dadyl | 𝙿𝙴𝙽𝙰𝙽𝙲𝙴 𝙸𝙽𝙱𝙾𝚇 ;

[ His tail might already be wrapped around him but Daryl slips the arm he doesn't need to sign against Gabe's chest around the other's back, just so he can hold onto him in a way that feels more familiar. When Gabe nuzzles against him, Daryl's gills ripple in what amounts to a sigh and he wonders if maybe Gabe is cold. He'd grown used to the water almost immediately when he'd been tossed in, but Daryl had been so much farther along in the surgeries than Gabe is now. He's so utterly human that it has Daryl worried. ]

Take it that means you've seen someone drown, too.

[ Not to mention he's probably felt the beginning effects of it before today if it had been a part of his training. Gabe doesn't bring it up often, but every story from that time is a horror. ]

It's okay. I ain't seen Carol around here, yet. That means she's still on the outside.

[ And that means she's going to find a way to get them out. That, at least, is something Daryl isn't worried about. He can count on her watching his back like he can count on Hell jerking them around in the first place. ]

She'll figure it out. [ Or she'll do her damned best. ]

Yeah. I have.

[ It's signed simply, and without emotion. That was one of the lessons in his SERE training. Not everyone made it out whole. Not everyone made it out alive. The instructors called it a good thing. Said culling the weak links made them all stronger.

Run with the pack. Don't slow the others down. ]

And I've been waterboarded. I know what it feels like when you start dying.

[ That moment when it stops hurting. That's when you know you're really in trouble. But he puts that thought into a box and locks it away, shaking himself. It doesn't matter. He isn't drowning now and neither is Daryl. They're together and they're stronger that way.

They'll make it through. ]

Good. Good. She'll play it smart.

[ He had assumed as much about Gabe's training, given what he's already been told about it, but another ripple shivers through Daryl's body at the mention of waterboarding. That's exactly what it had felt like for the first minute he'd been thrown in here - the waterboarding that Leah and Carver had subjected him to. The memories come roaring back down, even as his gills work just fine. ]

I ain't never felt anything like it. Ever.

[ And he never wants to again, it had been terrible seeing Gabe struggle before his new instincts had kicked in. He might not know the first thing about how Carol will go about helping them, but he trusts her to figure it out. If anything can be tried, Carol will try it. ]

I wouldn't be alive if it weren't for her, you know.

[ Broadly, true, but specifically as well. And maybe they aren't alive here, maybe not exactly, but he's alive back home because of her, full stop. ]

First time she saved me? Me and Rick, all of us... We were about to have our throats slit. Be bled out. For meat.

[ It still seems surreal just signing it. But it had happened - and everything that had happened afterwards had been real as well. ]

We got caught by a group that was eating people. Easier to lure us in than hunt for food themselves.

[ Daryl hasn't told him a lot of specifics about the world he walks through back home. The dead came back, things went to shit. Being alive means fighting. The last part is familiar, even if the specifics aren't.

Gabe tries to imagine that. Facing an enemy hungry and desperate enough to butcher other people. It's an ugly, brutal picture. ]

That's fucked.

[ But Carol saved him. Saved the ones with him too, sounds like. ]

There are people back home that buy corpses. Organ grinders, we call them, because they take what's left. Repurpose it. Bones, teeth, augmentations. Even the muscle tissue. Everything. But they don't kill people for the meat. Jesus.

[ Daryl just nods when Gabe declares it fucked. It was. It was years ago, so many years, and still, Daryl isn't sure he's ever seen anything worse than the killing floor. The piles of bones and carcasses in the yard, the train cars full of other trapped people. The cattle.

Realizing that the people there were all wearing and using their peoples' things. ]

They hunted us after. After we helped Carol kill most of them. Tried to eat one of ours slow.

[ At least, he'd been told all about it. He and Carol had already been heading into the city after Beth when the cannibals had attacked the church. ]

We met plenty of other bad groups. Crazy ones. But nothing like them again. Even when the world got even meaner.

Not everyone goes bad.

[ Horror after horror. Gabe takes it in, toggling his tech so he's sure he's not missing any of Daryl's signs in the water. It takes focus. Sometimes he thinks he misses things, nuance that he'd be able to grasp if he still had eyes. But he knows this because he knows Daryl, and what it means to survive in the aftermath.

Some things just bleed true. Even across worlds. ]

Not everyone.

[ He tips his head back, listening to the water. The strange clarity of it. ]

You didn't.

[ He loves him for signing that because sometimes Daryl still wonders. He's done a lot of things to stay alive, to keep his people safe. All things he would do again in a heartbeat, and how much more would he have been willing to do if it had meant saving those they'd lost? Maybe he doesn't want to know.

It hadn't mattered before he'd ended up here. But in Hell, he's had more than the rare occasion to get caught up in those thoughts. ]

We always tried to be the good ones. The ones working to keep people alive. Whenever we could.

[ They'd gotten good at it, but his world has been rotting for a long time. It's getting harder and harder to survive no matter how much experience they have to rely on. ]

I thought I knew people were bad before. I didn't know shit.

That matters.

[ Gabe trails his fingers absently through the water. He was cold earlier, but he's adjusted to the temperature. How long can he stay in the water like this before it starts fucking him up, damaging his skin? He apparently can't breathe oxygen anymore, so that's fun, but the rest?

Thoughts for later. He keeps floating, hanging close to Daryl. That feels safe, at least. ]

Think most of them are. But not all. And it matters when you try. I -

[ He hesitates, his signs stalled. ]

I need it to matter.

[ Bad or weak, he's learned that sometimes it doesn't matter which it is. Both are dangerous when it comes down to it. But he also knows Gabe's position back home is so much more complicated than Daryl's own fight for survival in his world. Of course, Gabe needs the trying to matter, so Daryl nods against his forehead and makes sure that Gabe feels it. ]

It's mattered here.

[ Here, there are ways to measure it. Daryl is sure, more than ever, after his conversation with Bucky. ]

You and me. Carol, too. We been here, what, how long? A year?

[ There's a pang in Daryl's chest when he realizes what he's saying and again, his tail betrays him and squeezes Gabe a little tighter. ]

And we haven't changed. We don't normally look any different.

[ Not like the many he's seen with demonic changes they deserve. Not like Monika. ]

So it's mattered.

[ It hasn't escaped Gabe's notice how some of the sinners end up with fangs, claws, shit like that. Henry had fangs, he remembers. And sometimes people end up with crazy shit for a while, or forget themselves, but then it fades. They don't keep that, though they carry the memories.

He bumps his forehead against Daryl's, pressing closer for a moment. Almost too close to sign. ]

More than a year, for me. And I'm still - human, at least. We all are.

[ Gabe gets so close that Daryl's gills ruffle again, but the part about them all still being human hits hard. He doesn't feel human, scaled and spined and more than half his body made up of tail. He feels so alien that he's holding onto Gabe just to remember what it means to be himself and that comment, signed awkwardly against his chest, does it.

He takes hold of that signing hand in his own altered one and just cocks his head to the side enough to lean in and kiss him. He doesn't know if it will be the same, he's betting it won't, but he's been trapped here with nothing but his thoughts for two days. He's grown to miss Gabe in ways that can't be expressed in words.

The kiss isn't as weird as he'd thought it would be, but the moment their noses brush together and their lips meet, another burst of bioluminescence runs the length of Daryl's spine, sparkling and refracting around them in the water. ]

[ It's the first time he's ever been kissed underwater. To Gabe's faint surprise, it isn't that different. It's just a moment, with this man, this person he trusts, and that lets it settle warm in his chest. All easy physicality as their noses brush and then his tech suddenly picks something up. There's -

Gabe cocks his head, running scans. He reaches out to run his fingers along Daryl's collarbone, trying to zero in on it. ]

Something's different. Did you do that?

[ This is familiar, at least. Living suspended in the water isn't, his existence in his body isn't, but kissing Gabe somehow is. Despite how his skin responds with a little light show, Daryl lets himself relax into the moment - and perhaps one thing is feeding the other, and vice versa.

But oh, he likes how they can talk now without having to break their kiss. He's going to keep that, that is, if he ever gets put back right again. ]

Not on purpose.

[ Daryl deepens the kiss, even strokes his tail's strong grip down Gabe's legs, and the colours along his spine develop and shiver. ]

When you touch me... parts of me light up.

[ He doesn't know how else to describe it and when Gabe's fingers trail over his collarbone, his scales respond in kind. ]

[ With anyone else, Gabe thinks he'd be tensed up and twitchy from being held like this. Contained like this. Here, it almost settles him. He knows Daryl and he knows what it means to be held by him. This is just a continuation. A thing they're doing.

He bumps their foreheads together, smiling a little. ]

Yeah? I can pick it up, a little. What's it look like?

It...

[ He hesitates, trying to find the words. He isn't usually a very descriptive or talkative person. ]

It's this blue light, coming through my... scales.

[ The last word is signed a little differently, like Daryl is both hesitatant to say it and angry that he has to. ]

Wherever they added them. My spines, my shoulders.

[ Not his tail yet, but if they'd kept kissing... Daryl isn't totally sure what might have happened. ]

Like instead of goosebumps. But stronger.

[ Gabe knows the strangeness of the moment will catch him if he lets it. The questions of what comes next, what the demons will do given the chance — worse, and stranger, than what’s already been done. But he pushes past that. What does it get them to dwell?

First, survive. They’re still human.

Gabe leans forward, nuzzling against Daryl. Centering himself. Maybe offering some small comfort. ]

I can pick it up through my tech. Like a ripple.

[ A shift in the atmosphere. ]

I like it.

[ He isn't sure how Gabe will react to what he's telling him. He knows Gabe can't see the worst of it, not the way someone like Carol would be able to, and that takes some of the bizarre shame off of his shoulders.

But he can touch, he can feel the changes firsthand, and then Gabe nuzzles against him anyway like it doesn't matter and another burst of colour shivers through Daryl. He wraps both his arms around him and instead of signing on his chest, he traces the necessarily lines on his back in slow strokes.

Like the words themselves don't matter. ]

Only you could make me feel like less of a freak right now.

[ Part of him wonders what color it shines in the water and almost asks, but Daryl's pulling him close and that's just easier. A comfort now, especially in this place, and Gabe just lets himself press into it. A little more of the tension just draining out.

They're okay. Right here, right now, they're okay.

Gabe rests his head against Daryl's shoulder, cycling his tech absently. They can't speak to each other like this, not out loud, but that's okay. They know each other. He just presses his mouth to Daryl's skin in a quiet kiss and hopes that covers everything. You've got me, and I've got you.

We're okay. ]

𝙿𝙴𝙽𝙰𝙽𝙲𝙴 𝙸𝙽𝙱𝙾𝚇 ;

oof the scars, he knows him so well ;;

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