now, a short conversation with Simon wrapping up with a wolfish grin shot in your direction before slinging Lucille over his shoulder and waltzing into the open door, and you clip your water bottle back onto your belt, rubbing your temples to try and forget it.

It feels so pointless, every time you’re dragged to one of these stupid confrontations. You don’t even do anything here. You don’t grab automatics to ‘get shit done’ - you don’t douse cut-down trees in lighter fluid or tie up the infected for some sick psychological torture - you’re just some spectator in all this.

Every time Negan looks at you like that, that expression wiping across his face like that night you’d first met him, it’s like a taunt. It’s like he knows, even without making you kneel next to the squelch and crush of a head, that he can make you break out in a cold sweat and make you remember the fear that coursed through your veins when you had been.

You hate that he’s right.

When you hear the first few whistles, your hair stands at the back of your neck, and you try to blink away the first few tears threatening your vision. The Saviors are close - they have to be, even grouped up, whistles can’t get that loud - and as the two tones get even closer, you close your eyes and lean forward, putting your head between your knees as you prop yourself up against the trunk of the sedan. 

It was only a matter of time before they were caught. 

In the position you’re in, you urge your bloodflow to your brain in hopes that maybe - just maybe - it’ll work well enough that it won’t make you think of the first time you’d heard those sounds. You hope that it’ll melt the ice lining your muscles, but you don’t have to hope any longer when the lights of the parked cars turn on, breaking you out of your spiral with the momentary flash of white as you squint your eyes to adjust to the brightness. 

Despite the pain at your temples when you stare into the lit clearing, you’re thankful for it. It reminds you you’re here, not in a long-buried memory, and though you hate being here, you hate being there even more.

But you know this weirdly settled thankfulness won’t last long. As you watch them get onto their knees, whatever’s left of your morals are screaming at you to do something try to stop the way Negan swings open the door and waves Lucille like he’s at some pissing contest, but you know it won’t do anything. You know you can’t do anything.

You’re not sure if savior complex is the right word for what you’re feeling, but it feels funny when you’re in this type of situation.

There’s always an illusion of help - that maybe if you screamed loud enough or just spoke some stubbornly-ignored reason, you could be able to stop him - but you know you can’t. As the first bash of Lucille breaks skull, you know there’s no way to stop him. He swings and swings and swings, and it’s so silent save for the group’s sobbing and the constant thunk of his strikes.

You’re not close to them at all - the length of a car and several people separate you from the group - but you can see them well enough when you turn your head, your heart hammering against your ribs when you recognize that one of them is a kid and one of them looks so pale that she might pass out at any given second. The headlights illuminate them like some sort of demented spotlight, Negan’s shadow distorting across their bodies and their bloodshot eyes as he lingers the bat in front of one of them for too long.

You know what he’s getting at - he’s testing their fear, he’s testing how much more he needs to push before they crack and run back to their community with their tails between their legs - and you remember when you were there, a different type of acquiescing running through your mind. You knew you couldn’t do anything when you were the one knelt on hard ground. You knew that there were too many guns pointed at you and there was too much violence in Negan’s eyes.

The only people who would act on that impulse would be the stupidest people in the-

Holy shit. 

The only people who would act on that impulse are here. Or, at least one of them was.

He swung at Negan - that man who had blood running down his chest and blood covering his hands - made hard contact with the corner of one of Negan’s cheeks, and though he’s subdued in almost an instant, you can’t look away. An odd sense of fascination keeps your eyes glued to the scene in front of you.

You don’t remember the last time anyone’s swung at Negan - let alone at a lineup - and you can’t help the spark of a long-forgotten hope that sparks within you.

He’s brave, that much is obvious. 

But still, he’s stupid as all hell, held down to the ground as Dwight points a crossbow at him, staring straight at the barrel of it like a trapped animal, and you watch them drag him back into place, a sick feeling crawling into when Negan rises back to his feet.

You know what’s coming. You were on the receiving end of this once, too.

You know defiance gets you nothing except another grave to dig.

And though you’re expecting it, your hands balled into fists at your sides as if to somehow cushion the consequences of not looking away, you still recoil when Negan brings Lucille down on a different man.

It’s different, this time. This man doesn’t use his last bit of consciousness for a well-deserved ‘fuck you’ to Negan. He uses it to tell someone that he’ll ‘find her’ - holds on to his coherence and fights the rushing blood and pain to try and get out more - but he can’t, Negan’s voice filling the space with a mock of sympathy.

Then he swings again, and your stomach feels like it’s folding in on itself, rushing up your throat and through your lips. You turn back away from the scene, hoping that it’ll erase you from whatever the hell is going on, but it doesn’t and in a split second, you’re throwing up. Everything you’ve just seen finally catches up with you and you’re really throwing up, but nothing is coming out except pieces of a granola bar and the ocean of water you’d tried to calm yourself with.

It hits the line between the gravel and the sparse grass, and you take a step back to avoid it, but nausea hits you like a wave and makes you stumble. The trunk of the sedan stops you from moving any further, and you place a hand on it to steady yourself before taking a step to the side and then another, leant forward with your arm in front of you until you can brace on a tree.

Jesus Christ, did you really manage to forget the reality of this? Did you really manage to forget how the air smells when it’s tinged with this much fresh blood? Or how fucking haunting the sound of so many people crying is?

It seems you have - at least, you forgot how overwhelming it was - and you’re not sure if you’re furious or happy that you have.

But now you remember. You remember kneeling and your ribs stinging with each breath you took. You remember the smell of your friend’s blood coming from right next to you. You remember the way your eyes burnt from all your crying and the way your chest hurt with each sob that ripped through you. You remember it all, down to each blade of grass.

Stop overreacting.

There’s always that voice in you that berates when moments like these happen. It curls its lips up in disgust at the fact you’ve let yourself become so terrified, and you loathe yourself for it, a reminder of how it had all gone wrong that day and how you’d let it. It speaks tenfold, the image of that man even just trying to swing at Negan sharpening its words to a point and cutting you with its disappointment. 

Even though you try to convince yourself you’re not there anymore, it all feels so real that you can’t help but spiral.

God, you’re such a fucking- 

“Hey! Hey, y’alright?”

You’re not sure how long you’d spent lent on that poor tree, the intensity pulling you from reality, but it doesn’t matter because, when Arat places her hand on your shoulder, you flinch away, stumbling on your shaky legs. It feels like it’s been ages - your mouth is cotton and your ears are ringing - but it can’t have been long, the sun barely starting to rise.

“Yeah, fine. Great. I’m great.”

Wiping your mouth with your sleeve, you ease yourself back into a stand, blinking hard before looking around and ignoring the suspecting squint of Arat’s eyes. You’re pretty far out, a couple meters past the closest vehicle, and when you spot the pistol strapped to her thigh, you can’t help but wonder if you could just go. 

If you just reached down and took it - if you just concentrated enough pressure to one spot at the side of her head - would she be knocked unconscious, giving you the opening to run?

But you know you can’t. Well-aimed pistol whips barely knock people out as it is, and you haven’t eaten anything substantial since the day started. There was no way you’d be able to do it. The second you bolt, Arat would tackle you. Even if you knocked her out, you wouldn’t make it far, your legs would give up as if they knew he would end up finding you.

He always does.

“Here, eat this.”

A tiny plastic packet is pressed into your palm before she steps back, grabbing your arm and dragging you back towards the clearing. With the darkness ebbing away, the headlights have been turned off, and you can see everything without its blaring harshness.

The scene looks even sadder in natural lighting - tracks of dried tears and slumped shoulders lined up one by one - and all of them refuse to move their heads from where they’re frozen.

But one of them is missing.

Leaning against the sedan, you rip open the packet with your teeth, your fingers still lacking feeling from what Arat had caught you in just moments ago, and you try not to look at the center of the clearing as you force down the crackers.

It’s then when you notice the RV is gone, and it’s then when you realize Negan’s gone too.

It doesn’t take long to connect the dots, and when you finally glance back over to them, you finally figure out who’s missing.

He’s the leader, then - curly hair and fur-lined jacket.

Break him, and everyone falls in line.

The sun comes up soon, lighting the clearing through the gaps between heavy-set trees, and the RV peels in not long after. You watch with the same pit in your stomach when Negan pulls him out by the back of his collar, and as he yells his demand of him to chop off his son’s arm off - as he stops him before he really does it - everyone knows that, whatever Negan had set out to do, he must have done it.

Dwight loads the man who punched Negan into the van he’d come out of - and he shifts his weight when he gets in, swaying like an animal trying to escape - and you find yourself curious about him. You watch as Negan leans in just a foot away to talk to their leader before rising back onto his feet, and you learn that the man’s name is Daryl.

And as much as you hate agreeing with Negan, he really does look like a Daryl.

“We'll be back for our first offering in one week. Until then, ta-ta.”

He throws their axe over his shoulder, a nonchalance in his gait, and he’s quick to hop back into the truck he drove over, letting out a theatrical sigh as if to say ‘all in a day's work’ without actually saying something. Though, knowing him, he’d probably love it if his voice carried for a moment more.

You contemplate where to go as you watch everyone start to disperse - if you’d asked, would Dwight be willing to let you sit shotgun in the car he’s keeping Daryl? Or should you follow to wherever Arat is going and try to figure out a way to thank her for the saltines that have settled your stomach for the time being? - but you don’t have time to move your feet before you hear a familiar voice calling your name and banging against the car roof.

“Get on in, princess.”

Negan sticks his head through the driver’s seat window, and you pull your lips into a line before taking a deep breath and turning your feet in his direction. He’s looking at you with an easy smile, but you keep your eyes on the ground instead, walking behind the wall of cars to mitigate some of the embarrassment you feel at any type of association with Negan.

You look over at the group before pulling at the passenger side handle, and some of them are looking back at you. The woman who had spoken up is studying you, so is their leader and the kid and two of the other women, and you feel shame course through you at their glares. You tear your eyes away from them and blink harshly before hitting the seat, and you slam the door shut, taking a deep breath as you refuse to look at Negan as he barks orders through the open window.

You watch them as all of the Saviors loads back up, and you can’t stop yourself from wondering if this was what you looked like on that night, too. Was this what you would have looked like on that soccer field if he hadn’t taken you before the sun rose? 

You can’t blame them for it, though.

Because it’s your fault for letting him push you around like this, isn’t it?

Because you’re so scared of being out there alone, you’d do anything to survive, wouldn’t you?

Because he’s scarred you enough times for you to think like that, hasn’t he?

Swallowing hard, you try to stop that stupid voice from running by pulling your legs up to your chest and tapping a lazy rhythm onto your shin. It’s comforting. It reminds you of the world before - when you’d slaved over schoolwork to it playing mindlessly out of your old cassette player - but also of how things were before you met Negan, its tune playing through that rusty old vinyl player you’d dug up.

You hadn’t heard it since. 

“Hey, your little… blegh, during the shit that went down, you alright?”

Your eyebrows meet in the middle of your forehead as you turn to look at him, trying to figure out if there was some hidden motive behind what he’d just said only to conclude that there doesn’t seem to be. 

“Yeah, fine. Doing great. Don’t worry about it.”

Your face relaxes as you speak, and you shake your head to try and convince him to drop it. Turning back towards the window, you study the trees as they pass by once again, and it feels like you’re back in yesterday, blurs of green the same way they’d been when he’d driven you to the clearing. There’s some peace to be found in the colour, but he breaks it before it settles.

“Go see the doc when we get back.”

It turns out that your response just wasn’t convincing enough for him, so he tells you what to do, and you think about how this is always how it is with him. You think about how it’s never a suggestion - how you never get a say - and how it’s always an order you’re just expected to follow.

Guess you’re clocking into your shift earlier than expected.

“You got some boyfriend I don’t fucking know about or something?”

Scrunching your nose at his digging, you give him a curt response - ‘I’m not pregnant, if that’s what you’re implying’ - and when he speaks again, you can hear the way a corner of his lips turns up.

“You haven’t been screwing around?”

You don’t dignify him with an answer.

Instead, you let an emptiness linger as you chew at the inside of your cheek, wondering if you really should say what’s hanging on the tip of your tongue. It could get you in trouble - no, it could get you in a shit ton of trouble - but you do it anyways, some feeling gnawing at you to take a hint from that Daryl guy and just be brave for once.

“You didn’t have to kill the Asian guy.”

The silence that follows is deafening.

“I let you get away with a lot of shit, y’know that?”

Then panic comes - it drips slowly, down from your hairline and stings from your forehead down to your chin - but you stave it off before it can shake your voice.

“I’m just saying that you-“

He interrupts with a raise of his gloved hand, the pieces of dried blood on it cracking with the open and close of his first, and for that second where you think he might hit you, you flinch away by instinct, pinching your eyes closed to brace for it. 

It wouldn’t be the first time he’s done it, but the impact never comes.

“If you were one of the limp-dicks out there, I would’ve thrown you in a cell for questionin’ my goddamn authority.”

Instead, he places his hand back on the steering wheel with a small smile, his words making you let out a breath, and you find yourself listening more intently than you care to admit. 

“But that’s why I like you, isn’t it, princess?”

Your jaw strains at the stupid nickname, but the playfulness that’s wormed into his words makes your tensed shoulders relax just the slightest. 

“Pullin’ me back and really putting shit into perspective when that shit needs it. I like that, keeps me in line. It shows you’re really lookin’ out for the future of this place.”

It takes all the strength in you not to scoff, but some of it slips out, a tiny huff followed by a twist of your lips, and it doesn’t take a genius to understand that it’s definitely not a smile. There’s no doubt in your mind that he knows you’re not looking out for the Sanctuary or the Saviors when you find the courage to mouth back at him. Why else would he keep dragging you out to shit like this?

It’s to keep you in line, you’re sure of it. It’s to keep you in line as if reminding you of that night would keep you locked in your room and stuck where he wanted you. He’d dragged you back to the Sanctuary one too many times for him to just not care about you anymore.

“It was just- it was just unnecessary, Negan. If you liked the balls on the guy who punched you, you could’ve just taken him and left and ended everything there. You didn’t have to kill the Asian guy or do any of the stuff you did afterwards, either.”

The breath that escapes his mouth as a barely-audible whistle, his frown oddly approving before he questions you. His voice isn’t condescending or accusatory, you don’t think, but there’s a dangerous edge to it, like something could go wrong if you answered it wrong. 

“You know what they did, right?”

But you don’t have the right answer, so you just don’t say anything. 

“They ambushed the whole fucking satellite station! Killed every one of them! The blood’s on their hands, so I would say it was pretty fuckin’ courteous of me not to cut off their dicks and kill every last one of ‘em, wouldn’t you?”

You can’t find the words to refute that - not when his voice rises enough for the vibrations to run through the car and work their way into your bones, or when he gestures with that same gloved hand that’s done more than its fair share of things to hurt you - but even if you did, he gives you no time to respond, anyways.

“So you still wanna debate morals, princess? ‘Cause I don’t think you understand the whole damn scope of what they did.”

His voice drops down, but it doesn’t hide his irritation, and you swallow down the spit that’s made home in your throat. Nobody told you what that group did, but you think you know why, biting down the smile pulling at your cheeks. 

They’re the only ones to have tried it and done it successfully.

“Yeah, I guess I don’t.”

The rest of the drive is silent.

[ichoriism]

   ahn sara was a woman of few words and great expectations. her only son was her most treasured gift and the moment her eyes laid on that tiny face as she held him close for the first time, she decided there’s nothing she wouldn’t do to keep her son safe. she stared at the door before her for a good moment, black channel glasses on her face. a long, slender finger reached for the doorbell button and she pressed on it. her pretty bow-shaped lips –identical to her son’s–, pressed together into a tight line as she waited.

with – @haruwrites​ .

[brucelees-a]

*   cassius  &  matthew    ♡     a starter for @haruwrites​​

“so, he’s going on another business trip this month? that’s... interesting. you must really trust your boyfriend a lot to not feel even the tiniest bit suspicious about that,” the mob heir remarks, arching an eyebrow. admittedly, it was extremely petty of him to try to sabotage his exes’ relationship by secretly befriending his new partner to plant a seed of doubt in his head and seduce him away from him, but the guy deserved it for choosing this simpleminded tea shop employee over the cassius yi. “it’s just that being a business man myself, i hear about it a lot, you know? men using that old excuse to have affairs behind their significant other’s back. i’m sure your boyfriend isn’t like that, though. after all, who would want to cheat on someone as cute and charming as you, matty?”