(The Walking Dead) FIC: Strange Times
Title: Strange Times
Pairing/Characters: Daryl/Glenn (pre-slash/friendship)
Words: ~4,400
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Somehow, Glenn and Daryl become friends. It's the apocalypse, stranger things have happened.
Spoilers & Notes: Kind of taking liberties with the timeline. Goes AU after the attack on the camp when Rick, T-Dog, Daryl and Glenn return from the city in Vatos -- Jim died in the attack, so instead of going to the CDC the group stays put at the camp for several weeks. Big thanks to the_reverand and thirstyrobot for their help and hand holding. <333
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine, I'm just playing around. Please don't sue me, I'm skint.
***
He’d been reluctant to bring anyone along -- on his own it’s easier, he has nothing to worry about but his own hide. The first time he brought a group he wound up strolling through a crowd of geeks while covered in rotting guts, and the second time he got kidnapped by the staff of a nursing home. Third time lucky, maybe, but there’s no way he’s going to test fate on this.
But Rick insists, of course he does, in that reasonable tone of his that brooks no argument.
“Just one, though, I’m not having a crowd with me.” Glenn says. “And not you,” he adds quickly when Rick opens his mouth, “I don’t want Lori glaring at me for the rest of the day.”
That’s when Daryl emerges from between the trees with a dead bird of some kind dangling from his belt. Rick follows Glenn’s gaze and they both watch Daryl stride across the camp without so much as a greeting or a glance to anyone. He sits on a rock next to his pick-up truck and immediately begin to pluck the feathers of his bird, rough and angry like the bird is somehow responsible for all the shit that’s happened to him. If he were a cartoon, he’d have one of those angry clouds floating above his head, with a scowling face and flashing lightning. He’s been even more explosive than usual since his brother went AWOL, and Glenn’s often wondered what’s keeping him with this little ragtag group of survivors when he doesn’t seem to get any pleasure from their company.
“Him?” Rick says. “You sure?”
“Why not? He doesn’t scare me. I’m pretty sure he can run faster than T-Dog or Morales, and his crossbow is quiet.” That, and even a temperamental redneck would be easier to lead around the city than Shane the Action Hero.
“Alright. I’ll talk to him.”
***
They drive to the outskirts of the city in the red Dodge Challenger he stole. Daryl looks a bit ludicrous cramped in the passenger seat, wearing a biker’s vest, with his crossbow on his lap. Glenn thinks of his dad, who wouldn’t even let Glenn and his sisters bring drinks in the car, who vacuumed the seats and the floor of his Buick every Sunday afternoon like clockwork, and wonders what he would’ve made of this guy dirtying up the pristine leather seats. It makes him smile, and it makes something twist painfully in his stomach.
“Too bad there’s no one left to impress,” Glenn says, just to distract himself as he comes to a stop into a deserted side street. “I’d have killed to drive something like this back when anybody still cared.”
“Sorry your dick replacement ain’t wowing anyone.” It’s the first words Daryl has uttered since they got in the car, after Glenn’s inane attempts at small talk had only been met with silence.
“Dick replacement? You drive a bike!”
“The bike’s Merle’s,” Daryl snaps, and he’s out of the car before Glenn can think of a way to pull his foot out of his mouth.
They’re mostly silent after that, communicating with gestures and looks as they make their way to the hardware store that Glenn’s been to a few times before. It’s surprisingly easy, actually. Daryl accepts Glenn’s leadership without arguing like all the others always do, and they tag team the only walker they encounter so quickly that half its head is gone before it even registers their presence.
When they leave the store, both of their backpacks are loaded and heavy with tools and wire and boxes of nails, batteries, flashlights, and anything else they can carry that might come in handy. There’s a small revolving display of lollipops by the cash register, shaped like a tree, and Glenn grabs a handful of them and stuffs them in his pockets for the kids back at camp. He picks out a red one for himself and unwraps it right away. When he looks up Daryl is staring at him with something that might pass as amusement so Glenn offers him a purple one.
“Want one?”
“Nah. That shit’ll rot your teeth.”
Glenn can’t quite hold back an incredulous laugh and Daryl rolls his eyes and takes the lollipop, drops it in his pocket. “Better get goin’.”
As they make their way back to the car, Glenn tries to imagine Daryl here, in Atlanta, before the world ended. It’s difficult to imagine him any other way than how he is now, with his unwashed hair and his stubble, his ripped jeans and his shirt caked with mud and blood and god knows what else. He pictures Daryl trying to make sense of the bus system while surrounded by trendy students and businessmen. Imagines him trying to get through the revolving doors at the mall with his crossbow strapped to his back, or sitting in a fancy restaurant, cutting a filet mignon with his giant hunting knife.
***
It’s been raining for at least a week. Glenn’s not really been keeping track of the days so it might be more. Dale would know. At least a week of fog and drizzle and the occasional rain shower, and now the camp is one giant puddle of mud and it’s miserable, worse than the suffocating days of summer, worse than all the bugs. All of his clothes are wet, his sleeping bag is damp, his shoes are soaked through. They’ve had to move the fire pit out of puddles three times in as many days.
Glenn used to dream big. He used to imagine himself a movie star, or a bad ass guitarist in a famous band, or a professional gamer. Used to daydream about being loaded and travelling all around the world. These days all he dreams about are dry, freshly washed clothes, a warm bed with an eiderdown duvet, and a good night’s sleep.
“I guess I should turn in. I think there’s mold growing under my sleeping bag though, so it’s not very appealing.”
“No point washing anything in his weather, it’ll never dry.” Carol’s sitting with him, sheltered from the rain under the tarp they’ve stretched out between Dale’s RV and a couple of trees. It’s just starting to get dark but most of the survivors in the camp are already huddled in their tents. Everyone is bedraggled and cranky, and the longer it goes on, the more they bicker amongst themselves. Sometimes it’s easier to just sit alone in your tent and ignore everybody else for a while.
Glenn pushes himself to his feet and pulls the hood of his sweatshirt over his head before stepping out from under the tarp. He waves glumly at T-Dog who’s keeping watch on top of the RV but it goes unnoticed. He circles around to go have a piss behind the cars, and on his way back towards his tent he passes Daryl’s truck.
Daryl’s sitting in the passenger seat with his bare feet propped up on the dashboard and he looks up in time for their eyes to meet. Something about Glenn’s appearance makes him smirk, and he gestures with his chin for him to come in.
It’s the first time Glenn’s been in Daryl’s truck - it’s dusty and a bit damp in there, but comparatively dry compared to Glenn’s tent. Daryl had been in the middle of sharpening his knife, but he stops long enough to scoop up the ratty blankets piled up on the driver’s seat to make room for Glenn, and shoves them behind his seat on top of what looks like the rest of his worldly goods: a couple of shirts, a small toolbox, and inexplicably, an old telephone book that’s missing its cover.
“What’s up?”
Daryl fishes in his coat pocket until he pulls out the purple lollipop Glenn gave him in the hardware store, and hands it over
Glenn lets out a surprised laugh. “Are you sure you don’t want it? They’re pretty good.”
“I seen muskrats that look less wet an’ pitiful than you,” Daryl says, as though that explains it. Glenn’s never seen a muskrat in his life and isn’t sure he could even identify one in a lineup, but he knows enough to know it’s not a compliment.
Glenn unwraps the lollipop and sticks it in his mouth and it somehow makes him feel a bit better.
Daryl doesn’t seem to have anything else to say, he just goes right back to sharpening his knife, and Glenn doesn’t know if that’s his cue to leave or an invitation to hang out. It’s nice sitting in the truck, though, and the patter of rain on the windshield is not nearly as deafening as it is inside his tent.
“I can see why you sleep in here now. Less chances of drowning in your sleep.”
“S’alright.”
“There’s a pond in the middle of my tent. It keeps getting bigger. One of these days I’ll go in and there’ll be fish living in there.”
Daryl lets out a snort that’s almost a laugh and Glenn finds himself smiling too.
Then for a while it’s just the quiet, regular sound of the whetstone gliding on the blade in short, practiced strokes.
Glenn picks up the old telephone book just for something to do, determined not to fill the air with babble this time around. It’s from about 10 years ago and has probably been in the truck for that long judging by its state, a relic of an era when people didn’t have smartphones to look up phone numbers. That had been the day that Glenn had realized the world was ending, when he could no longer pick up a single signal in the center of Atlanta. His phone had died shortly after but he’s kept it, it’s lying somewhere at the bottom of his backpack with his house keys and his wallet, mementos of his previous life. Now, of course, even old-fashioned phone books like this one are useless because there’s no one left to call.
It turns out there’s only about half of the phonebook left but it’s the half that has his parents in it. Glenn flips through it until he finds the right page, slides his finger down the middle to the phone number they’ve had since sometime in the 80s.
“404-856-3021.”
“Who?” Daryl says without looking up.
“My mom and dad. I’ll probably remember that number for the rest of my life, how dumb is that? Pointless.”
“Hell, I remember my folks’ number and I ain’t used it in years.”
“Oh. Are they...?”
“They been dead since long before this. Me ‘n Merle are the only ones left. Kind of a blessin’, really.”
And just wishful thinking on your part as far as Merle is concerned, Glenn thinks, but he knows better than to say that out loud. They’re both silent again for a while after that, but it’s not really awkward. Daryl seems to forget he’s there, and Glenn just keeps on flicking through the pages of the phone book, looking for the names of people he knew, wondering if any of them are still alive somewhere. When it gets too dark to see anything anymore, he closes the book and puts it on top of the dashboard. “I’m gonna get some sleep I guess.”
Daryl doesn’t look up, just nods, and almost smiles when Glenn adds, “Thanks for the sucker.”
***
“I let you lead the way in the city but here you gotta follow me. There’s more than just walkers in these woods.”
“Yeah, like what? Squirrels? …muskrats or whatever?”
“Bears,” Daryl says at once, without looking back. He’s making his way between the trees with surprising ease, stepping over fallen trunks that Glenn always trips over, avoiding the low hanging branches that always seem to smack Glenn full in the face. Glenn is secretly beginning to suspect that he’s got some kind of redneck magic powers that makes the trees and roots just move out of his way to let him through. “I seen one last week, a mother with a couple of cubs. And then there’s the mountain lions.”
“Seriously?” Glenn says, his voice going up an octave, hand falling to the knife hanging from his belt.
“Yeah man, and they’re quicker than walkers. Stronger, too, and smarter. Don’t think you can take out a mountain lion with that steak knife you been carryin’ around.”
“Shut up, there are no mountain lions here. We’re right next to the city.”
Daryl looks over his shoulder and, sure enough, he’s smiling. “Yeah, maybe not. But I did see a bear.”
He’s been in an unusually good mood since morning, they all have, after the sun broke through the clouds for the first time in about ten days. When he’d caught Glenn watching him pack some supplies in a backpack to go hunting, he’d surprised everyone by asking him if he’d wanted to come along. There was something so hesitant and gruff in his voice when he’d made the offer that Glenn couldn’t bring himself to say no, even though he’d planned to spend the day just napping somewhere in the sun.
Daryl shows him how to put up rabbit snares using fishing line, and explains where the best spots are for setting them up. It’s all just dirt and leaves to Glenn but he nods as though it all makes sense.
***
The next supply run nearly goes to shit. They’ve been sneaking through a residential area that had seemed clear until a group of at least a dozen geeks appears around a corner, wandering aimlessly in their direction. Daryl reaches for his crossbow but Glenn doesn’t need to do any math to know their odds against a group of this size. They haven’t been spotted yet, and there’s an old shed with the door ajar just behind them, so Glenn takes hold of Daryl’s arm and drags him backwards until they’ve both stumbled inside. Glenn knocks over some tools in his haste and Daryl swears through his teeth, shoving Glenn against the wall and clamping his hand over Glenn’s mouth. His free hand slowly pulls the door closed, leaving a crack just wide enough to watch the street.
Glenn nods to show he isn’t going to scream, that he gets it, that it was his idea to hide for fuck’s sake, but the hand stays where it is, hot and dry against his lips. It tastes of dirt and sweat and blood, and Glenn is briefly tempted to bite it so Daryl lets him go, but he can’t risk either of them making any noise and alerting the walkers to their presence. There’s a body missing a head in the back of the shed, with skin like curdled milk, but the smell of it is so overpowering that it just might mask their own scent.
Glenn can’t see anything from this angle but he can hear them, their tortuously slow shambling steps just inches away on the other side of the door. Daryl’s got an eye aligned with the crack in the door, staring out with that slightly unsettling intensity he has that always puts Glenn in mind of some kind of predatory animal. It’s a long time before he relaxes and finally looks at Glenn. “Looks clear now.”
That’s when he notices that he’s still got his hand over Glenn’s mouth and he recoils suddenly as if burned.
“I wasn’t going to yell at them or anything,” Glenn says ruefully. “No need to get all touchy.”
“Shut up,” Daryl says, more exasperated than angry. “You’re the one who man-handled me into a shed. If you wanna cuddle, just ask.”
***
Daryl takes him out trapping again and this time they come back with two rabbits. One of them is from a snare that Glenn set up, and even though it was Daryl who’d picked the specific placement, over a rabbit trail that Glenn never would’ve spotted, he still feels inordinately proud.
Daryl insists on showing him how to gut them properly and even lets Glenn borrow his knife when his own proves to be too blunt for the task.
“This is gross.”
That makes Daryl laugh. “This is gross? I seen you split walker skulls in half, kid. Don’t get all squeamish on me now.”
“Alright, Grizzly Adams. I’ve only ever seen rabbits in cages before.”
“You going to go all mountain man on us, Glenn?” Lori asks from over his shoulder as she passes by the two of them.
“Well, no, but I guess it’s a useful skill to have, in case...”
“What, in case I snuff it?” The sudden anger in Daryl’s voice takes Glenn completely off-guard. There’s something like a frown on Daryl’s face, or maybe it’s a sneer. On his face, the two expressions always seem to blend in together.
“That’s not what I meant,” Glenn says, maybe a bit too quickly. “I meant... in case you decide to leave. I guess.”
Daryl just grunts and pushes himself to his feet, tossing his fully skinned and gutted rabbit at Glenn’s feet and stalking off to the pond to wash his hands without another word.
***
It’s dark but he knows Daryl isn’t sleeping because he can see him silhouetted in the window of the truck, sitting in the drivers seat. Glenn raps his knuckles against the door on the passenger’s side, and, not expecting an invitation, lets himself in without waiting for one.
The old telephone book is sitting open on the dash but it’s too dark to see what page it’s on.
“I brought your knife back,” Glenn says, handing it over hilt-first like a peace offering. “I cleaned it and everything.” Daryl takes it without a word, but he’s staring at him like he’s waiting for something else, so Glenn continues, “I couldn’t replace you anyway, I’m a shitty apprentice.”
There’s silence for a while, then Daryl finally looks away and shrugs, returning his knife to the sheath on his belt. “I spent my life in the woods, man. I kinda have a head start.”
“I can find my way in all the back alleys of the city, but here, I’d just get lost on my own. And I’d never have caught that rabbit if you hadn’t told me where to put the snare.”
“Well, next time you take a trip in the city you can put up a couple of snares there. I bet you’d catch a couple of cats, at least.”
“Is this the lead up to a hilarious joke about Asians eating cats?”
“What? No! I wasn’t gonna say that,” he says, loud and angry again. “Why would I say that?”
Glenn could lay out all his reasons for expecting that joke, but it doesn’t seem like the right idea because he came in here to apologize, and he doesn’t want to argue about who would or wouldn’t eat fucking cats.
“Look, just... Never mind. I’m going to sleep.”
***
The next morning he wakes up to someone rattling his tent from the outside. He emerges to find Daryl standing there, his crossbow slung over his shoulder.
“I’m heading out. You comin’ or not?” He’s staring at his feet in a way that puts Glenn in mind of a bashful toddler, and Glenn figures that’s his way of asking, ‘Are we okay?’ without putting it in those words.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
Daryl nods, half-smiling, and Glenn feels ridiculously relieved. “Let’s grab somethin’ to eat first. I’d kill for some damn coffee.”
“Yeah, we’ll just drop by Starbucks on the way. You can grab a frappuccino or whatever.”
“Oh god, don’t even joke.”
They don’t catch any game that day but they stumble upon a clearing where a small pear tree is growing. Glenn laughs, delighted, and without having to say a word they race each other to the tree. Glenn nearly makes it first, but Daryl tackles him and they tumble in the long grass.
“Cheater!” Glenn yells, his mouth full of weeds, but Daryl’s already picking out a pear and tossing it at his head.
They both fill their pockets, then eat a few right there and then, sitting in the shade of the tree, and they’re the sweetest, juiciest pears Glenn has ever eaten.
That night Daryl joins the group by the fire for the first time since his brother vanished. He sits next to Glenn so close that their knees keep touching. He doesn’t say anything, but Glenn thinks he hears him laugh when Dale tells a joke, and again, louder than everyone else, when Glenn makes up a story about having to save him from a mountain lion.
***
A walker that might once have been a soldier staggers to its feet when they turn the corner to the grocery store, and Glenn knocks it back with his crowbar hard enough to send half its teeth flying out of its ruined mouth. The creature falters and Daryl swoops in with his knife before it has a chance to regain its balance.
“Finish him!” Glenn says in an deep overly-dramatic voice as Daryl’s knife sinks into the walker’s eye socket.
“What the hell was that?” Daryl says, squinting up at him when he crouches down to pull his knife free.
“Mortal Kombat.”
“What?”
“Mortal Kombat? Finish him? When the other guy is almost dead and you do that combo on your controller... you don’t remember? Oh, forget it.”
“If you say so.”
“I can’t believe you’ve never played Mortal Kombat.”
Daryl quiets him with a hand on his shoulder and a sideways nod towards the broken Publix sign visible a couple hundred yards down the street.
They collect what’s left of the canned goods - they can’t afford to be picky anymore, there’s barely anything edible left on the shelves. Rick has been insisting that they move their camp for weeks now, and soon they will have no choice. The outskirts of the city are drying up, and going further in isn’t an option.
Glenn nearly jumps out of his skin when Daryl appears over his shoulder and says, “Ketchup?” right in his ear.
“Jesus! Don’t do that! I nearly brained you with the bottle.”
“Are we really reduced to survivin’ on ketchup now?”
“I love ketchup. I could eat anything as long as it was smothered in ketchup. Maybe even cat meat.”
Daryl shoots him a suspicious glare like he doesn’t know whether or not it’s a joke. Eventually he snorts and gives Glenn a playful shove that nearly sends him sprawling. When Glenn points out that he needs to find better ways to show his affection, Daryl half-smiles and takes a step closer. Glenn briefly and ridiculously thinks Daryl is going to hug him, but instead he just gets his baseball cap knocked off his head and his hair ruffled.
Daryl shoulders the heavier of the two backpacks and leads the way out and Glenn doesn’t know whether or not to feel disappointed.
***
The next time Glenn goes out hunting, he twists his ankle over a tree root and Daryl practically carries him all the way back to camp.
“This is embarrassing,” Glenn says, and Daryl smirks and calls him a city boy and jokes that if they get attacked by walkers he’s leaving him as bait. Glenn is pretty sure he doesn’t mean it.
Sitting around the camp not doing anything other than washing clothes is more boring than he’d ever imagined it could be and he finds himself looking forward to the end of each day, when Daryl inevitably appears from between the same trees, his crossbow over his shoulder. Daryl always comes to him first, sometimes empty-handed, other times with a few squirrels, birds, or a couple of rabbits, and they skin whatever he’s caught by the fire. After about ten days, Glenn is back on his two feet and he can gut a squirrel almost as fast as Daryl. That’s something he never thought he’d be able to add to his resume.
Soon after that he catches his first rabbit on his own, without any help from Daryl. And when Glenn nearly passes out from a blow to the head on a supply run that goes wrong, Daryl is the one who remembers all the shit they’re supposed to grab from the pharmacy and who figures out the quickest way to get back to the truck.
***
“Here, I made this for you,” Daryl says one evening when they’re sitting in the truck. They’re sharing a beer that Daryl found god knows where and Glenn feels more relaxed than he has in a long time.
Daryl hands him a folded piece of paper, a lopsided four-legged creature made out of what looks like a torn out page from the telephone book.
“What’s this? A bear?”
“It’s a cat, dumbass!”
Glenn’s laughing and laughing and there’s a glint of something like affection in Daryl’s eyes and an upturned quirk to his lips.
“Origami? Where did you learn to do that?”
“Merle. He learned it in juvie I guess.”
The thought of Merle Dixon in an orange jumpsuit folding brightly colored paper into flowers and swans makes him laugh even more, and soon Daryl is laughing too. It’s a good sound, not as rare as it used to be. Daryl punches him lightly in the arm, but before Glenn can complain, he throws his arm over Glenn’s shoulder and drags him closer to give him a noogie. Glenn laughs and prods and yelps and eventually Daryl relents but he leaves his arm around Glenn’s shoulder, like weird half-hugs are something they do all the time. Glenn decides to go with it. Daryl’s arm is a pleasant weight around his shoulders, and he figures after all this time, they’ve earned it. He leans his head on Daryl’s shoulder and they stay like that for a while, quiet.
Outside the truck Rick and Shane are arguing again but it’s easy ignore them from here, their voices muted and sounding further away than they really are, a bit like watching a movie with the volume down.
“Daryl?”
“Hmm?”
“If you left, would you tell me?”
“Why?”
“Cause I’d go with you.”
Daryl is quiet for so long that Glenn thinks he’s not going to answer, but after a moment he inclines his head in a nod that Glenn feels more than sees. “You know those idiots’d be screwed without us,” he says, his voice close to Glenn’s ear.
Glenn smiles. “Better stay, then.”
Pairing/Characters: Daryl/Glenn (pre-slash/friendship)
Words: ~4,400
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Somehow, Glenn and Daryl become friends. It's the apocalypse, stranger things have happened.
Spoilers & Notes: Kind of taking liberties with the timeline. Goes AU after the attack on the camp when Rick, T-Dog, Daryl and Glenn return from the city in Vatos -- Jim died in the attack, so instead of going to the CDC the group stays put at the camp for several weeks. Big thanks to the_reverand and thirstyrobot for their help and hand holding. <333
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine, I'm just playing around. Please don't sue me, I'm skint.
***
He’d been reluctant to bring anyone along -- on his own it’s easier, he has nothing to worry about but his own hide. The first time he brought a group he wound up strolling through a crowd of geeks while covered in rotting guts, and the second time he got kidnapped by the staff of a nursing home. Third time lucky, maybe, but there’s no way he’s going to test fate on this.
But Rick insists, of course he does, in that reasonable tone of his that brooks no argument.
“Just one, though, I’m not having a crowd with me.” Glenn says. “And not you,” he adds quickly when Rick opens his mouth, “I don’t want Lori glaring at me for the rest of the day.”
That’s when Daryl emerges from between the trees with a dead bird of some kind dangling from his belt. Rick follows Glenn’s gaze and they both watch Daryl stride across the camp without so much as a greeting or a glance to anyone. He sits on a rock next to his pick-up truck and immediately begin to pluck the feathers of his bird, rough and angry like the bird is somehow responsible for all the shit that’s happened to him. If he were a cartoon, he’d have one of those angry clouds floating above his head, with a scowling face and flashing lightning. He’s been even more explosive than usual since his brother went AWOL, and Glenn’s often wondered what’s keeping him with this little ragtag group of survivors when he doesn’t seem to get any pleasure from their company.
“Him?” Rick says. “You sure?”
“Why not? He doesn’t scare me. I’m pretty sure he can run faster than T-Dog or Morales, and his crossbow is quiet.” That, and even a temperamental redneck would be easier to lead around the city than Shane the Action Hero.
“Alright. I’ll talk to him.”
***
They drive to the outskirts of the city in the red Dodge Challenger he stole. Daryl looks a bit ludicrous cramped in the passenger seat, wearing a biker’s vest, with his crossbow on his lap. Glenn thinks of his dad, who wouldn’t even let Glenn and his sisters bring drinks in the car, who vacuumed the seats and the floor of his Buick every Sunday afternoon like clockwork, and wonders what he would’ve made of this guy dirtying up the pristine leather seats. It makes him smile, and it makes something twist painfully in his stomach.
“Too bad there’s no one left to impress,” Glenn says, just to distract himself as he comes to a stop into a deserted side street. “I’d have killed to drive something like this back when anybody still cared.”
“Sorry your dick replacement ain’t wowing anyone.” It’s the first words Daryl has uttered since they got in the car, after Glenn’s inane attempts at small talk had only been met with silence.
“Dick replacement? You drive a bike!”
“The bike’s Merle’s,” Daryl snaps, and he’s out of the car before Glenn can think of a way to pull his foot out of his mouth.
They’re mostly silent after that, communicating with gestures and looks as they make their way to the hardware store that Glenn’s been to a few times before. It’s surprisingly easy, actually. Daryl accepts Glenn’s leadership without arguing like all the others always do, and they tag team the only walker they encounter so quickly that half its head is gone before it even registers their presence.
When they leave the store, both of their backpacks are loaded and heavy with tools and wire and boxes of nails, batteries, flashlights, and anything else they can carry that might come in handy. There’s a small revolving display of lollipops by the cash register, shaped like a tree, and Glenn grabs a handful of them and stuffs them in his pockets for the kids back at camp. He picks out a red one for himself and unwraps it right away. When he looks up Daryl is staring at him with something that might pass as amusement so Glenn offers him a purple one.
“Want one?”
“Nah. That shit’ll rot your teeth.”
Glenn can’t quite hold back an incredulous laugh and Daryl rolls his eyes and takes the lollipop, drops it in his pocket. “Better get goin’.”
As they make their way back to the car, Glenn tries to imagine Daryl here, in Atlanta, before the world ended. It’s difficult to imagine him any other way than how he is now, with his unwashed hair and his stubble, his ripped jeans and his shirt caked with mud and blood and god knows what else. He pictures Daryl trying to make sense of the bus system while surrounded by trendy students and businessmen. Imagines him trying to get through the revolving doors at the mall with his crossbow strapped to his back, or sitting in a fancy restaurant, cutting a filet mignon with his giant hunting knife.
***
It’s been raining for at least a week. Glenn’s not really been keeping track of the days so it might be more. Dale would know. At least a week of fog and drizzle and the occasional rain shower, and now the camp is one giant puddle of mud and it’s miserable, worse than the suffocating days of summer, worse than all the bugs. All of his clothes are wet, his sleeping bag is damp, his shoes are soaked through. They’ve had to move the fire pit out of puddles three times in as many days.
Glenn used to dream big. He used to imagine himself a movie star, or a bad ass guitarist in a famous band, or a professional gamer. Used to daydream about being loaded and travelling all around the world. These days all he dreams about are dry, freshly washed clothes, a warm bed with an eiderdown duvet, and a good night’s sleep.
“I guess I should turn in. I think there’s mold growing under my sleeping bag though, so it’s not very appealing.”
“No point washing anything in his weather, it’ll never dry.” Carol’s sitting with him, sheltered from the rain under the tarp they’ve stretched out between Dale’s RV and a couple of trees. It’s just starting to get dark but most of the survivors in the camp are already huddled in their tents. Everyone is bedraggled and cranky, and the longer it goes on, the more they bicker amongst themselves. Sometimes it’s easier to just sit alone in your tent and ignore everybody else for a while.
Glenn pushes himself to his feet and pulls the hood of his sweatshirt over his head before stepping out from under the tarp. He waves glumly at T-Dog who’s keeping watch on top of the RV but it goes unnoticed. He circles around to go have a piss behind the cars, and on his way back towards his tent he passes Daryl’s truck.
Daryl’s sitting in the passenger seat with his bare feet propped up on the dashboard and he looks up in time for their eyes to meet. Something about Glenn’s appearance makes him smirk, and he gestures with his chin for him to come in.
It’s the first time Glenn’s been in Daryl’s truck - it’s dusty and a bit damp in there, but comparatively dry compared to Glenn’s tent. Daryl had been in the middle of sharpening his knife, but he stops long enough to scoop up the ratty blankets piled up on the driver’s seat to make room for Glenn, and shoves them behind his seat on top of what looks like the rest of his worldly goods: a couple of shirts, a small toolbox, and inexplicably, an old telephone book that’s missing its cover.
“What’s up?”
Daryl fishes in his coat pocket until he pulls out the purple lollipop Glenn gave him in the hardware store, and hands it over
Glenn lets out a surprised laugh. “Are you sure you don’t want it? They’re pretty good.”
“I seen muskrats that look less wet an’ pitiful than you,” Daryl says, as though that explains it. Glenn’s never seen a muskrat in his life and isn’t sure he could even identify one in a lineup, but he knows enough to know it’s not a compliment.
Glenn unwraps the lollipop and sticks it in his mouth and it somehow makes him feel a bit better.
Daryl doesn’t seem to have anything else to say, he just goes right back to sharpening his knife, and Glenn doesn’t know if that’s his cue to leave or an invitation to hang out. It’s nice sitting in the truck, though, and the patter of rain on the windshield is not nearly as deafening as it is inside his tent.
“I can see why you sleep in here now. Less chances of drowning in your sleep.”
“S’alright.”
“There’s a pond in the middle of my tent. It keeps getting bigger. One of these days I’ll go in and there’ll be fish living in there.”
Daryl lets out a snort that’s almost a laugh and Glenn finds himself smiling too.
Then for a while it’s just the quiet, regular sound of the whetstone gliding on the blade in short, practiced strokes.
Glenn picks up the old telephone book just for something to do, determined not to fill the air with babble this time around. It’s from about 10 years ago and has probably been in the truck for that long judging by its state, a relic of an era when people didn’t have smartphones to look up phone numbers. That had been the day that Glenn had realized the world was ending, when he could no longer pick up a single signal in the center of Atlanta. His phone had died shortly after but he’s kept it, it’s lying somewhere at the bottom of his backpack with his house keys and his wallet, mementos of his previous life. Now, of course, even old-fashioned phone books like this one are useless because there’s no one left to call.
It turns out there’s only about half of the phonebook left but it’s the half that has his parents in it. Glenn flips through it until he finds the right page, slides his finger down the middle to the phone number they’ve had since sometime in the 80s.
“404-856-3021.”
“Who?” Daryl says without looking up.
“My mom and dad. I’ll probably remember that number for the rest of my life, how dumb is that? Pointless.”
“Hell, I remember my folks’ number and I ain’t used it in years.”
“Oh. Are they...?”
“They been dead since long before this. Me ‘n Merle are the only ones left. Kind of a blessin’, really.”
And just wishful thinking on your part as far as Merle is concerned, Glenn thinks, but he knows better than to say that out loud. They’re both silent again for a while after that, but it’s not really awkward. Daryl seems to forget he’s there, and Glenn just keeps on flicking through the pages of the phone book, looking for the names of people he knew, wondering if any of them are still alive somewhere. When it gets too dark to see anything anymore, he closes the book and puts it on top of the dashboard. “I’m gonna get some sleep I guess.”
Daryl doesn’t look up, just nods, and almost smiles when Glenn adds, “Thanks for the sucker.”
***
“I let you lead the way in the city but here you gotta follow me. There’s more than just walkers in these woods.”
“Yeah, like what? Squirrels? …muskrats or whatever?”
“Bears,” Daryl says at once, without looking back. He’s making his way between the trees with surprising ease, stepping over fallen trunks that Glenn always trips over, avoiding the low hanging branches that always seem to smack Glenn full in the face. Glenn is secretly beginning to suspect that he’s got some kind of redneck magic powers that makes the trees and roots just move out of his way to let him through. “I seen one last week, a mother with a couple of cubs. And then there’s the mountain lions.”
“Seriously?” Glenn says, his voice going up an octave, hand falling to the knife hanging from his belt.
“Yeah man, and they’re quicker than walkers. Stronger, too, and smarter. Don’t think you can take out a mountain lion with that steak knife you been carryin’ around.”
“Shut up, there are no mountain lions here. We’re right next to the city.”
Daryl looks over his shoulder and, sure enough, he’s smiling. “Yeah, maybe not. But I did see a bear.”
He’s been in an unusually good mood since morning, they all have, after the sun broke through the clouds for the first time in about ten days. When he’d caught Glenn watching him pack some supplies in a backpack to go hunting, he’d surprised everyone by asking him if he’d wanted to come along. There was something so hesitant and gruff in his voice when he’d made the offer that Glenn couldn’t bring himself to say no, even though he’d planned to spend the day just napping somewhere in the sun.
Daryl shows him how to put up rabbit snares using fishing line, and explains where the best spots are for setting them up. It’s all just dirt and leaves to Glenn but he nods as though it all makes sense.
***
The next supply run nearly goes to shit. They’ve been sneaking through a residential area that had seemed clear until a group of at least a dozen geeks appears around a corner, wandering aimlessly in their direction. Daryl reaches for his crossbow but Glenn doesn’t need to do any math to know their odds against a group of this size. They haven’t been spotted yet, and there’s an old shed with the door ajar just behind them, so Glenn takes hold of Daryl’s arm and drags him backwards until they’ve both stumbled inside. Glenn knocks over some tools in his haste and Daryl swears through his teeth, shoving Glenn against the wall and clamping his hand over Glenn’s mouth. His free hand slowly pulls the door closed, leaving a crack just wide enough to watch the street.
Glenn nods to show he isn’t going to scream, that he gets it, that it was his idea to hide for fuck’s sake, but the hand stays where it is, hot and dry against his lips. It tastes of dirt and sweat and blood, and Glenn is briefly tempted to bite it so Daryl lets him go, but he can’t risk either of them making any noise and alerting the walkers to their presence. There’s a body missing a head in the back of the shed, with skin like curdled milk, but the smell of it is so overpowering that it just might mask their own scent.
Glenn can’t see anything from this angle but he can hear them, their tortuously slow shambling steps just inches away on the other side of the door. Daryl’s got an eye aligned with the crack in the door, staring out with that slightly unsettling intensity he has that always puts Glenn in mind of some kind of predatory animal. It’s a long time before he relaxes and finally looks at Glenn. “Looks clear now.”
That’s when he notices that he’s still got his hand over Glenn’s mouth and he recoils suddenly as if burned.
“I wasn’t going to yell at them or anything,” Glenn says ruefully. “No need to get all touchy.”
“Shut up,” Daryl says, more exasperated than angry. “You’re the one who man-handled me into a shed. If you wanna cuddle, just ask.”
***
Daryl takes him out trapping again and this time they come back with two rabbits. One of them is from a snare that Glenn set up, and even though it was Daryl who’d picked the specific placement, over a rabbit trail that Glenn never would’ve spotted, he still feels inordinately proud.
Daryl insists on showing him how to gut them properly and even lets Glenn borrow his knife when his own proves to be too blunt for the task.
“This is gross.”
That makes Daryl laugh. “This is gross? I seen you split walker skulls in half, kid. Don’t get all squeamish on me now.”
“Alright, Grizzly Adams. I’ve only ever seen rabbits in cages before.”
“You going to go all mountain man on us, Glenn?” Lori asks from over his shoulder as she passes by the two of them.
“Well, no, but I guess it’s a useful skill to have, in case...”
“What, in case I snuff it?” The sudden anger in Daryl’s voice takes Glenn completely off-guard. There’s something like a frown on Daryl’s face, or maybe it’s a sneer. On his face, the two expressions always seem to blend in together.
“That’s not what I meant,” Glenn says, maybe a bit too quickly. “I meant... in case you decide to leave. I guess.”
Daryl just grunts and pushes himself to his feet, tossing his fully skinned and gutted rabbit at Glenn’s feet and stalking off to the pond to wash his hands without another word.
***
It’s dark but he knows Daryl isn’t sleeping because he can see him silhouetted in the window of the truck, sitting in the drivers seat. Glenn raps his knuckles against the door on the passenger’s side, and, not expecting an invitation, lets himself in without waiting for one.
The old telephone book is sitting open on the dash but it’s too dark to see what page it’s on.
“I brought your knife back,” Glenn says, handing it over hilt-first like a peace offering. “I cleaned it and everything.” Daryl takes it without a word, but he’s staring at him like he’s waiting for something else, so Glenn continues, “I couldn’t replace you anyway, I’m a shitty apprentice.”
There’s silence for a while, then Daryl finally looks away and shrugs, returning his knife to the sheath on his belt. “I spent my life in the woods, man. I kinda have a head start.”
“I can find my way in all the back alleys of the city, but here, I’d just get lost on my own. And I’d never have caught that rabbit if you hadn’t told me where to put the snare.”
“Well, next time you take a trip in the city you can put up a couple of snares there. I bet you’d catch a couple of cats, at least.”
“Is this the lead up to a hilarious joke about Asians eating cats?”
“What? No! I wasn’t gonna say that,” he says, loud and angry again. “Why would I say that?”
Glenn could lay out all his reasons for expecting that joke, but it doesn’t seem like the right idea because he came in here to apologize, and he doesn’t want to argue about who would or wouldn’t eat fucking cats.
“Look, just... Never mind. I’m going to sleep.”
***
The next morning he wakes up to someone rattling his tent from the outside. He emerges to find Daryl standing there, his crossbow slung over his shoulder.
“I’m heading out. You comin’ or not?” He’s staring at his feet in a way that puts Glenn in mind of a bashful toddler, and Glenn figures that’s his way of asking, ‘Are we okay?’ without putting it in those words.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
Daryl nods, half-smiling, and Glenn feels ridiculously relieved. “Let’s grab somethin’ to eat first. I’d kill for some damn coffee.”
“Yeah, we’ll just drop by Starbucks on the way. You can grab a frappuccino or whatever.”
“Oh god, don’t even joke.”
They don’t catch any game that day but they stumble upon a clearing where a small pear tree is growing. Glenn laughs, delighted, and without having to say a word they race each other to the tree. Glenn nearly makes it first, but Daryl tackles him and they tumble in the long grass.
“Cheater!” Glenn yells, his mouth full of weeds, but Daryl’s already picking out a pear and tossing it at his head.
They both fill their pockets, then eat a few right there and then, sitting in the shade of the tree, and they’re the sweetest, juiciest pears Glenn has ever eaten.
That night Daryl joins the group by the fire for the first time since his brother vanished. He sits next to Glenn so close that their knees keep touching. He doesn’t say anything, but Glenn thinks he hears him laugh when Dale tells a joke, and again, louder than everyone else, when Glenn makes up a story about having to save him from a mountain lion.
***
A walker that might once have been a soldier staggers to its feet when they turn the corner to the grocery store, and Glenn knocks it back with his crowbar hard enough to send half its teeth flying out of its ruined mouth. The creature falters and Daryl swoops in with his knife before it has a chance to regain its balance.
“Finish him!” Glenn says in an deep overly-dramatic voice as Daryl’s knife sinks into the walker’s eye socket.
“What the hell was that?” Daryl says, squinting up at him when he crouches down to pull his knife free.
“Mortal Kombat.”
“What?”
“Mortal Kombat? Finish him? When the other guy is almost dead and you do that combo on your controller... you don’t remember? Oh, forget it.”
“If you say so.”
“I can’t believe you’ve never played Mortal Kombat.”
Daryl quiets him with a hand on his shoulder and a sideways nod towards the broken Publix sign visible a couple hundred yards down the street.
They collect what’s left of the canned goods - they can’t afford to be picky anymore, there’s barely anything edible left on the shelves. Rick has been insisting that they move their camp for weeks now, and soon they will have no choice. The outskirts of the city are drying up, and going further in isn’t an option.
Glenn nearly jumps out of his skin when Daryl appears over his shoulder and says, “Ketchup?” right in his ear.
“Jesus! Don’t do that! I nearly brained you with the bottle.”
“Are we really reduced to survivin’ on ketchup now?”
“I love ketchup. I could eat anything as long as it was smothered in ketchup. Maybe even cat meat.”
Daryl shoots him a suspicious glare like he doesn’t know whether or not it’s a joke. Eventually he snorts and gives Glenn a playful shove that nearly sends him sprawling. When Glenn points out that he needs to find better ways to show his affection, Daryl half-smiles and takes a step closer. Glenn briefly and ridiculously thinks Daryl is going to hug him, but instead he just gets his baseball cap knocked off his head and his hair ruffled.
Daryl shoulders the heavier of the two backpacks and leads the way out and Glenn doesn’t know whether or not to feel disappointed.
***
The next time Glenn goes out hunting, he twists his ankle over a tree root and Daryl practically carries him all the way back to camp.
“This is embarrassing,” Glenn says, and Daryl smirks and calls him a city boy and jokes that if they get attacked by walkers he’s leaving him as bait. Glenn is pretty sure he doesn’t mean it.
Sitting around the camp not doing anything other than washing clothes is more boring than he’d ever imagined it could be and he finds himself looking forward to the end of each day, when Daryl inevitably appears from between the same trees, his crossbow over his shoulder. Daryl always comes to him first, sometimes empty-handed, other times with a few squirrels, birds, or a couple of rabbits, and they skin whatever he’s caught by the fire. After about ten days, Glenn is back on his two feet and he can gut a squirrel almost as fast as Daryl. That’s something he never thought he’d be able to add to his resume.
Soon after that he catches his first rabbit on his own, without any help from Daryl. And when Glenn nearly passes out from a blow to the head on a supply run that goes wrong, Daryl is the one who remembers all the shit they’re supposed to grab from the pharmacy and who figures out the quickest way to get back to the truck.
***
“Here, I made this for you,” Daryl says one evening when they’re sitting in the truck. They’re sharing a beer that Daryl found god knows where and Glenn feels more relaxed than he has in a long time.
Daryl hands him a folded piece of paper, a lopsided four-legged creature made out of what looks like a torn out page from the telephone book.
“What’s this? A bear?”
“It’s a cat, dumbass!”
Glenn’s laughing and laughing and there’s a glint of something like affection in Daryl’s eyes and an upturned quirk to his lips.
“Origami? Where did you learn to do that?”
“Merle. He learned it in juvie I guess.”
The thought of Merle Dixon in an orange jumpsuit folding brightly colored paper into flowers and swans makes him laugh even more, and soon Daryl is laughing too. It’s a good sound, not as rare as it used to be. Daryl punches him lightly in the arm, but before Glenn can complain, he throws his arm over Glenn’s shoulder and drags him closer to give him a noogie. Glenn laughs and prods and yelps and eventually Daryl relents but he leaves his arm around Glenn’s shoulder, like weird half-hugs are something they do all the time. Glenn decides to go with it. Daryl’s arm is a pleasant weight around his shoulders, and he figures after all this time, they’ve earned it. He leans his head on Daryl’s shoulder and they stay like that for a while, quiet.
Outside the truck Rick and Shane are arguing again but it’s easy ignore them from here, their voices muted and sounding further away than they really are, a bit like watching a movie with the volume down.
“Daryl?”
“Hmm?”
“If you left, would you tell me?”
“Why?”
“Cause I’d go with you.”
Daryl is quiet for so long that Glenn thinks he’s not going to answer, but after a moment he inclines his head in a nod that Glenn feels more than sees. “You know those idiots’d be screwed without us,” he says, his voice close to Glenn’s ear.
Glenn smiles. “Better stay, then.”