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It’s only about fourteen miles from Alexandria to the middle of DC, but in apocalypse-driving time, that translates to at least two hours when you count in all the backtracking and side-streeting and general recon that it takes to get through all the abandoned cars littering the city like the skeletons of ancient dinosaurs. And two hours of apocalypse-driving time feels like at least eighteen hours of apocalypse-driving-with-a-pissed-off-redneck-in-the-passenger-seat time, so when Rick finally stops the car in front of the National Cathedral, he’s exhausted, his ears ringing with the silence.
He’d tried to put in another terrible CD when they started on the road, and Daryl had just snorted and glared out the window. That was how he knew he’d fucked up--no way would the Daryl he knew just let him put in shitty music without at least trying to stop him. And then he’d tried to start up small talk twice, which hadn’t gone well. The first attempt was shut down three words in by Daryl snapping “shut up” and going back to the window. The second attempt was “I told you to fuckin’ shut up” and the archer’s feet on the dashboard, the jasper he’d been carrying around since the prison shining in his palm with all the rubbing he’d done to it.
After that, Rick had turned off the music and they’d made the rest of the drive in silence.
He kills the engine and sits for a moment, hands still on the steering wheel. “I don’t know what I did to piss you off.”
Daryl scoffs and flings the door open, unfolding himself and getting out of the car in one fluid motion. “‘Course you don’t,” he mumbles just in time for Rick to hear him before the door slams shut hard enough to rock the car.
Rick gets out and jogs around the car and up to Daryl, who’s already tugging at an invisible strap to adjust his crossbow and stomping up toward the heavy wooden doors with the faded “Refugee Center” signs still nailed to them. “Daryl,” he starts.
Daryl whirls around and takes an angry step toward Rick, pointing his finger at the man with enough venom to take out a village. “Don’t fuckin’ talk to me. Don’t touch me. Don’t look at me with those goddamn eyes of yours because you are a lyin’ sack of shit, Rick Grimes, and I shoulda shot you on that roof first day we met and been done with your bullshit.”
Rick blinks, confused, and tries again. “Daryl--”
Daryl snorts and turns back around, using his crowbar to wrench open the doors like the locks are made of butterfly gossamer instead of steel and time. “Fuck you,” he growls, then storms inside the building.
Rick follows slowly, getting out his flashlight and trailing along behind Daryl as he stalks up to a pile of boxes against one of the walls and starts rooting through them. The sound of canned goods echoes in the huge room, the ceiling arching hundreds of feet overhead as the sunlight filters weakly through the stained glass windows and paints the floor with dim colors like the shadows of worship from years past, and Rick sighs and holsters his gun, then stands there with his thumbs hooked in his belt as he stares at the floor.
“Don’t just fuckin’ stand there,” Daryl mutters after a few seconds. “Start loading this shit in the car. ‘S what we came for, right?”
Rick sighs and walks over to pick up a box that contains what looks like canned carrots. Daryl’s eyes flash over to him with a hard, angry glint in them and Rick almost opens his mouth, but decides that it’s probably better not to. He loads the car in silence, returning back inside each time only to be handed another box and shooed out the door again.
They fill two cars that way--the one they came in and another that they found parked on the street. Rick packs the supplies in, putting his old-world Tetris skills to work as he figures out how to fit the most cans possible in the vehicles, and then heads back inside after the last load to tell Daryl the cars are full.
The hunter is gone from the boxes now, standing in the center of the building staring up at one of the stained-glass windows with his arms crossed tight across his chest. Rick sighs and walks over to him, coming to stand beside Daryl in the cold stone room.
“You don’t look at me no more. You noticed that?” Daryl asks, his voice vibrating in the space between them like the fading echoes of a timpani.
Rick frowns. “What do you--”
“Never really believed in God much, you know?” Daryl interrupts. “Didn’t seem to be listenin’ to me. Prayed for my mama to love me an’ my daddy to stop drinkin’. Prayed to die a couple times when it got real bad. But he never answered. An’ eventually I stopped prayin’.”
Rick doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just lets his head hang down, elbows out to his sides with his hands in his pockets.
“Started again though,” Daryl mutters. “After the world started to end. Prayed for Sophia. Prayed for the prison. Prayed for Merle an’ Beth an’ Ty. All of ‘em. Didn’t really think nobody was listenin’ so it was mostly for me. But the only prayer that kept getting answered was you. An’ you know what? It was enough.” Daryl lets out a hard breath and tightens his arms even more. “It was all I needed. Sittin’ there watching you across the campfire, the way you looked at me. The way sometimes you’d lean in just a little when we were talkin’ close. The way you’d let your hand sit on my shoulder a little longer than everybody else. You looked at me. You saw me. And fuck, man, you gave me somethin’ to live for when nothing else made me want to.”
“I still look at you,” Rick says, and Daryl snorts loudly enough to echo.
“No you don’t,” Daryl answers. He leaves one arm across his chest, fingers tucked under his bicep, and lifts the other hand to his mouth to gnaw on his thumbnail. “Not since we got to Alexandria. And you know, part of that’s on me. I’ve been a jackass and I’ve been givin’ you too much space. But I always thought you just needed to settle, you know? That you and me were gonna be something someday. Law of averages, right? My whole life’s been shit but it was gonna be worth it in the end. Ain’t never had nothin’ but I was gonna get you. All I had to be was patient.”
Rick lets out a long, slow breath. “I didn’t know you felt this way.”
Daryl laughs, a bitter, hard sound that echoes off the walls. “Yes you fuckin’ did. Don’t lie to me, Rick. You knew and you know what else? You felt it too.” He turns and looks at Rick, jaw hard and tense, eyes so narrow that Rick almost can’t see them. “Which makes it some kinda fuckin’ bullshit that you’d go and fuck her like that.”
Rick winces and murmurs, “You heard about that.”
“‘Course I heard about it. There’s like twenty people in the whole damn town. Nobody farts without everybody hearin’ it.”
Rick reaches up and pinches the bridge of his nose, leaving his other hand in his pocket. “I didn’t do it to hurt you.”
“Yeah, I know. It woulda been better if you had, bein’ honest with you.” Daryl kicks at the stone floor and glares off into the shadowed distance, at the huge organ at the back of the mass. “‘Cause if you were tryin’ to hurt me that would mean you at least gave me one damn thought in the middle of all the skirt-chasing you’ve been doing since we got to town.”
“Daryl--” Rick starts, reaching out a hand to touch Daryl’s shoulder.
Daryl hisses and backs up. “I said don’t fuckin’ touch me, Rick. You don’t got that right. Only people I want touchin’ me is people I trust, and you ain’t one of them no more. So you can take your straight-fantasy bullshit and shove it up your ass.”
“I thought you liked Mi--”
“Don’t you fuckin’ say her name, Rick,” Daryl warns, fire flashing in his irises in the darkness. “And this ain’t about her. It’s about you bein’ a jackass an’ thinking with your dick instead of your goddamn heart.”
Rick sighs heavily, moving his hands back to his belt loops and standing in his usual sheriff-stance. “You weren’t this mad about Jessie, though.”
“Jessie didn’t mean shit. She was a front and we all knew it.” Daryl grumbles for a moment, then lets out a huff of breath. “I mean, I hate that she died. Don’t nobody deserve that. But I put up with you an’ her because I thought you had a plan and actin’ like a moonstruck calf every time she looked at you was part of the game. But this ,” Daryl says, swinging his arm in the air to gesture vaguely in the direction of home and letting his voice creep louder as he speaks, “this is not part of the game. This is you bein’ an inconsiderate heartbreakin’ asshole. So fuck you, Grimes. Daddy always said you can’t trust a goddamn pig. Guess I shoulda listened to that one.”
“Daryl,” Rick says, eyebrows creeping upward as the rage bubbles out with every syllable Daryl speaks. “Calm down.”
Daryl steps forward and shoves at Rick’s chest hard with both hands. “Calm down? Don’t you fuckin’ tell me to calm down. I’ve been too calm for too goddamn long an’ maybe that’s why I lost you to her. Maybe I shoulda thrown you against a wall last week and sucked your dick until your eyes crossed. Maybe then you woulda fuckin’ looked at me again and not gone and crawled into bed with the next bitch who opened her legs for you.”
“Daryl, that’s not--”
“Screw you,” Daryl practically yells, his voice ringing from the stone buttresses above them, and he shoves Rick again, hard enough that Rick loses his balance and falls.
He hits the ground hard and Daryl follows him down, pushing him the rest of the way onto the floor and curling his fingers around Rick’s neck, putting just a bit of pressure onto his throat. Rick struggles, trying to grab Daryl’s arms and push him away, but Daryl swings a leg over Rick’s body and straddles him as he presses his hand harder against Rick’s windpipe--still not hard enough to break Rick’s airflow, but definitely hard enough to make Rick pause in his struggle and stop trying to break free.
“You been lyin’ to me all this time, Grimes?” Daryl rumbles, then removes his hand quickly and catches Rick’s arms before Rick even has the time to think about moving them. He holds Rick’s famine-slender wrists in one large hand and shoves them over Rick’s head, pinning them to the cold floor. “All them looks. All the lip-licking and shoulder-touching and all those times you used that husky fuckin’ voice to tell me goodnight. Was all that a lie?”
“No,” Rick whispers, then lets out a strangled moan as Daryl rocks his body backward, pressing against Rick’s groin with his ass.
“You want me?” Daryl leans down and drags his lips over Rick’s jawline. “Feels like you do. Feel you gettin’ hard against me already. But that don’t mean nothin’, does it? You get hard for anybody looks at you sideways, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry,” Rick gasps out even as his hips betray him by hitching up against Daryl. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” Daryl whispers in Rick’s ear, the rough hair on his chin tickling Rick’s cheek. “But you’re gonna be. Because I’m gonna take what I want from you. That cock a’yours shoulda been mine to have in the first place. And you’re gonna give it to me and you’re gonna thank me for it, ¿comprendes?”
Rick swallows hard, feeling Daryl’s dry lips ghost over his throat as it moves. “Yeah. Yes.”
Daryl bites down on Rick’s collarbone and then presses Rick’s wrists harder against the floor, pulling his head back to lock eyes with Rick. “Take off your clothes. I’ll be right back. And so help me, Rick, if you’re not naked with your wrists back in this position by the time I get back, I will take my shitty possessions and I will fucking walk. Do you understand me?”
“I understand,” Rick murmurs, his hips bucking upward again without his permission. “Daryl--”
“Shut up and strip,” Daryl snaps, then stands up in one graceful arch and stalks up toward the altar.
Rick immediately starts yanking at his clothes, whipping his shirt off over his head and tugging at his boots, and by the time he hears Daryl’s footsteps approaching again, he’s back in position, stretched out along the floor with his wrists crossed above his head, his skin flushed with arousal and his dick straining toward the sky. Daryl sets down a small cardboard box and then steps forward, towering over Rick and looking down with fire in his eyes. Rick swallows again and twitches his hands, almost breaking position and moving them.
Daryl’s leather vest hits the ground beside Rick’s head with a heavy rustle. “I wanna hear you say you want me,” Daryl rumbles from above him. “I already know you do. But I want you to say it.”
“I want you,” Rick says, turning his head so he can gaze up at Daryl with pleading eyes.
“Need more than that.” Daryl leans down and starts taking off his own boots, moving slowly and untying the laces with far more care than necessary. “After the shit you pulled? I need you to fucking grovel.” He kicks off his boots and starts unbuttoning his pants.
Rick’s eyes snap to Daryl’s fingers, hovering over the shiny silver button on his jeans. “I want you, Daryl. Please.”
“How long?” Daryl says, slowly slipping the button out of its home and pulling the zipper down inch by eternal inch.
“Forever,” Rick breathes out. He takes a deep, shuddering breath as Daryl abandons his work on his jeans and reaches up to pull off his shirt. “I’ve always wanted you. Long as I’ve known you.”
Daryl lets his shirt fall on top of his discarded vest. “Then what the hell was last night?”
“A mistake,” Rick says, then wriggles his hips and closes his eyes to control himself. “I care about her a lot. And I know she wants me, maybe loves me. And she’s a good mom to Carl and Judith. And I thought… maybe that was enough.”
He hears Daryl’s jeans whisper down his legs and then a clinking sound as Daryl pulls something out of the cardboard box. “Was it?” the archer murmurs, and Rick shakes his head, letting his skull roll back and forth on the cold stone floor.
“Shoulda waited for you.”
“Damn straight,” Daryl says, and Rick’s eyes fly open as he feels Daryl straddling him, his knees tight against Rick’s hips. Rick’s hands come off the ground, reaching for Daryl, and Daryl frowns and pins them back to the floor before letting go and reaching for a ceramic jug he’d put down beside his jeans.
Rick lets out a mildly scandalized laugh. “Is that holy oil?”
Daryl rolls his eyes and pops the cork out of the jug. “They ain’t usin’ it anymore. Might as well not let it go to waste.” He shifts his position a bit so that their cocks are touching, and Rick moans and arches his back at the contact. Daryl is longer than he is but Rick’s got him beat on girth, and when Daryl’s oil-slick hand wraps around them both and gives them a long stroke, Rick gasps into the cavernous cathedral and suddenly understands religion.
Rick starts lifting his hips slowly, thrusting into Daryl’s hand and against Daryl’s cock, and it’s more than good, more than perfect, more than anything . “Daryl,” he says again, and this time Daryl doesn’t cut off the word but Rick has no idea what else to say, so he speeds up the motion of his hips and tries to imprint this whole moment in his mind, never to be forgotten.
“Was she tight?” Daryl asks. His eyes are dark, more pupil than iris, and his once-free hand has disappeared behind his back. Rick moans again, a wanton sound, and lets his eyes flutter closed for a moment as the thought of being in Daryl settles in his brain.
A sharp squeeze on his cock makes Rick blink, and Daryl raises an eyebrow, his own breath coming faster as he works himself on both sides. “Answer me,” Daryl growls. “Was she tight?”
Rick opens his mouth to respond but Daryl’s wrist twists wickedly around his throbbing shaft and for a moment he’s lost in helpless whimpering as he forces himself to stay in control of his body. “Yes,” he gasps out after a moment. “Yeah.”
Daryl laughs, somehow both cruel and joyful at the same time, and leans down to drag his lips over Rick’s rough cheek and down to his ear. “I’m tighter,” he rumbles, and Rick’s hips jerk upward as the caramel-thick sound of Daryl’s chuckle rings in his ears. “Wanna feel?”
“Oh, fuck yes,” Rick breathes, and he reaches for Daryl’s face to pull him down for a kiss.
“No,” Daryl snaps, then stops stroking and pulls a long sash, probably part of a priest’s vestments, out of the box. “Told you to leave your hands up there. Now I gotta make you.” He grabs Rick’s wrists again, crossing them together and quickly knotting the sash around them, binding his wrists together in a tight restraint that’s just this side of painful, then lets Rick’s hands free. “Back behind your head,” he orders, and Rick quickly complies.
Daryl smirks and then moves again, lifting his hips and positioning Rick’s cock at his entrance. “Tell me whose you are,” he says, voice low and dark like sacrilege itself, then gives Rick’s shaft a quick squeeze before taking his hand off of it. “Tell me who this belongs to.”
“You,” Rick gasps, gaze locked on the sight before him, Daryl in all his glory hovering just above him, the tip of his cock pressed lightly against Daryl’s loosened hole. “Just you.”
“Damn straight,” Daryl says again, and then he moves , sinking down onto Rick with such agonizing slowness that Rick is sure he hears trumpets sound off to the east. His hands come up off the floor but he manages to keep them from moving any farther away from where Daryl wants them, and he feels his eyes crossing as Daryl finally takes him all the way in, hot and tight like the very definition of of original sin. They stare at each other for a moment, chests heaving with the exertion of control, and then Daryl moves again, rocking his hips in a way that’s so decadent that Rick’s own hips stutter against him.
“You have any idea how many times I thought about this?” Daryl murmurs, his body moving with Rick’s in the same display of perfect synchronization that permeates everything they do. “At the CDC. At the farm. At the prison. Every single fucking time I saw you.” He tightens his muscles around Rick, and Rick curses under his breath and thrusts upward to slide just that much farther inside.
“I’m sorry.” Rick arches his neck, exposing it to Daryl, who leans forward and sucks on the skin there.
“You better be,” Daryl growls against his throat. “‘Cause I ain’t lettin’ you pull this shit again. You’re mine now, an’ I don’t share.” He sits up then and reaches for the box again, pulling out a big bottle of wine with a screw-off top. “You know how fuckin’ much I wanted to kiss you after you took Joe out?” he rasps. “Blood all over your mouth like a goddamn demon from hell an’ then them angel eyes on top of everything. Hot as shit, man.”
Rick lifts his knees and plants his feet on the floor to get more leverage as he fucks up into Daryl. “Can kiss me any time you want.”
Daryl snorts out a laugh. “I know I can. Open up.” He unscrews the lid from the wine bottle and as soon as Rick’s mouth is open he starts to pour, the dark red liquid sparkling in the light from the stained glass windows as it spills from the bottle and past Rick’s lips. Rick swallows as fast as he can, but Daryl keeps pouring, letting some of the wine splash down Rick’s cheeks, cutting tiny blood-red rivers through the stubble there.
And then Daryl stops pouring and sets the bottle down, then grabs Rick’s chin and grins. “Fuckin’ gorgeous, man,” he breathes, and then his mouth descends onto Rick’s, tongue slipping through Rick’s lips and teasing the wine out of his mouth.
Rick whimpers and kisses back, thrusting up harder than ever. Daryl grinds his ass back against Rick’s groin, pushing him farther inside as they both moan into each others’ mouths and their movements become hitched, stilted, desperate. Daryl sits back up quickly and starts stroking himself, his breath coming out in puffs from his wine-stained lips as he bounces up and down on Rick’s dick.
“Daryl--” Rick says again, and this time he is interrupted.
“Beg me,” Daryl rasps out, pumping his hand faster on his long shaft as Rick writhes under him. “Beg me to forgive you. Beg me to let you come.”
Rick opens his mouth, feeling heat pooling in his belly, and takes just a moment to steady himself before he locks eyes with Daryl and says, “Daryl, please.”
“Not good enough,” Daryl says, and he lifts himself all the way off of Rick’s cock and knee-walks up his body, still jacking himself quickly. “You take what I give you and you thank me for it, remember?”
The noise that bubbles up from Rick’s throat is barely human, a note of despair mixed with desperation and love and lust and all the complicated emotions he’s had buried in his chest for Daryl all this time. “I love you,” he breathes, and Daryl’s hips hitch as the hunter starts coming, thick ropes of white coating Rick’s face as Daryl groans out something that might be Rick’s name and then lets himself fall off to the side, rolling away from Rick and lying on his back, staring up at the stone ceiling hundreds of feet above them and gasping for breath.
Rick whimpers again and fucks up into the air with his still-straining cock. “Daryl, please, I still need--”
“Fuck you,” Daryl says, then starts to laugh, a free and light sound that makes warmth curl around Rick’s heart even as his dick screams to be touched. He rolls over on his side and smiles at Rick, the expression melting ten years from his face. “You can come when we get home.”
Rick’s mouth falls open, and Daryl smirks and reaches over him to grab something else from the cardboard box. “You’re kidding, right?” Rick says. “You’re just gonna leave me hanging like this?”
“Damn straight,” Daryl says a third time, tearing open the vaccuum-sealed bag and reaching in for a handful of wafers. “Teach you to fuck someone besides me. An’ don’t jack yourself either. This is your punishment.”
Rick groans and moves his arms at last, draping one awkwardly over his eyes. “What am I gonna do with you, Dixon?”
“Hell of a lot more than you’ve been doing,” Daryl mutters, then holds out his hand as Rick peers at him from under his arm. “Cracker?”
Rick sits up and holds out his hands, and Daryl brushes the crumbs off of his fingers and reaches out to untie him. “Those are communion wafers, you know,” Rick points out. “I’m pretty sure you’ll go to hell for that.”
Daryl shrugs. “Just had gay sex in a fuckin’ cathedral usin’ holy oil as lube and tyin’ you up with priest robes, man. Already got a first-class ticket.” He grabs another handful of wafers and holds them out, and Rick rolls his eyes and takes them. They sit in silence for a long time, munching on the communion wafers and passing the bottle of wine between them, and finally Daryl stands up and starts gathering up his clothes.
Rick watches him move, then clears his throat and looks down at his finally-fading erection. “I’m looking at you now,” he murmurs. “Sorry I stopped. I won’t make that mistake again.”
Daryl pauses, staring at the clothes in his hand for several seconds, then bends down to pull his pants up over his legs. He gives a short nod, and just like that, all the tension between them that’s been building for months dissolves into the stale air around them, the jewel tones from the stained glass windows painting Daryl’s bare chest with light, and Rick lets a smile drift across his lips as he grabs the priest’s sash and uses it to wipe the come off of his face.