#archer sleeping looks so moe-

[darabeatha]

x

[daryl-dixon-daydreams]

Words: 3,778 Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Reader Reader pronouns: she/her Era: pre-Negan Alexandria, Warnings: graphic descriptions, violence, gore, fear and anxiety, strong language Summary: Still stuck in the auto shop, Daryl and Y/N try to move on after the explosive argument. A/N: Ooooohhh boy. I'm excite for you to read this chapter!

This is a series! Read the previous parts on the Master List.

Your name: submit What is this?

As soon as you made it completely into the little break room you felt like your knees were about to give out. You leaned your back against the far wall and slid down to sit on the floor, wrapping your arms around your knees. Because I’m fucking in love with you! You could hear his voice in your head, see his face as he realized what had just spilled out of him. You squeezed your eyes shut and rubbed a hand over your forehead. Shit. That was impossible to ignore. And it was going to make the mix of emotions you always felt around him even more impossible to ignore. And of all places to be; trapped in a small, dingy auto shop.

You suddenly felt so drained, and you couldn’t tell if it was from the fighting, the running, the adrenaline crash, or the emotional fallout from what had just transpired, but your whole body ached and your mind was foggy. You hadn’t meant to, but you submerged almost against your will into a deep pool of heavy sleep.

That cruel smile and those dead eyes, dark wells of nothing, were right in your face. Your vision alternately blurred and sharpened as you fought to stay conscious even while you were unsure if it would be better to black out or stay awake. A knife point was thrust mere centimeters from your right eye. “Eenie. Meenie…” The edge of the knife moved to press down on the top of your ear. “Miney…” The bite of steel pressed into your bottom lip, pulling it slightly down as the edge met the soft pillow of flesh. “Moe…” The knifepoint moved to the center of your sternum and he twirled it in his fingers. You felt the cotton of your shirt give way to the sharp point of the knife which then pricked your skin. You couldn’t help the slightly shuddered breath that it drew from you as you felt the tip begin to sink more deeply into your flesh. “I’d start talking, sweetheart, unless you want this knife to go in deeper,” he hissed in your face. You could smell the moonshine he’d been drinking on his breath. “Answer one question—just one—and I’ll loosen those ropes on your wrists.” Your vision wavered again. “Fuck you,” you managed. A searing pain tore down the center of your chest as he pushed the knife in and dragged it downwards. Someone was screaming. You realized that was you. You were screaming. You felt blood start to soak the front of your shirt as he lifted the knife, leaving you gasping for breath and whimpering. Your wrists were burning from struggling against the rough ropes and your shoulder was on fire.

“Y/N! Wake up! Hey!” Strong hands clasping your shoulders, shaking you. “Wake up!”

You were still disoriented and your field of vision was like you were looking through a pinhole, all dark and blurred around the edges. Your hands shot out to push the figure away from you, but when you felt familiar worn leather, you gripped on instead.

“Yer havin’ a panic attack! Just breathe! Listen to m’ voice!” Daryl drawled, his hands still on your shoulders. “Breathe. C’mon. S’alright.”

You felt your lungs start to loosen, all while you clung more desperately to his vest. Finally, the darkness and blur in your eyes faded away and you were left looking at the handsome archer in front of you. He was on his knees, his expression a little desperate, his blue eyes chaotic. You pulled your hands off his vest like you’d been burned and he suddenly realized he was still holding onto your shoulders and his grip slipped gently from them. “Ya alright?” he asked softly, his brow heavily furrowed, casting a shadow over his blue eyes, turning them a deep blue like the color of a clear twilight sky.

Your chest was still heaving as you tried to recover the oxygen you seemed to have lost that left your head swimming. You squeezed your eyes shut and leaned your head back against the wall. Daryl watched as your left hand came across and gripped your right shoulder, the one that had been dislocated during your ordeal. You rubbed it gently. He felt helpless as you tried to calm down and simply sank back onto his heels, tucking his hands into his back pockets to keep from fiddling with them anxiously.

“Yer shoulder hurt?” he asked, simply for something to break the silence. Your eyes opened and fixed on him for a long moment. You nodded, shifting to sit up straighter against the wall behind you.

“Yeah. It’s like that phantom limb syndrome or whatever… but… it just aches.” You gulped. “But it’s not just that. When I have these flashbacks, I can feel—” You broke off abruptly and bit your bottom lip. Daryl’s chest felt hollow. You pulled your eyes away from his face and stared vaguely at the floor. You shook your head and sighed. “It doesn’t matter,” you murmured. “Wasn’t real. It wasn’t…” You said it to like you were trying to convince yourself and Daryl felt a sharp pang in the middle of that empty feeling in his chest. This is what you had meant when you said you couldn’t sleep. How am I supposed to sleep? If possible, you felt even more exhausted than you had when you’d originally fallen asleep. Maybe he read it on your face, but he pushed himself up.

“Ya—ya okay?” he asked again. It seemed like a stupid question.

You nodded hesitantly. “Ish,” you said.

Daryl nervously scratched the back of his head. “Alrigh’. I’ll just be out here, if ya need anythin’.” He couldn’t imagine that you wanted him hanging around right now. I need some time. That’s what you’d said.

He’d barely crossed the threshold when you said his name again. “Daryl.” He turned back, a question on his careworn face. For a moment the air felt charged and thick, your lips parted and he waited for you to speak but you suddenly seemed to reverse course and ducked your eyes. “How’d you get the lights on in there?” you asked, picking at a hole in your jeans.

A flash of confusion flitted over his face briefly and he cleared his throat. “Uhh—walkers seem like they wandered off. I found a generator in the back. Has a little bit of juice left in it... I was jus’ workin’ on that car to—to pass the time, ya know.” He had to keep busy or he thought he might lose his mind.

“Oh.” You nodded.

You looked like you were on the edge of saying something else and Daryl stepped back toward you. “What is it?” he asked softly.

You gulped and stared back down at your fiddling fingers. “Nothing. Just—” Did you dare to ask him for this favor? After how cold you were, how you snapped at him, after how you’d yelled, how you’d blamed him. “Would you sit here next to me for a bit? I just—until that—that flashback gets out of my head.”

Your voice sounded so weary and you truly did look like you were about to collapse from exhaustion, but Daryl couldn’t believe you were asking that of him after what had happened earlier… Ain’t like she’s got any damn choice of anybody else though, is it? he thought to himself. His heart quickened as he nudged his nose up in a nod. You shifted over against the back wall to give him more room and he sunk down beside you, leaving a buffer of space between his broad shoulders and yours.

“Thanks,” you murmured, still not looking at him, again rubbing your hand over your shoulder.

“Mhm,” he hummed. He couldn’t help staring at your profile, memorizing the slope of your nose and the fullness of your bottom lip. You seemed to be purposely keeping your eyes turned away.

You sighed heavily and closed your eyes, leaning back against the wall again. “I’m tired,” you breathed.

Daryl was too, but he had a hard time believing sleep would come. Instead, he listened to your breathing grow slower and deeper beside him and finally your head lolled toward your shoulder. He pressed his back into the cold cinderblock behind him and couldn’t help replaying the earlier conflict with you over and over in his mind. He rubbed a hand over his face and thought of a thousand different things he wished he had said—but at the same time… it felt like some poison had been drawn from a wound. He’d been carrying his feelings around for you for years and it had only gotten more difficult when things fell apart between the two of you. He was deep in thought, replaying little moments from when things were good and when it all went bad, when suddenly you shifted beside him and he felt your hand on his arm. Your body turned toward his and your head came to rest on his shoulder. You were still deeply asleep, no idea you’d moved against him, but the effect it had on the archer was instantaneous. He felt a growing bloom of warmth in his chest start to grow outwards and pour into his face. It was accompanied by a sudden sense of relief and calm, peace, that he hadn’t felt in a long time. Your hand on his arm… just that touch he felt starved for. He studied the serene expression on your face and his heart bounded as your hand curled gently around his arm, holding to him more tightly. Fuck. Who was he kidding? There was no going back to before he’d confessed his feelings for you, and he didn’t want to. Whatever he had to do… no matter what it was, whatever you needed him to do to make things right, he would do it. He’d been walking around with a gaping wound in his chest since things between the two of you had turned sour back at the prison, waking up every day thinking of you and failing at sleeping while thinking of you. No matter how many times he tried to tell himself to give it up, that it was over, he couldn’t let it go. He couldn’t. And if this was all he had? You falling asleep against him in this stupid auto shop with walkers and living dickbags patrolling outside, shit, that would be enough for now. And he’d figure it out. The rest of it, he’d figure out…

_ _ _ _ _ _

You awoke with a start to find that you were curled up tightly on your side. Your body was stiff from the hard floor, but as you sat up a spare shirt of Daryl’s slid off you. You noted that he’d also cushioned your head with his pack as a makeshift pillow. Your heart fluttered involuntarily at the sweetness of those simple gestures despite the fiery conflict between the two of you. No matter how long you’d tried to push him away, he kept caring for you. Even when you told him to do otherwise… You stretched your stiff limbs and listened. You could hear faint noises in the other room and you pulled yourself to your feet, smoothing your hair and clothes and heading toward the sounds. As you expected, Daryl was bent over the engine compartment of the SUV tinkering with something. He didn’t seem to hear you come in, and you were able to just watch him work for a moment, pausing every now and again to sigh, grab a different tool, or wipe at his brow with the back of his arm.

While you stood there, there was a sudden upwelling of emotion in your chest and you found yourself feeling ashamed, ashamed of the way you had treated him… And the whole time you had been fighting the fact that you had tremendously intense and tremendously conflicting emotions about him. Most days you didn’t know if you wanted to punch him in the face or kiss him, and that was terrifying. But enough was enough. If you hadn’t been so fucking stubborn you could have talked this whole thing out ages ago… and who knows where the two of you would be now if you had. Nothing was a guarantee in this world; no tomorrow, no next moment, no next second. And you’d wasted years.

You stepped closer and cleared your throat, getting ready to speak. His eyes shot up to find you standing there, looking anxious and unsure, something that was rare for you. He set down the tool in his hand on the edge of the engine compartment.

Daryl gulped nervously. “Hey. Ya alrigh’?” he asked.

You nodded and stepped a little closer. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. Thanks for the, uhh, makeshift pillow and stuff… and for sitting with me when I was freaking out…”

Daryl nudged his nose up in a nod. His blue eyes studied you as you wrung your hands nervously.

“Look, I—” You sighed heavily trying to gather up your courage and swallow your pride. “I owe you an apology. Or—like… a thousand apologies.”

Daryl’s brow furrowed and you read the confusion easily on his face. “Ya don’t.”

“Yeah. I do,” you insisted. “I was angry at you and all this time I’ve—I’ve been cold and hostile and pushed you away because—” you hesitated. How could you possibly explain your behavior without making it sound like you were trying to excuse it? Or were you really ready to confess the real reason you’d kept him so at arm’s length?

“Ya ain’t gotta explain anythin’ to me. Ya dun need a reason to—”

You laughed a little wryly. “Just let me get this out, okay? I’m—I’m trying to apologize here.” You pulled in a deep breath. “Yes, I was angry at you for what you did. And I still am a little. But you didn’t deserve to be treated the way I treated you.”

Confusion only further clouded his face.

You shook your head and shrugged. “And—just, how? How, after everything, do you not just hate me? For all the years of me picking fights and shoving you away…”

Daryl’s blue eyes were still unwaveringly fixed on your face, but he pulled his bottom lip in between his teeth for a moment and chewed it nervously. “I could never hate ya,” he drawled softly. “And it ain’t like ya didn’t have a reason…”

Your heart was starting to pound in your chest and you tried to draw up your last bit of courage. “I was mad. And I felt betrayed… and I felt all the things I said yesterday but it was more than that… The reason I pushed you away so hard was because I was afraid.” Daryl just went on looking at you, his chest heaving a little with some anxious breaths. The atmosphere in the small shop felt thick with tension and it seemed like fingers of electricity were slowly crackling their way through the air.

You could still see the question on his brow. “I felt all those things. Angry and hurt and deceived and—and hopeless because I would never get that closure that I thought would fix my—” you sighed heavily. “I felt all that but I also still was—was in love with you. And I didn’t know how to deal with that. I couldn’t reconcile those two things. They were both too strong and I didn’t know how to fit them together. And I realize now that it’s not fair of me to think that even if I had been there, even if I’d been the one to kill him or had watched him die, that that would have stopped my flashbacks or patched up this hole I’ve got from the loss of my dad. I can’t know that. Nothing is going to bring him back. It doesn’t change what I went through. And punishing you for it doesn’t help anything. For all I know, seeing him again could have made things worse.”

Daryl seemed frozen but his mind was a chaotic blur as he tried to process what you’d just said. You’d just said you had been in love with him. Past tense. Had. He was trying to grapple with this still when you barreled on.

You felt your eyes stinging a little with emotion and you blinked away the tears as best you could. “Daryl, I never stopped feeling that way about you. You’re still you. Everything I love about you is the same. Even in what you did that made me so angry, it came from this place of you wanting more than anything to protect me, to fix any wrong in my world. Your loyalty, your fierce protection of the people you care about, the fact that you’re a total badass and then you—you slip your pack under my head because you want me to have a pillow. We screamed at each other yesterday and at the first sign of something wrong you didn’t hesitate to sit next to me on that dingy floor and make sure I was okay. All of that, all the reasons I fell in love with you in the first place,” you shrugged, unable now to stop the tears from burning in your eyes, “they’re all still there. And I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry that I wasted so much time being confused and afraid of how strongly I felt and I’m just—sorry, I guess,” you finished weakly.

There was another moment of silence that felt infinitely long as you tried to weather the internal turmoil that was swirling, but it couldn’t have been longer than a few seconds.

You watched something shift behind his blue eyes but you couldn’t put a word to it. You stood paralyzed while he pulled the red rag from his back pocket and wiped his hands in a well-formed habit. He tucked it back into his pocket and looked up at you again, and this time you saw uncertainty on his face. The space between the two of you still felt charged with electricity, but it also felt vast and lonely. Your feet moved toward him almost without you thinking and in no time you were standing so close you could feel the heat from his body.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” you said again, looking up at him through your lashes.

He shook his head almost imperceptibly. “Ya ain’t gotta say that.”

“Yes. I do,” you insisted again. You lifted a hand and hesitated briefly before pressing it gently to the center of his chest. “I’m sorry.”

You felt his breath hitch at your touch. “Daryl.” He still looked uncertain. “Say something?”

His heart was pounding, and he was quite sure you had to be able to feel it with your hand on his chest. “‘M sorry, too.” He was surprised he managed any words at all.

“I know,” you said. You looked up into his face for only a moment longer before you arched up onto your toes, studying the shades of blue in his eyes for a moment before gently finding his lips with yours. Your eyes closed as he gave way softly to your kiss, but the next moment you were setting back on your heels and taking in the stunned look on his face. You felt your cheeks warm with a blush and you nervously bit your bottom lip. Maybe you shouldn’t have done that? Maybe this was just all too much at once. Your heart jumped in your chest. “Um… was that okay?”

“Okay?” he repeated.

“Yeah, just—you look a little… surprised…” Your hand was still flat in the center of his chest and the other had come to rest on his side.

“Course ‘m surprised. Yesterday, I thought—I thought I’d ruined everythin’. Again.”

You shook your head. “You didn’t. I just had to—”

You were interrupted by his lips on yours, and this time the kiss was fiery and insistent and needy. You almost lost your balance, but Daryl’s hands on the small of your back caught you and you eagerly looped your arms around his neck and arched into him, kissing him back hard until the two of you were completely breathless. You broke apart for a moment and his eyes met yours. He watched your lips curve into a smile as you blinked at the glassiness of happy tears in your eyes. He committed that look to memory, and then kissed you again. You smiled against his lips and everything seemed to fall away as the two of you were lost in each other, Daryl’s fingers tangling into your hair and clasping your face. Kissing him was easy. Your lips were in sync and you were surprised by the forcefulness of his need for you. His hands landed on your hips and you walked backwards until your back hit the SUV behind you.

You found his bottom lip with your teeth and gently bit it, smiling into the kiss again at the growl it drew from him. His hips pressed against you and his hands clasped your face. You could feel the strong muscles of his back beneath your fingers. You felt light-headed, giddy, as you pulled him in tightly against you.

When you finally broke apart again, both of you were breathless. Daryl was looking down at you still in vague disbelief. You sighed and gave him a small smile. “We’ve got a problem,” you breathed.

“Hmm?” His face darkened immediately.

“Rick is going to think his plan worked, sending us out alone. He’ll be intolerable,” you joked.

Daryl looked relieved that you were simply kidding around and he pushed a strand of your hair away from your eyes. “We ain’t gotta tell him right away,” he drawled. “We can at least keep it a secret until he can’t take credit for it.”

You laughed lightly. “I don’t know. I feel like I may never stop smiling. Kind of hard to hide that.”

“Don’t stop then,” Daryl said. “Let ‘em take credit. I dun want ya to ever stop smilin’.”

[deals-and-the-chipped-cup]

Broken || Belle and Rumple

@aldahi-rp

Belle could not think of a single scenario in which killing or injuring her father would be the only way to save her life. Even if her father chose to do something horrible, like in prison her again, Rumpelstiltskin had other methods that his disposal. He could simply remove Belle from the danger. Or he could immobilize her father or put him to sleep. All of Rumples varied powers meant that there would be very few if any situations where he would have no choice but to harm her father to save her or himself.

So that took care of that.

…. And yet here she was…. With the dark one that was her true love, rending promises from him one at a time, not to murder and attack people…

Belle just looked at him searchingly forms long time.

Often Belle would criticize the girls in those “my monster boyfriend” novels as being immature and thoughtless.

Was Belle being immature and thoughtless now? Because she was in love with a monster?

“You said you would try to be a better person” she pressed.

He had promised that. And then he had decided to try and kill Regina anyway when he had learned that she’d sent the archer to kill him, and when he thought that she might have taken Belle again.

Rumple knew that trying to kill someone, even if they did deserve it, wasn’t trying to be a better person.

But then he had wanted to kill Moe too, for what he had done, and he hadn’t done that.  Because he’d known that it would upset Belle if he killed her father.

“I did,” Rumple said, “And I am trying.  I never said I would be able to change immediately.”

He’d promised now that he wouldn’t kill anyone or attack Belle’s father unless it was necessary to protect her.