Chapter Text
Daryl's skin tells a tale of pain and blood and life. The scars on his back alone tell anyone who sees them everything they need to know, and few care to ask beyond their first sight of the old, silver-pink lines that stretch across his broad shoulders and down his narrow waist in a crisscross pattern that cannot be ignored. Some of their hesitance comes from not wanting to pry into something so obviously not their business—their fascination of the act tempered by their humanity and the knowledge that scars like the ones Daryl wears don’t just happen by accident.
Part of the reason people don’t ask is because the one time someone did, Sasha had found her sobbing in the boiler room an hour after Daryl had left for a hunt that took him three days and brought them enough meat to last them three weeks.
So people don’t ask, and no one questions why Daryl continues to wear a shirt—sleeveless though it is—when the weather is so brutal that even Rick deigns to go without the fabric clinging to his sweaty skin while he’s working out in the vegetable patches.
The core group, those of them who have been together since the beginning, all know, and that’s more than enough. Daryl hates attention at the best of time, his hackles going up like a wild dog when he feels cornered or backed into a conversation he wants no part of. He’s relaxed a lot since the quarry, even more since Merle, even though his brother’s death still weighs heavily on him. It’s there in the tight, downturned line of his thin lips, in the broiling darkness of his eyes when he looks out across the yard and into the forest. Sometimes it’s there in the way he prowls the fences, killing walkers without mercy, something like desperate sadness and loss in his blue eyes as he searches the snarling faces like he’s looking for something that will never be there.
At night, after he’s wiped the gore and the sweat from his arms, his skin filthy in a way no one else can manage, because the Woodbury people are too keen on staying clean, Rick watches the play of muscles under the skin of his biceps; watches how they ripple under faint scars that no one else has probably even noticed because Daryl doesn’t let anyone close enough to him to see. Their eyes will meet across the room and he’ll tip his head just slightly. He’ll watch the hunter falter, lick his lips when something new blooms in eyes so blue they rival the sky, and he’ll smile when Daryl dips his head just enough to get the message across without anyone else even knowing.
Daryl will slip away after dinner to shower and Rick will retire to his cell, sitting on the bunk and waiting patiently. He used to fidget and fret, but barring something monumental, Daryl has never once refused the silent request. Beyond the cell door, he listens to the sound of his family settling in for the night, smiling when he hears Beth singing Judith to sleep; Carl and Michonne talking quietly to one another about some comic or other. The near-silent tread of old, scuffed boots making their way toward him.
The hunter is silent when he slips into the cell, pulling the door closed and then the curtain. He’s dressed in clean clothes, but as soon as the barrier is drawn his fingers go to his buttons. Rick watches him, ever patient, letting Daryl set the pace because even now, if he pushes too hard he knows the man will withdraw into himself and leave. They’ve come a long way, but there are years that stretch back behind them, behind Daryl in particular, and navigating through those turbulent waters will take time.
Baggy pants hanging low and loose on his hips, Daryl smirks at him, and Rick smiles back. That smirk softens into something gentle, something shy; the last button coming undone and the shirt sliding off of the strong frame to land with a rustle on the concrete floor. Without being asked, the hunter gives Rick his back, the single camping lantern illuminating everything.
No words pass between them when he stands. Under his palms, Daryl’s skin is warm and alive, the nape of his neck a little rougher but every inch of his back supple until his fingers hit a scar. He touches every single one of them, everything Daryl lets him, and watches the man lean forward and rest his forearms on the top bunk, sighing out softly and tipping his head forward. Dragging his finger down the dark ink of the hunter’s demons, Rick presses a fluttering kiss to them, then lets his lips trace across strong shoulder blades, skin and scars alike. He feels Daryl trembling faintly, can hear his breath hitch as Rick paints silent promises of love and devotion over the damage. He can’t erase them, but he can try to give them new meaning, and Daryl lets him.
Daryl’s scars tell a tale of blood and pain and fear, but they don’t make Daryl who he is. That triumph lays solely with Daryl, because despite everything he’s been through, he’s become someone that Rick can rely on, someone he can love—someone who takes care of Rick just as much as he takes care of the hunter, and in Rick’s mind, the scars cut into Daryl’s skin show more strength than anything he can even imagine.